This has been my most used build probably in the game, used since it was first introduced with all 3 special ammos, used when it was just explosive ammo, used when it was hollow point rounds, and everytime it had some sweet spots but many more flaws. Sadly i think it still is like that.
Well first of all i made a long post comment on issues regarding bleed damage vs burn damage (https://forums.ubisoft.com/showthrea...-Burn-vs-Bleed), tl;dr bleed sucks and burn is miles better. The two big issues with bleed is that it only does 2 things, small amount of damage, decrease player speed. So in current live game most of OD benefits comes from the hollow point damage bonus (20% base and 35% with chestpiece), in the PTS how much hollow point ammo acquisition has been changed a bit, you now get ammo directly to your gun without having to go there pick it up OR reload using backpack talent, and that's very GOOD.
Now the problem comes with the second part of that, the amount you can carry has been changed to whatever is your magazine size so that means that slow hard hitting weapons like shotguns, rifles and snipers are now in bad spot, while ARs and SMGs are bit better, and LMGS drasticly better. That's very troublesome to me since most other gear sets drasticly benefit automatic weapons (negotiator for high rof automatic weapons, true patriots with bigger magazines for LMGs) and snipers also have their own gear set. So shotguns and rifles are bit left behind but current live game OD provided them with a good niche (even if they also have a bug that is a stealth nerf to the set), now with shotguns naturally carrying very low amount of ammo they become drasticly nerfed now with this gear set change (1886 would only have 5 rounds and double barrel shotgun obviously only 2 for an entire gunfight).
The other problem that is extremely disappointing comes from how bad bleed damage is, extremely awful, truly awful. I've tried stacking status effect and the new vile exotic mask, it was still tickling enemies, bleed is not good, as long bleed is not good this gear set will underperform. Either give new gimmick to hollow points such as extra armor damage on top of the regular damage bonus or rework bleed damage, my suggestion would be to just make bleed do % of an enemy health and that way it's scales perfectly with player amount and difficulty.
Even with the backapack talent buffing the bleed damage you would get something that is just inferior in both DAMAGE and lacks the CC that burn offers. Burn status effect is so superior that anything that has bleed is drasticly inferior
So to sum up:
Good: ammo now goes to the gun directly, backapack talent is better than old one
Bad: Bleed damage makes the backpack and status effect bonus irrelevant, nerfed amount of hollow point you can carry resulting in indirect nerfs to shotguns and other weapons, burn damage makes a better dot and has CC so bleed is just badly designed.
Veridict: Ongoing directive gear set is now WORSE than current live build .The quality of life changes are good but overshowed by the bad bleed damage, useless backpack talent due bad bleed scalling, and less total ammo carried making using gear set useless unless you want to be angry at not working.
Solution: Make bleed relevant for PVE either by buffing it or making it have a better secondary effect (enemy takes more damage the more armor he has, damage of each tick increases over time). Or replace bleed mechanic completely by something else using special ammo ,explosive ammo that explodes when you reload your weapon and damage increases based on the weapon damage and number of hits so a single shotgun shot would stack mulplie pellets, some kinda of tazer dart ammo that if you hit enemy enough times to fill a bar on top of his head it shocks him. Current state is simply not acceptable if bleed stays the same.
Well yeah, so it's a very hard nerf to shotguns and rifles, a medium buff for ARs and SMGS as stupidly huge buff to LMG. Try having fun with the boomstick shotgun now using this gear set. There's also the issue with the backpack talent being useless due how bad bleed is.Originally Posted by As1r0nimo Go to original post
I used it mainly with ARs so for me it's fine.Originally Posted by xcel30 Go to original post
As for bleed - i think there is something wrong with status effects affecting it (it only increase the duration, i think).
agreed on backpack talent being better
i tried this set before but quickly ditched because didnt feel good performing
after rework tried again in the pts
still needs work i agree with the bleed being low
you use 4 pieces to get the talents working and sacrificing maybe 4-5 reds of a dps build and getting far less in return
by the way i always used AR in the div1 and 2 except rare ocacions where i needed to swap so i tried this setup with a 4 piece ongoing including backpack fenris chest with trauma and coyote for the crits
felt better then the old version but still felt not good enough output to change all-red build
maybe making the bleed a bit better or bufing the hollow point ammos own dmg can work
i dont know
but gonna try again still wanna like this build somehow
it can do challenge time trials solo i believe in ongoing =)
gonna try that tooOriginally Posted by As1r0nimo Go to original post
Which raises the question of whats the poinf of the new backpack talent once againOriginally Posted by As1r0nimo Go to original post