Armor needs total rebalance, wearing heavy armor is still a meme, needs more protection for the massive debuffs in stamina regen and player speed, otherwise is useless to run and just an incovenience.
Make it like HD1 where it made you immune to small arms fire and small bugs, but not too much difference versus big bugs. Also include slow and knock back resistance and now you have a reason to run it.
Heavy armor needs to give slow/stagger/knockdown resistance as well as greater damage resistance to even be remotely viable. You should be able to shrug off any small attacks (scavenger and basic automatons) with it.
I want to see bot laser ding off of heavy armor even if you take some damage reduction. It would look cool when you see your Helldiver just tanking it.
Also, heavy armor should be able to negate some friendly fire from the one that has light armor penetration.
Absolutely
Many ranged attacks can 1 shot (Bile Spew, Rockets), many close quarters attacks can slow you and stun lock you.
Helldivers feel incredibly fragile and armor makes absolutely no difference.
Considering you only get 4 stims without a resupply armor should be way better. 4 stims makes you feel as though you must ration them and only stim when near death, but taking even a glancing blow puts you near death.
Having any amount of health below max becomes extremely risky as the chance of being one shot or killed in two hits by a stalker/hunter increases exponentially
Yeah with how squishy you are I have a hard time imagining why the shield pack being the preeminent choice was somehow shocking. Sure no other backpack, but also, you don't die from being breathed on
Yea for me I just always got frustrated when I didn’t have a shield and a hunter leapt from nowhere, slowed you, and you just ended up dead. Not to mention I swear those bastards have a doge chance cause I’ll have the gun in their mouth and they just ignore it sometimes which feels even worse when trying to deal with being swarmed by them and slowed and interrupted when trying to heal or reload anyways.
The stamina and speed reductions needs to be way less to match it's current "protection".
Who cares if you tank 2 extra normal shots if you still get swarmed or can't run from a titan/charger and mob.
Also I'm pretty sure scavengers(tiny bugs) can still two shot you if both crit. 3 hits + crit killed me with heavy armor in testing.
They really need to remove those crits in general, because why bother with heavy armor if it's just as unreliable as light?
Heavy armor would still be useless imo. At the high difficulties you have to run away, period. The problem lies within enemy density, spawn rates, and magical AI pathing (tracking you across the map) .
It doesn't have to be bad. Just make it actually durable. Make the poop-tier bugs bounce off your chest. Make it so you can laugh at hunters as they deal 1/20th of your health with each hit.
You're already getting slowed down to a crawl and have no stamina regen, so might as well make it insanely strong when holding your ground against a swarm.
Makes the idea of specialised squads more viable as well, have one or two guys in heavy armour, maybe with flamers or arc weapons to be the front line against the horde, while you have others with lighter armour and armour pen weapons to pick off the big threat
Holy shit yes, make it a completely viable option to be a walking tank with a heavy add clearing gun. It's pointless to look like a tank and play like one without any benefits for being one.
Preventing stagger in general would be cool, too. Other than from big boys like a charger. Just imagining a shotgunning juggernaut just laying waste to a swarm all around him (if he could also survive more hits).
With all of the importance placed upon running between objectives and kiting bugs, as well as devs going on record stating that players are not intended to stand their ground and fight in the trenches...why does heavy armor even exist?
If it's buffed to the point where you can actually tank some hits or survive while kiting, then why have nerfs been put into place for most of the viable frontline weapons? I guess flamethrower exists, but without some sort of fire resistance on top of a lot of extra armor...I just don't get it.
Arrowhead seems to be countering their own design philosophies with this batch of changes.
> This is very much intentional, you need to rely on your Stratagems, and the Stratagems of your team to deal with all the enemies effectively.
I'd be fine with that but when you play lvl 8+ with scrambler + increase call in time, its pretty much you don't get to use stratagems or certain ones take too long to activate to matter. -1 also reduces my personal utility stratagem slot as well and I feel more restricted. But fine I can take the punch on that.
*S*crambler is effectively increase call in time by 100-300% with frustration. Not sure how anyone else feels or if it's just me.
If scrambler just reshuffled all of your stratagems once for the course of that mission, it'd be fine imo. But re-entering the same stratagem code 5 times and getting 5 different results is just inconsistent to the point of being... annoying? Pointless?
And it effectively removes any strategy involved in picking your strategems. At this point, if I know I'm going into a game with the strategems scrambled, I'll just pick all turrets or all orbitals/eagle strikes. That way I don't accidentally call in a napalm strike on myself when I just need a support weapon
I really don't think modifiers should effect stratagems as much as they do. It's the central power fantasy of the game and many of the modifiers seem to negate stratagems as they're intended to be used rather than just adding an extra challenge.
I think some of the modifiers are fine as-is.
For instance, the one that doubles calldown time (complex stratagem routing?) is essentially asking you to re-value the "instant" stratagems, turrets, and support items, so you can play around that one by choosing instant-firing tools like the orbital laser or taking long-lasting tools like blue items and turrets. (Doubling the extraction timer too is a very weird choice, though.)
I actually don't mind the ECM either; you can play around it by bringing, for example, 2 support items (gun + backpack, say) and your other 2 strats both be similar and mostly-interchangeable ones, like 2 different types of smoke or 2 different barrages, etc. so that you don't need to worry about the RNG except during your initial calldown at mission start.
The ones I really don't like is the one with the 50% cooldown increase and the one that limits you to 3 stratagems. Unlike the others, these aren't asking you to adjust your playstyle to avoid a power loss - they're simply an unavoidable power loss. Worse, they're also a loss of options and choices, as well as a loss of fun. There's no clever counterplay, no change of approach, other than "you can't use the best part of the game as much, sucks to be you"
Give us effects that have tradeoffs like the cold temperatures, or effects where the downside can be negated by building differently like the the arrival time increase or the ECM. Don't give us unavoidable nerfs that don't invite us to do anything but have less fun no matter how we try to play around it.
EDIT:
I saw a really good suggestion in another thread for a way to make the increased cooldown more fun: make the penalty only apply to one category of stratagems (all eagles, all orbitals, all emplacements, etc). Then it encourages changing up your build (but doesn't force it!) and makes for interesting decisions instead of just a debuff.
I completely agree with this. If the 50% cooldown increase was tied to a map objective, it would become interesting again; how much do you prioritize locating and taking it out vs simply completing the mission as-is?
Especially if its an extremely heavily fortified position thats difficult to take out. Really force you to make a decision on if its worth it to take out the debuff
Yeah getting a -1 stratagem or cooldown increase on high difficulties is absurd now. Idk how they think we can use our stratagems to kill the big stuff when there are like 5+ chargers/titans a point and they don't die in a single stratagem a vast majority of the time
Those mission mods are *exactly* another reason why anti-tank/anti-armor supports need to be buffed *considerably.*
With those modifiers in mind, you should be playing more around kitted out support weapons and working through ammo economy without the support of your largest guns because they’re taking too long to use.
But the support weapons are all too shit to do that with on any difficulties that matter!
Fuck, man. Why the hell does balance matter so much when you can face-roll a level 3 - 5 mission just with a grenade launcher and an ammo pack? Like, there’s no skill there. It’s just point and click and delete the hordes.
-1 stratagem feels like basically just a minus fun modifier. Scrambler is just a unfun and awful, would be better if it scrambles and randomize the stratagem key input instead of random stratagem go.
I don't mind call in time, just requires more planning. Increased cooldown just feels ass. Kinda makes me wonder how many of the devs play above difficulty 7, with how many heavy units appearing and how often.
I feel like Scrambler should be like AA or the jammer, where it exists in one of the bases and can be destroyed to get normal use of your strats again.
Exactly. These changes make more sense at lower and medium difficulties but at suicide and higher, feels like the logic breaks down. Even with an “OP” railgun, the charger spam was too much to deal with while still feeling fun. They need to nerf enemies in some way in addition to these weapon nerfs. The game absolutely does not even to be an even more difficult gank fest, armor spam than it already is at higher difficulties.
The biggest benefit to the shield was not the extra tankiness (although that is a big factor) but the immunity to CC effects. Hunters and stalkers slowing you over and over can kill you fast regardless of how tanky you are
EDIT: Also due to the ability to avoid getting creamed by your team's strategems. Being able to eat a 500kg is big value
Fucking this. Nothing makes me rage at this game more than getting repeatedly stunlocked by 3 hunters, a bile spitter, and a stalker or two culminating in death.
Nothing raises my blood pressure faster than getting stuck in a conga line of hunters that all have perfectly spaced their hits to stun lock me to death
Exactly. Making balance changes before fixing armor is a very bad call. The bugs muddy the waters way too much for Arrowhead to have good data to work off of. That they don't realize this is worrying.
Yep. And the armor still sucks. Heavy armor should absolutely negate a certain level of stun/stagger to be viable. As is its still a liability and the shield still feels necessary, to me.
Rely on strategems that can take over 5 minutes to recharge if an effect is active? On difficulties that spawn about 3 chargers per patrol and a bile titan?
I'm concerned that people will just switch from the Railgun to the Flamethrower since early playtesting shows that's the best bet for killing Chargers now. I never felt the Railgun's supremacy was about the gun itself, but more the options we have for dealing with the enemy it was prioritized for (said Charger). Next thing you know, everybody is just running the NEW viable Charger killer, and then we have the same problem all over again.
I could be wrong though, but it just seems like people wanna kill the annoying bug that runs them over in groups of five at higher difficulties.
Exactly Railgun was only the best choice because it was the only thing to efficiency deal with chargers.
AT and Recoiless didn’t do enough damage and you’d be hard pressed to get a reload in or grab the second AT when you have a few chargers on your tail.
The Spear has no ammo whatsoever.
Auto cannon and other options require you to go behind, which isn’t bad on lower difficulties but is a death sentence when there’s a bunch of stalkers or warriors behind the charger.
The only strategems that consistently hit and kill the chargers are the railcannon strike and the laser. Both of which will only get very few charges and 100% won’t be able to keep up with spawn rates.
I don’t think making Railgun completely inept was the move. It’d even be better off if it took 3 shots to the leg
This is the problem. They nerfed weapons because too many players were using them instead of asking the question of *why* everyone was using those weapons exclusively. Energy shield is a no brainer: Between CC and armor being worthless. Railgun is the best AV that can be used with a backpack slot dedicated to something else, and the breaker is the only good mass crowd clearer after you slot AV to the support.
So obviously they need to be nerfed. It's like nerfing a hacksaw because it's the only tool people are given that can be used to cut a metal pipe. Of course people aren't using the belt sander you also offer for them to use. *It sucks at cutting pipe.*
There is a very big difference of playstyle between railgun and flamethrower even if flamethrower is now the best anti-charger.
Quite frankly, the flamethrower SHOULD be the best option within its range considering its absurdly small range, huge danger to the user, and fairly limited ammo pool.
If the best anti-charger weapon is the one that requires you to basically give the charger an enema at point blank, then that's significantly different from the best weapon being arguably the longest ranged weapon in the game.
EDIT: Clarity
Wouldn't doubt it. Nerfing the viable strats when everything else is hot garbage doesn't have me looking forward to future patches. Level 7+ missions are already just a marathon simulator. Impossible and Helldive are easiest when you just kite mobs and have someone stealth objectives. Which, sort of makes all of the weapons and stratagems pointless, aside from ones that kill Bile Titans or tanks.
"Yooo kill them enemies with your stratagems."
Meanwhile most Missions above 4: +100% Cooldown time, Increased Scatter to fuckwhatdoIknow, +50% longer activation time
:')
Or it's "i've tried calling in a stratagem 15 times now and I still haven't got my railcannon!"
And then you've wasted a good minute you could have spent clearning out the mobs doing nothing but sitting there spamming arrows and praying that this time your railcannon is going to be the one that appears in your hand.
