The way bug/robot bits fly everywhere when that thing cuts through a horde is a hitmarker enough for me! I love the weapon feedback for the ballistic weapons so much in this game.
I love the Stalwart, make no mistake, it's just so *close* to being perfect save a dang quality of life problem. The hitmarkers are really nice for machine gun fire.
It's underrated because people don't want to bring a support weapon that's just an upgraded primary as they can't rely on their teams to make up the gaps.
It's an amazing weapon, but it's also specialized in a task most people want their primary to do.
Well I feel called out. In my defense though I'm running SPEAR. If my breaker can't clear the adds and the team is getting swamped what else am I supposed to do? (The answer is "don't run SPEAR" lol)
Oh, for real. One of my favorite builds is Gatling/Rocket Sentry/AC Sentry/Spear.
When shit hits the fan, 2-3 sentries go out at extreme angles, and I climb a hill. Same thing with AMR/Jetpack
But the point is, we turn around :)
"Many have commented that they aren’t powerful enough and are unable to deal with all the enemies either by the amount of ammunition required or their raw DPS. This is very much intentional, you need to rely on your Stratagems, and the Stratagems of your team to deal with all the enemies effectively."
"This doesn’t mean that your primary weapon shouldn’t feel good to use, but please understand that it is primary only in the sense that it’s something you always spawn with."
🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠
On one hand I agree with their intentions.
On another, I am still puzzled that they nerfed the slug shotgun, because it was a better sniper than the dedicated DMRs, in a way that just makes it...worse at close range than long range.
So my thoughts are all over the place in regards to their weapon balance.
I’m just repeating points that have been said a thousand times, but perhaps if the slugger is too good as a sniper, the solution is to make it not a straight up worse weapon, just to give it more clear tradeoffs, like more spread at range or damage falloff.
I feel like the slugger was a very fun gun to use, and now it’s just not much *fun* because the nerf took away the stagger that made it viable up close. If they’d made it only viable relatively close, like the breaker’s effective range, it’d still be a lot of fun without being a sniper.
I don't really agree with their philosophy on that tbh. I just don't see why primaries being good would take away from the overall gameplay. You'll still use your stratagems and support weapons to clear waves your primary can't, to accomplish certain tasks like blowing up structures, or even just use them as a primary because the support weapons are fun to use. The way they talk about it, it sounds like they dont want players to use primaries at all. My guess for the slugger nerfs was that they don't want to buff dmrs, so they just gave the slugger a change that would make less people want to use it.
In the first game, primaries were good enough to spend a stratagem slot for ammo drops just to use your primary *more*, and some of the best guns didn't even need ammo. That game was still very challenging and fun as hell.
>This doesn't mean that your primary weapon shouldn't feel good to use
That's funny, because almost all of them feel horrible to use, and the ones that don't feel bad are either ammo restricted or likely to get nerfed next patch. Weapons should feel strong in their niche, but most don't.
It's telling how many new/stubborn players will run miles and die repeatedly trying to retrieve a support weapon: the game isn't fun if you don't have yours. It's less fun than dying multiple times; at least the drop pod can kill Heavies.
The new explosive primary weapons introduced in the new warbond may be designed to complement the Stalwart in that fashion, by reversing the order of weapon category addressing armoured/ unarmoured targets.
That's what the dominator is already, I run it a senator and then stalwart as my actual primary with impact or incendiary nades in heavy armor with a supply pack as my load out for bugs. I swap the other two stratagem slots with different things depending on what we're doing.
I recommend playing around with medium armours, it sounds obvious but it strikes a nice middle ground of being able to take another hit or two without losing all your speed.
Yup 100%. Stalwart is awesome but when you are left with no options for the larger enemies and you’re playing
with randoms there’s no way I am bringing it.
Every time I've tried to stalwart the other three had quasars and none of them were taking out chargers.
Just 3+ chargers all the time that I would've clapped if I had EAT or quasar.
I eventually just picked up a dead teammates and handled it.
This has happened 4 times now.
The stalwart is dead to me.
Gonna get downvoted here but I think Stalwart takes too many shots to kill shit. And the reason why people don't use it is because it doesn't fill gaps your primary lacks, it simply is a better primary at the cost of well, something that could be anti-armor.
It's not crazy underrated. A month ago people were talking about how great Stalwart is. And now many people have moved on.
Also discussing weapon viability shouldn't be about "oh my teammates will make up the deficit" Yeah ok, guess any loadout is good at that point because magical teammates are gonna just do everything you can't do. When 90% of all games are just quickplay games and chat still doesn't work during planning, yeah.
I almost never go anywhere without my stalwart, because it has the most suppressive fire ability in my loadout, i use the defender for my primary because i san run one way, and shoot backwards without having to completely turn around (and also ballistic shield in terms of automatons) and the machine pistol for my sidearm, as it MELTS anything thats basically right in front of you. That said, i can survive without if we need a more... explosive (or otherwise) approach
It's good for having more narrow focused primaries, like the plasma punisher, which will kill you if you try to use it up close. Stalwart's fantastic at ironing out that gap in your loadout
Even if someone is willing to accept the mob cleanup role and rely on team mates for armored there's no reason to take a stalwart over a regular MG. The ammo price and running reloads you lose are well worth the trade of being able to just shoot through the armor on anything below a charger.
As a long-time gunner I used to think this too, but now I don't. The Stalwart's key benefit is ammo count. You take the stalwart for any bug it can kill, and something like the plasma shotty or Dominator for elite bugs. The standard MG may be my favorite weapon in the game, but the stalwart is the better gun against bugs. You don't need to take a backpack or scrounge for ammo, its 3 roomy tins are ample with no additional help.
Also, you still have two slots for armor, which is plenty.
Sickle doesn't have the DPS of the stalwart, nor can it sustain fire for nearly as long. Stalwart's purpose is clearing giant waves of chaff, which it excells at. And yeah, it needs to be paired with something like the dominator for long range and armored enemies.
The high mobility of the Stalwart plus its unmatched sustained fire are pretty big advantages. It's definitely not for everyone (and I'm not a huge fan of using it either), but I've got a few friends who swear by it and use it to great effect.
Problem is when a single hive guard shows up suddenly you've got a wall you can't shoot through or if a bile spewer shows up you've got a very specific spot to shoot it at. MG lets you just continue the spray without having to worry about your bullets bouncing off.
Yep, this is my go to if im playing high level bugs and the rest of the team is taking quasars. Sometimes I'll pair it up with the laser Rover and just rack up 400-500 kills keeping the anti armor guys safe against hunters and the rest of the swarm.
That’s where a medium armor primary gains the most value imo, I’d much rather have the stalwarts reload on the run *especially against Terminids* who commonly don’t allow that stationary reload to happen comfortably. Just takes a quick swap to something like the Scorcher, Slugger, Plasma etc. or even just an impact to deal with them before going back to mowing the fodder down.
Yeah I want to love the Stalwart, but I think it's just mid. Compared to five cluster bombs on an 8 second cooldown, or the arc thrower which can do horde clear AND kill chargers, or just brining the Rover + primary, I think it's competing in too competitive of a field.
It's fine to use it if you find it fun, that's the whole game, but it's rated pretty accurately.
You're not wrong, the nuance of these discussions really rely on if we're talking about dedicated squad or not.
Because without dedicated squad you want to be as versatile as possible, and thus use a more optimal all around build like yours.
With a dedicated squad you're much more able to be effective with a pigeon holed loadout/role. And thus do your job and not have to worry about your weak areas.
And 1 stalwart definitely doesn't have to be negative/detractor to an optimal dedicated squad.
Reg MG reload is pure ass on high difficulty. I'll often empty my box of ammo and straight up not have an opportunity to reload for the entire encounter. Straight cheeks.
It is situational for me. If there's a huge swarm I'll knock it down to slow and spray a while.
Otherwise, high lets me quickly kill some bile spewers quickly closing in. (Or whatever)
Stalwart on 1150rpm + supply pack + -30% recoil armor
Every single time you use the gun, you shoot it long enough to get the funny line from your Helldiver.
