HELLDIVERS 2

Fallen Kell · Apr 9, 2024

Yeah, in terms of the primary weapons, really there are 2-3 standouts and then the rest... The ballistic shield backpack item might change this narrative as you need a one handed weapon (but only against the automatons, since it is mostly useless against bugs). Otherwise, it is really hard to beat the breaker, breaker incendiary, and jar (general usage, vs bugs if hosting, vs bots or on higher difficulty bug matches where higher armored bugs are the norm, respectively). You can make a case for a couple other primary weapons in specific situations/loadouts, like the sickle (but you need to know the enemy weak points and be able to aim for them and only against the automatons).

After that, if you are not using the redeemer as the secondary, you are making your life harder for you and your team. Sure, some will say the Slugger is better since it can penetrate armor, but you have very limited ammo, and with the nerf, the aiming time is terrible, and given that you will normally be using this weapon for a snap aim because you ran out of ammo on your main or the enemies are too close for your main, or everything is on cooldown, it is a useless weapon now.

RPD · Apr 9, 2024

Fallen Kell said:
Yeah, in terms of the primary weapons, really there are 2-3 standouts and then the rest... The ballistic shield backpack item might change this narrative as you need a one handed weapon (but only against the automatons, since it is mostly useless against bugs). Otherwise, it is really hard to beat the breaker, breaker incendiary, and jar (general usage, vs bugs if hosting, vs bots or on higher difficulty bug matches where higher armored bugs are the norm, respectively). You can make a case for a couple other primary weapons in specific situations/loadouts, like the sickle (but you need to know the enemy weak points and be able to aim for them and only against the automatons).

After that, if you are not using the redeemer as the secondary, you are making your life harder for you and your team. Sure, some will say the Slugger is better since it can penetrate armor, but you have very limited ammo, and with the nerf, the aiming time is terrible, and given that you will normally be using this weapon for a snap aim because you ran out of ammo on your main or the enemies are too close for your main, or everything is on cooldown, it is a useless weapon now.

I do want to try out the shield backpack with the SMG now that the bots have returned, to see how effective it can be while also seeing how the SMG as a primary can do. But hard to beat the energy shield backpack for bots.

I wanted to really love the two energy based shot guns in the CE warbond but they just don't cut it. The plasma one is like a horrible grenade launcher, requires reloading, can only lob the plasma balls so far, while accounting for the low velocity and gravity. The arc shotgun, it's just too damn slow. Range is short so you can only use it when surrounded and with it's firing rate and not enough damage you get overwhelmed quickly.

They do need some more choices with secondary weapons, but I think everyone may be taking the 1-shot grenade hand gun in Thursday's warbond, but at least the revolver has good stopping power, just reloading sucks SO.BAD.

RPD · Apr 9, 2024

Today's patch notes:

Helldivers 2 update 01.000.202 patch notes:
Overview
This update includes

Stability fixes

Gameplay

We have updated the stats UI for weapons to take into account any explosive damage done by them. This is to give weapons that do damage with explosive projectiles a more fair representation in the UI. Most notably affected is the PLAS-1 Scorcher.

Fixes
Crash fixes

Fixed some crashes that occurred when deploying to mission.

Fixed some crashes that occurred during extraction and right after it.

Fixed crashes that could occur if the squad deployed a large amount of support weapons.

Fixed various crashes that could occur during gameplay.

Fixed a crash that could occur when using heat based weapons.

Fixed crashes which could occur if a player died while using the jetpack.

Fixed crash which could occur when large volumes of enemies were present.

Fixed crash which could occur when the player picked up a snowball.

Fixed crash which could occur when completing an objective.

Other Fixes

Fixed hang that could occur while navigating the social menu.

Picking up Medals and Super Credits will no longer lock the player in place.

Known Issues

These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed. This list is not exhaustive, and we are continuing to identify issues and create fixes. These are organized by feedback, reports, severity, etc.

