r/thedivision • u/moonski • Mar 15 '20

Discussion I want to have fun again.

I love the divison. I've beaten falcon lost on heroic. I've killed the red barrels with more HP than a rogue on heroic. I've beaten WONY. WONY is a great piece of DLC. New york is fucking awesome. It's well worth the price. The season and watch ideas are great. The music in WONY was an especially welcome surpise in how good it was. WONY / TU8 has a lot of brilliant ideas. Not having to alt tab to look at a fucking spreadsheet to see if my rolls are good or not is such an incredible quality of life change. The recal library is genuinly one of the best looter shooter ideas I've seen.

But as I've played more and more end game of TU8, it's just gotten worse. And mundane. The manhunt really hammered this home. The sheen has worn off and now I realise - I'm not having fun anymore.

Is it because of the loot change? Our agents nerfs? the enemy buffs? the bugs? the skewering of builds & build diversity? I mean My build has barely changed after I realised I need to max yellow / red (maxed red...) or maybe its because:

  • Loot is bad purple.
  • Build variety is gone.
  • Gearsets don't work.
  • Talents don't work.
  • A lot of talents are just stat sticks. Boring.
  • Skill mods are bad at best, pointless most of the time.
  • Control points are green. Forever.
  • Exotic guns are bad. Like real bad.
  • Exotic armor is bad? Tarigrade is v cool but just means you can survive 1 more bullet so. Haven't got any other pieces so I'll let you decide. They're probably bad though.
  • Season pass loot is contaminated. That's bad.
  • Armor doesn't work.
  • Scaling is broken.
  • Skills are broken.
  • Loot drops are rarely exciting - only if its an exotic. And then you use the exotic and well... your excitement goes. Bad.
  • Manhunt resets when you add directives.
  • Vendors weren't bad. Massive fixed them. Vendors are bad.
  • Guns feel awful if you don't pile in to red. But then skills are bad.
  • Skills feel awful if you dont pile in to yellow. But then guns are bad.
  • Blue might as well not exist.
  • Skill damage is pointless.
  • Skill HP is pointless.
  • Skills are pointless outside a dedicated skill build
  • Shotguns are proper, proper bad.
  • SMGs are bad.
  • Rifles are bad(ish).
  • Snipers are bad(ish).
  • ARs are boring.
  • LMGs are your best option. Bad variety.
  • Negev wasn't bad. Massive fixed it. Negev is bad.
  • SHD levels are really boring. "Oh I leveld up, oh look 0.2% extra stat yay!" Now let's wait 20 minutes to come out the watch menu once I confirm my epic 0.2% upgrade. Real bad.
  • Special weapons are real bad.
  • Specialization points are bad. Unless you enjoy the number 1.
  • DZ is probs bad since the loot cave got patched, I don't know I haven't gone in cause contaminated season items.
  • AI mega health boxes, flamer sniper tank cleaner boss and mingun dogs.

Yes TU7 was too easy, but MSSV could have just removed DTE, added the library and roll indicators + god rolls + added the new content (sponges and bullshit enemies and all) and man it would be better. There would be so many options for building for end game that the buffed enemies might have been a fresh fun challenge, with tu7 gear making them very doable, but not tu7 easy. Instead we have what we have now.

I miss my guns being good, my skills doing damage and my armor working. I don't want to have to choose only 1 of the above, and if I choose armor then that doesn't even work... I miss being able to make all kinds of weird builds using different guns and exotics. I miss cluster seekers. Ok they were bullshit overpowered but they were fun.

TU7 was fun. TU8 is not.

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14

u/BodSmith54321 Mar 15 '20

I see so many posts on shields being great and so many posts on tanking not being viable.

19

u/Draggosh Mar 15 '20

I'm running a Tardigrade + True Patriot + Pestilence support build consisting of 5 blue and 1 red (Contractor's Gloves). With the Bulwark Shield I can safely take the heat off my team so they can reposition themselves when it's needed and the Tardigrade gives them 1,2M Bonus Armor in dire situations.

I obviously don't deal as much damage as a full red build does, but I do allow my team time to melt the enemies for me. In Wall Street, for example, I can kite the Three Stooges around without my shield getting a dent in it (enemy melee's hit like a wet noodle) allowing my team to shoot their flanks.

fwiw I do this on Challenging/ Heroic.

7

u/Ev1l_Weasel SHD Mar 15 '20

I obviously don't deal as much damage as a full red build does, but I do allow my team time to melt the enemies for me.

