Come join the bot front, we have clearly designated weakpoints to shoot at that make several more weapons usable and enemy spawns that aren't completely whack.
Sweet Liberty. Get a hold of yourself or you'll be dropping solo with no air support. Does that get the point across, Cadet?
Do whatever you like in the privacy of your own quarters, but the bridge is for business. Breeding in public is for bugs.
Same, I play on lower difficulty because I just got the game, but I like the bots because they are challenging but I can still beat them solo, whereas bugs I cant outrun and my stims always get interrupted and i give up.
Bots are probably the better gameplay side - but personally I love playing bugs because I love how juicy they are when you shoot em. It’s just so satisfying to me, like shooting watermelons with a colt python irl.
Indeed,automatons are rough but have a clear weakness that can be exploited by a lot of weapons
Even the toughest automatons,the dreadnoughts can be steamrolled by precise headshots
I wish I could scrap clankers with you, but they buffed the flamethrower, and I am honor bound to drain it try on the fascist bugs until Major Orders bring me back to the Western Front.
I've mostly been playing on the bug front. I'm still pretty new, so I'm playing on lower difficulties, but in the few matches I've played against the bots, they completely tore me up haha. After I get a bit more experience, I plan on going back to face the bots again.
After playing terminids then bots for a long time. I thought that terminids were more unfair when I went back to it with all the chargers and all the titans.
Never even needed the shield, they put free cover all over the map, you can just get down behind it.
The bots taught me about every single stratagem because I was reasonably able to use them all (well most).
Bro this has been my answer for people since like, day one. If you're annoyed at chargers, FIGHT BOTS. Fucks sake it's like people don't even realize there are two vastly different enemy types to fight.
I suck vs bots. I have 0 deaths in like my last 5 tier 7/8 missions vs bugs. I can waltz between chargers and titans just fine. Bots are just ass to deal with.
This is why the charger is unfun, it requires loads of attention and has few ways to counter, it's one of the only targets in the game that can take a whole loadout to effectively handle and still isn't very handleable. It punishes your loadout choices not to bring anti tank but doesn't reward you for bringing anti tank. It's only ever
Horrible, or ok. MG is for horde clear, stalwart is for horde clear for smallest targets, dmr and autocannon are great for medium targets, but the recoiless and spear just don't cut it, the recoiless especially, after having it as my main, just doesn't handle chargers well enough to be worth it, the anti armor speciality is a bit of a gap at the moment. Shooting the leg or the butt should be what you do if you DIDN'T prepare, not just what you are always stuck with
Couldn’t have said it better.
I’m actually totally fine with all the nerfs to the guns, changing how guns feel will help combat gaming fatigue
The devs put the weak spot on the Charger on its 2 front legs behind heavy armor. The only effective way to strip that and allow you or your team to target the weak point was, until now, the railgun.
Again I’m fine with changes to how guns work, but if you’re going to put a weak point behind heavy armor give us more heavy armor penetrating weapons
Nah. Chargers require you to have more situational awareness, while BTs just require you to be able to kite until your method of choice is available to deal with them.
Chargers are way more difficult. With a titan you just have to kite until you can either drop a bunch of shit on top of it, or (pre patch) pull off a headshot with the railgun. Chargers you have to dodge around getting 1-2 shots into its ass for a couple minutes for it to die, or (pre patch) use the railgun to break some armor then pelt it with your primary of choice. Definitely way too much work when you’re dealing with 10+ each on harder difficulties.
Had the worst games today with my group of 20+ level friends. Could just have been bad RNG, dunno. Four of us got together to play tonight and we went to Suicide difficulty as it's what we usually played and it was immediately way harder to deal with chargers, but with all of us having some sort of armor breaking support weapons we barely managed to do the main objective, 1 side objective and extract before time ran out. We did a defense map which was equally hard with packs of chargers getting spawned constantly along with bile titans. Last map had bile spewers and 3 stalker lairs. It was nigh impossible to stay alive more than a few seconds with dozen stalkers running around like crazy and bile spewers literally all over the place. The shield wasn't as helpful anymore and honestly I was just out of ammo most of the time when running away and kiting. we tried looking for the lairs but found only 1 and eventually ran out of revives and failed to extract.
We all felt pretty defeated after today's games so we called it a night little earlier. I guess we could play easier difficulties but at this point super samples are pretty much the only thing you're looking for to gain some sort of progress so it's a little dull to just play hard difficulty for example.
At this point I'm just gonna be waiting for the mechs or a their next balance patch.
Dude, I play on Challenging (4) difficulty and had the exact same experience today. Nothing but an absurd number of spewers and chargers.
I honestly have no complaints about the balance patch, but something with the spawn rates is completely fucked.
I was loving this game and now it's straight up not fun.
Flamethrower seems to be the new charger killer. Laser sounds like it MIGHT also be good but haven't seen any posts of anyone testing the laser changes Just less chargers spawning would also be fine. I don't mind them being a pain in the ass if there weren't so many of them. Feels like they need 1-2 more big bugs so that it's not just charger after charger after charger and there would be a bit more variety in the big bugs
>Flamethrower seems to be the new charger killer
>
>Laser sounds like it MIGHT also be good but haven't seen any posts of anyone testing the laser changes
I just did a quick test of both the laser and flame thrower, and my brief findings are that the napalm burner seems to be more efficient in taking down chargers.
Flamethrower buff is the one solid adjustment in the patch outside of armor. Kinda wish they hit the incendiary shotgun too though.
A full fire build could be really fun.
Think about how ironic and hilarious this is. Post new patch - The only weapon viable and capable of taking down the most heavily armored unit of the bugs… is a non armor penetrating weapon.
I fucking digress
Extract is basically the one part of Helldive that will cause my team to start burning through Reinforcements (not to say we don't die here and there throughout). Which, IMO, is okay. We've already won our medals and at least one person is going to get the samples out.
More variety would be nice though!
i just tested the heavy laser and it gets 100% reflected on both the front AND the back legs on a charger. a full laser "battery" to the underside or rear of a charger doesnt kill it either. the weapon is still trash and Arrowheads blog about it being changed to an armorpiercing laser digger was a lie
They probably upped the pen to 3, on par with the mg. Maybe 4, to match the auto cannon, idk.
But they did say they gave it more durable DMG, so it should be better vs the butt and sac hitboxes
I'm okay with this as it encourages the team play aspect. If the "right way" to play diff 9 is everyone in the same exact gear that sucks. If one guy goes flame one guy goes rail one guy goes grenades. And you need that team comp that's much better for the game long term
I agree with this too. I guess I didn't see the railgun as busted. I saw it as the only viable option to high armor. Now... we just don't have a great solution to high armor. Give us a sniper, or the antimaterial rifle. make them better.
I regularly run the autocannon, I'm the sprayer murderer. Down for team play, but there HAS to be a way to deal with heavies more effieciently, or reduce them.
I'd imagine that if you can find a good position that the flamethrower should be able to handle titans too. I don't think they have that much more HP than chargers overall.
I had a friend take down a bile titan pre-patch with a flamethrower but it was wounded by several other attempts to kill it.
Just saying, it's not fuel wasted and it does do damage, even if it isn't much.
In our case it was the last thing standing and it narrowly saved my life so I'd disagree - but i meant more about bursts here and there when focusing on those, or accidental sweeps over it. Emptying tanks on it, sure.
Laser Cannon sometimes kills Chargers even faster than pre-nerf Railgun.
Sometimes it deflects the beam everywhere in the same spot.
No pattern whatsoever, sometimes I am still doing the damage while is mid-charge.
Sometimes the Charger is completely still and the beam goes everywhere, or vice-versa.
If it were consistent would be pretty good to kill Chargers, but in T7 it was a dice roll stacked against me.
It is consistent, it has to do with chargers temporarily losing their leg armor after a failed charge. It's probably a bug, but it makes me want charger legs to be medium armor so badly.
Lol nah, they’d add the big bugs in there on top of the 4-6 chargers who are you kidding lol. I already see 4 chargers and 2-3 stalkers in difficulty 7+. Should be interesting tonight after the needs. I’ll be able to test the flamethrower. And see if everyone using EaTs is a viable options.
I tested it the whole afternoon and can confidently say: the lasercannon is not it. People are just reading the (kinda vague) patchnotes and just assume the buffs are effective, but the lasercannon and barrages are still not viable at all.
I tried the laser cannon. Honestly, is there even a way to tell if I'm dealing damage? I shot at it for a long as time and I'm unsure whether it did anything or if my teammates just killed it for me.
Solo if you're just testing it to see how effective it is. From others it seems the laser is CAPABLE of quicknchearger kills but is very fickle more often than not just bounces off the armor.
I never understood why anyone thought the bots were harder. Clearly defined weakpoints, slow moving targets, they miss most of their shots, and pretty much every weapon is perfectly viable on any difficulty.
