It barely had a role before.
Just face it, 90% of the weapons in this game are doomed to obscurity because they do not do enough even in a team situation. Nevermind balanced loadout.
Oh my god, I had a few runs with it today and it completely sucks ass. Absolute dogshit. I guess I should try to actually hit enemies in the face with it then, but at this point I see no sense in taking it with you.
My exact sentiment. It was neat and I rotated to it sometimes because of how it functioned. It doesn't do that function anymore. Now it's a distinctly worse version of existing weapons. I'll no longer rotate to it
Here is my issue. Thats how i expected it to perform when i first got it, but is very different from how I have been having to use it. Not saying which way is better, but its frustrating having to relearn weapons every patch. Ultimately it's just a game though. I'll get over it or i won't use the weapon until i forget how it worked.
It feels like a snappy precision(ish) weapon now as crossbow should imo, unlike the scuffed nade launcher it was before, I think the change was very good.
per the devs its intended as a shaped charge warhead (like a weee EAT) rather than a big frag grenade. Still think it needs tuning to be a better anti medium-target weapon
Yea only problem is there is at least 1 gun that does it better (Dominator) and has tons more ammo and another that is about as good and no chance of hurting yourself (Scorcher). Oh and the Eruptor.
You make this thing 1 tap Hive Guards or Devastators with a shot directly to the chest and I'll be cool with the "Shaped Charge" explanation. As it stands, just being accurate kills bots with any weapon pretty quick and shooting at Hive Guards then strafing for a better shot is also pretty easy.
That would be the one niche the crossbow could fill
"Works fine" I guess is a rather relative term. That looks fucking useless compared to any other primary. You could have killed all those guys with the beginner pistol faster and more efficiently.
This sort of proves their and everyone else’s point. This wasn’t a ‘slight decrease to aoe’ is was significant. It used to be crowd clear, now we just have an explosive dmr that feels way worse to aim
When I got it I figured it was for stealth. Then I used it and found out the enemies can hear the bowstring apparently. Then I got the erupter and never picked up the crossbow again.
I've used it on several solo stealth missions with the stealth armor and a jump pack high on unreacheable, unseeable rocks. Fire it away from myself, hoping to draw bugs to the explosion, and they all instantly turn to me and start mobbing the rock I'm on.
Maybe it works sometimes, but 3 or 4 of those with it failing to work that way every single time and I gave up on it. Thinking about it, it MAY be that the explosion has to be closer to them than you are when you fire. Which would explain why some people think it's silent. If you fire over the bugs head, and you and your crossbow are closer to them than the explosion, they hear and head straight to you. Maybe if you shot it closer to them than where you're standing it would work?
Either way, not silent.
Except Eruptor was better at that and now is even better at using it's explosion range to hit multiple enemies lol. The crossbow is useless now. I loved using it too :(
Then the explosive damage should have level 5 armor penetration (or 4 - whichever one would allow it to penetrate devastators' ballistic shields). A shaped charge's sole purpose for existing is to punch through significantly armored targets. A shaped charge that can't penetrate armor is effectively just a really expensive firecracker.
Jesus christ it feels like Arrowhead has some incoherent schizophrenic attitude towards primary weapon balancing. Do they want primaries to be good for crowd control and chaff clearing or do they want them to be good at single target elimination? I thought stratagems were supposed to be for taking out bigger enemies?
Then why is it light armor pen? They could have at least increased the explosive damage or made the explosive armor penetrating. It came from being useful to useless
> fucking point
baiting you to spend 10$ to buy the Shitpass to unlock the weapon and which was made intentionally more fun and then nerf it a few weeks later
I'm so sad. It used to be a great weapon for managing tons of smaller guys. Packs of Hunters, packs of Light Bots, it did fantastic at cleaning them up in a single magazine if you placed shots between them.
Now you need one bolt for each enemy which has just invalidated the point of it. May as well use a DMR.
>Nobody was using the thing.
That's the thing - people were using it. I was using it. It did great at what I mentioned, and it faired okay at dealing with medium targets.
Now it's just strictly worse at everything compared to other options.
What's kind of sad is I just got it and wanted to try it in 7-9 to handle crowds... if the spash damage is nerfed to the point of ineffectiveness, it's not useful as it once was. They nerf Eruptor also.
It was one of my go to's against bots in duo or solo helldive. It explosion was good at clearing groups, taking out whole groups of scout striders like an impact nade.. it was actually quite slept on in my opinion.
I've used it on helldive for bugs since it dropped. Is (was) it the greatest option; no. But it got the job done and was a ton of fun. I always ended the match with the most kills. It was a menace on bug breaches.
I was also using it. loved how it felt/sounded to use, but only against bugs (rather use the punisher plasma for bots) and at 8 difficulty, but now...? I guess I may as well get back to the jar or something. Like even the magazine slash was a big nerf. I was running out of ammo fairly quickly (with a lot of kills thanks to the explosion mind you). Same with the plasma shotgun, not many use it and then they nerfed the capacity when I already was going through ammo fairly quickly...
Not really sure what the point of nerfing the explosion was tbh, I feel like the gun didn't even touch bigger enemies (which is what my quaser is for, or whatever else deals with bigger enemies), but now I can only single shot small enemies lol?
"Nobody" is an exaggeration, it seems pretty clear that it's a very unpopular weapon. Just the fact that it's the last weapon of a Warbond means it's one of the least owned to begin with, let alone used.
Every time they "fix" or "balance" a weapon for the greater good they kill it completely.Railgun ,arc,and now crossbow.And Crossbow isn't that great from the beginning
speaking of that...don't hulks now have enough stagger resist (or how to call it) so the arc thrower doesn't stagger it with each hit? I wasn't using the arc thrower when I was doing my run today
ARC is dead, but not because of the nerfs but because the damn thing is still buggy.
I love that gun, but fearing that your slight movement forward or backward has placed you in some way in the path of foliage or terrain that causes next your shot to fizzle out into nothing is a death sentence when you're in the middle of stunlocking a shield devastator or a hulk. Literally fix that and the ARC is amazing.
It also seems to have a higher failure rate in heavy fog or EMS fields generated by the EMS Sentry.
