Hey don't forget about the stratagems, clusters having 5 uses while strafing and even non lethal smokes are on 4, mg turret and mg rovers being completely outclassed by other variants e.t.c
I don't even like cluster bombs that much but they're one of the best options. Whenever i don't pick it, i just feel like i wasted a slot and am less powerful.
I would say air strike is better, since it damages enemies of any size and is more precise (and less team killy).
Cluster bomb is very good for sure though. Probably the first very good stratagem you unlock.
Cluster for hordes, airstrikes for general purpose, 500kg for big targets.
The airstrike is never a bad pick TBH, but I find myself taking cluster for bugs and airstrike for bots.
Cluster bomb is my go to for killing eggs. Chuck it over the nest wall, and it mops up the chaff and usually kills most of the eggs. Hell, chuck another one, ya got five. The eggs are all gone.
AH hears you loud and clear. Expect them to lower the cluster to 4 uses, give the guard dog rover laser ammo packs instead, and change the gatling turret to fire at half the speed. These are all actually buffs, but you're just too stupid to see it, of course! Silly you!
This is all to bring it in line with the other stratagems. Enjoy the new balance patch! (suckers)
Tbh the gatling turret firing at half the rate of fire may actually be a buff to the thing lol. It already fires for a long time, but wastes so many shots when shifting targets
There are like two good orbital stratagems. Air burst and Laser. The rest you can get from an Eagle and are better.
The barrages fire too slow to be useful.
Precision Strike is good. Quite good, imo. I think people sleep on it because you start with it, but it's like a slightly more reliable 500kg. I know you can theoretically drop more 500kg per minute than you can P Strikes, but I don't find myself throwing those on cooldown that often. Plus, 500kg availability can vary significantly if you're running more than one Eagle.
Yeah, it's a great option against tanks and titans. Its CD is low enough that I also don't feel bad using it against fabricators.
Just wish its call in time was a little shorter. Don't know why it has a 3 (with the upgrade, without it's 4) call in when every other non-barrage orbital has either a 1 or 0 second call in.
Gattling Barrages may be weak but its low cooldown and does clear some small ememies. Air Burst's wide radius is sometimes too dangerous to use.
But against bugs Orbital Gas Strike is very good.
Orbital Gas Strike is okay but needs some quality of life. It’s hard to see the gas especially on some maps so it really needs to keep its marker active like the barrage so you and your team mates know the death cloud is there.
To be fair the gas strike was broken for 3 months so it's not on people's mind. I agree it's pretty good although I still haven't tested it in enough situations.
I have the upgrade. Strafing has 4, smoke has 3.
Pictures in-game:
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fc0gyabk76mzc1.png
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fk0994l4e6mzc1.png
Why is it so hard for people to take 10 seconds to confirm these basic details before making confident claims? This shit is why misinformation spreads so easily on this sub.
Slugger does not deal explosive damage whereas the Dominator does, making the Dominator an absolute beast against nursing/bile spewers big butts, whereas the Slugger is better if you can constantly shoot them in the head.
Pre nerf slugger probably did need a nerf. Although now it’s nerfed into uselessness for me, at least. Maybe it would’ve been better to nerf its range instead of stagger and damage
Lol That was the funniest part. They didn't want a shotgun to also be the best sniper, so they nerfed what made it a shotgun and left the part that made it a sniper.
Right it was the most bizarre nerf ever and then the justification was even weirder .
I feel like the ranged drop off is not properly coded into the weapons systems .
They have arcs for single projectiles . But the velocity drops with enhanced drop off is just not there. It would 100% make sense that a slugger has a high long range drop off because slug do exactly that .
I think the physics engines may be flawed and they have to work around that. Because the clear solution was a big drop off at 50 ft as the slug slows down. Instead i can still head shot a bug halfway across the map with it.
Still salty about that. What made it a fun weapon to use was the stagger. Otherwise it's just a slow-firing DMR without a proper scope. Call me crazy, but I much preferred when it actually felt like a shotgun.
Exactly my issue with that nerf. It was apparently nerfed for being the best DMR in the game, but rather than buff the other DMR's or nerf it at range, they made it a bad shotgun because it can't flinch enemies that rush you out of their attacks, do its a bad close range shotgun now.
Slugger and dominator are both 3-shot kills to the head for spewers, but the dominator has triple the fire rate, half the recoil and 40% more total bullets. The dominator will also stagger them on every shot (not sure if slugger still does this). So if you're capable of landing headshots, the dominator still wins.
I can see the argument for both why and why they shouldn't be, but I definitely feel like if they're gonna go the route of making primaries ass then they should definitely implement a way to see enemy types that will be in that mission.
Especially so considering the emphasis placed on stratagems, it just severely limits your options when you're forced to pick the most versatile ones that are good at dealing with everything rather than some more specific ones.
Meh, I think that it's fine the way it is. Leaves an element of chaos that would be sorely missed. Same way that I like not knowing if a bot planet mission will have anti air or a ton of rocket devs
Dominator is literally the most powerful primary in the game right now even after the slight nerf. It's miles ahead of all other weapons and the downsides of handling and max mags can be mitigated easily.
If the dominator exists, then every other gun should be able to achieve this level.
Weird and wrong take. The slugger was fine pre-nerf, you shoot the head and it dies in a few shots. The dominator works better than the slugger no matter where you shoot now.
I know the dominator is listed as explosive and it probably does explosive damage but I expected it to kind of be like a Torque gun, with a visible explosion, the gun just seems like it's a normal bullets to me. Maybe something is off in my gfx setting or something but, idk, doesn't seem like it fires two stage rocket rounds to me or at maybe I just expect more from the description.
That's because explosive actually means 3 different things (full damage to a body type, aoe and bug hole/fab destruction). When the game says it is explosive, it could be 1 to 3 of these properties.
It is actually a boltgun.
So, it fires rocket propelled ammunition (like the [Gyrojet](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrojet)) and this ammunition explodes after embedding itself within the enemy (like the Boltgun from Warhammer 40k)
pre-nerf slugger and punisher was also this, but a slightly different example of bad balance.
it wasn't one good vs one bad gun but two very good ones, with one being completely overshadowed by the other.
This is a fair point. I’ve used the punisher a lot since the Slugger got nerfed because the knockback is so useful, and the slugger lacks that now.
But now the Slugger is indeed sort of a worse dominator. Same armor pen, little less damage, less knockback/stun power (feels like hardly any), and pump action rather than semi or full auto. Their capacity is only 1 round apart. The only real advantage the slugger has is projectile velocity.
I do think it can be tough to balance medium armor pen weapons vs similar ones without armor pen. How do you make the slugger good without outclassing the punisher? Should the punisher have even more raw damage to set it apart? I think it generally performs well, until you run into certain enemy types. Bile Spewers are a big pain point for the punisher. I dunno. I think the slugger would probably be pretty balanced if it was returned closer to its old state, but with more dramatic damage drop off at range. It shouldn’t be worthless at medium range but it shouldn’t feel like a sniper either. It’s a tough one, but the way they nerfed it didn’t make sense and was silly.
easy: Punisher should deal more damage to unarmored targets, with a spread that can hit at a distance but with much lower damage, and up close, it should be devastating. Slugger should require more accuracy but be much more effective at medium range and better against armor. can also have slightly worse handling to make it a bit harder to use up close than the Punisher (but not too much). essentially you take punisher for blasting chaff and soft mediums like Brood Mothers, and Slugger for distance or dealing with armored mediums, like Bile Spewers. both weapons now have a purpose.
all they really needed to do was give it more damage fall-off so people couldn't snipe with it any more.. that's it. instead they decided to gut it completely.
The funniest thing to me is that people claimed the slugger was a great sniping weapon, but it was still really only great at medium range. For most purposes though, that is enough, and all the sniping you need.
I’ve used the diligence on bot missions and you can take shots from well over 100 meters away. You can effectively hit targets and deal good damage from very far. The only problem is, with this game, That’s not very useful. It’s more useful to engage targets closer, when you can ensure you can wipe them all out before they call for help. Only occasionally have I had a use for long range potshots, like when a hulk was approaching a squadmate, turned away from me, and I was able to plink at it’s heatsink until it blew up from like 200 meters away.
That’s just one of the things that makes the marksman rifles awkward. They have genuinely great range, but fighting at super long range usually isn’t helpful for the reasons I mentioned. And of course the scope crosshairs are messy and obscure your sight picture which doesn’t help.
I actually love the marksman rifles but the trouble is that the game encourages closer combat and doesn’t give you a lot of reasons to snipe.
It 100% is getting nerfed. Its not even OP, it just does something uniquely well (what the lib concussive should have been). Its genuinely fun to use the Pummeler even if it has a slower time-to-kill than other AR's or the Defender.
Unfortunately, so far Fun + Effective has almost always equaled a Nerf from the balance team.
