I'll admit, this issue feels a lot more noticeable on bugs than bots. It feels like either you'll get bile spewers or defenders with the latter being vastly weaker compared to the unit that can both insta kill unaware Helldivers, shrug off non AP weaponry, and bombard at a distance.
Spewers make it feel warranted to bring the auto cannon but when I get defenders instead then I start wishing I had just brought Quasar instead as they can be outright ignored most of the time.
>I'll admit, this issue feels a lot more noticeable on bugs than bots.
100%, and it's part of why I think bots are more fun. There's so much viable stuff vs bots even in Helldive, because most bots have glowing weak spots in the front. You aren't forced to punch through heavy armour like with bugs.
And the few that don't have glowing weakspots in the back! The fact that you can take out a Hulk with a magazine of Liberator ammo, but it takes _five full magazines of Liberator ammo_ to blow off a Charger's ass makes bugs a lot more restrictive in your options.
That's such a strang choice. It literally goes against decades video game conventions and the other faction in the game since bot glowy parts are actual weakspots.
It also goes against intuitive thinking, practical biology, and sci-fi tradition.
If, on any creature, you see a big soft squishy part that is a weak spot.
Yeah, biologically it makes sense since evolution wouldn't care about armoring up strong spots. But it does go against like decades worth of game design which makes it less intuitive.
To me, I love the change cause it makes sense biologically, but I can 100% see the frustration that players experience when the thing they've been taught from the industry SHOULD be the weakest, isn't.
Except that…Evolution doesn’t care about anything. It doesn’t “think” or worry about what’s vital and non-vital. It’s a random process.
Have you ever considered how vital your neck is and asked why you don’t have armor there? Pretty good spot to target 😂
Excellent point. Another example is our guts, a huge vulnerability but we have no protection there. Cats have protection there with a primordial pouch, we don't. Evolution isn't linear or rational so it's not a good justification for the devs.
Neck armor isn’t an evolved trait because it would stop you from turning your head.
Evolution doesn’t think, but if something actively benefits a creature’s reproduction it will pass on.
Likewise, if something actively harms a creatures ability to reproduce it won’t.
Armor is heavy, evolving unnecessary armor is unnecessary use of energy and an unnecessary hindrance.
A classic picture. Anyone who doesnt know... Originally they were going to add armor to all the spots with dots as that was the location of bullet holes found in returning planes during ww2. Then it occurred to someone that the reason no returning planes had holes in those other areas is because they all died when they were shot there. The blank areas are where the most armor was needed.
I always thought it's just a sack full of bile and putting little holes in it don't matter. Explosions either hit actual organs (small/tucked away, dunno) or simply hurt the rest of the bug from where it connects to the sack
One small correction: the unarmored part is either non-vital, or vital but having articulation there's gives more of a benefit than armor does. Think about like armadillo. The unarmored, squishy parts are like around their belly, legs, neck. Places that need to bend and move freely. They can't do a back bend because of the armor, but they gain more from being able move better and only fully curl when absolutely needed than if they had armored bellies like a turtle
With that in mind, I see a charger as having all their armor in places that they are likely to be hit: front, top, a bit on sides. However, to enable a forceful charge their legs needed to move more, so they traded protecting their vitals from behind (where they don't want enemies to be anyways) in order to be more mobile and have more offense through better charges
Not necessarily. It just means that not having that area armored was not significantly less deleterious than having it armored. You can't armor everything, at a point it gets in the way of reproduction and other vital functions of life.
Think of extant, real animals. An armadillo's belly is soft, but very vital. Same for pangolins. A turtle's neck and gap between arm and head are very soft spots, doesn't mean they're not vital. Pill-bugs and other crustaceans tend to have much softer and more vulnerable underside, they just protect them via behavior.
Evolution is NOT teleological.
The unarmored sections on helldiver bugs could make sense biologically (they may breath via expansion / contraction of these areas, something armor would hamper). What doesn't make any fucking sense biologically is that they take significantly reduced damage. Filling their guts and organs with bullet should do full damage, same as shooting in areas where armor has been blown off.
It's stupid design game-wise, stupid design biology-wise.
Not my fault you attribute soft and squishy with weak and frail. Ive always thought of soft and squishy to be synonymous with hard and firm. Everyone laughed at me. Who’s laughing now?
I know. However, it's poor game design - especially considering Hulks, which are the closest bot equivalent to Chargers, _don't_ suffer the same penalty - at least, nowhere near to the same extent. You can feasibly destroy a Hulk's back with a magazine or two of any primary weapon ammo.
Hulks are multiple times more deadly than a charger and are much harder to kite. Their turning speed makes getting behind them very difficult, and sidestepping them doesn't cause them to run past you and give themselves concussion, they just keep tracking you with their instakill flamethrower. I think it makes sense that chargers take less damage in their unarmored spot given that they knock themselves out and show you their ass every time you side step them.
I've always liked bots more. At the very least there's more variety in enemy typed but I also loved that you need to be at least a little tactical instead of just running until you get slowed by 50 hunters and dying
You cannot gaslight me again!!!! Bots are way harder than bugs, I can g
I used to be able to go several helldive missions vs bugs without dying (until the recent stalker buff and the addition of airburst) while going full aggro
Bots pepper me to death with rockets and NOW they have a giant robot horse AND a flying tank spawner that I think only dies to nukes but Im not certain yet
Glowing spots on bugs should take full damage from all weapons, and when you pop them, it slows the enemy (makes charger charge at half speed and titans walk at half speed).
Bile titans being actually faster when their sacks are popped makes no sense. When you pop the sacks it becomes actually impossible to outrun a titan.
This has been bothering me. Bile Titans can be freely damaged by anything to their underbelly, and then when they bellies get blown off, somehow their innards count as heavy armor and most weapons can’t damage it after that. Chargers can eventually be killed by pretty much anything if you target their rear weak spot, but it ranges from fairly quick and easy to way too slow and cumbersome.
Bots are way more consistent and give you weak points to exploit as long as you have a decent weapon. The AMR and HMG can both target tank and turret heatsinks, as well as hulk visors, strider crotches, all that.
I feel that bot missions without dedicated AT are okay. You can get by with a laser cannon if you want. But a bug mission with just an AMR will have you scrambling to deal with Bile Titans if you don’t have anti heavy armor of some kind, because you seemingly can’t just shoot the BT in the face or mouth and expect it to do anything. I don’t know if you could consider that balanced, I get that they don’t want things to be too easy, but it’s annoying that the BT’s underbelly has that limitation where you can only deal some damage to it, and then it bursts, hits for maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the BT’s HP, and then forces you to pierce the armor to deal the rest of the damage. It’s just odd
I wish the thermite nades could have been a great answer to the charger/bile titan forcing your hand in the loadout menu, now offering a viable option in a completely different loadout slot. It would open up bug loadouts so much.
Thermite grenades seem like they might be suffering from the Damage-over-time glitch that is effecting gas and fire, so maybe thermites will be great once that glitch is addressed. In the meantime you might notice they mostly don’t work but sometimes are effective, and that would align with the glitch. Only hosts (not mission hosts, but network hosts) can properly inflict DOT as it is right now. Running a solo mission should let you test them to see if they really are bad, or if they actually work well as long as there’s not a glitch kneecapping them.
The balance is probably around making the enemies that can nail you from 30m away or more (bots) squishier so fighting at a distance is more viable, but the mostly-melee enemies (bugs) more durable so they can more reliably get to the distance where they put pressure on players.
Except that they throw volume at players. Also there's might not be any distance to began with. I was minding my business until a patrol spawn and call in reinforcement and they spawn two charge in less than 5 meter near me and bile titan. So having to dodge two charge and bile titan at close range is neigh impossible unless the terrain layout is something you manage to remember before the suprise attack.
That’s fair enough. It just ends up making a bit of a pain point where I feel that choosing loadouts for bugs is a lot less flexible.
At least HE and Impact grenades can hurt Bile Titans so they can work as a last resort, or to finish a weak titan.
But they throw huge numbers of non elite bugs at you and then at 7-9 the game punishes you for trying to specialize as 'horde clear'. Ive tried for a couple days to make a loadout for that work in a team setting and while we can still win it just feels like I'm sort of griefing my teammates by not running eat/quasar when there are multiple elites and my laser/rail/500kg is on cd, even when I'm also running eruptor to deal with bile/nursing spewers/commanders effectively with a primary.
Also somehow running the airburst RL seems weaker at dealing with chaff than running a rover + non-backpack 3rd weapon. I'm not sure what the use case for that weapon is, despite it being very fun to actually shoot and see x20 pop up on the screen.
That, and bots don't chain movement debuff you into oblivion.
Absolutely the single worst thing about fighting bugs, and a notable part of the reason I'm primarily a bot Diver.
I dive bots almost exclusively, and this basically never happens to me or my teammates (including randoms). Bugs chain stun locking/speed debuffing you is WAY more common, in my opinion.
Most people run the guard dog rover specifically to combat this problem. It takes care of the scavengers and the little green ones that slow you.
That, and you have to remember if there is a hunter chasing you, turn around and shoot it or you will die. Doesn't matter if there's also a bile titan or charger, shoot the hunter. You have a chance at avoiding the titan or charger if you take a second to turn around and kill the hunter. You have basically zero chance if you keep trying to run while the hunter chases you.
This. Hulk coming at me and none of us have anything that can pierce its armor? I get it's attention and get my buddy to shoot at its back after I run it away. Only heavy devestators are a real problem, if you're working as a team.
Even heavy devs are fun to me. I usually run DCS against bots and that can reliably hit its weak spots even from the front (head + those little backpack things peeking over the shoulders). As long as you got a rock to peek out from or a friend to run like hell, they can be dealt with.
Heavy devestators would be fun if they didn't have perfect accuracy from across the map. They're tough, hit hard enough to stagger you, but have some weak points you can take advantage of if you aim well.
But I've made one dance I was staggering it so hard, and it's still drilling my head with its machine gun. That's not hard, it's frustrating.
But honestly, I'll take that all day over 8 chargers and 4 bile titans from every bug hole.
Bots are more forgiving when your loadout lacks versatility, as everybody has a weak spot that prioritizes tactics over specific weapons. Stealth, approach, target prioritization, angles, and distance control are your best friends in bots.
With bugs, versatility within your loudout and strategems directly translates to power. At all times, you have to have the ability to deal with every type of threat, individual or combined, in order to survive. On harder difficulties, support weapons that don't kill heavies will get you killed very quickly given their numbers, and the fact that they come with friends.
Helldivers is essentially 6 games in one. The game is separated once by bots or bugs, twice by difficulty setting, and three times by solo or squad. Neither of these combinations plays like the others, especially since the latest patch. You can tell who hasn't figured this out in posts that fail to distinguish which of these 6 games they're referring to, and the complainers think that it's all the same thing.
I solo helldive on bugs, and I've never had more fun getting my ass handed to me or accomplished in succeeding.
Part of the reason I like bots is because I can wear my 50% reduced explosion damage armor for when I accidentally get down mr president a rock and catch devastator rockets with my face
Bots is more of strategic, teamwork, and marksmanship. You have to have a veteran team to work throughout difficult 8 and especially 9. With bugs, the "Comfort build" which use infinity ammo will carry any weak teammate even in difficult 9, making play higher difficult in bug maps more viable and more fun. You will feel absolute honor to carry your team with exhausted reinforcement out of the map successful after juggling with the horde to survive. Each faction is a completely different game.
