Perk discussion

[Arbit]

Here is a thread to discuss perks. Those you like, those you hate, those you have questions about. For reference, I'm lvl 19, play tac w/ stalker bolter about 80%+ of the time, and am usually upper middle of the pack in terms of score which probably means I'm cannon fodder for some of you guys.

Tactical Readout: I really like this perk. It lets you know if you can confidently stick a fight out or when to run. For instance, if an ASM shows up you can quickly identify that he is at 10% health/100% armor and can dispatch him even if he gets up close, or if you can win a stalker bolter duel, etc etc. The big health/armor bars also make enemies very visible. It almost always takes up my first perk slot. Give it a try.

Double shot perk for the stalker bolter: is this worth it? It eats up ammo frighteningly fast and seems to make long range headshots more difficult, the upside being it's much better when used at close range. But if I want a good close range weapon I take the extra weapon perk and grab a melta/stormbolter.

Discuss, and post your own findings.

[Shuma]

FINAL VENGEANCE AUGHUEHRUGHUHEURH.

I honestly like this perk even though i never use it anymore(those slots are better spent on other stuff than on kamikaze tactics) but i live the perk, it's funny, and like Konfeta(?) said, there's nothing like seeing one assault marine dying, then have his explosion kill another, which in turns kills another.

Anyway, the Twin link perk for the Storm bolter is pretty awesome, turns it into a death spewing machine and makes it much more accurate from hip fire, hell it barely has scatter anymore. I also pretty much always run around with the Master crafted perk, can't get enough of dem super grenades.

[konfeta]

Conga vengeance lines. The natural evolution of conga sync kill lines from AvP.

[Ragg]

I love true grit, its funny watching the tacticool roll back expecting an easy kill as you unleash the fury of the god empra on there face with a lot of bolt rounds.

I aint keen on final vengeance I find it totally cheap same as killing blow, I find you can practically 1 shot with hammer when you have death from above and hit them dead on with the ground pound then follow on with the hammer strike. Finally arbit I prefer the stalker without the burst fire as it just seems less effective and chomps up the ammo too quickly.

[Mirage Knight]

The natural evolution of conga sync kill lines from AvP.

God's teeth don't remind me of that, because then it gets me thinking about "E"spam...

[Saberdark]

I know pretty much everybody is going to mention Final Vengeance one way or the other but I don't like it. It's pretty much a free kill for dying. I think it could stand to have some reduced damage because right now it's pretty much instant death to anybody even slightly in the blast radius. Which when you are defending points happens quite often.

I find the two weapons perk for Tacticals to be very useful. Allows you to take a longer ranged weapon along with a Storm Bolter/Melta which can be very helpful depending on the map.

[mred]

I like Final Vengeance for two reasons: One, I'm not very good at the game, so it helps me get a couple of extra kills, and I don't take it that seriously, so I always get a good chuckle when either i nab them or they get me. The only issue I have is that if i make one more swing after killing a guy, the animation takes too long to finish before i can jump away, though i'm assuming that's lag.

the weapon versatility one i really like.

[Sturmhaubitze]

I don't see a benefit to Ammunition Stores. There's enough ammo lying on the ground that you shouldn't run out, and most guns have enough ammo to keep you going for quite some time.

[Arcinatus]

For Devastators I like Feel No Pain / Iron Halo. Feels pretty OP at times just how much damage I can soak up.

CAN'T KILL ME!!! DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA!!!

[hellic]

Repost from official forums: The Burst Fire for the Stalker is great. It makes you much more effective at long range since enemy doesn't get as much time to hide. Just as important, if not moreso, it actually does increase your DPS. Your RoF is about the same but you fire two bullets at a time as opposed to one. Furthermore, you'll notice that after you fire a single Stalker bullet, the reticle will expand. This indicates a loss of accuracy. If you want your next shot to be completely accurate, you'll have to wait a bit before shoting again.

The only downside is that you'll expend your clip in half the time, but that's a good trade-off to have when you can kill quickly in two bursts.

Arbit, the loss of accuracy after shooting once is well worth the perk if you're long-range sniping. Burst fire is even more incredible in mid-range since it's easy to get at least one headshot in a single burst.

You should also replace Tactical Readout with Weapon Versatility for close-range Melta defense or Master Crafted Grenades for extra BOOM. The color auras already tell you when someone has shield or only has health. Besides, the Stalker and Melta combo is versatile enough to take anything on 1v1.

[Vuther]

Is anyone feeling Favor of the Armory and Master-Crafted Wargear to be a wee bit too excessive with frag grenades? Just a little. You can roll for your life (likely taking heavy ranged fire) against two and survive, even when they're souped up by MCW, but with FotA!? You're kinda fucked, save for being an Assault Marine with jump jets fully fueled up.

