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  1. #1

    Why do the devs struggle to get skills right in the sequel?

    Level 40 player here, ran damn near most of my missions in mm as a skill build. While I can pull my weight in a group, skills still have issues to this day when it comes to deployment. They either have bad deployment or crappy functionality in general, Massive really needs to get their act together with skills because this doesn't make any sense.

    I'm gonna focus on mainly DPS skills and what is wrong with them

    Seeker Mines: Since the launch of this game Cluster has been the one and only used skill variant to remain competitive, Explosive is either too weak to use at all and Airburst horrid functionality. This ends up making ppl solely reliant on clusters and freak out the moment clusters are bad = skill builds are bad. This mindset causes a negative stigma on skills as whole because when ppl are thinking that way it means something must be seriously wrong with other skills to use.

    Remember how simple Cluster and Airburst were to use back in TD1? Yeah? Why did we move away from that design choice? Massive decided to make what was working fine worse. You could throw Airburst, it could autotrack enemies, and the player could choose which target to seek. Someone suddenly thought it was a good idea to change that and give us the crappy version of Airburst we know now.

    Airburst: The current way to use it is garbage and tedious, not really much to say.

    Cluster: The specialty of this mine should be strength in numbers, right now it does decent upfront damage to the point it overshadows the Explosive Seeker Mine variant. Yes I'm aware that enemies now dodge the mines, my point still stands on where this seeker mines variant is suppose to be and where it isn't suppose to be.

    Explosive: The current damage it does is not enough to use it and because of that it can't compete against Cluster

    Drones:: Striker sees a little action, bomb drone sees no action.

    Striker: gets easily shredded on harder difficulty, I feel like they made the AI too harsh when it comes to prioritizing player skills.

    Bombardier: This variant not worth using at all, it'll either get destroyed instantly in mid air(Not having an enemy hit it, it'll literally destroy itself for no reason.) or the horrendous controls. What I suggestion is to make it like Striker but it stays near the player so that shoots out missiles. The current design isn't gonna cut it.

    Firefly: I honestly like this skill but it's so damn sad to see MSV give players tools to play with when often at times the tools themselves don't wanna work. I use Demo Firefly and Burster time from time. Firefly will destroy itself INSTANTLY a split second after deploying it to go on a cooldown, causing me to not be productive to my group and miss out on contributing to it.

    Burster: will TAG the enemies I select and when they are tagged, the skill doesn't wanna detonate when they are near each other. After a certain while they bombs I deploy will go away causing me DPS lost. Remove the stupid requirement of needing 2 people to trigger it and have it go on a 3 second timer like Explosive Shot from WoW currently does. Making this skill less situational.

    Demolisher: This skill is bugged on some enemies, my demo does almost 10mil and it doesn't destroy a heavy cleaner weakspot, I only run 1 red and maybe 5 or 15 shots from my LMG will destroy a weakpoint on him. Also, why are we only allow to tag 1 weakpoint on an enemy when they have multiple weakpoints? A pure red build that's either an MG5 or M1A can destroy them all much quicker. You're screwing skill builds over in that department.

    Also, why can't it damage Support Stations either? It's suppose to target skill proxies and it doesn't do that.

    Turrets: Much like the Striker Drone I think the AI is too harsh and focuses them easily

    Assault: Terrible, they were fine before TU6 or 7 where its AI wasn't screwed. The Assault Turret will suddenly stop firing and cause the player to retarget the turret again, It has noticeably became less aggresive.

    Flamer: Also terrible, Much like Airburst and Cluster the variant should've been left alone when coming from the first game, the positioning requirement of it puts off most players and if you put it in the wrong spot it's useless, even if you do manage to catch enemies on fire it's still useless because the enemy can run out of its cone to destroy it. Dragonbreath didn't have this issue because it could turn 360 and burn anybody who was within radius of the turret.

    Sniper Turret: Outside of its wonky aim I have no real complaint, the aiming could still use some tweaking

    Mortar Turret: No complaints here as far as I'm aware.

    Stinger Hive: Fine, it does what is expected of it functional wise

    Booster Hive: The skill haste this variant suppose to provide is bugged

    Chem Launcher: I feel like the faster deployment helped this skill out a lot.

    Firestarter: Could use a better button to detonate the fire explosion over double tapping the deployment button

    Oxidizer: Should've been a DoT that lingers on an enemy.

    I ran skills in TD1 a lot, everytime I deploy a skill I feel like I was gonna benefit from using it. Here I often at times get the feeling that will it finally work this time or will it bug out and miss out on doing what it's suppose to be do screwing over my performance? How Massive been handling skills in TD2 is mediocre, They came a long way since the launch of this game but they still have much room to improve on and I don't see that happening with the team's lack of attention towards them. Constantly doing number tweaks isn't gonna help skills as whole. If the skill doesn't feel good to use then the skill will be overlooked.
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  2. #2
    I like the concept of Firefly, but although its 8 targets, why do I feel that I've won the lottery whenever I am able to target 2 things?

