I’ve seen many many posts talking about Skitarii and a bunch about the upcoming expeditions area, but no mentions on the new enemies coming to the game; Man-sized shield enemies.
Honestly I’m more excited at the idea of what these new enemies can bring to the game than either the dlc class or new expeditions area.
How will these enemies affect the game’s combat flow? How will their shields interact with our 119 different weapons and our many talents?
The news of this enemy coming to the game in combination with Fatshark’s recent balance patch has me thinking they’re finally taking the forum’s balance complaints into consideration. At least we’ll have hordes that are slightly more threatening, but I fear the possibility this enemy might release and its existence to be inconsequential in face of the players’ overwhelming damage, survivability and mobility. Ideally, I hope that this enemy is accompanied by larger changes to reduce player power and perhaps an additional difficulty. It’s what I want most, for the 4-player co-op game to be able present challenging gameplay on its highest difficulty (Auric) for 4 players and its enemy roster to present tangible threats in fewer numbers compared to today.
I feel extremely validated, in the houndmaster reveal I said I hope shield mobs are on the way and next roster update they’re coming. Now we just need mobs with high DoT resistance.
Hopefully these new man-sized shielded enemies have breakable shields like in Vermintide otherwise they will be just as annoying and obstructive as the Bulwark.
I mean, it’s advertised just as prominently as the expeditions area, barely at all but the news of the new expeditions area at least sparked more discourse than the news of the shield enemy has. Then I figured I would be the one to make a thread on it.
There’s a Cultist (“Dreg”) Vanguard which I hope is Melee, and a Traitor (“Scab”) Vanguard which I hope is Ranged.
The Dregs certainly need more Melee Enemies to fill some of those Dreg Gunner spawns…
Fatshark mentioned that they’re looking to do some adjustments pertaining to Bulwarks after the Crusher spawn reduction, so they’re probably hoping to shift some of those Bulwark spawns to these Vanguard Enemies as well.
I’m excited! Vermintide 2 has an awesome array of Enemy types that Darktide’s been sorely missing. Human-sized Shield Enemies are one of those sorely-missed Enemy types.
Hopefully we get some reworked Blightstormers and Lifeleeches as Scab Battle Psykers and Dreg Rogue Psykers respectively!
They advertised chaos spawn/tox bomber and scab plasma more because they were like 50% of their mid updates. Chaos spawn came with a map (later 2 from a community mission), tox bomber came with penances and scab plasma with a mortis map expansion (reverb echo fart.wav). These shield baddies come alongside Houndmaster/armored pupperinos to regular, Skitarii class and a pointless expeditions map. And le balance changes if I’m really scooping the barrel.
I assume they would work like the Vermintide 2 shield enemies with how they interact with cleave and damage, and breaking after a certain amount of damage. Shielded black rat units in Darktide would be nice. A human sized bulwark.
I’ve seen people acknowledge them here and there but there just isn’t much to talk about I don’t think? I’ll say they are the only reason (they’ve advertised) that I haven’t hit the uninstall yet. So if they are another wet fart addition that doesn’t do much for the sandbox, my watch will end. I’d like to think they will be a successful and good addition with how their equivalents worked in VT2, but I just can’t be bothered to be hopeful anymore.
yeah in vt2 blunt weapons were significantly better at breaking the guard and shield of shield enemies, and considering how non-blunt weapons tend to overperform in darktide (outside of a few honest weapons caught in the crossfire like devil’s claw and heavy sword), this could end up being a nice buff to those blunt weapons. I’m not sure if shielded chafe will be enough for that though. If the shielded chafe are well done and well received, I’d like to see elite versions of them too like in vt2 which should really help even the playing field and add some variety to melee elite spawns.
really my big hope from this update is that since they were talking about breakable shields and addressing bulwarks in previous dev blogs that they allow blunt weapons to permanently break a bulwark’s shield and make them easier to hit.