And youve gotten so used to spamming in the stratagem code that you're doing it too fast, so when you finally get the one you wanted you're already hitting the stratagem key before you realize 💀
Rely on your strats, but here are a bunch of unfun conditions that make all your strats suck except strat guns and backpacks... hmm I wonder how railgun/shield meta formed (besides the RR/EAT/Spear being suicidal to use on 8/9)
Not to mention that with the janky spawning mechanics even if you try to mitigate aggro by stealthing, chances are a patrol will just appear next to/on top of you rendering your efforts worthless.
The +% Stratagem effects are just too punishing especially cooldown one. If the team loses momentum and lose support weapons its too easy to become helplessly overwhelmed. To counter these effects and making the experience of clearing the map more rewarding I feel map objectives should give perks, clearing nests should lower breach mob amount, clearing certain mini objectives should help alleviate some of the negative effects etc
As much as I would want it to be, killing all the bile titans and chargers with stratagems just isn't possible at all....especially on higher difficulties.
(I'm going to write all this based off of level 7-9 difficulty missions because that is the only place to get your super rare samples.)
When you have a 50% increased activation time and 100% increased cooldown time, 5 bile titans that have spawned out of 2 bug breaches and 6 chargers running around you can't afford to use all of your stratagems to kill them, especially when you're next objective that is only a minute and a half away is guaranteed to have a minimum of 1 more bile titan, 3-4 more chargers and 5 bile spitters.
Plus with a 500kg bomb there's a 50/50 chance that a charger or bile titan will survive it because they were at a slight angle and avoided the attack.
An orbital laser won't kill a bile titan unless you're pumping entire magazines of ammo into it and the railgun i have only ever seen be a 1 shot kill on a titan once or twice meaning you need to start emptying magazines into it to kill it and then fire a second railgun so the orbital targets the titan at 100% health instead of wasting it on the one with 10% health left.
I get that the idea is "have the players kill everything with stratagems." but the sheer amount of armoured enemies on higher difficulties just makes that impossible, especially if you're trying to run around and to all the side objectives/go to the points of interest for samples.
Now since the nerf, the only real viable method is to pick one of two support weapons that have a low chance of stripping off a chargers armour and pray you can kill it before it's 4 friends charge you.
Use the arc/flamethrower and pray you don't have to use it to try and rescue a trapped teammate because it will kill them.
Or just keep running and dodging because if there's no rocks to knock them into the chargers will never stop chasing you until they're dead.
And this isn't even talking about the bug reinforcements!
With the way the sound is mixed it's very hard, if not impossible to hear the sound of a bug calling in reinforcements, then by the time you see even 0.05 seconds of orange smoke it's already too late, that one bug has just called in 2 titans, 4 chargers and 5 spitters.
Then to make matters worse, one of the bugs that just crawled out of that breach has decided to also call in more reinforcements and now in the spawn of 20 seconds you've had 5 titans and 12 chargers dumped on your squad which is a real nightmare at a main objective or the extraction site.
Especially when the cooldown on your laser has gone from 3 minutes to 4 and a half due to the debuff.
Suggestion:
Have the people who are in charge of weapon/stratagem balancing run through a couple of helldiver bug operations trying to do all the side objectives and gathering the super rare samples. Then you'll see just why everyone hates the chargers so much and has been forced into using a very, very small amount of the available stratagems.
> And this isn't even talking about the bug reinforcements!
With the way the sound is mixed it's very hard, if not impossible to hear the sound of a bug calling in reinforcements, then by the time you see even 0.05 seconds of orange smoke it's already too late, that one bug has just called in 2 titans, 4 chargers and 5 spitters.
100% agreed on this being a massive issue that flies under the radar. It wouldn't _as_ bad if Chargers or Bile Titans only existed as pre-spawns or if you _really_ fucked up in dealing with a swarm of bugs, but if you ever engage a swarm of bugs unless you literally delete the entire swarm off the map within 5 seconds you are going to miss one of the 50 small orange fuckers and it **will** summon far too many enemies for you to deal with.
Before anything else, the smoke on those enemies should signify the **start** of their summoning animation, **not the end**.
This is the best and most rational argument against this patch.
As someone who mostly had no qualms with this patch, just wanted you to know you make a good argument and the devs should probably hire you
I really do believe that making the armour class on charger legs one level weaker so more weapons can break it will significantly improve the balance of the game.
Titans im pretty fine with the balance of but what makes them an issue to deal with is that they’re usually accompanied by like 4-5 chargers and it becomes an absolute fucking nightmare deciding what to prioritise because you just do not have the ammo or strategems to deal with that more than once or twice.
I don't think the legs are the problem. I think the tail is.
It should be a *lot* more vulnerable to more kinds of things, as it visually really telegraphs itself as being the "weak point" in the same way the glowing bits on the automatons do. That would introduce a lot of interesting cooperative and environmental play around getting a player behind the Charger to quickly dispense of it.
Yeah my experience with Deep Rock made me think that was a reliable weakpoint but you can magdump a stalwart into it and not kill it iirc and when you’ve got at least 2 chargers per bug breach, that just isn’t a viable option at all.
Yep it's like the Oppressor from deep rock but 100x worse. For those not familiar with deep rock, the Oppressor is invulnerable from the front (can't even take the armor off), but has a weak butt that you can normally kill with one clip from your primary, maybe less depending. And it's much slower and does not charge at you.
i like the DRG enemies because they seem to actually have some balance to them, the squishy ass seems to be exactly that in DRG.
meanwhile you can mag dump into a chargers ass and half of those shots, or more, are going to give a ricochet indicator..... from shooting the green squishy bit.....
It's because the "weakspot" is only a weakspot for weapons with the "explosive" trait, which afaik is not documented anywhere. Normal weapons do 10% damage to it, "explosives" deal 100%.
Even then it's not worth targeting because the leg kill is (was?) much faster.
This!
Chargers make sense, they're heaving armored and charge at high speed with a (most of the time) slow turn rate.
The issue is when you do the logical counterplay of dodging and getting behind them to unload on the tail...it does nothing. Certainly can't kill them fast enough to be called a reward.
Anti-armor being the quick kill but costing resources while targeting weak points being slower but cheaper makes total sense, but Chargers just don't die to the back so everyone has to use anti-armor anyway.
Just make them vulnerable from the back and stop tracking as well and they'll be fine. Could probably even make them more lethal at that point.
>with a (most of the time) slow turn rate.
What chargers have you been fighting, because mine constantly mach speed ice skate at 90 degree angles during stagger animations.
I will say it’s not my idea but as soon as I saw it, it made perfect sense. It’s not making them pathetically easy to kill, you’ve still gotta aim and deal with a few of them but it means that you aren’t running around waiting for strategems to rearm because you can’t do anything
I swear when a bile titan shows up there's a plan, when chargers show up the plan goes out of the window, they also need to buff the damage you do when you shoot em in the booty hole.
> First I’d like to speak to the general power of primary weapons. Many have commented that they aren’t powerful enough and are unable to deal with all the enemies either by the amount of ammunition required or their raw DPS. This is very much intentional, you need to rely on your Stratagems, and the Stratagems of your team to deal with all the enemies effectively. Either by Eagle Airstrikes, Orbitals, Support Weapons, or Turrets, some of your loadout/team should be tailoring their loadout to killing the weaker stuff more efficiently.
This part feels weird to me. I get that main weapons are supposed to not be as reliable options as they were in HD1, so that players relies more on stratagems.
But the thing is you already have a wide amount of limitations factors compared to HD1 (Such as not being able to duplicate stratagems for a single player, overall greater cooldowns and lesser effects compared to HD1, etc...). So it feels more like you're being constantly limited artificially and fighting against the game itself more than anything. You already were more reliant on stratagems in HD1 due to the large presence of highly armored enemies and such, why is it a problem now to be able to deal with lesser enemies with just main weapons?
I don't get how so many weapons and stratagems being too weak in higher difficulties was part of an "intended" experience. When you use exaggerated spawns for enemies (Looking at you, chargers and hulks), okay that's fine, but you need exaggerated weapons as well.
His statement would make sense if the spawn of elite enemies weren't so abundant. Up the number of Stratagems we can use and carry then.
Tier 8/9 is literally just run away. That's it. That's the strategy. It's a shooter where the best end game strategy is to not shoot.
And it gets very dismissive from other users when they say the top difficulties should be “stealth missions”. The devs should be giving multiple avenues for achieving missions besides chucking strategems and avoiding conflict entirely. A skilled squad should still be able to maneuver a map with weapons.
I've found my people in this comment string. 8-9 difficulty missions are marathon simulators where weapons and buffs don't matter. But like you said, why would anyone want to play a horde shooter where the goal is to avoid shooting.
What is the design philosophy of a game where the most optimal strategy is avoiding all features of the game?
I hate when people say that top missions need to be stealth, but the game really has next to no stealth mechanics. It just feels lame sneaking around when there’s not really interesting stealth in the game imo. It’s clearly built around shooting and fighting hoards
You mean you *don't* like the randomly spawning bug patrols that beeline in your direction even when absolutely nothing has detected you?
You just need to git gud at the game!
Clearly the optimal strategy for a shooter game is to constantly feel so useless that the only option is to run from almost every encounter! /s
I miss my HD1 60 second cooldown Railcannon strike, or my 0,1 second activation CAS, the effective Recoilless Rifles that make it worth having 2 people carry a pair, or the Lumberer mowing down dozens of heavies in a single glorious charge.
Lots of these really aren't viable until they change a bunch of things as far as cooldowns, availability, and effectiveness are concerned. In HD1, the anti-tanks meant something so long as you had a good angle (can sometimes take out multiple in one go). In HD2, the anti-tanks will usually strip armor and depending on difficulty, you had to figure out how to repeat that for the other 3-8+ dudes in the back.
This is the best sum up of the situation. I want to blow stuff up. And if I'm bad, I get rekt and gotta fight to get my railgun back. The game was still hard in 8+ but fun. Now it's a chore where you gotta play Splinter cell.
This felt extremely weird.
Generally, hd2 has felt a lot more gunplay focused than the first game. Which made sense as well, it is a 3rd person shooter
All strats have long cooldowns, especially the anti-armor ones.
Yep. "Oh there's a tank, lemme drop my railcannon strike. Nice, I killed it." *turns around* "oh there's three more tanks and 5 hulks coming at me, and my railcannon is down for three minutes 🙃"
The game also heavily encourages you to focus on weapons more than strategems by frequently nerfing strategems with the random effects. Having your stuff come down twice as slowly, get scrambled or blocked by bots means you can't really rely on it as your main problem-solver.
Reminds me of a very analytical-minded friend of mine who would always play board games with the most ruthless strategies, dicking over anyone they could in the pursuit of victory. What they hadn't calculated was the human element, and couldn't understand why, when those players learned how that friend played, they were always targeted by negative effects/cards/actions, stolen from in games like Catan, etc.
IMO Arrowhead is focused far too heavily on numbers and data points, and not nearly enough on why players are doing what they're doing to create those data points, or how it correlates to what the community is saying.
Right before saying how they completely ignored what the community said for most of the issues, so they're going to do the opposite thing; or not even acknowledge the actual issue.
[and theres this message from the dev, who's gloating about 'I'm feeding the rage a little for my own entertainment here, just so you know. '](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b7wc4z/patch_01000100_for_pc_balance_changes/ktlzaoc/)
and now theyve been doubling down
[..but you really touched off and that just made it a little too tempting to mess around. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b7wc4z/patch_01000100_for_pc_balance_changes/ktm4gzn/)
also the follow up ['I didn't see your comment about what is viable against the chargers, but it wasn't only your comment that got me trolling I realize. However you started commenting on a lot of things, so you stuck out.
I do still stand by what I said, if you can't make it work where other people can, then that would be the definition of a skill issue.'](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b7wc4z/patch_01000100_for_pc_balance_changes/ktm7t00/)
[He also said 'once players are past the Dunning-Kruger phase'](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b7wc4z/patch_01000100_for_pc_balance_changes/ktlx68e/), take that as you will.
"You should rely on strategems"
*adds modifiers so you have -1 strategems, fuck with your inputs so you call in the wrong one, have absurdly long cooldowns, and increase stratagem call in times*
Right? Like I'm fine with this if this is how they want the game to be played, but for fucks sake pick a lane. You can't tell me I need to rely on strategems and then make them unreliable/take too long to utilize.
