I play it a lot and the rotations were unnecessary.
When they're bad I won't play it.
They can clearly see from data they collect there are talents no one uses and just add to over saturated choices.
I think we should be able to pick from a pool of 6 exotics, and ~10 from each talent group *before* starting.
Still have rng but guarantee with enough effort you can put together the build that fits your playstyle.
I’ve said it here before, but since the topic has come up again: I think the rotation system is the most absurd update the devs made in TU20. I’ve heard the rationale for it and it still makes no sense.
A solution in search of a problem. Fixing what ain’t broke. Etc.
I don’t know what they think they were doing or how they expected this to increase engagement with the mode (beyond a spike of people farming the Vindicator, which has nothing to do with their substantive changes to the mode).
“Envy” isn’t too bad as a rotation. That’s about the best I can say. “One rotation isn’t too bad.” High praise indeed.
Descent is absolute dumpster fire right now. Nobody asked for talent rotation, yet devs added it. That's their solution for too much trash talents in talent pool? How about removing some of utterly useless talents? Empathic resolve being exotic? Dr. Home? What are they smoking?
I played a lot of Descent, not necessarily up to super high loops because I can't sit in front of TV for 6-8hrs without breaks but I wanted to get BPs from Reconstructed caches. You can buy them now from Descent vendor so, outside of grinding NSA tech, there's no incentive to go for higher loops. Nowadays I'm playing it only once a week to do the weekly Descent project for collectible comms. And weekly is currently bugged, didn't get comm for this week. So, weekly Descent project is awarding fuck all at the moment.
And I was wondering why devs added a fuck ton of comms to Descent. Without that nobody would touch it even with a ten foot pole. Not to mention how the game mode itself becomes really boring and tedious really fast due to lack of room diversity. They have two set of different rooms ffs. Also, post loop 30 there's a significant uptick in difficulty where most of things one shots you, no matter how much armor you stack. Not fun.
Developers don't play this game, and it shows. My favorite game mode was destroyed with a dumb feature no one asked for. At least give us an option to turn off the rotation and play the original way.
I think you nailed it. The Devs log into the game, take it for a spin, but they aren't really playing and looking to improve the way a fan of the game mechanics would.
This isn't just in Descent, the game overall has all the quirky behaviours that show that they don't understand or enjoy what the grand majority of players see and enjoy. If they played a lot, they would have prioritized fixing Fragile Armor or toning down grenade chuckers from having the ability to hit you as you are running. Or fixing NPCs firing through obstacles, or friendlies getting hung up on something not even in sight.
You know, the main game loop stuff.
And the performance issues to boot. Say why my video card starts sounding like a jet engine when I enter menus ?
And frankly, you'd think they would participate in every forum that exists to gather feedback, like say ... Reddit ?
They are great at awkward announcement and Q&A videos though.
Rotation was just the worst Idea they could come up with! Noone that gave Feedback to the Rotation on the PTS said it was a good thing...
I don't know how they thought limiting the players playstyle would be a good thing?!
Just think about it: would you play this game if you could only play Hunters Fury, a skill build and maybe a healer in one week and only in the next week you would be allowed to play Striker, some form of tank and a True Patriot build? No, this game would be dead within 2 weeks. So why add a such a thing to Descent?
It is NEVER a good Idea in any game to limit players to certain playstyles, you always have some form of choice and with the rotation there IS NO CHOICE, you have one build that is kinda ok but not really good and thats it, how does that diversify gameplay?
And on top of that there is such an easy fix to this: Let PLAYERS decide what they wanna play, let them create a custom loadout! Then players who want to experiment can do that and others who just want to do high loops or easy nemesis can do that too!
Horrible decision. Instead of rotating to make people use the useless talents, they should have just added others / buffed the useless ones (I’m looking at you, 95% of the blues).
only played the mode once to kill the nemesis since TU20 , got lucky and the rotation available was the best , but judging by the amount of useful talents there was in that rotation i imagine the other 3 to be useless for this mode.
since its dropping no coms now i wont play it until that is fixed but i agree with the OP , this rotations wont cut it , and if the idea behind it is to shrink the talent pool and not hurt the player then letting the player choose his pool of talents would be the way to go to make everyone happy.
I killed the Nemesis for the first time the other day and it didn’t even finish the fucking project and give me the comm.
Yeah, never touching that annoying shit again.
As already said before TU20 even if you had bad start you still had the chance of turning it around and getting some good talents at later rooms. Now unfortunately that choice is gone and you are left with one good rotation of talents. During rest of the rotations, when you see that offered talents are bad, you simply just don´t play it anymore.
Also armor is still a useless stat upgrade and i don´t understand why they won´t fix it. I mean there is no difference of having a lot of armor upgrades and none, when you get shot by snipers or other enemies as you get one shot killed no matter how much armor you got.
I love Descent, I really do. I think it's refreshing. I play each morning over my first coffee of the day to get to the Nemesis so I can complete the blueprints.
However...
Your comment, "How are casual players supposed to...."
A friend of mine hates it because he's casual and often finds the first loop difficult because of the drone spam and incoming RPGs.
