Darktide

[Asian tech support]

So full disclosure, I've never played the VT games. I have VT2 in my library, but I've just never gotten around to trying it out. I wouldn't mind weapons having the complexity and feel of VT weapons if that was something widely desired - frankly, the knife is very fun to use, though I personally enjoy playing with the Devil's Claws a lot more. The issue with the knife is that it is just so much better than the other melee options available, which discourages people only following the meta from experimenting with the other melee options. Perhaps the solution would be to buff/change the other melees to be more in tune with VT's mechanics instead of nerfing the knife?

The issue with a large swath of DT's armory right now is how immobile many of the melee weapons are. DT is a more movement focused game than VT in some ways and all of the best non-ogryn builds have some mobility, whether it's from talents or weapons. The knife is the king of mobility, with the devil's claw swords, tactical axes, and dueling swords coming in second. It doesn't really matter if a stealth zealot can clap a boss in one second if he gets overwhelmed by fast mobs. Rather than buffing things to be more like the knife (bad idea; the game is easy already), I'd like to see some kind of mobility added to existing weapons, more mobile weapons added, or tweaks to the game in other ways that would allow stand-your-ground non-ogryn builds to be viable.

When I talk about the knife feeling the most like a VT weapon, what I mean by that is how its chains can be interrupted and changed without disrupting its natural flow. This was a staple of VT with many weapons' optimal combo not being all that straightforward. Plus, blocking in VT tended to be quicker. Ironically in DT, FS added a very useful stat screen breaking down every attack in relative detail, though the optimal chain more often than not tended to be simplistic and at times, sluggish, in stark contrast to the general faster pace. Something else that VT did was add momentum to certain attacks: the charged heavy of the executioner's sword would move you forward, many of the halberd's attacks could move the player around, among many others. This, coupled with many subclasses having movement based abilities (of the 20 subclasses, five have charges similar to zealot's and a further three have stealth) made the game very fast despite an initially static impression for many. VT also has no slide and I am very much a slide abuser in DT. Many weapons in DT are very static despite how much more mobile players are.

Keep in mind, when the game came out, people were complaining about the power sword and the boltgun being op. Consider how far we've come for those to be mid and trash weapons in the current meta.

 

[Asian tech support]

A gear crafting blackpill.

There's a good chance crafted gear is going to be worse than the best shit currently obtainable. I could be wrong but Fagshart is Fagshart and what you get is always worse than what you think you're going to get.
Itemization Rework Dev Blog #1
Itemization Rework Dev Blog #2
Overview of the upcoming patch

Why do I think this? Because of the screenshots they voluntarily divulged. I'm happy to accept the disclaimer of the screens not being representative of the UI but I firmly believe that the core fixtures of the system are set in stone. Before getting into how it (presumably) works, let's touch on what we know.

• Every weapon class (not specific marks but the entire group of, say, infantry autoguns) has a mastery tracker. Returning players will be awarded mastery progress based on how many blessings they currently have unlocked. Higher tiers are weighed more heavily. Progress along the mastery tracker unlocks additional max "weapon potential" (more on that in a second) and blessings.
• Mastery progress is account wide.
• It will not be possible for any weapon to reach the 380 cap; it will still have to have a sufficient base.
• All perks and blessings will no longer be locked.
• Mastery is gained by using a type of weapon. The amount gained depends on the difficulty of the mission and whether or not it was completed (some is still gained when failing). I've seen it parroted that it'll take ~8 hours to completely master a weapon, assuming it was starting from zero, but I didn't see a source for that. Obviously for returning/veteran players, it'll take significantly less.

There's more but that's the quick & dirty. So what's the issue? The issue is with the "weapon potential" and its application. Here:

In the third image we can see that the maximum "weapon potential" will be 500, with the total combined stat value contributing up to 380 and perks/blessings adding up to another 120. Every blessing and perk has a cost. The values in every screen isn't consistent, indicating to me at least that they're acknowledging meta blessings and weighting their cost higher. I really wish they showed a good weapon and some meta blessings like a knife or a flamer as shotguns are shit no matter how well they're rolled. As we can see, tier 1 Flechette costs 15 (and has been buffed at least in that screen), tier 3 Speedload costs 38, tier 3 Hit & Run costs 32, tier 4 Scattershot costs 35. The actual values aren't important, what is is that they don't conform to any strict set of rules. I'd expect meta blessings like tier 4 Riposte and Precognition to cost much more.

