+2.5-4% Bonus Critical Chance on Chained Hit. Stacks 5 times.
+25-40% Cleave on Hit. Stacks 5 times.
+4.5-6% Close Range damage on Repeated Hit. Stacks 5 times.
Gain +7-10% Close Damage for 3.5 seconds after killing an enemy at close range, stacking 5 times.
This has become my go-to build when running veteran. The Columnus MK Infantry Autoguns is one of the best weapons in the game, with ridiculous DPS hampered only by carapace armour. Between our Krak Grenades and the brittleness afforded to us by Onslaught, even these fall in seconds. We have enough ammunition with fully loaded giving us extra reserves and Survivalist generates 7 bullets for every elite or special kill to reliably never run out of ammunition. Weapons Specialist Provides an insane attack speed buff to our Cadia Mk XIIIg Assault Chainsword, which allows us to spam our light attack into hordes and turn it into pulp.
The shock trooper is designed to be a close ranged Veteran build. By crouching and firing in short bursts, we can pick off distant targets if need be. Where we shine is in short to medium ranged engagements. The Columnus Mk V Infantry Autogun has one of the highest overall damage per second profiles of any weapon in the game, and this build aims to maximise it's potential. Even with the recent nerf to Survivalist auara, with over 700 rounds of ammunition, you have to actively mag-dump intro trash hordes to actively try and run out of ammunition.
We will be rocking 200+ Toughness with 50%+ toughness damage reduction providing we can mantain our toughness at the upper ends. This means we effectively have 400+ Toughness, which allows to wade into melee just as confidently as a zealot of Ogryn. Voice of Command is on a short 30 second cooldown (even shorter if we do our job and kill specialists) , and allows us to top our toughness up, support our team and knock back that Crusher about to turn us into a pancake, or to stun that Chaos Spawn trying to snack on our teamate. Melee play is very simple. With Weapons Specialist, our attack speed becomes insane, and we can just spam left click into hordes. The pickest threat you will face is carpal tunnel syndrome. By switching between melee and ranged frequently, we can buff both aspects of our gameplay.
Close order drill & Confirmed kill is the best start in 90% of builds. Longshot requires a not-insignificant distance to benefit from, something which this build lacks. It is down to personal preference if you want to opt for Shredder Frag Grenade or Krak Grenade. Both are viable and will not change the amount of points spent. I personally prefer Krak Grenades as we have fantastic horde clear with our melee. Our Columnus Mk V Infantry Autogun is capable of taking down larger Ogryn targets, but does not do so efficienctly. Krak Grenades allows us to save ammunition on these heavily armoured targets. Grenade Tinkerer buffs our grenade damage and increases collateral damage. Killing three crushers in one grenade because they were tightly packed feels real good, and this also lets us chunk down monstrosities.
I prefer Catch a Breathe over Get back in the Fight! as it provides toughness regeneration in situations where we are solo and need to clutch, as well as top up toughness in ranged firefights. It's not super neccessary and either is viable based on your preference. Even with the addition of the 5-second cooldown, Survivalist Aura remains the best veteran aura by far and should be picked up in every build, provided it does not drastically alter your build path. Our weapons are rapid fire anyway, so don't have to worry about breakpoints (Not that Fire Team helps with many anyway). Demolition Stockpile is practically mandatory on every veteran build. Much like with Survivilist Aura, the amount of free resources it provides over the course of a match is far too impactful to give up. Voice of Command with Duty and Honour is the meta veteran ability and incredibly easy to use. Even if you switch your brain off and just spam it off of cooldown, the amount of value you will be generating for your team is insane. Only in Death Does Duty End is not neccessary and can save you a point elsewhere (especially important in a tree as packed as the Veterans). Just run over to a downed teamate, shout, and whilst the enemies are knocked back, we have enough time to pick up our teamates (Whilst avoiding the 50% increased cooldown).