[Thorno]

As I've said before.

Kraken rounds and accuracy added to my Bolter? Yes please.

Is anyone feeling Favor of the Armory and Master-Crafted Wargear to be a wee bit too excessive with frag grenades? Just a little. You can roll for your life (likely taking heavy ranged fire) against two and survive, even when they're souped up by MCW, but with FotA!? You're kinda fucked, save for being an Assault Marine with jump jets fully fueled up.

But then they're out of grenades...

[Vuther]

But then they're out of grenades...

This is true...but you can pick up some more off your enemies' corpses, and getting a few kills while proper grenade throwing is already pretty much a temporary "you are not going to cap this point" in Seize Ground...gets a little bit excessive.

[konfeta]

"A bit excessive" is an understatement. Everyone is still to enamored with Plasma Cannons and Final Vengeance. If/when those things will get nerfed, doubling up on the frag grenade perks will be the next flavor of the month. It's my current go to tactic when both teams go full retard towards the end of the game and rush in waves towards a single point. A smarter Tac will combine Master Crafted with fast spawn, which is quite possibly the most bullshit defensive tactic in the game..

[Skullcap]

Or you can take double perk bolter and hose everyone down with hipfire shooting with the same accuracy as zoomed in and pull off game wins aswell as 20 kills >.>

The amusing part is, if you know a assault/raptor is jumping in, roll to the side, they go into melee spam and end up going forward in a line, gun them down, or the best is they jump straight to you and you step backs hip firing them to the face.

Not to mention the fact you can dump half a clip zoomed in with no reticle shake into a devestator/havoc before they even can get aim from all the shaking off damage hits.

The biggest FU build for me atm is mastercrafted perk and melta gun charge to be honest, just run around melting faces quite litterally and every assault/raptor is no problem...as is most of the other team bar devs/havocs with iron halo/chaos icon

[konfeta]

Incorrect, Bolter Targeter still has recoil when firing without the zoom function. You need to fire full auto for it to be noticable, though.

[Arbit]

Arbit, the loss of accuracy after shooting once is well worth the perk if you're long-range sniping. Burst fire is even more incredible in mid-range since it's easy to get at least one headshot in a single burst.

You should also replace Tactical Readout with Weapon Versatility for close-range Melta defense or Master Crafted Grenades for extra BOOM. The color auras already tell you when someone has shield or only has health. Besides, the Stalker and Melta combo is versatile enough to take anything on 1v1.

welp


So yeah, double shot perk is awesome. Not sure why I was having such a rough time hitting with it before. There are always plenty of corpses to loot so the extra ammo consumption is a non-issue. Makes a great combo with the melta/stormbolter.

[hellic]

You were close to heresy there, brother.

[Chad Ghostal]

I agree with skullcap, mastercrafted grenades with melta with faster recharge is just cake. 75% of the maps are close quarter battles, just too easy to thromp people with that build. My personal setup for my tact. A good second place is stormbolter with 4 mastercrafted grenades. I think, I'm noticing a trend.....

[dr.mario89]

I'm glad to see that no one has vouched for killing blow, which in my opinion seems like a crutch for ASMs. Weapon versatility is probably my favorite, and I do admit that final vengeance is a guilty pleasure, but I will probably stop using it now because it is pretty crazy. The 4 mega grenades on certain maps, especially on sieze ground, is super effective and super cheap, and I feel like it's kind of a no-skill loadout (in my experience). And melta faster recharge is the only way to go with the meltagun, probably because I somehow suck with it normally.

[Shuma]

Killing blow is a weird perk imo, because when it doesn't work(be it because of lag, or just missing) well it's a wasted slot, but when it does work then, well it's awesome.

[Kam!kazee]

Kraken bolts + master crafted is a pretty nasty combo IMO. I got used to the bolters accuracy without targeters barely missing anything even when going full auto on someone.

Also I love air cooled thrusters, they're in every ASM build I have. I fear that I can't play without them anymore. Combine them with death from above for some fun goomba stomping. With these 2 perks, the axe becomes really useful, as it kills everything in 2 hits after landing (bar devastators).


The *'s zeal perks belong to the useless side, they're far too situational imo. The axe swings too slow to have any benefit from the heals, and in general I found if I survived with them, I would've survived without them as well.

[Caeltos]

Killing blow is a weird perk imo, because when it doesn't work(be it because of lag, or just missing) well it's a wasted slot, but when it does work then, well it's awesome.

