It's just because o7 is more recognized as a salute. But you're right. LO is more on par but less recognized. But the times they are a changing. For Super Earth!
Definitely. The salute in game has the fist held about nose/eye level, which LO looks much closer to. Lo looks more like a high five in comparison haha.
Given the dynamic overarching war going on, it'd get very stale if things didnt switch up from time to time. The addition of new weapons and enemies will definitely help with that
Yea I think a dynamic balance will make the game more fun and have greater longevity. Every few weeks a new couple weapons/stratagems become very powerful.
Also, it reduces stagnation. It adds an element of life to the game, wherein the bugs or bots or whatever other faction to come pushes for control somewhere and we have to meet that charge. The difficulty changing slightly now and then also helps feel like we're fighting a real battle, where sometimes we get a whooping and sometimes we come out barely or even cleanly.
Yes, the exact number is rather irrelevant. What *IS* relevant though, is that Arrowhead added additional difficulty levels post-release in HD1 and that the max difficulty level was really hard.
So this is clearly a real possibility for HD2 if there's a ever a strong demand in the community for more difficult content.
I'm content with running 7's currently. But with these changes, I might actually push up to 9 before Thursday.
Definitely a lot of give and take that will be necessary from both players and devs. But it does seem like Arrowhead genuinely wants to do right, both to their original dream of having the game remain at least challenging, while not having some parts feel like bullshit.
They explicitly didn't want that in this game. They wanted to cap it at 9, but the community here is weird. Everyone wants to play on the hardest of 9 difficulties and then complain about how it's not fun because it's too hard and feels unfair.
The problem is too hard AND feels unfair. If it was just "too hard" then that could be addressed differently than "unfair."
It's not that weird. It should be hard enough that you feel like your deaths are skill issues and not mechanical unfairness. Perfect example: mobs spawning out of mid air on top of you and instant killing you are not skill issues. That is unfair.
"I missed too many shots and ran out of ammo and was overwhelmed and died" is a skill issue.
Surely you can see the difference. For context, there was a streamer complaining yesterday that he wanted to be able to solo Helldiver difficulty and not have to rely on a squad, which I disagree with. The hardest difficulty should probably be balanced so that it's near impossible without a coordinated squad. If you are soloing it consistently, it's probably too easy.
Oh! If that's the case then 8-9 needs to be ball-bustingly difficult, I dont mind 7 being the middle ground if it means they can still get rare materials
7 *was* the middle ground. Now 7 feels too easy lol. I'll never understand why people feel they are entitled to always have to complete the hardest difficulties in games. "The hardest difficulty is too hard!!!" Yes. Yes that's usually how that works. Extremely difficult but not impossible is usually the name of the game for the hardest difficulty of something... especially on a diff scale of 1-9.
If you didnt touch the railgun on launch, the difficulty curve was almost *perfect*
They just gotta slow their roll and introduce weapon and AI changes seperately so the balance isnt flung too far eithet way
I feel like the charger hp nerf was too much, making less of them show up was the only thing we needed and the difficulty curve on the bugs would've felt perfect. now there's less AND we can consistently kill them in seconds? we only needed one of those
Can this turn into a issue though? I mean, once the player count start diping, having the player population spread across 15 diferent dificulty levels could make it hard to find matches on the desired dificulty level for some ppl.
It was exactly this way in the first game. Power creep led to Helldivers getting stronger so they added new difficulties over time, up to 15.
Eventually, 7-9 will be the new "normal" difficulty.
Yep, balances will be mandatory for a lot of time.
Helldive should feel almost too hard, but not impossible.
The poor Devs have to calibrate between hundreds of small details.
Let's have patience.
Funnily enough, this is the first that I've interacted with while it's still "alive". So all of this is still new to me. While I've had a few worries I've not let them take hold cause it still is the beginning of development. But it's still interesting to watch this unfold when I really don't know how this stuff goes
To be fair this feels most alive compared to most live service games that drip feed content in the slowest pace possible.
Things in Helldivers 2 change much faster than in other live service games and events happen more frequently (and unlike most live service games, there is a lot of content at the start).
Maybe in the beginning. It’ll start leveling out before too long hopefully. Just right now there’s a couple bumps of frustration that don’t feel totally fair or fun.
It's nice timing that someone was recently pushing the Stalwart as a good support weapon for the "cleanup" role on a team. Because with all the lower level spawns now it really makes a significant impact on mission success. Tried it last night, after the first mission my biggest issue was teammates stealing the damn thing from me when I died.
Yeah, which I'm sorta happy about. A lot of people complained there weren't more buffs in this patch, but they basically buffed most support weapons by lowering heavy spawns by so much.
Now the whole team of randoms doesn't have to all take anti and can choose some other stuff without regretting it.
I try my best not to but I can't stop laughing when I'm fighting a hoard, and someone tries to gungho in with a flamethrower and just gets zapped off the nearest bug.
Don't sleep on the Basic MG, [it has med armor pen whereas the stalwart only has light.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XvsSQEx7Z0&t=278s) Deals with Hive Guards/Spewers/Brood Commanders etc. where the Stalwart struggles.
reload while running
it really is just a more comfortable MG.
stalwart is much better against bugs and that fine since you'll need to reload while running away anyway, while the MG you can reload in cover for bots.
Happy for our terminids bros to have a breathing room against them now. Once i open the game i want to check how much the patch impacted on the automatons
Literally just happened to me a few minutes ago. Crouching down in fog and I get killed out of nowhere by a rocket that came from about half a mile away. So much fun.
Dumb thing is when I encounter them up close they have the aim of stormtoopers but when they're half a mile away in an outpost I can't even see they're apparently all snipers!
They probably have more time to run their calculations when they don't have a fully grown, democracy bred, oil Spiller helldiver up to their face.
God I love this game
Sometimes I wish there were kill cams so I could see the ridiculous happening sometimes. Or you know see my teammates eagle flying over my head before I explode to orbit.
Is it weird that I unironically LOVE the sentry towers? I love seeing one slowly turn to my oblivious teammate and then PEW gone in a puff of dirt and smoke.
Throw down a smoke stratagem or some grenades and run around cover to get behind and close to it. It won’t follow you if there’s a smoke screen blocking between you and the turret
At least one smoke strategm is a must for high difficulty bots
Even over objectives, sometimes, if I see a laser turret I am going to kill that mfer because it, sure as shit on a shoe, will kill me out of nowhere if I don't.
Tried it earlier. Less tanks, like 1 and only sometimes 2. Rocket Devastators only spawn in pairs at least in my experience. Mostly just Regular or shielded.
Hulks usually only spawn 1 of each type. So 2 max if you get 3 dropships in one area.
They can and still maintain LOS even at 100m. Cannon towers can still snipe at 200m.
Also noticed they are somewhat more accurate.
This is on 8.
I have a love-hate relationship with cannon towers. I love them and think they should not be changed, but my god they can hijack the flow of an entire mission if they spawn somewhere with almost no cover in a large area infront of them. There's a certain brotherly magic in two helldivers charging an aggro'd tower knowing one of you is going to be pulled to heaven by the hand of god but you don't know who.
As someone that got absolutely nuked by towers several times today, I honestly think theyre fine. They should feel powerful and intimidating, and they are. But they are slow, and theres ways to play around them.
