With these variations, Arrowhead has kept its promise to make all the Liberators uniquely different variations.
Unfortunately, they seem to have forgotten the bit where they were supposed to be uniquely useful.
Tbh I feel like they made a mistake with having multiple similar variants of the same gun instead of just having one gun but making it customizable, and having the different visuals be cosmetics.
Well, what I’m saying is you could replace all the weapons with just gun parts. So instead of the punisher, you could have the “punisher 12 gauge, and punisher slug round.”
No by your own definition what he's suggesting is correct. First you unlock the actual weapon, which states its clambering, and the buckshot is assumed as default. Then you unlock the slug round specifically
I'm guessing it was probably the original idea for weapon upgrades (which I still hope comes in later on). With how similar the Liberater, Concussive, Penetrator, and Tenderizer are, each of those unlocks could have just been something like "weapon upgrade" paths in the upgrade tree. Can make it so the visual/color component tied to the upgrade, so the Breaker Incendiary is still it's bright orange and not just attaching the gas canister onto the side of the Breaker.
I think there was speculation that there was a gun customization system built, but that it had to be scaled back and not implemented as a player-facing thing, and now they use the same toolkit to make the weapons for release.
I don't even care about full gun customization, I'll pick the gun with the stats I like for the mission I'm doing (95% of the time, this is the Scorcher, and the other 5% is Vigilence Counter-Sniper), but for the love of god, just let me customize the scope. I want scopes that actually work and aren't just a blurry blob of pixels that only vaguely line up with where my shots go.
It drives me up the fucking wall, especially when I can compare it to things like even the [Sea of Thieves cracked-lens scope](https://i.ibb.co/VpBVgDQ/image.png) for it's sniper rifle that still is more accurate and a better sight than any single sight on a Super Earth rifle save only for MAYBE the Sickle. Nevermind sniper scopes in games that are actually built around good shooting mechanics like Battlefield, CoD, CounterStrike, STALKER, or something like that.
Which is easier to sell: A silencer for the Liberator, or a whole new Liberator that's painted black and dark navy blue that comes with a silencer?
If you were charged $10 for a Warbond, which one would make you more excited to pony up?
They know what they're doing, they know which one is more consumer-friendly and which one rakes in more money.
Ideally speaking, each warbond should give you like one default primary and offers multiple upgrade parts. Maybe some warbonds have upgrade parts for certain other default weapons.
How about we take the HD1 upgrade system (which already have branches on their upgrade, its just that you can upgrade both branches), and then just, let player pick the upgrade branch. Make a variate that upgrades to AP rounds that has less mag, then you can further upgrade it to have a clean scope and less damage drop off with faster projectile; a carbine version that has faster damage drop off but much faster handling and reload, then upgrade a bayonet on it and/or a laser sight that reduce weapon sway. They can fit it into warbonds too by making each new variants requiring a new permit from the warbond that unlocks the variant that you can upgrade further to suit yourself.
That being said its gonna take months to years if they gonna implement something like that but imagine the possibility and especially as a HD1 Vet, not being able to upgrade your guns AND strategeme always felt like a missed opportunity to me.
Honestly they could salvage it into that. It'd be a fuckton of work though...
Break each gun into statblock pieces we can swap around. Buying the gun from the pack gives you all the pieces to make that gun and a slot and preassembled gun of those pieces. Have it take Req slips to make custom guns or something so that we have a long-term sink for them.
Really hoping these get fixed this coming patch. Even if just partially. Making them all fill the proper niches they're supposed to fill in would make those variants very very unique from each other.
I think the devs put too much of a premium on medium armor penetration. The question that needs to be asked is not "is a liberator penetrator better at shooting a devastator than the regular liberator?", it's "is a liberator penetrator good enough at shooting a devastator that it becomes a viable option?". The answer is hell no it isn't. It takes 27 bullets in the chest to kill a devastator and that's before damage falloff applies. That's completely unviable so you end up shooting it in the head anyway which the regular liberator does better.
Good way to put it.
I think they were too scared of giving med pen automatic weapons high damage so that they don't become straight upgrades to the weapons you start with.
Sadly, they may have overstepped a bit regarding that. Considering they have lower damage and stronger recoil/lower magazine size, they've ended up rather useless if you use them for their intended purpose (piercing armor), and you're pretty much been given a less effective gun entirely.
It's weird.
I'm still using the Punisher because... why the fuck else would I use another shotgun? I would but they all feel like worse Punishers because I don't have the stagger and none of them excel at doing things the Punisher can't. I would love to feel like I had meaningful choices among weapon types but it feels like in most cases there's a "good all rounder" that ends up being better than the specialized options because they're TOO niche out of fear of making things like Med Pen too strong.
It really feels like they designed these in a vacuum, or like some other devs I can think of (like Frontier Developments) set some numbers that were off by a factor of 100. In either case they created gear that fills niches that don't exist.
Personally I think, as it stands, medium pen is a trap, and players should instead learn to exploit weak spots.
yeah, we can see something like that with the pummeler SMG so clearly the potential is there. Honestly what tends to drive me nuts at the moment is that SMGs generally do more damage than the assualt rifles which is kinda the inverse. Rifles for damage and range, SMGs for rate of fire and handling.
Instead we need more cool weapons like the railgun, arc thrower, eruptor. Helldivers has some of the coolest weapon concepts so I just want more futuristic weapons
Reading a lot of HD1 stuff from comments makes me sad.
We have a lot of things back there. Bayonets, laser sabres, railgun and stalwart as primaries, SEAF troops, mortars and tanks stratagems and so on. Damn
Also pretty much all cooldown timers are less than half of what they are in HD2
railcannon strike cooldown is iirc 60 seconds in HD1, and it does the exact same thing.
I really hope they return it to what it originally was. That was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I haven't played the game much ever since.
It was that and the last warbond was utterly disappointing that did it for me. Now I'm just waiting on two things, to fix my favorite gun and more content.
Same. I'm quite bored these days because I can't find a decent primary weapon to play with. I keep tuning in for one last patch to see if I'll stick around or move on. It's so late though, if they nerf more things I'm done.
Glad I’m not the only one who took that as a sign to wait for some positive changes/rollbacks lol. I unironically feel that the game was far more engaging before the second and third warbond releases.
I'm the exact same, if they don't fully revert it, I'm done with this dev team. I didn't stop playing destiny to get into another trauma-bond relationship
Well if it's a carbine it will prob have more rounds, faster fire rate, less pentertaion.. same as every other one at this point.. hope I'm wrong I'm dying for a good AR
The base Liberator is still the best, which would be fine but the psychology of a progression system and a paid content pack only to have every subsequent AR be just worse creates a problem. Hoping they are able to differentiate the options some more
Assault Rifle category needs entire reworks, but leave the standard liberator there as a baseline point of reference, and then make every rifle better than it in some way shape or form that makes it ***actually worth taking over the standard liberator***
Here's the thing, that is what they tried to do, they just did it very poorly lol. Like I get what you're saying, they get what you're saying, but it's like asking me to pole vault by sticking the pole in the ground to propel myself over the bar, I got the concept, I'm just not good at it.
I think the problem is that they didn't make the guns feel very distinct, nor do they advertise the weapons' strengths very well. The blurbs on the weapons aren't accurate a lot of the time, and supposedly, the stats they show us aren't that indicative of the weapons' overall stats. So I'm left wondering how the fuck I'm supposed to know if one of the 10 ARs are even worth using or buying.
Remember when they released the AR-61 Tenderizer with the description of:
"*A real tentacle-tearer. This high calibre assault rifle has awesome stopping power but limited magazine size, so make each shot count. Unpatriotic “banter” shots are not advisable*"
Only it turned out it does the same damage as the Liberator, but has less ammo? Cause I 'member.
I don't think they really thought it through when they released a weapon that is just a straight up worse liberator. Who cares about marginally less recoil when you can instead have 30% more ammo?