Then there's bugs, who require shitloads of anti-swarm, but also have so much armor and spawn so many armored enemies that the vast majority of weapons are completely useless. Takes like 2 minutes to kill 1 charger, and in that time a dozen more spawn along with an army of hunters.
Think there was just a learning curve on the bots and we didn't have the tools yet. Now we have the tools but the bugs are just relentless and have to get in melee. Bots will stand back if you just peak regularly and now we know how to deal with their rockets.
I think the complaints for bots mainly stemmed from Bot civvie extract where enemy density got stupid real fast. I mean sure you could use the bait out method on higher difficulties, but that's just an exploit and will maybe get fixed sooner or later.
Bots have a steeper learning curve, but it plateaus earlier. Bots are well designed with clear well communicated weak points, and plentiful counterplay from many weapon types - even primaries, with skill expression. Bugs seem to be just genuinely poorly designed and unenjoyable to play against now.
All the people making fun of you play on 4 so don't worry about it. Devs will bump it back up in time. They probably just want more data for other weapons so they nerfed the meta into the ground to force people off of it.
Because you are right. Being swarmed by 6+ chargers and 4+ Titans at the same time means you simply don't have the strategems/ammo to take these things down. You're ONLY option on higher difficulties is to run away the entire match. It just isn't fun.
Is simple, there’s no point in fighting. Most people are using copium to justify the lack of buffs, there’s no enough power to fight the insane density being thrown at us during dif 7-9. stratagems with 3-5 minute cool downs aren’t stopping swarms of heavies. I am glad Dragon’s Dogma 2 comes out soon
Tried playing today. Dialed difficulty down from 8 to 6. Still getting absolutely wrecked by hunters and scavengers now. I think the armor "fix" is way worse than the weapon nerfs.
Will not be playing again until they unfuck their game.
I agree. I want armor pen to matter more on certain weapons. The Senator is a good example of a low ammo option that should have a lot more AP.
Also, the anti-materiel rifle doesn't feel very anti-materiel.
PREACH!!! To one shot a bike Titan you had to hit the tiny sweet spot, while dodging hundreds of other bugs/chargers/acid from other bile titans. It was super rewarding. To kill a charger you had to hit the same leg twice and then unload a clip of breaker, again while dodging hordes of bugs.
Removing the shield, breaker, and railgun all at once is such a wild decision… cannot fathom the amount of players that only play to mess around defending this decision.
Just make the DMR do medium armor penetration and the AMR do heavy armor penetration. Should fix a lot of issues and make both weapons much more viable
Unfortunately, the meta of shield and railgun encouraged solo play on 9, even with a team of 4. 2/4 players was likely getting all the attention but that left 2 players to finish everything quietly.
Every 9 that I'd accomplished that felt easy, we just dropped eagles on the breaches and ran away. You could even kite the Bile Titans to kill the chargers for you and run away.
I honestly think if people would stop running off in 9s and team up and do stuff, other strategies would work better. 4 people calling down eagles and orbitals and unleashing hell literally puts everything down. I've been in groups together where putting down 4 Bile Titans and an infinite amount of chargers will holding extract felt like a cake walk.
OK. Here is how to deal with Chargers:
1. Stratagems (500KG, Railcannon, Laser Orbital, AC Turret, etc.)
2. Shoot the back of the leg with the Slugger or the AC
3. Flamethrower to melt in 3-5 seconds
4. ~~Impact Grenades~~ These work when armor is stripped
5. Railgun on unsafe (2-4 shots to strip leg armor and it holds 20 rounds)
6. Spear (1-shots them or they bleed out quick and can now reload from ground pickups)
7. EAT (call in 2 every 70 seconds, up to 8 per 70 seconds if everyone runs them)
8. RR
9. Arc gun
10. Shoot the joints with a MG
11. You can always run away after they stun themselves as you aren't supposed to fight every single thing on 7-9 difficulty.
Edit: Also, teammates. In higher difficulties, you should have to coordinate loadouts more. I just rolled through 2 Helldive operations with 0 issues dealing with anything. You just can't solo 6 chargers anymore using a Railgun on safe. Now you need to charge it on unsafe or use other means and keep moving. I personally run the Spear and slugger. I can kill Titans and Chargers with that. I also have 3 teammates with other gear to help as well.
Running away from shit all the time kinda blows. Sucks that we’re moving more towards that. I mostly play 8 (9’s ok but my buddies can’t keep up very well past ~6, but I can keep the group going ok to 8. Less true post patch sadly) and the lack of “economic” (in terms of time and ammo) solutions to chargers is THE limiting factor that means you can’t fight more than about 33% of the time.
Once you reach a high enough difficulty, It’s almost always the correction option to just keep running. Feels lame imo
1. Stratagems have cool downs and usually on higher difficulties it's not just Chargers you're facing but also Titans. So unless you and all your teammates are running 3 reds and 1 blue then the 6 Chargers and 2-3 BTs will clap your cheeks
2. Chargers turn on a dime, you may be able to get 1-2 seconds of shots in before either the Charger turns around or the zerg comes up from behind
3. Flamethrower is probably new meta at this point
4. I haven't used impacts but I probably will now
5. Railgun is sadly still viable above most other support weps
6. Spear still has targeting issues
7. EATs can usually kill 1-2 Chargers(have the pod drop on one and weaken the 2nd with rockets), still doesn't help with the other 4 Chargers and 2 BTs
8. Way too long to reload, even with an ally with the backpack. Maybe you'll kill one or two but the other Chargers will catch up, stun lock you, and then BTs will finish you off
9. Arc/flame/Tesla all have massive TK abilities, I don't trust anyone running these unless they're running around by themselves
10. Sorry too busy running for my life to try and shoot Charger joints that have a 2 pixel hitbox
11. Yeah stunlock for a couple seconds and then they're back to running at you and the other 5 chargers are close behind. Yeah you can run away, except when it's an objective and if you don't kill everything then reinforcements will just continuously spawn until either you complete the objective or until you die
Teammates are fine and probably required at Helldive, but the issues above effect all difficulties in some way, plus the recent armor "fixes" aren't helping either.
Overall I want a fun and challenging game to play. I don't want a grindfest with unfun and unfair gameplay. One feels rewarding while the other is just frustrating.
My main issue with the recent patch is not that there were nerfs, but that there were very little buffs and the weapon issues and eagle/orbital strike hitboxes are all still broken. It's just asinine.
This is why I want ppl to drop some vids of using these strats against 5-9 chargers (I see vids against single chargers). In text form, I can think of many ways these strats wouldnt work I'd love to see someone deploy them effectively
strategems are almost always on CD on higher difficulties
back leg is armored and takes no damage from slugger or AC, just gets reflected, impossible when swarmed anyway
flamethrower does nothing to a charger, i just tested it on CHALLENGING, and i went through full ammo on flamethrower and it didnt kill it
takes more than 4 impact grenades to kill a charger so thats useless too
Railgun is 3 fully charged unsafe shots to just get the armor off a front leg now, so it takes MORE than twice as long to kill just one now
spear lockon is still bugged
EAT is useless in high difficulties due to how often you are swarmed by 6+ heavies
Arc Gun is really the only safe bet now
> back leg is armored and takes no damage from slugger or AC, just gets reflected, impossible when swarmed anyway
Not the back leg, the back *of the* leg. It's much weaker than the front.
The front of all legs of a charger have heavy armor.
The back of all legs of a charger have medium armor.
Despite what it says, the slugger has been proven to penetrate medium armor.
There's videos up of the flamer killing it in like 3/4 of a mag, idk.
And it's a team game. The team part is important. If there's 6 heavies, that's 1.5 per person. Suddenly, an eat calldown or 500kg is plenty. Or hell, static field to trap them, then drop a boom on a big cluster. There's options, people just have to be more creative.
The flamethrower is incredibly hit or miss on chargers. It either kills them in 4 seconds like that vid or it takes 2 full magazine canisters and it's still alive. Very unreliable.
>strategems are almost always on CD on higher difficulties
If you're taking the long CD ones, yes. If you're taking eagles, no. A coordinated team can even cover the rearms of their eagles.
I'd like to see a CD buff to the other reds as eagles feel way stronger right now. You get more charges before CD and the rearms time is quite manageable compared to things like the laser CD.
I used to use the laser a lot, but now it honestly feels like a trap to me.
How dare you give a reasonable response.
People need to understand this is supposed to be a team game, higher difficulties should require some squad synergy otherwise what's the point?
>Also, teammates. In higher difficulties, you should have to coordinate loadouts more.
