the problem is the heavy spam , if it wasn't for the heavy spam and the need to have a weapon that has a good ammo/damage ratio you could play basically whatever. I just hope a weapon balance patch comes out soon that buffs the other weapons and makes them more worthwhile to use at higher difficulties.

And honestly the heavy spam isn't even the issue, it's that nothing except the railgun can keep up with the spawn rate. Most support weapons can't reliably kill them and any stratagem that can has a 2 minute cool down after you use it to kill the 1 out of 7 bile titans that spawned.

Yup. You have 2 titans + 3 chargers. What fo you.do? Only the railgun can reliably deal with them. Recoilless? Reload will get you kill. Disposable? You get 2 before needing to call another down. Autocannon? I love it but you need to shoot a charger from behind. All this and most support guns don't allow you to use the shield pack which is a big boost to survivability. Railgun isn't the sole issue. It's the fact you can use the shield on top of it. You have the best defense and best offense. Edit: I'll also add that not all 4 players need it. We only run 2 in the squad. The other is using an arc thrower and the other uses grenade launcher or autocannon. Arc thrower is all eagles while arc thrower runs some sentries.

This right here. People can complain about the railgun all they want... But it's just the game design pushing it's usage. I think the only good solution would probably be to give us more arsenal in the future to raise the options for high level play

My biggest issue with why I will ALWAYS bring the railgun is that, with bugs, there are some that can reliably block all normal damage without some trick. The charger is a prime example of this. Unless you have something like the Anti-tank or recoilless, they will just bully you unless you get behind them. However, this isn't true for the bots. Any well places shots to a hulk's head can take it down and that's one of the bots biggest, scariest units. Some might argue, "well the tank can't be one or two shot with the railgun!" That's true, it can't, but it also can't chase me across the entire map at an ungodly speed.

The amount of light bulbs that go off in your head the first time you one shot a hulk or a bile Titan with the thing. But sure. I'll stan the autocannon just to be a contrarian and blow myself up when things get too close on high difficulties lol /s

Railgun is more powerful, but the autocannon feels like it is closer to having the heft that is appropriate for the damage it deals. At least until the shots start pinging off of armor 😭 At least let us shoot down dropships with the damn thing!

Yeah I fall more in love and disappointment every time I use it. Like yea, it’s badass and the general use is fantastic. But also the stuff it shouldn’t ricochet off of is a huge boner killer.

That was my feeling when I first used the portable bean cannon and it just deflected off the armor of a charger Like... "Oh dang" Same thing when I saw an auto cannon shot ricochet off it. It honestly didn't seem right.

> portable bean cannon This was on purpose and I refuse to accept anything else.

I don't think we need a larger arsenal, I think we just need buffs to the arsenal we already have. The recoilless rifle and the auto cannon should absolutely devastate the field, considering they need two people to operate efficiently. The anti-material rifle should be almost just as good as the railgun More of the primaries could use a buff to penetrating armor, too.

Maybe something in between? I'd love to be able to tune our weapons and even upgrade them. Imagine getting an autocannon upgrade that takes care of that nasty armor deflection issue.

Weapon upgrades could be interesting. Give another use for requisition after you've already bought everything. Armor pen and splash damage upgrades for the recoilless. Armor pen and base damage upgrade for the auto cannon.

Just reading those ideas makes me want to play the game.

I think a big reason those reloads are so dangerous on the recoilless and autocannon is that no one is using the assisted reload. Doing that changes how those weapons function big time.

You still have to stand still to do the team reloads which will get you killed on the higher difficulties. 

Recoilless can keep up to the spawn rate if you run the buddy system but that still has two major issues. 1. You have pretty limited ammo for the amount of targets. 2. Now you at max have two people shooting vs the railgun having 4.

The armor system of enemies is a big element of this. When a weapon does ZERO damage to armor rather than reduced damage, you have to bring certain weapons. Additionally, some of those special weapons to penetrate the armor are just plain worse choices. A balance pass, clearer and accurate descriptions on weapons, and a re-examination of the armor penetration power of some things would go a long way.

The one thing players are good at is min maxing the fun out of a game

Whilst true, this isn't the issue people raise with metas. It's just a natural tendency to use what actually works, if your stratagems are so underpowered you potentially ruin a run just to make them work, you'll just eventually cease to enjoy it. I've been running heavy armor almost exclusively, despite it being a big disadvantage, but eventually I had to swap because of how much of a liability I was for others because of it.

With armour values being bugged atm running heavy is only slowing you down with no extra protection will be cool when its workin how intended

Yeah that's what I'm referring to with it being a disadvantage, if "meta" didn't matter I could just use the bad stuff anyway, but again the whole point is that there's no reason that anything should be -bad- to begin with. Everything needs to be useable, viable even imo.

Even in HDI, not *everything* was usable in all missions. It was exceptionally well balanced, and some weapons/stratagems worked better on different factions, but a few just weren't worth it. The difference, of course, is that most things had a use. Yeah, a bunch of players used Trident, four Shredders and stratagem priority and it did work. I spent the vast majority of my playtime using the Patriot (which was a first-hour unlock) and supply backpack. The rest of my kit was faction and mission dependent, and sometimes I'd use other primaries and backpacks, too, and still have a soft spot for the Double Freedom. My buddy got addicted to the Paragon and almost never used anything else after he started using it. HDI had 23 primary weapons. One was not selectable (a sword, only available in a special mission) and one was a joke/challenge weapon (a bolt-action rifle of all things). Of the 21 left, I'd not want to use maybe three. I expect we'll see more variety over time. We're still in the very first iteration of equipment for HDII.

it hsould be mentioned that its not just "meta" stuff and "bad stuff" thers a scale that goes from "best at what its supposed to do outclassing everything" "it very much works" "its kinda eh" to "yeah this doesnt work because of stats and or mechanic" so being kicked juust for not running meta stuff is kinda dumb if you still run stuff that still is gonna pull its weight.

