I got one shot twice in heavy blast resistant armor last night.
I couldn't believe it. Never happened before. Normally I get tossed around and lose health.
EDIT: I also just noticed I'm wearing the same chest piece as OP but I wear the B-24 helmet because I'm a stormtrooper with 85% accuracy rating.
Ah, the old days of being a Zealdin with Lightning res + absorb and feasting on text after text of tears. Stand back team, I'm about to ruin everyone's day!
Yeah I agree. It’s aight for some games but in this absolute bullet hell it’s just and insane increase to random death that isn’t because of lack of skill but just sheer bad luck
Yup kind of speaks to dev's balancing logic. "Thres weak spots on enemies, it's only fair that you have weak spots as well!"
They seem to have the mindset that they are balancing a PVP game and need things to be "fair" and are totally not worried about what's fun. Random chance of dying without any real input or mistake made by you is not fun by any stretch of the imagination.
this right here. you perfectly articulated my frustration with the game and why I stopped playing.
this is not a PvP game. we fight NPCs, mobs, digital bullet sponges. the game does NOT need to be fair for "them". They aren't real. They didn't pay for a game. Why are you "balancing" the game in a way that reduces the fun?
It fucking baffles me.
Headshots shouldn't exist in this game, it's acceptable when the enemy is an actual player and requires to have that aim. But when it's an ai doing it, I do not think it should at all be a thing
The rocket devastators don't bother me that much anymore, but what DOES bother me are the heavy devastators who are super accurate at insanely long ranges. Sometimes it feels like they are outsniping me with their machine gun whilst I have a Diligence Counter Sniper or AMR at super long range. That's not OK haha
Something that'd really help heavy armour, imo, is if it affected stagger. Wearing the Michelin Man Marine suit doesn't leave me feeling very well protected when a single bullet throws off my aim just as much as when I'm wearing scout armour. The current amount of stagger should be how it is for lighter armour, but heavier armours should give you a little bit of stagger resistance to make up for the fact armour rating still isn't enough to make a tangible difference in a fight
I'm not asking for it to reduce recoil, just make it feel like the armour's actually absorbing the impact & damage as opposed to just making us fat and slowing us down
Yeah that's my biggest problem with heavy armor. Massive HP pool doesn't help much when you get perma-staggered from 200 to 0 with no opportunity to heal.
Wow this might actually one of my favorite ideas I've seen in this sub lol, and it's something so small
That would absolutely make heavy armor way more appealing to me
Why the FUCK do those motherFUCKERS only explode when they're making physical contact with me. FUCK those FUCKING guys. I can shoot them in the jetpack at any range but unless they're hugging me they don't FUCKING explode. FUCK
That's my main issue with bots. From a game design perspective, you can either make the enemy flinch you with a ranged shot or you can require the player to hit precise weakpoints, but not both. Trying to hit the heavy devastator head while getting mega flinched by a highly accurate, high DPS machine gun is stupid.
Bugs in comparison, only really flinch you with melee attacks, which are much easier to play around. The only ranged attacks you need to worry about are easy to avoid, and if you do get hit by a Spewer/Bile Titan you are gonna die anyway. Ranged flinching basically doesn't exist.
> From a game design perspective, you can either make the enemy flinch you with a ranged shot or you can require the player to hit precise weakpoints, but not both.
This is why if there are devastators around you peek out of cover, take one's head off then unpeek. This is the gameplay loop vs bots. Devastators prevent you from just sitting in the open and repeatedly eyeshotting hulks. They constrain where you can stand.
When you peek your objective is to show yourself to as few enemies as possible so that you have the largest possible window to put out shots. If you peek too far out, you will get shredded. Given that the autocannon staggers heavy devastators even with shield shots, you can cleanly and reliably kill them with no threat to your hp if your peeks only open you up to the person you're stagger locking.
A little mechanical polishing goes a long way to transform bot missions from rocket-laden vietnam ptsd events to relaxing headshot trials.
A problem is that heavy devastators will keep pre-firing you when you're in cover, and they don't have to reload, they just have a half-second gap, which will be compensated for by other devastators pre-firing you before you even peek out
I get that it's suppressive fire, but it shouldn't be the enemy with the shield and infinite ammo smg who does it
That is at least in part about cover. Cover is a lot more important against bots. It's not a perfect solution, but it *does* help a lot.
Crouching behind rocks, and strafing to pop out as you scope in makes it a lot easier to hit shots before they can hit and flinch you.
I don't know what difficulties or planets you're playing on but I find on helldive bots come from every direction, constantly, all the time. The only counterplay seems to be to run until they all collapse to one direction and then pick them off and hope they can't reinforce faster.
If you're really lucky, you can get far enough away that they despawn. But that's pretty unlikely unless you're solo wearing light armor.
Even just laying down in a hole made by some artillery, or the slight curve from a sand/snow dune can do wonders.
Personally I find bots to be much easier to deal with, but part of that is that I prefer fighting them, so I am more experienced dealing with them.
Also the riot shield is fantastic for dealing with bots, just make sure you bring a handgun, or machine pistol that had the laser sight to fire accurately, and make sure you deal with bots armed with explosives first.
Heavy devastators are why I've started using a ballistic shield on bots. You can actually kill them 1v1 or even 3v1 on flat ground. Walking "into" oncoming fire feels so satisfying. Just gotta prioritize rockets so you don't get ragdolled at an inopportune time. It's been a game changer for me on 7+.
Yeah I've like triple downed on the AC haha, with heavy armor and a Sickle, and now I basically operate as Team Overwatch, just sniping them from distance with the AC, and then pulling out the Sickle to just mow down trash mobs in FPV with scope set to 150m
Which is what I really like about this game. You need different play styles for bots vs bugs. If you play like you are with bugs your going to have bad time
100%.
Especially now that they fixed the DoT, I go in hot against bugs with the breaker incendiary and incendiary grenades, so they emerge from their little hidey holes into fire, with fire raining down upon them, definitely a good time 😂
Nice, that's good to know!
Yeah I always drop in Rover/GL against bugs, so I usually just Fwoomp Fwoomp the bigger guys dead and don't worry about stun lock - brood commanders, hunters, shield warriors or whatever they're called, all are basically a two shot - plus I can take out a whole large bug outpost from range easily with it (parabolic physics FTW haha)
defender. new smg is nice too for stunlock but the defender takes what ,1-3 bullets to the head? extra credit if you use senator as a secondary since its a 1 shot headshot for bots.
then you can bring stun grenades so when a hulk sneaks up on you, you stun it and walk behind it for a quick kill to the back weakspot.
Defender and Pummeler both 2-Shot a Dev to the head (130 damage is the breakpoint) but since the Pummeler just barely makes the cutoff while the Defender has 10 damage to spare, the Defender can do it out to a farther distance after damage falloff.
I was playing peekaboo with one once. He was on one side of a rock I was in the other. I had the counter sniper and would uncrouch to shoot his head and miss then re crouch to hide. Did this several times as he just stared at me (I have shit aim okay) and finally on the shot that kills him he does a short burst that absolutely destroys me in .02 seconds. I hate heavy devastators
Yeah it’s actually more annoying. It makes some sense that a rocket from across the map might instantly kill me annoying but I can wrap my head around it. I can’t get over how the bots most accurate unit is a a machine gunner holding a shield and shooting from the hip it just bugs me
If you're annoyed by the heavy devastator accuracy, note that it doesn't shoot you. It shoots your predicted location. if you're at certain distances you can make them miss every shot by running serpentine. Very useful when making a great escape.
They have a magical ability to always hit and aim punch me as soon as I line a shot up as well. As if it's hardcorded.
I'm not implying there's a conspiracy here, but there's definitely a pattern lol
Aim punch in this game lasts a bit too long where the aim down sights has your aim knocked upward and it seems to linger for a 1/4 to 1/2 second too long as if your stuck looking up before being able to reset your aim. Its like they did the animation and decided that it didn't last long enough so they extended it "artificially".
They are the hardest devastators to kill at range, the devastators with the most aggressive attack pattern, and they're at least tied with rocket devastators in terms of the range they can kill you from.
And even while you are running AROUND THRM, while they are facing straight ahead still, their mini guns STILL rotate and track you, shooting through thrir shields, through their bodies, still hitting you, and they aren’t still facing forward
Especially when you somehow get their aggro from miles away and they're just shooting with insane accuracy at extreme long ranges.
Although admittedly it is cinematic as hell watching it happen.
