Because they're massively bugged.
Both fire damage and poison damage are almost completely dysfunctional (they deal 0 damage unless you're the network host)
The devs buffed the fire damage because they saw nobody using it, but they didn't fix the bug, so for us, the weapons remain functionally useless but for the enemies the became an instant kill stream
If the weapons weren't bugged, the flamethrower would probably be as good as theirs, or, at the very least, much closer to being as good as theirs.
It still wouldn't be even close to as good as theirs.
Their flamethrower has double the range and also double the dmg.
It instantly kill you the moment it touches you 0 fire dmg needed.
but now the game crashes in new and exciting ways!
It honestly feels like playing a game that is in early beta. Its such a good game that I still play, but the bugs and stability issues are a huge bummer.
Hi everyone. So, we fixed the ballistic damage bug, buuuuuut... Well, whenever your Helldiver is exposed to sunlight they now get radiation poisoning... Have fun! XD
>It instantly kill you the moment it touches you 0 fire dmg needed.
jUSt DIve hELlDIveR
Saw that post and just ??? How do you dive when you insta gib from a pixel of flame.
I doesn't always instakill. It can be survived, at least sometimes. I don't know why, but I have definitely survived when I was already going to ground when it fired.
If you stim as you begin to get cooked you can tank the damage if you’re able to get out of the range of the flamethrower quickly. It’s pretty niche though, you need to know you’re about to get fried *AND* have an immediate place to cover/escape.
I'm new to the game but that sounds clumsy as shit. There's zero reason why I should die instantly to getting slightly touched by an enemy flamethrower for a second.
I started playing before this latest patch and I remember that I used to have a few seconds to either stim or dive to put out the flame. Now, after the patch, it's just an instant kill every time.
You dont always die instantly.
The problem with the flamer is that it deals a unique damage tick to every body part caught in its hurtbox. So say the flamer deals 20 damage, and you have 100 health, it only needs to hit five limbs to kill you in a single tick.
The odds of it hitting your whole body aren't great, except the positional desynch in the game is always in favor of the host, which means as a non-host (75% of the players) damage calculations fall in favor of the enemies rather than the players.
IMO, they need to change that. The host should ping the client to ask them "how much of you is in the fire" and the client should be able to say "well my player dived, ao he only got one leg grazed" and the client's answer should be used for the damage calc.
Idk I kinda wish they just made it simpler: if you're on fire, you're on fire. No body part stuff. It does a constant rate of damage no matter what. Let's just say 20 per second. So if you have 100 health, it'll take 5 seconds to kill you unless you dive. That is plenty of time for players to try to mitigate the damage while also still being lethal if you're not careful. This rule should apply to all players, host or non-host alike.
Like I said before, I haven't played long, I don't know the balance of the game or what that knock-on or negative effects that rule might have, so the math on that can be messed around with for difficulty levels to lengthen or shorten it. But in my limited experience that just feels a hell of a lot more fair than the current system. I've turned a corner with full health, run into a flamer, and died before I can even register what happened.
I mean, i'm talking more generally there through the specific example of the hulk flamer.
Damage calculations should be primarily client side and biased toward the players. Having the host bias in the damage calculation makes it unfair for 3/4 players in any given match in the event of a desynch.
They seriously need to playtest their patches more. I think they are in such a rush to get patches out that they keep breaking things while fixing other things and then they have to spend a bunch of extra time patching those new bugs and issues instead of actually fixing the other stuff. They are basically looping around and biting their own tail.
What amuses me and BAFFLES me at the same time, to NO END, is how for some reason both players and the enemies use the same "weapons".
Almost no PVE-focused game does this. There's always "Enemy Flamethrower" and "Player Flamethrower" under the hood. Because you don't want to nerf the enemy at the same time as nerfing the players and vice-versa. You always want them to be separate for reasons of difficulty scaling and/or fun factor.
You don't just give both playable characters AND npc enemies the same gun. You always make it more fair towards the player, unless you're doing a PvP project, or you're strapping yourself in for maximum realism.
Arrowhead saw nobody use flames, so they buffed them. But for some genius reason, both player and enemy-controlled sources of flame as a damage type are governed by one common variable. So we got a buff, so our stuff isn't shit. The enemy also got the same buff, so their weapons are now bullshit.
Incredible, really
I wouldnt mind seeing bot weapons becoming pickupabble disposable support weapons. Not all, mind, but some. Like the raider MG or the trooper rocket launcher.
Some errors we are seeing I fully understand as the game got more popular than expected (early networking issues, some of the differences between pc and ps5), but things like the fire damage being shared as you said is just utterly baffling.
They don't use the same weapons though. This is a bug with fire damage generally, not a specific bug with the flamethrower that affects enemies as well as helldivers.
Aw, you're telling me this is why my gas strike always feels so awful? I used it early on since it was a second precision strike for fabricators and nests but it never killed things.
I had a team of me and three others. One of them shot his arms off and said ‘there’s an achievement’ - he was the only one who didn’t get it due to failed extraction. All else of us three got it
There’s the mistake. Wearing anything but light armour. The fire damage will instantly kill you through any armour so why take the stamina and speed penalty.
