The Division 2

Vorph

Vorph

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mkopec said:
So its been like 2 weeks and my character does like 3-5mill DPS (depending on stacks built up). Watch level is like 300. Not 100% optimized yet but like 90% there. Still need like 10 more % crit chance and more crit dmg. They made it super easy to catch back up with all the target farming, the anniversary pass etc.. The new modes, incursions and the 8 man activity that just rains loot. There is always something to do. They even have a catch up mechanic for the exotics too. Been really fun.
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Have you tried the new season? The new tier of loot and mission difficulty actually has me thinking about giving Div 2 another shot. I haven't played since they added that seasonal bullshit though, but I loaded the game up briefly last night and it doesn't actually seem like there's any need to create a new character for the season or anything like that. Did they end up scrapping that part of it?

Not sure if I'll stick with it though. The drop rates for prototype stuff are so ungodly low that it just seems like something that will piss me off, plus there's all these stupid systems they've added that actually make dealing with loot annoying again. I ended up closing the game last night after doing a bit of the seasonal manhunt simply because my inventory was full and I couldn't remember what the fuck to do with all the junk. "Expertise" was one of the dumbest ideas anyone at Massive ever had.
 
mkopec

mkopec

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None of that shit is really necessary. They added all that stuff for the hardcore 13K SHD people that had nothing to do anymore. You dont need any of that shit other than make the new harder stuff less difficult, which is again, an activity they added for people that cant put this game down. Im doing fine in heroic without expertise, or the new prototype shit or any of that stuff with a basic striker setup. Just farming for more exotics and to get some other pieces like the hearbreaker or tipping scales which I want to try and build out full sets of. Other than that, yeah its a grind they added for the no lifers that have been playing this game non stop for the better part of 8 yrs. Im just logging in, doing my daily shit, grinding some stuff, doing some seasonal stuff and when I get bored again ill quit. I really like the new retaliation stuff. The reworked projects and shit like proirity objectives and the seasonal "journey" stuff they added in. You always have soemthing to do. they also added the legacy manhunt end missions to the game as well. Which is nice if you wwnt to go through the end missions of the manhunts of the past 8 yrs.

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This season, they added the black tusk retaliations which have some special "elite squad" that tries to hunt you down within and I guess they have a chance to drop the raid exotics. Im liking the retailations. You get ported to a new instance and you have a certain amount fo time to retake the control points. With each one you taking adding extra time. Then they throw trash at you when youre going from point to point to slow you down and then of course the "elite squad" which is like 4-5 tough elites that have tons of HP that try to kill you. And if you take them down they give you great loot and extra time. You can also chose the loot that drops there too.

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Vorph

Vorph

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mkopec said:
None of that shit is really necessary. They added all that stuff for the hardcore 13K SHD people that had nothing to do anymore. You dont need any of that shit other than make the new harder stuff less difficult, which is again, an activity they added for people that cant put this game down.
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I must be in a weird situation then. I have just under 500 SHD because it's always been a retarded grind and my library is 99% complete aside from a few stats and chest/bp mods that no one ever uses anyway. All my gear for the two builds I play (all-red Scorpio/Momentum and turret/drone skill build with Capacitor and Waveform) is recalibrated, but a few pieces still need a bit of optimization. So I really don't have any choice but to deal with the hassle of expertise because that's the only other use for junk items. And somehow despite that, I'm still really struggling with figuring out what to keep, what to dismantle, and what to donate from my full inventory (mostly because the last time I played I had the same problem and just dumped everything into my stash to deal with later... as it turned out, two years later).

Surprisingly neither build has really changed in the two-ish years I've been away, at most I need to farm 1-2 items that are slightly better, like swapping my chest to the named Wyvern one they added last season with Perfect Kinetic Momentum on it. Or I guess I could check out the Refactor set that was added while I was gone, but that sounds like it's mainly for co-op and I play 100% solo.
 
mkopec

mkopec

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They have added some new killer sets that everyone uses, like the ones I mentioned. This seasons one, core strength, is pretty baller too if you use the chest. But from what im hearing most people either use the hearbreaker, tipping scales or striker because they are just that much above anything else. There is an exotic backpack, the ninja bike or something, that can fill in for the 4th slot for a set piece so essentially you can have two 4 set pieces running at the same time too. So a striker/tipping scales with an LMG? Yes please.

