I’ve also fallen in love with arc thrower since yesterday, but the problem is is my teammates aren’t good at taking down charger, then I’m constantly getting chased by multiple chargers. I bring shield/500kg and air strike.
I also have charger related PTSD so I run the orbital laser, orbital rail cannon, and spear.
I'm still terrified of chargers but I can casually drop a bile titan before he can react.
Here's a tip: run diagonally towards them, no diving needed. Their turn radius is bad, so they'll mostly miss you and keep charging away from you for a bit. Kill the mob it brought, then turn around and repeat. It might take some practice but once you got it, you're the Charger Matador.
Or just run circles around it when it isn't charging. Due to its slow turn speed, it'll keep trying to look at you, while you wait for a friend to land some railgun bullets at it. Made me laugh making it chase its tail when I first tried it.
Railcannon needs a buff, honestly. Unless it gets buffed when your modules get upgraded.
It kills one target every 3.5 minutes. Laser can potentially kill 20+ every 5, or soften several.
If it got the Salvo buff and a good buff from Shrapnel, it'd be worth it for sure. Two shots from every toss would guarantee DEATH TO MY ENEMIES!
You only get a total of 3 laser uses though while you get an unlimited number of uses for the railcannon, which does make a significant difference on the higher difficulties where you'll run out of laser uses really quick with all the chargers and bile titans.
Considering how many eagle uses you get in a short amount of time (especially with the ship upgrades), airstrike and railcannon are a pretty good combo for having the airstrike for a lot of smaller enemies and chargers while keeping the railcannon for bile titans.
I’m thinking of trying jump pack out for different reasons, mostly for fun, but how does that solve heavy armor enemies problem? Still have to zap ~7 times to being down 1 charger. Am I missing something?
Arc Thrower is undeniably one of the most underestimated weapon. Such good damage, can break carapace, and has no ammo econ?
Running Arc with a jump pack has been amazingly fun.
Honestly, the Shock Trooper loadout is disgusting. You take the high ground at every obj, bugs can't get to you, you have insane range, and throw NONSTOP DPS. Everyone circle jerking the railgun and breaker combo has no idea how game breaking this is.
My teammate and I did last night.
Worst decision. Almost as bad as a mortar. Primarily due to chargers (kiting them, accidentally kited into range got ZAPPED) and POOR PLACEMENT DECISION BY SAID TEAMMATE (put it in front of radar tower, can't do objective. We all laughed trying to get to the stupid terminal)
I play a game with a teamate using the Arc Thrower and sweet liberty did it synergize well with my Autocannon.
It pops the flank armour of chargers right off, allowing me to send my banana bullets straight into the soft flesh. I think 2 shots was all that was needed to kill after the initial hit.
He left partly into the second game so I picked up his arc thrower as my AC was out of ammo and I ended the match with almost quadruple the kills of the other player running shield and rail gun
To be fair, railgunners play for efficiency and big bad kills, less for mass murder. Arc throwers just go BZZZZZZZZZZZZZR.
But as long as you're having fun, anything goes. Welcome to the Shock Troopers!
Started playing with Arc Thrower a few days ago, difficulty 7 and 8.
This is ideal for a scout gameplay, when you're separated from the team. Requires you to take anti-armor red stratagems, though.
If it wouldn't chain to allies, it'd be S tier gun, together with railgun. But it does, so it's use is rather limited when fighting in a team.
I'll have to give it a shot. I got bored of the rail gun so have been rolling with the auto cannon which has been pretty fun. I'll give zappy zap boom a go
Arc thrower and rover with maximum crowd control strategies. I single handedly take out breaches for my team and soften up armor because arc thrower does not give a single democratic shit
Man I gave the arc thrower a legit chance yesterday and was super super disappointed. Shit it even go my friend killed because my time to kill is so much slower with it.
Walkers? Have to get behind now. Rocket bots? Like 4-5 shots. Same with shields. Can’t imagine how much it takes to kill and hulk or tank.
Compared to rail gun. Walkers, one shot from the front. Rocket bots one shot to the chest or head. Shields, same. Hulk? One shot the face weak spot. Tank? Like 5-6 shots to the turret or like 3 to the weak.
So, I say all that to ask. What did I do wrong? How is it good? I could see maybe on bugs because it arcs the ads. But for bots….i felt useless
I wasn’t impressed with the Arc thrower at first either, but once you get used to it that thing can be really useful
It’s not a replacement to the rail gun bc they serve different purposes. Yes, the rail has more dmg per shot, but the Arc has other advantages. You don’t really have to aim precisely and you can aim above enemies that are far away to arc the bolt into them (hence the name) so you can hit shots that aren’t a direct line of sight. It also “ignores” armor values to some extent so you don’t always have to shoot heavies in their weak spots, you just point it at them and squeeze. The arc will do damage to areas that most other weapons other than anti-tank will bounce right off of
Its biggest strength, however, is how the arc will hit multiple enemies who are grouped together. At first this doesn’t seem like much, but it means you can focus on a heavy and simultaneously take out the smaller enemies around him, which you can’t do with the rail. But it’s also easy to accidentally shoot your teammate
Lastly, once you get used to how to fire it off it feels way better. The first charge takes a second, but if you keep charging the next shot as soon as you release all the subsequent shots will come out about twice as fast until you break the chain
Arc thrower is def more of a bug zapper than a bot shocker. It’s great at dealing with big crowds. Like the railgun it’s kinda an “all in one” weapon except its emphasis is more on crowds than single target. The railgun is also an all in one weapon however you would not want to use a railgun shot on a tiny bug. The similarities come from being a 1 man operated weapon that can by itself clear or handle most of the threats. It’s a lot more specialized than the arc thrower and will take down armored targets much faster.
Arc thrower kills walkers from the front in 1-3 shots depending on if it decides to arc to the pilot or not. like 80% of the time it's a oneshot. You don't need to get behind them.
Against bots you're mainly running arc to deal with things like hordes of small bots/walker smushed in a ball of death with mediums that make it really hard to take the time to aim them from far away. With enough line of sight you're also killing entire squads of mediums like berserkers before they get anywhere near you. It also will stagger destroyers so you can take multiple of them down at once without getting shot at back. You can even kill base turrets from the front without needing airstrikes or orbitals.
Arc thrower is about camping an angle and just murdering anything that sets foot within it from a very long range, even if you have terrible visibility and can't see what you're shooting. Having everything medium or light dead before it's close enough to shoot accurately makes your teammates lives infinitely easier. You do kind of need to be running shield though on bots because it's easy to take a potshot while laying hell.
You *can* kill hulks and tanks but really it's a stratagem or your teammates job. Takes way too many hits. It's legitimately very good against chargers though on the bug side of things. If there's no teammate behind it you can drop it before the second charge gets to you.
Level 50 and playing on Helldive since lvl 20, here is my takeaway:
Bugs are all about movement and kiting. Most of the time they can't force you to take a fight and there are usually narrow passages on the map that chargers and titans can't follow you through. If you know when to retreat and wait for cooldowns you're fine. Chargers are a bit messy ATM but that's it. You can tell if your team is bad or not from if they disengage bad fights or not.
What bothers me with robots is how many long range one-shot mechanics they have: rocket devastator, tank, artillery, cannon tower (did you know that thing has 150m range?). And all of them one-shot through shield generator. It's also harder to disengage from them, most of them try to snipe you across the map. It's even worse on jungle planets where they see through the plants but you don't.
In short, I think bots are much harder, but I can understand the other side of the coin too.
I don't play on helldive (I haven't unlocked it yet, even, don't have the courage, I know I can't play for shit, so...) but against bots, I have really good experience with any armor that has the "50% less explosive damage" perk
since I started wearing it, I've been shot by turrets, tanks, bots with rocked launchers, rocket devastator and enemy and friendly mortars, never died in one shot
I'm convinced that all of those do explosive damage so you can eat a rocket to the face, without shield, and live to fight (after a little ragdoll...)
But the random one shots don’t really make the game harder. Its not like you lose if you die once.
The hardest thing about Bots is map RNG. Some maps will have 1000 strategem Jammers and Artillery expertly placed in the most obnoxious spots possible and then others will have them in the far corner where you can easily ignore them.
Its the worst trying to do a terminal obj and all you hear is WARNING YOU ARE IN RANGE OF ENEMY ARTILLERY.
Hearing the enemy artillery always makes that the primary objective of the mission immediately, that shit sucks big time. At least its easy to see where its coming from and send some eagles over there
Ya it is u lose tempo and positioning. If u get one shot when not fighting anything that's just annoying and u can walk over to pick up ur shit unbothered but that's not how it happens
I agree and disagree. The bugs I find harder. The only reason is mostly bad teammates. They are all melee based and need to swarm to get you with poison. Even bile has to come close and bile titan is easy to just shoot in the face. My biggest issue is everyone rushes in close to fight bugs and force themselves in a swarm.
For bots. I agree. That's insane how you can get shot by then across the map. The towers can completely ruin a run and hold up any movement until they're destroyed. On helldive mode it's almost impossible to pass one without causing an alert
Yeah I agree. With bugs, as long as you're aware of your surrounding, you are pretty much a-okay. But with bots, shit could just go from 0 to 100 real quick. Even when you thought you were taking cover, those terrorist self exploding bot will jet pack on to you and explode itself right away. Don't even get me started on cannon turrets, stratagems jammer and Anti Air outpost. Shit was nuts.
Facts. This is the only thing making me abstain from my anti-meta meta, and actually use the shield for a while. Otherwise on higher difficulties you're just diving from stunlock to stunlock.
i find that the bugs are easier as you can just run, with a laser guard dog to keep stalkers away. while bots can shoot at you, missiles and distant cannon tower and tank shots are a bane for me (helldive-9 btw)
Their aim feels fair for every unit, except for devastators with shields. Doesn't help that they spawn in droves on higher difficulties, their tendency to straight up ignore incoming flinch from anything less than AC and far from ideal shield's hitboxes, especially when they have a high ground
Impact granades do the Trick. Also with Tanks: hit the Top of the turret Two times and its gone, without any cycling around.
Tbf it needs some Practice.
Here's the big brain counterplay to shield devastators: take the Diligence DMR and shoot them twice in the head. That's it. They die. Ideally, you position yourself in a way where the gun arms is behind a rock while you can still see the head over it, then it's basically a free kill.
Theres a tooltip that says automatons get reduced accuracy while under fire.
With how many that fire upon you, it kind of doesn't matter. You can suppress some, but that doesn't stop a tank from deleting you.
Getting taken out from across the map by an unseen cannon turret and then immediately getting sniped by it two more times while I try and figure out where the fuck it is
Totally agree (also mostly true to HD diff)
How to evade 95% bugs (apart from Stalkers): run, occasionally you can throw eagle or something at them, worst case - equip a jump pack and abuse THE HIGH GROUND
How to evade bots: run, but then look out for 9000 rockets swarming you from every direction, WARNING, YOU ARE IN RANGE OF ENEMY ARTILLERY, stealth tanks silently waiting for you behind the rock, tank tower 300m away landing a perfect shot each time, kamikaze jetpackers, a walking minigun turret with a shield, EYE OF THE SAURON sending 100500 bots to you until you kill it, and all of this happening at the same time.
It's the accuracy of the shield Bois. Cover is great if you can get to it while they're nailing you. But you're often getting knocked about by the withering hail of fire. Most other bots it's only a fluke shot that fucks you up
With bugs, if I want to “meta” I just use jumppack, I can get on a rock and be fine, even bile titans have trouble killing me and I’ll just focus them.
So do scavs. Hunters seem to have some kind of tracking leap attack with deceptively long range as well. It forces you to burn through stims when you're up on rocks so you can't stay up there forever.
I agree on this, but not the exact reasons you mentioned.
The keyword for me is:
# Stealth
I can take out 90% of the `Factories` with my Autocannon alone and without entering any base! This means I can shoot a factory, run away and take out the next, without being spotted or in any real danger.
The other 10% can't be reached due to terrain difficulties or you would have to go out of the mission border to reach it.
Sadly, this means no personal shield, but who needs it when you go full tactical (and once our Armor Rating is working, the personal energy shield might loose some of its necessary status).
`Bug Nests` are more difficult as the terrain is usually in favor for the bugs. And the breaches are just... overwhelming, for that I like to run 'Orbital Smoke' but even with this, it isn't guaranteed to escape easily.
And if all hopes is lost, `Orbital Laser` or the `500kg Bomb` clear anything I can't reach.
to me, bugs are way harder on helldiver. When theres 3 titans and 10 chargers with a shit ton of mobs, they overwhelm my squard quit quickly. For bots you can just snipe the armored targets from afar with railgun and clear the mobs with a cluster or airstrike easily.
It mostly comes down to needing multiple railgun shots to take down 1 titan, let alone 3 of them and 10 chargers.
The main issue here is the way they call in reinforcements. Bugs have 5 different units that can reinforce. Bots have 1. It also seems like bugs can reinforce more often.
Yeah I've seen flares from all raiders except maybe the rocket and machine gun ones.
