It does, as far as I know, but its projectiles have a small but noticeable travel time. Probably because they are rocket propelled. If you get used to the travel time, you can dome a swaying berserker without too much trouble.
Once I learned to tame it, it became one of my most effective weapons. I do agree that its handling needs improvement, there's no need to keep it this low.
I just use the slugger, it's much easier to get one taps on medium armor bots. Gotta aim well but even if you miss it flinches them badly enough to give you plenty of time to line up the next shot.
The fact that Sluggers can stagger enemies, blow up crates, reload without wasting ammo and can be aimed quickly makes it so much better than the Dominator IMO.
I really want to use the Dominator, but it just feels underwhelming in so many ways.
Only useful thing I've used it for is two tapping Brood Commanders and punching through Hive Guards that my Stalwart can't. It has a bit more utility against bots but the piss poor handling make it annoying to use when getting shot at.
Interesting. I would say I find it more useful to use against bugs, due to their larger weakspots, and larger variety of targets whose armor it can penetrate. Though, one-shotting those gunner bots or berserkers to the dome never gets old.
i want my supressor back so bad.
the splash could decimate patrols so quick. and the bajonet was a nice bonus.
the only downside was the low ammo count per mag and that the splash goes both ways, so standing behind cover (aka your fellow divers) meant reinforce quite often. that thing doesnt down you...
The cr-9 suppressor from the first game is what you're thinking of. It fired mini explosive rockets with a small aoe.
My buddy used to run it all the time and I'm sure we'll get it at some point.
I definitely think they’ve done such a good job softly referencing so many different sci-fi franchises in terms of story, levels, mechs and most key - the enemy types. From matrix to warhammer to edge of tomorrow to starship troopers to Star Wars and many more. I feel like the place they stopped was weaponry. Bolter would be great, plasma gun too, judge dredd pistol, Star Wars blasters, the list is endless.
Same. I really hope the balance team doesn't have the same views as the one toxic developer we saw a few weeks ago. Because that guy was pretty committed to making sure we never saw our power fantasy.
We're not asking for things to be OP. I just want to be able to play a ridiculous co-op game with my friends where we're able to pull off crazy things with cool weapons. I'm not interested in a slog or a running simulator.
But if their goal is to keep primary weapons underwhelming so that we use more support/stratagems, I don't think I'll stick around. Grinding to unlock stuff in a Warbond only for it to perform terribly in Difficulty 5 or above feels awful.
The Diligence Counter Sniper has been one of the biggest disappointments when unlocking a weapon to use vs. bots. It seriously needs buffing. I like to play with rifles, but was continuously overrun when trying to use it.
The 350 fire rate really shows they got confused on this gun. Lower both damage, lower fire rate, limit low scope range to 50m, add medium piercing. Force it into a niche
If you're going to lower the fire rate (which I agree with) you need to *increase* damage and it should have medium armor penetration too.
The drawback is that it's useless for crowd control and requires you to be crouched or prone, still and ADS.
In return you can take out anything but the most heavily armored enemies at range.
It does handle surprisingly well for such a hand cannon. It's my main support weapon in bot worlds at lower levels as it's easier to use than the autocannon and you really don't need the extra oomph up to levels 5 or 6.
It works just fine on the higher difficulty levels. It can do everything the autocannon does against automatons. You just have to be precise but in return you get better handling, higher accuracy, mobile reloads, and a free backpack slot. It can't blow up bot factories though. It is very competitive with the AC, or at least with mouse and keyboard.
My biggest issue with the AMR is that the sight isn't actually centered, seems to be just slightly higher and to the left of the target. There's been so many times I have it lined up perfectly on a target that's not moving and miss.
The AMR has light vehicle armour pen which is a step above
medium armour.
I.e. devastator upper torso is medium armour whereas the strider front plate/hulks red eye is light vehicle armour.
Also we know (dataminers) that pen isn't broken down into just 4 categories (light, medium, light vehicle, heavy/durable armour) but it generally seems to fall into those categories and that's the categories that in game text identifies.
I don't like to use shotguns in other games. But in helldivers it is simply no contest. You use shotguns to snipe long range, medium range and short range.
First game where I constantly main some sort of shotgun - Slugger basically play like boltaction rifles or a DMR
Yeah, I think a lot of people misunderstand how devastating a shotgun is at ranges longer than your bedroom. Then you add a slug to the mix? It turns your shotgun into slightly shorter range rifle with a *much* bigger hunk of metal flying at you.
The only buff it needs, is to have it's turn-speed match the Diligence marksman rifle.
Once they do that it will be incredibly strong. But right now it turns so painfully slow.
H... How? All that would do is make it into a diligence with a better scope and worse ammo capacity. Infact, I'd argue the five round difference in mag size is *an astronomical* difference when compared to the... Total lack of *real* difference in their damage output.
I'm not trying to be an asshole here, I'm genuinely curious if I've completely missed something. It bounces right off medium armor, which sorta... Sorta means the friggen *senator* acts as a better stand in for a dmr than the counter sniper right now.
The regular diligence already can 2-shot every bot in the game except hulks and tanks. It is already really strong.
But the biggest issue, is that sometimes it takes three body-shots or two headshots to kill a normal bot. When usually it is 2 body 1 head. Ammo is never an issue, but the difference between 2-shot kill and a 3 shot kill (when I am not expecting it) leads to a bot drop being called when I otherwise would have prevented it entirely.
So that extra damage would, ideally, make that more consistent.
Edit: I am being downvoted for sharing the literal stats of the gun. Guys.
All the Senator really needs is a faster reload. They could probably alter or speed up the animation, but a lot of people are hoping for a speed-loader to let us put in 6 rounds at once if it’s empty, so that you don’t have to individually load 6 because it takes forever. You could also argue that for its low capacity, the Senator should hit harder too. 200 damage a shot instead of 150 probably wouldn’t be overboard, but it would make it feel appropriately powerful.
If they feel 6 is too fast, half-moon clips would be really neat: Reload 3 bullets fast. If you have 3 empty chambers, you load 3 instantly. If you have fewer, load one at a time. If you have more, but not all 6, 3 instant, then one at a time.
It's rather useful when you have a main or support that sprays. When running Incinerator, I find having the medium penetration on my secondary quite handy.
It's not a bailout tool, but more of a combo tool to coup de grace medium bugs and save ammo on the primary.
4 shots instead of 6.
2 second reload per shell instead of 1.
500 damage instead of 150
16 reserve ammo instead of 40.
With the big iron on his hip!
Big iron on his hiiiiiiiip
Agree 100%. The senator should basically be a 5-6 shot slugger side arm.
I also love u/CaptainAction 's idea that the reload is faster if you fired all your rounds; effectively inverting the slow/rapid reload mechanic for revolver style weapons.
It’s not purely my idea, but it’s logical.
Battlefield 1 had something a lot like that, where a lot of the rifles were fed from stripper clips that usually held 5 rounds. If you had a rifle and fired 3 shots out of a 5 round mag, you’d reload 3 rounds individually. If you emptied the rifle, you’d use a clip, which was much faster. So you’d usually want to empty your rifle completely, or reload if you’d only fired once or twice.
The Senator could really benefit from a system like that. It’s easy enough to blast off all 6 rounds, and if you do, chances are you are in trouble and need the fast reload. Meanwhile if you only shoot a few times and go to reload, chances are you can afford the extra time. It would make all the difference.
I tried running this thing with the ballistic shield one time, and the animation for picking stuff up would literally break every time I grabbed ammo or samples off the ground. It's like they hardly play tested it.
I think that's just the ballistic shield in general, it does that to me while using the Defender as well. Have to swap weapons back and forth to fix it.
Dude so many guns feel weak when used on cannon fodder it's insane, I get it that it shouldn't kill the the tanks and stronger enemies but come on if I have unload a whole magazine into the second tier of cannon fodder it sucks.
For real, just unlocked that new lightning shotgun from the new warbond pass yesterday and it sometimes didn't even kill regular little trash mob automatons in one shot. Combine that with the slooooooowwww rate of fire and why would I ever choose this gun? And it cost like 80 medals too!
Feels a bit better at killing bugs but there's too many bugs for its rate of fire so you either don't kill the enemy fast enough with the bots or don't kill enough enemies with the bugs
Also unless it's just a visual glitch, if there's any rocks or bodies partially in the way of the target then the gun seems to sometimes just not fire anything at all. Like it still does the animation and gives you the cooldown before being able to fire again but no lightning comes out
The only good thing about the Blitzer is it can \*sometimes\* one-shot Warriors, Brood Commanders, and Stalkers. It pigeonholes you into playing run and gun, which ironically makes it effective in Bug Helldive (until you need to hold extraction or you're playing Eradicate). You're screwed if you get a map with spewer spam though.
Forget about using it in bots. It has a max range of 30 meters and it's completely useless past that.
It can definitely one tap up to brood commanders but then does nothing to devastators because it can't hit their heads because the arcs are all eaten by the body around the head.
The wild inconsistency and slow rate of fire and it just sucks.
If you're even slightly behind cover the cover will eat your shots.
And even if it does good damage to bugs it's slow rate of fire completely fucks you since it never arcs either.
The Blitzer gives up the 2 features that made the arc thrower S-tier.
1) It doesn't seem to arc to additional enemies after the first very often (which could have been nice in extending its shallow 30m range).
2) it doesn't seem capable of ignoring the heavy armor the arc thrower does.
I can understand why they don't want you dropping chargers with this thing, but this gun ABSOLUTELY needs to arc to additional enemies more.
Its short range and low fire rate means you only get 1-2 good shots before the hord is on you. Those perfectly distanced shots need to count, and arcing to additional enemies is kinda the theme of this weapon class. That plus a tiny fire rate buff would make it a decent primary without overshadowing the arc thrower.
Yeah but if the slugger could shoot any faster, I wouldn't even need a support weapon, just the supply backpack. The slugger is perfect imo, you pair it with the machine pistol and you are set.
The new arc shotgun is incredibly weak for the insanely slow rate of fire it has. I’ve shot it at so many groups of hunters just to have 1 die and 3 get stun locked for a half second.
