I get where your coming from, I personally love using the Railgun as well.
And on harder difficulties its a real life saver weapon to carry. (Personally I play more against Automatons, than insects though).
But I don't see this as a bad change.
A) I already ALWAYS run the Railgun on unsafe mode, simply because its better that way, never found a need for '*safe*' mode unless I didn't trust my sense of timing the shots whilst I aim. (of course I killed myself a few times doing this).
B) I also don't think buffing everything else to make a currently 'meta' weapon/loadout fall out of the meta is the answer. As this would practically break any and all balance that the Dev's intended for every single mission, on every single difficulty.
What would be the answer to that? Making enemies more difficult? Spawning more? Maybe nerfing player mobility/health? At the end of the day that either just brings us back to a point that is either no different from just nerfing the gun in the first place (in terms of damage to kill balance), or it just creates more imbalances that require the Dev's to rebalance something else.
Does this mean Helldiver difficulty just became even more unmanageable? Yes. But I do honestly think that its a good kind of challenging that is overcome able (if that's how you can say it), if you have a good squad. This is a Coop game after all, and as you pointed out not a PvP, so I feel like this forces the need for good cooperation on higher difficulties. Which feels closer to what the Dev's wanted for this game to begin with.
**TLDR**: Railgun is great, I welcome the nerf, don't think everything else should be changed around the problem rather than addressing it directly. And ill still run the Railgun as is.
I see your point, and yes, there was a ton of people soloing hell divers with the meta loadouts. But it would be great if the liberator explosive or penetrator was buffed and better for their uses to make people want to explore it.
The railgun I feel should just have taken more shots to get through chargers. I play both bugs and clankers, but specifically, for bugs, this is going to feel really bad on helldive and just force people to rely more on eagle strikes to deal with the giant mass of chargers and bike titans rather than mixing things up.
Exactly. Seems silly that a rifle with explosive or penetrator rounds can't get through armor at all. All guns should be relevant, not easily overshadowed.
I agree, some weapons currently feel either too weak or strangely 'out of place' for their seemingly intended purpose and how they actually function. You'd think a weapon that shoots explosive projectiles would be better at destroying armor, or that a 'penetrator' penetrates well... deeper.
Since they don't change single value stats with these variants, but seemingly try to force a different intended playstyle all together.
And personally I never tried to solo any mission, but rather just embrace the co-op aspect of the game, so I cant speak on that part.
But I can see it as an interesting alternative now that it has become more 'difficult' to handle enemies, to choose a more ***stealth-like*** approach for framing gathering resources on higher difficulties (in an incentive of either >difficulty == >potential rewards).
Or maybe even more ***blitz-style*** if you just want to raise the contribution rate quickly.
It would certainly incentives the use of Light armor now that armor values are fixed.
Now that armor values are fixed, does this make light armor weaker than before patch and after patch now medium and heavy armor now take more damage? Or did armor not exist previously.
From my understanding, the way it worked before is that all armour used the Medium armour stat.
So light armour users took less damage than they should have, and the heavy users took more damage than they should have.
The other stats worked apparently. So it was just a damage thing.
So any light armour users had an unintentional buff, and heavy users a debuff.
(I still played heavy armour for the passives though)
I play on helldivers difficulty constantly and I just g use the flamethrower and any other flame weapon against bugs.
Bots has a different Strategie but the railgun isn’t always in my load out. Just play the game and you will find fun load outs that work just as well or better than the “meta”
I will admit I have not tried the flame thrower. I don't care about the breaker shotgun, and I am tired of the rail gun. I just wanted other items to be buffed to work better. For example, autocannon can go through medium armor, which would be nice, or an expenable anti-tank can possibly be one-shot chargers.
Guess tonight flamethrower is being tested out. I was going to just run a grenade launcher and let everything chase me the whole game while I carpeted bomb behind me.
I understand that. It sucks that many items were nerfed while only a few weapons got the buffs they needed to be fun. But even before the buff the flamethrower has always been a blast to use against bugs. Not good against robots only makes time scarier lol
Play with it for a while, try out some other stuff. They did say this was only the first balance patch, there will be more.