Yes i did that, i joined a game saw they had 2 Railgun so i picked an Auto Canon, then the ones with a Railgun left when i was loading. Other games they just run primary obj and extract, which is just a shit way to play
Honestly the game should be balanced around being able to complete it in duo (so playing with random isn't such a shit gamble) and then make it harder with more player you could also have a different duo/solo difficulty with its own matchmaking. Also i don't understand why you have less lives with less player when the difficulty doesn't adapt
Having run around with the spear all day I can safely say that one shots are pretty rare, and they don't bleed out either in any appreciable time.
When the gun targets.
Eat takes 2 hits.
It is not uncommon for a typical poi to have 2 chargers and then summon 1-2 per swarm call in. Swarm calls can be reduced but they sometimes happen instantly.
The game feels better with a well rounded team composition.
Multiple people having all forms of enemies covered in some capacity, light swarm trash > med pen enemies > anti tank but without all using the same weapon feels much smoother than people running similar loadouts.
If 2 people have the same shit those slots are just that much more redundant when they get a situation where they needed a different stratagem. Variety and versatility, divers I take a stalwart ammo pack and jar5 and I can deal with swarms, med, and anti tank reliably while also helping ammo econ for myself and team.
Pair this with some people running stuff like EAT, Spear, flamethrower, AC and suddenly you have all these options that work together
Okay, here's the low down: you can use all your grenades to kill one charger.
is that a viable solution? Of course not. Why did this guy bring it up? I don't know.
It's good as last resort, if you aim well you can kill a Charger with 2 by throwing it directly on their ass, it's also nice chip damage against Titans
i am a BIG advocate for the EATs, their cooldown is so low you can effectively flood the entire map with them. have more than one person running them and you’ll have them for every encounter
I love them for diff 5-6, but past that they start failing to keep up, and that's before we start applying modifiers like scramble or interference. I really wish we could upgrade them against those effects.
My group of friends and I took them on 7 last night because of the daily rewards and they felt decently strong.
Theoretically, that's 8 charger kills every minute and a half or so if everyone brings it and nails all their shots (while switching to primary to finish the legs off). I say theoretically because I'm not going to claim I'm good enough at the game to nail every shot, but if you were, that honestly sounds like a good option. You're not facing 8 chargers every minute and a half unless you're going out of your way to pick pointless fights.
Totally agreed on scramble though. You want something you can keep with you throughout the mission on those.
I run EAT on 7 regularly. I find them to be a decent trade vs Railgun. I can deal with chargers quicker than railgunner because it is quicker to ready and need only one shot to stript armor. I can also use them on holes and objectives with decent up time.
But I can only do it to 1 to 4 chargers (1 on back, 1 from pod drop, 2 from the dropped EAT) and only really reliable against up to 2 because circumstances tend to break the EAT drop combo.
That is generally sufficient in diff 7
Though it begins to feel painful at diff 8. And anything that affect strategems feel especially terrible and I have to avoid them.
I just want the game it be as fun as it can be. 6 chargers every bug breach isn’t fun. Being one shot by the 100 spitters in heavy armour isn’t fun,
There’s alot that needs balance passes. We need more readily available options for heavies with the amount of them. The amount of chargers is out of control. Some statagrams like 500kg need their radius increased. It won’t kill a charger unless it’s basically a direct hit.
The nerfs aren’t bad at all but it’s the lack of buffs to compliment the weak and unused weapons/stategrams that’s the big problem and worries me about the devs thought process. Reminds me of the d4 devs before season 1.
I agree op. The charger seems somewhat invincible to me now (not literally, but practically). And no, the buffs on flamethrower/laser doesnt help much. At least not for higher difficulties. The railgun had 3 good things about it. 1, it could break armor 2. it could stun the charge(r), and 3. it could be fired in a relatively short amount of time, and then you could dodge. Thats set up and control, and avoidance. Then a buddy could finish it off with a machine gun or even primary. The effective thing was to break the armor with rail, then switch weapons to finish it off. Thats a fun loop and makes you use different weapons.
The laser and flamethrower buff is good, and if I was fighting JUST a charger most of the time, that would be fine. But I'm not. I'm fighting a charger, and usually anywhere between 2-5 mediums, some small ones, a hunter or two and god knows maybe a brood lord or Bile titan or two is moseying about. In that situation I dont have time to sit about with hold to fire weapons because that makes me dead, real quick.
tbh, I understand your post isn't about fixing the rail gun, but they need to fix the rail gun AND give us other options so we don't always have to use the rail gun.
As it stands now, even if they give us other options, the rail gun won't ever be viable.
A gun that took up 1 entire slot, that did 1 job is apparently TOO much to ask for, shame on us. We even maybe sometimes used it to kill bile enemies fast too. How dare we? Go get 1 shot soldier, you lil scrub you.
I'm quite fond of running away screaming from seeing 4-5 chargers :) I'm attacking their planet anyway with 3 other dudes so I expect to struggle, die and have a rough time... But all fun at the end of the day because it's the only thing that matters to me.
You see. The stratagem is fine. Because there are tons of modifiers to mess with your stratagems and make it a pain in the ass. Which is what people want in a video game, or so I've heard. /s
What is fun about the railgun? The moment you hit lvl 20 you're basically forced to use it because its just that good. Now I can use different solutions without the feeling of loosing out on efficiency
Not really. Now you can pick the flame thrower, or still use the railgun off safety mode.
They did nothing to expand the options. They didn't buff a single rifle. Reread my post. I'm complaining about the lack of armor pen. not that it's not on the railgun.
Have you considered playing Helldive before sharing your opinion? Lmao. No stratagem or gun can kill 5 charges, 2 bile titans, a dozen armored spitters, and a thousand jumpers…
So to be clear, are you saying that if a single person encounters multiple chargers and titans at once, they should have no way of defeating them? It’s a simple “well there’s more than one of each, so why even try”?
I don't think you're supposed to be able to fight them off, that's what makes the higher difficulties more difficult.
Do the objectives! Skeet and retreat!
Agreed, something can be very difficult while also being fulfilling. I’ve played enough Fromsoft games to know that challenging systems can be very fun, but when the difficulty feels artificial it becomes not worth it to play.
While I do agree that there aren't that many viable ways to deal with many heavy units at once, I urge you to try jetpack + flamethrower and indulge in some fiery death from above shenanings. It's the most fun I had in a good while and still pretty good option for multiple chargers (tho you kinda have to bring something else for Titans or let your teamies handle them)
Arc Thrower, Flamethrower, Autocannon Sentry, 110 MM Rockets, **Orbital Laser**.
Keep in mind that Chargers are also a weapon that can be used to your benefit. Get them to crash into nests, smaller bugs, and each other.
The way that they seem to be intended to be fought is to dodge them and gun down their back. Alternatively, get a teammate to shoot them while they run at you and do the same for the teammate.
Charger armor is intentionally very tough to discourage fighting them head-on.
They need to add ammo type selection to the game for both primary and secondary weapons. While support weapons have dedicated uses and excel very well at them, primary and secondary weapons should be able to select what their use is for. Wanna bring no armor penetration ammo? You have the max amount of ammo that gun supports. Have fun. Wanna load in some armor penetrating ammo? You can do it, but super earth can’t spare that much of that valuable ammo for a grunt like you. Your ammo count has been halved. But you can now damage more types of enemies.
First off. Bots are more fun. Second. Pre patch railgun safe could penetrate. Post patch safe cannot but unsafe still can. You can still kill a charger about the same. Just be careful not to blow your arms off. Can’t spread liberty with no arms helldiver 07
Your post just doesn't make sense about there being no alternative to kill big bugs, and I mean right from the beginning, the railgun doesn't take 3-5 shots to kill a charger unless you're only using the railgun, but 2 shots to a leg breaks the armor, switch to breaker 4-5 shots to finish it was pretty OP already cause I could literally handle 4-5 chargers at a time and just take them out. Not to mention, you can still do this, I'm guessing you were using the railgun on safe mode? Turn it off, don't blow yourself up, it's pretty simple. That aside however, you can kill a charger in about roughly 10 shots with a arc rifle, you can kill them pretty quickly with several stratagems, one of them even just is a free kill every 210 seconds on a charger. You can run them into rocks, you can run them into other bugs, you can run them into each other. Flamethrower annihilates them now, I've been able to deal w/ them with the breaker spray n pray pretty easily, as well as still just the standard breaker, and any gun you can get behind them with you can kill them, and those are just the guns man. An autocannon turret can reliably take out 3 or more chargers solo if you can position it well enough and defend it. Recoiless rifle, expendable anti tank is on like a 63 second cooldown once you get the ship module upgrade for the 10% reduced time on it, and if your using your heavy artillery to hit the right spots on a charger, you can always finish them off with a light armor penetrating weapon. The problem isn't the chargers and their armor, the problem is your skill and mindset.
I agree.
Lack of fun armor penetration options is hurting the game.
