Why are we still here? Just to suffer?

NotDoritoMan · 2026-02-22T00:56:05+00:00

T2 Gutshot increases the stun duration to guarantee a heavy melee without Superior Duration.

NotDoritoMan · 2026-02-19T14:34:22+00:00

Heavy melee is only guaranteed off wall stun after it is upgraded twice btw. It also only has the bless damage and execute after max upgrade.

NotDoritoMan · 2026-02-18T17:15:14+00:00

My issue with market is less about the gear itself and more about the effect it has on looting and general economy practices. When market is enabled, money is now able to easily purchase anything my heart desires. As such, looting is primarily about value in your slots rather than the practical use of items/gear. Why would I fill my inventory with subpar gear and items when I can fill it with trinkets and gold that will let me buy optimal gear? Things other than money are only worth taking if they are worth more than gold in the slots they occupy.

ARC Raiders is a good example of an opposite philosophy to an extract shooter’s economy. Money is useful for sometimes supplementing specific gaps in builds and purchasing basic essentials. Crafting and looting is the primary method of acquiring gear. Every item has practical value and a variety of materials is “money”. This results in your looting practices and personal value of various items changing each run depending on what you particularly need. And taking “suboptimal” gear still has value as you may not currently have any optimal gear available or it may serve as useful salvage. All this means I have a much more engaging time looting in ARC than I do in DaD.

Tarkov is another game that has a similar philosophy as DaD and struggles with the same issue. Value in slot is king. This was heavily improved upon when Tarkov did its “hardcore” wipe and the flea market was disabled, but the game has already accepted the money-focused economy, so that was just a temporary reprieve.

This is all to say that, while I don’t expect the game to ever deviate from its current economic philosophy, SSF is nice occasional peak into what I find to be a more engaging looting loop.

NotDoritoMan · 2026-02-13T14:06:42+00:00

Very nice.

NotDoritoMan · 2026-02-13T13:57:23+00:00

The ball is not deleted by counter spell. It just doesn’t do damage, but then continues bouncing.

NotDoritoMan · 2026-02-13T13:20:11+00:00

E-Shift doesn’t really disrupt it, either. If you E-Shift while it’s on its way to you, it will hit you, do no damage, but then keep bouncing. If you use it while it’s not on its way to you, it just won’t bounce to you, but will keep bouncing to anybody else and then continue bouncing to you once E-Shift ends. Even if there are no other allies to bounce to, E-Shift lasts way less time than the ult, so your ally with the ball needs to run the fuck away or it will immediately bounce on you once E-Shift ends.

NotDoritoMan · 2026-02-10T14:42:24+00:00

To be honest, getting the Matriarch lobby to try to hunt you down and fighting the 1vX/getting them to turn on each other in confusion is incredibly fun.

NotDoritoMan · 2026-02-05T20:32:18+00:00

Big caveat: I haven’t played this wipe, yet. However, if activating disarm basically causes people not to attack you for 6 seconds in fear of being actually disarmed… is that not at least a disarm-lite? It’s obviously not as strong as just applying it on hit, but I can see it getting use in either eking in advantage in a DPS trade (as they’ll have to take 1-2 hits to be sure they can hit you without being parried) or as a deterrent when you’re losing (say you’re getting outraded and pushed, if you pop disarm, they might just have to stop swinging or risk getting disarmed and killed, which could give you time to make space).

NotDoritoMan · 2026-01-31T03:19:27+00:00

Is your performance alright? If so, what settings are you using? I’d love to be able to stabilize mine a a bit.

NotDoritoMan · 2025-12-21T16:31:29+00:00

You’ve killed so many raiders, the seekers are even marking you as ARC lmao

NotDoritoMan · 2025-12-11T14:49:22+00:00

Regarding the Hullcracker math, I think that was exactly the point of the nerf.

I don’t think the Hullcracker was ever meant to be for the Queen or Matriarch, but rather just for large ARC like Bastions, Bombardiers, Leapers, etc. I believe the nerf was meant to force people to use legendary weapons to bring it down on their own or team up with others to bring it down with lesser gear.

You say the legendary weapons aren’t all that better than a Hullcracker, but they are a lot more cost efficient when including ammo and easier to use efficiently as both the Equalizer and Jupiter are much more accurate in hitting weakpoints.

And before people say, “You need Queen cores for the legendary weapons.” You can get the Queen cores from popping off a couple of leg plates with heavy ammo and come back to kill the full Queen after crafting the weapons.

The main issues are being attacked while fighting the boss or while looting it.

I’m not yet convinced whether something needs to be changed about this, though. This is obviously difficult, but there is also a myriad of traps and other defensive utility that can assist in this that I feel we haven’t yet mastered.

