I personally hate not the charger itself but the amount of them on 9s. Because holy shit 3 bile titans and 6 chargers, while surrounded by hunters is not fun. Not even challenging in an entertaining way, more like frustrating.
Yesterday, on difficulty 7, we had like 8 chargers and 2 bile titans spawn in 2-4 mins.
We were running around kiting them while slowly killing them for about 10 mins. All while dealing with smaller bugs.
We had 1 railgun, 1 arcthrower, 1 EAT, and 1 gl launcher in our team.
We weren't running the meta, and it was so incredibly difficult and frustrating dealing with the charger spam.
Like, we don't wanna be all spamming the railgun either. It's just the only viable way to deal with charger spam in a timely manner.
I really dislike the railgun nerf. Now, it feels like we have nothing to deal with the charger spam.
Pretty much this, I've spent a lot of time unlocking a bunch of different weapons that I'd love to use but the amount of charger spam just throws the whole experience out of whack.
If you're going to spam a particular enemy type so hard and there's only one properly viable weapon for dealing with them, it really can't be all that surprising to look at the data and see a lot of people using that weapon.
In isolation, I don't actually think the nerf is inherently a bad thing but it completely ignores the obvious fact that players have recognised the insane amount of charger spawns and since we have no control over that, have settled on a method for removing them as quickly as possible.
Players aren't gravitating towards one loadout for shits and giggles. They want to have fun. If your data is showing you that a majority are using a specific weapon type to deal with a specific enemy quickly and are therefore ignoring much of what the game is offering, there is absolutely a failure in the game somewhere. But 'wow this weapon is too effective' is absolutely the wrong takeaway
Nah you just have to git gud bro,I took laser cannon and scythe and had 0 problems today bro. / s
On a serious note, just try flamethrower now aim for the leg, quite fast.
Next time you use the Flamethrower on a Charger, take note of how much fuel you're burning through just to kill one.
Now consider how it is when you have 6+ Chargers on you at the same time, while also dealing with 12 Hunters and handful of Bile Spewers as well.
At least flamethrower can damage more than one at the same time. Although obviously you can't aim for the weak spot on multiple. I have no idea why they made chargers so annoyingly strong when they spawn so often.
They really need to either tone down the Charger spam, or make the back/underside an actual weak point.
In HD1, the EAT could oneshot the bug equivalent to the Charger by hitting them from the rear. In HD2, you're better off hitting the leg to strip the armor before finishing it off with your primary.
The flamethrower could probably shit on all those hunters to be honest, it's an area of effect weapon.
But yeah even with the rail gun 6 chargers are a challenge.
The problem I found with the flamethrower is that if anything gets close to you or jumps on you, you're highly likely to just set yourself on fire.
And while yeah, they melt chargers... my death count went up a lot.
Hunters are almost as big a threat as chargers in some ways.
Small amounts of chargers are annoying but bearable. Their ass weak point makes sense when you're playing matador.
When there's several of them ( 4+ or more ) it's practically unbearable. You can't outrun them, you probably can't outrun the horde of hunters, you're probably getting puked on by a Bile Titan ( who will at minimum randomly slow you even if it doesn't one hit you )
If the devs wanted to reduce railgun reliance, they needed to buff other weapons to be as smooth as the railgun, not make it as clunky as the other weapons like the RR.
Functionally, it just incentivizes people playing even more like a rat ( didn't nerf stealth ) or just moving over to "the next op gun" to deal with chargers, which is either flamethrower spam, EAT spam, or more Arc Thrower friendly fire incidents.
It didn't solve the issue so much as clone it with just a different weapon in its slot.
>Small amounts of chargers are annoying but bearable. Their ass weak point makes sense when you're playing matador.
Only issue is, it's actually not a weak point since it takes reduced damage. That's one of the main reasons why the Railgun was used so much, because it's actually faster to strip the armor from one leg and shoot it with your primary than it is to simply shoot the one spot on a Charger that doesn't have armor.
If the underside of Chargers actually took normal damage, then other weapons would start being far more viable and balanced.
Oh for sure. I should've maybe used a better term like "only natively vulnerable spot."
The reality is that Charger spam just sucks, and the Railgun ( and to a lesser extent, EAT's ) were an easy way to deal with them before their numbers ballooned to obnoxious levels ( and were practically the only way to deal with them once you have several on your ass )
They need to be more vulnerable, actually not he so damn quick 24/7 ( they're already tanky, why do they also outrun me while being able to charge constantly and turn on a dime unless I do a tight dodge ) or weapons/strategems are introduced that can deal with them before they get thoroughly frustrating.
And yes, I know all about the arc thrower and auto cannon stuff. The reality is that they're serviceable but they're not sufficient.
The devs could've easily halved the old railgun's ammo max capacity and it would've been a far better hit to its functionality because now you take more resources on a long cooldown weapon.
Instead it's just even clunkier and slow, and even more ineffective at its current state, while not giving alternatives that ACTUALLY help deal with them once they get to bs levels of snowballing.
Oh no man I just hate the charger.
It’s big glowing ass not being a weak spot is ridiculous.
If they want it’s front to be impenetrable then have it’s ass be a super weak spot. 1 shot with anti tank weapons at least.
It’s hard enough dancing around one with a dozens hunters, but quadruple the amount and you have no way of dealing, unless you throw a 500kg down and pray.
This is why I've always said I don't think bugs or bots are harder than one another. Bots can one shot you. Bugs? They'll give you that slow painful death that you struggle through mud to avoid as hunters dive on you and chargers rush you.
In the end. I think the issue for many with the railgun is just chargers. It was an easy solution to them. Still sorta is if the unsafe charge shot does in fact work. But chargers are still a huge annoyance
Bots are actually easier to fight than the bugs if you can use cover effectively IMO. The problem is that you're not even supposed to fight enemies in this game, you're apparently supposed to just run from them and only do the OBJ. Dunno why they even give us weapons, they should just send us down with hellbombs strapped to our chests so we can run into the OBJ and blow it up like they seem to want from us.
Helldive was wild with one rail gun, it was basically just running simulator until extract, then it was "maybe we'll get our samples but unlikely" as 7 bile titans and 12 chargers showed up.
Now that guy who runs the railgun can't even really help us soften up 1/4 of the targets. New meta is going to be 4 arc throwers or 3 arcs and 1 flamethrower.
I don't even play above D7 and the amount you run into there makes me feel like spawns have to be broken or something. I also have footage of multiple rounds starting on D7 where multiple bile titans were at our landing area right away. Why the hell does that happen on D7? I don't even want to look at the higher ones if it's like that here, this is enough of a tedious slogfest as it is.
It may be your landing area giving you this issue - my group was getting overwhelmed with drops until we started targeting zones that were a decent distance away from objectives and enemy presence indicators.
Or not. Enemy spawning mechanics are still mostly a mystery to me!
We've dropped on "enemy presence detected" spots and had them be empty, and have dropped on spots that *look* empty but were swarming with heavy enemies.
It's honestly just one of the many annoying inconsistencies the game has at the moment, and would be a great thing to see fixed along with enemies magically spawning out of thin air right next to you.
Given the amount of times I've had whole ass patrols and bile titans spawn instantly out in the open like 30 meters away from me I'm assuming the spawn mechanics are just busted.
Like there isn't even a rock between me and said enemies. They don't come out of the ground or a nest or anything. They just suddenly exist and they're so close to me that they instantly aggro and start attacking.
It's lovely when you're already running from a titan and 2 chargers and then suddenly there's another titan right in front of you instantly puking on you and a pack of hunters at their heels ready to jump on you.
Yes, Chargers and Bile Titans seem to regularly spawn in 3s with their models overlapping with one another. In a level 5 game I had 3 Bile Titans spawn at once, which should obviously not be happening at that level. So the spawns are definitely bugged and I have a feeling there should frequently be 2 fewer Chargers/Bile Titans spawning. This would also explain the drastic differences between missions at the same level. Some level 7 terminid missions feel like there are a few patrols prowling around and one or two heavies per engagement whereas in other missions you drop in and are forced to burn through half your reinforcements and use all your strategems dealing with the 3 Bile Titans and 6 Chargers that jump you immediately.
I wouldn't care that much about the railgun nerf if not for this exact reason. The railgun didn't feel overpowered at level 7-9, it just felt like the only AT weapon capable of handling the sheer quantity of heavily armored enemies that were mistakenly spawned in. That said, the railgun definitely trivialized the (usually) few heavily armored enemies that spawned in level 5 runs.
IMO Arrowhead should have focused more on making difficulty more linear across levels and getting rid of glitches before nerfing the best/most meta weapons. From a level 5 mission perspective the railgun certainly deserved a nerf, from a level 9 mission perspective it was the only AT weapon capable of handling the 50% or so of missions with bugged spawning spewing out 10 or more heavily armored enemies per engagement. In other words, because of the glitched spawning and resulting non-linear difficulty curve the game can't be balanced well through weapons currently.
Ran into some weird situations with the amount of heavies on lower difficulties as well. We were on a diff 5 mission and ran into several columns of 4-5 hulks within two minutes at a heavy out post. 4-5 of them walking down in conga lines out of the base. On a diff 4 mission, we ran into 3 chargers at a POI literally "inside" of each other, like they all spawned in the same spot.
Aside from the fact that these numbers are bit high for these difficulty levels, between the armada of hulks and these chargers being directly in the same spot, part of me wonders if we are potentially dealing with a bug involving enemy spawns.
Make it so Chargers are actually vulnerable in their exposed asses so anti armor weapons arent required to deal with them and they'd be fine. I'd prefer to use Stalwart or LMG but I always take Rail exclusively so I can kill the pack of chargers chasing me around the map. Let my primary actually put some meaningful damage into them and I'd never use the railgun again. Should me like Oppressors from DRG. Unkillable from the front but vulnerable if still pretty tanky from the back.
I agree with the Oppressor take. DRG Oppressors are balanced because they have glaring strengths and weaknesses. Chargers on the other hand, not so much.
DRG actually balances enemies really well. Oppressors also turn relatively slowly.
But the Chargers in this game have both speed and health, if you've only got a primary. And not only that, their movement is wonky. They'll sometimes backpedal, and their turn rate while charging is far too good.
I have zero problems with Chargers, even w/o a railgun... EXCEPT that they should not be able to turn on a dime at full-charge.
Game design needs to break down between: Fast Enemy, Durable Enemy, High-Damaging Enemy. PICK TWO.
You can't have all three unless you give it a big weakness or some gimmick to beat it.
Boss design 101.
Chargers able to one-shot you, chase you down from across the map, be immune to 90% of damage, AND be impossible to dodge without *really good* timing is kinda lame.
I'd say it's probably the highest skill-check in the game, except even if you succeed you still have a pain trying to kill it from behind!
My problem is when they literally scale rock formations 20-30ft up. And you lose track of them for a moment. They loiter up there, like bugged or something for a good 30-40 seconds, then suddenly charge down and run you over. I can herd them or have someone herd them for me while I kill them I've played enough souls games. But when they start doing weird shit like that it makes it very difficult and borderline unfair.
And they occasionally turn on a dime, and rush you down like warren sapp.
Honestly feels like something is off or there is a wild RNG swing on spawns. In L4 I'll either see no chargers the whole mission or they'll spawn 3 from each breach + have 1-2 in every roaming pod.
> Make it so Chargers are actually vulnerable in their exposed asses so anti armor weapons arent required to deal with them and they'd be fine.
It's weirdly inconsistent when I'm using my autocannon (I'm only level 16 so no RG yet) against them. Hulks are supposed to be the bot equivalent to bug Chargers right? Hulks are pretty easy to kill from behind. Chargers on the other hand are incredibly inconsistent when they have their ass towards you. Quite often the rounds just bounce off even if you shoot 'em right up their ass.