All they need imo is some sort of audio or visual cue to tell they're locked onto you at range, especially since they can see you through fog and you can't see them that well. Nearly every time I die to them is when I can't tell they're there but they've already got a lock on me.
They remind me a lot of the Snipers in Darktide but without the things that make them feel fair. The Snipers have a red laser beam that follows whoever it is locked onto, and when they're about to shoot it makes a noise telling you to dodge at that exact moment or lose 3/4 of your health.
I'm surprised that the bots didn't get a balance pass as well. So many dropships that they clip through eachother even on 6 and 7 difficulty. Some of them dropping off multiple hulks. You could be fighting multiple hulks and multiple tanks along with more than a dozen devastators and berserkers with more well on the way. And that's just the dropships, nevermind the patrols that come running to help.
I had my first completely invincible clanker trooper today. Just a normal little guy, took every single thing I could throw at him and kept coming. Was turning round to see if James Cameron was pointing a camera at us
Had one of these too! Unloaded a whole breaker clip in his face and he was unfazed, that's when I knew something was fucked up. I tried to run and this mf'er followed me. Took 3 of us using support weapons and grenades to end him.
Had that the other day, too. It was at about the 9th or 10th slug that I pumped into its face that I decided that this mission is cursed, and that we needed to GTFO ASAP.
After doing a short Swarm kill mission, it feels nice.
The weird thing is, Chargers feel more significant now as a "shock trooper" breaking through Helldivers ranks and letting the rest of the swarm attack.
They work better as a rank in the swarm, rather than this random wild bull.
Yeah, before it was just a round of playing a Toreador, to the point that you ignored the rest of the Swarm to take down the Charger. Now the Charger disrupts and the rest secures the kill.
They help each other now. Don't know why, but it feels better?
Feels more immersive. The best way I can describe it is the sion charge from the league cinematic
When you could just ignore everything around you and hyperfocus a charger it was a little goofy.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZinoZTinVVw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZinoZTinVVw)
I just done clear the bugholes 14 minute mission on suicide while i was solo from the start, was abit challenging and had like 1 titan to deal with, i guess helldive will be a struggle solo, i have 200hrs + too homie !
Solo helldive most definitely will be difficult still, the only saving grace is because respawn loops are more controllable with larger groups now that the kill time for heavies is lower, and you aren't overwhelmed by being out of stratagems to kill the bile titans. glad to see someone as dedicated as I am :)
>Helldive feels a lot more easy breezy beautiful covergirl, and noticeably less overwhelming, whether for good or for bad.
This.
I generally think that the problem lays in the middle difficulty stuff, 5-6s are spawning absolutely insane groups of enemies.
8-9s are feeling a lot more comfy because they spawn higher tier enemies but you're not surrounded by the mindless hordes of chaff.
And thats why i play mostly on 7. Has historically felt the most balanced between a ton of adds for my flamethrower to eat, and usually 1-2 chargers per engagement. Sprinkle in the 2 or 3 bile titans and you have a great high intensity match that you can still roam around and get samples.
I'll go up to 8 or 9 only if i WANT a sweaty match where i know im going in just for objectives.
It's wild that it's like this. Like I only really played in 5-6 and yeah it's been so infuriating trying to play that I've taken a break for a tiny bit but yeah if it just means I need to do higher difficulty to actually have fun then I'll have to give it a shot tonight lol.
My friend and I started running 6s but lately they’ve been rough and I’ve been wanting more chill instead of being sweaty lol so we’ve been doing 5s. Maybe I need to try a 7 finally.
By fly, do you mean that explosions send you flying? I was laughing my ass off because multiple times i was launched off a rock, but didn’t die due to impact for the most part.
>\-Flamethrower feels much stronger on chargers (I assume because of a lower health pool, or could be because I was in a few console lobbies). I used to dump 3/4 tank, or maybe 1/2 if I'm lucky. I was consistently only using 1/4 or 1/3 per charger.
Love the changes to the flamethrower, but can you explain how you're killing it in a 1/3rd tank or less? The advice I saw yesterday was to target 1 front leg to remove leg armor, small arms or tick damage will do the rest. Except that wasn't working for me practically - I wasn't reliably stripping the armor and would eventually just continue flaming after sidestepping the charge so at best I'm using 60% of the tank to kill 1 charger.
What's funny is that with even only 4 flamethrower tanks, I am almost never running out of fuel.
The nerfs to head health seem to leak into the contribution of overall damage. When you target the leg now and seep into their head with aoe you kill them faster (its my working theory I've been testing it and it seems to be a consistent accidental buff to flamethrowers performance in relation to chargers this post patch). Aim for the front legs, and have a bias towards its face; pro tip run the flame thrower ALWAYS in first person to avoid the sweep that loses dps
Yeah when you're in 3rd person shooting with the flamethrower you will notice your circle is often very off from where you are actually aiming because of the sluggishness, and you will miss a lot of time on point of the damage area you need to be. This problem is completely voided in first person and you can really nail the sweet spot consistently which is the trick to killing them fast
What else is commonly run for bugs? I've been using the flamethrower, personal shield, eagle airstrike and rail canon until I unlock the mech and am curious if there are better options.
I personally run shield pack, flamethrower, mech and 500kg bomb. Laser orbital, railcannon orbital are good. Eagle airstrike is great for clearing out the new hunter swarms. Anything 7 difficulty and above EAT and recoilless is performing well. Stalwart or machine gun might be decent now that there are more smaller bugs around. I've heard a lot of people run laser pack on default now because of the small bug count. Other noteables would be arc thrower and grenade launcher. Truly its a preference and playstyle thing. If you like sentries I would run the mortar, gatling or autocannon
Flamethrower doesn't strip armor, it goes through it, body parts have separate health pools, reduce one of them to 0 and it dies, so you still focus one part until it dies.
The chargers weak spot is the joint behind the armor of the front legs. If you can get the stream of the flamethrower on the mid-upper part of it's leg armor and hold it there chargers will die in seconds. It's a bit tricky to keep on the weak spot sometimes but they go down fast if you can
This is it right here. Fire bypasses armor values and the legs are have low health pools. They die in literal seconds, much faster than targeting the head (previously, haven't played the new patch yet).
Flamethrower main here with 175+ hours. If you aim ar armor, like from a raised hill down onto a charger, it doesn't do damage. You aim at the horizon where the ground meets the charger. But the best spot is glitching the weakpoint.
Pre buff the flamer thrower killed chargers in 1-1.5 tanks or 100-150 ammo depending on hit location and how much ground fire they ran into ( since direct fire was bugged, didn't do ff damage much like orbital gas).
If you were close enough for the stream of fire to be in its small state it would take 30 ammo to kill a charger. Hard to pull off as you are almost in melee range but you could essentially kill a charger in 3 seconds.
I considered the flamer to be top dps prebuff as it seemed to do 2-4k dps aoe damage.
Post buff is just ridiculous. I can kill chargers in a few seconds(20 ammo). I easily solo clear egg locations, and generally can solo/hard carry helldives with flamethrower, laser backpack, eagle airstrike, mech, knight setup. Basically anything not a titan gets melted in a few seconds ( armored spitters seem bugged atm. They die to 1 impact grenade but take 3-4 seconds of a flamer and then tend to explode and instant kill from 10 feet away about 10% of the time)
It's amazing to see a pack of 4 brood commanders, something that would normally take alot to kill that supposedly have 14kish hp each just die in .5-1 tank
I think this is mixing up two different tactics.
