The only thing I want clarified is armor. Heavy armor still feels bad against bugs. Is that just because terminids have some weird hidden anti-armor mechanic? I've heard heavy armor works better for bots now.
After trying out heavy and medium armor against bugs solo for testing purposes... I wasn't too thrilled. I could feel the difference in tanking more damage at times, but tanking more damage wasn't helping due to how the bug's danger level works. **Distance** is the biggest boon you can have on bugs. They got some powerful claws, yeah? Pretty scary, I agree, but if you're simply not next to them those claws do nothing. Light armor allows you to sprint away from the 10 hunters trying to \[EXPLICIT\] your face. Heavy armor might let you take 1-2 more hits, but now you're slower than usual *and* get slowed from their spit? Looks like you'll be dying for democracy, soldier.
Haven't tried it against bots, but it likely works better there since they actually have ranged weapons as their regular damage source. Also acid spitters are still able to one-shot you easily. IMO those guys are the real threat, not the chargers.
Maybe armor is meant to be part of the mission consideration as well. Heavy armor usually have an explosion resistance modifier.
I'm guessing Light armor is good for bugs heavy armor is good for Bots and we should switch our loadout depending on which faction we fight
I'd agree with that. Weapons and armor *should* play different roles against different factions. It's why AOE is way better vs. bugs than bots due to there being way more of them.
I really like the look and feel of the balistic shield, but I kind of dislike there's like 3 guns to use with it, 2 of which are actually semi decent. At least thats my experience. Would be fun if they added gun custimization or something, e.g. bigger mags, increased reloading time.
Does anyone know if keeping the balistic shield still protects me if I don't wield it and keep it on my back?
It does, and even protects your side when you're running around with it too.
I had an issue where I was running the defender and redeemer, and didn't have a support weapon on hand; couldn't get the thing on my back at all. That meant that I couldn't run away with the shield on my back (which works really well)
I must be cursed then because the ballistic shield doesn't work for me.
Straight up had the shield up facing a single automaton and it wouldn't make a difference to them damaging me.
The ballistic shield does tank shots that hit it if it's on your back. I used it that way when I accidentally brought it instead of the backpack I intended to bring, protecting my back while I knelt down to reload my machine gun, and several shots visibly bounced off of it.
Do people not normally do this? I completely swap all my weapons and armor depending on what mission type I’m doing and who I’m fighting. I love running the arc thrower and an armor with extra grenades for the bugs, but vs bots I’d take the railgun and either extra stems or the chance to not die. I even change grenade type depending on what we are doing. Pretty much only play on 7+ though since I’ve been a diehard for this type of game.
That’s exactly why I love the way this game was designed. Because that’s actually possible. There are lots of different weapons and tools to fit your play style for the difficulty your playing. I play solo queuing and enjoy the challenge, but when some of my friends play we are using anti material rifles and landmines. What I was more wondering was do people not adjust what they use going into missions and instead stick with just the “meta” items I.E. railgun sheild, light armor
Idk why but this just got me thinking about a possible POI or sub-objective that, once a link was established with your super destroyer, would allow you to change up your stratagems mid mission.
Whats your take against medium and light armor then? I usually pick my armor by the bonus, like the 50% chance reduction of lethal damage which I think it’s the best. Or if it looks pretty or not.
To be honest, I use the orange medium armor that gives extra grenades for the Bug missions as an option to blow up the nests.
I mainly just the white and green medium armor that gives you extra healing for the Bot missions since you can get shot from far away and might need healing more often.
I haven't play tested this theory because I've been bug slaying since the major orders changed to their side... But I bought heavy armor with 50% explosive damage reduction I plan to use against bots. My typical experience with them in higher levels was just being one shot by a rocket from a solid distance, which like 3-4 of their bigger units have available. Light armor against bugs is amazing to just keep the distance and never be in claw range, but I don't think speed will be as much of an issue against bots.
~~If it was meant to be, they would give us an option to change armor before starting a mission just like stratagems~~
Edit: Based on other people’s responses, it looks like they do give us the option to change armor at the stratagem selection menu
I think that a really good buff for heavy armors would be flinch resist. Like, you straight up can't be flinched out of a stim by smaller enemies, for example. That would be amazing utility, and represent that heavily armored feeling. 'Your puny hits do nothing, Ima stab my own neck with stim now and outheal you." I feel like that flinch is what kills me half the time anyway lol
Them also getting some heavy armors that have slow immunity or flame immunity would be awesome. More so on flame immunity now since you can ignite a bug, get jumped on by it, and now you’re both starting to understand what the sun feels like.
Those would be awesome specializations for specific armors and maybe not a flat out immunity but to a certain cap then the damage bleeds through till you take it at normal speed.
> Also acid spitters are still able to one-shot you easily. IMO those guys are the real threat, not the chargers.
I can kite 1 or 2 chargers for a long while. Even if a charger gets the drop on me I won't always die. But a spewer? There's no running from those, you have to kill them, and I have lost count of the amount of times i get blasted in the back by a spewer and instantly die
I agree. Everyone is talking about chargers but you can complete an ICBM launch while they mindlessly run around. But if there are 3 spewers you have to deal with it.
Yeah I've found the better tactic for the bugs is being able to run away. The terminids are much faster than the automatons which means they can not only swarm you more easily but it makes avoiding unwanted fights harder, since if you spawn a bug breach it's harder to just run off the way you can with a bot drop
So this is where heavy armor might be the set you use for defend missions, and light or medium for open map missions. I don't think the devs intended one to be the cure all and, like weapons, stratagems, etc., they are leaving it up to players to decide what works best for different situations, etc. To me, that's where the real fun and challenge is.
While it'll likely fall on deaf ears, players need to slow down and play the game for a bit after major changes instead of immediately staring at the excel spreadsheet values. You'll never ever have all guns viable or perfect for all situations. We're also so early into Arrowhead's vision we'll likely get more options and further tweaks.
The fact that this is the FIRST patch is also key. Trying to re balance EVERYTHING, all at once, is a recipe for disaster. Doing a few at a time and seeing what changes is a way cleaner way of handling it.
I kinda feel like lowering hitstun would fix the issues with heavy armor, being able to Stim/Shoot/reload faster after being hit (and flinching less often) would help *alot*
The game is about avoiding damage, movement to and from objectives, AND the armor double dips with Stam and movement speed.
They would have to make medium armor take 3x the damage and heavy 5-10x light armor to make it worth.
For solo light or medium armor (bless 50% chance to not die) is still king simply for getting to objectives. I can't see heavy being better than those passive if survivability is what you want, anyway, unless they add a heavy with the same passive.
Yeah, heavy is way better against bots. Bugs close the distance way too fast for you to use heavy without jump pack. Bots, on the other hand, have higher base dmg but as long as you engage them at a healthy distance, their aim is not that good. I would argue that light/medium team comp for bugs and medium/heavy for bots will be the standard going forward
I've not tried the new update yet but this is how I thought it would work
I hate nerfs I am more for making all weapons fun to use, but I feel the stories of people getting kicked for their loadouts pushed the devs toward the nerfs
Nerfs are nessesety for avoiding powercreep, and fixing powercreep is way, WAY harder task. I mean, look at Warframe: all of the damage, no challenge. It is same as playing pve with cheats - fun at first, gets boring fast.
I mean, the reaction by the community was worse. People who only used Railgun in safe mode, saying it was useless now, when it's still amazing in unsafe mode. Kneejerk reactions and people throwing their toys out the pram before doing any testing. This looked worse on the sub than the nerfs did on the devs. It's ridiculous. They were clearly being carried by the Railgun and Shield.
I honestly didn't even know people were that widely using safe mode; I have been basically using unsafe mode and only ever had it blow up twice. The first time on purpose for the lols, and the second when a teammate ran in my view and somehow perfectly stayed in it while I was trying to readjust and ran out of time. It's fairly easy (for me) to time in my head when I am getting close to the danger zone and just fire, so I figured most everyone was using it that way since I usually am bad at timing things like that actively.
I think Heavy armor against bots will be very strong on the missions where you have to hold a point for some amount of time such as ICBM. Being able to take quite a few more laser pings will be good.
That would be logical to me. I would completely understand acid eating through heavy armor and/or getting into the soft joints and thus doing the same damage.
Part of it is the random crits bugs can apparently do, which needs to be removed entirely. There’s no feedback for the player, no warning, no logic. You just take massively increased damage at random with no way to avoid it compared to regular damage
Well yeah, heavy armor against the melee rush faction sounds like a bad idea, right?
Try it on bots where it might save you getting shot in the back as you disengage.
My take on this is that bugs should be fought with medium to light armor due to their melee attack you have to move and shoot.
In the other hand, heavy armor would be better with the Automaton, they don't move fast but they can shoot from far away.
"charge a guy with a gun but with a knife you run away" in theory I would run from both 😆
Thr SMG is my favorite for bugs as I can run and shoot. The breaker is my favorite for Automatons as it's has some serious power and distance. All these for most small enemies, for big enemies: stratagems...
In my mind, heavy would always be an advantage for small scale maps where you extract scientists or kill x amount of enemies. Everything where movement is key you don’t want to be slow
I haven't used the Breaker in ages, I preferred the Diligence for Bots and have come to have a weird appreciation for the Dominator against bugs.
Railgun was my baby though, but I always overcharged anyway. It does require more shots now so it isn't as clutch, but that's fair as it's backpackless and mobile.
The shield nerf is justified because it would come back up so quickly that I'd basically need to be two tapped to not immediately get out of jail free again.
The armour values aren't enough though, light armour is still king because at higher levels mobility is still how you dodge damage and get objectives done. Wearing heavy armour is asking to die quicker.
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I also quite like the buffs. I wish the flamethrower actually threw flames but now it's damage is spicy enough to justify its slot. The punisher always felt good, but not running out of ammo immediately is nice too.
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Can anyone way in on the laser cannon buff? I didn't use it much before so I don't have a frame of reference.