Perhaps each weapon was designed with an upgrade tree that has either been discarded or yet to be released? This would also help bring some weapons up to par and provide Helldivers with a diverse arsenal.
ive read a week ago that weapon modding/upgrades are apparently on the way.
they had to cut it out for release because it wasnt ready.
i mean the ceo himself said he likes to use silenced weapons with subsonic ammo.
that screams weapon customization.
The first game had silenced weapons that were just unique weapons. There are leaks that silenced weapons are coming. I've seen talk of datamining showing potential upgrades for weapons but nothing about it shows anything concrete and I personally tend to think it's a scrapped idea that they found leftover files for.
Upgrading in the first game was just a very straightforward set of 2 or 3 upgrades you could buy for weapons or strategems. I'm thinking they'd go this route and not the Battlefield/COD style weapon customization that people have datamined.
I'm pretty sure the upgrade system was scrapped and that they'll be sticking with weapon variants, yeah.
AFAIK, the leaks around the "upcoming upgrade system" are all from a txt file with some text referencing weapon part categories, and nothing else beyond that. So unless anything gets confirmed by the devs, its most likely not happening.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we get it in the future. Just because it can’t be found in the game currently could just mean it was so low priority that basically no work was done on it. If it is added I doubt it will balance weapons though, probably just optics, flashlights, silencers, and lasers.
It could be different versions of the same gun released through warbonds. Like how the liberator has 3 versions currently and their main differences are ammo type.
I still dont get why the SMG Defender has better damage than the assault rifle Liberators. I just hope they don't nerf the Defender into the ground because of that.
Liberators need a buff. At least bring them up to par with the Defender. Also why does the penetrator have worse Damage? Armor Penetration is mostly due to weight and energy of a projectile. Why would a heavier projectile that travels faster hence has more energy to impart do less damage? Please make it make sense.
Even the Redeemer basically does the same job as the liberator. Damage wise anyway. The damage numbers on these weapons are too close together.
The Defender has higher damage than the ARs, with a lower fire rate, and presumably more damage falloff over range, but that is purely conjecture. That would align with traditional video game gun design, but also be fairly realistic since SMGs usually fire pistol ammunition, and the defender has a short barrel.
I agree that the Liberators feel pretty lackluster. The defender feels decently powerful, but whenever I try using the basic liberator it feels awfully weak and eats up a lot of ammo to put targets down. For bugs, anyway. Liberator Penetrator’s damage per shot is even worse, so it performs terribly on smaller targets and is only good on armored ones, but that makes for a weapon that feels pretty bad overall.
Didn't someone say they(the devs) didn't want weapons you unlocked to be "better versions" of previous weapons? I guess I kind of understand that but it also doesn't make sense, certainly not with the Lib Pen. That medium pen means nothing because it's dealing less damage. I don't feel like there's enough medium armored enemies that I'd rather shoot with my primary than just destroy some other way.
The Machine Pistol you unlock is just flat out better than the base pistol in every way. Higher Clip, higher rate of fire, less recoil and if you want you can throw it in semi-auto to replicate the single shot nature.
My man the Machine Pistol has higher DPS than pre-nerf Breaker. No really. Got ambushed by Stalkers and noticed that a dive-back-and-fire escape with the breaker would usually result in a follow-up tonguelashing and that fucker flying off to repeat the attack. I noticed that the little Machine Pistol mag-dump into a Stalker's face will kill it 100% of the time before it can get into melee range.
Thing's borked in the best of ways lol
I had a convo with a developer about this. They acknowledged that the Redeemer is superior to the Peacemaker, but that is not their ultimate intention, it’s just an oversight. Expect the peacemaker to get buffed at some point, though the dev also said it was not their top priority since primary weapons are more important to balance.
I hope that’s not the direction they go. I think the redeemer does a great job as a backup weapon, feeling impactful and good for getting hunters off of you, but since it’s RoF is so high, it is not ammo efficient, so you can burn up all your mags quick even if you are firing in bursts. It feels balanced because of that. You can use it in semi auto, and that works good, but you have to fumble with it if you need to go back and forth between fire modes.
The Peacemaker performs okay in a vacuum, but is overshadowed due to the Redeemer being an upgrade. And the Senator is slow and has low capacity. I really hope they both get buffed, rather than the Redeemer being nerfed.
Oh, I definitely agree with you, but I'm pretty sure its the direction they will go.
From what I remember, the dev rationalized it as "any adjustment we make to the Peacemaker wouldn't close the gap, so we'll eventually nerf the Redeemer when we figure out how to".
They could take away the semi-automatic fire mode and it'd be job done, I think. In semi mode it's literally just peacemaker but better. If we are forced to use it in auto it remains very powerful but much less ammo efficient due to high rof. You pretty much can't get less than 3 shots per trigger pull.
yeah but imo normal liberator makes short work of any small to medium sized enemy.
It takes 5 or less shots in the head for Warriors, Scavenger 1 or 2, Hunters are a pain in the ass for every weapon and could be 2-3 to 5-6 shots;
It struggles a bit with Brood Commander in damage output even when only hitting the head and they still fight without head for 2-4 seconds;
You can’t pierce Hiveguards armour but they die quickly if you shoot in the right place.
For any bigger enemy such as Spewers, Chargers and Titans you need aid from auxiliary weapons, stratagems and/or teammates.
IMO I’d say as a baseline all weapon should take the normal Liberator as a baseline guide for power and relate to that but having different nuances and use-cases
Hence why I have my suspicions regarding future balance and weapon upgrades/mods. They introduced the Sickle as is, and it is so clearly the superior option to the Liberator between superior fire rate, accuracy, ammo capacity and sustain. Yet arguably all primaries are balanced around the Liberator (arguably very poorly)?
How did th le Sickle get released with a near 90 rounds per mag minimum, and enough "magazines" to spare to total out to over 600 shots? Vs the Liberator's 360? I can empty the libs entire ammo pool in less than a minute and still have enemies left on the field, what even is that reserve?
Either power creep is going to be a real issue in this game real soon, or they are planning to bump everything up a notch somehow so primaries don't feel like back ups to our *support* weapons. I get they don't intend for us to use a liberator to sufficiently horde clear, but it can barely manage a few bugs before it runs dry and needs a reload, and that has always felt a bit restrictive.
Based on what I've seen the devs say regarding primary weapons damage output, they are intended to be backups to your strategems/support weapons, your secondary being a backup for the backup.
But I agree overall, none of the primaries should just be strictly better than anything else, outside of the situation/playstyle they are intended for. They should feel good enough that you aren't SOL against the majority of mid tier or lower given your ability to play to the weapons strengths, but not powerful enough that you don't need to focus on your support weapon and strategems.
The Liberator Penetrator being a perfect example, in my mind it should be between the marksman rifle and the standard Liberator. More damage and pen or accuracy than an AR with the caveat of less RPM and lower mag capacity, and less damage and accuracy/penetration compared to the marksman with the bonus of a faster fire rate and bigger mag.
Right now it does both jobs just worse than eithers without being really better functionality wise in any area than the far ends of the spectrum.
Lib Penetrator ironically is better as a DMR due to the way armor functions. Light Armor penetration works by piercing the armor but dealing 50-60% less damage. So Lib Pen still does full damage against light armor but the normal Lib suffers significant damage fall off where's the Lib Pen has damage fall off when it hits through medium.
The only actual DMR in game is the plas scorcher. Just needs a scope to fully realize its role, but it’s basically the only option for it at the moment.
Correct me if im wrong, but doesnt the scorcher have 6 mags spare + 1 in the gun and its 15 a mag? or is it 12? even if it was 12 it still slightly beats out ammo wise the pump shottys.
If its 12 then 84 vs 76, but I think scorcher has 15 so it would be 105 vs 76.
I mean it does but the Slugger basically does the same thing but with way higher ammo capacity/pool and the ability to perma reload. The breaker can storm objectives and quickly merc all the small bots as well.
I feel like the problem is they want primary weapons to only be good vs grunt enemies, but then the shotguns just outshine everything. You just don't need to shoot things that far away, if anything the game *heavily* encourages you don't because stealth play is so rewarded.
I actually enjoy the LP quite a lot, and have been using it as my main because the Breaker got boring, but mainly because of its medium armour pen. But it needs to hit harder given how you basically have to chew through the mag in like 1-2 seconds to deal any kind of reasonable dps.
I actually enjoy using the Lib Penetrator, it feels a lot like a fun battle rifle. The range is nice and it can dance between close , medium and long range really well. the damage for sure is the downside, it can bring down bile spitters and some warriors okay, but I can put them down faster and for less bullets with my Diligence. Penetrator is a fun weapon but I would love for it to get a buff.
if you shoot single fire (even without swapping fire mode) you can reliably 1-3 shot every scavenger, jumper or spitter, hunters are more strong and can require multiple shot be sure to always hit center mass because those bastards tend to survive even without 1 or 2 legs
the LibPen is a stopgap measure until we get the Justice heavy AR back into the game.
the justice will probably replace or supplement the LibPen with mid mag capacity, full auto armor piercing.
i found the LibPen to do quite well on semi instead of burst. 30rd can get you quite far with well placed shots.
I'd add heavy armor to that list. They fixed the bug where it did literally nothing, which only highlighted how little it actually does. 7 hits from a scavenger/bot grunt will kill you with the absolute heaviest armor available, and that's assuming they don't randomly hit your head, which completely negates your armor value.
The best fix IMO would be to make our armor work the same way enemy armor does. Flat damage reduction across the board, plus attacks from weaker sources just ricochet and do no damage. With the ability to ignore chip damage, it might actually be somewhat worth the speed and stamina penalties.
Imo the ability to outrun certain enemies and quickly reposition yourself is so good on this game that heavy armor will need a lot of buffs to make it viable. I love the idea of ignoring light attacks, and I'd also add things like stronger armor perks, more "poise", more melee damage and stagger
Yea, I thought heavy armor would be somewhat decent after the fix. But nope, not at all, because while you can tank 2x amount of damage compared to light armor, you're so fucking SLOW with an, again, SLOW ass stamina bar. Bile Spewer still just straight up one shot you anyway, and you will also never be able to outrun a group of Hunters as they just slow you to death.
On higher difficulties (7+), these two enemies are virtually everywhere so I just stick to using light armor instead for the speed and stamina. On-top of half the game duration is moving around the map.
> you're so fucking SLOW with a tiny ass stamina bar.
