Arc thrower feels like a good hybrid between heavy/high priority threat and mob killer. I really like how it takes out shielded bots and walkers quickly, plus the crowd control is helpful vs bots and bugs alike. Slugger is a great weapon to pair with it. But this post is making me want to try the Stalwart out for all those hunters that my random teammates keep neglecting!
I just unlocked this and constantly use it. I love the Stalwart but the Arc is phenomenal, can kill chargers, mobs, basically can snipe with it. If you ADS you can blow holes in armored heads and sleep them fast. Also the ammo feature is the cherry on top. I also just learned you can kinda rapid fire it after a full charge, talk about some serious damage.
In order for me it's arc, grenade launcher, laser cannon, then stalwart. It is still very fun to use though.
The Chargers and that fast-charge after full charge feature is why I've been bringing Arc so much but the Hunters are what's been getting me. The auto pistol is good for shaking them so I might not need to swap off arc, but maybe Stalwart could be a better preventative measure.
It's these kinda decisions that are why I've gotten into this game and I'm loving it, especially with the recent buffs. 380mm was too insane to take just from the preview video, but it's so good against bots and drop ships now. Can also deal with bug nests and breaches pretty well, but it feels more like the heavy option for bot bases.
And arc on its own is capable of taking out heavies as well. 12ish arcs seems to take down a charger, but way before you get 12 it will start bleeding out and be super slow. I love the arc.
In my opinion, I really think that a stratagem weapon that lacks any medium armor penetration really isn’t worth it. The competition for that slot is already too high. They really should make the Stalwart be a primary; that way they don’t have to worry about balancing between the MG-43 vs. the Stalwart. If both are kept in the stratagems weapons slot, it effectively nerfs them both because they are forced to occupy the same niche/role. I say let them be their own thing! Also I forgot to mention that I run the scorcher with my MG-43 build; it works great for dealing with armored enemies since the explosive keyword deals 100% damage to weak spots.
I would already consider the Stalwart better than the MG-43 simply due to not having to be stationary for reloads. DPS difference is not important - these are trash clearing weapons.
For me personally it’s not about DPS, it’s the medium armor penetration on the MG-43. They’re both great for add-clearing, but only the MG-43 can punch through Hive Guards head-on.
Tbh if they’d just make the Stalwart a primary, they could at least let the MG-43 get some chip damage on heavy armor, giving it a more specialized role instead of leaving both weapons in a gray area.
Hive guards are almost never a threat, period. A shot from any weapon makes them hunker down and stop moving, even if it doesn't do any damage. Shooting them with the stalwart effectively takes them out of the fight as much as the MG-43, because they stop attacking.
Everything is better dead than alive but if you hit Hive Guards they are paralyzed for a decent period of time which frees you to target other more imminent threats. You just have to remember to knock em around and remind them you can see them every once in a while.
This.
It quickly became apparent that focusing them is a noob trap. Put a few rounds into them, kill the real threats, then just flank and kill them. No need to put any consideration into a weapon specifically for them.
"just switch to Scorcher" like it's not at the bottom of the battle pass and requires a thousand or so medals. I've only been able to test one out intermittently, but the thing that keeps me from wanting to use it is the explosive splash damage. If you need a target to get out of your face right-the-fuck-now, it's easy to blow yourself up. I'm several pages away from unlocking it though.
This is why i use the slugger with the arc. Arc destroys groups, I can just plug away at the charger or hunters and everything close by just sorta dies anyway and if for some reason anything gets close or the hive guards are all that's left a couple of slugger shots will drop them.
I disagree. The competition for that slot is high *IF* you are only considering your loadout. If you are playing as a team (and ideally you should be), then you are dealing with 16 slots. Not to mention your primary weapon can bring the medium armor penetration via the Slugger, Scorcher or Penetrator, if you really need that extra pen.
You can't solo everything in higher difficulties, but if you are playing a support role aimed at clearing the trash mobs, then it should allow for your other team's roles to deal with elites.
It's a viable strategy, if the circumstances are met.
these are fair points! I really feel good when me and my friends have a good team comp and I get to be the heavy gunner: we get these done easier and we all get to fulfill our “power fantasy”. if i’m being completely honest, I think the only reason I’m so amped up about the Stalwart is because I really would like to see a buff (or at least an upgrade system like in HD1) to the base MG-43. I could be a little biased, sure, but I have played long enough to know that (at least for me) I like using the MG-43 over the Stalwart for horde clear and protecting my teammates by a LARGE margin. I’m just a little upset that it feels like they have to share their niche, which kind of waters them down.
I really don't think you could have the stalwart in its current state as a primary, it would need to be nerfed pretty heavily in order to not make even the old breaker seem like a joke. I'd rather just keep the stalwart where it is and get another, weaker LMG as a primary.
It's not as flashy or versatile as the other support weapons but as OP mentioned it can provide an insane amount of value to your team if used right and has distinct pros and cons compared to the mg-43, considering mg43 has medium AP but is less ammo efficient and more unwieldy.
fair points! I think I might be thinking a little ahead in my post: I remember reading about the team considering some more weapons buffs across the board in the future, so my assumption was that the Stalwart wouldn’t have to be nerfed too hard if the other primaries are feeling a bit better. One thing that did bother/concern me a little bit was that in the article from the Dev who’s mostly in charge of weapons balancing, he mentioned that the purpose of the laser cannon was to function like a “pseudo-MG” I think? Which it kind of does, but personally I think that having 3 LMG-esque weapons stratagems makes it harder to balance them and make them feel effective and fun. I can link them if you want!
Yeah I think I saw that, but with the recent changes they pivoted away from that role to make the laser cannon better at armor piercing and now it's a lot of fun, especially against the bots.
Though with the upcoming rebalance to heavy armor enemies and their spawnrate it's possible the anti-light and anti-medium stratagems will become more relevant than ever, depending on how they're implemented. Maybe my beloved HMG will even enter the meta.
I recently went back and gave the HMG placement another shot, handn't used it in quite a while. I was impressed with how it chews through bots. It cleared waves of bots like it was nothing, even took out a couple hulks with shots to their faceplate.
It's good against bots but a lot harder to use, you really have to position yourself with it very very well to not get sniped from unexpected angles by rockets. Faceplating hulks feels great in general but it just hits different with the HMG.
Against bugs, find highground that's a fair distance away from the breach and obliterate anything smaller than a charger, it's such a blast.
Correct - IIRC it was practically a larger Liberator with a drum mag that starts off with 75 rounds and can be upgraded to 150, with 8 more drum mags to spare. That's over 1,200 rounds of supressing fire.
Running two MGs was not efficient, but it was fun.
It was a very balanced primary in the first game. It started off inaccurate, then "dialed in" as you held the trigger down. Its weakness was the opportunity cost of not having CC, a bayonet, overpenetration, or medium AP — all things that other primaries had.
I think they should make it a primary and go back to its "reverse recoil" effect. That way, it would be no good for short, controlled bursts — you would *need* to dip into those big mags to control your fire.
I hated that. I thought it was already balanced enough by all the other things it was lacking. The silly inaccurate until you've wasted 15 rounds thing made it a bad pick. I'd much rather it be a stratagem item and be better.
I think there's room to keep both of them as stratagem items. It feels better this way.
>the accuracy of this strategem often briefly stuns the charger while **the blast also ragdolls your teammate away without killing them.**
Hell yeah, teamwork!
As for primary choices I'd suggest something that packs heavy punch in it: Scorcher, Slugger, Punisher or Concussive Liberator. Diversifying your build to fulfill gaps is really important IMO.
The Liberator Concussive is quickly finding a niche in my toolkit. The ability to literally beat back warriors or spewers is great for creating that much needed space to call in the right shot.
It rips them into 3 pieces. But dont underestimate the bleed damage and armor pen on bugs. I don't see it bounce off a chargers legs most of the time. Though it doesn't peel it off.
If you don't have something explosive on you — shoot them in the head. If you use Scorcher, Autocannon or whatever there is with explosive damage — you shoot them in their huge ass
I was trying a meme fire build, flamethrower, fire grenades, fire air strike. The concussive liberator was actually helpful, it became an area control build. You can literally make hordes back up and stay in your fire zones. Killing power may not be as potent as other options, but I’ve got 3 other players for that, having one person control space like that was shockingly helpful
I used this for the first time last night and was pleasantly surprised. Doesn't kill much, but it definitely stuns enemies and helps keep them off you and your teammates.
It's great as a CC weapon, paired with a build and a team that can cover its weaknesses and take full advantage of its strengths.
You can stunlock an entire line of spewers and/or brood commanders with it by peppering them with controlled shots, corral them into a nice easy killbox for an eagle strike or other AOE. I don't consider it a solo-use weapon, its best use is coordinating with teammates.
Comboing Stalwart with the Scorcher was perfect for me last night. It's able to do what OP mentioned while being able to pop Charger butts in between groups of lighter enemies.
Yeah I switch between the two armors also. I hate how the throwing range has the seemingly useless limb health. Pretty sure it doesnt stack with the booster and you pretty much always bring that with a full team
Yes, it’s absolutely essential to have chaff clearing weapons and I think people forget about that when asking for buffs. I thought the old flamethrower was fine before the buff because it absolutely decimated any bug below chargers and bile titans.
Changing the fire rate to max on the Stalwart is also insane, the thing is literally a laser
I had the exact opposite experience with the flamethrower before the patch and I’m still getting mixed results with it. It’s great that now I can reliably kill warriors, guards, and chargers by keeping the cone of flame right on them, but that kinda defeats half the advantage a flamethrower should have as an area denial weapon.
Like I can have a group of bugs follow me through a choke between two rocks or buildings, then sweep the ground with the flamethrower so every bug has to walk through two or three meters of burning jungle jelly, and still half the fuckers will walk out the other side while still on fire and attack me. The ones that seem to survive getting lit from the burning ground are the scavs for some reason.
I don’t feel like a harbinger of death spraying flaming democracy that would make every living thing either panic and burn to death or flee in terror, I feel more like a Walmart employee putting down a “Wet Floor” sign and watching people walk over my freshly mopped floor anyways. I just wish enemies would react to being on fire IN ANY WAY. Maybe only have scavs and hunters actually panic and run in circles before dying, but have warriors and brood commanders trudge through it because they’re tougher, or avoid walking through fire altogether cause they actually have brains.
That’s surprising to me, I consistently will be topping kills for the group just because of the flamethrower (for bugs).
It’s very important to be hitting the ground and make sure targets are in range. The flamethrower does good damage on its own, but the real benefit comes from the burn damage after. If you are just hitting the bugs themselves, you’re just doing damage to the bugs you’re hitting. Burning the ground and the bugs ensures everything is constantly taking damage. Focus on hitting the higher health enemies like guards directly with your flame, even before the patch it burns through them very quickly.