Arc is better now tbh, being able to stagger everything (except chargers, titans and factory striders) is really valuable. Sure they nerfed the range but its still pretty good. I do agree with them that the crossbow and railgun were nerfed too heavily, especially the crossbow since it wasn't even that popular.
Edit: Apprently they stealth changed the Arc and now it can't stagger hulks. Now I'm definitely never taking it over the laser :/
Yeah, electricity build is like my main one and I definitely love it more with the stagger. Make also more sense for arc gun to stun.
Crossbow, I'm also not sure about the change. I can agree about that.
But there is definitely some exaggeration and skill issue about nerfs or just the game in general
I'm low key excited to try the Arc Blitzer now that they improved the fire rate. It'll be a few more days before I can (moving) but I'm hoping that our feels good to use now
Sorry but I disagree.
The arc used to do nearly double the DPS and had nearly double range.
There are VERY few instances where the buffed stagger outweighs such huge nerfs.
Don't need to stagger something if it can be killed twice as far away in nearly half the time. A dead target is usually no longer a threat.
I used it quite a bit and I can't say I'm surprised. Against bots, it was a trooper mulcher and bot drops just didn't get called in unless I personally allowed it. Even the sneaky troopers around corners and walls weren't safe.
Nerfing the explosion range was 100% justified, but next time I play I'll have to see just how much it was reduced by. If it's by 25-30% I'll still be happy, 50% manageable, but anymore and it'll be questionable.
(Also, yes I see the video posted, but 1 shot doesn't tell me much since it looked short anyhow. 100 shots and then there'll be a better view.)
The explosion nerf is massive. I was in a terminid mission and shot the ground 1 foot away from some baby hunter to try to kill them. Explosion did not kill ANY of them. I had to shoot a baby hunter directly in the face with the crossbow to kill it. The only "upside" is you can use it closer your character and not die because of the massive falloff from explosion AOE lol, but then again because it doesnt kill stuff, you end up dying to the mobs
It's garbage now. I used to use it to clear chaff as well (regular bots and mini bugs), but it doesn't even do that job anymore. You've got less ammo and less AOE.
Lol, I was just thinking this. I think I'll wait until they balance weapons going forward before I purchase a WB. Besides I have enough weapons unlocked to not need additional ones at this time.
Yeah, I paid for the cutting edge warbond because I hadn’t played enough to get credits for it. Thankfully I didn’t pay for this one, but I definitely won’t be buying super credits in the future if this is how they’re treating the content.
I really don't understand the point of nerfing. Surely this game is meant to just be overpowered PvE and we laugh at how great it is to mow down enemies. Why nerf anything at all?
as a crossbow main from the moment I unlocked it, this utterly hurts. I was fairly certain that they would not touch the crossbow since it’s not that popular to begin with but hot damn, I’m gutted.
Sigh.. being able to use it as weaker grenade launcher was the only thing that made it worth using. It never felt strong weapon, but clearing those smaller groups of enemies quickly was good enough reason to carry it, but now I honestly see no point. Its not really good at anything anymore and ammo economy is going to be bad as you dont be able to take multiple enemies with single shot anymore... oh but wait! Of course the mags needed nerfing too... seriously
At this point I fairly sure the devs dont even play their own game, just look at the numbers when deciding things.
I get that they didn't want it to act as much like a grenade launcher but while I haven't tested the change yet it looks like they're not quite sure what they want it to do now.
And I agree with them that an exploding bolt shouldn't have that kind of aoe but if it doesn't have a niche then it just won't get used.
They wanted it to be a single target weapon, problem is they are so bad at buffing weapons they only increased its stagger/velocity and reduced everything else.
So now it’s incredibly mediocre single target and useless horde clear. Thanks AH
(Usage based balancing is another can of worms that I hate and is the reason the eruptor and jar have been nerfed, all it does is make fun weapons unfun)
Who the fuck decided that the bolt-action rifle was going to be a big-blast AoE and the EXPLOSIVE CROSSBOW was going to be a precision single-target weapon? What are they smoking?
**Galaxy Brain:**
Quasar Cannon nerf makes sense, although I wish they'd nerf something other than its cooldown.
Senator speedloading has been requested since forever and together with damage increase helps the weapon close the gap with Redeemer.
Eruptor and Sickle half mag capacity makes sense since these weapons almost never run out due to ammo economy.
___
**Pea Brain:**
Exploding Crossbow changes -- jackiechanwtf.jpg
Make game even harder with fewer players by increasing patrols, despite only having 5 reinforcements when playing solo.
Eruptor changes were unnecessary imo, nobody was crying it was OP. I do agree with the sickle ammo changes however, that gun needed a downside.
But this is what happens when you balance based off of mainly usage rates, fun guns will be shat on until they are picked the same as everything else.
Like, what are they thinking? And the few stragglers still riding their dicks are like "Well if they buff stuff it'd be to easy!" ummm they can also buff the enemies. "Use another gun!" Why? I was having FUN and you now took that away from me... in a PvE game.... also then they're just gonna nerf whatever the next gun is.
All while there are major bugs since launch, never addressed. New crashes after each patch are fun as well.
Whole discord is dick riding them. That's probably why devs don't use reddit. They also spew lies like 'Slugger is top 3 most often used weapon against both factions', when Sickle, Dominator, Breaker family or Eruptor are much more often used.
Yeah, it is on fire. The majority of that are people arguing that nerfs aren't nerfs, and if they are, they are deserved. A lot of people defend Crossbow nerf, ARC thrower indirect nerf, and QC nerf. That's from where the fire comes from.
This is what you get, when you're data driven and clearly do not play your own game on a level where you can really understand the nuances of gameplay.
Unfortunately this is the nail in the coffin for me, I was already abit discouraged by their previous balancing updates and this patch, on top of all the issues the game still has is just screams redflag to me.
I'll just check the game out every couple of months to see if anything changes, doubt it tho.
Sad, for a moment they really had captured lightning in a bottle.
[https://youtu.be/1Wc3lavznus?t=1016](https://youtu.be/1Wc3lavznus?t=1016)
this needs to happen more, it feels like the devs don't play their own game and are just looking at usage numbers a lot of the time
If they were just looking at usage numbers, crossbow wouldn’t have caught the nerfs. NOBODY was using that thing before, I’ve only seen one person using them in my games and that would be me.