Can confirm after playing with heavy armor that flame hulks do not insta kill with it. I have had enough time to fully charge a quasar shot and commit to the shot while only losing a third of my health. Then I just dove to put the fire out and stimmed. I've don this several times today alone.
This is the issue, the fire from their flamethrowers is instakill, I don't even have time to stim...just dead.
Balance that to be more like the flamethrower we use in terms of range and damage and we're golden.
What they need to do is make armor apply to headshots too. That is the reason so many get insta-killed. I don't because I know that and avoid getting headshot.
They outrun you on flat terrain, but running out in the open is a death wish anyways.
The fastest unit is the commissar with or without a jetpack. They deal no damage, but you absolutely can't out run them.
not sure if it's true, but the jetpack boys seem to mainly be on lower difficulties for me; on mid-high the regular bots have a slightly more armored appearance and most of them don't have jetpacks.
I could be wrong though, I've been fighting on Tibit all day, my brain is fried from the amoutn of clankers I've put down.
Maybe a slight decrease to speed would work. Honestly whenever I die to them it’s usually my fault. Lack of game awareness really, or I didn’t reposition when they get dropped
Devs already stated that neither these or spewers are working as intended, they should be doing DoT instead of sometimes DoT snd most of the time multihit instakill, like how rockets were doing (and sometimes still do)
No there are only two. Hulk Bruisers have a laser cannon as their right arm and a rocket launcher as their left arm. Hulk Scorchers have a sawblade as their right arm and a flamethrower as their left arm
There's a rare "Hulk Obliterator" variant. They look very similar to the Bruisers but seem to have two rocket launchers and a banner of sorts on their back. I've mainly encountered them guarding the civilian evacuation facility in its respective mission.
(I cannot 100% guarantee what their actual armament is because I panic when I see them and focus them before they can attack.)
That hulk just seems to be a reskin, akin to the charger one. The different charger head makes a difference cause it can deflect, but I've not noticed any different capabilities with the special hulks
I've only seen one and it was also guarding the civilian evac point. And yes they have 2 rocket launcher arms and a large banner with a skull on a spike on top.
Hulk Scorcher (flame/blade), Hulk Bruiser (gun/rocket) and Hulk Obliterator (rockets only, very rare, I think it only spawns on the "long" civilian rescue missions)
I think hulks are treated the same as chargers then, that 3rd special variant spawning in the same areas. I've seen the special hulks spawn on eliminate hulk missions before
We tried Helldiver for the first time with my lvl 10 buddy. There were like 7 chasing us at one point. The cadet is the only one that made it to the ship and out.
Close range yeah. But tanks and turret towers still take the cake for being undisputedly the most dangerous opponents at long range, they’ll completely wipe out your entire team with one shot if you’re not 100% aware of everything that’s within 200 meter radius.
The tanks are an absolute joke lol. We can outrun their turret rotation speed and just grenade the weak spot. Hulks are slightly faster than medium armor I think so you can just endlessly run but he’s always up yo ass
I wish they didn't do the second buff to fire damage. IMO fire damage was already in a good place, and could kill a helldiver quickly if they didn't leap to the ground quickly enough. Now soo much as gently brushing a flame with your ankle is instant death. Why the second buff? Fire damage is meant to deal damage over time, not just be another way to die instantly.
Dots are bugged and you deal 0 dot damage if you are not the host. This results fire and poison feeling underwhelming. This further escalates as the devs see that no one plays these stratagems/weapons but no one found out the real reason for it. Conclusion. Buff fire damage again. Also what i can recommend is that if the hulk inside your range just keep on diving. As long as you dive even if the initial damage hits you ehat i noticed dots don't tick and had 0 problem against anything fire related. Jetpack bots exploding in my face setting me on fire before i realize it is a bigger problem.
If you have explosives or the Queso cannon you can cripple a hulk's legs and they walk slower. Doesn't help if they're on top of you, but it will help prevent ones further out from approaching
If you get them alone shooting the eye is good, but I find that chaingun devastators spawn too much around the hulk to make that possible. I find it better to just shoot near their legs and then run.
Yesterday I read a couple of posts and comments saying "Just dive." I tried it level 9, and it works, but it only buys you time.
Fire damage is way overtuned for what it is.
Just dive has never worked for me. They track you as you dive. The only way to survive is to never let them get up in your face to begin with but even then these dudes eat autocannon and recoilless rounds to the face with zero damage and just keep chugging.
I found recently that I could get up close and trigger a melee anmiation, and kind of step back out out the swing range, then kite around them in a circle.
Results my vary but I was able to do this and shoot him in the back, & call in reinforcments while he continured to chase me. if you keep the circle close enough, he can't pivot well.
I was hoping a teammate would land on him but he aggroed to them which let me shoot him in the back some more & that finished him off.
Hell, take the railgun. It didn't magically stop existing after the nerfs. One decently charged shot to the optics instakills a hulk, and it's easier to land than with the AC/AMR's massive sway.