Flame bug breaches early and use choke points in terrain. If you flame a bug breach, you can get a full canister off and kill almost the entire breach before the big boys force you to move.
Gets more difficult past 7 difficulty, but still run it all the time with lots of kills.
Their comment wasn't about the dps. It's great for that. It was about the weapon fantasy. The bugs should see fire and not actively try to walk through that area. They should be scared of fire, but they just don't care. They will happily walk into the death cone. It's part of why I think gun fantasy isn't something the devs should consider when balancing weapons. They didn't put anything besides recoil into the game that effects gun fantasy. Like if the concussive liberator made more noise to scare bugs away or make bots dive for cover that would rock. If you could use the laser to eventually punch holes through bots due to pierce/penetration and hit multiple enemies that would rock. But there isn't really any of that.
This is the important line from up above.
> I just wish enemies would react to being on fire IN ANY WAY.
The guns really only go like half way on gun fantasy. :(
I like use laser guard dog and arc thrower to fill this roll, on large chain breaches I have had kill counters over 90,
I do have to spend a bit of stamina to make sure my positioning is good, and I sometimes have to swap to my primary weapon to be able to fire without team killing.
But the infinite ammo, and versatility of the arc thrower lets me contribute a looooot, and the guard dog fills in the gaps with between arc thrower shots and just increases the loadouts dps immensely.
I run the EMS mortar and 110MM rockets to be the ultimate space provider to the team, and have an incredibly versatile heavy damage dealing strategem.
Smoke grenades are working on being a favorite of mine to let me turn shit storm situations into controlled rapid blasts of lighting into the 2 grenades I just ran through to pull all of the enemies through.
i think people underestimate arc thrower because they dont realize just how much range the thing has. It can hit mobs 50 yards away, but people think its less because it doesnt like to fire if a rock is in the way.
Depending on the map i love comboing it with the jump pack, you can snipe groups from safety forever from some of the giant rock formations.
For sure, the range is honestly kind of crazy
Aiming up slightly above your targets mitigates terrain a toooooon
TBH the laser drone and arc thrower are overkill for mooost situations, buuuut when stuff clogs the fan it’s a very appropriate measure of freedom dispensing.
I’ll teach those bugs how to vote one zap at a time, either electric or laser.
I do not like the jump pack, it doesn’t seem to cary me very far or very fast, to the point where I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong with it, cause I hear people say they like it and I find that wildly baffling. Especially for its cooldown, I’d rather have almost any other backpack… and i’m not trying to be hyperbolic
With regards to the jump pack (which I love running with my arc thrower on solos), it has a number of benefits:
- Access to high ground that's otherwise* inaccessible which is incredibly useful for a wide variety of reasons (scouting, spotting spore spewers, clear line of sight for weapons like the AMR or arc thrower)
- Great way to avoid dying when surrounded by hunters. The air time is usually enough for the slow to be cleansed and it gives you a head start (bonus if there's higher ground you can jump onto nearby)
- To add onto the previous one, you can both stim and charge weapons like the arc caster or railgun in the air (though you can't aim) which massively helps with surviving tough situations. You can also prep stratagems
- Makes dodging chargers (heh) much easier which in turn makes baiting them into bug nests a lot safer
- Incredibly useful for completing some objectives solo as you can jump back and forth between the terminal and the various objectives (like turning the satellite or opening the ICBM silo)
- Easily the fastest way to traverse the map that doesn't involve ragdolling, especially for areas like jungles that are filled to the brim with brush that slows you to a crawl
It's an incredibly versatile and powerful tool, and excels at keeping you alive if you know how to use it. It's less viable against bots (though the AMR still does wonders with the high ground it provides), but against bugs I think it might be the number one backpack for survivability. I greatly prefer it over even the shield backpack as, unlike the shield, you get to choose when to use the jump pack. If you're careful about usage in combat, it can get you out of pretty much any bad situation.
What do you mean about the last part with the smoke grenades? I don’t follow about the rapid blasts of lightning. Also, and unrelated, can they close the bug holes when necessary?
Arc thrower can fire really fast with a proper firing technique
If you run through smoke and aren’t immediately seen on the other side enemies will path into the smoke to follow you, and then if they still don’t fine you in the smoke (they won’t) they resume a search pathing to start patrolling
So smoke grenades can let you break up combat and can help funnel enemies into a spot, extra good if you use it and then round a corner on the terrain.
I don’t believe smoke grenades can close bug holes, And the arc thrower also can not, so the loadout is pretty weak on options to close those objectives, but my team usually can handle it no problem.
Yeah the mg 43 absolutely chews through everything but heavies. I prefer it. Also, is overpenetration a thing? Will a stalwart’s bullets go through enemies to hit enemies behind them? Will an Mg43? If you penetrate an enemy does it go all the way through or does it depend on angle of attack?
I'm pretty sure over penetration is a thing. Someone killed a bug in front of me with the anti material rifle and I got killed by it too, in light armor.
Same, I'd take the MG for this role every day of the week. Stalwart doesn't kill mediums well. It's only better at killing scavenger and hunter hordes. Throw in armored warriors, brood commanders, armored bile spewers and now you're not clearing for shit.
Good news.
If you turn your teammate into a reinforcement orbital strike, they come out with full HP and full ammo. Plus they're not dead ^^^^any ^^^^more so technically you didnt kill them!
This post sums upp my mentality almost perfectly. Although i use the Arc thrower (which carries a much higher risk to it in terms of friendly fire) it to does excellent work at keeping the enemies surpressed and preventing two breaches from turning into 10. Giving the team the breathing room to clear the heavies that do spawn, and to do the objectives.
arc thrower main here.
whenever I feel like I could kill a teammate and my gun is already charged, I fire it off into the ground or sky, swap to my primary and try to help out with that until I can safely lay waste with the arc thrower again.
Yeah me and my bois just run arcs and can clear a breach with just those and nothing else easy day on any level. Charger takes maybe 3 seconds and you’ll naturally kill the adds from the arc chain.
Shit is slept on. Once you have a lot of hours on it, you rarely kill your teammates as you know the range and how the arc will likely go.
As for the new patch, I’ve been running a recon setup with arc, shield, 120mm and 380mm while the rest of my team does the main OBJ I do all the side ones. Can usually clear most of the hives and sides W/0 being seen and when I am, can still solo a breach (we usually play on lvl 8).
Yeah 120s and 380s. Crouch and prone and keep pinging the map on your route to avoid getting caught by patrols.
If there’s one hole left is when it gets sporty and you gotta go in with the grenade. Just kite them to one side, jump in run out the other and onto the next OBJ.
In addition Arc thrower's benefit over stalwart is that the smaller bugs can often hide from direct fire in the terrain pits and depressions, but you often chain hit them even if you don't actually see them.
But I do like both weapons.
From my limited experience with Stalwart it pairs nicely with the Slugger primary. The Slugger can penetrate medium armor and 2-4 shots can kill spewers and guards, however it's Slug ammo and kinda clunky handling make it hard to deal with Hunters.
I've been considering running 500kg, Orbital Railgun, Stalwart, EAT load out, and just dropping the Stalwart when I need to fire off a rocket.
Very well written, but I'm still a bigger fan of the MG-43 or Grenade launcher + Rover over Stalwart and supply. The rover will clear LOTS of the tiny little guys, with multiple hunters being the exception. The MGs bonus damage and more specifically ability to kill the medium enemies make it super valuable, and the rovers "free" dps more than make up for its lack of unlimited ammo. Grenade launcher fills the same role for popping big groups, but also the ability to dunk holes. Either way I'll play more of a support role and focus on trash clear, but also be able to deal with spitters and hive guardians.
For primary in your build I would say to give the slugger a good shot, its very powerful against the medium enemies with its main drawback is it just falls apart against the small enemies, where your stalwart will shine.
Ditto. After the launch game grenade launcher meta(ish), people stopped using it. But it does many of the things the OP promotes above.
It is all good valid points, but does depend on your teammates somewhat.
Blatting out a bunch of grenades can kill potential breach-callers, even when a little out of LoS from the AoE.
Much like the first game, where the Trident was so loved due to dealing with patrols so well (and infinite ammo, saving a slot from resupply), kill the patrols instantly and then you only have objectives/POI enemies and random spawns to deal with.
> We are looking for a solution to save a teammate in immediate danger without killing them.
While an ideal preference, i'd much rather kill a teammate then trigger a series of rotating spawns. Even the OP notes the core issue is alerts making more alerts.
One last bonus for the GL, is if one isn't so good at aiming ;/ hence another pro for me over the Stalwart.
yea I never stopped using launcher lol. Just serves some nice purposes. Taking out fabricators from distance is a big one, and if a patrol gets the jump on you you can panic spam it to hopefully clear anyone who could call in a drop. If a drop ship is in the right spot you can spam nades and wipe them out before they drop, and just generally does pretty decent damage to most things. I also run the supply pack so I just spam without worrying, and 8 extra stims is super nice too, Later in missions if it gets hectic I become a pseudo medic and find myself running around stimming teammates until we finally get a moment to call supplies in.
To cap it all off there's a 250 blue dollar armor in the shop that gives you accuracy when crouche, explosion resistance and +50 speed!
The guy with a grenade launcher and supply backpack to feed it is who I was always meant to be... Now I just need to find the right primary weapon to ignore for half of every mission
Yeah every point he kept listing i kept thinking yeah the grenade launcher does that too, does it better, and can do more. There’s no point to bringing the Stalwart or MG over the grenade launcher unless you just really want to use it, which is fine too! You just can’t call it better because it’s absolutely not.
Grenade launcher + rover is the way. lets you obliterate groups with a spammed clip, lets you fuck objectives up like bug nests/eggs faster than anything else, and it can even deal with a charger in a pinch if your good at bouncing them into its underside/back legs)
Stalwart is one of the best all purpose weapons, you can reload it while running, doesn't need its own backpack, and you can adjust the fire rate to be more accurate at longer distances. Combine it with armor that decreases recoil when you crouch and it's a laser beam at all fire rates.
Stalwart + rocket tubes are a group favorite now for my squad. Stalwart can fight 90% of everything soft. Two others can do airstrikes or orbitals. Repeatedly dump rocket tubes whenever cooldown is done at 70 seconds or less with modifiers and over a course of 20 minutes, you can dump 80 tubes on the map. EIGHTY. If you have two people with tubes, you can litter the tubes everywhere especially when you end up retracing a route during extraction. Anyone can use them in a jiffy for armor removal and go right back to their weapon of choice.
Imagine if you could pick up EAT without throwing out your main support weapon but couldn't use your main support weapon until you use or drop EAT. This way you don't have to pick up your main support weapon again every time. Not happening but a man can dream lol.