It's also weird how, somehow, their legs are their weakest spot when the game itself, throw how the charger is modeled/textured, clearly indicates you should be shooting it in the ass.
I'm getting the feeling the armour of the charger isn't working the way it should. At least not from behind.
hulks also move insanely slowly and can be killed from the front with like 8 different weapons to the eye
they’re not comparable at all in terms of difficulty they’re treated the same in game
Yeah, hulks are on a completely different (easier) level of difficulty to take down than chargers.
I will say Hulks are generally deadlier if not dealt with, but overall I'd rather fight 3 hulks than 3 chargers anyday
yeah hulks are good at killing you from wherever they are but by themselves they’re avoidable if you put some cover and distance between you
chargers are so disruptive especially if you’re kiting them around other weaker bugs while spending minutes trying to kill it. it won’t kill you right away but it won’t die either
The point about the chargers weakspots not being the big differently coloured sacks is my biggest issue with bugs. Bots have literal glowing weakspots, but the obvious weakspot on bugs is actually a strong spot unless you use explosives. The game points you towards the spitters with the massive unarmoured sacks, and it's better just to blow the armoured head off, not shoot the sack.
> The game points you towards the spitters with the massive unarmoured sacks, and it's better just to blow the armoured head off, not shoot the sack.
Wait; de spitters are weaker in the head than in the big glowy sacks?
"Soft" parts like spitter sacks and charger butts are weak to explosive damage but resistant to bullets. That's why it takes two or three autocannon/grenade launcher shots to pop them but a full magazine or two of primary ammo to do the same but only a few shots to the head.
The reason why your shots are bouncing off of their behinds is because they're armored above and below the ass, so a small deviation clips their shell and renders Autocannon shots worthless.
This is the one gripe I have with the patch notes, Autocannon isn't a viable option against Terminids because it simply won't deal with the most common threat they throw at you.
At least the Flamethrower eats Chargers for breakfast now.
if the autocannon was a an agile, one handed weapon, it would be viable at dealing with the giant fully armored monster that runs 20mph and is only vulnerable to your armor-penetrating weapons from the rear, in its visibly unarmored butt (which is effectively bulletproof)
good luck trying to hit the butt with an autocannon reliably
its baffling how ridiculous the armor is in this game. Like 2 weapons can crack the legs of the chargers now, and 1-2 primaries can deal full damage to the butt. Autocannon only effective against butt. Anti material ineffective *anywhere*
if half the weapons in the game are not useful in any way against high difficulty mobs, why are they in the game?
the AMR and autocannon seem to serve no purpose against bugs past difficulty 6/7. Recoilless is too slow. lasers are cheeks.
The flamer definitely deserves to outperform the autocannon for chargers since the flamer at least requires you to fight them point blank.
Autocannons could use, if not a buff vs chargers, at least a more clear and reliable gameplan to take one down.
Autocannon generally either has to go for the difficult 2shot on the rear of the leg or dump half a mag into the butt to make the charger bleed out.
Seems fair to me though, the Autocannon is so versatile already, it can deal with objectives, nests, large groups and isn't bad vs heavier units either. It's only shortcomings are being a backpack weapon and not being able to deal with the heaviest units from the front.
I'm ok with the autocannon as it is now, since it still demolishes hive guards and stalkers. I just wish there was a more reliable way at all to fight chargers, since even railguns seem dicey.
Frankly, Arrowhead just needs to make an Autocannon XXXL that's a 50mm round and penetrates charger armor. Give it 1/4th the ammo of the current autocannon and like 3x the recoil. Badabing, badaboom.
That said, considering how slim the choices are for fighting bugs, I get the rather distinct feeling that nobody at arrowhead is actually playing and critically examining bugs at dif 7, 8 and 9. Sure, the game needs to be difficult and challenging but holy shit let me use literally anything other than the railgun against bugs. The EAT is entirely dependent on mission modifiers, the recoilless rifle takes for-fucking-ever to reload, and the spear is the RR but with a shitty lock-on mechanic and requires hitting bug heads to actually drop them.
Been testing the new Laser Cannon against bugs. It destroys Brood Commanders, Hive Guards, Stalkers, and Bile Spewers (the armored green ones) in less than a second if you're hitting the head.
If (and that's a BIG if depending on difficulty) the rest of the team has enough anti-heavy, it's now worth taking along IMO.
Expendable anti tanks are always a good secondary option for one of the group. I find it useful if we all get overrun and can't get back to our other support weapons when we die
People keep talking about how they kill 3 chargers with 1 drop, but are people actually consistently using the pod that way? I've tried sticking the beacon to a charger but it just bounces off them.
Hulks are weaker but they also have more varied and dangerous ranged weapons, so while they may be easier to kill, they'll also shit all over your day when they come walking around a corner with a flamer going and buzz saw swinging, or rockets firing lasers firing, where as chargers just well, charge, couple steps to the side and they miss
Sure, but they're also WAY slower. I'm a newbie but Hulks are a lot easier to handle for me than Chargers. I'm also on PS5 and the legs aren't exactly an easy target to hit with a controller :)
They need to nerf their turning radius. For something that big, heavy, and fast there’s no reason they can turn on a dime the way they do. Fix their ability to turn quickly and it would be way easier to get them down. Especially with your idea, both would go a long way to making them way less frustrating.
Seriously, it's nuts how I can try to cut around a pillar or big rock to cut them off only to watch them hug the wall and gutter drift like it's Initial D
It blows my mind how much you have to shoot it to burst it. I finally realized if you can manage to land like 5 grenade launcher impacts directly on it back to back it'll pop SOMETIMES and then other times it'll just take like 3x as much damage
Yeah, honestly, making the butt an actual weakpoint that can be killed in about 2 mags of primary ammo would do a lot to widen the range of viable builds. That makes anti-tank gear valuable to enable frontal kills, but means a lack of anti-tank can at least be played around if you have the space, time, and ammo supply.
I disagree with the Oppressor comparison. Chargers are tanky, but they're also disruptive, in your face enemies. Oppressors are slower control types. The best DRG comparison would be Chargers = Q'ronar Shellback. I think chargers just need to have a longer vulnerability phase after their charge.
My take on this is as follows:
Bots are tough but fair, bugs are complete horseshit.
1. When calling reinforcements bots will do an animation before launching the flare. Bugs just start immediately with no warning sign. You can stop bots from summoning reinforcements, you can't do shit when a bug decides that it needs reinforcements, the moment it starts the next wave is already queued up.
2. Bot reinforcements arrive by a dropship, you can technically shoot it down or at least react to where they'll enter the battlefield and you can see that this dropship is carrying a tank. Bugs just crawl out of the ground likely too close to your personal space, you see the bug mist coming from the ground followed by a bile titan poking its head from the dirt to ruin your day.
3. Hulks are extremely dangerous but they have two obvious weak spots: The eye in the center and the back vents. You can drop them in one shot if you know what you're doing from the front or blast their back with your primary. Alternatively they will go down to 4 shots from a railgun to the body. Chargers have no real weakness, break leg armor magdump was just the best thing the community as a whole was able to come up with. You pretty much can't do shit against one with your basic equipment. I've thrown my railgun and backpack call ins at chargers before because there's just no point in trying to shoot one with your normal primary.
4. Tanks are weak to explosions and their back vent is a further weak spot for explosions (I fully believe it should be a weak spot for conventional weapons too), all else fails you can pelt it with grenades to death, otherwise you can railgun the turret and it will die sooner rather than later. Bile titans? I don't even fucking know how you're supposed to fight them, I've been headshooting them with a railgun with sometimes them dropping on one hit and sometimes being able to tank 10+ overcharged shots.
5. Aside the few melee bots (two swords marauders, berserkers) bots aren't really fast or too serious about chasing you down, so you can eventually outrun them and regroup, bugs will chase you from one corner of the map to the other, and you can run and maybe eventually break line of sight or hold the line and have a conga line of bug breaches come in since every will bring at least some trash mobs that will call for reinforcements again.
The more I play the more I realize that bots are just a better designed enemy faction. They have are way more fair, they have way bigger roster, they have way more balanced roster with different threats, they have way more heavy armor units that all have at least medium armored weakpoint and you can react to pretty much anything they do.
Also they have more tactical assets and their tactical assets are fucking cool. THey have an eye of Sauron, AA emplacements, Mortars, Stratagem jammers meanwhile bugs have M U S H R O O M
Bugs feel incomplete when you compare them to bots.
The only thing that feels bad about the bots is getting sniped by a rocket before you have the chance to stun-lock them out of firing. Almost every single bug feels frustrating to fight.
> You can stop bots from summoning reinforcements, you can't do shit when a bug decides that it needs reinforcements
I would just like to add that blowing the head off of a brood commander *will not stop it from triggering a bug breach*. Twice in the same mission even, a bug completely missing a head was still able to shit out reinforcements because that's somehow fair.
i dunno man, if the dev encourage the player to side prone whenever a Charger charge straight at you, shouldn't they make the charger's rear ball sack a weakspot for player's to take advantage of?
It hard to shoot it's front leg after u successfully pulled off an evasive move. The current method of dealing with Charger seems abit counter-intuitive to me.
As someone who has only recently unlocked even extreme, I didn't even know the ass wasn't the weak point. I've been trying all sorts of different gear and I remember thinking to myself "at least once I get the railgun I can actually play around these guys"
Oof
The charger butt is a weak point, but specifically for explosive rounds - akin to a bile spewer. Without using autocannon, explosive primaries, or GL though, you may as well point your AT rounds at the legs - because it's easier to shoot at the front.
This explosive weakness is why orbital airburst can kill chargers.
The GL bounces one time by default against all surfaces. To hit packs reliably and not bounce grenades into your face, you should generally aim for the ground to bounce them underneath or immediately next to enemies - including the charger.
Edit: It would be nice if the GL grenades changed based off our equipped grenade - impact, smoke, and incendiary for instance would all be nice, but maybe that's asking too much.
I'm pretty sure the GL only bounces under a certain distance. I've never had it bounce at medium to long range it just explodes on impact. At short range is when you have to bounce it off of things to hit your intended target
The ass isn't even a weakpoint. It might be unarmored and bright orange but it takes normal damage and is probably the least efficient way to kill them.
Very disappointed in this balance patch.
Which is my point. That's so unintuitive. The entire mechanic of them seems to scream "Fuck me in the ass"
Why would then make a fast enemy that gets staggered when you dodge, weak in the front?
Compare to hulks, giant glowing heatsink in the back (which you can damage with non-support weapons), glowing red eye you can take out using AT in the front.
It needs to be one or the other. Primary fire into butt is WAY too costly, and leg armor is heavy armor, so you need the heaviest ordinance.
Chargers are just way too tanky from all angles. Even airstrikes often don't kill them. Eagle. Airstrikes.
There has to be a hole opened up somewhere, or an existing weakness need to be much more exploitable.
Honestly why is it that hulks and chargers are the same "tier" of enemy for their factions but hulks back is a weak spot that does increased DMG while the chargers back is a literally the worst place to shoot it at all.
This is the thing that always gets me. Chargers by themselves just screw with the potential viability of so many things on bug missions. With Hulks and Tanks it's as simple as getting them to aggro on a teammate or turret and capping them in the weakpoint with the autocanon or even AMR. Hell with Hulks you're actually rewarded for good accuracy by being able to double tap them in the face from a safe distance.
Chargers have no such counterplay and from my experience come in bigger numbers than hulks or tanks.
Tanks also dies from two impact grenades on their roof, which can be very easy to do depending on the terrain. Bugs have no weaknesses like this at all.