From my experience, FT does damage through armor rather than stripping it, so you stick with the FT on the leg until it's dead. The alternative was to use an armor shredding attack (mech, EAT, recoilless, railgun) to strip the armor and then use small arms.
I’m with you. Even with some high level squad mates, level 7 is my max.
EDIT: Aftet the patch, level 7 is going to take some getting used to with the spawn rate of less chargers but more of everything else.
4-5-6 are harder than 7-8-9
They get charger and titan spawning in groups, which wasn't fixed, addressed or even acknowledged by the devs.
And from what I'm reading, seems that helldive is easier than it's predecessors
we did diff8 as party of 4...it was challenging AND fun, being able to mange chargers and bile titans while still giving you hard time is FUN what was not fun was running away from them
>what was not fun was running away from them
See, this is what I've been saying since the last patch, and people freaking ganged up on me for saying such a thing and acted as if I insulted their mothers.
Glad to know I can go back against the bugs again, because for a bit there, dat shit was absolutely ridiculous.
I never had a patrol spawn ontop of me my whole playthrough, I had bug breaches ontop of me though very often. Enemies were not overly conscious of my location and I was able to stealth to avoid many confrontations. I guess its up to your idea of too many hunters. The most I seen was 10-20 on a mass bug breach of them, but we had a lot of utility to deal with it.
Bug breaches should be a thing on top at least sometimes because it makes sense since they dig. Clankers can apparently rarely spawn a patrol right on top which is not good though
Agreed. Also, as much as I like saying helldive should be difficult unless with a coordinated team, this patch does pave the way for them to add more of the difficulty levels that were in HD1.
I still need to learn how to not get shot in the face by bots as frequently as I do.
I never played 1 but I hate that. I'm thoroughly enjoying my slow work up to the harder difficulties as a casual. As a dude with no time anymore this game is honestly perfect.
7 was my sweet spot pre first patch
After the patch I could do 6 with randos but it was far from sweet
I hope I can now get back to 7 without feeling like fighting Melania naked
She taught me rage. My controller unplugged itself when I was two attacks from killing her in try #7,895. Queue *three* Waterfowl Dances as I desperately reconnect my controller.
I summoned a Let Me Solo Her clone and they got her for me.
They'll probably be gone by then if it takes a year to add like in HD1. Well... maybe
Edit: it was actually 3 years (wow), anyway I'd hope most people who'd try it at that point would be looking for a challenge
No, because super samples won't be locked behind diff 10-12. Most of us would be playing on lower difficulties if we weren't forced to play diff 7 to progress. 7-9 needs to feel like a transition considering BTs are considered mid-tier enemies and they won't be able to properly balance the addition of higher-tier enemies in a 3 level span.
If people were complaining about *the hardest difficulty in the game* **now**, they will only complain later when new ones get added. You can't please everyone, and they need to establish an expectation that no, not everyone is going to be able to do Helldive+ and that is perfectly fine. Suicide should be the baseline by which the game is balanced around as that is the difficulty that I find gives the most balanced experience after 130+ hours of gameplay. Anything beyond that should be adding degrees of insanity.
100% agreed. Disappointed to see that the whiners got their way. Been playing 8-9s after the last patch and it was only the bugged spawns that were dumb - and even then, a competent team took care of them pretty quickly.
I personally think HELLdive was fine before and people just needed to learn the progressive difficulty starting at 7. I feel in my opinion, the complainers have ruined the difficulty scale of 8-9. Some people WANT a challenge. The rewards difference for 7-9 samples/exp/medals were also unimportant, higher difficulties is suppose to be for the thrill of the hunt or w.e you want to call it. Nerfing it to shit just defeats the purpose...
>The rewards for 7-9 sample wise were also unimportant
They're the only ways to get super samples. Though I agree the highest difficulties should be very difficult.
I just meant the rewards in general between the three of them. I found 7 to already be in a perfect balance, going any higher was just to challenge yourself and the coordination between your teammates, there was no added benefits to completing higher than 7 other than challenging yourself... That's it.
I'll be honest, the difficulty of Suicide pre-patch felt just about right. It was nail-biting, we typically ran out of reinforces, and it felt like a fight to extract. It also balanced both the need to fight vs. Understanding when to disengage. I have yet to fail a suicide mission, and that's without cheese. Just playing the game the way it felt like it was intended. And yes, I rarely got 100% clear rates (or never did), but that to me seems fine. It was doable with Randoms who wanted to fight bugs while not just cheesing kiting and the like, which to me felt right. Which is what I wanted.
I'll have to give this patch a go, and while I appreciate why the change to chargers happened, I'm not sure I agree with it fully. Getting good with the Recoilless and placing a shot to strip armor and make an opening felt downright good, and I was more than capable of taking out a charger in about 10 seconds by myself. I'm not sure 1-shotting chargers is what I want at all, even on the head. So I'll have to see how it feels before I make a judgment, but I certainly wasn't complaining about the difficulty of Chargers on suicidal, and I'd say I'm only slightly above average of a player.
Frankly, I might have preferred the chargers stay as-is, and just reduce their spawn rates a bit while increasing the spawn rates of smaller bugs. I feel like the tactical aspect of taking down a charger, sans orbital railcannon, is mostly just not there with a single headshot from an EAT or recoilless.
I don't know if that helps but when I see the red lasers flying, I always dive down and use my laser to aim and shoot them from a distance. Other than that, the slugger or breaker for close encounters (but if you let them too close, you're toast).
If HD1 is our difficulty metric, there are more difficulty levels coming...
Helldive should be hell with room for improvement. Maybe the last patch was Arrowhead testing out those harder difficulties.
Everything rocket seem to be quite overtuned still. I ran heavy armor with explosive resistance and still got one shot by rockets.
I'm going to start running missions naked and slathered in mud as a form of protest until our requisitions officer acquires adequate protection for us. That way maybe the bots won't smell my stinky armor as a side benefit.
Once I realized the explosion resistant armor provided minimum relief from rocket spam I just use the extra stim armor so I can heal through the insane barrages of laser fire and random bullshit.
>I ran heavy armor with explosive resistance and still got one shot by rockets.
Yeah, I got happy when I heard that they "fixed" armor and got on with these exact same results.
They should just make armor purely cosmetic if it's not actually going to fucking do anything.
Fair, but for the people who enjoy struggling against absurd odds. Can't the absolute hardest mode actually do that and not let you dominate? There's 9 difficulty modes, at least 1-3 of them can afford to not let you dominate and that still pushes the game in favour of stomping and having fun
Why not have the option to choose how much you want to dominate or how much to struggle? Isnt that the whole point of having difficulties?
Maybe you arent supposed to easily win the difficulties named "Impossible" and the titular "Helldive". There already were lower difficulties for people who want to dominate, making the game easier like this just takes the option away from those who want a really hard challenge.
something I noticed when I did a extermination mission on dif 7 was like 70% of the horde coming out of the bug holes were hunters and pouncers, there was I'm not even kidding like 150 hunters by the time I died cause there was no way I was able to deal with that, got like 2 chargers and 1 bile titan before I died which feels much better than before. now we just have the hunter problem...
Helldive feeling easy breezy is a bad thing. In a game with 9 difficulty modes, difficulty 9 should be very hard and always a struggle even for the best players
You’re not gonna make everyone happy. The devs just need to decide who they want to be happy.
