PS: join the Kneel And Flex clan. I'm pretty inactive until Episode 3, but after that will be on daily and can help with any/all content.
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The Division 2 |OT| National Anthem
- Thread starter Cornbread78
- Start date
Haven't played this in forever and was going to get back into it but I think I'll wait till that Gear 2.0 stuff launches before I start again.
About time they're working to move away from 'Damage to Elites' (DTE), I'm surprised they carried that aspect of PVE balance from Div 1 to Div 2's launch.
Perhaps DTA is a better approach to the 'sponginess' scaling of standard, veteran, and elite enemies, especially with the latter two wearing armour in spades.
Perhaps DTA is a better approach to the 'sponginess' scaling of standard, veteran, and elite enemies, especially with the latter two wearing armour in spades.
I got my "Year in Review" from Playstation and this game was my 3rd most played game of the year. Which shocked me because I didn't realize I had put 120 hours into this at launch haha.
Yeah, this is what people were asking for since Div 1 days - DTE meant, in both games, that elites were often easier to down than reds/purples, but worse than that, it was a vital stat for PVE content that really did nothing for PVP. So it necessitated two versions of every build, a PVE and PVP version for those who wanted that. Damage To Armor makes a lot of sense, but so does just letting people really spec into flat DPS finally with glass cannon builds (damage talents now apply to all red attributes and bonuses, and talents like Reckless, re-named, are coming back). That might allow the game to be balanced without needing either option.
They announced that the raid is coming later in 2020, and with Episode 3 coming in February, my guess would be not until late March at the earliest, probably even later. With that in mind, I'd guess that the gear reboot drops at the same time as the second raid, and the start of year 2, which if they are smart, will include both a new PVE mode that has repeatable content, and a PVP mode that makes it, well, fun, and then ideally some serious changes to the DZ too.
Raid is mid 2020 confirmed here:
So, 2 missions with episode 3 (+2 classified assignments for pass owners) then no word on anything until mid 2020 in terms of content.
Oh that's right, I guess mid 2020 is more like May/June timeline.
That feels like too long a wait for Gear revamp/gear score increase/new activities. The game has been struggling to find compelling reasons to get players back. Maybe what makes the most sense is March/April gear revamp and launch of Year 2 activities (PVE/PVP content), letting players gear up for a month or two with the new meta before the raid drops. That still feels right for me, but who knows...
I agree, and yes the game desperately needs an "arena" or "horde" mode that is repeatable with adjustable scaling difficulty...and expand the missions that have Heroic difficulty with the promise of some kind of guaranteed drops.
So, it makes absolutely no sense to get into the game now. Better wait when Gear 2.0 drops.
I think I like the changes. Hope Ubisoft has big plans for the game and will reveal some new stuff at E3. A huge DLC at the end of the year would be great
I think I like the changes. Hope Ubisoft has big plans for the game and will reveal some new stuff at E3. A huge DLC at the end of the year would be great
Honestly, the only reason(s) to get into the game now/continuing to play is to make sure you're at World Tier 5 and have a stash full of exotics and gear with high attributes. The Gear Score increase will make stashed gear pretty useless quickly (as it'll be under the max gear score) except for the ability to transfer stats over to the new gear. If a god rolled attribute currently corresponds to a god roll attribute post-update, then it'd be a smart idea to try and farm (mostly Airaldi/Alps) gear for high stats on Health, Skill Power, Weapon Damage, Armor, Armor %, Hazard Protection, etc. There is the possibility that attribute ranges will change, though, in which case it might all become trash outside of Exotics, which I assume will always roll at max gear score.
I think I'm set at this point other than one set of blueprints left from the Normal raid.
Am I reading the good news that they are finally trying to fix the loot? That's great. I'm actually hyped to try this game again when they do. I was thinking to boot up this game now but it seems like it might be best to wait.
Although I guess I could finish building the exotic sniper.
I've been watching dumb action shows like Treadstone and Jack Ryan on Amazon and that's got me itching to play this ha ha.
Although I guess I could finish building the exotic sniper.
