Honestly I would hope they removed the knock down from Deimos H2 and simply made it stagger. It's annoying trying to go for the follow up when the crusher is now on his ass in the middle of the trash pile
What the developers don't understand about the flamer and any other close range firearms is this: It's completely fine for them to be strong. Cause you're sacrificing the ability to shoot gunners, snipers, bombers, and other long range menaces. That's a LOT to give up. For this sacrifice you should be able to do a lot in exchange, otherwise there's no point in using the weapon
Agreed its a dead weapon with no reasons to ever take it on higher difficulites, yes you can clear hoard but so does everything else. Its not even fun as you have to stand still (very slow movement) to use it and that means your dead in any situation where setting everything on fire is whats needed.
@@SFuruli Not enough with AOE alone to compensate for it being so weak in everything else now. Needs a buff, doesn't have to be that much but something.
@@thunder2434 But the Flamer already is good. Shoot it every time a large mix of enemies run in, and it will both stagger and leave just the most heavily armored elites. As the developers said, the Zealot class can skip ranged combat, so shooters aren't an issue. Add throwing knives for dealing with specialists, and you're golden.
@@SFuruliflamer is an absolute joke weapon atm. Ofc you can beat any difficulty with any equipment if you know what you’re doing but still it doesn’t make flamer any good
Biggest buff for the thunder hammer: LET OTHER PEOPLE HEAR THE COOL NOISE IT MAKES WHEN IT SMITES THINGS! WHY AM I THE ONLY ONE THAT GETS TO EXPERIENCE IT'S GLORY?!
They kept nerfing it because ppl were complainig it was too strong due to a skill but when they removed it now it's so nerfed it's not even playable. Sadly my flamer collection just sits collecting dust now.
@@ulysseslenka4739 jtc shows it without buffs on the flamer. A whole can should hurt a Mauler decently even as a gray weapon, it's the point made in the video.
On the opposite end of thunderhammer, I think the heavy swords have become outpaced by other zealot options that can deal with hordes, but also so more than horde clear (anti boss/elite/carapace, better dodge/crit stats, etc)
The flamer is actually pretty strong, but it requires you to specialize in the skills that boost its damage including the crit-boosting ones. Its main function is to clear out mobs really fast while you switch back to your melee weapon while the DoT kills the trash mob. The other function is to stagger with the hip fire, which is decent crowd control letting others finish them off or to let you approach with your melee.
One of my constant issues with the thunderhammer is that using a charged attack does not cleave through hordes. So if you have elites mixed in with a horde, a charge attack would be wasted on a poxwalker rather than on the massive crusher. I do not think a charged attack should do more damage to a horde, it just needs to be able to cleave through them similar to a power sword. Without this, it is just not as viable as other weapons.
I would just be careful with that. I think that there should be use cases for the thunder hammer where uncharged swings are better than just constantly charging every single attack with it like you do for the power swords. Making the charged attacks powerful, yet meaningful for specific situations, is the way to go. So if you make the charged attack good at EVERYTHING, the weapon loses some of its skill and becomes a brainless charge-attack spamming machine.
Ironhelm already does this and while it is very nice it does not solve the problems. I don't know if it is better compare it to the crusher 2h maul or the power sword but thammers are clunky compared to both of those weapons for no gain.
@@therealw04 Yes, but at a significantly reduced damage which at that point why use a thunder hammer at all? Thammers are already slow and clunky compared to most other zealot weapons so they need power behind them the ability to easily single out elites in specials in a horde else that is not viable.
@@dizerelj5678 I get what you mean, but my comparison to the power sword is more that its charged attack can cleave and not a want to have every attack be a charged attack. This is also not the only change I want to make to the Crucis thunder hammer, but feel this is one that is most needed if thunder hammers are to compete with other zealot weapons. Melee weapons need to be able to handle both hordes, elies/specials, and bosses to be viable. That does not mean that have to excel at each, just be able to perform with each. For example, the Antax combat axe excels at hordes and elites and does moderately well with bosses while the Catachan Mk III combat blade excels at elites and bosses while doing moderately well on hordes. The Crucis thunder hammer does well with bosses and that's it. It can do a lot of damage to elites if you can single them out, but doing so while mixed with a horde is not only annoying but inefficient. The current pick axes for the Ogryn are really what thunder hammers should be as though they are slow and clunky, they have a ton of power and can deal with elites mixed with hordes.
Bolter is more or less ok damagewise. Fixing its janky ads will help a lot, since no more ammo will be wasted, on top of that incresed mag cap could be an option, like +3 bolts. Also i don't think incresing stagger is a good option, cause once crusher knocked you can't aim his head.
There is one thing I noticed with both bolter and bolt pistol: they don't have a consistent one tap ability for shooters/cultists. Even with flack/unarmored if you don't hit a dead on center mass/head shot, the target will survive. Just being able to one tap consistently, it'll already feel a lot better imo
activation weapons are fundamentally flawed and need to be completely reworked, preferably to something more like the new shock mauls. but the gameplay of activate, swing, is always going to be awful and tend to create a cursed problem where the activation is either never worth using, negating the point of an activation weapon, or the activation is ONLY worth using, negating the entire moveset of the weapon. buffing the bolter breakpoints around the idea that you have no crit is insane unless you ALSO want to nerf finesse damage because bolter is absolutely cracked with crits. the problem with the flamer is it's boring. it is already insanely good horde clear, wanting it to clear armor too is like asking for it to compete with ogryn frags. what the flamer needs is mechanical depth and to not be a lame fart cloud so that it's at least interesting to use, you can't just number your way out of this one either lol.
I always saw the chainaxe's niche as the jack of all trades in the chain weapon lineup. Shove + strong attacks for hordes and light + rev attacks for single targets. You can trash clear, deal good damage to bosses, handle maulers/crushers, and have a good stamina bonus for reviving. This is coming from someone who uses it on Veteran however, so I don't know how well it preforms on Zealot.
Mk 4 chain axe is my most used weapon, probably around 800hrs 😅😅😅 nothing else keeps me playing like the mk4 chaxe. It's pretty insane on zealot, especially with martyrdom. Like you said, jack of all trades for sure. Not one category it's actually bad at, and many categories, like ragers and crushers, where it's top 3 weapons in the game.
A space marine T Hammer hits like a small artillery strike, they're as much anti-armor weapons as they are area denial, since the shockwave their discharge produces is so powerful. The little junior hammers zealot uses are more like other human-usable power weapons, making them a tiny bit less cumbersome would be nice.
I agree to all your suggestions jtcLIVE! I hope Fat Shark are listening. :) I would like to add Bolt Pistol to the list as well. It shouldn't be as powerful as the Bolt Gun and makes up for it in faster deploy and reload, but it's too weak now vs Armor. I'd like the BP to have full auto like the boltgun as well as they are commonly full auto able in lore, but it's not critical. I also find that Chain weapons in general are a bit weak vs Armor despite them being described in-lore as armor piercing with their Diamantine teeth. Not a big issue but a secondary one perhaps. A slight buff for all of them vs Armor would do just fine. A combat knife should not be more effective than a Chainsword or Chainaxe vs Armor and now it is.
I originally had the bolt pistol in this video too but ended up cutting it, because the bolt pistol doesn’t really have an identity (which can’t be fixed with simple buffs IMO - It needs an entire overhaul to be a competitive choice)
To make Bolt Pistol work what they need to do is increase its penetration and make it great at oneshotting chaff to the body, and then also change the revolvers to only really be strong when hitting weak spots. Also disagree on the chain weapons' penetration, they work fine as horde-clearing, ogryn/mutant carving weapons, a knife actually makes sense for penetration, because it's nimble and easy to slip between the armor plates of an opponent, though the mk3 should be a little worse at cleave I personally think, a small knife should be worse at clearing hordes than a sword.
I totally agree on the bolt pistol and revolver. Sorry I should have specified about the chain weapons. I meant that chainweapon Revv damage needs a boost vs Carapace which it's specifically meant for, not the normal attack damage which is fine as it is. Three revvs or more to kill 1 Crusher in Damnation should be two, like it used to be. Especially since a tiny knife does it in one quick flurry of attacks given the right skills and blessings. Also Lorewise a chainsword has armor penetration while knives don't unless it's a unique artifact weapon. Spacemarines are said to saw each other in half through Power Armor even, or Carapace equivalent "Chitinous Armored" xenos like Genestealers or Tyranid Warriors. It should have a big bite on revv.
Also i'm one of the people that reported this ironhelm's combo resets upon pressing sprint with a very awkward motion from heavy 2 or heavy 3 to the sprinting heavy attack which resets thrust charges its very annoying
Bolter damage buff against unarmoured by about 20-25% to deal with dreg gunners with a single headshot at any range and dreg bruisers with 1 body shot, and also increase headshot damage of maniacs by about 20% to meet flamer headshot breakpoint. (Copy the previous changes to bolt pistol) Add a partial reload animation like for the bolter, however change ammo to 75 in reserve to disincentivize mag dumping. Bolt pistol should have less hipfire spread for a more run and gun role. Also both the revolvers should have far less damage for the torso, but increase its headshot damage multipliers even higher than they are now.
I think both thammers need buffs now after the change to chastise(from armor downgrade to rending) even with a charge full thrust 4 stacks and special activation ironhelm doesnt do any carap damage. spending both chastise charges to kill one crusher even with momentum/wounds. I think they can use a bit more carapace damage or freeing the mouse during the charge so its possible to land a weakspot hit during it would be good
As a Zealot main who runs the bolter anyway (using bolt pistol atm but I'm calling my emotional support bolter because its mostly to make me feel safer not to actually be safer) I would say that the effective damage is 90% of its issues. I am fine with the long draw time and general sluggishness of the weapon as I'm playing the melee class anyway so rarely need/want a ranged weapon, I can ussually close on ranged enemies or let the ranged class (as if Veterans even bring guns anymore lol) play its role (yeah I know but sometimes rarely it happens) so I only 'need' a gun for special occasions, Crushers bigger mauler packs and snipers. Snipers are one shot at all ranges with the pinpoint accuracy of the first round, even when 'quickscoping' in a dodge so its great for that job IF you can make time to take the shot which is a good skill check imo. The draw mag dump delete a crusher pack is what I want the Bolter for and its powerfully mid at the task, it used to be able to take out 3 sometimes 4 crushers with a single mag but now its 1 sometimes 2 and I often feel that its a waste of time even bringing a gun when that happens. No idea why Fatshark are so opposed to the bolter being genuine OP I mean its a fucking bolter of course its op, the Plasma gun is op so why is the bolter a toy. If I mag dump 4+ crushers I want them dead not just pulling agro its not like the game doesn't spawn 9-12 crushers on the highest difficulties quite often anyway which would always require at least 1 reload (2 realistically) which takes about a week so why not. If its not going to kill things like a bolter should then way way way more stagger/stun should be the order of the day I mean its just stupid when you shoot something in the head with a .75 explosive round and they ignore it/don't get staggered. 1 shot on poxhounds is a must not because of gameplay just its a dog being hit with an anti-tank weapon (it would one shot early tanks ffs), they are quick and can disable you quicker than the draw time so why not let the cannon hurt them, I am 100% convinced fatshark hasn't even realised the mistake on this and it makes me question their ability to make games, like it has to be an error the alternitive is worse than mere incompetence This is a co op game not a competitive deathmatch style game balance for fun IS allowed, its fine for things like Bolters and Plasma guns to be more powerfull than an autogun or the shredder pistol, both have downsides to 'balance' that out anyway. I mean most Auric Damnation Maelstrom missions taking a bolter is going to have ammo supply issues so may as well let it hurt things One last 'idea' and I use the term loosely, if the bolter is OP on the Vet don't let them equip it and just leave them the Plasma which is a far better weapon on that class anyway (with the toy bolter as it is) so the Zealot can have the wild dps dump in to things faces option that thematically works quite well.
Not bad suggestions for the bolter but I would say that the slow draw and slow reload should be left in and used to justify buffs to stagger, accuracy and carapace penetration. Experienced bolter users know which talents and techs can shorten draw and reload. Leave it as a weapon for the skilled/committed but give it the power to justify that complexity. This way it can have the power befitting an iconic 40k weapon without making every other gun in Darktide obsolete.
For the bolder, buff base damage, buff armour piercing, nerf unyielding. Net result is more damage to everything except monstrosities which stays the same. Thunder hammer would be good if the move set changed. You need thrust and special together. Making light attacks a sweeping pattern and heavies an overhead would go a long way without changing fundamentals, just so you could hit that crusher and not the poxwalker next to him. Flamer… just go out back and put it out of its misery at this point.
