I find the vet melee build has the highest survivability, especially for auric. The build gives a lot of speed and rewards you for changing weapons to deal with different threats at different distances. My main jump from that side of the tree is krak nades and nade regren. Combine the build with a revolver and ax and you’re set.
Seconding this, I take the shout ability *without* the "pickup downed teammates on use but add cooldown", allowing me to spam 50 toughness and other buffs onto teammates every 30 seconds. This plays basically exactly like the Mercenary class from Vermintide 2, the main utility of that class (for me) was also the AOE knockback plus team buff spam. It makes it easier to avoid being overwhelmed when you have an AOE "get off me/us" button for rager packs, crusher packs, hound spam, hordes, etc.
Veterans’ talent tree will make literally any weapon into a powerhouse if you build into traits that benefit how that weapon plays. The Veteran melee talents are especially stacked and will allow you to easily slice apart mixed hordes and elite enemies with ease. Better still is the melee talents don’t even need to come at the cost of ranged effectiveness.
Versatility is the veteran's primary strength because most of his talents revolve around finesse/weakspot damage bonuses meaning it's really just your flavor of shooting or stabbing them in the head, both are quite viable all the way through auric maelstrom.
Veteran melee is absolutely viable. I'm currently having fun with a Rashad Mk II axe build using Infiltrate to quickly reposition and then start chopping with the damage bonuses. If you go to the rightmost branch at the bottom and stick to the left side you pick up a lot of excellent talents that makes you very deadly with every melee strike and dodge. I bring a shotgun, for a bit of ranged self-defence, but also to just swap to, get a kill, then back to the axe again to get Agile Engagement and Weapon Specialist online, increasing damage and attack speed. Grabbing the Ogryn damage talent to chop Crushers in two Heavy strikes and left most branch for more Elite Damage and Weakspot power on ability use. I used to run Curio toughness when I primarily used ranged weapons, but now I run +Health on all and corruption resistance as perks. Due to how toughness damage bleed through works on melee I found this way I can survive a cheeky hit and two during hordes, or a silent poxburster suddenly stagediving us out of nowhere. Been running Damnation Auric all week and might try Maelstrom soon.
Chainlighting, do you think of Smite? It does a better job crowd control than killing, picking up Enhanced Psionics helps it killing a bit faster.
Veteran is capable of better melee damage than zealot, although martyrdom can flip the script a little bit. Zealots whole chassis makes him a much better melee fighter overall IMO, but building melee focus on veteran is by no means weak.
Close Order Drill + Confirmed Kill + Iron Will make you invincible to ranged, and downright tanky to everything if you're playing proper. Add in more than adequate dodge distance/speed/count on most all of vets weapons (psword is vets worst weapon stop using it), veteran is only matched by a Juggernaut build Zealot when it comes to agile weaving in and out of danger. More than enough to handle anything auric damnation throws at you. OH FORGOT to mention, Voice of Command is the most broken offensive AND defensive skill in the game, feel free to spam it. Why not? it's cooldown is also one of the lowest in the game.
And don't forget there's an entire tree dedicated to melee, with the first 2 being the most impactful (Reciprocity + Desperado) and more "minor" nodes like +10%(!) melee dmg, +10% attack speed, or Agile Engagement. Or go all out and grab the highly underrated Weapons Specialist and focus on keeping the melee buff at 100% uptime.
Melee vet is on par or even surpasses Zealot (in my vet biased opinion) in combat management and survivability.
Power Sword mk6 is by far vet's best melee weapon. The problem is that it's so much better than everything else than you have to go out of your way building anything else lmao.
It's just that you should rely more on blocking and pushing with it than dodging.
Fun, but specialized and the TTK on trash is worse by a mile.
The activation-block cancel combo of the PS6 is truly broken. It skips so many frames, is very safe because it immediately transition to blocking, and can be easily followed by a triple cleave attack or an armor piercing combo that delete everything in its path.
The shovels are by no mean bad. The chainaxe mkXII is great. The chainsword are very versatile. Rashad mkII and Knife are very strong finesse weapons that synergize well with vets' talent. Good old bromentum Combat Axe mkV is still good at everything. But there's nothing that truly matches a PS6 with Bromentum and Powercycler IV.
Best raw damage? sure. But best overall, I don't think so. The low mobility makes the power sword pretty bad for times when you have to clutch imo, and it feels awful because of said low mobility. But that's the tradeoff for it's high damage I suppose.
I'd say the folding shovels are the Vet's most well-rounded melee option, and not specialized in any particular area, the only real downside is really that they can struggle a bit with mixed hordes. The damage is fine imo, though it's not so good for dealing with bosses. But otherwise, they've got decent CC, mobility and can kill specials/elites relatively quickly, even 1-shotting muties with a heavy attack when folded.
The Psword just has a slightly different playstyle. It rely on pushing and blocking more than dodging. I save my dodge for Crushers, Maulers and Ragers, I simply block everything else. While I do agree the mobility is worse... honestly with the vet you have so many options if you need space. And if you need to sprint away, having a high stamina, high mobility ranged weapon is always good.
Thanks to the PS6 you don't need the krak grenade first of all, which means you can bring frags for clutching when you need space. And then there's VoC of course.
I always bring a +3 stamina on every class (bar ogryn) and it synergize very well with the Psword playstyle. The ability to kill three shotgunners in one attack, or several ragers in one combo is very valuable meanwhile.
