Sweatmaxxed Vet
Build for Darktide

I think this is the ideal vet build. However the bolter's skill floor is somewhat high, so you must be good at using it; practice is of course needed.

I dont want to explain every facet of it ofc but here is a short list of its strengths and weaknesses.

I left some weapon perk and curios unselected. I think having a cdr curio perk is good, but I havent done any calculations or anything of the sort and the difference is pretty minute. I think maniac or flak (i have flak) damage is ideal for the other perk on the bolter, but it is way less important than reload speed

and you know how the crafting system is

The mk6 power sword is better, but the mk3 cleaves horizontally and that is all it is really needed for 

As veteran with this build, your gun is your primary weapon and melee is your secondary; grenades are exclusively for emergencies and buying time to revive allies. other very niche situations like saving teammate from a dog w/o line of sight. The grenades are NOT your first response to ANY type of enemy. You have the lowest priority for grenade pickups simply because your grenades are the worst. Ogryn > priest > vet in terms of grenades.

You have the highest ammo priority though, don't be a sniveler about the grenades.   

An alternative option for this build would be to unselect tactical reload (25% reload speed) and vanguard (20% more toilet paper on the mourningstar), and select marksman's focus and long range assassin (15 stacks). At best, you lose 5% reload speed and gain 7.5*15 % headshot dmg. The damage is only particularly needed for ogryns, mutants and perhaps armored ragers. This is most useful for ogryns in my experience; they can be killed in two or so shots with shartsmans focus. Also, pick the 5% health boost node on the left at the top if you do this option.

Even without the alternative option, the bolter can easily kill the listed enemies, but it'll cost more ammo.

Another alternative is to remove exhilarating takedown and select the toughness dmg resist node at the bottom or focus target.

An extra wound curio is listed because often times people (namely randoms which cannot be coordinated with) with two wounds will get corruption or get downed and be on the edge of death. having three wounds lets the two wound guy heal first, as he is closer to death than you (even if you had two wounds also, he wouldve taken the medicae charge anyway regardless of your classes)

also if one has three wounds, they are still not at much risk of death even if they were downed once, which happens!

in my experience auric games mostly end not because someone died but because everyone was downed at the same time, but still. If you are confident and/or are playing in a 4stack, use two toughness curios and one health one

Strengths

-Permanent ult is easy (with practice)

-Kills all shooters

-Kills all elites

-Kills all specials

-Kills the beast of nurgle easily

Weaknesses

-difficult to do monster dmg on the plague ogryn and spawn

-frag grenades are shit

-If you are consistently overrun & are forced to switch to melee frequently, it is much more difficult to use the bolter effectively. You must depend on your team (stay in coherency) to have them protect you (as you protect them by killing dangerous enemies at range). 

Another important think to note is that if there are multiple vets, your likelihood of winning is much lower. This is because the two (three, four) of you are essentially doing a one man job. Melee vet is alright, but of course worse than a zealot. Despite this, do not flame them in game! Reading that, it sort of sounds facetious but dont shit up the community by flaming.

With this build, you will do it better on the scoreboard than the others veterans on your team, but that does not matter in the slightest as you were overrun by a horde of regular melee enemies and lost.

As i said at the beginning I think this is the ideal vet build. if using it seems impossible as many on leddit claim, then weenie hut jrs is two blocks down