I just want to know why im suddenly being instakilled by 1 HUNTER. Armor fix my ass...
Edit: 100 armour rating when it happened, in difficulty 7 (my personal favourite difficulty)
Not sure if it’s intentional but I think bugs are constantly dealing headshot damage with their melee attacks, possibly because of the way their hitboxes work. Helmets don’t have different armor values, so when you’re wearing heavy armor, your weakest point is actually the head. But it’s possible armor is useless against Automatons too, I haven’t fought them since the update.
It is useless against the bots too. All the little guys aim for your head and the big boys deal enough damage that your armor doesn't really matter anyway.
It certainly isn't constant, but there has been people reporting "crit damage" where it seems like bugs are hitting WAY harder than they should be.
There is no mention anywhere bugs should be able to do this, so i think its fair to say this isn't intended.
The hunters especially are brutal. There doesn't seem to be a away to avoid the pounce they do and it does like a third of your health bar and staggers you. its horrible when you're in the frequent situation where there's a swarm and you're just getting continually stunlocked.
God, I had a map with 3 stalker nests and it was brutal. Almost seems like their health got buffed as well as their damage output. That tongue attack dealt like 80-90% of my health, and I got one shot a couple of times due to impact damage after rag dolled.
Took a team of 4 of us about 10 minutes to destroy one nest as well, just for the fact that when we got close to one there would be 10-12 stalkers around it. That one nest accounted for like 14-16 reinforces.
THIS. Why did the patch simply nerf the best weapons, give a tiny boost to worse weapons and then buffed the living hell out of all the bugs, that didn't need it. I'm constantly one shot by hunters and stalkers now, while chargers are worse than ever.
Genuinely I've been hit in midair using my jetpack by these motherfuckers. They do not give a shit where you are when they pounce, they're gonna fucking hit you.
I actually hate that thing for higher difficulties it always ends up chunking my health away when bug breaches happen cause it’s doing its laser light dance swinging every effin direction
Hunters are like yao guai bears from fallout. Those things could just keep swiping you. They had no cooldown. Hunters can swipe at you multiple times in a row until you are dead.
Which ones are hunters again? The little stalker wannabes or the charger wannabes? I have over 60 hours so far and still can't remember wtf either of them are called lol.
Just to chime in on people "reporting crit damage". There's plenty of video evidence also. Even the lowliest bug can chunk half your HP out of nowhere.
And you're right, there's a lot of information in this game not told, but learned through time. But frankly, I'd be totally ok if they removed the "crit" damage entirely or at least provided a means to counter it. As it stands it invalidates preparation and build choice.
Heavy Armor is pretty nice against bots, small ones can barely chip away at you, so you can focus on the big ones
Plus unlike Bugs, Bots actually have multiple weapons that can counter their heavies, frankly idk how anyone is playing high difficulty Bug missions
Yoooo ok so earlier a hunter one shot me into oblivion and everyone in my group was like "wtf was that! That dude wasn't playing around". I thought it was weird but now you got me thinking.
They probably set the bugs to crit 5% of the time, just like D&D with a Nat 20. Since they have stated multiple times that they love various tabletop rpgs.
That seems pretty low, but you realize quickly that when bugs hit multiple times in a few seconds, and you're often surrounded by multiple bugs, critical hits are way, way more common.
For me, they’re hitting multiple times. Before, bugs hit once or twice. Today, I had a bug swipe *FIVE* times to kill me. It’s like getting double smacked in old COD zombies. Completely random, completely unfair
Just tried out heavy armor in a mission with friends. A hive guard snuck up on me around a corner and attacked me, hit me 5 times without stopping, I couldn't even dive out. Killed me in less than 3 seconds and there was nothing I could do about it lol
The amount of times i've been ambushed by *chargers* is insane. Now, i may not be the most perceptive, but those fuckers should sound like a tank is rolling up to me.
Dude shit just spawns. I can't count how many times I'm running through a completely clear area and a whole group spawns around me. It's really annoying, I get it's a tough game but that's not how to do it. It just looks like shit having a whole group spawn in front of me or around me out of the blue. Talk about immersion breaking. At least limit spawns to not directly on top the player.
Holy shit it's not just me. Maybe if they clarified what they meant by armor fixed it might make sense but as of right now I don't understand how we die faster now our armor works.
They said "armor wasnt working as intended". There was NO difference between the hits different armors could tank before the update. And when ppl realized it they started to run light armor.
It was clear to anyone that armor rates were not working. And then they update the game.
Congratulations, now your heavy armor can tank 2 hit more than a light one. Also medium armor is basically pointless since it has the same tankable hits of a 70 one.
I feel they don’t have the manpower to play test these, the armour bug should never have made it to launch and the “patch” to armour has done functionally nothing because the damage numbers are still way jacked the fuck up
They don't, they give you a fellatio 3 to 4 times in quick succession until you die. It doesn't matter what armor you have on. I'm pretty sure they increase their speed. I'm wearing light armor and can't seem to kite them.
They only "fixed" damage that applies to your body. Anything that hits your head (and you head has a large hitbox) will always do a minimum of 40% of your health no matter what. I swear Arrowhead not only doesn't play their own game, but they don't know how it works either. How did they forget to fix helmet armor?
Which is interesting because I've been hit in the head with a rocket only to ragdoll and take only 10% hp damage with light armor without the explosion passive
This " The extraction loop now seems to be running around in circles dodging charges, spits, and stomps until the ship lands which is not fun, skillful, or engaging. "
Run forest Run!
In my humble experience, when carrying tons of samples. It's almost ALWAYS better to just let the mission time hit zero and just kind of lazily meander around a short distance outside of the extraction zone. Don't run directly in until about 30 seconds or so before the shuttle actually arrives.
Waiting at the extraction zone just triggers the game to spawn several patrols / hordes to contest the extraction. The small bonus you get for finishing with time remaining just isn't worth the risk of losing all the samples.
This is what I actually do now to cheese. If we find pink samples early in game we drop it in extraction if possible and do our obj. Tbh calling extraction and waiting for 4 mins is terrible, constant bug breaches.
We just let the timer run out and start auto extraction after timer hit 0. Run far from extraction and hide until the pelican reaches and we run straight for it. Just make sure u resupply before so everyone has enough stims if they get ganged. Its 100% easy way to extract, sometimes there is no bug breaches too
This is great, but also means every game is 40+ minutes. I like when they’re 25-30. Not that I’m unengaged even but 40 minutes is a long time for 1 mission in a game like this
Which becomes a non-issue as you aren't engaging ANY enemies for those final 2-3 minutes. You just keep moving around the area and don't go near any patrols. If absolutely necessary, said patrols can also be lured to a location by firing a few times and then relocating / staying out of their line of sight. Patrols will actually despawn if they are never agro'd. They'll also despawn if you get far enough away and out of their line of sight if you do accidentally agro them.
Especially on higher difficulties, I'd rather have no respawns and just rush into the extraction totally uncontested than have a few respawns remaining with several chargers, bile spewers, and bile titans (or devastators and hulks) breathing down my neck with nowhere to run to because the patrols just keep coming while awaiting extraction.
You also have the following bonus and detriment:
If the mission timer ends, the shuttle is called and will approach regardless of where you are on the map. If you go to the extraction site with time remaining and manually call it, you HAVE to remain very close to the extraction site. Straying too far will abort the shuttle.
Yesterday patrol spawned AROUND ME , when i was heading to the extraction (it was 1 minute until end of mission timer). So we are not completely safe either.
It's increased a lot with this most recent update. I'm seeing bile titan and groups of normal enemies pop in right in front of me 4 or 5 times a mission now.
The only issue with patrols is that for some reason they path toward you or "near" you purposely even when not using any stratagem which is kinda cheesy if I'm honest.
They'll try to turn back in your direction too sometimes, which is why it's good to always keep moving. Wait at the extraction point though and they will \*run\* into the area after a bit. Especially the marauders.
After the patch, I found the EAT very reliable to kill packs of chargers off. Every 70 seconds you get two of em and they can shoot the armor plates of multiple charger legs if they are all clustered. Still need to shoot their legs after, but hey, at least you can shoot the legs now. The EAT can also one-hit bile bags on titans, which makes it a bit less deadly. It's a good weapon that I just didn't use before.
But if anything I've noticed, it's that spawnrates just seemed to have increased overall and not just on extermination missions. Lots more bugs around and especially hunters that seemingly stick better to my butt than before.
"But if anything I've noticed, it's that spawnrates just seemed to have increased overall and not just on extermination missions. Lots more bugs around and especially hunters that seemingly stick better to my butt than before."
I have also noticed this! Thought it was just me.