What I think they're doing is saying here, you can have your stupid 380, but you just can't have all tier 4 perks and tier 4 meta blessings, you might have to make do with tier 3 somewhere. And the further away from a natural 380 your weapon is, the more expensive it'll be and you had better hope your dump stat is right at 60 because you can't dock stats. I could be wrong and am looking into preview screenshots too deeply but as I said, whatever they put out has an almost 100% chance of being worse than what's expected given their history.

They really could have said fuuuuuuuck all of this we're just going to remove locks and allow longtime players to dump their hundreds of thousands of plasteel into souping up their weapon of choice into a maxed out red weapon and call it there. It wouldn't have made a difference. No one is playing this game as a fucking looter shooter. Vermintide solved this with red weapons and weave crafting proved they could have made it even more simple if they wanted, though by the time weave crafting was a thing, every VT2 player had a mountain of reds, making a switchup that deep unnecessary.

 

[Blazing Piety]

What I think they're doing is saying here, you can have your stupid 380, but you just can't have all tier 4 perks and tier 4 meta blessings, you might have to make do with tier 3 somewhere.

This is how I interpreted it when I saw the screenshots - I'm not sure how I feel about it. On one hand, the difference between some tier 3 and tier 4 blessings and perks isn't horribly significant to cripple your weapon, but on the other hand if it isn't possible to get a 380 weapon with all tier 4 perks and tier 4 blessings, then what the hell is the point of changing the system when you can accomplish that in the old system (albeit in a potentially long time)?

Regarding the QnA #2 they did, this question/comment caught my eye:

A "minor investment" huh? I'll believe it when I see it. Something about this update is just screaming at me that it's gonna be a letdown and I truly hope it isn't.

They really could have said fuuuuuuuck all of this we're just going to remove locks and allow longtime players to dump their hundreds of thousands of plasteel into souping up their weapon of choice into a maxed out red weapon and call it there.

It baffles me that they haven't done this already.

 

[Asian tech support]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1361210/view/4567301015221622988?l=english

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1361210/view/4567301015221694996?l=english

A preview of the patch later in the month. I'm surprised as it looks like almost universal buffs across the board. The big change is the psyker tree. Without being 100% certain of which new node is which, it's hard to say how much of a change this really will be. None of the changes look like staff psyker will come out on top of gun psyker but whatever.

 

[Blazing Piety]

The Itemization update dropped today, while I was at work of course.
Patch Notes Part 1
Patch Notes Part 2
Patch Notes Part 3
Patch Notes Part 4

My initial impressions:
- I was expecting to have a lot more penance unlocks than I actually did when I launched the game. What I had read in the patch notes made me think I was going to launch the game and suddenly have 50+ penances unlocking. Not the case: I only unlocked 2 automatically. The ones they added all seem tied to mastering weapons. I shouldn't be surprised I guess, since that was the whole point of the update.
- The mastery system: it's a bit confusing to understand at first, but after playing around with it a bit, it's starting to make sense. The way it works is that you get experience by using the weapon in game, and every time your weapon levels up, you receive either blessing points, perk rank upgrades (i.e unlocking the second tier of perks, then the third, then the fourth), or weapon power upgrades (starting at 200 and going to 500). Here's a screenshot of what my crusher stats look like:
The way it works is that the skull on the left side of the screenshot will start at level 1, for the tier 1 blessings. You unlock a level of each blessing with a single blessing point. After spending 5 blessing points on tier 1 perks, the skull changes to level 2, and you can now unlock tier 2 blessings. After 7 points spent, you can then unlock tier 3 blessings, and finally after spending 8 (or 9, not 100% sure) blessing points you can unlock the tier 4 blessings. Based on what I had with the autoguns, you'll get enough points to unlock every level of every blessing. I gotta say that I am pleasantly surprised with how it all works, but it does kinda suck that I don't have access to all the previous tier 4 blessings I had collected.
- My previous unlocks seem to have carried my progress on weapon levels significantly, even for weapons that I don't use. Maybe it's from collecting blessings on them previously? Not sure, but the bottom line is that if you had a lot of progress before the update, you should see it carry over to the mastery system.
- The locks on weapons and curios are indeed gone. About time.
- MAJOR gripe: my talent trees were wiped on every class that isn't zealot. If you don't remember which talents you had on a particular build, good luck. I know I don't remember any of the builds I had for veteran.
- Regarding bugs - I haven't found anything yet. The only oddity I've noticed is that I somehow have the penances for weapon powers of 300 and 500, but not 400. Not sure how that's possible, unless you specifically need to upgrade a weapon to level 400.
- The servers seem unstable at the moment. As I type this, I've been disconnected 3 times in the span of 20 minutes. Hopefully that resolves itself on its own.
- Weapon rolls from the armory are still important, here's a screenshot of what it looks like when you buy something now:

The rolls seem to hover between the range of 290 to 330. I haven't been able to roll anything higher than 330 so far.
- The new discard system is a bit janky in my opinion, but the filtering options for weapons is useful. I do like that there is a confirmation screen before you discard anything.

That's about all I've seen so far. I haven't played the new map yet, but a friend described it to me as "the worst shit they've ever added," so we'll see how true that is. Overall, I'm just happy that the update did not fuck the game up.

 

[Asian tech support]

I was expecting to have a lot more penance unlocks than I actually did when I launched the game.

I'm thankful that wasn't the case. Not a huge fan of going through and ticking em all.

After spending 5 blessing points on tier 1 perks, the skull changes to level 2, and you can now unlock tier 2 blessings. After 7 points spent, you can then unlock tier 3 blessings, and finally after spending 8 (or 9, not 100% sure) blessing points you can unlock the tier 4 blessings.

The total number of points you have to blow to progress to the next tier is dependent on the number of available blessings. Some have 10 blessings, some only have 7 or 8.

I gotta say that I am pleasantly surprised with how it all works, but it does kinda suck that I don't have access to all the previous tier 4 blessings I had collected.

Yeah, I'm glad my doomer prediction didn't come true. Genuine Fatshart W.

My previous unlocks seem to have carried my progress on weapon levels significantly, even for weapons that I don't use. Maybe it's from collecting blessings on them previously?

It's entirely dependent on how many blessings you fed Hadron before the update. Tier 4 blessings were weighted heavier.

The locks on weapons and curios are indeed gone. About time.

MAJOR gripe: my talent trees were wiped on every class that isn't zealot. If you don't remember which talents you had on a particular build, good luck. I know I don't remember any of the builds I had for veteran.

I wanna say this has happened every time they've switched out nodes. Not changed slightly, entirely new ones.

The only oddity I've noticed is that I somehow have the penances for weapon powers of 300 and 500, but not 400. Not sure how that's possible

Yeah I have the 300 one but have only raised a 490 to 500. Didn't get the 500. Likely a bug.

Weapon rolls from the armory are still important

All that matters is targeting the dump stat now. Most of the time it's damage or mobility.
This weird gay man explains dump stats pretty well.

The rolls seem to hover between the range of 290 to 330. I haven't been able to roll anything higher than 330 so far.

I think it's taking into account any junk items you had in your inventory. I'm a clean inventory freak so most of what I had I was using but maybe I should have kept some junk to feed into the discard thing. All my shit was in the 480-500 range by default.

The new discard system is a bit janky in my opinion, but the filtering options for weapons is useful.

I expected to have to hold something down but nope its fast and caught me off guard. It doesn't mesh well with the rest of the UI.

I've got a couple of additional gripes.

1. Most of the new blessings suck. The meta is not changing, though I suspect this update wasn't focused on balance at all.
2. The skins for completing a mastery are garbage. If they're going to look like a red and white checkered tablecloth, at least make em ork themed.
3. The new nodes on the psyker tree are a goddam mess. I like a couple of them but they're in inconvenient places. First off, Souldrinker (all the way to the right) should be on the left. Keep all the warp damage/staff nodes together. Soulblaze psyker is already a node hungry build. Souldrinker fits in but it's nowhere near any of the other standard soulblaze nodes. Likewise, having access to Perilous Assault, Lightning Speed, By Crack of Bone, and Warp Splitting is absolutely going to a thing in melee Scrier's Gaze builds but they're spread out too far.
4. Something absolutely needs to be done about the mastery score vs weapon's ratings. It's confusing, not to anyone who just rerolled one perk or something because they got their god roll 500 hours ago, but to the returning players who quit after the first crafting update a year and a half ago.

edit: something I didn't notice until I was a couple maps in was that you can freely change between weapon marks, though why they've been renamed is a fucking mystery. I remember seeing something about that in the preview blogposts but didn't understand exactly what they meant. It's honestly not implemented well either.

