Devoted, new and old,
In this post I’d like to explore some avenues that Havoc modifiers could be adjusted without outright nerfing them, but rather changing them in a way that opens up other means to play or engage with them.
Currently I dislike how most of them are implemented and decided to write this post, to invite constructive discussion and/or generally relay feedback.
There is a lot of “if”-s and “maybe”-s, and “can”-s in this post - I do not cling to these ideas as the only means through which the modifiers can be made slightly more tame, and the suggestions themselves do rely a lot on gut feeling of mine, in respective to having some experience with the game mode and generally having played a lot of -Tide games throughout the years. I may be deluded in my claims by the lack of experience, due to being burnt out with the mode, but am nevertheless open to discussion. There will be blunt, but reasonably level-headed takes embedded also.
I want to further preface that not all suggestions below should be considered to be implemented all at once. In my mind these are just ideas that I’d composed in a vacuum and may or may not all be compatible with one another complexity-wise, but can and should be discussed and adjusted as needed, since some of them might be exploring completely opposing avenues of change. All numbers for presented changes proposed by me are just that - exemplary. It’s the idea that matters, not the numbers I came up with without any exploratory data reference.
I originally wanted to embed this post in the General Discussion so that it doesn’t expire, but all in all this is mostly concentrated on my general feedback towards the gamemode. I wonder if it will gain enough traction it will be possible to have it moved to improve visibility, but if it won’t, then so be it.
For the record, I used this excellent Steam guide by kuli for basically all relevant references for this post.
I have also used some visuals that were previously used by FS to announce updates and whatnot - I do not “own” these, I merely embedded them for adding some visual coherency and thematic elements to the post.
With that out of the way, let’s discuss the modifiers and what they felt like to experience.
Imagine using ordinary ranged weapons against enemies with this mod like the Psyker pictured in this thumbnail; lol, lmao even.
Pus-hardened Skin
Pus-hardened Skin details
This mutator grants a chance that enemies receive a set of changes when they spawn:
Chance Breeds* 10% Bruisers, Scab Shooter, Stalkers, Daemonhost 20% Scab Captain 25% Mauler, Scab Ragger, Shotgunners, Scab Bomber 30% Dreg Rager, Pox Hound 35% Dreg Tox Bomber, Flamers, Sniper, Trapper 50% Bulwark, Gunners, Reaper, Poxburster *Enemy breeds that are not listed cannot be affected by this mutator.
Enemies affected by ‘Pus-hardened Skin’ receive the following changes:
- adds green-yellowish VFX with dripping particles to enemies’ bodies
- reduces the damage enemies take from ranged attacks; the effective damage reduction scales per Havoc Rank being lowered by 1% flat per increasing Havoc Rank.
Havoc rank 1 2-10 11-20 21-30 31-39 40 Ranged DR 89% 88% to 80% 79% to 70% 69% to 60% 59% to 51% 50% While this ‘inverted’ scaling seems counter-intuitive at first, it can be assumed that it was chosen to account for the base difficulty increases (from Malice up to Damnation) and also for the additional Havoc modifiers (especially more enemy health). The current implementation ensures a somewhat consistent effect over all Havoc Ranks: high damage reduction when enemies have comparatively low health, and lower damage reduction when enemies have high health.
Overview
This is the first modifier that generally features limitations to players’ effective ranged weapon options versus enemies with this buff, while also not providing any potential reward for playing around it. “Just meleeing” these enemies is not feasible if there’s an entire battalion of shooters with that buff that you can’t approach without involving some other kind of risk that goes alongside it (like hitting horde/monster triggers), and shooting at bullet-spongy enemies in a game mode that deliberately starves you in limiting ammo from pick-ups is just adding more salt to the wound.
Solution, without resolving to melee or resources other than ammo? Damage-over-time effects. Caveat? Very little ranged weapons have that, and with varying degree of ammo efficiency (laspistols, recon lasguns, force staves, bolt gun and bolt pistol; ripper guns and combat shotguns also to a much lesser extent). Also I do not get the idea for having this buff scale with Havoc level - I generally dislike the scaling bit, but suffice it to say - I’d be a big fan of the damage value resistance enemies get become a static percentage at any Havoc level, to not always grind the players’ ranged damage agency to shooting pebbles, since high level Havocs feature % HP increases to all enemies. I will explore this idea in the suggestions section.
With that in mind, this modifier doesn’t really need a lot in terms of reworking it to be made more engaging. Consider what follows.