Time to end this debate once and for all :P. Killing Blow will register on SUCCESFUL hits, and this is directly from the update patch that's coming soon;

If you engage mano-el-mano in a straight up face to face confrontation, the killing blow should be succesful. However, should it not a direct hit, it will count as a glancing hit. iirc, even attacking from different angles than not up-front to the models will register it as a glancing.

Post deleted.

Y THEY REMOVE THEIR OWN POST ? (

[Zallis]

I've never actually found killing blow necessary. When you have death from above, landing on someone + hitting them once with the hammer generally kills them. Since you're generally going to be goomba stomping people before attacking them, the killing blow is made redundant.

[konfeta]

Killing Blow is necessary for Iron Halo, Reactive Armor, Feel No Pain, and Combat Stims.

And fuck Death from Above. I recently dedicated a few games and realized this perk will be forever absolute trash because it doesn't register full damage on moving targets even if you hit them dead on. Lag, design, bug, whatever.

[LoweGear]

Nothing to do with the performance of the Perks themselves... but I think I'm slow for only noticing recently that weapon-specific perks actually change your weapon's appearance when equipped.

Take this example for the Lascannon (the first one I noticed it on):

Space Marine Lascannon

Spoiler

Normal


w/ Lascannon Capacitors


w/ Lascannon Stabilizers

Chaos Lascannon

Spoiler

Normal


w/ Lascannon Capacitors


w/ Lascannon Stabilizers

Melee weapons don't show the same changes though.

[hellic]

Nice catch.

[DoomKnights]

If you want a challenge, Tact with Serated edge and master crafted wargear. Now only use your bolt pistol and CC through out the game. It's hard but if done right you can still make kills. So far my best is 10 kills in a game.

Dev with Iron Halo and Master Armour, use a bolt pistol and run around. Odd combo but works well.

[Arbit]

Hellic, what do you mean? Surely you're not begrudging an aging gamer a single pridepost?

[hellic]

No, I'm just glad you saw the Astronomican's Light.

[Jaimas]

Make Serrated Blade give the Tactical a Chainsword.

Really, is it too much to ask?

[KDR_11k]

I find Final Vengeance fairly anoying to deal with. Not hard, annoying. It's not fun to have the battlefield turn into a minefield when you kill ASMs.

Ammo stores are pretty much only for devs running PCs with quickcharge so they can spam those big-ass shots for longer. Everything else has so much spare ammo that you won't run out even without ammo pickups.

Iron Halo seems to at least double your armor, anyone using a weapon with a bad anti-armor rating is screwed then (but anyone using plasma doesn't care). More damage and health is always extremely popular with players in any game.

I like the improved cooling perk on the Plasma Cannon, that's 8 shots before overheating. More than enough to kill two dudes.

[Sturmhaubitze]

There's three problems with Final Vengeance:

1. Unlike Call of Duty's Martyrdom death-streak, this happens every time you kill an Assault/Raptor, not just when they're on a losing streak (Died 3+ times in a row without killing anyone).
2. Unlike Call of Duty's Martyrdom death-streak, you are almost always within the blast radius, since the enemy with it is attacking you in close-combat.
3. Defeating a close-combat class in close-combat should be recognized as an accomplishment, especially if you're playing a different class. Instead you're punished for beating them at their own game.

Reducing the damage or blast radius isn't going to fix it, it will just make it a useless perk. I'd rather see it removed and replaced with something else.

[Mirage Knight]

I find Final Vengeance fairly anoying to deal with. Not hard, annoying. It's not fun to have the battlefield turn into a minefield when you kill ASMs.

Unlike Call of Duty's Martyrdom death-streak, you are almost always within the blast radius, since the enemy with it is attacking you in close-combat.

Often times you can't get out of the way fast enough or not at all due to being held up by a fucking stone on the ground. Anyone come across a situation where you simply cannot move at all on a map? And God help any team mates that are nearby if the game has friendly fire turned on...

Defeating a close-combat class in close-combat should be recognized as an accomplishment, especially if you're playing a different class. Instead you're punished for beating them at their own game.

Yes, it really does need to be replaced. As Sturm mentioned, there's no way to tweak this perk without rendering it largely useless for its intended task.

[Sturmhaubitze]

The collision boxes for some of the environments are a little odd at times. For example there's the pipes around the church structure in Basilica, the ones near the ground entrance to the stairs. They look like you can walk over them, but sometimes you get stuck on them instead and have to go around.

[Pseudonymn]

Defeating a close-combat class in close-combat should be recognized as an accomplishment, especially if you're playing a different class. Instead you're punished for beating them at their own game.

