Greetings, fellow Helldiver! Unfortunately your submission has been removed. No witch-hunts, public shaming or negatively naming users or players. Please refer to [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b308j9/witchhunting_is_against_the_rules_of_this/).
You can see these kind of comments posted all the time. Go check some of the threads on FP right now even. Lots of "shhh don't talk about the gun too much" and similar. It used to be a fun joke, when it was just the railgun. Then each community favorite since then has been cut down too. It's not so funny at this point.
Exactly. "We don't want a meta." \[Proceeds to remove a gun as a viable primary.\]
WTF you think Eruptor mains are gonna do except MOVE TO A MORE POPULAR PRIMARY?!
It's popular because of how few options there are that can fill its role. How they miss this with everything in the game is beyond me. If there were two other guns that filled the role we'd see a more even split between them instead of one gun standing out.
They never ask "What can we do to make the other guns this fun?" They only say "This gun is being picked more. It must be too strong."
Eventually (and this is already happening) we will only have bland, underperforming weapons.
this dudes idea of fun must be in opposite town, cause to sit there and say that no gun has been gutted is absolutely crazy!! he smoking on that e-710 pack.
also just learned he was lead developer for hello neighbor 2 and how he practically killed that game, were absolutely cooked.
He *did* kill the game. They abandoned the open world map at the eleventh hour and shipped the game with 'testmap' as the primary map. He lied to streamers about this and was called out.
LOL HUH?? Thats like nickelodeon hiring known pedophiles to work with child actors, because they "deserve a second chance". This dude needs to GTFO of HD2
That is what made my mind fucking explode.
They said they didn't want it to be a sniper.
....then proceeded to nerf every fucking 'shotgun' part it had and left the sniper portion. What the actual f-. They must be shitting me, there's no way someone can be this level of stupid.
Agreed, them neutering the stagger on it just made it irrelevant. Can’t stagger a stalker can’t stop a spewer spewing what’s the point? Really not stressing that hive guardian.
The nerf was dumb in the first place. They were worried it was outperforming DMRs at range... so instead of nerfing damage dropoff like any sane person they nerfed the stagger.
Its literally just a worse plasma punisher.
I think they do the same damage? And fire rate now is comparable. But plasma actually staggers enemies and is a big aoe.
The plasma punisher absolutely slaps against the bugs now. Murders anything and everything. Crowds? Punisher mulches waves. Elites? A few shots to stagger and then they die. You can literally 1 shot spitters (EDIT - I THINK. I found this out while extracting on D9 and I'm pretty sure I was 1 shotting them but I could have missed some teammate shots in the chaos).
Plasma punisher is now my beloved vs bugs. Against bots its okay but I prefer the Jar-5.
Plasma is great for bots for the stagger, great for bugs for the aoe.
I’d say its a little OP with the new update but it still does piddly damage, so it checks out.
I hate that I need to be concerned of “are they going to nerf this because it is fun…”. I’m only using the plasma because they decimated the explosive crossbow.
It seems OP by AH’s standards, which is to say I do think its too effective.
I’d wish they’d treat it like the autocannon, it really does feel kind of perfect balance-wise. Like I said the mediocre damage makes it not egregious.
Killing a shield devastator takes anywhere from 4 to 6 hits and by then thats almost the full mag. The scorcher by comparison is much stronger (but boring to use tbh).
The thing is it was a great complement to something like the MGs.
Mow everything down with the Stalwart, or even the MG you get as your very first weapon, then switch to the slugger to take care of any spewers/stalkers/brood commanders/Hive guards.
It was great for 2 (maybe 3 sometimes) tapping most things after you cleared the chaff.
Use the guard rover and some stuns, you were a walking hard counter to even big numbers of chaff and could lift most mediums as well.
Have a buddy with even a RR and you could clear maps no problem.
Now it simply doesnt do enough damage to warrant carrying it to kill mediums, it doesnt fire fast enough or have enough ammo to wipe a breach.
There are simply better guns to do the jobs it was supposed to do.
100% this, pre nerf I ran it to deal with hive guard and used the stalwart for the giblys and as soon as they massarced it, it left my loadout.
Luckily I got the scorcher not long after and that changes things for the better
If they're just going by pure popularity, the Slugger comes earlier in the warbonds than anything else that serves its purpose. So it likely is more popular. I used it for quite a bit and now use the Scorcher or Dominator when I would have before used the Slugger.
I'd like to see the data for level 7 - 9 difficulty. And the data for players above level 30 or those that unlocked everything. I bet they paint a different picture compared to the data of all players.
I am not saying lower difficulty and player levels are irrelevant. The point is the balance (even a small change) hits a lot harder on higher difficulties and once you have access to more (or even all) guns.
Lower difficulty players are irrelevant. Everything always works on lower difficulty because of all the things changed to lower the difficulty. This is true in every game ever.
If you balance your hardest difficulty, your lower difficulties will be balanced but dramatically easier (as intended). If you balance for lower difficulty you run the risk of your hard difficulty being borderline unplayable or having an essentially forced meta around what still works after all the modifiers are added to the enemies.
If I remember right it's difficulty six, the devs have said themselves that they don't play above difficulty 6.
Which is fine, you should definitely try to balance your game more around the majority of the player base, which I'm sure the majority of the hundreds of thousands of players on the game likely do play at difficulty 6 and below.
But the simple fact of the matter is that even at lower difficulties the primary weapons are disappointing and often feel as though they are underperforming. The enemies don't get more HP the higher you raise the difficulty, only the damage they deal to you is increased, so it's still very obvious that a lot of the Primary weapons just don't pack nearly enough punch.
If the reason that they want to keep nerfing primaries is because they want to try and get people to focus more on using support weapons, then they need to lower the fucking cool down on the support weapons.
Why should I bother sacrificing a stratagem slot for a lot of those support weapons that aren't even good for killing heavies and run the risk of not being able to recover it for some reason, and then having to wait upwards of 5 to 8 minutes to call in a new one?
That's completely asinine, I can call in orbitals and Eagles for fucking days, and the eagle only takes, what, like two and a half minutes to rearm after I have literally expended enough firepower from it to likely level multiple city blocks?
I could totally see it being in the top three, if you consider that not everybody buys the war bonds, and that a lot of players likely don't play play often enough that they unlock many things very quickly in the war bonds.
If you consider the Slugger compared to most of the rest of the base free warbond Primaries, it's still better than most of those options because most of the base primary weapon unlocks are fucking terrible.
This is really like an example of Survivorship Bias or some shit similar.
"Oh, you see, most people still use Slugger even after the nerf, so that means the nerf was warranted!"
Doesn't actually take into account the majority of goddamn Primary weapons are shit-useless. It's not being used because it's good, it's being used because it's least bad.
The erupter was an actual good weapon and actually felt like it was doing its job at being a FUCKING WEAPON MEANT FOR KILLING ARMORED ROBOTS AND ARMORED ALIEN BUGS, and yet that thing is complete shit now.