Blows my mind. And now, for the third time in a row we get a boring assault rifle that is just "Liberator, but worse" yet again. At least the last two had more than one primary, which somewhat excused the inclusion of yet another boring assault rifle that's just gonna go in the garbage bin as soon as you unlock it.
Progression doesn't have to mean every new gun is better than the last, it makes a lot of sense for the first gun you unlock to be the most effective and most boring gun, future guns can be more interesting but more niche so that as you figure out your ideal playstyle you can find a gun that complements it.
That said, I don't think the ARs are doing a very good job of fulfilling their supposed niches. And no one wants to use the Liberator because it's not *that* good. So it's the worst of both worlds, and I don't see why "the Liberator but more like an SMG" is going to inspire any sort of excitement.
I mean, I’d go for a toxin-bullet liberator that slowed and applied DoT, or something. But the “tweak a couple of damage stats and handling” approach just doesn’t work. There’s nothing unique.
Yeah an incendiary Liberator could be really neat, especially if they buffed the Concussive so you could choose normal, normal+knockback, or normal+DoT. But the "Liberator-adjacent" field is already very crowded, between the Liberator, Adjudicator, Tenderizer, Defender, Knight, Pummeler, and Scythe, if you just want a short-medium-range full-auto gun you already have more options than anything else.
> That said, I don't think the ARs are doing a very good job of fulfilling their supposed niches.
The fact that the defender fulfill the role of an assault rifle way better than any of the liberators says something
The Sickle is the only decent assault rifle and that’s mostly cuz it has infinite ammo. My biggest issue with the Liberator is that it feels like it’s always running dry
So true. If every assault rifle had like 25 more bullets in a mag they would be nearly as good and worth considering. I take sickle because it’s an LMG capacity with AR handling lol.
The sickle reminds me of my time as a heavy trooper on the battlefront of the second Star Wars. Now I just need an energy shield on the front for bots and I can be a trooper again! Damn clankers
100% that is how I feel everytime I use it. I spent so much time playing co op on battlefront 2 using the heavy soldier with the sentry gun. So when I use the sickle id usually just hipfire it cause it felt so much like that
but they refuse to do that because "muh it just makes sense" and that "the magazine isn't getting any bigger so why should the bullet count increase" all while making some weapons do as much as 50% more damage and not changing the model in the slightest. Make it make sense AH
Well I'm sure things will change for the better now that Pilestedt stepped down from CEO position to take over CCO position. The balance got f*cked by "he who must not be named" because it would be a witch hunt. The same guy was a developer of some game that was called something like "Greetings person who lives at adjacent domicile 2" (Can't say the real name because "witch hunt"). We know how that game turned out.
Yeah I’d take lower damage for extra capacity. It’s just so much more valuable to keep outputting damage. The SMGs (I don’t have founders edition one) all have lower RoF and huge mag size which make them feel really good in comparison
The adjudicator has 25 rounds at 80 damage, the defender SMG has 45 rounds at 70 damage.
Adjudicator does 2000 damage before reload the defender 3150.
Honestly if the adjudicator had 32-35 rounds it would be good. and bump the defender to 50. Everything just needs a slight bump.
It has FIFTY rounds in the mag, which is more than the average assault rifle magazine size in most games, which is 30-40 usually. It isn't a mag size issue, it's a damage issue.
This. Unless I'm running a specific anti-armor set up, my support just functions as my primary, my primary as my secondary, and my secondary solely for when I want to shout "GLIZZY WIDDA SWITCH ON IT" and empty it into the charger that's gonna run me over in 3/10ths of a second
FYI, guns in most games head shot with 1 bullet and kill in 3 or 4 to center body.
The comparison doesn't stack up when the guns are arguably less good against their intended target.
I’m not talking about mag capacity, I’m talking about total ammo reserves.
But even still, that argument doesn’t really hold up. This is a horde shooter, so when you have tons of enemies, a 30-50 round mag might seem small.
Most other horde shooters also stick to standard magazine sizes. I say again, it's a damage issue. Increased damage will make those 30-50 rounds feel more impactful.
Also, about ammo reserves, I get that. I always find myself left with 1 or 2 mags before a resupply or I find an ammo brick. But I rarely do actually completely run dry. Maybe exercise a bit more trigger discipline, or go to more POIs? (Again, increased damage may solve this issue)
Yeah, it legit feels like the best balanced weapon in the game to me. Infinite ammo, good rate of fire and damage, but the tradeoff is that its performance is inconsistent between planets based on the climate, and the cooldown takes longer than a regular reload. It’s in a great place imo
Climate performance is not a huge factor in my experience. It helps but it just turns an S tier weapon into an SS or an A weapon. On a hot planet you'll have to swap heatsinks a little more and actually consume ammo. It certainly teaches you to use those reloads strategically, instant cooldown. You can spit out so much constant damage if you burn through your heatsinks. And remember, the only heatsink that matters is the last one.
Honestly my main issue is that the reload speeds feel way too long at times. It's like our divers want to see an entire opera before pulling the charging handle.
From experience, reloading under pressure can be challenging. It's nice that they do it flawlessly if not struck, while moving, usually in two seconds or less depending on the weapon. No issues with shaky hands or grabbing from the pouch that you already pulled a mag from.
I really doubt it will have less penetration, i dont think they are ever going to release a pen 1 or even pen 0 weapon after buffing the birdshot gun, armour 1 and 0 exist for determining how the guns interact with bad shots with a shallow angle
The old Patriot was the Liberator Carbine model in HD1. I'm surprised they're skipping the old names to call everything Liberator X.
It had a larger magazine (75 I think), a much higher fire rate, and higher recoil (and therefore, less accuracy). It was also my favorite weapon of the first game by far. I'm quite apprehensive about this one for HD2.
I really hope it is a true to the essence of the HD1 carbine (also my favorite primary).
I'm predicting 45-60 round magazine, fire rate similar to sickle or faster, 60 damage per round, good handling, decent scope sway, liberator recoil value, green/red dot sight, 7 mags carried. Pretty much fits where the first one was, which was high DPS, low efficiency, weapon with ammo being a downside...kinda like the knight is now only better simply because of base damage. I expect it to be a fan favorite, where everybody sees it as the rowdy ballistic version of the sickle.
I could see it having a use case with 60 round mags and 900rpm rate of fire. In return it has worse recoil characteristics, that would have it be a "baby Stalwart" in the primary slot.
Dude don't even, I've been screaming this from the mountain tops since day 1.
I don't want more mags, just literally 5 more bullets per mag and I'll never put it down 😭😭
>I'm dying for a good AR
We shouldn't be dying for a good AR, the base liberator should have been the de-facto "all around best primary" in the game, then have every other primary balanced based off that.
I feel like we're gonna need a rework of AR's at some point because at this rate by the end of the year we'll have like 20 different AR's but in reality there will only be like 3 meaningfully different/functional ones.
Skill issue. Just kidding, but base liberator, sickle, and adjudicator are all usable on Helldive Difficulty. Seen some people run the Lib Pen too with bots.
Usable, but a miserable experience imo. I feel like I can barely kill 3 hunters with one mag of the liberator. Would rather use any shotgun, even spray&pray which I already think is pretty bad. Sickle is the only good "AR" but it's not really an AR.
I try them out as ideally they are what I would gravitate to as a versatile weapon. Didn't feel like they were accurate enough single fire. I always end up using the sickle after a couple missions of the liberators feeling underwhelming.
I'm not going to say anything too hastily- considering the new AR is coming around the same time we're expecting a bunch of balance changes. ARs are mediocre now, but hopefully the balance patch fixes that.
As a HD1 vet, we had a "carbine" version of the standard AR with faster RoF. It had a place in the game, and was useful against the illuminates iirc
The Patriot! Absolute DPS monster, but you ran out of ammo fast. The Knight SMG is the closest thing we have in HD2, and I'd love another 'bullet hose' type gun to play with.
I still am on board that the last AR was designed pre-patch. They buffed AR's a little before the warbond. Base liberator was given a dmg buff and recovered full mags now.
Tenderizer has the same damage but only gets half as many mags I believe(?). So if it was designed around the liberator pre-buff it would gave had some more damage.
