This title is purposefully a little inflammatory. To be fair, there is synergy between classes in the game; I’m not trying to suggest that there isn’t any at all. But this topic was borne from a conversation between my peers and I about how some of our builds invalidate others. One friend hates playing Elite Dog Arbites when I’m playing melee Psyker, because I will just kill everything before they can unless I make a conscious effort not to. I hate playing Charge Zealot into a team w/ an Explosive or Plasma Vet, because I just find that I never have hordes to charge into, or the Elites get obliterated before I can get any meaningful power from engaging w/ them. It’s interactions like this that make me feel like the game has a lot of Anti-Synergy.
Every class has nodes that capitalize on player killing elites, and because of the current enemy sandbox, those elite killing nodes are some of the most valuable nodes in every class tree. It would be easy to suggest that if there’s too much anti-synergy on a team, you should just trade out for a build that doesn’t get bonuses for or from killing Elites, but when games routinely throw a Conga Line of Crushers, Bulwarks, Maulers, and Ragers at you, that’s effectively asking players to bring a build that can’t handle the biggest, most common threats that they’ll be facing. A lot of the Class Trees don’t feel like they’re designed to push players into a specific role, and the enemy composition only exacerbates by turning every build into some flavor of Elite Killer. If everyone is playing an Elite Hunter, no on truly is, and instead of working w/ your allies, the game devolves into competing for kills. I think there is a practical solution to this.
If you, the reader, would humor a Strawman Argument from me, I think that there’s probably a lot of people who feel like there’s not a way around this problem because every class needs to be capable of dealing w/ elites. But the suggestion borne from the original discussion w/ my peers is to not have nodes give you bonuses from/for killing Elites, Specials, or Monstrosities, but instead give you Bonuses based on Armor Type. Right now, the only real armor types that matter in the game are Unyielding and Carapace. But if certain branches of each class tree got bonuses for/from killing enemies of a certain armor type, not only would it create greater synergy between teams (as everyone wouldn’t be fighting over Elites and Specials) but it would also create more defined roles.
As example, Zealot could have a Horde Clear Build (Infested and Unarmored Bonues), an Anti Heavy Build (Carapace and Void Shield), and an Anti Elite Build (Flak and Maniac). There are Elite and Special enemies w/ those armor type so it’s not as if the class will lose power. They will just want to exercise that power against specific targets over others when they have the opportunity. And it’s not like enemies themselves couldn’t have their armor types and health values adjusted to better balance a change like this. This would actually make armor types matter, including armor types like Infested and Unarmored, when picking perks for your weapons. And maybe then, we could finally move away from this Armored Enemy Spam that has been dominating the Balance and Meta of the game for over a year now.