While Elden Ring players continue to get a lot of mileage out of the game, mainly thanks to mods and bizarre challenge runs, as they wait for more news on its highly-anticipated DLC, many FromSoft fans are eagerly anticipating the arrival of Armored Core 6.
The latter is set to land later this week and treat players to plenty of action-packed mech battles, each of which will feature enough explosions and energy blasts to decimate a small neighbourhood.
However, following some intense debate late last month around the game's graphical fidelity, the PVP element of its latest showcase has left some fans concerned about the balancing of a certain build.
Did Armored Core 6’s PVP duel showcase leave you concerned that you might end up being easily decimated by a tank?
As part of the showcase, YouTubers Oroboro and FightinCowboy gave prospective players their first look at a 1v1 PVP duel in the game, which the latter won in pretty quick fashion, as you can see below.
The surprisingly dominant nature of FightinCowboy’s victory sparked some concerns among fans that tank builds similar to the one they were using in the duel might be a bit overpowered, especially in comparison to more lightweight mechs like the one Oroboro was using.
One Reddit user, Flint_Vorselon, went as far as to ask the YouTuber during an AMA session whether they thought that the showcase battle lent credence to fears that lighter builds might not have effective enough counter plays to overcome the hard lock dual-gatling attacks of tanks.
“So, in all the cases where we saw [a] tank [armed with] dual gats, no one had the right [mech] to counter it,” revealed FightinCowboy in response, adding: “In the 1v1 against Oroboro, he couldn't maintain distance, and in the first [3v3] matchup, I went in with a melee [mech] and just got staggered to death.”
They also added: “In the third match where they tried the triple tank gimmick, one of my teammates had a tetrapod with laser rifles and managed to clean up pretty well.”
In a YouTube video, Oroboro painted a similar picture with regards to it not being worth reading too much into the game’s balancing from the clips, revealing that the showcase builds had been limited to only using early game parts.
They emphasised that hard locked gatling guns are only very effective at close range and declared: “tanks are very strong, but they’re not as strong as people think,” adding that they think parts available later in the game should help people counter these builds more effectively.
Regardless of whether you’re now changing up your early game build plans to something a little bit more beefy, make sure to follow us for guides to both Armored Core 6 and Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree expansion.