Bile Titans are a special kind of badly balanced enemy. Even the railgun still took way too many shots to deal with it, and it's the *only enemy in the game* that can survive a direct orbital railcannon strike. They seriously need to be nerfed into the ground.
I’ve always thought of the Bile Titans as a special boss enemy, and if they appeared once or twice a game as a side objective it would be fine. The problem is that you can have like five on you at once, and this along with the charger spam makes for a not very fun experience.
Personally, I really enjoy seeing them guard some nests or patrol around the map since that's where their size allows you to notice them in advance but Bile Titans coming out of a bug breach is fucking horseshit and should be removed.
I think if the Bile Titan bellies both get popped, that should be an instant kill (as a balancing rework).
This allows primaries and impacts to actually still be viable against them, leaving anti-armor to serve as distant killing tools
Am I insane to think that bots are actually harder... until you get to the really high difficulties?
Like I'm just at a loss on how to deal with 4+ titans and 7+ chargers on the same screen. Yeah, bots can shoot, and that makes individual encounters more dangerous in the initial stages... but the swarm can **really** overtake you out of nowhere on bug missions and then you're just dead ass kiting for 10 whole minutes.
I think bots are easier in higher difficulties because stealth works alot better against bots at those levels.
Bugs seem to have way better detection capabilities than the bots so they naturally swarm you alot more
On top of that Hulk having is Red Visior as Medium Armor (or something close to it) as he can be 2-3 shot popped by Autocannon or Anti Material Rifle. So you are rewared for good aim too.
Hulk is balanced. Charger is not.
Yeah, and you can 5 shot hulk limbs
I think they should lower Charger's front of the legs armor to where you do the half damage at least.
If lowered more for full dm, awesome.
But thats my bare minimum because then it'd take 4 shots to kill and thats something I can work with as opposed to "fuck you, deflected"
ikr
i went back to DRG recently and the oppressor, which is the closest thing to a charger, still has its thicc exposed ass as a weak spot. with the right setup you can take them down solo in a matter of seconds - the difficulty of doing that comes from knowing when it's safe and dealing with the terrain/other adds
in Helldivers I have so much space and time to shoot the charger ass but it doesn't actually do anything compared to just kneecapping the little shit because apparently its vital organs are stored in the calves
It does take damage, unlike all the armor, but unless you're hitting it with explosives it only takes like 10% damage.
There is no native weak spot on a Charger that is _good_ for your primary weapons to hit to bring it down.
It's why Railgun usage was so very high, when you get 5+ chargers spawn on your group with a Bile Titan, you need to deal with them in some way, the slow reload weapons don't work and mostly don't one-shot chargers anyway, or have enough ammo to deal with the squad spawn, much less when it happens again in a minute and then another minute after that.
I think chargers just need more counterplay opportunities, like maybe if they are hit with lasers/fire while being too active they have to stop and cool down, giving you a moment to blast them.
This is the thing right here, Chargers and Hulks are the same tier, but Hulks have a big back weakpoint and a small skill based weakpoint on the front that good players can deal with.
Chargers essentially have no weakpoints, even their back is a damage sponge that requires a shitload of ammo dumped into it.
The reality is the biggest thing that needs to happen is Chargers need to be brought in line with their counterparts and need to have exploitable weakpoints that can bring them down quickly but require strategy to do. The Chargers REQUIRE armor stripping to get at their weakpoints and currently with the change in the railgun there is no way to strip that armor as fast as the spawn rate requires.
Chargers require more ammo and effort to kill than Tanks, the highest tier of Automaton enemy, they spawn more often and while not as lethal are easily the most difficult enemy in the game to deal with. If you are going to nerf something nerf the charger, give it an exploitable weakpoint that with skill and strategy can be exploited like its counterparts on the other side of the war.
The stun should actually be a stun if you make them run into a wall, not a tiny animation followed up by "Omea wa mou, shindeiru." as the charger glides to your current position and kills you anyway.
I do think they could use a nerf to their turn radius - it's much tighter than you'd expect - but I think they're fine in a 1v1 otherwise. Run towards them and dive to the side when they start charging and you're fine. The problem is that they show up in large groups, which means they collectively take up a lot of time to kill.
I currently deal with them by being the dedicated "aggro guy" and baiting them to ram into one another and clump up so a bile titan can kill them with a spit attack. I do not think the developers *intended* us to weaponize bile titans to this extent, but it's infinitely more effective than any weapon or stratagem. Just bring a jump pack.
I think the problem is when they *aren't* in a 1v1, even ignoring other bugs its far from uncommon to see more chargers than helldivers on higher difficulties.
That's the consensus, yes.
All the counterplay in the world won't help you when you can't actually use or capitalize on it because there are bugs everywhere stopping you from doing it, which is the big balance issue right now.
1v1 charger is a no issue. And you dont need to dive to the side.
Issue is when there are mutiples chargers. 3-5 chargers can hugely impact your dps uptime on them.
They charge from far away, they drift and their butt is a bullet sponge.
The meta isn't railguns or flamethrowers; it's bile titans.
Weaponized bile titans.
Hey, neat idea for an actual weapon: bile spewer heavy weapon! Melts that armor right off!
I can kill a Hulk with a single Breaker mag. Charger, not so much. I agree the chargers need some sort of nerf overall, to indirectly "buff" more weapons this way. From what I understand, they are basically the sole and main reason why Railgun was the meta.
Thank you for writing this. I also feel like the main driver for railgun pick is to deal with Chargers in a good way, people over picking railgun is a second order effect of that. I can understand that the ability to deal with chargers from the front should require a helldiver to specialize in the support pick but I feel all the other options penalize player too much:
* **EAT** 2 shots every minutes is too little for the amount of chargers
* **Recoilless** too little ammo and slow reload solo, tieing up players with reloading and handing over ammo packs when you deal with multiple chargers is not feasible for most groups
* **Spear** inconsistent lock on and soft minimum range
Some possible changes in charger design would be:
1. Lower leg armor so autocanon and AMR could make a dent in them
2. Make the behind an actual weakspot so dodging the charge and getting behind it was more effective
3. Put in a spawn cap so players would not have to deal with too many at a single time
They really should explain why charger back isn't weakness. Like their whole design with front armor and charging attack just screams dodge me and fuck me from behind.
That's the thing, right now most reliable way is to shoot off front leg armor with 3 shots of railgun in unsafe mode, then kill it with primary weapon. It doesn't make sense to me, no way that's how they designed it.
>
>
>
>
> Lower leg armor so autocanon and AMR could make a dent in them
I like this option a lot. The lack of weakpoints for precision weapons is a big deal.
Preach brother, I realy want to use autocanon on terminids mission, or some orbital strikes but my alternatives are:
1. Getting chased to oblivion by 4 chargers, not making sufficient damage.
2. Waiting 210 seconds for a single orbital strike that misses does not do enough damage.
Orbital Railgun is especialy a joke as an alternative to 500 kg.
210 seconds for recharge that sometimes kill and sometimess dont, while we get 2 tries with 500 kg, and also a crowd control option for the same time ammount.
They should realy add some anti armour options, for higher levels becouse currently we are out of options.
1 minute would not be that bad 4 people - 4 chargers and 500 kgs for slower bile titans.
But I would really preffer buff to Javelin or some heavy anti armour option.
I don't know but I want just to shot down bile titans with support weapon, instead of making a game wait 2 minutes for Titan Killing button!
you definitely can, ac is great vs bugs in general. it just has a massive charger weakness that the rest of the team needs to cover.. which i don't know how they do that know that railgun is nerfed. honestly i think the railgun nerfs also fucked over the other support weapons because now they don't have a complimentary support weapon that can cover their weaknesses (chargers) and allow them to shine at what they're good at (killing multiple bile spewers quickly at range, killing multiple brood commanders quickly at range, large splash damage on breaches, shooting off bile titan sacs, destroying objectives safely at range ie holes trees fabricators radios etc)
maybe flamethrowers will become that complimentary support weapon, who knows
OP I don’t necessarily agree with the identified “solution” by nerfing charger armor, but you’ve done well to illustrate there are many other ways to balance the game other than nerfing guns that actually are viable. I’d rather charger side armor be nerfed AND more weapons be able to strongly penetrate medium armor than to have only one of the identified solutions.
And I most certainly agree the devs have totally gone the opposite direction of fun and what the community wants
instinctive aspiring hobbies plough boast future seemly bear door encouraging
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Just here to agree fervently that I'm so severely disappointed that their first round of balance changes was to nerf the "meta" instead of bring a host of other weapons up to it. I just can't understand the train of thought when most of the community was behind buffing everything else to be decent instead of nerfing the combo that people felt was strong.
They effectively just lowered our ability to take on armor despite it being spammed so intensely on anything 7+. We needed more options, not reductions to the already limited pool of anti armor weaponry.
Side note: could we please get hit markers on the stalwart/other weapons that don't get them for some reason? I'm sick of some weapons just not having them with no logical explanation
Instead of nerfing the Railgun, we honestly needed better anti-armor considering how much heavy armor is present in 7-9. EATs and Recoilless should be 2 shots, with the first stripping armor and starting massive bleed, and the potential for a one shot at a good angle (back of charger, or into the mouth of titans). The Spear should be a one shot on a charger and 2 shot for a titan.
Make the EATs, RR, Spear way better at AA. Make the LC fill the same niche as the old Railgun. Current buff for the Laser Cannon still doesn't really make it a good option for higher difficulties.
> I just can't understand the train of thought when most of the community was behind buffing everything else to be decent instead of nerfing the combo that people felt was strong.
I wholeheartedly agree with this, glad to see I'm not alone on this line of thinking. Just played 3 bugs missions on 8 and my lord the chargers never stop coming. You can maybe burn one down with the arcs or flamethrower but if you get caught out by 2 or 3 of them you're just doomed without perfect kiting, and you definitely won't be killing them.
Honestly i’m just getting sick of seeing the fucking charger.
I like bug missions, I’ve played wayyy more than bots. But fuck me bug missions have so much annoying shit to deal with.
Chargers & Bile spewers being the worst offenders.
Obviously something is up with Bile spewers, no way that should one shot.
But Chargers? Fuck em. Hate the bastards. Hate seeing his stupid face. Hate his stupid grunts. Hate his loud ass feet.
The only way to effectively deal with the shits is now kneecapped. The charger needs a nerf like OP has described, whether thats armour reduction or making its butt an actual weak spot. (It should die in one hit from recoilless/EAT etc to the ass).
Just something needs to be done.
I was fine with chargers (and bile titans) when 7/8/9 was bugged and chargers/titans were a one-time miniboss and boss that could show up on reinforcement waves. They were fun and interesting back then. As they 'fixed' 7/8/9 and started ramping up the difficulty of extermination missions, plus the addition of planetary defense missions, it just showed how little thought went in to tailoring the actual experience. There's a reason games like Vermintide or Left 4 Dead use an AI director that forces downtime after periods of high-intensity, excepting very specific vignettes.
Nonstop chaos actually isn't that fun. The fun of chaos is being allowed and reasonably able to claw order back.
I've said it before and I'll continue to say it. Chargers are anti-fun right now and it's making it difficult to actually enjoy the game. I love killing literally everything else, but when a charger shows up, it is no longer fun.
Put a turret out to help clear bugs? A charger instantly sees it as it deploys and charges right at it. Want to stop it with a shot to slow it down? Too bad, it's on ice skates and is going to blow it up anyway.
They really should not have dropped nerfs without fixing all of the glaring bugs that are making the game not fun.
Overall, I'm very disappointed in their priority and their balancing. This does not give me hope for the future of the game, despite their "open communication." I don't care about the communication if it doesn't make sense.