 

[SandyCat]

Is the new update any good?

 

[Asian tech support]

Is the new update any good?

Yeah. Crafting is a little awkward but feature complete.

 

[Blazing Piety]

The total number of points you have to blow to progress to the next tier is dependent on the number of available blessings. Some have 10 blessings, some only have 7 or 8.

Ah okay, good catch. I did all my testing with melees and didn't notice that. Part of the problem is that the UI goes apeshit if you click on blessings too quickly so I wasn't seeing the skull's progress bar change in time.

It's entirely dependent on how many blessings you fed Hadron before the update. Tier 4 blessings were weighted heavier.

I figured that was the case. It's not like I was keeping track of the blessings I was scraping from mission rewards, so I'm sure I amassed a collection of blessings for random things.

Most of the new blessings suck. The meta is not changing, though I suspect this update wasn't focused on balance at all.

That's unfortunate, but you're probably right about balance not being focused on.

something I didn't notice until I was a couple maps in was that you can freely change between weapon marks, though why they've been renamed is a fucking mystery. I remember seeing something about that in the preview blogposts but didn't understand exactly what they meant. It's honestly not implemented well either.

Wow okay, I just noticed that too, and that's only because they got rid of the keybinds for changing your appearance and inspecting the weapon (why?????). I didn't even realize that was a feature and honestly I don't know how to feel about it. It's nice, I guess, but I'm not sure why it was added.

I think it's taking into account any junk items you had in your inventory. I'm a clean inventory freak so most of what I had I was using but maybe I should have kept some junk to feed into the discard thing. All my shit was in the 480-500 range by default.

Weird, I keep my inventory very clean and I was still only rolling within the 290 to 330 range. Most of my weapons were also all 480 to 500. If they did change something with how the rolls are generated, I didn't see it in the patch notes.

I wanna say this has happened every time they've switched out nodes. Not changed slightly, entirely new ones.

I think you're right, but I don't know if it's ever affected 3 of the 4 classes in one update before. If it were just one class I wouldn't be annoyed, it's just the fact it hit 3 of them. I'll piece my loadouts back together eventually, but the server disconnects keep happening as I sit in the hub typing this, so that'll be a project for later.

Something I saw but didn't grab a screenshot for: the new mission has a horrible payout IMO. I saw a Auric Damnation Hi-Intensity/Gauntlet mission for it show up and the payout was only like ~19,000 dockets. I get that the point of the mission is that you're supposed to go fast, but man, I don't think that payout would be worth it compared to grinding out maelstroms.

Is the new update any good?

I think so. It'll take some getting used to if you are used to the previous crafting system, but Fatshark did a pretty good job this time around.

 

[Asian tech support]

Something I saw but didn't grab a screenshot for: the new mission has a horrible payout IMO. I saw a Auric Damnation Hi-Intensity/Gauntlet mission for it show up and the payout was only like ~19,000 dockets. I get that the point of the mission is that you're supposed to go fast, but man, I don't think that payout would be worth it compared to grinding out maelstroms.

The mission can be over in 5-6 minutes if you're playing with good players, maybe less if you're doing some cheeky cheese like three stealth zealots plus a bubble psyker to keep the trash back. I think it's cool they tried to do something different but I'd rather it was just a normal map. There are a bunch of missions that have you fighting in train tunnels and stations already, just add the train itself as a middle or final event.

 

[Mooger Meng]

- The locks on weapons and curios are indeed gone. About time.

Holy fuck. Whoever managed to pull that many heads out of asses probably feels like he just harvested a bumper crop of potatoes.
Give that poor bastard a heartfelt thank-you and a bar of Lava soap.

 

[Asian tech support]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1361210/view/6539884087960666469?l=english

Update coming in a couple of weeks.

(Note: The formatting on Steam is currently messing up, and it won't let us make formatting changes consistently on this post. We'll amend it to look better once Steam responds properly. )

Hey Everyone,

We’ve been cooking for you. We’re ready to announce our next major update, Grim Protocols. It will be released on 3 December on all platforms.

