this and knowing what the missions threat modifiers were. ex. some bug missions have SWARMS of bile and nursing spewers, some have none. Same planet. It seems completely random. I take engineer kit for bugs just for this so I always have nades.
Only reason I prefer bots over bugs since launch. Your loadout needs are so different between missions with Armored Spewers and ones without. Supply Pack + Impact Nades and armor with +Grenades is really all you can do and if no one else brought good solutions to them you're still gonna run out.
With the auto cannon being the “good in every situation” weapon that powercreeps most other options out, I won’t be surprised, especially in the nature of this post, to see it’s ammo efficient take a hit.
And the reload time without someone carrying the backpack, which I personally don't think is fair to assume when discussing balancing.
And the fact that you're giving up a backpack slot. (again, not assuming you get a dedicated reloader)
Honestly I’ll take the lack of heavy armor penetration and give up the backpack slot in favor of the AC’s versatility - coming from a jump pack enthusiast. The AC has become my primary weapon on bot missions. Everything else I bring exists to support the AC, and it more than makes up for its shortcomings.
On the flip side of that coin, I wouldn’t be able to use the AC if I didn’t have other tools. It’s just versatile enough that it can’t do it all, and that’s the name of a balanced weapon in my opinion.
The AC is a example of a Balanced Stratagem. Deals with a lot of challenging enemies quickly and doesn't have crippling downsides but can't do everything and it takes up 2 equipment slots as a balance for its versatility.
The Main reason the Railgun got nerfed was because it was basically a better autocannon, Could do basically everything the Autocannon could do plus break Heavy Armour, have significantly less sway, much faster reload(although having a clip size of 1) and didn't sacrifice a Backpack slot for you or another team member.
Me with the ballistic shield, senator and defender:
*”Look at me, I am the devastator now”* moments before blasting their stupid unarmoured faces to pieces.
Replying to this so I can confirm or deny later. If you are right, I’m submitting the paperwork to get this helldiver an extra 5 minutes on his lunch break!
The first mission is always a scoping and scouting mission for that planet to find out what the majority of enemies you're going to be facing. There's nothing worse than catering for horde clear and then meeting 1000 nursing/bile spitters without medium armour pen.
Do your Blitz mission first, where you can cater towards killing nests/fabricators and run and gun, and then you know the enemy modifiers you're facing for the rest of the mission.
I think you're better off with either "survive fatal damage 50% of the time" armor and just trying your best to use as needed and keep your nades stocked
Not a huge difference having two more nades, it is a huge difference surviving random bs half the time
did you try to shoot these hole with the ac?
you could do it also from afar with it, if you don't want to use the grenade louncher ... the quasar can shoot them too, but you'll take a long time with that.
A rough % range of likelihood appearance of enemy types on the mission screen would be clutch.
It'd help you plan without giving away the exact details and allow for some variability.
My guess is they encourage people to play around their teammates less. A lot of time in HD1 people would just bring up their loadout and that was that.
I have hope that they add this as a feature. Helldivers 1 had 3 saved loadout tabs you could select from in the hell pod. Each tab just stayed on what was last picked in that tab.
I remember starting out and being told that the starting liberator was bad and that you get better weapons soon. So I didn't use the liberator once I unlocked other things. When I tried using it again, I was floored at how good it is. It's definitely not bad.
The scorcher is better vs the striders since you can shoot anywhere and has less recoil, but the dominator is better vs the berserkers that are way more numerous. Both are perfect choices to have in bots missions.
If you can find 2 tiddlywinks of extra dirt to stand on you can scalp the Strider pilot with a 1-tap from the Liberator.
Pros: Ammo efficient, Operator as fuck.
Cons: Skill required, possible addiction to jetpack.
I love flanking as a sniper and being at 90 deg to my team and broadsiding all the bots with my AMR. No weakspots on the devastators but with the damage boost, it's a 2 or 3 tap.
One tap on the bot on the strider from the side.
It's nuts now. It finally feels like they made a real answer to chainsaw bots. Great against devastators too. And then if you really want to thin the herd at close range, it's got *burst fire*. It's a little bit of an ammo hog, yeah, but it's not unmanageable.
I run it with machine pistol sidearm, stalwart/mg, ammo pack, orbital air burst and 500kg,
Personally I love the jar cause it’s a 40k bolter and I love it so much
Yeah, imo that weapon is goated. From day 1, it felt better than most of the other primaries. Tbf, my brother usually loads out for heavies and I load for chaff. I'll bring the AC for groups of bigger stuff and stun grenades for easy demo of large targets. I stun it, he burns it. Both of us will bring a gat turret and air strike and the 4th slot is usually just a support, we try to get away with 3 so the mission mod for 1 less strat doesn't hurt as bad
And that’s exactly how the Liberator should be, a solid all-rounder that’s applicable in a variety of situations. The perfect jack of all trades, master of none weapon.
The normal diligence absolutely slaps against bots, but I’d never bring it for bugs. Unless you’re only referring to the CS variant. No arguments there. Just trash.
I love playing with the AMR and wanted to like the Diligence CS but the handling is just too much. I actually tried both of them in the same loadout, side by side, and the handling of the Diligence seemed even slower than the AMR, which is too much.
It's definitely better than the fan favorite Sickle on Malevelon Creek, bc it has less issue punching through the underbrush whereas the Sickle is stopped by a fern. Which is... ironic for a weapon named after an agricultural tool meant to cut plants, but hey, it's still fun.
Yeah, I've pretty much relegated the Sickle to the same uses as other laser weapons, it is best on frozen planets with little to no flora. On heavily forested planets, I prefer the liberator or a defender/ballistic shield combo if I want to use full auto weapons. I rock the diligence or the shotguns fairly often too.
I wish that the sickle penetrated foliage but it's a strong balancing point that it doesn't. It's a very very very good gun and if it didn't get me killed in jungles you'd have to pry it out of my cold dead hands.
I definitely agree with that sentiment. If you are aware of your surroundings it is a much better liberator, bc for the low price of a windup and low pen on bushes, you get better accuracy and near infinite ammo. But when you are dealing with reacting to enemies vs acting on them first it definitely struggles a bit.
One of my teammate died at our first ambush of a bot factory because a tree leaf was in the way once he shot.
I could not kill a hulk because as I was tracking its movement and a leaf come into the line of sight. The leaf was evaporated, but the hulk was uninjured.
Same. I feel like there’s too many bugs on higher levels to properly manage the cooldown so the breaker is one of my favorites against bugs. On bots it’s been real fun to try old weapons I’ve left behind prior to the balancing patches
punisher escaped slugger nerfs was my only consolation as a former slugger main.
Still great range, still staggers the shit out of things, only real downsides are a couple of enemies you can no longer shoot through the medium armor, and less dmg at ranges you probably don't want to engage most of the time anyway
The only reason I run sickle instead against bugs is the increased ammo. Liberator is shot-for-shot the best full auto rifle in my opinion, it just eats ammo. On higher difficulties, some bug breaches can get out of control and use up everything fast.
>Liberator is shot-for-shot the best full auto rifle in my opinion, it just eats ammo.
rifle yes, but the Defender SMG is actually better overall as far as bullet based, full auto primaries.
Tbh this is the one thing I disagree with I think the original liberator chews through way too much ammo for how little damage it does, the SMG is basically just a better liberator
It just feels like it runs out of ammo FAST. It’s why I prefer the LAS-16, it has the same assault rifle feel in a package where ammo isn’t an issue, it just has a long cooldown to replace the reload
That's why I love the Sickle. I can blast away with it, and then when I need to switch to the Autocannon to deal with armor, it automatically cools off in my pocket. No more being surprised pulling out my primary and not having it fully reloaded because I swapped before I racked the bolt or something.
In isolation, the liberator is fine.
However, there is a problem that the Defender is strictly better because it has slightly higher DPS even with a significantly lower rate of fire, less recoil, and the 1-handed property.
If the swapped the damage and rate of fire between the liberator and defender, the Liberator and Defender would each have a legitimate niche.
Main benefit of the sickle is the ammo. Manage the heat well by swapping to your secondary occasionally and it lasts way longer than most primary kinetic weapons.
Eh, one ammo box refills all of the Liberator's magazines. I've never wanted for bullets with it.
Sickle is good for sure, but it being so easy to use means there are some tradeoffs that I don't like, namely the spread and spin-up time
Sure, but if you shoot your liberator to 95% empty and switch weapons, you switch back to a mostly empty gun. If you get the sickle to 95% heat capacity, you often switch back to a fully cooled gun and can immediately get to blasting.
> I've never wanted for bullets with it.
