Auric Maelstrom Allrounder Vet
 Veteran Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

This is currently my most comfortable and consistently performing Vet build for quickplaying into Auric Maelstroms on Damnation.

The build functions as a mix of Vet ‘greatest hits’ and is based around Fire Team + Focus Target with Redirect Fire and Focused Fire to give you and any teammates in coherency a general 17% damage buff with near 100% uptime and an additional 32% damage against bosses, as well as assorted additional damage vs other taggable targets when relevant through the course of maintaining Redirect Fire stacks.

The build has an answer for almost any situation, and a lot of redundancy built in which allows you to conserve your resources through the course of the mission by using the most efficient option available to you at a given point.

-Recon Lasgun: The Recon Lasgun with Infernus is a Vet meta staple as of writing. However, most builds use the ‘Blue’ mark as the very high rate of fire allows you to quickly apply Infernus stacks and max out the brittleness from Onslaught. This build instead utilises the ‘Green’ mark, which is the most all-round mark, with middling rate of fire, damage per shot and reload speed but high accuracy and ammo capacity.

The reason we are using the Green mark is that it has the most embodied damage in its total ammo capacity, with 72,912 total damage excluding the additional 25% ammo from Fully Loaded and the ‘free’ shots from Shock Trooper, as well as near perfect accuracy and a large amount of embodied damage per magazine, with a modest 2.7 second reload.

While having the highest damage per second, and the ability to apply Infernus and Onslaught stacks efficiently, The Blue mark has the lowest embodied damage at 63,600, a long reload of 3.75 seconds and while more accurate than most weapons, still has a noticeable spray at long distances when shooting at things such as snipers, which can cause you to waste even more of your already comparatively limited ammo supply. With our large damage buffs, we rely on direct damage more than Infernus stacks, and with Headhunter the additional accuracy can result in noticeably faster Time to Kill with the Green at medium to long distances compared to the Blue against easy to headshot targets like Gunners, Flamers, Trappers etc.

With the damage buffs, Headhunter and Onslaught, you can kill Crushers and Maulers very quickly with sustained headshots in a pinch. However, I would still just melee isolated Elites when you can safely do so to conserve ammo. Even if you had additional crit for Shocktrooper and Survivalist as your aura, you would still run out of ammo quite quickly if you just shot everything unnecessarily.

-Krak Grenades: Nothing especially new to say here, Kraks with grenade Tinkerer are great for killing concentrated stacks of Crushers, Bulwarks and Maulers that would otherwise use up large amounts of ammo to kill or be risky to engage in melee. They can also do a lot of boss damage, especially with Focus Target applied, but that isn’t really required with this build unless you are low on ammo and want to be more conservative with your resources.

Compared to Shredder Grenades, you can’t use Kraks as a ‘panic button’ when surrounded by mixed hordes or to stagger enemies on a downed teammate to try and revive them. However, I find the above situations can be reasonably played around with the other tools available to this build, especially VoC, while if you’re stuck in a corner with a stack of Crushers coming through the door you’re most likely going to just die.

-Combat Axe: There’s no unique synergy with the Combat Axe, though it definitely appreciates the additional 17% damage from your buffs, I just find it very comfortable to use with Brutal Momentum and Headtaker, as you can safely and quickly kill both hordes and elites as required. You can use whatever melee you prefer, though I would recommend something with at least five dodges and the ability to kill Crushers in a reasonable amount of time when needed to save ammo.

-Focus Target: Vet has a bit of a reputation of having mediocre keystones, at least for Marksman Focus and Focus Target. However, the mechanics for Focus Target, especially Redirect Fire, are actually a lot more forgiving than they seem at first glance.

Redirect Fire both stacks and refreshes. This means you can put a single Focus Target stack on an enemy and kill it when you already have 8 stacks of Redirect Fire, and it will refresh the duration for the 8 stacks. It also means if you kill an enemy with three Focus Target stacks on it when you already have 3 stacks of Redirect Fire, it will add the additional three and refresh the duration of the buff, giving you six stacks of Redirect Fire. This allows you to have near 100% uptime of Redirect Fire at 8 stacks during fights by pinging and immediately killing a taggable enemy, which gives you and allies in coherency an additional 12% damage against all targets, along with the 5% bonus from fire team.

Against bosses, wait until you have 8 stacks of Focus Target available, tag the boss, use VoC to proc the additional damage from Close Quarters Killzone and For the Emperor (if safe to do so) and shoot its weakspot with your Recon Lasgun. Even if you’re not in a position to attack the boss, such as if you’re kiting a Beast of Nurgle and can’t hit its weakspot, Focus Target applies to allies, so your teammates will also get the benefit and can melt the boss while you distract it.

Curios: Curios are personal preferences, but I find 2x Toughness and 1x Stamina with Toughness, Health and Stamina Regeneration as the perks to be the most comfortable for me for Vet. If you’re confident in your play you can swap the Health for Combat Ability Regeneration, but I find there are so many things that go through toughness that your HP can get chipped very quickly if a barrel or flamer tank gets shot.

This setup has 205 Tougness and 181 Health, which allows us to make good use of the Toughness damage resistance from Close Order Drill and Iron Will while still having a bit of breathing room around fire.