Hunters are almost unbeatable on Legendary

Games Halo Infinite
, ,
#1

I don’t understand how, but 343i have managed to ruin the hunters. On legendary, there is 0 incentive to take on hunters, because they are too damn difficult. I get that legendary is supposed to be hard, almost cruel in difficulty, but theres a difference between challenge and B.S. mechanics. Also, inb4 get good lol its not that hard

The Hunter was designed as a large, slower moving, slow firing, heavily armoured, tank unit, which roams in pairs. Why have the hunters now got a rapid fire and tracking shot, far increased fire rate on the main canon, and a quick-firing mortar-style ability? On top of this, the melee animations are infuriatingly short, and you cannot dodge them using standard maneuvers, like you could in previous titles (343i and Bungie). Instead you are forced to rely on the thrusters, which aren’t even that effective against them anyway, or you take cover and pepper them for 10 minutes to slowly bring them down. Speaking of slowly peppering, they are now apparently the biggest bullet sponges in the entire game, requiring almost a full ammo rack from a skewer to kill. Why? The hunters were always formidable when you encountered them, but this is just excessive. It takes around 10 direct missle volleys from a wasp to kill one hunter. I don’t understand the rationale behind their balancing, it’s ludicrous.

Trying to beat the HVT Hunters was mind-burningly frustrating, because the standard overkill stats of this version of the hunters, is now multiplied by many thousands of times, simply because they are a HVT. Come on 343i this is seriously poor enemy design.

tl;dr
Hunters are OP and go completely against their purpose in the Halo sandbox.

26 Likes
#2

I just used Needlers againat them, fogured out that works pretty damn effectively

4 Likes
#3

They re the 2nd biggest bullet sponges. The main ones are the bossess in this game. Some of them took me 30+ min to kill

12 Likes
#4

:man_shrugging: i really enjoyed fighting hunters on legendary, especially when you’re unprepared.
It just made things extremely tense and i really had to pull out all the stops to kill them, also love when you kill one of them and the other goes bloody beserk!

12 Likes
#5

Tank beats Ghost. Tank beats Hunter.

22 Likes
#6

Speaking as someone whose finished the campaign on Heroic and is now starting a Legendary run. The hunters were a tad less fun than usual, but potentially interesting. I didn’t mind the hunter’s new Alt-fire mode, when the player can just choose to fly circles around them in a Wasp they can’t just keep using the big slow cannon. I have yet to face them on legendary so I can’t speak for that. My main gripe is with the hunter’s AI and how said machine gun mode is used, they don’t quite act like hunters. Part of the fun of Halo was manipulating the AI, the classic example being, kill the Elites the Grunts run away. Hunters were the pure distillation of using the AI of the enemy against themselves.

Fighting Classic Hunters was a multi-step process. Classic Hunters Hate friendly fire, you get between them or to close to their partner and they stop using their cannons as to avoid shooting each other. You get close and the Hunter stops shooting to avoid it’s own AOE damage. Instead a hunter would attempt to smash you with the Car door strapped to its arm. The point of getting close being to dodge the melee attack and shoot/punch the hunter in the back during it’s follow through. You back up when the other hunter also gets in close because dodging two hunters in close range was really difficult, even if it could be done.

None of this was risk free, getting hit by a hunter’s melee attack, if it didn’t kill you outright, would push you far enough away for them to start shooting at you again. At that point you’re choices would be to run for cover to get your shields back, or rush back to the nearest hunter and risk getting melee slammed to death before said shields recharged. Getting in between the hunters may stop the classical hunters of old from shooting you but it wouldn’t stop a Grunt, Jackal, Brute, or Elite, and it wouldn’t stop the Hunter’s from using the aforementioned car door.

Infinite’s Hunters do care about friendly fire but they don’t hate friendly fire. They wont try to shoot directly through each other, but I don’t remember it ever being so easy to get Hunters to shoot each other, and they don’t care about the crossfire, standing between them and jumping when they shoot their big shot can actually get them to hit each other on flat terrain. While Infinite’s Hunters will try to punch you if you get close it doesn’t stop them from shooting like it did in previous games. Infinite Hunters don’t care as much about their own AOE. The Machine gun is the big issue. The rest of the above changes could be exactly the same and hunters would make a fair if difficult fight. The Machine gun is the part that turns the Hunters sour.

The Machine gun makes getting close and getting away far more hazardous, as what used to be the far range of their melee lunges and the close range of their power shot, is now the range at which the machine gun will near guarantee kill you, and the machine gun will kill you, it has no wind up, no signaling whine of a charge shot about to be fired, it just shoots. Even if you are at full health Max shield upgrades on Heroic, if you are in the wrong spot when a hunter decides to use the machine gun, you are dead.

