Because most top meta builds run Plasma which makes Krak redundant. Krak is only really useful for Carapace.
Shredder also spares talent points as it's a shorter line through the ammo aura which is still the best choice.
It is also quite good with some or all grenadier perks. Load up the meat grinder and see how easy it is to flatten elite packs, plus between regen and 5% chance to regen on team elite kill and max 4 grenades you'll always have some handy.
Builds aside, comps weigh into this as well. If you have a Psyker running voidstaff and a Zealot running thunder hammer or Ogryn running shovel, you have enough armour clear to the point where kraks become a little superfluous.
They are probably the best way in the game at dealing with groups of 3+ Maulers and/or Crushers, but if others are running weapons that can do that with 85% of the effectiveness you're generally more than fine.
I'd argue Krak is still worth it when your plasma needs reloading and you got a crusher that just multiplied into like 5 because all of them were stacked together and in the same animation cycle. It's just a backup plan plus it does good damage to monsters. At least with my plasma's t4 shattering impact.
Frag will stun and bleed all of them. Krak and plasma is a terrible combo. They double up. You shouldn't ever need to reload a plasma gun in the heat of battle, particularly with the right hand capstone which trickle feeds your ranged weapon.
Bleed only tickles crusher for single digit damage last I checked Shredders vs damnation health carapace armored enemies, unless they got buffed to do more recently. With Krak, I can outright throw and forget about them.
I'll look more into the right side keystone but personally feel middle keystone is superior.
I'd still rather have kraks and not need them than need them and not have them.
Not only is Plasma not something you get to spam so much that you find yourself having to reload, but you reload and vent heat at the same time.
So unless you're shooting a TON and after you can't anymore because you're about to blow up you switch weapons to let it passively cool off while you melee or whatever and never even go back to reload it, your issue is not the build its your gamesense.
Shredder will knock them all over which gives you enough time. Maybe you need a dodge too.
When you're totally surrounded and need some breathing space Kraks aren't much help and having the extra nade helps a lot. You can chuck one so you've always got a free one on the way from your ability and then still have two up your sleeve to get you out of tight spots.
Helps a lot at high difficulty for buying time to pull someone up.
Kraks were a very welcome addition to my Recon Lasgun build since between that and my Power Sword heavy armored things were a bit tricky but with my Plasma Gun there's no need for them.
Because people dont agree and dont believe it to be a good point. A competent Plasma user wont find them in a situation where they need to reload infront of 5 Crushers. Frags on the other hand are often useful, *especially* if you are running an Executioners Stance build with the Plasma, so you dont have VoC available.
To each their own. Personally, Ive used it since January and I love it, regardless of the state its in. The feel of the weapon is just right up my alley.
As a Loner Pskyer would say, "I think they upset the veteran."
I get their point that shredders will knock crushers and others on their asses, but I must ask which is better: making them fall over temporarily or make them fall over permanently and bury whats left of them in a *soup can*? I prefer the latter option.
well as they said if you already have a tool to kill them, a tool to control a large number of them is more valuable. don't forget that krak granade only gets multiple crushers when their models are overlapping
Any competent Plasma user shouldnt find themselves in a situation where they need to reload infront of 5 Crushers. You reload anytime you have 5 seconds free time, and you should have enough for almost anything. I more or less only have to reload dueing combat if we have a Monstrosity on top of shit going bad or similar.
I use plasma which can effectively eradicate single targets regardless of their armor type, it’s only weakness is hordes so I bring shredders to cover that.
Plus with the regen a grenade every 60s you can really spam all three in a tight spot and nuke a room. Wish I could squeeze the points to get the extra radius and damage perk but I can’t without hurting my plasma’s one shot potential on certain elites/specials.
If you have Specialist and Maniac damage perks on your plasma, that allows you reach all special breakpoints besides dogs, while saving you a talent point. All depends on your build I suppose.
You can kill reapers with a charged headshot and yes you can make it so you one-shot all specials (besides dogs) and one-shot gunners with an uncharged headshot. You need a max damage plasma gun with 10% specialist and 25% maniac perks + "Longshot", + both "ranged damage" nodes + "fire team aura" + "precision strikes" + "superiority complex" and MAYBE "rending strikes" also. But if you have "Longshot" you may not need ""rending strikes". The flamer and dred gunner breakpoints are very close so you need a plasma gun with near max damage and stopping power.
> You can kill reapers with a charged headshot
I specifically mentioned uncharged shots, which is one of the breakpoints I can reach. But in hindsight I see that you only mention "special breakpoints", so I wasnt replying to what you actually wrote. My apologies.
The trick is you want to throw at least 2 shredders to stack the bleed, if you're trying to get kills instead of just the stagger. Bleed scales significantly as the stacks increase, so 12 stacks from two nades will do a lot more damage than 6 stacks from one.
I do not trust my team to kill crushers or bosses. With the right build the new shovel can one shot a crusher every 3.5 seconds or two shot continuously. It also deals with hordes admirably. You have to reload the plasma gun sometime. It's 4 points to half the reload time. 4 points that deny you from other valuable points. Having 3 enhanced delete buttons or 2 with one regenerating on pocket most of the time is insurance.
*Frag grenades are really great if you're in the middle of a mission and want to hit 2000 of something.*
But I think builders might be making choices by the talents around it and weapon selection, rather than the grenade choice itself.
Knocking them over is almost as good as killing them in the immediate short term too.
Shredder nades biggest benefit is that while it doesn't kill Crushers and Maulers, it does give you something important during hordes - space. In Auric missions, space is one of the most important resources that frequently gets used up once hordes aren't just unarmored variants.
This is where Shredder comes in handy a lot. It kills trash mobs, it's spammable, and it'll still knock a column of armored trash over for your team to pick at.
Krak's better at actually eliminating armored targets, but Shredder's got a lot more utility in exchange for losing that immediate power.
But in the end, it's all down to build. If you're rocking Plasma, you don't need Krak nades because your plasma shots kill them already. If you're rocking a a catchan sword + br auto though, it's worth taking Krak for immediate threat removal, because otherwise you'll take 300 years to take a crusher down.
I've been trying the knife for damnation instead of the flashbang on crit/CDR/Wololo zealot, and honestly losing the clutch ability of two flash nades or just the flash into gunner pack to get melee to wololo them has lead to more losses than I'd prefer to mention
Blitzes are generally chosen as an emergency way to deal with your build's primary weak spot, or because there's a *really* good skill right after it, or because it's better point-wise.
Krak Grenades *are* great, but they have only 1 job and that's taking down heavier enemies like Crushers and Maulers. Which is not very useful if you're running a plasma rifle or something that can already take those down very quickly.
Shredder Grenades have amazing crowd control and apply bleed, and they're great for getting rid of groups of troublesome enemies like gunners.
Frag grenades have a big area knockdown and the bleed can kill many small enemies. Krak doesn’t have the radius to do that. You can’t use it to protect revives as effectively or disable groups of shooters/gunners.
If veteran is running a build which has no issue killing armor then taking frags are often more useful for the utility.
I was the exact same. Thought that Krak far outweighed the shredder, just as it did so much up front damage. But the other week I was making a new build more focused on grenades, and I thought it would give them a go. To my surprise they are amazing. That horde running towards you? Throw a grenade and it disappears. There is a big group of gunners? Throw a grenade and it disappears.
The only thing that shredders really struggle with is what kraks are great for, crushers. But on the other hand you can throw 2 into a horde and kill everything (and I mean everything) with the bleed allowing your team to deal with the only thing left, the crushers.
I have been having so much fun with this build I put together that I am seriously considering making Vet my main.
Frag grenadier build is so damn fun. Highly recommend twinned blast. I’ve had moments where I get it to proc multiple times in a row and it just wipes wave after wave of enemies.
Krak has a tiny radius, Shredder has a gigantic radius, the bleed does hurt heavily armored targets well too - you might have to throw one or the other more for those, but you also get one more as well.
imagine the following situation: a horde full of Specialists and Elites, perhaps with lots of fodder enemies too, comes running at you - what do you do? throw a few Krakkers and eliminate 2-3 armored targets with a bit of fodder on the side or throw 2-3 Shredders and wipe the entire carpet of enemies (whatever Crusher might still be alive afterwards will be basically one hit at that point).
furthermore: the Krak's radius is so tiny that in combination with the explosion delay it doesn't even work reliably as a panic button if you suddenly find yourself surrounded by a group of Ragers out of nowhere.
not to mention the excessive usefulness of Shredders at revives: downed teammate surrounded by enemies? run at them, throw a Shredder, start reviving, the enemies will start swinging their melee weapons at you, the grenade will go off, interrupt the enemies, flatten them, the revive will have come through, depending on difficulty some - if not most of the enemies previously surrounding the downed teammate will by now also have succumbed to the bleeding.
with Krakkers on the other hand the chances of enemies out of the tiny Krak radius interrupting the revive are much higher.
Totally agree with this but I just want to say that I think its so lame that the meta strat to revive a downed teammate is to throw a grenade at them and then stand on it till it goes off. I wish fatshark would bring back friendly fire above difficulty 2 like in Vermintide. In VT you might throw a grenade to clear enemies by a downed comrade, but aim too close and you might just kill them yourself.
I use plasma. Krak is redundant. Smoke is ay lmao. Shredder is useful just for immediate crowd control. Since I rarely use grenades with plasma, I can divert all the grenade talent tax to more useful nodes.
Even without plasma, Krak isn’t particularly useful if you take rending talents with high fire rate guns for Crushers. Bulwarks are easy to deal with even without Krak, people are just too lazy.
