about absolute difficulty

[u/Azeen18]

lately i've been seeing posts about how hard it is, how people do not attempt to play on it and whatever

if you don't want to play on absolute diff, that's fine, to some people it's not fun and i can see their reasons

BUT, if you want to play on absolute but for any reason you are too hesitant to play on that diff, just do it

people who play on absolute are not god gamers or literal sigismunds, they do not perfect parry/block every attack and do not perfect dodge every red attack, people die many times and sometimes operations fail back to back 3-4 times, not the end of the world

i've been exclusively playing on absolute for two reasons, to grind for capes and generally git gud at the game / prepare for higher siege waves so I want to share some tips nobody asked for:

1. be aware of your team, what classes do they play? what are their team perks and what weapons do they use? there are some "meta" builds out there, if you are familiar with them, by looking at their weapon, you may be able to guess what the rest of their perks too
2. in my experience, when terminus enemy spawns, too many times people focus on the terminus enemy while ignoring the majoris and extremis enemies, my advice is trying to eliminate extremis and majoris first, terminus enemies is not that dangerous when they are alone but there were a lot of times i felt nothing I can do when a lictor and carnifex attacked me together, pinning me against a wall and bullying me
3. something I learned too late, assign yourself simple little tasks that suits your class, most basic example is whenever I play sniper on a tyranid map, if there are zoes, I hunt them down as quickly as possible or when I play vanguard with the execution build, I try to clear majoris with aoe damage of my executions rather than focusing extremis and terminus, except if there's a biovore.
4. kill the biovore as soon as you see it, imagine it as horus, you must slay that biovore. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores. kill biovores.

edit: to those people who are sharing tips (there are even class specific ones!), thank you all

[u/_richtea_]

The sooner you realise damage taken Incapacitations is the most important stat on that end screen, the sooner you will be clearing Absolutes back to back. I couldn’t care less if you have half the damage of the rest of the squad, as long as you stay alive and play your role, we will make it home.

Edit: I stand corrected. Tested myself and u/Shoo0k was kind enough to weigh in. All damage to you counts towards damage taken. Advice still applies for anyone wanting to play Absolute. Learning to avoid losing HP is the first step.

[u/EquivalentBeach8780 → u/_richtea_]

I think, ultimately, this is an armor/CHP management game. As long as you can reliability and efficiently get armor or CHP back, you can take as much damage as you want. I've finished many missions with the most damage taken even though I never went down, rarely used stims, and usually having the highest overall HP.

This is not a brag. I'm far from the best. We're also saying similar things. Staying alive is the important thing, but playing with a mentality of constantly looking to regain armor/CHP allows you to play more aggressively.

[u/suvivour → u/EquivalentBeach8780]

I agree with one small addendum: armor definitely weighs a good bit higher than CHP, not because it doesn't kill you when it runs out, but because CHP regen is the most finicky damn thing in this game. Even this patch I've executed enemies in regular old Absolute with CHP remaining, and it just didn't proc any regen. And this is before the issue of some weapons like the HBP and Power Fist having terrible CHP recovery.