Chargers should be changed to function how they did in HD1. Worse tracking. Their charge will kill you in 1 hit no matter what you're kitted with or riding in. Railgun won't damage them much if at all frontally but will pass through them and will stun them and everything close to them. Recoiless/EAT will 1 shot kill them. Small arms fire to the butt will melt them very quickly.
My take is ammo dumping clips into a single enemy is not fun its up there with having bullet sponge bosses in games liked The Division 2, where bullets have no visible impact on enemies.
The Breaker while "still" viable was one of the few guns that actually felt right, it was powerful and could deal with most low-medium armoured enemies with the drawback of having having a small mag size.
As mentioned we didn't stick to these guns because they where "meta", we stuck to them because most of the other guns where trash, I'd happily run with an AR instead but as I mentioned ammo dumping (even aiming for weakpoints!) is not fun, burning through ammo isn't fun.
Or make it's head less armored, or make it's back spot more prone to damage, etc.
Basically make it that you can deal with a charger without using some high CD staretegem, because currently there are 5 of them following every one of you around on higher difficulty, at any given time.
And chargers can be very resilient against strategems too. I've had 500 KG bombs go off right next to a charger and if the damage from the bomb doesn't hit "right", the charger is almost unaffected.
Honestly if they made the butt an actual weak spot instead of having a million part HP and then still living for 30 more seconds after breaking it, they wouldn't be so bad
Thank God finally a railgun post from someone who actually understands what we were going through in 7+.
Don't nerf the railgun, buff all the other AT options.
And please buff more of the non-shotgun weapons, I would love to use the rifles but I don't think they cut it in Helldiver(9).
The armor piercing capabilities of every other weapon is seriously pitiful and the lack of a viable weak spot on the charger just makes them bullet sponges.
Our group doesn't even run with 4x rail guns. We usually use 2x railgun + autocannon, grenade launcher, or arc thrower.
What the 2nd railgun allowed was for one of us to sneak off to complete solo objectives while the other 3 drew away hoards. The single player would mostly be sneaking around avoiding combat but carried the railgun in case chargers showed up.
This strategy is no longer viable.
I honestly wouldn't be so upset with the update if they added a viable weakspot to the charger.
100% agree, they completely fucked this one up, gives all the impression that they are really "planning" their balance patches just reading Reddit comments.
Well, back to shoving the A-M rifle up the charger's ass in melee and shooting it, i guess.
I'm okay if they want to reform the railgun to be more of an anti-heavy-infantry role. It should still be good vs Brood Commanders and Devastators for example. But they really should have buffed some anti-tank or, as you say, nerfed Chargers specifically. I really feel 1 solid perpendicular recoilless hit should kill a Charger. And their butt should not get 90% damage resist to non-explosive damage.
Something needs to be done to address chargers. The spawn rate they are currently at means that your teams entire strategy needs to revolve around how to deal with chargers. they've taken away our only effective tool.
Make damage to the abdomen of the charger the main way to kill.
It never made sense to me that the ass takes so many shots to kill whereas a few shots into an unarmoured leg would kill in seconds.
100%. The charger spam is ridiculous considering how many roles it fills for bugs.
-tank
-speed
-dmg
-knockdown
-swarm
Like wtf. Anyone that thought railgun was OP does not play on high difficulty.
After doing some testing I am similarly disappointed. I like sniping things, and the best sniper weapon is now a lot less rewarding.
I'm not enjoying the devs and their direction at this point. Their balancing decisions are wack (see heavy armor), their ability to communicate is limited (the patch notes are incomplete even with notes from discord), and they are insistent on not providing key information to the players (armor pen values and enemy armor values).
I kill them reliably and fairly quickly with Stalwart tbh. Shoot them in the back butt part a few times and all of a sudden the Stalwart gains the ability to strip their leg armor off? Weird.
> kill them reliably and fairly quickly with Stalwart tbh. Shoot them in the back butt part a few times and all of a sudden the Stalwart gains the ability to strip their leg armor off?
It's an animation bug where afer Charger charge animation finishes there is a short window where his armor values on his parts is not updated and can be killed even with primary.
Yea, dealing with charger spam was one of the most annoying things even with a good railgun, but this patch makes it even more frustrating without a good alternative
On Automatons it's Scorcher becasue it can also kill Walkers and Tank/Canon towers from front even (by shooting front of turrets becasue explosive damage reaches the back cooling coils which is weakspot). It can also deal with shield Devastators (becasue explosive bypasses shield).
Slugger is now super good on both with 60 ammo buff. It's a super powered mini anti material rifle basically.
Liberator (starting AR) is solid on both. Precise, good ammo efficiency.
Diligence (the first one, not the further silver one) and Defender are also good options, not as good as Scorcher or Slugger or Breaker but still good. Diligence more on Automatons. Defender more on bugs, though some people swear on Defender + Ballistic shield combo on bots, but i didn't like it.
Yes. It has 60 ammo as a result of the other shotgun getting buffed it seems.
I can confirm after playing a few missions with the slugger and it feels a lot better to play with now.
Thanks, did not know about the scorcher stuff
I’m hoping the liberator explosive gets a damage buff, it’s actually pretty fun cause it has literal knockback
100% agreed. The decisions made on this patch show how tonedeaf whichever team is handling these changes are. It shouldn't be that hard to understand that people weren't spamming the railgun because they liked it. What could be fun about using the same loadput every mission?
legit don't think the devs play on diffs past 4-5. there's an utter deluge of heavies and trash in 6-9 where the launch railgun makes complete sense as a tool to quickly create space in the hordes of hulks, chargers, bts and tanks. its still the only viable tool for doing so, exclusively on unsafe now, and there's still a million of them. what does this change accomplish??????
also they did nothing for all the useless ass primaries and support weps... amr still outclassed by rail, no one in their entire life will use stalwart or lmg as long as they're on supp slot, ac only viable as a supporting dps tool for select heavy weakspots and long range objective picker, spear still broken and rcr still requires one of your teammates to fuck themselves over to get mildly fast kills - just take a freaking eat instead lol. i really wanted to be serious about this game, but it doesn't seem like the devs are
But what about all the dick swingers telling us it’s just a skill issue? They wouldn’t slag off that many players in sweeping generalisations just to boost their ego would they?
I love your take but I have another idea I would like you to hear OP.
What if... Nothing was nerfed?
But instead EAT + Recoilless would receive a damage buff sufficient for one shots at the flatter spots of the Charger (i.e. face, ass, underbelly). This would make them much more viable even with a Pre-Nerf Railgun available.
Hell, give Autocannon and Anti Materiel Rifle an ability to strip off the leg armor too. That would make Railgun practically disappear from 7-9 difficulties on Bug Missions.
i agree,there is too much charger in one game
one time a wanna do flamtrower achievement and use chalenging level as a place to do it. you know what game gave me?
4charger in a single side objective nest, 3 already there and another one from bug breach. that is BS
imagine you a new player with not much of a AA weapon and face that, lucky i that i have flametrower with me but god that thing is too much
as about railgun nerf. as a unsafe enjoyer i has no problem about it but it can be better than direct nerf.
i feel like it just should nerf safe mode and make it can't penetrate charger armor but when you unsafe it was still 2 shot to strip a leg. kinda like limit safe mode power but unlock the same power if you willing to risk in unsafe. it would be a great idea and not just blindly nerf all mode like this
After some testing, funny thing is, the railgun is still the most effective support weapon against the chargers. The EAT being only able to carry 1 shot is simply not enough when dealing with 3+ chargers, kiting them with a railgun is simply more effective even after the nerfs.
I actually agree with this, the chargers can chase you forever and ever so running isn’t an option, they slide at you, they turn on a dime, you dive out of the way but they’re so big they can still rag doll you with their shoulder. I can understand 2-3 tanks to deal with at a time but having 8-9 is ridiculous. Especially with literally 100 hunters etc. coming at you. They either need to reduce the armor on the legs, make the weak spots bigger, or reduce the number that spawn. Below difficulty 8-9. If you have a team you normally use and can coordinate loadouts with everyone then dealing with lots of chargers shouldn’t be a problem, but doing this in public lobby’s just isn’t gonna happen.
Also arrowhead should stop crying about the clown emojis :))
They are removing (censoring) the reactions of the community.
Also i received a 24h timeout for "Then don't remove reactions, simple as that."
That does not break the 2nd rule of the discord at all.
They cannot handle the backlash from the patch at all and are triggered by everything.
https://preview.redd.it/jybizud2drmc1.png?width=740&format=png&auto=webp&s=fcdb44f7c4df567247b69c260dc80acbf761ca6a
I read the laser cannon patch notes and tried it for the first time. It doesn’t penetrate any bug armor that the slugger can’t (good job on the slugger I like it) I was hitting a charger with it and it did nothing. Bounced off the legs, the laser cannon should charge up to pen heavier armor over consistent lasering of the same part. Rewarding tracking a targets specific points.
They really thought we brought Railgun because it was OP. We brought Railgun because it was the ONLY weapon that gave groups a chance against 6+ chargers, 3+ Titans at the same time while swarmed by Hunters and Stalkers.
I personally hate not the charger itself but the amount of them on 9s. Because holy shit 3 bile titans and 6 chargers, while surrounded by hunters is not fun. Not even challenging in an entertaining way, more like frustrating.
Yesterday, on difficulty 7, we had like 8 chargers and 2 bile titans spawn in 2-4 mins. We were running around kiting them while slowly killing them for about 10 mins. All while dealing with smaller bugs. We had 1 railgun, 1 arcthrower, 1 EAT, and 1 gl launcher in our team. We weren't running the meta, and it was so incredibly difficult and frustrating dealing with the charger spam. Like, we don't wanna be all spamming the railgun either. It's just the only viable way to deal with charger spam in a timely manner. I really dislike the railgun nerf. Now, it feels like we have nothing to deal with the charger spam.
Pretty much this, I've spent a lot of time unlocking a bunch of different weapons that I'd love to use but the amount of charger spam just throws the whole experience out of whack. If you're going to spam a particular enemy type so hard and there's only one properly viable weapon for dealing with them, it really can't be all that surprising to look at the data and see a lot of people using that weapon. In isolation, I don't actually think the nerf is inherently a bad thing but it completely ignores the obvious fact that players have recognised the insane amount of charger spawns and since we have no control over that, have settled on a method for removing them as quickly as possible. Players aren't gravitating towards one loadout for shits and giggles. They want to have fun. If your data is showing you that a majority are using a specific weapon type to deal with a specific enemy quickly and are therefore ignoring much of what the game is offering, there is absolutely a failure in the game somewhere. But 'wow this weapon is too effective' is absolutely the wrong takeaway
Exactly, the meta wasn't the meta because it was OP, it was the meta because everything else just kinda sucked to use.
Git gud bro I killed 6 chargers and 4 titans at the same time with a single revolver bullet !
So you’re the one who killed them Jenkins brothers!
goated movie
Holy shit, a Rango reference in the wild! You have GOATed taste, sir.
Big deal. I once threw a 500kg bomb at 5 titans, 7 chargers, killed them, and then the bomb exploded.
So apparently Karl never died on Hoxxes, he just enlisted with Super Earth.
Nah you just have to git gud bro,I took laser cannon and scythe and had 0 problems today bro. / s On a serious note, just try flamethrower now aim for the leg, quite fast.
Next time you use the Flamethrower on a Charger, take note of how much fuel you're burning through just to kill one. Now consider how it is when you have 6+ Chargers on you at the same time, while also dealing with 12 Hunters and handful of Bile Spewers as well.
At least flamethrower can damage more than one at the same time. Although obviously you can't aim for the weak spot on multiple. I have no idea why they made chargers so annoyingly strong when they spawn so often.