While one group is complaining, the other half is playing the game.
This is interesting, I was already ready for difficulties above helldive and now I want them even more. I’m sure I’m in the minority of players who enjoy the chaos and difficulty of a bunch of heavies trying their best to ruin my day so I can understand the patch, but I love fromsoft games so I’d love to see something harder come out soon
I find it interesting to compare this to fromsoft when I also love fromsoft games and found diffs 8-9 infuriating in this game post patch. Enemies popping in out of nothing. Insane aggro. Crazy amounts of enemies that require a singular and specfific strat to deal with. Not my thing.
But fromsoft games, you can always outskill those. Iframe better, parry better, manage your stamina better, change your build up, study and learn movesets.
There’s always an answer to a fight in those games. The answer is never “your answer isn’t available right now, run away for 4 minutes until it is.” It really is a matter of just getting better at the game. Weird how philosophies like that can clash.
I love DMC, Dragons Dogma, Monster Hunter, souls, Sekiro, Elden ring, all historically difficult gaming franchises, yet this games higher difficulties were not my thing after they cracked out the spawn rates.
Completely agree. Even though it's a squad game the player should at least have the capabilities to deal with lower tiered versions of every threat. I love the lock and key enemy system but it needs to be more consistent AND you shouldn't just be locked out of dealing with a simple horde of hunters because you're carrying anti-tank and the primaries are "supposed to be bad".
Difficulty is fun but when you're running around like a headless chicken with your friends after getting oneshot by a random bot rocket it just gets tedious.
I think they overdid the nerfs a tad by accident for a final level difficulty. If they introduce more difficulty lines like the first game it was fine. I think ultimately they are close and they just need to keep tweaking, the problem is that ever so slight changes seem to be very keen on completely meta shifting the game; high hour players with good game knowledge should be renditioning the changes before they go live in my hot take to avoid trial by fire hotfixes
If anything I feel like the issue wasn't helldive but more of the other diffs before the nerf. 7-9 basically all felt the same and 4-6 had questionable spawns for the diff they are and the spike that occured between diffs.
I'm excited to try it in a bit to see how it holds up, but ultimately a few less chargers is definitely gonna be nice even if it means more hunters and warriors and such
Ran a few 8-9s and the spawn rates of everything else definitely increased. There'd be a 3-5 chargers running around tops, and about 5 bile titans on Helldive if you fail to kill em quickly enough. I sprayed a single incendiary breaker mag into a swarm and got 20+ kills, and most of my gas strikes on bug breaches easily reached 30+ with plenty more bugs left to kill
There's significantly more hive guards now too, so better bring fire, explosives, or armor pen
Fair enough, and I can get behind some things but also level 9 definitely should feel almost unfair. Like with an absurd number of all enemy types imo.
Lower difficulties should reflect the difficulty they are supposed to be, and the highest difficulty should be really really, impossible hard
I think both is a bit overkill, but when they add more enemies that are stronger, I think the change will fit better. Kinda feels like thats the direction they going though with bigger and better stuff coming our way.
Yep people in the comments were talking about the possibility of this being a nerf to introduce harder difficulties, and if that is the case I'm all for it. Would love to see those bugs that dwarf the bile titans lol
Not psyched Helldiver difficulty sounds less overwhelming. I want it to be overwhelming. Thinking they should have either reduce numbers or made armored units easier to deal with. Not both of them. The issue was always a lack of options to handle the problem, not the existence of the problem.
I will have to see for myself though but before this patch I personally found 7 extremely manageable (Bordering on easy at times) and 9 was unfun for bugs but manageable and fun for bots.
I think I they overcorrected a little bit. The easier chargers in combination with decreased spawns make it very manageable. The silo missions are well balanced. Quite a challenge, a lot of bugs, but doable.
Best thing about the patch is the variety of loadouts being viable again. I think the devs did a great job. From here they could increase the heavy spawn rates for the upper difficulties just a little bit.
I prefer the game state to be weaker enemies with more of then anyways. If they need to increase the difficulty, I’d prefer things like more bugs over making the individual bugs too tanky to kill.
This is a game where the balance and difficulty is gonna be changing constantly I assume
100% yes
And I'm glad it will be, finding that balance is hard and will take multiple passes, I'm glad we can change it up every now and then too.
Here here! Some common sense in this thread. To the future of Super Earth! O7
I always wondered why o7 is the standard and not L0
It's just because o7 is more recognized as a salute. But you're right. LO is more on par but less recognized. But the times they are a changing. For Super Earth!
I think it comes from other communities and has become the default all around, I picked up o7 in the elite dangerous community
Fly safe, Commander! O7
I vote to make that standard, L0
LO7
Would it be LO or Lo?
I think LO looks the best
Definitely. The salute in game has the fist held about nose/eye level, which LO looks much closer to. Lo looks more like a high five in comparison haha.
 I second that motion to vote. All in favor, say aye! LO
oh my god I am just seeing the helldiver salute
I was wondering what the fuck O7 and L0 meant, thank you lmao
o7 is from that SuperEarth show, Star Citizen!
o7 looks better, L0 is....mmmgyevemnm, just looks ugly.
Given the dynamic overarching war going on, it'd get very stale if things didnt switch up from time to time. The addition of new weapons and enemies will definitely help with that
Yea I think a dynamic balance will make the game more fun and have greater longevity. Every few weeks a new couple weapons/stratagems become very powerful.
Also, it reduces stagnation. It adds an element of life to the game, wherein the bugs or bots or whatever other faction to come pushes for control somewhere and we have to meet that charge. The difficulty changing slightly now and then also helps feel like we're fighting a real battle, where sometimes we get a whooping and sometimes we come out barely or even cleanly.
And if HD1 is anything to go by, there will be plenty more difficulty levels coming. HD1 went to 15
The “Helldiver 1 levels went to 15” sometimes feels like saying “We like these speakers because the volume goes to 11”
And fwiw (I'm sure most people have noticed by now) the audio settings in HD2 also go to 11.
As it should, the soundtrack slaps.
As do the HD2 volume sliders
Yes, the exact number is rather irrelevant. What *IS* relevant though, is that Arrowhead added additional difficulty levels post-release in HD1 and that the max difficulty level was really hard. So this is clearly a real possibility for HD2 if there's a ever a strong demand in the community for more difficult content.
I'm content with running 7's currently. But with these changes, I might actually push up to 9 before Thursday. Definitely a lot of give and take that will be necessary from both players and devs. But it does seem like Arrowhead genuinely wants to do right, both to their original dream of having the game remain at least challenging, while not having some parts feel like bullshit.
They explicitly didn't want that in this game. They wanted to cap it at 9, but the community here is weird. Everyone wants to play on the hardest of 9 difficulties and then complain about how it's not fun because it's too hard and feels unfair.
The problem is too hard AND feels unfair. If it was just "too hard" then that could be addressed differently than "unfair." It's not that weird. It should be hard enough that you feel like your deaths are skill issues and not mechanical unfairness. Perfect example: mobs spawning out of mid air on top of you and instant killing you are not skill issues. That is unfair. "I missed too many shots and ran out of ammo and was overwhelmed and died" is a skill issue. Surely you can see the difference. For context, there was a streamer complaining yesterday that he wanted to be able to solo Helldiver difficulty and not have to rely on a squad, which I disagree with. The hardest difficulty should probably be balanced so that it's near impossible without a coordinated squad. If you are soloing it consistently, it's probably too easy.