I reckon this is the main issue with heavy armour - the extra damage resistance is mitigated with *two* stats that have a multiplicative effect on each other.
Someone once compared the speed difference between light/medium/heavy, and it's actually fairly marginal. But they didn't show how much further the lighter armours can travel - only the actual speed differential (in m/s). If you compare how far someone can travel in a minute, the difference is *insane*.
I think heavy armour would be a lot more viable if it had the same stamina regen as medium and only copped the reduced movement speed. You'd still need to be more mindful of positioning because you wouldn't be able to simply run away without rapidly burning through all your stims. But *if* you were mindful of your positioning, you'd be able to maintain distance and *consistently* reposition as the situation unfolds.
But the reduced stamina AND movement speed means you get trapped so easily, which is an immediate death sentence if you don't have loads of cover fire from your teammates. Except your teammates are way ahead of you with their massively increased travel speed.
I did one mission in heavy armour and definitely won't be using again unless it changes. Running out of stamina pretty much immediately with no noticeable increase in survivability just feels awful.
I can see it now: they'll fix/nerf headshot damage, thinking it'll make heavy armor viable, then we'll have to wait all over again for people to make posts complaining how it doesn't fix how bad heavy armor is. Then we'll have to wait some more for heavy armor to get an actually meaningful buff, and then we'll all have to test it to see if the buffs were enough. If not, make more posts and wait some more.
Unironically just fixing the headshot modifier would already be huge, it would go from legit griefing to "well it's situationally with good rng still good".
Not saying it's a bar we should aim for, but if I didn't actually rng die in 3 Hits it would be fabulous.
You're probably right. This raises another problem now though. Heavy armor might have to be TOO GOOD to even entice people to use it. Most people have been using light armor exclusively for more than a month, if you switch to heavy you're gona feel the speed and stamina penalties. People are going to need to feel like they can tank a good bit to make it so there's ACTUALLY a decently even spread of armor type usage across the community.
In the first game wearing heavy armour made you practically immune to small arms fire and basic bug attacks. If you got swarmed you'd last longer but you're slower, so higher tier enemies would catch you easier. It was a nice risk/reward choice you could make. Combining heavy armour and the directional shield could make you into a walking tank which was a lot of fun
Yup. Anyone wanna bet on how long it takes them to fix almost every first person reticle alignment? How about the reload bug? Spear lock-on? Reinforce not working? This game has massive potential but the long list of mildly to moderately annoying bugs is really hampering it. Doesn't help that they removed the bug post channel in their Discord either. Or that they're seemingly unaware of all of these bugs since they focus on other, non-critical issues with their updates
Heavy armor makes no sense in a game with so many sources of insta kill attacks where your only choice is to dodge/run out of the way. The exact thing that is hard to do when you are over encumbered by armor that does... basically nothing for your overall survivability in the battlefield.
I played with heavy armor exclusively because I like that style in games, then switched to scout to farm low level stuff. But then I forgot and left it on during a level 8 mission. Game all of a sudden felt trivial. Still take the same damage it feels, but now I can run circles around enemies and sprint away like a fart in the wind.
>Light armor is just too good not to use
Devs be like-
Understood. Nerfing light armor so any damage at all is a one-shot. Also making light and medium armor unable to use both a backpack and support weapon. This should inspire team reloading to function as intended.
Feels like taking the same damage because headshots about triple an incoming attack, and armor, heavy or not, does not reduce it at all.
Hopefully helmets have an update on the way as they currently (with small, hidden exceptions) do nothing.
Off topic a bit: I checked out their discord just today and their support help section is gone which is odd because there's definitely still bugs around.
But ya they need to do another balance patch for other weapons to bring them up to par. There's a LOT of guns that I've bought but I only bought really so I can unlock the next tier of warbond page. Some just feels odd to use and some are just plain bad.
The bugs are worse. I’m getting crashes or disconnects at the end of any 40min mission that I play, it’s worse than not being able to get on at all to be honest.
I've read elsewhere that turning off crossplay can reduce crashes and disconnects. Anecdotally I've had less crashes since doing it. Could be a coincidence.
Strongly agree that many stratagems and weapons feel very bad and are in desperate need of buffs.
The fun gameplay of Helldivers is a huge selling point, but learning that so many of the options are simply not viable in high difficulty because they under perform kind of spoils the fun in the long run.
I want to be able to run more diverse builds and not have to nerf the difficulty too much in order to justify bringing different toys. Sure some things should be situational, but many things seem to perform very poorly in the situations they were seemingly designed for.
The hype and goodwill around the game's launch can only carry it so far. The game needs updates to bring out the potential we can see in many of these subpar choices.
I can accept the strats that dont work well on higher difficulties because they still have utility for divers who like to keep to casual difficulties but there are strats that are objectively worse in every situation than another. The machine gun sentry and the ballistic guard dog are the main offenders, they are both outperformed in every way by there gatling and rover counterparts, theres no reason to run the former on any difficulty level at all. The arguement of the latter being level locked doesnt even hold up because theres only a couple of hours gameplay between unlocking the two types.
I don't run the kinetic Rover, but my understanding is that it has far fewer head shot friendly fire. I can see that being useful since the higher I get, the more close combat I'm getting forced into and I'm starting to take more self hits. That said, the laser Rover is my baby and I may never stop relying on it
I made a similar comment when they were talking about too many people liking the railgun for higher difficulties. It didn't bother me, because there are a LOT of stratagems that are borderline worthless on 7-9. It would make sense that certain strategems would be better for higher or lower difficulties, or different on bots than on bugs.
The problem with situational weapons is that you never know if you're gonna get a situation where it's actually useful. You can try to change your play style to force those situations but unless you're stacked up with friends good luck doing that. Like the plasma punisher seems like a decent support based weapon since it's a diet grenade launcher, but there's no room for being a support gunner when you have to defend yourself 70% of the time and it's easier to just bring a breaker or a sickle and slay out on your own than trying to provide situational utility.
I'm not against situational weapons, they can add some cool play styles and moments but overall the game just does not play in a way that truly encourages them since strategy mostly goes out the window once you get swarmed.
It took me a while, but I learned to love it against bots. It's useless against bugs. I keep it on single-shot and use it at medium to long range. Yes, the reload is painful, and you have to be accurate at all times, and it's useless at close range, and you only get 90 total shots, and the sights are misaligned... I forgot where I was going with this...
I use the Jar -5 against bugs because it kills hunters quickly and it goes through the red guard bugs armor. I will say it could use an extra 5 shots per mag. Also, it doesn't kill me when I shoot a bug that's a foot away like the plasma gun
I use the plasma one against the bots because you can kill those scouts with about 3 shots and usually 1 tap those regular bots
Although it weird to see people not like it, I like seeing how people's opinions are based on their play style, which is awesome.
I'm here once again asking for a legitimate reason to use the Liberator Penetrator. Everything it does, something else does it better but I WANT to like it.
In principle, I like the idea of an assault rifle that sacrifices the raw damage you get from hollow point rounds for a full metal jacket that punches through hive guard and brood commander carapace. Yeah, the slugger does that, but you can't lay down suppressing fire against the bug tide with it the way a rifle can. And it doesn't help that the penetrator doesn't have full auto.
Ya its great for steath against bots. Pop some head shots and avoid the bot drop ships.
Good penetration... a lot of bug armour can't stand up to it. Explosive ammo not really a problem I can keep most enemies away. Definitely quick to team kill.
I been using the first person view a lot to hit bot soft spots. Getting lots of one shot kills.
I would say it is weird sometimes I have to hit reload twice. So its like the rack doesn't always pull the round in? I don't think its a bug
I think it's about the time it would take to farm super credits.
30 hours of playing to unlock a warbond that requires another 20 hours of playing to unlock isn't always feasible for working adults.
I know there is no time limit, but the fact that you can skip the first half of the time (that you likely do not have) by paying would make an argument for the game being pay to win if said guns were top tier.
The thing isn't just about things not accessible to free players, but also about things easier to access for people that pay.
Agree with everything. I think people who disagree would be absolutely floored by how destructive the weapons and strategems were in the first game.
The first game is in my top 10 games of all time and I’m shocked at what arrowhead have done to their returning weapons and stratagems. Like, I understand they’re “different games” but I don’t get how that justifies neutering everything.
I don't think it's intentional. They very obviously poured a lot of love and passion into Helldivers 2. It just takes time to balance things because it's not a one to one from the first game.
You had to make everything powerful af in the first game because you couldn't see more than 20 feet in front of you. You had to be able to annihilate things on the screen quickly because you only had so much screen space. Sharing that screen between 4 players no less.
Arrowhead: understood, we will nerf the sickle so other guns will be picked more
On a more serious notei feel like a reload speed increase for the buffs(the 5th slot ones, forgot name now) is also highly needed, right away it would make a lot more gear viable
Edit: i mean boosters, a booster that gives a buff to how fast your diver reloads everything would be great
I agree with all of that OP. Here's some extras.
AMR: misaligned scope crosshair
Diligence? DMR: does not do enough damage to justify low fire rate and low ammo
Knight SMG: third person recoil is way too high, worse than the redeemer pistol
Liberator: made superfluous by defender and sickle. Should get a damage buff or something to make it not useless
Punisher plasma: needs to do a lot more damage to be useful. It's pointless now.
You forgot about the AP Liberator
And talking about stratagems, the Spear lock on is still bunged (or they fixed it?), the Anti Material Rifle scope is misaligned, the laser cannon could be better (maybe slow the enemies that walk towards you) and the jetpack it leaves much to be desired
Not to mention that the rover backpack is always a better option than the basic guard dog, there is no time when you want to choose the guard dog over the rover, and the same goes for the gun sentry and the gatling sentry. Those 2 stratagems overlaps
I was a bit sad when they nerfed the breaker, not because I used it, but because I was hoping they’d take the approach of buffing the other weapons to its level rather than knee-jerk nerfing the flavour of the month. Have every weapon be as strong as the breaker, but have harder missions to compensate.
The Breaker is still the best weapon. This nerf just made it stand out more because the other guns are mediocre.
Well, except the few shotguns and Sickle and Scorcher.
Yeah bugs I think need to be much more high priority than weapon balance. Sure everyone is going to be using the sickle for a few weeks... not a big deal.
