What do you mean, fatshark? Rotten armor originally had high DR against ranged damage and tons of crushers already made melee battle challenging. Now you’re telling me its DR also applies to melee damage while only explosion and dot damage can be unaffected? It’s my first time to complain about havoc mutators and the reason is simple. How do you want me to play if both basic attack types in the game cannot deal effective damage under the situation that rotten armor already brings a big challenge with a tons of crushers and melee elites? Why don’t you just make enemies directly immune to range and melee, lol?
I’m not sure if it’s because you wanna promote hive scum whose poison dot and RPG are still good in this case, but I’d say it’s such a nonsense as it ruins the gameplay of other characters so hard.
It’s actually insane that they made Rotten Armor even more obnoxious. Rotten Armor was barely tolerable when it didn’t affect melee damage, you could at least get away with using some fun melee builds. Now you just get overwhelmed unless you abuse DoTs and meta builds with Psyker or Hive Scum. I have a sneaking suspicion that the corruption modifiers and Rotten Armor changes were all made to make Hive Scum more appealing as a class even though someone always claims the game “isn’t balanced around Havoc.”
I don’t know who can test 75% DR on full hp enemies and say “yea, it’s ok to have in the game“. One more proof Fatshark don’t even play their own game.
When you screw up an already problematic game mode just because you want to promote (and semi enforce the presence of) the new class….. at least that’s what it feels like so far.
They brought back goo cuz stimm pack counters it.
Strongest unconditional dot in the game, bring back another modifier and tweak it in a way nobody asked for
This also explains why they buffed Boom Bringer to be on pair with Krak but in a larger AoE.
I don’t even play Havoc and I winced when I read that patch note. “So rending dot abuse is just mandatory now?” more or less sums up what that evoked in me. If that’s a misread somebody familiar with the game mode please correct me.
This can be easily tested with mods. Rotten Armour is even more ridiculous than it used to be. Meanwhile shivs on Hive Scum are a more OP version of combat knives and duelling sword Mk IV, so I suppose just another Monday in Sweden?
Weapon balance has never been worse in Darktide, mainly because Fatshark refuses to acknowledge certain weapon classes are the problem. I would imagine the knife lobby must be pretty strong, both at Fatshark and the playtester group /s
I don’t think any playtesters in their right mind would have asked for this. Outside of the most annoying minmaxxers (I’m talking about the 0.1% garbage players who only play meta builds and demand everyone on their Havoc teams play meta, macro abusers, and wall hacks) most skilled players and playtesters avoid meta in favor of fun builds in Havoc anyways while embracing the challenge. But I know for a fact that a ton of highly skilled players avoided Rotten Armor even before the changes because it reinforces boring meta builds, these changes make it even worse.
Uncanny only helps with caraspace and rotten armor enemies have a very high DR at high HP. For example of veteran with dueling sword, it took around 3 to 4 hits to kill a crusher with five stacks of uncanny, but now it takes at least 6 to 7 for rotten armor with the same build and buffs. TTK basically doubles or even more.
Another one of those rules taught in game developement that don’t make the “official” text books. When releasing new classes, if the desired number playing new class is below the desired number, indirectly nerf the old ones to increase “participation” in the new hotness. Then when you “balance” the new class conviently forget about all the changes made. That way the next release can “address the players concerns”. Far easier than making the new class really interesting without powercreep in in the first place.
Dueling sword is still much more op than shiv. You can test their highest dps against h40 rotten armor crushers/maulers in modded meat grinder. Even the most melee focused Hive Scum builds(rampage + stim + adrenaline frenzy), can barely reach the highest dps of a Veteran using the dueling sword against crushers. And the Vet is not supposed to be a melee specialist. Psykers can reach even higher numbers.
And once the Hive Scum’s ramage/stim wears off, it’s melee dps using the shiv against crushers is just plain horrible. The vet on the other hand do not need to rely on any abilities/stimm to reach that insane dps with the dueling sword. It’s constant throughout the entire game.
They are not doing it to promote Hive Scum. It was originally a bug that the rotten armor didn’t apply to melee damage as well. So everyone got used to this bug, and came up with lots of melee builds to take on this bugged modifier.
But now that they’ve fixed it, people are starting to realize the true intended difficulty of this modifier, and how their melee builds aren’t effective anymore. So they are now complaining and accusing them of promoting Hive Scum, etc.
Combined with the plasma gun, the vet is one of the most versatile class in the game. Able to dish out both insane melee and range damage. And with golden toughness buffs.
The Hive Scum on the other hand only has insane range damage, but mediocre melee damage(against crushers/maulers). In fact one of the weakest melee dps of all classes, against non-human sized enemies. As fragile as a psyker too.