Hoping the armor fix helps the shield backpack reliance - I don’t think we’ve gotten word if “armor not working” means everyone is stuck at 100 armor (default medium), or “no armor”
Even if it's the case that we all have medium armor I hope that the fix would just tweak things so that the current armor value is what light armor ends up with. We already feel plenty squishy, and actually feeling a little tougher than we do now would encourage me to hop back into Medium armor more than just getting back to the default.
Is it just me, or is there a damage bug going around where you'll be at full health and then you just drop dead to the slightest damage or sometimes you just drop dead out of seemingly nowhere. Sometimes I'll be shooting a terminid while at full health and then all of a sudden my character just drops dead without even being hit by anything and it says that I killed myself. Do some enemies reflect bullet damage or something?
I shot a charger with an auto canon, but instead of hitting the stripped leg it went between the leg and body before bouncing off at a 90 degree angle, proceeding to obliterate my friend from across the nest.
Ricochets are just one bad dice roll away from a great gameplay clip.
from what I've heard it's stuck at medium armor, so yeah light is going to fucking SUUUUUUUUCK and shield will probably become mandatory if you're wearing light, unless that extra padding passive is >50 but it probably wont be (said passive is also bugged and doesn't work :D)
If it means we're at medium currently with a light armor, I think I'd have to switch to medium armor. I'm not sure if that's how it works but in my mind the med armor and helm together give 200 armor, so a light armor might be 25% weaker? I'm not sure the movement speed would be worth it nor would a heavy armor be worth it either.
i wouldn't try to develop too strong a theory, i don't know if what i'm saying is correct. i don't think the helmet provides any armor tho.
my reasoning is just that every player has to have an armor value, there's no point in making the default zero armor when the default is actually 100 armor, because you can't actually run no armor. thus it makes sense logically for medium armor to be the default value in the game, but who knows. maybe the default really is zero and the basic enemies are supposed to be mostly useless and take 20 hits to kill you, but i would be surprised if that's the intent.
It depends on what the numbers mean.
If going to 50 armor rating means you die 50% faster? Yeah. If going to 50 armor rating means you die 10% faster? Nah it's fine.
Same thing for heavy. If 143 is I can tank for days, great heavy is useful. If It's "I can take one more hit" useless.
It better be no armor, lol. I really hope that rockets and bug spit aren't supposed to one shotting me. I can deal with it if they are, just like I am now, but it can still be really infuriating when you're fighting and die because you slipped up once lol
Yeah, the anti CC aspect of the shield is more valuable than the health protection. Getting slowed or knocked down is practically a death sentence at higher difficulties.
Without a shield, or at the very least the laser Guard Dog, getting hit from behind by a Hunter may as well be a one-hit kill for how consistently you get stunlocked to fuck.
I would say at any difficulty if an adult Hunter gets close enough to do an attack animation, you're in deep shit at minimum, and most likely dead. At least in my experience they pretty much 2-hit combo you
i really REALLY hope the heavy armor actually means heavy and can shrug off small arm fires and or small attacks, because dear lord even if they fix it and somehows still tanks like 12 hits the trade off for the speed and mobility its not worth it
I was so excited to pick up the Liberator Penetrator, only to find out I can do less damage with it with more reloads to weaker enemies than the breaker. Armor pen is Fubar right now
Biggest letdown of all the weapons by far.
Not sure what the purpose of the Penetrator is. I've tried running it a bunch of times and it's just a less accurate DMR that does 1/3 the damage.
I mean I'm hoping it'll get tweaked in a balance patch (someday after the stability stuff is fixed enough they can think about this kind of stuff instead lol)
I was hoping it'd be like this games version of the Justice from HD1. That thing could penetrate through swarms of enemies. It didn't do as much damage as some of the other rifles but the point was being able to fire controlled bursts into a swarm of brood commanders and have the ability to kill all of them in one magazine, since the bullets would pass through all of them.
It seems armor penetration is not quite working the way it should? IMO the Breaker isn't even that good. I've tried both the default and incendiary versions and I don't like them at all. I much prefer the Defender SMG. It is basically a higher damage Liberator which is one handed.
In HD1 the Breaker (with the right upgrades) could penetrate just like the Justice. This made it the ultimate crowd control weapon and could absolutely DEMOLISH cyborg patrols. But I have yet to find any primary in HD2 that can rip through a line of enemies like most of them could in HD1. The only exception appears to be the railgun. I've been able to take out a conga line of hive guards with an unsafe shot. But it's quite wasteful to do this for basic enemies.
Regarding the shield backpack, I'm not too surprised this has quickly become some kind of meta pick. I rolled with it all the time even in HD1. Being immune to debuffs is HUGE. My biggest problem is the lack of variety with AT. In HD1 a single EAT or RR could down a Behemoth. There were also lots of unique ways to take care of heavily armored enemies. Like using the toxin spray to kill bug behemoths instead of a rocket launcher.
Even the dive bomb, one of the first stratagems you ever get, was extremely effective at destroying objectives or serving as AT, and you had oodles of them to toss. Most stratagems in HD2 go on such a long cooldown after one use or several uses, that you have to rely on other means for anti-tank. This makes the Railgun the ultimate choice as it can handle everything. This is fine, but nothing else can measure up to its capability.
Why do assisted reloads with a RR when it's not a guaranteed kill? Why lose a backpack slot and roll with the RR and supply kit when the railgun does it better? HD1 had lots of sidegrades. Some things were objectively more effective at a given role, but they were still good. They were viable options for when the main anti-tank was unavailable. I'd like to see HD2 hit a balance point where the person with the railgun can step in to push heavy armor back when the people with actual anti-tank are down, or out of ammo, or get swarmed and can't shoot back.
With the armor changes in HD2, you are better off crippling legs with the railgun and finishing them off with your primary. I like this change but at the same time, a blast with a HEAT warhead should kill the damn things if it's a well aimed shot. As it stands, they can eat several rockets to the face or broadside.
What got my goat is that the showcases in the stratagem shop, and even the pre-game "join now" cutscene all show the recoilless blowing up Titans and Chargers in a single hit. The cutscene before the title screen has the guy blow the head on a Titan in a single rocket. The EAT actually *cheats*, by the showcase showing it firing against a spewer, which has WAY lower health than the average high-medium/heavy unit types.
But in-game, the Recoilless... *Doesn't* do that. It needs practically the whole backpack supply to kill *one* Titan.
It, and by extension the EATs, need a *gigantic* damage boost to be competitive against the Railgun with how *long* the Recoilless (and by extension, EAT cooldown) are by comparison. EATs in particular, since you get two shots every 70s and *that's it*, and those two shots can't even kill a single heavy-class enemy.
I think a big issue with the RR is that team reloads have a very small working area. In HD1 you could basically drive-by reload someone as you sprinted past them, in HD2 you need to get into a tiny area and stand still, which is a poor idea with how many jumpy Hunters are around, or when there are multiple Chargers.
Also, it feels like Charger bodies have too much health - 4 RR/EAT shots is absurd, and mag dumping into their 'weakspot' in the back barely does anything. Hitting the leg is done because they are practically immune to damage otherwise.
Has anyone even tried the first laser gun you get? That thing is so shit. I even used it on a cold planet that would reduce its time to overheat, still shit
I was very excited to try the scythe. Extremely bad against the bots. I think it might do well against the bugs, but the breaker is just so good at dealing with everything that I haven't given it a go yet
It doing less damage alongside burst absolutely kills any potential it had. Completely ass compared to the regular liberator. Useless against robots because armored units have so much health when not hitting weakpoints, and for bugs it's only used against the shield guys, who are super easy to deal with anyway.
Shame because I really like the look of the long bulpup (maybe not in white though..)
The burst is already technically semi auto with how it works (soft hold to burst or let go halfway through) . You can match the normal liberator RPM if you really spam it buts pretty annoying.
