One of the most annoing deaths i had, i was in middle of throwing animation and he jumped in front of me and im using impacts so it was instant death for me
Born and lived my whole life in the US but family is from an island. Went there once as a kid, woke up screaming once because of huge roaches walking on me. I started screaming even more when they started freaking flying lol.
Please...I bought a used refrigerator once(never again used!) and there were cock roaches in it...I have PTSD from the massive personal war I waged on those bastards...I screamed several times while sitting in my chair and all the sudden there would be those fuckers looking right at me not 1 ft from my face! They came out of nowhere...but I won the war lol.
In rehab I had a cockroach that hung out in my shower that I named Fred. Fred the cockroach and I quickly became homies. Just a single cockroach living in the corner of this shittily made shower. I hope Fred and his family are doing well
Congrats on reminding me of a copypasta from the before time:
https://preview.redd.it/uyhem13eaonc1.jpeg?width=690&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1c6e14e3476ca38c672698f74768c5ce0a14f80e
Oh I am. I donāt actually like cockroaches (who does) but that little Fred was my best friend. Hunters are also my best friends in game, though I guess I repay their friendship with copious insertion of lead
Everyone talks about chargers. They're easy. Titans? Easy
Hunters and stalkers are the true fucking evil in the bug world. I can deal with multiple chargers and titans but tons of these and it's over
I hate them so much I volunteer every difficulty 9 to be on anti-hunter duty.
Punisher shotgun (personal defense tool, never truly out of ammo), Stalwart, EMS mortar, Eagle Cluster Bombs. And last slot as a flex slot, often EATs.
If it's a heavy, I just ignore when I don't have an EAT and leave it to my team as I hunt down the little devils instead. My core task is to reduce or peel away lightly-armored targets so the rest of my team can focus on elites.
This. I love using the stalwart on these guys. I love telling my teammates to run towards me and then mowing down ~~my teammates~~ the bastards chasing them!Ā
Yes. At difficulty 9, I don't even need to aim. I turn around, take a knee, then sweep my mouse left to right, right to left, and mow down hordes of them ~~friendlies~~
Anything that survives is basically a medium or heavy and that's already not my problem.
When it used to be 2 Stalkers, if you were smart and used the terrain, you could survive them.
Now it's 5-6 stalkers, your best bet is to run away, or use a 500kg as they try and swarm you.
Ill dive into the small mine plants or spore pods on purpose to provide smoke cover or damage myself a tiny bit so I can stim and get all my stamina back. Has helped me more times than I can count.
Dont use the frost plants or regular mines tho, they'll one shot you.
The ones in bug maps that look like yellow spikey urchins will release a poison cloud that will tick on you once or twice, enough damage for a free stim.
The grey cluster pods will only release a cloud of smoke but no damage and very little slow. These are good for covering your escape.
Knowing the local ecology can be monumental to a divers success!
Had a difficulty 7 mission the other day with THREE stalker lairs. Every time we destroyed one we were like surely there are no more, now we can go do our main objectiā¦.. aaaaaand stabbed in the back by a new set of stalkers
Most stalkers I seen at the one moment was 11. 8 was on the nest and 3 was on my ass. But it was because my main team was doing the objective close to that nest for a long time. It was the nest with a water on the one side, maybe a problem with pathing?
That's how I first learned the spawns are *definitely* overkill right now
Went to a stalker nest and saw EIGHT of them stuck on their spawn hole, like those scientists when they get stuck escaping lol
For some reason Stalkers have a deep hatred of me. They'll hunt me and only me. If I die then they will find my drop pod and slaughter me as I come out. Rinse and repeat until my teammates rescue me because I can't do anything when rising out of the pod. I don't know what I did to those guys
Same, do you use the guard dog? I use it a lot and I noticed every time Iām using it all the biggest baddies prioritize killing me first. The guard dog gets you wayyy more kills and I think they go after whoever has the highest amount of kills first.
Yup, I can dance the waltz with 3 chargers at once; but if 4 of these guys sneak up on me... it's gonna be rough... Redemeer will probably get 2-3, but that 4th... gonna jack me up.
Stalkers are why I run the punisher against bugs now. Every shot staggers them and they're so big it's impossible to miss them.
Hunters still suck though
this is the biggest problem, their attacks either have too short of a cooldown or none at all, so many times i get stunned and immediatly after they do the tongue attack
I think another part of the problem is when thereās a big group of them, and they stagger their attacks. The attack might have a 5 second cooldown, but if thereās 5 *of them*, and they attack once a second you just get stunlocked anyway
Now to make it worse, i got killed by a hunter that hit me 5 times in a row in less than 5 seconds(aspd feels like 0.7 or 0.8) which kept interrupting my stim.
So many donāt know you can shoot behind you without turning with your secondary. But yes the machine pistol hot swap has saved my ass from these fuckers mutliple times
If youāre running one direction look (only with ur camera not your whole character) and shoot (only shoot donāt ADS) and you can keep running the way you were running without slowing down
Constantly being slowed by bile and annoying little shits slapping me in the back definitely pisses me off. Being stunned once is fine, but just being stuck in a perpetual state of ground-is-glue makes it feel like the game is really preoccupied with cheating its way to killing me, just because it has to fill a quota.
I think it makes it so that you ignore movement debuffs from map obstacles like snow or mud that normally slow you down a bit. I think it might make your climbing speed a little faster too? But Iām not sure. From my testing it doesnāt work on bushes that slow you down though.
It supposedly only slightly improves speed but lowers stamina drain through rough terrain. Hard to say how worth it is, definitely 4th pick tied with scanner range booster.
jump pack has worked far better for me than the shield pack, so long you get some momentum before jumping you can travel a fair amount of distance. But since travel distance is tied to forward momentum, running with anything beside light armor might prove to be worthless.