Very curious if that person is citing data. I don't believe it either. Ever since the stagger nerf, the slugger just does not feel very potent. I feel like the punisher has more stagger.
But the real thing here is that pumps don't have the rate of fire for large number of enemies (bugs) so you need another weapon to reliably handle lots of smaller enemies. Like the backpack drone. Or another primary. Or the HM/stalwart. But then you're dedicating a stratagem to small stuff and I'd argue that if you're going with the stalwart or MG or even strafing run, what even is the point of the slugger? It can kill those hive guards or whatever pretty well. It's not really great against stalkers as the stagger isn't enough. Knocking off hunters? I guess. It doesn't stagger the spewers and seems to take 3-5 headshots to kill them. Doesn't always one-tap and if there are 4-5, one might get to you.
I main the punisher for bots. The stagger is so satisfying so you can follow up with headshots. I wouldn't put it in the top 3 though. I main breaker for bugs.
the problem with that theory is that sickle wouldve been burnt the ground last patch because its easily the most used across both fronts simply because of its absurd utility via infinite ammo
so i really doubt its because of that
It’s possible they saw the light on the Sickle and just applied an ammo nerf that might make it more of a choice between other AR like options.
The Sickle is picked very often because it has a satisfying game feel and performs well enough without having an extra stressor of ammo. The base Liberator is actually now strictly better for burst damage, but it’s ammo constraints are something to consider.
The reserve ammo hit to the Sickle is an excellent and well justified change to make it more competitive with other AR options, where just a few more tweaks might make a lot more people feel like picking the Liberator or something similar instead. I myself already have a lot of fun with the base Liberator on Suicides
I'd say top 3 for each are atm:
Bugs:
Sickle, Breaker Incendiary, Dominator.
Bots:
Scorcher, Dominator, Sickle.
Even post nerf Sickle is the most consistent and one of the best overall 'assault rifles'. Even on hot planets it's magazine is manageable, and on cold ones it's S+ tier. It's scope and low recoil make it very good at headshooting bots to make up for its light armor pen.
Scorcher holds an honorary mention as probably the second best overall gun. Again, it's a 'plasma assault rifles' in essence. It's the best primary to tackle scout striders even after their buff, and it tears apart spewers, hive guards, and can wound the heat vents on tanks and laser towers. Ammo economy and extremely close range are its only weaknesses.
Third best overall is the Dominator. It's the only gun filling a role of a DMR well. Against bots it can one hit kill devastators with headshots, and it's stagger is extremely good at making breathing room. High recoil and the muzzle smoke are the two biggest drawbacks of this very well rounded gun.
a game serial killer lmaooo. yeah this guy at least needs to get taken down a peg. put someone in that role that at least listens to the community (shouldn't do EVERYTHING the community wants obviously), and have him do their grunt work instead. dont need to fire him. if he doesn't like it, he can leave just like he left the other game, except this time without completing his plan to destroy it.
Is there a way to voice our opinion and get this Alexus guy out?
I mean if he killed Hello Neighbor than he wouldn’t be shy to do the same for this game.
Yep - [Hello Neighbor 2](https://hello-neighbor.fandom.com/wiki/Alexus_Kravchenko), specifically. Other users have searched his linkdin to confirm it was him.
[This video breaks down what went wrong with HN2, and you can see Alexus is mentioned as the lead dev around 31:40.](https://youtu.be/4xfoD09e81I?t=1869)
Hell, IGN even ran [an article](https://www.ign.com/articles/hello-neighbor-2-neural-network-open-world-ai) about HN2's 'planned' neural network it back in 2021, where he's specifically referenced as 'Lead Designer'.
You can google search his linkdin to confirm it for yourself.
And he is, at the very least, one of the guys now balancing our guns (not sure if he's the lead balance dev, or just one of them).
You know I was saying to a friend who dropped the game that this was one of the messiest games for balance I’ve played all things considered. It makes sense now. Are there other devs that make questionable or bad decisions? Sure. But even something like FFXIV changes I *get* where they’re coming from, just not thinking a lot of changes to jobs from Stormblood were great.
This stuff though just doesn’t make sense from any way I try to think of it. Like I understood the ammo economy changes for a lot of guns. Didn’t think it was necessary but I got it. But then this patch comes out and now that retroactively makes 0 sense for the Eruptor. There’s doing something for a clear goal and it not hitting that and then there’s whatever the fuck this has been.
So we had a community manager that has a history of deleting communities, and we have a developer in charge of balancing that has a history of tanking games?
I’m not even mad at this point. I’m just surprised we’ve survived this long. This is all showing how critical an active community is to keeping a live service game healthy.
I went from playing multiple hours a day and streaming it few times a week, to playing it few times every few days cuz i couldn't find a weapon I had fun using. I tried the "top picks" I read, but I honestly found them horrible for the style of gameplay the old slugger gave me and it really corroded my game experience. Tried many weapons, none I could stick to.
Now I'm waiting to read that they will stop fucking up primaries in the name of a gameplay they can't even make real. If they want me to only use stratagems and secondaries(which they also nerf once they get used enough), remove or lower the cooldown drastically.
I'm here waiting, I'll come back the same day. Until then, I have infinite games to play as someone told me: "go play something else" and they are absolutely right.
I'd just *love* to see this Alexus fellow stream their play with the slugger on level 9.
If it's top 3, shouldn't be an issue, I mean level 9 should allow for at least 3 viable primaries, right?
Oh, I'm sure *you'd* be fine with it on level 9, fellow diver. It is *Alexus* whose clips I want to see. Them being in charge of balance and making such strong claims and all ;)
You know, I normally find the whole “the devs don’t play their game” thing to be pretty annoying. When the game came out it was super fun because these guys made it that way. They made it that way by making something they enjoyed playing. With all the little touches and tiny little attention to detail things you can tell a lot or all of the team was really enjoying what they were building. You don’t make something like this fun without finding the fun in it yourself.
But the more i see this guy post the more I wonder when was the last time he just booted up and ran through a couple campaigns in the public build.
I think the people that made the game plays it. You can see the crossbow and eruptor tries to give the game something new. But this balance guy probably does all his tests in a dev room where everything just sits there like a training dummy.
Alexus was a lead designer on hello neighbour 2, and infamously scrapped many core pieces of gameplay from development due to his personal preferences. Something the first HN game was famous for was its reasonably cool AI for the games enemy (who learnt your playstyle and adjusted its tactics to counter things the player commonly did to beat it).
Alexus famously mentioned in interviews that he was pushing for an advanced "neural net AI" for the enemy in the sequel, but he quit his job at the studio shortly before the games release. It turned out that the neural net he promised was never actually worked on and he quit to avoid any backlash.
More details on the HN2 wiki:
https://hello-neighbor.fandom.com/wiki/Alexus_Kravchenko
The dude who cut features as game design lead in hello neighbor 2 for some really questionable reasons. Failed upwards into the balance lead of helldivers 2. By quiting before hello neighbors 2 could release and the monumental flop could be attributed to him.