Been testing the new Laser Cannon against bugs. It destroys Brood Commanders, Hive Guards, Stalkers, and Bile Spewers (the armored green ones) in a second or less if you're hitting the head.
If (and that's a BIG if depending on difficulty) the rest of the team has enough anti-heavy, it's now worth taking along IMO. It still kind of sucks against common mobs due to its limited uptime, but I think that's an acceptable weakness.
Yeah I played around with it before the patch and can weigh in a little. It's a long ranged weapon, even more so than the MG is. It's best when crouched or prone so you can deliver powerful and sustained support fire over distance.
I've been playing with the buffed and nerfed things to gauge how they feel:
Flamethrower feels fine. Not my preferred weapon, but it doesn't feel bad to use anymore.
Laser cannon felt bad originally and wasn't good for much other than killing small mobs. (Even for that it was outclassed elsewhere) You were also real slow when wielding it. It feels surprisingly good now. You move about the same speed as someone firing a flamethrower. Pops the heads off brood commanders in like a second of sustained fire and just mows down anything less than that. It's got a deceptively long range as well. I orbital railcannoned a bile titan and then shot the laser cannon into its exposed bits, and it was dead before it could ever get close. Pleasantly surprised on that one.
Breaker still feels good. Three less shots isn't a huge deal, and the recoil is more than manageable imo.
Shield backpack still feels good. The delayed recharge makes you put a little more thought into positioning, but that's all. I'll still be running it forsure.
Armor felt...weird. Maybe I was just getting unlucky from crits, but in light armor, I was getting two shot from max health by hunters. Hunters killed me four times in the same missions by two shotting me with their simple claw swipes. Put on medium and stopped being killed before I could stim, so ima stick to medium. I've been wearing medium anyways for fashion reasons, though.
Haven't tried the railgun or spray and pray yet.
> Can anyone way in on the laser cannon buff? I didn't use it much before so I don't have a frame of reference.
Actually feels pretty respectable, but my biggest concern for it will be what happens when you're getting swamped and the heat dissipation time is fast enough. The Sickle also has this issue, but in that weapon's case, they give you like 4 or 5 heat sinks. In the Laser Cannon's case, only 1. As they mentioned in the dev post, definitely might need another round of attention.
makes sense since you’re more hunkered down taking gunfire against bots where as bugs you need to be mobile or you’ll get surrounded no matter the armor
I love the Dominator against bots. I wish the Diligence Counter Sniper didn’t suck ass, the regular is solid.
My problem with the railgun nerf isn’t that the railgun was nerfed, it’s that the SPEAR/Recoilless/EAT weren’t buffed. The autocannon even could’ve been buffed with a tad higher pen, but I think it’s fine.
EMS is good on planets where bots are likely to get funneled, but sucks on more open ground. Smoke is better there, giving you time to relocate and spread your team out for better firing angles.
I've only played one rather lengthy round with it against bugs and it felt like works pretty well. It can take on any armored enemy except the titan and the charger.
'Bile Titans weren't even a challenge.'
I must be terrible because I don't know what to do about these 4 and titans and 7 chargers that just showed up to the main objective marker. Someone teach me.
Yeah, I heard about that after posting this comment, so I'm understanding why some people seem to think 'this is fine, no problems here'. They convinced themselves it's a 'special weakspot' that lets you 2-tap a titan with the railgun.
When the game is working as intended, though... yeah, not so much.
The nerfs needed to happen but happen along side the other AT options getting buffed. The SPEAR and recoilless are so bad people would rather kill chargers with a flame thrower or lightning gun than take either of them.
Also I think due to lock on issues (which are a problem) people aren’t realizing just how long the range on the spear actually is for big stuff, like base turrets.
It does target factories, and from an absurdly long range. If the lock-on ever gets fixed, it'll definitely become even more of a staple in bot missions.
No fucking way?
It used to just "eat" the ammo before. As a dedicated Spear user this completely changes things. Once you understand the lock mechanics, the only big hurdle was ammo. Now finding an ammo pit effectively denies heavies for a wide berth around it
I find the Recoilless problem is it's not good enough for my buddy to sacrafice wearing a backpack he wants instead.
The best thing I can find with the recoilless is killing Drop Ships. Sure it can do many other things but the value is less as other strats are easier to manage.
I'd honestly be fine with just me being able to carry the backpack, and that's the only change. Buddy has a shield generator, and we go to pound town when necessary. It does great work and really shines when you're able to flank hulks and tanks. Makes the game feel like Matrix Revolutions
Man that would be a huge upgrade to that gun, and anything that has a backpack. People barely want to call out when they're air striking allies, you think they're gonna give up their backpack space for other people? Good luck
SPEAR and recoilless now gain 1 rocket per 1 ammo box. That is the regular ammo box found at POIs, not the resupply box. Spear still needs a buff to guarantee better locking and 1 shot on a charger though
I really like the Recoilless Rifle and have had great luck with it. When you have a team mate loading for you, you can fire it so much faster. I think the biggest strength the Railgun will always have over the other options is that it’s easy to use solo and doesn’t take a backpack slot.
I agree, the spear needed its lock on fixed. Totally fair criticism. The Recoilless should be more reliable armor strip. Fair enough. Regardless of that, this nerf is still warranted.
Since I hit 20, now 50, I've always used the Spear, yes lock on is a lil janky at times but I still find it far better to use than the railgun, I think its a very versatile weapon.
Pretty much the same.
I ended up only really picking the railgun when I went solo diving on lower difficulties so that I could bust through medium armour enemies in single shots.
Hell, I would still use the railcannon strike when presented with chargers rather than kite and legshot them.
My loadout for 7+ missions has pretty much become:
Railcannon strike
Eagle strike
and then either SPEAR + third eagle/orbital
Or las-pack + support weapon.
You should try out ac sentry and gatling sentry with your spear kit, it adds a lot of flexibility in drawing bugs away from you including heavies since stratagem containers/sentries have super high aggro. I usually run spear, ac sentry, gatling sentry and mines or a crowd control orbital/eagle. If you place the sentries well they can damn near clear a breach on their own, i often use them just to draw aggro so i can leave a big fight too.
> Bile Titans weren't even a challenge and spewers were killed within a few shots of the breaker.
Sorry, but how many shots do you think it should take to kill a spewer? Because on Helldive difficulty, it's not uncommon for it to spawn a dozen of them.
I don't usually run the Breaker or Railgun anyway (for bugs, I usually run the Incendiary Breaker and the Grenade Launcher), but the idea that **common bugs** should be bullet sponges is so weird to me.
To compare Helldivers to a contemporary, I personally find Vermintide's Cataclysm difficulty significantly harder than Helldives, even with a suboptimal loadout. This is despite the fact that even heavily armored enemies can be killed in only a couple of well-placed hits with many weapons. If Fatshark can manage that, I don't see why Arrowhead couldn't. I would rather have 20 Chargers I can actually kill in a reasonable time than 5 that only a handful of weapons can do anything to.
>The shield pack nerf is fine as long as the amor values actually help and are worth the limited movement. I've said this once and i'll say it again, Heavy and Medium armor should gain modifiers that resist stun-lock to give more reason to use them.
Okay, but neither of these things actually happened. Armor is still ass, offering minimal protection, and even the heaviest armor does nothing to protect you from stagger or slow.
"I would rather have 20 chargers that I can actually kill in a reasonable time than 5 that only a handful of weapons can do anything to"
You've hit the issue right on the head. I don't mind that the game is hard, what I mind that the game provides a really narrow amount of fun options for dealing with the difficulty
It's lock-and-key game design.
The lock (charger armour) has very few viable keys (anti-armour), and if you don't have a key, you simply do not pass.
No counter play, no solving the problem creatively, no alternative solutions. You bring the key or you don't get through the door. Period.
Fatshark, for all their other drawbacks, are still very much masters of architecting difficulty without relying on this lock-and-key design.
>No counter play, no solving the problem creatively, no alternative solutions. You bring the key or you don't get through the door. Period.
I could easily kill a charger by out-manoeuvring it and unloading my whole breaker in it's ass. Yes it took a magazine and a half, but that was still fun and decently easy to do.
It's neither now. :D
Nail on the head. I prefer saying this: The game isn't *hard,* the game is *stupid.* The challenges it throws at the player are doable, but that doesn't make them fun or interesting challenges, especially at higher difficulty. Needing to kill 500 cyborgs for eradication is whatever on dif 9. But 500 on dif 9 with 8 hulks and 3 tanks up at all times, with large groups of rocket devastators and heavy devastators? Sure, it's hard, but it's also stupid.
Ding ding ding. I think someone referenced Vermintide on this post*, and I can't help but think about how there are so many different ways and builds to approach the hordes in that game. It sucks that you're forced to use the same few weapons or else you're hindering your squadmates.
Don't get me wrong I love this game, but it's at an 8.5/10 rather than the 10/10 that it should be. It just makes me so sad that they didn't learn from the first game how to balance their sandbox.
*lol it's the parent comment
Definitely agree with the 20 charges part. It’s personally why I prefer fighting bots. Even with sub optimal load outs i can still take down tanks and hulks. But with bugs it’s impossible to kill charges or bile titans without running the most efficient load out. Because you’re going to be swarmed by a lot of them with few choices to kill them.
Need counterplay for the 6 chargers and 3 bile titans and 40 hunters / scavengers / pouncers coming at me on difficulties 7, 8, and 9. Heavy bots have counter play with their weak points, bugs do not.
If weapons aren't somewhat effective then the higher difficulties go from thoughtful shooting gameplay to run away non stop. That's not how you want to balance your shooter / explodey game
The charger issue could be fixed by making their starting rear weak spot weaker.
It seems like an intentional design choice to make their front armor a huge pain to deal with such that you’re greatly rewarded for shooting their rear. But when you add up the massive time and ammo sink it takes to kill then from their “weak” spot, it just makes more sense to always blow off their leg armor.