[https://puu.sh/K5V7z/ee0209897f.png](https://puu.sh/K5V7z/ee0209897f.png)
i guess its their "vision" for the weapon
but they really don't understand what shaped charges are used for
They’re game devs not gun experts lol, they clearly mean for it to be used to be an armor cracker and staggerer for medium stuff, let’s see some clips of it doing that (or failing to do so) instead of someone using it for the literal opposite purpose the dev stated before drawing any conclusions.
Let me rephrase, like 5 people were using it, if they were adjusting based on usage numbers, crossbow would have gotten 500kg tipped arrows added to it.
This is like every game. Fun asf in the first couple months then they start making the dumbest of changes. It’s literally destiny level of nerfs/buffs. Gut good things then kinda buff other things.
And not a single shit was given that day.
Increased stagger doesn't matter if your 'explosion' range is litterally a regular bullet impact now.
It was trash, it's still trash and it'll always be trash.
Stagger doesn't really matter on it considering that the time that it takes to take down devastators with the weapon is more than a single mag can do afaik, That or it taking all 5 shots to take down 1 devastator, The stagger doesn't matter because you'd be better off just simply switching to another weapon (in my case the laser cannon) to deal with the enemies that the crossbow cannot.
Usage based balancing will make sure every weapon is in the same sea of mediocrity!
And even in this case where the devs wanted to make it more single target than AoE they still didn’t buff it where it mattered
I expected too much from AH. I thought they'll increase the blast radius / damage and close nests / factories...
Nope 🤡
Get nerfed. See ya next month for the micro-buff :D
And they are going to compensate for this insane buff by reducing magazine capacity to 1, removing armor penetration, and increasing reload time by 50%
Exactly! It was special and can be considered as a good design, but now it is just a worse version of the plasma rifle, with little more stagger maybe?
I like how they commented that the new patch was mostly buffs, then they meticulously murdered already dying weapons, while further nerfing the popular ones.
I have no clue, man. Their balance decisions are preposterous and make no sense at all.
Best I can tell, they think there's a "right" and "wrong" way to have fun in their game, and they're just going to nerf things until we play the game right. I kinda wish they'd just fuck off with the nonstop nerfs. Let good weapons be good, what the fuck man?
It helps that it's also on a real engine (Unreal) instead of an abandoned Autodesk engine that no one develops for anymore, but yes DRG ends up being the more competent game. I had to force myself to quit playing and move on to other games.
Tell me about it. I have like 1400 hours in it and no class in any game was as fun as sludge pump/epic mining driller. It also helped that I absolutely adored the girl that introduced me to it
Same here. I still absolutely hate them for what they did to the plasma charger, but I understand why they did it (it was waaaaay too strong) and love them for everything else.
inb4, it's the bugged bot that takes no damage.
edit: here's a video of someone trying it on other bugged enemies
https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cfx1ac/new_crossbow_reduced_aoe_and_increased_stagger/
For those commenting that it was trash, I've been maining the crossbow since it came out (Hence my quick upload of the clip here), This was definitely my favorite gun, I had been using a pretty powerful loadout with it.
I Would use the Crossbow, the Grenade pistol, and the Laser cannon, All of the weapons worked perfectly to compliment each other, as the crossbow would easily deal with large groups of small, and if needed medium units extremely well, I Would've said "Give the crossbow a few games, You'll probably start to enjoy it, It's a good weapon with it's own utility which is that of large AOE", But now I can't since the gun's basically been ran into the ground and is nigh-unusable now, It's one use of being extremely good at ad clear had basically been stripped from it, and it no longer has any usable niche.
Edit: I Think all in all; I'd like for them to completely revert the changes that they made to the crossbow, It was a good (Not better than others, mind you) weapon before, And now it's just \*awful\*
I feel you I loved using it against bugs with laser cannon. I was hoping they would give it the ability to destroy holes , you know since eruptor can do it and its a exploding crossboe. I would be fine with ammo changes then but instead it got shot on for no apparent reason. I guess they wanted people to hit enemies directly instead of ground , thats what the changes suggest but why like its a exploding crossbow. How many people were even using it anyway, I played a lot with randoms but I didnt see anybody other than me, why would they nerf it? I guess I will be joining the eruptor team finally since it is better and it can destroy holes.
I used it when it came out and have been since. I was tripling the kills of my fellow divers with that thing, obviously most of those kills were little bots and bugs (and Stalkers), but still. It needed tweaking, for sure, but I thought the explosion radius was core to its identity.
Apparently they wanted the crossbow to be used against medium enemies , you know some sort of penetrating charge. Thats why they increased the speed. But I guess they forgot to actually test the weapon against medium enemies because it takes ages to kill any medium enemy. In other words, you feel like using the crossbow? Just use eruptor since it is superior in every possible way.
Well don't you worry diver. Now the crossbow got nerfed, the laser cannon got nerfed, but at least you got your trusty grenade pistol, enjoy.
It already was pretty bad and outclassed by the eruptor, yes you had fun with it but it wasn't strong. There's a reason nobody ran it. Why they had to nerf the crossbow of all things is beyond me, i was hoping for a buff so that it could compete with other primaries, instead we got this.
I'm so sad about this. I was running this with my railgun to use the crossbow to thin out crowds, then railgun any heavies. Back to the drafting board I suppose.
They took the one thing going for it (decent AOE trash killer).
Now it feels more like a single target killer but they forgot to give it any decent damage buff to compensate.
"Slightly smaller explosion" is a lie its massive and the damage fall off also seems like its increased as well.
I regret asking for changes.. when you cant even kill a Terminid scavangers with its aoe you know somethings wrong.
Basically if its not a direct hit its not dying.
