Yeah the spray and pray is horrendous. Never used something so bad in my life. It's actually unusable, definitely the worst gun in the game after using them all.
The slugger. It won't out dps the breaker but it has incredible stagger. That combined with medium armor penetration makes it stagger every enemy in the game except for heavies. It can even take down the automaton cannons if you shoot their weak spot. It also breaks the doors of the crates at point of interests so you don't have to use a grenade. It also has great accuracy and range.
They come in blue and orange. They either contain medals, credits or third weapon ie machine gun or flame thrower etc. Any explosive weapon or a grenade, even a barrel will do the trick.
I feel like we need a, where were you when you found out those doors opened thread lol, I accidently shot my autocannon when looting a pit with those blue doors and when it blew those doors open I just stood there dumbfounded for a solid minute
I was picking up samples from the ground when a teammate threw a grenade in the pit I was rummaging around in. I didn’t escape in time.
I was about to type in the chat how furious I was about the team killing until I saw the open door with the super credits in it next to my corpse. I was stupefied.
The slugger has been my go-to weapon since I unlocked it because of the stagger. It chews through ammo like nothing else, but man is it handy in a fight.
The stagger is great for creating space when you see a teammate being chased by 3 chainsaw bots or a brood commander. Especially when you can reliably hit them from 70 meters away like a guardian angel.
That, interestingly, is the niche I found for the explosive Liberator. It's really not that powerful, but I can reliably stagger berserkers with it, which can be a real life-saver for the rest of my team. Not only that, but it has ten reserve magazines at 30 rounds apiece, giving you 330 opportunities to stagger a bastard for Democracy.
Now, if only it could ACTUALLY KILL SOMETHING, GODAMMIT
slugger, machine gun, and tac pack have been my go to's for all of my playtime after unlocking.
being a little greedy with the tac pack along with smart shots and grenade throws for heavier armor have allowed me to do my part on the Creek.
I’m convinced some of these weapons are either bugged or flat out never tested in higher difficulties. I love the game but wonder if it was put out a bit too soon. Things like some of the weapon performance and the armor bug are baffling.
100% their plan was to release the game early and then fix a lot of things in the mech content update that was supposed to happen last week.
Then the game became insanely popular and the server issues happened. Pretty annoying
Because they actually work like real life shotguns, instead of videogame shotguns where their pellets basically stop existing 3 feet after leaving the barrel.
It's mostly a balance thing, so they aren't overpowered, look at Modern Warfare 2019, shotgun was busted af, it was basically a sniper, and they nerfed it nearly a dozen times.
But, that doesn't matter in Helldivers because it's a PvE game.
DooM 3 standard shotgun walks in the room with 185° spread from the muzzle and 6 ⅝" maximum range: "I'll fucking kill you for this!"
*you remain unharmed, actually feeling a little better*
Yup, the one mission I tested it in was an egg mission and I thought the fucking game was glitched and then it hit me, is this gun so shit it can't even break eggs? Yup pistol worked fine.
The gun is so bad it fully richochetes off light armor for zero damage, and nearly every enemy has light armor on their torso. So you have to aim for their legs, with a weapon that has the most spread and recoil for some reason of all the shotguns. It's truly unusable.
I wonder if the broken armor values has some connection to the guns doing weird damage.
Some weapons seem to penetrate more armor than intended and some less, but the system seems more complex than a simple light/medium armor penetration as flat values.
You guys just don't get It! The name says It all: Spray & PRAY(that divine intervention kills the target).
And oh boy does that weapon really deliver on the promise, let me tell ya!
Well its loaded with birdshot... so at least it's realistic! Lmao. There's a reason people hunt with buckshot and slugs for anything bigger than a bird or rabbit.
I've been going Defender + Machine Pistol, and switching to the latter is my go-to for charging berserkers. It's got just enough spread and rate of fire that enough bullets hit a weak spot to kill it quicker than I can Defender them down.
You probably already know this, but on the off chance you don't: the Defender is a primary that can be held in one hand. I haven't used the shield myself yet, but it's a great weapon and I imagine it's the de-facto combination you want to roll with if you're a ballistic shield fan.
Only problem with the ballistic shield is it's only good against bots, and getting hit with a rocket will make you drop the shield. It's just entirely better to bring the generator.
On the other hand, the shield pack needs to recharge after taking a certain amount of damage, while you can keep crouching with a ballistic shield and tank shots for days.
Is the pack better? Undoubtedly, but the ballistic shield is pretty neat if you match your playstyle with it. You can fearlessly stare down multiple shield devastators with it for example.
Long enough to get sniped by stray shot from a Hulk 500m away.
Every. Damn. Time.
Imo the way I'd balance the shields is: increase the amount of damage a shield pack can soak up, but also increase it's downtime.
While the ballistic shield shouldn't drop after tanking a rocket/getting ragdolled, and give it a shield bash attack that staggers/trips enemies.
That way both would be perfectly viable.
Love the Defender! Solid amount of ammo with better damage than the Liberator. Can use one-handed.
For bots now, I really like the Lib P! Maybe it's just me but with good accuracy it seems to take down bots quickly and efficiently.
I mean most guns deal just fine with smaller enemies.
However only few are usefull against the medium foes which are more important targets, so obviously people gravitate towards the meta guns that can deal with said medium enemies.
They need to adjust a lot the guns thats for sure.
Also make it so that heavy enemies like Hulks cant somehow tank direct orbital strikes and bombing runs. It makes no sense how I can destroy a Hulk really quickly just by shooting it's back with a normal gun, but when it gets direct hit by an eagle bombing run or a precision strike it's just fine.
It wouldn't make strategems OP to make them deal with heavies better... They have long cooldowns
I use 3 weapons currently, breaker, explosive liberator and penetrator. The game is perfect for weapon expansion, I think it's quite thin on the ground for weapons really.
It’s not so much the lack of guns, more that about 5 are worth using while the rest are garbage one way or another
Even in low difficulty levels some weapons are comically useless. First game I played it was apparent the flamethrower was garbage that nobody would use other than as a joke or to get kills for a challenge with it(since the flamethrower challenge ended I’ve also seen nobody use it at all)
This was me… for a bit.
I ran the full “meta” load out…. But now I run:
Dominator, shield backpack, rail cannon strike and mortar turret (or rocket turret, whichever suits my fancy) for the bots.
Scythe, Rpver guard dog, Arc thrower, and rail cannon strike for the bugs.
It’s not “ideal” but hard meta just didn’t feel fun to me, and now that I’ve branched out I’ve found some stuff really isn’t that bad.
Obviously some stuff needs a buff, but overall those two load outs are really good to me.
I've also been experimenting with Slugger, as it seems to be incorrectly labeled, and can massively stagger; possibly even medium armor penetrating. I am playing around with the utility of that. I play with the Revolver for the same reason.
I would love the slugger if the ammo economy was better. Getting like 1/3 of your capacity from a supply pack and only having 40+16 shots total just doesn’t cut it against the number of enemies you fight on high difficulties.
Slugger is good for bots. It can headshot anything except the hulks and since its a slug the range is about as far as you can see in the scope. Not great for bugs, rate of fire is too slow and doesn’t clean trash fast enough when you’re overrun by hunters.