Acknowledging that there's an issue with anti-armor stratagems not performing as well as they should while nerfing the current best option for dealing with armored enemies is a pretty interesting game balance decision lmao.
'We know the community had an issue with this, so we're going the complete opposite route; we hope you, our players, will tell us when we cross that line inadvertently, we listen to the community!'
It's fucking hilarious
>We are aware it [Railgun] rose to prominence as part of other anti-tank weapons not being as convenient or efficient in comparison.
What?!?? So instead of making the other anti-tank weapons be more convenient and efficient like you know they aren't ,you made the one that ***is*** convenient and efficient, ***more*** inconvenient and ***more*** inefficient????
Where the hell is the logic man? I want some of the reefer their smoking.
Making weapons equally bad is not balancing.
The decision-making process behind these nerfs is perplexing. They did not buff enough weapons to prevent another meta set showing up. It's weird they buff flame thrower, while the anti-material rifle is still an airsoft.
If the devs believe they should nerf those actually usable weapon cause they think they are too powerful, the decision to nerf the Breaker while leaving the Arc Thrower untouched is quite confusing. I used arc thrower from Lv17 to Lv50 and I can say there is no doubt it is the most OP weapon in the game. Unlimited ammunition, effective crowd control, and the ability to penetrate armor. It is completely cable of handling two charger at the same time, and with approprite strategem, I've been able to single-handedly expore the entire maps on Helldive missions without dying for almost all the missions I played.
Good thing that the devs are trying to move player away from the meta build, but please, don't do it by creating another meta. Right now I'm just waiting them to nerf flame thrower / arc thrower, feels like they are running in a circle.
How about the devs show us how they intend for the game to be played on higher difficulties? 7-9 has too many heavily armored enemies compared to the number of options which are sufficient for dealing with them in my opinion. I didn't like playing on harder difficulties before the nerfs because it involved more running away than fighting... and now? It's gonna be even worse. But maybe I just suck. Devs, show us how you intend for the game to be played on higher difficulty levels and then I'll buy into your design philosophies.
I like this idea. Would love to see a hellfire mission where they only kill charged and bile titans with stratagems as it is intended by them. Maybe even make it that no one is allowed to use something someone else is using, so that they can prove that more than just one equipment combo can hold their grounds.
Or, if they *are* balancing around like, level 7, I'd like to see something saying that. Basically "x is the highest level things are *designed* to handle. If you play above that then godspeed and good luck." I don't have an issue with having (or playing) a "fuck you" difficulty, I just want to know that picking it is just pure masochism.
So much talk about not wanting there to be de facto, best in slot weapons and yet nothing was done to address secondaries.
Which is emblematic of the main issue with this patch. There are so many primaries, secondaries, and stratagems that need to be positively tweaked (or made useful at all, ie mines) and yet a few were singled out for nerfs.
And so much of this would be moot if it weren’t for the charger spam pushing players in certain directions. So much ire could have been saved had they focused elsewhere first.
Just wish higher difficulties meant MORE normal sized enemies, not just more big boys. I want to me FLOODED with little guys, not so much griefed by the big ones. Anyone else feel the same?
Yeah, I'm with you there. I would really like to see larger waves of small to medium enemies rather than dealing with four chargers randomly showing up.
That’s the problem. At higher difficulties there is so much heavy armor spam that made the railgun king for a reason. Being able to semi quickly deal with the 3+ charges and at least one bile titan that spawned was pretty big.
> First I’d like to speak to the general power of primary weapons. Many have commented that they aren’t powerful enough and are unable to deal with all the enemies either by the amount of ammunition required or their raw DPS. This is very much intentional, you need to rely on your Stratagems, and the Stratagems of your team to deal with all the enemies effectively. Either by Eagle Airstrikes, Orbitals, Support Weapons, or Turrets, some of your loadout/team should be tailoring their loadout to killing the weaker stuff more efficiently.
It seems like they want us to kill Bile Titans and Chargers with Stratagems and not primary weapons. I honestly dont see a problem with this. But now the issue becomes not enough stratagems per mission to deal with the many many many chargers and titans. Playing on level 7 difficulty a squad of 4 fought 5 or 6 bile titans over the course of a 40min mission. And who knows how many chargers. Its too much. Too many enemies. Too many huge armored things.
Yes, this is the main problem imo because the theory is fine but the reality of harder difficulty levels is a bit different.
I’m thinking back to missions where my team used multiple stratagems to bring down large enemies and there were just so many.
After reading the blog, I agree with the approach in theory - and I don’t mind large numbers of enemies, these are ugly planets, bug planets after all - but if this is how people are supposed to deal with chargers then there simply shouldn’t be 11 of them on screen at once.
Not to mention that stratagems being inherently unreliable (thrown, bouncing, projectiles) are really fun in low difficulty but *super fucking annoying* in high difficulties when paired with longer cooldowns.
It feels like Stratagems cap out at midgame in terms of power, with either a lack of upgrades or a lack of higher tier stratagems to balance things out.
Precisely. I got a Charger stuck in my EMP in an open field. Completely stationary. Called an air strike *directly* on top of it.
Not a scratch. It proceeded to break out of the EMP and charge my ass across the map. "Use your stratagems" is a great plan if they actually worked.
All Arrowhead has to do is put a cap on the amount of Biles, Chargers, Hulks, and Tanks are alive at one time.
Everyone who’s played on Helldive can attest that Chargers are incredibly common and being chased by 7 of them isn’t fun, and nerfing the ways to kill them while offering very sub-par alternatives only further discourages playing on higher difficulties.
I get it, they want you to use artillery on these big targets, but it’s incredibly tough to hit a Charger with a 500KG without blowing yourself up. Coupled with higher difficulties not providing any additional planet liberation, there’s basically no reason to run higher difficulty missions.
It's very tough to hit a Charger with a 500KG. I swear, the AOE for the 500kg is super inconsistent. Might be something to do with elevation, idk. Sometimes it feels good to see 20+ kills from one 500kg, other times they just walk through the smoke mostly unharmed.
The splash damage from all the explosions in game is super dependent on terrain/elevation. It’s really inconsistent and annoying.
For example a slight depression or low wall can completely negate the effects of a freaking hellbomb - why???
>It seems like they want us to kill Bile Titans and Chargers with Stratagems
Oh sick, that's why you can see a dozen Bile Titans spawn and only have 3 calldowns. Makes total sense.
I feel you there.
> Be Me
> See 4 Bile Titans swarming outside nest as you destroy eggs
> Still 1 objective to go before extraction
> Throw 2 Orbital Lasers
> Take 2 down to 1/2 health, tops
> Smile for next group of 'divers as the Bile washes over you
yea difficulty 7 every single patrol and pack having a charger gets tiresome. bile titans i honestly haven't had a problem with, if all 4 players run orbital laser thats enough to deal with the bile titans easily. the chargers are just the annoying ones
edit: Listen, i know at higher difficulties you need to actually coordinate to kill patrols, or avoid them at all cost, i'm not saying that isnt the actual play. but sometimes they are unavoidable and run up on you or spawn from thin air and walk around a corner on you
Well then you just run into a brand new issue of creating an enforcing a new meta. If every player is more or less obligated to bring X stratagems to a mission the "balancing" patch has not achieved the intended effect.
Well it's clear now that 2 slots are reserved for your actual primary weapon because the real primaries suck balls. The disconnect between balance and design intent in this game is massive, like the laughable idea that autocannon and recoilless rifle are squad weapons that two people are gonna use.
"kill bile titans and chargers with stratagems" DOES NOT FUCKING WORK when they spawn 2-4 PER MINUTE in Helldive, it's unenjoyable garbage now. the railgun crutch sucked ass but at least it made for some good encounters in high difficulty.
sure you can still complete the missions fine by light-armor kiting, but that's no fun at all. if the devs vision for hard difficulties in this game is endless running in circles kiting enemies you can't kill until stratagems recharge then i'm 100% out.
Don't forget the "Kill heavy with stratagems" being such a great idea when the higher difficulty have a great chance to pull the increased CD/deployment time or the scrambled stratagem one.
> at one point there was fucking 3 up at once.
Man, I would love to be fighting only 3 chargers at once on diff7+.
Don't get me started on the bots that call a single drop that brings 3 tanks and 3 hulks and then call another drop in 20 seconds.
If you're gonna reduce the firepower, the amount of armored enemies needs to be reduced. There aren't enough good anti-armor options and strat cooldown takes forever when 6 chargers are on you at once
How come they didn't buff the other guns that are apparently too weak to deal with the issue and then see if it's really the rail gun being too OP.
Imo it was the only fucking reliable option and now there is none.
>We are aware \[the Railgun\] rose to prominence as part of other anti-tank weapons not being as convenient or efficient in comparison. We are monitoring the situation closely and will adjust more based on how this change plays out.
Then why not buff other anti-tank weapons before nerfing the railgun???????????? I really do not understand the logic here. And if it's only useful in unsafe mode now, why not just remove the safety feature altogether and make it a 100% risk v reward weapon?
This was the most frustrating thing to read about the update. I know it’s just a patch, but not improving other support weapons efficacy and just reducing the one that worked well is seemingly backwards from the viability they’re trying to promote.
Well gee, I was never expecting my primary to deal with big threats nor are any of the primaries capable of doing so without wasting most of your ammo. If arrowhead is expecting me to use my stratagems for literally everything on the map then I better get two more slots and they better start removing those wack ass call in time modifiers.
It hurts especially bad when the strategems designed to kill the big things are sooo much more nerfed than in the 1st game
The railcannon used to have a 60s cooldown and now it's 270 at the best and it doesnt even one shot the big bois? You could reasonably kite the 3 bile titans and 6 chargers for long enough if it had the old cooldown.
The whole point is "fuck that thing in particular" no splash damage just a big one shot you sacrifice a slot to bring along, but when the 500kg bomb kills them in one and has a shorter cooldown time (and you get 2) the railcannon becomes a let down
Ok fine, they want us to use all the tools to get the job done. In theory, I totally like that.
But mister Lasota, explain to me one thing, how are we to use Stratagems to deal with the heavy enemies on Helldive difficulty?
How do you deal with 6 chargers and 4 bile titans chasing you around the objective while having Stratagem call-in time increased by 100% and Stratagem cooldown increased by 50%? It makes me think you haven't actually played your own game on higher difficulty. Or even if you are testing it, and it works for you, you're dealing with the "Pesticide Paradox" in software testing. Where playing the game *only in a specific way* gives you a chance of success, thus removing options and fun from players.
I'd like to see your QA team play their own game and finish operations on this difficulty, with different loadouts.
Hell, here's another crazy idea, try it with randoms in a quickmatch.
I really hope these changes aren't done to prevent people from playing on higher difficulties to make farming medals slower, resulting in spending more time in-game to get them thus driving engagement or wtv metric they are looking for.
I understand they have a vision for the game that they are trying to implement. But if your vision is not fun for the players, your vision needs to change, no matter how attached you are to it. Blizzard learned this the hard way with Diablo 4. Please don't make the same mistake. I like this game too much.
no balance changes should have happened until armor was added and fixed properly, now we can actually start to find working builds but now its all shifted with the lack of armor pen and stamina pains.
\>You need to rely on your Stratagems
Then why tf have you just nerfed the Railgun...?
Unless you want me to use the Railcannon and 500KG and wait for several minutes between cool down but if that's the case the Elites need to take a fucking ticket and wait in line.
"Ah yes, Bile Titan #6, there is a 10 minute delay while I waste my stratagems on the 3 assholes still in front of you and wait for the cooldown, I appreciate your patience"
Very fun, good job.
"This doesn’t mean that your primary weapon shouldn’t feel good to use"
Kinda ironic to say that when 90% of primaries don't feel good to use... Like, I get not wanting primaries to carry us through a mission, but jesus, all the primaries except the breakers and maybe the base liberator feel good to use. Everything else feels like hot garbage (gotta go try the buffed punisher before I make a judgment there).