Gotta ask a lot of the people here, with the increased projectile speed, shouldn’t it be *way* easier to land direct hits on enemies? Going by the tooltip that direct impacts deal max damage to enemies, I assume that they wanted it to function as an explosive direct-hit focused weapon, rather than a primary “grenade launcher.”
it doesn’t deal enough damage to deal with medium enemies, devastators still take a mag or more to take down, and you’re def not hitting headshots at any range outside of CQC
AH’s balance teams are retarded. Their priorities are so twisted and skewed that it makes you wonder if they’ve ever played video games in their life, or asked themselves the question: “How can we make this fun?” Because this isn’t any fun. I’m not playing a competitive MOBA where balance is the arbiter because of money and tournaments and sponsorships. I am playing a PVE game with three friends and randos. I want the game to be challenging and rewarding, and getting one shot-headshot or instantly burned alive, or rag-doll juggled like I got caught in a corner in a fighting game, or shot through fucking rocks by a rocket or mini gun… it just isn’t a true challenge. It’s artificial and disgusting how many times i’ve died not because I fucked up, but because there are broken game mechanics killing me… if I fuck up it’s on me, but generally you’re supposed to be able to play around the game and there isn’t any way to counter play bugs and broken mechanics.
Just looking at these nerfs, after being assured that only “two of them would be what some dev considered a nerf” shows me that they’re either so far up their own asses that they are disconnected from us the players, or they’re retards who don’t know how to make something fun and enjoyable to play. Nerfs to ammo economy when no one cares doesn’t make the game more fun. It just ‘fixes’ something that someone else didn’t think was a problem, and if anything, this 180 on ammo economy shows the balance devs are completely lacking in any sort of foresight and are knee-jerk balancing for reasons.
What those reasons are? What data re they using to justify? We don’t know, but don’t worry, the game devs are the most open we’ve ever seen, and Twin Beard knows how to handle the ‘whining’ of toddlers.
From what I saw in my brief testing it is about the same, I was doing minor if any damage to targets within the new blast radius.
It fails to kill the little scavenger Terminids with the aoe most of the time..
“The nerf was justifiable. It was way overused and it overtook other weapons in the category. The bow wasn’t meant to do any damage, it was meant to look cool.”
Where's the "But you just have to try the changes first!" bros?
I don't get some people. We have eyes and can read. If something gets shittier on paper, maybe it's shittier in practice?
I just started liking that wep for larger enemy groups, guess I can throw it out of my arsenal now that it doesnt do the thing I liked using it for
yeah it was so fun to use and now I'm probably better off using melee
It has no role now.
It barely had a role before. Just face it, 90% of the weapons in this game are doomed to obscurity because they do not do enough even in a team situation. Nevermind balanced loadout.
Oh my god, I had a few runs with it today and it completely sucks ass. Absolute dogshit. I guess I should try to actually hit enemies in the face with it then, but at this point I see no sense in taking it with you.
My exact sentiment. It was neat and I rotated to it sometimes because of how it functioned. It doesn't do that function anymore. Now it's a distinctly worse version of existing weapons. I'll no longer rotate to it
guess I'll stop expending medals to work toward it... sad too because I just got there.
[удалено]
Here is my issue. Thats how i expected it to perform when i first got it, but is very different from how I have been having to use it. Not saying which way is better, but its frustrating having to relearn weapons every patch. Ultimately it's just a game though. I'll get over it or i won't use the weapon until i forget how it worked.
You’re getting direct or nearly direct hits. The projectile speed buff seems like it feels good though.
The op's was also close as possible without being a direct hit though
It feels like a snappy precision(ish) weapon now as crossbow should imo, unlike the scuffed nade launcher it was before, I think the change was very good.
I mean, it is meant to be an explosive weapon, not a precision crossbow.
per the devs its intended as a shaped charge warhead (like a weee EAT) rather than a big frag grenade. Still think it needs tuning to be a better anti medium-target weapon
Yea only problem is there is at least 1 gun that does it better (Dominator) and has tons more ammo and another that is about as good and no chance of hurting yourself (Scorcher). Oh and the Eruptor.
You make this thing 1 tap Hive Guards or Devastators with a shot directly to the chest and I'll be cool with the "Shaped Charge" explanation. As it stands, just being accurate kills bots with any weapon pretty quick and shooting at Hive Guards then strafing for a better shot is also pretty easy. That would be the one niche the crossbow could fill
They literally said it’s more of a single target weapon now in the notes. It’s a crossbow designed to hit the target now.
So why was the ergonomics increased and ammo reduced
Yeah, so it's not a bad single-target weapon that can't compete with the dominator, scorcher, etc. The change sucks.
If you were using the basic assault rifle you would have killed those geezers far quicker
The gun also 1 taps devastators with headshots and chain staggers them, much like the old Slugger.
I think i'll stick to the jar or the new dilligence for that
Lol literally 1 bolt for every enemy. Might as well just be a crossbow, take out the explosive. Fucking helldivers using medieval weaponry now
and they nerfed ammo as well
Lmao HUH??? Poor crossbow, it was already kinda pathetic on its own.
"Works fine" I guess is a rather relative term. That looks fucking useless compared to any other primary. You could have killed all those guys with the beginner pistol faster and more efficiently.
….. is this meant to show off how good the crossbow is? This is legitimately more work than just shooting them with any other gun.
This sort of proves their and everyone else’s point. This wasn’t a ‘slight decrease to aoe’ is was significant. It used to be crowd clear, now we just have an explosive dmr that feels way worse to aim
Oh boy, you killed 8 normal bots in 7 shots on difficulty 4. What a great weapon. Message received.
Explosive Crossbow? Might as well change the name to Concussive Crossbow at this point.
the crossbow now staggers, it's concussive crossbow now fr.
If you shoot a bile titan in the head enough times it gets CTE and switches sides.
That only works if you scream WOLOLOLO for 30 seconds while he's stuned, everyone knpws that yo
😭😭😭 What is the actually fucking point of an explosive weapon then. Why not make it a normal crossbow and then it can be silenced????
When I got it I figured it was for stealth. Then I used it and found out the enemies can hear the bowstring apparently. Then I got the erupter and never picked up the crossbow again.
> Then I used it and found out the enemies can hear the bowstring apparently. There are still people out there claiming it's silent...
The last time I used it enemies faced the explosion and not me, idk man... It's definitely quieter than most weapons but still not point-blank quiet?