Strongly agree. It's probably the most annoying, skilless perk in the game. Even for the one using it, there's really no sense of satisfaction by it. It's literally just a "+1 upon death" perk. This sort of thing doesn't encourage good gaming behaviors.

[Carl]

Seriously, if you can't deal with Final Vengance i've really got to wonder what your playstyle is like. I completed the No Surrendur. No Retreat achivement 2 days ago, I was 2/3 of the way through Fragged at the time, (not quite completed that yet). That adds up to less than 10% of my deaths to explosives. And of those the majority are self kills, the rest are allmost entierly enemy grenades. I don't think i've been killed more than 10 times by finial vengance. And most of those have been when i've walked/rolled round a corner into somones body, rather than becuase i killed somone and stood around for the next 5 seconds on his body till he killed me.

[hellic]

It's not hard to dodge Final Vengeance, it's just bloody annoying. People have given lots of reasons for why it shouldn't be in the game. Can you even think of one reason it should be?

[Shuma]

Does "It's funny" count?

[Thorno]

It gets me kills.

[Jaimas]

Can you even think of one reason it should be?

It teaches campers a harsh lesson in complacency.

[Demonic Spoon]

...Really? The mark of a camper is not moving an inch after killing an enemy?

[Mirage Knight]

Can you even think of one reason it should be?

It can get you a cheap kill that you didn't really earn that required absolutely no skill on your part?

Does "It's funny" count?

I kind of doubt that

[Ad Infinitum]

I've started to assume every assault uses final vengeance, because they almost always do. Kill and run is my go to tactic for handling this annoying turd of a perk. Sometimes (not always) I find I literally can't avoid the blast radius as I'll roll out of the way and sprint and just as I'm seeing the warning fade the very edge of the explosion manages to obliterate my stalwart marine with a puff of hot smoke.

Favor of the armory and MC wargear is pretty unnecessary and just promotes grenade spam. It's more annoying than it is troublesome since most people that use it tend to waste 3-4 grenades on one person.

Killing blow shouldn't even exist in it's current form, IMO. You have a hammer. You have grenades. You really don't need it, even if it's a devastator with a halo/icon and Feel No Pain they're still going to die really fast.

Some of the ammo reserve perks need an added bonus to be more appealing since ammo is already very abundant.

[Pseudonymn]

Carl, people's differences in playstyle notwithstanding, lag has as much a role in dying to a final vengence blast as anything else. It's just an annoying perk whose sole function is to grab a dubious +1 for the player upon their death.

[Mirage Knight]

It's more annoying than it is troublesome since most people that use it tend to waste 3-4 grenades on one person.

I tend to waste 3-4 Mastercrafted grenades / mini nukes on blobs protecting control points and then roll in and spray any survivors with mah trusty Stormbolter. For some reason people call that a bullshit tactic.

Some of the ammo reserve perks need an added bonus to be more appealing since ammo is already very abundant.

Ammo perks are so redundant due to the ammo drop mechanic it's almost a joke.

[konfeta]

Killing blow shouldn't even exist in it's current form, IMO. You have a hammer. You have grenades. You really don't need it, even if it's a devastator with a halo/icon and Feel No Pain they're still going to die really fast.

I agree. It should affect every target hit.

[BigSteve]

Replace it with a perk that lets you swing faster!

[Pseudonymn]

I would rather trade it in for a perk that extends the forward range of the groundpound targeting reticule to something a little closer to the way it was in SP. It's virtually straight up and down as it is now and makes the ASM flight path much to predictable.

[Carl]

@Pseudonymn: if you'd been paying attention to my posts in the dedicated server thread and elsewhere you'd know i've been stuck with persistant low grade lag all week. Unless your lag has everyone warping everywhere, (rare), Final Vengance is trivial to avoid if you know where the beepings coming from. Seriously. Leaving aside gunning down an ASM as a HB Dev at point blank range after suffering a fair bit of damage, the main way i die to it is rollign behind cover into the aftermath of a duel and getting cuaght in the blast of one i didn;t know was there. But the same can happen with grenades, so nothing wrong there.

@Hellic: I could go on about the several useful effects it has starting ith the one mentiond above. But at the end of the day there;s really only one reason it needs: because.

Fundamentally all perks are designed to help increase your kill to death ratio in a posotive way, eithier by increasin your damage to let you kill faster, increasing your health/armour, so you can outlast your opponent, or through more exotic secondary means. FInal Vengance defintly fall into the last category, and whilst it may be annoying to you, (just as i find the ability of air cooled thruster ASM to jump like bunnies on LSD annoying), it isn't exactly unbalanced in it's effects. So it's fine.