Im currwntly running it on my cadian vet commander build where i use exhilherating take down, iron will, the anti supression perk, and covering fire as well as all toughness regen and charasmatic with than the voice of command and regnerating maxed out frags for horde clear and the oh fuck situations.
Honestly is fun as hell to let loose on the hordes knowing how much toughness im regening the group while also giving them a massive dmg boost on top of the bolter shots doing serious horde dmg as i pop heads!
Boltweapons should treat limb shots as body shots and body shots as headshots with the exception of bosses maybe. Would really sell how devestating it is to have a shell explode inside your body.
i agree with the sentiment at the tailend. its wild that the games higher difficulty missions push everyone AWAY from the dark fantasy weapons to just the relatively stone and stick options of knife and revolver
You'd think it would push us toward the brutal futurisic weapons like Bolters and powered weapons that are iconic to 40K in a game with that theme. Imagine if Terminators lumbered around with revolvers and combat knives instead of the Stormbolters and Power Fists or Assault Cannons fitted with chain bayonets? I mean, why do they even exis if they'te not better than a revolver and a knife. Because they're meant to be better according to lore and not just a litte but like super powered in comparison.
The highest difficulty in PvE restricting the weapon and build pool down to a handful of the most meta picks is just how these games work really. It's a little funny the weakest weapons lorewise are the meta but honestly if it wasn't them it'd be something else. Its why IMO the highest difficulty in most PvE games isn't fun and often actually tends to suck.
@@Tk3997 Darktide's meta is not nearly so punitive. You can literally run nothing but grey garbage and no talents and still win if you know what you're doing. Its just that the balance lends the wrong feel to the game. When the balance favors axes and revolvers and not 40k weapons the game lacks a 40k feel to it because people tend to pick what is more meta than not so their games are smoother.
I find it cool how the community is finally acknowledging how the "iconic" weapons are either trash or mid, Boltgun especially. My biggest pet peeve though about the bolter is people trying to justify semi-auto aim is good and worthy of a build when it just becomes a worse revolver, full auto is so much cooler and needs its own variant for the Bolter that is full auto with less recoil.
This is actually been a drum beat of mine a while but I just think that the bolter should just have more single fire damage than the revolver and still be full auto.
@@Reginald-sc9tkat the cost of severe recoil, unless crouched dont want it to outclass everything else and make it feel more powerful. Similar to the thunder hammer stun.
It doesn't work because instead of locking the dude in place like the ogryn gauntlet, it pushes and staggers the target, thereby misaligning the barrel and the target's ass😑
It's just nice to be able to run the iconic Commissar kit, and it's so satisfying to reload with that saucy mag flip and then turn a heretic into shrapnel.
Glad my sentiment on "the bolt pistol while fun is not competitive against the revolvers" is shared here. I was using it and while it was cool and I was having fun I noticed I was actually struggling to kill things more than if I hady revolver.
Yeah. The bolt pistol feels artificially handicapped which makes it very frustrating to use. It’s like having a weight attached to your arm and you’re being forced to throw a punch (just feels sluggish and underpowered instead of say punching with brass knuckles). Bolt weapons by lore have high penetrative powers, so I feel it would be great if they could punch through cover to hit enemies like how the the plasma gun can. A slightly higher ammo capacity and fire rate along with better recoil would make the bolt pistol much more fun.
@@ParryHotter204agreed, i remember playing an older Warhammer game, i forget the name but the bolt pistol was really good in that but here it just feels useless
I'll say this. I think Zealot and maybe veteran should have a perk that helps but most humans cannot use a bolt pistol without alot of training or flat out religious zeal. It makes sense as much as it sucks. @@ParryHotter204
the bolt pistol and bolter both suffer from the same limb damage jank as the plasma gun did at launch. It wasn't noticeable for so long do to the whole stagger power build we all used to run, but after those nerfs last year the limb damage jank ruined the feel of the gun much like the plasma just felt bad for so long.
I played darktide for the first time in a long time last night. Ah, I remember now why I played it non stop for so long. ❤ Also the new weapons are really fun.
@@Reginald-sc9tk well, good news is the crafting system overhaul is looking pretty sweet based on the blog post FS posted yesterday, so that'll be nice.