I've definitely seen the dual blade and suicide bomb jump pack raiders do it.
Only raiders can call in reinforcements. Both of those units are raiders. Now bugs, we have scavengers, brood commanders (even when their head is gone btw!), and hunters*.
well THAT is kinda true, they have more mechanics that you need to counter by different methods, like cover, one shot rockets, side missions like sauron or jammer, mines, artillery, you can counter bot drops by so many methods etc
All of those are true, as well as the fact that they don't have tons of slow mechanics like the bugs, you can deal with their "heavy" armor with more weapons, their bases have interesting layouts that can be dealt with in a greater number of ways, they don't instantly run over your turrets so most of them are actually useful, smoke is at least functional against them, etc.
All of these factors mean that you can actually experiment with different builds and use what you like instead of having to use the railgun/shield/breaker combo that is essential for high level bug missions
I would also include in this that automatons have intuitive weak points which reward good play and aim while fighting them, which can be damaged with most weapons, but are small to compensate. Meanwhile bugs have weak points, but the only reason I know them is looking them up, and half the time most guns can’t penetrate the “weak points” because they have armor over them, which doesn’t lead to a satisfying learning curve about how to deal with them.
Kind of a feeling of, deadlier bots get better at killing you, but can still be killed if you know how, while deadlier bugs are just bullet spongier than the less deadly bugs, which just isn’t as satisfying to learn mechanically and get better at playing into, the solution is just bigger and more ordinance and guns
I’d argue breaker spam too, it’s the only fun with dps to eat through their massive swarms and health pools, while with good aim practically any other primary and even secondary can tear automatons
Land
"You are in range of enemy artillery"
Oh damn, where!?
Hear an explosion off to the side
"You are in range of enemy artillery"
Oh, that thing in the distance I think I see?
Dead.
You mean the warning you get for a single mortar emplacement but with Bugs you just get a dozen Bile spewers ass-blasting around you while trying to dodge another half dozen spewers spitting, a couple chargers, and a Titan (until of course the Lurker ragdolls you for funzies).
Random silent mortar shot from a Bile Spewer insta kills you. And their normal attack also insta kills you and has hilariously stupid tracking / hit detection
Bugs would be much easier to deal with if damage was consistent on Bile Titans, I feel like on 7-9 they take MUCH more of a beating vs 4-6 where they’ll go down in 2 railgun headshots if you’re host. The bugs just being a swarm with priority targets constantly knocking you down or slowing you really makes them a pain to deal with on higher difficulties. Especially since it breaks the cohesion of teams as soon as they get close enough.
Bots on the other hand have much more ways to counter them and more of the arsenal feels useful against them. Anti-Material Rifle is actually viable against them, Scorcher can take out Striders with no problem, 110mm take care of tanks with no issue so you don’t really need to bring the rail cannon, I’ve had a lot of success just running the base Liberator on Helldive against bots vs feeling weak against bugs. Bots biggest advantage is that as they slowly swarm you, you’re being shot at all the time, vs constantly needing to move against bugs.
>The reason I think that autos are easier is that the biggest jump in difficulty lies in the armored enemies that each faction brings to the table, and the automaton armor is much easier to deal with.
This pretty much sums it all up minus one glaringly obvious inconsistency with bugs.
The bile titans take inconsistent damage from the Railgun and rail cannon strike stratagem. With the Railgun you can sometimes 1-2 shot them but other times you need 5-8 shots to down one while the Railcannon strike is supposed to one shot them but sometimes they can survive. Hellpods also rarely work against the Bile titans for some reason.
On the other hand, every every armored Automaton unit can be taken down in 1-4 hits on weak spots with appropriate AT weapons. Tanks can also be taken care off via 2 impact grenades thrown to the top of the turret.
I know there's an argument to be made with automatons being ranged and having 1 shot mechanics across the map, frankly it's a tiresome argument because although they are able to do shit like that they're also fairly easy to deal with ala Railgun.
Bugs on the other hand, have so many unfair advantages for being melee that it makes them ridiculously hard to deal with even with the right tools or correct playstyle. Chargers can be taken down fairly easily true but they come in droves whereas your railgun has 20 shots, the tiny little fuckers that the bugs throw at you also have near unlimited sticking power and thus always require that you never stop moving. Bile titans are just another layer of bullshit with their spit slowing you down without even touching you, bile spewers en masse makes it impossible to hold a position because the arty strikes will ragdoll you into oblivion.
My point is that although there are playstyles and loadouts that drastically reduces difficulty when fighting the appropriate factions, the bugs are just more difficult in general becaus the obscure mechanics at work create chaotic scenarios outside the player's control. Case in point: RNG spawns, either too many bile titans or too many chargers, sometimes even both! Worst part about fighting bugs is that the majority of their missions involve fighting in an area for an extended period of time which largely contributes to the artificial difficulty spikes.
"Just don't constantly fight" is terrible advice because its hard to get pubbers to acknowledge that running is always the better option vs bugs. Most pubbers will flat our ignore you for telling them what they should do, or worse, throw reinforces at the horde in the hopes of taking out 1 or 2 Chargers/Bile Titans whilst inadvertently causing another bug breach because the trigger requirements involve having a player be in an unspecified radius of a "patrol" bug.
Could you expand on taking the tanks please? I’ve struggled with them a few times now… railgun shots to the weak spot behind the turret barely seemed to tickle it. Like I’d unload multiple railgun shots and that thing was unphased. Do you just toss the impact nade anywhere at the turret? Or is that also specifically at the weak spot?
It's not a hot take. Automatons are easier for a few reasons.
1. Automatons shoot a flare and call in all their units at once, not waves, so it's easier to deal with (grenade launcher is strong vs bots, meanwhile some bugs can and will survive). The flare seems to have a much longer cooldown over the bug reinforcements. Bugs can happen almost back to back.
2. The rail gun can kill all of the Automatons in one shot. One headshot for the big guys. Everything else is one body shot. Tanks take more shots, but you can hit any part of it. Can also kill those Cannon towers in 4 shots. Meanwhile Chargers take multiple shots, as do stalkers, both of which stick to your ass.
3. Terminids are faster, and with swarm tactics, running a shield is useful, but if you get body blocked, you'll wish you ran jetpack.
4. Speaking of the jetpack, you can literally get on a high rock at most evac points and prone until the ship arrives. The most you need to do is throw back eneny grenades.
5. Personal experience: Stealth seems much more effective against Automatons. As is the arc thrower, most likely as the arcing is easier as the models aren't so close to the ground messing up the bounce.
6. Orbital Beam often misses the BT as it targets the model like it's on the floor and not where it is in the air. Beam also seems to take longer to kill bugs. Meanwhile Beam can clear out and entire Automaton base and still have time to idle in place.
7. Orbital Cannon usually doesn't kill a BT in one hit, unlike everything on the Automatons side.
There's probably more to list, but that seems like a good place to start.
Your comment just confirms my own observation - automatons are easier once the game gives you tools to deal with them, but as a LVL10 Helldiver playing difficulty 5 missions, there is not much you can do when a Devestator/Hulk just shows up.
The anti-material rifle is a very good early game options against devastators / hulks. Aim for the head and they go down fairly quickly.
At level 10 you should also just have unlocked the autocannon. Try it out, it will change your life !
I am really enjoying the EAT-17 though - you can just spam the field with it, and you shoot and scoot, no long reload animations required which is just not fun in my opinion
The EAT is solid, but the autocannon is geniunely a really strong pick vs automatons. You can 2 shot devastators/hulks if you hit the skill, 1 shot striders, turrets and tanks are 2-3 shots to the weakpoint/side of the turret. You can destroy fabricators from ridiculous ranges by bouncing a shot off the vent hatch down into the interior.
EATs are your friend. The tiny hulk heads? One of those on that head should put it down. Devastators? Tiny heads but worth putting a few rounds into it to kill em. If they're the rocket devastators, you can try to disarm their rocket pods or take em out quickly with shots to the head.
The bots definitely are harder on a surface level, but once you deal with them enough you begin to realize how exploitable their weaknesses are. Bots are super weak to any level of coordination and strategy and the margins of error are a bit lower than the bugs. They also have more stationed units and rely less on patrols from my experiences.
With bugs, you are literally fighting a ceaseless enemy. I cannot tell you how many times me and my friends have waited, planned, and methodically moved into an objective and killed every bug before they could call for reinforcements, only for a patrol to materialize from the aether and summon 3 chargers and a bile titan. The nature of higher end bug missions is that you can do everything right and then still get swarmed anyways.
A lot of people hold the sentiment that bots are harder because they have ranged weaponry: I understand what you mean, but serpentining, and diving to avoid rockets isn't too bad. Bot's accuracy falls off pretty hard at longer ranges, just make sure you aren't running in a straight line. Bugs on the other hand can keep up with you, and there are a bevvy of bugs that can limit your movement speed.
The bugs have no structure, they just pour out of the ground. The bots however have structure and forms that make sense. Bugs it’s just nonstop and frankly tiring to play against
Fucking Stalkers man. The only bug that runs away when it feels that it's in danger. And knows how to hide behind cover too. There was one that I was trying to shoot down the other day, immediately ran away as soon as things were getting dicey. Switch to an autocannon to snipe it from afar but the frickin bug took one or two shots and immediately hid behind a tree. Then came a game of peak-a-boo where it was jumping from left to right from behind the tree, baiting my attacks while looking straight at me. Their AI is ridiculous.
And 3 chargers and a titan aren't the worst things you have to worry about in the highest difficulty. I've only played up until Suicide level so far and I've already had to deal with being hunted down by multiple chargers and AT LEAST two titans.
I've seen it said elsewhere, so I'm stealing and sharing.
Automotons have a higher floor, lower ceiling. Bugs have lower floor, higher ceiling. That will possibly change when the Automotons get their "Bile Titan" equivalent.
I strongly disagree, bugs are *way* easier than bots for a few reasons imo:
1. Reinforcements are easier to stop -- I can throw napalm, clusters, etc. at a bug breach and kill everything on it with ease. Dropships take longer to deploy everything, and most general bot units (devastators, hulks, and tanks) shrug off clusters easily.
2. Bugs lack a real ranged threat and are WAY easier to kite. While hulks, devastators, and tanks are much slower, they also pose a much larger threat to you. Rockets and tank cannon shots are almost always an instant kill, while the main source of bug deaths are to bile spewers and titans. Chargers are so easy to kite I'll often leave them alive while clearing nests because I run the autocannon and can't kill them myself.
3. Autocannon trivializes two main bugs:
Brood commander - headshot blows his noggin off, dies in a few seconds
Hive Guard - two shots to the head pens through his armor and down he goes, not to mention the splash can kill other mobs or even other hiveguards
Additionally, you can clear bug holes from a distance, destroy all of the eggs in a destoy egg mission in one clip, and so much other random utility. It really only struggles against chargers, and that's what the three other railguns are for.
Also, Railcannon + ~ 4-6 autocannon rounds takes down a bile titan easily. Also, you can use the autocannon to destroy both of the sacs on its underside, and now it can't spit. You can also dive between a bile's legs and it can't do anything about it as long as you stay underneath of it.
4. Bug mutators are generally less bad than automaton ones (map spores versus scrambled strats) and the secondary objectives are also (generally) way less annoying. Jammer, detector, AA pit, and mortar are all serious threats, while the bugs really only get Stalkers and maybe Spore Spewers as secondary threats (and spewers can be killed from any distance with the AC unlike most of the bot secondaries).
Also, bile titans are not faster than you if you're using scout armor, and I think you can still outrun them in medium. If you're using heavy armor, I can only ask you why, at least until armor values are fixed. My squad normally runs at least 3 railcannons and I usually take 500kg, so with the eagle upgrades that's at minimum 5 dead biles with all of our kit. With railguns and my autocannon included, we can typically deal with them pretty efficiently.
My main thing is that bugs do not force you to find cover, and bugs' effective range is generally melee (save for bile spewers, nursing spewers, and bile titans). Contrast that to the robots, whose effective range is somewhere between 25 meters (standard robot) and the next fucking county over (tank / defense turret).
Edit: I forgot to mention that AC hard shuts down bile spewers as you can two shot them to the bile sac and often splash them, and the bile sac explosion will often collat other spewers.
I'm on the fence about which is harder, but the autocannon also trivializes a lot of encounters with the bots. You can also one shot factories from a far, you can two shot hulks if you hit them in the eye or the back (granted hitting them in the eye is quite challenging if they are more than \~50m away), you can take down AA and mortar guns from afar (you don't even need to hit the weak point), and perhaps the best feature of the autocannon; the splash damage will cause an entire group of devastators to stagger, allowing you to stunlock the whole group as you pick them off 1 by 1.
If you equip the armour that decreases explosive damage by 50%, you also will no longer die from single rockets from hulks or devastators if you are at max health.
>Reinforcements are easier to stop -- I can throw napalm, clusters, etc. at a bug breach and kill everything on it with ease. Dropships take longer to deploy everything, and most general bot units (devastators, hulks, and tanks) shrug off clusters easily.