Challenges
- Great limitation of viable ranged weapons, especially considering ammo pickup limitations. Using weapons or abilities with embedded DoT effects is encouraged to the point where no other ranged weapons are worthwhile taking (Ogryn especially suffers from this),
- Handling shooters with this buff sucks, especially considering other offensive buffs they get introduced in Havoc. Shooters with this buff, shooter Elites included, are a bigger threat if aggroed and left unhandled; outside of suppression, which can be more valuable to handle this threat (but this modifier is not mutually exclusive with Cranial Corruption, which makes ranged enemies with both buffs really unfun to handle),
- Gunners have a high chance of spawning with this buff, which contributes to them being “bullet sponges”, i.e., durable enough to make them very difficult to kill reliably,
- Having to use ordinary non-DoT weapons on this mode, against enemies with the buff, sucks, particularly the ones that already have issues with maintaining ammo - the buff may just be rendering some weapons completely worthless,
- There is no direct reward for handling these enemies appropriately.
The good
- Melee enemies with this buff are fine and generally can be more threatening to players - they can’t be burst down reliably with ranged weapons, but can be controlled still and killed in melee; this is the best thing this modifier does for spicying-up any encounters with hordes and/or ambient spawns,
- This modifier may (map-dependant) encourage players to flank dug-in shooters and engage them in melee distance; or use other resources to safely approach and dispatch,
- Despite the shooters being made bullet-spongy by this mod, it increases indirect threat shooters present, which may affect decision-making and punish trying to brute-force through certain encounters.
Suggestions
-
Rework idea: Make the buff wear off as target receives instances of ranged or melee damage, but not warp damage,
-
Make the damage reduction say a flat 10% ranged damage reduction across all Havoc levels. This effect can stack up to 5 times and whenever an enemy with the buff spawns,
- This could make it so buffed enemies are harder to reliably one-shot by single-shot weapons, especially before engagements proper start, but also make it so weapons that rely on concentrated fire are not required to be fired for extensive bursts to bring common enemies down, such as non-Elite shooters,
- This will also allow melee users to wear down melee targets with this buff and allow other players to finish them off with powerful ranged weapons,
- I have added the warp damage bit post-mortem of typing out points of this idea, but with how dominant Psyker’s role is in most cookie-cutter class compositions, especially with Voidblast and Inferno force staves, this suggestion could potentially reinforce their position even more, which is something I’d like to keep in mind and try to limit going out of control,
- This would be obscure to inform the players of however, so description of the modifier should be adjusted to accomodate for that,
-
Make Elite and Specialist enemies regain stacks of this buff consecutively as they are not receiving damage. Regular, non-Elite enemies should not regain the buff at all. The buff highlight on enemies should disappear once it’s gone, and be back over time for Elite enemies,
-
I am not certain whether this is necessary, but to accomodate for some of the above changes, consider making burn-based DoTs weaker against buffed enemies, but be capable of taking down stacks of the buff with each tick,
-
Make Brittleness-applying effects wear this buff out “more”. This is yet another niche that could be given to an otherwise shunned property of some blessings/skills,
-
Make ranged weapons that fire multiple projectiles capable of taking down the buff in one shot if enough pellets hit the target,
- Furthermore, make it so that any bleed-through/post-mitigation damage from remaining hitting pellets is applied,
- This might open up a niche for shotgun-type weapons to be more suitable for this modifier.
-
-
Reduce the chance of regular Gunners spawning with this buff from 50% to 35% (Reapers should still remain at 50%),
-
Make the vanilla buff’s effect only half as efficient if the target is hit in its weakspot, or with a critical strike (critical weakspot strikes still would only benefit from one “layer” removal),
- This is a simplified mean of changing this modifier without reworking it substantially.
-
Make Pus-hardened enemies more distinct from the buff provided by the Blight Spreads. This buff blends disgustingly well with The Blight Spreads acid-buffed enemies and contributes to a general lack of visual clarity as to which effect is which (or when are both active. I am well aware there are different particle effects for each buff, but it’s not very distinct to me). Preferably make the updated highlight or what have you not green, or yellow-tinted.
Ogryn personnel should be discouraged from consumption of potentially warp-founded appendages.
Cranial Corruption
Cranial Corruption details
This mutator grants a chance that enemies receive a set of changes when they spawn:
Chance Breeds* 5% Armored Groaner, Mauler, Scab Flamer 10% Groaner, Poxwalker, Poxwalker (lesser mutated), Poxwalker (mutated), Bruisers, Stalkers, Scab Shooter, Dreg Rager, Gunners, Shotgunners, Bombers, Dreg Flamer 20% Bulwark, Crusher, Reaper 25% Scab Rager *Enemy breeds that are not listed cannot be affected by this mutator.