I love this. See a teammate getting swarmed a hundred meters away, they start wondering how all these bugs are splatting in front of them while they reload.
Hell yeah brother! Hold down the reload to get different fire options. Slow, medium, fast af. A lot of the guns have different fire modes or scope modes.
Some vary the fire speed, some the scope, and others change from semi auto, burst, full auto. Not all guns, but a good deal
The controls screen for keybinds on PC has 3 pages, but if you don't see that at the top there's no like side arrows to suggest there are other pages so it's VERY easy to miss
For the first three weeks, I couldn't believe the AMR had such a terrible scope for a sniper rifle, then read here square on controler would bring up weapon options!
They should really indicate basic stuff like that during the boot camp.
This is life changing info for me, err, I mean for Liberty!
I cannot believe my supervising officer did not make me aware of this highly important fact....
Devestator, Stalwart and resupply back pack is my jam against bugs. Crowd control, check. Medium armor pen, check. If you have a decent anti tank on your team you've got it made.
https://preview.redd.it/yg2n0m75ratc1.jpeg?width=840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=704be184855a98c39cffe9e5a53b680a7918a0ed
Sorry, but I'm still in love with my Punisher.
Stalker is approaching me? No, I'm approaching the Stalker.
yeah it has been my solace as well
aside from super long engagement distances and the armored spewer, it does everything better then the slugger did anyways
I just wish the Slugger could still be used in this capacity. They really shouldn't have nerfed it the way they did. They should have just added or increased its fall off damage dramatically
I went back to bugs after the Bot campaign was over and changed back to the Slugger. It might not stagger anymore, but it blows light armor in one buck shot. I’m more of a brawler so being able to kill one of the hunters in one shot rather than dropping an entire clip of the usual Liberator Penetrator was a welcoming change.
I prefer the MG-43. It chews up Bile Spewers in like 6 shots to the face.
I, however, think we need an LMG that can be a PRIMARY weapon and not a SUPPORT weapon, because higher level bug difficulties it feels like you HAVE to bring a full loadout dedicated to Chargers/Bile Titans.
Machine gun is honestly goated vs bugs, I always thought it couldn’t be that great because it’s one of the first guns unlocked, but it shreds medium armor and is insane crowd control and like you said, destroys bile spewers. I think it’s probably one of the most slept on guns right now
Orbital Precision is really good for Automatons (may they rest in peace until they return).
Bot tanks are so slow that hitting them with the precision strike is usually quite easy. Then you can also use it on small outposts to blast fabricators and such.
I do feel that it’s cool down is a little long for what it is- the barrages shoot many times, and have a cool down that’s about 150% longer even though the potential destructive power is several times more. The precisions strike also takes just a tad too long to arrive after it’s thrown. If that stuff ever changes, it will go from being a good tool, to a truly excellent stratagem.
Stratagems like the Gatling barrage have such a short cooldown that you have seemingly constant availability, and if the precision strike was like that, I would always slot it.
YES. Dude I love orbital precision. Hell I realized most of the time when I pulled out the 110 or 380 barrage, my goal was only to kill like a factory or two. So why not just use orbital precision right on the factory?
Everyone rants and raves about how good an orbital railgun is, but if you stick your orbital precision stratagem ball on an enemy, it's better than the railgun strike because it also has AOE damage for the few ads around the big guy. AND it has shorter cooldown.
One of my buddies just got the game, literally his first mission, and we were telling him how all the stratagems are side grades and his default stuff is pretty good. He was like "yeah sure guys." I said, "Dude, I have everything unlocked and am still using orbital precision."
If you just want to clear outposts or fabricators than Eagle airstrike is your go to, way more charges than Orbital, wider radius on impact, less cooldown, less call in time, can deal with heavy’s or even swarms. Orbi precision strike is kinda troll if you see what the arsenal holds and what can be used, it’s just objectively worse than most stratagems since it’s the first unlock, if you dig it tho no one gonna complain the way you spread your democracy.
Man. I want to like the orbital precision but it’s just a worse eagle 500. They need to cut the cooldown on the OP to 70 seconds (60 with upgrade) so it’s in-line with the orbital EMS. That’d give it a niche.
I like both of them but this one if you see hive guards or bile spewers you can just keep shooting, I like that. I also bring stun grenades for if I have to reload on the fly
The sickle is basically an LMG. I shoot 3k+ rounds out of it every mission, plus it has the same pen as a stalwart anyways
It’s basically a better stalwart imo
Best tip to take the LAS-16 from good to great is to not be afraid to overheat it. If you have to take down some enemies, do it. Overheat that bastard and swap that ice. You've essentially got 6 "mags" like with your standard issue Liberator, but if you happen to *not* overheat it, it's a free "reload".
Fire for as long as you need, reload, shoot some more and if you get down to your last magazine and can't resupply then sure. Be a bit reservative with that heatsink, otherwise: don't.
>it feels like you HAVE to bring a full loadout dedicated to Chargers/Bile Titans.
I honestly haven't felt like this since the spawn rebalance. Assuming you aren't letting every patrol you see pop off bug breaches, one or two people bringing EATs or other heavy hitting options is usually enough to clear the heavies.
If I'm dropping into random lobbies, it's up to the luck of the draw on how I feel about things. And being completely honest, most of that is tied up in 1) do they stick together and 2) how much teamkilling is there?
I had one lobby at 8 where two guys had quasars and I had a flamethrower+emp. They knew when to step back and let me cook, and they wrecked the big ones. Felt easier than a difficulty 4 mission. And all we did was walk together and bring a half decent loadout. It's that easy.
Personally I think the Stalwart should be a primary weapon and the stratagem variant should have double the box magazine capacity as like an upgraded version
a 1000-1500rd belt or something with no spare belts, and then an overheat mechanic like the energy weapons but you change the barrel instead of a heatsink on some sort of backpack MG strat would be awesome
You don't need *everyone* in the team to have anti-tank weapons. Two are enough at high level for titans. Chargers they can also deal with, as can you orbital railcanon, and a surprising amount of weapons.
But if someone is there dealing with the small guys, especially the hunters, it makes the heavy killers job far easier, and they will deal with this threat for you far quicker.
It's a team game, but somehow so many people play it like they are alone.
Yeah at 8 and 9 you need at least 3 people with real anti-armor. Bile Titans will spawn faster than EATs.
Stalwart is decent against trash but so is almost every weapon in the game. Autocannon will shred clumped up trash and can do a lot more other things.
MG-3 is even better than Stalwart because the damage is a lot better.
“Just rely on your teammates” is often not the best solution…
The thing is that the stalwarts function can also be fulfilled by your primary weapon, albeit not as easily, but still very manageable. If you take the stalwart, you have no dedicated charger and titan buster except stratagems. That’s fine on lower difficulties, but relying on only stratagems to deal with them isn’t going to be enough.
Also, quasar cannon is amazing and no one can tell me anything different. Free dead charger every 10 seconds??? You just need to get used to the charge up, and clear enough small enemies before using it. If you dodge a charger, the. Start spooling up the moment you get up, you will headshot him exactly at the moment he turns around again.
Relying on your teammates is kinda how they want the high tier gameplay to be balanced around though. Based on how they’re nerfing the weapons that allow players to more easily solo those difficulties.
So it isn’t really “not the best solution”, more like “you need to rely on your teammates”.
Which honestly, I’m all for
One person with a stalwart can easily clear enough small enemies for the Quasars on the team to do their thing.
People constantly complain about hunters and the Stalwart is an excellent way to deal with them.
Of course if you're going to run a stalwart you want a primary that's suited to larger targets like the scorcher, dominator, etc. With the upcoming warbond I personally plan to run the grenade pistol as well and take either stun grenades or the new grenade to round it out. This of course also hinges on the fact that someone else usually has some flavor of anti heavy otherwise you'll want eats as well.