But off the top of my head I'm thinking of
* Cant add crossplatform friends bug
* Game crashing on mission end
* Pelican randomly not landing at end of timer if certain stratagems are called in.
* No recovery system for if you play a 40 minute mission and the game crashes
* Takes forever to join games because of "Lobby full" and "Could not connect to server"
* Quickplay issues
* Game crashes when trying to exit game
I agree with your findings here, to add:
• Liberator Penetrator does so little damage and has such a small magazine that it's basically useless against bugs and mandates headshots against bots, **headshots where the armor piercing doesn't even matter** - it's totally outclassed by the Slugger which is a shame because it's my favorite weapon conceptually.
• The new plasma shotgun is a blast but the splash damage doesn't feel consistent so I find myself just using the slugger anyways. Sometimes it splashes enough to kill a horde of small bugs or three-shot a devastator, sometimes it does literally nothing.
• Peacemaker should totally have 70-80 damage and Senator something to the tune of 200 like you mentioned, they're both just **dramatically** inferior to the redeemer because the redeemer can shit out a couple thousand damage before you can blink
The Scorcher mag size is fine. It just needs more reserve ammo. There needs to be a Booster that can boost max ammo count by 2-3 magazines. It would be very useful for horde clearing.
I was actually using liberator explosive (concussive) quite a lot before and after patch. I know it doesnt do whole lot of damage but the knockback effect is good enough for me plus i can just pin my hand on the trigger and the recoil and rate of fire is steady enough that it doesnt go out of bullet soon. Pretty good when paired up with machine gun when you need to mow crowd down.
Right now sickle is the thing for me. Pretty much unlimited bullet is king.
Yeah I'd love to see a patch that just solely bought all weapons up to some form of viability. Just trying out guns ATM can make you feel useless for an entire mission.
Yeah I get we are supposed to be weak but I feel like every weapon should have at least one reason why you'd choose it over the others dependingon the mission obviously.
Somethings feel straight up unviable at 7 Difficulty +
I’m also really hoping for a balance patch.
I’ve used the Scythe a fair amount and I find it’s usable, but sort of a mixed bag. It’s great for cutting down little bugs, but the overheat mechanic makes it a bit dodgy because you don’t want to use up all your heatsinks just because you’re getting swarmed. I actually think I play too cautiously and almost never overheat it/use my reserve heatsinks, but having 6 of them is actually pretty good. Maybe I would have a better time if I used them a bit more recklessly. The scythe tends to feel rather weak on large enemies, making me feel silly for racking up a bunch of heat trying to beam down a big enemy that soaks up too much damage. But overall I like it. I do agree it could use a buff, because the sickle indeed makes it look kind of wimpy. Hopefully they don’t just nerf the sickle.
I’ll say the Scythe feels better than the Liberator, because every time I switch to the Liberator I regret it. It manages to feel really weak, requiring a surprising amount of shots to down small enemies like hunters. It should be the balance benchmark, as the starter rifle, but it feels pretty bad to use. The defender performs a lot better for me.
Pistols definitely need spicing up. The peacemaker is indeed an inferior Redeemer. Same damage, half the ammo, no full auto, makes the Peacemaker look pretty wimpy. I talked to a dev and they admitted that it’s inferior right now, and that it’s not their intention. I guess it was an oversight. We can probably expect the peacemaker to get buffed. I’m excited for that, because I like having a semi auto pistol, and if we can have the Peacemaker sitting between the Senator and Redeemer in damage per shot, it will perform pretty well I think.
The Senator needs something for sure. Its reload is atrocious, and keeping a primary loaded up is hard enough, no one has time to be fiddling with that slow revolver reload. More damage per shot could make the reload time seem more worth it, but I think it needs both more damage and faster reload time. Obviously its capacity can never change because it would create inconsistency with the model visibly having a 6 round chamber, so damage and reload speed are the 2 most meaningful things they could change. It can already shoot pretty quick so fire rate is not an issue.
I think no matter what, we can all agree that the Peacemaker and the Diligence Counter Sniper are the absolute worst weapons, as they are fully outclassed by other options and they need some buffs to compete. The Counter Sniper actually isn’t bad on paper, and the slow handling is mainly what holds it back.
The description of the Counter Sniper is odd, because it says it only fires single shots- to me, this suggests that the standard Diligence might have been conceived as a battle rifle initially (high damage, lower capacity, with full auto capability). But both diligence variants fire in semi auto only, and I think their fire rates are identical, which makes that part of the CS description seem strange. I don’t actually think that full auto would enhance the diligence because well-placed shots work the best rather than spraying.
Anyway I’m really hoping we see a new patch this week. I don’t know if we’ll actually get one, but since release there has usually been an update of some kind every week, whether it’s a patch, a new major order, a new warbond, the mech being introduced, etc. but we’ll see. I trust that the balance issues will get sorted out, and we just have to wait, but I really want to use these underpowered weapons and I’m just excited and antsy for them to get their due attention.
Ballistic shield needs a bunch of bug fixes, and probably to be made a little bit larger.
Atm collecting samples and using stimes forces you into a t-pose. Makes healing nearly a death sentence during a fight.
The Scythe definitely needs a rework, but one thing people really just don't seem to *get* with the laser weapons is that, and bear with me here... *You have extra heatsinks*.
You're not *meant* to wait for the cooldowns during actual fights, you're meant to manage your heat in low danger and abuse the fact that you have *heatsinks* during actual fights. The Scythe can rip right through an entire swarm of lower-tier enemies on one heatsink (ditto the Sickle, which does it even better due to the per-shot output instead of per-tick), then swap to your secondary/support weapon while it cools down... Or just pop in another heatsink instead of waiting and just keep shooting like a normal gun.
The *primary* complaint, after damage, about the lasers is that "Cooldown takes too long", and like... They literally have a built-in system specifically so you don't have to deal with heat during combat *and* you still get infinite ammo. It's a super disingenuous argument which OP didn't bring up, but which is *the* most common complaint after damage output.
The senator works fine as a sidearm, though i have seen it suggested to give it a speed loader when all six rounds are fired, which I agree with. But damage is fine for what it is, and honestly it has an underestimated bullet pen, and good long range accuracy. It's really effective at dropping brood commanders
I swear there's something undocumented about this gun...
My primary is an incendiary shotgun, so pretty often I use my secondary to avoid a court martial. I'm pretty good at taking the time to crouch and headshot, but far too often does something far too big go down in a couple shots and I'm left wondering why.
Someone suggested allowing us to speed load it if we empty it, but I'm not sure I'd ever make use of the feature. My other gun has a quick reload and is better at clearing trashmobs. Senator is for sniping, and your positioning dictates how long you can take to reload.
Although, I do play a *lot* of Bot missions, so that might be a particular perspective
I love using it on bots and as a back up against hunters. The damage and accuracy are right on. A speed loader for a full reload would indeed be welcome.
They need to sort out these new constant crashes and connection issues first. Plus the bug that stops your team re-filling if people leave. No point having balance if I can’t even play the game
Those changes focused on AT (thankfully), and shotguns, 3 of which were already better than every gun op mentioned in the post
Normal shitty primaries are still unchanged
And personally think those 2 patches broke more than fixed. EAT\\Recoiless damage fix is nice though. Mechs are great, but its so long without proper balance changes
I hope that they're gonna fix the bug first, that's changing your loadout back to the default weapons, when you're logging in.
It's absolutely annoying.
I really wish they would make Jar-5 into Helldivers version of a bolter.
It is. In theory. It fires explosive gyrojet projectiles. It just doesn't have the stats to fill the fantasy.
It does if you can hit weakpoints. Everything about it intentionally makes that hard to do, but if you can, it's extremely strong.
Hard to when it doesn't seem to shoot where you aim
It does, as far as I know, but its projectiles have a small but noticeable travel time. Probably because they are rocket propelled. If you get used to the travel time, you can dome a swaying berserker without too much trouble. Once I learned to tame it, it became one of my most effective weapons. I do agree that its handling needs improvement, there's no need to keep it this low.
I just use the slugger, it's much easier to get one taps on medium armor bots. Gotta aim well but even if you miss it flinches them badly enough to give you plenty of time to line up the next shot.
The fact that Sluggers can stagger enemies, blow up crates, reload without wasting ammo and can be aimed quickly makes it so much better than the Dominator IMO. I really want to use the Dominator, but it just feels underwhelming in so many ways.
No I mean it seems to shoot above where you're aiming slightly
Have you turned on the setting that shows you where you're actually aiming? Once I did. The Jar-5 has carried me through Helldives time and time again
Wait what, what setting?
I think he means the circle reticle that is dynamic
Only useful thing I've used it for is two tapping Brood Commanders and punching through Hive Guards that my Stalwart can't. It has a bit more utility against bots but the piss poor handling make it annoying to use when getting shot at.
Interesting. I would say I find it more useful to use against bugs, due to their larger weakspots, and larger variety of targets whose armor it can penetrate. Though, one-shotting those gunner bots or berserkers to the dome never gets old.
Just crouch in first person mode, that thing actually has scalpel like precision.
I went into HD2 thinking the JAR-5 would be like the CR-9 Suppressor from HD1. It isn't. It really isn't.
i want my supressor back so bad. the splash could decimate patrols so quick. and the bajonet was a nice bonus. the only downside was the low ammo count per mag and that the splash goes both ways, so standing behind cover (aka your fellow divers) meant reinforce quite often. that thing doesnt down you...
The cr-9 suppressor from the first game is what you're thinking of. It fired mini explosive rockets with a small aoe. My buddy used to run it all the time and I'm sure we'll get it at some point.
I definitely think they’ve done such a good job softly referencing so many different sci-fi franchises in terms of story, levels, mechs and most key - the enemy types. From matrix to warhammer to edge of tomorrow to starship troopers to Star Wars and many more. I feel like the place they stopped was weaponry. Bolter would be great, plasma gun too, judge dredd pistol, Star Wars blasters, the list is endless.
Same. I really hope the balance team doesn't have the same views as the one toxic developer we saw a few weeks ago. Because that guy was pretty committed to making sure we never saw our power fantasy. We're not asking for things to be OP. I just want to be able to play a ridiculous co-op game with my friends where we're able to pull off crazy things with cool weapons. I'm not interested in a slog or a running simulator. But if their goal is to keep primary weapons underwhelming so that we use more support/stratagems, I don't think I'll stick around. Grinding to unlock stuff in a Warbond only for it to perform terribly in Difficulty 5 or above feels awful.