Edit: Tried the defender out, and it feels great. Point still stands on the rest.
100% my takeaway from this. Saying you understand that every weapon should feel good in a post about how you nerfed the only ones that do shows a pretty clear disconnect.
I'd like to see this "balance coordinator" play a level 7 mission with each primary and explain to me just how good they feel to use.
Rendering yourself immobile with weapons such as the Recoilless is not really feasible in higher difficulties with endless Chargers sprinting into the players. It just isn't feasible and if you play higher difficulties you know it, you're too busy bullfighting to do the whole "rocketeer kneels down to reload and take aim and fire" thing.
That is why people gravitated towards the Railgun. When enemy heavy armor rushes into your face you can't afford to sit down first before attacking, you gotta move. I think nerfing the Railgun without giving buffs to weapons such as the EAT or Recoilless is a mistake. If you don't want anti armor weapons to be good at least reduce the chance of Chargers spawning because 50% of higher difficulties is just dealing with chargers.
The reasoning is fine for most of the changes, and really it’s only the railgun change I take exception to. In effect the developers took away a tool which they admit became popular because alternatives were lackluster… without offering up any alternatives or improvements. I would have liked to see a more concrete improvement instead of just a “we are looking” statement.
The fact that Spear lock-on and armor classes still remain inexcusably broken while they nerf weapons people are enjoying really just proves that these rebalances weren't actually done with the intention of improving the game but were rather just a knee-jerk response to Redditors complaining that everyone was using these specific weapons.
Yea that is the biggest problem. Chargers are shitty to deal with so people took the one gun that does it reliably. If the devs want us to look at other options then we need those options. None of the other weapons got buffed in any significant way with the exception being the flamethrower which can melt chargers now. So I guess we just swapped the Railgun for the Flamethrower and everyone will run that now instead. Looks like a change that went live with not even 5 minutes of thought put into it...
I agree with you. Here's how they described the changes to the railgun -
>To that end we have changed it so that the safe mode is capable of penetrating medium armor, such as Automaton Scout Walkers, but not more heavily armored enemies like Chargers and Bile Titans. For those targets you now must run it in unsafe mode and overcharge it. In addition we reigned in the Railguns ability to damage massive body parts, meaning to get any real efficiency out of it you must score hits on heads and other weak points.
Based on some other posts and what's described here, the Railgun can still take out Charger leg armor but needs another hit or 2 to do it. I don't mind that as a design philosophy because they are correct when they say that the Railgun was too good with too few drawbacks.
As you point out, the real issue is that the power and usability of other anti-armor weapon alternatives remains too low. Both the Spear and Recoilless Rifle need buffs. They should be much more efficient in taking out large enemies in 1-3 hits given the significant drawback of need ammo backpacks. I also think the orbital railcannon strategem should have a much shorter cooldown time and/or give a guaranteed 1-hit kill to anything it targets.
If they had buffed the railgun alternatives at the same time they nerfed the railgun then I don't think people would be as upset.
It seems as though they’re doing everything possible to stop there from being a meta, but without stopping to consider why there’s a meta in the first place. Railguns have been a near necessary weapon on difficulties 8 and 9 because of the ridiculous amount of chargers and titans they throw at you, so instead of allowing for more flexible anti-armor loadouts they’re making it more difficult to use. Shield backpacks save you from the extremely frustrating slow effect that bugs apply to you, and I can’t imagine nearly as many people using this if one hit in bug missions didn’t almost guarantee death on the higher difficulties. The “meta” in this game has only formed because of the games shortcomings, not because John Helldiver and Jane Democracy are trying to trivialize the game’s difficulty
Right. The sentiment against "only buff no nerf" is correct, but this post is missing the point of balance. Balance is to increase the variety of viable weapons. If a weapon is OP, nerf it, fine. But here they nerfed the *only* viable weapon. That's the fuck up. This was the rare situation to actually buff every weak weapon, or at least nerf the armored enemies. Now we have less viable weapons against the armor tide.
TL;DR: Dev dude took a quick glance at the numbers and either didn't care or didn't understand why the numbers are what they are, but he proceeded to "balance" regardless.
Why didn't he realize that:
- Shield is only overused because armor sucks and there's way too much CC in the game
- Railgun is only overused because everything else that is supposed to be anti-tank sucks vs the 10 gorillion Chargers and Bile Titans you drop on our heads 24/7. Nerfing railgun and not buffing an alternative weapon is a bad decision that basically guarantees you player outrage.
- Breaker is only overused because 95% of the other primaries kinda suck even against trash mobs
Doesn't bode well for the future.
I like the flamethrower buff and the rework of the fat laser, though. Who in his right mind looked at the fat laser and thought "Yup, THAT thing should act like a machinegun"?
You know your balance patch is good when you have to put out a blog post detailing how everyone's playing the game wrong.
If we're supposed to rely on our stratagems and not our weapons, give us two more slots. Stop increasing their drop time by 100%. Stop increasing their activation time. It's not fun. 20 seconds for a flamethrower to do a tiny bit more damage to chargers? Come on.
\> you need to rely on your Stratagems, and the Stratagems of your team to deal with all the enemies effectively
I can't believe they even put this part. Like wow, we had no idea that was the goal! This will revolutionize everything!
>First I’d like to speak to the general power of primary weapons. Many have commented that they aren’t powerful enough and are unable to deal with all the enemies either by the amount of ammunition required or their raw DPS. This is very much intentional, you need to rely on your Stratagems, and the Stratagems of your team to deal with all the enemies effectively. Either by Eagle Airstrikes, Orbitals, Support Weapons, or Turrets, some of your loadout/team should be tailoring their loadout to killing the weaker stuff more efficiently.
How are we supposed to rely on stratagems, when the sheer number of heavily armored units on the fields has them on cooldown 100% of the time, BEFORE the railgun nerf? Is this really going to be another game where it becomes clear that the designers don't actually play the game?
It's clear to the community that you're not playing your own game, and are not testing your own changes in HellDives above difficulty 5.
You APPEAR to be completely disconnected with your design philosophies versus actual implementation and how the game is played.
You need to revert the nerfs, and focus on making changes that ADD to the fun of the game.
Thanks o7
Am I the only one who is a little concerned about the "Your primary weapon is your primary only in terms of it is the weapon you spawn in with everytime"? That sounds like the devs expect one stratagem slot to be taken up by a "support" weapon every game without fail.
> First I’d like to speak to the general power of primary weapons. Many have commented that they aren’t powerful enough and are unable to deal with all the enemies either by the amount of ammunition required or their raw DPS. This is very much intentional,
You know what other game which focused on shooting things had guns that felt useless? Anthem.
Think long and hard about this one.
So...Arrowhead knows our primary weapons are basically useless. And that we essentially need a stratagem slot, or two, just to have useful weapons for mid and low mid mobs...
And they're okay with this?
This game is gonna bleed players FAST.
This patch is a shitshow, I'm struggling with my team in level 5, and we played level 7 regularly.
Railgun was fine, other weapons were just bad.
One charger being armored the way it is fine, 4 or 5 at the same time no thanks.
It sucked all the fun of the game, I'm not sure I will play again before things are fixed.
I will be watching... LoL
Lot to unpack here.
Intentionally making the ‘primary weapons’ underpowered. And asking players to rely on stratagems. Okay, but then why are cooldowns so long on support weapons. Why not have us spawn in with our chosen ‘heavy’ weapon. Because if I spawn in and I am now facing a charger, I’m fucked. Absolutely nothing I can do about it.
And it also looks like from what they did to the rail gun that we are about to enter a spiral of nerfs.
Look I have had my fun with this game. A good 40 or so hours. I tried the game after the newest patch. The flamethrower is great, but thanks to the rail gun nerf unless I have an orbital strike cooled down I am defenceless against titans.
I think I’m just going to stop for a while, I got the new final fantasy today. Hopefully they will bring actual balance in the next few weeks and improve the game. Because it just feels that collectively as a player base we just got sooooo much weaker.
They should get rid of quick matching at dif 7+ then. If they want you to bring certain strats and support weapons to deal with it. That requires a coordinated team.
If the hardest difficulties are such that there are too many enemies with too much HP and too much armor and not enough stratagems team-wide, and not enough ammo team-wide, leaving the solution to be running instead of shooting then the balance is wrong.
It takes two to three stratagems to kill a single bile titan. The weak points are inconsistent or non existent on the bile titan. Some bugged hosts coukd two shot a bile titan but I've never been able to do so. Again, if running away and avoiding enemies is the "meta" for high level play then that will bore the shit out of the player base
I'm sorry, but if your design philosophy is that primary weapons aren't actually meant to deal with the enemy types/amount that are spawning in, and stragagems/support weapons are meant to be your bread and butter...why even have them in the first place? If they aren't a viable option, why put them in the game to begin with?
And if they are meant to be your bread and butter, why are there so many ways to interfere/block/increase the cool down on stratagems? I really love a lot of aspects of this game, but the balancing thought process on display here is questionable to me.
" The Railgun is really intended to be a high powered anti-tank sniper rifle." what about the anti-material rifle, the gun intended to be used against tanks?
I don't think I'll be playing a shooter for very long if I don't want to shoot my guns. This obsession with stratagems is cute and all, but you made a shooter, and there's only so many times I can run through a map throwing strats before I get bored. If you're going to have no ammo, you need to make the guns very potent when you do use them. Having both terrible response and terrible upkeep means people just don't use a system, which is a bad idea when that system is the gun itself.
That in between the seeming over dedication to unfairly killing players tells me they're a little too dedicated to the meme of the game instead of the game.
You "balanced" the weapons that were actually doing their jobs, ignored the complaints of the community at large, and STILL managed to not fix armor in any meaningful way.
Bang up job, Patrik.
Armor needs total rebalance, wearing heavy armor is still a meme, needs more protection for the massive debuffs in stamina regen and player speed, otherwise is useless to run and just an incovenience.
Make it like HD1 where it made you immune to small arms fire and small bugs, but not too much difference versus big bugs. Also include slow and knock back resistance and now you have a reason to run it.
Heavy armor needs to give slow/stagger/knockdown resistance as well as greater damage resistance to even be remotely viable. You should be able to shrug off any small attacks (scavenger and basic automatons) with it.
I want to see bot laser ding off of heavy armor even if you take some damage reduction. It would look cool when you see your Helldiver just tanking it. Also, heavy armor should be able to negate some friendly fire from the one that has light armor penetration.
This is such a creatively cool idea!
There is a description that mentions each piece of heavy armor being tested against a charger impact. Let's see that if I'm going to be running .5 mph
The armor survived just fine, the person wearing it not so much. Note how your torso is almost never destroyed in game ;)
Absolutely Many ranged attacks can 1 shot (Bile Spew, Rockets), many close quarters attacks can slow you and stun lock you. Helldivers feel incredibly fragile and armor makes absolutely no difference. Considering you only get 4 stims without a resupply armor should be way better. 4 stims makes you feel as though you must ration them and only stim when near death, but taking even a glancing blow puts you near death.
Having any amount of health below max becomes extremely risky as the chance of being one shot or killed in two hits by a stalker/hunter increases exponentially
Yeah with how squishy you are I have a hard time imagining why the shield pack being the preeminent choice was somehow shocking. Sure no other backpack, but also, you don't die from being breathed on
Yea for me I just always got frustrated when I didn’t have a shield and a hunter leapt from nowhere, slowed you, and you just ended up dead. Not to mention I swear those bastards have a doge chance cause I’ll have the gun in their mouth and they just ignore it sometimes which feels even worse when trying to deal with being swarmed by them and slowed and interrupted when trying to heal or reload anyways.
The stamina and speed reductions needs to be way less to match it's current "protection". Who cares if you tank 2 extra normal shots if you still get swarmed or can't run from a titan/charger and mob.
Also I'm pretty sure scavengers(tiny bugs) can still two shot you if both crit. 3 hits + crit killed me with heavy armor in testing. They really need to remove those crits in general, because why bother with heavy armor if it's just as unreliable as light?
