For reference I am referring to the campaign missions where you are ambushed by individual Twins. I have found that the way The Twins have been incorporated into the levels really flips the canoe on new or under-leveled players in quite a hostile and abrupt way. It also, in my opinion, undermines the joy of progressing through Darktide mastery by presenting a sudden brick wall.
For context, I’m a very experienced player (Auric/Auric Maelstrom is my bread and butter) who has been levelling new characters with a friend and playing through the campaign. She’s got some VT2 experience and also a level 30-40 (true level) character in Darktide.
As two players who were on the juicy curve of mastering T2 → stepping into T3 around level 17 and gear power 200-300, it felt really crazy to successfully struggle through the main game content and all of a sudden get destroyed by this quiet surprise boss. Like, D E S T R O Y E D.
In full transparency:
We’ve been doing Private matches with 2 players, so we are a little under-gunned to be sure. We’ve been doing well though, outside of these Two.
I haven’t really gone up against The Twins since they launched, and never did secret hard mode.
Our tactics have been standard boss tactics more or less, of block/dodge if you have aggro and DPS if you do not. If this is stupid please lay it on me. Maybe you just are supposed to run past them?
We played as level ~17-20 characters on difficulty 2/3 and gear level 200-300, simply following the campaign and upping the difficulty when it got too easy. It’s probably worth noting that for players with the time for maybe 1-2 games a day this experience probably disproportionately affected us.
My feedback:
They seem to have way more HP (I know you don’t have to bring them to 0, still) than monstrosities and deal far, far more damage. It was so dis-heartening to see the HP bar slowly tick down, despite using quite effective weaponry for the job.
Their movesets are more aggressive and complex than anything else in the game up to that point. It’s an incredible difficulty spike for players on difficulty 2/3. Probably 1 too, idk.
The above contribute to a truly absurd-feeling difficulty spike. As an experienced player I just felt that something was amiss here. It was a “yeah, nah” moment for sure.
There is little to no fanfare or badass music to really pump you up, they kinda just show up and start wailing on you without so much as a “nice to meet you, nice to beat you”.
And you know what? If there was fanfare, and loud awesome music, and the boss was mocking me in harsh guttural tones, I feel like I’d be OK with it! But instead it was like getting invaded by a PVP sweatlord in Dark Souls when you’re level 10. Felt so out of place in so many ways, which is a shame because I think it’s a nice way to keep people coming back to Twins content.
Anyways… am I crazy? Do I just suck? All of the above??? If you’ve done the campaign, has it stuck out to you like this?
It’s a lot harder - and it sounds like you didn’t even make it to the end arena battle where’s it’s really harder.
I was doing the campaign on damnation and breezing through everything. The final boss fight I just could not clutch. My teammates kept dying and if you’re the only one left it’s very hard to rez your mates unless you have stealth or something or are an Ogryn. I finally had to turn the difficulty to malice I think.
Yeah that’s a good point, and what we did. However the main thrust is that FOR the current difficulty the Twins seem quite over-tuned compared to everything else. This seemed apparent to me on T3 and T2, the difficulties we tried it on.
May I ask if you played through on level 30 or new character? Interested in getting a data point on when you faced the Twins in your campaign playthrough.
I played through the campaign only on Arbites and only did public lobbies, so I don’t have a healthy frame of reference to go by for how that mission should feel.
I had just hit level 30 on the Arbites. Gear was pretty close to max level if not maxed. Again, I was playing through the campaign on Damnation difficulty.
Also, playing the mission with two of the team being bots is going to make it a LOT LOT harder ad well. The bots are nearly useless at dealing with the twins.
I understand about the bots, very familiar with their uselessness at this point and why I had to include that in the post since that does skew it a bunch. Add to that I’m not experienced enough against the Twins to clutch it out at a disadvantage.
I’m still leery that the Twins’ HP/damage numbers are a bit inflated though, at least for players who are progressing through the campaign with new characters. Comparing the raw damage to monstrosities especially.
As someone that recently came back to the game, levelled the arbiter to 30, then an ogryn, and now a zealot, I was breezing through the story at the first/second difficulty, but on all characters when I got to the twins fight I hit a brick wall… I was forced to lower the difficulty because it was impossible to do.
So yes, their difficulty is too high… especially considering that on the next mission I was able to get back to the same difficulty I died on them and it was fine to play again…
Okay, maybe it’s just me after beating them several time with hardmode on damnation, but they are absolutely OK as bosses.
To be honest - they are the only boss that actually feels like boss, since usual mosntrocities are evaporated pretty quickly usually.
Tho when i was levelling arbites i also had some trouble with them(Lvl 18-20 IIRC) but mostly due the fact that was was the last man standing and, well was overwhelmed and killed by bosses and the horde when tried to res teammates.
TL;DR: Imo bosses are completely fine. We need more bosses like this.
The twins are notoriously more difficult compared to any other boss encounter. There’s two of them and they control the battle area quite well, can very quickly switch targets, and require really upped player denfensive skills.
You are absolutely right that their difficulty is way above average, and probably at it’s adjusted peak, for whatever difficulty you play at.
Ignore the trolls. They are harder than other content.
Yeah they are the most brutal/interesting enemies by far and the big selling point of Havoc. I occasionally did come back to this mission prior havoc because they are such a nice unique challenge…
Though there are some things to make them far easier:
Cat Sword for parry spam agains rinda
Smoke nades, Dome, and range dodge/immunity perks/talents for her brother.
The issue is the inconsistency in difficulty, not that it’s difficult.
The twins on heresy should be about as difficultly as any other heresy mission. Players looking for a heresy experience should not have to choose malice for the twins mission to get a heresy experience.
Leave the highest difficulties alone, but everything under damnation should be made a little easier to match the difficulty.
The issue is the inconsistency in difficulty, not that it’s difficult.
The twins on heresy should be about as difficultly as any other heresy mission. Players looking for a heresy experience should not have to choose malice for the twins mission to get a heresy experience.
Leave the highest difficulties alone, but everything under damnation should be made a little easier to match the difficulty.
I’m going to completely unnecessarily quote your entire post in this immediate reply because you’ve summed up my thoughts perfectly
I’ll say again that in my opinion the numbers are simply off. The sheer amount of damage you take from some of the rapid attacks are in line with Mauler overheads without nearly the same telegraph. I’m kicking myself because I lost the clip which would make this a lot easier to convey…
It’s been a pet peeve of mine for a while. Mission modifiers should not impact the overall difficulty of a mission (too much). When a player hits quickplay for Heresy, no matter the modifiers it should be about the same difficulty as any other Heresy mission. If there’s more crushers, there should be less of something else, or crushers should be a little weaker. There shouldn’t be a wide range of variation within a difficulty.
The melee twin’s combo can also change target mid-combo. But in Hard mode the sheer amount of elites that spawn is the real challenge rather than the bosses.
They certainly are, I remember myself my first attempts at that mission in Malice, it felt as if I suddenly went to Heresy mission instead. They really need to do something about it, it just doesn’t make sense. It can be somewhat more difficult than other missions at a given threat level, but not to the point most of your attempts to beat it end in your team being crushed in the final fight again and again, that’s too much.
