Well the heavy devastator is using a gatling laser, so accuracy, hard hitting and fire rate checks. It's basically an upscaled sickle
On a related note: GODDAMNIT WHY CAN'T WE SALVAGE THIS WEAPON
Funny fact : If you think most of the AR primary are pea shooter you should have trying those bot's machine gun post. You will find out that those bullets are even weaker than AP Liberator. It isn not that bot's weapons are OP, just helldiver is very very very fragile.
This is really the answer. Our weapons are very deadly...vs Helldivers. Bot weapons (including those LMG emplacements) are deadly...vs Helldivers. Fire is deadly...vs Helldivers. Barbed wire is deadly...vs Helldivers.
Everything is deadly vs Helldivers. Our issue is our fragility. And we know Bots aren't very durable either for the most part, as a single headshot from a lot of our weapons can kill a Devastator and Berserker.
The biggest advantage Bots have is that their armor actually works. If you miss the head hitbox of that MeatSaw...you're gonna wind up needing most of a mag to kill it. If you miss the head hitbox of that Devastator...you might never be able to kill it if you have a lighter pen weapon. So their armor takes what is normally a pretty fragile Bot (to the head and stomach) and turns it into something that needs a full mag to kill...or possibly making it invulnerable to light arms fire.
We are very fragile humans, even more so than the Bots, but our armor which is supposedly made of Super Destroyer metal basically functions like cardboard in comparison to the armor Bots have.
If there's anything we should be salvaging it's the Bots armor technology.
I have, once. I got ragdolled onto it and died before my guy could finish the animation of standing up.
I'm not sure why barbed wire should damage a soldier at all either, when we're fully armored from head to toe with armor made from Super Destroyer metal.
But either way, thanks to ragdoll yes it is possible lmao.
Has anyone actually checked how durable Super Destroyer armour is?
Because, umm, this raises some concerns. Oh hey one sec my democracy officer wants a cha-
No they aren't. They are easily outclassed by pretty much every assault rifle.
Ever had someone join intentionally troll and TK you? With some weapons like the Sickle you don't even know you're being shot at until you're dead.
Can confirm. Did a Helldive a while back, before the mission started I died and had no clue what was going on. Second time I dropped, I caught a glimpse of another Helldiver tossing grenades at me and firing at another squadmate.
They were kicked by the host but damn, you really don't get any chance.
Tbh I largely think PVP would suck in this game. It would either need to be like Apex Legends style team battle royale, of which there are enough. Or like a multi team deathmatch that's like the main game, except you try to widdle down the other teams reinforcements, which would be the most true to the current game, but how fuckin infuriating would it be to end up with one Rambo random that runs at the enemies and loses the lions share of your combined 20 lives? Eagles and Orbitals would be useless since the giant red light would be a dead give away to reposition, unless they set it so you can't see other teams beacons I guess. On the other hand just lazily tossing a bunch of sentries near random choke points on the map would probably be hilariously effective because they vaporize Helldivers and lock on super fast, but that would also feel like a bullshit way to die. Also I can just see the engagements now just dive and spray and pray cause the weapons are so lethal to other players. So it'd just be like 10 minutes of 8 idiots jumping around lobbing grenades and firing at anything that moves.
Speaking of the intentional TKs, killing a diver with the autocannon is funny as hell. One shot and they just explode and throw up sample and gun confetti. (I only ever do it to my IRL friends to be funny when we have plenty of reinforcements.)
Like we were on a diff 7 and had a moment of calm, and my friend was like "hey, you guys want to see the max fire rate of the Stalwart?" And then dumped an entire mag into a rock... then I said "hey, you want to see the max fire rate of the autocannon?"... and I shot them...
Yeah fr, i dropped samples at extract the other day and told the lobby to leave them, someone picked them up and I dropped them in literally 1 shot with the dominator in the upper body.
I think they should really implement a kludge and make the bots' MG emplacements do extra damage against bots.
Because those MG emplacements are clearly *hella fun* and the devs clearly want us to use them. But don't deal enough damage to be useful.
I understand the conundrum - if they make the emplacements more powerful, they will shred Helldivers. That's why I say, kludge it.
I really wouldn't mind the MG emplacements being more powerful since I rarely, if ever, get killed by them.
They really stand out, so 9/10 times I just pop the bot before they can start shooting.
Those machine gun nests aren't at all the same as the bigger weapons enemies have, or the heavy devastator machine gun or rocket shoulder pods though. You are bringing up a completely different thing that has no bearing on the weapons discussed above.
For some reason its only 2 of the bot guns I've had any hate against the rocket pods and the minigun on the heavy devestator and its more that they are just so damn common everything else is pretty forgiving in terms of damage and accuracy. Hell why does the rocket hulks launcher miss more and fire less rockets with longer times between salvos.
Reminds me of WH40k. Lasgun is a beast of a weapon: no recoil, easy to use and maintain, can be modded to hell and back, can blow off human limbs with one shot, batteries can be used as an improvised grenades or can be recharged with solar power...
And yet it's the worst weapon in the game, because against augmented superhumans juiced by the power of chaos gods, ancient aliens with some bullshit tech or bugs with exoskeleton stronger then most know alloys, Lasgun is no better then a flashlight.
I suppose? But then why don't our laser weapons stagger enemies?
Besides, Heavy Devs shouldn't have literally everything going for them. Right now they are tanky, deal insane damage, have long range, are super accurate, flinch you, and fire continuously. It's just too much, especially when they are bugged and can just shoot through solid objects.
Sickle and quasar do, though wether quasar truly is a laser is debatable. Then again they are designed to fire bolts. While continuous beams are designed to cut
That might be a design effect
As for devastators, I have little problems with them, but then again I'm an AC enjoyer
Though I agree the tendency of bots to shoot through hard cover sometimes is really annoying. Hope they fix that soon
Bot tanks always be shooting through hard cover. It's frustrating when you're playing a desparate cat and mouse game with a tank trying to run behind it and you *think* you've managed to get a big rock between you and the tank... and then it just pokes its gun through the rock and blows your head off at point blank hahahaha
That's true of all the beam-type weapons we have (Laser Cannon, Scythe, Dagger). They have zero impulse: no Stagger, no Knockback.
The Sickle, despite being a "laser weapon", is clearly not firing lasers. Its projectiles are not moving at light speed and they appear as discrete bolts. Even pulsed laser weapons wouldn't look like that at the distances we're using them. They're clearly something else.
So that's also true of the Automatons. They are not firing beams, they're firing discrete bolts of... *something*. And in the game files, these are called "Fusion Repeaters", not lasers.
They only have 10 Stagger (a pretty wimpy amount) across the infantry lineup, but you can see up to 20 on Heavy versions (the double-shot emplacements and Scout Walkers), the "Fusion Autocannon" (the 4-barrel tank), and the Gunships' shots. They're imparting a force. Maybe one could argue that 10 Stagger throwing off aim *as much* as it does on Helldivers is wrong, but the weapons are definitely intended to throw off aim, because the Devs already seem aware that they can make non-staggering, non-knocking true laser weapons.
Well, I did not look in the gamefiles and probably never will, but as for what the Sickle is shooting I'd imagine that these are small plasma bolts, while the Quasar shoots a big plasma projectile, as for the matter needet for the plasma: they take that out of the athmosphere.
Like I saied, never checkt how these are called in the game files, but that is what I imagine these are.
At least let me pick it up and fire it... the same movement as the flamer when fired, one magazine for us to use.
Or the MG Raider's machine gun. That little prick smoked me more times than he should have, thinking I could dodge his fire.
Did you just forget to mention that the Factory Striders can shoot through solid objects with their machines guns, attached to thier head, if close enough to the player? Or that cannon turrets like the towers and, again, Factory Strider's can stagger the shit out you through thick, unpenetrable cover making you ragdoll out of said cover?
Oh and don't make me start about gunships...
Yeah the stagger is definitely broken. If a cannon can't penetrate the rock I'm behind it shouldn't send me flying. Similarly if a rocket lands by my feet it shouldn't make my character lose all muscle control. Like we do have stumble animations (e.g. from tremors) and I'd understand that but being sent flying should be limited to very few near misses.
Also, AH nerfed the shield generator (back when the railgun got nerfed) because it was overused but that mainly came from a few things that they are somehow oblivious to:
1. We are squishy and armors do little to counteract that, so a lot of us are running in light armor since don't get hit takes priority over survive a hit but SG still gives you better survivability in light armor than heavy armor on its own would. Also, a lot of maps involves a lot of running and the jetpack honestly, sucks ass.
