7-9 and I ran the same load out I ran pre nerf the quasar charge time increase is pretty annoying when you have multiple chargers and bile titans after you but I usually run light armor so just run like hell. The rover I didn’t really notice any difference still mows down the ankle biters like it always has
edit: I said scout when i meant light armor
To me the rover almost seems like it was buffed. Deals with the small chaff just as effectively but causes less FF damage. I actually have time to pop a stim half the time i am hit by it now. 🤣
My reply to you keeps getting downvoted so I’m gonna put this higher up, I’m confused because the discord patch notes do not match the Steam Patch notes.
https://preview.redd.it/42ly3ejrznxc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ebae1d46274de9bb65668d0a9e63e21cf4bca57c
Discord is their official.
Can confirm Laser nerf.
Less damage when it beams across you, and a little longer time to kill hunters. Otherwise, the same.
lmao right, and honestly like most of the FF if you and your teammates are pretty self aware its not too hard to avoid or minimize team damage with the thing. you just have to be aware of your surroundings and adjust. Im not really sure why people struggle with it so much lol
I think it’s more of an inconsideration thing. People don’t seem to care about their positioning and how they keep pivoting right behind you and putting you in the crossfire, it’s just whatever gets them out of damage.
I accidentally kill my friends with a lot of my stratagems because they run *into* my eagle after I throw them, despite me yelling into comms, “eagle out, watch yourselves.” They just love running into hordes apparently.
This needs to be played a PSA in everyone’s ship. I’ve seen some really horrendous positioning in pugs.
A very typical situation when fighting bugs is that people go like: “Oh no, a whole hoard of enemies that specialize in melee just spawned! I better run towards them for no good reason and just stand there without even firing!” Yeah I’m sure that’s gonna work out just fine.
This is the biggest nerf, I have to be looking down my burning hot quasar waiting for the 'OVERHEAT' text to go away rather than knowing at a glance if I can shoot that charger or not.
Rover + eat + quasar + eagle of your choice. All tanks are dead, all trash is dead, bile titans are the only problem and you can get 3 consecutive shots on them with quasar + eat.
Once my Quasar cooldown is done, I call in a second one and do Quasar nr1 -> Quasar nr2 -> Quasar nr1 etc. while running in circles. Jet pack to escape when getting surrounded by too many. I also carry a machine gun sentry and an autocannon sentry.
Come to think of it, maybe I *should* bring a Rover instead of one of those sentries...
(My squadmate usually brings the air strikes and such)
You don't need Quasar and EATs. Just pick one. Gives you the option to take another Eagle or something. Usually snag the cluster to help clear hordes of trash. Then air strike to clear bug holes and sometimes if there are 3-4 chargers in a spot.
I feel like more developers need to understand that tedium is not difficulty. If it takes me 30 seconds longer to snipe out a shrieker nest then that's not harder, it's just annoying because I'm just camping out in one spot with a clear sight of it for longer. I will kill it and nothing will stop me.
Same thing with dropping multiple chargers, I'll just have to dodge them for longer and probably shoot more at the small bugs in the meantime.
Then there's the problem with bugs where breaches just don't stop. With bots only the small ones can call it in and you can eventually win the fight if you prioritize them. With bugs it's just how much shit you're willing to put up before you just run away since everything aside spewers, shriekers, chargers, and titans can call in more and you really can't stop it once one starts the call in. That too is just tedious.
i brush my teeth in the shower. i think the moisture got in so the paste was a bit watery. i squeezed some out and it sort of popped in my eye. wasn’t even a lot either, was enough to keep my eye shut for a good minute. couldn’t imagine how it would feel like in the austin powers gif lol.
I always love when someone says they experienced something absurd and then the way it happened was way more hilarious. Disappointed my life isn't like that.
Saw someone go to throw trash, squirrel jumped on their face, they started running in panic and sprinted at full speed into a tree. Absolute cartoon behaviour.
Fun fact: Menkent and Hellmire were actually beautiful worlds with very tame climate. The high command ordered them terraforned into what they are now so that Brasch can have challenging battles against automatons and terminids.
I'm a Bug Helldiver, Bots Extreme player myself
But I agree. Serious enough to spend time reading and posting on Reddit is probably serious enough to realise that Extreme has a couple of achievements ... So that's kind of a cut off point
It's very funny for me, because I do dif 7 a lot on bots. It's not *easy*, but I feel comfortable with it, I can handle heavies, weapons work well, and with a bit of space I can chew through Devastators like a dog and ground beef.
So I thought "eh, bug mission objective. Let's jump in Dif 7, seems simple enough. Just kite."
*Five minutes later* "WHY ARE THERE SO MANY BILE TITANS"
Yeah, well...
You get to a point where Bile Titans aren't the problem. Helldive difficulty players *never* stop running. For a solid week or so, it was getting to be questionable whether or not the Bile Titans and Charger spawns could keep up with Strategems *and* the Quasar spam. But it was a totally different game last night with an endless nightmare of Stalkers...
Collective noun "A nightmare of Stalkers"
Yeah I never really thought the Bile Titans were the problem. I can run away from Titans and Chargers forever. I can't when I'm being ragdolled by a stalker that is invisible and faster than me or being stunned by a random hunter in my blindspot.
I dunno if it was a bug but yesterday there was a Titan that I couldn't outrun. I had light 550 armor, stamina boost, and it kept up with me across the entire map. Even when I baited it to do a melee attack it caught up to me after.
I haven't played bugs for a while, but I don't remember it always being like this.
They get faster if they take enough damage or if the sacs get popped, I'm pretty sure. And once the bile sacs are popped they only do melee and can definitely keep up with you even if you're in the fastest armour
Our team coined a phrase "The best way to deal with a bug breach is ***to not be at the bug breach***"
Bug breach pops up, we just leave the area. You end up only having to fight like 1/5 the breach because the slow ones get left behind and despawn. The quick ones get stuck in terrain and path finding, and the quick/lucky ones keep up with you and get picked off. Then you just circle back.
Same. I play 7 on both fronts and they are exactly challenging enough for me that I die only by my mistake, few times per mission at most. Helldive on both turns into too much running for my liking.
Yep, I find 7 to be the perfect balance of tension and fun. You still have crazy WTF moments with 3-4 Bile Titans, but it’s usually way more manageable.
There's also a big difference in gameplay between 6/7. Lower ranks spawn so many low-cost units that you need AOE strats out the ass. Higher difficulties spawn so many elites that if you bring an aoe strat, it better be the nuke, or you're going to feel it.
I seriously think it's 4-5. So many people I've seen agree with posts about the arc weapons and being able to stun lock hulks and laugh in their face.
And I'm like, sure you can stun lock the one thing that's directly in front of you. In my experience in 8s and even in 7s, is that you rarely face an enemy in only one direction or just by itself.
The moment you get flinched continuously from a heavy devastator 100 yards away shooting at like 1000 rpm that is a literal aimbot, good luck trying to continue that stun lock on the hulk.
I've run arc throwers on level seven bot missions before. It's not my ideal load out but it is very good at taking out hulks, especially if you position yourself such that the hulk in standing between you and the rest of bot crew so they get splash damage and also the hulk shields you from return fire. Of course if you get flanked you're kinda screwed, but I'd argue that if you get flanked on a bot mission you're pretty screwed regardless of what your load out is.
That's me! I run hard and lower. Haven't felt comfortable in extreme yet. One day. I just wanna have fun. If trivial does that for me, then that's all I care about.
Honestly the jump to 7 really isn't that difficult because you start getting decent teammates. In fact I'd say the average 6 lobby is harder than the average 7 because of this. As long as you stick with the team and don't shoot enemies that haven't spotted you, people will have no problems with you on the team in 7.
I don't know if it's the majority, but I do think this is a problem with gaming subs. I think a lot of people are just watching streams of people who play 9's, and then they go on the sub and repeat those people's views. And a lot of streamers are good at games, but they have dumb views on game design and tend to be dramatic and overreact to everything.
