This was an interesting read. Truthfully, I’ve always felt caught in the middle of Darktide Balance Discussions. An Auric Maelstrom is the sweet spot of difficulty where I actually have to fully pay attention to the game. I can easily carry team in Havoc up to Havoc Level 25. But I find that my peers aren’t skilled enough to follow me beyond, and Party Finder Solo Queing is a mixed bag. At Havoc Level 25+ I personally find carrying teams to be a lot harder if not borderline impossible. If my entire team goes down to something stupid in an Auric, I might have to play my butt off for a few mins, but I can clutch it up. In a Havoc, my ability to clutch is entirely dependent on whether or not the Dark Havoc Lord of Change thinks spawning 15 Crushers, 10 Bulwarks, Every Bomber and Flamer on Atoma, two weakened Chaos Spawns, 2 Captains/Champions, and a Sludge Puppy is funny. And spoiler alert, he always thinks it’s funny. There’s no way for the game to be balanced around one player surviving that without inflating player power to the point that not Havoc difficulty is practically meaningless, and second spoiler alert for you.
Havoc has never read as the highest level of play to me. To be clear, this isn’t to say that skill isn’t needed to play Havoc. Havoc is the most challenging level of play, but not the highest. Emperor’s Fading Light, Busted Mod Combinations, and the awful Demotion system means that playing Havoc well is a combination of Luck and Skill, but most importantly, it’s a measure of much a team can exploit the strongest options available to them. As you said…
The Zealot’s Ability to exploit its strongest option has been dramatically reduced, hence you recent experience. Emperor’s Fading Light is such a problem for Havoc because Darktide Attrition is based less on players slowly losing health to Chip Damage and more so on the, losing massive chunks of health suddenly to burst. The game quite literally is not designed for you to have no Toughness Buffer with the amount of powerful one shot attacks and gunners it throws at you. I personally think Havoc needs to be redesigned from the ground up, preferably after changes to enemies and the classes. The demotion system reinforces the lack of build diversity, and the modifications range from negligible to game breaking in a way that pushes Havoc too far outside the games ability to balance for it in mind. The reason why I don’t want an Overhaul like this until enemies and classes are reworked is because I don’t think Havoc can realistically change for the better until enemies and classes are shifted. For what’s supposed to be a cooperative game, Classes generate more discord between each other than synergy and all Classes have an Over-reliance on DoT and Bonus Damage Stacking, probably due to it being necessary playing into Havoc. I’ve also expressed my feeling that (amongst other problems) Havoc and Mortis were ill-conceived; providing a service in the form of a separate game mode before the infrastructure of content and stable balance was there to support it. And even today, I wrote on problems I have w/ Arbites and Zealot, two classes that I find very interesting in their lack of team centric utility, support, and power. Right now, the only way the game can truly challenge players is with a comical clown car conga line of armored units. But as much as I complain, I want to be tentatively hopeful that FS can turn the game around. I mean, this is probably the first time in the game’s lifespan where all the classes felt so close to one another in power. The game is in the best position it’s every been in for the sake of major system rebalancing and overhauling. Here’s to hoping that FS makes it worth the wait.