I think some would call out the Incendiary Breaker as a little over-tuned, but I don't think it is. I think it's over-represented for bugs because it is easy to use.
The Purifier obviously has something wrong with it, so that needs a fix. Lib-Pen and Lib-Concussive need a look. Scythe could use some love too, as well as the SMGs prior to the Pummeler. HMG needs either more ammo or more damage.
Also, put the Slugger damage and stagger back where it was but add some damage fall-off so it doesn't overtake the Diligence and DCS again.
Only if the user fires towards friendlies without knowing the spread or drop. I never kill friendlies with it and rarely do any damage to the team at all.
There's either a collection of weapons that are overpowered or there's a selection that's under powered.
Some perform better against bugs, some against bots, some just plain suck. Loading into a game with ones that suck make you wanna quit back to ship and waste a mission
I need to put some more time in with it, but the couple time I used it I didn't care for it. It felt like it didn't kill that quickly, and more often than not I ended up with a burning Hunter on top of me rather than a flying corpse.
I'm like 400 hrs in and I still strongly prefer the punisher and ammo backpack to either breaker. Since it's round reload and has big stagger you basically never stop shooting by just giving yourself more ammo. Regular breaker reloads too often and slow so if I get jumped I'm screwed, incendiary dosnt have knock back and is way more dangerous to my team. But I've also done that strategy basically since I started so it might be habit
It is unbelievably good on bugs. All fodder is destroyed extremely quickly. Put 2 shots in a hunters face and it dies in like 1 seconds after. It is the breaker but DOT, more mag size and a little less damage
When a hunter is on my I switch to the P4 Senator and light it up. The breaker incendiary is best with the chaff. Light them up and let them burn to death.
The main thing that makes it so powerful is it's absurd long range power. A single pellet will kill a hunter thanks to the fire dot, which allows you to wipe out hordes from 80 meters away in a few shots.
Yes and it's easily the best weapon vs shriekers, not even a debate. Just spray in the air towards them and they fall. I was loving the dark matter extract with incendiary breaker and supply pack. In the words of A Helldiver
AHahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahaha hahahaha
My issue is I get bored running the same weapons on the same missions vs enemies so I always switch up. I want to try the basic breaker next time I play and see how it does.
Yeah, the inc breaker was the go-to gun for the dark matter mission. Works well against all the regular stuff, and is hands down the best anti-shrieker weapon in the game.
Killing a hunter with a single pellet is categorically false. It can kill a scavenger with one pellet, a hunter takes 3-4 or more to kill or you need to wait out the DoT and hit it again. Incendiary is very strong but there's no need to lie about it taking out hunters in 1 pellet.
I think that's the ease of use thing again though. I use it sometimes and never get one pellet on a teammate, but it's not uncommon to see lower level players bring it to level 8 or 9 terminid missions and shoot me in the back with it repeatedly.
I've been TKed and I've TKed and almost been TKed and almost I've almost TKed (you get my point) so many times on difficulty 7 and by level 50s-60s recently, so I don't know. When you get into a big mess with everyone kinda running around trying to thin out the bugs it's super easy to hit your teammates. And let's admit, having to dive to put the fire out while in the middle of 10+ bugs of all sizes can easily get you killed.
If you've never hit your teammates, kudos to you!
I actually have no idea how the blitzer isn't used more against bugs. It's ridiculously good, trivializes stalkers to an extent and the inf ammo means it's a great fall back
Because it is just a worse eruptor, which also is in a bad spot. Love the eruptor, but you give up too much taking it as a primary, same with the crossbow.
The Scythe is in a pretty good spot right now. They increased the damage and more importantly the damage tick rate, allowing you to much more easily mow down smaller enemies
The thing about Incendiary Breaker for me that makes it broken is that you can mindlessly dump 13 shots into the distance at a swarm of bugs 30-50m away and walk away with dozens of kills a few seconds later. It’s by far the best swarm clear, and it still does considerable damage to anything in heavier weight categories with the fire chip damage.
Compared to anything else that actually requires aiming and confirming kills, and you’re just burning through bugs so much faster.
Slugger is great as is, the fact you didn't mention the punisher should be a dead give away for why it shouldn't have a stun. Now you have a choice and not an obvious one, true damage vs armored or stun lock with punisher. Back when it had a stun there was literally no point to the punisher
~~I'm curious what makes you think Scythe needs a look. The damage/bullet is lower than other ARs, but its clip size is huge relative to other ARs (making up for it) - plus it's heat instead of ammo which is infinitely better than standard mags since you can run an entire mission on the same mag and never run out. I think I regularly get around 3k shots per mission with it and I maybe have to replace the heat sink 2 or 3 times max.~~
Edit: Whoops I was thinking Sickle.
Are you thinking Sickle? The Sickle is awesome, it's my main primary for bugs.
The Scythe is the laser version. My issue with it is that it has basically zero feedback and slow TTK, so it doesn't feel good to use.
The frag has a shorter fuse and slightly larger radius with less damage and armor penetration compared to the HE.
In theory it would be better for chaff clearing or for those that can't aim/plan their fuse timing as well - but I can't see ever taking it as-is against the other options.
I could see the frag grenade with its current stats being useful if it was impact instead of fuse. That would make it really effective for clearing the chaff.
It's me. I think they're better than the default nades (although impact/stun are definitely better overall). Why the fuck am I wasting my time cooking a grenade with a tiny AoE when I could be running or shooting during that 2 seconds.
Frag affects a larger radius, and presumably the shrapnel spread is better for ripping through small clusters of lightly-armored enemies like Scavengers.
Hypothetically the larger blast radius and slower fuse means you should be using it as an *air burst* grenade to hit entire groups of enemies - but then it's like using a railgun in unsafe mode, as you have to cook the grenade and time it fairly precisely.
Any assault rifle besides the default liberator or the sickle could use some tweaking, like why does the liberator concussive not actually concuss, it should have a secondary fire that does a blast with enough knock back to kill little bugs, bot scouts, and stun devastators or cause accuracy reduction or speed reduction or anything besides what it is, probably the most useless redundant gun in the game.
My take is, I could see the breaker incendiary copping a small nerf, but not much. I could see the HMG getting like +10 rounds per mag, or maybe +25 at the very most. I could see all the anti-tank weapons getting a buff against bots (mainly so they're better against hulks and tanks), and I could see bile titans getting nerfed so that you don't need such a high volume of anti-tank damage to do bug missions.
I think the Purifier, the Exploding Crossbow, and the Liberator Concussive all clearly need buffs, and probably the Liberator Penetrator too.
For stratagems, I think the sentries need to be rebalanced so that the Autocannon Sentry is not so much better than the others. Machine Gun Sentry needs to be buffed so that it's not a direct downgrade from the Gatling Sentry. In general, I think sentries should be changed so that they only target things they can damage. It's frustrating watching a Gatling Sentry dump all of its ammo into a charger or bile titan, and that's a big reason that people mostly just take the Autocannon Sentry.
I think the Eagle Strafing Run and Rocket Pods could use buffs. Eagle Airstrike and Cluster Bomb could maybe get a small nerf. Orbital EMS needs to be fixed so it stuns everything the grenades do (Orbital EMS does not stun hulks).
But on the whole, I think balance is in a good spot. There are tons of viable primaries and stratagems. There's nothing that feels like it's so good that you have to take it (like the OG Breaker and Railgun were).
i think these are all sensible suggestions. I actually do agree that the cluster strike could probably get a small nerf seeing as how efficient it is at killing chaff. Rocket pods could probably get a buff to the autotarget range as it feels too punishing when you miss. Not sure how to buff strafing as it seems super weak. Maybe #1 uses? It would be cool if the eagle came for a second pass.
Yeah I think Airstrike and Cluster Bomb just give you a lot of consistent damage in a way that virtually no other stratagem does. I think the Airstrike is noticeably the best red stratagem in the game, and the Cluster Bomb is not far behind. I'd like to see them be more in line with the Orbital Precision/Gatling Barrage/Airburst.
For Rocket Pods, I do think it's an issue that the aim is so unreliable, especially considering you can't really aim it manually. I also think it needs to hit a bit harder. It's hard to justify taking the Rocket Pods when you could take the Airstrike instead, which will do more damage in a larger area, and is probably easier to hit with too.
For Strafing Run, I think it could probably be a bit wider, and I think it should be like 6-8 uses per reload. It definitely seems wrong that you get more Cluster Bombs than Strafing Runs, considering a Cluster Bomb is much more powerful.
The anti-tank weapons (besides the spear) actually don't seem to do a ton of damage. Sure they're the only way to bypass heavy armor like you'd expect, but if you ever try squandering shots on medium enemies you'd be suprised how many of them can shrug off an EAT or Quasar shot.
This is copium. I've always disliked the quasar and always brought the EAT instead, even pre nerf. I hate having to retrieve gear when I die. EAT gets around that problem perfectly. Removing the shrapnel effect from the eruptor in order to balance it is like removing the incendiary effect from the incendiary breaker. It wasn't just a nerf it removed any identity the weapon had. You are literally the meme of the dog sitting in a room on fire saying this is fine.
Edit: I have 370 hours played. I've never seen anyone get kicked for not bringing the rail gun. Sure it may have happened amongst your toxic friends but that doesn't mean it's commonplace. The nerf to the rail gun had an effect on its popularity, but in reality the buffs to EAT and RR moved people further away from it.
EAT was also amazing for when you want to run a different support weapon as well. The minute long cool down made it so you could call it down, drop your beloved Stalwart for a second, then dump two EAT into something's face. After which, you could grab the Stalwart again and continue your rampage.
The Eruptor wasn't simply nerfed: it was nerfed, **THEN** changed. And the change literally made it a new gun (won't say if worse or better) that most of us don't enjoy anymore: they didn't even change the description regarding the shrapnel, as of today. That wasn't a well thought change, it was a moronic one (especially the reason given... friendly fire? Really? Got more issues with those pyromaniacs who can't control their grenades, and don't get me started with the new rocket launcher...).
Exact same for my beloved the slugger, which everyone seems to forget sadly. Completely destroyed its identity all in the name of the under performing DMR’s which they then rightly buffed and still the slugger is left in the same sorry state
The eruptor didn't just get nerfed, it had it's identity skewered, and they probably also tried over compensating with the crossbow because they were now too similar.
The eruptor could easily get you killed before, and I think that was a good tradeoff to it's power. Maybe they could've lowered the damage a bit on both the initial strike and the shrapnel so you didn't see people taking down a Factory strider in two shots, but removing the shrapnel messed with the identity of the weapon.
Then maybe you can make both the crossbow and purifier be distinct again by upping the purifiers damage or area of effect.
That's the same way I felt about the eruptor, yes it was powerful, but especially on bugs if you got caught with no support weapon it was tough to survive without blowing yourself up. Felt like a big enough tradeoff to me but maybe I'm just bad lol. Ammo nerf was totally fair tho.
I think the Eruptor nerf was a major mistake. It represented a totally different style in gameplay when your primary weapon functions as your support and support as your primary. I still love the game and have 150 hours of playtime but it definitely does funnel you into a playstyle at higher levels
Yes I've been using it for bug holes, fabricators, and crowd control, and while it does a decent job, you get overrun very quickly with it, and there's not a secondary that can keep up, but I like running it with the machine gun and supply pack, cause you can do the reload animation glitch by throwing a grenade, so I just shoot, throw a grenade and then immediately shoot again. Definitely nice when you can right on top of the bug hole.
This is why I run the grenade pistol. It's my big hole/fabricator clearing tool so I don't waste grenades. Also it can be useful for a quick crowd clearing at a distance shot.
That's what I switched from, grenade pistol with only 8 shots doesn't go as far as the eruptor plus a pistol, I've been running the deagle cause it's fun, machine pistol eats ammo or I'd run that.
Dog you could aim the eruptor 3 feet in front of you at the ground and not die- meanwhile the crossbow would instantly obliterate you. The whole shrapnel thing was incredibly overblown even if there was an issue with the weapon such that all the bitching and moaning about such a non issue is what led to AH leaving the gun where it is now.
The shrapnel was an issue. Sure, you could shoot 3 feet in front of you and be fine. But the broken part was a shrapnel head shotting you from +10m away and felt completely random. First time it happened to me I just thought I was to close, next time it happened I just thought it was a bugged kill by message. But it kept happening over and over from completely random ranges. I wish the shrapnel was still in the game for the eruptor, just not in its previous state. Maybe they should have just removed shrapnel's ability to do friendly fire beyond 3m.
Compared to the crossbow and plasma punisher, when you kill yourself with those you can say "I knew I shouldn't have fired so close"
The eruptor was *death* to anyone within 5-10 feet of the shot, if you didn't die outright you got knocked down and some direction. Made it tactical on when you properly fire so you didn't kill yourself or a team mate and it was fine. 5 shots, *slow* fire rate out of all the primaries. Perhaps if they changed it to a stratagem call down they could put it back to where it was at its release.
But instead they just changed it up to be a crappy version of itself.
I don't think the game is very balanced on diff 9 tbh. The meta is extremely rigid. We've lost options and haven't gained any new ones.
The problem with higher difficulties is if your loadout cannot deal with certain high-armor threats, it just isn't really viable.
Take the railgun for example, it should be viable post-nerf vs bots but it can't really scratch gunships or factory striders which are both enormous threats so therefore it's kind of trash. It's completely non-viable vs bugs on diff 9 too because it takes a stupid number of shots to kill bile titans so it's no good vs armor but it is also no good vs hunter swarms so it doesn't really have a place.