Enemies affected by ‘Cranial Corruption’ receive the following changes:
- adds a different head model which has a green outline; this head hit zone has the Infested armor type; hitting the head with a ranged attack makes the enemy explode if the attack leaves the enemy at or with less than 30% max health, melee attacks cannot trigger the explosion; the explosion has a max radius of 6m, does not ignore toughness, deals 7.5 base damage to players (if no toughness, 50% of this amount is dealt as corruption damage), and deals average damage and decent stagger against enemies,
- increases enemy movement speed by 25%; does not apply to Flamers and Bombers,
- grants immunity to suppression,
- increases enemy hit mass by 50% which makes enemies harder to cleave.
Overview
I don’t have strong feelings about this modifier, but it does at least two things well, one thing not so well, and one that I dislike heavily; the latter two take away most of my enjoyment of engaging with it.
The suppression immunity in particular is bothersome and can contribute to situations, when paired with another modifier - Pus-hardened Skin - in which case you are up against a shooting enemy that requires a significant amount of resources to kill and cannot be disarmed via suppression. The only means of defusing such an enemy is stagger, but given all enemies in Havoc have greatly enhanced stagger thresholds it’s not reliable; engaging said enemy in melee or completely ignoring it while certain abilities are used (Chorus, Telekine shield) and other methods of engagement are employed. The suppression immunity on Melee enemies is mostly fine, since it only affects Groaner horde enemies, as other Melee units are suppression-immune anyway. The immunity also makes suppression-based blessings and skills less valuable, even if by themselves they are already situational buffs, which only affect a handful of enemies the Rejects face in the game.
I don’t think this contributes to a lot of “fun” to be had with that in mind, but the modifier itself does certain things well as a difficulty/complexity tweak. Having corrupted Melee or Specialist enemies engage you quicker in combat and cut distance faster can change the pacing of combat quite drastically and can make certain horde compositions more difficult to handle, or dragged out even, with the good and the bad of that scenario.
There’s a reward to be had for handling these enemies well, albeit it’s a double-edged sword - on one hand the corrupted enemies have Infected-type heads, and most weapons in the game have good damage modifiers against this health type - being good at hitting weakspots will bring down these enemies quicker. On the other hand handling these enemies via ranged weapons means that the heads can pop, which may cause disruption against teammates (or tactically saving them from oppression wink wink) and enemies alike.
Despite that, the most apt way of handling these enemies, much like many other massed threats in Havoc, is AoE, and AoE by itself doesn’t feature enough setback to consider other contending approaches, especially since Flamer and Inferno force staff - primarily DoT-based weapons, don’t interfere with the modifier in any meaningful way.
Challenges
- Suppression immunity sucks when trying to temporarily disarm ranged enemies that are also benefitting from Pus-hardened skin buff,
- Suppression-enhancing effects are devalued by this modifier, even if they are already quite situational in application (mainly valid v shooters),
- Weapons already strong into Havoc density have meaningless interactions with this modifier. It’s not frustrating, but it’s not interesting either.
The good
- Melee and Specialist enemies with the buff can cut distance quicker between them and the players, which makes certain encounters more intense,
- There is a strategic element to popping corrupted heads near teammates, especially around ledges (rewards good positioning),
- … but its staggering effect on common enemies is likely too strong and can be exploited to mitigate any risk coming from engaging these enemies embedded in regular hordes.