From here we branch into all three branches and pick up the most impactful nodes from each. On the left hand tree, Precision Strikes pairs very well with the Columnus Mk V Infantry Autogun which already has incredibly high weak spot damage. It will take some getting used to the recoil, but you should always be aiming for the head to maximise DPS and minimise ammo expenditure. Fully Loaded not only increases our margin for error, but also increases the amount of ammunition we get back. Perks such as Survivalist aura give ammo back based the percentage of our total ammunition. So this synergised well with our aura, giving us around 7 shots back per elite or specialist kill. Superiority Complex is a simple 15% increase to Elite enemies. Take it.
Down the middle tree we pick up For the Emperor! We will be using our ability frequently anyway to buff our team. Born Leader rarely comes into play when we are shouting to replenish our teamates toughness anyway and Keep their Heads Down! doesn't seem to have much impact. This allows us to pick up Tactical Awarness to reduce our ability cooldown on our way to pick up Iron Will. This is one of the best nodes for Veteran and allows us to tank so much damage, even Ogryns blush. This 50% Toughness Reduction applies to the overshield of our shout, effectively giving us a 100 Toughness shield, just as strong as a Zealots Chorus. This is what allows us to get into the thick of action without a care in the world.
Down the right tree Close Quarters Killzone to add yet another buff to our shout. This is not super neccessary, and you can opt for Duck and Dive if you would prefer. Personally I don't run out of stamina often, so I don't find this node helps me. Onslaught is absurdly good on rapid fire weapons, and the reason we go down the right side of this particular tree. Firing 16 shots applies 40% rending, turning even carapace armour into tissue paper. If I am not mistaken, the Columnus Mk V Infantry Autogun fires 10 rounds a second, meaning that you get the full effect after 1.6 seconds of firing. This combined with Precision Strikes allows us to take down Crushers and Maulers quickly with sustained fire in situations where we do not have Krak Grenades available. Trench Figher Drill and Weapons Specialist gives us ridicolous attack speed in melee. The buff lasts for 10 seconds. if it runs out, switch to your ranged weapon, fire into a horde just long enough to kill one enemy, to get the melee buff back and wade knee deep in nurgle worshippers. We don't pick up any keystone modifiers because it all honesty, the kind of suck and our points can be far better used elsewhere.
For our melee weapon, we want a weapon that benefits from spamming our light attacks. The Cadia Mk XIIIg Assault Chainsword has a simple moveset and does over 200 damage for each light attack. No other melee weapon comes close to this level of raw damage. It's for this reason that I prefer it over force swords and other melee options for this build. Force swords require activation to get the most out of them, so does not benefit as much from our attack speed. The Cadia Mk IV Assault Chainsword has a slightly more versatile moveset, but does not work as well on light attack spans, making it slightly inferior in this specific build.
The Columnus Mk V Infantry Autogun is what makes this build, and is considered by many to be the best weapon in the game at the moment. I would not go that far, but it's hard to argue it's insane DPS potential, fast handling and quick reload. The first few shots will give kick recoil moving the weapon upwards, but at that point it turns into a pin-point laser beam with exceptional accuracy. Whilst it suffers at longer ranges, 90% of threats you will face at high tier gameplay is as a result of being overwhelmed by enemies at close range. The columnus seeks to overcome this by hitting DPS checks and clearing enemies in the quickest time possible. It will take some getting used to be able to handle the recoil, but if you can consistently land headshots, there are few weapons that can compete with it's sheer destructive power.
After 1,000+ hours in Darktide, I have a few simple rules when it comes to Curios. Melee classes (Ogryns and Zealot) should take 2x Toughness and 1x Health Curios to give a good mix of defensive stats. Veterans should take 3 Toughness Curios, as they benefit more from Toughness than other classes, owing to their larger toughness pools and skills such as Iron Will. Psykers should run 2x Toughness and 1x Stamina curio to make up for low Base stamina, and to benefit from their faster stamina regeneration. Obviously, there are some caveats to that. A melee centric Veteran might want to run 1x Health Curio and certain knife and stealth builds might want to run a stamina curio. But for the most part, I find this a good rule to stick to to ensure you have curios that are effective for the vast majority of your builds, especially when starting out when it is difficult to find any curios, much less good ones. Oh and Wound Curios should only ever be used on Zealot Martydom builds. Having Wound Curios actually means that health stims will now heal less on you. I know some people like to take a wound curio 'just in case they go down', but in higher difficulties, there is no guarantee your team can pick you up. It's far better to invest in defensive abilities which prevent downs as much as possible.