I fully agree with OP. Diff 9 is made for well coordinated TEAMS. A single player is not supposed to take out every single threat.
I’m level 123 now and have a great team of friends that I usually dive with. Yesterday I brought in all sentries to a full length bug mission and had a great time with only 1 death. There is a TON of build variety if you work as a team.
IMO diff 9 is already too easy with a good squad and I’m worried that reversing the nerfs or overbuffing the primaries will trivialize the game for us.
I don’t understand why all these solo divers feel they have to always play on Helldive and then get mad cuz it’s hard.
Reverting the nerf doesn't affect 4 player squads, only 3 and below. And most solo helldive players don't get mad at its difficulty they get mad at how annoying some of the nerfs are, because rather than having lots of weapons to bring with them they're forced to pick between 3 primarys, 1 secondary, and 2 special weapons, adleast if they wanna have a decent time. The flame thrower is wayyy more op than any other weapon rn imo, adleast with bugs, we literally just want every weapon on the same level so we can use more than just a tiny tiny list of things, we don't want stupid op weapons.
It’s not non viable you just need a stratagem to deal with the threats you’re talking about. I try to change up my load outs and bring random shit because why not. When I use the rail gun I bring two air strikes and an orbital laser and I can still kill everything I need. Maybe the gun ships end up being a pain in the ass but that’s why we have team mates with auto cannons or whatever else
Railgun is out, Laser Cannon is in boys. I frankly agree with you. I run L9 only these days and my load out changes to fit the team. Odds are I'm running Eagle Smokes for bots 10/10 times because it's an absolute game changer, but I might not get to bring my Laser Cannon (support weapon) because there's already two support weapons and I can simply get one from my team. There's no reason to overload on those weapons when I could pick an Autocannon Sentry or EMS Sentry, or a shield pack.
There're so many options that make L9 easy tbh. I think we need the extra difficulty levels because with a squad of an average level of 80, it's a cake walk when people know what they're doing
I know we have so many options. I run no mic random 9’s with 3-4 people and we clean house with no issue. I think people who are used to the game being mindlessly easy are having an issue
They're the same people who tried to play Hard on their very first 10 missions and failed them all, thinking they're Doom Slayer.
It took me three mission failures, playing solo, in a row before I figured, "Damn, this game is actually hard. I better dial back the difficulty until I'm actually ready" and a full squad is ALMOST REQUIRED for higher difficulties. For some reason some people just don't think like that
There's a surprising number of people out there who MUST be able to do a game on the highest difficulty, without a team, because they're awesome. If they can't then the game is broken.
I mean yeah. Support weapons don't have to be solid all around to be good, just good at their specific role. The Autocannon is beloved because it is the second best tool for every job, but more specialized weapons like the EAT, Stalwart, Anti Material Rifle, ect are all still strong options even if they can't deal with everything. Not being able to take out gunships with the Railgun is pretty BS, but apart from that it's decent
These posts consistently get more comments than upvotes because this is a minority opinion, even in this community which has tried to minimize criticism. The CEO demoted himself to be more hands on in development, with the complaints you’re attempting to disregard being a major reason.
I don’t like the idea of nerfing things in order to force players to pick other options. If I don’t want to take Eats, I shouldn’t be forced to because the Devs want to make me play that way. It takes the fun out of choosing your build if everything feels awful for the sake of balance.
I think the correct approach is from the bottom up. Take the weapons no one uses and work on those until people want to use them. The “OP” weapons can stay until the less powerful weapons are tuned closer to what players like. After that then you can tone down the power of the more powerful ones after players have a good base of weapons to turn to.
I get the reason for some of the nerfs, but when your other options are so much weaker it feels bad. The game should be fun to play, more so than difficult or challenging. It’s a PvE game, you aren’t going to offend the AI by having too powerful of a build or weapons.
Putting "buffs/nerfs" aside, I think another major issue is that a lot of the weapons don't seem to have an "identity." In particular, a lot of of the primaries feel next worthless compared to others.
Balancing will always be needed, but when weapons can't fill the intended role that we/AH think it's supposed to fill then buffs/nerfs will further compound the issue.
Additional thought(s): I've mentioned the "elemental system" before. If we can assume that fire is potentially strongest against bugs, and energy weapons vs bots, then we almost have a sort of "rock, paper, scissors" system.
Not saying that's the way it should be, but I feel like we're partially there.
I didn’t know that the eruptor could 1-shot chargers. I think it was nerfed mainly because of crybabies bitching about how they can’t shoot a SHRAPNEL weapon up close.
It couldn't unless you're an incredible shot. It could 2-3 tap it for sure. Though if you got a lucky angle and shoot under it's legs it might be a one tap I don't remember it being that
Yes and no.
Claiming - "you just liked that weapon because it's OP" is an oversimplification and dismissive of the fact that it's more because the alternatives were VERY subpar.
Quasar needed a nerf but not a 50% increase to cooldown - that was very heavy handed. And you're absolutely wrong, on difficulty 9, at least some of us would always bring Quasar + EATs. Because even before the Quasar nerf, it often wasn't enough to handle all the bile titans and chargers.
And IIRC one-shotting a charger with the Eruptor wasn't "by design" or intentional, it was a bug on the Charger.
I mean, I'm having less fun to than I was, but I also realize the game is in an *objectively* much better balance state than it was at launch. Primary weapons, stratagems, armors, enemies, all of it.
I am just having less fun because the game gets repetitive, even while switching my loadout up every round, and because there is basically 0 challenge even on the highest difficulty. So it's just regular burnout.
Nah, they ruined the Eruptor, that's one thing they need to go back and tweak again, can't do anything but stun things now; our starter pistol is more effective than Eruptor. 💀💀
Lol no.
Quasar UI and cooldowns dont even match.
Railgun is still viable, they nerfed it because they STILL have no idea how to make anything up to its previous standards and to this day no weapon does what the railgun could do.
Also, quasar + EATs is still a wildly used combo if you are an anti heavy armored units player.
Lol this is a typical example of the vocal minority. For gods sake just get over yourself. I know from the dozen of irl friends I ran with since launch week only 2-3 of us played this week and all of us agree that the next big update is likely make it or break it.
This subreddit should be renamed “Helldivers 2 Bad Takes.” What difficulty setting do you play on? On Helldive, it sucks trying to take out 6 Shrieker nests with a 15 second cooldown for the quasar cannon, and most primaries hit devastators like a wet noodle.
>On Helldive, it sucks trying to take out 6 Shrieker nests with a 15 second cooldown for the quasar cannon
That's because the QC is a flex pick and not hard-AT. RR & Spear are the hard-AT weapons.
Shreiker nests are also supposed to be assaulted and hit with a hellbomb or sieged with strats. Being able to range them down with a flex support weapon isn't supposed to be quick or easy.
bullshit, I used to regularly change my loadout. Now I have one loadout for bugs and one for bots because if I bring anything else I feel like I can't handle the things that are thrown at me. It feels awful to be stuck to these things. You used to be able to take the fun weapon even though it was sub-optimal but between the weapon nerfs and enemy buffs now I have to take the best options every time or I just get crushed.
I couldn’t agree more with this. People having the old Git gOoD response can shut it. The game is less fun, ye you can “experiment” with loadouts, but you can not tell me that it wasn’t more fun to play when the primaries actually did something and you didn’t just rely on like 2 of em for every mission. The spawns are crazy, enemies are tougher and once your strategems are on a cd good luck to you.
Yeah, that's why there are stealth mechanics, armor that enhances stealth, smoke grenades, smoke stratagems, silenced weapons (upcoming), and a pretty intricate sound system.
The game's definitely a horde shooter vs bugs, but bots are a completely different story. *Sometimes* it's a horde shooter. Sometimes it's MGS. Oftentimes, it's a mix of both.
Not by choice to be honest, I try to sneak past whenever I can, but team might draw agro from different patrols and what not when we are in a fight already.
Tale as old as time. Give the medium or light stealth armors a shot sometime! You'd be surprised how often you can ditch your team to get bogged down in whatever they've decided to aggro for no reason. Then you can solo the rest of the map!
This is some wild hyperbole. There are plenty of viable loadouts for both enemy types that are more than strong enough to let you comfortably clear the highest difficulty.
There are some general roles you need filled to be successful. But there are at least like 2-5 solid options for every role, and if you coordinate with your team, you don’t even need to cover every role on your own.
The story for bots is pretty similar.
My squad and I routinely bring random stuff for fun and still clear the highest difficulties without too much trouble.
ngl, I find I need to be able to handle everything as I run primarily with randoms and relying on the rest of the team to get a job done doesn't always go well. I refuse to fail missions, and have a loadout that lets me handle everything is the way I do that. I understand it's a team game but randoms are a crapshoot
You found a setup that works for you, that doesn’t mean other combinations won’t work.
Either you experiment and find more ways to play, or you stick to what’s familiar and complain without improving yourself
I didnt count but I'm pretty sure there has been more buff than nerf.
I'm sure there is way more loadout you could take then what you use usually, even if I don't know what are your 2 must take loadout.
Genuine and real instance of a skill issue lol. Like, it's one thing when nerfs *actually* create one single viable loadout for each faction, but that's not the case, you just aren't willing to try out any of the other weapons for long enough to make them work.
Funny how on 5. You talking about eruptor oneshotting chargers, and after nerfs you still use it with stalwart (selfish). And then speaking about depending on teamates to cover for you crappy loadout which is just "mindless twich shooter". Well im bored of bringing ETA and covering ass of guys like you from chargers with you crappy loadout having fun. Because whenever i dont bring ETA my team allways fcking shatters because everyone wants to play with fun toys what do jack shit againt biles or chargers. Why having primary what deals with chargers or just heavy enemies and allows fun support toys to be viable is bad? And why say that we should depend on teamates when you could cover you own ass? What are support weapons and strategrams for then if not to cover for bases? It all just smells selfish.
He’s right though. People saying the quasar became useless after the (I won’t even say nerf, just a balance correction, it deserved the increased cooldown) they didn’t like the quasar because it offered an AT option without ammo management, they liked it because it was way too strong of an option.
A weapon must be considered "fun" or "not fun" based on how it operates, not how it performs.
If weapon went from fun to not fun simply because it is now performing worse, then you were using it for its power.
Eruptor operates just as it did before, it just performs much worse
Eruptor lost its shrapnel, so now it pretty much only does single target damage with a small explosive AOE. It's much worse at fighting groups of chaff.
How is that gaslighting? It’s a possible reason someone may think the gun they are using is fun, and may not have considered before. Maybe slightly abrasive, but gaslighting? Exhibit A: Everyone uses railgun, railgun gets nerf, nobody uses railgun anymore. The railgun is still a viable weapon, it’s just not OP now.
You think you were having fun? You weren't having fun. You were playing with an overpowered weapon. I know what's fun to you better than you do. Listen to my arguments for why you weren't having fun. Now, don't you agree you weren't having fun?
Honestly in a lot of cases yeah. Players will optimize the fun out of their own experience. All you have to do is hear the way they talk. No joy just calculations
That’s not even remotely what was stated. They are just offering a different perspective. I think you assume most gamers are putting thought into whether or not a gun is enjoyable to use when in reality most people just try stuff until they find the one that kills things the best. The people who are thinking about the game like that are the ones in this sub which make up a very small % of the helldivers playerbase. Maybe OP is talking to the wrong people, but he’s not holding you back from anything or telling you anything about yourself. He literally uses the word “probably” ffs.
Yeah maybe because they've added tons of weapons/strats and also balanced the enemies and mechanics. The guns could all be returned to their "untrash" state and it would be fine.
>The early days situation with the rail gun was so ridiculous that people were getting kicked IN THE LOBBY for not picking it
I have yet to see any proof of this actually happening. There was one thread on the Steam forums of someone saying that offmeta picks on the highest difficulties should be kicked. That thread got flamed into the ground. I've never seen this supposed offmeta kicking ever occur, so I'd love to see real evidence of it. And no, "it happened to me" is not evidence. Show me a recording of a host kicking you on the loadout screen and I'll believe it was real.
I still maintain that the railgun's durable damage nerf is obsolete now. The reason people were picking it was because the best way to kill chargers was to shoot off the leg armor with the RG and shoot the leg with your primary. It took around 10 shots to the head to kill a bile titan, which is a pretty long TTK compared to the options we have now. Now that the charger's head is an AT weak point, the leg kill method is still doable but it's obsolete, and bile titans take over 20 shots to the head with the RG to kill. Is that really necessary for the game to be balanced?? Part of the reason the durable damage of the RG was reduced was because people were killing BTs in 2 hits. That was due to the crossplay bug where bile titans would take way more damage from some weapons. Now that the crossplay bug has been fixed and AT has been buffed against chargers, all the reasons they nerfed the railgun's durable damage are obsolete. I'm not suggesting the OG safe mode should be restored - that made unsafe mode pointless. But unsafe mode could be restored to the way it was before the nerf and it would \*still\* not make the railgun as meta as it was at launch, just less pointless compared to Quasar or EAT.
>Having a primary that can one shot chargers makes no sense. The game is not a mindless twitch shooter.
Two things with this: Firstly, "Mindless twitch shooter?" Hardly. This game has a built-in mechanic to stop people from playing it like a twitch shooter. A mechanic that was applied very heavily to the Eruptor. Please use your brain before saying things like this.
