Because it basically limits your ranged options to counter ranged enemies, which are now by far the most dangerous ones to deal with in Havoc, especially with the buffs to gunners.
Some background.
One of the player’s trials in general play is to deal with ranged enemies swiftly so they don’t overwhelm you with ranged damage, on higher difficulties this becomes increasingly difficult due to increased enemy count, so if you see groups of gunners idling oftentimes you want to basically smash them all at once before they scatter like insects to the four corners of the world where they hide and wait for you to pass so they can open up in full auto with their firearms.
It’s simply not possible with Pus-hardened Skin to strike groups of gunners and such and destroy them all at once. It’s not an impossible mod to play around, but it mostly just results in a more tedious play experience, since it limits your options in a way that is not fun. One of the least enjoyable things of Havoc has been that enemy HP has been scaled upward, destroying certain breakpoints that many weapons rely on to deal damage effectively, but Pus-hardened skin really just makes this even worse.
Given how hard-hitting ranged enemies are in Havoc, you are punished even more for making mistakes and taking risks in trying to engage in melee, especially since unless there’s only one ranged enemy around, you’re putting yourself in exponentially increased damage just to approach them, because you have to weather their attacks as you get close. The player also often has to make uninformed decisions to do this because, sometimes you can approach a group of dreg gunners, and then there’s seven more hidden behind a wall waiting for you, and even if you are aware enough to pick up on this as you make your approach, you’re still basically doomed at that point.
Already Pus-hardened Skin is building a reputation amongst early players of Havoc as a modifier to outright avoid, and this is going to be a problem going forward I can imagine and be very frustrating because, by comparison all the other modifiers aren’t at all similar in how they scale up the challenge, Blight, Moebians and Cranial Corruption all are basically laughable in comparison.
I can already see on the horizon this mod basically being a curse where if you have it no one will want to join your lobby since it nearly guarantees a loss, more so than any of the other mods.