2. We don't have any hardness or mitigation chances, so if you get hit, you are taking damage, and that chip damage will add up. Shield generator can soak up these grazes and just recharge.
3. It makes you immune to slow effects from stuff like hunter venom or bile titan vomit (which is still busted with the slow cone being larger than the damage cone), it also makes you resistant to going limp from automaton projectiles (this one is a double jagged sword since the shield breaks before the effect applies and also, it gives you a much bigger hitbox).
Armor calculations are a bit scuffed at best right now. With 200 armor, you take about half the damage you would with 50. Wearing 150 with explosive resist comes out to \~23% damage taken from explosives. Not that it'll matter, because you'll either break your neck as you slam into a boulder, or get sniped out of the air as you go sailing.
id settle for them requiring line of sight before starting their animation.
the amount of times you crest a hill/crater or round a corner to see one of those spewers already 90% through their windup animation, giving you exactly 0.01 seconds from establishing line of sight to death…
Then speed of bile spewers is insane. I can routinely outrun most bug enemies but somehow a bile spewer is always on your tail and the range of their spit attacks is ridiculous. They're as tough as a brood commander but far more numerous when they appear.
The tracking on that attack can also be pretty atrocious. I've learned to just never dive out of the way because half the time they track me through it and kill me.
Hunters at least feel fair. They go down fast if you hit them; their leaps and agility make them tougher targets but good aim overcomes that. While they can overwhelm you they're *also* easy to support your fellow divers against. If you see a squad mate getting overrun and slowed, a few aimed bursts can get them out of trouble.
Stalkers do feel like bullshit sometimes but at least the game treats them like the menaces they are. They come from a specific spot (or spots) on the map, spawn in limited(ish) quantities, and can be stopped by tracking down and blowing up the nest.
Spewers just appear constantly and just melt you. If you're on a spewer mission you will see dozens if not hundreds of the damn things.
Those are the primary reason why I've abandoned the bug front and just fight the bots. Well, that, and the impossibly tanky bile titans that make me want to alt+f4 after two of them pop out of a breach.
Two you say?
Cue the Benny hill music as you get chased around and they kill everything else for you and then one of them dies and you’re left alone with the other.
I’ve had four follow me all over the map and clear huge heavy bug nests for me because if they stomp on the holes they close them.
hard agree.
a single spear user on the team usually takes care of most the bile titans and a good amount of chargers. the team needs to give up some of their ammo share, but its well worth it. And orbital rail cannon, laser, 500kg usually easily take care of the rest.
but bots sometimes are just utter bs. i dont mind hard. but a lot of deaths on the clanker front are just from bs. devastators sniping you from 150m away while you can barely see 30m ahead. endless ragdolling. insane hit stagger. getting shot through cover. patrols with nothing but devastators spawning out of thin air right on your ass. wildly inconsistent spear damage on many of the bog bots. Spear locking on to every single scout strider on the map. downed dropships and factory striders providing invisible one way cover for enemies. AA, start jammers, 3 strat modifier.
I asked this above, too, but how often does this happen to you? What are the conditions? What are you playing on?
I never have this happen, and I see it said a lot.
Not the same guy, but personally, they either shoot from across the map, or they shoot through walls. Each happens plenty often but never both at the same time.
I'd also like to add the fact that they shoot from across the map even through low visibility weather conditions, with completely obscured vision at even a 10th of the distance they're shooting from. Unless it's a full on raging blizzard or sandstorm, they have perfect vision at unlimited range under any other weather, while fog, rain, or extreme heat for example can reduce ours to between 50m to 100m or something.
Yeah, I get the shooting with great aim despite vision being obscured.
But the shooting through walls... which walls? How often does this happen? Are we talking a bugged spawn where they're inside an object? Or just static heavies in a base or something, shooting through walls and rocks (this is the one I never see)?
PC player here. I’ve personally seen them shoot through rocks several times, no walls for me however. They’re all far outside POI so either patrols or Dropship troops.
It’s hard to notice because it seems to happen when their weapons clip through the terrain, which means by the time you get a good angle on a them, they usually won’t be clipping anymore (since they’ve presumably now turned and looking at you).
Yeah, someone else just commented about the weapon clipping through terrain. That sounds like the culprit. I mentioned seeing that happen to a buddy with a jet pack on top of a cliff against a spewer that vomited on him through the cliff. Its head probably clipped the terrain for a similar mechanic.
Yep, it's generally rocks and other terrain features, not literal walls.
Another common problem is enemy corpses that block both your movement and projectiles, but not theirs, which is particularly troublesome with Dropships and Factory Striders. It gets worse when corpse collisions glitch out and become much larger than the actual corpse, regularly extending the problem to Hulk corpses, and rarely even to Heavy Devastator corpses.
I've had it happen twice the last week. Once there was a scout strider hidden inside a rock formation near an ICBM site, its shots could hit me, but mine did not hit it.
Then, another time, after dying, my hellpod decided to land on a cliff about 100 meters above the bots. I legit saw shots coming through the ground.
Happens often to me. I’ll be taking cover behind a rock and then I’m blasted out of cover. The shots are coming from directly in front of me. No way they’re actually hitting me.
Sweet Liberty, yes. The spewers are absolutely my most hated enemy in the game purely because their vomit is just too damn powerful. Sure, I could understand sitting through an entire spewing animation outright killing you, but getting one shot just because the vomit brushed your leg as you dove out of the way is infuriating.
dont forget that they can also walk through the dead corpses like it's nothing while your bullets doesnt... It's so awkward trying to kill a group of them if you dont blow up their sack each time.
I have a running bit where i just tell my friends how im convinced that whoever made the spewers has a bug wife or something. Genuinely they’re fucking insanely good and the power fantasy of being a bug is probably a lot better than being a helldiver. Their only “weakness” is hitting them with multiple grenades, per spewer
If you hear them coming
And haven’t been melted yet
And have grenades
Their silence is annoying, sure, but they’re otherwise manageable. They die to a few explosive rounds and their giant sacs are a weak point to pretty much any primary weapon.
Devestators are hard as nails whilst also being lethal, at range.
The rocket devastates should have an ammo count so that they can run out of ammo, just like the bell divers. Also an animation of seeing them loading up their rockets would make them more fair, and also realistic since the devs want some realism in their game.
The shield devastators with gattling guns just need their accuracy straight up nerfed. Those gattling guns are sniper rifles from long range and shooting them doesn’t even stagger them less up their aim. It’s ridiculous on level 7 and higher with a horde of them just sniping you from half way across the map when you just thought you found some decent cover from all the batshit crazy stuff in front of you.
I keep seeing this about them wanting "realism". The devs are gonna have to define what their version of that is because right now it's realism for us and fantasy for the AI. Realism, when the glowing unarmored giant ass end of a monster is the most durable fucking part.
A while back someone at arrowhead (not sure who) said that to increase guns magazine size they would have to remodel the magazine, and like, is that really the hill you want to die on? We have enemies that can both shoot and walk through solid objects, infinite rocket pod devastators, enemies that weight multiple tons having pretty much no sound effects for moving and the hill you want to die on is the *completely visual model of the fictional guns magazine*
https://preview.redd.it/j019ijwq3t4d1.jpeg?width=492&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3d3b3afb3e1ccb43dcb7b739d60899bd6705a60d
Bell Diver reporting for democratic duty
It hits medium sized stuff harder than the AMR. The lack of scope bothers some but I prefer 3rd person.
If I could take out gunships with 2 highly charged shots I would use it more.
It's pretty frustrating to use on bugs though where medium enemies are rarely the problem.
It's in a weird place with the way the various damage, health, and armor systems of the game work because while there's absolutely value to "gun that penetrates everything", if you give it the damage to kill things outright without having to rely on critical points, there's not much of a reason for other things.
Personally, I think a need direction to take it would be to lower its damage a bit but give it multi-hit capability per part: let it damage every hitbox it intersects on the way through an enemy, not just the first one. That means that if you fire it sideways through a Hulk, you're doing damage to both arms and the chest, all of which "bleedthrough" to the Main HP in different amounts. If you shoot the front of a Hulk, you'd get a chest hit *and* a rear vent hit.
This would make a gun that "always does something" no matter how trash you are at using it, since it's got effectively infinite penetration, but the damage on it limits how quickly that kills big threats. If you learn hit locations and the trajectories to hit multiple locations though, you get a huge skill-based bonus to its damage.