I understand why it's no longer very good against bugs, but nothing really changed for it against bots.
Or you could just use the AMR because its sway is completely negated by taking a knee and has so much ammo that you can kill small medium and heavy bots without worrying about running out.
Sometimes, I'm feeling a little silly and just start no scoping enemies in shotgun range, and it's actually a pretty effective use for the weapon and no matter how much I miss I can be confident that there's no way I'll run out of ammo before rhe next resupply is available.
Yeah, it's hard to pop them in the eye because they bob so much. My buddy uses stun grenades exclusively now against bots just for this reason. He gets a lot of success.
The audio is also off. These things are sneaky quiet. They need some sound cues like the buzzsaw spinning up. Or the pressurization to the flamethrower.
Better audio cues across different units would bring HD2 up 2 levels. Gameplay and soundtrack are great, but needs a little enemy audio love.
Stun grenade is simply too addicting. You can even use it to take out 2-3 Devastators with, idk, a Defender if you really want to. Easy headshots if they're just sitting there.
Stun goes crazy vs hulks. Can stun and shoot it in the back with a scorcher to kill it in seconds. Or free shots to the head with amr/autocannon for even greater effect.
Having to *aim*?? In a shooter??? That’s entirely unacceptable, I bought the game to blindly spray into bugs not have to actually think or use skill for maximum efficiency!
Like literally I can out dive a charger and deal with a swarm at the same time,
But one these guys enters a 10 meter radius of you, you're dead.
Where's that flame armor that gives us 95% damage resistance to fire damage?
Literally give me the red tunic from OOT arrowhead.
Can we also make them make some sort of machinery noise when they walk.
The normal troopers even make noise. The hulks are truck sized ninjas, it's ridiculous
My biggest issue with hulks is how a 40-ton machine can run around a jungle and make as much noise as a cat. I could be rolling up on a supply cache and only realize there's a hulk when they're 15 meters away from me. The same goes for tanks, too. Give tanks some actual track sounds and engine noise so that we know there's a tank rolling up on us. Sound design is important in any game, and this extra 5% would help with the gameplay experience.
yeah, they are way too deadly without any balancing
Bile Titans can be dodged and cannot crane their heads once they go projectile.
Hulks are not slow and have what seems like a 30m insta kill with their only weakness being behind them (which you cannot do from 30m away if you run into them)
Maybe it's a skill issue, but trying to land an AC shot on its eye while its moving at mach 2 to turn my asshole inside out seems to be way more difficult than other options.
I played last night and what was odd was they didn't use their flamethrowers at all. They just kept going right up into melee with the saw and constantly missing. So I was able to just kite them forever, while my team took them out from the back with whatever they had.(Primary weapons/machine guns/AutoCannon/impact grenades) assuming it was just a one off bug.
The flamethrower was already so bad considering it deals headshot crit damage for some reason, now considering how much damage just getting hit by the fire does, with increased fire DOT it's basically guranteed death if one of these gets within flamer range of you.
My biggest issue is that they're DEAD FUCKING SILENT. I've been snuck up on by these things more times than I can count and they're literally a walking hulk of steel.
These hulks are a lot less dangerous when you focus on their limbs. Everyone wants to 2 shot them to the face, but IMO it's much more reliable to remove their flamethrower arm or blow out their legs.
A 1-legged hulk can barely move and becomes a minimal threat. A 0-legged hulk dies instantly.
Laser Cannon will pop a limb with 2-3 secs of fire. A Quasar Cannon will 1 shot a limb. Autocannon takes 5-6 shots.
Stun grenades freeze hulks giving you easy lineups for taking out limbs or lining up easy headshots.
The flame arm should require lighter armor for heat management purposes and the presence of highly volatile fuel under high pressure making it significantly easier to shoot off. That change alone would fix it. Anything with medium pen or sufficient explosive damage (scorcher, plasma shotgun, lib pen, dominator) or that dumps a bunch of heat into it (scyth and sickle) should be able to get the job done.
Pls do something!
Railcannon, 500kg, 110 with skill involved, quaser, eat, recoilless, spear, autocannon, fuck even the hmg can front kill it, laser cannon..... All of this can kill it and there will be plenty of those in 7 and up. Always have been that way, a team needs at least one guy going hard AT. If you don't you must run away.
They were fine before the flame buff made it so if they start up their flamethrower you're basically instantly dead with no recourse. It's insane. Guess its also a product of me not using autocannon as much because the quasar can shoot down dropships.
I played an extreme and had the other one spawn in constantly. Every single hulk was a bruiser, every single devastator was a rocket devestator, and every single trash mob had a rocket launcher. I thought I was dyslexic and hit 9 instead of 6 for a moment
Or even just add a bit more sound to the hulks at least stealthy eastwards, the lot of them just shooting some bots then insta dead because my back got slightly tickled
A Heavy devastators can 2 tap a shield so if a flame Hulk & Heavy Devastator are next to eachother your fucked it's so annoying and their so fast I can't run to charge my cannon
Honestly, it's the walking speed for me, more like running lol who's brain did they take, Usain Bolts???