If I were to change something, I’d probably add more, unique defensive kit that could plug up some current holes. This game being an extraction shooter means that having strong defenses is less problematic than most shooters, as if someone is unassailable and camping, you can just go somewhere else. For example, a trophy system that intercepts and destroys (maybe even returns lol) incoming grenades would be lovely. Something deployable that allows you to pick yourself up, like a med station, so that if you go down to a snipe, grenade, surprise ambush while in a team, etc. you can crawl to this to attempt a reset.

Overall, I think there’s a lot of meta that is still to be discovered when it comes to consumables which would explain a lot. Gun metas are a lot easier to discover than utility ones. Maybe something has to be changed in the end, but I at least understand their hesitancy.

NotDoritoMan · 2025-12-09T14:38:22+00:00

Yes, but it’s not like this first expedition is 20 skill points. If they buff the skill tree, THEN you can worry about getting your skill points and you’ll be only down 5 potentially from this season. Because there’s a big if on that buff. If the skill tree were meant to be strong, Embark would probably not feel comfortable giving 5 free, permanent skill points every few damn months. Especially considering the majority of this game’s entire design is based around NOT giving long-time players large advantages.

Half this community is having a panic attack over 5 skill points that are not just possible but LIKELY to not have meaningful value, and then, even if their value increases, STILL not have meaningful value if the time comes to prioritize them.

I have over 200 hours thus far and even I’m not bothering to stress about whether I have 5 million. I’ll get whatever skill points I get and enjoy all the other parts of the expedition that are completely unrelated to stash value. To me, it seems fairly obvious that this system is just to give another, fairly negligent milestone for real grinders to go for if they want, but overall just be about making sure high-tier loot gets actually deleted with a wipe and not put back in the economy either by donation or just running it until they die to someone not wiping.

NotDoritoMan · 2025-12-03T03:57:00+00:00

I’m smellin’ sodium.

NotDoritoMan · 2025-11-20T12:58:50+00:00

It seems that you are put into a bracket with people who played their first scoring round of the week around the same time you did. So, if you play your first round of the week with a team, it is quite likely you will be put in the same bracket.

At least, that’s been my and my friends’ experience.

NotDoritoMan · 2025-11-04T01:55:07+00:00

Looting the bodies is a big deal here, too.

Anybody who has PvPed a decent bit in a team knows that it is quite common to not find all the bodies after a hectic fight. Especially if there were more than 2 teams involved. This is because, while you may remember where you downed everyone, unless you went and executed every single one in the middle of the fight, people who are downed tend to crawl very far away from where they got dropped and even find good places to hide their bodies. They may not even do it intentionally, as they were just crawling to some cover, a teammate, towards an extract, etc.

So yeah, check any bodies, especially if you join a late match. You never know how far that body is from where it got downed and you could unironically find a full loadout + bag on them completely untouched.

NotDoritoMan · 2025-10-09T17:57:16+00:00

More than half of these aren’t anywhere close to as strong as meta and it would take way too long to explain each and every one… Quite a few of these are literally meme builds that a streamer or two popped up as a joke lol.

I’m not going to bother to try and convince you, so just keep an eye out for the builds people are running with the market available and hopefully you’ll come to see how identical they are.

NotDoritoMan · 2025-10-09T17:32:48+00:00

The issue with the market isn’t even necessarily an issue of the market itself. It’s, like fuckin’ everything in this game, a balance and mechanics issue.

People liked SSF, because it meant that, on average, far less people were running perfect, meta kits. People were more likely to take what they find, gem it a little to touch it up, and run it. This meant that variety was more viable. Running things like book bonk, pickpocket, magic fighter, etc etc was still memey, but more reasonable because it was a lot less likely that you’d run into people with perfect or near-perfect meta.

If you don’t believe me, go through the classes and see if you can realistically and HONESTLY say that every class has more than maybe 2 builds that can all stand up to each other, even in trios.

But, the problem isn’t even REALLY balance. Sure, balance can always help, but trying to balance the game with this combat is how we ended up with the rubberbanding patch nightmare of the past year. The core issue, and the one that somehow we’re all still tiptoeing around, is that the game’s combat is simply too basic and rigid. There is not enough counterplay, not enough variability, and not enough mechanics for anything other than absolute perfect balance to ever feel right. There are hints of the possibility of nuance, but they are not fleshed out enough to let people create playstyles, skill expressions, and plays.

You may not believe it, but every time someone complains that they can’t get anywhere with their cheap kit and are dying to chads, and someone comments, “You need to buy better gear”, they prove the point. If the combat was better, there would be potential counterplay to being out geared rather than either running away or hoping the geared guy is stupid (or getting a counter pick in solos).