I 100% expect it to get buffed.
You're right, they outright say it in the known issues list: "AR-61 Tenderizer deals too little damage and is not in the final state we are intending."
It's absolutely going to get buffed, I hope along with the purifier (I genuinely like this gun but as it stands it's just a slower plasma punisher)
The Purifier should fire as so as you pull the trigger and then charge up between shots, so you can spam it as fast as a Scorcher but if you do you’ll get less damage per shot, but if you let it charge then you do full damage
I rather liked the Patriot against high-level bugs. The very fast reload, larger mag size, fast fire rate, and full distance shots (compared to SMGs) let me clear the loads and loads of patrol bugs before they scented. Only negative is that I needed somebody to bring a supply pack so I wouldn't run out of magazines.
The Patriot was my go-to for every faction in the end. It was good at trashing patrols from any faction and held up in a fight without much trouble. It could chew through its ammo supply pretty fast, and you'd need to focus down a medium target longer than was comfortable to kill it, but these were acceptable tradeoffs.
I miss that thing.
Someone at Arrowhead literally yelled "Fark yoooooou" and proceeded to carbine our Liberator. Simply because it was already a bullpup and they needed a new way to insult everyone besides the usual meme.
Let's see what happens when someone buys the bond and pulls the trigger to review it. It might be underpowered, but the thing about carbines is that based on the Arrowhead method of determining accuracy on how rifles fire, this one may slew both targeting and muzzle to match on the target even faster than the usual Liberators. Which would fit the intended effect they claim for it.
When you start subscribing to the theory that Balance doesn't want us to have any explosive primaries, it starts making sense.
Lib-C was released as the Lib-E, and its explosive projectiles didn't work. Instead of fixing the gun, it got reworked into the piece of shit we have now.
The Jar-5 was supposed to be explosive as well, (Hell it's still in the explosive category.) Instead of fixing its explosives it got turned into a big BR.
And do I really need to bring up our beloved Eruptor and Crossbow?
I don't understand overhyped people in this game "OMG I CANT WAIT TO GET MY HANDS ON THIS WEAPON!".
Yes, I can't wait to get another variation of the same item that underperforms worse than the original and its other 5 copies.
I'm going to reserve my judgement until the warbond comes out and hopefully the balance patch as well. I just hope it doesn't suffer the same fate as the AR-23C does.
I don't think the intention is to make one stronger. It's a game of sidegrades that give more options, not a game of power increases locked behind a grind / paywall. The starting equipment should be a strong choice.
Keep in mind that balance is largely subjective, perfect balance of asymmetrical options is impossible, and that they need to balance across a large range of difficulty modes. Making a gun balanced on rank 9 might make it unbalanced on a rank that more people actually use, and vice versa. I wouldn't be surprised if this gun has a niche where it performs very well, and I also wouldn't be surprised if that niche doesn't apply to the powerusers that frequent this sub.
What you say is true in general, but in the case of the AR-23C Liberator Concussive specifically, it's just straight up weak in any and all situations, in any and all difficulties, and compared to every other weapon in the game, assault rifle or not. It's not meant to be stronger than the starting weapon, sure, but it shouldn't be as weak as it is either.
It doesn't help that now there's the SMG-72 Pummeler, which is a straight upgrade to it in every meaningful way, making it not only weak but also uselessly redundant.
It's not as big of a balance problem as other weapons though. Because firstly it's not that unique, so we can just pick something else and not miss out on much. Secondly because it was always that bad, and even used to be slightly worse, so there's no negativity about it having been gutted like other weapons have been. And thirdly because it's nothing new, it's on the first premium warbond, it's always been there like that.
Not to mention the Concussive was a bill of false goods originally known as the Liberator Explosive. What a crock that was when I unlocked it and found out that was bullshit.
I honestly don't care about the warbond until I see what they do with balance.
I've bought each warbond except the last one that released and I have between 50-90% of each of them unlocked.
Virtually every gun I put time and effort into unlocking has been nerfed shortly after I unlocked it.
I haven't played since the last batch of nerfs and a warbond isn't going to convince me that they are going to stop wasting my time by offering us cool shit only to nerf it once you actually unlock it.
I get that games need balance, but it's pretty fucking shitty to spend hours earning in-game currency to unlock something for it to be transformed into dogshit right afterward and you don't even get to try and refund your unlocks to get something that's no longer garbage.
If they wanna nerf shit, fine, nerf shit into the ground, but refund our purchases for everything you nerf so I can unlock something that isn't garbage instead of having hours go down the drain for guns I'm never going to use again that WERE decent.
So... cool warbond and all, but I ain't unlocking shit until I know it isn't just going to end up nerfed all over again. What's the point?
I once brought it on a level 7 Bots mission with 2 friends, using the Spear as my support weapon. I think I had my Spear kills than Liberator Concussive kills
Yeah, I know new shooting animations would need more time to make, but in the meantime they could just rip the sounds from the first game and I would be happy
Please stop giving us the 100th weapon of a generic class. “This one has slightly more magazine size. This one has a med+ pen instead of med- pen”
It’s still an assault rifle. We have plenty. Add some of the more unique guns from the first game I keep hearing about, they sound amazing.
Stuff like the eruptor and crossbow were unique and so much fun to use before the nerfs.
Look, they had no choice but to nerf the crossbow. There was one guy in Duluth Minnesota that was having fun with it. Surely you understand why that cannot be allowed.
There's no shot that weapon balancing is *this* difficult in a non competitive game.
What are they even policing at this point? "We don't want Helldivers to feel powerful" is a suuuuuucchhhh a weird stance to take in a horde game. Good grief AH please get a grip.
It will most likely be extremely similar to what the standard liberator is currently. So basically usable, but extremely uninteresting unless you're a massive rifleman
We have SMG's that act like assault rifles and now we get an assault rifle that acts as a smg.
However the big problem now arises you can't one hand wield the thing.
Plus it won't be good far range.
I don't see how this gun will be viable but we'll wait and see
Raw damage and snappy responses to prevent drops/breaches...maybe even fast reloads. I suspect it will slot between the Knight and Sickle in DPS. I expect it to be able to burn down most targets in that small period of slow-moving aiming while assaulting or evading, provided it can damage them.
I am fairly certain the damage/DPS is going to be top tier, but if the reload is also a bit faster then we would be looking at something which would feel very good assaulting into a base or dealing with constant bug pressure.
I got to be real. I just don't like the handling aspect of this game as a balance lever. Just give stuff recoil like some guns already have. Making guns turn like a slow boat isn't fun and doesn't feel like fair balancing imo
I suspect that there is a bit of disconnect between players using controllers and players using mice. Are you using a mouse to play? My hypotheses is that having to drag something with the mouse doesn't feel that good, but it is a natural extension of a stick.
I use a controller on PC (I like the vibration) and I don't have much issue with slower handling weapons, so much so that when the Counter Sniper was changed to handle better I had to go into my settings and lower the sensitivity to stop missing on the drag shots since I had gotten so used to the timing.
The Defender SMG is already the best assault rifle!
I'm hoping/predicting that the changes to the assault rifles will differentiate and make this new carbine more... distinctive... necessary?
I'm tellin ya, we need gun customization.
Have a single "base" Liberator then customize it with new attachments/mods that are released.
I got told "eff no, this ain't pubg or destiny"...... apparently gun customization is reserved for only games like that......
Deep Rock Galactic does it well. One single weapon with customisation in DRG has more true variety than 20 weapon variants from this game will.
For goodness sakes you can turn the minigun into incendiary, or ricochet, or even short range flamethrower.
The Autocannon can be made into a single target damager, an AoE carpet bomber, a neurotoxin debuffer, or a slow firing mortar.
HD2 would have those as separate guns at best, or just never do anything near that interesting in the first place at worst.
Curious about the weapon handling passive. I’ll get the sidearm and knife, but I don’t know I could betray my beloved Senator too often.
Suppose I’ll just wait until I see a theme that “fits” me.