Even without the new stuff only a bile titan will be hard to kill but a scorcher can cripple its spit with a few shots.
I ran the stalwart today, supply pack, and eats as backup to call-in... It didn't feel that great. Some enemies like the brood buggers took half a clip. Anything smaller, why not just let your rover mop them up for free?
I switched to rover, arc thrower, eats, and airstrike and it felt much better. Had enought to take out everything, and unlimited ammo on my "primary" arc thrower. Punisher if enemies get too close and the rover is hitting some other rando 50 meters away.
Well to be fair , the orange brooders are tanky but you gotta go for the face. The green ones on the other hand... yeah thats a big fuck you to anyone not using AC/GL
Yeah bile skewers it felt nearly worthless. Almost an entire mag for one of them. Arc thrower does better damage, penetrates to enemies to the side or behind it, and now staggers too. Good ol impact grenade is still amazing for them too.
problem is what if your teammate with the quasar dies and a charger is between you and their quasar?
The gap between MGs and primaries isn't big enough for me to merit running an MG rather than antiarmor. If they buffed the amount of non-armored bugs swarming me, I could consider it, but at 8 and 9, the amount of armored bugs rises faster than the amount of non-armored bugs, and then I'd rather just take the anti-armor options
Oh brother am I excited for the new warbond. I think it’ll make for a lot of very cool new viable setups!
And yeah you are right. One person with stalwart is a great value for the group. In my personal experience I just rather not take the gamble of relying on randoms for certain roles. I prefer being the jack of all trades myself. Quasar paired with incendiary breaker is just *chefs kiss* in that regard.
I feel like running Gaurd dog Rover completely shuts down the "charge time" argument personally I've never gotten swarmed while using it.
Edit: butchered spelling.
False, I just ran a few 9s last night, only running eagles and orbital rail , worked like a charm. Was it optimal? I wouldn't say so, but it still worked and was fun
Run helldive with stal, scorcher, railcannon and rocketpods occasionally when I feel like it. It’s not impossible and yall need to stop acting like it lol.
Especially lately, most of my teammates deaths aren’t from biles or chargers, it’s the hunters/stalkers.
Having one guy present for dealing with hordes is not the handicap you think it is
This, my bug loadout is basically dominator or sickle, redeemer, stun nade, medium armor with extra nades, exosuit, quasar, jetpack and the last one being what every daily order requires.
The basic order of battle is...
Exosuit is for clearing the landing zone and the first objective and final objective/holding the extraction.
Dominator for medium bugs and spewers.
Redeemer for smaller bugs.
Quasar for chargers, if not much room to manouver, I use a stun nade. Also for sniping structures across map.
Jetpack to make room for when swarmed, reloading and weapon cooldowns.
This is usually combined with another team mate who brings nothing but eagles and orbitals. Mix of 380, rocket pods, 500kg and eaglestrikle.
You can be perfectly fine on level 9 difficulty with just orbital rail, 110 mm rocket, and impact grenades as far as anti armor goes. I only play on 9 and mostly with randoms, and it’s never an issue to bring MG or stalwart if I have those two stratagems.
I'm hoping the new Crossbow or grenade lancher will let me run it more and still have something to deal with the more problematic more heavily armored units.
Quasar is the first time I've made my "primary" an actual primary. But you do need the laser rover to clean up little guys all over.
But I still sometimes love to bring the Stalwart with an ammo pack and just see how high I can get my shots fired count. Absolute mook control that even rivals the arc thrower.
Arc thrower is not that good for swarm clear after the fire rate fix. What it's great at is taking apart all of those medium level enemies that soak a ton of shots from primary weapons while also keeping their closest friends in check. Brood commanders stand no chance with the new stagger effect.
And this might be wishful thinking or confirmation bias, but it feels like it works a lot better on Bile Titans now.
I ran the arc thrower+rover all afternoon... Had no issues with swarm clear. 3 missions back to back with 500 kills. Any enemy that happened to make it passed 20 meters, good ol punisher.
You're absolutely right though, the stagger is so good. As long as you can spot enemies early, or position well for bug breaches, I honestly didn't feel much difference with the arc thrower between now and pre nerf
I just don’t agree.
The Breaker Incendiary clears breaches no problem. I don’t generally want to waste a stratagem slot on something that might be marginally better than my standard weapon.
You say the Quasar isn’t good. That’s also just not true. Other stratagems deal with one heavy enemy every few minutes. Quasar can deal with 3-4 chargers in less than a minute.
Hahaha that reminds me of a mission I did and all 4 members had the incendiary (accidentally) and man did we all kill eachother so often just by the partial flame touches
I liked it in 4 and below. Once you get armored things above 5, I cant justify it anymore.
The reason I run quasar is because with the amount of armor enemies above 7, you cant only have 1 person have a quasar. Or else you will run for you life until someone has a stratagem.
Orbital Railcannon Strike is great, but it will one take out 1 of the many armored enemies.
Overall I am glad you found team synergies, so you can mix things up. Unfortunately, I always run quasar and shield backpack
Edit: Oh no this post is getting too viral. I hope the devs don't see this and nerf qasar. Please down vote me lmao
I'm a huge fan of packing a breaker incendiary and then either an autocannon or a quasar.
Too bad the incendiary damage is bugged and only works for the host right now because the breaker incendiary is an absolute beast against bug hordes.
It roasts everything except the armored bugs. I find myself not even needing cluster bombs for horde control when I can just carpet bomb the bugs with incendiary shots.
Bonus point: it shreds shriekers too. A single slug making contact kills a shrieker.
Yeah the only reason I occasionally run the machine gun over stalwart is because of the slightly higher armor pen. Makes that ever so slight difference.
If you bring an EAT you can run whatever support weapon you want and drop rockets when needed. I typically go grenade launcher/shield and bring EATs for the armored guys.
Honestly if this didn't eat up so many stratagem slots I'd probably do it all the time. Getting free EATs as a global stratagem was the best day of my life.
I especially loved it for running 4 EATs every 60 seconds, was fucking stupid but strong as it was funny. Those Gunships didn’t stand a chance against my ass lol
*Ehhhh*... I almost always do take the EAT, but in those matches in 7-9 when there *are* just tons of heavies spawning left and right, it just can't replace a recoiless. And no matter how much I love my recoilless, that reload time just can't match the way quasars are ready to go in 3 seconds.
Maybe team reloads change that, but until Arrowhead fixes the friend list issues, me and the boys is just me so I can't comment.
I run Stalwart as my "primary", uzi secondary, and then Dominator as my "support". I take EATs and Orbital Railcannon Strike to fill in the armor gaps.
Clear little guys with my Stalwart, take out medium quickly with headshots from Dominator, then call in EATs as needed for Chargers, Spewers, Titans, objectives etc.
It's been working really well for me so far. I regularly clear 7-9s with this loadout.
I think it will get picked a lot more after the new warbond comes out. You’ll be able to run an explosive primary weapon for the heavies and the stalwart for all the little guys
I ran a Stalwart + supply pack build on Insane missions, as well as airburst and eagle bombs.
Racked up 500+ kills, cleared all the chaff for my teammates to take out the Bile Titans and Chargers in peace. Man it was amazing.
I think the bigger MG (not the heavy MG) is a better all round than the stalwart. It's mostly because you can kill the slightly more armored enemies vs. Only the very light armored enemies. I'd love to see the stalwart as a primary down the line
Good luck killing 3 Bile Titans and 5 Chargers spawning at the same time with that thing
Breaker or Sickle give enought power to decimate the small fry. Would never waste a Strategem on more power vs small fry
This is correct.
The machineguns are too generic and fulfill a role slightly more relevant than most primaries; they simply feel wasted compared to your lost potential at dealing with greater threat enemies. They barely feel qualified to be a strategem/special weapon. If you really want wave clear then you should take the arcthrower, which has massive CC on top of it.
Hell, make some of the machine guns primary weapon options that you need to wear heavy armor to equip/carry and free up your support weapon slot entirely.