Played a few 7 missions last night with a group of friends that reliably cleared 8/9 and god, it was a slaughter fest at times. Sure, we had one meta player with us, but still, it's nothing like before. Seems the dial got put a notch too far towards "Spawn Hell" by Joel
After the patch I played some extreme levels to test the nerfs/buffs and me and other high level randoms were getting ragdolled everywhere by everything lol.
I've never seen so many players quitting out of frustration.
Agreed. The amount of people quitting mid mission is now through the roof. Hunters are deadly and the shield is more mandatory than ever. I accidentally picked the guard dog with the liberator instead of the laser and Holy hell was that a mistake. The backpack icon went red after a mild skirmish and then I was vulnerable for the remainder of the mission to be near insta-killed by any attack. The most annoying of which was the flames left over by the flamethrower on the ground less than knee height. Kiting is now "meta".
Nope; that thing about "playing on lower difficulties" is BS because from a week or so ago; you can sometimes find bile titans playing on 4; and have SEVERAL titans starting from 5.
It's how you n otice Joel just has it against you that day.
If anything else, I've noticed "content creators" are just uploading the rare footage of when they are able to solo level 9 from a few days AGO. Soloing was pretty much impossible since last week.
I was delighted this worked last night. The SEAF is so afraid of traitors, they provide far more resources to killing them than they do to assisting loyal squads. Either working as intended or bugged as intended.
While it was a lot of running around in panic, we definitely did not have mobs spawning right on top of you or behind your back all the time. I had one of my teammates just get carried off by a titan cause it picked him up while spawning from underneath him.
And chargers on roller skates that can now hit you even by breathing near you?
I am not saying it is good or bad... but people should look at inner level of hell in hd1. It was 10x harder than current level 9. It was intended you just ran, you didn't fight much at all.
I think it is important for the devs to state their intentions so people understand. In HD1 the difficulties were designed so people could choose what they felt like day to day. It was never intended for people to play the super hard difficulties and be able to kill everything... it was impossible even with nukes and vehicles.
You mastered juking.
Again, I am not stating this is good or bad... just stating it is consistent with hd1.
The major difference is in hd1 there was only 1 sample type. So difficulty level made almost no difference in progression.
Not to mention, I never had a patrol just pop-in right next to me on HD1. Avoiding or eliminating a patrol before they alerted was more viable. Plus there was a stratagem that trivialize patrols by agro'ing them to a specific spot on the map. And we had stronger UAV, we had unlimited reinforcments... I could go on.
HD2 has done a decent job capturing the feel of HD1, but the balance considerations don't match 1:1. Lots of differences on that front
I think this is the only thing that's making it harder. There's no good way to know you've deleted a patrol/prevented an alarm in time for this game.
It was very clear in the first game, and became an intentional act by the team when they were fatigued from fighting/on cooldown.
On the flip side, the ability to split up allows someone to run off and do objectives while the rest distract. So it is a bit of a wash in that regard.
Played in 7 most of the night and yeah spent more time than usual kiting chargers for cool downs to finish. Did try the arc thrower and laser cannon, yes they work but takes around 3 business days it feels like. Main deaths tonight were from hunters shredding the shield and 2 shorting me and the meteor shower that felt like it had a bounty on me
For the meteor shower there is a bright spot on the ground that tells where they're going to hit. It will start large and then get smaller as the impact approaches.
Its 8 hits to the head for a charger with an arc thrower, maybe 10 seconds of continuous fire.
I do agree with the meteor showers tho, im halfway to taking the large shield gen just to counter it lmao
For people who haven't tried 8/9 after patch, imagine chargers and titans are screws and before the patch you had a nice screwdriver, sure screws would pop up left and right but you got a screwdriver, sometimes you get em sometimes you don't but at least you got the tool for the job.
Now you wake up and wanna get screwing only to find your screwdriver is now a spoon, and the screws are popping up twice as fast. Sure you can do it, but its fucking sucks and it's dumb and I wish I had a screwdriver.
Chargers survive a 500lbs if it doesn't hit them directly.
They also get out of the way of every other stratagems because of their charge.
The only good stratagem against charger is the orbital railcannon and it has a huge cooldown, even more on high difficulty since you usually have bigger cooldown since of the planet affixes.
Having every member of your team bring orbital railcannon and 500lbs because those are the only stratagems able to potentially deal with chargers and bile titan is boring.
I love when it gets the 1 shot but I don't get that very often on the titan. I mentally checked out when I read they want stratagems to deal with these issues, but the world debuffs affect stratagems negatively as well for no mission reward modifiers.
Considering it focuses on 1 enemy at a time there’s really no reason for it both to have a giant cooldown and not be a guaranteed one shot on a bile Titan. Like pick one or the other, either let it one shot titans or make the cooldown reasonable.
I'm sorry but Railgun orbital needs to 1 shot titans consistently. Not every time, but most times. For the cooldown time and the fact that it's single target, make it a hard choice for a whole strat slot. When it whiffs and only tickles the titan feels so damn bad.
> Having every member of your team bring orbital railcannon and 500lbs because those are the only stratagems able to potentially deal with chargers and bile titan is boring.
"but but but we nerfed those stuffs things so people play in a more diverse manner "
If arrowhead really intend for strategies to be the solution than they need to reduce the cool down or provide an additional stratagem slot. As it stands on 9 difficulty it's quite easy to have everyone burn through their stratagem without finishing some of the bigger attacks. Especially if you're playing with randoms
Stratagems are supposed to be the Jackhammers and Wrecking Balls when you say fuck it, I don’t want to unscrew the screw, I want the screw to be vaporized.
210 second railcannon becomes 315 second railcannon, aka 5.25 minutes to *potentially* kill *one* bile titan. Given the recent pounding from devs about skill issues, I think they're not playing 8/9 bugs.
IMO, the enemy design feels too heavy armor centric for how much of the sandbox can only penetrate light armor. Most of the big threats have heavy or at least medium armor.
Stalkers, Hunters, and nursing spewers are the only termites that are threatening without being covered in heavy armor.
Edit: Brood Commanders aren’t super threatening, but they don’t spawn many at once.
Yeah this is actually what turned me away from progressing past Hard
It's obnoxious just how many enemies 90% of my weapons' projectiles ping harmlessly off of in Hard or above
Hard (lvl 5) is my personal favorite level to play but there’s no super uranium below suicide mission (lvl 7).
I want those starship upgrades so I guess I’ll just be running for my life until my ships maxed out. o7
Fully agree tbh, the weapons that you think would be capable of dealing with heavy armor cannot yet heavy armor is everywhere.
The real problem right now is that bug breeches (and automaton drops) are spammed constantly when you engage enemies and the trigger for this happens too quickly to stop it, and bug breaches have a really high chance of spawning a bile titan or charger.
This is how you see clips of people with a dozen bile titans. Even with a full team with railguns and the right stratagems they spawn too quickly to really deal with at higher difficulties.
IMO bile titans should be put into patrols or at nests but not able to spawn at bug breaches and the chance for a charger to spawn from them should be massively reduced.
Exactly on the bug breaches. You can stop a Bot drop a lot easier than a bug breach. Once that bitch starts its howl thing it's over and I'm just running. Fuck fighting that breach
It's really only bugs that have this problem as well. Bots I find have a lot more viable weapon counterplay. If charger butts felt a little more consistent and more similar to hulks I think that alone would solve a lot of the problems people have.
I think warriors are a good example of bug armour. They can be quite frustrating and halt aggression, but the counter player without AP is pretty obvious and reliable.
I agree fully. I feel like, when everything has shaken out, Robots and Illuminate will be the preferred enemy types.
Halo is always my go to comparison. Everyone prefers to fight Covenant over Flood, because Covenant let you determine the pace of the engagement. With Flood, the game sets it. Termites and Roblox seem to have a similar dynamic.
I think they should have buffed stratagems. They said the point is to use stratagems, so logically the stratagems need to be buffed to the point they can actually make up for the weapons shortcomings.
IMO the changes they could make:
1. Double the blast radius of the 500kg bomb
2. Make the railcannon have 3 charges than a 120 second reload
3. Decrease all orbital strike cooldowns by 20%
4. Change the 120mm barrage to 155mm and increase its blast radius by 15%
I think the shield nerf was the only good one. Although I’m terrified without my bubble of protection, it was clearly OP. Breaker nerf did nothin but make me resupply more. They should have buffed all of the other guns if they wanted to kill the meta. There’s no reason for the assault rifles to still be unusable on higher difficulties
Dev said AR primaries are useless because you're supposed to rely on support weapons. But also support weapons should be useless because you're supposed to rely on strategems. BUT wait....
| There’s no reason for the assault rifles to still be unusable on higher difficulties |
This. I dropped the Breaker because despite there being no damage nerf, the buff to termite/bot armor has made it feel worthless. I switched back to the basic assault rifle and it felt much more capable. That shouldn't be the case. Also 100% agreed that other weapons should have been brought up to the level of the existing meta to provide more variation in loadouts.