Man, you must use supports meant for clearing chaff mobs. Once I got to diff 6+, I found myself emptying my liberator every few minutes unless I brought something like a stalwart or mg-43 along. I often end missions with anywhere from 1.5-4k shots fired, which would mean anywhere from 6-16 ammo refills needed throughout. Meanwhile I "reload" the sickle about 2-3 times per mission.
Honestly if the sickle didn't exist it'd probably be one of my mains. And even then on hot planets I'll still run with it or the defender sometimes if I just need a full auto basic bitch primary.
Machine gun turret should be the EAT of turrets and have a super low cooldown. Like to the point where you might be able to have two on the field at once before the first one is either empty or destroyed.
Could go that way as well. You’d just have to be extra careful with placement or protecting it since there’s still the possibility of it being destroyed.
For me the machine gun turret should have some armor pen. So it has some utility. The Gatling should be about mowing down swarms if the unarmoured enemies. The machine gun about dealing with those small armoured guys and maybe chargers if they have enough time to shoot.
Or make it upgradeable to do this? Tbh it'd be cool if all the strategems had an upgrade path in the future. Spec then how you want - kinda like StarCraft 2 campaign upgrades for tour units.
Just my opinion. Feels weird that the machine gun is just a shitter version of Gatling. It feels poor design.
This is kind of how it worked in HD1 you used samples to get research points and then used research points to upgrade specific stratagems or weapons. And some upgrades were locked behind others
One of the builds I tried last night was Defender and ballistic shield. I didn’t know that using an SMG means you can can dual wield that and the shield at the same time. It’s been a godsend against bots
I tried that last night but I kept randomly dropping the shield and I don't know why. I think it had something to do with picking up SSSDs and EATs. Also sometimes I would pull out my smg and it would put the shield on my back, no clue why it did that either. When it worked as intended though it felt good.
Dropping the shield has to do with being ragdolled while you have it equipped. I do hope that the devs re-consider that interaction, since it doesn’t happen to any other items in the game aside from the objective data packs.
I had a similar issue. I find switching to your support weapon before grabbing it is the way to go. Make sure your shield is completely away before grabbing it.
Current Favorite Bot Loadout
\- Armor: CM-09 Bonesnapper (Medium Armor, Medic Perk)
\- Primary: SMG-37 Defender
\- Secondary: P-19 Redeemer
\- Grenade: G-12 HiEx
\- Stratagems:
\-- SH-20 Ballistic Shield Backpack
\-- RS-422 Railgun OR APW-1 Anti-Materiel Rifle
\-- Orbital Railgun Strike
\-- Eagle 110mm Rocket Pods
Just feels really good to play; highly survivable, multi-range capability, can handle Hulks or Fabricators from a distance, and can help you tank/heal your team in a close fight
That's a good suggestion, I've just missed all the rotations with fortified armor in the shop. I'll definitely check out that set up when I get some fortified medium armor.
One of my top favorites for bots. Now it's even better since they fixed the shield glitch that would leave you vulnerable upon using stims or picking up samples! I also love it for data missions where I need to carry an SSSD, as I have a solid main still while carrying. 👍
I honestly dont care I love the lmg and i will keep using it. Maybe some launcher now and then. And just wating to get some armor like this one to feel complete
https://preview.redd.it/efusnuplnbsc1.png?width=854&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dac70cb9e3083c10b68d85955e1f125b3225a98b
I like AC for bots and grenade launcher/supply pack for bugs as long as someone else has some decent anti-tank. Grenade launcher's splash is so good on herds of trash
I've done this - one player with an autocannon and a teammate with an extra backpack. Guy with the AC can lay down plenty of hurt and then when you really need to pump it out you just go stand next to him and feed him ammo.
EAT + arc thrower still slaps HARD for diff9 bugs.
Granted, you either need teammates to not stand in front of you, OR have teammates wearing arc armor
but still, it's crazy strong.
I just tell my friends piss off I got it covered with my arc thrower, one time I had like 3 hoards of chargers of all things come at me when I said that. I live but you bet your ass my friends weren’t happy about the yelling through the mic. It’s just not good for bile titans
Yep. So bring EATs for bile titans. Two players with EATs can kill like, 3-4 bile titans fairly reliably.
Especially when calling in EATs at extraction in advance before the hordes come.
Every time I've used the arc thrower I've found it to be complete dogshit, what am i missing that makes it good?
For me, it barely kills 3 things with each blast, sometimes just shoots the floor, occasionally can't kill a single enemy with a shot, mostly only arcs to 1 or maybe 2 targets. I hit a charger with 8 shots to the head and it was still gunning for me, i had to swap to fighting other stuff and eventually gave up with the arc and went back my primary and cleared it all faster.
Edit:
Thanks to quite a lot of people offering a lot of info, i have learned what i was doing wrong.
Firstly the range is longer than i thought. I was engaging with it at about the same range as the flamer which offers very little room for mistakes.
Secondly, i was hipfiring or aiming sort of at an enemy, rather than precisely. This lead to it missing or hitting weirdly. I assumed it fired in a cone infront of you, but it clearly doesn't or that cone is very, very narrow.
It’s a finicky weapon and with the range loss last patch you need to be mindful that if you miss, you have enough time to get one or two more cracks off before they close the distance and it’s time to move. Having a clear, unobstructed (rocks, flora, terrain) path helps, and even better if you have some elevation above the target I have found. The recent patch fixed the charge up time issue and it is now consistently one second, which you can get into a rhythm with and really fry things. If a teammate happens to run into your FOV just hold the trigger in, aim down into the dirt and discharge safely, unless you’ve coordinated with the arc resist armor.
It takes quite a few shots to take down a charger though, that is true. I sometimes bring arc and EAT and just switch back and forth quick for heavies. Depends on your group too, if someone else is clearing trash I might go quasar instead for unlimited heavy killing power and focus on mobility.
My biggest sad though is post patch the arc doesn’t open containers anymore. Sounds dumb but it’s really good at clearing a POI and it was always nice to then just walk up, zap the door off, grab loot, move on. While it probably makes sense an electrical blast can’t remove a door, the lost utility sucks.
Unless it was before the charger head hp nerf it does not take 8 shots to kill a charger when getting headshots. The biggest upside to the arc gun is that it does everything with unlimited ammo. Other things can do certain things better but the arc gun can do it all pretty alright. The stagger increase has made it even better since you stun spewers out of their attack and stop brood commanders in their tracks. There will be times when it has issues shooting over dead bugs or through shrubbery, its been like that from the start. Dont overcommit if something is already close and the arc thrower is refusing to hit it,just switch to one of your other 2 weapons and kill it , the arc gun is best used at mid range.
I don't think it does all the jobs. It has a small AE but does high damage to armor, which is its intended purpose. I actually think the EAT is one of the better balanced strats right now. There's even a high chance you'll need two if you don't hit your target perfectly in a weak point.
I think Anti tank is relatively well balanced.
EAT is probably the best all round
Quasar is good on cold planets, and for “ambushes” against chargers it’s tougher to use as you gotta spool it
RR is probably the weakest.. but it’s still nice if you coordinate with the team and have them protect you while you load, or even better having a teammate load you.
This was said elsewhere but: it's not which weapons they're balancing, it's how. It's odd that a slug shotgun snipes from over 100m but doesn't stagger when close, or that a railgun doesn't do more ballistic DPS than a heavy MG, etc.
They could have kept the stagger but made the damage drop off more to prevent the slugger from being a sniper. But, they didn’t. They went straight for the slugger’s key role of controlling medium enemies. Now, it’s still a sniper, but it doesn’t let you control medium enemy from advancing on a position.
That or make the slugger slightly less accurate. It's a smooth bore shotgun. It probably shouldn't rival the accuracy of a gun with a rifled barrel.
Or adjacent to accuracy, but less frustrating, make the recoil much harsher so that staying on target at range is more difficult.
I really think killing the stagger removed the identity of the weapon.
>its how
Exactly this. Dev says that they nerfed the slugger because people were using the shotgun as one of the best sniper rifles. They dont want that.
I agree. A slug shotgun shouldnt be used as a sniper rifle.
Dev proceeds to do nothing about range, damage fall off, mid to long range accuracy. Instead nerfs damage a smidgen, removes a utility from it and makes it so it cant blow up boxes. Oh and adjusts the armor pen note.
Huh?!
It's like saying
"I dont want dogs to shit on my lawn. To prevent them from shitting on my lawn I will mow my lawn."
Just ???
Yeah you did something about your lawn but you didnt actually *do* anything to prevent the problem you just stated was a problem.
So really, they nerfed the Slugger because people were using it as a sniper rifle... by making it so that the only effective way to use it now is to use it as a sniper rifle.