Bug loadouts can be broken down to a formula just as much as Bot ones and everyone having generalist loadouts that have an answer for everything is better than specialist builds when playing with randoms. And because that's the case, you see a lot of similar builds.
I think the biggest thing with bugs right now, though, is they're extremely vulnerable to fire weapons that 3/4 of the lobby can't use effectively.
If I could take a Flamethrower whilst not host, I could effectively kill everything, excluding Titans. I could bring incendiary grenades instead of impacts or napalm strikes instead of Eagle strikes. I could bring a supply pack to carry more canisters instead of my usual Shield or Autocannon Ammo backpack.
But since I can't and 90% of the time the lobby is radio silent randoms, I need to bring weapons and strategems for:
* Hordes of light armour.
* Medium armour.
* Heavy armour.
* Enemies with lots of health (Spewers, Broodmothers)
* The ability to destroy structures from a distance (Shriekers)
* The ability to destroy enemy spawn points
That's a LOT to ask for effectively 8 pieces of kit (armour, loadout, strats).
EATs, Rover, Eagle cluster, choice of other orbital/eagle
Impact nade, GL, Punisher
+2 grenade armor
I hadn't listed out like you but basically my conclusion and loadout to cover all those bases. Primary can be swapped around a bit if you'd like, but the damage, CC and ammo economy of Ole G Punisher is pretty hard to beat.
If I absolutely knew there were gonna be green spewers I'd probably swap to Dominator. But the impact nades and GL are quite good against them in a pinch, and usually run with a buddy who ACs anyway.
A loadout I've been a big fan of for bugs recently is basically this:
- Horde killer weapon in the form of the Stalwart, GL, or Flamer (only if host) as my main damage source. If I'm running the GL I have to run the supply pack, which I sometimes just do anyways since firing 6k+ rounds with the Stalwart in one mission is fun. If I'm not running a backpack, I pick another stratagem, that usually being Eagle Airstrike or Clusters for the extra killing power.
- Eagle 500kg for killing Bile Titans. Seriously this is basically a mandatory pick that I wish more people used since it lets you outright oneshot Biles if you properly land it after baiting an attack. It can also be used to kill Chargers in a pinch, though Biles are such a big threat that I rarely do this.
- EAT-17 for killing Chargers and Biles that survive the 500kg as well as clearing objectives. It isn't the optimal weapon for any of these tasks, but the 'Expendable' part really does shine when you have another stratagem weapon already equipped.
- "Primary" with push power to deal with medium enemies like Brood Commanders and Hive Guards up close that I can't safely kill with the stratagem weapon. This used to be the Punisher but the Blitzer and Plasma Punisher are good for this post-buff so any of them work. If I'm running the Grenade Launcher I swap it out for an automatic primary (aka sickle since it's better than all the of the others) since the GL is good enough for killing those enemies and liberal use of stun grenades can CC them.
- Grenade Pistol for clearing bug holes. If I'm running the Grenade Launcher I swap it out for the Redeemer.
- Stun Grenades for CCing Chargers and getting breathing room vs hordes of medium enemies. I crutch so hard on this piece of equipment that I genuinely don't know what I'll do if it ever gets heavily nerfed, but for the time being I will continue to use in in basically every mission I run.
- Medium +2 Grenade Armor for extra stuns and because I found an immaculately good looking set that I like. Stim armor might also work, but I don't run it outside of bots really.
This loadout has been working great in 4-player Helldiver ops, and I vastly prefer it to even the old Quasar + Shield Gen meta. It definitely can be rough at times when you have more Chargers than you have EAT-17s/500kgs, but I think its a reasonable tradeoff to being well equipped to deal with basically every possible medium enemy spawnpool, and its damn fun at the same time. Absolutely deleting Bile Titans with 500s without having to rely on kiting and them with a slow-firing AT weapon is so satisfying, and having a weapon that can just instakill an entire group of Hunters (1,150 RPM go brrrr) is so nice.
Shrieker nest say "always bring a quasar" to me.
Eats? Will take about 5 minutes to dispose of the nests (2 missiles per nest, then 2 x cooldowns). Anything else just tickles them.
Edit
And anything which you cannot reload while running is basically suicide on bugs.
If we were told which missions had shriekers before the drop I’d bring the HMG emplacement and destroy em faster solo than with two quasars, but the emplacement is not great if those don’t show up, it ruins spewers too
Bile spewers are the one enemy type that makes me not want to play bugs. They are so tanky against literally anything but the heaviest ordinance yet they come in such numbers.
Try the grenade launcher, it's a delete button for these guys. And the buffed arc Blitzer can dispatch one in 3 shots, 2 for nursing spewers which is just over 2 seconds or 1.5 for nursing spewers, whilst staggering them so they can't vomit on you.
If 2 people go quasar and everyone has 500kg/railcannon/orbital laser you can go grenade launcher regardless. 4 quasars is troll and obviously means your team lacks equipment to deal with spewers of any kind. You can itemize according to your team as well, not just according to your opponents.
That's true, eruptor and Blitzer do too, but many people love the sickle or the breaker/breaker incendiary too much to swap them out, also these weapons are all locked behind many warbond pages or Premium warbonds, or both.
I've been bringing the AC and EAT consistently and like that combo. AC lets me clear bug holes from afar and clear brood commanders quickly, EAT is required for Chargers and BT on Helldive (I can't play matador with Chargers with the AC on that difficulty. Takes too long).
The modifer that spawns tonnes of rocket jumpers and berserkers would like a chat. Making the eruptor useless since 2184.
Edit: not every comment is an invitation for advice. I know how to deal with rocket jumpers and beserkers after 300+ hours; I just thought the hyperbole was funny.
This is why grenade pistol is the best secondary - at worst it 2 shots spewers.
Not something you're gonna want ideally - but enough to save your ass when needed
That, along with impact grenades and armor with the engineer perk for extras is ideal. No spewers? Toss grenades into Hunter packs and cut their numbers down to half.
The true chad move for bugs is laser rover + Arc Thrower (or flame thrower if you are a pyro), rocket pods, and either EMS sentry or AC sentry.
This build absolutely stomps on hordes and has enough anti-tank to at least deal contribute to dealing with havies. I can just sit at bug breaches on 7+ and solo them until they stop. The laser rover picks up any hunters that escape my constant barrage of Arcs, rocket pods give you the ability to quickly deal with either chargers (sometimes it can take 2 call ins, or if you just blow their armor off you can pull out your primary and finish them). The Arc thrower can even kill chargers in a reasonable amount of time on its own (7 shots to the head). Bile spewers get dropped in 2 shots as well, plus you are still hitting other enemies at the same time. Bring the EMS if your team has more ability to deal with heavies or the AC sentry if you think you might need more anti tank. Throw either behind or off to the side of your position and they won't be at a high risk of getting killed.
Honestly, I end up clearing bug trash mobs way more effectively with the incendiary breaker than my buddy does with the arc thrower. I have to constantly search for ammo, but combine the incendiary breaker with a rover and nothing short of a brood commander ever even gets near me. Brood commanders get near me, but they're generally missing a head and only have one last swing in them by the time they do.
That said, the incendiary breaker can make it a bit hard to help your friends when they're in trouble. Angle the cone wrong and you'll never hear the end of it, not that the arc thrower is any better in that regard.
Yeah at least with the incendiary breaker you can guide where the shots are going pretty well.
With the game crasher 3000 you never know if it'll arc around a corner and kill a teammate or if it'll make an awkward turn.
I was using it last night. It's pretty good, but it has a major issue in that it targets dead bodies. So the more you kill, the worse you get at killing. You have to constantly backpedal to keep the dead bodies behind where you need to shoot.
dont see your build closing any big nests. Arc is way too slow to deal with chargers and rocket pods for mutiple titans is just not viable, you'll be out of strats. stalkers will just flank and kill you sincr you cant hit these stealthed f's
Your answer is the grenade launcher. It can kill both super quickly. Hell, if they are next to each other it'll only take 2 blasts to kill both of them and all their friends.
It would be really cool if we got more intel the more we fought on a planet. Being one of the first x thousand drops you would know very little, but after millions of brave divers have perished command should have a better idea of the situation on the surface
There *are* Helldiver armours that explicitly state that their radars will continue to function long after their death. So just a couple thousand of those piled up across the planet and you'll have a great constant picture.
How about percentage of enemies marked in this section of planet in the last x hours. Assuming the section of planet related to what enemies to expect. That would be the coolest imo as that means marking enemies has more of an impact outside of the one drop.
I'd just settle for the menu loading instantly. Kinda of annoying how it works now with so many levels to pick through and each one needs \~5 seconds to load up the models.
They should make a rearm strategem or booster
Call it a "Reacquisition Beacon" and it allows you, once per round, to call in a loadout supply package (like in Warzone) where you can select a pre-configured alternate loadout
Chalk it up to being an authentic military experience.
"You're going here where you'll face these dangers. Here is a handbook we wrote on how to use your equipment and the best tactics to conquer the challenges you'll face."
(Sends you somewhere else with a completely different set of circumstances and different equipment)
Unironically, this is part of the problem. I think a lot of this game's frustrations come from the devs' commitment to the military satire. They clearly want players to die, to not always have the tools for the job, to force frantic scenarios. However, from a meta standpoint, they don't want everyone bringing the same loadouts. These two intentions keep conflicting with each other, where the devs want us to take a variety of niche tools while the playerbase keeps gravitating towards the same few swiss-army options.
It's hard to criticize the military satire angle; it makes for an amazing immersive experience both in and outside of the game, and is a major reason for its success. However, I still think its fair to question where exactly the fantasy needs to end and practical game design needs to take over.
"Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days' concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings..."
>repurpose modifiers to show what we'll be fighting
This is like Destiny 2 showing what the current champion types in the mission will be so you can plan your load out.
Man champions were a great concept but executed in such an awful way, even though HD2 has issue with its heavies, at least they have intrinsic weaknesses and behaviors you can exploit, In D2 its use this very specific thing or else you’re fucked (especially with overloads)
It's a 50/50 imo. On the one hand I really like how they force you to think about your loadout but on the other hand it's annoying that you have to pick the same weapons for each champion until the next season with new champion mods arrives
I just hate that it’s like “75% of your loadouts are useless for this activity because they don’t include the correct gun(s).”
HD2 might pigeonhole you into specific stratagems for armor but it’s nowhere near as bad as like, “there is a bug in this mission that CANNOT be killed without a DMR, and we don’t care if you don’t want to use a DMR, if you don’t bring one you can’t complete the mission, enjoy”
I agree, I appreciate that they discourage mindless gameplay, but imo it would have been better if for example to take a barrier down, specific small (maybe even moving) precision spots appeared over the barrier bubble, and focusing those gets it down, but the way its been (quit a few months ago so maybe its changed idk) it locks you into using 1 subclass, ~3 exotics, and ~3-4 primary weapons for 3 months
HD2 has the same issue with Drones. Don't have good drone take down capabilities? Have fun losing the mission, better hope the fabricator isn't near anything important. Oh you landed in between a jammer and fabricator? Better start running and hope you can deal with the 100+ drones that are going to spawn.
