Long thread about Division 2 PVP inbound, specifically Damage vs Armor and MMR’s.

Right now my 6 Red Headshot MMR build can’t one shot headshot a 3 Blue Lady Death build. This is a huge problem.

If you stack 6 reds, you should be able to kill 6 blue builds before they kill you

For reference, here is a compilation video from the DZ tonight. There are multiple times I headshot people and they aren’t downed. Keep in mind I have a min-maxed 6 red HSD MMR build.

Take note at 4:49 where I pull off a last ditch headshot at point blank range with a max roll White Death after 1v2’ing his teammates.

That should be a kill.

Instead it only hits for about 1.23 mil due to the MMR over-nerf of 30%.

“We want to reward headshots.” No, you don’t.

Lower skill ceiling players that run around with Lady Death / Intimidate / Adrenaline Rush got one shot by headshots and complained. To cater to those lower skill players, you nerfed base damage of MMR’s.

You couldn’t one shot a player with bodyshots. It wasn’t possible then.

If you’re going to nerf MMR damage by such a huge %, then you should have increased the Headshot Damage (HSD) of bolt action MMR’s to compensate for that to compensate.

That would have stayed true to your principle of “We want to reward skilled play of headshots.”

If I can’t consistently kill players with headshots on my MMR build, then there is no incentive to even use that build as it’s no longer effective at what made it useful - keeping enemies at range and punishing them for being out of cover.

Cover-based shooter, remember that?

So if my MMR HSD build doesn’t work, then I’m forced to use a build that does - and also works in more situations.

That’s yet another reason why armor stacking Lady Death / Intimidate / Adrenaline Rush builds are so prevalent - because they have both Damage & Survivability.

Because there is no point in trying to use a HSD MMR build if you have to land two consecutive headshots on a strafing idiot with a bolt action MMR where that TTK is actually longer than him shooting you with bodyshots from a Lady Death.

Think about that for a second.

Headshots should beat bodyshots.

Headshot Damage (HSD) should be stronger than Critical Hit Chance / Critical Hit Damage (CHC / CHD)

These are very basic PVP principles.

The Division 2 throws those away because they seek to cater to a low skill ceiling playerbase.

By doing that, you are driving away skilled players as their prowess isn’t rewarded.

Why play a game that doesn’t reward you for your higher skill ceiling play? Why play a game where your aim being better doesn’t matter because accuracy dispersion means you land less headshots?

There is nothing more infuriating then being killed by someone that just lands bodyshots against you while you’re hitting headshots.

The reason they win is because the torso is a larger target than the head, and accuracy dispersion means the headshotter lands less shots.

This is exacerbated in TD2 because CHC / CHD is too easy to obtain - you have 10% / 20% just due to SHD levels. SMG’s have another 21% CHC. CHD rolls on gear are at 12% when HSD is only 10%.

Builds are able to hit over 200% CHD. This is the EXACT problem from TD1 with Pulse.

We could have 60% CHC / 100% CHD from Tactical Scanner back in TD1. This was just way too much damage output, which adversely affected PVE as well since enemies were scaled to that level of player damage output.

But Tactical Scanner had a hard counter in PVP - Conceal Pulse.

All that damage potential was negated by one skill.

In TD2 we don’t have that. We had CHC Resistance of 20% in the skill tree, but that was changed to Pulse Resistance. There’s no longer any soft or hard counters to crit, which just makes it all the more overpowered.

And therein lies the problem with PVP in the entirety of The Division IP - they don’t have a good list of PVP Principles and they don’t adhere to them.

You need to build the system from the ground up, which requires a solid foundation. TD2 never had that. TD1 did, at times.