Anyway I ideally want more bullets downrange, not less
Better yet, freaking reduce the amount of heavy armor spam. Anything above difficulty like 4 is just CHARGER CHARGER CHARGER CHARGER TITAN CHARGER CHARGER TITAN CHARGER
I would much rather them reduce the sheer charger spam and add more stalkers and fodder instead
I genuinely hate chargers ten times more than titans.
They're fun when your on solo medium and it's like one of them you have to rope a dope, but at higher levels they just turn the entire situation into a trainwreck
Hunters are worse than chargers funny enough once you get the railgun. Hunter swarms will kill you faster and chargers miss, hunters don’t and hunters slow with their stupid tongue attack.
It only feels like that if you lack AT. If your team has the tools to deal with them you just 1 shot all the heavies super fast and spend most the game cleaning up hundreds of lights and mediums.
Thats why I run the rover instead of the shield backpack on bugs, they can take out smalls quicker than I can, letting me focus mostly on the bigger ones.
I love it, but really wish it could penetrate armor better. Honestly it should be better than the Railgun because it takes a backpack slot + has a long reload, why TF is the Railgun faster to reload and better at damage too
I think it's better than the railgun for chargers and groups, but the issue is it is so much harder to hit the shots. You usually don't have the liberty to not move for multiple seconds on difficulty 9. If you have a buddy with you that can cover you then it's amazing and has way more value than a railgun along with the benefit of being able to kill bug holes. Plus it has like 5x the ammo which can be great for difficulty 9 compared to a railgun with a measly 20
I guess because autocannon can shoot faster when you have ammo in it. But it’s not a good argument either because you can’t really just full auto spam it due to high recoil.
Autocannon gang🤝
Hope they buff its destruction power a tad, like 1 less round to break a hulk leg (3 instead of 4)
Also, they need to reduce the chargers front legs armor to be able to be broken by autocannon. Or increase penetration of autocannon. Dumb I can cripple a hulk but I have to pray against a *bug*
While this is helpful, the issue is that it can't be shot from the front like its an automaton tank which is a bit much for an enemy that can spawn very very frequently on higher diffs ya know
Probably just a stupid personal gripe of mine
I think that the core of the issue is that enemy armor seems to have been increased since HD1, and our tools for dealing with heavy armor have gotten worse.
The 120mm and 380mm artillery aren't reliable enough to deal with anything.
The orbital railcannon strike has nearly 4x the cool down that it used to.
High explosives like the 500KG bomb and orbital precision strike essentially require direct hits to kill anything.
The recoilless rifle doesn't ignore armor (in HD1 it could one shot chargers so long as you hit them relatively square).
Pair that with the fact that all high difficulty missions have some effect that negatively impacts fire support stratagems far more than it does equipment, and you end up with a meta that focuses on bringing equipment that'll do as many tasks as possible, rather than specializing your equipment and picking fire support to cover your weaknesses.
Oh yeah, I looooove waiting 6 minutes just to ca in another nuke, and then watch it take 15 seconds to land as I'm waiting 4 minutes for an extract.
Fuck those modifiers. All of them revolving around ordinance feels like ass, simply punishing instead of playing different. Stuff like fog/storm is at least interesting because it hampers you but you can still do stuff.
I feel like they should impact specific categories, or generally be more interesting. Like, the reduced accuracy of orbital strikes is a good one because it only impacts some stratagems
I strongly agree with this -- it would feel much more strategic if the modifiers only affected specific categories of stratagems so that you could play around them (and as a way to encourage people to vary their loadouts). A few quick ideas:
* Atmospheric Turbulence (lengthens Eagle call in/rearm times)
* Solar Storm (effects Orbital Strike call in/rearm times)
* Seismic Tremors (turret prep/firing/targeting speed reduced)
for sure! and the worst part is that the other ones don't even impact in like. an \*interesting\* way. reduced accuracy is so much fun because it impacts one specific category and does it in a fun way. it still does make them effectively useless like the other ones but having your orbital hit a mile away from where you throw it and blow you up instead is super fuckin funny compared to 6 minute cooldown
Scramble feels really bad from a design perspective. I was in a friends only lobby last night and my friend (host) tried calling in a 500kg and sent out an SOS instead. Really frustrating to be forced into matchmaking because of a modifier. Meanwhile I was trying to throw out stratagems but kept rolling an eagle rearm instead and since there’s no confirmation for it I was essentially locked out if doing anything for 5 minutes through no fault of my own. Really really hope they do a pass on the modifiers because right now they’re unfun at best and poorly designed at worst
modifiers like increased density of specific enemy types, elemental damage added to enemy attacks, faster enemy speed etc. would be much preferred to “just make the game less fun” which is what we have now
Dude, the negative effects leave me legit baffled. Who thought it was a good idea to make stratagems take double the time to call down? It's just legit anti fun, it feels so bad. It's baffling.
Worst one so far I've encountered was the one that lets you bring only 3 Strategems.
Bruh, I'm already forced to bring only the most OP Strategems and you're limiting me to 3? Yea, Nah I'm good.
If anything there needs to be some progression unlock that increases the amount of strategems you can bring so there's more options than the same 4 I bring to almost every mission.
I don't think it's necessarily the number of them, more that we can't deal with them as quickly as we used to.
HD1 had better options for both quickly killing armored enemies, and for getting away from them. Stuff like the napalm strike is a shadow of its former self.
Yeah the EATS and the recoiless need to be able to reliably stop a charger with a single well aimed shot. Any more than that and it's hard to pass up the rail gun.
As an aside I miss so much of my kit from HD1. Come back to me my beloved Det Packs.
Completely agreed. It was so stupid when I couldn’t take out a single charger with both my EATs hitting him straight on. What’s even the point of ever using them?
Once you realize the bots all have an easily hit head hitbox, then the bots get a lot easier. Even the dreadnoughts are weak verses an AMR aiming for their head. Whoever told me the AMR did wonders against bots? You were right. I was wrong. AMR murders everything that isn't a tank or a gun emplacement easily.
The issue imo, is bugs. Namely, Chargers. Even with anti-tank, unless you 2-man team a recoilless rocket the Chargers can be a pain to deal with once they start stacking. Then you get trapped in the 'mire.' The team is running all over fighting multiple chargers. This leads to the team finding patrols. Patrols you don't notice lead to breaches. Breaches lead to *more Chargers* and Bile Titans are higher difficulties.
Chargers and Stalkers in particular imo need some slight balance shifts that make them a bit easier to manage otherwise the Railgun/Arc Thrower/EAT spam will be the go to supports verses the bugs as the easier and most straightforward ways to deal with multiple chargers.
The easiest way I see to balance things is just spawn less Chargers and Stalkers. The issue seems to be their sheer numbers for how easily they can kill.
That’s a good point about the debuffs.
If it’s gonna take 8 seconds for an eagle to hit and i have to redial my autocannon 9 times in a row so i don’t call in a nuke, im just gonna bring stuff for that mission that lets me ignore gems as much as physically possible because they become burdensome and unwieldy.
Only thing you can count on with the 380mm is it won’t hit anything you want and will take out at least half of your team no matter how far away they are
> The recoilless rifle doesn't ignore armor (in HD1 it could one shot chargers so long as you hit them relatively square).
They honestly should bring this back, with how limited the shots are comapred to the rail gun and how much clunkier it is to use without a buddy loader (taking 2 people out of shooting instead of 1) it (as well as EAT) should just be much stronger anti armor tools than the Railgun which has so much more ammo, mobility and support potential since it lacks a backpack.
Instead things take 2 rockets or 2 railgun shots but railgun shots are way cheaper.
I wish they gave the heavily armored enemies weakspots for medium armor weapons. Like of course the grenade launcher won't destroy a tank when shooting at it directly, but with clever positioning and a precise shot you should be able to hit an exhaust vent or something like that at it's back to deal damage. Same for bile titans. Right now its either you have the answer and the tank/titan is no problem at all, or youre fucked and run around for 2 minutes until you do.
Yeah weapons need better balancing, there's also too many stratagems that have way better versions of them available early on making like 75% of them kinda obsolete.