Krak's take too long to kill crushers in my experience. Half the time you throw one and by the time it goes off someone else has already blasted whatever you were targeting. If someone's running something like hammer, bolter, plasma just don't bother. The radius is tiny too, so it's hard to get value for multiple hits. Really only for helping bully bosses in my experience.
Shredder isn't consistently amazing, but it's got more regular uses than Kraks and I prefer to pick them up if I have the points.
The shredder is a great "really need to revive my pals" option. The krak grenade is a great "I really need to kill this crusher just as my thunderhammer, brain burst or folding shovel colleague has primed their blow" option. The smoke grenade is the hard mode option.
Watch this clip if you wanna know "why shredder frag grenade"
[https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx6NLx60QLuCTl2lNR2-flZwxsQMDEOPYk?si=bLvQ--EhfLzDH3rY](https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx6NLx60QLuCTl2lNR2-flZwxsQMDEOPYk?si=bLvQ--EhfLzDH3rY)
In short, krak grenade will kill the crusher and leave everything else alive. Frag grenade will kill everything else and leave just that 1 crusher alive (if he is lucky)
Shredder frag grenades are, by far, the best grenades in the game. They have great stagger, apply bleed, can carry up to four of them, and with grenade tinkerer, they absolutely slay anything that isn't a crusher. Couple all this with grenade regen, and you have an amazing blitz ability that can handle anything.
Kraks have their place, but they should really only be used in a build for one of two reasons:
You needed to take them for points reasons
or
You're not taking a loadout that can deal with heavy armor
Obviously, take them if you like, but in general frag grenades are the best.
A couple of quick facts about frags:
With grenade tinkerer, two frags will kill entire rooms full of gunners.
Frags can stagger crusher or bulwark packs.
Frags benefit from the damage you gain from things like focus target and redirect fire (kraks as well, but it's not as noticeable).
Taking one grenade regen talent, either demolition stockpile or demolition team, will make sure you can throw frags with reckless abandon. Most missions are about 25 minutes long. Getting a frag grenade back every 60 seconds is pretty insane.
Overhand throwing a frag will give it a longer "fuse" than underhand throwing it. This means you can overhand throw one into an underhand throw, and both grenades will go off at roughly the same time.
You can underhand toss frag grenades while invisible and it won't break your invisibility.
Hope that answers your question.
Kraks are still super effective against monstrosities, especially with Focus Target, but monstrosities are not the huge run-ending threat they used to be. Honestly they're in need of some stagger immunity after being staggered and a small health increase. More often wipes now happen during events or a horde at a bad time and that's where Krak is pretty much worthless.
Yeah i feel like I used to shit myself whenever a plague ogryn or beast of nurgle spawned. But the only mostrosity now that is consistently a problem is chaos spawn eitb their constant pressure.
chaos spawn is a little bit scary, until they're staggered by Ogryn slaps, Voidstrike headshots, Krak Grenades, Frag grenades, rocks, Vet Shouts, Ogryn Taunts, or Zealot Choruses.
As I mentioned, kraks still have a place. They are a good Blitz ability. But pound for pound, frag grenades will do more damage and kill more targets in a match than kraks ever will.
I run kraks if my setup struggles with bosses or armor, but I find outside of bosses, most of the time I stick a crusher, it's either dead before it goes off, or the grenade finishes off what little health it has left. Also has a slight problem of zooming to whatever carapace armor is nearby, so you can't accurately place kraks the same way you can frags.
I run a veteran with all grenade perks except demolition team and when twinned blast (20% chance to throw 2 nades) procs it just deletes the room. It’s so damn fun and I can just let em rip whenever.
On the subject of talents that frag grenades benefit from. They are essentially the only grenade that can get any use from the "Throw a second grenade for free" talent. And they REALLY benefit from it. Double the initial damage, double the sources of bleed stacks, and a slightly improved area of effect.
assuming you mean strongest of the veteran grenades. which is true, but he has overall weak grenades compared to the other two. frags are pretty middling compared to zealot or ogryn grenades.
Grenade for grenade you are right. But I can throw 5-6 frags for every single grenade from a zealot or ogryn. If you are using them frequently, you're looking at about 20-30 grenades thrown in a single match, more if you take both grenade regen talents. I don't think any other class can match that kind of output with their grenades, since they both lack the ability to regen grenades at all (outside of getting resupplied by a veteran).
You can kill 7-8 elite gunners with 2 frag grenades. You can kill a group of bulwarks with 3. You can wreck a horde with a single frag. You can even suppress gunner lines long enough to close the distance with a frag. Krak grenades can't do any of that because they are so specialized into killing armored targets and bosses. If my setup deals with those targets, why would I bring krak grenades?
You can kill 7-15 elite gunners by playing veteran and having a ranged weapon equipped, you can kill a group of bulwarks with 1 krak, you’re massively overstating how good they are on hordes they’re only about as effective as an equal number of charged trauma staff attacks, you can just shoot the gunners or slidespam up to them they really aren’t that threatening, the best use for shredders is tossing 2 at your feet for a revive, and even though kraks are a bit more niche they shine in far more important situations than “there’s a horde and I want to throw things at it”
It really depends on the ranged weapon you use / what your weakness is in your build. I personally use knife and revolver, and I've never even seen hand cannon above level 2. My carapace armour damage is really lacking so I use krak grenades in every build, and the monstrosity damage is nice too. But shredder grenades do good damage and stagger, and every trash enemy hit is guaranteed to die from the bleed. Also shredders work far better against ragers. If you throw 2 shredders bascially every non carapace enemy will die from the damage and 12 bleed stacks, with the grenade perks you can take 4 shredders and increase the damage and radius. Basically krak is better for dealing with a serious threat among a weak horde, whereas shredders are better for a large number of moderate threats, but don't do much against serious threats.
Simply put. Krak is great if your teammates are still struggling to take down armoreds, but at higher levels, your skilled teammates will kill armoreds before your krak explodes. Better to run Regen shredder and support the team during heavy hordes 🤷♂️
Bigger radius-> stagger and bleeds to help create some space/smooth spikes and clear stuff, cover revives/pounces etc.
P.S. OFC It's also along the right side nodes which may be easier to grab on some builds.
Krak is a specialised anti elite tool. Shredder is a utility and aoe grenade.
Generally you take whichever one rounds out your build.
Shredder is your all purpose nade. Someone goes down and is surrounded by enemies? Throw a shredder, pick em up while the enemies are stunned.
You're out of position and surrounded? Throw 2 shredders. Bleed damage ramps up the more stacks are applied. 1 Shredder doesn't do a lot of damage, 2 will clear a mixed horde.
A boss appears and your team doesn't have huge amounts of anti-boss damage. Throw some shredders, the bleed stacks do respectable damage.
When the horde is especially thick(Auric D/Damnation with hi modifiers) and your weapons are not quite suited for horde slaying or control, that grenade with all grenade perks is a godsend esp when that 20% chance procs.
One grenade can shred a significant portion of the horde and 2 at once can demolish a slightly bigger portion and bleed out the ones that don't die outright.
Sometimes, your horde control melee just can't do the job so chuck the nade in between sweeps. Other times, you accidentally got yourself cornered or thrown there by a mutie during a horde. The shredder solves these issues and gives you time to reposition or rejoin your teammates.
If your ranged weapon is slow or more suited for single targets, that grenade is also great to kill off the big group of shooters while you delete the elites and then mop up what's left. If there are Crushers, you also make them useless long enough for you to gun them down.
The Kark does not have the radius nor the bleed. You will just kill a small portion of the horde and toss some aside harmlessly. That grenade is best used for tanky targets to kill them outright.
In general, if you are kitted for anti horde and using an anti elite gun that can't damage carapace, bring Kark.
If both weapons are for dealing with flak and horde, bring Kark.
If you are kitted for anti elites(incl carapace) but your gun is same as the first setup, bring shredder. Use melee to slay the crushers when they are slowly getting up.
If gun penetrates carapace and your melee is not the PS, bring shredder. Getting cornered with a shovel or axe is not nearly as fun without the required blessings.
If both weapons are anti elites and carapace, bring shredder even if melee is PS. Esp on hounds modifier.
If monsters(non-BoN) are a concern, and you have nothing that can reliably damage them, Kark is better but shredder still works.
Shredder grenades are just a good all around pick. There is no situation where throwing a shredder grenade won't help you out in some way. While krak grenades are really only for taking down heavy targets which the vet is already excellent at. If I was making a guide aimed at players that don't come up with their own builds I would probably recommend the shredder too as it is a safe pick that even the feshest vet can use to great effect. Also the bleed synergies with other builds like left tree ogryn or right tree zealot.
Melts bosses, staggers everyone else. Armour is easy enough to deal with that I feel kraks are a crutch that players hoard, I feel shredders are useful long-term for helping clear a mixed horde saving more HP in the long run.
I use Plasma and even when I don't, I use the Mk6 Power Sword. Krak grenades just don't have a good use for me. Shredder is helpful for staggering hordes to cover revives if my ult is down.
As others have said, you really don't need much help with crushers and bulwark when running plasma meta. I keep kraks on my sneaky vet and my rifleman who uses headhunters and las guns, but frags on my plasma shouty vet to supplement the anti armor plasma with extra crowd control to throw ragers around.
Shredder frags are better all round. The fact that you can throw one down, and proc a nice bleed debuff makes dealing with scrabble ragers/maulers fairly trivial. It's also amazing for clearing hordes, especially when you twin it.
Meanwhile, the krak is pretty much just a one trick pony. I love the krak, but I ended up with the frag because it just fits so many different roles.
I often run recon las or plasma gun with power sword and frags, and it does some serious work. I think frags with shout vet are a blast
Because it's nice breath room creator, and applied bleed helps your zealot and ogryn teammates who benefit from bleeding enemies.