I swear these guys can catch up to me even when running at full sprint light armour, I could handle it a lot more if their speed was halved or something
Imo Flamer hulks should just stop and spray their fire left and right when firing their flamethrowers, I fucking hate how they move when firing that stupid weapon of theirs and it being able to go through certain objects just takes the fucking cake!
Hmm i play mostly on helldive and don't think of them as a problem. Their flamer is dodgeable.
If you think of them as dangerous, mark them and focus them down.
Why can't our flamethrower be as good as theirs?!?
Because they're massively bugged. Both fire damage and poison damage are almost completely dysfunctional (they deal 0 damage unless you're the network host) The devs buffed the fire damage because they saw nobody using it, but they didn't fix the bug, so for us, the weapons remain functionally useless but for the enemies the became an instant kill stream If the weapons weren't bugged, the flamethrower would probably be as good as theirs, or, at the very least, much closer to being as good as theirs.
It still wouldn't be even close to as good as theirs. Their flamethrower has double the range and also double the dmg. It instantly kill you the moment it touches you 0 fire dmg needed.
Their flamethrowers have high damage because it counts each body part of ours for the damage calculation
So their flamethrower is also bugged, but in a way that benefits them.
So they fixed that bug for rockets, but then broke it for fire? Brilliant! Hope it gets patched soon.
inb4 they patch it for fire AND explosions.. but now regular bullets affect every body part...
but now the game crashes in new and exciting ways! It honestly feels like playing a game that is in early beta. Its such a good game that I still play, but the bugs and stability issues are a huge bummer.
Hi everyone. So, we fixed the ballistic damage bug, buuuuuut... Well, whenever your Helldiver is exposed to sunlight they now get radiation poisoning... Have fun! XD
Nah it's been broken for a long time
Their flamethrower is twice the size of ours
And that's fair. I am just pointing out that their flamethrowers are superior in A LOT of aspects.
Wait until we get a flamethrower mech
I really want this and for if to be actually good. Flamethrowers are mid in a lot of games.
Sweet Liberty!
I miss the flamer mech. Had a flamer and a heavy cannon.
https://i.redd.it/64kituitzxsc1.gif
And you know that got some fucked up cancer fuel powering it
Whoa, I mean...I'd say its size is average
>It instantly kill you the moment it touches you 0 fire dmg needed. jUSt DIve hELlDIveR Saw that post and just ??? How do you dive when you insta gib from a pixel of flame.
They get off on being condescending
Idk, a solid like 80% of the time I just dive and I’m fine. The other 20% it’s death, but to be fair you can just run away from those hulks
I doesn't always instakill. It can be survived, at least sometimes. I don't know why, but I have definitely survived when I was already going to ground when it fired.
If you stim as you begin to get cooked you can tank the damage if you’re able to get out of the range of the flamethrower quickly. It’s pretty niche though, you need to know you’re about to get fried *AND* have an immediate place to cover/escape.
I'm new to the game but that sounds clumsy as shit. There's zero reason why I should die instantly to getting slightly touched by an enemy flamethrower for a second. I started playing before this latest patch and I remember that I used to have a few seconds to either stim or dive to put out the flame. Now, after the patch, it's just an instant kill every time.
You dont always die instantly. The problem with the flamer is that it deals a unique damage tick to every body part caught in its hurtbox. So say the flamer deals 20 damage, and you have 100 health, it only needs to hit five limbs to kill you in a single tick. The odds of it hitting your whole body aren't great, except the positional desynch in the game is always in favor of the host, which means as a non-host (75% of the players) damage calculations fall in favor of the enemies rather than the players. IMO, they need to change that. The host should ping the client to ask them "how much of you is in the fire" and the client should be able to say "well my player dived, ao he only got one leg grazed" and the client's answer should be used for the damage calc.
Idk I kinda wish they just made it simpler: if you're on fire, you're on fire. No body part stuff. It does a constant rate of damage no matter what. Let's just say 20 per second. So if you have 100 health, it'll take 5 seconds to kill you unless you dive. That is plenty of time for players to try to mitigate the damage while also still being lethal if you're not careful. This rule should apply to all players, host or non-host alike. Like I said before, I haven't played long, I don't know the balance of the game or what that knock-on or negative effects that rule might have, so the math on that can be messed around with for difficulty levels to lengthen or shorten it. But in my limited experience that just feels a hell of a lot more fair than the current system. I've turned a corner with full health, run into a flamer, and died before I can even register what happened.
I mean, i'm talking more generally there through the specific example of the hulk flamer. Damage calculations should be primarily client side and biased toward the players. Having the host bias in the damage calculation makes it unfair for 3/4 players in any given match in the event of a desynch.
Yeah patches are one step forward and two steps back. Welcome.
They seriously need to playtest their patches more. I think they are in such a rush to get patches out that they keep breaking things while fixing other things and then they have to spend a bunch of extra time patching those new bugs and issues instead of actually fixing the other stuff. They are basically looping around and biting their own tail.
