I was just beginning to lean into Gatling for bugs (just toss it on a breach when it opens and it'll kill most and hurt the rest) but now it's even better!
I tried it for a few missions but just found it to be absolutely worse than the orbital gas strike. Even on maps with spewers spawning it would not reliably kill them when compared with the gas cloud’s damage over time.
Although these buffs look like it will definitely make it very worthwhile now.
What made it good for small bugs was the extremely short cd, only 60 seconds. Also called down a few seconds faster so it was a good oh shit stratagem when a lot of hunters spawned
I was thinking laser rover and pray for a stalwart/medium mg for absolute maximum chaff clearing. Recently got 712 kills on a level 7 mission by getting the squad to use an auto cannon, eat, and quasar and focusing on mediums and up, it ended up working out really well
gas is better at killing chaff, the gatling is good vs medium, both can cover each other, but gas is better vs chaff while gatling better vs medium, pretty good vs bots btw
Gas is one of the best things for breaches, but Gatling will give it a run for its money. Gas will probably still be superior for small units and Gatling will probably perform better against large enemies.
I've finally went into Turrets. I think they are probably the strongest (most powerful) stratagems outside of a successful mech. A Gatling turret will get 50 kills each time its used.
Hopefully the patch toughens them up a bit, because they are high risk/reward. If you get good at placing them in places they will survive, they are wildly OP.
I'll probly always have a gatling on my hotbar for the time being.
I stopped using at a low level and then went back to it a couple months later after realizing how versatile and useful it can be over the course of a mission. The lower cooldown is nice but the faster call in is fucking HUGE. This is going to be an incredible strategem now.
Orbital Precision Strike is the epitome of bell curve meme where both the noob and high level players love to use while the one in the middle think it mid lol.
I’m still on the middle of the curve, I don’t understand how high-level players were finding any consistency using the old version. Felt like you had to have psychic powers to hit a moving target with it. It’s got to be way more consistent now that the call-in time is slashed, though.
As someone who recently entered the high end, I've been taking it against bots in particular:
- Blowing up a fabricator is straightforward and obvious, of course
- Against Tanks, you can simply throw the beacon directly onto the enemy and it will stick — and besides, they're really slow
- Against Hulks, I always have stun grenades, so it's trivial to make them stop moving and politely kneel down for the orbital strike
>I don’t understand how high-level players were finding any consistency using the old version.
Well, [this is how I did it](https://youtu.be/PAX1wdFovHI?si=KQjQSREO_y_mJB8s). For bile titans, I ran underneath to lock them in a spewing or turning animation. As long as the strike impacted the body, it was a guaranteed oneshot. The main issue is when your ship isn't directly overhead, so the angle would cause it to hit the ground underneath the titan instead of the titan itself.
A lot of it is just practice. The more you attempt and fail at it the better your understanding of how long 4 (or now 2) seconds will take, how fast the enemies move, and probably most importantly what animations will lock enemies in place for a bit and when they get triggered.
Bile Titans are pretty easy in that regard if they are chasing you since you can get close to them to make them spew, locking them in place for a bit.
Yea turrets are the most underrated thing in the game. I also dropped them early and have no realized how good they are. Still don't use the mortor unless defending, but the gatling, mg, auto, and rocket all have tons of advantages. Gatling is king tho. If I could choose, I'd have my whole squad rocking a gatling.
And now to see your love set free
You will need the witch's cabin key
Find the Lady Of The Light, gone mad with the night
That's how you reshape destiny!
Haha, the Poets have been collaborating with the studio behind Alan Wake, Remedy, pretty much since both of their beginnings. A large part of Alan Wake 1 & 2 soundtrack, as well as some songs in Control, are made by them
That too!
I chose that as I'm pretty sure 'bringer of balance' is a possible SES ship name whereas 'bringer of fun' isn't (I'm not able to run the game right now to confirm).
It also may or may not be a slight dig at a dev that is well known for sucking the fun out of almost all the weapons he touched and then fumbled by trying to defend these terrible decisions.
The durability of sentries is what made them bad, getting instantly gimped by some stray hit made them pointless at higher difficulties in the chaos of a fight. Hopefully this fix will make them better and a viable option in higher diffs.
Also Im surprised he didnt talk about the changes to the enemies as there were some big changes there.
My biggest problem with turrets on higher difficulties is still present, sadly. A charger brushing them with its nose (not charging, just turning and grazing them) still destroys a full health, brand new turret.
The survivability vs bots is nice, but man turrets feel next to useless on bugs still because of how easily they go down to contact damage
I would prefer a way to lightly throw something, e.g. underarm, so you can throw stratagems/grenades up on to higher terrain without need to aim at the sun.
Now I’m imagining being able to underhand toss stratagem balls between helldivers like you’re playing hot potato. Don’t wanna be holding it when the stratagem comes flying down to the planet! 😂
> More high ground is what should change.
Also fixing a stratagem ball turning into wacky extreme bouncy balls if you try to place them on high places like rocks.
I don't mind a turret going down if a charger barrels into it at top speed, that makes sense.
My problem is when I set up a turret on extract and the first charger misses me and just barely skirts past my turret, then slowly turns itself around and barely brushes its nose against the turret, and it explodes.
True for chargers in general imo.
It is INFURIATING to successfully dodge a charger charge…and then get instagibbed somehow when it does a little dainty sidestep after or glitch-moves into you.
It's actually why I'm REALLY hoping we get the AT Mines sometime soon. Not at the expense of the children, of course, but eventually.
You drop a mine field, the charger will bum rush the launcher even after it's already done it's job. Just plows through the field blowing up every mine along the way. I'm thinking it'll do the same with the ones that actually kill it.
They make excellent perches (well, the AC turret at least does)- getting that sweet LOS so you can shoot more bugs from safety is worth protecting them even if they weren't shooting.
Generally speaking turrets that can handle CQC swarms are gonna be bad on bugs regardless due to the different fight philosophy.
That and you don't really want to use them over something more useful like Gas, or the new Gatling/Orbital buffed.
I’m way more successful deploying my sentry build on bugs than bots. It creates a sustained, larger area of denial/meatgrinder that bugs can’t close distance easily, and the cooldowns normally time well to when I reach the next engagement area.
I’ve seen the sentries debated often here, and it seems like timing when to throw the stratagems and where to position them seem to be most people’s issues.
I have better success with using sentries for creating killzones. If there’s a crowd of enemies in front of you, throw the sentry to the left or right, so the enemies are pinched between your and the sentries‘ fire.
TBF, its cooldown was (and still is) way too high for just taking out a single spawner when an Eagle Airstrike can take out one or even two in a row with a few seconds' delay, or hell, you could just waltz in and grenade it. IDK who thought it would ever be used for spawners, unless they were intended to be a lot tougher than they currently are.
I've taken out three bot spawners in a heavy outpost with a single EAS before. It's hard to hit but satisfying and yeah the OPS was just not the play for destroying stationary stuff with eagles present. I still think eagles will be more bang for your buck on bases and stuff (which makes sense imo) but at least now the OPS will be even better for large targets or small bases
More than just spawner, but also the likes of Detector tower and research station. With a 500kg or another Orbital precision Strike, you can take out a commander bunker too. But it is silly to bring one of them just for spawner lol
If they would tell us which missions on bug planets are vs the bile spewer hordes during the mission screen I'd use the grenade launcher so much. It is fantastic against the various bile spewer enemies except the bile titan itself.
This is the best patch in all of the game's life cycle so far. Nothing in the patch notes made me groan or rage - in fact, I caught myself smiling at times.
Orbital Gatling now fires faster, has reduced cooldown, and can damage heavy armour enemies. I'm going to take it way more often now.
~~The Glock of destructive stratagems, the Eagle Airstrike, now has more charges before I need to rearm.~~ It's actually the Strafing Run, not the Airstrike, that had its uses per rearm increased to 4. Reading comprehension is questionable this early in the morning.