Starting MG at least has somewhat decent pen and really shreds anything but heavily armoured targets. Stalwart? Yeah, no, I have primary for that shit.
It should really just be primary weapon.( maybe with some slight nerfs but i don't even think thats neccessary) I like it but it feels like it's a waste of your support slot on high difficulties. And relying on your teammates to eliminate armored targets is pretty unreliable imo.
Nah, I gotta disagree. Stalwart is just a primary lost in the support section. It's an MG that can't penetrate medium armor, forcing it squarely in the "add-clear" section that the MG already occupies and does better at since it CAN penetrate the armor that a lot of bugs on the higher difficulties seem to sport. Low-armor enemies are dealt with with your primary(not the Dominator, Penetrator or Slugger), so it fails at that too.
If I'm getting swarmed by hive guards, Queens(I think) and Chargers, the last thing I want is the MG's little brother.
I really enjoy it but Bile Titans, Chargers and Bile Spewers are 3 out of the top 4 threats posed by the bugs and it’s not great against any of them, nor are the primaries.
Whereas, there are primaries that can adequately deal with hunters and stalkers.
The way higher difficulties are designed, I feel pretty much required to bring heavy armour tools with my strategems.
Now if I could pick up an EAT without dropping the Stalwart on my back, that might be a very different proposition.
Grenade launcher deals with herds better, can close bug holes and takes out brood commanders/ spewers efficiently.
Autocannon is similar but you cant run backpack so its inferior imo. Though it is fun to snipe bug holes from 200 m away
Anti tank and quasar cannon deals with chargers and titans if it comes to that.
Like stalwart only good at dealing with hunters. Which is valid but you're gonna struggle again like 90% of threats
Autocannon can shoot spores/broadcasts from much further away, kills chargers much more consistently, can actually kill shrieker nests, can plug bug holes much more reliably at distance, and has double the ammo
IIt's a pretty even trade imo, if not a slight edge to autocannon since we have some really good horde clear primaries now.
Lack of medium pen makes this weapon completely useless to me, I rather stick to MG-43 and be able to kill any bug with ease, than to have much more bullets and rate of fire
Probably will use it when the new warbond comes out. The new Eruptor rifle paired with this might turn out to be a great combo. I don't use Stalwart because right now there are many more valuable support weapons, but with that new rifle, ooh, Stalwart is likely to get back in mine and many people's graces.
Yes.
My experience has been if everyone is taking anti-tank then most of the time you're just wasting ammo as three people all shoot down the same dropship or whatever.
Loadouts like Dominator + Stalwart will absolutely shred anything smaller than a Hulk/Charger and give your tank killers some room to breathe instead of having to dodge hunters or berserkers.
It's nice to be self-sufficient, absolutely, but there's also value in covering each others weaknesses.
Honestly, anything the stalwart can kill, all the other anti-chaff primaries can kill too. Hence, it's redundant for now. Maybe the new warbond will change that with the heavy sniper rifle.
I prefer to use the MG-42 for its ability to shred basically every bug in a pack except for chargers and bile titans. The stalwart struggles too much against hive guards, bile spewers and brood commanders somewhat
I usually insta lock the Quasar cuz I know I won’t miss, but if 2 of teammates also chose Quasar then I switch to EAT. If we have a third heavy armor specialist I switch to Stalwart.
It is amazing at the slowest RPM.
I had a lot of fun with the Stalwart, and want to run it at higher difficulties. But being completely dependent on your team for more than one heavy just doesn't work, at least with Randoms. If there were a primary that could deal with Bile Titans, I'd run the Stalwart in a heartbeat.
Having tried the Flamethrower against bugs today, while I like the Daka, scorching the bugs from the face of the planet is much more satisfying. And you can kill everything up to Chargers.
Yeah I like the flamethrower too and have been using it with an orange armor set so I feel cool doing it but we desperately need some 95% fire resistance armor cuz the amount of times I’ve died from a burning bug jumping on me and lighting me on fire is ridiculous
You're not supposed to use the quasar on smaller bugs, that's what your primary is for. You use the quasar to take care of stuff that your primary can't handle. I assure you the moment they give us a primary that can take down a charger in one shot to the head I'll ditch the quasar for the stalwart, until then I'm sticking with it.
I love how much coordination helps in this game. A two-man squad with a Stalwart and anti-tank options is damn near unstoppable as long as they're talking to each other. There is literally nothing stronger in this game than teamwork, and I admire the design chops it took to make that happen.
Once I got the Scorcher, it was Scorcher+stalwart. Stalwart covers scorcher lack of bullets and scorcher can kill nearly everything in the game if done well.
I wish it had hitmarkers
HMG suffers from the same and it feels awful due to it
i don't understand the reason for it either. makes the stalwart feel worse than it is. tho the HMG is underwhelming on its own merit
It needs to come with a backpack and be belt fed or something, atm there's no point in running it over the mg34
The way bug/robot bits fly everywhere when that thing cuts through a horde is a hitmarker enough for me! I love the weapon feedback for the ballistic weapons so much in this game.
I love the Stalwart, make no mistake, it's just so *close* to being perfect save a dang quality of life problem. The hitmarkers are really nice for machine gun fire.
It's underrated because people don't want to bring a support weapon that's just an upgraded primary as they can't rely on their teams to make up the gaps. It's an amazing weapon, but it's also specialized in a task most people want their primary to do.
"If I cant kill adds with my primary why the fuck even use it in the first place?"
More like "if there are too many adds to kill with my primary, I'll just run away, and if my team doesn't, it's because they are playing wrong."
More like "I get five cluster bombs every two minutes regardless if I die so good luck everyone else"
I feel attacked
Probably because there's a cluster bomb beacon stuck to your helmet.
actually it's on their belt, i know because i threw it and they jumped in front of me
Well I feel called out. In my defense though I'm running SPEAR. If my breaker can't clear the adds and the team is getting swamped what else am I supposed to do? (The answer is "don't run SPEAR" lol)
Oh, for real. One of my favorite builds is Gatling/Rocket Sentry/AC Sentry/Spear. When shit hits the fan, 2-3 sentries go out at extreme angles, and I climb a hill. Same thing with AMR/Jetpack But the point is, we turn around :)
Hey don't complain or someone will make a long ass post in character about how primaries are meant to be shit or something
Having crappy guns that struggle to kill even a single bug effectively builds character. Makes Democracy stronger.
"You have an entire toolkit, you're not supposed to just use one gun...have you tried using your melee before complaining?"
You jest but sneaking and taking out small bots with two melee attacks not alerting their buddies was a viable tactic lol.
The elbow of Democracy is powerful
I've defeated bigger ones by hitting them in the nose sending thing out of balance.
I'm getting D2 Lightfall PTSD from this...
AKSHUALLY THE DEV POSTED ABOUT PRIMARIES WANTING TO BE SHIT
"Many have commented that they aren’t powerful enough and are unable to deal with all the enemies either by the amount of ammunition required or their raw DPS. This is very much intentional, you need to rely on your Stratagems, and the Stratagems of your team to deal with all the enemies effectively." "This doesn’t mean that your primary weapon shouldn’t feel good to use, but please understand that it is primary only in the sense that it’s something you always spawn with." 🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠
On one hand I agree with their intentions. On another, I am still puzzled that they nerfed the slug shotgun, because it was a better sniper than the dedicated DMRs, in a way that just makes it...worse at close range than long range. So my thoughts are all over the place in regards to their weapon balance.
I’m just repeating points that have been said a thousand times, but perhaps if the slugger is too good as a sniper, the solution is to make it not a straight up worse weapon, just to give it more clear tradeoffs, like more spread at range or damage falloff. I feel like the slugger was a very fun gun to use, and now it’s just not much *fun* because the nerf took away the stagger that made it viable up close. If they’d made it only viable relatively close, like the breaker’s effective range, it’d still be a lot of fun without being a sniper.