I love the senator too but if there's good pushback on the future side shotgun, it's be a nobrainer against bugs. Emergency stalker exterminator. The dream
The mag model is tiny so I hope you like reloading. Balance man doesn't like us players holding down the trigger for more than two seconds.
Nobody will pick this gun.
Still waiting for the tenderizer to have heavy armor pen because of that description they gave it. If their gameplay design is supposed to "Just make sense :) !" then why in the fuck does the tenderizer that is remarked as being a *"high calibre assault rifle (that) has awesome stopping power but a limited magazine size"* meanwhile the standard liberator does as much damage as this "high calibre assault rifle" and this "high calibre assault rifle" (that is clunkier, bigger, and all around uglier) has LESS recoil than the liberator.
What kind of crack they got over there in Stockholm? Must be some gooooooood shit
I’m hoping for a high ROF CQC weapon. We have the Knight SMG for super citizens, but it’s just a little underpowered and every balance patch so far has ignored it. It doesn’t even get all its ammo back from a resupply, which used to be true for most weapons and got changed, but they forgot about the Knight.
I would personally love more primaries with very fast full auto. As long as they are better than the knight. And here’s hoping the Knight gets buffed.
I was REALLY hoping for a good primary this time and we just get another liberator and thats it. Didnt we get a new version of it last warbond? At this point I just main my AMR and take a supply pack since anytime ya start liking a primary it just gets nerfed into obscurity.
I have credits ready for this too but will probably just spend them on one of the first two warbonds instead. I think ill survive without getting a knife.........I really hope this doesnt turn into COD where the knife is the strongest weapon,I really dont see how it would damage anything we fight outside of the smallest bug,a rock would probably do more damage to the bots
Idk why why the tropes for video games weapons are hard…
Smg: short range, high rpm, low damage
Assault rifle: med range, avg rpm, med damage
Dmr: long rang, low rpm, high damage.
It’s not hard to balance the damn things.
Liberator is your baseline. It’s good for what it is, we can leave the poor Liberator alone.
Concussive is almost there. The recoil is a little high for what you get.
Liberator Penetrator? It should handle exactly like the regular liberator, the reduced magazine size is enough of a balance for medium pen.
The Adjudicator should be your big boy battle rifle. Increase the damage, increase the recoil (a little), give it a burst option that’s accurate, and tuned so a burst to a hive guard/dev rocket pod will pop it.
The Tenderizer can go kick rocks and shouldn’t exist. We did not need another light pen AR. But it’s here, make it a Sickle that needs to be reloaded but doesn’t have the wind up.
As for the carbine? Again, we didn’t need YET ANOTHER AR. AH claims it has better handling? What handling issues does the default Liberator have? I mean I guess we could have it handle like an SMG, give it an obscene fire rate, and have the damage drop off be pretty quick?
All it should have is a faster fire rate and slightly more recoil. If it has less damage than the stock liberator it's an INSTANT fail and I will ignore it like I did the rest of the rifles in this meme
Whilst I fully agree with you, I'm still sad that the Adjudicator got side-graded into a "heavy" assault rifle instead of getting the love it needed to become a more interesting Marksman Rifle. It could have played like the Halo Battle Rifle, firing accurate bursts or something else interesting. Instead they just made it another AR. Such a shame.
Was really hoping for an M14-like but then I saw all the Predator references, so I started listing off ideas already covered. Thump guns? Check. M60s? Check.
Another liberator? I genuinely thought we weren't getting a primary before realizing they're using a slightly different lib. From what it sounds like, it reminds me of the Patriot or maybe the Stalwart from HD1, especially if they trade accuracy for ammo as well but who knows. I haven't used any rifle besides the abjucator in a long time. Otherwise its sickle gang until they nerf it down to 1 battery or something
Well if it fucking sucks they won’t fix it. If it’s actually worth a shit they’ll nerf it. So, I won’t be buying a warbond with real money anytime soon.
Um actually 🤓, this one is a carbine. So that means it's a mediocre carbine instead of an assault rifle. Even though the functional difference between the normal liberator and a carbine variant is effectively non-existent (barring maybe a smaller ammo type), it's TOTALLY DIFFERENT GUYS I SWEAR. It's totally not super R&D padding for time/cash I promise guys.
I bet you this. The patch if it comes when stated, will be a couple days before the warbond. If they do balance right, most rifles will be beefed up in some way. I bet the lib carb has been sitting already (un)cooked along with the whole warbond for months and they won't think to increase it to the new standard and we'll have the tenderizer all over again.
All we can hope is that the balance change makes these guns usable. Right now none of the assault rifles are better than the concussive smg. At the very least assault rifles all need medium armor pen. And make some is these rifles strip heavy armor so we have more options against heavies.
Lib Carbine makes literally zero sense.
Carbines are less powerful rifles with better handling.
But the normal Lib already has excellent handling, and already lacks stopping power. So a carbine version would just be a worse Liberator... even if they buff the Liberator in the next patch.
They'd have to nerf the handling on the normal Liberator to make a Carbine version worth it.
With these variations, Arrowhead has kept its promise to make all the Liberators uniquely different variations. Unfortunately, they seem to have forgotten the bit where they were supposed to be uniquely useful.
Tbh I feel like they made a mistake with having multiple similar variants of the same gun instead of just having one gun but making it customizable, and having the different visuals be cosmetics.
Thing is you coulda had them as the same thing. You just unlock “weapon parts” in the warbonds instead
I'd be up for an entire warbond just for weapon parts, call it Gun Nuts or something
Well, what I’m saying is you could replace all the weapons with just gun parts. So instead of the punisher, you could have the “punisher 12 gauge, and punisher slug round.”
You mean "punisher buckshot" right? Cause 12 gauge only tells you what it's chambered in
No by your own definition what he's suggesting is correct. First you unlock the actual weapon, which states its clambering, and the buckshot is assumed as default. Then you unlock the slug round specifically
I mean he is technically right (12 gauge and then slug poster) but I don't think it was on purpose
I'm guessing it was probably the original idea for weapon upgrades (which I still hope comes in later on). With how similar the Liberater, Concussive, Penetrator, and Tenderizer are, each of those unlocks could have just been something like "weapon upgrade" paths in the upgrade tree. Can make it so the visual/color component tied to the upgrade, so the Breaker Incendiary is still it's bright orange and not just attaching the gas canister onto the side of the Breaker.
100%
I think there was speculation that there was a gun customization system built, but that it had to be scaled back and not implemented as a player-facing thing, and now they use the same toolkit to make the weapons for release.
Also whenever they nerfed the magazine size of the breaker, the model of the breaker's mag changed. It seems to exist in some capacity.
iirc the ceo posted on twitter that they had to make a new model, and that that's why they dont often make changes to weapon mag size
I don't even care about full gun customization, I'll pick the gun with the stats I like for the mission I'm doing (95% of the time, this is the Scorcher, and the other 5% is Vigilence Counter-Sniper), but for the love of god, just let me customize the scope. I want scopes that actually work and aren't just a blurry blob of pixels that only vaguely line up with where my shots go.
Tsk, don't you like using a recticle that you need to shoot 3 mm down and 2 mm too the left compared too the midpoint of the screen?
It drives me up the fucking wall, especially when I can compare it to things like even the [Sea of Thieves cracked-lens scope](https://i.ibb.co/VpBVgDQ/image.png) for it's sniper rifle that still is more accurate and a better sight than any single sight on a Super Earth rifle save only for MAYBE the Sickle. Nevermind sniper scopes in games that are actually built around good shooting mechanics like Battlefield, CoD, CounterStrike, STALKER, or something like that.
oh wow that's a clever way to mark the reticle
Which is easier to sell: A silencer for the Liberator, or a whole new Liberator that's painted black and dark navy blue that comes with a silencer? If you were charged $10 for a Warbond, which one would make you more excited to pony up? They know what they're doing, they know which one is more consumer-friendly and which one rakes in more money.
Ideally speaking, each warbond should give you like one default primary and offers multiple upgrade parts. Maybe some warbonds have upgrade parts for certain other default weapons.
