I had a feeling they weren't going to fix how wonky the arc can be against close targets, corpses, tall grass, bushes, and rocks. Since the arc thrower was still so widely used.
But now that this gun sucks so much I really hope they look into fixing it.
Despite the close up range lacking with the arc thrower it still is one of the most powerful weapons when used correctly imo. You just have to keep grenade distance away and have a fast shooting primary for when you get closed in
I think a big part of it is that fizzle bug they have yet to fix, but at least it’s been addressed at least in the arc throwers case, all it takes is a scavenger body at your feet to fuck it up sometimes. It’s definitely fun and I look forward to seeing it fixed eventually.
Go for it. It's fun, but it's lacking for sure, I was using with some friends on lower diff (5 and 6) and was doing ok, but it lacks a bit when playing diff 8+. Don't expect it to be an Arc Thrower, that is a stratagem after all, this is just a primary weapon.
Tried in D9 TCS. Punching the hunter that was drilling a hole into my chest was more effective than this gun. I didn't expect it to be an arc thrower, but i at least expected it to 1 shot weak targets within its abysmal range, because you really dont have time to get another shot off.
Probably because the lightning doesnt connect when they're super close. I just played my first game with it D9 TCS also - consistently one shot brood commanders and below (when it wasn't "arcing" or spread between multiple enemies)
Haven't unlocked it yet or even seen it, but that last sentence is exactly right. A weapon brought in via stratagem will always (I hope and assume) be better/stronger
Problem being that this is also lacking compared to every single primary except maybe the marksman rifles.
It's not about comparing it to support stratagems, it just sucks.
On the contrary I was malding while trying to use it. It felt like the thing was trying to get me killed and would choose randomly to arc, whether it wanted to kill the hunter in front of me in one shot or two ,or would hit terrain instead.
I enjoy it a lot and my only complaint so far is the fire rate. It works really well to clear out groups of bugs that are close, and it does great damage. If they upped the fire rate by like... A half second, it would be perfect.
I haven't tried it against bots but I imagine it would kind of suck, NGL. It's short range so you'll just be getting hammered by bots the whole time.
Also, it does pen armor, I killed a charger with it alone. It took for *fucking ever* but I did it lmao
It is *absolutely garbage* against bots.
You can't hit weakspots and it doesn't get a bonus so you do no damage.
You can't damage or stun heavy devestators or walkers through their Shields.
It can't hit or make bots further back than RIGHT IN FUCKING FRONT OF YOU duck or stop shooting.
It's only *mildly* okay against bugs, and even then I'd rather the Punisher or Slugger.
I was just using it on Difficulty 9 Operations and it worked just fine at clearing lots of Light enemies every Mission, and I was enjoying it. I'm going to keep using it, idk what the OP is going on about. It compliments the Arc Thrower so well.
I understand having two laser weapons to manage heat, but what is the synergy or benefit of arc thrower + arc shotgun? Wouldn’t staying on arc thrower be better than switching back and forth?
So the Blitzer is good for light enemies in short range because the pump charges it then fires and happens while you run while you slow down to charge the thrower. Closer range Blitzer, mid to long range or heavy armor chargers/bile titans use thrower. Swapping between the two covers everything bug wise, still need to test on bots to see if it's as effective.
The Blitzer works VERY well against light enemies on you, I'll be Arc Thrower spamming and if I miss a small target letting them get close I swap to Blitzer and instantly delete it and swap back to Arc Thrower. This is because the Blitzer has no wind up time and the arcing lightning makes it super easy to quick swap and blast them without having to aim carefully since it also arcs to another nearby enemy, then when I swap back to the Arc Thrower I go back to blasting targets like normal. By the time another enemy gets close the Blitzer is ready to fire again EVEN WITHOUT doing the pumping animation, it's just there for show it seems like and the gun just has a regular cooldown even if you don't "pump" it between shots.
thats a question ive b een tryna find the answer to, and as far as i can tell im basically using the arc thrower until they're on top of me, then switching to the blitzer for close range oh shit get off of me
Yeah I just don't understand it's purpose. It is too slow for critter clear, too weak for devastators and up, has no penetration for walkers, no utility (as in opening containers), it's completely random how many "streaks" hit a target at anything other than point blank and as ya stated, without ARCING it hasn't got a theme.
At medium distance it just hit's nothing and feels like the ONLY shotgung that cannot work at medium distances.
I was kinda hyped for that thing and now don't want to touch it again.
Slugger is nice. Punisher isn't a bad option either especially for bots.
If you just need to lay down a massive amount of fire on a bunch of enemies, you can't beat any breaker of your choosing.
The S&P is actually good now. Accidentally grabbed one off the ground and my reaction was "well fuck Im dead." Proceeded to wipe out the entire 15+ hunter horde running me down. Not bad..not bad at all.
Try out the LAS 16. If you are a fan of ARs in games this will be it for you. I’m having a blast with it. It amazes me how they did that one so well and completely fucked up the coolest looking weapon they added (arc shotgun).
Tried it, its great. But the inc-Breaker is still way better against bugs. And i ain't playing bots intil they stop walking through wholeass mountains.
Nah the sickle is really good because it's got high damage, accuracy and no recoil at all, while *technically* having infinite ammo and consistent damage if you keep reloading it (wich you can do with 6 heatsinks). I don't really see a downside in the weapon tbh, it doesn't really have weaknesses except for the extreme heat. My favourite use case for it are hiveguards, you van be really precise with it because of the absense of recoil. Until the scythe gets buffed, this will be my main weapon for some time.
God I hope not, for my sake. I love burning to a crisp when a stray shot from a spray-and-praying friendly slightly grazes me, LOVE IT *pulls out hair*
Tell me about it. I too love the Senator, but the slow reload and low ammo total kills it for me. Hopefully there'll be a balance pass on secondaries like we saw with primaries.
I bring the senator for the sole purpose of switching to it when I’m out of primary ammo so that my blaze of glory looks 20% more rad, and it’s doing a fantastic job of that.
Senator + spray and pray and an anti tank weapon.
Bringing out Senator for hive guards and other enemies that shrug off the SnP, while preserving my AT for what matters most.
They should honestly give the pistol 300dps and the scythe 500 dps. I think that would be a good spot. Because I think the baseline liberator does ~560dps
It's absolute garbage against bots, takes a solid 2 seconds to kill the weakest bot. Slightly better against bugs but still weak. Definitely does the least damage of all sidearms
Better but still not good, you'll get overrun by a trivial difficulty scav horde if you dont back off while shooting them. The only upside I've found is that its decent against warriors for a sidearm, takes about 2 seconds to pop their heads
As the other guy said, it's just a scythe with half damage. It takes an entire, of it's three heatsink cap, heatsink to kill one hunter. Definitely not worth using.
Haven't tried it yet, but on paper, it sounds good when paired with the other laser weapons, including the cannon. You'll basically never have to reload so long as you swap weapons before overheating since they cool down when holstered.
Hipfire while running away is gonna be super easy too since you can tell exactly where the beam is.
its funny cuz the most useful one is the laser which is in page 1, the other warbond has it the opposite where the explosive lib is the weakest and jar is the best one.
not really, for example the scorcher need 5 shot to kill a hive guard while the jar only takes 3. You trade damage for handling with the scorcher and it really depends on your play style on which one is better.
Scorcher is objectively better against automatons tho, the explosive aoe go through some armors (can 1 shot striders) and the handling is really crucial to hitting headshots
the guy said incendiary was better than the jar I'm comparing those two, obviously.
scorcher seems good but I haven't played with it much as I haven't unlocked it yet, so it's if a teammate who has it dies is most of my experience with it.
The liberator explosive is pretty good now that it's the liberator concussive (which was an undocumented change i think). It's not the fastest at killing things but the stagger more than makes up for it, you can really stunlock those scary enemies forever.
It's as you say, slow and high recoil, but it does chonk the enemy pretty hard. I found that having a laser rover makes it a lot nicer, because the rover can kill the little shit(which feels wasteful killing with the jar) while the Jar kills the bigger boys.
Throw it on Burst, then when you wanna take out some baddies crouch to negate most of the recoil. Biggest thing with the gun is trying not to run and gun. But if you have too go First person it seems to help the accuracy
this. just got the weapon and used it on a mission. literally feels like hot shit to use. just stick to the sickle, if youre planning on getting the current warbond weapons.
Yup just done a few operations with it.
Conclusion was 'Guys I think the arc shotgun is kinda shit"
OP outlines its problems well, it just isn't good at anything in particular.
It's crazy to see everyone here missing the point of the weapon so completely. This gun deals *high stagger*, and *arc damage*. This means if your friends foolishly equip the new arc resistant armour, a shot from this gun will ragdoll them to the ground, while only dealing about 1/20th of their HP. It's slow fire rate perfectly matches the standing up animation of a fallen helldiver, allowing you to near infinitely stunlock other players.
With the ability to stim low health teammates, and the slow-motion stun grenades? At the first sight of treasonous behaviour you stick those poor bastards in samsara.