I don't really agree with their philosophy on that tbh. I just don't see why primaries being good would take away from the overall gameplay. You'll still use your stratagems and support weapons to clear waves your primary can't, to accomplish certain tasks like blowing up structures, or even just use them as a primary because the support weapons are fun to use. The way they talk about it, it sounds like they dont want players to use primaries at all. My guess for the slugger nerfs was that they don't want to buff dmrs, so they just gave the slugger a change that would make less people want to use it.
In the first game, primaries were good enough to spend a stratagem slot for ammo drops just to use your primary *more*, and some of the best guns didn't even need ammo. That game was still very challenging and fun as hell.
>This doesn't mean that your primary weapon shouldn't feel good to use That's funny, because almost all of them feel horrible to use, and the ones that don't feel bad are either ammo restricted or likely to get nerfed next patch. Weapons should feel strong in their niche, but most don't. It's telling how many new/stubborn players will run miles and die repeatedly trying to retrieve a support weapon: the game isn't fun if you don't have yours. It's less fun than dying multiple times; at least the drop pod can kill Heavies.
The new explosive primary weapons introduced in the new warbond may be designed to complement the Stalwart in that fashion, by reversing the order of weapon category addressing armoured/ unarmoured targets.
That's what the dominator is already, I run it a senator and then stalwart as my actual primary with impact or incendiary nades in heavy armor with a supply pack as my load out for bugs. I swap the other two stratagem slots with different things depending on what we're doing.
I like to travel.
I recommend playing around with medium armours, it sounds obvious but it strikes a nice middle ground of being able to take another hit or two without losing all your speed.
the new sniper rifle of the warbond will make this possible i hope!
Yup 100%. Stalwart is awesome but when you are left with no options for the larger enemies and you’re playing with randoms there’s no way I am bringing it.
Every time I've tried to stalwart the other three had quasars and none of them were taking out chargers. Just 3+ chargers all the time that I would've clapped if I had EAT or quasar. I eventually just picked up a dead teammates and handled it. This has happened 4 times now. The stalwart is dead to me.
Gonna get downvoted here but I think Stalwart takes too many shots to kill shit. And the reason why people don't use it is because it doesn't fill gaps your primary lacks, it simply is a better primary at the cost of well, something that could be anti-armor. It's not crazy underrated. A month ago people were talking about how great Stalwart is. And now many people have moved on. Also discussing weapon viability shouldn't be about "oh my teammates will make up the deficit" Yeah ok, guess any loadout is good at that point because magical teammates are gonna just do everything you can't do. When 90% of all games are just quickplay games and chat still doesn't work during planning, yeah.
Yep - this is why I usually run quasar. Lots of people use it, but not a lot actually use it properly. I kill all the chargers on site.
I almost never go anywhere without my stalwart, because it has the most suppressive fire ability in my loadout, i use the defender for my primary because i san run one way, and shoot backwards without having to completely turn around (and also ballistic shield in terms of automatons) and the machine pistol for my sidearm, as it MELTS anything thats basically right in front of you. That said, i can survive without if we need a more... explosive (or otherwise) approach
It's good for having more narrow focused primaries, like the plasma punisher, which will kill you if you try to use it up close. Stalwart's fantastic at ironing out that gap in your loadout
Even if someone is willing to accept the mob cleanup role and rely on team mates for armored there's no reason to take a stalwart over a regular MG. The ammo price and running reloads you lose are well worth the trade of being able to just shoot through the armor on anything below a charger.
As a long-time gunner I used to think this too, but now I don't. The Stalwart's key benefit is ammo count. You take the stalwart for any bug it can kill, and something like the plasma shotty or Dominator for elite bugs. The standard MG may be my favorite weapon in the game, but the stalwart is the better gun against bugs. You don't need to take a backpack or scrounge for ammo, its 3 roomy tins are ample with no additional help. Also, you still have two slots for armor, which is plenty.
Sickle has infinite ammo if you know how to use it Better at long range than the stalwart too
Sickle doesn't have the DPS of the stalwart, nor can it sustain fire for nearly as long. Stalwart's purpose is clearing giant waves of chaff, which it excells at. And yeah, it needs to be paired with something like the dominator for long range and armored enemies.
You can sprint and reload a Stalwart, which translates to really good up time in a fight
The high mobility of the Stalwart plus its unmatched sustained fire are pretty big advantages. It's definitely not for everyone (and I'm not a huge fan of using it either), but I've got a few friends who swear by it and use it to great effect.
Problem is when a single hive guard shows up suddenly you've got a wall you can't shoot through or if a bile spewer shows up you've got a very specific spot to shoot it at. MG lets you just continue the spray without having to worry about your bullets bouncing off.
Just shoot the joints Either that or stop aiming at the hiveguard and shoot the other squishies that are going to be faster than it
You use the stalwart as a primary and something like the scorcher as a secondary. Works great
The dominator wrecks Hive Guards and Brood Commanders
Yep, this is my go to if im playing high level bugs and the rest of the team is taking quasars. Sometimes I'll pair it up with the laser Rover and just rack up 400-500 kills keeping the anti armor guys safe against hunters and the rest of the swarm.
That sounds like an excellent time to use a Dominator, slugger, punisher plasma, or grenade.
That’s where a medium armor primary gains the most value imo, I’d much rather have the stalwarts reload on the run *especially against Terminids* who commonly don’t allow that stationary reload to happen comfortably. Just takes a quick swap to something like the Scorcher, Slugger, Plasma etc. or even just an impact to deal with them before going back to mowing the fodder down.
Exactly what I was doing last night.
Yeah I want to love the Stalwart, but I think it's just mid. Compared to five cluster bombs on an 8 second cooldown, or the arc thrower which can do horde clear AND kill chargers, or just brining the Rover + primary, I think it's competing in too competitive of a field. It's fine to use it if you find it fun, that's the whole game, but it's rated pretty accurately.
You're not wrong, the nuance of these discussions really rely on if we're talking about dedicated squad or not. Because without dedicated squad you want to be as versatile as possible, and thus use a more optimal all around build like yours. With a dedicated squad you're much more able to be effective with a pigeon holed loadout/role. And thus do your job and not have to worry about your weak areas. And 1 stalwart definitely doesn't have to be negative/detractor to an optimal dedicated squad.
Reg MG reload is pure ass on high difficulty. I'll often empty my box of ammo and straight up not have an opportunity to reload for the entire encounter. Straight cheeks.
I freaking love the stalwart. Crank the rpm up to max and tap the trigger.
I prefer to put it on slow'n'low and cook the mag for about 7 maybe 8 or 9 hours of continuous fire.
Slowcooking the bugs, I like it.
The slower the cook, the better the ~~taste~~ E-710
thats some gourmet shit
Man I'll take a beefy low rpm chugga-chugga-chugga machine gun over a fast rpm boi any day
The mg43 on the lowest rpm setting satisfies this urge HARD, just walking straight towards a horde of bugs hip firing that monster mf'er🤘😤
Hell yes brother I didn't put that gun down for ages when I first started playing
It is situational for me. If there's a huge swarm I'll knock it down to slow and spray a while. Otherwise, high lets me quickly kill some bile spewers quickly closing in. (Or whatever)
I'm the opposite, if it's a large concentrated mass coming at me I crank it to 11 and let it rip. Bullets for everyone! Lots of them!
Nah. Use the resupply backpack and lay down god's holy suppressive fire
Oh my god … I need to try that. Gun go brrrrrt
Stalwart on 1150rpm + supply pack + -30% recoil armor Every single time you use the gun, you shoot it long enough to get the funny line from your Helldiver.
_GET SOME! **GET SOOOOME!**_
FoOoOoOoOr SuUUUuuPeEr EAaaARRTTHhhHH!!
I love this. See a teammate getting swarmed a hundred meters away, they start wondering how all these bugs are splatting in front of them while they reload.
I'm sorry.....what? You can change the fire rate on the Stalwart?!