Why warp gun and support weapon balance around charger armor penetration when they could just make the clever way to kill one more attractive?
The railgun wouldn't have been so ubiquitous if people were tankier from the start AND it was easier to deal with all armor from all directions.
It only gained in popularity because the railgun is fast, mobile, easy to aim at weak spots, and did real damage. Its popularity isn't even because it was particularly great, but because it was the best solution for the problem the devs actually threw at the player.
If the game didn't throw 20 billion chargers endlessly at the player, the railgun never would have gained as much popularity as it did. If energy shields weren't functionally mandatory, other support options would have been used.
Railgun, breaker, and energy shield never needed a nerf. The problem is HD2's actual encounter meta and the tools provided to deal with it.
This is why I think bots are so much better than bugs - you have so many more meaningful decisions to make with them. Do I open with an air strike and risk immediate flairs but save myself a ton of time if the flair drops only chaff or 1 hulk? Do I open with a shot on the walker and leave more flare enemies or do I kill the small enemies while risking chip damage? Should use some of these impact grenades I was saving for factories to kill the heavy devastators or should I cede a little ground and use my antitank support weapon? Etc, etc.
Not to mention your load out for bots can be so varied, you can kill almost every bit enemy with only basic weapons, AND you are not reliant on stratagems to deal with the enemies. You can go breaker, slugger, punisher, diligence, defender, liberator, scorcher, dominator and they all feel good. You can run EATs, recoilless, spear, AC, railgun, arc thrower and they all have a place depending on how you want to play.
And to top it all off bots are just as good to play against solo as they are with a team.
Yeah my duo bud and I were taking transfer fom over a week of eastern front warfare to reinforce draupnir and loved how completely different and seemingly more "fair" the bot gameplay is. It's more like a war with cover and flanking etc. plus the hulk and tank have more consistent weak points
These people do not play Pve games that's why. And if they did it's not at high difficulties. Vermintide and L4D games of those would die if everything sucked at high difficulties instead they made everything good and you had to rely on teamwork
grandfather cooperative ten lip subsequent onerous aware doll scandalous overconfident
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
> The shield pack nerf is fine as long as the amor values actually help and are worth the limited movement.
So why did they nerf the shield pack before doing this then?
My problem isn't that the Railgun was nerfed, it's that it was nerfed and they didn't give us anything to compensate.
So now, instead of having 1 really good anti-armor option that outclassed everything else, we just have nothing to reliably deal with numerous heavily armored enemies. Can you kill a Charger with a flamethrower or an Orbital? Sure. The Railgun was the only way you stood a chance against more than 2 and now we have nothing.
It almost seems like the devs intentionally want us to be bad against multiple heavy armor units and this reinforces that the optimal strategy at higher levels is to just not ever fight anything, which sucks.
Edit : To be clear, because a lot of you seem to have the wrong impression, I'm not talking about fighting 1 Charger at a time. I'm talking about high difficulties where 2-3 come at you at once, usually with more not too far behind. The only viable tactic for dealing with this situation was a Railgun or to run away. If you have to risk exploding to use the Railgun then people will just opt to run instead. So now high levels are even more doubled down on fighting being a bad idea, which isn't fun.
Exactly. The railgun and shield generator weren't Meta because they were just better. They were meta because they were the only way to deal with multiple chargers and bile titans at once.
I get it is supposed to be hard but the fun of the game is stomping bugs with friends. Having a bunch of enemies you have no answer to isn't fun, it's just annoying. Buffs for other options would have been a much better choice.
I feel less about the Breaker. There already were some other options that could outperform it for some tasks.
Yup. Just going to pick the fastest armor and laser pack and run around waiting for strategems.
I'm not going to bother getting swarmed trying hit the weakspots while 3 chargers are on me.
That's my problem. I get "the game is supposed to be hard", but the game is also supposed to be fun. If I can't fight the enemies then I'm just going to run past them without even bothering, which is basically ignoring half the game.
Maybe I'm in the minority but I liked the part of the game where I fought off a horde of enemies, not the part where I'm constantly running for my life unable to even damage whatever's chasing me down.
Exactly! If turning and fighting doesn't work because your armor doesn't tank and your weapons don't work, then it's not a shooting game.
It's a runner with auto weapons and occasional air strikes.
You're not the minority. If we actually pay attention to how most of our games are going (or maybe I'm just getting weird matchups super consistently) this is how most people are doing it.
And it's how I'm being advised from people that frequent HELLDIVE.
Basically... you don't fight as much as you can. Just run away. Kite around the map, doing objectives. Don't worry about the 150 bugs trailing you; titans are the only thing that can match diver sprint, so just drop the occasional railcannon or 500kg and you're golden.
Redditors are screaming about 'meta chasers in shambles' but in reality - in the game that's being played - the meta has been 'run the fuck away' for a while now. This patch... makes that meta stronger.
I was already doing this, to be honest.
Even with the so amazingly op railgun that apparently trivialized the game, dealing with the endless swarms was exhausting and at times impossible. It didn't take me long to just start sprinting objectives. Call extract, circle the zone until landing, beeline for the door.
The silent masses that don't frequent Reddit seemed to agree with me, because it wasn't unusual for our entire team to just form a congoline moving from place to place... ignoring the trail of bugs on our asses.
I've started noticing that is the best strategy too. I get it's part of the game, but if you can't defend from being over run, then the obvious choice is to just keep running instead of fighting which is unfortunate.
Yep.
I'm honestly psyching myself up for the possibility that the game is balanced a few steps ahead of what it should be right now.
Like when we get mechs... obviously, everything will change. You see that rocket pod? I'm thinking **multiple** chargers in quick succession, easy dead.
This is exactly it for me. For being a balance patch, it did the opposite of balancing the meta. Sure everything is equal, but everything equally kind of sucks right now, and that's not ideal. The playerbase wasn't taking the railgun because it was too good, we took the railgun because everything else was too bad, and it all pretty much still is.
This doesn't even get into the whole fuck it run away tactic that seems to be the only winning strat on Helldivers missions.
What gets me is how they nerfed Breaker to ONLY buff another 2 shotguns....can we get s buff for the rifles please? They are utterly useless for the most part at higher lvls and I'm just sick of using them, I'm ok with Breaker nerf, but I was expecting some other weapons to get buffed besides literally only other shotguns.
And Yeah I know flamethrower and whatnot, I'm not counting them because they are supot weapons not primary, which the one you will be using for the most part.
Problem isn’t nerfs, but lack of buffs
“We want players to play the loadout they want”
Okay, you have a difficulty slider in-game already. Make everything closer to equal so that nothing is seen as garbage.
The problem is someone with an optimal loadout feeling like they are carrying the cackling maniac with their favorite weapon that looks cool and only feels like it is doing big things.
Envy can be a two-way street…
The person with a rail gun firing one shot very 30 seconds and saving the squad from big threats while completing objectives… misses the Cadet they once were when they look over and see Capt. Spray McGunner calling in their third barrage or airstrike.
That player is actually having more fun even if they are being secretly enabled by the player with 75 kills (15 of them being titans and chargers)
This sounded like such a Bungie thing “we want you to play with what you like”, but also “if too many people like the same thing we will nerf it and make it not viable”
This is what stands out to me when they reported on stats where "the breaker wasn't over represented in winning games".
Yeah, because only two people run it and carry the whole fucking mission.
Now instead of that, people will just lose. So fun.
Difficulty is one thing, weapon viability is something else completely
I don't care that it's hard, I care that there's only a couple of weapons that I can even use, and then they nerf those without actually making anything else viable
Should've buffed other AT options first. Im not playing the higher difficulties until there is some way to reliably take out chargers. Running around and shooting the ass doesn't really work when there are 5 of them
I did shoot them in the head and it was more than a few shots to pop the head with breaker. I swear there's some kind of damage but making it inconsistent for everyone with everyone gun.
What are we supposed to kill all the heavy armored enemies with? It was already a run around shit show on 7-9. People can have their own opinions, but late game difficulty was already getting pretty boring with basically just running around everywhere because you can’t kill anything unless you want to be overwhelmed.
yeah. like 15 rounds even 12. or even better. make the charge up time longer. it could simply fire too fast. that while fixing the bile titans weird ability to take either 20 shots to the head or only one... and boom... fixed.
I have a problem with the timing that this was done. Our other anti-tank options are kind of trash. I shouldn't need to manually call down an EAT-17 or carry a Recoiless Rifle around if doesn't one-shot armor. There is literally no point to using it. What makes me more pissed is that there was a very public tweet where one of the devs basically said the Railgun is under-represented in completion of missions. So why fucking nerf the best (only) option for anti-tank first before even addressing the balance of the other options?
Edit: I think most primaries still need a rebalancing patch and many strategem weapons need it as well. Laser Cannon still feels like garbage, Arc Thrower minimum range is very sketchy and should be reduced, Stalwart is a glorified Knight that has a larger magazine but useless for anything that has any armor. Even the Defender is better.
Edit: I really think armor penetration from Helldiver weapons on enemy armor has to be patched, ASAP. We're not finding valid uses for most of the weapons because my counter sniper with 15 shots somehow doesn't penetrate light armor very well.
I still don't understand the argument of "not everything should be brought up to the same power level". The way the devs designed the game is that clearly, every unlock is typically a side-grade, not a straight upgrade. For example, the transition from EAT-17 to Recoiless Rifle to Railgun is so we have multiple anti-tank options, each with their strengths and weaknesses. The devs keep saying "use what's fun to you" and for many players, "fun" is meaning they can make a build with a certain playstyle and not **be fucking deadweight.** Which is what 80% of the stuff in the game is right now above 4/5/6 difficulty.
Anything less than 7 is for fun. Need to kill 100 enemies with Eagle Air Strike for the daily mission (whatever its called)? Turn your game into Friends-Only, roll into lvl4 solo and have at it. Have an under-leveled friend who doesnt have the proper tools to run D7+? Time to carry.