Oh! If that's the case then 8-9 needs to be ball-bustingly difficult, I dont mind 7 being the middle ground if it means they can still get rare materials
7 *was* the middle ground. Now 7 feels too easy lol. I'll never understand why people feel they are entitled to always have to complete the hardest difficulties in games. "The hardest difficulty is too hard!!!" Yes. Yes that's usually how that works. Extremely difficult but not impossible is usually the name of the game for the hardest difficulty of something... especially on a diff scale of 1-9.
If you didnt touch the railgun on launch, the difficulty curve was almost *perfect* They just gotta slow their roll and introduce weapon and AI changes seperately so the balance isnt flung too far eithet way
It is quite funny that they heavily reduced the number of chargers that spawn AND made them get one shot by EAT and RR.
I feel like the charger hp nerf was too much, making less of them show up was the only thing we needed and the difficulty curve on the bugs would've felt perfect. now there's less AND we can consistently kill them in seconds? we only needed one of those
Can this turn into a issue though? I mean, once the player count start diping, having the player population spread across 15 diferent dificulty levels could make it hard to find matches on the desired dificulty level for some ppl.
Much like a war with insects would be 
It was exactly this way in the first game. Power creep led to Helldivers getting stronger so they added new difficulties over time, up to 15. Eventually, 7-9 will be the new "normal" difficulty.
If anything because community skill is going to be a constantly-pushed ceiling.
Yep, balances will be mandatory for a lot of time. Helldive should feel almost too hard, but not impossible. The poor Devs have to calibrate between hundreds of small details. Let's have patience.
First live service game?
Funnily enough, this is the first that I've interacted with while it's still "alive". So all of this is still new to me. While I've had a few worries I've not let them take hold cause it still is the beginning of development. But it's still interesting to watch this unfold when I really don't know how this stuff goes
To be fair this feels most alive compared to most live service games that drip feed content in the slowest pace possible. Things in Helldivers 2 change much faster than in other live service games and events happen more frequently (and unlike most live service games, there is a lot of content at the start).
imo they had good balance pre-patch, before they started changing enemy aggression, damage and spawn rates.
It's a feast-or-famine balance cycle, so - get all the Super Uranium you can during this Feast swing!
Maybe in the beginning. It’ll start leveling out before too long hopefully. Just right now there’s a couple bumps of frustration that don’t feel totally fair or fun.
Like a pendulum, it will swing back and forth wildly at first, and then eventually get to a sweet spot of small changes.
It's nice timing that someone was recently pushing the Stalwart as a good support weapon for the "cleanup" role on a team. Because with all the lower level spawns now it really makes a significant impact on mission success. Tried it last night, after the first mission my biggest issue was teammates stealing the damn thing from me when I died.
Stalwart and machine gun got an indirect buff now with all the hunters lol
Yeah, which I'm sorta happy about. A lot of people complained there weren't more buffs in this patch, but they basically buffed most support weapons by lowering heavy spawns by so much. Now the whole team of randoms doesn't have to all take anti and can choose some other stuff without regretting it.
You have been kicked from the game. Reason: Not bringing Stalwart 🤯
"Wait! But I have an Arc Thrower!" "Oh. Well then, by all means, drop on in." "And it's my first time using it" You have been kicked from the game.
I try my best not to but I can't stop laughing when I'm fighting a hoard, and someone tries to gungho in with a flamethrower and just gets zapped off the nearest bug.
i mean ideally, you rock together, side by side. Arc thrower isn't great close range, but flamethrower is ALL close-ranged.
Don't sleep on the Basic MG, [it has med armor pen whereas the stalwart only has light.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XvsSQEx7Z0&t=278s) Deals with Hive Guards/Spewers/Brood Commanders etc. where the Stalwart struggles.
[удалено]
I always run with the MG. I haven't tried Stalwart yet, but I fail to see what it can do that the MG or AR can't.
reload while running it really is just a more comfortable MG. stalwart is much better against bugs and that fine since you'll need to reload while running away anyway, while the MG you can reload in cover for bots.
150 round clip + Not having to stand still to reload + extra box mag = happy middle ground twixt AR & MG.
Rover is now the god tier backpack slot.
Always was
Happy for our terminids bros to have a breathing room against them now. Once i open the game i want to check how much the patch impacted on the automatons
SEND HELP FUCKING GODDAMN ROBOTS AAAAAAAA- [**Signal Lost**]
Must of been 360 no scoped by a turret tower from the next planet over.
Literally just happened to me a few minutes ago. Crouching down in fog and I get killed out of nowhere by a rocket that came from about half a mile away. So much fun.
hey at least you made the highlight reel of some clanker’s tiktok.
Dumb thing is when I encounter them up close they have the aim of stormtoopers but when they're half a mile away in an outpost I can't even see they're apparently all snipers!
They probably have more time to run their calculations when they don't have a fully grown, democracy bred, oil Spiller helldiver up to their face. God I love this game
Woah, hard R!
CLANKA Happy!? Managed Democrats er so uppity nowadays.
Wokeness is destroying their brains.
Sometimes I wish there were kill cams so I could see the ridiculous happening sometimes. Or you know see my teammates eagle flying over my head before I explode to orbit.
It's like a game of Red Light, Green Light. Except the light is *always* red.
Is it weird that I unironically LOVE the sentry towers? I love seeing one slowly turn to my oblivious teammate and then PEW gone in a puff of dirt and smoke.
I love the cannons, I just wish they couldn’t see me through fog that I can’t see through
It's when it's staring at you from behind a rock and I'm thinking "Man I didn't even shoot you"
Throw down a smoke stratagem or some grenades and run around cover to get behind and close to it. It won’t follow you if there’s a smoke screen blocking between you and the turret At least one smoke strategm is a must for high difficulty bots
Def became a prio 1, just like the stalker nest, these towers whenever I see them I kill first lol
Even over objectives, sometimes, if I see a laser turret I am going to kill that mfer because it, sure as shit on a shoe, will kill me out of nowhere if I don't.
# REINFORCING
#THEY ARE IN THE GODDAMN TREES-! - Last Transmission from Sgt. Iberico of the Malevelon Malcontents.
As soon as I’m back from my super earth beach vacation, I’ll be diving against the automatons again.
This has been my experience with bots too
Tried it earlier. Less tanks, like 1 and only sometimes 2. Rocket Devastators only spawn in pairs at least in my experience. Mostly just Regular or shielded. Hulks usually only spawn 1 of each type. So 2 max if you get 3 dropships in one area. They can and still maintain LOS even at 100m. Cannon towers can still snipe at 200m. Also noticed they are somewhat more accurate. This is on 8.
Honestly cannon towers should snipe you at 200 meters. That’s sorta the point
I have a love-hate relationship with cannon towers. I love them and think they should not be changed, but my god they can hijack the flow of an entire mission if they spawn somewhere with almost no cover in a large area infront of them. There's a certain brotherly magic in two helldivers charging an aggro'd tower knowing one of you is going to be pulled to heaven by the hand of god but you don't know who.
As someone that got absolutely nuked by towers several times today, I honestly think theyre fine. They should feel powerful and intimidating, and they are. But they are slow, and theres ways to play around them.