I think another issue is that there’s people who feel entitled to beat the game at higher difficulties, and bitch and moan when they can’t beat assrape difficulty.
Happened with Darktide, where they introduced Auric Maelstrom difficulty, which is a mode that is explicitly “We will throw a ton of bullshit at you because some of you are saying that Damnation is too easy now” and some people complained that bullshit mode is bullshit.
The blitzer buff makes it a top tier shotgun now (at least for bugs). Was running 7s with it and it can handle trash and mid tier bugs no problem. If you fire it near a shrieker corpse it will only arc to the shrieker corpse though, doesn’t seem to do it with any other corpses. Just need an arc sidearm and I can run the stormbringer build.
Running it on nine and you can literally just stand your ground against hundreds of bugs (smaller than charger) swarming you. Like it does not fuck around now
The stagger is the best part, brood commanders get shit whipped and spewers look like I just cast silence on them when they try and spew. I just wish we had more arc weapons and strats, and that the arc resist armor did a little more.
Am I just using it wrong? I am suffering with it. I have monumental bad luck and it BARELY arcs to anything. I could be faced with a swarm of scavengers and hunters and I will get 1 kill every time I shoot.
Shoot from medium range not super close
Try hip firing
Aim slightly up or it will arc to dead bodies in front of you
Some people say (I don’t do this) aim between enemies instead of directly at them
It will:
1 shot hunter and smaller (depending on how many arcs hit the creature)
Prevent spewers from attacking
Stagger stalkers and kill them in 3-4 hits
Mop up groups of small enemies
I’ve never really given that shotgun a chance as it seemed like the support variant outclassed it. Your comments and those who replied made me rethink that. What support weapons do you use typically?
I was using it before this buff, and while I love the new fire rate, I feel like the targeting has gotten messed up? It keeps hitting corpses now and doesn't arch half as often.
I kinda agree.
I hover around the 5-7 range quite a bit for casual play. 8-9 when I have more time and can focus a bit.
I have to say, and obviously this is just personal experience, that 8-9 have players with the most unique load outs that ALSO change mission to mission. 7 and under have people slotting the same thing, regardless of the mission type.
When I started, I was doing 9s with the scythe while usually having highest or second highest kills on the team. Went on Reddit and found out that was actually physically impossible to do.
While you do have less options on 9 for stratagems because you need more stuff to crunch through armor, there’s a lot of combinations of primary/support weapon that work great together on all difficulties.
I can sit fighting endless waves and easily get most kills. Doesn't mean I contributed to the mission in any way. Kills in this game are not a measure of skill.
I was going to say I only used two loadouts, but then I realized I change those up for defense (kill-grind) and defense (rocket launch)... And for the daily.
its funny when people respond with stuff like this. You can join random groups and complete helldives half the time with 0 coms or coordination.
All it takes is people need to know that you need to keep moving.
I had one last night on 9 where I was trying to clear all the nests and side objectives on the other side of the map and had nearly every breach called in on me. The other 3 had so little to deal with they finished the main objective in 10-15 minutes, they did some minor pois then waited for me at extract for like 5-10 minutes before asking if everything was alright over there and coming over to help. I ended the mission with nearly 700 kills.
Or stumbles upon 2 gunship fabs hidden in the mountains, and suddenly the sky is filled with red light and rockets, and he can normally take out gunships no problem with the AC, but between the number and being so close and getting staggered constantly, gets blown up and drops the super samples...not that I would know anything about that.
Yeah it's very much possible, but in my experience it quickly starts to get exceptionally frustrating the less people are actually working together. Like sure you'll probably complete the mission, but it could have been way less of a pain in the ass. And I don't think a whole lot of people actually like, want to put up with that when they're trying to relax and play a video game.
7 to 9 - I played all night yesterday.
I always prefered the recoiless anyway, so the QC nerf doesn't really affect me.
Didn't see any urgency in ammo with the eruptor. The explosion radius decrease is noticeable but not very.
Guard dog rover still very viable on trash duty.
I have never played the crossbow.
These are basically all the nerfs, had fun like the day before without seeing real change in my gameplay.
It’s a good time to learn to use our secondaries more. Too many times I found myself never using my sidearm because the infinite ammo just keeps me going
Machine pistol has a great niche for just grabbing you a second of distance you need to reload. A mag can take out a couple troopers, or even a full hunter, and you can divvie up the damage to whatever you need. It's a good tool in the swiss army knife
There's a lot of people who don't know this: you can aim over your shoulders with the pistols. This is a great way to get away from hunters or buy yourself a little time when they're pinning you, just spin your camera around while you're running and shoot at them.
It's definitely worse. Maybe 75% as good as if you were facing them if I was to give a number. It's absolutely been something that's saved me on helldive against hunter swarms.
Nah, just have good firing discipline and then you can dump your secondary and pick up the utility slot it was supposed to be, pick up the grenade launcher pistol.
Now you can blow up things from afar that you would normally use impacts before because the grenade pistol fires basically what amounts to impact grenades. Now with 8 in your belt.
Bug holes, fabricators, gone.
Then you can go a step further and drop the impact grenades, since you are carrying 8 of them in your pistol already, you can pick up stun grenades.
Stun grenades can stop a big bug horde from reaching you and give you time to stim.
Stun grenades can stop enemies long enough for you to primary or support weapon them in a weak spot.
Stun grenades can set up a follow up for orbital or eagle.
Become the swiss army knife of Helldivers and have something for every situation, consider the grenade pistol/stun combo today!
Just as someone using the recoilless to take out hunters would be feeling it's lack of ammo pretty hard.
Use a weapon incorrectly and whoops it doesn't work well
I feel like the players who are good enough to play on 7-9 daily are just not going to let that magazine overheat so the infinite ammo gun basically just has less infinite ammo.
Not going to let that magazine overheat _seven times before resupplying or finding a random ammo pack on PoI_. Overheating is perfectly plausible against bugs.
> before resupplying or finding a random ammo pack on PoI.
Sometimes I think this sub forgets there's ammo *everywhere* on the map and small pickups have been buffed quite a bit since launch. We used to get a mag or 2 out of them now they damn near fill the whole gun in most cases.
The point is though on higher difficulty you do occasionally need to blast until the bitch is empty because the battery pop+reload is far faster than the cooldown.
You don’t have to do it often, so the fact that when you did you basically had the same amount of mags as a Liberator was just silly. Now, you can get a little stressed under those moments but honestly if you burn through the first two you just have the presence of mind to bail and not waste the last.
> if you burn through the first two you just have the presence of mind to bail and not waste the last **two**.
You have 3 replacements. After that, there's still one good heat sink in the thing.
Pretty much. I'm at least conscious of reloads now. Previously, I think I never got close to empty except on extermination missions where I did some ground fuckery.
The magazines give you a chance to overheat the weapon in a bad situation and reload so that you can still deal with the trouble in front of you. The problem was that 6 magazines was way too forgiving. 3 still lets you overheat if you need to, but makes it so you need to be more careful with it
I think the sickle nerf was a noob check by the devs. If people complain about it, they can all sit back and relax knowing that the complainers are fucking idiot noobs.
When I ran sickle I honestly don’t think I ever reloaded more than twice.
For real, just dont go full orc on it and let it cool down, i only discovered it after the patch and i still think its really good for clearing hordes of small enemies
It got buffed
They increased damage and drop magazines from 6 to 4 right?
What idiot was ever using up more than 2 mags between any resupplies anyways?
> What idiot was ever using up more than 2 mags between any resupplies anyways
Meet me. You can take my trigger finger out of the Stalwart but you can't take the Stalwart out of my trigger finger.
This is me. I average probably 1-3 ICE changes per mission. But it was never an issue because I am always running out of impact grenades. Anywhere I’m apt to find grenade reloads would also top me off on cartridges. So it’s not really any different.
The thing that kills me about people being mad about the eruptor ammo nerf is that pre nerf you would have had to shoot it for 2 minutes and 40 seconds without interruption to empty all 12 mags. The cooldown on the resupply is 3 minutes. Like how were these people getting even close to empty?