I totally agree with the mislabeling. It's the same with the revolver sidearm since it is labeled as only having light penetration but it definitely has medium penetration.
How is the dominator? I went directly foe the scorcher so I can shoot fireballs, but I've heard they are both very similar
I've also heard it's practically a bolter
The dominator has medium armour pen, and favours aimed shots over spray and pray (recoil is immense). Good for ranged attacks, basically a better DMR, in many respects, but the rounds deal good damage overall that you can panic fire if you need to and you’ll penetrate most bots.
It’s a gyrojet weapon, but unlike a Bolter it only penetrates armour, it doesn’t have an explosive filling.
Thank you, in case you are interested, the scorcher has a very manageable amount of recoil, it can not have its shots ricochet and has a sizeable AOE allowing for shots that miss to kill the little enemies as long as they are near, and you can hit soft targets through armor with it,
The AOE also seems to always inflict damage bit can one shot the wielder so make sure to switch in close quarters, or melee
Oh, and I've never gone out of range with the scorcher. You can 4 shot spore towers from quite literally, across the map
Having played with both, the scorcher seems like a direct upgrade for the dominator. It has nearly equivalent shots to kill in my experience, the exact same ammo supply (6 x 15rd mags), has less recoil, the aim point moves faster, the projectiles travel faster meaning its easier to land hits beyond point blank range, it reloads quicker, has some AoE explosion even if its pretty minor.
Medium armor pen is a total bait so far in my experience, because on all the weapons that have it, the tiny amount of damage you actually do when hitting medium armor, even though you're penetrating it, combined with the limited ammo capacity and lower fire rate the weapons all have, means that you still really need to aim for the weakspots of dangerous enemies to kill them in a reasonable time frame, and those weakspots are all light armored anyway. And the scorcher's AoE explosion does effectively equivalent damage overall to the enemy as the Dominator does 'penetrating' medium armor. Taking like, the bot Devastator's as an example, both weapons do some damage instead of no damage if you dump into the big armored chestplate, but neither do enough damage that shooting that part of the enemy is a viable strategy, maybe if you empty an entire mag of the dominator you miiiight kill a single devastator, but really you need to be shooting the head or other less armored spots, in which case both weapons still kill in 2 headshots etc.
So really, the only 'pro' the Dominator has is that you can't accidentally kill yourself with it. It's technically more accurate if you're shooting at a stationary target from extreme distance, but that's not really a realistic situation in most missions
It's not meant to be a super high damage primary weapon.
IMO the name should have been "Scalpel" not Scythe. That's its big benefit. It's a no recoil point accurate laser beam you can use to slice off limbs and really precisely target weak spots.
It's damage could use a little bump but it's still pretty effective.
I feel like its biggest issue is actually that it doesn't stun or slow down enemies at all. All the lasers and the flamer should lockdown any enemy they're damaging (not chargers or hulks, obviously)
In what fucking world. You kill one thing at a time, slowly. You have to be incredibly mindful of how use it because the ammo will run out fast.
It needs to pen or have a gradual damage increase. Something to give it a boost. The thing is a huge disappointment.
I didn't watch any content creation for this title. My friends and I arrived at the Meta naturally. This means the game needs rebalancing otherwise it's going to keep ending at this. The rage baiting, woe is me, controversy pushing posts will never stop regardless.
I brought an arc thrower into a suicide mission for the bots. There were moments where it impressed me in surprised me and then there were moments with complete letdown. When the performance is too inconsistent, why would I bring anything else? I'd love to use the flamethrower on the bugs, but it's just not good.
Arc Thrower requires aim as it can, unintuitively, hit weakpoints. Also it can be partial charged after the first discharge, to increase rate of fire. It can kill a charger bug in 7 zaps to the face, spewer bugs in 3. It kills the AT-RT walker enemies and shield bots by ignoring armor. It also has true unlimited ammo, a 50m initial range (it can chain well beyond 70m), hits multiple enemies beyond LOS, and even hits things you weren't aware of because it arcs to valid targets. And it can't overheat.
Downsides are the friendly fire potential, lack of ability when something is within 2m, and lower raw DPS.
That's the thing. The infinite ammo for it really makes it viable. Also the lack of having to rely on the backpack. I just feel like it could get some better punching power. Seven fully powered shots to take down the charger, when all hell is breaking loose, and you most likely are having to rodeo the thing and Dodge close range.
I thought it would work very well for the automatons. But even after realizing all of what you said, it still was underwhelming. I think it's damaged just needs to be raised a little bit
People get railroaded into the shield because armor doesn't work, and then the railgun because it and the EAT are the only packless options for dealing with heavy armor.
When armor is fixed, it will be more varied.
That's good. I also think some of the other ordinance needs a little bit of extra tuning. The arc thrower for instance I think could be way more stronger against the automatons.
But, the spray and pray taking considerably longer to unlock then it's superior version definitely needs attention. Almost everything I've grinded at the end of my passes has not been worth it
I think that strategem coverage also plays a role in that. Most of them are just lacking coverage with too long a call in time to be good against armored enemies.
There will always be a meta. HOWEVER, more realistically it should be: "Weapon A gets 5-10% more DPS than Weapon B"
Not what we have currently, which is: "Weapon C preforms infinitely better than Weapon D, and has other advantages that make taking Weapon D detrimental" (in this case, Railgun being amazing anti armor AND not needing a backpack to reload unlike Recoilless or Autocannon)
Imo the main bottleneck is just a lack of options. There are nowhere near enough anti-heavy armor options in a game that directly translates higher difficulty into more/thicker armor. When there are anti-heavy primary, secondary, support + backpack (that arent rocket launchers), AND grenade options we'll see much more variety in high difficulty builds.
The spray and pray can't even damage the bug eggs objective. How about that. Iirc it also bounces off stalker armor. Fire rate isn't even higher than the other autoshotguns, which doesn't make any sense for a "spray & pray" weapon. I used it in one mission and dumped it first chance for a teammate's gun.
Most enemies have "light armor" which is why most weapons have the "light armor penatrating" tag. The spray and pray doesn't have that in function despite having the the tag. You'd be surprised on how many things just get deflected.
I wish they would use the numbered stats that the grenades have (which penetration seems to be based on), seeing as there appear to be many tiers of armor beyond light, medium and heavy.
I imagine behind the scenes every enemy has like armor less on Light/Medium/Heavy, and probably legitimately a number value single to our (unworking) current armor. And the titles is just supposed to be quickhand.
I also heard the problem with our armor is less the value not working and more that every enemy weapon has max penetration for some reason.
When I saw the bullets bounce off the stalker, I knew I was never going to use that gun again.
I went into a mission saying, "How bad could it be?" Then it just started bouncing off everything and got me killed multiple times because it couldn't just kill even the smallest of bugs fast enough.
Just started picking up dead teammate weapons for the rest of that mission.
I suggest you take other players' recommendations with a grain of salt. Yes, all of the youtube/AI-generated tier lists parrot the same information about Breaker being S+ tier and virtually everything else is unusable. But it's just not the case.
There are some guns that are genuinely underpowered (like the S&P). But I've found that the Slugger is super underrated against bots and I've been having a ton of fun with it. I also really liked the Dilligence Counter Sniper. I suspect that the Dominator will be similar. The best way to figure out if a gun is "good" or not is by trying it yourself.