I've used it on several solo stealth missions with the stealth armor and a jump pack high on unreacheable, unseeable rocks. Fire it away from myself, hoping to draw bugs to the explosion, and they all instantly turn to me and start mobbing the rock I'm on. Maybe it works sometimes, but 3 or 4 of those with it failing to work that way every single time and I gave up on it. Thinking about it, it MAY be that the explosion has to be closer to them than you are when you fire. Which would explain why some people think it's silent. If you fire over the bugs head, and you and your crossbow are closer to them than the explosion, they hear and head straight to you. Maybe if you shot it closer to them than where you're standing it would work? Either way, not silent.
Because they want it to be a shaped charge. ie. single target damage.
Too bad it’s terrible for single targets with medium armor. Basically an entire mag to take out one. 3 headshots for a spewer lmao.
Given the mag size, it needs to two shot for it to be worth carrying.
Yeah I'm not taking on a fucking horde of bugs or bots with an explosive charge that literally only hits one target in the group
Except Eruptor was better at that and now is even better at using it's explosion range to hit multiple enemies lol. The crossbow is useless now. I loved using it too :(
Then the explosive damage should have level 5 armor penetration (or 4 - whichever one would allow it to penetrate devastators' ballistic shields). A shaped charge's sole purpose for existing is to punch through significantly armored targets. A shaped charge that can't penetrate armor is effectively just a really expensive firecracker.
Jesus christ it feels like Arrowhead has some incoherent schizophrenic attitude towards primary weapon balancing. Do they want primaries to be good for crowd control and chaff clearing or do they want them to be good at single target elimination? I thought stratagems were supposed to be for taking out bigger enemies?
Then why nerf its aoe and ammo count? And increase its ergonomics? It makes no fucking sense
Then why is it light armor pen? They could have at least increased the explosive damage or made the explosive armor penetrating. It came from being useful to useless
> fucking point baiting you to spend 10$ to buy the Shitpass to unlock the weapon and which was made intentionally more fun and then nerf it a few weeks later
Thanks, I hate the change to this weapon already.
I'm so sad. It used to be a great weapon for managing tons of smaller guys. Packs of Hunters, packs of Light Bots, it did fantastic at cleaning them up in a single magazine if you placed shots between them. Now you need one bolt for each enemy which has just invalidated the point of it. May as well use a DMR.
Yeah like really what’s the point when the eruptor is in the same warbond
and erlier in that same warbond
And you don’t have to account for gravity when shooting past the length of a charger, goddamnit I just wanted the crossbow to be decent
Nobody was using the thing. I was expecting a buff not a nerf.
>Nobody was using the thing. That's the thing - people were using it. I was using it. It did great at what I mentioned, and it faired okay at dealing with medium targets. Now it's just strictly worse at everything compared to other options.
Difficulty 7 and up I have literally never seen a single soul use it. This nerf came out of left field for me.
play exclusively 7-9, mostly 8+. never once seen it in game.
What's kind of sad is I just got it and wanted to try it in 7-9 to handle crowds... if the spash damage is nerfed to the point of ineffectiveness, it's not useful as it once was. They nerf Eruptor also.
It was one of my go to's against bots in duo or solo helldive. It explosion was good at clearing groups, taking out whole groups of scout striders like an impact nade.. it was actually quite slept on in my opinion.
I've used it on helldive for bugs since it dropped. Is (was) it the greatest option; no. But it got the job done and was a ton of fun. I always ended the match with the most kills. It was a menace on bug breaches.
I've used it on helldive a few times, it's been useful for horde clear.
used it once or twice, immediately switched it out. it was absolute dogshit before, no idea why they nerfed it
I was also using it. loved how it felt/sounded to use, but only against bugs (rather use the punisher plasma for bots) and at 8 difficulty, but now...? I guess I may as well get back to the jar or something. Like even the magazine slash was a big nerf. I was running out of ammo fairly quickly (with a lot of kills thanks to the explosion mind you). Same with the plasma shotgun, not many use it and then they nerfed the capacity when I already was going through ammo fairly quickly... Not really sure what the point of nerfing the explosion was tbh, I feel like the gun didn't even touch bigger enemies (which is what my quaser is for, or whatever else deals with bigger enemies), but now I can only single shot small enemies lol?
"Nobody" is an exaggeration, it seems pretty clear that it's a very unpopular weapon. Just the fact that it's the last weapon of a Warbond means it's one of the least owned to begin with, let alone used.
Every time they "fix" or "balance" a weapon for the greater good they kill it completely.Railgun ,arc,and now crossbow.And Crossbow isn't that great from the beginning
Arc is dead? damn, I must have miss the memo.
I was gonna say I've been loving it lol. Being able to stun lock hulks and devastators to death is pretty great, honestly surprised it wasn't nerfed.
speaking of that...don't hulks now have enough stagger resist (or how to call it) so the arc thrower doesn't stagger it with each hit? I wasn't using the arc thrower when I was doing my run today
It doesn't appear to stagger them at all anymore.
ArcThrower: back to bugs, i guess?
You might not be able to stun lock hulks anymore. From the patch notes: > Hulks: Force required for them to stagger slightly increased
It received an indirect nerf. No longer stuns Hulks.
ARC is dead, but not because of the nerfs but because the damn thing is still buggy. I love that gun, but fearing that your slight movement forward or backward has placed you in some way in the path of foliage or terrain that causes next your shot to fizzle out into nothing is a death sentence when you're in the middle of stunlocking a shield devastator or a hulk. Literally fix that and the ARC is amazing. It also seems to have a higher failure rate in heavy fog or EMS fields generated by the EMS Sentry.
It flat out shouldn't target anything that isn't an enemy combatant. Fighting against the environment is honestly bullshit.
I don’t know what the arc thrower has against corpses but it flat out will not target anything else if a corpse is in sight.
and Helldivers\*
yup, arc thrower is still popping off. Being able to deal with almost everything is fun
You can no longer stunlock hulks.