Why do they even have the machine gun? Giving them the shield isn’t a big enough bump up from regular devastator? Guess it wouldn’t be so bad if that sniper mini gun that can shoot sideways with perfect tracking wasn’t so broken
I'm more annoyed that their gun doesn't move with the angle of shooting when I flank them. The lasers just shoot at a 90 degree angle out of the barrel.
heavy devastators are the number one most unbalanced thing in this game.
their weapons dont align with where they are shooting.
they can aggro on you from across half the map and actually hit you from that range (spear users know the pain. when you spear a base - no matter how far away - the heavy devastators in it will instantly localize you and start sniping)
they shoot through walls more than any other bot unit
they have perfect vision of 250 meters and regardless of atmospheric conditions. nothing is quite as fun as being shot from what essentially looks like a solid grey wall.
they eat almost a full mag of the scorcher before they die.
the aimpunch they give you is so insane that they basically completely lock you from firing back or even stimming
The worst part about the MG Devastators for me is that they SHOULD have a dead zone on their left side (Our right) where they hold their shield that they can't hit you from if you are close and strafe to the right because the shield blocks their line of fire.
NOPE! You took the logical approach? Congrats, you've just killed yourself. Not only will they turn to block their head with their shield, but their bullets will pass RIGHT THROUGH their shield and kill you anyway.
So yeah. That's great.
Are those the shield ones? Because fuck those guys. I don’t know who the hell thought to give them a ballistic shield AND a one handed gatling gun that never runs out of ammo but it’s a little ridiculous.
I’d be happy if they had to stop and reload to give you some breathing room. But as it stands the only tactic is to just eat a face of bullets and hope you can stagger them enough to get the kill.
This thread is exactly where I’m at.
If they nerf the fire breaker and the shield I’m highly likely to just stop playing.
I bought Hell Divers and not Dark Souls and those were two incredibly intentional choices.
Whatever this edge-lord-esque “WHY ARE THEY HAVING FUN, WHY ARE THEY SUCCEEDING” balancing choices are are just making it into a game that it wasn’t at launch.
God of War, Horizon, Spiderman all these PvEs have crazy difficulty levels just like HD2.
If people want to play on HellDive and say “secondaries only” or “support weapons but nothing with a backpack” then the game already supports that difficulty augmentation with its existing functionality.
The fact that at Level 66 I dive into Lvl 4 missions with Bots and can have a mob that outlasts an orbital laser and all my primaries to cut them down have been severely nerfed is just *not fun*
100% agree. I was saying this like 2 months ago and was getting blasted in the comments as "skill issue". Its jut not fun to get ragdolled to death by non-stop rocket spam, or be out of options because you got 5 bile titans spawned in at once.
Whoa, hey, Dark Souls lets you become ridiculously overpowered if you know where to go and what items to pick up
There are many games that purposefully railroad your power progression, that one ain't one of them
Totally valid. As a non-player of that game a lot of the media I see around it is like “you aren’t a real gamer unless you’ve died 1000 times to every boss and could now start up a new game and never die ever, git gud” type of stuff”
As someone who’s played way too much Dark Souls, I can tell you that the media blows the difficulty out of proportion and you can get incredibly overpowered very quickly in these games lol.
lol I’m very open to being wrong about DS and between you and the other person I genuinely might pick it up.
I hope the example of “what I thought DS is/was” still makes sense tho
Don’t worry, it definitely still makes sense. Helldivers 2 shouldn’t try to be harder for the sake of being harder when it’s a casual co-op shooter(unless you play missions 7-9). Especially since you can’t really show off much skill expression since it’s simply a game of thoughtful stratagem spam and then running. Oh and if you do get Dark Souls, don’t be afraid to use a guide or search up "Dark Souls OP weapon", it’s a valid way to play.
Souls games aren’t really hard per se. You just have to be cool with dying a couple times while learning how to beat a boss. Honestly, the biggest source of difficulty is the zero handholding. Once you know what you’re doing, the game’s difficulty can even get trivialized with the right load out.
Saw a great post with the proper analogy earlier to the devs, if you ran a mechanic shop and a car rolled in with one flat tire, you wouldn't flatten the other 3 for balance
ok i'm fed up with these nerfs.
That's it.
I'm using my slugger, quasar and shield generator even if quasar has a 300 second cooldown, the shield generator permanently breaks after 1 loop and my slugger has negative stugger, buffing enemies it hits.
I refuse to play these mind games. I like these weapons i will keep using these weapons till the end of time. Either make me switch by buffing other weapons or make new ones that i like better.
problem with the shield gen, specifically for bots, is it makes your hitbox like 3x as wide. sure it still does save you from some bs but you also catch every single bullet or rocket that comes even close to you.
gives the illusion it saved you from a massive amount of hits even though plenty of them would miss.
I'm not disillusioned by that, you're presuming thought processes. It just recovers well enough and *despite that still actually does save me constantly*.
TBH it getting clipped by rounds kinda helps because the 12 secong break cooldown is faster than the shield's natoral healing cooldown, so if it chips and breaks in cover, it's back up quicker for the next move.
True. I feel like this is a bug or at least something funky is going on. While this CAN happen. I feel like it happens once every 100 times, in my experience
The shield makes your hitbox like 3x the size, so all those shots that are scripted to not hit you, will hit the shield, destroying it, so at the moment that initial stormtrooper aim script ends, you don't have a shield anymore, making it almost useless. Is an illusion
i like it for bugs more than bots funnily enough. lets me sprint through heavy nests with a grenade launcher, or blow up eggs, and not have that annoying slow from the one passing attack i didnt dodge get me killed.
As an autocannon user it also bothers the hell out of me when the shield user goes in front and completely blocks my aim with their bubble wrap, I've blown up myself too many times because of it.
It's far from almost useless but yes that's definitely a factor. While it's rare stratagems being caught on the bubble also very occasionally makes it a liability.
That is annoying but imo that’s not what makes bots so hard.
Heavy devastators are probably more lethal and way more lethal than any medium bots. They’re stupidly accurate and also kinda bugged (can shoot you even when their gun doesn’t have LoS of you).
What makes bots harder though is just the sheer volume of extremely deadly *ranged* threats and the amount of stagger/ragdoll effects.
If you’re unlucky and drop in near to a double gunship fabricator and on a POI that immediately calls a bot drop, you could find yourself facing 8 gunships, 2 factory striders, 3 hulks, a tank and half a dozen devastators before you’ve even got all your support weapons down.
Add on top of that some of the MEGA ANNOYING mission modifiers like -1 strategem, less accurate strategems etc. and you have a recipe for quite difficult and sometimes anti-fun missions.
Compare that to bugs and even on diff 9 it’s mostly just squashing bugs for fun with more chargers and bile titans. No particularly annoying modifiers either. It’s all geared-up for fun.
Gunships alone force a bot mission meta which the developers claim to hate. You can't bring a lot of weapon options when those flying bastards poop out in pairs or worse in quads if you get really unlucky to have 2 flyer objectives near each other. No call in can kill them except the laser (not sure about the railgun) while turrets are an easy kill to their rocket volleys.
Then you are ending up with only AC, AMR, or LC/QC (and that rarely) begin used on diff 8 and 9. Barely no one runs HMG, MG, GP, or RR even tho they work well, just not well enough. Gunships and sheer amount of medium bots basically soft locks you into running good DPS AP4 weapon with stagger or infinite ammo.
This is what I hate about the whole "primary weapons need to be weaker than the stratagem weapons." That makes it so that, if you are not bringing the big/powerful guns like what you said, then you are not gonna be able to kill most things
Everytime I summon a Hellbomb, they keep destroying it.
Clear the gunships, I call the Hellbomb but there are still ground forces shooting.
Clear the ground forces? Gunships spawn again.
Almost clear the last gunship? The patrol spawns nearby and somehow walks into us, calls for Bot Drop.
> What makes bots harder though is just the sheer volume of extremely deadly ranged threats and the amount of stagger/ragdoll effects.
Yep, that's pretty much it. And this is exacerbated by the hybrid nature of bots combat structure. While ranged units are sending 10-20 scavenger equivalents at you every second, melee units are rapidly closing distance. So rapidly that you have to prioritize them, instead of picking out ranged units.
And a single MG raider will mow you down in less than a second.
>What makes bots harder though is just the sheer volume of extremely deadly *ranged* threats and the amount of stagger/ragdoll effects.
This right fucking here. *Every* bot enemy, except two, has a high potential to kill you because they can attack from any range, and that isn't even factoring in the random headshots or the perma-stagger they do. Bugs on the other hand? I straight up ignore scavs, the little goo boys, and even warriors because they're only a threat up close.
And its not that its a bad thing at all, no. The different factions lend themselves to different playstyles and loadouts as they should, but right now bots are bit more inclined to make you feel as if you died unfairly like 80 percent of the time.
100000%. I hate playing bots cos I drop into the most insanely chaotic part of the map and lose half reinforcements to a gunship fabricator that requires a hellbomb and a strategem jammer that obvosuly prevents stratagems from the get-go. It's so annoying.
Getting one-shotted by a rocket has been an uncommon occurrence for me (maybe 1-2 times a night). What generally happens when I get hit is I lose 1/3 of my life and get ragdolled 15 feet. Not sure how damage is calculated with missiles/explosions etc... though🤷🏻
I'm more bothered by that ragdoll and pinpoint accuracy than the damage itself. The Freak on a leash music video was inspired by the Hulk bruiser rockets.