@@burnin8ableit’s about time the game gets in a state where it’s less janky and barebones and can finally launch I’m tired of this 2 year beta phase (oh wait)
As someone who really likes the revolver... yeah I really wouldn't mind a bodyshot nerf. Like the revolvers feel great to use because whipping out your sidearm and pulling off a crisp one-tap from across the arena requires skill and feels appropriately rewarding. But that reward is kinda diminished when I realised with my skill level and playstyle, it's much safer to go for a two shot in the torso. And half the time I get a crit or something and it doesn't matter anyway.
No more ogryns blocking shots all the time. No more you laying down fire and a teammate stepping right in front of you because go ahead I don't care. :)
@@thunder2434 thing is thats the optimal way to play for a lot of situations! Believe it or not there were people genuinely defending this design choice, citing it would be 'OP' if you could shoot through your teammates. Yeah, totally.
Lethal Proximity and Puncture make it fun and effective in close quarters Surgical helps when you have a build that doesn't rely on movement (momentum) for buffs I agree they need to make it where the Bolt Weapons are even better than a revolver
Your closing thought is exactly how I felt after using it: It's not as good as the revolver but its good enough and it's more fun and interesting to use.
Revolvers always upset me in this (and many other) games. They're built up to be extremely powerful, which compared to other pistols is fine, but very few would be shooting anything that should be competing with a rifle cartridge.
to be fair, the stub revolver in darktide specifically is definitely shooting rifle sized cartridges. you can tell when you reload, those suckers are long as shit.
They look like magnum rounds to me, maybe .44. Squash head but we'll assume they're super special boolets. Its worth remembering that a short barrel and chamber setup reduces velocity quite a bit. Rifle ballistics only happen in rifles.
@@Reginald-sc9tk ye true, barrel length gives more time to accelerate the boolet. but who cares? it's not like the thing we're comparing the revolver against, the bolt pistol, makes any more sense by comparison lol.
@@burnin8able Not even a hot take but it actually does make a lot more sense. Projectile velocity and Mass are the primary method of loading and dumping kinetic energy into the target in a conventional munition. Revolver rounds aren't going to have the mass or velocity combo required to exceed a rifle round, even an intermediate caliber one, in any modern firearm. A bolt gun is a 2 stage gyrojet with an explosive round. If you go look at the actual gyrojet pistol and rifle their barrels aren't even pressure bearing components. In the bolt pistol there likely is a component of a barrel, however short, that imparts initial spin and allows the bolt's initial primer charge to be expended and kick the bolt out of the barrel. After a short delay the rocket charge is initiated and would increase velocity and likely add more spin for additional stability at range. Thus the short barrel isn't very important on bolt rounds since most of the velocity comes from the rocket not the kicker charge. Same concept as a modern RPG-7 actually. Beyond the massive projectile being pretty damaging on its own, the rocket itself causes cavitation if active while inside a target, and on top of all of that the thing explodes inside a target too. So it really is a different animal for how damage is dealt.
@@Reginald-sc9tkI once had a bug where guns had like half their models missing in the meat grinder. The auto gun rounds and stub revolver are similar in length. But the auto gun rounds are seriously bulky like friggin hell. Those things should be bisecting people.
Great stuff, thank you for putting this out so damn quick. What confused me about your comments though: On one hand, you say "it's fine, except the revolver exists." But even if there wasn't a revolver(which, yes, should be nerfed a touch), the bolt pistol would still be pretty sub-par for the reasons you subsequently articulate. The amount of follow-up shots I find myself doing to confirm a kill is frankly nuts, especially considering the thematics. I don't see myself revisiting the bolt pistol without major changes.
I think its ability to one tap specialists on a quick draw platform is above par of any other weapon except the revolvers and zealot knife, though its hard to achieve. But because of the follow up shot issue it certainly is underpowered for its handling. So its in a weird place in my view where its almost good enough but isn't but still does things few other weapons can do.
I really don't want the revolver nerfed, if it were unable to do what it does right now, the thing would be useless scrap metal. If I have to use two shots for every enemy, it's a waste of resources.