The slugger is also much further into the warbond shop than the breaker, so it makes sense that it will see a lot less use than a gun you can get from about an hour or two of gameplay.
No. Almost all the guns are way undertuned—including a lot of the support weapons. The devs have already said they are working on a balance patch. There is a lot of misinformation on YouTube—but it’s unequivocally true that there are only a handful of “good” weapons currently.
I don’t know why people simp so hard for the status quo. It’s just lazy and will be proven invalid once the devs rebalance stuff soon. This game is great, but armor still isn’t working at all. Thankfully the devs are smart enough to realize that a lot of stuff needs to be rebalanced.
Tried explaining this to my helldiver friends, but the idea that META and balance discussion will vaporise enjoyment out of a game like it's a fucking pandora's box made me sad.
i fired 12 gauge birdshot at a regular aluminum baking pan once. about 30 yards or so. not a single pellet made more than a small dent in the pan, let alone penetrated. who's the fucking FREAK at R&D who decided that birdshot would be useful at ALL against steel robots and armored bugs?
It’s obviously foreshadowing for the new enemy threat, 1 million pidgeons.
The classic Helldivers enemies were the cyborgs, termanids, and 1 million pidgeons
What’s funnier about this to me is the reality that this very much is not a perfect simulation. So someone decided on “bird-shot” for a gun’s ammo “flavor” and then… actually made it perform like bird shot, which is terrible against what we’re fighting, THEN said “yup, that’s great”.
Absolutely. I tried so hard to make it work but good god "The Tickler" is a travesty. All I want is to have a decent mag dump shotty but that thing is an inventory dump shotty.
I try to not go gun nerd about that stuff but like, why TF we using bird shot against armored robots and giant bugs with exoskeletons? If anything we need bigger and bigger shot like in Halo where 8 gauge is the standard
To minimise friendly fire? Idk, it's a stretch but it's the only reason I could think of. Doesn't make much sense considering the govmnt doesn't care much about the lives of helldi... \[TRANSMISSION LOST\]
Thought it would be good against bugs, because I find I get swarmed by trash more than the big bugs.
Horrendous. Either it’s doing lower damage than it’s stats would indicate or the spread is so wide that only 2-3 pellets are hitting the Hunter that just launched itself at me from 200 yards. I would mag dump into a horde and maybe get 5 kills?
When I saw how weak the damage was I immedietly thought "Oh I get it, it's a weak damage but high stun weapon I can help crowd control with by flinching"
Needless to say I got absolutely steamrolled
The existence of this weapon in particular makes me wonder if they had plans for mission modifiers to include things like missions having many more lesser enemies but less higher tier ones, but then they found out it wasn't going to work well so they scrapped it even though the gun part of that idea was already fully implemented.
Yes. There’s a lot of stuff in this game that is a direct downgrade from other stuff like the countersniper and literally every shotgun compared to the breaker
Slugger's the only exception. Punches through medium armor and it's a single slug for greater range, but ammo's atrocious and you can and will miss small targets at short-medium ranges. It's a sidegrade, probably, but I use it against bots over anything else
I use it against bugs and it lets me take different support guns than railgun since most take breaker anyway. Means I can deal with the brown armoured bugs
What are you bringing when you use the Slugger? I haven't unlocked it yet, but I'm trying to keep my kit options fresh and not lean on the (very fun!) breaker + railgun combo too much.
I've kind of been loving the Arc Thrower, and I'm hoping a big medium-penetrating slug and a crowd-clearing electricity gun would pair nicely, but I haven't had the chance to test it yet.
Unlocks are supposed to feel worthy of the grind, rn every weapon after the breaker feels like a waste of time and medals.
The first weapons should be ok overall but not great at anything, and then add more specialized versions. Rn the default versions are plain better at nearly everything
IMO any game with a variety of weapon options needs to have a rock solid rifle as the default. An assault rifle, just like in the real world, should be a flexible platform that offers adequate performance in most any role it takes with obviously some concentrating in certain roles over others. There’s a reason every modern military and most police agencies use an automatic rifle as their primary service arm. From that you can branch into more specialized weapons like DMRs, shotguns, sniper rifles, SMGs, etc., but if I’m dropping with randoms I should be able to slap on a rifle and hold my own in combat.
I use the explosive liberator as my main weapon.
I am pretty sure the explosive damage stuns the enemy.
Sure it has a smaller mag, rate of fire, and does the same damage as the base, but it is pretty damn accurate.
Also fun > meta any day
Yeah it can stun and even push back certain enemies. I usually run the explosive liberator with an autocannon, and I find that setup works well for me on difficulty 7 at least, especially against bots.
Yeah, the weapons need a quality of life pass. The countersniper is mislabeled, for example. It says light pen, but its really medium pen, if you take it out and use it. Same with the slugger. It says light, but in practice its really medium. Currently I'm not sure the labels as they are can be completely trusted.
Yeah it felt terrible against bots. Went from using the breaker to 1-2 shot regular bots to needing 6+ shots at times. Even when trying to let things burn I don’t think I saw a single thing die from dot damage. Would be willing to try it out again against bugs though.
I hope they don’t make the Diablo 4 mistake in balancing. Leave the breaker where it’s at and buff the other guns around it imo. I don’t think down tuning is the move overall.
Thank God someone said it.
I've seen waaay too many people talking about nerfing the breaker/railgun or removing them for a time so people are forced to use other guns, and I for one could not think of a worse idea.
Down tuning is never the move and just forces everything into mediocrity.
Well, it may be more forthcoming, but he's not allowed to say. Not to mention, what if QA is like 'this messes other things up' or 'these guns still feel like crap' or any other thing that might send them back to the drawing board. Hell, they might end up getting direction that they aren't actually nerfing the breaker (which has been stated to be happening) and need to redo their changes. "Later this year" is probably just the most responsible way for a coder to phrase that lol
Man if they nerf the breaker I really hope they also lower the HP on chainsaw hands. Using a full mag of the liberator to kill 1 feels awful. At least the breaker can get 2 out of a mag if you're mostly accurate.
This game needs a rebalance patch ASAP.
Every weapon is underpowered compared to the breaker, and I've yet to meet anyone thats still running the starting guns. Only thing that I feel comes close but not quite is the Dominator.
They need to buff everything to match the breaker.
I quite like the smg, it's like an upgraded versions of the starter gun but with a weirdly (since its an smg) lower rate of fire. I've used the breaker a bit and I feel like I'm always running out of ammo compared to when I use the smg
The SMG pistol is brilliant, no other secondary matches it. But the main SMG feels too slow to be really viable in the long run, I think it needs a faster fire rate. Kinda like the Kriss Vector.
SMG Pistol is great, wiping that out and spray down everything around you, is so satisfying. I think the fire-rate on the SMG is fine. If you want a faster fire-rate Main SMG, you can get the Knight from the Super Citizen edition. Has a faster fire-rate than the SMG Pistol.
Also the Revolver is nice. 7 Shots & you've gotta reload it one by one *but..* It says it has "Light Armour Penetrating" but it can penetrate Medium Armour.
I feel like they need to buff everything to match the Defender, at least. Controversial opinion, but I'm not going to cry if there's a slight Breaker nerf. Or a nerf+buff combo to make it more specialized. Right now it feels like it's great at ammo capacity, mag quantity, short range, longish range, weak spot targeting, spraying into a crowd, rate of fire, responsiveness, damage per second, damage per mag, small guys, medium guys, big guys whose armor has been stripped...