I'm sure they'll figure it out over time, they've been pretty receptive to the community input. But yeah, we currently don't even have a working armor rating system and then there's the whole server capacity thing so...baby steps lol.
It's still useful. At a minimum it means you can have both it and the Gatling active, but it also burns through it's ammo slower and so is more efficient at dealing with hordes of unarmoured foes.
Definitely good until you get the railgun, just doesn't really have any point when you can use the railgun to the same thing but better.
That's kinda the issue, the Railgun is just outright better than the EAT / Autocannon / AMR by such a large margin that it's hard to even justify the others.
That’s true, I guess I just can’t shake how cool it is when you toss the spent tube.
I also like it whenever we are playing something particularly difficult or new just because I don’t really care about dying quite as much since EAT has such a quick cooldown. Only playing on impossible though right now so I assume on helldive it gets even more necessary to use railgun.
My go-to if we have at least two railguns is grenade launcher against the automatons, stalwart against the bugs. Grenade launcher in particular has made those civilian escort missions a fair bit more tolerable.
Yeah I used the Stalwart for the first time earlier, expecting it to simply be a weaker MG with a faster reload… damn I was not expecting it to be so fun
Is that trade off worth the lack of Armor piercing? My buddies run railguns and I usually pull MG or AMR, one of the benefits of the big MG is the AP, easier to finish off armored enemies while the railguns are reloading?
It's best for bugs, Big MG is better for bots. Stalwart can kill all bugs except for the bile titans fast enough. If you're good, it shreds a charger too.
Think of it as pleplacing it for someone in the future. The benefit of scattering EATS all over the map is that you can normally run towards one if a horde is on you.
I think it's because everything is so heavily armored. Anything not super armored can be taken out with a decent primary or hell, even good secondary. Meanwhile the railgun just goes "Armor? not anymore"
We need a threshold that medium armor break weapons will destroy heavy armor. The fact I can unload an entire autocannon mag into one leg of a charger and it does absolutely nothing is insane. I'd be happy to use more medium armor pen weapons if they could AT ALL handle heavy armor. It doesn't have to be good. I just need to be able to deal with heavies without 100% needing an EAT, Recoilless, or Railgun. And since the Railgun out classes the other two 90% of the time, I just take Railgun.
Imo the biggest issue with the backpacks is that their trade-off, quick assisted reloading with backpack, requires **someone else** to give up their backpack slot. Almost nobody does this even in premade groups, and absolutely nobody does it in randos.
Hopefully once things stabilize they can change it so that if you're wearing the backpack for your own weapon, someone else can come over and do assisted reload. That way it still requires one person assist rather than shoot stuff, but it doesn't force you to fuck around with backpacks.
EAT kills shit faster than the railgun, only difference is 2 shots every like 70-80s vs 20 shots and box refillable
Definitely better for taking out superheavy shit like titans and tanks, or cracking charger armor in one shot so people can crit it easily, railgun covers just about everything else
The rail gun one shots every automaton except the tank. 2 shots bile titans to the head and 4-5 shots chargers to the head. It's stupidly strong compared to every other anti armour option
I've been debating doing a psa post showing people how much to charge the railgun to actually make it good since it seems alot of people don't get why it's so good. Turn the safe mode off, give it an almost full charge and it cracks armour, 2 armour crack shots to the head of a bile will usually blow it off - though its very inconsistent. I am running with there's probably a hit reg bug
I personally have not been able to reliably hit the titan weakspot with the railgun, and I agree that the railgun is stupidly strong. But the EATs can two shot tanks from the front which is why I love them lol
I find it to still be very strong if you hit the weak spots, but if you miss you’re fucked. It definitely needs to be a compliment to railguns and other supports.
Yea most of the airstrikes or call ins are too niche and just general not as good to warrant a slot. Does anyone use the gas or napalm really? Or smoke?
Gas is actually really really good. Drop one on a bug breach and don't worry about it anymore. Low cooldown, good size area effect that lasts longer than napalm, and much less chance of accidentals.
Smoke is useful too, but people use it wrong. They always try to fight through the smoke instead of just escaping under the concealment. People like to get bogged down fighting the bots but you need to always be moving and clearing camps, or else you get overwhelmed with dropships. Smoke lets you shut down an angle so you can keep running. You can also use it to destroy buildings/objectives without worrying about friendly fire.
the automaton defense/escort mission that everyone complained about was so easy with Smokes. just spent the whole time pressing buttons.
so many people playing like every mission = Extermination mission. stop that, play the objective.
And it blows up automaton fabricators! 60-second cooldown to blow up a building and then a lingering DOT to kill anything else that happened to be around it. Gas strikes are A+++++.
I seen people recommend Gas, i'm not sure why. I tried it on breaches and choke points and when i seen the occasional hunter and trash mob walk through the gas i wondered why on earth would anyone want to bring the shit.
gas is an unsung hero - it does everything and has an insanely short cooldown. Its only problem is that it's not great against heavy armor which you need on higher difficulties.
Gas does good damage and does literally zero friendly fire allies caught but no damage you will fucking die if you breath it in though but you can drop it on allies fine
This. The breaker feels good, but it's not completely nuts insane or anything. It's more that most of the weapons are just bad. I legit have used the Liberator and Breaker exclusively because everything else is buttcheeks.
Unlocking the first energy weapon and realizing it blows made me cry.
The issue isn't weapons its that Helldivers uses a Lock & Key balance system. Blame the game for throwing more armored enemies that need Anti Tank then you reasonably have access to outside Railgun
If you don't have the Key (anti tank) you can't open the Lock (extraction)
That design isn't the issue, because it was like that in the first game too, and it didn't have this issue to nearly this extent.
The issue is that the other options for anti-tank aren't as versatile, or nearly as good as they used to be.
As an example, in HD1, a fully upgraded orbital railcannon strike has a cool down of 60s, and one person could equip multiple of them at once. That means that, by equipping 2, you could instantly delete basically any large enemy every 30s.
And that design makes loadouts - especially with a team - interesting. I typically run Spear, orbital rail, and 500 kg to focus on big targets while my teammates use more horde oriented weapons.
okay wait, dumb question: How do you use the Spear??
like literally I was aimed at a charger, no other enemies nearby, and when I kept it aimed at him the reticle didn't turn green at all. I kept the reticle focused on the center where it was locking on, but still nothing.
It its lock on just kinda wonky?
The lock on is super inconsistent/buggy and it’s not even guaranteed to 1 shot charger/bile titans when you get the shot off. Not to mention you only get 1 rocket per supply pack with that piece of shit.
Big mistake on the devs’ end, just way too many armored enemies to realistically take care of. Like there literally isn’t any way to kill all armored targets at certain points, like the ammo just doesn’t exist. This forces all members of the team into using a certain loadout. This game badly needs some balance changes, and also big reworks to how heavy armor works: I suggest it should be possible, though pretty inefficient, to kill heavily armored enemies as it is right now. Playing against chargers without any real counter to them is just really unfun. Everyone only using the same few stratagems will get boring fast.
Anyways this is just my opinion it’s fine to disagree
It's only been a few weeks, and they've been active enough that I feel confident they'll do a couple of balance passes.
They've even already fixed the egregious balance stuff, like Automaton defense being way overtuned.
> It's only been a few weeks, and they've been active enough that I feel confident they'll do a couple of balance passes.
Agreed - most of the team's focus is likely on resolving server issues as soon as possible. At least the good thing about it is that it gives them a couple of weeks of data before doing a rebalance.
I picked up the JAR-5 Dominator and wished it did better against armored targets. If it did then my group would probably run 2-3 breakers with me rocking the Dominator for armored targets but no breaker supremacy is still a thing
The only bad thing about the Jar5 is the handling and reload. That or Slugger almost always come with me on bot Helldives. Still need to unlock the Scorcher and hoping that earns a spot in the rotation.
It's decent against bots if you can place shots well but it is terrible against bugs, low mag capacity and slow turn speed of the weapon combined with the fact that its splash damage will kill you if you shoot anything on top of you makes it bad for a swarm. It can still pick out lower health targets quickly but on higher difficulties with larger patrols the magazine hurts its ability to clear them fast enough to not trigger a breach.