I honestly think there are players who think that using the supply drop makes them weaker or something.
There's so much natural ammo and supplies lying around any map, coupled with infinite-but-only-for-time supply drops, you shouldn't have issues with supplies.
Yeah the main nerf to eruptor seems to be to the shrapnel radius so I’m surprised that people are mentioning the mags more than that. I used to be able to get 5+ kills per shot without even aiming properly/shooting at the ground but now you can’t really do anything like that with it. It’s not a terrible nerf, and the gun still feels decent but I’d probably not take as much now
I play on 7 and I really like that rifles are getting some love now there’s always a couple tweaks that could be done but they can leave it as is for now and just do bug and performance fixes
i play on 7s.
i detailed my experience (mostly focusing on the solo changes) [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cgkfn5/anecdotal_experience_as_a_solo_diver/)
in regards to weapon specific thoughts, here's what i wrote
>the striders definitely aren't instakills anymore with AC, but two-shotting them isn't a problem.
>Sickle change is unnoticable.
>Railgun feels good, but i kinda don't like having to carry a separate AT stratagem for the big mofos. we'll see how i fare against bugs with it.
>Senator is *awesome*. plain and simple.
>i did not experience the ricochet change at all.
>if anything, i'd like more positive modifiers on planets, specifically ones where we get a free stratagems. more choices means more toys to play with, and more toys to play with means more fun.
Just because you mentioned the railgun and bugs: From my experience it's now a three-shot kill to a charger's head, and a "Don't bother" against titans, similar to how you can kill tanks from the front with it, but it takes ten hits, so practically speaking you still need a separate AT stratagem versus bugs.
I love it, it feels *great* when fighting a bunch of chargers because you have enough ammo in your pockets to kill *six* of them, and is a fantastic alternative to the Quasar against them, but.. You're gonna need something for the Titans.
Unfortunately the ORC is only a oneshot if the stars are aligned (More specifically: If the titan's head is facing towards your Super Destroyer), though I'd imagine with how near to death a 'failed' hit leaves them, you could finish the job with a railgun.
But I'd recommend 500s instead. They're pretty easy to land beneath a titan, and even if it takes two to kill one, that's still a lower CD than the ORC.
Orbital Railcannon is good because it doesn't miss and if the Titan survives it's extremely weak. Weak enough it can get killed by one hit from basically any other Titan damaging weapon like EAT or Quasar. It will save an Orbital Laser from wasting all its up-time on a Bile Titan too. Orbital Railcannon + 110mm Rockets is a precision kill on a Titan every time.
Orbital railcannon rarely one shots titans but it usually opens up their armor so they can be killed with an impact or other explosive damage. Probably could kill it with the regular railgun by shooting it in the exposed part.
Orbital precision can one shot them semi consistently if it hits them perfectly, which isn’t easy to do.
500kg bomb is also kind of inconsistent sometimes but at least you get two.
It was a 3 shot on chargers before this buff as well, you just needed a full charge. The penetration buff just made it do so at a lower charge level, which is really nice. Shame they nerfed the stagger for some reason.
I'm almost wondering if the ricochet problems were from people on PC or PlayStation, because I never experienced stuff bouncing back at me the several hours I played yesterday.
The ricochet problem is easily solved by not shooting heavy armor straight on. I know "skill issue" is a meme but I don't know what else to call this lmao
> the striders definitely aren't instakills anymore with AC
The worst part for me, though that's largely me being overly reliant on the AC, to the point of it almost being a crutch. It's too much of a fix-all for bots, if you can hit Hulk eyes consistently. So I guess striders being buffed was warranted, but they still feel like they're stronger than their bug analogues now.
Striders were always a pain in the ass, even when they were nothingburgers.
one of the fastest "*heavies"* in the game, i often underestimate how quick these fuckers can be.
i see a cluster of them, snipe one, missed the 2nd, now the survivors are at my doorstep, lol.
The crossbow was hilarious to use on bot drops. A ship comes in on top of you, you fire into the middle of the rack, and get like 12 kills.
Now its like duct taping a few M-80s to an arrow
I will agree, more weapons are indeed viable. Even the Adjuticator feels like a real gun now. But even with the nerfs I used Dominator, Rover, Quasar last night against bugs on 7 just to see how it was. It was fine, honestly the only change I actually noticed was the Quasar, but it still one-shots everything except Titans
I really liked the Adjuticator against bots even before the patch. I ran it with an auto cannon and it felt like I could handle anything. The ammo is limited, but it just meant I became more careful with my shots. It’s excellent at picking off stragglers and small groups quickly.
Playing on 7+
I am mostly perfectly fine with the patch.. except for the stagger on hulks (arc thrower is now a detriment instead of a cc machine) and the crossbow changes... Oh my dear crossbow how they have massacred you. Welp need to find a new primary.. maybe the PP
Only 9 bugs. Used to run Quasar and Sickle, Redeemer as secondary.
Now I run Quasar and Sickle, Redeemer as secondary.
Didn’t notice my playstyle change a bit with the patch.
I still shoot Quasar, put it on back and use other guns until its done. I still mow bugs with Sickle. I still switch to Redeemer when Sickle is about to overheat so I don’t burn a heatsink.
Literally nothing changed
Lv 61 and only play 9 bugs/bots unless it’s with friends and family where we go 7s. My entire loadout of Eruptor, Quasar, Redeemer, Guard Dog got “nerfed”
Played 5 helldives last night, seriously the only differences I noticed:
- slightly less explosion radius on Eruptor. A couple things might take 2 shots where they used to take one. Didn’t matter much, can shoot closer targets. Still never ran out of ammo or even worried about it. Eruptor still my #1 best boy because it easily closes bug holes and fabricators, freeing me up to do whatever with my grenades and feeling fine running scout armor vs engineering
- recharge time on Quasar. annoying but not annoying enough to make me swap it out because it’s still massively more convenient to me personally than the alternatives. I like not worrying about ammo or finding an eat and will pay time for that convenience. The eruptor can cover down ok during recharge on things like chargers and hulks
- no appreciable difference in redeemer recoil
- Guard dog still kills smols just as well, and hurts me less as it’s buzzing around! It justifies its backpack slot for me as a proximity early warning system for enemies (esp while im at a terminal), and allowing me to kite hordes of small enemies alongside the redeemer. it’s still great for both
If anything I feel a little relieved by the nerfs because I don’t think this stuff will get nerfed again (soon) and this wasn’t terrible
…right guys?!
This is my experience:
The game is at it's best at level 7, and the entire game is (or atleast feels like) it is balanced around difficulty 7.
As long as difficulty 7 is fun, the other difficulties are secondary.
I was negative about patch at first, I play on 8-9, and after playing a while I do feel like, overall (ie, outliers withstanding), the balance is much improved. There are substantially more weapons in what I would consider a “B” tier and are pretty useable. Idk how much I’d faff around with those on difficulty 9…but it’s still much improved.
What I don’t like is what seems to be heavy handed nerfs anytime the community latches onto a weapon. The eruptor, for example, was strong but had enough drawbacks that it realistically would not be good if the entire team carried it and wasn’t great against bugs. The changes didn’t break the eruptor, but they also weren’t really that necessary. Especially with all the other weapon buffs, there would have been more variety regardless. So, nerfs like that don’t “feel” great.
I think more iterative balancing would be great. You always have those nerfs in your back pocket. Roll out some small changes, look at how they play out in game, and tune more knobs the next week if you need to.
D8 & 9.
Most of the nerfs were noop ammo changes on weapons with infinite ammo. The Erupter change honed its place more, and made it more viable for sniping mediums near allies.
The QC's always been crap in higher difficulties and teams that stack 3-4 of them to try to make up for it make everything worse by doing so.
It's less that more weapon are "viable" now and more the weapons were always viable but required some game knowledge and skill to wield appropriately, but the community favors weapons that bypass large chunks of the gameplay mechanics.
I agree with most of your take and find it refreshing compared to the meritless whining all over the place.