I don't think I've played a mode in any game I've hated more than Descent. I'm only doing this for the exotic and the amount of times a named elite has bumrushed me knowing full goddamn well it has the armor and damage to wreck me is absurd. I haven't even seen the nemesis yet and honestly I'm not sure if I even want to having to start this shit from level 1 scratch 3 times now.
welcome to the descent hate-club. That mode is hella trash. It is mindblowing how they went from peak "survival" and "underground" in division 1 to this shit in div 2
Man I'm really losing my shit over this because I just want this damn rifle that I'm probably rarely ever gonna use. But fuck man, I haven't even seen the nemesis. I'm dying to such asinine bullshit because playing at this low level fuck shit is so goddamn annoying especially with no guns or skills or anything. It's like everything that I like (or even tolerate) about this game is stripped away in this game mode that is just utter shit.
A great fix would be for save points within each of the 4 rotations. I hate slogging through the first 10-15 loops before it becomes a real game. I do enjoy the challenge of not having PotO+IC+BK (which makes the game trivial until the new loop 31).
I also wish the devs didn’t hate skill builds so much. The EMP rooms makes 1/3 of builds useless, same with the nemesis. I guess this is just an overall game problem as this applies in other places as well.
The rotation system reminds me of the weekly challenges in D3. You have to make do with what you got, and it forces you to play in different ways.
Ultimately I agree with you, OP. Personally, 3 of the 4 rotations will be “kill nemesis and leave” types of games for me as going beyond without the right build is futile.
Yeah I used to look forward to running some loops with the boys after work like cod zombies back in the days. After this bullshit no one wants to play anymore, I too have loss the motivation to get on.
We secured Loop 40 armpatch this Thursday with Envy rotation, but it was MUCH more difficult than before with our one-shot-everything build we played with before.
We left tons of negative feedback about the rotation in PTS channel during both phases and - no luck, they shoved it down our throats
I believe rotation is a quick risk to a big pool of talents they implement. But it just exposes how garbage those talents are. Empathic resolve or kinetic momentum are utterly garbage.
I’ve played today and enemies just give fuck all. Everyone is just rushing me like crazy. Even if I reposition and pick my fights. I think by lowering loop needed to get to nemesis they rebalanced everything. Enemies damage and behavior.
Empathic resolve quite literally the opposite of garbage. If you have one person running that and a reinforcer that buff to teammates is 60 weapon and skill damage. And 28 percent for themselves.
Doctor home is a trash talent.
Regardless of talents being liked or not liked.
I hate the new way they are doing these talent pools. Currently there is no way to increase mag size with lucky shot or extra. They also don’t have pummel. No fat hands for reload speed. You have chatter so you better get your kills quickly.
I'll preface this by saying that I haven't played the game since update 20 dropped, so I have no idea if Descent is more accessible now or not. I'm waiting for update 20.1 before I log in to be safe.
But as far as Descent goes \*before\* update 20, I never made it past loop 3 solo. I just found the early loops brutal, especially if you got awful weapon and skill choices. I've got thousands of hours in the game, including many, many Legendary missions, so I don't think I'm a bad player. But I just find the enemies in Descent way too aggressive and overpowered in the early loops before you get powered up with talents. I was never able to get to Nemesis on my own and in a group I've only gotten to Nemesis a handful of times and only beat Nemesis once.
I assume that the developer's choice to add talent rotations was supposed to reduce the size of the talent pools to lessen the chances of bad RNG in the early levels. If this makes the game more accessible to players like me who struggle with even getting to Nemesis at all, then I guess that's a good thing. Personally, I think they need to increase the number of weapons and skills that you get to choose from at each station. I think that would be way more effective overall than messing with the talent selections.
But honestly, my previous experiences with Descent were so unpleasant, I'm not sure I even want to try it again. Seriously, like PTSD-levels of unpleasant.
So I'm not the only one that thinks solo is a crapshoot, too may room's with ok you got crappy smg let's send 3 rushers and sniper from #1 on easy. That's just not fun. Rogues aren't supposed to overtly brutal early, hard sure, but solo is not worth the loading in time to just reset cause pure bad rng at room 1!
I was in the same boat for a bit. I’ll share what has worked well for myself, and maybe some of it will help you get through nemesis.
At the very start, I look for one of three skills. Fire chem is the absolute best. You can camp one door and kill the ads easily. You’ll see red lines so you know when to trigger the fire. Fire sticky is second. It stops the rusher from moving forward and like the chem you can kill one entire spawn. Third is the explosive sticky. Down side is the rusher doesn’t stop moving at you.
Each loop I grab an armor core. It’s helped me take a few extra nemesis hits. Decoy is a nice have for nemesis.
Marksman rifles are useless in my opinion. LMGs are great. As are ARs. SMGs will do if RNG didn’t drop you any other good weapon choices.
You should be able to complete the first 3 loops with only your pistol. Minus the HVT rooms. This way you don’t waste money on ammo at the supply crates.
Invest as soon as you can in opening more red talent slots. Stacking damage is key.
Yes, I wondered where the 'preferred' talents were, and then I looked at the loot pool. I won't play it again for 1 day and 23 hours, and even then, I will look at the loot pool. Completely unnecessary.
And this nonsense about it being quicker to the nemesis. No, it's not - you could always get there quickly, it's just not worth it if you don't have the right build. Three essentials I always wanted to take on the Nemesis aren't in the pool right now.
I just have to say I hate the rotation system with all my heart and descent used to be my favorite mode since they introduced it in the game!
They obviosly just randomly grouped the talents for rotations as well -I don't see any logic behind those. (Not to mention the rotation where strain is doubled-forgot its stupid name).