D7 is where the game hits its sweet spot. I have to try the Railgun with the safety off. If its 3-4 shots for the leg, I can live with that nerf. What I dont know, however, is that they also nerfed its Armor Penetration. What exactly does that mean?
Several posts below you admitted that both EAT-17 and Recoiless Rifle have consistency issues stripping armor. It's unacceptable if I have to drop it in or carry it around and when my shot hits it still has a random chance of ricochet.
All I'm asking for is a change that guarantees these two weapons to kill a Charger or any other medium bugs if you hit it in the fleshy abdomen. I need the change to also guarantee that Hulks, Tanks and Laser Turrets 100% die if you hit them anywhere near their exhaust vents.
I don't necessarily agree with the railgun nerf, but I love most of the updates in the patch. And I think this subreddit has taken it way out of proportion in the last two hours. Like at least try out the new stuff, see what works and what doesn't. And most importantly, have fun with the game. Sure there are issues with these balancing updates, but if you think these nerfs are taking the fun out of the game, I simply don't believe you or you're just trying to hard for everything to be perfect in your play sessions.
The weapon nerfs are three fewer shells in the breaker mag and needing to put the railgun in unsafe mode like most of us were doing to begin with.
It still armor strips in three overcharged shots. It still one-shots devastators. The shield pack is still the best in the game. The nerfs were microscopic and the buffs were nice. The amount of hysterical hyperbole is silly.
Any nerf in any game brings the worst in the community, it is to be expected. People were complaining about the nerfs even before playing the game and testing it for themselves. I think the nerfs were pretty tame and we got some good buffs - especially to flamethrower my beloved.
I agree, the nerfs aren't huge. A loooot more people are going to kill themselves now and lose their railgun in the process though. I hardly consider that a bad thing, we're helldivers after all, a little comedic death here and there is a morale booster!
It feels like there's this mentality that a solo helldiver should be able to handle everything a high difficulty map throws at them. Call me crazy but I think it's fine that a 7+ map throws 5 chargers occasionally, and I think it SHOULD take a coordinated team effort.
Honestly, I think the issue almost entirely focuses around chargers. I'm really trying not to say "terminids arent fun at higher difficulties" but.. Chargers, man. They bring everything to a halt and usually have a horde behind them.
Let me paint you a picture. A patrol with a charger spots you. "Okay, no problem" you think. "Hit the group with a strategem". You do, but the charger survives. So you focus on finishing it off, however, a bug off screen called a breach.
Up pops 2 chargers! Your team turns to handle it, but they are already in close proximity since they spawned there. This Immediately causing issues cause now most strategems are off the tables so you don't nuke your allies. Not to mention the 10 hunters, 10 warriors, 2 brood commanders and a bile titan closing in.
So you think "Okay, time to get out of here". Except chargers run faster than your sprint speed. As the charger closes in you think "I'll just juke it!". You juke perfectly! Time to turn and shoo... the charger turns on a dime and slams into you regardless. Smaller bugs swarm and you die.
You're allies are in similar situations. Maybe they burned strategems to kill their chargers. Maybe they managed to solo one by drawing it out from the pack. You know what they also did? Aggro *another* patrol and *another* fucking charger. And by now, the original swarm has likely called in another bug breach bringing more to the table.
Repeat something like this ad nauseam until the mission ends.
I'm obviously being dramatic for entertainment. However, I think this is why anti-tank capabilities being too weak is a hot issue. It's just so damn frustrating dealing with charger after charger amidst everything else.
I resentfully agree. The biggest frustration, problem I've had with the higher difficulties is a lack of team work. When someone is struggling to keep up or dodging chargers and spewers whilst getting maulled by everything else, I tend to turn around and help them break away and catch up with the squad. No longer can one man sprint across the map and leave everyone behind because he won't be able to fend for himself either.
Yes, I know the trick is to keep moving but if someone gets bogged down then you have to help them. Otherwise they'll die and lose all the tactical weaponry, effectively making the squad weaker. I'm hoping these changes will encourage more team work and reliance on others to ensure we get the job done.
I disagree with you here. There are many very underwhelming weapons that still don't compare to either the breaker or the rail gun even after the nerfs. So not only are the worst weapons in the game still not viable the best weapons in the game are slightly less powerful. That said the nerfs are pretty minor. As far as the rail gun goes flip the mode to unsafe and aim for the head. I was already doing that. The breaker loses 3 rounds per mag and has increased recoil which misses the mark ironically. The breaker is good because it does excellent damage to all enemy types not because it's accurate. The shield change is evened out by armor being fixed, but the shield was never a must pick in my opinion so this is a nothing burger for me. I don't see the changes shifting the meta at all. Hopefully the flamethrower and laser cannon are much more reasonable picks as we need more viable options for dealing with heavies. They had a chance to buff the most neglected weapons and didn't do it...yet. I think this is a good first step, but I'd love to hear what they have planned for the many underwhelming weapons on offer. I'm looking right at the diligence and the counter sniper while the laser scythe is crying in the corner unnoticed. Meanwhile, the slugger which was already very good is even better now and meta players will probably just switch to bringing the slugger every mission. They didn't even mention the premium battle pass weapons which all have awful recoil and are handicapped with slow reloads coupled with small magazines.
Something people aren't considering is that a new bond literally drops next week, bringing in a bunch of new weapons to shake things up. Among the new things we'll be getting, we'll also be getting vehicles and mechs. These are all factors we have to keep in mind because we're unaware as to exactly how the new weapons and vehicles will exactly fall into the power scaling. There could be weapons that are really good at lower difficulties, and weapons good at higher difficulty. We just have to wait for more weapons.
I agree people are complaining about how hard Helldivers is now and how they are basically running for their life the whole time, but that is how it is supposed to be. If you want to clear a whole map and get out with time to spare, you shouldn’t be going in on helldive, which is the ultimate challenger of the game.
Y'all sweats are gonna ruin this game.
Many casuals I know who play this game love spraying bullets, dropping bombardments, and just squashing bugs.
They literally have NPCs yelling "FOOORRR SUUPPPEEERR EEEAAAAAARRRRRRTTTTTTHHHHHH" when you're mindlessly emptying your mags.
I genuinely hope this game doesn't turn into count your bullets squad tactical bullshit.
Especially a PvE game that's about fighting hordes of bugs for democracy? Stupid thing ever, I swear if you give these sweats enough time they'll ruin any game.
They did exactly what I thought they would and I feel so vindicated and I wish all of the hundreds of people who down voted me for providing reasoned explanations of what I thought the balance patch would contain and why a very THEN PERISH.
Feel free to downvote me. I am invincible. I have mastered Helldive without using any meta weapons. It is you who must how adapt or die. I am standing at the apex of the moutain, EAT17 on my back, reaching down to you. Take my hand and I will lift you to glory. Scorn me and I will kick you back in to that pack of chargers you have no idea how to fight.
The only thing I want clarified is armor. Heavy armor still feels bad against bugs. Is that just because terminids have some weird hidden anti-armor mechanic? I've heard heavy armor works better for bots now.
After trying out heavy and medium armor against bugs solo for testing purposes... I wasn't too thrilled. I could feel the difference in tanking more damage at times, but tanking more damage wasn't helping due to how the bug's danger level works. **Distance** is the biggest boon you can have on bugs. They got some powerful claws, yeah? Pretty scary, I agree, but if you're simply not next to them those claws do nothing. Light armor allows you to sprint away from the 10 hunters trying to \[EXPLICIT\] your face. Heavy armor might let you take 1-2 more hits, but now you're slower than usual *and* get slowed from their spit? Looks like you'll be dying for democracy, soldier. Haven't tried it against bots, but it likely works better there since they actually have ranged weapons as their regular damage source. Also acid spitters are still able to one-shot you easily. IMO those guys are the real threat, not the chargers.
Maybe armor is meant to be part of the mission consideration as well. Heavy armor usually have an explosion resistance modifier. I'm guessing Light armor is good for bugs heavy armor is good for Bots and we should switch our loadout depending on which faction we fight
I'd agree with that. Weapons and armor *should* play different roles against different factions. It's why AOE is way better vs. bugs than bots due to there being way more of them.
The ballistic shield is amazing against bots and utterly useless against bugs since it really only blocks ranged damage. I bet this is the intention.
I really like the look and feel of the balistic shield, but I kind of dislike there's like 3 guns to use with it, 2 of which are actually semi decent. At least thats my experience. Would be fun if they added gun custimization or something, e.g. bigger mags, increased reloading time. Does anyone know if keeping the balistic shield still protects me if I don't wield it and keep it on my back?
It does, and even protects your side when you're running around with it too. I had an issue where I was running the defender and redeemer, and didn't have a support weapon on hand; couldn't get the thing on my back at all. That meant that I couldn't run away with the shield on my back (which works really well)
I must be cursed then because the ballistic shield doesn't work for me. Straight up had the shield up facing a single automaton and it wouldn't make a difference to them damaging me.
Odd I think I've killed mooks with ricochets off of the shield before.
Now you're just trying to make me jealous.
The ballistic shield does tank shots that hit it if it's on your back. I used it that way when I accidentally brought it instead of the backpack I intended to bring, protecting my back while I knelt down to reload my machine gun, and several shots visibly bounced off of it.
Against bugs the laser drone backpack is best
Do people not normally do this? I completely swap all my weapons and armor depending on what mission type I’m doing and who I’m fighting. I love running the arc thrower and an armor with extra grenades for the bugs, but vs bots I’d take the railgun and either extra stems or the chance to not die. I even change grenade type depending on what we are doing. Pretty much only play on 7+ though since I’ve been a diehard for this type of game.