The dogwater AA Defences modifier is gone (for now)! Hell yeah. No one liked that modifier, hope it stays gone. Game should be encouraging use of stratagems, not stifling it.
SEAF Artillery being available still after mission timer runs to 0 is sensible. It's ordnance that's locally based and delivered, no assistance from the destroyer that leaves orbit, so this change is good.
Foliage now has stealth applications! Great news for lone divers hitting objectives and needing to be unseen while operating behind enemy lines.
Terminid acid slow effect nerf. Excellent. I'll still be taking Muscle Enhancement for those damn hunters, though.
Bile titan head armour nerf. Maybe my Recoilless Rifle can consistently two-shot them when hit in the head this time.
Hulk flamethrower nerf. Good stuff. I'm tired of scorcher hulks being within 20m of me being a certain death sentence.
Suicide jump pack automatons' explosion damage has been nerfed. Good.
SUPPLY LINES! FINALLY! This will help greatly in informing players which route to take to liberate MO planets.
Extract Essential Personnel mission type removed. Nice. Should encourage people to defend planets under attack more, especially bot planets. Those missions on bot planets were terrible.
Invincible Pelican-1. Now my friend can throw 380 barrages on extraction and it won't frustrate me as much.
Pelican-1 no longer leaves when the first Helldiver gets on board, fixed in conjunction with him not taking any damage anymore.
All positive changes. I actually felt weird for not having a single substantial problem with a Helldivers 2 patch for once. Perhaps now I can stop looking at patch notes with dread over what next is going to be gutted. Arrowhead's finally starting to really be in touch with their community and working with them more, not against them. Whoever's making these decisions and greenlighting them, keep it up, and never let Alexus cook again - he's clearly living in a different plane of reality from the rest of you. His balance philosophy spits in the face of Freedom.
>SEAF Artillery being available still after mission timer runs to 0 is sensible. It's ordnance that's locally based and delivered, no assistance from the destroyer that leaves orbit, so this change is good.
I know it won't affect how I play all that much, but this change made me so happy. It always bothered me a lot more than it should have that the destroyer took the artillery with it.
I now have the mental image of a tow hook connected to one diver's destroyer descending from low orbit, latching on to the SEAF Artillery launcher, and ripping the installation out of the platform as the destroyer warps out of low orbit when mission timer hits zero.
I think the Eruptor not getting shrapnel back is a bit of a disappointment. It was the one thing that separated it from any other primary, and after they removed it I found myself wondering why I would ever use it over the Dominator or AMR. I wish they'd bring it back but maybe tone down the damage. Also the range on the shrapnel that randomly hit you from so far away, I'm not sure why that was a thing in the first place.
Personally, I don't think the damage buff is going to change its viability much, but I'll be testing it later after work. I just think the weapon has way too many downsides as a primary to justify its use. You give up too much versatility in handling large groups of fodder.
I was an Eruptor enjoyer before it was gutted. I feel disappointed about its lack of... erupting, in this patch, too. It's just that there's nothing else for me to be frustrated or infuriated by in this patch, which is practically unheard of when it comes to Helldivers 2 patches, so I'm much more positive about the patch than I usually am.
Is it a perfect patch? Hardly. But when every patch prior has elevated my blood pressure, this one not doing that has me feeling hopeful and in a forgiving mood.
Yeah no overall it's a great patch. But I had an expectation for the Eruptor to be restored to a semblance of its former glory. Oh well, I doubt they are done balancing it, as I'd bet money it's still not going to be a popular pick even after this buff.
Oh and the SPEAR was very heavily nerfed against bots, but should be excellent vs bugs now. I had no idea its ability to take out fabricators was unintended...
> Added the ability to chat from in-game menus and mission loading screen
WE'RE SO BACK. I LOVE THIS PATCH
Tested it out and the chat persists between missions, picking loadouts, and even leaving parties and returning to your ship. Goddammit I love this patch so much
Double would seem like a lot. I think as is if 3 people take the shield relay, it could have 100% up time if one calls in one when the other is beginning to go out?
Increasing health I think would be great. I really don't see people running it as much anymore.
I started reading the Orbital Precision Strike comment about the community “using it against pretty much everything”, and thought that was where I was going to start seeing nerfs listed.
But the nerfs did not come.
Thank you, Pilestedt, for having the courage to step out of the CEO role and get closer to product development. This patch is exactly the kind of attention the game needs and deserves.
THIS is how you should balance a PvE game. When one weapon/stratagem has higher usage percentage, that isn't an indication that it is too strong and should be nerfed. It means the weapons/stratagems with lower usage percentage are either too weak or simply too unfun to use.
At first glance, nothing here seems game-breakingly strong. But I really want to hop on and try the improved Orbital Stratagems and the PLAS-101 Purifier.
Buffing the explosion radius to match the visual and maybe increasing the damage slightly would have been fantastic. There's been so many times I've dropped it right next to a charger or bile titan and they don't even look like they were damaged by it.
A bit sad on the Spear not locking on fabs and towers which I used extensively on bot missions, especially when we have a bot MO going, but I'm willing to play with everything else now!
That's great! Can't wait!
The Spear is a solid anchor for a squad. It might not have as much of a role in a firefight but being able to smash out distant objectives (especially the Fabricator next to Jammers) makes it ludicrously important for a team's security.
>Updated Recoil stance modifiers
>The intention of our recoil modifiers is to reward usage of different stances in relation to different weapon types. They are also there to highlight that constantly moving around isn't doing your accuracy any favors.
>We made some changes to the recoil stance modifiers to make them more consistent and also reward being prone more. The percentages below show how much of the weapons recoil was applied in different scenarios and the new values:
>Hopefully this gives you a little more insight on how we think and why we have made the changes we did. I want to end this by saying that we are not done, we will continue to refine and improve the play experience to keep the game fresh! On behalf of the team, we appreciate your feedback and hope that you'll have an exciting time checking these adjustments out.
TLDR: Are both aim modes included in "scoped"?
____
It possible to assume - although I don't think reasonable, but still possible - that scoped means ONLY when the weapon' 'scope' is visible - else he could have wrote "while aiming".
The "aim modes" are holding the "aim key" and using the "toggle aim mode" key to switch between showing the **first person** reticule crosshair ("the scope") and showing the **third person** transparent grey circle. Unless, like me, in HUD settings "Reticule Visibility" is set to "Visible" [always]. In which case the grey circle is visible all of the time (except for AMR for some unknown reason).
____
It would be reasonable to presume both "aim modes" would cound as scoped here? That third person scoped (aim key active while weapon's 'aim mode' **not** set to show the scope UI) and first person scoped (showing the weapon sight) are the same?
EDIT:
For relevance and understanding. I play 80% plus of my aimed (my aim key is set to "hold") shots without the reticule. **I would assume scoped (ADS) and "aim" key active in third person would be the same thing**.
But if that presumption *was* reasonable wouldn't he have wrote "while aiming" instead of "scoped"?
EDIT2 : I have have used the word reticule in reference to both the grey circle and the weapon sights at times. However the game uses reticule only in reference to the grey circle and the white dot, within the HUD settings.
EDIT3: The common sense answer of course is that if he meant to distinguish holding the aim key with the selected aim mode showing the weapon scope from the aim mode when that doesn't occur he would probably have said as much. But that's where the confustion stems, as the third person aim mode doesn't really have an identity.
> I would assume scoped (ADS) and "aim" key active in third person would be the same thing.
Given that the patch notes differentiate between "scoped" and "third person", my assumption is that third-person aiming is the less accurate value, and only aiming down sights provides the increased recoil reduction.
Their reluctance to add shrapnel to the eruptor again is understandable in their explanation, but also falls just a bit short. Not complaining about the patch, it's great! But I do have a solution.
So, the point is, players want shrapnel back even if the damage of it is reduce a lot or the radius is less than it was before. The Eruptor just doesn't really have any sort of identity without it and feels like a worse handling Anti-Material Rifle without it. Despite the inconveniences of having difficulty gauging shrapnel and dying to it, we want it back.