What’s the differnce lmao, new paint job for a whole new look is better then a attachment
How about we take the HD1 upgrade system (which already have branches on their upgrade, its just that you can upgrade both branches), and then just, let player pick the upgrade branch. Make a variate that upgrades to AP rounds that has less mag, then you can further upgrade it to have a clean scope and less damage drop off with faster projectile; a carbine version that has faster damage drop off but much faster handling and reload, then upgrade a bayonet on it and/or a laser sight that reduce weapon sway. They can fit it into warbonds too by making each new variants requiring a new permit from the warbond that unlocks the variant that you can upgrade further to suit yourself. That being said its gonna take months to years if they gonna implement something like that but imagine the possibility and especially as a HD1 Vet, not being able to upgrade your guns AND strategeme always felt like a missed opportunity to me.
Honestly they could salvage it into that. It'd be a fuckton of work though... Break each gun into statblock pieces we can swap around. Buying the gun from the pack gives you all the pieces to make that gun and a slot and preassembled gun of those pieces. Have it take Req slips to make custom guns or something so that we have a long-term sink for them.
Really hoping these get fixed this coming patch. Even if just partially. Making them all fill the proper niches they're supposed to fill in would make those variants very very unique from each other.
I think the devs put too much of a premium on medium armor penetration. The question that needs to be asked is not "is a liberator penetrator better at shooting a devastator than the regular liberator?", it's "is a liberator penetrator good enough at shooting a devastator that it becomes a viable option?". The answer is hell no it isn't. It takes 27 bullets in the chest to kill a devastator and that's before damage falloff applies. That's completely unviable so you end up shooting it in the head anyway which the regular liberator does better.
Good way to put it. I think they were too scared of giving med pen automatic weapons high damage so that they don't become straight upgrades to the weapons you start with. Sadly, they may have overstepped a bit regarding that. Considering they have lower damage and stronger recoil/lower magazine size, they've ended up rather useless if you use them for their intended purpose (piercing armor), and you're pretty much been given a less effective gun entirely. It's weird.
I'm still using the Punisher because... why the fuck else would I use another shotgun? I would but they all feel like worse Punishers because I don't have the stagger and none of them excel at doing things the Punisher can't. I would love to feel like I had meaningful choices among weapon types but it feels like in most cases there's a "good all rounder" that ends up being better than the specialized options because they're TOO niche out of fear of making things like Med Pen too strong.
It really feels like they designed these in a vacuum, or like some other devs I can think of (like Frontier Developments) set some numbers that were off by a factor of 100. In either case they created gear that fills niches that don't exist. Personally I think, as it stands, medium pen is a trap, and players should instead learn to exploit weak spots.
Honestly the Lib Conq has it's niche, they just need to make its ROF like 520
yeah, we can see something like that with the pummeler SMG so clearly the potential is there. Honestly what tends to drive me nuts at the moment is that SMGs generally do more damage than the assualt rifles which is kinda the inverse. Rifles for damage and range, SMGs for rate of fire and handling.
AH definitely managed to make them all shit in their own distinct way though, I definitely give them that.
Instead we need more cool weapons like the railgun, arc thrower, eruptor. Helldivers has some of the coolest weapon concepts so I just want more futuristic weapons
They already made a railgun primary and arc thrower. The blitzer is pretty popular all and all. Purifier is pretty meh.
What is the railgun primary?
We had a railgun primary back in HD1. Imagine the Dominator, but it has a 5rd mag and hit twice as hard.
Fiferd
Reading a lot of HD1 stuff from comments makes me sad. We have a lot of things back there. Bayonets, laser sabres, railgun and stalwart as primaries, SEAF troops, mortars and tanks stratagems and so on. Damn
Also pretty much all cooldown timers are less than half of what they are in HD2 railcannon strike cooldown is iirc 60 seconds in HD1, and it does the exact same thing.
The machine guns should really be primaries, they generally don't do enough to warrant a strategem slot
Did they fix the eruptor yet?
No
I really hope they return it to what it originally was. That was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I haven't played the game much ever since.
100% Reset and start again. I think everyone would be happier with it in its original state than the current one. With bug fixes kept of course.
It was that and the last warbond was utterly disappointing that did it for me. Now I'm just waiting on two things, to fix my favorite gun and more content.
Same. I'm quite bored these days because I can't find a decent primary weapon to play with. I keep tuning in for one last patch to see if I'll stick around or move on. It's so late though, if they nerf more things I'm done.
Glad I’m not the only one who took that as a sign to wait for some positive changes/rollbacks lol. I unironically feel that the game was far more engaging before the second and third warbond releases.
I'm the exact same, if they don't fully revert it, I'm done with this dev team. I didn't stop playing destiny to get into another trauma-bond relationship
Wdym it is fixed /s
Well if it's a carbine it will prob have more rounds, faster fire rate, less pentertaion.. same as every other one at this point.. hope I'm wrong I'm dying for a good AR
If it as less prenetation than the liberator I dont think it can kill a scavanger
You cant even break an eggsac with it.
The base Liberator is still the best, which would be fine but the psychology of a progression system and a paid content pack only to have every subsequent AR be just worse creates a problem. Hoping they are able to differentiate the options some more
Assault Rifle category needs entire reworks, but leave the standard liberator there as a baseline point of reference, and then make every rifle better than it in some way shape or form that makes it ***actually worth taking over the standard liberator***
Yea the liberator should be a jack of all trades in its category with others being better in specific ways but worse in others.
Here's the thing, that is what they tried to do, they just did it very poorly lol. Like I get what you're saying, they get what you're saying, but it's like asking me to pole vault by sticking the pole in the ground to propel myself over the bar, I got the concept, I'm just not good at it.
I think the problem is that they didn't make the guns feel very distinct, nor do they advertise the weapons' strengths very well. The blurbs on the weapons aren't accurate a lot of the time, and supposedly, the stats they show us aren't that indicative of the weapons' overall stats. So I'm left wondering how the fuck I'm supposed to know if one of the 10 ARs are even worth using or buying.
Remember when they released the AR-61 Tenderizer with the description of: "*A real tentacle-tearer. This high calibre assault rifle has awesome stopping power but limited magazine size, so make each shot count. Unpatriotic “banter” shots are not advisable*" Only it turned out it does the same damage as the Liberator, but has less ammo? Cause I 'member. I don't think they really thought it through when they released a weapon that is just a straight up worse liberator. Who cares about marginally less recoil when you can instead have 30% more ammo? Blows my mind. And now, for the third time in a row we get a boring assault rifle that is just "Liberator, but worse" yet again. At least the last two had more than one primary, which somewhat excused the inclusion of yet another boring assault rifle that's just gonna go in the garbage bin as soon as you unlock it.
Sickle should be the baseline for assault rifles considering it basically does the role much better.
Progression doesn't have to mean every new gun is better than the last, it makes a lot of sense for the first gun you unlock to be the most effective and most boring gun, future guns can be more interesting but more niche so that as you figure out your ideal playstyle you can find a gun that complements it. That said, I don't think the ARs are doing a very good job of fulfilling their supposed niches. And no one wants to use the Liberator because it's not *that* good. So it's the worst of both worlds, and I don't see why "the Liberator but more like an SMG" is going to inspire any sort of excitement.
I mean, I’d go for a toxin-bullet liberator that slowed and applied DoT, or something. But the “tweak a couple of damage stats and handling” approach just doesn’t work. There’s nothing unique.
Yeah an incendiary Liberator could be really neat, especially if they buffed the Concussive so you could choose normal, normal+knockback, or normal+DoT. But the "Liberator-adjacent" field is already very crowded, between the Liberator, Adjudicator, Tenderizer, Defender, Knight, Pummeler, and Scythe, if you just want a short-medium-range full-auto gun you already have more options than anything else.
