After playing a little bit more and thinking a lot more, (I’m at the point where I would rather read forums than play the game) I’ve come to the conclusion that this game no longer promotes Aggressiveness.
edit: I should point out I mostly QP legend, so my game experience involves an unknown amount of latency as I am not hosting. Combat 2.0 seems to have exacerbated latency issues.
It used to be that you were encouraged to charge in to melee because that’s where temp HP came from. You wanted to dodge around enemies and swing your weapon because that was a fast and; IF SKILLED ENOUGH, safe way to kill enemies. Now the damage tradeoff is in favor of a loss of life when fighting hordes, the only real source of Temp HP is from Ambient Elites unless you have 1 of 2 weapons that can cheese stagger HP. Damage mitigation talents for Slayer and Zealot are gone, HP on cleave is gone, hell Temp Health for Waystalker Ult is gone, no more Bonus HP from Kruber’s Ult. HP is too precious to use fighting a bugged horde with no more reliable dodge.
The game now Heavily promotes a slower more defensive CC oriented playstyle. I find this considerably less fun. I’ve tried 4 classes and a dozen weapons, the only one that felt really effective was Sword n Board Kruber, but I just don’t enjoy the attack patterns of the shield.
I won’t belabor the dev’s with cries to revert things or give me the game back. But I would like them to understand the reason I loved this game. It used to be that the game rewarded you for going full LEEROY JENK-IIINS!!1!1 and who doesn’t love Leeroy? Fix the bugs then and give me back that feeling please.
I personally think tweaking Several numbers immediately would be better than waiting until the bugs are fixed. Put Dodge value back to near they were before, it was a mickey mouse fix to a netcode issue but it inadvertently led to amazing combat. Set THP on Cleave to what it was before. And give us the tools to endure the current bugged state of combat. I mostly ask this since I don’t expect to have these bugs fixed any time soon.
p.s. I don’t really play Sienna or Slayer, but that is a change you need to revert. The Fix is more broken than the “problem” was.
Well I don’t know what are you talking about because playing on ranger veteran im most of times in middle of melee combat, and you know ppl say he is underpowered or to squishy.
And well i didn’t changed a lot of my style of play its just that stagger damage is some small bonus but overall you need to be more focused on fight than before nothing more.
I’m happy that 2.0 works for you, but I can only speak to my experience and observations, which are otherwise. If I may ask, what setup are you using for him? Are you normally the host? What is your approach to melee combat in 2.0? Do you roll with a premade/friend or QP, and on what difficulty?
I do agree that the game generally requires more defensive play and awareness. At the very least, aggression needs to be far more calculated and coordinated. That said, I’m not certain if this will end up as a negative or positive change. It’s hard to make an effective call about the current state of the game with all the bugs and new balance.
RV mostly randoms, dunno tried some different talents some works better some worse
cd reduction for reload with throwing axes are lolzy as hell you can force your cd to nearly 20-30 s just throwing axes into ground or when walking
30% dmg resist for headshot (its any headshot) is outshining rest (mostly because i don’t use cleave ranged, handgun or axes )
scavenger talent is outshining rest (even more that when you use axes because you don’t use pouches)
ult talents all usefull all works great, but with my playstyle I prefer 15 s mostly because you can deal a lot of things in those 5 more seconds, kill 3/4 of patrol without even aggroing them, or safely throw axes into monster back if ppl kite him correctly and he stands in place you will deal amazing amount of damage, and of course hide in middle of horde pushing them around and hammering them
dual hammers still op as hell with stagger thp
approach to melee 2.0? Ehh dont focus on stagger damage its not worth to place yourself in dangerous situation for 20-60% more damage, its works nice for high stagger weapons(hammers, maybe shields but I don’t fell like playing shields right now) but its not like you need to focus on it. Big plus of stagger weapons are ridiculous amount of stamina, pushing hordes to make place for your teammates helps a lot you don’t need to be highest damage dealer (RV is not very good at it he is still squishy character)