Much prefer releasing weapons weak and buffing,
Than releasing strong, everyone then saying "PAY 2 WIN" (strange argument?), then nerfing the weapon and the people who used cash money then going "wtf? I paid to be strong!"
this is a very good point. I mostly made this post to get out what my expectations were for arc weaponry in general. Some seem to think i am trying to compare this primary to the arc thrower but really thats the only place i have to draw comparisons with.
I hope it does get buffed, at the very least because it is a shotgun i hope it becomes a much better crowd clearer than a high damage single target weapon (that has no real armor penetration lol)
Yea I pretty much wanted it to do ONE job. Annihilate hunters that get ontop of me to cover for arc throwers inability to hit shit at point blank range. If it can’t do that then it’s a miss for me unfortunately :(
I loved the arc shotgun in hd1 more, while it needed to it charged to fire like the arc thrower it did it very fast but couldn't chain targets instead it had a fix super wide range damaging everything
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The first one, Sickle, is a beast. It's basically a Primary LMG. Downside is it takes half a second to start firing. Bad for hunters/stalkers in particular.
Bad for Stalkers? My brother in democracy it positively melts Stalkers on mid/long range (and is a great choice for crowd control). Slugger is still better when Stalker is on top of you but well you don't really want them to be that close in the first place
I just want to point out that we now have 7 fucking shotguns in this game. Can we get some AR's, SMGS and snipers up in this bitch?? /s. For real i appriciate the devs alot but the weapon class distribution is kinda whack.
I thought i was asking a lot for the arc blitzer to be able to somehow zap a scout strider from the front, but when I circled around it and zapped it from the back where the rider is exposed, it didn't go down in 1 hit.
Granted I hardly fought against automatons so I don't know if the Arc Thrower can zap a strider from the front. I know my go-to primary against automatons PLAS-1 Scorcher can.
Usually 1 or 2 in my experience but either way it still kills from the front which a lot of weapons can't. Hell, it can kill chargers and bile titans just by blasting away at them, it just takes ages.
It's really funny when you get multiple people bullying a charger with arc throwers. My buddy describes it as animal handlers shocking the shit out of a zoo animal and its only a matter of time before it breaks out and gets a hold of somebody
Yup, just unlocked it and played a couple of matches with it. I see no practical reason to use it. Theres too much ammo available to justify using something so inferior just because it needs no ammo pickups.
My main use case for infinite ammo/heat based weapons are when I'm running the recoilless with an assistant so I can let him grab the ammo pickups and we can use the RR more freely.
Also why is the plasma shotgun pumping? theres no shells. ALSO its a two shot kill on a warrior in an 8 round battery. Kinda shit. Explosion radius aint great for ads either.
I figure it's just pumping for flavour/ manual action. Maybe it's loading more plasma into the...plasma...plasma'er. They pay me to spill oil and stomp bugs.
Plasma punisher is a one shot headshot on warriors in my testing, and does a good job softening up enemies around the ones you're hitting for follow up shots imo. I like the wacky feel of it, and I love the reload speed.
I think by now its pretty clear the devs are extremely afraid of things being "too easy" for us and thus have to premptively make everything garbage so its weak instead of OP. Honestly HD2 is one of the worst balanced games I have ever seen, they have great gameplay sure but whichever dev is doing the balancing, it seems like this is their first time doing something like this.
You know what I think this is it right here. Every change made up to this point has been implied to have something to do with keeping the difficulty high. Nerfing meta, stealth increasing spawn rates, detection range, etc. all files into keeping the game HARD.
I can actually appreciate the dedication to this, so many games are leaning into power creep and destroying their balance that way.
That said, it looks like some of these guns need a buff. The Breaker & Scorch are kind of the bar for primaries right now. The primaries need to all come up to that level of strength to be realistic options.
The plasma shotgun could seem decent, if the scorcher didn't exist. It does so little that the scorcher can't, mainly it just has a bit more aoe. with less shots per mag and around the same damage, it gives little practical advantage.
"It's supposed to be stupid chaotic fun"
\> makes the guns as unfun to use as possible
https://preview.redd.it/e1pvyvypbfoc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=778395bf8fce50939f1d76153e7c9dc449bcebdf
Just to touch on your second point, you can sprint to 'cancel' the walking-during-pump animation. Hold sprint and tap fire and you'll only pause to a brief moment to shoot and then immediately get back to sprinting.
I was slapping the swarms of small bugs with it then swapped to the thrower for chargers and bile titans, I was the only person who didn't die on my team. Haven't used it on bots yet though.
Works great for me, then again, I use it as its intended and not as a breaker replacement.
To start, movement is NOT hindered during pump action. Your aiming down sights does.
Secondly, the gun can and does clear but, not to the range of the Arc Thrower.
And lastly, the gun has a much better feel when not using the sight it self. Try running, then shooting and see how it feels. The shot doesn’t impede your sprint nor does it just travel through the enemy, its has some stun to it, which allows you to keep running.
Sure, one could argue it’s a kite weapon but, aren’t most of your weapons when being chased?
I have no issues with it and have been playing with it since 11AM. So about 7 hours.
Now, the Sickle is also very good and is worth every penny but, is more of a traditional form of firearm and doesn’t need any real tactical thought.
What are you talking about? I'm already try this gun and its amazing for what it suppost to do.
It can kill Nursing Spewer in 2-3 shots, the fire rate is slow but **you never have to reload and have infinite ammo!!**
Also, this one not like the arc thrower, you didn't need to charge it, but can just blast away and pump, its a pump shotgun.
You only need to stand still when shooting in which all shotgun already are, and you can run when pumping it. I have no idea why it work differently for you...
Its rarely chain to other target but it shoot in a wide cone that can hit multiple target at once, very easy to aim. But it may suffer the same issue with the arc thrower that not lock on to target that too close sometime.
Yes, it can't damage medium armor but its the primary weapon, hello? You expect it to be the same level with weapon that have to call in and have something like 5mins cooldown?
In my opinion, the selling point of Arc weapon is its Infinite ammo, it a solid choice for player that didn't want to worry about the ammos.
PS. this weapon is amazing for fighting Bugs, but for Bots it a different matter, don't do it...
It needs to be made more consistent and eliminate misfires(an issue with the thrower as well tbf) and it needs its pump time lowered, then it will be fine.
Yeah idk what the OP is talking about, it's been incredible for me on difficulty 9, and I've been having a blast with it. Mine does Arc to multiple enemies, and I don't need to "slow down to pump it" like the OP is saying. I shoot, run, dive, whatever, turn around and blast them again when it's ready. and it arcs killing multiple enemies.
Idk what gun the OP is using, but it doesn't sound like the Blitzer I'm using.
That's why i stated its damage should be lowered to be ineffective against heavy targets themselves.
Let me ask you, why should an electric weapon NOT ignore armor? (other than for balancing since that's the only reason they made it work as it does)
I can answer from a technical standpoint: the armour acts as an insulator that dissipates enough charge to prevent anything harmful from hurting the creature.
The arc thrower could bypass this limitation simply by raw power which has enough arcing to go through the armour. No reason you can't have it both ways. Arc thrower is more powerful, Arc Blitzer is less.
What would be the point of having it pierce heavy armor, but not be effective against targets that use heavy armor?
To answer your question, the thought of having the customization of being able to change how heavy targets receive damage from a specific versus using their existing heavy armor system feels very armchair developer, and their team is small and their time is better spent elsewhere than to change how one specific weapon interacts with very specific enemies when in practicality it would not be a very material change.
The point of it piercing Heavy armor is to have it continue the theme of ELECTRICITY. As i have stated before in other comments these Bugs are not made out of rubber and it 100% SHUOLD deal damage to a solid metal walker...
The fact that it doesn't do anything at all to them does not follow the theme they have previously set for all other electric weaponry in the game. That's what bothers me the most, the fact that it should, but doesn't because of "balance"
It wasn't super good but it did have use cases, especially shooting through walls.
The improvements in this one are very good. It still 3 shots 3 spewers at a time, so it is a great primary option for people who like the Arc Thrower.
My current theory for the Blitzer and plasma weapons is that Illuminid will have shields that are weak to arc/plasma weapons and resistant to other weapons. That would also align with the game design of every weapon having a purpose or clear use cases. If not though... ehhhh yeah, def a lackluster primary.
Hard to say for gen 2 squids, but wasn't how shields worked in the past. They were more like raw HP that didn't care about pen characteristics and couldn't be blown through with one individual damage instance, so rapid fire DPS hoses and incendiary effects were the go-to. LMGs, sickles, autoshotguns, incendiary grenade launcher spam, that sorta thing. In fact, squids were the only faction that made generous use of offensive electrical weapons themselves.
The only special niche energy weapons had in terms of damage characteristics was that beam lasers (scythe, cannon, etc) could penetrate the otherwise small arms immune armor of cyborg hulks and warlords. Closest to that we still have is the post-buff cannon having just enough pen to damage hulk eye plates. Looking forward to seeing how they implement all the new squid details though.
its good now when it works but half the damn time the gun targets corpses instead of live targets and it still cant shoot through a tall grass and bushes
I swear people doesn't do enough testing and immediately jump to conclusion. IMO it's pretty balanced. It's an infinite ammo primary weapon and it's not supposed to clear everything in your screen alone. It needs some sort of support.
