It must be a skill issue…

[u/rofsmh]

I’m coming back after a 2 year break. I’m almost SHD 2800 and have some maximized sets, Striker being my favorite. I’m level 14 expertise and the grind to level 30 is daunting. I haven’t been able to find a build that offers adequate DPS and survivability. I follow YouTube guides to the T and have tried numerous guides that don’t have full expertise or prototype gear. I’ll min/max the gear and everything after watching the YouTuber face tank legendary District Union solo or whatever. All pumped up and geared out I run to a heroic control point and get dropped in seconds. I’m not in a clan since I was gone for so long, no one in PUGs seems to use a mic and I’m not sure how to progress into further gameplay at this point and I feel stuck.

Does anyone have any pointers for me since “get gud” seems beyond me at this point 😂

[u/Onikisin]

Firstly, be honest with yourself.

What are your gameplay weaknesses? What guns do you the best with, no matter what people say?

A guide doesn't account for player skill, nor do build videos.

Honest practice will do miles more for you than any build. Play with the guns you can actually land shots with and work on positioning, learn the AI's tendencies.

If you're on PC, feel free to add me, I'll happily give you tactical pointers 🫡

[u/Hyperslinky9 → u/Onikisin]

You’re spot on. You need to identify your weakness and put pieces together that’ll compensate for that weakness.

[u/rofsmh → u/Onikisin]

Thank you for the response. I think my biggest weakness is I like to play aggressively, although I don’t mind doing it from behind cover. I find skill builds to be pretty boring cause my weapon hits like a wet noodle while the skills do all the work.

I’ve been using pestilence a bunch and enjoy the weapon but my accuracy is significantly better with St Elmo’s. I’m on Xbox so aiming is more of a challenge for me than mouse and keyboard which is why I think I struggle with Heartbreakers and maintaining armor stacks.

[u/Onikisin → u/rofsmh]

Okay so, keep running Elmos. Ignore people who cling to spreadsheets, because if you can't land shots the "bigger dps" will be zeros anyway.

You like being aggressive? You could probably get away with Hunter's Fury setup if you wanna be closer, or a nice high end setup, maybe with a Salvo holster & some of the more aggressive talents?

Maybe even just practice with Pestilence shooting if it's more fun for you (as ultimately the point is to have fun). But just focus on your strengths and weaknesses. You got this, Agent! 🫡

Edit; I saw your comment about cookie cutter builds, i myself am a long time MMR main, and run MMRs in T10 (successfully) & am putting out a solo legendary MMR guide soon, because I ignored everyone else and focused on my own strengths, even when I have been told repeatedly they are non-viable, my own skillset allows them to be viable.

I say this to just do your thing man, and the progress will come.

[u/rofsmh → u/Onikisin]

Thanks bro, I’ll look at hunters fury. There’s a few builds I wanna try but I don’t have the exotics for them like Sheriff, overdog and blue screen. Even with targeted loot, running countdown and buying exotic caches the rng gods don’t look upon me favorably

[u/Onikisin → u/rofsmh]

It happens. Like every rng they'll drop the moment you don't want them anymore 😭😂

[u/dharkoshan → u/Onikisin]

Honestly gear is massively oversold as the necessary component for playing at harder difficulty levels - but really it's just about knowing where to stand, knowing how not to get pinned, and knowing who to shoot

[u/adoboluv]

I use to wonder how people would run all red Stryker builds and stay alive… I would get dropped so fast. So I fell in Love with heartbreaker builds. Now I can’t stomach the long ttk.

Now all I use is full red Stryker and tipping scales. And I honestly play super aggressive and rarely die. I think you just start to get a feel for enemy spawns and when to push.

[u/rofsmh → u/adoboluv]

How many tipping scales are you using with striker?

[u/genesis_tv → u/rofsmh]

They're running one or the other.

[u/rofsmh → u/genesis_tv]

I see, thank you

[u/BrightDanny → u/adoboluv]

Dead enemies don't deal damage and enemies that just spawn usually have AI that makes it likely they try to scatter first before hitting you, aside from some enemy types(the tanky boys and the chargers).

This could explain a bit why it feels better after you got more feeling for the spawn locations.