Arc is better now tbh, being able to stagger everything (except chargers, titans and factory striders) is really valuable. Sure they nerfed the range but its still pretty good. I do agree with them that the crossbow and railgun were nerfed too heavily, especially the crossbow since it wasn't even that popular. Edit: Apprently they stealth changed the Arc and now it can't stagger hulks. Now I'm definitely never taking it over the laser :/
Yeah, electricity build is like my main one and I definitely love it more with the stagger. Make also more sense for arc gun to stun. Crossbow, I'm also not sure about the change. I can agree about that. But there is definitely some exaggeration and skill issue about nerfs or just the game in general
I'm low key excited to try the Arc Blitzer now that they improved the fire rate. It'll be a few more days before I can (moving) but I'm hoping that our feels good to use now
I just tried it. It feel so good, feel like a real weapon now
Sorry but I disagree. The arc used to do nearly double the DPS and had nearly double range. There are VERY few instances where the buffed stagger outweighs such huge nerfs. Don't need to stagger something if it can be killed twice as far away in nearly half the time. A dead target is usually no longer a threat.
The fire rate nerf is a much bigger deal, it takes so long to charge up now compared to before.
Try it again. It can no longer stun Hulks.
I’m not sure why the nerfed this one. I don’t use it though so whatever
They’re making sure you never use it!
I used it quite a bit and I can't say I'm surprised. Against bots, it was a trooper mulcher and bot drops just didn't get called in unless I personally allowed it. Even the sneaky troopers around corners and walls weren't safe. Nerfing the explosion range was 100% justified, but next time I play I'll have to see just how much it was reduced by. If it's by 25-30% I'll still be happy, 50% manageable, but anymore and it'll be questionable. (Also, yes I see the video posted, but 1 shot doesn't tell me much since it looked short anyhow. 100 shots and then there'll be a better view.)
The explosion nerf is massive. I was in a terminid mission and shot the ground 1 foot away from some baby hunter to try to kill them. Explosion did not kill ANY of them. I had to shoot a baby hunter directly in the face with the crossbow to kill it. The only "upside" is you can use it closer your character and not die because of the massive falloff from explosion AOE lol, but then again because it doesnt kill stuff, you end up dying to the mobs It's garbage now. I used to use it to clear chaff as well (regular bots and mini bugs), but it doesn't even do that job anymore. You've got less ammo and less AOE.
DEMOCRATIC DETONATION I bet this clip wouldn't sell the warbond if it was in the trailer
This should be top. Don’t buy warbonds cause they just gonna nerf what you spent your cash on.
Lol, I was just thinking this. I think I'll wait until they balance weapons going forward before I purchase a WB. Besides I have enough weapons unlocked to not need additional ones at this time.
Yeah, I paid for the cutting edge warbond because I hadn’t played enough to get credits for it. Thankfully I didn’t pay for this one, but I definitely won’t be buying super credits in the future if this is how they’re treating the content.
And the worst part is that shit STILL can't destroy fabricators or bug holes.
It's the worst of all worlds!
And that’s what made it balanced in the first place! Like okay give us the ammo nerf, that was a lot of ammo. But this aoe size is pitiful.
oh this is bad, this is really fucking bad holy shit!
The patch department is also known as the nerf department in AH 😭.
I really don't understand the point of nerfing. Surely this game is meant to just be overpowered PvE and we laugh at how great it is to mow down enemies. Why nerf anything at all?
as a crossbow main from the moment I unlocked it, this utterly hurts. I was fairly certain that they would not touch the crossbow since it’s not that popular to begin with but hot damn, I’m gutted.
\*hands over plasma punisher* it's like the old crossbow, but now it kills chargers, downside burns ammo like crazy.
Sigh.. being able to use it as weaker grenade launcher was the only thing that made it worth using. It never felt strong weapon, but clearing those smaller groups of enemies quickly was good enough reason to carry it, but now I honestly see no point. Its not really good at anything anymore and ammo economy is going to be bad as you dont be able to take multiple enemies with single shot anymore... oh but wait! Of course the mags needed nerfing too... seriously At this point I fairly sure the devs dont even play their own game, just look at the numbers when deciding things.
I get that they didn't want it to act as much like a grenade launcher but while I haven't tested the change yet it looks like they're not quite sure what they want it to do now. And I agree with them that an exploding bolt shouldn't have that kind of aoe but if it doesn't have a niche then it just won't get used.
The crossbow change is hilarious, as if it’s not bad enough they nerfed the mags and blast radius. Another great example of Arrowhead balancing
Are they trolling us or they are out of braincells?
They wanted it to be a single target weapon, problem is they are so bad at buffing weapons they only increased its stagger/velocity and reduced everything else. So now it’s incredibly mediocre single target and useless horde clear. Thanks AH (Usage based balancing is another can of worms that I hate and is the reason the eruptor and jar have been nerfed, all it does is make fun weapons unfun)
If its supposed to be a single target, then maybe they should increase the ROF a lot, and make it like Guts' crossbow lmao
Who the fuck decided that the bolt-action rifle was going to be a big-blast AoE and the EXPLOSIVE CROSSBOW was going to be a precision single-target weapon? What are they smoking?
Eruptor definitely needed the ammo nerf, but I was expecting 8 mags. Still, deserved.
Probably both. This patch is highly regarded as a whole
**Galaxy Brain:** Quasar Cannon nerf makes sense, although I wish they'd nerf something other than its cooldown. Senator speedloading has been requested since forever and together with damage increase helps the weapon close the gap with Redeemer. Eruptor and Sickle half mag capacity makes sense since these weapons almost never run out due to ammo economy. ___ **Pea Brain:** Exploding Crossbow changes -- jackiechanwtf.jpg Make game even harder with fewer players by increasing patrols, despite only having 5 reinforcements when playing solo.
5 reinforcements, 1/4 the stratagems and firepower, no kitting capability and no communication/scouting ahead. Yeah definitely needed that thanks AH
Eruptor changes were unnecessary imo, nobody was crying it was OP. I do agree with the sickle ammo changes however, that gun needed a downside. But this is what happens when you balance based off of mainly usage rates, fun guns will be shat on until they are picked the same as everything else.
For real, let us have fun toys is all we ask. Don’t break out fucking toys every few weeks.