Not sure about the skill builds because I try to stay away. I like killing shit myself and see the big numbers pumping.

Go to like 5:10 were he talks about the new set thats dropping this season. IT seems pretty strong. So strong he thinks it gonna get nerfed eventually.



As to what to keep and what to throw away? I do like this, I go do some shit, mission, some whatever, then I get into my inventory and just hit V (mark as junk) on all the shit thats not at least 90% stat wise then I go to the expertise menu and donate junk, and anything thats left over I just dismantle. I think Im lv 3 out of 30 on the expertise shit so I have a long way to go. This is why im not even concentrating on it. Its the long grind. Not something you will accomplish prob playing like we do. When we play a season or two here and there and drop the game for a few years, lol.
 
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Vorph

Vorph

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They really need to get rid of all the FOMO shit in this game. Especially when so much of what they add temporarily is top-tier build-enabling stuff and not just random cosmetic fluff (which is the only acceptable thing for temporary items). Don't have Quickstep? Have fun doing retaliations where the control points are half a mile apart and you're 20% slower than someone who has the pistol. Want to play an AR build? Lexington is significantly better than any other gun and there's also Caretaker which is the only AR with Perfect Killer on it. Playing Striker build? Oops, you get to build stacks slower because you didn't play when Stack Broker was available. One-shot sniper build and trying to play with full directives? Your pistol is inferior because you can't get a Harvest anymore. Then there's Turmoil kneepads which are great for LMG and 1886/MR builds but again, completely unavailable.

I know that a lot of these items will be attainable from "stretch goal" caches at the end of the season, but that's literally months away. How do the retards at Massive not understand that when a season gets a bunch of people to return to their game, they want to be able to access the good shit they missed out on at the start of the season and not 2.5 months later? The only way to get some of this stuff (just Quickstep and Harvest, AFAIK) right now is by begging someone who has old event bounties saved to carry you through them until everything you need drops. There's so many people asking for the carry and so few who still have the bounties that it's basically impossible.
 
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mkopec

mkopec

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The quickstep I agree on, but all that other shit? Does not matter. Lexington is like 5%-10% better than the others, I run the others. And BTW the lexington shows up once per month usually when they run events, so its not rare. The shot gun? There is like 3 others that do the same shit for building stacks. All you want is the same 360 RPM which you can get from the regular one, I have the lefty which is still dropping. BTW I use MK46 LMG on my striker build. I find its better than any AR for my tastes.

I mean, they are special named items that only show up during seasons they dropped and some during special events. They are rare and if they werent they would not be special. It kind of gives props to the peeps that play this game season to season, event to event. I would be pissed if I was one of those and they just handed out all these items that I collected over the years because I was there and some noob that just starts playing or some dude that played 3 yrs ago shows up and has access to all these things right from the get go.

And again, you dont need any of that shit to do the hardest parts of the game. The amount of power creep over the last 2-3 yrs is fucking crazy. No your builds wont be 100%, but they will be 90% and thats MORE than enough to clear anything in this game other than maybe escalation tier 10. And in reality why would you want to do that shit anyways?
 
Vorph

Vorph

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Yeah, it's pretty much just Quickstep and Turmoil that I'm bitching about since those are both completely unique, game-changing effects. Lexington to a certain extent too since I hate SMGs after putting together a Backfire build that has everything perfect aside from a quad-blue Investor (I stopped rerolling when I got a quad yellow for the second time, at least it's good for Refactor) and it's just terrible compared to my main build, and I really wanted to see what a proper Striker build is like. The rest wouldn't really change anything if I could get them, but I still think it's retarded to make content like that in the first place. In a game like this exclusive content should be limited to apparel items and goofy shit like the xmas guns that are just novelty items.

mkopec said:
BTW I use MK46 LMG on my striker build. I find its better than any AR for my tastes.
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Why Striker for that? I was under the impression Tipping Scales was stronger for most LMGs. Haven't really used them much myself since Y1 or 2 when they were far stronger than anything else. I would like to put together a new build though, I have a perfectly rolled Bluescreen that I never got around to using when it was new. Not sure which set is best though, I've seen people say OD, ND, and Tipping Scales in various posts.