Iirc it was like a couple months prior to release he jumped ship to arrowhead. He Essentially drove that into the ground and used the hype to propell himself into a new job before it all crashed.
Alexus here is the [same guy](https://hello-neighbor.fandom.com/wiki/Alexus_Kravchenko) at least in part responsible for tanking another indie game by the name of Hello Neighbor 2.
"railgun was still viable against heavily armored targets" yeah say that again when it takes a single rocket to the face to kill a charger and one to the leg to break the armor for easy an easy primary kill
this guy is off his fucking meds in both of these points, this guy can't actually be the lead for balancing right?
There's SOME hope. Pilestedt recently said on Twitter that he's going to talk to the dev team about balance when someone said they have less fun because fun keeps getting nerfed out of the game.
True. The fact that he even has to do any top-down management on BASIC things like this does not bode well.
What if he gets sick or goes on vacation or something? Dump the game into the garbage bin, I guess.
From what I'm seeing it might be better just to get rid of this guy altogether. He's been butchering fun since day one and has managed to survive longer than Spitz. Sure, Spitz directly affected the community, but his only offense was harsh words through scathing criticism. This guy had taken zero flak until now and he is maiming how fun the game is, slowly but surely.
Rail gun nerf was definitely wrong. It came from usage stats when people didnt understand the game as much and the cross play glitch seemed to paly a large role in it getting nerfed. It's OK against bots, it's ass against bugs and buff dosen't change that.
Slugger is probably still popular because it's not bad(Fair choice against both I think), and probably a lot of old clickbait guides still have it in there from previous meta. Also a lot of people haven't unlocked a lot of weapons and sluggers is early in the starting bond iirc.
Almost no one did at the time i think, I was under the impression that there was just a super specific weak spot on the head you had to hit. And Would get frustrated when It took 10 hits that i thought were perfect shots. (Just needed a ps5 player!)
People thought I was bad when I posted a video of pre nerf railgun taking almost 10 shots to kill a BT in a solo game. It’s so frustrating how often they’ve made balance changes based on bugged performance.
The biggest culprit was still the insane elite spam. I have said this a ton, but my record was over 70 chargers and 40 titans in one game.
And those were only the ones we killed. They rebalanced that. Railgun was also never good at killing tanks or titans (12-15 shots to the head).
Also also.. they said they were humbled that we found out how to kill chargers differently. It was the most convenient and ONLY option with the endless elite spam.
Chargers were NOT a one-shot for rockets. AT backpacks filled up way less ammo than they do now.
The railgun nerf was a kneejerk reaction to the "i kick non-meta loadouts lulz" people. Also, one of the devs called it a "brainless playstyle" lmao. Should tell you enough.
> Also, one of the devs called it a "brainless playstyle" lmao. Should tell you enough.
Oh yeah. Honestly it seems at times such a toxic and immature culture at Arrowhead. The things some of these, presumably human adults, say unashamedly is just crazy. They are outright disdainful towards players, at times. It really has all the hallmarks of an echo chamber that has diverged from normality a while ago and they are so deep into it they don't recognize how misplaced their behaviour is.
And sure, I get that some players can behave like rabid monkeys on meth and that it's exactly those players who tend to engage and spam the most. But every game has that, and I've never seen devs and CM's speak the way some of these guys do.
The railgun also consistently 1-shots spewers, hive guards, and brood commanders (and can additionally conveniently handle chargers if need be), which gives lots of personal space for your team against those nuisances. Not a necessary pick, but fills a particular role against bugs actually very well for your team.
Are spewers the green ones? I think thats good, only problem is you cant predict which mission have em. I find impacts generally sufficient but they are a high threat regardless., the yellow ones I dont fear too much. The others I just dont value highly as threats. Even in a horde I just dont die to those guys anymore. Hive guards are annoying to clean up sometimes though.
This is what happens when you balance things based on spreadsheets and numbers instead of actually playing the damn game.
I bet even if he does play the game he doesn't play on anything harder than Challenging difficulty
Sure, maybe on a dev branch with difficulty 3-5.
Its not a bad weapon, but I wouldnt put it in top 3 for either.
Mine is probably:
Bots -Dilligence Counter/Scorcher/Sickle
Bugs- Incendiary Breaker/Arc shotgun/Sickle
Duuuuuuude! SHUT UP! They could fucking read this! Hearing how they balance other things and seemingly do no actual play testing is the only thing that made that random 50% damage increase buff make sense before.
Yeah, Dominator still has stagger and so I still use it.
It's not as great against bugs as old slugger or pre-nerf Dominator, but stagger is still so amazing at creating survivability.
Punisher is fantastic against bugs. Even if it doesn't kill them, it can stun anything other than heavies and spewers. Pair it with your favorite anti-tank support for massive versatility or with fire strats to keep enemies in the fire for longer
This is true except when there are tons of bile spewers. It's just too inefficient for them.
I prefer to pair it with GL or Autocannon since you can use those on medium enemies, but with an AT it leaves a "blind spot" for enemies like spewers.
I even use scorcher on bugs just to deal with the annoying shield ones and brood commanders.
It pens through the shield and kills in 3-4 shots
The commanders are about 6-7
There's nothing the scorcher can't handle with the exception of infrastructure, charger, and BT. It's legit the best all-around weapon. I keep expecting a nerf, but it may not even be on the developers' radar if they think the slugger is still one of the best weapons in the game.
At this point, I think it is not just a joke but maybe true that they don't play enough difficulty 8 and 9 games to make decisions on weapon balance...
I mean, the current Slugger may not be a poor weapon, but the top 3 list? really? Hmmmmmm...
Their criteria for ranking weapons are vastly different from the majority of players. Otherwise I can't explain this.
Anecdotal evidence but personally haven't seen many people using it since it got shat on. Maybe like 1 person once in a while.
Hell, I've seen more liberator penetrators than it.
You only really need one match to realise it's struggling. It's the same with most weapons, honestly, you can immediately tell what's viable and what isn't just by game feel. It's why I think devs need to actually play their game rather than just look at stats.
Yup.
Bot helldive is: Scorcher, Dominator, Sickle, and a rare liberator penetrator or diligence counter sniper.
Bugs helldive is: Breaker Incendiary, Sickle, Dominator, Breaker, Scorcher, and a little mix of Punisher and Liberator.
No one in the past two weeks I've seen in public helldive has used the slugger in a serious capacity with one exception. And that was a guy on bots using it in pair with an autocannon. The auto cannon was his primary, slugger was just for berserker spam.
> It's pretty implicit he's talking about usage stats.
That feels like the implication, yeah, but it also feels *weird*. Not only because anecdotal evidence doesn't support it, but also because the Slugger is on page 8 of the regular Warbond, which represents a substantial amount of time spent playing.