I've been watching dumb action shows like Treadstone and Jack Ryan on Amazon and that's got me itching to play this ha ha.
Currently there are pieces of gear with talents like Spotter on them that give damage bonuses to pulsed enemies.
Off the top of my head, world tiers, the strongholds, the raid, four regular missions, classified assignments (3-4?), 2 specializations, the expedition, a PVP mode, named and exotic gear and at least a couple of major balance passes.
I just started this up with that $10 target sale recently.
I'm on xbox One X if anyone would like to squad up. I'm only level 4 right now.
GT: I am DroidX
Edit: I'm really enjoying this game. I wouldve paid $50+ if I wasn't so busy with other games.
I'm on xbox One X if anyone would like to squad up. I'm only level 4 right now.
GT: I am DroidX
Edit: I'm really enjoying this game. I wouldve paid $50+ if I wasn't so busy with other games.
Feel free to join the Kneel and Flex (KNF) clan when you get to that part. Most of us won't be on until Episode 3, but still, you might earn some extra caches along the way here and there.
Man I really need help taking down a few of the Hunters. Anyone on PC Uplay who can help an average skilled player? Lol
I am on W5 but I have a long way to go to having a good build (I have a 495-500 build just isnt very good) but i just started now after hitting W5. Any one play kinda often who I can add and if i see you online and it is night time in game we can try it?
I am on W5 but I have a long way to go to having a good build (I have a 495-500 build just isnt very good) but i just started now after hitting W5. Any one play kinda often who I can add and if i see you online and it is night time in game we can try it?
Picked the steelbook up today for cheap at GS on Xbox. Mainly will play solo but feel free to add me. I need friends anyway lol
SilverGhost121
SilverGhost121
I logged in this morning for the first time in months and everything feels strange.
I stopped just as the raid was released. Does anyone have a good video or article that covers the larger changes? I briefly took a look at the new respc bench and noped out before I started breaking things I didn't understand.
I stopped just as the raid was released. Does anyone have a good video or article that covers the larger changes? I briefly took a look at the new respc bench and noped out before I started breaking things I didn't understand.
The biggest change is you can no longer stack talents. So no more 4 pieces with Damage To Elites. You get one use per talent, any duplicate talents just get greyed out. The other big change is on the map you can see targeted loot. In those areas/missions, there's a chance for specific gear or brands or weapons (whatever's targeted) to drop on top of what normally drops. So if you really need Alps gloves, go to wherever Alps drops. The best use of time for targeted loot is waiting for it to be an open world Target and doing activities to level up control points to Level 4. You'll be flooded in loot of the brand or type you are targeting.
...but somewhere after February (likely closer to April), none of that will matter anymore as talents are being removed from all but two pieces of gear (I think chest/backpack) and are being re-tooled to be far more impactful.
So for now, I'd suggest just looking up some basic builds. A good DPS build, a good seeker build, etc. and trying to farm them for now til that update drops. Those builds will let you coast through Challenging and Heroic content. If you want to really get into it, you can look up Aces & Eights builds for the raid. But just as long as you don't get too attached, as within 5-6 months everything is changing.
Thanks a lot for this.
I'll play a few missions and see how it feels, but right now I'm leaning toward waiting for the changes. I really love the sound of targeted loot...
If you want something that's pretty easy to farm quickly, this seeker build demolishes all content (including Heroic) that isn't the raid.
It's pretty easy to farm, because Hard Wired tends to drop with similar attributes to what you actually need, and if you're in the Gear Set target areas, it comes quickly. Then, just farm some ALPS and Airaldi gear to get high rolls to recalibrate (damage to elites on the mask, skill power on the holster etc). Mods, you can farm, or if you're lucky, just get a good vendor reset time and buy Explosive damage ones all at once. Even not optimized, you'll likely be leading your team in damage and kills and because it's a seeker build, it's easy to play safe. Once you get more comfortable with Challenging/Heroic, you can actually start advancing and doing a decent chunk of damage with your AR too.
