Focused Executioner [Update 1.13]
 Veteran Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

  PRIMER CURRENTLY BEING REVAMPED!!!

                RISE TO THE OCCASION OR FALL FOR ATOMA!!!

   With the new changes comes a new opportunity to experience the game in fun ways disregarding what is META since there won't be one for a while. With that said, this tree should be able to transition well from the very basic Veteran template. Veteran's kit normally lacks an abundance of survivability and with the changes we have lost upwards of 40 base toughness. This leaves us with wanting more avenues of survival even with the baked in increase for ranged damage that we will got (+15% ranged damage after accounting the fact that we lost a +10% ranged damage talent). This set up leans into the hybrid nature that the class has been known for for the longest, regardless of Fatshark's intention to make it the "RANGED CLASS". The class can still deal tons of ranged damage due to the bump from the new iconic and because of this I am exploring in what ways the changes will affect the ranged arsenal on the class.

   With this set up I want users to think of themselves as a Field Officer inspiring the troops with an immense show of power and precision. To do this we are running a sort of aura setup by way of utilising Target Down!. With this talent and the main Talent keystone Focus Target!, the talent tree will flesh out a hybrid combat style of play that bolsters your team while also leading them to kill highlighted targets. 

   Some readers might be thinking "where does the incentive come from?" Well, each kill will be providing everyone near the Veteran resources in return as the team takes out highlighted enemies. We are talking about Toughness and Stamina, both of which will probably be more important past the recent balance changes made for each class since both resources are vital to survivability. Some classes got a glow up in power but others very much became squishier, or lost power and anyone wanting to eek out more power will end up being squishy now -- we can help them circumvent that. So marking targets frequently provides the team with toughness and stamina on kill which will be fueling our own damage via Deadshot while generally making it easier for the rest of the team to stay alive.

   With Deadshot you can easily land kills on on all specials as well as a majority of the elites in the game, even on the highest difficulty Havoc 40. With the bloat in HP in the higher difficulties all means of bumping your ranged damage increase in value. With the Blessings on the Bolt Pistol, I am aiming at making it more of a pocket sniper than can be whipped out, used and put away at a moment's notice. To lean into more power and survival we will be taking Executioner's Stance. This ability will make it easier to snipe targets while also benefiting melee due to the hidden stun immunity that it gives the user. With the added density of elites that increases with difficulty grabbing kills in both ranged and melee will provide the veteran stun immunity, a constant trickle of toughness and a well liked awareness buff via the highlight.

*For a higher damage output alternate build try the talent tree below, it overall has 17.5% more damage which is hard to know how much it actually changed without being on the live patch

https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/a2d05a35-536c-41ea-9898-f93cd47d69e9/alt

         Know your place within the God-Emperor's Design!!!

In Darktide, builds tend to fit loosely into 1 or 2 of the three conceptual military combat role/categories: 

• Vanguard [Frontline Anchors/Melee builds] - Vanguards are anchors are the beefy characters designed to stick around, the ones that can clutch the easiest due to damage reductions, more health and toughness generation. These are your more melee focused builds that lean into increased damage for melee specifically and high survivability using support ranged weapons to complement their close range or sidearms and other longer ranged guns for picking off targets as a way to round out their kits. A lot of the time anchoring requires you to forego some damage as it's not easy to do without skimping out defences. The Zealot, Ogryn, and Arbites fit in this role comfortably as they have lots of built in survivability and melee focus for those clutch situations.

  Think Fury of the Faithful Zealots with Flamers for Crowd Control, melting chaff for the team or Ogryns using Loyal Protector taunt builds with Grenade Gauntlet for Crowd Control and decent close ranged damage. These are usually the beefier more healthy classes.

• Cores [Main Damage Dealers/ Hybrid builds with all-round coverage] - Cores are builds that are more allrounders, not just focused on damage but designed to be good at removing all targets in comparison to others builds with said damage; Specials, Elites, Captains and Monsters if they exist. Cores usually have a lot more damage output potential readily available that other builds and have among the best Blitz coverage and Crowd Control in the game. The Hive Scum, Psyker and Veteran easily fit this role due to the larger amounts of damage output and capability to deal with hordes using a plethora of area denial and given talents on their trees.