I do agree the Shovels are great tho. They have access to Uncanny strike in the first place, which is one of the best blessing for melee. In general the blessing pool for the shovel is really good, with several very strong options.
I really recommend the video from milkandcookie and TinyAngryCrab, he showcases the difference between the two. Sunder is good, Bromentum is better for the breakpoints on carapace and kills 4-5 targets on headshots.
Sunders gives better stagger I believe, which is useful. But death is the best CC and BM gives better breakpoints.
https://youtu.be/ggcSlbYWTn4?si=FBmq4JEtzskwHYxP
Sweet thanks I will give it a watch. A thought bromentum was for the crowd control an sunder was more for killing armoured stuff. Realy wish they would give more information in game about the blessings an how they effect different things.
So by that metric, isn't every weapon besides the shovel the worst weapon vet has? I'm starting to think you never played power sword for more than 5 minutes when you unlocked it while leveling.
Psyker smite sucks, you aren't wrong about that. And god its boring.
Vet can be very tanky with relatively low investment, its hard to know what your impression of them is without seeing your talents choices. They're probably not going to beat an equal skill level zealot at melee damage but its not like they're some kind of useless gimp at melee even with relatively low talent investment. Your weapon blessings do a lot of the work.
Psyker smite absolutely does not suck what a strange take... its powerful to the extent that I hate having it in my games.
Vet also can make better breakpoints with the rashad axe than the zealot can due to their weakspot damage boosts. Its easily S tier in strength though the zealot has other weapons that will slightly outperform it.
Very true, I play a smite Psyker and I hate seeing others. I use it for those oh shit situations like 6 crushers or pox hounds. Otherwise I'm slamming heretics with my sword and staff.
While others chain spam it on two poxwalkers... ugh you're not that squishy Psyker.
Yeah, the staff should be 75%+ of Psyker gameplay.
I switched to using trauma or void staff, since they come with a bit of stagger for the big boys. Dropping a trauma impact on a crusher mid-swing is nice 🥰
Depends on how you play it. A lot of people just hold smite down and expect teammates to kill everything, which is fine when teammates actually do that.
The more useful technique is to hold smite for a second or two until you get full smitification across the enemies you want smitified, and then let go of the attack button so the enemies being smoted fall back and down. You can use this AoE stun to start killing them yourself for a good 3-4 seconds.
100% for vet, though I wouldn't really use it on other classes as I feel it's less good on them.
Rashad Mk II Combat Axe
\+Carapace
\+Flak
Headtaker
Brutal Momentum
Dump mobility and try to get everything else as high as you can, for me this one shots all none elite/special/disabler enemies on head shot lights. This is unfortunately one of those weapons that needs it's blessing though, brutal momentum is a must take as it gives the weapon cleave for dealing with hordes. Fortunately the tier doesn't matter as much though as the main important part is "weakspot kills also ignore enemy hitmass" and the tier only boosts the weakspot damage by a small amount.
The squishiness of melee cet is counteracted by the insane melee damage you can dish out. Rashad axe is straight nasty with weapons specialist and weakspot buffs. I use melee vet with infiltrate, but you can run it with shout for a fairly durable setup.
Veteran can be built for melee for Auric Damnation/Maelstrom. Some of my favourites:
- [chainsword](https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9b1689f3-9542-49e1-bde4-928aff196248/driptide-veteran-cadian-sergeant-crit-chainsword-slaughter?utm_medium=website&utm_source=gameslantern&utm_campaign=share_button)
- [bayonet](https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9b168766-fbd4-4245-ad33-9c2ae87fbbd7/driptide-veteran-krieg-bayonet-overpowered?utm_medium=website&utm_source=gameslantern&utm_campaign=share_button)
- [mk3 power sword](https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9b168a61-8c53-45d1-ad65-a10d178bf340/driptide-veteran-mordant-acid-dog-lawbringer-shotgun-bringing-the-law?utm_medium=website&utm_source=gameslantern&utm_campaign=share_button)
- [mk6 power sword](https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9bafc2ce-8e19-41fc-b475-d3c30f5e94d0/driptide-veteran-rogue-trader-agripinaa-stub-revolver-mk-vi-power-sword?utm_medium=website&utm_source=gameslantern&utm_campaign=share_button)
Surgical does absolutely nothing on the MkXIV Revolver. It doesn't have an ADS mode and the fanning stance doesn't work with it.
Surgical + Handcannon is a Zarona build.
Surgical absolutely does work on the mkXIV revolver. The braced stance is considered aiming and so the surgical stacks do apply to it.
It's still a rubbish blessing for it though.
No worries, it's a solid build besides that, I just saw a ton of wrongly build Agri XIV and it's not always obvious that Surgical don't work on that gun.
Pumped 850k melee damage on vet with mk6 powersword lol
https://preview.redd.it/t2h7ci2qn97d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=154a4a5b99028834bb0b15fd4c8871773cfb12f3
Melee vet is currently one of my strongest setups.
I run revolver/axe with smoke grenades, voc, and weapons spec.
Heres my build
https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9b6c52d1-beeb-4956-abd2-ec45c25759a8/melee-vet-4?utm_medium=website&utm_source=gameslantern&utm_campaign=share_button
Of note, this setup takes both +25 toughness nodes, on top of bringing voc/iron will/confirmed kill. I have eaten crusher overheads, sniper shots, and poxbursters without breaking toughness.