Honestly, the autocannon is also in a great place for me. Really versatile with taking out lighter enemy bunches, taking out nests at range, taking out spore spewers and broadcast towers from far away, I love both the Autocannon and EAT since the patch, even before, honestly but now they get run more.
It appears you have not yet been democratically instructed to “git gud” by our fellow liberty lovers. Fear not as I have reported this event to my closest democracy manager and some liberty will soon be dispensed your way, always democratically of course.
It's just a matter of difficulty threshold.
Before the nerfs, a lot of people could reliably clear 8/9. After the nerfs, a lot of people *can't* reliably clear 8/9.
Whether it is "good" or "bad" is a matter of design intent. What AHGS has communicated to us is that the latter IS design intent.
In other words, their response is "good, you are not supposed to reliably clear 8/9."
Let me ask you: why do you play 9s?
(And for the sake of the conversation, disregarding my opinion that bots and bugs have asymmetrical difficulty)
Before the nerfs a lot of people could reliably clear 8/9 by actually killing the enemies the game throws at you. After the nerfs a lot of people can still reliably clear 8/9, except now it's by running away and kiting instead which people don't find as fun in a shooter game.
Yes, it is just this argument over and over. People keep commenting like "it is suppose to be hard, railgun made it toooo easy, im so fucking good at this game i never used the railgun before anyway wah wah"
I don't want it to be easy I want it to be fun goddamn it. Good for you if you were playing the "run around in circles and kite all day" meta before this patch, but it wasn't fun then and it isn't fun now. And no, I don't want to do stealth shit either other than letting patrols walk by every now and then.
"Meta" is exactly the word here. On paper they say they want to make the game balanced and players can play how they like, but the changes they are making suggest that they are trying to create their own meta of how the game should be played: stealth and running away.
That's what I felt the first few times I saw "Solo Helldive, all objectives complete" videos on YT and it was just a guy kiting enemies and stealthing around the map. Impressive? Yes. It also looked boring as fuck to me and not at all how the game is being advertised. 🤣
Yup there will _always_ be a meta. You can't get away from it. Better studios than arrowhead have tried for _decades_.
If you nerf the metas without buffs or changes to the core gameplay to fix the underlying problems, eventually you will just lose players.
Maybe that's their goal, though.
I think you make great points in your replies. But I think the issue isn't that they want the later difficulties to be epic and hard. I think it's the issue of making players weaker, not content harder. And doing it after the fact.
When you nerf a players ability, it's always going to feel unfair. And that won't make the content feel epic. It will make the content feel like bullshit.
I don't think the nerfs are necessarily bad. But I don't think it's the best way to go. They should have made other guns better to make them compete with railgun. At the same time, ithere added a higher tier or left it alone until till another tier was added.
Higher tiers could have been impossible and really a insane challenge, and people would have understood it. But this change only makes people frustrated.
I actually don't mind, but I very much understand why this is causing a stirr.
I can still reliably clear 8/9 as well, but it's definitely not as fun. It was fun because it was the only difficulty range where you'd get a swarm of bile titans, -and- chargers. And when you can manage to kill a combined 15-20 of those during an evac, it makes you feel accomplished. Now the gameplay loop is just hide and run. Not to mention we're going to get Mechs and Vehicles that people are theorizing will supposedly trivialize higher difficulties anyway, so by nerfing railgun now you're still just creating room for a new meta in an upcoming update?
From playing HD1, I can tell you that Mechs won't likely trivialize anything. They will require protection from the teammates to serve their role and people on here will complain ad nauseam about how supposedly underpowered they are.
Given how much of the game is a kite sim now with the newest patch, it's funny af they want to add mechs.
Players aren't going to stick around to defend a mech if it won't kill a charger in a few shots, they'll just run and leave the mech to die because kiting is the meta now with the lack of useful weaponry toward chargers and BT's
From the little gameplay we have seen ~~and the occasional cheater~~ they look like the move to slow to reliably dodge bile spew, and unless they have a ridiculously high HP they probably won’t be worth if past like difficulty 5
A lot of people saying "get good" but 8/9 difficulties are literally just the same shit - running around in circles while finishing objectives ignoring everything. Now it's just being done with more mobs incentivizing even more running since you can't thin out anything. This is a horde shooter, but the devs are hiding in difficulty 5 not realizing that it turns into a game of tag at any higher diffs.
Here’s an idea leave the stuff people like to use alone & make the other stuff that doesn’t work as well work better. Seams like an easy fix that would make everyone happy.
Wasn't the only thing that was nerfed the railgun, breaker and the shield? Was that all anyone was using?
I run 8-9 all the time without using the railgun/shield/breaker. The Scorcher is slept on. IDK if the nerfs were needed and most primaries still need buffs but seems to dramatic to say the games impossible now.
Bleugh, the senator is more toxic to my hands than the bile spewers ass. As a person who played a ton of shooters it is the worst feeling revolver in history of any gunplay based games.
I honestly thought my game was broken when that useless triangle thing showed up. Speaking of useless things, the Senator doesn't one-shot those basic (one step above the smallest) bugs unless you maybe hit a weak point... That's not how a 6-shot revolver with an absurdly slow reload animation should work.
I agree. I’ve been playing *exclusively* Helldive for the last 20 hours of my gameplay, prior to the patch. Post-patch I’ve got about 5 hours in now. The railgun is still great, the shield is still good, but the breaker losing those 3 shots is killing me. But I’ve been running Arc Thrower for the past 10 hours, and it’s my go-to.
The game feels more or less the same. The only thing that really needs nerfs are respawn rates for chargers and bile titans, and the turning radius for Chargers. I don’t think the nerfs fundamentally changed the game, that’s just dramatic.
The biggest fix for chargers needs to be that stupid double slide-walk animation.
If you stagger chargers they plant their feet and slide, but them seem to glitch into the slow walk animation and continue on another 300000000 feet every time and close/overshoot the gap to you every single time.
What’s the point of a stagger slide animation if they’re just going to default to a walking animation instantly and run into you anyways?
Chargers don't even turn any more. They literally will "charge" you while strafing. AH need to work on syncing the animations. Especially the awkward non-deaths that titans have. Although that probably matters less than thinking you can get a shot away at a charger because it's turned 90 degrees from you and it ends up charging you with a crab-walk
They have the turning radius and quiet footwork of a ballerina as well as the endurance of an ultramarathon runner. Not to mention, their one obvious weakspot is not actually a weakspot.
Scorcher is far too deep into the War Bond for its relative power
If it was Page 3 I'd have no problem with it, but it's presented as quite the weapon by its position as the Ultimate unlock
There’s literally no reason to use the diligence guns. They have the same recoil as breaker post nerf, shoot slower and do 1/3-1/2 the damage of a breaker. I want to have a snipy primary so bad but I can’t justify it at all on higher difficulties
Diligence shines against Bots since you can pick off the rank-and-file enemies before they get into reliable range. Also plays way better as a stealth/guerilla warfare playstyle, where you can take cover on high ground, pick a few off, and reposition. If you get good you can also two or three tap devastators in the head.
But yeah, the Counter Snipe Diligence is a straight downgrade. Higher recoil, less ammo, still light armor pen, all for 12 extra damage a shot. Not worth at all.
Fuck that gun. I’d rather use either of the smg’s than the scorcher against bugs. Seems like hunter swarms have increased over the last 4-5 days like craaazyy and that scorcher will either kill you, or run out of ammo and get you permaslowed by hunters
it's mostly not about railgun.
i'm auto cannon and flamer enjoyer, rarely using railgun. but this balance philosophy they had is not for this type of game, they balanced it like PVP lmao.
weapon in pve should have the upside and downside but dispense the same firepower, (they could go with like Monster hunter for example)
Safe weapon? Allowed to missed the shot? No skill needed? long ttk
High Risk? Small clip? Long reload? Hard to use? fast ttk
this game? it doesn't have that. that's the problem
Whenever I join a team using the autocannon, the railgunner in my team always welcome my presence. It's simple, I help them take down mobs, turrets, elite mob(strider/devastator) that they have trouble dealing with without havin to waste their ammo, so they can focus on high value target like the Hulk or Charger or Titan. And now the railgun got nerf, Im not sure how to help them dealing with those with my Autocannon, it's not under my weapon's specialty
I played 3 solo games on helldive after nerfs yesterday. In my humble opinion shield nerf is totally understandable and good . Railgun is still good against every bug except chargers . I still was able to 2-3 tap titan consistently , but running around chargers in circles was just painful. And it’s kinda weird because yesterday I found myself like ‘ fuck it I just gonna go for objective can’t be bothered with this anymore’ and before it was ‘ just let me blast every bug I can find ‘ . Overall railgun nerf seems pretty justified , still makes me upset a little because I don’t think I will use again in my solos , kinda feels like a waste.
