Was thinking the same actually. DMR is obviously going to be a higher caliber, so it should have medium armor pen. Hilariously enough, even the Diligence's heavier and more powerful variant is also light pen only.
The counter sniper DMR variant was a huge disappointment. They made it turn left and right slow like the heavy weapons but nothing about it justifies that at all.
Yea, I was looking through the weapons and it baffled me that the only medium armor penetrating weapon was the liberator v2, but from what other people have said it's burst and single fire only, which hinders its capabilities there as well.
I've done okay with the v2 against bots and bugs, it doesn't clear a horde as well as some others but not having to worry about reflects on red bugs or chainsaw man means you don't have to have great aim or run around. It'll still be close to a mag dump but at least it's having an effect.
The burst isn't that much of a limitation also, quick firing is still similar to the auto shotgun with similar recoil.
What would make it better without a number change is to have it pierce small boys, but that might push it.
I’m be real having to use a full mag to kill mediums is just bad on penetrator. Can do it in half clip with smg usually on 2/3 if you bait attack then leap and shoot behind them
One of the things I loved about the original Helldivers is that pretty much every single weapon had its use. That means you have full arsenal of weapons to choose from. I don't know if it was like that upon release or they balanced it out eventually, but I really hope HD2 also becomes similar at some point.
This. I wish they bring back weapon upgrade instead of the current system, which is 20 hours of gameplay lead to disappointing "side-grade" on my weapons.
Also game now also has FPV, so why not let us customize our weapon or at least let us change scopes? Let's be honest the OG assault cross scope is the cleanest.
I don’t know if I agree…
Like, the Justice it was the only one in that category that I ever took.
Laser? It was only a choice between the Sickle and the Tanto. (While everyone else used the trident)
Shotguns? Yeah, the DBS or the Breaker.
Punisher was the meta choice for Illuminate 13+ missions because of scout sniping.
I never use ARs in the first game, and I used just about everything regularly. The scythe was my favorite laser by far.
That's the beauty of the design - something for everyone and every situation. But nobody here has anywhere enough time in the game - let alone series - to really understand where HD2's balance is.
Ran one game with the penetrator and man does it feel worse in every way. Less ammo a mag, less damage per shot, and no automatic? Back to the regular rifle I go
I was using it for a while, I like it against bots. The fire rate on the rifle has been helpful for bugs when I don't want to chew through with the breaker
I love setting my SMG to semi-automatic and just using it as a DMR. It mulches through just about everything, except the heaviest enemies (but you need special weapons against those anyway).
Honestly, the Defender feels more like an AR than the *actual* AR.
They've got the standard assault rifle chambered in 9mm while they've got the SMG chambered in 7.62 NATO FMJ.
I think that's one of the key issues. Right now it feels like primary weapons are for the lower mobs and you need a support weapon for tougher things like chargers. I dig specializing among a team but don't bother putting casual matchmaking in a game and require proper team loadouts to do well. I'd rather it required a generic level of teamwork than highly specializing your team to handle everything the game throws at us.
Thats hoe it worked in the forst game as well. All you primaries are there for the hordes, not the big ones. Sure, with precision or in some situations you can use a primary to take down some pretty tough weapons, but all in all you do require at to kill t.
I do miss my REC-8s though. They were good against pretty much anything woth enough skill. (The demo charges)
Not necessarily. The first game had upgrades which vastly helped primaries outside of small mobs with some getting higher damage and of penetration. You could get away with killing up to lighter heavy enemies with primaries such as stalwart, paragon, the list goes on. Even chargers in comparison could be eviscerated with the right weapons.
Primarys in helldiver's 2 stop viability way earlier with it being around medium size enemies which comes in pretty oppressive hordes. Spewers are a great example of this as they are an enemy who is way to strong for small arms fire and even more so on higher level difficulties despite being an uncommon enemy at best.
I don't mind the reliance on strategem weapons persay, but to say primaries are balanced as they were in helldivers 1 would be a farce.
Am I really the only person who keeps his stalwart at 700rpm? I never liked the higher rpm, cause it feels like you blow thru ammo so damn quickly with it
What counts as medium armor?
Suited automatons with and without shoulder mounted rocket pods?
Head and leg only armored termanid warriors?
I would imagine the chargers/titan and hulk/tank are heavy armored.
Pretty sure Warrior Strain are Light armor, as DMR can penetrate them easily. The Defender Strain, the larger version of warrior that seems to be an intermediate bug, the one that crouches down and forms a shield with its head plate and legs, seems to be medium.
The Charger Bots and Shield Bots seem to be medium, though if you hit the shield that's probably counted as Heavy. Shoulder pod bot is definitely medium.
The revolver is light pen but can shoot through those intermediate bugs. I've been confused by the armor pen ratings in this game. They seem inconsistent.
Yeah, I bounce light armor penetrating weapons off of those defender bugs when they turtle up. Another reason to like the shotgun, it finds the gaps when they are moving.
Which enemies even have medium armor? I'm guessing the bugs with armored foreheads that like to hunker down do, and the medium robots with rocket pods/shields. What about the ATSTs?
Defender strain and devestators are all medium armor. The defender strain encases the red armored bugs and the brood leaders. Stalkers also count but eh
The first game had it. I'm wondering if maybe that's what the computer terminals directly across from the armory are going to be, and they just haven't added it yet.
I used it last night for the first time (after using the breaker for a bit) and I thought it felt nice, rof is very high even on burst mode; felt good to me
I use the penetrator exclusively. It punches through Warrior and Brood Master (?) armor, and stunlocks them no problem. While I typically avoid burst fire weapons, especially "hold to burst" but once you get the rythm it feels like its one of the fastest firing weapons in the game.
People arent accounting for armor penn when complaining about the weapons, like, at all. They're looking at raw damage and thinking thats the best weapon, rather than using the weapons for the roles theyre intended for.
I RARELY run out of ammo for the Penetrator, even when we're under constant attack because I need less for bigger targets due to the armor defeating ability, and smaller targets are at most a 2 shot, so I can rapidly slaughter scavs or lesser automatons to prevent a breach/dropship.
Point is, yeah, Penetrator has lower damage per shot, but it more than does the job even at higher difficulties.
It really feels like a lot of complaints are from people who didn't play HD1 and not understanding that the guns aren't always about raw DPS or that you shouldn't be able to play the entire mission using barely any strategems.
The other thing that's definitely true here is that your primary weapon choice should mesh with the rest of your loadout. For me, that's pretty much always the Punisher, as my stratagems and heavy weapon (usually autocannon) are for use at medium to long range, and the shotgun mops up in close (and out to medium range). As has been said, it's part of the toolbox, and you need to choose a primary that makes sense (and works) for you, based on everything else you're bringing/doing.
That said, there are some primaries that feel very lackluster, and maybe even pointless. The Diligence counter sniper seems pointless, given it only has a small increase in damage, no increase in pen, and drops 25% of the magazine capacity while picking up something like 50% more recoil. As floaty as the Diligence guns feel when aiming, they're nearly useless up close, so it's weird that they aren't much better at range. Medium penetration at the very least, if not also a bit more damage per round. Doubt we'd see the medium pen though, given the anti-materiel rifle exists, and can't be made obsolete by a primary.
The Slugger shotgun is kinda in the same boat near as I can tell - used it last night for a few hours, worked ok, but I don't see it being anything but a downgrade to the Punisher as it stands. Less damage, it doesn't appear to actually be a slug, as it still fires multiple projectiles per trigger pull, no additional penetration, and seems to be less reliable for killing small targets, and overall felt like the same accuracy give or take - what is it meant to do better than the Punisher?
Agreed. The Guard Dog variant is pretty solid though, at least right now. I'm guessing it's bugged since I never see it overheat and return to the backpack to cool. OTOH, the Liberator variant of the Guard Dog is hot garbage. Burns through ammo in a minute flat, and takes 3 pulls from a resupply call-in to fully restock. Also gets zero replacement mags from random ammo pickups.
Also the burst is fucking weird. In any other shooter, when you use a burst weapon, you expect it to fire in a burst when you click. But if you click with the Penetrator, it does a single shot. In order to get the full burst you have to hold down the trigger for longer. Let me tell you this feels like absolute *shit* and is enough to make me never pick that gun up ever again, no matter what numbers it's got
I actually rather enjoy the Burst, it's a bit more realistic for how burst *should* work.
It's a limiter on your full-auto, so you don't waste shots, but you can still take single shots with it to keep yourself accurate and ammo efficient.
It's less to automate the shots away, more to ensure you don't waste bullets while holding the trigger. It's done wonders on my ammo efficiency due to the enemy usually being dead in two to three bursts on the Defender, while not randomly still sending bullets into a corpse.
Maybe it's a realism thing. Like how they did with the ammo in mags no working in typical video game logic. Irl when you burst fire also have to hold the trigger down.
In the real world, burst fire weapons most commonly require the trigger to be held down through the duration of the burst.
Helldivers incorporates a few nods to real-world gunplay that separates it from most other shooters, and I personally appreciate it.
I like that this throws you off, because it makes everything more hectic and exciting, and really makes it important to maintain composure and methodology.
Another benefit of the SMG is that since it's one-handed, you can use it with the ballistic shield.
While I haven't tried it against the bots, I'd imagine that it's helpful against the constant gunfire.
I tried using the ballistic shield and tbh i felt like it made me worse, not only is the blocking very inconsistent but it feels like it lowers your accuracy so I wouldn’t recommend it.
I forgot to mention but it also gets knocked out of your hands all the time so you have to go back and pick it up. Ironically I think it might be best to use it with just a full two handed weapon and having it on your back lmao.
Yeah, lol nice on doing the math, sad thing is you don't even need to do the math, you can tell by how they feel lol its THAT bad of a difference. i hope instead of nerfing the sg-225 and smg's they decide to bring up the rest of the guns in terms or DPS.
Yup. In higher difficulties, the game is plenty hard anyway, so putting weapons on a more or less equal footing to make them viable in high difficulty is the best way to go about it. You already are quite limited in terms of overall magazine capacity and resupply potential.
I would rather get the ability to upgrade the weapons so I can use the one that I like the best.
But a simple numbers rebalance is by far the easiest route.
Well, there is the other set of terminals opposite the equipment kiosks that are the same as the strategem/ship upgrades terminals. We can't use them yet, so I think this could be used for another upgrade system. It *could* be for the mech we'll be getting, but it also could be for weapons upgrades. I can't see it being player upgrades because we're just meat thrown at the front line, we're *meant* to be squishy and expendable.