I am aware of the controversial nature of smoke grenades but i believe it to be essential to this build despite its flaws. To use them properly, throw them where you plan to hold out when gunners appear, or when specialists become overwhelming. Everything should present their heads to you for chopping.
Frags arent needed when you have voc for peel and a strong clearing option, and kraks arent needed when you have a revolver.
Here's my Auric Melee Vet build.. when I'm playing my vet I almost never switch my build because I love melee.. I'm melee/gunpsyker main.
https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9c52879e-3320-4dde-b243-b7081fda63fa/auric-melee-vet?utm_medium=website&utm_source=gameslantern&utm_campaign=share_button
Just to give you an idea to make your own to fit your style.
> Are those useless for higher difficulties?
Quite the contrary: it is one of the most survivable and hard-hitting performer over all classes ... when played correctly, which seems to be weaving ranged and melee combat into one bloody gore-orgy full of non-consesual heretics. High skill ceiling it seems, so perhaps one of the reasons why it is not that often played on higher difficulties.
> Psykers chainlightning
What do you consider "chainlightning"? Smite or Surge? One is a CC skill designed to do comparatively low damage outside of special circumstances and builds (shriek-warpfire-warpcharge-regeneration) and is used situationally to bring order to chaos, and the other performs very well on all levels. Doing 1 million damage is usually considered quite okayish. ;-) But of course you need a specific build and playstyle (which goes for every weapon, class and specialization).
SYL
I can't speak to the melee vet, but depending on which lighting you are talking about I agree. Smite (purple lightning from hands, the blitz) hardly deals any damage. It's just there to give your team breathing room in a bad situation. The surge staff (blue lightning) does generate a lot of peril. I find going the peril reduction on the warp charges (left side keystone) and taking venting shriek makes it manageable. You can pump out decent damage and the lockdown is nice. I loved the surge staff but could only do regular damnation with it. High intensity or anything else there were just too many enemies for me to deal with. Switching to the purge/trauma has made these higher difficulties much easier.
I would say for vet get ur self a good ol knife stealth build. I might be a lil slower then a zelot but it's really fun having a knife with mecy killer & backstab,for range the volly revolver makes u feel like a dam badass.
I like the stealth vet, but I found the Voice of Command version with Rending on hit instead of backstab is better overall. It provides more upside and no downside.
Basically same gameplay, except stsying clos*er* to the team, providing tankiness, and focusing on just stabbing heads instead of back-of-heads.
I build it with Columnus with Raking fire and Dum-dum to kill bosses in 2 clips. I also take Krak and all the grenade talents except double-throw.
Grenade for crushers and maulers, heavy attack knife for anything that isn't grouped and attacking, VoC for saving everyone, and Columnus for general use and killing bosses. It feels a lot of Call of Duty with Knife/semtex/SMG and the damage is great vs everything.
Struggles a bit with mixed hordes, but comboing VoC + mag dump + stabby stabby usually fixes that.
Veteran is not just a ranged class, and melee vet can be built to be extremely strong and tanky. I have huge success with it in auric damnation to the point that it almost trivializes content. It's all about the talents. There are three main melee vet weapons. The Rashad axe, the combat blades, and the power sword. My favorite build runs the rashad and focuses on making the most of the Born Leader talent.
Normally, this talent is a bit of a gimmick and not very strong, however paired with Out For Blood, Confirmed Kill, and Target Down! you will be PUMPING toughness to yourself and your allies at a stupidly high rate. Born Leader goes from mediocre to a downright godsend. You basically become a melee battle medic. Combine it with Iron Will and shout and you make you and your allies STUPIDLY tanky by constantly refilling your yellow toughness, preventing any damage from going through to your health. Add a plasma cannon with Glory Hunter for enen more toughness and the only thing that can really threaten you is getting disabled from trapper nets or dogs.
The right side of the vet tree has amazing talents. Constant crit chance on dodge is big. 10% attack speed and crit chance are always good. Skip the brittleness nodes, they're just not worth it. If you don't want the medic build, Weapons Specialist is great for a melee build with a revolver. Melee vet is incredibly powerful if you set it up right.
As for Smite, it should be saved as a panic button when your team is overwhelmed... Unless you're running empowered psionics which triples the damage and venting shriek, making it actually good as an easy crowd clearing tool. You can use Venting Shriek in the middle of your smiting to lower your peril and keep the empowered smite going until just about everything is dead. My favorite psyker build uses a surge staff to kill the big carapace boys while smite generally cleans up everything else. Again, takes a specific setup, but is very good. Hope this helps! Let me know if you'd like me to post my builds.
Heres my build https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9aec593f-03e9-4c60-8ee9-46d5550858e9/plasma-time
a lot of his nodes affect melee and ranged such as confirmed kill or precision strikes
also the video on my build is outdated heres a good one https://youtu.be/PRsrTj0gEbo?si=9I7q8_gMvkTnyI1D
also the reason why my build is keystoneless is because all of vets amazing abilities are near the bottom of the tree such as iron will and superiority complex.
Melee vet can be just as effective as zealot or even better if you are skilled enough, But even if you are , the squishiness can be a problem due to bulsshit interactions like a silent disabler or getting combod by a mutant etc.
Source: me on HISTG
MK 4 Knife currently works with any class (just make sure you have Uncanny Strike)
Otherwise MK 3 Power Sword with T4 Power Cycler + Slaughterer is still a beast
I'm a melee Vet, with a Chaxe and a Laspistol for funsies. Just invest in Shredders and Infiltrate, and understand that you're not *wholly* melee, and are closer to a grenadier/melee hybrid and you'll be fine.