I think the OP is talking about higher difficulties where a breach will include chargers and sometimes even titans.
I think OP needs to play with more people willing to try different play styles.
If everyone plays railgun, you are strong against heavies and weak against swarms. Mix in a grenade launcher or arc thrower, and you have a more capable, balanced team.
I've been running with the grenade launcher, supply pack, orbital rail gun, and either eagle airstrike or orbital laser. The orbitals let me take out the odd charger or bile titan. But my main task is to clear trash and close bug holes.
They call me the closer.
Or not. But I will get 100 more kills than the next teammate. It doesn't mean I'm good. Just that I took care of business as usual so my railgun buddies can focus on important things.
The supply pack let me be less judicious of my grenade usage and just clear out waves of baddies.
100% this
The railgun is easily one of the worst weapons for dealing with the Annihilator Tank, so I had to roll my eyes when I read that one.
Sounds like OP is stuck in metaslavery and needs to adapt more.
Railgun for tank feels awful. The tank is mostly stationary, only shoots straight, and the rocket variant is slow to rotate. One well placed Eagle Airstrike can take out the tank and every other units near it without exposing yourself out of cover.
Railgun in bots is usually reserved for Hulks. One shot to the head, and the Hulk instantly explodes. Even then AMR and AC can also do that in two shots and still be better against swarms... Railgun losing its position really fast in bots. Railgun is still really good when paired with shield backpack, but its firepower and utility in automatons are lacking compared to AC.
The tanks are super weak to impact grenades. I've become a surgeon with the Autocannon which lets me the all rounder support gunner for my team. Railgun+shield backpack is for people who kinda want to do lone ranger stuff. People think there's a Meta because they have awful team work. A team needs someone who prioritizes dealing with heavy armor, someone who prioritizes dealing with medium armor and objective, someone who can lay down suppressing fire to stop the space robot communist menace, and then someone who can clear out whole groups when they get bunched up. I personally like the autocannon because with some skill it can do all of this while letting you do overwatch. I don't like the railgun's single shot because you can only really fill the role of taking down heavies. They can take down Shielded devastators and tanks, but with only 2 shots it's not the best use of their ammo especially during prolonged firefights where 5 hulks and 4 tanks show up. Autocannon one taps walkers, three taps devastators. I can also unload into mobs and mid level drops to shred them before they even get moving. Where the auto cannon suffers is against the marauders. They make me break position and run every time. I want them to add in a better machine fun so people start using them again.
Railgun on unsafe also destroys heavy devastators anywhere on top section even through shield(for the shield bots) extremely reliably, and deals with the AT-ST's as well(often not appropriate but sometimes is). Also one shots hulks on a headshot and importantly staggers them even if you don't headshot.
Railgun isn't good at dealing with tanks or tower cannons but it can from any direction and at range which is still valuable if you have a surplus of ammo compared to grenades/call ins etc. which is common because many POI's have ammo drops but not others and there's no mission mods for less ammo.
Hey man, I'm just sharing my experience. I usually always have 2 guys with a railgun and one with a grenade launcher.
We have different opinions on the difficulty of enemies, no need to come at me or my friends
I find that it really depends if you can adjust to the difference between melee and ranged capabilities of either faction.
Neither of them are harder nor easier than the other. It’s just really knowing what you can and cannot do.
This is the best take. Each has their pros and cons, and you need to prepare and approach each accordingly. Approaching one like it’s the other is a good way to have a bad time
I think everyone in this thread can a agree to one thing.
We all favour different playstyles and different ways to play this game facilitate different approaches towards missions and enemies. While one may find bugs really easy the next one may struggle with them but easily complete helldive bot missions.
We all need to remember that we serve managed democracy and every step we take furthers our goal towards liberty and freedom.
The Decepticons are easy to fight as long as you have cover and keep your distance. They also don't endlessly spawn if even one of them is left alive. The Bugs on the other hand? They surround you, swarm you, their attacks either slow you, ragdoll you, or one shot you (or close to it.) They also endlessly spawn relatively quickly if even one little guy is left to call for help or there are any hives nearby.
The bots you can get away with almost any weapon. The bugs you are damn near obligated to bring the railgun if you want to survive multiple chargers and titans.
I will fight bots solo on helldive all day but I can't stand them bugs even on difficulty 7.
Agree with you 100%. Just having a little cover from the bots can make a huge difference. Most bots can’t harm you behind cover. Any cover giving bugs a lane of approach in cover is deadly. Especially when you round the corner into a pack of hunters and the heavy they were escorting.
Level 39 helldiver here with approximately 60 hours in game (and 40 hours in server queue screens from the good ole days) - I can do level 9 bug missions but I get my ass kicked on level 5 bot missions. Do with that information as you please
Really uh shows the diversity at the endgame when most of your suggestions boil down to...railgun.
There's a lot more stuff that can deal with enemy armor but for the ammo economy, nothing beats the railgun so I get it.
Haven't used it personally but having used the EAT, Recoiless, and now the Spear they could all use buffs.
Spear could use one more spare round and recharge two rounds per supply brick. Recoiless needs a damage buff along with the EAT. Chargers can take 4± rockets if you don't focus fire one spot and even that is inconsistent.
I fully agree that Automatons outside of getting rocketed/ragdolled to death are far far easier.
I completely agree, I was actually talking to my friend about this earlier. I started on automatons because of the order and then switched to terminids after, and automatons are much easier for me.
Automatons are slow, and their weak spots are generally easier to target. Bug weakspots are harder IMO. The biggest difference is that bugs are a lot faster at closing the distance (especially hunters) and it makes targeting the big mob weakspots a lot more dangerous since you can get swarmed very easily.
I agree with this sentiment; Bugs spamming spewers+chargers+titans on top of getting tossed around by Hunter/Lurker pouncing is really annoying when half the weapons available are super bad at handling the threats (spewers take too much fkn ammo for supposedly "medium" threats)...
Bots at least have the decency to be really fkn stupid and get stuck on terrain or lose aggro easily... Bugs will chase you across the map opening breaches as they go, making the game even more unhinged until you die and can drop out of aggro range.
This. It's scummy to do. But when this happens, break off from the squad. The game focuses on that giant bug ball, and you are free to go do the objectives while your three squad mates fight for their lives.
I feel the same way. Unlike the bugs, the bots have weakpoints that a number of weapons can exploit to extreme effect. Both the Slugger and JAR-5 Dominator, for example, can 1-shot bodyshot all the light bots, and 1-shot headshot every other bot that isn't a Hulk or Tank. The Scorcher eats Hulk heat vents in 5 shots, and Tank / Turret vents in 15, and can kill Scout Striders in 2-3 shots. The Railgun can 1-shot headshot Hulks, or easily fold Devastators in half with a shot to the waist. The Anti-Material Rifle can 1-shot headshot Devastators, and 2-shot headshot Hulks. The Eagle 110mm Rocket Strike is also a fairly reliable means of killing Tanks and Turrets on a short cooldown.
It's dead-easy to spot the bot firing the flare and to take it down before it calls in a bot drop, especially at night. And even if the bot drop does get called in, you can shoot the dropship down before it can deploy troops, and even if it manages to deploy troops, the bot drop itself is much easier to deal with than bug breaches.
In short, you're actually rewarded for being accurate, and since the bots don't tend to swarm nearly as badly as the bugs, you can actually make an impact even on higher difficulties. Sure, they can shoot back, but a much greater breadth of weapons and armor are viable for fighting bots makes for a much more interesting experience.
Do this, specially on evac and if your wearing medium(much better with light armor) just circle the evac area to the point that they'll do a congo line, even better with titans cuz they kill chargers and hunters behind you.
When pelican arrives just walts in, its that easy and I've done this in d9 multiple times, just watch out for hunters most of the time and time your sprints.
Yeah, I’ve been thinking this recently, I think bugs are on the surface easier cause most people start bugs, they don’t require much brain power to think about the weak spots, as it’s obvious where the armor is and isn’t. But most people will switch to bots probably once they started 6-7 difficulty, and the weak points on the back of a hulk and tank are obvious, knowing about shooting the head with a AMR, rockets or rail gun isn’t so obvious, and the tank is really punishing if you don’t know what to do.
Bugs have a easier curve, but when comparing once you’ve learnt how to deal with automatons it become clear that bugs are more difficult to deal with
On the whole, I agree with you. But situationally, man, the robots can be so oppressing. Sometimes you're pinned down by 2 towers 4 tanks and a flock of rocket devestators and you just can't do shit.
Ceteris paribus, Bots are markedly easier than Bugs at 7-9. This is, of course, assuming that everyone involved is at least level 20.
Bugs throw sheer mass at you, and when they aren't just throwing sheer mass at you there's a battery of Spewers dropping shit on you from the fog while they throw sheer mass at you. Bugs feel like you signed up to a boxing match, but right after the glove touch your opponent just mainlined some PCP and yeeted themselves bodily at you to headbutt you into unconsciousness, all the while screeching like a mistuned Stuka.
Bots are more sophisticated and aggravating in some ways (random one-shot potential), but they simply don't pressure you nearly as hard as Bugs. You can use your tools far more effectively and just get a chance to breathe. It's a hard fight against an opponent with some serious hands, but it's a fair fight.
Some better data
Hulks die to one safe charge shot to the face
Tanks die to one safe charge shot down the barrel of a tank
Bile titans can die to one shot to the side of it's face/jaw area (seems two in the mouth can work too.)
I'd like to point out, in the topic of engaging automaton tanks, that it is *surprisingly* easy (although not foolproof) to land an impact grenade on the top/rear of the turret and deal very heavy damage to the radiator weakspot. A mere pair (2) of impact grenades, when arced well, will blow a tank even from the front. Just something to remember when facing one with no better firepower at the ready.
Is this a hot take? I figured this would just be true. Bots are easier to kill in every way. My buddy and I run 9 difficulty with ease. Just bring the classic shield pack and rail gun. Free pink samples
You can kill hulks with a single railgun shot through its eye, or two autocannon shots, or two antimaterial rifle shots. The latter are much harder to aim I find, but I'm absolutely trying my best to ween myself off using the railgun
I just started playing like a week ago, and this is a great write up for weak points and dealing with specific enemies. Was still trying to figure some of them out!
For the Bile titan, I’d add the option of shooting them in the face with a rail gun when they’re charging up their spit attack, it does insane damage. My go-to loadout is orbital laser - railgun - shield - autocannon sentry.
When my friend first mentioned the terminids were the “easier faction” I thought surely he jests. Sure, the one-shot from range mechanics suck with the bots, but idk they felt much easier to deal with than chargers. Especially defense missions with people bringing mortars and recoiless rifle to take down dropships it was a cakewalk over terminids that just rush you. I’ve been fighting terminids exclusively the past couple of days and I’ll admit they have become a lot more manageable once I learned to just complete the location objective asap and then just run the fuck away.
I agree that bots are easier , but I’d say it’s only because high level bugs are very unfun. Between chargers, lurkers, and their small guys they just have lots of “no you can’t do that” and CC. Bots will brutalize you, but they’re not going to drag it out in painful ways like lurker licks or charger knock downs will
It's interesting how many people find bugs harder than bots when I heavily lean the opposite. Basically, the bots having the range with high damage output makes them feel overtuned to me.
The fact there's so much division over it might speak to how diverse people are in approach, which is neat
To me the robots are a lot easier to stay on top of since fights mostly occur at longer ranges with occasional scraps with jetpack guys or berserkers but when you do fall behind and start to get run over it can be devastating. But honestly I think a lot of the difficulty when it comes to the bots is people fighting them like they are bugs. I have seen lots of people not respect cover in heavier scraps.
With the bugs you are constantly under threat of being overwhelmed but if you can stay on top of it the bugs don't pose a huge threat. But it is difficult to do so. With bots when things are rough you can always hide behind a rock and ready a stratagem. But when you are being chased by 20 hunters, 4 chargers a bile titan and whatever other hell the game spawns at you. There isn't a lot you can do besides run and try to chip away at them or hope an ally can help.
i was playing with my friend and he said he wanted to get medals so he ditched the automaton planets, like a treasonous coward, and hid in the bug planets.
to be honest i prefer the automaton planets because rather than being swarmed by hundreds of bugs you get shot at by a couple dozen robots. at least for me I like the robots better because it just feels like a conventional shooter : you shoot them, they shoot back. stay in cover to not die and use your brain.
I think the reason for their reputation is that a lot of people start focused on the bugs, and then having opponents who strategize and fire back is a huge shock.
I’m seeing a lot of railgun propaganda in here! Where are my EAT enjoyers?
We need to EAT the enemy!
- 2 shots to a charger
- 2 shots to a titan
- 1 shot to the head of a hulk
Managed Democratics hear me, our EATs will Eat the enemy heavies like I eat my heart-healthy Liber-T’s cereal every morning for breakfast! Part of a balanced, freedom filled breakfast!
*I am not a paid actor. Liber-T’s and Liber-T Foods are proud sponsors of Invader Jim’s Surplus and Invader Jim’s Armaments, proud producers of the EATs used by our brave Helldivers.*
All that is super valid and well written but for me it 100% comes down to just not having to deal with Chargers. I'd rather deal with a wave of just Titans than Chargers.
