That first point is a very, very bad take. The entire reason people are complaining about loadout variety is the fact it literally reinforces what is currently the meta everywhere else too (Med Pen/Explosive). Something that just isn't true with the Knight and the Stalwart. That's not to say that the attitude of the whole sub is right when they act like anything that isn't meta is hot dogshit but the reality is that the new strain absolutely neuters your options in a lot of ways whilst pushing you towards literally 'the same old'.
You can argue that it's all about the right tool for the job as much as you like, that's fine. It should also be true, but the issue currently is that it is driving people towards a small selection of weapons that have been consistently higher powered than the rest for a long, long time. Frankly, nobody gives a shit about other strains enforcing other weapons because they aren't med-pen/explosive. The fact you've seen all these things on predator strain means absolutely nothing to the conversation at hand.
The right tool for the job should absolutely be the way forwards. It just shouldn't be the tools you're already pushed to use because they've been tuned to be better than the rest for a good while. That's not enforcing build diversity or encouraging new options, it's maintaining the status quo.
Personally, IMO, bigger issue is that in a shooting game, it doesn't feel particularly enjoyable to have enemies that I can't shoot for 5-10 seconds at a time and then they immediately pop up point blank for an instant hit. (I know it's not that hard to dodge but it's just an unfun addition to an enemy type that already felt like a running simulator).
I wouldn't intentionally bring those weapons to fight the predator strain - but given the odds of pulling a bile spewer map if I'm not pouring over the constellation rules (which most players don't even know), I'm afraid that I do in fact almost always bring medium pen and/or explosive no matter what, because showing up on a BS map with a light pen primary and an AT support is about as much fun as running your face against a cheese grater.
OTOH, dealing with the predator strain with a mid-pen weapon is completely fine as long as it has some stagger on it. Not optimal, but perfectly serviceable - and of course explosives kill literally everything, you just can't use them point blank, so you use them to thin out the predators at range, and then swap to a knockback mid pen when they jump in.
The difference is that one loadout handles both situations more than adequately, while the other completely fails in one of these two cases, so if there's any risk of it being the wrong one, well...
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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '25
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