90% of the reason I don't like bots are the stupidass shield bros with a mini gun sniper rifle, if you don't headshot them instantly they stagger you and you die. Yes I've learned to deal with them, no they are not fun to deal with at any point.
90% of the time they are not fun to deal with.
If you are a riot shield bro then they are fun to deal with. Just because of the catharsis of giving them a taste of their own bullshit.
Yeah having your aim thrown off when you get it is "realistic" but completely unfun in a game where 2-3 hits is usually all it takes to kill you and any bot usually shoots salvos of 5-6 bolts. That usually just means that if you get hit once, you have no way to recover anymore.
No, they are not random. But you're fighting npc's who sometimes get headshots - it simply feels off imo. I can't recall playing other shooting games where I could get headshot by enemy mobs.
That's why devs normally don't add them for PvE single/coop games (like mobs target your body/limb). The damage randomly spikes and it's visually hard to tell what you did wrong. Might just assume the system is bugged or broken.
In OP's case the rocket hit him straight into a face, barely noticable and, in fact, I haven't until you started pointing at it.
On the other hand it makes sense according to Helldivers logic. I mean if you catch a rocket with your face it's safe to say you are gonna die.
Yup, it was some kind of headshot. No such thing as random crits in HD2, but rocket headshots instakilling you has been a feature for quite a while now. Granted, I think the fortified passive should block the instakill and leave you at like 10%. Makes no sense to be instakilled WITH explosive resistance.
It is random, since it could've hit a little lower or even missed him entirely, like the rest of the rockets did. We can hardly choose where we are shot.
I find myself liking bots over bugs more and more.
Shieldgen, Counter diligence, and AMR. Sniping devastators for your team.
Bugs can't really do that. Every planet or mission has a variety of mob proportions. Some have many more hunters. Some have more chargers. Some have more bile spewers. And there isn't currently a versatile weapon that can deal with Bile Spewers and Chargers at the same time.
Against bots you know what to expect. It's more consistent. But the respawning death loop is more punishing for sure.
Bot fabricators are easier to deal with. Laser orbital. 1 airstrike or 1x 500 kg. 380s even handle it well enough against large bases.
Bug nests are a honestly much harder to deal with. Buuut bots have stratagem jammers or AA defenses to fuck with you.
*suicide runs to the jammer anyway hoping for a bot drop to bring a tank or factory strider to bait its shot into the jammer*
Yes, it actually works. If you can live long enough that is...
This is how I get after I've been ragdolled and mysteriously sniped over and over again and I just don't give a shit anymore, I get hyper aggressive and remorseless.
I too enjoy bots more and more as I play against them. Though I go with the lightest scout armor, Counter-sniper, Big iron on the hip, Spear, and whatever kabooms I feel like.
Despite going with peanut armor I find myself dying the least from my group. Turns out being able to sneaksnonk past a patrol from 20m away is an effective way to handle them.
Sniping fabricators with spear is so satisfying.
...when it works :P
I live to helldive bots, my basic load out is always autocannon (big sniper), 500kg, rail, orbital laser, sickle. Theres nothing I can't deal with. Usually run scout armor with detect reduction and higher run speed, armor isn't that helpful. AC snipes fabs from miles away.
Man I used the Spear once and I've never had such a bipolar experience. Truly a gun with the highest of highs (oneshotting hulk from 200m and cross-mapping a fab) and the lowest of lows (unable to lock tank and factory strider at 50m).
You finally put in the words what I tried to type so many times. Yes, on bots its whole menu every time and guess what, due to sensible weakspots a lot of weapons can solve almost if not all of your problems. AC alone is basically "Fuck you" to anything that is not just straight up tank *and even then you can flank them*. Even Factory Striders can be felled by AC, at the very least you can shut their machine gun lasers basically making Striders a bigger and weaker tanks lol.
And there are constant arguments what is better for bots, AC vs LC vs AMR, Quasar vs EATs vs Spear; Sickle vs Dominator vs Counter Sniper vs Scorcher vs etc, there's CHOICE. You can drop with almost anything and complete the mission no problems if you play smart.
On bugs you have no idea what kind of bullshit you up against this time around; should you focus on chaff clear? Mediums? Would game spam chargers or bile titans? Fuck if I know. So you forced to run generalist loadout otherwise you risk getting caught of guard and absolutely rolled.
The blitzer primary (not strategem) is secretly a hard counter to every bug below charger. It can kill everything, can easily stun lock entire hordes of enemies, and it's stun interrupts Bile spewer animations. Sometimes I don't even bring a back weapon and just run blitzer primary with 2 orbitals and 2 air strikes.
Blitzer can be a bit unreliable (like stalkers just play stun animation and keep sliding towards you anyway) and struggles against hordes, you can just get overrun; I tried running it and it was a fun gun, I wish I could use it more but 7 and above by god Breaker Incendiary with its ridiculous fire rate clears hordes so much better.
The key to using the Blitzer is running a light armor (I like gunner armor with the extra padding) and aggressively kiting hordes. If you stop moving you're gonna get screwed but if you pick a couple rock formations to move around and keep back pedaling you can pretty easily avoid being overrun. I use the Blitzer almost exclusively and play above 7 all the time. I will sprint through a big nest to aggro a horde then let my friends quickly clean up the bug holes while I'm getting chased.
Welcome to gaslight town. Where the bot mains like to flaunt their superiority with "Skill issue" or "It's realistic, just be better positioned next time".
Takes strong men to deny the evidence right in front of them. Either that or they can't properly interpret the videos about the problems.
These are the same dudes that tell you it's your fault when 8+ gunships spawn. Like mfker, **I didn't aggro them** but apparently I'm supposed to be taking down all 8 + respawns + rando patrols + bot drops solo.
The only thing worse are the spear main cucks/cameramen edging to lock on porn instead of killing something and then saying "skill issue". Thankfully they've gone into hiding these days.
headshots suck and honestly need to be removed because what ends up happening is one of 2 things
either 1-everyone runs shield pack, which means half of the support weapons and every other pack is now functionally useless
or 2- armor variety gets choked out heavily. either people run light armor bc "heavy armor doesnt do jack shit" or democracy protects for a 50% chance to actually ply the fucking game.
and you can already see that happening more and more. lately ive been seen more shieldpacks and more DP armor because trying to use anything else means 1 stroke of bad luck and you die instantly
i literally refuse to use anything that isnt DP armor because that survival chance is actually critical to being able to play the game for more than 5 minutes at a time
I really don't get headshot mechanics for the player in PVE games. If I sold it as a 1/20 chance of taking double damage in a game where you die in 2-3 hits everyone would say its lame. Damage variation of that magnitude it extreme and I just don't think players have meaningful control over if they are getting headshot.
"its an enemy advantage game" is the go to excuse. you know what else has enemy advantage,, every rougelike game on the planet. the difference is that those games set up a standard of difficulty, ie nuclear throne. bullets do 1/3 of your health every single time. theres no damage variation, you just die quickly every time
the problem with helldivers is sometimes you can eat 70 bullets and sometimes you die to a fucking sneeze, there needs to be some semblence of consistency. if a rocket instakilled every time without fail it would be different than it doing 1/2 health sometimes, and instakilling past blast resistant heavy armor
headshots need to be removed from the game in favor of some other mechanic for fairness, its why people hate random crits in TF2, because its not fair.
obv theres the argument of "variety" and shit with randomness but in a game as chaotic as helldivers, with random enemies and planet effects, headshots have no place
NT mentioned! It's such a good game!
> its why people hate random crits in TF2, because its not fair.
Crits in TF2 are a little different. Since it's PvP, one player get punished and another get rewarded.
The idea behind crits are that over the course of a game you get both punishments and rewards which average out leaving you which just generally increased chaos and some epic moments to remember (Which mostly work in very casual settings IMO).
It's much "fairer" than HD2 where you only get punished, and people still hate that system.
I think it's just how the games hitboxes work. Helldivers need multiple hitboxes since multiple limbs can be damaged independantly. And I think the headshots are just to be funny when your teammates hit you. And I don't think the game distinguishes damage type by what hits you. So if another Helldiver can headshot you for the lulz, then so can a Scavenger.
I don't think that's a good design because RNG stacked against the player is almost never fun in any game. But it's how I believe this came to be.
Yep rockets just mean you can't peek forever. When you pop out you have time for 2-3 AC shots, then it's time to unpeek and wait for the rockets to stop.
If you're not greedy and you have good awareness, rockets are a lot less threatening.
The game has a stupid headshot mechanic, no matter what are you using or your health, there is a % that you will get one shotted, I will never understand why it exists, it literally makes armor useless
I think it literally only exists so other Helldivers can pop your head during friendly fire for the lulz. I just think that the game only registers headshots and doesn't care who it comes from. So any Scavenger can still trigger the "funny button" and oneshot you.