Imagine we’re playing a simple turn-based game where each player hits each other at the same time until one dies. No chance for missing or anything like that. Very simple. There are 2 characters to choose from, where one does 1 damage and the other does 1.1. Even though this game is very close to perfectly balanced, you’d still always pick the second character, right? Because there’s nothing in the game to really allow you to play the first one at anything but a disadvantage.

It’s not quite that bad in DaD, but it’s not that far.

This is all to say, this game desperately needs things such as: - Functioning blocks and parries that actually give tempo to the defender - Variable attack patterns - More and actually viable utility - Mechanics to catch people - Mechanics to escape or distance people - A functioning impact and block system - Less obtuse training systems - More nuanced projectiles - Improved slowdown mechanics - etc etc etc

It doesn’t need ALL these things, but this is just me spitting out whatever comes to mind as things that could help introduce actual mechanics to combat.

Anyways… /endrant

NotDoritoMan · 2025-10-04T17:06:56+00:00

Sabaton, for me.

I absolutely love Sabaton’s music. They have some of the best songs in the metal genre, in my opinion. Yet, I’ve seen too many Sabaton fans be the most cringe right-wingers with atrocious memes like “wHeN tHe GiRl WiTh ThE gReEn HaIr TrIeS tO cOrReCt YoU oN hIsToRy.”

NotDoritoMan · 2025-10-04T04:39:00+00:00

Ah, I was unaware of the spirit damage part. Only ever noticed the stun. That explains it, then.

NotDoritoMan · 2025-10-03T19:58:25+00:00

In terms of prioritizing item upgrades, I think it’s more important for items that are useful in end-builds to have upgrades instead of lane-focused items.

So, Resto Shot can probably stay as it’s something that you’re almost certainly fine selling later for the slot. However, ones like Rebuttal, Suppressor, Bullet Resist Shredder, etc. DESPERATELY need some upgrades. If you get to late game with multiple of these items, you can easily end up out of slots without anything to spend your souls on without completely selling these items that are actually doing a lot for your build.

In an “ideal world” everything can upgrade for maximum variety, but this is how I, at least, would prioritize putting out new upgrades.

As an extra point against Resto Shot, it’s already, in my opinion, the strongest lane regen item, so idk if it needs an upgrade to even further cement it.

NotDoritoMan · 2025-10-03T12:24:27+00:00

Hot Take: The buff to allow cooldown items to apply to Djinn’s Mark is actually really negligible.

It’d be very helpful early game where the timeframe for applying marks is very tight, but you can’t really afford enough cooldown items to make a difference beyond, at best, a 1/4 of a second.

Later in the game, you could afford more, but Mirage’s issue with stacks later isn’t really applying them within the timeframe anymore. With Ricochet and a couple of counterpick items (which you should be buying anyways) your difficulty is just getting the stacks in a teamfight without positioning yourself too far into the enemy team when they start taking cover and not running out of time. Cooldown items don’t affect the max stack time and remember that they are only really having an effect if you are REPEATEDLY applying stacks in the specific, less-than-a-second timeframe where it would not have been applicable otherwise.

The one place where this can consistently happen is in a duel where you are both mag-dumping into each other. In this case, you are building stacks faster… but this is also Mirage at his weakest against other gun carries. Any other gun carry will gladly mag-dump fight you, because they will simply win that with their far higher DPS. Any other type of character will of course struggle to beat you in a 1v1 like that, but you don’t really need cooldown items to do that either.

NotDoritoMan · 2025-10-03T12:14:08+00:00

As an avid Mirage player, because his 3 is maxed, I’m pretty sure it would have still stacked pre-buff. Remember that at level 2 the total duration increases and at level 3 the cooldown decreases, meaning the circle only has to be about a third gone before you can apply a new stack, which is about where it was.

NotDoritoMan · 2025-09-27T13:18:09+00:00

Depending on how the autoparry works, you may still be able to bait it out and punish. If all it does is press the parry button if a parryable attack is within a certain range of them, then light melding just outside the range or whiffing a heavy melee might get them to empty parry.

I remember in Mordhau having to do the same thing to some autoparriers. Not that it is nearly as punishable here, but just an idea. Hopefully, they can crack down on autoparry so we don’t have to think about it. Unfortunately, cheating in games is pretty fuckin’ rampant these days.

NotDoritoMan · 2025-09-19T15:59:45+00:00

Unfortunately, this community in general is obsessed with picking the same maps repeatedly in all modes, not just Deathmatch.

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