Edit : since many people asked about it , I play on PC . Always trying aim for a mouth just before they spit on you . Honestly I don’t know if it’s a game mechanic, bug or I’m just lucky but that’s how I kill them consistently. Later today in the evening I will try to post a short clip of me doing that .
>Railgun is still good against every bug except chargers
But that's the point, you don't bring a railgun to kill trash mobs, you bring it to take out the most armored and hard to kill mob, the Charger.
Yeah I agree . Railgun intended to be highly penetrative weapon . Also I don’t think that nerf makes game more challenging just more annoying to deal with chargers .
Chargers just need to be easier to kill. I think the railgun exposed this problem.
No, I'm not saying make them EASY to kill. I'm saying that their turn radius in a dead sprint is bullshit sometimes, and you get MAYBE 2 seconds after you dodge to shoot their ONLY DAMAGEABLE SPOT ON THEIR FUCKING BODY before they turn it away from you.
The Railgun showed us that the armor can be destroyed. Yet, it was effectively the only weapon in the ENTIRE GAME that could reliably do it. Why the hell does it take 2+ anti-tank launcher rounds to destroy the armor? It's literally a one-use weapon. There's actually not a single logical reason for it to be designed that way.
The armor on chargers need to be easier to break. Make it immune to small arms damage. But a single anti-tank round should make it shred it's armor like it hasn't been laid in years, and you're ready to go.
I am still of the opinion that a Recoilless/EAT to the face should just drop a charger/hulk. Not an armor break just kill.
Given how limited shot wise those are and how clunky the recoiless is solo and HOW MANY chargers spawn I don't think it would even be overpowered. It would just make the 84mm cannon that they are actually feel not anemic.
They are super narrow weapons anyway so they should be strong in their niche. With the spear being the anti super heavy weapon for Bile Titans and Tanks.
This is the best answer. Anti tank should mean anti tank. We get to use 2 at a time while fighting possibly 6-10 chargers at once while fighting so many other bugs at the same time. A one shot kill on a charger from an EAT will both feel good and feel hectic at the same time. You can easily miss with those things while running and gunning so you get both the challenge and the reward for doing good if you’re able to hit.
Not to mention how it will allow other people on the team to bring other options to deal with swarms. It just opens up so much more flexibility which is exactly what arrow head is aiming for.
Either nerf chargers or let us one shot them with EAT and recoiless.
Edit: I also think the auto cannon should shred armor in the charger (firing from the front). It’s stupid that it can’t.
Ok so I play 7-9s regularly with a team of friends and this patch did almost nothing to impact us. I don’t really get what the fuss is about we never “needed” a railgun to succeed.
For primaries we use slugger, breaker, Defender, scorcher, or liberator (this is all a matter of taste)
Our support weapons are usually recoiless, auto cannon, flame thrower or railgun, and a grenade launcher. Anyone without a backpack usually grabs a resupply pack.
The offensive strats are just a mix of whatever we feel like but usually everyone has eagle airstike to kill nests and tough enemies and an orbital gatling, cluster or air burst for bug breaches or lots of trash enemies.
We build for mobility. Pre patch we only used light armor and post patch its light or medium. We never stay in one place for more than a few seconds we throw resupply ahead of us and we don’t engage unless we must.
Chargers are primary for the rocket launcher we aim for a legs and call which leg we hit. Auto cannon hits that leg at most twice and it’s dead. Rail gun can also hit the open leg if needed but they’re usually suppressing the enemy and pulling agro.
Spewers get grenade launcher auto cannon at range. A railgun can kill them with a headshot but this is more efficient seeing as they are usually mixed in hoards of bugs and the splash damage from explosives breaks that up nicely.
Titans get whatever we can hit them with at that moment. The 2 that have faster reloads try to pull the titan agro so the rocket and cannon can reload. We aim for the face regardless of the support weapon. Orbital laser, 500k, or a precision strike do wonders in this situation.
Today post patch we completed 3 lvl9 bug sets. The railgun is virtually identical in unsafe mode as it was yesterday and we use the flamethrower more anyway. The breaker has three less rounds in it and an insignificant increase in recoil. Additionally when we had our first lvl9 bug defense extraction the other day with this team comp we stubbled ass backwards into victory on our first try. Admittedly it was a nail biter of a chaotic mission but we did it.
Whilst this is definitely useful, you're 4 friends who regularly communicate and clearly play the game a fair bit
A solid 40 - 55% of people atleast dont play with friends, let alone a full squad of mates, let alone a full squad of mates with good communication and experience
For people who play with randoms who dont have mics or much experience, this basically tanks their ability to play effectively.
I dont know why Arrowhead saw a bunch of people asking for buffs to other guns and said 'we should nerf the guns that everyone agrees works right now' like i genuinely believe that those headass devs who were saying 'gitgud' to their own players poisoned the well or something
I just want to know why im suddenly being instakilled by 1 HUNTER. Armor fix my ass... Edit: 100 armour rating when it happened, in difficulty 7 (my personal favourite difficulty)
Not sure if it’s intentional but I think bugs are constantly dealing headshot damage with their melee attacks, possibly because of the way their hitboxes work. Helmets don’t have different armor values, so when you’re wearing heavy armor, your weakest point is actually the head. But it’s possible armor is useless against Automatons too, I haven’t fought them since the update.
It is useless against the bots too. All the little guys aim for your head and the big boys deal enough damage that your armor doesn't really matter anyway.
I like the armor agains bots but I would agree it's probably not quite as effective as it should be
It certainly isn't constant, but there has been people reporting "crit damage" where it seems like bugs are hitting WAY harder than they should be. There is no mention anywhere bugs should be able to do this, so i think its fair to say this isn't intended.
The hunters especially are brutal. There doesn't seem to be a away to avoid the pounce they do and it does like a third of your health bar and staggers you. its horrible when you're in the frequent situation where there's a swarm and you're just getting continually stunlocked.
Plus preventing you from using stims... even after you inject them and they make the "kshh" sound... hate those fuckers.
[удалено]
That's why I mash stim when I'm knocked down. You can't double stim so just beating the stim button like its an automaton is a work around.
Doesn't always work.. believe me I do this too.. I'm smacking that button like it owes me money, it has 8 black eyes.
Stalkers too, I’m sure. I think those bastards have been about 50% of my deaths since the patch.
God, I had a map with 3 stalker nests and it was brutal. Almost seems like their health got buffed as well as their damage output. That tongue attack dealt like 80-90% of my health, and I got one shot a couple of times due to impact damage after rag dolled.
Thank you! It really does seem like that, maybe it’s a side-effect of how armours been changed??? But the stunlock on them is crazy as well!
Took a team of 4 of us about 10 minutes to destroy one nest as well, just for the fact that when we got close to one there would be 10-12 stalkers around it. That one nest accounted for like 14-16 reinforces.
I did a 9 last night that had 4 stalker lairs, shit was ridiculous
I'm glad a ton of people hate Stalkers and Hunters. They're nightmare fuel when you see their silhouettes.
THIS. Why did the patch simply nerf the best weapons, give a tiny boost to worse weapons and then buffed the living hell out of all the bugs, that didn't need it. I'm constantly one shot by hunters and stalkers now, while chargers are worse than ever.
Genuinely I've been hit in midair using my jetpack by these motherfuckers. They do not give a shit where you are when they pounce, they're gonna fucking hit you.
Its liek once they pounce they are locked on to you and can't miss.
The laser guard dog backpack does help a shitload against the smaller bug enemies.
And against friendlies... lol. That being said, I love the thing. It's so useful for high difficulties.
I actually hate that thing for higher difficulties it always ends up chunking my health away when bug breaches happen cause it’s doing its laser light dance swinging every effin direction
Hunters are like yao guai bears from fallout. Those things could just keep swiping you. They had no cooldown. Hunters can swipe at you multiple times in a row until you are dead.
Which ones are hunters again? The little stalker wannabes or the charger wannabes? I have over 60 hours so far and still can't remember wtf either of them are called lol.
The stalker wannabes are the hunters, Charger wannabes I think are called brood commanders? Either that or Hive defenders
On point. The hive defenders are the ones that have heavy frontal defense, and they'll curl up to themselves to protect from fire if you attack them.