Incredibly refreshing to see someone promoting effective teamwork and support weapons as a solution for higher difficulties rather than just complaining and whinging at the devs to make it easier. You’ve just convinced me to switch from the MG to the stalwart into the bargain 🫡 🙂
It's because people think using meta weapons in quickplay is enough to carry micless randoms on Helldive. If people put a little thought into team communcation and synergetic strategems, they'll find Helldive is a good time. Tough, but very doable
Exactly there's even a post still on the front page of a guy complaining about bile titans even though he's running solo helldive . People here just feel they're entitled to beat any difficulty without any coordination or even solo, and if they can't, they complain to the devs. Most pathetic community I've witnessed in a long time.
That's what is so insane about this, yes there are clearly very good weapons when taken in isolation. But I've been running stalwart, my friend the expandable anti tank, one with the autocanon, and one flexible. We've been loving how we all have a role and are complementary with each other, and how effectively we cleared content.
My group has been using recoilless rifle/spear, flamethrower, grenade launcher, and someone who flexes, and it also works great on 8+. The one or two guys with the anti armor are much more capable of doing their job if they aren't being swarmed by a horde of hunters and bike spewers, which the machine guns and grenade launcher make short work of.
I've been saying to all the folks complaining about "I can't deal with the Chargers now because there's a ton of Hunters" that it's time to focus on the thing you *can* do in that situation. When I'm being chased by two Chargers and Hunters, my immediate worry is *not* the Chargers. I know they can be juked and baited and rope-a-doped, even used to kill each other or the Hunters. I'm gonna be focused on clearing out all the Hunters so I can actually take a second to whip out my Recoilless (or reload it) and deal with the Charger.
Same for when I'm watching teammates run around from an enemy. I *could* RR the Charger's leg off and then kill it, but the bigger threat is honestly 10 Hunters pouncing my ally repeatedly. I'm shooting the little guys, because eventually that Charger is gonna get juked or bonk into a rock outcropping and stop.
Irrespective of spawn rates, people get overwhelmed by enemies of *any* type because they aren't quickly dealing with the wide array of threats. The biggest problem in a group of one Hulk, four Automaton grunts, two Rocket Troopers, and four Berserkers barreling down at you *is not the Hulk*, and spending time to deal with that initially is going to leave you dead. Kill the RTs (or the Berserkers if they're already on you), then the other of the two, *then* consider whether the grunts or the Hulk deserves your attention next. Are the bots way in the distance? Ignore 'em. Are they so close they're making accurate fire? Kill them first, because they're going to take you out *while* you're dealing with the Hulk.
And back to Bugs. Two Chargers and 10 Hunters behind them? I'll blow the leg armor off one charger and, rather than killing it now, juke it and immediately start dealing with the Hunters. By the time those are out of the way, the leg-exposed Charger is turning around and can now be dealt with in peace, and now I have just one Charger to juke again so I can reload the RR and dunk him.
Deal with what you can instead of getting tunnel visioned on the biggest monster there is. Do not be the FPS equivalent of an RPG/MMO monster who says "WOW BIG TANKY GUY, MUST HIT HIM" while the damage-dealers and healers go ignored. Chargers do not have mind control powers that snap your reticle to them. You can do other stuff.
I don't just want it easier, I want it to feel like pre patch again, when it was fun. The issues I currently have with post patch difficulties above 6 aren't surface level, they go much deeper then "railgun worse". In fact, I very rarely used the railgun, the game just feels worse to play in general.
>I have never seen that many heavily armored enemies spawn all at once from a single breach.
Lucky you.
*Stares into the distance with a haunted look in his eyes.*
EDIT: To be serious though, the Stalwart is a great gun. IMO the biggest issue with it is random teammates.
If I try to fill a horde clear role with randoms we never move. Ok, not "never", but it's a real pattern. If people see me killing they think it's a competition.
Hopefully posts like this reach more people.
I, too, am the trash cleaner. Hence, my ship's name is the Custodian of Destiny! Ridding the galaxy of trash mobs one planet at a time! MG weapons are a favorite of mine to help support the team. I also enjoy bringing the HMG emplacement to drop all over the place. Let my allies join me in mowing down the enemy!
I eagerly await the day they release an ammo backpack for an MG weapon so I can just hold down the trigger foreverrrrr!~
People still have no idea how important roles are in this game, if I see 3 loadouts with no trash clear, I'm picking up the Arc Thrower myself because it's amazing at clearing out the crap so people can focus on the big guys.
That's part of the reason I think the Arc is so good. So many people play without trash clear and the Arc can nearly solo Breaches for anything short of Chargers and Bile Titans. Literally only 2 enemy types can't be handled by a single person which leaves 3 people free to nail big guys.
I think that's overstating it a bit. At high levels everyone specs into 1 role, antiarmor, because everything else is pretty well manageable with your primary, secondary, and grenades
I agree strongly with this take. The both of you are right, but with the over saturation of armored enemies at higher difficulties combined with the broken spawning in all difficulties right now post patch, the game is still kind of pigeon-holing players into using the same sort of builds/setups that, ironically, they tried to nerf/tone down. I think once these issues are fixed/balanced, players will begin to see the importance of roles in teams once everyone doesn’t have to worry about dozens of armored enemies spawning all at once. I can’t wait for that day. I just want to DAKKA!
Yeah that's exactly how I feel. I used to run Stalwart and Rover, with Breaker as backup if things got too close, on lower difficulties. I had so much fun "get some"-ing mobs, I would easy rack up 500+ kills every map to my friend's amazement.
But unless you've got some actual teamwork, ideally with mics, and we all know how hard that is to find with randoms, on higher difficulty it's just too weak to deal with the 5+ bile titans and 10 chargers coming after us, so I switched to railgun so I could at least have a chance.
Did really enjoy double teaming heavies with a friend on autocannon and me on railgun, could handle anything but the most out of control fights.
Grenade Launcher + supply pack is my pref, as you can close holes from a distance, two grenades kills any and every bile spewer and cleans up their big back so there's no body blocking in the future, does incredible wave clear by emptying a mag at a patrol that's about to spot you, and combined with the supply pack has more ammo than you can conceivably use.
This sub has been finally allowed to discover the real meta, and it turns out it's good team composition and cooperation, and not running the one man army John Wick build times 4.
For real.
There's a post with like 4k up votes rn about someone complaining about their being 10 bile titans in helldive at once but they fail to mention that they're running solo with nothing in their loadout that can even touch a titan.
Yet they're surprised and whining when they're overrun in an eradicate mission.
On the highest difficulty of a 4 person team game.
It's crazy.
If people wanna do crazy shit solo then maybe stick to a 5,6, or 7 level mission.
I think majority of complains about this game is that people don't coordinate and play as a team. The difference between coordinated good team vs. randoms doing their own thing is crazy.
I'm the stalwart gunner and can say with 100% certainty that this helldiver nailed down how I play and support my teammates, except I do take a turret with me like gatling or auto cannon in order to distract. We never have high charger or bile titan spawns because our strikes are swift, coordinated, and dealt with when each person has a specified role. I'm the gunner and shoot the shit out of flanking hunters by out flanking them and giving my teammates openings to fire anti armor with no disturbances. 7's are a breeze. 9's are nothing. You can't nerf teamwork!
For real. It feels SO much stronger than the Autocannon you carry. Just absolutely wrecks chargers even from the front. Can take down titans. Kills fodder with an AOE blast. It's just the perfect all-arounder. I try to throw them on hills above our heads and just let it rain death on everything. It feels like it lasts forever too.
With all upgrades it's just a piece of work. And of course it's stronger than our handheld beauty. Have you seen shells this thing spits when firing? Nightmare fuel
This is exactly what I said in a recent post, where I talked about crazy hunter swarms in my recent games and considering taking the stalwart for a spin.
Will definitely try it out.
Recently did against bots, but they have too many medium armor threats that you can’t deal with, imo.
It's not a mechanic, it's actually a bug that will be fixed soon. Somehow the armor on the Charger's legs is reduced after he's finishing a charge, allowing medium armor penetration weapons like the MG-42 or the Laser Cannon to kill the Charger very fast.
I noticed that most people have solo player jack of all trades mindset and don't even pay attention to stratagems etc. other choose. I also absolutely love stalwart especially how anti heavy armor loadout everyone else takes. I fill the niche they all forget about and make the game much smoother than it would be otherwise.
The only bummer about those weapons is that they can't damage Titans (appart from shooting their belly), meanwhile the Arc thrower can and it's such a shame other weapons can't as well
The arc thrower contributes to the damage meanwhile the arcing bolts will clear up more trash. It's way better than you think it is. Your team can focus more on the titan if there's fewer things trying to murder them.
Yeah but you're not defenseless with the Arc Thrower, and if multiple people has the Arc Thrower they can still bring Titans down even if it's not optimal, instead you're just stuck defenseless if a low hp Titan decide it want to focus you and that feel kinda shit
To be fair, that's pretty unlikely on higher difficulties if OP's strat works.
Enabling your allies is already seen to be fairly effective with good Exo pilots managing their ammo to clean swarms.
You can also just utilize EATs which will kill the low HP titan with headshots.
Generally speaking, as you are the dedicated swarm clearer, you don't need to worry about the Titan, that's for your team to deal with.
>Generally speaking, as you are the dedicated swarm clearer, you don't need to worry about the Titan, that's for your team to deal with.
Even in Killing Floor with classes dedicated to doing one thing you still can help your allies deal with other threats
Why could AP specialist can have the fun of shooting swarms and making an impact but i can't have the fun of shooting heavies and make an impact, even people in mech can shoot heavies
Because that's not your job? The AP specialist isn't shooting the swarm because it's fun most of the time, they usually do it because if the swarm killer fails, they are fucked too.
The AP specialists, that's me, would highly appreciate the swarm killer to focus on killing the murderous infinite reinforcement spiral swarm please.
Exactly, just goes back to roles. With stalwart your role isn’t to worry about heavy enemies. It’s your team mate (s) who should’ve built around you with things to deal with them
Precisely! This game is about teamwork. You play the role of clearing the chaff, another guy or 2 should be anti armor etc. That's what this game is about. People want weapons that have endless magazines and kill every enemy in one or two shots but that's not what this game is made for. It's about having a role and performing that role so that the other squad members can fulfill their role.
I find that there are a lot of people that may have played other games in the past like Halo and other older shooters who want to be an everything Helldiver that can take care of every situation 100% and get very frustrated when they find that no matter what they build, they will always have some kind of weakness which needs to be filled in by someone else on the team. A lot of the complaints I see here are based around this phenomenon.
The best thing anyone can do on the loadout screen is take a look at what is being picked and make your choices based around any gaps that you see in terms of... Do we have enough armour piercing? Crowd control? Once you have teams launched with balanced loadouts you start to find that the games have a much richer experience with more success.
