i used to disagree when people said that low armour penetrating weapons like devil’s claw and heavy sword were unviable at h40 because i and other players i know have had a lot of success with them. but then fatshark added rotten armour to the game and i’ve been put in some situations where i cannot possibly imagine surviving without at least 3 people on my team metaslaving
this is a h40 on power matrix with rotten armour, the first area was pretty empty so we moved on quickly, then we got ambushed with the biggest armour pack i’ve ever seen. all of my teammates went down because they had 0 room to move and couldnt see a thing thanks to the massive wall of huge enemies, i kited for a few minutes after but died even on ogryn with a team of pretty skilled players using meta bs. this literally would have been impossible if we had been using weapons that we personally found fun.
WTF is going on at fatshark??? how have they gone 2 years without a single meaningful nerf to any weapon??? why are they choosing to spawn so many enemies the game turns into an RTS instead of balancing the game??? could anyone at fatshark even beat h40 with rotten armour on a narrow map like power matrix when they get spawns like this?
it’s honestly pathetic that they squandered what couldve been a fantastic game by sticking to this insane design philosophy where enemy and player roles dont matter, where high hp tanky enemies spawn by the dozen and more specials can be active at once than some vt2 modded difficulties.
another h40, this time we survived but unless we got lucky and didnt get hit with a surge of specials while kiting it would’ve probably killed all of us if we werent using meta weapons. even if we could’ve kited them it would’ve probably taken 5+ minutes to kill all of these enemies
and even if this was somehow balanceable and armour penetration was more equal across weapons, fighting this many constantly overheading enemies that clip inside each other isn’t fun or engaging, and honestly feels like a completely different genre to vermintide 1 or 2, or even to early darktide. fatshark have removed the careful gameplay and visual clarity from this game and replaced it with stupid levels of enemy spam, and added 40 extra difficulties
if fatshark dont fix the powercreep and idiotic design decisions in this game i honestly hope it fails, unfortunately that probably wont happen since most players dont seem to care that the game is like an RTS mixed with overwatch rather than a tide game.
The worst part to me about this is that if you’re not stunlocking everything at this point then maps that have no immediate kite path are just instant losses or force players to speedrun through sections of the game to at the very least fight in better areas. Which means that at some point they’re gonna have to redesign every single map to accommodate having dozens of every single elite and special active at the same time in every single room.
Or they could, you know, just get rid of infinite cleave and cleave talents and nerf dot dps so that non-flak/carapace enemies can live and be an actual swarming threat, and add some dreg melee variants so the faction isn’t just oops all ragers in melee seeds. Nerf some overperforming melee weapons and maybe you have a fun game instead of armored clown parades with stims that make them immortal or purple clouds that make them feel immortal.
It’s even worse when it’s rotten armor + stims, because the second crushers and maulers start blue stim themselves, it is becomes a 5-10 minute kiting game, assuiming there’s place to kite. Such crushers don’t die under fully stacked uncanny on DS 4 in a dozen hits, while being on soulblaze or(and) bleeds, they also don’t get staggered.
I still remember 1st or one of the 1st havoc 40 with this combo, it was dark communion, on the bridge, game spawned lot’s of them, many stimmed themselves with blue, i was grenade veteran, others aside from psyker died, so me and psyker kited them all the way back to elevator, then we split up and run back to respawn point and only after we saved other teammates we were able to finish this horde completely. Blue ones survived: stabs to the face, bleed and explosions from frags and non sneeze soul blaze.
So far best counter to this that i’ve seen, was psyker with flame staff and sneeze overstacking soulblaze with it and perlios combustion(checked his build). So basically, yes, these mods force metaslaving, you need uncanny, you need biggest damage weapons against armor and best danage builds from classes.
I guess only exception to this is ogryn with updated power maul, it’s got synergy with righ sub talent for taunt, which cuts cooldown on stagger, so with maul ogryn can cut 12 seconds on big horde with one special attack and bring a lot of stagger with it and taunt even against such enemies.
I also played with rotten and purple, that’s weaker than stims, though still problematic.