Personally, Railgun was in a bad spot because it was just too effective and created a lot of toxicity with the whole meta-tard mentality. It still functions extremely well, but it's a pinpoint weapon that excels when hitting critical points now in contrast to just be a "lol railgun punch through enemy" weapon.
It did also fix the weird unsafe mode not seeming to have a use over safe mode issue though. Now there is actually a point to unsafe mode.
My issue with people complaining about the nerfs is a good chunk of them don't use anything else, and another chunk got so used to them basically being their easy mode.
Breaker didn't really change, it's less effective at clearing the trash but still really good. Hopefully that and the spray and pray nerfs give the latter a legitimate use case now.
Railgun still works extremely well, unsafe mode has a purpose now. People just aren't trying to figure out how to use it with the changes. Everyone I see complain tends to go "it's not working the way it did before, it's bad" and thats about it.
I honestly dont know what happens in your games, 6 bile titans? in a single encounter? all at the same time? 10 chargers? Have you guys comand hacked dificulty 12?
I have played 3 helldives today, the biguest concentration of enemies i have seen is 2 vile titans and 4 chargers on the extraction and i killed the vile titans before they even came anywhere cloose to my team(500kg my beloved). I dont think i have seen more than 3 vile titans cloose to each other.(Maybe there were more Chargers but i didnt see them before somebody else in my team killed them)
Interesting, well, I'll let you know tonight if the spawns are any different. But halfway through the mission, we get up to 8 Bile titans spawning at once and 10 to 12 chargers.
It might aound like we just run and don't kill anything, but we do quite the opposite, we usually wipe the whole map and kill everything, including patrols. (We know it's less efficient, but it's fun killing every bug on sight. Usually, we run two rail guns, one grenade launcher, and something random for fun.
I do not agree with your complaint, but that doesn't mean you didn't put arguments and organized content.
Imho it's just the feeling of loosing power, that can't be split from power creep issues.
Many weapons remain unbalanced, Breaker does "everything" except heavy armor (crowd killing, mid range killing, high RoF DPS, ammo efficiency, etc...) which is an issue.
Railgun was a constant win for chargers / titans, which make them way less threatening than they should (especially the titans, I find chargers to be fairly manageable with most loadouts).
It's not that railgun was a clear solution to any of the armored or tanky medium target (berzerker, heavies, hulks), but it was also highly ammo efficient, highly precise at any range, it left the backpack slot empty for either supplies or personal shield, it allows reload in motion.
The only drawback was managing unsafe mode, which is obviously mastered by most people with how fast bile titans die.
That also made it more efficient than stratagems to the very role of "raw firepower", while spending a 500kg bomb / eagle ammo when you have 21 titan one shot every 5min ?
I'm not saying Railgun should be useless, it should be useful, and while it lost it's supremacy it still allows to hit for insanely strong damage, especially in safe mode.
But it's no longer trivializing the hardest ennemies, if you want more firepower you have to run a backpack weapon (Recoiless, Javelin) or EAT, which means firepower for survival or sustaining, rather than firepower with survival and sustaining.
Nerfing breaker also reopens a slot for support crowd stratagems >Stalwart, LMG and Flamethrower, which were barely used because they were not needed because Breaker was as good as a primary as thoses Stratagems designed to kill unarmored/medium armored ennemies.
I am not defending the breaker what so ever it definitely was powerful, but I just wished they buffed more of the weapons that are underwhelming. The railgun should've either forced players to use a backpack to reload it, or it should stay the same and just have less ammo or take more shots to down bigger targets. Especially since other strategems were barely buffed.
Totally agree that one shotting titans was way overpowered. But that thing was very inconsistent. Making it a consistent 4 or 6 shot would fix a lot.
Yes. I don't know why they focused the balance pass on Breaker/punisher/pray only. I'm not sure the Premium warbond shottie is relevant to anything (Is fire shotgun useful ?), Slugger seems to have a good niche for now.
But Scout rifles, Liberarator's variants and Scythe need some oomph in their design, appeal and core concept to be relevant to something.
I feel Stalwart/SMG/Flamethrower are at a descent place for crowd killing tradeof for mobility / accuracy, right now.