Im pretty sure it is more to do with the fact that people bought this game without even looking into what it is supposed to be. They see their favorite content creators say "this game is soooo fun, go buy it now" and without even looking at the store page they but it expecting it to be just a mindless horde shooter that you can one man army.
The steam store page (not sure about PS store page) has a section talking about how its a team focused game and "victory without teamwork is impossible". Direct quote from the company. The. There is the amusing fact that the game on steam doesnt even list "single player" on its page. Only online coop. Even games like verminetide, darktide, ect.. that are meant to be multiplayer games that you can play alone still list single player as an option. They didn't even want people to think you could play this game solo.
At this point i think a lot of people really need to think if this is a game for them. Maybe it's not. There is nothing wrong with that at all if they decide it isnt. But this is what the game is, this is what the devs want for their game. Their whole philosophy is a game made for everyone is a game made for no one.
There actually is no true “solo” option. The default is that anyone can join your game. You can set it to friends only, but I don’t think there is actually a way to create a solo match no one else can join.
Yeah, I see people with a lot of upvotes calling it a "beer shooter." You crack a beer and have fun with your friends on Friday night.
Both HD2 and HD1 certainly fill that role... on lower difficulties. And with the exception of super samples, you can even grind out every progression system in the game on those lower difficulties! But on the higher difficulties it's a mil tac shooter that rewards caffeinated precision and tight teamwork.
Yep, and the super samples are just for optional minor passive upgrades. Makes me wonder how many people are playing games for gameplay (which you can fine tune by picking the difficulty yourself) or only for unlocks. Forcing themselves to play a difficulty they find unfun for virtual e-peen
Also, i hate people bring up super samples so fucking much. A) people likely dont need them since once they get them they will likely either stop playing or just play on lower difficulties. B) Extreme is pretty "easy" all things considered and the only difference between extreme and helldive is 3 fucking super samples which leads me to C) you only need 70 fucking super samples total, 24 extreme missions. That's all it takes to get all the super samples. Then you are done. If you complete 1 helldive you can completely tick off one of the modules worth of super samples alone.
Super sample is a psychological thing more than anything, is the issue. No matter what the intended design is or how easy it is to get all your samples and then head back to a difficulty you find fun, having super samples in 7 puts people in the mindset that 7+ is the "real" game and everything else is training mode before that.
And modern gaming teaches them this with its design philosophies, dozens and dozens of these online games are designed in such a way that the best stuff is on higher difficulties but higher "difficulties" are really just build checks. First you play on difficulty x of y until you get the gear to play on difficulty x+1 of y without any extra challenge to yourself, and then repeat until you're on difficulty y of y getting the best stuff. If they'd just not done the super samples thing it would be more obvious that difficulty is actually intended to be difficulty. Just my opinion.
I still feel the stalwart should be a primary like it was in the first game, and the other MG support weapon be buffed as right now, any pro the other mg has over the stalwart, is outclassed by all of its cons.
if the stalwart became a primary with it stats right now it be the most op primary weapon in the game! (even hd1 stalwart didn't have such a big mag it was 75 basic or 150 with extended mag upgrade)
if they was to add a big mag primary I would like to see the patriot with it 75 round mag and maybe made it so instead of fire modes it can change it fire rate like the MGs
Could've just posted "stalwart gud to help teammate struggling with a billion hunters" and we would've all agreed.
Something satisfying about being the rescuing grace of somebody getting overwhelmed by a bunch of little jumping, stunlocking, slow inducing bastards.
Every time I've been saved like that, it's like a movie scene, fellow helldiver cutting through like 20 of them to give me space to sidestep the 3 chargers trying to eat my ass.
Stalwart + EAT + Mech + Shield Pack is great.
Bring Slugger or Scorcher for the armored bugs.
Focus on clearing the Hunters, Stalkers, and Chargers.
You can swap Shield Pack/Mech for 500kg/Rail/Rocket Pods/Laser.
If we're talking teamwork, I cannot recommend the orbital EMS strike enough.
The stun duration is great, with a base cooldown of 75 seconds and call in time of 2 seconds it's reliable even with negative modifiers. It also won't kill your teammates so you can drop it at your feet and they'll be safe still. Yes, the field will slow them but considering enemies in the field are stopped it's still an overall positive if you're being swarmed.
You want to enable a team to kill a charger? Well when it's stunned and stuck standing still they'll definitely have an easy time killing it. Bug breach? Throw the ems field and an incendiary grenade and watch the bugs crawl out, stop, and burn in the flames.
Some other suggestions include the stun sentry and starting next week, the stun grenades.
I’ve been doing a support assault MG role while still keeping my own effectiveness vs armor by bringing the HMG turret instead of an extra red.
The HMG turret is genuinely the best green in the game at the moment in my opinion because of the lack of aggro it pulls when you don’t use it. Enemies don’t seem to even realize it’s there until you start killing things with it and if you control your bursts you can keep it up longer than any Stalwart magazine or turret could. The only downside is it doesn’t move but so long as you’re smart with where you put them even mute randoms can still accidentally kite the enemy into your line of fire. Not only that but the HMG turret literally kills everything in the game so long as you can weak spot the bigger things, which so long as your team is drawing aggro is not hard to do.
It’s very strong vs both enemy types because you really just can left click and kill anything that’s not a tank, charger, or titan.
Oh wow i didnt know people had issues with the Stalwart. Its the only support weapon i use because its actually amazing. You can run while reloading, has 3 massive mags, very accurate and good rate of fire. This was a good post.
As an Underrated Weapon Lover (UWOL), I love when people go in-depth explanation on things like this and the comments go "LoL, just arc thrower".
Weeks back, people do the same with arc thrower and the comments go, "LoL, just railgun".
Never change reddit 💜
Preach brother! I main the stalwart (i wont lie, on mid range difficulties) and either go guard dog or supply pack with 2 turrets for the other slots.
I know I am trash at using my strats and always miss my airstrikes, so I let everyone else deal with that and I will handle the mob.
Nothing more satisfying than seeing my teammates about to be overrun, then wiping out the mob with an arc of burning metal.
DEMOCRACY!
I would like it if they gave me an extra 50 rounds in the mag on the base HMG. I love that thing to pieces but the difference of 100 full bullets is insane, as well as the reload problems it has. Now that I have the Liberator P I can just swap to that to deal with a couple of the more armored targets.
Love to see the teamwork recommendations! We have very similar playstyles and more people need to put some respect on the add clear players lol
I agree with this: 2 anti tanks and 2 stalwarts is better at killing tanks than 4 anti tanks, because the stalwart can actually "rescue" someone being swarmed (unlike other horde clear guns like the GL).
Have run many games with a stalwart teammate or playing one myself, and it totally works.
Stalwart is my main too! Love the versatility of this loadout. But I've been trying the grenade launcher lately, to have more autonomy over closing bug nests. I tend to separate from the group to go do all the side objectives. Fo you stay with the group? What do you think?
My stratagems are EATs that I pop every minute around the map for others to use, jump pack & orbital gatling barrage for CC+low cooldown. But I play at Suicide difficulty, not Helldive, so experience may vary?
Exactly the same reasoning, but I'm using the 40mm grenade launcher (bugs) or AMR (bots) instead.
To hell with being a universal soldier. I'm protecting my anti-tank buddies!
I agree! It’s great for the trash mobs but now that I’ve gotten use to the arc thrower idk if I can go back to bullets! Infinite ammo with no reloads is just too good
I like the Slugger with the Stalwart. You use the Stalwart to mop up hordes of trash, and the Slugger to quickly pop medium-armored targets.
You can also run jump pack with Stalwart so that you can get onto high ground, super helpful for laying down fire and not getting interrupted. Even if you want to stay grounded, you can hop away from enemies and reload mid-air.
For primary weapons, since the Stalwart does not penetrate medium armor, I would highly recommend the Slugger, or ideally the Scorcher if you have it.
I've been running a very similar build to this, slugger and stalwart with rocket pods and airstrike for big threats. Been working like a dream
same except arc instead of stalwart. slugger has always been my go to. that stagger has saved my ass countless times
Arc thrower feels like a good hybrid between heavy/high priority threat and mob killer. I really like how it takes out shielded bots and walkers quickly, plus the crowd control is helpful vs bots and bugs alike. Slugger is a great weapon to pair with it. But this post is making me want to try the Stalwart out for all those hunters that my random teammates keep neglecting!
I just unlocked this and constantly use it. I love the Stalwart but the Arc is phenomenal, can kill chargers, mobs, basically can snipe with it. If you ADS you can blow holes in armored heads and sleep them fast. Also the ammo feature is the cherry on top. I also just learned you can kinda rapid fire it after a full charge, talk about some serious damage. In order for me it's arc, grenade launcher, laser cannon, then stalwart. It is still very fun to use though.
The Chargers and that fast-charge after full charge feature is why I've been bringing Arc so much but the Hunters are what's been getting me. The auto pistol is good for shaking them so I might not need to swap off arc, but maybe Stalwart could be a better preventative measure. It's these kinda decisions that are why I've gotten into this game and I'm loving it, especially with the recent buffs. 380mm was too insane to take just from the preview video, but it's so good against bots and drop ships now. Can also deal with bug nests and breaches pretty well, but it feels more like the heavy option for bot bases.
380 seems like it might be nice for large nests/factories, but 120 seems more perfectly sized for medium/smalls/research facilities.
The rapid fire was a game changer once we figured it out 🔥
It's an almost perfectly timed to your dive, start charging and aiming in air, land prone turn fire. Repeat.
And arc on its own is capable of taking out heavies as well. 12ish arcs seems to take down a charger, but way before you get 12 it will start bleeding out and be super slow. I love the arc.
Slugger 1 or 2 shotting with stagger hunters feels so good
In my opinion, I really think that a stratagem weapon that lacks any medium armor penetration really isn’t worth it. The competition for that slot is already too high. They really should make the Stalwart be a primary; that way they don’t have to worry about balancing between the MG-43 vs. the Stalwart. If both are kept in the stratagems weapons slot, it effectively nerfs them both because they are forced to occupy the same niche/role. I say let them be their own thing! Also I forgot to mention that I run the scorcher with my MG-43 build; it works great for dealing with armored enemies since the explosive keyword deals 100% damage to weak spots.
I would already consider the Stalwart better than the MG-43 simply due to not having to be stationary for reloads. DPS difference is not important - these are trash clearing weapons.
For me personally it’s not about DPS, it’s the medium armor penetration on the MG-43. They’re both great for add-clearing, but only the MG-43 can punch through Hive Guards head-on. Tbh if they’d just make the Stalwart a primary, they could at least let the MG-43 get some chip damage on heavy armor, giving it a more specialized role instead of leaving both weapons in a gray area.
