Weapon Perks - First priorities, a tier list, and why you shouldn't just stick crit on it

Weapon Perks - First priorities, a tier list, and why you shouldn't just stick crit on it

Introduction

The objective of this guide is to cover the most common perk setups for weapons in Darktide, to try to set people up on the right track for evaluating their own gear. I’m going to start with general (TLDR) advice and then elaborate on some of the reasoning further down, along with an explanation of the enemy armor type system (Unarmored, Flak, etc.) and how Crit and Weak Spot perks work, which is not how new players think they would.

I’m not going to cover Blessings here because they are very weapon specific. A great blessing on one weapon (Blaze Away on Autopistol) can be completely useless on another similar weapon (Blaze Away on Heavy Stubber) for no obvious logical reason so they have to be covered weapon by weapon.

This is written with Damnation(+ condition) difficulty in mind but I don’t think any of the priorities change significantly on lower difficulties if that’s what you’re concerned with.

Melee Weapons

Here we’re going to assume a fairly baseline weapon with a general use case such as Combat Axe, Ogryn’s Bull Butcher Cleaver, or most Swords. Where this applies less (but still some) is with specialty weapons like a Thunder Hammer or Deimos Force Sword that can play a little differently.

“+Armor type/Enemy group” refers to “+X% Damage (type)” perks. Keep in mind that bonuses against groups of enemies like Elites (6-10%) are much smaller than against armor types (15-25%). Because we often have to accept non-optimal Perks I’ll list a rough priority order to help with the decision on what to keep/reroll.

TLDR summary:

Great: +Unarmored, +Flak.

Not quite as good: +Elite, +Infested (*).

Even less exciting: +Groaner/Poxwalker (*), +Maniac.

Bad: +Specialist, +Unyielding.

Need to know what you’re doing (explained later): +Weak Spot Damage, +Crit Chance, +Crit Damage.

Basically garbage: +Carapace, +1 Stamina, Block Efficiency, Sprint Efficiency.*: If this weapon is your go-to horde clearer. Otherwise knock it down a line.

The vast majority of enemies most players routinely fight in melee are Unarmored or Flak Armored, with Infested and Maniac a way behind those. Elite covers a large enough pool of enemies to be a pretty solid perk even with its reduced bonus compared to armor type perks.

The rest is enemies you either mostly shoot (Maniacs, Specialists, Unyielding) or there are so few of them on any map (Carapace) that it doesn’t matter. Crit and Weak Spot perks I’ll elaborate on further later but I didn’t put them down that far for no reason.

If you have to choose between Flak and Unarmored, for a simple answer go to the Psykanium and see if either of them lets you get to 1-shot headshot kills on the ambient Dreg and Scab enemies. Alternatively, choose whether to be better at horde clear (Unarmored) or ambient/elite damage (Flak). Gun to my head what's better overall if someone doesn't want to do the homework? Probably Flak.

Ranged Weapons

Again we’re assuming a “normal” ranged weapon, like any Autogun, Lasgun, Stubber, or Ripper. Stuff you pull out to shoot back at shooters and kill Specials. Weapons with different use cases like Flamers or unusual stats like Plasma Guns break the mould a little, but the gist of it should still hold up.

TLDR Summary:

Normal weapons:

Absolute gold standard: +Flak, +Maniac.

Not quite as good: +Unarmored*.

Less exciting: +Unyielding, +Specialist, +Elite

Depends, but not great: Reload speed**

Kinda bad: +Infested

Need to know what you’re doing (explained later): +Weak Spot Damage, +Crit Chance, +Crit Damage.

Basically garbage: +Carapace, +Groaner/Poxwalker, +1 Stamina, Sprint Efficiency.

*: If you’re intending to heavily target Shooter enemies this can move up depending on your gun/build - mostly applies to Veterans.

**: This is hard to pin down in a broad sense but I can say I would not pick this over a relevant damage boost in almost any case. More discussion further down.

Almost everything worth shooting is Flak, Unarmored, Maniac, Elite, Specialist and/or Unyielding. Specialist and Unyielding moves up a lot compared to melee weapons because those types are almost always more efficient, or practical, to shoot than to melee.

Maniac comes up and eclipses Unarmored for most purposes due to how many high priority Specialists are that type. On the current hard game modes killing Mutants, Trappers and Flamers quickly is extremely important.

If you have to choose between Flak and Maniac, Flak covers way more enemies but Maniac covers some of the more critical ones so if you don't have a melee solution to Mutants and are primarily targeting Specials with the gun then choose Maniac, but otherwise stick with Flak for a more general approach.

