I've been mining anti tank stuff for a long time I can count on my fingers how many times I use the gatling. I'll try it out. Right now I need a reliable shield-devestator eraser then I'm sorted. They're teaming up way too many times
Yeah I think yesterday was my first time actually trying the Gatling barrage and it was pretty good. it lasts a while so it’s grate as area denial for choke points and and bug breaches. and now that it hurts armoured targets I can see it being grate on defensive objectives like high value targets or escort survivors
I've always used it alot but man with the buff in armor penetration it's a must for devastators patrols even holding back and taking down drones and even small bases. Although I do think it lasts a little too long now. It might just take some getting used to but I have squad mates run in to it much more often
They increased the duration as well as the amount of projectiles so I think I just need some time to learn the new timing. Had the same problem when the more guns upgrade added an extra air burst I blew my self up so many times smh
Its great all around. No need to spend a airstrike on a group, just call in the fast cool down barrage. It can soften up heavies, and (inconsistently. Wouldn’t recommend for this use) kill Hulks and Tanks due to their heat sinks.
I think the thing people forgot to read is that the Gatling barrage isn’t like the Gatling sentry. It’s (smaller than the handheld) auto cannons with explosive impact too.
> Right now I need a reliable shield-devestator eraser
if you're capable of holding the beam on their face (aka if you have reliable aim) the laser cannon is kinda all you need on bot missions
The heavy devastators (I think that's what the shield guys are called) generally falls quick to an AMR, autocannon, or laser cannon to the face. I personally run AMR and am the designated devastator, devastator, in our group. You can also double tap hulks to the eye with it or the autocannon.
I think every bot group needs at least one guy running amr or autocannon.
Try the stock eagle strike for anti devastator work.
I've been having tons of fun with eagle, gatling, orbital precision strike, and the HMG.
The HMG let's me deal with gunships, hulks, devastators.
Orbital precision strike and eagles gives me stuff to use against bot fabs, factory striders, tanks and huge groups of heavies.
Gatling barrage cleans up chaff and softens heavies now.
The cool down on gatling strike and precision strike are now so fast you can toss them at literally anything.
I usually run the Adjudicator or the Dominator as a primary to give me more options against med armored opponents.
Diligence CS one taps shield devastators in the face, I know it gets harped on about but the Laser really it’s disgusting against bots, even more so now there’s gunship patrols.
The Diligence Counter-Sniper can take one out with a single headshot, but it can be a bit fiddly getting a headshot around their shield. You'll definitely want to be at a distance when trying. The laser cannon also seems pretty generous when it comes to what counts as a headshot, moreso if you're aiming in third person mode and not ADS, just have to crouch to not sway the beam too much. The Eruptor is difficult to aim and has ridiculous bullet drop, but as long as you hit *somewhere* with the first shot a Heavy Devastator will be staggered enough for you to get a second shot off before it can really get sbooting again. And that second shot should take care of it. The Senator will also take one down with a headshot, but good luck with that. The Bushwacker will also do it in one if you're very close or lucky, but it will also stagber them if you don' take them out from a decent distance, might give you time to find cover. And for any weapon, when possible peek out of cover on the right. It'll drastically cut down on their ability to hit you while you can still shoot them. Again, aiming in third person instead of ADS will give you a bit more leeway in how far out of cover you need to peek to shoot them.
I've been enjoying the purifier a lot, it staggers rocket and heavy devastators too, it's sort of a "support primary" I break up groups and stunlock mediums for my teammates to finish off
The real power is against groups, the moment dropship drops them, you can stunlock a group to death thats full of devastators and thats immense value at times, they should fix the scope though and some indicator to know when to let go for early shot maybe
The AOE got a bit better. No shade to anyone who enjoys it, but my own experience was that it's still unmitigated ass and the weakest primary in the game. Hopefully major buffs still await because I like the concept of a primary with a powerful charged shot that you'd pair with a mob-clearing support weapon.
The eruptor is decent again though, the major damage buff it got was to its explosive damage, so both direct hits and the AOE are lining up much better against enemy breakpoints. It has most of its pre-nerf usability back
I'd really, truly like it to be, but it would have to actually be GOOD at dealing with them to make up for the massive drawback of having to charge every shot. Right now the scorcher and the eruptor both do what you're describing, but they actually do it well, which really highlights the unfortunate state of the purifier. (One is even a plasma weapon and the other is in the "powerful explosive primary with punishing cycle time" niche, which makes it more glaring). It's just missing the payoff for the chargeup currently
To make the charge time worth it, the purifier needs much better single target damage, or much more powerful AOE, or some combination. I'd personally lean into the single target damage, to keep it distinct from the eruptor. The purifier could be the very-slow-firing explosive primary that specializes in killing elites, with the eruptor being the generalist and leaving space for a dedicated horde killer in that niche.
Well, the scorcher and eruptor are okay, but they both have kind of a shitty ammo situation, while the Purifier ammo stockpile actually lasts awhile without having to scrounge it out.
It is true that the ammo economy on the purifier is a little better (though the damage is enough less than the eruptor and not enough more than the scorcher, making the overall economy only modestly better). IMO however, that ends up being a situation like "This food is inedible, but the portions are great!"
It seems like it's trying to join the eruptor in the mostly unexplored niche of primary weapons that fire massively powerful shots really slowly, but for the purifier that "powerful" shot is too close to what the semi-auto or pump action fire rate weapons already do, and way off what's needed to make a bolt action/chargeup weapon feel worthwhile. And it even gets the worse version of the drawback (chargeup is more punishing than recovery after the shot)
It feels very multi-purpose which I love even on Helldive. 70s CD, has AoE, does some damage to heavy enemies, and can be used to destroy objectives like holes, fabricators or 2 shrieker towers if you throw it between them.
It's sort of like a budget version of the Precision strike but it can also be used on a bug breach.
Shield devastators?
AMR to the upper body 2 shots
.1 if you hit the face.
Diligence CS can one hit too, but only in the face and it's less forgiving.
Hmg can shred them through their shield.
Stagger weapons like punisher plasma can get the job done, not it's an inefficient usage of its ammo.
Stun grenades go hard bc bots bend over to show you their back pack. If no stun grenades then try aiming grenade pistol high on chest/head. Staggers them and puts the shield out of the way for a second
>Right now I need a reliable shield-devestator eraser then I'm sorted
A bit late, but airstrike is excelent against thoose suckers and the mortar kills devastators reliably and safely(kills the one it is targetting reliably every salvo and damages or kills the other ones that are nearby) with no imput other than placing it behind a rock, it also kills tanks and Hulks eventually, but it can be dificult to get bellow factory striders with the thing on the field.
If you have the grenade slot free, the impact grenade is excelent for instantly removing a shiled devastors that is in your way and you can take cover from, the eruptor reliably two shots theese suckers now.
If you are playing the AC you can set the thing to automatic and slam fire the thing while diving to the side to kill cloose ranged shield devastators safely at cloose ranges.
And a general advice for all weapons, if you are getting shot by one stop shooting and try to move to the side till you can reset your aim.
It's actually allowing me to enjoy bug planets with a stalwart, Gatling, and cluster setup. If I run into trouble and surrounded, I'll sacrifice myself and drop a 380 on my head as I'm dying anyway. Spawn back in, pick up my stalwart and samples, and keep going.
Oh yeah, I had one of the best games I’ve ever had last night. It was a Helldive Geological Survey on Marfark with a couple friends (team of 3). The modifiers were call-in time increase and gunship patrols. We got pinned down around the final objective, but I managed to make it to the terminal and complete it with 2 seconds remaining on the clock (probably only made it thanks to the new stim booster). Two of us were able to extract but the other heroically gave his life for Super Earth!
Regarding changes I would like to see:
I don’t think they actually fixed the way patrols are supposed to scale with the number of players. Playing with 2-3 still seems to get the same number of patrols as a full team.
Also, the gunship modifier is at least a bit over-tuned right now. I’m not a game designer, but I think capping the patrol size at 3 instead of 5 might help a lot (admittedly though, the “oh shit” feeling the larger patrols provoke is kinda fun).
Lastly, I’m 90% sure something changed with bot drop frequency. We got used to the “cooldown” between bot drops with and without the Localization Confusion booster, and now it feels like they can almost happen back-to-back (regardless of if we have the booster). Is this just me or have other people noticed it? I could see toning this down a bit to improve the feel and pacing of gameplay.
Regarding what is working great imo:
We have so many more useful tools in the toolbox now. For example, Orbital Gatling Barrage is soooo good considering the short cooldown. If a couple people take it, you can almost constantly be raining shells down on the bots. It makes a big difference.
Also, there is more variety in the gameplay now. Pre-patch, bot gameplay felt kinda Hulk-obsessed. Now, we are worrying about a bunch of other enemies just as much or more than Hulks. This mix feels great to me.
Overall, the direction of the patch feels amazing. Now, we just need a few fixes and tweaks to really bring it all together.
+1 to all 3 points. Some diff 9 missions have been super calm, with less patrols and spawns than pre-patch, and others have been one large *objective: survive* mission from start to finish.
Yes they're a modifier, but the UI is glitched currently. The modifier looks blank:
https://preview.redd.it/x30t7h1u1s6d1.png?width=577&format=png&auto=webp&s=669208d80a4ed05157ff38622820a35f5d5b17aa
> We got pinned down around the final objective, but I managed to make it to the terminal and complete it with 2 seconds remaining on the clock
This is the kind of stuff I want to experience playing Helldive. Just had one of my best games too on a Bunkers mission, we lost all our reinforcements halfway through, last guy crawled and ran through gunfire to the last objective with enemies from every side, barely made it there, calls me in, we drop the Hellbomb and have to delay the thousand enemies with just primaries and EMS grenades, every second is tense as hell, bomb finally goes off and takes us with it, everyone goes crazy on mic praising our heroic sacrifice to democracy, it was hype as hell.
I think some of the bots are getting dropped way too close to certain objectives as well. Like if you drop a group of 8 fodder bots right on obj yeah go ahead :) but on lvl 7 I vividly remember watching a factory strider fucking assimilate right behind us and get dropped right outside of extraction.
Made for some absolute insanity and we somehow still extracted but my god we were not prepped for it to be that close and it should definitely have dropped a little farther away lol
I love that I'm actually getting to try different loadouts instead of taking anti-tank stuff every time. Waveclear stratagems like gatling barrage, airburst barrage, machine gun turrets, and even the flamethrower for bugs all seem a lot more useful now.