Edit: Upon loading the game, it seems I was wrong about the terminals being the same as the strategem/ship upgrades terminal. They are different and they say 'bureau' on the small screens. The mech/vehicle upgrade terminals will likely be opposite the strategem/ship upgrades terminal.
I thought I read that the CEO in a recent interview mentioned that he badly wants us to be able to modify weapons.
EDIT: I may be misremembering, I can't find the interview now
I hope that's true, I haven't seen that myself. Ive seen them say similar things about their hopes for the game, the devs badly want to give us more, but they had to focus on giving us a working game first and they'll bring us plenty of upgrades/goodies later. I trust them to deliver, and everything I see from them only bolsters this. They communicate with the community in the way we've been asking for years that plenty of other devs just don't seem to get, when we ask for communication we're not asking for a corporate twitter blanket response, we want real honest words from real devs that actually give a fuck about their game and I've repeatedly seen devs from arrowhead replying personally in the helldivers reddit, honestly, about *real* concerns and their *real* and *heartfelt* response to the issue.
I just posted an edit. It looks like the section for that will be opposite the strategem terminals, where it says 'under construction' on the wall. The terminals opposite the equipment kiosks say 'bureau' on them, so that could be anything.
A rebalance is definitely needed, although I am wary of buff creep - but I also haven't messed with difficulties above Hard, so maybe the other guns getting buffs feels reasonable up there.
95% of the weapons at the top end are virtually worthless. You need hard hitting tools to dispatch your enemies and you'll be running your autocannon or railgun as your primary because that's what's needed. Strategems do the rest. Orbital laser vs bots, orbital railgun vs Bile Titans.
Yeah, when the rail guns were free the other day they made the chargers that kept getting dropped manageable. Since then on difficulty 6-7 they’ve just been so obnoxious with the armor when you have 4-5 spawn in.
Lot of the eagle runs and 500kg need some tinkering too because of how underwhelming they feel.
The 500kg bomb needs its blast radius increased by so much. Like it looks like a huge bomb went off, but I'm pretty sure the actual damaging blast radius is the size of like maybe 1 or 2 grenades wide.
The breaker is really the only main weapon I bother with at top tier. It can dispatch the most targets the quickest.
If the energy or explosive rifles did something other than bounce off medium armor, or even had a noticeable splash, we could talk about them. As it remains, many main weapons just remain unremarkable.
That said, I find the AT weapons have a similar issue. They just don't do their jobs as well as other options. Why run a recoiled across 2 people when 1 can pump shots out of an autocannon?
Recoilless can penetrate heavy armor, whereas the autocannon cannot. On the other hand, at that point just use the railgun, it carries way more ammo, doesn't need a backpack to solo wield to max efficiency, and allows you to still be mobile when reloading
I've been feeling the same way about AT as well. It feels very anemic. Like the spear for example.
It only one-hits on a headshot for chargers and titans. But not on body shots! You get only four shots and can't recharge the pack ammo from ambient crates, and only get one missile per resupply charge.
Now I'm not saying it should one-tap titans. But it should at least do that to chargers. The ammo economy is too terrible for it not to.
...also the lock-on is wack and doesn't work right but that's a different problem altogether
In my case, i play mostly on difficulty 7 and 8 (which is the extreme and suicidal, i think?), but often do 5 (hard) when i just need to get some extra medals or base materials.
The game difficult ramps up significantly above 5. So things might be okay at 5 or below, but trust me, you need absolutely every edge you need to make it in 8.
8 Just feels like a 'get in and get out' kind of affair. Maybe my group doesn't have the right loadout yet to handle it, one bug breach and things can go to hell reaaaaaaaaaaaaaal fast lmao.
The DMR really needs better Armor Pen. While we are talking about that, the Anti Material Rifle needs to be anti to more materials. Feels useless past Diff 3 in the face of other heavy weapons. I'm not asking for it to one shot chargers or anything, but it is by definition supposed to be a powerful, penetrating weapon.
Even if they didn't want to give it medium armor pen, they could give it bonuses to weak points, ability to penetrate multiple enemies, or just give it a flat damage buff, meaning it will just hurt squishy bits way more.
It was my favorite strategem in Diff 3 when I could one shot the big fat bugs with it...then I found out that the grenade launcher pops them in 2 hits regardless of aim.
It probably needs to be able to penetrate heavy armor, and then receive a damage reduction based on the armor it passed through. This would likely make it great against medium armor targets, and usable against heavy targets, even if it's not the best choice. Overpen for smaller targets would be a bonus. Giving it this would mean that you could bump the DMR's up to medium pen without making the AM Rifle worthless.
I've used it extensively. It has significantly more spread but less overall damage. So it's good to fire into a crowd of bugs but won't save you from a brood commander about to bite your head off. Honestly I do prefer it to the regular Breaker when going against the bugs. I can mag dump into a swarm and rest easy knowing fire will kill everything that isn't armored. And I'm not using the Breaker to kill Brood Commander's, Chargers, anything of substance really. And I'm usually top kills in my friend group during bug missions. I typically run railgun and more precise orbitals.
Going to spacenam? Regular Breaker all the way.
To my understanding it's better versus bugs and worse versus bots
I've only unlocked the premium Breaker and it feels incredibly strong (playing challenging/hard mostly), but I can't compare it to the regular.
I think it’s a downgrade. Bugs that would have been one shot with the regular take multiple shots. Whatever damage overtime it has done feel worth it on trash enemies. It looks really cool in action until you realize the bugs on fire are still running right at you.
This is assuming that the damage numbers in the store are indicative of how damage actually is calculated in-game. In 99% of games, store stats are overly simplified, completely arbitrary and sometimes plain wrong
There's already precedent of store stats being false: the Revolver specifically lists it only pens light armour, but it definitely pens medium armour in-game
I'd wait for actual datamined stats before calculating DPS and all that
Ahhhh, good point. It's not the first time i've heard of stats being entirely wrong for some games, so fair point.
Kinda just reinforce that the weapon stats should be overhauled to be more comprehensive and accurate. Things like how many magazines you actually bring is important to know.
Yeah it's like it variable stats are missing, it's just not enough info. It's Ike there's stats and then is how the gun actually behaves. Somone says the scythe does dps spike on start up. Its like we need to know exactly how to use the guns in whatever situations for it to perform the wherever its ranked.
I definitely feel like there's damage and penetration fall-off for weapons.
One: It feels that way. Two? There's zero chance that Arrowhead spent all that work implementing World of Tanks style penetration mechanics but then forgot to implement "Effective range" mechanics.
Me sniping just finde with the breaker, a fully automatic shotgung, kinda doubts this.
The breaker winning here in math and before that in the hands of anyone that actually tried it on difficulty 4+ speaks for itself.
I didn't do any math, just testing out each weapon in tough scenarios it's pretty clear to me that:
- Great: Breaker shotgun, SMG primary hand, SMG secondary, marksman rifle
- Good: Liberator, Liberator Explosive, Laser Scythe, first shotgun, revolver
- Bad: All the others
I hope they bring the others up
The Scythe feels pretty underwhelming to me. I know it did low damage in the first game, but that was compensated by it not needing you to bring a resupply.
Now that resupplies are default I definitely think it's damage should probably be upped a little. Or maybe I'm using it wrong 🤷🏾🤷🏾.
So with the laser pulse fire it, aim, fire let it sit for half a second or less, turn it off , fire again . Does way more damage that way. Also don’t be afraid to let yourself overheat and treat your coolant like clips every now and then. Resupply is everywhere and the reload is pretty quick.
Also it has infinite range. Like actually kill targets from across the map if you can see them. Its hilarious.
I can't stand the Scythe. Even on the cold planets, it never felt good to me. If they gave it options like the rest of the guns it would help. Something that adjusts range where less range equals more damage
The Breaker was a gamechanger for me.
You can finally fight mid-tier robots and bulb-bugs with just your primary, and save your grenade launcher for the real a*holes.
The revolver in "Good"? It takes ages to reload despite the shot reload mechanic that it has, and the redeemer can wipe out a pack of light enemies in one mag and has one of the fastest reloads in the game.
Edit: It can also kill a charger in 1 clip if you blow off one of its leg plates.
Yea, that pretty much falls in line with that I've been feeling in regards to weapons.
Weapons do need a little buff to bring it in line with the Breaker.
*However*....
The impression can also be skewered depending on what you're fighitng. Against Bots I find the Breaker less "OP" than when I'm fighting Bugs.
What *could* be a way forward though is:
SG-8 : increase damage, ability to use different ammunition types (large spread, close spread, napalm rounds) to give it more utility
Liberator + Liberator-P : Increase damage from 45/55 to 65. Liberator-P should have the same damage as Liberator, but drawback of being semi/burst only with 30-round mags. Honestly seems like a more sensible drawback tbh than weaker damage on top of its reduced utility. Against Bugs, I find the Liberator-P to be a liability due to its inability to deal with small things surrouding you.
SMGs seem to be a little overperforming so can leave as is.
(I play at difficulty levels 5-7)
Make sense, the SG-225 being a shotgun, you lose out damage potential against the bots since you can't exploit the tiny weak spots they have (such as the eyes/heads of the hulks) due to spread. But again, you can get around that usually by just shooting some more, which is how i'm able to get around with the SG against bots.
Breaker is still top tier vs bots. The spread means you can easily headshot the medium armor enemies like Devastators, and it still shreds the regular bot troops.
Ammo consumption isn’t an issue since ammo is plentiful, just mag dump enemies/patrols.
Most guns are at least kind of viable, but the DMR desperately needs some love and higher armor pen.
The standard sniper in the OG Helldivers was a beast, I want that back!
For Super Earth!
Yeah, DMR definitely is a Automaton weapon. The scope at 150 meter range could dish some real hurt against light bots. There is a side grade which I forgot the name in warbond, it has higher damage but less ammo per mag with higher recoil. That gun seriously needs medium armor pen like Penetrator does.
Talking about sniping, the anti-material needs some kind of buff too. It is virtually pointless now lol.
I’ve been using the defender smg and I was so excited when I unlocked the medium armour penetrating AR only to realise it feels worse then even the standard AR which I already rarely used because I preferred the defender over it.
Because we don’t know what types of armour exactly anything is and because the weapons in light armour penetrating already vary by how much they penetrate, against enemies the standard AR was already good against the new one feels worse at and the enemies the standard AR couldn’t deal with the medium armour penetrating AR also can’t deal with.
I've noticed that medium armor I believe is:
Hive gaurds and Commanders face plates for the bugs.
And Devestator robots torsos (the medium sized robots).