    When I solo, I hardly use a skill build because my dps builds kill everything 2 to 3 times faster. Outside solo, I only do the Raid, and as far as I've seen so far, pure skill builds are a liability there.
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  3. #3
    Good post! Cluster seekers are weak right now and they have a functionality problem, blowing up on an enemy and not causing damage, NPCs constantly evading it unlike when I evade their grenade and it still one shots me.
    I use glass cannon on the chest for much needed damage due to the devs neutering skill damage horribly. It's not enough!

    The NPCs are still amazing marksmen with smgs at distance, they have 500 crit damage and 100% crit chance it seems.

    I'm done with this game until devs fix these skills or possibly for good. The devs love their cheaters so much they can keep them, I hope they have a long lovely relationship together
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  4. #4
    SHDLBC's Avatar Senior Member
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    Thanks for taking the time to write that out and post it. I appreciate the actual feedback.

    I can agree with most of it too, though I’m not a huge skill guy. In TD1 I usually ran 1 defensive skill and 1 offensive skill. I loved the airburst seeker but I feel like it was DOA for TD2 and they’ve never really tried with it, especially in light of the cluster seekers that were the main feature of TU7.

    Generally I have a hard time justifying the 1 defensive and 1 offensive skill approach because with the possible exception of the sniper and mortar turrets, I feel that it’s just not worth giving up the gun DPS to get them to a usable state. That’s just me though. I’ve been trying a build with mender drone and a couple of the different turret variations and it’s....ok. Skills were more fun in TD1.

    For me there are a couple things that they tried to reinvent the wheel for in Division 2 and I’m not sure why. Skills are at the top of that list, and it feels like they’ve been flailing about with them. First we had skill power/mods. Then we lowered the power thresholds for some of the mods. Then we had powerful batteries introduced to add skill power in specific spots. Then we nerfed the batteries and added the technician spec. Now the batteries are gone and we have skill tiers, along with a bunch of mods that are pretty much useless.

    It seemed like in TD1 most, but not all, of the skills had a base level of effectiveness so that you could deploy them and get some benefit out of them even if you weren’t all in on skill power. You felt like you were a government sleeper agent that didn’t just have a gun but some cool toys too. I don’t feel like that’s the case in TD2. I remember the first time I logged in on day 1 and the first skill I unlocked was pulse because that was the first one I unlocked in TD1. Then I walked outside the BoO, ran across some Hyenas, and decided to trigger the pulse to see if there were more around. It was so horridly disappointing when the pulse didn’t even reach far enough to detect the closest enemy to me that I could actually see. I have to say that my impression of skills in this game has never really recovered from that initial disappointment.

    I also agree that a lot of the deployment procedures, button combinations and such, feel pretty clunky.

    Anyway, that’s my thoughts. I’ll be curious to see what some of the skill build folks think.
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  5. #5
    pob709's Avatar Senior Member
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    I completed solo legendary in DI using a tech build use to take time but achiebable and rewarding (not drops lol). Now I played around with skills in Tu8 and its just not rewarding as dps still rules. Seekers have been over nerfed (due to the cry baby gun rambos) and let's be honest the whole skill set up needed changing with the increased AI and being able to use endless multiple skills against the player. You should be able to swap skills via a flywheel and use more than two at once even during cooldown. The loss of talants (to further synigise a build) has not helped and yes its fine to run and gun but we are supposed to be a super soldier using high tec and the best build is based on a single shot rifle 😂
    Something is wrong with the game and its just not the glitches and bugs.
    Actually the devs have got one thing partly right (the rogue agent) only problem is its not us.
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  6. #6
    You are doing it wrong. I can solo every heroic with striker drone and attack turret, very easily in fact. Takes a little longer than my dps build but is very doable.

    Seeker most people bust their nut at start of a fight which is bad. You want to wait alittle bit so it can kill some enemies. Use the chest piece with 25% skill kills to reset cooldown.
    You are basically spamming seekers at this point.

    Airburst is made for status builds.

    A lot of people just aren't building properly for skill builds, but they are also not in a place they will overtake Red DPS builds. It just will not happen.
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  7. #7
    Originally Posted by dogspeonlegs Go to original post
    Airburst is made for status builds.
    I think most people know that Airbust is for status buids.
    The problem is, "it's annoyingly tedious to use".

