This, this so very, very much.
I remember doing Havoc when it came out, I jumped what difficulty levels I could, then did a couple 40’s before eventually getting a win. Each one was a nail biter, and the one I finally won the team was in lock step, everyone did what they could, the Veteran was getting every ammo drop and still barely keeping up with the enemies he needed to deal with. I on my Zealot had to ’ clutch up’ a time or two, reviving half the team from the pylons on multiple occasions with chorus after desperately getting one team member up so they could get the rest while I stunned. We got through by the skin of our teeth with a vet, a psyker, and two zealots, it was exhilarating, and while I couldn’t say I wanted to do that anxiety inducing of a fight until next weeks rotation, I knew said next weeks run would be that much fun and I was excited for when I had the energy for it again (and am happy I did all my Havoc runs at 40 in the first iteration of Havoc, because holy heck *points at the rest of my ‘essay’).
I did a Havoc 38 yesterday with 4 arbites and we walked through the mission with one down/death, 3 missions later (they where going for True Survivor and I figured I might as well help) we got through without anyone dropping below half health. No conservation of ammo, no needing a ‘specific team comp’, just tripping over everything, everyone gets one hit of the ammo crate (or sometimes one person gets 2 since another wasn’t using it as much), and nobody died despite similar stakes and level of enemy spam.
I would like someone to tell me why our team, being this heavily separated, should be at these health levels after dealing with a captain, a hexbound deamonhost, and a gunner/elite wave on top of that (the two other team mates not shown are behind me/in front of the little room area pushing forward/keeping the enemies completely at bay by themselves):
There was a point shortly after this Kenndrik here was the target of a successful summon of a Deamon Host (since the other guys where pushed so far up we couldn’t get to it), he’s fine though, don’t worry about him, just slowly walking backward with his shield, he’s fine:
And the clips just do not stop.
I unfortunately didn’t get one during the first run of the night where I was completely separated from the team, stuck in a wave, Captain hammering me left right and center, and I just activated Castigator stance, stuffed a Concentration Stim into my bones, and walked back to my team in two Combat Ability casts. While not the same, this clip is similar in nature:
My man’s Judge-Mortis gets completely cut off, separated by a beast of Nurgle and a whole host of ragers and bulwarks, a death sentence for most other classes, with an Ogryn likely getting trappered or dogged because he got pulled out of coherency.
Na, he’s fine, a lil health loss and some corruption, doesn’t really matter to much.
I truly think high havoc is just Auric now at this point, granted one has to bring Ogryn/Arbite OR the best builds possible on the other classes, but like, come on. Balance is generated via a character having to pick between having damage OR surviviability, but we are rapidly approaching the point where everyone gets both. Veteran used to be ‘one of the more broken classes’ at the point where shout was released and all their talent nodes just gave them ludicrous amounts of stats and damage. Now they are literally the ‘base line’, and my friend group talks about how Veteran is like ‘the most balanced class’ of all of them, just because their survivability is conditional and it’s balanced by their incredible levels of damage output (Psyker woudl be a close second but Inferno + Perilous Combustion Exists so haahaha), said output just being the norm now.
This game is rapidly approaching the point of being ‘solved’ even more heavily than the ‘golden toughness days’. Now you don’t even need a source of it, just walk in with 4 Arbite’s and you get True Survivor/Havoc Forged for free with little recourse. I was anxious when starting the night wondering what might come at us given the stories I’ve heard about the ‘new havoc 2.0’. By the end of the night I was going off on my own scrounging for ammo scraps because ‘why not? the wave can’t kill me anyway’, and just playing it like Auric Mortis Trial.
I know I complained about not having build variety in high havoc, but this is not the way I wanted it solved. I wanted more weapons to be able to do comparable damage and maybe a talent or two giving a bit more DR/Emperors Fading light toughness and health debuff to get removed along with the ammo reduction. But this? Making everyone so overstated to the warp and back that everything below havoc 40 is a cake walk? No, stop, we’ve all said it before and we will continue to say it.
HAVOC SHOULD NOT BE THE BENCH MARK FOR BALANCE!
It should be the place people excel and do high ranks of because they are good and using the best, with MID TIER HAVOC (20-30) maybe being considered a bench mark. If you balance around Havoc 40, you kill the game, and that’s already happening. Please, FS, stooppppp. I don’t want this game to be another Destiny 2, that I shelve because it’s functionally unplayable as you just throw VFX in front of you and ignore all the game mechanics because you just auto win for pressing buttons. please, there’s still time, I beg of you there’s still timmmme.