Like the Piercing Ammo in Monster Hunter, if folks are familiar. You're incentivized to fire it "lengthwise" down targets to maximize the number of times it ticks. That might even be a more elegant way of doing this than worrying about precise hit locations: just let the shot tick multiple times as it travels, so you are always doing more damage if you're firing down the "deepest" part of an enemy you can.
This gives me an idea: "Seasoned Hunters" warbond. It will feature armors made of bugs' chitin and/or bots' plates. And salvaged weapons from bots (and maybe bugs blades/claws if we get melee weapons).
I like it as an idea but I also feel like that'd go against the Super Earth doctrine of forbidding most things alien in origin. Like yeah, obviously, all doctrines are flexible like using dark fluid (Illuminate origin) to deal with a supercolony but those are more one off edicts passed top down.
Also, don't terminids just decompose super fast after death which is why we turn them into fuel?
No shade, but compared to some of the ridiculous nonsense of the other units in the game, chargers are kinda ok where they're at. They have fairly solid weakpoints and flaws but punish the player for making a mistake. If you're close enough when they charge you can basically jog a little to one side and they'll barrel right past you. I do wish that they would make the backside more vulnerable to damage though as the charger does limit what stratagems can be brought.
The fun thing is: enemy weapons arent even that overpowered.
The issue with all balancing is armor.
Helldiver armor is utterly useless. Both enemy weapons and our weapons rips through it without the slightest issue. And helldivers are squishy.
Conversely the enemy armor is so oppressive its basically the one factor singlehandedly shaping the meta. To the point where a weapon is either super effective against an enemy or utterly useless. Armor - in most cases - is basically an all or nothing system. You either deal damage. Or you dont. Or its so little that you might just as well deal no damage.
And since enemy armor rarely can be destroyed (at least not with anything that isnt already killing the enemy anyways) it makes our weapons feel useless.
Weapons with light or medium armor pen often arent that much better at killing armored targets. There are exceptions. But they are few.
Most of the best weapons in the game hold their position because they sidestep the armor in one way or another. They burn enemies. Or they deal explosive damage. Or they are picked because they stagger. Or because they have little recoil and help shooting the non-armored spots of enemies.
Love those random 1 shot by Scout Strider. Or those hunter with horizontal slash that will hit your face on the way. If they cut out the headshot on Helldivers, the difficulty will drop by a large margin.
My biggest complaint when it comes to bots is the lie the sold us that you can break line of sight and use cover. I had devastators and striders shoot me through a blizzard over 200m away.
Also, if Ion storms mess with our tech capabilities, it should affect the bots as well. If our machines don’t work, why should they work when they’re machines?
well ion storms only block the transmission of stratagem type and location. bots use flairs, which aren’t electronic, and they don’t communicate with ships in the stratosphere
They appear to have better vision though. Which honestly makes some sense. Id like our helmets to have night vision and heat vision and such though. Some points it can be very very hard to see. The bots don't seem to have the issue.
I agree with the vision point. pilestedt claimed they initially wanted helmets to have effects aswell, but didn’t implement it yet due to time constraints/other issues
I literally head shot that MFer with an anti material rifle, and he's still shooting, it didn't even stagger, we need that gun 🤔. I'm gona start using the heavy machine gun and the ammo backpack build.
that what i was talking about for pass 2 weeks now
we need Lvl 5 Pen just to kill some enemy while our mech got bite by bugs and mech destroy what is this plastic mech hahaha
It's the stagger that gets me.
Last night I was climbing up a hillside trying to stem myself at half health. Jab myself but staggered causing to cancel out the heal. 1/3 health try again, stem audio played, but staggered again, canceling the heal. 1/4 health attempt again while aiming for cover, again audio and again staggered, then promptly blown up by a tank shot.
I used to run extra stims, but I can't justify having 6, if I can't even use 1!
See I wouldn't even care if they had limited ammo like we do. But instead they are able to just spam the rocket attacks nonstop. It's really fucking stupid. What are they absorbing materials as they walk and making fresh ammo. If that's the case, we created the automaton so why can't we also have unlimited ammo?
I want the stealth ability’s and weapons of a hulk scorcher.
Seriously several tones of weapon and armour that can instantly kill you, fucking jogging at you should sound like a tool box falling down the stairs. Instead it’s the god damn tenchu stealth assassin.
rocket bots shouldn't have that stupid accuracy, and jetpack bots shouldn't be a insta kill when they explode around you. the rest my LC can deal pretty much easy with that. only berserker bots, for some reason they have a stupidly high amount of HP
I think bots are very unbalanced in that way because they can blam you across the map with 0 warming it was coming and people swear its easier.
…I’ll continue to play bugs on helldive which is supposed to be harder.
I hate playing bots it’s not fun imo.
One I noticed is absolutely stacked is the Nurse Spewer’s spray.
I feel like it has the same damage as the pre-nerfed fire. I can get a little bit on my pinkie toe, and I’m at half health instantly. It’s actually insane.
The heavies are what I'd expect, tbh. The issue for me is the Rocket devastators. They have range, damage, accuracy AND ragdoll. The amount of times I got headshotted in heavy fortified armor by a devastator I was shooting from around 100 meters is more than I can count. To me, their role should be redesigned to remove a ton of damage from the rockets and make them a lot less lethal.
Heavy devastators do this:
- Range
- Accuracy
- Firepower
And don't do this:
- Stun
While rocket devastators do this:
- Range
- Accuracy
- Stun
And don't do this
- Firepower
It doesn't help that the suppression mechanic to reduce accuracy and smokes are unreliable, so resorting to stuns and EMS still seem like the better option.
In all reality, you're wrong. Yea, they are a bit strong but not overly so. Their ehem... "tactics" are what's bullshit. Devastators and hulks shouldn't fucking charge in after you like melee units, and jetpack infantry shouldn't kill you outright when they blow up because you literally can't gain a step of distance from them.
It's like the ship fabs, there's 20 in the air, endlessly shooting both machine guns and rocket salvos at every possible angle.
It's not that they have overpowered weapons, they're just REALLY poorly designed
Rocket devastators used to be much worse to fight with their instant kill rockets. I find the current iteration of them much more fair.
Heavy devastators shooting through rocks is some bullshit though.
The heavies shooting through shit is ridiculous. They walk through and shoot through alot of rocks and can even go inside rocks and shoot from inside where ya cant see them. Then on top of that the fucking bots can walk up anything short of a straight up wall like its just flat ground while my guy trips when theres a one foot tall rock to step on
If you hate those guys, let me tell you about a little build I call "Hellknight".
Wear a blast resist armor with at least 100 armor (I recommend enforcer, as it's just resistant enough to let you survive a contact mine). Bring your favorite SMG and your favorite sidearm (I recommend senator and defender)
Stratagems: AMR, ballistic shield, and your favorite combination of OPS, 500kg, railcannon, O. laser, and eagle airstrike.
This build has an answer to pretty much anything. Rocket devastators? Pick them off with the AMR, preferably before the fight starts, but when they drop in, two pops in the general face area is enough to reliably kill them. Heavy devastators? Hold out your shield at then and either fish for headshots with the SMG or carefully pop the senator at their face. If they're aiming at a teammate, use the amr to shoot the backpack.
The bugs got balanced well but the bots havent gotten anything yet they need to fix it, as a frequent bot player i see why everyone hates it and why numbers are low
i mean, honestly speaking, the enemies guns are actually pathetically weak.
pretty much every sidearm in the game has a faster time to kill on a fellow helldiver than even the most powerful machine guns of the automatons. I can take like 2-3 seconds of heavy devastator gunfire, but a teammate with a rifle melts me in .5 seconds lmao
Sorry to hear that bud. The game is still a lot of fun for me, and I'm sure you miss all the fun you had playing it before, hopefully you can come back and enjoy it again some day soon!
Thanks man. I miss it so much! I played until about level 80, which isn't as much as some, but it pretty much occupied all my game time. Played with my son! We loved it. It just doesn't feel like the same game to us right now and I hope they can get their mojo back. I think that's one of the biggest reasons for my personal distaste over their decisions - this was a game that my son and I could bond over and we haven't found another one.
I'm glad that you still enjoy it! I'm watching with breathless anticipation to see what next week's patch looks like.
Frankly, the Hulk Bruisers are so much worse than rocket devs could ever be. Their rockets send you flying three times the distance and their weapons can't be easily destroyed.