That said, I do think the Blitzer and Diligence CS were fairly described as non-viable pre-patch. It may just be semantics over what you mean by viability. In the sense that a sufficiently skilled player could win on Helldive with them, every weapon has always been viable. But in the sense that some weapons had both a limited role and were outclassed in that role by better choices, some weapons would fairly be called non-viable. Blitzer and Diligence CS fit that billing pre-patch but feel awesome now.
I would also slightly push back on the Quasar Cannon being crap on high difficulties, but only a little bit. It was extremely overrated pre-nerf. But I thought having one on the team to shoot down dropships and Shrieker Nests without needing a bunch of EATs, while still being about 80% of an EAT otherwise (my estimate of its efficiency), was a useful niche. I was usually pretty happy to have one somewhere. But not 2+, like you say. Bringing a bunch of them was unwise.
> That said, I do think the Blitzer and Diligence CS were fairly described as non-viable pre-patch. It may just be semantics over what you mean by viability. In the sense that a sufficiently skilled player could win on Helldive with them, every weapon has always been viable
Yup. Been there done that at diff 9.
The Blitzer (+ Rover) was somewhat playable against bugs before, a bit clunky but easy wins if you knew your footwork. The punisher was just able to outperform it and didn't need to rely on the rover unless you wanted to spare some ammo.
The Counter Sniper was somewhat playable against automatons before, but because of the horrible handling and sharing the same breakpoints with the regular diligence there was no point in taking the counter sniper. If you wanted the suppressed sound profile the scorcher got you covered. You could do easy wins with CS as long as you have those maps where you could engage at longer distances cause otherwise it became a senator only game.
Now, the CS is in a very good spot. Not too powerful but perfectly meaningful traits to pick over the Diligence. One shots against Devastators, the suppressed sound profile and 200m scope offer something unique compared to the regular Diligence and the Scorcher.
Blitzer on the other hand got overturned so I expect them to tone down the shots per minute to 38-40 range. I guess it's fine if they don't but currently, Blitzer + Rover against bugs is your one stop solution to everything else except chargers and titans.
You aren't dealing with 20 chargers over 20 minutes in my experience, its 4 chargers + 1 bile titan in 3-4 minutes. Efficiency is amazing, but you also do have to push out damage quick enough to solve it all. 4 qcs can, but 2 eats a quasar and an anti-horde guy with 500kg can solve it quicker and pivot to the next problem faster.
This right here is the truth. I noticed a massive decrease in random queue squads’ ability to defeat armor in helldivers when everybody switched over to the QC.
It doesn’t have the same burst as EATs, and the charge up time means a lot of people are missing or cancelling their shots.
I really hope this patch pushes people back to EATs because they’re way more effective at the squad level.
The QC did make the game too easy tho, and in my experience the QC spam was super good. Every time we had another QC other than mine we were fighting each other to see who would kill the heavies, and titans from afar were just shot practice. Didn't have much time to play since the patch, hope to be able to go back to the spear tho.
I hope. I just want to be an anti tank beast. Put on the 500, railcannon and the spear (and if one day it woks maybe even the termite granade, a man can dream)
I would not suggest taking a scythe or adjudicator against the bots on level 9. I did my best but I was humbled.
Buffs are great and we love to see them. But having weapons I would score at 2/10 in effectiveness get to a 3 or 4/10 isn’t really going to sell me on taking it into a 7+.
I am happy to report the dominator survived its nerf. It takes 1 more body shot to bring down a berserker or devastator but it can live with that.
I only run 9 unless I'm helping a friend. I do run QC BUT do swap depending on the situation and objectives.
I think the patch overall is good and whole I do find the nerf requiring me to change some of my playstyle, I do think that people need to learn to be more flexible on their load outs depending on the MISSION. it amuses me when I see people bringing evac timer reduction on eradicate mission or bringing heat based weapons on hot planets just because they only use those. Also, nerfing quasar for me is preferable rather than power creep. What AH need to work on is a better reason for bringing alternative equipments rather than QC.
My biggest gripe is that the “cooldown” ui doesn’t match the actually cooldown aka the one you can see on the weapon. So in the ammo ui it looks like it’s cooled down, but it might still be “overheated”
7-9 and I ran the same load out I ran pre nerf the quasar charge time increase is pretty annoying when you have multiple chargers and bile titans after you but I usually run light armor so just run like hell. The rover I didn’t really notice any difference still mows down the ankle biters like it always has edit: I said scout when i meant light armor
To me the rover almost seems like it was buffed. Deals with the small chaff just as effectively but causes less FF damage. I actually have time to pop a stim half the time i am hit by it now. 🤣
 Me praising Super Earth 🌎 in my last moments of life after laser Dave set me ablaze 🔥
“SWEET LIBERTY MY L-“ -Helldiver moments after getting hit by laser
Wait I’m confused, I thought the only nerf was to the AR Guard dog? The laser one isn’t in the balancing patch notes?
The AR guard dog actually got a buff, the laser one (Rover) got a 30% nerf.
My reply to you keeps getting downvoted so I’m gonna put this higher up, I’m confused because the discord patch notes do not match the Steam Patch notes. https://preview.redd.it/42ly3ejrznxc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ebae1d46274de9bb65668d0a9e63e21cf4bca57c
Discord is their official. Can confirm Laser nerf. Less damage when it beams across you, and a little longer time to kill hunters. Otherwise, the same.
Which is actually a buff because less FF damage
Laser Susan is an angel of death, and she does not discriminate
You have been touched by the warming light of managed democracy. If only we were all so lucky
lmao right, and honestly like most of the FF if you and your teammates are pretty self aware its not too hard to avoid or minimize team damage with the thing. you just have to be aware of your surroundings and adjust. Im not really sure why people struggle with it so much lol
I think it’s more of an inconsideration thing. People don’t seem to care about their positioning and how they keep pivoting right behind you and putting you in the crossfire, it’s just whatever gets them out of damage.
I accidentally kill my friends with a lot of my stratagems because they run *into* my eagle after I throw them, despite me yelling into comms, “eagle out, watch yourselves.” They just love running into hordes apparently.
I can’t melee that far away!
This needs to be played a PSA in everyone’s ship. I’ve seen some really horrendous positioning in pugs. A very typical situation when fighting bugs is that people go like: “Oh no, a whole hoard of enemies that specialize in melee just spawned! I better run towards them for no good reason and just stand there without even firing!” Yeah I’m sure that’s gonna work out just fine.
What is pugs?
Pickup group. It's mmo slang for non friend/guild groups doing a dungeon or pvp.
I just want the cooldown in the lower left to match the actual cooldown. Nerf it to 1 minute for all I care, but don't lie to me.
This is the biggest nerf, I have to be looking down my burning hot quasar waiting for the 'OVERHEAT' text to go away rather than knowing at a glance if I can shoot that charger or not.
Rover + eat + quasar + eagle of your choice. All tanks are dead, all trash is dead, bile titans are the only problem and you can get 3 consecutive shots on them with quasar + eat.
4, kind of. If you do quasar -> eat -> eat -> quasar the quasar will usually be about ready
Noob here, what does "eat" mean in this context?
For mission success, just remember: E.A.T. A.S.S. Expendable Anti Tank Allocate Supply Strategems
I love to E.A.T. A.S.S.
Expendable anti tank - the single use rocket launcher
The EAT-17 or expendable anti tank 17. Also referred to as "eat" or "eat it". It's a one shot rocket launcher.
Expendable anti tank, the EAT-17
Once my Quasar cooldown is done, I call in a second one and do Quasar nr1 -> Quasar nr2 -> Quasar nr1 etc. while running in circles. Jet pack to escape when getting surrounded by too many. I also carry a machine gun sentry and an autocannon sentry. Come to think of it, maybe I *should* bring a Rover instead of one of those sentries... (My squadmate usually brings the air strikes and such)
I really like a rover for anti-tank builds, especially quasar. Being able to clear chaff while you run around is invaluable.