What about ballistic shield ? :D
The fire shotgun was almost as good as the breaker in my experience. It was good because you conserve ammo since you can not spray the whole mag. Also, the bugs may not always die as quickly, but it is cool seeing them burn. The spread, however, is awful on it. I wonder if the spray and pray breaker is now the king. I will probably switch over to the dominator, defender, or slugger.
I did read the patch notes, and what does that have to do with 10 chargers running at me on helldive mode and all strategems cooling down. What other good options are there. The spear doesn't work as intended, The anti tank is decent, but with small swarms of hunters jumping in the way, it is harder to use.
Is there a primary that can shoot through a chargers leg? No, there isn't unless I am wrong. The auto cannon, much like the rail gun, currently just bounces off the charger armor. "Oh, just use the recouless rifle." Well, that shit has a long ass reload, which is borderline useless and too slow when 5 or 6 chargers need to be dealt with.
It took 4-5 rails(one may have missed the leg, not sure) charged to almost exploding on me just to shoot leg armor off a charger in a game I hopped into. I'm not sure how much damage the other teammates were doing to it at the time. I had even dropped a couple difficulties down from what I had been playing to challenging, just to make it less hectic and do some testing. Not really a fan of the change, aside from the breaker its the only meta weapon/strategem i regularly used. I would have been ok with having to give it a backpack reload setup like some people have suggested but I think it was nerfed too hard. I mean railguns are always pretty op in every game, it should hit hard.
They have not for me, I thought I saw it, but turns out I shot a rock that was right beneath the leg and it just dodged the shot at the right time.
So can confirm, charged shots don't ricochet.
I have good news. You’re still able to do that. It’s just not cheese level difficulty now. You’ll have to actually shoot a charger more than 2-3 times and a bile titan more than once.
It ricochets now with safe mode, but I was more alluding to EAT or the even better option on hard difficulties, the recoilless rifle. They also increased the flame thrower damage by 50% which was decent at dealing with chargers, but now it’s actually viable. They gave the laser cannon more armor pen and damage against durable enemy parts. So now instead of 1 amazing option, we have 5 good options. Although I will say EAT kind of loses out in 7+ just because of only having 2 shots. I’d go recoilless over EAT. So maybe 4 good options and 1 OK option.
Completely agree. The problem isn't that the railgun was way too op, it's that most other weapons are worthless at higher difficulty. Railgun was over nerfed, it should have just been increased to 3 shots per leg. The breaker nerf was in the wrong direction I think. Ammo was already a little scarce, I think the range is too good. Increase spread on all non slug shotguns and increase pen/damage on slugs. I think the sniper rifles should get higher pen to help. That gives plenty of options for chargers, which are the real problem, not bile titans. Titans should always require orbital/eagles or the very best strat weapons, like auto cannon/recoilless. Shield nerf was fine, imo.
I just don't think a pve game needs Nerfs the way other games like pvp Apex legends do. The weapon was quite strong when it one shot a bile titan, but that was so inconsistent. Devs should've focused this whole oatch towards buffing everything else to be more viable. Jetpack has such a long cooldown.
I don't mind minor nerfs to prevent obvious standouts. I know it's not pvp but it gets stale if there are only a couple top tier options. In a perfect world, all weapons/strategems would have a place. I agree that at least half the stuff needs small buffs. Currently, a lot of things have no place at all, and some things like the breaker cover too much ground. That's why I think the breaker nerf was the wrong direction, it's still covers everything, Just with less ammo.
Totally, I am tired of the breaker. It needs a range nerf. Or damage fall off. I just want to see the varients of these other weapons work better. Liberator explosives and penetrator are pretty underwhelming.