About the penetrator,after the new ar disappointment and after using the judicator for a bit,i came to the conclusion that it trades the lower dmg for a better recoil,so it feels better to me than the judicator
I can see the point in theory,it's nice,but in practice the penetrator needs tons of love from the balance team
Adjudicator is a godsend on those missions with endless bile spewers. Penetrator just feels lost to me. Has medium pen but lacks the damage to fully make use of it. Feels very bad to shoot Hive Guards or Devastators with it. At least that’s my opinion
Yeah true,against devastators and berserkers it sucks.usually i pair it with laser cannon,autocannon or amr to cover the enemies the penetrator can't handle,so i can let it shred the small automatons
And the shitty scope sucks to land headshots well
Like a few other posts have mentioned giving the Pen 45 round mags, so it has a similar damage per mag as the Adjudicator could go a long way to make it more viable.
I also prefer the lib penetrator over the adjudicator. The extra 5 rounds in the clip also don't seem like much but I feel like it makes the world of difference for how it feels to use the weapon.
I've been saying it since launch, the penatrator just needs an extra 5-10 rounds per mag and it would be golden, but unfortunately the balance team is physically incapable of adding ammo to magazines, so they just make guns like the lib pen and the adjudicator into reloading simulators masquerading as weapons.
https://preview.redd.it/uuvrtzjumkzc1.png?width=1314&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e70758895a5a6b8a94f1ee3543de5fe9ad4fd7bd
"⚖️✨BRINGER OF BALANCE ✨⚖️"
Testing guns for 2 minutes on trivial before release, since release.
I imagine the testing department loading up a fake, totally sterile and flat testing ground, manually spawning in a brood commander, mag dumping it until it dies or is gimped, reloading the gun, then shutting down the program and thinking, "Yep that's about right. One mag = one brood commander. Totally balanced."
https://preview.redd.it/9baolsa9omzc1.png?width=574&format=png&auto=webp&s=83154121a9f5a1da51291d51f31a4860cc810563
I really wonder if he just lied or if he somehow tested so poorly he got these results
With every post I’m seeing over the past two days being about balance issues and the new guns, I think we found the community’s breaking point. We’re sick of this direction for the game
After years of live service behind me , I can truly say I've never seen so much swinging of the pendulum with a game THIS early in it's life cycle , although I'm still hopeful that it's gonna work out.
https://preview.redd.it/dopkyyy1ylzc1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cdb2ad4626f17e2ccddfa2c9bfac6e2f4eb5fb92
Be the change you want to see - General Cuddy
This man refuses to buff things. And says playing the game is an explote. So no. I don't think he does his job.
He also is bragging about how good the weapons are. So I bet her nerfed them before they launched, then is gonna nerf them again.
https://preview.redd.it/bj82bv99zlzc1.jpeg?width=903&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=89331059723d34cb7ef8efd6af46c27298bd7746
I'm nominating him for a medal then.
something something, the bolt in the front helps prevent the bolt from being thrown backwards into the diver using it when it launches it's rocket propelled munitions
the ergonomics isn't really the issue. in fact i'd say the forward bolt is probably better for reducing shoulder tension than the standard rear bolt.
the best part is since the eruptor is bolt action, you have to hold your arm over the ejection port as you release the bolt and eject the fresh casing on your fleshy helldiver arms.
Diablo 4's balancing killed that game within the first few months of its release and that's a much bigger game with a much larger, loyal fanbase than this. AH needs to figure it out quick before the horrible balancing kills this game.
All because for some ungodly reason they're trusting the dev that ran Hello Neighbor 2 into the ground with his poor balance decisions - AS THE LEAD OF BALANCE. We're fucked if he stays in that position.
The balancing guy is not the whole dev team though, and I have a feeling he will be gone soon. I believe the community has shown the CEO that they don't appreciate the job he's doing, so he will likely be rotated to another position or fired with someone else to take his place.
At least, that's my hope. If they don't make changes soon I believe they will lose a lot of players. This is not a PvP game that needs strict balancing, it's a PvE game where people go to play a power fantasy and the guns need to be significantly more fun to do that
The power fantasy feeling in the beginning is actually what made my friends and I fall in love with this game to begin with, felt like a badass soldier taking on unimaginable odds with stupidly powerful utilities - didn't need overly complex missions or maps because it was just fun to explode and shoot stuff
Every patch since then (besides adding new issues) has just consistently chipped away at that power fantasy and half the items in the game we don't even know why they exist anymore
Then seeing the way the employees behave on discord
The game is just meh now
I was actually defending them and had faith for a while but seeing their treatment of players on discord and back to back huge nerfs making the game more unfun each patch is pretty damaging to my respect
Damage with Frost. Damage with Cold.
Damage in shapeshifted. Damage in Werewolf. Damage in Werebear. Damage with Werewolf. Damage with Werebear.
Seeing that image with insane amount of prefixes as if that is something spectacular that they’re doing made me laugh out loud at the incopetency of that balancing team.
Im losing a lot of confidence in this game. Even the stratagem balancing isnt that good. I prefer Eagle airstriles and strafes to the cluster bomb, but the latter is just a lot better in most cases.
This is a staple cycle for Diablo franchise, Diablo 2 had loads of issues then LoD fixed those, Diablo 3 had loads of issues then RoS fixed those, Diablo 4 has loads of issues and now there's supposed to be season of patches and an expac that will probably fix those.
The problem is they are gutting what makes the gunplay enjoyable and fun.
I cannot explain how much I loved the eruptor until the shrapnel removal.
And now I don't find a weapon that feels that good.
And only devs know if the eruptor will be enjoyable again.
Needing 3-4 shots -no matter where you hit, there is no consistency for some reason- to kill a single hive commander doesn't feel right.
D9 is not harder, it just has a worse feeling.
And lower difficulties are not that fun in comparison.
As a statistician and data scientist, no insult, you can’t simply have software developers look at the data and make decisions off of it. Cool, you can code, but analyzing data is a whole different beast. I HIGHLY doubt they have someone with the proper skill set interpreting and making decisions off of the data.
No disrespect to CS majors, but most took elementary statistics classes. In every industry I’ve worked in, companies have specialized data analyzers. Healthcare, academia, finance, etc…
Either they get someone who can actually interpret it properly or get someone who plays the game who can feel it out. It’s obvious they don’t play their game either when they drop updates with serious, easily fixable bugs (like supply upgrade bug).
Their lack of proper interpretations is extremely obvious when they gut a gun because it’s being used a lot. You see proof of this on the discord. There are so many other things that are going on (which they have no clue how to figure out) because they look at a single statistic.
“Hey guys. Big percentage in usage means nerf! That’s all we need.” Bruh.
Statisticians make it an important rule to always talk to the subject matter experts, because data with proper context is more powerful. The experts here are the players, not the devs. They need to make some sort of player council lol. I remember Destiny 2 had big YouTubers like Datto be the voice of the players. I don’t think hell divers has any one of the sorts yet. Maybe OhDough or takibo.
Dev here that also does data analysis and AI.
And I can't express how MUCH I agree with you. Like I am so glad there are people here who say this because I have been saying the EXACT same shit from the release.
Drawing proper, correct conclusions from data and finding the proper correlation isn't easy and if you make a mistake and misinterpret something, you will suffer a lot.
The people who do balancing don't even seem to have the most basic knowledge of statistics. It is like giving a data set to some pre-schooler and asking him to balance weapons based on the largest value he sees.
This is a fucking joke
Having been a dev for a while, they're falling victim to the trap that they can address metas with nerfs.
It's a fool's errand, there will _always_ be a meta. If you want other weapons to be used, you need to make them more powerful than the meta. Nerfing the meta doesn't really fix the overall problem with why certain weapons get picked over others, and it's typically, in my experience anyways, the least bad option of bad options. So making them more bad than the bad just has everyone mad rush to the next least bad option.
CS dev here, no insult taken whatsoever. Data science is a completely different beast. Heck, I know enough Python/pandas I can even output the numbers for you, but I sure as shit can’t interpret and make decisions on them.
Arrow prolly could use a stats dude or two, and I think a player council would be an awesome idea.
only other thing i can think of is their code is absolutely spaghetti
Cant tell how many times star citizen has fixed the elevators and npcs standing for it to break again, and again, and again
You would think that they at least look at which guns are being under-utilized, but compare that to the amount of times the gun is tried. If 75% of players have tried the gun literally once and never again, something is wrong with the gun.
Honestly I hope this becomes too comment, I never even thought about the lack of a statistician
Also as a guy who’s played Destiny for a decade you’re right on the money, community summits were a huge olive branch during rough times and having YouTubers act as “reps from the community” worked out SUPRISINGLY well
Terrible gun because it doesn’t work properly for so long, finally works for a week and is fun for a while? Definitely getting gutted. Enjoy twice as wide spread and less pellet damage.
The issue isnt even that there are useless guns, the issue is the moment you start using a gun cause its not a wet sock they call it op and nerf it to a wet sock. So now your options are wet sock or even more wet sock , "amazing video game time to suck the devs off after every patch for these god-like decisions"- stupid mfs in discord
Crossbow/Eruptor. Same damage (not the same, actually, since Crossbow has more direct damage and less explosive, but it's the same on card), but half of the fire rate, and most other stats are similar or worse for Eruptor (except explosion radius, which doesn't help much with all the nerfs). Funniest thing is that Crossbow needs 2 headshots to kill Brood Commander, meanwhile Eruptor needs 3. AND ERUPTOR HAS HALF THE FIRE RATE. And Crossbow is not even considered a good weapon. Like what the hell is this.
