thats an positive understatement 
this one was “only” I E but it really gave us a run for our money
love how they beefed up the end part instead of kumbaya around the tree
I think the OP of that one was just complaining about shooters (and deserves the flack for thinking the shield is required to counter massed shooters), it may have been me that brought up how the spawn timer is slightly too aggressive and the numbers slightly too much (though that may have been over in the thread where the OP said the director feels good and I responded and got flack for saying more enemies does not equal better or something like that).
But yeah. Some matches it feel great, others you get your teeth kicked in and they steal your lunch money.
ATM Deamination, especially normal maelstrom damnation feels just a bit too overtuned. You feel very punished for running off-meta builds or tying new builds, especially with randoms.
I stick by what I said, the AI director is very close to being perfect (or as perfect as FS will ever get) but it sometimes seems to get an injection of double or triple the spawn tokens to allocate due to how aggressive they have made the “anti-speadrunning” mechanics. If one player is just slightly too far ahead it just starts freaking out and spawns specials and elites to beat you up until you are forced to group back up.
If you encounter an elite patrol it spawns specials and/or a horde. So if you get hit with anti-speadrun and that person ahead pulls an elite group you can be hit with two elite groups, two sets of special spawns and a horde or two all at once.
My stance:
It isn’t that that kind of spawning is bad, it is that that kind of spawning should not be happening over on the normal mission board. That is stuff that should be happening over on auric board where it is supposed to be oppressively hard and I think a lot of auric players would agree based on the posts I have read.
If you play it solo…I’m not convinced that is a good measure of intensity. We occasionally play something like damnation hi-intensity without the STG mod, as a warm up round for people busy with an actual life in our group. That is fairly calm for what it is, even for them.
Sadly atm the difficulty quite often is down to the game just not working as designed and thanks to some questionable design decisions. I mean who doesn’t love bursters which ignore 2 pushes to finally just sit on their ass on the 3rd push, missing audio and audio cues, bursters appearing half way through their jump animation from a door you are forced to pass, enemies ignoring dodge state / pushes, silent elites, lack of backstab sounds etc etc etc. Basically the usual “works as intended” experience in Tide games.
At this point I start to think Fatshark’s introduced some of those issues intentionally, which would explain some of those bugs haven’t been fixed yet. 
Nice! Very spicy ending – poor Ogryn almost made it out 
Tbh I really like I-E, I feel like it always ends up being a good balanced run, just shock troops with a little extra spice.
This condition on the other hand…
Just a nice relaxing stroll through Chasm Station in the fog 
Just a thought/question - why do people keep posting Maelstrom videos to prove the director is broken? Why not go play sedition, malice, heresy, basic damnation and see if that’s the takeaway?
Disclaimer: I think the game fundamentally changed since they added in all the support classes, and as such the difficulty spikes aren’t that big of a deal when you have a support or two on your team instead of rabidly chasing pointless scoreboard numbers (win > scoreboard). Further disclaimer: I tend to play cc classes and haven’t felt the difficulty spikes are overwhelming.
That being said, I’m sitting here going “They say the director is nuts and their evidence in this thread is LITERALLY THE TOUGHEST CONTENT IN THE GAME, INTENDED TO BE INSANE” …
IDK Maybe I’m crazy. But, folks… ??? How do your Maelstrom vids support the point?
I farm plasteel now with knife Zealot on damnation quickplay and difficult is 0. Can solo run the whole map.
Which suggests the director isn’t nuts?
I think the broader point folks are making is that the director seems a bit screwy overall at the moment. Sometimes it goes hogwild in normal missions, sometimes it’s basically asleep in auric maelstroms. Ofc there should be some randomness, but it seems like something’s off – normal missions shouldn’t ever be super super crazy, and auric maelstroms shouldn’t ever be a relaxing walk in the park. (The 2 vids I’ve posted have been auric maelstrom missions where the director was weirdly chill.)
I played that modifier the other night with a fellow CHAXE enthusiast running martyrdom. It was just LMAO SCAB GUNNERS and REAPERS all game long. If I recall correctly it was the interrogation mission that ends in the big hack defense inside the old water cartel quarters. There was a section where you enter the little town area just after a dropoff. We ran into so many scab gunners there it was actually insane.
Me and the other chaxter got a combined 256 ranged elite kills in that one game. The other two players pulled in 157. So thats 408 ranged elites in one mission. Absolutely nutty spawn rates. There were only 642 ranged lesser enemies. That means there were 2/3rds the number of gunners and repears as shooters in that game.