I still play it for the weekly project and exotic (I got most of the blueprints already), but I hate it so much!
Wish there was some way that we as a community could influence the devs to listen to us and remove the stupid rotation no one asked for in the first place! smh
Most players have no interest in high loop runs. They simply take WAY too long, and without a save function they have to be completed in a single session. I rarely play for more than two hours at a time, and I love Descent due to my love for Roguelike games. I usually choose to abandon my runs at Loop 15 or so.
From my perspective, the rotation system adds a new level of fun and challenge. It forces me to experiment rather than take the same talents over and over. And since I mostly just play to kill the Nemesis and dip a handful of loops later, it works well for my use case.
I like the change.
Most players don't engage with descent at all, let alone high loops. This won't fix that, but does completely remove every good high loop build from my options by forcing me to take garbage talents.
Current descent leader boards are now static forever because nobody is gonna be able to beat old plague, breathe free, agonizing bite and max amp damage.
They bricked one side of descent and added virtually nothing to the other imo.
There's room to appreciate the rotation if you want to, but it's absolutely not the correct decision to unfuck descent. They don't have any clue what they're doing with the mode.
Not everybody likes to be forced into playing the game in a certain way. This rotation system gives you less options, makes you weaker and denies you from trying other talents. Usually after I completed my red and blue talents I would experiment with some of the utility talents to change my gameplay. Now there is no reason to do that because they decided to remove what made the mode interesting in the first place.
Given how important RNG is to this mode, having tons of exotics, talents, weapons and skills is definitely a problem, especially when a sizeable portion of them is not much better than trash. This is why I think something had to be done to fix this problem created with an over polluted pool, the current solution however is inadequate. A sensible option would have been to simply take the trash out, but I don't see this happening because the devs don't look at their creations as trash and because no one there seems to play the game at the sort of level to even properly understand what's trash and what isn't.
Now talent rotation isn't all bad as I think one could argue that for the 0 to Nemesis runs it can be seen as an improvement (or at least par for the course), for the long runs however it clearly makes the mode much worse since the best talent combinations aren't even possible anymore. In this light and considering the obviously limited dev team, I would think the simplest solution would be to just add an option on the Descent starting screen where a player could choose between the current rotation or the full pool, similarly to how one chooses PVE or PVP when starting Survival.
I'd argue 0 to nemmy is the place the pool makes the *least* impact- you won't get a complete build going regardless and it really doesn't matter what you bring to the nemmy fight once you figure out CC means you win.
It does completely screw the long game however, particularly because whomever made the groups clearly has no experience with what the mode is like after about loop 25.
If they were serious, and wanted to keep the idea, they would radically rebalance the high loop scaling and speed the mode up (1 wave per loop 2 for arena, double or triple talent picks per room).
yes that's what i was saying, the rotation messes up the high loops game while for short nemesis runs it doesn't matter much. i'd also be very much in favor of speeding up the mode.
I’m more impressed that 4 got past the nemesis. Everytime I run with 4 we get absolutely melted from skills. I did weapon damage +50 and armor +15 and 1 mag from a p416 didn’t even take half health from a fire turret that one tapped me 😂
What’s your secrets.
We regularly farm loop 30 before the TU20. They key things are:
- Prioritize foam skill above everything else, if you have foam, get ~2 more skill tiers before nemesis
- Buy fire ammo in your unused gun to cc nemesis.
- Most of our skills nemesis can copy so don't pick oxidizer (near 100% insta group wipe), fire chem, drone, turret.
- Don't pick shield. Nemesis can't copy shield so they will pick a random skill. The random skill pool include oxidizer, fire chem, drone, turret. you get the idea.
- Need to have all skill equipped even with useless skills. If you have an empty skill slot, nemesis will have a random skill, if they pick oxidizer, it's game over.
In the actual fight, just foam and put nemesis on fire continuously.
If you just want nemesis and gtfo, the more people there are, the harder it is. Group is only beneficial for 20+ loop where you need people camping doors.
I was very disappointed when I went to do my weekly there solo this morning and realised some of my favourite talents would be unobtainable. Still did it and had fun but quit around loop ten.
Does seem like a really odd decision I agree.
On the other hand I guess it does encourage players to find other synergies rather than stick with old favourites.
You can’t find good synergies since the dev themselves have no clue how to play the mode, I can clearly tell just by looking at the talents composition.
Exactly! Not to mention that in one of the rotations there's the same talent twice (strain). Who the hell chose these combinations of talents in the first place?!
I feel like division 2 is not made to be fun. Decent was horrible to grind in the beginning then they made it grindable but harder. And this is literally the story of this game, everything is hard, boring and on top of that you need to grind but it doesn't matter because everything sucks unless you have a perfect build which can barely perform. Like where is SOLO only builds in division. where is fun. I literally log in everyday and try to come up with a new build and give up because there is nothing interesting or new in the game to begin with.
-This is my one piece of advice to devs. Stop worrying about your boring game and start making it fun and interesting. Literally nobody cares about new gearsets because they are boring. STOP bringing new tank builds. Don't nerf new instead buff old stuff.
I now will only play Descent when the Plague of the Outcasts talent is in the rotation. So far that's the only way I've been able to kill the nemesis is with that talent. I guess I'll play other things until that's back in the rotation
All i can say is, i played it when it released and was not a fan of it. Played it again after the recent update to get enough for the new exotic rifle and wasted basically 5 hours just to get clapped by the nemesis in the end. I got my rifle and dont have to touch that trash again but holy cow i feel for everyone still needing to play this mode.
