Survivalist creates a number of issues for build crafting and for ammo economy.
First off, unless the other two aura picks are truly ridiculous/OP, it is incredibly difficult to compete with survivalist. Choosing an aura is a cost opportunity pick, and it is difficult to just losing 100% ammo generation for 5% more damage or 5% more movement speed. This ammo generation is also teamwide, so it’s effectively taking 4 counts of 5% damage or 5% movement speed and also taking -100% ammo generation for four people which is a ridiculously bad trade off (assuming only one vet of course).
And, because of this reliance on vet from ammo generation, balancing the ammo economy becomes much more difficult because now it has to be assumed that there will be a survivalist vet and balanced around that.
If the game is balanced around not having a survivalist vet on your team, and ammo becomes way too plentiful when there is a survivalist vet on the team.
If the game is balanced around having a survivalist vet on your team, then when you happen to to not have one, ammo is a struggle, and it creates this expectation to run survivalist or to have an emotional support vet designated to be an ammo factory.
This survivalist issue is honestly the biggest issue for gunlugger and gun psyker builds (and whatever a ranged zealot would be). They have to use ammo with high usage and 0 effective ability to actually regenerate ammo, so the issues above are exacerbated with more non-vet ranged builds on your team if you don’t have survivalist.
A stopgap fix would be to move survivalist to an intrinsic part of vet and make the aura +15% weakspot damage instead. This will at least improve build variety.
A better fix in my opinion is to entirely remove this aura and rebalance the entire ammo economy.
It does pose a difficulty with ammo management with teams with a higher dependence on ammo although.
I propose survivalist be removed and replaced with some other aura. Ammo pickups now give 5% of the ammo value to all team members on pickup regardless of range. Or perhaps in coherency. This basically solves the whole problem and makes ammo balance a value to tweak.
I don’t know why you think this. Quite to the contrary i think melee was made far more important by the patch 13, 14 and 15 changes.
I personally think the biggest issue with gunpsyker and gunlugger is that a lot of people that play these builds tend to think that shooting 100 percent of the time is the only way to deal damage, and avoid melee like its the plague.
They might not have these kinds of issues if they let go of the trigger once in a while, especially for gunpsykers running Scryers Gaze and Disrupt Destiny since those abilities are good for melee weapons as well.
They could always try to make the other auras not be after thoughts and make them good enough to compete with survivalist.
There should still be passives for more than just ogryn and psyker’s cope crit chance increase. But I don’t like the idea of survivalist being an aura if it has to be in the game at all.
Maybe they could move it to a passive, if it were also adjusted to only give ammo for Specialists like it claims to. This is where I want more of a trade off, having Veterans around just makes shoot everything the ideal solution. Big packs of ragers and the like you start looking forward too for huge restocks. Maybe make a seperate node that enhances this for that function, feels too strong as is. Especially plasma/revolver getting like 15 ammo back for a conga line of shotgunners.
Agreed. Ammo econ shouldn’t be on one build and the system already has issues otherwise you wouldn’t see constant posts about people ammo hogging. Encourage teamwork but don’t pigeonhole a class or make gameplay suffer because someone misclicks a crate or large box.
You see posts about ammo hogging because the average player has developed absolutely atrocious ammo conservation habits. We’re talking people shooting through other people to kill things they’re already killing, nonvets shooting things in melee range instead of meleeing, and various other things.
Survivalist existing has encouraged all kinds of bad habits.
Survivalist is justso good that I can’t see any other auras dethroning it, no matter how good they are, but Vet’s other two auras really need a buff. Its laughable that 5% damage or 5% movespeed were considered equivalent with the only renewable source of ammo in the game, on a character whose primary ability is using ammo.
IMO survivalist should be made into a regular skill like demolition team (they could even be combined), and all three auras should be replaced with something new.
The Sharpshooter tree could get passive weakspot damage, team leader highlights suppressed enemies, and weapon specialist could give stamina regen.
I believe it’s important aspect of the game to struggle for the ammo every now and then. Learn to not waste it when not needed. Having aura that makes it bit more comfortable or that allows you to use ammo inefficent weapons more efficiently is actually great aura.
On the other hand having auras that gives you bonuses you don’t even notice is a bad design. Other two auras should provide more impactful bonuses to the team to make difference in order to be competetive. If for example the Fire Team helps you reach the treshold on certain enemies it saves you some ammo as well.
Zealot auras are great example. All of them do something impactful. Notice that the Benediction gives you 15% toughness damage reduction, not 5% like some travel node.
Those people will still exist is the issue. I still see the occasional shredder moron on Zealot probably to double down on even more RoF, and faster ammo consumption.
I like that with survivalist at least my own ammo will be relatively safe, and I’ll still be able to kill specials, and elites.
I wasn’t playing while it was meta. It suits my purposes far more effectively than the Lawbringer because apparently all the reliable stagger I was used to with that is basically gone. It knocks over Ragers and Maulers in 3-4 shots in close so I can close and stab them while Chorus is on cooldown. Occasionally use it to clear a big wad of Gunners when they’re all firing and suppressing the team (again, while on cooldown, since Chorus is WAY better to make them stop firing anyway).
As long as you aren’t spamming it into hordes you dont qualify my guy.
Last ones I ran into were a pair one was either griefing or braindead and kept shooting corpses on the ground.
I had to rush ahead to get ammo away from them.
EDIT: I run into them enough that I think this is my version of the “Knife Zealot” speedrunners that I so rarely experience myself, but are apparently a daily occurrence for some.
Every time I load into a game and notice my pug zealot has a gun with 620-640 ammo I get a chill down my spine.
Though, gotta double-tap them Poxers, never know when a zombie’ll get back up to whack you in the back of the head while entirely silent with only the muffled backstab sound playing too late for a dodge
I’m assuming he was shooting stuff on the ground because my VoC would knock things over so to him it was ambiguous as to whether it was dead or not.
Doesn’t change the fact that he’s a moron who made my game stressful. I told him I needed ammo in chat after I used the ping system first. Ignored me. The other one didn’t and tried to hold back a bit at least.
Still don’t know if he was a griefer.
Either way I use a dagger on all my human characters so I can run ahead, and steal ammo if I absolutely need to though I really don’t like the feeling of having to play against my own teammates.