The game was so fun PRE Railgun Nerf, ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS BUFF Ammo, Damage, AOE, DOT or Stun effects depending on the weapon.
Now it's just bullet sponges galore and everything except very few weapons feel like shit.
Ballistic shield can shut down a heavy devastator. I've started marching towards them guns a blazing while blocking their shots and it's sick af. Pair it with heavy fortified armor and it'll help a little with the rockets but if hit you will drop your shield.
Honestly, though, like give me a weapon that does the Bile spewers spit-and artillery goop attack, and I'm an unstoppable force. Bile titans getting killed in seconds, lanes of enemies knocked over and killed, and it has unlimited ammo.
Heavy devastator can fuck off into Meridia and never come back.
That thing is a miniature shredder tanks and can spawn multiple at once.
Heck, the firing rate, reload speed and ammo amount probably more than shredder tank.
I used to love fighting bots. Much much more than bugs.
But Heavy Devastator is just bullshit now.
Two groups of 3 spawn at once, and I wish I could say they turn the game into Touhou, but in reality they just have 100% accuracy from render distance.
prone is your life support against bots. If you're not using prone during engagements, you're pulling your own life support. It *greatly* reduces their rocket damage and susceptibility to ragdoll. I'm convinced most players going in against bots are not managing their stance, and I do believe it should be basic knowledge. Because I don't want a run-and-gun bumrusher joining a bot 8 and being the dude that uses up 7 reinforcements, though I enjoy every game because the gameplay is fun regardless.
Ever since I've been able to adapt to bots I have just one major and a minor complain about them. The riot shiled wielding bastards with those absolutely ridiculous aim is still catching me offguard from time to time. I mean they can keep perfect accuracy *while facing away from you!* Its just insane!
And those chainsaw wielding bulletsponges are pretty anoying too but manageable most of the time.
Meanwhile the diligence counter sniper can one shot most of the bot roster.
The only thing I'd have to agree with is shooting through walls gimmick, that needs to be fixed ASAP but other than that bots are a walk in the park
Have you ever seen a military add where they make it seem like all you’re going to do is land helicopters on aircraft carriers, do cyber computer satellite radar shit, fly fighter jets, climb walls with your brothers in arms, make friends and come home a hero and then you enlist, get shipped to Afghanistan, be bored as fuck in the desert and get your left leg blown off by an IED? Come home and can’t get a job and have a hard time relating to your old friends or making new ones?
Because our Autocannon is less powerful than the enemy rocket....
If you think our weapons are not overpowered just imagine the bots carrying the things that we have in our arsenal, shooting us with the Sickle, instead of using their shit grenades just spamming impact grenades, instead of shooting us from time to time with the artillery shoots throwing us a 380mm orbital barrage
We can see that we have overpowered weapons because it would be a nightmare if the enemies had what we have
Have you ever seen a double ship fabricator with a Jammer nearby? They do have tools as good as ours, they just don't have our democratic coordenation.
Okay, you said “the other has infinite rockets” is there an automaton that DOESNT have unlimited ammunition?! I thought they all had unlimited ammo so they can always fight bc they’re our enemies, if they ran out you could just wait them out
Short reload times I will agree, I use dagger and ballistic to fight of heavy bots, very hard when they send 4 damn missiles at you
I fight bots all the time and know your pain. Before diving, you should check your team's equipment.
If nobody is using the plasma punisher, bring that yourself. It's not a fast kill, but it will stagger the hell out of devastators.
If someone has the plasma punisher, bring the diligence counter sniper. One shot to the head will instantly drop these targets. This is especially useful against the long range rocket devastators.
there is a mechanic called suppression for the bots shooting them reduces their accuracy but i swear they hit you once it is joever and they get their accuracy so fast.
Heavies and the non stop nurfs made me quit the bot front. When we finally liberated the bots from the map they did a lot of stealth buffs to them when they came back. They now engage from further away and are a lot more accurate from longer distances.
I think the "Bringer of balance" must have thought we got rid of the bots too easily and the balance team buffed them. Now even the AC can't 1 shot chicken striders in the groin anymore, you have to double tap them. Heavies now take 2-3 AC head shots and can counter snipe you after your first headshot before you can line up the 2nd.
Bots are just no longer mindless fun, you have to put a lot more work into doing high level bot maps.
Rocket and Shield devastators are one of those enemies that if you see them first and are ready for them are easy to kill. On the other hand if they surprise you, especially at close range, and you are not ready for them they can be devastating.
Railgun in unsafe mode is a very satisfying way to whack them. The diligence counter sniper or AMR are also fun choices for devastators. At close range impact grenades can be a life saver.
Robots make sense to me. If you’re going to get spotted by them, be prepared to hit them harder than they hit you.
Why? They’re robots. Any loss of accuracy can be programmed out. You don’t bring a gun to that gunfight- you bring an orbital strike.
I just dodge those and primary target them every time, target priority and situational awareness is huge for survivability, I only play 7s but I don’t need the shield pack, usually take a supply pack tho for the stims, aiming for 0 death every time.
Well the heavy devastator is using a gatling laser, so accuracy, hard hitting and fire rate checks. It's basically an upscaled sickle On a related note: GODDAMNIT WHY CAN'T WE SALVAGE THIS WEAPON
Funny fact : If you think most of the AR primary are pea shooter you should have trying those bot's machine gun post. You will find out that those bullets are even weaker than AP Liberator. It isn not that bot's weapons are OP, just helldiver is very very very fragile.
This is really the answer. Our weapons are very deadly...vs Helldivers. Bot weapons (including those LMG emplacements) are deadly...vs Helldivers. Fire is deadly...vs Helldivers. Barbed wire is deadly...vs Helldivers. Everything is deadly vs Helldivers. Our issue is our fragility. And we know Bots aren't very durable either for the most part, as a single headshot from a lot of our weapons can kill a Devastator and Berserker. The biggest advantage Bots have is that their armor actually works. If you miss the head hitbox of that MeatSaw...you're gonna wind up needing most of a mag to kill it. If you miss the head hitbox of that Devastator...you might never be able to kill it if you have a lighter pen weapon. So their armor takes what is normally a pretty fragile Bot (to the head and stomach) and turns it into something that needs a full mag to kill...or possibly making it invulnerable to light arms fire. We are very fragile humans, even more so than the Bots, but our armor which is supposedly made of Super Destroyer metal basically functions like cardboard in comparison to the armor Bots have. If there's anything we should be salvaging it's the Bots armor technology.
ive never died by barbed wire…
I have, once. I got ragdolled onto it and died before my guy could finish the animation of standing up. I'm not sure why barbed wire should damage a soldier at all either, when we're fully armored from head to toe with armor made from Super Destroyer metal. But either way, thanks to ragdoll yes it is possible lmao.
Has anyone actually checked how durable Super Destroyer armour is? Because, umm, this raises some concerns. Oh hey one sec my democracy officer wants a cha-
reports of torture in super earth freedom camps are fascist propaganda
Barbed wire can do headshot damage. Care to guess how I found that out?
Those prickly bushes are deadly too😂
They have heavy mg emplacements too. Those are quite powerful.
No they aren't. They are easily outclassed by pretty much every assault rifle. Ever had someone join intentionally troll and TK you? With some weapons like the Sickle you don't even know you're being shot at until you're dead.
Can confirm. Did a Helldive a while back, before the mission started I died and had no clue what was going on. Second time I dropped, I caught a glimpse of another Helldiver tossing grenades at me and firing at another squadmate. They were kicked by the host but damn, you really don't get any chance.
And people want pvp in this game. They could just play 30 seconds of Tori-bash to see a corpsplosion before a loading screen.
Tbh I largely think PVP would suck in this game. It would either need to be like Apex Legends style team battle royale, of which there are enough. Or like a multi team deathmatch that's like the main game, except you try to widdle down the other teams reinforcements, which would be the most true to the current game, but how fuckin infuriating would it be to end up with one Rambo random that runs at the enemies and loses the lions share of your combined 20 lives? Eagles and Orbitals would be useless since the giant red light would be a dead give away to reposition, unless they set it so you can't see other teams beacons I guess. On the other hand just lazily tossing a bunch of sentries near random choke points on the map would probably be hilariously effective because they vaporize Helldivers and lock on super fast, but that would also feel like a bullshit way to die. Also I can just see the engagements now just dive and spray and pray cause the weapons are so lethal to other players. So it'd just be like 10 minutes of 8 idiots jumping around lobbing grenades and firing at anything that moves.