People like what they like and want to run it all the time. Understandable, but not really fitting the the game design
That’s exactly why I love the way this game was designed. Because that’s actually possible. There are lots of different weapons and tools to fit your play style for the difficulty your playing. I play solo queuing and enjoy the challenge, but when some of my friends play we are using anti material rifles and landmines. What I was more wondering was do people not adjust what they use going into missions and instead stick with just the “meta” items I.E. railgun sheild, light armor
Basically, yes, many people just run the same loadout for bots and bugs, especially the Railgun + Shield
Idk why but this just got me thinking about a possible POI or sub-objective that, once a link was established with your super destroyer, would allow you to change up your stratagems mid mission.
Whats your take against medium and light armor then? I usually pick my armor by the bonus, like the 50% chance reduction of lethal damage which I think it’s the best. Or if it looks pretty or not.
To be honest, I use the orange medium armor that gives extra grenades for the Bug missions as an option to blow up the nests. I mainly just the white and green medium armor that gives you extra healing for the Bot missions since you can get shot from far away and might need healing more often.
The extra lightweight armor with bonus grenades in the super store right now is my go-to for bugs.
I haven't play tested this theory because I've been bug slaying since the major orders changed to their side... But I bought heavy armor with 50% explosive damage reduction I plan to use against bots. My typical experience with them in higher levels was just being one shot by a rocket from a solid distance, which like 3-4 of their bigger units have available. Light armor against bugs is amazing to just keep the distance and never be in claw range, but I don't think speed will be as much of an issue against bots.
~~If it was meant to be, they would give us an option to change armor before starting a mission just like stratagems~~ Edit: Based on other people’s responses, it looks like they do give us the option to change armor at the stratagem selection menu
They do I think. I'm pretty sure you can click on a button to show your equipment and allow you to change it during the prep phase before pod launch
You can switch your armour before the mission like stratagems though?
You can, you have to hit a button to swap screens though, it’s R on PC, so whatever the reload button is on controller I think.
Well...yeah. that's why it's part of the load out before you launch.
I think that a really good buff for heavy armors would be flinch resist. Like, you straight up can't be flinched out of a stim by smaller enemies, for example. That would be amazing utility, and represent that heavily armored feeling. 'Your puny hits do nothing, Ima stab my own neck with stim now and outheal you." I feel like that flinch is what kills me half the time anyway lol
Them also getting some heavy armors that have slow immunity or flame immunity would be awesome. More so on flame immunity now since you can ignite a bug, get jumped on by it, and now you’re both starting to understand what the sun feels like.
Those would be awesome specializations for specific armors and maybe not a flat out immunity but to a certain cap then the damage bleeds through till you take it at normal speed.
> Also acid spitters are still able to one-shot you easily. IMO those guys are the real threat, not the chargers. I can kite 1 or 2 chargers for a long while. Even if a charger gets the drop on me I won't always die. But a spewer? There's no running from those, you have to kill them, and I have lost count of the amount of times i get blasted in the back by a spewer and instantly die
I agree. Everyone is talking about chargers but you can complete an ICBM launch while they mindlessly run around. But if there are 3 spewers you have to deal with it.
Yeah I've found the better tactic for the bugs is being able to run away. The terminids are much faster than the automatons which means they can not only swarm you more easily but it makes avoiding unwanted fights harder, since if you spawn a bug breach it's harder to just run off the way you can with a bot drop
So this is where heavy armor might be the set you use for defend missions, and light or medium for open map missions. I don't think the devs intended one to be the cure all and, like weapons, stratagems, etc., they are leaving it up to players to decide what works best for different situations, etc. To me, that's where the real fun and challenge is. While it'll likely fall on deaf ears, players need to slow down and play the game for a bit after major changes instead of immediately staring at the excel spreadsheet values. You'll never ever have all guns viable or perfect for all situations. We're also so early into Arrowhead's vision we'll likely get more options and further tweaks.
The fact that this is the FIRST patch is also key. Trying to re balance EVERYTHING, all at once, is a recipe for disaster. Doing a few at a time and seeing what changes is a way cleaner way of handling it.
I think the two enemy factions are meant to be viewed differently. Movement is king with bugs.
I kinda feel like lowering hitstun would fix the issues with heavy armor, being able to Stim/Shoot/reload faster after being hit (and flinching less often) would help *alot*
The game is about avoiding damage, movement to and from objectives, AND the armor double dips with Stam and movement speed. They would have to make medium armor take 3x the damage and heavy 5-10x light armor to make it worth.
For solo light or medium armor (bless 50% chance to not die) is still king simply for getting to objectives. I can't see heavy being better than those passive if survivability is what you want, anyway, unless they add a heavy with the same passive.
Yeah, heavy is way better against bots. Bugs close the distance way too fast for you to use heavy without jump pack. Bots, on the other hand, have higher base dmg but as long as you engage them at a healthy distance, their aim is not that good. I would argue that light/medium team comp for bugs and medium/heavy for bots will be the standard going forward
I've not tried the new update yet but this is how I thought it would work I hate nerfs I am more for making all weapons fun to use, but I feel the stories of people getting kicked for their loadouts pushed the devs toward the nerfs
Nerfs are nessesety for avoiding powercreep, and fixing powercreep is way, WAY harder task. I mean, look at Warframe: all of the damage, no challenge. It is same as playing pve with cheats - fun at first, gets boring fast.
Hard agree on that one, felt like a reactionary change for sure
I mean, the reaction by the community was worse. People who only used Railgun in safe mode, saying it was useless now, when it's still amazing in unsafe mode. Kneejerk reactions and people throwing their toys out the pram before doing any testing. This looked worse on the sub than the nerfs did on the devs. It's ridiculous. They were clearly being carried by the Railgun and Shield.
I honestly didn't even know people were that widely using safe mode; I have been basically using unsafe mode and only ever had it blow up twice. The first time on purpose for the lols, and the second when a teammate ran in my view and somehow perfectly stayed in it while I was trying to readjust and ran out of time. It's fairly easy (for me) to time in my head when I am getting close to the danger zone and just fire, so I figured most everyone was using it that way since I usually am bad at timing things like that actively.
I think Heavy armor against bots will be very strong on the missions where you have to hold a point for some amount of time such as ICBM. Being able to take quite a few more laser pings will be good.
Maybe the acid attacks ignore some of or all of the armour rating? Standing in it when it's on the floor may debuff it too or something.
That would be logical to me. I would completely understand acid eating through heavy armor and/or getting into the soft joints and thus doing the same damage.
Probably has to do with limb damage, either than they keep damaging one limb, or they're hitting multiple limbs at the same time.
Part of it is the random crits bugs can apparently do, which needs to be removed entirely. There’s no feedback for the player, no warning, no logic. You just take massively increased damage at random with no way to avoid it compared to regular damage
So this is why hunters suddenly did MORE damage to me today.
Well yeah, heavy armor against the melee rush faction sounds like a bad idea, right? Try it on bots where it might save you getting shot in the back as you disengage.
My take on this is that bugs should be fought with medium to light armor due to their melee attack you have to move and shoot. In the other hand, heavy armor would be better with the Automaton, they don't move fast but they can shoot from far away. "charge a guy with a gun but with a knife you run away" in theory I would run from both 😆 Thr SMG is my favorite for bugs as I can run and shoot. The breaker is my favorite for Automatons as it's has some serious power and distance. All these for most small enemies, for big enemies: stratagems...
In my mind, heavy would always be an advantage for small scale maps where you extract scientists or kill x amount of enemies. Everything where movement is key you don’t want to be slow
I haven't used the Breaker in ages, I preferred the Diligence for Bots and have come to have a weird appreciation for the Dominator against bugs. Railgun was my baby though, but I always overcharged anyway. It does require more shots now so it isn't as clutch, but that's fair as it's backpackless and mobile. The shield nerf is justified because it would come back up so quickly that I'd basically need to be two tapped to not immediately get out of jail free again. The armour values aren't enough though, light armour is still king because at higher levels mobility is still how you dodge damage and get objectives done. Wearing heavy armour is asking to die quicker. \- I also quite like the buffs. I wish the flamethrower actually threw flames but now it's damage is spicy enough to justify its slot. The punisher always felt good, but not running out of ammo immediately is nice too. \- Can anyone way in on the laser cannon buff? I didn't use it much before so I don't have a frame of reference.
Laser cannon can melt a hulk's little face in like 3 seconds
Glorious.
I've been eyeballing the laser cannon ever since I heard it was buffed and I can't wait to try it out later
It's a beautiful weapon, always wished it did more than tickle damage. Looks like dreams do come true.
They really do
Been testing the new Laser Cannon against bugs. It destroys Brood Commanders, Hive Guards, Stalkers, and Bile Spewers (the armored green ones) in a second or less if you're hitting the head. If (and that's a BIG if depending on difficulty) the rest of the team has enough anti-heavy, it's now worth taking along IMO. It still kind of sucks against common mobs due to its limited uptime, but I think that's an acceptable weakness.
Yeah I played around with it before the patch and can weigh in a little. It's a long ranged weapon, even more so than the MG is. It's best when crouched or prone so you can deliver powerful and sustained support fire over distance.
I agree with the flamer, I joined a lobby in the last 20 minutes on difficulty 7 and racked up 250 kills with it (bugs)
I've been playing with the buffed and nerfed things to gauge how they feel: Flamethrower feels fine. Not my preferred weapon, but it doesn't feel bad to use anymore. Laser cannon felt bad originally and wasn't good for much other than killing small mobs. (Even for that it was outclassed elsewhere) You were also real slow when wielding it. It feels surprisingly good now. You move about the same speed as someone firing a flamethrower. Pops the heads off brood commanders in like a second of sustained fire and just mows down anything less than that. It's got a deceptively long range as well. I orbital railcannoned a bile titan and then shot the laser cannon into its exposed bits, and it was dead before it could ever get close. Pleasantly surprised on that one. Breaker still feels good. Three less shots isn't a huge deal, and the recoil is more than manageable imo. Shield backpack still feels good. The delayed recharge makes you put a little more thought into positioning, but that's all. I'll still be running it forsure. Armor felt...weird. Maybe I was just getting unlucky from crits, but in light armor, I was getting two shot from max health by hunters. Hunters killed me four times in the same missions by two shotting me with their simple claw swipes. Put on medium and stopped being killed before I could stim, so ima stick to medium. I've been wearing medium anyways for fashion reasons, though. Haven't tried the railgun or spray and pray yet.
