You’re not going to like this video then
TLDR buff weapons around havoc’s meta of needing, great ammo efficiency, high penetration(great horde clear) and solid damage to deal with elite/boss spam.
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But OP is right… you cannot balance around Havoc…
How do you make autopistol worth to use in Havoc? you cannot
Therefor, you cannot balance by considering havoc.
You wanted a game mode where it is close to impossible to finish, don’t ask for buff now.
Fatshark needs to balance around damnation… and not even auric one. OP is right on everything.
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+1 to the idea that balancing around Havoc is insane. I don’t really understand how it’s a topic of conversation to be honest. It’s supposed to be as hard as hell (and yet the super-talented players can still destroy it), and buffing systems external to Havoc (classes, weapons) is going to ruin the rest of the game.
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Yes
Try telling that to the E and his fans
I like that he says mortis is too easy and is a snooze fest because everything can easily beat it with no downsides and says oh we need to buff most of the sandbox to accommodate for one mode in the game while making the rest of the game even more of a snoozefest
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Well I really don’t understand. you want something hard or you want something that will be easy in 6 months?
When reading or saying things like “Exec stance is just way worse than VoC” you have to keep the full picture in mind:
Exec stance is fun and actually balanced on aurics
VoC is obscenely OP
If Havoc gets harder due to a VoC nerf, who cares? It’s meant to be hard. Put up with it. I want the balance around Havoc to stop. Sure if something can get some more Havoc utility and that won’t affect the base game it’s a net positive. Otherwise we are just asking to repeat the cycle “buff everything until the game is easy to the point where we need a new challenge gamemode”
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Mortis Trials boring and too easy but also buff everything for Havoc
Irony is neat.
Yeah, I do disagree with all of it. I think the fail state he displayed is fine if the option to redo the mission with a different comp/build/strat exists.
So like… we have this tier list, right? Only the green circle stuff is Havoc Viable and the rest is trolling. Okay, sure. Lot of those I don’t prefer to use in a regular mission… but the Zarona Revolver? The Handcannon? Where in the Warp did we go wrong where the pocket nuke needs another buff? What does a buff to that thing even look like that doesn’t ruin everything outside of Havoc?
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I mean, VOC might deserve a nerf, but why can’t they also buff Exe Stance and stuff like Smoke Grenades or Marksman Focus, which even in normal games barely anyone uses and performs well with them?
What’s the point in having skill trees when people don’t engage with half the buffs and weapons?
You do realize that even a nerfed VOC (unless it’s gutted to the point it’s unusable) will be the best Veteran ultimate, both in Havoc and auric games, because it’s the most team-oriented ability and because it trumps the main weakness of Veteran, which is lower survivability on average?
I don’t think the game should be balanced around Havoc, but I don’t think 10-20% buffs for some weapons will break the game. Why are you guys are so scared to make Double Barrel or Agripinaa Revolver slightly more consistent?
Because I disagree Exec stance is actually bad. It’s pretty good on aurics. It’s very reliant on which weapon you use with it which is the main issue that I would identify design wise. It doesn’t benefit sniper weapons much if at all because they already have low recoil, low spread and usually do enough damage to oneshot. Which is pretty contrary to what the whole left tree is themed after and is trying to do.
However, with a weapon that actually benefits from hitting some better breakpoints and getting a strong recoil + spread reduction, it’s actually fantastic. This can be stuff like autoguns which gain extreme power per bullet from it and marksmans focus, even shotguns, but it can also apply to bolters with specific builds gaining the ability to oneshot things you couldn’t dream of without this.
The issue actually and genuinely is that VoC is just so OP that it blows those benefits out of the water. I’m not saying exec stance is perfect because it could use modifiers that make it useful on sniper weps somehow to be thematically consistent (don’t ask me how). But it does actually have really good benefits. It’s also good visibility help which isn’t to be underestimated in this game, at least when not using mods for it at which point you’re arguably just cheating (but that’s not a discussion for here, just saying it’s not a valid point against the outlines being powerful). It’s just that when you’re weighing breakpoints, weapon handling and wallhacks against being basically invincible and extending that to your team you’re picking the team invincibility.
Also nobody is ready for this one yet but weapons specialist is also obscenely OP on low mag, high throughput weps like the DB shotty or revolver. In this case, I agree that the DB shotty needs to be better balanced to be fun without wep specialist, too.
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Honestly I just find exc stance boring
All it is, is veteran, veterans harder
That’s the appeal to me, when I play a veteran I want to be shooting my gun, not cast defensive aoe spells. Although I agree many of the stat buff actives are boring, exec stance manages to actually be interesting via the kill-to-keep-it-on and wallhack mechanics. Using it for the insta swap is also great.
I think generally many abilities should be less impactful, this isn’t a hero shooter. The base gameplay is very interesting, adding an ability that CCs every enemy on the screen and makes you damage immune is actually incredibly lame and lets you ignore the excellent base gameplay.
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True but since dt is
Enemies spawn 5 meters away from you and get into a full sprint to hit you exc stance gets ruined by you have to keep your gun out, since dt is all about being a hybrid of both melee and ranged it just feels wrong.
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It does have the insta weapon swap thing built in to help with hybrid combat specifically. They even changed it so it stays on if you wep swap. Also, it has stun immunity, suppression immunity, and even makes you stagger harder, so it does actually let you shoot better and safely if you want to be playing ranged focus.