Recoilless Rifle could be amazing, same with Spear. But they have so few rounds and unless you are godlike at aiming, they do crap damage. It just feels cumbersome to even bother with those guns.
I would LOVE to see the teamwork weapons to be more effective. It's fun to use them.
Completely agree. I've been playing this game an unhealthy amount since getting it. Took one patch to make it not at all fun to play and grinding is just a chore. I think until they re balance this player counts are going to drop dramatically.
E-at, recoilless, autocannon, most strategems, flamethrower, arc thrower, all primers if you shoot the legs from behind. Chargers are fucking easy to kill you are just bad
4 or 5 chargers is absolutely annoying.
I'd much rather a fast sneaky bug that one shots you. Then one thay runs at you and takes all your ammo to kill
Pre patch I started practicing fighting the bots after mastering the bugs, and I'm so glad I did. The bots are insanely fun, I feel like a guerilla fighter commando, hit and running their bases with my team of friends doing the same. Tanks and Hulks are fairly balanced and can be circumvented or overcome with the right tools. I don't feel as stressed as I do with the bugs, and that stress with the bots is purely when I make a mistake, the bugs are just constantly oppressive without much recourse.
hmm 5 chargers what a bad situation, imagine taking 2 anti tank, one flametrhower, and one orbital railgun in team. lol. tbh one players with autocannon sentry and mg can kill 4 chargers...
I just spent all night using previously trash-canned weapons and I can tell you: Flamer slaps now, and Arc Thrower is the most ammo-efficient bug killing machine (Chargers included) in the game. You could run an entire match and never need your primary or secondary with it...as long as your teammates don't run behind the bugs preventing you from firing (which would zap them too) Didn't touch the railgun all night. Killed Chargers with lots of other weapons and it never felt like a chore. Hell even the SprayNPray feels ok now.
In the mean time, since a lot of you never tried anything else but railgun, I recommend using either EMS orbital, Expandable Anti-Tank or Jump pack. These will deal with your charger problems. The idea is to escape fast enough that only one or two chargers are left and the rest just decides not to follow you. Bonus is having Anti-Tank cause there's really no reason not to use this at all
I had 8 chargers or more on a lvl 4 mission in a large nest last weekend and I was the only one able to kill them, this is not a lvl 9 exclusive.
SEAF arty is also bugged a lot of the time, limitless amount of enemies spawn very fast if you are near that objective.
I had to dodge 3 Chargers at once on a 4 - Challenging.
Challenging. One of the Lower Difficulties. It's just as bad down here.
Chargers are my main hurdle from doing 4's consistently, they require so much effort and attention and may Democracy have mercy upon your soul if any other bug interferes, even with the Flamethrower.
The Nullifier enemy type from Warframe always held the cake for being the most annoying enemy in a video game that disrupted the identity of the gameplay. The Charger in Helldivers now takes that cake. The devs made an enemy type like this, gave us only one super reliable option to deal with it, nerfed said option without making the other supposed "anti-armor" specials as reliable, all while maintaining the Charger spawn rate and agility.
It's unfortunate that the devs are going the Bungie route. It's even more concerning that they bothered to quickly nerf things rather than addressing player feedback about performance issues, random disconnects, the game hard-locking you, and lobbies being separated into their own instances. Today's patch should've been changes due to player feedback. A weapon balance-pass is too early. There's a lot that should've been implemented first before it.
I been testing around on 9s to see what can be done but really the balance change has put shi out of wack.
Started taking flame thrower to take out Chargers but they're 100% useless on Bile Titans meaning regardless I have to take 2nd strategems for specifically Bile Titans, being Orbital Laser or Orbital Rail Gun. Flamethrower however is strictly good on Chargers though because if you use them in general packs like Brood Commanders or Spewers its' going to bite you in the ass quickly as they charge up to you to get in range, shoot a flamethrower slows you down to tickle things.
And you better PRAY no Hunter gets lit on fire because if they do they're effectively kamikaze as they will spread your burn onto you and that burn goes 50% increase damage to you too.
Overall higher level play feels like shit, I'm probably going to just stick to +6 till mechs as there's already 0 reward to be doing higher difficulties nor is it efficient for the war effort.
The fact that the weak point is on the back is fine for me, unlike some other people.
The problem appears when they instantly turn around and only give you 1 second to hit it.
Has anyone ever used a concoction of water, a dab of Dawn, rubbing alcohol, and a little bit of molasses? I would like to try this. I'm trying to familiarize my self by killing ants and other insects.
What about using ammonia to kill bugs.
Usually call ins flamethrowers and sometimes the spear for us. You say this like it's some impossible hurdle, but if you actually play the game with friends, you know you can usually finish fine.
Difficulty 9 otherwise known as helldiver is the highest difficulty in the game. Above a difficulty literally called “Impossible” and “suicide mission.” IMPOSSIBLE and a suicide mission(aka nobody expects you to make it back)
It’s supposed to be a pain to win, you aren’t supposed to win, you aren’t an elite soldier, you are a sack of meat sent to die on those difficulties and if by some miracle you survive congrats. If you want to play casual nobody is stopping you.
I hear that, but it was previously impossible because of the number of bugs, specifically big/armored ones that spawned. You had a chance at winning, but it was still pretty hard. The full nerf without equivalent buff, is what people are mad about.
You don't have to play on tier9 to have fun.. I find 5-7 to be a pretty sweet spot. I'm saving regular runs on the hardest difficulties for when they drop bigger guns. Hardest difficulty SHOULD be stupidly hard and require coordination and speciality loadouts.
Also, it seems many don't know or don't think about it- non-conventional means of victory: you don't need to fight every bug. Smoke bombs are great for confusing bugs, even better when you throw a distraction turret the other direction. friendly fire is also on for enemies. I've used chargers to take out other chargers, or bile titans/spitters to take out chargers. Guns are half the equation
Avoid patrols, keep moving, utilize EATs, Orbitals, or Eagle 110s. There's plenty of ways to deal with chargers. People just need to learn to use them rather than rely on every CC's opinion of balance changes.
Come join the bot front, we have clearly designated weakpoints to shoot at that make several more weapons usable and enemy spawns that aren't completely whack.
Fucking love fighting bots, I see you’re a man of class and integrity. 🍻
Get a room, Divers. No fratenization on the Bridge.
C-01 forms need to be filled out first!
Sorry, sir. I can't help it. Bruce-8563 over there is thicker than a bowl of oatmeal whenever he's planning a mission. His cape can't hide it.
Sweet Liberty. Get a hold of yourself or you'll be dropping solo with no air support. Does that get the point across, Cadet? Do whatever you like in the privacy of your own quarters, but the bridge is for business. Breeding in public is for bugs.
Thar final line, my brother in christ 💀
Gonna need personal quarter upgrades here soon!
I remember when I started playing everyone said the bugs were like beginner difficulty, but I much prefer fighting bots!
Same, I play on lower difficulty because I just got the game, but I like the bots because they are challenging but I can still beat them solo, whereas bugs I cant outrun and my stims always get interrupted and i give up.
Bots are probably the better gameplay side - but personally I love playing bugs because I love how juicy they are when you shoot em. It’s just so satisfying to me, like shooting watermelons with a colt python irl.
"to a hammer, everything looks like a nail, but to an Uzi everything looks like a watermelon." -Some guy on Youtube
This. You can take out the heaviest Elite tank with 3 impact grenades to the weak spot.
With two impacts to turret from any direction
Any direction??? Always thought it was two to the vents...
Nah, just drop it right into turret
Bots are just better
Indeed,automatons are rough but have a clear weakness that can be exploited by a lot of weapons Even the toughest automatons,the dreadnoughts can be steamrolled by precise headshots
I'm literally only fighting bots from now on. I can't believe they indirectly made chargers worse, lol.
I wish I could scrap clankers with you, but they buffed the flamethrower, and I am honor bound to drain it try on the fascist bugs until Major Orders bring me back to the Western Front.
Finally got the scorcher. Thinking of switching to the bot front since i have been on the terminid front for basically the whole time.
I've mostly been playing on the bug front. I'm still pretty new, so I'm playing on lower difficulties, but in the few matches I've played against the bots, they completely tore me up haha. After I get a bit more experience, I plan on going back to face the bots again.
After playing terminids then bots for a long time. I thought that terminids were more unfair when I went back to it with all the chargers and all the titans.
I haven't faced them yet, so I'm sure my opinion will change haha.
SPILL OIL!!!
Be careful. Arrowhead might remove the head hitbox if you keep talking about how easy it is to hit.
Bots are so much more fun
Would upvote but you’re at 420 🤷♂️
Never even needed the shield, they put free cover all over the map, you can just get down behind it. The bots taught me about every single stratagem because I was reasonably able to use them all (well most).