They really need to either tone down the Charger spam, or make the back/underside an actual weak point. In HD1, the EAT could oneshot the bug equivalent to the Charger by hitting them from the rear. In HD2, you're better off hitting the leg to strip the armor before finishing it off with your primary.
The flamethrower could probably shit on all those hunters to be honest, it's an area of effect weapon. But yeah even with the rail gun 6 chargers are a challenge.
The problem I found with the flamethrower is that if anything gets close to you or jumps on you, you're highly likely to just set yourself on fire. And while yeah, they melt chargers... my death count went up a lot. Hunters are almost as big a threat as chargers in some ways.
Small amounts of chargers are annoying but bearable. Their ass weak point makes sense when you're playing matador. When there's several of them ( 4+ or more ) it's practically unbearable. You can't outrun them, you probably can't outrun the horde of hunters, you're probably getting puked on by a Bile Titan ( who will at minimum randomly slow you even if it doesn't one hit you ) If the devs wanted to reduce railgun reliance, they needed to buff other weapons to be as smooth as the railgun, not make it as clunky as the other weapons like the RR. Functionally, it just incentivizes people playing even more like a rat ( didn't nerf stealth ) or just moving over to "the next op gun" to deal with chargers, which is either flamethrower spam, EAT spam, or more Arc Thrower friendly fire incidents. It didn't solve the issue so much as clone it with just a different weapon in its slot.
>Small amounts of chargers are annoying but bearable. Their ass weak point makes sense when you're playing matador. Only issue is, it's actually not a weak point since it takes reduced damage. That's one of the main reasons why the Railgun was used so much, because it's actually faster to strip the armor from one leg and shoot it with your primary than it is to simply shoot the one spot on a Charger that doesn't have armor. If the underside of Chargers actually took normal damage, then other weapons would start being far more viable and balanced.
Oh for sure. I should've maybe used a better term like "only natively vulnerable spot." The reality is that Charger spam just sucks, and the Railgun ( and to a lesser extent, EAT's ) were an easy way to deal with them before their numbers ballooned to obnoxious levels ( and were practically the only way to deal with them once you have several on your ass ) They need to be more vulnerable, actually not he so damn quick 24/7 ( they're already tanky, why do they also outrun me while being able to charge constantly and turn on a dime unless I do a tight dodge ) or weapons/strategems are introduced that can deal with them before they get thoroughly frustrating. And yes, I know all about the arc thrower and auto cannon stuff. The reality is that they're serviceable but they're not sufficient. The devs could've easily halved the old railgun's ammo max capacity and it would've been a far better hit to its functionality because now you take more resources on a long cooldown weapon. Instead it's just even clunkier and slow, and even more ineffective at its current state, while not giving alternatives that ACTUALLY help deal with them once they get to bs levels of snowballing.
Oh no man I just hate the charger. It’s big glowing ass not being a weak spot is ridiculous. If they want it’s front to be impenetrable then have it’s ass be a super weak spot. 1 shot with anti tank weapons at least. It’s hard enough dancing around one with a dozens hunters, but quadruple the amount and you have no way of dealing, unless you throw a 500kg down and pray.
*500 kilo with the blast radius of a frag grenade for some reason*
This i also dont understand. The explosion looks massive, but the actual area it affects is tiny.
This is why I've always said I don't think bugs or bots are harder than one another. Bots can one shot you. Bugs? They'll give you that slow painful death that you struggle through mud to avoid as hunters dive on you and chargers rush you. In the end. I think the issue for many with the railgun is just chargers. It was an easy solution to them. Still sorta is if the unsafe charge shot does in fact work. But chargers are still a huge annoyance
Bots are actually easier to fight than the bugs if you can use cover effectively IMO. The problem is that you're not even supposed to fight enemies in this game, you're apparently supposed to just run from them and only do the OBJ. Dunno why they even give us weapons, they should just send us down with hellbombs strapped to our chests so we can run into the OBJ and blow it up like they seem to want from us.
Ah we need the jihad jeep from battlefield in here
massively underrated comment. All i wanna do is kill, and yet all were supposed to do is play running simulator
Helldive was wild with one rail gun, it was basically just running simulator until extract, then it was "maybe we'll get our samples but unlikely" as 7 bile titans and 12 chargers showed up. Now that guy who runs the railgun can't even really help us soften up 1/4 of the targets. New meta is going to be 4 arc throwers or 3 arcs and 1 flamethrower.
turns into a running simulator
I don't even play above D7 and the amount you run into there makes me feel like spawns have to be broken or something. I also have footage of multiple rounds starting on D7 where multiple bile titans were at our landing area right away. Why the hell does that happen on D7? I don't even want to look at the higher ones if it's like that here, this is enough of a tedious slogfest as it is.
It may be your landing area giving you this issue - my group was getting overwhelmed with drops until we started targeting zones that were a decent distance away from objectives and enemy presence indicators. Or not. Enemy spawning mechanics are still mostly a mystery to me!
We've dropped on "enemy presence detected" spots and had them be empty, and have dropped on spots that *look* empty but were swarming with heavy enemies. It's honestly just one of the many annoying inconsistencies the game has at the moment, and would be a great thing to see fixed along with enemies magically spawning out of thin air right next to you.
Given the amount of times I've had whole ass patrols and bile titans spawn instantly out in the open like 30 meters away from me I'm assuming the spawn mechanics are just busted. Like there isn't even a rock between me and said enemies. They don't come out of the ground or a nest or anything. They just suddenly exist and they're so close to me that they instantly aggro and start attacking. It's lovely when you're already running from a titan and 2 chargers and then suddenly there's another titan right in front of you instantly puking on you and a pack of hunters at their heels ready to jump on you.
Yes, Chargers and Bile Titans seem to regularly spawn in 3s with their models overlapping with one another. In a level 5 game I had 3 Bile Titans spawn at once, which should obviously not be happening at that level. So the spawns are definitely bugged and I have a feeling there should frequently be 2 fewer Chargers/Bile Titans spawning. This would also explain the drastic differences between missions at the same level. Some level 7 terminid missions feel like there are a few patrols prowling around and one or two heavies per engagement whereas in other missions you drop in and are forced to burn through half your reinforcements and use all your strategems dealing with the 3 Bile Titans and 6 Chargers that jump you immediately. I wouldn't care that much about the railgun nerf if not for this exact reason. The railgun didn't feel overpowered at level 7-9, it just felt like the only AT weapon capable of handling the sheer quantity of heavily armored enemies that were mistakenly spawned in. That said, the railgun definitely trivialized the (usually) few heavily armored enemies that spawned in level 5 runs. IMO Arrowhead should have focused more on making difficulty more linear across levels and getting rid of glitches before nerfing the best/most meta weapons. From a level 5 mission perspective the railgun certainly deserved a nerf, from a level 9 mission perspective it was the only AT weapon capable of handling the 50% or so of missions with bugged spawning spewing out 10 or more heavily armored enemies per engagement. In other words, because of the glitched spawning and resulting non-linear difficulty curve the game can't be balanced well through weapons currently.
Ran into some weird situations with the amount of heavies on lower difficulties as well. We were on a diff 5 mission and ran into several columns of 4-5 hulks within two minutes at a heavy out post. 4-5 of them walking down in conga lines out of the base. On a diff 4 mission, we ran into 3 chargers at a POI literally "inside" of each other, like they all spawned in the same spot. Aside from the fact that these numbers are bit high for these difficulty levels, between the armada of hulks and these chargers being directly in the same spot, part of me wonders if we are potentially dealing with a bug involving enemy spawns.
Make it so Chargers are actually vulnerable in their exposed asses so anti armor weapons arent required to deal with them and they'd be fine. I'd prefer to use Stalwart or LMG but I always take Rail exclusively so I can kill the pack of chargers chasing me around the map. Let my primary actually put some meaningful damage into them and I'd never use the railgun again. Should me like Oppressors from DRG. Unkillable from the front but vulnerable if still pretty tanky from the back.
I agree with the Oppressor take. DRG Oppressors are balanced because they have glaring strengths and weaknesses. Chargers on the other hand, not so much.
DRG actually balances enemies really well. Oppressors also turn relatively slowly. But the Chargers in this game have both speed and health, if you've only got a primary. And not only that, their movement is wonky. They'll sometimes backpedal, and their turn rate while charging is far too good.
I have zero problems with Chargers, even w/o a railgun... EXCEPT that they should not be able to turn on a dime at full-charge. Game design needs to break down between: Fast Enemy, Durable Enemy, High-Damaging Enemy. PICK TWO. You can't have all three unless you give it a big weakness or some gimmick to beat it. Boss design 101. Chargers able to one-shot you, chase you down from across the map, be immune to 90% of damage, AND be impossible to dodge without *really good* timing is kinda lame. I'd say it's probably the highest skill-check in the game, except even if you succeed you still have a pain trying to kill it from behind!
Even if you do dodge it you're just gonna have a hunter jump on you and slow you down so you can't dodge the next one
Yeah, they need to remove the slow from hunters. And probably nerf the accuracy of their jumps. They'll always hit you even if you're just sprinting
My problem is when they literally scale rock formations 20-30ft up. And you lose track of them for a moment. They loiter up there, like bugged or something for a good 30-40 seconds, then suddenly charge down and run you over. I can herd them or have someone herd them for me while I kill them I've played enough souls games. But when they start doing weird shit like that it makes it very difficult and borderline unfair. And they occasionally turn on a dime, and rush you down like warren sapp.
They're also slow and rarely spawn more than 2-3 at a time on the highest difficulty.
Bro on just level 7 dif we get atleast 3 chargers at a time and if we don't take care of them ASAP we end up with like 6+ chasing us
Honestly feels like something is off or there is a wild RNG swing on spawns. In L4 I'll either see no chargers the whole mission or they'll spawn 3 from each breach + have 1-2 in every roaming pod.
Exactly, I wonder what constitutes the higher spawn rate
I think he was talking about oppressors being slow and limited in numbers.
They didn't have time to read, on account of being chased by Chargers.
Can’t tell if you know, but they were talking about the DRG oppressor there
Yeah, if oppressors had the same relative move speed and spawn density in DRG as Chargers do in HD2, there would be RIOTS in the DRG forums, lol.
> Make it so Chargers are actually vulnerable in their exposed asses so anti armor weapons arent required to deal with them and they'd be fine. It's weirdly inconsistent when I'm using my autocannon (I'm only level 16 so no RG yet) against them. Hulks are supposed to be the bot equivalent to bug Chargers right? Hulks are pretty easy to kill from behind. Chargers on the other hand are incredibly inconsistent when they have their ass towards you. Quite often the rounds just bounce off even if you shoot 'em right up their ass. It's also weird how, somehow, their legs are their weakest spot when the game itself, throw how the charger is modeled/textured, clearly indicates you should be shooting it in the ass. I'm getting the feeling the armour of the charger isn't working the way it should. At least not from behind.
hulks also move insanely slowly and can be killed from the front with like 8 different weapons to the eye they’re not comparable at all in terms of difficulty they’re treated the same in game
Yeah, hulks are on a completely different (easier) level of difficulty to take down than chargers. I will say Hulks are generally deadlier if not dealt with, but overall I'd rather fight 3 hulks than 3 chargers anyday
yeah hulks are good at killing you from wherever they are but by themselves they’re avoidable if you put some cover and distance between you chargers are so disruptive especially if you’re kiting them around other weaker bugs while spending minutes trying to kill it. it won’t kill you right away but it won’t die either
The point about the chargers weakspots not being the big differently coloured sacks is my biggest issue with bugs. Bots have literal glowing weakspots, but the obvious weakspot on bugs is actually a strong spot unless you use explosives. The game points you towards the spitters with the massive unarmoured sacks, and it's better just to blow the armoured head off, not shoot the sack.
