I really agree with everything said about havoc and auric missions. I like the challenge that havoc brings and it’s fun to make it through such an unfair level to an extent. But a lot of the time it isn’t satisfying to play because of how repetitive everything is, even down to the modifiers. I really expected a bunch of different modifiers to be honest, not a bunch of the same ones over and over up to havoc 40.
Not having gold toughness at all just means either you’re going to wipe in the first 5 seconds, or the run is going to take over an hour. Same for bringing off-meta weapons, it’s just not going to go well.
I am by the standards of this forum fairly low/average. I struggle on Havoc, I don’t frequently play Auric.
Out of my friend group? I am without question the tryhardiest sweatlord to ever exist when it comes to this game.
I have a strong feeling, one backed up at least a little by steam achievements and such, that people like the general population of the forums are very much the exception when it comes to how hard the game ‘feels’.
Most people are Malice/Heresy casual types. They’re not going to feel the pinch of balance changes, or be venturing too far into Auric or Havoc.
You can actually see this even with weapon balance. Things that are unacceptably clunky or too inefficient to ever consider bringing to Damnation+ games do just fine and have niches with no real problems.
The clearest delimiter I see is people who think the game is too easy have a “crew” A.K.A. pre-made group of friends that have developed a coordinated and skillful dynamic. It really blows my mind people don’t understand the insane level of advantage that gives and how it can completely throw general balance off kilter.
I generally think that the idea of “We should balance existing difficulties instead of adding a new one” is good, but I also think it’s unrealistic at this point. It’s been over a year since the class rework and none of the significant powercreep has been addressed, outside of Ogryn bleed debuff interactions (interestingly this one got nuked quick, but nothing else did) and at this point I’m not sure if we can ever expect it to happen
I think Havoc is made for those people and I don’t think that’s a bad thing, it’s not like Havoc was super high effort and it is fun for those players.
What I really just want is a more difficult quickplay experience. Havoc isn’t that, and Aurics are a joke, trivialized by a single person with a meta loadout even with just mediocre skills.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; they should’ve opted for flat numbers across difficulties when it comes to health and damage a la Helldivers 2. The path they’ve chosen now means they have 5 stat realities to balance which is obviously much more complicated than is possible to realistically manage. I would’ve been happier with a game that was more lethal across the board, in both directions. Things like poxwalkers tanking bolt rounds would cease to be a thing and enemy shooters could once again feel threatening. There’s also the fact that this creates predictability and consistency in how you understand and learn how to deal with the various enemies as a new player. It also rewards the player for good tactical acumen and skillful play in a way that is less reliant on what is essentially magical skills and abilities. I feel pretty strongly that that baseline approach of flat stats across difficulties needs to become the industry standard in this genre. Helldivers 2 shows clearly that it can be done without trivializing the challenge of the game itself.
Not that I expect any of this to happen when it comes to Darktide or anything, but I think that would’ve been a wiser path to go down rather than this byzantine system they’ve opted for.
I wonder how standard your experience is. My experience is totally different. My win rate in aurics is probably about 80% or so and often if I’m alone I can still progress, but this frequently ends in failure, though my project of late has been getting mastery for all weapon families so I’m frequently playing with random weapon combos of things I don’t have leveled. Probably if I only used a handful of op meta builds I’d do better.
That being said, I play with several friends and the experience is totally different. We have to play on regular damnation or even heresy. If they have to fight more than one thing at the same time they just die. They get hit by at least 50% of pox bursters and dogs. I think there are a lot of people having this experience.
Side note: Often in souls games I will do challenge runs like daggers only no ash of war Elden ring, something to that effect. Elden ring only has one difficulty and if I just played sorcery the game is basically brain-dead easy, but a lot of bosses are really hard with just a dagger. So if you are looking for a challenge in aurics just don’t use the op meta builds. Try to use the worst weapons to their best effect. Do rp theme builds for fun. Try no blessing brunts armory weapon runs. They game will be a lot harder with no need for extra difficulties.
At a certain point it’s really not down to builds at all. Aurics aren’t restrictive, you can run whatever you want.
Also, I can decide to bring a non meta loadout, and I almost exclusively do, but I can’t decide what my teammates do. On Havoc, while it’s more restrictive in terms of loadouts, a teammate can’t trivialize the mission on my behalf. I’d like for the latter concept to be in the regular game.
There are almost always balance tweaks in every real patch so I don’t think that’s true. Probably no total rebalance all at once, but more tweaks to deal with some of the more severe sore spots I think are definitely coming at some point.
Some weapons have high viability for single target and horde at the same time. Usually should be case one better at horde vs better at single target. But if a weapon is high yield at both with very little sacrifice in either when compared to other weapons, then it funnels the choice.
Good at single target, bad at horde
Medium at single target, Medium at horde
Bad at single target, Good at horde
At the moment. There are weapons that are good at both with little weakness in either.
The problem is that the exact same weapon wielded across classes perform differently because it is supported by the class skill nodes that excel it. i.e. You can weaken the weapon, but change effectiveness more for the same weapon for another class that uses it. The skill nodes have to be considered when re-balancing weapons.
Balancing doesn’t have to come from weapons itself either.
For example:
There was a plasma gun bug which I thought was intentional design change where bulwarks block plasma shots 100%. Thought it was very good design. Forcing a vet to change positioning. FS reverted this “bug”.
Carapace is now body for Scab Ragers. Making autoguns less effective. So it is headshots with guns/melee for effectiveness.
Without having to nerf the weapon against all enemies you encourage players to change tactics.
Most of the time they are, sometimes they aren’t. Depending on the map/conditions/AI Director variables, they’re as dense or even denser than Havoc. The game just has too much variability when it comes to horde density and composition with supposedly identical modifiers.
Overall, I agree. Most Auric Maelstroms are baby’s first Darktide run compared to a standard Havoc 40, and Havoc 40 is not particularly hard.
Your non-optimal builds will fall short in Auric when you’re put with 2-3 absolute dead weights who will die on the first horde or the never ending ragequitter train. I very highly doubt that you will get the same consistent successful runs with non-meta loadouts, such as lasgun ES vet VS even semi-meta VoC + Bolter, for example.
This whole thread feels like a fake flexing to be honest. Auric with a premade is easy. Auric with randoms is almost always a chore if you don’t bring a loadout that will give you the output of several players.
Depends on the modifiers, how non-meta the build is, and most importantly, how much you’re relying on the non-meta aspect of the build. If you bring an infantry las and actually primarily use it, yeah, the run is gonna be tough. It you bring an infantry las and just melee everything, it’s not really any harder than any other primarily melee-focused run, and it barely makes a difference.
The ease of use of the weapon also matters. Shredder Autopistol is low tier, but relatively easy to use to its full potential. Relying on precision weapons sans revolver is way harder even if they’re theoretically better.
You could have the excellent weapon balance mod on modded realm, and only after a year or so FS decided to finally admit they suck at balancing and copied the mod values over.
