Underpowered tools should be buffed, and overpowered tools should be nerfed. There’s a power level equilibrium to be reached and I just don’t think a game where the current meta is the STANDARD is going to be made into a healthy game in anything resembling a reasonable frame of time. I just want them to get the damn glaring balancing issues fixed already so that they can FINALLY focus on expanding the game in meaningful ways.
It’s not that I’m stressing over them nerfing things too much. It’s that every time they buff the weaker weapons and skills, they never buff them enough. And yeah, the strong stuff does get toned down. But the weapons that were supposed to shine in these updates—they feel almost exactly the same as before, buff or no buff… and honestly, that’s what’s really frustrating.
I’m not even at “frustrated” anymore. I’m at the point where I just hope they actually see what we’re saying and do something about the number of Braced Autoguns. But every update is just tiny buffs and nothing really new… It’s just kind of sad at this point.
I dunno about that chief. Take a look at this ridiculous talent post buff:
Let’s also not forget the crazy sequence of buffs that put plasma in a state to require nerfing in the first.
Then there’s duelling sword that was mostly used as a mobility tool pre patch 13…
I dunno I think a lot of their buffs are pretty substantial. I calculated the effective ammo increase Ogryn can get from the PBB buff + right tree in a thread recently and it went from about 1.5x effective ammo pre PBB buff to 3.6x effective ammo during PBB post buff… That is a huge increase.
Depends how you look at it. Power creep is the reason why elite spam in Havoc to be further “buffed” with Rotten and other Havoc modifiers. Busted weapons allow players to kill elites before any sort of real“player skill check”. What do I mean by that? Elites force players to be more on defensive, watch spacing, enemy attack animations, and dodge in timely manner. If players can 1-3 shot heavy elites, that skill check barely ever happens.
So Fatshark in their wisdom started buffing elites, instead of nerfing the armour busting weapons. Somehow they ignored the impact that is going to have on other weapons. All this has achieved is make those busted weapons even MORE meta. Other weapons and builds have to struggle vs big armour waves even more. 
I haven’t touched duelling sword in Havoc once, and I couldn’t care less about obsessively using meta picks, unless I genuinely like those weapons for other reasons. The current trend is just anti-fun in my book. Fatshark Havoc design decisions do not help with playstyle variety in pub Havoc players. People just get too easily indoctrinated into “meta” picks due to the game mode difficulties, and their own insecurities. This at least partially explains the recent reviewing bombing after few small nerfs to what is considered meta in the Asian community.
Don’t worry neither can the sound engine or spawn director
in order for that to happen players would need to recieve a lot of nerfs, but everytime that gets proposed people lose their minds and start review bombing, so the only option they have to counter-act the powercreep is to keep making the enemies stronger and spawn more of them
I had a nightmare once about playing a gritty early WWII shooter and I had an anti-tank rifle but it was buffed so it could penetrate pretty much any armor and the RoF was that of a light semi-automatic and it had some AoE so it was good against infantry and the game started spawning swarms of tanks and I realized I was awake, playing DT.
They can just add more new enemies if they want—no way there are only this many Nurgle followers. The rest are just “new” enemies with a hard shell slapped on them. And if they go ahead with all those nerfs like you said, it’s just gonna make things worse for new players. Veterans won’t care—they’ll still run the same strong setups, while the stuff that already sucks becomes completely unplayable. The game’s balance is already a mess.
What they should do is buff the weapons that feel like toys right now, or at least tone down the ridiculous number of Crushers and Maulers. That’d actually help make the game feel healthy. Instead, they just keep nerfing players—and what has that ever given us? No new enemies, no new weapons. Are we seriously the only ones on the forums asking for more of both?
Just imagine: Vets getting more meltaguns, Zealots getting more relics, Psykers getting more staves, Ogryns getting bigger and cooler weapons—going up against fresh enemies. Like, I saw someone suggest Nurgle bugs the other day, and honestly, that would bring in new players and make vets lose their minds in the best way.
And on top of that, the weapon variety is just sad. It’s been years, and we’ve gotten less than ten new weapons for the original classes. That’s way too slow… man.
I think the problem is they’re not doing both at the same time. It’s always usually some light handed nerfs or buffs and enemies not really changing much at all. Yeah I want less excessive spawns too but when are they coming really?
Personally, I think they ought to just reverse course on that “Miniboss” idea and tweak Crusher health accordingly. If we can only have this if it comes to nerfing Kraks/Boombringer/ect as well then so be it, but I’d rather have tools of that power level be weaker and not need them to be so present than what we currently have.