This update will include:
New Game Mode - Havoc: Think you’ve mastered the threat over Tertium? Think again. Havoc is a new end-game experience that will test the resolve of the most seasoned operative. Be ready to face daunting challenges and earn new cosmetic rewards. We’ve posted an initial dev blog about this, and we’re working on finishing the Q&A post to follow.
New Mission - Dark Communion: Return to the Carnival and explore its darkest corners. Steel yourself as you face hordes of cultists who will stop at nothing to achieve their Dark Communion. We are working on a dev blog for this.
Three New Weapon Families: Tear through waves of enemies by wielding the destructive might of the Two-Handed Force and Power Swords, and the Ogryn Heavy Stubber. We are working on a dev blog for this…but here is a sneak peek:

Two-Handed Power Sword (2 Marks) - Zealot: A massive, high-damage melee weapon with wide, sweeping attacks.

• Munitorum Mk X Relic Blade
• Munitorum Mk II Relic Blade

Two-Handed Power Sword - Unique Features:
Heat Activation Mechanic: Generates a heat gauge, building over time. Reaching the limit locks activation briefly (overheat mechanic).
Special Attack: Sprinting Heavy stab attack for unique engagement tactics.

Two-Handed Force Sword (2 Marks) - Psyker: A finesse-oriented weapon combining melee and psychic powers.

• Covenant Mk VI Blaze Force Greatsword
• Covenant Mk VIII Blaze Force Greatsword

Two-Handed Force Sword - Unique Features:
Force Cleave: Special attack releases a psychic cleave with scaling based on charge power (three stages).
Smooth Flow: Psyker’s psi-assisted techniques make the weapon feel lighter and more agile.

Heavy Stubber (3 Marks) - Ogryn: A heavy, precision-support firearm for Ogryns, blending suppressive fire with marksman capabilities that will keep the darkness at bay.

• Krourk Mk IIa Heavy Stubber
• Gorgonum Mk IIIa Heavy Stubber
• Achlys Mk II Heavy Stubber

Heavy Stubber - Unique Features:
Primary Fire: Heavy, slow automatic fire for suppressive roles.
Alt Fire: A more precise, single-shot mode for longer-range accuracy.
Flashlight: Included to assist in low-light environments.

Anniversary Special Event: To celebrate the second anniversary of Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, the game will host an event that will reward players with a unique weapon trinket.
And more: Including the expansion of the Penance progression track with new challenges and rewards, as well as quality of life improvements such as an extension of the Party Finder feature and idle animations to Stances.

We look forward to sharing more about this update with players in the coming few weeks. We’re finishing up dev blogs on the new weapons, the new mission Dark Communion, and more. Stay tuned!

– The Darktide Team

I have zero interest in the new game mode as it positively reeks of Weaves (which Fatshart has never lived down and devs have publicly seethed over). I'll try it but I think that a sixth difficulty would do loads more for the game than another crack at a separate matchmaking pool game mode.

What intrigues me far more is the new weapons. We were denied a proper heavy eviscerator as Fatshart has the cuck tendency to fun size everything so I'd imagine that any new two handers are going to be too slow, weak, and unwieldy to compete in the current mobility dominated meta. If you're gonna make a two handed weapons, make them enormous; this is 40k after all. Likewise, I don't see high damage low rate of fire stubbers having a place in the ogryn meta wither unless they do serious damage surpassing the current achlys (heavy weapons guy ogryn is fun but not really that good). The game is currently dominated by close and medium range encounters. A "marksman" rifle for the ogryn offers nothing.

 

[MidUSA]

I don't see high damage low rate of fire stubbers having a place in the ogryn meta wither unless they do serious damage surpassing the current achlys (heavy weapons guy ogryn is fun but not really that good). The game is currently dominated by close and medium range encounters. A "marksman" rifle for the ogryn offers nothing.

A ranged option that can deal with specials at ranges over 30 meters without needing to waste half a magazine doesn't sound like it would be too bad a choice for an Ogryn.

I reckon the problem will be that it'll be overclassed in it's anti-special role by the kickback, if nothing else as it'll probably have a slower pullout time at the very least, even if it's precision match the kickback.