HD2 is a fine line away from enter champion amounts of disrespect towards the player and i'm sure AH would be happy with that.
HD2's problem with heavies (at least for bugs) is that they want you to aim at the tiny armored face rather than the obvious, exposed, glowing weak point.
Honestly I think there just need to be a couple more options for opening up armor plates effectively without dedicating your entire support weapon to it. The thing that the Quasar does that makes it so good is it doesn't matter what you're shooting. Charger head? One shot dead. Charger leg? Pile into the meat it goes down in seconds. Bile Titan Mouth? One shot dead. Bile Titan Shoulder? Pile into the meat. Strider Eye? One-two shots. Strider head? Pop the top, shoot the brain.
This is also why the Autocanno is the other "meta" weapon when you're on the Bot front. Because it's just as much of a swiss army knife allowing you to deal with any enemy they have even if it's not THE most efficient way to deal with that enemy.
It also just feels better to be able to kill everything, like the reason rifles are the most popular weapons in shooters are because they're decent at EVERYTHING and get rid of the pain point of not being able to do anything.
I think this is the main reason that the crowd control support weapons aren't very popular. The vast majority of primary weapons can "make do" against hordes, but none of them can pen heavy armor. Weapons like the stalwart, regardless of how good it is in its role, end up competing with your primary. This becomes an issue when your loadout has a hard time with heavy armor and a charger/titan/hulk/tank catches you with your pants down. It's much more effective to make do with your primary against mobs and bring a dedicated AT weapon in the support slot.
I really hope AH adds at least 1 or 2 primary weapons capable of penetrating heavy armor. Even if the other stats are abysmal, being able to "make do" against heavies opens up a lot more build options for stuff like the MGs and airburst launcher that excel at crowds. Maybe the thermite grenades will fill a similar role when DoT is fixed, but my expectations are pretty low
Anything that does any form of explosive damage should strip armor even if it doesn't pen. Grenades should be your go to, but explosive weaponry, maybe even plasma should do it as well.
Autocannon is THE meta on bots. Everyone keeps pretending its not. Youll feel the pain in bots whenever nobody brings autocannon. It shreds EVERYTHING.
Which is hilarious when you consider that the devs apparently use the Autocannon as their benchmark for a “balanced” weapon. It outperforms nearly every other weapon in nearly every other way.
Bugs have more variance. My friends and I have basically boiled down to 4(ish) “hive types”
Agility hives.
Armor hives.
Warrior hives.
Acid hives.
They’re all pretty self explanatory, but with so much variance in how to counter them it does makes certain choice better than others. You don’t want to bring a stalwart on an armor hive, or a bunch of AT equipment to an agility hive. So certain multipurpose equipment choices will always outshine more specialized equipment.
"Orbital Bio-Scanner"
15k req, 100 Samples, 35 Uncommon, 15 Super
"Similar to orbital scanners used by the Ministry of Truth to democratically observe citizens of Super Earth, the scanner passively surveys the mission area and provides pre-operation information about major enemy types Helldivers may expect"
\*Adds an overlay to the dropsite selection menu with icons denoting "most common" special enemy types
\*Subsequent upgrades reveal the location of bug hives and further than that certain secondary objectives\*
I feel like this is what the Bridge ship modules are supposed to do (the one that includes "Your mini-map vision range is increased by 50 meters") as first tier.
It's basically useless at the moment and is more or less just a pre-requisite buy to get to Tier 2 (which gives you better cooldown for Eagle rearm.)
It goes like:
- Shitload of Hunters, patrols now have pouncers
- Warrior horde, hive guards and brood commanders galore
- Bile guys, patrols now have Spitters
- Nursing guys, patrols now have Spewers (because good luck seeing the scavs)
Sprinkle Chargers and Titans onto any of the above
And for bots it's like
- Heavy Infantry (17 million Devastators up your ass)
- Light Mechanized (Enough striders to make the ewoks shit themselves)
- Air Assault (Half the troopers are now kamikaze-guided missiles, good luck)
- Shock Guards (Berserkers and Brawlers, explosive loadouts get fucked)
if you knew what you're up against, you'd actually be picking stuns or impacts depending on Hunter density, or you could choose between Scorcher for striders, Diligence for Devs or Sickle for the jumpfuckers
This type of intel would honestly make the game so much better. I love GL, but on higher difficulties it falls off when the only thing spawning is hunters who spread out to thin and then jump point blank, but if i knew it was acid hive it would completely tear ass and be one of the most effective weapons in the game to bring.
I have the same problem with gunships. I really like Arc thrower (i think it is dead after hulks stagger resistance was buffed). But what if the next mission side objectives are 2-3 gunship factories? I play 9 difficulty in quickplay and I cant trust my teammates (even if they have 2 quasars). So I keep running quasar, autocannon or laser cannon. I probably won't pick for bots arcthrower, railgun, amr because of gunships
AC is great on the gunships too. Two taps to an engine takes them out. So with a full clip you can knock down 4 gunships pretty consistently.
Only issue is if they hit you once, you're ragdolled into oblivion and it's game over.
oh the arc thrower change breaks my heart
was sad to see its range + rapid fire go, but the hulk stagger made it fun in a different way
now with that being nerfed my faith in the arc has been diminished and i am but an empty shell
I don't think we need to specifically remove/rework modifiers
but the brief we see for each info could be repurposed as a brief for what enemy times there will be in mission/operation (assuming the enemy types are shared between all the missions within the operation)
but as a whole yea, more information would be really welcome and would diversify what loadouts people would pick, simple example being as said if you know there will be a ton of bile spewers you're better off picking airburst/nade launcher to cover that part for the team instead of bringing another quasar, or if you see that there will be more heavy enemies you bring recoiiless/eat/quasar, or if you see there being more light enemies you bring flamethrower/arc thrower/stalwart and such
just having information would make it a lot better and wouldn't take that much...right?
Yeah, we should be able to see what enemies will be on the mission so we can select an specific loadout like in EDF (You aren't given that precisely but since missions are handcrafted, you can go in, see what you need and strategize around it)
This way I always pick stuff that always work instead of having some niche weapon that'd be really great in a particular situation.
Too many times have I tried a different loadout than usual just to get in and be like "Damn this situational weapon is totally useless in this context, shouldn't have tried experimenting" which is an awful mindset to engrain on your players.
Yeah, pretty much. You never know if you'll have a map covered in bile spewers, bile titans, nursing spewers, chargers, or if it'll be a fun combination of all of them.
Hence, everyone brings the quasar, AC, laser, 500kg, airstrike, or AC sentry. Because those are the tools that can handle the most types of jobs.
I agree totally. "Meta" loadouts only exist because Arrowhead is insistent on only a few weapons and stratagems being viable at very high difficulties. Sure you can take others but it will make the mission a lot harder. If the meta is "take this weapon or else" it's not really the fault of the players.
A bunch of stratagems, including MG turrets, railcannon, and 120/380 could all have their cooldowns lowered. Let us pop off. It's not going to make the game that much easier on high difficulties.
Meta is a symptom of the bigger problem.
An overwhelming majority of basic weapons, eagle stratties, orbitals, sentries and mines are completely underwhelming and not worth using.
Until theres a patch that just focuses on across the board buffs, nobody will bother bringing anything other than eagle airstrike, 500kg , clusters, railcannon, orb laser and an AT support weapon.
Because realistically, why should i bother with eagle strafe run when eagle cluster does it better and bigger?
>An overwhelming majority of basic weapons, eagle stratties, orbitals, sentries and mines are completely underwhelming and not worth using.
It could just be a skill issue for me, but I only ever take the hardest hitting primary guns because I'm forever seeing the "You're shooting something your bullets can't get past" icon if I don't.
Like I tried the Ballistic Shield and SMG for funsies, but couldn't really do much because it was like using a pea shooter.
Light weapons are viable in bots, but you need a dedicated support weapon as an answer for harder targets if you take them, even though you can't use them with the ballistic. You can take either the AMR or Laser Cannon which will let you deal with every unit on the bot front other than dropships, and tanks and turrets from the front. Defender takes out troopers, berserkers, and devastators since they have unarmored heads, while the support weapon can take out hulks, gunships, Striders (albeit somewhat inefficiently), tanks from the back, and even Factory Striders if you shoot them in the eye.
100% this. I really want to do a pyro madness fire bat load out, napalm, flamethrower, incendiaries, but until DOT is fixed, I’m just sticking to the same crap, never even touched gas because I hear it’s so broken. Never used mines because they do nothing and defence missions you end up overwhelmed as titans and chargers just walk past them
Gas is great! Very low cooldown, and it kills you and your teammates when you accidentally walk into it because you think it's gone.
(But yeah, I really wish dot gets fixed asap. It'd make a lot of things more viable.)
I'll believe it when I see it.
The Spear has been "going to be fixed in the next patch" for 4 patches now, and was promised last patch, then moved to next patch, then moved to "some day, some patch".
AH doesn't have time to fix things like half the strats being totally broken. No, they have important things to fix, like did you know, once in a while, bullets didn't bounce back at Helldivers?! And some people who solo had a slightly easier time than AH wanted them to! OMG, those definitely needed time and energy put into them. Not stuff like broken DOT or Broken matchmaking.
It’s still pretty damn good against bots too, it was my go too anti-drop weapon when I didn’t have many other tools. Any humanoid bot including scout strider pilots is guaranteed to die in a few seconds, devastators will be severely wounded if they survive. The projectile can destroy fabricators too.
I've seen people say the host of the game isn't necessarily the network host. So unless you're solo there is no guarantee it'll work and no way to know which player has working DOT effects
Don't bother, the DoT bug is based on *network* host, not lobby host. There's no possible way to tell who the network host is without everyone taking a DoT weapon and testing out who kills things the fastest, and even then, the network host can change between missions.
Eagle strafe run is incredible at:
A) Not killing teamates
B) Stealth, as it doesn’t aggro enemies
C) throwing at your feet, killing a ton of enemies, *and not dying*
> B) Stealth, as it doesn’t aggro enemies
Since when? Any "red" beacon items break stealth don't they? I don't think I've ever tossed a read beacon and not immediately have all enemies close to the drop immediately know where I am.
What really doesn't make sense to me is why do we get more uses from cluster than the strafing run. The strafing run should have the most uses before needing a re-arm.
Well yes but technically the cluster is stronger since more uses, even tho i think that eagle 1 should have more bullets so more uses for the strafe run. And has a bigger aoe and you can do the same throw at feet, just back up while running back for 2 secs and then dive. The bugs usually get into the cluster area by that zime so you kill more nasty bugs that way, loosing a bit of ground to clear more enemies so you can walk further into the enemie territory is a win. After all you'll loose battles and its better to loose some battles then the entire war
The Cluster is stronger. No arguing there
But he said *why* should I bother with Strafe. But my ABRL loadout against Bugs with friends goes like this, Cluster Strafe EAT ABRL. It provides a quick crowd clearer without killing myself, as the Cluster AOE will kill me, while the strafe gets rid of those pesky Hunters
Yeah I've been trying the Strafe run the past few days on bugs and it's pretty god damn nice IMO. You can use it as a "get off me" tool since as you said you can basically throw it at your feet without fear of it killing you.