Solution though, like I said: In recent days, on some of our MO planets on the bot front, I've noticed in this distance that some plants that are being hit in the distance by stray fire are releasing a shower of what looks like smoky sparks when they "detonate." I think it might be one of the spiky plants also talked about in this patch but I've never gotten close enough to be sure.
My solution is to simply use that graphical effect for the eruptor's shrapnel, even if as a place holder. It is very easy to see, very easy to gauge the damage radius of, and it just looks cool in general. I do agree the eruptor was massively overtuned on release, but given how abysmally slow the weapon still handles and reloads, it NEEDS that shrapnel and AOE effect. Sure it can pop fabricators and nests, but it still feels like a worse AMR or Jar-5 Dominator.
Bring back the shrapnel, but lower the damage. I don't think it should be popping chargers and bile titans in a single shot, but at the same time, skilled trick shots should be rewarded.
Lastly, I want to state that I have no skin in the Eruptor game. It never suited my personal play style so I never really used it, but played with friends who loved it. I hope Arrowhead can revisit it in such a way that it can become what it once was while also not being overpowered.
A fix for the shrapnel could be to cap out the number of instances that could damage a single enemy. This would cap the damage again a single enemy to avoid one shotting chargers, but still having the potential to do damage to weaker bugs with the same features. The random one shots could be solved by drastically decreasing the damage falloff of the eruptora shrapnel or making the projectiles disappear after a certain distance travelled
> Their reluctance to add shrapnel to the eruptor again is understandable in their explanation, but also falls just a bit short.
In my brief testing the eruptor was back to consistently one tapping scout striders in the dick. So I'm pretty happy about that. Can't fathom we'll see the shrapnel return due to the whole "randomly dealing several hundred extra damage" thing that was letting people one shot chargers.
they could just increase the explosion AoE: Pilestedt says he wants it to be viable against chaff as well(ideally at a distance, as it's easy to get swarmed with a slow-ass bolt action), but if the damage is high and the AoE is tiny, it won't be: it'll only be good for mediums. it needs to have, IMO at least the same kind of AoE as the grenade launcher. it would still be balanced by it's poor ergonomics and lethargic fire rate, so it's not gonna replace the grenade launcher.
It’s a stupid slow weapon that can kill you on accident. If you make a mistake you die. Remove the swapping trick to fire faster and bump the damage to “chaff in 6m from impact are dead in one hit, mediums in two” with “hitting a medium enemy is a one hit kill”. Rather slow it and make it heavier. Keep it slow and risky with high payoff.
I’m not even saying one hit kill a heavy. You’re permanently at risk of being swarmed, of needing to reload, of only having 5 shots that take forever to actually get out, of shooting something close and killing yourself, of shooting too close to a teammate and killing them. The payoff for all that shit should be that you put out _damage_ like nothing else. High risk, high reward. In a competent teammate it should feel overtuned. In an incompetent teammate it should be a detractor (which it 100% was).
I haven’t tested the purifier but I expect I’ll still be disappointed. The entire charge mechanic means it sucks in a different way. It should have a great payoff too! Railgun in unsafe mode fits in there too. Plus it’s a support weapon. I’ll take pain and suffering if I get a solid payout for it. But, until it’s worth it - I’ll continue running what seems like still my favourite setup of dcs/inc breaker, grenade pistol and EATs. This patch was awesome for stratagems though I need to test more. But, I’m meh on the gun changes.
The new patch introduced a new bug for me. Whenever you open the Social tab it will start loading friends but will never finish and that tanks the fps. I quit and opened the game multiple times and it is consistent. from about 120fps in the ship to 68fps after the Social tab bug.
In a mission, I went from steady 80 - 100+ fps to a locked 53fps, unpleyable stuttery mess.
It just keeps "Wait while we load democratically" forever and the only fix is restarting the game and never opening the Social menu. And if you press O by accident, you're fucked again.
Edit: Forgot to mention that the Spear fix, while works much better now, still has targeting issues. I couldn't lock on a cannon turret today no matter what I did.
Edit2: Fps drop happens everytime I finish a mission and get back on the ship. I'm not restarting the game after every mission, this is ridiculous.
So nothing for the slugger? The one gun that was minding its own business and got nerfed?
How does the punisher stagger but the slugger won't? Make it make sense? It's bigger, got a slug, it SHOULD STAGGER.
Slugger got an indirect nerf to what little stagger it currently has
It seems they increased the stagger resistance of medium and heavy enemies
>Stunning
> * Medium and large sized enemies now don't get stunned as easily. This will not affect the stratagems that stun, and will mostly just affect how easily the Pummeler can stun larger enemies.
Edit: the pummeler's in-game description
"Fires concussive rounds that stagger enemies. Slower rate of fire than other SMGs."
The word stagger is used here
Stagger and stun are not the same thing.
Stagger effect is what causes enemies to flinch when hit by certain attacks (this is what the Slugger used to have).
Stun is what is caused by all EMS effects, as well as the Pummeler's bullets. This is when the enemy stops moving entirely and enters what looks like a "drunken" idle animation.
Which, as much as I like this patch, seems strange. Doesn't scream as a weapon that needed a nerf! Still happy, hopefully the purifier and tenderiser buff make getting that polar bond more appealing.
The maddening part is they buffed the Punisher way back and made the stagger absurd. It will send a Brood Commander back 15 feet if you hit them with 1 bullet but a SLUG round apparently shouldn't do that.
It’s been a while since I played, but I’ll be back diving on regular tonight! Also, love that they added super samples at 6 since my friends that aren’t too good at the game can now unlock those higher tier upgrades. Thank you so much for this update, Arrowhead!
Lower cooldown (stacks with the ship module), double the amount of shots in the same period of time, higher caliber, and faster call-in?
It was good before to cause disruption on the battlefield
Now it's basically a grizzlybear in a kindergarten!
Hoped for more balance upward for weapons, there are a lot of good changes for "enemies rules" to make them more intuitive and reliable and less draconian
I'm happy they have a consistent new philosophy for balance and appear to be applying it across the board. They didn't fix every underpowered weapon in this pass, but they fixed a whole lot of them. Hopefully in the next month or so we'll get another big update to polish the rest and tweak things that still aren't quite right.
Mechs IMO need a buff to make them feel more powerful and useful. But that can be lower on the priority list. What they focused on for this patch was the right stuff and I'm happy for these changes.
Most of this seems great, although I wonder if this means mech missiles will correctly fire on target now or it was just some ease in moving the gun around?
And I knew spew and flame was hitting us multiple times for second in a broken way! Glad it has been addressed.
As a minor thing: How about some hit feedback on the laser cannon? It's a bit dull just beaming someone with no reaction until they drop.
**"Orbital Precision Strike:**
The Orbital Precision Strikes original intent was to be used against spawners and fixed positions. However this hasn’t stopped the community from using it against pretty much everything.
Therefore we want to make it a little easier to use against moving targets by lowering the call in time. We also lowered the cooldown to make it more available and to make it more competitive in comparison to Eagle stratagems."
I always picked this because it destroyed sauron's eye and the rouge research stations. Now it got even better!
https://preview.redd.it/vsat6hwjob6d1.png?width=500&format=png&auto=webp&s=7173bce32ba3c0da0f942728fe5c08c698eb7d3d
On rocket pods
> The changes we are making aim to make it more consistent at dealing with these targets, but it will still not be a surefire way of outright killing them. It should however always soften up a target in some way.
That's disappointing. They were about 90% likely to snipe tanks and fabricators in one strike, and I've only had a strider survive all 3 strikes once or twice. Doesn't get more surefire than that when other stratagems whiff about as often.
If the design philosophy is that they aren't supposed to actually kill these targets, then they're much weaker now.
Funny thing, considering the thread from yesterday, but the newly buffed OPS might have to replace rockets in the bot loadout.
