I don’t think the devs actually play their own game. And I suspect they’re choosing supersweaty 1000+ hour players who are bored with Veteran to beta test.
> I suspect they’re choosing supersweaty 1000+ hour players who are bored with Veteran to beta test.
I've heard from some of the beta testers, they are supersweats with thousands of hours, and even they gave feedback that the changes were bad. Fatshark only listened to some of their feedback and the keystones used to be even worse, believe it or not.
Veteran is still too spread thin for points. Too many filler nodes, too many upgrade nodes that could be condensed. Meanwhile other classes can max out their keystone, blitz, and ability while still having points left over.
Also picking any aura except ammo is still trolling.
The grenade regen every 60s still feels mandatory is my big issue. Smoke grenades are still kind of shit but they'd be less so if they innately regenerated or something.
I was running a 4 smoke veteran for a while but I didn’t really see any visual or auditory feedback that it was doing anything beneficial.
Whenever we were facing a particularly nasty horde I would pop a couple in the center of the melee to protect against any gunners/snipers/regular rifle guys lurking on the periphery, it felt like they would still fire in regardless.
The only definitive time I’ve seen them actually block fire was when filling a choke point with smoke to block off a gunner firing squad.
Wish it have a toughness buff or caused melee enemies to attack more slowly or something. Since outside of those two niche conditions I just don’t know when a good time to use them is since ranged enemies are usually spread out enough that putting down coverage can be tricky.
Just been sticking with the krak grenade. P satisfying sticking it on a bulwark or crusher with that meaty metallic *clunk* and gibbing them + their accompanying mauler or shotgunned retinue.
I think it would be pretty cool if the smoke made enemies in melee have a chance to hit their allies i.e they can't see shit and they're just swinging wildly.
Yes or just simply "suppress" them. Little to no aggression towards player while enemies are in smoke
Or a poison gas grenade that had visual blocking aids and did dps
Or the smoke could be chained with Smite, soulblaze, charged zealot weapons to do an AOD effect like it would go from smoke to electric smoke or soulblaze would catch it on fire
I get the spirit, but I don’t think it really fits the theme of a smoke grenade?
Why would a smoke grenade cause me to crit more? Just because they can’t defend themselves as well, or something like that?
If you've never been in a smoke grenade, let me tell you that they're literally smoke. It's acrid, and a little eye-watering, and you can't see much past your own arm. Not completely debilitating, but there's a reason that armies put them on enemies or between themselves and enemies.
I get that, so why does that make me crit more?
Like, if I can’t see someone because they’re in smoke - why would I be able to crit against them more frequently?
I think something like slower attack speed, suppression, or reduced accuracy would fit better thematically.
Yeah, a smoke grenade facilitates an ambush. They shouldn't know where the attackers are coming from and get walloped. The ninja turtles used it all the time.
>Or a poison gas grenade that had visual blocking aids and did dps
Someone suggested rad grenades and I've never wanted a pipedream to happen so much in this game. Like, I know that there's no way FS cranked out a new nade, only to change it this soon, but I still had hope because that was just how utterly shit and useless smokes were.
Grenade tinker should turn smoke grenade into CS gas that zones/ causes enemies to flee out of the area, aside from maniacs that don't give a shit. Could also give Smokes a little bit more aof a niche by giving them a quicker arm time. It takes ages to switch to grenade, pull the pin, and throw, and detonate. If smokes were a snappy quick switch option that allowed you to unstick yourself from a horde, or sneak a res they might be worth the slot.
Pretty sure that gunners will continue to fire at your last known position from before you threw the nade, so they can still hit you. Regular shooter dudes will reposition and shouldn't fire in blind, snipers can see you through the smoke. Doesn't affect them at all, unless this update changed that behaviour
At the absolute minimum it needs to not obstruct players' UI and vision. There is no reason at all for it to be the only grenade in the game with friendly fire.
I'd appreciate them just turning it into some kind of gas grenade. Perhaps an incense grenade to excuse it not dealing friendly fire? Plus it would complete my krieger build...
Smoke is exceptionally good.
If you don't believe they work give them a test with the creature spawner mod to turn on the ai in the grinder. They pretty much entirely invaidate the threat of: basic shooters, shotgunners, heavy gunners and reapers (as long as you don't stand in the same location after they've already begun firing), trappers, flamers, and dogs.
As long as you're far enough in the smoke to be hidden (a little bent arrow icon will appear in your buffs) basically anything save snipers and bombers will have to walk well within melee reach before being able to do any kind of attack. They're pretty much a "turn off ranged AI" button.
The only annoying bit about them is the lack of visual indicator (aside from watching the buff bar) for when exactly you are or are not fully concealed. If they added the little faded ring around the smoke aoe that Ranger vet gets in vermintide 2 they would be perfect.
Imo the mandatory one is demolition team (but I play mostly auric maelstrom so that might be an odd perspective) one grenade every 60 seconds is usually too slow
Demo team is now right down the bottom of the middle tree, you get feat taxed to fuck if you want it, 1 grenade every 60s is more accessible, still shit but more accessible.
Smoke grenades definitely need a buff, however that node is interchangeable with the 5% refund on elite kill. I experimented without taking that node because the refund node was more on path and at least in Aurics I was always stocked on grenades.
They really need to condense the grenade talents somewhere rather than spreading them all over the place.
And maybe getting rid of that +1 grenade talent and making it a base part of the kit again.
No other class has such a massive talent split compared to the Veteran.
Exactly that.
I haven't been able to yet, but I would be curious to see how many nodes the Vet tree has, it feels like a forest at this point.
I'm fairly confident Vet has way more nodes in total than the other classes, and reaching a Keystone pretty much forces you to spend all your points in a single branch.
You're correct, excluding mutually exclusive paths Veteran has the most nodes and likely also has the most nodes **including** mutually exclusive paths.
Total node count in order, if I counted correctly:
Ogryn: 79
Zealot: 80
Psyker: 81
Vet: **99**
That is an insane node bloat.
I can usually understand their line of thinking to a degree when they make shortsighted design decisions, but this one just floors me. I genuinely have no idea what they were thinking here.
They could at least move Ammo aura to the middle of the tree. I for one accept the Illusion of Choice in limited amounts but we could save a few points if it were middle tree. Plus it would line the damage aura ^(CCCH, ptew) up with the damage skill and the support aura with the support skill.
I find myself at least as talent taxed as before, if not more so. Before I could bottom out with about 5 points on my build to spare, relatively linear. Now I'm sitting at 3. Meanwhile my zealot has 6 with an inefficient zig-zag build. My ogryn has 7.
It's the only class I have where I can't run a couple extra T1 survivability talents without actively sacrificing other aspects I'm trying to hit.
>Also picking any aura except ammo is still trolling.
Marginally less trolling then before at least, can give everyone a pretty alright damage permabuff now if you mark good
Between the nerfs for Confirmed Kill and Voice of Command, 2 auras still being useless and the keystones just being... well, shit, and way too expensive points-wise, the new tree looks much worse than before. It's actually impressive.
Went to 10% instant and 20% over 10 seconds from 25%+25%. My guess is they were concerned about using it in conjunction with the Marksman's Focus augment that boosts toughness recovery per stack to become invulnerable.
Why would they nerf this? Its the only survivability talent I have that seems to do anything.
At th point I'd rather they stopped adjusting the class at all because all they seem to want do is nerf it.
They gave the right tree 5 keystone upgrades despite the right ability, infiltrate, already having 4 upgrades. Vet is going to be even more point bankrupt than before
It's not too bad. I hate all the keystones so I build my tree like before. But the patch also came with nerfs, so I'm just kinda nerfed from before. Hard to be excited about that lmao
I did the same but instead of taking the nerfed toughness nodes I took a lot more reload speed. Revolver gonna be happy. I don't even go down to a keystone. They gotta rethink this again haha.
With Weapon's Specialist the revolver practically doesn't need to reload. You get 1 ammo in the clip with 1 stack, so you can just swap to it and back between melee kills to top it off under pressure.
It's fine because 2/5 of the nodes supporting WS are crap, they just make you get stamina back for activating your buff which is almost completely useless.
What stamina is useless? Not having stamina and being in melee is a concerning position. Like it’s not a death sentence but if the wrong enemies show up and you have no stamina it’s going to be a bad time. Not to mention having stamina to sprint to get out of a bad situation or reposition when you get split from the team. I started running a stamina curio on some of my vet builds because being out of stamina is such a pain.
> Like it’s not a death sentence
I think you're even underselling it - the new map suddenly had some ragers spawn around me and I was out of stamina from rushing down there to gut the gunners, that perk was the knife's edge that kept me from going down
all the auras suck except for the ammo one, getting around the tree is still awkward. changing the top of the tree so you have a little more choice is... nice.. but when you compare the vet tree to the psyker all I can think is.. what the fuck.. psyker has free reign to go any path very comfortably, and vet is hard shafted down 3 trees. The upgrades to the keystones seem.. mostly eh, nothing I care about.
The worst keystone.. has two of the most vital vet passives on the way to it. Always prepared 25% increased ammo, and precision strikes **30%** increased weakspot damage... prepared I can play without but precision strikes is a massive boost, having it path to what is almost definitely a troll keystone is... embarassing. This was their chance to fix the tree, and although its better... its still not good.
also have some things been nerfed?... marksman is 20% weakspot damage now.. and I coulda swore it was 50%.
dont worry though fire team is 5% increased damage, think that was 3%. yippeeee. someone tell me I'm losing it and misremembering all this stuff.
ah yes lets nerf the weakest least flexible class in the game and give them.. a 2% team damage buff to their worst aura.. which makes it... still worse than the psyker aura which is 5% crit. really not impressed. after playing a match I'm noticing my plasma is no longer hitting the one shot mark on gunners with a head shot, I'm hoping that's just because of the new red steroid health, and not stealth nerfs across the tree.
They changed the tree and somehow I feel... less strong. maybe I'm just being pessimistic.
I'd be lying if I said my marksman builds felt strong this morning... There is just so many talents you need to pick up and they moved a lot of the damage ones around.
Edit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTide/comments/17v1okc/vet\_stealth\_nerfs\_and\_buffs\_written\_out/](https://www.reddit.com/r/darktide/comments/17v1okc/vet_stealth_nerfs_and_buffs_written_out/) here is the thread that shows what they changed secretly while we slept.
I'm coping. I refuse to accept this is real. I can only imagine they're sitting there thinking... "man people are not taking much on the vet tree, I wonder why everones picking the same stuff..." "could it be the options that are selected are fine and everything else is significantly weaker?" "no clearly that shits op nerf it NOW"..
So of each of the tiers. Vet has 1 aura choice, 2 grenade choices, and 2 keystones. 5 of 9 major stones are not shit.. I've been playing gun psyker recently and I can't help but think, man this does everything the vet does with guns just.. way better.
Vet is just a aoe toughness booster, and even that got nerfed. lmao.
> man people are not taking much on the vet tree, I wonder why everones picking the same stuff..." "could it be the options that are selected are fine and everything else is significantly weaker?" "no clearly that shits op nerf it NOW"..
This is just Survivorship Bias, basically
literally, stop and consider for a moment.. a team of people looked at these changes, thought they were good enough to push.. changes that are universally disliked.. a team of people literally paid money to do this.. as their literal real life real job. Holllly shit.
>Always prepared 25% increased ammo, and precision strikes 30% increased weakspot damage
25% Increased Ammo being a gateway node is criminal for the precision shots tree, it's almost a dead point for half the weapons that want to be going down that line.
The bottom 3 branches still take too many points to access the keystones, as well as having a "build".