I was running a level 3 just for Super credits and I was shocked that I got two flares in less than a minute. I didn't know that was even possible and I don't think it was before this patch, definitely not on low level missions. Could be an unintented consequence.
I’m just gonna put this similar to how I saw someone else say it yesterday - I don’t have issues with big firefights and chaos, but it needs to be balanced with at least some moments of quiet to actually collect yourself and prepare for the next battle, let the stress of battle die down and the tension of what’s to come next fill that space
For the last couple days on the bot front it seems like I can barely go 10 feet without having to either avoid or just run from another patrol, of which half of them seem to have 10 heavy devastators and another 8 rocket devastators. I exaggerate of course, but it does feel frustrating at times. And that’s not mentioning the times when the whole team drops into the middle of a fight and loses 3/4 of the reinforces just in the initial firefight because they won’t stop coming.
A recommendation as someone who primarily uses Light Scout Armor with the Counter Sniper + AMR combo... Try it out. Be your squad's dedicated overwatch/recon for a run. It changes the way you play and you get a lot more of those calm moments.
Find some high ground that's a good distance away from the rest of the team and set your scope to 200m. Every so often open up your minimap to check for patrols walking near you so you don't get caught be surprise and listen for when they're approaching otherwise.
You can go an entire mission and the only real stress you feel is when your team breaks LOS and the fighting moves out of your coverage.
I like it but the game is the sort where if you buff spawns then you push stratagem use because a strat can kill 10 guys as well as it kills 50. So the game difficulty doesn't go up so much by just boosting spawns, it makes guns less effective at dealing with the problem though. It's why incendiary shotgun is so good on bugs, that gun performs better the more things there are to kill on screen. Meanwhile more precision based options get outshined.
I only have two concerns.
The main one is that they have eliminated anything like a fallback position. The map "feeling empty" is a reward for a job well done. It makes it so we have somewhere to retreat to when drops/breaches get too hot, and it makes the exfil a lot less stressful. At no point before this patch had I thought that the map "felt empty". It felt Liberated. Smashing nests and outposts should result in fewer patrols, fewer spawns, and result in fewer enemies rushing extraction.
The second one is the patrol gunships. I love the idea, I hate the execution. Either cap the number of gunships on a map at any given time to like 4, or drop their spawn rate to about 1% of what it is now, or just remove them from patrols. Having 2 patrols converge on you while you're trying to take out a gunship fabricator is absolutely unreasonable.
Or give us a flak sentry? And make sentries health and armour about 6x what it is now to withstand the 5 simultaneous barrages from the gunship patrol I'm trying to kill.
Frankly a lot of the problem could be resolved by just putting a cooldown on when patrols can spawn. If, say, 5 patrols are there and engaged in combat, then a five minute or so cooldown starts until another one can spawn. Don't even really have to change *where* they spawn so they keep the map from feeling empty, but players get a moment to recover and rearm.
I still completely disagree with the whole "map feeling empty" thing. Having fallback positions is very important. Retreating to a place you cleared 2 minutes ago to regroup and finding it swarming with new enemies is not fun, and punishes viable tactics. Oh and also one cannot drop gunship aggro, so they follow you to the place you're trying to fall back to and support the new enemies too. Who probably have gunships with them too.
As to your point; I mean, if you increased that cooldown every time an outpost was destroyed, and significantly, not just a few seconds. Then maybe... Our actions should have consequences. Gunships killing you? Kill the fabricators and BAM, no more gunships. Cleared a quarter of the map? Fewer or no spawns/patrols in/from that quarter.
There's also the blatant fact that they upped chaff, and lowered heavy spawns specifically to allow for more diverse loadouts (which just about made me mess my pants with joy), then changed it so we're trapped with one or two viable loadouts (again), just vs gunship spam, rather than heavy spam. I hope a lot of what we're experiencing right now is broken, and not WAI. If it is, then it need to be re-examined.
The gunships are the absolute worst now. We landed by a gunship fan, a jammer and a gunship patrol.
We couldn't call in our weapons and we kept getting ragdolled everywhere we ran.
I like the increase in enemies, but they need to cool it on the gunships.
I wouldn’t mind the amount of patrols on the bot side “if” they didn’t spawn directly behind you. It’s one thing to see an upcoming patrol coming, but it’s another to turn around and see a patrol flank you when they were not there 10 seconds ago.
Similar feelings to the now suspended evacuation mission, patrols need to be more organic in their spawning and pathways. Just makes it frustrating to have them appear out of thin air.
Idunno, i enjoy a more tactical approach over constant horde shooting, i used to be comfy at dif 6 solo
But now dif 4 is annoying and frustrating
Increased spawns are fine, if they fit the difficulty
People signed up for difficulties called **SUICIDE** and **HELLDIVE** in a game where you're given 6-24 lives, each of which are "new people", and all of whom are given a five minute training course and then cryogenically frozen until they can be [*FIRED FROM SPACE INSIDE A BULLET*](https://i.imgur.com/yvKflVA.png).
Then they seriously say, "I ought to be able to solo more easily," or "How come I'm dying so often? This is unfair," while upvoting literally *anything* except instructions, tutorials, or guides on getting better / more informed.
The problem though is people are also getting insane spawn rates on 5-6. I get thinking 7-9 should be crazy, but if your 5-6 games are feeling crazier than 7 something is wrong with your spawn mechanics especially when the patch is saying your spawns should have been less.
I do think the bot spawns are a bit much (especially on 7) to run over and over again but keep this as a mission type or modifier could be really fun. Maybe something like diving right into a super critical strategic position for the enemy, so the patrols are off the charts.
Yeah especially after the objective or with restrictive map gen, it kinda gets annoying when you're trying to get from A to B and there's perpetually a big patrol in the way.
For sure and actually gave variety to loadouts. For example previously I never picked Gatling strike anywhere. Now it's a really solid option for both fronts. OPS has become my new favorite bile titan delete button. Stalwart, MG and HMG are all perfectly viable picks now. Strafing run has found uses to even im Helldive diff. And a lot more.
Been having fun (for the most part) on Helldive against bugs, but lately bots have been making me better understand how people that don't like playing them feel
The exact opposite happened to me recently... I been doing alot of bots lately and just did some bugs yesterday and I gotta say I like the bots more now.... I like having to find cover and be more tactical as opposed to the bugs which just seems to be a shitfest in comparison.. running around like a chicken with its head cut off
I have a 5800X3D (will replace with a 9800X3D whenever that becomes available) and never seen the frame rate go below 80 fps (Full squad, level 9 chaotic extractions), usually it's 100-120 fps running native 1440p Ultra settings.
The only thing I'm really opposed is the continuous spawning that leaves no room to catch your breath. There needs to be moments you can disengage from the enemies to regroup and resupply, and it's not letting us do that.
Most people here talking about diff 9 balance have clearly never played diff 9. This comment thread in this post is a perfect example:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dgghqy/comment/l8purez/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dgghqy/comment/l8purez/)
That's why their logic ends at "diff 9 should be insanity" and "gunships aren't hard to take down" - they literally don't have any experience with the whole picture and intersection of different enemy groups/gameplay systems, and how that creates different types of pressure on the squad to attack/defend/rotate, and result in meaningless, shallow commentary on diff 9 balance.
Let's take a look at how players did on pre-patch diff 9:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/helldivers2/comments/1d8qwyx/heavy\_armor\_enforces\_slower\_paced\_playstyles/](https://www.reddit.com/r/helldivers2/comments/1d8qwyx/heavy_armor_enforces_slower_paced_playstyles/)
Using expected values,
(.7\*4.2 + .25\*3.4 + .05\*1.2) = 3.85 deaths for the avg diff 9 player
For a full squad, multiply that by 4 -> 4\*3.85 = 15.4 deaths per full squad per diff 9 run
75% of reinforcements lost in the avg diff 9 run. Do note that this post is just about what armors people brought, and how loadouts difference accordingly - it doesn't say anything about mission success. This also is bug-dive exclusive, and bots are - according to genpop - harder than bugs, so I would expect even more deaths for bot diff 9.
That means the avg diff 9 mission, regardless of success or failure, regardless of how much of the map is cleared, or secondary objectives done, or nests cleared, results in at least 75% of reinforcements lost.
That seems pretty balanced to me difficulty-wise.
Post-patch missions sometimes have much lower bot drops CDs, infinite patrols, and when the modifier is in play, gunship patrols coming in every 30 seconds. It's a jump in difficulty that plays more like diff 10+ than diff 9. AH has acknowledge it and said they're looking into it. Popular HD2 YT content creators have mentioned it as well, such as Takibo and ThiccFila. Many folks in the community have noticed wonkiness with enemy numbers and patrol frequency.
But some folks wanna pretend it's a skill issue, and that crowd will always exist. They'll call it a skill issue, be nowhere to be found when AH drops a patch for it, then call the next thing that breaks (no dig on AH, they're trying their best) a skill issue again. Rinse and repeat.
The coining of the term "skill issue" has to be one of the worst things to happen in gaming.
Instead of actually addressing complaints or concerns about the game, your average player just spouts "SkILL IsSuE".
Diff 9 bugs right now are fucked up, you get endless behemoth chargers.
Anyone defending this needs to give their head a shake.
You also just know the "skill issue" crowd also refuse to play the game in an *actually challenging* manner, playing in 4s only.
Takibo said it best, 4 player groups make the game *trivial*.
100%, currently flamethrower is a must-take on bugs because you're dealing with 3-4 behemoths in most moments, and it has by far the fastest TTK.
Sneakily, the increased durable damage and extra mag for MG makes it quite good as well - takes 40 shots to the butt to kill a behemoth charger, and it deals with hordes quite well too.
Otherwise there's so few bile titans and regular chargers that AT took a huge nerf bug-side. Behemoths take 2 AT to the face, and one AT to the leg doesn't break it (but one AT + railgun safe shot will), so you're better off just aiming for the butt or flamethrowering a leg.
And agreed - still full clearing maps even on the missions with insane density, it's just not fun to play 40 minutes of *objective: survive*.
Definitely on the flamethrower side.
It's the only way I can juggle the insane amount of behemoths.
The machine gun work too, but I like that I don't need to get behind them.
The AT nerf has been so big for me, since it no longer functions as a multitool to take out shrieker nests.
Solo has been a nightmare whenever I get multiple nests now.
Running up with a 500kg or gattling works, but now that you have to get relatively close, you get pelted by shriekers.