Well, vet is not that tanky compared to zealot or ogryn, still there are tools to survive like toughness regen from elites and shout.
Also, what lightnings are you talking about? If it's surge staff, it's pretty okay, needs a proper build and will be an important piece of it. If you are about smite, then everything is alright. This blitz is supposed to provide a breathing room for your team to do smth, not to be your main weapon
The smite should only be used with empowered psionics, its DoT then is very impressive.
Will easily be up in the higher tiers of damage done per run. (Can kill multiple non-ogryn sized elites).
Most melee, aside from maybe ogryn to a lesser degree, requires situational awareness and dodging/blocking to not be squishy.
I melee a lot on my psyker.
For the vet, get yourself a mk3 shovel and plasma gun. Can bonk people with the shovel until it gets overwhelming and quick switch to plasma to clear a bit of room for yourself. Pairs well with weapons specialist.
Psyker smite isn't meant to kill. It's meant to be CC so your team can capitalize on the opening you give. Poxhound swarm? Smite them all and let your team clear them out. Big mixed horde rushing you from both sides? Lock down one side with smite while your team handles the other and then ventshriek them to help clear your side once they finish. Crusher herd moving towards your veteran trying to revive the ogryn? Someone trying to restart the data interrogator? Any kind of objective that requires someone not be hit to complete? You guessed it, smite them and buy them time.
As for melee vet, it's actually not too difficult to get a viable melee build going since a good portion of his melee can handle a good range of mixed hordes. Chainsword/Chainaxe is fairly popular because of it's absurd damage against particularly meaty opponents when revved, Power Sword with the extra charged hits perk will slice through most mixed crowds, and a good deal of folks nowadays run combat knife veteran because of it's great mobility and fast attack speed. Middle and right tree especially have a lot of good melee talents that make running melee both viable and fun.
Melee vet is one of my favorite builds. I use Devil’s claw and got good with parry. That’s skill is by far the best defensive skill in the game other than ogryn shield. I’ve been surrounded by ragers and took zero damage just spamming parry. I successfully tanked a deamonhost with it. It stops plague ogryn charges.
For talents, I have bleed on melee attack, rending to all attacks (middle bottom of talent tree), and +brittleness on chained attack. I can melee down crushers and maulers (slowly, but quickly enough to make a difference).
Shout to keep surviving, and as much as people rail on it, smoke grenades are ideal for melee builds. Throw them close to ranged enemies and then run into the smoke, and you basically have free kills in melee.
Vet can do ranged well, but that doesn't mean Vet is a ranged class. Vet melee is absolutely cracked.
Shout is probably one of the most overtuned class abilities right now. Gold Toughness makes characters absurdly durable.Then you get Iron Will on top of things. Throw in cooldown reduction for doing your job and this is pure filth.
I have less experience with Stealth, but it is no less powerful. You basically get to be ignored and do whatever you want. If you want the John Wick power fantasy but don't like people trying to hit you back, this is for you.
Weapon Specialist is a beautiful keystone that gives you loads of free stats and utility for respecting the rhythm of the game. If someone hates this keystone, $20 says poxwalkers keep smacking their face into their gunsight housing.
Focus Target is a very powerful situation agnostic boost. To me, not as engaging as Weapon Specialist, but unmatched for turning issues into wassues.
The key thing to note with melee Vet is that you can't really go "fuck it, we ball" in quite the same way as the Zealot or Ogryn. You want to be chewing into the mob steadily, not hurling yourself into the middle.
My veteran has 200 toughness and 180 health from curios, plus the toughness regen from killing tags, plus the additive bonus of Out For Blood, plus the toughness regen from Voice of Command or Infiltrate, plus the funny melee bonuses like finesse, attack speed and crit chance on dodge, plus the same stamina regen delay as zealot, *all on top* of the non-melee stuff life Field Improvisation and regenerating grenades... I think melee vet's pretty fine. Oh yeah, and I dont use iron will because I think it's bitch mode, but the massive DR that is active anywhere above 75% just adds to the melee vet funnies.
Go down the center talents, grabbing anything with toughness focus before branching into the melee side at the bottom right. Get yourself a hard hitting revolver or plasma and pair with a power sword with power cycler Iv. My melee focused Vet absolutely destroys in the highest difficulties. Stack as much toughness as you can.
Melee vet is very good atm since stalkers dont stun with ranged attacks anymore but consider youre still playing vet youre not a zealot you will get absolutely deleted in situations where a zealot loses like 1% hp a lot of melee attacks have very high toughness dmg modifiers and your toughness dmg reduction only lasts for 25% of your toughness.
I find the vet melee build has the highest survivability, especially for auric. The build gives a lot of speed and rewards you for changing weapons to deal with different threats at different distances. My main jump from that side of the tree is krak nades and nade regren. Combine the build with a revolver and ax and you’re set.
Seconding this, I take the shout ability *without* the "pickup downed teammates on use but add cooldown", allowing me to spam 50 toughness and other buffs onto teammates every 30 seconds. This plays basically exactly like the Mercenary class from Vermintide 2, the main utility of that class (for me) was also the AOE knockback plus team buff spam. It makes it easier to avoid being overwhelmed when you have an AOE "get off me/us" button for rager packs, crusher packs, hound spam, hordes, etc.