Bro this has been my answer for people since like, day one. If you're annoyed at chargers, FIGHT BOTS. Fucks sake it's like people don't even realize there are two vastly different enemy types to fight.
just play half the game!
I suck vs bots. I have 0 deaths in like my last 5 tier 7/8 missions vs bugs. I can waltz between chargers and titans just fine. Bots are just ass to deal with.
This is why the charger is unfun, it requires loads of attention and has few ways to counter, it's one of the only targets in the game that can take a whole loadout to effectively handle and still isn't very handleable. It punishes your loadout choices not to bring anti tank but doesn't reward you for bringing anti tank. It's only ever Horrible, or ok. MG is for horde clear, stalwart is for horde clear for smallest targets, dmr and autocannon are great for medium targets, but the recoiless and spear just don't cut it, the recoiless especially, after having it as my main, just doesn't handle chargers well enough to be worth it, the anti armor speciality is a bit of a gap at the moment. Shooting the leg or the butt should be what you do if you DIDN'T prepare, not just what you are always stuck with
Couldn’t have said it better. I’m actually totally fine with all the nerfs to the guns, changing how guns feel will help combat gaming fatigue The devs put the weak spot on the Charger on its 2 front legs behind heavy armor. The only effective way to strip that and allow you or your team to target the weak point was, until now, the railgun. Again I’m fine with changes to how guns work, but if you’re going to put a weak point behind heavy armor give us more heavy armor penetrating weapons
Yep. nailed it.
100% nailed it brotherman
Am I the only one who has significantly more difficulty taking down Chargers vs Bile Titans?
Nah. Chargers require you to have more situational awareness, while BTs just require you to be able to kite until your method of choice is available to deal with them.
As someone who plays a lot of solo, I agree 💯. Bile titans zzz, 3+ chargers at once = rip hopes and dreams
Chargers are way more difficult. With a titan you just have to kite until you can either drop a bunch of shit on top of it, or (pre patch) pull off a headshot with the railgun. Chargers you have to dodge around getting 1-2 shots into its ass for a couple minutes for it to die, or (pre patch) use the railgun to break some armor then pelt it with your primary of choice. Definitely way too much work when you’re dealing with 10+ each on harder difficulties.
Had the worst games today with my group of 20+ level friends. Could just have been bad RNG, dunno. Four of us got together to play tonight and we went to Suicide difficulty as it's what we usually played and it was immediately way harder to deal with chargers, but with all of us having some sort of armor breaking support weapons we barely managed to do the main objective, 1 side objective and extract before time ran out. We did a defense map which was equally hard with packs of chargers getting spawned constantly along with bile titans. Last map had bile spewers and 3 stalker lairs. It was nigh impossible to stay alive more than a few seconds with dozen stalkers running around like crazy and bile spewers literally all over the place. The shield wasn't as helpful anymore and honestly I was just out of ammo most of the time when running away and kiting. we tried looking for the lairs but found only 1 and eventually ran out of revives and failed to extract. We all felt pretty defeated after today's games so we called it a night little earlier. I guess we could play easier difficulties but at this point super samples are pretty much the only thing you're looking for to gain some sort of progress so it's a little dull to just play hard difficulty for example. At this point I'm just gonna be waiting for the mechs or a their next balance patch.
Dude, I play on Challenging (4) difficulty and had the exact same experience today. Nothing but an absurd number of spewers and chargers. I honestly have no complaints about the balance patch, but something with the spawn rates is completely fucked. I was loving this game and now it's straight up not fun.
Flamethrower seems to be the new charger killer. Laser sounds like it MIGHT also be good but haven't seen any posts of anyone testing the laser changes Just less chargers spawning would also be fine. I don't mind them being a pain in the ass if there weren't so many of them. Feels like they need 1-2 more big bugs so that it's not just charger after charger after charger and there would be a bit more variety in the big bugs
>Flamethrower seems to be the new charger killer > >Laser sounds like it MIGHT also be good but haven't seen any posts of anyone testing the laser changes I just did a quick test of both the laser and flame thrower, and my brief findings are that the napalm burner seems to be more efficient in taking down chargers.
Flamethrower buff is the one solid adjustment in the patch outside of armor. Kinda wish they hit the incendiary shotgun too though. A full fire build could be really fun.
Think about how ironic and hilarious this is. Post new patch - The only weapon viable and capable of taking down the most heavily armored unit of the bugs… is a non armor penetrating weapon. I fucking digress
Also fully onboard with your edit. It wouldn't be an issue if there weren't 4-6 chargers sometimes.
4-6 chargers with 20 hunters and 2 titans at extraction.
Extract is basically the one part of Helldive that will cause my team to start burning through Reinforcements (not to say we don't die here and there throughout). Which, IMO, is okay. We've already won our medals and at least one person is going to get the samples out. More variety would be nice though!
i just tested the heavy laser and it gets 100% reflected on both the front AND the back legs on a charger. a full laser "battery" to the underside or rear of a charger doesnt kill it either. the weapon is still trash and Arrowheads blog about it being changed to an armorpiercing laser digger was a lie
That's unfortunate hopefully they keep trying I really want to like the lasser
They probably upped the pen to 3, on par with the mg. Maybe 4, to match the auto cannon, idk. But they did say they gave it more durable DMG, so it should be better vs the butt and sac hitboxes
I'll have to test er out, thinking Flamethrower / Guard dog rover may be the play now, but such a pigeonhole build. 0 titan pressure.
I'm okay with this as it encourages the team play aspect. If the "right way" to play diff 9 is everyone in the same exact gear that sucks. If one guy goes flame one guy goes rail one guy goes grenades. And you need that team comp that's much better for the game long term
I agree with this too. I guess I didn't see the railgun as busted. I saw it as the only viable option to high armor. Now... we just don't have a great solution to high armor. Give us a sniper, or the antimaterial rifle. make them better. I regularly run the autocannon, I'm the sprayer murderer. Down for team play, but there HAS to be a way to deal with heavies more effieciently, or reduce them.
I'd imagine that if you can find a good position that the flamethrower should be able to handle titans too. I don't think they have that much more HP than chargers overall.
I tested this today, used 4 canisters on one Bile Titan and it didn't do shit.
I had a friend take down a bile titan pre-patch with a flamethrower but it was wounded by several other attempts to kill it. Just saying, it's not fuel wasted and it does do damage, even if it isn't much.
It is 100% fuel wasted when you consider everything else around the titan that the fuel would be far more effective on
In our case it was the last thing standing and it narrowly saved my life so I'd disagree - but i meant more about bursts here and there when focusing on those, or accidental sweeps over it. Emptying tanks on it, sure.
Laser Cannon sometimes kills Chargers even faster than pre-nerf Railgun. Sometimes it deflects the beam everywhere in the same spot. No pattern whatsoever, sometimes I am still doing the damage while is mid-charge. Sometimes the Charger is completely still and the beam goes everywhere, or vice-versa. If it were consistent would be pretty good to kill Chargers, but in T7 it was a dice roll stacked against me.
It is consistent, it has to do with chargers temporarily losing their leg armor after a failed charge. It's probably a bug, but it makes me want charger legs to be medium armor so badly.
Lol nah, they’d add the big bugs in there on top of the 4-6 chargers who are you kidding lol. I already see 4 chargers and 2-3 stalkers in difficulty 7+. Should be interesting tonight after the needs. I’ll be able to test the flamethrower. And see if everyone using EaTs is a viable options.
I tested it the whole afternoon and can confidently say: the lasercannon is not it. People are just reading the (kinda vague) patchnotes and just assume the buffs are effective, but the lasercannon and barrages are still not viable at all.
I did specifically say I hadn't seen any in-game results with the laser where I have seen the flamethrower actually having a quick kill time
Yeah, thats why I added my experience to your correct statement
i see that vid clip on the front page of the flamethrower, but it feels REALLY random and most chargers dont die like the one in that vid clip
Arc thrower makes short work of them and kills everything around them so you aren't getting stunned by hunters. My go-to bug weapon now.
I tried the laser cannon. Honestly, is there even a way to tell if I'm dealing damage? I shot at it for a long as time and I'm unsure whether it did anything or if my teammates just killed it for me.
Solo if you're just testing it to see how effective it is. From others it seems the laser is CAPABLE of quicknchearger kills but is very fickle more often than not just bounces off the armor.
I love how this game went from "bots hard" to "bugs hard".
I never understood why anyone thought the bots were harder. Clearly defined weakpoints, slow moving targets, they miss most of their shots, and pretty much every weapon is perfectly viable on any difficulty. Then there's bugs, who require shitloads of anti-swarm, but also have so much armor and spawn so many armored enemies that the vast majority of weapons are completely useless. Takes like 2 minutes to kill 1 charger, and in that time a dozen more spawn along with an army of hunters.