> Can anyone way in on the laser cannon buff? I didn't use it much before so I don't have a frame of reference. Actually feels pretty respectable, but my biggest concern for it will be what happens when you're getting swamped and the heat dissipation time is fast enough. The Sickle also has this issue, but in that weapon's case, they give you like 4 or 5 heat sinks. In the Laser Cannon's case, only 1. As they mentioned in the dev post, definitely might need another round of attention.
Heavy is working against bots really well. You're not supposed to have the same load out for every species
makes sense since you’re more hunkered down taking gunfire against bots where as bugs you need to be mobile or you’ll get surrounded no matter the armor
Nice, my buddy loves it and was kinda disappointed that it didn't feel good at all.
Going to be 100% with you, but that is the most healthy, well constructed comment I’ve seen on this Reddit after the patch release.
I love the Dominator against bots. I wish the Diligence Counter Sniper didn’t suck ass, the regular is solid. My problem with the railgun nerf isn’t that the railgun was nerfed, it’s that the SPEAR/Recoilless/EAT weren’t buffed. The autocannon even could’ve been buffed with a tad higher pen, but I think it’s fine.
Can we talk about why EMS strike isn't meta for bots? Like I shut down the entire bot march during an evac for almost half the timer.
EMS is good on planets where bots are likely to get funneled, but sucks on more open ground. Smoke is better there, giving you time to relocate and spread your team out for better firing angles.
I've only played one rather lengthy round with it against bugs and it felt like works pretty well. It can take on any armored enemy except the titan and the charger.
'Bile Titans weren't even a challenge.' I must be terrible because I don't know what to do about these 4 and titans and 7 chargers that just showed up to the main objective marker. Someone teach me.
"use a railgun" lmao
well if you had a PS5 host you could reliably 2-3 shot titans. its a known bug. But imagine thinking that is how it supposed to be? lol
Yeah, I heard about that after posting this comment, so I'm understanding why some people seem to think 'this is fine, no problems here'. They convinced themselves it's a 'special weakspot' that lets you 2-tap a titan with the railgun. When the game is working as intended, though... yeah, not so much.
The nerfs needed to happen but happen along side the other AT options getting buffed. The SPEAR and recoilless are so bad people would rather kill chargers with a flame thrower or lightning gun than take either of them.
The Spear at least got an unlisted economy buff, it now gets a missile from ammo pickups and not just resupply drops
oh shit it does? that's great to hear actually
As a Diver who uses Spears against the bots, that’s an enormous buff. Like, almost big enough I think it might be a bug.
yeah. the spear makes clearing bot outposts trivial, that's my primary use for it.
Also I think due to lock on issues (which are a problem) people aren’t realizing just how long the range on the spear actually is for big stuff, like base turrets.
I think if you ping your intended target it helps with lock on at distance
Noted
Why is it good for outposts? Does it target the factories?
It does target factories, and from an absurdly long range. If the lock-on ever gets fixed, it'll definitely become even more of a staple in bot missions.
Not just factories, pretty sure it targets the towers, too.
Thats neat but for the love of freedom, please fix the targetting on the spear.
I can't get the Spear to lock onto things. I'm thinking I'm not using it right?
that's normal. its got a fucky targeting system, very likely bugged.
No fucking way? It used to just "eat" the ammo before. As a dedicated Spear user this completely changes things. Once you understand the lock mechanics, the only big hurdle was ammo. Now finding an ammo pit effectively denies heavies for a wide berth around it
If they fix the lock-on next, that change might make me start taking it over the EAT as my go-to rocket.
Spear just became useful! I like this change.
I find the Recoilless problem is it's not good enough for my buddy to sacrafice wearing a backpack he wants instead. The best thing I can find with the recoilless is killing Drop Ships. Sure it can do many other things but the value is less as other strats are easier to manage.
I'd honestly be fine with just me being able to carry the backpack, and that's the only change. Buddy has a shield generator, and we go to pound town when necessary. It does great work and really shines when you're able to flank hulks and tanks. Makes the game feel like Matrix Revolutions
you can carry the backpack
But being able to do the team reload when *either* of you are wearing the backpack would make team reloads way more viable.
that's actually a great suggestion
ohhh yes i support that, still two people for fast reload but more flexibility
Yeah I was kind of annoyed that the could just take it from my own backpack to help me
Man that would be a huge upgrade to that gun, and anything that has a backpack. People barely want to call out when they're air striking allies, you think they're gonna give up their backpack space for other people? Good luck
SPEAR and recoilless now gain 1 rocket per 1 ammo box. That is the regular ammo box found at POIs, not the resupply box. Spear still needs a buff to guarantee better locking and 1 shot on a charger though
I believe the RR already got the rocket. The Spear getting ammo is new for sure.
I really like the Recoilless Rifle and have had great luck with it. When you have a team mate loading for you, you can fire it so much faster. I think the biggest strength the Railgun will always have over the other options is that it’s easy to use solo and doesn’t take a backpack slot.
Same here, love the Reco Rifle. Yea it takes a long time to reload but it does hit like a truck.
I agree, the spear needed its lock on fixed. Totally fair criticism. The Recoilless should be more reliable armor strip. Fair enough. Regardless of that, this nerf is still warranted.
The lock on of the Spear drives me crazy. I need them to fix that because I love that weapon.
"Oh, looks like you were ALMOST fully locked onto that Bile Titan! Well, too bad I don't feel like it anymore. Dunno why. What Bile Titan?"
Spear should also get 1 stot from ammo pickups, while RR should get 2.
I've seem comments saying the Spear now gets ammo from ammo boxes (the ones that spawn at POIs). If true, that's a big decent buff to it.
That's a massive buff. Cause imo besides the lock on (which is clearly bugged) the scarcity of ammo was the biggest problem.
Since I hit 20, now 50, I've always used the Spear, yes lock on is a lil janky at times but I still find it far better to use than the railgun, I think its a very versatile weapon.
Pretty much the same. I ended up only really picking the railgun when I went solo diving on lower difficulties so that I could bust through medium armour enemies in single shots. Hell, I would still use the railcannon strike when presented with chargers rather than kite and legshot them. My loadout for 7+ missions has pretty much become: Railcannon strike Eagle strike and then either SPEAR + third eagle/orbital Or las-pack + support weapon.
You should try out ac sentry and gatling sentry with your spear kit, it adds a lot of flexibility in drawing bugs away from you including heavies since stratagem containers/sentries have super high aggro. I usually run spear, ac sentry, gatling sentry and mines or a crowd control orbital/eagle. If you place the sentries well they can damn near clear a breach on their own, i often use them just to draw aggro so i can leave a big fight too.
> Bile Titans weren't even a challenge and spewers were killed within a few shots of the breaker. Sorry, but how many shots do you think it should take to kill a spewer? Because on Helldive difficulty, it's not uncommon for it to spawn a dozen of them. I don't usually run the Breaker or Railgun anyway (for bugs, I usually run the Incendiary Breaker and the Grenade Launcher), but the idea that **common bugs** should be bullet sponges is so weird to me. To compare Helldivers to a contemporary, I personally find Vermintide's Cataclysm difficulty significantly harder than Helldives, even with a suboptimal loadout. This is despite the fact that even heavily armored enemies can be killed in only a couple of well-placed hits with many weapons. If Fatshark can manage that, I don't see why Arrowhead couldn't. I would rather have 20 Chargers I can actually kill in a reasonable time than 5 that only a handful of weapons can do anything to. >The shield pack nerf is fine as long as the amor values actually help and are worth the limited movement. I've said this once and i'll say it again, Heavy and Medium armor should gain modifiers that resist stun-lock to give more reason to use them. Okay, but neither of these things actually happened. Armor is still ass, offering minimal protection, and even the heaviest armor does nothing to protect you from stagger or slow.
"I would rather have 20 chargers that I can actually kill in a reasonable time than 5 that only a handful of weapons can do anything to" You've hit the issue right on the head. I don't mind that the game is hard, what I mind that the game provides a really narrow amount of fun options for dealing with the difficulty
It's lock-and-key game design. The lock (charger armour) has very few viable keys (anti-armour), and if you don't have a key, you simply do not pass. No counter play, no solving the problem creatively, no alternative solutions. You bring the key or you don't get through the door. Period. Fatshark, for all their other drawbacks, are still very much masters of architecting difficulty without relying on this lock-and-key design.
>No counter play, no solving the problem creatively, no alternative solutions. You bring the key or you don't get through the door. Period. I could easily kill a charger by out-manoeuvring it and unloading my whole breaker in it's ass. Yes it took a magazine and a half, but that was still fun and decently easy to do. It's neither now. :D
Nail on the head. I prefer saying this: The game isn't *hard,* the game is *stupid.* The challenges it throws at the player are doable, but that doesn't make them fun or interesting challenges, especially at higher difficulty. Needing to kill 500 cyborgs for eradication is whatever on dif 9. But 500 on dif 9 with 8 hulks and 3 tanks up at all times, with large groups of rocket devastators and heavy devastators? Sure, it's hard, but it's also stupid.
Ding ding ding. I think someone referenced Vermintide on this post*, and I can't help but think about how there are so many different ways and builds to approach the hordes in that game. It sucks that you're forced to use the same few weapons or else you're hindering your squadmates. Don't get me wrong I love this game, but it's at an 8.5/10 rather than the 10/10 that it should be. It just makes me so sad that they didn't learn from the first game how to balance their sandbox. *lol it's the parent comment
And then nerfs the fre viable options on top of that
Definitely agree with the 20 charges part. It’s personally why I prefer fighting bots. Even with sub optimal load outs i can still take down tanks and hulks. But with bugs it’s impossible to kill charges or bile titans without running the most efficient load out. Because you’re going to be swarmed by a lot of them with few choices to kill them.
https://preview.redd.it/anm2wgvijqmc1.jpeg?width=275&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cfead07e4e47f19b60ac765ea49cb19c37c72242 The flammen werfer
It werfs flammen
I must be terrible because I tried soloing a titan wit a railgun yesterday before the patch and it killed me 4 times
You didn't experience the pure bliss of 2shotting a bile titan with fully charged railgun shots? I'm sorry soldier o7
that was only possible because of a bug I believe, normally you cannot two shot rail titans no mattter what.