It’s quite a powerful active, and I think it’s solely rated this badly because it’s next to shout, which is stupid broken OP. Stealth also breaks the game but differently and in less appreciable ways for randoms in a pug mission. That and because it doesn’t actually benefit sniper weapons in obvious ways unless you really delve into breakpoints, which someone who doesn’t know the game well won’t really think to do, making the obvious sniper+exec stance combo a bit of a noob trap in this sense
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Really nice to see someone share this sentiment, starting to feel like I’m going mad over on the exec stance thread.
I also think it’s pretty fun for laspistol personally. Can help with some really nice breakpoints and makes hipfire obscenely accurate, which lets you be very mobile while hitting shots. Feels nice.
You mentioned autoguns and while it’s not optimal I genuinely miss Exe on brauto when I don’t run it. Even without befitting from the weakspot bonus, the +25% damage and especially spread/recoil reduction is extremely noticeable in speeding up TTK and significantly increasing your effective range.
Exe isn’t bad. I wouldn’t mind maybe seeing some fire rate/reload speed thrown in there, maybe as a sub node. Bigger they are could probably use an additional bonus to be more attractive. But even those changes are really just on my “nice to have” list, not things it direly needs.
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I agree that the enemy highlight feature is the best part of the Exe Stance. I honestly don’t even consider its damage buffs, they are placebo most of the times.
Very few weapons benefit from reduced spread, and if they do, they are already so underpowered you might as well run something else (basically all ballistic ammo autoguns and shotguns). In the past I used to run Exe Stance with Braced Autogun MK8 a LOT, but in the current balance it’s an utterly useless weapon that requires all the rending/brittleness talents and ammo in the world to be a competitive elite-killer even to middling stuff like Las pistol, which is my favorite ranged weapon right now.
I mean, some high end players believe that Exe Stance makes Agripina Revolver consistently oneshot bosses, and of course it’s always accompanied by showcases in Psykhanium, not actual gameplay where bosses bounce around and hide their weakspot by targeting different players, which I honestly find a bit disingenuous and a weird way to brag.
Why would you need to reduce spread on the weapon that already has insane accuracy on hipfire at base? Which breakpoints does it help with? Most non-armored targets die to a few bodyshots from the original laspistol, especially if you use Infernus as one of the blessings.
Honestly strong disagree. Autoguns are absolutely fine, great weapons that tear aurics apart just fine. Shotguns are odd and i’d describe them as worse revolvers with bad ammo econ and weird mechanics that make them hard to actually use, they should probably be changed to have less hostile-to-players ADS and pellet mechanics. As alsozara said though even the laspistol benefits a lot, doesn’t get more meta than that. Recon lasguns do too.
Haven’t tested it with the agripina revolver yet but that’s just cause I don’t like that wep a lot. But to reiterate I don’t think you can seriously call autoguns underpowered. Maybe some of the headhunter marks suck to use. Infantry autos and braced autos are absolutely great, maybe even overtuned, and exec stance plays to their strengths. They have the defined weakness of not dealing with carapace well but that’s an acceptable drawback given that carapace isn’t that threatening to a veteran anyway.
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You don’t need Exe Stance for Recons. It was my most used weapon during season one of Havoc. I often had the most damage done to bosses and was the one person to kill all the shooters. I mean, Exe is fine on recon, but it doesn’t make it suddenly 200% better. Even the fastest firing mark can be used without Exe Stance, and the one with most damage is already very accurate. Even with Exe Stance buffs it still needs multiple weakspot hits on many targets, like Maniacs or Scab/Dreg Gunners. I mean, shooting 1-2 seconds longer is not that big of a difference.
I used Vraks Headhunter MK3 with burst fire a lot in the past, and it’s so much weaker nowadays, even with Exe Stance. Borderline unusable. And actually I can’t even remember the last time I’ve seen someone else play with it. I think it was over a year ago.
The only autogun that’s still good is the broken one that everyone ran in the past. Columnus, I believe. And the problem is, Psyker with Scriers Gaze completely blows Vet out of water both on recons and autoguns in auric. Just better synergies with the class and better survivability due to additional movement speed, auto-dodge and crits heal. And on scriers it actually benefits both melee and ranged, unlike Exe Stance, so you’re not forcing yourself into ranged only mode.
It’s not just carapace that is weakness of autoguns. Autoguns require way more ammo on average than meta picks to kill Ragers, Mutants and Maulers. Even with Exe Stance buffs, the spray pattern is unideal on brace autoguns. There’s a tech where you can do fast taps of mouse button to make very accurate shots with Brace Autoguns, since the first shot is always close to the center of the screen. This allows to kill snipers and bombers across the area like the last room of Consignment Yard. I figured this tech out when I was playing a lot of Stealth/MK8, so that I don’t need to run Exe Stance.
Infantry Lasguns benefit from Exe Stance the most, and they are just so weak compared to Las Pistol and Recon. You can also use Exe Stance with Bolter to 2 shot Crushers with Surgical on auric, but again, I’m not sure about that 1-2 ammo difference. And you could stack both Exe and Focus Them for insane boss damage on Bolter, but in my experience of both normal games and Havoc, just Focus Them is more than enough.
So to reiterate my point, most weapons don’t really need Exe Stance to perform well, and those that do are some of the weakest weapons in the game.
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Yeah it’s pretty funny that you have exc stance give you a 25% weakpoint damage bonus but there’s a perk that gives you a 30% one permanently
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Fully share this sentiment, I think at most havoc should be the harder challange and any time balance needs to be considered then it should either be adjusted to fit more around damnations/aurics weapon balance or custom adjustments spesfic to the mode then having the whole balance overhauled. Besides that I think the armor should be earned through other means making new players feel less forced into the mode
I always saw it as a kind of new game plus in the same fashion of dark souls so it being slightly more challanging and a bit bull at times fits it best imo
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