I think a nice balancing ideology for the bolter would be "Raw damage and stagger, less reward for finese." Something like having good damage and breakpoints for bodyshots but a very low weakpoint multiplier. You could say that's dumb because getting hit in the face with a bolt would obviously be fatal but counterpoint: is it really any more fatal than being hit in the anywhere with one? This combined with weakspot damage having increased importance in boss killing nowadays and the tremendous recoil making precision very hard would likely prevent the bolter from overperforming on bosses. Oh, and making the explosion more noticable and effective would be nice. One important distinction I want to make from the video is while I think letting the bolter stagger carapace easily is a good idea I'm a little hesitant to let it be very good at killing carapace because it might sorta step on Plasma's toes. With the Bolter being a better general weapon than Plasma I think Fatshark really needs to take care to prevent Plasma from just being a worse Bolter again.
I originally had the idea of granting bolter a “reverse finesse modifier” that gave it extra damage on body shot and less damage on headshot. I still think it could be a unique way to fix the bolter because it gives into the power fantasy, fixes the bolter being a finesse precision weapon (which makes no sense lorewise), and takes some power away from the current meta of precision finesse weapons we have going on
Flamer just feels so redundant on zealot considering the class already has basically built in horde clear They really saw lingering flames from VT2 pre patch and said yeah let’s make that a weapon
Along with the weapons you listed here are some weapons need some serious attention: Shredder autopistol is completely worthless since they overnerfed it like a year ago or more now Dueling Swords (apart from the mark 4) are truly bad Recon Lasguns are still bad despite the buff Lawbringer Shotgun (also would love to see the Aggripinna fire slugs by default, nobody uses the regular fire unless theyre forced to) Bolt Pistol (reduced time to get back on target after ADS shots or buff the damage a bit) Obscuruos Force Sword has no reason to ever be taken over the other marks in the family and needs reworking so it actually has some kind of advantage
The flamer should have a "heat" threshold on enemies. Example: 5 of the same continuous dot applied in X seconds of each other cause the enemy to ignite causing extreme fire DMG. They are wearing armor so let them burn up.
I'm a Thunder Hammer enthusiast and I would welcome some buffs. It's super fun to use but the self-stun makes it really risky. I would love boltguns to actually cause some explosion damage, blowing up targets and doing AOE. That would make the downsides of the weapon worth it. I think the bolt pistol technically does this but it's barely noticeable.
A couple features of the bolt pistol kinda got me thinking of a potential buff for bolt weapons broadly. 1. The BP only does AoE damage when the shot actually hits an enemy, otherwise it just staggers. (I've heard it described as the damage is being done by bits of the target becoming shrapnel) 2. The blessing "puncture" applies bleed on hit. Conclusion: What if bolt weapons caused an AoE bleed, but only on hitting an armoured target. A problem with the old boltgun was that it did massive damage, but could also be used to lock down a room full of chaff by just spraying it in the general direction of enemies. This way, it'll regain a bit of that horde control, but only if you aim at priority targets in the horde, plus the bleed will help with some of the problematic damage breakpoints. Obviously, the damage mods will need looked at as well as this (especially vs infested), but I think this change could make them much stronger without having them overshadow every other option.
Honestly I really liked this video, and it's always fun to see what other people are thinking. I agree w/ just about everything I watched, though I do have my own hot takes regarding the Bolter and the Flamer. My two cents w/ the Bolter is that, in lore, they're basically explosive slugs (or Bolts) that blast through whatever they hit before detonating. They're arguably AP weapons, but not in the same way that something like the Plasma Gun is. My main thought is to emphasize the explosive aspect of the weapon to help differentiate it from the Revolver or Plasma Gun. Instead of over-penetrating, (in my head) the bolter should detonate and suppress. As of time of writing, hitting the environment instead of an enemy creates an explosion of suppression and stagger, but no damage, and while hitting an enemy directly will deals explosive damage to enemies around your target, this damage isn't really that impressive. In my opinion, once the shot is primed, you should get explosive damage even from environmental shots, and the explosive damage taken by surrounding enemies to your target should be increased. This doesn't need to be *a lot* of damage for either explosion, but I do think it should be enough to be considered the strength of the weapon. The Plasma Gun and Revolver might cut through a hoard to kill a priority target, but the "Dark Tide" of the wave as a whole will keep advancing. The Boltgun should be like momentarily slamming a door in the hoards face. A space maker, so long as you have rounds to fire in your small, dwindling magazine. The weapon's slow handling and reload speed, as well as it's (IMO) middling ammo reserves would already do a lot to balance out that level of CC. Pair this alongside some slightly better breakpoints for the weapon, and maybe some a buff to it's Suppression and Impact. Phil Kelly of GW says himself that Bolters are supposed to be built for intimidation. I want the weapon to feel like it's making the enemy think twice about pushing. I also personally think the weapon could stand to be more accurate as well. It should still have heavy recoil, but you're firing a Gyro Jet. Those fly pretty straight; it's kind of their whole appeal. I can't say that this would be the most balanced buff, but as of right now, the Bolters, especially the Bolt Pistol, feel sloppy and inaccurate to fire, even when only firing a single round. With all those thoughts typed out for the Bolter, my thoughts on the Flamer are more concise. Humans, all living things really, have an aversion to fire. Military and police have to train out the overwhelming psychological response to *move away* from it. Just like real world Flamethrowers, 40K's Flamers fire a torrent of of fuel, a jet of viscous, heavy liquids that are on fire. Even if you're protected from the fire, you aren't protected from *the weight*, and you definitely aren't safe from the *Heat*. In my opinion, these weapons should be suppression and Impact machines, with the added benefit of Rending armored targets so that the longer they're in your jet, the more damage they'll take. Now, I recognize that this suggestion for the Flamer sounds somewhat similar to the Bolter, but the difference is that the Bolt Gun is a weapon shared between the Veteran and Zealot, and the Bolt Pistol is shared between Veteran, Zealot, and Psyker. Meanwhile, the Flamer is Zealot exclusive. And I think it should be even better at slamming a door in the face of the hoard than the Bolters. As a weapon unique to one class, I think it should feel specialized in that role compared to the Bolter, as something only it uniquely can do at it's level. To put it another way, to use an relationship established earlier, The Plasma Gun and the Revolver can both fire through a hoard to hit a priority target, but the Plasma Gun can reach far deeper into the hoard, and can even penetrate cover. In terms of the two weapons' potential to cut through enemies, the Plasma Gun is far more powerful, and it's unique to the Veteran. In turn, if the Bolter was buffed to slam into and slow down the hoard, then the Flamer should offer up a similar utility, but at a greater level of power. I personally think the Bolter should heavily suppress unarmored enemies, slow down armored/flak enemies, but only be a mild annoyance to heavily armored enemies unless directly hit. Assuming this was the case, the Flamer could be a step up from this. Anything Flak or below is going to stumble, while even heavily armored units are slowed down. Throw on some Rending at base and nothing armored is going to reach you unscathed. This would more or less make the Flamer a heavier, clunkier, lower ammo Bolter, but in my opinion, this isn't a bad thing. There would still be a reason to take the bolter, as it wouldn't be as sluggish and it would have a better range, allowing you to snipe with it. It also would deliver it's damage all at once to heavily armored enemies, instead of over time, making it better at turning and burning. Those are still two very different use cases though. The Bolter would become a weapon for driving back the hoard in quick burst. Perhaps to secure an objective or revive an ally. A "get off me" button. Meanwhile the flamer would be a tool for holding an area; not just making space, but keeping it, at least for a little while. If the Bolter makes a bubble in "the darktide", then the Flamer should make an island. A powerful tool, but an expensive one that needs space and time to be effective. A poor ammo reserve and slow handling combined with its low base damage means that the weapon would be at it's best when used in *anticipation* of a problem instead of in reaction to one.
My zealot almost exclusively uses the flamer and a heavy evisc. I love flamers so much, but it definitely feels underpowered... The only reason I use it so much is I love burning shit, and fan the flames is a great cc stagger. Also, revolver outperforms the new bolt pistol as well.. it's kind of sad.
Also, you just aren't good enough to use the bolter. It is a you problem, not the gun. My only issue is that the bolter has limited ammo. Infinite ammo would be the best buff for it.
@@snowcordie9322 Darktide is a 4 player co-op game in case you missed that fact also. If I want to play single player I'd go play Doom or Wolfenstein the new colossus. And that is besides the point, it seems you can't even use the bolter properly even when playing with others. Pretty much a you problem still.
@@thathandsomedevil0828 You answered neither of my 2 questions so I guess it's no to both. From now on, whatever else you say is irrelevant lol Bolter is scuff as a weapon that's a fact. No one good at the game will tell you it's a top tier weapon which only has ammo as an issue.
@@snowcordie9322 DARKTIDE IS A 4 PLAYER CO-OP GAME. You are by default are not supposed to "solo" it because the game isn't designed that way. Stop the gad damn cap, you simply suck at playing the game. If you can't hack using the bolter in a 4 man team then you have no business trying to "solo" anything. Imagine the brain power trying to single play a 4 player co-op game. Good lord.
if you're gonna bring up lore then at least you should realise that we aren't using a space marine bolter, it's an older shittier and downscaled version made for humans.
I wish flamer would get some love, it makes no sense that a flamethrower is completely neutered by armor, something that realistically would make the heat worse.
I think the force swords shoudn't need Deflector to block ranged attacks. It's like asking the Ogrin shield to have a blessing to block ranged attacks. And I think the special of the Illisi should work more like the Veterans Power Sword's special
Buddy and I both grabbed flamers with the extra stagger blessing. Just left clicking allowed us to perma stagger waves of crushers. It was so damn funny. We got mulched by gunners tho.
3:30 Bolter handling needs some work: draw time, the whole rack the bolt every time you pull it out should be removed, also the weird crosshair behaviour should be smoothed out, bolter should kick up when fired a lot, but the random aspect of the weapon sway should be removed. Careful with power changes vs elite enemies
Salutations, I largely agree with the bolter changes, it's worth mentioning that bolters in the lore of the night lords books are mentioned to be worse against armour and made more for flesh. I believe the idea behind carapace in game is to force players into melee rather than use ranged weapons. I think if the changes you are suggesting go through the ammo change in the latest patch should be reverted. Having the weapon be very strong but balanced by the less ammo you have to use it so you can't just spam it. (This is already an issue with the plasma, being incredibly strong and spammable at the same time.) The idea that you have this incredible tool but you have to more carefully decide when to use it. The issue with the flamer is that it ignores mass therefore theoretically having the highest DPS in game. 50 damage to an enemy is low, however dealing 50 damage to every enemy in your screen suddenly boosts the damage you're pumping out by a hindred. If the flamer were made to have some kind of beam with penetration instead of simply being a cloud of damage it would be easier to balance. On the thunder hammer and chain axe I find myself in agreement with you.
Good video with pretty decent suggestions JTC. I would probably with these: - Chainaxes are intended to be like single-target monsters, so if chainsword is overperforming them in single target damage, something is fucky and needs adjusting. The dodge buffs make sense. Also we might one day get two-handed chainaxes, so they need an identity and role as well. - Gotta nerf Zarona a bit too, it outshoots bolters atm and that is just bullshit. - I would keep bolters, both boltgun and bolt pistol as single target low / no-cleave weapons, but as trade-off be extremely damaging and kill most anything human-sized with bodyshots. They do sorely need some better damage values vs infested enemy types, aka poxwalkers and poxhounds. So yes, some more damage buffs needed. The wielding times could be adjusted, but before that, it´s more important to fix the recoil and accuracy issues and THEN adjust the recoil so you´d be incentivized to fire accurate shots with bolters to put whatever you are aiming down. - Flamer does need more love, problem is that it cannot be too good against armor or it won´t have that many weaknesses. However, some love, yes, agreed. - Thunderhammer needs some love too, especially the Crucis one, have not played with the Ironhelm enough to make good calls, but I would replace the powered attack from heavy sweep into an overhead smash and cause it do a bit of AOE stagger at the end, also tune down the Bosskilling potential so it won´t be as preposterous as it currently is. Should be bit better at staggering things too, prolly a bit more damage as well.
Pendant: The Bolter in the game is not the Astartes issue. That is too heavy for a baseline human and if fired, would most likely kill you. It's a human sized varient which is why it doesn't blow apart the larger targets and is unwieldy. But to your point, the amount of shots it takes to kill most targets is a joke and very off even for a puny sized Bolter. It's a rocket propelled armor pearcing projectile designed to detonate inside the target.
i would love to use chain axe more if the shreding 1 enemy nullify other enemies by scare them and they will back off for 1s. instead of shredding 1 enemy and take damage from 5 different sources
I doubt this will be read but a lot of people seem to believe that in the lore that the bolter is an unwieldy, hard to use weapon. The bolter has a two stage charge on it's ammunition. One to fire it out of the gun and a 2nd stage that is basically a rocket. It has minimal recoil, handles well and is extremely reliable. It is the holy weapon of the space marines after all lol. The bolters that normal humans use are not the same size or caliber as the astartes version, which is difficult for a normal human to wield. I think this is where the confusion comes from as well as 99 percent of the wh40k communities lore knowledge coming from memes and not the source material.