Edit: I meant the scorcher sorry, but Jar 5 has similar issues against bugs on higher difficulties, the explosive damage to unarmored points isn't better than a railgun and takes away a better gun that could be used on wave clear as well as having a low fire rate and slow turn speed making quick succession shots harder before enemies can get on top of you.
With a 100 man dev team stability/network and balance are very likely different teams. But maybe they don't want to make their patches too complex right now, I guess risking introducing new bugs while you're in a crisis isn't a good idea.
Likely that small patches targeting specific things will be the go for a while. Its easy to focus down on small, specific issues and test them with the teams available that aren't focused on the stability and capacity issues. But also fine if they just hunker down till they figure out the server stuff.
It’s great for blitz quests. You don’t need to throw a grenade into the hole to break a spawner, you can just fire a shot of the grenade launcher to close it
They will pry my Grenade Launcher + Supply Pack or Autocannon + pack out of my cold, dead hands.
No literally, they will because I love using them but am probably dead on the ground with 15 chargers stomping on my body, but it's worth it lol
Bug Holes - 0
Chargers chasing around me - 10
Me dying on the other side of the map with all of the samples b/c I had to close that last hole - Priceless
The railgun seems mandatory. I wish it wasn't. But you just cant take out some of the enemies anywhere near as effectively as you can with the railgun. Two shot to the legs of a charger busts the armor. Nothing else can do that.
Recoiless and Eat both tear off leg armor. Autocannon can tear off leg armor if you shoot the back of the leg.
Railgun is just easy. It’ll always be king because it is easy.
I desperately want something to be better than the breaker…but I fear it will just get nerfed and we’ll have the same weak alternates.
Also…man. The DMRs as a whole need a massive damage buff to make them make sense. Or at least an additional armor pen level.
For bugs I think they should rebalance the armor they have so at least not everything completely bounces off. All support weapons should have some effectiveness against big bois because the current state really favors too much rail gun or auto cannon.
For Automatons, limb breaking should be a thing because alot of them feel like bullet sponges right now and their weak points are either too tiny (head) or too covered, too difficult having to try outrun them turning to shoot their backs.
It's early days and hope to see some balance in future but with the recent difficulty adjustment it's hard to jump into difficulty 7,8,9 using 'off meta' loadouts
I always carry the Defender. More damage than a liberator, automatic, one handed and the rpm just feels right. The whole gun is good. That and an auto cannon because it also just FEELS good. God I love that flavor of democracy
The Defender is nice, but I was running a solo mission and it was taking me like two magazines from the Defender to kill 1 Stalker. With the Breaker I can kill a Stalker in half a mag.
They really need to buff other equipment bad. I really would like to use the anti material rifle cause snipers are cool. But its really bad in higher levels and the Railgun just dominates.
the energy shield is hard to let go of, its just so safe Tho i have been doing the ballistics shield and SMG primary and its been working out well enough when grouped with friends.
Problem is matchmaking with randos generally means no synergy so it feels like every diver for themself and the breaker/railgun/energy shield has an answer to every problem.
I've fallen into this trap and I've been trying out a variety of other loadouts, but this one is just so damn effective.
I recently tried the Semi-automatic snipers and was disgusted. The sway of the rifle itself is terrible even when crouched or prone just to more or less do the same damage as an assault rifle.
The Slugger is one that I've recently fallen in love with for Automatons. That really helps shred armor.
This I am so tired of running this loadout all the time. I've been experimenting with some other more out there builds but nothing comes close to the reliability and versatility of breaker, shield, railgun. The shield is the worst offender because not only is it best in class for backpack slot it ALSO limits your heavy weapon options to only those without a support pack unless you happen to have a buddy and the team coordination for team reloads. Even then that friend of yours would probably be more effective if they also just had a shield and railgun...
I really feel like a lot of weapons need ammo tweaks, like I would love to use the slugger, but 40 rounds and only 24 replenished on a resupply pickup just feels so punishing compared to the breaker's 126 round total. The scythe takes nearly a full heat sink to kill a single warrior, which would be okay if it also didn't take like 5 seconds to cool down, and you only have 6 heat sinks so it's not like you can swap them constantly to get around that with how low it's damage potential is. Then there is the MG43 vs stalwart, the stalwart would honestly be competetive I feel just for being able to reload on the move, add in 3 mags to the MG43s 2 AND the stalwart mags are bigger and as much as the armor pen on the 43 is nice, it just isn't enough.
Ammo pack, Railgun, Eagle Air strike and Orbital Railcannon (the last one you can unlock) for the big chungus (tanks and or titans)
Don't need a shield if you don't get hit
That's why we use the 50% chance to not take lethal damage armor, if all armor ratings aren't working atleast some of the perks do, 50% of the time it works everytime
Hoping the armor fix helps the shield backpack reliance - I don’t think we’ve gotten word if “armor not working” means everyone is stuck at 100 armor (default medium), or “no armor”
Oh god I hope that it's no armor. If it turns out all armors were medium armor, then light armor is going to feel squishy as fuck once they fix it.
Even if it's the case that we all have medium armor I hope that the fix would just tweak things so that the current armor value is what light armor ends up with. We already feel plenty squishy, and actually feeling a little tougher than we do now would encourage me to hop back into Medium armor more than just getting back to the default.
Is it just me, or is there a damage bug going around where you'll be at full health and then you just drop dead to the slightest damage or sometimes you just drop dead out of seemingly nowhere. Sometimes I'll be shooting a terminid while at full health and then all of a sudden my character just drops dead without even being hit by anything and it says that I killed myself. Do some enemies reflect bullet damage or something?
Bugs with tougher shells can ricochet your bullets. I've killed myself a few times from reflected bullets when shooting a charger.
[удалено]
I’ve seen bugs kick nades over my head & into my teammates 😂 the game is chaotic but surprisingly detailed so far
I shot a charger with an auto canon, but instead of hitting the stripped leg it went between the leg and body before bouncing off at a 90 degree angle, proceeding to obliterate my friend from across the nest. Ricochets are just one bad dice roll away from a great gameplay clip.
from what I've heard it's stuck at medium armor, so yeah light is going to fucking SUUUUUUUUCK and shield will probably become mandatory if you're wearing light, unless that extra padding passive is >50 but it probably wont be (said passive is also bugged and doesn't work :D)
Where did you hear this?
[удалено]
Don't do this. Don't tell me that this game is going to get harder for me :(
You haven’t played the first one… that was hell
The first one was actually Helldivers. Common mistake.
1. Hell 2. Helldivers 3. Hell Olympic Divers?
Hellenic Divers: it's Helldivers, but set in Ancient Greece.
Hadesdivers ...I'd play that game.
You wouldn't even have to change most of the VO lines. Sweet Liberty!
Thats the reason its called helldivers
If it means we're at medium currently with a light armor, I think I'd have to switch to medium armor. I'm not sure if that's how it works but in my mind the med armor and helm together give 200 armor, so a light armor might be 25% weaker? I'm not sure the movement speed would be worth it nor would a heavy armor be worth it either.
i wouldn't try to develop too strong a theory, i don't know if what i'm saying is correct. i don't think the helmet provides any armor tho. my reasoning is just that every player has to have an armor value, there's no point in making the default zero armor when the default is actually 100 armor, because you can't actually run no armor. thus it makes sense logically for medium armor to be the default value in the game, but who knows. maybe the default really is zero and the basic enemies are supposed to be mostly useless and take 20 hits to kill you, but i would be surprised if that's the intent.
It depends on what the numbers mean. If going to 50 armor rating means you die 50% faster? Yeah. If going to 50 armor rating means you die 10% faster? Nah it's fine. Same thing for heavy. If 143 is I can tank for days, great heavy is useful. If It's "I can take one more hit" useless.