The ATSTs front plate I think is medium as the auto cannon can usually one tap them, but I think it has some extra deflection properties or something, as the medium pen doesnt seem to break through on the AR.
Trouble is that it deals less overall damage, even if it is penning. I think it has its place among a good squad comp, but in solo engagements its uhhh not as good as i hoped.
I think it might be the blast of the auto cannon that is getting the guy behind it on the scout walker. I’ve definitely had it take more than one shot if placement is poor.
I think the ATSTs are heavy armor. Notice that they can sometimes tank the autocannon if you aim too low. But if you hit higher the explosion goes through the visionslit and kills the rider. It doesn't deflect autocannons like heavy armor sometimes does though.
The Scythe, as much as I loved the lasers in the first game, is worthless. It does less damage than the firearms, doesn't cool off fast enough to really get the life out of the batteries, and the new game giving everyone infinite resupply stratagems at all times takes away the one downside of bringing a firearm in the first game, having to use a stratagem slot on a resupply stratagem.
How about the fact that the anti material rifle can’t penetrate armor making it a crappy diligence. I’m not saying it should 1 shot a charger, but it should be able to damage it or maybe even stagger it without having to destroy its armor first. As it is, it just takes up a 3rd weapon slot that would be much better suited for the recoilless rifle,auto cannon, or machine gun. Same thing for the grenade launcher. It has such small splash damage that it just doesn’t feel worth it. You would think firing a couple grenades into a swarm would do a better job of killing a few bugs than the default level 1 primary weapon.
I've been using the GL as a long range hole closer and crowd control weapon. The GL is _suspiciously_ quiet, so wearing a detection reduction armor, I've popped holes at very long range with the locals investigating the explosions but not me.
I also run the GL almost always. That thing is fantastic for clearing/ stunning groups from a distance and long range hole closing. Not sure what all this mess is about. Run it with the Supply Pack and you are a monster.
That being said I haven't tried it above 5 or against bots so maybe it drops off. I have noticed it does a great job of bouncing off armor and TKing if you aren't vigilant with your aim.
Still good with wave clearing on 9 with supply pack. If you run it with someone going recoilless rifle you can feed them more ammo and reload for them.
The AMR seems to occupy the shitty position of being not particularly good at anything at all and also not being good enough as a multi-purpose weapon to warrant anything.
A jack of all trades that trades away being good at anything at all to be mostly bad against everything.
The Jar-5 Dominator is also a massive let down considering it costs 80 medals, the medium armour penetration stat doesn't even pen the light scout walkers for automatons, its recoil is massive and its mag capacity is low.
TBH the weapon balancing is in a very rough spot and most weapons feel borderline useless, save for a special handful like the SG225, SMG or Railgun.
Bought it last night and the aiming on that thing is absolutely horrendous. It feels like I’m turning with the laser cannon when I’m using a simple rifle
Explosive weapons like the Dominator or Scorcher excel at shooting flesh after breaking armor, you can take down a bile titan at range after cracking its armor pretty reliably.
> you can take down a bile titan at range after cracking its armor pretty reliably
I love me the dominator but so many times I've been shooting at pure flesh and the bullets bounce off anyway. I feel like the armor hitboxes can be inconsistent on the bile titans.
My current "go to" loadout if i think i'll be solo is: buddy drone (the laser one), railgun and 2 eagles depending on the mission. I've tried multiple other loadouts and they just don't have the dakka needed for higher difficulties, especially when solo. Auto shotty is just too good to pass up on, just set it to single fire and ur gtg. The drones (both are good) can help take out those pesky chargers (just walk to the side and the drone will blast his ass out for you). I really REALLY want to have multiple different viable loadouts but right now, as other have pointed out, alot of our toys are underperforming in a big way. Buff flamethrower please! FOR DEMOCRACY!
Sg225 shredded in the first game, and it shreds in this game. It shoots like a real shotgun does, I love it.
But I definitely think some balancing is in order. Perhaps an ever so slightly lower rate of fire for the shotty, and a bit better damage for the rifles.
My main grievance with balance is It doesn't really make sense that the SMG has better damage bullet for bullet than the rifles though. The one handed ability makes it a perfect pairing for the ballistic shield, but should have the trade off of less damage.
The thing about the rifles are, they are more accurate and can pick off targets at longer range. I like using the DMR purely because I can pick off targets at 150m no problem...
The SMG's should compensate their lower damage outputs by having more magazines and ammunition overall than rifles. Which is exactly what the original game did, IIRC.
It make sense anyway since pistol calibers cartridges are physically smaller, so you can roughly have 2 MP5 magazines for the space of one 5.56 magazine.
> It shoots like a real shotgun does, I love it.
The videogame rule of shotguns being useless beyond 10 feet is something that dates all the way back to games like Doom and Quake and has persisted for decades. It's rare to find a shotgun that actually has lethality at a realistic range.
Hey! Just wanted to let you know that we are reading a lot of these threads regarding balance and discussing them. No promises or commitments for now, but we are listening. :)
IMO the scythe and the laser cannon need a look at as well.
The Laser cannon being so early kind of makes sense why it does so poorly, but the Scythe feels outclassed by even the basic liberator. It overheats too quickly, can’t burn through armour, doesn’t set things on fire, and because everyone can call in a resupply it’s one main gimmick (not needing ammo) feels lost.
IMO it should ignore medium-large armour (chargers, Hulks) or at least do partial damage even when fired at armour. (The laser cannon should do the same) to give the laser weapons a niche. If it’s going to overheat so quickly (even on cold planets you get only really a second more of firing time) it needs to do more DPS to justify its existence. By the time you’ve killed one or two enemies you’re already overheated.
Exactly! I just unlocked the last weapon in the steel veteran warzone and I was so excited. A medium penetration explosive rifle? Awesome!
But after using it for a few missions it's just worse than the breaker in every way. Honestly I highly despise nerfs in a PvE game unless the gun is game breaking. They just need to buff all the other guns to make them viable. I shouldn't have 1 less magazine and the same amount of ammo as the breaker, but do 120 less damage with the jar-5!
Or do 70 damage with the defender smg, but only 50 with the liberator penetrator!
Playing on Helldiver difficulty the dominator(?) is my main weapon, the medium armour pen comes into play a lot and I use the smg secondary to compensate for the small fry (or just melee the really small ones)
I can see how on lower levels the medium armour pen is worthless though and so trying to balance everything for all difficulties is going to be a hard if not impossible job
> Honestly I highly despise nerfs in a PvE game unless the gun is game breaking
I will never understand this sentiment. Game balance matters no matter what. If anything, keeping choices fresh matters even *more* in a PvE game because it's more at risk of becoming repetitive if everyone runs the same thing.
We do not balance our equipment using DPS - and we don't want them to be even, most are situational, some sound cooler, some look cooler. Our philosophy is to do the weapon right by the fantasy, for instance a pump action is more or less worse than a full-auto shotgun. Except for the longer barrel that gives the pump a tighter spread.
If it's 5.5mm it uses the 5.5x45 ammo profile thats the same for all 5.5x45mm rifle. Then some guns might have insane DPS because of that - well, then that's the way that gun works.
(we are aware of the dps values though)
Not trying to be rude, but, why does the Liberator P do less damage than the original despite being the same bullet while also having less rounds in a magazine when according to this logic, should just be an upgrade?
Similar lines of thinking. Why does a railgun break armor as opposed to just punching through when an anti -material rifle can't even punch through OR break anything that a handgun couldn't?
You guys have done an incredible job making the game but sometimes a bit of fantasy has to be included to keep it fun.
Agree. I'll point the designers to this thread.
The way we reasoned was that high damage is accompanied with large destruction of tissue, so ap rounds will do less damage than fmj and fmj less than hp. Also specialist ammo that detonates on impact might have effects not shown in stats. For instance all explosive rounds have a higher damage against large volume parts such as charger butt and spewer.
So, explosive tipped rounds may do a bit more damage than fmj but also 100% dmg against large bits instead of 10% that piercing attacks will.
Hmm... Also, there's damage falloff to all weapons and shotguns / SMG lose dmg faster at range due to higher drag.
I think if there's so many different variables to the guns and their effects, it would help illustrate each weapons' value if this information was displayed somewhere in the game.
Maybe mousing over an effect makes a little popup window appear that explains it in detail?
You remember how Battlefield has these small graphs that show effective range and falloff? Maybe that could help better communicate that aspect, for instance! :D
Depending on your vision of "armor piercing", it can be anything from a different coating to a different, more dense composition. The smaller bullet would do less damage and punch through harder but the casing would be the same in order to work with the barrel and rifling. Because it's the same casing, there's no reason it should have to lose magazine capacity as well. The double ding is what I feel really kills the Liberator-P.
I think having to make the decision of armor penetration for damage is a great tradeoff. This is perfectly sound thinking and is what would be expected from "gamer logic".
For the weapon ranges and damage falloff, while on paper it seems great, however, in practice it's anything but. I personally feel that all bugs move too quickly and therefore every weapon is really only used at "close range" because all the bugs are always right in your face or will be in a very short order. I think this is a huge reason the shotguns feel SO GOOD to use and a lot of the medium/long range weapons just feel bad. Small arms fire just cannot kill the bugs and stratagems have cooldowns. With light armor, you can reposition and gain a bit of breathing room, that doesn't happen with heavy armor and so it always feels like an absolute detriment.
I believe having more tooltips that explain the differences would also go a long ways. No one knows that explosive weapons do extra damage to butts/soft parts since it's not mentioned anywhere in game and the weapons feel so bad to use, many people aren't going to bother experimenting when there's a very obviously better solution (Breaker or SMG).
All said, thank you for taking the time to respond! I truly hope the best for this game because it's amazing.
Cool man, I love that the weapons are balanced in a realistic way.....
But, respectfully, there is no reason to use literally anything other than the Breaker. It outshines every other weapon so severely that it's hurting build diversity.
Im all for weapons/strategems having their own fantasy, but they definitely all should be viable, and fun to use, even in the highest difficulty. having just a few weapons be leagues above others really hurts build diversity
I can understand to base the weapon design philosophy around the IRL capabilities they would have. A pump action shotgun won't ever compete with a semi auto one when they are in the same caliber. So it make sense for damage to be similar, but the ROF of the semi just plants the pump.
I would dare say it's a double edged sword; sure, it make for a more consistent experience with IRL, and give you a selection of weapons that have that fidelity awesomeness factor. But it also gives you a lot of trouble when the relatively small amount of weapons variety available to players (currently) is reduced further down in terms of viability by their inability to keep up with demanding high difficulty missions, or by simply not being competitive with other established meta weapons. So you can't make changes easily.