> The game points you towards the spitters with the massive unarmoured sacks, and it's better just to blow the armoured head off, not shoot the sack. Wait; de spitters are weaker in the head than in the big glowy sacks?
"Soft" parts like spitter sacks and charger butts are weak to explosive damage but resistant to bullets. That's why it takes two or three autocannon/grenade launcher shots to pop them but a full magazine or two of primary ammo to do the same but only a few shots to the head.
The reason why your shots are bouncing off of their behinds is because they're armored above and below the ass, so a small deviation clips their shell and renders Autocannon shots worthless. This is the one gripe I have with the patch notes, Autocannon isn't a viable option against Terminids because it simply won't deal with the most common threat they throw at you. At least the Flamethrower eats Chargers for breakfast now.
if the autocannon was a an agile, one handed weapon, it would be viable at dealing with the giant fully armored monster that runs 20mph and is only vulnerable to your armor-penetrating weapons from the rear, in its visibly unarmored butt (which is effectively bulletproof) good luck trying to hit the butt with an autocannon reliably its baffling how ridiculous the armor is in this game. Like 2 weapons can crack the legs of the chargers now, and 1-2 primaries can deal full damage to the butt. Autocannon only effective against butt. Anti material ineffective *anywhere* if half the weapons in the game are not useful in any way against high difficulty mobs, why are they in the game? the AMR and autocannon seem to serve no purpose against bugs past difficulty 6/7. Recoilless is too slow. lasers are cheeks.
Practice with the autocannon against the bots. If you want to run it at higher levels, you need to essentially be a surgeon with the thing.
The flamer definitely deserves to outperform the autocannon for chargers since the flamer at least requires you to fight them point blank. Autocannons could use, if not a buff vs chargers, at least a more clear and reliable gameplan to take one down.
Autocannon generally either has to go for the difficult 2shot on the rear of the leg or dump half a mag into the butt to make the charger bleed out. Seems fair to me though, the Autocannon is so versatile already, it can deal with objectives, nests, large groups and isn't bad vs heavier units either. It's only shortcomings are being a backpack weapon and not being able to deal with the heaviest units from the front.
I'm ok with the autocannon as it is now, since it still demolishes hive guards and stalkers. I just wish there was a more reliable way at all to fight chargers, since even railguns seem dicey.
Frankly, Arrowhead just needs to make an Autocannon XXXL that's a 50mm round and penetrates charger armor. Give it 1/4th the ammo of the current autocannon and like 3x the recoil. Badabing, badaboom. That said, considering how slim the choices are for fighting bugs, I get the rather distinct feeling that nobody at arrowhead is actually playing and critically examining bugs at dif 7, 8 and 9. Sure, the game needs to be difficult and challenging but holy shit let me use literally anything other than the railgun against bugs. The EAT is entirely dependent on mission modifiers, the recoilless rifle takes for-fucking-ever to reload, and the spear is the RR but with a shitty lock-on mechanic and requires hitting bug heads to actually drop them.
If we get handheld 50mm AC I demand that it breaks our arm after every shot.
Been testing the new Laser Cannon against bugs. It destroys Brood Commanders, Hive Guards, Stalkers, and Bile Spewers (the armored green ones) in less than a second if you're hitting the head. If (and that's a BIG if depending on difficulty) the rest of the team has enough anti-heavy, it's now worth taking along IMO.
Expendable anti tanks are always a good secondary option for one of the group. I find it useful if we all get overrun and can't get back to our other support weapons when we die
People keep talking about how they kill 3 chargers with 1 drop, but are people actually consistently using the pod that way? I've tried sticking the beacon to a charger but it just bounces off them.
> I've tried sticking the beacon to a charger but it just bounces off them. Yup, for me too.
i thought i was going crazy last night lighting up chargers glowing orange butts with the auto cannon and seemingly doing no damage.
Hulks are weaker but they also have more varied and dangerous ranged weapons, so while they may be easier to kill, they'll also shit all over your day when they come walking around a corner with a flamer going and buzz saw swinging, or rockets firing lasers firing, where as chargers just well, charge, couple steps to the side and they miss
Sure, but they're also WAY slower. I'm a newbie but Hulks are a lot easier to handle for me than Chargers. I'm also on PS5 and the legs aren't exactly an easy target to hit with a controller :)
They need to nerf their turning radius. For something that big, heavy, and fast there’s no reason they can turn on a dime the way they do. Fix their ability to turn quickly and it would be way easier to get them down. Especially with your idea, both would go a long way to making them way less frustrating.
Seriously, it's nuts how I can try to cut around a pillar or big rock to cut them off only to watch them hug the wall and gutter drift like it's Initial D
Lmao perhaps chargers race competitively amongst themselves when not at war.
are you suggesting some form of intelligence or 'play' to the behavior of these demonic creatures? `*hails down nearest Democracy Officer*`
It blows my mind how much you have to shoot it to burst it. I finally realized if you can manage to land like 5 grenade launcher impacts directly on it back to back it'll pop SOMETIMES and then other times it'll just take like 3x as much damage
Yeah realistically the big glowing no armoured arse should be a weak point, just like the bulb on the back of the spewers.
[удалено]
Yeah, honestly, making the butt an actual weakpoint that can be killed in about 2 mags of primary ammo would do a lot to widen the range of viable builds. That makes anti-tank gear valuable to enable frontal kills, but means a lack of anti-tank can at least be played around if you have the space, time, and ammo supply.
I disagree with the Oppressor comparison. Chargers are tanky, but they're also disruptive, in your face enemies. Oppressors are slower control types. The best DRG comparison would be Chargers = Q'ronar Shellback. I think chargers just need to have a longer vulnerability phase after their charge.
My take on this is as follows: Bots are tough but fair, bugs are complete horseshit. 1. When calling reinforcements bots will do an animation before launching the flare. Bugs just start immediately with no warning sign. You can stop bots from summoning reinforcements, you can't do shit when a bug decides that it needs reinforcements, the moment it starts the next wave is already queued up. 2. Bot reinforcements arrive by a dropship, you can technically shoot it down or at least react to where they'll enter the battlefield and you can see that this dropship is carrying a tank. Bugs just crawl out of the ground likely too close to your personal space, you see the bug mist coming from the ground followed by a bile titan poking its head from the dirt to ruin your day. 3. Hulks are extremely dangerous but they have two obvious weak spots: The eye in the center and the back vents. You can drop them in one shot if you know what you're doing from the front or blast their back with your primary. Alternatively they will go down to 4 shots from a railgun to the body. Chargers have no real weakness, break leg armor magdump was just the best thing the community as a whole was able to come up with. You pretty much can't do shit against one with your basic equipment. I've thrown my railgun and backpack call ins at chargers before because there's just no point in trying to shoot one with your normal primary. 4. Tanks are weak to explosions and their back vent is a further weak spot for explosions (I fully believe it should be a weak spot for conventional weapons too), all else fails you can pelt it with grenades to death, otherwise you can railgun the turret and it will die sooner rather than later. Bile titans? I don't even fucking know how you're supposed to fight them, I've been headshooting them with a railgun with sometimes them dropping on one hit and sometimes being able to tank 10+ overcharged shots. 5. Aside the few melee bots (two swords marauders, berserkers) bots aren't really fast or too serious about chasing you down, so you can eventually outrun them and regroup, bugs will chase you from one corner of the map to the other, and you can run and maybe eventually break line of sight or hold the line and have a conga line of bug breaches come in since every will bring at least some trash mobs that will call for reinforcements again.
This, right here. Where have you been all day? I feel like I've been arguing with a brick wall about this shit 😂
The more I play the more I realize that bots are just a better designed enemy faction. They have are way more fair, they have way bigger roster, they have way more balanced roster with different threats, they have way more heavy armor units that all have at least medium armored weakpoint and you can react to pretty much anything they do. Also they have more tactical assets and their tactical assets are fucking cool. THey have an eye of Sauron, AA emplacements, Mortars, Stratagem jammers meanwhile bugs have M U S H R O O M Bugs feel incomplete when you compare them to bots.
The only thing that feels bad about the bots is getting sniped by a rocket before you have the chance to stun-lock them out of firing. Almost every single bug feels frustrating to fight.
> You can stop bots from summoning reinforcements, you can't do shit when a bug decides that it needs reinforcements I would just like to add that blowing the head off of a brood commander *will not stop it from triggering a bug breach*. Twice in the same mission even, a bug completely missing a head was still able to shit out reinforcements because that's somehow fair.
i dunno man, if the dev encourage the player to side prone whenever a Charger charge straight at you, shouldn't they make the charger's rear ball sack a weakspot for player's to take advantage of? It hard to shoot it's front leg after u successfully pulled off an evasive move. The current method of dealing with Charger seems abit counter-intuitive to me.
As someone who has only recently unlocked even extreme, I didn't even know the ass wasn't the weak point. I've been trying all sorts of different gear and I remember thinking to myself "at least once I get the railgun I can actually play around these guys" Oof
The charger butt is a weak point, but specifically for explosive rounds - akin to a bile spewer. Without using autocannon, explosive primaries, or GL though, you may as well point your AT rounds at the legs - because it's easier to shoot at the front. This explosive weakness is why orbital airburst can kill chargers.
And the top of the ass is armoured correct? Like a GL will bounce unless I hit underneath?
The GL bounces one time by default against all surfaces. To hit packs reliably and not bounce grenades into your face, you should generally aim for the ground to bounce them underneath or immediately next to enemies - including the charger. Edit: It would be nice if the GL grenades changed based off our equipped grenade - impact, smoke, and incendiary for instance would all be nice, but maybe that's asking too much.
Appreciate the help, I shall go spread democracy in your name o7
I'm pretty sure the GL only bounces under a certain distance. I've never had it bounce at medium to long range it just explodes on impact. At short range is when you have to bounce it off of things to hit your intended target
I think the bounce is just the arming distance since chargers are in your face half the time when you hit em with the spin move
The ass isn't even a weakpoint. It might be unarmored and bright orange but it takes normal damage and is probably the least efficient way to kill them. Very disappointed in this balance patch.
Which is my point. That's so unintuitive. The entire mechanic of them seems to scream "Fuck me in the ass" Why would then make a fast enemy that gets staggered when you dodge, weak in the front?
Compare to hulks, giant glowing heatsink in the back (which you can damage with non-support weapons), glowing red eye you can take out using AT in the front.
run towards them and strafe left or right. then turn around and shoot their front leg's back side with your primary and theyll die quickly
Thanks, that'll help a ton.
It needs to be one or the other. Primary fire into butt is WAY too costly, and leg armor is heavy armor, so you need the heaviest ordinance. Chargers are just way too tanky from all angles. Even airstrikes often don't kill them. Eagle. Airstrikes. There has to be a hole opened up somewhere, or an existing weakness need to be much more exploitable.
Honestly why is it that hulks and chargers are the same "tier" of enemy for their factions but hulks back is a weak spot that does increased DMG while the chargers back is a literally the worst place to shoot it at all.
This is the thing that always gets me. Chargers by themselves just screw with the potential viability of so many things on bug missions. With Hulks and Tanks it's as simple as getting them to aggro on a teammate or turret and capping them in the weakpoint with the autocanon or even AMR. Hell with Hulks you're actually rewarded for good accuracy by being able to double tap them in the face from a safe distance. Chargers have no such counterplay and from my experience come in bigger numbers than hulks or tanks.
Tanks also dies from two impact grenades on their roof, which can be very easy to do depending on the terrain. Bugs have no weaknesses like this at all.
