If you've ever been confused by a term you've heard, were unsure of what something meant or just wanted to get a brief definition of something without having to deep dive into it, then this guide is for you!

Below is a large collection of terms that you will hear referenced in Darktide. Some of these terms directly appear within the game while others are community created terms to help make certain things or actions easier to understand.

Alternatively, If you would prefer to view this guide in a video format with on screen examples, click the video down below:

Weapon Attack Descriptors are meant to be a soft guide on how to use certain weapons and their attacks. Attacks with a certain descriptor are by no means locked to that single role, and through the use of blessings, talents and attack combos a single attack can fulfill multiple roles (A rapier swing fulfilling Assassin and Relentless, for instance).

For more info regarding weapons and their attacks, you can inspect a weapon in game by selecting it and opening the weapon inspect window (Default key 'V' on PC)

STRIKEDOWN is a type of melee attack that is designed to deal high damage to a single target, most often through vertical strikes or stabs. Unlike assassin, these attacks do not need to be aimed at the head to achieve their high damage, although headshots certainly help.

Weapons that use strikedown attacks include Combat Axes, Tactical Axes and Ogryn Clubs.

Example Weapons:


RELENTLESS is a type of melee attack that is most effective in controlling hordes due to its high cleave and massive stagger potential. Unlike vanguard these attacks are not necessarily intended to kill hordes, but to control them to make it safer for you and your team to engage them.

Weapons that use relentless attacks include Thunder Hammers, Slab Shield and Crusher.

Example Weapons:


VANGUARD is a type of melee attack that is most effective in killing hordes due to its high cleave and damage potential. These attacks tend to trade high amounts of stagger for high amounts of damage and therefore struggle against massive hordes or mixed hordes (hordes with armored units mixed in).

Weapons that use vanguard attacks include Heavy Eviscerators, Ogryn Cleavers and Heavy Swords.

Example Weapons:


ASSASSIN is a type of melee attack that is found on weapons with high finesse modifiers,
allowing them to deal high single target damage while repeatedly striking headshots. Assassin based attacks typically lose their potency when attacking anywhere but the head, but headshots often allow assassin based weapons to have decent horde clearing capabilities when paired with the proper blessings.

Weapons that use assassin attacks include Dueling Swords, Combat Blades and Tactical Axes.

Example Weapons:

IMPACT is another term to reference stagger and stagger power. Impact refers to how strong the knockdown power of your weapons are, and the higher a weapon's Impact is the easier it is stagger larger enemies.

In Darktide, four main forms of stagger exist within Darktide. The type and duration of stagger applied is dependent on the weapon/ability you are using and its power - Additionally, the type and duration of stagger is also scaled based upon how far you exceed the threshold of an enemy's hitmass value.


*Extreme stagger is not an official term of Darktide, but a term I use to refer to the stagger power of abilities that allow for consistent and reliable stagger of boss monsters.

RENDING is a self buff that allows a specific percentage of your attacks to ignore enemy flak and carapace armor. With this buff active, weapons will use their base damage modifier to calculate the listed percentage of damage versus enemy armor rather than only using your armor damage modifier.

BRITTLENESS is identical to rending, but functions as a debuff placed upon enemies so that your entire team can benefit from the extra armor damage rather than just you.

POWER is a buff that scales the base amount of your attack's damage. It also increases the overall damage, stagger and cleave potential that a weapon has, making it essentially a 3 in 1 buff.

CLEAVE both a buff and weapon modifier that determines the amount of enemies your attacks can pass through before being hard stopped, which is directly determined by the hitmass value an enemy has.

HITMASS refers to a certain value each enemy has that determines how difficult it is to cleave through. Enemies with lower hitmass (I.e Poxhounds) allow you to cleave through more
while enemies with higher hitmass (I.e Ogryn enemies) will make you cleave through less.

Buffs/Blessings that ignore hitmass allow for infinite cleave potential, whereas
those that increase cleave still have a hard cap on how many targets you can
cleave through at once.

SUPPRESSION is the status that effects all creatures in the game, both AI and players, when
shot at with ranged weaponry.

• Suppression versus enemies will cause them to stop firing and either cower
  in place or run to cover.
  
  
• Suppression versus players will heavily reduce your ranged accuracy, making
  it near impossible to hit anything at range.
  
  
• Suppression only effects ranged combat and has no effect against melee
  combat for either side.

DAMAGE is a weapon modifier and buff that refers to the amount of hitpoint damage
an attack deals. Does not effect any stat other than hitpoint damage.

FINESSE MODIFIER is both a weapon modifier and buff that refers to the damage multiplier of weakspot hits. Weapons with high finesse modifiers deal increased headshot damage and are more effective while hitting headshots and other weakspots.
WARP RESIST refers to the weapon modifier that directly reduces the amount of peril generated from a specific weapon.

DODGE LIMIT, also referred to as Dodge Count, is a stat of weapons that can be viewed in the weapon inspection screen. After exceeding a weapon's dodge limit, your dodges will become less and less effective until you cannot dodge anymore. Not dodging for 0.85 seconds will reset your dodge limit and allow you to dodge again.

PERIL is the status psykers gain as they call upon their warp based powers. Attempting to cast while at 100% peril will cause you to trigger perils of the warp and explode, going down or dying if at
max wounds.