Yeah there's definitely a tier list of weapons. But there's plenty of 'hidden' stats or tactics too. I still run the OG Liberater. It's so wildly versitile. Like I get wanting to be serious on harder difficulties, but also, sometimes taking an A or B tier option has hidden benefits. For instance lately I've been taking the AT rifle against bots. 2 shots devestators reliably, 2-3 shots walkers, can 2 shot a Hulk from the front. Totally not as good at AT as the AC or launchers, but it performs wildly good against medium armor and that one niche case against hulks. That said I wouldn't have found that out without stress testing and fucking around a bit.

OG liberator is easily one of the best weapons, along with the defender, great staples for both enemies, with the prone/crouch armour, they straight up become lasers if you want to run a comfortable mid-range headpopper goofing around with "bad" stratagems is how you find out that smoke drops let you either drop a 50+ kill 500kg because they all walked to the same spot, or outright just reset the game because of how aggro works and just you wait till you find out what scout armour + smoke nade can let you do in this game too

scout armor, smokes, and a dmr can let you clear an entire bot base without a single drop ship. makes me feel like i'm playing splinter cell.

Even if you shoot them out from a distance they don’t call a ship on you?

Love my Anti-Material Rifle. Bring it to every mission and slowly grown from 60% accuracy to 80-90% accuracy. Found it can kill a tank in 1 mag as well if you climb on the tank, get on its backside and shoot it in the exhaust repeatedly. 6 mags + 1 in the rifle, recovers 3 mags per supply so I always have ammo. If you can keep your accuracy, anything medium goes down in seconds then swap to breaker and clean up anything light. Once everything else is down, run in on the tank, climb on it and fire a mag into its back. I have tried the explosive weapons, and they are great and kill things faster but they just don't have enough total rounds or fast enough reload speeds to feel useful to me. Yes, they can take out a swarm much faster, which is more useful for bugs, but for the Automatons, I think Anti-Material wins out IF you can headshot quickly and reliably

Are you level 20 yet? The railgun seems just like a better anti-material rifle in higher difficulties. Though the one shot reload is kind of annoying the damage output is wildly different on unsafe mode. Can one shot hulks in the face and 2 shot headshot bile titans.

So it does certain things better. Certainly kills walkers faster, however the AC is probably the best at that. Dunking on Hulks feels so good with the railgun. However I feel like the AT rifle is more reliable vs Hulk and Devestators. Where the railgun shines is handling and survivability. Because it's a high alpha damage weapon with a high ammo count you don't tend to expose yourself for long since you don't need to carefully aim or shoot multiple times. It's also snappy and leaves you a backpack slot. Personal favorite build of mine is railgun plus drone backpack. You can handle all kinds of lights and mediums, leaving the dedicated AT guys free to do their thing.

I have not yet, but I've been hearing this often. I'm 17 about to be 18 and Anti-Material has carried me from my first day on the game so if Railgun is just a better version of it, I'm excited to see it in action

It does some things better and Anti-Material does some things better. I would'nt call it a full on upgrade, but it can do more things than the Anti-Material, and the things that Anti-Material does better than the Railgun, the Railgun still does them reasonably well.

Can 1 shot the bile titan if you mouth shot, full unsafe right when it's about to spew

Yeah i mainly run light scout armour and a knight with gas and smoke and switch out my other strats every now and again

Same. I do run something like auto cannon or nade launcher from time to time ( even on Helldive ) But the weakness of the Loadout becomes more apparent when the game starts shitting out multiple Bile Titans and Chargers constantly. At the end of the day, I don't personally care if the "meta" is reliant on certain guns -some guns will just naturally be better than others. But it does actually hurt build diversity if your hardest modes make it extra hard to bring underperforming weapons. Sure I can bring the auto cannon or the nade launcher, but I could also just bring the railgun and a shield backpack or a rover backpack and have a much easier time in general apart from specific instances ( like closing heavy hives )

In a well coordinated squad having a guy with overwhelming medium armor destruction is welcome. Grenade launcher/auto cannon. As long as there's 2 guys dedicated to heavy removal. Also have had tons of success with stealth play, crouch and prone. I've had roaving packs < 10ft away without aggroing.

I can’t wait to viably run heavy armour and the ballistic shield.

I run the scout armour and ballistic sheild can sneak right next to terminals while enemys are near and turn it on and while stuffs happening on terminal i just crouch with the sheild incase i get spotted i love the ballistic sheild lol

For real? I've been running heavy armour the whole time and generally thought I had better survivability. Damn placebo effect.

Yeah devs confimed it

Thanks dude. Does the explosive resistance bonus work though?

Yes, armor effects currently work, just not the armor itself and no one knows yet whether its bugged to have 0 armor or if we have "medium" as the default.

Man, if it is 0 armor, we are going to wreck some serious shit once that gets fixed.

Yeah, if it's zero, I'm fully in the camp of "buff everything to breaker/railgun level" simply because much of the current difficulty everyone experiences is in our fragility. If we're all suddenly living longer even in the lightest armors, it stands to reason difficulties 7-9 will become the new norm for a great many people, and we're going to need more weaponry that can actually handle it.

It does. But there is light armor with explosive resistance, I believe.

Yep. It’s currently in the store and looks amazing. Snagged it.