Flamer got nerfed when it made sense. Ammo. The power wasn't nerfed on damage part. You just need to build like old zealot pre skill tree patch. It is horde clear weapon, not kill everything weapon. Thunder Hammer is already fine as is since they buffed cleave but i agree that stagger values should go up if enemy got buffed as well. Bolter is fine other then the ready time. Pulling out a bolter takes way too long to use it effectively when it's most needed. This is primary reason it's unusable on high difficulties. Remember that weapons don't exist in vacuum and you have skills to truly make them shine. Even on Veteran Las gun or Plasma are meh unless you spec into them and they are just monster of a weapon.
Good takes all around however as a Zealot main who almost always uses the flamer I do want to give my two cents on it. First things first. Know what role your weapons have. The flamer is not the gun that kills armor, it kills all the fodder that surrounds the armor which makes killing those crushers and maulers a cake walk. Two. The flamer is a secondary to the melee build of a Zealot, want to make a gun Zealot? Take a gun with you, simple as. Third. When you shot the flamer, make sure to aim everywere as you can get a lot of value per 1 ammo you spend if you jiggle the mouse around like the mad lad you are. And finally fourth. Find your own way of using it, like all weapons they are tools to kill in the Emperors name and should be treated as such. Now what would I do to buff it? Nothing really, it does it's job well and remember that when you are alone it looks weak, but with three others doing constant dmg around you it is a beast. And do not scuf at tick dmg on fodder, even armored enemies will feel the emperors heat if the Zealot knows how to use it that is. Great video btw.
The balance of the game is not in a good position. Voice of Command + Plasma Gun runs the game currently. I have over a 90% participation rate of shout vets in my game. Almost all of them use a plasma gun. Combine that with the recent nerf to Invocation of Death and the game is not in its best balance state right now. I don't know how you came to that conclusion.
I dont know, to me it feels like the whole damage system is bit flawed. When I started the game I thought that I would choose a weapon to deal with unarmored enemies and one to deal with armored ones, but it turned out that there are weapons that are good against everything. So special weapons like a Thunderhammer, Eviscerator, Bolter or Flamer are just a nightmare to balance. To many weapons are just to viable in to many situations.
Counterpoint regarding chain axe: it looks really really cool. That alone makes it superior to regular chain swords. On boltguns, I wonder whether the damage from it is considered explosive by the game. Didn't they give poxwalkers a resistance to explosive damage a few months ago? In contrast, I notice you didn't mention groaners (unarmored in contrast to poxwalkers' infested status), so I assume boltguns have no real problem one-shot body shotting them. Mostly that's my curiosity, and is tangential to your point, though.
Now this might be really controversial but I thought that the bolt gun should have not been in the game for a handful of reasons 1 lore reason the recoil on that gun is think was enough to break the shoulder and ribcage of a normal human so there that 2 you could never do it justice, It would eather have to be op in all things or it would just not feel right because if its underpowered people get mad but if its to strong people also get mad but there is one reason it is funny I think to balance the bolter its would be a mid range special killer that EATS ammo so you dont use it with alot of mobs because of how valuable thoughts rounds are
I don't think the boltguns need any damage changes. They are supposed to be the *spam* options to their respective alternatives, hence their comparatively larger mags, no heat restricting their fire rate, and recoil is always a skill issue (or build issue). The Veteran is the class to run to make any gun perform at its peak, and it can achieve those breakpoints and recoil control in Executioner Stance and/or Deadshot, meaning if you make it meet those breakpoints by default you devalue Exe Stance (if the question becomes "taking Exe over Shout?", then that's a whole other balance discussion). What troubles the regular bolter is the abysmal pull out time that's longer than its animation and its base *reload speed*. You get 15 shots, then it ceases to exist until the next fight. Same thing can be said of the bolt pistol when being compared to its revolver counterpart, the reload is taking more time than it really needs. Both weapons would never accidentally become truly overpowered in any class' hands if you could use it more frequently, because their ammo reserve is the hard limit. I guess you could tweak the ammo on pickup too if the above change is done.
It doesn't devalue ex stance as the bolter is one of the worst to pair with that ability due to the terrible recoil, low mag size and terrible reload speed. Those together make extending the ex-stance timer very difficult and reloading is so slow it almost guarantees it canceling after the mag is dry. Headhunter guns, lasguns, and autoguns are significantly better for up time and benefit from more even more benefits being met. A minor damage buff against unarmoured and weakspot damage against maniac is what it needs to be more relevant and makes it more ammo efficient. Also bolt pistol needs the same changes as well as revolver does it all better. (I know you already said this but, the clunky nature of this weapon gives it its unique charm/profile. Im saying if you make the reload speed changes and drawtime changes it encrouches on the other more precision based weapons niches like the headhunter guns)
@@basicallybacon2593 Terrible recoil? The entire point of taking Executioner's Stance with it is that the recoil is minimized to such a degree that it is easy to use, and of course enemies are highlighted which is good for anyone considering the irons hard to use. Extending it is reasonably possible by having just Volley Adept, but the timing has no margin for error. I actually think the Bolt Pistol is just the superior option at this time because it reloads faster and the slight extra wait for the recoil just makes Surgical better. The extra handling and reload speed I want shouldn't tread on other weapons, but more like JTC said, it should not be so wildly longer than everything else. An addendum to my own post; I did a schizo-check and it seems like in the psykhanium my bolter can fire before its draw animation was complete, so its "on time". Yet I distinctly remember it lagging behind for a full second in a real match during a bad situation. So it could have been server desync shenanigans but that just means the long draw time is only going to be hurt more by these unforeseen problems.
the crucis hammer is so sad to use, the effect is so cool but the damage is beyond underwhelming. im pretty sure you can do more elite damage with the knife and at a more consistent and less vulnerable way too
Great and productive suggestions. Very sad and very counterintuitive changes that stem from stuff being too strong and Devs nerfing it to be unusable anywhere rather than god-tier at fewer things.
I was playing my shroudfield hammer Stealth Bonk Zealot today and was getting owned by trash. I didn’t have time to charge it before trash hit me. It really feels like it should do a little more damage and not take 3 attacks to kill the lowest enemy.
Heavy Swords no longer feel very good! I used to be able to use the dash ult on Zealot and tear hordes up with fury but the heavy sword seems to not be good enough anymore to do this reliably. And that is its only job, besides maybe oneshot mutants. I would also love to see a new Staff for Psykers!! I still like bringing flamer for a stagger build with the big stagger blessing, it can stagger groups of heavies if you spam leftclick while killing the small enemies real fast
The flamer sould bypass armor and just do alot of DOT and down things fast. Then the bolter should have a lot of armor pen lets be honest and have stagger. Above all just for the love of god... let us attach different things to our weapons like flashlights and have different ammo types. Having a different ammo variety would be a game changer imagine hotshot las packs changing the base lasguns and giving them basically incendinary ammo. Even different grenade types and also xeno weapons would be great as well.
You can melt whole mauler patrol with one max one and a half of flamer canister so i dont think its that bad but yeah carpace damage sucks. Edit: Just checked my flamer kills mauler TWICE with one canister of fuel. So yeah only carapace damage is bad.
How DARE you call my beloved thunder hammers bad. Real talk though, the thunder hammer is pretty much the only thing I run on the zealot. It has a complex attack pattern that takes time to learn and is engaging to use even after it gets mastered. Although the self-stun on use does make the weapon worse, if that got removed I think I would enjoy the weapon less. Like that self stun combined with the big thunderous kaboom of the hammer impact is what makes the thunder hammers FEEL great to use, even if their numbers arent the best. I prefer playing my zealot as a control tank. Not someone meant to deal damage, but instead someone to keep the enemy melees in check and staggered while my teamates do cleanup. I'd much prefer if instead of being a damage tool (Except against monsters because watching that healthbar dissipate gives me the funny brain chemicals), they pivoted the thunder hammer into being a control/support weapon. Increasing cleave and some stagger power would be nice, but instead of removing the self-stun, I'd rather they make it so that the empowered hit does a small shockwave stagger to nearby enemies. This might make it overlap with the crusher a bit, but I'd prefer if my ability to control the horde was not diminished just because I want to deal some single target damage. Or, if they don't want overlap with the crusher, make the empowered hit able to cleave through multiple elites and hit all of them with that devastating blow.
1. I disagree with removal of self-stun after special attack. Would rather have AoE stagger like Crusher Mk IV does. So you stagger yourself as well as enemies you hit. That still leaves you vulnerable to ranged attacks, but staggering horde elites will give you enough time to recover. And it wont compete with Crusher Mk IV, as crusher anti horde weapon. While Thunderhammer is anti elite weapon. So AoE stagger only works when you discharge your special attack (yes, one hammer discharges even on horde enemies, that should be removed) 2. All mutants are resiliant to ranged damage. Having bolter to be anti-mutant weapon that does not suffer from their resistance is a good idea. Both in-game and lorewise. But overall i think bolter is in a good spot where it is right now. It's a back-up weapon. And it should be. When you get cornered by 4-6 crushers - just whip out bolter and delete them in 1-2 magazines. Just tested this out in meat grinder. Kill 6 damnation crushers in 1.5 magazine. With no stim boost. Which in my opinion is too many. With 1 magazine you should kill 1-2 armored crushers. Not 3-4. Stop trying to make back-up weapons into main one. 3. This is a flamer, not a melta. It SHOULD NOT do anything to fully armored crusher. In my opinion bulwark with shields up should completely nullify flamer. If you want to use it so much against armored enemies - fine, a stagger effect can be applied to SOME of them. This is a problem i have with darktide community. You only want buffs. You want every weapon to be able kill crushers and other dangerous enemies very fast and very easy. And, unfortunately, Fatshark listens to you. Which leads to high threat enemies like crushers becoming a joke. "Oh, what's that? A very strong, fully-armored, ogryn crusher? Imma oneshot it with a revolver. Or stab it with a knife once and he dies. Or zap him with a lightning and he dead". This powercreep creates disbalance, where dangerous enemies becoming so useless, that developers have to increase their amounts to the point where entire horde consisting purely out of elites. This is stupid. Strong enemies supposed to be strong. You supposed to deal with them. Not cry on forums that your bolter cant onetap crusher and demanding buffs. To summ this all up - get gud. And then weapons will be gud too.
the flamer itself not doing much damage is fine. The fire DoT effect on the other hand needs to be more potent imo. You are setting people of fire ffs. It shouldnt be registered by the enemy like a minor inconvenience, it should make them freak tf out and do some serious damage. A buff there would be to give the fire DoT more damage overall and a percentage of armor ignore but reduce the time an armored target is ablaze. That way you could kill an armored target but you´d to keep hosing them down with the flamer to keep the DoT going.
I just wish that they hadn't removed the chastise the wicked armor pierce entirely it feels tone deaf since the other two abilities always seem a lot stronger. maybe reduce it sure or nerf it specifically for the flamer, but I very much enjoyed running around as zealot knowing that every range weapon was viable. Now if I don't bring something that's armor pierce I feel like I'm pulling the team down. (really enjoyed a crit build with the Columbus braced autogun that now can't work for a number of reasons.) Also every other career has a talent for innate ranged armor pen ignoring your equipped weapons, but zealot doesn't. ogryn gun rending node, veteran +rending to all attacks/krak grenade, Psyker brain burst there are more but these are the ones I remember off the top of my head. Every Career should have the ability to choose to spec into focusing ranged or melee or a mixture. Zealot is the only class that is forced to only do melee (emperor's executioner and the gutted chastise the wicked +fire rate are about it for zealot. They need more options.)