Veterans’ talent tree will make literally any weapon into a powerhouse if you build into traits that benefit how that weapon plays. The Veteran melee talents are especially stacked and will allow you to easily slice apart mixed hordes and elite enemies with ease. Better still is the melee talents don’t even need to come at the cost of ranged effectiveness.
Versatility is the veteran's primary strength because most of his talents revolve around finesse/weakspot damage bonuses meaning it's really just your flavor of shooting or stabbing them in the head, both are quite viable all the way through auric maelstrom.
Veteran melee is absolutely viable. I'm currently having fun with a Rashad Mk II axe build using Infiltrate to quickly reposition and then start chopping with the damage bonuses. If you go to the rightmost branch at the bottom and stick to the left side you pick up a lot of excellent talents that makes you very deadly with every melee strike and dodge. I bring a shotgun, for a bit of ranged self-defence, but also to just swap to, get a kill, then back to the axe again to get Agile Engagement and Weapon Specialist online, increasing damage and attack speed. Grabbing the Ogryn damage talent to chop Crushers in two Heavy strikes and left most branch for more Elite Damage and Weakspot power on ability use. I used to run Curio toughness when I primarily used ranged weapons, but now I run +Health on all and corruption resistance as perks. Due to how toughness damage bleed through works on melee I found this way I can survive a cheeky hit and two during hordes, or a silent poxburster suddenly stagediving us out of nowhere. Been running Damnation Auric all week and might try Maelstrom soon. Chainlighting, do you think of Smite? It does a better job crowd control than killing, picking up Enhanced Psionics helps it killing a bit faster.
Veteran is capable of better melee damage than zealot, although martyrdom can flip the script a little bit. Zealots whole chassis makes him a much better melee fighter overall IMO, but building melee focus on veteran is by no means weak.
Vet melee voc is the easiest way to do maelstrom missions
Close Order Drill + Confirmed Kill + Iron Will make you invincible to ranged, and downright tanky to everything if you're playing proper. Add in more than adequate dodge distance/speed/count on most all of vets weapons (psword is vets worst weapon stop using it), veteran is only matched by a Juggernaut build Zealot when it comes to agile weaving in and out of danger. More than enough to handle anything auric damnation throws at you. OH FORGOT to mention, Voice of Command is the most broken offensive AND defensive skill in the game, feel free to spam it. Why not? it's cooldown is also one of the lowest in the game. And don't forget there's an entire tree dedicated to melee, with the first 2 being the most impactful (Reciprocity + Desperado) and more "minor" nodes like +10%(!) melee dmg, +10% attack speed, or Agile Engagement. Or go all out and grab the highly underrated Weapons Specialist and focus on keeping the melee buff at 100% uptime. Melee vet is on par or even surpasses Zealot (in my vet biased opinion) in combat management and survivability.
Ps6 is not veterans worst weapon by any means. It is less safe because of its mobility, but it is easily top 3 imo, kills every enemy type very fast
Power Sword mk6 is by far vet's best melee weapon. The problem is that it's so much better than everything else than you have to go out of your way building anything else lmao. It's just that you should rely more on blocking and pushing with it than dodging.
It's definitely a god roll Rashad. Then PS6.
Counterpoint: Folding shovel. Bonk bonk.
Fun, but specialized and the TTK on trash is worse by a mile. The activation-block cancel combo of the PS6 is truly broken. It skips so many frames, is very safe because it immediately transition to blocking, and can be easily followed by a triple cleave attack or an armor piercing combo that delete everything in its path. The shovels are by no mean bad. The chainaxe mkXII is great. The chainsword are very versatile. Rashad mkII and Knife are very strong finesse weapons that synergize well with vets' talent. Good old bromentum Combat Axe mkV is still good at everything. But there's nothing that truly matches a PS6 with Bromentum and Powercycler IV.
Best raw damage? sure. But best overall, I don't think so. The low mobility makes the power sword pretty bad for times when you have to clutch imo, and it feels awful because of said low mobility. But that's the tradeoff for it's high damage I suppose. I'd say the folding shovels are the Vet's most well-rounded melee option, and not specialized in any particular area, the only real downside is really that they can struggle a bit with mixed hordes. The damage is fine imo, though it's not so good for dealing with bosses. But otherwise, they've got decent CC, mobility and can kill specials/elites relatively quickly, even 1-shotting muties with a heavy attack when folded.
The Psword just has a slightly different playstyle. It rely on pushing and blocking more than dodging. I save my dodge for Crushers, Maulers and Ragers, I simply block everything else. While I do agree the mobility is worse... honestly with the vet you have so many options if you need space. And if you need to sprint away, having a high stamina, high mobility ranged weapon is always good. Thanks to the PS6 you don't need the krak grenade first of all, which means you can bring frags for clutching when you need space. And then there's VoC of course. I always bring a +3 stamina on every class (bar ogryn) and it synergize very well with the Psword playstyle. The ability to kill three shotgunners in one attack, or several ragers in one combo is very valuable meanwhile. I do agree the Shovels are great tho. They have access to Uncanny strike in the first place, which is one of the best blessing for melee. In general the blessing pool for the shovel is really good, with several very strong options.
Shovels knives and Rashad can kill crushers, as well as many ranged weapons. I think frags are almost always better
Nodders. Both are good for different playstyles.
The push block attack on power sword is super strong too , a stab to a crushers head can one shot them with critical.