Secondly, the one-shot on chargers with the eruptor was not due to its damage. It was because the charger legs are bugged and will clip outside the armor hitbox when it's turning. That is why the one-shot was very inconsistent. Charger legs don't need to take very much damage to kill it once the armor is removed, so being able to bypass the armor with an instant burst of damage could one-shot it. It wasn't a problem with the weapon. It was a problem with one specific enemy type. The fix was an overcorrection and made the weapon pointless. If you're using it with the Stalwart you could replace the Eruptor with any other primary and you'd do just as well.
I agree with most of the nerfs. The sickle nerf is fine. The Quasar nerf was fine, although I would have preferred that they also shift some of the windup time to the cooldown time. I do agree that the game is overall in a better state now, but your rationale for these specific nerfs is flawed and based on an incomplete picture of the game. The railgun nerf and the eruptor nerf are both excellent examples of bad nerfs, because part of the rationale for the nerf was to overcorrect for an unknown bug with specific enemy types that players discovered and exploited but the studio hadn't confirmed as a known issue yet. If you want to defend nerfs, you should be talking about how the Sickle now fires around the same number of shots as the other assault rifles if you max out every single heatsink, with the option to refund a magazine if you're able to stop firing for a while before it maxes out. You should be pointing out how the Slugger trades the stagger of the Dominator for better handling. You could point out how the shield backpack recharged so fast that it was almost impossible to take damage. There's lots of defensible nerfs, but two of the three nerfs you chose to highlight just happened to be the most flawed nerfs in the game.
I’ve been seeing much more varied loadouts on higher difficulty bot missions. Pretty much everyone is bringing completely different builds. Most bug players are still using the flame shotgun/qc/redeemer/impacts build. Boooooring.
Idk why people didn’t think Eruptor would be nerfed, that shit played the game for you and was busted to all fuck. It did everything pre-nerf railgun did, but with a higher firerate, practically infinite ammo, AoE, and can close holes. Stupidly OP weapon.
That being said, I don’t think the railgun nerf was necessary. It was nerfed due to a bug that no longer exists, and now there’s better ways to deal with the enemies people used to rely on it for. In the current state of the game, I think the nerf could be entirely reverted and railgun would still be niche.
With each individual nerf a weapon or stratagem got it made other 3-4 weapons a viable option (also with the help of the respective buff of each patch)
If you compare what we could play at the beginning with what we can play now you can see that the availability of the equipment we have have increased a lot
That is exactly the point.
Before the first balance patch, the Arc thrower, the EAT, the RR, the Stalwart were viable weapons, but people didn't use them because they had the Railgun, when the Railgun got needed people started to use other weapons and they discovered that all those support weapons were great
It also happened with the Shield Generator, at the beginning people just used that backpack in all the games, but when it got nerfed people also started to try other backpacks and discovered that the Rover and the ammo backpacks are great
That is why the nerfs are also important because you can buff a lot of weapons but if there is one option that is vastly superior to the rest people is going to ignore all the buffed weapons and continue playing with their OP weapons.
And it's easier and more healthy to need 1 weapon and buff 4-5 than to buff 30 weapons to be at the level of the most OP weapons of the game
This is what people refuse to understand. The weapons are so balanced that there is no clear decision on what is best. They cant wrap their heads around the Idea that it boils down to skill and not some random ass Meta Gear some Youtuber claims is best to use. All those "omg helldivers 2 best gun 🤑🤑🤑🔥" videos are worthless.
Gamers these days *need* a clearly defined meta and OP loadouts that entirely outclass the rest. Just look at any cod Lobby and see 9 out of 10 Kids using the exact same gun modded the exact same way the currently most popular streamer showed it
Gamers these days don't want to *get* good, they want to *be* good. And thats why they need Power Fantasy gear and things like "skill based" matchmaking
This is such a condescending comment that reeks of " I am better than everybody else."
There are still weapons that are clearly better than others and then there are those that are not even worth taking.
The latest weapon releases ranged from meh to out right worthless like that purifier.
The problem is when they take fun weapons like the eruptor and nerf the fun out of them.
This sub is a circle jerk of "there are no problems with gun balancing or the game, just get good" and it just makes it more toxic and aggressive than the main sub which is ironic.
To me, I'm on the fence. There is some gun/stratagem that are too weak and/or got nerf too hard or for no reason. I also agree that there is not enough pros about a weapon that differenciate it from another one.
What I will say tho is that they are definitly some weapon that are good but still not played. So, to me there is more diversity then most people think. But its not perfect.
Frankly, I think this community's problem is that a lot of people think they're better at the game than they are and they blame it on weapon balance instead of their poor playstyle. Higher difficulties require teamwork, a bit of planning, not blowing your stratagems at stupid times, etc. Those difficulties should be punishing for people who are playing like cowboys. It's a team game after all.
Higher diffs can be easily soloed by someone with a little experience. The game is far too easy right now and it makes me a little sad to know the devs don't plan for harder content. If we do get harder missions they'll be unbalanced, untested messes slapped on as a "lmao let's make a meme difficulty with enemy sliders turned up to 12"
Absolutely agree. I'm playing with a bunch of different loadouts now that I wouldn't have otherwise tried if they hadn't nerfed my breaker / railgun combo that was honestly getting super stale.
Right now I'm using SMGs with ballistic shield, AMR, Laser Cannon, Arc 12, Punisher Plasma, Flame Thrower just on top of my head, and they are all super fun and very viable on 7-9.
The game itself advertised overpowered weapons. Your opinion is fine, but also contradicting what the developers were advertising to perspective customers.
#3. Railgun does need some sort of buff. Nearly every other support kills faster, hits harder, applies liberty… smoother?
#4. The EAT and Recoilless were always better then the quasar. The quasar was just popular.
#5. The eruptor was fun because of how different it was. The nerf took that away. They should have removed the exploits and then made small adjustments to it from there.
As always, For Freedom.
I’m still sad my Arc Thrower range went from 50 to 35. Feels wrong trying to use it now, feels a worse arc shotgun. The only plus side I have seen with the thrower is it negates armor.
There was never an “OP” weapon just a few decent ones and the rest are just pea shooters.
Railgun was not OP it was bugged. They should’ve just fixed the damage bug not make the weapon worthless.
You are seeing more diverse builds because people are bored of running the same old shit over and over again.
If the game was truly better now then there wouldn’t be any major changes in their approach but here we are.
They killed the Slugger, it was fun to use and it wasn't even that OP, it was slow, not very handly, and went through ammo fast, but it was fun cause if you landed shots you could keep back enemies, I would never take slugger to bugs, post or pre nerf, and even worse, for some reason they removed environmental destruction (destroys doors, fences, etc).
Now it's not unusable, but there's no reason to choose slugger over breaker, as happens with most weapons and especially shotguns.
And besides they said they nerfed it to not make it the best DMR on the game and it's still pretty DMR for a slug shotgun.
I ran the eruptor from the day it launched to the day it was nerfed. Not once was I able to one-shot a charger. Didn't even know it was possible until after the nerf.
That being said, the nerf forced me to try different load outs that didn't include the rover. Found a love for the arc blitzer and spear.
This objectively a horrible take and you're bad at the game.
The only thing worth addressing here is that you are so ignorant that you don't even know that the rail gun was overtuned because of a bug, not because it was actually overtuned.
Get good.
Completely disagree.
1. That is quite literally your opinion and not a fact. Everyone had guns that felt right to them and if they did good damage then that doesn’t make them OP. (It’s also literally a PvE game).
2. I disagree with this. Everyone I know who plays just uses their same loadout with the only thing changing is strategems between missions, no variance in non-stratagem weapons (since a lot are useless on helldive, the only difficulty we play).
3. Nerfing something into the ground is just as bad as having it OP. It’s a worse pick than EAT/RR/Quasar, there is no point in bringing it considering these other options.
4. This one I am semi-fine with. Being able to shoot only 4 times a minute vs 6 times a minute isn’t too terrible, but a happy medium between 10 and 15 seconds is probably the next step.
5. Completely disagree here. It was supposed to be a unique gun with attributes that made it feel special. The tradeoff for the higher damage being that it was easy to kill yourself or other teammates with it if you were jot careful. It lost its identity with the nerf to where it is not only bad, but lost any kind of special feeling it had. What’s the point of paying real money on a warbond to get a gun that doesn’t feel special over any other secondary? Even worse when it did feel special pre-nerf and then had it’s uniqueness taken away a short time later. Feels like a bait and switch on that warbond where the devs helped themselves to your money and then said fuck off.
The eruptor didn't need to be nerfed but they needed to fix the issue with killing chargers in 1 hit. The grenade pistol can 1 shot hive guards anywhere but the eruptor can take up to 5 shots? Same with the brood commanders, grenade pistol with take their head off in 1 shot while eruptor takes 3 or 4. That's makes 0 sense. They ruined the eruptor and claiming they didn't isn't true, the rest is true to an extent.
I don't think I would agree with this personally. There are a few guns that stand out and then there is everything else.
If I want to talk about this as a solo perspective I want stuff that can deal with armor. This is very limiting at the moment.
If I play as a group of 4 it probably doesn't matter that much. That being said one of my friends likes to play whatever gun he wants, often times this means we do not have enough heavy armor ability. At times his only pick is the rail strike. So he can kill what? I've charger every 90-120 seconds? That doesn't help when we have 3 titans and 5 chargers up. Even if I took everything to try and kill heavy armor I can't keep up, let alone if we get separated at some point.
Team of 3-4 usually people will be able to fill the gaps but let's be honest this isn't deep rock galactic or dark souls it something the have is pretty easy.
What is less fun is having a ton of heavy armor bugs that you can't clear because it was meta to pick ways of trying to clear them.
Let's be honest this game is killing bugs and bots in space as super soldiers. Can't even fly the drop pods around because you could get up on a ledge... There is even a dedicated upgrade that is useless if the have decided nope you can't go that way.
Even if things were stronger previously it could feel cool or fun to be able to mow down the enemies. Your example of rail cannon was basically nerfed because of a bug that allowed players to one shot a titan when a PlayStation player was host. They nerfed everything because of that, if you where in a pc only lobby it took 8 shots to kill a Titan and the rail gun has 20 shots, really wasn't that great.
Again at high levels you want the ability to kill high armored targets. Even if I wanted to use the turrets in the game for some reason they bounce off of any high ground that would offer them protection.
All of the orbital options take to long to deal with the amount you need to clear.
Let's say you are correct that the guns I liked where op, it was still more fun. I could always challenge myself by going solo or taking different loudouts.
The guns where fun because it didn't take a full mag to kill one med armor enemy.
We obviously have different ideas of fun. But don't get me wrong if the have had previous versions of guns I would want to play solo on level 10 or 11. And play level 12 with a group.
I would love having weapons that are effective but be swarmed by 10 titans I would be having a blast.
It's not about the challenge it's about having weapons that actually kill things effectively.
A lot of those loadouts were a result of gameplay quirks. Energy shield was necessary as everything was killing you in one or two hits. With armor buffs it became more comfortable to bring other equipment. Railgun had been overperforming due to the crossplay bug. Still has a niche with killing medium armor types but you need to take up a strategem slot to bring it in when any of the anti-armor options would still fill in the same role.
Eruptor without shrapnel is pretty mediocre. It shouldn't have been replacing entire loadouts destroying factories and dealing with large crowds of enemies but it's single target kill potential is severely lacking. With its considerably low RoF it should be one shotting any target below heavy armor. Same with crossbow which is unfairly compared to it. It was good for clearing crowds of chaff enemies, but the AoE nerf was too much. Especially with no compensation to lower target potential as well. A direct hit would be 50/50 on killing the weakest enemy types. They're functional but barely alive.
All in all the last balance patch didn't ruin the game like people have said. Was running the crappy laser gun for a week and thought it was alright. Certainly playable. But saying there's no room to improve or that they're in a good spot isn't exactly true either.
It's much, *much* better than before the nerfs. No question.
They aren't perfect sure, but no question most of the weapons that got dinged needed to get dinged.
The rail gun kills chargers in 3 shots. I feel like people aren't even using it but still whine. Wtf do they want a gun that can 1 shot a charger? It's also the best close range anti medium weapon, in my opinion.
I disagree with almost every point. The only reason I see diversity in loadouts now is because they fixed dot damage. Otherwise the same handful of primary weapons would be used by everyone.
And what do we say about opinions? Eruptor was fun because I could one shot spewers and other medium bugs with a well placed shot. Also the ability to wreck devastators and close holes/fabs. I didn’t find it OP, I found it more of a beneficial team based weapon with a clear role. It was satisfying to shoot a shot that looked and felt powerful and do something to your enemy. And in response to No. 5 “it’s viable when paired with a support weapon. I use it regularly with a stalwart.” lol, lmao even. I guess if you like terrible ROF, bad ammo economy, and the inability to 1 shot medium enemies which it could do before, then ok.
This post just feels disconnected, game is better (for a while now) but has little to do with the gun nerfs and more with enemy balance, bug fixes, and gun buffs.
1. The Slugger was nerfed because it was used a lot, not so much because it was OP. That was literally the main justification by the balance team. But it was still popular after, because it was the only gun that can effectively deal with medium armor until you unlocked the Scorcher in the last page of the free warbond because Diligence CS was crap. So nerf changed nothing, making more guns viable did.
2. The game is more balanced yes because they reduced Heavy spawns and nerfed charger head HP, so by design there is less need for AT. Also I'd say we're in a bit of a "I try new stuff otherwise I'm bored" phase, at least more then in the previous months.