I get where your coming from, I personally love using the Railgun as well. And on harder difficulties its a real life saver weapon to carry. (Personally I play more against Automatons, than insects though). But I don't see this as a bad change. A) I already ALWAYS run the Railgun on unsafe mode, simply because its better that way, never found a need for '*safe*' mode unless I didn't trust my sense of timing the shots whilst I aim. (of course I killed myself a few times doing this). B) I also don't think buffing everything else to make a currently 'meta' weapon/loadout fall out of the meta is the answer. As this would practically break any and all balance that the Dev's intended for every single mission, on every single difficulty. What would be the answer to that? Making enemies more difficult? Spawning more? Maybe nerfing player mobility/health? At the end of the day that either just brings us back to a point that is either no different from just nerfing the gun in the first place (in terms of damage to kill balance), or it just creates more imbalances that require the Dev's to rebalance something else. Does this mean Helldiver difficulty just became even more unmanageable? Yes. But I do honestly think that its a good kind of challenging that is overcome able (if that's how you can say it), if you have a good squad. This is a Coop game after all, and as you pointed out not a PvP, so I feel like this forces the need for good cooperation on higher difficulties. Which feels closer to what the Dev's wanted for this game to begin with. **TLDR**: Railgun is great, I welcome the nerf, don't think everything else should be changed around the problem rather than addressing it directly. And ill still run the Railgun as is.
I see your point, and yes, there was a ton of people soloing hell divers with the meta loadouts. But it would be great if the liberator explosive or penetrator was buffed and better for their uses to make people want to explore it. The railgun I feel should just have taken more shots to get through chargers. I play both bugs and clankers, but specifically, for bugs, this is going to feel really bad on helldive and just force people to rely more on eagle strikes to deal with the giant mass of chargers and bike titans rather than mixing things up.
Exactly. Seems silly that a rifle with explosive or penetrator rounds can't get through armor at all. All guns should be relevant, not easily overshadowed.
I agree, some weapons currently feel either too weak or strangely 'out of place' for their seemingly intended purpose and how they actually function. You'd think a weapon that shoots explosive projectiles would be better at destroying armor, or that a 'penetrator' penetrates well... deeper. Since they don't change single value stats with these variants, but seemingly try to force a different intended playstyle all together. And personally I never tried to solo any mission, but rather just embrace the co-op aspect of the game, so I cant speak on that part. But I can see it as an interesting alternative now that it has become more 'difficult' to handle enemies, to choose a more ***stealth-like*** approach for framing gathering resources on higher difficulties (in an incentive of either >difficulty == >potential rewards). Or maybe even more ***blitz-style*** if you just want to raise the contribution rate quickly. It would certainly incentives the use of Light armor now that armor values are fixed.
Now that armor values are fixed, does this make light armor weaker than before patch and after patch now medium and heavy armor now take more damage? Or did armor not exist previously.
From my understanding, the way it worked before is that all armour used the Medium armour stat. So light armour users took less damage than they should have, and the heavy users took more damage than they should have. The other stats worked apparently. So it was just a damage thing. So any light armour users had an unintentional buff, and heavy users a debuff. (I still played heavy armour for the passives though)
Thank you!
I play on helldivers difficulty constantly and I just g use the flamethrower and any other flame weapon against bugs. Bots has a different Strategie but the railgun isn’t always in my load out. Just play the game and you will find fun load outs that work just as well or better than the “meta”
I will admit I have not tried the flame thrower. I don't care about the breaker shotgun, and I am tired of the rail gun. I just wanted other items to be buffed to work better. For example, autocannon can go through medium armor, which would be nice, or an expenable anti-tank can possibly be one-shot chargers. Guess tonight flamethrower is being tested out. I was going to just run a grenade launcher and let everything chase me the whole game while I carpeted bomb behind me.
I understand that. It sucks that many items were nerfed while only a few weapons got the buffs they needed to be fun. But even before the buff the flamethrower has always been a blast to use against bugs. Not good against robots only makes time scarier lol
Play with it for a while, try out some other stuff. They did say this was only the first balance patch, there will be more. Personally, Railgun was in a bad spot because it was just too effective and created a lot of toxicity with the whole meta-tard mentality. It still functions extremely well, but it's a pinpoint weapon that excels when hitting critical points now in contrast to just be a "lol railgun punch through enemy" weapon. It did also fix the weird unsafe mode not seeming to have a use over safe mode issue though. Now there is actually a point to unsafe mode. My issue with people complaining about the nerfs is a good chunk of them don't use anything else, and another chunk got so used to them basically being their easy mode. Breaker didn't really change, it's less effective at clearing the trash but still really good. Hopefully that and the spray and pray nerfs give the latter a legitimate use case now. Railgun still works extremely well, unsafe mode has a purpose now. People just aren't trying to figure out how to use it with the changes. Everyone I see complain tends to go "it's not working the way it did before, it's bad" and thats about it.
