Hey there. I'm poodros. I will get straight to the point
So, I was running summit on solo some weeks ago and, as it was to be expected, NPCs killed me. Of course, I revived and got killed again after, but there was something I noticed in the death screen.
Before respawning, I saw that an elite had hit me for 995K damage, which wasn't very surprising, until I saw that the red bar NPC that actually killed me twice had hit me for 1 million damage.
I don't run Protection from Elite Mods and have most if not all of my gear attributes and gear mods focused at Crit Chance and Crit Damage. I run 4p Hunter's Fury, Memento and a Walker Harris chest piece with Glass Cannon.
Even when taking Glass Cannon into consideration, it seems quite absurd to me that somehow a red bar NPC can hit harder than elite NPCs in the same period of time.
And this is one occasion that I have memory of, but it can very well happen again and that is what is really concerning.
NPCs really need serious balancing passes and, ideally, should at most do only 350K damage, simply because they are supposed to be weak and easy to get rid off and should only chip at your armor not savagely melt you down in a system tick
It's important to note that the damage report shows you the damage you take in a few seconds before you died. It's entirely possible the redbar does not just do more damage every time, but simply that the redbar hit you more than anyone else did in that window of time.
Not that it excuses how much damage anything does on legendary, but you should at least understand this part of the game before leaping to conclusions.
Even for a tank build the damage dealt by redbars and purples is still insane. Check this, 3.5M dmg from a purple medic (that is supposed to have no damage or very little): https://forums.ubisoft.com/showthrea...1#post15196394
I don't think there is that much of a difference (anymore, if there ever was) to the amount of damage each NPC type does to players. They're only harder to take down those veterans and elites. In my opinion they're only using the NPC types for challenges where you need to take down X elites (or veterans). I also notice that whenever there is a challenge it becomes harder to find any of those. It isn't like TD1 whereas you play missions on challenging you only see elites, I think it is quite the opposite. There aren't that many around on higher difficulties because the others (red and purples) hit just as hard. Which to me kind of defeats they whole purpose of having these different types in the first place.
Am not sure what level OP was playing, because it isn't mentioned it the post. But I usually play the game on hard/challenging simply because it is most fun. When roaming the city I can take out a mob without them even hitting me (grenades still work). Doesn't matter which color they are, everything is down quickly and really can't be bothered it spent an hour (or more) to complete a single mission like legendary ones. In TD1 they were still fun, in this game not so much because of NPC split second accuracy and composition of groups. But that is just the way I prefer to play, shoot-them-up style, not sit and duck.