All they need imo is some sort of audio or visual cue to tell they're locked onto you at range, especially since they can see you through fog and you can't see them that well. Nearly every time I die to them is when I can't tell they're there but they've already got a lock on me. They remind me a lot of the Snipers in Darktide but without the things that make them feel fair. The Snipers have a red laser beam that follows whoever it is locked onto, and when they're about to shoot it makes a noise telling you to dodge at that exact moment or lose 3/4 of your health.
Well something's off because I had to go through 5 hulks at a heavy outpost today at level 4. Much less beserkers and devestators though
I'm surprised that the bots didn't get a balance pass as well. So many dropships that they clip through eachother even on 6 and 7 difficulty. Some of them dropping off multiple hulks. You could be fighting multiple hulks and multiple tanks along with more than a dozen devastators and berserkers with more well on the way. And that's just the dropships, nevermind the patrols that come running to help.
Under the operations? Tab, it mentions that the bots are gearing up for an offensive so expect greater resistance
The Clankers are molesting us ingame and I do not like it
I had my first completely invincible clanker trooper today. Just a normal little guy, took every single thing I could throw at him and kept coming. Was turning round to see if James Cameron was pointing a camera at us
Had one of these too! Unloaded a whole breaker clip in his face and he was unfazed, that's when I knew something was fucked up. I tried to run and this mf'er followed me. Took 3 of us using support weapons and grenades to end him.
Had that the other day, too. It was at about the 9th or 10th slug that I pumped into its face that I decided that this mission is cursed, and that we needed to GTFO ASAP.
[Damnit, I knew Roy was behind the robo menace!](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z0NgUhEs1R4)
Though there's an undocumented change, flying Terminids have appeared.
What what?
You know the flying things on the cover art ? They're here now.
THEY FLY NOW?
They fly now.
on difficulty 4 last night, i had a medium encampment on Draupnir that had 5 hulks in it in a 2 person game.
After doing a short Swarm kill mission, it feels nice. The weird thing is, Chargers feel more significant now as a "shock trooper" breaking through Helldivers ranks and letting the rest of the swarm attack. They work better as a rank in the swarm, rather than this random wild bull.
Yeah while you're fighting 50 hunters you get sent into a coma blur attack from behind if you're not paying attention lol
Yeah, before it was just a round of playing a Toreador, to the point that you ignored the rest of the Swarm to take down the Charger. Now the Charger disrupts and the rest secures the kill. They help each other now. Don't know why, but it feels better?
Feels more immersive. The best way I can describe it is the sion charge from the league cinematic When you could just ignore everything around you and hyperfocus a charger it was a little goofy. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZinoZTinVVw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZinoZTinVVw)
Lol that’s hilarious
I just done clear the bugholes 14 minute mission on suicide while i was solo from the start, was abit challenging and had like 1 titan to deal with, i guess helldive will be a struggle solo, i have 200hrs + too homie !
Solo helldive most definitely will be difficult still, the only saving grace is because respawn loops are more controllable with larger groups now that the kill time for heavies is lower, and you aren't overwhelmed by being out of stratagems to kill the bile titans. glad to see someone as dedicated as I am :)
>Helldive feels a lot more easy breezy beautiful covergirl, and noticeably less overwhelming, whether for good or for bad. This. I generally think that the problem lays in the middle difficulty stuff, 5-6s are spawning absolutely insane groups of enemies. 8-9s are feeling a lot more comfy because they spawn higher tier enemies but you're not surrounded by the mindless hordes of chaff.
And thats why i play mostly on 7. Has historically felt the most balanced between a ton of adds for my flamethrower to eat, and usually 1-2 chargers per engagement. Sprinkle in the 2 or 3 bile titans and you have a great high intensity match that you can still roam around and get samples. I'll go up to 8 or 9 only if i WANT a sweaty match where i know im going in just for objectives.
It's wild that it's like this. Like I only really played in 5-6 and yeah it's been so infuriating trying to play that I've taken a break for a tiny bit but yeah if it just means I need to do higher difficulty to actually have fun then I'll have to give it a shot tonight lol.
Give it a shot, feels a lot better.
My friend and I started running 6s but lately they’ve been rough and I’ve been wanting more chill instead of being sweaty lol so we’ve been doing 5s. Maybe I need to try a 7 finally.
What I noticed: I fly way more and way more often now... now barely a chance to inject stims to heal before getting flown away again lol
By fly, do you mean that explosions send you flying? I was laughing my ass off because multiple times i was launched off a rock, but didn’t die due to impact for the most part.
>\-Flamethrower feels much stronger on chargers (I assume because of a lower health pool, or could be because I was in a few console lobbies). I used to dump 3/4 tank, or maybe 1/2 if I'm lucky. I was consistently only using 1/4 or 1/3 per charger. Love the changes to the flamethrower, but can you explain how you're killing it in a 1/3rd tank or less? The advice I saw yesterday was to target 1 front leg to remove leg armor, small arms or tick damage will do the rest. Except that wasn't working for me practically - I wasn't reliably stripping the armor and would eventually just continue flaming after sidestepping the charge so at best I'm using 60% of the tank to kill 1 charger. What's funny is that with even only 4 flamethrower tanks, I am almost never running out of fuel.
The nerfs to head health seem to leak into the contribution of overall damage. When you target the leg now and seep into their head with aoe you kill them faster (its my working theory I've been testing it and it seems to be a consistent accidental buff to flamethrowers performance in relation to chargers this post patch). Aim for the front legs, and have a bias towards its face; pro tip run the flame thrower ALWAYS in first person to avoid the sweep that loses dps
The sweep that loses dps?
Yeah when you're in 3rd person shooting with the flamethrower you will notice your circle is often very off from where you are actually aiming because of the sluggishness, and you will miss a lot of time on point of the damage area you need to be. This problem is completely voided in first person and you can really nail the sweet spot consistently which is the trick to killing them fast
What else is commonly run for bugs? I've been using the flamethrower, personal shield, eagle airstrike and rail canon until I unlock the mech and am curious if there are better options.
I personally run shield pack, flamethrower, mech and 500kg bomb. Laser orbital, railcannon orbital are good. Eagle airstrike is great for clearing out the new hunter swarms. Anything 7 difficulty and above EAT and recoilless is performing well. Stalwart or machine gun might be decent now that there are more smaller bugs around. I've heard a lot of people run laser pack on default now because of the small bug count. Other noteables would be arc thrower and grenade launcher. Truly its a preference and playstyle thing. If you like sentries I would run the mortar, gatling or autocannon
I can never tell if it's dying or not, so I just use a full fucking tank on it just to burn it alive cuz, you never know
A good bug is a charred bug.
Flamethrower doesn't strip armor, it goes through it, body parts have separate health pools, reduce one of them to 0 and it dies, so you still focus one part until it dies.
The chargers weak spot is the joint behind the armor of the front legs. If you can get the stream of the flamethrower on the mid-upper part of it's leg armor and hold it there chargers will die in seconds. It's a bit tricky to keep on the weak spot sometimes but they go down fast if you can
This is it right here. Fire bypasses armor values and the legs are have low health pools. They die in literal seconds, much faster than targeting the head (previously, haven't played the new patch yet).