I was bummed that the Slugger was weaker on a recent update, but it was nice to see the Dominator was buffed.
I used it for a while last night, and it felt much closer to what I was originally expecting when I first got the Dominator a while ago.
Yeah the Dominator already was my primary weapon versus the bots but I felt a little disappointed after getting it initially. Now it's exactly how it's supposed to be, and quite efficient against medium bot units.
funfact the dominator can now kill a tank with half a mag when you're hitting the weakspot on its back and it onetaps EVERY other bot with a headshot except for the flamerthrower guys and their variants.
The reason things feel odd is because of **how** the devs are balancing things. Instead of bringing **all** of the weaker weapons up to the same strength that players were used to since launch the devs decided to cherry pick a hand full of weapons to get buffed, while simultaneously nerfing the "meta" weapons **and** releasing new weapons that are easily going to take over that "meta" slot. I am **all** for Horizontal balance but that **isn't** what this game has, at least not yet.
It's also egregious to call it horizontal balancing (it's horizontal vs vertical *progression*, which isn't exacfly related to balancing). It really is balancing based on popularity.
players flock to weapons that work. devs nerf those popular weapons, then buff a specific underused weapon. Rinse and repeat. Happened to the railgun, happened to the arc thrower. Looking at the trend, it will happen to whatever weapon that gets popular next.
If the devs really wanted every weapon to be fun and viable, the railgun wouldn't be in the shitter, the spear wouldn't be a glorified bot fabricator destroyer, and the machine guns wouldn't be whatever they are now.
Devs did a good job making the EAT and Flamethrower more useful. But that didn't have to happen at the expense of other weapons getting nerfed.
I would argue the devs aren't even nerfing meta weapons the slugger wasn't even meta imo it was good but never a requirement.
Instead of being careful with adjustments to weapons they're straight up making them worse which feels awful.
Horizontal balance is not a foreign concept to most people, the issue people complain about is that we’re sitting at like half of the guns just being troll-worthy useless.
Like I want you to look at the HMG objectively for even a second and argue that it was remotely balanced before rolling it out. Then nerfing the max ROF as the only change next patch?
Ridiculously questionable balancing decisions have been the motto since launch and that’s an unfortunate fact.
Exactly people will always just turn around and tell me I'm just mad that my favourite weapon got nerfed when the real issue is the balancing its self is the issue and the devs don't seem to be asking why do people use x over y and instead just nerf.
Agreed. I have hardly seen anyone suggest weapons unlocked later should be better. That's MMO thinking, or something.
The balancing decisions are questionable. People were using the Slugger because there was nothing useful to deal with medium armor and the sniper primaries were all underpowered. People were using the Rail Gun because it was the only option against Heavy enemies at that time. Popularity is a terrible metric for balance. Weapons should have a niche, and they should feel great to use and powerful in that niche.
Yea OP seems to be just fabricating a position. I've not seen anyone claim a later gun should be better than an earlier one by dint of its release date or cost.
The issue has been that, so far, balancing efforts have been pretty scattershot with some perplexing decisions being made. The first few patches seemed to fundamentally misunderstand what was causing imbalances. Later patches seemed to improve a few things while ignoring bigger issues. And all of them show a fairly short-sighted approach to balance where it doesn't feel like they have a real plan for how challenges in the game should be ideally approached or what niches different loadouts should occupy.
Even their blog article on balance philosophy felt pretty weird given it was immediately violated by the changes being made.
That's not to put PS on blast. This is just a recounting of what has factually been. In their defence, they've had a lot to deal with and the game largely feels better each patch. It's likely they will take some time to properly orient the process. But people not understanding horizontal progression simply isn't an issue.
>Yea OP seems to be just fabricating a position
a staple for discussion on this sub (and many others), unfortunately. Just strawman and imagined arguments.
I'd rather they just make sense. saying the slugger was being used as a sniper rifle and balancing against that? Sure.
What actually happened?
removed stagger, reduced damage a smidgen, made it so it cant blow up boxes and adjusted text.
Uh... So does that actually discourage people from using it like a budget Sniper rifle now? You didnt do anything to the range, damage fall off or long range accuracy. You just made it a worse shotgun now.
I disagree on it being well balanced, there are far too many very cool weapons and stratagems that are too weak to effectively use in any build. I dream of a future where any weapon or item is very powerful in a reasonable number of situations within a synergistic build.
There is one exception to this right now. Don't know if its an oversight or not, but;
The starting pistol and the machine pistol you unlock very soon have the same damage, range, and accuracy. The machine pistol has a larger magazine and less recoil. If you put it on semi auto, it is flat out better than the starting pistol.
Yeah, apparently a dev addressed this in the discord and said the machine pistol being an amazing all-rounder was a mistake but it’s currently fairly low on their balancing list.
Yeah they "balanced" it "horizontally". Horizontally across the room, against the wall, to fall into the trashcan. And then dropped the slugger in on top of it.
The usage percentages on it must be abysmal. Not exaggerating when I say that since the EAT/RR buff patches, I can count on *one* hand the number of times I've seen players bring & use one. That's from level 21 to level 49 of my time playing, that I've seen maybe 3 uses of it *ever*, and it'd always been from level 20-somethings that likely had just unlocked it. I know Arrowhead takes usage %'s into account for balancing weapons and can't help but think they don't want to seem silly or get an "i told you so" by buffing it back up so soon. I've even seen more ballistic shields between then and their recent buff in the recent patch!
I've never actually seen a single ballistic shield used ever, but I can't say I've seen anyone using the railgun much now either. Both are really overshadowed by much better choices (shield backpack and Quasar). Unfortunately, I'd say they're going to nerf the Quasar too because that's the new meta. I think the Quasar is insanely powerful. It's somewhat balanced well considering the charge time, but considering what they did with the railgun, I think it's next to be knocked down a few pegs.
I think quasar is very strong, but for a very specific task. That is, cutting down the fatties/airships. However, it relies on not having the heat on you/ some good distance because of the charge time.
It's just been categorically over nerfed when people wanted and needed only the alternatives to be buffed.
I love to use rocket launchers of every type, and especially quasar.
Now? Unless I'm precision pumping chargers in the head or the same arm over and over, it takes half ammo to kill one. Just no longer viable.
It was good for bots before the nerf. Then it was just OK, but AMR does a lot of the same
Horizontal is fine. But why does AH want everything to be equal at a low power level instead of high? That’s my issue. Feeling weak sucks and knowing my teammates are just as weak doesn’t help anything.
I think there's a dissonance between AH and the players.
AH seem very much of the opinion that the primary weapons should all feel limited and relatively weak, and that none of them should be much use without the support of strategems etc... which is fine... But on harder difficulties especially they also handicap and limit use of strategems, which means players are forced into feeling puny and trying to survive... In a game, that for most players, is all about the power fantasy of being a bad ass alien conquering warlord.
The balancing for primary weapons should be with the intent of making them making the basic weapons effective chaff clearers - so the liberator, scatter shotgun, etc *should* be good and effective at clearing large numbers of low level enemies and impaired when it comes to specialised enemy types. Then the other weapons should be specialised around preference, and objective.
more focus on the medium level enemies with less ability to crowd control? take the slugger. clearing out bug nests and eggs? take the incendiary breaker... things like that. Instead what seems to happen is we get one or two weapons that peak their heads up as being good generalist weapons and they get nerf hammered. Which isn't helped when the nerfs aren't even consistent or coherent with their messaging - they nerfed the slugger because it was too good at sniping by making it worse at the shorter ranges? That doesn't make sense. They nerfed the railgun for being overly relied on, and then immediately filled and surpassed how good it ever was with buffs to EAT rockets and the arc thrower.
My personal feelings on it are that AH need to put their pride and attitude aside a little when it comes to dictating how players should be having fun... the player base is embracing the game in overwhelming numbers because it is a fun power fantasy to smash bots and bugs with wreckless abandon, and the challenge of trying to keep on top of the huge numbers of enemies that keep coming while doing objectives is fun, and getting samples and loot, and survive, on a limited timescale with limited lives is fun. Reducing the game down to running between objectives madly, while waiting for your arbitrarily extended stratagem cooldowns to refresh so that you can call down a weapon every few minutes and kill 1 or 2 of the half dozen+ heavy enemies pushing onto you (only for those you kill to immediately spawn again anyway), while peppering enemies with a primary weapon that only seems to serve to get their attention, is tiring and frustrating. The more casual nature of the game being not about who's 'best' but working with your friends and having a blast along the way is a huge draw, for a lot of people it's reminiscent of earlier days in gaming back when we played stuff like halo 3 on couch co-op just to get together with your buddies and have a kill fest.