 

[Asian tech support]

I reckon the problem will be that it'll be overclassed in it's anti-special role by the kickback, if nothing else as it'll probably have a slower pullout time at the very least, even if it's precision match the kickback.

The kickback knocking down every special sans mutants at almost any range is just about as good as outright killing it. My hope would be that the new stubber has good carapace penetration and can roll (something like) hand-cannon/surgical. Even if it's kind of slow, if you can pop crushers and maulers like other classes do with the revolver, it'll have a niche.

 

[SandyCat]

A ranged option that can deal with specials at ranges over 30 meters without needing to waste half a magazine doesn't sound like it would be too bad a choice for an Ogryn.

Half a magazine for one enemy is pretty good for an Ogryn. Usually they would need to go through 6 or 7, if they can remember how to reload it

 

[Asian tech support]

Havoc update

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1361210/view/4456970437737317498?l=english

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1361210/view/4456970437737317496?l=english

Havoc is shit and a waste of time. Not even Bungie could have come up with a worse progression system. The way it works is you cannot matchmake into it, forcing you to be in a premade or use the party finder. Only the host can progress rank, meaning that if you stop playing with the same people, you have to start over. At the same time, the host does not receive any progress towards any of the rewards, but the other party members do, making me want to scratch my head but this is kind of standard Fatshark fuckery. You can get a head start and complete an auric maelstrom run to calibrate at havoc rank 16 but this has made matchmaking into maelstroms virtually unplayable due to the sheer amount of shitters. At the end of the week, if you weren't hosting, you're supposed to be bumped up to the highest completed havoc rank but, again, that's fucking stupid. My best guess is this is to prevent some kind of abuse but who cares.

Havoc itself is boring as shit for the first 20 tiers. It's sub-damnation difficulty with a couple extra boss spawns. The best way to do these starting from scratch is to ignore everything and speedrun the map with everyone playing knife zealot. Around 30 it starts getting into auric territory. I jumped into a friend's tier 31 lobby last night and I don't think it's that far off from auric quickplay, just with more bosses.

The new weapons are a mixed bag.

The stubbers are much more precise and agile than I thought they'd be. The high rof one is kind of shit but the medium and low rof ones are pretty ok. Their hipfire spread is atrocious. Built properly, the two ok ones can one tap gunners. The damage on the heavy one is comparable to the boltgun. I don't think they're going to be that valuable for gunlugger builds but gunlugger was nerfed because Hank and the Ogrynomicon bum boys are faggots. More on that later.

I do not see a use for the force greatswords. The concept is cool but their poor mobility is too much of a detriment. Maybe someone will come up with a neat build but I couldn't.

The relic blades are ok. The empowered dash attack with zealot charge oneshots crushers but they kind of struggle with carapace armor and packs of ragers. Their mobility is the same as the eviscerator which I think is fine but I know some people really dislike. They are very fun though and get points for that alone.

Ogryn received a nerf under the guise of making the skill tree make more sense.

• ‘Reloaded and Ready’ has moved to the position where ‘Big Boom’ was
• ‘Big Boom’ has moved to the position where ‘Pacemaker’ was
• ‘Pacemaker’ has moved to the position where ‘Towering Presence’ was
• ‘Towering Presence’ has moved to the position where ‘Reloaded and Ready’ was
• Swapped places between the ‘25% Suppression Bonus’ node and the ‘5% Ranged Damage’ node, that were set before and after 'Coward Culling’

Coherency is shit and Towering Presence was always a tax node for Big Boom. Big Boom is a nice node for the rumbler and is easily taken as tauntgryn now.

Reloaded and Ready was a nice one point investment for a constant +15% damage on the rumbler and kickback for non-luggers. Moving it to be buried under Pacemaker (one of the worst nodes in the ogryn tree) nerfs every ogryn build. This puts a two node tax (Towering Presence and Pacemaker) on the standard lugger build, which already was not that sweaty of a build. Ogryns now have to give up either Smash Em, Steafy Grip, or Reloaded and Ready. The nice thing about Reloaded and Ready was that it activates on Point Blank Barrage use and since it's so easy to chain uses together, it had almost 100% uptime while in the thick.

