2686

Do you mean “GM2 is a cakewalk” for strongholds or freeplay?

2687

Any of the above. One caveat, I don’t play storm much. But even with storm, there are ways to mitigate the fact the shield doesn’t work properly (with components that give damage resist on shield break).

Gm3 freeplay is also quite easy. Strongholds not so much. Maybe not worth it solo, though, depending on what you are playing…colossus probably fine. Ranger could get tedious, depending on build.

2688

If you’re kitted out in masterwork gear, sure I’ll agree with that. Anything less and you’re gonna get chewed up, I can tell you from experience. You can’t sustain any damage, nor can you produce enough damage to keep yourself from sustaining damage.

2689

It takes very little time to do that. And I found that journey to get fitted in masterworks to be great fun, as was the initial climb into gm2.

2690

Different strokes for different folks.

Randos aren’t reliable enough for me in GM2 and it’s still tedious at that level for me having to carry or revive so much. That and the increased health bullet sponginess of GM2/3 don’t make it worthwhile for my time.

The increased chance or increase in number in drops is worthless because drops are the exact same quality tier as GM1 so I prefer to stay there. If you’re already kitted out in MWs, all the blues, purples and MWs in GM2 are worthless. Everyone is just after legendaries. The extra trouble of extra hard hitting enemies and their increase health isn’t as quick to plow through.

GM1 for all my expeditions, strongholds and GM3 for freeplay. I’ve hateplayed this game a lot obviously. GM1s take 10-15min. GM2-3s take 30min + always unless it’s a GM2 HoR where everyone bails after furies.

I’ve slogged through GM2/3 strongholds and gotten a single MW. It’s a colossal waste of time.

2691

But that’s not really the point. You start out as an essentially naked character in Diablo 3 on normal difficulty. There’s no way you could do the same on GM1 in Anthem. And considering you can’t even get to masterwork stuff until you reach level 30, meaning post game, I’m not sure I agree with the “very little time” part either.

2692

All you need to get going in gm1 are a couple of masterwork weapons, which are easily obtainable on hard. More masterworks are easily obtainable at that point. No, you shouldn’t go diving into a stronghold, but you can certainly do freeplay, and perhaps with a drop or two, you can do legendary contracts with guaranteed drops until you are ready to take on strongholds.

2693

I’m with you. You also have to pray to the gods of RNG to get a legendary/MW drop of the ability drop you want to use in your build. Took me a month to get Legendary Recurring Vengeance.

2694

I’ve been pretty fortunate with RNG, myself. No idea if I’m an outlier, but I’ve gotten almost all the masterwork weapons at this point, and a bunch of gear as well. Even a few legendary items. And that’s almost completely on GM1. So I don’t fully disagree with @misguided either, it’s not a difficult slog to get to GM1 and once you’re there you can get in decent endgame shape. But you definitely have to put in your time to get to that point.

2695

LOL photoshop prediction

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2696

So I decided to try the other two instances last night. Did get 30, not geared for GM1 by a long shot though. And my build is made up of random skills and guns that I need to level. So …

I guess because Temple of the Scar is easier/shorter, it was a full run.

So I start a Heart of Rage run. Never seen it either, though it was pretty much just story - recanned - so not hard to know what was happening.

Soloed that puppy end to end. The reason I think was I set it to Easy. ;) No one came … but eh. Sort of a catch 22 if you can’t do GM1. Maybe with a little more gear I could solo normal, but I think the only groups will be for GM1 except for the shortest instance (that was also on Easy). I did pop the caches and got 3 Masterworks in chests, which I need to start getting, so worth it I guess.

But at least now they are open for hot joins, and I can let the autofinder look for any players.

2697

Oh wow, you got three masterworks on easy? Maybe I’m wasting my time on GM1!

2698

Also, patch notes for today’s update are up now:

This one is pretty big:

  • Added the ability to access the Forge during Missions, Strongholds and Freeplay. You can now change your gear without having to return to Fort Tarsis or the Launch Bay!
2699

More content is good, but I think there’s going to be backlash (I mean, there always is with gamers, but I mean more than usual) due to them not really addressing the many critical issues with the game.

Is the dev stream today? They really need to talk about what their plans on for addressing a lot of the concerns or I don’t think they’re going to get much mileage out of this update.

2700

Man, I have the opposite experience. Temple of the Scar is the mission I seem to die the most on. I even accidentally flew into the fan blades of the shield generator last night on gm2. The boss can just about one shot my storm at full health.

2701

I kind of hate that stronghold because I swear, at least once each time I run it, I end up walking into one of those damn fan blades and needing to get revived.

2702

It and Tyrant Mine I can solo in GM1, not so with HoR. Also, you can unload your ultimates into the esCarlos at the beginning and start him off at 50% health.

Dismantling seems to have the pause again after each item. Dammit, BioWare.

2703

The damage buff might actually make GM1 fun and GM2 doable without feeling like it is a giant waste of time.

2704

That is big, though you still can’t talk to the team mates to coordinate.

Still a help, like in the HoR boss phases where he cycles being immune to things. Makes me want to have preloads for various elements now at least.

Quite a bit of nice QoL and bug fix, but only the one bit of new. Probably understandable. I can only hope the crunch didn’t lead to too much of what I used to call spaghetti code they have to rework and maintain.

Looks like they also realized that the whole primer/detonator/combo thing was still a mystery to most.

The other big one to me, esp. from feedback from family playing a Ranger behind my melee Colossus … players can now shoot/use gear through teammates. Much needed. I can now ground pound and “go bowling” with less guilt.*

And I didn’t die on Temple of Scar because: it was on Easy, I had a team of four, and I was on my Colossus. Noticed the fan, stood in it a while before I figures out what it was! ;) But the first run on Easy I like for that … now I know! Because of all this is was also fast. But only one MW drop there. I can see spamming that one on easy though as a good way to quickly run up your stronghold counter for the one grind. Probably why it had people.

Heart of Rage is probably faster to do with a team of four on GM1 assuming all are geared enough? My fresh, ungeared 30 could solo it on Easy, with a crappy build, but it felt much longer than the Scar run. It being a lucky loot run, was a good pick me up after the lonely solo slog.

(* Bowling … get a Colossus, put on all the melee augments you can, and esp get the shield damage when sprinting one equipped. See packs of trash, ready shield … sprint through them, never stop just keep bowling! It does not detonate a combo though, you need to manually use the shield bash not just run over them to trigger the combo, so hit that key/button when you see one primed.)

2705

EA servers took a dirt nap and prompted to update Origin client.