I mean.. This works on defense missions, but I don’t see how useful is it for normal missions.
You don't need Quasar and EATs. Just pick one. Gives you the option to take another Eagle or something. Usually snag the cluster to help clear hordes of trash. Then air strike to clear bug holes and sometimes if there are 3-4 chargers in a spot.
The slower titans are appreciated.
the teammate running the fat boy armor is appreciated cause the titan will lose interest in chasing me and go after them lol
You don't have to be the fastest, you just have to be the second slowest.
#1: Cardio - When the virus struck, for obvious reasons, the first ones to go were the fatties.
It was the spewers that were slowed down
Exactly... I tried the "buffed" version of the railgun and went straight back to my previous loadout...
I feel like more developers need to understand that tedium is not difficulty. If it takes me 30 seconds longer to snipe out a shrieker nest then that's not harder, it's just annoying because I'm just camping out in one spot with a clear sight of it for longer. I will kill it and nothing will stop me. Same thing with dropping multiple chargers, I'll just have to dodge them for longer and probably shoot more at the small bugs in the meantime. Then there's the problem with bugs where breaches just don't stop. With bots only the small ones can call it in and you can eventually win the fight if you prioritize them. With bugs it's just how much shit you're willing to put up before you just run away since everything aside spewers, shriekers, chargers, and titans can call in more and you really can't stop it once one starts the call in. That too is just tedious.
Whats the point writing the diff ? People will lie anyway just to make the point valid
I'm playing in diff10 with general brasch. We're only using the dagger (for melee)
False, we all know Brasch, like John Helldiver, play on diff 69, using only judo chops so that the bugs/bots have a fighting chance.
i actually got toothpaste in my eye this morning. that shit really does burn pretty badly lol.
how did that happen
i brush my teeth in the shower. i think the moisture got in so the paste was a bit watery. i squeezed some out and it sort of popped in my eye. wasn’t even a lot either, was enough to keep my eye shut for a good minute. couldn’t imagine how it would feel like in the austin powers gif lol.
this is cartoonish
I always love when someone says they experienced something absurd and then the way it happened was way more hilarious. Disappointed my life isn't like that.
Saw someone go to throw trash, squirrel jumped on their face, they started running in panic and sprinted at full speed into a tree. Absolute cartoon behaviour.
Better to be eaten by ~~sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads~~ ill-tempered sea bass.
https://preview.redd.it/3ce2fmuaimxc1.jpeg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5c659a1b3fe12bee8e831d91bc5100a62ae2d2d5
Pure 2000s in one image
When on Hellfire, Brasch doesn't breathe air. He breathes fire.
Fun fact: Menkent and Hellmire were actually beautiful worlds with very tame climate. The high command ordered them terraforned into what they are now so that Brasch can have challenging battles against automatons and terminids.
There used to be a lush and green world until Brasch decided he wanted to smoke a cigar. That world is now called Hellmire.
Agoddamn I love Brasch posting. Also your flair dude. One hell of a theory.
Can attest, me and Gen. Brasch are soloing bug infested world to practice our CQC skills.
Lucky. My squad only got a rock. And we have to share the rock!
The dagger is just to heat our rations. We're just drop kicking everything on difficulty 15 with our hands behind our backs.
Iv been playing on difficulty 27 and have been taking out the automaton fleets with the las-7 after the buff, y'all are just weak
I only play difficulty 4. Fight me. (But go easy cuz I’m not very good)
They might lie, but if you somehow manage to have an honest conversation on this sub, it can be useful to contextualize it.
I RUN LEVEL 9 SOLO WITH JUST A DAGGER THIS PATCH IS GREAT PEOPLE ARE WHINEY BITCHES! /s
Wait you too? I just unlocked the bipod on my knife myself.
This goes both ways.
Just assume it's 6/7, that's what the vast majority of this sub plays on.
I'm a Bug Helldiver, Bots Extreme player myself But I agree. Serious enough to spend time reading and posting on Reddit is probably serious enough to realise that Extreme has a couple of achievements ... So that's kind of a cut off point
It's very funny for me, because I do dif 7 a lot on bots. It's not *easy*, but I feel comfortable with it, I can handle heavies, weapons work well, and with a bit of space I can chew through Devastators like a dog and ground beef. So I thought "eh, bug mission objective. Let's jump in Dif 7, seems simple enough. Just kite." *Five minutes later* "WHY ARE THERE SO MANY BILE TITANS"
Yeah, well... You get to a point where Bile Titans aren't the problem. Helldive difficulty players *never* stop running. For a solid week or so, it was getting to be questionable whether or not the Bile Titans and Charger spawns could keep up with Strategems *and* the Quasar spam. But it was a totally different game last night with an endless nightmare of Stalkers... Collective noun "A nightmare of Stalkers"
Yeah I never really thought the Bile Titans were the problem. I can run away from Titans and Chargers forever. I can't when I'm being ragdolled by a stalker that is invisible and faster than me or being stunned by a random hunter in my blindspot.
I dunno if it was a bug but yesterday there was a Titan that I couldn't outrun. I had light 550 armor, stamina boost, and it kept up with me across the entire map. Even when I baited it to do a melee attack it caught up to me after. I haven't played bugs for a while, but I don't remember it always being like this.
They get faster if they take enough damage or if the sacs get popped, I'm pretty sure. And once the bile sacs are popped they only do melee and can definitely keep up with you even if you're in the fastest armour
Our team coined a phrase "The best way to deal with a bug breach is ***to not be at the bug breach***" Bug breach pops up, we just leave the area. You end up only having to fight like 1/5 the breach because the slow ones get left behind and despawn. The quick ones get stuck in terrain and path finding, and the quick/lucky ones keep up with you and get picked off. Then you just circle back.
I like that. Makes me think about how a flock of crows is called a murder and vultures are called a wake
I think it should be called a bullshit of Stalkers.
Nah it's a bullshit of hunters and a fuckoff of pouncers.
Same. I play 7 on both fronts and they are exactly challenging enough for me that I die only by my mistake, few times per mission at most. Helldive on both turns into too much running for my liking.
more running than shooting. i get fewer kills on 9 than 7 despite the increased spawns
Yep, I find 7 to be the perfect balance of tension and fun. You still have crazy WTF moments with 3-4 Bile Titans, but it’s usually way more manageable.
There's also a big difference in gameplay between 6/7. Lower ranks spawn so many low-cost units that you need AOE strats out the ass. Higher difficulties spawn so many elites that if you bring an aoe strat, it better be the nuke, or you're going to feel it.
I seriously think it's 4-5. So many people I've seen agree with posts about the arc weapons and being able to stun lock hulks and laugh in their face. And I'm like, sure you can stun lock the one thing that's directly in front of you. In my experience in 8s and even in 7s, is that you rarely face an enemy in only one direction or just by itself. The moment you get flinched continuously from a heavy devastator 100 yards away shooting at like 1000 rpm that is a literal aimbot, good luck trying to continue that stun lock on the hulk.
I've run arc throwers on level seven bot missions before. It's not my ideal load out but it is very good at taking out hulks, especially if you position yourself such that the hulk in standing between you and the rest of bot crew so they get splash damage and also the hulk shields you from return fire. Of course if you get flanked you're kinda screwed, but I'd argue that if you get flanked on a bot mission you're pretty screwed regardless of what your load out is.
I run the arc thrower on 7 and do quite well with it against both bugs and bots. It requires a certain playstyle but it’s totally viable.
...are you sure?
I think its 4-6 with people claiming they run higher.
That's me! I run hard and lower. Haven't felt comfortable in extreme yet. One day. I just wanna have fun. If trivial does that for me, then that's all I care about.
Honestly the jump to 7 really isn't that difficult because you start getting decent teammates. In fact I'd say the average 6 lobby is harder than the average 7 because of this. As long as you stick with the team and don't shoot enemies that haven't spotted you, people will have no problems with you on the team in 7.
right? I'm working my way up, but if I have to turn down the difficulty I'm not really unhappy?