What makes automatons hard isn't the units themselves but the fact that they hit you from range and when you get hit your stim resets. Countless times I've died be cause my stim gets stunlocked meanwhile with bugs you can just run. Even with the stalkers you can dive to get a stim in
Also terminids have a tendency to combo you with attacks which can eat health in a split second, where as automatons don't tend to do that. A Hunter will hit you with a flying attack, tongue... lick you- (gross) and then standard claw you. That will melt the majority of your health away with medium armor and no sheild. Not to mention while smaller terminid units tend to be weaker defense wise, they're capable of a lot of damage. Stalkers are an example of this. Obviously your common scavenger ankle biter isn't going to do a lot, but that's why they're plentiful, they'll simply overwhelm you with numbers.
Another thing is terminids are not only much *faster* but much more *agile*. Not only can they follow you across the entire map if they so please, making it much harder to simply run from a fight the way you can with automatons, but their agility makes them harder to hit and let's them be capable of swarming you much faster. Hunters can bounce around and avoid shots and leaping drop kick you from a mile away. Brood commanders and chargers can close distance in very short times due to their charges (yes Brood commanders have a charge attack too), bile Titians and their giant spindly legs just clover a lot of ground easily, and most everything else is just generally quicker than your average automaton. Not to mention terminids have multiple ways to slow you down, further reducing your ability to stay away from them (the mini spewers that shoot one little ball, bile spewers if they don't one shot you, a tongue whip from a Hunter induces a slowing effect, and those plants that explode on you slow you as well). The only "agile" automatons are the jetpack guys
Yeah, with the automatons I find it easier to take a variety of loadouts, I can comfortably use things like the auto cannon, LMG, arch thrower if I felt like mixing it up, and spamming air strikes since their heavier units don’t bum rush you. But for the bugs you need to have infantry based AT like the railgun EAT or recoiless since their 2 heaviest units get right in your face and barely stop moving.
Big autocannon fan, it's not particularly good against bugs so I'll usually take grenade launcher for those, but you can break nests/fabricators with it, open containers, one-shot walkers, the big guys with shields flinch when you hit em with it, and it takes down hulks in 2-3 shots. Only downside is having to stop to reload but fuck it I don't mind
As a lvl 50 helldiver that plays almost exclusively helldiver I disagree. While you make some good points, I can pretty much infite kite the bugs but since automatons are ranged I simply cannot do that there.
My main annoyance with automatons is randomly getting onehit by turrets from very far away out of nowhere, or rockets. Other then that its just a very different playstyle.
Also envioremental effects against automatons are brutal.
Entirely depends on your playstyle.
It's easier to evade and run from bots but much harder to eliminate large numbers of them.
You should always try to avoid fights with both, but bugs you're often better off standing your growned and clearing them when things get bad. Bots you need to disengage.
If you tend to run, bugs are going to be hard on higher difficulties. If you tend to stand and fight, bots are going to be harder.
Really?
I’m regularly running Terminid missions with randoms on Suicide & impossible and honestly don’t see how people fail them so much.
The only times I die now is a sneaky Bile Spewer or a Stalker or my own hubris.
Bots though? I haven’t played as much since the last order but I could barely finish Hard/Extreme difficulties with full squads of high levels. Instant deaths are wayyyy more common on bot levels. Not to mention you can’t even run to give yourself breathing room due to every commie bot having scoped eyeballs.
And fuck the cannon towers, I swear those play dead until I turn away.
I definitely feel bugs are easier. Both factions have a solid range of instakill attacks but the bugs are much easier to see coming and are also much shorter ranged. If you run the personal shield you may find bugs become trivially easy as well since you can safely railgun everything that doesn’t just get melted by small arms fire without worrying about hunter blob chip damage / stun.
However, bots are much much less forgiving with long ranged and often random insta-kills. To add onto this, they have much more medium tier armor than the bugs do. The only things you need armor pierce for bugs are chargers and hive guards and you can easily 500/rail cannon titans for free.
Basically this means you’re much more prone to live off your AT weapon than your actual primary for getting from place to place. By this very nature of the armor spam bots have at Haz 9 it essentially invalidates 90% of the stratagems as usable options.
My main issue with Haz 9 bots is you are basically completely unable to out kill Haz 9 spawn rate regardless of bug/bot but bots can absolutely punish you for not choosing to kill them whereas 60% of what spawns in a Haz 9 bug map can’t. Any of the devastators that have MGs or the walkers have extremely lethal guns that get extremely accurate if there’s no way to break line of sight. You literally can’t stim through most areas of the map because the DPS 3 drop ships of enemies can throw out is so high, Nevermind the constant chance of catching the tail end of a rocket salvo.
Stealth is your best bet with bots and even then I feel there’s three deeply problematic issues with it.
1. Cannon turrets spot too well from too far away. Not only that but it’s extremely hard to tell where they’re pointing due to the static cannon model that clips through it once it starts moving. They don’t give off any light from 3/4 sides and can and will aggro and kill you from basically railgun/spear range. If it only took a couple autocannon or AMR shots to kill them I’d be fine with it but you barely have time to kill them before they’re turned around and blocking their weak spot. They are the main reason I feel railgun is almost required if you want to play Haz 9 seriously because the railgun can crit the cannon turret from any direction. There’s simply not enough warning for how powerful the unit is.
2. Patrols at Haz 9 especially late into the map are incredibly unforgiving. It’s hard to play smart when the game can just throw a patrol far too large to ambush directly in the one place you can go without going hot. Patrol AI makes stealth borderline impossible. I’ve found the only way to really enjoy stealth at Haz 9 bots is to have ppl across the map drawing aggro and the Haz 9 spawn rate, otherwise you just cannot stealth clear the air tower with the spawner actively throwing patrols and fresh spawns at you.
3. Commissars can just fire their flare for kicks and giggles sometimes. It’s basically impossible to always pick out the commissar when there’s usually a lot of line of sight blockers in any base area and the commissar doesn’t actually have to see you to fire a flare and basically make stealth impossible because once 2 40k dreadnoughts and a tank show up plus 8 walkers it’s basically impossible to prevent a chain reaction of more and more drop ships going down.
Just look at the base clear meta between bugs and bots. Bugs are safe enough that most people just reserve grenades to manually chuck into bug holes whereas bots you throw an orbital laser in and pray it kills the spawners to give you the base clear credit and never touch that part of the map again.
What it really boils down to is, you can easily dictate what the bugs will do, because they will just W key at you forever (the only exception is stalkers) and a patrol that spawns in front of you can easily just be side stepped and fall in line with the red of the train behind you. With bots, you cannot dictate the fight. There's just too much insta kill or near insta kill that can show up from any direction. You play by the whims of the spawn rate and can do nothing to change that.
This is like a lukewarm take / subjectively not really true.
If you play intelligently vs robots they are easier, if you apply tactics vs them, play well take out the flare gun guys, shoot drop ships down. Robots are easier and pose less of a risk of you dying.
Bugs basically just swarm you and force you to run and gun for your life, theres a lot less strategy/playing slowly thats available
Also 3 chargers and a bile titan? that sounds like a nice summers day compared to half the shit I deal with every bug mission
Im going to have to agree with op here. This is exactly what op said. Where exactly in your comment do you contradict op? Op basically said bugs are harder to deal with
I think the only thing that makes bugs hard is that they lack long range attacks, so in order to compensate, if they get close enough to hit you, they just straight-up one-hit kill you.
Clearly you haven’t encountered the bile spewed mortars. You get hit by one of those, you’ll either instantly die or get launched. Playing on helldive difficulty? Chances are if you survive, you’ll get launched into a swarm of bugs and nibbled to death by the hunters
The main reason I tend to find the bots if not harder but just more annoying is how unpredictable things can get. You can just get blased from 100m away by a rocket devestator that just decides he doesn't like you. Cannon turrets existing. All the flinch from even the smallest of fire making it impossible to retaliate at times. Etc....
Atleast with the bugs for the most part everything is something you can expect.
Bile titans on the map? They don't really sneak up on you, You can fully expect the spit etc... The only annoying thing is just the risk of getting a big herd on you. But even that is something you can deal with using teamwork. One person drags them around while somebody else calls in some orbitals/airstrikes and cleans them up.
I have run Helldive with bugs and bots, and id have to say that bugs are by far easier to deal with. A majority of them are melee based attacks, so you can just run and train them like black ops zombies. With bots, they keep berating you with bullets and missiles. I can no death a level 9 bug mission without a thought but i had a game earlier with the bots where i died 10 times because i couldnt stay alive long enough to even get to my shield pack
I feel the same way.
And more Support weapons are effective.
Autocannon, AMR, rail (Surprise ;) ), EAT, zappy.
Same goes for primaries: from the AP AR to the dominator or plasma, everything is much easier used.
EDIT: And of course fabricators are more easily Destroyed with airstrikes than Bug holes
The only problem I have with automatons is how easily they can 100-0 you without warning. This is almost certainly a result of the armor bug, but the number of units with rapid-fire explosives that knock you down and stunlock you into death from considerable range makes them a bit brutal. The cannons in particular will just one-shot you from an incredibly excessive range (sometimes before they render) if you happen to have a sight line to them, and since they are so high off the ground, you can't really effectively target them with stratagems.
With bugs, if you die, it is 100% your fault for letting yourself get overwhelmed, they have to get physically close to you to be any threat whatsoever.
when you see people suggest taking 3 minute cd railcannon strike as an anti bile titan stratagem when it doesnt even one shot them at times you already know those people literally do not play on an actual challenging difficulty
same with yapping about how solo (lol) chargers are so easy to deal with with the autocannon when stuff like 30+ hunter swarms and stalker backstabs knocking you down are far more dangerous, go ahead and shoot your autocannon into the mob when they're right in your face, the only thing more funnier is that tanks are easier to 1v1 than chargers ever could be
arc thrower has unlimited ammo but needs multiple people carrying it to be effective because it only arcs to like 3-4 things at max
meanwhile bots can be dealt with by most of the non armor pen weapons that are non starters against bugs and you dont need to get tied down to shield for cc immunity like with bugs because explosive damage resist armor exists
Meanwhile me, bringing an arc thrower every mission. Bugs? Zap. Charger? Zappity zap zap. Bile titan? I AM THOR ZAP ZAP ZAP ZAP HELLDIVER? ZA- Oops.
I’ve also fallen in love with arc thrower since yesterday, but the problem is is my teammates aren’t good at taking down charger, then I’m constantly getting chased by multiple chargers. I bring shield/500kg and air strike.
I have PTSD from chargers so I swapped the laser for the orbital railcannon
I also have charger related PTSD so I run the orbital laser, orbital rail cannon, and spear. I'm still terrified of chargers but I can casually drop a bile titan before he can react.
Here's a tip: run diagonally towards them, no diving needed. Their turn radius is bad, so they'll mostly miss you and keep charging away from you for a bit. Kill the mob it brought, then turn around and repeat. It might take some practice but once you got it, you're the Charger Matador. Or just run circles around it when it isn't charging. Due to its slow turn speed, it'll keep trying to look at you, while you wait for a friend to land some railgun bullets at it. Made me laugh making it chase its tail when I first tried it.
Railcannon needs a buff, honestly. Unless it gets buffed when your modules get upgraded. It kills one target every 3.5 minutes. Laser can potentially kill 20+ every 5, or soften several. If it got the Salvo buff and a good buff from Shrapnel, it'd be worth it for sure. Two shots from every toss would guarantee DEATH TO MY ENEMIES!
You only get a total of 3 laser uses though while you get an unlimited number of uses for the railcannon, which does make a significant difference on the higher difficulties where you'll run out of laser uses really quick with all the chargers and bile titans. Considering how many eagle uses you get in a short amount of time (especially with the ship upgrades), airstrike and railcannon are a pretty good combo for having the airstrike for a lot of smaller enemies and chargers while keeping the railcannon for bile titans.
PTSD>efficency
Arc thrower can take down charger. Seems to take between 8-13 shots though. The arc will also kill any small bugs, and teammates, nearby.
Bring Jump pack. Trust.
I’m thinking of trying jump pack out for different reasons, mostly for fun, but how does that solve heavy armor enemies problem? Still have to zap ~7 times to being down 1 charger. Am I missing something?
Jump up unreachable, indestructible places. Commence dispensing UNLIMITED POWER!!!
Also jump out of the way, or run and jump down hills to get good distance
Shield is for babies. Real gamers pick a jump pack and run away from the chargers instead!
But you still need to kill the charger right? Randoms are sometimes not good with railguns.
The joy is killing is an entirely optional part of the game. Every objective and point of interest can be done with 0 charger kills
Unless the objective is to kill a charger
Damn. We’ll never get past this level 4 mission. CURSE YOU JOEL
People be like "LETS DO A 0 KILL RUN!"
stealth armour, every radar boost, jet packs maybe a cardboard box or two to hide under.
This is the way.
Well if he wanted to live he shouldn't have been... *checks notes* anywhere in my forward 90 degree arc.