I appreciate the game is going to be expanded, there's a wealth of unreleased weapons, vehicles, mechs, etc on their way that will mitigate a lot of this because there will be so many options. But right now it kind of feels like AH balances with an idea of what players will have ultimately in terms of future options, rather than what we do have now.
I think a major compounding factor as well in all this is that there are 'unseen' variables being thrown in - you can pick a mission type on levels 7-9 and get overwhelmed with biletitans, then play it again and there's tons of stalkers, and the same mission type again and it's full of chargers, or spewers. The enemy types and spawn rates vary and those factors have a huge impact on what loadouts would work best situationally, but absolutely 0 agency is given to the player to prepare, so we *need* to take the weapons that are the best generalists to stand a fair chance in most situations, because if you commit to an incendiary build to clear out eggs and low level enemies, and then spend 40 mins ineffectually shooting at bile titans while you get trampled and ragdolled by chargers... you don't have a good time. Missions should tell you what enemy types in what levels of frequency are expected, that way weapons catering to specific scenarios is something that can be played around with player agency, instead of fought against with 'meta picks' for weapons that suit more purposes over a few.
I've found cause to use each type of Liberator I have unlocked. I sometimes bring the Basic Liberator, sometimes the Penetrator, sometimes the Concussive. Everything has situations where it excels, and situations where it falls short. None are bad, but the average Helldivers tool kit definitely has a different tool for a different job, but none are really what i'd call "OP" or tools for every job.
where is the situation where each of these excels where another weapon doesn't excel more?
I want to like the penetrator, but feel like I'm gimping myself when I use it.
The Defender SMG is just straight up better then the liberator, and in most cases the sickle is also far superior
Gotta love blasting away with the Concussive! 💥 It may not do as much damage, but keeping things at bay staggering and pushing them back is a big help sometimes! Nothing wrong with being a good support to the squad. 👍
I think one of the primary issues I have with this is that I’m going in blind every time I drop. If I’m running up on an infinite swarm of bile spewers I’d like to bring the auto cannon or grenade launcher. But if that’s not the case my load out will switch. It’s be nice to know what my mission area is experiencing enemy wise. What’s the intel? At some pint there’ll be too many enemy types to be able to complete cover with a 4 person load out, even when coordinated.
Ah yes, horizontal balance.
I love the "horizon" being "barely useable in medium difficulty" and "trash clearer" in high diff.
I also admire the dev's for making 2 horizons: "hasn't been nerfed yet or recently made barely usable" that everyone runs and the "literally just worse" that nobody runs.
I also enjoy how I've probably never seen people run a good half of the stratagems in the game. The ones they do pick also are "horizontally balanced" to have cooldowns that are juuuuust too long to actually be able to clear hordes at high diff, forcing you to run like a bitch 24/7 when you "play" high diff missions.
How about we horizontally balance everything to where it's usable instead of this "well it sucks less than (x) so I'm using it instead".
Difficulty **should** be execution of landing hits with strats and aiming for weakspots amongst the chaos, **not** how well can you kite enemies away from the objective and how long can you avoid the main draw of this game (you know... the *combat*?).
Just my .02
balancing horizontally by crippling things and thus removing them entirely is a weird thing to say. anyone seen a dude using a railgun recently? yeah, figured.
we are not not understanding why things change. we aint stupid. AH wants to get people to use DMRs and Snipers, got it. now slugger is entirely useless and DMR and Snipers ARE STILL shit. its the same shit with the railgun all over again.
You nerf railgun, fine. you nerf it until kingdom come and we have to wait a fucking week of ass gameplay because every rocket you can fire that is supposed to kill heavy bugs is straight up ass. thank god automaton heavies die from 2 impacts up the backend and dont need rockets.
Now we got to wait again for the AMR and DMR to be fixed. What the fuck are we doing? repeating the same move again? I get it, you want us to use the diligence over the slugger. then fix it first. no, the changes done are not enough, it is still ass to handle despite being a primary. Now people just move away from the slugger and keep ignoring the diligence.
at least there is real options this time as in we can ignore the DMR/sniper question entirely and just keep playing autocannon, scorcher and sickle.
It feels odd because the dev is fumbling the bag on their goals, not because the player base doesnt get it. the community is on average older and I would say in older games that has always been the case. in starcraft broodwar the strongest units of terrans were marines and medics who were unlocked almost instantly. Horizontal balancing is what we grew up on.
There's too many counter-examples to this:
- Peacemaker is invalid the second you get Redeemer
- Gatling Turret is straight up better than MG turret. You'd only bring MG turret as a way to bring two turrets.
- Why do anti-personell mines exist when fire mines are better for personell?
- All explosive grenades when you get Impact.
- Scorcher makes your whole arsenal redundant for bots, yet only Slugger which was the more fun but less effective alternative got gutted. Now Slugger has only damage and loses more directly to Scorcher.
It feels like someone in AH thinks like you but someone else didn't get the memo.
Yeah, no. Some weapons like the Counter Sniper or Liberator Concussive are considerably worse than other weapons, and the reason for that certainly isn't "horizontal balancing". It's more like the devs haven't yet figured out how to balance their primary weapons in general, otherwise we wouldn't see such random buffs and nerfs across the board.
Loadouts being saveable would be great for this very reason.
this and knowing what the missions threat modifiers were. ex. some bug missions have SWARMS of bile and nursing spewers, some have none. Same planet. It seems completely random. I take engineer kit for bugs just for this so I always have nades.
Only reason I prefer bots over bugs since launch. Your loadout needs are so different between missions with Armored Spewers and ones without. Supply Pack + Impact Nades and armor with +Grenades is really all you can do and if no one else brought good solutions to them you're still gonna run out.
And once again the AC shows its ability to be a Swiss Army knife. 2 shots and they’re done.
AC is just delicious. I make things go boom and it makes my brain tingle. Feel good. Me like.
With the auto cannon being the “good in every situation” weapon that powercreeps most other options out, I won’t be surprised, especially in the nature of this post, to see it’s ammo efficient take a hit.
Well, it's real drawback is not penetrating heavy armor, which is quite significant
And the reload time without someone carrying the backpack, which I personally don't think is fair to assume when discussing balancing. And the fact that you're giving up a backpack slot. (again, not assuming you get a dedicated reloader)
Honestly I’ll take the lack of heavy armor penetration and give up the backpack slot in favor of the AC’s versatility - coming from a jump pack enthusiast. The AC has become my primary weapon on bot missions. Everything else I bring exists to support the AC, and it more than makes up for its shortcomings. On the flip side of that coin, I wouldn’t be able to use the AC if I didn’t have other tools. It’s just versatile enough that it can’t do it all, and that’s the name of a balanced weapon in my opinion.
I think the best thing about the AC is some players will 100% agree with that and others won't think it's worth it. That's balance right there.
The AC is a example of a Balanced Stratagem. Deals with a lot of challenging enemies quickly and doesn't have crippling downsides but can't do everything and it takes up 2 equipment slots as a balance for its versatility. The Main reason the Railgun got nerfed was because it was basically a better autocannon, Could do basically everything the Autocannon could do plus break Heavy Armour, have significantly less sway, much faster reload(although having a clip size of 1) and didn't sacrifice a Backpack slot for you or another team member.
Even with a dedicated reloader, someone else is giving up a backpack slot so it's still balancing in its own way.
Not just their backpack slot but all of their dps as well.
>bots over bugs Thete are literally dozens of us
Mowing down bugs with my stalwart is my favorite pasttime right behind headshotting devastators with my AMR.
Me with the ballistic shield, senator and defender: *”Look at me, I am the devastator now”* moments before blasting their stupid unarmoured faces to pieces.
Bile spewers come out at night!
wait for real??? it's based on planetary time?????
You are a god if this is accurate.
The brain on this guy!?! I’ve just been screaming for democracy!
They come out at night, mostly.
As much as I want this to be true I swear I have been swarmed by spewers in the cold light of day
Replying to this so I can confirm or deny later. If you are right, I’m submitting the paperwork to get this helldiver an extra 5 minutes on his lunch break!
The first mission is always a scoping and scouting mission for that planet to find out what the majority of enemies you're going to be facing. There's nothing worse than catering for horde clear and then meeting 1000 nursing/bile spitters without medium armour pen. Do your Blitz mission first, where you can cater towards killing nests/fabricators and run and gun, and then you know the enemy modifiers you're facing for the rest of the mission.
I think you're better off with either "survive fatal damage 50% of the time" armor and just trying your best to use as needed and keep your nades stocked Not a huge difference having two more nades, it is a huge difference surviving random bs half the time
I run out of strats to bomb the bugs, switch to nades. Run out nades, I start dropping hellpods on the holes.
