Warhammer 40,000: Darktide The Ultimate Guide to Griefing

WARNING: Read This Before Continuing!

This guide contains information that may be offensive to certain readers. If you cannot handle being told that you are bad at a video game or are afraid of no-no words, you should stop reading this guide now. Remember, sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you.

Further, you are responsible for your own actions in game. If you are punished for doing something naughty and you lose it all, don't complain about it to me.

Remember, this is only a Steam guide written by some guy, and nothing more.

1. Introduction

At its core, Darktide is a very fun game. Compared to many other co-op horde shooters, Darktide has an incredibly strong gameplay loop. Even if there are (many) problems with the game, what keeps players coming back is the satisfying feeling of the game's combat.

But just as with any mutliplayer game, Darktide is filled to the brim with some of the worst Gamers™ the world has ever seen. You would think that this would only apply to the lowest difficulties in the game, but even all the way up in Auric Maelstroms and Havoc 40s you will still find people who have not figured out that you can skip the opening section of Mercantile by hopping over that fence at the beginning and subsequently wondering why they aren't getting revived when the rest of the team has already dropped down for the event. Or, you will find people who seem to know what they are doing, but take them off of the weapon(s) they are crutching on and you'll be shocked how quickly they get downed.

Unfortunately, behavior like this isn't talked about by the vast majority of the playerbase, at least on mainstream channels. This is due to a significant number of players being Redditors and Discord users, and as we all know, both of these platforms are intense echo chambers that only allow positivity to spread. For those who cannot handle even the smallest amounts of negativity, that's great, but it has the side effect of preventing them from getting better at the game. After all, why try to learn how to use a mechanically interesting weapon like the Crusher when you can equip the Dueling Sword and one-shot every single specialist and elite with zero skill or effort, all while being told how "good" you are and getting Internet points for it?

Of course, players who are actually good at the game don't think like this, at least typically. Someone who is truly good at the game looks at weapons like the Flamer and the Recon Lasgun and sees them for what they are: boring weapons that reward low skill players with cheap kills while denying the rest of the team from being able to play the game. This is the mindset that every player should have. After all, Darktide is a co-op game, and the game is much more enjoyable when everyone is able to participate in killing things. If you disagree with that statement, you are just wrong, and you are trying to play a game that isn't a co-op game.

With all this said, there is a way to turn a bad player into a good player, but the methods you must use to get that outcome will be frowned upon. However, it has been said that actions speak louder than words, and so it falls to the good players to take actions to bring the average skill of this playerbase out of the dumpster. While some lesser players may have different words or phrases for it, such as "being an a-hole" or "having fun", these actions are colloquialy known as griefing.

2. Griefing Requirements

Since the advent of online gaming, griefing has existed as a way for the best players of a particular game to knock some sense into the worst players of the game. In the olden days, griefing was a very effective tool to turn bad players into good players. If you were being bodyblocked into corners while playing CSS after you had spent half the game spectating, that was a sign from your team that you weren't that good at the game. Sure, in the short-term, it might be upsetting, but the point was that it started a conversation in your head about what had transpired. You could ask yourself questions like "Why was I griefed?" or "What did I do that made my teammates want to grief me?" or, most importantly, "What can I do to make sure I don't get griefed again?".

Of course, that was nearly two decades ago, and we've now hit 2025, a year where the average gamer cannot handle being told that he is not as good as he thinks he is without seeing it as an unforgivable sleight against him. Because of the many features added into games to counter griefing and the fact that younger people are quicker to spot when they are being griefed, it is much harder to achieve an outcome like the one described above. That doesn't make it impossible, however. With the right mindset and the right techniques, anything is possible.

With that said, there are some requirements that must be fulfilled before a successful grief can begin.

2a. Be Good At The Game.

This is the most important requirement for the player that is going to do the griefing. It is a verifiable fact that players who don't get downed in missions, who can solo bosses, who don't get trapped, and so on are going to be more respected than those who cannot leave the starting area without being downed. Nobody is going to take you seriously when you call the Voidstrike Psyker garbage if you get trapped five seconds later.

A good rule of thumb is this: if you are able to do Hi-Shock Auric Damnation true duos without using crutch weapons, you are probably at the point where you are good at the game. This alone filters about 95% of the playerbase and 100% of people from Reddit and Discord.

This is the type of gameplay you should be doing if you are truly good.

2b. Use An Ethical Loadout.

This requirement goes in tandem with the previous requirement, because you cannot be a good player if you are using the very weapons or talents that are a problem in the first place.

Here's an example of what I'm taking about: Let's say you're level 60 and playing with the knife on Zealot. You're taking Thy Wrath be Swift and Holy Revenant, which are fairly standard for most Zealot builds, and you're using Shroudfield. You get in to a game with a level 300 Veteran player, who begins to trash talk you for using stealth. At some point, you slip up and Holy Revenant procs. The moment it does, the Veteran is on your ass calling you a bad player and begins trying to grief you. But, as you take a closer look at the Veteran, you notice that he is using the Recon Lasgun and the Dueling Sword, two of the most oppressive weapons in the game, and he is also running Voice of Command with Duty and Honour, providing himself with gold toughness all the time. What is more likely: the person complaining at you is a genuinely good player, or the person complaining at you is a bad player using their own set of crutches to be "good" at the game?

The point of that example is this: you cannot posture yourself as a good player if you are running the same dominant crutch builds as every other player, because you just come across as a hypocrite. It's the old saying of "you can't have your cake and eat it too."

What determines if a loadout is ethical is somewhat subjective, but we'll cover weapons and talents later. In general, if your loadout is making use of gold toughness, stealth, or infinite scaling weapons, your build isn't ethical.

2c. Be On The Right Difficulty.

This should be self explanatory. Lower difficulties are going to lack the horde density needed for griefing, which impacts some of the methods we will discuss later. Griefing should be done on high difficulties where teamwork especially matters, such as Auric Maelstroms and the higher levels of Havoc. Griefing braindead players on Sedition will impress nobody.

2d. Pick A Good Map For Griefing.

While you can grief on any map, there are a handful of maps that are better suited towards griefing, usually those with lots of ledges such as Smelter Complex and Clandestium Gloriana. If it isn't obvious why, don't worry, it will be covered later. Maps that have minimal ledges like Consignment Yard are going to be more difficult to grief on, though not impossible.