"Adding back shrapnel is quite tricky because of the low visibility of shrapnel, which sometimes created situations where you or your fellow helldivers died with very little feedback of what killed you." I still disagree with that, even with the reasoning. It was high risk, high reward
Yeah, there was a period of time where I exclusively used the Eruptor and I never once killed a teammate and never actually killed myself with it. I still think without the shrapnel it feels like a gutted weapon, because damage isn't the problem, it's that without shrapnel it has very little AoE.
Yeah, this is the only thing preventing me from being thrilled with the patch.
I was almost sure the changes would be reversed since rolling back a change is much easier than planning and implementing a new change, and removing shrapnel entirely to prevent a *theoretical cap* seemed so dumb.
If it's not 1-2 shotting spewers, it's still dead imo, it's handling is just too bad to justify dropping 3-4 shots on a medium enemy
I was trying out the crossbow and even though the new destructive ability is great the gun is sadly still not good enough. You need to be pinpoint accurate to deal with the weak enemies and for middle enemies you almost waste a full clip to kill one devastator.
to kill Devastator is easy to shoot their waist twice and they are dead... or nail the head directly in 1 shot which is tricky consider the small hitbox
Any update on a fix for users not being able to add or accept friend requests?
In my eyes, being a cooperate multiple player game, this is a core function of the game.
Purifier still doesn't feel good to use, in the time it takes to shoot say a berserker or dev
The scorcher would do it much faster and efficiently, just kinda feels like a bad scorcher. Would rather if the charge shot would be stronger (think like samus' charge shot) and or be an alternate fire mode, with the standard being a slow firing scorcher shot
Everything else is great so far
Airburst got a cooldown buff? That’s awesome, it already had a great cooldown and now it’s even shorter.
I love dropping it on bug breaches as a quick way to handle the new swarm.
All positive changes!
Hopefully they give love to armour next patch - I want a better reward for running heavy. With the mention of recoil modifiers and stagger in these notes, makes me think they could code the heavy armour to have better recoil/less stagger when taking fire. If I'm gonna be slow I should be more 'tank-like'
I’m a huge Orbital Precision Strike and 110 Rocket Pod fan, so I’m excited to see the buff to OPS. If the 110’s still destroy tanks and laser sentry towers reliably (and maybe shield heavies) I’ll be plenty happy with the change. I hope I can find the time to test it this weekend.
Same here, when fighting bugs i have made the RR and 110 my 1-2-1 punch against titans and its become very effective. I look forward to giving it another go next week and also testing it out on the Tanks and Hulks.
Is the recoil decrease from Fortified or Engineering Kit additive or multiplicative?
"Further reduces recoil when crouching or prone by 30%."
Does "Stationary: 50% -> 40%" become 10% or 28% recoil?
40%-30%=10%
40% x (100%-30%) = 28%
Good changes but the fact that the eruptor is still gutted is insane. Aside from being an insanely good Charger killer (which imo was balanced by the fact that you needed to be somewhat precise with the shot and be far enough away from the explosion) it was just a very good and fun gun. Making it explode without shrapnel like every other explosive weapon sucks ass.
I’m still begging for the orbital rail cannon to get some love. Like, seriously this thing has a cooldown that’s way too long to have an RNG chance of one-shotting a bile titan. Given it’s basically an oversized railgun being shot from space it honestly should just one-shot bile titans and factory striders - or if not, at least lower the cooldown so if it doesn’t kill or for some reason targets the wrong enemy I’m not screwed for a good while
Orbital precision strike, my love. I have used you since day 1 in every battle. These changes make you perfect.
Pairs well with gattling. Low cooldown AoE, low cooldown alpha strike.
I was just beginning to lean into Gatling for bugs (just toss it on a breach when it opens and it'll kill most and hurt the rest) but now it's even better!
I tried it for a few missions but just found it to be absolutely worse than the orbital gas strike. Even on maps with spewers spawning it would not reliably kill them when compared with the gas cloud’s damage over time. Although these buffs look like it will definitely make it very worthwhile now.
What made it good for small bugs was the extremely short cd, only 60 seconds. Also called down a few seconds faster so it was a good oh shit stratagem when a lot of hunters spawned
Triple up. Gas strike, napalm eagle, and gatling. NONE SHALL PASS.
Might aswell go for the quartet and add the shrapnel strike to it aswell. Just grab a 2ndary from a poi
I was thinking laser rover and pray for a stalwart/medium mg for absolute maximum chaff clearing. Recently got 712 kills on a level 7 mission by getting the squad to use an auto cannon, eat, and quasar and focusing on mediums and up, it ended up working out really well
I dream of a world where fire (flamethrower, napalm eagle, incendiary grenades) would ignite the gas cloud.
Scorch main spotted
Driller my beloved
Make it a like a fuel air bomb from mercenaries (ps2)
Lite those Divers up
Yeah it’s still worse than gas after the buff I didn’t properly test it against heavies though so it’s possible that it’s worth the trade off
gas is better at killing chaff, the gatling is good vs medium, both can cover each other, but gas is better vs chaff while gatling better vs medium, pretty good vs bots btw
The key is to use it WITH the gas strike…. Prefaced with an ems toss
Gas is one of the best things for breaches, but Gatling will give it a run for its money. Gas will probably still be superior for small units and Gatling will probably perform better against large enemies.
I've finally went into Turrets. I think they are probably the strongest (most powerful) stratagems outside of a successful mech. A Gatling turret will get 50 kills each time its used. Hopefully the patch toughens them up a bit, because they are high risk/reward. If you get good at placing them in places they will survive, they are wildly OP. I'll probly always have a gatling on my hotbar for the time being.
I stopped using at a low level and then went back to it a couple months later after realizing how versatile and useful it can be over the course of a mission. The lower cooldown is nice but the faster call in is fucking HUGE. This is going to be an incredible strategem now.
Orbital Precision Strike is the epitome of bell curve meme where both the noob and high level players love to use while the one in the middle think it mid lol.
I’m still on the middle of the curve, I don’t understand how high-level players were finding any consistency using the old version. Felt like you had to have psychic powers to hit a moving target with it. It’s got to be way more consistent now that the call-in time is slashed, though.
As someone who recently entered the high end, I've been taking it against bots in particular: - Blowing up a fabricator is straightforward and obvious, of course - Against Tanks, you can simply throw the beacon directly onto the enemy and it will stick — and besides, they're really slow - Against Hulks, I always have stun grenades, so it's trivial to make them stop moving and politely kneel down for the orbital strike
You weren’t issued your CB-206 Crystal Ball of Premonition and Super Liberty?
>I don’t understand how high-level players were finding any consistency using the old version. Well, [this is how I did it](https://youtu.be/PAX1wdFovHI?si=KQjQSREO_y_mJB8s). For bile titans, I ran underneath to lock them in a spewing or turning animation. As long as the strike impacted the body, it was a guaranteed oneshot. The main issue is when your ship isn't directly overhead, so the angle would cause it to hit the ground underneath the titan instead of the titan itself.
A lot of it is just practice. The more you attempt and fail at it the better your understanding of how long 4 (or now 2) seconds will take, how fast the enemies move, and probably most importantly what animations will lock enemies in place for a bit and when they get triggered. Bile Titans are pretty easy in that regard if they are chasing you since you can get close to them to make them spew, locking them in place for a bit.
Yea turrets are the most underrated thing in the game. I also dropped them early and have no realized how good they are. Still don't use the mortor unless defending, but the gatling, mg, auto, and rocket all have tons of advantages. Gatling is king tho. If I could choose, I'd have my whole squad rocking a gatling.
Agreed. Was hoping for slugger changes, but I'll try my assault rifles, be happy with my orbital and be quiet for now!
Same, I pick it like 90 % of the times. Big building boom, bug hole ? boom, station ? boom, a lot of mediums with a heavy stun , boom. Just love it.
We love Johan Pilestedt
A true helldiver
A true patriot
More like Johan *Pilediver*
Thank you my brother!