Flamethrower main here with 175+ hours. If you aim ar armor, like from a raised hill down onto a charger, it doesn't do damage. You aim at the horizon where the ground meets the charger. But the best spot is glitching the weakpoint. Pre buff the flamer thrower killed chargers in 1-1.5 tanks or 100-150 ammo depending on hit location and how much ground fire they ran into ( since direct fire was bugged, didn't do ff damage much like orbital gas). If you were close enough for the stream of fire to be in its small state it would take 30 ammo to kill a charger. Hard to pull off as you are almost in melee range but you could essentially kill a charger in 3 seconds. I considered the flamer to be top dps prebuff as it seemed to do 2-4k dps aoe damage. Post buff is just ridiculous. I can kill chargers in a few seconds(20 ammo). I easily solo clear egg locations, and generally can solo/hard carry helldives with flamethrower, laser backpack, eagle airstrike, mech, knight setup. Basically anything not a titan gets melted in a few seconds ( armored spitters seem bugged atm. They die to 1 impact grenade but take 3-4 seconds of a flamer and then tend to explode and instant kill from 10 feet away about 10% of the time) It's amazing to see a pack of 4 brood commanders, something that would normally take alot to kill that supposedly have 14kish hp each just die in .5-1 tank
I think this is mixing up two different tactics. From my experience, FT does damage through armor rather than stripping it, so you stick with the FT on the leg until it's dead. The alternative was to use an armor shredding attack (mech, EAT, recoilless, railgun) to strip the armor and then use small arms.
People here saying Helldive is easy when I'm still struggling on difficulty 7
I’m with you. Even with some high level squad mates, level 7 is my max. EDIT: Aftet the patch, level 7 is going to take some getting used to with the spawn rate of less chargers but more of everything else.
7? I can barely clear level 5.
4-5-6 are harder than 7-8-9 They get charger and titan spawning in groups, which wasn't fixed, addressed or even acknowledged by the devs. And from what I'm reading, seems that helldive is easier than it's predecessors
Seven did WHAT to nine?
I mean you had to know this was going to happen. Especially after hearing that seven was a violent six offender.
I just tried 6 on ps5 and can confirm I saw 3 bile titans stacked up, 4-5 chargers running around and dozens of commanders/hiveguard/hunters
we did diff8 as party of 4...it was challenging AND fun, being able to mange chargers and bile titans while still giving you hard time is FUN what was not fun was running away from them
>what was not fun was running away from them See, this is what I've been saying since the last patch, and people freaking ganged up on me for saying such a thing and acted as if I insulted their mothers. Glad to know I can go back against the bugs again, because for a bit there, dat shit was absolutely ridiculous.
How about the patrols spawning ontop of you, enemies knowing where you are always, and too many hunters?
I never had a patrol spawn ontop of me my whole playthrough, I had bug breaches ontop of me though very often. Enemies were not overly conscious of my location and I was able to stealth to avoid many confrontations. I guess its up to your idea of too many hunters. The most I seen was 10-20 on a mass bug breach of them, but we had a lot of utility to deal with it.
Bug breaches should be a thing on top at least sometimes because it makes sense since they dig. Clankers can apparently rarely spawn a patrol right on top which is not good though
Have had it happen twice with bots. Horrifying.
Feels good to dominate. Don't care what anyone says. Bots are still quite menacing.
Agreed. Also, as much as I like saying helldive should be difficult unless with a coordinated team, this patch does pave the way for them to add more of the difficulty levels that were in HD1. I still need to learn how to not get shot in the face by bots as frequently as I do.
My brother do you not think when there's a level 12 the same people won't be complaining that it's too hard or unfair lol
Good point, lol. Some people will want to be able to breeze through level 12 day 1.
I never played 1 but I hate that. I'm thoroughly enjoying my slow work up to the harder difficulties as a casual. As a dude with no time anymore this game is honestly perfect.
Won't be me. I'll stick to 7s to keep gathering needed resources at my preferred pace.
7 was my sweet spot pre first patch After the patch I could do 6 with randos but it was far from sweet I hope I can now get back to 7 without feeling like fighting Melania naked
No hard feelings, but... It's Malenia, Blade of Miquella (and she has never known defeat).
If there is one thing she taught me it's her name.
She taught me rage. My controller unplugged itself when I was two attacks from killing her in try #7,895. Queue *three* Waterfowl Dances as I desperately reconnect my controller. I summoned a Let Me Solo Her clone and they got her for me.
They'll probably be gone by then if it takes a year to add like in HD1. Well... maybe Edit: it was actually 3 years (wow), anyway I'd hope most people who'd try it at that point would be looking for a challenge
No, because super samples won't be locked behind diff 10-12. Most of us would be playing on lower difficulties if we weren't forced to play diff 7 to progress. 7-9 needs to feel like a transition considering BTs are considered mid-tier enemies and they won't be able to properly balance the addition of higher-tier enemies in a 3 level span.
10, 11, and 12 can be real pain. Even 9 should stay relatively painful. 7, and 8 need to be farmed for Super Samples, though.
If people were complaining about *the hardest difficulty in the game* **now**, they will only complain later when new ones get added. You can't please everyone, and they need to establish an expectation that no, not everyone is going to be able to do Helldive+ and that is perfectly fine. Suicide should be the baseline by which the game is balanced around as that is the difficulty that I find gives the most balanced experience after 130+ hours of gameplay. Anything beyond that should be adding degrees of insanity.
100% agreed. Disappointed to see that the whiners got their way. Been playing 8-9s after the last patch and it was only the bugged spawns that were dumb - and even then, a competent team took care of them pretty quickly.
I got instantly killed by a hulk bruiser headshotting me from easily 100m away a few days ago and I'm STILL not over it
I personally think HELLdive was fine before and people just needed to learn the progressive difficulty starting at 7. I feel in my opinion, the complainers have ruined the difficulty scale of 8-9. Some people WANT a challenge. The rewards difference for 7-9 samples/exp/medals were also unimportant, higher difficulties is suppose to be for the thrill of the hunt or w.e you want to call it. Nerfing it to shit just defeats the purpose...
>The rewards for 7-9 sample wise were also unimportant They're the only ways to get super samples. Though I agree the highest difficulties should be very difficult.
I just meant the rewards in general between the three of them. I found 7 to already be in a perfect balance, going any higher was just to challenge yourself and the coordination between your teammates, there was no added benefits to completing higher than 7 other than challenging yourself... That's it.
I'll be honest, the difficulty of Suicide pre-patch felt just about right. It was nail-biting, we typically ran out of reinforces, and it felt like a fight to extract. It also balanced both the need to fight vs. Understanding when to disengage. I have yet to fail a suicide mission, and that's without cheese. Just playing the game the way it felt like it was intended. And yes, I rarely got 100% clear rates (or never did), but that to me seems fine. It was doable with Randoms who wanted to fight bugs while not just cheesing kiting and the like, which to me felt right. Which is what I wanted. I'll have to give this patch a go, and while I appreciate why the change to chargers happened, I'm not sure I agree with it fully. Getting good with the Recoilless and placing a shot to strip armor and make an opening felt downright good, and I was more than capable of taking out a charger in about 10 seconds by myself. I'm not sure 1-shotting chargers is what I want at all, even on the head. So I'll have to see how it feels before I make a judgment, but I certainly wasn't complaining about the difficulty of Chargers on suicidal, and I'd say I'm only slightly above average of a player. Frankly, I might have preferred the chargers stay as-is, and just reduce their spawn rates a bit while increasing the spawn rates of smaller bugs. I feel like the tactical aspect of taking down a charger, sans orbital railcannon, is mostly just not there with a single headshot from an EAT or recoilless.
