As we all know, and as was specifically stated in SOTG, the loot system is designed such that loot odds are increased at the higher difficulty settings -- heroic and legendary.
For me, and I think for a good chunk of the players, heroic remains out of reach because the game remains poorly balanced for solo and duo. Can't speak to 3 or 5 person groups, but my understanding is the balance is pretty good.
The reason I can';t do heroic content isn't because I am unskilled. It is because, for whatever reason, the game designers want heroic content to be out of reach for the majority of players.
I am not able to heroic because I run out of ammo. Its that simple. When you run out of ammo, you are pretty much done.
I run out of ammo not because my aim is poor or my build is weak, but because the NPC time to kill remains way too high, bullet sponginess is about 30% too high, and of course because ammo doesn't really seem to drop very much. And even if ammo does drop, you just can't get to it. Because my approach to hard content isn't to run in and gun. That would be pretty stupid. Instead, my style is to remain at a distance and take them out in a controlled fashion.You just can't do it any other way if you are solo or in a duo.
Take a CP4 for example. When the named elite comes out, that alone is going to take more ammo than your inventory can hold. And I am not talking about a heavy. Oddly, those go down quicker than the non-heavies do. A named elite hyena assaulter for example. It should not take 5 clips to down one of these, and a fully charged nemesis shot to the face should do more than 1% damage to armor.
And at some point, the battle will transition from a stand off to a rush in by the NPCs. When this happens, you just can't keep control of the situation. Because as soon as one yellow gets to your flank, you are done.
Because not only is it going to take at least one reload to down that yellow, to make matters worse your shots to their face do not even phase them. It used to be that headshots -- even body shots -- would have an impact on the NPC. Make them pause a second, or a few seconds it it was a good face shot. But now, they are not even phased one bit.
Again, I am not talking about heavies or with helmets. I am talking about assaulters and such.
Then there is the fact that weakpoints are no longer weakpoints. It seems to take about 10+ hits to a weak point now. Good luck getting that to happen with the NPC rolling and chicken dancing about -- and of course still unphased when you do make a good hit.
And all of this nonsense is happening while 12+ NPCs with high damage output are aimed solely at you and giving you everything they've got. In 3 and 4 person crews, there are enough of you to split the NPC's attention. But solo or even duo., they can focus on you enough that you cannot move. And if a grenade lands within 20 feet of you, even if you are outside the flame area, you will still catch fire and become phased.
Now, for the past year plus, if I read a post like this, I'd respond by saying "you are simply taking on content you or your build is not ready for". That is exactly how it feels now. LIke it did before I knew anything about builds and just wore whatever. When I didn't really even know about weak points. When I didn't know what the icon over the NPCs head meant, and therefore had no idea about prioritization.
Apparently, what the game designers want me to do, is start doing matchmaking with randoms so I can get carried through heroic/legendary content, and in that process I can farm and be blessed with god rolls and rare items.
Or, perhaps they want me to glitch? I guess not, because we know how that ended up. I never condone cheating, but honestly, I can't say I can really blame the ones that used glitches very sparingly.
I've said before and will say again, a game that was once very fun is anything but.
TL;DR
Fix UR game.
I've not tried legendary but I can solo CP4 content. I've never grouped in my entire play time with D2 and agree with keeping distance, but it is possible and not just if you get lucky.
I think it does depend on your build though. I'm using a rifle and have gone almost full glass cannon - if it goes wrong I die very quick! I have swapped in a chest piece with unbreakable now which makes survivability much better without compromising DPS too much.
I do CP4 solo just fine without running out of ammo at all, so do many others.
Weak points aren't called weak points, because they are supposed to be taken out easy. I had a good laugh at that one by the way. They are weak points, because they weaken the NPC when taken out.
You say you play good build and it's not you, but the game, yet you don't provide a single information on your build. Some people in the game think a build with purple and blue pieces should be taken in Heroic. (Yes, I have seen that.)
And since you absolutely had to throw that TL;DR in the end, here is another one for you.
It's not the game, it's you.
Yeah, apparently you're not using the M1A/Baker's Dozen. It's a bit ridiculous but that's really the best weapon to take on CP4's or Heroic content solo. I run the gunner specialization, which gives you 10% of your total ammo every 60 seconds. Combined with the BD's Perfect Lucky Shot talent means that you'll never run out of ammo.
My build is nothing special, just a standard FPS build with Unbreakable and Unstoppable Force, specced into crit. On Heroic, I down an elite enemy in 3-4 shots, a named in 10 shots if I land em right. Reds get oneshotted once Unstoppable Force is procced.
I don't know what you're running, but the game is really unforgiving towards SMG's and AR's in it's current state. M1A is the way for the time being.
I am fairly confident that the detailed description of the problems will demonstrate to most that I am not a below average player, or even an average player. The average player doesn't even make it into the end game. I am not even an average player of those that do play the end game.Originally Posted by Deathlyhearts Go to original post
BTW, let's make sure we are on the same page with what "able" means in the context of heroic content. To me, it means able to without any wipes. Or the use of any cheese methods.
But if you are able to do that, then either you are an extremely talented player, or one that has been blessed with better drops.
I just made Tier 5. Now when I solo missions on Challenging mode, I get disconnected from server on last boss!! I am so glad I waited until the game was $3.99. It is not worth more than that. As for the new expansion, I have yet to find more than one decent review. I have experienced this with several PC games from ubisoft. The conversion to PC is highly flawed. I don't play xbox so I have no experience to compare. Ubisoft needs to fix this. Until then my days of throwing away money is over.
Well I can't speak for the rest, but to me personally it shows that you are playing on a difficulty that your gear cannot handle yet solo IMO.Originally Posted by tcarlisle2012 Go to original post
If you are struggling with taking weak points and staggering enemies it means your dps output is not enough to do so. If you are running out of ammo often (I say often, because its still fine if you run say, once out of ammo -- that's why we have resupply nodes, scattered around the world, CP, missions etc) it shows that it's taking you way too much ammo then it should if your build was up to par with the selected difficulty.
Personally I prefer to run CP4 with Unbreakable DPS build, but I mostly use AR. I have the Baker Dozen's as my second, but IMO I really don't like using it all that much, but I like LMG's even less and still haven't dropped an SMG I am happy with. It takes me around 3 clips to fully down a Named Enemy (2 and a half to blow their armor away and the last half is for their health). Most of the times said enemies get also focused by the friendly militia, so if takes you 5 clips on top of the damage your friendlies are doing, again it seems you gear is yet not up to par for that level of difficulty to me.
Have I been blessed with good drops? Maybe. My DPS build is nearly maxed out on everything and I also have nearly maxed out Skill dmg build that I sometimes use in CP4. I have no issues with either, but I like the DPS one better for CP4 in particular.
I don't consider myself extremely talented player in the slightest, but I am certainly not an average player as well. Most of the times I clear it without wipes, sometimes I wipe, if I do a stupid mistake and yes, 99% of my wipes are because of a mistake on my part.
I am sure Massive will be deeply saddened to hear they lost a customer who threw away the staggering amount of $3.99 for the game. I was so very tempted to put "" on customer too in your case.Originally Posted by MebeMe502 Go to original post