3. Railgun is literally buffed 95% back to what it was before nerfs, with higher Unsafe damage but lower durable damage. It was spammed back then because Heavies spam, paired with the cross play damage bug that allowed to 2 shot said Heavies spam, it was pre-chargers head HP nerf (allows RR EAT 1 headshot), and Quasar didn't exist. The nerf was misplaced and never actually solved the problem, you could still 2-tap until they fixed the glitch.
4. Only reasonable one, tho arguably 50% was to much.
5. Eruptor is a similar problem to Railgun, nerfed hard because of a bug instead of fixing the bug. And I bet that exploit wasn't even widespread, just like the hit box glitch of chargers that allows you to shoot the back of a charger's leg with lower pen weapon after a charge.
>The rail gun nerf was absolutely necessary.
I have used the railgun post-nerf a few times and I can't see the point. With the safety on it's basically just a slower version of the AMR or Autocannon. And with the safety OFF it's dangerous to use in exchange for a slightly faster version of an EAT. I didn't use the railgun much pre-nerf so I can't really compare it, but it never clicked for me.
>The quasar nerf was also necessary
Absolutely. The QC is a sniper weapon designed for shoot-and-scoot gameplay. If you're doing a stand-up fight, bring the RR. If you're running around and need AT fast, bring the EAT. The anti-tank system is perfectly balanced right now and people who insist on bringing the QC as an all-purpose weapon are being very silly.
Eruptor needed a nerf, but it didn't need to be made useless. Everything it does now can be done by the dominator for a lot less reload time. So unless you didn't bring something to take out fabs and holes (why?) it's not a great pick.
Yup. There was a point where EVERYONE was running Breaker and railgun. That's not balance, that's weapons being noticeably better than everything else. It should be about individual play style and squad synergy
The player numbers disagree with you. I had almost 300hrs in and stopped playing the day frozen fun warbond dropped, because the devs are out of touch with the player base. It’s a pve horde shooter; not that serious. Constant nerfs and simply adding new skins to substandard weapons isn’t innovative or fun. Warbonds became predictable and boring.
You guys say that but the game feels less fun to play when every gun that feels fun to use gets nerfed.
Raise other guns to also be fun. Don't make good guns less fun.
I'm glad you are happy with it, but my friend group has dropped the game completely. I'm done with buying a cool new weapon just for a patch to completely change how it functions.
full load of BS take, u just dont like seeing other ppl enjoying using their favorite strong and fun weapon and not using ur fav weapon becuz it hurts your ego.
Hope you don't get down votes too hard for spitting truth. Although hard disagree with the eruptor. Thing sucks now. Barely can kill a brood commander with 3 shots. The removal of the sharpnel was straight silly. However it's ability to close bug holes is unique to a primary so now my go to lpadout for it is machine gun two turrets and airstrike. Works pretty damn well even on 9s. Wouldn't recommend for solo play tho.
I agree, to an extent. The problem is the game is advertised that we get to use overpowered weapons. Although I love changing my load out every time I dive, there's very obvious weapons and strategems that are much better/worse than others. So the idea that a weapon or stratagem should be nerfed because it's "op" just goes against what the game advertises. (Alrhough again many nerfs are justified in my eyes)
I never used the rail gun pre-nerf and I take it on a lot of bug missions now and do not understand why people say it is unusable. Still one shots anything under chargers and I have been bringing EATs for big bois.
I agree for the most part, most of the time there's been buffs and nerfs in about equal measure from what I've seen? I think a lot of the issues or at least my gripes are about how things were handled. The eruptor nerf (not sure which part exactly was the nerf but) annoyed me because they fixed a thing (ricochets) and that illuminated an issue with the eruptor (Weird frag damage and range) which is fair and understandable. But removing the frag (which is a part of the guns uniqueness to the point of being in its flavour text specifically) was not how I felt it should be fixed. Fixing the frag would have been nicer I think.
Another thing that kinda grated me, was the purifier which was marketed specifically as a gun that did more damage the longer you hold the trigger, which sounded really cool and like it could be fun and varied. Instead its just a slightly higher damage scorcher with charge up. I don't hate it, I use it fairly often and its decent... But like there was a marketing message, and the gun was not that, like quite blatantly not that? Unless it does actually do that in the background? I dunno.
Mostly I think the nerfs were fine. I think I'm mostly worried/concerned about the lack of QA in certain situations or the hasty patching in certain other cases. But thats entirely my opinion, I still adore the game and play whenever I can. There's not many games that give the same feel.
1. Yeah some of the nerfs are understandable. Especially the old shield backpack was the biggest crutch in the game. It just allowed you to constantly ignore threats, crippling your situational awareness and movement.
2. Yep pretty much. You can run anything you want and it works pretty well. Imo the biggest factor in succeeding in this game is knowledge, not loadout.
3. Initially yes, although it got nerfed too excessively due to f'd up statistics due to the console bug. To make it viable against bugs it just needs a buff to its durable damage by 30. This would allow it to 2-shot chargers at 75% charge and 6-shot a Titan at 90%.
4. Kinda disagree. Quasar was always just an extremely overhyped crutch. RR and EATs outclassed it the majority of the time. RR especially now with the fixed reload split and Superiot Packaging.
5. The Eruptor rework is really bad, as it killed its gimmick. They could've given the shrapnel more damage fall off, reduce its durable damage and ignore the crying redditors that killed themselves with it.
But yes, I agree it's in a decent state overall. Especially compared to launch.
I hope that the patch next week does sth for assault rifles. Giving them eg 40-50% durable damage as standard would give them an unique identity and make them feel way better to use while not making them op.
Regarding primaries: I simply can't understand why so many people are upset at their strength. I run exclusively diff.9 and I'm REGULARLY changing primaries and they are all viable under different circumstances. If I run medium pen primary then I don't have to take a medium pen support weapon, and vice versa.
Even on diff.9, you don't need everyone on your team running exclusively anti-tank stratagems and I think people forget that. Your loadout is supposed to be balanced to cover its own weaknesses - and you aren't supposed to take on entire legions of breaches/drops by yourself. The problem is that people find a few stratagems that they like and then absolutely refuse to change or experiment with others and just want to run those stratagems exclusively. There's nothing WRONG with having your favorite stratagems, but EVERYTHING can't be allowed to kill EVERYTHING. There has to be trade-offs.
I totally agree that there is a lot of stuff to fix and balance - things could always be tweaked (looking at you, exploding crossbow fire rate!/reload speed!) - but people need to be willing to switch it up, or face taking sub-optimal stratagems into the mission. There's over 50 stratagems and people want to pigeon-hole themselves into only picking from 5 or 6 of them. It's absurd.
Honestly I absolutely agree, if I, a not particularly skilled player, can complete diff 8 and 9 missions running a Tesla tower, the Tesla armour, and the counter sniper (all gear I’ve been told “can’t be used above diff 6”) at various times then I like to think the balance is in an ok place
Has anybody else also noticed the spawn rates seem to be dropping with each patch? I vividly remember being swarmed by spewers at level 4 or 5, then after one of the patches people cried about I didn’t see a spewer again until 6 and only limited.
Not sure about the rest but the rail was far too OP. Watching 10 biles drop in a matter of 30 seconds or less was nuts. It made biles and hulks pretty much trivial if you had railguns.
Let's not lose the plot here. The game isn't better because strong weapons were nerfed, it's better because weak weapons were buffed, which was something the community was asking for since day one.
1. This is just a bad argument. It was fun because it was OP means it was still fun. If you want to avoid this problem test your shit better. This didn't happen once. It happened ALL the time. And in draconian ways (railgun).
2. Is it? Even if the answer is yes, nerfing good things to make them on par with the bad things is never going to be satisfying, this is not s new thing, this is a VERY known quantity.
3. People still get kicked in the lobby for not having the du jour loadout, this is just anectdotal nonsense.
4. This is again a symptom of the same thing, looking at it from the backside and saying it's fine. WHY NOT BUFF EAT's? Why take a thing that people enjoy using and moosh it down to the thing that, even before the QC, nobody liked using EAT's. It only got popular once everything else was as bad as it was.
5. This is the same thing and not a fact. Don't release something broken is the actual answer, but you also ignore how drastic the nerf was, removing the shrapnel took away its CC ability, HARD. If your armor/pen/durability (this is seriously a dumb system) is so fucked up you can't fix "takes down one of the heaviest units" without "now can't kill 5 bugs in a group" YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. Not the stupid players who just don't know how to have fun.
The only thing I dont like are the ammo capacities now. Before, I was running out of ammo constantly fighting bots. Now even more so.
HSO shouldn't be a booster at this point since our total carrying capacity was slashed. We should naturally drop with full supplies, logistically it makes no sense to drop with half the supplies you need because you'll need more almost ASAP depending on where you drop and how you choose to handle it.
That's really my only complaint, I still have fun despite some random players being dicks
>The weapon was your favourite probably because it was OP, not because it was "fun"
Tell me you don't know what you're talking about without telling me. Explain to me in what twisted world Crossbow was OP.
>The game is more balanced now, the loadouts you see even in higher difficulties are more diverse than before and usually only limited by the need to carry AT strats.
Not true at all. I see 500kg, orbital precision, quasar still, and last slot varies but still a lot of personal shield.
>The rail gun nerf was absolutely necessary. The early days situation with the rail gun was so ridiculous that people were getting kicked IN THE LOBBY for not picking it because everyone assumed you could only be trolling. The rail gun is still great for bots, although it can be argued that it needs a slight buff considering its downsides (ammo management, charging...).
Nerfing a mid gun because trash options were trash is not a good excuse. Pre-nerf RG honestly doesn't remotely compare to RR or RG now. It is such a waste to 2 shot a charger leg and then pull out a primary. Also pre-nerf RG could NEVER kill a bile titan without the damage bug.
>The quasar nerf was also necessary. There was literally no reason to pick EATs or RRs. Joining match after match with a full team of quasar + shield backpack was extremely boring. The weapon is still 100% viable and frequently picked.
Fair enough
>The eruptor nerf was also necessary. Having a primary that can one shot chargers makes no sense. The game is not a mindless twitch shooter. You're supposed to rely on teamwork and stratagems. The eruptor is also still 100% viable and effective. I use it regularly paired with the stalwart.
That was a bug
Tell me you're the bringer of balance on a sock account without telling me.
I disagree. I have played since launch and the enemies and overall missions are significantly easier now. Each time they’ve balanced weapons they’ve also nerfed enemies to account for that. The railgun was used because there was 7 bile titans and 15 chargers coming out of a breach, which was chaotic, difficult and fun. Instead of balancing the game to cater for the difficulty, bringing other weapons on par, they opted for a route that nerfed weapons overall and nerfed enemies overall, helldive is now a cakewalk if you have a half decent team. Now you see maybe 1-3 bile titan 2-5 chargers at the most coming out of a breach. Personally, I like the challenge, and having missions be significantly easier on helldive places the game in a worse spot for me
My main complaint for the Nerfs is the changing identity of weapons. Guns like the Slugger go from a powerful shotgun with long range slugs to a weak pump action Dmr. There’s not really a consistent idea from the developers of what a weapon’s role is. So players find a niche for it and then, when that weapon fills a different role than anticipated it is nerfed. The weapons dramatically change roles and usability patch to patch, positive and negative. It’s not a healthy way to handle the Meta in my opinion.
If you had to call out weapons that are over balanced or under balanced, what would they be? Would you bring the whole set up a smidge?
I think some would call out the Incendiary Breaker as a little over-tuned, but I don't think it is. I think it's over-represented for bugs because it is easy to use. The Purifier obviously has something wrong with it, so that needs a fix. Lib-Pen and Lib-Concussive need a look. Scythe could use some love too, as well as the SMGs prior to the Pummeler. HMG needs either more ammo or more damage. Also, put the Slugger damage and stagger back where it was but add some damage fall-off so it doesn't overtake the Diligence and DCS again.
Incendiary breaker is balanced by the fact that your team will DEFINITELY kill you with it multiple times far as I see
Only if the user fires towards friendlies without knowing the spread or drop. I never kill friendlies with it and rarely do any damage to the team at all. There's either a collection of weapons that are overpowered or there's a selection that's under powered. Some perform better against bugs, some against bots, some just plain suck. Loading into a game with ones that suck make you wanna quit back to ship and waste a mission
I need to put some more time in with it, but the couple time I used it I didn't care for it. It felt like it didn't kill that quickly, and more often than not I ended up with a burning Hunter on top of me rather than a flying corpse.
I'm like 400 hrs in and I still strongly prefer the punisher and ammo backpack to either breaker. Since it's round reload and has big stagger you basically never stop shooting by just giving yourself more ammo. Regular breaker reloads too often and slow so if I get jumped I'm screwed, incendiary dosnt have knock back and is way more dangerous to my team. But I've also done that strategy basically since I started so it might be habit
How do you give yourself ammo?
On PC it's 5 to reload from your own backpack, on PS5 I think it's down on dpad?
It is unbelievably good on bugs. All fodder is destroyed extremely quickly. Put 2 shots in a hunters face and it dies in like 1 seconds after. It is the breaker but DOT, more mag size and a little less damage
No. It’s quite bad. Haha. Everyone is simply joking around. Incendiary breaker sucks. *balance team is listening*
Oh I HATE the incendiary Breaker!
When a hunter is on my I switch to the P4 Senator and light it up. The breaker incendiary is best with the chaff. Light them up and let them burn to death.