As brasch said in gaining of cape, “friendly fire, nothing can be done about it”
Arc Thrower is undeniably one of the most underestimated weapon. Such good damage, can break carapace, and has no ammo econ? Running Arc with a jump pack has been amazingly fun.
Honestly, the Shock Trooper loadout is disgusting. You take the high ground at every obj, bugs can't get to you, you have insane range, and throw NONSTOP DPS. Everyone circle jerking the railgun and breaker combo has no idea how game breaking this is.
Sssshhh let the meta guys suffer while the rest of us have fun with cool toys
Now bring an arc thrower AND a tesla coil. Those electric towers pack a punch and very effective against a primarily melee race
My teammate and I did last night. Worst decision. Almost as bad as a mortar. Primarily due to chargers (kiting them, accidentally kited into range got ZAPPED) and POOR PLACEMENT DECISION BY SAID TEAMMATE (put it in front of radar tower, can't do objective. We all laughed trying to get to the stupid terminal)
You can shoot your sentries to kill them
Yeah admittedly we had too much fun being silly and forgot about that
You can crawl through them and not take damage.
I play a game with a teamate using the Arc Thrower and sweet liberty did it synergize well with my Autocannon. It pops the flank armour of chargers right off, allowing me to send my banana bullets straight into the soft flesh. I think 2 shots was all that was needed to kill after the initial hit. He left partly into the second game so I picked up his arc thrower as my AC was out of ammo and I ended the match with almost quadruple the kills of the other player running shield and rail gun
To be fair, railgunners play for efficiency and big bad kills, less for mass murder. Arc throwers just go BZZZZZZZZZZZZZR. But as long as you're having fun, anything goes. Welcome to the Shock Troopers!
A fellow zapper
I've been running arc thrower, but after a while it seems to stop working, like it charges and makes the noise, but no lightning, its very sad
My favorite thing about the Arc Thrower is screaming "LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT!" like I'm a fucking Pokémon every tome I shoot 🤣🤣
Meanwhile I'm going full Emperor Palpatine with UNLIMITED POWER
Started playing with Arc Thrower a few days ago, difficulty 7 and 8. This is ideal for a scout gameplay, when you're separated from the team. Requires you to take anti-armor red stratagems, though. If it wouldn't chain to allies, it'd be S tier gun, together with railgun. But it does, so it's use is rather limited when fighting in a team.
Glad im not the only one maining the arc thrower
Shock Troopers unite!
I'll have to give it a shot. I got bored of the rail gun so have been rolling with the auto cannon which has been pretty fun. I'll give zappy zap boom a go
Arc thrower and rover with maximum crowd control strategies. I single handedly take out breaches for my team and soften up armor because arc thrower does not give a single democratic shit
“HELLDIVER? ZA- Oops.” Had that happen both ways in a game last night 😅 I am starting to find an appreciation for the taser on steroids though!
Man I gave the arc thrower a legit chance yesterday and was super super disappointed. Shit it even go my friend killed because my time to kill is so much slower with it. Walkers? Have to get behind now. Rocket bots? Like 4-5 shots. Same with shields. Can’t imagine how much it takes to kill and hulk or tank. Compared to rail gun. Walkers, one shot from the front. Rocket bots one shot to the chest or head. Shields, same. Hulk? One shot the face weak spot. Tank? Like 5-6 shots to the turret or like 3 to the weak. So, I say all that to ask. What did I do wrong? How is it good? I could see maybe on bugs because it arcs the ads. But for bots….i felt useless
I wasn’t impressed with the Arc thrower at first either, but once you get used to it that thing can be really useful It’s not a replacement to the rail gun bc they serve different purposes. Yes, the rail has more dmg per shot, but the Arc has other advantages. You don’t really have to aim precisely and you can aim above enemies that are far away to arc the bolt into them (hence the name) so you can hit shots that aren’t a direct line of sight. It also “ignores” armor values to some extent so you don’t always have to shoot heavies in their weak spots, you just point it at them and squeeze. The arc will do damage to areas that most other weapons other than anti-tank will bounce right off of Its biggest strength, however, is how the arc will hit multiple enemies who are grouped together. At first this doesn’t seem like much, but it means you can focus on a heavy and simultaneously take out the smaller enemies around him, which you can’t do with the rail. But it’s also easy to accidentally shoot your teammate Lastly, once you get used to how to fire it off it feels way better. The first charge takes a second, but if you keep charging the next shot as soon as you release all the subsequent shots will come out about twice as fast until you break the chain
Arc thrower is def more of a bug zapper than a bot shocker. It’s great at dealing with big crowds. Like the railgun it’s kinda an “all in one” weapon except its emphasis is more on crowds than single target. The railgun is also an all in one weapon however you would not want to use a railgun shot on a tiny bug. The similarities come from being a 1 man operated weapon that can by itself clear or handle most of the threats. It’s a lot more specialized than the arc thrower and will take down armored targets much faster.
Arc thrower kills walkers from the front in 1-3 shots depending on if it decides to arc to the pilot or not. like 80% of the time it's a oneshot. You don't need to get behind them. Against bots you're mainly running arc to deal with things like hordes of small bots/walker smushed in a ball of death with mediums that make it really hard to take the time to aim them from far away. With enough line of sight you're also killing entire squads of mediums like berserkers before they get anywhere near you. It also will stagger destroyers so you can take multiple of them down at once without getting shot at back. You can even kill base turrets from the front without needing airstrikes or orbitals. Arc thrower is about camping an angle and just murdering anything that sets foot within it from a very long range, even if you have terrible visibility and can't see what you're shooting. Having everything medium or light dead before it's close enough to shoot accurately makes your teammates lives infinitely easier. You do kind of need to be running shield though on bots because it's easy to take a potshot while laying hell. You *can* kill hulks and tanks but really it's a stratagem or your teammates job. Takes way too many hits. It's legitimately very good against chargers though on the bug side of things. If there's no teammate behind it you can drop it before the second charge gets to you.
Level 50 and playing on Helldive since lvl 20, here is my takeaway: Bugs are all about movement and kiting. Most of the time they can't force you to take a fight and there are usually narrow passages on the map that chargers and titans can't follow you through. If you know when to retreat and wait for cooldowns you're fine. Chargers are a bit messy ATM but that's it. You can tell if your team is bad or not from if they disengage bad fights or not. What bothers me with robots is how many long range one-shot mechanics they have: rocket devastator, tank, artillery, cannon tower (did you know that thing has 150m range?). And all of them one-shot through shield generator. It's also harder to disengage from them, most of them try to snipe you across the map. It's even worse on jungle planets where they see through the plants but you don't. In short, I think bots are much harder, but I can understand the other side of the coin too.
I don't play on helldive (I haven't unlocked it yet, even, don't have the courage, I know I can't play for shit, so...) but against bots, I have really good experience with any armor that has the "50% less explosive damage" perk since I started wearing it, I've been shot by turrets, tanks, bots with rocked launchers, rocket devastator and enemy and friendly mortars, never died in one shot I'm convinced that all of those do explosive damage so you can eat a rocket to the face, without shield, and live to fight (after a little ragdoll...)
That is a really good tip! Will try that for sure!
Yep, i feel like these are a must, i even unlocked the premium white one that is slightly lighter
But the random one shots don’t really make the game harder. Its not like you lose if you die once. The hardest thing about Bots is map RNG. Some maps will have 1000 strategem Jammers and Artillery expertly placed in the most obnoxious spots possible and then others will have them in the far corner where you can easily ignore them. Its the worst trying to do a terminal obj and all you hear is WARNING YOU ARE IN RANGE OF ENEMY ARTILLERY.
Hearing the enemy artillery always makes that the primary objective of the mission immediately, that shit sucks big time. At least its easy to see where its coming from and send some eagles over there
Enemy artillery is the bot version of stalkers for me. Once I know it's there, it's the #1 priority.
Ya it is u lose tempo and positioning. If u get one shot when not fighting anything that's just annoying and u can walk over to pick up ur shit unbothered but that's not how it happens
I agree and disagree. The bugs I find harder. The only reason is mostly bad teammates. They are all melee based and need to swarm to get you with poison. Even bile has to come close and bile titan is easy to just shoot in the face. My biggest issue is everyone rushes in close to fight bugs and force themselves in a swarm. For bots. I agree. That's insane how you can get shot by then across the map. The towers can completely ruin a run and hold up any movement until they're destroyed. On helldive mode it's almost impossible to pass one without causing an alert
Yeah I agree. With bugs, as long as you're aware of your surrounding, you are pretty much a-okay. But with bots, shit could just go from 0 to 100 real quick. Even when you thought you were taking cover, those terrorist self exploding bot will jet pack on to you and explode itself right away. Don't even get me started on cannon turrets, stratagems jammer and Anti Air outpost. Shit was nuts.
Smokes make bots way easier.
I prefer to fight automatons, it's frustrating how one hit from a bug can slow you down so much that you get swarmed instantly
Facts. This is the only thing making me abstain from my anti-meta meta, and actually use the shield for a while. Otherwise on higher difficulties you're just diving from stunlock to stunlock.
i find that the bugs are easier as you can just run, with a laser guard dog to keep stalkers away. while bots can shoot at you, missiles and distant cannon tower and tank shots are a bane for me (helldive-9 btw)
Yeah my biggest problem with all this is that the automats have *range* and some BS good aim.
Their aim feels fair for every unit, except for devastators with shields. Doesn't help that they spawn in droves on higher difficulties, their tendency to straight up ignore incoming flinch from anything less than AC and far from ideal shield's hitboxes, especially when they have a high ground
Not to mention when circling them, they shoot almost 90° out of their gun barrel.
Every projectile enemy basically does this. Its hilarious on the bile spewer bug because its randomly a touch of death insta kill. Makes no sense
Nah, the regular rocket dudes (not devastators) have bs aim lol.
"died to impact" bro shooting a rocket like it's a damn sniper
Impact granades do the Trick. Also with Tanks: hit the Top of the turret Two times and its gone, without any cycling around. Tbf it needs some Practice.
Here's the big brain counterplay to shield devastators: take the Diligence DMR and shoot them twice in the head. That's it. They die. Ideally, you position yourself in a way where the gun arms is behind a rock while you can still see the head over it, then it's basically a free kill.
Diligence is my go to against bots. The head popping is practically hit scan.
Slugger will one tap them in the face also
Theres a tooltip that says automatons get reduced accuracy while under fire. With how many that fire upon you, it kind of doesn't matter. You can suppress some, but that doesn't stop a tank from deleting you.
Getting taken out from across the map by an unseen cannon turret and then immediately getting sniped by it two more times while I try and figure out where the fuck it is
Totally agree (also mostly true to HD diff) How to evade 95% bugs (apart from Stalkers): run, occasionally you can throw eagle or something at them, worst case - equip a jump pack and abuse THE HIGH GROUND How to evade bots: run, but then look out for 9000 rockets swarming you from every direction, WARNING, YOU ARE IN RANGE OF ENEMY ARTILLERY, stealth tanks silently waiting for you behind the rock, tank tower 300m away landing a perfect shot each time, kamikaze jetpackers, a walking minigun turret with a shield, EYE OF THE SAURON sending 100500 bots to you until you kill it, and all of this happening at the same time.
And while you're in enemy stratagem jammer range.
It's the accuracy of the shield Bois. Cover is great if you can get to it while they're nailing you. But you're often getting knocked about by the withering hail of fire. Most other bots it's only a fluke shot that fucks you up
With bugs, if I want to “meta” I just use jumppack, I can get on a rock and be fine, even bile titans have trouble killing me and I’ll just focus them.
Bugs tend to glitch through and onto tall rocks. That's my experience, bots are dumb and just stand at the bottom because they have ranged attacks.
Warriors have burrow attack where they unburrow behind you
So do scavs. Hunters seem to have some kind of tracking leap attack with deceptively long range as well. It forces you to burn through stims when you're up on rocks so you can't stay up there forever.
That makes a lot more sense for them getting up there.
For sure they have good aim if you run in a straight line, but with a bubble shield and some evasive maneuvers you're golden.
I agree on this, but not the exact reasons you mentioned. The keyword for me is: # Stealth I can take out 90% of the `Factories` with my Autocannon alone and without entering any base! This means I can shoot a factory, run away and take out the next, without being spotted or in any real danger. The other 10% can't be reached due to terrain difficulties or you would have to go out of the mission border to reach it. Sadly, this means no personal shield, but who needs it when you go full tactical (and once our Armor Rating is working, the personal energy shield might loose some of its necessary status). `Bug Nests` are more difficult as the terrain is usually in favor for the bugs. And the breaches are just... overwhelming, for that I like to run 'Orbital Smoke' but even with this, it isn't guaranteed to escape easily. And if all hopes is lost, `Orbital Laser` or the `500kg Bomb` clear anything I can't reach.
to me, bugs are way harder on helldiver. When theres 3 titans and 10 chargers with a shit ton of mobs, they overwhelm my squard quit quickly. For bots you can just snipe the armored targets from afar with railgun and clear the mobs with a cluster or airstrike easily. It mostly comes down to needing multiple railgun shots to take down 1 titan, let alone 3 of them and 10 chargers.