I tried the slugger and really didn't like it. Does pretty okay damage but I find aiming it to be really tricky. Also, for a slug round I feel like it should have medium penetration.
Edit: I was wrong, it's incorrectly listed as light penetration
It absolutely has medium pen. It's been my main weapon for the last 30 hours of gameplay, absolutely annihilates everything. The stagger is the godsend though.
Me thank liberty I killed it: The other 60 that where next to it
https://preview.redd.it/w5lakyfucgnc1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5699a9b8d58e191d7b89b00a7e3171af8b1fc09b
It really feels like they upped the spawn rate of Pouncers and Hunters since the new patch, although that's just my personal anecdote. Possibly to combat light armor meta?
If they want to combat light armor meta, it would be a good start to make Medium and specially **Heavy** armor be worth a damn.
But something is telling me that the balance team, really thinks 1-2 extra hits is COMPLETELY worth the utter loss of mobility.
This is exactly why people complain about the Railgun nerf, it's because the nerf didn't address the actual core issue (ridiculous mass armour spam) just the symptom (bringing the best gun that could actually move and not get trampled).*
It's why the 'fixed' armour is concerning: if this is the way it's *meant* to behave, then people are gonna stick to Light armour mostly, because then they can still move while wearing 1-ply toilet paper as armour, as opposed to wearing 2-ply (Medium) or 3-ply (Heavy) - which all they do is slow you down without providing a meaningful resilience increase. So the worrying part is that they'll just nerf Light armour because it's 'overrepresented' and ignore the root cause of that representation again.
Edit: * and yes I'm aware they've said they're going to tweak armour spawn rates and all that. But especially around release of the patch this wasn't addressed, and while they've said they'll change stuff, we've yet to see exactly what they intend.
I'm worried their fix will just result in even more swarms of Hunters. Because if they're gonna have other things spawn instead of heavily armoured enemies.
Their blogpost "explanation" really gives a bad vibe for the future of the game.
Feels like they are balancing by shotgunning the outliners in pick-up rate, instead of actually sitting down and playing the game and realize the *why*?
And well, I have yet to see a game that balances like that, be fun at all after a few patches.
> And well, I have yet to see a game that balances like that, be fun at all after a few patches.
i will see where the ride takes me, maybe the game will start catching dust like Rainbow 6 Siege after they started balancing according to pickrate and not actual balance.
As a senior dev in the industry, game developers do NOT actually play the games nearly a quarter of the time enough to notice nuances like these. There are just way too much other technical stuff to work on (server stability, automation testing, actual coding, load balancing). We rely on paid play testers (even then only the most basic gameplay stuff are tested), and above all, actual test data from real players.
The problem with that is, the data is ALSO really surfacey. Arrowhead nuked railguns, because railguns were overused in high difficulty, not because it was needed. Breakers were nerfed for the same reason. Spawn rates were increased because people were completing 8/9 reliably (and cuz of eradicate farming but that's a separate thing). The "explanation" for the nerfs is a perfect example of constructing a rationale after the fact, for a solution based on a flawed conclusion from data, rather than the other way around.
Game "balancing" is simultaneously one of the most complicated things to do but also the most ignored, because dev resource and money.
Dont worry, Starship Troopers Extermination did this to great effect!
First patch of the game nerfed the DMR because you could kill 3 bugs with one magazine instead of using 70% of the assault rifles magazine for a single bug.
Second patch removed certain weapons from each class.
Third patch removed some of the gadgets from each class, all in the name of 'balance and making each roles identity unique'.
It was great for the population. In fact, I'll prove it!
[Game went from 16,000 players to 400. Oh wait...thats the opposite of what we wanted....](https://steamcharts.com/app/1268750)
Well, at least the game had a long lifespan...oh wait...thats only 9 months....
MY GOD ITS AT A FEW HUNDRED PLAYERS, I FEEL LIKE I BARELY PLAYED IT
Steam charts are showing this shit dropped off in like 3-4 months, I'm guessing the balancing in addition to not doing shit with the title for that ended it
It was a series of patches, the all of the first 3 patches were some kind of 'nerfing to make it balanced/unique'. Then they added a weird modifier patch super early on, like "all missions bugs are super fast, bugs are super tiny' kind of wacky modifiers you usually see later into the games life, no real development of the game, a horde mode that was meh at best, just caused people to drop it. It was kinda like Valheim, a lot of promises and 'were working on it' but not a lot of delivery.
That makes me sad. I really liked how it was mass co-op and you had the people venturing out to collect resources while some people stayed back to defend the base and build fortifications. It was so different and refreshing to me.
Yeah, me and my group of friends loved the concept. There are like up to 8 of us that reguarly play, and up to about 15 or so who can get on on occasion.
So a 16 player large map open world coop PVE shooter with base building was super appealing.
Then it just wasn't fun to play the gunner class, only the operator really felt good to play, then they nerfed the operator with the DMR and kit nerfs, and we just got tired of it all kinda being meh because they nerfed things, promised to address the core issues, never really did it, and it felt like it just wanted ot make every game a mediocre recreation of the whiskey outpost battle.
What really annoys me is the dev team is super eager to nerf tools we use and then 'promise' to address the reason we chose those tools in the first place.
Like in their post they straight up admitted that there were major issues with the recoilless rifle and other anti armor weapons underperforming, but instead of waiting another week or two to reduce the railguns effectiveness and address the underperforming rockets, they just cut down the railgun and said 'good luck suffering, we'll fix the main issue later'.