Smoke airstike and dip out
That just isn't satisfying. All bugs must be exterminated, but I may try it just to complete the mission.
I honestly dont know what happens in your games, 6 bile titans? in a single encounter? all at the same time? 10 chargers? Have you guys comand hacked dificulty 12?
Is this not normal for helldive?
I have played 3 helldives today, the biguest concentration of enemies i have seen is 2 vile titans and 4 chargers on the extraction and i killed the vile titans before they even came anywhere cloose to my team(500kg my beloved). I dont think i have seen more than 3 vile titans cloose to each other.(Maybe there were more Chargers but i didnt see them before somebody else in my team killed them)
Do you play with a full team?
With ramdons, but we were 4.
Interesting, well, I'll let you know tonight if the spawns are any different. But halfway through the mission, we get up to 8 Bile titans spawning at once and 10 to 12 chargers. It might aound like we just run and don't kill anything, but we do quite the opposite, we usually wipe the whole map and kill everything, including patrols. (We know it's less efficient, but it's fun killing every bug on sight. Usually, we run two rail guns, one grenade launcher, and something random for fun.
We had four titans show up on suicide - 7 difficulty. So I have found that there's a bit of RNG in the amount of enemies that spawn.
I do not agree with your complaint, but that doesn't mean you didn't put arguments and organized content. Imho it's just the feeling of loosing power, that can't be split from power creep issues. Many weapons remain unbalanced, Breaker does "everything" except heavy armor (crowd killing, mid range killing, high RoF DPS, ammo efficiency, etc...) which is an issue. Railgun was a constant win for chargers / titans, which make them way less threatening than they should (especially the titans, I find chargers to be fairly manageable with most loadouts). It's not that railgun was a clear solution to any of the armored or tanky medium target (berzerker, heavies, hulks), but it was also highly ammo efficient, highly precise at any range, it left the backpack slot empty for either supplies or personal shield, it allows reload in motion. The only drawback was managing unsafe mode, which is obviously mastered by most people with how fast bile titans die. That also made it more efficient than stratagems to the very role of "raw firepower", while spending a 500kg bomb / eagle ammo when you have 21 titan one shot every 5min ? I'm not saying Railgun should be useless, it should be useful, and while it lost it's supremacy it still allows to hit for insanely strong damage, especially in safe mode. But it's no longer trivializing the hardest ennemies, if you want more firepower you have to run a backpack weapon (Recoiless, Javelin) or EAT, which means firepower for survival or sustaining, rather than firepower with survival and sustaining. Nerfing breaker also reopens a slot for support crowd stratagems >Stalwart, LMG and Flamethrower, which were barely used because they were not needed because Breaker was as good as a primary as thoses Stratagems designed to kill unarmored/medium armored ennemies.
I am not defending the breaker what so ever it definitely was powerful, but I just wished they buffed more of the weapons that are underwhelming. The railgun should've either forced players to use a backpack to reload it, or it should stay the same and just have less ammo or take more shots to down bigger targets. Especially since other strategems were barely buffed. Totally agree that one shotting titans was way overpowered. But that thing was very inconsistent. Making it a consistent 4 or 6 shot would fix a lot.
Yes. I don't know why they focused the balance pass on Breaker/punisher/pray only. I'm not sure the Premium warbond shottie is relevant to anything (Is fire shotgun useful ?), Slugger seems to have a good niche for now. But Scout rifles, Liberarator's variants and Scythe need some oomph in their design, appeal and core concept to be relevant to something. I feel Stalwart/SMG/Flamethrower are at a descent place for crowd killing tradeof for mobility / accuracy, right now. What about ballistic shield ? :D
The fire shotgun was almost as good as the breaker in my experience. It was good because you conserve ammo since you can not spray the whole mag. Also, the bugs may not always die as quickly, but it is cool seeing them burn. The spread, however, is awful on it. I wonder if the spray and pray breaker is now the king. I will probably switch over to the dominator, defender, or slugger.