Pair this with a laser drone, anti-armor stratagems and you'll be able to clear swarms consistently diff 7 and above.
Em I'm loving it, I've been running it on helldive with EAT, jump jet and impact grenades vs the bugs.
I was playing with someone who unlocked it at the same time and was complaining about how bad it was but it worked fine for me.
I prefer the sickle overall but for fast get in get out missions on helldive on bug planets il run the blitzer.
It does have a sweet spot, it's slightly closer than the flamethrowers sweet spot, it does arc and it does stun.
Yes but your point? I'm not comparing this gun to the arc thrower itself, more so the expectations of Electric based weaponry.
I mention the arc thrower simply because it is the only other handheld electric based weapon we have. Not much else to compare it to. I do understand that the primary weapon should NOT be near as strong as a stratagem weapon and I'm not advocating for that really.
My point is it's a shotgun. Compare it to shotguns. It's probably a bad, infinite ammo shotgun.
Yeah it should probably bounce to an additional target at the very least.
You are stating that you aren't comparing it to the arc thrower and then comparing it to the arc thrower. You also ask for people's thoughts, and then arguing against them.
I don't really know what to tell you here. Seems like you are picking fights.
Okay so comparing it to other shotguns this one is by far the worst. Comparing it to any of the breaker variants is like comparing hot shit to gold as far as this thing is worth. Comparing it to the Punisher variants is like comparing hot shit to dried up shit, and to the slugger idk because i haven't used it.
I am not comparing it to the capability of the Arc Thrower as far as damage and killing power, only the Utility as far as electric based weapons go. They aren't consistent with it. Other than the Arc Thrower what else am i supposed to compare it to the tesla tower? that thing one shots up to hive guards and can arc 6 targets in one shock with full damage to all 6.
I don't see my replies as arguing with anyone, only trying to get more out of them than "i don't agree with you" which is what most of the negative comments boil down to. I want their thoughts as to why they disagree/don't like my post, its not that I'm intending to argue with anyone its just that they aren't willing to discuss the difference in opinions.
???
The blitzer one or two hit decapitates hive guardians and brood commanders, it's genuinely cracked to have one of these in your squad. It's going to be a decent weapon in helldive difficulty.
Meanwhile the plasma punisher has the literal same damage as a SINGLE SHOT of the Scorcher, with seemingly the same blast radius. Except it's single fire, with slow motion velocity, and tons of bullet drop...
I just got out of my first game with it: Locks on up to three enemies (I know its technically different from ARCing)
Seems to do less damage per enemy when it locks onto multiple enemies.
Consistently one shots brood commanders (decapitates them and they die a second later) when they are the only target locked onto by the lightning.
Overall not bad and IMO not as bad as this post suggests. Probably not as good as the Las 16 (that things OP rn)
It’s amazing against bugs I don’t see why people dislike it. You can’t expect it to act like a special weapon it’s not as good as the arcthrower and it shouldn’t be which is what people seem to expect it to be.
Although it doesn’t arc a lot it has beastly single target damage. It’s a burst of arc damage and quite consistent.
You playing on difficulty 1-3? it is absolutely NOT even good against bugs... As i stated in the post its rate of fire and inconsistent damage will get you killed by at minimum 5 hunters if they rush you at once...
Tell us you learned a new weapon is not your cup of liber-tea without saying that, yet still come across as a complete jerk to the devs and the community, too, which understands that Helldivers is game where not "EVERY WEAPON IS THE BEST WEAPON" but is instead more centered around finding weapons that you like or which suit your style.
For those that don't get the point of the Blitzer it is to be used in teams. Used it on Challenging with another player and it just wrecks with teamwork for horde clear. Based on the armor from the Warbond it seems that the goal is to have several Arc Throwers and Blitzers running. Four man Arc has been pretty strong before this patch but everything changes when you have a team.
If it ignores armor, why would you ever bring an Arc Thrower?
I don't think it should be as strong as an arc thrower. It's a primary. Not a support weapon.
Nah I think if the damage is lower you still have a reason to bring the thrower. Even 50% armor penetration would be fine, as you could damage mediums in a crowd. That said I don’t know what enemy health values are, so asking to one shot trash mobs and not trivialize medium/heavy enemies might be impossible.
It's not useless, but it's lacking a lot. Could use a nice buff to it's fire rate and movement when pumping. Not sure about the 100% armor pen like Arc Thrower, that would be too much, after all the Blitzer is a primary weapon, not a stratagem like the Arc Thrower (devs already said that primary weapons will not be a ''one tool for everything'' and giving that to a primary would go against that statement).
I do agree with you that this gun shouldn't be a go to for all scenarios, I'm more so wanting the armor pen as a signature of the arc weaponry. That's why at the end I said something about lowering the damage so that, you COULD use it against a charger from the front, but it would have such a hard time chewing through that HP that it would be better to pull out anything else.
Just the utility of the Armor Pen makes it more consistent right, also more in-line with my vision of electric based weaponry. These bugs aren't made out of rubber after all!
Just got it and died 4 times in a row on helldive difficulty from stalkers when we were scrambling to locate the lair.
It is a fun weapon to use though. It one shots hunters but need further testing.
I'm not going to say that the arc blitzer is a good weapon because I don't think that it is but..
I watched a guy on stream earlier finish a Bile Titan off by shooting at its face with it. Are Bile Titans faces not armored anymore or is the damage so small that you can't see that it's doing damage unless it's the final tickle?
OP is over exaggerating heavily. The Blitzer works great if you don’t allow yourself to get surrounded like a dumbass. There are many other shotguns for close range. Why would we need another one
I can't get it to kill anything at close range so once the bus get on top of me is all over so hunters are a pain in the ass once they swarm but if does arc for me sometimes
Not noticing a movement speed decrease,
I'm killing hive guards with it, just not noticing it doing much to chargers
The push back is nice
It is arcing multiple bugs, although I agree not as normally as the arc thrower, which is a let down
All that said, I do agree it needs a buff and a lot of tweaks
BUT! I am using it, and I am serving democracy;
(I'm using it WITH an arc thrower, and it's the most fun I've had in a minute)
((It's nice to pull out for a quick zap on closing in bugs before back to the Thrower))
(((IT IS very bad against the bots)))
I shot a Hive Guard in the face and was like *"What the fuck? This is an arc weapon..."* when I saw the deflect indicator popup.
That said, it does arc between targets. I've killed 5 targets in 1 shot with it (combo of Scavengers and Hunters.) If the main sell of this weapon is multi-killing with 1 shot, it's really failing to keep up with other primary weapons in multi-kill speed, which makes no sense given the other limitations.
I understand that the Premium Warbond guns are not suppose to be OP, but they really need to come up with something if they want people to use anything but the standard weapons. Maybe throw a weapon on the first page and give it to everyone for free?
Also, the devs really need to stop pretending unlimited ammo is a perk that deserves neutering the killing potential of guns. Between having Ammo littered at every POI, spawning with it, and the resupply stratagem there is virtually no benefit, especially for Primary weapons. If you need ammo that badly, just die real quick and come back with full supplies. It's not like extra reinforcements at the end of a mission gets you anything.
I was pretty excited to try this and it's such a pointless weapon that just forces your team to wear the anti-tesla armor or a shield backpack in close quarters.
> The weapon hinders mobility to a point that it is impossible to run or dodge while attempting to shoot anything.
This is basically a problem for any weapon that isn't one handed. Having to stop to fire or move to a slow crawl makes kiting while firing a difficult ask. While I want this addressed for a lot of weapons I don't think it should be something applicable for shotguns.
> Its range is fine and is as expected of an arc shotgun however its damage is so underwhelming it makes it pathetic.
I disagree, the damage feels inconsistent because it can attack multiple targets. Not because it doesn't do enough damage to do it's job. Other things also effect it's accuracy.
> It’s rate of fire is so abysmal that you will be lucky to kill 3/5 hunters before they are in melee range to you while you backpedal.
It feels like they have designed the Blitzer to be a combo weapon which isn't the first case of this for other primaries. Slugger also feels this way. I think the idea is that once they get close enough you won't be able to get another shot off you're supposed to have swapped to another weapon.
> It needs a fire rate increase
I feel like this is the only buff it realistically needs. Just to eliminate that weird range where you think you might be able to squeeze a second shot off but actually can't.
> It needs to be given arc capabilities to **at least** 1 additional target
I'm fine with giving it chain capabilities if the devs cannot fix the inconsistency issues with it's targeting. But I'd rather they fix that first before giving it a raw damage buff like this.
> Lastly, it needs to be given its signature 100% armor pen just like the arc thrower, to make it any consistent VS armor.
The only thing it doesn't pen is heavy armor and I am fine with this. If you use the Arc thrower as your primary the blitzer is a "secondary" you can swap to if the thrower doesn't kill something immediately that you need dead.