Various issues involving friend invites and cross-play:

Player name may show up blank on the other player's friend list.

Friend Request cannot be accepted when the requesting player changed their username before the request was accepted.

Cross-platform friend invites might not show up in the Friend Requests tab.

Players cannot unfriend players befriended via friend code.

Players cannot unblock players that were not in their Friends list beforehand.

Damage-over-time effects may only apply when dealt by the host.

Players may experience delays in Medals and Super Credits payouts.

Enemies that bleed out do not progress Personal Orders and Eradicate missions.

Certain weapons like the Sickle cannot shoot through foliage.

Scopes on some weapons such as the Anti-Materiel Rifle are slightly misaligned.

Arc weapons sometimes behave inconsistently and sometimes misfire.

Spear’s targeting is inconsistent, making it hard to lock-on to larger enemies.

Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but it will deploy to its original location.

Explosions do not break your limbs (except for when you fly into a rock).

Area around Automaton Detector Tower makes blue stratagems such as the hellbomb bounce and be repelled when trying to call them down close to the tower.

Planet liberation reaches 100% at the end of every Defend mission.

Fallen Kell · Apr 9, 2024

RPD said:
I do want to try out the shield backpack with the SMG now that the bots have returned, to see how effective it can be while also seeing how the SMG as a primary can do. But hard to beat the energy shield backpack for bots.

The ballistics shield is incredibly good against the bots when used correctly. You need to pay attention to your pulls (and what your teammates are pulling as well), but if you can act disciplined and force encounters on your terms keeping the enemies to the front and also strafing/circling them with the shield on the appropriate side, it is awesome and MUCH better than the energy shield since it will just absorb hit after hit after hit. This lets you stand there and take the incoming fire, giving you time to aim precision weapons at weak points, or mash out stratagems without getting gunned down. You still need to worry about some various explosive hits that will knock you down, or deal with flamethrowers (remember, stop/drop/roll, or in the case in helldivers 2, dive to the ground to put out those flames) and physical bladed/chainsaw weapons will still give you trouble.

But it brings a new strategy to bear, in a "tank" build with the ballistics shield, and the large shield generator stratagems. Using the large shield generator to cause the bots to focus fire on it and away from you and the team mates, while letting you get to a new location using the ballistic shield while the shield generator is on it's 90 second cooldown.

RPD · Apr 12, 2024

Got to say, the new exploding sniper primary is legit for what it is. You use it to pick off medium armor non-trash guys, can blow up bug holes and bot factories, allows you to bring a stalwart support to cut down trash and then railgun/laser orbitals for the big boys.

The complaints on it are its slow to reload and magazine capacity, or rounds per capacity are low. But if you are using it close range you are doing it wrong. Had a blast with it last night on bot missions.

Fallen Kell · Apr 12, 2024

Yeah, I need to get better with it. Still trying to figure out what I want to do loadout wise for bot missions, but I think this might be my new main weapon there. On bugs, if they ever fix the fire damage over time for non-host computers, I think the flamethrower and breaker incindiary are just too hard to beat (especially when you add in the new ship upgrade for an additional 25% damage).

For the new ship upgrades, the first one I am grabbing will be the -100 second cooldown time for things like the mines as it also includes the shield generator, which only has a 90 second cooldown in the first place.... But I think they will change that once we start seeing almost permanent shield generators being dropped (they will probably make it a -66% cut of the times, instead of being a direct value, as all the other stratagems in the list have a 150 second cooldown).

Fallen Kell · Apr 15, 2024

I need to get the ship upgrade for the arc thrower.... it is just that I havn't even really started down that tech upgrade path. It is funny because I still use it on the bugs, and love it. People have started to question my bug loadout when the mission starts, but at the end when they see I am constantly have the top kills on the team they start wondering if I really do have the better loadout.