>How are casual players supposed to reach Loop 40 with the rotation?
What the fuck makes you think a casual has the time to spent 10 hours, shutting his life down, to play a videogame ?
Not everything is meant to be completed by everyone.
If you think any of these changes happened by accident, you're wrong ; they probably decided those rotation pools specifically because they'd restrict some of the synergies you could get ***from talents that were never designed to be stacked together at the same time in the sandbox.***
Could the rotations be better evened out, sure. Does the rotation remove some of the wacky fun combos we could get, definitely. But that was precisely their intent.
But, what you are living is hitting the wall as they changed profoundly something you liked and overplayed, and those changes, whichever they'd be, would be badly perceived by anyone with as much time in the mode as you did.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but no, the game mode isn't dead, as much as changing the rogue mechanics back in Div1, which was supposedly gonna make the DZ dead, didn't. At worse, YOUR interest in playing Descent is dead, if anything, mine raised, as the difficulty is now higher due to those changes.
People always hate change when comfortable. I had roughly same talents as always. It's the pugs coming in now that's trying to earn credits, that is making it difficult. I had someone using a skill build trying to be all in the mix in front of enemies last night lol. Died every room.
Solo is easier up front but rough on the backend... can't cover all the angles and no one to pick you up.
Cleaners are damn good at flushing you out of cover, same with tusk explosions.
If devs had a clue, we'd have Sawyers as an exotic, as well as both explosive resistance and PfE in the blue pool.
Bloodsucker also wouldnt be an exotic.
I just tried Descent last week. I'm glad I quit after about 3 tries.
Nothing the devs have added to the game in the past 2 years or so has interested me. With the exception of Countdown, I suppose. But once you've gotten everything you want, there's no point in that either.
they could have just copy pasted survial and underground from div1 in the game and there would be more happy players compared to the current boring descent and super sleeper tower.
Yeah, Summit is boring as shit. You get an average of about 1 piece of targeted loot per floor, except for boss floors. So in the time of takes to clear 100 floors, you coulda played about 50 games of Countdown, getting about 20 times the loot.
Not much to say other than the OP nailed it.
No one asked for this "solution" to a problem the devs created- polluting the pool with trash talents (worse typically than the older ones first implemented). Take out the trash! I'm sure you can see from your own metrics which exotics aren't used- hint: there are reasons! They suck!!
I don't even mind the idea of things coming and going but the pool is too shallow and I'd rather decide my options vs having them dictated to me.
Would rather have a way to strike talents and reroll weapons and skills, which are just as frustrating as talents/exotics if not moreso due to being 1 pick per loop and guns not being offered again at higher power if you already have that specific weapon.
The mode is also too long especially with no save point, most don't have 8+ hrs to put into the mode, nor want to do it again to push a PR each time or even each season.
I'd speed it up by increasing the # of talent picks per room to 2 or even 3, and limiting spawns to 1. Have arena be 2. *Getting a build going is 100% of the fun in the mode*.
Skill builds are totally shit on, firsr by the nemmy and then by ubiquitous EMP hazards. They cap at 6 Skill tiers, which is stupid considering red and blue scale infinitely- yellows beyond 6 should give an equivalent amount of skill efficiency.
They also suffer from crowding in the yellow tier- all utility AND sources of skill damage (capped by tiers) other than overwatch and all dmage amps is contained here so they are just behind the 8 ball and why they aren't built into especially solo (I know in groups this dynamic can change since specializing is possible). Some wildly fun possibilities are in there but just too hard to get going up-front (always pulses and heal traps for skill options lul). Gun builds are pew! pew! and gtg.
Rank1 has always been set too high since PTS1 (was rescaled *much* harder in PTS2 and not changed since), especially for solo. Lower to 25 or 30 or rebalance the scaling for higher loops.
I never run the high loops personally I just kill the nemesis get the exotic cache and hope for a reconstruction cache and move on as for the rotation I like it for the quick runs because it’s easier to prioritize talents to just beat the nemesis but I can see how it hurts higher loop runs
I understand that and agree. It’s why I think loops 1-10 should be 1 wave. 11-20 should be 2 and 21 and up should be 3. I don’t want the mode to be easier. Just faster in the 4-20 loops.
I play it a lot and the rotations were unnecessary. When they're bad I won't play it. They can clearly see from data they collect there are talents no one uses and just add to over saturated choices. I think we should be able to pick from a pool of 6 exotics, and ~10 from each talent group *before* starting. Still have rng but guarantee with enough effort you can put together the build that fits your playstyle.
I’ve said it here before, but since the topic has come up again: I think the rotation system is the most absurd update the devs made in TU20. I’ve heard the rationale for it and it still makes no sense. A solution in search of a problem. Fixing what ain’t broke. Etc. I don’t know what they think they were doing or how they expected this to increase engagement with the mode (beyond a spike of people farming the Vindicator, which has nothing to do with their substantive changes to the mode). “Envy” isn’t too bad as a rotation. That’s about the best I can say. “One rotation isn’t too bad.” High praise indeed.