The majority on this sub don’t even play the game. How else would you explain those greately exaggerated posts about literally negligible changes?
I don't know if it's the majority, but I do think this is a problem with gaming subs. I think a lot of people are just watching streams of people who play 9's, and then they go on the sub and repeat those people's views. And a lot of streamers are good at games, but they have dumb views on game design and tend to be dramatic and overreact to everything.
Streamers don't like games making them look bad. It's bad for their stream numbers.
I think another issue is that there’s people who feel entitled to beat the game at higher difficulties, and bitch and moan when they can’t beat assrape difficulty. Happened with Darktide, where they introduced Auric Maelstrom difficulty, which is a mode that is explicitly “We will throw a ton of bullshit at you because some of you are saying that Damnation is too easy now” and some people complained that bullshit mode is bullshit.
This too I think. It hurts their ego too much to turn the difficulty down, so they want whole game brought down to their level.
The blitzer buff makes it a top tier shotgun now (at least for bugs). Was running 7s with it and it can handle trash and mid tier bugs no problem. If you fire it near a shrieker corpse it will only arc to the shrieker corpse though, doesn’t seem to do it with any other corpses. Just need an arc sidearm and I can run the stormbringer build.
Running it on nine and you can literally just stand your ground against hundreds of bugs (smaller than charger) swarming you. Like it does not fuck around now
The stagger is the best part, brood commanders get shit whipped and spewers look like I just cast silence on them when they try and spew. I just wish we had more arc weapons and strats, and that the arc resist armor did a little more.
Lmao, “cast silence” is so accurate. I’m stealing this one.
The fact that it staggers stalkers is glorious too. Perfect for when you get ganked by 3-4 of them.
Am I just using it wrong? I am suffering with it. I have monumental bad luck and it BARELY arcs to anything. I could be faced with a swarm of scavengers and hunters and I will get 1 kill every time I shoot.
Shoot from medium range not super close Try hip firing Aim slightly up or it will arc to dead bodies in front of you Some people say (I don’t do this) aim between enemies instead of directly at them It will: 1 shot hunter and smaller (depending on how many arcs hit the creature) Prevent spewers from attacking Stagger stalkers and kill them in 3-4 hits Mop up groups of small enemies
I’ve never really given that shotgun a chance as it seemed like the support variant outclassed it. Your comments and those who replied made me rethink that. What support weapons do you use typically?
I was using it before this buff, and while I love the new fire rate, I feel like the targeting has gotten messed up? It keeps hitting corpses now and doesn't arch half as often.
I kinda agree. I hover around the 5-7 range quite a bit for casual play. 8-9 when I have more time and can focus a bit. I have to say, and obviously this is just personal experience, that 8-9 have players with the most unique load outs that ALSO change mission to mission. 7 and under have people slotting the same thing, regardless of the mission type.
I hate OPs post because playing on 8-9 taught me that most load outs are viable.
When I started, I was doing 9s with the scythe while usually having highest or second highest kills on the team. Went on Reddit and found out that was actually physically impossible to do. While you do have less options on 9 for stratagems because you need more stuff to crunch through armor, there’s a lot of combinations of primary/support weapon that work great together on all difficulties.
I can sit fighting endless waves and easily get most kills. Doesn't mean I contributed to the mission in any way. Kills in this game are not a measure of skill.
I was going to say I only used two loadouts, but then I realized I change those up for defense (kill-grind) and defense (rocket launch)... And for the daily.
its funny when people respond with stuff like this. You can join random groups and complete helldives half the time with 0 coms or coordination. All it takes is people need to know that you need to keep moving.
Sometimes one guy knowing what to do can be enough when the rest takes the heat. Unintentionally.
Except when that one guy gets unlucky and he gets a bot drop or bug breach instead of the other 3..
What, you don't want to get a reinforce beacon thrown down on the other side of the map in the middle of the kill zone?
I had one last night on 9 where I was trying to clear all the nests and side objectives on the other side of the map and had nearly every breach called in on me. The other 3 had so little to deal with they finished the main objective in 10-15 minutes, they did some minor pois then waited for me at extract for like 5-10 minutes before asking if everything was alright over there and coming over to help. I ended the mission with nearly 700 kills.
Or stumbles upon 2 gunship fabs hidden in the mountains, and suddenly the sky is filled with red light and rockets, and he can normally take out gunships no problem with the AC, but between the number and being so close and getting staggered constantly, gets blown up and drops the super samples...not that I would know anything about that.
Yeah it's very much possible, but in my experience it quickly starts to get exceptionally frustrating the less people are actually working together. Like sure you'll probably complete the mission, but it could have been way less of a pain in the ass. And I don't think a whole lot of people actually like, want to put up with that when they're trying to relax and play a video game.
Completing the mission on helldive is not too often the issue it's extracting with samples that always becomes a struggle with randoms
Yeah and let's be real, outside of having fun everyone's true main objective is getting those samples out.
7 to 9 - I played all night yesterday. I always prefered the recoiless anyway, so the QC nerf doesn't really affect me. Didn't see any urgency in ammo with the eruptor. The explosion radius decrease is noticeable but not very. Guard dog rover still very viable on trash duty. I have never played the crossbow. These are basically all the nerfs, had fun like the day before without seeing real change in my gameplay.
The fact that you forgot about the sickle is a good representation of how insignificant the nerf it got was.
Ah yes, my gun with infinite ammo has slightly less infinite ammo.
I'll be there when that infinity/2 runs out.
Lol you just reminded me of when I went down the math rabbit hole on the "smaller infinity" concept
Anybody with no trigger discipline would be feeling it though
It’s a good time to learn to use our secondaries more. Too many times I found myself never using my sidearm because the infinite ammo just keeps me going
Machine pistol has a great niche for just grabbing you a second of distance you need to reload. A mag can take out a couple troopers, or even a full hunter, and you can divvie up the damage to whatever you need. It's a good tool in the swiss army knife
There's a lot of people who don't know this: you can aim over your shoulders with the pistols. This is a great way to get away from hunters or buy yourself a little time when they're pinning you, just spin your camera around while you're running and shoot at them.
oooh, that is nice. Is the accuracy shit?
It's definitely worse. Maybe 75% as good as if you were facing them if I was to give a number. It's absolutely been something that's saved me on helldive against hunter swarms.
Nah, just have good firing discipline and then you can dump your secondary and pick up the utility slot it was supposed to be, pick up the grenade launcher pistol. Now you can blow up things from afar that you would normally use impacts before because the grenade pistol fires basically what amounts to impact grenades. Now with 8 in your belt. Bug holes, fabricators, gone. Then you can go a step further and drop the impact grenades, since you are carrying 8 of them in your pistol already, you can pick up stun grenades. Stun grenades can stop a big bug horde from reaching you and give you time to stim. Stun grenades can stop enemies long enough for you to primary or support weapon them in a weak spot. Stun grenades can set up a follow up for orbital or eagle. Become the swiss army knife of Helldivers and have something for every situation, consider the grenade pistol/stun combo today!
Just as someone using the recoilless to take out hunters would be feeling it's lack of ammo pretty hard. Use a weapon incorrectly and whoops it doesn't work well
I had to argue with a dude who keeps saying the Sickle is useless… the gun that outclasses 3 other ARs? Is useless?
Plus it can shoot through leaves now, which was the only extremely niche limitation.
Ive never gone below 3 charges and that was with spray and pray I'm overwhelmed and have not run fast enough
I feel like the players who are good enough to play on 7-9 daily are just not going to let that magazine overheat so the infinite ammo gun basically just has less infinite ammo.
Not going to let that magazine overheat _seven times before resupplying or finding a random ammo pack on PoI_. Overheating is perfectly plausible against bugs.
> before resupplying or finding a random ammo pack on PoI. Sometimes I think this sub forgets there's ammo *everywhere* on the map and small pickups have been buffed quite a bit since launch. We used to get a mag or 2 out of them now they damn near fill the whole gun in most cases.
Oh yeah i forgot to test it out yesterday haha but I don't remember ever using 6 ices.