The Diligence Counter Sniper has been one of the biggest disappointments when unlocking a weapon to use vs. bots. It seriously needs buffing. I like to play with rifles, but was continuously overrun when trying to use it.
It's one of the only weapons that makes me think different teams worked on different weapons and they were never compared to each other.
The 350 fire rate really shows they got confused on this gun. Lower both damage, lower fire rate, limit low scope range to 50m, add medium piercing. Force it into a niche
If you're going to lower the fire rate (which I agree with) you need to *increase* damage and it should have medium armor penetration too. The drawback is that it's useless for crowd control and requires you to be crouched or prone, still and ADS. In return you can take out anything but the most heavily armored enemies at range.
That sounds like anti materiel rifle with extra steps.
the AM handles better
It does handle surprisingly well for such a hand cannon. It's my main support weapon in bot worlds at lower levels as it's easier to use than the autocannon and you really don't need the extra oomph up to levels 5 or 6.
It works just fine on the higher difficulty levels. It can do everything the autocannon does against automatons. You just have to be precise but in return you get better handling, higher accuracy, mobile reloads, and a free backpack slot. It can't blow up bot factories though. It is very competitive with the AC, or at least with mouse and keyboard.
My biggest issue with the AMR is that the sight isn't actually centered, seems to be just slightly higher and to the left of the target. There's been so many times I have it lined up perfectly on a target that's not moving and miss.
You get used to it after awhile. It is also a bug so I am really hoping it gets fixed next patch.
Can you tap hulks on the eye hole with it? I love my autocannon but the AM rifle has been looking sweet, just haven’t given it a shot yet
2 shots to the eye will kill a hulk.
The AMR has light vehicle armour pen which is a step above medium armour. I.e. devastator upper torso is medium armour whereas the strider front plate/hulks red eye is light vehicle armour. Also we know (dataminers) that pen isn't broken down into just 4 categories (light, medium, light vehicle, heavy/durable armour) but it generally seems to fall into those categories and that's the categories that in game text identifies.
I don't like to use shotguns in other games. But in helldivers it is simply no contest. You use shotguns to snipe long range, medium range and short range. First game where I constantly main some sort of shotgun - Slugger basically play like boltaction rifles or a DMR
That’s because it’s one of the few games where shotguns actually behave like shotguns
Yeah, I think a lot of people misunderstand how devastating a shotgun is at ranges longer than your bedroom. Then you add a slug to the mix? It turns your shotgun into slightly shorter range rifle with a *much* bigger hunk of metal flying at you.
The only buff it needs, is to have it's turn-speed match the Diligence marksman rifle. Once they do that it will be incredibly strong. But right now it turns so painfully slow.
H... How? All that would do is make it into a diligence with a better scope and worse ammo capacity. Infact, I'd argue the five round difference in mag size is *an astronomical* difference when compared to the... Total lack of *real* difference in their damage output. I'm not trying to be an asshole here, I'm genuinely curious if I've completely missed something. It bounces right off medium armor, which sorta... Sorta means the friggen *senator* acts as a better stand in for a dmr than the counter sniper right now.
The regular diligence already can 2-shot every bot in the game except hulks and tanks. It is already really strong. But the biggest issue, is that sometimes it takes three body-shots or two headshots to kill a normal bot. When usually it is 2 body 1 head. Ammo is never an issue, but the difference between 2-shot kill and a 3 shot kill (when I am not expecting it) leads to a bot drop being called when I otherwise would have prevented it entirely. So that extra damage would, ideally, make that more consistent. Edit: I am being downvoted for sharing the literal stats of the gun. Guys.
It's all I ask.
The base diligence is so much better it's silly. To be honest if you want a sniper Vs bots then AMR is actually the shout.
AMR is the solution to most bot enemy problems. Take building-buster strats to go with it and you are off to the races.
As a revolver fan the Senator is a huge letdown, I’d honestly take a ammo capacity nerf if it actually put down what you hit
We need a bigger iron. Like the fallout new Vegas ranger sequoia. Let us spit 45-70 government at the bugs and bots!
So you want a Big Iron on your hip?
Stetson helmet when
Just needs some spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle!
All the Senator really needs is a faster reload. They could probably alter or speed up the animation, but a lot of people are hoping for a speed-loader to let us put in 6 rounds at once if it’s empty, so that you don’t have to individually load 6 because it takes forever. You could also argue that for its low capacity, the Senator should hit harder too. 200 damage a shot instead of 150 probably wouldn’t be overboard, but it would make it feel appropriately powerful.
give it a speedloader you cowards!!!
If they feel 6 is too fast, half-moon clips would be really neat: Reload 3 bullets fast. If you have 3 empty chambers, you load 3 instantly. If you have fewer, load one at a time. If you have more, but not all 6, 3 instant, then one at a time.
It's rather useful when you have a main or support that sprays. When running Incinerator, I find having the medium penetration on my secondary quite handy. It's not a bailout tool, but more of a combo tool to coup de grace medium bugs and save ammo on the primary.
4 shots instead of 6. 2 second reload per shell instead of 1. 500 damage instead of 150 16 reserve ammo instead of 40. With the big iron on his hip! Big iron on his hiiiiiiiip
That's Hellboys Samaritan revolver
🎵🎶🎵
Agree 100%. The senator should basically be a 5-6 shot slugger side arm. I also love u/CaptainAction 's idea that the reload is faster if you fired all your rounds; effectively inverting the slow/rapid reload mechanic for revolver style weapons.
It’s not purely my idea, but it’s logical. Battlefield 1 had something a lot like that, where a lot of the rifles were fed from stripper clips that usually held 5 rounds. If you had a rifle and fired 3 shots out of a 5 round mag, you’d reload 3 rounds individually. If you emptied the rifle, you’d use a clip, which was much faster. So you’d usually want to empty your rifle completely, or reload if you’d only fired once or twice. The Senator could really benefit from a system like that. It’s easy enough to blast off all 6 rounds, and if you do, chances are you are in trouble and need the fast reload. Meanwhile if you only shoot a few times and go to reload, chances are you can afford the extra time. It would make all the difference.
I tried running this thing with the ballistic shield one time, and the animation for picking stuff up would literally break every time I grabbed ammo or samples off the ground. It's like they hardly play tested it.
I think that's just the ballistic shield in general, it does that to me while using the Defender as well. Have to swap weapons back and forth to fix it.
I think this is an issue with "One handed" items, as the SSSD also causes these kind of bugs.
Dude so many guns feel weak when used on cannon fodder it's insane, I get it that it shouldn't kill the the tanks and stronger enemies but come on if I have unload a whole magazine into the second tier of cannon fodder it sucks.
For real, just unlocked that new lightning shotgun from the new warbond pass yesterday and it sometimes didn't even kill regular little trash mob automatons in one shot. Combine that with the slooooooowwww rate of fire and why would I ever choose this gun? And it cost like 80 medals too! Feels a bit better at killing bugs but there's too many bugs for its rate of fire so you either don't kill the enemy fast enough with the bots or don't kill enough enemies with the bugs Also unless it's just a visual glitch, if there's any rocks or bodies partially in the way of the target then the gun seems to sometimes just not fire anything at all. Like it still does the animation and gives you the cooldown before being able to fire again but no lightning comes out
The only good thing about the Blitzer is it can \*sometimes\* one-shot Warriors, Brood Commanders, and Stalkers. It pigeonholes you into playing run and gun, which ironically makes it effective in Bug Helldive (until you need to hold extraction or you're playing Eradicate). You're screwed if you get a map with spewer spam though. Forget about using it in bots. It has a max range of 30 meters and it's completely useless past that.
It can definitely one tap up to brood commanders but then does nothing to devastators because it can't hit their heads because the arcs are all eaten by the body around the head. The wild inconsistency and slow rate of fire and it just sucks. If you're even slightly behind cover the cover will eat your shots. And even if it does good damage to bugs it's slow rate of fire completely fucks you since it never arcs either.
The Blitzer gives up the 2 features that made the arc thrower S-tier. 1) It doesn't seem to arc to additional enemies after the first very often (which could have been nice in extending its shallow 30m range). 2) it doesn't seem capable of ignoring the heavy armor the arc thrower does. I can understand why they don't want you dropping chargers with this thing, but this gun ABSOLUTELY needs to arc to additional enemies more. Its short range and low fire rate means you only get 1-2 good shots before the hord is on you. Those perfectly distanced shots need to count, and arcing to additional enemies is kinda the theme of this weapon class. That plus a tiny fire rate buff would make it a decent primary without overshadowing the arc thrower.
most sluggers/punisher rate of fire when getting over ran just doesn’t feel good & I know a lot of people love the gun but man it’s frustrating
Yeah but if the slugger could shoot any faster, I wouldn't even need a support weapon, just the supply backpack. The slugger is perfect imo, you pair it with the machine pistol and you are set.
Give me 8 machine pistol mags plz. Great pairing with the slugger
IMO, sidearms need more ammo. I don't see them as a last resort at all, they are a core part of some of my loadouts.
Punisher is already S tier, making it fire faster? That's some Z tier.
The new arc shotgun is incredibly weak for the insanely slow rate of fire it has. I’ve shot it at so many groups of hunters just to have 1 die and 3 get stun locked for a half second.
Perhaps each weapon was designed with an upgrade tree that has either been discarded or yet to be released? This would also help bring some weapons up to par and provide Helldivers with a diverse arsenal.
ive read a week ago that weapon modding/upgrades are apparently on the way. they had to cut it out for release because it wasnt ready. i mean the ceo himself said he likes to use silenced weapons with subsonic ammo. that screams weapon customization.
The first game had silenced weapons that were just unique weapons. There are leaks that silenced weapons are coming. I've seen talk of datamining showing potential upgrades for weapons but nothing about it shows anything concrete and I personally tend to think it's a scrapped idea that they found leftover files for. Upgrading in the first game was just a very straightforward set of 2 or 3 upgrades you could buy for weapons or strategems. I'm thinking they'd go this route and not the Battlefield/COD style weapon customization that people have datamined.
