: Is anyone else able to still distinguish who's who? I don't think I've been
: able accurately set one Elite rank apart from each other since Reach and
: the visual effects in Halo 5, while impressive as hell, further compound
: the problem. Right now all I can recognize specifically are the Stealth
: Elites and the Rangers, who are set apart by role and not rank. The same
: problems are also evident with the Grunts too. With both enemies, their
: armor color, once proud and bright, are heavily subdued and each rank's
: unique armor types are totally lost on me unless they have a gigantic
: headdress that I could signify as an officer or whatever.

: I'm not even aware of what I'm supposed to be looking for with Promethan
: Soldiers. The only enemy, potentially by rank, that I can see a clear
: difference with are the Crawlers. The normal rank and file Crawler has a
: smooth body while the higher ranking variety are like porcupines with
: spikes or whatever coming out from the back.

: I miss being able to tell who I should target first, who to avoid altogether
: until the last possible moment, and who I can get out of the picture right
: off the bat. Graphical upgrades and unfortunately poor designs have really
: hindered any ability for even a keen eyed fan like myself to distinguish
: an individual enemy by their rank, role, and how exactly they could kick
: my butt.

I can still tell but as you say, it was much more straight-forward when you had blue, red, gold, white. Then Reach came along and changed the colors for no good reason (and pretty much got rid of Elite minors in general) and along with the armor things got muddier. (I still don't know who the hell is who in Reach, which was compounded by them removing the ranks we know and adding new ones.)

The Prometheans are fairly easy because they've been simplified; you have Crawlers and Elite Crawlers, Soldiers and Soldiers With Linebacker Shoulder Pads, Knights and Knights with weapons that will kill me faster.

Grunts all die via headshots so it's no difference to me, and Jackals still have their shields, luckily.

I will say that I was replaying Halo 4 and I didn't have any issues identifying the ranks of different Prometheans, which was a major complaint I heard from people. It might be familiarity after playing the campaign several times, and/or the benefits of the increased resolution which makes the finer details more obvious.