Regardless of the map, you should be aware of important spots on the maps, namely spots where backtracking is prevented via dropdowns.

2e. Have The Right Mindset.

Not everyone who tries to grief is good at it. Don't try to grief if any of these apply to you:

You are bad at trash talking.

You have a fragile ego, which is to say you cannot take what you dish out.

You are an automaton, meaning you don't have any original thoughts of your own and can only parrot things you've heard or seen from other people.

You are a Redditor or a Discord user.

Griefing requires a certain mindset that midwits do not have and cannot replicate. Here's a simple test that you can take: go to /coopg/ and post any of the following:

Any contrarian opinion based on what is currently being discussed in the thread

Horribly designed builds that you claim you "run all the time in Auric"

Screenshots of scoreboards that you got where you have the most damage, but your damage is 500K or less

Bring up any political topic and express support for one side and denounce the other (the war between Russia and Ukraine is particularly inflamatory)

Insult American players

Insult European players

Insult white people

Talk about how you think Tanner Lindberg is the Messiah of this game

Show support for People of Gender (who are demons from Hell, by the way)If the replies to your post cause you any amount of discomfort, from minor annoyance to a full on tard rage, you're not going to go far griefing. If you can't get a single (You), then that's even more pathetic.

2f. Be Able To Communicate In English.

Thanks to the efforts of globalists and other agents of Satan, English has become the dominant language of the world. Actions may speak louder than words, but there will be times when you need to speak your mind in either voice chat or text chat, and nobody is going to understand you if you don't speak English. If you are ESL, make sure you're understandable when speaking English.

On the subject of communication, if you are going to use voice chat, you must make sure that you do not have any kind of speech impediment, no matter how subtle it may be. If I can hear you spitting all over your monitor trying to insult me, I'm only going to laugh at you.

2g. Have The Right Mods.

There are a handful of mods that you will want to have in order to be a better griefer, and a better player for that matter. At a minimum, you should install the Scoreboard[www.nexusmods.com] mod or Power DI[www.nexusmods.com] , as either of them will be required for one of the griefing methods presented in this guide. Some other mods that will be helpful include the following:

Spidey Sense[www.nexusmods.com] : Adds icons to the HUD indicating the presence of special enemy types. Most useful for Trappers, Poxbursters, and hounds as these will always be the most threatening enemies towards you. Not required, but be aware sound queues in this game, especially with trappers and Poxbursters, are inconsistent at best.

Numeric UI[www.nexusmods.com] : Provides numerical values for things that normally don't have numerical representation, such as your combat ability cooldown.

True Level[www.nexusmods.com] : Shows the actual level of players based on how much XP they have earned instead of the normal cap of 30.

Who Are You[www.nexusmods.com] : Shows a player's actual name. Most useful for identifying who the console players on your team are.

Danger Zone[www.nexusmods.com] : Shows the radius for things like Poxburster explosions and Daemonhost aggro. Also useful, but not required, for one of the methods described later.

InspectFromPartyFinder[www.nexusmods.com] and InspectFromSocial[www.nexusmods.com] : Allows you to inspect builds for players trying to party with you and players you can see within the social menu. Useful for weeding out bad players. After all, there's no need to grief if everyone in your lobby is a good player.

3. Griefing Targets

This section will cover some of the most common types of people that are worthy of griefing, encompassing talents, weapon picks, playstyles, and so on. In theory, all players are griefable, but some players are more griefable than others. This list won't be comprehensive, nor will it be in any particular order. However, the aim here is to help you identify when someone should be griefed, and conversely when someone shouldn't be griefed.

3a. Dueling Sword Users

The Dueling Sword user is immunized against all dangers: One may call him a coward, cancerous, autistic, garbage, it all runs off him like water off a raincoat. But call him a Bot and you will be astonished at how he recoils, how injured he is, how he suddenly shrinks back: "I’ve been found out".

The number one type of player that should be griefed is a Dueling Sword user. When discussing the Dueling Sword, it should be clear that we're referring to the 4th mark of the sword. To understand why someone should be griefed for using this weapon, we need to consider what the sword does and the behavior it enables.

The Dueling Sword possesses the ability to be able to kill every single specialist and elite in the game in a single hit, potentially two hits. On the surface, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, because plenty of other weapons are capable of doing the same thing. However, the Dueling Sword has a number of advantages going for it:

It is a light weapon, meaning you have more dodges and better stamina, along with having very fast attacks.

Unlike power weapons such as the Thunder Hammer, there is no charging effect you need to apply for the sword to be at its maximum potential. You simply need to be able to heavy attack.

It is available on all three human classes. Weapons like the aforementioned Thunder Hammer are locked to a single class, in this case Zealot.

The horde clearing abilities of the sword, while not the best, are well above average. You have absolutely no issues with horde clear while using this weapon.

It treats armored enemies like they are wearing cardboard, which is to say it practically ignores armor.Putting that all together, we have a weapon capable of one to two shotting any specialist or elite in the game that has fast attacks and strong movement, can easily crowd control a horde, and does not need any special buff to achieve any of this, AND can be used on every human class. This is an absurdly strong combination, one that overshadows a huge number of weapons in the game.

But you may be thinking to yourself, "Doesn't the knife have all of these traits too?" Sure enough, it does. Just like the Dueling Sword, the knife is a fast attacking, high mobility weapon that can one to two shot specialists and elites, and like the Dueling Sword, it has above average horde clear, requires no special buff, and is usable on all three human classes. Both of them also pay no mind to armor. If this is all true, which it is, then why not take issue with the knife too?

This leads us to one additional facet of the Dueling Sword that was purposely omitted: the special attack. The Dueling Sword's special attack is a quick thrust that is able to stun almost every enemy in the game without needing to hit a headshot, only requiring a headshot on enemies like Crushers and Mutants. The knife's special attack is a punch - useful for animation cancelling, but not much else.

These abilities are why the Dueling Sword is such a strong weapon, and why it can singlehandedly take down Crusher packs in seconds. No other melee weapon in the game comes anywhere close to the offensive power this sword can put out. Even the knife can't compete.