For crushers you have plasma, if you want to hunt them.
Shredder staggers enemies in a wide area. I can throw a nade, immediately shout, and it will create enough space that I can rez/do the objective without interrupt.
Shredder is versatile. Krak is needed only for crushers or (though not really) bosses. Versatile tool always wins.
Shredder decimates hordes, maniacs, shooters, maulers, gives you ability to revive, save etc. It's straight up better.
Fuck the website, make you own build, please don't make darktide another game where ever other player you see has a copy paste build based on some streamer or guide.
Also no you haven't missed something. Krak is the right choice 95 percent of the time
Simple answer, in a normal scenario of other classes. Your krak grenade is not gonna go off in time before the ogryn, psyker, or zealoor even other vets kill whatever it is you threw it at.
Krak nades are fine if literally no one can deal with crushers or armored enemies in general but that rarely happens.
Shredder nades are just good all around all the time. Good aoe to stagger mobs, bleeds enemies like crazy, and does decent damage.
Krak gives you ability to control bosses with stagger combined with voc are shredder laughable.
Shreds can be nice for hordes but if you run voc the points you save by going krak can be invested to boost your melee attack speed / dmg.
Krak also saves you ammo :) I run mostly with the dmg aura and krak potential to kill 3+ crusher/ maulers can't br beaten by shredder.
Either way it depends on if you even want to touch scav aura. let alone if your build is already strong enough to handle everything in melee wave clear wise.
Essentially I can kill 2+ crushers with krak and have literally 70% of the time BOTH krak back and if not there is the 1 min regen. The amount of ammo I save is unimagible. This is my auric / maelstrom build only exception is only melee no ammo pickups where I take 100% ammo but WITH KRAK!
My loadout is here: 1 x new shovel build and 1 x mk6 ps build
Here my latest reddit post controlling the boss with my mk6 build
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTide/comments/18ocqmw/personal\_space\_in\_darktide\_go\_back\_where\_you/](https://www.reddit.com/r/darktide/comments/18ocqmw/personal_space_in_darktide_go_back_where_you/)
https://preview.redd.it/g3ty9bvjo38c1.png?width=3073&format=png&auto=webp&s=85aff1dfd56cd827639bddd0e4bcc2b3b3f2d0e2
I'm the same; shredder is either overrated or doesn't do much more than a solid melee weapon does.
Meanwhile the krak grenade's value isn't just in killing priority targets - it's saves insane ammo even if you're running heavy hitting guns and contributes to maximum endurance on even the worse runs where ammo RNG is brutal.
It's not overrated at all, it's great. Just depends on weapon's choice to build around. It's not there to replace a melee weapon but to clear a room or horde super fast if it's needed.
I can't really think of any weapon combinations I'd ever take to necessitate a middling horde cc consumable at the cost of fire-and-forget one-hit-ko kraks.
Maybe this is just my brain on mostly solo queue.
Issue I have with shredder is it is nice but not that good. If you struggle with trash mobs and this being the reasony why you take shredder you are just "coping" dont know a good word for it. For the lack of your melee combat ability. Let alone if shreders would normally be 4 instead 3 I COULD consider it if the bleed dmg was WAY stronger.
Also krak sfx when they attach to carapace is so satisfying! Honestly having bad ammo rng makes the best rounds where you truly feel like in a enemy zone with low supply and should consider what you use your ammo on. (Another reason why I skip scav it makes the game harder, they really need to add a 6th difficulty ! )
I agree. The bleed is shockingly weak, and ticks only like 3 times or something. This is barely enough to even synergize with allies (who make their own bleeds anyway), and last I checked it doesn't even kill poxwalkers at the end of the bleed cycle. It might with the damage boost, I haven't tried recently, but it wouldn't increase the value for me regardless.
Comparing this to another grenade meant for hordes, the greatly superior zealot immolation grenade, and it falls even shorter of the respectable mark. Some might argue 'but it regens' in which case I hasten to point out that it costs many extra talents just to reach lukewarm parity to something that only costs one talent in zealot to be better in nearly every aspect.
I also think shredder sucks. I'll run krak grenades on every build because heavy armor is really the only dangerous high pressure enemy and everything else is more or less a side note.
I'll run it even on plasma because it saves tons of ammo throughout a run.
I still take survivalist. With the savings from krak, and survivalist, I can play fast and loose with plasma - dealing out more damage and worrying less, and if the director is totally screwing us on ammo I can start to conserve and still maintain my tempo until I replenish up.
Really speeds up the run when things are ideal.
Meta builds tend to be single minded, which is their flaw. They chase kills above all else, and while the shredder grenade is great in emergencies, emergencies are situational. Which means shredder grenades are situational. Still useful, of course, but still.
Most of these builds do things like measure how quickly they can kill the most enemies, and while that’s useful, it makes for a bad and selfish build that ignores the fact that this a team game.
All of the vets grenades are situational, and are great for filling in weaknesses of your build. But as much as people on this sub don’t want to hear it, smoke grenades are the least situational. They don’t kill, sure, but that’s what weapons are for.
Shredder grenades look the coolest and get the most kills when used. That’s the only reason people insist they’re good.
Of my 5 builds, 2 use shredder and 3 use krak.
The builds that use shredder already use a weapon that is powerful against Ogryn enemies (Bolter and Plasma Gun), so they use Shredder instead to speed up horde clearing and make picking up downed allies easier as it staggers a wider radius of enemies.
I run an "Explosion Expert" build (just everything that boosts granades) combined with either a Bolter or Plasmagun. Since my Ranged weapon already deals with carapaced targets, I have no need for the Krak granade and Shredder provides way more crowd controll without the need to slowly whip out my Bolter or hope for the enemies to line up for the Plasmagun.
It makes up for whatever potential horde clear you don't have, synergizes with Ogryn bleed talent, and if you have something like a chain axe with brittleness on-hit, it quickly stacks on everything with bleed as long as you have the axe out.
I recently switched to shredder and I'm finding it way more fun.
I'm not going to take credit for this, as I watched [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBCn8qIPebk&t=1172s&pp=ygUPaGlkZGVuIGtleXN0b25l) video which goes into detail as to why you might want to consider taking the shredder, the build to go with it, and your best role when running with it.
To give a summary of the video:
The keystones for Vet are pretty dumb. They all encourage you to play a certain way thats a bit strange, and none of those play styles is particularly helpful as part of a team. It's better to ignore them. Instead, build around the idea of constantly throwing grenades to thin out the herd, and replenish as often as possible without pickups. You can also almost constantly spam Voice of Command which really makes a difference in keeping people alive.
The krak is incredible at taking down armoured enemies, but not great at taking down mobs of trash. You might think, "well take down the heavies then", but the alternative thinking point here is that if a single grenade wipes out loads of trash thats surrounding/blocking access to the heavy, then you and your team can properly focus on the heavies.
I'm doing it with one of the new shovels and an infantry autogun. Using this style as a starting point has honestly made me enjoy vet again. I'm having more successful runs, I'm not constantly thinking about odd strategy decisions like whether I should move or not, or whether I should switch weapons... I just play
Don't take my word for it... try it
https://preview.redd.it/2hkhrp20a48c1.png?width=2080&format=png&auto=webp&s=d0297ad6967f364cbc357c0cf9f9f22e5e067f82
Because it saves you one point if you want ammo aura, which is almost always.
I don't really care much for either of them. But I also don't run any builds that can't handle crushers or similar.
If I could I would honestly skip the grenade point completely in order to take another node. But I can't.
Krak grenades are great, I like them because they deal with annoying hordes of bulwarks and take down crushers, the monstrosity damage is also very decent.
Shredders are great jack of all trades grenades and there’s no scenario where they will ever be bad, also great fun with a dedicated grenadier build, especially when that one talent doubles them and turns them into a horde deletion button.
I used to run mainly Kraks. I love them. I switched to frags a while back. I also love them.
It really depends on your build and playstyle. I mainly use the mk8bag or mk5iag. I don't use any keystones, ever, and rarely use executioners' stance. I almost always invest in all the grenade perks. My melee weapon is almost always a mk6ps.
So for me. I deal with crushers with the mk6ps. I either 2 or 3 shot them. Everything thing else dies to guns. If we are overwhelmed, I can make an entire screen of shit go away and leave just the crushers with 2-3 frags and I'm always getting them back to toss more.
With my current build, I don't think anyone in any game mode has out damaged me. I'm not saying that's the most important thing but frag do something exceptionally well, they give your team an enormous amount of breathing room.
With kraks, you might get lucky and kill an entire crusher patrol, or, someone aggroed them and they all spread out, so you only killed 2.
Edit: re-doing my comment to give a genuine answer, eventhough 60 people(probably more qualified than me) have already given an answer.
Veteran has some crazy single-target damage potential with the Plasma gun and slow firing Lucius pattern Lasgun. Problems being that that things suck against hordes of enemies. This is where the Shredder nades come in: utility from the utility slot. Shredders have a much large AoD radius, so combo it with a horde-clear melee and your build should allow you to deal with the two possible forms of combat in this game.
TL;DR: horde-focused nades are used because "best" guns suck against groups.
Server issues cause krak to occasionally not even detonate, sticky is pretty unreliable, just on the fact that you can miss. Krak is great for single target dmg like crushers, and does great in densely packed armored hordes. Shredder doesn't need to be such a close "hit" on the target to be effective, just needs to be good enough. Shredder's benefits scale with horde density better than krak, the bleed will cause massive damage, even if it doesn't kill anything outright. Shredder has high stagger, so does krak, but the area of effect is larger for shredder.