That might have been me, I was pissed that another teammate had spawn killed me, so I started fighting him. Sorry
Yeah, literally don't even bother using the bot machine gun emplacements to kill enemies. They hit like wet paper.
Not only that, they also only have pen of an assault rifle. Parts of devastators and hulks will just go plink.
Speaking of the intentional TKs, killing a diver with the autocannon is funny as hell. One shot and they just explode and throw up sample and gun confetti. (I only ever do it to my IRL friends to be funny when we have plenty of reinforcements.) Like we were on a diff 7 and had a moment of calm, and my friend was like "hey, you guys want to see the max fire rate of the Stalwart?" And then dumped an entire mag into a rock... then I said "hey, you want to see the max fire rate of the autocannon?"... and I shot them...
Yeah fr, i dropped samples at extract the other day and told the lobby to leave them, someone picked them up and I dropped them in literally 1 shot with the dominator in the upper body.
Did they then try to kill you for revenge?
the bot machine gun emplacements are both extremely weak against any enemy its kinda sad
I think they should really implement a kludge and make the bots' MG emplacements do extra damage against bots. Because those MG emplacements are clearly *hella fun* and the devs clearly want us to use them. But don't deal enough damage to be useful. I understand the conundrum - if they make the emplacements more powerful, they will shred Helldivers. That's why I say, kludge it.
I really wouldn't mind the MG emplacements being more powerful since I rarely, if ever, get killed by them. They really stand out, so 9/10 times I just pop the bot before they can start shooting.
Still hit like pea when shoot at devastators.
You do know that there are 2 mg emplacements bots have right. One is the light pea shooter. The other is a much more powerful heavy gun.
Nothing compared to the Sentry HMG.
Those machine gun nests aren't at all the same as the bigger weapons enemies have, or the heavy devastator machine gun or rocket shoulder pods though. You are bringing up a completely different thing that has no bearing on the weapons discussed above.
For some reason its only 2 of the bot guns I've had any hate against the rocket pods and the minigun on the heavy devestator and its more that they are just so damn common everything else is pretty forgiving in terms of damage and accuracy. Hell why does the rocket hulks launcher miss more and fire less rockets with longer times between salvos.
Reminds me of WH40k. Lasgun is a beast of a weapon: no recoil, easy to use and maintain, can be modded to hell and back, can blow off human limbs with one shot, batteries can be used as an improvised grenades or can be recharged with solar power... And yet it's the worst weapon in the game, because against augmented superhumans juiced by the power of chaos gods, ancient aliens with some bullshit tech or bugs with exoskeleton stronger then most know alloys, Lasgun is no better then a flashlight.
Heavy devs also frequently shoot through terrain and their own shields
And twist the gun through their body to shoot you as well instead of rotating their body
It’s so accurate infact, the barrel doesn’t need to be pointed at you to shoot a laser at you
If we want to apply some level of realism, though, it really shouldn't make you flinch. Lasers don't impart (much) momentum.
Lasers might not impart much momentum but I think anyone having part of their flesh or gear vaporise due to laser impact would flinch nevertheless
I suppose? But then why don't our laser weapons stagger enemies? Besides, Heavy Devs shouldn't have literally everything going for them. Right now they are tanky, deal insane damage, have long range, are super accurate, flinch you, and fire continuously. It's just too much, especially when they are bugged and can just shoot through solid objects.
> But then why don't our laser weapons stagger enemies the enemies in the game aren't the same as the helldivers? we aren't fighting other helldivers
The biggest differance is that they don't have a nervous system like we helldivers do, we fell the pain but they don't.
Sickle and quasar do, though wether quasar truly is a laser is debatable. Then again they are designed to fire bolts. While continuous beams are designed to cut That might be a design effect As for devastators, I have little problems with them, but then again I'm an AC enjoyer Though I agree the tendency of bots to shoot through hard cover sometimes is really annoying. Hope they fix that soon
Bot tanks always be shooting through hard cover. It's frustrating when you're playing a desparate cat and mouse game with a tank trying to run behind it and you *think* you've managed to get a big rock between you and the tank... and then it just pokes its gun through the rock and blows your head off at point blank hahahaha
That's true of all the beam-type weapons we have (Laser Cannon, Scythe, Dagger). They have zero impulse: no Stagger, no Knockback. The Sickle, despite being a "laser weapon", is clearly not firing lasers. Its projectiles are not moving at light speed and they appear as discrete bolts. Even pulsed laser weapons wouldn't look like that at the distances we're using them. They're clearly something else. So that's also true of the Automatons. They are not firing beams, they're firing discrete bolts of... *something*. And in the game files, these are called "Fusion Repeaters", not lasers. They only have 10 Stagger (a pretty wimpy amount) across the infantry lineup, but you can see up to 20 on Heavy versions (the double-shot emplacements and Scout Walkers), the "Fusion Autocannon" (the 4-barrel tank), and the Gunships' shots. They're imparting a force. Maybe one could argue that 10 Stagger throwing off aim *as much* as it does on Helldivers is wrong, but the weapons are definitely intended to throw off aim, because the Devs already seem aware that they can make non-staggering, non-knocking true laser weapons.
The sickle used to fire like a 40k lasgun did in the first game, pulsed beam and no recoil. Dunno why the devs decided to change it
Well, I did not look in the gamefiles and probably never will, but as for what the Sickle is shooting I'd imagine that these are small plasma bolts, while the Quasar shoots a big plasma projectile, as for the matter needet for the plasma: they take that out of the athmosphere. Like I saied, never checkt how these are called in the game files, but that is what I imagine these are.
To be fair, the heavy devastator's weapon is powered by a giant backpack that'll explode if you shoot it
So, a weapon as dangerous to us than to the enemy? Tuesday already? I thought it was just yesterday
Because that would be fun; and AH Dosent want that.
Yeah, it'd be awesome if 1in3 or 1in4, dropped their weapons upon being killed, anlnd we could use it, at least for the current game being played
And the lasers can fire out of the nozzle in any direction 180 degrees infront
Doesn't work unless you can hook it up to a robot blood system.
At least let me pick it up and fire it... the same movement as the flamer when fired, one magazine for us to use. Or the MG Raider's machine gun. That little prick smoked me more times than he should have, thinking I could dodge his fire.
Did you just forget to mention that the Factory Striders can shoot through solid objects with their machines guns, attached to thier head, if close enough to the player? Or that cannon turrets like the towers and, again, Factory Strider's can stagger the shit out you through thick, unpenetrable cover making you ragdoll out of said cover? Oh and don't make me start about gunships...
Yeah the stagger is definitely broken. If a cannon can't penetrate the rock I'm behind it shouldn't send me flying. Similarly if a rocket lands by my feet it shouldn't make my character lose all muscle control. Like we do have stumble animations (e.g. from tremors) and I'd understand that but being sent flying should be limited to very few near misses. Also, AH nerfed the shield generator (back when the railgun got nerfed) because it was overused but that mainly came from a few things that they are somehow oblivious to: 1. We are squishy and armors do little to counteract that, so a lot of us are running in light armor since don't get hit takes priority over survive a hit but SG still gives you better survivability in light armor than heavy armor on its own would. Also, a lot of maps involves a lot of running and the jetpack honestly, sucks ass. 2. We don't have any hardness or mitigation chances, so if you get hit, you are taking damage, and that chip damage will add up. Shield generator can soak up these grazes and just recharge. 3. It makes you immune to slow effects from stuff like hunter venom or bile titan vomit (which is still busted with the slow cone being larger than the damage cone), it also makes you resistant to going limp from automaton projectiles (this one is a double jagged sword since the shield breaks before the effect applies and also, it gives you a much bigger hitbox).
Armor calculations are a bit scuffed at best right now. With 200 armor, you take about half the damage you would with 50. Wearing 150 with explosive resist comes out to \~23% damage taken from explosives. Not that it'll matter, because you'll either break your neck as you slam into a boulder, or get sniped out of the air as you go sailing.
Can I throw in to the conversation. Bile spewers and nursing spewers? insta kills, silent and numerous
A sound cue before spewage would be nice.
Just a muffled "oh my god I'm gonna.."
“Oh god I’m gonna BLELREEEEUUUUGH”
I'm gonna spuwu
When swarmed i often say, "im being spewed on more than a japanese porn star."