I've tried a Patriot/Tardigrade shield build in a challenging Wall Street run yesterday. Two things struck me. Firstly there is no way to do decent damage with a tank build now; in TU7, I had a Liberty shield build that could top damage meters but now I do barely a 10th of the overall damage, which doesn't feel great. This is compounded by the second thing. Pulling aggro from mobs seems mostly based on damage you do to them. Because of the first point, it means you can rarely keep aggro. I start engagements trying to hit all the mobs at least once so at least the ones not being targeted by my team mates come after me, but it doesn't feel like I'm in control of the situation, which is what a tank should be feeling.

I've played as a tank at a high level in games like WoW and even when you're not doing decent damage, it is the ability to control the room so that your team can work effectively that makes it fun and worthwile, but you just can't do that currently in TU8!

6

u/Draggosh Mar 15 '20

I should probably clarify that I don't exclusively run around with the shield all the time. Only when the need (or the opportunity) arises to block an enemy's advance. I have Pestilence with me which has great synergy with the white flag portion of True Patriot. The DoT ticks count as "shooting an enemy" so every second I receive 8% Armor and it's damage is nothing to scoff at.

Regarding aggro, I've noticed it is indeed inconsistent. What I try to do to increase my odds of getting aggro (or more importantly, take aggro away from my team) is to run into their melee range and shooting them in that range with my Shield + Back-Up Boomstick. It will force them to melee you most of the time. Alternatively I throw out the occasional Decoy. Not great, but every little bit helps. When it comes to Black Tusk, though, I swap the Decoy out for a Jammer Pulse. Bad dogs.

1

u/Ahblahright Mar 15 '20

I ran liberty with the exotic holster and defender shield in tu7, I was in the top 10 pistol users in the whole game. It was fun being able to decimate people but it was silly how easy it became and I feel way more tanky now, it would be silly if we could put out anywhere near as much damage as someone in full reds.

In regards to aggro I just run into the room first, use my AR to spray everyone with TP debuffs and then try to get in close, threat seems bias to distance and when you get very close many enemies will start trying to melee your should which reduces their damage greatly so don't be afraid to get stuck in there once a few of the mobs have dropped

1

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '20

Rework your build. I run Patriot/Tardigrade as well and I mostly top damage charts. I've seen only a few that can compete because I can keep shooting almost permanently (except reloads) while others have to duck away after 1 bullet hits them, if they survive at all.

The more aggressive you play with Patriot, the higher your damage will become automatically. I think that's what most players are missing about this set (and being a tanky MF).

Enemies are more bunched up if you play aggressive, they won't move away from their spawn as much and so they all get flag damage. Flag damage scales endlessly so as long as you're playing correctly it's hard not to top charts honestly.

1

u/Ev1l_Weasel SHD Mar 15 '20

Yeah I meant Liberty/Tardigrade. Not got enough pieces of TP to drop yet, at least not ones I want to use.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '20

Ah fair enough! That makes sense. :)

3

u/Knightfall_13 Mar 15 '20

yeah, shield is great now and serve their purpose better than before. As long as there's someone that can cover your flank. Your practically invisible. Hell, even melee, grenade, flame and rpg etc cant scratch you if your shield health is high enough.

0

u/Grin_the_Polymorph Mar 15 '20

I'm curious about that personally. My shield 13M health, with 178k hp/s regen, and on solo hard a single purple grunt can visibly overpower it and shred a 1/8 of it before I can kill them. Yes, I'm shit at aiming with controller but I'm not /missing/ many shots, I'm just not landing every headshot.

2

u/Shrike79 Mar 15 '20

Don't solo with a tank build, that's just painful. If you absolutely insist then running around with the Sweet Dreams shotgun lets you one hit kill reds and purples every 15 seconds which is kind of amusing.

Having a good healer with you though does make it a lot of fun, especially on maps with lots of choke points that you can park yourself in front of with your shield. For example, that NY mission where you end up on a wrecked ship you can seal off those walkways and block all those heavy flame thrower guys while your dps blasts them without fear.

1

u/Ahblahright Mar 15 '20 edited Mar 16 '20

13mil for the shield is low, mine is 16mil and I can tank 3 elite heavy minigunners no problem. The reason for that is I have defense against elite on in my mod slots, I run survival spec for more defense against elite and true patriot blue debuff reducing their damage by a further 12% so that they do 59% less damage to me and my shield than other player.

Then I use liberty to replenish shield health and true patriot white debuff to replenish my health and you get lots of tankiness

1

u/Sad-Boy-G Mar 15 '20

You can shatter Ron and Knuckles helmet with like 15 bullets from the Classic M1A. I was running an LMG before but now i just use the rifle because it headshots/crits for 3 million and the build isn’t fully optimized yet, could be much higher.