@@102ndsmirnov7 It's gotta be about as strong as the revolver imo, but its tradeoff could just be that it's harder to handle. It's fine that it doesn't get crazy crits, but it's gotta be able to at least kill poxwalkers or regular shooters in one shot lmao
I'm glad I found this video. I was streaming my play for friends and they started to notice other issues that seemed to do more with Darktide's recent instability instead of any balance issues. We noticed that Bolter had a relatively consistent issue of damage registration. The big turning point was when I captured myself shooting an enemy in the face and it dealing seemingly no damage. Just some random lesser melee enemy. This led me to ask a lot of players I saw in game who were using the weapon in my Auric runs if they had noticed an inconsistency with the damage of the weapon. A lot of people I spoke to assumed that they just were having issues aiming, but as you pointed out with break points, there's not really a reason for the game to show a hit marker but not a kill marker for shooting these enemies in the head. The Bolt Pistol actually has the exact same damage mapping as it's larger variant, but without access to full auto mag dump, I find it really struggles to be consistent.
It does struggle to be consistent. I usually don't talk about bugs in my videos because they're subject to change. Hit registration has been an issue for darktide of greater or lesser intensity for a while. It really hurts the thunder hammer for example. Its not always too bad but when servers and netcode are in bad shape its usually pretty rough. It happened to me about 4 (confirmed) times in 3 games last night.
This has been happening to me for months, with every gun. It's especially noticeable with lasguns and autoguns, particularly the single-shot autogun in my one-shot headshot build with it. An enemy standing perfectly still, not moving, you score a perfect headshot, you see the blood splatter, and the enemy is aggroed and starts approaching you, but you did 0 damage and have to shoot him again. Happens sometimes over a dozen times per match. Maybe it happens more when combat is really heated and chaotic and I just don't notice it, but those calm moments where you're sniping an unaware enemy happens far too often and it's aggravating.
@@vahnn0 No its been a long standing problem since the game launched, its waxed and waned in frequency as well. Its a huge bane for the Thunder Hammer too. But in theory its a net-code bug that remains unaddressed and just needs to get fixed.
Do want to note that when the itemization update hits we'll be able to take weapons to 100%. If it works as advertised, breakpoints and required perks could change.
One loadout I have for my bolt pistol is used lethal proximity and execution Having a frag pistol, pretty nice good for staggering hordes of chaff Also had a game where I played as the doom slayer with arc mace they’ve added and the assault shotgun With weapon specialist for my keystone And when swapping to ranged weapons, partial reload to the magazine And got 20 toughness for swapping in general I managed to clutch a game. Everybody died in the room, where you have to break the ice off of the gears. The doom veteran cleared house I also clutched it a second time up above at the Forge because everybody got clapped again by bloody guns and chaff. It was very fun.
Maybe I'm just a monster but I love bringing the bolt pistol to Aurics, yes everyone still runs around with revolvers in it but I still end up keeping or even doing the best in the team
Like I said, it's fine. I had a blast with mine last night, top scoring too. There's no weapon in darktide so bad you can't bring it. But there are lots of weapons that are obviously inferior choices.
the bolt pistol need to be better than the revolver, it's an heresy in the game!! I go report this to the inquisition, no joke i hope Fat Shark do something about that...
Honestly found best use with lethal proximity on my Weapon specialist Vet, while using either the combat knife or a power sword. The explosive damage is modest and works for dealing with a horde to give some breathing room, plus it will soften heavier targets, so I suppose it’s more your playstyle that will determine its usefulness, in my case, I’m pushing in with kraks, infiltration and weapon specialist, usually running a power sword of some sort and the bolt pistol, since at max stacks from weapon specialist in melee you get 3 shots back upon killing and immediately swapping. That’s 3 shots that at point blank deal massive damage in bursts.
Yeah the idea of being penalized for not being precise with a bolt weapon seems to completely counteract the entire purpose of the weapon. That is when I shoot something with a bolter that is not a massive or heavily armored target, it should explode.
Bolt pistol currently does need some buffs, but currently I'm having a great time using it as a secondary weapon for my zealot. Lethal prox+Run n Gun turns it into a Rumbler that loses some aoe for a magazine. Its damn good for making space and dealing with ranged specials.
I like the bolt pistol because its easier to use than the bolter. That has some insane recoil compaired to the bolt pistol. I use it as a specialist and carapace armored killer.
Mix between revolver and boltgun. I like it, but it's very clumsy compared to revolver + Faster reload + More capacity. + Area stagger. + More damage (I think). + Can hip-fire. + More ammo. - Huge recoil (reduces effective firing rate to below 1 shot / second). - No penetration. - sights hard to acquire, especially after a shot (needs weapon customisation mod for better sights). - Less effective close range. I like it. I don't mind the damage or no penetration. I would prefer better weapon handling characteristics and sights. It is effective if you hit your shots.