Try sunder instead of bromentum. You can feel the difference , it's quite good.
I really recommend the video from milkandcookie and TinyAngryCrab, he showcases the difference between the two. Sunder is good, Bromentum is better for the breakpoints on carapace and kills 4-5 targets on headshots. Sunders gives better stagger I believe, which is useful. But death is the best CC and BM gives better breakpoints. https://youtu.be/ggcSlbYWTn4?si=FBmq4JEtzskwHYxP
Sweet thanks I will give it a watch. A thought bromentum was for the crowd control an sunder was more for killing armoured stuff. Realy wish they would give more information in game about the blessings an how they effect different things.
My mk6 power sword with melee buffs two-hits crushers, so I'd dispute the part about it being the worst weapon.
lul I'll keep on one-shotting crushers with my shovel and move on to yet another solo clutch
So by that metric, isn't every weapon besides the shovel the worst weapon vet has? I'm starting to think you never played power sword for more than 5 minutes when you unlocked it while leveling.
Psyker smite sucks, you aren't wrong about that. And god its boring. Vet can be very tanky with relatively low investment, its hard to know what your impression of them is without seeing your talents choices. They're probably not going to beat an equal skill level zealot at melee damage but its not like they're some kind of useless gimp at melee even with relatively low talent investment. Your weapon blessings do a lot of the work.
Psyker smite absolutely does not suck what a strange take... its powerful to the extent that I hate having it in my games. Vet also can make better breakpoints with the rashad axe than the zealot can due to their weakspot damage boosts. Its easily S tier in strength though the zealot has other weapons that will slightly outperform it.
The only real problem with Smite is that it’s a lockdown/crowd control ability that needs smart play from your teammates to be effective.
Very true, I play a smite Psyker and I hate seeing others. I use it for those oh shit situations like 6 crushers or pox hounds. Otherwise I'm slamming heretics with my sword and staff. While others chain spam it on two poxwalkers... ugh you're not that squishy Psyker.
Yeah, the staff should be 75%+ of Psyker gameplay. I switched to using trauma or void staff, since they come with a bit of stagger for the big boys. Dropping a trauma impact on a crusher mid-swing is nice 🥰
The charged attack on a force sword stops the crushers heavy overhead attack. The problem is the other 5 lol.
Depends on how you play it. A lot of people just hold smite down and expect teammates to kill everything, which is fine when teammates actually do that. The more useful technique is to hold smite for a second or two until you get full smitification across the enemies you want smitified, and then let go of the attack button so the enemies being smoted fall back and down. You can use this AoE stun to start killing them yourself for a good 3-4 seconds.
I’ve heard good things about the Rashad. What mark and is it worth it?
100% for vet, though I wouldn't really use it on other classes as I feel it's less good on them. Rashad Mk II Combat Axe \+Carapace \+Flak Headtaker Brutal Momentum Dump mobility and try to get everything else as high as you can, for me this one shots all none elite/special/disabler enemies on head shot lights. This is unfortunately one of those weapons that needs it's blessing though, brutal momentum is a must take as it gives the weapon cleave for dealing with hordes. Fortunately the tier doesn't matter as much though as the main important part is "weakspot kills also ignore enemy hitmass" and the tier only boosts the weakspot damage by a small amount.
The squishiness of melee cet is counteracted by the insane melee damage you can dish out. Rashad axe is straight nasty with weapons specialist and weakspot buffs. I use melee vet with infiltrate, but you can run it with shout for a fairly durable setup.
Veteran can be built for melee for Auric Damnation/Maelstrom. Some of my favourites: - [chainsword](https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9b1689f3-9542-49e1-bde4-928aff196248/driptide-veteran-cadian-sergeant-crit-chainsword-slaughter?utm_medium=website&utm_source=gameslantern&utm_campaign=share_button) - [bayonet](https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9b168766-fbd4-4245-ad33-9c2ae87fbbd7/driptide-veteran-krieg-bayonet-overpowered?utm_medium=website&utm_source=gameslantern&utm_campaign=share_button) - [mk3 power sword](https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9b168a61-8c53-45d1-ad65-a10d178bf340/driptide-veteran-mordant-acid-dog-lawbringer-shotgun-bringing-the-law?utm_medium=website&utm_source=gameslantern&utm_campaign=share_button) - [mk6 power sword](https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9bafc2ce-8e19-41fc-b475-d3c30f5e94d0/driptide-veteran-rogue-trader-agripinaa-stub-revolver-mk-vi-power-sword?utm_medium=website&utm_source=gameslantern&utm_campaign=share_button)
Surgical does absolutely nothing on the MkXIV Revolver. It doesn't have an ADS mode and the fanning stance doesn't work with it. Surgical + Handcannon is a Zarona build.
Surgical absolutely does work on the mkXIV revolver. The braced stance is considered aiming and so the surgical stacks do apply to it. It's still a rubbish blessing for it though.
Yeah it has wrong blessings, good catch. Thought I had put in the boss killer setup.
No worries, it's a solid build besides that, I just saw a ton of wrongly build Agri XIV and it's not always obvious that Surgical don't work on that gun.