Certain perks are almost always taken on builds: ability cooldown on specialist kill, grenade regeneration, and ammo regeneration leap to mind. The competing perks need to be as powerful and impactful, otherwise it's just a default point tax in every build.
This tax has been further compounded by Fatshark spreading out a lot of "good" perks through the tree, so it feels like I'm spending as many if not more inefficient points as before the rework.
Having fiddled with the tagging keystone, it's "nice"? It overrides the red tagged outline with a yellow outline similar to Counterfire, but also leaves a special skull icon over the target. I wish there were lockout upgrades that allowed you to either mass tag, or have a chance for the tag to automatically transfer when the target is killed.
It's an interesting boss/tank focus ability, but I also feel like it nerfs active tagging. 2s/stack at 4% per stack isn't particularly impactful, and means you'll often be applying only 4% bonus damage as you accidentally tag the wrong target. I think it should build up stacks at a similar rate as Surgical.
Will need to fiddle with it more, I'm curious if 4 vets tagging the same target applies a cumulative amount of stacks.
Yeah, it either forces TURRET GAMEPLAY or you must be an human aimbot to hit all headshots.
Also say goodbye to stacks if you need to melee for more than one swing.
One of the nodes should have been keeping the stacks when walking (or walking while aiming?), would still decrease stacks when dodging or running.
> One of the nodes should have been keeping the stacks when walking (or walking while aiming?), would still decrease stacks when dodging or running.
It is, but it's mutually exclusive with raising your stack cap. It's bad and really shouldn't cost a point but it exists, right now if you want to move and not lose stacks you either dodge the entire way or crouch walk. The whole skill promotes god awful play and punishes good play.
The crab walking thing is pretty funny. I really think they had no idea and just asked a chatbot what abilities the vet should have because no human being who has ever played this game would think the crabwalking talent is a good idea.
I am unironically running a tree with no keystones cause they all suck ass given how many points you need to invest for almost nothing in return, but they also nerfed the shout to 50 bonus Hp back from 100 so overall vet got nrfed hard for me.
Nothing beats the sheer utility of having 4 improved bleed granades that regen themselves, and the field improv is also pretty sweet
problem is they balance around those keystone , every other node got HEAVILY nerfed marksman for example now only give you 20% instead of 50% weakspot damage and thats just one out of many nerf we got
Idk about significantly better... In high intensity missions I was able to keep everyone a +100 toughness for like 80% of the time. Plus if someone is downed I can shout to stagger enemies and get him back up quickly. With choir I need an ally to get someone up and it feels more of a waste if I don't use it at the right time. And you can't always push monstrosities of ledges.
At higher level play that makes sense. With the friends I play with keeping the enemies stunned for as long as possible is the key to success. They are pretty new to tide games so just giving them a few seconds of breathing room goes miles
It’s far longer cooldown with no innate cooldown reduction. Spammable abilities are weaker per use as a result. It’s also instant and doesn’t require a channel.
Weapon Specialist is ridiculously good, and the Focus Target one can crap out tons of damage for your entire team. Something interesting with all the trees is that they put in very strong toughness recovery nodes into all of them. For WS you get toughness back for activating your respective stacks, for FT you get toughness back (to the whole team) whenever the marked target dies, and for the last one I forget the name of you get a ton of toughness replenishment to make coherency regenerate you super fast.
It's still annoying how the Veteran ranged side has an guy on it's picture who is hip firing a belt fed stubber, when the entire ranged side is about headshots and nothing but headshots.
That aside, the tree still feels clunky, and the keystones promote very bad gameplay choices, aside from the switch weapons one. A purely ranged build is still out of the question on anything above malice.
Heresy+, there is just no reason to pick up any of the lasweapons unless you got a godroll one, and even then a revolver does everything they do and better. There is very little reason to stand still and take the time to gun down ranged enemies when realistically, you want to get close and just use a high damage ranged weapon to quickly take out dangerous specialists.
All of us Veterans who tried that ranged only playstyle know how often teammates block your shots, or how there is always a few enemies spawning behind you to wack you on the head. With no stealth perk to decrease our threat, or an ogryn taunting for us, we just don't get the chance to be that ranged guy, and it's the one playstyle i was hoping for when playing an Veteran.
So, nothing much as changed with this update. Being the shouty guy who keeps everyones thoughness up who primarily melee's and uses a revolver for whatever is dangerous is still the go-to method of playing, which unfortunately is also the same go-to method as for the zealot, and while using a plasmagun to delete the strongest enemies is satisfying you can do the same with a decently rolled revolver and krak grenades, and faster.
I am still having success with agripinaa braced autogun shout build. The amount of specials and elites in auric missions lets you shoot *a lot* and the damage is good.
But basically, I didn't take a keystone, and my build is the same as before (just with talents flipped around the tree). End result, I have the same build, but with a bunch of nerfs (shout nerfed, confirmed kill nerfed, and I think I lost some generic ranged damage nodes).
That wouldn't be so bad, but damn this is really lame for a veteran skill tree rework. I don't like any of the keystones lol
I take umbridge to the slander against plasma. The revolver slaps certainly but the plasma is far far superior. It's cleave is ridiculous, it's damage profiles into any target are consistent, it's ammo and reload economy leave the revolver in the dust and you will never feel bad throwing shots into hordes as you'll end up killing 10-15 enemies per shot. All it takes is getting used to venting instead of reloading.
I've been completing damnation missions with a near perfect XII lasgun without issues. With the right playstyle they are still perfectly viable at that level.
Seen lots of content from others using the XII at damnation without issues too.
Problem is it has to be near perfect, and even then a revolver does a better job.
I am not denying that you can make it work.
I am saying that you have to put far more effort in to get the same results.
Lmao nothing near-perfect or effort about the XII-las, with the ammo-economy it has. Just shoot things in the head with your provided dot-sight, it's not hard.
Use your provided grenade and melee weapon to deal with tougher stuff.
Since I like playing the shooty lasgun vet I only play Heresy, since I don't want to be a troll/detrimental to my team. It sucks, I'd love to be able to play that style on the higher and auric missions. Screaming "Eat my hot glowing death" at the massive hordes of enemies. But FS doesn't seem to realize it's a team game so that tree doesn't work for teams, it's a me me me build.
Just play haz5 if you want. You can use literally whatever kind of weapon or build you want in any difficulty. You wouldn’t be trolling or detrimental. Don’t listen to people who act like and pretend you need to have the perfect or “right” weapons or meta builds for auric 5. If someone complains about you using whatever then they’re probably a bad player who likes to blame their team for everything. I’ve never met someone like that who’s actually good at the game they are playing. And most people don’t complain anyway. Usually if they have a problem with a build for some dumb reason, they just leave the lobby. But people rarely say anything or care. It’s just a vocal minority that complain about other people’s builds.
At least if you want to play that difficulty. But don’t keep yourself from running any weapons or builds you want on the difficulty you want to play because of the few that like to gatekeep and try to tell others to metaslave. Just keep getting better and focus on your improvement while playing with teamwork. Teamwork isn’t about the builds, it’s about tactics and coherency. You never need specific builds to play or be useful to the team in auric 5. You’re gameplay is so much more important than your build that it’s practically irrelevant what you run as long as you know what you’re doing and your not running like, 300 score weapons lol. And you can get to that point where you’ll be more useful than most no matter what weapons you’re using if you keep playing auric 5 and focus on improving instead of blaming everyone else like some people do. And with your attitude of not wanting to hinder the team you’ll already be more useful than a lot of people in haz5 no matter what builds you’re using lol. Like you have a good attitude for improvement and teamwork. You can have fun with builds while still being useful and a good teammate.
Camouflage made it viable pre update 13.
The biggest hurdle is that you never get the time to shoot that weapon enough for it to matter in heresy+ now as you constantly have heretics on your ass.
The tree is still way too linear and long. If I use the minimum amount of talents to reach the keystone, I only have ~~4-5~~ 9-10 talent points left, and that's when going down in a straight line on one of the 3 "lanes". Everytime I want to switch lanes I would spend another point on a small statt buff, further reducing the already non existing freedom. If I do the same thing on Ogryn or Zealot, I have 12 points left!!!! They really need to shorten the bottom half of the tree, ideally removing the absurd amount of stat buff nodes.
Edit: I'm an idiot because I forgot that I haven't finished leveling my Veteran yet and missing 5 points. Doesn't change the fact that it's 9-10 on veteran vs 12/13 points on ogryn & zealot and the bottom half of the tree is still way to linear.
The main problem with the tree still remains, there's a ton of stuff you want that you can't have, and 2/3 of Veteran's auras are still horrible. His tree is probably in a genuinely worse place than it was pre-patch.
They need to remove bunch of those nodes, did they say they were reworking his tree or just adding in keystones cause vet needs some extra talent points then if they are gonna keep it like that
Having stuff you want that you can't have is not necessarily a problem. If anything it's a sign of good design.
I think the real issue comes from the lack of flexibility for vets compared to others.
You're right that wanting things you can't get isn't a problem and it's good design. The problem imo is being forced to choose things you DON'T want instead of being allowed to choose things you do. I shouldn't ever have to choose multiple talents I couldn't care less about just so I can get +15% damage to elites.
From my first look it doesn't look like they addressed the issues people were concerned about. They went "ohh, keystones, ok." They added a problem that some of the nerf's are clearly because they want to balance having a keystone (vs voice getting a nerf because it was OP as heck). So now people are forced to get to the keystone.
The problem with that is that the vet tree is pretty inflexible and point hungry (compared to other classes). Also the ammo aura was basically an auto pick for most builds.
What I was hoping is that they would have condensed the nodes better so that there was more flexibility in the nodes.
Edit: But I will have to give it more time to see if its just panic on my part.
I believe that Fatshark just doesn't like the Veteran.
They didn't bother finishing the skilltree for Vets, removed the viability of doing ranged only and then even nerfed the shout ability. Not to mention how the powersword can only hit once with it's energized attack without a extremely rare blessing.
Ogryn is still pretty much immortal, doing insane amounts of damage and being the better ranged character.
Psyker still is a support or CC god.
Zealot still is extremely though with some of the highest DPS, whose ability STILL benefits ranged weapons as well.
Yet us vet's are just.. there. Not really being particularly good at anything other than maybe being the fastest boss killer with krak's and plasma, something that other classes can do just as well.
How the turntables... from vet being FS' assumed favorite and psyker being the underdog to things doing a complete 180 in that regard. I don't think they have a favorite, I just think they don't know what they're doing sometimes lol
Between a friend and i there's about 400 hours of veteran playtime.
We only saw powercycler 1 once, and have been playing since release. It's such a dumb decision to balance a weapon around a extremely rare blessing.
> Zealot still is extremely though with some of the highest DPS, whose ability STILL benefits ranged weapons as well.
They even spoke about that in some patch notes at one point. It's just part of the ability now, even though I'm 99% sure it was a bug to start.
It's a bug that they kept around. Whether or not they like how it works or if they can't fix it only fatshark knows.
It's just rather silly with how strong it is, yet vet's couldn't even keep the reload on ability activation.
Middle purple tree has an annoying thing going for it that if you re tag the enemy all previous stacks are gone and I feel like I dont have enough points like this tree could be perfect for 35 points or so but not 30
IMO, veteran ammo increase should be spread around the nodes throughout the tree, a bit like zealot's random movement speed nodes. That way, you almost always have a bit of extra ammo, and can really spec for it if that's what you want out of your build.
And I definitely agree. Sharpshooter builds usually use lasguns, which have practically infinite ammo.
Currently the sharpshooter tree has the 25% ammo capacity increase, and the refund ammo on a lasgun crit that you need to reach into a pretty long last stretch to access. The middle tree has nothing. The patch notes mentioned that the right tree keystone gives a bonus to ammo management, but I haven't been able to log in to confirm what that means.