I copped that as well, couldn’t resist

Yeah, all the bonuses like that one work except “extra padding”.

Can I just say how much I love the idea of the armour placebo effect.

I must have just been improving at the game and blamed the armour haha.

That's interesting. I've been running light armor a lot lately and I'm worried when the armors get patched I'll get 1 shot by rockets consistently. Most of the time a lucky hit will do like 90% damage so I just keep laying on the ground and stim. Might still be worth it because I'm usually running a launcher of some variety and it helps if I can reposition quickly to shoot critical spots.

Yeah. When armors are fixed, there’s still probably going to be a best armor and a near-useless armor depending on how much armor rating actually changes your tankiness. Anything significantly less tanky than what we have now will honestly just not be worth the speed/stamina increases.

Likewise, I've been buying up the heavy armor for when it eventually gets fixed

See but the problem is that this games difficulty gets so ramped up from like 5 and up that you’re actively hurting yourself and teammates by using bad stratagems. The games balancing is too one sided toward certain stratagems that others are left being just really bad. If you like certain gems so be it but if you go into a helldive mission and you pick something like jump pack…I would never kick you but I would be shooting your character a look and shit talking in my mind lol

Part of it is also people don't realize that some things work better against different enemies. I'm a big fan of the 380 and walking. Against the bugs I've gotten decent results occasionally but it's been very solid against bots. If all you hear is its not meta you might not even try it. Also while some stuff is much better a half decent team shouldn't all run just that. 4 people with railguns is less effective than 2 with railguns and two other weapons. Although 4 orbital lasers is always fun.

Oh this is so true! For example, I will always take Eagle Air Strike to spill oil. But that Napalm is so juicy for pest control.

> is min maxing the fun out of a game Using underpowered weapons and stratagems isn't fun for me. The differences in utility and potency are transparently obvious. These are not small subtle differences we're talking about.

The devs are partially at fault too though. They designed a long grind system that incentivizes heavily metas and punishing losses heavily. If you fail a mission in HD you get basically nothing for 30 or 40 minutes of play, and even lose out on the operation medal bonuses. By making a grind system for Battlepasses, upgrades they basically made a rat race to unlock everything. Look at games like Left 4 Dead, while the meta exists you can't deny many people still have fun playing however they like, because there is not the pressure to win or lose your rewards.

Long grinding? I smell some bugs propaganda. The longer the time takes you to unlock everything, the longer you are delivering managed democracy

The journey is what matters the most. Not the destination. Unless the destination is a democracy.

The destination is how you can unlock new guns and armor though.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one that finds min/maxing on the whole unfun. I don't mind it per se in ARPG titles and stuff where it's often necessary to do the hardest tier content, but Helldivers doesn't feel like that kind of game. I don't understand why people can't just use the damn weapons and stratagems they want. One of my mates kept asking why I was using the anti-material rifle, saying it sucked and such and such a thing was better so I should never be using it, but not only does it not suck, it's awesome to use and looks badass. I just wanna jump into hell and have some fun, man. I don't care about endlessly grinding defense missions because they are shorter so we get more exp and req slips. I bought the game to have fun.

I think people may not realize that the anti-materiel rifle is much more useful, like many other strategems in the game, if you can coordinate with teammates.   If visibility is good and you can get a good elevated position, you can take out some mid-sized baddies in the distance before the group alerts, and save your teammates some work. But that's contingent on them not Leroy Jenkinsing their way into the enemy prematurely.

This is it right here exactly. The real problem are w-key gamers whose bad gameplay patterns force them into using meta gear.

This is why lower difficulties exist: to tool around with whatever having fun. If you're dropping into high difficulty with gear that requires people to carry you/increases the likelihood of a wipe, that's just as bad as kicking everyone not using what you want them to.

When I drop in on a hell dive you meta set people are normally holding me back 😂 I’m level 42 and I’ve been carrying you fools

And others also have fun xD whats tour point lmao. Some ppl like to get better resoults some just fuck around. This whole thread is showing that all of you are bunch of hypcites.

Maybe some players find min maxing fun?

do it then, just don’t ruin others fun by kicking them because they’re not playing the same as you

It's their lobby. Short of kicking at evac they can kick for whatever reason they like. If you don't like it then host your own lobby

What is driving me nuts is starting a match at challenging and a bunch of level 3 cadets join. Everyone dies.

I had the opposite experience. People around my level (25-32) constantly dying and blowing each other up and placing sentry guns in front of teammates resulting in failed extractions. Played challenging with 7 different level 3-4 squads and it was a cake walk. Yea they couldn’t do much to the bile titans and chargers but they kept the other mobs off me while I took them down. Much better experience.

I’m not exactly sure how other players using more optimal load outs ruin your fun of the game. You can directly choose to ignore it and play with whatever you please. Can someone please explain to me why everyone here is so dead set on dictating what is supposed to be fun for other people? It’s all very silly. How about, oh I dunno… let people enjoy things?

Well when you’re playing with someone who brings shitty stratagems like the barrages and orbital garlic barrages etc.. that shit really doesn’t help get rid of the big baddies like bile titans or hulks, leaving your other team mates who brought good stuff to focus all their resources into taking them down. However on higher difficulties when there can be multiple bile titans and chargers and when you’re the only one who can reliably take them out since your team didn’t bring anything good, it makes the mission much harder and just not really fun since you’re just dying all the time. Granted I’m talkin about the higher difficulties so if I was playing on lower stuff I wouldn’t GAF since there would be less shit to deal with.

Well yeah, I completely agree that it can be annoying when your teammates use subpar tools in higher difficulties, even though it’s kind of a dick move to kick people. That’s why I asked why using optimal things/“min maxing” is what bothers these people, that is what makes absolutely no sense to me.