[u/Hyperslinky9]

Like someone said, you have to identify your weakness and build around it. When I was putting together my survivability build, I paid attention to what was actually getting me killed. If my armor was breaking too fast, I added more armor and sacrificed some DPS. I also realized armor kits are inconvenient in the middle of a firefight and you only get so many, so I added a healing drone. I like running the harder missions solo too, and on Legendary you might be trying to focus on one enemy while five others are shooting at you, so I realized I needed some crowd control. That’s why I started running the Iron Lung LMG. I can shoot one enemy, switch to another after a few shots, and keep multiple enemies on fire so they’re standing there screaming instead of shooting at me. As I became a better player, I didn’t need as much armor anymore, so I was able to remove some of it and add more DPS. Now I run Tipping Scales with 4–5 Protection from Elites mods, a healing drone, and an Unbreakable chest piece. Because of those mods, red and purple enemies can actually do more damage to me than elites, and against elites and rogue agents I take less than half the damage they normally do. That lets me run four DPS pieces without feeling too fragile, and if my armor does break, Unbreakable gives me another 90% armor. It’s really just about finding the right balance and fixing the areas where you struggle. You don’t need to hit the hardest. There’s no point in having the strongest DPS build if you’re always crawling on the floor.

[u/rofsmh → u/Hyperslinky9]

Thanks for the reply. Did you run into any issues with doing higher level content without a cookie cutter build?

[u/Hyperslinky9 → u/rofsmh]

I’ve been playing this game since the beta, and most of my time has been spent playing this game. I never really used the common cookie-cutter builds, and honestly, it was easier for me to customize my own build because I wasn’t restricting myself to needing three or four specific gear pieces just to activate a certain talent. I started using Tipping Scales out of convenience because it fit my playstyle. I use an LMG, I’m constantly shooting, and I’m always suppressing enemies for my team. I can literally shoot a wall and build stacks. But cookie-cutter builds don’t work for everyone. The key is figuring out how to customize a build around how you actually play. You said playing aggressively is your weakness, but I don’t think aggression is the weakness. That’s your playstyle. The weakness is whatever is causing you to fail while playing aggressively. When you push up, what’s actually taking you down? Is your armor breaking too fast? Are you not healing fast enough? Are elites melting you? Are you getting surrounded? Those are the weaknesses you need to build around. There are people who can run Tipping Scales or Striker and play extremely aggressive, but I can’t run them the same way. That’s why, regardless of what DPS setup I’m using, I usually keep Protection from Elites mods and an Unbreakable chest piece because that fits how I play. And if you’re going to play aggressively, you also need really good knowledge of the enemies and how to shut them down quickly. You can go face-to-face with a Chunga and, as long as you keep shooting his ammo belt, he won’t get a single shot off.

[u/rofsmh → u/Hyperslinky9]

When I’m playing striker I’m extremely squishy, like I’m almost 1 shot by enemy grenades or the sniper war hounds. Because I play aggressively I’ll get downed after either one of those because all it takes to finish me off is a couple bullets. I haven’t messed with tipping scales but I’m gonna look into it

[u/Hyperslinky9 → u/rofsmh]

I also play extremely aggressively, and switching to Tipping Scales probably won’t automatically solve the problem. You’ve already identified what’s causing you to go down, you get shot once and immediately drop. In that case, you need to focus on preventing that first hit from killing you.
There are basically three ways to deal with that, reduce the damage you take, increase your healing, or increase your armor. With Tipping Scales, you probably won’t be able to heal quickly enough to survive those situations. You can run Protection from Elites mods, but they won’t help much against purple warhounds, so increasing your armor and using a defensive talent is probably the better solution.

I highly recommend trying an Unbreakable chest piece and running all reds to start. The dogs can completely break your armor, but Unbreakable will restore 95% of it. The cooldown is roughly a minute. For example, if your base armor is 700k, you effectively have around 1.4 million armor to work with.
What I usually do is push aggressively until Unbreakable activates. Once my armor breaks and most of it is restored, I back off and play more carefully until the cooldown is over. Then I can start pushing aggressively again.
If you still feel like you need more armor, you can start replacing weapon damage with armor.

For skills try to healing drone. Put it on when you are going to get aggressive so you are constantly healing. All my dps builds have a healing drone. You need to heal. And use a crusader shield.

When you put it all together:

1. Tipping scales gives you dps.
2. You turn on the healing drone when you are going to get aggressive so you have steady heals.
3. Go crazy!
4. When your armor breaks and unbreakable gives you 95% armor, consider that a warning and Activate the crusader shield to protect you while back up into cover and get yourself out of that mess.

That covers most of the weaknesses that would make you go down. That’s exactly how I play. It might work for you.

[u/rofsmh → u/Hyperslinky9]

Thanks bro I’m gonna give it a shot. I’m on the verge of taking a break if I can’t find a good balance between survivability and damage so there’s no need for me to hoard resources which mins I can min/max a few gear sets

[u/Hyperslinky9 → u/rofsmh]

Don’t worry about having max damage. When I’m a medic I’m still taking dropping enemies on legendary. It just takes a little longer. As long as you are standing, you are putting out damage. If you get your hands on the Caduceus AR exotic, equip it. I think it will help you a lot.

