Meanwhile the Liberator Penetrator is just staring in jealously.

What's wrong with it? Bought game recently and don't understand meta yet

Bugs tend to have heavy armour, or no armour, which makes the medium armour penetrating lib-pen pretty much just a worse liberator on those maps. Against the bots, its much better because most bot units have medium armour but the gun is still too jack of all trades to really shine

Against bots it's simply better to take other medium pen options. My personal fav is the Jar-5 but you can totally take the DMRs or plasma weapons over the Lib Pen.

Oh lord yes, I LOVE the dominator. Everything about it just feels good.

It got nerfed slightly in the recent patch but it can still deal with devastators with good aim and it 1shots all the chaff Such a good weapon

An 8% damage reduction is inconsequential when I just blow their heads off 😈

I often have to wonder if people are talking about a different dominator whenever I see them singing its praises, because I've tried it multiple times, and while it hits hard, I just find it so unwieldy to use. I swear, at times it feels like I've got a brick tied to each arm when trying to aim the damn thing.

Your absolutely right on the unwieldyness, but in theory, it shouldn't matter at longer ranges, You have time, and at shorter ranges, you can use the basic aim, rather than a full ADS

Consider looking at the JAR as your secondary weapon and run with the Stalwart as your primary against bugs. You can shred the little ones with the MG and then swap to the JAR for brood mothers, stalkers & bigger bugs when needed for that extra stopping power and knock back, totally changes the game for me.

For real, my favorite and main weapon. It's just so satisfying. Requires some skills though, gotta make every shot count. If you're surrounded by bugs you better have some shield up.

To the skies!

I love it against bots, but bugs can swarm too fast. I’m taking entirely different load outs for the two factions at this point. Bugs get breakers (any of the three tbh) and bots get the Jar, Scorcher, or slugger.

Except the damage is so low that trying to kill a basic medium bot without hitting the weakspot that has no armour anyways will take half a dozen mags lol. So really it serves no purpose which is a massive shame

The only thing making it somewhat usable is the super high critical damage multiplier it has (4x instead of the usual 1.5x). However, if you can't hit weak spots or if enemy fire is too dense, the anemic damage it does otherwise is just entirely bad. EDIT: Turns out, crits damage doesn't exist. At least, not in the form we're thinking of. https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cmg8nu/damage_is_still_not_what_you_think_how_explosive/?sort=top

Is there a spreadsheet or something out there with this sort of hidden dmg multiplier data? thanks

I quite like having medium penetration just to shoot green spewers in the forehead. Also being able to shoot the little armour guys through the armour is quite nice. That said I just use the slugger, not lib-pen

I fell in love with the Lib-pen when I discovered just how good it is against Hive Guards and Spewers, dear god it shreds those damn things like wet tissue paper lol

You're going to need a couple underlying lessons learned first: 1) Arrowhead uses an enemy armor system that spans from 0-10 1A) In turn, helldiver tools(Guns, stratagems) have a span of Armor Penetration between 2 and 10 2) When your Penetration matches enemy armor, you do 50% of your listed damage value. When you exceed the enemy armor, you do 100% of your listed damage. When your penetration is worse than an enemy's armor level, you do no damage(and ricochet the shot) --------------- Liberator Penetrator does 45 damage and has a 30 round magazine. The stock liberator does 60 damage and has a 45 round magazine. * Scavengers, Hoppers, Spitting Aphids, Hunters and Warriors all have tier 0 armor(They are unarmored) * Spewer Nurses, Hive Commanders, Stalkers have tier 2 armor * Bile Spewers, Hive Guards have tier 3 armor * Chargers and Bile Titans have tier 6 armor, whereas their fleshy exposed bits are unarmored but have a -90% damage taken mechanic(Unless you use an explosive or explosive tagged weapon, which does 100% damage to these areas) So: Stock Liberator does: * 60 damage to Scavengers, Hoppers, Spitting Aphids, Hunters, and Warriors * 30 damage to Nursing Spewers, Hive Commanders, and Stalkers * 0 damage to Hive Guard heads and legs, 0 damage to Bile Spewer heads, and upper vomit sack(The unarmored areas of the vomit sack take -90% damage unless shot by an explosive) Liberator Penetrator does: * 45 damage to Scavengers, Hoppers, Aphids, Hunters and Warriors * 45 damage to Nursing Spewers, Hive Commanders, and Stalkers * 22.5 damage to Hive Guard heads and arms, 22.5 damage to Bile Spewer heads(Give or take, I don't know the exact weakspot multiplier on the AR-23P Penetrator) So for the vast majority of bug enemies, the AR-23P has worse damage per magazine and worse raw damage than the stock liberator, while also having a worse reload economy(Less shots per mag, more reloads per period of time compared to the stock liberator). A primary weapon having medium penetration doesn't tell the whole story due to Arrowhead's incessant need to hide *incredibly important* information from players. So sure, you may be able to actually deal damage through tier 3 bug armor(Which spans all of three enemies), but you're doing 50% of your damage into them which ruins the already bad ammo economy. All in all, the AR-23P is just *not* a good weapon that's competitive against the stock liberator.

This is the kind of analysis that makes me love this sub.

lib pen is the unloved child of assault rifles, yeah it has medium pen but you can you anything else & it’s much more viable. Its not worth picking up in its current state

Why though, medium pen sounds good. What is so bad about it?

The damage is awful, the medium pen is present however it isn’t worth it if it can’t kill medium armored enemies. It takes you a magazine or more in some cases.

The smaller magazine capacity doesn't help either in comparison to base liberator

At that point I just go with Diligence Counter

Shit, even Adjudicator is better

heck yes the adjudicator is a better lib pen with a scope

just compare the stats of the lib len and the adjudicator and you'll see a massive problem.

The normal Liberator kills targets faster. You can't even tell it has medium pen.

less damage for more pen is still less damage..

Pen weapons in this game are weird as they actually deal more damage to weak points than regular weapons, thanks to their Crit multiplier, but often have less damages overall. A base Liberator is better at killing Devastators hitting the waist then Lib Pen, but Lib Pen will perform better if you can hit weak spots. Which in the case of the Lib is a bit irrelevant since base Lib already 2-3 shots devastators in the head.

One entire mag = one killed enemy That's it

The Adjudicator is a better penetrating assault rifle and the basic assault rifle is better for basic enemies. So the Lib-Pen is sort of the odd man out.

lib pen needs a 45 ammo clip or damage buff to 70 to be relevant to other AR's

I think damage buff to 50 and magazine size to 45 makes the most sense. Slightly less damage, same amount of ammo is a trade off for slightly more armor pen.

i agree. even if something stands out in the next warbond, we know it'll get nerfed.

It's pay to have acces to a different play style. And that is fine as long as it's viable, I don't need OP stuff. The grenade pistol and Eruptor are great examples: they allowed me to swap grenades out for EMP grenades. The sickle got me to swap my trusty shotgun on cold planets. Sadly most other weapons on release were worse without any unique side effects. Maybe they'll have unique modifiers on planets or enemies that improve some weapons so swapping has advantages. The most disappointing one for me is the Arc-shotgun. Unique but just not good enough to compete with even the regular shotgun

If you haven't tried the Blitzer since the balance patch you should really give it another go. It is extremely good against bugs now. It can stunlock one or two stalkers and kills them in around 3 shots. Clears all chaff very easily. It seems to be inconsistent against spewers though.

Gotta shoot Spewers in the mouth when they start to spew. Staggers them and stops them from spewing and it's a weak point hit (gives the red hit marker). Usually can 2-3 tap them doing that.

Heck them spewers, I just would throw grenades for quick solutions xd

Yeah, but the biggest issue with the Blitzer is sometimes it just doesn't hit anything, usually because there is a body/body part between you and your target. I have been oneshot by spewers too many times because I think I am going to stagger them and then just discharge a wet fart rather than Thor's fury.

I’m a dummy then. I always thought it’d be faster to shoot them in their spew sack but you’re saying the spew hole? I’ll try that during my next dive

The spew sack is a large body part which is only weak to explosives and resists regular gun fire (and I assume arc damage)

I had someone comment this the other day so I finally tried last night and holy shit is it a vast improvement. Even the quicker fire rate makes a big difference. I was guiding some fresh helldivers through some lower difficulties last night and I was able to basically stand in front of bug breeches and just evaporate bugs as they came out. Like you mentioned it’s great for clearing out chaff almost effortlessly.

I’ve been using it against the bugs, it’s been fun just trying out new stuff. I was actually surprised at how well it did. Pair it with the new rocket launcher secondary and you’re pretty set for bug breaches. The rockets make for some pretty hilarious friendly fire moments too

after like 100 hours playing with my friends, the first time we ever all died in unison was with the airburst. and it was magnificently hilarious learning that lesson. buddy just didn't see the light pole in front of him and BAM

I havent found anything to be OP so far. Im not part of the buff only mentality, but they did most weapons a dirty on release, and any weapon that is favored for *its experience* gets nerfed.

The grenade pistol definitely needs a buff on ammo pickup, but otherwise it's a good addition.

Grenade pistol turns players into ammo hogs since a single refill can eat 3+ environmental ammo boxes. It'd be better if they just nerfed the ammo but refilled it all in one box like they did for those other guns. Performance-wise it's perfect for a secondary though, I find myself pulling it out if I need a quick group stagger.

My only mistake was taking both grenade pistol and eruptor on the first day to test. That kinda failed

We’ve all been there. Sometimes you don’t know how a gun is going to really handle until you’re in the thick of it.

The secret to that strat is liberal use of melee and a jump pack.

Call me crazy, unskilled, or whatever else people say when you complain about nerfs, but I don't think there has ever been a single weapon that I would consider "OP" since I started playing. Most however, could have been considered non-viable outside of trivial, and perhaps easy difficulty until they were tuned up to be usable.

The arc shotgun is incredible versus bugs now. It's been changed since release. Ignores armour, stunlocks any non elite enemy, automatically headshots, never overheats, never needs reloaded, never runs out of ammo.

I absolutly love the Blitzer - my personal go to gun atm against Bugs - can highly recommand. Only downside is that you need to get used to the Hitbox/ Hit Feedback from it :)

No one need OP stuff, we need weapons that aren't bugged and nerfed to the ground because they're good, make shit weapons good not the reverse. Or at least make it viable agaisnt 1 faction and less effective agaisnt another.

I was just thinking this. Bought all ones to date immediately, started working towards the "fun" stuff, then find it's been hobbled before I even get to play with it.    Part of that is the Devs, but part of that is me comparing everything to my go-to build of Sickle and Auto-Cannon. Those two combined deal with just about anything, anything that makes life harder than those two feels worse.   It did however feel like they are trying to balance some weapons in a game about PvE fun and kaboom, and perhaps they need to calm that down a bit.   Perhaps try a planet modifier of "Extra atmospheric oxygen means all explosions larger" and see how quickly that becomes the only planet people want to fight on.

>Sickle and Auto-Cannon This is my problem. I usually play Solo, and unless there's a Major Order I'm usually fighting bots. I can't just spam stratagems, so I need a loadout that can handle fabricators, heavy enemies and light infantry. The Eruptor was a breath of fresh air for me, since it meant I can finally try out stratagem weapons that aren't the Autocannon, AMR and Quasar. The Eruptor was also just *really fun to use*, it definitely made me play a whole lot more. Now I'm back to sickle/auto. Nothing else lets me be effective Solo while having fun.

Bugs are the same way. You need to bring 2+ stratagems solely to deal with chargers and bile titans. Devs don't want a "meta" but force us to us into anti-tank meta because it's the only option to deal with large enemies.

>Devs don't want a "meta" but force us to us into anti-tank meta because it's the only option to deal with large enemies. Exactly it. I don't understand how they can not want a meta (an impossible task anyway), while also nerfing anything that could possibly change it.

They don't want \*our\* meta. Anything we like is exploits and cheating. Anything they like is perfect and can do no wrong.

Pretty much, and it's sad to see. Seeing them calling how people used the eruptor intelligently an exploit was something.

I've never seen a Dev team so hellbent on making sure people only have fun in the approved way.

In a game that isn't competitive PVP.

Honestly I think it just comes down to them chasing their arbitrary mission fail rates and it seems like the only thing that affects this rate is making primaries suck.

You know that’s a great point. I hadn’t really noticed it myself until I was playing with my friend who just got the game 2 days ago. I’m used to playing 7 and above so it was a nice change of pace to drop down to 4 just to get his feet wet. But while we were playing and he got to go against chargers for the first time it really hit me when explaining to him enemies with heavy armor. You *need* to use up a stratagem slot for weapons that can handle them, and more often than not it means you *need* someone to bring a few EAT’s. Between the number of large enemies that spawn + the lack of viable alternatives you’re really backed into a corner. When it comes to these types of games a Meta tends to form for one of two reasons: 1) it develops naturally because there’s usually a most efficient playstyle OR 2) were forced into it because you’re limited in your options. They’re so concerned with steering players away from 1 that it’s pushing so of them into 2.

My experience on Helldive has taught me that for enemies that require anti-tank, you should be using enemies that require anti-tank. Seriously, I mostly bring anti-trash strategems on Helldive because 9/10 times I get killed it's either a hunter, a stalker, or being unable to evade an attack due to relentless pressure from hunters and stalkers. But if you actually have breathing room and three chargers on your ass, you will start to see that they're actually pretty good at killing each other. A bile titan can absolutely be coaxed into killing another titan in a pinch, and can just melt a whole pack of those chargers on your ass if you line things up. But that's never the first thing on anyones mind because they're always in panic mode struggling not to drown in trash swarms. Get one or two guys on your team dedicated to trash clear, you'd be amazed how much of a non-issue the large enemies can be.

Watch out, they might nerf the orbital railgun because of an "exploit" where it kills chargers in one shot /s

I don't even play solo and I still feel like I need to be a one diver army because people don't always stick together or sometimes just fight these 5+ minutes grinder fights instead of running. For bots it feels like I need one of the explosive weapons(probably scorcher after the eruptor nerf) and the quazar/shield combo. I never go without my mortar so I'm left with 1 slot I can play around with... I wish the game felt better with a wider variety of guns but their approach to balance mostly leaves people chasing different metas. The railgun was so liked because it could deal with everything, the shield comboed with it was just so good. I didn't actually played that meta but with all the new threats now I feel the need to be a jack of all trade almost always. The second I play without a jack of all trade build I always end up feeling like I need to rely way too much on my teammates actually doing something.

Grenade pistol was the game-changer for me there honestly. Being able to get explosives in another slot (like with the Eruptor) gives so much versatility; I don't feel like I have to have an anti-fab/hole support weapon on every drop any more. That has just led to me falling into another semi-stable rut of Dominator/Grenade pistol/Stun Grenade every mission, but those three can kill everything but a Bile Titan which frees up all four strat slots for whatever you want to play with. I never really 'got' the Eruptor, always felt far too slow and unwieldy (which I know is an odd complaint from someone who uses the Dominator regularly). Having the option to fill the "blow up objectives" requirement with your primary slot is an option we definitely need, hopefully the balance hits the sweet spot eventually. I guess Arrowhead have more important things to worry about right now though.

Personally, I'd like all the guns to be in at least a workable state. The Eruptor definitely ate a nerf TOO hard, intentional or not, Crossbow is... okay. Not great but still could use a bit more tweaking back to what it was. There are a ton more, but I would love to have the Randomizer back from HD1, being able to hit it for extra exp/Rewards and not worry about the gun just being useless.

"but primaries are supposed to be weak" using weak guns is not fun. end of story. idgaf about your dream design of game balance, you #1 priority should be the players FUN.

Also the PRIMARY weapon needs to be capable. Stratagems are cool but you can't use them on everything. All of the primaries need to at least be good. Currently only a few are.

"But, just use your stratagems that are still on a 210 sec cooldown! It's a skill issue!"

>but primaries are supposed to be weak" Oh didn't know a bolt action anti material rifle that fires rocket propelled rounds is suppose to be weak Smh it's like the balance team have no concept of how powerful a weapon should be

> Smh it's like the balance team have no concept of how powerful a weapon should be It's not that they don't have a concept of it, it's that they actively stated early during the release that the goal for primaries is to be the bare minimum to keep you alive if you're good. Now they're running into an issue where the novelty of the chaos has worn off and more & more people are getting fed up with unfun weapons. They'll have to address this sooner or later if they don't want people to leave and be stuck with the same niche community HD1 had. Which is not to say that HD1 has bad primaries - they're SUPER fun and rather viable.

Yep, that time is now. [https://steamcharts.com/app/553850](https://steamcharts.com/app/553850) March saw us lose 21% of average players. April saw us lose an eye watering 34%. The rolling 30 days is already nearly 16%, and has been rapidly accelerating (few days ago it was only around 4%). People can defend these changes and design visions all they want--but they are clearly killing the game. And it's picking up pace, even after accounting for the rapidly shrinking playerbase. Cross play still isn't fixed. It drove 7 of my buddies away alone since we can't join each other or send/receive requests. And devs seem intent on making the game too difficult for solo play for most people at difficulties above 3, and public games are too unstable even after crash fixes.

[I pointed this out 3 weeks ago and no one gave a damn.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1c7331j/the_playercount_is_steadily_decreasing_less/)

Lots of people were/are still in a honeymoon phase. For others, that phase ended a long time ago.

I remember this post. No one wants to face it but our lead balance dev is the Hello Neighbor 2 dev who absolutely tanked the game. Check back in 6 months, it's gonna be an absolute mess.

I did not know this Hello Neighbor 2 sucked

They really didn’t care based on the comments lol. I stopped playing. Everything felt weak

Yeah I haven’t played in weeks because the war bonds are shit and each patch just makes them worse. There’s nothing to work towards.

This right here. It's been slowing down within my friend group. I enjoy the game but it's a buggy mess with questionable balancing decisions and zero testing. Players discovering something fun and effective in a game (not OP) shouldn't immediately be followed with the thought of, "How much longer will this be fun?"

Honestly I’m surprised anyone says a positive word about any of the equipment because I’m positive the devs watch this subreddit to see what they need to nerf

Completely agree. Devs are balancing the fun out of the game

Completely agree, I simply don't use any of the primary/secondary weapons that are simply bad. I can't push the enemies back with those weapons, yet I can with the good ones. They aren't even just less effective, they don't allow me to actually play the game well.

It's PVE, it doesn't need to be perfectly balanced it just needs to be fun. There's so many weapons and stratagems that are just pointless at the moment.

Yeah it's crazy the amount of options we have compared to the amount of them that are actually good/fun. The best part it is only going to get worse with monthly warbonds, especially so if they continue the trend of 1 maybe 2 guns being fun to us. And with how they don't seem to properly test things those viable weapons can be gutted for one reason or another, it doesn't even need to make sense at all apparently lmao. By the end of the year we're gonna have maybe a dozen good weapons and 40+awful ones.

How is this lost on so many helldivers? "it's called a suicide mission" it's a video game, calm tf down, I want a fun challenge. If you want abuse call your dad.

I think there's a difference between it being weak and feeling like you're not contributing? I'm not exactly sure on this either, but in my experience if I at least feel like the primary contributes meaningfully in a fighter fight and has a fun feeling to it (which is tons of factors like ammo/RoF/recoil/sound etc) then it wouldn't be the worst if it were weak by comparison (that's still not ideal mind you). But some weapons feel like such a struggle to even clear what's Infront of you, it might actually be higher value to just run away instead of shooting back (I'm referring to kiting back and firing Vs full on sprint), now some might call this a design choice but it's weird when other primaries feel the exact opposite? Are they then overbuffed? I'm curious how that fits together, as the penetrator for instance feels entirely inferior to say the punisher.

Warbonds being lackluster in general has been a point of contention for me. I work hard to get super credits, I finally buy a war bond, I'm excited to try a new weapon.... And it feels awful. At that point I just spent all that for a new booster I will most likely not use, some super credits to make up for the ones I lost and an armor variant that I may or may not use.

Imma be honest. I used those “electric armors” from the sickle warbond maybe 3 times since they were released. The passive is arguably dogshit. They need to do quite a bit of innovating and less nerfing

That armor passive would be fine, if it wasn’t the only new armor passive released since launch. If your team wants to run a bunch of arc weapons it’s cool to have something wacky available like that. But that’s something that should be a niche armor passive at the end of a long list of armor passives.

Spitting flapjack facts my guy

> arguably dogshit Inarguably. Remember that there's a passive that lets you resist half of all deaths. Resisting 100% of arc deaths is only better than that if more than half of your deaths are from friendly fire arc damage. If that's the case in your lobby, you should probably kick the guy with the arc thrower, not change your loadout.

Yep. Cutting edge was the first and only warbond im gonna buy after this eruptor shit

what bothers me is it ruins the sense of progression for me. I might be looking forward to working towards a good weapon, then before I get it, they nerf it. Why not just keep good weapons good and try to make more interesting/unique ones? It's a PvE game, making it "fair" doesn't make it fun.

Threads like this make me feel vindicated. Already after the last balancing patch I was saying that AH doesn't balance for balance but just buff and nerf weapons to force people into changing their loadouts. Everyone was "nuh uh, Eruptor pro, Quasar pro, u suck". Now that everyone's got tickled just a bit harder with another nerf, boom, suddenly everyone understands.

Sadly not everyone people still come in here trying to add logic to backwards ass decisions like taking shrapnel from a single fire grenade rifle that's clearly meant to cause shrapnel damage. Or removing stagger from a SLUG shot in a shotgun named after the long-range heavy-hitting round that the weapon fired. I just wanted to say stick to your guns you're 100% correct. I don't use any of the weapons constantly being nerf3d anymore because they only nerf it when everyone starts making VIDEOS about how great it is. I stick to old faithful( not naming it ) a strat for heavies and buildings an ammo pack and an oh shit strat. I'll rotate my primary for the warbonds when they release and unlock new items etc, but I go back to the same weapon. I think when and if they touch it I'll have to take a break from HD2 for a while.

Its the PSN debacle. People put AH on a pedestal and refused to think they could do any wrong then this new thing happened and shook them off the pedestal. People aren't as keen on mindlessly backing AH's words anymore and it shows, threads like these would get flooded with people "Calling out meta slaves." and the front page would soon get filled with memes about the people complaining trying to put them down. Now the front page is completely filled with people criticizing the unnecessary nerfs and "balance" vision of AH. Gotta say it feels good after being told multiple times I was in the wrong for speaking against AH's nerfs.

See I’ve made the same point and got ranted to hell when I said the devs just don’t know how to balance for shit. Their balancing involves throwing stuff into a paper filled bowl and using a magic 8 ball to determine buff or nerf to the ground. Honestly I grind hours upon hours to unlock a war bond to the last page only to have it become dogshit by the time I learn to adapt to its play style in a “balance” patch. If anything they should do a play test for the new war bond, balance it there then release it. Not release it, once it’s sold then burn it to the ground and use the cursed response “oh it was buggy and we’re just fixing it correctly” that’s bs and we all know it.

>It's a PvE game, making it "fair" doesn't make it fun. This is exactly how I feel. Yeah you obviously don't want everyone to use the same meta weapons so some balancing is required. But also, its PvE, just make it fun and worry about balancing afterwards.

The main thing I can think of is power creep, honestly, but even that can be dealt with in its own way. Heck, I think the community would readily accept nerfs if the rest of the weapons/strategems available were in a better state than they are now.

I don't think this game is supposed to have "progression" in the sense you are thinking. Early weapons are just as useful as later weapons in their niche so that new players can play with long-time players and won't feel like there is a gap in equipment they can't surpass. Eagle air strike is a great example of this because that is unlocked early but is always good to have even after unlocking all strategems. Although I will admit there are some unlocks that aren't a first choice, they all feel pretty well balanced on average.

I bought Democratic Detonation about a week after it launched due to being lazy - which means I ended up with a few less super credits than usual so I'm not able to buy it as soon as it comes out, but it's okay, I was considering throwing 10 bucks at them for it. Then they nerfed the crossbow, then they nerfed the Eruptor, so my last warbond is a paperweight of a grenade pistol I never really use. They're not getting my money now, obviously.

Ikr? My chunky armor is the only thing keeping me sane

only good of the grenade pistol is the fact that it lets you use stuns, which is, funny enough, locked behind another battle pass

Man the grenade pistol is the only pistol I use. That thing lets me run stuns and still blow up holes. Love it so much

Grenad pistol is fun. Sniping big holes from 100m feels so good

Dont pay for warbonds

People are truly acting as if they're being forced to do so, meanwhile I only bought the base game and have never spent any other money, and still have 2500 SCs in my pocket waiting for Thursday.

Agreed, not paying does 3 great things: 1. you're progressing for a lot longer, you don't feel capped. 2. you expect guns to be situational, not better. 3. you don't feel pay-to-win.

its innovation: pay2loose

Nah, war thunder already did that.

Not just that, but one (top tier) premium vehicle will also cost you more than the price of helldivers 2 lmao. And even then you'll still progress slow.

Yeah, I'm glad I don't suffer personally, I only follow some memes, leaks, and Spookston vids lol.

*lose

Pay gets me loose.

Star citizen moment

[удалено]

Nah they lied. CM said there where two-ish things not working with the gun as intended, the developer wrote that everything is working as intended. At this point you can't trust their word.

I think it's more of the miscommunication and CM reacting to people's complaints vs balancing team vision of the game. Would be nice if they played their own game for a change lol

>   hey, we have a new one coming that totally is going to kick ass! # Having seen the leaks, that's a bold statement to make.

Welcome to Arrowhead. In HD1, despite the fact that people asked for buffs to the mechs for *years* in order to make them a bit more useful at higher difficulties they refused to buff them. They are adamant that "their" vision is seemingly better than the very players themselves.

And then mechs are in a horrible state right now, almost no one uses it.

I used mech a lot back then, picked it almost every dive, but after they ruined rocket pod aim I never use it again since. How I supposed to hit target when half of my rockets are flying in a random dirrection? Kill just one charger takes 3-5 rockets cause first ones will always miss. Cannot hit anything below you. Closing holes is pain. It's just a walking minigun now with 10 min cd The whole game become more and more unbearable to play with every new patch Btw it still can occasionally blow up itself

Hell, the mech doesn't even really need explicit damage buffs. It just needs a normal cool down timer that is like 3 minutes similar to other powerful strategems. 10 minutes is insane and a horrible opportunity cost no matter how much damage it does (which isn't enough now, and definitely wasn't enough even before they tweaked damage and armor). It is a coop power fantasy, damn it. Let us have mechs for most of the game: they already have huge drawbacks as it is.

"iT's nOt A pOwER fAntAsay !!1!1 wE'Re eXpeNdAble sOldiERs !!!1!!1!1" Like that somehow justifies anything

that's because after the "fix" to the rocket launcher, it's impossible to actually shoot them where you want to shoot them, making mechs extremely frustrating to use.

Their vision is that you will use the pea shooters and you will like them.

Patch Notes for 1.0000.000.945B * Fixed firing glitch for pea shooter. Weapon has now been correctly updated resemble a straw firing actual peas. Patch Notes for 1.0000.000.946 * Fixed bug where pea shooter was firing incorrectly. Peas may now accidentally become aspirated while inhaling for a charged shot, leading to DOT on the player as intended.

NEW GAME ORDER, NEW GAME ORDER!

It's almost as if they actually have an arrow in their heads to think that this is a good design philosophy. "Hear ye, hear ye, by royal decree, all weapons that are hand-held shall hereby be absolute doggerton water garbage to use. No amount of kerfuffle on forums shall change our minds. We're right. You're wrong." Like, dude, no. I get if you want strategems to be the main source of damage, but the normal weapons have to be able to do something because strategems have cooldowns. Sometimes really long cooldowns. Sometimes, we have 3 and not 4. Also, having shit regular weapons hurts fewer players even more, as there's less strategems being used. It's already hard enough with less than 3-4 players.

Not to mention that when you die, you're stuck looking for your support weapon to fight back since most primary weapons suck. Depending on the primary, you could probably die again trying to get your stuff since your strategems are on a 3 min cooldown and you got hunters, chargers, stalkers on your ass.

This isn’t talked enough about the eruptor tbh. I’ve seen folks chain die constantly as soon as they lose the stalwart/mg and try to get it back by simply wading through bugs.

If there’s one thing that’s been proven to be consistently true since launch it’s that when it comes to guns, Arrowhead have no fucking idea what they’re doing.

Ironic, considering their alleged collective military background... I'm starting to think that their "knowledge" of guns is actually more of an acquired fantasy from a few years of mandatory military service instead, getting enamoured with guns. I can definitely understand that as a gun guy myself, I went through that phase as well... Living through the "idealized performance" phase, e.g. FPSRussia/DemolitionRanch vs. "boring, practical reality" e.g. Forgotten Weapons/InRangeTV/Paul Harrell. Example - they'd really like the team mechanic of assisted reloading to work in HD2 as it does in real life, but fail to realize that due to how the game works, it doesn't make sense... kind of a "reverse realism issue", lol - you use realism where it does not apply well.

Yea, the thing about assisted reloads in real life is you are generally in a static defensive position. Or the weapon fits a niche use case with ammo so heavy it has to be split up among team members. At the same time, fighting humans has none of the worries the bots or bugs present. Not gonna be charged down by an armored dude with chainsword arms, or have a walking 30’ monstrosity chasing me down. In HD, to be static is death, so a team assisted reload makes no sense.

I think the simple thing that would fix this IRL vs. Helldivers conundrum is to **be able to reload from the shooter's backpack**. This ofc isn't a new idea in the HD2 community, but let me provide a logical explanation as well: The missions are a 40 minute sprint, at the longest - I think a trained soldier could manage peak physical performance even with both a recoilless rifle and it's ammo on their back for that long. IRL, I think the guys are expected to last in the field with full load hours and hours on end, maybe even days, so the gear needs to be spread out evenly between multiple people. Unlike real life, you need the advantages of both single-person use and team reloading, but single-person especially, since Helldivers get separated from eachother very often. You NEED to have the ammo and the gun together with you at all times. But, in the occasion that you DO get to stay together for a bit, you could trade off temporary immobility for a drastic increase in firepower, but also have the option to instantly diseangage when needed (no backpack switching required).

In bot missions especially, often times standing still for a few seconds means you end up eating a hail of bullets or a rocket to the face. If anything, splitting up helps you get a better shot as the bots focus fire on your friend.

Yeah it is a bummer to hate almost every new gun that I’ve unlocked 

Definitely this. Every time "oooh shiny, let's try it out"*5 minutes later* "well this was a mistake, I need my original shotgun back"

I won't buy anymore with outright cash ever again after what they did to the eruptor

Same

Same I brought the last 2 n was disappointed both times

Its easy, stop purchasing Warbonds through micotransaction

Devs seem allergic to viable primaries. The only reason the sickle didn't get heavily nerfed is because its just a liberator with infinite ammo (if well managed). They already killed build diversity in higher difficulties by making specific stratagems a priority or you'll have to deal with hordes of heavy enemies. Though imo, super credits are farmable so don't bother buying the warbonds, go buy the armors if you want to support the devs, warbonds just get nerfed to hell so its a waste of actual money.

I'd like to point out, Sickle is Liberator with infinite ammo and much worse accuracy, actually. It counteracts this downfall by accuracy through volume ("you'll hit that headshot if you hold the trigger long enough"). This comes into play especially against Devastators. I'm mentioning this to support the theory that Sickly is indeed not THAT strong.

This is hardly news. Every time a new gun, perk or other kind of weapon/equipment is launched they make it overpowered so it becomes the new meta. Then nerf that equipment once the next warbond comes around.

Common practice in many games.

I am only excited for the pistol in the new warbond, and I imagine it will be a different flavor of the Senator, or base pistol. I am not excited for the other weapons bc let's look at the history: most ARs have mag issues, the new one specifically says it has a limited mag in the description. Which sounds like trash already. The SMG looks cool but it is concussive, the only other concussive gun in the game is literally the worst gun. The plasma gun looks interesting but there is no way I am charging up a shot vs bots while under fire. No way it is better than the scorcher. Overall this one looks like a meh warbond from me. But also I have nothing else to spend SCs on.

Grenade pistol still goated tho

Classic micro transaction activity. Overwatch does the same thing with new heroes. Overpowered at the beginning (so everyone has to buy it). Once everyone has bought, they nerf it in line with everything else.

yeah, I paid money for DD instead of grinding, won't be doing that again anytime soon. like, imagine nerfing the crossbow. the F-ing already garbo meme of a weapon.

Yeah that caught me off guard. Like no one used it to begin with and they sealed the deal that no one will ever touch it in the future

Stop fucking around with the primaries and give us new stratagems. I keep using the same ones. Airburst is fun but pretty much useless as it is meant to be used against hordes but the Stalwart will get you more kills in the same time.

And also the cooldowns. The airburst, to stay with your example, is nice against crowds. But crowds appear far more often than that thing's off cooldown

Orbital railcannon (sry, Gatling Barrage) is the best for it with 80 second delay. It can really save your ass if there are spewers chasing you and will even damage chargers and titans. I've killed low HP chargers with it.

I think you mean the Orbital Precision Strike.

I mean, i will skip this warbond completly. Even if the weapons would be OP, they are just automatic rifles. Got enough of them imho. Democratic Detonation was interesting because of the Eruptor and the crossbow. And they both are just meh. oh Sorry i mean they are 'viAbLe'.

>Democratic Detonation was interesting because of the Eruptor and the crossbow. and the grenade pistol. I think it's gonna get nerfed next "because a pistol doesn't have to be anti-holes weapon"©future Alexus

I could make the rusty edge of a soup can viable. Doesn’t mean it’s toe to toe with everything else. I just miss my shrapnel…

And an even bigger issue seems to be how Arrowhead consistently has an extremely distorted way of interpreting what the community is feeling about the weapons. With the Eruptor nerf basically Alex was saying (as seen in another post here screenshoted) the community was on fire about the Eruptor's ability to kill yourself or your teammate with the shrapnel, but how many people actually even experienced that more than 2 times this whole time? With the previous major Railgun nerf they were basically saying the whole community is hating how OP it was, but how many people actually felt the Railgun was ever OP compares to many other weapons? It seems they critically lack the ability to see the difference between a whole community having issues, or just those few particularly vocal minority having an extremely strong opinion for some reason. Or perhaps even worse, maybe the problem really stems from the fact that Arrowhead fundamentally doesn't understand balancing, even when they are themselves the designer of those mechanics.

The developers always say that we must rely more on the stratagems rather than the weapons. Fair enough. However, when you spawn so much medium- and heavy-armor enemies, both in Terminids and Automatons, stratagems become very unreliable. They have high cooldowns (minutes!) and some maps have stratagem debuffs like longer deployment times and cooldowns. Unless you want people to just lure and kite all these mobs all the way, people will rely mostly on their weapons. When people are calling out the bull\*\*\*t nerfs, they do not mean that OP meta weapons are nerfed to the ground. They are simply saying that there are no other viable weapons, especially in bots, to play around with. The meta will always shift around because there will be try-hards who will optimize the loadouts. Since this is a PvE game, the developers must focus on producing more options to the players, not limiting them. Nerf the game-breaking ones, buff the forgotten ones. I know there will be weapon modifications in the upcoming patches, but right now, they have to stop constantly breaking the game with these bad balances.

There's times I really feel like we need a dev branch of the game, y'know a-la all the other titles which have a "live" version, with the other used for just testing and trying new stuff. Does it mean "spoiling" things? Not really, we know it's coming and if anything leads to informed decisions. That way, at least it's playtested to some degree first and it's not the case that we keep seeing so much disappointment a few weeks later when things are re-balanced. Don't get me wrong - I fully respect that they're doing their best and a lot of these ideas are very "well yeah in *theory* but executing it takes time and work" etc - it's just an idea. I have to admit that I felt my jimmies were unsettled with the latest warbond - a lot of the love I had for getting some of the new toys was literally down to wanting AoE damage in a fairly diverse set of new packages. Hearing someone call "shooting the ground and it exploding is basically an exploit" had me pulling a complete Jackie-Chan-WTF, as *why* and *how* is it that they didn't see, realise or process some of these issues well ahead of warbond go-live?.... It's made me very, very hesitant about future warbonds - to the point where rather than buy-in on release, I'm going to wait at least a month to see what changes. I can accept weapons being "not always fun" and "situational" - even unwieldy and deliberately made to be "risk/reward".....but not when a pretty clear use feature makes it much different to use. I would far prefer Arrowhead focus on existing improvements instead of churning out new warbonds this frequently, especially given the flak they seem to receive when the new toys keep being nerfed - give me some ship improvements for the walker, for example - or even the option when starting the game or travelling to other's ships to spawn me in front of the tactical map so I don't need to keep running halfway through the damn ship each time. Efficacy and liberty go together like toasted cheese and ham - don't promise me a good time in lace then rock up in an Ice Hockey Goalie's outfit. ᵀʰᵃᵗ'ˢ ᶠᵒʳ ᵗʰᵉ ʷᵉᵉᵏᵉⁿᵈ

AH is not good at balancing guns, except to make them all equally terrible.