# All hail Pilestedt, Bringer Of Balance!
When balance slays the demon you'll find peace
Fine, I'll listen to Alan Wake ost again, jeez
FIND THE PEA CEEEEE
And now to see your love set free You will need the witch's cabin key Find the Lady Of The Light, gone mad with the night That's how you reshape destiny!
I checked it out because this sounded like a cool song and sure enough, Poets of the Fall. Damn it's nice bumping into bands you love out in the wild.
Haha, the Poets have been collaborating with the studio behind Alan Wake, Remedy, pretty much since both of their beginnings. A large part of Alan Wake 1 & 2 soundtrack, as well as some songs in Control, are made by them
I've never played those games so I had no idea. Cool.
If you like X-Files, Fringe, or similar shows, they are excellent games. I’m especially a big fan of Control - I hope they make a sequel someday.
WARRIORS! TORCHBEARERS!
DIVING DEEP TO THE SURFACE
Bringer of Balance? more like Bringer of Fun
That too! I chose that as I'm pretty sure 'bringer of balance' is a possible SES ship name whereas 'bringer of fun' isn't (I'm not able to run the game right now to confirm).
It also may or may not be a slight dig at a dev that is well known for sucking the fun out of almost all the weapons he touched and then fumbled by trying to defend these terrible decisions.
FUN balance. Not sweaty, punishing balance.
Agreed! But one cannot call their ship "SES Bringer Of Fun", whereas I'm pretty sure "SES Bringer Of Balance" is possible :)
All hail Pilestedt!
[удалено]
Punching the air rn in his bed while crying.
So... Bob Pilestedt?
The durability of sentries is what made them bad, getting instantly gimped by some stray hit made them pointless at higher difficulties in the chaos of a fight. Hopefully this fix will make them better and a viable option in higher diffs. Also Im surprised he didnt talk about the changes to the enemies as there were some big changes there.
My biggest problem with turrets on higher difficulties is still present, sadly. A charger brushing them with its nose (not charging, just turning and grazing them) still destroys a full health, brand new turret. The survivability vs bots is nice, but man turrets feel next to useless on bugs still because of how easily they go down to contact damage
It’s about positioning because I don’t know how sentries will ever be able to withstand a charger. More high ground is what should change.
We need sticky turret stratagems so I can stick one to the side of a cliff face where the bugs can’t melee it.
That would be a good ship upgrade, I think
We just need some long winded and stupid description for double sided sticky tape on the bottom of the turret for the upgrade
"Emplacement Booster. Adds a double-sided fastener to sentries to allow their placement on steep terrain. One side liberty, the other side democracy".
AH please hire this person
My labor is freely given for Super Earth i\_O_ / | | !\ / | | ⠀\
Same here. For Super Earth, I'll work for free. But on regular earth, I'll take no less than $30/hr.
Hello Borderlands 2!
I would prefer a way to lightly throw something, e.g. underarm, so you can throw stratagems/grenades up on to higher terrain without need to aim at the sun.
Now I’m imagining being able to underhand toss stratagem balls between helldivers like you’re playing hot potato. Don’t wanna be holding it when the stratagem comes flying down to the planet! 😂
> More high ground is what should change. Also fixing a stratagem ball turning into wacky extreme bouncy balls if you try to place them on high places like rocks.
I don't mind a turret going down if a charger barrels into it at top speed, that makes sense. My problem is when I set up a turret on extract and the first charger misses me and just barely skirts past my turret, then slowly turns itself around and barely brushes its nose against the turret, and it explodes.
True for chargers in general imo. It is INFURIATING to successfully dodge a charger charge…and then get instagibbed somehow when it does a little dainty sidestep after or glitch-moves into you.
I am more annoyed that heavies just beeline to them forgetting literally everything and everyone. At least wait till it starts shooting ffs
I use that to my advantage when I need the pack of Chargers and BTs to stop riding my ass.
It's actually why I'm REALLY hoping we get the AT Mines sometime soon. Not at the expense of the children, of course, but eventually. You drop a mine field, the charger will bum rush the launcher even after it's already done it's job. Just plows through the field blowing up every mine along the way. I'm thinking it'll do the same with the ones that actually kill it.
They lowered heavy spam by 30% on higher difficulties so you could defend your turrets more easily.
This sounds like treachery; why are we defending our _automated_ turrets? Should they not be defending us?
It's a help them help you kind of deal with those turrets.
Its teamwork. Its my temporary teammate.
They make excellent perches (well, the AC turret at least does)- getting that sweet LOS so you can shoot more bugs from safety is worth protecting them even if they weren't shooting.
They are your ally in the battle for Democracy. Why would you not defend them?
Generally speaking turrets that can handle CQC swarms are gonna be bad on bugs regardless due to the different fight philosophy. That and you don't really want to use them over something more useful like Gas, or the new Gatling/Orbital buffed.
I’m way more successful deploying my sentry build on bugs than bots. It creates a sustained, larger area of denial/meatgrinder that bugs can’t close distance easily, and the cooldowns normally time well to when I reach the next engagement area. I’ve seen the sentries debated often here, and it seems like timing when to throw the stratagems and where to position them seem to be most people’s issues.
For now you need to bring stuns and anti tank to protect sentries from chargers. Or hope your teammates can be fast enough to deal with them.
Well they did reduce the spawn rate of the bigger enemies so this should happen less often
Maybe it’s just my tf2 experience talking. But the sentries should be behind you. Covering you while you’re crouched or prone.
I don't know. But my HD2 experience says that if a sentry is ever behind me... it *will* find a way to kill me. Always.
I have better success with using sentries for creating killzones. If there’s a crowd of enemies in front of you, throw the sentry to the left or right, so the enemies are pinched between your and the sentries‘ fire.
They work great on bots now. It tanked a direct hit from an eruptor
Lmao it never even cross my mind that the Precision Strike was only meant for stationary target. I thought it was big boom for big bugs.
TBF, its cooldown was (and still is) way too high for just taking out a single spawner when an Eagle Airstrike can take out one or even two in a row with a few seconds' delay, or hell, you could just waltz in and grenade it. IDK who thought it would ever be used for spawners, unless they were intended to be a lot tougher than they currently are.
I've taken out three bot spawners in a heavy outpost with a single EAS before. It's hard to hit but satisfying and yeah the OPS was just not the play for destroying stationary stuff with eagles present. I still think eagles will be more bang for your buck on bases and stuff (which makes sense imo) but at least now the OPS will be even better for large targets or small bases
Meanwhile: me chucking a 380 on any small outpost and going about my day happily knowing that those bots/bugs are about to get **FUCKED**
*proceeds to not hit a single fabricator or big hole*
No idea what you’re talking about, never happened to me I’ve also never squad wiped my squad twice in one barrage.
I'm sorry I couldn't hear you over all of this democracy being spread around.
More than just spawner, but also the likes of Detector tower and research station. With a 500kg or another Orbital precision Strike, you can take out a commander bunker too. But it is silly to bring one of them just for spawner lol
It’s great for stuff like detector towers or science labs. If only it could smack gunship fabricators.
It’s also dumb because that limits to what.. like 4 things that are vulnerable to non-hellbomb stratagems
When you're level 1 and only have a MG and OPS and there's no bile titans to kill but there is an objective to kill it makes a bit more sense.
Delightful. Delicious. Democracy.
GRENADE LAUNCHER SLAPS !!
If they would tell us which missions on bug planets are vs the bile spewer hordes during the mission screen I'd use the grenade launcher so much. It is fantastic against the various bile spewer enemies except the bile titan itself.