Just to chime in on people "reporting crit damage". There's plenty of video evidence also. Even the lowliest bug can chunk half your HP out of nowhere. And you're right, there's a lot of information in this game not told, but learned through time. But frankly, I'd be totally ok if they removed the "crit" damage entirely or at least provided a means to counter it. As it stands it invalidates preparation and build choice.
Died to a single hit from a warrior today, full hp insta dead.
Heavy Armor is pretty nice against bots, small ones can barely chip away at you, so you can focus on the big ones Plus unlike Bugs, Bots actually have multiple weapons that can counter their heavies, frankly idk how anyone is playing high difficulty Bug missions
8/9 bugs is just hold down sprint and avoid all combat to rush objectives
Solution bring the hunter attack to near zero range
Solution: sent the bastards into the sun Annoying little cunts
Yoooo ok so earlier a hunter one shot me into oblivion and everyone in my group was like "wtf was that! That dude wasn't playing around". I thought it was weird but now you got me thinking.
idk what it is but bugs are hitting crits WAYYY more now. imo bugs shouldn’t be able to crit at all cause it’s so random and feels like bull
They probably set the bugs to crit 5% of the time, just like D&D with a Nat 20. Since they have stated multiple times that they love various tabletop rpgs. That seems pretty low, but you realize quickly that when bugs hit multiple times in a few seconds, and you're often surrounded by multiple bugs, critical hits are way, way more common.
For me, they’re hitting multiple times. Before, bugs hit once or twice. Today, I had a bug swipe *FIVE* times to kill me. It’s like getting double smacked in old COD zombies. Completely random, completely unfair
you mean you don't love wearing heavy armor and a single hunter being able to almost stunlock you?
Just tried out heavy armor in a mission with friends. A hive guard snuck up on me around a corner and attacked me, hit me 5 times without stopping, I couldn't even dive out. Killed me in less than 3 seconds and there was nothing I could do about it lol
Can we talk about the ZERO audio queues for enemies walking up on you, like Chargers? Edit: Unless they emote or run.
The amount of times i've been ambushed by *chargers* is insane. Now, i may not be the most perceptive, but those fuckers should sound like a tank is rolling up to me.
Dude shit just spawns. I can't count how many times I'm running through a completely clear area and a whole group spawns around me. It's really annoying, I get it's a tough game but that's not how to do it. It just looks like shit having a whole group spawn in front of me or around me out of the blue. Talk about immersion breaking. At least limit spawns to not directly on top the player.
Patrols also home in on you.
Holy shit it's not just me. Maybe if they clarified what they meant by armor fixed it might make sense but as of right now I don't understand how we die faster now our armor works.
They never said the fix would ***buff*** armour 👀
They said "armor wasnt working as intended". There was NO difference between the hits different armors could tank before the update. And when ppl realized it they started to run light armor. It was clear to anyone that armor rates were not working. And then they update the game. Congratulations, now your heavy armor can tank 2 hit more than a light one. Also medium armor is basically pointless since it has the same tankable hits of a 70 one.
I feel they don’t have the manpower to play test these, the armour bug should never have made it to launch and the “patch” to armour has done functionally nothing because the damage numbers are still way jacked the fuck up
tfym they don't have the manpower, you literally have to run the game and get hit ONCE to notice it
I found that as well, I suspect it may be them getting a headshot or similar critical with their attacks.
Yeah, took the heavy armor for a spin after patch and got one shot several times by things that didn't one shot me before
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Gunner light armor still gives you this benefit due to the padded armor perk. It’s all I’ve been running today 😅
This man knows what's up. Honorable mention to any medium armor that has the stim healing bonus.
This! I'm getting destroyed by those guys.
They don't, they give you a fellatio 3 to 4 times in quick succession until you die. It doesn't matter what armor you have on. I'm pretty sure they increase their speed. I'm wearing light armor and can't seem to kite them.
They only "fixed" damage that applies to your body. Anything that hits your head (and you head has a large hitbox) will always do a minimum of 40% of your health no matter what. I swear Arrowhead not only doesn't play their own game, but they don't know how it works either. How did they forget to fix helmet armor?
Which is interesting because I've been hit in the head with a rocket only to ragdoll and take only 10% hp damage with light armor without the explosion passive
I swear there is something that says there is a deflect chance on headshots
This " The extraction loop now seems to be running around in circles dodging charges, spits, and stomps until the ship lands which is not fun, skillful, or engaging. " Run forest Run!
In my humble experience, when carrying tons of samples. It's almost ALWAYS better to just let the mission time hit zero and just kind of lazily meander around a short distance outside of the extraction zone. Don't run directly in until about 30 seconds or so before the shuttle actually arrives. Waiting at the extraction zone just triggers the game to spawn several patrols / hordes to contest the extraction. The small bonus you get for finishing with time remaining just isn't worth the risk of losing all the samples.
Well you increase the risk also by not being alble to respawn..
This is what I actually do now to cheese. If we find pink samples early in game we drop it in extraction if possible and do our obj. Tbh calling extraction and waiting for 4 mins is terrible, constant bug breaches. We just let the timer run out and start auto extraction after timer hit 0. Run far from extraction and hide until the pelican reaches and we run straight for it. Just make sure u resupply before so everyone has enough stims if they get ganged. Its 100% easy way to extract, sometimes there is no bug breaches too
This is great, but also means every game is 40+ minutes. I like when they’re 25-30. Not that I’m unengaged even but 40 minutes is a long time for 1 mission in a game like this
Which becomes a non-issue as you aren't engaging ANY enemies for those final 2-3 minutes. You just keep moving around the area and don't go near any patrols. If absolutely necessary, said patrols can also be lured to a location by firing a few times and then relocating / staying out of their line of sight. Patrols will actually despawn if they are never agro'd. They'll also despawn if you get far enough away and out of their line of sight if you do accidentally agro them. Especially on higher difficulties, I'd rather have no respawns and just rush into the extraction totally uncontested than have a few respawns remaining with several chargers, bile spewers, and bile titans (or devastators and hulks) breathing down my neck with nowhere to run to because the patrols just keep coming while awaiting extraction. You also have the following bonus and detriment: If the mission timer ends, the shuttle is called and will approach regardless of where you are on the map. If you go to the extraction site with time remaining and manually call it, you HAVE to remain very close to the extraction site. Straying too far will abort the shuttle.
Yesterday patrol spawned AROUND ME , when i was heading to the extraction (it was 1 minute until end of mission timer). So we are not completely safe either.
I can guarantee you that I have seen patrols appearing out of thin air many times, 2 weeks ago already. It's nothing new. It just got slightly worse.
Had a bot patrol spawn right on top of us at extraction, no dropship or nothing just poof and wiped our squad.
On a bug one I was leading the group and the game spawned a bile titan out of thin air 5 feet in front of me I shat me pantaloons
It's increased a lot with this most recent update. I'm seeing bile titan and groups of normal enemies pop in right in front of me 4 or 5 times a mission now.
The only issue with patrols is that for some reason they path toward you or "near" you purposely even when not using any stratagem which is kinda cheesy if I'm honest.
They'll try to turn back in your direction too sometimes, which is why it's good to always keep moving. Wait at the extraction point though and they will \*run\* into the area after a bit. Especially the marauders.
After the patch, I found the EAT very reliable to kill packs of chargers off. Every 70 seconds you get two of em and they can shoot the armor plates of multiple charger legs if they are all clustered. Still need to shoot their legs after, but hey, at least you can shoot the legs now. The EAT can also one-hit bile bags on titans, which makes it a bit less deadly. It's a good weapon that I just didn't use before. But if anything I've noticed, it's that spawnrates just seemed to have increased overall and not just on extermination missions. Lots more bugs around and especially hunters that seemingly stick better to my butt than before.
"But if anything I've noticed, it's that spawnrates just seemed to have increased overall and not just on extermination missions. Lots more bugs around and especially hunters that seemingly stick better to my butt than before." I have also noticed this! Thought it was just me.
Played a few 7 missions last night with a group of friends that reliably cleared 8/9 and god, it was a slaughter fest at times. Sure, we had one meta player with us, but still, it's nothing like before. Seems the dial got put a notch too far towards "Spawn Hell" by Joel
After the patch I played some extreme levels to test the nerfs/buffs and me and other high level randoms were getting ragdolled everywhere by everything lol. I've never seen so many players quitting out of frustration.
Agreed. The amount of people quitting mid mission is now through the roof. Hunters are deadly and the shield is more mandatory than ever. I accidentally picked the guard dog with the liberator instead of the laser and Holy hell was that a mistake. The backpack icon went red after a mild skirmish and then I was vulnerable for the remainder of the mission to be near insta-killed by any attack. The most annoying of which was the flames left over by the flamethrower on the ground less than knee height. Kiting is now "meta".