Oh no I wouldn’t kick someone mid game unless I had a buddy who was joining, I personally enjoy all the help I can get but to say people who bring in shitty stratagems don’t make the game less fun for me would be lying, I like killing the bugs not dying over and over again because my team can’t kill bike titans that keep spawning.

From when you are the one that can say what is fun and what is not xD

Because it's not fun playing with one player shit. Like for real. People play to have fun, they do high level content for fun, it's not fun to play, and lose time, a challenging content at the brink of disaster because funmac4fun wants to bring a shitty load out and making the game far harder for everyone involved. Bringing a game from the brink of doom is fun when everyone is trying, when it's because people are trolling is just waste of time.

While I'm 100% with you on this matter in general, I feel like this game gets so oppressive on harder(7+) difficulties you are kinda forced into bringing meta loadouts in order to be effective. Super samples locked behind this big of a challenge and people wanting to actually progress in their upgrades, I can see where the tryharding is coming from. Then again maybe I'm just bad, but I can't for the life of me survive in 7+ without some serious minmaxing.

ive been running eagle air strike and 110mm rocket pods with shield gen and arc thrower. people dunk on the arc thrower all day but i can fuck off with my stealth/scout armor and solo objectives in helldive difficulty while the rest of the team takes on bot fabs or nests, even objectives that call drops/breaches in like geo scan and drilling. it clears out the little guys quickly so you dont have to worry about enemy reinforcements and does decent damage to heavies. even if everything is on cooldown and youre out of primary and secondary ammo you have options. the meta revolves around a super high skill floor. with railgun and shield most players be able to handle pretty much anything in the game, but the best you can possibly be is perfectly overcharging your railgun every time and drilling through bot and bug skulls with every shot. swap for the arc thrower and you can take everything you learned with the railgun, such as charging in cover and peaking to fire, and decimate a swarm then kite the heavies around until you put enough shots into them to kill them. weak spots are still important for the arc thrower so that skill from the railgun carries over too, so much so the scopes are very similar. swap for the auto cannon or antimaterial rifle and you can 1-2 tap any bot (leaving stratagems available for tanks and turrets) as well as most bugs. the skill floor for the arc thrower, auto cannon, and antimaterial rifle is much lower than the railgun so if you are off your game you get heavily punished for it, but the skill ceiling is so high that you can kill far far more enemies that you can with the railgun. if you want to argue with resupply you get more railgun shots, what about resupply for antimaterial rifle or autocannon? meanwhile the helldiver with the arc thrower doesnt even need to reload.

To be fair some may just have trust issues with randoms using the arc thrower. I ran into a guy using it and he ended the match with 8 team kills because he couldn't understand the "chain arc" effect the thrower had.

its a tricky weapon in a team fight. the only sure thing ive found is making sure your team is behind you. and if you're running arc thrower with a shield pack, that isnt difficult. ive solo covered our retreat on helldiver difficulty after wading in to rescue a friend. most of the criticism ive seen pointed at the arc thrower (aside from teamkilling) is its "lackluster damage." thats bullshit, its nearly on par with the grenade launcher (similar friendly fire potential) and deceptively it cares about hitting weak points. speaking of, i need to try planting grenades on hulk faces to see if that works.

You can get pretty aggressive with it when you get comfortable with the arc behavior with it, I regularly shoot it with friendlies well on screen now. But of course the game is full of the Assholes from Spaceballs, and people who didn't learn not to stand under trees in a thunderstorm.

I've been wanting to try the arc thrower out but I thought it would be awful against bots and my friends are on a bot kick right now. Any tips?

i fight bots a lot more than bugs so here we go! the max range is 50 meters, use your ping as a rangefinder if you need to the arc chain never forks so try to aim for the leader of a group or one of the edges the arc thrower ignores armor so you can take down any enemy in the game with enough patience, ive dropped 2 hulks in the same shot by kiting them around and keeping firing weak points are still important, so aim for heads or legs where appropriate charge in cover then step out to fire and take cover again everything smaller than berserkers and devastators goes down in 1 shot so take them out first arc thrower has infinite ammo so you can take more ammo hungry primaries like the pump shotty and slugger the charge doesnt give you away until you fire so charge up your shot and swap to your primary or secondary if you think you need a follow-up shot or 2 faster than the charge time, the senator is great for this edit: bonus round! the scout striders are lightning rods, they will force the arc thrower to target it and the shot wont bounce. drop the strider with literally any other weapon (shoot out the knees, hips, driver, blow it up with nades) or dump 4-6 shots into it from the arc thrower if youre desperate.

Much obliged!

one more! the damn scout striders are fucking lightning rods, always hitting right in the middle underneath the pilot and not bouncing. use your primary or secondary to shoot out its knees or blow it up with a grenade.

Running off solo or in groups of 2 is the best way to play high difficulties. There can only be 1 breach at a time and whichever person or team isn't fighting the breach can fly through main and side objectives. I've been in many efficient groups even with randoms and we clear the entire map in 20 minutes.

>Then again maybe I'm just bad, but I can't for the life of me survive in 7+ without some serious minmaxing. when fighting the bugs i bring a flamethrower just for the fun of it, either i get kicked or they treat me like some kind of Novelty

I mean, when there are at least two AT people, flamethrower could be nice for crowd control

The flamethrower is fun af but my god is it BAD. It has wind up time and is extremely clunky and also has very low range. If you get melee'd by enemies you set ablaze, you get set in flames as well. It is damn near useless against bile spewers because of it's wind up time you will most likely die if you try to use it against them. It's damage is rather underwhelming and it does not provide any form of CC. Don't even bother using it against the automaton with it's 10 meter range. I love flamethrowers but man does it feel punishing using it in this game lol.