I think more damage keep the clumsy is a better delineation. Otherwise everything just becomes "like the revolver but X" Its worth mentioning that the revolver has 1 off reloads which is really useful for special sniping and saves time compared to a full reload animation.
It feels so strange they put all this work into it and its effectively just an even more limited bolter. I want to love this game but they make it harder and harder every day. I would prefer this to be solved by making the more fantastical iconic weapons spectacular rather than just nerfing the more pedestrian meta ones but I know that won't happen.
what i would do with the bolt pistol: +60% dmg -100% ammo reserve (so basically the magazine inside the weapons and 3 others , 8-24) reduce dmg at very long range. The point is to have a weapons with very high damage at short-medium range to death with elites. But with a vastly lower ammo reserve than a revolver or any other weapons. So the bolt pistol would shine into the hand of someone who rarely use range weapons and can manage his ammo. Those changes would allow the bolt pistol to be used as a reactive weapon (even without the need to aim for the head) and be able to do a full reload quickly. (where the revolver tends to require more space to breath for aim and reload fully.)
Maybe I missed it, but did you know about the double-aim trick? When you ADS and shoot, instead of waiting for the recoil to reset or trying to adjust your aim, just release ADS and instantly ADS again and it resets MUCH faster. Just do this between every shot. It still gets too inaccurate after several shots, but it's still much better overall. Works great with the regular Bolter, but with the bolt pistol, I noticed that the aim point snaps up and left if you don't shoot fast enough after re-ADSing, so you either have to aim and shoot before that happens or wait until after the snap and shoot, otherwise you'll miss a ton of shots. It's always up-left. But yeah, I agree, overall it's pretty underwhelming. If the bleed blessing applied to all enemies, it would be phenomenal, but as it stands, it's just okay. However it's still better than almost all the other options. I actually like the close-range explosion one, I use one of the power mauls with the +dmg vs staggered blessing, which pairs great with the Sharpshooter talent that increases weapon damage by 25% after switching weapons. (By the Emperor, I can't remember the names of any of these things anymore!)
I did know about it, after I finished recording and was almost done editing the video someone mentioned it to me. Was too late to go back and add it in but I had heard about it!
Yeaaaaaaah.... revolver seems to accomplish everything a little better and cleaner. Kinda wish the "explosive" aspect was more impactful. Like, lacking the penetration of the gat with the upside of single target damage. I thought that you put it all very well. Good vid!
The reason why boltguns don't do well against infested is they are too squishy for the rounds to be effective. It has even been noted in the lore, which is why Space Marines can struggle with hoards of poxwalkers. Now for unarmored, flak and maniac, yeah, it should do more bodyshot damage. Not going to disagree one bit. I know I've been having a lot of fun with the boltpistol and the mkIII stun maul (Haven't been able to find a good mkIa to try yet) on my support zealot build. I am currently knocking the rust off of my gears and haven't done any Auric Malestrom yet, so my opinion may change. Really like how snappy yet unwieldy the pistol is, such an odd combination of traits. My break had made me forgotten how great the weapon feel of the game has been, how much of a team game it is and such. Really looking forward to getting back to where I was. I absolutely love the lore and tilesets Fatshark does, I just wish they would come out with more maps x.x
Even if we take it from the lore that bolt guns struggle against infested flesh why would non-exploding and smaller caliber revolver rounds be more effective instead of even less? Thats the rub for me.
Don't disagree. I think the revolvers shouldn't have been added and have the shredder as the auto pistol. Would give them more breathing room for the infernus and plasma pistol in the future.
@@CrayssiusYes they have both impact detonation and a timed fuse. Some in lore stories talk of a bolter round embedding in someones extremity to then seconds later explode on timer. This could be incorporated in DT.
The revolvers are fine but they should be limited to needing headshots to deal big damage, and just generally worse penetration than the bolt pistol. They can fill the role of an accuracy sidearm while the bolt pistol is more generalist and can be used for both horde clearing and taking out elites.