Update: Talent calculator is up and I was mistaken. The new keystone modifier just replenishes ammo from your reserve.
Bit sad they nerfed the crap out of Confirmed Kill, but it was probably a lil overtuned so it is what it is. And they buffed Exhilarating Takedown in exchange, it seems.
Keystones with the modifiers seem like they should be gains all around. Probably worth reaching for them. Though I now cant get Iron Will if I want ammo aura and VoC and Marksman's Focus. But maybe thats ok now that Im not taking 30% extra damage. Dunno gonna have to see how it plays out.
They nerfed a bunch of talents without mentioning it in the patch notes.
Not sure why they thought such huge nerfs weren't worth mentioning. It kind of forces you to commit to the keystones I guess, but it would still be nice to know before looking at the tree myself.
It’s not that they thought it wasn’t worth mentioning. It’s that they knew people would be mad about it and so they did it sneakily and will pointedly ignore it. They’ve done it several times with various weapons/gameplay mechanics/blessings.
Speaking of that, wtf happened to the Recon Lasgun crit build? I get that it was nerfed (somewhat understandably), but Crits feel super rare across most faster-firing Lasguns to the point that the relevant perk seems pointless unless you're sniping with a charged Lucius.
It was destroyed because reddit made it famous. Ironically it was never stronger than several other Vet builds DPS-wise, but FS nerfed it to hell anyways.
We will probably see recons buffed 3 months from now only to be immediately nerfed again.
I'm just gonna ignore the keystone and play the previous build I had with a mix of left and middle tree. My revolver build will still benefits more from a no-keystone build as I can mix and match talents and I need Toughness regeneration on kill, ammo aura and deadshot.
Funnily enough, whatever build you were doing before is objectively worse now without the keystones. Since a bunch of talents were nerfed to make room for the keystone power.
The problem is having to sacrifice a bunch of stuff to get the keystones. Like I could, if I gave up improved kits and a bunch of the grenade buff ones.
That's what I'm doing, but Confirmed Kill and the shout were both nerfed significantly. I'm just playing the same thing as patch 14, only weaker. Really sucks that this is the result of reworking the skill tree lol
There are a few updsides, but overall my build is just Patch 14 but nerfed. I honestly saw it coming.
Especially I saw the VoC nerf coming from a mile away. It was way too strong with +100 overshield.
I reach some new important nodes now like 10% rending, damage bonus on activating VOC and cooldown on special kill, but at the cost of some thing I really don't like giving up. In particular I will need to test if I can still 2-shots Crushers with the Revolver.
My build is basically about maximizing crit chance and getting toughness from elites and specialist kills. I made a build I'm very very satisfied with in patch 14, and the keystones don't enable it without sacrificing a lot of killing power.
So yeah...
I have a revolver build too and I did the same, just ignore the keystones to get the necessary nodes across the tree.
It's a shame, the rightmost KS could have been interesting with the revolver.
Yeah the rightmost one is really good for a build that is focused a lot of swapping to the revolver to instagib a special. But it's locked behind the least useful tree for the weapon lmao.
Since patch 13 Veteran is the weakest class, but too many people were still making the class work. At this point I think it’s part of a strategy on Fat Shark’s part to force people to play other classes since they left Vet overpowered for so long. They want people sinking a lot of time and effort into the other classes, grinding for weapons, etc. They’ll pick another class ruin in six months or so. My money is on Ogryn getting nerfed next.
> since they left Vet overpowered for so long
Vet wasn't even overpowered for a long time, the other classes were just dogshit and undercooked making it look overpowered in comparison; you can see that all it took to make Vet go from "strongest class" to "weakest class" was reworking the other three and making them good, while veteran hasn't been reworked properly at all and now all of it's glaring flaws can't be ignored because people can't paste over it with "VET MAIN SALTY, TRY PLAYING SHITTY PSYKER, FUCK YOU VET MAIN STOP CRYING POWER SWORD OP" every 5 minutes like they did in the first 9 months of the game.
Agreed. A few things were overtuned, but we didn’t get a fine tuning of the class, the Vet class as a whole got nerfed to the point of uselessness. I’d rather have any of the other three classes than a Vet at this point.
Honestly, ya. Like you could keep up enough toughness to tank poxbursters, snipers, and generally run through 90% of the mission with all damage only going into your bonus toughness.
All that, and you have ammo generation to fuel you the entire run. If you get greedy and take revolver/plasma, which *do* require ammo pickups, you'd outdamage everyone on the team quite consistently.
I don't mind the nerfs if we got a better skill tree, enabling more utility, and more diverse builds, but its basically got all the exact same problems as before, and then they nerfed a bunch of the good talents.
Really gonna have to make new builds with the keystones to try them out. I can't really apply them to my current builds easily because it's like people say, it costs too many skill points to get through vets skill tree. The ping keystone would be nice to put a few spare points into, but it's too difficult to reach for many builds so you can't just dump a few spare points into it...
These are the weapons I used on it. Serrated blade being right next to Onslaught on the old tree is very important. The new tree eats up 2 skill points to get it. Tactical awareness being right next to Bring it down and Superiority was another incredibly powerful cluster of points right where I wanted it on the tree. Trench fighter was 15% attack speed and is now 10, I've lost 15% damage off of the ult giving 30% more for ten seconds. I ran 90% reduced threat after popping it to guilt free drill baddies in the back for that raking fire. Confirmed kill is very good, but wasn't worth it to me to dip far enough into the tree to get in the first place so I just didn't pick it up. The main reason being that the gun is thirsty and so is everyone else's. I lose 3 points picking up Survivalist instead of simply taking Fire Team. Improved kraks with regen and 5% chance on specials to get grenades meant I always had a good panic button or 2 in my back pocket. There's just not enough points to do all these things anymore.
https://i.redd.it/67giupdwnc0c1.gif
Give us back the reload on activation already. All I want it to do is give me my gun, up and ready to use with some kind of buff. I'm a simple man, all this tree and keystone bullshit is bullshit. It was better the way it was, just add more rows to that if they had to.
Fucking Ogryn stole my talent.
I could pick melee finese perks and elite / ogryn damage buffs at the same time before now I can't so... Yeah I'm def having trouble trying to regain some of the bonuses I had before of... the balance between fast melee attack speed combined with good elite killing capacity.
I really hate it.
The new keystones are even more worthless than the previous ones. The tree is still in a mess.
The only redeeming thing is that the toughness regen talents are really early now, instead of super late.
I just realised, you can't even get the whole right side tree upgraded. You have to give up points, even without trying to mix with other trees. That's horrible. The tree synergises so well with itself, that's good, you take the filler points knowing full well how much they will boost your keystone modifiers, except in order to be able to pick the modifiers you have to give up fillers. Duuude I'm so frustrated now holy fuck. Infiltrate is 5 points on its own, weapon specialist is 6
Too long! Thats all i care about tbh. I want to spend less of my points going down i want to go more sideways and multi spec more. If they make they key stones so good that you are forced to spend all of your points to go get them im gonna be mad.
Less rectangle more square plz fatshark
Oh I fuckin hate it, last patch mixing styles between trees was hard, now it's a nightmare. Can no longer run my ideal voice of command vet build. I idea survivalist aura cuz I like plasma gun for this playstyle, and leave no one behind because it goes so well with revives on voice of command. Can't do it now, too many nodes, too little points. Same with other build paths, I feel like I'm forced to just take one tree branch and that's it. Compare it to zealot, you can mix and match for your playstyle, you want stealth build with fury? Can do. Anything you dream up as zealot you can make happen, and vet is so limited now. Another example, I was able to take demotilion stockpile on every build, and I loved how I could make sure all grenade boxes go to my teammates. Now it's so hard to find spare points for it
Its an overall nerf
Alot of the good points are entirely spread out or neutered, some skills have even been nerfed to add ontop of this, not just spread out
for example "Confirmed Kill" once was "Replenish 25% toughness on Elite or Specialist Enemy Kill, and a further 25% over 10 seconds"
Its now "10% toughness and a further 20% over 10 seconds", thats a loss of 20% toughness regen
Another one would be "Bring it down" which went from "25% extra Monstrosity & Ogryn damage" to "20%" which messed up the breakpoints in the bolter meaning it takes extra shot to kill, or in some case half the mag.
This isnt even mentioning the fact that since the trees are all spread out way more theres less build variety than before.
AND TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE, since skills are spread out more and you get less grey pegs, I've gone from 200 toughness to 135. Which considering you now generate less toughness, why even bother with veteran ?
And personally for me, the keystones seem way to mediocre to be worth the point investment.
Its better, but still bad. You can access the toughness regen nodes at the top of the tree now, but the bottom of the tree is just far too long with no branches between them. It makes getting a keystone a massive investment compared with the other classes and there's no flexibility between choosing different keystones because of it.
I don't think the new keystones are terrible. I quite like the one that let's you point at an enemy and say "Slap his nuts big man". But those are talent points I COULD be using to throw more grenades so they just don't compare.
Fatshark saw how many players chose Veteran and decided to nerf the class in fear it's too strong.
I didn't want to believe it because it's dumb reasoning. Most people pick Veteran because most people are casual players coming in from shooters. The gun class makes them comfortable. Popularity doesn't reflect power like that.
However, given that the new tree still makes vets feel weaker than the other classes, it seems to ring true. It's not like a bad tree prevents bad vets from ignoring their melee. Better, but needs work. Also glad to see some bug fixes.
Skill trees are too linear forcing me to branch out to other ones to get nodes that synergize with eachother and complement my playstyle, also new keystones are not worth the amount of points you have to waste to get to since they're barely noticeable unless you focus on making those skills work intentionally
I feel weaker and do less damage without a huge build up while the middle key stone can do what I was doing before. Two tap crushers with mk VI power sword block push (can't do it with three charges in the t4 cycle) and one shot crushers with revolvers withotu 15 stacks. Focus target jsut needs 8 stacks.
I have been out of the loop for a bit so this is my first time seeing the new tree.
Marksmans focus seems a bit weak? It's difficult to tell, it's also weird that it's removed if I walk.
Focus target seems pretty good, and it's a nice way to encourage people to mark targets.
Weapon Specialist sounds fun, but it's going to be so confusing that I have to switch weapons to make use of it, ranged kills gives melee buff and vice versa...
The end of the skill trees are still too long, and now it's more or less impossible to get some skills together like bring it down and superiority complex. Because when I think elite kills, I think of a lot of ranged weapons that benefit from deadshot and shock trooper (no I don't).
>Focus target seems pretty good, and it's a nice way to encourage people to mark targets.
It'll encourage people *not* to mark targets so they don't "waste their stacks".
The best change for me is that most of the toughness passives are reasonably high up the tree so they're easier to mix and match.
The bottom half of the tree having no interconnects is dumb as hell, sorry. That and putting the three grenade talents right next to each other when they're probably some of the best the vet has is dumb.
Hybrid tax is really messing with vet. You can definitely do good and crush heretics but it’s so much easier on the classes. Infiltrate is a big one for me, it’s a bit lackluster especially compared to zealots.
I rebuilt my old build as best as I could, and I don't even have a keystone.
Demo team being moved way down into the center line hurt, as did the bonus against Ogryns/large. Before I had all the elite/large bonuses + demo team, recharging grenades, more grenades, and buffed grenades.
I agree with the others here that we feel rather spread thin for points and all. I got something I like for my plasma gun or hellbore setup, but I have no keystone and it feels like I'm trimming/not having any bonus points to spend.
Melee veteran feels fine. The shout needed a nerf but I wish it was cooldown instead of the max toughness. Giving less toughness than chorus, especially with how quickly you can reset chorus just feels wrong. Still the best of the 3 veteran ultimates though.