If someone tries to make the argument that the sword is only a problem on Zealot, you can safely call that person a moron and ignore everything else he tries to tell you. Even when the sword was only available for Psykers, it was still able to do all of the same things described above. In fact, if anything, it is/was even worse on Psyker due to the fact that Psyker has much stronger damage talents than Zealot has, access to one of the best offensive abilities in the game in the form of Scrier's Gaze, and access to one of the best offensive keystones in the game in the form of Disrupt Destiny.

With all this power, how do you think the majority of players handle the Dueling Sword? If you guessed poorly, you'd be right. Here's what happens: a low level idiot with a Dueling Sword sees a high level idiot with a Dueling Sword run into a horde and kill everything in five seconds. The first idiot thinks to himself, "Wow! That was insane! I bet I can do that too!", and so the next time a horde appears, the low level idiot rushes into it, trying to kill everything just as quickly as the other player did. Only, the low level player is an idiot and doesn't know how to properly dodge, and is immediately greeted by a Mauler overhead, instantly downing him. Now, the rest of his team has to try to rush into the horde to save the idiot, sacrificing ammo, grenades, and potentially health in order to save this idiot player, who will try to repeat the same behavior for the rest of the match. In some cases, he'll fail, but in many other cases, he'll succeed, and that's where the problem with the sword lies. Because it enables even the worst players to succeed despite making massive mistakes, it encourages them to not bother trying to grow their raw skills, condemning them to mediocrity. This is why I refer to Dueling Sword players as bots: they lack any cognitive function beyond use of the Dueling Sword.

The only way to teach Dueling Sword users that they need to learn how to actually play the game is by punishing them for using it. Since the weapon has no kind of punishment, and there has been absolutely no indication that the weapon will be nerfed in any capacity in the future, it is up to you to induce punishment in the form of griefing.

When asked to generate a picture of a Dueling Sword user, an AI gave me this:

3b. Staff Psykers

The previous section covering the Dueling Sword was centered around a melee weapon that completely outshines every other melee weapon in the game. But what if I told you that there was a secondary weapon that outshines every other secondary weapon in the game? Further, what if I told you that it wasn't just a single secondary weapon, but actually three secondary weapons? And then, what if I told you that these three secondary weapons did what the Dueling Sword did, and in fact they were even stronger than the Dueling Sword? Surely such a collection of weapons couldn't exist... right?

Psyker's staves are gigantic red flags, and anyone using a staff should be griefed, especially if using the Purge Staff. To understand why, let's examine the properties of the staves:

Staves have no ammo requirement, meaning they can constantly be used throughout a mission without the concern of running out of ammo.

Staves make use of peril, something that Psyker wants to have at all times. The supposed downside of the staves, that being peril management, is not a downside when Psyker has talents that scale off of your peril.

Staves scale infinitely. By infinitely, I mean that no matter how dense a horde is, the staves will always be able to keep up. The Purge Staff in particular is really bad about this.

Staves can clear hordes in seconds. Even Zealots struggle to keep up with how quickly a staff Psyker can melt a horde.

Staves effectively ignore armor due to how much damage they dish out just by holding down M2.These attributes are why the staves are as strong as, and stronger than, the Dueling Sword. The abilitiy to obliterate any number of enemies in seconds thanks to the Trauma Staff's AoE damage, the Voidstrike Staff's death orb, and the Purge Staff's... well, any attack, make the staves even more effective at killing than the Dueling Sword is. If someone with a Dueling Sword could kill four Crushers in six seconds, a staff Psyker could kill eight Crushers in half the time. If you want to see just how strong these staves are, hop into the Psykhanium with the Creature Spawner mod, spawn a sh*tload of different kinds of enemies, and then equip the Purge Staff, and watch as you can kill every enemy just by holding down M2 a couple of times. You'll be amazed at how little effort you have to put in compared to what a Zealot or Veteran has to do to have the same effect. Pair the staves with Soulblaze and the Warp Siphon keystone for even stronger hordeclear.

It is this insane hordeclear that makes the staves such an unfun thing to play around. How is anyone else on the team supposed to kill anything when a staff Psyker can enter a room and take out every threat before the other players have had a chance to even survey the room? A core principle of a co-op horde shooter is that everyone should be able to contribute to the team in some capacity, but the staves completely circumvent this by turning Psyker into a one-man army. The staves also have the same problem that the Dueling Sword has, in that they are so good that they actively discourage players from learning how to actually play the game. And so, just like how it is necessary for good players to punish those using the Dueling Sword, it is also necessary for good players to punish those using the staves.

There is an exception to this, and that is the staff I have not mentioned: the Surge Staff. While the Surge Staff doesn't require ammo and does scale off of peril (through talents and weapon blessings), it does not scale infinitely or have spectacular hordeclear abilities. This is due to its single target nature, and because of this, the Surge Staff ends up being a more ethical weapon. Surge Psykers also tend to actually know how to play the game, which is nice.

3c. Smite Psykers

It should be obvious why this section is here as Smite has always been considered a joke. Smite Psykers truly believe that being able to stun a horde is better than killing said horde. Of course, to achieve this stun, the Smite Psyker has to stand around with his thumb up his ass as he holds down his mouse button. Since Smite does pitiful damage, this forces the rest of the team to deal the actual damage to get the kills. If this sounds like a waste of time, that's because it is. Here is a golden rule that you can print out and hang above your bed: killing the horde will always, always, always be a better option than stunning the horde.

Thankfully, Smite Psykers tend to be more braindead than your average staff Psyker, so these guys end up being pretty easy to grief.

3d. Flamer Zealots

The Flamer has the same problem that the Purge Staff does, the only difference being that the Flamer has ammo and does comparatively less damage to armor. Despite this, it is still just as effective at horde clear. The problem with this is that Zealot is already good at hordeclear with his melees, meaning there is zero reason you should be running the Flamer. If you see a Zealot running the Flamer, there is a 100% chance that that Zealot does not know how to manage the horde and is going to be a detriment to your team in the long run.

3e. Stealth Zealots And Stealth Veterans

Even though Shroudfield and Infiltrate have different numerical properties, they both employ the same mechanic of stealth, which is why these two playstyles are combined into a single section.

Stealth is the talent of choice for the selfish player, and this is due to how stealth affects enemy AI. When you enter stealth, enemies will stop attacking you and start attacking other players on your team. That's great for you, but when multiple Gunners are shooting at you and now decide to target another player that's trying to manage the horde, that player is practically guaranteed to get downed because of you. You might not think that this happens if you only play on low difficulties where Gunners seldom appear in packs, but it certainly does on higher difficulties where Gunners are a more important threat.