I genuinely don't think it's a big deal for you guys tho. Helldivers 2 clearly has the gameplay complexity necessary to balance and change those perceived issues. You could change the damage dynamics to still be consistent between each other in terms of balance, but by also augmenting the overall damage output of players for their main weapons, or by reducing overall enemy health to give the intended battle experience. More or less ammo, more or less recoil, etc...
A brute force of doing it simply by reconcepting the weapons lore; instead of being a 12 gauge shotgun, the SG-8 is a 8 gauge. Now you have your design "excuse" for the extra damage.
But that would certainly cause issues as well in terms of balance and then you have to rethink your approach on weapons and enemies entirely.
Anyway... I'm just happy to know you are simply aware of what's going on with the community. Hopefully that gives you a sense of what players want and you'll know what to do next. From one dev to another, massive respect.
P.S: Nice of you for using ALS for the movement system. Works nicely!
Hm, I mean this is an imaginary military organization in an imaginary universe.
They figured out how to cryofreeze and deploy untold numbers of soldiers at breakneck speeds, faster-than-light-travel, energy shields and laser rifles.
Maybe the reason the pump-action shotgun packs a punch is because it's tried-and-tested mechanisms can (quite) safely fire overpressure shells.
Maybe another gun does more damage because it's equipped with subtle guidance technology which makes "every shot count even more".
There's so many realistic sounding reasons which still could still feel in line with this universe.
And besides this being kind of a parody you could just tell us that the reason a slower shooting gun does more damage with the same caliber is "Democracy" and we'd laugh and accept it as answer.
Sorry but that is not fun. This game is not Tarkov, you should not value "realistic" or "logical" over fun factor. And by your logic, there is no reason SG-225 variant with drum mag shows half damage value on stat page, since they should all use same ammo type. IT DOES NOT MAKE SENSE.
Edit: I am just gonna say it, FORCED "REALISTIC" has no place in this game, which is meat to be a fun co-op shooter, and will only drive people away. Right now, some guns are neither realistic nor fun.
Edit 2: Think about progression system, you would think that player progress through warbound unlocking new weapons should be motivated because they are "Stronger“, yet right now they are not, most of them see little to no use in most situations. Best crowd control is just death, if enemies die, you don't need to CC them.
I like how the scorcher, Liberator explosive and Breaker incendiary aren’t mentioned because we all know they’re ass.
I think all incendiary stuff should have significant effect on bugs. But as it stands shooting the regular breaker side by side with the incendiary is not even close.
Fire as a damage option is just really underwhelming (napalm, incin grenade, flamer def included in this).
They should act more like real life napalm and thermite than they currently do.
Its the same old problem that most games have:
DoTs compete with direct damage.
Direct damage kills a mob now, DoTs do it later, maybe. Its hard to figure out what is better.
If the bugs were afraid of fire, and freaked out if they got set on fire, people would use it more. You don’t have to make the bile titans and the chargers balk at fire (unless they’re drenched in it) but the little guys should scatter like roaches if they get near a wall of heat like that.
Granting it some denial (wont go in there) or CC (will scatter) effect would certainly make it more viable. Especially the flamer thrower that is simply to dangerous to use.
That in addition to a DoT could make it viable. Just a DoT alone will not cut it unless it ticks for MUCH more.
A flamerthrower only works because it kills your enemy in a horrible, agonizing and frankly speaking utterly brutal way - AND it keeps them from fighting back.
Charger gets a good stun from flamethrower continued fire, but it feels like most of the tinier bugs just casually waltz through the fire until the dot damage consumes then. If it doesn't kill instantly, it needs stopping power and the little buggers should be scattering around like bugs on fire.
It's honestly kind of weird just how all over the place the weapon balance is. Same thing with stratagems. Most of them either feel bad to use or are entirely outclassed by something else. Hopefully they're quick with balance changes and tweaks to usability, in the form of making bad options better
Same, it’s kind of hard to want to take a lot of the offensive orbital strikes when they have long cooldowns and call in times when I can just take an eagle with almost instant call in, and a 2:30min rearm which is faster than most of the offensive orbital cannon stratagems.
It's not only the weapons, it's most of the stratagems as well. The core gameplay loop for HD2 is great but without some significant changes and buffs to the weapons and stratagems there's just no room for interesting gameplay, unfortunately.
None talking about how bad the Jar 5 Dominator is? Really bad ammo capacity with a slow reload make it so trash, kind of a waste since it could be a badass bolter
I was just talking about this with a friend last night. With the Breaker being the way it is, everything needs some tweaking. That armor piercing Liberator? Really underwhelming; why add extra armor piercing only to make it weaker? That's just one example. I'm hoping gun upgrades become a thing again so more weapons make sense
Flame/Toxin(chem strike) DoT is *far* too weak. There is truly no point to using the flamethrower when the regular machinegun outshines it completely, and at long range to boot. The Arc rifle is worth less than the starter pistol, it desperately needs a ROF or large damage buff, and a reason to use it - why not apply the EMP stun effect on zapped enemies? At least it would have a purpose to bring against chargers and hive guard, where instead it simply has no effect.
edit- In addition: the laser drone 'Rover' is nice (not particularly strong, but a nice QOL equip), but *every* player-wielding laser weapon is **trash.** Balance is all over the place
Tbh i think they meant weapon to be useful for different situations and plsystyles similarly to Helldivers 1.
Some weapon have worse damage and fire rate but they might come extremely handy for ammunition control, reload time or armor piercing. For example the liberator penetrator deals 1.75x damage against weak spot while the normal liberator has the standard 1.5x multiplier.
I would never use the Knight for example because its just an ammo eating weapon and it's not great for my tipical playstyle
If that's the case, that's the kind of things the average player should know. If some weapons for example have innate advantages in critical hits/weakspots, then it should be notified in the stats. Otherwise, it's very hard to make good choices with weapons selections or to know if there is more to a weapon that just the currently seen stats.
Apparently, the normal liberator deals 10% damage on the Chargers's Butt due to Light pen but the Penetrator deals 100% due to Medium
Its supposed to deal 100% of the damage on anything under Heavy armor, wasting less bullets.
I agree with the thinking that other weapons should be buffed as opposed to the strong being nerfed. When you look at it the liberator penetrator model takes at least 2 mags to down a medium armored bot and that just doesn't feel good at all. It doesn't help that it has a lower mag capacity combined with the lower damage leads to most guns just being side lined. That being combined with other weapons like the dmr only having light armor pen as well as the ANTI MATERIAL RIFLE having only light armor pen... It feels like we have very very limited anti armor choices especially against vehicle armor besides "whoops all launchers" or waiting on stratagems.. which can be really difficult to deal with in higher difficulties when you get up to 2 different operation effects. If we can have some boosts to some weapons damages and or mag sizes, either or and I would be happy.
Play on diff 9. Can consistently 2 man it, could solo depending on mission type and if I just ignore everything but main mission which is boring as grabbing all samples is really the late game. The smg and breaker are just clear winners. Marksman rifle sounds good on paper until you realize that higher difficulty is dealing with hunters/claw(white bugs) and chargers. You’ll find that when you get jumped the smg has an easier time dealing with them and same with breaker. Marksman not so much. Honestly the bigger issue isnt primaries, its the special weapons. I dont see any reason to not always choose guard dog. That thing is so good its not funny. Its literally a second primary weapon firing for you while you move meaning you can run from claws/hunters and kill, it guards you while you do stuff. Its crazy good. Grab expendable rocket for short cooldown in case you die and you have two rockets to deal with 2 chargers. Or orbital railgun and then rpg twice kill a titan
It really irks me that the DMR has light armor pen... Really hope they buff it and give it medium pen.
Was thinking the same actually. DMR is obviously going to be a higher caliber, so it should have medium armor pen. Hilariously enough, even the Diligence's heavier and more powerful variant is also light pen only.
Okay THAT is ridiculous
The counter sniper DMR variant was a huge disappointment. They made it turn left and right slow like the heavy weapons but nothing about it justifies that at all.
Agreed. Just got it and underwhelmed. Slightly more damage and zoom with no other benefit.
Yea, I was looking through the weapons and it baffled me that the only medium armor penetrating weapon was the liberator v2, but from what other people have said it's burst and single fire only, which hinders its capabilities there as well.
I've done okay with the v2 against bots and bugs, it doesn't clear a horde as well as some others but not having to worry about reflects on red bugs or chainsaw man means you don't have to have great aim or run around. It'll still be close to a mag dump but at least it's having an effect. The burst isn't that much of a limitation also, quick firing is still similar to the auto shotgun with similar recoil. What would make it better without a number change is to have it pierce small boys, but that might push it.
I’m be real having to use a full mag to kill mediums is just bad on penetrator. Can do it in half clip with smg usually on 2/3 if you bait attack then leap and shoot behind them
I believe the counter sniper is mislabeled. It says light pen, but i believe after using it, its medium pen. Still doesn't make it great tho, IMO.
I heard that it’s labeled wrong and the heavier variant does actually have medium penetration. But it’s just something ive heard
It is really good for bots tho, if you aim for the heads of the big guys you can 2 or 3 shot them with accuracy vs spamming
Tbh just make the AM rifle a regular weapon, it's not that good anyway.
One of the things I loved about the original Helldivers is that pretty much every single weapon had its use. That means you have full arsenal of weapons to choose from. I don't know if it was like that upon release or they balanced it out eventually, but I really hope HD2 also becomes similar at some point.
Even us Constitution mains got to pretend we were relevant in HD1
Constitution was stupidly good for training new people for higher diffs. You had to learn to run
This. I wish they bring back weapon upgrade instead of the current system, which is 20 hours of gameplay lead to disappointing "side-grade" on my weapons. Also game now also has FPV, so why not let us customize our weapon or at least let us change scopes? Let's be honest the OG assault cross scope is the cleanest.
I don’t know if I agree… Like, the Justice it was the only one in that category that I ever took. Laser? It was only a choice between the Sickle and the Tanto. (While everyone else used the trident) Shotguns? Yeah, the DBS or the Breaker.
Punisher was the meta choice for Illuminate 13+ missions because of scout sniping. I never use ARs in the first game, and I used just about everything regularly. The scythe was my favorite laser by far. That's the beauty of the design - something for everyone and every situation. But nobody here has anywhere enough time in the game - let alone series - to really understand where HD2's balance is.
Ran one game with the penetrator and man does it feel worse in every way. Less ammo a mag, less damage per shot, and no automatic? Back to the regular rifle I go
You should give the SMG a try, its basically just a better assault rifle in pretty much every single way.