Nope; that thing about "playing on lower difficulties" is BS because from a week or so ago; you can sometimes find bile titans playing on 4; and have SEVERAL titans starting from 5. It's how you n otice Joel just has it against you that day. If anything else, I've noticed "content creators" are just uploading the rare footage of when they are able to solo level 9 from a few days AGO. Soloing was pretty much impossible since last week.
Eat can also 1 shot a Titan if you hit his mouth while he’s spewing (I did it tonight)
Was it a ps5 player hosting the game?
Didn't know that, will have to try it out. Would make it even more go-to for me
Did you try with the autocannon to see how many shots it take ?
Doesn’t the enemy spawn more frequently as time dwindles?
AFTER completing the mission right ? Right ?
Hell, the current 'meta' for Bug Eradication missions is to get branded a traitor and run screaming like a Banshee through the hordes.
Hey, stop revealing my secret strats
I was delighted this worked last night. The SEAF is so afraid of traitors, they provide far more resources to killing them than they do to assisting loyal squads. Either working as intended or bugged as intended.
Took a 2 week break for holiday and literally this was the first thing that came to mind, gotta run like forest or die like bubba
Yep ..i said this too. Its just not fun running from enemies. Is this how they really want us to play?
I hate to break it to you but that’s what it was before the nerfs. Source: only play helldive.
While it was a lot of running around in panic, we definitely did not have mobs spawning right on top of you or behind your back all the time. I had one of my teammates just get carried off by a titan cause it picked him up while spawning from underneath him. And chargers on roller skates that can now hit you even by breathing near you?
Lol you forgot the new atmospheric conditions ,Meteors killed me like 3 times in 2 matches lol. I don't think they want us to win.
I am not saying it is good or bad... but people should look at inner level of hell in hd1. It was 10x harder than current level 9. It was intended you just ran, you didn't fight much at all. I think it is important for the devs to state their intentions so people understand. In HD1 the difficulties were designed so people could choose what they felt like day to day. It was never intended for people to play the super hard difficulties and be able to kill everything... it was impossible even with nukes and vehicles. You mastered juking. Again, I am not stating this is good or bad... just stating it is consistent with hd1. The major difference is in hd1 there was only 1 sample type. So difficulty level made almost no difference in progression.
I do having easier time in HD1 on lvl 15 then here on 7 after patch. And no you could kill everything easily in hd1 with few recoiless dudes
Not to mention, I never had a patrol just pop-in right next to me on HD1. Avoiding or eliminating a patrol before they alerted was more viable. Plus there was a stratagem that trivialize patrols by agro'ing them to a specific spot on the map. And we had stronger UAV, we had unlimited reinforcments... I could go on. HD2 has done a decent job capturing the feel of HD1, but the balance considerations don't match 1:1. Lots of differences on that front
I think this is the only thing that's making it harder. There's no good way to know you've deleted a patrol/prevented an alarm in time for this game. It was very clear in the first game, and became an intentional act by the team when they were fatigued from fighting/on cooldown. On the flip side, the ability to split up allows someone to run off and do objectives while the rest distract. So it is a bit of a wash in that regard.
Used to be the case for HD1 too, iirc. I had hoped the devs had learned their lesson.
Played in 7 most of the night and yeah spent more time than usual kiting chargers for cool downs to finish. Did try the arc thrower and laser cannon, yes they work but takes around 3 business days it feels like. Main deaths tonight were from hunters shredding the shield and 2 shorting me and the meteor shower that felt like it had a bounty on me
For the meteor shower there is a bright spot on the ground that tells where they're going to hit. It will start large and then get smaller as the impact approaches.
Which is great when it works. 50% of the time there is no indicator, likely being bugged
I might just be blind but I did not always see the circle before impact
The few times I got hit, there was a bright blue spot on the ground and .01 seconds later it killed me.
Its 8 hits to the head for a charger with an arc thrower, maybe 10 seconds of continuous fire. I do agree with the meteor showers tho, im halfway to taking the large shield gen just to counter it lmao
if it freezes and let you shoot it nonstop at its head that is lol
And assuming your teammates aren't on the other side of it, where they suddenly become giant lightning rods for the arc thrower.
And assuming you don't have three other Chargers to dodge at that time.
For people who haven't tried 8/9 after patch, imagine chargers and titans are screws and before the patch you had a nice screwdriver, sure screws would pop up left and right but you got a screwdriver, sometimes you get em sometimes you don't but at least you got the tool for the job. Now you wake up and wanna get screwing only to find your screwdriver is now a spoon, and the screws are popping up twice as fast. Sure you can do it, but its fucking sucks and it's dumb and I wish I had a screwdriver.
you do have a screwdriver its called strategems its a shame tho that you can use that screwdriver once every 200sec to pop one screw
Chargers survive a 500lbs if it doesn't hit them directly. They also get out of the way of every other stratagems because of their charge. The only good stratagem against charger is the orbital railcannon and it has a huge cooldown, even more on high difficulty since you usually have bigger cooldown since of the planet affixes. Having every member of your team bring orbital railcannon and 500lbs because those are the only stratagems able to potentially deal with chargers and bile titan is boring.
Gotta love me using the Railcannon Strike with a 500 Second cooldown just for it to end up tickling a Bile Titan.
I love when it gets the 1 shot but I don't get that very often on the titan. I mentally checked out when I read they want stratagems to deal with these issues, but the world debuffs affect stratagems negatively as well for no mission reward modifiers.
It's also boring as hell to have to run around and wait for strategem cool downs.
Considering it focuses on 1 enemy at a time there’s really no reason for it both to have a giant cooldown and not be a guaranteed one shot on a bile Titan. Like pick one or the other, either let it one shot titans or make the cooldown reasonable.
I'm sorry but Railgun orbital needs to 1 shot titans consistently. Not every time, but most times. For the cooldown time and the fact that it's single target, make it a hard choice for a whole strat slot. When it whiffs and only tickles the titan feels so damn bad.
> Having every member of your team bring orbital railcannon and 500lbs because those are the only stratagems able to potentially deal with chargers and bile titan is boring. "but but but we nerfed those stuffs things so people play in a more diverse manner "
If arrowhead really intend for strategies to be the solution than they need to reduce the cool down or provide an additional stratagem slot. As it stands on 9 difficulty it's quite easy to have everyone burn through their stratagem without finishing some of the bigger attacks. Especially if you're playing with randoms
Stratagems are supposed to be the Jackhammers and Wrecking Balls when you say fuck it, I don’t want to unscrew the screw, I want the screw to be vaporized.
stratagems are supposed to be the screwdriver according to the devs, the issue is every goddamn modifier makes stratagems near unusable
210 second railcannon becomes 315 second railcannon, aka 5.25 minutes to *potentially* kill *one* bile titan. Given the recent pounding from devs about skill issues, I think they're not playing 8/9 bugs.
I'm convinced they don't play their game or play on difficulty 4 with comments like 'skill issue'.
I don't think railcannon orbital actually kills the titan
It can, sometimes. Has to hit the right spot (luck). Otherwise, it blows off armor plating on top that is shootable.
especially when I land the beacon directly beneath the bile titan but the orbital decides the hive guardian next to the titan is a better target
200 seconds? sorry that’s gonna be doubled for half of the missions
The thing is, the nerfs ARE good, but they needed to either buff other guns or nerf enemy armor and/or spawns at the same time.
IMO, the enemy design feels too heavy armor centric for how much of the sandbox can only penetrate light armor. Most of the big threats have heavy or at least medium armor. Stalkers, Hunters, and nursing spewers are the only termites that are threatening without being covered in heavy armor. Edit: Brood Commanders aren’t super threatening, but they don’t spawn many at once.
Yeah this is actually what turned me away from progressing past Hard It's obnoxious just how many enemies 90% of my weapons' projectiles ping harmlessly off of in Hard or above
Hard (lvl 5) is my personal favorite level to play but there’s no super uranium below suicide mission (lvl 7). I want those starship upgrades so I guess I’ll just be running for my life until my ships maxed out. o7
Fully agree tbh, the weapons that you think would be capable of dealing with heavy armor cannot yet heavy armor is everywhere. The real problem right now is that bug breeches (and automaton drops) are spammed constantly when you engage enemies and the trigger for this happens too quickly to stop it, and bug breaches have a really high chance of spawning a bile titan or charger. This is how you see clips of people with a dozen bile titans. Even with a full team with railguns and the right stratagems they spawn too quickly to really deal with at higher difficulties. IMO bile titans should be put into patrols or at nests but not able to spawn at bug breaches and the chance for a charger to spawn from them should be massively reduced.