The thing is, it really only works in a team (especially at the higher difficulty layers) as I don't have things to deal with some of the objectives themselves (once I am out of grenades, I can't deal with closing bug tunnels/nests easily), but otherwise, it is a great setup. Loadout:
Primary: Breaker Incendiary
Secondary: Redeemer Pistol
Grenade: High Explosive

Stratagems:
Arc Thrower
Guard Dog Rover (laser)
Expendable Anti-Tank
final is map/mission specific (orbital laser, 500kg bomb, cluster bomb, shield generator relay, EMS mortar, etc.)

For primary weapon, I mostly carry the breaker incendiary (will be even better once they fire damage), redeemer pistol secondary (might change this out to the grenade pistol, since this would get me another way to deal with the tunnels...). The idea of this loadout is small/medium trash cleanup as well as support for the heavies. Between the arc thrower and the guard dog rover, I can beat back any bug tunnel breach that doesn't contain a charger or bile titan. If those show up, I call down the anti-tank a little distance away and run towards it, pick it up, and fire, then immediately pickup the arc thrower again. For the big fights that I know we have some prep ahead of time I will call down an anti-tank before-hand. I will also call it down from time to time in the early part of the mission and let them be scattered across where-ever I was headed, especially if we are doing a full map sweep since eventually they will get used against a titan or charger when they start spawning,

RPD · Apr 15, 2024

Arc thrower is (was since haven't tried it since the change to range and stagger add) best when team goes in with like 2. I was duo'ing with a friend and if you both have it, you know what is going on and really zap pretty much everything to death. What is really nice about it, is your aim doesn't need to be dead nuts on, it will path over to the closest thing, provided there isn't a leaf in the way. I think that was why I stopped using it, the reliability made it too risky.

But for bugs I host, I do incendiary/grenade pistol with quasar cannon, eagle napalm, orbital rail cannon strike and laser drone. Primary and drone handle trash, QC/rail orbital for the big boys, eagle napalm on bug breaches. The grenade pistol is very nice for running and gunning to close bug holes. The one issue is supply packs and ammo packs only give you 1 grenade so it is resource hungry in that regard.

My bot load out I think after playing some more 7's this weekend, I need to bring that shield sentry, someone else used it and it was very handy for drop in's and regrouping. I have also seen people praising the laser cannon as a support for bots, I wasn't feeling it on bugs. The one draw back for me using the eruptor on bots means your support weapon needs to handle close up stuff, so usually the stalwart is the choice, that means you aren't blowing up bot ships, which can be good or bad depending on when you blow them up. Good if you get them before they drop as that seems to kill the guys it's carrying, bad if after due to clipping and guys can shot out but you can't shot in, but they are trapped so there's that. I know you can take down a drop ship with the eruptor but unless it's, I think directly on the down blasting part of the engine, you need multiple shots, which with it's slow reload makes it almost impossible to do.

Fallen Kell · Apr 15, 2024

Yeah, for bots it really is a completely different setup needed. As much as I want to like new meta weapon in the bolt action rifle from the Democratic Detonation Expansion seems to be getting a lot of love, I just can't stand it's sluggish movement and reload. Some people have hacked the reload by swapping weapons to cancel the reload animation, but I would only call that a temporary solution until that patch it and have the weapon stay unloaded on the switch.

I need to test some more with the explosive crossbow, which I think is a much better weapon. It does more damage, less reload time, much better movement, with the same penetration/explosive damage and same amount of ammo as that bolt action. You simply need to deal with the bullet/arrow drop that is about the same as the grenade launcher (well maybe a little more). To me it just feels better but will not be as long range. And as for the secondary, yeah, you essentially need to use the senator, everything else (aside from the grenade handgun) just do not have the penetration required to be useful.