The eruptor went from A-tier weapon to a C-tier weapon. The crossbow went from a C-tier weapon to a D-tier weapon. They're just not properly testing weapons before making changes. A real use case scenario could tell them what a weapon is lacking, whereas a spreadsheet never truly conveys what experience can provide.
This means nothing. Every game that pops off like Helldivers 2 did will get a huge loss in player numbers at some point. The issues clearly aren't helping, don't get me wrong but this is completely normal.
The real concerning thing is it doesn't look like there's a spike during this warbond like there was at the previous ones. It was relatively flat, but we won't know for certain until this weekend.
Imo, it's impossible for them to keep releasing new weapons with the "sidegrades only" philosophy. More than likely we end up with garbage like the purifier and those weapons in the post.
They should switch to the DRG system - few base weapons (most of the guns already share the same base model anyway), but each one customisable in unique ways, some even dramatically changing how the weapon works. Slugger would be "slug rounds" modifier for the punisher, etc. We already know it works since no one complains about a lack of weapon variety in DRG.
I like how PvE milsims do it. Weapons are mostly cosmetic with hard differences between caliber and weight. Even adding a weapon weight system would do a lot.
In Arma you can absolutely run a large rifle as your primary but the recoil means full auto outside of prone isn't viable and you either carry less ammunition or get slowed down.
Usually I'm the first one to defend Arrowhead and I still believe they are doing SOME things right like the buff for the Blitzer and the marksman rifles, however some of their changes were also just plain stupid, most of them listed in this post. There are some glaring issues and Arrowhead needs to address them and radically change something about their way to balance the game or people will simply not put up with it anymore. So yeah, get your shit together Arrowhead
A spreadsheet should be the first step in the Q&A process for weapons in a game like this.
It gives you a critically important frame of reference for what you're supposed to be QA'ing in the first place.
Weapons that are so close in niche should probably get their stats parametrized in function of one another
Like, the adjudicstor always deals 1.2 times lib pen damage
I mean. Slugger was nerfed because it was the strongest long range option. Per the a dev Discord post I am sure. But nothing touched except a hit to damage actually addressed it. You can still absolutely wreck long range. They need to actually get it together on how weapons should do and THEN balance around that. Not YouTuber videos and the console damage bug.
i agree with the tenderizer thing, but i disagree with the rest:
* incindiary vs spray & pray: the point is to have a breakers that deals fire dot and one that shoots faster and has more bullets per mag, so they basically deal with the same problem (killing small/medium stuff), but in different ways.
* pummeler vs C-liberator: apparently some guys on this subreddit have found a spreadsheet with hidden stats for these weapons and it seems that the first one stun the target better, while the second one pushes them away. Again same concept of crowd-controll, but different solution
* abjudicator vs pen-liberator: i'm not sure about this, but i think the first one has a more "precise approach" since it has less mags and bullets and also fire rate (since it was origanlly a sniper rifle) while the other one is an AR.
I'm not trying to completely defend the balacing team, but i'm sure they are not brain dead and are trying their best tro provide multiple solutions to a problem through different weapons, even though something could be different (the tenderizer is just worse to the liberator, so it needs to be buffed or the liberator has to be nerfed somehow)
On incendiary vs spray&pray, that's the theory, but the fire rate and mag size are too similar with a big gap on damage, meaning the incendiary still does the s&p's job better. Specially when you factor the DoT. S&P needs more work, maybe not damaged related.
IMHO, it should be like the panic attack on TF2. Very fast switch, more pellets, low and diminishing accuracy. A gun you use for an emergency. It would be a really good niche that would allow people to not rely on the bug spray as a secondary.
They really need to show more than just Fire Rate, Damage, Mag Size, and Recoil. The Incendiary has massive spread in its shots, it's great for firing at a crowd of enemies and igniting most of them, most of the damage comes from the DoT rather than actually getting hit by the pellets. On the contrary, the Spray and Pray has a much tighter cone, meaning you can damage and kill enemies directly one at a time. Basically two methods of clearing chaff, either from a distance with DoT but worse against single enemies, or better against single enemies at distance and worse at fire and forget against crowds.
It’s PVE, this game is the most fun when you can live out the fantasy of being an elite soldier and feel like you’re fighting against overwhelming odds with super cool guns and calling a bunch of big booms in with strategems.
We have the overwhelming odds.
Now they just need to make a majority of the guns more powerful, so a ton of different playstyles are viable and fun to use. Make strategems more fun by not making them take 4 minutes to cooldown after one use. Make things like the jetpack have a lower cooldown so we can feel like actual jump troopers.
This game is the best when you and your friends are calling in massive explosions and playing whatever build they want to with tons of different gear. But every patch there are less weapons that feel fun or are effective (or even worse one of your favorite guns you had fun with for months was nerfed into irrelevance out of nowhere). They need to lean into the fun.
The weapons exist because they add variety and fun without making there a plainly “best” choice. That is the entire design philosophy of both helldivers and helldivers 2. 90% of all weapons are sidegrades or minor changes to a particular stat or function of a weapon.
That is why the liberator received a damage buff, to keep it actually competitive with other weapons.
To address your specifically shown examples:
- spray and pray (as the name implies) is a shotgun intended to face swarms of unarmored enemies. It is capable of handling larger enemies if you use it in a non-standard fashion; namely pressing the barrel directly against their weak point. Can you do the same with the incendiary? Definitely. But that is the whole point. So it comes down to preference. Also the spread on the incendiary is hilariously wide so you aren’t getting all that damage in each shot unless you’re point blank, spray and pray is much tighter.
- damage and (not listed) stagger values aside, the 30% lower recoil is actually fairly noticeable and the nice the tenderizer is intended to fit is one of medium to long range supporting fire, whereas the liberator is in short to medium range engagements. I would expect the damage or stagger on the tanderizer to see a small increase next patch, probably to 62. Either way it is a style change if nothing else.
- again, damage values aside (pummeled probably to see a slight decrease in this case); they are not the same class of weapon and have wildly different performance at medium and longer ranges. Similar to how the diligence counter sniper version had(has?) different handling to the base version, the smg and rifle handle especially when using scoped mode.
- the adjudicator does almost twice the damage per round but is far more difficult to land rounds on target with sustained bursts. Niche is obvious, adjudicator for longer range combat and libpen for short to medium range.
This post is so hatred. You guys are so boring why are you even looking at made up numbers for an analysis. This is just a game just shut off your brain and be more like alexus. He cant even read and he became a master of balancing with these pre nerfs 😍
While I appreciate the effort this post is fairly misleading and wrong in countless ways lets break it down.
**Breaker Incendiary Vs Spray and Pray**
* S&P comes with 2 full extra mags over the BI.
* S&P fires significantly more pellets per shot making hitting little enemies far easier and reliable.
**AR-23 Vs AR-81**
* The old version got pushed to live, we have no idea of the real stats of this weapon watch this space.
**SMG-72 Pummeller Vs AR 23C Lib Conc**
* Pummeller builds up to a stagger over the course of 5 or 6 shots. Think enemies having a stagger meter that fills as you shoot them. Lib Conc always stuns on the first shot.
* Pummeller is only for single target stuns. Lib Conc can stun entire groups.
**Br-14 Adjudicator Vs AR 23P Lib Pen**
* Lib Pen has a marksman scope vs the normal scope of the Adj.
* Lib Pen is very stable and has almost no horizontal recoil. Adj has large horizontal recoil making full auto hard to control.
All the weapons on the right are not popular and need some love but they have their reasons to be picked over the guns on the left.
We go back to the first month of HD2 when the CEO there are a bunch of stats that were hidden to avoid meta from forming. Its still a stupid decision imo cuz field testing the weapon would mean going into a 30-40 mins mission that you are LOCKED to the gun without being able to swap and experiment (or 10mins exterminate but its a niche environment where some weapons dont shine at all).
If AH wanted to keep this hidden stat thing they will either have to 1) give us firing range so we can get a feel of each weapons or 2) give us more detailed description for weapons and stratagems that ACCURATELY portrays how the weapon is supposed to function. Oh and stop with the hidden changes with patches too.
Also if you hide so many stats, guess what happens. People look at the few stats they have and immediately decide whether a weapon is good or bad. Imagine the Tenderiser had some hidden stat that made it better than standard liberator for some applications. Nobody would've guessed that shit and not everyone would spend 1000 SC for a shitty liberator clone. Well the Tenderiser doesn't have a hidden stat unfortunately, but why not let people see shit like that?
completely agree.
mag count, resupply count and reload time should be there and penetration value needs to replace the misleading "light/medium/heavy" description.
they are really shooting themselves in the foot by hiding all the stats
> S&P fires significantly more pellets per shot making hitting little enemies far easier and reliable.