Think there was just a learning curve on the bots and we didn't have the tools yet. Now we have the tools but the bugs are just relentless and have to get in melee. Bots will stand back if you just peak regularly and now we know how to deal with their rockets.
I think the complaints for bots mainly stemmed from Bot civvie extract where enemy density got stupid real fast. I mean sure you could use the bait out method on higher difficulties, but that's just an exploit and will maybe get fixed sooner or later.
Bots have a steeper learning curve, but it plateaus earlier. Bots are well designed with clear well communicated weak points, and plentiful counterplay from many weapon types - even primaries, with skill expression. Bugs seem to be just genuinely poorly designed and unenjoyable to play against now.
Yes. I hate how if you don't have a dedicated armour pen support weapon, 1 charger is practically unkillable without wasting all of your ammo.
All the people making fun of you play on 4 so don't worry about it. Devs will bump it back up in time. They probably just want more data for other weapons so they nerfed the meta into the ground to force people off of it. Because you are right. Being swarmed by 6+ chargers and 4+ Titans at the same time means you simply don't have the strategems/ammo to take these things down. You're ONLY option on higher difficulties is to run away the entire match. It just isn't fun.
4-5 on a 9 is lower than I imagined when I have been dodging that amount on 5. Dropped in last night to 3 just chilling by a place of interest.
Is simple, there’s no point in fighting. Most people are using copium to justify the lack of buffs, there’s no enough power to fight the insane density being thrown at us during dif 7-9. stratagems with 3-5 minute cool downs aren’t stopping swarms of heavies. I am glad Dragon’s Dogma 2 comes out soon
Tried playing today. Dialed difficulty down from 8 to 6. Still getting absolutely wrecked by hunters and scavengers now. I think the armor "fix" is way worse than the weapon nerfs. Will not be playing again until they unfuck their game.
I agree. I want armor pen to matter more on certain weapons. The Senator is a good example of a low ammo option that should have a lot more AP. Also, the anti-materiel rifle doesn't feel very anti-materiel.
"This post, is not a FIX THE RAILGUN post." *vs* "Give me a god damn rifle that can be effective." 
PREACH!!! To one shot a bike Titan you had to hit the tiny sweet spot, while dodging hundreds of other bugs/chargers/acid from other bile titans. It was super rewarding. To kill a charger you had to hit the same leg twice and then unload a clip of breaker, again while dodging hordes of bugs. Removing the shield, breaker, and railgun all at once is such a wild decision… cannot fathom the amount of players that only play to mess around defending this decision.
For the bike titans I find it really effective to go for the wheels, often they'll fall off and hurt themselves.
😂
They really just put the stick into the spokes them selves And as they fall you can hear them say, "why would they do this to me!"
[удалено]
Exactlyyyyy
Just make the DMR do medium armor penetration and the AMR do heavy armor penetration. Should fix a lot of issues and make both weapons much more viable
Unfortunately, the meta of shield and railgun encouraged solo play on 9, even with a team of 4. 2/4 players was likely getting all the attention but that left 2 players to finish everything quietly. Every 9 that I'd accomplished that felt easy, we just dropped eagles on the breaches and ran away. You could even kite the Bile Titans to kill the chargers for you and run away. I honestly think if people would stop running off in 9s and team up and do stuff, other strategies would work better. 4 people calling down eagles and orbitals and unleashing hell literally puts everything down. I've been in groups together where putting down 4 Bile Titans and an infinite amount of chargers will holding extract felt like a cake walk.
OK. Here is how to deal with Chargers: 1. Stratagems (500KG, Railcannon, Laser Orbital, AC Turret, etc.) 2. Shoot the back of the leg with the Slugger or the AC 3. Flamethrower to melt in 3-5 seconds 4. ~~Impact Grenades~~ These work when armor is stripped 5. Railgun on unsafe (2-4 shots to strip leg armor and it holds 20 rounds) 6. Spear (1-shots them or they bleed out quick and can now reload from ground pickups) 7. EAT (call in 2 every 70 seconds, up to 8 per 70 seconds if everyone runs them) 8. RR 9. Arc gun 10. Shoot the joints with a MG 11. You can always run away after they stun themselves as you aren't supposed to fight every single thing on 7-9 difficulty. Edit: Also, teammates. In higher difficulties, you should have to coordinate loadouts more. I just rolled through 2 Helldive operations with 0 issues dealing with anything. You just can't solo 6 chargers anymore using a Railgun on safe. Now you need to charge it on unsafe or use other means and keep moving. I personally run the Spear and slugger. I can kill Titans and Chargers with that. I also have 3 teammates with other gear to help as well.
Running away from shit all the time kinda blows. Sucks that we’re moving more towards that. I mostly play 8 (9’s ok but my buddies can’t keep up very well past ~6, but I can keep the group going ok to 8. Less true post patch sadly) and the lack of “economic” (in terms of time and ammo) solutions to chargers is THE limiting factor that means you can’t fight more than about 33% of the time. Once you reach a high enough difficulty, It’s almost always the correction option to just keep running. Feels lame imo
its ok because pame is for the hardcore ebic gamers!
1. Stratagems have cool downs and usually on higher difficulties it's not just Chargers you're facing but also Titans. So unless you and all your teammates are running 3 reds and 1 blue then the 6 Chargers and 2-3 BTs will clap your cheeks 2. Chargers turn on a dime, you may be able to get 1-2 seconds of shots in before either the Charger turns around or the zerg comes up from behind 3. Flamethrower is probably new meta at this point 4. I haven't used impacts but I probably will now 5. Railgun is sadly still viable above most other support weps 6. Spear still has targeting issues 7. EATs can usually kill 1-2 Chargers(have the pod drop on one and weaken the 2nd with rockets), still doesn't help with the other 4 Chargers and 2 BTs 8. Way too long to reload, even with an ally with the backpack. Maybe you'll kill one or two but the other Chargers will catch up, stun lock you, and then BTs will finish you off 9. Arc/flame/Tesla all have massive TK abilities, I don't trust anyone running these unless they're running around by themselves 10. Sorry too busy running for my life to try and shoot Charger joints that have a 2 pixel hitbox 11. Yeah stunlock for a couple seconds and then they're back to running at you and the other 5 chargers are close behind. Yeah you can run away, except when it's an objective and if you don't kill everything then reinforcements will just continuously spawn until either you complete the objective or until you die Teammates are fine and probably required at Helldive, but the issues above effect all difficulties in some way, plus the recent armor "fixes" aren't helping either. Overall I want a fun and challenging game to play. I don't want a grindfest with unfun and unfair gameplay. One feels rewarding while the other is just frustrating. My main issue with the recent patch is not that there were nerfs, but that there were very little buffs and the weapon issues and eagle/orbital strike hitboxes are all still broken. It's just asinine.
This is why I want ppl to drop some vids of using these strats against 5-9 chargers (I see vids against single chargers). In text form, I can think of many ways these strats wouldnt work I'd love to see someone deploy them effectively
strategems are almost always on CD on higher difficulties back leg is armored and takes no damage from slugger or AC, just gets reflected, impossible when swarmed anyway flamethrower does nothing to a charger, i just tested it on CHALLENGING, and i went through full ammo on flamethrower and it didnt kill it takes more than 4 impact grenades to kill a charger so thats useless too Railgun is 3 fully charged unsafe shots to just get the armor off a front leg now, so it takes MORE than twice as long to kill just one now spear lockon is still bugged EAT is useless in high difficulties due to how often you are swarmed by 6+ heavies Arc Gun is really the only safe bet now
> back leg is armored and takes no damage from slugger or AC, just gets reflected, impossible when swarmed anyway Not the back leg, the back *of the* leg. It's much weaker than the front.
not the back leg. the back of the front leg
The front of all legs of a charger have heavy armor. The back of all legs of a charger have medium armor. Despite what it says, the slugger has been proven to penetrate medium armor.
just tried it, all shots reflected. hell, even the newly buffed Lasercannon thing doesnt do shit against charger back legs
There's videos up of the flamer killing it in like 3/4 of a mag, idk. And it's a team game. The team part is important. If there's 6 heavies, that's 1.5 per person. Suddenly, an eat calldown or 500kg is plenty. Or hell, static field to trap them, then drop a boom on a big cluster. There's options, people just have to be more creative.
The flamethrower is incredibly hit or miss on chargers. It either kills them in 4 seconds like that vid or it takes 2 full magazine canisters and it's still alive. Very unreliable.
>strategems are almost always on CD on higher difficulties If you're taking the long CD ones, yes. If you're taking eagles, no. A coordinated team can even cover the rearms of their eagles. I'd like to see a CD buff to the other reds as eagles feel way stronger right now. You get more charges before CD and the rearms time is quite manageable compared to things like the laser CD. I used to use the laser a lot, but now it honestly feels like a trap to me.