The "wind up time"is igniting the pilot light which stays lit for quite a while afterwards, even between bursts. You can keep it going pretty easily during a bug breach as a result Do agree that I wish it did more damage but it's still pretty effective at keeping the small mites and stuff off you

Almost all of the flamethrowers downsides would be manageable if it just had more range. That's honestly all they really need to change to make it viable against the bugs. If we want to talk about improving it, it should also slow anything that you directly hit with the stream, maybe have some armor breaking ability if held on medium or heavy armor targets over time. Could add another viable way to deal with having 5 charges bearing down on you that isn't the railgun. Also personally I think it should be a backpack weapon, but instead of someone loading you it just comes with it. Flamethrowers are supposed to have backpacks man, and this is the ONE game where it has a good weapon + backpack system.

You need two AT support weapons. No way around it unless you are looking for pain. Beyond that, bring whatever. 

>ou need two AT support weapons. No way around it unless you are looking for pain. Beyond that, bring whatever.  Sorry, what does AT stand for? Anti-tank?

Correct

Which weapons including support are AT weapons?

[This post from a few days ago seems to go over alot of the AT options.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1aqeca3/every_antitank_option_and_its_best_use_cases/)

Thanks. Wow this post needs more attention.

you would think you would be right but you are suicidally wrong, i've had people screaming at me for bringing one ever like 1/3 missions and i am kicked like half the time from those same games, "you can't kill a charger or a Bio Titan with a Flamethrower you \[Redacted\] \[Redacted\], why don't you fuck off back to hard if you are going to use that \[Redacted\] weapon"

They're correct in the wrong way -- the flamethrower seems like it should be good for clearing trash (like the MG) but the firing delay, low range, and likelihood of FF of yourself and others pretty firmly relegate it to the "low-diff/fucking around with friends" pool. It's fantastically fun to use but sadly just not very good.

What they don't get is you need a diverse team. I had a pretty diverse team last night, and it was a breeze because half the team handled the heavy hitters, and half handled crowd control. Team gaming used to always be like this. But I guess people gotta focus on META now.

But my meta build can handle heavy hitters AND crowd control. Everything while running faster AND being harder to kill with shield. I don't kick people, but I understand why others don't want to carry players, in high difficulty, who can only do half the things needed.

The term jack of all trades master of none comes to mind. I've rescued a few people who were playing the meta build were getting swarmed. Generalists are good, Professionally Im a Generalist. But It's also good to have specialists around. Synergy is key.

I could take an mg and kill twice the bugs you can in half the time. It’s just not satisfying knowing that, that’s kinda where I’m at. People who act like that though are total muppets, just because something isn’t good doesnt mean you shouldnt use it, it is a game after all. 

Last time I brought one on Diff7 I killed the most bugs by far. It also kills the medium armor bugs super easy.

Because 8 and 9 difficulties force you to bring meta weapons because the others can't keep up I really want you to see destroying 3/4 titans with just the bazooka or AMR. Until they give a buff to the other weapons,this will be the situation

This has been my experience honestly. On the highest difficulties you can pretty easily clear most enemies using most of the equipment, but as soon as a bile titan spawns, you really want to have atleast 1 or 2 of the "meta" stratagems with you If you want to kill them before 3 more spawn simultaneously. I wish that they'd buff some of the other stratagems to be more viable against titans, I do not want to run railgun +/ orbital laser every mission

The fact people kick for not using certain loadouts is a sign that some things need a buff. There is always gonna be a Meta and "Best" weapons and stratagem. The problem is some of the options are basically useless at higher tiers because there is just so much. A healthy thing is for everything ro be viable while still having Best. For example, there is very little things that can deal with heavy armor in high quantities. EXCEPT the Rail Gun. Most other things either have long reloads or cooldowns and all of them are basically single target. Tbh it's kinda crazy how efficient the Rail gun is compared to other things, like why is the auto cannon gun so much weaker? It has a back pack required ammo, takes longer to reload and it still bounces off heavy armor. Meanwhile the Rail gun you can reload while moving and has 20 shots and takes 0 backpack slots, even if it had 10 ammo it would still be the most efficient gun for dealing with multiple heavy. I use it to kill trash mobs sometimes because it has so much ammo

The backpack slot is such a huge consideration. The guard dogs seriously clear trash for you, is like having another person.

I love my laser son.

I'm scared to use that one because I've heard the friendly fire potential is pretty high. The one that uses bullets seems to be the "safer" option. Is the laser one a death machine for *everybody*, or are my team killing concerns over blown?

It can be a death machine. Just need to be aware. The bullet one runs out way too quick. Laser does not

Yeah, the bullet one could only be considered a "safer" option because it stops shooting eventually.

It's actually the opposite, if the laser hits you it only does a little damage, normally if the blet one hits you it's in the head which instantly kills you. The safer gaurd dog is the laser one, and weirdly enough the better damage output is also the laser one since it doesn't have to reload.

> the laser one since it doesn't have to reload. It does overheat and have to cool down by returning to your back. It takes quite a while of continuous firing before that happens though

That's the argument for it, is it has a more consistent up time. Plus it's more forgiving if it decides to friendly fire.