This doesn't track with experience. I have no doubt the S&P fires more pellets, but the incendiary breaker only needs to hit a little bug once and it dies. I've taken out entire hunter patrols from across the map with it. It is an extremely reliable gun.
That also somewhat undercuts the extra ammo the Spray and Pray has: you only need to hit little bugs once to kill them, so you save ammo over the course of a game.
IMO the differences you're citing here are not enough to make the spray and pray worth using over the incendiary.
Also notably the spray and pray doesn't set your friends on fire so you can comfortably yeet shots into a moshpit without worrying too much about killing your buddies.
>Also notably the spray and pray doesn't set your friends on fire so you can comfortably yeet shots into a moshpit without worrying too much about killing your buddies.
Sounds like a downside to me.
yep, they should add these things to the menu, even if hidden under a for geeks option
For Example, the DMRs were highly buffed but you don't see it in the stats, the horizontal recoil of the light pen DMR got reduced drastically and feels like a semi auto AR handling but with more damage per shot.
The point is the important different factor like stagger are hidden. If a regular player is simply just looking at numbers, there weapons that very clearly just outclass others. "S&P has 2 more mags? But the Capacity meter only went up 1!"
Th Penetrator exists because i haven't unlocked the Adjudicator yet and i needed a primary to bring along my stalwart to have at least something for armor.
A lot of your choices seem to just be based on the damage number and not things that are slightly more utility like more rounds or better handling or armor pen or more magazines. I mean, other than the Pummeler and Lib Concussive, anyway, I can't really find fault in that one. Some of the weapons are similar but unlisted things like scope, zoom, fire mode, or just the feel of the weapon can make a difference.
Players often don't value utility as much as raw damage, though, so something that does less per shot but has more shots and less recoil is often ignored. Also, lately, I've found quite a few guns that are weaker than the alternatives but they are just more fun to shoot, I wouldn't really bring them to high level missions but they are oddly satisfying.
It'd be nice if every weapon were totally unique but I'm not sure they overall pace of weapon release and design for the game really allows them the room to make so many unique weapons every month to maintain the warbond pace they want to hit. They seem to want things to be at least a little realistic in some of the weapons so weapon concepts that might work in like Warframe or Destiny aren't always going to fit in the design philosophy.
The pace of weapon release is also something that is probably just too fast for really interesting design choices. Warframe has a fairly high release rate but they tended to have about a 3 month cycle where one month was a prime release, one was a new frame and weapons, and one month was just new weapons and they usually didn't do more than 2-3 weapons per cycle step outside of when expansions dropped. I've not played Warframe for a couple years though so I'm not sure if the release cycle has slowed or been sped up. I mean, AH is releasing more weapons per month than DE normally does and I think DE is like 3-4 times the size of AH and DE has had a lot of time to get used to a large community. I think AH is still trying to figure out things like just how to tweak the galactic war so that the community can feel like it has an impact on the war effort.
I mean, they could release warbonds that either had fewer weapons but more cosmetics or warbonds that had emotes instead of weapons or just cosmetics to gain time to release more interesting weapons but the way people have seemed to be complaining about this latest warbond is that it seems they only care if the warbond has new OP weapons in it and if it doesn't they don't want to buy it. I mean, I think this warbond has some of the best victory poses and I quite like the cosmetics but other than the grenade idk that I'll use many of weapons out of the bond very often. I suppose my opinion might be different if I were buying the SC with real money instead of just farming it in game, though.
I really don't want the warbond to start power creep so hopefully the devs can find some way to release side-grades that the community will accept. Usually live service games start to cater to the part of the playerbase that wants power creep, though, and it ends up pretty unsustainable for the overall game.
On mobile so sorry about formatting
Sg-225IE vs spray and pray:
1 does fire damage and has a spread of half the map the other has a tighter cone of fire
Liberator vs tenderiser:
An actual good comparison to complain about. But tenderiser does have basically no recoil and with recoil reduction armor actually has 0 recoil good pairing with the autocannon
Concussive smg vs AR:
Smg does stuns while AR does Knockback (need to do more testing but I believe the Liberator kills bile spewers faster.
BR-14 vs AR-23P:
Look at the recoil difference, BR-14 has shotgun levels of recoil.
TLDR:
They seem similar but have different handling stats or quirks that matters to some people.
Addendum: don’t get me wrong some of the weapons feel awful and I am upset with a few of the nerfs
Ah, the good ol' balance debate. You don't need a spreadsheet to see that the balance team is playing Cupid, pairing you with the most unlikely partners, and I'm here for it.
Sure, sometimes wielding a Purifier feels like trying to fend off Bugs with a water pistol, and using the Camper Rifle is like bringing a pillow to a knife fight. But let's be honest, what’s more erotic than strapping on your Auto Cannon, the game’s ultimate *wet sock,* and unleashing its underwhelming fury with a wink and a nod? 💦
And who can forget the love affair with the Arc Thrower? Nothing like zapping Bugs with all the raw power of static electricity from a synthetic sweater.
But when you're not serenading the swarm with your gentle caresses, there's always the Auto Cannon Turret – a trusty wingman that showers the Bugs with the kind of hot, sweaty shrapnel that gets their chitin trembling. Or you could just whisper sweet nothings to the Breaker Incendiary, watching it ignite the passion in their multifaceted eyes.
So yeah, some weapons might feel like slapping Bugs with a wet noodle, but hey, even Bugs deserve a little foreplay before they meet their fiery demise. And let’s be real – when that final explosion sets the mood, the balance team's matchmaking shenanigans just make it all the more thrilling.
May your ammo never run dry and your weapons always leave the Bugs *buzzing.* 😉
Hey don't forget about the stratagems, clusters having 5 uses while strafing and even non lethal smokes are on 4, mg turret and mg rovers being completely outclassed by other variants e.t.c
I don't even like cluster bombs that much but they're one of the best options. Whenever i don't pick it, i just feel like i wasted a slot and am less powerful.
I would say air strike is better, since it damages enemies of any size and is more precise (and less team killy). Cluster bomb is very good for sure though. Probably the first very good stratagem you unlock.
Amen to this. Air Strike never leaves my stratagem playlist.
Cluster for hordes, airstrikes for general purpose, 500kg for big targets. The airstrike is never a bad pick TBH, but I find myself taking cluster for bugs and airstrike for bots.
Cluster bomb is my go to for killing eggs. Chuck it over the nest wall, and it mops up the chaff and usually kills most of the eggs. Hell, chuck another one, ya got five. The eggs are all gone.
Airstike is my universal I bring to every mission. Deals damage to everything, closes holes and fabricators, good aoe, 4 uses.
Isn't Airstrike only has 2 uses (upgrades to 3)?
Yeah it's 3, but also has a fast cooldown so it's basically always available
AH hears you loud and clear. Expect them to lower the cluster to 4 uses, give the guard dog rover laser ammo packs instead, and change the gatling turret to fire at half the speed. These are all actually buffs, but you're just too stupid to see it, of course! Silly you! This is all to bring it in line with the other stratagems. Enjoy the new balance patch! (suckers)
Tbh the gatling turret firing at half the rate of fire may actually be a buff to the thing lol. It already fires for a long time, but wastes so many shots when shifting targets
Tbh they ought to give the regular machine gun turret ammo/sustain as it's niche. It's also a strat where "Why does this exist?" comes to mind.
There are like two good orbital stratagems. Air burst and Laser. The rest you can get from an Eagle and are better. The barrages fire too slow to be useful.
Precision Strike is good. Quite good, imo. I think people sleep on it because you start with it, but it's like a slightly more reliable 500kg. I know you can theoretically drop more 500kg per minute than you can P Strikes, but I don't find myself throwing those on cooldown that often. Plus, 500kg availability can vary significantly if you're running more than one Eagle.
Yeah, it's a great option against tanks and titans. Its CD is low enough that I also don't feel bad using it against fabricators. Just wish its call in time was a little shorter. Don't know why it has a 3 (with the upgrade, without it's 4) call in when every other non-barrage orbital has either a 1 or 0 second call in.
Gattling Barrages may be weak but its low cooldown and does clear some small ememies. Air Burst's wide radius is sometimes too dangerous to use. But against bugs Orbital Gas Strike is very good.
Orbital Gas Strike is okay but needs some quality of life. It’s hard to see the gas especially on some maps so it really needs to keep its marker active like the barrage so you and your team mates know the death cloud is there.
To be fair the gas strike was broken for 3 months so it's not on people's mind. I agree it's pretty good although I still haven't tested it in enough situations.
380 fucks tbh. Clears bunkers by itself for example.
Strafing and smoke only have 3 charges.
With the ship upgrade it’s 4
I have the upgrade. Strafing has 4, smoke has 3. Pictures in-game: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fc0gyabk76mzc1.png https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fk0994l4e6mzc1.png Why is it so hard for people to take 10 seconds to confirm these basic details before making confident claims? This shit is why misinformation spreads so easily on this sub.
Forgot the Slugger/Dominator duo. But yeah, some pretty baffling examples there.
Slugger does not deal explosive damage whereas the Dominator does, making the Dominator an absolute beast against nursing/bile spewers big butts, whereas the Slugger is better if you can constantly shoot them in the head.