My turn for an essay. The bolter absolutely needs a buff. I think both the bolter and bolt pistol need better breakpoints, actually. The current damage they do in no way justifies the severe handling mallus they are inflicted by when there are longstanding alternative weapon picks that are naturally much stronger without any of the drawbacks. It should be as simple as that. If you must continue to fight the weapon itself just to pull it out, reload and aim it, it NEEDS to hit like a truck. It SHOULD one-shot non-elites, bare minimum. These are rocket propelled explosive rounds hitting soft, rotten flesh and flak armor, which is often refered to as "t-shirts" in tabletop settings because flak is the Imperium's *minimum* for protection. A lot of the problem with the bolter's previous overpowered status had to do with class interactions. The vet makes any ranged weapon monstrous in the right conditions, and how a Pinning Fire bolter worked with the old Executioner's Stance was an insane list of boosts. The instant reload is a majority of what let it burst bosses down so consistently. We no longer have 100% power boosts from Pinning Fire, and Executioner Stance has had so much of its value stripped away. No more instant reload, no more immortal toughness. On zealots, they had the armor rending from Fury of the Faithful to help burst a lot more targets down than they normally could. That is also gone. So now the bolter is left to stand on its own legs, and it is absolutely weak at the knees. I find the only time a bolter is remotely on par with other ranged options now is on an Executioner Stance veteran, which is now vet's glass cannon build and has plenty of room to debate whether it needs tweaking as well. It's honestly shameful that THE iconic 40k weapon is like this. The bolt pistol is still outshined pretty badly by the revolver, but it's a less dramatic difference by comparison. It's less egregious than comparing the bolter to any of its armor piercing contemporaries. I just think the damage profile should be on par with the revolver. The revolver has a slow reload speed as a drawback and that's pretty much it. It has FAR superior cleave, better handling, and better breakpoints than the bolt pistol, which can shoot more and more often, which it needs to do because it has no cleave, god awful handling, the explosive damage and stagger is pitiful and it takes more shots to do what the revolver typically does with one. I'm typically not fond of nerfs because Fatshark uses a heavy hand. When they reel something back, they almost always nerf it into the ground. It then takes 6+ months for them to course correct and actually find a decent place for the weapons. See recons. That being said, I think plasma has had it's time to cook, and if we have to make other options more appealing by nerfing what's good, I pray they at least take it easy on the revolver because I think the revolver is mostly fine. It's strong, yes, but it was pretty bad before they buffed it and I don't think it deserves to go back to the salt mines, it just needs alternatives that are worth using. On all other points, I generally agree. It makes sense for the chainaxe to have a better mobility profile as a one-handed weapon, though I think it should still be inferior to the chainsword in that regard, if just a little bit. The fact that it's more on par with the eviscerator is a little silly to me. There's probably a happy medium in there. The flamer is definitely once more indirectly nerfed by the Fury of the Faithful change, and has lost a lot of its value. It was, prior to this patch, situationally strong. It still required a ramp-up to max burn stacks before it was capable of dealing decent carapace damage by using FotF. Way back in early Darktide, the flamer was a ridiculous killing machine that melted everything. The nerfs then were justified. I thought for the better part of this year, the flamer was in an absolutely okay place. In fact, I honestly hate they finally "fixed" FotF ranged rending. I don't think there was any case in which it was too strong to justify. It was a fun mechanic that made zealot slightly more robust, but they nerfed it in favor of pidgeonholing the zealot for identity.
how do you feel about the ripperguns? i think they need more of an ammo reserve for sure, especially for a gunlugger ogryn. even using the slower firing mk2 ripper to try and eke out ammo, it feels like i'm struggling to keep the firepower coming
Bolter is fine Flamer can’t really be good without being broken I don’t think Thunder hammer needs a rework not a buff. Having it be the monster one shot stick is not fun for other players or the monsters lol
Agripinaa Revolver my beloved the potential is just locked away for this gun, all I'd want is some pen and a tiny dmg boost and it would be fine. The no pen really kills the gun esp when there is a Special surrounded by trash mobs.
I was the person who made the Reddit post about bringing the bolter back to glory, man they just need to revert the nerfs & just let it hit like a tank cause enemies got buffed in auric/damn
I think he did a few months ago when they decided to knee cap anything that was popular. It honestly stopped me from playing VT2 again. dev 1: "we have like 300 players at best, what should we do?" other dev: Nerf everything that is popular?
Agree on thunder hammer and chainaxe but not much with the bolter or flamer. Bolter is a very strong sniper on vet capable of oneshotting maulers with the right setup currently, and with a damage stim you can even reach a oneshot crusher breakpoint. I think all that needs to be done for it is to clean up the horrid ADS sway and remove suppression effects from ranged enemies and it will be in a decent state for vet. Zealot can also reach impressive breakpoints on elites with Duellist and Annointed in Blood and can cut down the swap time with a throwing knife, making it a fantastic hipfire weapon especially when paired with Dance of Death, so it only needs improvement on the terrible recoil while firing for it to really shine on that class as well. It's fine to buff the breakpoints on infested since it shouldn't take more than 1 shot to kill a dog (even more annoying that the stagger throws them all over the place), but when used efficiently and effectively with the right builds the weapon can be extremely reliable. I'd also add that they should remove the class resitrictions so psyker can play around with this weapon. I imagine it would be great fun to run a DD scrier's gaze cavalcade bolter build would go hard. As an additional note I don't think balance changes should be made to a weapon thinking of them in comparison to the revolver, or, in general, should be powercrept to match the strongest weapons in the game. Revolver should be nerfed, having rending and penetration be toned down and penetrating through far less targets. Having it be a great special sniper is fine, but it shouldn't be a better option at clearing carapace or flak than almost any other weapon in the game. Flamer has a massive effective radius of aoe damage that will melt entire hordes and elites in a single reload, and it really doesn't need to be buffed to be better at that especially if you factor in other players being near you as you use it. The game already struggles with having enough of a horde to stop 4 players in the first place, having this weapon and the purgatus makes them virtually nonexistent. There is already way too much effective aoe in darktide, from blitz like flame grenades on zealot or bleed grenades on vet, or smite on psyker, to abilities like vet shout and psyker shriek, and weapons like trauma staff and rumbler. They really don't need to be buffed without a significant turn up in horde timers and spawn rates, or a severe reduction in their effective range, cleave and radius, or munition.
Literally no one uses the flamer, except maybe in non-auric? I play a lot and I have yet to see 1 zealot with a flamer. I wonder why? Auric Damnation / Maelstrom will eat up a flamer and keep coming.
@@HeroOfTheWeb Because of nerf. People not seeing it needs a buff to work again just aren't playing it on higher diff and/or just see the magnificent hordeclear the few times it shines due to timing and hard work of the player using it basically only close combat fighting up until those moments.
@@HeroOfTheWeb No one uses flamer because it doesn't do everything and general purpose in most cases is far better than screen clearing, especially when you're playing a class that cheats melee like zealot does, gaining insane amounts of toughness through dodges and insane effective toughness via crit tdr and dodge tdr and passive aura effects. You are the screen clear in that case, and no amount of buffing flamer will make up for it unless it is OP. Flamer is still very effective in auric damnation, you just lose out on the ability to kill snipers or gunners across the map and instead have to make the travel distance. Most people do not want to play without a sniper tool and probably can't aim with knives, but I know many of my friends, among them speedrunners, who rely on the flamer because it makes clearing ambient and horde waves absolutely trivial.
Flamer was good - a few loud voices "waahhhh it clears hordes" Me: Play something higher than Malice It got completely destroyed and now no one uses it at all. I've seen a recent comment about nerfing all classes heavily to make the game harder. Yeah, listen to that guy, we have like 2-4k people playing at peak, it's a great idea to nerf everything.
Agreed as someone who has hundreds of auric malestorm wins its not like the game is easy, just (if your at that point) go back to a heresy mission and see how players newer to the game are struggling for a quick reminder that its not easy, its just you are good at the game which are two entirely different things. I do wonder how good some people must be if they think the game is easy, I mean when I'm not in a 3 or 4 stack of friends and am jumping in to solo quick play on the auric board I don't see many players who can carry the clusterfrick you often get dropped in to. For players that can how about running a challenge loadout or play at 10 fps if your just that good lol
Thunderhammer is really a sad weapon. I used it for so long just because I find it cool but's really outclassed my so many other options. The eviscerator that isn't even that good of a weapon outclasses it in most aspects. I don't understand why they fear to make a big slow weapon kill big targets in one swing that takes forever to come out when the combat knife will literally kill everything in the same amount of time while also being incredible fast to attack and move. I also feel the power maul even with the buffs isn't in a good spot. The regular moves are way better but the charge just doesn't do enough damage to compensate the slow animaton of turning it on while not being able to run. At this point it's just a bully club but worse
Bolter Buff suggestion (both Pistol and Normal) - treat limb hits as body shots - treat body shots as headshots Would reflect really well how devestating it is to have an explosive projectile explode anywhere in your body.
This is more or less asking to double the damage of the bolter in a round-about way as limb damage is, if I'm not mistaken, 0.5x damage. Which, I mean, yes. The explosive round shouldn't care what part of the body it hits. If the bolt explodes on a heretic's leg, that leg -- and the greater part of the lower torso -- should be gone.
Reapers & Crusher/bulwarks need to be killed in 3 shots, let it hit like a tank! A pack of crusher taking 4-5 hits just to kill one when you have only 15 in a clip is very underwhelming especially in higher diffs.
Yup, I agree with pretty much everything you said. There's a lot of weapons that could use some positive changes to keep up with the rest. What do you think about the change to invocation of death? It pretty much kills several builds I was running with crit zealot for shroudfield and FoF. IMO, since they're nerfing how often you can trigger it, it deserves a buff to how much time it reduces your CD on crit. Make it reduce the CD by 3 or 4 seconds instead of 1.5. Heck, make it reduce the CD based on the inverse of your attack speed or something. Less CD reduction per crit for fast weapons and more CD reduction for slow weapons per crit. I love chainaxes now that they're not trash, but they really do feel lacking in the mobility department, considering they're a 1 handed weapon. Thammer has always been jank with its self stun, so if they just remove that, and make sure it hits better breakpoints with its damage and stagger, then it'd be great. At least let us dodge/block immediately after a charged attack; I can at least understand not being allowed to attack for a moment after smashing something with the thammer. Also, just let us 1 tap ogryn heads on damnation with a fully charged thrust thammer. That's *the point* of thammers, bonking the biggest targets! IMO, bolter feels like a really awkward precision weapon atm, which is entirely the wrong role for that weapon, especially considering the awful recoil and handling of it. It definitely needs more damage/better breakpoints so that it can actually live up to its role in lore of being the fully automatic AP grenade launcher that it is (though still needs to not outclass the plasma gun). The flamer is just pathetic atm. It does absolutely nothing except for clearing hordes that you should just use your melee weapon on. I guess you can use it on close range shotgunner/gunner squads, but that's a terrible niche for a short range weapon.
What I also hate about flamer users is that they block my fov, and cover my screen. The zealot will unknowingly help the enemy horde by blinding the team with the worst gun in game. I feel the same way with smoke grenades. God, that blitz utility is near useless. By the time it pops off, either my team or I have dispatched or suprressed half the distant gunners. Another visual hazard, too. Also, REGULAR axe users. Idk how you all feel about all simple axes and hatchets in the roster, but I personally think they are all shit and don't do anything special. Let alone niche. Even on Malice. Tbf, I do not vibe with them at all no matter how hard I try.
@@cire837 Rashad is too slow, and doesnt cc. It's long wind up with thrust and armor penetration doesn't make up for it, either. Especially compared to other melee powerhouses. Smoke grenades dont even break LOS once gunners shoot at their target, and you still obscure everyone's vision. Plus, you have to take account how many nades you have, and how long until the nade refill takes to give you another. No one is picking the node that lets your team see gunners when ES is activated. Plus, frag nades can distrupt gunners as easily, and dealing suppression or dodge sliding is much more beneficial and quicker to do. Niether axes or smoke are as useless as the flamer, but they are quite shit.
What's funny is you can knock over crushers with a second heavy attack on the daimos force sword and the charged hammer can't.
Honestly I would hope they removed the knock down from Deimos H2 and simply made it stagger. It's annoying trying to go for the follow up when the crusher is now on his ass in the middle of the trash pile
What the developers don't understand about the flamer and any other close range firearms is this: It's completely fine for them to be strong. Cause you're sacrificing the ability to shoot gunners, snipers, bombers, and other long range menaces. That's a LOT to give up. For this sacrifice you should be able to do a lot in exchange, otherwise there's no point in using the weapon
Agreed its a dead weapon with no reasons to ever take it on higher difficulites, yes you can clear hoard but so does everything else. Its not even fun as you have to stand still (very slow movement) to use it and that means your dead in any situation where setting everything on fire is whats needed.
That strength is the AoE capability.
@@SFuruli Not enough with AOE alone to compensate for it being so weak in everything else now. Needs a buff, doesn't have to be that much but something.
@@thunder2434 But the Flamer already is good. Shoot it every time a large mix of enemies run in, and it will both stagger and leave just the most heavily armored elites. As the developers said, the Zealot class can skip ranged combat, so shooters aren't an issue. Add throwing knives for dealing with specialists, and you're golden.
@@SFuruliflamer is an absolute joke weapon atm.
Ofc you can beat any difficulty with any equipment if you know what you’re doing but still it doesn’t make flamer any good
Bolter, not Heavy Bolter
The Emperor will truly smile upon us if we ever get a Heavy Bolter
Yeah an Ogryn with 200 rounds on a Heavy Bolter.... Would be amazing.
I want an Autocannon for Ogryn slow rate of fire - 100rounds only.
@@mwnciboo Heavy flamer,heavy bolter, auto cannon, multi melta...power gauntlet...all things the big lads need!!!
@@mwnciboohonestly think that a heavy bolter could barely carry 100 and a auto cannon can only carry about 30-50 rounds is you look at the model
-Malum Caedo wants to know your location-
Give it to the psyker 😊
Biggest buff for the thunder hammer: LET OTHER PEOPLE HEAR THE COOL NOISE IT MAKES WHEN IT SMITES THINGS! WHY AM I THE ONLY ONE THAT GETS TO EXPERIENCE IT'S GLORY?!
This guy gets it ⚡🔨
I didn't know this and it makes me sad. No wonder my friends aren't as excited by the thunder hammer as me.
Not the only one, brother. 😊
That flamer damage... yeesh. Poor thing needs some love
They kept nerfing it because ppl were complainig
it was too strong due to a skill but when they removed it now it's so nerfed it's not even playable.