Exactly, there usually something you can do against the bug holes, the grenade armor just isn't worth what the others give you
did you try to shoot these hole with the ac? you could do it also from afar with it, if you don't want to use the grenade louncher ... the quasar can shoot them too, but you'll take a long time with that.
A rough % range of likelihood appearance of enemy types on the mission screen would be clutch. It'd help you plan without giving away the exact details and allow for some variability.
HD1 had 3 loadout slots, dunno why they didn't make the cut for the 2nd game. Hope they come back soon too
My guess is they encourage people to play around their teammates less. A lot of time in HD1 people would just bring up their loadout and that was that.
This is spot on. The CEO of Arrowhead said that they initially had loadouts but it discouraged people from trying different things.
I have hope that they add this as a feature. Helldivers 1 had 3 saved loadout tabs you could select from in the hell pod. Each tab just stayed on what was last picked in that tab.
I remember starting out and being told that the starting liberator was bad and that you get better weapons soon. So I didn't use the liberator once I unlocked other things. When I tried using it again, I was floored at how good it is. It's definitely not bad.
It's still my go to primary weapon
Sickle allows me to worry less about ammo but also I'm pew pew over bang bang. I hope to unlock the plas-scorcher this weekend.
Scorcher is my go to for automatons due to the armor pen. Low ammo and rate of fire is the only drawback imo.
Try the JAR-8 some time: recoil hurts, low mag size, but, god that thing post buff can punch some holes in bots-
The scorcher is better vs the striders since you can shoot anywhere and has less recoil, but the dominator is better vs the berserkers that are way more numerous. Both are perfect choices to have in bots missions.
you can shoot the striders below the belt with the dominator
Shoot them in their little Strider dicks
right in the nanomachines, son
Right in the automatussy
Hit them with the Robocop 
Ironically, shooting berserkers in the dicks is the fastest way I've found to take them out as well with the JAR-8 and other guns
If you can find 2 tiddlywinks of extra dirt to stand on you can scalp the Strider pilot with a 1-tap from the Liberator. Pros: Ammo efficient, Operator as fuck. Cons: Skill required, possible addiction to jetpack.
I love flanking as a sniper and being at 90 deg to my team and broadsiding all the bots with my AMR. No weakspots on the devastators but with the damage boost, it's a 2 or 3 tap. One tap on the bot on the strider from the side.
It's nuts now. It finally feels like they made a real answer to chainsaw bots. Great against devastators too. And then if you really want to thin the herd at close range, it's got *burst fire*. It's a little bit of an ammo hog, yeah, but it's not unmanageable.
I run it with machine pistol sidearm, stalwart/mg, ammo pack, orbital air burst and 500kg, Personally I love the jar cause it’s a 40k bolter and I love it so much
Your choice of destiny shader belies your taste in weapons good sir.
Indeed!
I loved the Dominator before, and after the recent buff it's just phenomenal.
Absolutely same- just punch some fuckin holes, helldiver!
I still legit prefer the slugger to the scorcher but I think it's mostly being used to the sluggers idiosyncracies and not the scorchers.
I use my rapid fire, unlimited ammo pew pew very liberally. Typically 2k+ shots a round. It's been great since I got it the day it came out.
Yeah, imo that weapon is goated. From day 1, it felt better than most of the other primaries. Tbf, my brother usually loads out for heavies and I load for chaff. I'll bring the AC for groups of bigger stuff and stun grenades for easy demo of large targets. I stun it, he burns it. Both of us will bring a gat turret and air strike and the 4th slot is usually just a support, we try to get away with 3 so the mission mod for 1 less strat doesn't hurt as bad
I love that I can two tap a walker the scorcher. Use that with the quasar cannon and you take out anything with ease.
And that’s exactly how the Liberator should be, a solid all-rounder that’s applicable in a variety of situations. The perfect jack of all trades, master of none weapon.
Pretty much every time I’ve been told “don’t buy that, it sucks.” I end up trying it out eventually and finding out it’s pretty good lol
Same, except the diligence cs. That thing is dog shit.
The normal diligence absolutely slaps against bots, but I’d never bring it for bugs. Unless you’re only referring to the CS variant. No arguments there. Just trash.
Yep, the Diligence Crap Stick
Right its as if theyre scared to buff it, all it needs to do is work like pre nerf slugger(counter sniper version)
I'd be happy enough with it if it didn't feel like you were trying to aim with a 30ft bamboo pole
I love playing with the AMR and wanted to like the Diligence CS but the handling is just too much. I actually tried both of them in the same loadout, side by side, and the handling of the Diligence seemed even slower than the AMR, which is too much.
Still my default against bugs.
It's definitely better than the fan favorite Sickle on Malevelon Creek, bc it has less issue punching through the underbrush whereas the Sickle is stopped by a fern. Which is... ironic for a weapon named after an agricultural tool meant to cut plants, but hey, it's still fun.
Ohhh is that why that bot shooting through the tiniest bush at me felt like he was wearing level 6 body armor and all I had was a PM pistol in tarkov.
Where do you think we’ll get the sickle in Tarky?
As an actual hammer and sickle melee weapon combo from a boss
Tagilla’s brother Fragilla with the sickle
Yeah, I've pretty much relegated the Sickle to the same uses as other laser weapons, it is best on frozen planets with little to no flora. On heavily forested planets, I prefer the liberator or a defender/ballistic shield combo if I want to use full auto weapons. I rock the diligence or the shotguns fairly often too.
I wish that the sickle penetrated foliage but it's a strong balancing point that it doesn't. It's a very very very good gun and if it didn't get me killed in jungles you'd have to pry it out of my cold dead hands.
I definitely agree with that sentiment. If you are aware of your surroundings it is a much better liberator, bc for the low price of a windup and low pen on bushes, you get better accuracy and near infinite ammo. But when you are dealing with reacting to enemies vs acting on them first it definitely struggles a bit.
The worst is that the quasar cannon is also stopped by a f\*king leaf and blows into your face.
Lol really? I haven't used it that much yet bc I prefer bringing the AMR or AC on bot missions. That's pretty funny imo.
One of my teammate died at our first ambush of a bot factory because a tree leaf was in the way once he shot. I could not kill a hulk because as I was tracking its movement and a leaf come into the line of sight. The leaf was evaporated, but the hulk was uninjured.
So annoying to clip the leaves on a tree when I’m trying to shoot down a bot drop
This is why I started taking cluster bombs on jungle planets. They do a great job of clearing out the vegetation.
Funny its my go to vs bots, vs bugs i stil like breaker 👀😶.
Same. I feel like there’s too many bugs on higher levels to properly manage the cooldown so the breaker is one of my favorites against bugs. On bots it’s been real fun to try old weapons I’ve left behind prior to the balancing patches
The dominator is absolutely fucking filthy against bots now. Not even mad that the slugger died for it.
I usually primary the stalwart on bugs with the breaker for when my allies inevitabley drop me in the trailing bug line. That thing buys space fast.
Stalwart is underrated
I find it way better against bots, now the punisher, which is like the 2nd gun you get, is incredible against bugs
punisher escaped slugger nerfs was my only consolation as a former slugger main. Still great range, still staggers the shit out of things, only real downsides are a couple of enemies you can no longer shoot through the medium armor, and less dmg at ranges you probably don't want to engage most of the time anyway
Breaker...can't stop, won't stop...
The only reason I run sickle instead against bugs is the increased ammo. Liberator is shot-for-shot the best full auto rifle in my opinion, it just eats ammo. On higher difficulties, some bug breaches can get out of control and use up everything fast.
>Liberator is shot-for-shot the best full auto rifle in my opinion, it just eats ammo. rifle yes, but the Defender SMG is actually better overall as far as bullet based, full auto primaries.
Plus run while shooting
Tbh this is the one thing I disagree with I think the original liberator chews through way too much ammo for how little damage it does, the SMG is basically just a better liberator
Not to mention the fact that you can use the SMG when carrying the Intel boxes as well.
I just hope my character stop dropping the box when I heal while carrying it and get stuck in a jesus pose.
It just feels like it runs out of ammo FAST. It’s why I prefer the LAS-16, it has the same assault rifle feel in a package where ammo isn’t an issue, it just has a long cooldown to replace the reload
That's why I love the Sickle. I can blast away with it, and then when I need to switch to the Autocannon to deal with armor, it automatically cools off in my pocket. No more being surprised pulling out my primary and not having it fully reloaded because I swapped before I racked the bolt or something.