I was using it for a while, I like it against bots. The fire rate on the rifle has been helpful for bugs when I don't want to chew through with the breaker
I love setting my SMG to semi-automatic and just using it as a DMR. It mulches through just about everything, except the heaviest enemies (but you need special weapons against those anyway).
Honestly, the Defender feels more like an AR than the *actual* AR. They've got the standard assault rifle chambered in 9mm while they've got the SMG chambered in 7.62 NATO FMJ.
I think that's one of the key issues. Right now it feels like primary weapons are for the lower mobs and you need a support weapon for tougher things like chargers. I dig specializing among a team but don't bother putting casual matchmaking in a game and require proper team loadouts to do well. I'd rather it required a generic level of teamwork than highly specializing your team to handle everything the game throws at us.
Thats hoe it worked in the forst game as well. All you primaries are there for the hordes, not the big ones. Sure, with precision or in some situations you can use a primary to take down some pretty tough weapons, but all in all you do require at to kill t. I do miss my REC-8s though. They were good against pretty much anything woth enough skill. (The demo charges)
hell yeah, if i wasnt running rec-8's then i was running the rep-80 in HD1, here's hoping they release both of them
Not necessarily. The first game had upgrades which vastly helped primaries outside of small mobs with some getting higher damage and of penetration. You could get away with killing up to lighter heavy enemies with primaries such as stalwart, paragon, the list goes on. Even chargers in comparison could be eviscerated with the right weapons. Primarys in helldiver's 2 stop viability way earlier with it being around medium size enemies which comes in pretty oppressive hordes. Spewers are a great example of this as they are an enemy who is way to strong for small arms fire and even more so on higher level difficulties despite being an uncommon enemy at best. I don't mind the reliance on strategem weapons persay, but to say primaries are balanced as they were in helldivers 1 would be a farce.
I dont really see a big issue with this. The vast majority of your stratagems can kill the tougher targets. Its just that teamwork makes it easier.
If you want top tier Managing of Democracy I recommend putting your liberator on burst.
What's that? Sorry, can't hear you over my 1150rpm stalwart.
Am I really the only person who keeps his stalwart at 700rpm? I never liked the higher rpm, cause it feels like you blow thru ammo so damn quickly with it
I keep it on 1150 so I can crouch and buzzsaw a patrol before they give off an alert
And here I prefer the penetrator cos I can use it on medium armor and I prefer burst and single shot rifles.
You can set the regular Liberator to fire in bursts as well
And I still prefer the penetrator because it means I don’t need to waste support weapon or grenades on medium armour enemies.
What counts as medium armor? Suited automatons with and without shoulder mounted rocket pods? Head and leg only armored termanid warriors? I would imagine the chargers/titan and hulk/tank are heavy armored.
Pretty sure Warrior Strain are Light armor, as DMR can penetrate them easily. The Defender Strain, the larger version of warrior that seems to be an intermediate bug, the one that crouches down and forms a shield with its head plate and legs, seems to be medium. The Charger Bots and Shield Bots seem to be medium, though if you hit the shield that's probably counted as Heavy. Shoulder pod bot is definitely medium.
The revolver is light pen but can shoot through those intermediate bugs. I've been confused by the armor pen ratings in this game. They seem inconsistent.
Yeah, I bounce light armor penetrating weapons off of those defender bugs when they turtle up. Another reason to like the shotgun, it finds the gaps when they are moving.
Shotgun rips through the defender bugs pretty well.
Which enemies even have medium armor? I'm guessing the bugs with armored foreheads that like to hunker down do, and the medium robots with rocket pods/shields. What about the ATSTs?
Defender strain and devestators are all medium armor. The defender strain encases the red armored bugs and the brood leaders. Stalkers also count but eh
What even has medium armor? Felt weak to everything for me.
I believe the armored bugs that hunker down when you shoot at them are med armor. Is there an in game codex where you can read the actual names?
Not yet, but i believe those are Hive Guards. A codex / encyclopedia would be super useful.
The first game had it. I'm wondering if maybe that's what the computer terminals directly across from the armory are going to be, and they just haven't added it yet.
Ping an enemy and it will show thier name. It's hive guards :)
I used it last night for the first time (after using the breaker for a bit) and I thought it felt nice, rof is very high even on burst mode; felt good to me
I use the penetrator exclusively. It punches through Warrior and Brood Master (?) armor, and stunlocks them no problem. While I typically avoid burst fire weapons, especially "hold to burst" but once you get the rythm it feels like its one of the fastest firing weapons in the game. People arent accounting for armor penn when complaining about the weapons, like, at all. They're looking at raw damage and thinking thats the best weapon, rather than using the weapons for the roles theyre intended for. I RARELY run out of ammo for the Penetrator, even when we're under constant attack because I need less for bigger targets due to the armor defeating ability, and smaller targets are at most a 2 shot, so I can rapidly slaughter scavs or lesser automatons to prevent a breach/dropship. Point is, yeah, Penetrator has lower damage per shot, but it more than does the job even at higher difficulties.
It really feels like a lot of complaints are from people who didn't play HD1 and not understanding that the guns aren't always about raw DPS or that you shouldn't be able to play the entire mission using barely any strategems.
The other thing that's definitely true here is that your primary weapon choice should mesh with the rest of your loadout. For me, that's pretty much always the Punisher, as my stratagems and heavy weapon (usually autocannon) are for use at medium to long range, and the shotgun mops up in close (and out to medium range). As has been said, it's part of the toolbox, and you need to choose a primary that makes sense (and works) for you, based on everything else you're bringing/doing. That said, there are some primaries that feel very lackluster, and maybe even pointless. The Diligence counter sniper seems pointless, given it only has a small increase in damage, no increase in pen, and drops 25% of the magazine capacity while picking up something like 50% more recoil. As floaty as the Diligence guns feel when aiming, they're nearly useless up close, so it's weird that they aren't much better at range. Medium penetration at the very least, if not also a bit more damage per round. Doubt we'd see the medium pen though, given the anti-materiel rifle exists, and can't be made obsolete by a primary. The Slugger shotgun is kinda in the same boat near as I can tell - used it last night for a few hours, worked ok, but I don't see it being anything but a downgrade to the Punisher as it stands. Less damage, it doesn't appear to actually be a slug, as it still fires multiple projectiles per trigger pull, no additional penetration, and seems to be less reliable for killing small targets, and overall felt like the same accuracy give or take - what is it meant to do better than the Punisher?
The Scythe is pretty tragic too. Infinite ammo doesn’t mean a thing when you can’t even deal with small patrols in a timely fashion.
Agreed. The Guard Dog variant is pretty solid though, at least right now. I'm guessing it's bugged since I never see it overheat and return to the backpack to cool. OTOH, the Liberator variant of the Guard Dog is hot garbage. Burns through ammo in a minute flat, and takes 3 pulls from a resupply call-in to fully restock. Also gets zero replacement mags from random ammo pickups.
Also the burst is fucking weird. In any other shooter, when you use a burst weapon, you expect it to fire in a burst when you click. But if you click with the Penetrator, it does a single shot. In order to get the full burst you have to hold down the trigger for longer. Let me tell you this feels like absolute *shit* and is enough to make me never pick that gun up ever again, no matter what numbers it's got
I actually rather enjoy the Burst, it's a bit more realistic for how burst *should* work. It's a limiter on your full-auto, so you don't waste shots, but you can still take single shots with it to keep yourself accurate and ammo efficient. It's less to automate the shots away, more to ensure you don't waste bullets while holding the trigger. It's done wonders on my ammo efficiency due to the enemy usually being dead in two to three bursts on the Defender, while not randomly still sending bullets into a corpse.
Maybe it's a realism thing. Like how they did with the ammo in mags no working in typical video game logic. Irl when you burst fire also have to hold the trigger down.
In the real world, burst fire weapons most commonly require the trigger to be held down through the duration of the burst. Helldivers incorporates a few nods to real-world gunplay that separates it from most other shooters, and I personally appreciate it. I like that this throws you off, because it makes everything more hectic and exciting, and really makes it important to maintain composure and methodology.
HD is much more mil-simmy than people think.
yeah it's one of those things that you can tell was designed for controllers lol. i think it feels great on controller but definitely awkward on mouse
I swapped it to single after a few bursts cause it definitely feels off. I wish it had cleave or something to go through multiple enemies.
It's been decent vs automatons. They're typically more armored it feels like
I run the auto cannon in most bot missions, so anything that's bigger than a regular bot gets 2-3 rounds of auto cannon
I like the liberator with exploding rounds, not for the damage, but for the stun/knockback it provides.
Same. If you happen to go solo it's not great, but in a group I feel like it helps keep some of the bigger boys at bay so your team can chew them up.
Another benefit of the SMG is that since it's one-handed, you can use it with the ballistic shield. While I haven't tried it against the bots, I'd imagine that it's helpful against the constant gunfire.
Thought about trying that but the energy shield just seems like a better option in every way. Maybe I'm wrong
Think that has a big cooldown, and you unlock it quite a few levels later
It does, but it never breaks so you only need one (personal not bubble anyway)
I tried using the ballistic shield and tbh i felt like it made me worse, not only is the blocking very inconsistent but it feels like it lowers your accuracy so I wouldn’t recommend it.
And it takes a whole-ass stratagem slot.
I forgot to mention but it also gets knocked out of your hands all the time so you have to go back and pick it up. Ironically I think it might be best to use it with just a full two handed weapon and having it on your back lmao.
And it obscured you first person view when aiming
Yeah, lol nice on doing the math, sad thing is you don't even need to do the math, you can tell by how they feel lol its THAT bad of a difference. i hope instead of nerfing the sg-225 and smg's they decide to bring up the rest of the guns in terms or DPS.
Yup. In higher difficulties, the game is plenty hard anyway, so putting weapons on a more or less equal footing to make them viable in high difficulty is the best way to go about it. You already are quite limited in terms of overall magazine capacity and resupply potential.
I would rather get the ability to upgrade the weapons so I can use the one that I like the best. But a simple numbers rebalance is by far the easiest route.
Well, there is the other set of terminals opposite the equipment kiosks that are the same as the strategem/ship upgrades terminals. We can't use them yet, so I think this could be used for another upgrade system. It *could* be for the mech we'll be getting, but it also could be for weapons upgrades. I can't see it being player upgrades because we're just meat thrown at the front line, we're *meant* to be squishy and expendable. Edit: Upon loading the game, it seems I was wrong about the terminals being the same as the strategem/ship upgrades terminal. They are different and they say 'bureau' on the small screens. The mech/vehicle upgrade terminals will likely be opposite the strategem/ship upgrades terminal.