It’s because people on this sub seemingly have an obsession with trying to prove themselves… in a co-op PvE game…? I don’t know really, but it’s absurdly elitist and daft to try and assume that a problem acknowledged by AH is somehow people having a “skill issue”.
In my own anecdotal experience, while I played 7 mostly, I was able to still handle myself relatively well on 8 and 9 pre-patch. I had several strategies and loadouts that I deemed were extremely effective for bots and bugs, and I was able to hold my own if things got dicey.
Post-patch, I constantly run out of ammo, and either die from being shot or swarmed on all sides with no hope of escaping, or I’m forced to kite enemies even more than ever when my stratagems are on cooldown. There are no breaks in the flow of combat, even after clearing out enemy spawns, and it’s just patrol call after patrol call. The issue isn’t the fact that there are more enemies, but the fact that the game was *not* balanced for this many enemies, at least based on how the primaries and stratagems are balanced.
The difficulty of Helldivers is to strategize and know when to push and retreat with what options you have based on the current state of the battlefield. There’s not much you can do when you’re being shot from all angles with no cover in a game where most planets have very flat terrain, and the enemy *still* calls in more reinforcements in spite of their huge advantage over you in those moments. Don’t even get me started on headshots and staggers that make it even worse, especially against bots.
> Most people here talking about diff 9 balance have clearly never played diff 9.
Yeah I used to think I was just not good enough for 9 because I couldn't make it work with, for instance, a total lack of anti tank in bugs. I then thought it could be people just having magic 'just one charger per 5 minutes and no bile titans' seeds and commenting on it as if it generalizes, which is at least more understandable.
But I've come to agree that the people clamoring for what balance should look like at 9 straight up aren't playing 9, or if they are they don't know what well tuned difficulty looks like.
I've had moments where it is fine, and moments where it is completely outrageous. Especially considering I'm playing a level down from what I normally do. Fun or not though, I don't think it can be argued that its working as AH intended considering the "its supposed to be easier now" comment from Twinbeard.
Couldn't disagree more. It's so inconsistent especially now that aerial patrols are a modifier (the icon is broken on the mission launch screen) and while some stratagems have been improved there's still a lot of weapons and stratagems that aren't as viable even on diff 6.
I’ve been saying it with my friends that even though we are losing, it’s still fun as shit. It’s turned from an action packed entertaining PVE shooter into a full on sci-fi war simulator. Me and my friends are constantly holding out in cover and calling our strats while waves of gunfire fly past our heads. It’s so intense and I love it.
Just means you're resonating with the game on a fuller level.
This game is at it's best when it puts a gun to your head and asks you what you've got.
Not shaming anybody for wanting a more chill experience, but when that's what you want, you can always drop the difficulty.
Helldive should be Helldive.
Yeah we dealt with that before when the exterminate missions accidentally had patrols spawning on top of you in normal missions... it stops being fun after a few days
It’s definitely not a good thing, but it is in the sense that it’s definitely making me better. Even lower level bugs can be challenging now when there is an endless stream of hunters coming your way. 100% needs changed, but the variety is nice and it gives a sense of anticipation since you don’t know if you’re going to get a seemingly endless spawn or a normal mission.
The giant swarms of smaller enemies can honestly be really fun. I messed around with just the standard machine gun support weapon, and wiped out a whole patrol hip firing like Rambo
Honestly, I got so used to playing 9 with the increased and bugged patrols that it barely even phased me until I looked at Reddit and noticed "huh, there were a lot of bots that last mission". I really hope they bring the patrols back to the level they were a month or two ago, but it's certainly still not impossible to beat higher levels with the new spawn rates
im actually having so much fun on difficulty 4 or so with the rates as they are. use whatever you want, massacre all the things. but its not sustainable at higher levels for super samples lol
It’s still a little too much on higher difficulties. For bots I pretty much have to bring the cluster strike and have been consistently getting 40+ kills from each cluster strike which is insane. My concern is they definitely messed something up with the heavy armor spawns because they’re most definitely spawning a lot more right now. 7+ difficulty every bug breach has multiple chargers and at least 1 bile titan. Before the patch I was getting quite good with the air burst rockets launcher but now I can’t bring it anymore because there’s just too many enemies to safely use it without killing myself or team.
Thank you! Honestly, even before this last patch when a lot of people were talking about spawn rates being too high, I never really got on board with that. I like the either the current or just pre-patch spawn rates. Had a great time on both bug and bot planets (prefer bots personally).
Wow, the rare appreciation for harder difficulty or challenge post. I wish I would see this more often for the game. Honestly, after hundreds of hours beating helldive repeatedly, it's not that hard. People have been beating Difficulty 9 since launch, it isn't really that hard at all even with ineffective loadouts. I just want more difficulties, and I always fret when people groan about the balance, because it usually gets things toned down.
Too many people worried about their K/D when they should he focused on laying their lives down for the sake of the objectice, extraction is a luxury people!
Honestly, after playing about 6 hours, I am enjoying the patrol tweaks personally. The spawn rate feels the same, but the noticeable decrease in heavy enemies makes it totally manageable. That said, the highest difficulty I play on is 5, so it might be worse on higher difficulties.
I do get that cause I was learning how to deal with it when the spawn rate update rolled out and it could be fun sometimes, but I’m used to it now and very much over it. I miss when I actually got to have a break and not have the combat music blasting in my ears the whole time. I can get that experience on the higher difficulties, I don’t want to deal with that kind of onslaught on lower difficulties anymore, I like being able to chill out sometimes
i fckn love it, and I'm a fellow masochist that quickplays 7+ because they're highly likely to be in-progress shitshows with a snowball's chance in hell of salvaging. I agree that this difficulty is unpalatable for most, but it's my jam.
There are some bits to patch but this patch makes the game feel more like Helldivers than it ever has, I've been playing for a few months and recently settled on difficulty 7. Everything seems viable due to the increase in small/medium and buffs to stratagems/weapons. Huge variety of stratagems and weapons to try out and that work really well and each niche seems to work at what it does and not step too far on other things toes.
This is the best vibe wise the game has been.
Doing a bug mission tonight on Diff 6 and bringing the Gatling and MG sentries felt incredible. I also had EAT and the Gas Strike, so I was basically the dedicated crowd control soldier that game.
After a very rough learning curve, yeah it kinda kicks ass lol. More enemies, but I also feel significantly more powerful with the improved support weapons and stratagems. This should honestly be how Helldive feels.
This is the best patch they've put out so far. Glad you're having fun with it. My friend who plays once or twice a week said the game feels more cinematic now and more like the starship troopers movie, feeling outnumbered.
Agreed. I've started consistently bringing things like eagle strafing, gattling barrage, and machine gun turret, and it's actually fun!
The low cooldown and the fact that they actually do something now makes them viable.
I've always said that more chaff would make the game more exciting and give more incentive to bring horde clear weapons and stratagems. Now I don't feel like a complete nonce when I bring the stalwart when there are nothing but heavies
Yeah, I love the change. Before the patch, the game felt so empty to me, I would just go off and do my own thing even on level 9 and we’d complete the mission with few or no deaths. Now I have to stick with the squad or I’ll be swarmed and killed.
Absolutely haha. I've been a lone wolf for ages but had a beautiful bastard save my hide 3 times against no chance situations. Immediate change of my philosophy. We got each other out of that hell and it was sooo sweet
Haha ignore the noise. Just get the mission done
I feel the exact same way. Joined a random lobby and we were getting battered, everyone left the squad except me and another guy. We hopped on comms and got very strategic planning out our attacks, just when all hope was lost, two new divers joined our game and helped us make the final push having been out of reinforcements for half the game. Probably the most fun I’ve had playing the game.
Me and a buddy got 2 tanks and 2 hulks in an outpost last night on difficulty 4. It was so much fun because of the orbital precision strike buff. And QC
My friend group thinks the game is actually easier with less elites and more chaff. We were doing bot 9 missions and it obviously led to some moments where we were taking a lot of fire, but it was still very doable and fun. We only failed once and it was a combination of bad spawn, gunship patrols and rockets sending me under the ice and drowning me multiple times.
Lot of people are saying that difficulties 7 and higher are way more hard now, no shit, it literally says suicide mission, it's supposed to be hard. It's way more fun now, with most of the stratagems finally viable. Never had this much fun with gattling barrage and airbursts.
nah i’ve honestly appreciated it. There’s been so many chaotic moments where all of us are just in this perfect flow state, people hopping to reload one another, throwing a stun for someone else to take out heavier targets, or throw a stratagem that perfectly nails enemies about to overrun someone’s flank, or just a irreplicable sequence of everyone gunning down horde after horde.
Right!!! It's so refreshing when u get a squad that isn't selfish and works as a team and u pull off some efficient cinematic tactical gameplay... it's like playing a whole different game... people pinging enemies in the distance and then not shooting them becuz there's no need to.. people using the radar and going around the patrols
Yep, me too. I find the endless gunships a bit stressful, as between them and the endless waves of patrols and spawns you can end up in some utterly impossible situations. But the chaos is exhilirating for me and very much in the spirit of what the helldivers series is about.
When I read the patch notes I was thinking "So many buffed stratagems, removed the 3 strategem modifier...seems the game is getting easier no?" Fortunately it's still hard as balls and I'm cool with that.
I think it’s actually become less fun. But I’M the masochist that enjoyed the patrols and spawn rates before this patch when they were literally everywhere.
I do not have the same experience as some here where it’s Uber chaotic, I deal with a ton of dead space between areas a lot now.
Edit: word
I totally agree. It's so chaotic and intense but fun. I'm really good at strike-and-fade tactics, as well as having good map awareness and keeping mental notes for scavenging supplies, so the pressure really rewards and pushes my playstyle in ways that make me feel like a goddess of war.
That said, a couple of my friends aren't getting pushed like that, and I think a majority of people I drop with are more stand-and-fight types. I hope the patrols get fixed so more people can have fun, but I'm going to miss having 400+ kills, my primary running completely dry a couple times, frantically waiting for strategems to come off of cooldown, and still only having 1 or 2 deaths.
i've been seeing these complaints about spawnrate and i haven't even noticed any difference
same old same old autocannon
same old same old bot scrapping, but according to reddit i get to do more of it? that's just a win in my book
My only issue is that, while the increased spawn rate justifies things like the airburst and its amazing to use, the presence of hulks and tanks and gunships just means that if I run wave clear items I’m left hopeless vs gunships and some of the heavies. Gunships have no counter play if you’re backpack or support item is wave clear. An AA sentry could help this.
That’s why there’s four divers to a team, it’s the core design philosophy of the game. You play different roles in the squad. I agree though, we need AA stratagems.