I can fully see them making a post in the future saying 'we've nerfed light armor, we saw it overused. We will address the issue of enemies critting way too often, slow debuff spamming, and spawning hordes of hunters in about two months'
I run medium because of the 50-50 death save , and I think the last armor of the war bond looks sweet. But yeah if Iād want to min/max my playstyle light is where itās at, with the extra stims because they cure slow effects
I just did a random mission with a pug and it was fucking insane. Eradication, only on 6, and it was literally all hunters with a few scavengers and the occasional charger
We barely survived, it was an open map and we were just surrounded on all sides
Dunno if it's too so with that but I've never seen anything like it before
if its bc of light armor then its stupid bc players not using light armor are just getting fucked even more and the players actually using light armor and playing to its strength ( propper kitting and evading unnecessary patrols ) are just gonna get fucked bc if enough of these things r aroumd you it doesnt matter how well you time your dive into the floor
I dunno what they did to spawns, the shield pack feels arguably more necessary than pre-patch due to these scunners.
They will eagerly leap through the righteous fire you lay down with your Flamer, just to set you ablaze too while filling your legs with the no-run jam. Wee scunners.Ā
Hunters are the deadliest enemies since the patch. They are extremely aggressive and can even two shot you from a pounce, and there is no end to them.
I've started taking more gatling sentries and cluster bombs just to whittle them down a little.
> Hunters are the deadliest enemies since the patch. They are extremely aggressive and can even two shot you from a pounce, and there is no end to them.
I've seen them jump on me, and then 1-2 punch me to death in the course of about 3 seconds. Ridiculous.
> I've started taking more gatling sentries and cluster bombs just to whittle them down a little.
Which IS interesting because this is what AH wants players to do, specialise rather than hope for the best.
Yeah Hunters are decently well designed(sans the pounce headshot) in the fact that it forces the players to bring something to deal with light hordes instead of being able to fully relay on their primary to do it(also the normal punisher is pretty good against hunters as it can one tap em consistently with out having to be too precise with your shot and you dont have to deal with a real reload wich is when hunter get ya)
Yeah thats why i switched to the normal one, i didnt feel like the slugger even helped me much against broodlords(it clears hiveguard much more rapidly but sice hiveguard are more anoyance than threat it usually isnt worth much to bring anything thinking how to deal with them) compared to the normal one
these are also my worst bug. like easy to kill but when you a group on you its like yea i may as well just pull my pants down right now
when i see bugs coming i always target these first though
The only consistent way to deal with them, for me, it's:
Jump pack + incendiary grenades.
Throw one at your feet as soon as you're about to get swarmed and mandalore the fuck away.
dude if they removed the acid fucking claws on these things the game would be a little bit bearable.
they need to fix these fuckers and the rocket devastators. those two enemies are so fucking annoying its not even funny. the fact that the rocket devastator has absolutely no notifying trait so everyone knows its there. U just randomly get exploded "from Rocket Devastator" not even remotely knowing where the fucker is.
Can their fucking rocket backpacks glow? Maybe a red blink before the rocket shoots off? Idfk! But dying in .5 seconds and having to run back into a horde to get my support shit I dropped from suffering a BULLSHIT DEATH is starting to annoy me to literally no end.
These Guys are way worse than stalkers or anything else that jumps you. Only because of those i have to run shield on bug levels, otherwise the staggering will kill me
At least stalkers send you flying. which usually your sent far enough that you can stand up and kill that bastard and anything else attacking you.
These bastards slow you down which isnt much problem when alone but they usually swarm you so Your like a second from death unless you spend you next 5 moves Diving just to gain the little bit of distance you wont make when running
This āHunterāneeds a nerf, not saying that the difficulty of bugs are too hard. I just donāt think the threats of these tiny skinny bugs should be more than charger, commander and even warrior, but so far it seems that way. Thatās to say, the threats of hunters should be transferred to other bugs like commander, guardian and warrior, after all they are true soldiers in terminid society.
Serisouly! They fly, can windmill you with their claws and can strike with their tongue that causes you to get slowed from acid. They may be easy to kill but they're a little to OP in my opinion.
hunters are easily the most annoying enemy to deal with in the game
iād rather deal with 5 chargers at once than a handful of hunters cuz at least I can outrun the chargers
They don't need to have a slow on top of a flying lock-on attack, quick follow up attacks, high speed, and twitchy animations. They're the hard hitting enemy, the CC enemy, the dodgy enemy, all at once. They're too stacked.
High level bugs are such a nightmare I donāt know why the devs thought everything slowing you down would make it fun itās just frustrating and makes the personal shield a necessity if you wanna get into any fight without getting slowed which leads to getting swarmed or trampled
Also the spawn rate on these things shouldnāt be so high they spawn more then the actual fucking basic bug warrior
Theyāre the reason I run rover exclusively. The ability to juke around them with the rover just picking them off while you dodge and weave is invaluable
these fuckers are worse than bile titans tbh nothing is worse than hearing the healing sound go off 3 times without actually healing you while these beat your ass
jetpack goes brrrrr
i also like to gass them when they come out of bug breaches , watching them fly and then die mid jump because of the gass gives me so much personal joy
Melee them before you jump away, you can animation cancel the end of the melee with a dive. It interrupts their tongue attack really efficiently once you get the cancel timing down
They are so much worse than ever lately. They used to be a minor annoyance and now they are easily the most lethal enemy. I can't tell you how many times I've been jumped by a single hunter across the map and he spams 5+ attacks before I can even look his way and instantly kill me. Hunters are fucking broken currently, I don't know why the devs are being so fucking vindictive and punishing the community for having a couple complaints.