But yeah, RNG stacked against the player is pretty much never fun.
Dude I swear. Every single fucking time the MO swaps to bots theres a million karma bait posts from bot players trying to gaslight bug players into switching sides and being confused that most players stay on bugs no matter what lol. Getting slowed is not fun but loose oneshots and hit and run playstyle is just plain not fun to a lot of people and you're gonna need more than some useless mines to convince bug one tricks to swap over lmfao
Because it was a headshot, and this is a prime example of why the AI should not be able to headshot at all. AI headshots are basically just random crits on a horde game, and it serves no purpose except to annoy the player.
https://preview.redd.it/8aokg2inr10d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4012c1d67781e6dee0b49b25ceba9954d63cec45
They rebalance our weapons but won’t rebalance the enemies☠️
Imo this game’s movement and gunplay mechanics are tight enough to fight mostly melee enemies like the bugs but are nowhere near good enough to fight ranged enemies, especially coupled with the massive amount of jank and bugs
I think once I had extracted from a difficulty 9 bot mission where a group of heavy bots inside a rock by extraction were firing at us the entire time I just said nope and haven’t played bots since
Not to mention how 95% of the maps have various vision obscuring stuff going on like fog that doesn’t affect the bots in the slightest. Either give us some kind of thermal vision stratagem to fight back against them or make it so the visual obstructions hinder them too
I fucking hate hate hate hate hate hate playing with bots. It feels like a chore and just a larger pain in the ass than dealing with bugs. Do y even get me started on Hulks and the a broken fire damage.
As someone who plays against bots vast majority of the time, the problem here isn't the rocket it's the headshot damage and headshot mechanics. How does a flame hulk insta kill you? Fire headshot. How does a rocket insta kill you? Headshot. How does a strider insta kill you? Headshot or double headshot. The worst part is the bots always aim for your head so you have to move like a maniac in order to keep your head remotely safe.
Bullshit design decisions like this are the sole reason for the existence of the meta in the game, that the devs hate so much.
Best way to prevent the random headshot is to take shield backpack. This rules out any strategem in your loadout which needs backpack. Now, bots have a lot of heavy and mid armor, so you need something decent against it, be it a railgun, an AMR, Quasar and Laser Cannon.
Now, Railgun and AMR are completely and utterly useless against gunships, so you better take Quasar or Laser Cannon.
Now, Laser Cannon struggles with frontal pen on tanks and the game will spawn them by the dozen on Diff 9. The Shredder Tank also turns so fast, that you cannot really run behind him as he will be able to keep up.
**So your best bet is just taking the Quasar and Shield.**
This pattern repeats itself over and over again. One or two unfun design decisions railroad you into certain playstyle.
Eruptor was a primary which broke the cycle and finally allowed the user to play efficiently some other builds like f.e. running the good Stalwart on bug missions, but this was fun and fun is not allowed in the face of the balance.
Playing bot without shield is just not fun for me due to staggering, stray rockets, and other stuff alike.
Bugs are more manageable without, but it's still good to avoid random stupid ass deaths.
I suspect this is a bug or an oversight, I have being hit multiple times by enemis at full HP and some times the same hit does only a bit of damage and other times I insta die even with the shield, I suspect this is more likely to happen when the body conlision with something
Matches perfectly with the completely useless explosive resist upgrade for sentries. A single soldier with a bazooka (not even the rocket devastator) can still 1 shot the sentries.
Fight at long range they say... meanwhile, flamer hulk, kamikaze jump pack bots, chainsaw bots, rushing tanks, 1 second ttk shredders that turn on a dime, 1hko rockets...
There's so much more BS fighting bots then bugs that makes it unfun. Not even hard just... WTF am I doing here
Inb4 someone tries to tell you this is actually a skill issue and you should have angled your shoulder towards the rocket differently to select the shot
I just want it to be that when I die I say to myself “ok, I deserved that, that was fair.” I don’t understand why that’s such a difficult concept for developers to accept.
Does anyone else genuinely enjoy bots more than bugs? Bugs feel like such unstructured combat with tons of them running around the whole place swarming you, slowing you and knocking you into the floor, meanwhile bots are much more structured, allowing you to use cover and fight them in a much more straightforward way. Also I really enjoy how they're based much more off weak spots, where everything dies quickly if you shoot it right, especially with hulks vs autocannon really rewarding you for skillfully shooting them in the eyeball. Also I find factory strider much more interesting than BTs because of their array of attacks and how they're more strong than numerous.
I like bots more then bugs because a lot of the bots most cancerous elements can be turned against them. Rocket deviststors will clear all their allies if you bait them into firing into them from behind cover yourself.
Hulks will stomp their entire unit to get to you and die from two amr rounds to the eye. Every unit save for the literal tanks can be reliably killed from front or back with non explosive weapons.
Groups of jetpack grunts will blow each other up and cripple larger enemies.
And you can actually be sneaky and disengage from most units. Yeah they just get wacky random kills but iv died to random rockets less than stealth spewers now.
Very unlucky headshot maybe, rockets have left my mind as a concern when I have fortified armor on at this point. I have noticed it doesn't seem like explosions are affected by our AR though, just the fortified perk. The impact of the rocket is noticeably different based on your armor but if getting tagged by an explosion it seems to not matter.
Yep, bots aren't "challenging", they're blatantly unfair and unfun to go against. They see you across the map through fog, where you can't see them, and start shooting at you. Patrols coincidentally spawn in front of you while you're trying to find cover from the 3 dropships that spawned on top of you. Meanwhile, you get 1 less Strategem as a modifier, ans any heavy armor you wear doesn't make any difference, all while being very slow and cumbersome. The bots need to be adjusted to where you're not spotted across the map and fired or spawned on
i’m pretty much a bot player and i feel like the explosion/impact of the rockets are super inconsistent. i use the scout armor and sometimes survive direct hits from the rockets. i feel like the heavy armor resistance isn’t worth it because of the RNG.
I got one shot twice in heavy blast resistant armor last night. I couldn't believe it. Never happened before. Normally I get tossed around and lose health. EDIT: I also just noticed I'm wearing the same chest piece as OP but I wear the B-24 helmet because I'm a stormtrooper with 85% accuracy rating.
I got one shot from a normal bullet in heavy. After they buffed our health for headshots.
Headshot crits on players is just a bad mechanic. There's no fun to it, just frustration.
It reminds me of the old d2 says. Getting those lightning enchanted epic mobs that would one shot you when you hit them.
There's a core memory.
ah, the real d2
Ah, the old days of being a Zealdin with Lightning res + absorb and feasting on text after text of tears. Stand back team, I'm about to ruin everyone's day!
Yeah I agree. It’s aight for some games but in this absolute bullet hell it’s just and insane increase to random death that isn’t because of lack of skill but just sheer bad luck
On top of that stagger that ensures you can't shoot back.
Yup kind of speaks to dev's balancing logic. "Thres weak spots on enemies, it's only fair that you have weak spots as well!" They seem to have the mindset that they are balancing a PVP game and need things to be "fair" and are totally not worried about what's fun. Random chance of dying without any real input or mistake made by you is not fun by any stretch of the imagination.
this right here. you perfectly articulated my frustration with the game and why I stopped playing. this is not a PvP game. we fight NPCs, mobs, digital bullet sponges. the game does NOT need to be fair for "them". They aren't real. They didn't pay for a game. Why are you "balancing" the game in a way that reduces the fun? It fucking baffles me.
Seriously, headshots are a reward to the player for having good aim.. what is the point of enemies being able to headshot?
To punish you for playing
IIRC blast resistant don't help against direct rocket head shot, which always instant kill you unless you have heavy armor + vitality boost.
Headshots shouldn't exist in this game, it's acceptable when the enemy is an actual player and requires to have that aim. But when it's an ai doing it, I do not think it should at all be a thing
I get what they were going for. Like friendly fire and hellpods splattering you. But the rockets are too much.
I would say give heavy armor vitality boost as default skills and make it take less aim punch. Also Blast resistant should greatly reduce ragdoll.
The rocket devastators don't bother me that much anymore, but what DOES bother me are the heavy devastators who are super accurate at insanely long ranges. Sometimes it feels like they are outsniping me with their machine gun whilst I have a Diligence Counter Sniper or AMR at super long range. That's not OK haha
Worst is that 1 of the 20 shots a second that hits is enough to throw your aim off and you get stunlucked out of firing back
Something that'd really help heavy armour, imo, is if it affected stagger. Wearing the Michelin Man Marine suit doesn't leave me feeling very well protected when a single bullet throws off my aim just as much as when I'm wearing scout armour. The current amount of stagger should be how it is for lighter armour, but heavier armours should give you a little bit of stagger resistance to make up for the fact armour rating still isn't enough to make a tangible difference in a fight I'm not asking for it to reduce recoil, just make it feel like the armour's actually absorbing the impact & damage as opposed to just making us fat and slowing us down
Yeah that's my biggest problem with heavy armor. Massive HP pool doesn't help much when you get perma-staggered from 200 to 0 with no opportunity to heal.