I have been using the shield generator essentially since I started playing against the bots. It is really, really good, and I just don't know why more people don't take it. I mean, seriously if everyone took it and coordinated, you could have essentially permanent shield up (lasts 30 seconds with a 90 second cooldown, so one person pops it, and then the next, etc... And there is supposedly ship upgrade that lessens the cool down by 100seconds with the shield generator relay listed on it, but I havn't seen or heard of anyone taking advantage of that yet (possibly it is broken like a few of the others are?).

Fenixgoon · Apr 16, 2024

Fallen Kell said:
Yeah, for bots it really is a completely different setup needed. As much as I want to like new meta weapon in the bolt action rifle from the Democratic Detonation Expansion seems to be getting a lot of love, I just can't stand it's sluggish movement and reload. Some people have hacked the reload by swapping weapons to cancel the reload animation, but I would only call that a temporary solution until that patch it and have the weapon stay unloaded on the switch.

I need to test some more with the explosive crossbow, which I think is a much better weapon. It does more damage, less reload time, much better movement, with the same penetration/explosive damage and same amount of ammo as that bolt action. You simply need to deal with the bullet/arrow drop that is about the same as the grenade launcher (well maybe a little more). To me it just feels better but will not be as long range. And as for the secondary, yeah, you essentially need to use the senator, everything else (aside from the grenade handgun) just do not have the penetration required to be useful.

I have been using the shield generator essentially since I started playing against the bots. It is really, really good, and I just don't know why more people don't take it. I mean, seriously if everyone took it and coordinated, you could have essentially permanent shield up (lasts 30 seconds with a 90 second cooldown, so one person pops it, and then the next, etc... And there is supposedly ship upgrade that lessens the cool down by 100seconds with the shield generator relay listed on it, but I havn't seen or heard of anyone taking advantage of that yet (possibly it is broken like a few of the others are?).

autocannon 4 lyfe

Saylick · Apr 16, 2024

Has anyone tried the JAR-5 Dominator after the recent patch buffed it? They gave it +50% damage (from 200 to 300) and increased stagger, so it's actually a decent primary with medium armor penetration and the explosive trait. Recoil is high if you go full auto, but you can use it to kill heavier targets pretty quick if they are up close. The weapon handling is still pretty slow, but you can work around this by only aiming when you have a target centered on your screen.

RPD · Apr 17, 2024

Saylick said:
Has anyone tried the JAR-5 Dominator after the recent patch buffed it? They gave it +50% damage (from 200 to 300) and increased stagger, so it's actually a decent primary with medium armor penetration and the explosive trait. Recoil is high if you go full auto, but you can use it to kill heavier targets pretty quick if they are up close. The weapon handling is still pretty slow, but you can work around this by only aiming when you have a target centered on your screen.

It's a great primary for either bugs or bots. I switch between it (or did before Eruptor) and the scorcher on bots.

sze5003 · Apr 17, 2024

I am now trying to get 50 more super credits to unlock buying one of those premium warbond packs so I can get the fire equivalent of the shotgun. Lately the games I've been in have not had too many super credits found. I'm still in the east side of the galaxy too.

Stg-Flame · Apr 17, 2024

sze5003 said:
I am now trying to get 50 more super credits to unlock buying one of those premium warbond packs so I can get the fire equivalent of the shotgun. Lately the games I've been in have not had too many super credits found. I'm still in the east side of the galaxy too.

I went back to Easy missions to farm the SC since I could just run around and hit all the valuable areas without worrying about having a strider dropped on my face. That being said, I refuse to spend the SC to unlock one of those premium warbonds until they fix the client-side fire bug.

Zeze · Apr 17, 2024

This game is tons of fun. I completed the highest difficulty.

Aliens are definitely more satisfying to kill than bots. It's also the best starship troopers game

Fallen Kell · Apr 18, 2024

I havn't unlocked the highest "helldiver" difficulty yet, but mainly because I have been farming samples that are much easier to get at lower levels (level 7 gets you everything you need, and in good enough quantity that it is a much better difficulty for farming).