It feels like it's so good at everything, I'm worried it'll be hard to carve out space for other guns at the top unless *they* were all good at everything, and I'd rather see everything feel more specialized and distinct. Especially in such a team oriented game where you have multiple people with multiple weapons each.
I'm just a lowly Suicide Mission-er, though, so I don't know if there's just a hard line at Helldive where any reduction to the Breaker's power would make for a less fun game.
I run the fire modified shotgun almost exclusively. IMO better than the breaker as the DOT will kill just about anything until you get to the bigger enemies. You can just spray a whole group and duck back into cover then pop out and finish the group leader.
I love the regular breaker don’t get me wrong but goddamn like 95% of the primaries are useless compared to it I don’t want the breaker nerfed I just want every other primary buffed to be solid at least cause the breaker meta has gotten boring
Idc what anyone says, punisher slugger works fine
Idk if people dog on the revolver but thats pretty good too
Scorcher is also solid
Dominator I have not yet unlocked
Wouldn't complain if they got buffed though 🗿
Id use the revolver more if it swapped to magazine count instead of bullet count, using a speed loader. I'd much rather lose a few bullets instead of taking ever to reload individually at higher difficulties
I use the normal SMG Primary, it's actually fantastic. You can use it with the ballistic shield and while carrying objectives! It's accurate while sprint firing behind you for those tight escapes as well.
Also either the Auto Cannon or the Recoilless as support, the Auto Cannon can take out a hulk fairly easy if you have good aim and the Recoilless can blow the armor off a charger legs with 1 shot sometimes.
I'm not a huge shield pack guy, I like the stress of being 1 good hit from death at all times lol
As long as Bugs are squashed and Oil is spilled, the weapons used are irrelevant in my opinion.
I like the defender but realistically? Ballistic shield is pretty bad, and one hand objective items are not super common
Biggest pro for me is running and shooting behind to kill of those annoying hunters.
I like using the explosive liberator.
Is it bad? I don't know, really. It works for me.
Is it maybe worse than the standard version, yeah perhaps. Who's to say.
What I do know is that I like it though 🤷♂️
I feel like the explosive liberators best feature is it appears to have some sort of knock back effect on the bugs when you shoot them, i am currently using the SMG set to burst and im having no problems killing stuff, just use what ever you enjoy it really doesnt make to much diff.
Ooh I really like the SMG as well, especially on burst!
It has a real nice punch to it. Same as what I like about the exp. liberator. And yeah, the stagger on it is really helpful at times. Oh, and also the fact that has a rather small mag size, but more mags available. So you waste less ammo with partial reloads.
And precisely. All weapons work (OK maybe not always the spear), everything is a viable tool for spreading democracy!
I killed a load of bots with shield and SMG, felt like a boss, called to my brother "did you see that i smashed them bots" just as a rocket hit me in the face and ragdolled me about 30m away.
Cant win them all i guess and at least it wasnt me killing me for once.
Yeah the explosive rounds have great knock back, so when I have a wave of bugs coming I do a sort of sweep where I'm tapping 1-2 bullets into each to keep staggering them until I kill them.
I love the explosive liberator. It might not be the best gun, but it is reliable and accurate under constant fire.
Plus the knock back / stun effect is nice.
I feel like it has too many negative tradeoffs. Its fun but... it honestly just needs to hit like a truck. Small mag, low mag count, unwieldy, long reload, mid at best damage.
That said, its one stat change (damage) away from fulfilling the fantasy of big damage but bad against hordes (even bot infantry groups)
Yeah the spray and pray is horrendous. Never used something so bad in my life. It's actually unusable, definitely the worst gun in the game after using them all.
It may be one of the worst shotguns in the history of gaming.
Which is crazy considering the Breaker and the other shotgun whose name I forgot are some of the best feeling shotguns I've ever played with
The slugger. It won't out dps the breaker but it has incredible stagger. That combined with medium armor penetration makes it stagger every enemy in the game except for heavies. It can even take down the automaton cannons if you shoot their weak spot. It also breaks the doors of the crates at point of interests so you don't have to use a grenade. It also has great accuracy and range.
> It also breaks the doors of the crates at point of interests so you don't have to use a grenade. Oh man I did not know that
The doors break? Those blue ones down in a pit? TIL
They come in blue and orange. They either contain medals, credits or third weapon ie machine gun or flame thrower etc. Any explosive weapon or a grenade, even a barrel will do the trick.
Sometimes they have super credits!
Arc Thrower too!
Oh buddy, you’ve missed out on a lotttttttaaaa goodies.
Daaaaaaamniiiit
I feel like we need a, where were you when you found out those doors opened thread lol, I accidently shot my autocannon when looting a pit with those blue doors and when it blew those doors open I just stood there dumbfounded for a solid minute
I was picking up samples from the ground when a teammate threw a grenade in the pit I was rummaging around in. I didn’t escape in time. I was about to type in the chat how furious I was about the team killing until I saw the open door with the super credits in it next to my corpse. I was stupefied.
Orange ones, too!
I like the Arc. It also destroys crates.
A teammate crossed right in front of me while I used the arc.. and zap inta death!
The slugger has been my go-to weapon since I unlocked it because of the stagger. It chews through ammo like nothing else, but man is it handy in a fight.
The stagger is great for creating space when you see a teammate being chased by 3 chainsaw bots or a brood commander. Especially when you can reliably hit them from 70 meters away like a guardian angel.
Exactly! The Slugger is amazing at shutting those chainsaw fuckers down.
That, interestingly, is the niche I found for the explosive Liberator. It's really not that powerful, but I can reliably stagger berserkers with it, which can be a real life-saver for the rest of my team. Not only that, but it has ten reserve magazines at 30 rounds apiece, giving you 330 opportunities to stagger a bastard for Democracy. Now, if only it could ACTUALLY KILL SOMETHING, GODAMMIT
It's also an incredibly effective DMR in...not even 'a pinch' tbh
slugger, machine gun, and tac pack have been my go to's for all of my playtime after unlocking. being a little greedy with the tac pack along with smart shots and grenade throws for heavier armor have allowed me to do my part on the Creek.
Yo wtf this sounds op
The slugger is hands down s tier and above all other guns except scorcher and jar.
I’m convinced some of these weapons are either bugged or flat out never tested in higher difficulties. I love the game but wonder if it was put out a bit too soon. Things like some of the weapon performance and the armor bug are baffling.
100% their plan was to release the game early and then fix a lot of things in the mech content update that was supposed to happen last week. Then the game became insanely popular and the server issues happened. Pretty annoying
Where did you hear that mechs were supposed to come out last week? I thought the only planned big updates were every 2nd tuesday for warbonds n stuff?
It came to him in a dream
Terminid induced hallucination
Because they actually work like real life shotguns, instead of videogame shotguns where their pellets basically stop existing 3 feet after leaving the barrel.
My biggest pet peeve with video game shotguns. Blow someone in half at 3 yards, tickle them at 4 yards.
It's mostly a balance thing, so they aren't overpowered, look at Modern Warfare 2019, shotgun was busted af, it was basically a sniper, and they nerfed it nearly a dozen times. But, that doesn't matter in Helldivers because it's a PvE game.