Sadly my flamer collection just sits collecting dust now.
It does? Works fine when I use it. What's wrong with it?
@@johndane9754 Look at the video, it's demonstrated there. Barely any Carapace Armor damage.
@@thunder2434 yes but jtc showed poorly how it does work against maulers
@@ulysseslenka4739 jtc shows it without buffs on the flamer. A whole can should hurt a Mauler decently even as a gray weapon, it's the point made in the video.
The state of the flamer is incredibly depressing. The fire grenades completely replace it with no downsides.
On the opposite end of thunderhammer, I think the heavy swords have become outpaced by other zealot options that can deal with hordes, but also so more than horde clear (anti boss/elite/carapace, better dodge/crit stats, etc)
The flamer is actually pretty strong, but it requires you to specialize in the skills that boost its damage including the crit-boosting ones. Its main function is to clear out mobs really fast while you switch back to your melee weapon while the DoT kills the trash mob. The other function is to stagger with the hip fire, which is decent crowd control letting others finish them off or to let you approach with your melee.
If they buffed the Thunder Hammers I would be so happy.
Thunder Hammer is fine as is. What's the issue? What can you not delete with it?
One of my constant issues with the thunderhammer is that using a charged attack does not cleave through hordes. So if you have elites mixed in with a horde, a charge attack would be wasted on a poxwalker rather than on the massive crusher. I do not think a charged attack should do more damage to a horde, it just needs to be able to cleave through them similar to a power sword. Without this, it is just not as viable as other weapons.
I would just be careful with that. I think that there should be use cases for the thunder hammer where uncharged swings are better than just constantly charging every single attack with it like you do for the power swords. Making the charged attacks powerful, yet meaningful for specific situations, is the way to go. So if you make the charged attack good at EVERYTHING, the weapon loses some of its skill and becomes a brainless charge-attack spamming machine.
the ironhelm hammer already does this in game.
Ironhelm already does this and while it is very nice it does not solve the problems. I don't know if it is better compare it to the crusher 2h maul or the power sword but thammers are clunky compared to both of those weapons for no gain.
@@therealw04 Yes, but at a significantly reduced damage which at that point why use a thunder hammer at all? Thammers are already slow and clunky compared to most other zealot weapons so they need power behind them the ability to easily single out elites in specials in a horde else that is not viable.
@@dizerelj5678 I get what you mean, but my comparison to the power sword is more that its charged attack can cleave and not a want to have every attack be a charged attack. This is also not the only change I want to make to the Crucis thunder hammer, but feel this is one that is most needed if thunder hammers are to compete with other zealot weapons.
Melee weapons need to be able to handle both hordes, elies/specials, and bosses to be viable. That does not mean that have to excel at each, just be able to perform with each. For example, the Antax combat axe excels at hordes and elites and does moderately well with bosses while the Catachan Mk III combat blade excels at elites and bosses while doing moderately well on hordes. The Crucis thunder hammer does well with bosses and that's it. It can do a lot of damage to elites if you can single them out, but doing so while mixed with a horde is not only annoying but inefficient.
The current pick axes for the Ogryn are really what thunder hammers should be as though they are slow and clunky, they have a ton of power and can deal with elites mixed with hordes.
Bolter is more or less ok damagewise. Fixing its janky ads will help a lot, since no more ammo will be wasted, on top of that incresed mag cap could be an option, like +3 bolts.
Also i don't think incresing stagger is a good option, cause once crusher knocked you can't aim his head.
There is one thing I noticed with both bolter and bolt pistol: they don't have a consistent one tap ability for shooters/cultists. Even with flack/unarmored if you don't hit a dead on center mass/head shot, the target will survive. Just being able to one tap consistently, it'll already feel a lot better imo
Very good takes here. Glad I found a good Darktide CZcamsr. Also played a game with you the other day but I did not realize ggs!
ggs man!
activation weapons are fundamentally flawed and need to be completely reworked, preferably to something more like the new shock mauls. but the gameplay of activate, swing, is always going to be awful and tend to create a cursed problem where the activation is either never worth using, negating the point of an activation weapon, or the activation is ONLY worth using, negating the entire moveset of the weapon.
buffing the bolter breakpoints around the idea that you have no crit is insane unless you ALSO want to nerf finesse damage because bolter is absolutely cracked with crits.
the problem with the flamer is it's boring. it is already insanely good horde clear, wanting it to clear armor too is like asking for it to compete with ogryn frags.
what the flamer needs is mechanical depth and to not be a lame fart cloud so that it's at least interesting to use, you can't just number your way out of this one either lol.
I always saw the chainaxe's niche as the jack of all trades in the chain weapon lineup. Shove + strong attacks for hordes and light + rev attacks for single targets. You can trash clear, deal good damage to bosses, handle maulers/crushers, and have a good stamina bonus for reviving. This is coming from someone who uses it on Veteran however, so I don't know how well it preforms on Zealot.
Mk 4 chain axe is my most used weapon, probably around 800hrs 😅😅😅 nothing else keeps me playing like the mk4 chaxe. It's pretty insane on zealot, especially with martyrdom. Like you said, jack of all trades for sure. Not one category it's actually bad at, and many categories, like ragers and crushers, where it's top 3 weapons in the game.
I feel like the hammer has a self stun becuase..you know..were not space marines.
A space marine T Hammer hits like a small artillery strike, they're as much anti-armor weapons as they are area denial, since the shockwave their discharge produces is so powerful. The little junior hammers zealot uses are more like other human-usable power weapons, making them a tiny bit less cumbersome would be nice.
I mean on vet you can reload the bolter fast.
And get a bunch of buffs.
I belong to the camp, that the weapons should have been more separate between the classes.
And therefore be balanced more I line with the classes.
I agree to all your suggestions jtcLIVE! I hope Fat Shark are listening. :)
I would like to add Bolt Pistol to the list as well. It shouldn't be as powerful as the Bolt Gun and makes up for it in faster deploy and reload, but it's too weak now vs Armor. I'd like the BP to have full auto like the boltgun as well as they are commonly full auto able in lore, but it's not critical.
I also find that Chain weapons in general are a bit weak vs Armor despite them being described in-lore as armor piercing with their Diamantine teeth. Not a big issue but a secondary one perhaps. A slight buff for all of them vs Armor would do just fine. A combat knife should not be more effective than a Chainsword or Chainaxe vs Armor and now it is.
I originally had the bolt pistol in this video too but ended up cutting it, because the bolt pistol doesn’t really have an identity (which can’t be fixed with simple buffs IMO - It needs an entire overhaul to be a competitive choice)
@@jtcLIVE Good call. Yes it needs more.
To make Bolt Pistol work what they need to do is increase its penetration and make it great at oneshotting chaff to the body, and then also change the revolvers to only really be strong when hitting weak spots. Also disagree on the chain weapons' penetration, they work fine as horde-clearing, ogryn/mutant carving weapons, a knife actually makes sense for penetration, because it's nimble and easy to slip between the armor plates of an opponent, though the mk3 should be a little worse at cleave I personally think, a small knife should be worse at clearing hordes than a sword.
I totally agree on the bolt pistol and revolver.
Sorry I should have specified about the chain weapons.
I meant that chainweapon Revv damage needs a boost vs Carapace which it's specifically meant for, not the normal attack damage which is fine as it is.
Three revvs or more to kill 1 Crusher in Damnation should be two, like it used to be. Especially since a tiny knife does it in one quick flurry of attacks given the right skills and blessings.
Also Lorewise a chainsword has armor penetration while knives don't unless it's a unique artifact weapon. Spacemarines are said to saw each other in half through Power Armor even, or Carapace equivalent "Chitinous Armored" xenos like Genestealers or Tyranid Warriors. It should have a big bite on revv.
If you check the numbers you'll see that the Boltpistol deals ever so slightly more dmg than the Bolter. Definitely doesn't need a buff.
Also i'm one of the people that reported this ironhelm's combo resets upon pressing sprint with a very awkward motion from heavy 2 or heavy 3 to the sprinting heavy attack which resets thrust charges its very annoying
Bolter damage buff against unarmoured by about 20-25% to deal with dreg gunners with a single headshot at any range and dreg bruisers with 1 body shot, and also increase headshot damage of maniacs by about 20% to meet flamer headshot breakpoint. (Copy the previous changes to bolt pistol) Add a partial reload animation like for the bolter, however change ammo to 75 in reserve to disincentivize mag dumping. Bolt pistol should have less hipfire spread for a more run and gun role. Also both the revolvers should have far less damage for the torso, but increase its headshot damage multipliers even higher than they are now.
I have a god roll chain axe I never play with cuz I despise the horde clear so if they ever change oh boy will I be happy.
I think both thammers need buffs now after the change to chastise(from armor downgrade to rending) even with a charge full thrust 4 stacks and special activation ironhelm doesnt do any carap damage.
spending both chastise charges to kill one crusher even with momentum/wounds.
I think they can use a bit more carapace damage or freeing the mouse during the charge so its possible to land a weakspot hit during it would be good
As a Zealot main who runs the bolter anyway (using bolt pistol atm but I'm calling my emotional support bolter because its mostly to make me feel safer not to actually be safer) I would say that the effective damage is 90% of its issues.
I am fine with the long draw time and general sluggishness of the weapon as I'm playing the melee class anyway so rarely need/want a ranged weapon, I can ussually close on ranged enemies or let the ranged class (as if Veterans even bring guns anymore lol) play its role (yeah I know but sometimes rarely it happens) so I only 'need' a gun for special occasions, Crushers bigger mauler packs and snipers. Snipers are one shot at all ranges with the pinpoint accuracy of the first round, even when 'quickscoping' in a dodge so its great for that job IF you can make time to take the shot which is a good skill check imo.
The draw mag dump delete a crusher pack is what I want the Bolter for and its powerfully mid at the task, it used to be able to take out 3 sometimes 4 crushers with a single mag but now its 1 sometimes 2 and I often feel that its a waste of time even bringing a gun when that happens. No idea why Fatshark are so opposed to the bolter being genuine OP I mean its a fucking bolter of course its op, the Plasma gun is op so why is the bolter a toy. If I mag dump 4+ crushers I want them dead not just pulling agro its not like the game doesn't spawn 9-12 crushers on the highest difficulties quite often anyway which would always require at least 1 reload (2 realistically) which takes about a week so why not.
If its not going to kill things like a bolter should then way way way more stagger/stun should be the order of the day I mean its just stupid when you shoot something in the head with a .75 explosive round and they ignore it/don't get staggered. 1 shot on poxhounds is a must not because of gameplay just its a dog being hit with an anti-tank weapon (it would one shot early tanks ffs), they are quick and can disable you quicker than the draw time so why not let the cannon hurt them, I am 100% convinced fatshark hasn't even realised the mistake on this and it makes me question their ability to make games, like it has to be an error the alternitive is worse than mere incompetence
This is a co op game not a competitive deathmatch style game balance for fun IS allowed, its fine for things like Bolters and Plasma guns to be more powerfull than an autogun or the shredder pistol, both have downsides to 'balance' that out anyway. I mean most Auric Damnation Maelstrom missions taking a bolter is going to have ammo supply issues so may as well let it hurt things
One last 'idea' and I use the term loosely, if the bolter is OP on the Vet don't let them equip it and just leave them the Plasma which is a far better weapon on that class anyway (with the toy bolter as it is) so the Zealot can have the wild dps dump in to things faces option that thematically works quite well.
Not bad suggestions for the bolter but I would say that the slow draw and slow reload should be left in and used to justify buffs to stagger, accuracy and carapace penetration.
Experienced bolter users know which talents and techs can shorten draw and reload. Leave it as a weapon for the skilled/committed but give it the power to justify that complexity. This way it can have the power befitting an iconic 40k weapon without making every other gun in Darktide obsolete.
I agree, also one more buff i would make is that the bolter(and bolt pistol) do full damage when hitting limbs
For the bolder, buff base damage, buff armour piercing, nerf unyielding. Net result is more damage to everything except monstrosities which stays the same.
Thunder hammer would be good if the move set changed. You need thrust and special together. Making light attacks a sweeping pattern and heavies an overhead would go a long way without changing fundamentals, just so you could hit that crusher and not the poxwalker next to him.
Flamer… just go out back and put it out of its misery at this point.
I think a nice balancing ideology for the bolter would be "Raw damage and stagger, less reward for finese." Something like having good damage and breakpoints for bodyshots but a very low weakpoint multiplier. You could say that's dumb because getting hit in the face with a bolt would obviously be fatal but counterpoint: is it really any more fatal than being hit in the anywhere with one? This combined with weakspot damage having increased importance in boss killing nowadays and the tremendous recoil making precision very hard would likely prevent the bolter from overperforming on bosses. Oh, and making the explosion more noticable and effective would be nice.
One important distinction I want to make from the video is while I think letting the bolter stagger carapace easily is a good idea I'm a little hesitant to let it be very good at killing carapace because it might sorta step on Plasma's toes. With the Bolter being a better general weapon than Plasma I think Fatshark really needs to take care to prevent Plasma from just being a worse Bolter again.