Deadly accurate allows bolt pistol to do significantly more damage to crushers and monsters. On my psyker build for crits using scriers gaze it does perform worse than base revolver on carapace but it does a lot more to bosses than that revolver could hope for. I’m just not sure how the bolt pistol stacks up to the newer revolver variant since that one seems to also be more suited to boss damage
@Reginald-sc9tk It definitely is food for thought. I guess I may have to succumb to lower my mouse sensitivity just for this gun. hip fire first round is quite accurate that I missed the shot. lol
I initially didn't like this gun. (Still don't) But its charms are beginning to grow on me. It's the animations that I'm falling in love with. The reject holds it hip fired with one hand. When a need of precision, they hold the grip with two. They also hold the magazine when sprinting, keeping the gun tucked close to their body. The internal slide reciprocates out the back, which is something you can visually see. It's a nice touch. It's feels how i wanted the auto pistol to feel. It certainly looks better than the auto pistol when in cutscenes or from another person's perspective. The cutscenes, the idle animations, and combat animations all accurately portray how the gun looks in your own hands.
Again looking at the early Patch notes for some of the weapon and blessing changes for the 26th September "Unlocked and Loaded" Big Patch(tm) are out: Boltgun / Bolt Pistol In this release we added a set of targeted buffs aimed to increase the overall reliability of the iconic Boltgun and Bolt Pistol weapons, but also to significantly improve their performance against specific enemy types and in various situations. Dev Note: We are aware of some issues regarding the aim of the bolt weapons, particularly in the recoil and sway when shooting continuously. Unfortunately the issues are rooted quite deeply in the interaction between multiple different systems, so a complete fix was not possible for this release. We are going to continue investigating a solution and provide an update on our progress at a later date. In the meantime, we have added some tweaks on the Sway and hitscan behaviors which should at least alleviate part of the issue. Detailed Changes Both Families Reduced the intensity of the Sway from 1.0 to 0.3. Dev Note: This will make the weapon to be overall slightly less unwieldy when aiming, and also make it less likely for the aim position to be significantly displaced when transitioning from hipfire to ADS. Extended the radius of the hitscan for the bolt projectiles. Dev Note: This will make the hitscan detection to be more generous and allow for shots that would have slightly missed the target to still be considered a hit. Changed the bolt properties to ignore limbs on non-Monstrosity enemies when the projectile trajectory would have also hit their torso or head. Dev Note: This will avoid situations where a bolt could be intercepted by the limbs of the enemies even when aiming at their center of mass, resulting in heavily reduced damage. Armor damage modifier vs Carapace Armour from 0.4 to 0.5 (both near and far range). Armor damage modifier vs Infested from 0.5 to 0.9 (near) / 1.0 (far). Dev Note: Bolt-type weapons were penalized when shooting against Infested enemies. This tweak will normalize the damage in order to make them more reliable against this armor type. Locke Mk IIb Spearhead Boltgun Significantly improved the wield speed, from around 1.9s to 1.6s. Improved the stagger properties of subsequent hits on the same target. Dev Note: This will make it easier to open up Bulwark shields and reach stagger thresholds on other hard to stagger enemy types. Godwyn-Branx Pattern Bolt Pistol Added cleave properties to the bolt projectiles From no_cleave to {1.0,3.0}. Dev Note: This will make it possible for the shot to hit the intended target instead of being fully absorbed by even a single minor enemy. Reduced some chain timings after the Special Push action: Chain to hipfire Shoot from 0.56 to 0.4 Chain to Unwield from 0.54 to 0.4 Chain to Special from 0.9 to 0.75
Yep, I had same thoughts exactly. Generally, it's an OK weapon that has great esthetics but somewhat bad aiming - especially in ADS. You can definitely use it and succeed on highest difficulties, but if we talk efficiency, I would take revolver over it every time in every situation.
First off, love the production quality on this break down. Second, very valid concerns. I agree that the revolver should not suffer for the bolt pistol. Here’s hoping it gets the tweaks it can.
One more thing about Revolvers.. the hitbox of revolvers are larger.. it is easier to HIT with revolvers, and it's easier to MISS with the new Bolt Pistol - for not only that but many other reasons.. try it at the shooting range, you'll see that you still hit even when aiming off the target with revolvers, but that doesn't happen with the new Bolt Pistol.. And i think it makes no sense because if you see, the revolver calliber is way lesser than the Bolt Pistol..
Well if anything you've convinced me to at least give it a try. But I will still say the biggest barrier for me is still the ads recoil jank. Additionally I think talking about specialist killing pistols warrants mentioning the las pistol (the Accatran specifically), which I believe is an excellent weapon. I wouldn't consider it above the Zarona, but I would put it above the bolt pistol from what I have seen. Additionally it fits perfectly with the theme and lore of laspistols. Hope to see more DT content in the future.