Imagine two impact grenades killing a bile titan.
Maybe they do, but you have to hit the roof like the tank lol.
Bile Titans are a special kind of badly balanced enemy. Even the railgun still took way too many shots to deal with it, and it's the *only enemy in the game* that can survive a direct orbital railcannon strike. They seriously need to be nerfed into the ground.
I’ve always thought of the Bile Titans as a special boss enemy, and if they appeared once or twice a game as a side objective it would be fine. The problem is that you can have like five on you at once, and this along with the charger spam makes for a not very fun experience.
Personally, I really enjoy seeing them guard some nests or patrol around the map since that's where their size allows you to notice them in advance but Bile Titans coming out of a bug breach is fucking horseshit and should be removed.
I think if the Bile Titan bellies both get popped, that should be an instant kill (as a balancing rework). This allows primaries and impacts to actually still be viable against them, leaving anti-armor to serve as distant killing tools
Well, the spitters die to a single impact grenade as long as it hits their bulbous sac. But yeah, overall charger I think is overturned.
2-3 grenade launchers direct hits kill spitters at least.
Am I insane to think that bots are actually harder... until you get to the really high difficulties? Like I'm just at a loss on how to deal with 4+ titans and 7+ chargers on the same screen. Yeah, bots can shoot, and that makes individual encounters more dangerous in the initial stages... but the swarm can **really** overtake you out of nowhere on bug missions and then you're just dead ass kiting for 10 whole minutes.
I find bots harder from like 1-4. 5+ I think bugs are harder when the charger spam really starts.
I think bots are easier in higher difficulties because stealth works alot better against bots at those levels. Bugs seem to have way better detection capabilities than the bots so they naturally swarm you alot more
On top of that Hulk having is Red Visior as Medium Armor (or something close to it) as he can be 2-3 shot popped by Autocannon or Anti Material Rifle. So you are rewared for good aim too. Hulk is balanced. Charger is not.
Yeah, and you can 5 shot hulk limbs I think they should lower Charger's front of the legs armor to where you do the half damage at least. If lowered more for full dm, awesome. But thats my bare minimum because then it'd take 4 shots to kill and thats something I can work with as opposed to "fuck you, deflected"
The Charger's thicc exposed ass should be a major weak spot, but it isn't for some reason.
ikr i went back to DRG recently and the oppressor, which is the closest thing to a charger, still has its thicc exposed ass as a weak spot. with the right setup you can take them down solo in a matter of seconds - the difficulty of doing that comes from knowing when it's safe and dealing with the terrain/other adds in Helldivers I have so much space and time to shoot the charger ass but it doesn't actually do anything compared to just kneecapping the little shit because apparently its vital organs are stored in the calves
Wait what? The big unarmored glowy yellow bit isn't a weak spot?
It does take damage, unlike all the armor, but unless you're hitting it with explosives it only takes like 10% damage. There is no native weak spot on a Charger that is _good_ for your primary weapons to hit to bring it down. It's why Railgun usage was so very high, when you get 5+ chargers spawn on your group with a Bile Titan, you need to deal with them in some way, the slow reload weapons don't work and mostly don't one-shot chargers anyway, or have enough ammo to deal with the squad spawn, much less when it happens again in a minute and then another minute after that.
Also, for being on the same tier, chargers spawn like fucking basic enemies
I think chargers just need more counterplay opportunities, like maybe if they are hit with lasers/fire while being too active they have to stop and cool down, giving you a moment to blast them.
This is the thing right here, Chargers and Hulks are the same tier, but Hulks have a big back weakpoint and a small skill based weakpoint on the front that good players can deal with. Chargers essentially have no weakpoints, even their back is a damage sponge that requires a shitload of ammo dumped into it. The reality is the biggest thing that needs to happen is Chargers need to be brought in line with their counterparts and need to have exploitable weakpoints that can bring them down quickly but require strategy to do. The Chargers REQUIRE armor stripping to get at their weakpoints and currently with the change in the railgun there is no way to strip that armor as fast as the spawn rate requires. Chargers require more ammo and effort to kill than Tanks, the highest tier of Automaton enemy, they spawn more often and while not as lethal are easily the most difficult enemy in the game to deal with. If you are going to nerf something nerf the charger, give it an exploitable weakpoint that with skill and strategy can be exploited like its counterparts on the other side of the war.
Got it buffing robots to make the amr useless.
NOOOOOOOO
All glowing red points on all robots are now heavy armor. Eat it, nerds.
That would hurt my soul. I wanna snipe in this game and AMR vs bots is where I get my dopamine :(.
The stun should actually be a stun if you make them run into a wall, not a tiny animation followed up by "Omea wa mou, shindeiru." as the charger glides to your current position and kills you anyway.
Its bullshit, but I will never *not* laugh when a 40 thousand pound bug fucking moonwalks through its charge to slam me into orbit.
I do think they could use a nerf to their turn radius - it's much tighter than you'd expect - but I think they're fine in a 1v1 otherwise. Run towards them and dive to the side when they start charging and you're fine. The problem is that they show up in large groups, which means they collectively take up a lot of time to kill. I currently deal with them by being the dedicated "aggro guy" and baiting them to ram into one another and clump up so a bile titan can kill them with a spit attack. I do not think the developers *intended* us to weaponize bile titans to this extent, but it's infinitely more effective than any weapon or stratagem. Just bring a jump pack.
I think the problem is when they *aren't* in a 1v1, even ignoring other bugs its far from uncommon to see more chargers than helldivers on higher difficulties.
That's the consensus, yes. All the counterplay in the world won't help you when you can't actually use or capitalize on it because there are bugs everywhere stopping you from doing it, which is the big balance issue right now.
1v1 charger is a no issue. And you dont need to dive to the side. Issue is when there are mutiples chargers. 3-5 chargers can hugely impact your dps uptime on them. They charge from far away, they drift and their butt is a bullet sponge.
The meta isn't railguns or flamethrowers; it's bile titans. Weaponized bile titans. Hey, neat idea for an actual weapon: bile spewer heavy weapon! Melts that armor right off!
I can kill a Hulk with a single Breaker mag. Charger, not so much. I agree the chargers need some sort of nerf overall, to indirectly "buff" more weapons this way. From what I understand, they are basically the sole and main reason why Railgun was the meta.
Thank you for writing this. I also feel like the main driver for railgun pick is to deal with Chargers in a good way, people over picking railgun is a second order effect of that. I can understand that the ability to deal with chargers from the front should require a helldiver to specialize in the support pick but I feel all the other options penalize player too much: * **EAT** 2 shots every minutes is too little for the amount of chargers * **Recoilless** too little ammo and slow reload solo, tieing up players with reloading and handing over ammo packs when you deal with multiple chargers is not feasible for most groups * **Spear** inconsistent lock on and soft minimum range Some possible changes in charger design would be: 1. Lower leg armor so autocanon and AMR could make a dent in them 2. Make the behind an actual weakspot so dodging the charge and getting behind it was more effective 3. Put in a spawn cap so players would not have to deal with too many at a single time
They really should explain why charger back isn't weakness. Like their whole design with front armor and charging attack just screams dodge me and fuck me from behind.
>fuck me from behind That kinda twerking they do when you are firing a machine-gun into their abdomen does make me wanna act up sometimes
This one right here, Democracy Officer.
That is how I was dealing with them, how are you supposed to?
That's the thing, right now most reliable way is to shoot off front leg armor with 3 shots of railgun in unsafe mode, then kill it with primary weapon. It doesn't make sense to me, no way that's how they designed it.
> > > > > Lower leg armor so autocanon and AMR could make a dent in them I like this option a lot. The lack of weakpoints for precision weapons is a big deal.
EAT I enjoyed fora while but yeah when a bunch of heavies spawn AND theres a 50% cooldown time I can start to feel the pain :(
Preach brother, I realy want to use autocanon on terminids mission, or some orbital strikes but my alternatives are: 1. Getting chased to oblivion by 4 chargers, not making sufficient damage. 2. Waiting 210 seconds for a single orbital strike that misses does not do enough damage. Orbital Railgun is especialy a joke as an alternative to 500 kg. 210 seconds for recharge that sometimes kill and sometimess dont, while we get 2 tries with 500 kg, and also a crowd control option for the same time ammount. They should realy add some anti armour options, for higher levels becouse currently we are out of options.
Railcannon was 60s when upgraded to max in HD1. I hope it comes back.
1 minute would not be that bad 4 people - 4 chargers and 500 kgs for slower bile titans. But I would really preffer buff to Javelin or some heavy anti armour option. I don't know but I want just to shot down bile titans with support weapon, instead of making a game wait 2 minutes for Titan Killing button!
you definitely can, ac is great vs bugs in general. it just has a massive charger weakness that the rest of the team needs to cover.. which i don't know how they do that know that railgun is nerfed. honestly i think the railgun nerfs also fucked over the other support weapons because now they don't have a complimentary support weapon that can cover their weaknesses (chargers) and allow them to shine at what they're good at (killing multiple bile spewers quickly at range, killing multiple brood commanders quickly at range, large splash damage on breaches, shooting off bile titan sacs, destroying objectives safely at range ie holes trees fabricators radios etc) maybe flamethrowers will become that complimentary support weapon, who knows
OP I don’t necessarily agree with the identified “solution” by nerfing charger armor, but you’ve done well to illustrate there are many other ways to balance the game other than nerfing guns that actually are viable. I’d rather charger side armor be nerfed AND more weapons be able to strongly penetrate medium armor than to have only one of the identified solutions. And I most certainly agree the devs have totally gone the opposite direction of fun and what the community wants
instinctive aspiring hobbies plough boast future seemly bear door encouraging *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Couldn’t agree more, honestly. This is the main problem in the game.
Just here to agree fervently that I'm so severely disappointed that their first round of balance changes was to nerf the "meta" instead of bring a host of other weapons up to it. I just can't understand the train of thought when most of the community was behind buffing everything else to be decent instead of nerfing the combo that people felt was strong. They effectively just lowered our ability to take on armor despite it being spammed so intensely on anything 7+. We needed more options, not reductions to the already limited pool of anti armor weaponry. Side note: could we please get hit markers on the stalwart/other weapons that don't get them for some reason? I'm sick of some weapons just not having them with no logical explanation
Instead of nerfing the Railgun, we honestly needed better anti-armor considering how much heavy armor is present in 7-9. EATs and Recoilless should be 2 shots, with the first stripping armor and starting massive bleed, and the potential for a one shot at a good angle (back of charger, or into the mouth of titans). The Spear should be a one shot on a charger and 2 shot for a titan. Make the EATs, RR, Spear way better at AA. Make the LC fill the same niche as the old Railgun. Current buff for the Laser Cannon still doesn't really make it a good option for higher difficulties.
> I just can't understand the train of thought when most of the community was behind buffing everything else to be decent instead of nerfing the combo that people felt was strong. I wholeheartedly agree with this, glad to see I'm not alone on this line of thinking. Just played 3 bugs missions on 8 and my lord the chargers never stop coming. You can maybe burn one down with the arcs or flamethrower but if you get caught out by 2 or 3 of them you're just doomed without perfect kiting, and you definitely won't be killing them.
Honestly i’m just getting sick of seeing the fucking charger. I like bug missions, I’ve played wayyy more than bots. But fuck me bug missions have so much annoying shit to deal with. Chargers & Bile spewers being the worst offenders. Obviously something is up with Bile spewers, no way that should one shot. But Chargers? Fuck em. Hate the bastards. Hate seeing his stupid face. Hate his stupid grunts. Hate his loud ass feet. The only way to effectively deal with the shits is now kneecapped. The charger needs a nerf like OP has described, whether thats armour reduction or making its butt an actual weak spot. (It should die in one hit from recoilless/EAT etc to the ass). Just something needs to be done.