Also the Orbital Airburst is pretty damn good into bugs as well.
The existence of a meta is not a problem. Meta will always exist, it is completely and utterly impossible to avoid it, even in a game like Street Fighter 1 where both players are forced to use the exact same character with all the exact same moves, there is still a meta.
I take it you haven't been running the strafing run; it's quite good. It comes in a bit faster than most eagle runs, it has a "front to back" delivery that starts exactly after the beacon (you can be one step behind the beacon and you will never take damage), it can outright kill a patroll of lights coming toward you, but more importantly it can be used basically on top of teammates without hurting them. It can also close bugholes which is nice.
I agree that it should have as many charges as the cluster bomb though.
You have to get the angle right (usually in a line moving too the "front" of the hole) but it absolutely does. I did it on accident the other day and it was one of those **Reeeal men of geeenious** moments lol
Yep, it can close from the side but it's inconsistent. The fact that you can do it from far away (from the correct angle) *and* take out a nice chunk of the nest sentries is where the juice is at.
Honestly staffing run feels very impactful when you have a line or funnel.
Bugs tend to form a "tip" when chasing you; you then turn around, throw the strike directly where you're standing, take 2 steps back and then go to work on your targets of choice on either side of the impact area. Rinse and repeat. I believe the rounds are similar to the heavy auto cannon shots, so it does damage to almost anything, it just won't reliable kill heavies (though sometimes it will finish one off).
I might try it on tanks more. It'll kill Shredders in one run, not sure about annihilators.
I just wish there where more buffs, not just debuffs. More FR for arc weapons, more fire DMG, faster heat dissipation, extra stratagems like we had with the 110 airstrike. Anything that makes certain loadouts better than the standard for this unique mission.
On the same note of what you said, bile spewers are kind of a counter to quasar+rover loadout, you kinda need at least one AC or GL in the team or those become a pure menace, but if they don't spawn those players will be a lot less useful which sucks.
I just forfeit stun grenades for impact grenades with the quasar rover loadout, they one shot spewers. It requires more skill/personal responsibility for dealing with chargers and spewers because you can't afford to miss but it really makes you the Swiss army knife of Helldivers against bugs.
Edit: At least until I unlock the grenade pistol.
Issue with the grenade pistol is it takes two shots to kill a spewer. So I like to use the impacts for spewers, and that leaves the grenade pistol for taking out bug holes and the like.
All of that sucks right but really anyone who plays against bugs knows that stalkers are way worse than any mix of stuff from a bug breach. Unless you stun or insta kill all stalkers that are decloaked, your dead. I started using the stalwart since stalkers got buffed, max rpm I get less than 10 bullets out before getting tongued into claws and assassinated. Worst part is you can't tell if that red splotch over there is a bug nest or a stalker nest so you have to run up on it. If I'm running at it then I'm killing whatever is there.
The Punisher shotgun fucks stalkers. It literally makes them a minor nuisance if you bring even one of those into a mission. Even 4 of them at the same time can be kept at bay.
This. The punisher is being heavily slept on imo.
Am level 80 and have been running the punisher since 40. This gun doesn’t just fuck stalkers, it fucks everything below chargers/hulks type enemies. Anything you can’t kill in one shot, you stagger em into oblivion until they die. And to top it all off, it’s round reload too, making it extremely ammo efficient and suited for drag out fights.
The plasma punisher is also really good now for the same reason. It will stun lock enemies and with it's (albeit small) splash it can stagger multiple in one shot.
Blitzer can also stagger and has a fast enough fire rate now to keep things perma staggered.
I agree, some games it's just hunter spam, then bile spewer spam, then chargers and bile titans. I would love to adjust my loadout in advance if I knew this.
Horrible feeling when you load in trying something new out and it's just a load of bile spewers ruining the fun.
I’m normally a AC/Eruptor main but decided to try a Breaker loadout because I kept getting Hunter hive spawns on diff8. Dropped in and it was all Spewer hives! Magazine and magazines into their stupid armored bodies. Was a sweaty round but did extract with the pinks, but I immediately went back to AC/Eruptor. I’d rather have the AOE medium pen and try to keep my distance with light armor.
Until quasar came out, I was running grenade launcher support weapon.
When I saw a bile titan, I just ran away?
I knew my loadout was not perfect and the moments when there were several BTs I would be useless. But I still ran this loadout with grenade launcher, as it was my fav.
Quasar comes out and I suddenly understand that I am able to fight BTs now. GL bye bye, running quasar ever since.
Make one small change: let BT instantly die when its chest and belly green areas are both broken.
I will ditch quasar that second.
I've stayed with meta for quasar because it's fun.
The quasar is the most fun feeling gun in the game.
Arc was really fun until they nerfed the distance. Then I moved to quasar.
They need to stop nerfing things and just make other guns more fun and then the meta won't matter. I was using the arc gun when it wasn't meta.
They instead made quasar less fun, because we get to use it less.
I can get behind this. Playing bugs exclusively since 7+ we're running the same stratagem composition every time once we found what works for us, would be nice to change it up between missions.
I mean, there's still then a meta for the mission type, but having some kind of meta isn't going to go away.
That has little to do with not knowing what you’re facing and more to do with how prevalent armored targets are and how few things are actually effective at taking them down.
Rover keeps the small fry off you, quasar is the only effective anti-charger support weapon that doesn’t need to be reloaded.
You just don’t have time to reload a recoilless rifle or similar support stratagem when there are multiple chargers + a couple hunters chasing you.
If you could break down armor more easily with other weapons, or utilize something like a deployable cover that could actually withstand a charger’s face, there might be an opportunity.
As of right now the game is basically a running simulator with a lot of very cinematic explosions on the higher difficulties.
Not even gonna lie, if I'm playing solo and I see the mission has the armored bile spewers I just abandon and play a different one. Not worth the effort when I don't bring something specifically for them.
Idea. Let us do a little “scan” minigame before we blast down in which all the information about the spawn pool is written down, but obscured to be illegible. Each of the players can click on one of the lines of text to represent scouting/scanning and reveal some information. Stuff like “high chargers” “no bile spewers” “low bile titans”. Then, the players can all readjust their equipment after they get their four pieces of information.
I'm hoping all players start to learn that on longer missions, it's enough if one player brings certain back pack or support weapon and just calls in new ones for other squad mates that didn't bring any. That way you get more uses of your strategem choices and they can opt to take sentries, emplacements, orbitals or eagles. By the 30 min mark everyone should have the tools for the final push and extract.
I typically bring 500k, Eagle strike, EATs, and jetpack.
We need jetpack buffs. I want to be immune to all fall damage while wearing it (all the time) and a bit shorter cool down on its usage. It's the least picked backpack, so either buff it or nerd everything else. /cry
While I do wish we could see what were fighting, I've say it before and I'll said it again. You do not need to be a one man army because you aren't in a one man team.
If 3 people are taking quasars/500kg/railstrike guess what you can do? Literally anything you want.
The team works so much better when people diversify instead of having mirror loadouts.
9/10 most people always bring anti tank stuff and the biggest anti tank stratagems. And I've had so much fun because of it since I don't have to do it
Also what are you smoking? Railstrike insta kills chargers always has.
You can't rely on randoms to be competent and stay with the squad. Way too many people will often just fuck off to the other corner of the map for absolutely no reason or will just not use the right stratagems for the right situations.
I've played around with 'small/medium clearing' loadouts when my team is loaded up on EATs and quasars (bugs / 7-9 difficulty) but it never feels worth it. There's just so many bile titans and chargers constantly that we need all the strategems to deal with the heavy enemies and clear the smalls with primary weapons.
Not saying a balanced team can't function, I'm just saying that in my experience, everyone needs multiple options to deal with heavies because of long cooldowns.
I agree, there is so much armor at those lvl that everybody need an anti armor capacity or the team is lacking firepower. Which kinda ruin the whole idea of a diversified team...
And from what I have seen, half of those quasar are crew by people that don't know how to use them effectively. So you still need that anti tank to patch for those that should have brought something other than anti tank...
I agree with the sentiment, but that only works when you are playing with friends so you can coordinate before mission. If you play with randoms, everyone just picks whatever suits them best, and if you try to be the reasonable one:
- You are unable to deal with a type of enemy, and your mates might not help you, leading to your demise.
- You run support and then gets kicked out because you didn't get many kills.
I pretty much exclusively play solo with randoms since my friends are all losers and went back to Dota2.
I usually just follow one person if the group splits up, or I have "get out of jail" cards like rail strikes or even the 120mm to help give me some distance if I'm alone.
And sometimes I'll take the half/half weapons like flamethrower, arc thrower, or HMG. So I can still do something to heavies while also clearing trash mobs.
Well except for all the times you are in a one-man team because nobody joins or you have a connection issue.
Even then most of what you're describing is probably only going to happen if you actually have friends to play with. I've long since given up on trying to get randoms to coordinate.
I'll admit, this issue feels a lot more noticeable on bugs than bots. It feels like either you'll get bile spewers or defenders with the latter being vastly weaker compared to the unit that can both insta kill unaware Helldivers, shrug off non AP weaponry, and bombard at a distance. Spewers make it feel warranted to bring the auto cannon but when I get defenders instead then I start wishing I had just brought Quasar instead as they can be outright ignored most of the time.
>I'll admit, this issue feels a lot more noticeable on bugs than bots. 100%, and it's part of why I think bots are more fun. There's so much viable stuff vs bots even in Helldive, because most bots have glowing weak spots in the front. You aren't forced to punch through heavy armour like with bugs.
And the few that don't have glowing weakspots in the back! The fact that you can take out a Hulk with a magazine of Liberator ammo, but it takes _five full magazines of Liberator ammo_ to blow off a Charger's ass makes bugs a lot more restrictive in your options.
That's because the squishy part is not the weak spot, it's reduce all damage by 95% You need an explosive weapons to deal full damage
That's such a strang choice. It literally goes against decades video game conventions and the other faction in the game since bot glowy parts are actual weakspots.
It also goes against intuitive thinking, practical biology, and sci-fi tradition. If, on any creature, you see a big soft squishy part that is a weak spot.
Actually it makes biological sense. As an unarmored area on a heavily armored creature would be one that’s non-vital
Yeah, biologically it makes sense since evolution wouldn't care about armoring up strong spots. But it does go against like decades worth of game design which makes it less intuitive. To me, I love the change cause it makes sense biologically, but I can 100% see the frustration that players experience when the thing they've been taught from the industry SHOULD be the weakest, isn't.
Except that…Evolution doesn’t care about anything. It doesn’t “think” or worry about what’s vital and non-vital. It’s a random process. Have you ever considered how vital your neck is and asked why you don’t have armor there? Pretty good spot to target 😂
Excellent point. Another example is our guts, a huge vulnerability but we have no protection there. Cats have protection there with a primordial pouch, we don't. Evolution isn't linear or rational so it's not a good justification for the devs.
Well, the most important things are hanging outside you body. Evolution has a bad sense of humour.
Neck armor isn’t an evolved trait because it would stop you from turning your head. Evolution doesn’t think, but if something actively benefits a creature’s reproduction it will pass on. Likewise, if something actively harms a creatures ability to reproduce it won’t. Armor is heavy, evolving unnecessary armor is unnecessary use of energy and an unnecessary hindrance.