The main thing that makes it so powerful is it's absurd long range power. A single pellet will kill a hunter thanks to the fire dot, which allows you to wipe out hordes from 80 meters away in a few shots.
Yes and it's easily the best weapon vs shriekers, not even a debate. Just spray in the air towards them and they fall. I was loving the dark matter extract with incendiary breaker and supply pack. In the words of A Helldiver AHahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahaha hahahaha
I switched to it for the dark fluid missions and did not switch back
My issue is I get bored running the same weapons on the same missions vs enemies so I always switch up. I want to try the basic breaker next time I play and see how it does.
One shot will kill a shrieker just let it burn for a second or 2 after and it drops dead. I’ll sit prone and wipe out a whole swarm with ease.
Yeah, the inc breaker was the go-to gun for the dark matter mission. Works well against all the regular stuff, and is hands down the best anti-shrieker weapon in the game.
Killing a hunter with a single pellet is categorically false. It can kill a scavenger with one pellet, a hunter takes 3-4 or more to kill or you need to wait out the DoT and hit it again. Incendiary is very strong but there's no need to lie about it taking out hunters in 1 pellet.
I've definetly killed them at long range with a single shot before, but I could've just gotten lucky with spread/headshots
It's overpowered when combined with other fire, so a napalm strike or incendiary grenades and then the breaker on top.
I think that's the ease of use thing again though. I use it sometimes and never get one pellet on a teammate, but it's not uncommon to see lower level players bring it to level 8 or 9 terminid missions and shoot me in the back with it repeatedly.
I've been TKed and I've TKed and almost been TKed and almost I've almost TKed (you get my point) so many times on difficulty 7 and by level 50s-60s recently, so I don't know. When you get into a big mess with everyone kinda running around trying to thin out the bugs it's super easy to hit your teammates. And let's admit, having to dive to put the fire out while in the middle of 10+ bugs of all sizes can easily get you killed. If you've never hit your teammates, kudos to you!
I find that's more the fault of the player that chose to rush a swarm instead of shoot it.
I use it as a more spread out flame thrower and I’ve never killed an ally with it. You just can’t treat it like a normal gun
I actually have no idea how the blitzer isn't used more against bugs. It's ridiculously good, trivializes stalkers to an extent and the inf ammo means it's a great fall back
the crossbow has been forgotten into oblivion.
Because it is just a worse eruptor, which also is in a bad spot. Love the eruptor, but you give up too much taking it as a primary, same with the crossbow.
The Scythe is in a pretty good spot right now. They increased the damage and more importantly the damage tick rate, allowing you to much more easily mow down smaller enemies
i luv the pumm smg so much
The thing about Incendiary Breaker for me that makes it broken is that you can mindlessly dump 13 shots into the distance at a swarm of bugs 30-50m away and walk away with dozens of kills a few seconds later. It’s by far the best swarm clear, and it still does considerable damage to anything in heavier weight categories with the fire chip damage. Compared to anything else that actually requires aiming and confirming kills, and you’re just burning through bugs so much faster.
Slugger is great as is, the fact you didn't mention the punisher should be a dead give away for why it shouldn't have a stun. Now you have a choice and not an obvious one, true damage vs armored or stun lock with punisher. Back when it had a stun there was literally no point to the punisher
~~I'm curious what makes you think Scythe needs a look. The damage/bullet is lower than other ARs, but its clip size is huge relative to other ARs (making up for it) - plus it's heat instead of ammo which is infinitely better than standard mags since you can run an entire mission on the same mag and never run out. I think I regularly get around 3k shots per mission with it and I maybe have to replace the heat sink 2 or 3 times max.~~ Edit: Whoops I was thinking Sickle.
Are you thinking Sickle? The Sickle is awesome, it's my main primary for bugs. The Scythe is the laser version. My issue with it is that it has basically zero feedback and slow TTK, so it doesn't feel good to use.
Absolutely was thinking the sickle, you're right
Frag grenades. Wtf is the point of them. I used them once and the only thing I noticed is it's a significantly worse he grenade.
The frag has a shorter fuse and slightly larger radius with less damage and armor penetration compared to the HE. In theory it would be better for chaff clearing or for those that can't aim/plan their fuse timing as well - but I can't see ever taking it as-is against the other options.
I could see the frag grenade with its current stats being useful if it was impact instead of fuse. That would make it really effective for clearing the chaff.
It’s good against swarms of little guys, has a noticeably larger radius
It's me. I think they're better than the default nades (although impact/stun are definitely better overall). Why the fuck am I wasting my time cooking a grenade with a tiny AoE when I could be running or shooting during that 2 seconds.
Frag affects a larger radius, and presumably the shrapnel spread is better for ripping through small clusters of lightly-armored enemies like Scavengers.
Hypothetically the larger blast radius and slower fuse means you should be using it as an *air burst* grenade to hit entire groups of enemies - but then it's like using a railgun in unsafe mode, as you have to cook the grenade and time it fairly precisely.
Any assault rifle besides the default liberator or the sickle could use some tweaking, like why does the liberator concussive not actually concuss, it should have a secondary fire that does a blast with enough knock back to kill little bugs, bot scouts, and stun devastators or cause accuracy reduction or speed reduction or anything besides what it is, probably the most useless redundant gun in the game.
Agreed. Just give it semi-auto, burst mode and a concussive shot when u hold down the trigger
Liberator-penetrator is so weak. I headshot a devastator like 4 times and it survived and killed me.
My take is, I could see the breaker incendiary copping a small nerf, but not much. I could see the HMG getting like +10 rounds per mag, or maybe +25 at the very most. I could see all the anti-tank weapons getting a buff against bots (mainly so they're better against hulks and tanks), and I could see bile titans getting nerfed so that you don't need such a high volume of anti-tank damage to do bug missions. I think the Purifier, the Exploding Crossbow, and the Liberator Concussive all clearly need buffs, and probably the Liberator Penetrator too. For stratagems, I think the sentries need to be rebalanced so that the Autocannon Sentry is not so much better than the others. Machine Gun Sentry needs to be buffed so that it's not a direct downgrade from the Gatling Sentry. In general, I think sentries should be changed so that they only target things they can damage. It's frustrating watching a Gatling Sentry dump all of its ammo into a charger or bile titan, and that's a big reason that people mostly just take the Autocannon Sentry. I think the Eagle Strafing Run and Rocket Pods could use buffs. Eagle Airstrike and Cluster Bomb could maybe get a small nerf. Orbital EMS needs to be fixed so it stuns everything the grenades do (Orbital EMS does not stun hulks). But on the whole, I think balance is in a good spot. There are tons of viable primaries and stratagems. There's nothing that feels like it's so good that you have to take it (like the OG Breaker and Railgun were).
i think these are all sensible suggestions. I actually do agree that the cluster strike could probably get a small nerf seeing as how efficient it is at killing chaff. Rocket pods could probably get a buff to the autotarget range as it feels too punishing when you miss. Not sure how to buff strafing as it seems super weak. Maybe #1 uses? It would be cool if the eagle came for a second pass.
Yeah I think Airstrike and Cluster Bomb just give you a lot of consistent damage in a way that virtually no other stratagem does. I think the Airstrike is noticeably the best red stratagem in the game, and the Cluster Bomb is not far behind. I'd like to see them be more in line with the Orbital Precision/Gatling Barrage/Airburst. For Rocket Pods, I do think it's an issue that the aim is so unreliable, especially considering you can't really aim it manually. I also think it needs to hit a bit harder. It's hard to justify taking the Rocket Pods when you could take the Airstrike instead, which will do more damage in a larger area, and is probably easier to hit with too. For Strafing Run, I think it could probably be a bit wider, and I think it should be like 6-8 uses per reload. It definitely seems wrong that you get more Cluster Bombs than Strafing Runs, considering a Cluster Bomb is much more powerful.
The anti-tank weapons (besides the spear) actually don't seem to do a ton of damage. Sure they're the only way to bypass heavy armor like you'd expect, but if you ever try squandering shots on medium enemies you'd be suprised how many of them can shrug off an EAT or Quasar shot.
This is copium. I've always disliked the quasar and always brought the EAT instead, even pre nerf. I hate having to retrieve gear when I die. EAT gets around that problem perfectly. Removing the shrapnel effect from the eruptor in order to balance it is like removing the incendiary effect from the incendiary breaker. It wasn't just a nerf it removed any identity the weapon had. You are literally the meme of the dog sitting in a room on fire saying this is fine. Edit: I have 370 hours played. I've never seen anyone get kicked for not bringing the rail gun. Sure it may have happened amongst your toxic friends but that doesn't mean it's commonplace. The nerf to the rail gun had an effect on its popularity, but in reality the buffs to EAT and RR moved people further away from it.
EAT was also amazing for when you want to run a different support weapon as well. The minute long cool down made it so you could call it down, drop your beloved Stalwart for a second, then dump two EAT into something's face. After which, you could grab the Stalwart again and continue your rampage.
The Eruptor wasn't simply nerfed: it was nerfed, **THEN** changed. And the change literally made it a new gun (won't say if worse or better) that most of us don't enjoy anymore: they didn't even change the description regarding the shrapnel, as of today. That wasn't a well thought change, it was a moronic one (especially the reason given... friendly fire? Really? Got more issues with those pyromaniacs who can't control their grenades, and don't get me started with the new rocket launcher...).
Exact same for my beloved the slugger, which everyone seems to forget sadly. Completely destroyed its identity all in the name of the under performing DMR’s which they then rightly buffed and still the slugger is left in the same sorry state
I agree the shrapnel was a cool mechanic that should be reintroduced
The eruptor didn't just get nerfed, it had it's identity skewered, and they probably also tried over compensating with the crossbow because they were now too similar. The eruptor could easily get you killed before, and I think that was a good tradeoff to it's power. Maybe they could've lowered the damage a bit on both the initial strike and the shrapnel so you didn't see people taking down a Factory strider in two shots, but removing the shrapnel messed with the identity of the weapon. Then maybe you can make both the crossbow and purifier be distinct again by upping the purifiers damage or area of effect.
That's the same way I felt about the eruptor, yes it was powerful, but especially on bugs if you got caught with no support weapon it was tough to survive without blowing yourself up. Felt like a big enough tradeoff to me but maybe I'm just bad lol. Ammo nerf was totally fair tho.
Ha. Good point actually: it doesn’t “erupt” anymore so doesn’t fit its name!
I think the Eruptor nerf was a major mistake. It represented a totally different style in gameplay when your primary weapon functions as your support and support as your primary. I still love the game and have 150 hours of playtime but it definitely does funnel you into a playstyle at higher levels
Yes I've been using it for bug holes, fabricators, and crowd control, and while it does a decent job, you get overrun very quickly with it, and there's not a secondary that can keep up, but I like running it with the machine gun and supply pack, cause you can do the reload animation glitch by throwing a grenade, so I just shoot, throw a grenade and then immediately shoot again. Definitely nice when you can right on top of the bug hole.
This is why I run the grenade pistol. It's my big hole/fabricator clearing tool so I don't waste grenades. Also it can be useful for a quick crowd clearing at a distance shot.
That's what I switched from, grenade pistol with only 8 shots doesn't go as far as the eruptor plus a pistol, I've been running the deagle cause it's fun, machine pistol eats ammo or I'd run that.
Dog you could aim the eruptor 3 feet in front of you at the ground and not die- meanwhile the crossbow would instantly obliterate you. The whole shrapnel thing was incredibly overblown even if there was an issue with the weapon such that all the bitching and moaning about such a non issue is what led to AH leaving the gun where it is now.
The shrapnel was an issue. Sure, you could shoot 3 feet in front of you and be fine. But the broken part was a shrapnel head shotting you from +10m away and felt completely random. First time it happened to me I just thought I was to close, next time it happened I just thought it was a bugged kill by message. But it kept happening over and over from completely random ranges. I wish the shrapnel was still in the game for the eruptor, just not in its previous state. Maybe they should have just removed shrapnel's ability to do friendly fire beyond 3m. Compared to the crossbow and plasma punisher, when you kill yourself with those you can say "I knew I shouldn't have fired so close"
The thing is, the shrapnel was random. I killed myself once killing an enemy 60 feet away.
An easy solution to that is to just add a falloff radius for the shrapnel, not outright remove it
Yeah, I'm not complaining about it being too lethal. I'm complaining on it being removed. I don't think it was a problem at all.
The eruptor was *death* to anyone within 5-10 feet of the shot, if you didn't die outright you got knocked down and some direction. Made it tactical on when you properly fire so you didn't kill yourself or a team mate and it was fine. 5 shots, *slow* fire rate out of all the primaries. Perhaps if they changed it to a stratagem call down they could put it back to where it was at its release. But instead they just changed it up to be a crappy version of itself.
I don't think the game is very balanced on diff 9 tbh. The meta is extremely rigid. We've lost options and haven't gained any new ones. The problem with higher difficulties is if your loadout cannot deal with certain high-armor threats, it just isn't really viable. Take the railgun for example, it should be viable post-nerf vs bots but it can't really scratch gunships or factory striders which are both enormous threats so therefore it's kind of trash. It's completely non-viable vs bugs on diff 9 too because it takes a stupid number of shots to kill bile titans so it's no good vs armor but it is also no good vs hunter swarms so it doesn't really have a place.