Stealth turns what would be a cooperative player into a solo player, which is antithetical to the type of game Darktide is. This isn't to say that you need to be in coherency at all times - you don't. But what always happens with these stealth players is that they will run too far ahead and get themselves downed, and when their teammates are unable to revive them in time, they will either throw a fit in chat or leave the game outright. While anyone can behave like this, stealth users do it far more often than others.

Add in the fact that stealth allows you do to objectives with absolutely no difficulty and effectively functions as a Get Out of Jail Free card when you fail to position yourself correctly makes for a perfect crutch ability for low skill players. Grief them on sight.

Oh, and PS: any true solo where you use stealth to run through the map while not fighting anything is a pathetic true solo not worthy of any praise.

3f. Speedrunner Zealots

Of all the entries in this section, this one will likely have the least amount of contention, even among noobs. It also doesn't really any explanation. Also known as Zealots who only take talents on the rightmost tree, speedrunner Zealots make it their life goal to zoom through the map as fast as possible in an effort to clear the mission quickly. As they run through, they won't kill anything, leaving the rest of their team to deal with the resulting spawns. If it isn't obvious why this kind of playstyle shouldn't been seen in a co-op game, please stick to low difficulty missions and keep your retardation out of Auric. This is one of the few playstyles where you actively grief your team, whether or not you intend to do so, just by running it.

This kind of playstyle is NOT to be confused with players who are running through the map and killing everything they see. A situation like this just means you have a good player on your team, not someone trying to be malicious.

3g. Chorus Zealots And Voice Of Command (with Duty And Honour) Veterans

Like with stealth, these talents are being combined because they both function around stuns and providing gold toughness to the team. Yes, I know that VoC does not inherently grant gold toughness unless you take D&H, but I dare you to find any VoC build where D&H isn't taken.

To understand why these talents are a problem, we need to understand why gold toughness is a problem. The reason why gold toughness is a problem is because it negates the punishment that you should be taking for screwing up. If you get sniped by a Sniper, or blown up by a Poxburster, you should be taking some damage as a punishment. Both of these enemies are easy to counter, and there are plenty of options for counterplay against them that will always be effective (barring any broken mechanics on the game's part). Similarly, getting hit by a Crusher or Mauler overhead is a strong indicator that you didn't have good positioning. Getting punished promotes learning, and you should be learning how to avoid getting sniped, getting blown up by Poxbursters, and getting hit by overheads.

Gold toughness discourages this learning by preventing these punishments from happening. While you have gold toughness of any amount, you cannot take any health damage from Sniper shots, Poxbursters, and Crusher and Mauler overheads. If that sounds incredibly overpowered, that's because it is. You should not be able to effectively turn off enemy attacks like this, especially when these enemies are very simple to deal with.

These talents don't just give gold toughness - they also stun enemies, which is also a problem. If you are backed into a corner because you didn't position yourself correctly, you need to either have the skill to get yourself out of that corner, be able to kill the enemies surrounding you, or you just need to eat the down. Again, if this happens to you, it should be a moment of learning. But these talents negate this, because by just pressing your ability key, you now have a huge window of time where you can freely walk out of any dangerous situation, all while preventing enemies from attacking you due to the stun, and while having the safety net of gold toughness.

To top it off, both of these abilities are very spammable thanks to Veteran and Zealot having talents that reduce ability cooldowns. If you see players using either of these talents, know that they are absolutely crutching on them and are going to require constant babysitting the entire match. And before you start crying about these talents being required in Havoc, realize that neither of them are required and good players often don't use them.

3h. Bubble Psykers

Yes, yes, I know that the bubble is useful. In fact, you'll often see high level players using it pretty often. The problem with the bubble is that it trivializes ranged combat, which is yet again something that you should be learning how to handle. There will be situations where you do not have cover against a group of Gunners, and in these situations you should either be killing the Gunners or quickly getting to the nearest cover you can find. The bubble negates these situations by giving you a substantial amount of pseudo-invincibility via turning off ranged damage, but thankfully it doesn't last long when multiple Gunners are firing at it. Whether or not a bubble user should be griefed will often depend on when and how the bubbles are being used.

This is also another ability that morons will claim is required for Havoc, and I will state again that this is not true.

3i. Warp Siphon Psykers

The biggest issue with Warp Siphon is that it enables the staves to be even more effective than they already are because of how easy it is to obtain Warp Charges on high difficulties. With the talents below the keystone that provide increased damage, decreased peril generation, and toughness replenishment, the keystone helps the staves snowball in damage, which is absolutely not needed with how the strong they are to begin with. Beyond that, this keystone is pretty boring and only serves the single purpose of making staff Psykers even less fun to play with.

3j. Recon Lasgun Users

If this guide had been made a year ago, this section would be titled "Vraks Mk 5 Users." Due to a shift in the meta, the Recon Lasgun's VId mark has dethroned the Vraks Mk 5 (formerly Columnus) as the most annoying fully automatic gun to play with. With an enormous ammo pool, absolutely zero recoil, a large magazine, and access to some of the strongest blessings for any gun, the Recon Lasgun is absolutely devastating against specialists, elites, and bosses. It is especially potent on Gunpsyker, where a single Gunpsyker with this weapon can shred through everything in a room in no time at all. It shouldn't be shocking that this weapon is a crutch used by players who can't hit headshots and don't understand how to conserve ammo, but thankfully it isn't often seen in missions where ammo pickups are limited or nonexistent.

3l. Plasma Veterans

Ever since it was buffed, the Plasma Gun has become a dominant weapon among low skill Veterans, and seeing it in game is a surefire sign that the Veteran using it is afraid of armored enemies. With its piercing, high damage shots, the Plasma Gun is able to stagger groups of Crushers and Bulwarks without any issue, trivializing the threat that groups of these enemies should pose. Because the projectile is so large, hitting weakspots is laughably easy, meaning there is no skill in aiming required when using this thing; in fact, because the damage is so high, you don't even need to aim for weakspots and can still kill the majority of specialists and elites in 1-2 shots. The weapon's downsides are a long reload time and having to manage heat. The former downside isn't an issue when you can kill everything in the room with little ammo use, and the latter downside is only a problem if you aren't paying attention (which happens to a surprising amount of these idiots). It is yet another crutch, and Veterans using it should always be griefed.