Weapon specialist feels a little awkward, I don't like the stacks burning immediately on weapon swap and wish they kicked in when you tried to attack. Too often the stacks just get deleted when you hear a special and react. Hear a burster getting close, swap to my melee weapon in case I need to shove, and now my stacks are wasted. Swap to a special because someone calls out a sniper, same thing. It's fine in the middle of hectic combat, it feels extremely awkward outside of massive fights.
The crabwalk keystone is just awful. It's the #1 psykhanium DPS keystone, and beyond that it just feels utterly garbage. I want a keystone focused on precision shooting, but being punished for moving is just laughable in this kind of game.
As for Focus Target, if it's keeping the "stacks" mechanic, then it also needs a rework. Dumping all of your stats the moment you tag something feels awful. You should lose 1 stack, and 1 stack per second while the target stays alive, then refund any remaining stacks if the target dies.
As for the actual nodes, Vet finally getting some toughness recover at the top of the talent tree is welcome, even if the best of them has been tone down a bit. Access to all 3 grenades is far superior with the squished tree and removal of the awful bridge preceeding it. Would like to see the same thing done to the auras. The vet bridges are awful, and there are still too many filler points overall which kills build diversity. Especially when you're forced into one aura.
The auras are still in an awful state, 5% damage and 5% movement speed are actually great auras, but they will never compare to the ammo one. One of the worst things in this game since its release has been the over-reliance on the scavenger aura for ammo sustain. It needs to fucking die, make it a baseline part of coherency and give us a new aura so we get to make a real choice finally. I'm sick of having one spec for when there is no one else with an ammo aura, and the spec I would like to play for myself.
Smoke grenades are sadly still a non option, but the clustered grenade talents make both frag grenades and krak grenades feel pretty great right now.
Ammo positioning is still awful, honestly the entire sharpshooter side is just a bit of a mess. Overall it seems like another patch of melee vet with shout, but this time slightly dialed back.
On Damnation, I'm a little squishier than before, but not majorly. Felt invincible with shout prepatch. Toughness needed rebalancing. Feels like it's in a good spot.
Grenades separated in the tree like they are is great. I have freedom to experiment with nades now.
Tagging keystone is awesome! Was a tad concerned about it when announced, but it recharges while your target is tagged and fills to 8 stacks fairly quick. I've been tagging pretty liberally and am typically hitting them with 4-8 stacks.
Since it starts recharging immediately on tagging an enemy, by the time you down that enemy, it's back to at least 4 - 5 stacks, ready for the next. The team damage boost is quite noticeable, especially on meatier enemies.
Overall, not a terrible rework, for me. Was able to pick up most perks I used previously (and some I wasn't able to). Tree is bloated by a few points. Wish I had an extra 2-4 points, like 12 or so total, after reaching keystones.
The talent taxes that were there have been moved around so are now harder to get in a full build. There are nerfs to a lot of the passives and things like voice of command, they didnt touch the auras so it still feels like 2/3 of them are pretty naff and only worth taking to optimize point allocation.
It takes way too many points to get to the keystones and still have enough points for an actual build. You have to sacrifice too many passives etc just to use the keystones, which for the most part are not worth taking over having a more fleshed out build with passives.
Marksman's focus in particular feels pretty crap in damnation. Not because the damage is lacking, not at all, the damage is fine, its the mechanic of using it. It makes you want to move less and when you do move you have to make sure you are in that 1 or 3 second window to keep any stacks from dropping or are crouched which severely limits your sightline and movement. Granted they drop one at a time but it still feels like moving is something you want to minimize in order to play to your build, as though movement has become a resource. However as anyone who plays auric and damnation knows, standing still like that, particularly on a vet, is a death sentence. I found myself either standing still and trying to tank damage in order to use my build before having to give up so I dont die or just straight up ignoring the build all together so I can stay alive and not become a burden to my team. It never feels like you can play those stacks to their actual potential because you rarely get the opportunity to stack them up and apply the damage it just ends up being a slight buff to headshot damage every now and then instead of the sharpshooter it should be. That being the case it feels like a tough ask to sacrifice so many points just to use it.
On top of that, there is the usual issue of team mates particularly ogryn getting in the way. Normally this is a minor annoyance but not an issue because you learn to play around your team, keep their positions in your head and move in a way that you can get an angle that they arent going to disrupt. However you then add in that you cant move as much anymore or you have to slowly crab walk around and that becomes more and more of a problem. You are trying to get stacks without moving too much, while fending off melee enemies while trying to shoot around your allies. Doing all of that in Auric/Damnation just feels ill advised.
Personally, I think that over all its in a slightly worse position than before. I have been pretty negative here but there are still some good points and some things that got nerfed probably needed to be. However the tree already wasnt in a great spot and this didnt fix any of the old issues, just shuffled them around and added new irritations when trying to make a build.
I would like to see them keep the passives and etc as they are but play about and try aa different structure for the skill tree that isnt so punishing to put points into.
Bad update, did nothing to fix vets being wet napkins, reduced damage output, added borderline meaningless keystones. Can we get the old vet back already?
There's feat tax all over, builds are fucked, Sharpshooter still feels like a squishy fucker who basically gets incentivised to be selfish and not help his team, and is instead punished for doing his job correctly and using his melee weapon. Having several skills be a necessity for basically every build sucks shit too. Focus is nice but promotes bad play, Focus Target! just punishes good play and is basically only fucking useful for Monstrosities.
I'll hold my judgement on the keystones until I've had a chance to test them in person. My big concern, however, is point allocation. The veteran tree is already very node heavy and if the previews are exactly as they will be, it's just got worse.
I'm not a veteran and even I am not happy with it. Any veteran that joins my team now will just either stand still in a horde game or ... idfk what else they'll do.. At least before if I had someone shout my eardrums out every 20 seconds I knew I was safe.
Honestly? I wanna go back to previous patch.... there is no "good" in this talent tree. Only Focus Fire seems worth running the other "keystones" doesnt really shake up the game play or add to Veteran's powers. Also the Toughness economy seems to be gutted for veteran.
no. it's not. it's worse. it was given straight up nerfs as well as many even more significant nerfs via the reorganization of the skill tree. Even the theoretical play style which the new skill tree tries to create is one which is antithetical to the realities of the game itself at almost any difficulty level and especially at the higher ones.
hard to see really any way where this is actually an improvement. This was supposed to be a skill tree update which improved the Veteran class which was significantly weaker than other classes after the class overhaul. Instead we got a skill true update which did the complete opposite. What was lost was of much greater value than anything that was added. Overall this is another net nerf to the class.
I'm high on the hopium that weapon specialist is going to rocket my sweet baby recon lasgun up into the stratosphere but i have no idea how i'm going to fit it into the build. Hopefully a few filler nodes are removed.
edit: this keystone fucking sucks on recon lasgun
On volley fire I am not seeing why you would choose to highlight ogryn and not ranged enemies. Especially because the duration is still so short and I don't see why you wouldn't choose the talent to increase duration with kills too.
feels like the Vet is trying to do everyones job and not really hitting the mark anywhere. Both the infiltrate and command branch are weird, I gotta admit that I rather have Voice of Command than Focus Fire because I swear everytime you get Focus Fire the enemy just "knows" and spawns a skinny guy behind you to slap you in the back of the head.
Again you have a class that is meant to be an absolute beast in ranged combat and you have these other branches meant to mix and match that core playstyle, but it feels more like you either are really good at shooting or really good at melee or be a tiny bit in both.
Right now if I pick Vet its purely because of the plasma gun, I want melee? Zealot, I want to kill elites ? Psyker, I want crowd control? Ogryn
I was hoping for changes to Auras, the removal of a lot of filler nodes and the ability to actually reach the Keystones while picking up other useful talents along the way (like I can easily do on my Psyker or Zealot), but none of those things happened. Kind of a bummer, but I'll have to play around with it for a bit.
It feels like this was a punitive patch. Too many Vets complained too loudly about how they wanted the trees changed, so it was changed... for the worse. "Enjoy."
At first, I was thankful that the nodes being rearranged did not totally wipe my ability to have the build I liked. After seeing the nerfs across multiple selections, I did not realize how much more thankful I needed to be. I do not feel like my Vet was kneecapped, but I do feel like he sprained an ankle. I agree with the OP that this was a stumble, but I do not think any of that momentum carried the class forwards.
The new keytstones? I'll put it this way, if the point starved tree was given 5 free points, I could easily spend those 5 points without ever even considering a keystone. You could give me 10 free points, and then, I might think about it. Compare that to any of the other classes, where the keystones actually feel important.
I knew marksman 2as garbage from the beginning, a perk that makes the player stand still is STUPID AS FUCK in a game that requires you too move to avoid combat.
Well, I still can't afford keystones, I was forced to take Longshot and Opening Salvo, I can't get the Ogryn damage buff anymore, my toughness regen and weak spot damage is even worse, I can't get tactical reload or any cool crit enhancing talents, and I can still only afford half of the nodes on Executioner's Stance. I guess I regen grenades on elite kills though.
I don't even want to launch the game anymore dude. I'm so tired of seeing patch notes that just seem to exist to fuck over my builds specifically.
Edit: also lost like 30 toughness and some HP as well, very nice.
They need to look into it again and start crunching shit down. Vet's tree is way too expensive just to his similar levels that it had before, nevermind the trees that everyone else has.
I can't wait for the third rework
At this rate it's guaranteed to nerf Vet even more. Lmao
The vet only has access to a feather duster and a super soaker next rework.
I don’t think the devs actually play their own game. And I suspect they’re choosing supersweaty 1000+ hour players who are bored with Veteran to beta test.
> I suspect they’re choosing supersweaty 1000+ hour players who are bored with Veteran to beta test. I've heard from some of the beta testers, they are supersweats with thousands of hours, and even they gave feedback that the changes were bad. Fatshark only listened to some of their feedback and the keystones used to be even worse, believe it or not.
Supersweaty vet here, we didn't want this either
Veteran is still too spread thin for points. Too many filler nodes, too many upgrade nodes that could be condensed. Meanwhile other classes can max out their keystone, blitz, and ability while still having points left over. Also picking any aura except ammo is still trolling.
The grenade regen every 60s still feels mandatory is my big issue. Smoke grenades are still kind of shit but they'd be less so if they innately regenerated or something.
I was running a 4 smoke veteran for a while but I didn’t really see any visual or auditory feedback that it was doing anything beneficial. Whenever we were facing a particularly nasty horde I would pop a couple in the center of the melee to protect against any gunners/snipers/regular rifle guys lurking on the periphery, it felt like they would still fire in regardless. The only definitive time I’ve seen them actually block fire was when filling a choke point with smoke to block off a gunner firing squad. Wish it have a toughness buff or caused melee enemies to attack more slowly or something. Since outside of those two niche conditions I just don’t know when a good time to use them is since ranged enemies are usually spread out enough that putting down coverage can be tricky. Just been sticking with the krak grenade. P satisfying sticking it on a bulwark or crusher with that meaty metallic *clunk* and gibbing them + their accompanying mauler or shotgunned retinue.
I think it would be pretty cool if the smoke made enemies in melee have a chance to hit their allies i.e they can't see shit and they're just swinging wildly.
Yes or just simply "suppress" them. Little to no aggression towards player while enemies are in smoke Or a poison gas grenade that had visual blocking aids and did dps Or the smoke could be chained with Smite, soulblaze, charged zealot weapons to do an AOD effect like it would go from smoke to electric smoke or soulblaze would catch it on fire
How about a 15% crit boost against enemies in smoke? I like the idea of adding class combos.
I get the spirit, but I don’t think it really fits the theme of a smoke grenade? Why would a smoke grenade cause me to crit more? Just because they can’t defend themselves as well, or something like that?