These changes were brought upon by the feedback from the retards who write the Ogrynomicon guide. Fatshark has long since ignored the feedback from their own forum, instead choosing to take pointers from their playtesters. Unfortunately, their playtesters are just their biggest youtube ballwashers and not people who are actually top tier players. Hank (one of the Ogrynomicon guys) showed up yesterday in one of the groups I'm in to run defense, was called a faggot, and proceeded to leave and block a bunch of people. His defense was that it wasn't all the changes he asked for but that this set of changes made more sense as it put all the toughness and coherency nodes at the top. That's true but it doesn't make sense to make changes for the sale of change when there is zero benefit. No build benefits from these changes.

 

[Blazing Piety]

Just when I thought Fatshart was turning a new leaf, they go and pull this shit.

I still don't know why Havoc was added to the game. Who asked for this? All of the high level players that I know certainly didn't - they would rather have the option to pick the maps they want to play with whatever modifiers at whatever difficulty. Further, why the complication with how the leveling up works? Why require that you make a premade lobby for it? Why have the first ~30 levels not even be at Damnation if this is supposed to be an endgame event? It makes no sense. I've seen people speculating that the only reason for the premade parties being a requirement is to justify the inclusion of the party finder, and honestly I can buy that.

A friend and I true duoed to level 20 last night from level 16. We had the high honor of getting to play missions that had both pox gas and the new exploding enemy type, which I am not a fan of. For one, when you have the pox gas modifier, it makes the enemies with the buff look like they are Nurgle blessed, which is what I thought when I saw them for the first time (probably because they just changed the color of the Nurgle blessing to make a "new" buff). That shouldn't happen; it should be clear what blessing an enemy has. For another, I'm still not sure when their effect of giving you corruption damage is applied. If it's only when you contact the goop on the ground, that's fine, but if it's happening the moment you kill the blessed enemy, that's just stupid. It just feels like a lazy addition. I am glad to see that the infected troop modifier is back at least, since that adds some much needed density to the horde.

Of the new weapons, I only tried out the Relic Blades. While they certainly aren't gonna be a top tier pick, I had fun using them, especially doing the jousting attack. I know people won't like them because of the mobility, but that doesn't bother me. I've only heard negative about psyker's new greatswords, and I'm not entirely sure what the consensus is on the new ogryn guns.

These changes were brought upon by the feedback from the retards who write the Ogrynomicon guide. Fatshark has long since ignored the feedback from their own forum, instead choosing to take pointers from their playtesters. Unfortunately, their playtesters are just their biggest youtube ballwashers and not people who are actually top tier players. Hank (one of the Ogrynomicon guys) showed up yesterday in one of the groups I'm in to run defense, was called a faggot, and proceeded to leave and block a bunch of people. His defense was that it wasn't all the changes he asked for but that this set of changes made more sense as it put all the toughness and coherency nodes at the top. That's true but it doesn't make sense to make changes for the sale of change when there is zero benefit. No build benefits from these changes.

I saw Tanner Lindberg's community post about the Ogrynomicon and Hank. I am really hoping he decides to make an actual video talking about all the issues with the Ogrynomicon, because the guide is genuinely awful, and yet, for some reason, people treat it like gospel. Some retard left this comment on a Steam discussion post that I think perfectly sums up the mentality of the average Ogryn player:

Please check the ogrynomicon before spouting your misinformed nonsense pal!

This is a very minor nerf to the strongest build in the game, glugger and a buff to hybrids and meleegryn dipping.

At the very least, it seems like people are waking up to the fact that Ogryn is objectively the worst class in the game right now. Part of me is hoping for buffs in the future, and part of me is hoping that all the autistic fucks who LARP as Ogryns in game chat and elsewhere suffer. We'll see what Fatshark does.

Spoiler

...but we all know they're gonna keep nerfing him LMFAO

 

[Asian tech support]

I saw Tanner Lindberg's community post about the Ogrynomicon and Hank.

Didn't really want to out myself but yeah that's where it happened. It wasn't that people were just dogpiling and calling him a faggot either. People came prepared and he didn't like the pushback. I'm more sympathetic to his plight than I might have let on earlier as it's not like he's a dev but it's not like FS can balance their game (this goes all the way back to VT2 where they started ripping off rebalance mods). The ogrynomicon is perceived as the premier authority on ogryn so having them as playtesters offering Verified Feedback™ is valuable for FS but comes with a mantle of responsibility on the playtesters' end. FS absolutely values the feedback of their playtesters but when the playtesters aren't at the pinnacle of their game, you end up with retard outcomes such as this.