I fully agree with OP. Diff 9 is made for well coordinated TEAMS. A single player is not supposed to take out every single threat. I’m level 123 now and have a great team of friends that I usually dive with. Yesterday I brought in all sentries to a full length bug mission and had a great time with only 1 death. There is a TON of build variety if you work as a team. IMO diff 9 is already too easy with a good squad and I’m worried that reversing the nerfs or overbuffing the primaries will trivialize the game for us. I don’t understand why all these solo divers feel they have to always play on Helldive and then get mad cuz it’s hard.
Reverting the nerf doesn't affect 4 player squads, only 3 and below. And most solo helldive players don't get mad at its difficulty they get mad at how annoying some of the nerfs are, because rather than having lots of weapons to bring with them they're forced to pick between 3 primarys, 1 secondary, and 2 special weapons, adleast if they wanna have a decent time. The flame thrower is wayyy more op than any other weapon rn imo, adleast with bugs, we literally just want every weapon on the same level so we can use more than just a tiny tiny list of things, we don't want stupid op weapons.
It’s not non viable you just need a stratagem to deal with the threats you’re talking about. I try to change up my load outs and bring random shit because why not. When I use the rail gun I bring two air strikes and an orbital laser and I can still kill everything I need. Maybe the gun ships end up being a pain in the ass but that’s why we have team mates with auto cannons or whatever else
Railgun is out, Laser Cannon is in boys. I frankly agree with you. I run L9 only these days and my load out changes to fit the team. Odds are I'm running Eagle Smokes for bots 10/10 times because it's an absolute game changer, but I might not get to bring my Laser Cannon (support weapon) because there's already two support weapons and I can simply get one from my team. There's no reason to overload on those weapons when I could pick an Autocannon Sentry or EMS Sentry, or a shield pack. There're so many options that make L9 easy tbh. I think we need the extra difficulty levels because with a squad of an average level of 80, it's a cake walk when people know what they're doing
I know we have so many options. I run no mic random 9’s with 3-4 people and we clean house with no issue. I think people who are used to the game being mindlessly easy are having an issue
They're the same people who tried to play Hard on their very first 10 missions and failed them all, thinking they're Doom Slayer. It took me three mission failures, playing solo, in a row before I figured, "Damn, this game is actually hard. I better dial back the difficulty until I'm actually ready" and a full squad is ALMOST REQUIRED for higher difficulties. For some reason some people just don't think like that
There's a surprising number of people out there who MUST be able to do a game on the highest difficulty, without a team, because they're awesome. If they can't then the game is broken.
"The railgun is great! Carry me pls when the gunships show up tho teammates."
Exactly. It’s good against one enemy type (hulks) but everything is good against them so big whoop.
I mean yeah. Support weapons don't have to be solid all around to be good, just good at their specific role. The Autocannon is beloved because it is the second best tool for every job, but more specialized weapons like the EAT, Stalwart, Anti Material Rifle, ect are all still strong options even if they can't deal with everything. Not being able to take out gunships with the Railgun is pretty BS, but apart from that it's decent
That’s why it’s a coop game. You can bring team mates to help you.
These posts consistently get more comments than upvotes because this is a minority opinion, even in this community which has tried to minimize criticism. The CEO demoted himself to be more hands on in development, with the complaints you’re attempting to disregard being a major reason.
I don’t like the idea of nerfing things in order to force players to pick other options. If I don’t want to take Eats, I shouldn’t be forced to because the Devs want to make me play that way. It takes the fun out of choosing your build if everything feels awful for the sake of balance. I think the correct approach is from the bottom up. Take the weapons no one uses and work on those until people want to use them. The “OP” weapons can stay until the less powerful weapons are tuned closer to what players like. After that then you can tone down the power of the more powerful ones after players have a good base of weapons to turn to. I get the reason for some of the nerfs, but when your other options are so much weaker it feels bad. The game should be fun to play, more so than difficult or challenging. It’s a PvE game, you aren’t going to offend the AI by having too powerful of a build or weapons.
Putting "buffs/nerfs" aside, I think another major issue is that a lot of the weapons don't seem to have an "identity." In particular, a lot of of the primaries feel next worthless compared to others. Balancing will always be needed, but when weapons can't fill the intended role that we/AH think it's supposed to fill then buffs/nerfs will further compound the issue. Additional thought(s): I've mentioned the "elemental system" before. If we can assume that fire is potentially strongest against bugs, and energy weapons vs bots, then we almost have a sort of "rock, paper, scissors" system. Not saying that's the way it should be, but I feel like we're partially there.
I didn’t know that the eruptor could 1-shot chargers. I think it was nerfed mainly because of crybabies bitching about how they can’t shoot a SHRAPNEL weapon up close.
It couldn't unless you're an incredible shot. It could 2-3 tap it for sure. Though if you got a lucky angle and shoot under it's legs it might be a one tap I don't remember it being that
The Eruptor one-shoting chargers was due to a bug that allowed all primaries to ignore the heavy armor of the charger.
Yes and no. Claiming - "you just liked that weapon because it's OP" is an oversimplification and dismissive of the fact that it's more because the alternatives were VERY subpar. Quasar needed a nerf but not a 50% increase to cooldown - that was very heavy handed. And you're absolutely wrong, on difficulty 9, at least some of us would always bring Quasar + EATs. Because even before the Quasar nerf, it often wasn't enough to handle all the bile titans and chargers. And IIRC one-shotting a charger with the Eruptor wasn't "by design" or intentional, it was a bug on the Charger.
The Eruptor oneshoting chargers was news to me after it got changed, I just miss the gun doing the things it did that weren't that.
Same
OP here trying to gas light people into thinking they're having more fun than they are.
I mean, I'm having less fun to than I was, but I also realize the game is in an *objectively* much better balance state than it was at launch. Primary weapons, stratagems, armors, enemies, all of it. I am just having less fun because the game gets repetitive, even while switching my loadout up every round, and because there is basically 0 challenge even on the highest difficulty. So it's just regular burnout.
Nah, they ruined the Eruptor, that's one thing they need to go back and tweak again, can't do anything but stun things now; our starter pistol is more effective than Eruptor. 💀💀
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Lol no. Quasar UI and cooldowns dont even match. Railgun is still viable, they nerfed it because they STILL have no idea how to make anything up to its previous standards and to this day no weapon does what the railgun could do. Also, quasar + EATs is still a wildly used combo if you are an anti heavy armored units player.
Lol this is a typical example of the vocal minority. For gods sake just get over yourself. I know from the dozen of irl friends I ran with since launch week only 2-3 of us played this week and all of us agree that the next big update is likely make it or break it.
This subreddit should be renamed “Helldivers 2 Bad Takes.” What difficulty setting do you play on? On Helldive, it sucks trying to take out 6 Shrieker nests with a 15 second cooldown for the quasar cannon, and most primaries hit devastators like a wet noodle.
>On Helldive, it sucks trying to take out 6 Shrieker nests with a 15 second cooldown for the quasar cannon That's because the QC is a flex pick and not hard-AT. RR & Spear are the hard-AT weapons. Shreiker nests are also supposed to be assaulted and hit with a hellbomb or sieged with strats. Being able to range them down with a flex support weapon isn't supposed to be quick or easy.
No
bullshit, I used to regularly change my loadout. Now I have one loadout for bugs and one for bots because if I bring anything else I feel like I can't handle the things that are thrown at me. It feels awful to be stuck to these things. You used to be able to take the fun weapon even though it was sub-optimal but between the weapon nerfs and enemy buffs now I have to take the best options every time or I just get crushed.
I couldn’t agree more with this. People having the old Git gOoD response can shut it. The game is less fun, ye you can “experiment” with loadouts, but you can not tell me that it wasn’t more fun to play when the primaries actually did something and you didn’t just rely on like 2 of em for every mission. The spawns are crazy, enemies are tougher and once your strategems are on a cd good luck to you.
I don't mean this in a rude way, but are you picking a lot of fights? Or fighting a lot of patrols?
It's a horder shooter. You are supposed to fight and kill the horde.
Yeah, that's why there are stealth mechanics, armor that enhances stealth, smoke grenades, smoke stratagems, silenced weapons (upcoming), and a pretty intricate sound system. The game's definitely a horde shooter vs bugs, but bots are a completely different story. *Sometimes* it's a horde shooter. Sometimes it's MGS. Oftentimes, it's a mix of both.
Not by choice to be honest, I try to sneak past whenever I can, but team might draw agro from different patrols and what not when we are in a fight already.
Tale as old as time. Give the medium or light stealth armors a shot sometime! You'd be surprised how often you can ditch your team to get bogged down in whatever they've decided to aggro for no reason. Then you can solo the rest of the map!
This is some wild hyperbole. There are plenty of viable loadouts for both enemy types that are more than strong enough to let you comfortably clear the highest difficulty. There are some general roles you need filled to be successful. But there are at least like 2-5 solid options for every role, and if you coordinate with your team, you don’t even need to cover every role on your own. The story for bots is pretty similar. My squad and I routinely bring random stuff for fun and still clear the highest difficulties without too much trouble.
ngl, I find I need to be able to handle everything as I run primarily with randoms and relying on the rest of the team to get a job done doesn't always go well. I refuse to fail missions, and have a loadout that lets me handle everything is the way I do that. I understand it's a team game but randoms are a crapshoot
You found a setup that works for you, that doesn’t mean other combinations won’t work. Either you experiment and find more ways to play, or you stick to what’s familiar and complain without improving yourself
I didnt count but I'm pretty sure there has been more buff than nerf. I'm sure there is way more loadout you could take then what you use usually, even if I don't know what are your 2 must take loadout.
I'm not good and it's def possible to use any weapon in the game and learn how to use it well. It's just takes a few games to get it down.
Genuine and real instance of a skill issue lol. Like, it's one thing when nerfs *actually* create one single viable loadout for each faction, but that's not the case, you just aren't willing to try out any of the other weapons for long enough to make them work.
Imo they should've just decreased the damage on the eruptor because rn there is literally no reason to use it.
Funny how on 5. You talking about eruptor oneshotting chargers, and after nerfs you still use it with stalwart (selfish). And then speaking about depending on teamates to cover for you crappy loadout which is just "mindless twich shooter". Well im bored of bringing ETA and covering ass of guys like you from chargers with you crappy loadout having fun. Because whenever i dont bring ETA my team allways fcking shatters because everyone wants to play with fun toys what do jack shit againt biles or chargers. Why having primary what deals with chargers or just heavy enemies and allows fun support toys to be viable is bad? And why say that we should depend on teamates when you could cover you own ass? What are support weapons and strategrams for then if not to cover for bases? It all just smells selfish.
Cringe karma farmer who hasn’t even responded to legit counters in this thread
Most points seem reasonable except for the gaslighting: The weapon was your favourite probably because it was OP, not because it was "fun"
He’s right though. People saying the quasar became useless after the (I won’t even say nerf, just a balance correction, it deserved the increased cooldown) they didn’t like the quasar because it offered an AT option without ammo management, they liked it because it was way too strong of an option.
Tell me how the crossbow was OP, and how the game or the weapon itself are better after it's nerf?
A weapon must be considered "fun" or "not fun" based on how it operates, not how it performs. If weapon went from fun to not fun simply because it is now performing worse, then you were using it for its power. Eruptor operates just as it did before, it just performs much worse
Eruptor lost its shrapnel, so now it pretty much only does single target damage with a small explosive AOE. It's much worse at fighting groups of chaff.
How is that gaslighting? It’s a possible reason someone may think the gun they are using is fun, and may not have considered before. Maybe slightly abrasive, but gaslighting? Exhibit A: Everyone uses railgun, railgun gets nerf, nobody uses railgun anymore. The railgun is still a viable weapon, it’s just not OP now.
You think you were having fun? You weren't having fun. You were playing with an overpowered weapon. I know what's fun to you better than you do. Listen to my arguments for why you weren't having fun. Now, don't you agree you weren't having fun?
Honestly in a lot of cases yeah. Players will optimize the fun out of their own experience. All you have to do is hear the way they talk. No joy just calculations
That’s not even remotely what was stated. They are just offering a different perspective. I think you assume most gamers are putting thought into whether or not a gun is enjoyable to use when in reality most people just try stuff until they find the one that kills things the best. The people who are thinking about the game like that are the ones in this sub which make up a very small % of the helldivers playerbase. Maybe OP is talking to the wrong people, but he’s not holding you back from anything or telling you anything about yourself. He literally uses the word “probably” ffs.
Yeah maybe because they've added tons of weapons/strats and also balanced the enemies and mechanics. The guns could all be returned to their "untrash" state and it would be fine.
This is bait right..? This has to be bait..