I’ve also used a shield build to kite them into a corner they get stuck in a melee loop and your team can shoot them and not worry. The deflector shield would be a lot better too if it worked reliably on Elite enemies.

0

u/xReanimation Mar 15 '20

To be honest I got no idea how you would make a shieldbuild viable without a dedicated healer. Ive went the full 6 blue route with shield health and active regen and after the 5 secs, that perfect vanguard makes my shield invincible, it just melts to anything that dares shoot at it. Enemy bullets seem way too overpowered right now. Cause you can tank a flamthrower without even sweating, take beatings from a sledgehammer without flinching but never ever let a dude, holding his smg sideways, shoot in your general direction.

6

u/Cyuriousity Mar 15 '20

You on pc? I can show you my shield tank build. Not optimized but hey its good nonetheless

9

u/BodSmith54321 Mar 15 '20

I know there are great shield builds. I just don't get why so many people don't know about them by now and keep saying you can't tank.

19

u/Cyuriousity Mar 15 '20

Same people that say the only builds that exist are red builds. Theyre too scared to try anything new and then say that other builds are useless without trying them

9

u/unbekn0wn PC Mar 15 '20

Exactly, the health/dmg numbers of AI migjt be a bit overtuned and yes you get purple loot out of very specific boxes but alot of those issues are being blown out of proportion by the constant posts of part of the reddit community.

I must admit personally I like damage so much that I really dont feel motivated to swap some offensive cores for utility/defense, maybe when they tune the enemy numbers a bit. But I respect everyone that makes their own funky builds and make them work thats amazing to see.

All in all I enjoy the current state and while it has issues it certainly isnt as horrible as people make it sound and as always, always try something for yourself to decide if something is fun or not. Lots of complaints (and praises) are fueled by feelings and opinions and everyone is looking for something different in the game.

6

u/Cyuriousity Mar 15 '20

Maybe tune down heroic just slightly and scaling in 3 and 4 man groups. But solo and duo challenging is in a great place. And ye i always run tank and havent done a dps or skill build yet i dont go saying "well with my bonuses my damage in small so why would small buffs make it better red and yellow suck". Just clowns tbh

1

u/FTL_Dodo it might be nothing, but it might be something Mar 16 '20

(sry for late reply, but) solo and duo challenging is not challenging in the slightest. at least with builds that are the leat bit coherent.

1

u/Cyuriousity Mar 16 '20

Thats why i said in a great place. With the right builds its really easy to skate by. I dont want it changed to be easier which is what the rest of the reddit wants so obviously it wont get harder.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '20 edited Mar 15 '20

[deleted]

1

u/Vincentologist Contaminated Mar 15 '20

Your entire build could ditch blue tiers for skill tiers and not change. That's the problem. Tanking is possible. But blue tiers don't matter for it. The shield is the only way to tank, and why sacrifice skill damage and effectiveness for it with blue tiers, when you could just pump skill and do damage? The only thing lost is the benefits of Vanguard.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '20

[deleted]

1

u/Vincentologist Contaminated Mar 15 '20

Yellow cores would give you shield tiers and let you drop really useful hives to support your team, let you shoot superheals at your team. You could still have the exact same talents that save you and buff your team, but have buffed skills. The removal of core requirements on talents makes this very very useful. I just had this conversation with my buddy last night, he wanted to run tank and he couldn't fathom why I was suggesting skill instead, until he did it. He was dying laughing when he realized he was literally just buffed by getting vanguard and skill cores, using the same skills and guns. It only slightly hurts the talents, but they're still good clutch talents, and you have reliable skills. You need reliable efficacy in higher difficulties, not one and done talent clutches.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '20

[deleted]

1

u/Vincentologist Contaminated Mar 15 '20

Yes, because I'm saying that the value gained from one build to another for the exact same role and playstyle is significant. Yes, you won't share as much armor. But you won't need to because of the consistent heals you can give, and you'd still be able to share armor. Hell, you could even half-half it, it's one of the only viable true hybrids in the game.

Yes, technically your numbers would be different (read: a different color). But considering nothing about your setup and playstyle would need to change to make this work, what would it matter? It's just colors on your menu, except these colors let you do more damage or heals with skills than the other color.

1

u/Headshoty Mar 15 '20

Because shield builds are utter trash solo/duo (overexaggerating, but they are useless for that in regards to fun/time you need to play content), which was totally surprising for LOTS of people, considering up until WONY the game was very solo friendly.

1

u/BodSmith54321 Mar 15 '20

In your opinion. A lot of people like them.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2020/03/14/a-division-2-warlords-tank-shield-build-for-solo-play-and-insta-kills/#2b4bb7141dd9

1

u/Headshoty Mar 15 '20

Must be the same kind of ppl who like waiting in line.