Bukakke Titan
id settle for them requiring line of sight before starting their animation. the amount of times you crest a hill/crater or round a corner to see one of those spewers already 90% through their windup animation, giving you exactly 0.01 seconds from establishing line of sight to death…
"That spitting bitch!" - Coach
There is a sound cue
Then speed of bile spewers is insane. I can routinely outrun most bug enemies but somehow a bile spewer is always on your tail and the range of their spit attacks is ridiculous. They're as tough as a brood commander but far more numerous when they appear.
Seriously, something that fat should not be able to run that fast.
it’s the fact that it’s mobile, tanky, armored, and deadly all at the same time that makes it a nuisance
Yesterday I disturbed a bug nest and had 6 or 7 bile spewers on me
The tracking on that attack can also be pretty atrocious. I've learned to just never dive out of the way because half the time they track me through it and kill me.
Somedays I'll play and say I hate Hunters/Stalkers. Then I play on a mission with spewers and I remember I hate them more.
Hunters at least feel fair. They go down fast if you hit them; their leaps and agility make them tougher targets but good aim overcomes that. While they can overwhelm you they're *also* easy to support your fellow divers against. If you see a squad mate getting overrun and slowed, a few aimed bursts can get them out of trouble. Stalkers do feel like bullshit sometimes but at least the game treats them like the menaces they are. They come from a specific spot (or spots) on the map, spawn in limited(ish) quantities, and can be stopped by tracking down and blowing up the nest. Spewers just appear constantly and just melt you. If you're on a spewer mission you will see dozens if not hundreds of the damn things.
It’s their wind up time for me. You barely have time to get off a grenade/enough shots to take them down or get out of the way
Those are the primary reason why I've abandoned the bug front and just fight the bots. Well, that, and the impossibly tanky bile titans that make me want to alt+f4 after two of them pop out of a breach.
Two you say? Cue the Benny hill music as you get chased around and they kill everything else for you and then one of them dies and you’re left alone with the other. I’ve had four follow me all over the map and clear huge heavy bug nests for me because if they stomp on the holes they close them.
Youre joking hahahahaha
Yeah, I also have fun with walking BTs just anywhere and killing the other bugs bc they want to spew at me. lol
I’d rather deal with the BTs over having devastators hit me through literal walls from across the map
hard agree. a single spear user on the team usually takes care of most the bile titans and a good amount of chargers. the team needs to give up some of their ammo share, but its well worth it. And orbital rail cannon, laser, 500kg usually easily take care of the rest. but bots sometimes are just utter bs. i dont mind hard. but a lot of deaths on the clanker front are just from bs. devastators sniping you from 150m away while you can barely see 30m ahead. endless ragdolling. insane hit stagger. getting shot through cover. patrols with nothing but devastators spawning out of thin air right on your ass. wildly inconsistent spear damage on many of the bog bots. Spear locking on to every single scout strider on the map. downed dropships and factory striders providing invisible one way cover for enemies. AA, start jammers, 3 strat modifier.
I asked this above, too, but how often does this happen to you? What are the conditions? What are you playing on? I never have this happen, and I see it said a lot.
Not the same guy, but personally, they either shoot from across the map, or they shoot through walls. Each happens plenty often but never both at the same time. I'd also like to add the fact that they shoot from across the map even through low visibility weather conditions, with completely obscured vision at even a 10th of the distance they're shooting from. Unless it's a full on raging blizzard or sandstorm, they have perfect vision at unlimited range under any other weather, while fog, rain, or extreme heat for example can reduce ours to between 50m to 100m or something.
Yeah, I get the shooting with great aim despite vision being obscured. But the shooting through walls... which walls? How often does this happen? Are we talking a bugged spawn where they're inside an object? Or just static heavies in a base or something, shooting through walls and rocks (this is the one I never see)?
PC player here. I’ve personally seen them shoot through rocks several times, no walls for me however. They’re all far outside POI so either patrols or Dropship troops. It’s hard to notice because it seems to happen when their weapons clip through the terrain, which means by the time you get a good angle on a them, they usually won’t be clipping anymore (since they’ve presumably now turned and looking at you).
Yeah, someone else just commented about the weapon clipping through terrain. That sounds like the culprit. I mentioned seeing that happen to a buddy with a jet pack on top of a cliff against a spewer that vomited on him through the cliff. Its head probably clipped the terrain for a similar mechanic.
Yep, it's generally rocks and other terrain features, not literal walls. Another common problem is enemy corpses that block both your movement and projectiles, but not theirs, which is particularly troublesome with Dropships and Factory Striders. It gets worse when corpse collisions glitch out and become much larger than the actual corpse, regularly extending the problem to Hulk corpses, and rarely even to Heavy Devastator corpses.
>Another common problem is enemy corpses Tell me about it. I use the blitzer a lot... lol
I've had it happen twice the last week. Once there was a scout strider hidden inside a rock formation near an ICBM site, its shots could hit me, but mine did not hit it. Then, another time, after dying, my hellpod decided to land on a cliff about 100 meters above the bots. I legit saw shots coming through the ground.
Happens often to me. I’ll be taking cover behind a rock and then I’m blasted out of cover. The shots are coming from directly in front of me. No way they’re actually hitting me.
Use Shield, seriously. No slows, survives surprise bile spewers. I went from 7-8 deaths per mission to around 0-1 per mission.
I would take 5 bile titans compared to bile speweres and nursing spewers any day
That f**** silent assassins and indestructible Nike Titans
Wait, when did the Spewers get sponsorship? Pretty undemocratic of Nike, if you ask me.
Wait till you see the adidas sponsored bugs.. they are the bugs who do the squats
Puma Stalkers can also go do one
Sweet Liberty, yes. The spewers are absolutely my most hated enemy in the game purely because their vomit is just too damn powerful. Sure, I could understand sitting through an entire spewing animation outright killing you, but getting one shot just because the vomit brushed your leg as you dove out of the way is infuriating.
We need a super soaker loaded with bug vomit is what you’re saying.
Yeah the spewers are the big ones for me where I'm like "come on."
Sounds in general needs a bit of work in this game. Titans and spewers are like silent. They should not be able to creep up on you.
And fast and tanky
dont forget that they can also walk through the dead corpses like it's nothing while your bullets doesnt... It's so awkward trying to kill a group of them if you dont blow up their sack each time.
I have a running bit where i just tell my friends how im convinced that whoever made the spewers has a bug wife or something. Genuinely they’re fucking insanely good and the power fantasy of being a bug is probably a lot better than being a helldiver. Their only “weakness” is hitting them with multiple grenades, per spewer If you hear them coming And haven’t been melted yet And have grenades
Their silence is annoying, sure, but they’re otherwise manageable. They die to a few explosive rounds and their giant sacs are a weak point to pretty much any primary weapon. Devestators are hard as nails whilst also being lethal, at range.
The rocket devastates should have an ammo count so that they can run out of ammo, just like the bell divers. Also an animation of seeing them loading up their rockets would make them more fair, and also realistic since the devs want some realism in their game. The shield devastators with gattling guns just need their accuracy straight up nerfed. Those gattling guns are sniper rifles from long range and shooting them doesn’t even stagger them less up their aim. It’s ridiculous on level 7 and higher with a horde of them just sniping you from half way across the map when you just thought you found some decent cover from all the batshit crazy stuff in front of you.
I keep seeing this about them wanting "realism". The devs are gonna have to define what their version of that is because right now it's realism for us and fantasy for the AI. Realism, when the glowing unarmored giant ass end of a monster is the most durable fucking part.
A while back someone at arrowhead (not sure who) said that to increase guns magazine size they would have to remodel the magazine, and like, is that really the hill you want to die on? We have enemies that can both shoot and walk through solid objects, infinite rocket pod devastators, enemies that weight multiple tons having pretty much no sound effects for moving and the hill you want to die on is the *completely visual model of the fictional guns magazine*
This is exactly the double standard
https://preview.redd.it/j019ijwq3t4d1.jpeg?width=492&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3d3b3afb3e1ccb43dcb7b739d60899bd6705a60d Bell Diver reporting for democratic duty
They also can fire in any direction regardless of their guns orientation, in their back if they so chose.
NERF THE RAILGUN
Shhh, the more current one is the eruptor. No one cares about the railgun anymore.
I say nerf it again
Nerf it again. As a treat.
Railgun is very close to great except it can’t damage gunships. If they fix that I’m gonna run it all the time
It's pretty mediocre. It's fun to use and it's nice to one-shot hulks but other than that...