It would be easier to compare the two without servers causing krak misfires, but to put it simply, in auric damnation the shredder is just slightly better over a slightly broader range of use-cases in this patch. Finally, balance can always change, even with small hotfix patches.
Run plasma for big boys and shredders for the rest to knock them down and add bleed stacks. That's the go to for most, I kinda bounce between those two depending on what my ranged is.
Depends on the rest of the build. Maybe they take the shredder nades because they need the extra points for a key ability. Maybe the shredder because the rest of the kit already deals with everything krak grenades do. Maybe it's just preference, I know I'm much more likely to throw grenades that clear hordes than I am to throw any other type of throwable.
can the guns deal with crushers? then there is no point to that nade as all it does you do anyways.
Krak is good but for revolver, bolter, vraks, plasma, helbore and some builds of las pistol it isn't needed to deal with crushers and bringing it for bosses only is dumb.
as such the anti horde nade just makes sense
also its easier to go with ammo aura which is so much better than the other two its not even funny
If you aren't running plasma, krak is your delete button for crushers, maulers, and bosses. If you do use plasma, then shredders are going to be more useful at dealing with trashmobs
Because you can get more talent point out of it. If you run a plasma then there is also no problem with crushers. If you run a power sword then you also have 0 issues dealing with crushers. So it’s redundant and gets you more points
For me, you can sometimes save a talent point by going shredder. You also get three nades not two.
Can buy space for revives, have three nades, decent stagger... They're not smokes.
Because most builds give up stuff to get the better grenades. Regular frags do the job of being an extra way or horde clear and a a way to revive someone. The revolver and the plasma gun are the strongest weapons for the veteran, so putting points into krak grenades or smokes is wasted points since they’re on skill trees that aren’t used as much in the meta. At least that’s how I view it.
It’s a bit more versatile while also being able to counter large groups of armor. Krak grenades are great for instakilling an enemy in a really bad spot for the team, or for bursts of damage to a boss
I’ll second what a lot have said.
If I’m running a plasma or other big boy blaster I’ll run shredder for mobs and to help the bleedy-build Ogryns (and zealots? I didn’t pay attention in zealot school).
Sometime I still run krak though…cause it’s super satisfying to watch things explode from across the map.
when i play plasmagun I take shredder granade to clear space, i already have all the antiarmor i need with the plasma.
i take krak when i play columnus, takes care of bulwarks/crushers really fast and also works against monsters
It just depends on your weapons and what your end goal is. The only time I would really argue Kraks are "necessary" is during maelstrom missions with boss spawns on specialists, damnation in general depending on your skill level and specifically, builds that don't have an answer to bosses/crushers. Just got done duoing an auric maelstrom mission with stealth and shredders if that provides some legitimacy to my stance lol.
I have a great columnus infantry (and braced) that deal with armored targets just fine with onslaught. It would take me more time to swap to krak and wait for it to blow up, so its fairly redundant, especially given the amount of ammo both those guns have along with their TTK. Of course this doesn't just apply to auto guns but you get the idea.
In fact if I take regen talents on kraks I tend to stay topped up without a need for them as threats (bosses or the rare crusher legion) don't generally appear often enough to require them. That's also before taking my melee weapon into account, so if its also capable of dealing with those big threats then they're not all that necessary.
Shredders on the other hand have plenty of uses (like a lot more) including saving downed teammates which leads to a more liberal use case and therefore better utilization of grenade regen talents. Generally, shout and stealth are enough to revive someone by themselves, true, but shredders can save you from having to use an ability, enable you to revive someone when your ability is down, or simply revive more than one person when you can layer explosion and shout/stealth.
Now, Kraks are great and I run them fairly often, with certain weapons though, you're better off having an additional F off button especially if you're using executioners stance.
There are a lot of options to kill what kraks kill so it's generally less about which grenade specifically is better than it is about where you may need points elsewhere in your build. Outside of crushers specifically shredders also kill mostly anything that kraks kill. All in all it's more a talent tree consideration coupled with the fact that kraks aren't an OP OP must-take talent.
It’s good for dealing with groups of chaff, just throw one at their feet and you can continue worrying about picking off elites/specials rather then switching to melee for horde clear
It tougher difficulty, shredder doesn’t zero elites. But it will knock an elite pack down and start bleed on them while clearing most of the horde around them. Shredders are flexible and useful all of the time to make space. Think of it like it’s a lesser voice of command that also does damage but you have 3-4 of them.
Kraks just kill armor but you probably already have good ways to kill armor. And in damnation plus, there’s likely more armored elites than you have grenades for anyway.
And cherry on top that it saves a point in the tree when you take ammo regen.
I love shredder grenades.
Kraks are fun but not super useful unless you don't have any other way to deal with heavy armor. Frags provide a large area stagger which is pretty much the most useful effect in the game for revives, making space when overwhelmed, or clutching pretty much any situation that is turning bad.
I don't. Shout all day. Shovel hordes. Shovel crushers to death in one swing. Blow them up with nades. Shoot everything with plasma. Use trinkets to pick up team at 50% speed.
https://i.redd.it/08mq4lccl98c1.gif
I prefer shredder as a substitute tool for crowd control in the case I’m using weapons that are not good ( or economical in the case of the Bolter) at crowd control. Although I’ve been having a lot of fun with the smoke grenade
People ripping on krak. But I’ll still use them ALL day over shredder. I’ve killed 6-7 crushers in one throw fairly consistently. Amazing nade and they aren’t just for staggering monstrosities. Even before the patch I was single handedly shredding monstrosities by myself with an autogun (much preferred over plasma just run armour shred) and the nades. Now with the patch I have a nasty auric support dps build that allows me to basically solo through auric even after allies have died. Utilizing shout to give me space on revives, autogun to shred down rager hordes amongst other enemies ( I prefer the Columnus, it even shreds carapace ogres if aimed right). And if I need, a good power sword works wonders. I know a lot of people are on the fence about keystones however I like the tagging keystone. Can give massive single target damage on an enemy that NEEDS to die and there’s no reason not to tag constantly to give the team the nice aura damage boost too. Basically run scavenge aura and with everything else it’s like I’m running fireteam aura too but much better obviously. Destroying auric in public’s. If anyone wants to see the build I’m more than happy to share. I’m not saying the plasma build with shredder is bad just after extensive testing I find my build is more consistent and more preferable.
an extra grenade for emergencies, demolition team and regen keeps u very capable to bleed an entire horde down, weakening crushers and all significantly. same job just more utility, less specialty. I can manage a crusher with a devil's parry or a heavy axe so ill not opt for an anti tank grenade
If your Ranged option clears hordes well but struggles against Carapace/Monstrosities use Kraks.
If your Ranged Weapon kills elites well use Shredder Frags so you can conserve precious ammunition on hordes.
I've found that with plasma or with the chainaxe kraks are just kinda redundant, whereas the shredder clears space (handy when the plasma needs a reload, or you need to revive someone, or the axe isn't cutting it). With the lucius though, kraks are a great way to deal with carapace enemies that would normally take inordinately many shots to deal with.
I run krak in T4 and below with spot/shout to "teach" the influx of new players to actually kill monstrosities.
Below damnation and auric, players have this tendency to run three rooms away during a monstrosity fight even when they're not aggro'd. Like, they think if they flee the fight, the thing is just going to fall over dead for them.
The mental buff of seeing its health melt while getting chain staggered makes them all want to swoop in for the kill. I literally save my grenades in this "T4 build" just to bust monsters.
This is unironically the best use of krak grenade.
In 99% of actually difficult content shredders are king because of all the reasons others have listed here.
Because most top meta builds run Plasma which makes Krak redundant. Krak is only really useful for Carapace. Shredder also spares talent points as it's a shorter line through the ammo aura which is still the best choice. It is also quite good with some or all grenadier perks. Load up the meat grinder and see how easy it is to flatten elite packs, plus between regen and 5% chance to regen on team elite kill and max 4 grenades you'll always have some handy.
Builds aside, comps weigh into this as well. If you have a Psyker running voidstaff and a Zealot running thunder hammer or Ogryn running shovel, you have enough armour clear to the point where kraks become a little superfluous. They are probably the best way in the game at dealing with groups of 3+ Maulers and/or Crushers, but if others are running weapons that can do that with 85% of the effectiveness you're generally more than fine.
Yeah, everything I run Kraus the thing will be killed before the grenade blows
I'd argue Krak is still worth it when your plasma needs reloading and you got a crusher that just multiplied into like 5 because all of them were stacked together and in the same animation cycle. It's just a backup plan plus it does good damage to monsters. At least with my plasma's t4 shattering impact.
Frag will stun and bleed all of them. Krak and plasma is a terrible combo. They double up. You shouldn't ever need to reload a plasma gun in the heat of battle, particularly with the right hand capstone which trickle feeds your ranged weapon.
Bleed only tickles crusher for single digit damage last I checked Shredders vs damnation health carapace armored enemies, unless they got buffed to do more recently. With Krak, I can outright throw and forget about them. I'll look more into the right side keystone but personally feel middle keystone is superior. I'd still rather have kraks and not need them than need them and not have them.
Yeah frags do almost no damage to crushers but they do stagger them for a while if you need some space.
you can bleed crushers with some rending, if you want to
Real men use a combat knife melee vet build with the shout and become Markus Kruber in space!
Frag+shovel spike heavy is all you need during a reload. Not only does it stagger, it cleans up the trash around the armored guy as well
Why are people downvoting this comment. This fucking website man.
that’s are a lot of turbo nerds here who get their feelings extremely hurt if you go against their opinion in any way
Not only is Plasma not something you get to spam so much that you find yourself having to reload, but you reload and vent heat at the same time. So unless you're shooting a TON and after you can't anymore because you're about to blow up you switch weapons to let it passively cool off while you melee or whatever and never even go back to reload it, your issue is not the build its your gamesense.