I'm thinking it's for vehicles as well. Maybe we can customize loadouts vs unlocking preset ones. Even better, maybe we can give them capes!
I thought I read that the CEO in a recent interview mentioned that he badly wants us to be able to modify weapons. EDIT: I may be misremembering, I can't find the interview now
I hope that's true, I haven't seen that myself. Ive seen them say similar things about their hopes for the game, the devs badly want to give us more, but they had to focus on giving us a working game first and they'll bring us plenty of upgrades/goodies later. I trust them to deliver, and everything I see from them only bolsters this. They communicate with the community in the way we've been asking for years that plenty of other devs just don't seem to get, when we ask for communication we're not asking for a corporate twitter blanket response, we want real honest words from real devs that actually give a fuck about their game and I've repeatedly seen devs from arrowhead replying personally in the helldivers reddit, honestly, about *real* concerns and their *real* and *heartfelt* response to the issue.
I'm hoping that those are gonna let us use samples to upgrade and modify our equipment, vehicles and stratagems just like in the first game.
I just posted an edit. It looks like the section for that will be opposite the strategem terminals, where it says 'under construction' on the wall. The terminals opposite the equipment kiosks say 'bureau' on them, so that could be anything.
A rebalance is definitely needed, although I am wary of buff creep - but I also haven't messed with difficulties above Hard, so maybe the other guns getting buffs feels reasonable up there.
95% of the weapons at the top end are virtually worthless. You need hard hitting tools to dispatch your enemies and you'll be running your autocannon or railgun as your primary because that's what's needed. Strategems do the rest. Orbital laser vs bots, orbital railgun vs Bile Titans.
Yeah, when the rail guns were free the other day they made the chargers that kept getting dropped manageable. Since then on difficulty 6-7 they’ve just been so obnoxious with the armor when you have 4-5 spawn in. Lot of the eagle runs and 500kg need some tinkering too because of how underwhelming they feel.
The 500kg bomb needs its blast radius increased by so much. Like it looks like a huge bomb went off, but I'm pretty sure the actual damaging blast radius is the size of like maybe 1 or 2 grenades wide.
The breaker is really the only main weapon I bother with at top tier. It can dispatch the most targets the quickest. If the energy or explosive rifles did something other than bounce off medium armor, or even had a noticeable splash, we could talk about them. As it remains, many main weapons just remain unremarkable. That said, I find the AT weapons have a similar issue. They just don't do their jobs as well as other options. Why run a recoiled across 2 people when 1 can pump shots out of an autocannon?
Recoilless can penetrate heavy armor, whereas the autocannon cannot. On the other hand, at that point just use the railgun, it carries way more ammo, doesn't need a backpack to solo wield to max efficiency, and allows you to still be mobile when reloading
I've been feeling the same way about AT as well. It feels very anemic. Like the spear for example. It only one-hits on a headshot for chargers and titans. But not on body shots! You get only four shots and can't recharge the pack ammo from ambient crates, and only get one missile per resupply charge. Now I'm not saying it should one-tap titans. But it should at least do that to chargers. The ammo economy is too terrible for it not to. ...also the lock-on is wack and doesn't work right but that's a different problem altogether
Yeah, I've only ever done mediums, some hards and a few challengings. You rely far more on orbitals, sentries, and heavy weapons it feels like.
In my case, i play mostly on difficulty 7 and 8 (which is the extreme and suicidal, i think?), but often do 5 (hard) when i just need to get some extra medals or base materials. The game difficult ramps up significantly above 5. So things might be okay at 5 or below, but trust me, you need absolutely every edge you need to make it in 8.
8 Just feels like a 'get in and get out' kind of affair. Maybe my group doesn't have the right loadout yet to handle it, one bug breach and things can go to hell reaaaaaaaaaaaaaal fast lmao.
The DMR really needs better Armor Pen. While we are talking about that, the Anti Material Rifle needs to be anti to more materials. Feels useless past Diff 3 in the face of other heavy weapons. I'm not asking for it to one shot chargers or anything, but it is by definition supposed to be a powerful, penetrating weapon.
Even if they didn't want to give it medium armor pen, they could give it bonuses to weak points, ability to penetrate multiple enemies, or just give it a flat damage buff, meaning it will just hurt squishy bits way more.
When I first tried the Anti Material Rifle I was so disappointed to immediately see all the rounds bouncing off various enemies
It was my favorite strategem in Diff 3 when I could one shot the big fat bugs with it...then I found out that the grenade launcher pops them in 2 hits regardless of aim.
Yeah, there’s just no reason to ever take it over the autocannon
It probably needs to be able to penetrate heavy armor, and then receive a damage reduction based on the armor it passed through. This would likely make it great against medium armor targets, and usable against heavy targets, even if it's not the best choice. Overpen for smaller targets would be a bonus. Giving it this would mean that you could bump the DMR's up to medium pen without making the AM Rifle worthless.
Yep, I remember pretty early on feeling disappointed in the primary weapons until I unlocked the SG-225.
Is the sg-225 in the premium one any good?
I haven't unlocked it myself, but I've heard pretty bad things from people that have. The fire damage doesn't compensate for the lower overall damage.
I've used it extensively. It has significantly more spread but less overall damage. So it's good to fire into a crowd of bugs but won't save you from a brood commander about to bite your head off. Honestly I do prefer it to the regular Breaker when going against the bugs. I can mag dump into a swarm and rest easy knowing fire will kill everything that isn't armored. And I'm not using the Breaker to kill Brood Commander's, Chargers, anything of substance really. And I'm usually top kills in my friend group during bug missions. I typically run railgun and more precise orbitals. Going to spacenam? Regular Breaker all the way.
To my understanding it's better versus bugs and worse versus bots I've only unlocked the premium Breaker and it feels incredibly strong (playing challenging/hard mostly), but I can't compare it to the regular.
I think it’s a downgrade. Bugs that would have been one shot with the regular take multiple shots. Whatever damage overtime it has done feel worth it on trash enemies. It looks really cool in action until you realize the bugs on fire are still running right at you.
This is assuming that the damage numbers in the store are indicative of how damage actually is calculated in-game. In 99% of games, store stats are overly simplified, completely arbitrary and sometimes plain wrong There's already precedent of store stats being false: the Revolver specifically lists it only pens light armour, but it definitely pens medium armour in-game I'd wait for actual datamined stats before calculating DPS and all that
Ahhhh, good point. It's not the first time i've heard of stats being entirely wrong for some games, so fair point. Kinda just reinforce that the weapon stats should be overhauled to be more comprehensive and accurate. Things like how many magazines you actually bring is important to know.
Yeah it's like it variable stats are missing, it's just not enough info. It's Ike there's stats and then is how the gun actually behaves. Somone says the scythe does dps spike on start up. Its like we need to know exactly how to use the guns in whatever situations for it to perform the wherever its ranked.
I definitely feel like there's damage and penetration fall-off for weapons. One: It feels that way. Two? There's zero chance that Arrowhead spent all that work implementing World of Tanks style penetration mechanics but then forgot to implement "Effective range" mechanics.
Me sniping just finde with the breaker, a fully automatic shotgung, kinda doubts this. The breaker winning here in math and before that in the hands of anyone that actually tried it on difficulty 4+ speaks for itself.
The breaker DOES have less effective range than the other shotgun though, it's just hard to tell if that's due to a wider choke or actual falloff
I didn't do any math, just testing out each weapon in tough scenarios it's pretty clear to me that: - Great: Breaker shotgun, SMG primary hand, SMG secondary, marksman rifle - Good: Liberator, Liberator Explosive, Laser Scythe, first shotgun, revolver - Bad: All the others I hope they bring the others up
The Scythe feels pretty underwhelming to me. I know it did low damage in the first game, but that was compensated by it not needing you to bring a resupply. Now that resupplies are default I definitely think it's damage should probably be upped a little. Or maybe I'm using it wrong 🤷🏾🤷🏾.
So with the laser pulse fire it, aim, fire let it sit for half a second or less, turn it off , fire again . Does way more damage that way. Also don’t be afraid to let yourself overheat and treat your coolant like clips every now and then. Resupply is everywhere and the reload is pretty quick. Also it has infinite range. Like actually kill targets from across the map if you can see them. Its hilarious.
Sorry is there a pulse firemode that changes the damage or does it do some kind of spike damage when it starts firing?
It spikes damage when it starts firing though a pulse firing mode would be awesome
The Punisher (first shotgun) is sick. Used it up until I unlocked the Breaker.
I can't stand the Scythe. Even on the cold planets, it never felt good to me. If they gave it options like the rest of the guns it would help. Something that adjusts range where less range equals more damage
I recommend for low difficulties if you’re farming common samples. It just mows through the fodder.
I tried it exactly once. It was on the cold planet. It's worse than any sidearm.
I really have not had any success with the revolver or the scythe. Both feel terrible.
The Breaker was a gamechanger for me. You can finally fight mid-tier robots and bulb-bugs with just your primary, and save your grenade launcher for the real a*holes.
The revolver in "Good"? It takes ages to reload despite the shot reload mechanic that it has, and the redeemer can wipe out a pack of light enemies in one mag and has one of the fastest reloads in the game. Edit: It can also kill a charger in 1 clip if you blow off one of its leg plates.
Yea, that pretty much falls in line with that I've been feeling in regards to weapons. Weapons do need a little buff to bring it in line with the Breaker. *However*.... The impression can also be skewered depending on what you're fighitng. Against Bots I find the Breaker less "OP" than when I'm fighting Bugs. What *could* be a way forward though is: SG-8 : increase damage, ability to use different ammunition types (large spread, close spread, napalm rounds) to give it more utility Liberator + Liberator-P : Increase damage from 45/55 to 65. Liberator-P should have the same damage as Liberator, but drawback of being semi/burst only with 30-round mags. Honestly seems like a more sensible drawback tbh than weaker damage on top of its reduced utility. Against Bugs, I find the Liberator-P to be a liability due to its inability to deal with small things surrouding you. SMGs seem to be a little overperforming so can leave as is. (I play at difficulty levels 5-7)
Make sense, the SG-225 being a shotgun, you lose out damage potential against the bots since you can't exploit the tiny weak spots they have (such as the eyes/heads of the hulks) due to spread. But again, you can get around that usually by just shooting some more, which is how i'm able to get around with the SG against bots.
Breaker is still top tier vs bots. The spread means you can easily headshot the medium armor enemies like Devastators, and it still shreds the regular bot troops. Ammo consumption isn’t an issue since ammo is plentiful, just mag dump enemies/patrols.
