u/Omailey97

Genuine question, it might sound dumb, but I gotta know.

Bulwark with hammer, do you think that is 'legit' troll pick, or you don't mind?

Disclaimer real quick: I for myself am not calling out Bulwarks with Hammers troller picks, because as you can see from those pics in this post, I am quite enjoyer of the hammer as bulwark, which goes quite good with my Salamander if I dare to say so myself.

I am curious as to how the community sees a bulwark with a hammer in their lobbies, because even though in my opinion it's not a troll pick, it does remove something... "vital" ? to its loadout and that is the shield.

Shield is a HUGE thing about the bulwark, so losing it can and (from experience) WILL hurt his survivability.

But in a sort of.. counter effect to that is that the Hammer can offer a different style of gameplay, especially in terms of perk choices ofc.

For example I pick two perks that allow me to buff my melee damage up to 45% total for 10 seconds (35% from one perk, and 10% from the other) after doing a hammer charge forward.

Which is kinda nice 'cause these two perks have no cooldown to them, which means when the 10 sec buff runs out, I can just charge forward with my hammer once again and I get another 45% melee buff.

and if the hammer pick wasn't scandalous enough for y'all... let me admit another thing with this build... I don't take the healing banner perk at times with it! I pick the perk that makes it last 20% longer & 20% less damage received within the banner, so that I can make up for my lack of shield by being able to spam a lot of banners, and survive more efficiently.

Anyway, I've yapped enough, what's your thoughts on Bulwarks with hammer ?

Sorry for being unoriginal with the already used meme template, but hey, just thought I'd throw this one out there, testing the water in seeing if I'm not the one who feel like the AI Director is sorta rigged into hard focusing the Gene-seed holder.

Maybe I'm paranoid, or maybe I'm not.... who knows.. ? we've seen examples of the AI Director being cartoonishly & obviously rigged.

It's mostly about our primary & secondaries we're talking here, not the support weapon.

So what i'm trying to say with that meme is that our weapons in a lot of situations, never deal their full damage, and it has to do with 3 things.

Durability, Armor Penetration system & Bullet velocity drop (this one is less prominent, it just depends on the range of the fights you're engaging.)

If an enemy has any durability on parts of his body and is matching the armor level (light armor vs light armor pen) of the weapon you're using, and that you're actively shooting at it, it will deal first of, 65% of its whole damage because of the matching armor system, AND, it will have to take into calculation the durable damage of your weapon versus said part that you're shooting at.

let's take the example of a Hive Guard's body (light armor, 500hp, and 30% durable) & let's take... the Tenderizer for our example. (light pen, 105 flat damage, and 30 durable damage.)

point by point, the calculation should go like this.

Light pen vs Light Armor = 65% of the total damage of the weapon is dealt: 105 x 0.65 = 68,25 damage dealt

then, we take in the durable damage part, which acts as a blend when you're shooting at it (70% flat damage & 30% durable damage.)

So unless i'm mistaken, it would be like this (for the flat damage portion): 68,25 x 0,70 = 47,77

for the durable portion: 30 x 0,30 = 9

total: 47,77 + 9 = 56,8 damage.

the total damage dealt to a Hive Guard's body with a single shot of the Tenderizer is roughly 57 damage..

I'm not doing some kind of rant or anything, I'm simply sharing something that some people might not know at all but, if I may say something, I'm all for somewhat complex and interesting mechanic.

but I don't know if I'm a fan of the matching armor system. especially if it's combined with durability system.

like you take a light pen weapon cuz you like them, but then a lot of enemies has light body parts, so essentially you only deal 65% of the damage you're supposed to, without counting the durable stuff & the bullet drop thing?

I don't know, feels a bit whack to me, it's not like the end of the world type of stuff, but it's mildly annoying at best I'd say. I feel like the durability & bullet drop systems would be enough complexity mechanic thing if we were take away the armor matching meh feature.

what y'all think about all this?

First of all, I'm gonna say that the numbers thrown at us with the new Spore Bugs is good, and it should be that kind of numbers by default (by default I mean the default Bugs, default Bots, etc) because I wanna play HD2 for fun hordes to clear and stuff, not some of the snooze fest D10 diff can sometime offer us.

The one thing I don't like with these "revamped" Spore Bugs, is that they took the concept of the Predator Strain, and had done it onto another Strain of Bugs, with some bit of other things here and there but it is still the Predators' concept as whole that was used.

What was the concept of the Predator Bugs ? Super fast & relentless bugs that overwhelm you with their speed and numbers (on release at least, because after their introduction, the spawnrate was nerfed when they reappeared :/)

What is the concept of the Reworked Spore Bugs ? Fast, Relentless, overwhelm you with speed & numbers, with the added bonus of exploding in your face, and being slighly tankier? see what I mean?