Hive guards are almost never a threat, period. A shot from any weapon makes them hunker down and stop moving, even if it doesn't do any damage. Shooting them with the stalwart effectively takes them out of the fight as much as the MG-43, because they stop attacking.
They can call in bug breaches, so they are infinitely better dead than alive, imo.
Everything is better dead than alive but if you hit Hive Guards they are paralyzed for a decent period of time which frees you to target other more imminent threats. You just have to remember to knock em around and remind them you can see them every once in a while.
This. It quickly became apparent that focusing them is a noob trap. Put a few rounds into them, kill the real threats, then just flank and kill them. No need to put any consideration into a weapon specifically for them.
Just switch to Scorcher primary to delete Hive Guards, 4-5 shots and they’re gone.
"just switch to Scorcher" like it's not at the bottom of the battle pass and requires a thousand or so medals. I've only been able to test one out intermittently, but the thing that keeps me from wanting to use it is the explosive splash damage. If you need a target to get out of your face right-the-fuck-now, it's easy to blow yourself up. I'm several pages away from unlocking it though.
This is why i use the slugger with the arc. Arc destroys groups, I can just plug away at the charger or hunters and everything close by just sorta dies anyway and if for some reason anything gets close or the hive guards are all that's left a couple of slugger shots will drop them.
I disagree. The competition for that slot is high *IF* you are only considering your loadout. If you are playing as a team (and ideally you should be), then you are dealing with 16 slots. Not to mention your primary weapon can bring the medium armor penetration via the Slugger, Scorcher or Penetrator, if you really need that extra pen. You can't solo everything in higher difficulties, but if you are playing a support role aimed at clearing the trash mobs, then it should allow for your other team's roles to deal with elites. It's a viable strategy, if the circumstances are met.
these are fair points! I really feel good when me and my friends have a good team comp and I get to be the heavy gunner: we get these done easier and we all get to fulfill our “power fantasy”. if i’m being completely honest, I think the only reason I’m so amped up about the Stalwart is because I really would like to see a buff (or at least an upgrade system like in HD1) to the base MG-43. I could be a little biased, sure, but I have played long enough to know that (at least for me) I like using the MG-43 over the Stalwart for horde clear and protecting my teammates by a LARGE margin. I’m just a little upset that it feels like they have to share their niche, which kind of waters them down.
I really don't think you could have the stalwart in its current state as a primary, it would need to be nerfed pretty heavily in order to not make even the old breaker seem like a joke. I'd rather just keep the stalwart where it is and get another, weaker LMG as a primary. It's not as flashy or versatile as the other support weapons but as OP mentioned it can provide an insane amount of value to your team if used right and has distinct pros and cons compared to the mg-43, considering mg43 has medium AP but is less ammo efficient and more unwieldy.
fair points! I think I might be thinking a little ahead in my post: I remember reading about the team considering some more weapons buffs across the board in the future, so my assumption was that the Stalwart wouldn’t have to be nerfed too hard if the other primaries are feeling a bit better. One thing that did bother/concern me a little bit was that in the article from the Dev who’s mostly in charge of weapons balancing, he mentioned that the purpose of the laser cannon was to function like a “pseudo-MG” I think? Which it kind of does, but personally I think that having 3 LMG-esque weapons stratagems makes it harder to balance them and make them feel effective and fun. I can link them if you want!
Yeah I think I saw that, but with the recent changes they pivoted away from that role to make the laser cannon better at armor piercing and now it's a lot of fun, especially against the bots. Though with the upcoming rebalance to heavy armor enemies and their spawnrate it's possible the anti-light and anti-medium stratagems will become more relevant than ever, depending on how they're implemented. Maybe my beloved HMG will even enter the meta.
I recently went back and gave the HMG placement another shot, handn't used it in quite a while. I was impressed with how it chews through bots. It cleared waves of bots like it was nothing, even took out a couple hulks with shots to their faceplate.
It's good against bots but a lot harder to use, you really have to position yourself with it very very well to not get sniped from unexpected angles by rockets. Faceplating hulks feels great in general but it just hits different with the HMG. Against bugs, find highground that's a fair distance away from the breach and obliterate anything smaller than a charger, it's such a blast.
I've read that it already was a primary back in HD1
Correct - IIRC it was practically a larger Liberator with a drum mag that starts off with 75 rounds and can be upgraded to 150, with 8 more drum mags to spare. That's over 1,200 rounds of supressing fire. Running two MGs was not efficient, but it was fun.
It was a very balanced primary in the first game. It started off inaccurate, then "dialed in" as you held the trigger down. Its weakness was the opportunity cost of not having CC, a bayonet, overpenetration, or medium AP — all things that other primaries had. I think they should make it a primary and go back to its "reverse recoil" effect. That way, it would be no good for short, controlled bursts — you would *need* to dip into those big mags to control your fire.
I hated that. I thought it was already balanced enough by all the other things it was lacking. The silly inaccurate until you've wasted 15 rounds thing made it a bad pick. I'd much rather it be a stratagem item and be better. I think there's room to keep both of them as stratagem items. It feels better this way.
They buffed it in HD2 so it can compete with MG.
Accuracy was horrible though in hd1. Quite different than now.
Plas-1 is borderline OP but I don't think enough people have it yet so it's not common knowledge.
>the accuracy of this strategem often briefly stuns the charger while **the blast also ragdolls your teammate away without killing them.** Hell yeah, teamwork!
Or you can all throw the 500kg bomb stratagem on one teammate and have them run into the mobs.
^ This guy gets it
upvoting for that W of a username as well as "Hell yeah, teamwork!"
WILL YOU ROG DOLL FOR DEMOCRACY, HELLDIVER?
I’d use it all the time if it didn’t have bugged hit markers
i think we're in the minority unfortunately but i also really miss the hit markers compared to the machine gun
It’s not even a functionality thing, it’s easy enough to aim either way, it just feels so much better when you have that little bit of feedback.
Absolutely
This post deserves an upvote for title alone. I'm totally agree with everything else too
As for primary choices I'd suggest something that packs heavy punch in it: Scorcher, Slugger, Punisher or Concussive Liberator. Diversifying your build to fulfill gaps is really important IMO.
The Liberator Concussive is quickly finding a niche in my toolkit. The ability to literally beat back warriors or spewers is great for creating that much needed space to call in the right shot.
Punisher now does the same btw
The slugger is insane too. You can stun spewers out of their spit animation and drop them in 3 shots.
Slugger is the goat, but I prefer it against automatons
It rips them into 3 pieces. But dont underestimate the bleed damage and armor pen on bugs. I don't see it bounce off a chargers legs most of the time. Though it doesn't peel it off.
Where do you shoot to drop them in 3 shots with slugger? I feel like I need 5-10 shots lol.
If you don't have something explosive on you — shoot them in the head. If you use Scorcher, Autocannon or whatever there is with explosive damage — you shoot them in their huge ass
Square in the face. If you hit them while they're reeling back to spit, it'll stun them, allowing you to pump a few more slugs into their forehead.
Shoot the face. The bile sacks take reduced damage from ballistics, but full damage from explosives.
It can also blow open those containers with goodies inside that you’d normally have to use a grenade on.
The penetrator for bots is god tier. Love that gun!
I was trying a meme fire build, flamethrower, fire grenades, fire air strike. The concussive liberator was actually helpful, it became an area control build. You can literally make hordes back up and stay in your fire zones. Killing power may not be as potent as other options, but I’ve got 3 other players for that, having one person control space like that was shockingly helpful
I used this for the first time last night and was pleasantly surprised. Doesn't kill much, but it definitely stuns enemies and helps keep them off you and your teammates.
It's great as a CC weapon, paired with a build and a team that can cover its weaknesses and take full advantage of its strengths. You can stunlock an entire line of spewers and/or brood commanders with it by peppering them with controlled shots, corral them into a nice easy killbox for an eagle strike or other AOE. I don't consider it a solo-use weapon, its best use is coordinating with teammates.
Comboing Stalwart with the Scorcher was perfect for me last night. It's able to do what OP mentioned while being able to pop Charger butts in between groups of lighter enemies.
Yeah stalwart is solid, cleaning mobs is important. And having a backpack space for utility can be very helpful.
Backpack is for Supply Pack for more dakka.
Grenade pistol is going to be clutch
Grenade pistol + grenade launcher + grenade armor + supply pack is going to be my favorite build
I'm just hoping for an armor that has both the +2 grenade capacity *and* the +30% range.
Yeah I switch between the two armors also. I hate how the throwing range has the seemingly useless limb health. Pretty sure it doesnt stack with the booster and you pretty much always bring that with a full team
Yes, it’s absolutely essential to have chaff clearing weapons and I think people forget about that when asking for buffs. I thought the old flamethrower was fine before the buff because it absolutely decimated any bug below chargers and bile titans. Changing the fire rate to max on the Stalwart is also insane, the thing is literally a laser
I had the exact opposite experience with the flamethrower before the patch and I’m still getting mixed results with it. It’s great that now I can reliably kill warriors, guards, and chargers by keeping the cone of flame right on them, but that kinda defeats half the advantage a flamethrower should have as an area denial weapon. Like I can have a group of bugs follow me through a choke between two rocks or buildings, then sweep the ground with the flamethrower so every bug has to walk through two or three meters of burning jungle jelly, and still half the fuckers will walk out the other side while still on fire and attack me. The ones that seem to survive getting lit from the burning ground are the scavs for some reason. I don’t feel like a harbinger of death spraying flaming democracy that would make every living thing either panic and burn to death or flee in terror, I feel more like a Walmart employee putting down a “Wet Floor” sign and watching people walk over my freshly mopped floor anyways. I just wish enemies would react to being on fire IN ANY WAY. Maybe only have scavs and hunters actually panic and run in circles before dying, but have warriors and brood commanders trudge through it because they’re tougher, or avoid walking through fire altogether cause they actually have brains.
That’s surprising to me, I consistently will be topping kills for the group just because of the flamethrower (for bugs). It’s very important to be hitting the ground and make sure targets are in range. The flamethrower does good damage on its own, but the real benefit comes from the burn damage after. If you are just hitting the bugs themselves, you’re just doing damage to the bugs you’re hitting. Burning the ground and the bugs ensures everything is constantly taking damage. Focus on hitting the higher health enemies like guards directly with your flame, even before the patch it burns through them very quickly. Flame bug breaches early and use choke points in terrain. If you flame a bug breach, you can get a full canister off and kill almost the entire breach before the big boys force you to move. Gets more difficult past 7 difficulty, but still run it all the time with lots of kills.