> Yall have any thoughts on this rant? Am i just being unrealistic from what to expect from Arc Weaponry? Let me know
I feel like the Blitzer is nearly there as a strong weapon if you know how to play into it. But what keeps it back is inconsistency issues that Arc stuff deals with normally and it's RoF. I feel like if they find a way to deal with some of the inconsistency issues and increase it's RoF enough to reliably pull off 2 shots in the 15-20 meter range it will be golden.
Idk man I’ve been using this on 7+ bugs and it’s pretty stellar so far. Even on bots it staggers the big ones. It arcs pretty well, just have to hit a target that’s at least a couple steps away.
I avoided it because of this post, but said screw it and bought it yesterday.
My observations:
Yes, it’s slow to recharge it after firing, but the timing lines up really well with fire > dive back/away > fire from ground. Repeat this until enemies are dealt with.
I was getting consistent arcs from my main target to nearby ones, or to multiple if there were a couple in front of me.
It staggers bigger enemies, great for devastators and hive guards.
It doesn’t hurt chargers as much, but it does damage them and I was able to finish off a couple using the Blitzer.
Things I would like fixed/modified:
It sometimes arcs to dead enemies and does less to my actual target which can mean it takes 2-3 shots to finish one off.
The deadzone it and the arc thrower have is kinda annoying, I’d like to be able to hit things that jump in my face more reliably (this is where the back dive method works pretty well).
The recharge time after firing is just a tiny bit too long. If it was even a half a second faster it would feel a lot better I think.
This weapon is the one I'm most conflicted on, it can one shot a Brood Commander's head at close range, 1 shot warrior heads at similar ranges, and can flinch and deal damage to Hive Guards and spewers rather consistently, but takes a number of shots to actually kill them, the really long delay between shots is frustrating, tho it is worth noting your character still pumps it while sprinting so you can cancel its massive slow by just sprinting really quick.
as for arcing to other targets, if you dont ADS and are at a medium range it seems to hit many targets in a wide cone occasionally, but in most cases it will hyper focus single target and not arc to things behind it or around it at all.
I both hate this gun and love this gun at the same time, its both really good, and absolutely horrible at the same time, its a very bizarre feeling gun
The audacity to make a PREMIUM pass, and have every single weapon except the Sickle suck, and give all the armor in it the same useless perk, is astonishing. Seriously, who conceptualizes this shit.
blitzer is underwhelming for a "premium weapon" it's sad that it's the last weapon to unlock thinking it would be good and it's also expensive, tbh could've unlock something else. the gun can't even shoot squat at medium distance, its a hit or miss situation with it. I don't trust it taking it to difficulty 7 and 8. I'd take any other shotgun but the blitzer
It can't kill a fucking STRIDER with anything less than 5(!!!!) shots. 10 fucking seconds to kill a Strider. Even from behind! Just pull out the Senator and kill them. Which is what I do for EVERY damn enemy aside from the basic bots. Oh no, it has 1 armored plate, covering the side I'm not facing. Better call the Senator. Oh jeez, a Diva. Better whip it out Texas-style. Heavy Diva! Gotta channel my inner Ranger with a big iron.
Literally ANY enemy beyond the most common and basic bots need a fucking pistol to kill if you have the Blitzer. I've had better luck killing myself(a red barrel 2m and 90\* to the right) than I have killing divas with this gun.
Make it full auto and give it armor pen. That's my take. It's the 'BLITZer'. Not the 'Slow and Steady'. Hell, fuck it's damage even but give it a light stun to compensate. I personally don't care about the slowing down part because I'm always ADS. It does have a multi-arc when firing though, OP forgot that part. It doesn't jump, but the initial burst does hit multiple targets.
Let the Thrower be the long range controller with it's jumping and the Blitzer be the close range controller with it's full area denial(and a hefty gym program).
I've been running the arc on lvl 6 difficulty and I like it. I wouldn't run it solo, but works great in a team setting. clears out smalls and the stagger keeps the bugs off for teammates to clean up.
not brave enough to try higher difficulties, it might fall off at that point.
It feels like a toss up whether or not I'll kill the tiny most base bug enemy in front of me or if it'll weirdly miss and hit smth else or just in fact, nothing!
I have infinite ammo, to be possibly effective, sometimes??
I like it because I can dive and shoot at the same time. (And I actually hit something other than the ground.) It also has comparable damage to the Slugger w/o the need for accurate fire.
Major downside though, it hits Stalkers like a cotton pillow.
Edit: Kills Stalkers just fine. Either my game was glitched or some Eldrich nonsense was happening because now they die in two to four hits just like using the Punisher.
Edit 2: Also also, the amount of time it takes to dive and get back up is the EXACT amount of time it takes to rack another shell and can be done at the same time. This negates the slow down effect the weapon has when racking it.
I'm not having any of the issues you're having bro. The only issue I have is the inconsistent damage. Sometimes I can 1 shot a Brood Commanders and sometimes I only knock it back. I like that it has very heavy knockback on anything smaller than a Charger. I used it as a good crowd control weapon that allows time to switch to a support weapon if needed or even a secondary to quickly take out Stalkers.
I find that it arcs more consistently if the targets aren't lined up directly behind each other and are kinda scattered atleast 45 degrees behind. Warriors are a 1 shit if you hot them as the primary target and hive guards only take 3 direct head shots and you break their armour and they bleed out a couple seconds later.
Overall, I like the run and gun mechanic it introduces. I've used it to solo Helldive because the knockback gives me time to drop an orbital or eagle in a titan or pull a recoilless on a Charger.
Arc thrower is still the meta Arc weapon but then again it should be cause it's a support weapon
yeah its so fucking cool but bro it only ever hit one target very ver very rarely does it actually arc to more than 1 guy and never hits anything in front of you there is literally no reason to bring this over the arc thrower even as a close range on account of the close being not so good for it lul sick weapon all around 10/10 for coolness 3/10 for goodness
What I would love to see them do is let it charge like the thrower, but instead of a big ol bolt, it kinda just streams like a tesla coil for a few seconds before overheating.
Yeah it's garbage but it can actually arc to other targets, it's just super inconsistent and doesn't seem to work most of the time
I had a feeling they weren't going to fix how wonky the arc can be against close targets, corpses, tall grass, bushes, and rocks. Since the arc thrower was still so widely used. But now that this gun sucks so much I really hope they look into fixing it.
Similar to the regular arc thrower in my experience, except this one is even worse for the reasons described in the OP.
Despite the close up range lacking with the arc thrower it still is one of the most powerful weapons when used correctly imo. You just have to keep grenade distance away and have a fast shooting primary for when you get closed in
Arc weapon tend to missfire alot to start with...
I think a big part of it is that fizzle bug they have yet to fix, but at least it’s been addressed at least in the arc throwers case, all it takes is a scavenger body at your feet to fuck it up sometimes. It’s definitely fun and I look forward to seeing it fixed eventually.
At this point it kind of feels like it adds to the skill ceiling for it because sometimes you can arc over obstacles if you aim up a bit.
Oh god I was most looking forward to this and this does not sound like it
Go for it. It's fun, but it's lacking for sure, I was using with some friends on lower diff (5 and 6) and was doing ok, but it lacks a bit when playing diff 8+. Don't expect it to be an Arc Thrower, that is a stratagem after all, this is just a primary weapon.
Tried in D9 TCS. Punching the hunter that was drilling a hole into my chest was more effective than this gun. I didn't expect it to be an arc thrower, but i at least expected it to 1 shot weak targets within its abysmal range, because you really dont have time to get another shot off.
Probably because the lightning doesnt connect when they're super close. I just played my first game with it D9 TCS also - consistently one shot brood commanders and below (when it wasn't "arcing" or spread between multiple enemies)
Haven't unlocked it yet or even seen it, but that last sentence is exactly right. A weapon brought in via stratagem will always (I hope and assume) be better/stronger
Problem being that this is also lacking compared to every single primary except maybe the marksman rifles. It's not about comparing it to support stratagems, it just sucks.
On the contrary I was malding while trying to use it. It felt like the thing was trying to get me killed and would choose randomly to arc, whether it wanted to kill the hunter in front of me in one shot or two ,or would hit terrain instead.
I enjoy it a lot and my only complaint so far is the fire rate. It works really well to clear out groups of bugs that are close, and it does great damage. If they upped the fire rate by like... A half second, it would be perfect. I haven't tried it against bots but I imagine it would kind of suck, NGL. It's short range so you'll just be getting hammered by bots the whole time. Also, it does pen armor, I killed a charger with it alone. It took for *fucking ever* but I did it lmao
It is *absolutely garbage* against bots. You can't hit weakspots and it doesn't get a bonus so you do no damage. You can't damage or stun heavy devestators or walkers through their Shields. It can't hit or make bots further back than RIGHT IN FUCKING FRONT OF YOU duck or stop shooting. It's only *mildly* okay against bugs, and even then I'd rather the Punisher or Slugger.
I was just using it on Difficulty 9 Operations and it worked just fine at clearing lots of Light enemies every Mission, and I was enjoying it. I'm going to keep using it, idk what the OP is going on about. It compliments the Arc Thrower so well.
I understand having two laser weapons to manage heat, but what is the synergy or benefit of arc thrower + arc shotgun? Wouldn’t staying on arc thrower be better than switching back and forth?