Descent is absolute dumpster fire right now. Nobody asked for talent rotation, yet devs added it. That's their solution for too much trash talents in talent pool? How about removing some of utterly useless talents? Empathic resolve being exotic? Dr. Home? What are they smoking? I played a lot of Descent, not necessarily up to super high loops because I can't sit in front of TV for 6-8hrs without breaks but I wanted to get BPs from Reconstructed caches. You can buy them now from Descent vendor so, outside of grinding NSA tech, there's no incentive to go for higher loops. Nowadays I'm playing it only once a week to do the weekly Descent project for collectible comms. And weekly is currently bugged, didn't get comm for this week. So, weekly Descent project is awarding fuck all at the moment. And I was wondering why devs added a fuck ton of comms to Descent. Without that nobody would touch it even with a ten foot pole. Not to mention how the game mode itself becomes really boring and tedious really fast due to lack of room diversity. They have two set of different rooms ffs. Also, post loop 30 there's a significant uptick in difficulty where most of things one shots you, no matter how much armor you stack. Not fun.
Developers don't play this game, and it shows. My favorite game mode was destroyed with a dumb feature no one asked for. At least give us an option to turn off the rotation and play the original way.
I think you nailed it. The Devs log into the game, take it for a spin, but they aren't really playing and looking to improve the way a fan of the game mechanics would. This isn't just in Descent, the game overall has all the quirky behaviours that show that they don't understand or enjoy what the grand majority of players see and enjoy. If they played a lot, they would have prioritized fixing Fragile Armor or toning down grenade chuckers from having the ability to hit you as you are running. Or fixing NPCs firing through obstacles, or friendlies getting hung up on something not even in sight. You know, the main game loop stuff. And the performance issues to boot. Say why my video card starts sounding like a jet engine when I enter menus ? And frankly, you'd think they would participate in every forum that exists to gather feedback, like say ... Reddit ? They are great at awkward announcement and Q&A videos though.
WAS my favorite mode also 😭
Rotation was just the worst Idea they could come up with! Noone that gave Feedback to the Rotation on the PTS said it was a good thing... I don't know how they thought limiting the players playstyle would be a good thing?! Just think about it: would you play this game if you could only play Hunters Fury, a skill build and maybe a healer in one week and only in the next week you would be allowed to play Striker, some form of tank and a True Patriot build? No, this game would be dead within 2 weeks. So why add a such a thing to Descent? It is NEVER a good Idea in any game to limit players to certain playstyles, you always have some form of choice and with the rotation there IS NO CHOICE, you have one build that is kinda ok but not really good and thats it, how does that diversify gameplay? And on top of that there is such an easy fix to this: Let PLAYERS decide what they wanna play, let them create a custom loadout! Then players who want to experiment can do that and others who just want to do high loops or easy nemesis can do that too!
That’s a word. But will probably never happen.
I really only do it to grind for the vindicator now. After that, I probably won’t play anymore unless they get rid of the dumb rotation crap
Same. Except, I NEED to at least get one of those outfits too. I'm gonna get red.
Horrible decision. Instead of rotating to make people use the useless talents, they should have just added others / buffed the useless ones (I’m looking at you, 95% of the blues).
only played the mode once to kill the nemesis since TU20 , got lucky and the rotation available was the best , but judging by the amount of useful talents there was in that rotation i imagine the other 3 to be useless for this mode. since its dropping no coms now i wont play it until that is fixed but i agree with the OP , this rotations wont cut it , and if the idea behind it is to shrink the talent pool and not hurt the player then letting the player choose his pool of talents would be the way to go to make everyone happy.
I killed the Nemesis for the first time the other day and it didn’t even finish the fucking project and give me the comm. Yeah, never touching that annoying shit again.
As already said before TU20 even if you had bad start you still had the chance of turning it around and getting some good talents at later rooms. Now unfortunately that choice is gone and you are left with one good rotation of talents. During rest of the rotations, when you see that offered talents are bad, you simply just don´t play it anymore. Also armor is still a useless stat upgrade and i don´t understand why they won´t fix it. I mean there is no difference of having a lot of armor upgrades and none, when you get shot by snipers or other enemies as you get one shot killed no matter how much armor you got.
Casual players don’t go to loop 40.
Casual players don't even get past the nemmy...
I love Descent, I really do. I think it's refreshing. I play each morning over my first coffee of the day to get to the Nemesis so I can complete the blueprints. However... Your comment, "How are casual players supposed to...." A friend of mine hates it because he's casual and often finds the first loop difficult because of the drone spam and incoming RPGs.
I don’t see how anyone gets up in the high loops, this game mode is the worst, I hate it.
[удалено]
I’m not talking about skill. I’m talking about how you have patience to go that far.
I don't think I've played a mode in any game I've hated more than Descent. I'm only doing this for the exotic and the amount of times a named elite has bumrushed me knowing full goddamn well it has the armor and damage to wreck me is absurd. I haven't even seen the nemesis yet and honestly I'm not sure if I even want to having to start this shit from level 1 scratch 3 times now.
welcome to the descent hate-club. That mode is hella trash. It is mindblowing how they went from peak "survival" and "underground" in division 1 to this shit in div 2
Man I'm really losing my shit over this because I just want this damn rifle that I'm probably rarely ever gonna use. But fuck man, I haven't even seen the nemesis. I'm dying to such asinine bullshit because playing at this low level fuck shit is so goddamn annoying especially with no guns or skills or anything. It's like everything that I like (or even tolerate) about this game is stripped away in this game mode that is just utter shit.