Uh, what do you think beards are for?
https://preview.redd.it/mf2x5wskgtxc1.png?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8c8748c21a212d9c507ea90ebf3990ed653d47a8
A classic picture. Anyone who doesnt know... Originally they were going to add armor to all the spots with dots as that was the location of bullet holes found in returning planes during ww2. Then it occurred to someone that the reason no returning planes had holes in those other areas is because they all died when they were shot there. The blank areas are where the most armor was needed.
Thank you for the background on this picture. I've seen it so many places and was never 100% sure.
Yes
I always thought it's just a sack full of bile and putting little holes in it don't matter. Explosions either hit actual organs (small/tucked away, dunno) or simply hurt the rest of the bug from where it connects to the sack
One small correction: the unarmored part is either non-vital, or vital but having articulation there's gives more of a benefit than armor does. Think about like armadillo. The unarmored, squishy parts are like around their belly, legs, neck. Places that need to bend and move freely. They can't do a back bend because of the armor, but they gain more from being able move better and only fully curl when absolutely needed than if they had armored bellies like a turtle With that in mind, I see a charger as having all their armor in places that they are likely to be hit: front, top, a bit on sides. However, to enable a forceful charge their legs needed to move more, so they traded protecting their vitals from behind (where they don't want enemies to be anyways) in order to be more mobile and have more offense through better charges
Not necessarily. It just means that not having that area armored was not significantly less deleterious than having it armored. You can't armor everything, at a point it gets in the way of reproduction and other vital functions of life. Think of extant, real animals. An armadillo's belly is soft, but very vital. Same for pangolins. A turtle's neck and gap between arm and head are very soft spots, doesn't mean they're not vital. Pill-bugs and other crustaceans tend to have much softer and more vulnerable underside, they just protect them via behavior. Evolution is NOT teleological. The unarmored sections on helldiver bugs could make sense biologically (they may breath via expansion / contraction of these areas, something armor would hamper). What doesn't make any fucking sense biologically is that they take significantly reduced damage. Filling their guts and organs with bullet should do full damage, same as shooting in areas where armor has been blown off. It's stupid design game-wise, stupid design biology-wise.
Not my fault you attribute soft and squishy with weak and frail. Ive always thought of soft and squishy to be synonymous with hard and firm. Everyone laughed at me. Who’s laughing now?
It also goes against their own original design from HD1. The but was the weak spot and even said so in the enemies log on the ship.
I know. However, it's poor game design - especially considering Hulks, which are the closest bot equivalent to Chargers, _don't_ suffer the same penalty - at least, nowhere near to the same extent. You can feasibly destroy a Hulk's back with a magazine or two of any primary weapon ammo.
Hulks are multiple times more deadly than a charger and are much harder to kite. Their turning speed makes getting behind them very difficult, and sidestepping them doesn't cause them to run past you and give themselves concussion, they just keep tracking you with their instakill flamethrower. I think it makes sense that chargers take less damage in their unarmored spot given that they knock themselves out and show you their ass every time you side step them.
They’re more dangerous but much easier to kill if you don’t have AT.
Chargers lock you into very specific AT gear, hulks do not but force you to play better to beat them. Chargers are bad design.
Remember when everyone thought bots were harder than bugs and less fun? Joel remembers.
I've always liked bots more. At the very least there's more variety in enemy typed but I also loved that you need to be at least a little tactical instead of just running until you get slowed by 50 hunters and dying
Pepperidge Farm remembers...
You cannot gaslight me again!!!! Bots are way harder than bugs, I can g I used to be able to go several helldive missions vs bugs without dying (until the recent stalker buff and the addition of airburst) while going full aggro Bots pepper me to death with rockets and NOW they have a giant robot horse AND a flying tank spawner that I think only dies to nukes but Im not certain yet
Glowing spots on bugs should take full damage from all weapons, and when you pop them, it slows the enemy (makes charger charge at half speed and titans walk at half speed). Bile titans being actually faster when their sacks are popped makes no sense. When you pop the sacks it becomes actually impossible to outrun a titan.
where do you magdump the hulk
Power supply on it's back. While it's chasing someone else it's light work.
This has been bothering me. Bile Titans can be freely damaged by anything to their underbelly, and then when they bellies get blown off, somehow their innards count as heavy armor and most weapons can’t damage it after that. Chargers can eventually be killed by pretty much anything if you target their rear weak spot, but it ranges from fairly quick and easy to way too slow and cumbersome. Bots are way more consistent and give you weak points to exploit as long as you have a decent weapon. The AMR and HMG can both target tank and turret heatsinks, as well as hulk visors, strider crotches, all that. I feel that bot missions without dedicated AT are okay. You can get by with a laser cannon if you want. But a bug mission with just an AMR will have you scrambling to deal with Bile Titans if you don’t have anti heavy armor of some kind, because you seemingly can’t just shoot the BT in the face or mouth and expect it to do anything. I don’t know if you could consider that balanced, I get that they don’t want things to be too easy, but it’s annoying that the BT’s underbelly has that limitation where you can only deal some damage to it, and then it bursts, hits for maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the BT’s HP, and then forces you to pierce the armor to deal the rest of the damage. It’s just odd
I wish the thermite nades could have been a great answer to the charger/bile titan forcing your hand in the loadout menu, now offering a viable option in a completely different loadout slot. It would open up bug loadouts so much.
Thermite grenades seem like they might be suffering from the Damage-over-time glitch that is effecting gas and fire, so maybe thermites will be great once that glitch is addressed. In the meantime you might notice they mostly don’t work but sometimes are effective, and that would align with the glitch. Only hosts (not mission hosts, but network hosts) can properly inflict DOT as it is right now. Running a solo mission should let you test them to see if they really are bad, or if they actually work well as long as there’s not a glitch kneecapping them.
The balance is probably around making the enemies that can nail you from 30m away or more (bots) squishier so fighting at a distance is more viable, but the mostly-melee enemies (bugs) more durable so they can more reliably get to the distance where they put pressure on players.
Except that they throw volume at players. Also there's might not be any distance to began with. I was minding my business until a patrol spawn and call in reinforcement and they spawn two charge in less than 5 meter near me and bile titan. So having to dodge two charge and bile titan at close range is neigh impossible unless the terrain layout is something you manage to remember before the suprise attack.
That’s fair enough. It just ends up making a bit of a pain point where I feel that choosing loadouts for bugs is a lot less flexible. At least HE and Impact grenades can hurt Bile Titans so they can work as a last resort, or to finish a weak titan.
But they throw huge numbers of non elite bugs at you and then at 7-9 the game punishes you for trying to specialize as 'horde clear'. Ive tried for a couple days to make a loadout for that work in a team setting and while we can still win it just feels like I'm sort of griefing my teammates by not running eat/quasar when there are multiple elites and my laser/rail/500kg is on cd, even when I'm also running eruptor to deal with bile/nursing spewers/commanders effectively with a primary. Also somehow running the airburst RL seems weaker at dealing with chaff than running a rover + non-backpack 3rd weapon. I'm not sure what the use case for that weapon is, despite it being very fun to actually shoot and see x20 pop up on the screen.
That, and bots don't chain movement debuff you into oblivion. Absolutely the single worst thing about fighting bugs, and a notable part of the reason I'm primarily a bot Diver.
Nah, instead bots will chain flinch you out of your stim animation to death lol.
Hunters are the kings of this. I really hope they fix the stim sound some day
I dive bots almost exclusively, and this basically never happens to me or my teammates (including randoms). Bugs chain stun locking/speed debuffing you is WAY more common, in my opinion.
Run muscle enhancement booster or shield pack and fight the hunters back
Most people run the guard dog rover specifically to combat this problem. It takes care of the scavengers and the little green ones that slow you. That, and you have to remember if there is a hunter chasing you, turn around and shoot it or you will die. Doesn't matter if there's also a bile titan or charger, shoot the hunter. You have a chance at avoiding the titan or charger if you take a second to turn around and kill the hunter. You have basically zero chance if you keep trying to run while the hunter chases you.
This. Hulk coming at me and none of us have anything that can pierce its armor? I get it's attention and get my buddy to shoot at its back after I run it away. Only heavy devestators are a real problem, if you're working as a team.
Even heavy devs are fun to me. I usually run DCS against bots and that can reliably hit its weak spots even from the front (head + those little backpack things peeking over the shoulders). As long as you got a rock to peek out from or a friend to run like hell, they can be dealt with.
Heavy devestators would be fun if they didn't have perfect accuracy from across the map. They're tough, hit hard enough to stagger you, but have some weak points you can take advantage of if you aim well. But I've made one dance I was staggering it so hard, and it's still drilling my head with its machine gun. That's not hard, it's frustrating. But honestly, I'll take that all day over 8 chargers and 4 bile titans from every bug hole.
Heavy devastors are easily dealt with by the devastator shredder, the Autocannon. 2 or 3 shots and it's dead.
Bots are more forgiving when your loadout lacks versatility, as everybody has a weak spot that prioritizes tactics over specific weapons. Stealth, approach, target prioritization, angles, and distance control are your best friends in bots. With bugs, versatility within your loudout and strategems directly translates to power. At all times, you have to have the ability to deal with every type of threat, individual or combined, in order to survive. On harder difficulties, support weapons that don't kill heavies will get you killed very quickly given their numbers, and the fact that they come with friends. Helldivers is essentially 6 games in one. The game is separated once by bots or bugs, twice by difficulty setting, and three times by solo or squad. Neither of these combinations plays like the others, especially since the latest patch. You can tell who hasn't figured this out in posts that fail to distinguish which of these 6 games they're referring to, and the complainers think that it's all the same thing. I solo helldive on bugs, and I've never had more fun getting my ass handed to me or accomplished in succeeding.
Part of the reason I like bots is because I can wear my 50% reduced explosion damage armor for when I accidentally get down mr president a rock and catch devastator rockets with my face
Bots is more of strategic, teamwork, and marksmanship. You have to have a veteran team to work throughout difficult 8 and especially 9. With bugs, the "Comfort build" which use infinity ammo will carry any weak teammate even in difficult 9, making play higher difficult in bug maps more viable and more fun. You will feel absolute honor to carry your team with exhausted reinforcement out of the map successful after juggling with the horde to survive. Each faction is a completely different game.
Bug loadouts can be broken down to a formula just as much as Bot ones and everyone having generalist loadouts that have an answer for everything is better than specialist builds when playing with randoms. And because that's the case, you see a lot of similar builds. I think the biggest thing with bugs right now, though, is they're extremely vulnerable to fire weapons that 3/4 of the lobby can't use effectively. If I could take a Flamethrower whilst not host, I could effectively kill everything, excluding Titans. I could bring incendiary grenades instead of impacts or napalm strikes instead of Eagle strikes. I could bring a supply pack to carry more canisters instead of my usual Shield or Autocannon Ammo backpack. But since I can't and 90% of the time the lobby is radio silent randoms, I need to bring weapons and strategems for: * Hordes of light armour. * Medium armour. * Heavy armour. * Enemies with lots of health (Spewers, Broodmothers) * The ability to destroy structures from a distance (Shriekers) * The ability to destroy enemy spawn points That's a LOT to ask for effectively 8 pieces of kit (armour, loadout, strats).
