'Darktide' Class Guide: How To Play The Veteran Sharpshooter

The Veteran Sharpshooter class in "Darktide" is the ranged weapon specialist of the bunch that has access to a few special guns and melee weapons outside of the shared equipment pool.

These marksmen thrive behind their team, offering precision overwatch to eliminate high-value targets and keep all sorts of heretics away from allies. Sharpshooters aren't shabby at melee fighting at all either, making them incredibly versatile and easy to use.

Here's a quick guide that covers the basics on how to play as a Sharpshooter in "Darktide."

Main Role and Responsibilities

The Sharpshooter is the squad's designated marksman. They pick heretics off from a distance using accurate weapons fire to give the rest of the team a chance to approach objectives or close the distance in melee.

Ideally, Sharpshooters should focus on targeting heretic riflemen as well as Elites and Specials like Gunners, Maulers, Trappers, Chaos Ogryns and Pox Bursters. This class is also great for clearing hordes by using Frag Grenades.

Feats

The Sharpshooter's Feats revolve around guns, range management and grenades. They are all situational and there is no build that is objectively the best, but here's one Feat setup that focuses on a balanced playstyle with good survivability, utility and damage output:

• At Arm's Length
• Demolition Stockpile
• Bio-Optic Targeting
• Unwavering Focus
• One After Another
• Sustained Fire

At Arm's Length is generally good as lets players trade shots with Scabs and Dregs without having to worry about running out of Toughness. The eight-meter minimum requirement hardly matters either since anything within that range should be taken out with a melee weapon anyway, and doing so also recovers toughness.

Sustained Fire is also great as it turns Volley Fire into a panic button. This Feat makes sure that weapons are always loaded upon using the Sharpshooter's class ability, and it'll refresh the ability's duration every time an Elite or Special is killed by the player during its effect.

Feel free to replace Sustained Fire with Counterfire for an increase to Weakspot damage while Volley Fire is active. Boss-killer builds should use The Bigger They Are instead to get increased damage against Chaos Ogryns and monsters.

Arsenal Notes

Veteran Sharpshooters have access to a wider variety of lasguns compared to other classes. This includes the Lucius Helbore Lasgun used by the Death Korps of Krieg as well as the Accatran Pattern Mk VId, which is a fully-automatic variant used by Elysian Drop Troops.

In general, lasguns are more valuable to Sharpshooters because of their increased weakspot damage from one of their passive traits as well as the damage buffs granted by Volley Fire. They also enjoy more maximum ammo than everyone else, making Sharpshooters better at wielding spam weapons like autoguns.

Regarding the Plasma Gun, this weapon completely changes how Sharpshooter is used. Players will need to treat "Darktide" like "Vermintide," where ranged weapons are reserved solely for taking out special enemies.

The Plasma Gun can kill a Crusher on Malice difficulty with one charged shot, but it suffers from a slow reload speed and horrible ranged accuracy. When using this weapon, players will need to rely on their teammates to take out riflemen for them.

Ideal Perks

In general, players will want to find perks that synergize with the role they intend to play.

For ranged weapons, perks like Deadly Accurate can greatly increase DPS output as long as the gun itself has bonuses to its critical hit chance. The damage will pile on top of Feat effects and Volley Fire's buffs. Alternatively, perks that cause Rend on the Boltgun and Plasma Gun are amazing against heavily-armored enemies.

For offensive melee weapon perks, Wrath, Rampage and Death-spitter are all excellent in general. Players who are looking for defensive options should look for Momentum or Trauma instead.

Tips

• Swords in general are great melee weapons for the Sharpshooter since they have wide sweeping attacks that can make up for any lack of AoE damage their guns might have
• Braced Autoguns complement single-target melee weapons like axes fairly well
• Spam Grenades if Demolition Stockpile is slotted in
• Use Volley Fire as often as possible, even if it is just to scout for Elites and Specials that may be hiding
• If possible, leave Chaos Hounds to Psykers as these enemies are too hard to hit with guns
• Not all guns are meant to be spammed, so be extremely mindful of ammo conservation