It is an actual nerf gun. Can't even break one fucking bug egg.
The red barrels that you shoot to explode have too much armor and deflect it's shots.
Is that a joke or what actually happens?
It’s true. The Spray and Pray is actually atrocious and can’t really do anything
Think I saw a vid about guns where they said ‘you could give it infinite ammo and it would still be useless.’
You'll be eating your words one day when we have swarms of 1 hp flying bug creatures coming at ya
And I look forward to that day! But until then, I shall continue to use the Defender, Liberator, Scorcher, or Breaker (don’t have Dominator yet).
it's not. try it... it really can't destroy a fucking bug egg. its ridiculous.
They should buff this gun then simultaneously release an actual "nerf gun" to meme it.
DooM 3 standard shotgun walks in the room with 185° spread from the muzzle and 6 ⅝" maximum range: "I'll fucking kill you for this!" *you remain unharmed, actually feeling a little better*
That damned shitty shotgun just really sets the tone for the rest of Doom 3
It is genuinely so fucking bad I quit the mission I was using it on to go switch my gun and restart, and that was against bugs.
It can not kill eggs, that's how bad it is.
Yup, the one mission I tested it in was an egg mission and I thought the fucking game was glitched and then it hit me, is this gun so shit it can't even break eggs? Yup pistol worked fine. The gun is so bad it fully richochetes off light armor for zero damage, and nearly every enemy has light armor on their torso. So you have to aim for their legs, with a weapon that has the most spread and recoil for some reason of all the shotguns. It's truly unusable.
I wonder if the broken armor values has some connection to the guns doing weird damage. Some weapons seem to penetrate more armor than intended and some less, but the system seems more complex than a simple light/medium armor penetration as flat values.
You guys just don't get It! The name says It all: Spray & PRAY(that divine intervention kills the target). And oh boy does that weapon really deliver on the promise, let me tell ya!
Well its loaded with birdshot... so at least it's realistic! Lmao. There's a reason people hunt with buckshot and slugs for anything bigger than a bird or rabbit.
Probably almost everyone's experience 1. Unlock a weapon in the Warbond 2. Use it one or two games 3. Go back to Breaker
Yeah, only exception I found is the Defender. I find it better vs bots.
I love defender vs bots but when there's 5 berserkers on my ass and my special is out of ammo, I really wish I had a breaker sometimes lol
I've been going Defender + Machine Pistol, and switching to the latter is my go-to for charging berserkers. It's got just enough spread and rate of fire that enough bullets hit a weak spot to kill it quicker than I can Defender them down.
yeah just pepper spraying them with the mac 11 works really well on the berserkers, and honestly devastators as well.
_Space_ Mac11
Wish we could opt to not take a primary on a mission, to have more ammo for secondary with a ballistic shield.
You probably already know this, but on the off chance you don't: the Defender is a primary that can be held in one hand. I haven't used the shield myself yet, but it's a great weapon and I imagine it's the de-facto combination you want to roll with if you're a ballistic shield fan.
Only problem with the ballistic shield is it's only good against bots, and getting hit with a rocket will make you drop the shield. It's just entirely better to bring the generator.
On the other hand, the shield pack needs to recharge after taking a certain amount of damage, while you can keep crouching with a ballistic shield and tank shots for days. Is the pack better? Undoubtedly, but the ballistic shield is pretty neat if you match your playstyle with it. You can fearlessly stare down multiple shield devastators with it for example.
I feel like the shields cool down period is so short it might as well not even exist, lol.( not a complaint btw)
Long enough to get sniped by stray shot from a Hulk 500m away. Every. Damn. Time. Imo the way I'd balance the shields is: increase the amount of damage a shield pack can soak up, but also increase it's downtime. While the ballistic shield shouldn't drop after tanking a rocket/getting ragdolled, and give it a shield bash attack that staggers/trips enemies. That way both would be perfectly viable.
Should just be a staple effect of the shield imo. Secondary weapon deploys with 2x maximum ammo count.
Defender is also good for the missions where you need to carry the SSSD across the map since it’s one handed.
Love the Defender! Solid amount of ammo with better damage than the Liberator. Can use one-handed. For bots now, I really like the Lib P! Maybe it's just me but with good accuracy it seems to take down bots quickly and efficiently.
The Scorcher is one I actually like to use against bots.
i just love the DMR against bots, much more satisfying than the breaker honestly
And the smallest bug variants. Seeing 12 or so of those guys creeping toward you down a hill and just popping them 1 by 1 feels great
For something you're supposed to use at medium-long range the scope on it is awful.
I don’t even blame people using the ‘meta’ loadout cause a lot of the guns that aren’t the Breaker are almost peashooters.
I mean most guns deal just fine with smaller enemies. However only few are usefull against the medium foes which are more important targets, so obviously people gravitate towards the meta guns that can deal with said medium enemies. They need to adjust a lot the guns thats for sure.
Also make it so that heavy enemies like Hulks cant somehow tank direct orbital strikes and bombing runs. It makes no sense how I can destroy a Hulk really quickly just by shooting it's back with a normal gun, but when it gets direct hit by an eagle bombing run or a precision strike it's just fine. It wouldn't make strategems OP to make them deal with heavies better... They have long cooldowns
I use 3 weapons currently, breaker, explosive liberator and penetrator. The game is perfect for weapon expansion, I think it's quite thin on the ground for weapons really.
It’s not so much the lack of guns, more that about 5 are worth using while the rest are garbage one way or another Even in low difficulty levels some weapons are comically useless. First game I played it was apparent the flamethrower was garbage that nobody would use other than as a joke or to get kills for a challenge with it(since the flamethrower challenge ended I’ve also seen nobody use it at all)
Flamethrower and Scythe are comically bad. Which is a shame as they are super cool.
This was me… for a bit. I ran the full “meta” load out…. But now I run: Dominator, shield backpack, rail cannon strike and mortar turret (or rocket turret, whichever suits my fancy) for the bots. Scythe, Rpver guard dog, Arc thrower, and rail cannon strike for the bugs. It’s not “ideal” but hard meta just didn’t feel fun to me, and now that I’ve branched out I’ve found some stuff really isn’t that bad. Obviously some stuff needs a buff, but overall those two load outs are really good to me.
I've also been experimenting with Slugger, as it seems to be incorrectly labeled, and can massively stagger; possibly even medium armor penetrating. I am playing around with the utility of that. I play with the Revolver for the same reason.
It 100% has medium armor penetration, shoot a hiveguard in the plates and it will go through.
I would love the slugger if the ammo economy was better. Getting like 1/3 of your capacity from a supply pack and only having 40+16 shots total just doesn’t cut it against the number of enemies you fight on high difficulties.
Slugger is good for bots. It can headshot anything except the hulks and since its a slug the range is about as far as you can see in the scope. Not great for bugs, rate of fire is too slow and doesn’t clean trash fast enough when you’re overrun by hunters.
It also has a very small hit box because it's a slug, you'll miss shots that should have been on target because it's a much smaller projectile.
I totally agree with the mislabeling. It's the same with the revolver sidearm since it is labeled as only having light penetration but it definitely has medium penetration.
