cut a long story short went on a heroic mission last night with 3 other agents and 1 had a skill build who wiped every room out before any other agent had a chance to lift and aim our weapons up. he/she did this constantly in every room now i am not salty and fair play to whoever had this build but the fact remains are skill builds adding to the death of this game. it is first and foremost a looter/shooter yet ubisoft have pushed people to use skill builds (most of my drops have some kinda skill hast ect on them now). back to topic when the seekers wiped the room even the frame rate could not keep up forcing it to stutter and freeze in every room. i ask where is the skill in popping seekers out on rapid cooldown and letting loose while at the back of the room behind cover. why does this game take 1 step forward and then 5 steps back.
I love my tactician doing missions, but it's not everyone's cup of tea. Everybody has got a favourite gearset whether it's pve or pvp, mine being lonestar in pvp and tact for pve. Personally I think there's still an element of skill involved using a tact or other skill build, cos your very squishy and have to plan a good defence plan if the ncps get close cos most will kill you with 1-2 shots. Most people I've played with in legendarys especially, are some sort of skill build whether some put into electronics or full 10k elecs. What about reclaimers ? I know they can still use seekers as the second skill, but what if they just stick to healing skills. Does that still count as being part of killing the game ?
Are you talking TD1 or TD2?
If TD1, then years ago, they were even more powerful yet. If they are wiping enemies that fast with a full team on heroic, then they just about have to be using cheats or something. I have a 10,200+ electronics fully optimized Tac build. I use an optimized 204 class weapon with Destructive, Ferocious, and Determined (and another with predatory on the last slot if I need healing). I have the two explosive talents, plus the one for bleed. I can do as you describe solo on hard every time, and on challenging sometimes, largely depending on enemy proximity to each other and enemy type. Since the enemies scale to number in party there should be no way a person should be able to do that even if building stacks before using the skills with only seekers. Now, with a BFB and a cluster of enemies in close proximity to each other, one can certainly lay waste to a crowd. BFB does take some player skill to use, especially with slow PC or network connection (due to lag). You are right though that seekers are a drop and forget tool and don't require any player skill to use but one does have to give up either stamina or firearms to have enough skill power to make them do any damage.
Like Spectacular said above, if you are running a full electronics skill build, you are very easy to kill and one has tactfully plan your route, your advance, even the timing on the skills. Quite often, skills come off cooldown with either a second or two before an enemy (usually shotgun rushers) reach me. Or, the skills would have cooled off a second or two after they killed me.
I think the way this game is set up, some things it somewhat forces you to specialize to be strong. This makes for more build diversity, but less versatility for the individual player (for a given gear set). I have a lot of builds now that are somewhat just theory crafted ideas. For instance, I have been toying with a full electrician Final Measure to use as a skill build but not have to worry about grenades. It is not effective as Tac, but for instance in Warrengate Legendary, the grenade spam at the beginning makes it a decent build even though there is more time between skill uses.
Things like a 9k Stam Striker is fairly tanky while still retaining some gun damage. However, doing a 9k F/A Striker will absolutely melt everything. As long as all the enemies aren't focused on you, it is feasible and a lot of fun because everything just melts.
For PvE anyway, there is no build that 'kills the game'. There are the main 3-4 build that it seems 85% of the player base run. It is no fun for anyone in the scenario you described where one person kills everything in sight, probably not even for the one doing all the kills. They are probably just doing it to inflate their ego. So, if I am playing in a group, and someone is either doing everything or nothing, I tend to non stay in the group for long.
If you are a new(er) player, hold out judgement until you've tried out quite a few builds, especially optimized ones. My nephew didn't like several of the builds, saying they were inept. We swapped accounts for the night, him playing my fully optimized ones and me playing his. He quickly figured out how much fun some can be with the right rolls, talents, and attributes.
As mentioned above offensive skill builds tend to have burst damage - if you hit the combinations right and get your ducks in a row on procs, etc. you can easily wipe out a cluster of enemy even at the highest difficulty but if you miss then with such low health you go down easily and that is still their biggest weakness especially at higher difficulty you can easily be one shot (some tricked out builds aside).
Even with a tricked out build though you can't reliably wipe an entire room at heroic with just seekers alone - if someone is doing that constantly then they are most likely using some kind of exploit. You can just about do it at challenging depending a bit on which enemy you are facing (and even that is a stretch and pretty much needs perfect execution).