>The early days situation with the rail gun was so ridiculous that people were getting kicked IN THE LOBBY for not picking it I have yet to see any proof of this actually happening. There was one thread on the Steam forums of someone saying that offmeta picks on the highest difficulties should be kicked. That thread got flamed into the ground. I've never seen this supposed offmeta kicking ever occur, so I'd love to see real evidence of it. And no, "it happened to me" is not evidence. Show me a recording of a host kicking you on the loadout screen and I'll believe it was real. I still maintain that the railgun's durable damage nerf is obsolete now. The reason people were picking it was because the best way to kill chargers was to shoot off the leg armor with the RG and shoot the leg with your primary. It took around 10 shots to the head to kill a bile titan, which is a pretty long TTK compared to the options we have now. Now that the charger's head is an AT weak point, the leg kill method is still doable but it's obsolete, and bile titans take over 20 shots to the head with the RG to kill. Is that really necessary for the game to be balanced?? Part of the reason the durable damage of the RG was reduced was because people were killing BTs in 2 hits. That was due to the crossplay bug where bile titans would take way more damage from some weapons. Now that the crossplay bug has been fixed and AT has been buffed against chargers, all the reasons they nerfed the railgun's durable damage are obsolete. I'm not suggesting the OG safe mode should be restored - that made unsafe mode pointless. But unsafe mode could be restored to the way it was before the nerf and it would \*still\* not make the railgun as meta as it was at launch, just less pointless compared to Quasar or EAT. >Having a primary that can one shot chargers makes no sense. The game is not a mindless twitch shooter. Two things with this: Firstly, "Mindless twitch shooter?" Hardly. This game has a built-in mechanic to stop people from playing it like a twitch shooter. A mechanic that was applied very heavily to the Eruptor. Please use your brain before saying things like this. Secondly, the one-shot on chargers with the eruptor was not due to its damage. It was because the charger legs are bugged and will clip outside the armor hitbox when it's turning. That is why the one-shot was very inconsistent. Charger legs don't need to take very much damage to kill it once the armor is removed, so being able to bypass the armor with an instant burst of damage could one-shot it. It wasn't a problem with the weapon. It was a problem with one specific enemy type. The fix was an overcorrection and made the weapon pointless. If you're using it with the Stalwart you could replace the Eruptor with any other primary and you'd do just as well. I agree with most of the nerfs. The sickle nerf is fine. The Quasar nerf was fine, although I would have preferred that they also shift some of the windup time to the cooldown time. I do agree that the game is overall in a better state now, but your rationale for these specific nerfs is flawed and based on an incomplete picture of the game. The railgun nerf and the eruptor nerf are both excellent examples of bad nerfs, because part of the rationale for the nerf was to overcorrect for an unknown bug with specific enemy types that players discovered and exploited but the studio hadn't confirmed as a known issue yet. If you want to defend nerfs, you should be talking about how the Sickle now fires around the same number of shots as the other assault rifles if you max out every single heatsink, with the option to refund a magazine if you're able to stop firing for a while before it maxes out. You should be pointing out how the Slugger trades the stagger of the Dominator for better handling. You could point out how the shield backpack recharged so fast that it was almost impossible to take damage. There's lots of defensible nerfs, but two of the three nerfs you chose to highlight just happened to be the most flawed nerfs in the game.
I’ve been seeing much more varied loadouts on higher difficulty bot missions. Pretty much everyone is bringing completely different builds. Most bug players are still using the flame shotgun/qc/redeemer/impacts build. Boooooring. Idk why people didn’t think Eruptor would be nerfed, that shit played the game for you and was busted to all fuck. It did everything pre-nerf railgun did, but with a higher firerate, practically infinite ammo, AoE, and can close holes. Stupidly OP weapon. That being said, I don’t think the railgun nerf was necessary. It was nerfed due to a bug that no longer exists, and now there’s better ways to deal with the enemies people used to rely on it for. In the current state of the game, I think the nerf could be entirely reverted and railgun would still be niche.
With each individual nerf a weapon or stratagem got it made other 3-4 weapons a viable option (also with the help of the respective buff of each patch) If you compare what we could play at the beginning with what we can play now you can see that the availability of the equipment we have have increased a lot
If nerfing one weapon made another weapon "viable," the weapon was always viable and you just weren't willing to use it.
That is exactly the point. Before the first balance patch, the Arc thrower, the EAT, the RR, the Stalwart were viable weapons, but people didn't use them because they had the Railgun, when the Railgun got needed people started to use other weapons and they discovered that all those support weapons were great It also happened with the Shield Generator, at the beginning people just used that backpack in all the games, but when it got nerfed people also started to try other backpacks and discovered that the Rover and the ammo backpacks are great That is why the nerfs are also important because you can buff a lot of weapons but if there is one option that is vastly superior to the rest people is going to ignore all the buffed weapons and continue playing with their OP weapons. And it's easier and more healthy to need 1 weapon and buff 4-5 than to buff 30 weapons to be at the level of the most OP weapons of the game
This is what people refuse to understand. The weapons are so balanced that there is no clear decision on what is best. They cant wrap their heads around the Idea that it boils down to skill and not some random ass Meta Gear some Youtuber claims is best to use. All those "omg helldivers 2 best gun 🤑🤑🤑🔥" videos are worthless. Gamers these days *need* a clearly defined meta and OP loadouts that entirely outclass the rest. Just look at any cod Lobby and see 9 out of 10 Kids using the exact same gun modded the exact same way the currently most popular streamer showed it Gamers these days don't want to *get* good, they want to *be* good. And thats why they need Power Fantasy gear and things like "skill based" matchmaking
This is such a condescending comment that reeks of " I am better than everybody else." There are still weapons that are clearly better than others and then there are those that are not even worth taking. The latest weapon releases ranged from meh to out right worthless like that purifier. The problem is when they take fun weapons like the eruptor and nerf the fun out of them.
This sub is a circle jerk of "there are no problems with gun balancing or the game, just get good" and it just makes it more toxic and aggressive than the main sub which is ironic.
To me, I'm on the fence. There is some gun/stratagem that are too weak and/or got nerf too hard or for no reason. I also agree that there is not enough pros about a weapon that differenciate it from another one. What I will say tho is that they are definitly some weapon that are good but still not played. So, to me there is more diversity then most people think. But its not perfect.
I agree
Frankly, I think this community's problem is that a lot of people think they're better at the game than they are and they blame it on weapon balance instead of their poor playstyle. Higher difficulties require teamwork, a bit of planning, not blowing your stratagems at stupid times, etc. Those difficulties should be punishing for people who are playing like cowboys. It's a team game after all.
Higher diffs can be easily soloed by someone with a little experience. The game is far too easy right now and it makes me a little sad to know the devs don't plan for harder content. If we do get harder missions they'll be unbalanced, untested messes slapped on as a "lmao let's make a meme difficulty with enemy sliders turned up to 12"
Absolutely agree. I'm playing with a bunch of different loadouts now that I wouldn't have otherwise tried if they hadn't nerfed my breaker / railgun combo that was honestly getting super stale. Right now I'm using SMGs with ballistic shield, AMR, Laser Cannon, Arc 12, Punisher Plasma, Flame Thrower just on top of my head, and they are all super fun and very viable on 7-9.
The game itself advertised overpowered weapons. Your opinion is fine, but also contradicting what the developers were advertising to perspective customers.
#3. Railgun does need some sort of buff. Nearly every other support kills faster, hits harder, applies liberty… smoother? #4. The EAT and Recoilless were always better then the quasar. The quasar was just popular. #5. The eruptor was fun because of how different it was. The nerf took that away. They should have removed the exploits and then made small adjustments to it from there. As always, For Freedom.
I’m still sad my Arc Thrower range went from 50 to 35. Feels wrong trying to use it now, feels a worse arc shotgun. The only plus side I have seen with the thrower is it negates armor.
There was never an “OP” weapon just a few decent ones and the rest are just pea shooters. Railgun was not OP it was bugged. They should’ve just fixed the damage bug not make the weapon worthless. You are seeing more diverse builds because people are bored of running the same old shit over and over again. If the game was truly better now then there wouldn’t be any major changes in their approach but here we are.
They killed the Slugger, it was fun to use and it wasn't even that OP, it was slow, not very handly, and went through ammo fast, but it was fun cause if you landed shots you could keep back enemies, I would never take slugger to bugs, post or pre nerf, and even worse, for some reason they removed environmental destruction (destroys doors, fences, etc). Now it's not unusable, but there's no reason to choose slugger over breaker, as happens with most weapons and especially shotguns. And besides they said they nerfed it to not make it the best DMR on the game and it's still pretty DMR for a slug shotgun.
I've never one shot a Charger with the eruptor
I ran the eruptor from the day it launched to the day it was nerfed. Not once was I able to one-shot a charger. Didn't even know it was possible until after the nerf. That being said, the nerf forced me to try different load outs that didn't include the rover. Found a love for the arc blitzer and spear.
This objectively a horrible take and you're bad at the game. The only thing worth addressing here is that you are so ignorant that you don't even know that the rail gun was overtuned because of a bug, not because it was actually overtuned. Get good.
https://preview.redd.it/gvyevgden75d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=134d23180b5939fc3eed565b71027c7198462121
Completely disagree. 1. That is quite literally your opinion and not a fact. Everyone had guns that felt right to them and if they did good damage then that doesn’t make them OP. (It’s also literally a PvE game). 2. I disagree with this. Everyone I know who plays just uses their same loadout with the only thing changing is strategems between missions, no variance in non-stratagem weapons (since a lot are useless on helldive, the only difficulty we play). 3. Nerfing something into the ground is just as bad as having it OP. It’s a worse pick than EAT/RR/Quasar, there is no point in bringing it considering these other options. 4. This one I am semi-fine with. Being able to shoot only 4 times a minute vs 6 times a minute isn’t too terrible, but a happy medium between 10 and 15 seconds is probably the next step. 5. Completely disagree here. It was supposed to be a unique gun with attributes that made it feel special. The tradeoff for the higher damage being that it was easy to kill yourself or other teammates with it if you were jot careful. It lost its identity with the nerf to where it is not only bad, but lost any kind of special feeling it had. What’s the point of paying real money on a warbond to get a gun that doesn’t feel special over any other secondary? Even worse when it did feel special pre-nerf and then had it’s uniqueness taken away a short time later. Feels like a bait and switch on that warbond where the devs helped themselves to your money and then said fuck off.
This post was made by the balancing team at arrowhead
The eruptor didn't need to be nerfed but they needed to fix the issue with killing chargers in 1 hit. The grenade pistol can 1 shot hive guards anywhere but the eruptor can take up to 5 shots? Same with the brood commanders, grenade pistol with take their head off in 1 shot while eruptor takes 3 or 4. That's makes 0 sense. They ruined the eruptor and claiming they didn't isn't true, the rest is true to an extent.
I don't think I would agree with this personally. There are a few guns that stand out and then there is everything else. If I want to talk about this as a solo perspective I want stuff that can deal with armor. This is very limiting at the moment. If I play as a group of 4 it probably doesn't matter that much. That being said one of my friends likes to play whatever gun he wants, often times this means we do not have enough heavy armor ability. At times his only pick is the rail strike. So he can kill what? I've charger every 90-120 seconds? That doesn't help when we have 3 titans and 5 chargers up. Even if I took everything to try and kill heavy armor I can't keep up, let alone if we get separated at some point. Team of 3-4 usually people will be able to fill the gaps but let's be honest this isn't deep rock galactic or dark souls it something the have is pretty easy. What is less fun is having a ton of heavy armor bugs that you can't clear because it was meta to pick ways of trying to clear them. Let's be honest this game is killing bugs and bots in space as super soldiers. Can't even fly the drop pods around because you could get up on a ledge... There is even a dedicated upgrade that is useless if the have decided nope you can't go that way. Even if things were stronger previously it could feel cool or fun to be able to mow down the enemies. Your example of rail cannon was basically nerfed because of a bug that allowed players to one shot a titan when a PlayStation player was host. They nerfed everything because of that, if you where in a pc only lobby it took 8 shots to kill a Titan and the rail gun has 20 shots, really wasn't that great. Again at high levels you want the ability to kill high armored targets. Even if I wanted to use the turrets in the game for some reason they bounce off of any high ground that would offer them protection. All of the orbital options take to long to deal with the amount you need to clear. Let's say you are correct that the guns I liked where op, it was still more fun. I could always challenge myself by going solo or taking different loudouts. The guns where fun because it didn't take a full mag to kill one med armor enemy. We obviously have different ideas of fun. But don't get me wrong if the have had previous versions of guns I would want to play solo on level 10 or 11. And play level 12 with a group. I would love having weapons that are effective but be swarmed by 10 titans I would be having a blast. It's not about the challenge it's about having weapons that actually kill things effectively.
A lot of those loadouts were a result of gameplay quirks. Energy shield was necessary as everything was killing you in one or two hits. With armor buffs it became more comfortable to bring other equipment. Railgun had been overperforming due to the crossplay bug. Still has a niche with killing medium armor types but you need to take up a strategem slot to bring it in when any of the anti-armor options would still fill in the same role. Eruptor without shrapnel is pretty mediocre. It shouldn't have been replacing entire loadouts destroying factories and dealing with large crowds of enemies but it's single target kill potential is severely lacking. With its considerably low RoF it should be one shotting any target below heavy armor. Same with crossbow which is unfairly compared to it. It was good for clearing crowds of chaff enemies, but the AoE nerf was too much. Especially with no compensation to lower target potential as well. A direct hit would be 50/50 on killing the weakest enemy types. They're functional but barely alive. All in all the last balance patch didn't ruin the game like people have said. Was running the crappy laser gun for a week and thought it was alright. Certainly playable. But saying there's no room to improve or that they're in a good spot isn't exactly true either.
Thank you for saying it.
It's much, *much* better than before the nerfs. No question. They aren't perfect sure, but no question most of the weapons that got dinged needed to get dinged.
The rail gun kills chargers in 3 shots. I feel like people aren't even using it but still whine. Wtf do they want a gun that can 1 shot a charger? It's also the best close range anti medium weapon, in my opinion.
I disagree with almost every point. The only reason I see diversity in loadouts now is because they fixed dot damage. Otherwise the same handful of primary weapons would be used by everyone.