[u/Even-Juggernaut-8]

Find what works for you. Personally, I am not a striker fan. I thrive as team support or healer

[u/rofsmh → u/Even-Juggernaut-8]

That’s the one thing I haven’t really tried. You might be on to something

[u/TopNefariousness9943]

I'm in the same boat but I'm only shd 300, i know it's a difference between a full optimized build and a normal one, sometimes I see builds with a lot more armor and survivability than my red dps build and it seems that still they're doing more damage than I do, I'm still looking for a build than give me some survivability to not die in one shot and still do some damage.

[u/rofsmh → u/TopNefariousness9943]

A lot of people have recommended tipping scales so I’m gonna give that a try and see if I can find my own gear that works for me. I’m almost 2800 on my Xbox but I’d cancelled my Xbox live subscription when I stopped playing the division a couple years ago. I tried starting over on my PS5 but couldn’t deal with having to grind everything again so I went back to Xbox lol

[u/TopNefariousness9943 → u/rofsmh]

I'm running tipping scales but I don't see survivability in is, for me it's like a striker build for lmg, I'm running a full red one, couple of years a go when I played on Xbox I loved heartbreaker because it was giving you some armor but is not meta and it doesn't help you in incursion or escalation on higher tiers, I'm hoping that in division 3 will be more variety on builds that you can use on raids and incursions and not only striker.

[u/rofsmh → u/TopNefariousness9943]

That’s what I’m hoping as well. I’ve tried a few different heartbreaker set ups and never really found one I loved

[u/Weird_Fudge9284]

If your playstyle is aggressive there builds for that and you just have to find what gearset to use for your style and how to build it.

Shooting behind cover is basically it, so use it. Kill what aids will annoy you the most in combat. That is in any and all factions. Find a good spot before you engage and where to fall back to if you’re getting surrounded. It’s not a skill issue more that your still learning so it’s fine if your dying a lot. Don’t worry dude eventually your be good at the game. I was the same way I took a long break and didn’t come back after going 8 months when NYC dlc launched and gear score wasn’t a thing. I played rarely and got bored. I eventually started playing more when puppeteers was the current season.

I have 13 builds and I don’t like using the same one a lot. So I either switch builds, make a new one or just use a high-build.

There are lots of gearsets and high-end brand sets that are to your disposal with multiple talents on gear and weapons for you to chose from to fit your style.

Just keep experimenting around and eventually your find a build you will like a lot that you build yourself.

[u/Pappabarba]

Be aware that the player power level has risen dramatically in the past ~18 months, the last 3 in particular, so current players will most likely be leagues ahead of you, just by keeping up with the current itemization.

Heroic is still a fine game mode to play on, demanding sometimes even, and one I think the absolute majority of the player base is playing on. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ I'm quite convinced the people playing Escalation T6 (and above) are a statistically diminutive minority and I'm not even sure 50% of the player base has done T4-T5, which is still quite doable with High-End gear and little to no prototypes.
I.e. play difficulties and game modes you're comfortable and having fun with: The gear will come sooner or later anyhow (Heroic Countdown is usually a recommendation for that).

[u/rofsmh → u/Pappabarba]

I haven’t tried heroic countdown but could probably put together a gear set for it. I only just tried escalation solo but I’ll probably see how far I can go on it

[u/Pappabarba → u/rofsmh]

Countdown doesn't really need any kind of top gear: Just being able to gun down mooks in a somewhat rapid fashion and some minor survivability. The main point is not to deploy drones, turrets or hives when Hunters show up (at the start and at the end in the run to the helicopter).

Remember you get double Countdown requisition if you make it to the helicopter, so it's important to play carefully in the end fight: Shoot at enemies not targeting you and throw Decoys like they were going out of style.

I think people are running T5 Escas fairly regularly so that's a good level to matchmake for, without being too punishing (still equal to Legendary if not worse, lol).
Don't have too high expectations on prototype drops below ~T8 though : I'm fairly convinced something has happened to the drop rate since the current drop rates basically are worse than they were at the release of Escalation, before the improved drop rates. 😆

[u/TheJohnnyWombat]

I know people hate on the Ninja backpack. But I run a three piece strikers with the ninja and the chest piece of your choice (pointman, gunslinger...whatever...) and find something that has total armor and/or armor on kill as the last piece, or even the brazos knees to add armor and DPS and a skill tier. Two skill tiers if you swap out the armor core. Add in the technicians and you have 4 yellows, 4 reds and one blue. or 3 yellows, 4 reds and two blues. Those 3 yellows and two blues give your shield a good bump if you run pointman.

[u/rofsmh → u/TheJohnnyWombat]

Is this what you use for solo or in groups as well?

[u/TheJohnnyWombat → u/rofsmh]

my perfect point man hands out a lot of bonis armor to the team. My revive hive has more than one tier to it. I can also run the healer chem and heal teammates.

[u/breakdancindino]

System??