I originally had the idea of granting bolter a “reverse finesse modifier” that gave it extra damage on body shot and less damage on headshot. I still think it could be a unique way to fix the bolter because it gives into the power fantasy, fixes the bolter being a finesse precision weapon (which makes no sense lorewise), and takes some power away from the current meta of precision finesse weapons we have going on
Flamer just feels so redundant on zealot considering the class already has basically built in horde clear
They really saw lingering flames from VT2 pre patch and said yeah let’s make that a weapon
Along with the weapons you listed here are some weapons need some serious attention:
Shredder autopistol is completely worthless since they overnerfed it like a year ago or more now
Dueling Swords (apart from the mark 4) are truly bad
Recon Lasguns are still bad despite the buff
Lawbringer Shotgun (also would love to see the Aggripinna fire slugs by default, nobody uses the regular fire unless theyre forced to)
Bolt Pistol (reduced time to get back on target after ADS shots or buff the damage a bit)
Obscuruos Force Sword has no reason to ever be taken over the other marks in the family and needs reworking so it actually has some kind of advantage
The flamer should have a "heat" threshold on enemies. Example: 5 of the same continuous dot applied in X seconds of each other cause the enemy to ignite causing extreme fire DMG. They are wearing armor so let them burn up.
I'm a Thunder Hammer enthusiast and I would welcome some buffs. It's super fun to use but the self-stun makes it really risky.
I would love boltguns to actually cause some explosion damage, blowing up targets and doing AOE. That would make the downsides of the weapon worth it. I think the bolt pistol technically does this but it's barely noticeable.
A couple features of the bolt pistol kinda got me thinking of a potential buff for bolt weapons broadly.
1. The BP only does AoE damage when the shot actually hits an enemy, otherwise it just staggers. (I've heard it described as the damage is being done by bits of the target becoming shrapnel)
2. The blessing "puncture" applies bleed on hit.
Conclusion:
What if bolt weapons caused an AoE bleed, but only on hitting an armoured target. A problem with the old boltgun was that it did massive damage, but could also be used to lock down a room full of chaff by just spraying it in the general direction of enemies. This way, it'll regain a bit of that horde control, but only if you aim at priority targets in the horde, plus the bleed will help with some of the problematic damage breakpoints.
Obviously, the damage mods will need looked at as well as this (especially vs infested), but I think this change could make them much stronger without having them overshadow every other option.
Honestly I really liked this video, and it's always fun to see what other people are thinking. I agree w/ just about everything I watched, though I do have my own hot takes regarding the Bolter and the Flamer. My two cents w/ the Bolter is that, in lore, they're basically explosive slugs (or Bolts) that blast through whatever they hit before detonating. They're arguably AP weapons, but not in the same way that something like the Plasma Gun is. My main thought is to emphasize the explosive aspect of the weapon to help differentiate it from the Revolver or Plasma Gun.
Instead of over-penetrating, (in my head) the bolter should detonate and suppress. As of time of writing, hitting the environment instead of an enemy creates an explosion of suppression and stagger, but no damage, and while hitting an enemy directly will deals explosive damage to enemies around your target, this damage isn't really that impressive. In my opinion, once the shot is primed, you should get explosive damage even from environmental shots, and the explosive damage taken by surrounding enemies to your target should be increased. This doesn't need to be *a lot* of damage for either explosion, but I do think it should be enough to be considered the strength of the weapon. The Plasma Gun and Revolver might cut through a hoard to kill a priority target, but the "Dark Tide" of the wave as a whole will keep advancing. The Boltgun should be like momentarily slamming a door in the hoards face. A space maker, so long as you have rounds to fire in your small, dwindling magazine. The weapon's slow handling and reload speed, as well as it's (IMO) middling ammo reserves would already do a lot to balance out that level of CC.
Pair this alongside some slightly better breakpoints for the weapon, and maybe some a buff to it's Suppression and Impact. Phil Kelly of GW says himself that Bolters are supposed to be built for intimidation. I want the weapon to feel like it's making the enemy think twice about pushing. I also personally think the weapon could stand to be more accurate as well. It should still have heavy recoil, but you're firing a Gyro Jet. Those fly pretty straight; it's kind of their whole appeal. I can't say that this would be the most balanced buff, but as of right now, the Bolters, especially the Bolt Pistol, feel sloppy and inaccurate to fire, even when only firing a single round.
With all those thoughts typed out for the Bolter, my thoughts on the Flamer are more concise. Humans, all living things really, have an aversion to fire. Military and police have to train out the overwhelming psychological response to *move away* from it. Just like real world Flamethrowers, 40K's Flamers fire a torrent of of fuel, a jet of viscous, heavy liquids that are on fire. Even if you're protected from the fire, you aren't protected from *the weight*, and you definitely aren't safe from the *Heat*. In my opinion, these weapons should be suppression and Impact machines, with the added benefit of Rending armored targets so that the longer they're in your jet, the more damage they'll take.
Now, I recognize that this suggestion for the Flamer sounds somewhat similar to the Bolter, but the difference is that the Bolt Gun is a weapon shared between the Veteran and Zealot, and the Bolt Pistol is shared between Veteran, Zealot, and Psyker. Meanwhile, the Flamer is Zealot exclusive. And I think it should be even better at slamming a door in the face of the hoard than the Bolters. As a weapon unique to one class, I think it should feel specialized in that role compared to the Bolter, as something only it uniquely can do at it's level. To put it another way, to use an relationship established earlier, The Plasma Gun and the Revolver can both fire through a hoard to hit a priority target, but the Plasma Gun can reach far deeper into the hoard, and can even penetrate cover. In terms of the two weapons' potential to cut through enemies, the Plasma Gun is far more powerful, and it's unique to the Veteran.
In turn, if the Bolter was buffed to slam into and slow down the hoard, then the Flamer should offer up a similar utility, but at a greater level of power. I personally think the Bolter should heavily suppress unarmored enemies, slow down armored/flak enemies, but only be a mild annoyance to heavily armored enemies unless directly hit. Assuming this was the case, the Flamer could be a step up from this. Anything Flak or below is going to stumble, while even heavily armored units are slowed down. Throw on some Rending at base and nothing armored is going to reach you unscathed.
This would more or less make the Flamer a heavier, clunkier, lower ammo Bolter, but in my opinion, this isn't a bad thing. There would still be a reason to take the bolter, as it wouldn't be as sluggish and it would have a better range, allowing you to snipe with it. It also would deliver it's damage all at once to heavily armored enemies, instead of over time, making it better at turning and burning. Those are still two very different use cases though. The Bolter would become a weapon for driving back the hoard in quick burst. Perhaps to secure an objective or revive an ally. A "get off me" button. Meanwhile the flamer would be a tool for holding an area; not just making space, but keeping it, at least for a little while. If the Bolter makes a bubble in "the darktide", then the Flamer should make an island. A powerful tool, but an expensive one that needs space and time to be effective. A poor ammo reserve and slow handling combined with its low base damage means that the weapon would be at it's best when used in *anticipation* of a problem instead of in reaction to one.
My zealot almost exclusively uses the flamer and a heavy evisc. I love flamers so much, but it definitely feels underpowered... The only reason I use it so much is I love burning shit, and fan the flames is a great cc stagger.
Also, revolver outperforms the new bolt pistol as well.. it's kind of sad.
Bulwarks were buffed and are not even staggered by the boltgun anymore. The ammo increase is nice but the weapon still feels lackluster
Also, you just aren't good enough to use the bolter. It is a you problem, not the gun. My only issue is that the bolter has limited ammo. Infinite ammo would be the best buff for it.
@@thathandsomedevil0828 What gun would I be good enough to play mr Expert ? I suppose you can solo auric maelstrom if you talk like this ?
@@snowcordie9322 Darktide is a 4 player co-op game in case you missed that fact also. If I want to play single player I'd go play Doom or Wolfenstein the new colossus. And that is besides the point, it seems you can't even use the bolter properly even when playing with others. Pretty much a you problem still.
@@thathandsomedevil0828 You answered neither of my 2 questions so I guess it's no to both. From now on, whatever else you say is irrelevant lol
Bolter is scuff as a weapon that's a fact. No one good at the game will tell you it's a top tier weapon which only has ammo as an issue.
@@snowcordie9322 DARKTIDE IS A 4 PLAYER CO-OP GAME. You are by default are not supposed to "solo" it because the game isn't designed that way. Stop the gad damn cap, you simply suck at playing the game. If you can't hack using the bolter in a 4 man team then you have no business trying to "solo" anything. Imagine the brain power trying to single play a 4 player co-op game. Good lord.
if you're gonna bring up lore then at least you should realise that we aren't using a space marine bolter, it's an older shittier and downscaled version made for humans.
I'm glad someone said it.
I wish flamer would get some love, it makes no sense that a flamethrower is completely neutered by armor, something that realistically would make the heat worse.
I think the force swords shoudn't need Deflector to block ranged attacks. It's like asking the Ogrin shield to have a blessing to block ranged attacks. And I think the special of the Illisi should work more like the Veterans Power Sword's special
Buddy and I both grabbed flamers with the extra stagger blessing. Just left clicking allowed us to perma stagger waves of crushers. It was so damn funny. We got mulched by gunners tho.
3:30 Bolter handling needs some work: draw time, the whole rack the bolt every time you pull it out should be removed, also the weird crosshair behaviour should be smoothed out, bolter should kick up when fired a lot, but the random aspect of the weapon sway should be removed. Careful with power changes vs elite enemies
Salutations,
I largely agree with the bolter changes, it's worth mentioning that bolters in the lore of the night lords books are mentioned to be worse against armour and made more for flesh. I believe the idea behind carapace in game is to force players into melee rather than use ranged weapons. I think if the changes you are suggesting go through the ammo change in the latest patch should be reverted. Having the weapon be very strong but balanced by the less ammo you have to use it so you can't just spam it. (This is already an issue with the plasma, being incredibly strong and spammable at the same time.) The idea that you have this incredible tool but you have to more carefully decide when to use it.
The issue with the flamer is that it ignores mass therefore theoretically having the highest DPS in game. 50 damage to an enemy is low, however dealing 50 damage to every enemy in your screen suddenly boosts the damage you're pumping out by a hindred. If the flamer were made to have some kind of beam with penetration instead of simply being a cloud of damage it would be easier to balance.
On the thunder hammer and chain axe I find myself in agreement with you.
Good video with pretty decent suggestions JTC.
I would probably with these:
- Chainaxes are intended to be like single-target monsters, so if chainsword is overperforming them in single target damage, something is fucky and needs adjusting. The dodge buffs make sense. Also we might one day get two-handed chainaxes, so they need an identity and role as well.
- Gotta nerf Zarona a bit too, it outshoots bolters atm and that is just bullshit.
- I would keep bolters, both boltgun and bolt pistol as single target low / no-cleave weapons, but as trade-off be extremely damaging and kill most anything human-sized with bodyshots. They do sorely need some better damage values vs infested enemy types, aka poxwalkers and poxhounds. So yes, some more damage buffs needed. The wielding times could be adjusted, but before that, it´s more important to fix the recoil and accuracy issues and THEN adjust the recoil so you´d be incentivized to fire accurate shots with bolters to put whatever you are aiming down.
- Flamer does need more love, problem is that it cannot be too good against armor or it won´t have that many weaknesses. However, some love, yes, agreed.
- Thunderhammer needs some love too, especially the Crucis one, have not played with the Ironhelm enough to make good calls, but I would replace the powered attack from heavy sweep into an overhead smash and cause it do a bit of AOE stagger at the end, also tune down the Bosskilling potential so it won´t be as preposterous as it currently is. Should be bit better at staggering things too, prolly a bit more damage as well.
Pendant: The Bolter in the game is not the Astartes issue. That is too heavy for a baseline human and if fired, would most likely kill you. It's a human sized varient which is why it doesn't blow apart the larger targets and is unwieldy. But to your point, the amount of shots it takes to kill most targets is a joke and very off even for a puny sized Bolter. It's a rocket propelled armor pearcing projectile designed to detonate inside the target.
i would love to use chain axe more if the shreding 1 enemy nullify other enemies by scare them and they will back off for 1s. instead of shredding 1 enemy and take damage from 5 different sources
Flamer, Boltgun and Thunder Hammers were my weapons in the past. I want them to regain their deadly status.
I doubt this will be read but a lot of people seem to believe that in the lore that the bolter is an unwieldy, hard to use weapon. The bolter has a two stage charge on it's ammunition. One to fire it out of the gun and a 2nd stage that is basically a rocket. It has minimal recoil, handles well and is extremely reliable. It is the holy weapon of the space marines after all lol. The bolters that normal humans use are not the same size or caliber as the astartes version, which is difficult for a normal human to wield. I think this is where the confusion comes from as well as 99 percent of the wh40k communities lore knowledge coming from memes and not the source material.