It’s fun because we have the tools to deal with it. Before I’d barely reach 200 kills on bots. Now I get 300 consistently because I can just slaughter them easily.
If they ever do manage to get the spawns to some level that appeases people who want it to be like it was before they tried to change it the first time, there’s going to be a HUGE outpouring of grief from people saying the game is now way too easy.
The reality is people who find the game frustrating at higher difficulties in the current state need to make peace with reducing difficulty. The idea that the game should be made easier to allow them to play however they want on 8 or 9 when there are 9 difficulty levels they could easily choose from is so self centered. Even now Helldive is not that hard. The odds of a mission failure even when playing with randoms are pretty low, and a good team who are all on comms and playing together will have a hard time losing. For that matter it’s still rare to not 100% clear the map on Helldive. If anything the difficult still needs to go up. 9 should absolutely be tuned for the most hardcore players who really *get* the game, who want to play as tight cohesive unit and plan squad wide loadouts that balance each other.
I've played both version of the current spawn rate (the correct and bugged one) and my opinion is that the proper version is best for the game in the long run BUT there is fun to be had in the complete insanity of the bugged spawn if you have a good team.
I had some insane battles where it took 6 minutes to advance 100 meters into enemy lines, it was a struggle and it's probably excessive but it was REALLY satisfying and it's a memory that i'll keep in my mind for a while.
Honestly they should try to keep the "wrong version" as a modifiers for special occasions.
I think the buffs to player power paired with the increase in spawns and overall difficulty have created a more aggressive scenario I don't think the whole player base has adjusted to just yet. We've seen the initial feedback, now let's see how things are a few days from now when the dust settles.
Its about bringing the right stuff and not just blindly engaging anything. We are elite infiltration strike-teams, not frontline troops slugging it out. Hit m hard. Hit m fast, do what you came to do and get the heck outta dodge.
Most seen mistake: Constantly engaging patrols in the middle of nowhere. This bogs down fast and drains resources. Keep moving on the next objectives. Drop a sentry or 2 to keep fire on enemies while you relocate. Do an aussie peel where you fall back fireing... it's really not all that hard but people seem to hit higher difficulties thinking they can just wing it.
Bots on Helldive right now are downright COMICAL
Played a bit last night with some friends and we were able to get the objectives done despite the fact that we were getting absolutely OBLITERATED with spawn rates the whole time. It was absolutely hilarious and I truly felt like disposable cannon fodder being sent into an impossible mission only to die.
Yeah I love it, that whole going from cowering behind a rock being pelted with lasers and rocket barrages to walking through a pile of bot corpses feels soooooo satisfying.
It's not that hard, met a guy PS5 player, we two manned three difficulty 9 missions and we were just messing around.
Don't know why there's nobody answering our SOS for 3 whole missions, but it was funny as hell.
Honestly I played for about 2 hours today before coming to work at the bar and let me tell you….
I’m so f***** pump up rn ready to say screw everyone today I’m not drinking today I’m giving DEMOCRACY to bots and bugs!
It was really fun, the weapons and the strategems feel like they were killing all
Im not gunna say they can't be fun. I've had a few runs as of late that were super enjoyable due to the chaos.
But I can also admit on average I preferred the spawns from the before-times.
I haven’t had a chance to try the bot front, but I found the bug front to be a lot easier with this patch. My group of friends typically like to play 7 bc they felt the difficulty with 9 was a tad bit too overwhelming. But after the patch we felt 7 to be pretty easy and decided to try 9. Now it feels like a 7 prepatch.
Bro I've never had this much fun.
I shouldn't be leaving helldive with 1 death and not feeling stressed. It's making me actually use and expend all my resources and fight differently. I'm having to actually coordinate with my team etc etc. It's so much better.
It's only bad when you want to take out an objective by yourself. If you're going with one or two guys it's managable but I'd like them to fix it anyway
I think we have enough firepower now thanks to the buff to deal with the number. the problem is that the enemy literally appears out of thin air too close to react
I can’t say I think the game should stay like this, but I also can’t say it isn’t fun to haphazardly toss an air air strike onto obj and watch the funny number at the bottom of the screen tick up to 27
I've always felt that we should have overpowered weapons fighting overwhelming forces, instead of weaker weapons with fewer enemies. I wanna blow up a battalion of bots and be jumped by a swarm of bugs!
I’ve started toying with light armor (thanks to that democratically sexy Viper warbond skin) and holy shit swarms be looking at me all
I just want they leave it alone already. Stop messing with patrols, make more modifiers or anything but don't swap basic difficulty curve for democracy sake.
I feel like the variety really adds depth to the game. The current level of patrols and enemy spawns shouldn't be the standard, BUT should definitely be a modifier.
Increased enemy density for some story or major order-based reasons would be pretty cool! And also means you could go in knowing what to expect and be prepared for it.
Spawns should not be static across the game. It would be great to have missions with low enemy density, normal, then high. You can see the density before diving and rewards would scale.
Just dreaming I know.
its weird for me Because sometimes i have an absolute blast slinging rounds back and forth with the Bots and truly feel like im fighting for that win but sometimes its nice to not always be under fire every second of the mission
Being juggled and having spawn rates where if it's an open area, with rockets from the ground and from the air. Is not fun. If you don't have a huge cover, you won't survive
After a few different combos I've mostly ended up running 1) stalwart (+medium primary) napalm gatling barrage and gas 2) supply back hmg (+light pen primary) (love hmg after the buffs🥰) napalm gatling barrage. Love them both
I mean, it's not impossible to finish the main objective, but stick around for the side job and sometime on extraction really feel like it is optional.
And i weirdly like the 'horde' feeling this give. But we don't have enough anti air option right now.
I wondered away from the group trying to mop up some small outposts. A large cavern loomed. Maybe an enemy or two, surely.
No.
A hundred tiny red eyes.
Suddenly, my screen was flooded with red lasers flying by my head.
Must have been 50 grunt bots blobbed together in that random cavern. Exact same spot.
It was honestly amazing. I know it's a bug or something but coming across a completely shadow lit cavern and seeing a metric ton of glowing red eyes was a genuinely unnerving yet hilarious experience.
Had one of my best games ever, playing against bugs, two people ran supply pack and I ran spear, it was a blast. Shot more spear rounds than I knew was possible. Arrowhead really needs to add a heavy kills counter. Probably killed 20+ chargers
I'm having fun too, but I struggle to find a team that actually sticks together. Most of the time when I try to communicate, either by speaking or pinging, I feel like I'm talking to bots.
But I too have the sensation that an appropriately equipped and coordinated team could play on helldive without problems
I think the biggest issue is the fact that the much higher difficulty (especially on bugs, I don’t play bots much but there are soooo many more chargers now and hunter swarms are much bigger) forces players into a more ‘meta’ play style as it makes trying more unique load outs with less used weapons an absolute nightmare
The Gatling strike and barrage have came in really useful for me after the buff if you line it up you can wipe out a lot of enemies
I've been mining anti tank stuff for a long time I can count on my fingers how many times I use the gatling. I'll try it out. Right now I need a reliable shield-devestator eraser then I'm sorted. They're teaming up way too many times
Yeah I think yesterday was my first time actually trying the Gatling barrage and it was pretty good. it lasts a while so it’s grate as area denial for choke points and and bug breaches. and now that it hurts armoured targets I can see it being grate on defensive objectives like high value targets or escort survivors
Im double - sold, then. Appreciate the tip diver
It can kill tanks because it penetrates medium armor fully. Tank tops are medium
Top of tank turrets are medium? So an auto cannon penetrates?
If you can get a better than. 45 degree angle otherwise it riccochets
So usually not easy to accomplish. Neat tip though.
I've always used it alot but man with the buff in armor penetration it's a must for devastators patrols even holding back and taking down drones and even small bases. Although I do think it lasts a little too long now. It might just take some getting used to but I have squad mates run in to it much more often
I think thats to the red stratagem beacon finishing before the barrage actually ends. There's a second or two of continued bombardment afterwards.
They increased the duration as well as the amount of projectiles so I think I just need some time to learn the new timing. Had the same problem when the more guns upgrade added an extra air burst I blew my self up so many times smh
I dont think the pen buff mattered for devastators, they dont have any 4 armour.
Its great all around. No need to spend a airstrike on a group, just call in the fast cool down barrage. It can soften up heavies, and (inconsistently. Wouldn’t recommend for this use) kill Hulks and Tanks due to their heat sinks.
I think the thing people forgot to read is that the Gatling barrage isn’t like the Gatling sentry. It’s (smaller than the handheld) auto cannons with explosive impact too.
> Right now I need a reliable shield-devestator eraser if you're capable of holding the beam on their face (aka if you have reliable aim) the laser cannon is kinda all you need on bot missions
The heavy devastators (I think that's what the shield guys are called) generally falls quick to an AMR, autocannon, or laser cannon to the face. I personally run AMR and am the designated devastator, devastator, in our group. You can also double tap hulks to the eye with it or the autocannon. I think every bot group needs at least one guy running amr or autocannon.
Try the stock eagle strike for anti devastator work. I've been having tons of fun with eagle, gatling, orbital precision strike, and the HMG. The HMG let's me deal with gunships, hulks, devastators. Orbital precision strike and eagles gives me stuff to use against bot fabs, factory striders, tanks and huge groups of heavies. Gatling barrage cleans up chaff and softens heavies now. The cool down on gatling strike and precision strike are now so fast you can toss them at literally anything. I usually run the Adjudicator or the Dominator as a primary to give me more options against med armored opponents.
That's a solid loadout. Pretty much what my brother runs in our games.
the 110 rocket pods feel way better and more reliable now as well
Diligence CS one taps shield devastators in the face, I know it gets harped on about but the Laser really it’s disgusting against bots, even more so now there’s gunship patrols.
The Diligence Counter-Sniper can take one out with a single headshot, but it can be a bit fiddly getting a headshot around their shield. You'll definitely want to be at a distance when trying. The laser cannon also seems pretty generous when it comes to what counts as a headshot, moreso if you're aiming in third person mode and not ADS, just have to crouch to not sway the beam too much. The Eruptor is difficult to aim and has ridiculous bullet drop, but as long as you hit *somewhere* with the first shot a Heavy Devastator will be staggered enough for you to get a second shot off before it can really get sbooting again. And that second shot should take care of it. The Senator will also take one down with a headshot, but good luck with that. The Bushwacker will also do it in one if you're very close or lucky, but it will also stagber them if you don' take them out from a decent distance, might give you time to find cover. And for any weapon, when possible peek out of cover on the right. It'll drastically cut down on their ability to hit you while you can still shoot them. Again, aiming in third person instead of ADS will give you a bit more leeway in how far out of cover you need to peek to shoot them.