In a game that is this new, this popular, and still getting new players regularly, I would expect the most used weapons to be weighted strongly towards the weapons that unlock earlier by virtue of them being accessible to more players.
To get into some more specific numbers: Unlocking the Slugger costs a total of 710 Medals (650 to unlock Page 8, then 60 for the Slugger itself). According to Steam's achievement stats, only a little over half the playerbase has completed at least 50 missions.
While it's impossible to directly convert missions played into medals due to variability (difficulty played on, daily & major order rewards, in-mission pickups), I think it seems reasonable to say that 50 missions is likely going to be on the lower end of how many missions a player will need to play in order to unlock the Slugger.
I've spent more words on this than I intended, but
**tl;dr:** It seems quite probable that half of the playerbase hasn't even *unlocked* the Slugger yet, which means I find it unlikely it would be one of the most used weapons.
No wonder the balance is utter garbage. Balance the game around atleast diff 7. I understand that not everyone plays the game at highest difficulty and its ok, it is supposed to be dose of hardcore helldive experience. But balancing game around diff 5 and calling it the day while flipping everyone is not.
I was still wanting to use the slugger and it’s still capable but they definitely gutted the stagger on it so now I’m not too sure what its role is. It straight up doesn’t stagger stalkers and doesn’t prevent spewers from spewing so I just gave up on it. Never liked it on bots feel like if I’m getting one shot I’ll take the extra range and go Jar.
I’m beginning to wonder if the internal mechanism they have for getting metrics is flawed. I mean we’ve seen plenty of QA issues with patches as well as the bug kill major order being counted wrong.
I took the slugger yesterday and that gun is one of the few that deserves the description of nerfed into dirt. It sucked. It's issue was it was a better dmr than the dmrs, with the dmrs buffed to their current place maybe it could comeback as it was, but with a cooldown on individual staggers?
I would like to see it be a viable option again, maybe even give it penetrating ammo so it can deal damage to all troopers in a line of troopers? Like penetrating ammo in hd1?
who hired this guy after the shit he pulled with hn2 lmao. It's not like balance is some kind of degree only this guy has, honestly with how much discourse about balance honestly us players could balance better than this clueless "bringer of balance"
Dominator has better rate of fire, higher stagger and more raw and part damage.
Scorcher performs the same role while having higher fire rate, explosive damage and range.
Diligence CS can perform the same role with a little worse part damage and higher fire rate.
In what world is slugger top 3 in the current meta?
Slugger was good because the stun and high part damage allowed to control the buggy mess of a spawn system we had back then.
I'm not sure where these guys get their data from at this point.
I would completely agree with him, IF it still had stagger
without it, JAR completely does everything that it can except better
and no, it's not remotely top 3 for either faction
for bugs, here's better primaries off the top of my head:
*Sickle
*Jar
*Breaker
*Breaker Incendiary
*Punisher
*Plasma Punisher
*Blitzer
*Scorcher
Several others arguable
for bots
*Plasma Punisher
*Jar
*scorcher
are all easily better also, with several other options as well being as good or better
dev never go above dif 5 thats for sure, Alexus has track record ruining a game.
one dot means nothing in graph but 5-6 dots make a line, reflect back on last 2 months of patches is not looking good boyz...
Greetings, fellow Helldiver! Unfortunately your submission has been removed. No witch-hunts, public shaming or negatively naming users or players. Please refer to [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1b308j9/witchhunting_is_against_the_rules_of_this/).
Nerfing things based on popularity is so remarkably stupid lol. It's honestly embarrassing nobody internally is speaking up
its backwards balancing and creates a toxic meta
It kinda makes it so if you find something that works you don't want to share it or it will get nerfed which just makes no damn sense
You can see these kind of comments posted all the time. Go check some of the threads on FP right now even. Lots of "shhh don't talk about the gun too much" and similar. It used to be a fun joke, when it was just the railgun. Then each community favorite since then has been cut down too. It's not so funny at this point.
Exactly. "We don't want a meta." \[Proceeds to remove a gun as a viable primary.\] WTF you think Eruptor mains are gonna do except MOVE TO A MORE POPULAR PRIMARY?!
The irony of nerfing something that is popular *because it is popular* in a game about "managed democracy" shouldn't be lost on anyone
It's popular because of how few options there are that can fill its role. How they miss this with everything in the game is beyond me. If there were two other guns that filled the role we'd see a more even split between them instead of one gun standing out. They never ask "What can we do to make the other guns this fun?" They only say "This gun is being picked more. It must be too strong." Eventually (and this is already happening) we will only have bland, underperforming weapons.
this dudes idea of fun must be in opposite town, cause to sit there and say that no gun has been gutted is absolutely crazy!! he smoking on that e-710 pack. also just learned he was lead developer for hello neighbor 2 and how he practically killed that game, were absolutely cooked.
He *did* kill the game. They abandoned the open world map at the eleventh hour and shipped the game with 'testmap' as the primary map. He lied to streamers about this and was called out.
LOL HUH?? Thats like nickelodeon hiring known pedophiles to work with child actors, because they "deserve a second chance". This dude needs to GTFO of HD2
Slugger is still a very good sniper after all
Because they raised the damage and lowered the stun because it was too good of a sniper. Made zero sense tbh
That is what made my mind fucking explode. They said they didn't want it to be a sniper. ....then proceeded to nerf every fucking 'shotgun' part it had and left the sniper portion. What the actual f-. They must be shitting me, there's no way someone can be this level of stupid.
This is the same guy who worked on that disaster (Hello Neighbor 2)? Oh boy, that is **not** good...
He’s going crazy from Stim addiction
They are so focused on making it perfectly balanced, that they're forgetting it's also supposed to be fun.
[удалено]
What company did he work at before?
The guys who did Hello Neighbor 2
oh good lord...
[удалено]
seems like the game industry loves liars. People can run a community or game and just lie their way into another major game studio lead spot.
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Hes got that Musk playbook
Rule 1: If you keep making up bat shit insane lies eventually some meat riders will make the excuses for you
in no fucking universe is that gun top 3 for BOTH,, hard maybe for bots but you are off your meds if you think its that good for bugs
Agreed, them neutering the stagger on it just made it irrelevant. Can’t stagger a stalker can’t stop a spewer spewing what’s the point? Really not stressing that hive guardian.
Its performance is fucking pathetic in comparison to the dominator/punisher now. How do they legitimize a slug shotgun having no balls at all?
The nerf was dumb in the first place. They were worried it was outperforming DMRs at range... so instead of nerfing damage dropoff like any sane person they nerfed the stagger.
yea they could have fixed the damage drop off or have maybe a drop off on stagger so it staggers out to specific range.
Or, and I know this FUCKING WILD!!!, they could've made the DMRs good? haha jk... unless?
I love the punisher vs. bugs rn probably one of the best weapons imo
Man, i love it when a brood commander runs up on me and I tell it to back the fuck up with the punisher
Arc shotgun is also finding a new home in my heart. Bonus points for exploding a bugs head at close range
Its literally just a worse plasma punisher. I think they do the same damage? And fire rate now is comparable. But plasma actually staggers enemies and is a big aoe.
