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Ridgeway's Pride is undoubtedly the most underwhelming and least anticipated in the players' mind coming into TU11. We're all looking forward to Memento and many are at least intrigued by the Backfire. But most people seem to agree that the RP is just straightup garbage, only there as a bleed crutch for Sadist procs.

I disagree... to an extent. It's not bad; it's situational. Most people will take the word "situational" to mean "bad in every aspect except in one specific scenario", and I guess you're right.

It's a CQC Exotic (duh)

This exotic is meant for CQC and that alone comes with a heap of restrictions. CQC, by nature, is more difficult to pull off in groups than solo. It relies on both high damage output to dispose of enemies as well as your survivability to close the gap (you don't walk up face-to-face w/ an enemy to start shooting for the next 20 sec). The CQC playstyle also limits your weapon choice and which skills to use.

But I think in niche scenarios where it's good, it's really good.

In my mind, there are two types of CQC: 1) Relying on cover-to-cover and peeking out to kill enemies and 2) relying on full sprints, shields, and stagger to approach and kill enemies. The former is used to isolate as many one-on-one situations with the enemy, while the second is often used to rush down a choke or spawn point. I believe the RP is for the former.

There are more 1v3~1v5 situations than you might think

If you've played any amount of CQC, you know that you don't often fight a single enemy per combat. Rather, it's really a 1v3, 1v4, or 1v5, depending on how many of them have spawned. Think of your typical enemy patrol for instance.

The goal of CQC then is to pick apart the group, and execute one enemy at a time in such a speed that you go through the enemies without having to face all of them at once. The best offense is the best defense: stagger the enemies one at a time and chew through the group. This is why high-burst, high-upfront damage weapons like shotguns and SMG are particularly suited for CQC, among other reasons (accuracy, dmg falloff). We never truly engage a group of enemies in a 1 vs many fashion, because we almost always die before killing anyone. But if we're using a cover-based CQC (as opposed to shield-based), then the mixing of RP into a build suddenly makes a lot of sense.

As the devs emphasized many times over, exotics are not meant to be BIS, but rather to evoke a unique playstyle or build. RP allows players to engage more enemies at a time in the above CQC environment than otherwise possible. It allows players to be far more reckless while maintaining dps output (thanks to Sadist) and provides the sustain that CQC players often need.

4% armor regen is insanely good sustain

People's biggest complaint about RP is the "pathetic" armor regen it provides. "ONLY 4%???" they shout. Sure, on full tank builds where the total armor is in several millions, the 4% actually give big raw regen numbers. But it can't be anything noteworthy in full red builds can it?

Well, 4% per second is still 4% of your max armor. To put this in perspective, 10 sec to regen half of your armor is better than tier 1 chem launcher heal, due to cooldowns.

Final Thoughts

I'm not saying that RP will be amazing; I'm just saying it's not as bad as ppl seem to think. The biggest argument against RP, which I'll concede, is asking the question "why would I make concerted efforts to keep enemies alive whose bullets can blow my tiny regen'd armor by just grazing it anyway?" Basically, dead enemies >>> bleeding enemies is the argument. I agree.

But you're only required to "damage" enemies, not shoot them. Sticky bomb or Stinger hive could literally save you in a clutch w/ 25% regen if you're surrounded. I think there are many creative ways yet to make this exotic a powerful niche pick (esp with Hunter's Fury) and that people shouldn't write it off just yet.

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over 3 years ago - /u/Ubi-RealDude - Direct link

Originally posted by dregwriter

Despite all what you say with all your examples, after playing with it on the PTS, My personal experience paints a different picture, yea...........................not going to bother with this exotic.

It's not as bad as ppl think it is

I dont "THINK" it's bad, im not theory crafting or imagining how it would work in some imaginative situation. I "KNOW" its bad, from personal experience and live gameplay from having played it on the PTS with all god rolled gear.

Just for more context with this, what type of build were you using Ridgeway's Pride with on the PTS - and what kind of content?

over 3 years ago - /u/Ubi-RealDude - Direct link

Originally posted by HorribleRnG

Problem with this exotic is the limited range of 10m in order for its regen bonus to apply, you either never survive being in front of 5 enemies shooting at you (Playing solo possibly depending on build, in groups very slim chance and practically impossible in Heroics/Legendary 4man groups with anything other the full tank build), unless you are running full tank but at this point you are prob running 4p Foundry + Emperors Guard and Forge so you dont really need any more armor regen then that so this Exotic would not give any benefit whatsoever. Or the enemies disperse really fast and get out of the 10m range and keep running and hiding in cover... Ive been trying to incorporate this exotic into numerous builds and done so much theorycrafting and testing and every single time came to the conclusion that although on paper it is not the worst exotic in the game it is most definitely very poorly thought out and so extremely situational to the point that the scenarion where its useful is impossibly rare and that having it in any build does almost nothing for you, in most scenarios on avarage with perfect conditions you would have 2-3 targets within 10m and bleeding but usually ot was 1-2. So bearing that in mind this exotic is a pretty big DPS loss considering you lose out on a more impactful brand piece and at that its also a Chest piece which also has comes with a talent on it. This exotic simply falls short at what its intended gameplay niche is and does not have a single build that it enchances in a positive and meaningful way.

Here is my idea at a potential solution:

One idea is increasing the range from 10m to 15m or even 20m and start from there. Heck even reducing its max armor regen to 10-15% at five targets but increasing range to 20m+ would make it 100x more interesting and usable.

I appreciate the detailed response! It does definitely seem to fit loosely into several different types of builds, but for all those loadouts there's a better option instead of the Ridgeway.

The suggestion to increase the range is more common, but I've added your specific point about the range/regen relationship to my notes on the Exotic as well! :)