The increases to difficulty across the board have been awesome and I’m loving them so far but the Dreg Rager attack speed buff is too much.
In a previous update (don’t remember which one exactly) there was an AMAZING change to Ragers that allowed players to left/right dodge their attacks. Before this change, Ragers were a boring/annoying enemy to fight because they forced you to block and wait for teammates, or to dodge back out of the fight and miss your opportunity to damage them. But this change allowed players to “stay in” the fight with Ragers if you were brave enough to rely on dodging and get your damage in.
But the new Dreg Rager attack speed buff completely destroys the player’s ability to stay in close and fight it out with them because if you dodge the first hit and try to also get a hit in of your own, then you’re almost guaranteed to eat the follow up hit in the Rager’s 3-hit combo.
I am aware that the situation is not as black and white as I just made it sound and that there are still some melee weapons that allow the player to engage Ragers like this (albeit with much more inconsistency than before) such as the deimos force sword, but I still think this change is a step in the wrong direction because it encourages players to revert back to the previous methods of fighting Ragers which is just straight up boring compared to their scab counterparts.
I’m not against Dreg Ragers attacking faster than Scab Ragers, in fact I think it’s a good way to make them different, I just think it was overdone a little bit and the speed needs to be toned down.
It’s faster but I don’t think it’s that bad. I play only T5 Mael everyday and it doesn’t affect me that much because first of all, I don’t run into a group of 5 ragers and start meleeing them.
Hard or easy dealing with ragers depends on your weapons. In this example, I tried 3 weapons with different atk speed (shovel, axe, knife).
You can dodge side way (as you can see when I use the shovel). Realistically, I can use special attack to kill it in 1-2 hits. But I intentionally use light attack so you can see that when you block its attacks, it doesn’t take a lot of stamina. And you can easily dodge to the side at the right time to counter attack.
Push attack is very effective, it lets you block and fast counterattack, as you can see when I use axe and knife.
Dodge back gives you just enough time to charge a heavy attack if you use a fast weapon.
There’s a couple of issues with this though. As it stands now, Dreg Ragers are spawning in groups of 10-15+ at times on Auric, so fighting one at a time with simpler block and dodge timers just isn’t feasible. That’s not to mention how you don’t get the chance to approach them first, they’ll sprint towards you and start swinging the second they know you exist.
On top of that, the testing in this clip is on a Vet, a class which has incredibly easy to maintain massively stacking toughness damage reduction, very high toughness regen, and the option for a massive pool of total toughness, which altogether makes them incredibly tanky; those buffs can be kept up very easily in-mission meaning you can afford to take a tickle or two off a couple of Ragers, whereas other classes just aren’t afforded that same luxury.
Meleeing a group of ragers that hasn’t spread out in Auric has never been a good idea, even before the attack speed buff. What happened in the video won’t happen in a real match if we don’t kite and play to our strengths. However, it’s a basic skill that can be built upon. How good a player is depends greatly on how well a player can turn a bad situation into a winning condition. Unfortunately, most people don’t think much, don’t kite, and just all in. We should push at the right time and retreat when necessary.
I know that it’s in a meat grinder so it doesn’t perfectly apply to a real match. But all classes have their own win conditions. On top of that, I only got hit once from the example so I don’t know why you mentioned toughness regen.
I’m not quite sure about this because I rarely get hit. Nowadays, I challenge myself not to use med station at all in T5 Mael. If I take more than 200dmg in a game, it’s a bad game.
Nevertheless, I posted that vid here because I think it might be useful to someone who can see its benefits.
Meleeing a group of ragers that hasn’t spread out in Auric has never been a good idea, even before the attack speed buff.
The problem is though, we could finally deal with them properly in a satisfying way in melee before this patch, then the dev’s decided to take it away again but only for the angry naked gentlemen variety of Ragers; the best way to deal with them once again is to just get out of range and shoot them. We’ve just had options taken away from us for zero reason. On top of this, with the sheer number of them spawning in groups again now, there’s no point in ever taking out your melee option, even after splitting the group of them with a ranged option/blitz/ability/whatever; the speed they move and attack with as well as the range they start attacking from, there’s no reason to, in the time it takes to deal with 1 or 2, another 5 are already back swinging behind you. Once again, FatShark Giveth, and FatShark Taketh away.
