Bub's Focus Target vet (havoc)
 Veteran Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

2025-05-19

This build is pretty flexible and leans into the Vet buff stick idea, where you buff your teammates and focus on specialist, elite removal.  Your hoard clear is not the best, but Shredder Frag Grenade should help significantly with that.

Vet buff stick buffs:

1. Survivalist (if you don't bring this, in havoc and your team doesn't have it, you suck)
2. Voice of Command (spam as much as possible in fights.  Yellow toughness is OP)
3. Focus Target! 
4. Field Improvisation if you really want to lean into the whole buff stick thing.

Talent Tree Options

Flex picks are:

• Competitive Urge (least important, first to get rid of), 
• Kill Zone (this is easily maintained ranged damage)
• Desperado (always helpful)

Other good options are (in no particular order):

• Longshot (can help with breakpoints, but Kill Zone is better)
• Stamina Regeneration Boost (always useful.  If you can manage to get both, then you have the best stamina regen, tied with psyker, in the game)
• Field Improvisation (always useful, but rarely saves a game, can make ogryns very happy)
• any of the focus target modifiers (which are all good), Redirect Fire! -> Focused Fire -> Target Down!.  Other builds prioritize Target Down! , but not this one.  I don't use these, but you could if you wanted.
• Marksman Honestly probably better than Competitive Urge.  

People love Rending Strikes, but it really isn't that good with these weapons.  You have diminishing returns on rending after 1.0 damage modifiers (25%), of which both dueling sword and plasma have high numbers for just about every target, not to mention Uncanny Strike.

The top of the tree can be re-routed if you prefer.  Instead of taking One Motion and Out for Blood, you can take Close Order Drill and Confirmed Kill.  This is personal taste for every vet build.  Out for Blood works great with grenade builds.  Confirmed Kill works great with specialist/elite removal builds.  This build is both and both work fine.  I like the Movement Speed Boost node that goes with Out for Blood.  It is worth noting that Confirmed Kill stacks with each kill.  Exhilarating Takedown on the left side of the tree sucks.  It only works on ranged kills unlike the other two.

Weapons

Plasma can take Blaze Away instead of Rising Heat if you want more boss damage or find that you are not hitting head shots and need additional shots to take out enemies.  For the love of god, do not take Shattering Impact.  Shattering Impact will only help you against bosses and not that much.

For melee, you can use whatever you want.  Vet has a ton of a very good options.  Nothing is bad right now.  Maccabian Mk IV Duelling Sword is currently the best non-ogryn weapon in the game.  There are also many good blessings, discussed below.  

• Uncanny Strike helps with carapace and offers a tiny bit of extra damage to bosses.  Technically it adds some damage to flak and maniac, but dueling sword doesn't need that.  
• Thrust is for mutant one shots.  Helpful for other things.  
• Riposte and Precognition are also very good blessings.  
• Any combination of the above blessings are good.  

Not recommended blessings on dueling sword:

• Rampage is helpful for horde clear, but is the least good at of everything else I have mentioned.  Which is kind of insane, as it is the best blessing on many other weapons. 
• I see many people recommend Agile.  It is a waste of a slot.  It isn't bad and infinite dodge is fun and safe, but if you play smart (or just. . .you know normal, like any other weapon), you have plenty of dodges and dueling sword already has among the best dodges in the game.  
• Shred is a less good Riposte.  You have to build up to it and you lose all your stacks on one missed attack and have to build up again.
• Relentless Strikes goes away as soon as you touch any other enemy, so is only good on bosses.  If your team is missing boss damage, then go ahead, but if you really need boss damage then Achlys Mk VI Power Sword or any of the chain weapons are better at that specific role.

Curios 

I always take + toughness and + stamina.  Stamina affects most of your gameplay and a little extra helps a lot with sprinting and blocking.  Vet has low bases in this area so a little extra always helps.  Back in the days when all fire instantly removed all toughness, there was a better argument for health.  We aren't in those days anymore. 

