Operation 5 PvE Nerfs: Yay or Nay?

Let’s excuse the fact that Del originally had a far better Ultimate, like they didn’t even give the guy a Boltok :man_facepalming:

I’m not insinuating that Del should be a Kait or JD, I am fully aware that he is a great engineer, what I am saying is that they seem to have given the man no love when it comes to Escape, it wouldn’t have been too difficult to swap out his current Ultimate with something else not worthless but they doubled down and although he will be a bit better in Escape now the fact remains that he’s still a running joke.

Del was by far the worst Escape character, even lazily slapped together classes (Halo/Terminator) were superior before and I doubt this update will make him move up in any significant way. Baird is arguably a top 10 Escape character and that’s mainly because his Ult is good, no excuse why they couldn’t have either given him a new Ult (I was thinking a turret as its easy) or just bring back his old Ult (freezing sentry which would be amazing)

Even if you look past Escape and into Horde this update will do nothing because no sane Del will take away one of their good Engineer cards to slap on a trash tier damage card so it does nothing for Horde either.

It was lazy, that’s all I’m really saying. This is all because TC/MS thought one man could do everything (Michael Shannon) and so guy gets overwhelmed and looks for simple solutions to difficult problems, should’ve done it the right way and gave him a different Ult but now we’re stuck with a couple of balls forever.

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I agree. Having one person do all of pve is ludicrous. It makes sense it has taken them this long to change and fix things. It also means the decoupling severely affected possible improvements to pve since only one person was doing it.

And you’re not going to take off overclocked locker for bleeding tracker balls? Lol

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Anytime I play Del, I straight up announce that I’m useless. Mans doesn’t even have a shred of damage resistance.

To add insult to injury, they start him with an enforcer of all things. Pitiful.

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His only option for damage are a active reloaded long shot or boomshot on select targets

I was using a Longshot with him for a bit last night. Can only 1-shot 1-10 in horde.

After that, you take the first shot, and half the time on your second shot you get ■■■■■■■ shredded.

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Try the Torque Bow, should at least be able to take Imago and maybe Hammerburst Drone heads off.

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Never tried that. I’ll have to look into it.

Thing is that ammo will be a problem, as you don’t replenish torque ammo at the end of waves.

What? I thought you’d be swimming in power with those glorious discounts Del gets on fortifications. He even has an Overclock card that only applies to lockers he builds and is less strong than Baird’s…

I don’t see it being a problem to have some characters not being very good for Escape. The only real reason for letting all (except Jack) play Escape is to give us an easy way to level up cards. If all the characters were as good at Escape as they are in Horde and vice versa, there wouldn’t be as much point in having the different modes. It makes no sense for a pure engineer to go into Escape. The aim is to get out quickly, not make stuff and sit back. So yeah he will always be the weakest one to take into escape.

For Horde - again I don’t mind him not being a high damage character. He is meant to just build and repair stuff. If Del is finding himself having to contribute to combat in a significant way, even on Master, then the rest of the team have let him down.

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I see your point. It’s clear that Del was created with Horde in mind, not Escape and as such his inclusion in Escape feels like an empty token gesture.

That said, I’m a believer that all classes/characters should have a role in whatever they’re included in. It seems that TC to an extent feel that way too. Michael Shannon (PVE Lead) has mentioned a few specific points that some of the changes to characters is to balance them. Some of the changes to Cole where his ranged burning/fire skills and giving him some Scorcher skills was a means to bridge the gap for him in Horde and it was acknowledged that Cole is excellent for Escape, but not as much in Horde. They’ve also done the same for the original three Hivebuster characters (Mac, Lahni and Keegan) where they were originally strong Escape characters but were lacking in Horde. Since then they have all received buffs with Horde in mind.

With that principle in mind, then Del should receive something for Escape too.

Correct. The have done a decent job bridging the gap between horde and escape for most. But the two that should just remain are del and jack unless they are going to make significant changes to both. With only one person running the helm just change del back to horde only until you get a decent fix in for him.

I’ve said 5his before, not related to del, but they need separate tuning for horde and escape. Title would change the need for fahz and Kati nerf

I’m just surprised with clayton as now my level 6 card is level 4 basically.

And JD is changed to more of a grenade class when really I’d prefer them to actually make a grenadier class and left JD alone.

Kait is fine and Marcus we’ll see.

There’s always the worry that 5 of anyone is OP with certain teams. 5 Marcus will still have unlimited ult, 5 JD ultimated airstrikes etc

Just let my mulcher mulch

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I should’ve clarified I was meaning in Versus. Besides it was more of a general implication that all weapons will be weak if TC continues down this path, and yes I’m now aware it’s slightly out of context as this is a purely PvE thread. Damn :joy:

Having said that, I agree with your reply anyway and am very aware that the Lancer isn’t particularly useful, nor should every weapon be great. There are pros and cons to every one of them.

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Are people also considering the horde mutator changes and new events when they see class changes?

I feel like people are predicting how well their stats will hold up against the current enemy line up/difficulty as if that’s all we’re going to be fighting against until the end of time. But we have no idea what we’re getting into with the new mutators and events coming into op5 and how that actually plays out with the class changes.

If people are finding the mulcher to be boring against the default horde lineup, then request mutators or a special mulcher event for you to play.

Personally, if I can always select the double headshot mutator in custom lobbies, and play a “monster mash” type event thats only against swarm/locust and no deebees, with the gears 1 visual filter on, then I’ll be happy experimenting with gears 5 until gears 6.

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The bottom line is that TC is terrified of actually making this game fun for anyone to play.

Trying to nerf stuff so that 5 of one class can’t just walk through the map is stupid and pointless. I’m sorry, but even with the nerfing 5 JD’s could just melt the entire map with air strikes, his ultimate is all that is needed, there was no reason to nerf his ammo.

When TC allowed duplicates they needed to understand that this move would potentially make Horde “easy”, sure, if the players do certain things…but…WHO CARES?!

It’s a game. allow it to be fun.

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I think this is something of a feature in alot of more recent games nowadays. It’s all about ranked competitive play; or grinding. It often feels like the fun factor isn’t there in games as much as they were from previous console generations. I remember playing multiplayer games like Halo 3 to death because it was fun. There were a number of modes or maps or whatever which weren’t that balanced, but it was fun and I didn’t care.

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I actually miss the sawed off shotgun from gears 3. I kept that thing in my loadout encase a boomer or something big got close.

One thing ill say for sure is I won’t like duplicate classes in a horde or escape matches. I have played a good few games where people bypassed the duplicates by joining later and it was just a total nightmare. Either it should of never been changed or an option to disable them should have been put in the game for the host to decide.

Upside I can still host games so this problem can be easily controlled lol.

As for the nerfs since I haven’t played any of the characters with their new tweeks I can’t really pass judgement but by looking at the notes the nerfs seem to have restricted gameplay which is never a good thing. It doesn’t look good but ill play it for some time and then go yay or nay lol.

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Veteran (Marcus) needed a nerf, so no complaints here.

Marksman (Fahz) needed a nerf, but Ambush going from 140% to 100% is too drastic. 120% was the obvious choice.

Infiltrator’s (Kait) Laceration nerf is way too extreme.

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I can finally play Marcus and not feel guilty lol.

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