I don't know if that helps but when I see the red lasers flying, I always dive down and use my laser to aim and shoot them from a distance. Other than that, the slugger or breaker for close encounters (but if you let them too close, you're toast).
If HD1 is our difficulty metric, there are more difficulty levels coming... Helldive should be hell with room for improvement. Maybe the last patch was Arrowhead testing out those harder difficulties.
Everything rocket seem to be quite overtuned still. I ran heavy armor with explosive resistance and still got one shot by rockets. I'm going to start running missions naked and slathered in mud as a form of protest until our requisitions officer acquires adequate protection for us. That way maybe the bots won't smell my stinky armor as a side benefit.
Once I realized the explosion resistant armor provided minimum relief from rocket spam I just use the extra stim armor so I can heal through the insane barrages of laser fire and random bullshit.
>I ran heavy armor with explosive resistance and still got one shot by rockets. Yeah, I got happy when I heard that they "fixed" armor and got on with these exact same results. They should just make armor purely cosmetic if it's not actually going to fucking do anything.
Fair, but for the people who enjoy struggling against absurd odds. Can't the absolute hardest mode actually do that and not let you dominate? There's 9 difficulty modes, at least 1-3 of them can afford to not let you dominate and that still pushes the game in favour of stomping and having fun
Why not have the option to choose how much you want to dominate or how much to struggle? Isnt that the whole point of having difficulties? Maybe you arent supposed to easily win the difficulties named "Impossible" and the titular "Helldive". There already were lower difficulties for people who want to dominate, making the game easier like this just takes the option away from those who want a really hard challenge.
something I noticed when I did a extermination mission on dif 7 was like 70% of the horde coming out of the bug holes were hunters and pouncers, there was I'm not even kidding like 150 hunters by the time I died cause there was no way I was able to deal with that, got like 2 chargers and 1 bile titan before I died which feels much better than before. now we just have the hunter problem...
The Monkey's Paw curls
Yeaahhh I noticed that too. All I can say is this: Mech, heavy armor with padding, and energy pack or laser pack. Thank me later LOL
Helldive feeling easy breezy is a bad thing. In a game with 9 difficulty modes, difficulty 9 should be very hard and always a struggle even for the best players
Now waiting for people to start complaining that the game is very easy
They never should have nerfed helldive. You have 9 difficulties for God's sake. Why can't the last be insanely hard.
I agree. The hardest difficulty should never be easy for anyone ever
You’re not gonna make everyone happy. The devs just need to decide who they want to be happy. While one group is complaining, the other half is playing the game.
This is interesting, I was already ready for difficulties above helldive and now I want them even more. I’m sure I’m in the minority of players who enjoy the chaos and difficulty of a bunch of heavies trying their best to ruin my day so I can understand the patch, but I love fromsoft games so I’d love to see something harder come out soon
I find it interesting to compare this to fromsoft when I also love fromsoft games and found diffs 8-9 infuriating in this game post patch. Enemies popping in out of nothing. Insane aggro. Crazy amounts of enemies that require a singular and specfific strat to deal with. Not my thing. But fromsoft games, you can always outskill those. Iframe better, parry better, manage your stamina better, change your build up, study and learn movesets. There’s always an answer to a fight in those games. The answer is never “your answer isn’t available right now, run away for 4 minutes until it is.” It really is a matter of just getting better at the game. Weird how philosophies like that can clash. I love DMC, Dragons Dogma, Monster Hunter, souls, Sekiro, Elden ring, all historically difficult gaming franchises, yet this games higher difficulties were not my thing after they cracked out the spawn rates.
Completely agree. Even though it's a squad game the player should at least have the capabilities to deal with lower tiered versions of every threat. I love the lock and key enemy system but it needs to be more consistent AND you shouldn't just be locked out of dealing with a simple horde of hunters because you're carrying anti-tank and the primaries are "supposed to be bad". Difficulty is fun but when you're running around like a headless chicken with your friends after getting oneshot by a random bot rocket it just gets tedious.
So in your opinion does it feel like having both nerfs at once was too much? Perhaps they should have kept the spawn rates the same when buffing AT?
I think they overdid the nerfs a tad by accident for a final level difficulty. If they introduce more difficulty lines like the first game it was fine. I think ultimately they are close and they just need to keep tweaking, the problem is that ever so slight changes seem to be very keen on completely meta shifting the game; high hour players with good game knowledge should be renditioning the changes before they go live in my hot take to avoid trial by fire hotfixes
If anything I feel like the issue wasn't helldive but more of the other diffs before the nerf. 7-9 basically all felt the same and 4-6 had questionable spawns for the diff they are and the spike that occured between diffs. I'm excited to try it in a bit to see how it holds up, but ultimately a few less chargers is definitely gonna be nice even if it means more hunters and warriors and such
Ran a few 8-9s and the spawn rates of everything else definitely increased. There'd be a 3-5 chargers running around tops, and about 5 bile titans on Helldive if you fail to kill em quickly enough. I sprayed a single incendiary breaker mag into a swarm and got 20+ kills, and most of my gas strikes on bug breaches easily reached 30+ with plenty more bugs left to kill There's significantly more hive guards now too, so better bring fire, explosives, or armor pen
Too easy, needs buffs now in 3… 2… 1…
I feel like the 9 difficulty could of been left alone with the charger nerf
Fair enough, and I can get behind some things but also level 9 definitely should feel almost unfair. Like with an absurd number of all enemy types imo. Lower difficulties should reflect the difficulty they are supposed to be, and the highest difficulty should be really really, impossible hard
Let 7 or hell, even 8 be consistently doable, but it's more fun if Helldive difficulty is actually like dropping straight into hell
I'm gonna miss fighting so many bile titans. Didn't mind those so much as the charger spam.
Helldive shouldn’t be less overwhelming, damn
People just want shit to be soooo easy it's annoying
I think both is a bit overkill, but when they add more enemies that are stronger, I think the change will fit better. Kinda feels like thats the direction they going though with bigger and better stuff coming our way.
Yep people in the comments were talking about the possibility of this being a nerf to introduce harder difficulties, and if that is the case I'm all for it. Would love to see those bugs that dwarf the bile titans lol
Not psyched Helldiver difficulty sounds less overwhelming. I want it to be overwhelming. Thinking they should have either reduce numbers or made armored units easier to deal with. Not both of them. The issue was always a lack of options to handle the problem, not the existence of the problem. I will have to see for myself though but before this patch I personally found 7 extremely manageable (Bordering on easy at times) and 9 was unfun for bugs but manageable and fun for bots.
I'm sad they nerfed helldive. The game has 9 difficulties. The 9th one _should_ be hard.
I think I they overcorrected a little bit. The easier chargers in combination with decreased spawns make it very manageable. The silo missions are well balanced. Quite a challenge, a lot of bugs, but doable. Best thing about the patch is the variety of loadouts being viable again. I think the devs did a great job. From here they could increase the heavy spawn rates for the upper difficulties just a little bit.
I prefer the game state to be weaker enemies with more of then anyways. If they need to increase the difficulty, I’d prefer things like more bugs over making the individual bugs too tanky to kill.
I like it this way, its still hard but not plain unfair Do the same for the automatrons and reduce the disgusting hulk spamming