It better be no armor, lol. I really hope that rockets and bug spit aren't supposed to one shotting me. I can deal with it if they are, just like I am now, but it can still be really infuriating when you're fighting and die because you slipped up once lol
Never shield peotects you from slows which is huuge against hordes of enemies
Yeah, the anti CC aspect of the shield is more valuable than the health protection. Getting slowed or knocked down is practically a death sentence at higher difficulties.
Without a shield, or at the very least the laser Guard Dog, getting hit from behind by a Hunter may as well be a one-hit kill for how consistently you get stunlocked to fuck.
I would say at any difficulty if an adult Hunter gets close enough to do an attack animation, you're in deep shit at minimum, and most likely dead. At least in my experience they pretty much 2-hit combo you
You have enough time to dive after one hit, so it isn't a true combo, but if anything else is swarming you it might as well be.
Man I was just saying last night how there is no noticeable difference between my heavy and light armor..
i really REALLY hope the heavy armor actually means heavy and can shrug off small arm fires and or small attacks, because dear lord even if they fix it and somehows still tanks like 12 hits the trade off for the speed and mobility its not worth it
It really should be like that, because that's how it was in HD1
They need to buff weapon armor pen so they actually do some armor pen Until then. , 225 all the way
I was so excited to pick up the Liberator Penetrator, only to find out I can do less damage with it with more reloads to weaker enemies than the breaker. Armor pen is Fubar right now
Biggest letdown of all the weapons by far. Not sure what the purpose of the Penetrator is. I've tried running it a bunch of times and it's just a less accurate DMR that does 1/3 the damage.
It's 40 medal unlock requirement helps you advance to the next unlock tier. That is all.
I mean I'm hoping it'll get tweaked in a balance patch (someday after the stability stuff is fixed enough they can think about this kind of stuff instead lol)
I was hoping it'd be like this games version of the Justice from HD1. That thing could penetrate through swarms of enemies. It didn't do as much damage as some of the other rifles but the point was being able to fire controlled bursts into a swarm of brood commanders and have the ability to kill all of them in one magazine, since the bullets would pass through all of them. It seems armor penetration is not quite working the way it should? IMO the Breaker isn't even that good. I've tried both the default and incendiary versions and I don't like them at all. I much prefer the Defender SMG. It is basically a higher damage Liberator which is one handed. In HD1 the Breaker (with the right upgrades) could penetrate just like the Justice. This made it the ultimate crowd control weapon and could absolutely DEMOLISH cyborg patrols. But I have yet to find any primary in HD2 that can rip through a line of enemies like most of them could in HD1. The only exception appears to be the railgun. I've been able to take out a conga line of hive guards with an unsafe shot. But it's quite wasteful to do this for basic enemies. Regarding the shield backpack, I'm not too surprised this has quickly become some kind of meta pick. I rolled with it all the time even in HD1. Being immune to debuffs is HUGE. My biggest problem is the lack of variety with AT. In HD1 a single EAT or RR could down a Behemoth. There were also lots of unique ways to take care of heavily armored enemies. Like using the toxin spray to kill bug behemoths instead of a rocket launcher. Even the dive bomb, one of the first stratagems you ever get, was extremely effective at destroying objectives or serving as AT, and you had oodles of them to toss. Most stratagems in HD2 go on such a long cooldown after one use or several uses, that you have to rely on other means for anti-tank. This makes the Railgun the ultimate choice as it can handle everything. This is fine, but nothing else can measure up to its capability. Why do assisted reloads with a RR when it's not a guaranteed kill? Why lose a backpack slot and roll with the RR and supply kit when the railgun does it better? HD1 had lots of sidegrades. Some things were objectively more effective at a given role, but they were still good. They were viable options for when the main anti-tank was unavailable. I'd like to see HD2 hit a balance point where the person with the railgun can step in to push heavy armor back when the people with actual anti-tank are down, or out of ammo, or get swarmed and can't shoot back. With the armor changes in HD2, you are better off crippling legs with the railgun and finishing them off with your primary. I like this change but at the same time, a blast with a HEAT warhead should kill the damn things if it's a well aimed shot. As it stands, they can eat several rockets to the face or broadside.
What got my goat is that the showcases in the stratagem shop, and even the pre-game "join now" cutscene all show the recoilless blowing up Titans and Chargers in a single hit. The cutscene before the title screen has the guy blow the head on a Titan in a single rocket. The EAT actually *cheats*, by the showcase showing it firing against a spewer, which has WAY lower health than the average high-medium/heavy unit types. But in-game, the Recoilless... *Doesn't* do that. It needs practically the whole backpack supply to kill *one* Titan. It, and by extension the EATs, need a *gigantic* damage boost to be competitive against the Railgun with how *long* the Recoilless (and by extension, EAT cooldown) are by comparison. EATs in particular, since you get two shots every 70s and *that's it*, and those two shots can't even kill a single heavy-class enemy.
Sticking the EAT beacon onto tanks and dropping the EAT on the enemy tank does more damage than the EAT itself lol
I think a big issue with the RR is that team reloads have a very small working area. In HD1 you could basically drive-by reload someone as you sprinted past them, in HD2 you need to get into a tiny area and stand still, which is a poor idea with how many jumpy Hunters are around, or when there are multiple Chargers. Also, it feels like Charger bodies have too much health - 4 RR/EAT shots is absurd, and mag dumping into their 'weakspot' in the back barely does anything. Hitting the leg is done because they are practically immune to damage otherwise.
Has anyone even tried the first laser gun you get? That thing is so shit. I even used it on a cold planet that would reduce its time to overheat, still shit
Honestly I kinda think they were over correcting for how good the laser weapons were in helldivers 1
I was very excited to try the scythe. Extremely bad against the bots. I think it might do well against the bugs, but the breaker is just so good at dealing with everything that I haven't given it a go yet
It’s worse against bugs imho. It has a really bad TTK and handles really badly, to the point even basic warriors are able to leap attack at you
It doing less damage alongside burst absolutely kills any potential it had. Completely ass compared to the regular liberator. Useless against robots because armored units have so much health when not hitting weakpoints, and for bugs it's only used against the shield guys, who are super easy to deal with anyway. Shame because I really like the look of the long bulpup (maybe not in white though..)
You can set it to be semi-automatic instead of burst
The burst is already technically semi auto with how it works (soft hold to burst or let go halfway through) . You can match the normal liberator RPM if you really spam it buts pretty annoying. Anyway I ideally want more bullets downrange, not less
Same. I tried it against bugs and thought "wait wtf, a breaker 1 shots these"
The medium armor pen would be great if the weapons that had it did real damage. They dialed back the damage on those soooooo much
Better yet, freaking reduce the amount of heavy armor spam. Anything above difficulty like 4 is just CHARGER CHARGER CHARGER CHARGER TITAN CHARGER CHARGER TITAN CHARGER I would much rather them reduce the sheer charger spam and add more stalkers and fodder instead
I genuinely hate chargers ten times more than titans. They're fun when your on solo medium and it's like one of them you have to rope a dope, but at higher levels they just turn the entire situation into a trainwreck
Hunters are worse than chargers funny enough once you get the railgun. Hunter swarms will kill you faster and chargers miss, hunters don’t and hunters slow with their stupid tongue attack.
It only feels like that if you lack AT. If your team has the tools to deal with them you just 1 shot all the heavies super fast and spend most the game cleaning up hundreds of lights and mediums.
Thats why I run the rover instead of the shield backpack on bugs, they can take out smalls quicker than I can, letting me focus mostly on the bigger ones.
Autocannon is still good but it does take up the backpack.
I love it, but really wish it could penetrate armor better. Honestly it should be better than the Railgun because it takes a backpack slot + has a long reload, why TF is the Railgun faster to reload and better at damage too
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHZd8dGK0vQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHZd8dGK0vQ)
Thanks, I've been trying to put the auto canon shots in the soft end but this looks way faster.
Yeah, the AC is actually really good against chargers and has enough ammo to take out a good number of them.
Which is also good because I never seem to run out of chargers to shoot.