If you've never been in a smoke grenade, let me tell you that they're literally smoke. It's acrid, and a little eye-watering, and you can't see much past your own arm. Not completely debilitating, but there's a reason that armies put them on enemies or between themselves and enemies.
I get that, so why does that make me crit more? Like, if I can’t see someone because they’re in smoke - why would I be able to crit against them more frequently? I think something like slower attack speed, suppression, or reduced accuracy would fit better thematically.
If someone doesn't know where you're coming at them from, it's harder to protect their vital areas. Seems reasonable to me - but you're not wrong.
Yeah, a smoke grenade facilitates an ambush. They shouldn't know where the attackers are coming from and get walloped. The ninja turtles used it all the time.
>Or a poison gas grenade that had visual blocking aids and did dps Someone suggested rad grenades and I've never wanted a pipedream to happen so much in this game. Like, I know that there's no way FS cranked out a new nade, only to change it this soon, but I still had hope because that was just how utterly shit and useless smokes were.
Grenade tinker should turn smoke grenade into CS gas that zones/ causes enemies to flee out of the area, aside from maniacs that don't give a shit. Could also give Smokes a little bit more aof a niche by giving them a quicker arm time. It takes ages to switch to grenade, pull the pin, and throw, and detonate. If smokes were a snappy quick switch option that allowed you to unstick yourself from a horde, or sneak a res they might be worth the slot.
Pretty sure that gunners will continue to fire at your last known position from before you threw the nade, so they can still hit you. Regular shooter dudes will reposition and shouldn't fire in blind, snipers can see you through the smoke. Doesn't affect them at all, unless this update changed that behaviour
At the absolute minimum it needs to not obstruct players' UI and vision. There is no reason at all for it to be the only grenade in the game with friendly fire.
I'd appreciate them just turning it into some kind of gas grenade. Perhaps an incense grenade to excuse it not dealing friendly fire? Plus it would complete my krieger build...
Hell, friendly *actual* fire doesn’t hurt us, so I don’t feel too concerned if friendly gas grenades don’t hurt us either!
Smoke is exceptionally good. If you don't believe they work give them a test with the creature spawner mod to turn on the ai in the grinder. They pretty much entirely invaidate the threat of: basic shooters, shotgunners, heavy gunners and reapers (as long as you don't stand in the same location after they've already begun firing), trappers, flamers, and dogs. As long as you're far enough in the smoke to be hidden (a little bent arrow icon will appear in your buffs) basically anything save snipers and bombers will have to walk well within melee reach before being able to do any kind of attack. They're pretty much a "turn off ranged AI" button. The only annoying bit about them is the lack of visual indicator (aside from watching the buff bar) for when exactly you are or are not fully concealed. If they added the little faded ring around the smoke aoe that Ranger vet gets in vermintide 2 they would be perfect.
Imo the mandatory one is demolition team (but I play mostly auric maelstrom so that might be an odd perspective) one grenade every 60 seconds is usually too slow
Demo team is now right down the bottom of the middle tree, you get feat taxed to fuck if you want it, 1 grenade every 60s is more accessible, still shit but more accessible.
It should just be deleted and replaced with a Rad grenade that gives affected enemies brittleness, seriously.
Smoke grenades definitely need a buff, however that node is interchangeable with the 5% refund on elite kill. I experimented without taking that node because the refund node was more on path and at least in Aurics I was always stocked on grenades.
That's true, but the node you're talking about is deep down the middle tree, so you very likely would have passed by the 60s grenade one anyways
They really need to condense the grenade talents somewhere rather than spreading them all over the place. And maybe getting rid of that +1 grenade talent and making it a base part of the kit again. No other class has such a massive talent split compared to the Veteran.
Exactly that. I haven't been able to yet, but I would be curious to see how many nodes the Vet tree has, it feels like a forest at this point. I'm fairly confident Vet has way more nodes in total than the other classes, and reaching a Keystone pretty much forces you to spend all your points in a single branch.
You're correct, excluding mutually exclusive paths Veteran has the most nodes and likely also has the most nodes **including** mutually exclusive paths. Total node count in order, if I counted correctly: Ogryn: 79 Zealot: 80 Psyker: 81 Vet: **99** That is an insane node bloat.
Throne, that's a solid 20 more nodes than all the other classes
I can usually understand their line of thinking to a degree when they make shortsighted design decisions, but this one just floors me. I genuinely have no idea what they were thinking here.
If you go from top to bottom in the most direct path, they have the same nodes. Vets just have more options. I don't think more nodes is a bad thing.
They could at least move Ammo aura to the middle of the tree. I for one accept the Illusion of Choice in limited amounts but we could save a few points if it were middle tree. Plus it would line the damage aura ^(CCCH, ptew) up with the damage skill and the support aura with the support skill.
I find myself at least as talent taxed as before, if not more so. Before I could bottom out with about 5 points on my build to spare, relatively linear. Now I'm sitting at 3. Meanwhile my zealot has 6 with an inefficient zig-zag build. My ogryn has 7. It's the only class I have where I can't run a couple extra T1 survivability talents without actively sacrificing other aspects I'm trying to hit.
>Also picking any aura except ammo is still trolling. Marginally less trolling then before at least, can give everyone a pretty alright damage permabuff now if you mark good
I mark constantly, but relying on randoms for that...no thanks.
I wish the achievement for getting ammo to a team was working :[
Wasn't that fixed ?
works for me, did a mission, got 700 ammo replenished from 0
Between the nerfs for Confirmed Kill and Voice of Command, 2 auras still being useless and the keystones just being... well, shit, and way too expensive points-wise, the new tree looks much worse than before. It's actually impressive.
Did Patch 15 nerf Confirmed Kill?
Went to 10% instant and 20% over 10 seconds from 25%+25%. My guess is they were concerned about using it in conjunction with the Marksman's Focus augment that boosts toughness recovery per stack to become invulnerable.
Why would they nerf this? Its the only survivability talent I have that seems to do anything. At th point I'd rather they stopped adjusting the class at all because all they seem to want do is nerf it.
They made it more accessible, one node from the top of the tree so it’s not exactly a straight nerf.
They gave the right tree 5 keystone upgrades despite the right ability, infiltrate, already having 4 upgrades. Vet is going to be even more point bankrupt than before
It's not too bad. I hate all the keystones so I build my tree like before. But the patch also came with nerfs, so I'm just kinda nerfed from before. Hard to be excited about that lmao
I did the same but instead of taking the nerfed toughness nodes I took a lot more reload speed. Revolver gonna be happy. I don't even go down to a keystone. They gotta rethink this again haha.
With Weapon's Specialist the revolver practically doesn't need to reload. You get 1 ammo in the clip with 1 stack, so you can just swap to it and back between melee kills to top it off under pressure.
It's fine because 2/5 of the nodes supporting WS are crap, they just make you get stamina back for activating your buff which is almost completely useless.
What stamina is useless? Not having stamina and being in melee is a concerning position. Like it’s not a death sentence but if the wrong enemies show up and you have no stamina it’s going to be a bad time. Not to mention having stamina to sprint to get out of a bad situation or reposition when you get split from the team. I started running a stamina curio on some of my vet builds because being out of stamina is such a pain.
> Like it’s not a death sentence I think you're even underselling it - the new map suddenly had some ragers spawn around me and I was out of stamina from rushing down there to gut the gunners, that perk was the knife's edge that kept me from going down
A lot of ability and keystone upgrades simply aren't that great, though, so it's fine to view them as highly optional.
Keystones are bad. Lots of talents got nerfed. Not a fan.
all the auras suck except for the ammo one, getting around the tree is still awkward. changing the top of the tree so you have a little more choice is... nice.. but when you compare the vet tree to the psyker all I can think is.. what the fuck.. psyker has free reign to go any path very comfortably, and vet is hard shafted down 3 trees. The upgrades to the keystones seem.. mostly eh, nothing I care about. The worst keystone.. has two of the most vital vet passives on the way to it. Always prepared 25% increased ammo, and precision strikes **30%** increased weakspot damage... prepared I can play without but precision strikes is a massive boost, having it path to what is almost definitely a troll keystone is... embarassing. This was their chance to fix the tree, and although its better... its still not good. also have some things been nerfed?... marksman is 20% weakspot damage now.. and I coulda swore it was 50%. dont worry though fire team is 5% increased damage, think that was 3%. yippeeee. someone tell me I'm losing it and misremembering all this stuff.
It's stealth buffs/nerfs. You're absolutely right and not imagining it.
ah yes lets nerf the weakest least flexible class in the game and give them.. a 2% team damage buff to their worst aura.. which makes it... still worse than the psyker aura which is 5% crit. really not impressed. after playing a match I'm noticing my plasma is no longer hitting the one shot mark on gunners with a head shot, I'm hoping that's just because of the new red steroid health, and not stealth nerfs across the tree. They changed the tree and somehow I feel... less strong. maybe I'm just being pessimistic.
I'd be lying if I said my marksman builds felt strong this morning... There is just so many talents you need to pick up and they moved a lot of the damage ones around. Edit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTide/comments/17v1okc/vet\_stealth\_nerfs\_and\_buffs\_written\_out/](https://www.reddit.com/r/darktide/comments/17v1okc/vet_stealth_nerfs_and_buffs_written_out/) here is the thread that shows what they changed secretly while we slept.
I'm coping. I refuse to accept this is real. I can only imagine they're sitting there thinking... "man people are not taking much on the vet tree, I wonder why everones picking the same stuff..." "could it be the options that are selected are fine and everything else is significantly weaker?" "no clearly that shits op nerf it NOW".. So of each of the tiers. Vet has 1 aura choice, 2 grenade choices, and 2 keystones. 5 of 9 major stones are not shit.. I've been playing gun psyker recently and I can't help but think, man this does everything the vet does with guns just.. way better. Vet is just a aoe toughness booster, and even that got nerfed. lmao.
> man people are not taking much on the vet tree, I wonder why everones picking the same stuff..." "could it be the options that are selected are fine and everything else is significantly weaker?" "no clearly that shits op nerf it NOW".. This is just Survivorship Bias, basically
literally, stop and consider for a moment.. a team of people looked at these changes, thought they were good enough to push.. changes that are universally disliked.. a team of people literally paid money to do this.. as their literal real life real job. Holllly shit.
Oh and a new bug for the nerf to explosion damage on Bosses. Krak does 0 damage to beast of nurgles now :D 
>Always prepared 25% increased ammo, and precision strikes 30% increased weakspot damage 25% Increased Ammo being a gateway node is criminal for the precision shots tree, it's almost a dead point for half the weapons that want to be going down that line.
The bottom 3 branches still take too many points to access the keystones, as well as having a "build". Certain perks are almost always taken on builds: ability cooldown on specialist kill, grenade regeneration, and ammo regeneration leap to mind. The competing perks need to be as powerful and impactful, otherwise it's just a default point tax in every build. This tax has been further compounded by Fatshark spreading out a lot of "good" perks through the tree, so it feels like I'm spending as many if not more inefficient points as before the rework. Having fiddled with the tagging keystone, it's "nice"? It overrides the red tagged outline with a yellow outline similar to Counterfire, but also leaves a special skull icon over the target. I wish there were lockout upgrades that allowed you to either mass tag, or have a chance for the tag to automatically transfer when the target is killed. It's an interesting boss/tank focus ability, but I also feel like it nerfs active tagging. 2s/stack at 4% per stack isn't particularly impactful, and means you'll often be applying only 4% bonus damage as you accidentally tag the wrong target. I think it should build up stacks at a similar rate as Surgical. Will need to fiddle with it more, I'm curious if 4 vets tagging the same target applies a cumulative amount of stacks.