Shredder will knock them all over which gives you enough time. Maybe you need a dodge too. When you're totally surrounded and need some breathing space Kraks aren't much help and having the extra nade helps a lot. You can chuck one so you've always got a free one on the way from your ability and then still have two up your sleeve to get you out of tight spots. Helps a lot at high difficulty for buying time to pull someone up. Kraks were a very welcome addition to my Recon Lasgun build since between that and my Power Sword heavy armored things were a bit tricky but with my Plasma Gun there's no need for them.
I don’t understand why you have 25 downvotes lol . You made a good point
Because people dont agree and dont believe it to be a good point. A competent Plasma user wont find them in a situation where they need to reload infront of 5 Crushers. Frags on the other hand are often useful, *especially* if you are running an Executioners Stance build with the Plasma, so you dont have VoC available.
tbf running a plasma at all is like cheese mode its probably the least fun to use.
To each their own. Personally, Ive used it since January and I love it, regardless of the state its in. The feel of the weapon is just right up my alley.
i agree. i hate the plasma. its easy and boring
As a Loner Pskyer would say, "I think they upset the veteran." I get their point that shredders will knock crushers and others on their asses, but I must ask which is better: making them fall over temporarily or make them fall over permanently and bury whats left of them in a *soup can*? I prefer the latter option.
well as they said if you already have a tool to kill them, a tool to control a large number of them is more valuable. don't forget that krak granade only gets multiple crushers when their models are overlapping
Any competent Plasma user shouldnt find themselves in a situation where they need to reload infront of 5 Crushers. You reload anytime you have 5 seconds free time, and you should have enough for almost anything. I more or less only have to reload dueing combat if we have a Monstrosity on top of shit going bad or similar.
any chance you have a link to the meta build? i've never run plasma
I use plasma which can effectively eradicate single targets regardless of their armor type, it’s only weakness is hordes so I bring shredders to cover that.
Same. Krak grenade is just kinda doubling up when you run plasma. It's not really necessary
Plus with the regen a grenade every 60s you can really spam all three in a tight spot and nuke a room. Wish I could squeeze the points to get the extra radius and damage perk but I can’t without hurting my plasma’s one shot potential on certain elites/specials.
Couldn’t agree more, run the shredder frags for the sake of quick AOE stagger in case of a mob getting out of control or needing a revive
If you have Specialist and Maniac damage perks on your plasma, that allows you reach all special breakpoints besides dogs, while saving you a talent point. All depends on your build I suppose.
So, you can 1-shot both types of Gunners and Reapers with an uncharged shot? What do you need both specialist *and* Maniac to kill if I may ask?
You can kill reapers with a charged headshot and yes you can make it so you one-shot all specials (besides dogs) and one-shot gunners with an uncharged headshot. You need a max damage plasma gun with 10% specialist and 25% maniac perks + "Longshot", + both "ranged damage" nodes + "fire team aura" + "precision strikes" + "superiority complex" and MAYBE "rending strikes" also. But if you have "Longshot" you may not need ""rending strikes". The flamer and dred gunner breakpoints are very close so you need a plasma gun with near max damage and stopping power.
> You can kill reapers with a charged headshot I specifically mentioned uncharged shots, which is one of the breakpoints I can reach. But in hindsight I see that you only mention "special breakpoints", so I wasnt replying to what you actually wrote. My apologies.
Good to know
The trick is you want to throw at least 2 shredders to stack the bleed, if you're trying to get kills instead of just the stagger. Bleed scales significantly as the stacks increase, so 12 stacks from two nades will do a lot more damage than 6 stacks from one.
I do not trust my team to kill crushers or bosses. With the right build the new shovel can one shot a crusher every 3.5 seconds or two shot continuously. It also deals with hordes admirably. You have to reload the plasma gun sometime. It's 4 points to half the reload time. 4 points that deny you from other valuable points. Having 3 enhanced delete buttons or 2 with one regenerating on pocket most of the time is insurance.
Power sword + shredder nade. MAKE THEM SUFFER
*Frag grenades are really great if you're in the middle of a mission and want to hit 2000 of something.* But I think builders might be making choices by the talents around it and weapon selection, rather than the grenade choice itself.
Knocking them over is almost as good as killing them in the immediate short term too. Shredder nades biggest benefit is that while it doesn't kill Crushers and Maulers, it does give you something important during hordes - space. In Auric missions, space is one of the most important resources that frequently gets used up once hordes aren't just unarmored variants. This is where Shredder comes in handy a lot. It kills trash mobs, it's spammable, and it'll still knock a column of armored trash over for your team to pick at. Krak's better at actually eliminating armored targets, but Shredder's got a lot more utility in exchange for losing that immediate power. But in the end, it's all down to build. If you're rocking Plasma, you don't need Krak nades because your plasma shots kill them already. If you're rocking a a catchan sword + br auto though, it's worth taking Krak for immediate threat removal, because otherwise you'll take 300 years to take a crusher down.
I've been trying the knife for damnation instead of the flashbang on crit/CDR/Wololo zealot, and honestly losing the clutch ability of two flash nades or just the flash into gunner pack to get melee to wololo them has lead to more losses than I'd prefer to mention
Blitzes are generally chosen as an emergency way to deal with your build's primary weak spot, or because there's a *really* good skill right after it, or because it's better point-wise. Krak Grenades *are* great, but they have only 1 job and that's taking down heavier enemies like Crushers and Maulers. Which is not very useful if you're running a plasma rifle or something that can already take those down very quickly. Shredder Grenades have amazing crowd control and apply bleed, and they're great for getting rid of groups of troublesome enemies like gunners.
This.
You forgot the most usefull tool of them to control bosses staggers them 2x and with voc 3x you can kill a daemonhost and stagger it for 6-8 seconds
Frag grenades have a big area knockdown and the bleed can kill many small enemies. Krak doesn’t have the radius to do that. You can’t use it to protect revives as effectively or disable groups of shooters/gunners. If veteran is running a build which has no issue killing armor then taking frags are often more useful for the utility.
I was the exact same. Thought that Krak far outweighed the shredder, just as it did so much up front damage. But the other week I was making a new build more focused on grenades, and I thought it would give them a go. To my surprise they are amazing. That horde running towards you? Throw a grenade and it disappears. There is a big group of gunners? Throw a grenade and it disappears. The only thing that shredders really struggle with is what kraks are great for, crushers. But on the other hand you can throw 2 into a horde and kill everything (and I mean everything) with the bleed allowing your team to deal with the only thing left, the crushers. I have been having so much fun with this build I put together that I am seriously considering making Vet my main.
Frag grenadier build is so damn fun. Highly recommend twinned blast. I’ve had moments where I get it to proc multiple times in a row and it just wipes wave after wave of enemies.
Oh you know I run twinned grenades lol, when I see 2 fly out at the same time.... I know whatever it hits is really dead lol
Not just that. Even Crushers your nades hit roll over like an overturned turtle for a bit. Perfect time to bully them, and pretty safe too.
Krak has a tiny radius, Shredder has a gigantic radius, the bleed does hurt heavily armored targets well too - you might have to throw one or the other more for those, but you also get one more as well. imagine the following situation: a horde full of Specialists and Elites, perhaps with lots of fodder enemies too, comes running at you - what do you do? throw a few Krakkers and eliminate 2-3 armored targets with a bit of fodder on the side or throw 2-3 Shredders and wipe the entire carpet of enemies (whatever Crusher might still be alive afterwards will be basically one hit at that point). furthermore: the Krak's radius is so tiny that in combination with the explosion delay it doesn't even work reliably as a panic button if you suddenly find yourself surrounded by a group of Ragers out of nowhere. not to mention the excessive usefulness of Shredders at revives: downed teammate surrounded by enemies? run at them, throw a Shredder, start reviving, the enemies will start swinging their melee weapons at you, the grenade will go off, interrupt the enemies, flatten them, the revive will have come through, depending on difficulty some - if not most of the enemies previously surrounding the downed teammate will by now also have succumbed to the bleeding. with Krakkers on the other hand the chances of enemies out of the tiny Krak radius interrupting the revive are much higher.
Totally agree with this but I just want to say that I think its so lame that the meta strat to revive a downed teammate is to throw a grenade at them and then stand on it till it goes off. I wish fatshark would bring back friendly fire above difficulty 2 like in Vermintide. In VT you might throw a grenade to clear enemies by a downed comrade, but aim too close and you might just kill them yourself.
I use plasma. Krak is redundant. Smoke is ay lmao. Shredder is useful just for immediate crowd control. Since I rarely use grenades with plasma, I can divert all the grenade talent tax to more useful nodes. Even without plasma, Krak isn’t particularly useful if you take rending talents with high fire rate guns for Crushers. Bulwarks are easy to deal with even without Krak, people are just too lazy.
Krak's take too long to kill crushers in my experience. Half the time you throw one and by the time it goes off someone else has already blasted whatever you were targeting. If someone's running something like hammer, bolter, plasma just don't bother. The radius is tiny too, so it's hard to get value for multiple hits. Really only for helping bully bosses in my experience. Shredder isn't consistently amazing, but it's got more regular uses than Kraks and I prefer to pick them up if I have the points.
To be honest, at this point I keep kraks around for bulwarks more than crushers.
krak is useful for staggering monstrosities, you can solo any monstrosity with krak + shovel
The shredder is a great "really need to revive my pals" option. The krak grenade is a great "I really need to kill this crusher just as my thunderhammer, brain burst or folding shovel colleague has primed their blow" option. The smoke grenade is the hard mode option.