I put together a bunch of different setups this past week since I played so much getting expertise to just under 13. Nothing beats the first build I made on day 2 of the season though. Core Strength, Ninjabike, Picaro, and UA knees with Capacitor and 6 skill tiers just has so much survivability and while the dps is quite a bit less than Striker, I can actually use it without getting shredded.

Still pisses me off every time I do a retaliation and slowly slog across the zone without a Quickstep though. The timers are so tight on heroic retaliations in some zones that 20% run speed absolutely would have let me complete a few that I failed due to time running out.
 
Downhammer

Downhammer

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While I don't have it personally, there are quite a few people with the quickstep manhunt still in their log. You can farm the robo dogs without killing the main target and get the Quickstep and other xmas drops pretty quickly.
 
Downhammer

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Vorph said:
I put together a bunch of different setups this past week since I played so much getting expertise to just under 13. Nothing beats the first build I made on day 2 of the season though. Core Strength, Ninjabike, Picaro, and UA knees with Capacitor and 6 skill tiers just has so much survivability and while the dps is quite a bit less than Striker, I can actually use it without getting shredded.
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This is what I've been running a lot lately too except I'm using UA mask that I got god rolled. I'm not even sure Capacitor is that much less in real terms. The stat sheet does a weird thing where it doesn't immediately apply the skill tiers to the damage unless you flip to the stats page and back. Plus I get more time on target because of the survivability buff with less duck and cover needed.
 
mkopec

mkopec

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Striker is pretty much the end all be all DPS build. Tipping scales doesnt even come close. Beauty of striker is if you have anything fast firing and a bullet hose you build those stacks quick and just delete everything. Chest for legendary+ and equalizer chest for the rest. I put together another set with core strength using Memento for backpack with unit alloys facemask plus chameleon for that +DPS/CRIT/etc.. And that build is a banger too, not close to the DPS of the striker, good enough though... but the surviveability is top notch. More of an in your face build with 2 million armor/ shield and picking up those kill confirmed medals just adds weapon damage, bonus armor and armor regen. Its crazy. I want to put together so many builds but just farming for the stuff thats good enough to build around, like hearbreaker, Core strength hybrid with skills and capacitor seems to be fun from what I saw, ongoing directive for that bleed build.... One shot snipes... So much shit to try. Its fun fucking around with builds with all these pieces and figuring out what works and what doesnt.

Do any of you know where to get core strength blueprints?
 
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Downhammer

Downhammer

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It almost feels bad coming back after a long time off. I worked my ass off for some rare items and exotics back in the day and they drop like candy now. An hour or two of priority missions and you get as many exotics as you used to get in a week of farming.
 
mkopec

mkopec

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Downhammer said:
It almost feels bad coming back after a long time off. I worked my ass off for some rare items and exotics back in the day and they drop like candy now. An hour or two of priority missions and you get as many exotics as you used to get in a week of farming.
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And now they added a ton of exotic blueprints to the retaliations, even raid shit with the black tusk kill squads, which BTW if you havent noticed, can show up in any of the retaliations.

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Downhammer

Downhammer

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Yeah, I got the Tempest blueprint on one of my first retaliations and promptly made a bulwark pistol build to lol face tank shit. Of course I suck at paying attention to getting flanked while laughing and get killed anyway.
 
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Vorph

Vorph

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I've been meaning to put a Tempest build together since I got the BP from one of my first retaliations. What did you go with? I was thinking 3 Core Str, 2 IA, Ninjabike with striker drone and bulwark shield. Only reason I haven't put it together yet is because getting the IA pieces that can be turned blue is such a pain in the ass.