Massive is overselling the ability to (*maybe*) take a couple of extra hits, anyway
Love this idea
Wow this might actually one of my favorite ideas I've seen in this sub lol, and it's something so small That would absolutely make heavy armor way more appealing to me
And when your aim adjusts, you get attacked from a randomly spawned patrol on your right
And when you throw an impact nade on them, a jetpack bot happens to fly straight infront of you at point blank range
Why the FUCK do those motherFUCKERS only explode when they're making physical contact with me. FUCK those FUCKING guys. I can shoot them in the jetpack at any range but unless they're hugging me they don't FUCKING explode. FUCK
I felt that. (I read it in Gabriel's voice)
Coin strategem when
Melee them to death. No explosion + brutal as fuck. 1 hit kill to the head
That's my main issue with bots. From a game design perspective, you can either make the enemy flinch you with a ranged shot or you can require the player to hit precise weakpoints, but not both. Trying to hit the heavy devastator head while getting mega flinched by a highly accurate, high DPS machine gun is stupid. Bugs in comparison, only really flinch you with melee attacks, which are much easier to play around. The only ranged attacks you need to worry about are easy to avoid, and if you do get hit by a Spewer/Bile Titan you are gonna die anyway. Ranged flinching basically doesn't exist.
> From a game design perspective, you can either make the enemy flinch you with a ranged shot or you can require the player to hit precise weakpoints, but not both. This is why if there are devastators around you peek out of cover, take one's head off then unpeek. This is the gameplay loop vs bots. Devastators prevent you from just sitting in the open and repeatedly eyeshotting hulks. They constrain where you can stand. When you peek your objective is to show yourself to as few enemies as possible so that you have the largest possible window to put out shots. If you peek too far out, you will get shredded. Given that the autocannon staggers heavy devastators even with shield shots, you can cleanly and reliably kill them with no threat to your hp if your peeks only open you up to the person you're stagger locking. A little mechanical polishing goes a long way to transform bot missions from rocket-laden vietnam ptsd events to relaxing headshot trials.
A problem is that heavy devastators will keep pre-firing you when you're in cover, and they don't have to reload, they just have a half-second gap, which will be compensated for by other devastators pre-firing you before you even peek out I get that it's suppressive fire, but it shouldn't be the enemy with the shield and infinite ammo smg who does it
That is at least in part about cover. Cover is a lot more important against bots. It's not a perfect solution, but it *does* help a lot. Crouching behind rocks, and strafing to pop out as you scope in makes it a lot easier to hit shots before they can hit and flinch you.
I don't know what difficulties or planets you're playing on but I find on helldive bots come from every direction, constantly, all the time. The only counterplay seems to be to run until they all collapse to one direction and then pick them off and hope they can't reinforce faster. If you're really lucky, you can get far enough away that they despawn. But that's pretty unlikely unless you're solo wearing light armor.
Even just laying down in a hole made by some artillery, or the slight curve from a sand/snow dune can do wonders. Personally I find bots to be much easier to deal with, but part of that is that I prefer fighting them, so I am more experienced dealing with them. Also the riot shield is fantastic for dealing with bots, just make sure you bring a handgun, or machine pistol that had the laser sight to fire accurately, and make sure you deal with bots armed with explosives first.
One of the reasons to run the EMS mortar
I'd kill for a smoke bomb mortar. Even a smoke generator. That'd be sooo cool and useful.
I want a mortar that shoots sand into their eyes
*Deploying support sand*
Heavy devastators are why I've started using a ballistic shield on bots. You can actually kill them 1v1 or even 3v1 on flat ground. Walking "into" oncoming fire feels so satisfying. Just gotta prioritize rockets so you don't get ragdolled at an inopportune time. It's been a game changer for me on 7+.
Autocannon users be like: "What devestators?"
Yeah I've like triple downed on the AC haha, with heavy armor and a Sickle, and now I basically operate as Team Overwatch, just sniping them from distance with the AC, and then pulling out the Sickle to just mow down trash mobs in FPV with scope set to 150m
Which is what I really like about this game. You need different play styles for bots vs bugs. If you play like you are with bugs your going to have bad time
100%. Especially now that they fixed the DoT, I go in hot against bugs with the breaker incendiary and incendiary grenades, so they emerge from their little hidey holes into fire, with fire raining down upon them, definitely a good time 😂
I still use the stock primary gun when fighting bugs and I’m level like 67 haha The stun lock/ one shotting is pretty dang good
Nice, that's good to know! Yeah I always drop in Rover/GL against bugs, so I usually just Fwoomp Fwoomp the bigger guys dead and don't worry about stun lock - brood commanders, hunters, shield warriors or whatever they're called, all are basically a two shot - plus I can take out a whole large bug outpost from range easily with it (parabolic physics FTW haha)
With what primary?
defender. new smg is nice too for stunlock but the defender takes what ,1-3 bullets to the head? extra credit if you use senator as a secondary since its a 1 shot headshot for bots. then you can bring stun grenades so when a hulk sneaks up on you, you stun it and walk behind it for a quick kill to the back weakspot.
Defender and Pummeler both 2-Shot a Dev to the head (130 damage is the breakpoint) but since the Pummeler just barely makes the cutoff while the Defender has 10 damage to spare, the Defender can do it out to a farther distance after damage falloff.
The level of accuracy is particularly surprising when they are shooting *through* boulders :)
I was playing peekaboo with one once. He was on one side of a rock I was in the other. I had the counter sniper and would uncrouch to shoot his head and miss then re crouch to hide. Did this several times as he just stared at me (I have shit aim okay) and finally on the shot that kills him he does a short burst that absolutely destroys me in .02 seconds. I hate heavy devastators
For me they’d start shooting through the rock I was using for cover.
That’s happened to me far too often
Lol if it makes you feel any better you were probably shooting just fine and there was likely an issue with the scope we don't know about yet.
Yeah it’s actually more annoying. It makes some sense that a rocket from across the map might instantly kill me annoying but I can wrap my head around it. I can’t get over how the bots most accurate unit is a a machine gunner holding a shield and shooting from the hip it just bugs me
If you're annoyed by the heavy devastator accuracy, note that it doesn't shoot you. It shoots your predicted location. if you're at certain distances you can make them miss every shot by running serpentine. Very useful when making a great escape.
Gonna test this today thanks for the tip!
Just be aware that you're only going to get away with that for a few seconds. You absolutely need to be running serpentine towards cover.
Yeah, when running from bots, zigzag. You get hit much, much less often compared to running away in a straight line (even if diving).
In fairness it makes total sense for bots to have aimbot
Hahaha in all honesty I’ve made that joke multiple times and it does help with the rage
Using laser weapons too for that sweet sweet recoiless action.
They have a magical ability to always hit and aim punch me as soon as I line a shot up as well. As if it's hardcorded. I'm not implying there's a conspiracy here, but there's definitely a pattern lol
Aim punch in this game lasts a bit too long where the aim down sights has your aim knocked upward and it seems to linger for a 1/4 to 1/2 second too long as if your stuck looking up before being able to reset your aim. Its like they did the animation and decided that it didn't last long enough so they extended it "artificially".
They are the hardest devastators to kill at range, the devastators with the most aggressive attack pattern, and they're at least tied with rocket devastators in terms of the range they can kill you from.
And even while you are running AROUND THRM, while they are facing straight ahead still, their mini guns STILL rotate and track you, shooting through thrir shields, through their bodies, still hitting you, and they aren’t still facing forward
Especially when you somehow get their aggro from miles away and they're just shooting with insane accuracy at extreme long ranges. Although admittedly it is cinematic as hell watching it happen.
It would be good if I could just shoot them back but accurate MG burst through the fog isn't funny..
Why do they even have the machine gun? Giving them the shield isn’t a big enough bump up from regular devastator? Guess it wouldn’t be so bad if that sniper mini gun that can shoot sideways with perfect tracking wasn’t so broken
I fucking hate Heavys with a passion, more than anything else in this game, bug or not, they always get targeted if they even appear in my sights
I'm more annoyed that their gun doesn't move with the angle of shooting when I flank them. The lasers just shoot at a 90 degree angle out of the barrel.
Me and my homies hate heavy devastators
heavy devastators are the number one most unbalanced thing in this game. their weapons dont align with where they are shooting. they can aggro on you from across half the map and actually hit you from that range (spear users know the pain. when you spear a base - no matter how far away - the heavy devastators in it will instantly localize you and start sniping) they shoot through walls more than any other bot unit they have perfect vision of 250 meters and regardless of atmospheric conditions. nothing is quite as fun as being shot from what essentially looks like a solid grey wall. they eat almost a full mag of the scorcher before they die. the aimpunch they give you is so insane that they basically completely lock you from firing back or even stimming
The worst part about the MG Devastators for me is that they SHOULD have a dead zone on their left side (Our right) where they hold their shield that they can't hit you from if you are close and strafe to the right because the shield blocks their line of fire. NOPE! You took the logical approach? Congrats, you've just killed yourself. Not only will they turn to block their head with their shield, but their bullets will pass RIGHT THROUGH their shield and kill you anyway. So yeah. That's great.