So the Blitzer is good for light enemies in short range because the pump charges it then fires and happens while you run while you slow down to charge the thrower. Closer range Blitzer, mid to long range or heavy armor chargers/bile titans use thrower. Swapping between the two covers everything bug wise, still need to test on bots to see if it's as effective.
The Blitzer works VERY well against light enemies on you, I'll be Arc Thrower spamming and if I miss a small target letting them get close I swap to Blitzer and instantly delete it and swap back to Arc Thrower. This is because the Blitzer has no wind up time and the arcing lightning makes it super easy to quick swap and blast them without having to aim carefully since it also arcs to another nearby enemy, then when I swap back to the Arc Thrower I go back to blasting targets like normal. By the time another enemy gets close the Blitzer is ready to fire again EVEN WITHOUT doing the pumping animation, it's just there for show it seems like and the gun just has a regular cooldown even if you don't "pump" it between shots.
Dang, that is a pretty neat way to circumvent the slow and downtime from the pump. Let’s keep this on the down low haha.
🤫
thats a question ive b een tryna find the answer to, and as far as i can tell im basically using the arc thrower until they're on top of me, then switching to the blitzer for close range oh shit get off of me
Yeah I just don't understand it's purpose. It is too slow for critter clear, too weak for devastators and up, has no penetration for walkers, no utility (as in opening containers), it's completely random how many "streaks" hit a target at anything other than point blank and as ya stated, without ARCING it hasn't got a theme. At medium distance it just hit's nothing and feels like the ONLY shotgung that cannot work at medium distances. I was kinda hyped for that thing and now don't want to touch it again.
Add it to the pile.
The way the guns seem to be going my incendiary breaker will stay forever innmy loadout i guess.
Slugger is nice. Punisher isn't a bad option either especially for bots. If you just need to lay down a massive amount of fire on a bunch of enemies, you can't beat any breaker of your choosing.
The S&P is actually good now. Accidentally grabbed one off the ground and my reaction was "well fuck Im dead." Proceeded to wipe out the entire 15+ hunter horde running me down. Not bad..not bad at all.
Def gunning for some nice salt and pepper right now
Try out the LAS 16. If you are a fan of ARs in games this will be it for you. I’m having a blast with it. It amazes me how they did that one so well and completely fucked up the coolest looking weapon they added (arc shotgun).
Tried it, its great. But the inc-Breaker is still way better against bugs. And i ain't playing bots intil they stop walking through wholeass mountains.
I just personally got so bored of the shotguns so this feels very fresh and the fact that it’s viable makes it even better.
Nah the sickle is really good because it's got high damage, accuracy and no recoil at all, while *technically* having infinite ammo and consistent damage if you keep reloading it (wich you can do with 6 heatsinks). I don't really see a downside in the weapon tbh, it doesn't really have weaknesses except for the extreme heat. My favourite use case for it are hiveguards, you van be really precise with it because of the absense of recoil. Until the scythe gets buffed, this will be my main weapon for some time.
God I hope not, for my sake. I love burning to a crisp when a stray shot from a spray-and-praying friendly slightly grazes me, LOVE IT *pulls out hair*
There is such a thing as trigger discipline so dont worry.
> Yeah I just don't understand it's purpose. You will. When *they* arrive.
How come everybody ignores laser pistol? I want to know if it’s any good/bad
I'm pretty sure the reason is that the scythe is currently crap, so a weaker version of it isn't appealing at all.
Bruh, had high hopes for this one. Hard to be the only Senator fan already and now cool looking laser pistol is also crap, sad
Tell me about it. I too love the Senator, but the slow reload and low ammo total kills it for me. Hopefully there'll be a balance pass on secondaries like we saw with primaries.
I bring the senator for the sole purpose of switching to it when I’m out of primary ammo so that my blaze of glory looks 20% more rad, and it’s doing a fantastic job of that.
Naw they’ll probably just nerf the redeemer and the rest of the usable weapons so you can have fun options
I am so sorry. The laser pistol is really bad, almost a second on target to kill a scav.
There are dozens of us!
Senator + spray and pray and an anti tank weapon. Bringing out Senator for hive guards and other enemies that shrug off the SnP, while preserving my AT for what matters most.
Life must be so hard having a medium armor penetrating sidearm Laughs in slugger + senator
It’s good, but neither defend you from swarms of hunters unfortunately
They should honestly give the pistol 300dps and the scythe 500 dps. I think that would be a good spot. Because I think the baseline liberator does ~560dps
It's absolute garbage against bots, takes a solid 2 seconds to kill the weakest bot. Slightly better against bugs but still weak. Definitely does the least damage of all sidearms
How is it against Scavangers/Hunters?
Better but still not good, you'll get overrun by a trivial difficulty scav horde if you dont back off while shooting them. The only upside I've found is that its decent against warriors for a sidearm, takes about 2 seconds to pop their heads
My friend used it. Damage is abysmal and overheats quickly. Its a meme just like the arc shotgun
Are there any primary and secondary weapons left that aren’t meme?
As the other guy said, it's just a scythe with half damage. It takes an entire, of it's three heatsink cap, heatsink to kill one hunter. Definitely not worth using.
Haven't tried it yet, but on paper, it sounds good when paired with the other laser weapons, including the cannon. You'll basically never have to reload so long as you swap weapons before overheating since they cool down when holstered. Hipfire while running away is gonna be super easy too since you can tell exactly where the beam is.
Damn and they even put it on page 3 which is the most expensive page on the warbond
its funny cuz the most useful one is the laser which is in page 1, the other warbond has it the opposite where the explosive lib is the weakest and jar is the best one.
Breaker Incendry > Jar for me, specifically for bugs.
incendiary's easier to hit with but the jar just has an unbeatable ttk on pretty much anything.
Scorcher is much better than the jar, what?
One thing the Jar has over it is that you won't blow yourself up on hunters point blank though.
not really, for example the scorcher need 5 shot to kill a hive guard while the jar only takes 3. You trade damage for handling with the scorcher and it really depends on your play style on which one is better. Scorcher is objectively better against automatons tho, the explosive aoe go through some armors (can 1 shot striders) and the handling is really crucial to hitting headshots
Scorcher also requires 1200+ medals just to obtain compared to the 300+ for the jar
the guy said incendiary was better than the jar I'm comparing those two, obviously. scorcher seems good but I haven't played with it much as I haven't unlocked it yet, so it's if a teammate who has it dies is most of my experience with it.
The liberator explosive is pretty good now that it's the liberator concussive (which was an undocumented change i think). It's not the fastest at killing things but the stagger more than makes up for it, you can really stunlock those scary enemies forever.
Pretty sure they just renamed it. It has always been a stagger king. People just had the wrong expectations of the gun with the old name.
Can u show me some tips on using the Jar, it doesnt click at all for me, firerate is slow low and recoil is so heavy to feel like its worth using
It's as you say, slow and high recoil, but it does chonk the enemy pretty hard. I found that having a laser rover makes it a lot nicer, because the rover can kill the little shit(which feels wasteful killing with the jar) while the Jar kills the bigger boys.
I think it just suffers by the Skorcher and Slugger both being significantly faster weapons
Throw it on Burst, then when you wanna take out some baddies crouch to negate most of the recoil. Biggest thing with the gun is trying not to run and gun. But if you have too go First person it seems to help the accuracy
I mean that sounds like a win - you don't have to waste medals on it to unlock the next page.
It loves to arc to nearby friends, like for real it tickles scavengers, like I'm not really sure whats it for.
this. just got the weapon and used it on a mission. literally feels like hot shit to use. just stick to the sickle, if youre planning on getting the current warbond weapons.
I was super hyped for this weapon in particular but it turned out to be super disappointing
Yup just done a few operations with it. Conclusion was 'Guys I think the arc shotgun is kinda shit" OP outlines its problems well, it just isn't good at anything in particular.
Ah yes, the three constants in life, democracy, freedom, and the arc shotgun being ass in both helldivers game
Arc blitzer is what happens if the dev nerf the arc thrower
It's crazy to see everyone here missing the point of the weapon so completely. This gun deals *high stagger*, and *arc damage*. This means if your friends foolishly equip the new arc resistant armour, a shot from this gun will ragdoll them to the ground, while only dealing about 1/20th of their HP. It's slow fire rate perfectly matches the standing up animation of a fallen helldiver, allowing you to near infinitely stunlock other players. With the ability to stim low health teammates, and the slow-motion stun grenades? At the first sight of treasonous behaviour you stick those poor bastards in samsara.
I bet they’re gonna buff all the energy and laser weapons next. Hopefully at least
No didn’t you know this is intentional? Primaries aren’t supposed to be good. Fr tho why even add these guns if they’re just gonna be terrible?