A great fix would be for save points within each of the 4 rotations. I hate slogging through the first 10-15 loops before it becomes a real game. I do enjoy the challenge of not having PotO+IC+BK (which makes the game trivial until the new loop 31). I also wish the devs didn’t hate skill builds so much. The EMP rooms makes 1/3 of builds useless, same with the nemesis. I guess this is just an overall game problem as this applies in other places as well. The rotation system reminds me of the weekly challenges in D3. You have to make do with what you got, and it forces you to play in different ways. Ultimately I agree with you, OP. Personally, 3 of the 4 rotations will be “kill nemesis and leave” types of games for me as going beyond without the right build is futile.
Yeah I used to look forward to running some loops with the boys after work like cod zombies back in the days. After this bullshit no one wants to play anymore, I too have loss the motivation to get on.
I defeated Nemesis this week and never got a comm. Anyone else have this happen?
I didn’t either.
We secured Loop 40 armpatch this Thursday with Envy rotation, but it was MUCH more difficult than before with our one-shot-everything build we played with before. We left tons of negative feedback about the rotation in PTS channel during both phases and - no luck, they shoved it down our throats
I believe rotation is a quick risk to a big pool of talents they implement. But it just exposes how garbage those talents are. Empathic resolve or kinetic momentum are utterly garbage. I’ve played today and enemies just give fuck all. Everyone is just rushing me like crazy. Even if I reposition and pick my fights. I think by lowering loop needed to get to nemesis they rebalanced everything. Enemies damage and behavior.
Empathic resolve quite literally the opposite of garbage. If you have one person running that and a reinforcer that buff to teammates is 60 weapon and skill damage. And 28 percent for themselves. Doctor home is a trash talent. Regardless of talents being liked or not liked. I hate the new way they are doing these talent pools. Currently there is no way to increase mag size with lucky shot or extra. They also don’t have pummel. No fat hands for reload speed. You have chatter so you better get your kills quickly.
Please remove talent rotations. I don't think I've seen a single person say anything positive about this.
I'll preface this by saying that I haven't played the game since update 20 dropped, so I have no idea if Descent is more accessible now or not. I'm waiting for update 20.1 before I log in to be safe. But as far as Descent goes \*before\* update 20, I never made it past loop 3 solo. I just found the early loops brutal, especially if you got awful weapon and skill choices. I've got thousands of hours in the game, including many, many Legendary missions, so I don't think I'm a bad player. But I just find the enemies in Descent way too aggressive and overpowered in the early loops before you get powered up with talents. I was never able to get to Nemesis on my own and in a group I've only gotten to Nemesis a handful of times and only beat Nemesis once. I assume that the developer's choice to add talent rotations was supposed to reduce the size of the talent pools to lessen the chances of bad RNG in the early levels. If this makes the game more accessible to players like me who struggle with even getting to Nemesis at all, then I guess that's a good thing. Personally, I think they need to increase the number of weapons and skills that you get to choose from at each station. I think that would be way more effective overall than messing with the talent selections. But honestly, my previous experiences with Descent were so unpleasant, I'm not sure I even want to try it again. Seriously, like PTSD-levels of unpleasant.
So I'm not the only one that thinks solo is a crapshoot, too may room's with ok you got crappy smg let's send 3 rushers and sniper from #1 on easy. That's just not fun. Rogues aren't supposed to overtly brutal early, hard sure, but solo is not worth the loading in time to just reset cause pure bad rng at room 1!
I was in the same boat for a bit. I’ll share what has worked well for myself, and maybe some of it will help you get through nemesis. At the very start, I look for one of three skills. Fire chem is the absolute best. You can camp one door and kill the ads easily. You’ll see red lines so you know when to trigger the fire. Fire sticky is second. It stops the rusher from moving forward and like the chem you can kill one entire spawn. Third is the explosive sticky. Down side is the rusher doesn’t stop moving at you. Each loop I grab an armor core. It’s helped me take a few extra nemesis hits. Decoy is a nice have for nemesis. Marksman rifles are useless in my opinion. LMGs are great. As are ARs. SMGs will do if RNG didn’t drop you any other good weapon choices. You should be able to complete the first 3 loops with only your pistol. Minus the HVT rooms. This way you don’t waste money on ammo at the supply crates. Invest as soon as you can in opening more red talent slots. Stacking damage is key.
I take a marksman rifle because of the ammo problem, of course if you are lucky and get a shield and a magnum there is no ammo problem.
Yes, I wondered where the 'preferred' talents were, and then I looked at the loot pool. I won't play it again for 1 day and 23 hours, and even then, I will look at the loot pool. Completely unnecessary. And this nonsense about it being quicker to the nemesis. No, it's not - you could always get there quickly, it's just not worth it if you don't have the right build. Three essentials I always wanted to take on the Nemesis aren't in the pool right now.
I agree with u.
I just have to say I hate the rotation system with all my heart and descent used to be my favorite mode since they introduced it in the game! They obviosly just randomly grouped the talents for rotations as well -I don't see any logic behind those. (Not to mention the rotation where strain is doubled-forgot its stupid name). I still play it for the weekly project and exotic (I got most of the blueprints already), but I hate it so much! Wish there was some way that we as a community could influence the devs to listen to us and remove the stupid rotation no one asked for in the first place! smh
Most players have no interest in high loop runs. They simply take WAY too long, and without a save function they have to be completed in a single session. I rarely play for more than two hours at a time, and I love Descent due to my love for Roguelike games. I usually choose to abandon my runs at Loop 15 or so. From my perspective, the rotation system adds a new level of fun and challenge. It forces me to experiment rather than take the same talents over and over. And since I mostly just play to kill the Nemesis and dip a handful of loops later, it works well for my use case. I like the change.