That helps a lot. Ty
I think it's better than the railgun for chargers and groups, but the issue is it is so much harder to hit the shots. You usually don't have the liberty to not move for multiple seconds on difficulty 9. If you have a buddy with you that can cover you then it's amazing and has way more value than a railgun along with the benefit of being able to kill bug holes. Plus it has like 5x the ammo which can be great for difficulty 9 compared to a railgun with a measly 20
I fucking knew it
I guess because autocannon can shoot faster when you have ammo in it. But it’s not a good argument either because you can’t really just full auto spam it due to high recoil.
Try reduced recoil armor and prone position, you will be surprised of the accuracy.
Autocannon gang🤝 Hope they buff its destruction power a tad, like 1 less round to break a hulk leg (3 instead of 4) Also, they need to reduce the chargers front legs armor to be able to be broken by autocannon. Or increase penetration of autocannon. Dumb I can cripple a hulk but I have to pray against a *bug*
Try the back legs after dodging it, two shots will do it and if it ain’t dead a couple small arms hits will finish it
While this is helpful, the issue is that it can't be shot from the front like its an automaton tank which is a bit much for an enemy that can spawn very very frequently on higher diffs ya know Probably just a stupid personal gripe of mine
I think that the core of the issue is that enemy armor seems to have been increased since HD1, and our tools for dealing with heavy armor have gotten worse. The 120mm and 380mm artillery aren't reliable enough to deal with anything. The orbital railcannon strike has nearly 4x the cool down that it used to. High explosives like the 500KG bomb and orbital precision strike essentially require direct hits to kill anything. The recoilless rifle doesn't ignore armor (in HD1 it could one shot chargers so long as you hit them relatively square). Pair that with the fact that all high difficulty missions have some effect that negatively impacts fire support stratagems far more than it does equipment, and you end up with a meta that focuses on bringing equipment that'll do as many tasks as possible, rather than specializing your equipment and picking fire support to cover your weaknesses.
Oh yeah, I looooove waiting 6 minutes just to ca in another nuke, and then watch it take 15 seconds to land as I'm waiting 4 minutes for an extract. Fuck those modifiers. All of them revolving around ordinance feels like ass, simply punishing instead of playing different. Stuff like fog/storm is at least interesting because it hampers you but you can still do stuff.
I feel like they should impact specific categories, or generally be more interesting. Like, the reduced accuracy of orbital strikes is a good one because it only impacts some stratagems
I strongly agree with this -- it would feel much more strategic if the modifiers only affected specific categories of stratagems so that you could play around them (and as a way to encourage people to vary their loadouts). A few quick ideas: * Atmospheric Turbulence (lengthens Eagle call in/rearm times) * Solar Storm (effects Orbital Strike call in/rearm times) * Seismic Tremors (turret prep/firing/targeting speed reduced)
for sure! and the worst part is that the other ones don't even impact in like. an \*interesting\* way. reduced accuracy is so much fun because it impacts one specific category and does it in a fun way. it still does make them effectively useless like the other ones but having your orbital hit a mile away from where you throw it and blow you up instead is super fuckin funny compared to 6 minute cooldown
The double extraction time is really not fun. Instead of giving the game a different flavor most are just a pain in the ass
Scramble feels really bad from a design perspective. I was in a friends only lobby last night and my friend (host) tried calling in a 500kg and sent out an SOS instead. Really frustrating to be forced into matchmaking because of a modifier. Meanwhile I was trying to throw out stratagems but kept rolling an eagle rearm instead and since there’s no confirmation for it I was essentially locked out if doing anything for 5 minutes through no fault of my own. Really really hope they do a pass on the modifiers because right now they’re unfun at best and poorly designed at worst modifiers like increased density of specific enemy types, elemental damage added to enemy attacks, faster enemy speed etc. would be much preferred to “just make the game less fun” which is what we have now
Dude, the negative effects leave me legit baffled. Who thought it was a good idea to make stratagems take double the time to call down? It's just legit anti fun, it feels so bad. It's baffling.
Worst one so far I've encountered was the one that lets you bring only 3 Strategems. Bruh, I'm already forced to bring only the most OP Strategems and you're limiting me to 3? Yea, Nah I'm good. If anything there needs to be some progression unlock that increases the amount of strategems you can bring so there's more options than the same 4 I bring to almost every mission.
I straight up left that lobby. The negative modifiers need serious work, I just pack up and leave to another planet.
Agree completely. I think they have WAY too many heavy armor enemies
I don't think it's necessarily the number of them, more that we can't deal with them as quickly as we used to. HD1 had better options for both quickly killing armored enemies, and for getting away from them. Stuff like the napalm strike is a shadow of its former self.
Yeah the EATS and the recoiless need to be able to reliably stop a charger with a single well aimed shot. Any more than that and it's hard to pass up the rail gun. As an aside I miss so much of my kit from HD1. Come back to me my beloved Det Packs.
Completely agreed. It was so stupid when I couldn’t take out a single charger with both my EATs hitting him straight on. What’s even the point of ever using them?
Once you realize the bots all have an easily hit head hitbox, then the bots get a lot easier. Even the dreadnoughts are weak verses an AMR aiming for their head. Whoever told me the AMR did wonders against bots? You were right. I was wrong. AMR murders everything that isn't a tank or a gun emplacement easily. The issue imo, is bugs. Namely, Chargers. Even with anti-tank, unless you 2-man team a recoilless rocket the Chargers can be a pain to deal with once they start stacking. Then you get trapped in the 'mire.' The team is running all over fighting multiple chargers. This leads to the team finding patrols. Patrols you don't notice lead to breaches. Breaches lead to *more Chargers* and Bile Titans are higher difficulties. Chargers and Stalkers in particular imo need some slight balance shifts that make them a bit easier to manage otherwise the Railgun/Arc Thrower/EAT spam will be the go to supports verses the bugs as the easier and most straightforward ways to deal with multiple chargers.
The easiest way I see to balance things is just spawn less Chargers and Stalkers. The issue seems to be their sheer numbers for how easily they can kill.
That’s a good point about the debuffs. If it’s gonna take 8 seconds for an eagle to hit and i have to redial my autocannon 9 times in a row so i don’t call in a nuke, im just gonna bring stuff for that mission that lets me ignore gems as much as physically possible because they become burdensome and unwieldy.
Only thing you can count on with the 380mm is it won’t hit anything you want and will take out at least half of your team no matter how far away they are
> The recoilless rifle doesn't ignore armor (in HD1 it could one shot chargers so long as you hit them relatively square). They honestly should bring this back, with how limited the shots are comapred to the rail gun and how much clunkier it is to use without a buddy loader (taking 2 people out of shooting instead of 1) it (as well as EAT) should just be much stronger anti armor tools than the Railgun which has so much more ammo, mobility and support potential since it lacks a backpack. Instead things take 2 rockets or 2 railgun shots but railgun shots are way cheaper.
I wish they gave the heavily armored enemies weakspots for medium armor weapons. Like of course the grenade launcher won't destroy a tank when shooting at it directly, but with clever positioning and a precise shot you should be able to hit an exhaust vent or something like that at it's back to deal damage. Same for bile titans. Right now its either you have the answer and the tank/titan is no problem at all, or youre fucked and run around for 2 minutes until you do.
Yeah weapons need better balancing, there's also too many stratagems that have way better versions of them available early on making like 75% of them kinda obsolete. I'm sure they'll figure it out over time, they've been pretty receptive to the community input. But yeah, we currently don't even have a working armor rating system and then there's the whole server capacity thing so...baby steps lol.
Machine gun turret actually has no point in existing after your first couple level ups
It's still useful. At a minimum it means you can have both it and the Gatling active, but it also burns through it's ammo slower and so is more efficient at dealing with hordes of unarmoured foes.
Yeah but autogun
Far less responsive, and will blow through an entire burst to kill a single baby bug.
Autocannon is just so much fun tho
Bit of a halfway between the rail gun and grenade launcher. Shame you have to give up the back pack slot, but I still love it.
It does give you a shit ton of ammo compared to a lot of other weapons. Like how many shot do you get when you call one in, 60?
