Veteran Sharpshooter Build - All-Around Clutch Carry
Build for Darktide

WORK-IN-PROGRESS

Intro (up-to-date)

This is an all-around armour-piercing Veteran Sharpshooter build. This is the optimal build for a Sharpshooter Veteran right now. Many other builds are viable right now, but this is what peak performance looks like. If the lasgun or the power sword gets nerfed I will update my guide and substitute the weapons with the lacerate dagger and a bolter or any other weapons that will then become the strongest pick.

Let's get into it. Your melee deals heavy armour-piercing damage and your lasgun should reliably one-shot-headshot half specials and elites, and two-shot-headshot the rest of them with the exception of the charger mutant and ogryns. The melee you bring - the power sword - is one of the strongest weapons in the game, but it is still important for you to understand it's weaknesses and strenghts. Other than that we take advantage of the regenerating grenades that you can drop under your feet to quickly purge any fodder that isn't a special or an elite to buy some time when reviving others and forcing objectives. This setup also maximizes your ability to take on any kind of enemy with ease making you highly independent. What we are looking for is prioritizing consistency, independence from other players and being able to do everything well if you try hard enough. We are not taking any crit modifiers on the weapons because you won't be needing them. You will hit hard.

Weapon Choice (up-to-date)

As for the melee weapon any axe or armour-piercing can do my personal favourite  is the powersword. If you're choosing an axe then make sure that you use  the one with the attack pattern that speaks the most to you. You can even take the sapper shovel if you're new to the Tide series (meaning you have never played Darktide or Vermintide) to help you deal with hordes with the wide sweeps on the heavy attacks while still having light attacks that deal minor armour-piercing damage. I don't advise using a chainsword as the charge animation and attack animation slow you down. You can't afford to sacrifice your pacing at higher difficulties.

The ranged weapon of my choice is the Kantrael MG XII Infantry Lasgun. It like I mentioned previously it can take down specials and elites with one or two shots if you're accuracy is great. That's implying your gun is item level 500+. The benchmark difficulties is the highest in the game right now (5 or Damnation). With an average roll on all stats your lasgun should have 600-700 ammo which allows you to bring over 1000 ammo in total with the Veteran Sharpshooter passive. If you divide that by 3 (the ammo cost for firing the weapon once) you easily get over 300 shots. That's 300 scab/dreg gunners you can headshot and get rid off or 150-300 elites you can headshot and kill provided you land all of your shots.

Gadget Choice (up-to-date)

You can see the curios I chose on the display above the description. The stats we are prioritising is toughness, toughness and more toughness. Also some block efficiency to make mistakes against ragers and bosses more forgiving. We are also taking 1 wound because on the Heresy and Damnation difficulty our wound number is reduced by 1. This means you will only be able to go down once and be revived without using medicae. Then you will be taken hostages by the bad guys and you will have to be rescued by your teammates at the enemy checkpoint.

All blessing and perk stats summarised:

+20-40% Toughness

+24-30% Block Efficiency

+15-90% Toughness Damage Reduction

+15-60% Toughness Regeneration Speed

With some luck, if you roll two curios with the 20% toughness blessings your tougness will jump from 200 to 280 shield which is amazing. The patch 1.0.11 (which was applied after the pre-order beta) changed how the toughness works. In general toughness partially blocks damage you receive with melee attacks and stops all damage from ranged. It also stops all melee damage from IF you're struck while at maximum toughness. As you might have noticed by now, increasing the toughness limit increases the toughness you need to reach to get that melee hit prevention. You need as much toughness as you can get because it allows you to stay in the gunfights longer drawing all the ranged fire to yourself (with the 75% damage reduction perk you're basically tanking for the rest of the players which is fantastic, I will go into more details later). Low toughness build are great for melee characters as they can be often hit in melee and will be hidden from the line of sight of the shooters. Toughness damage reduction when tanking most of the ranged fire and also the toughness regeneration speed is pretty self explainatory.

The block efficiency is important in maximising your ability to deal with ragers and bosses. These two hit like a truck and you wan't to be able to block all these melee attacks as long as possible withot going 0 stamina. At 0 stamina your guard breaks and you will be stunned instead of damaged the first time you get hit when blocking. Getting stunned in this game can very quickly ruin your run in this game taking into consideration that this is a horde shooter/FPS and there's always a bunch of other stuff that's swinging at you.

Skill Choice (not optimal after the pre-order beta)(work-in-progress)(use the new skills selected above on the display)

1. Exhilarating Takedown - There are always too many corrupt guardsmen and you can't just hope that an elite will come within your range and that you will be the first one to kill it of all the other players. We are choosing 20% toughness regen at any weakspot kill which means that killing 5 of anything will restore all of your toughness. You can quickly restore 100% of your toughness by killing 5 lasguns or even 5 poxwalkers if you wish. Consistency and independence is what we are looking for.
    
