Anyone feels like these murder drones are just way too tanky?

[Night_Sniper]

[rant]
Come on, a single drone able to deal such serious damage and move so quickly just can't be THAT tanky, right? Well, okay, maybe it can, but, jesus christ, theres atleast 4 of them on the screen on hazard 4-5 at once.

They just aren't supposed to eat SO MUCH lead as a half opressor each. Theyre fast, numerous, and now also boring as hell because they take eternity to kill.

Before you say "Just use M1000", there are 4 classes in the game and now they all are obligated to use a sertain weapon built in a sertain way just to be able to kill one enemy, that may not even be present on a mission, at sane speed. Not once before this has been a thing in the game. And all that just because these flying flappy bots are tankier than praetorians.

Literally all it would take to make these bots fun, not specifically easier, but FUN is simply tuning out their health to a sane number. You want them to be more dangerous? Alright, make them deal more damage quicker, but don't make such a FAT enemy, they aren't dreadnoughts but metal, we got a caretaker boss for that.

[/rant]

[Chibbity]

They die instantly if set on fire, although not always easy to do depending on class/loadout; it's a great solution.

[Tiom]

I get where you are coming from. They do have a lot of health and if you know you are going to be fighting them you probably need to make a build for them. If you don't think you can deal with them for a data deposit or prospector encounter then just dont do the encounter.

For Driller : flamethrowers with triple filtered fuel mod from tier 2 put and end to them pretty easily. If the patrol bots reach "on fire" status they instantly die.

For gunner : Bulldog, BRT, Hurricane and Leadstorm are decent at taking them out pretty quickly with some headshots.

Scout: you already mentioned it

Engineer: Lok-1 is good at dealing with them. Hyper Propellant OC on the 40mm PGL is also good for killing them.

[Zeddy]

I was pretty surprised when I checked the wiki and saw they have as much health as a Praethorian!

[Cephalopod]

Yeah. They feel terrible to fight against. I hate, absolutely loathe bulletsponges in videogames. Doesn't make things hard, just really, really tedious. And fighting those things is a nightmare. Not only because they are so tanky, but just as you said they are way too fast. You expect tanky enemies to be slower. Not Sonic on crack. Just isn't fun imo. And I only play Haz 4 btw. I cannot imagine Haz 5.

[Ackranome]

Scouts hate this one thing....

[Johnno]

Originally posted by Zeddy:

I was pretty surprised when I checked the wiki and saw they have as much health as a Praethorian!

You mean Oppressor? I've always felt that Praetorians are child's play, Oppressors too really unless you're in a tunnel getting swarmed with buncha other stuff as well.

The patrol bots have heaps of weaknesses, and take far more weakpoint damage from being hit in the head than Praetorians or Oppressors take from being shot in the rear. If you feel that patrol bots are bullet sponges in comparison you must be doing something wrong (as in no bonus damages on your weapons and not hitting the head).

Even a good power attack hit with the pickaxe when the patrol bot rolls by takes a good chunk of health out of them. And while they're fast they also roll/fly away so you can hide to regen/do other stuff if necessary, or just swap targets and once they come around again take them out.

So no, I wouldn't agree with the OP that they're in any way too tanky, I don't spec to fight them I just aim for the head.

[Erin the Angry]

The difference is praetorians are a joke because the slowly lumber toward you and soak up everything with no regard to anything and have that MASSIVE weak point and also stand in place to do a useless long drawn out attack. The patrol bots actually have a small weak point and zip around like they are on crack so yeah praets go down uber quick.

[ITS YOHANE]

Originally posted by Tiom:

Engineer: Lok-1 is good at dealing with them. Hyper Propellant OC on the 40mm PGL is also good for killing them.

Should note the LOK-1 only aims for their center mass, and because they fly a lot it'll be really hard to headshot them even looking straight up.
You can only headshot them with the LOK-1 if you have the high ground in which you can do a lot of damage, but normally you'll end up shooting their big orb and use up your limited ammo.

[phenir]

Smack them with a power attack, robots take 3x damage from melee so you can take off a huge chunk of their hp. Also, their weakspot multiplier is x3 so getting weakspot hits is a must.

[CCShad]

I think it's just kind of a side effect of all the new weapons not really being hitscan (except for the lok1 kinda), they're fine but the patrol bots have a really small weakpoint, and extremely erratic and unpredictable movement patterns.

Hitscan weapons still absolutely zap 'em

[Night_Sniper]

So you are telling me these flying warcrime machines on crack have the health pool of praetorian? Jesus Christ, that hurts me on a spiritual level.

They are simply too fast and have too many rapid (and one homing too) attacks, paired with a tiny af weakspot, to be THAT much of a bullet sponge.

Honestly, I would take it if their health was that of 70% of their current health, leave or take 5%. Cutting hp by a third sounds reasonable to me. Atleast someone, who isn't building into dummy accurate single-target can take on these robots in this case. In return they could recieve some damage buff on some of their attacks (burst gun and ramming) so that attacking from afar is safer (as sniper shots and rocket salvos remain weaker), but requires more accuracy.

My whiny part tells me to demand their health be cut in half, but... Okay, now THAT is too much. PGL will straight up delete them entirely

[Cress]

I can make quick work of these with any of my standard builds on Haz5... I have never felt the need to make some sort of custom build in order to deal with these.

They're more challenging than most of the content, I will give you that, but it's not like they're some immortal killing machine.

"They are too fast"- slow them down or git gud. It's not hard to hit.

"They are too tanky"- they die easy enough. They are a rare enemy that only spawns under certain circumstances in a limited amount. They shouldn't be a pushover either :P

[Loken Stoneheart]

Probably shouldnt be small (the weakpoint, or effective weakpoint since theyre often above you when they arent pretending theyre Shellbacks, obscuring a fair bit of it), hyper mobile / have erratic movement, AND have a beefy health pool.
I've never really had trouble with them killing me, but they're certainly obnoxious to kill.

I usually power attack them, but that only really works if they decide they want to actually come at you.


Honestly thinking about it though, the robots in general seem to reward precision weapons or an overheat build.
Most of their weakpoints are tiny, and they either zip around or stick on ceilings 40m out.

[Fiveball]

They're more of an annoyance to me. Wouldnt really cry much if they were gone.

[Frisky]

bit tanky yeah, though my LOK-1 usually is pretty good at cutting down their HP, plus as others mentioned the fire gimmick is helpful

My big gripe with them is that they're ranged enemies with high damage and a shellback like knockback that can spawn in fairly large numbers, making them one of the most annoying enemies in the game IMO, especially if you're a cryo driller and you bump into a depo event you weren't prepared for and now have to peashooter them to death

not an issue for sabotage obviously but it makes certain playstyles really unfun at random, I love the event and season but I won't miss them one bit when they're gone from the normal missions