From a gear standpoint, very similar to my setup (I don't use turrets or the multiple seeker mines though...also I went with a Hard Wired vest and backpack both with damage to elites.
That being said, regardless of the gear I'm not good enough to solo any Heroic mission (maybe an easier Challenging mission, and even then it would take forever).
I used to solo Challenge/hero with my own builds, I'd imagine most of them are broken now though...
Thanks a lot for this. Saved the post.
They might be broken, but honestly, the last major patch that changed the way talents worked made most builds stronger after a bit of farming. You may have been stacking things a certain way, but the individual talents got buffed overall. So while you can't have like 4 pieces with DTE and such, the ones you can have are far stronger. If you were mainly DPS, you could just look at your previous builds and replace anything with one of the new talents. Composure, Concussion, etc. are very stronger replacement talents. Anywho - either way, hope you have fun!
The changes sound great and I'm excited to see more. I just wish those changes were alongside content I would actually play unlike a raid. If they are smart they would have killed it and reshaped it into something properly replayable and/or a testing ground for a mode with meaningful modifiers that could keep things fresh.
While I get disappointed thinking how great the game could have been all through last year if they had actually learned from their mistakes from the first game, I have to remind myself, hey at least it's not breakpoint bad. That team shipped a turd, promised to do better after being called out by corpo, delayed an update and went radio silent for 2 months only to finally come back with vague details, more delays, and the much hyped update being basic fucking bug fixes. Phew.
While I get disappointed thinking how great the game could have been all through last year if they had actually learned from their mistakes from the first game, I have to remind myself, hey at least it's not breakpoint bad. That team shipped a turd, promised to do better after being called out by corpo, delayed an update and went radio silent for 2 months only to finally come back with vague details, more delays, and the much hyped update being basic fucking bug fixes. Phew.
Well... they're getting there. Brand sets will probably be the only thing left of vanilla Div2 by the end of it.
Most of the changes still sound good to me - the idea that you bank talents and get to re-calibrate that stat unlimited times - is a surprising but welcome change. Was always a pain having to farm 4 different high DTE masks, for example.
The thing that's nagging at me is, I really hope that banking stats is relatively cheap to do. I have a full stash of great items. I want them gone as quick as possible, to make room for the higher gear score coming. If I have to grind just to be able to bank a 50+% DTE, 15% weapon damage, 43k health etc., or choose between paying to bank one, only to find one that's 1% better and having to re-grind to bank it is going to be a pain. Even just sorting through what to bank, and what to hold onto to start gearing up again is giving me inventory anxiety, hah...
Skill changes seem good too, but of course it's all in the details of how powerful they end up once everything is re-balanced/what the trade-off is, etc.
The thing that's nagging at me is, I really hope that banking stats is relatively cheap to do. I have a full stash of great items. I want them gone as quick as possible, to make room for the higher gear score coming. If I have to grind just to be able to bank a 50+% DTE, 15% weapon damage, 43k health etc., or choose between paying to bank one, only to find one that's 1% better and having to re-grind to bank it is going to be a pain. Even just sorting through what to bank, and what to hold onto to start gearing up again is giving me inventory anxiety, hah...
Skill changes seem good too, but of course it's all in the details of how powerful they end up once everything is re-balanced/what the trade-off is, etc.
it seems you just dismantle them and then it gets added to the library. I am not sure what you mean by "re-grind to bank"
Maybe I misheard, I thought they said "we are still figuring out the cost of...banking a stat." But I was also playing the Witcher with it on in the background, so maybe the "still figuring out the cost" referred to something else.
Edit: the question was more about re-calibration becoming more costly. So if you're right and stat banking is free, that's a great move.
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Kinda just looking at this pic and I don't really think dismantling will cost anything or at least not anything too precious
I hear that - but also, they really hammered on the point that the UI mock-ups, the numbers shown within them, etc. are all very much subject to change. They were just aids. That said, hope you're right. Especially if it's just automatic when dismantling...I dismantle so much shit in the open world now that isn't relevant to me, but could be a small stat increase on an attribute I've so far ignored. Fingers crossed!Kinda just looking at this pic and I don't really think dismantling will cost anything or at least not anything too precious
This game is gonna be hard to relearn when I come back to it in like April or something when all the gear and QoL changes are set and out.