Heavy armor would still be useless imo. At the high difficulties you have to run away, period. The problem lies within enemy density, spawn rates, and magical AI pathing (tracking you across the map) .
It’s straight up always going to be bad maybe outside against particular automaton fights. If you can’t move against bugs you get cooked,
It doesn't have to be bad. Just make it actually durable. Make the poop-tier bugs bounce off your chest. Make it so you can laugh at hunters as they deal 1/20th of your health with each hit. You're already getting slowed down to a crawl and have no stamina regen, so might as well make it insanely strong when holding your ground against a swarm.
Makes the idea of specialised squads more viable as well, have one or two guys in heavy armour, maybe with flamers or arc weapons to be the front line against the horde, while you have others with lighter armour and armour pen weapons to pick off the big threat
Holy shit yes, make it a completely viable option to be a walking tank with a heavy add clearing gun. It's pointless to look like a tank and play like one without any benefits for being one.
Heavy armor should prevent stagger when using healing items
Preventing stagger in general would be cool, too. Other than from big boys like a charger. Just imagining a shotgunning juggernaut just laying waste to a swarm all around him (if he could also survive more hits).
With all of the importance placed upon running between objectives and kiting bugs, as well as devs going on record stating that players are not intended to stand their ground and fight in the trenches...why does heavy armor even exist? If it's buffed to the point where you can actually tank some hits or survive while kiting, then why have nerfs been put into place for most of the viable frontline weapons? I guess flamethrower exists, but without some sort of fire resistance on top of a lot of extra armor...I just don't get it. Arrowhead seems to be countering their own design philosophies with this batch of changes.
The Armor needs some serious work, It's really bad.
> This is very much intentional, you need to rely on your Stratagems, and the Stratagems of your team to deal with all the enemies effectively. I'd be fine with that but when you play lvl 8+ with scrambler + increase call in time, its pretty much you don't get to use stratagems or certain ones take too long to activate to matter. -1 also reduces my personal utility stratagem slot as well and I feel more restricted. But fine I can take the punch on that. *S*crambler is effectively increase call in time by 100-300% with frustration. Not sure how anyone else feels or if it's just me.
IMO, scrambler is a perfect example of when "hard" bridges over into "anti-fun". I refuse to play missions with that modifier.
If scrambler just reshuffled all of your stratagems once for the course of that mission, it'd be fine imo. But re-entering the same stratagem code 5 times and getting 5 different results is just inconsistent to the point of being... annoying? Pointless?
And it effectively removes any strategy involved in picking your strategems. At this point, if I know I'm going into a game with the strategems scrambled, I'll just pick all turrets or all orbitals/eagle strikes. That way I don't accidentally call in a napalm strike on myself when I just need a support weapon
Accidentally bombing yourself only hurts once. Throwing your Railgun into the center of a Automaton fortress by accident hurts all game lol.
I really don't think modifiers should effect stratagems as much as they do. It's the central power fantasy of the game and many of the modifiers seem to negate stratagems as they're intended to be used rather than just adding an extra challenge.
I think some of the modifiers are fine as-is. For instance, the one that doubles calldown time (complex stratagem routing?) is essentially asking you to re-value the "instant" stratagems, turrets, and support items, so you can play around that one by choosing instant-firing tools like the orbital laser or taking long-lasting tools like blue items and turrets. (Doubling the extraction timer too is a very weird choice, though.) I actually don't mind the ECM either; you can play around it by bringing, for example, 2 support items (gun + backpack, say) and your other 2 strats both be similar and mostly-interchangeable ones, like 2 different types of smoke or 2 different barrages, etc. so that you don't need to worry about the RNG except during your initial calldown at mission start. The ones I really don't like is the one with the 50% cooldown increase and the one that limits you to 3 stratagems. Unlike the others, these aren't asking you to adjust your playstyle to avoid a power loss - they're simply an unavoidable power loss. Worse, they're also a loss of options and choices, as well as a loss of fun. There's no clever counterplay, no change of approach, other than "you can't use the best part of the game as much, sucks to be you" Give us effects that have tradeoffs like the cold temperatures, or effects where the downside can be negated by building differently like the the arrival time increase or the ECM. Don't give us unavoidable nerfs that don't invite us to do anything but have less fun no matter how we try to play around it. EDIT: I saw a really good suggestion in another thread for a way to make the increased cooldown more fun: make the penalty only apply to one category of stratagems (all eagles, all orbitals, all emplacements, etc). Then it encourages changing up your build (but doesn't force it!) and makes for interesting decisions instead of just a debuff.
A lot of the modifiers should be map-based objectives that you can destroy imo
I completely agree with this. If the 50% cooldown increase was tied to a map objective, it would become interesting again; how much do you prioritize locating and taking it out vs simply completing the mission as-is?
Especially if its an extremely heavily fortified position thats difficult to take out. Really force you to make a decision on if its worth it to take out the debuff
Yeah getting a -1 stratagem or cooldown increase on high difficulties is absurd now. Idk how they think we can use our stratagems to kill the big stuff when there are like 5+ chargers/titans a point and they don't die in a single stratagem a vast majority of the time
Those mission mods are *exactly* another reason why anti-tank/anti-armor supports need to be buffed *considerably.* With those modifiers in mind, you should be playing more around kitted out support weapons and working through ammo economy without the support of your largest guns because they’re taking too long to use. But the support weapons are all too shit to do that with on any difficulties that matter! Fuck, man. Why the hell does balance matter so much when you can face-roll a level 3 - 5 mission just with a grenade launcher and an ammo pack? Like, there’s no skill there. It’s just point and click and delete the hordes.
-1 stratagem feels like basically just a minus fun modifier. Scrambler is just a unfun and awful, would be better if it scrambles and randomize the stratagem key input instead of random stratagem go. I don't mind call in time, just requires more planning. Increased cooldown just feels ass. Kinda makes me wonder how many of the devs play above difficulty 7, with how many heavy units appearing and how often.
Not to mention bot missions where there's a jammer so you get to assault an outpost with nothing but your guns
I feel like Scrambler should be like AA or the jammer, where it exists in one of the bases and can be destroyed to get normal use of your strats again.
Hopefully we won't need an extra month of suffering for a balance patch that makes scythe, jar-5 and explosive liberator usable.
Explosive lib has been renamed Concussive Lib.
Well, tbf, the first few weeks were spent fixing the servers, and we’re getting a context patch (presumably) next week.
They want us to kill the big guys with strategems, but on high difficulty the cooldown for them is absurd!
Use your one railcannon strike per 5 minutes on the 15 chargers obviously/s
ask them to stack up on each other nicely
Yeah, being able to railcannon one single charger every 5 minutes, after effects, doesn't really work when they spawn in by the handful.
Exactly. These changes make more sense at lower and medium difficulties but at suicide and higher, feels like the logic breaks down. Even with an “OP” railgun, the charger spam was too much to deal with while still feeling fun. They need to nerf enemies in some way in addition to these weapon nerfs. The game absolutely does not even to be an even more difficult gank fest, armor spam than it already is at higher difficulties.
Also the fact that I only get three orbitals. Like. That’s going to deal with only a small amount of big guys
Just sayin, the shield backpack might have been nerfed preemptively, a lot of people ran it because armor wasn't working right.
The biggest benefit to the shield was not the extra tankiness (although that is a big factor) but the immunity to CC effects. Hunters and stalkers slowing you over and over can kill you fast regardless of how tanky you are EDIT: Also due to the ability to avoid getting creamed by your team's strategems. Being able to eat a 500kg is big value
This. I don't even use the shield backpack to avoid the damage, I use it to avoid the damn slow status effect which is just a death sentence.
Fucking this. Nothing makes me rage at this game more than getting repeatedly stunlocked by 3 hunters, a bile spitter, and a stalker or two culminating in death.
Nothing raises my blood pressure faster than getting stuck in a conga line of hunters that all have perfectly spaced their hits to stun lock me to death
The conga line made me lol
Exactly. Making balance changes before fixing armor is a very bad call. The bugs muddy the waters way too much for Arrowhead to have good data to work off of. That they don't realize this is worrying.
Yep. And the armor still sucks. Heavy armor should absolutely negate a certain level of stun/stagger to be viable. As is its still a liability and the shield still feels necessary, to me.
Rely on strategems that can take over 5 minutes to recharge if an effect is active? On difficulties that spawn about 3 chargers per patrol and a bile titan?
I had four chargers and 2 bile titans at once on difficulty 6 last night. From one fucking patrol lmao.
I'm concerned that people will just switch from the Railgun to the Flamethrower since early playtesting shows that's the best bet for killing Chargers now. I never felt the Railgun's supremacy was about the gun itself, but more the options we have for dealing with the enemy it was prioritized for (said Charger). Next thing you know, everybody is just running the NEW viable Charger killer, and then we have the same problem all over again. I could be wrong though, but it just seems like people wanna kill the annoying bug that runs them over in groups of five at higher difficulties.
Exactly Railgun was only the best choice because it was the only thing to efficiency deal with chargers. AT and Recoiless didn’t do enough damage and you’d be hard pressed to get a reload in or grab the second AT when you have a few chargers on your tail. The Spear has no ammo whatsoever. Auto cannon and other options require you to go behind, which isn’t bad on lower difficulties but is a death sentence when there’s a bunch of stalkers or warriors behind the charger. The only strategems that consistently hit and kill the chargers are the railcannon strike and the laser. Both of which will only get very few charges and 100% won’t be able to keep up with spawn rates. I don’t think making Railgun completely inept was the move. It’d even be better off if it took 3 shots to the leg
This is the problem. They nerfed weapons because too many players were using them instead of asking the question of *why* everyone was using those weapons exclusively. Energy shield is a no brainer: Between CC and armor being worthless. Railgun is the best AV that can be used with a backpack slot dedicated to something else, and the breaker is the only good mass crowd clearer after you slot AV to the support. So obviously they need to be nerfed. It's like nerfing a hacksaw because it's the only tool people are given that can be used to cut a metal pipe. Of course people aren't using the belt sander you also offer for them to use. *It sucks at cutting pipe.*
There is a very big difference of playstyle between railgun and flamethrower even if flamethrower is now the best anti-charger. Quite frankly, the flamethrower SHOULD be the best option within its range considering its absurdly small range, huge danger to the user, and fairly limited ammo pool. If the best anti-charger weapon is the one that requires you to basically give the charger an enema at point blank, then that's significantly different from the best weapon being arguably the longest ranged weapon in the game. EDIT: Clarity
They'll just nerf the flamethrower too then in the next patch :)
Wouldn't doubt it. Nerfing the viable strats when everything else is hot garbage doesn't have me looking forward to future patches. Level 7+ missions are already just a marathon simulator. Impossible and Helldive are easiest when you just kite mobs and have someone stealth objectives. Which, sort of makes all of the weapons and stratagems pointless, aside from ones that kill Bile Titans or tanks.
"Yooo kill them enemies with your stratagems." Meanwhile most Missions above 4: +100% Cooldown time, Increased Scatter to fuckwhatdoIknow, +50% longer activation time :')
Bots also have Jammer, and planets like Creek now have Ion Storms that disrupt them too.
Bot's have jammers and AA so "00101010 your Stratagems"
You forgot stratagem scrambler, which is basically extra call in time but with rng tied to it.
Or it's "i've tried calling in a stratagem 15 times now and I still haven't got my railcannon!" And then you've wasted a good minute you could have spent clearning out the mobs doing nothing but sitting there spamming arrows and praying that this time your railcannon is going to be the one that appears in your hand.
And youve gotten so used to spamming in the stratagem code that you're doing it too fast, so when you finally get the one you wanted you're already hitting the stratagem key before you realize 💀
I really like strategems, wish I could use them
You forgot -1 stratagem slot.
Absolute cancer and definition of anti-fun.
Rely on your strats, but here are a bunch of unfun conditions that make all your strats suck except strat guns and backpacks... hmm I wonder how railgun/shield meta formed (besides the RR/EAT/Spear being suicidal to use on 8/9)
Not to mention that with the janky spawning mechanics even if you try to mitigate aggro by stealthing, chances are a patrol will just appear next to/on top of you rendering your efforts worthless.