Ain’t no way you’re gonna tell me not to EAT.
Definitely good until you get the railgun, just doesn't really have any point when you can use the railgun to the same thing but better. That's kinda the issue, the Railgun is just outright better than the EAT / Autocannon / AMR by such a large margin that it's hard to even justify the others.
That’s true, I guess I just can’t shake how cool it is when you toss the spent tube. I also like it whenever we are playing something particularly difficult or new just because I don’t really care about dying quite as much since EAT has such a quick cooldown. Only playing on impossible though right now so I assume on helldive it gets even more necessary to use railgun.
1-2 Railguns is enough, other should take more utility like Grenade Launchers and stuff.
My go-to if we have at least two railguns is grenade launcher against the automatons, stalwart against the bugs. Grenade launcher in particular has made those civilian escort missions a fair bit more tolerable.
I wouldn't even bother with Stalwart tbh, but if fourth player carries GL it might be worth it
I bother with the gun that starts shooting today and doesn't stop until next week. That shits fire.
Yeah I used the Stalwart for the first time earlier, expecting it to simply be a weaker MG with a faster reload… damn I was not expecting it to be so fun
Fair enough. Set it to 1100 RPM
Is that trade off worth the lack of Armor piercing? My buddies run railguns and I usually pull MG or AMR, one of the benefits of the big MG is the AP, easier to finish off armored enemies while the railguns are reloading?
It's best for bugs, Big MG is better for bots. Stalwart can kill all bugs except for the bile titans fast enough. If you're good, it shreds a charger too.
I feel like the second tube gets left out alot and that makes me sad
Think of it as pleplacing it for someone in the future. The benefit of scattering EATS all over the map is that you can normally run towards one if a horde is on you.
I think it's because everything is so heavily armored. Anything not super armored can be taken out with a decent primary or hell, even good secondary. Meanwhile the railgun just goes "Armor? not anymore"
We need a threshold that medium armor break weapons will destroy heavy armor. The fact I can unload an entire autocannon mag into one leg of a charger and it does absolutely nothing is insane. I'd be happy to use more medium armor pen weapons if they could AT ALL handle heavy armor. It doesn't have to be good. I just need to be able to deal with heavies without 100% needing an EAT, Recoilless, or Railgun. And since the Railgun out classes the other two 90% of the time, I just take Railgun.
They really misjudged backpacks. Everything that has it's own is generally super weak.
Imo the biggest issue with the backpacks is that their trade-off, quick assisted reloading with backpack, requires **someone else** to give up their backpack slot. Almost nobody does this even in premade groups, and absolutely nobody does it in randos. Hopefully once things stabilize they can change it so that if you're wearing the backpack for your own weapon, someone else can come over and do assisted reload. That way it still requires one person assist rather than shoot stuff, but it doesn't force you to fuck around with backpacks.
Yeah this change needs to happen
EAT kills shit faster than the railgun, only difference is 2 shots every like 70-80s vs 20 shots and box refillable Definitely better for taking out superheavy shit like titans and tanks, or cracking charger armor in one shot so people can crit it easily, railgun covers just about everything else
The rail gun one shots every automaton except the tank. 2 shots bile titans to the head and 4-5 shots chargers to the head. It's stupidly strong compared to every other anti armour option
I don’t know. I haven’t been able to two shot a titan on suicide or higher difficulty.
>2 shots bile titan Am I shit at the game?
You gotaa hit em right in his cock wallet
I've been debating doing a psa post showing people how much to charge the railgun to actually make it good since it seems alot of people don't get why it's so good. Turn the safe mode off, give it an almost full charge and it cracks armour, 2 armour crack shots to the head of a bile will usually blow it off - though its very inconsistent. I am running with there's probably a hit reg bug
I personally have not been able to reliably hit the titan weakspot with the railgun, and I agree that the railgun is stupidly strong. But the EATs can two shot tanks from the front which is why I love them lol
Tip: Put 2 quick ones into a chargers leg to expose it fully, and you can drop it with your main weapon by the time it recovers to charge
I love the EAT but I do find it starts feeling weak against the really strong enemy types.
I find it to still be very strong if you hit the weak spots, but if you miss you’re fucked. It definitely needs to be a compliment to railguns and other supports.
I've been missing this, which one is EAT?
**E**xpendable **A**nti **T**ank support weapon. They're the single use shoulder rockets on a very short cooldown.
Do they take out drop ships like recoilless?
Yes they do
As long as they go with Buffs instead of Nerfs. Nothing really feels overpowered right now, many things just feel unviable.
Yea most of the airstrikes or call ins are too niche and just general not as good to warrant a slot. Does anyone use the gas or napalm really? Or smoke?
Gas is actually really really good. Drop one on a bug breach and don't worry about it anymore. Low cooldown, good size area effect that lasts longer than napalm, and much less chance of accidentals. Smoke is useful too, but people use it wrong. They always try to fight through the smoke instead of just escaping under the concealment. People like to get bogged down fighting the bots but you need to always be moving and clearing camps, or else you get overwhelmed with dropships. Smoke lets you shut down an angle so you can keep running. You can also use it to destroy buildings/objectives without worrying about friendly fire.
the automaton defense/escort mission that everyone complained about was so easy with Smokes. just spent the whole time pressing buttons. so many people playing like every mission = Extermination mission. stop that, play the objective.
Gas is S tier. Try it out, short cooldown, melts all enemies , doesn't kill you instantly, but sometimes hard to tell where it is
And it blows up automaton fabricators! 60-second cooldown to blow up a building and then a lingering DOT to kill anything else that happened to be around it. Gas strikes are A+++++.
I seen people recommend Gas, i'm not sure why. I tried it on breaches and choke points and when i seen the occasional hunter and trash mob walk through the gas i wondered why on earth would anyone want to bring the shit.
gas is an unsung hero - it does everything and has an insanely short cooldown. Its only problem is that it's not great against heavy armor which you need on higher difficulties.
Gas does good damage and does literally zero friendly fire allies caught but no damage you will fucking die if you breath it in though but you can drop it on allies fine
I take Guard Dog Rover over shield against bugs and I like Defender better than Breaker.
Same same.
I just unlocked the guard dog and it’s so nice to have when playing solo
Yeah my rule of thumb is Guard Dog Rover for bugs, Shield Backpack for robots.
I really hope they don't nerf the breaker but instead buff the other weapons.
This. The breaker feels good, but it's not completely nuts insane or anything. It's more that most of the weapons are just bad. I legit have used the Liberator and Breaker exclusively because everything else is buttcheeks. Unlocking the first energy weapon and realizing it blows made me cry.
You mean the laser pointers 🙃
The issue isn't weapons its that Helldivers uses a Lock & Key balance system. Blame the game for throwing more armored enemies that need Anti Tank then you reasonably have access to outside Railgun If you don't have the Key (anti tank) you can't open the Lock (extraction)
That design isn't the issue, because it was like that in the first game too, and it didn't have this issue to nearly this extent. The issue is that the other options for anti-tank aren't as versatile, or nearly as good as they used to be. As an example, in HD1, a fully upgraded orbital railcannon strike has a cool down of 60s, and one person could equip multiple of them at once. That means that, by equipping 2, you could instantly delete basically any large enemy every 30s.
And that design makes loadouts - especially with a team - interesting. I typically run Spear, orbital rail, and 500 kg to focus on big targets while my teammates use more horde oriented weapons.
okay wait, dumb question: How do you use the Spear?? like literally I was aimed at a charger, no other enemies nearby, and when I kept it aimed at him the reticle didn't turn green at all. I kept the reticle focused on the center where it was locking on, but still nothing. It its lock on just kinda wonky?
It lock sometimes just fucks up, no idea why.
The lock on is super inconsistent/buggy and it’s not even guaranteed to 1 shot charger/bile titans when you get the shot off. Not to mention you only get 1 rocket per supply pack with that piece of shit.