It'll be fun I think! I really love those kinda things and re-exploring stuff and then learning "new" systems and such. It's one of my favorite things about properly updated GaaS games.
With only two talents per build (chest/backpack), and each piece of gear having a Core Stat, it might be a total reinvention of gear that's coming, but it will likely not be very hard to quickly put together builds. Within the first week or two, the community will probably have DPS, tank, skill builds etc. figured out, and if we can easily store all of our stats, it'll be farming min-max pieces, but not that much time actually deciphering where to start.
But wasn't that the very issue from the beginning? The game never ever giving you good loot? Im sure I can dig up a dozen reddit threads from when I played about people putting 10x the amount of farming that I did and only being 5% stronger because the game never gave you anything. Hell I think I still need a hammer or some cloth for a project I had opened since I bought the game.
Partly, that's because of the stat budget system which is getting taken out. If you had a god roll on one attribute, another would be super low. Now it's possibly for things to drop with god rolls across all attributes. So, previously, it was often about choosing between gear that maybe had 2% extra weapon damage at the cost of -10k health. While you can still only re-calibrate one attribute or talent, the fact that multiple can roll high naturally means you'll be seeing a lot more gear that is just straight upgrades from what you have for a good amount of time.
They also largely fixed the "I've been grinding for weeks and still can't find..." part in the last update with Targeted loot (allowing you to play rotating activities/areas of the map that drop additional gear/weapons than what they normally do). Basically, you're drowining in loot that is either the brand, weapon type, mod type etc. that you are chasing now. Beyond that, they announced on stream that in general, loot will tend to drop of better quality in Heroic than Challenging, and better in Challenging than Hard etc. Plus crafting got a buff post-release to at least be max gear score.
All that to say, sounds like, based on how easily builds have been to make in the last update, which is far more complex than the one we're about to get, it really shouldn't take too long to get decent builds together, and like always, it will be about min/maxing. But even that, with simplifying the # of talents, not having attribute requirements, and allowing you to bank stats, it all points to - this will be far, far easier than previous Div 2 builds. Not quite as easy as Div 1 builds were once the optimization station came out, but still...
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So how is the game? Is it close to Division 1.6-1.8?
Did they finally release a real Dark Zone? Underground/Defense in the game? More gear sets and unique builds?
Did they finally release a real Dark Zone? Underground/Defense in the game? More gear sets and unique builds?
It's a strange time to start playing. Honestly, it's in the best place it's ever been in terms of PVE. Lots of build variety, easy-ish to farm for builds because of the new targeted loot system, etc. It's really fun moment-to-moment gameplay going from level 1-30 and then World Tier 5.
But because the loot system is changing entirely sometime after February, the only real reason to play/farm once you get to World Tier 5 is to stash some items with really high rolls to re-calibrate later. Otherwise, your builds are going to become useless quickly, partly because talents/attribute budgeting etc. are being changed and partly because gear score is increasing.
Honestly, the PVP sucks. The 3 Dark Zone experiment has been a failure and unless the new update really shakes up the DZ experience after Feb, I can't recommend spending much time in there for fun. The dedicated PVP mode is even worse. Nowhere near the fun that Last Stand was.
That said, Year 2 content will be starting after February and the developers have stated that they have every intention of working on the DZ, working on PVP and introducing a new mode or modes that are replayable. While it's unlikely to be a straight-up copy cat of Underground or Survival, they've heavily hinted that they plan to incorporate pieces of Div 1 modes that worked in new ways.
All that to say, if it's on sale, I do think it's a steal of a deal. Great amount of content/value, the moment to moment shooting is fun, though, like Div 1, the story sucks. But if you've already dipped your toes in and are far along in the game, I'd say just wait it out until the massive overhaul comes.
Appreciate the intel, agent. I will wait for the impressions on reworked gear/DZ then.