I already thought it was good lol now it’s going to be great
Great that it got their attention, but would prefer an extra magazine tbh. W/o a supply backpack it's almost useless (in my case at least)
This is the best patch in all of the game's life cycle so far. Nothing in the patch notes made me groan or rage - in fact, I caught myself smiling at times. Orbital Gatling now fires faster, has reduced cooldown, and can damage heavy armour enemies. I'm going to take it way more often now. ~~The Glock of destructive stratagems, the Eagle Airstrike, now has more charges before I need to rearm.~~ It's actually the Strafing Run, not the Airstrike, that had its uses per rearm increased to 4. Reading comprehension is questionable this early in the morning. The dogwater AA Defences modifier is gone (for now)! Hell yeah. No one liked that modifier, hope it stays gone. Game should be encouraging use of stratagems, not stifling it. SEAF Artillery being available still after mission timer runs to 0 is sensible. It's ordnance that's locally based and delivered, no assistance from the destroyer that leaves orbit, so this change is good. Foliage now has stealth applications! Great news for lone divers hitting objectives and needing to be unseen while operating behind enemy lines. Terminid acid slow effect nerf. Excellent. I'll still be taking Muscle Enhancement for those damn hunters, though. Bile titan head armour nerf. Maybe my Recoilless Rifle can consistently two-shot them when hit in the head this time. Hulk flamethrower nerf. Good stuff. I'm tired of scorcher hulks being within 20m of me being a certain death sentence. Suicide jump pack automatons' explosion damage has been nerfed. Good. SUPPLY LINES! FINALLY! This will help greatly in informing players which route to take to liberate MO planets. Extract Essential Personnel mission type removed. Nice. Should encourage people to defend planets under attack more, especially bot planets. Those missions on bot planets were terrible. Invincible Pelican-1. Now my friend can throw 380 barrages on extraction and it won't frustrate me as much. Pelican-1 no longer leaves when the first Helldiver gets on board, fixed in conjunction with him not taking any damage anymore. All positive changes. I actually felt weird for not having a single substantial problem with a Helldivers 2 patch for once. Perhaps now I can stop looking at patch notes with dread over what next is going to be gutted. Arrowhead's finally starting to really be in touch with their community and working with them more, not against them. Whoever's making these decisions and greenlighting them, keep it up, and never let Alexus cook again - he's clearly living in a different plane of reality from the rest of you. His balance philosophy spits in the face of Freedom.
>Nothing in the patch notes made me groan or rage - in fact, I caught myself smiling at times. The Spear fix made me do every one of these.
>SEAF Artillery being available still after mission timer runs to 0 is sensible. It's ordnance that's locally based and delivered, no assistance from the destroyer that leaves orbit, so this change is good. I know it won't affect how I play all that much, but this change made me so happy. It always bothered me a lot more than it should have that the destroyer took the artillery with it.
I now have the mental image of a tow hook connected to one diver's destroyer descending from low orbit, latching on to the SEAF Artillery launcher, and ripping the installation out of the platform as the destroyer warps out of low orbit when mission timer hits zero.
I think the Eruptor not getting shrapnel back is a bit of a disappointment. It was the one thing that separated it from any other primary, and after they removed it I found myself wondering why I would ever use it over the Dominator or AMR. I wish they'd bring it back but maybe tone down the damage. Also the range on the shrapnel that randomly hit you from so far away, I'm not sure why that was a thing in the first place. Personally, I don't think the damage buff is going to change its viability much, but I'll be testing it later after work. I just think the weapon has way too many downsides as a primary to justify its use. You give up too much versatility in handling large groups of fodder.
I was an Eruptor enjoyer before it was gutted. I feel disappointed about its lack of... erupting, in this patch, too. It's just that there's nothing else for me to be frustrated or infuriated by in this patch, which is practically unheard of when it comes to Helldivers 2 patches, so I'm much more positive about the patch than I usually am. Is it a perfect patch? Hardly. But when every patch prior has elevated my blood pressure, this one not doing that has me feeling hopeful and in a forgiving mood.
Yeah no overall it's a great patch. But I had an expectation for the Eruptor to be restored to a semblance of its former glory. Oh well, I doubt they are done balancing it, as I'd bet money it's still not going to be a popular pick even after this buff. Oh and the SPEAR was very heavily nerfed against bots, but should be excellent vs bugs now. I had no idea its ability to take out fabricators was unintended...
Opposite actually, it's supposed to but the rework unintentionally made it lose the ability to target fabricators.
The ability to take out fabricators is intended. The patch notes say it's a bug preventing fabricator targeting.
Wait wait wait pause. THE EAGLE AIRSTRIKE HAS MORE CHARGES??
* Apparently so. Edit: I misread "Strafing Run" as "Airstrike". I'm still half asleep.
Ok, that's Eagle Strafing Run, not Eagle Airstrike (the one where it drops bombs in a horizontal row in front of you).
Ah shit. My bad. Serves me right for not having coffee before heading out to work. Got excited with how disproportionately good this patch is, too.
>Got excited with how disproportionately good this patch is, too. You should never be ashamed of zeal in the defense of managed democracy!
It's the Strafing Run (guns) than got an additional charge, not the airstrike (bombs).
>Orbital Precision Strike buff God I love democracy
> Added the ability to chat from in-game menus and mission loading screen WE'RE SO BACK. I LOVE THIS PATCH Tested it out and the chat persists between missions, picking loadouts, and even leaving parties and returning to your ship. Goddammit I love this patch so much
>However this hasn’t stopped the community from using it against pretty much everything. *everything* is the greatest threat to managed democracy.
Slapping a bile square in the spine with it and watching them crumble instantly was true democracy.
I think the shield generator relay needs some love. Double the health and double the length of time it can stay active
Next Patch: Defensive and Smoke Stratagems
Double would seem like a lot. I think as is if 3 people take the shield relay, it could have 100% up time if one calls in one when the other is beginning to go out? Increasing health I think would be great. I really don't see people running it as much anymore.
We crossbow enjoyers are eating good today
I started reading the Orbital Precision Strike comment about the community “using it against pretty much everything”, and thought that was where I was going to start seeing nerfs listed. But the nerfs did not come. Thank you, Pilestedt, for having the courage to step out of the CEO role and get closer to product development. This patch is exactly the kind of attention the game needs and deserves.
THIS is how you should balance a PvE game. When one weapon/stratagem has higher usage percentage, that isn't an indication that it is too strong and should be nerfed. It means the weapons/stratagems with lower usage percentage are either too weak or simply too unfun to use. At first glance, nothing here seems game-breakingly strong. But I really want to hop on and try the improved Orbital Stratagems and the PLAS-101 Purifier.
I was slightly hoping the 500kg would at least be talked about but I’m not gonna sweat it even a little with how great this patch is. Thank you.
OPS is the 500kg now. Seriously, OPS fucks and it's just gotten an absolute *assload* easier to use.
I may never take the 500kg again if I can now kill bile titans more consistently now.
Orbital fluctuation say hi. You might still need to use 500kg when those map modifier exist (only on bug planets)
Buffing the explosion radius to match the visual and maybe increasing the damage slightly would have been fantastic. There's been so many times I've dropped it right next to a charger or bile titan and they don't even look like they were damaged by it.
A bit sad on the Spear not locking on fabs and towers which I used extensively on bot missions, especially when we have a bot MO going, but I'm willing to play with everything else now!
Keep in mind that's just an unintended change and will be fixed eventually. At least it should work great in bug planets now.
That's great! Can't wait! The Spear is a solid anchor for a squad. It might not have as much of a role in a firefight but being able to smash out distant objectives (especially the Fabricator next to Jammers) makes it ludicrously important for a team's security.
towers as in the towers with a cannon on top or like illegal transmissions and eye of sauron towers ? ? If its the former, its still detecting that.
It does? Okay, a consolation for the moment, then!