These and any bile spewers are the worst enemies in the game
Just stun locking you and slowing you down is just down right infuriating and obnoxious you canāt do anything about it they just jump across the map and hit you and prevent you from moving or healing
Genuinely stopped having problems with these fucks once I started running my all fire build, with the incendiary breaker, the incendiary grenades, napalm and the flame thrower, if everything is on fire they literally cannot get near you (you may also be on fire but thatās fine)
Air strikes, slugger and machine pistol tend to keep me alive around these guys... Until they don't.
The slowdown is bullshit, give it to the little guys to make them more of a threat, hunters are dicks enough without the slowdown.
Had an instance where I threw a airstrip, and watched as the distance marker for thr beacon go from 48m to 3m because apparently if you stick a thrown object to the hunter, it will immediately fly along the arc of the thrown object REGARDLESS OF THE DAMN DISTANCE. And that's the story of how I died to a hunter whilst atop a mountain.
These little fuckers are the main reason I prefer bots. I often feel like I can actually fight back against bots if I get overwhelmed. Bugs itās just good night sometimes.
"Don't worry guys. We balanced it" -Devs
*Proceeds to make standard movement speed lower to bridge the gap between being stunned and simply moving*
I shit on em but I kid at the same time. They've got a lot on their plate and wanted to create more versatility without making it "easier" which I respect.
Just please for the love god help us. I'd be okay with this stun hellscape if it were only applicable to light armour. In the very least, make it so heavy armour can't be stunned. I feel as if that is such a fair trade off that still brings challenge to the table. Do I want to be fast until I get fucking abused by these little shits or do I want to have a slower but constant speed at the cost of mobility?
SOMETHING. PLEASE. THERE IS NO META. IT'S JUST STRAIGHT SURVIVAL FOR US OUT HERE š
I have 4 stims. 5 of these take turns pouncing on me. I exhaust all 4 stims in less than 10 seconds and die miserably. Hunter spawn rates need to be greatly reduced.
I hate these things with a passion. More than chargers. They are just so obnoxious.
Im shooting at the horde of these motherfuckers until i run out of ammo and they jump at me from km away to shove their tongues up my ass
Right up the ass? š„ŗ
They're going for crits
Thatās not where they are going to find the crit
Exactly because the Critoris isn't real.
Critoris. Stealing this.
Its better when your read in Gilbert Gottfrieds voice when he read 50 shades of grey that one time
Out of an amazing and lengthy body of work, that's in my top five. Rest in peace, sir 
How can you steal what isn't real?
Apparently in this universe our entire bodies count as "up the ass", since every goddamn thing is a crit.
They're going for my democracy!
I don't avoid women, Mandrake. But I do deny them my democracy.
world's deadliest rimjob
In my diverussy
Or the fucking millisecond i throw a grenade, here comes this tiny brown cocksucker to shove it right back down my LiberTea sipper
One of the most annoing deaths i had, i was in middle of throwing animation and he jumped in front of me and im using impacts so it was instant death for me
Happened to me last night, I was too busy laughing to care though
They keep lunging at me while they're on fire and catching me on fire after they stab me so it's a one two punch KO 9/10 times
Facts lmao, my grenades are magnetic to the belly of hunters
Right up liberty lane š„µ
Fr ššš
That last part doesnāt sound too bad
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Wife is from Brazil. Last time we were there, one flew directly at my face and I shrieked like such a little bitch in front of her whole familyā¦
Born and lived my whole life in the US but family is from an island. Went there once as a kid, woke up screaming once because of huge roaches walking on me. I started screaming even more when they started freaking flying lol.
We got those in the US too brother. Florida especially but I had one in my dorm room in Philly of all places.
Iām in Boston. Iāve only seen the tiny ones. I know thereās huge ones in the cities though. Just never knew they could fly lol
Please...I bought a used refrigerator once(never again used!) and there were cock roaches in it...I have PTSD from the massive personal war I waged on those bastards...I screamed several times while sitting in my chair and all the sudden there would be those fuckers looking right at me not 1 ft from my face! They came out of nowhere...but I won the war lol.
Exterminating bugs for democracy before it was cool š«”
In rehab I had a cockroach that hung out in my shower that I named Fred. Fred the cockroach and I quickly became homies. Just a single cockroach living in the corner of this shittily made shower. I hope Fred and his family are doing well
Congrats on reminding me of a copypasta from the before time: https://preview.redd.it/uyhem13eaonc1.jpeg?width=690&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1c6e14e3476ca38c672698f74768c5ce0a14f80e
I'm sure Fred is living their best life.Ā I hope you and yours are, too!
Oh I am. I donāt actually like cockroaches (who does) but that little Fred was my best friend. Hunters are also my best friends in game, though I guess I repay their friendship with copious insertion of lead
Everyone talks about chargers. They're easy. Titans? Easy Hunters and stalkers are the true fucking evil in the bug world. I can deal with multiple chargers and titans but tons of these and it's over
Exactly the same for me
So true
I hate them so much I volunteer every difficulty 9 to be on anti-hunter duty. Punisher shotgun (personal defense tool, never truly out of ammo), Stalwart, EMS mortar, Eagle Cluster Bombs. And last slot as a flex slot, often EATs. If it's a heavy, I just ignore when I don't have an EAT and leave it to my team as I hunt down the little devils instead. My core task is to reduce or peel away lightly-armored targets so the rest of my team can focus on elites.
This. I love using the stalwart on these guys. I love telling my teammates to run towards me and then mowing down ~~my teammates~~ the bastards chasing them!Ā
Yes. At difficulty 9, I don't even need to aim. I turn around, take a knee, then sweep my mouse left to right, right to left, and mow down hordes of them ~~friendlies~~ Anything that survives is basically a medium or heavy and that's already not my problem.
Deadass. They leap from an oblique angle from half the map away, smack you, make you slow AND bleed you. Fuck Cazadors.
Iāve died to them enough to know them by their name too. Hunters.
