#NerfCole (Mastered all 26 hives Solo as Cole)

Gears 5
#61

After reading most of thread, I am on Commanders side. But it’s my opinion that Cole should be nerfed. I’ve mastered all hives and have a 1% on all maps beside those that have broken leaderboards.

What amuses me is that people want from TC to ease the game further. OMG. The silliness of Coles invincibility has been shown to me on 2nd chapter of Corruption, where cole ran to firs reject room, woke up everything, drawn all attention, and just stayed in place. 10-15 Rejects weren’t able to do him damage, on Master. I was like wtf. This difficulty level should give you challenge, not feeling that you again completed game by using glitch. For me it’s not fun.

But that’s an opinion of person who does like real challenge and likes games that are difficult ( Dark Souls series specially).

Also I want to nerf Marcus ult on horde, now you don’t have to have enemy in your camera view to even hit enemy, not mentioning it’ll be a headshot hit. Also ult shouldn’t last for 2 hours straight.

Also just to add important thing: I don’t play Cole, I reached level 12 and just put him on bench, I still prefer playing as Mac in escape, it requires some skill to be successful and don’t getting downed all the time.

1 Like
#62

Cole runs as swift as a coursing river, hits with all the force of a great typhoon, with all the defense from his inner fire and balancing mysterious as the dark side of the moon.

8 Likes
#63

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#64

I was hoping someone would pick up the reference :wink:

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#65

Worse example is the Juvies on The Warren being unable to do anything about him. Even the big Juvie mob halfway through the second act is incapable of doing anything to him.

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#66

#NerfWolfsXP #ZeroXPForWolf

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#67

At least the guy isn’t active anymore on this forum.

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#68

Guys, keep it civil… I understand that my opinion may be late that I call for a nerf and that you’re comparing it to Wolfs action but I wanted to first check if it really is doable to solo all the hives on the highest difficulty whereas about 50% of those hives (if not more) were not even a big challenge to doing so.

The highest difficulty is supposed to be extremely difficult in any game, otherwise I don’t understand why to have so many difficulties in a game if even the hardest one becomes a joke on the majority of hives.

I do understand that some people are not able to control Cole the way I am handling him, yet there’s still a bunch of people replying here that they can play him very well.

I’m not calling for a nerf to put him into a “unusable” state. Just adjust a couple numbers (e.g. Inner Fire 35%, Damage Dash 35%, Trashball Pro 50%?) to adjust the insane tankiness where you can just run into enemy armies without thinking much (on the highest difficulty even).

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#69

You can see the nerfs coming. I doubt TC will have intended to have created a character that is capable of mastering all hives solo.

Yes, it requires time to master the character, which Commander certainly has, but its not like we are doing vanilla Naxxramas here.

Most of the maps didn’t really require much strategy either.

I’m not too bothered whether you would prefer Cole to stay as he is or whether you want him nerfed, but people have to admit, he is a very strong character. I’d argue he is the strongest Escape character, and grossly underrated in Horde.

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#70

To be fair most of the nerfs were to characters that were being “overused.” I don’t think Cole has that status yet. Not like Keegan with infinite glitch or JD with GL.

Personally I prefer a non-melee build for Cole.

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#71

True, but more people are waking up to this. I believe its only a matter of time until he eventually is.

I would like to see TC buff the fire bullets card. Some others I would like to see as well.

#72

They could just buff the fire damage in general, it hardly seems to be worth anything right now other than existing for the Torch Tackle damage bonus, All The Glory and Soothing Warmth. Maybe also the Burn Boost skill if people use that.

#73

I think it may be that TC are trying to create Hives which can be completed more flexibly given there are more characters in the game now. Back in Op 1 Hives were created with Mac, Lahni and Keegan in mind so the skills required and the scenarios were tighter and more specific. Nowadays we have so many characters available to use, that some Hives, particularly the Op 3 ones have become easier because I suspect TC want players to be able to use different combinations.

1 Like
#74

Players learning how to handle Escape and improvements to Lahni/Keegan/Mac have also contributed. The Hive used to be really tough to complete on Master originally near launch, and let’s not even talk about Gauntlet and Descent runs, or The Hunters when it first released. With better skills for the Hivebusters(Lahni especially), those hives have gotten a lot easier to complete. Keegan is a self sufficient explosive ammo generator, Lahni just bleeds anything to death while tanking most melee attacks from Drone type enemies(and the occasional Scion melee). Mac only received Venom Resistance that made a noticeable difference in terms of skill loadout… and an actually unnecessary nerf to Bloody Shot and Adrenaline Junkie that still has never ever been mentioned in any patch notes nor been addressed by TC.

