We have to talk about Damage to Elites | Forums

[gustavonerdz]

Something needs to be done regarding DTE and the way it currently works in the game.

The fact that there's a DTE talent for every gear piece and it's one of the most important damage values in the game is kinda ridiculous and kills build diversity. It's even worse in the raid where everything is an elite and you need that DPS. If they balance the game's difficulty around the current maxed DTE builds, nothing else can compete and there's no room for current talents or any new talents in the future will be able to compete with it. It also throws off the game's balance in a weird way where you're more concerned about Veteran enemies than Elites.

I don't know what exactly can be done here, but maybe a cap like we have on crit chance would make it so we can't/don't need to dedicate our entire gear to DTE to do respectable damage. Of course, enemy HP would have to be adjusted accordingly.

One thing that definitely SHOULDN'T be done here is lower the current talent/gear DTE values. DTE is already extremely overpowered, so if they reduce the values they'll just become even more mandatory on builds. If you could sacrifice 1-2 gear pieces for extra utility or exotic/gear set pieces that will punish you even harder.

[VersatilityToad]

I've been thinking about this. I think they would do better to have armour classes or a DtA (Damage to Armor) talent as well.

Damage to Armour buffs base dmg% to all armour types (red/purple/yellow)
Damage to Elites buffs base dmg% to elites health only (buff the health while rebalancing the armour)

Purple enemies are usually the worst of the adds you can pull at he CP4 or raid events. Especially if you get a couple or more at the same time.

[Hrothfuurd]

I feel that DTE just shouldn't exist as a trait. Balance the enemy HP around a somewhat predictable damage rate that doesn't include sometimes being doubled.

It's not like people going in the DZ actually need to meaningfully make the choice of "Hmm, more dte for doing landmarks, or build to be stronger vs players?"

[Bok_Choi_Fu]

I don't understand the problem with DTE, I run 87% DTE but don't find Veterans a Problem. TTK for me is equal on elites and veterans with the exception of shotgunners, the veteran taking a couple more AR rounds to kill (but they are also the quickest veteran to kill). If you make your build 100%+ DTE and don't stack weapon damage I could see the problem but that's a poor build, not a DTE problem.

[chillshock]

The easiest balance fixes available would be, imho:

A) completely remove DTE and replace all instances of it with AWD. (not nice, because it changes players gear)

or

B) calculate purples as "half elites" ... so half of DTE also applies to them. (this would keep the pve stat, but removes the whole "purples are the true elites" effect.)

[BOSS_TPH76]

I don't have an issue with how it currently is. Although I think the suggestion in the post above mine that talks about making it a progressive damage type for purple enemies is a decent suggestion regardless.

Changing it more drastically than that would require a significant rebalance of the AI's EHP, accuracy and DPS.

If that is on the table I suggest either completely removing DTE as a passive talent and relegating it to an attribute on certain gear pieces...with a significantly higher stat max.

[LANCERZzZz]

I feel that DTE just shouldn't exist as a trait. Balance the enemy HP around a somewhat predictable damage rate that doesn't include sometimes being doubled.

It's not like people going in the DZ actually need to meaningfully make the choice of "Hmm, more dte for doing landmarks, or build to be stronger vs players?"

I agree with this. Right now it just seems like an unnecessary buff. Either get rid of it or make the player choose between damage to elites, weapon damage (of any kind), or crit damage

[gustavonerdz]

The point I'm making here is that DTE is too strong as an attribute and that compared to other stuff like weapon damage, it's way more available and with higher numbers. The excessive availability makes it so the best in slot things are always DTE related and it makes every other current or future talents competing for usage objectively inferior. I really think massive wasn't expecting this talent to be this good.

Comparing weapon damage, for example:

Has few talents in limited slots (devastating and compensated, holster and gloves only), usually rolls at around 10-12% on chest and backpack, alongside small amounts in gear mods.

DTE: Can roll over 40% in masks, hard hitting talent gives 10% DTE and can roll in all pieces of gear. Weapon mods can add 10-15% extra DTE on top of that. Affects overall damage multiplicatively after weapon damage buffs.

With how this works now, I think massive has painted themselves into a corner when design new challenges and new talents. It's a weird complaint to make, but I want to use less DTE related stuff. It's a boring attribute, there's no fun in it compared to other cool talents but I'll be punished for using anything else. There's just way too much of it and it's restricting build diversity, forcing the game balance with content like raids and trivializing the rest of the content so we end up with uneven difficulty. Even with the proposed skill buffs, DTE still works for skills so they'll still be best in slot in a PvE skill meta, especially in gear pieces that don't have any competing damage talent.

[Ranger_Logan]

DTE should be changed completely to Damage To Armor. Armor has no color & is simply a number value. You can use it on PvE or PvP. Make diferent builds relevant with a damage output. And then if you want to have increased damage to health spec for Weapon Damage. That way you won't find all the gear trash & actually farm for stuff to make your all-around build or support builds.

[zigMAGNA]

I like DTE myself.
But I have played around with my gears enough so that I have tried to supplement the DTE for more weapon dmg. I use an LMG on my main.. so ofc I look for more LMG dmg rolls and more offensive gear mod slots without losing too much else in stats. I find very high weapon dmg or gun specific dmg is just as good if not better than high DTE.

But outside of this focus on DTE.. and weapon dmg.. i think the game is still lacking support builds.. and I mean in the sense of crowd controlling.. and status inflicting builds.

You have shock ammo, incendiary ammo.. high velocity ammo...
for skills we have the flame turret, blinder firefly..
grenades that burn... and deafen

but we don't have good ways to apply heavy bleeding, more viable builds focused on making shock and burn...
The set pieces that help with these things seem to do it poorly and not even jive with skills well enough.
So I think if there were more viable builds in this way we can have alternatives to just making high dmg focused and elite dmg focused builds. Just my opinion on it.

I am working on my firefly blinder build currently.. and it's highly effective. Have duration up to 16 seconds now..but the agent is squishy as all hell.. though I can essentially disable enemy NPCs and have enough time to pick off enemies and if I fail to DPS them all down.. my skill is off cooldown by then anyways and I can re-blind them. And in groups so far testing in MM games it seems to help allies focus on DPS.