Warhammer 40,000: Darktide – Explanation of Rending

Among the most formidable foes in Warhammer 40,000 are: Nearly everything your Strike Team tries to throw at Darktide, they can handle with ease. These terrifying enemies present a significant challenge, particularly on missions with a high level of difficulty, thanks to their massive armor and daemonic tenacity. Look for a weapon that offers Rending if you wish to level the playing field.

Certain Weapon Blessings bestow rending, which is extremely beneficial when facing the most resilient of Nurgle’s henchmen. Naturally, it helps to understand exactly what’s going on behind the scenes every time you pull the trigger or take a swing if you want to get the most out of a good Rending weapon.

How Is Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Damage Calculated?

For a shooter in particular, Darktide’s damage system can be very complicated, but the most important thing to understand is that damage is determined by the kind of monster you are attacking. Depending on the type of armor and any other defensive abilities your victim may possess, each weapon has a distinct damage range.

Armoured adversaries generally take less damage from weapons. Penetration-capable weapons lessen but do not completely eliminate this cost. While inspecting a weapon, select the View Attack Breakdowns option to view the weapon’s base damage range for each type of target.

Targets may have different kind of protection on different parts of their bodies. For instance, if an adversary with armor isn’t wearing a helmet, striking them in the head will allow you to use the unarmored damage rating of your weapon.

Additional elements, such as buffs or your weapon’s Bonus Stats, like Finesse, might alter the damage you do to an opponent.

How Does Damage React to Rending?

Both Damage and Rending are commonly expressed as percentages. Before determining damage based on the enemy’s protection, the percentage of an attack that qualifies as Rending is added to the weapon’s Damagestat if the requirements are met, according to the Blessing that bestows it.

In essence, this gives the weapon a significant damage increase that can offset part or all of the damage penalty incurred from striking an opponent who is armored.

Consider the Catachan Combat Blade, which is depicted above. Its base damage is 36, and attacking an opponent from behind will grant you 35 Rending. An opponent without armor takes 120 damage from a heavy sword assault, but an opponent wearing carapace armor only takes 32 damage.

The weapon’s Blessing’s Rending bonus activates when an attack comes from behind, almost tripling its Damage rating. While it won’t do the same amount of damage as if it had struck an unarmored opponent, hitting a Carapace Armored enemy from behind will still deal 63 damage—much better than it would have without Rending!

Does Rending Make Unarmored Opponents More Damage-Resistant?

As of October 5, 2023, when the balance patch was implemented to Darktide, Rending does offer a slight advantage over opponents without armor. For every four points of Rending, an attack gains one percentage point to its damage rating if it hits an opponent to whom the weapon would do full damage. This effectively reduces Rending’s effectiveness against enemies without armor to one-fourth, but it is still technically effective.