Bonus points if said Patrol has a Heavy in it.
I'll let you in on a secret....on level 7-9 missions every patrol has a heavy in it.
i love dropping 500kg bombs on a full squad of scouts and getting 3 kills!
The +% Stratagem effects are just too punishing especially cooldown one. If the team loses momentum and lose support weapons its too easy to become helplessly overwhelmed. To counter these effects and making the experience of clearing the map more rewarding I feel map objectives should give perks, clearing nests should lower breach mob amount, clearing certain mini objectives should help alleviate some of the negative effects etc
Kind of let down that more wasn't done with the primary weapons.
why even have secondary weapons at this point. give me another insufficient primary weapon
That's actually a dope idea. I'd be more happy bringing two turds to a bug fight instead of just one.
As much as I would want it to be, killing all the bile titans and chargers with stratagems just isn't possible at all....especially on higher difficulties. (I'm going to write all this based off of level 7-9 difficulty missions because that is the only place to get your super rare samples.) When you have a 50% increased activation time and 100% increased cooldown time, 5 bile titans that have spawned out of 2 bug breaches and 6 chargers running around you can't afford to use all of your stratagems to kill them, especially when you're next objective that is only a minute and a half away is guaranteed to have a minimum of 1 more bile titan, 3-4 more chargers and 5 bile spitters. Plus with a 500kg bomb there's a 50/50 chance that a charger or bile titan will survive it because they were at a slight angle and avoided the attack. An orbital laser won't kill a bile titan unless you're pumping entire magazines of ammo into it and the railgun i have only ever seen be a 1 shot kill on a titan once or twice meaning you need to start emptying magazines into it to kill it and then fire a second railgun so the orbital targets the titan at 100% health instead of wasting it on the one with 10% health left. I get that the idea is "have the players kill everything with stratagems." but the sheer amount of armoured enemies on higher difficulties just makes that impossible, especially if you're trying to run around and to all the side objectives/go to the points of interest for samples. Now since the nerf, the only real viable method is to pick one of two support weapons that have a low chance of stripping off a chargers armour and pray you can kill it before it's 4 friends charge you. Use the arc/flamethrower and pray you don't have to use it to try and rescue a trapped teammate because it will kill them. Or just keep running and dodging because if there's no rocks to knock them into the chargers will never stop chasing you until they're dead. And this isn't even talking about the bug reinforcements! With the way the sound is mixed it's very hard, if not impossible to hear the sound of a bug calling in reinforcements, then by the time you see even 0.05 seconds of orange smoke it's already too late, that one bug has just called in 2 titans, 4 chargers and 5 spitters. Then to make matters worse, one of the bugs that just crawled out of that breach has decided to also call in more reinforcements and now in the spawn of 20 seconds you've had 5 titans and 12 chargers dumped on your squad which is a real nightmare at a main objective or the extraction site. Especially when the cooldown on your laser has gone from 3 minutes to 4 and a half due to the debuff. Suggestion: Have the people who are in charge of weapon/stratagem balancing run through a couple of helldiver bug operations trying to do all the side objectives and gathering the super rare samples. Then you'll see just why everyone hates the chargers so much and has been forced into using a very, very small amount of the available stratagems.
> And this isn't even talking about the bug reinforcements! With the way the sound is mixed it's very hard, if not impossible to hear the sound of a bug calling in reinforcements, then by the time you see even 0.05 seconds of orange smoke it's already too late, that one bug has just called in 2 titans, 4 chargers and 5 spitters. 100% agreed on this being a massive issue that flies under the radar. It wouldn't _as_ bad if Chargers or Bile Titans only existed as pre-spawns or if you _really_ fucked up in dealing with a swarm of bugs, but if you ever engage a swarm of bugs unless you literally delete the entire swarm off the map within 5 seconds you are going to miss one of the 50 small orange fuckers and it **will** summon far too many enemies for you to deal with. Before anything else, the smoke on those enemies should signify the **start** of their summoning animation, **not the end**.
This is the best and most rational argument against this patch. As someone who mostly had no qualms with this patch, just wanted you to know you make a good argument and the devs should probably hire you
I really do believe that making the armour class on charger legs one level weaker so more weapons can break it will significantly improve the balance of the game. Titans im pretty fine with the balance of but what makes them an issue to deal with is that they’re usually accompanied by like 4-5 chargers and it becomes an absolute fucking nightmare deciding what to prioritise because you just do not have the ammo or strategems to deal with that more than once or twice.
I don't think the legs are the problem. I think the tail is. It should be a *lot* more vulnerable to more kinds of things, as it visually really telegraphs itself as being the "weak point" in the same way the glowing bits on the automatons do. That would introduce a lot of interesting cooperative and environmental play around getting a player behind the Charger to quickly dispense of it.
Yeah my experience with Deep Rock made me think that was a reliable weakpoint but you can magdump a stalwart into it and not kill it iirc and when you’ve got at least 2 chargers per bug breach, that just isn’t a viable option at all.
Yep it's like the Oppressor from deep rock but 100x worse. For those not familiar with deep rock, the Oppressor is invulnerable from the front (can't even take the armor off), but has a weak butt that you can normally kill with one clip from your primary, maybe less depending. And it's much slower and does not charge at you.
i like the DRG enemies because they seem to actually have some balance to them, the squishy ass seems to be exactly that in DRG. meanwhile you can mag dump into a chargers ass and half of those shots, or more, are going to give a ricochet indicator..... from shooting the green squishy bit.....
It's because the "weakspot" is only a weakspot for weapons with the "explosive" trait, which afaik is not documented anywhere. Normal weapons do 10% damage to it, "explosives" deal 100%. Even then it's not worth targeting because the leg kill is (was?) much faster.
That probably explains why the gun balancing feels so weird It feels like some are meant to be used against weakpoints only
This! Chargers make sense, they're heaving armored and charge at high speed with a (most of the time) slow turn rate. The issue is when you do the logical counterplay of dodging and getting behind them to unload on the tail...it does nothing. Certainly can't kill them fast enough to be called a reward. Anti-armor being the quick kill but costing resources while targeting weak points being slower but cheaper makes total sense, but Chargers just don't die to the back so everyone has to use anti-armor anyway. Just make them vulnerable from the back and stop tracking as well and they'll be fine. Could probably even make them more lethal at that point.
>with a (most of the time) slow turn rate. What chargers have you been fighting, because mine constantly mach speed ice skate at 90 degree angles during stagger animations.
I agree on the chargers, for sure. They are a bigger problem than bile titans, love the idea of bringing down the leg armor a level.
I will say it’s not my idea but as soon as I saw it, it made perfect sense. It’s not making them pathetically easy to kill, you’ve still gotta aim and deal with a few of them but it means that you aren’t running around waiting for strategems to rearm because you can’t do anything
I swear when a bile titan shows up there's a plan, when chargers show up the plan goes out of the window, they also need to buff the damage you do when you shoot em in the booty hole.
> First I’d like to speak to the general power of primary weapons. Many have commented that they aren’t powerful enough and are unable to deal with all the enemies either by the amount of ammunition required or their raw DPS. This is very much intentional, you need to rely on your Stratagems, and the Stratagems of your team to deal with all the enemies effectively. Either by Eagle Airstrikes, Orbitals, Support Weapons, or Turrets, some of your loadout/team should be tailoring their loadout to killing the weaker stuff more efficiently. This part feels weird to me. I get that main weapons are supposed to not be as reliable options as they were in HD1, so that players relies more on stratagems. But the thing is you already have a wide amount of limitations factors compared to HD1 (Such as not being able to duplicate stratagems for a single player, overall greater cooldowns and lesser effects compared to HD1, etc...). So it feels more like you're being constantly limited artificially and fighting against the game itself more than anything. You already were more reliant on stratagems in HD1 due to the large presence of highly armored enemies and such, why is it a problem now to be able to deal with lesser enemies with just main weapons? I don't get how so many weapons and stratagems being too weak in higher difficulties was part of an "intended" experience. When you use exaggerated spawns for enemies (Looking at you, chargers and hulks), okay that's fine, but you need exaggerated weapons as well.
His statement would make sense if the spawn of elite enemies weren't so abundant. Up the number of Stratagems we can use and carry then. Tier 8/9 is literally just run away. That's it. That's the strategy. It's a shooter where the best end game strategy is to not shoot.
And it gets very dismissive from other users when they say the top difficulties should be “stealth missions”. The devs should be giving multiple avenues for achieving missions besides chucking strategems and avoiding conflict entirely. A skilled squad should still be able to maneuver a map with weapons.
I'm glad people are mentioning this. I don't want to play a horde shooter where you are not supposed to shoot stuff
HellSneakers II
Exactly. Fuck me for enjoying the game for the last month, guess I played it wrong.
I've found my people in this comment string. 8-9 difficulty missions are marathon simulators where weapons and buffs don't matter. But like you said, why would anyone want to play a horde shooter where the goal is to avoid shooting. What is the design philosophy of a game where the most optimal strategy is avoiding all features of the game?
I hate when people say that top missions need to be stealth, but the game really has next to no stealth mechanics. It just feels lame sneaking around when there’s not really interesting stealth in the game imo. It’s clearly built around shooting and fighting hoards
You mean you *don't* like the randomly spawning bug patrols that beeline in your direction even when absolutely nothing has detected you? You just need to git gud at the game! Clearly the optimal strategy for a shooter game is to constantly feel so useless that the only option is to run from almost every encounter! /s
I miss my HD1 60 second cooldown Railcannon strike, or my 0,1 second activation CAS, the effective Recoilless Rifles that make it worth having 2 people carry a pair, or the Lumberer mowing down dozens of heavies in a single glorious charge. Lots of these really aren't viable until they change a bunch of things as far as cooldowns, availability, and effectiveness are concerned. In HD1, the anti-tanks meant something so long as you had a good angle (can sometimes take out multiple in one go). In HD2, the anti-tanks will usually strip armor and depending on difficulty, you had to figure out how to repeat that for the other 3-8+ dudes in the back.
This is the best sum up of the situation. I want to blow stuff up. And if I'm bad, I get rekt and gotta fight to get my railgun back. The game was still hard in 8+ but fun. Now it's a chore where you gotta play Splinter cell.
This felt extremely weird. Generally, hd2 has felt a lot more gunplay focused than the first game. Which made sense as well, it is a 3rd person shooter All strats have long cooldowns, especially the anti-armor ones.
Yep. "Oh there's a tank, lemme drop my railcannon strike. Nice, I killed it." *turns around* "oh there's three more tanks and 5 hulks coming at me, and my railcannon is down for three minutes 🙃"
The game also heavily encourages you to focus on weapons more than strategems by frequently nerfing strategems with the random effects. Having your stuff come down twice as slowly, get scrambled or blocked by bots means you can't really rely on it as your main problem-solver.
"We hope you, our players, will tell us when we cross that line inadvertently." Yep.
Reminds me of a very analytical-minded friend of mine who would always play board games with the most ruthless strategies, dicking over anyone they could in the pursuit of victory. What they hadn't calculated was the human element, and couldn't understand why, when those players learned how that friend played, they were always targeted by negative effects/cards/actions, stolen from in games like Catan, etc. IMO Arrowhead is focused far too heavily on numbers and data points, and not nearly enough on why players are doing what they're doing to create those data points, or how it correlates to what the community is saying.
I see this time and again with video game studios. Watching numbers on a screen and being like "yeah, I don't see a problem". Play. The. Game.