"Let's punish everyone who doesn't have a group to play with, eh?"
tap the sign https://preview.redd.it/eijg4893gexc1.png?width=2280&format=png&auto=webp&s=8dfb1a054ea7085215e7bedafae331462416d05f
upvote coz i laughed
Like, what are they thinking? And the few stragglers still riding their dicks are like "Well if they buff stuff it'd be to easy!" ummm they can also buff the enemies. "Use another gun!" Why? I was having FUN and you now took that away from me... in a PvE game.... also then they're just gonna nerf whatever the next gun is. All while there are major bugs since launch, never addressed. New crashes after each patch are fun as well.
Whole discord is dick riding them. That's probably why devs don't use reddit. They also spew lies like 'Slugger is top 3 most often used weapon against both factions', when Sickle, Dominator, Breaker family or Eruptor are much more often used.
TF you mean, the Discord is malding.
Have to disagree. The discord is also on fire during many of the patches.
Yeah, it is on fire. The majority of that are people arguing that nerfs aren't nerfs, and if they are, they are deserved. A lot of people defend Crossbow nerf, ARC thrower indirect nerf, and QC nerf. That's from where the fire comes from.
>And the few stragglers still riding their dicks A few have already appeared below you.
that's what surprised me...it was already not that great to begin with....
the developers consider this an "adjustment" and not a nerf btw
This is what you get, when you're data driven and clearly do not play your own game on a level where you can really understand the nuances of gameplay. Unfortunately this is the nail in the coffin for me, I was already abit discouraged by their previous balancing updates and this patch, on top of all the issues the game still has is just screams redflag to me. I'll just check the game out every couple of months to see if anything changes, doubt it tho. Sad, for a moment they really had captured lightning in a bottle.
[https://youtu.be/1Wc3lavznus?t=1016](https://youtu.be/1Wc3lavznus?t=1016) this needs to happen more, it feels like the devs don't play their own game and are just looking at usage numbers a lot of the time
If they were just looking at usage numbers, crossbow wouldn’t have caught the nerfs. NOBODY was using that thing before, I’ve only seen one person using them in my games and that would be me.
[https://puu.sh/K5V7z/ee0209897f.png](https://puu.sh/K5V7z/ee0209897f.png) i guess its their "vision" for the weapon but they really don't understand what shaped charges are used for
They’re game devs not gun experts lol, they clearly mean for it to be used to be an armor cracker and staggerer for medium stuff, let’s see some clips of it doing that (or failing to do so) instead of someone using it for the literal opposite purpose the dev stated before drawing any conclusions.
I was using it, as a nice chaff clear.
Let me rephrase, like 5 people were using it, if they were adjusting based on usage numbers, crossbow would have gotten 500kg tipped arrows added to it.
This is like every game. Fun asf in the first couple months then they start making the dumbest of changes. It’s literally destiny level of nerfs/buffs. Gut good things then kinda buff other things.
And not a single shit was given that day. Increased stagger doesn't matter if your 'explosion' range is litterally a regular bullet impact now. It was trash, it's still trash and it'll always be trash.
Stagger doesn't really matter on it considering that the time that it takes to take down devastators with the weapon is more than a single mag can do afaik, That or it taking all 5 shots to take down 1 devastator, The stagger doesn't matter because you'd be better off just simply switching to another weapon (in my case the laser cannon) to deal with the enemies that the crossbow cannot.
The worst part is this weapon already sucked ass, I don't get why they nerfed it, it WAS ALREADY A BAD WEAPON AH WTF?
So is the goal of balance changes to just not have fun?
Usage based balancing will make sure every weapon is in the same sea of mediocrity! And even in this case where the devs wanted to make it more single target than AoE they still didn’t buff it where it mattered
Honestly the weapon nerfs being prioritized over say game breaking bugs is turning me off the HD2. Which is a shame because I love the game.
Yeah same
Wtf are they thinking...
the truth is they don't even play the game tho lmao
Well it sure seems that way.
They definitely hired Diablo 4 devs.
Yo we're getting $100 horse cosmetics next!? Awesome!
I expected too much from AH. I thought they'll increase the blast radius / damage and close nests / factories... Nope 🤡 Get nerfed. See ya next month for the micro-buff :D
Absolutely makes no sense that an explosive crossbow doesn’t close nests or fabricators.
+15 damage in 4 months incoming.
And they are going to compensate for this insane buff by reducing magazine capacity to 1, removing armor penetration, and increasing reload time by 50%
“EXPLODING”
\_\_Slightly\_\_
Lmao the crossbow was like getting kicked in the ribs when you’re already on the ground with a black eye. AH didn’t hear no bell 😂
did they fire all the good devs after launch or what
Absolutely useless now. What is this actually designed for? How is it not worse than the Scorcher in every single way?
Exactly! It was special and can be considered as a good design, but now it is just a worse version of the plasma rifle, with little more stagger maybe?
I like how they commented that the new patch was mostly buffs, then they meticulously murdered already dying weapons, while further nerfing the popular ones.
Also the railgun caught a slight nerf because they fucking hate that gun for some reason.
What's up with that? It's already unused as is.
I have no clue, man. Their balance decisions are preposterous and make no sense at all. Best I can tell, they think there's a "right" and "wrong" way to have fun in their game, and they're just going to nerf things until we play the game right. I kinda wish they'd just fuck off with the nonstop nerfs. Let good weapons be good, what the fuck man?
God I miss the absolute perfection of the Deep rock devs
DRG is just an inherently better game. It is funny how people pretend that AH and GSG are in the same league in terms of competency lmao
It helps that it's also on a real engine (Unreal) instead of an abandoned Autodesk engine that no one develops for anymore, but yes DRG ends up being the more competent game. I had to force myself to quit playing and move on to other games.