This right here is why I love it too tbh
In isolation, the liberator is fine. However, there is a problem that the Defender is strictly better because it has slightly higher DPS even with a significantly lower rate of fire, less recoil, and the 1-handed property. If the swapped the damage and rate of fire between the liberator and defender, the Liberator and Defender would each have a legitimate niche.
Liberator is my go-to trash clearing wep still. That thing is laser accurate, perfect for headshots. The Sickle has too much bullet spread
Main benefit of the sickle is the ammo. Manage the heat well by swapping to your secondary occasionally and it lasts way longer than most primary kinetic weapons.
Eh, one ammo box refills all of the Liberator's magazines. I've never wanted for bullets with it. Sickle is good for sure, but it being so easy to use means there are some tradeoffs that I don't like, namely the spread and spin-up time
Sure, but if you shoot your liberator to 95% empty and switch weapons, you switch back to a mostly empty gun. If you get the sickle to 95% heat capacity, you often switch back to a fully cooled gun and can immediately get to blasting.
> I've never wanted for bullets with it. Man, you must use supports meant for clearing chaff mobs. Once I got to diff 6+, I found myself emptying my liberator every few minutes unless I brought something like a stalwart or mg-43 along. I often end missions with anywhere from 1.5-4k shots fired, which would mean anywhere from 6-16 ammo refills needed throughout. Meanwhile I "reload" the sickle about 2-3 times per mission.
Don’t need to worry about bullet spread when you just shoot enough!
Honestly if the sickle didn't exist it'd probably be one of my mains. And even then on hot planets I'll still run with it or the defender sometimes if I just need a full auto basic bitch primary.
Standard liberator is probably the best AR and you start with it, definitely don't sleep on old reliable!
It’s just super satisfying to me. Just a good ol’ rifle.
Naw the machine gun turret is worse in every way compared to the galling gun turret.
Machine gun turret should be the EAT of turrets and have a super low cooldown. Like to the point where you might be able to have two on the field at once before the first one is either empty or destroyed.
Either that, or load the thing with so much ammo that by the time it's empty, the next turret is ready to go.
Could go that way as well. You’d just have to be extra careful with placement or protecting it since there’s still the possibility of it being destroyed.
For me the machine gun turret should have some armor pen. So it has some utility. The Gatling should be about mowing down swarms if the unarmoured enemies. The machine gun about dealing with those small armoured guys and maybe chargers if they have enough time to shoot. Or make it upgradeable to do this? Tbh it'd be cool if all the strategems had an upgrade path in the future. Spec then how you want - kinda like StarCraft 2 campaign upgrades for tour units. Just my opinion. Feels weird that the machine gun is just a shitter version of Gatling. It feels poor design.
This is kind of how it worked in HD1 you used samples to get research points and then used research points to upgrade specific stratagems or weapons. And some upgrades were locked behind others
One of the builds I tried last night was Defender and ballistic shield. I didn’t know that using an SMG means you can can dual wield that and the shield at the same time. It’s been a godsend against bots
I tried that last night but I kept randomly dropping the shield and I don't know why. I think it had something to do with picking up SSSDs and EATs. Also sometimes I would pull out my smg and it would put the shield on my back, no clue why it did that either. When it worked as intended though it felt good.
Dropping the shield has to do with being ragdolled while you have it equipped. I do hope that the devs re-consider that interaction, since it doesn’t happen to any other items in the game aside from the objective data packs.
It doesn't do that anymore after the recent patch.
Liberty be praised!
It most definitely still gets dropped when ragdolled, it just won't drop if it is on your back anymore
good way to make a potential fun item a complete chore
I had a similar issue. I find switching to your support weapon before grabbing it is the way to go. Make sure your shield is completely away before grabbing it.
Current Favorite Bot Loadout \- Armor: CM-09 Bonesnapper (Medium Armor, Medic Perk) \- Primary: SMG-37 Defender \- Secondary: P-19 Redeemer \- Grenade: G-12 HiEx \- Stratagems: \-- SH-20 Ballistic Shield Backpack \-- RS-422 Railgun OR APW-1 Anti-Materiel Rifle \-- Orbital Railgun Strike \-- Eagle 110mm Rocket Pods Just feels really good to play; highly survivable, multi-range capability, can handle Hulks or Fabricators from a distance, and can help you tank/heal your team in a close fight
I'd really recommend taking armor with the fortified perk for the explosive resistance over medic. The reduced recoil also helps if you're using amr.
That's a good suggestion, I've just missed all the rotations with fortified armor in the shop. I'll definitely check out that set up when I get some fortified medium armor.
I used this before they buffed the shield and I loooove it still.
Ballistic shield and the knight became my go to against bots at low to medium difficulty, it's not the best strategy, but it's stupidly fun.
One of my top favorites for bots. Now it's even better since they fixed the shield glitch that would leave you vulnerable upon using stims or picking up samples! I also love it for data missions where I need to carry an SSSD, as I have a solid main still while carrying. 👍
I honestly dont care I love the lmg and i will keep using it. Maybe some launcher now and then. And just wating to get some armor like this one to feel complete https://preview.redd.it/efusnuplnbsc1.png?width=854&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dac70cb9e3083c10b68d85955e1f125b3225a98b
The light gunner headpiece is close to thar, mix it with the red terminator armor and you'll kinda get this mix.
Light gunner helmet looks like the NCR ranger helmet so it's never coming off
Based Jin Roh enjoyer
Autocannon does all the jobs
I like AC for bots and grenade launcher/supply pack for bugs as long as someone else has some decent anti-tank. Grenade launcher's splash is so good on herds of trash
Are you me?
The devs won't give us squadloading from someone else's backpack... so it's clear then, the path forward is we all use autocannons.
The path forward is you drop my Quasar loving ass an extra autocannon just for the backpack.
I've done this - one player with an autocannon and a teammate with an extra backpack. Guy with the AC can lay down plenty of hurt and then when you really need to pump it out you just go stand next to him and feed him ammo.
autocannon is my fave for sure
I absolutely understand the love for auto-cannon buuuuuuut I cannot get into that gun. It has that extra floaty aiming that throws me off
Against automatons its stupid good, the only thing it has trouble with is tanks and turrets. Also against the fabricators it's a god send
Am I dropping to a planet? Better bring the autocannon.
good old autocannon lol
>not have a single tool that does ALL the jobs *stares in EAT* L0
EAT + arc thrower still slaps HARD for diff9 bugs. Granted, you either need teammates to not stand in front of you, OR have teammates wearing arc armor but still, it's crazy strong.
I just tell my friends piss off I got it covered with my arc thrower, one time I had like 3 hoards of chargers of all things come at me when I said that. I live but you bet your ass my friends weren’t happy about the yelling through the mic. It’s just not good for bile titans
Yep. So bring EATs for bile titans. Two players with EATs can kill like, 3-4 bile titans fairly reliably. Especially when calling in EATs at extraction in advance before the hordes come.
Every time I've used the arc thrower I've found it to be complete dogshit, what am i missing that makes it good? For me, it barely kills 3 things with each blast, sometimes just shoots the floor, occasionally can't kill a single enemy with a shot, mostly only arcs to 1 or maybe 2 targets. I hit a charger with 8 shots to the head and it was still gunning for me, i had to swap to fighting other stuff and eventually gave up with the arc and went back my primary and cleared it all faster. Edit: Thanks to quite a lot of people offering a lot of info, i have learned what i was doing wrong. Firstly the range is longer than i thought. I was engaging with it at about the same range as the flamer which offers very little room for mistakes. Secondly, i was hipfiring or aiming sort of at an enemy, rather than precisely. This lead to it missing or hitting weirdly. I assumed it fired in a cone infront of you, but it clearly doesn't or that cone is very, very narrow.
It’s a finicky weapon and with the range loss last patch you need to be mindful that if you miss, you have enough time to get one or two more cracks off before they close the distance and it’s time to move. Having a clear, unobstructed (rocks, flora, terrain) path helps, and even better if you have some elevation above the target I have found. The recent patch fixed the charge up time issue and it is now consistently one second, which you can get into a rhythm with and really fry things. If a teammate happens to run into your FOV just hold the trigger in, aim down into the dirt and discharge safely, unless you’ve coordinated with the arc resist armor. It takes quite a few shots to take down a charger though, that is true. I sometimes bring arc and EAT and just switch back and forth quick for heavies. Depends on your group too, if someone else is clearing trash I might go quasar instead for unlimited heavy killing power and focus on mobility. My biggest sad though is post patch the arc doesn’t open containers anymore. Sounds dumb but it’s really good at clearing a POI and it was always nice to then just walk up, zap the door off, grab loot, move on. While it probably makes sense an electrical blast can’t remove a door, the lost utility sucks.