Las pistol is excellent but I kinda think of it more as a do-everything over a sniping tool because of the required refiring on most specialists. Its not whip out and remove problem exactly. Still really good though.
@Reginald-sc9tk fair enough. If the newer variant of the Las Pistol was better (kantrael I believe?) perhaps we could have that conversation, but it still needs a but if work.
Just the fact that you can get Bleed, Fire AND Explosive rounds on the Bolt pistol makes it more fun for me. I always hated how you have to be reloading 80% of the fights when using any revolver.
i think it is subpar because the bolter was so overpowered at launch so the boltgun came pre nerfed. the boltgun really needs a buff. the primary reason the bolter was op was the full auto mag dumping
It would be cool if they buffed the damage of the bolt pistol, made it harder to wield, then make the revolvers weaker but akimbo. No one would complain if you have the option to go full space cowboy.
"Akimbo" is standing with your hands on your hips in the stereotypical "grumpy parent" look. What did you mean to say? To make them all hip-shooters? The Agripinaa already does that.
The devs seriously fumbled it with their slow pace of change and numerous bad decisions. Compare DT to Helldivers for update pace and reactivity to feedback and it really is just a world away from good. But nothing compares to darktide for straight combat.
@@Reginald-sc9tk yeah I come back for the funny magic man and the great melee. But other then that liberty gots my number. Although I find it funny that dark tide tried to gaslight us that the Spanish leak wasn't real, then should it off.
3:30 this has been a bug as long as I've played this damn game on the normal bolter. How it could've possibly made it's way to the new bolt pistol is a friggen mystery to everyone
Yeah I agree on the Bolt-Pistol (and the regular Bolter, too!) needing a damage boost (and BETTER SIGHTS that are on TARGET if you ASD!)...seriously, the sights and the bolter are bad enough, but those on the Bolt-Pistol are worse! Yeah, over all the revolver is stronger (sadly)...I played with the revolver for a long time and yeah, it is the "sniper-rifle" in this game...especially since most other weapons have crappy sights! Seriously, they should give us the option to mount sights (the Imperium is not so primitive that they have forgotten how to mount an optic!)! That said: It is a fun weapon and iconic! Will be using it a lot :)
I hate how slow the Zerona revolver reloads. Same with the bolter. The Bolt Pistol gives me the best of both worlds, if not necessarily doing the job of either better.
it's just a matter of having more reload speed and better positioning.. the gun is strong as hell.. one of the strongest, you kill a Crusher with 2 shots to the head.
I'm certainly interested in doing so but it may take me more time and I have a lot of irons in the fire. This video was a big lift. I guess it depends on how well this video performs and what interests grab my attention. Interest is my primary motivator for my video production selection.
100% felt the same before considering stats or situation stuff. I've been using the vanilla revolver and combat blade since i first touched the zealot and I'm just waiting for any reason to swap out. The shock maul is nice as an option to change up some things but doesn't make me want to replace the knife. The bolt pistol feels like it *should* convince me to swap out the revolver but it just doesn't have any reason for me to use it yet. Why would I want a gun with 10 single fire rounds that is hard to aim, mostly low-damage compared to my revolver, and to get the best from it, needs to be spammed at close range? I have melee for close range enemy clearing without consequence because I built into that, so that my gun can be a near-instant reload 1 bullet and delete any ranged enemy. So disappointed by the bolt pistol because I'm yearning for anything to convince me to use a new loadout/build.
while I get what you mean, I feel like the revolver is just the best for zealot specifically because it so neatly fits into a niche that zealot's other tools struggle to fit. anti-ranged specialist and shooter is something that most of zealot's kit doesn't deal with very well, so the fact that the revolver can just do that out of the box with no additional support is massive. I feel like bolt pistol with lethal proximity and point blank on a weapon specialist vet would be REALLY fun for stun locking hordes.
Honestly if the splash damage from the bolt pistol hit the original target a couple of times, say calculated to assume hit's to 3 body locations, or one to two but without armor, then it would both probably balance it against the pistol and help it fulfill the action movie fantasy of shooting someone with an under slung grenade launcher having them survive and then explode a second or two later. Also if it's not going to kill someone in one shot I'm fine with the they die from bleeding out thing because legitimately if you blow apart someones limb or put a big hole in their torso and they don't die instantly they would bleed out in very short order.