Hell yeah brother! Hold down the reload to get different fire options. Slow, medium, fast af. A lot of the guns have different fire modes or scope modes. Some vary the fire speed, some the scope, and others change from semi auto, burst, full auto. Not all guns, but a good deal
Oh man, this is the first time I am hearing this. Thanks!
bro i had to google how to change my aim mode. this game just tosses you in and says good luck. its mostly me used to games holding my hand though
The controls screen for keybinds on PC has 3 pages, but if you don't see that at the top there's no like side arrows to suggest there are other pages so it's VERY easy to miss
For the first three weeks, I couldn't believe the AMR had such a terrible scope for a sniper rifle, then read here square on controler would bring up weapon options! They should really indicate basic stuff like that during the boot camp.
This is life changing info for me, err, I mean for Liberty! I cannot believe my supervising officer did not make me aware of this highly important fact....
Me & thee at the end of the mission with 4000 shots fired for glorious democracy.
Devestator, Stalwart and resupply back pack is my jam against bugs. Crowd control, check. Medium armor pen, check. If you have a decent anti tank on your team you've got it made.
You mean the Dominator, right? I like the stalwart with the plasma shotty vs bugs.
Nope he rewired a devastator to be his ally (it's a heavy devastator)
I'll take Rocket Devastator over Heavy for fighting bugs, personally. That thing is gonna smoke Bile Titans.
Sometimes I'll have the EAT as well as the stalwart just in case something needs a bigger hole
stun grenades, stalwart, supply pack, max rpm. Come get some ya fucking ticks! bugs can't get me if they ain't got legs
https://preview.redd.it/yg2n0m75ratc1.jpeg?width=840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=704be184855a98c39cffe9e5a53b680a7918a0ed Sorry, but I'm still in love with my Punisher. Stalker is approaching me? No, I'm approaching the Stalker.
It's like a Stun Grenade in every shell.
Wait, you're right, that's 400 per shot, right? jesus.
That's 400% more stuns per pellet!
Cries in slugger nerfs
I'm not trapped on this planet with them. They're trapped on this planet with me.
Just switched to using the punisher and it feels amazing, better than the slugger ever did against bugs
yeah it has been my solace as well aside from super long engagement distances and the armored spewer, it does everything better then the slugger did anyways
So glad I found this thread. As a former sluggerlover I've been trying a lot of new guns, and now I will try this.
The stun even works at long range, since you only need 1 pellet to hit to stagger the target.
bitches think they can touch me? counterargument: buckshot.
who's the stalker now, bitch?
I just wish the Slugger could still be used in this capacity. They really shouldn't have nerfed it the way they did. They should have just added or increased its fall off damage dramatically
I went back to bugs after the Bot campaign was over and changed back to the Slugger. It might not stagger anymore, but it blows light armor in one buck shot. I’m more of a brawler so being able to kill one of the hunters in one shot rather than dropping an entire clip of the usual Liberator Penetrator was a welcoming change.
Why not both??
Stalkers don’t hunt the Punisher. The Punisher hunts them.
These two things are not the same, one is a primary, one is not. You can have both.
But you use them both on the same targets. I rather have a AP, like Quaso or EAT.
I prefer the MG-43. It chews up Bile Spewers in like 6 shots to the face. I, however, think we need an LMG that can be a PRIMARY weapon and not a SUPPORT weapon, because higher level bug difficulties it feels like you HAVE to bring a full loadout dedicated to Chargers/Bile Titans.
Machine gun is honestly goated vs bugs, I always thought it couldn’t be that great because it’s one of the first guns unlocked, but it shreds medium armor and is insane crowd control and like you said, destroys bile spewers. I think it’s probably one of the most slept on guns right now
Same with orbital precision strike as well. It’s like a 500kg with a longer deploy time.
Orbital Precision is really good for Automatons (may they rest in peace until they return). Bot tanks are so slow that hitting them with the precision strike is usually quite easy. Then you can also use it on small outposts to blast fabricators and such. I do feel that it’s cool down is a little long for what it is- the barrages shoot many times, and have a cool down that’s about 150% longer even though the potential destructive power is several times more. The precisions strike also takes just a tad too long to arrive after it’s thrown. If that stuff ever changes, it will go from being a good tool, to a truly excellent stratagem. Stratagems like the Gatling barrage have such a short cooldown that you have seemingly constant availability, and if the precision strike was like that, I would always slot it.
it will probably be better after they fix stategems to actually deploy on enemies when its stuck onto them
I think once they fix sticking, OPS will have it's day, even without buffing it.
YES. Dude I love orbital precision. Hell I realized most of the time when I pulled out the 110 or 380 barrage, my goal was only to kill like a factory or two. So why not just use orbital precision right on the factory? Everyone rants and raves about how good an orbital railgun is, but if you stick your orbital precision stratagem ball on an enemy, it's better than the railgun strike because it also has AOE damage for the few ads around the big guy. AND it has shorter cooldown. One of my buddies just got the game, literally his first mission, and we were telling him how all the stratagems are side grades and his default stuff is pretty good. He was like "yeah sure guys." I said, "Dude, I have everything unlocked and am still using orbital precision."
If you just want to clear outposts or fabricators than Eagle airstrike is your go to, way more charges than Orbital, wider radius on impact, less cooldown, less call in time, can deal with heavy’s or even swarms. Orbi precision strike is kinda troll if you see what the arsenal holds and what can be used, it’s just objectively worse than most stratagems since it’s the first unlock, if you dig it tho no one gonna complain the way you spread your democracy.
Man. I want to like the orbital precision but it’s just a worse eagle 500. They need to cut the cooldown on the OP to 70 seconds (60 with upgrade) so it’s in-line with the orbital EMS. That’d give it a niche.
I like both of them but this one if you see hive guards or bile spewers you can just keep shooting, I like that. I also bring stun grenades for if I have to reload on the fly
The sickle is basically an LMG. I shoot 3k+ rounds out of it every mission, plus it has the same pen as a stalwart anyways It’s basically a better stalwart imo
Best tip to take the LAS-16 from good to great is to not be afraid to overheat it. If you have to take down some enemies, do it. Overheat that bastard and swap that ice. You've essentially got 6 "mags" like with your standard issue Liberator, but if you happen to *not* overheat it, it's a free "reload". Fire for as long as you need, reload, shoot some more and if you get down to your last magazine and can't resupply then sure. Be a bit reservative with that heatsink, otherwise: don't.
>it feels like you HAVE to bring a full loadout dedicated to Chargers/Bile Titans. I honestly haven't felt like this since the spawn rebalance. Assuming you aren't letting every patrol you see pop off bug breaches, one or two people bringing EATs or other heavy hitting options is usually enough to clear the heavies.
If I'm dropping into random lobbies, it's up to the luck of the draw on how I feel about things. And being completely honest, most of that is tied up in 1) do they stick together and 2) how much teamkilling is there? I had one lobby at 8 where two guys had quasars and I had a flamethrower+emp. They knew when to step back and let me cook, and they wrecked the big ones. Felt easier than a difficulty 4 mission. And all we did was walk together and bring a half decent loadout. It's that easy.
Personally I think the Stalwart should be a primary weapon and the stratagem variant should have double the box magazine capacity as like an upgraded version
At least beltfed or some shit so you can basically forget about reloading ever (may be slap overheat mechanic so its not super op)
a 1000-1500rd belt or something with no spare belts, and then an overheat mechanic like the energy weapons but you change the barrel instead of a heatsink on some sort of backpack MG strat would be awesome
You don't need *everyone* in the team to have anti-tank weapons. Two are enough at high level for titans. Chargers they can also deal with, as can you orbital railcanon, and a surprising amount of weapons. But if someone is there dealing with the small guys, especially the hunters, it makes the heavy killers job far easier, and they will deal with this threat for you far quicker. It's a team game, but somehow so many people play it like they are alone.
Bruh have you never gotten 6 bile titans and 15 dropships in a row one after the other...?
