Having played TD1, I always hated the idea of meta weapons and gear and currently the vector combined with the exotic variant of the p90 seems to be the go to on consoles.
Have played a few conflicts and my initial impressions of the devs wanting the game to be a bit more cover based shooter has vanished.
Everyone is running around with this combination making an encounter very one side result.
I had put together an average good build centered around AR but despite having specced into CHC, Critical damage, AR critical damage, weapon damage on gear mods, I felt that the AR and mostly the rifles are pretty useless and pathetic.
the current imbalance between AR and rifles vs smg is so high.
SMG gives you fast reload speed, crit hit chance and fast RPM where the AR can't really stand with health damage and slightly higher base damage but nothing more.
I don't PvP but as expected it is still a joke. If you aren't running the meta build that takes down players in one shot or literally 1 second you may as well not go in the DZ, which is what most people do. PvP and PvE do NOT mix. This has been proven time and time again but someone doesn't seem to get it. You can talk it up all you want but trying to normalize weapons and skills for both PvE and PvP at the same time will not happen. What inevitably ends up happening is that PvE skills that work fine get nerfed to death so they aren't OP in PvP which does nothing but hurt PvE players. The PvP players find other meta builds or just plain cheat and the people who aren't out to PvP are just lambs to the slaughter.
The few times I went into the DZ there were no "cool" battles with other players. Some dude just walked up, went rogue and killed me in less than a second. Usually when I was in the middle of a PvE battle. When people get bored of the LZ (which is already happening) the only thing to do is to make a meta PvP build and head into the DZ to kill people for fun, because you don't need loot and there is literally nothing else to do.
I'd nerf the Vector's base accuracy and optimal range to a point where Close and Personal becomes its go to active talent, you'd choose the Optimal Range handling talent over Allegro or the 20% mag size increase, and make you really think hard about choosing between +crit or +accuracy mods.
The shield is the only thing that stops the Vector RPM meta. You may not use the Vector but you are feeling the results of what players have to do in order to counter it, at least, that's how and why I use the shield.Originally Posted by ave.crux Go to original post
Blame the Vector RPM meta, not the skills.
This goes for the Defender drone, too. It is the only thing in the game that can stop the RPM meta, as well as the one shot sniper. The problem is exacerbated when the meta builds use the very skills that counter them.
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With some more than others, RPGs are games where builds have to be puzzled together. Because making a build can get complicated or overwhelming, players can run to the world's best instruction manual, Youtube, and be instantly presented with reliable meta build videos from Youtubers with a lot of subscribers and credibility. This ultimately removes the need for said players to puzzle their own builds together, and results in an influx of players running the same builds.
However, without those videos, those builds or meta may never get seen by the devs and may never be dealt with.
Now, we'd have to trust the devs to make the right decisions, and that will take time.
So, in the meantime, how are you or I to stop players from copying what they see on Youtube? As it turns out, the only option is to use the very things that nullify (to an extent) the meta builds. Which may be cheap or labeled as a crutch. But, if those things are the only thing that can stop the meta (in real time), a very distasteful thing, why should they be looked down upon?
Because what's worse, the meta or the things that counter the meta that affects things that aren't meta?
I might be rambling, but yeah... I think with this way of thinking, I can give credit to the shock turret. I may have hated it, but I was only feeling the effects of what players had to do in order to combat something that was so widely abused, despite not being a player who abused it.
So yesterday I went back to the game and decided to farm a few CP3. I managed to get a EXPS3 Holosight Blueprint and a laser sight.
Went to the crafting station, and spent all my resources on a crafting the perfect police M4 and I had one with Strained and Allegro. I fitted my new blueprints and had increased my CHC to 50% and criti hit damage to 70% my AR damage sits on 31%.
Went into few conflicts and I managed to record 6 kills streak. Only thing is to avoid close encounter and stay at relatively medium range. Maybe the best conflict sessions I had.