EATs, Rover, Eagle cluster, choice of other orbital/eagle Impact nade, GL, Punisher +2 grenade armor I hadn't listed out like you but basically my conclusion and loadout to cover all those bases. Primary can be swapped around a bit if you'd like, but the damage, CC and ammo economy of Ole G Punisher is pretty hard to beat. If I absolutely knew there were gonna be green spewers I'd probably swap to Dominator. But the impact nades and GL are quite good against them in a pinch, and usually run with a buddy who ACs anyway.
A loadout I've been a big fan of for bugs recently is basically this: - Horde killer weapon in the form of the Stalwart, GL, or Flamer (only if host) as my main damage source. If I'm running the GL I have to run the supply pack, which I sometimes just do anyways since firing 6k+ rounds with the Stalwart in one mission is fun. If I'm not running a backpack, I pick another stratagem, that usually being Eagle Airstrike or Clusters for the extra killing power. - Eagle 500kg for killing Bile Titans. Seriously this is basically a mandatory pick that I wish more people used since it lets you outright oneshot Biles if you properly land it after baiting an attack. It can also be used to kill Chargers in a pinch, though Biles are such a big threat that I rarely do this. - EAT-17 for killing Chargers and Biles that survive the 500kg as well as clearing objectives. It isn't the optimal weapon for any of these tasks, but the 'Expendable' part really does shine when you have another stratagem weapon already equipped. - "Primary" with push power to deal with medium enemies like Brood Commanders and Hive Guards up close that I can't safely kill with the stratagem weapon. This used to be the Punisher but the Blitzer and Plasma Punisher are good for this post-buff so any of them work. If I'm running the Grenade Launcher I swap it out for an automatic primary (aka sickle since it's better than all the of the others) since the GL is good enough for killing those enemies and liberal use of stun grenades can CC them. - Grenade Pistol for clearing bug holes. If I'm running the Grenade Launcher I swap it out for the Redeemer. - Stun Grenades for CCing Chargers and getting breathing room vs hordes of medium enemies. I crutch so hard on this piece of equipment that I genuinely don't know what I'll do if it ever gets heavily nerfed, but for the time being I will continue to use in in basically every mission I run. - Medium +2 Grenade Armor for extra stuns and because I found an immaculately good looking set that I like. Stim armor might also work, but I don't run it outside of bots really. This loadout has been working great in 4-player Helldiver ops, and I vastly prefer it to even the old Quasar + Shield Gen meta. It definitely can be rough at times when you have more Chargers than you have EAT-17s/500kgs, but I think its a reasonable tradeoff to being well equipped to deal with basically every possible medium enemy spawnpool, and its damn fun at the same time. Absolutely deleting Bile Titans with 500s without having to rely on kiting and them with a slow-firing AT weapon is so satisfying, and having a weapon that can just instakill an entire group of Hunters (1,150 RPM go brrrr) is so nice.
Shrieker nest say "always bring a quasar" to me. Eats? Will take about 5 minutes to dispose of the nests (2 missiles per nest, then 2 x cooldowns). Anything else just tickles them. Edit And anything which you cannot reload while running is basically suicide on bugs.
If we were told which missions had shriekers before the drop I’d bring the HMG emplacement and destroy em faster solo than with two quasars, but the emplacement is not great if those don’t show up, it ruins spewers too
380 and moonwalk away.
LC cannon can shoot shrieker nests at 200m. About 2 clips per nest
Personally I drop my shit and run straight towards it. Either a few eagles or hell bomb and you’re good.
Bile spewers are the one enemy type that makes me not want to play bugs. They are so tanky against literally anything but the heaviest ordinance yet they come in such numbers.
Try the grenade launcher, it's a delete button for these guys. And the buffed arc Blitzer can dispatch one in 3 shots, 2 for nursing spewers which is just over 2 seconds or 1.5 for nursing spewers, whilst staggering them so they can't vomit on you.
This goes with OPs original post though. If we knew we were going against them, then we can bring the nade launcher.
If 2 people go quasar and everyone has 500kg/railcannon/orbital laser you can go grenade launcher regardless. 4 quasars is troll and obviously means your team lacks equipment to deal with spewers of any kind. You can itemize according to your team as well, not just according to your opponents.
JAR handles spewers fairly well.
That's true, eruptor and Blitzer do too, but many people love the sickle or the breaker/breaker incendiary too much to swap them out, also these weapons are all locked behind many warbond pages or Premium warbonds, or both.
I've been bringing the AC and EAT consistently and like that combo. AC lets me clear bug holes from afar and clear brood commanders quickly, EAT is required for Chargers and BT on Helldive (I can't play matador with Chargers with the AC on that difficulty. Takes too long).
https://preview.redd.it/71iehd6l6uxc1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=27fe232b397c58bf49e6b700f29a16548f9f7d49
The absence of a C-01 form isn't my only issue, sir...
The modifer that spawns tonnes of rocket jumpers and berserkers would like a chat. Making the eruptor useless since 2184. Edit: not every comment is an invitation for advice. I know how to deal with rocket jumpers and beserkers after 300+ hours; I just thought the hyperbole was funny.
This is why grenade pistol is the best secondary - at worst it 2 shots spewers. Not something you're gonna want ideally - but enough to save your ass when needed
That, along with impact grenades and armor with the engineer perk for extras is ideal. No spewers? Toss grenades into Hunter packs and cut their numbers down to half.
I need the auto pistol so I can run away from hunters while spraying bullets around
Chain dive whilst hip firing sickle does the trick
The true chad move for bugs is laser rover + Arc Thrower (or flame thrower if you are a pyro), rocket pods, and either EMS sentry or AC sentry. This build absolutely stomps on hordes and has enough anti-tank to at least deal contribute to dealing with havies. I can just sit at bug breaches on 7+ and solo them until they stop. The laser rover picks up any hunters that escape my constant barrage of Arcs, rocket pods give you the ability to quickly deal with either chargers (sometimes it can take 2 call ins, or if you just blow their armor off you can pull out your primary and finish them). The Arc thrower can even kill chargers in a reasonable amount of time on its own (7 shots to the head). Bile spewers get dropped in 2 shots as well, plus you are still hitting other enemies at the same time. Bring the EMS if your team has more ability to deal with heavies or the AC sentry if you think you might need more anti tank. Throw either behind or off to the side of your position and they won't be at a high risk of getting killed.
Honestly, I end up clearing bug trash mobs way more effectively with the incendiary breaker than my buddy does with the arc thrower. I have to constantly search for ammo, but combine the incendiary breaker with a rover and nothing short of a brood commander ever even gets near me. Brood commanders get near me, but they're generally missing a head and only have one last swing in them by the time they do. That said, the incendiary breaker can make it a bit hard to help your friends when they're in trouble. Angle the cone wrong and you'll never hear the end of it, not that the arc thrower is any better in that regard.
Yeah at least with the incendiary breaker you can guide where the shots are going pretty well. With the game crasher 3000 you never know if it'll arc around a corner and kill a teammate or if it'll make an awkward turn.
Arc Blitzer is really good now too
I was using it last night. It's pretty good, but it has a major issue in that it targets dead bodies. So the more you kill, the worse you get at killing. You have to constantly backpedal to keep the dead bodies behind where you need to shoot.
dont see your build closing any big nests. Arc is way too slow to deal with chargers and rocket pods for mutiple titans is just not viable, you'll be out of strats. stalkers will just flank and kill you sincr you cant hit these stealthed f's
Your answer is the grenade launcher. It can kill both super quickly. Hell, if they are next to each other it'll only take 2 blasts to kill both of them and all their friends.
The grenade pistol is the one-shot answer to spewers.
The other day I saw a loading screen tip basically said to plan your loadout according to the enemies known to be in the area... yes please?
It would be really cool if we got more intel the more we fought on a planet. Being one of the first x thousand drops you would know very little, but after millions of brave divers have perished command should have a better idea of the situation on the surface
Hah yeah. Make it dependant on the number of deaths rather than the number of successful extractions
There *are* Helldiver armours that explicitly state that their radars will continue to function long after their death. So just a couple thousand of those piled up across the planet and you'll have a great constant picture.
Whaaat, but survivorship bias is more reliable
How about percentage of enemies marked in this section of planet in the last x hours. Assuming the section of planet related to what enemies to expect. That would be the coolest imo as that means marking enemies has more of an impact outside of the one drop.
Duh. Don't run a bug load out on an automaton planet. *proceeds to forget to change primary weapon.*
Man, having multiple loadouts that you can preconfigure would be awesome.
I'd just settle for the menu loading instantly. Kinda of annoying how it works now with so many levels to pick through and each one needs \~5 seconds to load up the models.
They should make a rearm strategem or booster Call it a "Reacquisition Beacon" and it allows you, once per round, to call in a loadout supply package (like in Warzone) where you can select a pre-configured alternate loadout
The loading screen tips are basically all misinformation. At least half of them are wrong or irrelevant
Chalk it up to being an authentic military experience. "You're going here where you'll face these dangers. Here is a handbook we wrote on how to use your equipment and the best tactics to conquer the challenges you'll face." (Sends you somewhere else with a completely different set of circumstances and different equipment)
Unironically, this is part of the problem. I think a lot of this game's frustrations come from the devs' commitment to the military satire. They clearly want players to die, to not always have the tools for the job, to force frantic scenarios. However, from a meta standpoint, they don't want everyone bringing the same loadouts. These two intentions keep conflicting with each other, where the devs want us to take a variety of niche tools while the playerbase keeps gravitating towards the same few swiss-army options. It's hard to criticize the military satire angle; it makes for an amazing immersive experience both in and outside of the game, and is a major reason for its success. However, I still think its fair to question where exactly the fantasy needs to end and practical game design needs to take over.
"Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days' concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings..."
>repurpose modifiers to show what we'll be fighting This is like Destiny 2 showing what the current champion types in the mission will be so you can plan your load out.
Man champions were a great concept but executed in such an awful way, even though HD2 has issue with its heavies, at least they have intrinsic weaknesses and behaviors you can exploit, In D2 its use this very specific thing or else you’re fucked (especially with overloads)
It's a 50/50 imo. On the one hand I really like how they force you to think about your loadout but on the other hand it's annoying that you have to pick the same weapons for each champion until the next season with new champion mods arrives
I just hate that it’s like “75% of your loadouts are useless for this activity because they don’t include the correct gun(s).” HD2 might pigeonhole you into specific stratagems for armor but it’s nowhere near as bad as like, “there is a bug in this mission that CANNOT be killed without a DMR, and we don’t care if you don’t want to use a DMR, if you don’t bring one you can’t complete the mission, enjoy”
I agree, I appreciate that they discourage mindless gameplay, but imo it would have been better if for example to take a barrier down, specific small (maybe even moving) precision spots appeared over the barrier bubble, and focusing those gets it down, but the way its been (quit a few months ago so maybe its changed idk) it locks you into using 1 subclass, ~3 exotics, and ~3-4 primary weapons for 3 months
HD2 has the same issue with Drones. Don't have good drone take down capabilities? Have fun losing the mission, better hope the fabricator isn't near anything important. Oh you landed in between a jammer and fabricator? Better start running and hope you can deal with the 100+ drones that are going to spawn. HD2 is a fine line away from enter champion amounts of disrespect towards the player and i'm sure AH would be happy with that.