3m. Point-Blank Barrage Ogryns

Hey, Ogryn players finally get their own dedicated section! Also known as Gun-luggers, these Ogryns are some of the strangest people you'll ever meet. They adamantly believe that Gun-lugger Ogryn is this insane powerhouse of a class and that Ogryn's gunning abilities are better than what the Veteran brings to the table. These beliefs are obviously wrong: not only can Gun-lugger not keep up with what Veteran does because Veteran has access to things like the Plasma Gun and the Recon Lasgun, but the only way it can even be on par with Veteran is by taking over half of the ammo pickups on the map. This is because Ogryn's guns are generally really bad, and his best guns (the Ripper and the Kickback) do not synergize with Gun-lugger. Coupled with the fact that Burst Limiter Override is a terrible keystone, you are basically wasting talent points if you try to build Ogryn this way.

The reality of this build is Ogryn players desperately trying to make Ogryn seem way stronger than he actually is. The only way one could conclude that this is true is by running Gun-lugger builds on lower difficulties. You'll "shred" enemies, but only because nothing is a threat.

As an aside, if you are going to argue against this build being bad and are going to reference terrible guides like the Orgynomicon as evidence, please leave a comment so I can laugh at you.

3n. Miscellaneous

The things in this section are not worthy of their own sections but still deserve to be called out. This is not a comprehensive list, but should give you a general idea of grief-worthy players.

Shield Ogryn: Not only is the shield a very boring weapon to play with, but its special attack exists as a crutch for players who can't handle Gunners.

Kickback Spammer Ogryn: I know that I said that the Kickback is one of Ogryn's best guns, but people who spam this thing at every special enemy they are braindead. If you use the weapon sparingly, then it is okay, but that almost never happens in public games.

Feel No Pain Ogryn: Not only is this keystone awful with a very shoddy uptime, but Ogryns running this are guaranteed to have problems staying alive. It's a bit hard to blame them with how bad Ogryn feels to play, but you should encourage them to use Heavy Hitter. Actually, scratch that, you should encourage them to complain more about how absolutely terrible all of the Ogryn keystones are.

Roleplayer Ogryns: Anyone who is a big enough loser that he feels it is necessary to talk like a subhuman in chat because it's how his in-game character talks is someone who should be griefed. The only people who laugh at this kind of "humor" have less than 100 IQ and lack any inner monologue.

Venting Shriek Psyker: This ability circumvents the punishment (that being getting downed) for poor peril management, which is something you should be mastering on Psyker. It is also always used by staff Psykers.

Krak Spammer Veteran: "Hey, is that guy soloing the Plague Ogryn? I know! I'll toss over as many Krak Grenades as possible so that I do half of more of the Plague Ogryn's health in damage with absolutely no effort!"

Krak Spammers also have this really funny habit of wasting their grenades on single targets that they could easily take down with melee. The exceptions to this are if you spam Kraks on a Beast of Nurgle, because that boss is terribly designed and doesn't deserve to be taken down ethically, or if you use your Kraks on Bulwarks, which are supposed to be threatening but on high levels of play just end up being anti-fun enemies.

Focus Target Veteran: Focus Target removes the need for precise aiming, discouraging the development of a crucial skill you need on ranged weapons. The constant pinging is also obnoxious, but that's just a subjective opinion.

Zarona Mk IIa Revolver Users: Effectively a weaker Plasma Gun but available on every human class. Typically used by Zealots who don't know how to throw knives correctly. Not as fun as the Agrippina, but is overall less offensive than some of the other weapons listed previously.

Console Players: Why anyone thinks that playing an intensive game like Darktide on a console that is locked to 30 FPS is beyond me, but as long as crossplay cannot be disabled by PC players, console players are always going to be the worst players on any team.

Ping Spammers: You know those people who get downed and immediately start spam pinging the ground next to them? That's what I'm referring to.

Actually, keep spam pinging; maybe if you do it 50 more times, I'll bother reviving your worthless ass instead of leaving you to die.

Child Predators: I hope it isn't a point of contention that players who are known weirdo freaks should be griefed. I'm looking at you, buddy!

The Classic Griefer Targets: Return to the glory of the late 2000s and early 2010s and find yourself the nearest furry, brony, weeaboo, or member of another group of dweebs to grief. Be warned that these groups have become more difficult to mess with due to years of abuse conditioning them to ignore people laughing at them.

3o. Contested Targets

The things in this section are contested as to whether or not they are grief-worthy. I will attempt to provide arguments for and against griefing when these things are seen, but ultimately it is up to you to decide what is and is not acceptable.

Thy Wrath Be Swift: While the talent doesn't say it, it also provides immunity to stuns caused by Gunners. Regardless, having immunity to stuns is very strong, some would argue too strong. I would counter this by proposing that this should be an inherent feature that each class has. Stun mechanics in games are never fun because they remove player agency and prevent counterplay, leading to what feels like cheap deaths. That said, I would also support changing the stun mechanics against enemies.

Until Death and Holy Revenant: The ability to ignore a hit that would have downed you is strong, but it also negates the punishment you should have gotten from a bad play. I would counter this by noting that this talent prevents the inconvenience of having to revive you if you are downed in a bad spot, and so your team won't need to rush in and save you. It also has a very long cooldown, and you can be downed if you do not fix your mistakes within the five seconds of invincibility it provides.

Zealot's Relic Blades: These weapons are extremely strong in hordeclearing, and they aren't slouching in the damage department against specialists, elites, and bosses either. You can argue that these blades are crutches as Zealot is already plenty strong with hordeclear. I would argue that the mobility on the swords is quite poor, so positioning matters more, and they perform much worse when not powered. You also must be consciously deciding when to power the sword so that you don't put yourself in the situation where you need to power the sword and are unable to.

Veteran's Power Sword: Believe it or not, some people seem to really believe this sword is better than all of Veteran's other melee options. While this sword's high damage and strong horde clear are appealing, the sword has atrociously bad movement and really sucks against bosses.