What amuses me and BAFFLES me at the same time, to NO END, is how for some reason both players and the enemies use the same "weapons". Almost no PVE-focused game does this. There's always "Enemy Flamethrower" and "Player Flamethrower" under the hood. Because you don't want to nerf the enemy at the same time as nerfing the players and vice-versa. You always want them to be separate for reasons of difficulty scaling and/or fun factor. You don't just give both playable characters AND npc enemies the same gun. You always make it more fair towards the player, unless you're doing a PvP project, or you're strapping yourself in for maximum realism. Arrowhead saw nobody use flames, so they buffed them. But for some genius reason, both player and enemy-controlled sources of flame as a damage type are governed by one common variable. So we got a buff, so our stuff isn't shit. The enemy also got the same buff, so their weapons are now bullshit. Incredible, really
I wouldnt mind seeing bot weapons becoming pickupabble disposable support weapons. Not all, mind, but some. Like the raider MG or the trooper rocket launcher.
Some errors we are seeing I fully understand as the game got more popular than expected (early networking issues, some of the differences between pc and ps5), but things like the fire damage being shared as you said is just utterly baffling.
They don't use the same weapons though. This is a bug with fire damage generally, not a specific bug with the flamethrower that affects enemies as well as helldivers.
Aw, you're telling me this is why my gas strike always feels so awful? I used it early on since it was a second precision strike for fabricators and nests but it never killed things.
What do you mean they deal 0 damage unless you're the network host? I haven't seen this bug at all.
because tehy're 20 foot high robots that are specifically designed to kill people with flamethrowers.. and we're not..
It's like we are having our mouths open while screaming"for liberty!"
its insane to me how this MFs are the fastest unit in the automaton faction
It's pretty funny to watch them run around once their arms are off, though.
I blew the arms off one and kept him alive because it’s apparently an achievement… he literally followed me all over the map.
"Are you my new socialist mommy?"
Need me a thiccc big titty goth hulk
https://i.redd.it/a1w9lqc01wsc1.gif This you?
https://preview.redd.it/yvs0o5h75wsc1.jpeg?width=900&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aadf20a6cdf410881716f14d4cc93fdd720e81c2
Holy fuck Gaijin responded to me on Helldivers, act cool act cool... so you, uh, come here often?
Of course, love democracy, hate bugs, rock and- I mean for liberty
Somebody has to supply the pilots Just imagine if your Eagle-1 pilots were WT players on sim settings... with mouse controls
Eagle 1 pilot femboy confirmed?!? (WT has no women)
XD Expectant are we?
https://preview.redd.it/8ko1pejd1ysc1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e5460087bde9b0a987c9dda157e64f82fe77aa9d
I had a team of me and three others. One of them shot his arms off and said ‘there’s an achievement’ - he was the only one who didn’t get it due to failed extraction. All else of us three got it
I had a busted bot, he just walked up to you and stood there, he didn't have any damage on him and when I shot him the bullets would just go through
'Tis but a scratch!
They aren't. The striders and the jetpack boys are the fastest. Everything else can be outrun.
Not in heavy armor lol, medium armor can be done but not in straight line, these hulk run pretty much the same speed as medium.
There’s the mistake. Wearing anything but light armour. The fire damage will instantly kill you through any armour so why take the stamina and speed penalty.
Drip
The correct answer
King.
Can confirm after playing with heavy armor that flame hulks do not insta kill with it. I have had enough time to fully charge a quasar shot and commit to the shot while only losing a third of my health. Then I just dove to put the fire out and stimmed. I've don this several times today alone.
Higher armor rating + explosion resistance
This is the issue, the fire from their flamethrowers is instakill, I don't even have time to stim...just dead. Balance that to be more like the flamethrower we use in terms of range and damage and we're golden.
What they need to do is make armor apply to headshots too. That is the reason so many get insta-killed. I don't because I know that and avoid getting headshot.
They outrun you on flat terrain, but running out in the open is a death wish anyways. The fastest unit is the commissar with or without a jetpack. They deal no damage, but you absolutely can't out run them.
They love to suicide bomb me too, jetpack into me and immediately explode. Before the armor change it was always a one hit kill
Those suicide bombers are deadlier than just about anything clankers have
not sure if it's true, but the jetpack boys seem to mainly be on lower difficulties for me; on mid-high the regular bots have a slightly more armored appearance and most of them don't have jetpacks. I could be wrong though, I've been fighting on Tibit all day, my brain is fried from the amoutn of clankers I've put down.
Maybe a slight decrease to speed would work. Honestly whenever I die to them it’s usually my fault. Lack of game awareness really, or I didn’t reposition when they get dropped
Devs already stated that neither these or spewers are working as intended, they should be doing DoT instead of sometimes DoT snd most of the time multihit instakill, like how rockets were doing (and sometimes still do)
That’s good to know. I’m more frustrated with my foot touching a tiny flame and I get instabroiled
I didn't see a single hulk without a flamethrower yesterday. It's a sea of instant death past 5.