For Perks, Always take Extra toughness and gunner resistance. Gunner Resistance is the most useful resistance node as it applies to Scab Gunners, Scab Shotgunners, Dreg Gunners, Dreg Shotgunners and Reapers. This is the largest collection of enemies out of any of the resistance perks. These enemies can absolutely shred you in seconds, and make up a significant portion of the enemies encountered in Auric Maelstroms. The ability is multiplicative, so does have some diminishing returns. 0.80×0.80×0.80=0.512 meaning that we end up with a total gunner resistance of 0.488, just below 50%. I can certainly see the argument to only running two gunner resistance curios (with an overall damage resistance of 36 %) and opting for something else (potentially sniper OR Flamer), but I still value that extra 12.8%.
For the final perk, it depends on your build. If you are using a build which relies heavily on your ability, then run cooldown reduction to more frequently make use of said ability. I find this to be especially powerful on builds which make use of Voice of Command for instance. If your build is not too heavily reliant on your ability, then run for extra health. Again you can tweak this to suit individual playstyle (and the mercy of the RNG-gods as Hadrons bricks yet another piece of equipment), but this is a pretty good rule to aim for.
Voice of Command your immortality button, and the overshield lasts for 15 seconds. With a 30-second cooldown, let's crunch the math. 12% cooldown reduction leads to a our ability being off cooldown in 26.4 seconds. This means that between consecutive shouts, there are now only 11.4 seconds where you are 'vulnerable' and not benefiting from the overshield. Bear in mind that overshield counts as you being above 75% toughness. Toughness reduction stacks in a multiplicative Iron Will combined with Close Order Drill means that your actual toughness reduction is a 33% increase of 50%, giving us a value of 0.67. So that's a 67% damage reduction, effectively giving that 50 toughness overheal 150 toughness in actuality, not accounting for any additional toughness damage reduction from teammate shields. Technically it's slightly higher because of the extra 5% damage reduction (68.175%) but you get the idea. You're virtually unkillable whilst this is up, so having this god-mode up more often is far more impactful not just to you, but to your team's survivability than the extra 15% health on the Veteran's quite pitiful base health pool.
The shock trooper excels in high-intensity auric runs, where you can quickly dispatch elites and specialists to provide ammo for you and your team. You won't need protecting like dedicated sniper Veteran builds, and can get stuck into the thick of it with our teamates comfortably. It is a versatile build, providing a shield for your team on a short cooldown, allowing you to come out of hectic horde fights unscathed. Your toughness and damage reduction are higher enough to shrug with most hits with only minimal health loss, and to go toe to toe with entire scores of enemy gunners in firefights and come out on top. It is a versatile build that can work well in most situations. The Columnus Mk V Infantry Autogun is one of the few ranged options with a flashlight, making it very useful for lights out and system purge runs.
Whilst you can take out distant targets by crouching to increase accuracy, long range engagements are not your forte. Short to medium ranges is where you shine and is your effective kill-zone. By not opting for a Focus Target! build, we do not provide as many buffs to our teamates as other, more support orientated builds can. Whilst our individual DPS is higher and the handling allows us to more quickly react to threats, without the infinie cleave of a Plasma gun, we can struggle with packed in groups of high armoured targets. Krak Grenades alleviate this problem somewhat, but not entirely. But the biggest weakness is the wrist strain it causes. Our attack speed in melee is so high, that it can actually hurt to spam left click in prolonged missions.
Question: Why do the stats, weapons, and abilities in the video not match what's written in this guide?
Answer: I am constantly evolving and refining my builds. As patch notes are released, certain weapons and abilities may change in effectiveness. Additionally, as my skills and knowledge grow, my preferred builds can shift. I aim to provide videos demonstrating the effectiveness of my builds in a Damnation level Auric run as proof of concept. However, these videos may sometimes be outdated. While I strive to keep everything current, Darktide is my hobby, and I may not always have the latest updates in the videos. The information in these guides reflects my most recent thinking and should be considered more accurate than what is shown in the videos.