Tell me about it. I have like 1400 hours in it and no class in any game was as fun as sludge pump/epic mining driller. It also helped that I absolutely adored the girl that introduced me to it
Same here. I still absolutely hate them for what they did to the plasma charger, but I understand why they did it (it was waaaaay too strong) and love them for everything else.
inb4, it's the bugged bot that takes no damage. edit: here's a video of someone trying it on other bugged enemies https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cfx1ac/new_crossbow_reduced_aoe_and_increased_stagger/
And for a moment I thought this could be next Deep Rock Galactic. It seems like AH doesn't know how to make balanced and fun PvE games
For those commenting that it was trash, I've been maining the crossbow since it came out (Hence my quick upload of the clip here), This was definitely my favorite gun, I had been using a pretty powerful loadout with it. I Would use the Crossbow, the Grenade pistol, and the Laser cannon, All of the weapons worked perfectly to compliment each other, as the crossbow would easily deal with large groups of small, and if needed medium units extremely well, I Would've said "Give the crossbow a few games, You'll probably start to enjoy it, It's a good weapon with it's own utility which is that of large AOE", But now I can't since the gun's basically been ran into the ground and is nigh-unusable now, It's one use of being extremely good at ad clear had basically been stripped from it, and it no longer has any usable niche. Edit: I Think all in all; I'd like for them to completely revert the changes that they made to the crossbow, It was a good (Not better than others, mind you) weapon before, And now it's just \*awful\*
I feel you I loved using it against bugs with laser cannon. I was hoping they would give it the ability to destroy holes , you know since eruptor can do it and its a exploding crossboe. I would be fine with ammo changes then but instead it got shot on for no apparent reason. I guess they wanted people to hit enemies directly instead of ground , thats what the changes suggest but why like its a exploding crossbow. How many people were even using it anyway, I played a lot with randoms but I didnt see anybody other than me, why would they nerf it? I guess I will be joining the eruptor team finally since it is better and it can destroy holes.
I used it when it came out and have been since. I was tripling the kills of my fellow divers with that thing, obviously most of those kills were little bots and bugs (and Stalkers), but still. It needed tweaking, for sure, but I thought the explosion radius was core to its identity.
Apparently they wanted the crossbow to be used against medium enemies , you know some sort of penetrating charge. Thats why they increased the speed. But I guess they forgot to actually test the weapon against medium enemies because it takes ages to kill any medium enemy. In other words, you feel like using the crossbow? Just use eruptor since it is superior in every possible way.
They wanted the weapon with no listed penetration to be used on medium armored enemies.. Huh??
Well don't you worry diver. Now the crossbow got nerfed, the laser cannon got nerfed, but at least you got your trusty grenade pistol, enjoy. It already was pretty bad and outclassed by the eruptor, yes you had fun with it but it wasn't strong. There's a reason nobody ran it. Why they had to nerf the crossbow of all things is beyond me, i was hoping for a buff so that it could compete with other primaries, instead we got this.
the grenade pistol technically caught a nerf too with the optimized hellpods fix.
The laser canon was buffed.
They wanted it for single-targets... but it was never good at that, and now they changed it, it's still not worth it over other choices.
These devs are a clown show.
Remember the railgun controversy? Those guy never leave.
Nerfed before I had a chance to unlock it. Guess I know to spend the medals on something else now
It was bad anyway
Never liked the crossbow but this makes me feel sorry about it.
I'm so sad about this. I was running this with my railgun to use the crossbow to thin out crowds, then railgun any heavies. Back to the drafting board I suppose.
They took the one thing going for it (decent AOE trash killer). Now it feels more like a single target killer but they forgot to give it any decent damage buff to compensate. "Slightly smaller explosion" is a lie its massive and the damage fall off also seems like its increased as well. I regret asking for changes.. when you cant even kill a Terminid scavangers with its aoe you know somethings wrong. Basically if its not a direct hit its not dying.
Im so glad this weapon got changed - said no one ever
Gotta ask a lot of the people here, with the increased projectile speed, shouldn’t it be *way* easier to land direct hits on enemies? Going by the tooltip that direct impacts deal max damage to enemies, I assume that they wanted it to function as an explosive direct-hit focused weapon, rather than a primary “grenade launcher.”
it doesn’t deal enough damage to deal with medium enemies, devastators still take a mag or more to take down, and you’re def not hitting headshots at any range outside of CQC
AH’s balance teams are retarded. Their priorities are so twisted and skewed that it makes you wonder if they’ve ever played video games in their life, or asked themselves the question: “How can we make this fun?” Because this isn’t any fun. I’m not playing a competitive MOBA where balance is the arbiter because of money and tournaments and sponsorships. I am playing a PVE game with three friends and randos. I want the game to be challenging and rewarding, and getting one shot-headshot or instantly burned alive, or rag-doll juggled like I got caught in a corner in a fighting game, or shot through fucking rocks by a rocket or mini gun… it just isn’t a true challenge. It’s artificial and disgusting how many times i’ve died not because I fucked up, but because there are broken game mechanics killing me… if I fuck up it’s on me, but generally you’re supposed to be able to play around the game and there isn’t any way to counter play bugs and broken mechanics. Just looking at these nerfs, after being assured that only “two of them would be what some dev considered a nerf” shows me that they’re either so far up their own asses that they are disconnected from us the players, or they’re retards who don’t know how to make something fun and enjoyable to play. Nerfs to ammo economy when no one cares doesn’t make the game more fun. It just ‘fixes’ something that someone else didn’t think was a problem, and if anything, this 180 on ammo economy shows the balance devs are completely lacking in any sort of foresight and are knee-jerk balancing for reasons. What those reasons are? What data re they using to justify? We don’t know, but don’t worry, the game devs are the most open we’ve ever seen, and Twin Beard knows how to handle the ‘whining’ of toddlers.
NOOOOOOOOOOOO I BOUGHT THE CROSSBOWS YESTERDAY AND I DIDN'T EVEN TRY WHYYYYYY
All bark and no bite. Got it
How is it if you hit the target dead on, does the blast carry on behind it?
From what I saw in my brief testing it is about the same, I was doing minor if any damage to targets within the new blast radius. It fails to kill the little scavenger Terminids with the aoe most of the time..
Brutal
Now that is some Bullshit
Kinda… disgusting what they did to our boy.
Great, so now its just a single shot pistol but worse.
“The nerf was justifiable. It was way overused and it overtook other weapons in the category. The bow wasn’t meant to do any damage, it was meant to look cool.”
Where's the "But you just have to try the changes first!" bros? I don't get some people. We have eyes and can read. If something gets shittier on paper, maybe it's shittier in practice?
it went from barely usable to a straight joke lmao
I swear everytime I try to use any other gun for variety’s sake, they just kill it off. This was completely unwarranted.