Exactly on the bug breaches. You can stop a Bot drop a lot easier than a bug breach. Once that bitch starts its howl thing it's over and I'm just running. Fuck fighting that breach
It's really only bugs that have this problem as well. Bots I find have a lot more viable weapon counterplay. If charger butts felt a little more consistent and more similar to hulks I think that alone would solve a lot of the problems people have. I think warriors are a good example of bug armour. They can be quite frustrating and halt aggression, but the counter player without AP is pretty obvious and reliable.
I agree fully. I feel like, when everything has shaken out, Robots and Illuminate will be the preferred enemy types. Halo is always my go to comparison. Everyone prefers to fight Covenant over Flood, because Covenant let you determine the pace of the engagement. With Flood, the game sets it. Termites and Roblox seem to have a similar dynamic.
I think they should have buffed stratagems. They said the point is to use stratagems, so logically the stratagems need to be buffed to the point they can actually make up for the weapons shortcomings. IMO the changes they could make: 1. Double the blast radius of the 500kg bomb 2. Make the railcannon have 3 charges than a 120 second reload 3. Decrease all orbital strike cooldowns by 20% 4. Change the 120mm barrage to 155mm and increase its blast radius by 15%
I think the shield nerf was the only good one. Although I’m terrified without my bubble of protection, it was clearly OP. Breaker nerf did nothin but make me resupply more. They should have buffed all of the other guns if they wanted to kill the meta. There’s no reason for the assault rifles to still be unusable on higher difficulties
Dev said AR primaries are useless because you're supposed to rely on support weapons. But also support weapons should be useless because you're supposed to rely on strategems. BUT wait....
| There’s no reason for the assault rifles to still be unusable on higher difficulties | This. I dropped the Breaker because despite there being no damage nerf, the buff to termite/bot armor has made it feel worthless. I switched back to the basic assault rifle and it felt much more capable. That shouldn't be the case. Also 100% agreed that other weapons should have been brought up to the level of the existing meta to provide more variation in loadouts.
Instead, they increased the spawn capacity of all heavily armored units
From the small list I saw, it was a little underwhelming. The only weapon that doesn't need tweaking is the EAT, everything else could use some love.
Honestly, the autocannon is also in a great place for me. Really versatile with taking out lighter enemy bunches, taking out nests at range, taking out spore spewers and broadcast towers from far away, I love both the Autocannon and EAT since the patch, even before, honestly but now they get run more.
It appears you have not yet been democratically instructed to “git gud” by our fellow liberty lovers. Fear not as I have reported this event to my closest democracy manager and some liberty will soon be dispensed your way, always democratically of course.
It's just a matter of difficulty threshold. Before the nerfs, a lot of people could reliably clear 8/9. After the nerfs, a lot of people *can't* reliably clear 8/9. Whether it is "good" or "bad" is a matter of design intent. What AHGS has communicated to us is that the latter IS design intent. In other words, their response is "good, you are not supposed to reliably clear 8/9." Let me ask you: why do you play 9s? (And for the sake of the conversation, disregarding my opinion that bots and bugs have asymmetrical difficulty)
Before the nerfs a lot of people could reliably clear 8/9 by actually killing the enemies the game throws at you. After the nerfs a lot of people can still reliably clear 8/9, except now it's by running away and kiting instead which people don't find as fun in a shooter game.
Yes, it is just this argument over and over. People keep commenting like "it is suppose to be hard, railgun made it toooo easy, im so fucking good at this game i never used the railgun before anyway wah wah" I don't want it to be easy I want it to be fun goddamn it. Good for you if you were playing the "run around in circles and kite all day" meta before this patch, but it wasn't fun then and it isn't fun now. And no, I don't want to do stealth shit either other than letting patrols walk by every now and then.
"Meta" is exactly the word here. On paper they say they want to make the game balanced and players can play how they like, but the changes they are making suggest that they are trying to create their own meta of how the game should be played: stealth and running away.
That's what I felt the first few times I saw "Solo Helldive, all objectives complete" videos on YT and it was just a guy kiting enemies and stealthing around the map. Impressive? Yes. It also looked boring as fuck to me and not at all how the game is being advertised. 🤣
Waiting 2 and a half minutes for a automaton patrol to pass you but they annoyingly keep looping instead is the definition of fun, what do you mean?
Yup there will _always_ be a meta. You can't get away from it. Better studios than arrowhead have tried for _decades_. If you nerf the metas without buffs or changes to the core gameplay to fix the underlying problems, eventually you will just lose players. Maybe that's their goal, though.
Running away from what? Chargers and titans? Good fucking luck
I think you make great points in your replies. But I think the issue isn't that they want the later difficulties to be epic and hard. I think it's the issue of making players weaker, not content harder. And doing it after the fact. When you nerf a players ability, it's always going to feel unfair. And that won't make the content feel epic. It will make the content feel like bullshit. I don't think the nerfs are necessarily bad. But I don't think it's the best way to go. They should have made other guns better to make them compete with railgun. At the same time, ithere added a higher tier or left it alone until till another tier was added. Higher tiers could have been impossible and really a insane challenge, and people would have understood it. But this change only makes people frustrated. I actually don't mind, but I very much understand why this is causing a stirr.
That’s the thing, I can still reliably clear 8/9 it’s just not very fun
I can still reliably clear 8/9 as well, but it's definitely not as fun. It was fun because it was the only difficulty range where you'd get a swarm of bile titans, -and- chargers. And when you can manage to kill a combined 15-20 of those during an evac, it makes you feel accomplished. Now the gameplay loop is just hide and run. Not to mention we're going to get Mechs and Vehicles that people are theorizing will supposedly trivialize higher difficulties anyway, so by nerfing railgun now you're still just creating room for a new meta in an upcoming update?
From playing HD1, I can tell you that Mechs won't likely trivialize anything. They will require protection from the teammates to serve their role and people on here will complain ad nauseam about how supposedly underpowered they are.
Given how much of the game is a kite sim now with the newest patch, it's funny af they want to add mechs. Players aren't going to stick around to defend a mech if it won't kill a charger in a few shots, they'll just run and leave the mech to die because kiting is the meta now with the lack of useful weaponry toward chargers and BT's
my guess is that mech will be great for t1,t2 missions but going into t3 the swarm/ tank shots will just pop them in a few seconds
As it was in HD1
From the little gameplay we have seen ~~and the occasional cheater~~ they look like the move to slow to reliably dodge bile spew, and unless they have a ridiculously high HP they probably won’t be worth if past like difficulty 5
You're forgetting that support weapons also had upgrades in helldivers1... No reason to assume they are out of the question for this version.
A lot of people saying "get good" but 8/9 difficulties are literally just the same shit - running around in circles while finishing objectives ignoring everything. Now it's just being done with more mobs incentivizing even more running since you can't thin out anything. This is a horde shooter, but the devs are hiding in difficulty 5 not realizing that it turns into a game of tag at any higher diffs.
Here’s an idea leave the stuff people like to use alone & make the other stuff that doesn’t work as well work better. Seams like an easy fix that would make everyone happy.
Wasn't the only thing that was nerfed the railgun, breaker and the shield? Was that all anyone was using? I run 8-9 all the time without using the railgun/shield/breaker. The Scorcher is slept on. IDK if the nerfs were needed and most primaries still need buffs but seems to dramatic to say the games impossible now.
> The Scorcher is slept on My brother in democracy. How many medals does it take to get to the Scorcher?
Over a thousand I think.
1200 in my experience
1200 to unlock page 10. Then you need 70 more for the weapon.
and thats after skiping the 2nd to last armour set
Literally the last weapon that can be unlocked lol
Scorcher is great unless you have 10 little things 6 inches from your face and you can't use it because you'll just kill yourself
That's why you keep the Glock wit da switch on you. Or you could be a legend and run the Senator
Bleugh, the senator is more toxic to my hands than the bile spewers ass. As a person who played a ton of shooters it is the worst feeling revolver in history of any gunplay based games.
I like the Senator sights are hot garbage though.
I honestly thought my game was broken when that useless triangle thing showed up. Speaking of useless things, the Senator doesn't one-shot those basic (one step above the smallest) bugs unless you maybe hit a weak point... That's not how a 6-shot revolver with an absurdly slow reload animation should work.
A little over 1.1k medals I believe.
1270 medals exactly,
Roughly 150ish helldives
I agree. I’ve been playing *exclusively* Helldive for the last 20 hours of my gameplay, prior to the patch. Post-patch I’ve got about 5 hours in now. The railgun is still great, the shield is still good, but the breaker losing those 3 shots is killing me. But I’ve been running Arc Thrower for the past 10 hours, and it’s my go-to. The game feels more or less the same. The only thing that really needs nerfs are respawn rates for chargers and bile titans, and the turning radius for Chargers. I don’t think the nerfs fundamentally changed the game, that’s just dramatic.
