Heya gents and ladies. I’ve only been able to play up to level 20 so far, but that’s a decent taste of what’s to come I feel. I’ll update this as I progress. Pretty much just thoughts and musings on what is the most solid way to progress as a team through havoc.
Increased damage/ways to take damage and decreasing health/toughness means many things.
#1 crowd control’s value increases proportionally as a stray attack can easily down players. #2 corruption modifiers are heavily mitigated through beacon of purity and corruption resistance trinkets. #3 corruption resistance will have greater value than damage resistance to things like snipers as you progress because eventually (theoretically) you’ll get 1 shot by a sniper even with 60% reduction due to the health/toughness shrinking. #4 psyker round shield, zealot chorus, and vet about are king. Temporary toughness bonuses do not scale downward with difficulty levels. Psyker is especially helpful as enemies like snipers won’t even try to shoot through it. #5 trauma staff, despite all of its failings is a CC machine and does not experience the same issues with cleave that melee weapons can on a very thick/buffed horde. That can buy the team a lot of room. #6 running krak grenades as a veteran can give your team a lot of room against bosses, especially with veteran shout/chorus. Having krak grenades for enemies like buffed crushers will save your team a lot of time. #7 veteran ammo aura feels mandatory if not just plain suicidal to run without it. Because of this ammo efficient guns that can deal with carapace are the meta. Plasma, helbores, revolver all seem solid.
All of that said, here are my recommendations for loadout
Zealot: beacon of purity/chorus. The new power sword seems to hit a nice spot between boss damage/horde clear. Going the fury path to increase how often you can chorus seems worth it. However, going the wounds route means you’ll need less healing resources as you progress.
Psyker: round shield, cool down aura, trauma staff and a solid mobility melee weapon. Smite can be really solid crowd control and can buy your team a lot of space. Warp charges to increase how often you can shield seems to be the focus.
Veteran: survivalist ammo aura, krak grenades, veteran shout, personally I recommend focus target as it benefits the entire team the most. Plasma guns, helbores are great for this. Veteran’s role is to keep the specials on check as much as possible and eliminate them from afar. Field improvisation is a great talent that is basically mandatory.
The 4th position should be a mix of a decent horde clear and boss killing specialization. Slab shield ogryn buys you a lot of room. Combining field improv with the ogryn frag grenade can nullify the difficulty of a lot of finales. A purgatus staff brings a lot of overall damage to the group, with brain burst the can help deal with specials.
A question in this regard.
Addressed to any vet who likes to run kraks.
Any issues with the grenades, since the update?
Since scab ragers now have carapace bodyarmor and attract the kraks, it should be much easier to kill them with kraks, but it should also be quite common to have the grenade “stolen” by a rager, when trying to blow up a crusher, right?
I would expect that this change made it almost impossible to hit crushers within a mixed group of elites.
I am only at 10 but still pretty easy so far. The bought one with melee enemies is pretty annoying for melee characters.
And pus hardened snipers suck
It would be nice for the then to explicitly say which difficulty level it’s using (malice, heresy, damnation, etc.) and what the explicit nerfs our to our health and toughness.
Also sucks that a lot blitzes seem to be considered ranged attacks for pus hardening.
Ragers were eating my grenades, but their always in such a pile of other mobs that I took it as a win most times. It is an annoying change though for sure.
Yeah I’m really not enjoying the enemies that give you corruption whenever they explode goo on you. Seems very unfun for a melee build.
If it was every 1 in 100 enemies that you had to avoid like the plague (like avoiding a pox burster) then it would make sense and be a great idea…but the enemies with corruption goo are absolutely everywhere and unavoidable.
TBF I must admit I have actually quite enjoyed the games that I’ve actually managed to play, with their mix of modifiers (apart from that one with the corrupting enemies).
It’s the lobby mechanics that sucks all the fun.
Playing the games is fun. Getting to play the games is just too challenging at the moment. Hopefully it gets ironed out with feedback.
Beacon of purity is simply bad(not just its effect but also the position on skill tree).
It might have been okay(still inferior to benediction) if it recovers above wounds(not as broken as it sounds).
The middle ult actually has uses tho.
The new 2h sword is the one that has cleave issue.
The mode doesnt start to get really interesting until 21 when it swaps from heresy to damnation base difficulty.
Pure meta cheese?
Vet with PS6 or DS4 and plasma w/ a survivalist and VoC/WS build
Zealot with crit bleed piety build running chorus and beacon of purity, flamer and DS4.
Psyker with a trauma bubble build and knife crit bleed for mobility and monsters.
Zealot frontliner with DS4 blazing FotF.
Beacon is required. Chorus is not but its obviously strong. Vet can be swapped for ogryn with pickaxe and bullrush to help frontline. Or a psyker with firestick shout soulblaze.
But if you beat 40 with DS4/Knife/PS6 you didnt beat the game.
You will not be swimming in medkits. Beacon literaly just turns off the entire plague modifier and elminates half the issues fighting BoN. Its frankly insane.
Call me when you hit 40. Its not required if you’re not fighting into the plagued modifier but if you are its such a drag on forward mobility to have to be always dealing with the spreading pools and very easy when busy to not realize youre standing in one. Corruption recieved in havoc is heavily boosted.
Perfectly competent teams were 80% corrupted by the second room more than once. Its a one talent take and chorus is meta anyway for 1 of 2 zealots. Also everyone wont find a med stim and you can spend half a game not finding a medcrate
I dunno why this is even an argument right now. Dude supposedly has first hand experience at 40? Wait til everyone has had a chance to even attempt to get to 40 and then commence d*ck swinging.
So your meta strategy is to steal everyone else’s ammo supply from a rare ammo crate that only provides 50% ammo so you can huck grenades in one horde in a 45 minuteish game?