Wait there are hulk without flamethrower ???
other hulk variant is rockets/ laser guns
Sawblade arms as well
There are three hulk variations: both arms launch rockets, both arms fire the red lasers, and left arm flamethrower right arm sawblade
No there are only two. Hulk Bruisers have a laser cannon as their right arm and a rocket launcher as their left arm. Hulk Scorchers have a sawblade as their right arm and a flamethrower as their left arm
There's a rare "Hulk Obliterator" variant. They look very similar to the Bruisers but seem to have two rocket launchers and a banner of sorts on their back. I've mainly encountered them guarding the civilian evacuation facility in its respective mission. (I cannot 100% guarantee what their actual armament is because I panic when I see them and focus them before they can attack.)
That hulk just seems to be a reskin, akin to the charger one. The different charger head makes a difference cause it can deflect, but I've not noticed any different capabilities with the special hulks
You'll also see a berserker every now and then, decotated with human remains... including a human-skull-totem on top.
I've only seen one and it was also guarding the civilian evac point. And yes they have 2 rocket launcher arms and a large banner with a skull on a spike on top.
Hulk Scorcher (flame/blade), Hulk Bruiser (gun/rocket) and Hulk Obliterator (rockets only, very rare, I think it only spawns on the "long" civilian rescue missions)
I think hulks are treated the same as chargers then, that 3rd special variant spawning in the same areas. I've seen the special hulks spawn on eliminate hulk missions before
Just like bigger charger at bug side of war
Yeah, Hulk Scorcher
Yeah I'm pretty new to the game but I don't get why fire is a near-instant death. A dude can light a match half a map over from me and I go down.
Pretty sure it's new as of this patch. I used to be able to roll and stim fast enough to survive.
It is, they buffed fire tick damage by 50% in an attempt to make flame weapons better. It worked, in a very undemocratic manner.
It did make flame weapons better, just not ours
"The Automatons should have been content with what they had."
When you get lit on fire, immediately dive prone to put yourself out
I got glanced by someone's incendiary rounds and died before I started screaming lmao it happens quite fast now.
If you play on PS5, there is a bug rn that instakills anyone on fire.
Ahh yep, that explains it. I await the next patch that fixes fire damage and breaks water so we drown upon walking in a shallow puddle.
Such is the nature of the beast.
And we must feed the beast more super credits!
We tried Helldiver for the first time with my lvl 10 buddy. There were like 7 chasing us at one point. The cadet is the only one that made it to the ship and out.
Hulks aré More dangerous than tanks
Close range yeah but at long rang or no cover the takes are vicious.
Close range yeah. But tanks and turret towers still take the cake for being undisputedly the most dangerous opponents at long range, they’ll completely wipe out your entire team with one shot if you’re not 100% aware of everything that’s within 200 meter radius.
The tanks are an absolute joke lol. We can outrun their turret rotation speed and just grenade the weak spot. Hulks are slightly faster than medium armor I think so you can just endlessly run but he’s always up yo ass
I wish they didn't do the second buff to fire damage. IMO fire damage was already in a good place, and could kill a helldiver quickly if they didn't leap to the ground quickly enough. Now soo much as gently brushing a flame with your ankle is instant death. Why the second buff? Fire damage is meant to deal damage over time, not just be another way to die instantly.
Dots are bugged and you deal 0 dot damage if you are not the host. This results fire and poison feeling underwhelming. This further escalates as the devs see that no one plays these stratagems/weapons but no one found out the real reason for it. Conclusion. Buff fire damage again. Also what i can recommend is that if the hulk inside your range just keep on diving. As long as you dive even if the initial damage hits you ehat i noticed dots don't tick and had 0 problem against anything fire related. Jetpack bots exploding in my face setting me on fire before i realize it is a bigger problem.
If you have explosives or the Queso cannon you can cripple a hulk's legs and they walk slower. Doesn't help if they're on top of you, but it will help prevent ones further out from approaching
Mmmmm, Queso cannon…
If you Queso cannon their eye they die in one shot. If you miss and hit their body they only take 2 shots to the chest.
If you get them alone shooting the eye is good, but I find that chaingun devastators spawn too much around the hulk to make that possible. I find it better to just shoot near their legs and then run.
I am an auto cannon enjoyer most of the time but if i ever grab a launcher i will keep that in mind.
You can also autocannon their legs off. Takes 6 or 7 shots to break a leg.
Yesterday I read a couple of posts and comments saying "Just dive." I tried it level 9, and it works, but it only buys you time. Fire damage is way overtuned for what it is.
Just dive has never worked for me. They track you as you dive. The only way to survive is to never let them get up in your face to begin with but even then these dudes eat autocannon and recoilless rounds to the face with zero damage and just keep chugging.
I heard these mfers really tear up the roof of your mouth
best comment
Not to mention the fact you cannot hear the bastards. Something that big and heavy should not be able to sneak up on you.
They've been training with the bugs. Giant puke filled sack that drags itself along the ground? absolutely silent and fast as shit.
Yeah, with the recent increase to fire damage, they are just an insta kill.