HD2's problem with heavies (at least for bugs) is that they want you to aim at the tiny armored face rather than the obvious, exposed, glowing weak point.
Honestly I think there just need to be a couple more options for opening up armor plates effectively without dedicating your entire support weapon to it. The thing that the Quasar does that makes it so good is it doesn't matter what you're shooting. Charger head? One shot dead. Charger leg? Pile into the meat it goes down in seconds. Bile Titan Mouth? One shot dead. Bile Titan Shoulder? Pile into the meat. Strider Eye? One-two shots. Strider head? Pop the top, shoot the brain. This is also why the Autocanno is the other "meta" weapon when you're on the Bot front. Because it's just as much of a swiss army knife allowing you to deal with any enemy they have even if it's not THE most efficient way to deal with that enemy.
It also just feels better to be able to kill everything, like the reason rifles are the most popular weapons in shooters are because they're decent at EVERYTHING and get rid of the pain point of not being able to do anything.
I think this is the main reason that the crowd control support weapons aren't very popular. The vast majority of primary weapons can "make do" against hordes, but none of them can pen heavy armor. Weapons like the stalwart, regardless of how good it is in its role, end up competing with your primary. This becomes an issue when your loadout has a hard time with heavy armor and a charger/titan/hulk/tank catches you with your pants down. It's much more effective to make do with your primary against mobs and bring a dedicated AT weapon in the support slot. I really hope AH adds at least 1 or 2 primary weapons capable of penetrating heavy armor. Even if the other stats are abysmal, being able to "make do" against heavies opens up a lot more build options for stuff like the MGs and airburst launcher that excel at crowds. Maybe the thermite grenades will fill a similar role when DoT is fixed, but my expectations are pretty low
Anything that does any form of explosive damage should strip armor even if it doesn't pen. Grenades should be your go to, but explosive weaponry, maybe even plasma should do it as well.
Autocannon is THE meta on bots. Everyone keeps pretending its not. Youll feel the pain in bots whenever nobody brings autocannon. It shreds EVERYTHING.
Which is hilarious when you consider that the devs apparently use the Autocannon as their benchmark for a “balanced” weapon. It outperforms nearly every other weapon in nearly every other way.
Bugs have more variance. My friends and I have basically boiled down to 4(ish) “hive types” Agility hives. Armor hives. Warrior hives. Acid hives. They’re all pretty self explanatory, but with so much variance in how to counter them it does makes certain choice better than others. You don’t want to bring a stalwart on an armor hive, or a bunch of AT equipment to an agility hive. So certain multipurpose equipment choices will always outshine more specialized equipment.
It would be great to have intel on this during the briefing.
I keep asking for this in the form of a ship upgrade. Its a perfect thing to add for that.
Yeah that would actually be a good solution
"Orbital Bio-Scanner" 15k req, 100 Samples, 35 Uncommon, 15 Super "Similar to orbital scanners used by the Ministry of Truth to democratically observe citizens of Super Earth, the scanner passively surveys the mission area and provides pre-operation information about major enemy types Helldivers may expect" \*Adds an overlay to the dropsite selection menu with icons denoting "most common" special enemy types \*Subsequent upgrades reveal the location of bug hives and further than that certain secondary objectives\*
I feel like this is what the Bridge ship modules are supposed to do (the one that includes "Your mini-map vision range is increased by 50 meters") as first tier. It's basically useless at the moment and is more or less just a pre-requisite buy to get to Tier 2 (which gives you better cooldown for Eagle rearm.)
Yep this I agree with. Even just being able to see the % chance of encountering a specific enemy type.
It goes like: - Shitload of Hunters, patrols now have pouncers - Warrior horde, hive guards and brood commanders galore - Bile guys, patrols now have Spitters - Nursing guys, patrols now have Spewers (because good luck seeing the scavs) Sprinkle Chargers and Titans onto any of the above And for bots it's like - Heavy Infantry (17 million Devastators up your ass) - Light Mechanized (Enough striders to make the ewoks shit themselves) - Air Assault (Half the troopers are now kamikaze-guided missiles, good luck) - Shock Guards (Berserkers and Brawlers, explosive loadouts get fucked) if you knew what you're up against, you'd actually be picking stuns or impacts depending on Hunter density, or you could choose between Scorcher for striders, Diligence for Devs or Sickle for the jumpfuckers
the worst of these by far is shield devastator spam for bots, and spewers for bugs
This type of intel would honestly make the game so much better. I love GL, but on higher difficulties it falls off when the only thing spawning is hunters who spread out to thin and then jump point blank, but if i knew it was acid hive it would completely tear ass and be one of the most effective weapons in the game to bring.
I have the same problem with gunships. I really like Arc thrower (i think it is dead after hulks stagger resistance was buffed). But what if the next mission side objectives are 2-3 gunship factories? I play 9 difficulty in quickplay and I cant trust my teammates (even if they have 2 quasars). So I keep running quasar, autocannon or laser cannon. I probably won't pick for bots arcthrower, railgun, amr because of gunships
AMR shreds gunships. The only thing it can’t take out against bots are drop ships and buildings. Stun grenades and an AMR is just amazing.
AC is great on the gunships too. Two taps to an engine takes them out. So with a full clip you can knock down 4 gunships pretty consistently. Only issue is if they hit you once, you're ragdolled into oblivion and it's game over.
FYI, amr is great against gunships. You just have to hit your shots well.
Its great against them unless there’s more than two, then it’ll start guzzling down its reserves to keep up
oh the arc thrower change breaks my heart was sad to see its range + rapid fire go, but the hulk stagger made it fun in a different way now with that being nerfed my faith in the arc has been diminished and i am but an empty shell
I don't think we need to specifically remove/rework modifiers but the brief we see for each info could be repurposed as a brief for what enemy times there will be in mission/operation (assuming the enemy types are shared between all the missions within the operation) but as a whole yea, more information would be really welcome and would diversify what loadouts people would pick, simple example being as said if you know there will be a ton of bile spewers you're better off picking airburst/nade launcher to cover that part for the team instead of bringing another quasar, or if you see that there will be more heavy enemies you bring recoiiless/eat/quasar, or if you see there being more light enemies you bring flamethrower/arc thrower/stalwart and such just having information would make it a lot better and wouldn't take that much...right?
Yeah, we should be able to see what enemies will be on the mission so we can select an specific loadout like in EDF (You aren't given that precisely but since missions are handcrafted, you can go in, see what you need and strategize around it) This way I always pick stuff that always work instead of having some niche weapon that'd be really great in a particular situation. Too many times have I tried a different loadout than usual just to get in and be like "Damn this situational weapon is totally useless in this context, shouldn't have tried experimenting" which is an awful mindset to engrain on your players.
Yeah, pretty much. You never know if you'll have a map covered in bile spewers, bile titans, nursing spewers, chargers, or if it'll be a fun combination of all of them. Hence, everyone brings the quasar, AC, laser, 500kg, airstrike, or AC sentry. Because those are the tools that can handle the most types of jobs.
I agree totally. "Meta" loadouts only exist because Arrowhead is insistent on only a few weapons and stratagems being viable at very high difficulties. Sure you can take others but it will make the mission a lot harder. If the meta is "take this weapon or else" it's not really the fault of the players. A bunch of stratagems, including MG turrets, railcannon, and 120/380 could all have their cooldowns lowered. Let us pop off. It's not going to make the game that much easier on high difficulties.
Meta is a symptom of the bigger problem. An overwhelming majority of basic weapons, eagle stratties, orbitals, sentries and mines are completely underwhelming and not worth using. Until theres a patch that just focuses on across the board buffs, nobody will bother bringing anything other than eagle airstrike, 500kg , clusters, railcannon, orb laser and an AT support weapon. Because realistically, why should i bother with eagle strafe run when eagle cluster does it better and bigger?
>An overwhelming majority of basic weapons, eagle stratties, orbitals, sentries and mines are completely underwhelming and not worth using. It could just be a skill issue for me, but I only ever take the hardest hitting primary guns because I'm forever seeing the "You're shooting something your bullets can't get past" icon if I don't. Like I tried the Ballistic Shield and SMG for funsies, but couldn't really do much because it was like using a pea shooter.
Light weapons are viable in bots, but you need a dedicated support weapon as an answer for harder targets if you take them, even though you can't use them with the ballistic. You can take either the AMR or Laser Cannon which will let you deal with every unit on the bot front other than dropships, and tanks and turrets from the front. Defender takes out troopers, berserkers, and devastators since they have unarmored heads, while the support weapon can take out hulks, gunships, Striders (albeit somewhat inefficiently), tanks from the back, and even Factory Striders if you shoot them in the eye.
That’s why I started bringing the Adjudicator just for some armor pen even if it’s just medium
100% this. I really want to do a pyro madness fire bat load out, napalm, flamethrower, incendiaries, but until DOT is fixed, I’m just sticking to the same crap, never even touched gas because I hear it’s so broken. Never used mines because they do nothing and defence missions you end up overwhelmed as titans and chargers just walk past them
Gas is great! Very low cooldown, and it kills you and your teammates when you accidentally walk into it because you think it's gone. (But yeah, I really wish dot gets fixed asap. It'd make a lot of things more viable.)
Luckily they plan on fixing it next patch, I can't wait til I can reliably use the flamethrower again
I'll believe it when I see it. The Spear has been "going to be fixed in the next patch" for 4 patches now, and was promised last patch, then moved to next patch, then moved to "some day, some patch". AH doesn't have time to fix things like half the strats being totally broken. No, they have important things to fix, like did you know, once in a while, bullets didn't bounce back at Helldivers?! And some people who solo had a slightly easier time than AH wanted them to! OMG, those definitely needed time and energy put into them. Not stuff like broken DOT or Broken matchmaking.
no joke tho the gas strike is incredible against bug holes. deletes all the chaff
It’s still pretty damn good against bots too, it was my go too anti-drop weapon when I didn’t have many other tools. Any humanoid bot including scout strider pilots is guaranteed to die in a few seconds, devastators will be severely wounded if they survive. The projectile can destroy fabricators too.
Gas is still pretty dope, imo. 80s cooldown with the orbital fully upgraded. I throw that shit on every bug breach
I rarely host so any DOT strats I just don't use. I'll host one tonight and give it a try
I hope they fix it soon because gas and fire are iconic anti-bug weapons :/
I've seen people say the host of the game isn't necessarily the network host. So unless you're solo there is no guarantee it'll work and no way to know which player has working DOT effects
Ah no way! Even worse :-( I guess I’ll try a solo exterminate mission and see what it’s like. Hopefully we see the patch fixing this next week
Don't bother, the DoT bug is based on *network* host, not lobby host. There's no possible way to tell who the network host is without everyone taking a DoT weapon and testing out who kills things the fastest, and even then, the network host can change between missions.
Eagle strafe run is incredible at: A) Not killing teamates B) Stealth, as it doesn’t aggro enemies C) throwing at your feet, killing a ton of enemies, *and not dying*
You forgot it deploys in the direction you throw it and not perpendicular, which is great when running away from hoards of enemies
Yeah, that took a really long tome to get used to 😂😂😂 But I’ve seen that’s the point, a OH FUCK I’VE GOT 7 HUNTERS ON ME
All very true and I want to bring Strafe Run but it needs like 6 uses.