Voice of Command Veteran without Duty and Honour: Removing the gold toughness talent turns VoC into a very useful stun tool without protecting you from things like Snipers and Poxbursters. While this is still a stun and can be argued to be a crutch, I find that it is very useful for Havoc 40 games during true duos and trios - this still does not mean it is required. I am much more willing to accept a Veteran doing this, if you win the lottery of finding one doing this, than a Veteran spamming gold toughness.

Psyker's Blaze Force Greatswords: These things are very potent, dealing great damage and having strong horde clear in the form of the special attack. I have heard the argument that the special attack functions as a mini Trauma Staff, and I can see where that argument comes from. But just like the Relic Blades, these greatswords are slow swinging and have poor mobility, so positioning is still important. I leave it up to you on whether these weapons are grief-worthy.

Psyker: Some high level players have proposed that anyone playing Psyker, regardless of build, deserves to be griefed. Now, I won't fully endorse this position, especially when most Gunpsyker builds tend to be very ethical, but I will state that on average 4 out of 5 Psyker players you come across deserve to be griefed. So, use your best judgment when it comes to this opinion - you should probably only hold it if you are in the top 1% of players.

4. Griefing Methods

Now that we have gone over the requirements for griefing and have outlined who acceptable grief targets are, it is time to outline the many different methods you can use to grief.

What methods you employ on your griefing adventure will depend on the map being played, the target or targets chosen, what modifiers the mission has, what class you are playing, how fast you can move, etc. Some methods will be applicable at a universal scale, while others will only work under certain conditions. It is up to you to determine which methods you will choose to employ. Bear in mind that some methods may not have a guarantee of success, possibly due to factors outside of your control. Regardless, you should read and understand each of the methods so that you know when it is ideal to utilize them. After all, there is nothing stopping you from doing multiple methods at once!

Oh, and when it comes to votekicks, remember that a majority needs to be reached before a player is kicked. That means three yes votes on a team of four, and two yes votes on a team of three. In duos, kicking isn't possible.

4a. Trash Talking

Perhaps the simplest method in any game that has a chat feature, trash talking is a simple strategy wherein you berate your target with as many insults as possible.

The key with trash talking is that it isn't something you are going to be good at the first time you do it, especially if you aren't comfortable being more aggressive than you're used to. There is a whole science involved that determines how effective your trash talking will be, which is influenced by both things you witness and can manipulate in the game itself, and also the psychological state of the chosen target. There is also no defined quantity of insults you must hurl to achieve or goal, other than the logic that weaker insults require more insults being hurled to achieve the same effect as fewer, stronger insults.

Here's a simple example. You are playing with a level 218 Purge Staff Psyker using the Dueling Sword. Without even having to see how he behaves in game, there are already a number of ways to insult this person: he is using two of the biggest crutches in the game, is playing the easiest class in the game, and is at a high enough level where he shouldn't need to be using either of these weapons. That gives you three vectors for insult: playing with crutches, playing the easiest class, and claiming that he was boosted to that high level.

When you get in game with this Psyker, make it your mission to critique EVERY mistake that he makes. It doesn't matter if that mistake is getting trapped, dogged, hit by an overhead, swallowed by a Beast of Nurgle, or anything else, but the moment a mistake happen is when you should capitalize on it. After all, surely somebody using two of the strongest weapons (arguably the strongest weapons) in the game shouldn't be making these mistakes. How you phrase your insults is up to you, but critically it should be from the perspective of laughing at the target player.

Here are some insults that can work in almost any situation:

Call the player low skill: This is the easiest way to anger people as they will feel that their Gamer Pride™ is under attack.

Insult the player's choice of class: This is especially effective on Ogryn players who are always insecure about how bad their class is and Psyker players who hate being told how overpowered their class is.

Proclaim how much better you are: This only works if you are actually doing better than the target player, which can be verified via the Scoreboard mod or Power DI.

Call the player retarded: Insults to the intelligence are one of the biggest blows you can deal to someone's ego.

Call the player a slur: Use whatever preferred slur you want. Slurs insulting the characteristics of people usually hit harder.

If you are griefing an American, it is helpful to keep in mind that Americans have been conditioned by their tiny-hatted overlords to have visceral reactions against certain words, namely a word starting with the letter N and a word starting with a P. Hopefully it is obvious what words these are.If you are a woman, and by woman I mean an actual woman and not a man in a dress, you have special privilege over two specific insults that only work when told by a woman to a man. These are guaranteed to cause instant seethe in men:

Say that the man is a virgin

Say that the man has a small penisYou can also try to call the man an incel, but that word has lost all meaning due to overuse and you'll just make yourself look stupid by using it.

One last point: trash talking in voice chat is 100% more effective than trash talking in text chat. This is because text chat sucks: not only is it way easier to report text chat, it also doesn't give you a chance to show off your ability to generate insults and converse on the fly. However, if you can't communicate well in English (or whatever language you are trying to use), have a speech impediment, or have a high pitched voice, you should avoid using voice chat to avoid getting bullied by your target.

This video is a great example of professional trash talking in action.

4b. Barreling

Barreling, as the name suggests, is when you explode a barrel that a target is standing next to. There are two types of barrels that the game has: fire barrels and explosive barrels. The only real difference between the two for the purposes of this guide is that the fire barrels leave behind a fire pool after exploding, while the explosive barrels will not.

Barreling is very simple to pull off. All you need to do is wait for the target player to walk by a barrel, at which point you quickly cause it to detonate by shooting it twice with whatever ranged weapon you prefer. The resulting blast will do health damage, and will also knock back the targeted player. If the barrel exploded was a fire barrel, the resulting pool of fire has a chance to do further health damage. You can also time the barrel to explode just when the targeted player walks past it by shooting it once or hitting it with a melee weapon. If you opt to do this, make sure the player isn't aware that you've done it, or your setup will be for nothing.

Where barreling becomes very effective is when there are ledges involved. Thanks to some barrel placements, it is possible to barrel someone so that they will be launched off the map. In 95% of cases, this is a guaranteed death, but sometimes the game will save the player by having them grab on to a ledge. If this happens, you should use one of the strategies for griefing downed players described below. If you can bait a group of enemies over to the ledged player, they will more than likely kill that player in a matter of seconds.

If it wasn't obvious already, Clandestium Gloriana is an excellent spot for barreling. Thanks to the opening section of the map having a massive amount of ledges and barrel spawns, it is super easy to barrel anyone who hangs near the ledges for too long. Just be careful not to barrel yourself by mistake!

4c. Delaying The Game

Delaying the game refers to any strategy that prevents the mission from progressing as expected. There are multiple ways to delay the game, but be warned that this method will punish every other player in the lobby beyond your target, so make sure not to do this unless your teammates are also being unethical. We wouldn't want to be unethical, now would we?

The most straightforward way to delay the game is to not enter any "airlock" sections of any map that require all team members to be present before progressing. This includes the traditional airlocks that you normally see, but also includes elevators.

Some maps have an additional way to delay the game. Certain mid events and end events will not trigger until every team member has passed a certain point, so as long as you hang back before the event in question, the event will never commence and the target player will be stuck waiting. Examples of where this is the case are the mid event on Chasm Station and the end event on Ascension Riser. Examples of events where this is NOT the case are the mid event on Ascension Riser and the end events on assassination assignments. You will need to have an understanding of the events on each map and what causes them to trigger if you wish to employ this strategy.

A funny way to delay the game without making it obvious that you are delaying the game involves elevators. By standing against the back entrance on certain elevators, you aren't technically counted as being in the elevator even though you physically are. This requires the elevator to be oriented such that there is only one way in and out of it, meaning you would be standing against the wall where the other entrance would be. As an example, the elevator to the end event of Magistrati has this property, and so does the elevator just after the Medicae station on Clandestium Gloriana (before the section where you need to break ice). This can lead to situations where your teammates will be oblivious as to why elevators cannot be activated, but you must take care not to move out, or be moved out, of your position, lest you actually be counted as in the elevator.

Excluding Dark Communion, every map has a guaranteed way to delay the game after the mission has been finished: if you simply do not enter the Valkyrie (or airlock/elevator) at the end of the game, the game won't end. This is guaranteed to cause massive amounts of seethe as you are denying your target of their precious XP and crafting materials that have had to "work" for, and can be done indefinitely. Technically, you could delay Dark Communion indefinitely by not breaking the stim tubes at the end, but that would require none of your teammates being alive, which is difficult to have happen in practice.

With any of these methods, remember that your safety is paramount. Specialists and elites won't stop spawing just because you've stopped moving, and all it takes is a single disabler to end your reign of terror. On Maelstroms with the monstrous modifier, this is doubly important. For this reason, make sure to conserve ammo and rely on your melee, only using ammo for the toughest enemies that come for you.

I find that this strategy works best against speedrunners and usually causes them to leave the game when they realize they can't progress any further. Don't be afraid to employ some trash talk too, as long as you're safe to do so!

4d. A Huge Wave Of Nincompoops Is Approaching

This strategy is designed around overwhelming your target with more enemies than they can handle. For this strategy to work, you need to be able to move fast, meaning it will be much more difficult to pull off on Ogryn and Veteran. Zealot works perfectly, and Psyker can also work if your move speed is high enough. Light weapons are also preferred. You also need to be on a high enough difficulty in order to maximize the density of the horde.

Here's what you do: while your target is busy doing something else, start running far ahead in the map, making sure to alert as many enemy patrols as possible. Your goal is to amass a horde of mixed enemy types, ideally with Bulwarks, Ragers, and Crushers. Gunners aren't ideal as they don't tend to follow you, but Shotgunners may give chase. Once you have enough enemies following you, run back to your target, and keep running past your target once you see them. If done correctly, all of the enemies you summoned will switch their aggro over to your targeted player, leading him to fight a battle he has a very low chance of winning and subsequently being downed or killed. You can further increase the effectiveness of this strategy if an actual horde appears while you are gathering enemies.

If you choose to use this strategy, make sure that you are good enough that you can handle being chased by multiple enemies. Nothing would be more embarrassing than getting downed half a mile away and then getting laughed at by your target. I find that this strategy works best against Plasma Gun users.

4e. Revive Griefing

There are multiple ways to grief a target who has been downed or killed. Trash talking is something that always works, but these strategies focus on things that you can actually do in the game.

First and foremost, you can simply choose not to revive a downed or killed target. Whether or not the target can safely be saved or revived is somewhat irrelevant, but it usually sends a stronger message if your target's body is clear and you deliberately choose not to revive him. You can further enhance seethe by forcing the respawn location to move further up on the map. This almost always causes the target to ask why he isn't being saved, at which point you can either explain to him why you aren't saving him (which is lamer, but more helpful), or you can just start trash talking him (which is funnier, but less helpful).

For downed players, and for ledged players as well, another simple strategy is to pretend to revive them. Just revive them close enough to the point where they would be saved, and then stop reviving them. Spamming revive on your target is also a funny way to grief. Where this is really effective is in the situations where your other teammates believe that you have the revive handled. Most Darktide players are completely clueless and won't think twice if they see you reviving someone that you have no intention of reviving; if the target dies, they'll just assume something prevented you from finishing the revive.

There is a third, more subtle interaction for downed players involving fire. Whenever you are revived in fire, you have no grace period for when you will start taking health damage. We can use this to our advantage. Simply bait a Bomber or either Flamer variant over to your downed target and wait for them to cover the area with flame. Once a large pool of fire is on the ground, commit to reviving your target. If the target can't get out of the fire in time, he will die. For this to work, the target does need to be on his last wound, so this will be tougher to pull off on players crutching on wounds. Also, the pool of fire needs to be sufficiently large so that no matter which direction he goes he will be damaged. It may be helpful to stand over your target if a Bomber is throwing bombs at you to maximize the area where your target will have to run through. Just remember not to burn yourself in the process.

A quick note on bots: bots will not attempt to rescue dead players, but they will attempt to revive downed players. For this reason, if a bot dies, it is preferred that you let them stay dead to prevent them from accidentally reviving your target.

4f. Speedrunning

Remember how I talked about speedrunner Zealots as a playstyle that was grief-worthy? This was because speedrunning left your team to deal with all of the enemies that you ran past. This is also why speedrunning is an effective griefing tool. By speedrunning through the map and not killing anything, your target player will have that many more enemies to deal with, which will hopefully lead to a down or death. If you are going to speedrun, remember that you need to have speed at all times, so no killing enemies unless it is absolutely necessary. Bring stamina curios, have Sprint Efficiency and Stamina Regen on those curios, and take as many speed boosting talents as possible. The faster you can go, the better.