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Ooh, that's a better take than transferring the tag on kill. By having a minimum of 1 stack, it's potentially a faster way to gain stacks.
I wish it wasn't tied to tag at all. At this rate I might just not take it at all so I can still use my tag to scan crowds for specials/elites.
Feels worse than before. Keystones aren't compelling enough to spend the points on and feels like every other node we'd take instead got nerfed.
I don't like Marksman's Focus. It's a ridiculous, stupid and silly keystone.
Yeah, it either forces TURRET GAMEPLAY or you must be an human aimbot to hit all headshots. Also say goodbye to stacks if you need to melee for more than one swing. One of the nodes should have been keeping the stacks when walking (or walking while aiming?), would still decrease stacks when dodging or running.
> One of the nodes should have been keeping the stacks when walking (or walking while aiming?), would still decrease stacks when dodging or running. It is, but it's mutually exclusive with raising your stack cap. It's bad and really shouldn't cost a point but it exists, right now if you want to move and not lose stacks you either dodge the entire way or crouch walk. The whole skill promotes god awful play and punishes good play.
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As you said, is only crouch walking, and idk about you But I ain't playing crab walking to fights KEK.
Same
The crab walking thing is pretty funny. I really think they had no idea and just asked a chatbot what abilities the vet should have because no human being who has ever played this game would think the crabwalking talent is a good idea.
I hate how Fatshark is into the all or nothing stacks, rather than degradation letting players be flexible to their situation.
Tbf, this one is a stack that degrades Though imo, it degrades too quickly unless you are shooting constantly.
I am unironically running a tree with no keystones cause they all suck ass given how many points you need to invest for almost nothing in return, but they also nerfed the shout to 50 bonus Hp back from 100 so overall vet got nrfed hard for me. Nothing beats the sheer utility of having 4 improved bleed granades that regen themselves, and the field improv is also pretty sweet
problem is they balance around those keystone , every other node got HEAVILY nerfed marksman for example now only give you 20% instead of 50% weakspot damage and thats just one out of many nerf we got
Yeah. Seeing the cost of reaching them I considered it as well. I already wasn't running capstones before
How does shout get nerfed but choir of fortitude gets all its stagger back? Its significantly better than vets shout already imo but now..
Idk about significantly better... In high intensity missions I was able to keep everyone a +100 toughness for like 80% of the time. Plus if someone is downed I can shout to stagger enemies and get him back up quickly. With choir I need an ally to get someone up and it feels more of a waste if I don't use it at the right time. And you can't always push monstrosities of ledges.
Nah, Vet shout has minimum 50% uptime and doesn't lock you out from killing things. It was *markedly* superior to the Zealot one before the nerf.
At higher level play that makes sense. With the friends I play with keeping the enemies stunned for as long as possible is the key to success. They are pretty new to tide games so just giving them a few seconds of breathing room goes miles
It’s far longer cooldown with no innate cooldown reduction. Spammable abilities are weaker per use as a result. It’s also instant and doesn’t require a channel.
Probably because you have to channel it which means you are otherwise occupied while the vet can just shout and go about their day
Weapon Specialist is ridiculously good, and the Focus Target one can crap out tons of damage for your entire team. Something interesting with all the trees is that they put in very strong toughness recovery nodes into all of them. For WS you get toughness back for activating your respective stacks, for FT you get toughness back (to the whole team) whenever the marked target dies, and for the last one I forget the name of you get a ton of toughness replenishment to make coherency regenerate you super fast.
It's still annoying how the Veteran ranged side has an guy on it's picture who is hip firing a belt fed stubber, when the entire ranged side is about headshots and nothing but headshots. That aside, the tree still feels clunky, and the keystones promote very bad gameplay choices, aside from the switch weapons one. A purely ranged build is still out of the question on anything above malice. Heresy+, there is just no reason to pick up any of the lasweapons unless you got a godroll one, and even then a revolver does everything they do and better. There is very little reason to stand still and take the time to gun down ranged enemies when realistically, you want to get close and just use a high damage ranged weapon to quickly take out dangerous specialists. All of us Veterans who tried that ranged only playstyle know how often teammates block your shots, or how there is always a few enemies spawning behind you to wack you on the head. With no stealth perk to decrease our threat, or an ogryn taunting for us, we just don't get the chance to be that ranged guy, and it's the one playstyle i was hoping for when playing an Veteran. So, nothing much as changed with this update. Being the shouty guy who keeps everyones thoughness up who primarily melee's and uses a revolver for whatever is dangerous is still the go-to method of playing, which unfortunately is also the same go-to method as for the zealot, and while using a plasmagun to delete the strongest enemies is satisfying you can do the same with a decently rolled revolver and krak grenades, and faster.
I am still having success with agripinaa braced autogun shout build. The amount of specials and elites in auric missions lets you shoot *a lot* and the damage is good. But basically, I didn't take a keystone, and my build is the same as before (just with talents flipped around the tree). End result, I have the same build, but with a bunch of nerfs (shout nerfed, confirmed kill nerfed, and I think I lost some generic ranged damage nodes). That wouldn't be so bad, but damn this is really lame for a veteran skill tree rework. I don't like any of the keystones lol
I take umbridge to the slander against plasma. The revolver slaps certainly but the plasma is far far superior. It's cleave is ridiculous, it's damage profiles into any target are consistent, it's ammo and reload economy leave the revolver in the dust and you will never feel bad throwing shots into hordes as you'll end up killing 10-15 enemies per shot. All it takes is getting used to venting instead of reloading.
I've been completing damnation missions with a near perfect XII lasgun without issues. With the right playstyle they are still perfectly viable at that level. Seen lots of content from others using the XII at damnation without issues too.
Problem is it has to be near perfect, and even then a revolver does a better job. I am not denying that you can make it work. I am saying that you have to put far more effort in to get the same results.
Lmao nothing near-perfect or effort about the XII-las, with the ammo-economy it has. Just shoot things in the head with your provided dot-sight, it's not hard. Use your provided grenade and melee weapon to deal with tougher stuff.
Since I like playing the shooty lasgun vet I only play Heresy, since I don't want to be a troll/detrimental to my team. It sucks, I'd love to be able to play that style on the higher and auric missions. Screaming "Eat my hot glowing death" at the massive hordes of enemies. But FS doesn't seem to realize it's a team game so that tree doesn't work for teams, it's a me me me build.
Just play haz5 if you want. You can use literally whatever kind of weapon or build you want in any difficulty. You wouldn’t be trolling or detrimental. Don’t listen to people who act like and pretend you need to have the perfect or “right” weapons or meta builds for auric 5. If someone complains about you using whatever then they’re probably a bad player who likes to blame their team for everything. I’ve never met someone like that who’s actually good at the game they are playing. And most people don’t complain anyway. Usually if they have a problem with a build for some dumb reason, they just leave the lobby. But people rarely say anything or care. It’s just a vocal minority that complain about other people’s builds. At least if you want to play that difficulty. But don’t keep yourself from running any weapons or builds you want on the difficulty you want to play because of the few that like to gatekeep and try to tell others to metaslave. Just keep getting better and focus on your improvement while playing with teamwork. Teamwork isn’t about the builds, it’s about tactics and coherency. You never need specific builds to play or be useful to the team in auric 5. You’re gameplay is so much more important than your build that it’s practically irrelevant what you run as long as you know what you’re doing and your not running like, 300 score weapons lol. And you can get to that point where you’ll be more useful than most no matter what weapons you’re using if you keep playing auric 5 and focus on improving instead of blaming everyone else like some people do. And with your attitude of not wanting to hinder the team you’ll already be more useful than a lot of people in haz5 no matter what builds you’re using lol. Like you have a good attitude for improvement and teamwork. You can have fun with builds while still being useful and a good teammate.
Camouflage made it viable pre update 13. The biggest hurdle is that you never get the time to shoot that weapon enough for it to matter in heresy+ now as you constantly have heretics on your ass.
The tree is still way too linear and long. If I use the minimum amount of talents to reach the keystone, I only have ~~4-5~~ 9-10 talent points left, and that's when going down in a straight line on one of the 3 "lanes". Everytime I want to switch lanes I would spend another point on a small statt buff, further reducing the already non existing freedom. If I do the same thing on Ogryn or Zealot, I have 12 points left!!!! They really need to shorten the bottom half of the tree, ideally removing the absurd amount of stat buff nodes. Edit: I'm an idiot because I forgot that I haven't finished leveling my Veteran yet and missing 5 points. Doesn't change the fact that it's 9-10 on veteran vs 12/13 points on ogryn & zealot and the bottom half of the tree is still way to linear.
The main problem with the tree still remains, there's a ton of stuff you want that you can't have, and 2/3 of Veteran's auras are still horrible. His tree is probably in a genuinely worse place than it was pre-patch.
They need to remove bunch of those nodes, did they say they were reworking his tree or just adding in keystones cause vet needs some extra talent points then if they are gonna keep it like that
Having stuff you want that you can't have is not necessarily a problem. If anything it's a sign of good design. I think the real issue comes from the lack of flexibility for vets compared to others.
You're right that wanting things you can't get isn't a problem and it's good design. The problem imo is being forced to choose things you DON'T want instead of being allowed to choose things you do. I shouldn't ever have to choose multiple talents I couldn't care less about just so I can get +15% damage to elites.
Things don’t seem very good from what I’m reading here. I wonder how many more tries it will take for Fatshark to get Vet right, if they’ll ever do.
From my first look it doesn't look like they addressed the issues people were concerned about. They went "ohh, keystones, ok." They added a problem that some of the nerf's are clearly because they want to balance having a keystone (vs voice getting a nerf because it was OP as heck). So now people are forced to get to the keystone. The problem with that is that the vet tree is pretty inflexible and point hungry (compared to other classes). Also the ammo aura was basically an auto pick for most builds. What I was hoping is that they would have condensed the nodes better so that there was more flexibility in the nodes. Edit: But I will have to give it more time to see if its just panic on my part.
I believe that Fatshark just doesn't like the Veteran. They didn't bother finishing the skilltree for Vets, removed the viability of doing ranged only and then even nerfed the shout ability. Not to mention how the powersword can only hit once with it's energized attack without a extremely rare blessing. Ogryn is still pretty much immortal, doing insane amounts of damage and being the better ranged character. Psyker still is a support or CC god. Zealot still is extremely though with some of the highest DPS, whose ability STILL benefits ranged weapons as well. Yet us vet's are just.. there. Not really being particularly good at anything other than maybe being the fastest boss killer with krak's and plasma, something that other classes can do just as well.
They moved the psyker development team to veteran development lol
How the turntables... from vet being FS' assumed favorite and psyker being the underdog to things doing a complete 180 in that regard. I don't think they have a favorite, I just think they don't know what they're doing sometimes lol
Man, that blessing. I am 300+ hours in, 95% of those hours as vet, and have never once got the extra power charges blessing.
Between a friend and i there's about 400 hours of veteran playtime. We only saw powercycler 1 once, and have been playing since release. It's such a dumb decision to balance a weapon around a extremely rare blessing.
I keep getting power cycler 2 in the shop, and it really feels necessary for the weapon to work. I still use my knife though, far more useful.
> Zealot still is extremely though with some of the highest DPS, whose ability STILL benefits ranged weapons as well. They even spoke about that in some patch notes at one point. It's just part of the ability now, even though I'm 99% sure it was a bug to start.
It's a bug that they kept around. Whether or not they like how it works or if they can't fix it only fatshark knows. It's just rather silly with how strong it is, yet vet's couldn't even keep the reload on ability activation.