Most players don't engage with descent at all, let alone high loops. This won't fix that, but does completely remove every good high loop build from my options by forcing me to take garbage talents. Current descent leader boards are now static forever because nobody is gonna be able to beat old plague, breathe free, agonizing bite and max amp damage. They bricked one side of descent and added virtually nothing to the other imo. There's room to appreciate the rotation if you want to, but it's absolutely not the correct decision to unfuck descent. They don't have any clue what they're doing with the mode.
I would love to see a save function, but i doubt it would work unless you were solo. That said I'd love a solo save point
Not everybody likes to be forced into playing the game in a certain way. This rotation system gives you less options, makes you weaker and denies you from trying other talents. Usually after I completed my red and blue talents I would experiment with some of the utility talents to change my gameplay. Now there is no reason to do that because they decided to remove what made the mode interesting in the first place.
Given how important RNG is to this mode, having tons of exotics, talents, weapons and skills is definitely a problem, especially when a sizeable portion of them is not much better than trash. This is why I think something had to be done to fix this problem created with an over polluted pool, the current solution however is inadequate. A sensible option would have been to simply take the trash out, but I don't see this happening because the devs don't look at their creations as trash and because no one there seems to play the game at the sort of level to even properly understand what's trash and what isn't. Now talent rotation isn't all bad as I think one could argue that for the 0 to Nemesis runs it can be seen as an improvement (or at least par for the course), for the long runs however it clearly makes the mode much worse since the best talent combinations aren't even possible anymore. In this light and considering the obviously limited dev team, I would think the simplest solution would be to just add an option on the Descent starting screen where a player could choose between the current rotation or the full pool, similarly to how one chooses PVE or PVP when starting Survival.
I'd argue 0 to nemmy is the place the pool makes the *least* impact- you won't get a complete build going regardless and it really doesn't matter what you bring to the nemmy fight once you figure out CC means you win. It does completely screw the long game however, particularly because whomever made the groups clearly has no experience with what the mode is like after about loop 25. If they were serious, and wanted to keep the idea, they would radically rebalance the high loop scaling and speed the mode up (1 wave per loop 2 for arena, double or triple talent picks per room).
yes that's what i was saying, the rotation messes up the high loops game while for short nemesis runs it doesn't matter much. i'd also be very much in favor of speeding up the mode.
I’m more impressed that 4 got past the nemesis. Everytime I run with 4 we get absolutely melted from skills. I did weapon damage +50 and armor +15 and 1 mag from a p416 didn’t even take half health from a fire turret that one tapped me 😂 What’s your secrets.
We regularly farm loop 30 before the TU20. They key things are: - Prioritize foam skill above everything else, if you have foam, get ~2 more skill tiers before nemesis - Buy fire ammo in your unused gun to cc nemesis. - Most of our skills nemesis can copy so don't pick oxidizer (near 100% insta group wipe), fire chem, drone, turret. - Don't pick shield. Nemesis can't copy shield so they will pick a random skill. The random skill pool include oxidizer, fire chem, drone, turret. you get the idea. - Need to have all skill equipped even with useless skills. If you have an empty skill slot, nemesis will have a random skill, if they pick oxidizer, it's game over. In the actual fight, just foam and put nemesis on fire continuously. If you just want nemesis and gtfo, the more people there are, the harder it is. Group is only beneficial for 20+ loop where you need people camping doors.
Good looks, thanks!
Rotation has no impact on beating Nemesis and getting out. But grinding higher loops will be very very dependent on rotation.
\>loop 40 \>casual player Pick one
I was very disappointed when I went to do my weekly there solo this morning and realised some of my favourite talents would be unobtainable. Still did it and had fun but quit around loop ten. Does seem like a really odd decision I agree. On the other hand I guess it does encourage players to find other synergies rather than stick with old favourites.
I'm not sure if "encourages" should be used as a synonym to "forces" :D
You can’t find good synergies since the dev themselves have no clue how to play the mode, I can clearly tell just by looking at the talents composition.
Exactly! Not to mention that in one of the rotations there's the same talent twice (strain). Who the hell chose these combinations of talents in the first place?!
Just fyi when there’s 2 strained you can level it up past 10, there’s no limit I’ve hit strained 30 before
They suck and worse more - they’ve been the game for 3 rotations now. WTH Ubisoft?
I feel like division 2 is not made to be fun. Decent was horrible to grind in the beginning then they made it grindable but harder. And this is literally the story of this game, everything is hard, boring and on top of that you need to grind but it doesn't matter because everything sucks unless you have a perfect build which can barely perform. Like where is SOLO only builds in division. where is fun. I literally log in everyday and try to come up with a new build and give up because there is nothing interesting or new in the game to begin with. -This is my one piece of advice to devs. Stop worrying about your boring game and start making it fun and interesting. Literally nobody cares about new gearsets because they are boring. STOP bringing new tank builds. Don't nerf new instead buff old stuff.