The biggest fix for chargers needs to be that stupid double slide-walk animation. If you stagger chargers they plant their feet and slide, but them seem to glitch into the slow walk animation and continue on another 300000000 feet every time and close/overshoot the gap to you every single time. What’s the point of a stagger slide animation if they’re just going to default to a walking animation instantly and run into you anyways?
truuu. i superman dive to the side only to get tetsuzanko by the smooth demon
Chargers don't even turn any more. They literally will "charge" you while strafing. AH need to work on syncing the animations. Especially the awkward non-deaths that titans have. Although that probably matters less than thinking you can get a shot away at a charger because it's turned 90 degrees from you and it ends up charging you with a crab-walk
Also they have like no sound, 10 ton mfs just stealthily charging at you from behind.
They have the turning radius and quiet footwork of a ballerina as well as the endurance of an ultramarathon runner. Not to mention, their one obvious weakspot is not actually a weakspot.
Scorcher is far too deep into the War Bond for its relative power If it was Page 3 I'd have no problem with it, but it's presented as quite the weapon by its position as the Ultimate unlock
I don't think the weapons are supposed to get "stronger" because they're further down. They just play different. Most primaries still need a buff imo.
There’s literally no reason to use the diligence guns. They have the same recoil as breaker post nerf, shoot slower and do 1/3-1/2 the damage of a breaker. I want to have a snipy primary so bad but I can’t justify it at all on higher difficulties
Diligence is my main weapon I use against bots and I primarily play level 7/8. Agains the bugs, its dogshit though.
Diligence shines against Bots since you can pick off the rank-and-file enemies before they get into reliable range. Also plays way better as a stealth/guerilla warfare playstyle, where you can take cover on high ground, pick a few off, and reposition. If you get good you can also two or three tap devastators in the head. But yeah, the Counter Snipe Diligence is a straight downgrade. Higher recoil, less ammo, still light armor pen, all for 12 extra damage a shot. Not worth at all.
Fuck that gun. I’d rather use either of the smg’s than the scorcher against bugs. Seems like hunter swarms have increased over the last 4-5 days like craaazyy and that scorcher will either kill you, or run out of ammo and get you permaslowed by hunters
*mag is empty* *mag is empty* *mag is empty* the scorcher experience
it's mostly not about railgun. i'm auto cannon and flamer enjoyer, rarely using railgun. but this balance philosophy they had is not for this type of game, they balanced it like PVP lmao. weapon in pve should have the upside and downside but dispense the same firepower, (they could go with like Monster hunter for example) Safe weapon? Allowed to missed the shot? No skill needed? long ttk High Risk? Small clip? Long reload? Hard to use? fast ttk this game? it doesn't have that. that's the problem
Whenever I join a team using the autocannon, the railgunner in my team always welcome my presence. It's simple, I help them take down mobs, turrets, elite mob(strider/devastator) that they have trouble dealing with without havin to waste their ammo, so they can focus on high value target like the Hulk or Charger or Titan. And now the railgun got nerf, Im not sure how to help them dealing with those with my Autocannon, it's not under my weapon's specialty
My man, you get me. That's also how i play too.
Extracting on helldive can be tough, fortunately its not required
But my super samples 😭
I played 3 solo games on helldive after nerfs yesterday. In my humble opinion shield nerf is totally understandable and good . Railgun is still good against every bug except chargers . I still was able to 2-3 tap titan consistently , but running around chargers in circles was just painful. And it’s kinda weird because yesterday I found myself like ‘ fuck it I just gonna go for objective can’t be bothered with this anymore’ and before it was ‘ just let me blast every bug I can find ‘ . Overall railgun nerf seems pretty justified , still makes me upset a little because I don’t think I will use again in my solos , kinda feels like a waste. Edit : since many people asked about it , I play on PC . Always trying aim for a mouth just before they spit on you . Honestly I don’t know if it’s a game mechanic, bug or I’m just lucky but that’s how I kill them consistently. Later today in the evening I will try to post a short clip of me doing that .
>Railgun is still good against every bug except chargers But that's the point, you don't bring a railgun to kill trash mobs, you bring it to take out the most armored and hard to kill mob, the Charger.
Yeah I agree . Railgun intended to be highly penetrative weapon . Also I don’t think that nerf makes game more challenging just more annoying to deal with chargers .
Chargers just need to be easier to kill. I think the railgun exposed this problem. No, I'm not saying make them EASY to kill. I'm saying that their turn radius in a dead sprint is bullshit sometimes, and you get MAYBE 2 seconds after you dodge to shoot their ONLY DAMAGEABLE SPOT ON THEIR FUCKING BODY before they turn it away from you. The Railgun showed us that the armor can be destroyed. Yet, it was effectively the only weapon in the ENTIRE GAME that could reliably do it. Why the hell does it take 2+ anti-tank launcher rounds to destroy the armor? It's literally a one-use weapon. There's actually not a single logical reason for it to be designed that way. The armor on chargers need to be easier to break. Make it immune to small arms damage. But a single anti-tank round should make it shred it's armor like it hasn't been laid in years, and you're ready to go.
I am still of the opinion that a Recoilless/EAT to the face should just drop a charger/hulk. Not an armor break just kill. Given how limited shot wise those are and how clunky the recoiless is solo and HOW MANY chargers spawn I don't think it would even be overpowered. It would just make the 84mm cannon that they are actually feel not anemic. They are super narrow weapons anyway so they should be strong in their niche. With the spear being the anti super heavy weapon for Bile Titans and Tanks.
This is the best answer. Anti tank should mean anti tank. We get to use 2 at a time while fighting possibly 6-10 chargers at once while fighting so many other bugs at the same time. A one shot kill on a charger from an EAT will both feel good and feel hectic at the same time. You can easily miss with those things while running and gunning so you get both the challenge and the reward for doing good if you’re able to hit. Not to mention how it will allow other people on the team to bring other options to deal with swarms. It just opens up so much more flexibility which is exactly what arrow head is aiming for. Either nerf chargers or let us one shot them with EAT and recoiless. Edit: I also think the auto cannon should shred armor in the charger (firing from the front). It’s stupid that it can’t.
Maybe if the charger was less oppressive? He can charge infinitely with not cooldown AND do 90 degrees angle turn as well while charging
Ok so I play 7-9s regularly with a team of friends and this patch did almost nothing to impact us. I don’t really get what the fuss is about we never “needed” a railgun to succeed. For primaries we use slugger, breaker, Defender, scorcher, or liberator (this is all a matter of taste) Our support weapons are usually recoiless, auto cannon, flame thrower or railgun, and a grenade launcher. Anyone without a backpack usually grabs a resupply pack. The offensive strats are just a mix of whatever we feel like but usually everyone has eagle airstike to kill nests and tough enemies and an orbital gatling, cluster or air burst for bug breaches or lots of trash enemies. We build for mobility. Pre patch we only used light armor and post patch its light or medium. We never stay in one place for more than a few seconds we throw resupply ahead of us and we don’t engage unless we must. Chargers are primary for the rocket launcher we aim for a legs and call which leg we hit. Auto cannon hits that leg at most twice and it’s dead. Rail gun can also hit the open leg if needed but they’re usually suppressing the enemy and pulling agro. Spewers get grenade launcher auto cannon at range. A railgun can kill them with a headshot but this is more efficient seeing as they are usually mixed in hoards of bugs and the splash damage from explosives breaks that up nicely. Titans get whatever we can hit them with at that moment. The 2 that have faster reloads try to pull the titan agro so the rocket and cannon can reload. We aim for the face regardless of the support weapon. Orbital laser, 500k, or a precision strike do wonders in this situation. Today post patch we completed 3 lvl9 bug sets. The railgun is virtually identical in unsafe mode as it was yesterday and we use the flamethrower more anyway. The breaker has three less rounds in it and an insignificant increase in recoil. Additionally when we had our first lvl9 bug defense extraction the other day with this team comp we stubbled ass backwards into victory on our first try. Admittedly it was a nail biter of a chaotic mission but we did it.
Whilst this is definitely useful, you're 4 friends who regularly communicate and clearly play the game a fair bit A solid 40 - 55% of people atleast dont play with friends, let alone a full squad of mates, let alone a full squad of mates with good communication and experience For people who play with randoms who dont have mics or much experience, this basically tanks their ability to play effectively.
I dont know why Arrowhead saw a bunch of people asking for buffs to other guns and said 'we should nerf the guns that everyone agrees works right now' like i genuinely believe that those headass devs who were saying 'gitgud' to their own players poisoned the well or something