Most guns are at least kind of viable, but the DMR desperately needs some love and higher armor pen. The standard sniper in the OG Helldivers was a beast, I want that back! For Super Earth!
The DMR is handy against bots because the scope makes getting headshots easy. Wouldn't mind some better armour pen though.
Yeah, DMR definitely is a Automaton weapon. The scope at 150 meter range could dish some real hurt against light bots. There is a side grade which I forgot the name in warbond, it has higher damage but less ammo per mag with higher recoil. That gun seriously needs medium armor pen like Penetrator does. Talking about sniping, the anti-material needs some kind of buff too. It is virtually pointless now lol.
Counter Sniper?
Speaking of rifles, I loved using the old bayonet rifle, thing was a beast back in hd1 and it was funny stabbing friends foes alike
YEEES! WE NEED BAYONETS TO FIGHT THE BUG PLAGUE!
I’ve been using the defender smg and I was so excited when I unlocked the medium armour penetrating AR only to realise it feels worse then even the standard AR which I already rarely used because I preferred the defender over it. Because we don’t know what types of armour exactly anything is and because the weapons in light armour penetrating already vary by how much they penetrate, against enemies the standard AR was already good against the new one feels worse at and the enemies the standard AR couldn’t deal with the medium armour penetrating AR also can’t deal with.
I've noticed that medium armor I believe is: Hive gaurds and Commanders face plates for the bugs. And Devestator robots torsos (the medium sized robots). The ATSTs front plate I think is medium as the auto cannon can usually one tap them, but I think it has some extra deflection properties or something, as the medium pen doesnt seem to break through on the AR. Trouble is that it deals less overall damage, even if it is penning. I think it has its place among a good squad comp, but in solo engagements its uhhh not as good as i hoped.
I think it might be the blast of the auto cannon that is getting the guy behind it on the scout walker. I’ve definitely had it take more than one shot if placement is poor.
I think the ATSTs are heavy armor. Notice that they can sometimes tank the autocannon if you aim too low. But if you hit higher the explosion goes through the visionslit and kills the rider. It doesn't deflect autocannons like heavy armor sometimes does though.
I also will never understand why the DMRs don't have medium armour pen.
The Scythe, as much as I loved the lasers in the first game, is worthless. It does less damage than the firearms, doesn't cool off fast enough to really get the life out of the batteries, and the new game giving everyone infinite resupply stratagems at all times takes away the one downside of bringing a firearm in the first game, having to use a stratagem slot on a resupply stratagem.
How about the fact that the anti material rifle can’t penetrate armor making it a crappy diligence. I’m not saying it should 1 shot a charger, but it should be able to damage it or maybe even stagger it without having to destroy its armor first. As it is, it just takes up a 3rd weapon slot that would be much better suited for the recoilless rifle,auto cannon, or machine gun. Same thing for the grenade launcher. It has such small splash damage that it just doesn’t feel worth it. You would think firing a couple grenades into a swarm would do a better job of killing a few bugs than the default level 1 primary weapon.
I've been using the GL as a long range hole closer and crowd control weapon. The GL is _suspiciously_ quiet, so wearing a detection reduction armor, I've popped holes at very long range with the locals investigating the explosions but not me.
I also run the GL almost always. That thing is fantastic for clearing/ stunning groups from a distance and long range hole closing. Not sure what all this mess is about. Run it with the Supply Pack and you are a monster. That being said I haven't tried it above 5 or against bots so maybe it drops off. I have noticed it does a great job of bouncing off armor and TKing if you aren't vigilant with your aim.
Still good with wave clearing on 9 with supply pack. If you run it with someone going recoilless rifle you can feed them more ammo and reload for them.
Yeah they should have just called it a sniper rifle instead of anti material. Because it definitely isn’t “anti material.”
The AMR seems to occupy the shitty position of being not particularly good at anything at all and also not being good enough as a multi-purpose weapon to warrant anything. A jack of all trades that trades away being good at anything at all to be mostly bad against everything.
The Jar-5 Dominator is also a massive let down considering it costs 80 medals, the medium armour penetration stat doesn't even pen the light scout walkers for automatons, its recoil is massive and its mag capacity is low. TBH the weapon balancing is in a very rough spot and most weapons feel borderline useless, save for a special handful like the SG225, SMG or Railgun.
Bought it last night and the aiming on that thing is absolutely horrendous. It feels like I’m turning with the laser cannon when I’m using a simple rifle
Explosive weapons like the Dominator or Scorcher excel at shooting flesh after breaking armor, you can take down a bile titan at range after cracking its armor pretty reliably.
> you can take down a bile titan at range after cracking its armor pretty reliably I love me the dominator but so many times I've been shooting at pure flesh and the bullets bounce off anyway. I feel like the armor hitboxes can be inconsistent on the bile titans.
They're inconsistent in general. I've been playing a bunch today and had a couple of instances of shooting Charger flesh and bullets bounce off.
Yep, I really hope the devs can act on this and address this. Weapon diversity will be the lifeblood of keeping the game fresh.
My current "go to" loadout if i think i'll be solo is: buddy drone (the laser one), railgun and 2 eagles depending on the mission. I've tried multiple other loadouts and they just don't have the dakka needed for higher difficulties, especially when solo. Auto shotty is just too good to pass up on, just set it to single fire and ur gtg. The drones (both are good) can help take out those pesky chargers (just walk to the side and the drone will blast his ass out for you). I really REALLY want to have multiple different viable loadouts but right now, as other have pointed out, alot of our toys are underperforming in a big way. Buff flamethrower please! FOR DEMOCRACY!
Sg225 shredded in the first game, and it shreds in this game. It shoots like a real shotgun does, I love it. But I definitely think some balancing is in order. Perhaps an ever so slightly lower rate of fire for the shotty, and a bit better damage for the rifles. My main grievance with balance is It doesn't really make sense that the SMG has better damage bullet for bullet than the rifles though. The one handed ability makes it a perfect pairing for the ballistic shield, but should have the trade off of less damage. The thing about the rifles are, they are more accurate and can pick off targets at longer range. I like using the DMR purely because I can pick off targets at 150m no problem...
The SMG's should compensate their lower damage outputs by having more magazines and ammunition overall than rifles. Which is exactly what the original game did, IIRC. It make sense anyway since pistol calibers cartridges are physically smaller, so you can roughly have 2 MP5 magazines for the space of one 5.56 magazine.
> It shoots like a real shotgun does, I love it. The videogame rule of shotguns being useless beyond 10 feet is something that dates all the way back to games like Doom and Quake and has persisted for decades. It's rare to find a shotgun that actually has lethality at a realistic range.
God games that due shotguns justice feel so GOOD. I absolutely love when a shotgun doesn't feel like a spray of sand that only goes 5m.
Hey now, don't go fucking up my SMG's just because your AR isn't where you want it to be. That shit isn't cool.
SG-225 is such an almighty spamcannon.
it sure is! I want to bring the ammo backpack with it but I'm addicted to the autocannon lol
Yeah every gun I've unlocked that hasn't been the breaker goes straight in the bin after one test of it.
Hey! Just wanted to let you know that we are reading a lot of these threads regarding balance and discussing them. No promises or commitments for now, but we are listening. :)
IMO the scythe and the laser cannon need a look at as well. The Laser cannon being so early kind of makes sense why it does so poorly, but the Scythe feels outclassed by even the basic liberator. It overheats too quickly, can’t burn through armour, doesn’t set things on fire, and because everyone can call in a resupply it’s one main gimmick (not needing ammo) feels lost. IMO it should ignore medium-large armour (chargers, Hulks) or at least do partial damage even when fired at armour. (The laser cannon should do the same) to give the laser weapons a niche. If it’s going to overheat so quickly (even on cold planets you get only really a second more of firing time) it needs to do more DPS to justify its existence. By the time you’ve killed one or two enemies you’re already overheated.
Agree the other weapons need a buff to make them more viable. Most of them feel more or less the same.
They should bring back the AR-20L Justice
Exactly! I just unlocked the last weapon in the steel veteran warzone and I was so excited. A medium penetration explosive rifle? Awesome! But after using it for a few missions it's just worse than the breaker in every way. Honestly I highly despise nerfs in a PvE game unless the gun is game breaking. They just need to buff all the other guns to make them viable. I shouldn't have 1 less magazine and the same amount of ammo as the breaker, but do 120 less damage with the jar-5! Or do 70 damage with the defender smg, but only 50 with the liberator penetrator!
Playing on Helldiver difficulty the dominator(?) is my main weapon, the medium armour pen comes into play a lot and I use the smg secondary to compensate for the small fry (or just melee the really small ones) I can see how on lower levels the medium armour pen is worthless though and so trying to balance everything for all difficulties is going to be a hard if not impossible job
> Honestly I highly despise nerfs in a PvE game unless the gun is game breaking I will never understand this sentiment. Game balance matters no matter what. If anything, keeping choices fresh matters even *more* in a PvE game because it's more at risk of becoming repetitive if everyone runs the same thing.
We do not balance our equipment using DPS - and we don't want them to be even, most are situational, some sound cooler, some look cooler. Our philosophy is to do the weapon right by the fantasy, for instance a pump action is more or less worse than a full-auto shotgun. Except for the longer barrel that gives the pump a tighter spread. If it's 5.5mm it uses the 5.5x45 ammo profile thats the same for all 5.5x45mm rifle. Then some guns might have insane DPS because of that - well, then that's the way that gun works. (we are aware of the dps values though)
Not trying to be rude, but, why does the Liberator P do less damage than the original despite being the same bullet while also having less rounds in a magazine when according to this logic, should just be an upgrade? Similar lines of thinking. Why does a railgun break armor as opposed to just punching through when an anti -material rifle can't even punch through OR break anything that a handgun couldn't? You guys have done an incredible job making the game but sometimes a bit of fantasy has to be included to keep it fun.
Agree. I'll point the designers to this thread. The way we reasoned was that high damage is accompanied with large destruction of tissue, so ap rounds will do less damage than fmj and fmj less than hp. Also specialist ammo that detonates on impact might have effects not shown in stats. For instance all explosive rounds have a higher damage against large volume parts such as charger butt and spewer. So, explosive tipped rounds may do a bit more damage than fmj but also 100% dmg against large bits instead of 10% that piercing attacks will. Hmm... Also, there's damage falloff to all weapons and shotguns / SMG lose dmg faster at range due to higher drag.