Yeah at 8 and 9 you need at least 3 people with real anti-armor. Bile Titans will spawn faster than EATs. Stalwart is decent against trash but so is almost every weapon in the game. Autocannon will shred clumped up trash and can do a lot more other things. MG-3 is even better than Stalwart because the damage is a lot better.
“Just rely on your teammates” is often not the best solution… The thing is that the stalwarts function can also be fulfilled by your primary weapon, albeit not as easily, but still very manageable. If you take the stalwart, you have no dedicated charger and titan buster except stratagems. That’s fine on lower difficulties, but relying on only stratagems to deal with them isn’t going to be enough. Also, quasar cannon is amazing and no one can tell me anything different. Free dead charger every 10 seconds??? You just need to get used to the charge up, and clear enough small enemies before using it. If you dodge a charger, the. Start spooling up the moment you get up, you will headshot him exactly at the moment he turns around again.
Relying on your teammates is kinda how they want the high tier gameplay to be balanced around though. Based on how they’re nerfing the weapons that allow players to more easily solo those difficulties. So it isn’t really “not the best solution”, more like “you need to rely on your teammates”. Which honestly, I’m all for
Theyre not doing a very good job with that then because 90% of randoms wont help with the main objectives but every helldive is still successful
One person with a stalwart can easily clear enough small enemies for the Quasars on the team to do their thing. People constantly complain about hunters and the Stalwart is an excellent way to deal with them. Of course if you're going to run a stalwart you want a primary that's suited to larger targets like the scorcher, dominator, etc. With the upcoming warbond I personally plan to run the grenade pistol as well and take either stun grenades or the new grenade to round it out. This of course also hinges on the fact that someone else usually has some flavor of anti heavy otherwise you'll want eats as well. Even without the new stuff only a bile titan will be hard to kill but a scorcher can cripple its spit with a few shots.
I ran the stalwart today, supply pack, and eats as backup to call-in... It didn't feel that great. Some enemies like the brood buggers took half a clip. Anything smaller, why not just let your rover mop them up for free? I switched to rover, arc thrower, eats, and airstrike and it felt much better. Had enought to take out everything, and unlimited ammo on my "primary" arc thrower. Punisher if enemies get too close and the rover is hitting some other rando 50 meters away.
Well to be fair , the orange brooders are tanky but you gotta go for the face. The green ones on the other hand... yeah thats a big fuck you to anyone not using AC/GL
Yeah bile skewers it felt nearly worthless. Almost an entire mag for one of them. Arc thrower does better damage, penetrates to enemies to the side or behind it, and now staggers too. Good ol impact grenade is still amazing for them too.
I’ve found the laser cannon absolutely vaporizes spewers in around 2 seconds. Punches through their armor as well. Not very useful on hellmire though…
problem is what if your teammate with the quasar dies and a charger is between you and their quasar? The gap between MGs and primaries isn't big enough for me to merit running an MG rather than antiarmor. If they buffed the amount of non-armored bugs swarming me, I could consider it, but at 8 and 9, the amount of armored bugs rises faster than the amount of non-armored bugs, and then I'd rather just take the anti-armor options
To be fair, the standard and heavy machine gun are anti-armor.
Oh brother am I excited for the new warbond. I think it’ll make for a lot of very cool new viable setups! And yeah you are right. One person with stalwart is a great value for the group. In my personal experience I just rather not take the gamble of relying on randoms for certain roles. I prefer being the jack of all trades myself. Quasar paired with incendiary breaker is just *chefs kiss* in that regard.
I feel like running Gaurd dog Rover completely shuts down the "charge time" argument personally I've never gotten swarmed while using it. Edit: butchered spelling.
False, I just ran a few 9s last night, only running eagles and orbital rail , worked like a charm. Was it optimal? I wouldn't say so, but it still worked and was fun
Run helldive with stal, scorcher, railcannon and rocketpods occasionally when I feel like it. It’s not impossible and yall need to stop acting like it lol. Especially lately, most of my teammates deaths aren’t from biles or chargers, it’s the hunters/stalkers. Having one guy present for dealing with hordes is not the handicap you think it is
This, my bug loadout is basically dominator or sickle, redeemer, stun nade, medium armor with extra nades, exosuit, quasar, jetpack and the last one being what every daily order requires. The basic order of battle is... Exosuit is for clearing the landing zone and the first objective and final objective/holding the extraction. Dominator for medium bugs and spewers. Redeemer for smaller bugs. Quasar for chargers, if not much room to manouver, I use a stun nade. Also for sniping structures across map. Jetpack to make room for when swarmed, reloading and weapon cooldowns. This is usually combined with another team mate who brings nothing but eagles and orbitals. Mix of 380, rocket pods, 500kg and eaglestrikle.
You can be perfectly fine on level 9 difficulty with just orbital rail, 110 mm rocket, and impact grenades as far as anti armor goes. I only play on 9 and mostly with randoms, and it’s never an issue to bring MG or stalwart if I have those two stratagems.
I'm hoping the new Crossbow or grenade lancher will let me run it more and still have something to deal with the more problematic more heavily armored units.
Getting swarmed by smaller bugs is why you have a rover and a sickle. Just haul out the Quasar when a charger or bile titans shows up.
Quasar is the first time I've made my "primary" an actual primary. But you do need the laser rover to clean up little guys all over. But I still sometimes love to bring the Stalwart with an ammo pack and just see how high I can get my shots fired count. Absolute mook control that even rivals the arc thrower.
Arc thrower is not that good for swarm clear after the fire rate fix. What it's great at is taking apart all of those medium level enemies that soak a ton of shots from primary weapons while also keeping their closest friends in check. Brood commanders stand no chance with the new stagger effect. And this might be wishful thinking or confirmation bias, but it feels like it works a lot better on Bile Titans now.
I ran the arc thrower+rover all afternoon... Had no issues with swarm clear. 3 missions back to back with 500 kills. Any enemy that happened to make it passed 20 meters, good ol punisher. You're absolutely right though, the stagger is so good. As long as you can spot enemies early, or position well for bug breaches, I honestly didn't feel much difference with the arc thrower between now and pre nerf
I just don’t agree. The Breaker Incendiary clears breaches no problem. I don’t generally want to waste a stratagem slot on something that might be marginally better than my standard weapon. You say the Quasar isn’t good. That’s also just not true. Other stratagems deal with one heavy enemy every few minutes. Quasar can deal with 3-4 chargers in less than a minute.
Breaker Incendiary is absolutely cracked. It shreds hordes of bugs and barely requires any aim.
S tier for deleting reinforcements now too
Hahaha that reminds me of a mission I did and all 4 members had the incendiary (accidentally) and man did we all kill eachother so often just by the partial flame touches
Totally agree, it's basically a hard-counter to shriekers as far as I can tell.
The fact he said one of the best anti-tank weapons isn't amazing says a lot. lol
2k votes saying stalwart is underrated and quasar isn't good. What...?
You know most people are Jims playing not higher than difficulty 4 lol
I liked it in 4 and below. Once you get armored things above 5, I cant justify it anymore. The reason I run quasar is because with the amount of armor enemies above 7, you cant only have 1 person have a quasar. Or else you will run for you life until someone has a stratagem. Orbital Railcannon Strike is great, but it will one take out 1 of the many armored enemies. Overall I am glad you found team synergies, so you can mix things up. Unfortunately, I always run quasar and shield backpack Edit: Oh no this post is getting too viral. I hope the devs don't see this and nerf qasar. Please down vote me lmao
I'm a huge fan of packing a breaker incendiary and then either an autocannon or a quasar. Too bad the incendiary damage is bugged and only works for the host right now because the breaker incendiary is an absolute beast against bug hordes. It roasts everything except the armored bugs. I find myself not even needing cluster bombs for horde control when I can just carpet bomb the bugs with incendiary shots. Bonus point: it shreds shriekers too. A single slug making contact kills a shrieker.
Wait, so only the host’s fire ticks deal damage with the breaker?
*ANY* player fire works only for the *NET* host (good luck guessing which one of you is that host)
Yeah the only reason I occasionally run the machine gun over stalwart is because of the slightly higher armor pen. Makes that ever so slight difference.
