If anything, ragers need a gap closing move added to their repertoire. It’s fairly easy to kite backwards when they begin their attack series and just watch them swing through the air.
They certainly do not need a nerf, and the increased HP is more than justified. These days the game director does have a tendency to spit out groups of ragers that are a bit on the large side, but even that doesn’t even bother me that much TBH. Auric missions are meant to be hard, and you’re not supposed to tackle everything by yourself.
Only thing I hate about Rager is their attack’s hitbox is bigger than it look so it’s really hard to spacing correctly if you aren’t using melee that can stagger them.
Hp is fine. Stagger resist I’m on the fence about as I play weapons that can’t stagger them.
I want them to have no hard tracking on some attacks like their counterparts in VT2 so you can dodge behind them for hits (this is their biggest problem imo). In exchange Id like them to also have a distance breaker. They’re real slow bois and could use some help in that department.
I think ragers, individually, are fine. The issue as I see it right now is that they tend to just magically appear in big balls of 10+ individuals, making no noise and, thanks to their height, largely just blending into the pack until they’re on top of you.
I.e, it’s the features that make us aware of their presence and location in advance that need looking at, not their combat stats.
Maybe a nerf to his attack range. Extended hitbox is fine for players but on enemies that can impede your movement and has absolute tracking is awful. Another issue is how their heads bounce when you shoot them in the head. Very annoying when youre using a marksman rifle.
As opposed to a few months ago, they definitely feel like they were overly buffed. Either too much health, or too much stagger resists. Can still deal with them effectively, though it really sucks when you get a group of them running after you. Then its a huge problem.
That said, you could argue that ragers were just buffed up to the same level as crushers and mauler. They were kind of a joke before since they died easily, now they are a genuine threat.
I dont think you should be able to just dodge into their backs. It trivialzes them too much. There are a lot of ways to deal with them. If they get close and start their sequence there is still options. Its already very easy to kite them on most weapons. Not every situation in the game should be totally trivial to solve solo. If there is 6 ragers on you and youre alone and cant get help and cant deal with them solo its a miss play and youre getting punished.
Either stop those situations from happening or have something in your loadout that will help you escape or kill them.
the problem is that you CAN trivialize ragers, a handful of weapons just completely delete them (dueling swords, flamethrowers, catachan swords etc.) while other weapons are just completely useless against them (chainaxe, THammer, some ogryn club variants etc) and you end up being staggerlocked and unable to dash far enough away, which really limits your build options in high difficulties to weapons that either have high maniac damage or high dashes
and yes unfortunately i have experienced plenty of occasions where i am with my team and they simply don’t notice the 6 ragers beating my face in
being able to compensate for your build with mechanical skill should be the ideal outcome and i don’t think sidestepping attacks will trivialize ragers at all, just make it possible to take items that dont tick the “destory maniac” box due to how many that spawn constantly
I like that they’re higher threat but I see why many feel like they’re outta whack given you get so many spawning at once, one massive wave in front and one behind.
The balance of numbers+stagger resistance+buffed hp might be a tad off.
The bugs make them feel much worse too, all the close range blessings still being halved, vet frag grenade and ogryn frag bomb explosions doing nothing/less, sound cues being borked etc.
P.S. They also fiddled/broke rager stagger, recently for club slaps at least.
Your wording is a bit ambiguous, are you referring to crunch talent/skill?
That only works on FULLY Charged attacks that auto-releases (i.e. you keep holding m1 and it swings on its own), in that time you could have swung again at least once; I’d argue it’s not a good pick for most things and certainly not the shield.
The shield can handle a gaggle of Ragers very easily, it’s one of the few that can.
The MK 4 cleaver was specifically reworked to do more anti-armor work and has a nice HLL combo to boot.
The power maul is…currently lacking some; it got left behind by the somewhat-misguided blanket HP boost and is not what it used to be, especially compared to the love the zealot crusher got.
Ragers are fine but really damn annoying as they currently are IMO. They’re hard to stagger, have a good amount of HP, lunge towards you on attack, have deceptively long ass reach on their attacks and they totally ignore dodges. All these things combined makes them annoying as hell in my opinion, I’d be happy to see either their attack range reduced slightly or make their attacks dodgeable like the zerkers in VT2. Making them easier to stagger would be overkill and too easy to deal with.
The recent changes to the director seems to have resulted in large packs of ragers being much more common than before, I didn’t think much of ragers previously but getting a pack of 10 ragers with some frequency is damn annoying. Also the hitstun lasts really long to the point that if you have decently high ping the second attack becomes a guaranteed hit after the first.
This is exactly what happened in vt2 on high ping, but overall stuns/interrupts in vt2 were much more tolerable while the berserkers in that game were dodgeable and did less stamina damage, so in comparison they do seem a bit overtuned while also coming in larger groups.
Dreg rangers are maniacs (probably the second toughest armour type after carapace) and scab ragers are flak armoured (small but important distinction, and which almost everything tears through nowadays).
Unfortunately that kinda calls into question your ‘research’.
For the actual topic, ragers should make noise/louder noise as they run at you, and I would like them to have a slightly longer down time between their attack combo.