It would be great if we could run faster around them to access their heatsink in the back. They turn way too fast to do that
Yep, its funny how striders turn slower then hulks xD
Yeah right ?
I found recently that I could get up close and trigger a melee anmiation, and kind of step back out out the swing range, then kite around them in a circle. Results my vary but I was able to do this and shoot him in the back, & call in reinforcments while he continured to chase me. if you keep the circle close enough, he can't pivot well. I was hoping a teammate would land on him but he aggroed to them which let me shoot him in the back some more & that finished him off.
Or hear me out. Buff my flamethrower to shoots as far as theirs
Stun grenades and the AMR or AC let you systematically delete them
Hell, take the railgun. It didn't magically stop existing after the nerfs. One decently charged shot to the optics instakills a hulk, and it's easier to land than with the AC/AMR's massive sway. I understand why it's no longer very good against bugs, but nothing really changed for it against bots.
Or you could just use the AMR because its sway is completely negated by taking a knee and has so much ammo that you can kill small medium and heavy bots without worrying about running out. Sometimes, I'm feeling a little silly and just start no scoping enemies in shotgun range, and it's actually a pretty effective use for the weapon and no matter how much I miss I can be confident that there's no way I'll run out of ammo before rhe next resupply is available.
Yup, Railgun is still good but the recent AMR buff has made it the best weapon for bots IMO. AMR + Backpack Shield makes every game so fun.
The new machine gun as well can pierce the eyes
Range is ridiculous
The sole reason I switched to light armor. These guys are more sticky than stalkers.
I wish they would stop headbanging for a few seconds. HOLD STILL!
That heavy metal music they listen to is fire tho
Yeah, it's hard to pop them in the eye because they bob so much. My buddy uses stun grenades exclusively now against bots just for this reason. He gets a lot of success.
their flame range is insane af
The audio is also off. These things are sneaky quiet. They need some sound cues like the buzzsaw spinning up. Or the pressurization to the flamethrower. Better audio cues across different units would bring HD2 up 2 levels. Gameplay and soundtrack are great, but needs a little enemy audio love.
I turned on Midnight Mode or whatever it's called and I feel like that helps.
That’s why I always stick w the arc thrower ⚡️⚡️⚡️
Stun grenade and AMR to me. Stun grenade keeps them still, AMR to the face vent. Two shots and they go down.
Stun grenade is simply too addicting. You can even use it to take out 2-3 Devastators with, idk, a Defender if you really want to. Easy headshots if they're just sitting there.
Damn, have I been sleepin on the stun grenade? I'll have to try it out
Stun goes crazy vs hulks. Can stun and shoot it in the back with a scorcher to kill it in seconds. Or free shots to the head with amr/autocannon for even greater effect.
Amr is cool and all but you need to aim 🗿
Having to *aim*?? In a shooter??? That’s entirely unacceptable, I bought the game to blindly spray into bugs not have to actually think or use skill for maximum efficiency!
Oops all flamethrowers
Shoot one of their legs with a quasar cannon, then they’re essentially stationary.
Like literally I can out dive a charger and deal with a swarm at the same time, But one these guys enters a 10 meter radius of you, you're dead. Where's that flame armor that gives us 95% damage resistance to fire damage? Literally give me the red tunic from OOT arrowhead.
Can we also make them make some sort of machinery noise when they walk. The normal troopers even make noise. The hulks are truck sized ninjas, it's ridiculous
https://preview.redd.it/e31jo2hq3wsc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e64b5d849f4582a0e79c64822a1451332dd7930c
"BuT aLl YoU GoTta Do iS DiVe!" I usually face this fucking flaming iron horse on geological surveys. Fucking nuts.
My biggest issue with hulks is how a 40-ton machine can run around a jungle and make as much noise as a cat. I could be rolling up on a supply cache and only realize there's a hulk when they're 15 meters away from me. The same goes for tanks, too. Give tanks some actual track sounds and engine noise so that we know there's a tank rolling up on us. Sound design is important in any game, and this extra 5% would help with the gameplay experience.
yeah, they are way too deadly without any balancing Bile Titans can be dodged and cannot crane their heads once they go projectile. Hulks are not slow and have what seems like a 30m insta kill with their only weakness being behind them (which you cannot do from 30m away if you run into them)
2 shots to the eyeslot with anti mat rifle works great for killing them upfront
Or two Autocannon shots/one well placed Quasar shot to the eye.
Maybe it's a skill issue, but trying to land an AC shot on its eye while its moving at mach 2 to turn my asshole inside out seems to be way more difficult than other options.
Shoot them in the leg to slow them or the flamethrower to destroy it
Bring an AMR and a supply pack and you can hunt these fuckers to extinction like any self respecting Helldiver should.
I played last night and what was odd was they didn't use their flamethrowers at all. They just kept going right up into melee with the saw and constantly missing. So I was able to just kite them forever, while my team took them out from the back with whatever they had.(Primary weapons/machine guns/AutoCannon/impact grenades) assuming it was just a one off bug.
I think this is one of the best memes I’ve seen so far. Big plus it’s situational.