With Puncture, does the explosion apply bleed, or only direct hits? A few stacks of bleed into a crowd sounds cool (even if it's actually not all that effective with bolt splash damage being fairly low/practically non-existent).
They should increase it's damage by about 20%, the fact an armour piercing explosive is weaker than a revolver is some shit. Though I like the boltgun hip fire on the zealot, it's not I want to do maximum damage, it's the boltgun goes brrrr into a wave of crushers ect... style and substance over sweaty I must min max above all else. Though I would love to see some dual wielding pistols, or one handing with a melee weapon, can't block or ads but you can go full dps and dodge!
It just feels right I love the bolter but it’s just too slow sometimes this is just perfect lil pocket fuck you for my zealot to pullout when something’s just outta stabbing or mashin range
for the the proposed fixes no the Revolver should be better against soft unarmored enemies while the boltpistol which is firing these massive rounds should absolutely body carapace and flak.
Well since half of the people in these comments saying it's trash i never had any problems with mine & plus im always having plenty of fun using the boltgun....now with other people that's just gotta be a skill issue with them 🤷🏾♂️💯
thats was my thought bolt pistol needs a buff, it felt like a bad revolver. the bolt pistol should be destroying people on contact, and the boltgun also feels off. but it was nerfed a bunch of times for making one shot boss. nerfing our toys shouldn't be the option buff the agression system.
Felt pretty similarly, really wanted it to be good but there really is no reason to use it over the revolver in its current implementation. Honestly I'd even be down with something like increasing the explosion radius or something to make it more versatile, then at least it would be a choice of do you want the gun that's absolutely the best for snipping elites, or do you want something that's still pretty good for that but can also deal with hordes better
Well the explosion radius blessing does that and all it is is stagger. It needs real damage but IMO thats not the kind of thing a bolter is for. Its not an AOE grenade launcher its a single target annihilator.
I might have mine set up wrong but i was underwhelmed with the bolt pistol. I got a top tier revolver with surgical4 and handcannon4 that takes a crusher down in 3 hits very reliably but the bolt pistol takes the whole clip at best and usually needed a few shots on top of that Then theres my bolter(proper bolter) and i have had that thing take up to three crushers out in one mag dump and that one also lets you chose if you want semi or full auto
Cheers Reginald, long time Fan here ;) guess I watched all your build and theory Vids, GREAT Information given and I am glad to see you back. QUESTION : did you test Lethal Proximity with Puncture? Maybe the increased explosion radius triggers the bleed and would make it ( great? ) vs Hordes. Also what does NEAR SHOTS mean? Does is trigger the Explosion INSIDE the 5m arming range...? I will test it myself when I got the Blessings...need to do some more mats farming though :P
Near shots are within 5 meters, which is the priming distance of the bolt round. Lethal and puncture have no interaction. Sadly. Thanks for coming to visit! Glad you like my work.
Pistol looks awesome, but the feel of playing is awful because of random "skips" between shots that makes you miss everytime, the pistol randomly jumps while you're aiming for no reason.. and also it is weak on damage, many times you're wasting time shooting a target twice that other guns kill in one shot... i think they should change Bleeding for Penetration and fix those random leaps between shots while aiming.
@@Reginald-sc9tk I dunno, i can kill more with the columnus mkV and quicker than with the revolver because of the crit chance, the revolver is more ammo efficient though.
@@Jono_93 Its a time bias thing. If I can onetap a key trapper instantly through a horde with quickdraw then that's less time spent shooting and more in melee when playing zealot. Whereas the columnus takes a bit more time to chew through things. But its the better weapon for veteran.
From a pure gameplay standpoint, there's too much value in being able to Marty Robbins a special through a crowd in a complete shitstorm, plink a special at 100 yards without batting an eyelid, or do a Veteran's job of wiping out packs of Scabs down a tin can alley. Far too many situations in games where I've tried to use another gun and ended up thinking "really needed my revolver there", certainly not seeing the bolt pistol taking that spot even if it is buffed as you suggest. Very fair points though. Have been trying the Hacker shotgun too. It's fun to use and sounds great, but feels like it needs minmaxxing with the Zealot's talents for guns and doing an alternating pattern with melée to even feel worth it, and still it doesn't seem to perform right. Other than doing the mad build Milk&Cookies showed on his Veteran with it, on a Zealot at least the Agripinna shotgun with the armour-pen alt slug feels consistently more situationally appropriate. What the Hacker can do to big (non-armoured) targets at point-blank I can do cleaner with either my chainaxe or Turt6.