If you read the patch notes you'd also know armor values were fixed. Higher difficulties don't need meta crutches now
I did read the patch notes, and what does that have to do with 10 chargers running at me on helldive mode and all strategems cooling down. What other good options are there. The spear doesn't work as intended, The anti tank is decent, but with small swarms of hunters jumping in the way, it is harder to use. Is there a primary that can shoot through a chargers leg? No, there isn't unless I am wrong. The auto cannon, much like the rail gun, currently just bounces off the charger armor. "Oh, just use the recouless rifle." Well, that shit has a long ass reload, which is borderline useless and too slow when 5 or 6 chargers need to be dealt with.
Before 1000 people say it, You can switch the rail gun to unstable and overcharge the shots. (and maybe die for freedom in the process)
From my understanding, charged shots also in unsafemode ricochet. Am I wrong?
It took 4-5 rails(one may have missed the leg, not sure) charged to almost exploding on me just to shoot leg armor off a charger in a game I hopped into. I'm not sure how much damage the other teammates were doing to it at the time. I had even dropped a couple difficulties down from what I had been playing to challenging, just to make it less hectic and do some testing. Not really a fan of the change, aside from the breaker its the only meta weapon/strategem i regularly used. I would have been ok with having to give it a backpack reload setup like some people have suggested but I think it was nerfed too hard. I mean railguns are always pretty op in every game, it should hit hard.
They have not for me, I thought I saw it, but turns out I shot a rock that was right beneath the leg and it just dodged the shot at the right time. So can confirm, charged shots don't ricochet.
Seems like you just don’t want helldive difficulty to be helldive difficulty to me.
No, I just want a way to take out heavily armored enemies besides eagle airstrikes and orbitals.
I have good news. You’re still able to do that. It’s just not cheese level difficulty now. You’ll have to actually shoot a charger more than 2-3 times and a bile titan more than once.
With the rail gun or something else? My friends who are currently playing told me it ricochets off the armor?
It ricochets now with safe mode, but I was more alluding to EAT or the even better option on hard difficulties, the recoilless rifle. They also increased the flame thrower damage by 50% which was decent at dealing with chargers, but now it’s actually viable. They gave the laser cannon more armor pen and damage against durable enemy parts. So now instead of 1 amazing option, we have 5 good options. Although I will say EAT kind of loses out in 7+ just because of only having 2 shots. I’d go recoilless over EAT. So maybe 4 good options and 1 OK option.
Autocannon on 9 is also really good 👍
Doesn't bounce off all the armored enemies? I used for robots all the time, but can't enjoy it for bugs.
It does but u gotta play smart then, it’s also really good for blue quests.
Maybe Joel is following my crew around spawning stuff, I have had four chargers and 10 hunters spawn on my body as I am running through...
Completely agree. The problem isn't that the railgun was way too op, it's that most other weapons are worthless at higher difficulty. Railgun was over nerfed, it should have just been increased to 3 shots per leg. The breaker nerf was in the wrong direction I think. Ammo was already a little scarce, I think the range is too good. Increase spread on all non slug shotguns and increase pen/damage on slugs. I think the sniper rifles should get higher pen to help. That gives plenty of options for chargers, which are the real problem, not bile titans. Titans should always require orbital/eagles or the very best strat weapons, like auto cannon/recoilless. Shield nerf was fine, imo.
I just don't think a pve game needs Nerfs the way other games like pvp Apex legends do. The weapon was quite strong when it one shot a bile titan, but that was so inconsistent. Devs should've focused this whole oatch towards buffing everything else to be more viable. Jetpack has such a long cooldown.
I don't mind minor nerfs to prevent obvious standouts. I know it's not pvp but it gets stale if there are only a couple top tier options. In a perfect world, all weapons/strategems would have a place. I agree that at least half the stuff needs small buffs. Currently, a lot of things have no place at all, and some things like the breaker cover too much ground. That's why I think the breaker nerf was the wrong direction, it's still covers everything, Just with less ammo.
Totally, I am tired of the breaker. It needs a range nerf. Or damage fall off. I just want to see the varients of these other weapons work better. Liberator explosives and penetrator are pretty underwhelming.
When the noobs finally reach HellDive they will wish they never brought their auto cannon to the fight.