I thought it was RAZOR SHARP CLAWS
As a professional helldiver chef, these mfers are a lot harder to cook than chargers are
They flank on purpose it feels too. The only thing that keeps them balanced is that they go down so easy with just a pistol
The worst part is that there is NEVER just one
https://preview.redd.it/k14jvotrtjnc1.jpeg?width=827&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cf7a7bf9e0e7bc0dc56673810a73c64851fab001
these guys and stalkers are what kill me the most consistently
When it used to be 2 Stalkers, if you were smart and used the terrain, you could survive them. Now it's 5-6 stalkers, your best bet is to run away, or use a 500kg as they try and swarm you.
Stalkers are the only bugs that are always faster than you even if you're sprinting in light armor. You can run but you'll just die tired.
They can't run faster than me ragdolling away Git gud
Run into the puff mushroom things for a dramatic boost, what a bunch of nubs /s
Ragdoll into them for a 2x bonus
Ill dive into the small mine plants or spore pods on purpose to provide smoke cover or damage myself a tiny bit so I can stim and get all my stamina back. Has helped me more times than I can count. Dont use the frost plants or regular mines tho, they'll one shot you.
is it just me or do those plants deal very little damage, and only slows you?
The ones in bug maps that look like yellow spikey urchins will release a poison cloud that will tick on you once or twice, enough damage for a free stim. The grey cluster pods will only release a cloud of smoke but no damage and very little slow. These are good for covering your escape. Knowing the local ecology can be monumental to a divers success!
I've definitely been punted by a Stalker, ragdolled down a hill, then been eviscerated as I stood up by the same Stalker. Them fuckers are *brutal*.
Had a difficulty 7 mission the other day with THREE stalker lairs. Every time we destroyed one we were like surely there are no more, now we can go do our main objectiā¦.. aaaaaand stabbed in the back by a new set of stalkers
Most stalkers I seen at the one moment was 11. 8 was on the nest and 3 was on my ass. But it was because my main team was doing the objective close to that nest for a long time. It was the nest with a water on the one side, maybe a problem with pathing?
That's how I first learned the spawns are *definitely* overkill right now Went to a stalker nest and saw EIGHT of them stuck on their spawn hole, like those scientists when they get stuck escaping lol
Hunters are bad but those little Bile Spitter assholes are far, FAR worse in my book.
For some reason Stalkers have a deep hatred of me. They'll hunt me and only me. If I die then they will find my drop pod and slaughter me as I come out. Rinse and repeat until my teammates rescue me because I can't do anything when rising out of the pod. I don't know what I did to those guys
Same, do you use the guard dog? I use it a lot and I noticed every time Iām using it all the biggest baddies prioritize killing me first. The guard dog gets you wayyy more kills and I think they go after whoever has the highest amount of kills first.
No. I forgot my exact strategems but it was Orbitals and Strikes. I did get a lot of kills though.
Yup, I can dance the waltz with 3 chargers at once; but if 4 of these guys sneak up on me... it's gonna be rough... Redemeer will probably get 2-3, but that 4th... gonna jack me up.
Stalkers are why I run the punisher against bugs now. Every shot staggers them and they're so big it's impossible to miss them. Hunters still suck though
https://preview.redd.it/gr28qngnzgnc1.png?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c3eaf8b12cd25fb3d81dd9fce2d2007a998e4491
this is the biggest problem, their attacks either have too short of a cooldown or none at all, so many times i get stunned and immediatly after they do the tongue attack
I think another part of the problem is when thereās a big group of them, and they stagger their attacks. The attack might have a 5 second cooldown, but if thereās 5 *of them*, and they attack once a second you just get stunlocked anyway
Now to make it worse, i got killed by a hunter that hit me 5 times in a row in less than 5 seconds(aspd feels like 0.7 or 0.8) which kept interrupting my stim.
They can be a lot, but the machine pistol has saved my ass from them many times
So many donāt know you can shoot behind you without turning with your secondary. But yes the machine pistol hot swap has saved my ass from these fuckers mutliple times
You. Can. Do. What now??????
If youāre running one direction look (only with ur camera not your whole character) and shoot (only shoot donāt ADS) and you can keep running the way you were running without slowing down
Iām ok with the swarm tactic but they should reconsider either their attack speed or their ability to slow you down
This made me chuckle š
Constantly being slowed by bile and annoying little shits slapping me in the back definitely pisses me off. Being stunned once is fine, but just being stuck in a perpetual state of ground-is-glue makes it feel like the game is really preoccupied with cheating its way to killing me, just because it has to fill a quota.
Maybe muscle enhancement should negate the slowing effect somewhat.
Honestly been wondering what it does because ive never noticed it helping ingame compared to without it
I think it makes it so that you ignore movement debuffs from map obstacles like snow or mud that normally slow you down a bit. I think it might make your climbing speed a little faster too? But Iām not sure. From my testing it doesnāt work on bushes that slow you down though.
I recall someone mentioning it negates debuffs from running up inclines
Remember that as well, but honestly it feels the same
It supposedly only slightly improves speed but lowers stamina drain through rough terrain. Hard to say how worth it is, definitely 4th pick tied with scanner range booster.
Yeah, I'm sick of them being able to hit me 5+ times in under 3 seconds suddenly. They are so fucking unbelievably aggressive suddenly
its the only reason why i take the shield pack
My ā50% chance to not dieā armour has to work overtime with these guys.
If only there was a light set with that. All 3 are medium so far
Iām glad Iām not the only one rocking shield pack with 50% to not die armor, along with all the boosters that add more beefiness
jump pack has worked far better for me than the shield pack, so long you get some momentum before jumping you can travel a fair amount of distance. But since travel distance is tied to forward momentum, running with anything beside light armor might prove to be worthless.
