Actually no, just remove them at this point if you are unwilling to properly balance them. They are disproportionately lethal considering A) how many spawn B) you introduced and enemy that spawns even more and has an attack that instant-detonates 3 right in your face that even perfect dodging does not prevent damage from 100% of the time. They deal between 1 armor to 3 armor+ 1/5th HP on Ruthless and Lethal, this is not dependent on getting directly hit or splashed. You supposedly can melee them but they often float just above where you swing so good luck with that. Are you in an animation like a gunstrike or end of a parry? Get bent because now the mine will hit you every time.

They are not difficult, they cause otherwise perfectly fine runs to suddenly become a wipe due to covering the entire map with explosions. I was sort of putting up with them before but given the severe lack of recovery in this game it is not okay how much damage they do considering how many spawn at once and how bugged their chain-detonate is as well as their spawn behavior. They are single-handedly ruining all the fun in this game because you don't feel like there is something you could have done better when you wipe to mines, you just feel cheated.

There are plenty of ways that have been suggested to balance these, you know their current spawns are bugged yet are working at your snails pace to patch it. You have proved in the past you are more than capable of quick hotfix releases so what gives? 

Anyway some back of napkin fixes/changes to mines now that that rant is over:

1: Reduce the damage of non-direct hits. Direct hits should deal a lot of damage, sure, you got hit directly, but often times they warn you they are diving on you, you dodge and they splash the ground where you were and you still take damage, typically at least 1 armor if not 2, heck sometimes it just breaks right through and deals damage to your health even on full armor.

2: Lower their hover distance so melee can actually hit them when they are mixed in with hordes.

3: Fix their inconsistent chain-detonate

4: Fix their tendency to sometimes spawn out of thin air in singles all around you thus turning the game into a bullet hell.

5: Check to see if for some reason they are able to be enraged as that may be the source of the wildly lethal damage values they sometimes have.

6: reduce the likelihood they spawn along side a biovore, those spawn their own mines no need to make an annoying mechanic worse by pre-spawning them.

7: (and if you do this you can mostly disregard all other suggestions) change them from unlockable to being a quick-time counter like minoris jump attacks that tosses the mine at the nearest enemy or just away if no enemies are nearby. This would single-handedly change them from an annoying enemy that can easily end your run with vcery little counterplay to bad spawns to a fun and engaging mechanic similar to managing how many minoris you allow to swarm you so you can more easily refill armor.

I don't expect people to agree with me here, but frankly these things are killing my enjoyment of tyranid maps.

I fear this thing, I'm enjoying chaos missions much more now lol

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sprjunior wrote:

I fear this thing, I'm enjoying chaos missions much more now lol

Right? If it is between chaos and spore mine spam, I'll take the chaos.

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sprjunior wrote:

I fear this thing, I'm enjoying chaos missions much more now lol

I read that as I am enjoying the chaos.

Spores are indeed chaos that's for sure.