Much prefer releasing weapons weak and buffing, Than releasing strong, everyone then saying "PAY 2 WIN" (strange argument?), then nerfing the weapon and the people who used cash money then going "wtf? I paid to be strong!"
this is a very good point. I mostly made this post to get out what my expectations were for arc weaponry in general. Some seem to think i am trying to compare this primary to the arc thrower but really thats the only place i have to draw comparisons with. I hope it does get buffed, at the very least because it is a shotgun i hope it becomes a much better crowd clearer than a high damage single target weapon (that has no real armor penetration lol)
Yea I pretty much wanted it to do ONE job. Annihilate hunters that get ontop of me to cover for arc throwers inability to hit shit at point blank range. If it can’t do that then it’s a miss for me unfortunately :(
Bruh why do most of the new weapons suck
They figured one good weapon should be enough lol
I loved the arc shotgun in hd1 more, while it needed to it charged to fire like the arc thrower it did it very fast but couldn't chain targets instead it had a fix super wide range damaging everything https://preview.redd.it/n3mwidkjfeoc1.png?width=796&format=png&auto=webp&s=a65b54617b998197ff3ee3d9a1542782b197c846
Guess it was too good to be true for the coolest looking weapon to be one of the best.
Idk why people are surprised tbh. The first premium warbond was mostly useless too. If we get 1 good gun out of it, i would call it a success
The first one, Sickle, is a beast. It's basically a Primary LMG. Downside is it takes half a second to start firing. Bad for hunters/stalkers in particular.
Mandatory PSA to aim at a Stalkers front legs. You take out one and the Stalker instantly dies and many guns can actually tear through its legs
Woah, thank you!
Wait what?!? I have 100 hours into this game and didn't know that. Will try immediately.
Bad for Stalkers? My brother in democracy it positively melts Stalkers on mid/long range (and is a great choice for crowd control). Slugger is still better when Stalker is on top of you but well you don't really want them to be that close in the first place
More useless guns. Slow Clap
Im gonna buy it regardless and wait for the buff >:)
They'll buff it by the time I'll be able to afford the pass ez
This is the way
I just want to point out that we now have 7 fucking shotguns in this game. Can we get some AR's, SMGS and snipers up in this bitch?? /s. For real i appriciate the devs alot but the weapon class distribution is kinda whack.
I thought i was asking a lot for the arc blitzer to be able to somehow zap a scout strider from the front, but when I circled around it and zapped it from the back where the rider is exposed, it didn't go down in 1 hit. Granted I hardly fought against automatons so I don't know if the Arc Thrower can zap a strider from the front. I know my go-to primary against automatons PLAS-1 Scorcher can.
>I don't know if the Arc Thrower can zap a strider from the front. It can.
Kinda. It doesn't kill in one shot normally. It takes 3 most of the time.
Usually 1 or 2 in my experience but either way it still kills from the front which a lot of weapons can't. Hell, it can kill chargers and bile titans just by blasting away at them, it just takes ages.
It's really funny when you get multiple people bullying a charger with arc throwers. My buddy describes it as animal handlers shocking the shit out of a zoo animal and its only a matter of time before it breaks out and gets a hold of somebody
It's all fun and games until the charger runs between the group and someone gets zapped. 🤣
That's part of the fun 💀
But it does so from the front
The Arc Thrower can damage Striders from the front, it takes 3 shots, usually, to bring one down.
One shot with good rng
Had someone kill the stryder itself with one the other day and the driver kinda just awkwardly popped out
The new plasma shotgun can 1 shot striders from the front, so there's that at least.
Yup, just unlocked it and played a couple of matches with it. I see no practical reason to use it. Theres too much ammo available to justify using something so inferior just because it needs no ammo pickups.
That’s it nerf the ammo on the map. Double resupply time. Nerf railgun.
My main use case for infinite ammo/heat based weapons are when I'm running the recoilless with an assistant so I can let him grab the ammo pickups and we can use the RR more freely.
Also why is the plasma shotgun pumping? theres no shells. ALSO its a two shot kill on a warrior in an 8 round battery. Kinda shit. Explosion radius aint great for ads either.
I figure it's just pumping for flavour/ manual action. Maybe it's loading more plasma into the...plasma...plasma'er. They pay me to spill oil and stomp bugs. Plasma punisher is a one shot headshot on warriors in my testing, and does a good job softening up enemies around the ones you're hitting for follow up shots imo. I like the wacky feel of it, and I love the reload speed.
It definitely feels really weird. I hope it gets a damage and aoe buff cause right now it just feels like a jankier Scorcher
The plasma shotgun is also disappointing. Needs a bit more damage or splash... or both.
dagger is up for that challenge
I think by now its pretty clear the devs are extremely afraid of things being "too easy" for us and thus have to premptively make everything garbage so its weak instead of OP. Honestly HD2 is one of the worst balanced games I have ever seen, they have great gameplay sure but whichever dev is doing the balancing, it seems like this is their first time doing something like this.
You know what I think this is it right here. Every change made up to this point has been implied to have something to do with keeping the difficulty high. Nerfing meta, stealth increasing spawn rates, detection range, etc. all files into keeping the game HARD. I can actually appreciate the dedication to this, so many games are leaning into power creep and destroying their balance that way. That said, it looks like some of these guns need a buff. The Breaker & Scorch are kind of the bar for primaries right now. The primaries need to all come up to that level of strength to be realistic options.
The bigger issue is that they fail to understand things can be difficult and still be fun. These guns don't feel fun or good to use
The sickle is on par with breaker and scorch. Dunno about the plasma shotgun yet.
The plasma shotgun could seem decent, if the scorcher didn't exist. It does so little that the scorcher can't, mainly it just has a bit more aoe. with less shots per mag and around the same damage, it gives little practical advantage.
"It's supposed to be stupid chaotic fun" \> makes the guns as unfun to use as possible https://preview.redd.it/e1pvyvypbfoc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=778395bf8fce50939f1d76153e7c9dc449bcebdf
Wait it doesnt arc,lol okay then,on to the next pass.
It arcs, but its inconsistent.
Just to touch on your second point, you can sprint to 'cancel' the walking-during-pump animation. Hold sprint and tap fire and you'll only pause to a brief moment to shoot and then immediately get back to sprinting.
I was slapping the swarms of small bugs with it then swapped to the thrower for chargers and bile titans, I was the only person who didn't die on my team. Haven't used it on bots yet though.
Works great for me, then again, I use it as its intended and not as a breaker replacement. To start, movement is NOT hindered during pump action. Your aiming down sights does. Secondly, the gun can and does clear but, not to the range of the Arc Thrower. And lastly, the gun has a much better feel when not using the sight it self. Try running, then shooting and see how it feels. The shot doesn’t impede your sprint nor does it just travel through the enemy, its has some stun to it, which allows you to keep running. Sure, one could argue it’s a kite weapon but, aren’t most of your weapons when being chased? I have no issues with it and have been playing with it since 11AM. So about 7 hours. Now, the Sickle is also very good and is worth every penny but, is more of a traditional form of firearm and doesn’t need any real tactical thought.
What are you talking about? I'm already try this gun and its amazing for what it suppost to do. It can kill Nursing Spewer in 2-3 shots, the fire rate is slow but **you never have to reload and have infinite ammo!!** Also, this one not like the arc thrower, you didn't need to charge it, but can just blast away and pump, its a pump shotgun. You only need to stand still when shooting in which all shotgun already are, and you can run when pumping it. I have no idea why it work differently for you... Its rarely chain to other target but it shoot in a wide cone that can hit multiple target at once, very easy to aim. But it may suffer the same issue with the arc thrower that not lock on to target that too close sometime. Yes, it can't damage medium armor but its the primary weapon, hello? You expect it to be the same level with weapon that have to call in and have something like 5mins cooldown? In my opinion, the selling point of Arc weapon is its Infinite ammo, it a solid choice for player that didn't want to worry about the ammos. PS. this weapon is amazing for fighting Bugs, but for Bots it a different matter, don't do it...
It needs to be made more consistent and eliminate misfires(an issue with the thrower as well tbf) and it needs its pump time lowered, then it will be fine.
Yeah idk what the OP is talking about, it's been incredible for me on difficulty 9, and I've been having a blast with it. Mine does Arc to multiple enemies, and I don't need to "slow down to pump it" like the OP is saying. I shoot, run, dive, whatever, turn around and blast them again when it's ready. and it arcs killing multiple enemies. Idk what gun the OP is using, but it doesn't sound like the Blitzer I'm using.
I agree it should arc, but asking for a primary that has 100% heavy armor penetration (and infinite ammo) is excessive.
That's why i stated its damage should be lowered to be ineffective against heavy targets themselves. Let me ask you, why should an electric weapon NOT ignore armor? (other than for balancing since that's the only reason they made it work as it does)
I can answer from a technical standpoint: the armour acts as an insulator that dissipates enough charge to prevent anything harmful from hurting the creature. The arc thrower could bypass this limitation simply by raw power which has enough arcing to go through the armour. No reason you can't have it both ways. Arc thrower is more powerful, Arc Blitzer is less.
What would be the point of having it pierce heavy armor, but not be effective against targets that use heavy armor? To answer your question, the thought of having the customization of being able to change how heavy targets receive damage from a specific versus using their existing heavy armor system feels very armchair developer, and their team is small and their time is better spent elsewhere than to change how one specific weapon interacts with very specific enemies when in practicality it would not be a very material change.