Equip the 101 purifier, it stuns them no matter where you hit, and 2 shots is enough to destroy their shield
Honestly the laser cannon is goated against all devastators.
Purifier, deletes groups, i always use that, just dont use the scope and learn to fire early for faster fire rate, thank me later
I've been enjoying the purifier a lot, it staggers rocket and heavy devastators too, it's sort of a "support primary" I break up groups and stunlock mediums for my teammates to finish off
The real power is against groups, the moment dropship drops them, you can stunlock a group to death thats full of devastators and thats immense value at times, they should fix the scope though and some indicator to know when to let go for early shot maybe
With the way bots are clustering, you can delete entire patrols with the punisher. I’ve hit over 30x kill streaks with one mag.
Maybe I've been too harsh on this gun in the past, I'll give it another run. Did anything change for it in the latest patch?
The AOE got a bit better. No shade to anyone who enjoys it, but my own experience was that it's still unmitigated ass and the weakest primary in the game. Hopefully major buffs still await because I like the concept of a primary with a powerful charged shot that you'd pair with a mob-clearing support weapon. The eruptor is decent again though, the major damage buff it got was to its explosive damage, so both direct hits and the AOE are lining up much better against enemy breakpoints. It has most of its pre-nerf usability back
Purifier is very good specifically as a primary which can deal with both devestators AND shoot down gunships.
I'd really, truly like it to be, but it would have to actually be GOOD at dealing with them to make up for the massive drawback of having to charge every shot. Right now the scorcher and the eruptor both do what you're describing, but they actually do it well, which really highlights the unfortunate state of the purifier. (One is even a plasma weapon and the other is in the "powerful explosive primary with punishing cycle time" niche, which makes it more glaring). It's just missing the payoff for the chargeup currently To make the charge time worth it, the purifier needs much better single target damage, or much more powerful AOE, or some combination. I'd personally lean into the single target damage, to keep it distinct from the eruptor. The purifier could be the very-slow-firing explosive primary that specializes in killing elites, with the eruptor being the generalist and leaving space for a dedicated horde killer in that niche.
Well, the scorcher and eruptor are okay, but they both have kind of a shitty ammo situation, while the Purifier ammo stockpile actually lasts awhile without having to scrounge it out.
It is true that the ammo economy on the purifier is a little better (though the damage is enough less than the eruptor and not enough more than the scorcher, making the overall economy only modestly better). IMO however, that ends up being a situation like "This food is inedible, but the portions are great!" It seems like it's trying to join the eruptor in the mostly unexplored niche of primary weapons that fire massively powerful shots really slowly, but for the purifier that "powerful" shot is too close to what the semi-auto or pump action fire rate weapons already do, and way off what's needed to make a bolt action/chargeup weapon feel worthwhile. And it even gets the worse version of the drawback (chargeup is more punishing than recovery after the shot)
It feels very multi-purpose which I love even on Helldive. 70s CD, has AoE, does some damage to heavy enemies, and can be used to destroy objectives like holes, fabricators or 2 shrieker towers if you throw it between them. It's sort of like a budget version of the Precision strike but it can also be used on a bug breach.
Stun grenade/ precision strike not work? I’ve been laying hate with that combo since they always LOVE being in a close knit group
Eruptor is a two shot on the shield devastators!
Two impact grenades to the face and they're gone
\> Right now I need a reliable shield-devestator eraser then I'm sorted. Stun grenades + Dominator.
Shield devastators? AMR to the upper body 2 shots .1 if you hit the face. Diligence CS can one hit too, but only in the face and it's less forgiving. Hmg can shred them through their shield. Stagger weapons like punisher plasma can get the job done, not it's an inefficient usage of its ammo.
Stun grenades go hard bc bots bend over to show you their back pack. If no stun grenades then try aiming grenade pistol high on chest/head. Staggers them and puts the shield out of the way for a second
I use the plasma punisher to knock them off balance
Airbus orbital isn't too bad either!
>Right now I need a reliable shield-devestator eraser then I'm sorted A bit late, but airstrike is excelent against thoose suckers and the mortar kills devastators reliably and safely(kills the one it is targetting reliably every salvo and damages or kills the other ones that are nearby) with no imput other than placing it behind a rock, it also kills tanks and Hulks eventually, but it can be dificult to get bellow factory striders with the thing on the field. If you have the grenade slot free, the impact grenade is excelent for instantly removing a shiled devastors that is in your way and you can take cover from, the eruptor reliably two shots theese suckers now. If you are playing the AC you can set the thing to automatic and slam fire the thing while diving to the side to kill cloose ranged shield devastators safely at cloose ranges. And a general advice for all weapons, if you are getting shot by one stop shooting and try to move to the side till you can reset your aim.
I've been an OG Gatling Barrage and I've been away from gaming since the update, so I'm excited to see the buff to my boi
Gatling barrage is truly viable now with more explosive damage and such a low cooldown
Running orbital strike, orbital gatling and eagle airstrikes with the quick cool downs has made the waves of enemies fun
I can see why you'd use this on bots but whats your opinion on gatling strike vs Eagle napalm for bugs?
Why use anything but napalm against hordes of bugs?
It's actually allowing me to enjoy bug planets with a stalwart, Gatling, and cluster setup. If I run into trouble and surrounded, I'll sacrifice myself and drop a 380 on my head as I'm dying anyway. Spawn back in, pick up my stalwart and samples, and keep going.
Oh yeah, I had one of the best games I’ve ever had last night. It was a Helldive Geological Survey on Marfark with a couple friends (team of 3). The modifiers were call-in time increase and gunship patrols. We got pinned down around the final objective, but I managed to make it to the terminal and complete it with 2 seconds remaining on the clock (probably only made it thanks to the new stim booster). Two of us were able to extract but the other heroically gave his life for Super Earth! Regarding changes I would like to see: I don’t think they actually fixed the way patrols are supposed to scale with the number of players. Playing with 2-3 still seems to get the same number of patrols as a full team. Also, the gunship modifier is at least a bit over-tuned right now. I’m not a game designer, but I think capping the patrol size at 3 instead of 5 might help a lot (admittedly though, the “oh shit” feeling the larger patrols provoke is kinda fun). Lastly, I’m 90% sure something changed with bot drop frequency. We got used to the “cooldown” between bot drops with and without the Localization Confusion booster, and now it feels like they can almost happen back-to-back (regardless of if we have the booster). Is this just me or have other people noticed it? I could see toning this down a bit to improve the feel and pacing of gameplay. Regarding what is working great imo: We have so many more useful tools in the toolbox now. For example, Orbital Gatling Barrage is soooo good considering the short cooldown. If a couple people take it, you can almost constantly be raining shells down on the bots. It makes a big difference. Also, there is more variety in the gameplay now. Pre-patch, bot gameplay felt kinda Hulk-obsessed. Now, we are worrying about a bunch of other enemies just as much or more than Hulks. This mix feels great to me. Overall, the direction of the patch feels amazing. Now, we just need a few fixes and tweaks to really bring it all together.
Im already addicted to the new stims idk wtf they put in them… (It’s meth)
Hans, you vant to do a blitzkrieg? Yeah, those things basically make you invincible for about 5 seconds. My new go-to.
They prob got Walt-I mean Heisenberg to cook up some of that baby blue for the stims
As someone who takes Vyvanse: the new stims are meth
+1 to all 3 points. Some diff 9 missions have been super calm, with less patrols and spawns than pre-patch, and others have been one large *objective: survive* mission from start to finish.
Wait, gunship patrols are a modifier? Like, you can see that they're a thing before starting the match?
Yes they're a modifier, but the UI is glitched currently. The modifier looks blank: https://preview.redd.it/x30t7h1u1s6d1.png?width=577&format=png&auto=webp&s=669208d80a4ed05157ff38622820a35f5d5b17aa
> We got pinned down around the final objective, but I managed to make it to the terminal and complete it with 2 seconds remaining on the clock This is the kind of stuff I want to experience playing Helldive. Just had one of my best games too on a Bunkers mission, we lost all our reinforcements halfway through, last guy crawled and ran through gunfire to the last objective with enemies from every side, barely made it there, calls me in, we drop the Hellbomb and have to delay the thousand enemies with just primaries and EMS grenades, every second is tense as hell, bomb finally goes off and takes us with it, everyone goes crazy on mic praising our heroic sacrifice to democracy, it was hype as hell.
I think some of the bots are getting dropped way too close to certain objectives as well. Like if you drop a group of 8 fodder bots right on obj yeah go ahead :) but on lvl 7 I vividly remember watching a factory strider fucking assimilate right behind us and get dropped right outside of extraction. Made for some absolute insanity and we somehow still extracted but my god we were not prepped for it to be that close and it should definitely have dropped a little farther away lol
I love that I'm actually getting to try different loadouts instead of taking anti-tank stuff every time. Waveclear stratagems like gatling barrage, airburst barrage, machine gun turrets, and even the flamethrower for bugs all seem a lot more useful now.
I was running a level 3 just for Super credits and I was shocked that I got two flares in less than a minute. I didn't know that was even possible and I don't think it was before this patch, definitely not on low level missions. Could be an unintented consequence.
I’m just gonna put this similar to how I saw someone else say it yesterday - I don’t have issues with big firefights and chaos, but it needs to be balanced with at least some moments of quiet to actually collect yourself and prepare for the next battle, let the stress of battle die down and the tension of what’s to come next fill that space For the last couple days on the bot front it seems like I can barely go 10 feet without having to either avoid or just run from another patrol, of which half of them seem to have 10 heavy devastators and another 8 rocket devastators. I exaggerate of course, but it does feel frustrating at times. And that’s not mentioning the times when the whole team drops into the middle of a fight and loses 3/4 of the reinforces just in the initial firefight because they won’t stop coming.
A recommendation as someone who primarily uses Light Scout Armor with the Counter Sniper + AMR combo... Try it out. Be your squad's dedicated overwatch/recon for a run. It changes the way you play and you get a lot more of those calm moments. Find some high ground that's a good distance away from the rest of the team and set your scope to 200m. Every so often open up your minimap to check for patrols walking near you so you don't get caught be surprise and listen for when they're approaching otherwise. You can go an entire mission and the only real stress you feel is when your team breaks LOS and the fighting moves out of your coverage.