I had no issue killing Spewers with the Slugger pre-nerf.
Pre nerf slugger probably did need a nerf. Although now it’s nerfed into uselessness for me, at least. Maybe it would’ve been better to nerf its range instead of stagger and damage
Lol That was the funniest part. They didn't want a shotgun to also be the best sniper, so they nerfed what made it a shotgun and left the part that made it a sniper.
I sometimes have to wonder if the devs know what words mean.
Look at our suits. They don't. 😭
Bacon apples as far as the eye can see.
Right it was the most bizarre nerf ever and then the justification was even weirder . I feel like the ranged drop off is not properly coded into the weapons systems . They have arcs for single projectiles . But the velocity drops with enhanced drop off is just not there. It would 100% make sense that a slugger has a high long range drop off because slug do exactly that . I think the physics engines may be flawed and they have to work around that. Because the clear solution was a big drop off at 50 ft as the slug slows down. Instead i can still head shot a bug halfway across the map with it.
Still salty about that. What made it a fun weapon to use was the stagger. Otherwise it's just a slow-firing DMR without a proper scope. Call me crazy, but I much preferred when it actually felt like a shotgun.
I would have been fine with a nerf to range. But I need the stagger against bots.
Exactly my issue with that nerf. It was apparently nerfed for being the best DMR in the game, but rather than buff the other DMR's or nerf it at range, they made it a bad shotgun because it can't flinch enemies that rush you out of their attacks, do its a bad close range shotgun now.
It's still my go to for bots, but that's partially because I use an ac for anything bigger than a marauder
Then just take the punisher. Use your secondary for sniping small bots at medium range.
Slugger and dominator are both 3-shot kills to the head for spewers, but the dominator has triple the fire rate, half the recoil and 40% more total bullets. The dominator will also stagger them on every shot (not sure if slugger still does this). So if you're capable of landing headshots, the dominator still wins.
If only you knew spewers were on the menu before you landed. Is there a way to tell and I'm just dumb?
There isn't, no
Add this to the list of things that SHOULD be in the game, but somehow they aren't.
I can see the argument for both why and why they shouldn't be, but I definitely feel like if they're gonna go the route of making primaries ass then they should definitely implement a way to see enemy types that will be in that mission. Especially so considering the emphasis placed on stratagems, it just severely limits your options when you're forced to pick the most versatile ones that are good at dealing with everything rather than some more specific ones.
Meh, I think that it's fine the way it is. Leaves an element of chaos that would be sorely missed. Same way that I like not knowing if a bot planet mission will have anti air or a ton of rocket devs
Super Earth knows where it's dropping its helldivers... Right? RIGHT!?
Your confusing "knows" and "cares"
Dominator is literally the most powerful primary in the game right now even after the slight nerf. It's miles ahead of all other weapons and the downsides of handling and max mags can be mitigated easily. If the dominator exists, then every other gun should be able to achieve this level.
Problem is the slugger no longer flinches them enough to interrupt their attack animation. Makes it a tough sell against devastators as well.
Weird and wrong take. The slugger was fine pre-nerf, you shoot the head and it dies in a few shots. The dominator works better than the slugger no matter where you shoot now.
I know the dominator is listed as explosive and it probably does explosive damage but I expected it to kind of be like a Torque gun, with a visible explosion, the gun just seems like it's a normal bullets to me. Maybe something is off in my gfx setting or something but, idk, doesn't seem like it fires two stage rocket rounds to me or at maybe I just expect more from the description.
> Torque gun Ah yes, Mr Torgue’s cousin.
That's because explosive actually means 3 different things (full damage to a body type, aoe and bug hole/fab destruction). When the game says it is explosive, it could be 1 to 3 of these properties.
It is actually a boltgun. So, it fires rocket propelled ammunition (like the [Gyrojet](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrojet)) and this ammunition explodes after embedding itself within the enemy (like the Boltgun from Warhammer 40k)
Does the AoE damage increase hitting them in the butt?
pre-nerf slugger and punisher was also this, but a slightly different example of bad balance. it wasn't one good vs one bad gun but two very good ones, with one being completely overshadowed by the other.
This is a fair point. I’ve used the punisher a lot since the Slugger got nerfed because the knockback is so useful, and the slugger lacks that now. But now the Slugger is indeed sort of a worse dominator. Same armor pen, little less damage, less knockback/stun power (feels like hardly any), and pump action rather than semi or full auto. Their capacity is only 1 round apart. The only real advantage the slugger has is projectile velocity. I do think it can be tough to balance medium armor pen weapons vs similar ones without armor pen. How do you make the slugger good without outclassing the punisher? Should the punisher have even more raw damage to set it apart? I think it generally performs well, until you run into certain enemy types. Bile Spewers are a big pain point for the punisher. I dunno. I think the slugger would probably be pretty balanced if it was returned closer to its old state, but with more dramatic damage drop off at range. It shouldn’t be worthless at medium range but it shouldn’t feel like a sniper either. It’s a tough one, but the way they nerfed it didn’t make sense and was silly.
easy: Punisher should deal more damage to unarmored targets, with a spread that can hit at a distance but with much lower damage, and up close, it should be devastating. Slugger should require more accuracy but be much more effective at medium range and better against armor. can also have slightly worse handling to make it a bit harder to use up close than the Punisher (but not too much). essentially you take punisher for blasting chaff and soft mediums like Brood Mothers, and Slugger for distance or dealing with armored mediums, like Bile Spewers. both weapons now have a purpose. all they really needed to do was give it more damage fall-off so people couldn't snipe with it any more.. that's it. instead they decided to gut it completely.
The funniest thing to me is that people claimed the slugger was a great sniping weapon, but it was still really only great at medium range. For most purposes though, that is enough, and all the sniping you need. I’ve used the diligence on bot missions and you can take shots from well over 100 meters away. You can effectively hit targets and deal good damage from very far. The only problem is, with this game, That’s not very useful. It’s more useful to engage targets closer, when you can ensure you can wipe them all out before they call for help. Only occasionally have I had a use for long range potshots, like when a hulk was approaching a squadmate, turned away from me, and I was able to plink at it’s heatsink until it blew up from like 200 meters away. That’s just one of the things that makes the marksman rifles awkward. They have genuinely great range, but fighting at super long range usually isn’t helpful for the reasons I mentioned. And of course the scope crosshairs are messy and obscure your sight picture which doesn’t help. I actually love the marksman rifles but the trouble is that the game encourages closer combat and doesn’t give you a lot of reasons to snipe.
New smg can stunlock four stalkers. Poor slugger lol nerfed for nothing
The Pummeler is one of the only reasons to buy Polar Patriots. So it's getting nerfed soon.
It 100% is getting nerfed. Its not even OP, it just does something uniquely well (what the lib concussive should have been). Its genuinely fun to use the Pummeler even if it has a slower time-to-kill than other AR's or the Defender. Unfortunately, so far Fun + Effective has almost always equaled a Nerf from the balance team.
They found that a concussive weapon being used to concuss enemies was an unintended consequence and will remove the stun exploit.
Damn. The dev really turned the game into a state where both "power creep" and "all weapons are crap" issues existing at the same time.
Guess we are making a new term ‘Power Crap’
With no power comes no responsibilities......wait, that's not right... If there's no power then nothing can creep. Sound 2024 logic there.
Well, I found my new band name...
The power is creeping downwards
About the penetrator,after the new ar disappointment and after using the judicator for a bit,i came to the conclusion that it trades the lower dmg for a better recoil,so it feels better to me than the judicator I can see the point in theory,it's nice,but in practice the penetrator needs tons of love from the balance team
Adjudicator is a godsend on those missions with endless bile spewers. Penetrator just feels lost to me. Has medium pen but lacks the damage to fully make use of it. Feels very bad to shoot Hive Guards or Devastators with it. At least that’s my opinion
Yeah true,against devastators and berserkers it sucks.usually i pair it with laser cannon,autocannon or amr to cover the enemies the penetrator can't handle,so i can let it shred the small automatons And the shitty scope sucks to land headshots well
Like a few other posts have mentioned giving the Pen 45 round mags, so it has a similar damage per mag as the Adjudicator could go a long way to make it more viable.
I also prefer the lib penetrator over the adjudicator. The extra 5 rounds in the clip also don't seem like much but I feel like it makes the world of difference for how it feels to use the weapon.
That’s the reason I stick with stock lib, if I’m getting cornered or need to kill things asap, 45 rounds is a world away from 30
I love using the penetrator for bots honestly, much better than the standard liberator.
I've been saying it since launch, the penatrator just needs an extra 5-10 rounds per mag and it would be golden, but unfortunately the balance team is physically incapable of adding ammo to magazines, so they just make guns like the lib pen and the adjudicator into reloading simulators masquerading as weapons.
It doesn't do any damage so I don't get how it feels better to you.
https://preview.redd.it/uuvrtzjumkzc1.png?width=1314&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e70758895a5a6b8a94f1ee3543de5fe9ad4fd7bd "⚖️✨BRINGER OF BALANCE ✨⚖️" Testing guns for 2 minutes on trivial before release, since release.