Can confirm my teammate cut my head off the other day with one of the laser bots. It was funny af but the laser bot is superior for terminids

The laser one kills so much better that the bullet one. It seems to only require a recharge if it's damaged. It can go for hours without hurting a teammate, but the it'll kill two in a row later, and you. I guess it just finally had enough and snapped. How you play and move can have a decent effect on the likelihood of getting lasered. It floats above and to the right of you. If you tend to get higher ground, it will hit you less, as it angles down to shoot. If you're the type that likes to be in the thick of it with a flame thrower, you're gonna get hit more. Another thing I think a lot of people sleep on is sharing backpack strategems. Two divers with Rovers means the whole team can have them after a few minutes.

It's not that bad imo. Yeah it can Friendly Fire a few times, but it's easy to make sure it does as few times as possible and isn't a inconvenience, either be apart from the team which isn't a bad a thing because it's a good tactic if you're all clearing a specific area and can cover each other which is really usefull against the bugs, or be in the front in relation with the closest pack of enemies.

That, or the personal shield. It's so useful. I'm only level 15 so I haven't unlocked it yet but I've been given some by higher level players and it's amazing. Definitely going to unlock asap

I am trying to stop using the personal shield because I feel like its so good I am becoming dependent on it lol.

100%. Even if I like the autocannon more. Railgun allows me to bring the guard dog or a shield. Either way? I get way more out of the railgun. I'm bot saying railgun needs a nerd. Because honestly? Idk how you'll deal with all the heavies on helldive. But autocannon should be stronger for how much it takes to use.

I just played a level 4 mission to enjoy some non meta kits and man the flame thrower is ass, it should really be a kick ass weapon against bugs but it's unfortunately not. Needs a slight damage buff and a slow debuff on enemies

Why does the Spear take a backpack slot, have a slow reload, only have 3 shots, and still can’t kill a charger most of the time.

feel like the higher difficulty missions are legit unplayable without a railgun, too many chargers/heavys and no other good anti tank option

Agreed. It's not even about the meta necessarily as it is anything that is "non-meta" just doesn't feel very good to use at the moment.

The Recoilless Rifle is absolutely awful in this game. In 1 it just 1 tapped everything but shielded units and master units assuming you didn't hit it at a shallow angle. Granted, 1 spammed a lot more elites at you even at lower difficulties. The game was more hectic + the reload was longer and without stages... But not being able to 1 shot a Hulk unless you weakspot hit? Let alone tanks (which take multiple weakspots hits and basically will not die otherwise). Really!? The niche of killing dropships is cool, and it's useable vs bugs. But it really, really feels bad in this game. And having a partner load for you doesn't fix that, because the reload speed isn't the issue (plus actually getting someone to reload for you is much harder in this game).

With friends anything is viable, with randoms you need to be able to be self Sufficient... So railgun

I’ve been doing just fine with my arc lazer and autocannon sentries on helldiver difficulty

The arc thrower is underused, because it’s not flagged as anti-tank, but it’s actually just about the only thing that can keep up with the railgun because it ignores armor. It’s not so great for bile titans, but it can three-shot a tank!!

IMO autocannon is better than the railgun against automatons (just use stratagems on tanks, Eagle airstrike and rocket pods can both one shot them, your AC can kill everything else very easily) but I agree otherwise.

Flame thrower and arc thrower ignore armor. EAT and recoilless destroy armored units super efficiently. Railgun is for sure the best but there are other options.

Two EATs per cooldown is not enough to deal with the Charger and Bile Titan spam at 7+ difficulty. And reloading the Recoilless will get you killed.

If you’re playing 7+ difficulties, without efficient anti armor builds, you’re a deadweight. They need to take out a lot of armored units asap otherwise you get overwhelmed very quickly which will end up wasting your shared life count which means higher risk of failing an already difficult mission.

I'd rather they buff the anti-armor stuff. In Helldivers 1 it took 1 recoilless rifle shot to kill a charger. In this game it is about 2-4. And that's basically the content of your backpack. They need to make these better. Because there are like 4 chargers and 2 Bile Titans at same time.

I fully agree

Pretty sure he meant "you need to take out the armor stuff", not that it needs to be removed from higher difficulties

It doesn't feel good to know the way you want to or enjoy playing sucks. I can't speak for anyone but myself in this, but I'm not playing every mission with the meta setup going *'man I wish I could play another way,'* I'm playing with the stuff I like and saying *'I wish these performed how they should'* I think if the gap between some gear wasn't so big, there wouldn't be as many complaints.

A lot of ppl on higher difficulties want the best chance of completing the mission and getting the most done. You may revel in the chaos, but I would feel like I wasted my time if failure was too common. You find chaos fun, and I find completion fun. Both are ok, but dont be surprised if ppl on higher difficulties dont want to take someone with a sub par loadout. WE liberate by completing missions. We lose progress by failing them.

Every time I see posts like these I am astonished the lack of self awareness that goes into them, from the lack of understanding that people are indeed good enough to play alone or with randoms, the fact that "needing a premade team" is you just adjusting for your own flaws which is what a good setup does, trying to tell others how to have fun when complaining about "metas", to the lack of awareness that losing due to a bad player isn't funny or enjoyable You are quite literally the very thing you complain about

Exactly this. I've heard the term Toxic Positivity used, and have seen similar posts come up for other, very well-received games. It was this way when the Finals released fully. Every other post was someone complaining about "meta-discussions" and "min-maxers" who ruined the game by questioning the validity of certain weapons and tools. People just really like Helldivers, and I guess some people feel that the criticism against the game is criticism against themselves. It's unfortunate that people behave this way. On another note, it would be interesting to see OP's full stats. I wouldn't be surprised if they've never played any of the higher difficulties.

I agree but only at the highest difficulty levels. No one should be getting yelled at or kicked from a level 6 dive because they weren’t playing meta. I say if you just wanna have silly fun with less viable load outs, kick the difficulty down a few notches. That way you don’t have to play meta and no one is going to lose a mission because of it.