Back to Reload Speed. The best case is something like a Bolter that can empty its magazine fast and has a slow reload (the worst is something like Infantry Lasgun with a long time to empty and fast reload) but consider how much of a boost you're getting to the reload speed and whether that's worth it over spending one less shot on killing something. Plasma Guns have (extra) slow reload, but they also empty their magazines very slowly, not needing to reload in many encounters. Do you save more time (even leaving ammo use out of it) firing one less shot to kill something while emptying the last mag than you'd save taking 8.5%-10% off your reload time? That's not a long time taken off.

Area weapons (Purg, Flamer, Trauma):

This is a little looser but I felt like I should include it.

Absolute gold standard: +Flak.

Not quite as good: +Elite*, +Unarmored, +Crit Chance (Purgatus/Flamer only**).

Less exciting: +Infested

Kinda bad: +Maniac, +Unyielding*, +Specialist, +Groaner/Poxwalker, +Crit Chance (others). Reload Speed***.

Basically garbage: +Carapace, +1 Stamina, Sprint Efficiency, +Weak Spot Damage, +Crit Damage.*: With how Flamer currently interacts with the Zealot ultimate, upgrade these by one line for that.

**: Critical hits apply two burn stacks.

***: See above for discussion.

Enemy Types


Weapon Perks - First priorities, a tier list, and why you shouldn't just stick crit on it image 44
Weapon Perks - First priorities, a tier list, and why you shouldn't just stick crit on it image 45

Okay so what’s up with enemy armor types? If you go to the Psykanium and hit something it’ll pop up the armor type along with the damage number. Enemies can have different armor types on different body parts and direct attacks will do damage according to the body part hit.

Dreg Bruisers (bucket head melee guys) have Flak Armoured heads and Unarmored bodies. +Flak damage will boost your headshots against them and +Unarmored everything else.

Area weapons (e.g. Flamers, Trauma Staff) will do damage according to the enemy’s base type, so Dreg Bruisers are treated as Unarmored for those purposes.

For further details check out https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PtPcw4m4YtO_IcEkFlJJOBVWCYDEIeCKJRYLT4SmLc0/htmlview# for a more technical breakdown and https://imgur.com/a/DqmYpV1/layout/grid for a visual representation. Again, if you’re unsure then a quick trip to the Psykanium should clear any confusion about what’s being hit.

You should be familiar with enemies that pop up in the kill feed but ambient and horde enemies are a little more confusing so I expertly crafted explanatory images for them:

Here are the types listed out:

Unarmored: Groaners (horde), Dreg Stalkers (shooter), Dreg Bruisers (melee), Snipers (special).

Flak: Scab Shooter* (shooter), Scab Stalker* (shooter), Scab Bruiser* (melee), Dreg/Scab Shotgunners* (elite), Dreg/Scab Gunners* (elite), Scab Rager (elite), Scab Mauler (elite), Scab Bomber (special).

*: Partial Unarmored.

You can tell why this armor type is important.

Maniac: Scab/Dreg Flamer (special), Dreg Rager (elite), Scab Trapper (special), Mutant (special).

The preponderance of Specials in this category is the reason +Maniac is generally superior to the broader +Specialists perk if those are your concern.

Infested: Poxwalkers (horde), Poxbursters (special), Pox Hounds (special).

Unyielding: Bulwarks (elite), Reapers** (elite), all Monsters.

**: Partial Carapace, Chest is Flak.

Carapace: Crushers.

Hey, What Was That About Crits!?

Crits are appealing as a universal passive dps upgrade but a few factors really hold them back from actually being as good as they look.

TLDR: Only take +Crit chance if your weapon has awesome crit damage or it procs something really important. Never take +Crit Damage. Only take +Weak Spot damage after you've run the numbers yourself.

The first one you need to look at is whether Crits are any good on your weapon. Just inspect your weapon in inventory and bring up attack breakdowns. Laspistols for example can have over 3x damage on Crits (ratios vary between armor types). Sweet.

What about my Power Sword then, that has 80 Finesse, must be a crit monster! Yeah, no. About 1.5x damage crits. Rashad Combat Axe? Finesse weapon! Sorry, 1.35x. Antax Combat Axe with no Finesse stat: 1.3x.

Those aren’t even the really bad ones, like Autopistol (1.14x), Cleaver 3 (1.15x), or Ripper 5 (1.06x!).

More on Crit and Weak Spot Damage

The stat scaling Critical/WS Damage, like in Vermintide 2, only scales the damage increase over the base damage – not the total damage on Crit/WS attacks.

So if we go back to that Power Sword, if I slap +10% Crit Damage on it I’ll be increasing the (Unarmored) damage of a charged Heavy Crit from 534 to 551. A total of 3% - not the 10% advertised. If we total up the potential cleave damage to 7 targets it’s even worse: 2.5%.

