Mostly Damnation focused, but feel free to talk about the other difficulties.
Game’s easy, that’s my opinion and this is a whine post 
Game will continue to get easier, too, because that’s just expected as bugs, balance, and performance are improved along with the community’s average skill level just naturally increasing.
Game is also fun and really much better now, but difficulty has been in the background on my mind for a while. I would like a discussion about hordes and elites because I feel they have been overlooked due to how hard it was to deal with mobs of Stalkers, Shooters, Shotgunners, and Elite Gunners; and when attention isn’t on the ranged enemies discussions are on specials.
Player’s Power Level
Get to this subject immediately, stagger is too free and easy to achieve. That and cleave are much more important and common than people may realize.
I think it’s fair to say players using the human characters (veteran, zealot, psyker) are focusing on standout OP weapons and may not have noticed everything offers considerable amount of control without blessings. The Catachan swords are, i think, the only (non-power/chain) melee weapons in the game that doesn’t have a special attack meant to flinch and interrupt elites. Kind of a deal, means no matter your build, you probably have the ability to control and stagger elites or large groups of hordes no matter what and adequately.
I feel that needs to be pointed out early because if and when the clearly standout OP weapons get touched, melee combat probably won’t change and stay easy.
Hordes
Love the hordes. Love opening a door or rounding a corner and seeing a massive swarm of zombies before they scream and charge in unison. Love the way they water fall over obstacles and just look really cool in motion and fun to shoot. They’re also too easy.
There’s two kinds, pox walkers (unarmored; 200 hp) and groaners (infested; 300 hp). The attack speed of both seems fine and they are responsive to all forms of stagger (there might be a handful of animations where they can’t be staggered, but not a huge concern right now IMO).
As threat goes, least challenging obstacle. A horde’s threat is dependent on roaming mobs, elites, and bosses being dragged into the horde and also cover for specials, but by themselves, just not a threat. And I feel like they are encountered by themselves often.
Both could stand to always have the company of stronger enemies near them. I’d love to have some unique pox walker/groaner elites there to just ruin someone’s day for positioning badly, but probably more realistic to ask for melee patrols to be near hordes more often (you know the scab/dreg bruisers, ragers, maulers, and ogryns).
Pox Walkers I think are mostly fine, I do wish they were accompanied by stronger enemies more often such as stalkers.
Groaners I think are too weak. Corruption is a cool threat, but I think they could always be more threatening. They can have more health, mass, and stagger resistance on their own. Would a base 400 hp or more, more mass, and enough stagger resistance to withstand most human character attacks be too brutal for Damnation? Considering how many cool tools we have to deal with hordes, would it be ok to make them as a group to be a little more stout and dangerous?
Right now at 300 hp, Groaners are identical to pox walkers in threat with only the ability to cause corruption separating them, which makes encountering them not unique when they could offer a greater challenge to keep players on their toes and actually pay attention to the uglier zombies versus the normal zombies.
Elites
Mainly the melee elites are either underrepresented or just overshadowed by ranged enemies. Seems like on most maps they are spawned as roamers or patrols making them easy targets, especially ogryns.
Ragers are a step above bruisers in threat. Their damage is fine, but most melee weapons have a special attack that can stagger them. They are just too easily controllable for what they are with anything from getting poked by the blunt end of an ax or just punched in the face with a jab from a knife weilding veteran will make them flinch out of a combo attack.
Maulers are awesome, chunky, and hurt a lot. They’re simply underrepresented in the game. Just need more to appear where they’re least convenient. Way more.
Bulwarks are too easy, but possibly as a side effect of the player base gravitating to weapons that deal with them so well. And they will get easier if the plasma gun gets lore accurate shield piercing. They need to be resistant to dropping their guard from Bolters, first and foremost, because it’s just nuts watching a couple of shield boys evaporate. They also share the same spawn rate issue as crushers, more on that next.
Crushers are crazy easy. Easy to flinch. Easy to stagger. Slow. They’re big and scary looking so obviously the team focuses them down. Both them and Bulwarks have extremely forgiving AI, trudging gently towards the players and never aggressively trying to accomplish anything. I actually wish they would try to ledge players with knockback attacks or intentionally blow up barrels or even throw the mighty BAWKS at us. If not that then adjust their attack patterns to not be so forgiving.
And then there is the biggest problem with all ogryn enemies, there is never more than 4 ogryns in a single encounter. That’s 2 or 3 bulwarks and/or 2 crushers at any time, sometimes you might have a reaper in the background. The game absolutely refuses to spawn enemy ogryns with malicious intent. They are only roamers, you can’t be ambushed by them, they won’t spawn behind you, they won’t spawn with hordes, they won’t spawn and track you down unless a horde is already aggroed, they will not spawn inside any event, and they won’t actually try to make players work for anything. They’re less dangerous than Maulers and even the Ragers.
The only time ogryns are dangerous is in numbers and in mixed groups which they absolutely will not spawn in ever. There is just not enough ogryns in the game and the ones that are there are basically speed bumps at worse.
Rather than ask for a new difficulty and divide the community, the composition of hordes and spawn rate of melee elites in Damnation really need to be adjusted to fit how powerful players are. It’s not a simple fix, but it is necessary.
That’s the post; discuss, debate, or whine
Edit: dumb fixes
fine what detail is about to get fixated on
