So in Mayhem 2.0, half the mayhem mods are a no go for an elemental Amara since they give immunities to elements. But with the Slayer mod + ties that bind you could at least get by. It may not have been intentional, but it was fun and not too OP since it didn’t work on every boss and on mobs it didn’t really make a big difference.
Now with the phase 1 patch, you still have all the elemental mods that you can’t play, but the changes to Slayer make it pointless, any of the decent weapons I spent the past few months farming are worthless, it just really feels like all of these changes are just making Amara worse and worse. Like, it even seems like the damage sharing from Ties That Bind is even less effective, so what’s going on?
I swear every patch recently has been continuously draining the fun out of the game for be to the point that I’m honestly done playing until the game stabilizes so I can know that I won’t be wasting my time farming weapons and finding a build I enjoy only to have it nerfed into oblivion and have to completely rebuild my character and find a new playstyle and farm my gear all over again.
What build were you using? My Amara is great with the exception of the new Takedown… Still learning the nuances of that.
To be honest, I can’t remember what Slayer is. Whatever it is, you don’t need it, because my solo Amara tears up M10 without it. I use ties that bind with the singularity augment, phasezeker and a Recursion. Plus some mods/annoints that decrease weapon charge time, to make the Recursion fire faster. Plus the OPQ, nopewpew and yellowcake, since most of the older weapons are still near-useless.
My Amara seems much more powerful than my other 3 characters, which is annoying, actually. I often try to play Zane or flak, only to be frustrated by how much longer it takes to kill mobs than when I play Amara.
Maybe my builds aren’t as good for the other characters, but I think the main difference is ties that bind and ricochet. You’re basically shooting 7 enemies for the price of one, which makes a huge difference to ammo and time when the enemies are this spongey.
I find the shared damage of ties that bind as effective as ever. I often find that by the time the grasped enemy is dead, the enemies all around it are long gone.
Tbh I think the problem is that almost all of my weapons are damn near useless, so virtually no damage from my weapons means virtually no damage being shared with TTB.
Additionally, I’m also frustrated that mayhem just seems to get less and less playable, like it began with mostly all unplayable mods that nerf individual elements, not immune, just reduced. Then 2.0 introduced a bunch of elemental immunity mods, and the only beneficial mod was Slayer, which helped offset all the really unfriendly mayhem mods and the ridiculous scaling. Now, the one cheesy thing I could do with my build has been taken away at the same time that all my gear was nerfed to oblivion. I don’t really mind finding another good build or farming new gear, but I’m not going to invest the time into it if the next patch or hotfix is just going to make everything I built around worthless.
I don’t stream for a living, I don’t get to play for hours every day, so when I get to a point where I’m satisfied enough with my gear, that’s months of playing, and to have it all taken away in a single patch is really defeating, and it’s not like it’s the first time my favorite gear has been made useless either through nerfs or just by not scaling up to the other changes made to the game.
Last, it just really seems like mayhem 2.0 and onwards they just really don’t care about the siren at all or most of the mods wouldn’t be unplayable. I get that elements are a big part of the game, so modifying how they work opens up new design space, but when one character is designed around elemental bonuses, most of your new design space can’t be to completely nullify elemental damage. Every Thursday it seems like there’s always at least one change to Moze to make her better at the higher difficulties, but I’m the game about Sirens, the Siren feels like she been completely forgotten, and when they accidentally give you one thing that makes you able to deal mass damage to a single target, they take it away but don’t offer anything else that synergizes with Amara’s strengths. Fl4k gets holy CRIT, Moze gets the grenade/explosive easy mod, Zane gets speed demon, and Amara had Slayer, but now Amara had no synergistic mayhem modifier, in fact everything is strictly either irrelevant or detrimental. They should really change the way mayhem works so it isn’t just all negative, like instead of making the elemental mods give immunity, they buff all of the element’s effects, both for players and enemies, so I can both deal more damage, but I’d also take more damage. It would change the way you play but it wouldn’t feel like everything is just making the game less fun with every patch.
I use as many different elements as I can and it makes modifiers like dazed and infused irrelevant.
Oh, now you’ve reminded me what Slayer is - the melee instakill modifier (I thought you were talking about a class mod) I didn’t know they changed it.
But yeah, M2.0+Cartel completely messed up the guns. If you’re trying to use the guns you were using beforehand, you’re in trouble.
I feel your pain regarding them pulling the rug out from under you. Before M2.0, I had been having a blast perfecting my melee-based Amara. Then they made melee absolutely useless in M2.0. And to add insult to injury they added a melee grenade with the Cartel event, which might have been awesome back when melee still did damage.
But regarding your complaints about the elemental modifiers, you certainly don’t have to have them. There are enough non-elemental ones that you could avoid the elemental ones entirely. Though I personally don’t mind the ones like Dazed and Confused, like the person above me. My Amara deals damage with so many different elements at once (because of skill points, mods, annointments, etc.) that it usually doesn’t matter. And for those times when it does, I make sure I have a couple of different elements covered in my gun selection.
I do agree with OP about the state of the game. I try to get back into it, but they made like all of my favourite guns unplayable in higher Mayhem modes. Phasecast builds are apparently not a thing anymore as well. At the moment this game is at least for me not something I want to spend a lot of time on, unless they change it dramatically.
Hey just a suggestion regarding mayhem mods. For a long time I’ve been running the combination of big kick energy, healy avenger or mob mentality, chain gang or laser fare, and buddy system. With that combo I’ve never felt handicapped that I need to switch skill elements/gear on the middle of combat. You can replace the first mod to something you prefer, like speed demon. The only drawback is that it can take a while to roll those mods.