2. Demolition Stockpile - This is your second most important perk in this build. It allows you to take any armour-piercing weapon of your choice while still being able to dispose of a horde at any time. This also makes you independent of grenade pickups on the map. You never get unlucky with grenade regeneration and nobody can hoard it and steal it from you. When surrounded push away the enemies and drop one under your feet. This will get rid of most poxwalkers and corrupted guardsmen. Then even when fighting a mixed horde full of ogryns and scab maulers with chainaxes you can just finish off the remaining fodder and then easily eliminate the elites with long attack animations using your AP melee.
    
3. Bio-Optic Targeting - This skill is a crutch for your teammates. When you're playing with randoms it helps a lot when they can see elites. You don't know if somebody is playing without sound or maybe has the music turned up all the way so that they can't hear the specials. Why not outline the elites and specials for them so that they don't die stupidly? The fewer times your teammates die the longer you can shoot and not have to swap to melee as they charge into melee.
    
4. Unwavering Focus - Toughness regen is very important because of how enemies work in Darktide. Ranged enemies focus on players that are not fighting in melee which means there when there are autoguns and lasguns looking at you they will absolutely be focusing on you and shooting you over other players in your team. Decreasing the damage by a whole 75% you take ensures you will be able to kill any target you want in most scenarios before your toughness breaks and blinds you (when it breaks your screen fades to pitch black for a brief moment). I haven't tested Camo Expert yet because of the odd nature of this perk. Will revise this guide when I get to play more after the beta launches on the 17th of November.
    
5. Deadshot - This allows you to decrease the over-the-top sway when shooting enemies at greater distances. The critical chance increase by an additional 25% amplifies your DPS big time. Pretty straightforward. It is worth mentioning that this a flat 25% crit chance which statistically means that you will crit 1 in every 4 shots you take. The bleed on grenades with Frag Storm is a no go because you only need grenades to clear the weakest enemies in the game that come in volume and not size. They will explode and vaporize before they start bleeding. The reload speed increase on elite kill from One After Another perk is good but it's situational however what we are striving for is consistency and not RNG.
    
6. Crackshot - This is the most important perk in this build because it allows you to target any enemy that you wish with any gun without having to deal with damage against armour penalties. Any time you have your special ability ready you can face any enemy and quickly erase him. If you're a regular FPS player you would never pick the Deady Focus perk as it essentially does what Deadshot does but worse and you don't need the recoil decrease on any weapon at all if you practice enough. Killing Machine sounds good but as with the other perk it strips your most important ability to kill anything in a moment ignoring the target's armour.
    

Playstyle (not optimal after the pre-order beta)(work-in-progress)

This build is tailored towards the true FPS fans who don't want to babysit their teammates or depend on them all the time. You can shoot anything with any gun and still do good damage thanks to the short cooldown of your Focus Fire ability paired with the Crackshot perk allows you to quickly shred any kind of enemy regardless if they're armoured from head to toe or not. Because you're a Sharpshooter your reserve ammo is increased by 75%. This allows you to do more shooting and not have to be so careful when using weapons with small ammo pools.

You generally want to be on the lookout for elites and specials as any other ranged class. Your task is to get rid of these priority targets before they become a problem and get within reach of you or your teammates. That's the logical gameplay of any ranged class. It is important to keep in mind that even though you're ranged-focused you should always keep your melee weapon in hand when traversing the levels. This allows you to block any unsuspected attack in the back from an enemy you might miss and you will always have the time to swap to your rifle to quickly take down any special or elite before they get close.

Remember that grenades buy space and time. See them as a resource and not just as a bunch of ammo to carry around just in case. You can have up to 4 frag grenades and these also regenerate taken you've chosen the perks I listed. Don't run around with a four-pack stacked in your pouches but instead throw it into a group of maulers or an idle horde standing in your way even if you're safe. Struggling with 3 scab maulers holding 3 big chainaxes over your head? Drop a grenade under your feet and watch them fall. Then cut them down or revive the teammate in need if he's close to bleeding out completely before gunning them down. Don't want to dance around a shielded bulwark ogryn? Just stagger him with a grenade and take his head. Taking advantage of the stagger mechanic will save you a lot of time and ensure that your teammates will be safe from attacks when executing everything that was knocked down to the ground and survived the blast. Three grenades are plenty to go around and you won't be needing more of them in a span of 45 seconds if you play your cards right.

Autogun vs Lasgun comparison video below