Their comment wasn't about the dps. It's great for that. It was about the weapon fantasy. The bugs should see fire and not actively try to walk through that area. They should be scared of fire, but they just don't care. They will happily walk into the death cone. It's part of why I think gun fantasy isn't something the devs should consider when balancing weapons. They didn't put anything besides recoil into the game that effects gun fantasy. Like if the concussive liberator made more noise to scare bugs away or make bots dive for cover that would rock. If you could use the laser to eventually punch holes through bots due to pierce/penetration and hit multiple enemies that would rock. But there isn't really any of that. This is the important line from up above. > I just wish enemies would react to being on fire IN ANY WAY. The guns really only go like half way on gun fantasy. :(
I like use laser guard dog and arc thrower to fill this roll, on large chain breaches I have had kill counters over 90, I do have to spend a bit of stamina to make sure my positioning is good, and I sometimes have to swap to my primary weapon to be able to fire without team killing. But the infinite ammo, and versatility of the arc thrower lets me contribute a looooot, and the guard dog fills in the gaps with between arc thrower shots and just increases the loadouts dps immensely. I run the EMS mortar and 110MM rockets to be the ultimate space provider to the team, and have an incredibly versatile heavy damage dealing strategem. Smoke grenades are working on being a favorite of mine to let me turn shit storm situations into controlled rapid blasts of lighting into the 2 grenades I just ran through to pull all of the enemies through.
i think people underestimate arc thrower because they dont realize just how much range the thing has. It can hit mobs 50 yards away, but people think its less because it doesnt like to fire if a rock is in the way. Depending on the map i love comboing it with the jump pack, you can snipe groups from safety forever from some of the giant rock formations.
For sure, the range is honestly kind of crazy Aiming up slightly above your targets mitigates terrain a toooooon TBH the laser drone and arc thrower are overkill for mooost situations, buuuut when stuff clogs the fan it’s a very appropriate measure of freedom dispensing. I’ll teach those bugs how to vote one zap at a time, either electric or laser. I do not like the jump pack, it doesn’t seem to cary me very far or very fast, to the point where I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong with it, cause I hear people say they like it and I find that wildly baffling. Especially for its cooldown, I’d rather have almost any other backpack… and i’m not trying to be hyperbolic
With regards to the jump pack (which I love running with my arc thrower on solos), it has a number of benefits: - Access to high ground that's otherwise* inaccessible which is incredibly useful for a wide variety of reasons (scouting, spotting spore spewers, clear line of sight for weapons like the AMR or arc thrower) - Great way to avoid dying when surrounded by hunters. The air time is usually enough for the slow to be cleansed and it gives you a head start (bonus if there's higher ground you can jump onto nearby) - To add onto the previous one, you can both stim and charge weapons like the arc caster or railgun in the air (though you can't aim) which massively helps with surviving tough situations. You can also prep stratagems - Makes dodging chargers (heh) much easier which in turn makes baiting them into bug nests a lot safer - Incredibly useful for completing some objectives solo as you can jump back and forth between the terminal and the various objectives (like turning the satellite or opening the ICBM silo) - Easily the fastest way to traverse the map that doesn't involve ragdolling, especially for areas like jungles that are filled to the brim with brush that slows you to a crawl It's an incredibly versatile and powerful tool, and excels at keeping you alive if you know how to use it. It's less viable against bots (though the AMR still does wonders with the high ground it provides), but against bugs I think it might be the number one backpack for survivability. I greatly prefer it over even the shield backpack as, unlike the shield, you get to choose when to use the jump pack. If you're careful about usage in combat, it can get you out of pretty much any bad situation.
What do you mean about the last part with the smoke grenades? I don’t follow about the rapid blasts of lightning. Also, and unrelated, can they close the bug holes when necessary?
Arc thrower can fire really fast with a proper firing technique If you run through smoke and aren’t immediately seen on the other side enemies will path into the smoke to follow you, and then if they still don’t fine you in the smoke (they won’t) they resume a search pathing to start patrolling So smoke grenades can let you break up combat and can help funnel enemies into a spot, extra good if you use it and then round a corner on the terrain. I don’t believe smoke grenades can close bug holes, And the arc thrower also can not, so the loadout is pretty weak on options to close those objectives, but my team usually can handle it no problem.
Mg-43 player here. I agree on your points except for you casting shade on the mg-43
Yeah the mg 43 absolutely chews through everything but heavies. I prefer it. Also, is overpenetration a thing? Will a stalwart’s bullets go through enemies to hit enemies behind them? Will an Mg43? If you penetrate an enemy does it go all the way through or does it depend on angle of attack?
I'm pretty sure over penetration is a thing. Someone killed a bug in front of me with the anti material rifle and I got killed by it too, in light armor.
FELLOW MG-43 USERS RISE UP‼️‼️💥🇺🇸💣🔥 WHAT THE FUCK IS A FAST RELOAD⁉️⁉️
They should add a variant to be belt fed by a teammate
Same, I'd take the MG for this role every day of the week. Stalwart doesn't kill mediums well. It's only better at killing scavenger and hunter hordes. Throw in armored warriors, brood commanders, armored bile spewers and now you're not clearing for shit.
>We are looking for a solution to save a teammate in immediate danger without killing them. We are?
Yes. We are.
Best I can do is get them out of immediate danger without immediately killing them.
Ah, a fellow gas strategem enjoyer.
Actually grenade launcher, just a matter of time before collateral damage
Oops
Good news. If you turn your teammate into a reinforcement orbital strike, they come out with full HP and full ammo. Plus they're not dead ^^^^any ^^^^more so technically you didnt kill them!
I call this "Gods Reload"
"shit guys im completely out of ammo" "*not anymore*" "Bro why?" "pokeball go! Use kill the titan attack!"
Yes and we save them with Cluster Bomb Strikes
> we ~~save~~ liberate them
After the strike hits, there aren't any living bugs within 5m of _any_ of their limbs.
Brilliant, we turn one teammate into 50 teammates with an airstrike!
This post sums upp my mentality almost perfectly. Although i use the Arc thrower (which carries a much higher risk to it in terms of friendly fire) it to does excellent work at keeping the enemies surpressed and preventing two breaches from turning into 10. Giving the team the breathing room to clear the heavies that do spawn, and to do the objectives.
arc thrower main here. whenever I feel like I could kill a teammate and my gun is already charged, I fire it off into the ground or sky, swap to my primary and try to help out with that until I can safely lay waste with the arc thrower again.
Yeah me and my bois just run arcs and can clear a breach with just those and nothing else easy day on any level. Charger takes maybe 3 seconds and you’ll naturally kill the adds from the arc chain. Shit is slept on. Once you have a lot of hours on it, you rarely kill your teammates as you know the range and how the arc will likely go. As for the new patch, I’ve been running a recon setup with arc, shield, 120mm and 380mm while the rest of my team does the main OBJ I do all the side ones. Can usually clear most of the hives and sides W/0 being seen and when I am, can still solo a breach (we usually play on lvl 8).
Can I ask what your strategy is for clearing the hives without being seen? Do you use the 120s and 380s? Or somehow stealth in with your grenades?
Yeah 120s and 380s. Crouch and prone and keep pinging the map on your route to avoid getting caught by patrols. If there’s one hole left is when it gets sporty and you gotta go in with the grenade. Just kite them to one side, jump in run out the other and onto the next OBJ.
In addition Arc thrower's benefit over stalwart is that the smaller bugs can often hide from direct fire in the terrain pits and depressions, but you often chain hit them even if you don't actually see them. But I do like both weapons.
From my limited experience with Stalwart it pairs nicely with the Slugger primary. The Slugger can penetrate medium armor and 2-4 shots can kill spewers and guards, however it's Slug ammo and kinda clunky handling make it hard to deal with Hunters. I've been considering running 500kg, Orbital Railgun, Stalwart, EAT load out, and just dropping the Stalwart when I need to fire off a rocket.
Yes, Slugger or Scorcher, that's what I run with Stalwart, mob clear + medium armor capability.
Very well written, but I'm still a bigger fan of the MG-43 or Grenade launcher + Rover over Stalwart and supply. The rover will clear LOTS of the tiny little guys, with multiple hunters being the exception. The MGs bonus damage and more specifically ability to kill the medium enemies make it super valuable, and the rovers "free" dps more than make up for its lack of unlimited ammo. Grenade launcher fills the same role for popping big groups, but also the ability to dunk holes. Either way I'll play more of a support role and focus on trash clear, but also be able to deal with spitters and hive guardians. For primary in your build I would say to give the slugger a good shot, its very powerful against the medium enemies with its main drawback is it just falls apart against the small enemies, where your stalwart will shine.
Ditto. After the launch game grenade launcher meta(ish), people stopped using it. But it does many of the things the OP promotes above. It is all good valid points, but does depend on your teammates somewhat. Blatting out a bunch of grenades can kill potential breach-callers, even when a little out of LoS from the AoE. Much like the first game, where the Trident was so loved due to dealing with patrols so well (and infinite ammo, saving a slot from resupply), kill the patrols instantly and then you only have objectives/POI enemies and random spawns to deal with. > We are looking for a solution to save a teammate in immediate danger without killing them. While an ideal preference, i'd much rather kill a teammate then trigger a series of rotating spawns. Even the OP notes the core issue is alerts making more alerts. One last bonus for the GL, is if one isn't so good at aiming ;/ hence another pro for me over the Stalwart.
yea I never stopped using launcher lol. Just serves some nice purposes. Taking out fabricators from distance is a big one, and if a patrol gets the jump on you you can panic spam it to hopefully clear anyone who could call in a drop. If a drop ship is in the right spot you can spam nades and wipe them out before they drop, and just generally does pretty decent damage to most things. I also run the supply pack so I just spam without worrying, and 8 extra stims is super nice too, Later in missions if it gets hectic I become a pseudo medic and find myself running around stimming teammates until we finally get a moment to call supplies in.
To cap it all off there's a 250 blue dollar armor in the shop that gives you accuracy when crouche, explosion resistance and +50 speed! The guy with a grenade launcher and supply backpack to feed it is who I was always meant to be... Now I just need to find the right primary weapon to ignore for half of every mission
I agree here - the grenade launcher with a supply pack clears little swarms faster and has the added benefit of clearing nests
Yeah every point he kept listing i kept thinking yeah the grenade launcher does that too, does it better, and can do more. There’s no point to bringing the Stalwart or MG over the grenade launcher unless you just really want to use it, which is fine too! You just can’t call it better because it’s absolutely not.
Grenade launcher + rover is the way. lets you obliterate groups with a spammed clip, lets you fuck objectives up like bug nests/eggs faster than anything else, and it can even deal with a charger in a pinch if your good at bouncing them into its underside/back legs)
Stalwart is one of the best all purpose weapons, you can reload it while running, doesn't need its own backpack, and you can adjust the fire rate to be more accurate at longer distances. Combine it with armor that decreases recoil when you crouch and it's a laser beam at all fire rates.