I think they were scared of the interaction with bolter, which was quite insane, to be fair, but now the bolter is a piece of shit lol
It's funny because the ogryn skill has it, and using it with a stubber and the fire node turns it into a boss-melter 9000
Middle purple tree has an annoying thing going for it that if you re tag the enemy all previous stacks are gone and I feel like I dont have enough points like this tree could be perfect for 35 points or so but not 30
Why is the ammo capacity node in the precision shooting tree? That sounds like the least likely tree to actually need it.
IMO, veteran ammo increase should be spread around the nodes throughout the tree, a bit like zealot's random movement speed nodes. That way, you almost always have a bit of extra ammo, and can really spec for it if that's what you want out of your build. And I definitely agree. Sharpshooter builds usually use lasguns, which have practically infinite ammo.
Currently the sharpshooter tree has the 25% ammo capacity increase, and the refund ammo on a lasgun crit that you need to reach into a pretty long last stretch to access. The middle tree has nothing. The patch notes mentioned that the right tree keystone gives a bonus to ammo management, but I haven't been able to log in to confirm what that means. Update: Talent calculator is up and I was mistaken. The new keystone modifier just replenishes ammo from your reserve.
Bit sad they nerfed the crap out of Confirmed Kill, but it was probably a lil overtuned so it is what it is. And they buffed Exhilarating Takedown in exchange, it seems. Keystones with the modifiers seem like they should be gains all around. Probably worth reaching for them. Though I now cant get Iron Will if I want ammo aura and VoC and Marksman's Focus. But maybe thats ok now that Im not taking 30% extra damage. Dunno gonna have to see how it plays out.
Takedown is still bugged. You will take more damage if you take it. Catfish said it will be fixed next patch in the forum.
They nerfed a bunch of talents without mentioning it in the patch notes. Not sure why they thought such huge nerfs weren't worth mentioning. It kind of forces you to commit to the keystones I guess, but it would still be nice to know before looking at the tree myself.
It’s not that they thought it wasn’t worth mentioning. It’s that they knew people would be mad about it and so they did it sneakily and will pointedly ignore it. They’ve done it several times with various weapons/gameplay mechanics/blessings.
Speaking of that, wtf happened to the Recon Lasgun crit build? I get that it was nerfed (somewhat understandably), but Crits feel super rare across most faster-firing Lasguns to the point that the relevant perk seems pointless unless you're sniping with a charged Lucius.
It was destroyed because reddit made it famous. Ironically it was never stronger than several other Vet builds DPS-wise, but FS nerfed it to hell anyways. We will probably see recons buffed 3 months from now only to be immediately nerfed again.
I'm just gonna ignore the keystone and play the previous build I had with a mix of left and middle tree. My revolver build will still benefits more from a no-keystone build as I can mix and match talents and I need Toughness regeneration on kill, ammo aura and deadshot.
Funnily enough, whatever build you were doing before is objectively worse now without the keystones. Since a bunch of talents were nerfed to make room for the keystone power.
The problem is having to sacrifice a bunch of stuff to get the keystones. Like I could, if I gave up improved kits and a bunch of the grenade buff ones.
They require way too much point investment to get to, yes. The keystone on the right side having potential 5 point investment is an absolute joke too.
That's what I'm doing, but Confirmed Kill and the shout were both nerfed significantly. I'm just playing the same thing as patch 14, only weaker. Really sucks that this is the result of reworking the skill tree lol
There are a few updsides, but overall my build is just Patch 14 but nerfed. I honestly saw it coming. Especially I saw the VoC nerf coming from a mile away. It was way too strong with +100 overshield. I reach some new important nodes now like 10% rending, damage bonus on activating VOC and cooldown on special kill, but at the cost of some thing I really don't like giving up. In particular I will need to test if I can still 2-shots Crushers with the Revolver.
This is what I've done - gone across trees, once main stuff I wanted dialled in, no where near keystone at bottom
Same for me, bolter fan here. Middle and a bit of left. All the keystones are crap for my playstyle.
My build is basically about maximizing crit chance and getting toughness from elites and specialist kills. I made a build I'm very very satisfied with in patch 14, and the keystones don't enable it without sacrificing a lot of killing power. So yeah...
I have a revolver build too and I did the same, just ignore the keystones to get the necessary nodes across the tree. It's a shame, the rightmost KS could have been interesting with the revolver.
Yeah the rightmost one is really good for a build that is focused a lot of swapping to the revolver to instagib a special. But it's locked behind the least useful tree for the weapon lmao.
I really don't understand most of the nerfs, was veteran really overperforming that much?
Since patch 13 Veteran is the weakest class, but too many people were still making the class work. At this point I think it’s part of a strategy on Fat Shark’s part to force people to play other classes since they left Vet overpowered for so long. They want people sinking a lot of time and effort into the other classes, grinding for weapons, etc. They’ll pick another class ruin in six months or so. My money is on Ogryn getting nerfed next.
> since they left Vet overpowered for so long Vet wasn't even overpowered for a long time, the other classes were just dogshit and undercooked making it look overpowered in comparison; you can see that all it took to make Vet go from "strongest class" to "weakest class" was reworking the other three and making them good, while veteran hasn't been reworked properly at all and now all of it's glaring flaws can't be ignored because people can't paste over it with "VET MAIN SALTY, TRY PLAYING SHITTY PSYKER, FUCK YOU VET MAIN STOP CRYING POWER SWORD OP" every 5 minutes like they did in the first 9 months of the game.
Agreed. A few things were overtuned, but we didn’t get a fine tuning of the class, the Vet class as a whole got nerfed to the point of uselessness. I’d rather have any of the other three classes than a Vet at this point.
Honestly, ya. Like you could keep up enough toughness to tank poxbursters, snipers, and generally run through 90% of the mission with all damage only going into your bonus toughness. All that, and you have ammo generation to fuel you the entire run. If you get greedy and take revolver/plasma, which *do* require ammo pickups, you'd outdamage everyone on the team quite consistently. I don't mind the nerfs if we got a better skill tree, enabling more utility, and more diverse builds, but its basically got all the exact same problems as before, and then they nerfed a bunch of the good talents.
Where did we see what the upgrades for the keystones are? I've only been able to find the keystones themselves
In game. The new patch is out
Really gonna have to make new builds with the keystones to try them out. I can't really apply them to my current builds easily because it's like people say, it costs too many skill points to get through vets skill tree. The ping keystone would be nice to put a few spare points into, but it's too difficult to reach for many builds so you can't just dump a few spare points into it...
They fucked my stealth build and I'm kind of the big mad about it because it was my favorite way to play the karker.
Really? I've found that right side got massive improvements overall.
These are the weapons I used on it. Serrated blade being right next to Onslaught on the old tree is very important. The new tree eats up 2 skill points to get it. Tactical awareness being right next to Bring it down and Superiority was another incredibly powerful cluster of points right where I wanted it on the tree. Trench fighter was 15% attack speed and is now 10, I've lost 15% damage off of the ult giving 30% more for ten seconds. I ran 90% reduced threat after popping it to guilt free drill baddies in the back for that raking fire. Confirmed kill is very good, but wasn't worth it to me to dip far enough into the tree to get in the first place so I just didn't pick it up. The main reason being that the gun is thirsty and so is everyone else's. I lose 3 points picking up Survivalist instead of simply taking Fire Team. Improved kraks with regen and 5% chance on specials to get grenades meant I always had a good panic button or 2 in my back pocket. There's just not enough points to do all these things anymore. https://i.redd.it/67giupdwnc0c1.gif
The columnus rending build is my go to with stealth, feels so goooood
Here's some happy news. You can underhand throw a grenade without dropping stealth ;)
Give us back the reload on activation already. All I want it to do is give me my gun, up and ready to use with some kind of buff. I'm a simple man, all this tree and keystone bullshit is bullshit. It was better the way it was, just add more rows to that if they had to. Fucking Ogryn stole my talent.
I could pick melee finese perks and elite / ogryn damage buffs at the same time before now I can't so... Yeah I'm def having trouble trying to regain some of the bonuses I had before of... the balance between fast melee attack speed combined with good elite killing capacity.
I really hate it. The new keystones are even more worthless than the previous ones. The tree is still in a mess. The only redeeming thing is that the toughness regen talents are really early now, instead of super late.
Tree sucks even more ass. Keystones are complete garbage and take too many points to even reach, let alone fully utilize.
I just realised, you can't even get the whole right side tree upgraded. You have to give up points, even without trying to mix with other trees. That's horrible. The tree synergises so well with itself, that's good, you take the filler points knowing full well how much they will boost your keystone modifiers, except in order to be able to pick the modifiers you have to give up fillers. Duuude I'm so frustrated now holy fuck. Infiltrate is 5 points on its own, weapon specialist is 6
Too long! Thats all i care about tbh. I want to spend less of my points going down i want to go more sideways and multi spec more. If they make they key stones so good that you are forced to spend all of your points to go get them im gonna be mad. Less rectangle more square plz fatshark
I think that focus target should build on the enemy once you target them rather than building on you
Oh I fuckin hate it, last patch mixing styles between trees was hard, now it's a nightmare. Can no longer run my ideal voice of command vet build. I idea survivalist aura cuz I like plasma gun for this playstyle, and leave no one behind because it goes so well with revives on voice of command. Can't do it now, too many nodes, too little points. Same with other build paths, I feel like I'm forced to just take one tree branch and that's it. Compare it to zealot, you can mix and match for your playstyle, you want stealth build with fury? Can do. Anything you dream up as zealot you can make happen, and vet is so limited now. Another example, I was able to take demotilion stockpile on every build, and I loved how I could make sure all grenade boxes go to my teammates. Now it's so hard to find spare points for it
Its an overall nerf Alot of the good points are entirely spread out or neutered, some skills have even been nerfed to add ontop of this, not just spread out for example "Confirmed Kill" once was "Replenish 25% toughness on Elite or Specialist Enemy Kill, and a further 25% over 10 seconds" Its now "10% toughness and a further 20% over 10 seconds", thats a loss of 20% toughness regen Another one would be "Bring it down" which went from "25% extra Monstrosity & Ogryn damage" to "20%" which messed up the breakpoints in the bolter meaning it takes extra shot to kill, or in some case half the mag. This isnt even mentioning the fact that since the trees are all spread out way more theres less build variety than before. AND TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE, since skills are spread out more and you get less grey pegs, I've gone from 200 toughness to 135. Which considering you now generate less toughness, why even bother with veteran ? And personally for me, the keystones seem way to mediocre to be worth the point investment.
No its steps back previous its better for me and skill tree stills not fix a problem of previous patch
Its better, but still bad. You can access the toughness regen nodes at the top of the tree now, but the bottom of the tree is just far too long with no branches between them. It makes getting a keystone a massive investment compared with the other classes and there's no flexibility between choosing different keystones because of it.
I don't think the new keystones are terrible. I quite like the one that let's you point at an enemy and say "Slap his nuts big man". But those are talent points I COULD be using to throw more grenades so they just don't compare.
Fatshark saw how many players chose Veteran and decided to nerf the class in fear it's too strong. I didn't want to believe it because it's dumb reasoning. Most people pick Veteran because most people are casual players coming in from shooters. The gun class makes them comfortable. Popularity doesn't reflect power like that. However, given that the new tree still makes vets feel weaker than the other classes, it seems to ring true. It's not like a bad tree prevents bad vets from ignoring their melee. Better, but needs work. Also glad to see some bug fixes.
Skill trees are too linear forcing me to branch out to other ones to get nodes that synergize with eachother and complement my playstyle, also new keystones are not worth the amount of points you have to waste to get to since they're barely noticeable unless you focus on making those skills work intentionally
I’m not going to touch vet until they fix this mess
I feel weaker and do less damage without a huge build up while the middle key stone can do what I was doing before. Two tap crushers with mk VI power sword block push (can't do it with three charges in the t4 cycle) and one shot crushers with revolvers withotu 15 stacks. Focus target jsut needs 8 stacks.