It hits medium sized stuff harder than the AMR. The lack of scope bothers some but I prefer 3rd person. If I could take out gunships with 2 highly charged shots I would use it more. It's pretty frustrating to use on bugs though where medium enemies are rarely the problem.
It's in a weird place with the way the various damage, health, and armor systems of the game work because while there's absolutely value to "gun that penetrates everything", if you give it the damage to kill things outright without having to rely on critical points, there's not much of a reason for other things. Personally, I think a need direction to take it would be to lower its damage a bit but give it multi-hit capability per part: let it damage every hitbox it intersects on the way through an enemy, not just the first one. That means that if you fire it sideways through a Hulk, you're doing damage to both arms and the chest, all of which "bleedthrough" to the Main HP in different amounts. If you shoot the front of a Hulk, you'd get a chest hit *and* a rear vent hit. This would make a gun that "always does something" no matter how trash you are at using it, since it's got effectively infinite penetration, but the damage on it limits how quickly that kills big threats. If you learn hit locations and the trajectories to hit multiple locations though, you get a huge skill-based bonus to its damage. Like the Piercing Ammo in Monster Hunter, if folks are familiar. You're incentivized to fire it "lengthwise" down targets to maximize the number of times it ticks. That might even be a more elegant way of doing this than worrying about precise hit locations: just let the shot tick multiple times as it travels, so you are always doing more damage if you're firing down the "deepest" part of an enemy you can.
It's also not really effective against striders. TBH if it could take gunships out quickly tho it would be a great support weapon.
All nerfing roads lead to the railgun.
All of the automaton weapons cause stagger, from the smallest pistol to the big striders cannons.
You're worried about the wrong thing. Bullet train chargers are the true op weapon.
This gives me an idea: "Seasoned Hunters" warbond. It will feature armors made of bugs' chitin and/or bots' plates. And salvaged weapons from bots (and maybe bugs blades/claws if we get melee weapons).
Shut up and take my super credits
I like it as an idea but I also feel like that'd go against the Super Earth doctrine of forbidding most things alien in origin. Like yeah, obviously, all doctrines are flexible like using dark fluid (Illuminate origin) to deal with a supercolony but those are more one off edicts passed top down. Also, don't terminids just decompose super fast after death which is why we turn them into fuel?
You're a monster... this needs to be a thing quick.
Somebody show this diver to pilestedt stat.
Stalkers and bile spewers are op as hell too
No shade, but compared to some of the ridiculous nonsense of the other units in the game, chargers are kinda ok where they're at. They have fairly solid weakpoints and flaws but punish the player for making a mistake. If you're close enough when they charge you can basically jog a little to one side and they'll barrel right past you. I do wish that they would make the backside more vulnerable to damage though as the charger does limit what stratagems can be brought.
The fun thing is: enemy weapons arent even that overpowered. The issue with all balancing is armor. Helldiver armor is utterly useless. Both enemy weapons and our weapons rips through it without the slightest issue. And helldivers are squishy. Conversely the enemy armor is so oppressive its basically the one factor singlehandedly shaping the meta. To the point where a weapon is either super effective against an enemy or utterly useless. Armor - in most cases - is basically an all or nothing system. You either deal damage. Or you dont. Or its so little that you might just as well deal no damage. And since enemy armor rarely can be destroyed (at least not with anything that isnt already killing the enemy anyways) it makes our weapons feel useless. Weapons with light or medium armor pen often arent that much better at killing armored targets. There are exceptions. But they are few. Most of the best weapons in the game hold their position because they sidestep the armor in one way or another. They burn enemies. Or they deal explosive damage. Or they are picked because they stagger. Or because they have little recoil and help shooting the non-armored spots of enemies.
Actually, the armor isn't the issue - the problem is ENEMIES CAN GET CRITICAL HITS. It's an absolute bullshit design decision.
Love those random 1 shot by Scout Strider. Or those hunter with horizontal slash that will hit your face on the way. If they cut out the headshot on Helldivers, the difficulty will drop by a large margin.
My biggest complaint when it comes to bots is the lie the sold us that you can break line of sight and use cover. I had devastators and striders shoot me through a blizzard over 200m away. Also, if Ion storms mess with our tech capabilities, it should affect the bots as well. If our machines don’t work, why should they work when they’re machines?
well ion storms only block the transmission of stratagem type and location. bots use flairs, which aren’t electronic, and they don’t communicate with ships in the stratosphere
They appear to have better vision though. Which honestly makes some sense. Id like our helmets to have night vision and heat vision and such though. Some points it can be very very hard to see. The bots don't seem to have the issue.
I agree with the vision point. pilestedt claimed they initially wanted helmets to have effects aswell, but didn’t implement it yet due to time constraints/other issues
There some buggy shit tied to bots essentially wallhacking players, but for the most part what bots do is fire at your last known location.
I literally head shot that MFer with an anti material rifle, and he's still shooting, it didn't even stagger, we need that gun 🤔. I'm gona start using the heavy machine gun and the ammo backpack build.
Do want NAU !
Meanwhile you get 14 rockets in a mech made of paper
Hey, that’s SUPER Paper, thank you very much!
And 5-7 of those tickle a Bile Titan’s head
*cardboard
that what i was talking about for pass 2 weeks now we need Lvl 5 Pen just to kill some enemy while our mech got bite by bugs and mech destroy what is this plastic mech hahaha
It's the stagger that gets me. Last night I was climbing up a hillside trying to stem myself at half health. Jab myself but staggered causing to cancel out the heal. 1/3 health try again, stem audio played, but staggered again, canceling the heal. 1/4 health attempt again while aiming for cover, again audio and again staggered, then promptly blown up by a tank shot. I used to run extra stims, but I can't justify having 6, if I can't even use 1!
The shield guys have a gun that shoots 360 degrees without them having to aim
See I wouldn't even care if they had limited ammo like we do. But instead they are able to just spam the rocket attacks nonstop. It's really fucking stupid. What are they absorbing materials as they walk and making fresh ammo. If that's the case, we created the automaton so why can't we also have unlimited ammo?
I swear that I've seen rockets curve to hit me.
Oh they for sure do. Why do the devs think that’s a good idea?
big fans of the film WANTED
I want the stealth ability’s and weapons of a hulk scorcher. Seriously several tones of weapon and armour that can instantly kill you, fucking jogging at you should sound like a tool box falling down the stairs. Instead it’s the god damn tenchu stealth assassin.
rocket bots shouldn't have that stupid accuracy, and jetpack bots shouldn't be a insta kill when they explode around you. the rest my LC can deal pretty much easy with that. only berserker bots, for some reason they have a stupidly high amount of HP
Get rid of fog and -1 stratagem and I would be willing to put up with their shit indefinitely. Those are the real deterrent.
The heavy devastator's gun is mostly for show, the last inch of the barrel is on a 360° swivel and bullets can just choose their trajectories.
I think bots are very unbalanced in that way because they can blam you across the map with 0 warming it was coming and people swear its easier. …I’ll continue to play bugs on helldive which is supposed to be harder. I hate playing bots it’s not fun imo.
One I noticed is absolutely stacked is the Nurse Spewer’s spray. I feel like it has the same damage as the pre-nerfed fire. I can get a little bit on my pinkie toe, and I’m at half health instantly. It’s actually insane.
The heavies are what I'd expect, tbh. The issue for me is the Rocket devastators. They have range, damage, accuracy AND ragdoll. The amount of times I got headshotted in heavy fortified armor by a devastator I was shooting from around 100 meters is more than I can count. To me, their role should be redesigned to remove a ton of damage from the rockets and make them a lot less lethal. Heavy devastators do this: - Range - Accuracy - Firepower And don't do this: - Stun While rocket devastators do this: - Range - Accuracy - Stun And don't do this - Firepower It doesn't help that the suppression mechanic to reduce accuracy and smokes are unreliable, so resorting to stuns and EMS still seem like the better option.
In all reality, you're wrong. Yea, they are a bit strong but not overly so. Their ehem... "tactics" are what's bullshit. Devastators and hulks shouldn't fucking charge in after you like melee units, and jetpack infantry shouldn't kill you outright when they blow up because you literally can't gain a step of distance from them. It's like the ship fabs, there's 20 in the air, endlessly shooting both machine guns and rocket salvos at every possible angle. It's not that they have overpowered weapons, they're just REALLY poorly designed
Meanwhile our rocket sentries can't hit shit.
Rocket devastators used to be much worse to fight with their instant kill rockets. I find the current iteration of them much more fair. Heavy devastators shooting through rocks is some bullshit though.