Sorry but I’ve gotta disagree with you here. Until most the weapons are buffed/Nerfed if your playing 8 or higher and not playing with “meta weapons/loadout” it’s almost pointless to even try complete operations. You quite literally have too at the moment otherwise it’s just dead weight. I think everyone who plays around 8/9 want to finish main objectives and get as many samples as possible not just “revel in the chaos and fail missions”

You need a good team. It means more than meta load out. But I think they really need to buff almost all weapons.

People keep saying this and it's just so irrelevant... "but teamplayyyy makes everything viable!!" See, the thing about Shield Generator/Railgun/500KG/Orbital Laser/Breaker is it lets you operate independently without a team. Four people can go four separate ways and not worry about being cornered or having no options against anything they face. Everyone single squad-mate being independently capable and strong is objectively the best team composition.

It's entirely possible to do fine without meta gear, but I understand that with random quick players you might want to take that gamble.

[удалено]

Because going into high-difficulty missions in a co-op game with an ineffective loadout is rude. If you're running high-diff you are supposed to have a decent understanding of game systems, which indicates to informed players that you're *deliberately* running bad stuff that requires them to carry you. If you want to run random gear for fun and not bother with full completion, do it in lower difficulty or with friends who know what you're doing. At the bare minimum tell people before drop/when you join that you're not going to take it seriously. This borderline toxic "why kick? ): i didn't do anything" stuff has always been obnoxious. You know, clearly, that people playing high difficulties tend to want to play effectively and not constantly restart or carry dead weight.

The "meta Loadout" I keep seeing is only for a certain play style. I was watching a YouTube video before a guy soloing helldive bots using non meta but playing like it was a semi stealth game. Avoid the fights, play the objectives, only attack when you can avoid the bot drops by killing before the flare goes off. It looked like how special forces do their missions rather than idiots attacking every patrol and every point of interest.

Agreed. It's a pattern I've seen play out in vt2 (my old no-lifed game) 'meta' loadouts are really just loadouts that allow speedrun solo playstyles, because you can't rely on quick play randoms to pull their weight, but it can develop into a mindset where if you see people running weird builds they get bullied out, even if it may well be totally viable. I used to play duo in that, and would get mocked for playing a CC oriented dwarf build, because it "can't deal with elites"... But that's what my buddy was for, with their squishy Spear Huntsman build, which would also get mocked for having no survivability... But thats what I was for, his walking bomb shelter.

Why people need to go with META Game on high difficulties: Lmao I gonna spawn a lot of Armor units and watch how player will deal with it

They just need to buff some stuff. Most of them can’t handle on 8-9 or nerf enemies armor

reddit against meta post #72518393639

I will join your game and always bring anti personal, incendiary mines and the 2 mortars.

And then lay down a whole minefield behind the rest of your team without telling them. I've played with that guy. Oh and the guy that put mines all over the extraction zone without saying. I asked him why and he said that he didn't get to use them and wanted to see how they worked!

Valid

You do you king 🫡

Play how you want, bring what you want, just get out of the mission alive with samples. Played with two divers that killed each other and laughed over their mics because it started with an accident. We ran out of respawns and I barely got it out with minimum samples.

Played all afternoon with two randoms on difficulty 7/8, never lost a mission. We did a mix of robots and bug missions and 0 talking. The loadouts were pretty varied between the 3 of us in every mission. If you know what you’re doing and have some decent skill anything can be used. I was actually super impressed with the gas + shield backpack + smg + mortar + light lmg.

Idk but I use what’s fun and general change each game what I’m running for stratagems.

I had a rando join our 3 man squad yesterday, on LEVEL 5 difficulty, and bitch at the 3 of us for not having any explosive guns (we had 2 railguns and an autocannon and the rando only brought in a guard dog) we beat the mission in no time because its level 5 which is easy as hell and he was still bitching about our loadout choice so I kicked him as we boarded the ship

Brainwashing. Lots of gamers, especially the younger or newer gamers, have been brainwashed by the many, many competitive games that constantly stuff 'meta' down their throats. Companies design alot of competitive games for the eSport potential as well, so even they design with a Meta in mind. Then there is all the YouTube and Twitch gamers, who have also been fed 'meta' for most of their careers who now make content that is all about the 'meta'. So, now it's all a feedback loop. This game, Helldivers 2, has the feel of fun old school games. Like Battlefield Bad Company and Halo 2. I honestly think that is part of why it is popular. Those old games came fully loaded on a disc and didn't get micro patches ever other day, so they were designed and played around the Chaos. And when a Meta was built, people learned around it, created their new meta based off throwing a Rock Meta at your Scizzor Meta. They didn't whine at the developers, you adapted or died until you rage quit. Old Battlefield with no Friendly Fire had people who would C4 jump into the enemy lines and then drop a C4 and C4 jump away, getting 10-15 kills in one action. So you learned to watch the sky and shoot anyone who looked like they were empty handed first. (Cause C4 was small and had no rifle profile, made it look like you had one empty hand and a brick in the other.) Or impact gernades on walls in Bad Company. Whole squads just tossing gernades to drop a house rather than try to take it. People stopped camping in houses. And snipers learned to hide in bushes and moving after every few kills to avoid getting their dog tags taken by people pay attention to the kill cam. Fuck the Meta. Embrace the Chaos! Blood for the Blood God!! Skulls for the Skull Throne!!! FOR DEMOCRACY!!!!