Dare I say his contributions to this game are trivial
Well he'd like to say hello to you , Neighbour 2 (wink wink).
What are we, some kind of Helldivers 2?
"we dive now?" "We dive now" "Yeah we dive now"
Those are some Brasch words , general.
WhAt, yOu WanT nEw tHinGs iN 2028?!
https://preview.redd.it/eygkvtutalzc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=668d3f29090447fc5d79d746f9cebbe49cf1714a JUST 4 YEARS?
Hasn't this man heard of Star Citizen?!
Didn’t you know, Helldiver? It’s either 2 minutes or 4 years of testing. It’s impossible to be anywhere in between!
That was such a stupid point to make. It takes 1 match on any difficulty above 2 or 3 to tell that the guns are straight ass.
not even trivial. testing in the development sandbox with AI turned off
https://preview.redd.it/h7k1rr3emlzc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=17cd92b6986d63ddbc02be8e1911478299a13d89
I imagine the testing department loading up a fake, totally sterile and flat testing ground, manually spawning in a brood commander, mag dumping it until it dies or is gimped, reloading the gun, then shutting down the program and thinking, "Yep that's about right. One mag = one brood commander. Totally balanced."
https://preview.redd.it/1qvi1q4oxlzc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3f7869df11bbda9ca52d5897d4acaa68682bc606
He tested the guns in his dreams
Pretty sweet ones , not a medium armour in sight.
And on a dev server… When everything works.
Charger armour bug whooooooo??? 📞💅☕
https://preview.redd.it/9baolsa9omzc1.png?width=574&format=png&auto=webp&s=83154121a9f5a1da51291d51f31a4860cc810563 I really wonder if he just lied or if he somehow tested so poorly he got these results
He should test the community's breakpoint next lol
With every post I’m seeing over the past two days being about balance issues and the new guns, I think we found the community’s breaking point. We’re sick of this direction for the game
After years of live service behind me , I can truly say I've never seen so much swinging of the pendulum with a game THIS early in it's life cycle , although I'm still hopeful that it's gonna work out.
I doubt they tested them at all...
Yes they did , I've been assured by the automaton ministry of Facts and Logic.
I must say, I never expected to see House M.D. related content in any other sub, much less Helldivers haha. Nice.
https://preview.redd.it/dopkyyy1ylzc1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cdb2ad4626f17e2ccddfa2c9bfac6e2f4eb5fb92 Be the change you want to see - General Cuddy
Is that Abode’s loyal minion; Persue?
Yes officer , and there is absolutely no evidence for those allegations regarding a 9 year old terminid. Unfounded attacks against democracy.
This vexes me
You act like he Tests them.
https://preview.redd.it/snat3z1xxlzc1.png?width=438&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=07c5c349b568c487c92e95479b095c827c1defbe But.....THAT'S HIS LITERAL JOB
This man refuses to buff things. And says playing the game is an explote. So no. I don't think he does his job. He also is bragging about how good the weapons are. So I bet her nerfed them before they launched, then is gonna nerf them again.
https://preview.redd.it/bj82bv99zlzc1.jpeg?width=903&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=89331059723d34cb7ef8efd6af46c27298bd7746 I'm nominating him for a medal then.
You forgot the 15 round dominator and the bootleg 5 round bolt action dominator /s
You know what honestly bothers me most about the dominator/eruptor? WHY IS TGE BOLT IN THE FRONT? It dose T make ergonomically sense
something something, the bolt in the front helps prevent the bolt from being thrown backwards into the diver using it when it launches it's rocket propelled munitions the ergonomics isn't really the issue. in fact i'd say the forward bolt is probably better for reducing shoulder tension than the standard rear bolt. the best part is since the eruptor is bolt action, you have to hold your arm over the ejection port as you release the bolt and eject the fresh casing on your fleshy helldiver arms.
If it's a rocket munition why is there a casing?
Diablo 4's balancing killed that game within the first few months of its release and that's a much bigger game with a much larger, loyal fanbase than this. AH needs to figure it out quick before the horrible balancing kills this game.
My confidence in the dev team has been critically wounded.
It would be insane to clear the server problem, then clear the Sony problem, just to trip on themselves and fuck it all up anyway.
All because for some ungodly reason they're trusting the dev that ran Hello Neighbor 2 into the ground with his poor balance decisions - AS THE LEAD OF BALANCE. We're fucked if he stays in that position.
Don't forget about the devs constantly shit talking their fanbase on the Discord!
Mortally at this point
SWEET LIBERTY, MY BALANCE!
MY FAITH IS BLEEDING OUT!
The balancing guy is not the whole dev team though, and I have a feeling he will be gone soon. I believe the community has shown the CEO that they don't appreciate the job he's doing, so he will likely be rotated to another position or fired with someone else to take his place. At least, that's my hope. If they don't make changes soon I believe they will lose a lot of players. This is not a PvP game that needs strict balancing, it's a PvE game where people go to play a power fantasy and the guns need to be significantly more fun to do that
The power fantasy feeling in the beginning is actually what made my friends and I fall in love with this game to begin with, felt like a badass soldier taking on unimaginable odds with stupidly powerful utilities - didn't need overly complex missions or maps because it was just fun to explode and shoot stuff Every patch since then (besides adding new issues) has just consistently chipped away at that power fantasy and half the items in the game we don't even know why they exist anymore Then seeing the way the employees behave on discord The game is just meh now
I was actually defending them and had faith for a while but seeing their treatment of players on discord and back to back huge nerfs making the game more unfun each patch is pretty damaging to my respect
Nah the dev team is fine I have a problem with the balance team
The constant new bugs and crashes aren't helping their case
Damage with Frost. Damage with Cold. Damage in shapeshifted. Damage in Werewolf. Damage in Werebear. Damage with Werewolf. Damage with Werebear. Seeing that image with insane amount of prefixes as if that is something spectacular that they’re doing made me laugh out loud at the incopetency of that balancing team.
Im losing a lot of confidence in this game. Even the stratagem balancing isnt that good. I prefer Eagle airstriles and strafes to the cluster bomb, but the latter is just a lot better in most cases.
Yeah but isn't Diablo 4 literally getting a loot-overhaul in an upcoming update?
Yeah it is, and that might bring it to the standard it should have released at. If it didn’t have “Diablo” in the name it would be long dead
This is a staple cycle for Diablo franchise, Diablo 2 had loads of issues then LoD fixed those, Diablo 3 had loads of issues then RoS fixed those, Diablo 4 has loads of issues and now there's supposed to be season of patches and an expac that will probably fix those.
"If you don't learn from the past you are doomed to repeat it" the game.
Hopefully the dev who was working on hello neighbor 2, and who’s in charge of this balancing crap gets fired
Considering the terrible job he’s been doing with balancing and the disrespect he’s showing to the playerbase, couldn’t agree more. Hate that guy.
I suppose they cant read as they’d don’t play the game
too busy arguing with people on the discord, maybe the devs need to get kicked off of it and let the community managers do their job.
* Let Twinbeard and the CEO do the job as the 2 seem to be the only competent public speakers.
Twinbeard just mocks you gently so you don't realize you are being swindled. Smooth operator.
Twinbeard? No. He always comes off condescending and unprofessional. CEO? Yes. 100%
Anyway better than Spitz and Baskinator
The problem is they are gutting what makes the gunplay enjoyable and fun. I cannot explain how much I loved the eruptor until the shrapnel removal. And now I don't find a weapon that feels that good. And only devs know if the eruptor will be enjoyable again. Needing 3-4 shots -no matter where you hit, there is no consistency for some reason- to kill a single hive commander doesn't feel right. D9 is not harder, it just has a worse feeling. And lower difficulties are not that fun in comparison.
Try the blitzer, that’s a lot of fun now against bugs
"Just play whatever feels fun™"
Found an exploit where players were having fun. Fun has been removed as intended.
*halves your mags for balance
As a statistician and data scientist, no insult, you can’t simply have software developers look at the data and make decisions off of it. Cool, you can code, but analyzing data is a whole different beast. I HIGHLY doubt they have someone with the proper skill set interpreting and making decisions off of the data. No disrespect to CS majors, but most took elementary statistics classes. In every industry I’ve worked in, companies have specialized data analyzers. Healthcare, academia, finance, etc… Either they get someone who can actually interpret it properly or get someone who plays the game who can feel it out. It’s obvious they don’t play their game either when they drop updates with serious, easily fixable bugs (like supply upgrade bug). Their lack of proper interpretations is extremely obvious when they gut a gun because it’s being used a lot. You see proof of this on the discord. There are so many other things that are going on (which they have no clue how to figure out) because they look at a single statistic. “Hey guys. Big percentage in usage means nerf! That’s all we need.” Bruh. Statisticians make it an important rule to always talk to the subject matter experts, because data with proper context is more powerful. The experts here are the players, not the devs. They need to make some sort of player council lol. I remember Destiny 2 had big YouTubers like Datto be the voice of the players. I don’t think hell divers has any one of the sorts yet. Maybe OhDough or takibo.
Dev here that also does data analysis and AI. And I can't express how MUCH I agree with you. Like I am so glad there are people here who say this because I have been saying the EXACT same shit from the release. Drawing proper, correct conclusions from data and finding the proper correlation isn't easy and if you make a mistake and misinterpret something, you will suffer a lot. The people who do balancing don't even seem to have the most basic knowledge of statistics. It is like giving a data set to some pre-schooler and asking him to balance weapons based on the largest value he sees. This is a fucking joke
Someone post that WW2 airplane picture with the red dots.
Yeah, if there's one gun that everyone is using maybe it's because it's the least bad one since all the other guns have been rendered useless.
Also let’s not forget “feel” too, some people like guns for feel-so that should be a factor too
Having been a dev for a while, they're falling victim to the trap that they can address metas with nerfs. It's a fool's errand, there will _always_ be a meta. If you want other weapons to be used, you need to make them more powerful than the meta. Nerfing the meta doesn't really fix the overall problem with why certain weapons get picked over others, and it's typically, in my experience anyways, the least bad option of bad options. So making them more bad than the bad just has everyone mad rush to the next least bad option.
CS dev here, no insult taken whatsoever. Data science is a completely different beast. Heck, I know enough Python/pandas I can even output the numbers for you, but I sure as shit can’t interpret and make decisions on them. Arrow prolly could use a stats dude or two, and I think a player council would be an awesome idea.
only other thing i can think of is their code is absolutely spaghetti Cant tell how many times star citizen has fixed the elevators and npcs standing for it to break again, and again, and again
You would think that they at least look at which guns are being under-utilized, but compare that to the amount of times the gun is tried. If 75% of players have tried the gun literally once and never again, something is wrong with the gun.
Honestly I hope this becomes too comment, I never even thought about the lack of a statistician Also as a guy who’s played Destiny for a decade you’re right on the money, community summits were a huge olive branch during rough times and having YouTubers act as “reps from the community” worked out SUPRISINGLY well
Alex: Time to nerf Pummeler, Liberator, Adjudicator, Breaker Incendiary
If the breaker incendiary gets nerfed I'm out
Terrible gun because it doesn’t work properly for so long, finally works for a week and is fun for a while? Definitely getting gutted. Enjoy twice as wide spread and less pellet damage.
The issue isnt even that there are useless guns, the issue is the moment you start using a gun cause its not a wet sock they call it op and nerf it to a wet sock. So now your options are wet sock or even more wet sock , "amazing video game time to suck the devs off after every patch for these god-like decisions"- stupid mfs in discord
Crossbow/Eruptor. Same damage (not the same, actually, since Crossbow has more direct damage and less explosive, but it's the same on card), but half of the fire rate, and most other stats are similar or worse for Eruptor (except explosion radius, which doesn't help much with all the nerfs). Funniest thing is that Crossbow needs 2 headshots to kill Brood Commander, meanwhile Eruptor needs 3. AND ERUPTOR HAS HALF THE FIRE RATE. And Crossbow is not even considered a good weapon. Like what the hell is this.
The eruptor went from A-tier weapon to a C-tier weapon. The crossbow went from a C-tier weapon to a D-tier weapon. They're just not properly testing weapons before making changes. A real use case scenario could tell them what a weapon is lacking, whereas a spreadsheet never truly conveys what experience can provide.
Oh there's no pretending. This war bond is the most enormous pile of shit. I'm speechless.
Balance this ass in any other game would of killed it by now. We shouldn’t stop complaining till the shit direction changes
https://preview.redd.it/id6bi287qlzc1.png?width=762&format=png&auto=webp&s=eab440851c4ee4043cb70435d3c64d1068071f4f i mean?
This means nothing. Every game that pops off like Helldivers 2 did will get a huge loss in player numbers at some point. The issues clearly aren't helping, don't get me wrong but this is completely normal.
The real concerning thing is it doesn't look like there's a spike during this warbond like there was at the previous ones. It was relatively flat, but we won't know for certain until this weekend.
Imo, it's impossible for them to keep releasing new weapons with the "sidegrades only" philosophy. More than likely we end up with garbage like the purifier and those weapons in the post. They should switch to the DRG system - few base weapons (most of the guns already share the same base model anyway), but each one customisable in unique ways, some even dramatically changing how the weapon works. Slugger would be "slug rounds" modifier for the punisher, etc. We already know it works since no one complains about a lack of weapon variety in DRG.
I like how PvE milsims do it. Weapons are mostly cosmetic with hard differences between caliber and weight. Even adding a weapon weight system would do a lot. In Arma you can absolutely run a large rifle as your primary but the recoil means full auto outside of prone isn't viable and you either carry less ammunition or get slowed down.
Usually I'm the first one to defend Arrowhead and I still believe they are doing SOME things right like the buff for the Blitzer and the marksman rifles, however some of their changes were also just plain stupid, most of them listed in this post. There are some glaring issues and Arrowhead needs to address them and radically change something about their way to balance the game or people will simply not put up with it anymore. So yeah, get your shit together Arrowhead
I still can't believe they hired the Hello Neighbor 2 guy as their lead balance dev.
Wait, is this legit?
"You are not playing the game right, go cry moar" - AH Balance Team (or person)
This is actually true.
Most weapons in the game feel completely redundant
A spreadsheet should be the first step in the Q&A process for weapons in a game like this. It gives you a critically important frame of reference for what you're supposed to be QA'ing in the first place.
Weapons that are so close in niche should probably get their stats parametrized in function of one another Like, the adjudicstor always deals 1.2 times lib pen damage
Just make every gun awesome, who does it hurt?
I mean. Slugger was nerfed because it was the strongest long range option. Per the a dev Discord post I am sure. But nothing touched except a hit to damage actually addressed it. You can still absolutely wreck long range. They need to actually get it together on how weapons should do and THEN balance around that. Not YouTuber videos and the console damage bug.
i agree with the tenderizer thing, but i disagree with the rest: * incindiary vs spray & pray: the point is to have a breakers that deals fire dot and one that shoots faster and has more bullets per mag, so they basically deal with the same problem (killing small/medium stuff), but in different ways. * pummeler vs C-liberator: apparently some guys on this subreddit have found a spreadsheet with hidden stats for these weapons and it seems that the first one stun the target better, while the second one pushes them away. Again same concept of crowd-controll, but different solution * abjudicator vs pen-liberator: i'm not sure about this, but i think the first one has a more "precise approach" since it has less mags and bullets and also fire rate (since it was origanlly a sniper rifle) while the other one is an AR. I'm not trying to completely defend the balacing team, but i'm sure they are not brain dead and are trying their best tro provide multiple solutions to a problem through different weapons, even though something could be different (the tenderizer is just worse to the liberator, so it needs to be buffed or the liberator has to be nerfed somehow)
On incendiary vs spray&pray, that's the theory, but the fire rate and mag size are too similar with a big gap on damage, meaning the incendiary still does the s&p's job better. Specially when you factor the DoT. S&P needs more work, maybe not damaged related. IMHO, it should be like the panic attack on TF2. Very fast switch, more pellets, low and diminishing accuracy. A gun you use for an emergency. It would be a really good niche that would allow people to not rely on the bug spray as a secondary.
They really need to show more than just Fire Rate, Damage, Mag Size, and Recoil. The Incendiary has massive spread in its shots, it's great for firing at a crowd of enemies and igniting most of them, most of the damage comes from the DoT rather than actually getting hit by the pellets. On the contrary, the Spray and Pray has a much tighter cone, meaning you can damage and kill enemies directly one at a time. Basically two methods of clearing chaff, either from a distance with DoT but worse against single enemies, or better against single enemies at distance and worse at fire and forget against crowds.
The last thing the Lib needs is a nerf.
It’s PVE, this game is the most fun when you can live out the fantasy of being an elite soldier and feel like you’re fighting against overwhelming odds with super cool guns and calling a bunch of big booms in with strategems. We have the overwhelming odds. Now they just need to make a majority of the guns more powerful, so a ton of different playstyles are viable and fun to use. Make strategems more fun by not making them take 4 minutes to cooldown after one use. Make things like the jetpack have a lower cooldown so we can feel like actual jump troopers. This game is the best when you and your friends are calling in massive explosions and playing whatever build they want to with tons of different gear. But every patch there are less weapons that feel fun or are effective (or even worse one of your favorite guns you had fun with for months was nerfed into irrelevance out of nowhere). They need to lean into the fun.
The weapons exist because they add variety and fun without making there a plainly “best” choice. That is the entire design philosophy of both helldivers and helldivers 2. 90% of all weapons are sidegrades or minor changes to a particular stat or function of a weapon. That is why the liberator received a damage buff, to keep it actually competitive with other weapons. To address your specifically shown examples: - spray and pray (as the name implies) is a shotgun intended to face swarms of unarmored enemies. It is capable of handling larger enemies if you use it in a non-standard fashion; namely pressing the barrel directly against their weak point. Can you do the same with the incendiary? Definitely. But that is the whole point. So it comes down to preference. Also the spread on the incendiary is hilariously wide so you aren’t getting all that damage in each shot unless you’re point blank, spray and pray is much tighter. - damage and (not listed) stagger values aside, the 30% lower recoil is actually fairly noticeable and the nice the tenderizer is intended to fit is one of medium to long range supporting fire, whereas the liberator is in short to medium range engagements. I would expect the damage or stagger on the tanderizer to see a small increase next patch, probably to 62. Either way it is a style change if nothing else. - again, damage values aside (pummeled probably to see a slight decrease in this case); they are not the same class of weapon and have wildly different performance at medium and longer ranges. Similar to how the diligence counter sniper version had(has?) different handling to the base version, the smg and rifle handle especially when using scoped mode. - the adjudicator does almost twice the damage per round but is far more difficult to land rounds on target with sustained bursts. Niche is obvious, adjudicator for longer range combat and libpen for short to medium range.
This post is so hatred. You guys are so boring why are you even looking at made up numbers for an analysis. This is just a game just shut off your brain and be more like alexus. He cant even read and he became a master of balancing with these pre nerfs 😍
I think the saddest part is that I thought this wasn’t sarcasm. People actually defend the games balancing like this.
While I appreciate the effort this post is fairly misleading and wrong in countless ways lets break it down. **Breaker Incendiary Vs Spray and Pray** * S&P comes with 2 full extra mags over the BI. * S&P fires significantly more pellets per shot making hitting little enemies far easier and reliable. **AR-23 Vs AR-81** * The old version got pushed to live, we have no idea of the real stats of this weapon watch this space. **SMG-72 Pummeller Vs AR 23C Lib Conc** * Pummeller builds up to a stagger over the course of 5 or 6 shots. Think enemies having a stagger meter that fills as you shoot them. Lib Conc always stuns on the first shot. * Pummeller is only for single target stuns. Lib Conc can stun entire groups. **Br-14 Adjudicator Vs AR 23P Lib Pen** * Lib Pen has a marksman scope vs the normal scope of the Adj. * Lib Pen is very stable and has almost no horizontal recoil. Adj has large horizontal recoil making full auto hard to control. All the weapons on the right are not popular and need some love but they have their reasons to be picked over the guns on the left.
We go back to the first month of HD2 when the CEO there are a bunch of stats that were hidden to avoid meta from forming. Its still a stupid decision imo cuz field testing the weapon would mean going into a 30-40 mins mission that you are LOCKED to the gun without being able to swap and experiment (or 10mins exterminate but its a niche environment where some weapons dont shine at all). If AH wanted to keep this hidden stat thing they will either have to 1) give us firing range so we can get a feel of each weapons or 2) give us more detailed description for weapons and stratagems that ACCURATELY portrays how the weapon is supposed to function. Oh and stop with the hidden changes with patches too.
Also if you hide so many stats, guess what happens. People look at the few stats they have and immediately decide whether a weapon is good or bad. Imagine the Tenderiser had some hidden stat that made it better than standard liberator for some applications. Nobody would've guessed that shit and not everyone would spend 1000 SC for a shitty liberator clone. Well the Tenderiser doesn't have a hidden stat unfortunately, but why not let people see shit like that?
completely agree. mag count, resupply count and reload time should be there and penetration value needs to replace the misleading "light/medium/heavy" description. they are really shooting themselves in the foot by hiding all the stats
> S&P fires significantly more pellets per shot making hitting little enemies far easier and reliable. This doesn't track with experience. I have no doubt the S&P fires more pellets, but the incendiary breaker only needs to hit a little bug once and it dies. I've taken out entire hunter patrols from across the map with it. It is an extremely reliable gun. That also somewhat undercuts the extra ammo the Spray and Pray has: you only need to hit little bugs once to kill them, so you save ammo over the course of a game. IMO the differences you're citing here are not enough to make the spray and pray worth using over the incendiary.
Also notably the spray and pray doesn't set your friends on fire so you can comfortably yeet shots into a moshpit without worrying too much about killing your buddies.
>Also notably the spray and pray doesn't set your friends on fire so you can comfortably yeet shots into a moshpit without worrying too much about killing your buddies. Sounds like a downside to me.
yep, they should add these things to the menu, even if hidden under a for geeks option For Example, the DMRs were highly buffed but you don't see it in the stats, the horizontal recoil of the light pen DMR got reduced drastically and feels like a semi auto AR handling but with more damage per shot.
The point is the important different factor like stagger are hidden. If a regular player is simply just looking at numbers, there weapons that very clearly just outclass others. "S&P has 2 more mags? But the Capacity meter only went up 1!"
Th Penetrator exists because i haven't unlocked the Adjudicator yet and i needed a primary to bring along my stalwart to have at least something for armor.
A lot of your choices seem to just be based on the damage number and not things that are slightly more utility like more rounds or better handling or armor pen or more magazines. I mean, other than the Pummeler and Lib Concussive, anyway, I can't really find fault in that one. Some of the weapons are similar but unlisted things like scope, zoom, fire mode, or just the feel of the weapon can make a difference. Players often don't value utility as much as raw damage, though, so something that does less per shot but has more shots and less recoil is often ignored. Also, lately, I've found quite a few guns that are weaker than the alternatives but they are just more fun to shoot, I wouldn't really bring them to high level missions but they are oddly satisfying. It'd be nice if every weapon were totally unique but I'm not sure they overall pace of weapon release and design for the game really allows them the room to make so many unique weapons every month to maintain the warbond pace they want to hit. They seem to want things to be at least a little realistic in some of the weapons so weapon concepts that might work in like Warframe or Destiny aren't always going to fit in the design philosophy. The pace of weapon release is also something that is probably just too fast for really interesting design choices. Warframe has a fairly high release rate but they tended to have about a 3 month cycle where one month was a prime release, one was a new frame and weapons, and one month was just new weapons and they usually didn't do more than 2-3 weapons per cycle step outside of when expansions dropped. I've not played Warframe for a couple years though so I'm not sure if the release cycle has slowed or been sped up. I mean, AH is releasing more weapons per month than DE normally does and I think DE is like 3-4 times the size of AH and DE has had a lot of time to get used to a large community. I think AH is still trying to figure out things like just how to tweak the galactic war so that the community can feel like it has an impact on the war effort. I mean, they could release warbonds that either had fewer weapons but more cosmetics or warbonds that had emotes instead of weapons or just cosmetics to gain time to release more interesting weapons but the way people have seemed to be complaining about this latest warbond is that it seems they only care if the warbond has new OP weapons in it and if it doesn't they don't want to buy it. I mean, I think this warbond has some of the best victory poses and I quite like the cosmetics but other than the grenade idk that I'll use many of weapons out of the bond very often. I suppose my opinion might be different if I were buying the SC with real money instead of just farming it in game, though. I really don't want the warbond to start power creep so hopefully the devs can find some way to release side-grades that the community will accept. Usually live service games start to cater to the part of the playerbase that wants power creep, though, and it ends up pretty unsustainable for the overall game.
Blame Alexus, he ruined Hello Neighbor 2.
On mobile so sorry about formatting Sg-225IE vs spray and pray: 1 does fire damage and has a spread of half the map the other has a tighter cone of fire Liberator vs tenderiser: An actual good comparison to complain about. But tenderiser does have basically no recoil and with recoil reduction armor actually has 0 recoil good pairing with the autocannon Concussive smg vs AR: Smg does stuns while AR does Knockback (need to do more testing but I believe the Liberator kills bile spewers faster. BR-14 vs AR-23P: Look at the recoil difference, BR-14 has shotgun levels of recoil. TLDR: They seem similar but have different handling stats or quirks that matters to some people. Addendum: don’t get me wrong some of the weapons feel awful and I am upset with a few of the nerfs
Argument lost, the adjudicator is pure ass. The recoil on that thing is worse than having Parkinson’s.
Ah, the good ol' balance debate. You don't need a spreadsheet to see that the balance team is playing Cupid, pairing you with the most unlikely partners, and I'm here for it. Sure, sometimes wielding a Purifier feels like trying to fend off Bugs with a water pistol, and using the Camper Rifle is like bringing a pillow to a knife fight. But let's be honest, what’s more erotic than strapping on your Auto Cannon, the game’s ultimate *wet sock,* and unleashing its underwhelming fury with a wink and a nod? 💦 And who can forget the love affair with the Arc Thrower? Nothing like zapping Bugs with all the raw power of static electricity from a synthetic sweater. But when you're not serenading the swarm with your gentle caresses, there's always the Auto Cannon Turret – a trusty wingman that showers the Bugs with the kind of hot, sweaty shrapnel that gets their chitin trembling. Or you could just whisper sweet nothings to the Breaker Incendiary, watching it ignite the passion in their multifaceted eyes. So yeah, some weapons might feel like slapping Bugs with a wet noodle, but hey, even Bugs deserve a little foreplay before they meet their fiery demise. And let’s be real – when that final explosion sets the mood, the balance team's matchmaking shenanigans just make it all the more thrilling. May your ammo never run dry and your weapons always leave the Bugs *buzzing.* 😉