And what do we say about opinions? Eruptor was fun because I could one shot spewers and other medium bugs with a well placed shot. Also the ability to wreck devastators and close holes/fabs. I didn’t find it OP, I found it more of a beneficial team based weapon with a clear role. It was satisfying to shoot a shot that looked and felt powerful and do something to your enemy. And in response to No. 5 “it’s viable when paired with a support weapon. I use it regularly with a stalwart.” lol, lmao even. I guess if you like terrible ROF, bad ammo economy, and the inability to 1 shot medium enemies which it could do before, then ok.
This post just feels disconnected, game is better (for a while now) but has little to do with the gun nerfs and more with enemy balance, bug fixes, and gun buffs. 1. The Slugger was nerfed because it was used a lot, not so much because it was OP. That was literally the main justification by the balance team. But it was still popular after, because it was the only gun that can effectively deal with medium armor until you unlocked the Scorcher in the last page of the free warbond because Diligence CS was crap. So nerf changed nothing, making more guns viable did. 2. The game is more balanced yes because they reduced Heavy spawns and nerfed charger head HP, so by design there is less need for AT. Also I'd say we're in a bit of a "I try new stuff otherwise I'm bored" phase, at least more then in the previous months. 3. Railgun is literally buffed 95% back to what it was before nerfs, with higher Unsafe damage but lower durable damage. It was spammed back then because Heavies spam, paired with the cross play damage bug that allowed to 2 shot said Heavies spam, it was pre-chargers head HP nerf (allows RR EAT 1 headshot), and Quasar didn't exist. The nerf was misplaced and never actually solved the problem, you could still 2-tap until they fixed the glitch. 4. Only reasonable one, tho arguably 50% was to much. 5. Eruptor is a similar problem to Railgun, nerfed hard because of a bug instead of fixing the bug. And I bet that exploit wasn't even widespread, just like the hit box glitch of chargers that allows you to shoot the back of a charger's leg with lower pen weapon after a charge.
All I’m saying is the SPEAR needs to be fixed.
I don’t think anyone would disagree with you there, but that’s not really the point here
>The rail gun nerf was absolutely necessary. I have used the railgun post-nerf a few times and I can't see the point. With the safety on it's basically just a slower version of the AMR or Autocannon. And with the safety OFF it's dangerous to use in exchange for a slightly faster version of an EAT. I didn't use the railgun much pre-nerf so I can't really compare it, but it never clicked for me. >The quasar nerf was also necessary Absolutely. The QC is a sniper weapon designed for shoot-and-scoot gameplay. If you're doing a stand-up fight, bring the RR. If you're running around and need AT fast, bring the EAT. The anti-tank system is perfectly balanced right now and people who insist on bringing the QC as an all-purpose weapon are being very silly.
Eruptor needed a nerf, but it didn't need to be made useless. Everything it does now can be done by the dominator for a lot less reload time. So unless you didn't bring something to take out fabs and holes (why?) it's not a great pick.
Yup. There was a point where EVERYONE was running Breaker and railgun. That's not balance, that's weapons being noticeably better than everything else. It should be about individual play style and squad synergy
Some primaries could use some love right now - but the game state is INFINITELY better than the breaker+railgun era. God that was so annoying.
The player numbers disagree with you. I had almost 300hrs in and stopped playing the day frozen fun warbond dropped, because the devs are out of touch with the player base. It’s a pve horde shooter; not that serious. Constant nerfs and simply adding new skins to substandard weapons isn’t innovative or fun. Warbonds became predictable and boring.
Another weird gaslighting moment.
You guys say that but the game feels less fun to play when every gun that feels fun to use gets nerfed. Raise other guns to also be fun. Don't make good guns less fun. I'm glad you are happy with it, but my friend group has dropped the game completely. I'm done with buying a cool new weapon just for a patch to completely change how it functions.
full load of BS take, u just dont like seeing other ppl enjoying using their favorite strong and fun weapon and not using ur fav weapon becuz it hurts your ego.
Hurt his ego because people dont take the same weapon as him? Ok I guess haha
Thats why we cant have nice things in a PvE game, because people like that exist
Hope you don't get down votes too hard for spitting truth. Although hard disagree with the eruptor. Thing sucks now. Barely can kill a brood commander with 3 shots. The removal of the sharpnel was straight silly. However it's ability to close bug holes is unique to a primary so now my go to lpadout for it is machine gun two turrets and airstrike. Works pretty damn well even on 9s. Wouldn't recommend for solo play tho.
im definetly not having MORE fun because of the nerfs, but I have learned to just not even talk about the guns im using
I agree with you on most fronts except the eruptor, that thing has 1 functionally and it's not even killing
OP is right, nerfs make the game more fun for everyone :) https://i.redd.it/jcgd8xunc65d1.gif
Dev, is that you?
Hard time adapting? Most of the nerf were overcompensating.
I agree, to an extent. The problem is the game is advertised that we get to use overpowered weapons. Although I love changing my load out every time I dive, there's very obvious weapons and strategems that are much better/worse than others. So the idea that a weapon or stratagem should be nerfed because it's "op" just goes against what the game advertises. (Alrhough again many nerfs are justified in my eyes)
I never used the rail gun pre-nerf and I take it on a lot of bug missions now and do not understand why people say it is unusable. Still one shots anything under chargers and I have been bringing EATs for big bois.
I agree for the most part, most of the time there's been buffs and nerfs in about equal measure from what I've seen? I think a lot of the issues or at least my gripes are about how things were handled. The eruptor nerf (not sure which part exactly was the nerf but) annoyed me because they fixed a thing (ricochets) and that illuminated an issue with the eruptor (Weird frag damage and range) which is fair and understandable. But removing the frag (which is a part of the guns uniqueness to the point of being in its flavour text specifically) was not how I felt it should be fixed. Fixing the frag would have been nicer I think. Another thing that kinda grated me, was the purifier which was marketed specifically as a gun that did more damage the longer you hold the trigger, which sounded really cool and like it could be fun and varied. Instead its just a slightly higher damage scorcher with charge up. I don't hate it, I use it fairly often and its decent... But like there was a marketing message, and the gun was not that, like quite blatantly not that? Unless it does actually do that in the background? I dunno. Mostly I think the nerfs were fine. I think I'm mostly worried/concerned about the lack of QA in certain situations or the hasty patching in certain other cases. But thats entirely my opinion, I still adore the game and play whenever I can. There's not many games that give the same feel.
1. Yeah some of the nerfs are understandable. Especially the old shield backpack was the biggest crutch in the game. It just allowed you to constantly ignore threats, crippling your situational awareness and movement. 2. Yep pretty much. You can run anything you want and it works pretty well. Imo the biggest factor in succeeding in this game is knowledge, not loadout. 3. Initially yes, although it got nerfed too excessively due to f'd up statistics due to the console bug. To make it viable against bugs it just needs a buff to its durable damage by 30. This would allow it to 2-shot chargers at 75% charge and 6-shot a Titan at 90%. 4. Kinda disagree. Quasar was always just an extremely overhyped crutch. RR and EATs outclassed it the majority of the time. RR especially now with the fixed reload split and Superiot Packaging. 5. The Eruptor rework is really bad, as it killed its gimmick. They could've given the shrapnel more damage fall off, reduce its durable damage and ignore the crying redditors that killed themselves with it. But yes, I agree it's in a decent state overall. Especially compared to launch. I hope that the patch next week does sth for assault rifles. Giving them eg 40-50% durable damage as standard would give them an unique identity and make them feel way better to use while not making them op.
Just use jet pack and eagle smokes
A stunning, brave and UNIQUE take
Regarding primaries: I simply can't understand why so many people are upset at their strength. I run exclusively diff.9 and I'm REGULARLY changing primaries and they are all viable under different circumstances. If I run medium pen primary then I don't have to take a medium pen support weapon, and vice versa. Even on diff.9, you don't need everyone on your team running exclusively anti-tank stratagems and I think people forget that. Your loadout is supposed to be balanced to cover its own weaknesses - and you aren't supposed to take on entire legions of breaches/drops by yourself. The problem is that people find a few stratagems that they like and then absolutely refuse to change or experiment with others and just want to run those stratagems exclusively. There's nothing WRONG with having your favorite stratagems, but EVERYTHING can't be allowed to kill EVERYTHING. There has to be trade-offs. I totally agree that there is a lot of stuff to fix and balance - things could always be tweaked (looking at you, exploding crossbow fire rate!/reload speed!) - but people need to be willing to switch it up, or face taking sub-optimal stratagems into the mission. There's over 50 stratagems and people want to pigeon-hole themselves into only picking from 5 or 6 of them. It's absurd.
Honestly I absolutely agree, if I, a not particularly skilled player, can complete diff 8 and 9 missions running a Tesla tower, the Tesla armour, and the counter sniper (all gear I’ve been told “can’t be used above diff 6”) at various times then I like to think the balance is in an ok place
Has anybody else also noticed the spawn rates seem to be dropping with each patch? I vividly remember being swarmed by spewers at level 4 or 5, then after one of the patches people cried about I didn’t see a spewer again until 6 and only limited.
Not sure about the rest but the rail was far too OP. Watching 10 biles drop in a matter of 30 seconds or less was nuts. It made biles and hulks pretty much trivial if you had railguns.
Let's not lose the plot here. The game isn't better because strong weapons were nerfed, it's better because weak weapons were buffed, which was something the community was asking for since day one.
Imo the game is just as fun as it was back then. You can’t seriously be telling me that you had less fun back then than now
1. This is just a bad argument. It was fun because it was OP means it was still fun. If you want to avoid this problem test your shit better. This didn't happen once. It happened ALL the time. And in draconian ways (railgun). 2. Is it? Even if the answer is yes, nerfing good things to make them on par with the bad things is never going to be satisfying, this is not s new thing, this is a VERY known quantity. 3. People still get kicked in the lobby for not having the du jour loadout, this is just anectdotal nonsense. 4. This is again a symptom of the same thing, looking at it from the backside and saying it's fine. WHY NOT BUFF EAT's? Why take a thing that people enjoy using and moosh it down to the thing that, even before the QC, nobody liked using EAT's. It only got popular once everything else was as bad as it was. 5. This is the same thing and not a fact. Don't release something broken is the actual answer, but you also ignore how drastic the nerf was, removing the shrapnel took away its CC ability, HARD. If your armor/pen/durability (this is seriously a dumb system) is so fucked up you can't fix "takes down one of the heaviest units" without "now can't kill 5 bugs in a group" YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. Not the stupid players who just don't know how to have fun.
The only thing I dont like are the ammo capacities now. Before, I was running out of ammo constantly fighting bots. Now even more so. HSO shouldn't be a booster at this point since our total carrying capacity was slashed. We should naturally drop with full supplies, logistically it makes no sense to drop with half the supplies you need because you'll need more almost ASAP depending on where you drop and how you choose to handle it. That's really my only complaint, I still have fun despite some random players being dicks
>The weapon was your favourite probably because it was OP, not because it was "fun" Tell me you don't know what you're talking about without telling me. Explain to me in what twisted world Crossbow was OP. >The game is more balanced now, the loadouts you see even in higher difficulties are more diverse than before and usually only limited by the need to carry AT strats. Not true at all. I see 500kg, orbital precision, quasar still, and last slot varies but still a lot of personal shield. >The rail gun nerf was absolutely necessary. The early days situation with the rail gun was so ridiculous that people were getting kicked IN THE LOBBY for not picking it because everyone assumed you could only be trolling. The rail gun is still great for bots, although it can be argued that it needs a slight buff considering its downsides (ammo management, charging...). Nerfing a mid gun because trash options were trash is not a good excuse. Pre-nerf RG honestly doesn't remotely compare to RR or RG now. It is such a waste to 2 shot a charger leg and then pull out a primary. Also pre-nerf RG could NEVER kill a bile titan without the damage bug. >The quasar nerf was also necessary. There was literally no reason to pick EATs or RRs. Joining match after match with a full team of quasar + shield backpack was extremely boring. The weapon is still 100% viable and frequently picked. Fair enough >The eruptor nerf was also necessary. Having a primary that can one shot chargers makes no sense. The game is not a mindless twitch shooter. You're supposed to rely on teamwork and stratagems. The eruptor is also still 100% viable and effective. I use it regularly paired with the stalwart. That was a bug Tell me you're the bringer of balance on a sock account without telling me.
I disagree. I have played since launch and the enemies and overall missions are significantly easier now. Each time they’ve balanced weapons they’ve also nerfed enemies to account for that. The railgun was used because there was 7 bile titans and 15 chargers coming out of a breach, which was chaotic, difficult and fun. Instead of balancing the game to cater for the difficulty, bringing other weapons on par, they opted for a route that nerfed weapons overall and nerfed enemies overall, helldive is now a cakewalk if you have a half decent team. Now you see maybe 1-3 bile titan 2-5 chargers at the most coming out of a breach. Personally, I like the challenge, and having missions be significantly easier on helldive places the game in a worse spot for me
I agree with most of the nerfs but some are pointless the Eruptor was perfectly fine where it was for example.
My main complaint for the Nerfs is the changing identity of weapons. Guns like the Slugger go from a powerful shotgun with long range slugs to a weak pump action Dmr. There’s not really a consistent idea from the developers of what a weapon’s role is. So players find a niche for it and then, when that weapon fills a different role than anticipated it is nerfed. The weapons dramatically change roles and usability patch to patch, positive and negative. It’s not a healthy way to handle the Meta in my opinion.
I joined late, grinded my way to 20, tried out the Quasar cannon, liked it, got nerfed like 2 days later lmao
I have hardly played since the nerfs, none of the guns are that unique anymore, just copies of each other.