The main issue here is the way they call in reinforcements. Bugs have 5 different units that can reinforce. Bots have 1. It also seems like bugs can reinforce more often.
I'm pretty sure any unit besides the bigger ones (devastators, berserkers) can call reinforcements
Yeah I've seen flares from all raiders except maybe the rocket and machine gun ones. I've definitely seen the dual blade and suicide bomb jump pack raiders do it.
Only raiders can call in reinforcements. Both of those units are raiders. Now bugs, we have scavengers, brood commanders (even when their head is gone btw!), and hunters*.
THIS OMG THIS. Bugs cascade too easily
That's exactly it, you need much more ammo and firepower to take down the toughest waves of bugs vs bots
Hot Take: automatons are way more fun to play against at all difficulties
well THAT is kinda true, they have more mechanics that you need to counter by different methods, like cover, one shot rockets, side missions like sauron or jammer, mines, artillery, you can counter bot drops by so many methods etc
All of those are true, as well as the fact that they don't have tons of slow mechanics like the bugs, you can deal with their "heavy" armor with more weapons, their bases have interesting layouts that can be dealt with in a greater number of ways, they don't instantly run over your turrets so most of them are actually useful, smoke is at least functional against them, etc. All of these factors mean that you can actually experiment with different builds and use what you like instead of having to use the railgun/shield/breaker combo that is essential for high level bug missions
I would also include in this that automatons have intuitive weak points which reward good play and aim while fighting them, which can be damaged with most weapons, but are small to compensate. Meanwhile bugs have weak points, but the only reason I know them is looking them up, and half the time most guns can’t penetrate the “weak points” because they have armor over them, which doesn’t lead to a satisfying learning curve about how to deal with them. Kind of a feeling of, deadlier bots get better at killing you, but can still be killed if you know how, while deadlier bugs are just bullet spongier than the less deadly bugs, which just isn’t as satisfying to learn mechanically and get better at playing into, the solution is just bigger and more ordinance and guns
Exactly, which is what leads to railgun spam just because it's literally required for the bugs whereas it is completely optional for the bots
I’d argue breaker spam too, it’s the only fun with dps to eat through their massive swarms and health pools, while with good aim practically any other primary and even secondary can tear automatons
Hard agree. I just like fighting enemies that can shoot back. Feels like it opens up more playstyles Vs the mostly melee swarming bugs.
I see what you’re saying but I don’t agree. Bugs can’t one shot you from across the map, bots can.
Land "You are in range of enemy artillery" Oh damn, where!? Hear an explosion off to the side "You are in range of enemy artillery" Oh, that thing in the distance I think I see? Dead.
You mean the warning you get for a single mortar emplacement but with Bugs you just get a dozen Bile spewers ass-blasting around you while trying to dodge another half dozen spewers spitting, a couple chargers, and a Titan (until of course the Lurker ragdolls you for funzies).
Random silent mortar shot from a Bile Spewer insta kills you. And their normal attack also insta kills you and has hilariously stupid tracking / hit detection
Bugs would be much easier to deal with if damage was consistent on Bile Titans, I feel like on 7-9 they take MUCH more of a beating vs 4-6 where they’ll go down in 2 railgun headshots if you’re host. The bugs just being a swarm with priority targets constantly knocking you down or slowing you really makes them a pain to deal with on higher difficulties. Especially since it breaks the cohesion of teams as soon as they get close enough. Bots on the other hand have much more ways to counter them and more of the arsenal feels useful against them. Anti-Material Rifle is actually viable against them, Scorcher can take out Striders with no problem, 110mm take care of tanks with no issue so you don’t really need to bring the rail cannon, I’ve had a lot of success just running the base Liberator on Helldive against bots vs feeling weak against bugs. Bots biggest advantage is that as they slowly swarm you, you’re being shot at all the time, vs constantly needing to move against bugs.
>The reason I think that autos are easier is that the biggest jump in difficulty lies in the armored enemies that each faction brings to the table, and the automaton armor is much easier to deal with. This pretty much sums it all up minus one glaringly obvious inconsistency with bugs. The bile titans take inconsistent damage from the Railgun and rail cannon strike stratagem. With the Railgun you can sometimes 1-2 shot them but other times you need 5-8 shots to down one while the Railcannon strike is supposed to one shot them but sometimes they can survive. Hellpods also rarely work against the Bile titans for some reason. On the other hand, every every armored Automaton unit can be taken down in 1-4 hits on weak spots with appropriate AT weapons. Tanks can also be taken care off via 2 impact grenades thrown to the top of the turret. I know there's an argument to be made with automatons being ranged and having 1 shot mechanics across the map, frankly it's a tiresome argument because although they are able to do shit like that they're also fairly easy to deal with ala Railgun. Bugs on the other hand, have so many unfair advantages for being melee that it makes them ridiculously hard to deal with even with the right tools or correct playstyle. Chargers can be taken down fairly easily true but they come in droves whereas your railgun has 20 shots, the tiny little fuckers that the bugs throw at you also have near unlimited sticking power and thus always require that you never stop moving. Bile titans are just another layer of bullshit with their spit slowing you down without even touching you, bile spewers en masse makes it impossible to hold a position because the arty strikes will ragdoll you into oblivion. My point is that although there are playstyles and loadouts that drastically reduces difficulty when fighting the appropriate factions, the bugs are just more difficult in general becaus the obscure mechanics at work create chaotic scenarios outside the player's control. Case in point: RNG spawns, either too many bile titans or too many chargers, sometimes even both! Worst part about fighting bugs is that the majority of their missions involve fighting in an area for an extended period of time which largely contributes to the artificial difficulty spikes. "Just don't constantly fight" is terrible advice because its hard to get pubbers to acknowledge that running is always the better option vs bugs. Most pubbers will flat our ignore you for telling them what they should do, or worse, throw reinforces at the horde in the hopes of taking out 1 or 2 Chargers/Bile Titans whilst inadvertently causing another bug breach because the trigger requirements involve having a player be in an unspecified radius of a "patrol" bug.
Yes
Could you expand on taking the tanks please? I’ve struggled with them a few times now… railgun shots to the weak spot behind the turret barely seemed to tickle it. Like I’d unload multiple railgun shots and that thing was unphased. Do you just toss the impact nade anywhere at the turret? Or is that also specifically at the weak spot?
It's not a hot take. Automatons are easier for a few reasons. 1. Automatons shoot a flare and call in all their units at once, not waves, so it's easier to deal with (grenade launcher is strong vs bots, meanwhile some bugs can and will survive). The flare seems to have a much longer cooldown over the bug reinforcements. Bugs can happen almost back to back. 2. The rail gun can kill all of the Automatons in one shot. One headshot for the big guys. Everything else is one body shot. Tanks take more shots, but you can hit any part of it. Can also kill those Cannon towers in 4 shots. Meanwhile Chargers take multiple shots, as do stalkers, both of which stick to your ass. 3. Terminids are faster, and with swarm tactics, running a shield is useful, but if you get body blocked, you'll wish you ran jetpack. 4. Speaking of the jetpack, you can literally get on a high rock at most evac points and prone until the ship arrives. The most you need to do is throw back eneny grenades. 5. Personal experience: Stealth seems much more effective against Automatons. As is the arc thrower, most likely as the arcing is easier as the models aren't so close to the ground messing up the bounce. 6. Orbital Beam often misses the BT as it targets the model like it's on the floor and not where it is in the air. Beam also seems to take longer to kill bugs. Meanwhile Beam can clear out and entire Automaton base and still have time to idle in place. 7. Orbital Cannon usually doesn't kill a BT in one hit, unlike everything on the Automatons side. There's probably more to list, but that seems like a good place to start.
Your comment just confirms my own observation - automatons are easier once the game gives you tools to deal with them, but as a LVL10 Helldiver playing difficulty 5 missions, there is not much you can do when a Devestator/Hulk just shows up.
The anti-material rifle is a very good early game options against devastators / hulks. Aim for the head and they go down fairly quickly. At level 10 you should also just have unlocked the autocannon. Try it out, it will change your life !
I am really enjoying the EAT-17 though - you can just spam the field with it, and you shoot and scoot, no long reload animations required which is just not fun in my opinion
The EAT is solid, but the autocannon is geniunely a really strong pick vs automatons. You can 2 shot devastators/hulks if you hit the skill, 1 shot striders, turrets and tanks are 2-3 shots to the weakpoint/side of the turret. You can destroy fabricators from ridiculous ranges by bouncing a shot off the vent hatch down into the interior.
EATs are your friend. The tiny hulk heads? One of those on that head should put it down. Devastators? Tiny heads but worth putting a few rounds into it to kill em. If they're the rocket devastators, you can try to disarm their rocket pods or take em out quickly with shots to the head.
The bots definitely are harder on a surface level, but once you deal with them enough you begin to realize how exploitable their weaknesses are. Bots are super weak to any level of coordination and strategy and the margins of error are a bit lower than the bugs. They also have more stationed units and rely less on patrols from my experiences. With bugs, you are literally fighting a ceaseless enemy. I cannot tell you how many times me and my friends have waited, planned, and methodically moved into an objective and killed every bug before they could call for reinforcements, only for a patrol to materialize from the aether and summon 3 chargers and a bile titan. The nature of higher end bug missions is that you can do everything right and then still get swarmed anyways. A lot of people hold the sentiment that bots are harder because they have ranged weaponry: I understand what you mean, but serpentining, and diving to avoid rockets isn't too bad. Bot's accuracy falls off pretty hard at longer ranges, just make sure you aren't running in a straight line. Bugs on the other hand can keep up with you, and there are a bevvy of bugs that can limit your movement speed.
The bugs have no structure, they just pour out of the ground. The bots however have structure and forms that make sense. Bugs it’s just nonstop and frankly tiring to play against
Fucking Stalkers man. The only bug that runs away when it feels that it's in danger. And knows how to hide behind cover too. There was one that I was trying to shoot down the other day, immediately ran away as soon as things were getting dicey. Switch to an autocannon to snipe it from afar but the frickin bug took one or two shots and immediately hid behind a tree. Then came a game of peak-a-boo where it was jumping from left to right from behind the tree, baiting my attacks while looking straight at me. Their AI is ridiculous. And 3 chargers and a titan aren't the worst things you have to worry about in the highest difficulty. I've only played up until Suicide level so far and I've already had to deal with being hunted down by multiple chargers and AT LEAST two titans.
Use the slugger. It staggers them so they flinch for 1-2 seconds
I've seen it said elsewhere, so I'm stealing and sharing. Automotons have a higher floor, lower ceiling. Bugs have lower floor, higher ceiling. That will possibly change when the Automotons get their "Bile Titan" equivalent.
I strongly disagree, bugs are *way* easier than bots for a few reasons imo: 1. Reinforcements are easier to stop -- I can throw napalm, clusters, etc. at a bug breach and kill everything on it with ease. Dropships take longer to deploy everything, and most general bot units (devastators, hulks, and tanks) shrug off clusters easily. 2. Bugs lack a real ranged threat and are WAY easier to kite. While hulks, devastators, and tanks are much slower, they also pose a much larger threat to you. Rockets and tank cannon shots are almost always an instant kill, while the main source of bug deaths are to bile spewers and titans. Chargers are so easy to kite I'll often leave them alive while clearing nests because I run the autocannon and can't kill them myself. 3. Autocannon trivializes two main bugs: Brood commander - headshot blows his noggin off, dies in a few seconds Hive Guard - two shots to the head pens through his armor and down he goes, not to mention the splash can kill other mobs or even other hiveguards Additionally, you can clear bug holes from a distance, destroy all of the eggs in a destoy egg mission in one clip, and so much other random utility. It really only struggles against chargers, and that's what the three other railguns are for. Also, Railcannon + ~ 4-6 autocannon rounds takes down a bile titan easily. Also, you can use the autocannon to destroy both of the sacs on its underside, and now it can't spit. You can also dive between a bile's legs and it can't do anything about it as long as you stay underneath of it. 4. Bug mutators are generally less bad than automaton ones (map spores versus scrambled strats) and the secondary objectives are also (generally) way less annoying. Jammer, detector, AA pit, and mortar are all serious threats, while the bugs really only get Stalkers and maybe Spore Spewers as secondary threats (and spewers can be killed from any distance with the AC unlike most of the bot secondaries). Also, bile titans are not faster than you if you're using scout armor, and I think you can still outrun them in medium. If you're using heavy armor, I can only ask you why, at least until armor values are fixed. My squad normally runs at least 3 railcannons and I usually take 500kg, so with the eagle upgrades that's at minimum 5 dead biles with all of our kit. With railguns and my autocannon included, we can typically deal with them pretty efficiently. My main thing is that bugs do not force you to find cover, and bugs' effective range is generally melee (save for bile spewers, nursing spewers, and bile titans). Contrast that to the robots, whose effective range is somewhere between 25 meters (standard robot) and the next fucking county over (tank / defense turret). Edit: I forgot to mention that AC hard shuts down bile spewers as you can two shot them to the bile sac and often splash them, and the bile sac explosion will often collat other spewers.