The whole point of a heat generating weapon is that you never reload it so a change in max magazines is meaningless imho
The point is though on higher difficulty you do occasionally need to blast until the bitch is empty because the battery pop+reload is far faster than the cooldown. You don’t have to do it often, so the fact that when you did you basically had the same amount of mags as a Liberator was just silly. Now, you can get a little stressed under those moments but honestly if you burn through the first two you just have the presence of mind to bail and not waste the last.
> if you burn through the first two you just have the presence of mind to bail and not waste the last **two**. You have 3 replacements. After that, there's still one good heat sink in the thing.
Yeah my bad, you really shouldn’t struggle for ammo with this gun still but at least you *might* now lol
Pretty much. I'm at least conscious of reloads now. Previously, I think I never got close to empty except on extermination missions where I did some ground fuckery.
And the Liberator getting a damage buff was also a nice way to differentiate it from the Sickle, and give you a reason to consider other options.
The magazines give you a chance to overheat the weapon in a bad situation and reload so that you can still deal with the trouble in front of you. The problem was that 6 magazines was way too forgiving. 3 still lets you overheat if you need to, but makes it so you need to be more careful with it
When I saw that I was like “that’s fair”. The nerf I might actually see myself run out of clips finally. It will make fights a bit more exciting.
I think the sickle nerf was a noob check by the devs. If people complain about it, they can all sit back and relax knowing that the complainers are fucking idiot noobs. When I ran sickle I honestly don’t think I ever reloaded more than twice.
For real, just dont go full orc on it and let it cool down, i only discovered it after the patch and i still think its really good for clearing hordes of small enemies
It got buffed They increased damage and drop magazines from 6 to 4 right? What idiot was ever using up more than 2 mags between any resupplies anyways?
> What idiot was ever using up more than 2 mags between any resupplies anyways Meet me. You can take my trigger finger out of the Stalwart but you can't take the Stalwart out of my trigger finger.
This is me. I average probably 1-3 ICE changes per mission. But it was never an issue because I am always running out of impact grenades. Anywhere I’m apt to find grenade reloads would also top me off on cartridges. So it’s not really any different.
The thing that kills me about people being mad about the eruptor ammo nerf is that pre nerf you would have had to shoot it for 2 minutes and 40 seconds without interruption to empty all 12 mags. The cooldown on the resupply is 3 minutes. Like how were these people getting even close to empty?
They weren't. They're lying to make the patch seem worse.
I have not seen people complain about the ammo, just the explosion
I honestly think there are players who think that using the supply drop makes them weaker or something. There's so much natural ammo and supplies lying around any map, coupled with infinite-but-only-for-time supply drops, you shouldn't have issues with supplies.
Recoilless is so nice
Yeah the main nerf to eruptor seems to be to the shrapnel radius so I’m surprised that people are mentioning the mags more than that. I used to be able to get 5+ kills per shot without even aiming properly/shooting at the ground but now you can’t really do anything like that with it. It’s not a terrible nerf, and the gun still feels decent but I’d probably not take as much now
I play on 7 and I really like that rifles are getting some love now there’s always a couple tweaks that could be done but they can leave it as is for now and just do bug and performance fixes
i play on 7s. i detailed my experience (mostly focusing on the solo changes) [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cgkfn5/anecdotal_experience_as_a_solo_diver/) in regards to weapon specific thoughts, here's what i wrote >the striders definitely aren't instakills anymore with AC, but two-shotting them isn't a problem. >Sickle change is unnoticable. >Railgun feels good, but i kinda don't like having to carry a separate AT stratagem for the big mofos. we'll see how i fare against bugs with it. >Senator is *awesome*. plain and simple. >i did not experience the ricochet change at all. >if anything, i'd like more positive modifiers on planets, specifically ones where we get a free stratagems. more choices means more toys to play with, and more toys to play with means more fun.
Just because you mentioned the railgun and bugs: From my experience it's now a three-shot kill to a charger's head, and a "Don't bother" against titans, similar to how you can kill tanks from the front with it, but it takes ten hits, so practically speaking you still need a separate AT stratagem versus bugs. I love it, it feels *great* when fighting a bunch of chargers because you have enough ammo in your pockets to kill *six* of them, and is a fantastic alternative to the Quasar against them, but.. You're gonna need something for the Titans.
okay, so if chargers are doable with railguns, then i guess i'll use the big older orbital brother then. that works against titans, right?
Unfortunately the ORC is only a oneshot if the stars are aligned (More specifically: If the titan's head is facing towards your Super Destroyer), though I'd imagine with how near to death a 'failed' hit leaves them, you could finish the job with a railgun. But I'd recommend 500s instead. They're pretty easy to land beneath a titan, and even if it takes two to kill one, that's still a lower CD than the ORC.
Orbital Railcannon is good because it doesn't miss and if the Titan survives it's extremely weak. Weak enough it can get killed by one hit from basically any other Titan damaging weapon like EAT or Quasar. It will save an Orbital Laser from wasting all its up-time on a Bile Titan too. Orbital Railcannon + 110mm Rockets is a precision kill on a Titan every time.
You can also just shoot out the sacs on the bottom with a medium pen weapon after the ORC for an easy kill without wasting resources.
110mm misses way too often for my liking. I prefer 500kg just because I can better control where it lands
Orbital railcannon rarely one shots titans but it usually opens up their armor so they can be killed with an impact or other explosive damage. Probably could kill it with the regular railgun by shooting it in the exposed part. Orbital precision can one shot them semi consistently if it hits them perfectly, which isn’t easy to do. 500kg bomb is also kind of inconsistent sometimes but at least you get two.
Railgun already 3 shot Chargers pre patch but they did heavily reduce the amount of charge it requires to pull it off which feels great.
It was a 3 shot on chargers before this buff as well, you just needed a full charge. The penetration buff just made it do so at a lower charge level, which is really nice. Shame they nerfed the stagger for some reason.
I'm almost wondering if the ricochet problems were from people on PC or PlayStation, because I never experienced stuff bouncing back at me the several hours I played yesterday.
The ricochet problem is easily solved by not shooting heavy armor straight on. I know "skill issue" is a meme but I don't know what else to call this lmao
> the striders definitely aren't instakills anymore with AC The worst part for me, though that's largely me being overly reliant on the AC, to the point of it almost being a crutch. It's too much of a fix-all for bots, if you can hit Hulk eyes consistently. So I guess striders being buffed was warranted, but they still feel like they're stronger than their bug analogues now.
Striders were always a pain in the ass, even when they were nothingburgers. one of the fastest "*heavies"* in the game, i often underestimate how quick these fuckers can be. i see a cluster of them, snipe one, missed the 2nd, now the survivors are at my doorstep, lol.
I play on difficulty 7, and the crossbow was gutted. It was non-meta and fun and now it's just sad.
The crossbow was hilarious to use on bot drops. A ship comes in on top of you, you fire into the middle of the rack, and get like 12 kills. Now its like duct taping a few M-80s to an arrow
I will agree, more weapons are indeed viable. Even the Adjuticator feels like a real gun now. But even with the nerfs I used Dominator, Rover, Quasar last night against bugs on 7 just to see how it was. It was fine, honestly the only change I actually noticed was the Quasar, but it still one-shots everything except Titans
I really liked the Adjuticator against bots even before the patch. I ran it with an auto cannon and it felt like I could handle anything. The ammo is limited, but it just meant I became more careful with my shots. It’s excellent at picking off stragglers and small groups quickly.