I've only heard negative about psyker's new greatswords

I figured out a build this afternoon.

You can drop Warp Expenditure for Warp Splitting and switch True Aim for Surety of Arms but this was how I was using it.
Been using the mk 6 with riposte and wrath. I pair the sword with a recon lasgun. The columnus or whatever it's called now is too ammo hungry. The sword does nothing without Gaze. With gaze and some DD juice, you can absolutely chunk armor. The special isn't that useful expect to generate some peril during the window between stacks expiring and Gaze coming up again. I'd really like to figure out to work Anticipation into the build. Can't give up One with the Warp as you're frontlining but the better dodge is so very nasty.

 

[Asian tech support]

Ogryn rework

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1361210/view/512951942084822085?l=english

There are other notes about additional weapon changes but I didn't care enough to read them.

The build editor has been updated to reflect the (tentative) new tree.

https://darktide.gameslantern.com/build-editor

I'm not much of an ogryn player so take this as you will. This rework isn't very much of a rework. It hasn't addressed any of the core issues plaguing the class. I'm not even sure if it's much of an improvement at all. They've done the same shit that they did with the minor psyker tree rework where nodes were added to dead ends.
Issues:

• An overreliance on building stacks of various things. The class with the slowest melee in the game has to build up to receive bonuses other classes receive either for free or immediately upon performing an action. For example, there's a new node "Frenzied Blows" that gives 2% melee attack speed on chained hit for 5s stacking 5 times. Every other class has a 10% melee attack speed node without any strings attached.
• Nodes that do too little and a lack of operative modifiers (the small nodes that give shit like toughness and other minor boosts). Normally it'd be a good thing for more passives and less of the small modifier nodes but ogryn received a large amount of his survivability from those nodes previously and most of them are gone. New survivability nodes have been added but like the rest of his kit, they require an entire song and dance to activate. Again, no other class in the game has to jump through these kinds of hoops. Both the zealot and the veteran have higher effective hp than a completely juiced up ogryn while requiring none of the setup.
• Nothing to augment the class' mobility. There are many problems with ogryn's mobility but none is more prevalent than his large hitbox compounded with his short dodge distance. While I understand that the ogryn is meant to be a big slow brute, in a game where tanking isn't really a thing and avoiding damage is how you win, he doesn't fit that mold. He's not tanky enough to offset his lack of mobility. His legs are longer, give him longer dodges and let him either spring faster or deplete stamina at a reduced rate and regenerate it quicker; his larger hitbox makes him weaker versus dogs and trappers, let him break from a disabler on a 1 minute cooldown or something.
• Stupid high ability cooldowns. Ogryn's abilities are the worst in the game but have the highest cooldowns. Why?
• Complete lack of viable weapons that synergize with the playstyle the tree is reinforcing. There really is only the pickaxe and slab shield.

This is the build I came up with (subject to change):

It's very much the same as the old bruiser build.

Good things about the new tree:

• Rock is genuinely much much better. The new node rewards skillful play.
• Soften Them Up is available to all builds regardless of blitz choice.
• Batter is good for more than just keeping Delight in Destruction active.
• Smash Em and The Best Defense much more accessible.

Bad things about the new tree:

• Smash Em and The Best Defense did not need the minor nerfs (again).
• The Point Blank Barrage changes prove they have no idea how to make ranged ogryn work. There was one build before that was already only a gimmick build.
• Batter is in a really stupid spot. Strike True is a tax talent. There really shouldn't be tax talents that blatant.
• Bruiser didn't need yet another change/nerf. Every build needs it and that whole middle-bottom section of the tree is tax nodes. Put it somewhere less retarded.
• Feel No Pain is still bad and unless they revert the "lose stacks on taking toughness damage" change from a couple of patches ago, it won't be usable.

I dunno. They're adding yet another separate presumable chaos wastes style game mode which will probably die in a month like Havoc did. Feels like they're grasping and have all but abandoned the game.

 

[MidUSA]

This rework isn't very much of a rework. It hasn't addressed any of the core issues plaguing the class.

I'm cautiously optimistic. Just having the Ogryn able to knock aside wimpy enemies while dodging could be a pretty big boost to maneuverability, helping to dodge nets etc, in tight situations.