I don’t know why you mentioned toughness regen.
One example is the toughness regen from Confirmed Kill basically being constantly active throughout the entire mission on higher difficulties, especially with this example of thinning out a Rager patrol. When combined with passives like Exhilarating Takedown and Iron Will, there’s going to be far less damage bleedthrough than you need to worry about, further reinforcing that the tankiness Vets in particular have is just absurd.
I’m not quite sure about this because I rarely get hit
I mean cool scoreboard but I’m puzzled as to why you posted it. The context of what we’re talking about is being able to deal with Dreg Ragers in Melee, but there’s no stat for how many Dreg Ragers you killed in Melee? Regardless, if everybody would try to minimise their damage taken in every general scenario, the state of pugs would be in a much better place.
Overall it’s just a case of the clip showing how to deal with Dreg Ragers in melee in an almost ideal scenario, which will almost never happen in actual content, and is kind of misleading based on those factors.
This might be true in the current stage but I think players will get used to it and find a way to combat it effectively.
I think I have seen quite a good amount of posts about how easy the game is, and I think this is one of the ways the devs response. Some people like it, some people don’t (I’m neutral), it’s difficult to satisfy everyone.
It is great to split them and deal with 1 or 2 by yourself. For the other 5 it depends on how bad the situation is and where we and our teammate position. It’s a team game after all. Not saying that we can come out on top all the time but I view it as a challenge. It depends on a lot of variables that it’s impossible to cover all of the possibilities. But I still think it’s manageable if we are more careful than we used to. Even if we failed, it’s still a fun challenge.
That’s fair enough. But quick note, I don’t use Iron Will.
That’s true. Though I have a lot more, for example, a game where everybody (except me) was less than lvl 100. And they died around 30 times altogether I think. So I pretty much had to kill everything but yeah that was before the last update. I think I’ve played less than 10 games after the update.
That’s very true but can you throw in if:
players stop blasting poxburster on others
players stop blasting barrels on others?
That would be perfect.
I think it depends on how you perceive it. I believe it can be beneficial especially for people who don’t know the rhythm. Can I apply it? All the time. It doesn’t mean I have to finish the whole combo. It doesn’t mean others won’t help me kill them.
I am a scary rager enjoyer! I think there’s a bit more counterplay in melee via stagger than just blocking and dodging. Makes my heavy weapon choice feel more impactful (ha!).
This might be true in the current stage but I think players will get used to it and find a way to combat it effectively.
That we will, whatever they decide to do with it, it was much nicer while it lasted. That and we can still dodge dance and poke Scab Ragers in the eyes for the moment at least.
Some people like it, some people don’t (I’m neutral), it’s difficult to satisfy everyone.
I think a lot more people would be happier with the changes if they’d fix the desync issues that have plagued us since the closed beta. Nothing worse than dealing with one in melee only for it to be a ghost hit and ignore your next dodge.
where we and our teammate position
It doesn’t mean others won’t help me kill them.
The tide games have unfortunately beaten me into the mindset of “wow I cannot trust anybody in a pug, it’s much better if I have the option and skill to deal with everything myself”, I wish the general player base would give me more reason to trust them to help out haha
That’s very true but can you throw in if:
players stop blasting poxburster on others
players stop blasting barrels on others?
That would be perfect.
The problem is though, we could finally deal with them properly in a satisfying way in melee before this patch, then the dev’s decided to take it away again but only for the angry naked gentlemen variety of Ragers; the best way to deal with them once again is to just get out of range and shoot them. We’ve just had options taken away from us for zero reason.
This is my thinking exactly. It’s not that I’m claiming Dreg Ragers are impossible to deal with now, it’s just that I personally REALLY liked the previous method of taking on groups of them in a straight up melee fight because it was immensely satisfying and now that is no longer viable so I’m sad.