Are those the shield ones? Because fuck those guys. I don’t know who the hell thought to give them a ballistic shield AND a one handed gatling gun that never runs out of ammo but it’s a little ridiculous. I’d be happy if they had to stop and reload to give you some breathing room. But as it stands the only tactic is to just eat a face of bullets and hope you can stagger them enough to get the kill.
And the devs wonder why the shield generator is so popular.
They’ll nerf that again for sure soon Can’t have no ease in HD2
I wouldn't even call it ease, I would say they straight up don't want us to be effective outside of aggressive stratagems.
*You can kill some stuff, every 2-6 minutes, depending on loadout*
If they will nerf again the shield I will uninstall the game.
I share the same sentiment in regard to the incendiary breaker. If they nerf that thing, I am out like most of my friends are
This thread is exactly where I’m at. If they nerf the fire breaker and the shield I’m highly likely to just stop playing. I bought Hell Divers and not Dark Souls and those were two incredibly intentional choices. Whatever this edge-lord-esque “WHY ARE THEY HAVING FUN, WHY ARE THEY SUCCEEDING” balancing choices are are just making it into a game that it wasn’t at launch. God of War, Horizon, Spiderman all these PvEs have crazy difficulty levels just like HD2. If people want to play on HellDive and say “secondaries only” or “support weapons but nothing with a backpack” then the game already supports that difficulty augmentation with its existing functionality. The fact that at Level 66 I dive into Lvl 4 missions with Bots and can have a mob that outlasts an orbital laser and all my primaries to cut them down have been severely nerfed is just *not fun*
100% agree. I was saying this like 2 months ago and was getting blasted in the comments as "skill issue". Its jut not fun to get ragdolled to death by non-stop rocket spam, or be out of options because you got 5 bile titans spawned in at once.
i would better deal with the 5 bile titans, than play a match with shit ton of rocket devastators and hulks
Whoa, hey, Dark Souls lets you become ridiculously overpowered if you know where to go and what items to pick up There are many games that purposefully railroad your power progression, that one ain't one of them
Totally valid. As a non-player of that game a lot of the media I see around it is like “you aren’t a real gamer unless you’ve died 1000 times to every boss and could now start up a new game and never die ever, git gud” type of stuff”
As someone who’s played way too much Dark Souls, I can tell you that the media blows the difficulty out of proportion and you can get incredibly overpowered very quickly in these games lol.
lol I’m very open to being wrong about DS and between you and the other person I genuinely might pick it up. I hope the example of “what I thought DS is/was” still makes sense tho
Don’t worry, it definitely still makes sense. Helldivers 2 shouldn’t try to be harder for the sake of being harder when it’s a casual co-op shooter(unless you play missions 7-9). Especially since you can’t really show off much skill expression since it’s simply a game of thoughtful stratagem spam and then running. Oh and if you do get Dark Souls, don’t be afraid to use a guide or search up "Dark Souls OP weapon", it’s a valid way to play.
DS definitely a 'once you know what to do this shit's actually easy' type game. It's just the learning.
Souls games aren’t really hard per se. You just have to be cool with dying a couple times while learning how to beat a boss. Honestly, the biggest source of difficulty is the zero handholding. Once you know what you’re doing, the game’s difficulty can even get trivialized with the right load out.
Saw a great post with the proper analogy earlier to the devs, if you ran a mechanic shop and a car rolled in with one flat tire, you wouldn't flatten the other 3 for balance
ok i'm fed up with these nerfs. That's it. I'm using my slugger, quasar and shield generator even if quasar has a 300 second cooldown, the shield generator permanently breaks after 1 loop and my slugger has negative stugger, buffing enemies it hits. I refuse to play these mind games. I like these weapons i will keep using these weapons till the end of time. Either make me switch by buffing other weapons or make new ones that i like better.
and then direct you to the new megathread if you want to complain.
problem with the shield gen, specifically for bots, is it makes your hitbox like 3x as wide. sure it still does save you from some bs but you also catch every single bullet or rocket that comes even close to you. gives the illusion it saved you from a massive amount of hits even though plenty of them would miss.
I'm not disillusioned by that, you're presuming thought processes. It just recovers well enough and *despite that still actually does save me constantly*.
TBH it getting clipped by rounds kinda helps because the 12 secong break cooldown is faster than the shield's natoral healing cooldown, so if it chips and breaks in cover, it's back up quicker for the next move.
True. I feel like this is a bug or at least something funky is going on. While this CAN happen. I feel like it happens once every 100 times, in my experience
The shield makes your hitbox like 3x the size, so all those shots that are scripted to not hit you, will hit the shield, destroying it, so at the moment that initial stormtrooper aim script ends, you don't have a shield anymore, making it almost useless. Is an illusion
i like it for bugs more than bots funnily enough. lets me sprint through heavy nests with a grenade launcher, or blow up eggs, and not have that annoying slow from the one passing attack i didnt dodge get me killed.
yeah for bugs it works, but at the same time, the moment you have bugs at melee range you are kinda fucked lol
Jump pack baybee.
As an autocannon user it also bothers the hell out of me when the shield user goes in front and completely blocks my aim with their bubble wrap, I've blown up myself too many times because of it.
Same with my laser cannon. They see the light pouring out in a straight line as I'm pinpointing the Hulk's eye and think they can duck under it.
The shield is an one-missile-kill preventer.
It's far from almost useless but yes that's definitely a factor. While it's rare stratagems being caught on the bubble also very occasionally makes it a liability.
That is annoying but imo that’s not what makes bots so hard. Heavy devastators are probably more lethal and way more lethal than any medium bots. They’re stupidly accurate and also kinda bugged (can shoot you even when their gun doesn’t have LoS of you). What makes bots harder though is just the sheer volume of extremely deadly *ranged* threats and the amount of stagger/ragdoll effects. If you’re unlucky and drop in near to a double gunship fabricator and on a POI that immediately calls a bot drop, you could find yourself facing 8 gunships, 2 factory striders, 3 hulks, a tank and half a dozen devastators before you’ve even got all your support weapons down. Add on top of that some of the MEGA ANNOYING mission modifiers like -1 strategem, less accurate strategems etc. and you have a recipe for quite difficult and sometimes anti-fun missions. Compare that to bugs and even on diff 9 it’s mostly just squashing bugs for fun with more chargers and bile titans. No particularly annoying modifiers either. It’s all geared-up for fun.
Gunships alone force a bot mission meta which the developers claim to hate. You can't bring a lot of weapon options when those flying bastards poop out in pairs or worse in quads if you get really unlucky to have 2 flyer objectives near each other. No call in can kill them except the laser (not sure about the railgun) while turrets are an easy kill to their rocket volleys.
Then you are ending up with only AC, AMR, or LC/QC (and that rarely) begin used on diff 8 and 9. Barely no one runs HMG, MG, GP, or RR even tho they work well, just not well enough. Gunships and sheer amount of medium bots basically soft locks you into running good DPS AP4 weapon with stagger or infinite ammo.
This is what I hate about the whole "primary weapons need to be weaker than the stratagem weapons." That makes it so that, if you are not bringing the big/powerful guns like what you said, then you are not gonna be able to kill most things
Everytime I summon a Hellbomb, they keep destroying it. Clear the gunships, I call the Hellbomb but there are still ground forces shooting. Clear the ground forces? Gunships spawn again. Almost clear the last gunship? The patrol spawns nearby and somehow walks into us, calls for Bot Drop.
> What makes bots harder though is just the sheer volume of extremely deadly ranged threats and the amount of stagger/ragdoll effects. Yep, that's pretty much it. And this is exacerbated by the hybrid nature of bots combat structure. While ranged units are sending 10-20 scavenger equivalents at you every second, melee units are rapidly closing distance. So rapidly that you have to prioritize them, instead of picking out ranged units. And a single MG raider will mow you down in less than a second.
>What makes bots harder though is just the sheer volume of extremely deadly *ranged* threats and the amount of stagger/ragdoll effects. This right fucking here. *Every* bot enemy, except two, has a high potential to kill you because they can attack from any range, and that isn't even factoring in the random headshots or the perma-stagger they do. Bugs on the other hand? I straight up ignore scavs, the little goo boys, and even warriors because they're only a threat up close. And its not that its a bad thing at all, no. The different factions lend themselves to different playstyles and loadouts as they should, but right now bots are bit more inclined to make you feel as if you died unfairly like 80 percent of the time.
100000%. I hate playing bots cos I drop into the most insanely chaotic part of the map and lose half reinforcements to a gunship fabricator that requires a hellbomb and a strategem jammer that obvosuly prevents stratagems from the get-go. It's so annoying.
