I’m not against that type of foe in general, having a burst damage gunner that doesn’t remove all your toughness and half HP in one shot as sniper does is a good addition to the game. But I completely miss the point of them having carapace helmets, can somebody help me here?
It makes them harder to kill for skillful players using high-precision weapons capable of one-shotting gunners to the head (revolver, zealot’s throwing knives etc) - so worsens skill expression. It makes it harder to kill them in melee too, as good single-target melee strikes are strikedowns usually, so they naturally hit them in the head. The last one is borderline FS griefing its players with “nope, so what if you’ve already closed the gap to the shooting type of enemy and now it can’t shoot you anymore - you’ll still be killing it twice as longer as the regular gunner for no reason at all, because blow us”.
I don’t really see a point of making them SO much bother. It really should be the same old “they can harrass you from the distance, but when you reach them just die and let you move on” kind of enemy.
To me this post isn’t a valid reason to rework the elite enemy. They’re elite for a reason. Giving them a carapace helmet is something you have to deal with. Having a variety of the plasma mob gunners, maybe some without a helmet spewing heretical banter and foaming at the mouth is one thing but changing the elite because it doesn’t fit your play style seems a bit silly.
All things considered you already have done half the work by identifying the head takes dmg differently than the body, ie carapace armor. A lot of players don’t care or notice these things.
I completely disagree. I do not want new enemies introduced to be, or feel like, the same old enemy.
Yes, they are elite - same as regular gunners. Shotgunners and Machinegunners are classified as elite. And they don’t have carapace helmets too. They can be a great threats at a distance, but when you finally got to them in melee range, there is literally no reason to further delay the inevitable, they fulfilled its purpose. Making them more “spongy” when hit in melee just creates more irritation of “die bugger, just die at last” kind while you are bashing them. Hardly something you want your players to feel in a game. They don’t even fight back at that point, they just taking your time needlessly.
They are not, they are different kind of foe already - a burst damage range mass-spawned elite. That’s enough difference already. Making them “more spongy” don’t make them “more different”, only more irritating.
Well they are a heretic, they will fight until they die so thats a pretty good reason to me that they dont just immediately give up. Plus the enemy takes out its melee weapon when you engage in melee, this is a victory in itself and a great way to approach the elite plasma-gunners when they appear during runs.
It’s not, it’s unrelated metrics entirely. Slower rates of fire is compensated by higher burst damage, that’s their main idea. As they are also mass-spawned, that burst may be really threatening, close to sniper’s shots. There is 0 reasons to do anything else here, making them different from the rest of the gunners, neither of which have carapace helmets. Because they were designed by somebody who understand balance. Melee elites need armor to survive heavy bashing in melee - but vulnerable at range; range elite enemies have advantage of range but vulnerable in melee. “Spongy” range enemy already leans towards a boss type enemy’s domain, but it’s mini-bosses that spawn in dozens, turning it into irritating bs.
so far they spawn in close proximity, are slow as fk and in melee range in a few seconds
you don’t let reapers spray at you either do you?
the fact that they are better armored in the head doesn’t make them boss like encounters, it incentivizes to not remain all ranged for the engagement, how is that a bad thing?
if someone pulls off headshots on demand he shouldn’t have an issue sliding into a few plasma gunner to whack em in melee.
before power creep was a thing and I’m tired of slashing through dozens of em in one place with my pickaxe cause only in numbers they remain somewhat of a threat.
3 gunners like in the early stages ?
the cheap havoc has them as firing squad ad nausea to make em relevant, otherwise you’d sneeze at em and they’d drop.
barely one heavy attack more to the legs with a pickaxe and they drop just like the maulers and ragers they’re usually paired with in a mixed horde.
“IF” other issues should be a havoc only thing, good, keep that festering contained in there, people seem to like difficulty based on numbers stacked against em, so let em i guess
auric maelstrom they’re a background enemy like all the rest and my intend for balance ends right there.
games atrocious as it is with stuff “balanced” around havoc.
See the thing is they are like that if you bring specific weapons lol. “Just shoot elsewhere haven’t you heard of the mauler bro” Some will say, yeah well the mauler is a melee enemy that closes to melee distance all on his own. Pulling out your lasgun to dispatch ranged threats, you know, the whole reason you bring that gun, just to hit a ranged enemy with plink plink plink feels terrible. And then you can just take recon las, plasma, revolver and delete these guys no matter where you hit them.
But right, we needed an enemy that further reinforced the existing meta and pushed even more weapons out via the carapace loadout check.
Carapace is already annoying and the most oppressive armor type, adding it to a ranged enemy just made this game’s balance problems worse, even if only slightly.
has them as firing squad ad nausea to make em relevant, otherwise you’d sneeze at em and they’d drop.