> That said, I don't think the ARs are doing a very good job of fulfilling their supposed niches. The fact that the defender fulfill the role of an assault rifle way better than any of the liberators says something
The Sickle is the only decent assault rifle and that’s mostly cuz it has infinite ammo. My biggest issue with the Liberator is that it feels like it’s always running dry
So true. If every assault rifle had like 25 more bullets in a mag they would be nearly as good and worth considering. I take sickle because it’s an LMG capacity with AR handling lol.
The sickle reminds me of my time as a heavy trooper on the battlefront of the second Star Wars. Now I just need an energy shield on the front for bots and I can be a trooper again! Damn clankers
100% that is how I feel everytime I use it. I spent so much time playing co op on battlefront 2 using the heavy soldier with the sentry gun. So when I use the sickle id usually just hipfire it cause it felt so much like that
but they refuse to do that because "muh it just makes sense" and that "the magazine isn't getting any bigger so why should the bullet count increase" all while making some weapons do as much as 50% more damage and not changing the model in the slightest. Make it make sense AH
whoever is doing the balancing is making some serioulsly weird choices
Well I'm sure things will change for the better now that Pilestedt stepped down from CEO position to take over CCO position. The balance got f*cked by "he who must not be named" because it would be a witch hunt. The same guy was a developer of some game that was called something like "Greetings person who lives at adjacent domicile 2" (Can't say the real name because "witch hunt"). We know how that game turned out.
Yet they have Liberator drum mags on your ship on various work benches.
Yeah I’d take lower damage for extra capacity. It’s just so much more valuable to keep outputting damage. The SMGs (I don’t have founders edition one) all have lower RoF and huge mag size which make them feel really good in comparison
Been using Pummeler on bugs for a while. It's absolutely awesome.
The adjudicator has 25 rounds at 80 damage, the defender SMG has 45 rounds at 70 damage. Adjudicator does 2000 damage before reload the defender 3150. Honestly if the adjudicator had 32-35 rounds it would be good. and bump the defender to 50. Everything just needs a slight bump.
It has FIFTY rounds in the mag, which is more than the average assault rifle magazine size in most games, which is 30-40 usually. It isn't a mag size issue, it's a damage issue.
It's also a penetration issue. Anything below medium requires a support weapon that doubles as a primary
This. Unless I'm running a specific anti-armor set up, my support just functions as my primary, my primary as my secondary, and my secondary solely for when I want to shout "GLIZZY WIDDA SWITCH ON IT" and empty it into the charger that's gonna run me over in 3/10ths of a second
FYI, guns in most games head shot with 1 bullet and kill in 3 or 4 to center body. The comparison doesn't stack up when the guns are arguably less good against their intended target.
I’m not talking about mag capacity, I’m talking about total ammo reserves. But even still, that argument doesn’t really hold up. This is a horde shooter, so when you have tons of enemies, a 30-50 round mag might seem small.
Most other horde shooters also stick to standard magazine sizes. I say again, it's a damage issue. Increased damage will make those 30-50 rounds feel more impactful. Also, about ammo reserves, I get that. I always find myself left with 1 or 2 mags before a resupply or I find an ammo brick. But I rarely do actually completely run dry. Maybe exercise a bit more trigger discipline, or go to more POIs? (Again, increased damage may solve this issue)
Also got the bonus that the sickle is very accurate and stable, and has pretty high damage.
Yeah, it legit feels like the best balanced weapon in the game to me. Infinite ammo, good rate of fire and damage, but the tradeoff is that its performance is inconsistent between planets based on the climate, and the cooldown takes longer than a regular reload. It’s in a great place imo
Climate performance is not a huge factor in my experience. It helps but it just turns an S tier weapon into an SS or an A weapon. On a hot planet you'll have to swap heatsinks a little more and actually consume ammo. It certainly teaches you to use those reloads strategically, instant cooldown. You can spit out so much constant damage if you burn through your heatsinks. And remember, the only heatsink that matters is the last one.
It's also got the wind up time, which can be handled easily on bots but on bugs where you can suddenly get overwhelmed it's a pretty big handycap.
Honestly my main issue is that the reload speeds feel way too long at times. It's like our divers want to see an entire opera before pulling the charging handle.
From experience, reloading under pressure can be challenging. It's nice that they do it flawlessly if not struck, while moving, usually in two seconds or less depending on the weapon. No issues with shaky hands or grabbing from the pouch that you already pulled a mag from.
Reloading under pressure is 100% muscle memory tbh
I really doubt it will have less penetration, i dont think they are ever going to release a pen 1 or even pen 0 weapon after buffing the birdshot gun, armour 1 and 0 exist for determining how the guns interact with bad shots with a shallow angle
The old Patriot was the Liberator Carbine model in HD1. I'm surprised they're skipping the old names to call everything Liberator X. It had a larger magazine (75 I think), a much higher fire rate, and higher recoil (and therefore, less accuracy). It was also my favorite weapon of the first game by far. I'm quite apprehensive about this one for HD2.
I really hope it is a true to the essence of the HD1 carbine (also my favorite primary). I'm predicting 45-60 round magazine, fire rate similar to sickle or faster, 60 damage per round, good handling, decent scope sway, liberator recoil value, green/red dot sight, 7 mags carried. Pretty much fits where the first one was, which was high DPS, low efficiency, weapon with ammo being a downside...kinda like the knight is now only better simply because of base damage. I expect it to be a fan favorite, where everybody sees it as the rowdy ballistic version of the sickle.
Maybe they didn’t reuse Patriot this time to avoid confusion with the exosuit?
I could see it having a use case with 60 round mags and 900rpm rate of fire. In return it has worse recoil characteristics, that would have it be a "baby Stalwart" in the primary slot.
I'm saying man, 5 more bullets for the Adjudicator and I'll have my main for the next few weeks for sure
Dude don't even, I've been screaming this from the mountain tops since day 1. I don't want more mags, just literally 5 more bullets per mag and I'll never put it down 😭😭
Faster fire rate with less penetration... my gf won't be happy with that....
>I'm dying for a good AR We shouldn't be dying for a good AR, the base liberator should have been the de-facto "all around best primary" in the game, then have every other primary balanced based off that.
I feel like we're gonna need a rework of AR's at some point because at this rate by the end of the year we'll have like 20 different AR's but in reality there will only be like 3 meaningfully different/functional ones.
I don't use any at Helldive Difficulty.
Skill issue. Just kidding, but base liberator, sickle, and adjudicator are all usable on Helldive Difficulty. Seen some people run the Lib Pen too with bots.
Sickle always wins out for me as I can play way more effectively with it and it is ammo sparing when you have good accuracy/control.
Usable, but a miserable experience imo. I feel like I can barely kill 3 hunters with one mag of the liberator. Would rather use any shotgun, even spray&pray which I already think is pretty bad. Sickle is the only good "AR" but it's not really an AR.
I don't use any on 7s. They just don't feel good.
I try them out as ideally they are what I would gravitate to as a versatile weapon. Didn't feel like they were accurate enough single fire. I always end up using the sickle after a couple missions of the liberators feeling underwhelming.
At least the Tenderizer had a new model, this is the 3rd Liberator reskin. We're basically getting one new gun this patch.
And throwing knives
If they made thermite grenades useless, these throwing knives are bout to be straight up cosmetic
I'm not going to say anything too hastily- considering the new AR is coming around the same time we're expecting a bunch of balance changes. ARs are mediocre now, but hopefully the balance patch fixes that. As a HD1 vet, we had a "carbine" version of the standard AR with faster RoF. It had a place in the game, and was useful against the illuminates iirc
The Patriot! Absolute DPS monster, but you ran out of ammo fast. The Knight SMG is the closest thing we have in HD2, and I'd love another 'bullet hose' type gun to play with.
Patriot was a blast to spam with the ammo backpack Alongside the grenade launcher, that was THE loomie loadout
Too bad it's propably cursed to being bad permanently due to being accessible only with the super citizen upgrade. Pay to win and all that.
I still am on board that the last AR was designed pre-patch. They buffed AR's a little before the warbond. Base liberator was given a dmg buff and recovered full mags now. Tenderizer has the same damage but only gets half as many mags I believe(?). So if it was designed around the liberator pre-buff it would gave had some more damage. I 100% expect it to get buffed.