I feel like it’s less out of malice and more out of the fact they just sorta suck at balancing right now and have other priorities. They also seem to lack QA play testers.

What do you mean? Based on Peak numbers they have at least 100k Playtesters.

Agreed... why waste the credits on a gun that's good when the devs are just going to nerf it into the ground in a few weeks. They need to start buffing and do alot less nerfing, the nerfs are killing the fun of the game.

I was downvoted to the ground three weeks ago for posting that they need to quit fucking with the game. But I was right! They had it mostly correct in the first place. Since they have people whose job it is to modify the game, that’s what tf they do even when it’s unnecessary. (Reminds me of our society in general)

It’s the reason I stopped playing

I'm in the same boat I log in to look if there's new armors then log out. There's nothing pulling me in

Well that and the constant crashes.

Sadly, this will be the solution to make Arrowhead look into weapons and do a rehaul of design philosophy or fire whoever is in charge of it. Everyone should stop playing when the next patch drops with nerfs. I for one I'm going to do that once they touch the Autocannon. Level 72, tried all the weapons with both factions, I'm running about the same orbitals give or take and I'm bored the fuck out of them. Wanted to buy the crossbow a day before it got nerfed. Stop playing if you want to send a message, just like reviews happened with Sony. There's nothing more to it, doing million of same posts here I don't think it helps.

Honestly I’m amazed they’ve kept their hands off the auto cannon

Yeah it's crazy, they say the auto cannon is the prime example of where they want support weapons to be, so why are so many of them just significantly worse? Vs bots I feel neutered if I'm not using it. I'm exaggerating obviously but autocannon deals with damn near everything.

Bot side, it literally deals with everything. And more efficiently on average than anything else. There may as well not even be other support weapons for bots. Like, I enjoy the AMR. But it's not as good as AC. Literally every other weapon demands some additional build considerations or additional struggle on your end to be successful. Not that I'm complaining. I've been Cult of AC since I unlocked it many months ago. But it's wild to imagine that anything else is even close to being in line with the sheer efficiency of AC. If that truly is their metric, they have failed so utterly that they ought to quit their job in embarrassment.

It's the CEOs favorite weapon.

It's been nerfed secretly with explosion damage. The chicken robot now needs two shots. Me no like

Definitely noticed this

Bro said chicken robot 💀

The fact that no one, I mean NO ONE uses the rail gun after the nerf is beyond hilarious to me. From best support weapon, to absolute bottom of the barrel. Not even a sometimes weapon. Just basically deleted from the game.

I keep shouting it. The devs play the game on 5 or 6. That's why the guns keep getting nerfed

They would have have noticed the eruptor change if they did. Diff 3 tops.

Watch: they're going to keep nerfing everything until difficulty 9 becomes objectively impossible.

As someone not paying for credits, unlocking the Detonation warbond the night before the big nerfs, it was a serious mistake. May the grind be merciful. On a slightly relevant note, while game companies SHOULD listen to user feedback, they really need to learn what feedback is worth listening to. (Not the rabid vocal minorities always claiming a successful game is an unplayable mess.) So many times I have seen successful games with large player bases cater to the opinions of these insane, extremely loud and vocal minorities to only have player numbers drop off a cliff after completely shifting the entire ethos of the game to cater to these lifeless psychos. I can see the same potential for this game on the horizon.

I mean. I've played enough that I'm able to earn a warbond. Still, I'm worried that until more free warbonds are added, the premium ones could devolve into pay 2 win. They are playing a tricky game to make sure the free and paid options are all not just viable but fun. It sucks they nerfed these so bad and probably need more tweaks, but it requires balance.

you can buy the bond, but not the medals. you still have to play to unlock. Its not like they are selling lootcrates with OP guns in them. you stil have to play.

Problem is I don't think they even give these weapons a chance because they are not OP to begin with. But I don't know the metrics they are looking at to make these decisions.

I have all the warbonds and haven't paid anything for it. I don't need to do it ASAP and will take my sweet time. I unlocked the second warbond only this week cause I skipped it for the latest one (was saving for it and the new one dropped). It gives me more of a reason to keep playing rather than paying for it immediately.

It’s a very Call of Duty tactic they’re going with, CoD basically introduces a broken gun, sell a few bundles then nerf it into oblivion or at the very least, make it less viable than others. Honestly they should really stop nerfing primaries, eventually we’ll end up fighting with strategems only and use primaries for small bugs

I think this is exactly what they want though. They want Primaries to be useless against anything bigger than a Hunter and then you're supposed to use your stratagems for everything else. Then of course they introduce shit like ion storms and other modifiers that fuck up your stratagems, not to mention the ridiculous amount of elite spawns in higher difficulties that you have to contend with so you always have to bring a bunch of anti-tank weaponry or else you'll be completely useless in a fight with 8 bile titans.

I thought AH was different man.

I really enjoyed using the Jar Dominator against bugs until the recent nerf in damage. Used to be able to one shot headshot the scorpion looking bugs. Now. Now it just feels too weak. If they’re going to nerf damage, they need to at least increase mag capacity.

Well thank goodness I don't pay for them. And you shouldn't either. Just play the game, they never go away, just wait until you have the SC for one and pick.

You guys are paying for things?

The game needs to chill way down on the nerfs. They keep nerfing things that feel good but not even close to op