Suggestions
-
Make the epicentre of the explosion smaller, so that less enemies are heavily staggered on popping corrupted heads,
-
Make the entire body mass of corrupted enemies capable of stopping ranged attacks with infinite cleave parameter,
- This may seem like an adverse effect introduced only to mess with the Flamer and Inferno force staff, but the matter of fact is that if such weapons are here to stay with no balancing acts against them, there should be counter-measures in place that users of builds based on these items should consider while facing corrupted enemies, since they don’t interact with any of Havoc-based modifiers in any manner that matters for how efficient they are,
- This might unintentionally nerf ranged attacks with infinite cleave, such as combat shotguns with Manstopper blessing, but if need be this could be limited to Flamer and Inferno only in one way or another (I’m not familiar with the game’s code enough, so I won’t be attempting to solve this),
-
Warp or Burn-based (DoTs included) ranged attacks can also cause the heads to explode, no matter which body part they hit,
- This is a measure to again, make hordes of corrupted enemies more unpredictable to handle, but also make it so Voidblast force staff is not a natural replacement to Inferno should that one be too unreliable on this modifier, with the suggestion regarding limiting infinite cleave in mind,
- Make the chance determinant or random, with say, 50% chance to occur if an enemy dies to a DoT effect,
- Note that this should not affect warp-based melee attacks, like force (great)swords’,
- This should also not include Bleed, which should be effective means of killing these enemies with no head pops (the best AoE bleed resource in the game, Vet’s frag grenades, already are killy and strong enough that this won’t really reinforce their position further),
-
Make corrupted enemies suppressable, but limit the amount of suppression they suffer by a certain percentage,
- This is to make suppression-enhancing effects still somewhat desirable against these enemies, but doesn’t completely negate the interaction altogether - it’s mostly giving players back tools to deal with corrupted ranged enemies, which still might be tougher to suppress than regular ones,
-
Make popped heads that stagger enemies also buff them temporarily as if they were under influence of pox gas (should wear off over time but grant all the benefits of that buff),
- This may further discourage players from committing to over-reliance on ranged weapons to handle this threat, and subsequently lead to an unintentional buffing of certain threats amidst the horde, and may make the popping operation relatively opportune and risk-free when there’s a three pesky gas bombers torturing your party.
girth boys.
Moebian 21st
Unrelenting Hordes details
This mutator replaces any Groaner or Poxwalker with an Armored Groaner. Armored Groaners deal the same damage as Groaners and Poxwalkers, are slightly more resistant to stagger, and have the following stats:
Breed Health (Damnation) Armor type Hit Mass (Damnation) Armored Groaner 625 Flak (base), Unarmoured (head, lower arms, legs) 1.5 Groaner 300 Unarmoured 1.25 Poxwalker 375 Infested 1.5 Note: Portion of the table regarding damage multipliers has been cut since it’s not relevant for this post, but can be seen in kuli’s guide.
Overview
I really don’t have a lot to type about this one - Moebian 21st is probably the most balanced of all Havoc modifiers and contributes a great deal to making horde encounters less meat-grindy than they otherwise are, which translates to players having to pay more attention to leaving some stragglers alive, lest they stab you in the back, and generally putting team-wide effort into clearing these beefier - almost bruiser-like in terms of tenacity - hordes.
It doesn’t feature any particularly anti-fun decisions, but does put emphasis on players having cleave-enhancing weapon blessings or skills to handle these spiced-up horde enemies better, which is fine, as horde density tanks cleave - outside of weapons with infinite cleaving/hitting capabilities - quite substanitally with this modifier and with other enemies mixed in. This indirectly also means that sniping other threats through these enemies is harder, but in a way that can be played around with.
Suggestions
-
Feature Poxwalker horde versions of enemies for this modifier, for theme expansion and diversifying the enemy rooster a little - Unarmoured-type body parts that Groaners have should naturally be replaced Infested ones,
- The timeline is not very well represented story-wise, but by the time the 21st Moebian regiment were infected and what feels like transpires now, enough time should have passed for Poxwalkers to manifest among these poor sods,
-
If there were any measures for adjusting this modifier, I reckon the armoured Groaners could be made slightly less healthy? They already have a 625 health base (compared to regular Groaners’ 300 and Poxwalkers’ 375), and with Havoc modifiers this amount is even more profound (and somewhat tedious to deal with),
- Lowering their HP amount to 575 health could be a good start and further adjustments would be made from there - this change would also affect Unrelenting Hordes in non-Havoc situations.
Insert reverb fart sound for comedic effect, but the thumbnail’s actually just for drawing attention, because I couldn’t find nothing more apt.
The Blight Spreads
The Blight Spreads details
This mutator grants a chance that enemies spawn blighted:
Chance Breeds* 10% Armored Groaner, Groaner, Bruisers, Poxwalker, Scab Shooter, Stalkers, Bulwark, Crusher, Gunners, Mauler, Ragers, Reaper, Shotgunners, Bombers, Flamers, Mutant, Poxburster, Pox Hound, Sniper, Daemonhost 20% Scab Captain 100% Plague Ogryn *Enemy breeds that are not listed cannot spawn blighted.
Enemies affected by ‘The Blight Spreads’ receive the following changes:
- adds greenish VFX with fly-like particles to enemies’ bodies,
- when a corrupted enemy dies, there is a chance that the corruption spreads to other enemies within 3m,
- when a corrupted enemy dies, a puddle of Nurgle Slime is created on the ground; this slime has the same properties as the slime created by Beast of Nurgle (see the ‘Player Debuffs’ section below) except for lasting for 19s and dealing 5 base corruption damage (Damnation) per tick which increases to 6.25 corruption damage per tick while sliding or dodging on slime.