Definitely the least fun ive ever had with havoc, just mass waves of bullet sponges. And trying to melee with rotten armor gas clouds blocking all vision while trying to dodge 10 different overheads you cannot even see. Playing with really good players ive known for a long time often just getting completely overrun, it doesn’t even feel like a skill problem it feels like artificial difficulty like the game asks you to throw 10 on a six sided die. Not excited with the direction it is heading and probably wont invest more time into it if things don’t change
I personally prefer a high-paced combat style, so I enjoy the current state like AuricHISTG.
In Havoc, enemies spawn at an even faster rate, and with modifiers and rank-based difficulty scaling, they become even tougher.
As a result, breakpoints have shifted, and even with headshots, many weapons can no longer one-shot enemies.
The increase in bullet sponge enemies, combined with reduced ammo pickups, has drastically worsened ammo efficiency.
This has changed Darktide’s fundamental combat style, which was a hybrid of melee and ranged combat, into a game mode more like VT2, where melee is dominant.
All players are forced to kill Carapace and hordes as quickly as possible, leading to almost complete weapon meta-locking.
The skill tree was originally implemented to encourage diverse playstyles, but the game balance in Havoc renders that meaningless.
It’s almost been a year since Havoc was released. What has really changed during that year? The balance has only worsened, and modifiers like PoxGas and Encroaching Garden, neither of which are fun for players - have been added.
Alongside this, the combat tempo has steadily deteriorated, and combat times have only lengthened, sometimes exceeding an hour in extreme cases.
Many players are exhausted by this situation, and matchmaking has not been implemented; instead, we’re still stuck using outdated party finders.
Fatshark, it’s time to end this ridiculous cycle. Please stop wasting time on unnecessary things and fundamentally reexamine Darktide from the ground up.
P.S.
It seems that the further large-scale deployment of enemies may also be causing disconnections and crashes.
I’ve played every iteration of havoc since it came out and this is by far the most boring monotone havoc meta we’ve ever had, it’s just walls and walls of 9750 hp crushers that heal everything so I’m just poking everything with my dueling sword while my arbites is just stunning them with a mine.
In an effort to “nerf” the ds4 all they’ve done is further reinforce it as being the only and most picked weapn, in what world would I choose anything else when the game does nothing but spam 20% dr 9750 hp mobs, remove this sh*t modifier it’s so boring I want to fight the dreg faction but can’t because every single time I seem to just roll rotten armour
Yeah, that clip is pretty brutal. Rotten + Purple is actual c@ncer & this is the hardest set of Havoc modifiers yet. We beat a Rotten & Purple on Silo, but it took like 7-8 tries, lmao. This was with hardcore Meta-slaving as well. I feel bad for people who have to get their 40’s this time around. Plus, it makes everything into damage sponges. It’s such a cheap way to make the game harder & to make it even longer. It’s total @ss & pretty unfun… Ultimately, you just need great RNG to win, which is sad.
It feels like ever since the old balance director left everything has been some flavor of stacking DR, health, and stagger resistance for difficulty increase.
I agree that it’s ridiculous and not that fun, but I just have to say…
Three Psykers on Rotten Armor map is a pretty poor team comp, especially if you forfeit taunt with 20% damage increase.
This modifier almost requires bringing Vet with Krak Grenades if you want to have a good time, since only kraks can realiably clear Rotten/Garden elite packs without backtracking and fighting them for 5-10 minutes each.
Melee arbites with dash forward is also really really good against these packs.
Also Trauma Staff is 200x better at controlling Rotten hordes than Inferno Staff, I’m not sure if you had it in this game since you turned off additional effects, but Trauma staff can stop a wall of Rotten Crushers and give your melee characters time to just click them to death.
yeah i really hope this game doesnt become badly received or a financial failure. if we put our heads together we can still solve this and bernie can still win
I literally refuse to play Rotten Armour + Healing because it’s such a boring, stupid, grindfest of a run. Nothing about it is fun.
I don’t care anymore about ranking up if I have to go through that modifier combo. This may be the first season I don’t get to 40 due to the DCs, Mission Aborteds, and this poop modifier. I’m 90% sure I’d already be at 40 with my premade, but we had so many server issues kill runs and kill nights for us that I’ve been having to hit up pubs and I’m sure you know how that has gone. Unfortunately, my premade isn’t able to get together that often.
Malestrom Duos have been pretty fun though. Turns out there are a lot of weapons in the game. Who knew!?