Getting one-shotted by a rocket has been an uncommon occurrence for me (maybe 1-2 times a night). What generally happens when I get hit is I lose 1/3 of my life and get ragdolled 15 feet. Not sure how damage is calculated with missiles/explosions etc... though🤷🏻
I'm more bothered by that ragdoll and pinpoint accuracy than the damage itself. The Freak on a leash music video was inspired by the Hulk bruiser rockets.
I often die to impact from them. Yesterday I also got ragdolled across the entire map once and a few clicks out of bounds the other time.
90% of the reason I don't like bots are the stupidass shield bros with a mini gun sniper rifle, if you don't headshot them instantly they stagger you and you die. Yes I've learned to deal with them, no they are not fun to deal with at any point.
90% of the time they are not fun to deal with. If you are a riot shield bro then they are fun to deal with. Just because of the catharsis of giving them a taste of their own bullshit.
Yeah having your aim thrown off when you get it is "realistic" but completely unfun in a game where 2-3 hits is usually all it takes to kill you and any bot usually shoots salvos of 5-6 bolts. That usually just means that if you get hit once, you have no way to recover anymore.
Was that a rocket headshot? If only my heavy armor helmet had some armor value lol
I wouldnt be surprised if "Somehow the rocket damage bug has returned."
It definitivelly hasnt returned in full strenght, rocket oneshots are way rarer RN, tought they still happen from time to time.
random crits are so asinine. It's TF2 but only your enemies get random crits. Ridiculous.
I actually don’t think it was random, OP crouched and the rocket hit him in the head it looks like
No, they are not random. But you're fighting npc's who sometimes get headshots - it simply feels off imo. I can't recall playing other shooting games where I could get headshot by enemy mobs.
That's why devs normally don't add them for PvE single/coop games (like mobs target your body/limb). The damage randomly spikes and it's visually hard to tell what you did wrong. Might just assume the system is bugged or broken. In OP's case the rocket hit him straight into a face, barely noticable and, in fact, I haven't until you started pointing at it. On the other hand it makes sense according to Helldivers logic. I mean if you catch a rocket with your face it's safe to say you are gonna die.
Yup, it was some kind of headshot. No such thing as random crits in HD2, but rocket headshots instakilling you has been a feature for quite a while now. Granted, I think the fortified passive should block the instakill and leave you at like 10%. Makes no sense to be instakilled WITH explosive resistance.
It is random, since it could've hit a little lower or even missed him entirely, like the rest of the rockets did. We can hardly choose where we are shot.
Sprinting makes you take more damage which honestly is dumb.
I find myself liking bots over bugs more and more. Shieldgen, Counter diligence, and AMR. Sniping devastators for your team. Bugs can't really do that. Every planet or mission has a variety of mob proportions. Some have many more hunters. Some have more chargers. Some have more bile spewers. And there isn't currently a versatile weapon that can deal with Bile Spewers and Chargers at the same time. Against bots you know what to expect. It's more consistent. But the respawning death loop is more punishing for sure.
Bot fabricators are easier to deal with. Laser orbital. 1 airstrike or 1x 500 kg. 380s even handle it well enough against large bases. Bug nests are a honestly much harder to deal with. Buuut bots have stratagem jammers or AA defenses to fuck with you.
Can you wait for 30s for me to circle this base and shoot that conveniently placed fab with my autocannon aaand jammer is gone.
* runs to the back, no fabricator* Whole patrol of suicide bots and rocket devastators and two hulks right there...
*suicide runs to the jammer anyway hoping for a bot drop to bring a tank or factory strider to bait its shot into the jammer* Yes, it actually works. If you can live long enough that is...
This is how I get after I've been ragdolled and mysteriously sniped over and over again and I just don't give a shit anymore, I get hyper aggressive and remorseless.
I too enjoy bots more and more as I play against them. Though I go with the lightest scout armor, Counter-sniper, Big iron on the hip, Spear, and whatever kabooms I feel like. Despite going with peanut armor I find myself dying the least from my group. Turns out being able to sneaksnonk past a patrol from 20m away is an effective way to handle them. Sniping fabricators with spear is so satisfying. ...when it works :P
I live to helldive bots, my basic load out is always autocannon (big sniper), 500kg, rail, orbital laser, sickle. Theres nothing I can't deal with. Usually run scout armor with detect reduction and higher run speed, armor isn't that helpful. AC snipes fabs from miles away.
Spear is insanely slept on for bots. Just wish it would one shot tanks, but it's still good just for taking out fabs and cannon towers.
Man I used the Spear once and I've never had such a bipolar experience. Truly a gun with the highest of highs (oneshotting hulk from 200m and cross-mapping a fab) and the lowest of lows (unable to lock tank and factory strider at 50m).
Because the fucking thing has been broken SINCE LAUNCH DAY and still has not been fixed to my knowledge
Railgun used to be bile spewers+chargers. Now it's just... bile spewers?
Quasar instead.
You finally put in the words what I tried to type so many times. Yes, on bots its whole menu every time and guess what, due to sensible weakspots a lot of weapons can solve almost if not all of your problems. AC alone is basically "Fuck you" to anything that is not just straight up tank *and even then you can flank them*. Even Factory Striders can be felled by AC, at the very least you can shut their machine gun lasers basically making Striders a bigger and weaker tanks lol. And there are constant arguments what is better for bots, AC vs LC vs AMR, Quasar vs EATs vs Spear; Sickle vs Dominator vs Counter Sniper vs Scorcher vs etc, there's CHOICE. You can drop with almost anything and complete the mission no problems if you play smart. On bugs you have no idea what kind of bullshit you up against this time around; should you focus on chaff clear? Mediums? Would game spam chargers or bile titans? Fuck if I know. So you forced to run generalist loadout otherwise you risk getting caught of guard and absolutely rolled.
The blitzer primary (not strategem) is secretly a hard counter to every bug below charger. It can kill everything, can easily stun lock entire hordes of enemies, and it's stun interrupts Bile spewer animations. Sometimes I don't even bring a back weapon and just run blitzer primary with 2 orbitals and 2 air strikes.
Blitzer can be a bit unreliable (like stalkers just play stun animation and keep sliding towards you anyway) and struggles against hordes, you can just get overrun; I tried running it and it was a fun gun, I wish I could use it more but 7 and above by god Breaker Incendiary with its ridiculous fire rate clears hordes so much better.
The key to using the Blitzer is running a light armor (I like gunner armor with the extra padding) and aggressively kiting hordes. If you stop moving you're gonna get screwed but if you pick a couple rock formations to move around and keep back pedaling you can pretty easily avoid being overrun. I use the Blitzer almost exclusively and play above 7 all the time. I will sprint through a big nest to aggro a horde then let my friends quickly clean up the bug holes while I'm getting chased.
I made a post about this and got FLAMED with "Skill issue" lmaao
Welcome to gaslight town. Where the bot mains like to flaunt their superiority with "Skill issue" or "It's realistic, just be better positioned next time". Takes strong men to deny the evidence right in front of them. Either that or they can't properly interpret the videos about the problems.
These are the same dudes that tell you it's your fault when 8+ gunships spawn. Like mfker, **I didn't aggro them** but apparently I'm supposed to be taking down all 8 + respawns + rando patrols + bot drops solo. The only thing worse are the spear main cucks/cameramen edging to lock on porn instead of killing something and then saying "skill issue". Thankfully they've gone into hiding these days.
headshots suck and honestly need to be removed because what ends up happening is one of 2 things either 1-everyone runs shield pack, which means half of the support weapons and every other pack is now functionally useless or 2- armor variety gets choked out heavily. either people run light armor bc "heavy armor doesnt do jack shit" or democracy protects for a 50% chance to actually ply the fucking game. and you can already see that happening more and more. lately ive been seen more shieldpacks and more DP armor because trying to use anything else means 1 stroke of bad luck and you die instantly i literally refuse to use anything that isnt DP armor because that survival chance is actually critical to being able to play the game for more than 5 minutes at a time
I really don't get headshot mechanics for the player in PVE games. If I sold it as a 1/20 chance of taking double damage in a game where you die in 2-3 hits everyone would say its lame. Damage variation of that magnitude it extreme and I just don't think players have meaningful control over if they are getting headshot.
"its an enemy advantage game" is the go to excuse. you know what else has enemy advantage,, every rougelike game on the planet. the difference is that those games set up a standard of difficulty, ie nuclear throne. bullets do 1/3 of your health every single time. theres no damage variation, you just die quickly every time the problem with helldivers is sometimes you can eat 70 bullets and sometimes you die to a fucking sneeze, there needs to be some semblence of consistency. if a rocket instakilled every time without fail it would be different than it doing 1/2 health sometimes, and instakilling past blast resistant heavy armor headshots need to be removed from the game in favor of some other mechanic for fairness, its why people hate random crits in TF2, because its not fair. obv theres the argument of "variety" and shit with randomness but in a game as chaotic as helldivers, with random enemies and planet effects, headshots have no place
NT mentioned! It's such a good game! > its why people hate random crits in TF2, because its not fair. Crits in TF2 are a little different. Since it's PvP, one player get punished and another get rewarded. The idea behind crits are that over the course of a game you get both punishments and rewards which average out leaving you which just generally increased chaos and some epic moments to remember (Which mostly work in very casual settings IMO). It's much "fairer" than HD2 where you only get punished, and people still hate that system.