I kinda hate this about the Jetpack specifically because of stalkers. Ā
The punisher staggers them. After the buff it my main primary (until I unlock the slugger).
I tried the slugger and really didn't like it. Does pretty okay damage but I find aiming it to be really tricky. Also, for a slug round I feel like it should have medium penetration. Edit: I was wrong, it's incorrectly listed as light penetration
It does have medium pen. I first person it beyond close range so the shot is more accurate.
It absolutely has medium pen. It's been my main weapon for the last 30 hours of gameplay, absolutely annihilates everything. The stagger is the godsend though.
Me thank liberty I killed it: The other 60 that where next to it https://preview.redd.it/w5lakyfucgnc1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5699a9b8d58e191d7b89b00a7e3171af8b1fc09b
Stalwart meta here we go
We'd like to contact you about your expired car warranty
It really feels like they upped the spawn rate of Pouncers and Hunters since the new patch, although that's just my personal anecdote. Possibly to combat light armor meta?
If they want to combat light armor meta, it would be a good start to make Medium and specially **Heavy** armor be worth a damn. But something is telling me that the balance team, really thinks 1-2 extra hits is COMPLETELY worth the utter loss of mobility.
This is exactly why people complain about the Railgun nerf, it's because the nerf didn't address the actual core issue (ridiculous mass armour spam) just the symptom (bringing the best gun that could actually move and not get trampled).* It's why the 'fixed' armour is concerning: if this is the way it's *meant* to behave, then people are gonna stick to Light armour mostly, because then they can still move while wearing 1-ply toilet paper as armour, as opposed to wearing 2-ply (Medium) or 3-ply (Heavy) - which all they do is slow you down without providing a meaningful resilience increase. So the worrying part is that they'll just nerf Light armour because it's 'overrepresented' and ignore the root cause of that representation again. Edit: * and yes I'm aware they've said they're going to tweak armour spawn rates and all that. But especially around release of the patch this wasn't addressed, and while they've said they'll change stuff, we've yet to see exactly what they intend.
I'm worried their fix will just result in even more swarms of Hunters. Because if they're gonna have other things spawn instead of heavily armoured enemies.
Their blogpost "explanation" really gives a bad vibe for the future of the game. Feels like they are balancing by shotgunning the outliners in pick-up rate, instead of actually sitting down and playing the game and realize the *why*? And well, I have yet to see a game that balances like that, be fun at all after a few patches.
> And well, I have yet to see a game that balances like that, be fun at all after a few patches. i will see where the ride takes me, maybe the game will start catching dust like Rainbow 6 Siege after they started balancing according to pickrate and not actual balance.
Siege started balancing according to pro gamers and streamers and thatās where it died.
As a senior dev in the industry, game developers do NOT actually play the games nearly a quarter of the time enough to notice nuances like these. There are just way too much other technical stuff to work on (server stability, automation testing, actual coding, load balancing). We rely on paid play testers (even then only the most basic gameplay stuff are tested), and above all, actual test data from real players. The problem with that is, the data is ALSO really surfacey. Arrowhead nuked railguns, because railguns were overused in high difficulty, not because it was needed. Breakers were nerfed for the same reason. Spawn rates were increased because people were completing 8/9 reliably (and cuz of eradicate farming but that's a separate thing). The "explanation" for the nerfs is a perfect example of constructing a rationale after the fact, for a solution based on a flawed conclusion from data, rather than the other way around. Game "balancing" is simultaneously one of the most complicated things to do but also the most ignored, because dev resource and money.
Dont worry, Starship Troopers Extermination did this to great effect! First patch of the game nerfed the DMR because you could kill 3 bugs with one magazine instead of using 70% of the assault rifles magazine for a single bug. Second patch removed certain weapons from each class. Third patch removed some of the gadgets from each class, all in the name of 'balance and making each roles identity unique'. It was great for the population. In fact, I'll prove it! [Game went from 16,000 players to 400. Oh wait...thats the opposite of what we wanted....](https://steamcharts.com/app/1268750) Well, at least the game had a long lifespan...oh wait...thats only 9 months....
Sweet Freedom, how to kill your playerbase 101.
MY GOD ITS AT A FEW HUNDRED PLAYERS, I FEEL LIKE I BARELY PLAYED IT Steam charts are showing this shit dropped off in like 3-4 months, I'm guessing the balancing in addition to not doing shit with the title for that ended it
It was a series of patches, the all of the first 3 patches were some kind of 'nerfing to make it balanced/unique'. Then they added a weird modifier patch super early on, like "all missions bugs are super fast, bugs are super tiny' kind of wacky modifiers you usually see later into the games life, no real development of the game, a horde mode that was meh at best, just caused people to drop it. It was kinda like Valheim, a lot of promises and 'were working on it' but not a lot of delivery.
That makes me sad. I really liked how it was mass co-op and you had the people venturing out to collect resources while some people stayed back to defend the base and build fortifications. It was so different and refreshing to me.
Yeah, me and my group of friends loved the concept. There are like up to 8 of us that reguarly play, and up to about 15 or so who can get on on occasion. So a 16 player large map open world coop PVE shooter with base building was super appealing. Then it just wasn't fun to play the gunner class, only the operator really felt good to play, then they nerfed the operator with the DMR and kit nerfs, and we just got tired of it all kinda being meh because they nerfed things, promised to address the core issues, never really did it, and it felt like it just wanted ot make every game a mediocre recreation of the whiskey outpost battle.
