I know, right? They’re so close to self-awareness…
Very funny duplication. But in honest I am always happy to see havoc as a too hard difficulty since it means more challenging and exciting game experience to me.
Just like I have already said, I just wish more weapons and bds viable in havoc instead of buffing the one which is already broken.
Of course, I’m not part of Fatshark, so I don’t have the data, but I don’t think players who play Havoc make up more than 10–15% of the total. At most, it’s probably around 5–10%.
Given this unusual state, most players probably can’t understand, but AuricHISTG is not easy, while Havoc isn’t as hard as people say. Of course, I’m not saying Havoc 40 is easy.
It’s just that we’ve been trapped for a long time in an abnormally overpowered meta, which has dulled our sense of difficulty. AuricHISTG without any meta is at a difficulty level that would feel extremely challenging for 99% of players. But the meta simply nullifies all of that.
I would gladly raise the difficulty if there were a mode where all builds and weapons are allowed. However, as far as I know, no such mode exists outside of AuricHISTG or Maelstrom.
More weapons should be viable and while some do need a buff most of havocs problem lies with havoc itself and could be solved by rebalancing havoc itself.
the key here is that you cannot win without them, not that everyone cannot.
you seem to miss an important point, if “difficulty” in a mode is achieved by having the talents of others mandatory for YOUR performance, something is wrong with the mode.
the game should challenge the living 
out of you but in a way that when others totally fk up its absolutely viable to solo clutch and therefore show superior “skill”
if 3 others have to rely on yellow toughness dispensing machine or a blue condom overhead in order to solve a situation there may be “team play” but neither one would have had the means or faculties to solve the situation based on his own abilities.
“coop” means we don’t fk each other over on purpose and fight against the same enemies, it doesn’t mean I reduce myself to meatshield or waterboy in order to get to the finish line.
prior to all the buffs and havoc game was in a good place on terms of “this dude wants to turtle up, let him, I do it myself then"
now it’s a boring grating down of artificial numbers one class alone can mathematically not provide.
sure I’ve done havoc 40s, did my true survivor and all.
and with non meta oggy not giving a flying for what “was wanted”
end result, I held my own and then some and no one could b1tch at having to compensate for a “less effective loadout”
why don’t I play it much?
neither do I deal with wishful fantasies of others what the mode “needs” as long as I more than make it work.
they are “there” nothing more nothing less, group clicks, fine, peeps mess up, time to shine.
nor do I seek validation true the means of others but myself.
auric maelstrom with dudes not able to tie their shoelaces? that’s the option to solo-with audience from start to finish and say “i” have done something
going turtle mode in havoc against stacked numbers “you” may have done a part but the mode forces them others to play it equally safe, so a very tiny % really shine.
oh boy, really time for solo mode to compare 
Yes. As a meta slave.
Really? Weird that I keep seeing H40 clears on Youtube with completely different loadouts.
Where do I say this?
And we’re saying that when you balance for Havoc you trivialize the rest of the game. And I enjoy regular mission map more than Havoc. Havoc was never intended as the game mode to be played by everyone. It was intended to be played by the 2% of the sweatiest.
Well, this is where we see eye to eye. Havoc is an abomination and FS really needs someone to tell them to stop creating more game modes instead of fleshing out the ones they already have.
Me too. Why can’t we have all the modifiers which already exist on regular mission maps?
Now we’re getting somewhere. We agree here. Note to Fatshark:
- Free the Modifiers
- Balance T1-T5 to be in a healthy state (This means nerfs for infinite cleave, gold toughness, uncanny strike)
- Rethink Havoc after that.
The road you are all pushing is balancing for Havoc and it will leave T1-T5 as you say:
Then stop asking for everything to be buffed to insane power levels. Enjoy the hard challenge instead.
However the issue is weak weapons like infantry lasgun,vigilant autogun and shock maul do need a buff. Even by nerfing meta like plasma, ds, power sword etc, weak weapons themselves still remains an unpopular choice since there are always weapons play a better role than them like boltgun and combat axe etc. Unless FS nerfs everything to the weakest level. But I dare FS to do so.
I agree with you fully on this. Nerf the overpowered outliers and buff the underperforming outliers.
I’m a h40 EU player and I deeply disagree with your point of view.
In my opinion all the following tools are not needed to clear h40 and are a cheese mechanics to make it extremely forgiving:
All golden toughness
It makes it so all 1 hits are irrelevant. This is only balanced if you’re facing a wall of 15 crushers + 15 maulers with rotten armour and purple heals and they all spam overheads over and over again. It makes it so you can take one overhead without going down but there are dozens of tools you can use to stagger and kite a mixed horde of this size to eventually wittle it down. Even if you get this number of enemies after a dropdown, you either have to throw all cc you have to hold the ground, or you have to start kiting the enemies forward.