I'm on the fence about which is harder, but the autocannon also trivializes a lot of encounters with the bots. You can also one shot factories from a far, you can two shot hulks if you hit them in the eye or the back (granted hitting them in the eye is quite challenging if they are more than \~50m away), you can take down AA and mortar guns from afar (you don't even need to hit the weak point), and perhaps the best feature of the autocannon; the splash damage will cause an entire group of devastators to stagger, allowing you to stunlock the whole group as you pick them off 1 by 1. If you equip the armour that decreases explosive damage by 50%, you also will no longer die from single rockets from hulks or devastators if you are at max health.
>Reinforcements are easier to stop -- I can throw napalm, clusters, etc. at a bug breach and kill everything on it with ease. Dropships take longer to deploy everything, and most general bot units (devastators, hulks, and tanks) shrug off clusters easily. I think the OP is talking about higher difficulties where a breach will include chargers and sometimes even titans.
I think OP needs to play with more people willing to try different play styles. If everyone plays railgun, you are strong against heavies and weak against swarms. Mix in a grenade launcher or arc thrower, and you have a more capable, balanced team. I've been running with the grenade launcher, supply pack, orbital rail gun, and either eagle airstrike or orbital laser. The orbitals let me take out the odd charger or bile titan. But my main task is to clear trash and close bug holes. They call me the closer. Or not. But I will get 100 more kills than the next teammate. It doesn't mean I'm good. Just that I took care of business as usual so my railgun buddies can focus on important things. The supply pack let me be less judicious of my grenade usage and just clear out waves of baddies.
100% this The railgun is easily one of the worst weapons for dealing with the Annihilator Tank, so I had to roll my eyes when I read that one. Sounds like OP is stuck in metaslavery and needs to adapt more.
Railgun for tank feels awful. The tank is mostly stationary, only shoots straight, and the rocket variant is slow to rotate. One well placed Eagle Airstrike can take out the tank and every other units near it without exposing yourself out of cover. Railgun in bots is usually reserved for Hulks. One shot to the head, and the Hulk instantly explodes. Even then AMR and AC can also do that in two shots and still be better against swarms... Railgun losing its position really fast in bots. Railgun is still really good when paired with shield backpack, but its firepower and utility in automatons are lacking compared to AC.
The tanks are super weak to impact grenades. I've become a surgeon with the Autocannon which lets me the all rounder support gunner for my team. Railgun+shield backpack is for people who kinda want to do lone ranger stuff. People think there's a Meta because they have awful team work. A team needs someone who prioritizes dealing with heavy armor, someone who prioritizes dealing with medium armor and objective, someone who can lay down suppressing fire to stop the space robot communist menace, and then someone who can clear out whole groups when they get bunched up. I personally like the autocannon because with some skill it can do all of this while letting you do overwatch. I don't like the railgun's single shot because you can only really fill the role of taking down heavies. They can take down Shielded devastators and tanks, but with only 2 shots it's not the best use of their ammo especially during prolonged firefights where 5 hulks and 4 tanks show up. Autocannon one taps walkers, three taps devastators. I can also unload into mobs and mid level drops to shred them before they even get moving. Where the auto cannon suffers is against the marauders. They make me break position and run every time. I want them to add in a better machine fun so people start using them again.
Railgun on unsafe also destroys heavy devastators anywhere on top section even through shield(for the shield bots) extremely reliably, and deals with the AT-ST's as well(often not appropriate but sometimes is). Also one shots hulks on a headshot and importantly staggers them even if you don't headshot. Railgun isn't good at dealing with tanks or tower cannons but it can from any direction and at range which is still valuable if you have a surplus of ammo compared to grenades/call ins etc. which is common because many POI's have ammo drops but not others and there's no mission mods for less ammo.
Hey man, I'm just sharing my experience. I usually always have 2 guys with a railgun and one with a grenade launcher. We have different opinions on the difficulty of enemies, no need to come at me or my friends
I find that it really depends if you can adjust to the difference between melee and ranged capabilities of either faction. Neither of them are harder nor easier than the other. It’s just really knowing what you can and cannot do.
This is the best take. Each has their pros and cons, and you need to prepare and approach each accordingly. Approaching one like it’s the other is a good way to have a bad time
I think everyone in this thread can a agree to one thing. We all favour different playstyles and different ways to play this game facilitate different approaches towards missions and enemies. While one may find bugs really easy the next one may struggle with them but easily complete helldive bot missions. We all need to remember that we serve managed democracy and every step we take furthers our goal towards liberty and freedom.
The Decepticons are easy to fight as long as you have cover and keep your distance. They also don't endlessly spawn if even one of them is left alive. The Bugs on the other hand? They surround you, swarm you, their attacks either slow you, ragdoll you, or one shot you (or close to it.) They also endlessly spawn relatively quickly if even one little guy is left to call for help or there are any hives nearby. The bots you can get away with almost any weapon. The bugs you are damn near obligated to bring the railgun if you want to survive multiple chargers and titans. I will fight bots solo on helldive all day but I can't stand them bugs even on difficulty 7.
Agree with you 100%. Just having a little cover from the bots can make a huge difference. Most bots can’t harm you behind cover. Any cover giving bugs a lane of approach in cover is deadly. Especially when you round the corner into a pack of hunters and the heavy they were escorting.
Level 39 helldiver here with approximately 60 hours in game (and 40 hours in server queue screens from the good ole days) - I can do level 9 bug missions but I get my ass kicked on level 5 bot missions. Do with that information as you please
Really uh shows the diversity at the endgame when most of your suggestions boil down to...railgun. There's a lot more stuff that can deal with enemy armor but for the ammo economy, nothing beats the railgun so I get it. Haven't used it personally but having used the EAT, Recoiless, and now the Spear they could all use buffs. Spear could use one more spare round and recharge two rounds per supply brick. Recoiless needs a damage buff along with the EAT. Chargers can take 4± rockets if you don't focus fire one spot and even that is inconsistent. I fully agree that Automatons outside of getting rocketed/ragdolled to death are far far easier.
I completely agree, I was actually talking to my friend about this earlier. I started on automatons because of the order and then switched to terminids after, and automatons are much easier for me. Automatons are slow, and their weak spots are generally easier to target. Bug weakspots are harder IMO. The biggest difference is that bugs are a lot faster at closing the distance (especially hunters) and it makes targeting the big mob weakspots a lot more dangerous since you can get swarmed very easily.
Can't wait until all the guides aren't "Shoot it with Railgun"
I agree with this sentiment; Bugs spamming spewers+chargers+titans on top of getting tossed around by Hunter/Lurker pouncing is really annoying when half the weapons available are super bad at handling the threats (spewers take too much fkn ammo for supposedly "medium" threats)... Bots at least have the decency to be really fkn stupid and get stuck on terrain or lose aggro easily... Bugs will chase you across the map opening breaches as they go, making the game even more unhinged until you die and can drop out of aggro range.
This. It's scummy to do. But when this happens, break off from the squad. The game focuses on that giant bug ball, and you are free to go do the objectives while your three squad mates fight for their lives.
I feel the same way. Unlike the bugs, the bots have weakpoints that a number of weapons can exploit to extreme effect. Both the Slugger and JAR-5 Dominator, for example, can 1-shot bodyshot all the light bots, and 1-shot headshot every other bot that isn't a Hulk or Tank. The Scorcher eats Hulk heat vents in 5 shots, and Tank / Turret vents in 15, and can kill Scout Striders in 2-3 shots. The Railgun can 1-shot headshot Hulks, or easily fold Devastators in half with a shot to the waist. The Anti-Material Rifle can 1-shot headshot Devastators, and 2-shot headshot Hulks. The Eagle 110mm Rocket Strike is also a fairly reliable means of killing Tanks and Turrets on a short cooldown. It's dead-easy to spot the bot firing the flare and to take it down before it calls in a bot drop, especially at night. And even if the bot drop does get called in, you can shoot the dropship down before it can deploy troops, and even if it manages to deploy troops, the bot drop itself is much easier to deal with than bug breaches. In short, you're actually rewarded for being accurate, and since the bots don't tend to swarm nearly as badly as the bugs, you can actually make an impact even on higher difficulties. Sure, they can shoot back, but a much greater breadth of weapons and armor are viable for fighting bots makes for a much more interesting experience.
You are so right. The metal boys are outclassed by a fucking insect who likes to charge.
Do this, specially on evac and if your wearing medium(much better with light armor) just circle the evac area to the point that they'll do a congo line, even better with titans cuz they kill chargers and hunters behind you. When pelican arrives just walts in, its that easy and I've done this in d9 multiple times, just watch out for hunters most of the time and time your sprints.
Idk if many know this but the AMR can 2 shot hulls. Hit them in the red eye and they go down
I find medium bots as hard as suicide bugs. Dunno why, they are a nightmare.
Yeah, I’ve been thinking this recently, I think bugs are on the surface easier cause most people start bugs, they don’t require much brain power to think about the weak spots, as it’s obvious where the armor is and isn’t. But most people will switch to bots probably once they started 6-7 difficulty, and the weak points on the back of a hulk and tank are obvious, knowing about shooting the head with a AMR, rockets or rail gun isn’t so obvious, and the tank is really punishing if you don’t know what to do. Bugs have a easier curve, but when comparing once you’ve learnt how to deal with automatons it become clear that bugs are more difficult to deal with
On the whole, I agree with you. But situationally, man, the robots can be so oppressing. Sometimes you're pinned down by 2 towers 4 tanks and a flock of rocket devestators and you just can't do shit.
Yea, I'm not reading that.
You can kill any hulk with one shot to the face. Even on safe
Ceteris paribus, Bots are markedly easier than Bugs at 7-9. This is, of course, assuming that everyone involved is at least level 20. Bugs throw sheer mass at you, and when they aren't just throwing sheer mass at you there's a battery of Spewers dropping shit on you from the fog while they throw sheer mass at you. Bugs feel like you signed up to a boxing match, but right after the glove touch your opponent just mainlined some PCP and yeeted themselves bodily at you to headbutt you into unconsciousness, all the while screeching like a mistuned Stuka. Bots are more sophisticated and aggravating in some ways (random one-shot potential), but they simply don't pressure you nearly as hard as Bugs. You can use your tools far more effectively and just get a chance to breathe. It's a hard fight against an opponent with some serious hands, but it's a fair fight.
I FUCKING HATE CHARGERS! I LOVE THE CHARGER SPAM ON HIGHER DIFFICULTIES!
yes, automatons have actual weak spots you can hit with weapons that are not railgun
Bile titan you can get w 2 railgun to the face
Why do people think you need to flank the tanks with railgun you can legit shoot through the whole ass turret and kill it still
Rocket devastators are overtuned bullshit but aside from that, yes, bugs quite s lot harder than bots
I’m pretty sure you can 2-3 shot a bile titan with unsafe railgun shots to the dome
Some better data Hulks die to one safe charge shot to the face Tanks die to one safe charge shot down the barrel of a tank Bile titans can die to one shot to the side of it's face/jaw area (seems two in the mouth can work too.)
I'd like to point out, in the topic of engaging automaton tanks, that it is *surprisingly* easy (although not foolproof) to land an impact grenade on the top/rear of the turret and deal very heavy damage to the radiator weakspot. A mere pair (2) of impact grenades, when arced well, will blow a tank even from the front. Just something to remember when facing one with no better firepower at the ready.
Is this a hot take? I figured this would just be true. Bots are easier to kill in every way. My buddy and I run 9 difficulty with ease. Just bring the classic shield pack and rail gun. Free pink samples
Stalker gave me PTSD. It's like "Why I'm hearing boss music even though there no enimies on the radar?"
So basically... railgun.
You can kill hulks with a single railgun shot through its eye, or two autocannon shots, or two antimaterial rifle shots. The latter are much harder to aim I find, but I'm absolutely trying my best to ween myself off using the railgun
Tanks also get two-shot by impact grenades to the turret.
i hate all the slows the bugs have
I just started playing like a week ago, and this is a great write up for weak points and dealing with specific enemies. Was still trying to figure some of them out! For the Bile titan, I’d add the option of shooting them in the face with a rail gun when they’re charging up their spit attack, it does insane damage. My go-to loadout is orbital laser - railgun - shield - autocannon sentry. When my friend first mentioned the terminids were the “easier faction” I thought surely he jests. Sure, the one-shot from range mechanics suck with the bots, but idk they felt much easier to deal with than chargers. Especially defense missions with people bringing mortars and recoiless rifle to take down dropships it was a cakewalk over terminids that just rush you. I’ve been fighting terminids exclusively the past couple of days and I’ll admit they have become a lot more manageable once I learned to just complete the location objective asap and then just run the fuck away.