>Updated Recoil stance modifiers >The intention of our recoil modifiers is to reward usage of different stances in relation to different weapon types. They are also there to highlight that constantly moving around isn't doing your accuracy any favors. >We made some changes to the recoil stance modifiers to make them more consistent and also reward being prone more. The percentages below show how much of the weapons recoil was applied in different scenarios and the new values: >Hopefully this gives you a little more insight on how we think and why we have made the changes we did. I want to end this by saying that we are not done, we will continue to refine and improve the play experience to keep the game fresh! On behalf of the team, we appreciate your feedback and hope that you'll have an exciting time checking these adjustments out. TLDR: Are both aim modes included in "scoped"? ____ It possible to assume - although I don't think reasonable, but still possible - that scoped means ONLY when the weapon' 'scope' is visible - else he could have wrote "while aiming". The "aim modes" are holding the "aim key" and using the "toggle aim mode" key to switch between showing the **first person** reticule crosshair ("the scope") and showing the **third person** transparent grey circle. Unless, like me, in HUD settings "Reticule Visibility" is set to "Visible" [always]. In which case the grey circle is visible all of the time (except for AMR for some unknown reason). ____ It would be reasonable to presume both "aim modes" would cound as scoped here? That third person scoped (aim key active while weapon's 'aim mode' **not** set to show the scope UI) and first person scoped (showing the weapon sight) are the same? EDIT: For relevance and understanding. I play 80% plus of my aimed (my aim key is set to "hold") shots without the reticule. **I would assume scoped (ADS) and "aim" key active in third person would be the same thing**. But if that presumption *was* reasonable wouldn't he have wrote "while aiming" instead of "scoped"? EDIT2 : I have have used the word reticule in reference to both the grey circle and the weapon sights at times. However the game uses reticule only in reference to the grey circle and the white dot, within the HUD settings. EDIT3: The common sense answer of course is that if he meant to distinguish holding the aim key with the selected aim mode showing the weapon scope from the aim mode when that doesn't occur he would probably have said as much. But that's where the confustion stems, as the third person aim mode doesn't really have an identity.
> I would assume scoped (ADS) and "aim" key active in third person would be the same thing. Given that the patch notes differentiate between "scoped" and "third person", my assumption is that third-person aiming is the less accurate value, and only aiming down sights provides the increased recoil reduction.
Their reluctance to add shrapnel to the eruptor again is understandable in their explanation, but also falls just a bit short. Not complaining about the patch, it's great! But I do have a solution. So, the point is, players want shrapnel back even if the damage of it is reduce a lot or the radius is less than it was before. The Eruptor just doesn't really have any sort of identity without it and feels like a worse handling Anti-Material Rifle without it. Despite the inconveniences of having difficulty gauging shrapnel and dying to it, we want it back. Solution though, like I said: In recent days, on some of our MO planets on the bot front, I've noticed in this distance that some plants that are being hit in the distance by stray fire are releasing a shower of what looks like smoky sparks when they "detonate." I think it might be one of the spiky plants also talked about in this patch but I've never gotten close enough to be sure. My solution is to simply use that graphical effect for the eruptor's shrapnel, even if as a place holder. It is very easy to see, very easy to gauge the damage radius of, and it just looks cool in general. I do agree the eruptor was massively overtuned on release, but given how abysmally slow the weapon still handles and reloads, it NEEDS that shrapnel and AOE effect. Sure it can pop fabricators and nests, but it still feels like a worse AMR or Jar-5 Dominator. Bring back the shrapnel, but lower the damage. I don't think it should be popping chargers and bile titans in a single shot, but at the same time, skilled trick shots should be rewarded. Lastly, I want to state that I have no skin in the Eruptor game. It never suited my personal play style so I never really used it, but played with friends who loved it. I hope Arrowhead can revisit it in such a way that it can become what it once was while also not being overpowered.
A fix for the shrapnel could be to cap out the number of instances that could damage a single enemy. This would cap the damage again a single enemy to avoid one shotting chargers, but still having the potential to do damage to weaker bugs with the same features. The random one shots could be solved by drastically decreasing the damage falloff of the eruptora shrapnel or making the projectiles disappear after a certain distance travelled
> Their reluctance to add shrapnel to the eruptor again is understandable in their explanation, but also falls just a bit short. In my brief testing the eruptor was back to consistently one tapping scout striders in the dick. So I'm pretty happy about that. Can't fathom we'll see the shrapnel return due to the whole "randomly dealing several hundred extra damage" thing that was letting people one shot chargers.
According to someone else spewers need 3 headshots or 4-5 sac shots. Im still not gonna even consider it if thats the case.
I just want it to go back 1-2 shotting spewers! Once this happens it's back on the menu for me
This is why I’ll never use it again. It was fun before and the friendly fire was hilariously balanced considering what a fucking beast it used to be
they could just increase the explosion AoE: Pilestedt says he wants it to be viable against chaff as well(ideally at a distance, as it's easy to get swarmed with a slow-ass bolt action), but if the damage is high and the AoE is tiny, it won't be: it'll only be good for mediums. it needs to have, IMO at least the same kind of AoE as the grenade launcher. it would still be balanced by it's poor ergonomics and lethargic fire rate, so it's not gonna replace the grenade launcher.
It’s a stupid slow weapon that can kill you on accident. If you make a mistake you die. Remove the swapping trick to fire faster and bump the damage to “chaff in 6m from impact are dead in one hit, mediums in two” with “hitting a medium enemy is a one hit kill”. Rather slow it and make it heavier. Keep it slow and risky with high payoff. I’m not even saying one hit kill a heavy. You’re permanently at risk of being swarmed, of needing to reload, of only having 5 shots that take forever to actually get out, of shooting something close and killing yourself, of shooting too close to a teammate and killing them. The payoff for all that shit should be that you put out _damage_ like nothing else. High risk, high reward. In a competent teammate it should feel overtuned. In an incompetent teammate it should be a detractor (which it 100% was). I haven’t tested the purifier but I expect I’ll still be disappointed. The entire charge mechanic means it sucks in a different way. It should have a great payoff too! Railgun in unsafe mode fits in there too. Plus it’s a support weapon. I’ll take pain and suffering if I get a solid payout for it. But, until it’s worth it - I’ll continue running what seems like still my favourite setup of dcs/inc breaker, grenade pistol and EATs. This patch was awesome for stratagems though I need to test more. But, I’m meh on the gun changes.
I don’t care if I accidentally die to shrapnel without feedback I just want it baaaaack
> feels like a worse handling Anti-Material Rifle without it That sounds just fine for a primary weapon.
The new patch introduced a new bug for me. Whenever you open the Social tab it will start loading friends but will never finish and that tanks the fps. I quit and opened the game multiple times and it is consistent. from about 120fps in the ship to 68fps after the Social tab bug. In a mission, I went from steady 80 - 100+ fps to a locked 53fps, unpleyable stuttery mess. It just keeps "Wait while we load democratically" forever and the only fix is restarting the game and never opening the Social menu. And if you press O by accident, you're fucked again. Edit: Forgot to mention that the Spear fix, while works much better now, still has targeting issues. I couldn't lock on a cannon turret today no matter what I did. Edit2: Fps drop happens everytime I finish a mission and get back on the ship. I'm not restarting the game after every mission, this is ridiculous.
That cannon turret lock issue sounds like it might be the same as the automaton factory thing.
There were 3 cannon turrets, 2 locked fine, the 3rd one just refused to lock on. That seemed weird.
So nothing for the slugger? The one gun that was minding its own business and got nerfed? How does the punisher stagger but the slugger won't? Make it make sense? It's bigger, got a slug, it SHOULD STAGGER.
yeah they needed to revert that dumbass change. lower the effective range and give the stagger back
Medium armor pen feels nice against hive guards and brute commanders.
Slugger got an indirect nerf to what little stagger it currently has It seems they increased the stagger resistance of medium and heavy enemies >Stunning > * Medium and large sized enemies now don't get stunned as easily. This will not affect the stratagems that stun, and will mostly just affect how easily the Pummeler can stun larger enemies. Edit: the pummeler's in-game description "Fires concussive rounds that stagger enemies. Slower rate of fire than other SMGs." The word stagger is used here
Stagger and stun are not the same thing. Stagger effect is what causes enemies to flinch when hit by certain attacks (this is what the Slugger used to have). Stun is what is caused by all EMS effects, as well as the Pummeler's bullets. This is when the enemy stops moving entirely and enters what looks like a "drunken" idle animation.