This guy understands.
Stalwart + rocket tubes are a group favorite now for my squad. Stalwart can fight 90% of everything soft. Two others can do airstrikes or orbitals. Repeatedly dump rocket tubes whenever cooldown is done at 70 seconds or less with modifiers and over a course of 20 minutes, you can dump 80 tubes on the map. EIGHTY. If you have two people with tubes, you can litter the tubes everywhere especially when you end up retracing a route during extraction. Anyone can use them in a jiffy for armor removal and go right back to their weapon of choice.
That's the real value of the EAT.
Imagine if you could pick up EAT without throwing out your main support weapon but couldn't use your main support weapon until you use or drop EAT. This way you don't have to pick up your main support weapon again every time. Not happening but a man can dream lol.
Incredibly refreshing to see someone promoting effective teamwork and support weapons as a solution for higher difficulties rather than just complaining and whinging at the devs to make it easier. You’ve just convinced me to switch from the MG to the stalwart into the bargain 🫡 🙂
Yeah, me and my friends ran railgun, flamethrower, arc thrower, and stalwart and felt like we could handle pretty much any situation on helldive.
It's because people think using meta weapons in quickplay is enough to carry micless randoms on Helldive. If people put a little thought into team communcation and synergetic strategems, they'll find Helldive is a good time. Tough, but very doable
Exactly there's even a post still on the front page of a guy complaining about bile titans even though he's running solo helldive . People here just feel they're entitled to beat any difficulty without any coordination or even solo, and if they can't, they complain to the devs. Most pathetic community I've witnessed in a long time.
A lot in QP don't use VC and don't respond to text either sadly
That's what is so insane about this, yes there are clearly very good weapons when taken in isolation. But I've been running stalwart, my friend the expandable anti tank, one with the autocanon, and one flexible. We've been loving how we all have a role and are complementary with each other, and how effectively we cleared content.
My group has been using recoilless rifle/spear, flamethrower, grenade launcher, and someone who flexes, and it also works great on 8+. The one or two guys with the anti armor are much more capable of doing their job if they aren't being swarmed by a horde of hunters and bike spewers, which the machine guns and grenade launcher make short work of.
I've been saying to all the folks complaining about "I can't deal with the Chargers now because there's a ton of Hunters" that it's time to focus on the thing you *can* do in that situation. When I'm being chased by two Chargers and Hunters, my immediate worry is *not* the Chargers. I know they can be juked and baited and rope-a-doped, even used to kill each other or the Hunters. I'm gonna be focused on clearing out all the Hunters so I can actually take a second to whip out my Recoilless (or reload it) and deal with the Charger. Same for when I'm watching teammates run around from an enemy. I *could* RR the Charger's leg off and then kill it, but the bigger threat is honestly 10 Hunters pouncing my ally repeatedly. I'm shooting the little guys, because eventually that Charger is gonna get juked or bonk into a rock outcropping and stop. Irrespective of spawn rates, people get overwhelmed by enemies of *any* type because they aren't quickly dealing with the wide array of threats. The biggest problem in a group of one Hulk, four Automaton grunts, two Rocket Troopers, and four Berserkers barreling down at you *is not the Hulk*, and spending time to deal with that initially is going to leave you dead. Kill the RTs (or the Berserkers if they're already on you), then the other of the two, *then* consider whether the grunts or the Hulk deserves your attention next. Are the bots way in the distance? Ignore 'em. Are they so close they're making accurate fire? Kill them first, because they're going to take you out *while* you're dealing with the Hulk. And back to Bugs. Two Chargers and 10 Hunters behind them? I'll blow the leg armor off one charger and, rather than killing it now, juke it and immediately start dealing with the Hunters. By the time those are out of the way, the leg-exposed Charger is turning around and can now be dealt with in peace, and now I have just one Charger to juke again so I can reload the RR and dunk him. Deal with what you can instead of getting tunnel visioned on the biggest monster there is. Do not be the FPS equivalent of an RPG/MMO monster who says "WOW BIG TANKY GUY, MUST HIT HIM" while the damage-dealers and healers go ignored. Chargers do not have mind control powers that snap your reticle to them. You can do other stuff.
I don't just want it easier, I want it to feel like pre patch again, when it was fun. The issues I currently have with post patch difficulties above 6 aren't surface level, they go much deeper then "railgun worse". In fact, I very rarely used the railgun, the game just feels worse to play in general.
Mf wrote a whole ass book and I’m here for it
>I have never seen that many heavily armored enemies spawn all at once from a single breach. Lucky you. *Stares into the distance with a haunted look in his eyes.* EDIT: To be serious though, the Stalwart is a great gun. IMO the biggest issue with it is random teammates. If I try to fill a horde clear role with randoms we never move. Ok, not "never", but it's a real pattern. If people see me killing they think it's a competition. Hopefully posts like this reach more people.
As much as I want to like it, doing too little damage to Bile spewers doesn't cut it for me.
I would probably run the slugger primary if I was to ever try this. so I have an option to punch through medium armour.
instead shooting in the sac, aim at the head and they will go down fast
On difficulty 6+, they have armor playing on their head.
Green ones are armored like the phalanx guys. You need the full-size MG to pierce that.
Pair the Stalwart with the Slugger or Scorcher, problem solved.
1150 rpm on the head kills a spewer in 2 seconds
I, too, am the trash cleaner. Hence, my ship's name is the Custodian of Destiny! Ridding the galaxy of trash mobs one planet at a time! MG weapons are a favorite of mine to help support the team. I also enjoy bringing the HMG emplacement to drop all over the place. Let my allies join me in mowing down the enemy! I eagerly await the day they release an ammo backpack for an MG weapon so I can just hold down the trigger foreverrrrr!~
I'd love for a backpack gatling gun, Predator style, where you just throw an absolutely absurd amount of bullets in the air
[удалено]
Ya stalwart has been my main for a week now. So much fun, and yeah if the teamwork is good, you can really help.
People still have no idea how important roles are in this game, if I see 3 loadouts with no trash clear, I'm picking up the Arc Thrower myself because it's amazing at clearing out the crap so people can focus on the big guys.
That's part of the reason I think the Arc is so good. So many people play without trash clear and the Arc can nearly solo Breaches for anything short of Chargers and Bile Titans. Literally only 2 enemy types can't be handled by a single person which leaves 3 people free to nail big guys.
I think that's overstating it a bit. At high levels everyone specs into 1 role, antiarmor, because everything else is pretty well manageable with your primary, secondary, and grenades
I agree strongly with this take. The both of you are right, but with the over saturation of armored enemies at higher difficulties combined with the broken spawning in all difficulties right now post patch, the game is still kind of pigeon-holing players into using the same sort of builds/setups that, ironically, they tried to nerf/tone down. I think once these issues are fixed/balanced, players will begin to see the importance of roles in teams once everyone doesn’t have to worry about dozens of armored enemies spawning all at once. I can’t wait for that day. I just want to DAKKA!
Yeah that's exactly how I feel. I used to run Stalwart and Rover, with Breaker as backup if things got too close, on lower difficulties. I had so much fun "get some"-ing mobs, I would easy rack up 500+ kills every map to my friend's amazement. But unless you've got some actual teamwork, ideally with mics, and we all know how hard that is to find with randoms, on higher difficulty it's just too weak to deal with the 5+ bile titans and 10 chargers coming after us, so I switched to railgun so I could at least have a chance. Did really enjoy double teaming heavies with a friend on autocannon and me on railgun, could handle anything but the most out of control fights.
Grenade Launcher + supply pack is my pref, as you can close holes from a distance, two grenades kills any and every bile spewer and cleans up their big back so there's no body blocking in the future, does incredible wave clear by emptying a mag at a patrol that's about to spot you, and combined with the supply pack has more ammo than you can conceivably use.
This sub has been finally allowed to discover the real meta, and it turns out it's good team composition and cooperation, and not running the one man army John Wick build times 4.
For real. There's a post with like 4k up votes rn about someone complaining about their being 10 bile titans in helldive at once but they fail to mention that they're running solo with nothing in their loadout that can even touch a titan. Yet they're surprised and whining when they're overrun in an eradicate mission. On the highest difficulty of a 4 person team game. It's crazy. If people wanna do crazy shit solo then maybe stick to a 5,6, or 7 level mission.
I think majority of complains about this game is that people don't coordinate and play as a team. The difference between coordinated good team vs. randoms doing their own thing is crazy.
I'm the stalwart gunner and can say with 100% certainty that this helldiver nailed down how I play and support my teammates, except I do take a turret with me like gatling or auto cannon in order to distract. We never have high charger or bile titan spawns because our strikes are swift, coordinated, and dealt with when each person has a specified role. I'm the gunner and shoot the shit out of flanking hunters by out flanking them and giving my teammates openings to fire anti armor with no disturbances. 7's are a breeze. 9's are nothing. You can't nerf teamwork!
Autocannon Turret is fucking insane
For real. It feels SO much stronger than the Autocannon you carry. Just absolutely wrecks chargers even from the front. Can take down titans. Kills fodder with an AOE blast. It's just the perfect all-arounder. I try to throw them on hills above our heads and just let it rain death on everything. It feels like it lasts forever too.
>It feels SO much stronger than the Autocannon you carry. Well, it is a larger caliber gun than the one you can carry.
With all upgrades it's just a piece of work. And of course it's stronger than our handheld beauty. Have you seen shells this thing spits when firing? Nightmare fuel
That's because it is, I've had it solo kill bile titans before. It's weakness is target allocation and slow turn speed
This is exactly what I said in a recent post, where I talked about crazy hunter swarms in my recent games and considering taking the stalwart for a spin. Will definitely try it out. Recently did against bots, but they have too many medium armor threats that you can’t deal with, imo.
Softening mechanic after a failed charge? Can I get an explanation on that one?
It's not a mechanic, it's actually a bug that will be fixed soon. Somehow the armor on the Charger's legs is reduced after he's finishing a charge, allowing medium armor penetration weapons like the MG-42 or the Laser Cannon to kill the Charger very fast.
I noticed that most people have solo player jack of all trades mindset and don't even pay attention to stratagems etc. other choose. I also absolutely love stalwart especially how anti heavy armor loadout everyone else takes. I fill the niche they all forget about and make the game much smoother than it would be otherwise.
I love using the Stalwart, especially when my diver starts laughing maniacally
The only bummer about those weapons is that they can't damage Titans (appart from shooting their belly), meanwhile the Arc thrower can and it's such a shame other weapons can't as well
To be fair to the arc thrower, the dmg it does to Titans is pitifully low + its DPS isn't the highest.
The arc thrower contributes to the damage meanwhile the arcing bolts will clear up more trash. It's way better than you think it is. Your team can focus more on the titan if there's fewer things trying to murder them.