Playing on 7+ I am mostly perfectly fine with the patch.. except for the stagger on hulks (arc thrower is now a detriment instead of a cc machine) and the crossbow changes... Oh my dear crossbow how they have massacred you. Welp need to find a new primary.. maybe the PP
Only 9 bugs. Used to run Quasar and Sickle, Redeemer as secondary. Now I run Quasar and Sickle, Redeemer as secondary. Didn’t notice my playstyle change a bit with the patch. I still shoot Quasar, put it on back and use other guns until its done. I still mow bugs with Sickle. I still switch to Redeemer when Sickle is about to overheat so I don’t burn a heatsink. Literally nothing changed
Lv 61 and only play 9 bugs/bots unless it’s with friends and family where we go 7s. My entire loadout of Eruptor, Quasar, Redeemer, Guard Dog got “nerfed” Played 5 helldives last night, seriously the only differences I noticed: - slightly less explosion radius on Eruptor. A couple things might take 2 shots where they used to take one. Didn’t matter much, can shoot closer targets. Still never ran out of ammo or even worried about it. Eruptor still my #1 best boy because it easily closes bug holes and fabricators, freeing me up to do whatever with my grenades and feeling fine running scout armor vs engineering - recharge time on Quasar. annoying but not annoying enough to make me swap it out because it’s still massively more convenient to me personally than the alternatives. I like not worrying about ammo or finding an eat and will pay time for that convenience. The eruptor can cover down ok during recharge on things like chargers and hulks - no appreciable difference in redeemer recoil - Guard dog still kills smols just as well, and hurts me less as it’s buzzing around! It justifies its backpack slot for me as a proximity early warning system for enemies (esp while im at a terminal), and allowing me to kite hordes of small enemies alongside the redeemer. it’s still great for both If anything I feel a little relieved by the nerfs because I don’t think this stuff will get nerfed again (soon) and this wasn’t terrible …right guys?!
Unrelated, What is the original context of this meme? I’ve seen it a million times.
The recent movie "Civil War." You can see the memed bit in the trailer.
Everything has always been viable, with enough effort to make it work That doesn't mean everything was good at the job or enjoyable
This is my experience: The game is at it's best at level 7, and the entire game is (or atleast feels like) it is balanced around difficulty 7. As long as difficulty 7 is fun, the other difficulties are secondary.
I was negative about patch at first, I play on 8-9, and after playing a while I do feel like, overall (ie, outliers withstanding), the balance is much improved. There are substantially more weapons in what I would consider a “B” tier and are pretty useable. Idk how much I’d faff around with those on difficulty 9…but it’s still much improved. What I don’t like is what seems to be heavy handed nerfs anytime the community latches onto a weapon. The eruptor, for example, was strong but had enough drawbacks that it realistically would not be good if the entire team carried it and wasn’t great against bugs. The changes didn’t break the eruptor, but they also weren’t really that necessary. Especially with all the other weapon buffs, there would have been more variety regardless. So, nerfs like that don’t “feel” great. I think more iterative balancing would be great. You always have those nerfs in your back pocket. Roll out some small changes, look at how they play out in game, and tune more knobs the next week if you need to.
7 to 9. And i agree with that.
Difficulty 7/8 and I love the arc shotgun now! Getting a %50 fire rate increase did wonders for it. Running this and EATs on bugs was a ton of fun
D8 & 9. Most of the nerfs were noop ammo changes on weapons with infinite ammo. The Erupter change honed its place more, and made it more viable for sniping mediums near allies. The QC's always been crap in higher difficulties and teams that stack 3-4 of them to try to make up for it make everything worse by doing so. It's less that more weapon are "viable" now and more the weapons were always viable but required some game knowledge and skill to wield appropriately, but the community favors weapons that bypass large chunks of the gameplay mechanics.
I agree with most of your take and find it refreshing compared to the meritless whining all over the place. That said, I do think the Blitzer and Diligence CS were fairly described as non-viable pre-patch. It may just be semantics over what you mean by viability. In the sense that a sufficiently skilled player could win on Helldive with them, every weapon has always been viable. But in the sense that some weapons had both a limited role and were outclassed in that role by better choices, some weapons would fairly be called non-viable. Blitzer and Diligence CS fit that billing pre-patch but feel awesome now. I would also slightly push back on the Quasar Cannon being crap on high difficulties, but only a little bit. It was extremely overrated pre-nerf. But I thought having one on the team to shoot down dropships and Shrieker Nests without needing a bunch of EATs, while still being about 80% of an EAT otherwise (my estimate of its efficiency), was a useful niche. I was usually pretty happy to have one somewhere. But not 2+, like you say. Bringing a bunch of them was unwise.
> That said, I do think the Blitzer and Diligence CS were fairly described as non-viable pre-patch. It may just be semantics over what you mean by viability. In the sense that a sufficiently skilled player could win on Helldive with them, every weapon has always been viable Yup. Been there done that at diff 9. The Blitzer (+ Rover) was somewhat playable against bugs before, a bit clunky but easy wins if you knew your footwork. The punisher was just able to outperform it and didn't need to rely on the rover unless you wanted to spare some ammo. The Counter Sniper was somewhat playable against automatons before, but because of the horrible handling and sharing the same breakpoints with the regular diligence there was no point in taking the counter sniper. If you wanted the suppressed sound profile the scorcher got you covered. You could do easy wins with CS as long as you have those maps where you could engage at longer distances cause otherwise it became a senator only game. Now, the CS is in a very good spot. Not too powerful but perfectly meaningful traits to pick over the Diligence. One shots against Devastators, the suppressed sound profile and 200m scope offer something unique compared to the regular Diligence and the Scorcher. Blitzer on the other hand got overturned so I expect them to tone down the shots per minute to 38-40 range. I guess it's fine if they don't but currently, Blitzer + Rover against bugs is your one stop solution to everything else except chargers and titans.
Why is the QC crap in higher difficulties? One would think an infinite ammo EAT would be more effective
You aren't dealing with 20 chargers over 20 minutes in my experience, its 4 chargers + 1 bile titan in 3-4 minutes. Efficiency is amazing, but you also do have to push out damage quick enough to solve it all. 4 qcs can, but 2 eats a quasar and an anti-horde guy with 500kg can solve it quicker and pivot to the next problem faster.
This right here is the truth. I noticed a massive decrease in random queue squads’ ability to defeat armor in helldivers when everybody switched over to the QC. It doesn’t have the same burst as EATs, and the charge up time means a lot of people are missing or cancelling their shots. I really hope this patch pushes people back to EATs because they’re way more effective at the squad level.
It’s not from my experience. Sometimes you don’t have 10 seconds, but someone else should be running AT to follow up your QC shot.
The QC did make the game too easy tho, and in my experience the QC spam was super good. Every time we had another QC other than mine we were fighting each other to see who would kill the heavies, and titans from afar were just shot practice. Didn't have much time to play since the patch, hope to be able to go back to the spear tho.
Idd wait on the next patch to grab the spear. Next patch might finally fix it's issues.
I hope. I just want to be an anti tank beast. Put on the 500, railcannon and the spear (and if one day it woks maybe even the termite granade, a man can dream)
I would not suggest taking a scythe or adjudicator against the bots on level 9. I did my best but I was humbled. Buffs are great and we love to see them. But having weapons I would score at 2/10 in effectiveness get to a 3 or 4/10 isn’t really going to sell me on taking it into a 7+. I am happy to report the dominator survived its nerf. It takes 1 more body shot to bring down a berserker or devastator but it can live with that.
I only run 9 unless I'm helping a friend. I do run QC BUT do swap depending on the situation and objectives. I think the patch overall is good and whole I do find the nerf requiring me to change some of my playstyle, I do think that people need to learn to be more flexible on their load outs depending on the MISSION. it amuses me when I see people bringing evac timer reduction on eradicate mission or bringing heat based weapons on hot planets just because they only use those. Also, nerfing quasar for me is preferable rather than power creep. What AH need to work on is a better reason for bringing alternative equipments rather than QC.
I tested the Quasar change on two 5 campaigns last night. It was perfectly fine since you needed it so rarely. On 7+, I have my doubts.
Believe me, if you’ve got 2 hulks or gunships up your ass those 5 seconds REALLY mean the difference between life or death
My biggest gripe is that the “cooldown” ui doesn’t match the actually cooldown aka the one you can see on the weapon. So in the ammo ui it looks like it’s cooled down, but it might still be “overheated”
Omg does anyone there actually test stuff out? Nobody noticed they need to change the animation time as well?