Please send this video to the Fatshark weapons design team and maybe they will fix the bolt weapons. I really can't fathom why they will not allow players in a PvE game to have fun with the iconic 40k weapons.😞
on paper i get what they wanted bolt guns to be. strong vs armor but weak vs squishy. but man that makes them feel like absolute trash ontop of how annoying it is to aim. cowboys stay winning
Revolvers should be a low level and accessible, easy to use point and kill gun for non-gun centric builds, Bolt guns should 100% FUCK whatever they hit at the cost of handling and ease of use, I don't care what they do, I don't believe that a rocket propelled, Deuterium-Core, Diamantine-Tipped ,15mm explosive round would be unable to kill a lady with a net gun with a body shot at 20 meters but a .45 Colt Revolver without problem can
all the new balance changes, and new weapons are for better or worse "balanced" while the op stuff is still there. though they tackled some of the op stuff in talent trees on zealot, it is funny watching people complain that zealot is unusable now
Yeah I'm in the "those nerfs were minor and justified" camp on zealot nerfs. If the idea here is to actually nerf the OP things and claim the bolt pistol is in a good spot i would disagree with that. I don't think bouncing off an unarmored dreg bruiser is a sensible balancing choice for this weapon given its real lore or implied effect. But if the balance "overton window" is going to be constrained a bit then the buffs don't need to be as strong. I'd still like to see some appropriately constrained interpretation of what I proposed here implemented.
@@Reginald-sc9tk i think in general the flak vs unarmoured balance is really weird. you generally do more damage to flak than unarmoured, if the units that had those armour classes were swapped, then all of a sudden the damage would make sense. just a weird quirk of how things got buffed i guess. for bolt pistol with the zealot build i had, i was ~10 damage off 1shs on scab gunner but something like >200 on dreg gunner. with the cope that they fix that, i think generally bolt pistol level would have a "balanced" ttk in an ideal game. but the balance is real slow to happen xd definitely hope theres a more comprehensive balance pass with the crafting update recoil control makes bolt pistol annoying to use imo, unpredictable and jittery. that definitely needs to be fixed xd
I dunno the 100% increase weakpoint damage makes quit a difference when getting head shots and taking out ogryn and boss enemies I find unless running a crit build the crit chance isn't a enough to make a difference
100% weakpoint on crit really only takes you over lines you would have crossed when critting already for most targets. Id rather use other weapons for monstrosities and ogryn than the BP
@Reginald-sc9tk it says critical weak spot damage ie how much damage you do to weak points unless I'm confused and obviously theirs better weapons plbut the perks turn 5 Headshots on a crusher to 3 atleast that's what I've found with my build
Joe The Pub won't like it, but Zarona needs a massive cleave nerf and somewhat pen nerf before we can start to accommodate the bolt pistol. This was long time coming.
I kind of felt this way about the boltgun, let's take what is supposed to be one of the well known, ICONIC weapons in 40k The OG HIMSELF, and make it "so so". The boltgun and the bolt pistol should be bad ass, you should feel like a top tier going to fuck up some heretics mother fucker when you use one. Honestly my near god roll agripinaa braced autogun feels more meaty and more effective with the right Vet talents than most of the guns in the game and I'm fully willing to accept it's not. On paper it probably isn't that good, but it damn sure "feels damn good".
Personally I think that the Bolter and Bolt pistol should do about 25% more damage in general to unarmoured, 35% extra maniac weakspot damage but less to carapace by around 10-15%. Reduce bolter reserve from 100 to 60 but in return it does not suffer from damage reduction from hitting limbs. So many 2 shots on ad gunmen at long range makes me frustrated even though i have extra flak damage.
I know there's meta, percentages, min/max and *snoooooore* Don't care. I'm not a huge fan of the revolver. I'll just swing my eviscerator and fire my bolt pistol while screaming praises to the emperor But yeah, buff my bolty
@@Reginald-sc9tk I found out why it looked better to me, you have the camera sway all the way up. I had mine down but I changed it. Ik it probably wasn't your intention but thank you!! (Great vid btw)