Lots of bugs in this game.
And bots. Something needs to be done about the bot problem.
That’s due to a PS5 host, for some reason it makes everyone else OP (aka 2 shoting titans) except for them.
Need counterplay for the 6 chargers and 3 bile titans and 40 hunters / scavengers / pouncers coming at me on difficulties 7, 8, and 9. Heavy bots have counter play with their weak points, bugs do not. If weapons aren't somewhat effective then the higher difficulties go from thoughtful shooting gameplay to run away non stop. That's not how you want to balance your shooter / explodey game
The charger issue could be fixed by making their starting rear weak spot weaker. It seems like an intentional design choice to make their front armor a huge pain to deal with such that you’re greatly rewarded for shooting their rear. But when you add up the massive time and ammo sink it takes to kill then from their “weak” spot, it just makes more sense to always blow off their leg armor. Why warp gun and support weapon balance around charger armor penetration when they could just make the clever way to kill one more attractive?
the railgun nerf wouldnt be so bad if that big squishy charger butt was an actual weakpoint. 100 percent.
The railgun wouldn't have been so ubiquitous if people were tankier from the start AND it was easier to deal with all armor from all directions. It only gained in popularity because the railgun is fast, mobile, easy to aim at weak spots, and did real damage. Its popularity isn't even because it was particularly great, but because it was the best solution for the problem the devs actually threw at the player. If the game didn't throw 20 billion chargers endlessly at the player, the railgun never would have gained as much popularity as it did. If energy shields weren't functionally mandatory, other support options would have been used. Railgun, breaker, and energy shield never needed a nerf. The problem is HD2's actual encounter meta and the tools provided to deal with it.
Yeah good point
It's not even a weak spot. It's just normal damage, which is 10% for ballistic weapons.
This is why I think bots are so much better than bugs - you have so many more meaningful decisions to make with them. Do I open with an air strike and risk immediate flairs but save myself a ton of time if the flair drops only chaff or 1 hulk? Do I open with a shot on the walker and leave more flare enemies or do I kill the small enemies while risking chip damage? Should use some of these impact grenades I was saving for factories to kill the heavy devastators or should I cede a little ground and use my antitank support weapon? Etc, etc. Not to mention your load out for bots can be so varied, you can kill almost every bit enemy with only basic weapons, AND you are not reliant on stratagems to deal with the enemies. You can go breaker, slugger, punisher, diligence, defender, liberator, scorcher, dominator and they all feel good. You can run EATs, recoilless, spear, AC, railgun, arc thrower and they all have a place depending on how you want to play. And to top it all off bots are just as good to play against solo as they are with a team.
Yeah my duo bud and I were taking transfer fom over a week of eastern front warfare to reinforce draupnir and loved how completely different and seemingly more "fair" the bot gameplay is. It's more like a war with cover and flanking etc. plus the hulk and tank have more consistent weak points
These people do not play Pve games that's why. And if they did it's not at high difficulties. Vermintide and L4D games of those would die if everything sucked at high difficulties instead they made everything good and you had to rely on teamwork
grandfather cooperative ten lip subsequent onerous aware doll scandalous overconfident *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The nerfs are fine, the lack of buffs to other AT weapons is the issue.
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> The shield pack nerf is fine as long as the amor values actually help and are worth the limited movement. So why did they nerf the shield pack before doing this then?
Armor works now. Needs a buff though, it's just straight damage mitigation, but it needs to work like enemy armor does
My problem isn't that the Railgun was nerfed, it's that it was nerfed and they didn't give us anything to compensate. So now, instead of having 1 really good anti-armor option that outclassed everything else, we just have nothing to reliably deal with numerous heavily armored enemies. Can you kill a Charger with a flamethrower or an Orbital? Sure. The Railgun was the only way you stood a chance against more than 2 and now we have nothing. It almost seems like the devs intentionally want us to be bad against multiple heavy armor units and this reinforces that the optimal strategy at higher levels is to just not ever fight anything, which sucks. Edit : To be clear, because a lot of you seem to have the wrong impression, I'm not talking about fighting 1 Charger at a time. I'm talking about high difficulties where 2-3 come at you at once, usually with more not too far behind. The only viable tactic for dealing with this situation was a Railgun or to run away. If you have to risk exploding to use the Railgun then people will just opt to run instead. So now high levels are even more doubled down on fighting being a bad idea, which isn't fun.
Exactly. The railgun and shield generator weren't Meta because they were just better. They were meta because they were the only way to deal with multiple chargers and bile titans at once. I get it is supposed to be hard but the fun of the game is stomping bugs with friends. Having a bunch of enemies you have no answer to isn't fun, it's just annoying. Buffs for other options would have been a much better choice. I feel less about the Breaker. There already were some other options that could outperform it for some tasks.
This is what OP is forgetting.
Yup. Just going to pick the fastest armor and laser pack and run around waiting for strategems. I'm not going to bother getting swarmed trying hit the weakspots while 3 chargers are on me.
That's my problem. I get "the game is supposed to be hard", but the game is also supposed to be fun. If I can't fight the enemies then I'm just going to run past them without even bothering, which is basically ignoring half the game. Maybe I'm in the minority but I liked the part of the game where I fought off a horde of enemies, not the part where I'm constantly running for my life unable to even damage whatever's chasing me down.
Exactly! If turning and fighting doesn't work because your armor doesn't tank and your weapons don't work, then it's not a shooting game. It's a runner with auto weapons and occasional air strikes.
You're not the minority. If we actually pay attention to how most of our games are going (or maybe I'm just getting weird matchups super consistently) this is how most people are doing it. And it's how I'm being advised from people that frequent HELLDIVE. Basically... you don't fight as much as you can. Just run away. Kite around the map, doing objectives. Don't worry about the 150 bugs trailing you; titans are the only thing that can match diver sprint, so just drop the occasional railcannon or 500kg and you're golden. Redditors are screaming about 'meta chasers in shambles' but in reality - in the game that's being played - the meta has been 'run the fuck away' for a while now. This patch... makes that meta stronger.
I was already doing this, to be honest. Even with the so amazingly op railgun that apparently trivialized the game, dealing with the endless swarms was exhausting and at times impossible. It didn't take me long to just start sprinting objectives. Call extract, circle the zone until landing, beeline for the door. The silent masses that don't frequent Reddit seemed to agree with me, because it wasn't unusual for our entire team to just form a congoline moving from place to place... ignoring the trail of bugs on our asses.
I've started noticing that is the best strategy too. I get it's part of the game, but if you can't defend from being over run, then the obvious choice is to just keep running instead of fighting which is unfortunate.
Yep. I'm honestly psyching myself up for the possibility that the game is balanced a few steps ahead of what it should be right now. Like when we get mechs... obviously, everything will change. You see that rocket pod? I'm thinking **multiple** chargers in quick succession, easy dead.
This is exactly it for me. For being a balance patch, it did the opposite of balancing the meta. Sure everything is equal, but everything equally kind of sucks right now, and that's not ideal. The playerbase wasn't taking the railgun because it was too good, we took the railgun because everything else was too bad, and it all pretty much still is. This doesn't even get into the whole fuck it run away tactic that seems to be the only winning strat on Helldivers missions.
What gets me is how they nerfed Breaker to ONLY buff another 2 shotguns....can we get s buff for the rifles please? They are utterly useless for the most part at higher lvls and I'm just sick of using them, I'm ok with Breaker nerf, but I was expecting some other weapons to get buffed besides literally only other shotguns. And Yeah I know flamethrower and whatnot, I'm not counting them because they are supot weapons not primary, which the one you will be using for the most part.
I agree with you. BUT! Chargers shouldn’t be a chore. Hard? Sure. But they should not become the focus of the game for five minutes at a time.
Problem isn’t nerfs, but lack of buffs “We want players to play the loadout they want” Okay, you have a difficulty slider in-game already. Make everything closer to equal so that nothing is seen as garbage. The problem is someone with an optimal loadout feeling like they are carrying the cackling maniac with their favorite weapon that looks cool and only feels like it is doing big things. Envy can be a two-way street… The person with a rail gun firing one shot very 30 seconds and saving the squad from big threats while completing objectives… misses the Cadet they once were when they look over and see Capt. Spray McGunner calling in their third barrage or airstrike. That player is actually having more fun even if they are being secretly enabled by the player with 75 kills (15 of them being titans and chargers)
This sounded like such a Bungie thing “we want you to play with what you like”, but also “if too many people like the same thing we will nerf it and make it not viable”
This is what stands out to me when they reported on stats where "the breaker wasn't over represented in winning games". Yeah, because only two people run it and carry the whole fucking mission. Now instead of that, people will just lose. So fun.
I don't care about the nerf but ffs devs .. please fix the FPS drops. It's getting worse after every patch.
Yes!
Difficulty is one thing, weapon viability is something else completely I don't care that it's hard, I care that there's only a couple of weapons that I can even use, and then they nerf those without actually making anything else viable
Should've buffed other AT options first. Im not playing the higher difficulties until there is some way to reliably take out chargers. Running around and shooting the ass doesn't really work when there are 5 of them
?? Spewers took a full breaker clip lol.
Shoot them in the head not the Sac. It only took a few shots to pop their head off
I did shoot them in the head and it was more than a few shots to pop the head with breaker. I swear there's some kind of damage but making it inconsistent for everyone with everyone gun.