Overview
I don’t like this modifier in general - its main mean of interference is limiting the effective aggression the players can get away with, while introducing corruption health application in a way that either necessitates usage appropriate curio properties, mitigating auras or effects, or both, or completely disregarding any/most of the setbacks if your movement skills and map knowledge are on point. While one’s performance may be on point and semi-aggressive approach can still be exercised, this modifier generally makes combating Melee enemies anemic; it’s way too focused on getting away with fighting hordes at convenient chokepoints, playing semi-slowly and not getting backed into a corner.
This is probably the least friendly modifier to queue into, since if you are a class with access to mitigative resources, you will be whipped into taking them if you haven’t. I’m not a fan of that - there should be available some means of interacting with this modifier that don’t involve taking specific build choices in public lobbies to make this modifier somewhat bearable, from being miserably slow to progress through otherwise.
Challenges
- Complexity mostly involves awareness and positioning, sometimes involving backtracking to fight at set positions,
- No way to interact with the modifier besides corruption-clearing or mitigating effects, which mostly make it irrelevant or make it nigh-negligible (Zealot’s Beacon of Purity aura, Veteran’s Voice of Command with yellow HP upgrade, Zealot’s Chorus ability).
The good
- I really would want to have anything good to say about this modifier, but I don’t. It’s bad. It makes the game slower, sometimes crawling to a halt regarding pacing, and introduces yet another source of corruption on top of any other ones that are already in the main game, and in Havoc in particular,
- I suppose one redeeming quality is that you will want to fight for position with enemies; securing good points to skirmish at is quite significant a factor in winning and building stakes/tension with this mod.
Suggestions
-
Make puddles absorb-able by stepping into them - define puddle “HP” or the amount of times it can tick, and allow players to essentially clear paths through them with basic movement methods,
- This might allow players to interact with the modifiers more - make melee not as nauseating and constantly requiring backtracking or having obscenely good cleave/stagger values, and have players assume roles of “clearers” of the puddles - say players with corruption-resistance based curios or effects may designate themselves as capable of clearing paths, reinforcing players’ agency and allowing offensive strategies to commence more fluently,
- To offset that, puddles should wear out yellow toughness granted by player buffs - not instantly 100-0 it, but wear it out in a similar manner that Tox-bombers’ grenades do to regular Toughness - with a multiplier on some base damage value,
-
Make killing enemies with melee damage restore 1 HP worth of corruption damage (cannot heal wounds); and restoring more on Elite/Specialist/Monster kills (3/3/10 - the last one being party-wide on monster kill),
- Lore-wise it might be hard to justify, but it would be a different, non-class-skill-based mean of interacting with the modifier and mitigating its implications,
- This might also create some space for decision-making regarding use of AoE or ranged weapons to clear a certain mass of enemies - would you rather want you or your teammates to restore some of their corrupted, so that they can be allowed more aggression, or clear the blighted horde so you don’t get in a bad position regarding the team’s resources in the first place?
-
I’m not certain if this is still the case, but make blighted enemies instantly drop a puddle of acid, instead of at the end of their dying animation if they’ve been subjected to one due to whichever killing effect and their ragdoll was not interfered with until it played out in full.
Summary and some other takes
Havoc as a gamemode seems to me as unnecessary to have been developed in this time, but it is in a way an investment that may eventually keep on giving, if given more support to how players can perform in it, by implementing more “fun” ways of the ways players can optimally build against certain modifier. That’s not to say I think it should be prioritised over features to the base game and I would want to type more about it, but this post I wanted to contain mostly matters related to the main modifiers.
The mode has more non-fun attachments in it, like the fact that the difficulty is spread across 40 levels rather than ~5-8 or so, which could feature significant difficulty spikes instead of spreading the playerbase further than it needs to. The entire degradation of Havoc rank and not giving players the ability to choose their own maps and mods in pre-made settings is also stupid and I want it out (i.e., the degradation I want out; the hosted lobbies I want in).
I dislike how the mode generally doesn’t give players’ much of a reason to interact with it other than pushing the challenge ceiling and some penances that award the Moebian 53rd set of items for each class, but that I may yet explore in a different topic or expand this one, if I will see “demand” for it (i.e., will to update it with additional observations).
If you did make it through the post and have drawn some conclusions or points worth of discussing, do bring it to the comments in a civilised manner.
Thank you so much for reading this post and have a good day.