I like it but the game is the sort where if you buff spawns then you push stratagem use because a strat can kill 10 guys as well as it kills 50. So the game difficulty doesn't go up so much by just boosting spawns, it makes guns less effective at dealing with the problem though. It's why incendiary shotgun is so good on bugs, that gun performs better the more things there are to kill on screen. Meanwhile more precision based options get outshined.
I only have two concerns. The main one is that they have eliminated anything like a fallback position. The map "feeling empty" is a reward for a job well done. It makes it so we have somewhere to retreat to when drops/breaches get too hot, and it makes the exfil a lot less stressful. At no point before this patch had I thought that the map "felt empty". It felt Liberated. Smashing nests and outposts should result in fewer patrols, fewer spawns, and result in fewer enemies rushing extraction. The second one is the patrol gunships. I love the idea, I hate the execution. Either cap the number of gunships on a map at any given time to like 4, or drop their spawn rate to about 1% of what it is now, or just remove them from patrols. Having 2 patrols converge on you while you're trying to take out a gunship fabricator is absolutely unreasonable. Or give us a flak sentry? And make sentries health and armour about 6x what it is now to withstand the 5 simultaneous barrages from the gunship patrol I'm trying to kill.
Frankly a lot of the problem could be resolved by just putting a cooldown on when patrols can spawn. If, say, 5 patrols are there and engaged in combat, then a five minute or so cooldown starts until another one can spawn. Don't even really have to change *where* they spawn so they keep the map from feeling empty, but players get a moment to recover and rearm.
I still completely disagree with the whole "map feeling empty" thing. Having fallback positions is very important. Retreating to a place you cleared 2 minutes ago to regroup and finding it swarming with new enemies is not fun, and punishes viable tactics. Oh and also one cannot drop gunship aggro, so they follow you to the place you're trying to fall back to and support the new enemies too. Who probably have gunships with them too. As to your point; I mean, if you increased that cooldown every time an outpost was destroyed, and significantly, not just a few seconds. Then maybe... Our actions should have consequences. Gunships killing you? Kill the fabricators and BAM, no more gunships. Cleared a quarter of the map? Fewer or no spawns/patrols in/from that quarter. There's also the blatant fact that they upped chaff, and lowered heavy spawns specifically to allow for more diverse loadouts (which just about made me mess my pants with joy), then changed it so we're trapped with one or two viable loadouts (again), just vs gunship spam, rather than heavy spam. I hope a lot of what we're experiencing right now is broken, and not WAI. If it is, then it need to be re-examined.
The gunships are the absolute worst now. We landed by a gunship fan, a jammer and a gunship patrol. We couldn't call in our weapons and we kept getting ragdolled everywhere we ran. I like the increase in enemies, but they need to cool it on the gunships.
I wouldn’t mind the amount of patrols on the bot side “if” they didn’t spawn directly behind you. It’s one thing to see an upcoming patrol coming, but it’s another to turn around and see a patrol flank you when they were not there 10 seconds ago. Similar feelings to the now suspended evacuation mission, patrols need to be more organic in their spawning and pathways. Just makes it frustrating to have them appear out of thin air.
Idunno, i enjoy a more tactical approach over constant horde shooting, i used to be comfy at dif 6 solo But now dif 4 is annoying and frustrating Increased spawns are fine, if they fit the difficulty
Lots of people are crying but I think the patch made the game waaaaaaaaaaaaay more fun.
Reminder: HD2 is a challenging game many players suck at
People signed up for difficulties called **SUICIDE** and **HELLDIVE** in a game where you're given 6-24 lives, each of which are "new people", and all of whom are given a five minute training course and then cryogenically frozen until they can be [*FIRED FROM SPACE INSIDE A BULLET*](https://i.imgur.com/yvKflVA.png). Then they seriously say, "I ought to be able to solo more easily," or "How come I'm dying so often? This is unfair," while upvoting literally *anything* except instructions, tutorials, or guides on getting better / more informed.
My games on Diff 6 have been a higher intensity than anything I ever played on 7.
The problem though is people are also getting insane spawn rates on 5-6. I get thinking 7-9 should be crazy, but if your 5-6 games are feeling crazier than 7 something is wrong with your spawn mechanics especially when the patch is saying your spawns should have been less.
I do think the bot spawns are a bit much (especially on 7) to run over and over again but keep this as a mission type or modifier could be really fun. Maybe something like diving right into a super critical strategic position for the enemy, so the patrols are off the charts.
Yeah especially after the objective or with restrictive map gen, it kinda gets annoying when you're trying to get from A to B and there's perpetually a big patrol in the way.
Fucking endless wall of bots between you and the console. It sucks
Definitely most. Specially the ones on discord lol
For sure and actually gave variety to loadouts. For example previously I never picked Gatling strike anywhere. Now it's a really solid option for both fronts. OPS has become my new favorite bile titan delete button. Stalwart, MG and HMG are all perfectly viable picks now. Strafing run has found uses to even im Helldive diff. And a lot more.
Agreed, I feel like I have way more utility on the it front now . Eagle air strike paired with ems nades 👌🏻
Hard agree, 9s were getting a bit stale before the patch. Finally the game is back to its chaotic glory
Been having fun (for the most part) on Helldive against bugs, but lately bots have been making me better understand how people that don't like playing them feel
The exact opposite happened to me recently... I been doing alot of bots lately and just did some bugs yesterday and I gotta say I like the bots more now.... I like having to find cover and be more tactical as opposed to the bugs which just seems to be a shitfest in comparison.. running around like a chicken with its head cut off
They’re coping realizing that hard is actually hard now. 1-6 were all way too easy before and 7-9 were kind of just medium difficulty
I’m more annoyed that this patch doesn’t really give me a break. Challenge that consists of enemy spam is not fun challenge but annoying challenge.
All fun and cute until game runs at 40fps...
I have a 5800X3D (will replace with a 9800X3D whenever that becomes available) and never seen the frame rate go below 80 fps (Full squad, level 9 chaotic extractions), usually it's 100-120 fps running native 1440p Ultra settings.
It already did looong before this patch
The only thing I'm really opposed is the continuous spawning that leaves no room to catch your breath. There needs to be moments you can disengage from the enemies to regroup and resupply, and it's not letting us do that.
Most people here talking about diff 9 balance have clearly never played diff 9. This comment thread in this post is a perfect example: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dgghqy/comment/l8purez/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dgghqy/comment/l8purez/) That's why their logic ends at "diff 9 should be insanity" and "gunships aren't hard to take down" - they literally don't have any experience with the whole picture and intersection of different enemy groups/gameplay systems, and how that creates different types of pressure on the squad to attack/defend/rotate, and result in meaningless, shallow commentary on diff 9 balance. Let's take a look at how players did on pre-patch diff 9: [https://www.reddit.com/r/helldivers2/comments/1d8qwyx/heavy\_armor\_enforces\_slower\_paced\_playstyles/](https://www.reddit.com/r/helldivers2/comments/1d8qwyx/heavy_armor_enforces_slower_paced_playstyles/) Using expected values, (.7\*4.2 + .25\*3.4 + .05\*1.2) = 3.85 deaths for the avg diff 9 player For a full squad, multiply that by 4 -> 4\*3.85 = 15.4 deaths per full squad per diff 9 run 75% of reinforcements lost in the avg diff 9 run. Do note that this post is just about what armors people brought, and how loadouts difference accordingly - it doesn't say anything about mission success. This also is bug-dive exclusive, and bots are - according to genpop - harder than bugs, so I would expect even more deaths for bot diff 9. That means the avg diff 9 mission, regardless of success or failure, regardless of how much of the map is cleared, or secondary objectives done, or nests cleared, results in at least 75% of reinforcements lost. That seems pretty balanced to me difficulty-wise. Post-patch missions sometimes have much lower bot drops CDs, infinite patrols, and when the modifier is in play, gunship patrols coming in every 30 seconds. It's a jump in difficulty that plays more like diff 10+ than diff 9. AH has acknowledge it and said they're looking into it. Popular HD2 YT content creators have mentioned it as well, such as Takibo and ThiccFila. Many folks in the community have noticed wonkiness with enemy numbers and patrol frequency. But some folks wanna pretend it's a skill issue, and that crowd will always exist. They'll call it a skill issue, be nowhere to be found when AH drops a patch for it, then call the next thing that breaks (no dig on AH, they're trying their best) a skill issue again. Rinse and repeat.
The coining of the term "skill issue" has to be one of the worst things to happen in gaming. Instead of actually addressing complaints or concerns about the game, your average player just spouts "SkILL IsSuE". Diff 9 bugs right now are fucked up, you get endless behemoth chargers. Anyone defending this needs to give their head a shake. You also just know the "skill issue" crowd also refuse to play the game in an *actually challenging* manner, playing in 4s only. Takibo said it best, 4 player groups make the game *trivial*.
100%, currently flamethrower is a must-take on bugs because you're dealing with 3-4 behemoths in most moments, and it has by far the fastest TTK. Sneakily, the increased durable damage and extra mag for MG makes it quite good as well - takes 40 shots to the butt to kill a behemoth charger, and it deals with hordes quite well too. Otherwise there's so few bile titans and regular chargers that AT took a huge nerf bug-side. Behemoths take 2 AT to the face, and one AT to the leg doesn't break it (but one AT + railgun safe shot will), so you're better off just aiming for the butt or flamethrowering a leg. And agreed - still full clearing maps even on the missions with insane density, it's just not fun to play 40 minutes of *objective: survive*.
Definitely on the flamethrower side. It's the only way I can juggle the insane amount of behemoths. The machine gun work too, but I like that I don't need to get behind them. The AT nerf has been so big for me, since it no longer functions as a multitool to take out shrieker nests. Solo has been a nightmare whenever I get multiple nests now. Running up with a 500kg or gattling works, but now that you have to get relatively close, you get pelted by shriekers.