Unrelated, I have to say that the new textile vendor is one of their best additions while I was gone. Hit him up this morning for a bunch of caches and finally got the Harmony I've been chasing for years (I don't even have DZ unlocked on my PC account, so named/event caches were my only chance). It even came one optimize short of godrolled too. Last week, one of his boxes gave me a Hollow Man which I never had before for the same reason.
 
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Xenrauk

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It's not like they're one time drops you can miss out on, just treat them about as rare as raid drops for now, but they literally just ran events in nov-halloween, dec-christmas, feb-valentine, end of season drive. I got everything in the christmas event including some of the raid drops. Quickstep is pretty much the only must have for the movement speed but you only need 1, everything else can be subbed in the meantime, there's plenty of good ar's, you can sub any acs-12 shotgun like rock n roll, turmoil is certainly nice in the new snipe build but you're one shotting everything anyways. That's the beauty of division, there's a number of ways to make the same meta build using a lot of different parts. They still gotta have some rarer chase items besides raid exotics to keep the loot game interesting, maybe later once the majority of the playerbase has that stuff they'll rotate them out and place them in the general pool like they do for season exotics.

I just want them to add more skills to the game instead of just making more gun builds. Like gimmie some of the stuff the npcs use like the rc car or bomber drone that can drop fire bombs or the shock trap or the burning foam turret, or a mini doggie...
 
Vorph

Vorph

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Xenrauk said:
It's not like they're one time drops you can miss out on, just treat them about as rare as raid drops for now, but they literally just ran events in nov-halloween, dec-christmas, feb-valentine, end of season drive. I got everything in the christmas event including some of the raid drops. Quickstep is pretty much the only must have for the movement speed but you only need 1, everything else can be subbed in the meantime, there's plenty of good ar's, you can sub any acs-12 shotgun like rock n roll, turmoil is certainly nice in the new snipe build but you're one shotting everything anyways. That's the beauty of division, there's a number of ways to make the same meta build using a lot of different parts. They still gotta have some rarer chase items besides raid exotics to keep the loot game interesting, maybe later once the majority of the playerbase has that stuff they'll rotate them out and place them in the general pool like they do for season exotics.
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Like I said, it was basically a rant about Quickstep. It just also applies to a bunch of other stuff which is not nearly as "absolutely must have" but I still believe should never be part of a temporary loot pool regardless. That shit should be cosmetic, period.

Mostly I'm sick of sometimes failing heroic retaliations with insanely short timers that I know I would've beaten if I could run 20% faster, and even when I succeed I'm so rushed on time that I'm rarely able to loot everything especially opening up the supply room boxes while they are affected by my targeted loot setting. Last week I just did challenging because I was only after quantity of loot for expertise + BPs which are nearly the same drop rate. This week I'm back to wanting to do heroic everything, and it's a pain in the ass without Quickstep. Same goes for Countdown. I never did coop before at all, but it just drops too much loot compared to other modes to ignore. And it sucks ass to play because everyone else blows past me and by the time I get to objectives they're cleared, then I run around looting whatever dropped and I'm even further behind, etc. Not having that one item is ruining the game.

Breakdown said:
I havent played this since 2020 should I give this a shot? Do I just start over or is the ease in smooth?
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It's definitely not super smooth if you've been away that long because there have been huge changes/additions/revamps of basically everything since then, but you're going to have the same learning curve getting back into it whether you start fresh or level a new character. The 1-40 experience really doesn't teach you anything. You're definitely going to need at least the first DLC (WONY). I bought the second one because it was cheap at the start of the season, but I wasn't terribly impressed by it.

Overall the game is in a pretty good place. This season's modifiers are fun/powerful and the new gear set is one of the best they've ever made. Escalation mode and prototype gear are a dismal failure in every possible way, but that's not something you would need to worry about for a long time anyway.
 
mkopec

mkopec

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I think they even redid the graphics on this game too. Looks really fucking good for a 7-8 yr old game. I used to crash ALOT but have not crashed once since I re-started like a month or two ago.
 