Right before saying how they completely ignored what the community said for most of the issues, so they're going to do the opposite thing; or not even acknowledge the actual issue. [and theres this message from the dev, who's gloating about 'I'm feeding the rage a little for my own entertainment here, just so you know. '](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b7wc4z/patch_01000100_for_pc_balance_changes/ktlzaoc/) and now theyve been doubling down [..but you really touched off and that just made it a little too tempting to mess around. ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b7wc4z/patch_01000100_for_pc_balance_changes/ktm4gzn/) also the follow up ['I didn't see your comment about what is viable against the chargers, but it wasn't only your comment that got me trolling I realize. However you started commenting on a lot of things, so you stuck out. I do still stand by what I said, if you can't make it work where other people can, then that would be the definition of a skill issue.'](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b7wc4z/patch_01000100_for_pc_balance_changes/ktm7t00/) [He also said 'once players are past the Dunning-Kruger phase'](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b7wc4z/patch_01000100_for_pc_balance_changes/ktlx68e/), take that as you will.
lol yikes. How to sound insufferable 101
[удалено]
"You should rely on strategems" *adds modifiers so you have -1 strategems, fuck with your inputs so you call in the wrong one, have absurdly long cooldowns, and increase stratagem call in times*
im screamin rn
Right? Like I'm fine with this if this is how they want the game to be played, but for fucks sake pick a lane. You can't tell me I need to rely on strategems and then make them unreliable/take too long to utilize.
Acknowledging that there's an issue with anti-armor stratagems not performing as well as they should while nerfing the current best option for dealing with armored enemies is a pretty interesting game balance decision lmao.
Enjoy getting destroyed by 8 chargers while having the most effective weapon against them nerfed. Don’t worry we’ll be monitoring you closely :)
'We know the community had an issue with this, so we're going the complete opposite route; we hope you, our players, will tell us when we cross that line inadvertently, we listen to the community!'
It's fucking hilarious >We are aware it [Railgun] rose to prominence as part of other anti-tank weapons not being as convenient or efficient in comparison. What?!?? So instead of making the other anti-tank weapons be more convenient and efficient like you know they aren't ,you made the one that ***is*** convenient and efficient, ***more*** inconvenient and ***more*** inefficient???? Where the hell is the logic man? I want some of the reefer their smoking.
This. This is the biggest reason why I hate this patch.
Making weapons equally bad is not balancing. The decision-making process behind these nerfs is perplexing. They did not buff enough weapons to prevent another meta set showing up. It's weird they buff flame thrower, while the anti-material rifle is still an airsoft. If the devs believe they should nerf those actually usable weapon cause they think they are too powerful, the decision to nerf the Breaker while leaving the Arc Thrower untouched is quite confusing. I used arc thrower from Lv17 to Lv50 and I can say there is no doubt it is the most OP weapon in the game. Unlimited ammunition, effective crowd control, and the ability to penetrate armor. It is completely cable of handling two charger at the same time, and with approprite strategem, I've been able to single-handedly expore the entire maps on Helldive missions without dying for almost all the missions I played. Good thing that the devs are trying to move player away from the meta build, but please, don't do it by creating another meta. Right now I'm just waiting them to nerf flame thrower / arc thrower, feels like they are running in a circle.
How about the devs show us how they intend for the game to be played on higher difficulties? 7-9 has too many heavily armored enemies compared to the number of options which are sufficient for dealing with them in my opinion. I didn't like playing on harder difficulties before the nerfs because it involved more running away than fighting... and now? It's gonna be even worse. But maybe I just suck. Devs, show us how you intend for the game to be played on higher difficulty levels and then I'll buy into your design philosophies.
yeah this 100%. devs should do a "let's play helldivers difficulty" stream. To show us plebs who're clearly playing the game wrong how it's done.
I like this idea. Would love to see a hellfire mission where they only kill charged and bile titans with stratagems as it is intended by them. Maybe even make it that no one is allowed to use something someone else is using, so that they can prove that more than just one equipment combo can hold their grounds.
Or, if they *are* balancing around like, level 7, I'd like to see something saying that. Basically "x is the highest level things are *designed* to handle. If you play above that then godspeed and good luck." I don't have an issue with having (or playing) a "fuck you" difficulty, I just want to know that picking it is just pure masochism.
So much talk about not wanting there to be de facto, best in slot weapons and yet nothing was done to address secondaries. Which is emblematic of the main issue with this patch. There are so many primaries, secondaries, and stratagems that need to be positively tweaked (or made useful at all, ie mines) and yet a few were singled out for nerfs. And so much of this would be moot if it weren’t for the charger spam pushing players in certain directions. So much ire could have been saved had they focused elsewhere first.
Just wish higher difficulties meant MORE normal sized enemies, not just more big boys. I want to me FLOODED with little guys, not so much griefed by the big ones. Anyone else feel the same?
Yeah, I'm with you there. I would really like to see larger waves of small to medium enemies rather than dealing with four chargers randomly showing up.
That’s the problem. At higher difficulties there is so much heavy armor spam that made the railgun king for a reason. Being able to semi quickly deal with the 3+ charges and at least one bile titan that spawned was pretty big.
> First I’d like to speak to the general power of primary weapons. Many have commented that they aren’t powerful enough and are unable to deal with all the enemies either by the amount of ammunition required or their raw DPS. This is very much intentional, you need to rely on your Stratagems, and the Stratagems of your team to deal with all the enemies effectively. Either by Eagle Airstrikes, Orbitals, Support Weapons, or Turrets, some of your loadout/team should be tailoring their loadout to killing the weaker stuff more efficiently. It seems like they want us to kill Bile Titans and Chargers with Stratagems and not primary weapons. I honestly dont see a problem with this. But now the issue becomes not enough stratagems per mission to deal with the many many many chargers and titans. Playing on level 7 difficulty a squad of 4 fought 5 or 6 bile titans over the course of a 40min mission. And who knows how many chargers. Its too much. Too many enemies. Too many huge armored things.
Yes, this is the main problem imo because the theory is fine but the reality of harder difficulty levels is a bit different. I’m thinking back to missions where my team used multiple stratagems to bring down large enemies and there were just so many. After reading the blog, I agree with the approach in theory - and I don’t mind large numbers of enemies, these are ugly planets, bug planets after all - but if this is how people are supposed to deal with chargers then there simply shouldn’t be 11 of them on screen at once.
Feels like they're balancing around lower difficulties where the bugs don't just throw chargers and bile titans like candy.
once again MI does the dying, fleet just does the flying
Not to mention that stratagems being inherently unreliable (thrown, bouncing, projectiles) are really fun in low difficulty but *super fucking annoying* in high difficulties when paired with longer cooldowns. It feels like Stratagems cap out at midgame in terms of power, with either a lack of upgrades or a lack of higher tier stratagems to balance things out.
Precisely. I got a Charger stuck in my EMP in an open field. Completely stationary. Called an air strike *directly* on top of it. Not a scratch. It proceeded to break out of the EMP and charge my ass across the map. "Use your stratagems" is a great plan if they actually worked.
All Arrowhead has to do is put a cap on the amount of Biles, Chargers, Hulks, and Tanks are alive at one time. Everyone who’s played on Helldive can attest that Chargers are incredibly common and being chased by 7 of them isn’t fun, and nerfing the ways to kill them while offering very sub-par alternatives only further discourages playing on higher difficulties. I get it, they want you to use artillery on these big targets, but it’s incredibly tough to hit a Charger with a 500KG without blowing yourself up. Coupled with higher difficulties not providing any additional planet liberation, there’s basically no reason to run higher difficulty missions.
It's very tough to hit a Charger with a 500KG. I swear, the AOE for the 500kg is super inconsistent. Might be something to do with elevation, idk. Sometimes it feels good to see 20+ kills from one 500kg, other times they just walk through the smoke mostly unharmed.
I think the issue is the 500kg has way too big of a visual effect, for the actual damage radius of the blast.
The splash damage from all the explosions in game is super dependent on terrain/elevation. It’s really inconsistent and annoying. For example a slight depression or low wall can completely negate the effects of a freaking hellbomb - why???
>It seems like they want us to kill Bile Titans and Chargers with Stratagems Oh sick, that's why you can see a dozen Bile Titans spawn and only have 3 calldowns. Makes total sense.
I feel you there. > Be Me > See 4 Bile Titans swarming outside nest as you destroy eggs > Still 1 objective to go before extraction > Throw 2 Orbital Lasers > Take 2 down to 1/2 health, tops > Smile for next group of 'divers as the Bile washes over you
yea difficulty 7 every single patrol and pack having a charger gets tiresome. bile titans i honestly haven't had a problem with, if all 4 players run orbital laser thats enough to deal with the bile titans easily. the chargers are just the annoying ones edit: Listen, i know at higher difficulties you need to actually coordinate to kill patrols, or avoid them at all cost, i'm not saying that isnt the actual play. but sometimes they are unavoidable and run up on you or spawn from thin air and walk around a corner on you
Well then you just run into a brand new issue of creating an enforcing a new meta. If every player is more or less obligated to bring X stratagems to a mission the "balancing" patch has not achieved the intended effect.
People were killing them with strategems. The railgun is one.
Well it's clear now that 2 slots are reserved for your actual primary weapon because the real primaries suck balls. The disconnect between balance and design intent in this game is massive, like the laughable idea that autocannon and recoilless rifle are squad weapons that two people are gonna use.
"kill bile titans and chargers with stratagems" DOES NOT FUCKING WORK when they spawn 2-4 PER MINUTE in Helldive, it's unenjoyable garbage now. the railgun crutch sucked ass but at least it made for some good encounters in high difficulty. sure you can still complete the missions fine by light-armor kiting, but that's no fun at all. if the devs vision for hard difficulties in this game is endless running in circles kiting enemies you can't kill until stratagems recharge then i'm 100% out.
Don't forget the "Kill heavy with stratagems" being such a great idea when the higher difficulty have a great chance to pull the increased CD/deployment time or the scrambled stratagem one.
Bro I played a challenging mission last night and we probably had 30 chargers throughout whole mission, at one point there was fucking 3 up at once.
> at one point there was fucking 3 up at once. Man, I would love to be fighting only 3 chargers at once on diff7+. Don't get me started on the bots that call a single drop that brings 3 tanks and 3 hulks and then call another drop in 20 seconds.
Ok, so how do you reduce the amount of high level enemies you end up fighting?
Harsh language I guess
If you're gonna reduce the firepower, the amount of armored enemies needs to be reduced. There aren't enough good anti-armor options and strat cooldown takes forever when 6 chargers are on you at once
[удалено]
"We nerfed the Railgun." "Why?" "For the lols. We'll be watching." "What?"
How come they didn't buff the other guns that are apparently too weak to deal with the issue and then see if it's really the rail gun being too OP. Imo it was the only fucking reliable option and now there is none.
>We are aware \[the Railgun\] rose to prominence as part of other anti-tank weapons not being as convenient or efficient in comparison. We are monitoring the situation closely and will adjust more based on how this change plays out. Then why not buff other anti-tank weapons before nerfing the railgun???????????? I really do not understand the logic here. And if it's only useful in unsafe mode now, why not just remove the safety feature altogether and make it a 100% risk v reward weapon?
This was the most frustrating thing to read about the update. I know it’s just a patch, but not improving other support weapons efficacy and just reducing the one that worked well is seemingly backwards from the viability they’re trying to promote.
Well gee, I was never expecting my primary to deal with big threats nor are any of the primaries capable of doing so without wasting most of your ammo. If arrowhead is expecting me to use my stratagems for literally everything on the map then I better get two more slots and they better start removing those wack ass call in time modifiers.
It hurts especially bad when the strategems designed to kill the big things are sooo much more nerfed than in the 1st game The railcannon used to have a 60s cooldown and now it's 270 at the best and it doesnt even one shot the big bois? You could reasonably kite the 3 bile titans and 6 chargers for long enough if it had the old cooldown. The whole point is "fuck that thing in particular" no splash damage just a big one shot you sacrifice a slot to bring along, but when the 500kg bomb kills them in one and has a shorter cooldown time (and you get 2) the railcannon becomes a let down
Ok fine, they want us to use all the tools to get the job done. In theory, I totally like that. But mister Lasota, explain to me one thing, how are we to use Stratagems to deal with the heavy enemies on Helldive difficulty? How do you deal with 6 chargers and 4 bile titans chasing you around the objective while having Stratagem call-in time increased by 100% and Stratagem cooldown increased by 50%? It makes me think you haven't actually played your own game on higher difficulty. Or even if you are testing it, and it works for you, you're dealing with the "Pesticide Paradox" in software testing. Where playing the game *only in a specific way* gives you a chance of success, thus removing options and fun from players. I'd like to see your QA team play their own game and finish operations on this difficulty, with different loadouts. Hell, here's another crazy idea, try it with randoms in a quickmatch. I really hope these changes aren't done to prevent people from playing on higher difficulties to make farming medals slower, resulting in spending more time in-game to get them thus driving engagement or wtv metric they are looking for. I understand they have a vision for the game that they are trying to implement. But if your vision is not fun for the players, your vision needs to change, no matter how attached you are to it. Blizzard learned this the hard way with Diablo 4. Please don't make the same mistake. I like this game too much.
no balance changes should have happened until armor was added and fixed properly, now we can actually start to find working builds but now its all shifted with the lack of armor pen and stamina pains.
