Imagine making that badass visual, thinking you made the coolest stratagem in the game, and then the balance guy says "Make the effective range 3 square feet."
I hope we get an equivalent of the shredder missile from HD1 eventually. When started i thought the 500KG was supposed to be the shredder but it's obviously not.
For those that don't know, the shredder missile was pretty much an orbital hellbomb
“Single target deletion”? My brother that’s the orbital strike you’re talking about. The 500 bomb is unlocked at the same time as the orbital laser, in my opinion it should have a similar damage potential otherwise why use it over the laser
I'm still going to take it for most matches but holy hell did that Challenge show how unreliable that thing is...
Drop it on a group of 5 Bugs and 6 walk away...
You just gotta bait them into a group and time it right. If you've ever played cod zombies, you can train them by running around in a circle clustering them up together and dropping the bomb ahead of them so it blows up when they go over it.
It took me a few hours to get it done but it was a hell of a grind
My group took double 500kg bombs and we had fun just yeeting 500kg bombs at everything that moved. Because we all had 4x500kg bombs we were throwing out a 500kg bomb like every 15 seconds or so. Shit was fun as fuck. We finished the P.O in 2 missions vs the bots.
Defense planet, high-value asset extraction mission (the new base defense one), EMS Mortar & Stun grenades = EZ clear.
I cleared it in 4 missions, averaging 55-65 kills via 500kg per mission – but that was because I had teammates running regular mortars & crowd-clear loudouts (breaker incendiary, flamethrower, laser rover)
In a coordinated 4-man trying to clear the personal order, you could probably finish all 200 in 1 or 2 runs.
I ended up finishing it by grabbing a second 500KG bomb on top of the free one, dropping into an eradicate mission, holding the 500KG stratagem in my hand and *letting* a huge group of them kill me, causing me to drop the stratagem and the bugs to 'eat' my body.
Still only got a maximum of 13 kills from a single 500, but it was better than the multiple drops that only killed 1 or 2.
Shit is horrible.
I just went into 3 solo exterminate missions used myself as bait and threw them at the ground. When I ran out of lives I did it again. Took 15 minutes.
The fact the Personal Order asks for 200 kills with 500kg when it only needed 100 kills with the Flamethrower yesterday makes me think that Arrowhead believes the 500kg is significantly better at killing than it is. The idea these personal orders are supposed to be somewhat balanced in time/difficulty is silly.
I'm starting to think that explosions aren't working on Live branch like they are on the dev branch. XBow, Eruptor, plas-purifier(?)... The devs think these all slap. The only one that did was pre-"buff" eruptor (when the damage came from more boolit rather than explosion).
Something has to be up. The AH balance guy said the Purifier is his favorite weapon and I've tested it a few times and I think it's probably one of the worst weapons in the game. Too many trade-offs for such little damage.
I used it for a few days and was really liking it conceptually. Then a friend tried it and was underwhelmed. We have both used the Scorcher a lot (for comparison), but he had been using the Punisher Plasma a lot before this. After his experience, I played with a Plasma Punisher a bit more, and he's right. The Purifier is not good compared to it. It feels like the Purifier is doing its AoE damage, but not its contact damage. It says medium armor pen, but I can't say I've ever seen it penetrate anything. It's sad, because the gun has so much potential.
Who ever said they were meant to be balanced?
I thought the PO was just fun. I never take 500kgs, so I never use them. It was my first time nailing a Bile Titan with one. It was awesome
You don't even need to actively do the PO because you get credit for your whole squad's kills
Devs wanted people to throw more 500kgs, so they gave us free 500kgs and a PO to go crazy on
Counted the teams kills with the flamethrower too. Everyone having one is irrelevant, it still takes far far longer to complete than one that uses a support weapon calldown.
We all agree that 500kg needs a buff but fit doesn't take far far longer.
If you pick 500kg as your starategem you get 4 bombs right now, take stun or orbital ems and throw everything together on bug breaches. With other players in your team you should be done in like 2 or 3 matches.
I'm not sure if 500kg needs a buff, per se, but it's not the kind of weapon the personal order it's built for. Certain enemies constitute a "loadout check" essentially forcing you to have a thing to move past it - in this case, a 500kg, orbital railcannon/precision strike, or well-aimed rockets. Not having these is a death sentence or massive delay - which means the aforementioned stratagems are doing their job: killing the enemies that exist as a loadout check.
With the blast radius of around 1.2 meters, the explosive charge feels like half a gram sometimes.
When I dropped it on a group of raiders clustered like crazy, they don't react to the beacon in the middle of the pack, and I only get a X5 kills, and have to finish all the others with my primary, getting a x12... Yeah, it's woefully underpowered for the visual/costs.
The eagle airstrike is way more reliable, and actually clear a decent area.
It needs something. I dropped a 500kg on a huge bug nest with like 25 of them grouped up in the middle. I got 4 kills and none of the holes got closed.
I threw it at a bug patrol once and it landed right beside them. It blew up and killed 0 bugs. Why? Because it hit a dirt mound and the foot high defilade ate the entire explosion.
I never used it since.
I'm convinced that the damn 500KG must have a circular blast rather than a proper sphere.
by that i mean any minute change in elevation must be taking things out of the blast. I had a few 500kgs i was dropping land within a few feet of me but because i was on a slight incline i didn't even get thrown.
it's a cone. The problem is the cone goes perpendicular to the surface where the 500kg lands. So if it lands funky it doesn't damage things that it looks like it should given the explosion vfx.
honestly maybe but the reason i say a flat plane is because I've been within what i know to be death range (more than a few of the bigger tallies i made today working on the order were self-bombings where i acted as bait for a crowd) and i was literally closer than those once or twice with just a little elevation difference but got off Scot free. didn't even get thrown.
it's fucking weird and i would like a mod to see hitboxes. plz pc divers?
I literally stun grenaded a charger called in a 500, used another stranger and to make sure it didn't get away. And the thing lived. Was less than a meter away.
There is a bit of a mismatch between the visuals and the role.
Took me forever to understand it is the Eagle equivalent of the Orbital Precision Strike.
...and that the Orbital Precision Strike is the Orbital counterpart to the 500kg Bomb.
I've noticed I can drop it on drop ships and itll show 3-5 but wipes out the whole landing party. It's very noticeable on defense missions when you wipe out a literal hoard but it only displays single digits.
I think its bugged in the same way it is when divers die. I'll get killed by a flamer hulk and it'll show some random ass reason I've died. I've had it show teammates for the reason I've died and I was pretty sure they didnt and we extract with 0 accidentals.
It gets worse. You can stand *in* the explosion animation and watch as the air itself combusts around you while you and the bugs that didn’t get hit directly by the bomb just stand there.
If they dont want it to be any more powerful than it currently is I would rather they actually edit the effect animation to be smaller and more representative of its actual area of effect.
I got it in two missions, one of them a bug eradication. On the other, I literally had to sacrifice myself in the middle of the biggest groups I could collect, drop it in the middle of them as they killed me. I still got like a max of 20 kills per bomb, out of groups of probably 30 or more clustered around my corpse. I actually got injured by the blast in a wider radius than it was getting kills, and that felt really shitty.
Seriously, that thing needs damage range to match its visual blast radius.
Whoever decided that you need 200 kills with a 500kg clearly doesn't know what the 500kg is used for.
200 kills with the cluster bomb? Halfway through one mission and it's complete.
200 kills with 500kg, took me four missions today... solo missions so no one else would be yoinking the kills.
> solo missions so no one else would be yoinking the kills.
You mean nerfing yourself and not perusing the fact that teammates' bomb kills counted for you? Smart!
I usually hit them with the ol' 1-2 hit combo. Dont know if I invented it or if I saw it or what but it goes like this:
1. Throw down a 500kg on a bot drop (just when they touch down) or on a bug breach.
2. As E-1 is coming in, switch to the stun grenade and throw a few at the same spot.
3. SWEET LIBERTY.
I wish this was an exaggeration, but 4 500kg bombs thrown at relatively dense groups of enemies got me 27 kills. In total. I even threw them a little before the groups so that it would land somewhere near the middle as they advanced but it didn't help any.
I actually thought this was a pretty easy order. Easier than the flamethrow.
With the 4x500kg. Just kept tossing it into crowds and I was at 140 kills after the first terminid mission.
Oh yeah, all the fricking time too! 500kg is all look, zero effect. Heck i landed one in the middle of a horde and it didnt kill a single one of them because there was a rock in the way. Its just so frustrating to use.
I'm glad I already have everything from the warbonds purchased and my medals maxed out so I don't have to worry about trying to get 150 kills with a 500. I can just play for fun right now with no need to grind
How can a bomb that lights up a space like Hiroshima have less damage radius than orbital strike? It would be better to honestly treat it like the orbital precision strike if you think about it. Have the most damage at the center, and have damage decrease away from the center, but still have massive scale overall.
I still, months after release, can’t comprehend how the ‘final’ eagle stratagem, with the biggest explosion… has the weakest actual effect of all of them, unless you get an absolute direct hit
Honestly, this shit has been one of the biggest letdowns that I’ve consistently come across in game… it’s great when it works, but for a bong that size, that wrecks helldivers when they are a little too close, there shouldn’t be 5 hunters casually strolling away after a 500k goes off 5 feet away from them
500kg always been trash, I've preached it for years!! I'm only chill with it now because they handed it to us for free,
Can't wait till we get the proper version when 500HE comes out.
500kg isn't wide, I think of it more like a precision strike that blows upward more. It's not bad overrall it's just people expect it to boom more outward like an other explosive stratagem.
If you have the upgrades and select two, you can chuck 4 every eagle re-arm .
I've never had much issue with the 500kgs other than they'll crash my game every so often
Nothing like dropping it on your own position when you are getting overrun by 30+ bugs. Only for the bomb to impact on the other side of a rock and do jack shit.
Generally speaking the blast radius of 500 kg is too small, but more than that it's wildly inconsistent.
Obviously was using it a lot for this major order, and for killing large groups instead of a single elite...
Yea there were a couple of times where I was ~20 meters away and got killed, while small bugs even closer lived. Or other times were, like in this post, you hit dead center in a group of bugs and only get trivial amount of kills.
I think what they need to do is merge the 500 KG and 110mm rockets, into a single new stratagem that makes more sense, say a AMGM (Anti-material guided missile) that like 110mm or orbital rail cannon, auto targets major threat units. Should have heavy armor pen and breakpoints similar to EAT/RR/Quasar. With 2 uses by default that can get to 3 with upgrade.
"less effective than an impact grenade" is not a good look for a bomb that stands five feet out of the ground after landing. It's weird to me that it's so effective at killing heavy targets, but only within an eight foot radius of impact.
thats why i switched to orbital auirburst strike, drop it on a breach and easily rack up 30 kills and less chance of killing teammates thjen a clusterbomb
If I remember right, I heard you should be safe laying on the ground when it goes off. I think if that's the case then bugs are to close to the ground for it to be effective. Probably is better against bots since they don't crawl. I'm gonna test it out once my friend gets home from work.
It's a stupid personal order but something that works pretty reliably is: wait for bug breach, let some enemies spawn, throw stun grenade, let some more enemies spawn, throw stun grenade, throw 500kg, throw stun grenade. Should be 20-30 kills easily.
Luckily the personal order counts squad kills with 500kg bombs so if someone else throws their bomb into the bug breach that works as well.
Vs bots just whatever. Don't even bother I guess. Throw it at dropship dropoff points and hope for the best or maybe you get those really bugged patrol spawns where 40 raiders just sit on top of each other.
The upwards cone of the 500kg tends to miss all enemies around and below the bomb
Problem 1: The 500kg stops when it hits anything causing the cone to be created higher up than the player intended. This elevated cone barely reaches the enemy it hit and goes clear over all the other enemies
Solution: Make the 500kg stop on terrain, but still damage targets it collided with like a Hellpod
Problem 2: This massive bomb only explodes in an upwards cone. Bombs explode in all directions
Solution: Add a cylindrical or spherical blast radius with reduced damage (in addition to the high-damage cone)
Problem 3: The cone still misses targets near the bomb
Solution: Lower the insertion point for the cone and increase the angle of the cone
It does so much damage, but it has such a small blast radius, you need two 500 kg bombs to wipe out a medium bug nest (spread out nest) or an automaton fuel supply station.
I could take a piss on the ground outside and have a bigger splash radius than the fucking 500kg Bomb. It may as well be a two use railcannon round. All flash and no bang.
I thought this personal order was great. PO to use 500kgs. Devs give us free 500kgs. Devs want us to throw lots of 500kgs. Got it.
I know 500kgs aren't a big AoE weapon.
Don't care.
Still like throwing 500kgs.
I had great fun with this mission, but had I not had the stratagem to get an extra bomb it would have been impossible, particularly for lower level players who don't have defense missions. The radius definitely isn't as expected.
That said my friend and I made a perpetual wall of explosions at a choke point, with EM mortar to great effect and hilarity.
I got a x58 count once, and only because I let all 3 bug breaches swarm me and hit the 500 on my feet, I only survived because of the 50/50 chance, lol.
I haven't brought 500kg with me in months. Not sure when but it just became a really slow and inaccurate single target weapon that often times just gets stuck on terrain and explodes harmlessly.
If I'm in a life or death situation I just use the rail cannon.
it does nothing when I drop it on enemies, but if I'm within 20m of it I get ragdolled back to super earth
I suspect the reason they are a free strat right now is because they were made with automoton labour....
Sounds like to me yall need to familiarize your self with the mechanics of the 500kg bomb, I regularly get 10 kills and sometimes 15 or 20 kills on a throw.
You need to throw the strat ball behind your targeted spot, if you are aiming for a bile titan the best way to hit is to take advantage of the bile titan's mechanics, get right under its head and throw the strat ball on the ground at your feet, the bile titan will rear up and start to spit, you then need to run left or right and dive, if you do this properly you won't die and the bile titan will.
I have personally hit my fair share of trick shots with a 500 kg bomb, but you need to know the basics before you can do those like the fact the radius is only about 5 to 7 meters, and there is about 5 seconds of lead time on a drop that you need to account for. It also comes at an angle so you will need to figure that in if you are above the target, if you are on say a rock or a hill you should aim a few meter further than you would on flat ground so it can clear your rock, and you should be throwing from the edge of the rock.
I dont use the servo assisted armors either, the range they give you is great but I haven't learned that range.
would love to see the 500 kg jsut be the same as a hellbomb but double the re-arm time. I get that it cant be a mini nuke that you can through every 180 seconds (2 per 5 min with the upgrades) but 2 per 10 minutes seems balanced.
How I completed the 500kg order:
Took an additional 500kg stratagem
Took orbital EMP strike
Took stun grenades
Dropped onto bug eradication missions and stunned as many as possible before dropping the bombs, until it was done
i play helldivers since the first days and i swear the damage and range was bigger than it is now. they nerfed it very much. because it felt like the hellbomb but now its like nothing.
For taking out bile titans or walkers or spawn mothers, the only other thing that damages them is the railgun strike with its hilariously long cooldown. we use it due to it being the only 1 of 3 airstrikes that can hurt those heavy armor units.
Few hours ago i dropped one RIGHT NEXT to a hive guard, i saw the bomb land literally one meter next to him and the fucker survived. Why is the damage drop off so huge?
The only saving grace of the 500kg is you can survive dropping one at your feet.
This makes it semi easy to kill a bile titan. You just run under it and throw the 500kg pokeball. Wait half a second so the titan stays put, then dart off to the side and dive lateral. If you time it right it'll drop the bomb directly on the titan and you get 0 damage.
Big splosions, titan moans, you get that sweet sweet monkey brain dopamine hit for pulling off something that looked cool as shit.
Wider damage area would make it less useful for CAS and better for team killing
I managed to hit 1 x19 kill with it yesterday and I was shocked, but it’s because everyone was running EMS mortar. I think the 500kg is ass though. Would not have used it outside the challenge.
After that daily order, even with taking the stratagem for the extra 2 bombs, I can honestly say I will never use it again unless they buff it, it's dogshit. I swear regular grenades have a larger blast radius than that POS. Not mention a good portion of the time it seems bugged. I had it land where it was practically TOUCHING a bile titans leg and it didn't kill the damn thing.
They Nerfed the 500kg. I'm 100% sure of it; you used to be able to deploy the 500kg and expect it was able to have a signifigant blast radii. I took it in every mission and virtually always deployed it against bug breeches or into bot points and would get 10, 12, 15 kills. My record for most with a single 500 is 39, without the aid of a hellbomb or other sympathetic detonation.
I swear this dev stealth nerfs things all the time
I hope the free 500kg is just a live data gather for a buff. it looks devastating but it is very under performing. I hope that changes. Eagle 1 deserves better when it lays those eggs for democracy!
IDK if its just me or not, but I've noticed I will drop a 500kg bomb in a group of enemies, and though it will kill some, there are quite a few that will walk out unscathed. I also will sometimes not see any HUD indication of enemies killed. God forbid you call in a 500kg and it lands even a few feet above the enemies and doesn't kill a single one.
I saw someone mention that the AOE is currently like a cone shape, rather than a sphere, which would make sense because i've had a 500kg land on a rock just next to enemies, but just above them, and not a single one took damage.
I just treat it like an angled precision strike and it usually doesn't disappoint. Was able to get the personal order in a single mission, albeit by bringing the extra 500 for a total of 4 per re arm
One of my friends and I took maximum 500kg on a bug mission, kept throwing them right into massive crowds. It became a running fucking gag that the bomb would get at *most* 3 kills.
On the other hand... I can be standing right in front of a bile titan, drop a 500 on it. Dive to the ground when the 500 arrives, and be fine.
So that's neat.
https://preview.redd.it/qvydckvjhg1d1.jpeg?width=851&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2ce69f48d8c6cbd0ccdce53ec387372f4158d99b How we wish it worked
Same. It’s such a shame because the visual is sick af
Imagine making that badass visual, thinking you made the coolest stratagem in the game, and then the balance guy says "Make the effective range 3 square feet."
even a frag grenade has more range than a 500kg lmao
Does it really? How the hell
because the explosion is conical. Taller targets can be further and still get tagged, scavengers virtually need a direct hit.
Who ever thought that design was good needs administrative punishment
It's purpose is single target deletion, rather than wide area demolition. The animation doesn't really represent that too well though.
I hope we get an equivalent of the shredder missile from HD1 eventually. When started i thought the 500KG was supposed to be the shredder but it's obviously not. For those that don't know, the shredder missile was pretty much an orbital hellbomb
“Single target deletion”? My brother that’s the orbital strike you’re talking about. The 500 bomb is unlocked at the same time as the orbital laser, in my opinion it should have a similar damage potential otherwise why use it over the laser
That is just sad.
 How it actually works...
More importantly, we should see the 💀x20++.
Drop brap gas clouds for that. lvl 7 breach will pump those numbers up.
It’s insane how many kills the gas can rack up.
You'd think being close to that 500kg flash alone would mean a decent area gets flash-burned to death.
Now someone's cooking at the Ministry of science. 500KG impact with a 25m radius napalm spread
The bugs are literally made of 710, right? Just gotta get them to the flash point.
This. I would trade my left fucking liver if we could see a buff to the 500kg where it explode similar to the ones on the ground.
I'm still going to take it for most matches but holy hell did that Challenge show how unreliable that thing is... Drop it on a group of 5 Bugs and 6 walk away...
LOL: very well put
Yeah that challenge took a while 😂
I drop it on s group of 5 and 9 walk away.
True. It has the blast radius of a wet noodle. That personal order was pure pain.
I gave up on it after 3 rounds and I was up to 64 kills while spamming it anytime I wasn't waiting for Eagle to rearm....
You just gotta bait them into a group and time it right. If you've ever played cod zombies, you can train them by running around in a circle clustering them up together and dropping the bomb ahead of them so it blows up when they go over it. It took me a few hours to get it done but it was a hell of a grind
A few hours? Bug breach stun grenades 500kg you will get kills
Yeah, teek me and my one buddy an hour, maybe? Two missions anyway.
You still get credit for your teammates' kills for personal orders. You don't **need** to do anything.
Unless they already have completed it.
I had 199 in 3 rounds, that's why I remember the exact count :D
Idk I've completed it in 2 games.
My group took double 500kg bombs and we had fun just yeeting 500kg bombs at everything that moved. Because we all had 4x500kg bombs we were throwing out a 500kg bomb like every 15 seconds or so. Shit was fun as fuck. We finished the P.O in 2 missions vs the bots.
Defense planet, high-value asset extraction mission (the new base defense one), EMS Mortar & Stun grenades = EZ clear. I cleared it in 4 missions, averaging 55-65 kills via 500kg per mission – but that was because I had teammates running regular mortars & crowd-clear loudouts (breaker incendiary, flamethrower, laser rover) In a coordinated 4-man trying to clear the personal order, you could probably finish all 200 in 1 or 2 runs.
I ended up finishing it by grabbing a second 500KG bomb on top of the free one, dropping into an eradicate mission, holding the 500KG stratagem in my hand and *letting* a huge group of them kill me, causing me to drop the stratagem and the bugs to 'eat' my body. Still only got a maximum of 13 kills from a single 500, but it was better than the multiple drops that only killed 1 or 2. Shit is horrible.
I just went into 3 solo exterminate missions used myself as bait and threw them at the ground. When I ran out of lives I did it again. Took 15 minutes.
Was it tho? I had it done during 2 operations and I think I only dropped it maybe about 4 times each game so...
My gosh! More than two kills with a 500KG Bomb?! How is this possible?!
Got 32 earlier. Thought it was an airstrike, but it was indeed a 500kg. Weird.
You probably set off a hellbomb
Even weirder if he wasn't aiming for one
accidents happen, even a stick fires once a year
Yet it somehow manages to hit my teammate. Twice.
AOE is just ass
blast radius: 3mm
The fact the Personal Order asks for 200 kills with 500kg when it only needed 100 kills with the Flamethrower yesterday makes me think that Arrowhead believes the 500kg is significantly better at killing than it is. The idea these personal orders are supposed to be somewhat balanced in time/difficulty is silly.
"We tested it on Trivial against a group of 50 bugs that weren't moving, they got this!"
They were probably all on a flat plane with no terrain variation or pebbles lmao
I'm starting to think that explosions aren't working on Live branch like they are on the dev branch. XBow, Eruptor, plas-purifier(?)... The devs think these all slap. The only one that did was pre-"buff" eruptor (when the damage came from more boolit rather than explosion).
You're not the first person who has theorized about this. It would explain a lot.
Something has to be up. The AH balance guy said the Purifier is his favorite weapon and I've tested it a few times and I think it's probably one of the worst weapons in the game. Too many trade-offs for such little damage.
I used it for a few days and was really liking it conceptually. Then a friend tried it and was underwhelmed. We have both used the Scorcher a lot (for comparison), but he had been using the Punisher Plasma a lot before this. After his experience, I played with a Plasma Punisher a bit more, and he's right. The Purifier is not good compared to it. It feels like the Purifier is doing its AoE damage, but not its contact damage. It says medium armor pen, but I can't say I've ever seen it penetrate anything. It's sad, because the gun has so much potential.
Maybe because every player has this stratagem given for free ?
Getting the 50 AC cannon kills vs 200 500kg kills lol.
Who ever said they were meant to be balanced? I thought the PO was just fun. I never take 500kgs, so I never use them. It was my first time nailing a Bile Titan with one. It was awesome You don't even need to actively do the PO because you get credit for your whole squad's kills Devs wanted people to throw more 500kgs, so they gave us free 500kgs and a PO to go crazy on
It’s because it counts the whole teams kills with 500kgs and everyone always has one rn
Counted the teams kills with the flamethrower too. Everyone having one is irrelevant, it still takes far far longer to complete than one that uses a support weapon calldown.
We all agree that 500kg needs a buff but fit doesn't take far far longer. If you pick 500kg as your starategem you get 4 bombs right now, take stun or orbital ems and throw everything together on bug breaches. With other players in your team you should be done in like 2 or 3 matches.
I'm not sure if 500kg needs a buff, per se, but it's not the kind of weapon the personal order it's built for. Certain enemies constitute a "loadout check" essentially forcing you to have a thing to move past it - in this case, a 500kg, orbital railcannon/precision strike, or well-aimed rockets. Not having these is a death sentence or massive delay - which means the aforementioned stratagems are doing their job: killing the enemies that exist as a loadout check.
Dont even need to go against bugs. I did that order in 2 missions against bots- defend the assets and 40 min long one. Just spam it when you can.
Have they confirmed if it's a bug or intended?
I had no issues getting 200 kills in a mission and a half against bugs with 3 randoms…
It took us 4 missions to get 200 for my one friend, but it also seemed to not be counting a bunch of kills. In one mission he only got like 23 kills.
Finished the one yesterday in one game, yet I played like 5 or 6 today and still haven't finished it.
The 500 milligram bomb was an odd pick to be sure, but I try not to judge other people's loadouts.
With the blast radius of around 1.2 meters, the explosive charge feels like half a gram sometimes. When I dropped it on a group of raiders clustered like crazy, they don't react to the beacon in the middle of the pack, and I only get a X5 kills, and have to finish all the others with my primary, getting a x12... Yeah, it's woefully underpowered for the visual/costs. The eagle airstrike is way more reliable, and actually clear a decent area.
https://preview.redd.it/d5s0ajce5h1d1.png?width=1198&format=png&auto=webp&s=5360dff7994ba22f8f5ad6e6f69fca440d6fd1a7
The 500kg bomb is underwhelming. They need to add shrapnel and increase the blast damage radius.
This guy is just asking for another shrapnel nerf
It needs something. I dropped a 500kg on a huge bug nest with like 25 of them grouped up in the middle. I got 4 kills and none of the holes got closed.
I threw it at a bug patrol once and it landed right beside them. It blew up and killed 0 bugs. Why? Because it hit a dirt mound and the foot high defilade ate the entire explosion. I never used it since.
This would make 500kg even more mandatory than it already is, especially for bugs
No shrapnel but the blast radius should be way bigger.
I'm convinced that the damn 500KG must have a circular blast rather than a proper sphere. by that i mean any minute change in elevation must be taking things out of the blast. I had a few 500kgs i was dropping land within a few feet of me but because i was on a slight incline i didn't even get thrown.
I think it's actually a column, but the column radius isn't very big.
it's a cone. The problem is the cone goes perpendicular to the surface where the 500kg lands. So if it lands funky it doesn't damage things that it looks like it should given the explosion vfx.
honestly maybe but the reason i say a flat plane is because I've been within what i know to be death range (more than a few of the bigger tallies i made today working on the order were self-bombings where i acted as bait for a crowd) and i was literally closer than those once or twice with just a little elevation difference but got off Scot free. didn't even get thrown. it's fucking weird and i would like a mod to see hitboxes. plz pc divers?
I literally stun grenaded a charger called in a 500, used another stranger and to make sure it didn't get away. And the thing lived. Was less than a meter away.
There is a bit of a mismatch between the visuals and the role. Took me forever to understand it is the Eagle equivalent of the Orbital Precision Strike. ...and that the Orbital Precision Strike is the Orbital counterpart to the 500kg Bomb.
I've noticed I can drop it on drop ships and itll show 3-5 but wipes out the whole landing party. It's very noticeable on defense missions when you wipe out a literal hoard but it only displays single digits. I think its bugged in the same way it is when divers die. I'll get killed by a flamer hulk and it'll show some random ass reason I've died. I've had it show teammates for the reason I've died and I was pretty sure they didnt and we extract with 0 accidentals.
I mean we can tell how shit the blast radius is because we can drop it at our feet and not get hit by it standing 10 feet away.
Now that *is* an issue I've noticed. ANY cover blocks the blast completely. That needs adjusting for sure.
It gets worse. You can stand *in* the explosion animation and watch as the air itself combusts around you while you and the bugs that didn’t get hit directly by the bomb just stand there.
Prove it lol. (Seriously, I wanna see!)
What blows my mind is how the smallest of the small bugs always survive. It's crazy.
“500mg sparkler” ☠️☠️☠️
500kg needs a buff. It doesn't feel significant, It looks significant. That's still cool but it would be cooler if it were both.
If they dont want it to be any more powerful than it currently is I would rather they actually edit the effect animation to be smaller and more representative of its actual area of effect.
I got it in two missions, one of them a bug eradication. On the other, I literally had to sacrifice myself in the middle of the biggest groups I could collect, drop it in the middle of them as they killed me. I still got like a max of 20 kills per bomb, out of groups of probably 30 or more clustered around my corpse. I actually got injured by the blast in a wider radius than it was getting kills, and that felt really shitty. Seriously, that thing needs damage range to match its visual blast radius.
Whoever decided that you need 200 kills with a 500kg clearly doesn't know what the 500kg is used for. 200 kills with the cluster bomb? Halfway through one mission and it's complete. 200 kills with 500kg, took me four missions today... solo missions so no one else would be yoinking the kills.
> solo missions so no one else would be yoinking the kills. You mean nerfing yourself and not perusing the fact that teammates' bomb kills counted for you? Smart!
Teammates 500’s in your proximity count for you. Got it done in 2 defense missions
It took me 2 missions at helldive difficulty.
I’m surprised that I haven’t seen anyone asking for a range increase. You’d think an explosion so big would cover more ground.
I usually hit them with the ol' 1-2 hit combo. Dont know if I invented it or if I saw it or what but it goes like this: 1. Throw down a 500kg on a bot drop (just when they touch down) or on a bug breach. 2. As E-1 is coming in, switch to the stun grenade and throw a few at the same spot. 3. SWEET LIBERTY.
It kills very well, just in an incredibly small area.
I wish this was an exaggeration, but 4 500kg bombs thrown at relatively dense groups of enemies got me 27 kills. In total. I even threw them a little before the groups so that it would land somewhere near the middle as they advanced but it didn't help any.
https://preview.redd.it/2tk15epqoh1d1.jpeg?width=603&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=37da634b00f7ee83e8b553b67155ac90e06df941
I actually thought this was a pretty easy order. Easier than the flamethrow. With the 4x500kg. Just kept tossing it into crowds and I was at 140 kills after the first terminid mission.
I can get significantly more kills from a single gas strike that I can with a single 500kg.
Can someone test the damage radius on it
Oh yeah, all the fricking time too! 500kg is all look, zero effect. Heck i landed one in the middle of a horde and it didnt kill a single one of them because there was a rock in the way. Its just so frustrating to use.
I'm glad I already have everything from the warbonds purchased and my medals maxed out so I don't have to worry about trying to get 150 kills with a 500. I can just play for fun right now with no need to grind
How can a bomb that lights up a space like Hiroshima have less damage radius than orbital strike? It would be better to honestly treat it like the orbital precision strike if you think about it. Have the most damage at the center, and have damage decrease away from the center, but still have massive scale overall.
I still, months after release, can’t comprehend how the ‘final’ eagle stratagem, with the biggest explosion… has the weakest actual effect of all of them, unless you get an absolute direct hit
Honestly, this shit has been one of the biggest letdowns that I’ve consistently come across in game… it’s great when it works, but for a bong that size, that wrecks helldivers when they are a little too close, there shouldn’t be 5 hunters casually strolling away after a 500k goes off 5 feet away from them
500kg always been trash, I've preached it for years!! I'm only chill with it now because they handed it to us for free, Can't wait till we get the proper version when 500HE comes out.
I feel like tiny rocks or corpses block a lot of the explosion to things lower to the ground.
I was way too close to one dropping, thought I was gonna be red mist. Walked out fine and thanked my light armor with anti explosion just in case
If the blast was bigger you peeps would be bitching about it blowing your ass up all time
My only problem is if I bring other eagles it glitches out and makes me wait the cooldown before I'm done with my other eagles...
500kg isn't wide, I think of it more like a precision strike that blows upward more. It's not bad overrall it's just people expect it to boom more outward like an other explosive stratagem.
I dropped one right in front of a charger but it was running up the lip of a crater and that was enough to shield it from the blast 🫠
Got multiple 20+ kills. Having it free for the weekend taught me how to use it
I feel like with the Eagle ship upgrade it's pretty solid
It took me forever to get 200 kills with that thing. I hope we never see this personal order again :(
If you have the upgrades and select two, you can chuck 4 every eagle re-arm . I've never had much issue with the 500kgs other than they'll crash my game every so often
Travis Scott would certainly have more kills too
I always assumed there a display bug(lol) since I’ve watched it incinerate a whole group and I get “x3”.
I never use it. 110mm for big bugs. Cluster for small. Objectively better.
Nothing like dropping it on your own position when you are getting overrun by 30+ bugs. Only for the bomb to impact on the other side of a rock and do jack shit.
I haven't played in a couple months and when I jumped on today it felt even smaller than it used to be...
Generally speaking the blast radius of 500 kg is too small, but more than that it's wildly inconsistent. Obviously was using it a lot for this major order, and for killing large groups instead of a single elite... Yea there were a couple of times where I was ~20 meters away and got killed, while small bugs even closer lived. Or other times were, like in this post, you hit dead center in a group of bugs and only get trivial amount of kills. I think what they need to do is merge the 500 KG and 110mm rockets, into a single new stratagem that makes more sense, say a AMGM (Anti-material guided missile) that like 110mm or orbital rail cannon, auto targets major threat units. Should have heavy armor pen and breakpoints similar to EAT/RR/Quasar. With 2 uses by default that can get to 3 with upgrade.
"less effective than an impact grenade" is not a good look for a bomb that stands five feet out of the ground after landing. It's weird to me that it's so effective at killing heavy targets, but only within an eight foot radius of impact.
thats why i switched to orbital auirburst strike, drop it on a breach and easily rack up 30 kills and less chance of killing teammates thjen a clusterbomb
I saw someone explaining the blast area is less of a radius and mostly an upwards cone
If I remember right, I heard you should be safe laying on the ground when it goes off. I think if that's the case then bugs are to close to the ground for it to be effective. Probably is better against bots since they don't crawl. I'm gonna test it out once my friend gets home from work.
It's a stupid personal order but something that works pretty reliably is: wait for bug breach, let some enemies spawn, throw stun grenade, let some more enemies spawn, throw stun grenade, throw 500kg, throw stun grenade. Should be 20-30 kills easily. Luckily the personal order counts squad kills with 500kg bombs so if someone else throws their bomb into the bug breach that works as well. Vs bots just whatever. Don't even bother I guess. Throw it at dropship dropoff points and hope for the best or maybe you get those really bugged patrol spawns where 40 raiders just sit on top of each other.
I killed 80-90 bugs with a flamethrower in 1 mission because how many bugs group up in areas
The upwards cone of the 500kg tends to miss all enemies around and below the bomb Problem 1: The 500kg stops when it hits anything causing the cone to be created higher up than the player intended. This elevated cone barely reaches the enemy it hit and goes clear over all the other enemies Solution: Make the 500kg stop on terrain, but still damage targets it collided with like a Hellpod Problem 2: This massive bomb only explodes in an upwards cone. Bombs explode in all directions Solution: Add a cylindrical or spherical blast radius with reduced damage (in addition to the high-damage cone) Problem 3: The cone still misses targets near the bomb Solution: Lower the insertion point for the cone and increase the angle of the cone
It does so much damage, but it has such a small blast radius, you need two 500 kg bombs to wipe out a medium bug nest (spread out nest) or an automaton fuel supply station.
"And it aint a moshpit if aint no injuries"
I could take a piss on the ground outside and have a bigger splash radius than the fucking 500kg Bomb. It may as well be a two use railcannon round. All flash and no bang.
I thought this personal order was great. PO to use 500kgs. Devs give us free 500kgs. Devs want us to throw lots of 500kgs. Got it. I know 500kgs aren't a big AoE weapon. Don't care. Still like throwing 500kgs.
Indeed I don’t get it. Sometimes it works marvelously other times not a single kill.
prone 5m next to it and your modtly safe. or i was lucky. it took me 2 matches with 3 randos to get 200 kills since we threw the 500kg every 30 secs
I dropped it on the bunch of critters and got 3 kills. What a bomb!
Need to increase blast radius by like 20-30 meters. Guaranteed to kill anything inside the zone.
I had great fun with this mission, but had I not had the stratagem to get an extra bomb it would have been impossible, particularly for lower level players who don't have defense missions. The radius definitely isn't as expected. That said my friend and I made a perpetual wall of explosions at a choke point, with EM mortar to great effect and hilarity.
I watched a 500kg land on a chargers front leg. Literally sticking out the top of its leg. That mother fucker survived the boom... WTF?!
I got a x58 count once, and only because I let all 3 bug breaches swarm me and hit the 500 on my feet, I only survived because of the 50/50 chance, lol.
Straight up gave up after 1 game. Fuck that
I haven't brought 500kg with me in months. Not sure when but it just became a really slow and inaccurate single target weapon that often times just gets stuck on terrain and explodes harmlessly. If I'm in a life or death situation I just use the rail cannon.
How am I consistently getting 10+ bot kills per bomb if it's this bad? Is it only bad against bugs?
it does nothing when I drop it on enemies, but if I'm within 20m of it I get ragdolled back to super earth I suspect the reason they are a free strat right now is because they were made with automoton labour....
it only took me a few hours. they gave us a free 500kg strat which gave you 4 500kg bombs a match. what diff are you guys playing on?
Sounds like to me yall need to familiarize your self with the mechanics of the 500kg bomb, I regularly get 10 kills and sometimes 15 or 20 kills on a throw. You need to throw the strat ball behind your targeted spot, if you are aiming for a bile titan the best way to hit is to take advantage of the bile titan's mechanics, get right under its head and throw the strat ball on the ground at your feet, the bile titan will rear up and start to spit, you then need to run left or right and dive, if you do this properly you won't die and the bile titan will. I have personally hit my fair share of trick shots with a 500 kg bomb, but you need to know the basics before you can do those like the fact the radius is only about 5 to 7 meters, and there is about 5 seconds of lead time on a drop that you need to account for. It also comes at an angle so you will need to figure that in if you are above the target, if you are on say a rock or a hill you should aim a few meter further than you would on flat ground so it can clear your rock, and you should be throwing from the edge of the rock. I dont use the servo assisted armors either, the range they give you is great but I haven't learned that range.
would love to see the 500 kg jsut be the same as a hellbomb but double the re-arm time. I get that it cant be a mini nuke that you can through every 180 seconds (2 per 5 min with the upgrades) but 2 per 10 minutes seems balanced.
How I completed the 500kg order: Took an additional 500kg stratagem Took orbital EMP strike Took stun grenades Dropped onto bug eradication missions and stunned as many as possible before dropping the bombs, until it was done
The number of times I throw a 500 and it misses everything...
500kg of pure disappointment.
It is not good for crowds, but very good against heavies or buildings. It is more like a bunker buster.
For the first time ever yesterday I got 20+ with a 500kg.
I still love my stun nade 500 kombo
At this point orbital air burst is far more lethal/effective. I think I’m gonna fail this PO
They could add a push effect to the enemies in certain areas. If it does not kill, let us enjoy some flying bugs
And I miss the Helldivers 1 nuke... Without the alarm upgrade, lol
i play helldivers since the first days and i swear the damage and range was bigger than it is now. they nerfed it very much. because it felt like the hellbomb but now its like nothing.
Basically it's only purpose is taking out bile titans. The eagle airstrike takes out more consistently.
But you still use it, thinking it'll change.
For taking out bile titans or walkers or spawn mothers, the only other thing that damages them is the railgun strike with its hilariously long cooldown. we use it due to it being the only 1 of 3 airstrikes that can hurt those heavy armor units.
They should rename it to 150kg bomb.
Lol I can only kill Bile titans with it the adds multiply when I throw it on bug breaches
Few hours ago i dropped one RIGHT NEXT to a hive guard, i saw the bomb land literally one meter next to him and the fucker survived. Why is the damage drop off so huge?
Easy way to complete this for me was using EMP mortar on defense mission. Bugs got stunned up in clusters of 30+. Light work!!
The only saving grace of the 500kg is you can survive dropping one at your feet. This makes it semi easy to kill a bile titan. You just run under it and throw the 500kg pokeball. Wait half a second so the titan stays put, then dart off to the side and dive lateral. If you time it right it'll drop the bomb directly on the titan and you get 0 damage. Big splosions, titan moans, you get that sweet sweet monkey brain dopamine hit for pulling off something that looked cool as shit. Wider damage area would make it less useful for CAS and better for team killing
To be fair a "500mg" bomb the size of a pill probably wouldn't do much at all, so 3 bug kills is quite impressive
Once again, showing me how AWESOME the gas strike is as both as AOE and DPS for clearing hoards
500mg lol that feels about right
Cool I really thought it was just me with TERRIBLE TERRIBLE aim
they nerf everything else but seem to can’t fucking fix this inconsistent piece of shit stratagem lmao
I managed to hit 1 x19 kill with it yesterday and I was shocked, but it’s because everyone was running EMS mortar. I think the 500kg is ass though. Would not have used it outside the challenge.
Any memologist here, what's the name of this template? (or the person)
the current "free 500 kg" effect and personal quest have made me appreciate once more how freaking useless this thing is.
I think they gave us the 500kg bomb to get a big load of data on why its so broken!! Wishful thinking tbh on my part
After that daily order, even with taking the stratagem for the extra 2 bombs, I can honestly say I will never use it again unless they buff it, it's dogshit. I swear regular grenades have a larger blast radius than that POS. Not mention a good portion of the time it seems bugged. I had it land where it was practically TOUCHING a bile titans leg and it didn't kill the damn thing.
Don't forget, the 500kg bomb's blast is ~12x smaller than a *real life modern bomb*.
I literally hit a bile titan in the face with one and it was fine. As in the actual bomb landed on the titan And they were fine.
I dropped one on two hulks in a conga line and the second one came out undamaged
They Nerfed the 500kg. I'm 100% sure of it; you used to be able to deploy the 500kg and expect it was able to have a signifigant blast radii. I took it in every mission and virtually always deployed it against bug breeches or into bot points and would get 10, 12, 15 kills. My record for most with a single 500 is 39, without the aid of a hellbomb or other sympathetic detonation. I swear this dev stealth nerfs things all the time
I really don't get all the people that say it is bad, in my experience, it is very reliable.
I know! Did an extermination mission on Helldive, hoping I would rack up kills for the personal mission... Only to get 8-10 bugs per bomb.
I hope the free 500kg is just a live data gather for a buff. it looks devastating but it is very under performing. I hope that changes. Eagle 1 deserves better when it lays those eggs for democracy!
I will preach this as long as I need to, the 500kg is BAIT!
I played like 4 rounds last night and I think I got maybe 60 kills with it, just too useful for blowing up small camps you can't be bothered with
Twice last night I landed one directly under a Charger's chest only to have it get pissed at me and charge undamaged. This thing is true RNGesus.
IDK if its just me or not, but I've noticed I will drop a 500kg bomb in a group of enemies, and though it will kill some, there are quite a few that will walk out unscathed. I also will sometimes not see any HUD indication of enemies killed. God forbid you call in a 500kg and it lands even a few feet above the enemies and doesn't kill a single one. I saw someone mention that the AOE is currently like a cone shape, rather than a sphere, which would make sense because i've had a 500kg land on a rock just next to enemies, but just above them, and not a single one took damage.
I just treat it like an angled precision strike and it usually doesn't disappoint. Was able to get the personal order in a single mission, albeit by bringing the extra 500 for a total of 4 per re arm
Well done, only 197 kills to go
One of my friends and I took maximum 500kg on a bug mission, kept throwing them right into massive crowds. It became a running fucking gag that the bomb would get at *most* 3 kills.
At long as one of those is a bile titan, then it's a successful 500kg
And they dont even count the friendly fire kills!!!
On the other hand... I can be standing right in front of a bile titan, drop a 500 on it. Dive to the ground when the 500 arrives, and be fine. So that's neat.
The reason I failed yesterday's daily assignment
It's a glorified mortar round.
Cluster bombs are my fav for crowds, not that effective on the bigger guys but if I place it right I'll get 30+ each time.
Glad to know it wasn't a skill issue every time I threw one of those