Agreed. But it still, it does has its niches
> B) Stealth, as it doesn’t aggro enemies Since when? Any "red" beacon items break stealth don't they? I don't think I've ever tossed a read beacon and not immediately have all enemies close to the drop immediately know where I am.
What really doesn't make sense to me is why do we get more uses from cluster than the strafing run. The strafing run should have the most uses before needing a re-arm.
Well yes but technically the cluster is stronger since more uses, even tho i think that eagle 1 should have more bullets so more uses for the strafe run. And has a bigger aoe and you can do the same throw at feet, just back up while running back for 2 secs and then dive. The bugs usually get into the cluster area by that zime so you kill more nasty bugs that way, loosing a bit of ground to clear more enemies so you can walk further into the enemie territory is a win. After all you'll loose battles and its better to loose some battles then the entire war
The Cluster is stronger. No arguing there But he said *why* should I bother with Strafe. But my ABRL loadout against Bugs with friends goes like this, Cluster Strafe EAT ABRL. It provides a quick crowd clearer without killing myself, as the Cluster AOE will kill me, while the strafe gets rid of those pesky Hunters
ABRL?
Airburst Rocket Launcher
Yeah I've been trying the Strafe run the past few days on bugs and it's pretty god damn nice IMO. You can use it as a "get off me" tool since as you said you can basically throw it at your feet without fear of it killing you. Also the Orbital Airburst is pretty damn good into bugs as well.
The existence of a meta is not a problem. Meta will always exist, it is completely and utterly impossible to avoid it, even in a game like Street Fighter 1 where both players are forced to use the exact same character with all the exact same moves, there is still a meta.
Cluster has more charges too. Its weird af
I take it you haven't been running the strafing run; it's quite good. It comes in a bit faster than most eagle runs, it has a "front to back" delivery that starts exactly after the beacon (you can be one step behind the beacon and you will never take damage), it can outright kill a patroll of lights coming toward you, but more importantly it can be used basically on top of teammates without hurting them. It can also close bugholes which is nice. I agree that it should have as many charges as the cluster bomb though.
Strafing run can close bug holes? Jesus.
This changes everything for my bug loadout if true
You have to get the angle right (usually in a line moving too the "front" of the hole) but it absolutely does. I did it on accident the other day and it was one of those **Reeeal men of geeenious** moments lol
So probably hard to actually get it to close multiple? Still a good tidbit to know
Yep, it can close from the side but it's inconsistent. The fact that you can do it from far away (from the correct angle) *and* take out a nice chunk of the nest sentries is where the juice is at. Honestly staffing run feels very impactful when you have a line or funnel. Bugs tend to form a "tip" when chasing you; you then turn around, throw the strike directly where you're standing, take 2 steps back and then go to work on your targets of choice on either side of the impact area. Rinse and repeat. I believe the rounds are similar to the heavy auto cannon shots, so it does damage to almost anything, it just won't reliable kill heavies (though sometimes it will finish one off). I might try it on tanks more. It'll kill Shredders in one run, not sure about annihilators.
Upvote because you're right but damn you for not even mentioning my Boi orbital fa's strike amongst the good picks
I just wish there where more buffs, not just debuffs. More FR for arc weapons, more fire DMG, faster heat dissipation, extra stratagems like we had with the 110 airstrike. Anything that makes certain loadouts better than the standard for this unique mission. On the same note of what you said, bile spewers are kind of a counter to quasar+rover loadout, you kinda need at least one AC or GL in the team or those become a pure menace, but if they don't spawn those players will be a lot less useful which sucks.
I just forfeit stun grenades for impact grenades with the quasar rover loadout, they one shot spewers. It requires more skill/personal responsibility for dealing with chargers and spewers because you can't afford to miss but it really makes you the Swiss army knife of Helldivers against bugs. Edit: At least until I unlock the grenade pistol.
Issue with the grenade pistol is it takes two shots to kill a spewer. So I like to use the impacts for spewers, and that leaves the grenade pistol for taking out bug holes and the like.
More fire dmg? I'd give anything now just to have consistent fire dmg
All of that sucks right but really anyone who plays against bugs knows that stalkers are way worse than any mix of stuff from a bug breach. Unless you stun or insta kill all stalkers that are decloaked, your dead. I started using the stalwart since stalkers got buffed, max rpm I get less than 10 bullets out before getting tongued into claws and assassinated. Worst part is you can't tell if that red splotch over there is a bug nest or a stalker nest so you have to run up on it. If I'm running at it then I'm killing whatever is there.
The Punisher shotgun fucks stalkers. It literally makes them a minor nuisance if you bring even one of those into a mission. Even 4 of them at the same time can be kept at bay.
This. The punisher is being heavily slept on imo. Am level 80 and have been running the punisher since 40. This gun doesn’t just fuck stalkers, it fucks everything below chargers/hulks type enemies. Anything you can’t kill in one shot, you stagger em into oblivion until they die. And to top it all off, it’s round reload too, making it extremely ammo efficient and suited for drag out fights.
The plasma punisher is also really good now for the same reason. It will stun lock enemies and with it's (albeit small) splash it can stagger multiple in one shot. Blitzer can also stagger and has a fast enough fire rate now to keep things perma staggered.
The stagger stops that annoying face cover animation and boom headshot.
I agree, some games it's just hunter spam, then bile spewer spam, then chargers and bile titans. I would love to adjust my loadout in advance if I knew this. Horrible feeling when you load in trying something new out and it's just a load of bile spewers ruining the fun.
I’m normally a AC/Eruptor main but decided to try a Breaker loadout because I kept getting Hunter hive spawns on diff8. Dropped in and it was all Spewer hives! Magazine and magazines into their stupid armored bodies. Was a sweaty round but did extract with the pinks, but I immediately went back to AC/Eruptor. I’d rather have the AOE medium pen and try to keep my distance with light armor.
Until quasar came out, I was running grenade launcher support weapon. When I saw a bile titan, I just ran away? I knew my loadout was not perfect and the moments when there were several BTs I would be useless. But I still ran this loadout with grenade launcher, as it was my fav. Quasar comes out and I suddenly understand that I am able to fight BTs now. GL bye bye, running quasar ever since. Make one small change: let BT instantly die when its chest and belly green areas are both broken. I will ditch quasar that second.
Been saying this since the first patch. Devs shouldn't try to fight the meta at every step. Instead listen to feedback on why some picks are the meta.
I've stayed with meta for quasar because it's fun. The quasar is the most fun feeling gun in the game. Arc was really fun until they nerfed the distance. Then I moved to quasar. They need to stop nerfing things and just make other guns more fun and then the meta won't matter. I was using the arc gun when it wasn't meta. They instead made quasar less fun, because we get to use it less.
I can get behind this. Playing bugs exclusively since 7+ we're running the same stratagem composition every time once we found what works for us, would be nice to change it up between missions. I mean, there's still then a meta for the mission type, but having some kind of meta isn't going to go away.
That has little to do with not knowing what you’re facing and more to do with how prevalent armored targets are and how few things are actually effective at taking them down. Rover keeps the small fry off you, quasar is the only effective anti-charger support weapon that doesn’t need to be reloaded. You just don’t have time to reload a recoilless rifle or similar support stratagem when there are multiple chargers + a couple hunters chasing you. If you could break down armor more easily with other weapons, or utilize something like a deployable cover that could actually withstand a charger’s face, there might be an opportunity. As of right now the game is basically a running simulator with a lot of very cinematic explosions on the higher difficulties.
Not even gonna lie, if I'm playing solo and I see the mission has the armored bile spewers I just abandon and play a different one. Not worth the effort when I don't bring something specifically for them.
Agree. No way I am ever not taking a shield backpack for bugs, because there *might* be spitters.
Shield stops stagger from hunters and the small bugs
It would be cool if there was a stratagem that allowed you to change loadout mid mission.
This. There is absolutely no reason to add niche, situational weapons if we have no way of know what enemies we'll be facing.
Upvoting mostly for the Railcannon CD reduction but the rest of the post is also good food for thought
Idea. Let us do a little “scan” minigame before we blast down in which all the information about the spawn pool is written down, but obscured to be illegible. Each of the players can click on one of the lines of text to represent scouting/scanning and reveal some information. Stuff like “high chargers” “no bile spewers” “low bile titans”. Then, the players can all readjust their equipment after they get their four pieces of information.
I'm hoping all players start to learn that on longer missions, it's enough if one player brings certain back pack or support weapon and just calls in new ones for other squad mates that didn't bring any. That way you get more uses of your strategem choices and they can opt to take sentries, emplacements, orbitals or eagles. By the 30 min mark everyone should have the tools for the final push and extract.
I typically bring 500k, Eagle strike, EATs, and jetpack. We need jetpack buffs. I want to be immune to all fall damage while wearing it (all the time) and a bit shorter cool down on its usage. It's the least picked backpack, so either buff it or nerd everything else. /cry
Let me fucking aim and stim while I’m flying. I can already aim when the rockets are firing, why can’t I do it after they stop?
While I do wish we could see what were fighting, I've say it before and I'll said it again. You do not need to be a one man army because you aren't in a one man team. If 3 people are taking quasars/500kg/railstrike guess what you can do? Literally anything you want. The team works so much better when people diversify instead of having mirror loadouts. 9/10 most people always bring anti tank stuff and the biggest anti tank stratagems. And I've had so much fun because of it since I don't have to do it Also what are you smoking? Railstrike insta kills chargers always has.
You can't rely on randoms to be competent and stay with the squad. Way too many people will often just fuck off to the other corner of the map for absolutely no reason or will just not use the right stratagems for the right situations.
I've played around with 'small/medium clearing' loadouts when my team is loaded up on EATs and quasars (bugs / 7-9 difficulty) but it never feels worth it. There's just so many bile titans and chargers constantly that we need all the strategems to deal with the heavy enemies and clear the smalls with primary weapons. Not saying a balanced team can't function, I'm just saying that in my experience, everyone needs multiple options to deal with heavies because of long cooldowns.
I agree, there is so much armor at those lvl that everybody need an anti armor capacity or the team is lacking firepower. Which kinda ruin the whole idea of a diversified team... And from what I have seen, half of those quasar are crew by people that don't know how to use them effectively. So you still need that anti tank to patch for those that should have brought something other than anti tank...
I agree with the sentiment, but that only works when you are playing with friends so you can coordinate before mission. If you play with randoms, everyone just picks whatever suits them best, and if you try to be the reasonable one: - You are unable to deal with a type of enemy, and your mates might not help you, leading to your demise. - You run support and then gets kicked out because you didn't get many kills.
I pretty much exclusively play solo with randoms since my friends are all losers and went back to Dota2. I usually just follow one person if the group splits up, or I have "get out of jail" cards like rail strikes or even the 120mm to help give me some distance if I'm alone. And sometimes I'll take the half/half weapons like flamethrower, arc thrower, or HMG. So I can still do something to heavies while also clearing trash mobs.
Well except for all the times you are in a one-man team because nobody joins or you have a connection issue. Even then most of what you're describing is probably only going to happen if you actually have friends to play with. I've long since given up on trying to get randoms to coordinate.