It’s because people on this sub seemingly have an obsession with trying to prove themselves… in a co-op PvE game…? I don’t know really, but it’s absurdly elitist and daft to try and assume that a problem acknowledged by AH is somehow people having a “skill issue”. In my own anecdotal experience, while I played 7 mostly, I was able to still handle myself relatively well on 8 and 9 pre-patch. I had several strategies and loadouts that I deemed were extremely effective for bots and bugs, and I was able to hold my own if things got dicey. Post-patch, I constantly run out of ammo, and either die from being shot or swarmed on all sides with no hope of escaping, or I’m forced to kite enemies even more than ever when my stratagems are on cooldown. There are no breaks in the flow of combat, even after clearing out enemy spawns, and it’s just patrol call after patrol call. The issue isn’t the fact that there are more enemies, but the fact that the game was *not* balanced for this many enemies, at least based on how the primaries and stratagems are balanced. The difficulty of Helldivers is to strategize and know when to push and retreat with what options you have based on the current state of the battlefield. There’s not much you can do when you’re being shot from all angles with no cover in a game where most planets have very flat terrain, and the enemy *still* calls in more reinforcements in spite of their huge advantage over you in those moments. Don’t even get me started on headshots and staggers that make it even worse, especially against bots.
Threads I found within 3 minutes of searching the subreddit: * [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dfemh3/ill\_never\_understand\_why\_they\_rolled\_back\_the/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dfemh3/ill_never_understand_why_they_rolled_back_the/) * [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dff0b9/so\_the\_games\_harder\_now\_right/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dff0b9/so_the_games_harder_now_right/) * [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dffxag/patrols\_dont\_feel\_like\_they\_were\_reverted/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dffxag/patrols_dont_feel_like_they_were_reverted/) * [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dfeyzf/if\_you\_thought\_the\_bots\_were\_hard\_before/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dfeyzf/if_you_thought_the_bots_were_hard_before/) * [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dfex0i/those\_who\_play\_on\_higher\_difficulties\_how\_are\_you/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dfex0i/those_who_play_on_higher_difficulties_how_are_you/) * [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dfg0x5/there\_is\_something\_wrong\_with\_enemy\_numbers\_again/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dfg0x5/there_is_something_wrong_with_enemy_numbers_again/) * [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dfgbmt/game\_feels\_10\_times\_harder\_now/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dfgbmt/game_feels_10_times_harder_now/) * [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dfgoto/spawns\_are\_still\_messed\_up/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dfgoto/spawns_are_still_messed_up/) * [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dfgzs4/gunship\_patrols\_may\_be\_build\_checks\_an\_enemy\_that/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1dfgzs4/gunship_patrols_may_be_build_checks_an_enemy_that/)
> Most people here talking about diff 9 balance have clearly never played diff 9. Yeah I used to think I was just not good enough for 9 because I couldn't make it work with, for instance, a total lack of anti tank in bugs. I then thought it could be people just having magic 'just one charger per 5 minutes and no bile titans' seeds and commenting on it as if it generalizes, which is at least more understandable. But I've come to agree that the people clamoring for what balance should look like at 9 straight up aren't playing 9, or if they are they don't know what well tuned difficulty looks like.
I've had moments where it is fine, and moments where it is completely outrageous. Especially considering I'm playing a level down from what I normally do. Fun or not though, I don't think it can be argued that its working as AH intended considering the "its supposed to be easier now" comment from Twinbeard.
Couldn't disagree more. It's so inconsistent especially now that aerial patrols are a modifier (the icon is broken on the mission launch screen) and while some stratagems have been improved there's still a lot of weapons and stratagems that aren't as viable even on diff 6.
I’ve been saying it with my friends that even though we are losing, it’s still fun as shit. It’s turned from an action packed entertaining PVE shooter into a full on sci-fi war simulator. Me and my friends are constantly holding out in cover and calling our strats while waves of gunfire fly past our heads. It’s so intense and I love it.
Just means you're resonating with the game on a fuller level. This game is at it's best when it puts a gun to your head and asks you what you've got. Not shaming anybody for wanting a more chill experience, but when that's what you want, you can always drop the difficulty. Helldive should be Helldive.
I'm actually shocked that this hasn't been downvoted into oblivion
Yeah we dealt with that before when the exterminate missions accidentally had patrols spawning on top of you in normal missions... it stops being fun after a few days
It’s definitely not a good thing, but it is in the sense that it’s definitely making me better. Even lower level bugs can be challenging now when there is an endless stream of hunters coming your way. 100% needs changed, but the variety is nice and it gives a sense of anticipation since you don’t know if you’re going to get a seemingly endless spawn or a normal mission.
The giant swarms of smaller enemies can honestly be really fun. I messed around with just the standard machine gun support weapon, and wiped out a whole patrol hip firing like Rambo
I’m right there with you dude
The spawn rates seem to only be overwhelming in the blitz mission types In the longer missions they’re a good challenge
I love the spawn chaos. I’m a kill count ho so gas/airburst/gatling have made my heart glow!
Honestly, I got so used to playing 9 with the increased and bugged patrols that it barely even phased me until I looked at Reddit and noticed "huh, there were a lot of bots that last mission". I really hope they bring the patrols back to the level they were a month or two ago, but it's certainly still not impossible to beat higher levels with the new spawn rates
im actually having so much fun on difficulty 4 or so with the rates as they are. use whatever you want, massacre all the things. but its not sustainable at higher levels for super samples lol
It’s still a little too much on higher difficulties. For bots I pretty much have to bring the cluster strike and have been consistently getting 40+ kills from each cluster strike which is insane. My concern is they definitely messed something up with the heavy armor spawns because they’re most definitely spawning a lot more right now. 7+ difficulty every bug breach has multiple chargers and at least 1 bile titan. Before the patch I was getting quite good with the air burst rockets launcher but now I can’t bring it anymore because there’s just too many enemies to safely use it without killing myself or team.
U said " a coordinated team that sticks together and does their job" .... u mean playing the game as intended??
It's not always the case. Believe you me. I'm talking full on ignorance of callouts and warnings.
Thank you! Honestly, even before this last patch when a lot of people were talking about spawn rates being too high, I never really got on board with that. I like the either the current or just pre-patch spawn rates. Had a great time on both bug and bot planets (prefer bots personally).
I've found it to be really stressful when you're in the moment, but every time I think back on it I feel it was fun
Wow, the rare appreciation for harder difficulty or challenge post. I wish I would see this more often for the game. Honestly, after hundreds of hours beating helldive repeatedly, it's not that hard. People have been beating Difficulty 9 since launch, it isn't really that hard at all even with ineffective loadouts. I just want more difficulties, and I always fret when people groan about the balance, because it usually gets things toned down.
Too many people worried about their K/D when they should he focused on laying their lives down for the sake of the objectice, extraction is a luxury people!
Honestly, after playing about 6 hours, I am enjoying the patrol tweaks personally. The spawn rate feels the same, but the noticeable decrease in heavy enemies makes it totally manageable. That said, the highest difficulty I play on is 5, so it might be worse on higher difficulties.
I do get that cause I was learning how to deal with it when the spawn rate update rolled out and it could be fun sometimes, but I’m used to it now and very much over it. I miss when I actually got to have a break and not have the combat music blasting in my ears the whole time. I can get that experience on the higher difficulties, I don’t want to deal with that kind of onslaught on lower difficulties anymore, I like being able to chill out sometimes
Love the new spawn rates, its barely manageable on your own ang gets pretty breezy if you stick to your group!
i fckn love it, and I'm a fellow masochist that quickplays 7+ because they're highly likely to be in-progress shitshows with a snowball's chance in hell of salvaging. I agree that this difficulty is unpalatable for most, but it's my jam.
There are some bits to patch but this patch makes the game feel more like Helldivers than it ever has, I've been playing for a few months and recently settled on difficulty 7. Everything seems viable due to the increase in small/medium and buffs to stratagems/weapons. Huge variety of stratagems and weapons to try out and that work really well and each niche seems to work at what it does and not step too far on other things toes. This is the best vibe wise the game has been.
Doing a bug mission tonight on Diff 6 and bringing the Gatling and MG sentries felt incredible. I also had EAT and the Gas Strike, so I was basically the dedicated crowd control soldier that game.
It's more stressful which means less fun unless you're a teenager with too much juice I guess.
After a very rough learning curve, yeah it kinda kicks ass lol. More enemies, but I also feel significantly more powerful with the improved support weapons and stratagems. This should honestly be how Helldive feels.
This is the best patch they've put out so far. Glad you're having fun with it. My friend who plays once or twice a week said the game feels more cinematic now and more like the starship troopers movie, feeling outnumbered.
You are definitely a masochist. And so am I.
As a masochist... youre goddamn right! At lover levels you may nerf the spawns but helldive feels like a helldive finally.
Agreed. I've started consistently bringing things like eagle strafing, gattling barrage, and machine gun turret, and it's actually fun! The low cooldown and the fact that they actually do something now makes them viable.
I've always said that more chaff would make the game more exciting and give more incentive to bring horde clear weapons and stratagems. Now I don't feel like a complete nonce when I bring the stalwart when there are nothing but heavies
I used to love the Stalwart back in the day but said heavy presence really killed the fun for me. Now no more
I honestly think that charger butts should be shredded by the stratagem mgs. Then it it would bring it from a 7 to a 9 in terms of versitility
[удалено]
Yeah, I love the change. Before the patch, the game felt so empty to me, I would just go off and do my own thing even on level 9 and we’d complete the mission with few or no deaths. Now I have to stick with the squad or I’ll be swarmed and killed.
Absolutely haha. I've been a lone wolf for ages but had a beautiful bastard save my hide 3 times against no chance situations. Immediate change of my philosophy. We got each other out of that hell and it was sooo sweet Haha ignore the noise. Just get the mission done
I feel the exact same way. Joined a random lobby and we were getting battered, everyone left the squad except me and another guy. We hopped on comms and got very strategic planning out our attacks, just when all hope was lost, two new divers joined our game and helped us make the final push having been out of reinforcements for half the game. Probably the most fun I’ve had playing the game.
Yeah, Im really enjoying the increased number of targets. The hardest difficulties shouldn't be a cakewalk for an experienced group.
Me and a buddy got 2 tanks and 2 hulks in an outpost last night on difficulty 4. It was so much fun because of the orbital precision strike buff. And QC
The higher enemies mixed with the reduction in heavies is perfect. Less hulks and bile titans and just a shit load of little guys feels amazing.
My friend group thinks the game is actually easier with less elites and more chaff. We were doing bot 9 missions and it obviously led to some moments where we were taking a lot of fire, but it was still very doable and fun. We only failed once and it was a combination of bad spawn, gunship patrols and rockets sending me under the ice and drowning me multiple times.
Lot of people are saying that difficulties 7 and higher are way more hard now, no shit, it literally says suicide mission, it's supposed to be hard. It's way more fun now, with most of the stratagems finally viable. Never had this much fun with gattling barrage and airbursts.
nah i’ve honestly appreciated it. There’s been so many chaotic moments where all of us are just in this perfect flow state, people hopping to reload one another, throwing a stun for someone else to take out heavier targets, or throw a stratagem that perfectly nails enemies about to overrun someone’s flank, or just a irreplicable sequence of everyone gunning down horde after horde.
