I know poxbursters are a problem but I really think we should let the player base stew in the new big list of buffs that are coming for a few months first and just see how everything feels before nerfing enemies!
The Sniper nerf, specifically. Of the specials, they are presently the least threatening because of how many warning signals the game gives. Just move and you avoid all damage. They don’t really zone you out, the little red laser does more psychic damage than the actual attack.
On Crushers and Maulers, I can’t actually tell how their changes would play in game, but still don’t want them to be less dangerous right now.
For me, this currently looks like an attempt to align the game’s difficulty with and without Gold Toughness. Right now, these are two very different levels of difficulty. Without a source of Gold Toughness on the team, it is very hard to pull off a win. Nerfing Gold Toughness while at the same time weakening enemies will lead to a situation where playing without Gold Toughness becomes easier than it was before the patch, and playing with Gold Toughness after the patch becomes harder than it was before the patch. This way, they plan to even things out—or at least, that’s how it seems to me
The overhead spam is definitely real on havoc, which just makes them less interactive on the whole and yet another element that feels hyper samey and grindy in the same stroke instead of challenging you in ways you never thought the game could. You can parry their non overheads which inflicts stagger, but if they never really throw them out its a bit of wasted knowledge. They’ve been needing some more connection to the rest of the melee system for a long time and not just a binary ‘dodge now’ flag. Their non overhead moves are much faster attacks, that basically blow up your toughness bar and have high chip. I’d even accept them throwing tracking on some, please make these enemies more engaging than ‘here comes the 1 hit kill! dodge!’
Snipers don’t do enough so they definitely don’t need a nerf, and poxbursters should have just had the pushes from other enemy units removed (its more random than anything else) and let all players on the strike team push it with the same strength in all situations. this might be a bit too much nerf, you can already slide dodge out unharmed most of the time without even pushing on some of the game’s fairy boy float weapons (sorry, ‘mobility’ pro choices). now you’ll take maybe a scratch if you somehow mess that up…
Both PBs and snipers have some clear bugs / issues. PBs despite multiple passes still can refuse to get pushed, and it is not just a matter of not being a target and shorter push range. Snipers still do not trigger “dodge now” audio cues in certain circumstance, also when you were not the target, and just happen to be in the line of fire. So…instead of fixing the issues…we see nerfs.
Enemies like Crushers and Maulers are mainly the problem of 10 years of unresolved issues with hyperdensity. Who doesn’t love getting “stealth” overheads through other enemies hit mass? Every enemy is supposed to take specific amount of space in the whole slot system, you would also hope the same rules would apply to players. Yet somehow you get enemies occupying the same space, trappers, and melee enemies lunging at you while being literally inside captain shield (therefore being invulnerable), enemies phasing through you because apparently there is no collision between player character model and enemies.
I personally don’t feel like the burster change would be as necessary if they reverted last update’s push behaviour change with them, and if they didn’t flop around like they were doing the fish slapping dance when they get electrocuted. The problem of silent bursters is also bigger than problems with their actual mechanics.
I’m good with the poxburster change, assuming it works the way I expect. The old behavior of taking 100% damage unless you were entirely outside the blast radius was a little silly, especially given the issues with pushing them. I think it would be better for the game if all explosion-type damage effects worked more like the Voidblast staff, where there’s an epicenter radius for full damage and a larger radius for partial damage.
I agree on waiting with the sniper and mauler/crusher nerfs until we have some time to test, but other posters in this thread bring up some good points as to why these changes might make sense. I guess my default position is to not nerf enemies preemptively because it’s harder to revert those changes without provoking complaints from the community.
They also get staggered by …flames / Blights puddles, enemy range fire, enemy flamers, hounds, now also other PB explosions, and Ogryn farts.
I "love their inconsistency and scummy spawns of multiple bursters who come at you with overlapping explosion radiuses. Yesterday I managed to push 3 at the same time, and dodge slide way from the explosion, and later, we failed to push ONE with two people pushing in the same direction, because coding is hard.