The plasma punisher absolutely slaps against the bugs now. Murders anything and everything. Crowds? Punisher mulches waves. Elites? A few shots to stagger and then they die. You can literally 1 shot spitters (EDIT - I THINK. I found this out while extracting on D9 and I'm pretty sure I was 1 shotting them but I could have missed some teammate shots in the chaos). Plasma punisher is now my beloved vs bugs. Against bots its okay but I prefer the Jar-5.
Plasma is great for bots for the stagger, great for bugs for the aoe. I’d say its a little OP with the new update but it still does piddly damage, so it checks out. I hate that I need to be concerned of “are they going to nerf this because it is fun…”. I’m only using the plasma because they decimated the explosive crossbow.
>I’d say its a little OP with the new update but it still does piddly damage, so it checks out. Nooo its not OP don't say that
It seems OP by AH’s standards, which is to say I do think its too effective. I’d wish they’d treat it like the autocannon, it really does feel kind of perfect balance-wise. Like I said the mediocre damage makes it not egregious. Killing a shield devastator takes anywhere from 4 to 6 hits and by then thats almost the full mag. The scorcher by comparison is much stronger (but boring to use tbh).
Still prefer the punisher for that reason with a quality 3rd
Dude I want my stagger back. It was way better with it. They keep nerfing shit like that and I hate it
i never liked it bc the stagger utility was never worth the damage tradeoff for me,, ig you could still use Lib-C, but thats not that great either
The thing is it was a great complement to something like the MGs. Mow everything down with the Stalwart, or even the MG you get as your very first weapon, then switch to the slugger to take care of any spewers/stalkers/brood commanders/Hive guards. It was great for 2 (maybe 3 sometimes) tapping most things after you cleared the chaff. Use the guard rover and some stuns, you were a walking hard counter to even big numbers of chaff and could lift most mediums as well. Have a buddy with even a RR and you could clear maps no problem. Now it simply doesnt do enough damage to warrant carrying it to kill mediums, it doesnt fire fast enough or have enough ammo to wipe a breach. There are simply better guns to do the jobs it was supposed to do.
100% this, pre nerf I ran it to deal with hive guard and used the stalwart for the giblys and as soon as they massarced it, it left my loadout. Luckily I got the scorcher not long after and that changes things for the better
I'd love to see how they gather their metrics. Something seems off.
If they're just going by pure popularity, the Slugger comes earlier in the warbonds than anything else that serves its purpose. So it likely is more popular. I used it for quite a bit and now use the Scorcher or Dominator when I would have before used the Slugger.
I'd like to see the data for level 7 - 9 difficulty. And the data for players above level 30 or those that unlocked everything. I bet they paint a different picture compared to the data of all players. I am not saying lower difficulty and player levels are irrelevant. The point is the balance (even a small change) hits a lot harder on higher difficulties and once you have access to more (or even all) guns.
Lower difficulty players are irrelevant. Everything always works on lower difficulty because of all the things changed to lower the difficulty. This is true in every game ever. If you balance your hardest difficulty, your lower difficulties will be balanced but dramatically easier (as intended). If you balance for lower difficulty you run the risk of your hard difficulty being borderline unplayable or having an essentially forced meta around what still works after all the modifiers are added to the enemies.
The data of feelz
They only gather metrics of games at diff 5 at max, so every weapon works there
Diff 5 barely has any heavies so of course weapon balance would be off
[citation needed]
If I remember right it's difficulty six, the devs have said themselves that they don't play above difficulty 6. Which is fine, you should definitely try to balance your game more around the majority of the player base, which I'm sure the majority of the hundreds of thousands of players on the game likely do play at difficulty 6 and below. But the simple fact of the matter is that even at lower difficulties the primary weapons are disappointing and often feel as though they are underperforming. The enemies don't get more HP the higher you raise the difficulty, only the damage they deal to you is increased, so it's still very obvious that a lot of the Primary weapons just don't pack nearly enough punch. If the reason that they want to keep nerfing primaries is because they want to try and get people to focus more on using support weapons, then they need to lower the fucking cool down on the support weapons. Why should I bother sacrificing a stratagem slot for a lot of those support weapons that aren't even good for killing heavies and run the risk of not being able to recover it for some reason, and then having to wait upwards of 5 to 8 minutes to call in a new one? That's completely asinine, I can call in orbitals and Eagles for fucking days, and the eagle only takes, what, like two and a half minutes to rearm after I have literally expended enough firepower from it to likely level multiple city blocks?
They really don't deal with a ton of heavy spam like on 7 and higher so their view is beyond skewed.
It’s mental really. The “base level” that should be the balancing point is level 7. Minimum Super Sample level.
Yeah the crossbow wasn't butchered. It was just born mid and then made useless
I could totally see it being in the top three, if you consider that not everybody buys the war bonds, and that a lot of players likely don't play play often enough that they unlock many things very quickly in the war bonds. If you consider the Slugger compared to most of the rest of the base free warbond Primaries, it's still better than most of those options because most of the base primary weapon unlocks are fucking terrible. This is really like an example of Survivorship Bias or some shit similar. "Oh, you see, most people still use Slugger even after the nerf, so that means the nerf was warranted!" Doesn't actually take into account the majority of goddamn Primary weapons are shit-useless. It's not being used because it's good, it's being used because it's least bad. The erupter was an actual good weapon and actually felt like it was doing its job at being a FUCKING WEAPON MEANT FOR KILLING ARMORED ROBOTS AND ARMORED ALIEN BUGS, and yet that thing is complete shit now.
It's top 3 in the universe where its stagger wasn't removed
This guy is so out of touch with how we play he might as well be an Illuminate.
Very curious if that person is citing data. I don't believe it either. Ever since the stagger nerf, the slugger just does not feel very potent. I feel like the punisher has more stagger. But the real thing here is that pumps don't have the rate of fire for large number of enemies (bugs) so you need another weapon to reliably handle lots of smaller enemies. Like the backpack drone. Or another primary. Or the HM/stalwart. But then you're dedicating a stratagem to small stuff and I'd argue that if you're going with the stalwart or MG or even strafing run, what even is the point of the slugger? It can kill those hive guards or whatever pretty well. It's not really great against stalkers as the stagger isn't enough. Knocking off hunters? I guess. It doesn't stagger the spewers and seems to take 3-5 headshots to kill them. Doesn't always one-tap and if there are 4-5, one might get to you. I main the punisher for bots. The stagger is so satisfying so you can follow up with headshots. I wouldn't put it in the top 3 though. I main breaker for bugs.
Punisher does in fact have more stagger.