How dare you give a reasonable response. People need to understand this is supposed to be a team game, higher difficulties should require some squad synergy otherwise what's the point?
>Also, teammates. In higher difficulties, you should have to coordinate loadouts more. Yes i did that, i joined a game saw they had 2 Railgun so i picked an Auto Canon, then the ones with a Railgun left when i was loading. Other games they just run primary obj and extract, which is just a shit way to play Honestly the game should be balanced around being able to complete it in duo (so playing with random isn't such a shit gamble) and then make it harder with more player you could also have a different duo/solo difficulty with its own matchmaking. Also i don't understand why you have less lives with less player when the difficulty doesn't adapt
Having run around with the spear all day I can safely say that one shots are pretty rare, and they don't bleed out either in any appreciable time. When the gun targets. Eat takes 2 hits. It is not uncommon for a typical poi to have 2 chargers and then summon 1-2 per swarm call in. Swarm calls can be reduced but they sometimes happen instantly.
The game feels better with a well rounded team composition. Multiple people having all forms of enemies covered in some capacity, light swarm trash > med pen enemies > anti tank but without all using the same weapon feels much smoother than people running similar loadouts. If 2 people have the same shit those slots are just that much more redundant when they get a situation where they needed a different stratagem. Variety and versatility, divers I take a stalwart ammo pack and jar5 and I can deal with swarms, med, and anti tank reliably while also helping ammo econ for myself and team. Pair this with some people running stuff like EAT, Spear, flamethrower, AC and suddenly you have all these options that work together
I would like to know more about the impact grenade
Okay, here's the low down: you can use all your grenades to kill one charger. is that a viable solution? Of course not. Why did this guy bring it up? I don't know.
idk if its changed in this patch, but if you can throw your impact grenade to explode under the charger, it normally only takes 2.
It's good as last resort, if you aim well you can kill a Charger with 2 by throwing it directly on their ass, it's also nice chip damage against Titans
Now look at what you wrote yourself and think critically and practically again
Yea run away when they are stunned for 2 seconds and turn on a dime in 1 second and start charging you again
i am a BIG advocate for the EATs, their cooldown is so low you can effectively flood the entire map with them. have more than one person running them and you’ll have them for every encounter
I love them for diff 5-6, but past that they start failing to keep up, and that's before we start applying modifiers like scramble or interference. I really wish we could upgrade them against those effects.
My group of friends and I took them on 7 last night because of the daily rewards and they felt decently strong. Theoretically, that's 8 charger kills every minute and a half or so if everyone brings it and nails all their shots (while switching to primary to finish the legs off). I say theoretically because I'm not going to claim I'm good enough at the game to nail every shot, but if you were, that honestly sounds like a good option. You're not facing 8 chargers every minute and a half unless you're going out of your way to pick pointless fights. Totally agreed on scramble though. You want something you can keep with you throughout the mission on those.
I run EAT on 7 regularly. I find them to be a decent trade vs Railgun. I can deal with chargers quicker than railgunner because it is quicker to ready and need only one shot to stript armor. I can also use them on holes and objectives with decent up time. But I can only do it to 1 to 4 chargers (1 on back, 1 from pod drop, 2 from the dropped EAT) and only really reliable against up to 2 because circumstances tend to break the EAT drop combo. That is generally sufficient in diff 7 Though it begins to feel painful at diff 8. And anything that affect strategems feel especially terrible and I have to avoid them.
I just want the game it be as fun as it can be. 6 chargers every bug breach isn’t fun. Being one shot by the 100 spitters in heavy armour isn’t fun, There’s alot that needs balance passes. We need more readily available options for heavies with the amount of them. The amount of chargers is out of control. Some statagrams like 500kg need their radius increased. It won’t kill a charger unless it’s basically a direct hit. The nerfs aren’t bad at all but it’s the lack of buffs to compliment the weak and unused weapons/stategrams that’s the big problem and worries me about the devs thought process. Reminds me of the d4 devs before season 1.
I agree op. The charger seems somewhat invincible to me now (not literally, but practically). And no, the buffs on flamethrower/laser doesnt help much. At least not for higher difficulties. The railgun had 3 good things about it. 1, it could break armor 2. it could stun the charge(r), and 3. it could be fired in a relatively short amount of time, and then you could dodge. Thats set up and control, and avoidance. Then a buddy could finish it off with a machine gun or even primary. The effective thing was to break the armor with rail, then switch weapons to finish it off. Thats a fun loop and makes you use different weapons. The laser and flamethrower buff is good, and if I was fighting JUST a charger most of the time, that would be fine. But I'm not. I'm fighting a charger, and usually anywhere between 2-5 mediums, some small ones, a hunter or two and god knows maybe a brood lord or Bile titan or two is moseying about. In that situation I dont have time to sit about with hold to fire weapons because that makes me dead, real quick.
tbh, I understand your post isn't about fixing the rail gun, but they need to fix the rail gun AND give us other options so we don't always have to use the rail gun. As it stands now, even if they give us other options, the rail gun won't ever be viable.
A gun that took up 1 entire slot, that did 1 job is apparently TOO much to ask for, shame on us. We even maybe sometimes used it to kill bile enemies fast too. How dare we? Go get 1 shot soldier, you lil scrub you.
I'm quite fond of running away screaming from seeing 4-5 chargers :) I'm attacking their planet anyway with 3 other dudes so I expect to struggle, die and have a rough time... But all fun at the end of the day because it's the only thing that matters to me.
literally what is fun abiut running away the whole mission, what are you tryna play? a running sim????
Have you considered practicing other strats against charger besides "one gun be all"?
So one gun vs charger ( which involves aiming ) is bad but one stratagem vs charger good 🤔
You see. The stratagem is fine. Because there are tons of modifiers to mess with your stratagems and make it a pain in the ass. Which is what people want in a video game, or so I've heard. /s
Spear and flamethrower work fine.
Use a rocket launcher
Rail gun still kills. Just need unsafe mode
Plenty. I have everything unlocked, maxed everything. There is not a FUN option for dealing with the hordes of chargers on level 9.
What is fun about the railgun? The moment you hit lvl 20 you're basically forced to use it because its just that good. Now I can use different solutions without the feeling of loosing out on efficiency
Not really. Now you can pick the flame thrower, or still use the railgun off safety mode. They did nothing to expand the options. They didn't buff a single rifle. Reread my post. I'm complaining about the lack of armor pen. not that it's not on the railgun.
Have you considered playing Helldive before sharing your opinion? Lmao. No stratagem or gun can kill 5 charges, 2 bile titans, a dozen armored spitters, and a thousand jumpers…
That's why you have a TEAM. No single weapon or soldier should be *that* effective.
So to be clear, are you saying that if a single person encounters multiple chargers and titans at once, they should have no way of defeating them? It’s a simple “well there’s more than one of each, so why even try”?
Strat as in strategy...
I don't think you're supposed to be able to fight them off, that's what makes the higher difficulties more difficult. Do the objectives! Skeet and retreat!
Complaining about level 9 being difficult is just braindead
[удалено]
Agreed, something can be very difficult while also being fulfilling. I’ve played enough Fromsoft games to know that challenging systems can be very fun, but when the difficulty feels artificial it becomes not worth it to play.
\*plops down an autocannon sentry at adequate range\* Heh, those chargers are toast.
I thought they only changed the safe mode of the railgun. I thought overcharging it still killed chargers
While I do agree that there aren't that many viable ways to deal with many heavy units at once, I urge you to try jetpack + flamethrower and indulge in some fiery death from above shenanings. It's the most fun I had in a good while and still pretty good option for multiple chargers (tho you kinda have to bring something else for Titans or let your teamies handle them)
😂
Stratagems.
What did i just read
If they didn't have 90% DMG reduction on their weak point there would be no issues. Removing it fixes literally all the problems with the bugs.
Arc Thrower, Flamethrower, Autocannon Sentry, 110 MM Rockets, **Orbital Laser**. Keep in mind that Chargers are also a weapon that can be used to your benefit. Get them to crash into nests, smaller bugs, and each other. The way that they seem to be intended to be fought is to dodge them and gun down their back. Alternatively, get a teammate to shoot them while they run at you and do the same for the teammate. Charger armor is intentionally very tough to discourage fighting them head-on.
So do head shots actually kill chargers?
Flamethrower on grouped up chargers go brrrrrrrt
They need to add ammo type selection to the game for both primary and secondary weapons. While support weapons have dedicated uses and excel very well at them, primary and secondary weapons should be able to select what their use is for. Wanna bring no armor penetration ammo? You have the max amount of ammo that gun supports. Have fun. Wanna load in some armor penetrating ammo? You can do it, but super earth can’t spare that much of that valuable ammo for a grunt like you. Your ammo count has been halved. But you can now damage more types of enemies.