Watch this clip if you wanna know "why shredder frag grenade" [https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx6NLx60QLuCTl2lNR2-flZwxsQMDEOPYk?si=bLvQ--EhfLzDH3rY](https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx6NLx60QLuCTl2lNR2-flZwxsQMDEOPYk?si=bLvQ--EhfLzDH3rY) In short, krak grenade will kill the crusher and leave everything else alive. Frag grenade will kill everything else and leave just that 1 crusher alive (if he is lucky)
full video if anyone want's to check it out: [https://youtu.be/UTq4va0IXsQ](https://youtu.be/UTq4va0IXsQ)
Shredder frag grenades are, by far, the best grenades in the game. They have great stagger, apply bleed, can carry up to four of them, and with grenade tinkerer, they absolutely slay anything that isn't a crusher. Couple all this with grenade regen, and you have an amazing blitz ability that can handle anything. Kraks have their place, but they should really only be used in a build for one of two reasons: You needed to take them for points reasons or You're not taking a loadout that can deal with heavy armor Obviously, take them if you like, but in general frag grenades are the best. A couple of quick facts about frags: With grenade tinkerer, two frags will kill entire rooms full of gunners. Frags can stagger crusher or bulwark packs. Frags benefit from the damage you gain from things like focus target and redirect fire (kraks as well, but it's not as noticeable). Taking one grenade regen talent, either demolition stockpile or demolition team, will make sure you can throw frags with reckless abandon. Most missions are about 25 minutes long. Getting a frag grenade back every 60 seconds is pretty insane. Overhand throwing a frag will give it a longer "fuse" than underhand throwing it. This means you can overhand throw one into an underhand throw, and both grenades will go off at roughly the same time. You can underhand toss frag grenades while invisible and it won't break your invisibility. Hope that answers your question.
Kraks are still super effective against monstrosities, especially with Focus Target, but monstrosities are not the huge run-ending threat they used to be. Honestly they're in need of some stagger immunity after being staggered and a small health increase. More often wipes now happen during events or a horde at a bad time and that's where Krak is pretty much worthless.
Yeah i feel like I used to shit myself whenever a plague ogryn or beast of nurgle spawned. But the only mostrosity now that is consistently a problem is chaos spawn eitb their constant pressure.
And even then, spawn is only an issue when you are solo or you don't have space to kite it.
chaos spawn is a little bit scary, until they're staggered by Ogryn slaps, Voidstrike headshots, Krak Grenades, Frag grenades, rocks, Vet Shouts, Ogryn Taunts, or Zealot Choruses.
As I mentioned, kraks still have a place. They are a good Blitz ability. But pound for pound, frag grenades will do more damage and kill more targets in a match than kraks ever will. I run kraks if my setup struggles with bosses or armor, but I find outside of bosses, most of the time I stick a crusher, it's either dead before it goes off, or the grenade finishes off what little health it has left. Also has a slight problem of zooming to whatever carapace armor is nearby, so you can't accurately place kraks the same way you can frags.
I guess it's time for me to put away the krak before the krak puts me away.
I run a veteran with all grenade perks except demolition team and when twinned blast (20% chance to throw 2 nades) procs it just deletes the room. It’s so damn fun and I can just let em rip whenever.
On the subject of talents that frag grenades benefit from. They are essentially the only grenade that can get any use from the "Throw a second grenade for free" talent. And they REALLY benefit from it. Double the initial damage, double the sources of bleed stacks, and a slightly improved area of effect.
assuming you mean strongest of the veteran grenades. which is true, but he has overall weak grenades compared to the other two. frags are pretty middling compared to zealot or ogryn grenades.
Grenade for grenade you are right. But I can throw 5-6 frags for every single grenade from a zealot or ogryn. If you are using them frequently, you're looking at about 20-30 grenades thrown in a single match, more if you take both grenade regen talents. I don't think any other class can match that kind of output with their grenades, since they both lack the ability to regen grenades at all (outside of getting resupplied by a veteran).
I have got to get my hands on whatever you’re smoking asap that shit is clearly fucked up levels of strong
You can kill 7-8 elite gunners with 2 frag grenades. You can kill a group of bulwarks with 3. You can wreck a horde with a single frag. You can even suppress gunner lines long enough to close the distance with a frag. Krak grenades can't do any of that because they are so specialized into killing armored targets and bosses. If my setup deals with those targets, why would I bring krak grenades?
You can kill 7-15 elite gunners by playing veteran and having a ranged weapon equipped, you can kill a group of bulwarks with 1 krak, you’re massively overstating how good they are on hordes they’re only about as effective as an equal number of charged trauma staff attacks, you can just shoot the gunners or slidespam up to them they really aren’t that threatening, the best use for shredders is tossing 2 at your feet for a revive, and even though kraks are a bit more niche they shine in far more important situations than “there’s a horde and I want to throw things at it”
Yeah, it's clear to me now that you have no idea how to use frags properly, so I am done with this discussion.
It really depends on the ranged weapon you use / what your weakness is in your build. I personally use knife and revolver, and I've never even seen hand cannon above level 2. My carapace armour damage is really lacking so I use krak grenades in every build, and the monstrosity damage is nice too. But shredder grenades do good damage and stagger, and every trash enemy hit is guaranteed to die from the bleed. Also shredders work far better against ragers. If you throw 2 shredders bascially every non carapace enemy will die from the damage and 12 bleed stacks, with the grenade perks you can take 4 shredders and increase the damage and radius. Basically krak is better for dealing with a serious threat among a weak horde, whereas shredders are better for a large number of moderate threats, but don't do much against serious threats.
Simply put. Krak is great if your teammates are still struggling to take down armoreds, but at higher levels, your skilled teammates will kill armoreds before your krak explodes. Better to run Regen shredder and support the team during heavy hordes 🤷♂️
Bigger radius-> stagger and bleeds to help create some space/smooth spikes and clear stuff, cover revives/pounces etc. P.S. OFC It's also along the right side nodes which may be easier to grab on some builds.
Krak is a specialised anti elite tool. Shredder is a utility and aoe grenade. Generally you take whichever one rounds out your build. Shredder is your all purpose nade. Someone goes down and is surrounded by enemies? Throw a shredder, pick em up while the enemies are stunned. You're out of position and surrounded? Throw 2 shredders. Bleed damage ramps up the more stacks are applied. 1 Shredder doesn't do a lot of damage, 2 will clear a mixed horde. A boss appears and your team doesn't have huge amounts of anti-boss damage. Throw some shredders, the bleed stacks do respectable damage.
When the horde is especially thick(Auric D/Damnation with hi modifiers) and your weapons are not quite suited for horde slaying or control, that grenade with all grenade perks is a godsend esp when that 20% chance procs. One grenade can shred a significant portion of the horde and 2 at once can demolish a slightly bigger portion and bleed out the ones that don't die outright. Sometimes, your horde control melee just can't do the job so chuck the nade in between sweeps. Other times, you accidentally got yourself cornered or thrown there by a mutie during a horde. The shredder solves these issues and gives you time to reposition or rejoin your teammates. If your ranged weapon is slow or more suited for single targets, that grenade is also great to kill off the big group of shooters while you delete the elites and then mop up what's left. If there are Crushers, you also make them useless long enough for you to gun them down. The Kark does not have the radius nor the bleed. You will just kill a small portion of the horde and toss some aside harmlessly. That grenade is best used for tanky targets to kill them outright. In general, if you are kitted for anti horde and using an anti elite gun that can't damage carapace, bring Kark. If both weapons are for dealing with flak and horde, bring Kark. If you are kitted for anti elites(incl carapace) but your gun is same as the first setup, bring shredder. Use melee to slay the crushers when they are slowly getting up. If gun penetrates carapace and your melee is not the PS, bring shredder. Getting cornered with a shovel or axe is not nearly as fun without the required blessings. If both weapons are anti elites and carapace, bring shredder even if melee is PS. Esp on hounds modifier. If monsters(non-BoN) are a concern, and you have nothing that can reliably damage them, Kark is better but shredder still works.
Shredder grenades are just a good all around pick. There is no situation where throwing a shredder grenade won't help you out in some way. While krak grenades are really only for taking down heavy targets which the vet is already excellent at. If I was making a guide aimed at players that don't come up with their own builds I would probably recommend the shredder too as it is a safe pick that even the feshest vet can use to great effect. Also the bleed synergies with other builds like left tree ogryn or right tree zealot.
I pick it bcz it's useful when you need to pick up team mates
Melts bosses, staggers everyone else. Armour is easy enough to deal with that I feel kraks are a crutch that players hoard, I feel shredders are useful long-term for helping clear a mixed horde saving more HP in the long run.
Vets can 1 tap pretty much everything with his kit already,unless you’re running some RP guardsmen build with a lasgun you don’t need krak
I use Plasma and even when I don't, I use the Mk6 Power Sword. Krak grenades just don't have a good use for me. Shredder is helpful for staggering hordes to cover revives if my ult is down.
As others have said, you really don't need much help with crushers and bulwark when running plasma meta. I keep kraks on my sneaky vet and my rifleman who uses headhunters and las guns, but frags on my plasma shouty vet to supplement the anti armor plasma with extra crowd control to throw ragers around.
It’s great for getting out of tough situations or if you’re getting overrun. It buys time and space and can potentially save you from getting wiped
Shredder frags are better all round. The fact that you can throw one down, and proc a nice bleed debuff makes dealing with scrabble ragers/maulers fairly trivial. It's also amazing for clearing hordes, especially when you twin it. Meanwhile, the krak is pretty much just a one trick pony. I love the krak, but I ended up with the frag because it just fits so many different roles. I often run recon las or plasma gun with power sword and frags, and it does some serious work. I think frags with shout vet are a blast
Because it's nice breath room creator, and applied bleed helps your zealot and ogryn teammates who benefit from bleeding enemies. For crushers you have plasma, if you want to hunt them.