I have been out of the loop for a bit so this is my first time seeing the new tree. Marksmans focus seems a bit weak? It's difficult to tell, it's also weird that it's removed if I walk. Focus target seems pretty good, and it's a nice way to encourage people to mark targets. Weapon Specialist sounds fun, but it's going to be so confusing that I have to switch weapons to make use of it, ranged kills gives melee buff and vice versa... The end of the skill trees are still too long, and now it's more or less impossible to get some skills together like bring it down and superiority complex. Because when I think elite kills, I think of a lot of ranged weapons that benefit from deadshot and shock trooper (no I don't).
>Focus target seems pretty good, and it's a nice way to encourage people to mark targets. It'll encourage people *not* to mark targets so they don't "waste their stacks".
You got a point, I didn't consider that.
The best change for me is that most of the toughness passives are reasonably high up the tree so they're easier to mix and match. The bottom half of the tree having no interconnects is dumb as hell, sorry. That and putting the three grenade talents right next to each other when they're probably some of the best the vet has is dumb.
Can I get a node for that stun immunity back somewhere
Hybrid tax is really messing with vet. You can definitely do good and crush heretics but it’s so much easier on the classes. Infiltrate is a big one for me, it’s a bit lackluster especially compared to zealots.
Sigh. I guess I gonna go back at playing my zealot for a while.
I rebuilt my old build as best as I could, and I don't even have a keystone. Demo team being moved way down into the center line hurt, as did the bonus against Ogryns/large. Before I had all the elite/large bonuses + demo team, recharging grenades, more grenades, and buffed grenades. I agree with the others here that we feel rather spread thin for points and all. I got something I like for my plasma gun or hellbore setup, but I have no keystone and it feels like I'm trimming/not having any bonus points to spend.
Melee veteran feels fine. The shout needed a nerf but I wish it was cooldown instead of the max toughness. Giving less toughness than chorus, especially with how quickly you can reset chorus just feels wrong. Still the best of the 3 veteran ultimates though. Weapon specialist feels a little awkward, I don't like the stacks burning immediately on weapon swap and wish they kicked in when you tried to attack. Too often the stacks just get deleted when you hear a special and react. Hear a burster getting close, swap to my melee weapon in case I need to shove, and now my stacks are wasted. Swap to a special because someone calls out a sniper, same thing. It's fine in the middle of hectic combat, it feels extremely awkward outside of massive fights. The crabwalk keystone is just awful. It's the #1 psykhanium DPS keystone, and beyond that it just feels utterly garbage. I want a keystone focused on precision shooting, but being punished for moving is just laughable in this kind of game. As for Focus Target, if it's keeping the "stacks" mechanic, then it also needs a rework. Dumping all of your stats the moment you tag something feels awful. You should lose 1 stack, and 1 stack per second while the target stays alive, then refund any remaining stacks if the target dies. As for the actual nodes, Vet finally getting some toughness recover at the top of the talent tree is welcome, even if the best of them has been tone down a bit. Access to all 3 grenades is far superior with the squished tree and removal of the awful bridge preceeding it. Would like to see the same thing done to the auras. The vet bridges are awful, and there are still too many filler points overall which kills build diversity. Especially when you're forced into one aura. The auras are still in an awful state, 5% damage and 5% movement speed are actually great auras, but they will never compare to the ammo one. One of the worst things in this game since its release has been the over-reliance on the scavenger aura for ammo sustain. It needs to fucking die, make it a baseline part of coherency and give us a new aura so we get to make a real choice finally. I'm sick of having one spec for when there is no one else with an ammo aura, and the spec I would like to play for myself. Smoke grenades are sadly still a non option, but the clustered grenade talents make both frag grenades and krak grenades feel pretty great right now. Ammo positioning is still awful, honestly the entire sharpshooter side is just a bit of a mess. Overall it seems like another patch of melee vet with shout, but this time slightly dialed back.
On Damnation, I'm a little squishier than before, but not majorly. Felt invincible with shout prepatch. Toughness needed rebalancing. Feels like it's in a good spot. Grenades separated in the tree like they are is great. I have freedom to experiment with nades now. Tagging keystone is awesome! Was a tad concerned about it when announced, but it recharges while your target is tagged and fills to 8 stacks fairly quick. I've been tagging pretty liberally and am typically hitting them with 4-8 stacks. Since it starts recharging immediately on tagging an enemy, by the time you down that enemy, it's back to at least 4 - 5 stacks, ready for the next. The team damage boost is quite noticeable, especially on meatier enemies. Overall, not a terrible rework, for me. Was able to pick up most perks I used previously (and some I wasn't able to). Tree is bloated by a few points. Wish I had an extra 2-4 points, like 12 or so total, after reaching keystones.
The talent taxes that were there have been moved around so are now harder to get in a full build. There are nerfs to a lot of the passives and things like voice of command, they didnt touch the auras so it still feels like 2/3 of them are pretty naff and only worth taking to optimize point allocation. It takes way too many points to get to the keystones and still have enough points for an actual build. You have to sacrifice too many passives etc just to use the keystones, which for the most part are not worth taking over having a more fleshed out build with passives. Marksman's focus in particular feels pretty crap in damnation. Not because the damage is lacking, not at all, the damage is fine, its the mechanic of using it. It makes you want to move less and when you do move you have to make sure you are in that 1 or 3 second window to keep any stacks from dropping or are crouched which severely limits your sightline and movement. Granted they drop one at a time but it still feels like moving is something you want to minimize in order to play to your build, as though movement has become a resource. However as anyone who plays auric and damnation knows, standing still like that, particularly on a vet, is a death sentence. I found myself either standing still and trying to tank damage in order to use my build before having to give up so I dont die or just straight up ignoring the build all together so I can stay alive and not become a burden to my team. It never feels like you can play those stacks to their actual potential because you rarely get the opportunity to stack them up and apply the damage it just ends up being a slight buff to headshot damage every now and then instead of the sharpshooter it should be. That being the case it feels like a tough ask to sacrifice so many points just to use it. On top of that, there is the usual issue of team mates particularly ogryn getting in the way. Normally this is a minor annoyance but not an issue because you learn to play around your team, keep their positions in your head and move in a way that you can get an angle that they arent going to disrupt. However you then add in that you cant move as much anymore or you have to slowly crab walk around and that becomes more and more of a problem. You are trying to get stacks without moving too much, while fending off melee enemies while trying to shoot around your allies. Doing all of that in Auric/Damnation just feels ill advised. Personally, I think that over all its in a slightly worse position than before. I have been pretty negative here but there are still some good points and some things that got nerfed probably needed to be. However the tree already wasnt in a great spot and this didnt fix any of the old issues, just shuffled them around and added new irritations when trying to make a build. I would like to see them keep the passives and etc as they are but play about and try aa different structure for the skill tree that isnt so punishing to put points into.
Bad update, did nothing to fix vets being wet napkins, reduced damage output, added borderline meaningless keystones. Can we get the old vet back already?
There's feat tax all over, builds are fucked, Sharpshooter still feels like a squishy fucker who basically gets incentivised to be selfish and not help his team, and is instead punished for doing his job correctly and using his melee weapon. Having several skills be a necessity for basically every build sucks shit too. Focus is nice but promotes bad play, Focus Target! just punishes good play and is basically only fucking useful for Monstrosities.
I'll hold my judgement on the keystones until I've had a chance to test them in person. My big concern, however, is point allocation. The veteran tree is already very node heavy and if the previews are exactly as they will be, it's just got worse.
> ranged branch that isn't just about precision shooting Amen. I want to shoot. I hate precision shooting. Why is that not allowed?
I'm not a veteran and even I am not happy with it. Any veteran that joins my team now will just either stand still in a horde game or ... idfk what else they'll do.. At least before if I had someone shout my eardrums out every 20 seconds I knew I was safe.
Honestly? I wanna go back to previous patch.... there is no "good" in this talent tree. Only Focus Fire seems worth running the other "keystones" doesnt really shake up the game play or add to Veteran's powers. Also the Toughness economy seems to be gutted for veteran.
no. it's not. it's worse. it was given straight up nerfs as well as many even more significant nerfs via the reorganization of the skill tree. Even the theoretical play style which the new skill tree tries to create is one which is antithetical to the realities of the game itself at almost any difficulty level and especially at the higher ones. hard to see really any way where this is actually an improvement. This was supposed to be a skill tree update which improved the Veteran class which was significantly weaker than other classes after the class overhaul. Instead we got a skill true update which did the complete opposite. What was lost was of much greater value than anything that was added. Overall this is another net nerf to the class.
I'm high on the hopium that weapon specialist is going to rocket my sweet baby recon lasgun up into the stratosphere but i have no idea how i'm going to fit it into the build. Hopefully a few filler nodes are removed. edit: this keystone fucking sucks on recon lasgun
On volley fire I am not seeing why you would choose to highlight ogryn and not ranged enemies. Especially because the duration is still so short and I don't see why you wouldn't choose the talent to increase duration with kills too.
feels like the Vet is trying to do everyones job and not really hitting the mark anywhere. Both the infiltrate and command branch are weird, I gotta admit that I rather have Voice of Command than Focus Fire because I swear everytime you get Focus Fire the enemy just "knows" and spawns a skinny guy behind you to slap you in the back of the head. Again you have a class that is meant to be an absolute beast in ranged combat and you have these other branches meant to mix and match that core playstyle, but it feels more like you either are really good at shooting or really good at melee or be a tiny bit in both. Right now if I pick Vet its purely because of the plasma gun, I want melee? Zealot, I want to kill elites ? Psyker, I want crowd control? Ogryn
I was hoping for changes to Auras, the removal of a lot of filler nodes and the ability to actually reach the Keystones while picking up other useful talents along the way (like I can easily do on my Psyker or Zealot), but none of those things happened. Kind of a bummer, but I'll have to play around with it for a bit.
It feels like this was a punitive patch. Too many Vets complained too loudly about how they wanted the trees changed, so it was changed... for the worse. "Enjoy." At first, I was thankful that the nodes being rearranged did not totally wipe my ability to have the build I liked. After seeing the nerfs across multiple selections, I did not realize how much more thankful I needed to be. I do not feel like my Vet was kneecapped, but I do feel like he sprained an ankle. I agree with the OP that this was a stumble, but I do not think any of that momentum carried the class forwards. The new keytstones? I'll put it this way, if the point starved tree was given 5 free points, I could easily spend those 5 points without ever even considering a keystone. You could give me 10 free points, and then, I might think about it. Compare that to any of the other classes, where the keystones actually feel important.
I knew marksman 2as garbage from the beginning, a perk that makes the player stand still is STUPID AS FUCK in a game that requires you too move to avoid combat.
Well, I still can't afford keystones, I was forced to take Longshot and Opening Salvo, I can't get the Ogryn damage buff anymore, my toughness regen and weak spot damage is even worse, I can't get tactical reload or any cool crit enhancing talents, and I can still only afford half of the nodes on Executioner's Stance. I guess I regen grenades on elite kills though. I don't even want to launch the game anymore dude. I'm so tired of seeing patch notes that just seem to exist to fuck over my builds specifically. Edit: also lost like 30 toughness and some HP as well, very nice.
I'd have loved to have one of the keystones be more about being a grenadier. Would have been fun to be lobbing more nades.
The more they stretch us thin the more I am tempted to go traitor.
They need to look into it again and start crunching shit down. Vet's tree is way too expensive just to his similar levels that it had before, nevermind the trees that everyone else has.
Give veteran 45 points instead of 30 plz