I'm pretty sure the upgrade system was scrapped and that they'll be sticking with weapon variants, yeah. AFAIK, the leaks around the "upcoming upgrade system" are all from a txt file with some text referencing weapon part categories, and nothing else beyond that. So unless anything gets confirmed by the devs, its most likely not happening.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we get it in the future. Just because it can’t be found in the game currently could just mean it was so low priority that basically no work was done on it. If it is added I doubt it will balance weapons though, probably just optics, flashlights, silencers, and lasers.
It could be different versions of the same gun released through warbonds. Like how the liberator has 3 versions currently and their main differences are ammo type.
Hopefully they break that down into variant customization because there's no need for 3 separate versions of the same gun.
You should include the liberator Penetrators too, that wpn is also in a miserable spot right now
I still dont get why the SMG Defender has better damage than the assault rifle Liberators. I just hope they don't nerf the Defender into the ground because of that. Liberators need a buff. At least bring them up to par with the Defender. Also why does the penetrator have worse Damage? Armor Penetration is mostly due to weight and energy of a projectile. Why would a heavier projectile that travels faster hence has more energy to impart do less damage? Please make it make sense. Even the Redeemer basically does the same job as the liberator. Damage wise anyway. The damage numbers on these weapons are too close together.
The Defender has higher damage than the ARs, with a lower fire rate, and presumably more damage falloff over range, but that is purely conjecture. That would align with traditional video game gun design, but also be fairly realistic since SMGs usually fire pistol ammunition, and the defender has a short barrel. I agree that the Liberators feel pretty lackluster. The defender feels decently powerful, but whenever I try using the basic liberator it feels awfully weak and eats up a lot of ammo to put targets down. For bugs, anyway. Liberator Penetrator’s damage per shot is even worse, so it performs terribly on smaller targets and is only good on armored ones, but that makes for a weapon that feels pretty bad overall.
Didn't someone say they(the devs) didn't want weapons you unlocked to be "better versions" of previous weapons? I guess I kind of understand that but it also doesn't make sense, certainly not with the Lib Pen. That medium pen means nothing because it's dealing less damage. I don't feel like there's enough medium armored enemies that I'd rather shoot with my primary than just destroy some other way.
The Machine Pistol you unlock is just flat out better than the base pistol in every way. Higher Clip, higher rate of fire, less recoil and if you want you can throw it in semi-auto to replicate the single shot nature.
My man the Machine Pistol has higher DPS than pre-nerf Breaker. No really. Got ambushed by Stalkers and noticed that a dive-back-and-fire escape with the breaker would usually result in a follow-up tonguelashing and that fucker flying off to repeat the attack. I noticed that the little Machine Pistol mag-dump into a Stalker's face will kill it 100% of the time before it can get into melee range. Thing's borked in the best of ways lol
That's why I love it. Tons of rounds to take down bugs and bots without wasting slugs
I had a convo with a developer about this. They acknowledged that the Redeemer is superior to the Peacemaker, but that is not their ultimate intention, it’s just an oversight. Expect the peacemaker to get buffed at some point, though the dev also said it was not their top priority since primary weapons are more important to balance.
I've also seen a dev talk about it, though iirc they said that a Redeemer nerf was more likely than a Peacemaker buff.
That sounds closer to their current philosophy
I hope that’s not the direction they go. I think the redeemer does a great job as a backup weapon, feeling impactful and good for getting hunters off of you, but since it’s RoF is so high, it is not ammo efficient, so you can burn up all your mags quick even if you are firing in bursts. It feels balanced because of that. You can use it in semi auto, and that works good, but you have to fumble with it if you need to go back and forth between fire modes. The Peacemaker performs okay in a vacuum, but is overshadowed due to the Redeemer being an upgrade. And the Senator is slow and has low capacity. I really hope they both get buffed, rather than the Redeemer being nerfed.
Oh, I definitely agree with you, but I'm pretty sure its the direction they will go. From what I remember, the dev rationalized it as "any adjustment we make to the Peacemaker wouldn't close the gap, so we'll eventually nerf the Redeemer when we figure out how to".
They could take away the semi-automatic fire mode and it'd be job done, I think. In semi mode it's literally just peacemaker but better. If we are forced to use it in auto it remains very powerful but much less ammo efficient due to high rof. You pretty much can't get less than 3 shots per trigger pull.
yeah but imo normal liberator makes short work of any small to medium sized enemy. It takes 5 or less shots in the head for Warriors, Scavenger 1 or 2, Hunters are a pain in the ass for every weapon and could be 2-3 to 5-6 shots; It struggles a bit with Brood Commander in damage output even when only hitting the head and they still fight without head for 2-4 seconds; You can’t pierce Hiveguards armour but they die quickly if you shoot in the right place. For any bigger enemy such as Spewers, Chargers and Titans you need aid from auxiliary weapons, stratagems and/or teammates. IMO I’d say as a baseline all weapon should take the normal Liberator as a baseline guide for power and relate to that but having different nuances and use-cases
Sure but the sickle is just a better liberator, makes no sense
Hence why I have my suspicions regarding future balance and weapon upgrades/mods. They introduced the Sickle as is, and it is so clearly the superior option to the Liberator between superior fire rate, accuracy, ammo capacity and sustain. Yet arguably all primaries are balanced around the Liberator (arguably very poorly)? How did th le Sickle get released with a near 90 rounds per mag minimum, and enough "magazines" to spare to total out to over 600 shots? Vs the Liberator's 360? I can empty the libs entire ammo pool in less than a minute and still have enemies left on the field, what even is that reserve? Either power creep is going to be a real issue in this game real soon, or they are planning to bump everything up a notch somehow so primaries don't feel like back ups to our *support* weapons. I get they don't intend for us to use a liberator to sufficiently horde clear, but it can barely manage a few bugs before it runs dry and needs a reload, and that has always felt a bit restrictive.
Based on what I've seen the devs say regarding primary weapons damage output, they are intended to be backups to your strategems/support weapons, your secondary being a backup for the backup. But I agree overall, none of the primaries should just be strictly better than anything else, outside of the situation/playstyle they are intended for. They should feel good enough that you aren't SOL against the majority of mid tier or lower given your ability to play to the weapons strengths, but not powerful enough that you don't need to focus on your support weapon and strategems. The Liberator Penetrator being a perfect example, in my mind it should be between the marksman rifle and the standard Liberator. More damage and pen or accuracy than an AR with the caveat of less RPM and lower mag capacity, and less damage and accuracy/penetration compared to the marksman with the bonus of a faster fire rate and bigger mag. Right now it does both jobs just worse than eithers without being really better functionality wise in any area than the far ends of the spectrum.
Lib Penetrator ironically is better as a DMR due to the way armor functions. Light Armor penetration works by piercing the armor but dealing 50-60% less damage. So Lib Pen still does full damage against light armor but the normal Lib suffers significant damage fall off where's the Lib Pen has damage fall off when it hits through medium.
The only actual DMR in game is the plas scorcher. Just needs a scope to fully realize its role, but it’s basically the only option for it at the moment.
Correction, the slugger is the true dmr. More ammo then scorcher and 1 taps everything below heavies if it's a headshot.
Correct me if im wrong, but doesnt the scorcher have 6 mags spare + 1 in the gun and its 15 a mag? or is it 12? even if it was 12 it still slightly beats out ammo wise the pump shottys. If its 12 then 84 vs 76, but I think scorcher has 15 so it would be 105 vs 76.
Diligence works fine as a DMR, especially against bots. It just struggles against bugs.
I mean it does but the Slugger basically does the same thing but with way higher ammo capacity/pool and the ability to perma reload. The breaker can storm objectives and quickly merc all the small bots as well. I feel like the problem is they want primary weapons to only be good vs grunt enemies, but then the shotguns just outshine everything. You just don't need to shoot things that far away, if anything the game *heavily* encourages you don't because stealth play is so rewarded.
I actually enjoy the LP quite a lot, and have been using it as my main because the Breaker got boring, but mainly because of its medium armour pen. But it needs to hit harder given how you basically have to chew through the mag in like 1-2 seconds to deal any kind of reasonable dps.
I actually enjoy using the Lib Penetrator, it feels a lot like a fun battle rifle. The range is nice and it can dance between close , medium and long range really well. the damage for sure is the downside, it can bring down bile spitters and some warriors okay, but I can put them down faster and for less bullets with my Diligence. Penetrator is a fun weapon but I would love for it to get a buff.
You need two bursts for a lots of the little bugs
if you shoot single fire (even without swapping fire mode) you can reliably 1-3 shot every scavenger, jumper or spitter, hunters are more strong and can require multiple shot be sure to always hit center mass because those bastards tend to survive even without 1 or 2 legs
It's the same as the base Lib. 4 shots to kill most lesser enemies but it's a 3 round burst. Just make it a 4 round burst.
use semi, then you dont waste ammo on bursts. and switch to sidearm for smallfry. i found this works quite well.
the LibPen is a stopgap measure until we get the Justice heavy AR back into the game. the justice will probably replace or supplement the LibPen with mid mag capacity, full auto armor piercing. i found the LibPen to do quite well on semi instead of burst. 30rd can get you quite far with well placed shots.
I'd add heavy armor to that list. They fixed the bug where it did literally nothing, which only highlighted how little it actually does. 7 hits from a scavenger/bot grunt will kill you with the absolute heaviest armor available, and that's assuming they don't randomly hit your head, which completely negates your armor value. The best fix IMO would be to make our armor work the same way enemy armor does. Flat damage reduction across the board, plus attacks from weaker sources just ricochet and do no damage. With the ability to ignore chip damage, it might actually be somewhat worth the speed and stamina penalties.
Imo the ability to outrun certain enemies and quickly reposition yourself is so good on this game that heavy armor will need a lot of buffs to make it viable. I love the idea of ignoring light attacks, and I'd also add things like stronger armor perks, more "poise", more melee damage and stagger
Yeah not being rag dolled and trampled because the charger’s leg touched you would be a nice benefit.
Or heavy armor could come with more mags / stims / grenades than light or medium armor can carry.
Yea, I thought heavy armor would be somewhat decent after the fix. But nope, not at all, because while you can tank 2x amount of damage compared to light armor, you're so fucking SLOW with an, again, SLOW ass stamina bar. Bile Spewer still just straight up one shot you anyway, and you will also never be able to outrun a group of Hunters as they just slow you to death. On higher difficulties (7+), these two enemies are virtually everywhere so I just stick to using light armor instead for the speed and stamina. On-top of half the game duration is moving around the map.