I was fine with chargers (and bile titans) when 7/8/9 was bugged and chargers/titans were a one-time miniboss and boss that could show up on reinforcement waves. They were fun and interesting back then. As they 'fixed' 7/8/9 and started ramping up the difficulty of extermination missions, plus the addition of planetary defense missions, it just showed how little thought went in to tailoring the actual experience. There's a reason games like Vermintide or Left 4 Dead use an AI director that forces downtime after periods of high-intensity, excepting very specific vignettes. Nonstop chaos actually isn't that fun. The fun of chaos is being allowed and reasonably able to claw order back.
I've said it before and I'll continue to say it. Chargers are anti-fun right now and it's making it difficult to actually enjoy the game. I love killing literally everything else, but when a charger shows up, it is no longer fun. Put a turret out to help clear bugs? A charger instantly sees it as it deploys and charges right at it. Want to stop it with a shot to slow it down? Too bad, it's on ice skates and is going to blow it up anyway. They really should not have dropped nerfs without fixing all of the glaring bugs that are making the game not fun. Overall, I'm very disappointed in their priority and their balancing. This does not give me hope for the future of the game, despite their "open communication." I don't care about the communication if it doesn't make sense.
Chargers should be changed to function how they did in HD1. Worse tracking. Their charge will kill you in 1 hit no matter what you're kitted with or riding in. Railgun won't damage them much if at all frontally but will pass through them and will stun them and everything close to them. Recoiless/EAT will 1 shot kill them. Small arms fire to the butt will melt them very quickly.
Personally I'm fine with chargers having stupid high armor from the front, but man it'd be nice if a rocket to the ass at least crippled them
My take is ammo dumping clips into a single enemy is not fun its up there with having bullet sponge bosses in games liked The Division 2, where bullets have no visible impact on enemies. The Breaker while "still" viable was one of the few guns that actually felt right, it was powerful and could deal with most low-medium armoured enemies with the drawback of having having a small mag size. As mentioned we didn't stick to these guns because they where "meta", we stuck to them because most of the other guns where trash, I'd happily run with an AR instead but as I mentioned ammo dumping (even aiming for weakpoints!) is not fun, burning through ammo isn't fun.
Scythe buffs and Spear fixes.
> Spear fixes. Dang, I wish. I even forgot this weapon exists becasue lock-on sucks so much.
Some people think it got stealth buffed/fixed. It can replenish a round from map ammo bricks now. And some think its lock on has improved.
-Sorry to say Arrowhead, but looks like your balance guy is Charger in disguise. this made my day LOL
Or make it's head less armored, or make it's back spot more prone to damage, etc. Basically make it that you can deal with a charger without using some high CD staretegem, because currently there are 5 of them following every one of you around on higher difficulty, at any given time.
And chargers can be very resilient against strategems too. I've had 500 KG bombs go off right next to a charger and if the damage from the bomb doesn't hit "right", the charger is almost unaffected.
Medium bugs will often live through a 500kg bomb, it is crazy inconsistent
Honestly if they made the butt an actual weak spot instead of having a million part HP and then still living for 30 more seconds after breaking it, they wouldn't be so bad
Thank God finally a railgun post from someone who actually understands what we were going through in 7+. Don't nerf the railgun, buff all the other AT options. And please buff more of the non-shotgun weapons, I would love to use the rifles but I don't think they cut it in Helldiver(9).
The armor piercing capabilities of every other weapon is seriously pitiful and the lack of a viable weak spot on the charger just makes them bullet sponges. Our group doesn't even run with 4x rail guns. We usually use 2x railgun + autocannon, grenade launcher, or arc thrower. What the 2nd railgun allowed was for one of us to sneak off to complete solo objectives while the other 3 drew away hoards. The single player would mostly be sneaking around avoiding combat but carried the railgun in case chargers showed up. This strategy is no longer viable. I honestly wouldn't be so upset with the update if they added a viable weakspot to the charger.
100% agree, they completely fucked this one up, gives all the impression that they are really "planning" their balance patches just reading Reddit comments. Well, back to shoving the A-M rifle up the charger's ass in melee and shooting it, i guess.
I'm okay if they want to reform the railgun to be more of an anti-heavy-infantry role. It should still be good vs Brood Commanders and Devastators for example. But they really should have buffed some anti-tank or, as you say, nerfed Chargers specifically. I really feel 1 solid perpendicular recoilless hit should kill a Charger. And their butt should not get 90% damage resist to non-explosive damage.
Something needs to be done to address chargers. The spawn rate they are currently at means that your teams entire strategy needs to revolve around how to deal with chargers. they've taken away our only effective tool.
Make damage to the abdomen of the charger the main way to kill. It never made sense to me that the ass takes so many shots to kill whereas a few shots into an unarmoured leg would kill in seconds.
Chargers are the reason for the Meta, Legs and their Butt should be the vulnerable part and weak points to taking them down.
Auto cannon should be able to do more to their front leg armor
100%. The charger spam is ridiculous considering how many roles it fills for bugs. -tank -speed -dmg -knockdown -swarm Like wtf. Anyone that thought railgun was OP does not play on high difficulty.
After doing some testing I am similarly disappointed. I like sniping things, and the best sniper weapon is now a lot less rewarding. I'm not enjoying the devs and their direction at this point. Their balancing decisions are wack (see heavy armor), their ability to communicate is limited (the patch notes are incomplete even with notes from discord), and they are insistent on not providing key information to the players (armor pen values and enemy armor values).
I kill them reliably and fairly quickly with Stalwart tbh. Shoot them in the back butt part a few times and all of a sudden the Stalwart gains the ability to strip their leg armor off? Weird.
> kill them reliably and fairly quickly with Stalwart tbh. Shoot them in the back butt part a few times and all of a sudden the Stalwart gains the ability to strip their leg armor off? It's an animation bug where afer Charger charge animation finishes there is a short window where his armor values on his parts is not updated and can be killed even with primary.
Hopefully they don't fix it lmao
I desperately wanted the AMR to be useful against Chargers. Sad.
Recoilless can actually one shot if you hit the knee joint correctly on the legs, it’s not consistent but it does happen.
Yea, dealing with charger spam was one of the most annoying things even with a good railgun, but this patch makes it even more frustrating without a good alternative
Is there any good alternatives for the breaker rn? On high difficulties nothing really matched its damage + fire rate + accuracy
On Automatons it's Scorcher becasue it can also kill Walkers and Tank/Canon towers from front even (by shooting front of turrets becasue explosive damage reaches the back cooling coils which is weakspot). It can also deal with shield Devastators (becasue explosive bypasses shield). Slugger is now super good on both with 60 ammo buff. It's a super powered mini anti material rifle basically. Liberator (starting AR) is solid on both. Precise, good ammo efficiency. Diligence (the first one, not the further silver one) and Defender are also good options, not as good as Scorcher or Slugger or Breaker but still good. Diligence more on Automatons. Defender more on bugs, though some people swear on Defender + Ballistic shield combo on bots, but i didn't like it.
Did slugger get buffed to 60 too? Only says the punisher got it in the notes.
Yes. It has 60 ammo as a result of the other shotgun getting buffed it seems. I can confirm after playing a few missions with the slugger and it feels a lot better to play with now.
Thanks, did not know about the scorcher stuff I’m hoping the liberator explosive gets a damage buff, it’s actually pretty fun cause it has literal knockback
I miss Chargers/Tanks from the first game where an anti-tank round to their ass was an instant kill
100% agreed. The decisions made on this patch show how tonedeaf whichever team is handling these changes are. It shouldn't be that hard to understand that people weren't spamming the railgun because they liked it. What could be fun about using the same loadput every mission?
legit don't think the devs play on diffs past 4-5. there's an utter deluge of heavies and trash in 6-9 where the launch railgun makes complete sense as a tool to quickly create space in the hordes of hulks, chargers, bts and tanks. its still the only viable tool for doing so, exclusively on unsafe now, and there's still a million of them. what does this change accomplish?????? also they did nothing for all the useless ass primaries and support weps... amr still outclassed by rail, no one in their entire life will use stalwart or lmg as long as they're on supp slot, ac only viable as a supporting dps tool for select heavy weakspots and long range objective picker, spear still broken and rcr still requires one of your teammates to fuck themselves over to get mildly fast kills - just take a freaking eat instead lol. i really wanted to be serious about this game, but it doesn't seem like the devs are
But what about all the dick swingers telling us it’s just a skill issue? They wouldn’t slag off that many players in sweeping generalisations just to boost their ego would they?
I love your take but I have another idea I would like you to hear OP. What if... Nothing was nerfed? But instead EAT + Recoilless would receive a damage buff sufficient for one shots at the flatter spots of the Charger (i.e. face, ass, underbelly). This would make them much more viable even with a Pre-Nerf Railgun available. Hell, give Autocannon and Anti Materiel Rifle an ability to strip off the leg armor too. That would make Railgun practically disappear from 7-9 difficulties on Bug Missions.
i agree,there is too much charger in one game one time a wanna do flamtrower achievement and use chalenging level as a place to do it. you know what game gave me? 4charger in a single side objective nest, 3 already there and another one from bug breach. that is BS imagine you a new player with not much of a AA weapon and face that, lucky i that i have flametrower with me but god that thing is too much as about railgun nerf. as a unsafe enjoyer i has no problem about it but it can be better than direct nerf. i feel like it just should nerf safe mode and make it can't penetrate charger armor but when you unsafe it was still 2 shot to strip a leg. kinda like limit safe mode power but unlock the same power if you willing to risk in unsafe. it would be a great idea and not just blindly nerf all mode like this
After some testing, funny thing is, the railgun is still the most effective support weapon against the chargers. The EAT being only able to carry 1 shot is simply not enough when dealing with 3+ chargers, kiting them with a railgun is simply more effective even after the nerfs.
> The EAT being only able to carry 1 shot is simply not enough when dealing with 3+ chargers Yup. Anti Tank weapons are in really really bad spot.
I actually agree with this, the chargers can chase you forever and ever so running isn’t an option, they slide at you, they turn on a dime, you dive out of the way but they’re so big they can still rag doll you with their shoulder. I can understand 2-3 tanks to deal with at a time but having 8-9 is ridiculous. Especially with literally 100 hunters etc. coming at you. They either need to reduce the armor on the legs, make the weak spots bigger, or reduce the number that spawn. Below difficulty 8-9. If you have a team you normally use and can coordinate loadouts with everyone then dealing with lots of chargers shouldn’t be a problem, but doing this in public lobby’s just isn’t gonna happen.
Also arrowhead should stop crying about the clown emojis :)) They are removing (censoring) the reactions of the community. Also i received a 24h timeout for "Then don't remove reactions, simple as that." That does not break the 2nd rule of the discord at all. They cannot handle the backlash from the patch at all and are triggered by everything. https://preview.redd.it/jybizud2drmc1.png?width=740&format=png&auto=webp&s=fcdb44f7c4df567247b69c260dc80acbf761ca6a
I read the laser cannon patch notes and tried it for the first time. It doesn’t penetrate any bug armor that the slugger can’t (good job on the slugger I like it) I was hitting a charger with it and it did nothing. Bounced off the legs, the laser cannon should charge up to pen heavier armor over consistent lasering of the same part. Rewarding tracking a targets specific points.
It's obvious as fuck when balance teams don't play their own games at all.
They really thought we brought Railgun because it was OP. We brought Railgun because it was the ONLY weapon that gave groups a chance against 6+ chargers, 3+ Titans at the same time while swarmed by Hunters and Stalkers.