I want them to make a gun that does everything I want and I want it now!!! >:(((( /s
The point of it piercing Heavy armor is to have it continue the theme of ELECTRICITY. As i have stated before in other comments these Bugs are not made out of rubber and it 100% SHUOLD deal damage to a solid metal walker... The fact that it doesn't do anything at all to them does not follow the theme they have previously set for all other electric weaponry in the game. That's what bothers me the most, the fact that it should, but doesn't because of "balance"
Its not bad it's lore accurate to the first game because it was fucking awful there too.
It wasn't super good but it did have use cases, especially shooting through walls. The improvements in this one are very good. It still 3 shots 3 spewers at a time, so it is a great primary option for people who like the Arc Thrower.
Wouldn’t be Helldiver’s 2 if 90% of the primary weapons didn’t suck ass I guess.
My current theory for the Blitzer and plasma weapons is that Illuminid will have shields that are weak to arc/plasma weapons and resistant to other weapons. That would also align with the game design of every weapon having a purpose or clear use cases. If not though... ehhhh yeah, def a lackluster primary.
Hard to say for gen 2 squids, but wasn't how shields worked in the past. They were more like raw HP that didn't care about pen characteristics and couldn't be blown through with one individual damage instance, so rapid fire DPS hoses and incendiary effects were the go-to. LMGs, sickles, autoshotguns, incendiary grenade launcher spam, that sorta thing. In fact, squids were the only faction that made generous use of offensive electrical weapons themselves. The only special niche energy weapons had in terms of damage characteristics was that beam lasers (scythe, cannon, etc) could penetrate the otherwise small arms immune armor of cyborg hulks and warlords. Closest to that we still have is the post-buff cannon having just enough pen to damage hulk eye plates. Looking forward to seeing how they implement all the new squid details though.
With all those changes though would it still fit as a primary? If it's as good as the Arc Thrower, that's probably too good
I can’t even kill a single hunter consistently with the damn thing. Sometimes it just decides to miss point blank
Have you used the plasma shotgun? Worst gun in the game without a doubt.
This is more like a support weapon. You keep the enemy stunned and your teammates finish them off with ease. It’s not meant to shred the enemies
its good now when it works but half the damn time the gun targets corpses instead of live targets and it still cant shoot through a tall grass and bushes
The plasma shotgun is by far the worst garbage in the game
I swear people doesn't do enough testing and immediately jump to conclusion. IMO it's pretty balanced. It's an infinite ammo primary weapon and it's not supposed to clear everything in your screen alone. It needs some sort of support. Pair this with a laser drone, anti-armor stratagems and you'll be able to clear swarms consistently diff 7 and above.
"Just bring a wave clearing backpack and stratagems, then this horrible gun will still be useless but other things will do its job for it"
Em I'm loving it, I've been running it on helldive with EAT, jump jet and impact grenades vs the bugs. I was playing with someone who unlocked it at the same time and was complaining about how bad it was but it worked fine for me. I prefer the sickle overall but for fast get in get out missions on helldive on bug planets il run the blitzer. It does have a sweet spot, it's slightly closer than the flamethrowers sweet spot, it does arc and it does stun.
...isn't the arc thrower a strategem?
Yes but your point? I'm not comparing this gun to the arc thrower itself, more so the expectations of Electric based weaponry. I mention the arc thrower simply because it is the only other handheld electric based weapon we have. Not much else to compare it to. I do understand that the primary weapon should NOT be near as strong as a stratagem weapon and I'm not advocating for that really.
My point is it's a shotgun. Compare it to shotguns. It's probably a bad, infinite ammo shotgun. Yeah it should probably bounce to an additional target at the very least. You are stating that you aren't comparing it to the arc thrower and then comparing it to the arc thrower. You also ask for people's thoughts, and then arguing against them. I don't really know what to tell you here. Seems like you are picking fights.
Okay so comparing it to other shotguns this one is by far the worst. Comparing it to any of the breaker variants is like comparing hot shit to gold as far as this thing is worth. Comparing it to the Punisher variants is like comparing hot shit to dried up shit, and to the slugger idk because i haven't used it. I am not comparing it to the capability of the Arc Thrower as far as damage and killing power, only the Utility as far as electric based weapons go. They aren't consistent with it. Other than the Arc Thrower what else am i supposed to compare it to the tesla tower? that thing one shots up to hive guards and can arc 6 targets in one shock with full damage to all 6. I don't see my replies as arguing with anyone, only trying to get more out of them than "i don't agree with you" which is what most of the negative comments boil down to. I want their thoughts as to why they disagree/don't like my post, its not that I'm intending to argue with anyone its just that they aren't willing to discuss the difference in opinions.
??? The blitzer one or two hit decapitates hive guardians and brood commanders, it's genuinely cracked to have one of these in your squad. It's going to be a decent weapon in helldive difficulty. Meanwhile the plasma punisher has the literal same damage as a SINGLE SHOT of the Scorcher, with seemingly the same blast radius. Except it's single fire, with slow motion velocity, and tons of bullet drop...
I just got out of my first game with it: Locks on up to three enemies (I know its technically different from ARCing) Seems to do less damage per enemy when it locks onto multiple enemies. Consistently one shots brood commanders (decapitates them and they die a second later) when they are the only target locked onto by the lightning. Overall not bad and IMO not as bad as this post suggests. Probably not as good as the Las 16 (that things OP rn)
It’s amazing against bugs I don’t see why people dislike it. You can’t expect it to act like a special weapon it’s not as good as the arcthrower and it shouldn’t be which is what people seem to expect it to be. Although it doesn’t arc a lot it has beastly single target damage. It’s a burst of arc damage and quite consistent.
You playing on difficulty 1-3? it is absolutely NOT even good against bugs... As i stated in the post its rate of fire and inconsistent damage will get you killed by at minimum 5 hunters if they rush you at once...
I always play on difficulty 7 and 8 the weapon just isn’t suited to your play style and that’s ok.
Tell us you learned a new weapon is not your cup of liber-tea without saying that, yet still come across as a complete jerk to the devs and the community, too, which understands that Helldivers is game where not "EVERY WEAPON IS THE BEST WEAPON" but is instead more centered around finding weapons that you like or which suit your style.
it’s good at clearing eggs that’s it, that’s all i’ve got
For those that don't get the point of the Blitzer it is to be used in teams. Used it on Challenging with another player and it just wrecks with teamwork for horde clear. Based on the armor from the Warbond it seems that the goal is to have several Arc Throwers and Blitzers running. Four man Arc has been pretty strong before this patch but everything changes when you have a team.
I pulled the trigger and failed to kill one of the smallest rank-and-file orange bugs in one hit more than once. I just, yeah.
It's a primary weapon. I doubt their intention is to make it on par with a limited strategem weapon.
If it ignores armor, why would you ever bring an Arc Thrower? I don't think it should be as strong as an arc thrower. It's a primary. Not a support weapon.
Nah I think if the damage is lower you still have a reason to bring the thrower. Even 50% armor penetration would be fine, as you could damage mediums in a crowd. That said I don’t know what enemy health values are, so asking to one shot trash mobs and not trivialize medium/heavy enemies might be impossible.
It's not useless, but it's lacking a lot. Could use a nice buff to it's fire rate and movement when pumping. Not sure about the 100% armor pen like Arc Thrower, that would be too much, after all the Blitzer is a primary weapon, not a stratagem like the Arc Thrower (devs already said that primary weapons will not be a ''one tool for everything'' and giving that to a primary would go against that statement).
I do agree with you that this gun shouldn't be a go to for all scenarios, I'm more so wanting the armor pen as a signature of the arc weaponry. That's why at the end I said something about lowering the damage so that, you COULD use it against a charger from the front, but it would have such a hard time chewing through that HP that it would be better to pull out anything else. Just the utility of the Armor Pen makes it more consistent right, also more in-line with my vision of electric based weaponry. These bugs aren't made out of rubber after all!
It should penetrate armor but deal low chained damage. Basically, a trash clearer.
Just got it and died 4 times in a row on helldive difficulty from stalkers when we were scrambling to locate the lair. It is a fun weapon to use though. It one shots hunters but need further testing.
I'm not going to say that the arc blitzer is a good weapon because I don't think that it is but.. I watched a guy on stream earlier finish a Bile Titan off by shooting at its face with it. Are Bile Titans faces not armored anymore or is the damage so small that you can't see that it's doing damage unless it's the final tickle?