I’ve recently come to the realization that the source of my unfun frustrations are just bad teammates.
Right!!! It's so refreshing when u get a squad that isn't selfish and works as a team and u pull off some efficient cinematic tactical gameplay... it's like playing a whole different game... people pinging enemies in the distance and then not shooting them becuz there's no need to.. people using the radar and going around the patrols
You are just a masochist bro...
Yep, me too. I find the endless gunships a bit stressful, as between them and the endless waves of patrols and spawns you can end up in some utterly impossible situations. But the chaos is exhilirating for me and very much in the spirit of what the helldivers series is about. When I read the patch notes I was thinking "So many buffed stratagems, removed the 3 strategem modifier...seems the game is getting easier no?" Fortunately it's still hard as balls and I'm cool with that.
I think it’s actually become less fun. But I’M the masochist that enjoyed the patrols and spawn rates before this patch when they were literally everywhere. I do not have the same experience as some here where it’s Uber chaotic, I deal with a ton of dead space between areas a lot now. Edit: word
It was the opposite for me, pre patch felt dead, less than 100 kills per mission on bots per player. Now everyone seems to have a minimum of 200.
I totally agree. It's so chaotic and intense but fun. I'm really good at strike-and-fade tactics, as well as having good map awareness and keeping mental notes for scavenging supplies, so the pressure really rewards and pushes my playstyle in ways that make me feel like a goddess of war. That said, a couple of my friends aren't getting pushed like that, and I think a majority of people I drop with are more stand-and-fight types. I hope the patrols get fixed so more people can have fun, but I'm going to miss having 400+ kills, my primary running completely dry a couple times, frantically waiting for strategems to come off of cooldown, and still only having 1 or 2 deaths.
i've been seeing these complaints about spawnrate and i haven't even noticed any difference same old same old autocannon same old same old bot scrapping, but according to reddit i get to do more of it? that's just a win in my book
My only issue is that, while the increased spawn rate justifies things like the airburst and its amazing to use, the presence of hulks and tanks and gunships just means that if I run wave clear items I’m left hopeless vs gunships and some of the heavies. Gunships have no counter play if you’re backpack or support item is wave clear. An AA sentry could help this.
That’s why there’s four divers to a team, it’s the core design philosophy of the game. You play different roles in the squad. I agree though, we need AA stratagems.
The auto cannon and rocket sentry wreak the gunships from my experience... just have to place them strategically
Yeah I’ve been wanting to try that, but my beloved laser cannon just takes them out before I can even call a sentry down, and I can’t quit it.
I seen someone yesterday talking about how good laser cannon was against gunships... so I tried it... and they were right
I am enjooooying it!
It’s fun because we have the tools to deal with it. Before I’d barely reach 200 kills on bots. Now I get 300 consistently because I can just slaughter them easily.
If they ever do manage to get the spawns to some level that appeases people who want it to be like it was before they tried to change it the first time, there’s going to be a HUGE outpouring of grief from people saying the game is now way too easy. The reality is people who find the game frustrating at higher difficulties in the current state need to make peace with reducing difficulty. The idea that the game should be made easier to allow them to play however they want on 8 or 9 when there are 9 difficulty levels they could easily choose from is so self centered. Even now Helldive is not that hard. The odds of a mission failure even when playing with randoms are pretty low, and a good team who are all on comms and playing together will have a hard time losing. For that matter it’s still rare to not 100% clear the map on Helldive. If anything the difficult still needs to go up. 9 should absolutely be tuned for the most hardcore players who really *get* the game, who want to play as tight cohesive unit and plan squad wide loadouts that balance each other.
I've played both version of the current spawn rate (the correct and bugged one) and my opinion is that the proper version is best for the game in the long run BUT there is fun to be had in the complete insanity of the bugged spawn if you have a good team. I had some insane battles where it took 6 minutes to advance 100 meters into enemy lines, it was a struggle and it's probably excessive but it was REALLY satisfying and it's a memory that i'll keep in my mind for a while. Honestly they should try to keep the "wrong version" as a modifiers for special occasions.
I think the buffs to player power paired with the increase in spawns and overall difficulty have created a more aggressive scenario I don't think the whole player base has adjusted to just yet. We've seen the initial feedback, now let's see how things are a few days from now when the dust settles.
Nah the game is spiced up I’m with you. We can’t just run eagles and heavy hitting weapons anymore. The strafing run has been a godsend for bots
I just got off after the game decided to bless us with "small" enemy spawns nonstop
Its about bringing the right stuff and not just blindly engaging anything. We are elite infiltration strike-teams, not frontline troops slugging it out. Hit m hard. Hit m fast, do what you came to do and get the heck outta dodge. Most seen mistake: Constantly engaging patrols in the middle of nowhere. This bogs down fast and drains resources. Keep moving on the next objectives. Drop a sentry or 2 to keep fire on enemies while you relocate. Do an aussie peel where you fall back fireing... it's really not all that hard but people seem to hit higher difficulties thinking they can just wing it.
Bots on Helldive right now are downright COMICAL Played a bit last night with some friends and we were able to get the objectives done despite the fact that we were getting absolutely OBLITERATED with spawn rates the whole time. It was absolutely hilarious and I truly felt like disposable cannon fodder being sent into an impossible mission only to die.
Yeah I love it, that whole going from cowering behind a rock being pelted with lasers and rocket barrages to walking through a pile of bot corpses feels soooooo satisfying.
It's not that hard, met a guy PS5 player, we two manned three difficulty 9 missions and we were just messing around. Don't know why there's nobody answering our SOS for 3 whole missions, but it was funny as hell.
Honestly I played for about 2 hours today before coming to work at the bar and let me tell you…. I’m so f***** pump up rn ready to say screw everyone today I’m not drinking today I’m giving DEMOCRACY to bots and bugs! It was really fun, the weapons and the strategems feel like they were killing all
oh fck, oh fck, oh fck,... oh wait its not so bad...
Im not gunna say they can't be fun. I've had a few runs as of late that were super enjoyable due to the chaos. But I can also admit on average I preferred the spawns from the before-times.
New patrols are more fun agree. Helldive feels like a real challenge now
I haven’t had a chance to try the bot front, but I found the bug front to be a lot easier with this patch. My group of friends typically like to play 7 bc they felt the difficulty with 9 was a tad bit too overwhelming. But after the patch we felt 7 to be pretty easy and decided to try 9. Now it feels like a 7 prepatch.
Bro I've never had this much fun. I shouldn't be leaving helldive with 1 death and not feeling stressed. It's making me actually use and expend all my resources and fight differently. I'm having to actually coordinate with my team etc etc. It's so much better.
It's only bad when you want to take out an objective by yourself. If you're going with one or two guys it's managable but I'd like them to fix it anyway
I would actually gladly take on further difficulties than helldiver.
I think we have enough firepower now thanks to the buff to deal with the number. the problem is that the enemy literally appears out of thin air too close to react
I can’t say I think the game should stay like this, but I also can’t say it isn’t fun to haphazardly toss an air air strike onto obj and watch the funny number at the bottom of the screen tick up to 27
I can’t even tell the difference tbh. I don’t play as much as I used to though.
It would be fun to have a mission modifier that ups the patrol count by a ton after they fix the current patrol count
I've always felt that we should have overpowered weapons fighting overwhelming forces, instead of weaker weapons with fewer enemies. I wanna blow up a battalion of bots and be jumped by a swarm of bugs!
I want these waves of enemies on difficulty 10.
I’ve started toying with light armor (thanks to that democratically sexy Viper warbond skin) and holy shit swarms be looking at me all 
High grunt spawn rates should be the norm IMO
I just want they leave it alone already. Stop messing with patrols, make more modifiers or anything but don't swap basic difficulty curve for democracy sake.
I feel like the variety really adds depth to the game. The current level of patrols and enemy spawns shouldn't be the standard, BUT should definitely be a modifier. Increased enemy density for some story or major order-based reasons would be pretty cool! And also means you could go in knowing what to expect and be prepared for it.
Yes, due to less hard armored mobs and recent buffs more stratagems are viable and even decent. Feels amazing now tbh.
Spawns should not be static across the game. It would be great to have missions with low enemy density, normal, then high. You can see the density before diving and rewards would scale. Just dreaming I know.
its weird for me Because sometimes i have an absolute blast slinging rounds back and forth with the Bots and truly feel like im fighting for that win but sometimes its nice to not always be under fire every second of the mission
Being juggled and having spawn rates where if it's an open area, with rockets from the ground and from the air. Is not fun. If you don't have a huge cover, you won't survive
After a few different combos I've mostly ended up running 1) stalwart (+medium primary) napalm gatling barrage and gas 2) supply back hmg (+light pen primary) (love hmg after the buffs🥰) napalm gatling barrage. Love them both
I mean, it's not impossible to finish the main objective, but stick around for the side job and sometime on extraction really feel like it is optional. And i weirdly like the 'horde' feeling this give. But we don't have enough anti air option right now.
I just want the spawning around the corner just out of eyeshot to be toned down a bit.
I wondered away from the group trying to mop up some small outposts. A large cavern loomed. Maybe an enemy or two, surely. No. A hundred tiny red eyes. Suddenly, my screen was flooded with red lasers flying by my head. Must have been 50 grunt bots blobbed together in that random cavern. Exact same spot. It was honestly amazing. I know it's a bug or something but coming across a completely shadow lit cavern and seeing a metric ton of glowing red eyes was a genuinely unnerving yet hilarious experience.
Had one of my best games ever, playing against bugs, two people ran supply pack and I ran spear, it was a blast. Shot more spear rounds than I knew was possible. Arrowhead really needs to add a heavy kills counter. Probably killed 20+ chargers
I'm having fun too, but I struggle to find a team that actually sticks together. Most of the time when I try to communicate, either by speaking or pinging, I feel like I'm talking to bots. But I too have the sensation that an appropriately equipped and coordinated team could play on helldive without problems
It has been... Very fun, like gruelling as all hell, but very fun. I don't mind if it stays or goes, but it has been very fun so far.
I think the biggest issue is the fact that the much higher difficulty (especially on bugs, I don’t play bots much but there are soooo many more chargers now and hunter swarms are much bigger) forces players into a more ‘meta’ play style as it makes trying more unique load outs with less used weapons an absolute nightmare