    The other seekers you can just toss and it will automatically attack an enemy or you can target a specific enemy for it to roll over to that enemy.
    But you can't do that with the airburst seeker you need to pinpoint a specific location for it to start rolling and explode.
    It becomes even more annoying when the enemy is on high ground or behind cover because the high-lighted location area keeps bouncing around when you try to choose where to send the Airburst.
    Trying to do that when a squadron of enemies are shooting at you is incredibly annoying and that's why a lot of people give up and start using the other seekers.
    Basically the Airburst seeker should work like the other seekers with autotrack.
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  8. #8
    The technician class should constantly have the overcharged if all already at skill tier 6 instead of giving us another useless skill tier in the tree, the overcharge is too conditional to get via bdsu gloves and exotic backpack for pure skill and solo, NPCs are extremely agile and evade grenades, and the overcharge last only 15 seconds, wow just **** diversity and skill builds huh oh and energized talent lmao thank God they nerfed armor kits down to only 4 then want you to burn one to get overcharge for 15 secs..... 15 ******g seconds. The exotic backpack doesn't even work to give the overcharge damage!!!! It's like they didn't test this game at all....... As soon as you throw a grenade, before it even explodes, two in the bag proc activates instead of the battery icon, 1 in the hand, check it out in the shooting range, they damage never changes and overcharge is never achieved
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  9. #9
    pob709's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by dogspeonlegs Go to original post
    You are doing it wrong. I can solo every heroic with striker drone and attack turret, very easily in fact. Takes a little longer than my dps build but is very doable.

    Seeker most people bust their nut at start of a fight which is bad. You want to wait alittle bit so it can kill some enemies. Use the chest piece with 25% skill kills to reset cooldown.
    You are basically spamming seekers at this point.

    Airburst is made for status builds.

    A lot of people just aren't building properly for skill builds, but they are also not in a place they will overtake Red DPS builds. It just will not happen.
    Well read my post never said I can't do it just said its not so rewarding. The 2% off players who completed legendary D1 solo don't really need advice. With nearly 4k hours in the Division franchise I don't need any help in putting a build together 😂
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  10. #10
    Originally Posted by dogspeonlegs Go to original post
    You are doing it wrong. I can solo every heroic with striker drone and attack turret, very easily in fact. Takes a little longer than my dps build but is very doable.

    Seeker most people bust their nut at start of a fight which is bad. You want to wait alittle bit so it can kill some enemies. Use the chest piece with 25% skill kills to reset cooldown.
    You are basically spamming seekers at this point.

    Airburst is made for status builds.

    A lot of people just aren't building properly for skill builds, but they are also not in a place they will overtake Red DPS builds. It just will not happen.
    Might I ask why you HATE skill builds? It's VERY clear you barely use skill builds and run with a DPS build 99% of the time.
    The way I see it is seekers in general need to be re-purposed.
    Cluster SHOULD NOT BE A BURST SKILL. It should go back to being a DoT like it was in Div 1. Lower the initial damage by 75% and add that damage back as bleed damage over 10 seconds. This keeps clusters out of the "nuke" category and adds a way to counter it in PvP while still making it have a LOT of pressure and more of a tactical aspect. Why this was changed is beyond me.
    The base cluster should have it's damage increased by a major amount to work as that single target nuke that if deployed TACTICALLY can take out small groups of 2 or 3.
    Air burst SHOULD have little to no initial damage and the damage should work like white phosphor and if it gets on you will cause insane damage over a very short time. SUPER high skill ceiling for SUPER high damage.
    As for the other skills.
    Artificer hive is currently not working on X-Box the way the description says it should. It boosts damage but does NOT refresh duration. If you are using artificer the duration is equally as important as the damage boost as it makes your main focus of damage dealing last the entire fight IF you tactically use it. These are the thinking mans play style and it's not for everyone but it scratches the master strategist itch that was missing from the game but until it works again as the description says it's simply a minor damage buff which honestly isn't that great.
    Sniper turret is in a really good spot paired with either a DMR or sniper on the player and those head shots from the turret are GOLDEN. Arguably one of the best skills in the game right now..
    Drone skills are cheesy and usually don't work well at all and the drone in general needs to have it's health SCALED TO DIFFICULTY AND PLAYER COUNT to make them even remotely usable in heroic. Duration based skills should not die to bosses in one hit.
    Bombardier drone should be a one time use NUKE with a very high skill ceiling and very high damage.
    Shield in general should have a LOT more health and it should be usable in the hardest of hardest content as a way to nullify damage to the player over long periods of time. This is not a skill that should EVER be linked to dealing damage. Give this an identity instead of an afterthought.
    Pulse skill honestly I NEVER use so I cannot give ANY input on this skill.
    Chem launcher... Where to start.
    Heal is ok but honestly needs MUCH faster cool downs in PvE based content.
    Firestarter is WAY to clunky and needs to have a way to make it explode on contact AS AN OPTION.
    Oxidizer needs to have a major damage increase OR (not and) a major increase to range. One or the other not both. I'd prefer to have the range maybe doubled in size as a base.

    As for the new skills I do not own the x-pac so I cannot comment.

    As for the skill tier seven causing constant overcharge I think is a VERY viable idea as the skill tiers honestly don't do much and skill mods are a joke it shouldn't be out of the question for a skill based specialization to get skill based increases that no other class can get. Just makes sense to me. It's not like skills being overcharged 100% of the time would kill the balance of the game in it's current state. At this point skills need ALL the help they can get to get back near a level playing field as DPS gun builds.
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