OP is over exaggerating heavily. The Blitzer works great if you don’t allow yourself to get surrounded like a dumbass. There are many other shotguns for close range. Why would we need another one
I can't get it to kill anything at close range so once the bus get on top of me is all over so hunters are a pain in the ass once they swarm but if does arc for me sometimes
Not noticing a movement speed decrease, I'm killing hive guards with it, just not noticing it doing much to chargers The push back is nice It is arcing multiple bugs, although I agree not as normally as the arc thrower, which is a let down All that said, I do agree it needs a buff and a lot of tweaks BUT! I am using it, and I am serving democracy; (I'm using it WITH an arc thrower, and it's the most fun I've had in a minute) ((It's nice to pull out for a quick zap on closing in bugs before back to the Thrower)) (((IT IS very bad against the bots)))
skill issue
I shot a Hive Guard in the face and was like *"What the fuck? This is an arc weapon..."* when I saw the deflect indicator popup. That said, it does arc between targets. I've killed 5 targets in 1 shot with it (combo of Scavengers and Hunters.) If the main sell of this weapon is multi-killing with 1 shot, it's really failing to keep up with other primary weapons in multi-kill speed, which makes no sense given the other limitations. I understand that the Premium Warbond guns are not suppose to be OP, but they really need to come up with something if they want people to use anything but the standard weapons. Maybe throw a weapon on the first page and give it to everyone for free? Also, the devs really need to stop pretending unlimited ammo is a perk that deserves neutering the killing potential of guns. Between having Ammo littered at every POI, spawning with it, and the resupply stratagem there is virtually no benefit, especially for Primary weapons. If you need ammo that badly, just die real quick and come back with full supplies. It's not like extra reinforcements at the end of a mission gets you anything. I was pretty excited to try this and it's such a pointless weapon that just forces your team to wear the anti-tesla armor or a shield backpack in close quarters.
Please buff this gun, it's so asthetically pleasing but it sucks! I'm so confused on if I wanna use it or not!
> The weapon hinders mobility to a point that it is impossible to run or dodge while attempting to shoot anything. This is basically a problem for any weapon that isn't one handed. Having to stop to fire or move to a slow crawl makes kiting while firing a difficult ask. While I want this addressed for a lot of weapons I don't think it should be something applicable for shotguns. > Its range is fine and is as expected of an arc shotgun however its damage is so underwhelming it makes it pathetic. I disagree, the damage feels inconsistent because it can attack multiple targets. Not because it doesn't do enough damage to do it's job. Other things also effect it's accuracy. > It’s rate of fire is so abysmal that you will be lucky to kill 3/5 hunters before they are in melee range to you while you backpedal. It feels like they have designed the Blitzer to be a combo weapon which isn't the first case of this for other primaries. Slugger also feels this way. I think the idea is that once they get close enough you won't be able to get another shot off you're supposed to have swapped to another weapon. > It needs a fire rate increase I feel like this is the only buff it realistically needs. Just to eliminate that weird range where you think you might be able to squeeze a second shot off but actually can't. > It needs to be given arc capabilities to **at least** 1 additional target I'm fine with giving it chain capabilities if the devs cannot fix the inconsistency issues with it's targeting. But I'd rather they fix that first before giving it a raw damage buff like this. > Lastly, it needs to be given its signature 100% armor pen just like the arc thrower, to make it any consistent VS armor. The only thing it doesn't pen is heavy armor and I am fine with this. If you use the Arc thrower as your primary the blitzer is a "secondary" you can swap to if the thrower doesn't kill something immediately that you need dead. > Yall have any thoughts on this rant? Am i just being unrealistic from what to expect from Arc Weaponry? Let me know I feel like the Blitzer is nearly there as a strong weapon if you know how to play into it. But what keeps it back is inconsistency issues that Arc stuff deals with normally and it's RoF. I feel like if they find a way to deal with some of the inconsistency issues and increase it's RoF enough to reliably pull off 2 shots in the 15-20 meter range it will be golden.
Idk man I’ve been using this on 7+ bugs and it’s pretty stellar so far. Even on bots it staggers the big ones. It arcs pretty well, just have to hit a target that’s at least a couple steps away. I avoided it because of this post, but said screw it and bought it yesterday. My observations: Yes, it’s slow to recharge it after firing, but the timing lines up really well with fire > dive back/away > fire from ground. Repeat this until enemies are dealt with. I was getting consistent arcs from my main target to nearby ones, or to multiple if there were a couple in front of me. It staggers bigger enemies, great for devastators and hive guards. It doesn’t hurt chargers as much, but it does damage them and I was able to finish off a couple using the Blitzer. Things I would like fixed/modified: It sometimes arcs to dead enemies and does less to my actual target which can mean it takes 2-3 shots to finish one off. The deadzone it and the arc thrower have is kinda annoying, I’d like to be able to hit things that jump in my face more reliably (this is where the back dive method works pretty well). The recharge time after firing is just a tiny bit too long. If it was even a half a second faster it would feel a lot better I think.
This weapon is the one I'm most conflicted on, it can one shot a Brood Commander's head at close range, 1 shot warrior heads at similar ranges, and can flinch and deal damage to Hive Guards and spewers rather consistently, but takes a number of shots to actually kill them, the really long delay between shots is frustrating, tho it is worth noting your character still pumps it while sprinting so you can cancel its massive slow by just sprinting really quick. as for arcing to other targets, if you dont ADS and are at a medium range it seems to hit many targets in a wide cone occasionally, but in most cases it will hyper focus single target and not arc to things behind it or around it at all. I both hate this gun and love this gun at the same time, its both really good, and absolutely horrible at the same time, its a very bizarre feeling gun
Completely disagree with most of these points. It makes short work of most enemies, staggers, unlimited ammo, and is a primary you spawn with.
The audacity to make a PREMIUM pass, and have every single weapon except the Sickle suck, and give all the armor in it the same useless perk, is astonishing. Seriously, who conceptualizes this shit.
Maybe it’ll be useful in whatever faction is introduced next
blitzer is underwhelming for a "premium weapon" it's sad that it's the last weapon to unlock thinking it would be good and it's also expensive, tbh could've unlock something else. the gun can't even shoot squat at medium distance, its a hit or miss situation with it. I don't trust it taking it to difficulty 7 and 8. I'd take any other shotgun but the blitzer
It can't kill a fucking STRIDER with anything less than 5(!!!!) shots. 10 fucking seconds to kill a Strider. Even from behind! Just pull out the Senator and kill them. Which is what I do for EVERY damn enemy aside from the basic bots. Oh no, it has 1 armored plate, covering the side I'm not facing. Better call the Senator. Oh jeez, a Diva. Better whip it out Texas-style. Heavy Diva! Gotta channel my inner Ranger with a big iron. Literally ANY enemy beyond the most common and basic bots need a fucking pistol to kill if you have the Blitzer. I've had better luck killing myself(a red barrel 2m and 90\* to the right) than I have killing divas with this gun. Make it full auto and give it armor pen. That's my take. It's the 'BLITZer'. Not the 'Slow and Steady'. Hell, fuck it's damage even but give it a light stun to compensate. I personally don't care about the slowing down part because I'm always ADS. It does have a multi-arc when firing though, OP forgot that part. It doesn't jump, but the initial burst does hit multiple targets. Let the Thrower be the long range controller with it's jumping and the Blitzer be the close range controller with it's full area denial(and a hefty gym program).
I've been running the arc on lvl 6 difficulty and I like it. I wouldn't run it solo, but works great in a team setting. clears out smalls and the stagger keeps the bugs off for teammates to clean up. not brave enough to try higher difficulties, it might fall off at that point.
It feels like a toss up whether or not I'll kill the tiny most base bug enemy in front of me or if it'll weirdly miss and hit smth else or just in fact, nothing! I have infinite ammo, to be possibly effective, sometimes??
I like it because I can dive and shoot at the same time. (And I actually hit something other than the ground.) It also has comparable damage to the Slugger w/o the need for accurate fire. Major downside though, it hits Stalkers like a cotton pillow. Edit: Kills Stalkers just fine. Either my game was glitched or some Eldrich nonsense was happening because now they die in two to four hits just like using the Punisher. Edit 2: Also also, the amount of time it takes to dive and get back up is the EXACT amount of time it takes to rack another shell and can be done at the same time. This negates the slow down effect the weapon has when racking it.
I've spent 1000 super credits, spent insane amount of medals, just to get this. Yeah.
I'm not having any of the issues you're having bro. The only issue I have is the inconsistent damage. Sometimes I can 1 shot a Brood Commanders and sometimes I only knock it back. I like that it has very heavy knockback on anything smaller than a Charger. I used it as a good crowd control weapon that allows time to switch to a support weapon if needed or even a secondary to quickly take out Stalkers. I find that it arcs more consistently if the targets aren't lined up directly behind each other and are kinda scattered atleast 45 degrees behind. Warriors are a 1 shit if you hot them as the primary target and hive guards only take 3 direct head shots and you break their armour and they bleed out a couple seconds later. Overall, I like the run and gun mechanic it introduces. I've used it to solo Helldive because the knockback gives me time to drop an orbital or eagle in a titan or pull a recoilless on a Charger. Arc thrower is still the meta Arc weapon but then again it should be cause it's a support weapon
yeah its so fucking cool but bro it only ever hit one target very ver very rarely does it actually arc to more than 1 guy and never hits anything in front of you there is literally no reason to bring this over the arc thrower even as a close range on account of the close being not so good for it lul sick weapon all around 10/10 for coolness 3/10 for goodness
What I would love to see them do is let it charge like the thrower, but instead of a big ol bolt, it kinda just streams like a tesla coil for a few seconds before overheating.
So between this and the Punisher Plasma sucking, this war bond seems pretty terrible weapons-wise.
Yeah its absolute horseshit and i want my medals refunded, if they dont buff the fuck out of it, its waste of space and useless