  Think Weapons Specialist Veterans with Tac. Axe/Power Sword and Plasma Gun or Venting Shriek Psykers using Purgatus Staff for chaff and soft elites along with Dueling sword for Monsters, Captains and Armored enemies. Hive Scum using Rampage! for melee damage having Needle Pistol for ranged picks and taking Boom Bringer for armored coverage is a very popular example as well as Gunlugger Ogryn using Point-Blank Barrage on Twin-linked Stubbers even if it is a bit more beefy than other cores. These builds will usually have priority on limited resources like stims, ammo and grenades.

• Support [Rearguard/Ranged Builds with team buffs] - Support builds are more utility focused OR ranged focused and are meant to be a backbone of the team, helping in essentially all areas like providing constant toughness recovery or specializing in picking off enemies with ranged weapons. These are builds that do not really focused on killing everything as fast as possible mostly due to what their coverage scenarios would be given their talents and weapon picks. Instead they aim for survival and utility along with a bit more ranged focus to help deal with picking off enemies. The utilities include making space with lock down abilities and decent add clear while also giving the team damage or survivability bumps via things like applying brittle to enemies or giving damage buffs in general to the team while also amplifying their survivability on the side. Support builds are usually resource agnostic as they do not require any pick ups on a map or aren't in priority to have any. Most of the classes can fit a small to even a large support role in the base game -- usually leaning a bit more into the other roles in the upper difficulties. 

  Think Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude Zealots using Combat Blade for mobility and somewhat decent damage into armored targets and monsters along with Beacon of Purity to heal corruption rounding out the build with either a Flamer for crowd control or a Bolt Pistol/ Boltgun for picking off targets at a range, Voice of Command Veterans using Smoke Grenade also count in this category even if that class still has easy coverage for all enemy types at it's fingertips. Additionally your more ranged focused vets using the Helbore Lasguns with Marksman's Focus completely fill this role as they need space to main their gun to pick off targets. And lastly, we have Stimm Supply Hive Scum giving it's unique Stimm lab buffs to their team as it clears enemies via toxin damage. These builds sacrifice some power for team utility or picking power that will help teams get through Havoc runs. They basically need their team up to function at their fullest potential.

   

                                     THE BREAD AND BUTTER

   This build focuses on stamina a bit so you'll want either Bonus Stamina Bars, or Stamina Regeneration on curios (I recommend the latter). This is because we will be using a lot of it and having more, more frequently, aids us in damage and survivability. Sprinting, Blocking and Shoving already takes away our resource and that's why we want to make sure we have more of it.

   Deadshot; This talent FEEDS off of stamina, and requires more bars to get more shots and time aiming down the barrel. Deadshot now drains .5 Stamina while aiming down your sights to reduces your gun sway. When aiming, shooting it will consume another .25 Stamina per shot, this drains our bars more or less depending on the RPM of the gun. Dedicating a curio to extra stamina can be a general boost to the build over all because the extra toughness curio slot will only benefit the build by small amount -- not that the general bump in toughness isn't something you'd want.

   Aside from Deadshot, the build also takes liberty in abusing the hell out of Executioner's Stance due to it's reduction in spread and recoil but also because if it's ranged damage buff AND hidden stun immunity modifier, the very latter still working with melee. And lastly the build utilizes Focus Target! with Target Down!. The build isn't in need or is pressed for another Keystone and this combo helps with ranged picks, slaying armored enemies in melee (this plays into easier 2 tap kills on H40 Crusher) and refreshing your stamina and toughness periodically. The stamina and toughness part is a bit more crucial now since some of the Veteran's toughness was taken away.

