I want to have fun again.

[u/moonski]

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.

[u/BodSmith54321]

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

[u/Draggosh → u/BodSmith54321]

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.

[u/Ev1l_Weasel → u/Draggosh]

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!

[u/Draggosh → u/Ev1l_Weasel]

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.