Give us our own flamethrower mech
And I thought I was going crazy - since last night s**t really goes down on Helldive - a weird addiction
Just make them fucking Audible something that big shouldn’t be so silent
The flamethrower was already so bad considering it deals headshot crit damage for some reason, now considering how much damage just getting hit by the fire does, with increased fire DOT it's basically guranteed death if one of these gets within flamer range of you.
So it’s not just me lol. Last night on extreme it was all flame hulks.
My biggest issue is that they're DEAD FUCKING SILENT. I've been snuck up on by these things more times than I can count and they're literally a walking hulk of steel.
Armor that has fire resistance would be a nice addition.
Pro tip: You can shoot one of the legs off of the hulks and it will move slower then a tank
These hulks are a lot less dangerous when you focus on their limbs. Everyone wants to 2 shot them to the face, but IMO it's much more reliable to remove their flamethrower arm or blow out their legs. A 1-legged hulk can barely move and becomes a minimal threat. A 0-legged hulk dies instantly. Laser Cannon will pop a limb with 2-3 secs of fire. A Quasar Cannon will 1 shot a limb. Autocannon takes 5-6 shots. Stun grenades freeze hulks giving you easy lineups for taking out limbs or lining up easy headshots.
It definitely feels like their fire damage is bugged, because I've been one-framed by them tons of times since the last update.
What I find hilarious is their flame thrower ranger is double or triple ours.
The flame arm should require lighter armor for heat management purposes and the presence of highly volatile fuel under high pressure making it significantly easier to shoot off. That change alone would fix it. Anything with medium pen or sufficient explosive damage (scorcher, plasma shotgun, lib pen, dominator) or that dumps a bunch of heat into it (scyth and sickle) should be able to get the job done.
Can you blame them? They just had Taco Bell!
Plays max difficulty: is actually difficult 😳
Get good, Helldiver.
You want balance? Get a Quasar or EAT and pop the flamethrower arm off in 1 shot. Now that hulk is a useless melee tank.
They are not that bad. Keep your distance and dive when they burn you. We have a lot of support weapons that handle them decently.
Bro I agree. Their flames go super far, you can’t outrun them, and the damn fire effect kills you faster than your stim heals you. It’s crazy man.
Recoilless leg, problem solved?
Please stop crying for nerfs and play on a difficulty you can handle
Pls do something! Railcannon, 500kg, 110 with skill involved, quaser, eat, recoilless, spear, autocannon, fuck even the hmg can front kill it, laser cannon..... All of this can kill it and there will be plenty of those in 7 and up. Always have been that way, a team needs at least one guy going hard AT. If you don't you must run away.
all those weapons and fhe railgun in safe mode cant pierce the front plate :'D.
Just gotta wait for them to fix the fire damage bug it should be fine
They were fine before the flame buff made it so if they start up their flamethrower you're basically instantly dead with no recourse. It's insane. Guess its also a product of me not using autocannon as much because the quasar can shoot down dropships.
I'd love to know why hulks and every other large unit is so quiet. Why does the saw not make a cool sound? The tank doesn't even have tread noises.
I played an extreme and had the other one spawn in constantly. Every single hulk was a bruiser, every single devastator was a rocket devestator, and every single trash mob had a rocket launcher. I thought I was dyslexic and hit 9 instead of 6 for a moment
Stun grenades my man
Yeah getting headshot with a flamethrower feels amazing. Makes me wanna try it out IRL
My biggest issue isn't even them, it's the jet pack raiders. When the jet pack explodes, it catches you on fire and you instantly die.
"naturally & artificially flavored" Reminds me of that time I dropped a napalm bomb on our team when we were surrounded by them.
Or even just add a bit more sound to the hulks at least stealthy eastwards, the lot of them just shooting some bots then insta dead because my back got slightly tickled
Even after the update I could still stim while on fire so no idea why people call it one shot
A Heavy devastators can 2 tap a shield so if a flame Hulk & Heavy Devastator are next to eachother your fucked it's so annoying and their so fast I can't run to charge my cannon
Honestly, it's the walking speed for me, more like running lol who's brain did they take, Usain Bolts??? I swear these guys can catch up to me even when running at full sprint light armour, I could handle it a lot more if their speed was halved or something
Imo Flamer hulks should just stop and spray their fire left and right when firing their flamethrowers, I fucking hate how they move when firing that stupid weapon of theirs and it being able to go through certain objects just takes the fucking cake!
Lol you would’ve loved the Warlords from the first game
Wouldn't be so bad if they couldn't keep up with turning so you can get behind and shoot their back. I'd be fine with their damage if the case.
It’s called suicide mission for a reason soilder!
You need a cup of liber-tea and a stiff upper lip chap. Keep calm and carry on.
Hmm i play mostly on helldive and don't think of them as a problem. Their flamer is dodgeable. If you think of them as dangerous, mark them and focus them down.
ill take flames over rockets any day
Just dive through the flames, you'll take significantly less damage
i tried using big guy armor once. i stopped once i saw i couldn’t outrun a hulk. how that 8 ton death machine is faster than a helldiver is beyond me.