To make the basic math there clearer (numbers rounded):

Base damage: 362

Crit damage: 534

Difference: (534-362) = 172

Crit Damage perk gain (172*0.1) = 17.2 damage added. That's not much.

Weak Point damage generally follows Crit damage on a weapon, but not always, so check that one as well before you start doing any theorycrafting. What WS damage has over Crits is that with any weapon that cares about WP hits you can easily get way higher rates of WP hits than ever on Crits (Deadshot builds and weapons with torso hit priority notwithstanding).

Some ability/feat/blessing interactions can also increase the value of these stats, like if you had an axe with Brutal Momentum and WS Damage clears a 1-hit headshot breakpoint on an ambient or horde enemy that isn’t a favored armor type, letting you get cleaving faster while also boosting your damage some across the board. That could add up to a significant gameplay benefit even if it doesn't immediately look significant from a total damage perspective. Similarly if you’re on Zealot and want more damage reduction uptime from +Crit Chance, that’s a valid choice with Knife or Tac Axe.

Like I said at the top, you can explore these Perks, but you have to know what you’re doing. Don’t just pick them up blindly because they’re familiar, universal, and passive.

I Want More Nuance!

This guide is meant to be generalized and it’s no stretch to come up with scenarios where you could decide your priorities warrant a different approach.

One common quandary with Perks is whether to double down on your strengths or try to compensate for your weaknesses. With the way Perks are designed my advice generally is to focus on what you actually do with a given weapon in real games first and foremost (you need to be a little analytical and honest with yourself on that) and then to mostly focus on your strengths.

Adding 25% to the Carapace damage of my Bull Butcher Cleaver for example will clear a breakpoint. Might even save me 2-3 swings. But it won’t matter – it’ll still suck against Carapace, there’ll still only be a handful of Crushers on the map, and I probably won’t have to solo them in melee.

“Breakpoints” – the points at which a boost will take you from needing two hits to only needing one (e.g.) to kill an enemy is the first thing most players look at. The Breakpoint Calculator is very helpful for that: https://dt.wartide.net/calc/

However keep in mind that not all interactions (mostly uncommon ones) are implemented there and you can’t account for class abilities with it, so for every class you’ll have to consider different outside variables, like Psyker Warp Charges, Vet Volley Fire and Weak Spot bonuses, Zealot Martyrdom and Rising Conviction, and Ogryn’s tier 5 Feat line. The Psykanium helps and is usually faster than trying to spreadsheet it yourself with multiple overlapping abilities. Consider the Healthbars, Creature Spawner, and Debuff Indicator mods to help test stuff if you really want to get into it.

Look at what procs your other abilities as well. 1-hit headshots for Brutal Momentum. 1-hitting Groaners or Poxwalkers for Slaughterer cleave trains - nobody likes teching for hordes but if you can get these enemies from one to two hits to kill it makes a marked difference ingame. What do you need to one or two-shot specific enemies with or without Volley Fire? Does clearing a nice breakpoint for a rare enemy outweigh the total cleave damage against a horde enemy?

To come back to the Deimos Force Sword I mentioned earlier, Psyker’s kit and the Deimos’ 1-shot headshot power against most weaker enemies actually lets you focus on killing Mutants and other Specials in melee moreso than is practical with most weapons, thus I consider +Maniac my first priority on that.

It’s a messy world out there and there aren’t always clear answers to be had but hopefully this helps someone draw their own conclusions.

Other Resources

I’ll re-link the ones above first:

Enemy types: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PtPcw4m4YtO_IcEkFlJJOBVWCYDEIeCKJRYLT4SmLc0/htmlview#

Enemy types visualized: https://imgur.com/a/DqmYpV1/layout/grid

Breakpoint Calculator: https://dt.wartide.net/calc/

Helpful Discords: (I don’t run them so links may become defunct)

Jsat’s: https://discord.gg/xF7wvAjsHz

Darktide Convicts: https://discord.gg/chGN8fzxJT

Darktide Modding: https://discord.gg/GFyCGNpJb8

Gameslantern has a site that can help look up stuff for builds, like available Blessings, the live mission board, or whatnot (browse top banner): https://darktide.gameslantern.com/weapon-blessing-traits

Base Crit chance for careers and weapons (as of writing): https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1044082128113127464/1050134453340602398/image.png

Rending/Brittleness explained: https://dt.wartide.net/docs/attacks_and_rending (I believe the negative damage case has been patched since it was written)

Jsat playlist with mechanical explanations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QlBkFN9RRw&list=PLIK-d7nI4NiiosXNF8-__gL2tzmh5quUj&index=2

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2976031655					

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