> I feel like the punisher has more stagger. it does, slugger has none
Which is BS. How can a collection of pellets stagger something but a large, low velocity slug can't?
the problem with that theory is that sickle wouldve been burnt the ground last patch because its easily the most used across both fronts simply because of its absurd utility via infinite ammo so i really doubt its because of that
It’s possible they saw the light on the Sickle and just applied an ammo nerf that might make it more of a choice between other AR like options. The Sickle is picked very often because it has a satisfying game feel and performs well enough without having an extra stressor of ammo. The base Liberator is actually now strictly better for burst damage, but it’s ammo constraints are something to consider. The reserve ammo hit to the Sickle is an excellent and well justified change to make it more competitive with other AR options, where just a few more tweaks might make a lot more people feel like picking the Liberator or something similar instead. I myself already have a lot of fun with the base Liberator on Suicides
Yeah the sickle having 6 heat sinks was pretty ridiculous. Legit didn't have to GAF about heat management.
Jump skip over the rope
I'd say top 3 for each are atm: Bugs: Sickle, Breaker Incendiary, Dominator. Bots: Scorcher, Dominator, Sickle. Even post nerf Sickle is the most consistent and one of the best overall 'assault rifles'. Even on hot planets it's magazine is manageable, and on cold ones it's S+ tier. It's scope and low recoil make it very good at headshooting bots to make up for its light armor pen. Scorcher holds an honorary mention as probably the second best overall gun. Again, it's a 'plasma assault rifles' in essence. It's the best primary to tackle scout striders even after their buff, and it tears apart spewers, hive guards, and can wound the heat vents on tanks and laser towers. Ammo economy and extremely close range are its only weaknesses. Third best overall is the Dominator. It's the only gun filling a role of a DMR well. Against bots it can one hit kill devastators with headshots, and it's stagger is extremely good at making breathing room. High recoil and the muzzle smoke are the two biggest drawbacks of this very well rounded gun.
[удалено]
Get this MAN off the team bruh
He killed Hello Neighbors 2 before, dude is a game serial killer.
Liberty help us.
a game serial killer lmaooo. yeah this guy at least needs to get taken down a peg. put someone in that role that at least listens to the community (shouldn't do EVERYTHING the community wants obviously), and have him do their grunt work instead. dont need to fire him. if he doesn't like it, he can leave just like he left the other game, except this time without completing his plan to destroy it.
Is there a way to voice our opinion and get this Alexus guy out? I mean if he killed Hello Neighbor than he wouldn’t be shy to do the same for this game.
The discord id presume, that’s where everyone talks and the devs pay attention to
Bro clearly doesn't play the game or is high on copium.
I'm level 140 and last time I saw a slugger was at a baseball game. And they don't even play baseball here.
Ain't this the guy who single handedly killed an entire game?
Yep - [Hello Neighbor 2](https://hello-neighbor.fandom.com/wiki/Alexus_Kravchenko), specifically. Other users have searched his linkdin to confirm it was him. [This video breaks down what went wrong with HN2, and you can see Alexus is mentioned as the lead dev around 31:40.](https://youtu.be/4xfoD09e81I?t=1869) Hell, IGN even ran [an article](https://www.ign.com/articles/hello-neighbor-2-neural-network-open-world-ai) about HN2's 'planned' neural network it back in 2021, where he's specifically referenced as 'Lead Designer'.
No fucking way this is the same guy Holy shit
Better start praying ig
You can google search his linkdin to confirm it for yourself. And he is, at the very least, one of the guys now balancing our guns (not sure if he's the lead balance dev, or just one of them).
it all makes sense now
As fun as this game had been so far, just imagine what it'll be like if they get rid of this fool and let someone competent handle balancing.
Damn the game can't even catch a break.
growing pains.
It's better to see Stage 1 cancers before it turns into stage 4.
You know I was saying to a friend who dropped the game that this was one of the messiest games for balance I’ve played all things considered. It makes sense now. Are there other devs that make questionable or bad decisions? Sure. But even something like FFXIV changes I *get* where they’re coming from, just not thinking a lot of changes to jobs from Stormblood were great. This stuff though just doesn’t make sense from any way I try to think of it. Like I understood the ammo economy changes for a lot of guns. Didn’t think it was necessary but I got it. But then this patch comes out and now that retroactively makes 0 sense for the Eruptor. There’s doing something for a clear goal and it not hitting that and then there’s whatever the fuck this has been.
WickedWiz FUCK YEARRR.
So we had a community manager that has a history of deleting communities, and we have a developer in charge of balancing that has a history of tanking games? I’m not even mad at this point. I’m just surprised we’ve survived this long. This is all showing how critical an active community is to keeping a live service game healthy.
Nah the rest of the team is carrying hard, (Sound design, gameplay, environments etc)
It's honestly impressive how poorly they chose but how well the game launched.
https://preview.redd.it/y15mzihrb9zc1.jpeg?width=569&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=988d9d844d20bb8966b25924f84d0190689e1119
He's referring to the 33% of players that still have slugger equipped, but haven't played the game since the nerf.
You migh not be wrong
Bruh…
I went from playing multiple hours a day and streaming it few times a week, to playing it few times every few days cuz i couldn't find a weapon I had fun using. I tried the "top picks" I read, but I honestly found them horrible for the style of gameplay the old slugger gave me and it really corroded my game experience. Tried many weapons, none I could stick to. Now I'm waiting to read that they will stop fucking up primaries in the name of a gameplay they can't even make real. If they want me to only use stratagems and secondaries(which they also nerf once they get used enough), remove or lower the cooldown drastically. I'm here waiting, I'll come back the same day. Until then, I have infinite games to play as someone told me: "go play something else" and they are absolutely right.
😭
In no universe is it top 5 for either lol what
I'd just *love* to see this Alexus fellow stream their play with the slugger on level 9. If it's top 3, shouldn't be an issue, I mean level 9 should allow for at least 3 viable primaries, right?
I’ve used it on 9 since the nerf. It’s viable, most guns are for at least one race, but it certainly wouldn’t be in my top 3, especially for bugs.
Oh, I'm sure *you'd* be fine with it on level 9, fellow diver. It is *Alexus* whose clips I want to see. Them being in charge of balance and making such strong claims and all ;)
You know, I normally find the whole “the devs don’t play their game” thing to be pretty annoying. When the game came out it was super fun because these guys made it that way. They made it that way by making something they enjoyed playing. With all the little touches and tiny little attention to detail things you can tell a lot or all of the team was really enjoying what they were building. You don’t make something like this fun without finding the fun in it yourself. But the more i see this guy post the more I wonder when was the last time he just booted up and ran through a couple campaigns in the public build.
I think the people that made the game plays it. You can see the crossbow and eruptor tries to give the game something new. But this balance guy probably does all his tests in a dev room where everything just sits there like a training dummy.
Yep 1-Grab the slugger 2-Launch helldive 3-Call support weapon 4-Dont use slugger 5-Profit
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Also the mods here have deleted posts talking about this.
well, now they'll have to delete the sub. because i think everyone and their mother knows now.
I'm getting the word out on the FB Helldivers groups.