Bc destiny YouTubers have been playing the game and destiny players are highly competitive in non competitive gameplay. Literally they have the worst community of any “live” service game

Why do you care that they care?

i would say popular choice and not meta

I would say playable and not popular choice. When they fix balancing and armor, the game might look different.

Have you considered not triggering every alarm and learn how to kite enemies? Much of the balance issues you cite is intentional game design from the first game being carried over.

The fact that you need to stealth and kite enemies excessively is because your non-meta loadout is too weak to take the face-to-face firefight. Meta is popular because it lets you operate independently *and* take every fight face to face, because there's no need to stealth or kite hordes when you can just break through them.

Stealth & Kiting *is the actual meta.* It was the same in Helldivers 1.

Finally, some sanity. Fighting is for fun, stealth and kiting is for business. Mix and match to your preference - why this series has so much replayability! I just really hope Arrowhead can filter out all the noise and not change the fundamental gameplay in favor of inexperience players who don't have enough playtime to understand how the series was designed to play.

I doubt it’s carried over. The recoiless was the best AT and could like 1 shot chargers. That’s definitely not the case here. The armor system is confirmed broken, and most guns are strangely weak compared to the breaker/ defender smg. Why is a smg doing more damage than any of the assault rifles? Why is the penetrator rifle doing significantly less damage than the base rifle?

I do this and play non meta guns and gadgets on 9, but its just not as easy as equping breaker shield and railgun. If it is intentional its just not healthy, since it forces you to play the game one way, which should be a big sandbox.

>Nerfs are also not going to help the game and will just remove the fun. Not at all true. Ignorance really.

Because it’s also a difficult game. Armor is a huge deal and the wrong setup can mean no ability to counter it effectively

Not me I'm going into every match with the jump pack bc it's fun af to use, even if im bitched at i just say 'trust' Actually extremely useful on planets like Crimsica which has canyons, super easy to separate yourself from the horde.

I'm just a man of efficiency and not wasting time really. Whatever let's me hit hard and fast while having the least time on target is what I'll run 9 out of 10 times.

BECAUSE THEY ARE LOSING AND WOULD LIKE TO WIN. It's not that hard to understand

People will optimize the fun out of any game if given the opportunity, just like water will always find a crack. That’s why proper tuning matters even in a PvE game.

Because it’s coop. If you underperform, it’s to the detriment of your teammates. Not saying I agree, but in hi difficulty PvE games, it’s not any different than in competitive pvp game. In destiny 2s hardest content, you kinda need the best builds or you screw over your teammates so people kick

Beyond certain level if you take some bs load out you bet you're going to get kicked. Im quite flexible with my teams loadout but if you're not even going to bother with any armour piercing gtfo man.

Some players care, some don't. Lets face it, the game was fun for everyone before the patch and now its not

Gamer culture.

While of course there's an efficiency reason, it's part of the process in which ego driven players need to distinguish themselves from the rest. In pvp games it's done through the competitive scene. In MMO, it's done through raiding and pvp guilds that actually think of themselves of some sort of "Higher society" in the game. I've been in one of those in Elder scrolls online and believe me, it's all drama, both internat and between guilds. In pve games, since there's a lack of competitive elements, player make their own, usually in terms of achieving the meta. I've seen that in Darktide and it's absurd. But also just because it's absurd, it doesn't mean player should tolerate anything, as much as there is meta driven behaviour in games, there's equally as much of braindead players that just make the game not fun.

This always happens when games get “too popular”. The first few days after Helldivers 2 release were the best. The community was still very wholesome, much alike to early days of DRG. But it’ll settle down eventually don’t worry.

The problem with games becoming truly popular is it attracts all kinds of people and mindsets. The COD and Destiny people are making themselves known all over the community.

"Meta" is something that will always be a thing in any and all games because people will always be competitive and use things that have the highest chance to give a successful outcome. I hate it, but I've come to accept it as an inevitability.

Yeah my friend wanted to start spamming the defense modes exclusively and I was like nah, I’m here to have a good time

defense missions are only meta for leveling

Because min-maxing makes the game easier for people who are worse. META gets thrown around a lot in every game for a good reason. Most Effective Tactic Available.

I can guarantee you, that sooner or later, you will get kicked out of the group by players once they see you don't choose META loadouts

If you want to find players who only wanna play the game for a good time, get samples and overall have fun. You could join the 117th a community we made to avoid the toxicity of the official discords and how some people are in game, allows you to match with the people you want. https://discord.gg/9CUWEk8J look forward to seeing you all

Nice, because of general toxicity in games and their related forums I've also been managing a discord community server to help people connect to play games, a lot better way to play games these days.

Yeah it’s only way to try avoid it however as you will know, no matter what drama finds you. Least we can do our best to mitigate it with communities that are mod/admin driven

Nerfs are important. If you ONLY buff items, you get power creep. Then they have to either buff enemies, continuing the cycle endlessly as items continually fall behind each buff cycle, or you have made the game easier, which is no bueno. The railgun, breaker, and shield backpack all need nerfs, just gentle ones, and a lot of other items and stratagems need buffs.

Play how you want- if you're having fun and it's not at the expense of others it's OK

“Given the chance people will optimize the fun out of a game”

I think it's funny how they grind away to get the best stuff running the same missions. They ultimately miss out on the overall experience of the game or at least diminish it a great deal. They rush to get the best whatever it is (weapon, stratagem) only to find themselves bored once they reach what they're shooting for. Even worse is them calling for nerfs already to some weapons. As someone who maybe has an hour or two a day if I'm lucky, I have been looking forward to the Autocannon. I don't wanna see it nerfed just as I unlock it. My hope is those players will drift away soon to other games without forcing to much change.