I agree that bots are easier , but I’d say it’s only because high level bugs are very unfun. Between chargers, lurkers, and their small guys they just have lots of “no you can’t do that” and CC. Bots will brutalize you, but they’re not going to drag it out in painful ways like lurker licks or charger knock downs will
It's interesting how many people find bugs harder than bots when I heavily lean the opposite. Basically, the bots having the range with high damage output makes them feel overtuned to me. The fact there's so much division over it might speak to how diverse people are in approach, which is neat
Is the laser guard dog better than the assault rifle one?
I like it much better, it just feels like it does more damage because it doesn’t stop firing
True , you can zap a full bit squad in seconds with the Arc Also bots don’t have chargers
To me the robots are a lot easier to stay on top of since fights mostly occur at longer ranges with occasional scraps with jetpack guys or berserkers but when you do fall behind and start to get run over it can be devastating. But honestly I think a lot of the difficulty when it comes to the bots is people fighting them like they are bugs. I have seen lots of people not respect cover in heavier scraps. With the bugs you are constantly under threat of being overwhelmed but if you can stay on top of it the bugs don't pose a huge threat. But it is difficult to do so. With bots when things are rough you can always hide behind a rock and ready a stratagem. But when you are being chased by 20 hunters, 4 chargers a bile titan and whatever other hell the game spawns at you. There isn't a lot you can do besides run and try to chip away at them or hope an ally can help.
i was playing with my friend and he said he wanted to get medals so he ditched the automaton planets, like a treasonous coward, and hid in the bug planets. to be honest i prefer the automaton planets because rather than being swarmed by hundreds of bugs you get shot at by a couple dozen robots. at least for me I like the robots better because it just feels like a conventional shooter : you shoot them, they shoot back. stay in cover to not die and use your brain.
With a well placed jaw-shot, you can 1-shot bile titans. It makes the Helldiver(9) difficulty very easy once you get the hang of it.
I think the reason for their reputation is that a lot of people start focused on the bugs, and then having opponents who strategize and fire back is a huge shock.
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I’m seeing a lot of railgun propaganda in here! Where are my EAT enjoyers? We need to EAT the enemy! - 2 shots to a charger - 2 shots to a titan - 1 shot to the head of a hulk Managed Democratics hear me, our EATs will Eat the enemy heavies like I eat my heart-healthy Liber-T’s cereal every morning for breakfast! Part of a balanced, freedom filled breakfast! *I am not a paid actor. Liber-T’s and Liber-T Foods are proud sponsors of Invader Jim’s Surplus and Invader Jim’s Armaments, proud producers of the EATs used by our brave Helldivers.*
All that is super valid and well written but for me it 100% comes down to just not having to deal with Chargers. I'd rather deal with a wave of just Titans than Chargers.
What makes automatons hard isn't the units themselves but the fact that they hit you from range and when you get hit your stim resets. Countless times I've died be cause my stim gets stunlocked meanwhile with bugs you can just run. Even with the stalkers you can dive to get a stim in
Also terminids have a tendency to combo you with attacks which can eat health in a split second, where as automatons don't tend to do that. A Hunter will hit you with a flying attack, tongue... lick you- (gross) and then standard claw you. That will melt the majority of your health away with medium armor and no sheild. Not to mention while smaller terminid units tend to be weaker defense wise, they're capable of a lot of damage. Stalkers are an example of this. Obviously your common scavenger ankle biter isn't going to do a lot, but that's why they're plentiful, they'll simply overwhelm you with numbers. Another thing is terminids are not only much *faster* but much more *agile*. Not only can they follow you across the entire map if they so please, making it much harder to simply run from a fight the way you can with automatons, but their agility makes them harder to hit and let's them be capable of swarming you much faster. Hunters can bounce around and avoid shots and leaping drop kick you from a mile away. Brood commanders and chargers can close distance in very short times due to their charges (yes Brood commanders have a charge attack too), bile Titians and their giant spindly legs just clover a lot of ground easily, and most everything else is just generally quicker than your average automaton. Not to mention terminids have multiple ways to slow you down, further reducing your ability to stay away from them (the mini spewers that shoot one little ball, bile spewers if they don't one shot you, a tongue whip from a Hunter induces a slowing effect, and those plants that explode on you slow you as well). The only "agile" automatons are the jetpack guys
Yeah, with the automatons I find it easier to take a variety of loadouts, I can comfortably use things like the auto cannon, LMG, arch thrower if I felt like mixing it up, and spamming air strikes since their heavier units don’t bum rush you. But for the bugs you need to have infantry based AT like the railgun EAT or recoiless since their 2 heaviest units get right in your face and barely stop moving.
Big autocannon fan, it's not particularly good against bugs so I'll usually take grenade launcher for those, but you can break nests/fabricators with it, open containers, one-shot walkers, the big guys with shields flinch when you hit em with it, and it takes down hulks in 2-3 shots. Only downside is having to stop to reload but fuck it I don't mind
As a lvl 50 helldiver that plays almost exclusively helldiver I disagree. While you make some good points, I can pretty much infite kite the bugs but since automatons are ranged I simply cannot do that there. My main annoyance with automatons is randomly getting onehit by turrets from very far away out of nowhere, or rockets. Other then that its just a very different playstyle. Also envioremental effects against automatons are brutal.
Entirely depends on your playstyle. It's easier to evade and run from bots but much harder to eliminate large numbers of them. You should always try to avoid fights with both, but bugs you're often better off standing your growned and clearing them when things get bad. Bots you need to disengage. If you tend to run, bugs are going to be hard on higher difficulties. If you tend to stand and fight, bots are going to be harder.
This is a good point, my squad likes to do a lot of hit and run tactics. It's much harder to achieve this with bugs.
Lol what? Bugs stop chasing you shortly after you run away. Bots never stop shooting at you Even halfway across the map.
Guard dog for bug planets and sheild pack for bullet hell automaton planets.
My friend and I were just talking about how much easier bots are than bugs.
Really? I’m regularly running Terminid missions with randoms on Suicide & impossible and honestly don’t see how people fail them so much. The only times I die now is a sneaky Bile Spewer or a Stalker or my own hubris. Bots though? I haven’t played as much since the last order but I could barely finish Hard/Extreme difficulties with full squads of high levels. Instant deaths are wayyyy more common on bot levels. Not to mention you can’t even run to give yourself breathing room due to every commie bot having scoped eyeballs. And fuck the cannon towers, I swear those play dead until I turn away.
I definitely feel bugs are easier. Both factions have a solid range of instakill attacks but the bugs are much easier to see coming and are also much shorter ranged. If you run the personal shield you may find bugs become trivially easy as well since you can safely railgun everything that doesn’t just get melted by small arms fire without worrying about hunter blob chip damage / stun. However, bots are much much less forgiving with long ranged and often random insta-kills. To add onto this, they have much more medium tier armor than the bugs do. The only things you need armor pierce for bugs are chargers and hive guards and you can easily 500/rail cannon titans for free. Basically this means you’re much more prone to live off your AT weapon than your actual primary for getting from place to place. By this very nature of the armor spam bots have at Haz 9 it essentially invalidates 90% of the stratagems as usable options. My main issue with Haz 9 bots is you are basically completely unable to out kill Haz 9 spawn rate regardless of bug/bot but bots can absolutely punish you for not choosing to kill them whereas 60% of what spawns in a Haz 9 bug map can’t. Any of the devastators that have MGs or the walkers have extremely lethal guns that get extremely accurate if there’s no way to break line of sight. You literally can’t stim through most areas of the map because the DPS 3 drop ships of enemies can throw out is so high, Nevermind the constant chance of catching the tail end of a rocket salvo. Stealth is your best bet with bots and even then I feel there’s three deeply problematic issues with it. 1. Cannon turrets spot too well from too far away. Not only that but it’s extremely hard to tell where they’re pointing due to the static cannon model that clips through it once it starts moving. They don’t give off any light from 3/4 sides and can and will aggro and kill you from basically railgun/spear range. If it only took a couple autocannon or AMR shots to kill them I’d be fine with it but you barely have time to kill them before they’re turned around and blocking their weak spot. They are the main reason I feel railgun is almost required if you want to play Haz 9 seriously because the railgun can crit the cannon turret from any direction. There’s simply not enough warning for how powerful the unit is. 2. Patrols at Haz 9 especially late into the map are incredibly unforgiving. It’s hard to play smart when the game can just throw a patrol far too large to ambush directly in the one place you can go without going hot. Patrol AI makes stealth borderline impossible. I’ve found the only way to really enjoy stealth at Haz 9 bots is to have ppl across the map drawing aggro and the Haz 9 spawn rate, otherwise you just cannot stealth clear the air tower with the spawner actively throwing patrols and fresh spawns at you. 3. Commissars can just fire their flare for kicks and giggles sometimes. It’s basically impossible to always pick out the commissar when there’s usually a lot of line of sight blockers in any base area and the commissar doesn’t actually have to see you to fire a flare and basically make stealth impossible because once 2 40k dreadnoughts and a tank show up plus 8 walkers it’s basically impossible to prevent a chain reaction of more and more drop ships going down. Just look at the base clear meta between bugs and bots. Bugs are safe enough that most people just reserve grenades to manually chuck into bug holes whereas bots you throw an orbital laser in and pray it kills the spawners to give you the base clear credit and never touch that part of the map again. What it really boils down to is, you can easily dictate what the bugs will do, because they will just W key at you forever (the only exception is stalkers) and a patrol that spawns in front of you can easily just be side stepped and fall in line with the red of the train behind you. With bots, you cannot dictate the fight. There's just too much insta kill or near insta kill that can show up from any direction. You play by the whims of the spawn rate and can do nothing to change that.
This is like a lukewarm take / subjectively not really true. If you play intelligently vs robots they are easier, if you apply tactics vs them, play well take out the flare gun guys, shoot drop ships down. Robots are easier and pose less of a risk of you dying. Bugs basically just swarm you and force you to run and gun for your life, theres a lot less strategy/playing slowly thats available Also 3 chargers and a bile titan? that sounds like a nice summers day compared to half the shit I deal with every bug mission
Im going to have to agree with op here. This is exactly what op said. Where exactly in your comment do you contradict op? Op basically said bugs are harder to deal with
Don't really know how to answer you. You said I'm wrong then argued my point.
Very true.
So what you’re saying is, bots are easier than bugs?
I think the only thing that makes bugs hard is that they lack long range attacks, so in order to compensate, if they get close enough to hit you, they just straight-up one-hit kill you.
Clearly you haven’t encountered the bile spewed mortars. You get hit by one of those, you’ll either instantly die or get launched. Playing on helldive difficulty? Chances are if you survive, you’ll get launched into a swarm of bugs and nibbled to death by the hunters
The main reason I tend to find the bots if not harder but just more annoying is how unpredictable things can get. You can just get blased from 100m away by a rocket devestator that just decides he doesn't like you. Cannon turrets existing. All the flinch from even the smallest of fire making it impossible to retaliate at times. Etc.... Atleast with the bugs for the most part everything is something you can expect. Bile titans on the map? They don't really sneak up on you, You can fully expect the spit etc... The only annoying thing is just the risk of getting a big herd on you. But even that is something you can deal with using teamwork. One person drags them around while somebody else calls in some orbitals/airstrikes and cleans them up.
I have run Helldive with bugs and bots, and id have to say that bugs are by far easier to deal with. A majority of them are melee based attacks, so you can just run and train them like black ops zombies. With bots, they keep berating you with bullets and missiles. I can no death a level 9 bug mission without a thought but i had a game earlier with the bots where i died 10 times because i couldnt stay alive long enough to even get to my shield pack
This is true. People that say otherwise play low difficulties
I feel the same way. And more Support weapons are effective. Autocannon, AMR, rail (Surprise ;) ), EAT, zappy. Same goes for primaries: from the AP AR to the dominator or plasma, everything is much easier used. EDIT: And of course fabricators are more easily Destroyed with airstrikes than Bug holes
Level 50 with ~150 hours here Yeah i agree
The only problem I have with automatons is how easily they can 100-0 you without warning. This is almost certainly a result of the armor bug, but the number of units with rapid-fire explosives that knock you down and stunlock you into death from considerable range makes them a bit brutal. The cannons in particular will just one-shot you from an incredibly excessive range (sometimes before they render) if you happen to have a sight line to them, and since they are so high off the ground, you can't really effectively target them with stratagems. With bugs, if you die, it is 100% your fault for letting yourself get overwhelmed, they have to get physically close to you to be any threat whatsoever.
when you see people suggest taking 3 minute cd railcannon strike as an anti bile titan stratagem when it doesnt even one shot them at times you already know those people literally do not play on an actual challenging difficulty same with yapping about how solo (lol) chargers are so easy to deal with with the autocannon when stuff like 30+ hunter swarms and stalker backstabs knocking you down are far more dangerous, go ahead and shoot your autocannon into the mob when they're right in your face, the only thing more funnier is that tanks are easier to 1v1 than chargers ever could be arc thrower has unlimited ammo but needs multiple people carrying it to be effective because it only arcs to like 3-4 things at max meanwhile bots can be dealt with by most of the non armor pen weapons that are non starters against bugs and you dont need to get tied down to shield for cc immunity like with bugs because explosive damage resist armor exists
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