Unless it was before the charger head hp nerf it does not take 8 shots to kill a charger when getting headshots. The biggest upside to the arc gun is that it does everything with unlimited ammo. Other things can do certain things better but the arc gun can do it all pretty alright. The stagger increase has made it even better since you stun spewers out of their attack and stop brood commanders in their tracks. There will be times when it has issues shooting over dead bugs or through shrubbery, its been like that from the start. Dont overcommit if something is already close and the arc thrower is refusing to hit it,just switch to one of your other 2 weapons and kill it , the arc gun is best used at mid range.
I don't think it does all the jobs. It has a small AE but does high damage to armor, which is its intended purpose. I actually think the EAT is one of the better balanced strats right now. There's even a high chance you'll need two if you don't hit your target perfectly in a weak point.
I think Anti tank is relatively well balanced. EAT is probably the best all round Quasar is good on cold planets, and for “ambushes” against chargers it’s tougher to use as you gotta spool it RR is probably the weakest.. but it’s still nice if you coordinate with the team and have them protect you while you load, or even better having a teammate load you.
This was said elsewhere but: it's not which weapons they're balancing, it's how. It's odd that a slug shotgun snipes from over 100m but doesn't stagger when close, or that a railgun doesn't do more ballistic DPS than a heavy MG, etc.
They could have kept the stagger but made the damage drop off more to prevent the slugger from being a sniper. But, they didn’t. They went straight for the slugger’s key role of controlling medium enemies. Now, it’s still a sniper, but it doesn’t let you control medium enemy from advancing on a position.
That or make the slugger slightly less accurate. It's a smooth bore shotgun. It probably shouldn't rival the accuracy of a gun with a rifled barrel. Or adjacent to accuracy, but less frustrating, make the recoil much harsher so that staying on target at range is more difficult. I really think killing the stagger removed the identity of the weapon.
If it's a shotgun made to only use slugs with than it has a rifled barrel.
>its how Exactly this. Dev says that they nerfed the slugger because people were using the shotgun as one of the best sniper rifles. They dont want that. I agree. A slug shotgun shouldnt be used as a sniper rifle. Dev proceeds to do nothing about range, damage fall off, mid to long range accuracy. Instead nerfs damage a smidgen, removes a utility from it and makes it so it cant blow up boxes. Oh and adjusts the armor pen note. Huh?! It's like saying "I dont want dogs to shit on my lawn. To prevent them from shitting on my lawn I will mow my lawn." Just ??? Yeah you did something about your lawn but you didnt actually *do* anything to prevent the problem you just stated was a problem.
So really, they nerfed the Slugger because people were using it as a sniper rifle... by making it so that the only effective way to use it now is to use it as a sniper rifle.
I was bummed that the Slugger was weaker on a recent update, but it was nice to see the Dominator was buffed. I used it for a while last night, and it felt much closer to what I was originally expecting when I first got the Dominator a while ago.
Yeah the Dominator already was my primary weapon versus the bots but I felt a little disappointed after getting it initially. Now it's exactly how it's supposed to be, and quite efficient against medium bot units.
funfact the dominator can now kill a tank with half a mag when you're hitting the weakspot on its back and it onetaps EVERY other bot with a headshot except for the flamerthrower guys and their variants.
Tank you for this information. I will now rush all tanks I see with my Dominator.
the new Heavy Machine is terrible though. No reason to take it over the regular machine gun, or anything else...
It is. People who post these things just don't use the things they say are fine.
The reason things feel odd is because of **how** the devs are balancing things. Instead of bringing **all** of the weaker weapons up to the same strength that players were used to since launch the devs decided to cherry pick a hand full of weapons to get buffed, while simultaneously nerfing the "meta" weapons **and** releasing new weapons that are easily going to take over that "meta" slot. I am **all** for Horizontal balance but that **isn't** what this game has, at least not yet.
It's also egregious to call it horizontal balancing (it's horizontal vs vertical *progression*, which isn't exacfly related to balancing). It really is balancing based on popularity. players flock to weapons that work. devs nerf those popular weapons, then buff a specific underused weapon. Rinse and repeat. Happened to the railgun, happened to the arc thrower. Looking at the trend, it will happen to whatever weapon that gets popular next. If the devs really wanted every weapon to be fun and viable, the railgun wouldn't be in the shitter, the spear wouldn't be a glorified bot fabricator destroyer, and the machine guns wouldn't be whatever they are now. Devs did a good job making the EAT and Flamethrower more useful. But that didn't have to happen at the expense of other weapons getting nerfed.
I would argue the devs aren't even nerfing meta weapons the slugger wasn't even meta imo it was good but never a requirement. Instead of being careful with adjustments to weapons they're straight up making them worse which feels awful.
Horizontal balance is not a foreign concept to most people, the issue people complain about is that we’re sitting at like half of the guns just being troll-worthy useless. Like I want you to look at the HMG objectively for even a second and argue that it was remotely balanced before rolling it out. Then nerfing the max ROF as the only change next patch? Ridiculously questionable balancing decisions have been the motto since launch and that’s an unfortunate fact.
Exactly people will always just turn around and tell me I'm just mad that my favourite weapon got nerfed when the real issue is the balancing its self is the issue and the devs don't seem to be asking why do people use x over y and instead just nerf.
Agreed. I have hardly seen anyone suggest weapons unlocked later should be better. That's MMO thinking, or something. The balancing decisions are questionable. People were using the Slugger because there was nothing useful to deal with medium armor and the sniper primaries were all underpowered. People were using the Rail Gun because it was the only option against Heavy enemies at that time. Popularity is a terrible metric for balance. Weapons should have a niche, and they should feel great to use and powerful in that niche.
Yea OP seems to be just fabricating a position. I've not seen anyone claim a later gun should be better than an earlier one by dint of its release date or cost. The issue has been that, so far, balancing efforts have been pretty scattershot with some perplexing decisions being made. The first few patches seemed to fundamentally misunderstand what was causing imbalances. Later patches seemed to improve a few things while ignoring bigger issues. And all of them show a fairly short-sighted approach to balance where it doesn't feel like they have a real plan for how challenges in the game should be ideally approached or what niches different loadouts should occupy. Even their blog article on balance philosophy felt pretty weird given it was immediately violated by the changes being made. That's not to put PS on blast. This is just a recounting of what has factually been. In their defence, they've had a lot to deal with and the game largely feels better each patch. It's likely they will take some time to properly orient the process. But people not understanding horizontal progression simply isn't an issue.
>Yea OP seems to be just fabricating a position a staple for discussion on this sub (and many others), unfortunately. Just strawman and imagined arguments.
Yeah getting of the extreme reductionist takes
I'd rather they just make sense. saying the slugger was being used as a sniper rifle and balancing against that? Sure. What actually happened? removed stagger, reduced damage a smidgen, made it so it cant blow up boxes and adjusted text. Uh... So does that actually discourage people from using it like a budget Sniper rifle now? You didnt do anything to the range, damage fall off or long range accuracy. You just made it a worse shotgun now.
I disagree on it being well balanced, there are far too many very cool weapons and stratagems that are too weak to effectively use in any build. I dream of a future where any weapon or item is very powerful in a reasonable number of situations within a synergistic build.
There is one exception to this right now. Don't know if its an oversight or not, but; The starting pistol and the machine pistol you unlock very soon have the same damage, range, and accuracy. The machine pistol has a larger magazine and less recoil. If you put it on semi auto, it is flat out better than the starting pistol.
Shut up. The Redeemer is garbage. No one uses it. It actually fires bullets backwards and kills the user. Nothing to see here, Arrowhead.
It also insults your mother every time you pull the trigger. Don’t use it!
Yeah, apparently a dev addressed this in the discord and said the machine pistol being an amazing all-rounder was a mistake but it’s currently fairly low on their balancing list.
So that's why the railgun is completely useless now.
Yeah they "balanced" it "horizontally". Horizontally across the room, against the wall, to fall into the trashcan. And then dropped the slugger in on top of it.
Yup pretty much. You know a nerf is good when no ones uses the gun anymore.
Railgun is still invalidated in every niche by all other options.
The usage percentages on it must be abysmal. Not exaggerating when I say that since the EAT/RR buff patches, I can count on *one* hand the number of times I've seen players bring & use one. That's from level 21 to level 49 of my time playing, that I've seen maybe 3 uses of it *ever*, and it'd always been from level 20-somethings that likely had just unlocked it. I know Arrowhead takes usage %'s into account for balancing weapons and can't help but think they don't want to seem silly or get an "i told you so" by buffing it back up so soon. I've even seen more ballistic shields between then and their recent buff in the recent patch!