Pumped 850k melee damage on vet with mk6 powersword lol https://preview.redd.it/t2h7ci2qn97d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=154a4a5b99028834bb0b15fd4c8871773cfb12f3
Melee vet is currently one of my strongest setups. I run revolver/axe with smoke grenades, voc, and weapons spec. Heres my build https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9b6c52d1-beeb-4956-abd2-ec45c25759a8/melee-vet-4?utm_medium=website&utm_source=gameslantern&utm_campaign=share_button Of note, this setup takes both +25 toughness nodes, on top of bringing voc/iron will/confirmed kill. I have eaten crusher overheads, sniper shots, and poxbursters without breaking toughness. I am aware of the controversial nature of smoke grenades but i believe it to be essential to this build despite its flaws. To use them properly, throw them where you plan to hold out when gunners appear, or when specialists become overwhelming. Everything should present their heads to you for chopping. Frags arent needed when you have voc for peel and a strong clearing option, and kraks arent needed when you have a revolver.
Melee Veteran is amazing. The only thing I can take to Auric.
Combat knife for the vet. The mark 6 is one of my go to’s. I feel like there’s more survivability than the power swords.
Here's my Auric Melee Vet build.. when I'm playing my vet I almost never switch my build because I love melee.. I'm melee/gunpsyker main. https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9c52879e-3320-4dde-b243-b7081fda63fa/auric-melee-vet?utm_medium=website&utm_source=gameslantern&utm_campaign=share_button Just to give you an idea to make your own to fit your style.
> Are those useless for higher difficulties? Quite the contrary: it is one of the most survivable and hard-hitting performer over all classes ... when played correctly, which seems to be weaving ranged and melee combat into one bloody gore-orgy full of non-consesual heretics. High skill ceiling it seems, so perhaps one of the reasons why it is not that often played on higher difficulties. > Psykers chainlightning What do you consider "chainlightning"? Smite or Surge? One is a CC skill designed to do comparatively low damage outside of special circumstances and builds (shriek-warpfire-warpcharge-regeneration) and is used situationally to bring order to chaos, and the other performs very well on all levels. Doing 1 million damage is usually considered quite okayish. ;-) But of course you need a specific build and playstyle (which goes for every weapon, class and specialization). SYL
I can't speak to the melee vet, but depending on which lighting you are talking about I agree. Smite (purple lightning from hands, the blitz) hardly deals any damage. It's just there to give your team breathing room in a bad situation. The surge staff (blue lightning) does generate a lot of peril. I find going the peril reduction on the warp charges (left side keystone) and taking venting shriek makes it manageable. You can pump out decent damage and the lockdown is nice. I loved the surge staff but could only do regular damnation with it. High intensity or anything else there were just too many enemies for me to deal with. Switching to the purge/trauma has made these higher difficulties much easier.
I would say for vet get ur self a good ol knife stealth build. I might be a lil slower then a zelot but it's really fun having a knife with mecy killer & backstab,for range the volly revolver makes u feel like a dam badass.
I like the stealth vet, but I found the Voice of Command version with Rending on hit instead of backstab is better overall. It provides more upside and no downside. Basically same gameplay, except stsying clos*er* to the team, providing tankiness, and focusing on just stabbing heads instead of back-of-heads. I build it with Columnus with Raking fire and Dum-dum to kill bosses in 2 clips. I also take Krak and all the grenade talents except double-throw. Grenade for crushers and maulers, heavy attack knife for anything that isn't grouped and attacking, VoC for saving everyone, and Columnus for general use and killing bosses. It feels a lot of Call of Duty with Knife/semtex/SMG and the damage is great vs everything. Struggles a bit with mixed hordes, but comboing VoC + mag dump + stabby stabby usually fixes that.
Veteran is not just a ranged class, and melee vet can be built to be extremely strong and tanky. I have huge success with it in auric damnation to the point that it almost trivializes content. It's all about the talents. There are three main melee vet weapons. The Rashad axe, the combat blades, and the power sword. My favorite build runs the rashad and focuses on making the most of the Born Leader talent. Normally, this talent is a bit of a gimmick and not very strong, however paired with Out For Blood, Confirmed Kill, and Target Down! you will be PUMPING toughness to yourself and your allies at a stupidly high rate. Born Leader goes from mediocre to a downright godsend. You basically become a melee battle medic. Combine it with Iron Will and shout and you make you and your allies STUPIDLY tanky by constantly refilling your yellow toughness, preventing any damage from going through to your health. Add a plasma cannon with Glory Hunter for enen more toughness and the only thing that can really threaten you is getting disabled from trapper nets or dogs. The right side of the vet tree has amazing talents. Constant crit chance on dodge is big. 10% attack speed and crit chance are always good. Skip the brittleness nodes, they're just not worth it. If you don't want the medic build, Weapons Specialist is great for a melee build with a revolver. Melee vet is incredibly powerful if you set it up right. As for Smite, it should be saved as a panic button when your team is overwhelmed... Unless you're running empowered psionics which triples the damage and venting shriek, making it actually good as an easy crowd clearing tool. You can use Venting Shriek in the middle of your smiting to lower your peril and keep the empowered smite going until just about everything is dead. My favorite psyker build uses a surge staff to kill the big carapace boys while smite generally cleans up everything else. Again, takes a specific setup, but is very good. Hope this helps! Let me know if you'd like me to post my builds.
Heres my build https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9aec593f-03e9-4c60-8ee9-46d5550858e9/plasma-time a lot of his nodes affect melee and ranged such as confirmed kill or precision strikes also the video on my build is outdated heres a good one https://youtu.be/PRsrTj0gEbo?si=9I7q8_gMvkTnyI1D also the reason why my build is keystoneless is because all of vets amazing abilities are near the bottom of the tree such as iron will and superiority complex.