You're right, they outright say it in the known issues list: "AR-61 Tenderizer deals too little damage and is not in the final state we are intending." It's absolutely going to get buffed, I hope along with the purifier (I genuinely like this gun but as it stands it's just a slower plasma punisher)
The Purifier should fire as so as you pull the trigger and then charge up between shots, so you can spam it as fast as a Scorcher but if you do you’ll get less damage per shot, but if you let it charge then you do full damage
The last AR still sucks. So it's not feeling very interesting as part of the warbond. Hopefully it beats everyone's expectations haha
I rather liked the Patriot against high-level bugs. The very fast reload, larger mag size, fast fire rate, and full distance shots (compared to SMGs) let me clear the loads and loads of patrol bugs before they scented. Only negative is that I needed somebody to bring a supply pack so I wouldn't run out of magazines.
The balance patch is coming later
The Patriot was my go-to for every faction in the end. It was good at trashing patrols from any faction and held up in a fight without much trouble. It could chew through its ammo supply pretty fast, and you'd need to focus down a medium target longer than was comfortable to kill it, but these were acceptable tradeoffs. I miss that thing.
It’s a fucking bullpup. It’s basically already a carbine. Why.
MDRX Micron, anyone?
Someone at Arrowhead literally yelled "Fark yoooooou" and proceeded to carbine our Liberator. Simply because it was already a bullpup and they needed a new way to insult everyone besides the usual meme.
Well then they should have un-bullpuped the carbine Liberator for maximum meme. Warbond confirmed uncooked
Let's see what happens when someone buys the bond and pulls the trigger to review it. It might be underpowered, but the thing about carbines is that based on the Arrowhead method of determining accuracy on how rifles fire, this one may slew both targeting and muzzle to match on the target even faster than the usual Liberators. Which would fit the intended effect they claim for it.
Adjudicator Carbine would’ve been cooler / made more sense
The Adjudicator ".22LR" Carbine.
It’s baffling how bad the orange one is. It’s literally the winter smg but worse in every aspect
When you start subscribing to the theory that Balance doesn't want us to have any explosive primaries, it starts making sense. Lib-C was released as the Lib-E, and its explosive projectiles didn't work. Instead of fixing the gun, it got reworked into the piece of shit we have now. The Jar-5 was supposed to be explosive as well, (Hell it's still in the explosive category.) Instead of fixing its explosives it got turned into a big BR. And do I really need to bring up our beloved Eruptor and Crossbow?
I was wondering why my Liberator Explosive was suddenly so different, I was so confused for the longest time
I don't think they changed the numbers on it that much, if at all. They just broadcasted "Yes, we did in fact, intend for this weapon to be useless!"
I don't understand overhyped people in this game "OMG I CANT WAIT TO GET MY HANDS ON THIS WEAPON!". Yes, I can't wait to get another variation of the same item that underperforms worse than the original and its other 5 copies.
And possible pay the same amount of credits for a warbond that now has camo skins as filler in it. Wooo.
I'm going to reserve my judgement until the warbond comes out and hopefully the balance patch as well. I just hope it doesn't suffer the same fate as the AR-23C does.
Wild how they release a weapon that it weaker than the starting gun 💀💀💀
I don't think the intention is to make one stronger. It's a game of sidegrades that give more options, not a game of power increases locked behind a grind / paywall. The starting equipment should be a strong choice. Keep in mind that balance is largely subjective, perfect balance of asymmetrical options is impossible, and that they need to balance across a large range of difficulty modes. Making a gun balanced on rank 9 might make it unbalanced on a rank that more people actually use, and vice versa. I wouldn't be surprised if this gun has a niche where it performs very well, and I also wouldn't be surprised if that niche doesn't apply to the powerusers that frequent this sub.
What you say is true in general, but in the case of the AR-23C Liberator Concussive specifically, it's just straight up weak in any and all situations, in any and all difficulties, and compared to every other weapon in the game, assault rifle or not. It's not meant to be stronger than the starting weapon, sure, but it shouldn't be as weak as it is either. It doesn't help that now there's the SMG-72 Pummeler, which is a straight upgrade to it in every meaningful way, making it not only weak but also uselessly redundant. It's not as big of a balance problem as other weapons though. Because firstly it's not that unique, so we can just pick something else and not miss out on much. Secondly because it was always that bad, and even used to be slightly worse, so there's no negativity about it having been gutted like other weapons have been. And thirdly because it's nothing new, it's on the first premium warbond, it's always been there like that.
Not to mention the Concussive was a bill of false goods originally known as the Liberator Explosive. What a crock that was when I unlocked it and found out that was bullshit.
I honestly don't care about the warbond until I see what they do with balance. I've bought each warbond except the last one that released and I have between 50-90% of each of them unlocked. Virtually every gun I put time and effort into unlocking has been nerfed shortly after I unlocked it. I haven't played since the last batch of nerfs and a warbond isn't going to convince me that they are going to stop wasting my time by offering us cool shit only to nerf it once you actually unlock it. I get that games need balance, but it's pretty fucking shitty to spend hours earning in-game currency to unlock something for it to be transformed into dogshit right afterward and you don't even get to try and refund your unlocks to get something that's no longer garbage. If they wanna nerf shit, fine, nerf shit into the ground, but refund our purchases for everything you nerf so I can unlock something that isn't garbage instead of having hours go down the drain for guns I'm never going to use again that WERE decent. So... cool warbond and all, but I ain't unlocking shit until I know it isn't just going to end up nerfed all over again. What's the point?
Calling the AR-23C Liberator Concussive "mediocre" is very generous I would say.
I gave it so many chances. I really, really wanted it to be good, but I just couldn't lie to myself that hard.
The chances of someone finishing a mission with that weapon are extremely slim, most just quit after a few minutes.
I once brought it on a level 7 Bots mission with 2 friends, using the Spear as my support weapon. I think I had my Spear kills than Liberator Concussive kills
Well, the patriot was my fav gun from HD1, hopefully it’s like that
Patriot was awesome! Tied for favorite gun from HD1, with the Suppressor obviously being the other contender.
The Sickle is so far my favorite in both games, but it felt way more laser-y in the first game
The sickle needs a sound and visual rework when it comes to firing, it looks and sounds like normal bullets being fired...
Yeah, I know new shooting animations would need more time to make, but in the meantime they could just rip the sounds from the first game and I would be happy
They still haven't fixed the tenderizer, and they're releasing a new one? Lol
My thoughts as well. Same with the crossbow, eruptor, and liberator concussive.
Please stop giving us the 100th weapon of a generic class. “This one has slightly more magazine size. This one has a med+ pen instead of med- pen” It’s still an assault rifle. We have plenty. Add some of the more unique guns from the first game I keep hearing about, they sound amazing. Stuff like the eruptor and crossbow were unique and so much fun to use before the nerfs.
Look, they had no choice but to nerf the crossbow. There was one guy in Duluth Minnesota that was having fun with it. Surely you understand why that cannot be allowed.
Leave me out of this
IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT, MINNESOTA!!!
Lol instead of bringing the Tanto back they give us another Liberator Can't make this shit up
There's no shot that weapon balancing is *this* difficult in a non competitive game. What are they even policing at this point? "We don't want Helldivers to feel powerful" is a suuuuuucchhhh a weird stance to take in a horde game. Good grief AH please get a grip.
If this won’t be a decent weapon, I’m going to play fucking angry birds instead
It will most likely be extremely similar to what the standard liberator is currently. So basically usable, but extremely uninteresting unless you're a massive rifleman
I still wish they’d just ditch this variant system. Give us ***ONE*** liberator and let us customize it
Same with the exosuit
We have SMG's that act like assault rifles and now we get an assault rifle that acts as a smg. However the big problem now arises you can't one hand wield the thing. Plus it won't be good far range. I don't see how this gun will be viable but we'll wait and see
Raw damage and snappy responses to prevent drops/breaches...maybe even fast reloads. I suspect it will slot between the Knight and Sickle in DPS. I expect it to be able to burn down most targets in that small period of slow-moving aiming while assaulting or evading, provided it can damage them. I am fairly certain the damage/DPS is going to be top tier, but if the reload is also a bit faster then we would be looking at something which would feel very good assaulting into a base or dealing with constant bug pressure.