DAMAGE DROP OFF refers to weapons that deal less damage the farther away you are from your target and more the closer you are. Applies to ballistic weapons such as the autoguns,
revolvers and bolter.

REVERSE DAMAGE DROP OFF is the opposite of damage dropoff - Weapons that deal less damage the closer you are and more damage the farther you are. Applies to lasgun weapons.

PERFECT PARRY occurs only when using the Devil's Claw Sword parry special move. Timing the parry less than one third of a second before an attack hits you achieves a perfect parry and massively reduces the block cost of that parry.

PUSH/BLOCK ANGLE refers to the difference in angles in which you can block enemy attacks and shove enemies away.

The direction you face is referred to as your effective block angle. All enemies in this radius can be shoved and attacks blocked will have a 0% increase in stamina cost

Behind you is considered to be outside of your effective block angle. Enemies in this radius cannot be shoved, and while you CAN still block attacks they will have a 100% increase in stamina cost.

SOULBLAZE/BURNING specifically refers to the burning damage over time (DoT) effects
within the game.
SOULBLAZE is a burning DoT that psykers apply through their special weapons
and abilities and is marked by blue flame










BURNING is a burning DoT that zealots apply through their flamers/grenades and
ranged weapons apply via the Infernus blessing, which is marked by orange flame.

COHERENCY is the aura that detects how many allies are near each other at any given time,
which can be seen through the bottom left shield icon.

Every ally in coherency grants you a stacking passive toughness regeneration boost as well as other boons depending on what build your team is running. If you have no allies in your coherency aura, you will not passively regain toughness and must kill enemies through melee to regain it.

CORRUPTION is the purple bar that fills up on your healthbar from right to left
and lowers maximum health. There are 2 kinds of corruption:

Grimoire corruption comes from picking up grimoires and can only be fully cured by throwing the grimoire away (Take out the grim and hold left click). Corruption will slowly reduce your maximum health as time passes. The curio perk of corruption resist (grimoire) can slightly reduce corruption gained this way.

Basic corruption comes from taking health damage from infested enemies (poxwalkers/poxhounds/poxbursters) and toxflamers (green flamethowers). Can be cured by medicae stations, stimms and skill tree perks. Buildup of basic corruption can be reduced by the curio perk of corruption resist.

MDLW refers to a very brief period of time after you come out of a dodge. During this moment, you are still considered to be dodging in order to prevent high ping players from getting hit seemingly mid dodge.

ARMOR PIERCING references the specific attacks in the game that can deal damage
through carapace armor instead of bouncing off of it.

All heavy attacks of all melee weapons have armor piercing, while some weapons have light attacks (I.e Combat Axes) or special attacks (I.e Force Swords).

DODGE DANCE has two different meanings:

When used in conjunction with a massive horde, dodge dance refers to the act of repeatedly dodging in a strict rhythm in order to avoid as many hits as possible. This form of dodge dancing pushes dodging to its limit as you dodge often enough to be in the dodge state as often as possible, but not so much that you exceed a weapon’s dodge limit.

When used in conjunction with bosses, dodge dancing refers to the act of locking down a boss by repeatedly baiting and dodging its attacks. As of now, the only bosses that can be dodge danced are the plague ogryn and beast of nurgle.

DISABLER is a slang term that refers to enemies that disable players and require a teammate to save them. In the case of Darktide, disabler units include Trappers and Pox Hounds but can also include Mutants.

KITE in darktide Differs from kiting in other games.

In Darktide, kiting is the act of purposefully holding aggro with an intent to stall rather than kill, or dragging an enemy or group of enemies away from your team to allow them the chance to recover from a bad situation. Most often used in reference to bosses and groups of elites.

Group Kiting is an alternate form of kiting, in which an entire team moves together in an effort to keep a horde's frontline in a unified position. Group Kiting is most effective against hordes that come from multiple sides or hordes that are too dense to easily control.

ATTACK COMBO is the mixing of different light, heavy and push attacks in order to create
a new attack for either horde clearing or single target damage. Often confused for Attack Pattern, which refers to the chain of attacks that are performed when spamming light and heavy attacks on a weapon.

OPTIMAL ATTACK COMBOS are specific attack combos that reach the highest DPS potential of a weapon, either for horde clearing or single target damage. Depending on the weapon, optimal attack combos can be as simple as spamming one kind of attack or mixing various light, heavy and push attacks.

For example:

The Optimal Attack Combo for horde clearing on the Mk IV Devils Claw Sword is a light attack followed by a heavy attack to obtain two horizontal sweeps which excel at horde damage.





However, the Optimal horde clear combo for the Mk IV Thunder Hammer is more complicated, requiring two heavy attacks, a light attack and then alternating between one heavy and one light attack.





If you'd like a more comphrensive and fleshed out guide to Attack Combos, check out my Comprehensive Guide To Weapon Attack Combos!

BLOCK CANCEL refers to the act of using a block to force a weapon's attack combo back
to its beginning in order to achieve optimal attack combos. This is done by briefly tapping the block button after an attack which allows you to restart the attack combo from the beginning.

For example, the Mk II Force Sword has a horde clear combo that is a light attack followed by a heavy attack. After the heavy attack, tapping block allows you to restart this attack chain from the beginning and repeat it as often as needed.

The Devil's Claw Swords utalize their parry instead of block to achieve this, and are therefore referred to as Parry Cancels.