                                     LAY ON THE DAMAGE

   This is a true hybrid build which really wants to smooth out the usage of your melee as you are to be expected to be dealing with threats in both melee and ranged efficiently. To do so I still take Survivalist for the steady trickle of ammo. In this current build we are now allowed to take Rending Strikes as opposed to before where you had to spend the extra point to pad out your toughness. We will now be doing slightly better with melee and 15% more with ranged so if the damage from Fire Team does end up seriously increasing the time-to-kill on your gun or it's shots-to-kill breakpoints I will mention them later on. Close and Kill can taken alongside Duck and Dive to specifically provide you with more mobility while using your Power Sword as most will know the weapon is quite clunky. There is a pretty sizeable amount of damage in this build for our ranged weapon in particular. 

Here is a list of our static damage nodes.

• Longshot (Useful for sniping targets and is otherwise a flat 10% ranged damage buff)
• Superiority Complex  (Decent damage bump into Elites)
• Precision Strikes (Big boost in damage for both melee and ranged)
• Bring it Down! (Damage for Monsters and Ogryn)
• Rending Strikes* (This pick is just the best path down into Focus Target)
• Desperado (This gives the Power Sword a very useful damage bump)
• Fire Team (If it makes a meaningful change to Break Point's or Time To Kill)

And then we have the dynamic damage buffs being

• Focus Target! (Spammable Damage bonus to help with sniping and bossing)
• Redirect Fire! (Spammable Damage bonus for the team)
• Deadshot (Dynamic DPS increase when ADS)
• Reciprocity (Massive Crit Boost mid combat)
• Skirmisher (Big Damage boost while maintaining movement)
• Exploit Weakness (Is a strong damage buff that can allow us to 2 shot Havoc 40 Crushers)
• Agile Engagement (this is just a lot of free damage for when you want to swap from melee to ranged for picks)

   The play style for the Accatran MG Mk II Heavy Laspistol the chosen blessings will be more burst oriented since otherwise you will burn out your stamina even with the Deadshot buff. The goal when using this gun is to swap after killing in melee and utilize the Agile Engagement and/or Exploit Weakness buffs to increase your kill pressure on the gun. This tactic coupled with the crit stacking will usually delete most ranged targets as you can cap out at 95% crit along with all the damage buffs and burn from said crits.

Melee also benefits from the other generic buffs that the build has access to as well: Superiority Complex, Precision Strikes, Bring it Down!, Onslaught, Rending Strikes, Reciprocity, Skirmisher and Focus Target!. I will also like to note that while attack speed is ALWAYS good to have in Havocs, attack speed indirectly translates into safety.

   Since Vanguards are a thing now, I am putting more importance onto the Sunder* Blessing again. These enemies stop your energized attacks in their track and can be annoying. Sunder has been increasing in value for a long time now on this weapon and I think more players should try it out given how smooth it makes melee feel on this weapon. The boss damage value is not to be forgotten at all either.

                 DEFENCE, SURVIVABILITY AND CROWD CONTROL

   For Defense, I ALWAYS recommend getting as much toughness possible because the more survival you have, the easier time you have making it to the end of a mission. You should at least aim for +30% baseline via curios. The higher you go into Havoc, the more toughness increases will matter because of how squishy you get and how damage works vs your health in comparison to what percent of your remaining toughness you have when you take a hit. Most of the survivability in this build comes from "Iron Will's" damage reduction and toughness regen from 'Confirmed Kill' procs coupled with Focus Target! and Target Down!.

 Voice of Command is also you're "oh shit" button option if you take it. Voice of Command is probably one of the better CC tools in the game at the Veteran's disposal, and alongside a grenade of your choice (you can take ANY ONE OF THEM), it provides a good amount of Crowd Control giving us a decent amount of breathing room. Aside from that, you should make good use of your stamina to start shoving and mowing down hordes with melee. 

As the most impactful rendition of this build takes Executioner's Stance , it is important to explain how valuable this Combat Ability is. Executioner's Stance is active even when using melee and thus provides and very nice amount of toughness generation when in melee. Executioner's Stance also provides an undisclosed stun immunity when it is active that is not explained at all by the game, this makes it provide a very nice balance between offense and defense. In terms of power output this is the best ability in the Veteran's kit. You can still take Infiltrate, but I do not have much to say about that to be honest.