Flamer got nerfed when it made sense. Ammo. The power wasn't nerfed on damage part. You just need to build like old zealot pre skill tree patch. It is horde clear weapon, not kill everything weapon.
Thunder Hammer is already fine as is since they buffed cleave but i agree that stagger values should go up if enemy got buffed as well.
Bolter is fine other then the ready time. Pulling out a bolter takes way too long to use it effectively when it's most needed. This is primary reason it's unusable on high difficulties.
Remember that weapons don't exist in vacuum and you have skills to truly make them shine.
Even on Veteran Las gun or Plasma are meh unless you spec into them and they are just monster of a weapon.
Good takes all around however as a Zealot main who almost always uses the flamer I do want to give my two cents on it.
First things first. Know what role your weapons have. The flamer is not the gun that kills armor, it kills all the fodder that surrounds the armor which makes killing those crushers and maulers a cake walk.
Two. The flamer is a secondary to the melee build of a Zealot, want to make a gun Zealot? Take a gun with you, simple as.
Third. When you shot the flamer, make sure to aim everywere as you can get a lot of value per 1 ammo you spend if you jiggle the mouse around like the mad lad you are.
And finally fourth. Find your own way of using it, like all weapons they are tools to kill in the Emperors name and should be treated as such.
Now what would I do to buff it? Nothing really, it does it's job well and remember that when you are alone it looks weak, but with three others doing constant dmg around you it is a beast. And do not scuf at tick dmg on fodder, even armored enemies will feel the emperors heat if the Zealot knows how to use it that is.
Great video btw.
The balance of the game is not in a good position. Voice of Command + Plasma Gun runs the game currently. I have over a 90% participation rate of shout vets in my game. Almost all of them use a plasma gun. Combine that with the recent nerf to Invocation of Death and the game is not in its best balance state right now. I don't know how you came to that conclusion.
I dont know, to me it feels like the whole damage system is bit flawed.
When I started the game I thought that I would choose a weapon to deal with unarmored enemies and one to deal with armored ones, but it turned out that there are weapons that are good against everything.
So special weapons like a Thunderhammer, Eviscerator, Bolter or Flamer are just a nightmare to balance.
To many weapons are just to viable in to many situations.
Counterpoint regarding chain axe: it looks really really cool. That alone makes it superior to regular chain swords.
On boltguns, I wonder whether the damage from it is considered explosive by the game. Didn't they give poxwalkers a resistance to explosive damage a few months ago? In contrast, I notice you didn't mention groaners (unarmored in contrast to poxwalkers' infested status), so I assume boltguns have no real problem one-shot body shotting them. Mostly that's my curiosity, and is tangential to your point, though.
Now this might be really controversial but I thought that the bolt gun should have not been in the game for a handful of reasons
1 lore reason the recoil on that gun is think was enough to break the shoulder and ribcage of a normal human so there that
2 you could never do it justice, It would eather have to be op in all things or it would just not feel right because if its underpowered people get mad but if its to strong people also get mad but there is one reason it is funny
I think to balance the bolter its would be a mid range special killer that EATS ammo so you dont use it with alot of mobs because of how valuable thoughts rounds are
Thunderhammer just lots of stagger.
Bolter should be powerful - high recoil - but also a bigger bolt explosion.
Flame cooking someone in their armor should be more effective. I hate the way they nerfed my flamer.
I don't think the boltguns need any damage changes. They are supposed to be the *spam* options to their respective alternatives, hence their comparatively larger mags, no heat restricting their fire rate, and recoil is always a skill issue (or build issue). The Veteran is the class to run to make any gun perform at its peak, and it can achieve those breakpoints and recoil control in Executioner Stance and/or Deadshot, meaning if you make it meet those breakpoints by default you devalue Exe Stance (if the question becomes "taking Exe over Shout?", then that's a whole other balance discussion). What troubles the regular bolter is the abysmal pull out time that's longer than its animation and its base *reload speed*. You get 15 shots, then it ceases to exist until the next fight. Same thing can be said of the bolt pistol when being compared to its revolver counterpart, the reload is taking more time than it really needs. Both weapons would never accidentally become truly overpowered in any class' hands if you could use it more frequently, because their ammo reserve is the hard limit. I guess you could tweak the ammo on pickup too if the above change is done.
It doesn't devalue ex stance as the bolter is one of the worst to pair with that ability due to the terrible recoil, low mag size and terrible reload speed. Those together make extending the ex-stance timer very difficult and reloading is so slow it almost guarantees it canceling after the mag is dry. Headhunter guns, lasguns, and autoguns are significantly better for up time and benefit from more even more benefits being met. A minor damage buff against unarmoured and weakspot damage against maniac is what it needs to be more relevant and makes it more ammo efficient. Also bolt pistol needs the same changes as well as revolver does it all better. (I know you already said this but, the clunky nature of this weapon gives it its unique charm/profile. Im saying if you make the reload speed changes and drawtime changes it encrouches on the other more precision based weapons niches like the headhunter guns)
@@basicallybacon2593 Terrible recoil? The entire point of taking Executioner's Stance with it is that the recoil is minimized to such a degree that it is easy to use, and of course enemies are highlighted which is good for anyone considering the irons hard to use. Extending it is reasonably possible by having just Volley Adept, but the timing has no margin for error. I actually think the Bolt Pistol is just the superior option at this time because it reloads faster and the slight extra wait for the recoil just makes Surgical better. The extra handling and reload speed I want shouldn't tread on other weapons, but more like JTC said, it should not be so wildly longer than everything else.
An addendum to my own post; I did a schizo-check and it seems like in the psykhanium my bolter can fire before its draw animation was complete, so its "on time". Yet I distinctly remember it lagging behind for a full second in a real match during a bad situation. So it could have been server desync shenanigans but that just means the long draw time is only going to be hurt more by these unforeseen problems.
the crucis hammer is so sad to use, the effect is so cool but the damage is beyond underwhelming. im pretty sure you can do more elite damage with the knife and at a more consistent and less vulnerable way too
Great and productive suggestions. Very sad and very counterintuitive changes that stem from stuff being too strong and Devs nerfing it to be unusable anywhere rather than god-tier at fewer things.
I was playing my shroudfield hammer Stealth Bonk Zealot today and was getting owned by trash. I didn’t have time to charge it before trash hit me. It really feels like it should do a little more damage and not take 3 attacks to kill the lowest enemy.
Heavy Swords no longer feel very good! I used to be able to use the dash ult on Zealot and tear hordes up with fury but the heavy sword seems to not be good enough anymore to do this reliably. And that is its only job, besides maybe oneshot mutants. I would also love to see a new Staff for Psykers!!
I still like bringing flamer for a stagger build with the big stagger blessing, it can stagger groups of heavies if you spam leftclick while killing the small enemies real fast
The flamer sould bypass armor and just do alot of DOT and down things fast. Then the bolter should have a lot of armor pen lets be honest
and have stagger. Above all just for the love of god... let us attach different things to our weapons like flashlights and have different ammo types.
Having a different ammo variety would be a game changer imagine hotshot las packs changing the base lasguns and giving them basically incendinary ammo.
Even different grenade types and also xeno weapons would be great as well.
by the way i doubt they will buff the flamer, since it was pretty powerful around when the game first came out but was nerfed around april last year
You can melt whole mauler patrol with one max one and a half of flamer canister so i dont think its that bad but yeah carpace damage sucks.
Edit: Just checked my flamer kills mauler TWICE with one canister of fuel. So yeah only carapace damage is bad.
They need to make most the weapons way stronger and just buff enemies to match if needed
Flamers got a direct damage buff just today! Wonder if it will be enough.
How DARE you call my beloved thunder hammers bad. Real talk though, the thunder hammer is pretty much the only thing I run on the zealot. It has a complex attack pattern that takes time to learn and is engaging to use even after it gets mastered. Although the self-stun on use does make the weapon worse, if that got removed I think I would enjoy the weapon less. Like that self stun combined with the big thunderous kaboom of the hammer impact is what makes the thunder hammers FEEL great to use, even if their numbers arent the best. I prefer playing my zealot as a control tank. Not someone meant to deal damage, but instead someone to keep the enemy melees in check and staggered while my teamates do cleanup. I'd much prefer if instead of being a damage tool (Except against monsters because watching that healthbar dissipate gives me the funny brain chemicals), they pivoted the thunder hammer into being a control/support weapon. Increasing cleave and some stagger power would be nice, but instead of removing the self-stun, I'd rather they make it so that the empowered hit does a small shockwave stagger to nearby enemies. This might make it overlap with the crusher a bit, but I'd prefer if my ability to control the horde was not diminished just because I want to deal some single target damage. Or, if they don't want overlap with the crusher, make the empowered hit able to cleave through multiple elites and hit all of them with that devastating blow.
1. I disagree with removal of self-stun after special attack. Would rather have AoE stagger like Crusher Mk IV does. So you stagger yourself as well as enemies you hit. That still leaves you vulnerable to ranged attacks, but staggering horde elites will give you enough time to recover.
And it wont compete with Crusher Mk IV, as crusher anti horde weapon. While Thunderhammer is anti elite weapon. So AoE stagger only works when you discharge your special attack (yes, one hammer discharges even on horde enemies, that should be removed)
2. All mutants are resiliant to ranged damage. Having bolter to be anti-mutant weapon that does not suffer from their resistance is a good idea. Both in-game and lorewise.
But overall i think bolter is in a good spot where it is right now. It's a back-up weapon. And it should be. When you get cornered by 4-6 crushers - just whip out bolter and delete them in 1-2 magazines. Just tested this out in meat grinder. Kill 6 damnation crushers in 1.5 magazine. With no stim boost. Which in my opinion is too many. With 1 magazine you should kill 1-2 armored crushers. Not 3-4.
Stop trying to make back-up weapons into main one.
3. This is a flamer, not a melta. It SHOULD NOT do anything to fully armored crusher. In my opinion bulwark with shields up should completely nullify flamer. If you want to use it so much against armored enemies - fine, a stagger effect can be applied to SOME of them.
This is a problem i have with darktide community. You only want buffs. You want every weapon to be able kill crushers and other dangerous enemies very fast and very easy. And, unfortunately, Fatshark listens to you. Which leads to high threat enemies like crushers becoming a joke.
"Oh, what's that? A very strong, fully-armored, ogryn crusher? Imma oneshot it with a revolver. Or stab it with a knife once and he dies. Or zap him with a lightning and he dead". This powercreep creates disbalance, where dangerous enemies becoming so useless, that developers have to increase their amounts to the point where entire horde consisting purely out of elites.
This is stupid. Strong enemies supposed to be strong. You supposed to deal with them. Not cry on forums that your bolter cant onetap crusher and demanding buffs.
To summ this all up - get gud. And then weapons will be gud too.
the flamer itself not doing much damage is fine. The fire DoT effect on the other hand needs to be more potent imo. You are setting people of fire ffs. It shouldnt be registered by the enemy like a minor inconvenience, it should make them freak tf out and do some serious damage.
A buff there would be to give the fire DoT more damage overall and a percentage of armor ignore but reduce the time an armored target is ablaze. That way you could kill an armored target but you´d to keep hosing them down with the flamer to keep the DoT going.
I hate the reload time on the Boltgun and Flamer
I just wish that they hadn't removed the chastise the wicked armor pierce entirely it feels tone deaf since the other two abilities always seem a lot stronger. maybe reduce it sure or nerf it specifically for the flamer, but I very much enjoyed running around as zealot knowing that every range weapon was viable. Now if I don't bring something that's armor pierce I feel like I'm pulling the team down. (really enjoyed a crit build with the Columbus braced autogun that now can't work for a number of reasons.)
Also every other career has a talent for innate ranged armor pen ignoring your equipped weapons, but zealot doesn't. ogryn gun rending node, veteran +rending to all attacks/krak grenade, Psyker brain burst there are more but these are the ones I remember off the top of my head.
Every Career should have the ability to choose to spec into focusing ranged or melee or a mixture. Zealot is the only class that is forced to only do melee (emperor's executioner and the gutted chastise the wicked +fire rate are about it for zealot. They need more options.)
My turn for an essay.
The bolter absolutely needs a buff. I think both the bolter and bolt pistol need better breakpoints, actually. The current damage they do in no way justifies the severe handling mallus they are inflicted by when there are longstanding alternative weapon picks that are naturally much stronger without any of the drawbacks. It should be as simple as that. If you must continue to fight the weapon itself just to pull it out, reload and aim it, it NEEDS to hit like a truck. It SHOULD one-shot non-elites, bare minimum. These are rocket propelled explosive rounds hitting soft, rotten flesh and flak armor, which is often refered to as "t-shirts" in tabletop settings because flak is the Imperium's *minimum* for protection.