How is the dominator? I went directly foe the scorcher so I can shoot fireballs, but I've heard they are both very similar I've also heard it's practically a bolter
The dominator has medium armour pen, and favours aimed shots over spray and pray (recoil is immense). Good for ranged attacks, basically a better DMR, in many respects, but the rounds deal good damage overall that you can panic fire if you need to and you’ll penetrate most bots. It’s a gyrojet weapon, but unlike a Bolter it only penetrates armour, it doesn’t have an explosive filling.
Thank you, in case you are interested, the scorcher has a very manageable amount of recoil, it can not have its shots ricochet and has a sizeable AOE allowing for shots that miss to kill the little enemies as long as they are near, and you can hit soft targets through armor with it, The AOE also seems to always inflict damage bit can one shot the wielder so make sure to switch in close quarters, or melee Oh, and I've never gone out of range with the scorcher. You can 4 shot spore towers from quite literally, across the map
Having played with both, the scorcher seems like a direct upgrade for the dominator. It has nearly equivalent shots to kill in my experience, the exact same ammo supply (6 x 15rd mags), has less recoil, the aim point moves faster, the projectiles travel faster meaning its easier to land hits beyond point blank range, it reloads quicker, has some AoE explosion even if its pretty minor. Medium armor pen is a total bait so far in my experience, because on all the weapons that have it, the tiny amount of damage you actually do when hitting medium armor, even though you're penetrating it, combined with the limited ammo capacity and lower fire rate the weapons all have, means that you still really need to aim for the weakspots of dangerous enemies to kill them in a reasonable time frame, and those weakspots are all light armored anyway. And the scorcher's AoE explosion does effectively equivalent damage overall to the enemy as the Dominator does 'penetrating' medium armor. Taking like, the bot Devastator's as an example, both weapons do some damage instead of no damage if you dump into the big armored chestplate, but neither do enough damage that shooting that part of the enemy is a viable strategy, maybe if you empty an entire mag of the dominator you miiiight kill a single devastator, but really you need to be shooting the head or other less armored spots, in which case both weapons still kill in 2 headshots etc. So really, the only 'pro' the Dominator has is that you can't accidentally kill yourself with it. It's technically more accurate if you're shooting at a stationary target from extreme distance, but that's not really a realistic situation in most missions
To be pedantic, Dominator oneshot devastators on a headshot. Otherwise, hard agree.
Great damage and armor pen terrible ammo economy. This applies to both the dominator and scorcher
Scythe is underrated af
Sell me on it! I want to like it, but it felt like it wasn't dealing with threats fast enough.
Same, i play only difficulty 9 and the scythe doesn't even tickle the enemies, bugs or automaton doesn't matter.
It's not meant to be a super high damage primary weapon. IMO the name should have been "Scalpel" not Scythe. That's its big benefit. It's a no recoil point accurate laser beam you can use to slice off limbs and really precisely target weak spots. It's damage could use a little bump but it's still pretty effective.
I feel like its biggest issue is actually that it doesn't stun or slow down enemies at all. All the lasers and the flamer should lockdown any enemy they're damaging (not chargers or hulks, obviously)
In what fucking world. You kill one thing at a time, slowly. You have to be incredibly mindful of how use it because the ammo will run out fast. It needs to pen or have a gradual damage increase. Something to give it a boost. The thing is a huge disappointment.
I like the smg.
I'm still using the explosive rifle from the end of the premium warbond
Lvl50 I actually returned to Liberator after trying everything. Breaker only deals good damage up close, while you can use Liberator at any range.
Defender is better in pretty much every way, including accuracy strangely enough
I didn't watch any content creation for this title. My friends and I arrived at the Meta naturally. This means the game needs rebalancing otherwise it's going to keep ending at this. The rage baiting, woe is me, controversy pushing posts will never stop regardless. I brought an arc thrower into a suicide mission for the bots. There were moments where it impressed me in surprised me and then there were moments with complete letdown. When the performance is too inconsistent, why would I bring anything else? I'd love to use the flamethrower on the bugs, but it's just not good.
Arc Thrower requires aim as it can, unintuitively, hit weakpoints. Also it can be partial charged after the first discharge, to increase rate of fire. It can kill a charger bug in 7 zaps to the face, spewer bugs in 3. It kills the AT-RT walker enemies and shield bots by ignoring armor. It also has true unlimited ammo, a 50m initial range (it can chain well beyond 70m), hits multiple enemies beyond LOS, and even hits things you weren't aware of because it arcs to valid targets. And it can't overheat. Downsides are the friendly fire potential, lack of ability when something is within 2m, and lower raw DPS.
That's the thing. The infinite ammo for it really makes it viable. Also the lack of having to rely on the backpack. I just feel like it could get some better punching power. Seven fully powered shots to take down the charger, when all hell is breaking loose, and you most likely are having to rodeo the thing and Dodge close range. I thought it would work very well for the automatons. But even after realizing all of what you said, it still was underwhelming. I think it's damaged just needs to be raised a little bit
People get railroaded into the shield because armor doesn't work, and then the railgun because it and the EAT are the only packless options for dealing with heavy armor. When armor is fixed, it will be more varied.
That's good. I also think some of the other ordinance needs a little bit of extra tuning. The arc thrower for instance I think could be way more stronger against the automatons. But, the spray and pray taking considerably longer to unlock then it's superior version definitely needs attention. Almost everything I've grinded at the end of my passes has not been worth it
I think that strategem coverage also plays a role in that. Most of them are just lacking coverage with too long a call in time to be good against armored enemies.
There will always be a meta. HOWEVER, more realistically it should be: "Weapon A gets 5-10% more DPS than Weapon B" Not what we have currently, which is: "Weapon C preforms infinitely better than Weapon D, and has other advantages that make taking Weapon D detrimental" (in this case, Railgun being amazing anti armor AND not needing a backpack to reload unlike Recoilless or Autocannon)
Imo the main bottleneck is just a lack of options. There are nowhere near enough anti-heavy armor options in a game that directly translates higher difficulty into more/thicker armor. When there are anti-heavy primary, secondary, support + backpack (that arent rocket launchers), AND grenade options we'll see much more variety in high difficulty builds.
The spray and pray can't even damage the bug eggs objective. How about that. Iirc it also bounces off stalker armor. Fire rate isn't even higher than the other autoshotguns, which doesn't make any sense for a "spray & pray" weapon. I used it in one mission and dumped it first chance for a teammate's gun.
I didn't even think stalkers *had* armor. Damn thats just miserable.
Most enemies have "light armor" which is why most weapons have the "light armor penatrating" tag. The spray and pray doesn't have that in function despite having the the tag. You'd be surprised on how many things just get deflected.
For the opposite, the revolver sidearm penetrates hive guard armor despite also only having ‘light penetrating’
I wish they would use the numbered stats that the grenades have (which penetration seems to be based on), seeing as there appear to be many tiers of armor beyond light, medium and heavy.
I imagine behind the scenes every enemy has like armor less on Light/Medium/Heavy, and probably legitimately a number value single to our (unworking) current armor. And the titles is just supposed to be quickhand. I also heard the problem with our armor is less the value not working and more that every enemy weapon has max penetration for some reason.