                                               THE ARMORY

Achlys Mk VI Power Sword: The solution to the threats that the side arm might struggle to kill. This weapon can 2 -3 taps Crushers when aimed at the head. And yes I am talking about 2 tapping crushers in Havoc 40 consistently.

• Carapace + Unyielding: The weapon mows down most chaff in the game as long as we aim head height so our perk choice aims to cover the main problems Specials and Elites. Crushers and Bulwarks are our biggest melee threat so taking Carapace and Unyielding for them is a MUST [Aim for the head: Power Up > Bash Attack > Light Attack 1. Follow through and/or Repeat]. For monsters your combo slightly changes [Aim for the head if you can: Power Up > Bash Attack > Heavy Attack 1 >Heavy Attack 2. Repeat. This is amplified SLIGHTLY by Sunder].

• Power Cycler + Brutal Momentum /Sunder /Slaughterer: Power Cycler is the Bread and Butter choice for the weapon and is a MUST TAKE. Sunder is the choice blessing for anyone who dislikes their attacks stopping abruptly when swinging into mixed hordes. Brutal Momentum is another choice if you don't value the cleave from Sunder and prefer the extra damage with no build up for your combos. Slaughterer is the overall best choice in my opinion because as it is easy to maintain while mulching through hordes giving damage cleave and stagger as it ramps up. This is what allows the easy 2 tap scenario into Crushers. Between the buffs from Slaughterer and other damage stacking you get from the tree, you will be able to deal with Crusher Packs pretty handily.

   

  [With the new changes to armour on Armoured Ragers and the addition of Havoc I would value Sunder even higher than Brutal Momentum]

  *Sunder technically helps with Crowd Control and this is why I take it over Brutal Momentum sometimes. Each enemy that you hit with the power up special will be stunned. Mowing past Bulwarks and the new Vanguards will still allow us to stun everything else and is something I find valuable. Swap between Slaughterer, Sunder and Brutal Momentum and see how you like them on the weapon.

Accatran MG Mk II Heavy Laspistol: This side-arm is a simple pull and shoot weapon that will slot nicely into the build. While chopping down horde you will be building damage up for it via Agile Engagement and Exploit Weakness procs as well as Executioner's Stance. When you are ready to shoot targets you can first ping them with Focus Target! and reap from the DPS amp between the keystone and whatever crit rate bonuses you picked up from procs of Reciprocity and Desperado.

• Flak + Unyielding/Maniac: The gun struggles at sniping, even more so Maniacs can be a problem. The focus on the gun is a bit drawn thin. Between needing it to deal with gunner threats (Dreg, Scab and Ogryn alike) you also may want to focus it a bit more into killing Maniacs. Mutants are something I really feel like is a valid reason alone to take Maniac damage.
• Infernus + Desperado: There are a few blessing combos to go for on this gun like using Dumdum in place of Desperado or Infernus, but doing that doesn't really do well for sniping or much more for actually killing targets as it makes th egun more close ranged focused primarily on the shot damage. The burn can actually help pick up kills at a distance and pretty much guaranteeing the burn through stacking crit up to 95% is a pretty easy way to make sure ranged targets burn out from our shots. That's all there is to this choice, no fishing for crits or focusing on close ranged damage, just consistency.

    For the Curios; Health is always going to be nice but more Toughness means we are less likely to take Health damage if we can keep it up. To be honest Vets get carried by Iron Will so you can forgo Health as much as you want, only needing 5% to break the 100 HP threshold in Havoc 40. Because you can generate toughness at a decent pace you might as well go all in on it for your base Curio bonuses.

CDR > Gunner Resistance >  Revive Speed > Stamina Regeneration Speed > Bomber Resistance

*NOTE: at +36% stamina regen you should get your stamina regen delay to 0.36s from 0.5

HAVOC 40 MODIFIERS ----> 151 TOUGHNESS || 102 HEALTH

     DEFENSE  ★★★☆☆☆ 

     OFFENSE  ★★★★★☆

COMPLEXITY ★★★★☆☆