The controversy of the guard continues.
Personally, I think they were fine. I think why you have such a split in how people find them is probably due to three main reasons.
1.) The game is unbalanced. If you’re using off meta weapons, some weapons performed way worse on them than others.
2.) Skill. There’s a very large skill gap, at several stages between players. The players stuck at malice, the players doing Auric duos, and the people doing havoc 40 solos and such. Obviously the people with lower skill would want the nerf and people bored with difficulty would not.
3.) Game design/philosophy. A lot of people love the power fantasy. Arguably the most popular, and people like feeling powerful. I personally find it gets boring. I like the challenge and don’t mind feeling small and seeing threats as valid threats. I think too many games lean into power fantasy and Darktide was unique when it came out. Ever since the talent trees came out though that changed, though havoc was nice to bring some of that back.
What would I recommend? Enemy scaling and behaviour doesn’t have to be linear. Currently Auric is damnation just with more intensity. I would say let’s have some of these changes change at different difficulties. Keep vanguards as mild threats on the lower difficulties, but change their behaviours and values moreso on Auric and Maelstrom.
Also, the game should be more balanced in general. Vanguards being deleted easily by meta builds and players just randomly picking things with little understanding and struggling are going to create these gaps in experience.