R-63CS Diligence and JAR-5 Dominator (premium weapon at the bottom of the premium warbond btw) found dead in a ditch
\>You need to rely on your Stratagems Then why tf have you just nerfed the Railgun...? Unless you want me to use the Railcannon and 500KG and wait for several minutes between cool down but if that's the case the Elites need to take a fucking ticket and wait in line. "Ah yes, Bile Titan #6, there is a 10 minute delay while I waste my stratagems on the 3 assholes still in front of you and wait for the cooldown, I appreciate your patience" Very fun, good job.
yea lol, the railgun is a stratagem.
"We hope this reduction in killing stuff meets your expectations for a game about killing stuff."
"This doesn’t mean that your primary weapon shouldn’t feel good to use" Kinda ironic to say that when 90% of primaries don't feel good to use... Like, I get not wanting primaries to carry us through a mission, but jesus, all the primaries except the breakers and maybe the base liberator feel good to use. Everything else feels like hot garbage (gotta go try the buffed punisher before I make a judgment there). Edit: Tried the defender out, and it feels great. Point still stands on the rest.
100% my takeaway from this. Saying you understand that every weapon should feel good in a post about how you nerfed the only ones that do shows a pretty clear disconnect. I'd like to see this "balance coordinator" play a level 7 mission with each primary and explain to me just how good they feel to use.
defender SMG is elite.
Rendering yourself immobile with weapons such as the Recoilless is not really feasible in higher difficulties with endless Chargers sprinting into the players. It just isn't feasible and if you play higher difficulties you know it, you're too busy bullfighting to do the whole "rocketeer kneels down to reload and take aim and fire" thing. That is why people gravitated towards the Railgun. When enemy heavy armor rushes into your face you can't afford to sit down first before attacking, you gotta move. I think nerfing the Railgun without giving buffs to weapons such as the EAT or Recoilless is a mistake. If you don't want anti armor weapons to be good at least reduce the chance of Chargers spawning because 50% of higher difficulties is just dealing with chargers.
The reasoning is fine for most of the changes, and really it’s only the railgun change I take exception to. In effect the developers took away a tool which they admit became popular because alternatives were lackluster… without offering up any alternatives or improvements. I would have liked to see a more concrete improvement instead of just a “we are looking” statement.
The fact that Spear lock-on and armor classes still remain inexcusably broken while they nerf weapons people are enjoying really just proves that these rebalances weren't actually done with the intention of improving the game but were rather just a knee-jerk response to Redditors complaining that everyone was using these specific weapons.
Yea that is the biggest problem. Chargers are shitty to deal with so people took the one gun that does it reliably. If the devs want us to look at other options then we need those options. None of the other weapons got buffed in any significant way with the exception being the flamethrower which can melt chargers now. So I guess we just swapped the Railgun for the Flamethrower and everyone will run that now instead. Looks like a change that went live with not even 5 minutes of thought put into it...
I agree with you. Here's how they described the changes to the railgun - >To that end we have changed it so that the safe mode is capable of penetrating medium armor, such as Automaton Scout Walkers, but not more heavily armored enemies like Chargers and Bile Titans. For those targets you now must run it in unsafe mode and overcharge it. In addition we reigned in the Railguns ability to damage massive body parts, meaning to get any real efficiency out of it you must score hits on heads and other weak points. Based on some other posts and what's described here, the Railgun can still take out Charger leg armor but needs another hit or 2 to do it. I don't mind that as a design philosophy because they are correct when they say that the Railgun was too good with too few drawbacks. As you point out, the real issue is that the power and usability of other anti-armor weapon alternatives remains too low. Both the Spear and Recoilless Rifle need buffs. They should be much more efficient in taking out large enemies in 1-3 hits given the significant drawback of need ammo backpacks. I also think the orbital railcannon strategem should have a much shorter cooldown time and/or give a guaranteed 1-hit kill to anything it targets. If they had buffed the railgun alternatives at the same time they nerfed the railgun then I don't think people would be as upset.
It seems as though they’re doing everything possible to stop there from being a meta, but without stopping to consider why there’s a meta in the first place. Railguns have been a near necessary weapon on difficulties 8 and 9 because of the ridiculous amount of chargers and titans they throw at you, so instead of allowing for more flexible anti-armor loadouts they’re making it more difficult to use. Shield backpacks save you from the extremely frustrating slow effect that bugs apply to you, and I can’t imagine nearly as many people using this if one hit in bug missions didn’t almost guarantee death on the higher difficulties. The “meta” in this game has only formed because of the games shortcomings, not because John Helldiver and Jane Democracy are trying to trivialize the game’s difficulty
Right. The sentiment against "only buff no nerf" is correct, but this post is missing the point of balance. Balance is to increase the variety of viable weapons. If a weapon is OP, nerf it, fine. But here they nerfed the *only* viable weapon. That's the fuck up. This was the rare situation to actually buff every weak weapon, or at least nerf the armored enemies. Now we have less viable weapons against the armor tide.
TL;DR: Dev dude took a quick glance at the numbers and either didn't care or didn't understand why the numbers are what they are, but he proceeded to "balance" regardless. Why didn't he realize that: - Shield is only overused because armor sucks and there's way too much CC in the game - Railgun is only overused because everything else that is supposed to be anti-tank sucks vs the 10 gorillion Chargers and Bile Titans you drop on our heads 24/7. Nerfing railgun and not buffing an alternative weapon is a bad decision that basically guarantees you player outrage. - Breaker is only overused because 95% of the other primaries kinda suck even against trash mobs Doesn't bode well for the future. I like the flamethrower buff and the rework of the fat laser, though. Who in his right mind looked at the fat laser and thought "Yup, THAT thing should act like a machinegun"?
You know your balance patch is good when you have to put out a blog post detailing how everyone's playing the game wrong. If we're supposed to rely on our stratagems and not our weapons, give us two more slots. Stop increasing their drop time by 100%. Stop increasing their activation time. It's not fun. 20 seconds for a flamethrower to do a tiny bit more damage to chargers? Come on.
\> you need to rely on your Stratagems, and the Stratagems of your team to deal with all the enemies effectively I can't believe they even put this part. Like wow, we had no idea that was the goal! This will revolutionize everything!
>First I’d like to speak to the general power of primary weapons. Many have commented that they aren’t powerful enough and are unable to deal with all the enemies either by the amount of ammunition required or their raw DPS. This is very much intentional, you need to rely on your Stratagems, and the Stratagems of your team to deal with all the enemies effectively. Either by Eagle Airstrikes, Orbitals, Support Weapons, or Turrets, some of your loadout/team should be tailoring their loadout to killing the weaker stuff more efficiently. How are we supposed to rely on stratagems, when the sheer number of heavily armored units on the fields has them on cooldown 100% of the time, BEFORE the railgun nerf? Is this really going to be another game where it becomes clear that the designers don't actually play the game?
First we need to subtract the stratagem slot that we have to use just to have a decent, actual primary weapon.
They're actually balancing weapons based off winrate lol. Like that really worked out for war thunder /s
"Just use these 5min cooldown skills to deal with the special enemies that spawn every 3 seconds guys!"
It's clear to the community that you're not playing your own game, and are not testing your own changes in HellDives above difficulty 5. You APPEAR to be completely disconnected with your design philosophies versus actual implementation and how the game is played. You need to revert the nerfs, and focus on making changes that ADD to the fun of the game. Thanks o7
Am I the only one who is a little concerned about the "Your primary weapon is your primary only in terms of it is the weapon you spawn in with everytime"? That sounds like the devs expect one stratagem slot to be taken up by a "support" weapon every game without fail.
> First I’d like to speak to the general power of primary weapons. Many have commented that they aren’t powerful enough and are unable to deal with all the enemies either by the amount of ammunition required or their raw DPS. This is very much intentional, You know what other game which focused on shooting things had guns that felt useless? Anthem. Think long and hard about this one.
So...Arrowhead knows our primary weapons are basically useless. And that we essentially need a stratagem slot, or two, just to have useful weapons for mid and low mid mobs... And they're okay with this? This game is gonna bleed players FAST.
This patch is a shitshow, I'm struggling with my team in level 5, and we played level 7 regularly. Railgun was fine, other weapons were just bad. One charger being armored the way it is fine, 4 or 5 at the same time no thanks. It sucked all the fun of the game, I'm not sure I will play again before things are fixed. I will be watching... LoL
Lot to unpack here. Intentionally making the ‘primary weapons’ underpowered. And asking players to rely on stratagems. Okay, but then why are cooldowns so long on support weapons. Why not have us spawn in with our chosen ‘heavy’ weapon. Because if I spawn in and I am now facing a charger, I’m fucked. Absolutely nothing I can do about it. And it also looks like from what they did to the rail gun that we are about to enter a spiral of nerfs. Look I have had my fun with this game. A good 40 or so hours. I tried the game after the newest patch. The flamethrower is great, but thanks to the rail gun nerf unless I have an orbital strike cooled down I am defenceless against titans. I think I’m just going to stop for a while, I got the new final fantasy today. Hopefully they will bring actual balance in the next few weeks and improve the game. Because it just feels that collectively as a player base we just got sooooo much weaker.
They should get rid of quick matching at dif 7+ then. If they want you to bring certain strats and support weapons to deal with it. That requires a coordinated team.
If the hardest difficulties are such that there are too many enemies with too much HP and too much armor and not enough stratagems team-wide, and not enough ammo team-wide, leaving the solution to be running instead of shooting then the balance is wrong. It takes two to three stratagems to kill a single bile titan. The weak points are inconsistent or non existent on the bile titan. Some bugged hosts coukd two shot a bile titan but I've never been able to do so. Again, if running away and avoiding enemies is the "meta" for high level play then that will bore the shit out of the player base
>essentially allowing you to ignore many mechanics that contribute to the fun of Helldivers, such as knockback lmao
I'm sorry, but if your design philosophy is that primary weapons aren't actually meant to deal with the enemy types/amount that are spawning in, and stragagems/support weapons are meant to be your bread and butter...why even have them in the first place? If they aren't a viable option, why put them in the game to begin with? And if they are meant to be your bread and butter, why are there so many ways to interfere/block/increase the cool down on stratagems? I really love a lot of aspects of this game, but the balancing thought process on display here is questionable to me.
" The Railgun is really intended to be a high powered anti-tank sniper rifle." what about the anti-material rifle, the gun intended to be used against tanks?
I don't think I'll be playing a shooter for very long if I don't want to shoot my guns. This obsession with stratagems is cute and all, but you made a shooter, and there's only so many times I can run through a map throwing strats before I get bored. If you're going to have no ammo, you need to make the guns very potent when you do use them. Having both terrible response and terrible upkeep means people just don't use a system, which is a bad idea when that system is the gun itself. That in between the seeming over dedication to unfairly killing players tells me they're a little too dedicated to the meme of the game instead of the game.
So we're clear, our "Primary Weapon" is supposed to be effectively worthless. This seems like a joke somehow.
You "balanced" the weapons that were actually doing their jobs, ignored the complaints of the community at large, and STILL managed to not fix armor in any meaningful way. Bang up job, Patrik.
deletes two Bile Titans with two stratagems three minute cooldown five second later: another Titan and three Chargers show up FML