4g. Skipping Sections Of The Map

This is a strategy that applies to one map in particular (that I know of!), and said map will be unnamed to protect this method's integrity. On this particular map, there is a section of the map where you can skip past about 10% of the playable area by getting yourself in and out of an unplayable area. 10% may not sound like much, but it forces the rest of your team to fight through that 10% without the benefit of your help. For players who rely on crutches, this can be a death sentence.

There are two things to keep in mind if you perform this skip. First, doing this skip will break the game director, and the moment you return to the playable area you will typically be greeted by sudden spawns of patrols, ranging from harmless Shotgunners to deadly Reapers or Gunners. When this happens, just stay calm and focus on protecting yourself properly. Additionally, you are not safe when you are in the unplayable area. Enemies will have no problem getting to you if you choose to linger in there, so watch out for disablers.

4h. Trapping Yourself

This is a somewhat obscure method that might only happen by chance, but can be manipulated to happen on demand. In my time playing the game, it has only happened once and occurred during a true duo on complete accident, but it should be something that can be done in a standard game.

For this to work, you will need a door that enemies come out of and something that can grab and throw you. In most cases, that's doing to be a Mutant, but a Chaos Spawn may work too. Here's what you do: position yourself by the door so that you are hugging it, and get grabbed by a Mutant. If done at the correct position, the Mutant will throw you, clipping you through the door and into a spawn room where enemies, well, spawn. You'll know you're in the right room if you can see enemies spawning in right in front of you. Once you're in this position, you're invincible so long as you can kill whatever spawns in that room with you. Leaving the room is similar: get a Mutant to spawn, and position yourself near the door so that the Mutant grabs you and throws you outside.

This strategy may not be the most practical, but it is pretty fun to do and can freak out players who don't understand how you got to where you are.

4i. Poxburster Manipulation

As the name implies, this strategy involves manipulating Poxbursters so that they explode on your target. You can do this by shoving the Poxburster into your target as it's about to explode, baiting the Poxburster to explode on your target by running into your target, or just shooting the Poxburster when your target is attempting to shove it. Poxbursters do crazy damage and can cause downs or deaths, making them useful tools. Additionally, because the resulting explosion has knockback, you can cause your target to get ledged or even fall off the map, adding to the humiliation. Caution should be taken to make sure you don't end up the victim of your own attack - even clueless morons will pick up attempts you make to Poxburster them, so act fast and don't screw it up.

4j. Baiting Overheads

You can bait all sorts of attacks into your opponents, but overheads are probably the most straightforward ones to bait due to their long windup time. To do this, you need to be mobile, so make sure you have stamina. You also need to keep track of your target at all times in order to position yourself correctly. Wait for a group of Maulers and/or Crushers to target you, and bring them back towards your target. Bait out one or more overheads, and once you see the attacks begin, dash backwards so that your target is between you and the enemies. With good timing and a bit of luck, your target will be hit by the overhead, causing them to die, get downed, or proc their Until Death if it was available. It is difficult to do, and may only happen by accident, but it is very rewarding if you are able to pull it off.

This method is less effective against Smite Psykers but can be pulled off if you lure in the enemies from a direction where the Psyker isn't smiting.

4k. TOS

If your target happens to be a livestreamer, and he happens to be live, and he has made the mistake of leaving voice chat or text chat on, you're in luck. With only a single word, you can jeopardize his entire streaming career! All you need to do is repeat this word quickly and loudly, and the Twitch/Youtube/whatever moderation team will take care of the rest. If you aren't sure what word you need to say, please refer to the trash talking section above. If you still aren't sure what word it is, ask your friend the next time you're on the short bus together.

4l. Activating A Daemonhost

When a Daemonhost is activated, it will begin to attack the player that activated it. If you are that player and you leave the game, the Daemonhost will choose another target, usually the person closest to it. 99% of the time this is a guaranteed death, and on the off chance that the remaining members of your team are able to finish the Daemonhost off, they will usually be in a pretty bad state healthwise which can lead them to wiping. Getting the positioning on this correct can be challenging, but all you need to do is wait for your target to be the closest person to you and then aggro the Daemonhost. The moment the Daemonhost begins to enter its attacking phase (when it starts going apesh*t) is when you should leave.

You can choose to join back into the mission after you have left, or just leave the team to deal with the chaos. Completely up to you. This strategy is most effective if there is also a horde swarming the team at the same time as the Daemonhost attacks.

4m. Damage Mogging

This method requires having the Scoreboard mod or Power DI, so make sure you have one of these installed. It doesn't matter which one.

Damage Mogging is simply the act of getting more damage than your target. While a simple premise, how you get that damage matters. Just like how griefing is less impactful if you rely on crutches to play the game, so to is dealing more damage if you are using crutches to get that damage. The entire point of damage mogging is to show your target that you don't need the crutches he needs and you can do better at the game than he can. It doesn't matter if you beat him by 1 point of damage or 100,000 points of damage; all that matters is that you beat him.

Once that final scoreboard shows up after the mission ends, you are free to taunt your target with the fact that you did more damage than him. This will deal a significant blow to his ego, and he will probably spit back some cope about how "toxic" you are. Pay him no mind, you are the superior player. Unless he outdamaged you, of course. If that happened, you'd be the loser, and we definitely don't want that to happen.

4n. Use Your Imagination!

Sometimes the best way to grief will only be apparent in the middle of the game and will only be effective for a specific player. If none of the techniques described above work, try something new! These are only a handful of the possibilities that you can employ. The only limit is your creativity and skill.

5. Conclusion

If you stuck around to here, thanks for reading this guide. I know it's a lot of text, but know it came from a place of passion.

Hopefully this guide has been informative. Darktide is a game with a lot of potential, but it will only get there through a strengthening of the playerbase. In a perfect world, the players of this game would cast away their Dueling Swords, Staves, Plasma Guns, and each and every other crutch in the game, and we would enter a new era of skilled play unlike anything ever seen. The methods to get to that perfect world may be frowned upon, but take pride in knowing that every garbage player griefed brings us closer to a utopia.

Constructive criticism is always welcome.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3417756022

The Ultimate Guide to Griefing