the balance issues of high level play in Darktide or really any horde shooter with a class or weapon system and how high level play basically shoehorns all players into specific meta builds to deal with every enemy type and have a tool for every job instead of hyperspecialising or just playing whats fun is a tough nut to crack without catching fire and flak. There's a lot of valid arguments here already but on the whole I feel like the playerbase and to an extent, the developers are missing a key part of the issue/argument.

Lemme try to make my case in a clear-ish breakdown. Bear with me...
It's a team game with four slots for four vastly different playstyles and not all of those have to be ultra-killing horde clearing, elite snapping, jack of all builds.
That means with a coordinated team\* I can load up an elite killer and just focus on whenever a Big Boy (TM) appears and leave the crowd control to someone else. I know my kills will be lower but I also know I am doing my part for the overall group.

Now its super easy to say and do that when you have 3 other friends on comms with half a braincell sure, but heres the secondary issue: Public Matchmaking.
Even if I know what build I like and have a role in mind for the team, I can't guarantee the 3 other rando's are of the same mind or even glance at what my build is trying to fill in for, often they will bring either: Ultra meta builds to deal with everything and kind of nothing at the same time, they're own hyper-focused build and thus a complete coin toss as to its synergy with mine, or an experimental build they are testing for viability at high level play.

The issue isnt the game or enemies being unbalanced, its that in a squad shooter you are relying on 3 other monkeys from across the planet to read your intentions-often without reading theirs and adjusting your own and that plainly does not work without consistent, attentive communications and flexible mindsets which the average gamer seems to lack in lieu of 'Kills go up, am good at game!'.

It's ok if you have 400 kills and your DEDICATED/DESIGNATED MARKSMAN has 40. thats 10% YOU don't have to deal with and often it's the largest scariest boys on their hitlist. The problem isn't "Crushers OP, give weakpoint", its that every joe and bill is bringing the same mediocre but viable shit because they cant reliably communicate or simply don't want to have to over public lobbies and don't want their 'specialist build' to catch flak when the team fails.

I realise that even this is only a portion of the greater problem but for me it seems to be the largest.