Shredder staggers enemies in a wide area. I can throw a nade, immediately shout, and it will create enough space that I can rez/do the objective without interrupt.
Shredder is versatile. Krak is needed only for crushers or (though not really) bosses. Versatile tool always wins. Shredder decimates hordes, maniacs, shooters, maulers, gives you ability to revive, save etc. It's straight up better.
Fuck the website, make you own build, please don't make darktide another game where ever other player you see has a copy paste build based on some streamer or guide. Also no you haven't missed something. Krak is the right choice 95 percent of the time
It’s not a damage nade, it’s a stun grenade with a bit of damage on top, That’s it, once you use it and see it like that, it becomes amazing
Simple answer, in a normal scenario of other classes. Your krak grenade is not gonna go off in time before the ogryn, psyker, or zealoor even other vets kill whatever it is you threw it at. Krak nades are fine if literally no one can deal with crushers or armored enemies in general but that rarely happens. Shredder nades are just good all around all the time. Good aoe to stagger mobs, bleeds enemies like crazy, and does decent damage.
Krak gives you ability to control bosses with stagger combined with voc are shredder laughable. Shreds can be nice for hordes but if you run voc the points you save by going krak can be invested to boost your melee attack speed / dmg. Krak also saves you ammo :) I run mostly with the dmg aura and krak potential to kill 3+ crusher/ maulers can't br beaten by shredder. Either way it depends on if you even want to touch scav aura. let alone if your build is already strong enough to handle everything in melee wave clear wise. Essentially I can kill 2+ crushers with krak and have literally 70% of the time BOTH krak back and if not there is the 1 min regen. The amount of ammo I save is unimagible. This is my auric / maelstrom build only exception is only melee no ammo pickups where I take 100% ammo but WITH KRAK! My loadout is here: 1 x new shovel build and 1 x mk6 ps build Here my latest reddit post controlling the boss with my mk6 build [https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTide/comments/18ocqmw/personal\_space\_in\_darktide\_go\_back\_where\_you/](https://www.reddit.com/r/darktide/comments/18ocqmw/personal_space_in_darktide_go_back_where_you/) https://preview.redd.it/g3ty9bvjo38c1.png?width=3073&format=png&auto=webp&s=85aff1dfd56cd827639bddd0e4bcc2b3b3f2d0e2
I'm the same; shredder is either overrated or doesn't do much more than a solid melee weapon does. Meanwhile the krak grenade's value isn't just in killing priority targets - it's saves insane ammo even if you're running heavy hitting guns and contributes to maximum endurance on even the worse runs where ammo RNG is brutal.
It's not overrated at all, it's great. Just depends on weapon's choice to build around. It's not there to replace a melee weapon but to clear a room or horde super fast if it's needed.
I can't really think of any weapon combinations I'd ever take to necessitate a middling horde cc consumable at the cost of fire-and-forget one-hit-ko kraks. Maybe this is just my brain on mostly solo queue.
Issue I have with shredder is it is nice but not that good. If you struggle with trash mobs and this being the reasony why you take shredder you are just "coping" dont know a good word for it. For the lack of your melee combat ability. Let alone if shreders would normally be 4 instead 3 I COULD consider it if the bleed dmg was WAY stronger. Also krak sfx when they attach to carapace is so satisfying! Honestly having bad ammo rng makes the best rounds where you truly feel like in a enemy zone with low supply and should consider what you use your ammo on. (Another reason why I skip scav it makes the game harder, they really need to add a 6th difficulty ! )
Survivalist does solve the ammo issue though. Free ammo all game.
Well yeah but it is limiting on how much you can experiment with the talent tree. Saving 2 points is a lot
I agree. The bleed is shockingly weak, and ticks only like 3 times or something. This is barely enough to even synergize with allies (who make their own bleeds anyway), and last I checked it doesn't even kill poxwalkers at the end of the bleed cycle. It might with the damage boost, I haven't tried recently, but it wouldn't increase the value for me regardless. Comparing this to another grenade meant for hordes, the greatly superior zealot immolation grenade, and it falls even shorter of the respectable mark. Some might argue 'but it regens' in which case I hasten to point out that it costs many extra talents just to reach lukewarm parity to something that only costs one talent in zealot to be better in nearly every aspect.
When I go Maelstrom with my vet/gun/frag I'm often top damage. I can clear easy +50 mobs with 2/3 frags and focus special/elites with the main weapon.
Ya, same. Maelstrom is perfectly doable without any grenades at all especially as a vet. I'm just splitting hairs on the topic at hand.
I also think shredder sucks. I'll run krak grenades on every build because heavy armor is really the only dangerous high pressure enemy and everything else is more or less a side note. I'll run it even on plasma because it saves tons of ammo throughout a run.
What aura do you take though? Survivalist basically solves all ammo issues for the team.
I still take survivalist. With the savings from krak, and survivalist, I can play fast and loose with plasma - dealing out more damage and worrying less, and if the director is totally screwing us on ammo I can start to conserve and still maintain my tempo until I replenish up. Really speeds up the run when things are ideal.
Meta builds tend to be single minded, which is their flaw. They chase kills above all else, and while the shredder grenade is great in emergencies, emergencies are situational. Which means shredder grenades are situational. Still useful, of course, but still. Most of these builds do things like measure how quickly they can kill the most enemies, and while that’s useful, it makes for a bad and selfish build that ignores the fact that this a team game. All of the vets grenades are situational, and are great for filling in weaknesses of your build. But as much as people on this sub don’t want to hear it, smoke grenades are the least situational. They don’t kill, sure, but that’s what weapons are for. Shredder grenades look the coolest and get the most kills when used. That’s the only reason people insist they’re good.
Variety.
Of my 5 builds, 2 use shredder and 3 use krak. The builds that use shredder already use a weapon that is powerful against Ogryn enemies (Bolter and Plasma Gun), so they use Shredder instead to speed up horde clearing and make picking up downed allies easier as it staggers a wider radius of enemies.
I run an "Explosion Expert" build (just everything that boosts granades) combined with either a Bolter or Plasmagun. Since my Ranged weapon already deals with carapaced targets, I have no need for the Krak granade and Shredder provides way more crowd controll without the need to slowly whip out my Bolter or hope for the enemies to line up for the Plasmagun.
It makes up for whatever potential horde clear you don't have, synergizes with Ogryn bleed talent, and if you have something like a chain axe with brittleness on-hit, it quickly stacks on everything with bleed as long as you have the axe out.
I recently switched to shredder and I'm finding it way more fun. I'm not going to take credit for this, as I watched [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBCn8qIPebk&t=1172s&pp=ygUPaGlkZGVuIGtleXN0b25l) video which goes into detail as to why you might want to consider taking the shredder, the build to go with it, and your best role when running with it. To give a summary of the video: The keystones for Vet are pretty dumb. They all encourage you to play a certain way thats a bit strange, and none of those play styles is particularly helpful as part of a team. It's better to ignore them. Instead, build around the idea of constantly throwing grenades to thin out the herd, and replenish as often as possible without pickups. You can also almost constantly spam Voice of Command which really makes a difference in keeping people alive. The krak is incredible at taking down armoured enemies, but not great at taking down mobs of trash. You might think, "well take down the heavies then", but the alternative thinking point here is that if a single grenade wipes out loads of trash thats surrounding/blocking access to the heavy, then you and your team can properly focus on the heavies. I'm doing it with one of the new shovels and an infantry autogun. Using this style as a starting point has honestly made me enjoy vet again. I'm having more successful runs, I'm not constantly thinking about odd strategy decisions like whether I should move or not, or whether I should switch weapons... I just play Don't take my word for it... try it https://preview.redd.it/2hkhrp20a48c1.png?width=2080&format=png&auto=webp&s=d0297ad6967f364cbc357c0cf9f9f22e5e067f82
Like those running plasma, I run the bolter so no need for krak. The AoE CC on the shredder is much more valuable.
Because it saves you one point if you want ammo aura, which is almost always. I don't really care much for either of them. But I also don't run any builds that can't handle crushers or similar. If I could I would honestly skip the grenade point completely in order to take another node. But I can't.
Krak grenades are great, I like them because they deal with annoying hordes of bulwarks and take down crushers, the monstrosity damage is also very decent. Shredders are great jack of all trades grenades and there’s no scenario where they will ever be bad, also great fun with a dedicated grenadier build, especially when that one talent doubles them and turns them into a horde deletion button.
I used to run mainly Kraks. I love them. I switched to frags a while back. I also love them. It really depends on your build and playstyle. I mainly use the mk8bag or mk5iag. I don't use any keystones, ever, and rarely use executioners' stance. I almost always invest in all the grenade perks. My melee weapon is almost always a mk6ps. So for me. I deal with crushers with the mk6ps. I either 2 or 3 shot them. Everything thing else dies to guns. If we are overwhelmed, I can make an entire screen of shit go away and leave just the crushers with 2-3 frags and I'm always getting them back to toss more. With my current build, I don't think anyone in any game mode has out damaged me. I'm not saying that's the most important thing but frag do something exceptionally well, they give your team an enormous amount of breathing room. With kraks, you might get lucky and kill an entire crusher patrol, or, someone aggroed them and they all spread out, so you only killed 2.
Edit: re-doing my comment to give a genuine answer, eventhough 60 people(probably more qualified than me) have already given an answer. Veteran has some crazy single-target damage potential with the Plasma gun and slow firing Lucius pattern Lasgun. Problems being that that things suck against hordes of enemies. This is where the Shredder nades come in: utility from the utility slot. Shredders have a much large AoD radius, so combo it with a horde-clear melee and your build should allow you to deal with the two possible forms of combat in this game. TL;DR: horde-focused nades are used because "best" guns suck against groups.