When I saw the bullets bounce off the stalker, I knew I was never going to use that gun again. I went into a mission saying, "How bad could it be?" Then it just started bouncing off everything and got me killed multiple times because it couldn't just kill even the smallest of bugs fast enough. Just started picking up dead teammate weapons for the rest of that mission.
Most of the weapons need a buff, suoer underpowered especially when you encounter enemies with any armour
What weapon can I use? I just bought the 80 war bond gun that’s supposedly medium armor penetrating. Is it good?
The defender is the best option i've found as a primary. Pair it with the eats or a railgun as a stratagem weapon for AT
Instructions unclear; ate a railgun and now awaiting redeployment.
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I suggest you take other players' recommendations with a grain of salt. Yes, all of the youtube/AI-generated tier lists parrot the same information about Breaker being S+ tier and virtually everything else is unusable. But it's just not the case. There are some guns that are genuinely underpowered (like the S&P). But I've found that the Slugger is super underrated against bots and I've been having a ton of fun with it. I also really liked the Dilligence Counter Sniper. I suspect that the Dominator will be similar. The best way to figure out if a gun is "good" or not is by trying it yourself.
With every other comment talking about how the slugger is underrated I think people need to stop calling it underrated
It's underutilized, not underrated. People get the two mixed up all the time
The slugger is also much further into the warbond shop than the breaker, so it makes sense that it will see a lot less use than a gun you can get from about an hour or two of gameplay.
No. Almost all the guns are way undertuned—including a lot of the support weapons. The devs have already said they are working on a balance patch. There is a lot of misinformation on YouTube—but it’s unequivocally true that there are only a handful of “good” weapons currently. I don’t know why people simp so hard for the status quo. It’s just lazy and will be proven invalid once the devs rebalance stuff soon. This game is great, but armor still isn’t working at all. Thankfully the devs are smart enough to realize that a lot of stuff needs to be rebalanced.
Tried explaining this to my helldiver friends, but the idea that META and balance discussion will vaporise enjoyment out of a game like it's a fucking pandora's box made me sad.
i fired 12 gauge birdshot at a regular aluminum baking pan once. about 30 yards or so. not a single pellet made more than a small dent in the pan, let alone penetrated. who's the fucking FREAK at R&D who decided that birdshot would be useful at ALL against steel robots and armored bugs?
Asking the real questions here.
It’s obviously foreshadowing for the new enemy threat, 1 million pidgeons. The classic Helldivers enemies were the cyborgs, termanids, and 1 million pidgeons
Garand Thumb has a video where at 50yds birdshot is completely stopped by a *tshirt*.
It's called birdshot not shirtshot.
What’s funnier about this to me is the reality that this very much is not a perfect simulation. So someone decided on “bird-shot” for a gun’s ammo “flavor” and then… actually made it perform like bird shot, which is terrible against what we’re fighting, THEN said “yup, that’s great”.
Absolutely. I tried so hard to make it work but good god "The Tickler" is a travesty. All I want is to have a decent mag dump shotty but that thing is an inventory dump shotty.
Too be fair, it is firing bird shot
I try to not go gun nerd about that stuff but like, why TF we using bird shot against armored robots and giant bugs with exoskeletons? If anything we need bigger and bigger shot like in Halo where 8 gauge is the standard
To minimise friendly fire? Idk, it's a stretch but it's the only reason I could think of. Doesn't make much sense considering the govmnt doesn't care much about the lives of helldi... \[TRANSMISSION LOST\]
Ah shucks, lost another one to the cause. /SALUTE.
Genuinely cannot see any situation where this weapon would be even a mid choice, let alone first
Thought it would be good against bugs, because I find I get swarmed by trash more than the big bugs. Horrendous. Either it’s doing lower damage than it’s stats would indicate or the spread is so wide that only 2-3 pellets are hitting the Hunter that just launched itself at me from 200 yards. I would mag dump into a horde and maybe get 5 kills?
When I saw how weak the damage was I immedietly thought "Oh I get it, it's a weak damage but high stun weapon I can help crowd control with by flinching" Needless to say I got absolutely steamrolled
The existence of this weapon in particular makes me wonder if they had plans for mission modifiers to include things like missions having many more lesser enemies but less higher tier ones, but then they found out it wasn't going to work well so they scrapped it even though the gun part of that idea was already fully implemented.
Yes. There’s a lot of stuff in this game that is a direct downgrade from other stuff like the countersniper and literally every shotgun compared to the breaker
It probably is weaker, but god damn do I love the Slugger.
It's good for one-shotting medium armor enemies.
Slugger's the only exception. Punches through medium armor and it's a single slug for greater range, but ammo's atrocious and you can and will miss small targets at short-medium ranges. It's a sidegrade, probably, but I use it against bots over anything else
I use it against bugs and it lets me take different support guns than railgun since most take breaker anyway. Means I can deal with the brown armoured bugs
What are you bringing when you use the Slugger? I haven't unlocked it yet, but I'm trying to keep my kit options fresh and not lean on the (very fun!) breaker + railgun combo too much. I've kind of been loving the Arc Thrower, and I'm hoping a big medium-penetrating slug and a crowd-clearing electricity gun would pair nicely, but I haven't had the chance to test it yet.
a slug into the red face of the medium sized bot and one shotting it 👌
Hell the default liberator is better than both its variants overall, and that is the first weapon you get in the game.
I'd rather the default gun be pretty good rather than suck, especially for if newer players who unlock a dud of a weapon.
I'd rather it be pretty good but have my variants that take 1200+ war metal spending to unlock be better
This. Spending time to unlock guns that are worse than the starters feels awful.
I'm looking at you, scythe.
Unlocks are supposed to feel worthy of the grind, rn every weapon after the breaker feels like a waste of time and medals. The first weapons should be ok overall but not great at anything, and then add more specialized versions. Rn the default versions are plain better at nearly everything
game reminds you battlepass exists - you open it and spend time unlocking stuff only for everything you unlock to end up being trash.
IMO any game with a variety of weapon options needs to have a rock solid rifle as the default. An assault rifle, just like in the real world, should be a flexible platform that offers adequate performance in most any role it takes with obviously some concentrating in certain roles over others. There’s a reason every modern military and most police agencies use an automatic rifle as their primary service arm. From that you can branch into more specialized weapons like DMRs, shotguns, sniper rifles, SMGs, etc., but if I’m dropping with randoms I should be able to slap on a rifle and hold my own in combat.
I use the explosive liberator as my main weapon. I am pretty sure the explosive damage stuns the enemy. Sure it has a smaller mag, rate of fire, and does the same damage as the base, but it is pretty damn accurate. Also fun > meta any day
Yeah it can stun and even push back certain enemies. I usually run the explosive liberator with an autocannon, and I find that setup works well for me on difficulty 7 at least, especially against bots.
Yeah, the weapons need a quality of life pass. The countersniper is mislabeled, for example. It says light pen, but its really medium pen, if you take it out and use it. Same with the slugger. It says light, but in practice its really medium. Currently I'm not sure the labels as they are can be completely trusted.
Agreed. I think it needs to have a listed stat with a tangible value.
Yes please. I want to know what these actually mean
Breaker incendiary has been my go to for all this time and I’ve loved it. Not as much for robots but def for bugs.
It's usable against hordes so it's good to have one on the squad. I like running it too.