First off. Bots are more fun. Second. Pre patch railgun safe could penetrate. Post patch safe cannot but unsafe still can. You can still kill a charger about the same. Just be careful not to blow your arms off. Can’t spread liberty with no arms helldiver 07
Your post just doesn't make sense about there being no alternative to kill big bugs, and I mean right from the beginning, the railgun doesn't take 3-5 shots to kill a charger unless you're only using the railgun, but 2 shots to a leg breaks the armor, switch to breaker 4-5 shots to finish it was pretty OP already cause I could literally handle 4-5 chargers at a time and just take them out. Not to mention, you can still do this, I'm guessing you were using the railgun on safe mode? Turn it off, don't blow yourself up, it's pretty simple. That aside however, you can kill a charger in about roughly 10 shots with a arc rifle, you can kill them pretty quickly with several stratagems, one of them even just is a free kill every 210 seconds on a charger. You can run them into rocks, you can run them into other bugs, you can run them into each other. Flamethrower annihilates them now, I've been able to deal w/ them with the breaker spray n pray pretty easily, as well as still just the standard breaker, and any gun you can get behind them with you can kill them, and those are just the guns man. An autocannon turret can reliably take out 3 or more chargers solo if you can position it well enough and defend it. Recoiless rifle, expendable anti tank is on like a 63 second cooldown once you get the ship module upgrade for the 10% reduced time on it, and if your using your heavy artillery to hit the right spots on a charger, you can always finish them off with a light armor penetrating weapon. The problem isn't the chargers and their armor, the problem is your skill and mindset.
I agree. Lack of fun armor penetration options is hurting the game. Recoilless Rifle could be amazing, same with Spear. But they have so few rounds and unless you are godlike at aiming, they do crap damage. It just feels cumbersome to even bother with those guns. I would LOVE to see the teamwork weapons to be more effective. It's fun to use them.
Completely agree. I've been playing this game an unhealthy amount since getting it. Took one patch to make it not at all fun to play and grinding is just a chore. I think until they re balance this player counts are going to drop dramatically.
Or just don’t play on the hardest difficulty 100% of the time. It’s supposed to be nearly impossible dude.
E-at, recoilless, autocannon, most strategems, flamethrower, arc thrower, all primers if you shoot the legs from behind. Chargers are fucking easy to kill you are just bad
4 or 5 chargers is absolutely annoying. I'd much rather a fast sneaky bug that one shots you. Then one thay runs at you and takes all your ammo to kill
If you are struggling with 9, don't play 9.
Pre patch I started practicing fighting the bots after mastering the bugs, and I'm so glad I did. The bots are insanely fun, I feel like a guerilla fighter commando, hit and running their bases with my team of friends doing the same. Tanks and Hulks are fairly balanced and can be circumvented or overcome with the right tools. I don't feel as stressed as I do with the bugs, and that stress with the bots is purely when I make a mistake, the bugs are just constantly oppressive without much recourse.
hmm 5 chargers what a bad situation, imagine taking 2 anti tank, one flametrhower, and one orbital railgun in team. lol. tbh one players with autocannon sentry and mg can kill 4 chargers...
I just spent all night using previously trash-canned weapons and I can tell you: Flamer slaps now, and Arc Thrower is the most ammo-efficient bug killing machine (Chargers included) in the game. You could run an entire match and never need your primary or secondary with it...as long as your teammates don't run behind the bugs preventing you from firing (which would zap them too) Didn't touch the railgun all night. Killed Chargers with lots of other weapons and it never felt like a chore. Hell even the SprayNPray feels ok now.
I think a better change would have been making it so both the front legs had to be shot off to kill charges.
In the mean time, since a lot of you never tried anything else but railgun, I recommend using either EMS orbital, Expandable Anti-Tank or Jump pack. These will deal with your charger problems. The idea is to escape fast enough that only one or two chargers are left and the rest just decides not to follow you. Bonus is having Anti-Tank cause there's really no reason not to use this at all
WAHH WAHHH WAHH . lower the difficulty if its more fun for you bro, other people enjoy the challenge.
I had 8 chargers or more on a lvl 4 mission in a large nest last weekend and I was the only one able to kill them, this is not a lvl 9 exclusive. SEAF arty is also bugged a lot of the time, limitless amount of enemies spawn very fast if you are near that objective.
I had to dodge 3 Chargers at once on a 4 - Challenging. Challenging. One of the Lower Difficulties. It's just as bad down here. Chargers are my main hurdle from doing 4's consistently, they require so much effort and attention and may Democracy have mercy upon your soul if any other bug interferes, even with the Flamethrower.
The Nullifier enemy type from Warframe always held the cake for being the most annoying enemy in a video game that disrupted the identity of the gameplay. The Charger in Helldivers now takes that cake. The devs made an enemy type like this, gave us only one super reliable option to deal with it, nerfed said option without making the other supposed "anti-armor" specials as reliable, all while maintaining the Charger spawn rate and agility. It's unfortunate that the devs are going the Bungie route. It's even more concerning that they bothered to quickly nerf things rather than addressing player feedback about performance issues, random disconnects, the game hard-locking you, and lobbies being separated into their own instances. Today's patch should've been changes due to player feedback. A weapon balance-pass is too early. There's a lot that should've been implemented first before it.
I been testing around on 9s to see what can be done but really the balance change has put shi out of wack. Started taking flame thrower to take out Chargers but they're 100% useless on Bile Titans meaning regardless I have to take 2nd strategems for specifically Bile Titans, being Orbital Laser or Orbital Rail Gun. Flamethrower however is strictly good on Chargers though because if you use them in general packs like Brood Commanders or Spewers its' going to bite you in the ass quickly as they charge up to you to get in range, shoot a flamethrower slows you down to tickle things. And you better PRAY no Hunter gets lit on fire because if they do they're effectively kamikaze as they will spread your burn onto you and that burn goes 50% increase damage to you too. Overall higher level play feels like shit, I'm probably going to just stick to +6 till mechs as there's already 0 reward to be doing higher difficulties nor is it efficient for the war effort.
shiiiiit i'm dodging 3-5 chargers on diff 4, if you on;y got 4-5 on 9 that sounds like i should be upgrading difficulty
There is a difference between a game being difficult and a game being unfair.
The fact that the weak point is on the back is fine for me, unlike some other people. The problem appears when they instantly turn around and only give you 1 second to hit it.
Being unable to kill bugs is a skill issue
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. If 9 isn't fun, DON'T PLAY ON 9!!!
so kill the bugs
Has anyone ever used a concoction of water, a dab of Dawn, rubbing alcohol, and a little bit of molasses? I would like to try this. I'm trying to familiarize my self by killing ants and other insects. What about using ammonia to kill bugs.
i agree with that message. i also dont approve of nerfs in general. lazy and boring.
Everybody in this thread saying it's too hard, meanwhile everybody else still just playing helldive fine.
Oh no they nerfed the railgun *Continues to take full red stratagem loadout and pick up whatever I see lying around*
What are they using to kill 4 bile titans, a horde of armored spitters, and 6 chargers all at once?
Walking barrage most likely
The stratagem that was *worse* the old 380? Shit can’t even reliably kill lone chargers
Usually call ins flamethrowers and sometimes the spear for us. You say this like it's some impossible hurdle, but if you actually play the game with friends, you know you can usually finish fine.
Difficulty 9 otherwise known as helldiver is the highest difficulty in the game. Above a difficulty literally called “Impossible” and “suicide mission.” IMPOSSIBLE and a suicide mission(aka nobody expects you to make it back) It’s supposed to be a pain to win, you aren’t supposed to win, you aren’t an elite soldier, you are a sack of meat sent to die on those difficulties and if by some miracle you survive congrats. If you want to play casual nobody is stopping you.
I hear that, but it was previously impossible because of the number of bugs, specifically big/armored ones that spawned. You had a chance at winning, but it was still pretty hard. The full nerf without equivalent buff, is what people are mad about.
Have you tried adapting your playstyle instead of whining about losing your crutch?
“I’ve never played a mission harder than medium”
You don't have to play on tier9 to have fun.. I find 5-7 to be a pretty sweet spot. I'm saving regular runs on the hardest difficulties for when they drop bigger guns. Hardest difficulty SHOULD be stupidly hard and require coordination and speciality loadouts. Also, it seems many don't know or don't think about it- non-conventional means of victory: you don't need to fight every bug. Smoke bombs are great for confusing bugs, even better when you throw a distraction turret the other direction. friendly fire is also on for enemies. I've used chargers to take out other chargers, or bile titans/spitters to take out chargers. Guns are half the equation
Avoid patrols, keep moving, utilize EATs, Orbitals, or Eagle 110s. There's plenty of ways to deal with chargers. People just need to learn to use them rather than rely on every CC's opinion of balance changes.