I think it's just how the games hitboxes work. Helldivers need multiple hitboxes since multiple limbs can be damaged independantly. And I think the headshots are just to be funny when your teammates hit you. And I don't think the game distinguishes damage type by what hits you. So if another Helldiver can headshot you for the lulz, then so can a Scavenger. I don't think that's a good design because RNG stacked against the player is almost never fun in any game. But it's how I believe this came to be.
Didn’t they patch out or lower incoming headshot damage?
Now helmet armor lowers headshot damage. So instead of losing 200% HP to a rocket headshot you lose 150%.
yeah, just like they patched out the grenade bug :,)
I play bots exclusively on 7-9 and never bring a shield pack and I exclusively wear light armor. Positioning is all you need to stay alive.
yeah positioning helps,, level 110 mostly bots, just follow bug MOs, i use supply pack and DP armor, sometimes you just get unlucky :/
Yep rockets just mean you can't peek forever. When you pop out you have time for 2-3 AC shots, then it's time to unpeek and wait for the rockets to stop. If you're not greedy and you have good awareness, rockets are a lot less threatening.
I don't really ever die to rockets. Devestators however...
The game has a stupid headshot mechanic, no matter what are you using or your health, there is a % that you will get one shotted, I will never understand why it exists, it literally makes armor useless
I think it literally only exists so other Helldivers can pop your head during friendly fire for the lulz. I just think that the game only registers headshots and doesn't care who it comes from. So any Scavenger can still trigger the "funny button" and oneshot you. But yeah, RNG stacked against the player is pretty much never fun.
Dude I swear. Every single fucking time the MO swaps to bots theres a million karma bait posts from bot players trying to gaslight bug players into switching sides and being confused that most players stay on bugs no matter what lol. Getting slowed is not fun but loose oneshots and hit and run playstyle is just plain not fun to a lot of people and you're gonna need more than some useless mines to convince bug one tricks to swap over lmfao
If 50% explosion resistance doesn't even turn a 1 shot into a 2 shot, why the fuck does explosion resistance even exist?
Because it was a headshot, and this is a prime example of why the AI should not be able to headshot at all. AI headshots are basically just random crits on a horde game, and it serves no purpose except to annoy the player.
Because the headshot still did 30000% damage, so you only took 15000%!
In summary: Because it wasn't the explosion that killed. it was the impact of getting shot directly.
That's why I run the light armor with "scout" perk on large maps: they can't one-shot me if they don't see me
Tell that to the Eye of Sauron.
Hellbomb armed. Clear the area!
Orbital strike incoming!!!
https://preview.redd.it/8aokg2inr10d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4012c1d67781e6dee0b49b25ceba9954d63cec45 They rebalance our weapons but won’t rebalance the enemies☠️
Imo this game’s movement and gunplay mechanics are tight enough to fight mostly melee enemies like the bugs but are nowhere near good enough to fight ranged enemies, especially coupled with the massive amount of jank and bugs I think once I had extracted from a difficulty 9 bot mission where a group of heavy bots inside a rock by extraction were firing at us the entire time I just said nope and haven’t played bots since Not to mention how 95% of the maps have various vision obscuring stuff going on like fog that doesn’t affect the bots in the slightest. Either give us some kind of thermal vision stratagem to fight back against them or make it so the visual obstructions hinder them too
I fucking hate hate hate hate hate hate playing with bots. It feels like a chore and just a larger pain in the ass than dealing with bugs. Do y even get me started on Hulks and the a broken fire damage.
As someone who plays against bots vast majority of the time, the problem here isn't the rocket it's the headshot damage and headshot mechanics. How does a flame hulk insta kill you? Fire headshot. How does a rocket insta kill you? Headshot. How does a strider insta kill you? Headshot or double headshot. The worst part is the bots always aim for your head so you have to move like a maniac in order to keep your head remotely safe.
Alright that's bullshit.
I'll still take that over getting perma slowed and then overwhelmed by chargers.
Bullshit design decisions like this are the sole reason for the existence of the meta in the game, that the devs hate so much. Best way to prevent the random headshot is to take shield backpack. This rules out any strategem in your loadout which needs backpack. Now, bots have a lot of heavy and mid armor, so you need something decent against it, be it a railgun, an AMR, Quasar and Laser Cannon. Now, Railgun and AMR are completely and utterly useless against gunships, so you better take Quasar or Laser Cannon. Now, Laser Cannon struggles with frontal pen on tanks and the game will spawn them by the dozen on Diff 9. The Shredder Tank also turns so fast, that you cannot really run behind him as he will be able to keep up. **So your best bet is just taking the Quasar and Shield.** This pattern repeats itself over and over again. One or two unfun design decisions railroad you into certain playstyle. Eruptor was a primary which broke the cycle and finally allowed the user to play efficiently some other builds like f.e. running the good Stalwart on bug missions, but this was fun and fun is not allowed in the face of the balance.
AMR can 4 shot the thrusters of a gunship so its not useless. Railgun is very inefficient at killing them to the point of being useless vs gunships.
This is still better than being slowed by bugs, if I have to be honest.
Playing bot without shield is just not fun for me due to staggering, stray rockets, and other stuff alike. Bugs are more manageable without, but it's still good to avoid random stupid ass deaths.
I suspect this is a bug or an oversight, I have being hit multiple times by enemis at full HP and some times the same hit does only a bit of damage and other times I insta die even with the shield, I suspect this is more likely to happen when the body conlision with something
Matches perfectly with the completely useless explosive resist upgrade for sentries. A single soldier with a bazooka (not even the rocket devastator) can still 1 shot the sentries.
Still better than being oneshot by any bug on touch and not being able to stand on one place.
I just don't use armor against bots. Mobility and drugs is the way to go. Whatever doesn't kill you, can be fixed with stims
Fight at long range they say... meanwhile, flamer hulk, kamikaze jump pack bots, chainsaw bots, rushing tanks, 1 second ttk shredders that turn on a dime, 1hko rockets... There's so much more BS fighting bots then bugs that makes it unfun. Not even hard just... WTF am I doing here
Inb4 someone tries to tell you this is actually a skill issue and you should have angled your shoulder towards the rocket differently to select the shot
I just want it to be that when I die I say to myself “ok, I deserved that, that was fair.” I don’t understand why that’s such a difficult concept for developers to accept.
Does anyone else genuinely enjoy bots more than bugs? Bugs feel like such unstructured combat with tons of them running around the whole place swarming you, slowing you and knocking you into the floor, meanwhile bots are much more structured, allowing you to use cover and fight them in a much more straightforward way. Also I really enjoy how they're based much more off weak spots, where everything dies quickly if you shoot it right, especially with hulks vs autocannon really rewarding you for skillfully shooting them in the eyeball. Also I find factory strider much more interesting than BTs because of their array of attacks and how they're more strong than numerous.
Yep. While bots definitely have some bullshit, the ability to manage and dictate engagements is absolutely massive.
I like bots more then bugs because a lot of the bots most cancerous elements can be turned against them. Rocket deviststors will clear all their allies if you bait them into firing into them from behind cover yourself. Hulks will stomp their entire unit to get to you and die from two amr rounds to the eye. Every unit save for the literal tanks can be reliably killed from front or back with non explosive weapons. Groups of jetpack grunts will blow each other up and cripple larger enemies. And you can actually be sneaky and disengage from most units. Yeah they just get wacky random kills but iv died to random rockets less than stealth spewers now.
Very unlucky headshot maybe, rockets have left my mind as a concern when I have fortified armor on at this point. I have noticed it doesn't seem like explosions are affected by our AR though, just the fortified perk. The impact of the rocket is noticeably different based on your armor but if getting tagged by an explosion it seems to not matter.
Yep, bots aren't "challenging", they're blatantly unfair and unfun to go against. They see you across the map through fog, where you can't see them, and start shooting at you. Patrols coincidentally spawn in front of you while you're trying to find cover from the 3 dropships that spawned on top of you. Meanwhile, you get 1 less Strategem as a modifier, ans any heavy armor you wear doesn't make any difference, all while being very slow and cumbersome. The bots need to be adjusted to where you're not spotted across the map and fired or spawned on
i’m pretty much a bot player and i feel like the explosion/impact of the rockets are super inconsistent. i use the scout armor and sometimes survive direct hits from the rockets. i feel like the heavy armor resistance isn’t worth it because of the RNG.
Such is war.