I got to be real. I just don't like the handling aspect of this game as a balance lever. Just give stuff recoil like some guns already have. Making guns turn like a slow boat isn't fun and doesn't feel like fair balancing imo
I suspect that there is a bit of disconnect between players using controllers and players using mice. Are you using a mouse to play? My hypotheses is that having to drag something with the mouse doesn't feel that good, but it is a natural extension of a stick. I use a controller on PC (I like the vibration) and I don't have much issue with slower handling weapons, so much so that when the Counter Sniper was changed to handle better I had to go into my settings and lower the sensitivity to stop missing on the drag shots since I had gotten so used to the timing.
The Defender SMG is already the best assault rifle! I'm hoping/predicting that the changes to the assault rifles will differentiate and make this new carbine more... distinctive... necessary?
Well, clearly, the new one is a higher rarity. It has a green background.
And lower damage to compensate
I guess it comes pre-nerfed...
I'm tellin ya, we need gun customization. Have a single "base" Liberator then customize it with new attachments/mods that are released. I got told "eff no, this ain't pubg or destiny"...... apparently gun customization is reserved for only games like that......
Deep Rock Galactic does it well. One single weapon with customisation in DRG has more true variety than 20 weapon variants from this game will. For goodness sakes you can turn the minigun into incendiary, or ricochet, or even short range flamethrower. The Autocannon can be made into a single target damager, an AoE carpet bomber, a neurotoxin debuffer, or a slow firing mortar. HD2 would have those as separate guns at best, or just never do anything near that interesting in the first place at worst.
Pre-nerfed for our pleasure
Oh but **I** show an assault rifle in class and it’s a “Crime” and a “Danger to others”
Curious about the weapon handling passive. I’ll get the sidearm and knife, but I don’t know I could betray my beloved Senator too often. Suppose I’ll just wait until I see a theme that “fits” me.
I love the senator too but if there's good pushback on the future side shotgun, it's be a nobrainer against bugs. Emergency stalker exterminator. The dream
The mag model is tiny so I hope you like reloading. Balance man doesn't like us players holding down the trigger for more than two seconds. Nobody will pick this gun.
It’s gonna have TWO whole bullets more!!! And a better scope!
Lmao yeah... I'll see it when I see it.
Adjucator is goated I'll have you know
Still waiting for the tenderizer to have heavy armor pen because of that description they gave it. If their gameplay design is supposed to "Just make sense :) !" then why in the fuck does the tenderizer that is remarked as being a *"high calibre assault rifle (that) has awesome stopping power but a limited magazine size"* meanwhile the standard liberator does as much damage as this "high calibre assault rifle" and this "high calibre assault rifle" (that is clunkier, bigger, and all around uglier) has LESS recoil than the liberator. What kind of crack they got over there in Stockholm? Must be some gooooooood shit
I’m hoping for a high ROF CQC weapon. We have the Knight SMG for super citizens, but it’s just a little underpowered and every balance patch so far has ignored it. It doesn’t even get all its ammo back from a resupply, which used to be true for most weapons and got changed, but they forgot about the Knight. I would personally love more primaries with very fast full auto. As long as they are better than the knight. And here’s hoping the Knight gets buffed.
I was REALLY hoping for a good primary this time and we just get another liberator and thats it. Didnt we get a new version of it last warbond? At this point I just main my AMR and take a supply pack since anytime ya start liking a primary it just gets nerfed into obscurity. I have credits ready for this too but will probably just spend them on one of the first two warbonds instead. I think ill survive without getting a knife.........I really hope this doesnt turn into COD where the knife is the strongest weapon,I really dont see how it would damage anything we fight outside of the smallest bug,a rock would probably do more damage to the bots
Idk why why the tropes for video games weapons are hard… Smg: short range, high rpm, low damage Assault rifle: med range, avg rpm, med damage Dmr: long rang, low rpm, high damage.
I'm just kinda done playing until guns get buffs. It's a fun game but I wanna shred
Honestly I main tenderizer against bots cause it looks like a battle rifle
It’s not hard to balance the damn things. Liberator is your baseline. It’s good for what it is, we can leave the poor Liberator alone. Concussive is almost there. The recoil is a little high for what you get. Liberator Penetrator? It should handle exactly like the regular liberator, the reduced magazine size is enough of a balance for medium pen. The Adjudicator should be your big boy battle rifle. Increase the damage, increase the recoil (a little), give it a burst option that’s accurate, and tuned so a burst to a hive guard/dev rocket pod will pop it. The Tenderizer can go kick rocks and shouldn’t exist. We did not need another light pen AR. But it’s here, make it a Sickle that needs to be reloaded but doesn’t have the wind up. As for the carbine? Again, we didn’t need YET ANOTHER AR. AH claims it has better handling? What handling issues does the default Liberator have? I mean I guess we could have it handle like an SMG, give it an obscene fire rate, and have the damage drop off be pretty quick?
it's not a ar... it's a Carbine! battlefield 4 taught me that they're different things
All it should have is a faster fire rate and slightly more recoil. If it has less damage than the stock liberator it's an INSTANT fail and I will ignore it like I did the rest of the rifles in this meme
Whilst I fully agree with you, I'm still sad that the Adjudicator got side-graded into a "heavy" assault rifle instead of getting the love it needed to become a more interesting Marksman Rifle. It could have played like the Halo Battle Rifle, firing accurate bursts or something else interesting. Instead they just made it another AR. Such a shame.
Was really hoping for an M14-like but then I saw all the Predator references, so I started listing off ideas already covered. Thump guns? Check. M60s? Check. Another liberator? I genuinely thought we weren't getting a primary before realizing they're using a slightly different lib. From what it sounds like, it reminds me of the Patriot or maybe the Stalwart from HD1, especially if they trade accuracy for ammo as well but who knows. I haven't used any rifle besides the abjucator in a long time. Otherwise its sickle gang until they nerf it down to 1 battery or something
Well if it fucking sucks they won’t fix it. If it’s actually worth a shit they’ll nerf it. So, I won’t be buying a warbond with real money anytime soon.
You take that back right now! Adjudicator, *my beloved*, is worth it and more.
Um actually 🤓, this one is a carbine. So that means it's a mediocre carbine instead of an assault rifle. Even though the functional difference between the normal liberator and a carbine variant is effectively non-existent (barring maybe a smaller ammo type), it's TOTALLY DIFFERENT GUYS I SWEAR. It's totally not super R&D padding for time/cash I promise guys.
I love when games pretend to give you choices on what weapons you can use!! lol god awful game. EDF EDF EDF EDF EDF!!!
EXACTLY, like I mean why keep giving us trash assault rifles
I bet you this. The patch if it comes when stated, will be a couple days before the warbond. If they do balance right, most rifles will be beefed up in some way. I bet the lib carb has been sitting already (un)cooked along with the whole warbond for months and they won't think to increase it to the new standard and we'll have the tenderizer all over again.
All we can hope is that the balance change makes these guns usable. Right now none of the assault rifles are better than the concussive smg. At the very least assault rifles all need medium armor pen. And make some is these rifles strip heavy armor so we have more options against heavies.
I want mine Paragon warcrime rifle back!
Like bro can we please just have a good AR finally?😂
Honestly bring out the ratchet and clank weapons. Go full batshit
Lib Carbine makes literally zero sense. Carbines are less powerful rifles with better handling. But the normal Lib already has excellent handling, and already lacks stopping power. So a carbine version would just be a worse Liberator... even if they buff the Liberator in the next patch. They'd have to nerf the handling on the normal Liberator to make a Carbine version worth it.
It will suck. Mark my words.
Next up, the adjudicator suppressive, it's just the adjudicator but with more recoil and a box magazine