Did Havoc cause this dynamic though? Serious question and i don’t think it did. The powercreep stems from before Havoc, I think
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The game doesn’t need more difficulty levels, it doesn’t need more splitting of the playerbase. There’s a lot of changes to other things (enemy AI/spawn behavior for example) that could be made that would likely result in better outcomes. Not spawning enemies in big clumped groups for cleave and blast weapons to swiftly cut through would help, have them come from more directions for example.
Regarding difficulty overall, there’s something to be said for patches and player power growing, but I’m not sure blaming a specific patch or talent design decision is purely at fault for what many perceive as a drop in difficulty. It plays some part, but at the same time, if you started this game at launch, you’ll have tripled your level of experience over what you had when say, Patch13 came out, player veterancy is showing. We have players with many thousands of hours of experience and the game is never going to be as hard as it once was for them. To use another example, WoW Classic doesn’t actually capture the original WoW experience of the mid 00’s, even PvP stuff like Alterac Valley BG games are measured in minutes, no longer literal days. This is because everyone knows exactly where to go and what to do and how to do it and has far more information access available for stuff like quests and items and mods than was available 20 years ago, and thus despite the mechanical base of the game being the same it doesn’t capture the same feel.
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Yes. Havoc is a product, not a cause. At least in origin.
We could balance around Havoc, if the balance is, “No one can reliably win at 40, and few can win 40 at all.” Since Havoc is already supposed to change from season to season, and already has dozens of frikin’ levels, it should be the last difficulty needed: An endlessly morphing wall the most experienced players can happily beat their heads against.
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In this case it’s actually because the mechanics changed and Classic WoW launched on the last patch before the TBC patches, which in the actual game back in the day was like 5% of Vanilla WoWs lifespan.
The game in Classic WoW is mechanically absolutely not the same as the versions 1 through 1.12 back in the day, it’s just 1.12 on every single content patch. It’d be like playing old damnation with todays arbitrator and going “See, it was never hard!”
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Havoc didn’t cause the dynamic. It was a result of it.
Auric was meant to be the hardest content only the most dedicated would play. You know why? because Damnation no longer served that purpose. That didn’t work anymore either because of the power creep so Havoc was introduced.
At first only the most strict meta could clear Havoc. Of course the best players went off meta for challenge and fun.
But now people want everything buffed so it can clear H40 as easily as gold toughness spam, infinite cleave and rending from uncanny.
Without nerfing the outliers this vicious circle will never end.
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DT dont need anoter bloat in shape of difficulty, but actuall balance; it gona take some time in current balance state.
Even if balance was all over the place after patch 13 it was still possible to improve it, but adding Havoc only doubledown on allready shaky balance.
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and it was a great measure cause one skilled player could still carry start to finish, whereas havoc is fixed on having the damage output of all players combined and various “mandatory” talents.
so in a sense it isn’t “harder" cause if you still play at your best most encounters are stacked against you no matter what when the team fkks up.
that’s not to say clutches are impossible, they’re just very situational and class/loadout related.
so the 
conundrum : if havoc wasn’t a thing, weapons&talents could be scaled way back and still a challenge to be had.
and one without “needing” other people at that, so no reason to b!tch and moan about “meta”
the whole premise of having others even “thinking” of how I play my char is disgusting for me, hell freezes over before I change something at the whim of some turned up random wannabe
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I still think that Fatshark should create new enemies, to make Darktide more “tactical”.
For example:
- Giant nurgle flies, would make players look up their heads to be safe.
- Some human sized enemy, that “sucks” HP from players.
- A modifier that chooses randomly a player, and he becomes like a VIP in Counter-Strike. The other players must protect him.
I am sure other players have better ideas.
But I am tired that usually the “new” difficulty / event / modifier, is moar enemies.
IMO, respectfully.
What I don’t like from Havoc, is that is so crazy, that you can’t use the character you actually want to use.
You must use the super-combo character.
IMO.
we already got piper perry on the shuttle with 3 ogryn and one tiny female psyker….
I guess that “qualifies” 
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BRUUUUH!!!
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I’m all for releasing Havoc modifiers into something like Auric Maelstrom so you can quickplay into missions with different challenges. However, if this makes the endgame harder players will call for more buffs when powercreep is already breaking the core of the game (literally, because the game engine is going to break at some point with the level of spawns we have right now).
Fatshark needs to pick a level of power they want for players and stick to it for good. For some inexplicable reason they have been moving the needle of player power up again and again. With how slow Fatshark works, it’s no wonder nothing can ever be balanced when the baseline of “balance” keeps getting moved. Unfortunately, sweeping nerfs are likely not going to be the path forward to reversing the powercreep.
Based on Fatshark’s recent balancing choices, IMO the best thing we can hope for is a stop to the powercreep and freezing players at the level they are now. Fatshark needs to pick a baseline and stick to it, even if it is players being absurdly overpowered for the time being. Once a strict cap on class power level is established, Fatshark can slowly balance enemies and weapons around a static point.
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