I can already see the comment "SEE?! SEE?! YOU LISTED TWO THINGS THE PRED STRAIN DOESNT DO, SO THEY DONT MAKE THEM LESS UNIQUE THEY HAVE THEIR OWN THING".

No, because what was the concept of the original Spore Bugs was: slightly slower (or at least it's what they felt like when we first encountered them) version of the regular bugs (the hunter was still rather the same though I think), that explodes into a cloud when you kill them point blank range, and tankier as a whole (35% durable on their main body)

Now they're just Predator Bugs BUT with the addition of being tankier than their regular bugs counterpart and can explode in your face...

So in my eyes, the Predator Strain has lost a big part of what made them special. and were borderline replaced in a way.

Like I said, big enemy numbers is good, and I want that for pretty much everything, but the way the newer spore bugs work, I'm not a fan of.

(Sorry for the very eye sore of a montage I did on paint.)

Spoilers, the title is highly hyperbolic BUT! there is some bit of truth in it!

I have been playing this game for around.. 500 hours ? and in my many missions played, I have noticed that some NPCs that are ranged oriented, lack very much so the usage of their melee abilities at times when a player closes the distance onto them.

Easy example, you have within range to kiss a Soulreaper Terminator on the cheek of his helmet (that's how much closed distance you are to it), but instead of using that BIG sword intended for melee attacks, he'd prefer to do his 360° Missile Barrage attack 9 times out of 10. Like I said, it's slightly exagerrated because the Ranged Terminator does use his sword, but it is highly inconsistent.

My other example is from our BELOVED Ranged Tyranid variants [still getting a bit spammed by the way], Tyranid Majoris equipped with Shotgunner & Sniper rifle tend to do this the most, the barbed wire guy is less likely to.

The Shotgunner and Sniper Tyranid LOVES to shoot at you when you quite literally pressing your playermodel against their own models, even though their weapons are quite LITERALLY phasing through your body! but still somehow hitting you when the projectiles shouldn't be actually hitting you, what is it you say? they have extra claws to use when within melee range reach? I believe they do not know that themselves!

So.. yeah.. would be fine if they were more responsive to the correct situation they are faced in.

RIP my boy Brutus.

(disclaimer before I get jumped: NO, I am not claiming that Valius is literally a DOG, this is merely a meme to showcase how he is spiritually/has attitude vibes of a good ol' Golden Retriever, as in being full of wholesome attitude, and friendliness towards his allies, there is no diss to my boy Valius, he's the goat)

Love Valius' personality, some of his voice lines are hilarious and so wholesome, some of his kill voice lines can also be simple yet efficient, like "Justice! for turning against your brothers, traitor!" after killing a Rubricae Marine.

although my fav kill voice line is from Vespasius (Assault class): "Is that the glory, Magnus promised you?" after killing a Thousand Son.

(ofc, little disclaimer cuz you never know, I am not saying that this lineup is the hard meta and that you should follow it 24/7 or else you're bad etc, nah, it's just my favorite lineup if I wanna go far into waves.)

Bulwark with the team perk "contested health fades 50% slower" or "20% less damage from Extremis & Terminus enemies."

With either of these perks you ensure better overall survivability of your team either from having a few more seconds to regain their contested health or to straight out receive less damage from Extremis & Bosses, as a added bonus he can have the healing banner ability to further help out teammates.

Vanguard with the team perk "30% health regen on Extremis & Terminus execution"

I think this one is a no brainer especially in Hard Siege since they do be spamming Extremis like crazy, which means heals everywhere :)

the other team perks can work though, but it's a little more specific.

Tactical with the team perk "1 equipment restock every 60 seconds" or the one with increased ranged damage for all.

With one grenade of your choice restocking every 60 seconds that means you don't have to run around the map everytime to try and get new stock, you can stick to a Shock grenade for crowd control or Melter bomb for BIG crowd control or focused target such as bosses.

or with more ranged damage team perk, that helps out everyone on the team, and that especially helps out the Vanguard and Tactical to delete extremis and majoris a lil more faster.

Anyway, what are yours? or if you don't have a specific lineup, then what's simply your best class to run on Siege Mode.

(little disclaimer, some of the enemies in the shown images I'm talking about is about their 1.0 release states, which Arrowhead clearly green-lighted to include into their game, so it counts still til this day.)

War Strider 1.0: (still to this day, much much less tho.) ragdoll simulator.

New Bile Titan: his breathe is a big gas that ragdolls into oblivion. (no need for direct hit, I know because I've been ragdolled by it while the VFX were clearly missing me.)

Vox Engine: Highly accurate & either one or two shot guaranteed ragdolling cannons.

Fleshmobs: they don't ragdoll in all their attacks but they have the possibility to do so when they charge.

Leviathan 1.0: remember the cringiness ? somewhat to highly accurate instant one shot on direct hit, or guaranteed ragdolling on near misses.

Just shows that Arrowhead has never learned their lessons / nor were they listening in the first place.