Part of me feels like Survivalist had a massive placebo effect on people’s perceptions of the game’s ammo economy; even in Auric Damnation, I’m not wanting for ammo all the time.
I think over time we’ve been weened off of our reliance for this aura. It could also just be power creep from game balancing over time and getting stronger.
However, I do agree that we were able to spam a lot more, and it gave precedence for heavy use of ranged weapons. This was an especially good aura with trigger-happy Ogryn teammates, as an Ogryn player that likes not having to stop shooting when using a Stubber. In those situations, we tend to fight over ammo a lot more.
That being said, not only am I forced to take pretty mediocre talents to use it, it now feels utterly useless. I have taken it off of every single build. I’m curious if there’s anyone that has any insight into its benefits in its nerfed state and if it has any actual objective benefit anymore.
I wasn’t really a fan of it before the nerf, and certainly aren’t now either.
At a personal build level, survivalist requires pathing over to it and “wasting” points on other mediocre talents at best. So it always felt sub-optimal to take.
From a team play perspective, the pre-patch state of survivalist pushes the behavior norm towards wasting a lot of ammo. People got used to having it around and didn’t manage their ammo very well. It enabled some wasteful habits that has taken a long time to reverse.
I still like it but I would agree that there is enough ammo on maps that it is not a requirement.
Edit: I think the psychology goes both ways. It got nerfed and some people overreact and think it is a completely dead talent because it reminds them of the time FS hurt them.
I stopped using it when they nerfed it. I made builds that included Shock-troop (las crits use no ammo), however what I find is everything is fine, until you get that special team: zealot using shotty, ogryn using stubber. In those situations I don’t get a whiff of ammo, and that was exactly why I used to run Survivalist.
So yeah, great. Loved the nerf. Really improved the game experience. /s
The only problem is that it should be 1% of ammo clip + reserve.
But it is actually 1% of the reserve. It penalizes several weapon, and especially the plasma gun.
Nota: no I did not change my mind. PG should get something done about its cleave, but this point (returning amount of ammo by survivalist) is not fair and should be corrected.
I don’t believe you. In what way is it “still the best”? In that all other auras suck? Great balance, everything sucks!
I get the sense that if the people behind the balance had their way, we’d all be running around with sticks tied to rocks. Auras should mean something. Not be ‘a place you’re forced to put a talent point to go down the talents’.
HUH? So you dont actually have any evidence, or examples to support your wild claim that “its the best talent”?
Yes, Auric IS easy, no one said it wasn’t. You do realise the mode can be easy, and the auras can still suck, right? They aren’t mutually exclusive. But clearly just artificially making things harder, ideally in a way that doesn’t impact you, thats the goal here right? Not player satisfaction or engagement, or excitement to work on builds. All of that is meaningless, right?
The auras are uninteresting talents that have little impact on the group. Survivalist, the ranged centric aura, used to be my goto, and now I just ignore the auras and look for the next talent I want in a build. Therefore, the auras are all just taxes now.
So you dont actually have any evidence, or examples to support your wild claim that “its the worst talent"?
If you don’t find any use for it and got then good for you, but plenty of people still find the extra ammo pretty damn good on range spam build even if it’s not ammo printer like it’s used to.
Anyway, I’m too tired to argue with you so I’ll just leave it at that.
If i can squeeze Survivalist into my build i will do it 100 percent of the time simply because the other auras basically have the same effect as a tax node.
Its kind of the same for psyker but to a lesser degree since the other psyker auras are a bit underwhelming with Seers Presence being present.
At least Ogryn and Zealot has Auras that are either relatively impactful or has an interesting interaction like Loner.
That’s part of the point of weapons like the plasma gun. They’re supposed to be ammo-inefficient - the problem is that plasma has so much uptime that its ammo inefficiency doesn’t really matter compared to something like the bolter.
Really I have difficulties to understand the concept of a weapon ammo-inefficient when I see it shooting from start to the end. And still, players don’t pick 40 to 60% of ammos.
That’s why I proposed that…
It’s still the best of the 3 auras. Not because it’s good, it’s because the other 2 suck.
It’s pretty much mandatory if you are going for a gunner build with braced or reccon, but I always pick it up.
Helps to keep you shooting, and that’s nice enough for me.
As others have said, it’s basically mandatory for shooter builds. I only ever take the other two auras when I don’t have enough points to cross paths and get survivalist.
That said, it still feels pretty bad. I don’t really play vet anymore because of it.
It’s still absolutely mandatory for ranged builds, and you can still struggle based on the team-comp or ammo distribution on the map. Not to mention having to constantly hunt down pickups feeling pretty bad in general.
For more hybrid or melee builds it’s an easy pass. You don’t really need it.
Ranged spec vs Melee spec ammo availability really needs a re-balance. Playing hybrid/melee you never struggle for ammo even with heavy use, while on range builds ammo anxiety is constant outside shock-trooper builds.
It’s still the best out of the 3 available options as those weren’t reworked nor buffed and are were pale in comparison before the ammo aura nerf already. The other 2 options are so bad I’d rather have -1 talent point instead of being able to pick one of those.
The nerf itself made ammo management in most pub games worse, and I don’t understand why it wasn’t an issue for over a year but then it suddenly became “so broken OP” that it had to be hammered. (introducing Auric missions and maelstorm can be a breaking point but still don’t see enough reason for it)