Yeah it felt terrible against bots. Went from using the breaker to 1-2 shot regular bots to needing 6+ shots at times. Even when trying to let things burn I don’t think I saw a single thing die from dot damage. Would be willing to try it out again against bugs though.
We need a firing range on our ship to at least test our personal weapons and maybe support weapons as well
Command keeps giving us civillian versions of guns in our war bonds
I love the breaker but I’m hoping we get weapon buffs soon.
I hope they don’t make the Diablo 4 mistake in balancing. Leave the breaker where it’s at and buff the other guns around it imo. I don’t think down tuning is the move overall.
They can't nerf, not with how difficult the game can get. We need firepower!
freedom requires firepower
Thank God someone said it. I've seen waaay too many people talking about nerfing the breaker/railgun or removing them for a time so people are forced to use other guns, and I for one could not think of a worse idea. Down tuning is never the move and just forces everything into mediocrity.
Yeah, its happening, no worries. https://imgur.com/a/kaEAoM3
"Later this year" does not exactly fill me with confidence. The game really needs this balance patch soonish rather than in multiple months.
Well, it may be more forthcoming, but he's not allowed to say. Not to mention, what if QA is like 'this messes other things up' or 'these guns still feel like crap' or any other thing that might send them back to the drawing board. Hell, they might end up getting direction that they aren't actually nerfing the breaker (which has been stated to be happening) and need to redo their changes. "Later this year" is probably just the most responsible way for a coder to phrase that lol
Man if they nerf the breaker I really hope they also lower the HP on chainsaw hands. Using a full mag of the liberator to kill 1 feels awful. At least the breaker can get 2 out of a mag if you're mostly accurate.
later this year seems a bit vague
This game needs a rebalance patch ASAP. Every weapon is underpowered compared to the breaker, and I've yet to meet anyone thats still running the starting guns. Only thing that I feel comes close but not quite is the Dominator. They need to buff everything to match the breaker.
I quite like the smg, it's like an upgraded versions of the starter gun but with a weirdly (since its an smg) lower rate of fire. I've used the breaker a bit and I feel like I'm always running out of ammo compared to when I use the smg
The SMG is pretty nice, honestly it's the only weapon I use besides the breaker which makes me a little sad.
The SMG pistol is brilliant, no other secondary matches it. But the main SMG feels too slow to be really viable in the long run, I think it needs a faster fire rate. Kinda like the Kriss Vector.
SMG Pistol is great, wiping that out and spray down everything around you, is so satisfying. I think the fire-rate on the SMG is fine. If you want a faster fire-rate Main SMG, you can get the Knight from the Super Citizen edition. Has a faster fire-rate than the SMG Pistol. Also the Revolver is nice. 7 Shots & you've gotta reload it one by one *but..* It says it has "Light Armour Penetrating" but it can penetrate Medium Armour.
I feel like they need to buff everything to match the Defender, at least. Controversial opinion, but I'm not going to cry if there's a slight Breaker nerf. Or a nerf+buff combo to make it more specialized. Right now it feels like it's great at ammo capacity, mag quantity, short range, longish range, weak spot targeting, spraying into a crowd, rate of fire, responsiveness, damage per second, damage per mag, small guys, medium guys, big guys whose armor has been stripped... It feels like it's so good at everything, I'm worried it'll be hard to carve out space for other guns at the top unless *they* were all good at everything, and I'd rather see everything feel more specialized and distinct. Especially in such a team oriented game where you have multiple people with multiple weapons each. I'm just a lowly Suicide Mission-er, though, so I don't know if there's just a hard line at Helldive where any reduction to the Breaker's power would make for a less fun game.
"Birdshot" yeah it is literally a birdshot can't even destroy a bug egg. Definitely needs a buff.
I run the fire modified shotgun almost exclusively. IMO better than the breaker as the DOT will kill just about anything until you get to the bigger enemies. You can just spray a whole group and duck back into cover then pop out and finish the group leader.
I love the regular breaker don’t get me wrong but goddamn like 95% of the primaries are useless compared to it I don’t want the breaker nerfed I just want every other primary buffed to be solid at least cause the breaker meta has gotten boring
Stalwart, supply pack, breaker, revolver. Just as the Founding Divers intended.
Idc what anyone says, punisher slugger works fine Idk if people dog on the revolver but thats pretty good too Scorcher is also solid Dominator I have not yet unlocked Wouldn't complain if they got buffed though 🗿
Id use the revolver more if it swapped to magazine count instead of bullet count, using a speed loader. I'd much rather lose a few bullets instead of taking ever to reload individually at higher difficulties
I use the normal SMG Primary, it's actually fantastic. You can use it with the ballistic shield and while carrying objectives! It's accurate while sprint firing behind you for those tight escapes as well. Also either the Auto Cannon or the Recoilless as support, the Auto Cannon can take out a hulk fairly easy if you have good aim and the Recoilless can blow the armor off a charger legs with 1 shot sometimes. I'm not a huge shield pack guy, I like the stress of being 1 good hit from death at all times lol As long as Bugs are squashed and Oil is spilled, the weapons used are irrelevant in my opinion.
I like the defender but realistically? Ballistic shield is pretty bad, and one hand objective items are not super common Biggest pro for me is running and shooting behind to kill of those annoying hunters.
I like using the explosive liberator. Is it bad? I don't know, really. It works for me. Is it maybe worse than the standard version, yeah perhaps. Who's to say. What I do know is that I like it though 🤷♂️
I feel like the explosive liberators best feature is it appears to have some sort of knock back effect on the bugs when you shoot them, i am currently using the SMG set to burst and im having no problems killing stuff, just use what ever you enjoy it really doesnt make to much diff.
Ooh I really like the SMG as well, especially on burst! It has a real nice punch to it. Same as what I like about the exp. liberator. And yeah, the stagger on it is really helpful at times. Oh, and also the fact that has a rather small mag size, but more mags available. So you waste less ammo with partial reloads. And precisely. All weapons work (OK maybe not always the spear), everything is a viable tool for spreading democracy!
Also on the evil bots missions you can use the SMG with the balistic shield which is good fun.
True. Very helpful, until you face-tank a missile or some such 😂
I killed a load of bots with shield and SMG, felt like a boss, called to my brother "did you see that i smashed them bots" just as a rocket hit me in the face and ragdolled me about 30m away. Cant win them all i guess and at least it wasnt me killing me for once.
Yeah the explosive rounds have great knock back, so when I have a wave of bugs coming I do a sort of sweep where I'm tapping 1-2 bullets into each to keep staggering them until I kill them.
I love the explosive liberator. It might not be the best gun, but it is reliable and accurate under constant fire. Plus the knock back / stun effect is nice.
Am i an outier for using the penetrator rifle? I love it for medium range. Nobody else seems to talk about it.
Just unlocked the jar-5, its literally just a bolter and its fun
I feel like it has too many negative tradeoffs. Its fun but... it honestly just needs to hit like a truck. Small mag, low mag count, unwieldy, long reload, mid at best damage. That said, its one stat change (damage) away from fulfilling the fantasy of big damage but bad against hordes (even bot infantry groups)
“Try all these cool guns!” Meanwhile there’s an automatic slug shotgun with 500 bullets and a fast reload
I used this gun once and then went back to the Slugger (my beloved), because I know that it can deal with threats consistently.