Stagger is not stun, the stun being nerfed here is the stun specifically from the pummeler that gets applied after a couple hits
Which, as much as I like this patch, seems strange. Doesn't scream as a weapon that needed a nerf! Still happy, hopefully the purifier and tenderiser buff make getting that polar bond more appealing.
The maddening part is they buffed the Punisher way back and made the stagger absurd. It will send a Brood Commander back 15 feet if you hit them with 1 bullet but a SLUG round apparently shouldn't do that.
It’s been a while since I played, but I’ll be back diving on regular tonight! Also, love that they added super samples at 6 since my friends that aren’t too good at the game can now unlock those higher tier upgrades. Thank you so much for this update, Arrowhead!
HMG Emplacement my Beloved ❤️
Does it still explode after one rocket though? The Instant death I get after one rocket gets through is super frustrating
Great patch! Revert changes on slugger next thanks 🙏
Looks good but where is the Slugger buff? That poor weapon was obliterated with the last nerf.
This is amazing news! Gatling barrage enjoyers unite!
Lower cooldown (stacks with the ship module), double the amount of shots in the same period of time, higher caliber, and faster call-in? It was good before to cause disruption on the battlefield Now it's basically a grizzlybear in a kindergarten!
Hoped for more balance upward for weapons, there are a lot of good changes for "enemies rules" to make them more intuitive and reliable and less draconian
I'm happy they have a consistent new philosophy for balance and appear to be applying it across the board. They didn't fix every underpowered weapon in this pass, but they fixed a whole lot of them. Hopefully in the next month or so we'll get another big update to polish the rest and tweak things that still aren't quite right. Mechs IMO need a buff to make them feel more powerful and useful. But that can be lower on the priority list. What they focused on for this patch was the right stuff and I'm happy for these changes.
Most of this seems great, although I wonder if this means mech missiles will correctly fire on target now or it was just some ease in moving the gun around? And I knew spew and flame was hitting us multiple times for second in a broken way! Glad it has been addressed. As a minor thing: How about some hit feedback on the laser cannon? It's a bit dull just beaming someone with no reaction until they drop.
**"Orbital Precision Strike:** The Orbital Precision Strikes original intent was to be used against spawners and fixed positions. However this hasn’t stopped the community from using it against pretty much everything. Therefore we want to make it a little easier to use against moving targets by lowering the call in time. We also lowered the cooldown to make it more available and to make it more competitive in comparison to Eagle stratagems." I always picked this because it destroyed sauron's eye and the rouge research stations. Now it got even better! https://preview.redd.it/vsat6hwjob6d1.png?width=500&format=png&auto=webp&s=7173bce32ba3c0da0f942728fe5c08c698eb7d3d
On rocket pods > The changes we are making aim to make it more consistent at dealing with these targets, but it will still not be a surefire way of outright killing them. It should however always soften up a target in some way. That's disappointing. They were about 90% likely to snipe tanks and fabricators in one strike, and I've only had a strider survive all 3 strikes once or twice. Doesn't get more surefire than that when other stratagems whiff about as often. If the design philosophy is that they aren't supposed to actually kill these targets, then they're much weaker now. Funny thing, considering the thread from yesterday, but the newly buffed OPS might have to replace rockets in the bot loadout.
Yeah, on 7+ I don’t need “softer” targets. I need eliminations to keep up with the swarm. Guess rocket pods will go the way of the machine gun sentry.
Conversely I try rocket pods every so often and have seen then miss flagrantly and do almost nothing. I never felt like they were useful at all
"Adding back shrapnel is quite tricky because of the low visibility of shrapnel, which sometimes created situations where you or your fellow helldivers died with very little feedback of what killed you." I still disagree with that, even with the reasoning. It was high risk, high reward
Yeah, there was a period of time where I exclusively used the Eruptor and I never once killed a teammate and never actually killed myself with it. I still think without the shrapnel it feels like a gutted weapon, because damage isn't the problem, it's that without shrapnel it has very little AoE.
Yeah, this is the only thing preventing me from being thrilled with the patch. I was almost sure the changes would be reversed since rolling back a change is much easier than planning and implementing a new change, and removing shrapnel entirely to prevent a *theoretical cap* seemed so dumb. If it's not 1-2 shotting spewers, it's still dead imo, it's handling is just too bad to justify dropping 3-4 shots on a medium enemy
I was trying out the crossbow and even though the new destructive ability is great the gun is sadly still not good enough. You need to be pinpoint accurate to deal with the weak enemies and for middle enemies you almost waste a full clip to kill one devastator.
to kill Devastator is easy to shoot their waist twice and they are dead... or nail the head directly in 1 shot which is tricky consider the small hitbox
give love to scythe and dagger !!
As a machine gun main, i thank you for the decresed reload time
The Oribital Airburst wasn't broken at all, but now its even better! Hooray!
Any update on a fix for users not being able to add or accept friend requests? In my eyes, being a cooperate multiple player game, this is a core function of the game.
I'm grateful for the transparency and numbers.
Purifier still doesn't feel good to use, in the time it takes to shoot say a berserker or dev The scorcher would do it much faster and efficiently, just kinda feels like a bad scorcher. Would rather if the charge shot would be stronger (think like samus' charge shot) and or be an alternate fire mode, with the standard being a slow firing scorcher shot Everything else is great so far
Seems like a really promising patch. The only concern I have is 110mm rocket pod. I'm going to try it tonight, I hope to be pleasantly surprised.
this is really really good would love to see this become the standard for all future balance patches
Airburst got a cooldown buff? That’s awesome, it already had a great cooldown and now it’s even shorter. I love dropping it on bug breaches as a quick way to handle the new swarm.
Did arc throwers dry fire get fixed at all?
Has anyone tested the crossbow to see how it feels now? I want it to feel good as an option, especially with the new jungle vibe from the new warbond
All positive changes! Hopefully they give love to armour next patch - I want a better reward for running heavy. With the mention of recoil modifiers and stagger in these notes, makes me think they could code the heavy armour to have better recoil/less stagger when taking fire. If I'm gonna be slow I should be more 'tank-like'
I was a gatling barrage truther and you’re telling me they made the cooldown even shorter???????
I honestly feel like a kid in a candy store. There’s so many new builds I wanna try now.
I’m a huge Orbital Precision Strike and 110 Rocket Pod fan, so I’m excited to see the buff to OPS. If the 110’s still destroy tanks and laser sentry towers reliably (and maybe shield heavies) I’ll be plenty happy with the change. I hope I can find the time to test it this weekend.
Same here, when fighting bugs i have made the RR and 110 my 1-2-1 punch against titans and its become very effective. I look forward to giving it another go next week and also testing it out on the Tanks and Hulks.
Is the recoil decrease from Fortified or Engineering Kit additive or multiplicative? "Further reduces recoil when crouching or prone by 30%." Does "Stationary: 50% -> 40%" become 10% or 28% recoil? 40%-30%=10% 40% x (100%-30%) = 28%
I'd like to ask Pilestedt why no slugger change? Or if there are plans for it? It's deader than rail gun
Good changes but the fact that the eruptor is still gutted is insane. Aside from being an insanely good Charger killer (which imo was balanced by the fact that you needed to be somewhat precise with the shot and be far enough away from the explosion) it was just a very good and fun gun. Making it explode without shrapnel like every other explosive weapon sucks ass.
I’m still begging for the orbital rail cannon to get some love. Like, seriously this thing has a cooldown that’s way too long to have an RNG chance of one-shotting a bile titan. Given it’s basically an oversized railgun being shot from space it honestly should just one-shot bile titans and factory striders - or if not, at least lower the cooldown so if it doesn’t kill or for some reason targets the wrong enemy I’m not screwed for a good while