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#75

Yeah I agree. Escape is very different to Horde, and I reckon on launch, alot of PVE players struggled because they were so used to Horde.

I’ve mentioned it before, but Horde is a much more passive game mode - you set up a base where you fight for the next 2-3 hours in the same couple of spots.

Escape requires players to be much more proactive, to be able to move quickly and adapt to fighting in changing environment. I think naturally the current crop of experience and strong Escape players will not have been as good as they are now.

Also at launch, we all will have had lower level characters with lower level skill cards. We’ve obviously had time to level them up since then.

1 Like
#76

But the main factor that makes new hives easier, is that Escape lost most of it’s players on second operation, it’s noticeable on leaderboards placement.

Yesterday every next 1% on leaderboard started every 90th player, so it mean that, at that time, the new hive was played by circa 9000 people. On second day, where you get achievement for completing op 3 hives.

TC desperately want to draw more players back, and they just ease almost every aspect of game. So we have overpowered Cole, easy hives (try to beat 2nd operation hive with original escape characters and 3rd op with same, you’ll see how many times more you need to repeat in op2 hive than op3 hive.

#77

I have done some of the Op 3 hives with a “original” Escape character team. The Corruption wasn’t really difficult with Mac, Keegan and Emile on Master but that may be due to it being a relatively easy hive to beat to begin with, as we beat it on the first attempt after one Inconceivable run with a single failure in the first act because I was unable to bring a Mulcher Scion down before it closed in due to teammates rushing ahead(and Keegan isn’t much of a tank as we all know). Others like The Blight or The Line may be harder but I personally think the Hivebusters are more than potent enough to beat any hive relatively easily if the team is good.

But I would argue some of the Op 2 characters also don’t provide that much of a safety net. Lizzie still requires a player to be decent to make the character not be totally useless outside of Silverback usage periods. Baird also isn’t that great outside of the DR-1 which has been turned into a massacre tool in Op 3… if it doesn’t get stunned and does more than just baby sit Baird.

#78

I meant op3 hives are easy in overall compared to previous operations hives. Whole pve is lowering it’s difficulty standards just to draw more players to game. It’s the process that started near the mpxp thing and when 1% leaderboard reward was changed to 5%.

2 Likes
#79

A post was merged into an existing topic: The Next Dimension

#80

Sure, I guess. Even so I have beaten some Op 2 hives first try. Yet to see this done on Ice Queen or The Line though. Not a fan of The Blight because of the way it forces close quarters encounters with Poppers a lot while there is also Scions, Drones and Snipers or Grenadiers about and due to how RNG it is with the doors that open or close which can cut Keegan off from any explosive weapon except frags, and/or force either passing through difficult paths or leave the easy paths open.

The Link - not really difficult, I personally think. Lahni players can pretty much single handedly beat this hive even if there is an Emile and Keegan or Mac on the team. It’s not really interesting for non-melee characters either. Warren, Lahni can also handle most of it if the player is good enough and is willing to wait for or lure Juvies into venom. Only the big Juvie mob partway through Act 2 can be problematic if the game makes melee hit reg on the Juvies not work so they don’t bleed for Lahni to be capable of surviving their onslaught.

For the rest… Detour can provide a challenge depending on how far you intend to go and what spawn pattern the first Act provides(Juvies are infinitely more difficult to pass through than Leeches there). Second act, the second saferoom seems to be the most fun/interesting due to different paths to approach the Elites in the room after the supply rooms and various ok-ish weapons and ammo. The first saferoom is least fun and likely most difficult due to a lack of adequate weapons and tile layout. Unless you think Hammerbursts and Enforcers are good weapons to fight Drone and Sniper or Grenadier Elites with.

Third saferoom is obviously most difficult to reach but I found it wasn’t as interesting to go through as the second saferoom due to the tiles you have to fight through, so it’s mostly good for leaderboard times due to the whopping 10 total COG tags found there, personally.

But out of the Op 2 hives I’d argue only Ice Queen, Detour and Line are actually properly difficult. Blight just feels artificial and too random with forced difficulty through randomly open/closed paths with a ton of Drones and some Scions, and a bunch of Poppers in mainly close range fights for good measure. Warren may be harder without a Lahni but then a Keegan to compensate would be useful for the Drone type enemies, Scions and the big Juvie mob in Act 2.

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