Golden toughness is op, and there is no way to see it any other way. This is why it should have long cooldowns, what is the difference between sedition and h40 if you can just ignore all damage with 100% golden toughness uptime? It MUST have a long cooldown because it is supposed to be a game changing ability that buys your team space to recover and continue the standard gameplay which shouldn’t include it as a baseline.
Bubble and smoke
Both allow players to make poor positioning decisions for free. CDR is so insanely good on psyker so you can have 100% uptime. I have beaten multiple games without bubble and smokes in current h40 and all it boils down to is knowing how to engage ranged enemies with your cc abilities, knowingly when to go in and seize the ground and knowing the maps and good defense spots perfectly.
Overperforming damage options
There is a list of weapons that ppl feel are mandatory to beat h40. Duelling swords, purgatus, kraks. While high dps and high mobility makes the run easier, it is not needed.
It’s not only the ‘casuals’ who want the obviously op stuff to be nerfed. I’ve seen a lot of tryhards call for nerfs because of the reasons listed above. Personally I’m happy with golden toughness uptime nerfs, it makes the game less cheesy and more skill dependent.
Zealot still has great damage and is a viable option, but as stated, you have to actually play the game instead of being the golden toughness afk dispenser that either spams crits to get cooldowns or prays. I’ve seen relic blades zealots, eviscerators zealots and TH zealots outdps purgatus just because the elite density is gigantic now and zealot has great tools to deal high amount of melee dps and they can get in really deep with until death as a security margin. Imagine making a class tree rework that makes all 3 zealot ults equally viable on h40. By the Emperor, hats off to Fatshark, they have actually done it.
I feel the recent havoc, after the crushers hp buff has really sifted through h40 playerbase and clearly showed us who played it depending on never ending golden toughness, always staying in the bubble, always holding the ground from ppl who have the deeper understanding of the game and how it can be played without the great cheese.
Thank you.
Summary of this thread:
Chinese players: Self impose the most strict meta builds on party finder
Also Chinese players: Why can’t we pick other builds?
Asian servers must be wild…
The shallow meta you describe has the lowest skill floor and the highest success rate but it’s not mandatory. You can beat h40 with the craziest modifiers without the narrow meta just by playing better and having and equally good, and coordinated team.
It only raises the skill floor needed to do it.
I have one additional comment I want to make.
I believe that you can beat all h40 missions with random class, random perks, random weapons with random perks and blessings if you have 4 ppl in the team that have deep game understanding, tons of experience and excellent manual execution.
To me this feels like overcoming a well prepared and very difficult challenge. We might not get it on the first try, but if we try and strategize based on the failed attempts we can get it done, and the moment we win will be better than having a 100% win rate with golden toughness and bubbles.
Check out NRGaa live streams. He literally plays and wins with infantry lasgun
Of course, there are a few other viable options besides these, but still very few.
At least one person always has to be bound to the meta, and it’s almost impossible for all four players to play using only non-meta setups rated around D to B tier.
Gathering players capable of running Havoc 35 or higher with such non-meta builds is impossible through random matchmaking — you need to form a prearranged team of experienced players beforehand.
That kind of game design can’t really be considered good.
Unsure if this qualifies as irony, but this is legitimately happening. Ogryn was redesigned and every other class tree is following the same design philosophy.
And it has been interesting seeing how that’s flipped Zealot and Veteran around. Lots of “Zealot bad, Zealot fall from grace, Veteran tops damage” discussions going around (not singling OP out), but not much discussion about why that is from what I’ve seen.
and now imagine doing that without “strategizing” or even talking with each other cause you so it with total randoms, on a whim and the whole team usually disbands after the first fail.
so it’s either a hole in one or a total bust.
now granted one could do a premade or “shudder” activate voice chat 
but that’s why I usually do a mandatory 40 as “proof of worth” and call it a day, getting back to doing “my thing” on auric maelstrom.
if I remember correctly there was a survey with most of the mmo crowd playing single for the majority of the content and only join a raid out of necessity.
same feeling applies here, yes there’s other folk present, no I dont want to socialize more than absolutely needed to win a match.
if a mode forces me into such interaction I rather opt out that mode.
All Havoc streamers don’t win every game, they have lose streaks too, even when playing in a premade.
I’ve played with NRGaa, Davee, Jay-Brodi, Fuuplayz. I’ve played with them all at least 5 games, and they win 1/3 games sometimes. Sometimes they don’t even win running the top meta builds where every weapon slot and all the abilities are Havoc BIS.
If they won in those matches, it wasn’t because they used infantry lasgun, it’s because they played well as a team, because in Havoc the personal skill of a singular player doesn’t matter as much as it does in normal gamemode.
Unless every single person on the team played off-meta builds with no Havoc-focused abilities, this kind of statement only misguides people.