Level 24 Havoc missions are spawning two Traitor Captains back-to-back, a Beast of Nurgle, and even a Daemonhost mid-summoning.
A tide of Nurgle-tainted zombies and Heretic Elites, spearheaded by multiple Traitor Captains, completely overran our position in seconds.
In other words, tuesday on Atoma.
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you mean like the ending here?
yeah, been like that pretty much all week 
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I’m loving it. Big ol DPS and coordination check, teamwork required, have yet to feel cheated.
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its a shame you can’t have like 6 boss bars on top of the screen, it would be hilarious
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there are a few bugs with heretic rituals that can be very frustrating too
i mean no way we would have made it to the ritual around the corner with that clusterfkk and our barely alive condition
it certainly was a “computer says no” moment 
vigil station upper elevator exit: twin captains, normal captain bulwarks + crushers.
the former attacking us while the door was still closed essentially boxing us in…
that experience (in slight variation of composition or number of appearance) continued 5 times…
i mean we threw ourselves against it, even warned every rando group in advance, results though 
solution? dont play vigil station and rebuild rank…
Haven’t had that experience yet! Every time I’ve lost to boss spam, there’s been a clear pattern of failures that lead to the loss.
To be clear, I’m not saying there isn’t buggy stuff. I just think what I’ve seen of the boss spam works as an effective, fair (in so far as Havoc is meant to be) challenge. We have a ton of options for CC, occupying bosses why others DPS down another, etc. that it doesn’t feel cheap to me. Just more, just harder.
Late stage power creep adjusted enemy spawns and difficulty
I’ve been thinking about this a lot and, although I do think we need a balance pass, Havoc is a solution to a real problem: that there just wasn’t enough difficulty for a portion of the community.
There was just no way to get this other than for FS to make a new higher difficulty, which I think they have successfully done.
But if you want a slower, chunkier game, you can have that right now, without FS having to step in. Just play the game with as few talent points spent as possible and grey weapons on an appropriate difficulty. With player power scaled down, lower difficulties become a place where there are fewer enemies, more hits to kill, no ability spam, etc. All the things I keep seeing some people ask for, except for movement nerfs (which I think could be interesting and I’ve dedicated some time to prototyping via mods but ultimately which I think would change the game quite drastically…maybe not for the better re: its popularity).
That flavor of game is there, if that’s what you want. Yea, you might have to get a group on Discord to do these “challenge runs” (like I’ve seen Telopots and crew do), but it’s possible and will continue to be possible.
This type of thinking is silly because I don’t want to have to pick between having a challenging difficulty and being able to pug & having the ability to include blessings in my build.
High Havoc is not a suitable replacement for difficulty in the base game because it’s not designed for random groups with no communication, yet that’s how I prefer to play the game whenever not all of my friends are online. It’s also not suitable because it changes core balance, like by limiting ammo and giving very high breakpoints to hit + cleave changes, which completely changes the viability scape of weaponry moreso than just finally balancing damnation would.
Finally just bringing gray weapons is also not really fun in the long run. Blessings are fun to play around with, having to just drop them from build considerations to face a challenge is lame. Same goes for empty talent trees etc.
On top of this, Havoc is just inherently gimmicky. Sure it’s fun sometimes but I dont want to be playing those gimmicky mutators every mission I play. It’s like challenges in VT2, fun to play the darkness thing for a change but not really if it’s 50% of your missions. Same goes for stuff like heinous rituals. Also, it has less maps.
All in all, nonsensical defense of a lack of balance and challenge in Darktide.
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I enjoy fighting the boss spam and then get shot to death by 8 Reapers. Vermintide player moment.
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The absolutely oppressive shooters is probably another reason I don’t like Havoc that much. It’s just nonsense to suggest that Havoc can excuse the base game lacking challenge + balance. It has its merits but it’s no replacement.
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This.
And clearly, it is not done for every players… and I don’t talk here about just the difficulty. I talk about the concept behind havoc.
As @Murderer said, Havoc is not working well with randoms. But we could add also that havoc requires or push you to play Top strongest abilities and weapons.
Anyways, the -75% ammo penalty is not for me.
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Been working fine for me! Get a group in <2 minutes, sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Feels no different from Auric except that people tend to stay around and people tend to talk.
Which havoc rank?
It’s 60% in this season. And there are vet builds with insane ammo efficiency, which lets you shoot during the entire match (almost).
That’s the great thing about Havoc: it’s on a spectrum from 1-40. I’ve been having a blast in the low/mid 20s. Halfway up. I’d say I’m probably a better-than-average player (although I have way more than average hours I’m sure), and expect I’ll keep rising up the ranks, but it’s really no sweat off my back if I don’t.
There is no feasible reality where any amount of balancing would make the ABSOLUTE hardest difficulty (High Havoc) puggable but also challenging enough to keep the attention of the truly-skilled players.
If you want something harder and slower, you can make that for yourself right now. That being said, I already stated that I think some things need a balance pas.
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20 is heresy, so it doesn’t really bear relevance in the discussion of wether Havoc is a good continuation for Auric damnation difficulty wise.
The game was in a fairly good balance spot for random groups before P13 on damnation. For the record I’m not saying High Havocs should be puggable, or even that they’re not puggable, I got back up to 40 pugging. It’s just that it’s less enjoyable to play with randoms because the dynamics make it really hard for people who don’t belong there to not grief the missions.
I don’t know how common this is and I’m not sure it matters much, but tide games are soloqueue pug games to me. There’s currently no good pick for me when it comes to that.
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Ok, bud! Hey tell ya what, nobody wants us Murderering this thread with more DramaTide, so why don’t we just agree to disagree on this one? I think throwing harder enemies in larger numbers at players (along with quicker horde spawns, various “hidden” modifiers, and the visible modifiers in season 2) definitely makes it harder than A5 in a good way. And you don’t. Cool!