Flak enemies should also have their sweeping health buff reduced as well, it’s not as urgent since Flak is easier to deal with vs Carapace but it’s the same principle. They were buffed with the justifaction that Scabs would be tougher but fewer in number compared to the Dregs but that has simply not been the case, they’re just as numerous as the Dregs.
You know what would actually be a neat idea for a Miniboss? Packmasters. Give them the health of a weakened monstrosity in Maelstroms but with the same approximate spawnrate(2-4 per match and independent of regular monstrosity/daemonhost spawns) and a more generous amount of hounds accompanying them. It wouldn’t be foolproof, but that’d be a far more deserving enemy to be a mini-boss than a Crusher ever would.
I think they’re more wary of overbuffing now based on previous mistakes like duelling sword.
heavy sword still feels mid after the rework lol
I agree, although I was never a huge fan of it in the first place. I don’t like that half the swings are at weird angles with heavy sword.
Have you tried all the Mks? I feel like it’s a rare case where everyone has their favourite moveset and there isn’t exactly a right answer, but you probably won’t gel with all of them.
I like to use the VI and throw in heavy uppercuts while making swish swoosh noises (it’s fun, trust).
From the creator of “Devil claw sword is too powerful” and “Does armor piercing mines affect havoc too much” comes another outrage farming low effort thread.
What happened in the devil claw thread anyway? I saw it got deleted but I haven’t seen what could’ve caused that.
I don’t think it’s outrage farming. Calling the devils claw too strong is clumsy phrasing but if you read the thread it was about the parry and the parry really is mechanically stupid. Not sure how much of the inflammatory title is down to translation though and no idea why it got deleted either.
Think it’s not beyond reason to say that Kraks affect balance too much, there’s certainly multiple modifiers at this point that just feel balanced around stuff like Kraks.
And the concept outlined in this thread is pretty true too, the game often feels terrible if it spams too many crushers because it turns from a horde game into a kiting simulator. Especially if you don’t have kraks, boombringer, dueling sword, whatever. I’ve been playing VT2 more and more and wow it’s amazing how you actually have enemies that aren’t chaos warriors that can kill you. Even lone ambient spawn rats will mess you up if you don’t respect them. Still feels like a horde game and you get the joy of cleaving through them instead of having to kite armor 24/7, and as such weapons like the 1h sword feel fine
Don’t think it’s an attempt at being inflammatory and I don’t disagree with any of these threads at the core. The point of this thread seems to be that there’s bigger balance changes required than small numbers tweaks on a braced autogun to make it fun to use, and if you look at the big picture that’s spot on
Most weapons right now can barely do anything effective against these Crushers anymore. You really think old weapons like the power sword, lasgun, or entrenching tool can actually deal with them quickly? The number of Crushers has gotten to the point where you’re forced to ask yourself whether your melee can even handle those disgusting Crusher “walls” fast enough. But every time, I just don’t see FatShark actually giving these weapons meaningful buffs. So many weapons are struggling more and more against the rising tide of Crushers. In Auric runs, people are getting wiped by Crusher blobs more and more often.
Honestly, it’s not like we can rely on FatShark to buff them one by one—even the power sword after its latest buff still can’t deal with carapace enemies properly. I once saw a Veteran on Heresy difficulty get two-shot by a Crusher while using an entrenching tool. His melee only did like 300 damage. And there were two more Crushers behind him… Is this really where we’re at? Too many weapons are just being held hostage by these damn Crushers.
Right now, the game’s “balance” basically just comes down to whether your weapon can deal with Crushers effectively or efficiently. But that just ends up making weapons that specialize in other areas weaker and weaker, because they can’t handle those guys. The power sword is great for quickly and satisfyingly clearing out hordes of poxwalkers and shooters—but every new wave comes with a ton of Crushers and other elites, which makes the power sword feel useless, or even completely unviable. The Zealot’s thunder hammer can deal with Crushers really well, but that power comes at the cost of horde clear speed. There are plenty of ranged weapons that can handle hordes. I feel like either they need to tone down the number of Crushers and Maulers, or just let most melee weapons actually deal with the ever-growing number of Crushers.
Definitely true in havoc 40, anecdotally most of my wipes were from crushers. Not any special, or bosses(-plasma gun boss he is a run ender if he snipes a team mate)
Its not just the density or hp pool, if the server lags at all during the encounter insta death.