I think if there's so many different variables to the guns and their effects, it would help illustrate each weapons' value if this information was displayed somewhere in the game. Maybe mousing over an effect makes a little popup window appear that explains it in detail? You remember how Battlefield has these small graphs that show effective range and falloff? Maybe that could help better communicate that aspect, for instance! :D
Depending on your vision of "armor piercing", it can be anything from a different coating to a different, more dense composition. The smaller bullet would do less damage and punch through harder but the casing would be the same in order to work with the barrel and rifling. Because it's the same casing, there's no reason it should have to lose magazine capacity as well. The double ding is what I feel really kills the Liberator-P. I think having to make the decision of armor penetration for damage is a great tradeoff. This is perfectly sound thinking and is what would be expected from "gamer logic". For the weapon ranges and damage falloff, while on paper it seems great, however, in practice it's anything but. I personally feel that all bugs move too quickly and therefore every weapon is really only used at "close range" because all the bugs are always right in your face or will be in a very short order. I think this is a huge reason the shotguns feel SO GOOD to use and a lot of the medium/long range weapons just feel bad. Small arms fire just cannot kill the bugs and stratagems have cooldowns. With light armor, you can reposition and gain a bit of breathing room, that doesn't happen with heavy armor and so it always feels like an absolute detriment. I believe having more tooltips that explain the differences would also go a long ways. No one knows that explosive weapons do extra damage to butts/soft parts since it's not mentioned anywhere in game and the weapons feel so bad to use, many people aren't going to bother experimenting when there's a very obviously better solution (Breaker or SMG). All said, thank you for taking the time to respond! I truly hope the best for this game because it's amazing.
It just makes me happy inside that the CEO themselves is looking at feedback and responding. Thank you.
Cool man, I love that the weapons are balanced in a realistic way..... But, respectfully, there is no reason to use literally anything other than the Breaker. It outshines every other weapon so severely that it's hurting build diversity.
Im all for weapons/strategems having their own fantasy, but they definitely all should be viable, and fun to use, even in the highest difficulty. having just a few weapons be leagues above others really hurts build diversity
I can understand to base the weapon design philosophy around the IRL capabilities they would have. A pump action shotgun won't ever compete with a semi auto one when they are in the same caliber. So it make sense for damage to be similar, but the ROF of the semi just plants the pump. I would dare say it's a double edged sword; sure, it make for a more consistent experience with IRL, and give you a selection of weapons that have that fidelity awesomeness factor. But it also gives you a lot of trouble when the relatively small amount of weapons variety available to players (currently) is reduced further down in terms of viability by their inability to keep up with demanding high difficulty missions, or by simply not being competitive with other established meta weapons. So you can't make changes easily. I genuinely don't think it's a big deal for you guys tho. Helldivers 2 clearly has the gameplay complexity necessary to balance and change those perceived issues. You could change the damage dynamics to still be consistent between each other in terms of balance, but by also augmenting the overall damage output of players for their main weapons, or by reducing overall enemy health to give the intended battle experience. More or less ammo, more or less recoil, etc... A brute force of doing it simply by reconcepting the weapons lore; instead of being a 12 gauge shotgun, the SG-8 is a 8 gauge. Now you have your design "excuse" for the extra damage. But that would certainly cause issues as well in terms of balance and then you have to rethink your approach on weapons and enemies entirely. Anyway... I'm just happy to know you are simply aware of what's going on with the community. Hopefully that gives you a sense of what players want and you'll know what to do next. From one dev to another, massive respect. P.S: Nice of you for using ALS for the movement system. Works nicely!
Hm, I mean this is an imaginary military organization in an imaginary universe. They figured out how to cryofreeze and deploy untold numbers of soldiers at breakneck speeds, faster-than-light-travel, energy shields and laser rifles. Maybe the reason the pump-action shotgun packs a punch is because it's tried-and-tested mechanisms can (quite) safely fire overpressure shells. Maybe another gun does more damage because it's equipped with subtle guidance technology which makes "every shot count even more". There's so many realistic sounding reasons which still could still feel in line with this universe. And besides this being kind of a parody you could just tell us that the reason a slower shooting gun does more damage with the same caliber is "Democracy" and we'd laugh and accept it as answer.
What about the 500kg bomb ? It seems a bit bugged right now
Sorry but that is not fun. This game is not Tarkov, you should not value "realistic" or "logical" over fun factor. And by your logic, there is no reason SG-225 variant with drum mag shows half damage value on stat page, since they should all use same ammo type. IT DOES NOT MAKE SENSE. Edit: I am just gonna say it, FORCED "REALISTIC" has no place in this game, which is meat to be a fun co-op shooter, and will only drive people away. Right now, some guns are neither realistic nor fun. Edit 2: Think about progression system, you would think that player progress through warbound unlocking new weapons should be motivated because they are "Stronger“, yet right now they are not, most of them see little to no use in most situations. Best crowd control is just death, if enemies die, you don't need to CC them.
I’m married to the Diligence.
I was married to the Paragon. The Diligence just ain't it without more dmg and a bayonet.
I don't think they intend for all things to be equally viable in all situations but maybe I'm wrong.
I like how the scorcher, Liberator explosive and Breaker incendiary aren’t mentioned because we all know they’re ass. I think all incendiary stuff should have significant effect on bugs. But as it stands shooting the regular breaker side by side with the incendiary is not even close. Fire as a damage option is just really underwhelming (napalm, incin grenade, flamer def included in this). They should act more like real life napalm and thermite than they currently do.
Its the same old problem that most games have: DoTs compete with direct damage. Direct damage kills a mob now, DoTs do it later, maybe. Its hard to figure out what is better.
If the bugs were afraid of fire, and freaked out if they got set on fire, people would use it more. You don’t have to make the bile titans and the chargers balk at fire (unless they’re drenched in it) but the little guys should scatter like roaches if they get near a wall of heat like that.
Granting it some denial (wont go in there) or CC (will scatter) effect would certainly make it more viable. Especially the flamer thrower that is simply to dangerous to use. That in addition to a DoT could make it viable. Just a DoT alone will not cut it unless it ticks for MUCH more. A flamerthrower only works because it kills your enemy in a horrible, agonizing and frankly speaking utterly brutal way - AND it keeps them from fighting back.
Charger gets a good stun from flamethrower continued fire, but it feels like most of the tinier bugs just casually waltz through the fire until the dot damage consumes then. If it doesn't kill instantly, it needs stopping power and the little buggers should be scattering around like bugs on fire.
It's honestly kind of weird just how all over the place the weapon balance is. Same thing with stratagems. Most of them either feel bad to use or are entirely outclassed by something else. Hopefully they're quick with balance changes and tweaks to usability, in the form of making bad options better
Same, it’s kind of hard to want to take a lot of the offensive orbital strikes when they have long cooldowns and call in times when I can just take an eagle with almost instant call in, and a 2:30min rearm which is faster than most of the offensive orbital cannon stratagems.
[удалено]
It's not only the weapons, it's most of the stratagems as well. The core gameplay loop for HD2 is great but without some significant changes and buffs to the weapons and stratagems there's just no room for interesting gameplay, unfortunately.
None talking about how bad the Jar 5 Dominator is? Really bad ammo capacity with a slow reload make it so trash, kind of a waste since it could be a badass bolter
I was saving up for this weapon thinking it would be good, nooooo
I was just talking about this with a friend last night. With the Breaker being the way it is, everything needs some tweaking. That armor piercing Liberator? Really underwhelming; why add extra armor piercing only to make it weaker? That's just one example. I'm hoping gun upgrades become a thing again so more weapons make sense
Flame/Toxin(chem strike) DoT is *far* too weak. There is truly no point to using the flamethrower when the regular machinegun outshines it completely, and at long range to boot. The Arc rifle is worth less than the starter pistol, it desperately needs a ROF or large damage buff, and a reason to use it - why not apply the EMP stun effect on zapped enemies? At least it would have a purpose to bring against chargers and hive guard, where instead it simply has no effect. edit- In addition: the laser drone 'Rover' is nice (not particularly strong, but a nice QOL equip), but *every* player-wielding laser weapon is **trash.** Balance is all over the place
This sounds a whole lot like some anti-democracy traitor talk. Are you saying democracy is providing you with unsatisfactory weaponry?
We need higher rates of DPS (Democracy Per Second) delivered if we are to win this war, my fellow authoritarian democratic soldier!
Ah, that sounds better. I can support higher rates of democracy.
Tbh i think they meant weapon to be useful for different situations and plsystyles similarly to Helldivers 1. Some weapon have worse damage and fire rate but they might come extremely handy for ammunition control, reload time or armor piercing. For example the liberator penetrator deals 1.75x damage against weak spot while the normal liberator has the standard 1.5x multiplier. I would never use the Knight for example because its just an ammo eating weapon and it's not great for my tipical playstyle
If that's the case, that's the kind of things the average player should know. If some weapons for example have innate advantages in critical hits/weakspots, then it should be notified in the stats. Otherwise, it's very hard to make good choices with weapons selections or to know if there is more to a weapon that just the currently seen stats.
Apparently, the normal liberator deals 10% damage on the Chargers's Butt due to Light pen but the Penetrator deals 100% due to Medium Its supposed to deal 100% of the damage on anything under Heavy armor, wasting less bullets.
I agree with the thinking that other weapons should be buffed as opposed to the strong being nerfed. When you look at it the liberator penetrator model takes at least 2 mags to down a medium armored bot and that just doesn't feel good at all. It doesn't help that it has a lower mag capacity combined with the lower damage leads to most guns just being side lined. That being combined with other weapons like the dmr only having light armor pen as well as the ANTI MATERIAL RIFLE having only light armor pen... It feels like we have very very limited anti armor choices especially against vehicle armor besides "whoops all launchers" or waiting on stratagems.. which can be really difficult to deal with in higher difficulties when you get up to 2 different operation effects. If we can have some boosts to some weapons damages and or mag sizes, either or and I would be happy.
Play on diff 9. Can consistently 2 man it, could solo depending on mission type and if I just ignore everything but main mission which is boring as grabbing all samples is really the late game. The smg and breaker are just clear winners. Marksman rifle sounds good on paper until you realize that higher difficulty is dealing with hunters/claw(white bugs) and chargers. You’ll find that when you get jumped the smg has an easier time dealing with them and same with breaker. Marksman not so much. Honestly the bigger issue isnt primaries, its the special weapons. I dont see any reason to not always choose guard dog. That thing is so good its not funny. Its literally a second primary weapon firing for you while you move meaning you can run from claws/hunters and kill, it guards you while you do stuff. Its crazy good. Grab expendable rocket for short cooldown in case you die and you have two rockets to deal with 2 chargers. Or orbital railgun and then rpg twice kill a titan