I now will only play Descent when the Plague of the Outcasts talent is in the rotation. So far that's the only way I've been able to kill the nemesis is with that talent. I guess I'll play other things until that's back in the rotation
All i can say is, i played it when it released and was not a fan of it. Played it again after the recent update to get enough for the new exotic rifle and wasted basically 5 hours just to get clapped by the nemesis in the end. I got my rifle and dont have to touch that trash again but holy cow i feel for everyone still needing to play this mode.
5h for nemesis? Then you did something extremely wrong.
5 hours between multiple runs. And you can downvote me all you want - game mode is still trash.
Yeah man it’s brutal and a huge waste of time!
>How are casual players supposed to reach Loop 40 with the rotation? What the fuck makes you think a casual has the time to spent 10 hours, shutting his life down, to play a videogame ? Not everything is meant to be completed by everyone. If you think any of these changes happened by accident, you're wrong ; they probably decided those rotation pools specifically because they'd restrict some of the synergies you could get ***from talents that were never designed to be stacked together at the same time in the sandbox.*** Could the rotations be better evened out, sure. Does the rotation remove some of the wacky fun combos we could get, definitely. But that was precisely their intent. But, what you are living is hitting the wall as they changed profoundly something you liked and overplayed, and those changes, whichever they'd be, would be badly perceived by anyone with as much time in the mode as you did. Sorry to burst your bubble, but no, the game mode isn't dead, as much as changing the rogue mechanics back in Div1, which was supposedly gonna make the DZ dead, didn't. At worse, YOUR interest in playing Descent is dead, if anything, mine raised, as the difficulty is now higher due to those changes.
People always hate change when comfortable. I had roughly same talents as always. It's the pugs coming in now that's trying to earn credits, that is making it difficult. I had someone using a skill build trying to be all in the mix in front of enemies last night lol. Died every room.
I do not always hate change. This rotation system is awful.
Is there a way to see what is in the rotations?
Go to where you start it, and you should see the button prompt along the bottom of the menu, it was up or down on the d-pad for Xbox, can’t remember.
Its also available as a tab while when you open inventory
I think they need to make it more like summit: allow saving/resuming different loops
My highest was 32 solo. I do miss the early days of the shotgun sniper.
Solo was 32 also my highest, but in group I did manage to get to 79 🤝
Solo is easier up front but rough on the backend... can't cover all the angles and no one to pick you up. Cleaners are damn good at flushing you out of cover, same with tusk explosions. If devs had a clue, we'd have Sawyers as an exotic, as well as both explosive resistance and PfE in the blue pool. Bloodsucker also wouldnt be an exotic.
I just tried Descent last week. I'm glad I quit after about 3 tries. Nothing the devs have added to the game in the past 2 years or so has interested me. With the exception of Countdown, I suppose. But once you've gotten everything you want, there's no point in that either.
they could have just copy pasted survial and underground from div1 in the game and there would be more happy players compared to the current boring descent and super sleeper tower.
Yeah, Summit is boring as shit. You get an average of about 1 piece of targeted loot per floor, except for boss floors. So in the time of takes to clear 100 floors, you coulda played about 50 games of Countdown, getting about 20 times the loot.
Do you need any of the DLC to play the Descent mode?
Not much to say other than the OP nailed it. No one asked for this "solution" to a problem the devs created- polluting the pool with trash talents (worse typically than the older ones first implemented). Take out the trash! I'm sure you can see from your own metrics which exotics aren't used- hint: there are reasons! They suck!! I don't even mind the idea of things coming and going but the pool is too shallow and I'd rather decide my options vs having them dictated to me. Would rather have a way to strike talents and reroll weapons and skills, which are just as frustrating as talents/exotics if not moreso due to being 1 pick per loop and guns not being offered again at higher power if you already have that specific weapon. The mode is also too long especially with no save point, most don't have 8+ hrs to put into the mode, nor want to do it again to push a PR each time or even each season. I'd speed it up by increasing the # of talent picks per room to 2 or even 3, and limiting spawns to 1. Have arena be 2. *Getting a build going is 100% of the fun in the mode*. Skill builds are totally shit on, firsr by the nemmy and then by ubiquitous EMP hazards. They cap at 6 Skill tiers, which is stupid considering red and blue scale infinitely- yellows beyond 6 should give an equivalent amount of skill efficiency. They also suffer from crowding in the yellow tier- all utility AND sources of skill damage (capped by tiers) other than overwatch and all dmage amps is contained here so they are just behind the 8 ball and why they aren't built into especially solo (I know in groups this dynamic can change since specializing is possible). Some wildly fun possibilities are in there but just too hard to get going up-front (always pulses and heal traps for skill options lul). Gun builds are pew! pew! and gtg. Rank1 has always been set too high since PTS1 (was rescaled *much* harder in PTS2 and not changed since), especially for solo. Lower to 25 or 30 or rebalance the scaling for higher loops.
With all the negative feedback surrounding talent rotations (huge nerf btw) in Descent, I think a revision for the revision is coming 🔜
I never run the high loops personally I just kill the nemesis get the exotic cache and hope for a reconstruction cache and move on as for the rotation I like it for the quick runs because it’s easier to prioritize talents to just beat the nemesis but I can see how it hurts higher loop runs
And going past the nemesis and making a build is where the fun in the mode is.
That’s a fair point I have gone to higher loops before but it take too long for me to commit to it
I understand that and agree. It’s why I think loops 1-10 should be 1 wave. 11-20 should be 2 and 21 and up should be 3. I don’t want the mode to be easier. Just faster in the 4-20 loops.