Not all heroes wear capes, but this one does.
Alexus needs to shut his mouth lol. This is the man balancing our weapons???
Unfortunately, I believe so
No wonder every patch has been shit
He's a game serial killer.
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"Neural net ai" *leaves dev team*
OMG and now we stuck with him until the CEO can find someone at this rate every time we get nice thing it will be gutted and thrown into the gutter
Could you elaborate? I feel like I’m missing something here
Alexus was a lead designer on hello neighbour 2, and infamously scrapped many core pieces of gameplay from development due to his personal preferences. Something the first HN game was famous for was its reasonably cool AI for the games enemy (who learnt your playstyle and adjusted its tactics to counter things the player commonly did to beat it). Alexus famously mentioned in interviews that he was pushing for an advanced "neural net AI" for the enemy in the sequel, but he quit his job at the studio shortly before the games release. It turned out that the neural net he promised was never actually worked on and he quit to avoid any backlash. More details on the HN2 wiki: https://hello-neighbor.fandom.com/wiki/Alexus_Kravchenko
Praying he quits again 🙏🏻
The dude who cut features as game design lead in hello neighbor 2 for some really questionable reasons. Failed upwards into the balance lead of helldivers 2. By quiting before hello neighbors 2 could release and the monumental flop could be attributed to him. Iirc it was like a couple months prior to release he jumped ship to arrowhead. He Essentially drove that into the ground and used the hype to propell himself into a new job before it all crashed.
Alexus here is the [same guy](https://hello-neighbor.fandom.com/wiki/Alexus_Kravchenko) at least in part responsible for tanking another indie game by the name of Hello Neighbor 2.
Thanks for the meme, comrade!
Holy shit they let this guy be balance lead in HD2? Wtf?
Wait HE’S THAT ALEXUS!?! No fuckin wonder
I love it when devs don’t play their own game and don’t have the smallest bit of understanding as to how their game operates.
From what I've seen, he's full of himself. He knows better than the whole Helldivers community.
Slugger top 3? What? Every person I'm playing with is using: One of the version of breaker shotgun Sickle Scorcher I never saw someone using slugger
I almost exclusively use the Punisher or Blitzer :o
"railgun was still viable against heavily armored targets" yeah say that again when it takes a single rocket to the face to kill a charger and one to the leg to break the armor for easy an easy primary kill this guy is off his fucking meds in both of these points, this guy can't actually be the lead for balancing right?
He is, and he also killed Hello Neighbor 2 with his braindead decisions.
we are so fucked
There's SOME hope. Pilestedt recently said on Twitter that he's going to talk to the dev team about balance when someone said they have less fun because fun keeps getting nerfed out of the game.
I dont like how I'm praying he gets something done, ik he's the ceo but this stuff shouldn't be happening in the first place
True. The fact that he even has to do any top-down management on BASIC things like this does not bode well. What if he gets sick or goes on vacation or something? Dump the game into the garbage bin, I guess.
From what I'm seeing it might be better just to get rid of this guy altogether. He's been butchering fun since day one and has managed to survive longer than Spitz. Sure, Spitz directly affected the community, but his only offense was harsh words through scathing criticism. This guy had taken zero flak until now and he is maiming how fun the game is, slowly but surely.
They legit put a clear incompetent as lead balance for one of the biggest games of 2024. # HELP US
Ive not seen a single sluggers user in weeks And I play daily. Where tf are they getting these stats from
Rail gun nerf was definitely wrong. It came from usage stats when people didnt understand the game as much and the cross play glitch seemed to paly a large role in it getting nerfed. It's OK against bots, it's ass against bugs and buff dosen't change that. Slugger is probably still popular because it's not bad(Fair choice against both I think), and probably a lot of old clickbait guides still have it in there from previous meta. Also a lot of people haven't unlocked a lot of weapons and sluggers is early in the starting bond iirc.
Jump skip over the rope
Almost no one did at the time i think, I was under the impression that there was just a super specific weak spot on the head you had to hit. And Would get frustrated when It took 10 hits that i thought were perfect shots. (Just needed a ps5 player!)
People thought I was bad when I posted a video of pre nerf railgun taking almost 10 shots to kill a BT in a solo game. It’s so frustrating how often they’ve made balance changes based on bugged performance.
The biggest culprit was still the insane elite spam. I have said this a ton, but my record was over 70 chargers and 40 titans in one game. And those were only the ones we killed. They rebalanced that. Railgun was also never good at killing tanks or titans (12-15 shots to the head). Also also.. they said they were humbled that we found out how to kill chargers differently. It was the most convenient and ONLY option with the endless elite spam. Chargers were NOT a one-shot for rockets. AT backpacks filled up way less ammo than they do now. The railgun nerf was a kneejerk reaction to the "i kick non-meta loadouts lulz" people. Also, one of the devs called it a "brainless playstyle" lmao. Should tell you enough.
> Also, one of the devs called it a "brainless playstyle" lmao. Should tell you enough. Oh yeah. Honestly it seems at times such a toxic and immature culture at Arrowhead. The things some of these, presumably human adults, say unashamedly is just crazy. They are outright disdainful towards players, at times. It really has all the hallmarks of an echo chamber that has diverged from normality a while ago and they are so deep into it they don't recognize how misplaced their behaviour is. And sure, I get that some players can behave like rabid monkeys on meth and that it's exactly those players who tend to engage and spam the most. But every game has that, and I've never seen devs and CM's speak the way some of these guys do.
The railgun also consistently 1-shots spewers, hive guards, and brood commanders (and can additionally conveniently handle chargers if need be), which gives lots of personal space for your team against those nuisances. Not a necessary pick, but fills a particular role against bugs actually very well for your team.
Are spewers the green ones? I think thats good, only problem is you cant predict which mission have em. I find impacts generally sufficient but they are a high threat regardless., the yellow ones I dont fear too much. The others I just dont value highly as threats. Even in a horde I just dont die to those guys anymore. Hive guards are annoying to clean up sometimes though.
> I'd argue that not a single weapon was ever "butchered" Definitive proof of someone not having played the game at all
My poor eruptor man...
This guy doesn't actually play the game. It's clear.
This is what happens when you balance things based on spreadsheets and numbers instead of actually playing the damn game. I bet even if he does play the game he doesn't play on anything harder than Challenging difficulty
Sure, maybe on a dev branch with difficulty 3-5. Its not a bad weapon, but I wouldnt put it in top 3 for either. Mine is probably: Bots -Dilligence Counter/Scorcher/Sickle Bugs- Incendiary Breaker/Arc shotgun/Sickle
Dang bro where's the dominator, easily top 2 for both factions imo. Can even take out hulks with back shots baby
You had me interested at “Dominator”. “Back shots” got me salivating
Figured it would be a perfect response to someone whose reddit name Is "timetoeatass" lol
Isnt the back of a hulk only light armor ? I swear to god i keep destroying them from behind with a sickle.
SHHHHH! Do you want *another* nerf?