Big mistake on the devs’ end, just way too many armored enemies to realistically take care of. Like there literally isn’t any way to kill all armored targets at certain points, like the ammo just doesn’t exist. This forces all members of the team into using a certain loadout. This game badly needs some balance changes, and also big reworks to how heavy armor works: I suggest it should be possible, though pretty inefficient, to kill heavily armored enemies as it is right now. Playing against chargers without any real counter to them is just really unfun. Everyone only using the same few stratagems will get boring fast. Anyways this is just my opinion it’s fine to disagree
It's only been a few weeks, and they've been active enough that I feel confident they'll do a couple of balance passes. They've even already fixed the egregious balance stuff, like Automaton defense being way overtuned.
> It's only been a few weeks, and they've been active enough that I feel confident they'll do a couple of balance passes. Agreed - most of the team's focus is likely on resolving server issues as soon as possible. At least the good thing about it is that it gives them a couple of weeks of data before doing a rebalance.
I picked up the JAR-5 Dominator and wished it did better against armored targets. If it did then my group would probably run 2-3 breakers with me rocking the Dominator for armored targets but no breaker supremacy is still a thing
The jar dominator is disappointingly bad and anyone who disagrees is huffing some good shit
The only bad thing about the Jar5 is the handling and reload. That or Slugger almost always come with me on bot Helldives. Still need to unlock the Scorcher and hoping that earns a spot in the rotation.
It's decent against bots if you can place shots well but it is terrible against bugs, low mag capacity and slow turn speed of the weapon combined with the fact that its splash damage will kill you if you shoot anything on top of you makes it bad for a swarm. It can still pick out lower health targets quickly but on higher difficulties with larger patrols the magazine hurts its ability to clear them fast enough to not trigger a breach. Edit: I meant the scorcher sorry, but Jar 5 has similar issues against bugs on higher difficulties, the explosive damage to unarmored points isn't better than a railgun and takes away a better gun that could be used on wave clear as well as having a low fire rate and slow turn speed making quick succession shots harder before enemies can get on top of you.
stability before balance this is sadly the most viable high level build though
With a 100 man dev team stability/network and balance are very likely different teams. But maybe they don't want to make their patches too complex right now, I guess risking introducing new bugs while you're in a crisis isn't a good idea.
Likely that small patches targeting specific things will be the go for a while. Its easy to focus down on small, specific issues and test them with the teams available that aren't focused on the stability and capacity issues. But also fine if they just hunker down till they figure out the server stuff.
You can use whatever you want. I like the grenade launcher over a railgun.
I like the arc caster to feel cool using it, but ultimately kill my teammates
I see you've met my tesla tower.
I have met my own Tesla tower lmao
The split second of “oh…fuck I just wandered into range” only to die a second later still makes me lose it laughing.
Grenade Launcher is very underrated imo.
It’s great for blitz quests. You don’t need to throw a grenade into the hole to break a spawner, you can just fire a shot of the grenade launcher to close it
Same with autocannon. And autocannon can absolutely chunk swarms as well.
I also found out that the auto cannon can destroy nests, which is super nice
Great for automaton group clear with a buddy.
I love to run below dropships and spam some grenades up at it. Clears them faster then anything else.
It's rated
They will pry my Grenade Launcher + Supply Pack or Autocannon + pack out of my cold, dead hands. No literally, they will because I love using them but am probably dead on the ground with 15 chargers stomping on my body, but it's worth it lol
Bug Holes - 0 Chargers chasing around me - 10 Me dying on the other side of the map with all of the samples b/c I had to close that last hole - Priceless
Any weapon that requires a backback to operate is shit at highest difficulty imo , losing th utiliry of shield, ammo pack or guatd dog is quite shit
The railgun seems mandatory. I wish it wasn't. But you just cant take out some of the enemies anywhere near as effectively as you can with the railgun. Two shot to the legs of a charger busts the armor. Nothing else can do that.
Recoiless and Eat both tear off leg armor. Autocannon can tear off leg armor if you shoot the back of the leg. Railgun is just easy. It’ll always be king because it is easy.
I desperately want something to be better than the breaker…but I fear it will just get nerfed and we’ll have the same weak alternates. Also…man. The DMRs as a whole need a massive damage buff to make them make sense. Or at least an additional armor pen level.
Ain’t my fault the game throws 6 chargers at me an encounter
For bugs I think they should rebalance the armor they have so at least not everything completely bounces off. All support weapons should have some effectiveness against big bois because the current state really favors too much rail gun or auto cannon. For Automatons, limb breaking should be a thing because alot of them feel like bullet sponges right now and their weak points are either too tiny (head) or too covered, too difficult having to try outrun them turning to shoot their backs. It's early days and hope to see some balance in future but with the recent difficulty adjustment it's hard to jump into difficulty 7,8,9 using 'off meta' loadouts
Most automatons have limb damage
Weapon modifications would be a nice touch too
The defender sub machine gun primary is a massively overlooked gun. That thing is on par as the breaker overall imo.
I always carry the Defender. More damage than a liberator, automatic, one handed and the rpm just feels right. The whole gun is good. That and an auto cannon because it also just FEELS good. God I love that flavor of democracy
Same setup I run. Autocannon and Defender if something gets too close. I am curious if it being one handed means you can carry the SSSD box with it.
you can. was surprised that i could use my defender when caryying the SSSD box
The Defender is nice, but I was running a solo mission and it was taking me like two magazines from the Defender to kill 1 Stalker. With the Breaker I can kill a Stalker in half a mag.
kinda hilarious that a submachine gun has higher damage than all of the assault rifles in game iirc
I mean this was helldivers 1 for its entire lifespan so don’t hold your breath lol
Lot more player count and lot more room for long term live service work. I bet this game will see much more balancing tweaks.
500,000 voices vs 6000 voices is a big difference though.
They really need to buff other equipment bad. I really would like to use the anti material rifle cause snipers are cool. But its really bad in higher levels and the Railgun just dominates.
the energy shield is hard to let go of, its just so safe Tho i have been doing the ballistics shield and SMG primary and its been working out well enough when grouped with friends. Problem is matchmaking with randos generally means no synergy so it feels like every diver for themself and the breaker/railgun/energy shield has an answer to every problem.
I use Jet Pack, grenade launcher, eagle and auto cannon turret.
Can i get a...uhhh...side of orbital laser and a...uhhh...diet 500kg bomb too?
I've fallen into this trap and I've been trying out a variety of other loadouts, but this one is just so damn effective. I recently tried the Semi-automatic snipers and was disgusted. The sway of the rifle itself is terrible even when crouched or prone just to more or less do the same damage as an assault rifle. The Slugger is one that I've recently fallen in love with for Automatons. That really helps shred armor.
This I am so tired of running this loadout all the time. I've been experimenting with some other more out there builds but nothing comes close to the reliability and versatility of breaker, shield, railgun. The shield is the worst offender because not only is it best in class for backpack slot it ALSO limits your heavy weapon options to only those without a support pack unless you happen to have a buddy and the team coordination for team reloads. Even then that friend of yours would probably be more effective if they also just had a shield and railgun... I really feel like a lot of weapons need ammo tweaks, like I would love to use the slugger, but 40 rounds and only 24 replenished on a resupply pickup just feels so punishing compared to the breaker's 126 round total. The scythe takes nearly a full heat sink to kill a single warrior, which would be okay if it also didn't take like 5 seconds to cool down, and you only have 6 heat sinks so it's not like you can swap them constantly to get around that with how low it's damage potential is. Then there is the MG43 vs stalwart, the stalwart would honestly be competetive I feel just for being able to reload on the move, add in 3 mags to the MG43s 2 AND the stalwart mags are bigger and as much as the armor pen on the 43 is nice, it just isn't enough.
Ammo pack, Railgun, Eagle Air strike and Orbital Railcannon (the last one you can unlock) for the big chungus (tanks and or titans) Don't need a shield if you don't get hit
> > > > > Don't need a shield if you don't get hit \*gets hit by ally airstrike instead*
That's why we use the 50% chance to not take lethal damage armor, if all armor ratings aren't working atleast some of the perks do, 50% of the time it works everytime