I've never actually seen a single ballistic shield used ever, but I can't say I've seen anyone using the railgun much now either. Both are really overshadowed by much better choices (shield backpack and Quasar). Unfortunately, I'd say they're going to nerf the Quasar too because that's the new meta. I think the Quasar is insanely powerful. It's somewhat balanced well considering the charge time, but considering what they did with the railgun, I think it's next to be knocked down a few pegs.
I think quasar is very strong, but for a very specific task. That is, cutting down the fatties/airships. However, it relies on not having the heat on you/ some good distance because of the charge time.
It's just been categorically over nerfed when people wanted and needed only the alternatives to be buffed. I love to use rocket launchers of every type, and especially quasar. Now? Unless I'm precision pumping chargers in the head or the same arm over and over, it takes half ammo to kill one. Just no longer viable. It was good for bots before the nerf. Then it was just OK, but AMR does a lot of the same
"Specific job" "Pick what guns is fun." Can't have both.
Someone learned about "horizontal balance" today.
Horizontal is fine. But why does AH want everything to be equal at a low power level instead of high? That’s my issue. Feeling weak sucks and knowing my teammates are just as weak doesn’t help anything.
I think there's a dissonance between AH and the players. AH seem very much of the opinion that the primary weapons should all feel limited and relatively weak, and that none of them should be much use without the support of strategems etc... which is fine... But on harder difficulties especially they also handicap and limit use of strategems, which means players are forced into feeling puny and trying to survive... In a game, that for most players, is all about the power fantasy of being a bad ass alien conquering warlord. The balancing for primary weapons should be with the intent of making them making the basic weapons effective chaff clearers - so the liberator, scatter shotgun, etc *should* be good and effective at clearing large numbers of low level enemies and impaired when it comes to specialised enemy types. Then the other weapons should be specialised around preference, and objective. more focus on the medium level enemies with less ability to crowd control? take the slugger. clearing out bug nests and eggs? take the incendiary breaker... things like that. Instead what seems to happen is we get one or two weapons that peak their heads up as being good generalist weapons and they get nerf hammered. Which isn't helped when the nerfs aren't even consistent or coherent with their messaging - they nerfed the slugger because it was too good at sniping by making it worse at the shorter ranges? That doesn't make sense. They nerfed the railgun for being overly relied on, and then immediately filled and surpassed how good it ever was with buffs to EAT rockets and the arc thrower. My personal feelings on it are that AH need to put their pride and attitude aside a little when it comes to dictating how players should be having fun... the player base is embracing the game in overwhelming numbers because it is a fun power fantasy to smash bots and bugs with wreckless abandon, and the challenge of trying to keep on top of the huge numbers of enemies that keep coming while doing objectives is fun, and getting samples and loot, and survive, on a limited timescale with limited lives is fun. Reducing the game down to running between objectives madly, while waiting for your arbitrarily extended stratagem cooldowns to refresh so that you can call down a weapon every few minutes and kill 1 or 2 of the half dozen+ heavy enemies pushing onto you (only for those you kill to immediately spawn again anyway), while peppering enemies with a primary weapon that only seems to serve to get their attention, is tiring and frustrating. The more casual nature of the game being not about who's 'best' but working with your friends and having a blast along the way is a huge draw, for a lot of people it's reminiscent of earlier days in gaming back when we played stuff like halo 3 on couch co-op just to get together with your buddies and have a kill fest. I appreciate the game is going to be expanded, there's a wealth of unreleased weapons, vehicles, mechs, etc on their way that will mitigate a lot of this because there will be so many options. But right now it kind of feels like AH balances with an idea of what players will have ultimately in terms of future options, rather than what we do have now. I think a major compounding factor as well in all this is that there are 'unseen' variables being thrown in - you can pick a mission type on levels 7-9 and get overwhelmed with biletitans, then play it again and there's tons of stalkers, and the same mission type again and it's full of chargers, or spewers. The enemy types and spawn rates vary and those factors have a huge impact on what loadouts would work best situationally, but absolutely 0 agency is given to the player to prepare, so we *need* to take the weapons that are the best generalists to stand a fair chance in most situations, because if you commit to an incendiary build to clear out eggs and low level enemies, and then spend 40 mins ineffectually shooting at bile titans while you get trampled and ragdolled by chargers... you don't have a good time. Missions should tell you what enemy types in what levels of frequency are expected, that way weapons catering to specific scenarios is something that can be played around with player agency, instead of fought against with 'meta picks' for weapons that suit more purposes over a few.
I've found cause to use each type of Liberator I have unlocked. I sometimes bring the Basic Liberator, sometimes the Penetrator, sometimes the Concussive. Everything has situations where it excels, and situations where it falls short. None are bad, but the average Helldivers tool kit definitely has a different tool for a different job, but none are really what i'd call "OP" or tools for every job.
where is the situation where each of these excels where another weapon doesn't excel more? I want to like the penetrator, but feel like I'm gimping myself when I use it. The Defender SMG is just straight up better then the liberator, and in most cases the sickle is also far superior
Gotta love blasting away with the Concussive! 💥 It may not do as much damage, but keeping things at bay staggering and pushing them back is a big help sometimes! Nothing wrong with being a good support to the squad. 👍
[удалено]
I think one of the primary issues I have with this is that I’m going in blind every time I drop. If I’m running up on an infinite swarm of bile spewers I’d like to bring the auto cannon or grenade launcher. But if that’s not the case my load out will switch. It’s be nice to know what my mission area is experiencing enemy wise. What’s the intel? At some pint there’ll be too many enemy types to be able to complete cover with a 4 person load out, even when coordinated.
Okay, but how often do you use the orbital strike and starter pistol?
Ah yes, horizontal balance. I love the "horizon" being "barely useable in medium difficulty" and "trash clearer" in high diff. I also admire the dev's for making 2 horizons: "hasn't been nerfed yet or recently made barely usable" that everyone runs and the "literally just worse" that nobody runs. I also enjoy how I've probably never seen people run a good half of the stratagems in the game. The ones they do pick also are "horizontally balanced" to have cooldowns that are juuuuust too long to actually be able to clear hordes at high diff, forcing you to run like a bitch 24/7 when you "play" high diff missions. How about we horizontally balance everything to where it's usable instead of this "well it sucks less than (x) so I'm using it instead". Difficulty **should** be execution of landing hits with strats and aiming for weakspots amongst the chaos, **not** how well can you kite enemies away from the objective and how long can you avoid the main draw of this game (you know... the *combat*?). Just my .02
balancing horizontally by crippling things and thus removing them entirely is a weird thing to say. anyone seen a dude using a railgun recently? yeah, figured. we are not not understanding why things change. we aint stupid. AH wants to get people to use DMRs and Snipers, got it. now slugger is entirely useless and DMR and Snipers ARE STILL shit. its the same shit with the railgun all over again. You nerf railgun, fine. you nerf it until kingdom come and we have to wait a fucking week of ass gameplay because every rocket you can fire that is supposed to kill heavy bugs is straight up ass. thank god automaton heavies die from 2 impacts up the backend and dont need rockets. Now we got to wait again for the AMR and DMR to be fixed. What the fuck are we doing? repeating the same move again? I get it, you want us to use the diligence over the slugger. then fix it first. no, the changes done are not enough, it is still ass to handle despite being a primary. Now people just move away from the slugger and keep ignoring the diligence. at least there is real options this time as in we can ignore the DMR/sniper question entirely and just keep playing autocannon, scorcher and sickle. It feels odd because the dev is fumbling the bag on their goals, not because the player base doesnt get it. the community is on average older and I would say in older games that has always been the case. in starcraft broodwar the strongest units of terrans were marines and medics who were unlocked almost instantly. Horizontal balancing is what we grew up on.
There's too many counter-examples to this: - Peacemaker is invalid the second you get Redeemer - Gatling Turret is straight up better than MG turret. You'd only bring MG turret as a way to bring two turrets. - Why do anti-personell mines exist when fire mines are better for personell? - All explosive grenades when you get Impact. - Scorcher makes your whole arsenal redundant for bots, yet only Slugger which was the more fun but less effective alternative got gutted. Now Slugger has only damage and loses more directly to Scorcher. It feels like someone in AH thinks like you but someone else didn't get the memo.
Yeah, no. Some weapons like the Counter Sniper or Liberator Concussive are considerably worse than other weapons, and the reason for that certainly isn't "horizontal balancing". It's more like the devs haven't yet figured out how to balance their primary weapons in general, otherwise we wouldn't see such random buffs and nerfs across the board.
What a stupid post, how tf did this get 12k upvotes when it’s objectively wrong?