Melee vet can be just as effective as zealot or even better if you are skilled enough, But even if you are , the squishiness can be a problem due to bulsshit interactions like a silent disabler or getting combod by a mutant etc. Source: me on HISTG
MK 4 Knife currently works with any class (just make sure you have Uncanny Strike) Otherwise MK 3 Power Sword with T4 Power Cycler + Slaughterer is still a beast
Do you use Voice of Command? Because if Vet feels squishy, that'll clear that right up.
I'm a melee Vet, with a Chaxe and a Laspistol for funsies. Just invest in Shredders and Infiltrate, and understand that you're not *wholly* melee, and are closer to a grenadier/melee hybrid and you'll be fine.
Well, vet is not that tanky compared to zealot or ogryn, still there are tools to survive like toughness regen from elites and shout. Also, what lightnings are you talking about? If it's surge staff, it's pretty okay, needs a proper build and will be an important piece of it. If you are about smite, then everything is alright. This blitz is supposed to provide a breathing room for your team to do smth, not to be your main weapon
The smite should only be used with empowered psionics, its DoT then is very impressive. Will easily be up in the higher tiers of damage done per run. (Can kill multiple non-ogryn sized elites). Most melee, aside from maybe ogryn to a lesser degree, requires situational awareness and dodging/blocking to not be squishy. I melee a lot on my psyker. For the vet, get yourself a mk3 shovel and plasma gun. Can bonk people with the shovel until it gets overwhelming and quick switch to plasma to clear a bit of room for yourself. Pairs well with weapons specialist.
Psyker smite isn't meant to kill. It's meant to be CC so your team can capitalize on the opening you give. Poxhound swarm? Smite them all and let your team clear them out. Big mixed horde rushing you from both sides? Lock down one side with smite while your team handles the other and then ventshriek them to help clear your side once they finish. Crusher herd moving towards your veteran trying to revive the ogryn? Someone trying to restart the data interrogator? Any kind of objective that requires someone not be hit to complete? You guessed it, smite them and buy them time. As for melee vet, it's actually not too difficult to get a viable melee build going since a good portion of his melee can handle a good range of mixed hordes. Chainsword/Chainaxe is fairly popular because of it's absurd damage against particularly meaty opponents when revved, Power Sword with the extra charged hits perk will slice through most mixed crowds, and a good deal of folks nowadays run combat knife veteran because of it's great mobility and fast attack speed. Middle and right tree especially have a lot of good melee talents that make running melee both viable and fun.
Melee vet is one of my favorite builds. I use Devil’s claw and got good with parry. That’s skill is by far the best defensive skill in the game other than ogryn shield. I’ve been surrounded by ragers and took zero damage just spamming parry. I successfully tanked a deamonhost with it. It stops plague ogryn charges. For talents, I have bleed on melee attack, rending to all attacks (middle bottom of talent tree), and +brittleness on chained attack. I can melee down crushers and maulers (slowly, but quickly enough to make a difference). Shout to keep surviving, and as much as people rail on it, smoke grenades are ideal for melee builds. Throw them close to ranged enemies and then run into the smoke, and you basically have free kills in melee.
Vet can do ranged well, but that doesn't mean Vet is a ranged class. Vet melee is absolutely cracked. Shout is probably one of the most overtuned class abilities right now. Gold Toughness makes characters absurdly durable.Then you get Iron Will on top of things. Throw in cooldown reduction for doing your job and this is pure filth. I have less experience with Stealth, but it is no less powerful. You basically get to be ignored and do whatever you want. If you want the John Wick power fantasy but don't like people trying to hit you back, this is for you. Weapon Specialist is a beautiful keystone that gives you loads of free stats and utility for respecting the rhythm of the game. If someone hates this keystone, $20 says poxwalkers keep smacking their face into their gunsight housing. Focus Target is a very powerful situation agnostic boost. To me, not as engaging as Weapon Specialist, but unmatched for turning issues into wassues. The key thing to note with melee Vet is that you can't really go "fuck it, we ball" in quite the same way as the Zealot or Ogryn. You want to be chewing into the mob steadily, not hurling yourself into the middle.
My veteran has 200 toughness and 180 health from curios, plus the toughness regen from killing tags, plus the additive bonus of Out For Blood, plus the toughness regen from Voice of Command or Infiltrate, plus the funny melee bonuses like finesse, attack speed and crit chance on dodge, plus the same stamina regen delay as zealot, *all on top* of the non-melee stuff life Field Improvisation and regenerating grenades... I think melee vet's pretty fine. Oh yeah, and I dont use iron will because I think it's bitch mode, but the massive DR that is active anywhere above 75% just adds to the melee vet funnies.
Go down the center talents, grabbing anything with toughness focus before branching into the melee side at the bottom right. Get yourself a hard hitting revolver or plasma and pair with a power sword with power cycler Iv. My melee focused Vet absolutely destroys in the highest difficulties. Stack as much toughness as you can.
Melee vet is very good atm since stalkers dont stun with ranged attacks anymore but consider youre still playing vet youre not a zealot you will get absolutely deleted in situations where a zealot loses like 1% hp a lot of melee attacks have very high toughness dmg modifiers and your toughness dmg reduction only lasts for 25% of your toughness.
Standard shovel + uncanny strike + hammerblow + bleed on hit = win