I dont find the initial post without reason, but I generally see these changes as reducing the “one shot dead” scenario , which i think is very good. Darktide is a chaos game, with much of the mechanics relying on audio cues and all is reliant on the internet communication and trillion of complications that stem from it. Reducing the number of one shot scenrios in such a enviroenment is imho a good thing, reducing frustration. The diffculty can be maintained by other means.
Personally I do not agree, reduction in enemy power should go hand in hand with reduction in player power.
But currently, overall player power is so far out of hand, that it should be reduced a lot more than enemy power. Which was entirely missed on this one.
Nerfs to spillover dmg while removing the most egregious part of golden toughness is not even equivelant adjustments, its a net profit in player power.
Even when FS tries to nerf something it ends up being powercreep
I agree with the sentiment that sniper nerf was not needed at all, and the only reason I accept the burster nerfs is because they are so broken.
I would say lets play it and see how it feels, but I dont usually play with golden shower..
The burster & sniper nerfs are insane, everyone’s going to be comfortably tanking bursters taking no health damage now, I’m thinking bursters will suddenly turn from the most dangerous to least dangerous special enemy. Snipers are eating shït for some reason? And Ogryn still gets his passive immortality on dodge too.
Of all the enemies, the Poxburster is the biggest problem.
At its worst, 4 to 5 of them can appear within 10 seconds, and at any moment, they might be impossible to push back due to bugs or lag, or their explosion radius might become larger than it should be due to a coding issue (yes this happened before). What’s most frustrating is that these aren’t skill issues, they’re purely design flaws.
If everyone were like me, a Ogryn, could tank it’s damage, those few bugs would still be acceptable. But no, if a little guy takes a direct hit from it, it’s a matter of life and death.
In the instance of the uncanny nerf and changing crusher spawn rate there were still other reasons outside the nerf that made the spawn rate change make a bit of sense. Annoying hyperdensity issues w/ large #s of crushers at once, just changing the meta to be less carapace heavy etc. That patch was also just a list of nerfs to things.
This update is more of a mixed bag but every class except HS is on net buffed. The mechanic of spillover immunity is isolated to two abilities of two classes. Compared to something like Uncanny which was on every human class, the implications here are far less reaching. Also the active parts of shout and book still provide utility versus Bursters by staggering them from further away than they can be pushed. Same with staggering maulers and crushers out of their overheads. Changing the enemies here feels like an overcorrection.
Personally, the desire for nerfs on the weapons/abilities/whatever is so that certain things don’t get to just break the rules of darktide. I wanted spillover immunity removed so that having 1 extra toughness doesn’t mean anyone can tank a crusher overhead to the face. The 19 other abilities in the game do not grant that protection nor do any talents (DR and until death let you live but you take damage still). The two step of making some changes to an aspect of player power and nerfing enemies at the same time just kind of sucks. I didn’t follow VT2 updates as close as DT but I don’t remember any big outliers being nerfed and then FS also being like “we’re reducing the number of CW by 30%”.
Getting to the point where it makes sense to stop asking for nerfs to things ig. Or maybe just need to make the argument more clearly that when using the other 98% of the non-outlier stuff the game gives the player, that the level of challenge is acceptable.
EDIT: Just remembered a non-enemy change but when they nerfed uncanny and then gave soulblaze extra ADM into carapace as some sort of compensation. It’s just so disconnected from the actual game being played (99.9% of players did not intentionally abuse this, same with the forthcoming sprint cancel nerf on flame staff).
Atm I don’t feel a need for any sniper or PB nerfs, even with Golden T being removed. Obviously it would be great if Fatshark put some focused work hours into resolving the issues affecting both enemies…
PB changes are really great imo, not taking 100% damage when you are at the very edge makes buggy PB’s way less anoyying to deal with and getting just hit isnt that devastating while getting dived might still ruin your day, its just fine
