Veteran Guard - Shooter Shooter
Build for Darktide

If you die, die fighting

The Guard Veteran's job is to take out all the shooters and distant threats so the rest of your team can deal with closer threats in peace. 

Pros: The best build for dealing with ranged enemies without needing someone to be your bodyguard

Cons: No survivalist. 

General Strategy

Your greatest vulnerability is when melee enemies attack you while you're trying to shoot ranged enemies. If you're lucky enough to have a teammate adopt and protect you, awesome. Getting up to max Marksman's stacks more than doubles your ranged weakspot damage (finesse power), which can let you really tear through otherwise scary situations.

• Psykers and other Vets are your most reliable partners. They will also hang back and you can protect each other.
• If you have a Taunt Ogryn, stick near him. Yes, he'll block some of your shots, but it's worth it. 
• If the Zealot runs off to attack shooters and there's other threats he should be chasing, shoot the shooters before he gets there and maybe he will learn to prioritize different targets. 
• Don't worry about Marksman's Focus stacks. You lose them fast, but get back to max stacks in 5 shots. They're usually only useful in times when you're able to get them back quickly anyway so don't worry about trying to hold onto them. Play normally. You'll get them when you need them and lose them when you don't.
• If you need to reposition just a little bit, dodge while crouching to not lose stacks. I typically only do this while fighting a monstrosity because there's no way to generate new stacks at that time. 
• Use your melee often. If it's not a situation where you can get use out of Marksman's Focus, just melee. 
• Frag Grenades will give you a short window of safety to take out priority targets, get out of a bad situation, or stagger & bleed a group of armor. 
• Maulers: even with 10 stacks, you'll do more damage shooting them in the chest 

Ranged Weapon Options 

Best Options

Kantrael MG 1a: Top tier ammo efficiency and speed. If someone else has armor under control, this gun will control all the shooters. All your weakspot buffs make it a force to be reckoned with. Can hipfire in melee range to speed up first shot after a reload or to shoot while moving. The recoil may take a small adjustment depending on your stability stat, but it's manageable with Executioner's active. Stability over 70 preferred. 

Vraks VII: More damage than the Kantrael 1a at the cost of ammo efficiency but it's excellent against a pack of Ragers running right at you. Great choice if you still want to sometimes take on Maulers and Crushers with your ranged while still excelling at killing shooters. Keep in mind that doing this will drain your ammo.  Main disadvantage is its small magazine and long reload.

Kantrael MG IV: may the emperor grant you mercy from the insane recoil, because your enemies won't. It has great synergy with Mark'sman's Focus due to its fast attack speed, but unfortunately the recoil is very high so needs Executioner's to be able to accurately fire at its max speed. 

Usable Alternatives

Heavy Laspistol: use this if you want to keep up with your team while killing shooters. Its main advantage is that it remains accurate at mid range while hipfiring. Consider using it when you have a taunt Ogryn or melee-heavy team because it's easier to keep up with them so they can cover you from melee attacks. 

Kantrael MG XII: More damage than the 1a, but its very slow. 

Melee Weapon Options 

Main priority is hordeclear, but ideally you want something that can kill armor in a pinch. 

Power Sword (any): It does everything and is super easy. If you can't get Power Cycler 4, consider another option. 

Shovel: grab uncanny strike and Decimator and the heavies will cut through hordes' heads with ease. I personally prefer it over a power Sword. Push attack is good for self defense and single target. Lights build up your blessing buffs fast. Has a very high weakspot damage bonus. 

Folding Shovel: BONK. Take frags instead of kraks (skip Grenadier)

Chainsword: All-rounder. 

Devil's Claw IV: Great hordeclear, not great anti-armor (other Devil's Claws still do fine if you get a great roll). But if it's an enhanced blitz maelstrom kraks will be plenty. 

Rashad Axe: always usable with Brutal Momentum and Headtaker, but it prefers builds with attack speed. 

Kantrael Lasgun Blessing tier list

(mostly true for Vraks VII as well)

S tier

• Deadly Accurate + Headhunter (together): Increased crits on weakspot hits + weakspot crit damage, self explanatory. Doesn't really change your DPS against shooters but it is fun to deck a mutie with a crit weakspot hit and can make your crtt

A tier

• Ghost: Immunity to ranged attacks while you're doing your thing is really nice, and will sometimes save your ass in a bad situation. Anytime this blessing is useful, it's extremely useful, and any time it's not useful the dps loss probably isn't hurting too much. 
• Efficiency: actually way more effective than it sounds as the description is wrong. It makes one shot every 4 seconds only cost 1/3 ammo, regardless of whether you've been shooting or not. Very useful if you struggle with ammo. Also makes it easier to just shoot 1 head every 6 seconds to keep MF stacks. 

B tier

• Falter + No Respite (together): Stagger + Stagger damage. These blessing suck alone, but are decent together. A-tier on Vraks and MG XII. 
• Infernus + Headhunter (together): Increased crits + burn stacks on crit is super fun, but most things you should bother shooting die before burn does anything. Decent against bosses. Lets you do something useful to distant maulers and crushers if you have ammo to literally burn. 

C tier

• Between the Eyes: situational suppression immunity is nice to free up the talent point from Determined, but the blessing slot is more important than the talent point. 

D tier

• Opening Salvo: increased damage on first shot. Your first shot will usually be against a target you know will die in 1 hit, and when it's not, 20% isn't usually enough to make a difference. That said, the "salvo" is only until your recoil resets and the Kantrael 1a resets its recoil pretty fast. If you like to take your time lining up each shot, you'll get the benefit. But if that's the case, just use an MG XII. 

Other Notes:

• The keystone modifier Tunnel Vision is quite powerful, but the opportunity cost for it is high.