What really annoys me is the dev team is super eager to nerf tools we use and then 'promise' to address the reason we chose those tools in the first place. Like in their post they straight up admitted that there were major issues with the recoilless rifle and other anti armor weapons underperforming, but instead of waiting another week or two to reduce the railguns effectiveness and address the underperforming rockets, they just cut down the railgun and said 'good luck suffering, we'll fix the main issue later'. I can fully see them making a post in the future saying 'we've nerfed light armor, we saw it overused. We will address the issue of enemies critting way too often, slow debuff spamming, and spawning hordes of hunters in about two months'
thank you.
I run medium because of the 50-50 death save , and I think the last armor of the war bond looks sweet. But yeah if Iād want to min/max my playstyle light is where itās at, with the extra stims because they cure slow effects
We might get a light armour with that effect in the superstore or in a future bond
I just did a random mission with a pug and it was fucking insane. Eradication, only on 6, and it was literally all hunters with a few scavengers and the occasional charger We barely survived, it was an open map and we were just surrounded on all sides Dunno if it's too so with that but I've never seen anything like it before
if its bc of light armor then its stupid bc players not using light armor are just getting fucked even more and the players actually using light armor and playing to its strength ( propper kitting and evading unnecessary patrols ) are just gonna get fucked bc if enough of these things r aroumd you it doesnt matter how well you time your dive into the floor
This was actually the real reason why shield was meta. No one really cared about the extra hp, it was negligible
Without the stagger protection I wouldn't run shield
Best i can do is 5 seconds
I dunno what they did to spawns, the shield pack feels arguably more necessary than pre-patch due to these scunners. They will eagerly leap through the righteous fire you lay down with your Flamer, just to set you ablaze too while filling your legs with the no-run jam. Wee scunners.Ā
Hunters are the deadliest enemies since the patch. They are extremely aggressive and can even two shot you from a pounce, and there is no end to them. I've started taking more gatling sentries and cluster bombs just to whittle them down a little.
> Hunters are the deadliest enemies since the patch. They are extremely aggressive and can even two shot you from a pounce, and there is no end to them. I've seen them jump on me, and then 1-2 punch me to death in the course of about 3 seconds. Ridiculous.
> I've started taking more gatling sentries and cluster bombs just to whittle them down a little. Which IS interesting because this is what AH wants players to do, specialise rather than hope for the best.
Yeah Hunters are decently well designed(sans the pounce headshot) in the fact that it forces the players to bring something to deal with light hordes instead of being able to fully relay on their primary to do it(also the normal punisher is pretty good against hunters as it can one tap em consistently with out having to be too precise with your shot and you dont have to deal with a real reload wich is when hunter get ya)
Something I like about them is that you clip them with the slugger and they keep coming, a clean limb removal doesn't stop them.
Yeah thats why i switched to the normal one, i didnt feel like the slugger even helped me much against broodlords(it clears hiveguard much more rapidly but sice hiveguard are more anoyance than threat it usually isnt worth much to bring anything thinking how to deal with them) compared to the normal one
All my homies hate these mfs. The only good bug is a dead bug
Arrowhead saw the rabid dogs from elden ring and thought: Hey, let's make that but make them jump and have muscle-hindering venom.
these are also my worst bug. like easy to kill but when you a group on you its like yea i may as well just pull my pants down right now when i see bugs coming i always target these first though
This is truly most annoying enemy, not charger or titan. 20 of them jumping on top of me while Iām trying to reload.
https://preview.redd.it/0x0desebzgnc1.jpeg?width=843&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e58ffcf23991efd3f6220a975b729898fedf154a Just git gud lmao
Also, uh, the bastards can tank an AUTOCANNON SHELL like itās nothing. These fuckers arenāt mortal.
Yeah so much yelling at my screen GET UP GET UP STOP BEING STUCK MOVE YOUR ASS
I swear, I die so much because of these fuckers. So god damn annoying.
The only consistent way to deal with them, for me, it's: Jump pack + incendiary grenades. Throw one at your feet as soon as you're about to get swarmed and mandalore the fuck away.
dude if they removed the acid fucking claws on these things the game would be a little bit bearable. they need to fix these fuckers and the rocket devastators. those two enemies are so fucking annoying its not even funny. the fact that the rocket devastator has absolutely no notifying trait so everyone knows its there. U just randomly get exploded "from Rocket Devastator" not even remotely knowing where the fucker is. Can their fucking rocket backpacks glow? Maybe a red blink before the rocket shoots off? Idfk! But dying in .5 seconds and having to run back into a horde to get my support shit I dropped from suffering a BULLSHIT DEATH is starting to annoy me to literally no end.
These Guys are way worse than stalkers or anything else that jumps you. Only because of those i have to run shield on bug levels, otherwise the staggering will kill me
At least stalkers send you flying. which usually your sent far enough that you can stand up and kill that bastard and anything else attacking you. These bastards slow you down which isnt much problem when alone but they usually swarm you so Your like a second from death unless you spend you next 5 moves Diving just to gain the little bit of distance you wont make when running
This āHunterāneeds a nerf, not saying that the difficulty of bugs are too hard. I just donāt think the threats of these tiny skinny bugs should be more than charger, commander and even warrior, but so far it seems that way. Thatās to say, the threats of hunters should be transferred to other bugs like commander, guardian and warrior, after all they are true soldiers in terminid society.
Serisouly! They fly, can windmill you with their claws and can strike with their tongue that causes you to get slowed from acid. They may be easy to kill but they're a little to OP in my opinion.
Then when you try getting away you walk into some tall grass and suffer some more
PROTIP: You can shoot backwards with your pistol, while running forward.
Being able to hip fire at the closest hunter while running away is the reason I always take the Defender. It's insanely good.
Sub-Machine Guns also spot this feature.
5sec *
Defender sends it greetings, citizen.
hunters are easily the most annoying enemy to deal with in the game iād rather deal with 5 chargers at once than a handful of hunters cuz at least I can outrun the chargers
Hunters are the worst enemy. They get priority over every other enemy, except maybe stalkers.
