Eh, as I and others have said, the limiting factor is players anyways, I don’t really care TBH, leave it as is, or cut penetration in half and see if anyone notices.
Bolter IS better now anyway! I wonder what the freakout will be when the proper fix comes in, IF?
I’m sure you have the reading comprehension to realise what point I was making there, and it wasn’t to argue Bolter vs Plasma (though personally I do think their functions differ enough to make direct comparison a bit silly).
Every time FS over buffs something people soon start clambering to bring everything else up to that point and so the incredibly tedious power creep loop we’ve been stuck in continues.
Plasma is still pretty absurd measured against the actual missions but that can be swept under the rug as long as there’s something stronger to point our finger at instead 
Oh I got it, you don’t need to tell me about the overnerf overbuff pendulum, I’m rather sick of it.
I’m also pretty sure whatever opinions shared here are weighted rather low, and that’s probably for the best in the grand scheme of things.
P.S. You guys are making sound like we’re comparing a knife to a heavy pick, when it’s more like a duelling sword MK4 to a power sword.
i think people are focusing on balance when all members of the squad are alive. which is okay, but nobody is putting them in real action in various situation, for example soloing or so.
for example, the quickness of reloading 5 bullets while clutching, is way better than reloading a plasma or bolter for that context.
imo recent bolter buff was good, and it’s really nowhere near to be game breaking.
you can kill an entire scab gunner patrol and some ragers and maybe a crusher. but after that, there is also more stuff to come usually. stuff that gets deleted anyway by many other weapons of the game, bolter just make it more visible.
Unfortunately, some people would view it such a way. What I mean to say is that because Crafting is no longer a huge issue that everyone can rally behind, we will probably be a lot more divided and prone to such folly from this point on. The Crafting Overhaul itself was a major success in my opinion.
For sure, I am so glad that I can actively try out new builds now. Trying out new build formulae is significantly more fun now that Hadron can no longer brick my weapons.
I took the black pill on this one.
With the most recent balance pass the amount of weapons that you can point to being op or trivialize content became the majority.
We aren’t in a loop persay as I see it. Instead stuff that was under got pushed up, while strong (“op”) stuff remained unchanged.
With this it’s like 4-5 ranged and melee weapons on each class that can perform to a degree that someone might call OP are pretty “balanced” against each other, and the next step down still incredibly powerful.
In a way this is like the most balanced the game ever was. Difficulty? That’s another question.
On a side note weapons like Knife I still see as a problem mostly due to the playstyle it enables which is see as very higly toxic, and there is still a lot of other stuff I think needs to be ironed out, and wierdness to be fixed balance-wise, but these thing are more like cross-class balance, and playstyle difference balance.
Define “Plasma cope”
Yeah I get it. It’s not even the weapon balance itself that mostly bothers me it’s the hoops the AI director is forced to jump through to try to create a semblance of difficulty.
Enemy spam at these levels is kind of tedious and the sense of pacing and ebbs and flows in intensity that made me fall in love with Tide gameplay in the first place is almost a thing of the past at this point.
I don’t really see a way this is addressed without bringing general player power down quite a bit. I don’t believe difficulty 6 is the answer and I struggle to visualise what a satisfying difficulty 6 would even look like at this point.
Not to mention it would be 6 months tops before people have successfully demanded FS buff everything up to be “viable” for this new difficulty and negate its entire purpose. We’ve literally seen it happen with the Auric board already.
It’s a bitter pill for a lot of the players to swallow but I see no way forward for a healthy game state without significant player nerfs.
Though obviously I’m aware I’m unlikely to get my wish here. FS have slowly become cowards over the years and the community is, on average, completely clueless about how to keep a game like this satisfying.
Wild anyone is talking about xyz being OP when 90% of the population doesn’t run Auric, and about half the population that does shouldn’t regardless of what “OP” set up they are using.
Same debate happened in V2, anything remotely decent was OP, and everything needed to be brought down to wet noodle tier, or anti fun boring talents… “5% attack speed, if I use daggers its a .067% dps increase, thats so broken!”
moonfire bow nerfed to the point to remove an unique visual AOE was crazy to me 
and kinda sad to see a visual downgrade of it because people complained too much when javelin existed back then.
then they gutted the moonfire by being not unique and just boring where a longbow kinda performs way more better 
Yeah they handled moonbow pretty badly but I think a lot of that was not having a clear plan for its intended niche to begin with.
Pseudo longbow + hagbane with infinite ammo and little regard for headshots was a pretty bad starting place, then they had no idea how to nerf it other than tuning everything down to the point the infinite ammo was its main remaining selling point (something no longer even unique to it).
Mods had some interesting ideas, like turning it into a massively energy consuming railgun that was impractical for reliable special sniping but did devastating damage into density.
To reiterate I think they set themselves up for failure by failing to come up with a niche for it in the first place.
Look at the overall kills, and overkill damage. Those numbers aren’t that crazy, its just the kickback overkill damage mainly.
why would anyone run auric? you go in, there’s two guys that couldn’t handle a tough malice run trying to get titles and the third guy drops out as soon at the match starts. there’s no reason to be there, whole thing sucks.
This
And also, I think that there are also several too strong talents. Not a lot, but several are really so strong (duellist, shroudfield for zealot, precision strike for veteran, there surely one for the psyker)
Yeah having to wonder if your teammates have any sense of ammo efficiency does become stressful especially on harder difficulties and you got teammates wasting entire magazines on hordes lol. I haven’t tried the bolter since the buff with my zealot, when I decide to switch back over I’ll definitely give it a shot
You run Auric for precisely that reason - learning to adapt and overcome whatever challenges you may face. Half the fun of this game is joining games with randoms and having to face new challenges because everyone is different. With a well rounded and experienced team even the most difficult content becomes a walk in the park. I have two videos on my youtube showing precisely that - one game was with pugs and it was an absolute clusterf*ck the entire game that took 30+ minutes. Then the same map, same modifier with a well rounded/experienced team - took 21 minutes and had no deaths.
Ragers are such a pain now, I swear they spawn in huge groups and just pour in from different directions. When it’s a nurgles blessing modifier and they turn green they are probably the most dangerous enemy in the game now - on my Veteran anyways. Also Happy Forum Anniversary! lol
oh yea, ragers sometimes can be an issue when paired with many things.
recently i’m having fun with duelling sword 
the special attack with also some havies it staggers them and it’s nice on zealot with dodge crit build. also thanks !