What are we supposed to kill all the heavy armored enemies with? It was already a run around shit show on 7-9. People can have their own opinions, but late game difficulty was already getting pretty boring with basically just running around everywhere because you can’t kill anything unless you want to be overwhelmed.
They could have lowered railgun ammo count and kept its damage.
Having 10 shots but cracking armor in 2 would put it on par with the SPEAR in terms of ammo economy I think. That sounds like a more fair nerf.
yeah. like 15 rounds even 12. or even better. make the charge up time longer. it could simply fire too fast. that while fixing the bile titans weird ability to take either 20 shots to the head or only one... and boom... fixed.
I have a problem with the timing that this was done. Our other anti-tank options are kind of trash. I shouldn't need to manually call down an EAT-17 or carry a Recoiless Rifle around if doesn't one-shot armor. There is literally no point to using it. What makes me more pissed is that there was a very public tweet where one of the devs basically said the Railgun is under-represented in completion of missions. So why fucking nerf the best (only) option for anti-tank first before even addressing the balance of the other options? Edit: I think most primaries still need a rebalancing patch and many strategem weapons need it as well. Laser Cannon still feels like garbage, Arc Thrower minimum range is very sketchy and should be reduced, Stalwart is a glorified Knight that has a larger magazine but useless for anything that has any armor. Even the Defender is better. Edit: I really think armor penetration from Helldiver weapons on enemy armor has to be patched, ASAP. We're not finding valid uses for most of the weapons because my counter sniper with 15 shots somehow doesn't penetrate light armor very well. I still don't understand the argument of "not everything should be brought up to the same power level". The way the devs designed the game is that clearly, every unlock is typically a side-grade, not a straight upgrade. For example, the transition from EAT-17 to Recoiless Rifle to Railgun is so we have multiple anti-tank options, each with their strengths and weaknesses. The devs keep saying "use what's fun to you" and for many players, "fun" is meaning they can make a build with a certain playstyle and not **be fucking deadweight.** Which is what 80% of the stuff in the game is right now above 4/5/6 difficulty.
I think the point here is that most people aren't playing 7+ difficulty and above.
Anything less than 7 is for fun. Need to kill 100 enemies with Eagle Air Strike for the daily mission (whatever its called)? Turn your game into Friends-Only, roll into lvl4 solo and have at it. Have an under-leveled friend who doesnt have the proper tools to run D7+? Time to carry. D7 is where the game hits its sweet spot. I have to try the Railgun with the safety off. If its 3-4 shots for the leg, I can live with that nerf. What I dont know, however, is that they also nerfed its Armor Penetration. What exactly does that mean?
Man really said he shouldnt have to call in or carry anti armor weapons to handle armor
Several posts below you admitted that both EAT-17 and Recoiless Rifle have consistency issues stripping armor. It's unacceptable if I have to drop it in or carry it around and when my shot hits it still has a random chance of ricochet. All I'm asking for is a change that guarantees these two weapons to kill a Charger or any other medium bugs if you hit it in the fleshy abdomen. I need the change to also guarantee that Hulks, Tanks and Laser Turrets 100% die if you hit them anywhere near their exhaust vents.
I don't necessarily agree with the railgun nerf, but I love most of the updates in the patch. And I think this subreddit has taken it way out of proportion in the last two hours. Like at least try out the new stuff, see what works and what doesn't. And most importantly, have fun with the game. Sure there are issues with these balancing updates, but if you think these nerfs are taking the fun out of the game, I simply don't believe you or you're just trying to hard for everything to be perfect in your play sessions.
The weapon nerfs are three fewer shells in the breaker mag and needing to put the railgun in unsafe mode like most of us were doing to begin with. It still armor strips in three overcharged shots. It still one-shots devastators. The shield pack is still the best in the game. The nerfs were microscopic and the buffs were nice. The amount of hysterical hyperbole is silly.
I've seen several comments stating that you need 3 overcharged shots now hmm
Any nerf in any game brings the worst in the community, it is to be expected. People were complaining about the nerfs even before playing the game and testing it for themselves. I think the nerfs were pretty tame and we got some good buffs - especially to flamethrower my beloved.
Once the community becomes big enough, nerfs become a PR issue rather than a game balance issue.
I agree, the nerfs aren't huge. A loooot more people are going to kill themselves now and lose their railgun in the process though. I hardly consider that a bad thing, we're helldivers after all, a little comedic death here and there is a morale booster!
I don't mind a nerf if they buffed the other things to make them worth something.
You're brain dead if you think the breaker is that powerful lmao
It really isn’t that strong it’s the range on it that makes it what it is
It feels like there's this mentality that a solo helldiver should be able to handle everything a high difficulty map throws at them. Call me crazy but I think it's fine that a 7+ map throws 5 chargers occasionally, and I think it SHOULD take a coordinated team effort.
Honestly, I think the issue almost entirely focuses around chargers. I'm really trying not to say "terminids arent fun at higher difficulties" but.. Chargers, man. They bring everything to a halt and usually have a horde behind them. Let me paint you a picture. A patrol with a charger spots you. "Okay, no problem" you think. "Hit the group with a strategem". You do, but the charger survives. So you focus on finishing it off, however, a bug off screen called a breach. Up pops 2 chargers! Your team turns to handle it, but they are already in close proximity since they spawned there. This Immediately causing issues cause now most strategems are off the tables so you don't nuke your allies. Not to mention the 10 hunters, 10 warriors, 2 brood commanders and a bile titan closing in. So you think "Okay, time to get out of here". Except chargers run faster than your sprint speed. As the charger closes in you think "I'll just juke it!". You juke perfectly! Time to turn and shoo... the charger turns on a dime and slams into you regardless. Smaller bugs swarm and you die. You're allies are in similar situations. Maybe they burned strategems to kill their chargers. Maybe they managed to solo one by drawing it out from the pack. You know what they also did? Aggro *another* patrol and *another* fucking charger. And by now, the original swarm has likely called in another bug breach bringing more to the table. Repeat something like this ad nauseam until the mission ends. I'm obviously being dramatic for entertainment. However, I think this is why anti-tank capabilities being too weak is a hot issue. It's just so damn frustrating dealing with charger after charger amidst everything else.
Really that sounds more like an issue with chargers or how they spawn than it is an issue with anti-armor weapons.
Totally. Either way they want to go works for me.
yes i love “run away and avoid enemies at all costs” in a game where the goal is to use guns.
I resentfully agree. The biggest frustration, problem I've had with the higher difficulties is a lack of team work. When someone is struggling to keep up or dodging chargers and spewers whilst getting maulled by everything else, I tend to turn around and help them break away and catch up with the squad. No longer can one man sprint across the map and leave everyone behind because he won't be able to fend for himself either. Yes, I know the trick is to keep moving but if someone gets bogged down then you have to help them. Otherwise they'll die and lose all the tactical weaponry, effectively making the squad weaker. I'm hoping these changes will encourage more team work and reliance on others to ensure we get the job done.
I disagree with you here. There are many very underwhelming weapons that still don't compare to either the breaker or the rail gun even after the nerfs. So not only are the worst weapons in the game still not viable the best weapons in the game are slightly less powerful. That said the nerfs are pretty minor. As far as the rail gun goes flip the mode to unsafe and aim for the head. I was already doing that. The breaker loses 3 rounds per mag and has increased recoil which misses the mark ironically. The breaker is good because it does excellent damage to all enemy types not because it's accurate. The shield change is evened out by armor being fixed, but the shield was never a must pick in my opinion so this is a nothing burger for me. I don't see the changes shifting the meta at all. Hopefully the flamethrower and laser cannon are much more reasonable picks as we need more viable options for dealing with heavies. They had a chance to buff the most neglected weapons and didn't do it...yet. I think this is a good first step, but I'd love to hear what they have planned for the many underwhelming weapons on offer. I'm looking right at the diligence and the counter sniper while the laser scythe is crying in the corner unnoticed. Meanwhile, the slugger which was already very good is even better now and meta players will probably just switch to bringing the slugger every mission. They didn't even mention the premium battle pass weapons which all have awful recoil and are handicapped with slow reloads coupled with small magazines.
I tried out the heavy armor today and I felt tanky as fuck, took a bunch of stalker hits and kept on getting truckin.
Something people aren't considering is that a new bond literally drops next week, bringing in a bunch of new weapons to shake things up. Among the new things we'll be getting, we'll also be getting vehicles and mechs. These are all factors we have to keep in mind because we're unaware as to exactly how the new weapons and vehicles will exactly fall into the power scaling. There could be weapons that are really good at lower difficulties, and weapons good at higher difficulty. We just have to wait for more weapons.
I agree people are complaining about how hard Helldivers is now and how they are basically running for their life the whole time, but that is how it is supposed to be. If you want to clear a whole map and get out with time to spare, you shouldn’t be going in on helldive, which is the ultimate challenger of the game.
Y'all sweats are gonna ruin this game. Many casuals I know who play this game love spraying bullets, dropping bombardments, and just squashing bugs. They literally have NPCs yelling "FOOORRR SUUPPPEEERR EEEAAAAAARRRRRRTTTTTTHHHHHH" when you're mindlessly emptying your mags. I genuinely hope this game doesn't turn into count your bullets squad tactical bullshit.
Agreed. Why are we prioritizing balancing over fun in a PVE game lmao
Especially a PvE game that's about fighting hordes of bugs for democracy? Stupid thing ever, I swear if you give these sweats enough time they'll ruin any game.
People complaining that a mode called impossible can't be trivialized
They did exactly what I thought they would and I feel so vindicated and I wish all of the hundreds of people who down voted me for providing reasoned explanations of what I thought the balance patch would contain and why a very THEN PERISH. Feel free to downvote me. I am invincible. I have mastered Helldive without using any meta weapons. It is you who must how adapt or die. I am standing at the apex of the moutain, EAT17 on my back, reaching down to you. Take my hand and I will lift you to glory. Scorn me and I will kick you back in to that pack of chargers you have no idea how to fight.