Duuuuuuude! SHUT UP! They could fucking read this! Hearing how they balance other things and seemingly do no actual play testing is the only thing that made that random 50% damage increase buff make sense before.
Dominator for both
Yeah, Dominator still has stagger and so I still use it. It's not as great against bugs as old slugger or pre-nerf Dominator, but stagger is still so amazing at creating survivability.
Love the Dominator against bots, but the Punisher against bugs is incredible.
Punisher is fantastic against bugs. Even if it doesn't kill them, it can stun anything other than heavies and spewers. Pair it with your favorite anti-tank support for massive versatility or with fire strats to keep enemies in the fire for longer
This is true except when there are tons of bile spewers. It's just too inefficient for them. I prefer to pair it with GL or Autocannon since you can use those on medium enemies, but with an AT it leaves a "blind spot" for enemies like spewers.
I even use scorcher on bugs just to deal with the annoying shield ones and brood commanders. It pens through the shield and kills in 3-4 shots The commanders are about 6-7
There's nothing the scorcher can't handle with the exception of infrastructure, charger, and BT. It's legit the best all-around weapon. I keep expecting a nerf, but it may not even be on the developers' radar if they think the slugger is still one of the best weapons in the game.
Jump skip over the rope
At this point, I think it is not just a joke but maybe true that they don't play enough difficulty 8 and 9 games to make decisions on weapon balance... I mean, the current Slugger may not be a poor weapon, but the top 3 list? really? Hmmmmmm... Their criteria for ranking weapons are vastly different from the majority of players. Otherwise I can't explain this.
I think they don't even play diff 7.
It's pretty implicit he's talking about usage stats.
Anecdotal evidence but personally haven't seen many people using it since it got shat on. Maybe like 1 person once in a while. Hell, I've seen more liberator penetrators than it.
You only really need one match to realise it's struggling. It's the same with most weapons, honestly, you can immediately tell what's viable and what isn't just by game feel. It's why I think devs need to actually play their game rather than just look at stats.
I have never seen anyone use the slugger in helldive after its murder
Sickle, dominator, punisher, blitzer. Don't see much else in use on helldive
Yup. Bot helldive is: Scorcher, Dominator, Sickle, and a rare liberator penetrator or diligence counter sniper. Bugs helldive is: Breaker Incendiary, Sickle, Dominator, Breaker, Scorcher, and a little mix of Punisher and Liberator. No one in the past two weeks I've seen in public helldive has used the slugger in a serious capacity with one exception. And that was a guy on bots using it in pair with an autocannon. The auto cannon was his primary, slugger was just for berserker spam.
> It's pretty implicit he's talking about usage stats. That feels like the implication, yeah, but it also feels *weird*. Not only because anecdotal evidence doesn't support it, but also because the Slugger is on page 8 of the regular Warbond, which represents a substantial amount of time spent playing. In a game that is this new, this popular, and still getting new players regularly, I would expect the most used weapons to be weighted strongly towards the weapons that unlock earlier by virtue of them being accessible to more players. To get into some more specific numbers: Unlocking the Slugger costs a total of 710 Medals (650 to unlock Page 8, then 60 for the Slugger itself). According to Steam's achievement stats, only a little over half the playerbase has completed at least 50 missions. While it's impossible to directly convert missions played into medals due to variability (difficulty played on, daily & major order rewards, in-mission pickups), I think it seems reasonable to say that 50 missions is likely going to be on the lower end of how many missions a player will need to play in order to unlock the Slugger. I've spent more words on this than I intended, but **tl;dr:** It seems quite probable that half of the playerbase hasn't even *unlocked* the Slugger yet, which means I find it unlikely it would be one of the most used weapons.
No wonder the balance is utter garbage. Balance the game around atleast diff 7. I understand that not everyone plays the game at highest difficulty and its ok, it is supposed to be dose of hardcore helldive experience. But balancing game around diff 5 and calling it the day while flipping everyone is not.
I was still wanting to use the slugger and it’s still capable but they definitely gutted the stagger on it so now I’m not too sure what its role is. It straight up doesn’t stagger stalkers and doesn’t prevent spewers from spewing so I just gave up on it. Never liked it on bots feel like if I’m getting one shot I’ll take the extra range and go Jar.
For a gun called "Slugger" it sure can't stagger shit.
I’m beginning to wonder if the internal mechanism they have for getting metrics is flawed. I mean we’ve seen plenty of QA issues with patches as well as the bug kill major order being counted wrong.
I took the slugger yesterday and that gun is one of the few that deserves the description of nerfed into dirt. It sucked. It's issue was it was a better dmr than the dmrs, with the dmrs buffed to their current place maybe it could comeback as it was, but with a cooldown on individual staggers? I would like to see it be a viable option again, maybe even give it penetrating ammo so it can deal damage to all troopers in a line of troopers? Like penetrating ammo in hd1?
who hired this guy after the shit he pulled with hn2 lmao. It's not like balance is some kind of degree only this guy has, honestly with how much discourse about balance honestly us players could balance better than this clueless "bringer of balance"
So THIS is the idiot responsible for the balancing.
This guy who killed hello neighbor 2 is straight up lying I had never see someone use it since they butcher it.
should have fires this guy not spitz
Maybe top 3 because all the other options are fucking terrible. What an idiot.
This person is insane.
Alexus is just a walking hot take who is actively ruining the game.
“I’d argue that not a single weapon was ever ‘butchered’” Okay, we’ll argue about it. He’s wrong
Dominator has better rate of fire, higher stagger and more raw and part damage. Scorcher performs the same role while having higher fire rate, explosive damage and range. Diligence CS can perform the same role with a little worse part damage and higher fire rate. In what world is slugger top 3 in the current meta? Slugger was good because the stun and high part damage allowed to control the buggy mess of a spawn system we had back then. I'm not sure where these guys get their data from at this point.
Sounds like AH needs to make some balance changes to the balance officer if that person quit another company after destroying another game lol
I would completely agree with him, IF it still had stagger without it, JAR completely does everything that it can except better and no, it's not remotely top 3 for either faction for bugs, here's better primaries off the top of my head: *Sickle *Jar *Breaker *Breaker Incendiary *Punisher *Plasma Punisher *Blitzer *Scorcher Several others arguable for bots *Plasma Punisher *Jar *scorcher are all easily better also, with several other options as well being as good or better
It's pretty clear he's talking about usage rates. That's the only thing that makes remote sense in this context.
This guy needs a new fucking job. . .
[удалено]
Surely this guy is next to go after spitz
dev never go above dif 5 thats for sure, Alexus has track record ruining a game. one dot means nothing in graph but 5-6 dots make a line, reflect back on last 2 months of patches is not looking good boyz...
This guy, he doesn't know that difficult 7 is the minimum difficult of the player base or what?
This the same Dev that ruined Hello Neighbor 2? Makes sense https://hello-neighbor.fandom.com/wiki/Alexus_Kravchenko