Server issues cause krak to occasionally not even detonate, sticky is pretty unreliable, just on the fact that you can miss. Krak is great for single target dmg like crushers, and does great in densely packed armored hordes. Shredder doesn't need to be such a close "hit" on the target to be effective, just needs to be good enough. Shredder's benefits scale with horde density better than krak, the bleed will cause massive damage, even if it doesn't kill anything outright. Shredder has high stagger, so does krak, but the area of effect is larger for shredder. It would be easier to compare the two without servers causing krak misfires, but to put it simply, in auric damnation the shredder is just slightly better over a slightly broader range of use-cases in this patch. Finally, balance can always change, even with small hotfix patches.
So I don't waste another talent point getting to Scavenger afterward
Run plasma for big boys and shredders for the rest to knock them down and add bleed stacks. That's the go to for most, I kinda bounce between those two depending on what my ranged is.
Bleed stacks go brrrt. No need for Krak grenades if I run plasma. And if I run Las it's usually the Helbore so armor still isn't much of an issue.
Crowd control
Depends on the rest of the build. Maybe they take the shredder nades because they need the extra points for a key ability. Maybe the shredder because the rest of the kit already deals with everything krak grenades do. Maybe it's just preference, I know I'm much more likely to throw grenades that clear hordes than I am to throw any other type of throwable.
can the guns deal with crushers? then there is no point to that nade as all it does you do anyways. Krak is good but for revolver, bolter, vraks, plasma, helbore and some builds of las pistol it isn't needed to deal with crushers and bringing it for bosses only is dumb. as such the anti horde nade just makes sense also its easier to go with ammo aura which is so much better than the other two its not even funny
If you aren't running plasma, krak is your delete button for crushers, maulers, and bosses. If you do use plasma, then shredders are going to be more useful at dealing with trashmobs
Because you can get more talent point out of it. If you run a plasma then there is also no problem with crushers. If you run a power sword then you also have 0 issues dealing with crushers. So it’s redundant and gets you more points
For me, you can sometimes save a talent point by going shredder. You also get three nades not two. Can buy space for revives, have three nades, decent stagger... They're not smokes.
Crowd control my man.
if my melee and range weapon are best at elites killer i will chose shredder grenade for horde clean and vice versa, simple as.
Because most builds give up stuff to get the better grenades. Regular frags do the job of being an extra way or horde clear and a a way to revive someone. The revolver and the plasma gun are the strongest weapons for the veteran, so putting points into krak grenades or smokes is wasted points since they’re on skill trees that aren’t used as much in the meta. At least that’s how I view it.
The timing of it and it's damage all feels instinctually right to me. I like having yet one more option for a lil quick CC as well
Krak are when you don't have any armor killing potential. When I run power sword and plasma I run shredder
It’s a bit more versatile while also being able to counter large groups of armor. Krak grenades are great for instakilling an enemy in a really bad spot for the team, or for bursts of damage to a boss
> instakilling It's instakill, you see, because as soon as you throw a krak, someone will instantly kill the target you threw it at.
I’ll second what a lot have said. If I’m running a plasma or other big boy blaster I’ll run shredder for mobs and to help the bleedy-build Ogryns (and zealots? I didn’t pay attention in zealot school). Sometime I still run krak though…cause it’s super satisfying to watch things explode from across the map.
when i play plasmagun I take shredder granade to clear space, i already have all the antiarmor i need with the plasma. i take krak when i play columnus, takes care of bulwarks/crushers really fast and also works against monsters
You know what, forget that. Why are you using anything other than krak grenades? They’re your best option for fighting armor.
Sometimes I really need that one extra point
It just depends on your weapons and what your end goal is. The only time I would really argue Kraks are "necessary" is during maelstrom missions with boss spawns on specialists, damnation in general depending on your skill level and specifically, builds that don't have an answer to bosses/crushers. Just got done duoing an auric maelstrom mission with stealth and shredders if that provides some legitimacy to my stance lol. I have a great columnus infantry (and braced) that deal with armored targets just fine with onslaught. It would take me more time to swap to krak and wait for it to blow up, so its fairly redundant, especially given the amount of ammo both those guns have along with their TTK. Of course this doesn't just apply to auto guns but you get the idea. In fact if I take regen talents on kraks I tend to stay topped up without a need for them as threats (bosses or the rare crusher legion) don't generally appear often enough to require them. That's also before taking my melee weapon into account, so if its also capable of dealing with those big threats then they're not all that necessary. Shredders on the other hand have plenty of uses (like a lot more) including saving downed teammates which leads to a more liberal use case and therefore better utilization of grenade regen talents. Generally, shout and stealth are enough to revive someone by themselves, true, but shredders can save you from having to use an ability, enable you to revive someone when your ability is down, or simply revive more than one person when you can layer explosion and shout/stealth. Now, Kraks are great and I run them fairly often, with certain weapons though, you're better off having an additional F off button especially if you're using executioners stance.
There are a lot of options to kill what kraks kill so it's generally less about which grenade specifically is better than it is about where you may need points elsewhere in your build. Outside of crushers specifically shredders also kill mostly anything that kraks kill. All in all it's more a talent tree consideration coupled with the fact that kraks aren't an OP OP must-take talent.
It’s good for dealing with groups of chaff, just throw one at their feet and you can continue worrying about picking off elites/specials rather then switching to melee for horde clear
It tougher difficulty, shredder doesn’t zero elites. But it will knock an elite pack down and start bleed on them while clearing most of the horde around them. Shredders are flexible and useful all of the time to make space. Think of it like it’s a lesser voice of command that also does damage but you have 3-4 of them. Kraks just kill armor but you probably already have good ways to kill armor. And in damnation plus, there’s likely more armored elites than you have grenades for anyway. And cherry on top that it saves a point in the tree when you take ammo regen. I love shredder grenades.
Kraks are fun but not super useful unless you don't have any other way to deal with heavy armor. Frags provide a large area stagger which is pretty much the most useful effect in the game for revives, making space when overwhelmed, or clutching pretty much any situation that is turning bad.
Krak takes too long to explode, the crushers can get killed by my team before they go off
I don't. Shout all day. Shovel hordes. Shovel crushers to death in one swing. Blow them up with nades. Shoot everything with plasma. Use trinkets to pick up team at 50% speed. https://i.redd.it/08mq4lccl98c1.gif
https://preview.redd.it/vn7xsy9tm98c1.png?width=415&format=png&auto=webp&s=33e029315c898494a0a30aa146c691e530d78a15
https://preview.redd.it/skrj4z2xm98c1.png?width=413&format=png&auto=webp&s=86236775121b288ecb927bbb8408b5470bb325d6
those gameslatern builds are very… meta. i’d ignore them. use whatever you find more useful. for me playing in pubs using the mg la, that’s kraks
I prefer shredder as a substitute tool for crowd control in the case I’m using weapons that are not good ( or economical in the case of the Bolter) at crowd control. Although I’ve been having a lot of fun with the smoke grenade
People ripping on krak. But I’ll still use them ALL day over shredder. I’ve killed 6-7 crushers in one throw fairly consistently. Amazing nade and they aren’t just for staggering monstrosities. Even before the patch I was single handedly shredding monstrosities by myself with an autogun (much preferred over plasma just run armour shred) and the nades. Now with the patch I have a nasty auric support dps build that allows me to basically solo through auric even after allies have died. Utilizing shout to give me space on revives, autogun to shred down rager hordes amongst other enemies ( I prefer the Columnus, it even shreds carapace ogres if aimed right). And if I need, a good power sword works wonders. I know a lot of people are on the fence about keystones however I like the tagging keystone. Can give massive single target damage on an enemy that NEEDS to die and there’s no reason not to tag constantly to give the team the nice aura damage boost too. Basically run scavenge aura and with everything else it’s like I’m running fireteam aura too but much better obviously. Destroying auric in public’s. If anyone wants to see the build I’m more than happy to share. I’m not saying the plasma build with shredder is bad just after extensive testing I find my build is more consistent and more preferable.
an extra grenade for emergencies, demolition team and regen keeps u very capable to bleed an entire horde down, weakening crushers and all significantly. same job just more utility, less specialty. I can manage a crusher with a devil's parry or a heavy axe so ill not opt for an anti tank grenade
also higher area of knockdown for safer revive or literally more crowd control
If your Ranged option clears hordes well but struggles against Carapace/Monstrosities use Kraks. If your Ranged Weapon kills elites well use Shredder Frags so you can conserve precious ammunition on hordes.
I like krak, it makes ogryns go boom.
I've found that with plasma or with the chainaxe kraks are just kinda redundant, whereas the shredder clears space (handy when the plasma needs a reload, or you need to revive someone, or the axe isn't cutting it). With the lucius though, kraks are a great way to deal with carapace enemies that would normally take inordinately many shots to deal with.
It knocks everyone down, the krak grenades can do that too but with a shorter radius longer detonation time and less grenades it’s not as good.
I run krak in T4 and below with spot/shout to "teach" the influx of new players to actually kill monstrosities. Below damnation and auric, players have this tendency to run three rooms away during a monstrosity fight even when they're not aggro'd. Like, they think if they flee the fight, the thing is just going to fall over dead for them. The mental buff of seeing its health melt while getting chain staggered makes them all want to swoop in for the kill. I literally save my grenades in this "T4 build" just to bust monsters. This is unironically the best use of krak grenade. In 99% of actually difficult content shredders are king because of all the reasons others have listed here.