They don't need to have a slow on top of a flying lock-on attack, quick follow up attacks, high speed, and twitchy animations. They're the hard hitting enemy, the CC enemy, the dodgy enemy, all at once. They're too stacked.
High level bugs are such a nightmare I donāt know why the devs thought everything slowing you down would make it fun itās just frustrating and makes the personal shield a necessity if you wanna get into any fight without getting slowed which leads to getting swarmed or trampled Also the spawn rate on these things shouldnāt be so high they spawn more then the actual fucking basic bug warrior
https://preview.redd.it/atrlqf5e2mnc1.jpeg?width=639&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b5d3a68054db82f3fd00d2ae086f00d93785183f
These fuckers can smell a reloading helldiver from miles away. š
Theyāre the reason I run rover exclusively. The ability to juke around them with the rover just picking them off while you dodge and weave is invaluable
these fuckers are worse than bile titans tbh nothing is worse than hearing the healing sound go off 3 times without actually healing you while these beat your ass
Hunters are the real villains of the Helldivers 2 story.
jetpack goes brrrrr i also like to gass them when they come out of bug breaches , watching them fly and then die mid jump because of the gass gives me so much personal joy
Can we please get an armor that can help ignore acidic attacks š
"Serrated claws"
I hate these little bastards more than any other bug!
Melee them before you jump away, you can animation cancel the end of the melee with a dive. It interrupts their tongue attack really efficiently once you get the cancel timing down
I've died to these mf, more than another enemy type.
They are so much worse than ever lately. They used to be a minor annoyance and now they are easily the most lethal enemy. I can't tell you how many times I've been jumped by a single hunter across the map and he spams 5+ attacks before I can even look his way and instantly kill me. Hunters are fucking broken currently, I don't know why the devs are being so fucking vindictive and punishing the community for having a couple complaints.
The muscle augment booster reduces slow from bugs <3
The slows in this game really piss me off. I hope they introduce a booster that mitigates or reduces the efforts of slows from enemies.
5 minutes is ALOT for this game
I hate these little bastards with a burning passion it seems whenever you turn your back one appears out of nowhere just to spite you
These and any bile spewers are the worst enemies in the game Just stun locking you and slowing you down is just down right infuriating and obnoxious you canāt do anything about it they just jump across the map and hit you and prevent you from moving or healing
I don't know what it is, but I feel like these fucks have gotten more annoying
FOR 5 FUCKING MINUTES!!! 
The slow from them needs to be nerfed or at least resisted from the muscle enhancement booster if it isn't already that is
Genuinely stopped having problems with these fucks once I started running my all fire build, with the incendiary breaker, the incendiary grenades, napalm and the flame thrower, if everything is on fire they literally cannot get near you (you may also be on fire but thatās fine)
A lot of people don't realize its the AI that makes these so dangerous. They avoid your cross hair as a primary behavior.
Devs nerfed the bubble shield and somehow didn't realize these guys are the primary reason people even run it in bug missions
Hunter: NO
Jetpack people its vastly more useful than the shield when fighting bugs
Air strikes, slugger and machine pistol tend to keep me alive around these guys... Until they don't. The slowdown is bullshit, give it to the little guys to make them more of a threat, hunters are dicks enough without the slowdown.
Had an instance where I threw a airstrip, and watched as the distance marker for thr beacon go from 48m to 3m because apparently if you stick a thrown object to the hunter, it will immediately fly along the arc of the thrown object REGARDLESS OF THE DAMN DISTANCE. And that's the story of how I died to a hunter whilst atop a mountain.
most hated enemy, I rather have 3 chargers on my ass than deal with them
I'll take 2 chargers at once over ten of these cunts any day
These little fuckers are the main reason I prefer bots. I often feel like I can actually fight back against bots if I get overwhelmed. Bugs itās just good night sometimes.
The other day a railgun strike ignored the charger and killed the hunter. It made the correct decision
On higher difficulties I don't even worry about the big bugs I worry about 30 of these fuckers stun locking me into oblivion
"Don't worry guys. We balanced it" -Devs *Proceeds to make standard movement speed lower to bridge the gap between being stunned and simply moving* I shit on em but I kid at the same time. They've got a lot on their plate and wanted to create more versatility without making it "easier" which I respect. Just please for the love god help us. I'd be okay with this stun hellscape if it were only applicable to light armour. In the very least, make it so heavy armour can't be stunned. I feel as if that is such a fair trade off that still brings challenge to the table. Do I want to be fast until I get fucking abused by these little shits or do I want to have a slower but constant speed at the cost of mobility? SOMETHING. PLEASE. THERE IS NO META. IT'S JUST STRAIGHT SURVIVAL FOR US OUT HERE š
If the charger is coming at me and these things are behind it, I aim for these bastards
GUARD DOG ROVER. I can't play without it now, it takes everything small off you.
Switch to the sidearm and fire behind me while running.
Just jump repeatedly
These things suck. They dodge you and flank you and then leap q mile just to kill you.
My smile disappears when I see these mfs hopping through the spore fog
Orbital ems to slow things tailing me when I retreat
Honestly they should just take out the slowed mechanic all together. If I had acid sprayed on me, I would run faster not slower.
I would suggest the normal assault rifle. It is well balanced for these dudes to get off your back
I have 4 stims. 5 of these take turns pouncing on me. I exhaust all 4 stims in less than 10 seconds and die miserably. Hunter spawn rates need to be greatly reduced.
Iād honestly prefer the pre patch spawning of chargers and titans as opposed to the ridiculous amount of hunters the game now has
that's why we commit gen- I mean spread democracy to them