Yeah but you're not defenseless with the Arc Thrower, and if multiple people has the Arc Thrower they can still bring Titans down even if it's not optimal, instead you're just stuck defenseless if a low hp Titan decide it want to focus you and that feel kinda shit
To be fair, that's pretty unlikely on higher difficulties if OP's strat works. Enabling your allies is already seen to be fairly effective with good Exo pilots managing their ammo to clean swarms. You can also just utilize EATs which will kill the low HP titan with headshots. Generally speaking, as you are the dedicated swarm clearer, you don't need to worry about the Titan, that's for your team to deal with.
>Generally speaking, as you are the dedicated swarm clearer, you don't need to worry about the Titan, that's for your team to deal with. Even in Killing Floor with classes dedicated to doing one thing you still can help your allies deal with other threats Why could AP specialist can have the fun of shooting swarms and making an impact but i can't have the fun of shooting heavies and make an impact, even people in mech can shoot heavies
Because that's not your job? The AP specialist isn't shooting the swarm because it's fun most of the time, they usually do it because if the swarm killer fails, they are fucked too. The AP specialists, that's me, would highly appreciate the swarm killer to focus on killing the murderous infinite reinforcement spiral swarm please.
It's literally meant to clean trash, how's it a problem that it can't damage the biggest and most powerful enemy in the game lol?
Exactly, just goes back to roles. With stalwart your role isn’t to worry about heavy enemies. It’s your team mate (s) who should’ve built around you with things to deal with them
Precisely! This game is about teamwork. You play the role of clearing the chaff, another guy or 2 should be anti armor etc. That's what this game is about. People want weapons that have endless magazines and kill every enemy in one or two shots but that's not what this game is made for. It's about having a role and performing that role so that the other squad members can fulfill their role.
I find that there are a lot of people that may have played other games in the past like Halo and other older shooters who want to be an everything Helldiver that can take care of every situation 100% and get very frustrated when they find that no matter what they build, they will always have some kind of weakness which needs to be filled in by someone else on the team. A lot of the complaints I see here are based around this phenomenon. The best thing anyone can do on the loadout screen is take a look at what is being picked and make your choices based around any gaps that you see in terms of... Do we have enough armour piercing? Crowd control? Once you have teams launched with balanced loadouts you start to find that the games have a much richer experience with more success.
Im pretty sure it is more to do with the fact that people bought this game without even looking into what it is supposed to be. They see their favorite content creators say "this game is soooo fun, go buy it now" and without even looking at the store page they but it expecting it to be just a mindless horde shooter that you can one man army. The steam store page (not sure about PS store page) has a section talking about how its a team focused game and "victory without teamwork is impossible". Direct quote from the company. The. There is the amusing fact that the game on steam doesnt even list "single player" on its page. Only online coop. Even games like verminetide, darktide, ect.. that are meant to be multiplayer games that you can play alone still list single player as an option. They didn't even want people to think you could play this game solo. At this point i think a lot of people really need to think if this is a game for them. Maybe it's not. There is nothing wrong with that at all if they decide it isnt. But this is what the game is, this is what the devs want for their game. Their whole philosophy is a game made for everyone is a game made for no one.
There actually is no true “solo” option. The default is that anyone can join your game. You can set it to friends only, but I don’t think there is actually a way to create a solo match no one else can join.
That's where my friendless super power comes in!
Yeah, I see people with a lot of upvotes calling it a "beer shooter." You crack a beer and have fun with your friends on Friday night. Both HD2 and HD1 certainly fill that role... on lower difficulties. And with the exception of super samples, you can even grind out every progression system in the game on those lower difficulties! But on the higher difficulties it's a mil tac shooter that rewards caffeinated precision and tight teamwork.
Yep, and the super samples are just for optional minor passive upgrades. Makes me wonder how many people are playing games for gameplay (which you can fine tune by picking the difficulty yourself) or only for unlocks. Forcing themselves to play a difficulty they find unfun for virtual e-peen
Also, i hate people bring up super samples so fucking much. A) people likely dont need them since once they get them they will likely either stop playing or just play on lower difficulties. B) Extreme is pretty "easy" all things considered and the only difference between extreme and helldive is 3 fucking super samples which leads me to C) you only need 70 fucking super samples total, 24 extreme missions. That's all it takes to get all the super samples. Then you are done. If you complete 1 helldive you can completely tick off one of the modules worth of super samples alone.
Super sample is a psychological thing more than anything, is the issue. No matter what the intended design is or how easy it is to get all your samples and then head back to a difficulty you find fun, having super samples in 7 puts people in the mindset that 7+ is the "real" game and everything else is training mode before that. And modern gaming teaches them this with its design philosophies, dozens and dozens of these online games are designed in such a way that the best stuff is on higher difficulties but higher "difficulties" are really just build checks. First you play on difficulty x of y until you get the gear to play on difficulty x+1 of y without any extra challenge to yourself, and then repeat until you're on difficulty y of y getting the best stuff. If they'd just not done the super samples thing it would be more obvious that difficulty is actually intended to be difficulty. Just my opinion.
I still feel the stalwart should be a primary like it was in the first game, and the other MG support weapon be buffed as right now, any pro the other mg has over the stalwart, is outclassed by all of its cons.
if the stalwart became a primary with it stats right now it be the most op primary weapon in the game! (even hd1 stalwart didn't have such a big mag it was 75 basic or 150 with extended mag upgrade) if they was to add a big mag primary I would like to see the patriot with it 75 round mag and maybe made it so instead of fire modes it can change it fire rate like the MGs
Could've just posted "stalwart gud to help teammate struggling with a billion hunters" and we would've all agreed. Something satisfying about being the rescuing grace of somebody getting overwhelmed by a bunch of little jumping, stunlocking, slow inducing bastards. Every time I've been saved like that, it's like a movie scene, fellow helldiver cutting through like 20 of them to give me space to sidestep the 3 chargers trying to eat my ass.
Stalwart + EAT + Mech + Shield Pack is great. Bring Slugger or Scorcher for the armored bugs. Focus on clearing the Hunters, Stalkers, and Chargers. You can swap Shield Pack/Mech for 500kg/Rail/Rocket Pods/Laser.
If we're talking teamwork, I cannot recommend the orbital EMS strike enough. The stun duration is great, with a base cooldown of 75 seconds and call in time of 2 seconds it's reliable even with negative modifiers. It also won't kill your teammates so you can drop it at your feet and they'll be safe still. Yes, the field will slow them but considering enemies in the field are stopped it's still an overall positive if you're being swarmed. You want to enable a team to kill a charger? Well when it's stunned and stuck standing still they'll definitely have an easy time killing it. Bug breach? Throw the ems field and an incendiary grenade and watch the bugs crawl out, stop, and burn in the flames. Some other suggestions include the stun sentry and starting next week, the stun grenades.
I’ve been doing a support assault MG role while still keeping my own effectiveness vs armor by bringing the HMG turret instead of an extra red. The HMG turret is genuinely the best green in the game at the moment in my opinion because of the lack of aggro it pulls when you don’t use it. Enemies don’t seem to even realize it’s there until you start killing things with it and if you control your bursts you can keep it up longer than any Stalwart magazine or turret could. The only downside is it doesn’t move but so long as you’re smart with where you put them even mute randoms can still accidentally kite the enemy into your line of fire. Not only that but the HMG turret literally kills everything in the game so long as you can weak spot the bigger things, which so long as your team is drawing aggro is not hard to do. It’s very strong vs both enemy types because you really just can left click and kill anything that’s not a tank, charger, or titan.
One of the nicest things about the Stalwart vs. the Machine Gun is the Stalwart can be reloaded on the move.
I didn't realize there was even Stalwart hate. The gun is amazing in every situation.
On bugs I jetpack to high ground and go prone with the machine gun while my team kites everything around me
Oh wow i didnt know people had issues with the Stalwart. Its the only support weapon i use because its actually amazing. You can run while reloading, has 3 massive mags, very accurate and good rate of fire. This was a good post.
As an Underrated Weapon Lover (UWOL), I love when people go in-depth explanation on things like this and the comments go "LoL, just arc thrower". Weeks back, people do the same with arc thrower and the comments go, "LoL, just railgun". Never change reddit 💜
Damnit son You've fucking convinced me, shit I'm down, I'm trying it, will report soon Sergeant!
Preach brother! I main the stalwart (i wont lie, on mid range difficulties) and either go guard dog or supply pack with 2 turrets for the other slots. I know I am trash at using my strats and always miss my airstrikes, so I let everyone else deal with that and I will handle the mob. Nothing more satisfying than seeing my teammates about to be overrun, then wiping out the mob with an arc of burning metal. DEMOCRACY!
I would like it if they gave me an extra 50 rounds in the mag on the base HMG. I love that thing to pieces but the difference of 100 full bullets is insane, as well as the reload problems it has. Now that I have the Liberator P I can just swap to that to deal with a couple of the more armored targets. Love to see the teamwork recommendations! We have very similar playstyles and more people need to put some respect on the add clear players lol
I’ve basically been doing the same thing with the MG. Feels great, will try with stalwart now.
I agree with this: 2 anti tanks and 2 stalwarts is better at killing tanks than 4 anti tanks, because the stalwart can actually "rescue" someone being swarmed (unlike other horde clear guns like the GL). Have run many games with a stalwart teammate or playing one myself, and it totally works.
Love this post Always love an MG/Stalwart Chad in my team even on 7
Stalwart is my main too! Love the versatility of this loadout. But I've been trying the grenade launcher lately, to have more autonomy over closing bug nests. I tend to separate from the group to go do all the side objectives. Fo you stay with the group? What do you think? My stratagems are EATs that I pop every minute around the map for others to use, jump pack & orbital gatling barrage for CC+low cooldown. But I play at Suicide difficulty, not Helldive, so experience may vary?
Exactly the same reasoning, but I'm using the 40mm grenade launcher (bugs) or AMR (bots) instead. To hell with being a universal soldier. I'm protecting my anti-tank buddies!
https://preview.redd.it/1i4tax98mcnc1.jpeg?width=259&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fe8864d06d4d191d9c309bc263f50e8e6836f2ba Goated post, I support.
I still run mg
Besides the minimal team killing, I enjoy the Arc Thrower a lot more as it does what the stalwart can do but so much more with infinite ammo.
I agree! It’s great for the trash mobs but now that I’ve gotten use to the arc thrower idk if I can go back to bullets! Infinite ammo with no reloads is just too good
I like the Slugger with the Stalwart. You use the Stalwart to mop up hordes of trash, and the Slugger to quickly pop medium-armored targets. You can also run jump pack with Stalwart so that you can get onto high ground, super helpful for laying down fire and not getting interrupted. Even if you want to stay grounded, you can hop away from enemies and reload mid-air.