For the small sub nodes, every build in the entire game should use stamina regeneration and ability cooldown on curios.  They are the most impactful stats.  For the last slot there are a number of decent options:

• Stamina regeneration is the most important cooldown stat.  It affects your ability to move and to resume blocking and pushing.  Some weapons are more dependent than others.
• Ability cooldown is the second most important.  Abilities can make or break games.  On all three curios, that is 12%.  For shout, this is a reduction of 3.6 seconds, which is further reduced by other talents and teammates.  In a 30 minute game, this is 8.2 more shouts (assuming maximum spam, which admittedly is unlikely).  Shouts can literally save games, even when you don't notice.  Maybe someone took a overhead.  With shout, that is no damage, without, that is a down.  That single down can cost a game.
• Sprint and block cost are always great. 
• +toughness is always great. 
• Gunner Resist is good. 
• Bomber resist is decent, although personally I would never take that. It helps with both napalm and tox bombers, both of which can easily end games.
  • Remember that damage reduction on curios is multiplicative, so you get diminishing returns. 3 gunner resists gives 48.8% damage reduction, not 60%. 2 gunner resists gives 36%, not 40%.  So never take 3 unless you really struggle with gunners.  Gunner resist only works on the guys with the big machine guns, not normal shooters.  
  • I believe every other curio stat is additive (as in non-damage resist stats).  
• I wouldn't frown at + health, but personally find toughness to be more beneficial.
• If you are starving for money, take those ordo docket increases.  I won't judge you.
• Everything else is bad.  Especially toughness regeneration, which only affects coherency toughness.  I don't want to ever see this.  Corruption resistance is niche in havoc and even there, it is questionable.  Better to bring a zealot with Beacon of Purity.

As for how to play this build.  

Your job is specialist and ranged threat remover.  Most likely you will be eating the most ammo on your team, but you still need to be conservative.  You don't need to shoot every little shooter.  And don't blast things that your teammates don't need help with.  Nothing in the game is as good as plasma for this task.  You do not focus on the boss, unless there is nothing else to do.  Leave that to the Ogryns and the Zealots.  You need to keep everything off those two while they deal with the boss.  Nothing you have is great boss dps, although both weapons are ok at it.

Every havoc vet build is a grenade spammer these days.  It is important to understand how Demolition Team and Demolition Stockpile work.  Demolition Stockpile ticks down as long as you are not at the grenade cap (3).  As soon as you hit the cap, it resets.  So to get maximum usage, you never want to be at 3 grenades (unless Demolition Stockpile got you there). If Demolition Team got you to cap, then you just lost that much time on Demolition Stockpile.  So make sure you are using them before you reach cap.  As a added bonus, you will probably see yellow numbers for damage done on the scoreboard if you follow these rules.  Do not pick up grenades unless no one else can use them.  You literally conjure them out of your bum and no one else does.

Obviously mark targets.  Try to keep bosses and monsters marked, but also feel free to use it to reach breakpoints on specific enemies (such as ones far away).  Dreg gunners you have to have stacks of your Rising Heat or you can mark them for the one shot.  Don't think about focus target stacks too much.  Just play as normal and keep marking stuff.

Shout during fights on cooldown.  Do not wait for the prime opportunity to stagger things.  Gold toughness is an enormous security blanket that protects you from all sorts of things including:

• Health damage bleed through
• crusher and mauler overheads
• dog guaranteed corruption on pounce
• sniper shot health bleed through
• mutant health damage from repetitive ground smashing
• Burster health damage bleedthrough and corruption
• Anything that normally hurts you through toughness

Don't wait, shout.

Finally, you do not have Volley Adept.  So learn to animation cancel your reloads.  Plasma has three points at which you can reduce the reload time.  Animation cancels can be done by tap sprinting or QQ (weapon swapping very quickly).

Plasma animation cancels:

1. As soon as the mag is pulled out
2. As soon as the mag is put in
3. Right after the first ratchet of the venting cap.