Yeah I am not sure on that one either. I am not complaining about the director being broken in Auric at all. Let it be broken, I’m trying to die in Auric. But my experience that I am reporting on comes from playing both normal damnation with teams and groups, even premades, and solo (melee only 'cause i’m a high-gumption chad. Obviously.)
I have been doing both. My premade of 1000+ gameplay hours auric gamers managed to whipe one game due a ludicrous spawn of a ambush horde, patrol of crushers, boss, daemon host, and stacked trappers and flamers and bursters in trios. I almost clutched it but there was a trapper inside another trapper when i hit it with my melee weapon…you know how it goes Im sure. Thats not to say damnation is always like this or that its harder than Auric, nor that its even htat bad 90% of the time. But it is occasionally just losing its mind. I enjoy this! But I’m not so sure lower skilled players who haven’t lost their minds like I have will.
Before or after the most recent hotfix? Prior to the last hotfix, auric maelstroms were wild across the board, including this modifier. It’s only since the last hotfix that sometimes the conflict director just seems to be asleep.
I think after. Can’t quite remember. We’ll just see how it goes in patch 15.2 at this point.
I can’t compare it on normal Damnation before and after. I haven’t run a normal t5 for a long time. On Auric it’s nuts.
I’ve only done a dozen or so Aurics in the last 5 or so days but none seemed nuts to me. Can you define nuts?
To be clear, I tended to be on a chorus-zealot or smite-psyker and when things started to hit the fan, I stopped them. Ed: Obviously I can’t take sole credit for the runs success, and it’s not like I was the only support, but I did tend to float along waiting for situations to nuetralize rather than trying to spend all my resources on meaningless scoreboard numbers. Plenty of players chasing those already, I just cared about winning.
To be clear I mainly play Vet and mostly pug.
You can see my post a bit above. Maelstrom has 1 special/ 6 seconds. The density can get incredibly ridiculous, you get flooded with enemies, pushing or progressing is extremely heavily gated by the director and specials can spawn basically in your face.
Events can be so spammy that even on Auric STG that it’s a DPS check.
It feels bad because it doesn’t really have a proper flow anymore.
I thought this post was specifically about basic heresy/damnation?
I’ve experienced this and can agree with it. It’s actually when I think cc starts to be a detriment, because it’s more of a dps check.
That being said… you’re talking about the toughest content in the game, which is intended to be insane. Normal damnation seems fine to me, even Auric damnation seems fine to me, I haven’t run into a situation where I felt the director was throwing things we weren’t equipped handle in those difficulties. IDK, is that the same topic? Maelstrom is supposed to be ridic, as is Auric.
I thought it was more general for the changes.
My basic assessment is that currently STG and Auric (and normal damnation) are around the same level of difficulty as it was pre-patch 13. I don’t have a problem with it being hard, it’s just too spammy, and the “non-stop action” isn’t a positive in its case (IMO).
It’s in the realms of unplayable with an Exa stance sniper build for example. They choose to make the game difficulty the worst way possible (again), by just cranking up spawn numbers to a ridiculous degree and spawning specials sometimes basically 1 second away.
The thing isn’t as bad playing with Zealot or Ogryn, but I feel like that just because those are incredibly busted and you are allowed to make so many mistakes.
That’s true, I have the same experience… apart from things like shield Ogryns which just do as much damage as any other weapon while also being good for making room/cc.
Awesome duo and real fun to watch. no wonder heretics are dropping by the millions if pappa nurgles gift makes them lose sight on 2 raving berserkers with flamethrowers in plain sight
Thanks! You see my point tho? The back half of that mission was almost empty, and I don’t think the horde music played even a single time that entire mission. I know there’s supposed to be some variability in how dense the mission is, but this really feels to me like it’s bugged – there’s just no way an auric maelstrom is supposed to be that chill.
personally i’m at the point where i can’t go back to anything below auric damnation. having mostly limited time compared to the golden age of 16 hour sessions, even warmup feels right at home and the game at a point where it scratches every itch.
that being said, having certain modifiers as an option, telling you what the overall condition is your about to face and having it vary wildly is something worth mentioning and a source of entertainment.
and in that regard i dont consider damnation and below an indicator of same value, for most situations there are really tame in comparison.
i watch the odd malice video out of curiosity but so far the biggest “madness” there is just a normal monday morning in maelstrom
This still applies, I think judging by the posts since.