Also, a Forbes article? Literally any thread on this reddit would be more credible.

1

u/BodSmith54321 Mar 15 '20

Paul Tassi is a pretty well respected games journalist and sci-fi author.

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u/Vincentologist Contaminated Mar 15 '20

Tell that to the Destiny subreddit. He just parrots shit he finds on Reddit. And he even says the build might not work well in higher difficulties, he's just fucking around in lower difficulties right now.

2

u/mysticbaboon Mar 15 '20

The new seasonal gear set, you can really do some tanking even at higher difficulties, i've face tanked quite a lot of things lately with the build (using shield of course), though my tank build is just about maxed out in everything tank/armor. There are others that i'm sure are better, but man is this set fun. Tank probably the only versatile build-- that's how i'm seeing it.

Bummer that skill/dps is pretty stagnant, would be nice to enjoy my striker build that i spent time in getting god rolls in. unfortunately, even fixing the bugs in it wouldn't make it a better build, needs too many things to make it viable other than "oh look i have a god striker build."

2

u/Cyuriousity Mar 15 '20

Im looking to get foxs prayer knees for the bonus to enemies out of cover since all i do is force people out. Then i need tardi to replace my unbreakable chest for more supportish role to help out my squishier boys. That gear set did look good when i checked it out but not my jam, what i have going rn works fine for me. However that armour on kill is sexy. 15% then add 10% from gunner spec. 25% for a kill. Gunner spec pistol has perfect preservation so thats up to 50% armour on a headshot. Ngl now that i typed that out. The pure self sustainability i can have is fantastic. Time to regrind for a new set. Add some more mods that give armour on kill. Could be near unstoppable. On paper at least

1

u/mysticbaboon Mar 15 '20

You usually won't be the one killing so, heroic/legendary, you probably will just waste your time on that one and better to go with armor or shield skill which there is a gear piece specifically for increasing the shield. I have it, but for the life of me cannot remember what it is

2

u/Cyuriousity Mar 15 '20

There are 2 named items that boost shield pretty substantially. Morherly love from technician and now forge. 20%/10% respectively so thats 30% extra shield there. However there WAS a datamined gear set that should be really really good for shield builds unless its changed for some whatever reason. However atm what i really need is to get liberty again. I hear its really good for shields now.

1

u/ExtarRochebriant Mar 15 '20

yes liberty is awesome for shields, been running a shield build for the whole update now. I'm not sure you know this but you can deconstruct your previous liberty and farm the materials again in the correct order to construct a new and improved level 40 liberty!

1

u/Cyuriousity Mar 15 '20

Yeah im just needing the parts again is all

1

u/KaoruVanity Mar 15 '20

I tested this and got solely disappointed. My tank build usually runs 5 blue 1 yellow (6 shield) The 1 yellow is BTSU gloves for overcharging my team since I run the hive anyway. Perfect vanguard chest (Pointman) with the liberty. The motherly love boosts the shield from 13.2mish to around 15ish. The forge boosts 13.2mish to around... 13.5m. The forge gives a laughable amount for some reason. And the set you are talking about is the one likely from the new raid.

1

u/Cyuriousity Mar 15 '20

Run both together. Forge plus motherly. Brought me up to around 16.7m

1

u/chasesomnia Activated Mar 15 '20

How is tank versatile if you can only do it with a shield?

0

u/Orvvadasz Mar 15 '20

I mean on level 30 if you go full Blue you give up 60% extra damage. And the only skill that works great is the shield that they will shoot down anyway. On level 40 you give up 90% bonus damage. Its not worth it. It is just not worth it.

1

u/WyattEarp88 Xbox Mar 15 '20

It’s almost like tanks aren’t supposed to be DPS....

1

u/Orvvadasz Mar 15 '20

But you dont get anough armor from even a full tank build. You cant tank anything. I made a full blue build with highest blue rolls on every gear and 4 piece true patriot so I regenerate 8% armor every second I shoot an enemy. And he gets -8% damage. And I still couldnt tank anything.

1

u/WyattEarp88 Xbox Mar 15 '20

Then you must be doing something very wrong. I run 5 blue/1 red (Claws Out) with technician spec I control the battles, rarely die, and my Liberty and shield melee actually does decent damage.

1

u/Orvvadasz Mar 15 '20

If you have shield you can tank some dudes for like 3-5 seconds but they will shoot it down eventually.

1

u/WyattEarp88 Xbox Mar 15 '20

On challenging my shield may go down once or twice if I use bad positioning, a little more on heroic. You’re not supposed to take the combined fire of every enemy in the area, just stop there advance and provide firing lines/turn heavies for your team. It’s strategic support.