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mkopec

mkopec

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Vorph said:
Last week I just did challenging because I was only after quantity of loot for expertise + BPs which are nearly the same drop rate. This week I'm back to wanting to do heroic everything, and it's a pain in the ass without Quickstep. Same goes for Countdown. I never did coop before at all, but it just drops too much loot compared to other modes to ignore. And it sucks ass to play because everyone else blows past me and by the time I get to objectives they're cleared, then I run around looting whatever dropped and I'm even further behind, etc. Not having that one item is ruining the game.
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I only do Retaliations in challenging. I heard from several people (youtube) that drop rates go from like 1-500 to 1-300 for those god rolled pieces between the two, challenging/heroic. So they say to do quantity vs quality. Run challenging and breeze through it and jut run more of them. Besides the good shit is all in those crafting recipe and the rewards anyway. I have ran both heroic and challenging many many times since my return and the drops pretty much feel the same.I mean I didnt add the shit up and keep spreadsheets, but thats how they feel. Definitely not warrant heroic and a chance to fail and not get those end rewards. Because in the end thats a waste of time IMO. The timers can get rough on those, especially when youre constantly being bombarded by mobs running to and fro.

I watch a speed runner that has like 34K SHD (LOOOL) and he basically said one day that he just dismantles everything that drops, he doesn't even look at it most of it. The only thing to watch for is the god rolled, or close enough, mods, which he always checks. (there is an arrow pointing up on pieces that roll with a top roll) And when he wants a certain piece, he just crafts it. He crafts like a dozen or more of them and keeps the good one with the perks he wants. Then he crafts onto it and mods it further. Or he says that target farming is easy basically is the way to go. Named items I dont think you can craft though, but I dont even think there is anything worthwhile to watch for this season anyway. Until the spring event which is coming up and many people are saying that that AR will be there to farm.

I do all the missions on heroic though. More controlled areas where you basically memorize the spawns. Brooklyn is a bitch though, even on challenging. Those missions they stepped up for sure on difficulty. Spawna all around you, turrets that blw you up or burn you. That one mission with the fucking mech dog boss that just rains grenades at your ass, like holy shit.

Countdown everyone just does challenging, or so I thought. I keep up just fine, but im sure I miss a lot of loot. Most of the countdown shit is learning the layout and where to fucking go and what objectives to attack. The ones I did I just follow the dudes with the biggest SHD numbers lol. I just tend to stay solo at my own pace to tell you the truth. I ran a few of them to get some striker pieces in the beginning when I came back but once I got rolling I tend to stay away. I prefer to just solo but thats just me. If you like the multiplayer, more power to you.
 
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Vorph

Vorph

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Challenging retaliations are absolutely 1000% more fun and chill, you are not wrong there. Heroic should never have been such a huge jump in difficulty/sponginess compared to challenging, and it's even worse for retaliation because they barely increase the timers at all. I sometimes finish a challenging retaliation with 7+ minutes left, and that's fully looting everything including the supply rooms. I don't think I've ever finished a heroic with more than a minute left, and I wouldn't even think of going for the supply rooms. Just taking the time to find an ammo box feels risky sometimes.

The difference in loot comes down to how low an item can roll. It's something like 50% of max on challenging, 60% on heroic, and 75% on legendary. That's probably not exactly right, but you get the idea. Crafting seems to use either normal or hard for its roll, because that shit can come out REALLY low. I've crafted some stuff out of desperation, but man... if you really want to use the item you craft you're going to use a ton of optimization mats to get it maxed.

As for Countdown, the videos I watched before trying it said that the reason everyone sticks with challenging is because it drops the same range loot as heroic does elsewhere. I guess heroic is slightly better still, but it's not all the way up to legendary. The other problem with heroic is that the hunters at the start and end of the mission are a real bitch. I'm not a huge fan of the multiplayer aspects, but I'm pretty sick of doing heroic Summit for targeted loot and it's something different. It's also way more lucrative in terms of drops, you'll average about 20 drops of whatever you target and close to 50 things total.

One thing I do find surprising about the MP is just how many new players Division 2 has after all this time. Every time I've done it there's been 1-2 people L40 with no watch level at all, and a couple more with sub-100 points.
 
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