How many times have you attempted it, and of those how many were successful? Yes, it’s a short fight – I finished it in 6 minutes. But just because it’s short doesn’t make it easy. It took me 7 (I think?) tries to finish one with a pick-up group. It requires a fair bit of coordination / situational awareness which makes it pretty challenging, especially if you’re running with a PUG.
I don’t think you need anything too specific for hard mode. I did it with a PUG without chorus or anything last night, running a normal build (i.e., not something specifically cooked up for this encounter). It’s mostly a coordination and situational awareness check.
Unfortunately, just as with Auric Maelstrom missions, it became clear very fast that randos were simply not up to the task.
Squad members were dying to things that shouldn’t be possible so I chose to go to Discord and completed it easily with the first group I joined.
Voice comms while fun were not actually needed past dividing responsibilites through the team before we entered the mission.
Most time spent on the comms were just us joking around with each other to pass time.
Give it a couple of days and I think that the majority of PUG will be able to clear it at a fairly high rate without comms or being premade.
It’s an easy fight and can be completed by any squad compisition and loadouts.
Although some combos and build trivilize the fight, just like with Vermintide and Darktide Auric Maelstrom and Hi-STG before it, it’s more about the individual player skill level then what builds and weapon loadouts you bring.
The best advice I can give is; don’t try to rush the fight, focus the ranged guy first and have someone tank the Crushers, Ragers etc. so the rest of the team can focus on the bosses.
So when you say it’s an “easy” fight, what you mean is, it’s not a hard DPS or gear check, and you don’t have to run a specific team composition to win it? I agree with that for sure. I don’t think it’s easy in the sense of actually requiring some coordination tho. Not necessarily voice comms – I cleared it with a PUG group without voice comms – but your group has to be coordinated enough to clear mines, stay out of the gas, and burn down the shields at roughly the same time.
When I say “easy” I mean that it doesnt require you to remember patterns and phases like World of warcraft.
It doesn’t require you to have the reflexes of a teenager.
Nothing during the fight will insta kill you: you have plenty of time to react to things and for decision making.
There is no sudden spawn of five silent Poxwalker’s jumping out of a door and and insta gibbing you like in Auric Maelstrom missions.
The fight is not a DPS check from my experience. Nothing so far in my 1600 hours of Darktide have really come close to be Remnant 2 APO DPS checks.
Just take it slow and steady, don’t stand in the lava and have someone control the specials and you’ll breeze right through it.
Most people are just very bad at the game and that’s ok.
It would be better if they stayed at the difficulty suited for their skill level instead of playing in modes above their ability, but it is what it is.
With the group I played Ogryn with: we didn’t clear any bombs because the bosses didn’t have the time to do a lot between the gas phases.
Randos were failing at Auric Maelstrom constantly after the class update.
Now, I can once again successfully complete most of the Maelstrom missions without having to break my back trying to carry with my support build.
The best time for Darktide was when we were at 4k players and you would win every game because only the hardcore playerbase were left, but it seem like we are starting to get back to that level slowly.
I guess you haven’t met the shotgunner blackhole spawn yet. You get ONE audio queue that you’re going to be shot, but the dodge doesn’t work on all 15 of them. ;^)
Loner is fine but its mostly just a tax talent to me. It offers very little value to 90% of my builds since the toughness gen doesn’t even work in a fight and is slow enough that it doesn’t matter for the brief periods between “fights” (based on enemy spacing). You get much more value out of the other two nodes. Its just slang for “knife zealot who doesn’t play with the team” by people who don’t understand zealot mechanics or methods.
Yeah it’s a tax talent… but often with stealth builds I just don’t have enough spare points to get one of the better ones. I feel like detouring through shield of contempt to take beacon looks immensely appealing but somehow just doesn’t work as well for me as my repugnant edgelord loner builds do, so
(If I was to sit down and make a Karnak Twins build, it definitely would include that detour through beacon tho)
Luckily for me I mostly play from the middle of the squad since Quorin is built for support, and i want to constantly hit eveyone in the squad with shout, so I rarely get put in a position where I have to face tank the death squad.
Yeah I don’t mind the poison but if I play a slow character and there’s a horde of pox walkers in my way it feels cheap that I am pretty much guaranteed to lose health. Sure if I play zealot or ogyrn with charges and such it’s easy. But a slow psyker really hurts.
I think it needs to be tuned or the change in fans knocks down enemies in the poison so you can rush by them or something.
I think this is the heart of it. The whole team has to be pretty good to beat hard mode. The usual setup where one or two scrubs get carried doesn’t work at all for this encounter because 1) there’s too much stuff happening for one or two players to do everything themselves and 2) if you die you’re completely out of the fight. So everyone has to be reasonably on top of things… which as anyone who PUGs knows is a tall order
I recently swapped to knife Psyker, and it definitely gets across that room quick if you’re looking for a weapon to literally run with. With Heavy Attack movement tech (just charging heavies as you sprint), it’s quick AND can damage on the go without slide cancels needed.
And it’s pretty great for safe horde clear with push attack spam; not sure there’s a safer weapon to throw attacks out of block with, even compared to Combat Swords with Parry (those do handle a rager or two more easily, but has holes in parry uptime) or Force Swords with Deflector (which handle ranged better and shield more efficiently, but can’t do damage out of block nearly as quickly/easily).
I haven’t had any problems with that because I don’t refuse to communicate. Someone invited me to play the secret hard mode and we worked out with the teammates (who were pubs) what builds to use in the lobby. Communication is everything.
Lmao. Honestly Badwin’s short take is the best one here.
Hard mode can only be played on Damnation and is of course harder than the normal Damnation version of the fight. This means that everyone is doing a fight they aren’t used to yet on the hardest difficulty. Naturally the people playing hardmode are split between all the normal unprepared players jumping into the fray like the good Emperor’s soldiers that they are, and the sweaty players that have played so many aurics that they don’t sweat.
Personal recommendations for how to play the fight from my slightly sweaty experience:
Have 1-2 people focus on the bosses and surviving. Be careful of other enemies too!
Have 2 people focus on clearing out specials as fast as possible, then the other enemy spawns, and the bosses only when there are no other threats.
Maybe try to kill the ranged boss first? Might depend on your team comp, but from all my experience those grenades are the biggest danger and getting rid of them as fast as possible really helps take the heat off.
Don’t be stingy with healing. No respawns means that if your team can’t make the revive, it’s over.
The only time limit for the boss fight is your teams’ healthbars, so play it safe over going for risky bursts of boss damage!
So after running hard mode 5 times and failing every time I can say this:
enemy spawns are glitchy AF, constantly getting 5+ stalkers inside each other shooting as fast as a gunner. Shotgunners will also do this occasionally, I have seen a player deleted by this (4 shotgunners hitting them at once as well as the stalkers)
boss knockbacks are dialed up way too much.
the sword twin will randomly decide to dash at a player who has done no damage to them and is kiting the elite pack (normally this is basically instant-death due to knockback and stun)
grenade/mine spam from plasma twin is way too damn high. He tosses out 3-5 every 5-10 seconds or so.
It is all but impossible to pick-up downed allies because of aforementioned knockback, meaning a down is basically a death, due to the corruption BS a down is often a death anyway. So the only reliable way is a vet with res VoC (this is not a good , you need to be immune to their knockback while reviving)
The mission is hard-coded (seemingly) to not give extra med-kits so you only ever get the one. Med kits do not have enough healing capacity for this to be fair if the rest of the map not having a chance of giving you an extra is intended (in 15 total runs I have never seen an extra ammo or med kit)
