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I hear a lot of complaints about the sponginess of NPCs in TD2. Honestly it's an argument prevalent in pretty much every loot shooter. When adding health to harder difficulties, where do you draw the line between "added difficulty" and "added frustration?"
I'd argue that TD2 gets it pretty right. Obviously that's subjective and we can argue til the cows come home, but I'd say that the amount of health on a challenging tier elite often feels about right to me. Keep in mind that i have taken the time to make a decent build near GS 500, a requirement that shoild be taken into consideration when balancing the highest difficulty tier. Not everything should be killed in one burst, or one magazine -- sometimes I should have to whittle away at a target, getting 20-30% hp before the target hides or another target forces me to relocate or change my focus. I feel like TD2 is at its best for me when I'm in one of these extended gun fights.
The problem with the huge difficulty spike at WT5 challenging tier is brought about not by too much enemy hp, I'd argue, but instead by the AI's apparent realization that they have this hp. There's a fundamental change in the way the AI reacts to the player when switching over to WT5 challenging. Levelling up on lower difficulties, when an NPC charges you and is about to walk past your cover, a good burst to the face will turn them in their tracks. They'll waver, think twice, then fall back a step or two and take cover. You're still usually in a bad spot, but the AI acknowledges the threat of the player and reacts accordingly. Even if the NPC in many cases could have kept charging you and killed you, it reacts predictably and fairly instead (of course, actual rushers are exempt from this as they should be.)
In WT5 challenging, this suddenly changes. Every NPC, from an engineer to a medic, will advance onto your cover and walk right past it while eating your bullets like a deranged coked-up Pacman. There is nothing that can be done to deter them. They seem to know that you can't stop them. I'm not sure if this is a literal change in the AI's programming at harder difficulties, or more likely the AI reacts to the amount of trauma being caused and so tougher NPCs just don't feel that threat from the relatively little damage you do to them in bursts.
Either way, I feel like this is the biggest problem with difficulty right now. In a group it's not noticeable, but it makes trying to solo or duo challenging content very hard. I'm probably in the minority who think that high difficulty levels SHOULD have lots of hp and should do lots of damage to players. I feel like both of these things are in a good spot to make a very challenging experience, but the AI is turning those things into an insurmountable challenge rather than a good, drawn-out war of attrition which all the really good fights in this game boil down to. The aggression should be dialed back a bit. Rushing should be left to the rushers instead of a slow stampede of every NPC on the map.
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