A lot of the problem with the bolter's previous overpowered status had to do with class interactions. The vet makes any ranged weapon monstrous in the right conditions, and how a Pinning Fire bolter worked with the old Executioner's Stance was an insane list of boosts. The instant reload is a majority of what let it burst bosses down so consistently. We no longer have 100% power boosts from Pinning Fire, and Executioner Stance has had so much of its value stripped away. No more instant reload, no more immortal toughness. On zealots, they had the armor rending from Fury of the Faithful to help burst a lot more targets down than they normally could. That is also gone. So now the bolter is left to stand on its own legs, and it is absolutely weak at the knees. I find the only time a bolter is remotely on par with other ranged options now is on an Executioner Stance veteran, which is now vet's glass cannon build and has plenty of room to debate whether it needs tweaking as well. It's honestly shameful that THE iconic 40k weapon is like this.
The bolt pistol is still outshined pretty badly by the revolver, but it's a less dramatic difference by comparison. It's less egregious than comparing the bolter to any of its armor piercing contemporaries. I just think the damage profile should be on par with the revolver. The revolver has a slow reload speed as a drawback and that's pretty much it. It has FAR superior cleave, better handling, and better breakpoints than the bolt pistol, which can shoot more and more often, which it needs to do because it has no cleave, god awful handling, the explosive damage and stagger is pitiful and it takes more shots to do what the revolver typically does with one.
I'm typically not fond of nerfs because Fatshark uses a heavy hand. When they reel something back, they almost always nerf it into the ground. It then takes 6+ months for them to course correct and actually find a decent place for the weapons. See recons. That being said, I think plasma has had it's time to cook, and if we have to make other options more appealing by nerfing what's good, I pray they at least take it easy on the revolver because I think the revolver is mostly fine. It's strong, yes, but it was pretty bad before they buffed it and I don't think it deserves to go back to the salt mines, it just needs alternatives that are worth using.
On all other points, I generally agree. It makes sense for the chainaxe to have a better mobility profile as a one-handed weapon, though I think it should still be inferior to the chainsword in that regard, if just a little bit. The fact that it's more on par with the eviscerator is a little silly to me. There's probably a happy medium in there. The flamer is definitely once more indirectly nerfed by the Fury of the Faithful change, and has lost a lot of its value. It was, prior to this patch, situationally strong. It still required a ramp-up to max burn stacks before it was capable of dealing decent carapace damage by using FotF. Way back in early Darktide, the flamer was a ridiculous killing machine that melted everything. The nerfs then were justified. I thought for the better part of this year, the flamer was in an absolutely okay place. In fact, I honestly hate they finally "fixed" FotF ranged rending. I don't think there was any case in which it was too strong to justify. It was a fun mechanic that made zealot slightly more robust, but they nerfed it in favor of pidgeonholing the zealot for identity.
>Charge buff wasnt intended
>Took them a year to figure that out
hmm..
how do you feel about the ripperguns? i think they need more of an ammo reserve for sure, especially for a gunlugger ogryn. even using the slower firing mk2 ripper to try and eke out ammo, it feels like i'm struggling to keep the firepower coming
They were overnerfed for sure
Would still like some xbox quality of life, might be wrong but we can't even see after game details
Bolter is fine
Flamer can’t really be good without being broken I don’t think
Thunder hammer needs a rework not a buff. Having it be the monster one shot stick is not fun for other players or the monsters lol
Since when does the chainsword has more Single target damage the the axe?
Launch Bolter was perfect.
Fight me.
Never stopped using Bolter, with recent ammo Upgrade its totally fine for me. But its rly No Fun 2 Kill a poxhound with it 😂
Give the flamer to veteran, and give the plasma to zealot
I agree with every sentence. Beautiful analysis.
What if thunder hammers did an AoE shock like what the new shock mauls have.
No pull up animation for boltgun + more dmg to carapace (revo can kill crusher with 1-2 shots... boltgun with 4+. It's dumb
They should make the gun more gunnier.
Agripinaa Revolver my beloved the potential is just locked away for this gun, all I'd want is some pen and a tiny dmg boost and it would be fine. The no pen really kills the gun esp when there is a Special surrounded by trash mobs.
Very good video, need more of these!
Yesss weapon buffs are absolutely necessary now that the game is a bit harder.
The game is made harder because player power is too high still.
I was the person who made the Reddit post about bringing the bolter back to glory, man they just need to revert the nerfs & just let it hit like a tank cause enemies got buffed in auric/damn
Cool that flamer got the buff.
Will you do a vermintide weapon balance discussion video as well?
I think he did a few months ago when they decided to knee cap anything that was popular. It honestly stopped me from playing VT2 again.
dev 1: "we have like 300 players at best, what should we do?"
other dev: Nerf everything that is popular?
Vermintide is in a very good state balance wise and really doesn’t need any immediate weapon changes imo
They're too busy not adding content that's been requested for 2 years and writing fanfiction to bother buffing/fixing anything.
Agree on thunder hammer and chainaxe but not much with the bolter or flamer.
Bolter is a very strong sniper on vet capable of oneshotting maulers with the right setup currently, and with a damage stim you can even reach a oneshot crusher breakpoint. I think all that needs to be done for it is to clean up the horrid ADS sway and remove suppression effects from ranged enemies and it will be in a decent state for vet. Zealot can also reach impressive breakpoints on elites with Duellist and Annointed in Blood and can cut down the swap time with a throwing knife, making it a fantastic hipfire weapon especially when paired with Dance of Death, so it only needs improvement on the terrible recoil while firing for it to really shine on that class as well. It's fine to buff the breakpoints on infested since it shouldn't take more than 1 shot to kill a dog (even more annoying that the stagger throws them all over the place), but when used efficiently and effectively with the right builds the weapon can be extremely reliable.
I'd also add that they should remove the class resitrictions so psyker can play around with this weapon. I imagine it would be great fun to run a DD scrier's gaze cavalcade bolter build would go hard.
As an additional note I don't think balance changes should be made to a weapon thinking of them in comparison to the revolver, or, in general, should be powercrept to match the strongest weapons in the game. Revolver should be nerfed, having rending and penetration be toned down and penetrating through far less targets. Having it be a great special sniper is fine, but it shouldn't be a better option at clearing carapace or flak than almost any other weapon in the game.
Flamer has a massive effective radius of aoe damage that will melt entire hordes and elites in a single reload, and it really doesn't need to be buffed to be better at that especially if you factor in other players being near you as you use it. The game already struggles with having enough of a horde to stop 4 players in the first place, having this weapon and the purgatus makes them virtually nonexistent. There is already way too much effective aoe in darktide, from blitz like flame grenades on zealot or bleed grenades on vet, or smite on psyker, to abilities like vet shout and psyker shriek, and weapons like trauma staff and rumbler. They really don't need to be buffed without a significant turn up in horde timers and spawn rates, or a severe reduction in their effective range, cleave and radius, or munition.
Literally no one uses the flamer, except maybe in non-auric? I play a lot and I have yet to see 1 zealot with a flamer.
I wonder why?
Auric Damnation / Maelstrom will eat up a flamer and keep coming.
@@HeroOfTheWeb Because of nerf.
People not seeing it needs a buff to work again just aren't playing it on higher diff and/or just see the magnificent hordeclear the few times it shines due to timing and hard work of the player using it basically only close combat fighting up until those moments.
@@HeroOfTheWeb No one uses flamer because it doesn't do everything and general purpose in most cases is far better than screen clearing, especially when you're playing a class that cheats melee like zealot does, gaining insane amounts of toughness through dodges and insane effective toughness via crit tdr and dodge tdr and passive aura effects. You are the screen clear in that case, and no amount of buffing flamer will make up for it unless it is OP.
Flamer is still very effective in auric damnation, you just lose out on the ability to kill snipers or gunners across the map and instead have to make the travel distance. Most people do not want to play without a sniper tool and probably can't aim with knives, but I know many of my friends, among them speedrunners, who rely on the flamer because it makes clearing ambient and horde waves absolutely trivial.
Flamer was good - a few loud voices "waahhhh it clears hordes"
Me: Play something higher than Malice
It got completely destroyed and now no one uses it at all.
I've seen a recent comment about nerfing all classes heavily to make the game harder.
Yeah, listen to that guy, we have like 2-4k people playing at peak, it's a great idea to nerf everything.
Agreed as someone who has hundreds of auric malestorm wins its not like the game is easy, just (if your at that point) go back to a heresy mission and see how players newer to the game are struggling for a quick reminder that its not easy, its just you are good at the game which are two entirely different things.
I do wonder how good some people must be if they think the game is easy, I mean when I'm not in a 3 or 4 stack of friends and am jumping in to solo quick play on the auric board I don't see many players who can carry the clusterfrick you often get dropped in to. For players that can how about running a challenge loadout or play at 10 fps if your just that good lol
Thunderhammer is really a sad weapon. I used it for so long just because I find it cool but's really outclassed my so many other options. The eviscerator that isn't even that good of a weapon outclasses it in most aspects. I don't understand why they fear to make a big slow weapon kill big targets in one swing that takes forever to come out when the combat knife will literally kill everything in the same amount of time while also being incredible fast to attack and move. I also feel the power maul even with the buffs isn't in a good spot. The regular moves are way better but the charge just doesn't do enough damage to compensate the slow animaton of turning it on while not being able to run. At this point it's just a bully club but worse
Bolter Buff suggestion (both Pistol and Normal)
- treat limb hits as body shots
- treat body shots as headshots
Would reflect really well how devestating it is to have an explosive projectile explode anywhere in your body.
This is more or less asking to double the damage of the bolter in a round-about way as limb damage is, if I'm not mistaken, 0.5x damage. Which, I mean, yes. The explosive round shouldn't care what part of the body it hits. If the bolt explodes on a heretic's leg, that leg -- and the greater part of the lower torso -- should be gone.
Reapers & Crusher/bulwarks need to be killed in 3 shots, let it hit like a tank! A pack of crusher taking 4-5 hits just to kill one when you have only 15 in a clip is very underwhelming especially in higher diffs.
voidstaff needs to be buffed
Yup, I agree with pretty much everything you said. There's a lot of weapons that could use some positive changes to keep up with the rest.
What do you think about the change to invocation of death? It pretty much kills several builds I was running with crit zealot for shroudfield and FoF. IMO, since they're nerfing how often you can trigger it, it deserves a buff to how much time it reduces your CD on crit. Make it reduce the CD by 3 or 4 seconds instead of 1.5. Heck, make it reduce the CD based on the inverse of your attack speed or something. Less CD reduction per crit for fast weapons and more CD reduction for slow weapons per crit.
I love chainaxes now that they're not trash, but they really do feel lacking in the mobility department, considering they're a 1 handed weapon.
Thammer has always been jank with its self stun, so if they just remove that, and make sure it hits better breakpoints with its damage and stagger, then it'd be great. At least let us dodge/block immediately after a charged attack; I can at least understand not being allowed to attack for a moment after smashing something with the thammer. Also, just let us 1 tap ogryn heads on damnation with a fully charged thrust thammer. That's *the point* of thammers, bonking the biggest targets!
IMO, bolter feels like a really awkward precision weapon atm, which is entirely the wrong role for that weapon, especially considering the awful recoil and handling of it. It definitely needs more damage/better breakpoints so that it can actually live up to its role in lore of being the fully automatic AP grenade launcher that it is (though still needs to not outclass the plasma gun).
The flamer is just pathetic atm. It does absolutely nothing except for clearing hordes that you should just use your melee weapon on. I guess you can use it on close range shotgunner/gunner squads, but that's a terrible niche for a short range weapon.
1:40 we should be stunned, it’s a massive f*cking power hammer it’s adds to the immersion
BuT tHe BoLtEr WaS bUfFeD
bro, 20 more rounds on my person isnt a buff.....
If you think the bolt gun needs buffs then you have a skill issue. A YOU problem.
Send this to the devs pls
What I also hate about flamer users is that they block my fov, and cover my screen. The zealot will unknowingly help the enemy horde by blinding the team with the worst gun in game. I feel the same way with smoke grenades. God, that blitz utility is near useless. By the time it pops off, either my team or I have dispatched or suprressed half the distant gunners. Another visual hazard, too.
Also, REGULAR axe users. Idk how you all feel about all simple axes and hatchets in the roster, but I personally think they are all shit and don't do anything special. Let alone niche. Even on Malice. Tbf, I do not vibe with them at all no matter how hard I try.
Lol, the Rashad axe is one of the strongest weapons in the game. Smoke grenades are extremely strong, especially after the gunner buffs.
@@cire837 Rashad is too slow, and doesnt cc. It's long wind up with thrust and armor penetration doesn't make up for it, either. Especially compared to other melee powerhouses. Smoke grenades dont even break LOS once gunners shoot at their target, and you still obscure everyone's vision. Plus, you have to take account how many nades you have, and how long until the nade refill takes to give you another.
No one is picking the node that lets your team see gunners when ES is activated. Plus, frag nades can distrupt gunners as easily, and dealing suppression or dodge sliding is much more beneficial and quicker to do.
Niether axes or smoke are as useless as the flamer, but they are quite shit.
@@flipsvstheworld Dude, Rashad with brutal momentum is objectively one of the best weapons in the game, I don't know what to tell you.
Agreed.