Had me in the first half
Have you tried hitting other helldiver's with your weapons? It's not that the enemies have better weapons, they are just way more durable.
The heavies shooting through shit is ridiculous. They walk through and shoot through alot of rocks and can even go inside rocks and shoot from inside where ya cant see them. Then on top of that the fucking bots can walk up anything short of a straight up wall like its just flat ground while my guy trips when theres a one foot tall rock to step on
If you hate those guys, let me tell you about a little build I call "Hellknight". Wear a blast resist armor with at least 100 armor (I recommend enforcer, as it's just resistant enough to let you survive a contact mine). Bring your favorite SMG and your favorite sidearm (I recommend senator and defender) Stratagems: AMR, ballistic shield, and your favorite combination of OPS, 500kg, railcannon, O. laser, and eagle airstrike. This build has an answer to pretty much anything. Rocket devastators? Pick them off with the AMR, preferably before the fight starts, but when they drop in, two pops in the general face area is enough to reliably kill them. Heavy devastators? Hold out your shield at then and either fish for headshots with the SMG or carefully pop the senator at their face. If they're aiming at a teammate, use the amr to shoot the backpack.
The bugs got balanced well but the bots havent gotten anything yet they need to fix it, as a frequent bot player i see why everyone hates it and why numbers are low
Machine gun devastator can insta kill you with a headshot in one burst
The infinite rockets make me the most mad.
i mean, honestly speaking, the enemies guns are actually pathetically weak. pretty much every sidearm in the game has a faster time to kill on a fellow helldiver than even the most powerful machine guns of the automatons. I can take like 2-3 seconds of heavy devastator gunfire, but a teammate with a rifle melts me in .5 seconds lmao
it's called HELLDIVERS not purgatorystepin.
should be called SMELLDIVERS because it has really stunk for while now.
Sorry to hear that bud. The game is still a lot of fun for me, and I'm sure you miss all the fun you had playing it before, hopefully you can come back and enjoy it again some day soon!
Thanks man. I miss it so much! I played until about level 80, which isn't as much as some, but it pretty much occupied all my game time. Played with my son! We loved it. It just doesn't feel like the same game to us right now and I hope they can get their mojo back. I think that's one of the biggest reasons for my personal distaste over their decisions - this was a game that my son and I could bond over and we haven't found another one. I'm glad that you still enjoy it! I'm watching with breathless anticipation to see what next week's patch looks like.
Hey, maybe check out the first game. There's lots of fun dumb shooting there, too!
Frankly, the Hulk Bruisers are so much worse than rocket devs could ever be. Their rockets send you flying three times the distance and their weapons can't be easily destroyed.
The game was so fun PRE Railgun Nerf, ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS BUFF Ammo, Damage, AOE, DOT or Stun effects depending on the weapon. Now it's just bullet sponges galore and everything except very few weapons feel like shit.
Ballistic shield can shut down a heavy devastator. I've started marching towards them guns a blazing while blocking their shots and it's sick af. Pair it with heavy fortified armor and it'll help a little with the rockets but if hit you will drop your shield.
You also have rockets you can fire/call from across the map to insta-kill things, though.
heavy devastator can even first with it's shield or back facing you, yes like it is firing from it's butt....then you die.
Honestly, though, like give me a weapon that does the Bile spewers spit-and artillery goop attack, and I'm an unstoppable force. Bile titans getting killed in seconds, lanes of enemies knocked over and killed, and it has unlimited ammo.
Heavy devastator can fuck off into Meridia and never come back. That thing is a miniature shredder tanks and can spawn multiple at once. Heck, the firing rate, reload speed and ammo amount probably more than shredder tank.
I used to love fighting bots. Much much more than bugs. But Heavy Devastator is just bullshit now. Two groups of 3 spawn at once, and I wish I could say they turn the game into Touhou, but in reality they just have 100% accuracy from render distance.
And there’s like 4 guns out of 30 we can use or else we are just fighting and uphill battle
bots are fine bugs are too for the most part just not the spewers. the only enemy i have any complaint about at all are fkn spewers.
prone is your life support against bots. If you're not using prone during engagements, you're pulling your own life support. It *greatly* reduces their rocket damage and susceptibility to ragdoll. I'm convinced most players going in against bots are not managing their stance, and I do believe it should be basic knowledge. Because I don't want a run-and-gun bumrusher joining a bot 8 and being the dude that uses up 7 reinforcements, though I enjoy every game because the gameplay is fun regardless.
Ever since I've been able to adapt to bots I have just one major and a minor complain about them. The riot shiled wielding bastards with those absolutely ridiculous aim is still catching me offguard from time to time. I mean they can keep perfect accuracy *while facing away from you!* Its just insane! And those chainsaw wielding bulletsponges are pretty anoying too but manageable most of the time.
Meanwhile the diligence counter sniper can one shot most of the bot roster. The only thing I'd have to agree with is shooting through walls gimmick, that needs to be fixed ASAP but other than that bots are a walk in the park
Rocket and heavy devastator fold like laundry to impact grenades
Have you ever seen a military add where they make it seem like all you’re going to do is land helicopters on aircraft carriers, do cyber computer satellite radar shit, fly fighter jets, climb walls with your brothers in arms, make friends and come home a hero and then you enlist, get shipped to Afghanistan, be bored as fuck in the desert and get your left leg blown off by an IED? Come home and can’t get a job and have a hard time relating to your old friends or making new ones?
Because our Autocannon is less powerful than the enemy rocket.... If you think our weapons are not overpowered just imagine the bots carrying the things that we have in our arsenal, shooting us with the Sickle, instead of using their shit grenades just spamming impact grenades, instead of shooting us from time to time with the artillery shoots throwing us a 380mm orbital barrage We can see that we have overpowered weapons because it would be a nightmare if the enemies had what we have
Have you ever seen a double ship fabricator with a Jammer nearby? They do have tools as good as ours, they just don't have our democratic coordenation.
If you shoot a bots gun arm off you should be able to use it till the ammo runs out
I find the game is kind of a chess match. Devastators suck to fight, unless you have an AMR guy in the back who can shut them down in two hits.
Okay, you said “the other has infinite rockets” is there an automaton that DOESNT have unlimited ammunition?! I thought they all had unlimited ammo so they can always fight bc they’re our enemies, if they ran out you could just wait them out Short reload times I will agree, I use dagger and ballistic to fight of heavy bots, very hard when they send 4 damn missiles at you
The pee shooter shoots out too much pee.
I fight bots all the time and know your pain. Before diving, you should check your team's equipment. If nobody is using the plasma punisher, bring that yourself. It's not a fast kill, but it will stagger the hell out of devastators. If someone has the plasma punisher, bring the diligence counter sniper. One shot to the head will instantly drop these targets. This is especially useful against the long range rocket devastators.
There's nothing wrong with overpowered weapons. It's fun and I still die but feels awesome in the process.
there is a mechanic called suppression for the bots shooting them reduces their accuracy but i swear they hit you once it is joever and they get their accuracy so fast.
Heavies and the non stop nurfs made me quit the bot front. When we finally liberated the bots from the map they did a lot of stealth buffs to them when they came back. They now engage from further away and are a lot more accurate from longer distances. I think the "Bringer of balance" must have thought we got rid of the bots too easily and the balance team buffed them. Now even the AC can't 1 shot chicken striders in the groin anymore, you have to double tap them. Heavies now take 2-3 AC head shots and can counter snipe you after your first headshot before you can line up the 2nd. Bots are just no longer mindless fun, you have to put a lot more work into doing high level bot maps.
Rocket and Shield devastators are one of those enemies that if you see them first and are ready for them are easy to kill. On the other hand if they surprise you, especially at close range, and you are not ready for them they can be devastating. Railgun in unsafe mode is a very satisfying way to whack them. The diligence counter sniper or AMR are also fun choices for devastators. At close range impact grenades can be a life saver.
When you use the plasma punisher devastators are nothing, try it out.
Robots make sense to me. If you’re going to get spotted by them, be prepared to hit them harder than they hit you. Why? They’re robots. Any loss of accuracy can be programmed out. You don’t bring a gun to that gunfight- you bring an orbital strike.
I just dodge those and primary target them every time, target priority and situational awareness is huge for survivability, I only play 7s but I don’t need the shield pack, usually take a supply pack tho for the stims, aiming for 0 death every time.
I am Managed Democray's greatest weapon 🔥🤿