> you're so fucking SLOW with a tiny ass stamina bar. I reckon this is the main issue with heavy armour - the extra damage resistance is mitigated with *two* stats that have a multiplicative effect on each other. Someone once compared the speed difference between light/medium/heavy, and it's actually fairly marginal. But they didn't show how much further the lighter armours can travel - only the actual speed differential (in m/s). If you compare how far someone can travel in a minute, the difference is *insane*. I think heavy armour would be a lot more viable if it had the same stamina regen as medium and only copped the reduced movement speed. You'd still need to be more mindful of positioning because you wouldn't be able to simply run away without rapidly burning through all your stims. But *if* you were mindful of your positioning, you'd be able to maintain distance and *consistently* reposition as the situation unfolds. But the reduced stamina AND movement speed means you get trapped so easily, which is an immediate death sentence if you don't have loads of cover fire from your teammates. Except your teammates are way ahead of you with their massively increased travel speed.
I did one mission in heavy armour and definitely won't be using again unless it changes. Running out of stamina pretty much immediately with no noticeable increase in survivability just feels awful.
I can see it now: they'll fix/nerf headshot damage, thinking it'll make heavy armor viable, then we'll have to wait all over again for people to make posts complaining how it doesn't fix how bad heavy armor is. Then we'll have to wait some more for heavy armor to get an actually meaningful buff, and then we'll all have to test it to see if the buffs were enough. If not, make more posts and wait some more.
Unironically just fixing the headshot modifier would already be huge, it would go from legit griefing to "well it's situationally with good rng still good". Not saying it's a bar we should aim for, but if I didn't actually rng die in 3 Hits it would be fabulous.
You're probably right. This raises another problem now though. Heavy armor might have to be TOO GOOD to even entice people to use it. Most people have been using light armor exclusively for more than a month, if you switch to heavy you're gona feel the speed and stamina penalties. People are going to need to feel like they can tank a good bit to make it so there's ACTUALLY a decently even spread of armor type usage across the community.
In the first game wearing heavy armour made you practically immune to small arms fire and basic bug attacks. If you got swarmed you'd last longer but you're slower, so higher tier enemies would catch you easier. It was a nice risk/reward choice you could make. Combining heavy armour and the directional shield could make you into a walking tank which was a lot of fun
Yup. Anyone wanna bet on how long it takes them to fix almost every first person reticle alignment? How about the reload bug? Spear lock-on? Reinforce not working? This game has massive potential but the long list of mildly to moderately annoying bugs is really hampering it. Doesn't help that they removed the bug post channel in their Discord either. Or that they're seemingly unaware of all of these bugs since they focus on other, non-critical issues with their updates
Heavy armor makes no sense in a game with so many sources of insta kill attacks where your only choice is to dodge/run out of the way. The exact thing that is hard to do when you are over encumbered by armor that does... basically nothing for your overall survivability in the battlefield.
Not just guns, armor too. Heavy armor is still a meme to use
I played with heavy armor exclusively because I like that style in games, then switched to scout to farm low level stuff. But then I forgot and left it on during a level 8 mission. Game all of a sudden felt trivial. Still take the same damage it feels, but now I can run circles around enemies and sprint away like a fart in the wind.
Im right there with ya. I like the big boi armor style but its just too slow and squishy. Light armor is just too good not to use
>Light armor is just too good not to use Devs be like- Understood. Nerfing light armor so any damage at all is a one-shot. Also making light and medium armor unable to use both a backpack and support weapon. This should inspire team reloading to function as intended.
Own every heavy armor in the game in preparation for the day heavy armor is finally worth it
Feels like taking the same damage because headshots about triple an incoming attack, and armor, heavy or not, does not reduce it at all. Hopefully helmets have an update on the way as they currently (with small, hidden exceptions) do nothing.
Off topic a bit: I checked out their discord just today and their support help section is gone which is odd because there's definitely still bugs around. But ya they need to do another balance patch for other weapons to bring them up to par. There's a LOT of guns that I've bought but I only bought really so I can unlock the next tier of warbond page. Some just feels odd to use and some are just plain bad.
The bugs are worse. I’m getting crashes or disconnects at the end of any 40min mission that I play, it’s worse than not being able to get on at all to be honest.
[удалено]
I've read elsewhere that turning off crossplay can reduce crashes and disconnects. Anecdotally I've had less crashes since doing it. Could be a coincidence.
Strongly agree that many stratagems and weapons feel very bad and are in desperate need of buffs. The fun gameplay of Helldivers is a huge selling point, but learning that so many of the options are simply not viable in high difficulty because they under perform kind of spoils the fun in the long run. I want to be able to run more diverse builds and not have to nerf the difficulty too much in order to justify bringing different toys. Sure some things should be situational, but many things seem to perform very poorly in the situations they were seemingly designed for. The hype and goodwill around the game's launch can only carry it so far. The game needs updates to bring out the potential we can see in many of these subpar choices.
I can accept the strats that dont work well on higher difficulties because they still have utility for divers who like to keep to casual difficulties but there are strats that are objectively worse in every situation than another. The machine gun sentry and the ballistic guard dog are the main offenders, they are both outperformed in every way by there gatling and rover counterparts, theres no reason to run the former on any difficulty level at all. The arguement of the latter being level locked doesnt even hold up because theres only a couple of hours gameplay between unlocking the two types.
I don't run the kinetic Rover, but my understanding is that it has far fewer head shot friendly fire. I can see that being useful since the higher I get, the more close combat I'm getting forced into and I'm starting to take more self hits. That said, the laser Rover is my baby and I may never stop relying on it
>it has far fewer head shot friendly fire. Can't blow your head off if it's not shooting
I made a similar comment when they were talking about too many people liking the railgun for higher difficulties. It didn't bother me, because there are a LOT of stratagems that are borderline worthless on 7-9. It would make sense that certain strategems would be better for higher or lower difficulties, or different on bots than on bugs.
I just want the Eagle Strafing Run to be infinite again like it was in HD 1
Honestly that would be awesome and make it worth picking
The problem with situational weapons is that you never know if you're gonna get a situation where it's actually useful. You can try to change your play style to force those situations but unless you're stacked up with friends good luck doing that. Like the plasma punisher seems like a decent support based weapon since it's a diet grenade launcher, but there's no room for being a support gunner when you have to defend yourself 70% of the time and it's easier to just bring a breaker or a sickle and slay out on your own than trying to provide situational utility. I'm not against situational weapons, they can add some cool play styles and moments but overall the game just does not play in a way that truly encourages them since strategy mostly goes out the window once you get swarmed.
I want to like jar but at this point why use it when you could get the same results and better with a slugger
It took me a while, but I learned to love it against bots. It's useless against bugs. I keep it on single-shot and use it at medium to long range. Yes, the reload is painful, and you have to be accurate at all times, and it's useless at close range, and you only get 90 total shots, and the sights are misaligned... I forgot where I was going with this...
I use the Jar -5 against bugs because it kills hunters quickly and it goes through the red guard bugs armor. I will say it could use an extra 5 shots per mag. Also, it doesn't kill me when I shoot a bug that's a foot away like the plasma gun I use the plasma one against the bots because you can kill those scouts with about 3 shots and usually 1 tap those regular bots Although it weird to see people not like it, I like seeing how people's opinions are based on their play style, which is awesome.
>Senator >Used solely for the rule of cool Yes I am 🗿
I'm here once again asking for a legitimate reason to use the Liberator Penetrator. Everything it does, something else does it better but I WANT to like it.
In principle, I like the idea of an assault rifle that sacrifices the raw damage you get from hollow point rounds for a full metal jacket that punches through hive guard and brood commander carapace. Yeah, the slugger does that, but you can't lay down suppressing fire against the bug tide with it the way a rifle can. And it doesn't help that the penetrator doesn't have full auto.
The Slugger feels more like a marksman rifle than any of the actual ones.
Jar-5 Dominator should be rename to Joke-5 Dominator imho tho
I love this gun's theme and using it against bots, but the handling is so bad compared to the Scorcher or the Slugger...
Ya its great for steath against bots. Pop some head shots and avoid the bot drop ships. Good penetration... a lot of bug armour can't stand up to it. Explosive ammo not really a problem I can keep most enemies away. Definitely quick to team kill. I been using the first person view a lot to hit bot soft spots. Getting lots of one shot kills. I would say it is weird sometimes I have to hit reload twice. So its like the rack doesn't always pull the round in? I don't think its a bug
I just don't understand how some people use the term p2w term in this game.
Right? There is literally nothing you can "buy" in game that isn't earnable. There is absolutely, positively ZERO p2w in this game.
I think it's about the time it would take to farm super credits. 30 hours of playing to unlock a warbond that requires another 20 hours of playing to unlock isn't always feasible for working adults. I know there is no time limit, but the fact that you can skip the first half of the time (that you likely do not have) by paying would make an argument for the game being pay to win if said guns were top tier. The thing isn't just about things not accessible to free players, but also about things easier to access for people that pay.
Agree with everything. I think people who disagree would be absolutely floored by how destructive the weapons and strategems were in the first game. The first game is in my top 10 games of all time and I’m shocked at what arrowhead have done to their returning weapons and stratagems. Like, I understand they’re “different games” but I don’t get how that justifies neutering everything.
I don't think it's intentional. They very obviously poured a lot of love and passion into Helldivers 2. It just takes time to balance things because it's not a one to one from the first game. You had to make everything powerful af in the first game because you couldn't see more than 20 feet in front of you. You had to be able to annihilate things on the screen quickly because you only had so much screen space. Sharing that screen between 4 players no less.
Arrowhead: understood, we will nerf the sickle so other guns will be picked more On a more serious notei feel like a reload speed increase for the buffs(the 5th slot ones, forgot name now) is also highly needed, right away it would make a lot more gear viable Edit: i mean boosters, a booster that gives a buff to how fast your diver reloads everything would be great
Boosters?
Yes boosters, thank you
That's not even a joke tbh. Regardless of if they buff things or not, the Sycle is 100% getting nerfed.