The Machine gun is a problem because unlike all of the Hunters other moves there is no wind up and it is effective at any range. The power shot has to charge, before it shoots, the machine gun doesn’t. The player doesn’t know that the machine gun is about to start shooting until after it shoots. My suggestion is to add some audio, and visual if possible, signal, distinct from the charge shot, to let the player know that the Hunter is about to lay down some suppressive fire. With the Drop-wall, Hook-shot, and Thruster pack. That’s all that would need to change to make this a fair, fun, but still difficult fight.

11 Likes
#7

devs definitely missed the point of hunters. they’re extremely tough and deal heavy damage, but you should be able to exploit their sluggish movement to parry them and expose their weak spot.

in infinite they never have their back to you under any circumstance, even with thruster camo. if you manage to get behind them they comically snap onto you. they’re essentially just bullet sponges only vulnerable to huge amounts of damage now.

25 Likes
#8

Tank beats EVERYTHING!

5 Likes
#9

the HVT hunters were super fun for me. I had to use every single spartan ability I had and every weapon on the ground. it was a bullet sponge fight, but beating them by out maneuvering them was super satisfying. the normal hunters are weak to nades and skewers. honestly if any enemy is nearly unbeatable for me its the damn shielded cannon chieftains.

1 Like
#10

you forgot that their melee doesn’t even have to hit you to do damage, and they’ll hit you with it even when you sidestep mid swing its like their melee has an aimbot

9 Likes
#11

I don’t find the Hunter’s too difficult overall; it’s all about “hit & run” strikes with power weapons to take out essentially every enemy that’s a total bullet sponge. I find that their weapons, even on Legendary, surprisingly don’t do a lot of damage compared to other enemies and bosses so it shouldn’t be too hard to avoid death from them.

The real problem I have with the Hunters is their ability to see you through walls and active camo, such that it’s almost impossible to flank them and reach into their back (and that’s the same for the main bosses that are encountered as well). It’s unreasonably tedious for me to take out the Hunters in this game because of this.

2 Likes
#12

Every other enemy has a weakness to exploit. Brutes have the helmets, Elites shield+headshot, Jackals shield gaps, grunts are grunts, etc. The hunters are completely lacking in any sort of exploitable weakness now, which is my main issue. I don’t mind the instant kill with a smash, because that makes sense, but the rapid alt-fire now makes taking an un-covered ranged approach with a rocket is not possible. Which means you are not allowed to engage at any range, without being deleted. The alt fire wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t track you like the burst carbine, because you could at least avoid them. It’s a real shame, because theres no satisfaction to beating one now, it’s become a chore. 343 seem to be enjoying making things a chore with this game cough cough multiplayer cough

8 Likes
#13

I get bondage now because I had a lot of fun getting my butt spanked over and over again buy a tag team of hunters. Killing them felt the best.

But yeah no they are hard if you have 0 power weapons. But with them they go down like chumps.

2 Likes
#14

I really overlooked this post right here.

Hunters in this game simply have wallhacks that are able to track you from behind cover or camo, as does every other bullet sponge opponent.

4 Likes
#15

Even with most power weapons they aren’t exactly going to melt before your eyes. Like I mentioned, it takes a full load of ammo from a skewer to kill a single hunter. The rocket launchers do it in 4 shots, and anything else is almost not viable (aside from needler from what @blazing_hellion said, yet to try this though). It’s just illogical and bad design to make enemies hard by simply making them bullet sponges. It’s very frustrating to see and play against.

5 Likes
#16

I think the big issue is that they do not leave their backs open as often as they used to in other games. The skewer does next to nothing on armor but if you hit their backs it’s a 2/3 hit kill.

6 Likes
#17

Exactly, they missed out the one weakness the hunters had, which was sluggish movement and a weak, open region on the back. All this is now invalidated by an aimbot melee that has a 360 degree hit radius. It’s mind boggling.

7 Likes
#18

Yeah I was no having fun with Hunters in this game, I get they are tough and all that but the AI just makes it impossible to play with.

-They have wall hacks
-They shoot you even when you are in melee range ( I seriously hate this one)
-The never have their backs exposed
-They are nothing but bullet sponges

I understand they need to move faster to compensate for your new movement options but this is too much, I literally ended up having to kill them with the Skewer point blank.

the most effect way to kill them is with a Scorpion and thats saying a lot

8 Likes
#19

This is my main gripe about the bosses and mini bosses, having a metric ton health and making them be able to one hit the player doesn’t make it harder it makes them frustratingly annoying, there is no reason for a halo to have multiple 30+ minute boss fights. well almost no reason and the only one I can come up with is to pad playtime,

6 Likes
#20

I would say its diabolical

1 Like