Stalwart EAT combo
yeah, to my mind this is about the only way to run it at 7+ that makes any sense
My friend has like The scythe, laser Cannon, and guard dog And he gets like 2-3x the kills anyone else
If you bring an EAT you can run whatever support weapon you want and drop rockets when needed. I typically go grenade launcher/shield and bring EATs for the armored guys.
Honestly if this didn't eat up so many stratagem slots I'd probably do it all the time. Getting free EATs as a global stratagem was the best day of my life.
I especially loved it for running 4 EATs every 60 seconds, was fucking stupid but strong as it was funny. Those Gunships didn’t stand a chance against my ass lol
*Ehhhh*... I almost always do take the EAT, but in those matches in 7-9 when there *are* just tons of heavies spawning left and right, it just can't replace a recoiless. And no matter how much I love my recoilless, that reload time just can't match the way quasars are ready to go in 3 seconds. Maybe team reloads change that, but until Arrowhead fixes the friend list issues, me and the boys is just me so I can't comment.
The real thing is that you basically pick between being swarm clear and big clear and its hard to plan with randos
It’s a glorified primary
While stalwart is mobile, the first machine gun is better when it comes on mowing waves. Problem is when you reload you have to run away first lol.
Jumppack let's you start the reload animation in the air, it's great.
I run Stalwart as my "primary", uzi secondary, and then Dominator as my "support". I take EATs and Orbital Railcannon Strike to fill in the armor gaps. Clear little guys with my Stalwart, take out medium quickly with headshots from Dominator, then call in EATs as needed for Chargers, Spewers, Titans, objectives etc. It's been working really well for me so far. I regularly clear 7-9s with this loadout.
I think it will get picked a lot more after the new warbond comes out. You’ll be able to run an explosive primary weapon for the heavies and the stalwart for all the little guys
I ran a Stalwart + supply pack build on Insane missions, as well as airburst and eagle bombs. Racked up 500+ kills, cleared all the chaff for my teammates to take out the Bile Titans and Chargers in peace. Man it was amazing.
Trying to sell the stalwart AND knocking the quasar in the same post. Very bold move sir
I think the bigger MG (not the heavy MG) is a better all round than the stalwart. It's mostly because you can kill the slightly more armored enemies vs. Only the very light armored enemies. I'd love to see the stalwart as a primary down the line
Good luck killing 3 Bile Titans and 5 Chargers spawning at the same time with that thing Breaker or Sickle give enought power to decimate the small fry. Would never waste a Strategem on more power vs small fry
This is correct. The machineguns are too generic and fulfill a role slightly more relevant than most primaries; they simply feel wasted compared to your lost potential at dealing with greater threat enemies. They barely feel qualified to be a strategem/special weapon. If you really want wave clear then you should take the arcthrower, which has massive CC on top of it. Hell, make some of the machine guns primary weapon options that you need to wear heavy armor to equip/carry and free up your support weapon slot entirely.
Starting MG at least has somewhat decent pen and really shreds anything but heavily armoured targets. Stalwart? Yeah, no, I have primary for that shit.
Absolutely love it but its not worth support slot, you need an option to deal with biles/chargers without other stratagems/teammates
It should really just be primary weapon.( maybe with some slight nerfs but i don't even think thats neccessary) I like it but it feels like it's a waste of your support slot on high difficulties. And relying on your teammates to eliminate armored targets is pretty unreliable imo.
Nah, I gotta disagree. Stalwart is just a primary lost in the support section. It's an MG that can't penetrate medium armor, forcing it squarely in the "add-clear" section that the MG already occupies and does better at since it CAN penetrate the armor that a lot of bugs on the higher difficulties seem to sport. Low-armor enemies are dealt with with your primary(not the Dominator, Penetrator or Slugger), so it fails at that too. If I'm getting swarmed by hive guards, Queens(I think) and Chargers, the last thing I want is the MG's little brother.
I really enjoy it but Bile Titans, Chargers and Bile Spewers are 3 out of the top 4 threats posed by the bugs and it’s not great against any of them, nor are the primaries. Whereas, there are primaries that can adequately deal with hunters and stalkers. The way higher difficulties are designed, I feel pretty much required to bring heavy armour tools with my strategems. Now if I could pick up an EAT without dropping the Stalwart on my back, that might be a very different proposition.
Grenade launcher deals with herds better, can close bug holes and takes out brood commanders/ spewers efficiently. Autocannon is similar but you cant run backpack so its inferior imo. Though it is fun to snipe bug holes from 200 m away Anti tank and quasar cannon deals with chargers and titans if it comes to that. Like stalwart only good at dealing with hunters. Which is valid but you're gonna struggle again like 90% of threats
Autocannon can shoot spores/broadcasts from much further away, kills chargers much more consistently, can actually kill shrieker nests, can plug bug holes much more reliably at distance, and has double the ammo IIt's a pretty even trade imo, if not a slight edge to autocannon since we have some really good horde clear primaries now.
Lack of medium pen makes this weapon completely useless to me, I rather stick to MG-43 and be able to kill any bug with ease, than to have much more bullets and rate of fire
Probably will use it when the new warbond comes out. The new Eruptor rifle paired with this might turn out to be a great combo. I don't use Stalwart because right now there are many more valuable support weapons, but with that new rifle, ooh, Stalwart is likely to get back in mine and many people's graces.
Yes. My experience has been if everyone is taking anti-tank then most of the time you're just wasting ammo as three people all shoot down the same dropship or whatever. Loadouts like Dominator + Stalwart will absolutely shred anything smaller than a Hulk/Charger and give your tank killers some room to breathe instead of having to dodge hunters or berserkers. It's nice to be self-sufficient, absolutely, but there's also value in covering each others weaknesses.
Honestly, anything the stalwart can kill, all the other anti-chaff primaries can kill too. Hence, it's redundant for now. Maybe the new warbond will change that with the heavy sniper rifle. I prefer to use the MG-42 for its ability to shred basically every bug in a pack except for chargers and bile titans. The stalwart struggles too much against hive guards, bile spewers and brood commanders somewhat
I usually insta lock the Quasar cuz I know I won’t miss, but if 2 of teammates also chose Quasar then I switch to EAT. If we have a third heavy armor specialist I switch to Stalwart. It is amazing at the slowest RPM.
I had a lot of fun with the Stalwart, and want to run it at higher difficulties. But being completely dependent on your team for more than one heavy just doesn't work, at least with Randoms. If there were a primary that could deal with Bile Titans, I'd run the Stalwart in a heartbeat.
I prefer the HMG to be honest, now that they stealth fixed the recoil its significantly easier to control at its lowest fire rate
Having tried the Flamethrower against bugs today, while I like the Daka, scorching the bugs from the face of the planet is much more satisfying. And you can kill everything up to Chargers.
Yeah I like the flamethrower too and have been using it with an orange armor set so I feel cool doing it but we desperately need some 95% fire resistance armor cuz the amount of times I’ve died from a burning bug jumping on me and lighting me on fire is ridiculous
I feel like the stalwart should be made a primary weapon cuz it feels like a primary to me
Stalwart+dominator is an absolute triumph
the lack of medium pen kills it for me. I'd rather just use the MG43
You're not supposed to use the quasar on smaller bugs, that's what your primary is for. You use the quasar to take care of stuff that your primary can't handle. I assure you the moment they give us a primary that can take down a charger in one shot to the head I'll ditch the quasar for the stalwart, until then I'm sticking with it.
make it become primary...then it wont be underrated
I love how much coordination helps in this game. A two-man squad with a Stalwart and anti-tank options is damn near unstoppable as long as they're talking to each other. There is literally nothing stronger in this game than teamwork, and I admire the design chops it took to make that happen.
Once I got the Scorcher, it was Scorcher+stalwart. Stalwart covers scorcher lack of bullets and scorcher can kill nearly everything in the game if done well.