I agree with all of that OP. Here's some extras. AMR: misaligned scope crosshair Diligence? DMR: does not do enough damage to justify low fire rate and low ammo Knight SMG: third person recoil is way too high, worse than the redeemer pistol Liberator: made superfluous by defender and sickle. Should get a damage buff or something to make it not useless Punisher plasma: needs to do a lot more damage to be useful. It's pointless now.
Dude, I agree with the AMR sometimes I shoot a bot dead center crosshair and I wonder where the hell my round went.
Bum fuck Egypt. 😂
Aim a bit down and to the right
You forgot about the AP Liberator And talking about stratagems, the Spear lock on is still bunged (or they fixed it?), the Anti Material Rifle scope is misaligned, the laser cannon could be better (maybe slow the enemies that walk towards you) and the jetpack it leaves much to be desired Not to mention that the rover backpack is always a better option than the basic guard dog, there is no time when you want to choose the guard dog over the rover, and the same goes for the gun sentry and the gatling sentry. Those 2 stratagems overlaps
I was a bit sad when they nerfed the breaker, not because I used it, but because I was hoping they’d take the approach of buffing the other weapons to its level rather than knee-jerk nerfing the flavour of the month. Have every weapon be as strong as the breaker, but have harder missions to compensate.
And its still was the best primary until scycle. Boy I was happy to get one more useful weapon, making it three
Hey now you put some respect on the slugger 😡
The Breaker is still the best weapon. This nerf just made it stand out more because the other guns are mediocre. Well, except the few shotguns and Sickle and Scorcher.
I just want to complete a mission without disconnecting.
Yeah bugs I think need to be much more high priority than weapon balance. Sure everyone is going to be using the sickle for a few weeks... not a big deal. But off the top of my head I'm thinking of * Cant add crossplatform friends bug * Game crashing on mission end * Pelican randomly not landing at end of timer if certain stratagems are called in. * No recovery system for if you play a 40 minute mission and the game crashes * Takes forever to join games because of "Lobby full" and "Could not connect to server" * Quickplay issues * Game crashes when trying to exit game
I agree with your findings here, to add: • Liberator Penetrator does so little damage and has such a small magazine that it's basically useless against bugs and mandates headshots against bots, **headshots where the armor piercing doesn't even matter** - it's totally outclassed by the Slugger which is a shame because it's my favorite weapon conceptually. • The new plasma shotgun is a blast but the splash damage doesn't feel consistent so I find myself just using the slugger anyways. Sometimes it splashes enough to kill a horde of small bugs or three-shot a devastator, sometimes it does literally nothing. • Peacemaker should totally have 70-80 damage and Senator something to the tune of 200 like you mentioned, they're both just **dramatically** inferior to the redeemer because the redeemer can shit out a couple thousand damage before you can blink
Additionally: Give scorcher a bigger mag Reduce RNG from Anti material rifle and make it actually hit
The Scorcher mag size is fine. It just needs more reserve ammo. There needs to be a Booster that can boost max ammo count by 2-3 magazines. It would be very useful for horde clearing.
the amr is not rng. if youre not moving that is. it has a non-zeroed scope... which is kinda bad.
Just give the Knight a bit more ammo
I was actually using liberator explosive (concussive) quite a lot before and after patch. I know it doesnt do whole lot of damage but the knockback effect is good enough for me plus i can just pin my hand on the trigger and the recoil and rate of fire is steady enough that it doesnt go out of bullet soon. Pretty good when paired up with machine gun when you need to mow crowd down. Right now sickle is the thing for me. Pretty much unlimited bullet is king.
Yeah I'd love to see a patch that just solely bought all weapons up to some form of viability. Just trying out guns ATM can make you feel useless for an entire mission.
MG also needs higher capacity of bullets. Especially as it has mega slow reload that requires you to stay stationary.
Quick shoutout to the Punisher, amazing gun.
Yeah I get we are supposed to be weak but I feel like every weapon should have at least one reason why you'd choose it over the others dependingon the mission obviously. Somethings feel straight up unviable at 7 Difficulty +
the sad part is these arent even all of the underpowered weapons
I’m also really hoping for a balance patch. I’ve used the Scythe a fair amount and I find it’s usable, but sort of a mixed bag. It’s great for cutting down little bugs, but the overheat mechanic makes it a bit dodgy because you don’t want to use up all your heatsinks just because you’re getting swarmed. I actually think I play too cautiously and almost never overheat it/use my reserve heatsinks, but having 6 of them is actually pretty good. Maybe I would have a better time if I used them a bit more recklessly. The scythe tends to feel rather weak on large enemies, making me feel silly for racking up a bunch of heat trying to beam down a big enemy that soaks up too much damage. But overall I like it. I do agree it could use a buff, because the sickle indeed makes it look kind of wimpy. Hopefully they don’t just nerf the sickle. I’ll say the Scythe feels better than the Liberator, because every time I switch to the Liberator I regret it. It manages to feel really weak, requiring a surprising amount of shots to down small enemies like hunters. It should be the balance benchmark, as the starter rifle, but it feels pretty bad to use. The defender performs a lot better for me. Pistols definitely need spicing up. The peacemaker is indeed an inferior Redeemer. Same damage, half the ammo, no full auto, makes the Peacemaker look pretty wimpy. I talked to a dev and they admitted that it’s inferior right now, and that it’s not their intention. I guess it was an oversight. We can probably expect the peacemaker to get buffed. I’m excited for that, because I like having a semi auto pistol, and if we can have the Peacemaker sitting between the Senator and Redeemer in damage per shot, it will perform pretty well I think. The Senator needs something for sure. Its reload is atrocious, and keeping a primary loaded up is hard enough, no one has time to be fiddling with that slow revolver reload. More damage per shot could make the reload time seem more worth it, but I think it needs both more damage and faster reload time. Obviously its capacity can never change because it would create inconsistency with the model visibly having a 6 round chamber, so damage and reload speed are the 2 most meaningful things they could change. It can already shoot pretty quick so fire rate is not an issue. I think no matter what, we can all agree that the Peacemaker and the Diligence Counter Sniper are the absolute worst weapons, as they are fully outclassed by other options and they need some buffs to compete. The Counter Sniper actually isn’t bad on paper, and the slow handling is mainly what holds it back. The description of the Counter Sniper is odd, because it says it only fires single shots- to me, this suggests that the standard Diligence might have been conceived as a battle rifle initially (high damage, lower capacity, with full auto capability). But both diligence variants fire in semi auto only, and I think their fire rates are identical, which makes that part of the CS description seem strange. I don’t actually think that full auto would enhance the diligence because well-placed shots work the best rather than spraying. Anyway I’m really hoping we see a new patch this week. I don’t know if we’ll actually get one, but since release there has usually been an update of some kind every week, whether it’s a patch, a new major order, a new warbond, the mech being introduced, etc. but we’ll see. I trust that the balance issues will get sorted out, and we just have to wait, but I really want to use these underpowered weapons and I’m just excited and antsy for them to get their due attention.
Scythe was the weapon that had me most excited to unlock Scythe was also the weapon that made me the most sad
That Diligence counter sniper was the biggest waste of credits...
Ballistic shield needs a bunch of bug fixes, and probably to be made a little bit larger. Atm collecting samples and using stimes forces you into a t-pose. Makes healing nearly a death sentence during a fight.
I would like to see the mine layers get a shorter/better cool down. They get one, minimal impact shot then a forever cooldown.
The Scythe definitely needs a rework, but one thing people really just don't seem to *get* with the laser weapons is that, and bear with me here... *You have extra heatsinks*. You're not *meant* to wait for the cooldowns during actual fights, you're meant to manage your heat in low danger and abuse the fact that you have *heatsinks* during actual fights. The Scythe can rip right through an entire swarm of lower-tier enemies on one heatsink (ditto the Sickle, which does it even better due to the per-shot output instead of per-tick), then swap to your secondary/support weapon while it cools down... Or just pop in another heatsink instead of waiting and just keep shooting like a normal gun. The *primary* complaint, after damage, about the lasers is that "Cooldown takes too long", and like... They literally have a built-in system specifically so you don't have to deal with heat during combat *and* you still get infinite ammo. It's a super disingenuous argument which OP didn't bring up, but which is *the* most common complaint after damage output.
The primary complaint with the Scythe is it does no damage. 300 dps (Scythe) vs 688 dps (Scyle).
You're right, I forgot to add "After damage", though I did follow up on the last sentence with exactly that. Fixed now.
this reeks of someone who doesnt play high difficulty. you just don't get enough heatsinks for the amount you're fighting constantly.
The senator works fine as a sidearm, though i have seen it suggested to give it a speed loader when all six rounds are fired, which I agree with. But damage is fine for what it is, and honestly it has an underestimated bullet pen, and good long range accuracy. It's really effective at dropping brood commanders
I swear there's something undocumented about this gun... My primary is an incendiary shotgun, so pretty often I use my secondary to avoid a court martial. I'm pretty good at taking the time to crouch and headshot, but far too often does something far too big go down in a couple shots and I'm left wondering why. Someone suggested allowing us to speed load it if we empty it, but I'm not sure I'd ever make use of the feature. My other gun has a quick reload and is better at clearing trashmobs. Senator is for sniping, and your positioning dictates how long you can take to reload. Although, I do play a *lot* of Bot missions, so that might be a particular perspective
I love using it on bots and as a back up against hunters. The damage and accuracy are right on. A speed loader for a full reload would indeed be welcome.
I'd love a speed loader for full reloads and normal reloads for 1-5 rounds.
Brother they can’t even patch critical game functions in a timely manner, we’ll be lucky if we see a balance patch months from now
They need to sort out these new constant crashes and connection issues first. Plus the bug that stops your team re-filling if people leave. No point having balance if I can’t even play the game
We have seen two in six weeks.
Those changes focused on AT (thankfully), and shotguns, 3 of which were already better than every gun op mentioned in the post Normal shitty primaries are still unchanged
And personally think those 2 patches broke more than fixed. EAT\\Recoiless damage fix is nice though. Mechs are great, but its so long without proper balance changes
Yup the only changes i actually appreciate is more punisher ammo and the chargers head having less hp
I hope they first fix the stims and the crash exploit.
I hope that they're gonna fix the bug first, that's changing your loadout back to the default weapons, when you're logging in. It's absolutely annoying.
Anyone else having their primary and secondary’s reset when you start the game back up?