I'm probably going to unlock the upgrade to the arc thrower and tesla tower tonight/tomorrow as even with the nerf, it is still my favorite weapon. The stagger is just so useful, and getting it to be able to damage and stagger an additional enemy each time I fire will be even MORE useful. Works for both bugs and bots (though you do need something else for things like the factory strider, charger (to an extent), or bile titans, but like I have said before, that is what the expendable anti-tank was designed to do and can be called in every 60 seconds...

RPD · Apr 19, 2024

Never did I think that rare samples were going to be the currency bottle neck, ugh.

Zeze · Apr 20, 2024

Fallen Kell said:
expendable anti-tank was designed to do and can be called in every 60 seconds...

Yea, many praise EAT.

However, it looks like the current meta is using that rechargeable energy rocket launcher

Saylick · Apr 20, 2024

Zeze said:
Yea, many praise EAT.

However, it looks like the current meta is using that rechargeable energy rocket launcher

I think I prefer the EAT over the Quasar Cannon still, if only because I find it easier to land a precise shot with it since it fires immediately on trigger pull. Against targets that are one hit kill to the head, a clean line of sight only appears for a brief moment at times so not having to charge the shot is clutch.

Stg-Flame · Apr 21, 2024

Saylick said:
I think I prefer the EAT over the Quasar Cannon still, if only because I find it easier to land a precise shot with it since it fires immediately on trigger pull. Against targets that are one hit kill to the head, a clean line of sight only appears for a brief moment at times so not having to charge the shot is clutch.

I greatly dislike the arc of the EAT and struggle to hit things at medium ranges accurately. Meanwhile, with a few second charge on the Quasar, I can nail secondary objectives across the entire map accurately. It's nice being able to take out Spore Spewers or Shrieker Nests long before we ever reach them or destroying the Automaton cannon towers, mortars, and AA emplacements from atop a mountain.

Zeze · Apr 22, 2024

Saylick said:
I think I prefer the EAT over the Quasar Cannon still, if only because I find it easier to land a precise shot with it since it fires immediately on trigger pull. Against targets that are one hit kill to the head, a clean line of sight only appears for a brief moment at times so not having to charge the shot is clutch.

I think nerds run both QC and EAT. They use QC as the workhorse. Then they drop EAT whenever needed for maximum armor bust.

Everything else is an easy clean-up with vanilla weapons / nades / air drops

QC + EAT + Shield or laser dog + eagle 1 of choice

Saylick · Apr 22, 2024

Zeze said:
I think nerds run both QC and EAT. They use QC as the workhorse. Then they drop EAT whenever needed for maximum armor bust.

Everything else is an easy clean-up with vanilla weapons / nades / air drops

QC + EAT + Shield or laser dog + eagle 1 of choice

Not a bad idea, tbh. I usually like running two offensive stratagems, usually eagles, but I agree that on higher difficulties having more anti-tank capability is clutch.

Fallen Kell · Apr 22, 2024

The 2 reasons I don't run the QC is that 1) I am typically primary running the arc thrower, and 2) people will simply steal the QC if it ever drops either from my death because it is such a long cooldown to calling it in again (since it will take 8 minutes before you can call it again).

The EAT is a 60 second timer... I will call it in every 60 seconds if I need it or not (throwing it ahead of where I am running if running on a map, or setting up in key defensive locations if on a defensive map). Anyone is free to use them, so it helps the entire team, not just me.

Zeze · Apr 22, 2024

Good on you to cycle the cool down of EAT. Smart man

RPD · Apr 22, 2024

Yep, a EAT not on CD is a wasted EAT. Something I found out today, if you blow up the pod the EAT's are called in on, they will be on the ground and now show up on the map. Another method to do this is to pick up the first one for yourself, then the second to drop one on the ground. Basically support stuff still in pods don't show up on the map.

HELLDIVERS 2

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Helldivers 2 update 01.000.202 patch notes:​

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Helldivers 2 update 01.000.202 patch notes: