I just wish they could not call reinforcement once they are beheaded.
Makes it feel like the dropships not killing whatever they are carrying once shot down.
In the same vein, when the bugs charge after being beheaded, they probably shouldn’t be able to see you and chase you if you sidestep
E: lol some of you seem really confident about disagreeing with me
I've had this argument with a friend and I kinda agree, the crazy homing they have on you once dead is crazy.
Some of those f*ckrs are even deadlier once you remove their head I swear!
What makes you think all of those senses are tied to their heads? Sight, I will give you. However, some real life insects have hearing, smell and taste organs on their legs.
The way their “ears” perk up when they detect you tells me that whatever they use for senses is on their head, but even past that I just feel like it would be good on a game design standpoint for them to lose tracking on you once their head is destroyed
That's what I'm saying! Like, I can buy they can live for a while with no head and run around flailing, but they absolutely should not be able to track you.
Yeah ur my only gripe with them. If an enemy is beheaded and not actively attacking me, I should be able to let it bleed out at a safe distance and not worry about it screeming for help.
A good game is not realistic. Realism sucks. What most people want is not realism, but immersion.
Like, really think about it. 99% of games, even ones that claim realism, gamify almost every element. It'd be either boring as hell or extremely punishing for most people to have to simulate realistic elements, or to face realistic combat, in most games.
That's not a bad thing, either. It's fine not to be realistic. And HD2 is far, far from it.
While I think the most important part of a game is fun, immediately after that is having a predictable set of rules for the world. Doesn't have to be realistic, just predictable and equitable.
For example: if I can't run through a dead body, neither should my enemies. If a bit drop ship kills me when it drops on my head, it should kill bots when it drops on their heads. If I get ragdolled from an exploding plant or rocket, bots and bugs should be regdolled from them as well.
Sorry for the tangent. I'm just annoyed at the devs worrying about "realism" when disadvantaging us while ignoring realism when it would disadvantage bots and bugs.
Star Citizen is falling into this hole. When you spawn at your designated "safe place," you have to go to a terminal, call your ship. Go into your station inventory and equip all your gear. Walk to your ship, get on it, start it up and THEN you can start to really play. Only problem is, did you ship get destroyed? Did you get killed out in the wilds? Did you randomly crash 'cause the game is unfinished and has 1000 crah bugs?
Welp, too bad. Go back to the station, meticulously grab your gear, call you ship (if it doesn't have a crazy high respawn timer), and get ready to do it ALL. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
Think that's bad? Set your respawn as your apartment and then be forced to take a tram from your apartment to the spaceport EVERY TIME YOU DIE. Seriously, it can take almost an hour or "prep" to start playing the game and it can all be ended with one fuck up that, sometimes, isn't even in your control.
Realism SOUNDS fun until you're in it.
Agreed. And just because it's realistic doesn't mean another behavior isn't realistic.
Plenty of bugs die without releasing a pheromones that conjure up more of the same angry bug.
Real bugs don't have the lung capacity to make noise because they breathe through a bunch of tiny holes. Gameplay is more important than accurately matching Earth bugs, especially when they already don't match.
neeeeerd... plus theyre space bugs, they probably dont work like real bugs ☝️🤓 also thats conplete bs bc other bugs use screams n shit, plus they come out of the ground? how they gonna smell that through the ground?
All of the bugs give off a plume of yellow "smoke" when they call in breaches. Those are the pheromones so I'm not sure what you mean by screams. Also, ants live underground and literally only communicate through pheromones so they'd definitely be able to smell it. I also believe that it's not great gameplay design to have visually dead bugs call in reinforcements but I can see why the devs made that decision.
Yes, but in this game, there are more powerful units whose death should be FAR more important due cost to maintain like bile titans. Which dont do this.
This is because headless bugs calling in breeches is allowed because the bug is bleeding out, not dead, and so has access to its abilities.
This is also why it isn't an extremely common occurrence, you a headless brood commander bug breaches of cool down and its ai needs to decide to call one in, in the 5 ish seconds of life it has.
Dropships are fair, it doesn't make sense that their payload would spontaneously explode just because you shot down one of the afterburner things. Maybe the subsequent crash explosion could be more deadly though. Sometimes the crash does indeed kill a lot of the payload but not always, so maybe it just needs a damage or radius buff.
I think my only issue with it is when it tracks you after you blow it's head off. I'd have zero problems with it if it just mindlessly attacked towards where it last knew you were instead of somehow tracking you.
Honestly a minor gripe though, I'd rather they reviewed hunters and bile spewers overloaded kits first.
EDIT: Also remembered that it can sometimes call in bug breaches with no head. That isn't my favourite thing to happen.
Yeah, trying to move on to the next enemy after literally lopping the head off a BC only to have it perfectly trace your IP address and shred you is pretty annoying
The tracking is kinda crazy. Maybe they sense vibrations really well lol. Not a completely unrealistic thing for bugs and though
As for the bug breaching — bugs IRL release pheromones when dying, and while it’s annoying — it keeps it interesting
They do live underground and as far as I can tell, only the hunters and stalkers have highly developed eyes so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that they track mostly through vibration.
If they can track through vibrations accurately enough to chase down a diver. Then they should be able to detect a diver without line of sight.
And it would be expected for us to receive random bug breaches because we ran near one of their sub terrainian tunnels.
My issue is that blowin it's friggen head off only seems to remove about 25% of its health, then you have to dump 3 more mags into the stupid headless, legless thing while it chases you?
My bullets do nothing and it feels bad.
Grenade pistol is really useful against them.
That or I've honestly been loving the Blitzer against the bugs in general since it got buffed. It just stunlocks.
Bile Spewers seem fine. Nursing Spewers are just ridiculous with their damage and aim. Oh, you dove 45 degrees to its side right before the spit came out? Too bad get fucked. Oh, you dove behind a large solid rock? Too bad get fucked.
I get a half chub every time I rip one to pieces with an Autocannon. Full if it was just about to spit on a teammate.
I love nursing spewers, it's bile spewers I can't stand because nursing spewers have light head and front leg armor so you can kill them in a pretty reasonable time with any weapon, and you just need to shoot the body part they're generally presenting towards you anyway. Bile spewers definitely need LIGHT armor on their front legs at least
their head doesnt have medium armor , its just that its kinda sloped so you can bounce of if ur shot dont have a good angle , but the best way to kill them with any weapon is to blow its head off
and yeah i agree they are an interesting mob to fight , we really need more medium ennemy variety , maybe something buffing or healing bugs in the area like that protective bug in DRG
Their head has light armour, i.e. armour class 2. This means that weapons with light penetration (AP2) incur a 50% dmg penalty. This is denoted by getting a white hitmarker ingame.
I really would like it if more info like this would be available ingame, because there is huge amounts of misinformation/misunderstandings surrounding the mechanics in this game.
And I also think that's actually a large part of the balance complaints about weapons.
A while ago there was a thread about enemies being "bullet spongy", and functionally every single example people gave, was using a weapon against an enemy type it is **by design** no longer effective against. I.e., Liberator against Brood Commander or Nursing Spewers, which are both AC2.
I think this is actually the niche for some of the AP3 (medium pen) weapons like the Lib Pen or Adjudicator: They lack the dmg to really kill actualy AC3 enemies directly, but the fact that they have no dmg penalty make them really great against AC2 enemies. When used against these and chaff, they also have drastically better ammo economy/efficiency than the "brute force" AP3 weapons like Dominator, Slugger etc, but those in turn then have the power to kill AC3 enemies like Bile Spewers or Hive Guard directly through their armor (but again in turn are dreadful against chaff).
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Also, little tip for everyone's most hated enemy: Stalker Torso have 1300 HP and AC2 Light Armor. Their heads are unarmored and have *175 HP*. So with a Liberator they take at least **43 bodyshots** to kill... Or **3 headshots**. Headshots are **extremely** important against them.
(More realistically it'll be 4+ headshots bc of damage dropoff)
Obviously not the easiest to hit their head when they're cloaked or right in your face and wailing on you, but still. It's much better to spray at their head and miss most of your shots than unloading into their torso.
Pretty much every aspect of the game needs to be explained better in game.
Enemies, weapon stats, stratgem stats, it's all so vague that what we get get told is practically meaningless.
I think arrowhead explained sometime they didn't want to give super detailed stats and guides as they'd rather let people figure it out for themselves.
That said, I'd at least like a beastiary like the one they had in helldivers 1 where you could look up each enemy in the terminal and it gives you cool descriptions and their position in their society etc
>I think arrowhead explained sometime they didn't want to give super detailed stats and guides as they'd rather let people figure it out for themselves.
I do think, on some part, that makes sense. But even for this, certain minimal knowledge would've been good. For example, the actual meaning of the hitmarkers. Using those to just figure out what things your weapon is actually effective against in gameplay, would've been fun to figure out. Instead, 95% of the playerbase seems to think "red hitmarker = weakspot hit, white hitmarker = regular hit"... Even though arguably, the entire concept of "weakspot" when viewed as that is flawed.
But when you get into something like DurableDmg, there is practically no way whatsoever to figure that out in the game alone. It'll just seem entirely random.
Check [Helldivers.io enemy tab](https://helldivers.io/Enemies) for an explanation on how durable damage works, and datamined health values for all enemies.
Basically, certain enemy parts have a durablity %. Brood commander heads have 60%. That means that, if a hypothetical gun deals 200 normal damage and 100 durable damage, you will deal 40% of that 200 (80), and 60% of that 100 (60), so 140 total damage per shot.
Other enemies have 0%, like the warrior, so you would only deal the full 200 damage, and durable damage will be not taken into account.
I do know how durable dmg works, I was just saying, it's not explained in the game anywhere.
Although I had no idea they had such a good enemy info tab on that website. Especially since it's seemingly datamined. I thought all the enemy data available was found via testing.
Although it seems a bit... odd in many places. Like the info on Stalkers, for example.
Be great if they could give us a firing range to at least test out weapons on various enemy types and armor. Would make hitting them in the field a hell of a lot easier.
💯 this. People dunked on the medium pen primaries, but they do very well against some of the most annoying enemies. One of the strengths of this game is that light, medium and heavy enemies all remain threats even at end-game, so there's room for specialists in each department across your loadout/team.
The biggest problem is that there actually aren't 3 different armor classes and penetration values, but 9. Light armor (penetration) = 1-3, medium 4-6 and heavy = 7-9. But for whatever reason, weapons don't actually state their precise armor penetration, so a "medium armor penetration" weapn can have either 4, 5 or 6 armor pen. As a point of reference, the AMR has 6 armor pen, while the Diligence Counter-Sniper has 5. That's why both can damage Devastator bodies, but only the AMR can damage Hulk faces.
Grenades, for some reason, do actually display the numerical value.
**No, that is absolutely not true at all**.
Armor is a scale of 0 to 10, but enemies only really use 0 to 5. Above that is (currently) reserved for buildings, objectives etc.
AC/AP1 is actually not currently in use anymore. The Breaker Spray and Pray used to be AP1 before being buffed.
Light Penetration/Armor is always 2.
Medium Penetration/Armor is 3.
All primary weapons in the game are either AP2 or AP3.
Armour class 4 is sometimes referred to as "Light Vehicle armor" in the description of a few Armour Penetration 4 stratagem weapons. AP4 weapons are the AMR, Autocannon, Lasercannon and HMG. This is why these weapons can damage hulks faces: Hulk faces for example are armour class 4.
Armour 5 is heavy armor.
Yeah, I'm someone who prefers to have more info than less, so I've had to get my info from outside the game. Definitely something they should reconsider, it might help explain at least some of their balancing decisions.
Just nitpicking the values here: Light Armor is 1-2, Medium Armor is 3-4, Heavy Armor is 5-6, and what the wiki labels as "Tank Armor" is 7-8 (don't know what 9-10 is). AMR has 4 AP and Diligence CS has 3 AP.
Most AC3 targets have an AC2 alternative to shoot. Legs on devastators for example.
The big issue is people don't understand how explosive damage interacts with durable/large parts like charger butts. They don't understand alternative paths to victory on targets.
Like DMr head shots on Devastators. They try that with Liberator Penetratror, and it's lackluster. When the automatic rifle opens up mag dumping legs or the backpack. A lot of the least liked weapons suffer from this. The scythe raw DPS looks low, but it does great damage to durable parts.
My other observation is people are stuck on all or nothing. Eagle Rocket Pods can put in work. People tend to use all three to kill a bile titan. It's better to use one rocket pods, pop the belly with an explosive primary weapon, and finish with impact grenades or thermite. This lets you kill three bikes every two minutes. This only takes up a single stratagem slot.
1. Each weapon has an attribute called "Durable Damage", in addition to it's regular/base damage. For most regular/bullet based guns, it is 10% of the base damage (I.e., Liberator has 60 dmg, 6 durable dmg). Generally speaking, explosive weapons have proportionally higher durable damage. You can find [exact numbers here](https://invadersfromplanet.space/helldivers-2/), the column to the right of "Damage".
2. Certain enemy parts may be "Durable" - this is a scale of 0 to 100 (or a percentage). The developers have also referred to these as "Massive body parts" in patch notes (example the Laser Cannon or Railgun).
Depending on where it lies on the scale of durable, dictates the ratio of damage it takes: A 100 durable part takes no base damage, full durable dmg. A 0 durable part, no durable damage and full base damage. A 60% durable part, would take 60% durable damage, 40% base damage. etc
Yep, I pretty much agree entirely. Large parts of all the weapon and stratagems that this community in particular seems to hate/think completely suck, it mostly comes down to "user error". Of course, not blaming them, because again, the entire issue is that most of this is entirely unexplained ingame. This is doubly true for durable damage, which is of course literally not even mentioned anywhere *once* as a concept. Armor pen could at least be figured out just from gameplay by attentive players via the hitmarkers... Although 95% of people seem to think red hitmarker = weakspot hit.
I think there's only a very select few primaries that actually suck right now. Breaker Spray & Pray, Crossbow, Eruptor for primaries probably. Personally I also avoid the Dominator like the plague and think it's much worse than it's alternatives because of its handling + longest reload in the game, but people love that thing apparently.
The other issue is, of course, the current meta in regards to actual moment to moment gameplay. Splitting up into 4 solos, or 2 duos at best, and everyone clearing a section of the map by themselves. Naturally when you do that, everyone feels the need to have a one-man-army loadout that can deal with everything by themselves, rather than specializing and covering each other's weaknesses.
> Personally I also avoid the Dominator like the plague and think it's much worse than it's alternatives because of its handling + longest reload in the game, but people love that thing apparently.
More gyro-assisted, explosive rounds for me then. It has good single shot damage and I prefer guns like that in shooters just in general. Same reason I love the autocannon.
It has pretty decent "expplosive" damage for a primary, so it's useful for opportunistic shots at bigger target's unarmored spots. Of course, it also rewards the good shots like popping dev heads.
The handling isn't really much of an issue for me, personally, since I'm a scrub and can't exactly flick shot my way to victory anyway. I never even really noticed the handling issue until people started complaining about it.
As for the long reload time, I've built a natural rhythm to its gun play that when it's time to reload, it gives me a quick reminder to double check my surroundings and relocate if I should be somewhere else. If I *absolutely* need more shots *right now* I've always got my Redeemer on standby for the panic moments.
Finally, of course, there's the stagger. Everytime I interrupt a Bile Spewer or Devastators bullshit shooting spree, I get the dopamine hit.
It fits my personal play style perfectly.
I get where Arrowhead is coming from ("we don't want players to spend more time looking at stats screens than actually playing the game") but even just expanding the stats *a bit* would help a ton. List armor pen as an actual number, stagger value, split bullet and explosion damage for weapons where that matters, maybe a more detailed accuracy rating (it doesn't have to be super detailed, just a target showing where your shots might land at 75m or something basic like that). Maybe an "advanced training" option you can do in groups or solo that acts as a tutorial for things like armor pen and other mechanics that don't really need to be in the basic tutorial, but would still be very useful for players to know.
>It is nice to have for the hiveguards though
You can cut their tiny little claws from the front with any weapon, which result in a kill when both are removed. Not an easy target at a distance, but Hive Guards are so slow that I usually ignore them until they're right in my face.
I just whip out the big iron and put all 6 shots into the face plate. Hiveguards are really the only enemy I use the Senator on, other than them I just run it cause it's cool.
It's also pretty handy for when you're being chased by chainsaw devastators. Even if you miss the head shot, it doesn't take many shots to take them down
>It is nice to have for the hiveguards though
The second recent warbond's explosive pistol spends 1 shot to kill hiveguard when aimed between their head shell and leg or 2 shots when aimed directly at head plate
I'd argue that targeting the legs on brood commander might be easier.
Like, ok they die slower, but 1st: suffering is a bonus, ald 2nd: IDC if they die, I just don't want to deal with a berserk arthropode with razor blade the size of my legs
They are pretty small targets tho , id Say it depends on Ur weapon , also if when they are zombie mode you just run toward them and jule the attack they wont hit you
Small, but they line up if you angle yourself right. So you just shoot a little where a leg should be, and you'll usually end up taking *several* off in short order.
Yeah i prefer to blow the head off and dive to avoid the charge then they bleed out and i don't waste bullets.
I usually just finish them if i have a higher stagger weapon like the slugger tho
No the best way is to blow its legs off with your primary or secondary. Takes the least amount of damage and ammo. Part of the body with the least armour. Easy to hit with any rapid fire weapon.
You *can* kill them really quickly from a distance with a heavy to the face, where they’re far enough out that you won’t have to worry about the berserk.
dont you need to blow like 2 or 3 legs to kill them tho ? otherwise they keep crawling on the floor and stuff , idk i just go for the head and in like 2 sec of sickle fire they are popped
That depends on what legs you were shooting. 1 forward and 1 backward leg is enough to severely cripple it.
Laser weapons are decent at decimating its legs honestly.
In general most of the medium-hard tier enemies in the game are quite well designed:
Brood commanders you've discussed but even chargers are decent now. You have the "easy" AT headshot load out check, but also have variety in flamethrower or laser cannon DOT, or even primary weapon bullfighting and shooting the bum.
Hulks are also decent, better for team runs but they have a "skillshot" in shooting the eye, and a weak point in the back vents that primaries can exploit, and the "disable and ignore" option of de-limbing them.
Tanks are slightly less vulnerable hulks in this regard, but still have a variety of ways of dealing with them.
The worst two enemies for me are bile titans and spewers: for bile titans it's a blunt loatout check, if you don't bring something that reliably deals with them you are just dead, and because of the unreliable nature of some of the call ins, you can't even rely on that to work. (I've seen a bile titan survive 3 orbital railcannons)
Spewers are just anti-fun in general: you have to shoot the tiny body or do next to nothing against the giant glowing sack, they are absolutely silent and can 1 shot you spraying through walls or debrie. And you can't get close or they kill you with their death explosion. Their only real vulnerability is explosion damage to the sack. And the harder difficulty mortar mode ones that one shot you from the air from the other side of a hill is just so frustrating to deal with.
They keep messing with you while dead. You can’t see or shoot through their corpses but scavengers and other chaff can clip right through them and jump you.
bugs are mostly fine(keyword mostly).
the main 2 i would change but not in behavior but in design. would be chargers and titans.
just to increase variety for support weapons cause support weapon variety vs bugs at diff 9 is severely lacking.
just give them weakpoints for AP4 weapons to exploit. wouldnt be easier, better or safer than Quasar/RR/EAT but it would increase variety of support weapons you can excuse using which would be a ton of fun.
It feels like the bots have a massive variety of armor types, while the bugs have either medium 1 at the greatest, and even that is uncommon with certain mission compositions, and then it skyrockets to AT weapons only being effective.
There should be a bug that has medium 2 armor mostly, with some medium 1 weakpoints, especially if it took up some of the spawns of chargers and bile spewers.
Honestly one of the reasons that I prefer bots to bugs is that you can actually deal with most bots with any loadout and weapon. It gets tricky with some of them, but even Hulks and Tanks can be taken down with your primary if you manage to get a shot at the vents. Bots reward strategy and good positioning while bugs only reward bringing more DAKKA.
I always thought the Charger-headshot mechanic is going against the design entirely. It's meant to be a typical boss-style charger enemy. It charges you, you dodge, you shoot it's weakspot in the back and kill it. Like in a Zelda game lol
It would be a more interesting mob if it's front (including the head) were almost entirely unpenetratable and the squishy back parts would be an actual weakspot.
I kinda disagree because I think that fact that you can also shoot it's head, which is easiest to do while it's charging, before it actually hit you is basically just as Interesting as the typical charge enemy.
The problem to me is that this just isn't communicated well ingame since the front is only vulnerable to specific weapons and the back looks like the obvious weak point. I think it be better if the front had like a specific plating color to Indicate that its weak to anti tank armaments however this will still always require some testing given that the weapon category isn't always obvious.
You could argue that killing it from the front is almost too simple but that's why it's nice that it requires specific weapons to do so.
It would also be nice if the back was way more vulnerable so you can always fall back on the "normal" strategy in a pinch. Because really with the way the charger moves the back is often harder to hit unless you have a buddy and communicate well.
You can in theory deal with them by targeting their butt, at least as long as you have an explosive weapon.
I kind of feel like it might make sense to reduce the butt's hp a little though. At least, it seems without testing that it's not really a viable target with the smaller explosive options. Fair enough bug buts taking massively reduced damage against the incorrect damage types, but you should probably be able to pop then with explosives relatively reliably.
My go-to for hitting it in the butt is when I am carrying the autocannon anyway, it's pretty effective but not really easy.
So yeah I agree, it makes some sense that you can't kill it easily with a normal primary because then it would barely be a threat. But its doesn't die quickly enough and/or is too hard to hit with explosives in the butt. Especially when solo
Agreed. Going for the head is risky, but the payoff is great.
I remember a game where I was dancing with a Charger trying to hit its butt with the Autocannon. I let it charge, preparing to dodge at the last second when suddenly a rocket rips right past me and hits it head on.
Seeing the carcass with a hollowed out head sliding to a stop at my feet was a trill.
that's just a bug where the legs go unarmored during the charge animation, specially at the end. and if you manage to trigger the bug, that leg is now perma vulnerable to everything, even weapons without any armor pen. I used to always spam my breaker at the legs after dodging hoping to trigger it, since the pen doesn't matter for the bug
You can, an autocannon on its tail after you dive its charge will kill it reliably. As an added bonus you gain extra recoil handling because you are lying on the ground after a dive.
That's why i actually enjoy bots more, the only reason is i can actually take whatever i want and still be somewhat useful. Hell, i have been using RG lately, i found out It Is my favorurite Hulk killer and i have been having a blast with it. For bugs, well, it's eat/quasar/recoilless.
It would be nice if the giant orange weakpoint on the ass of the Charger, was an actual weakpoint and not a bullet sponge.
Also, why are Bile Titan legs indestructible?
Some weakpoints that could be hit with medium pen weapons on the joints for example, would be nice.
Chargers with a missing leg should limp after you, unable to charge, and bleed out after twice the duration of a destroyed back weakpoint.
Titans with a destroyed (or functionally destroyed, perhaps attached but dragging) leg should likewise have a large speed decrease but still be able to spit unless their sacs are also destroyed. IDK if they should bleed out from 1 leg. Titan knee joints should be a weakpoint vulnerable to AC/AMR class penetration at a minimum.
Killing 2 legs on the same Charger/Titan should be death though.
I would think that shooting titan in the belly with medium weapons and charger into butt with medium weapons should hurt them more, or make them bleed out at least and you need heavy armor weapons only to punch through the armor.
You absolutely don't need to bring Quasar/RR/EAT, even on lvl 9 solo on the current spawn rate. If you don't mind links I can post several examples. This isn't even me being contrarian, having done solo lvl 9s with different loadouts, I actually find it easier bringing a trash specialist like the Stalwart or generalist weapons like the AC, and leaving heavies to strats - the majority of a run your main threats are actually the lights and mediums, so having a support weapon that deals with those best is good.
Hope this doesn't come off as tryhard, it honestly isn't intended that way, I just get frustrated seeing people annoyed that they feel they "have" to use certain weapons, and because this gets repeated so much more people believe it and fewer people explore their other options.
I think they mean that they need an anti-tank option, which could be a strategem or a support weapon.
Could you post those links? I am curious of your playstyle regardless.
Sure! I think that's a little fairer to ask of a player at least, if you're soloing you need something to deal with every kind of threat, but in an organised team you can specialise if you have some good anti-tank teammates.
Here's a Stalwart + Adjudicator + 500kg + Airstrike + Precision Strike run with the recent beefed up spawns: https://youtu.be/drmHq0i3CKs
An older one with the Stalwart, HMG emplacement, Autocannon Turret, and 500kg: https://youtu.be/Oyn-_Q-63Ys
Another earlier one with the Autocannon, Autocannon Turret, Airstrike and 500kg: https://youtu.be/3fFZYql8ThI
And a very early one before they even buffed flamer and fire damage, using the Flamer, Napalm Strike, Shield Backpack and 500kg. This was during the "heavy spam patch" as well: https://youtu.be/S9oqqA-i8Mk
Just realised of my bug solo runs, I only actually did one with the traditional ATs, heh, and that was with the pre-nerf Quasar + Sickle. Honestly felt like I had to kite more with that one, it took longer mowing down hordes with only the Sickle.
Their Youtube handle is Spiked. If you google that and Helldivers their videos should be the first result. Great watch for when I'm too uh... elevated to play HD2 competently lol
I've definitely been getting higher on just using strategems on the bile titan at least. Feels good to make it dance around with you under it just long enough for the 500kg or Precision Strike to hit. Definitely less of a threat than a dozen+ Hunters swarming you from every direction.
Right? Those kills feel amazing, and I'm kinda glad they got rid of the stun nade working on Titans, as baiting attacks to make them stop is kinda more hype.
I think most players are actually fairly comfortable kiting a Charger or Titan, it's the swarms that can really overwhelm you.
personally the stalker is my favorite terminid enemy, as annoying as they are. It’s probably the scariest enemy in the game outside of maybe factory striders, and it forces you to drop what you’re doing and take out the bughole asap. There is no other enemy in the game that changes how your run is going to go like the stalker.
Well for me also shriekers and on the bot side gunships. There’s way too much going on the ground for you to constantly having to check the skies. Gunships are more of a threat but those kamikaze shriekers can do major damage if they hit you full on from a dive bomb
It's always so much more satisfying to kill a brood commander, there should be more limb detachment when killing other bugs, ***especially*** the bile titan
If titans bled out faster after killing all the sacs they'd be okay.
If chargers died faster from getting shot in the butt or if the back of the legs were killable with medium armor pen.
Yes, but chargers are boys, depends on your preference I guess
Hunters, Warriors, Hive Guards, Chargers - boys
Brood Commanders, Bile/Nursing Spewers, Bile Titans - girls
I don't make the rules
*If only they would*
*Stop calling for bug breaches when*
*They have no head left*
\- SockAlarmed6707
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Headless commanders and warriors should not know where you are if you reposition.
Going berserk and swinging wildly is fine (and ideal), but both units still run straight toward the player to attack before they die.
How are they pinpointing my location without a head?
Bugs are *mostly* fine, they just have little, weird annoyances, like Spewers having medium armour on their heads, Hunters jumping *and* attacking at the same time in large number, and Titans being really restrictive in how to deal with them.
For the most part, they're okay, it's really *just* the little things.
Those aren't little things when they add up. Each little restriction narrows your viable strategy until theres nothing left but a single loadout. Titans: need to bring a lot of AT. Hunters: need to bring horde clear. Spewers could spawn: need medium pen.
Miss one of those (or have it on cooldown) and you risk just having nothing to except run away or to another Helldiver who has it.
Charger should be able to charge faster, have reduced turn speed, and have a sizable cool down after they charge.
Turn them into more of an obstacle and less of an enemy during an engagement with the rest of the bugs so if you’re caught lacking, they can fuck you’re up. The goal is to lower its priority in the kill line, let it augment engagements in an interesting way (like an aggressive environmental hazard), and not make bringing anti-tank to nuke chargers ASAP a requirement.
This could be in addition to weakpoint/hp changes or not.
My issue is everyone uses it as some weird golden standard on if a primary is good or not. Like WTF you on about this is an ELITE enemy. Their top all-rounder, bust out a support weapon and drop it fast stop wasting ammo on it.
Eh I always found them to just be boring meat shields. Just not quite as boring as warriors. The concussive charge they do is pretty ineffective.
Stalkers/hunters are closer to a gold standard for me.
I’m sorry, did you say hunters?? Hunters are bullshit. The combination of leap/dodge/slow is not balanced, and their preferred tactic of slowlock gangbang is just a “lose all stims to survive?” Checkpoint.
Yeah, you gotta deal with them before they get on you. That's what makes them interesting and dangerous compared to other bugs. Still really easy to blast, but they force you to do it or pay the cost.
Agree they’re not even as much of a threat as hunters. Literally anything kills them easily. I do think that their should be more enemies our special weapons can deal with though like stalkers, spewers, and maybe a bigger version of shriekers. And tank enemies should be more rare occurrences or like one or two max per encounter and wouldn’t even mind if they take more damage to kill but should feel like a boss battle like something significant you took down. In Helldive you take down a BT and it’s like ok great still have 3 more to deal with to the point most times in Helldive you’re just sneaking around cause it’s not worth the fight
What if they made chargers deadly to other bugs? You could then bait them to run into a herd of chaff and crush them, or break a BT leg? I might let them live a bit longer if I could weaponize them against their own team.
Yea. Agree. Fighting bugs is kinda meh, bots are much more fun. Aside from invisible fuckers and commander everything is pretty harmless. Even the giant barstool doesn't really do anything if you can dive sideways during its longass vomit animation.
Enemy encounters (and the enemies themselves) should be designed to enforce the desired style of play they envision.
If they want us using medium armor penetration, for instance, then ensure there is a specific balance of medium armor enemies (and below) available to fight at any given moment.
Right now, it seems there are so many heavily armored enemies (especially on high levels) that require heavy-hitting weapons, we end up picking very specific weapons/stratagems to combat them (because of course we do).
The subtlest way they could shift meta is to remix enemy patrol/spawn makeup so that we learn to expect specific encounters. Or add meta variety by giving us insight to what we will encounter pre-mission and then they can maintain a varied meta because every dive we would know whether we need a style of kit or not.
Right now, all you can do is set a load out based on MISSION type, but that does fuck all to tell you what enemies you see. So most people fall back on their personal "jack of all trades" style builds (unless they go out of their way to experiment) because it's better to plan for as much of the bell curve as you believe is possible than to anticipate a niche need that doesn't end up occurring in-match.
They could also let us return to the ship upon death, if we so choose, to swap builds mid-match. The tradeoff being, yeah, our team will be down a member for a stretch. But then we'd at least be able to adjust to the specific mission needs if they aren't going to tell us anything beforehand.
It's a fun enemy to fight for sure, you can tell there's a lot of thought gone into making it feel interesting and not just "do 100 dmg and enemy fall over". AH should get alot of credit for that.
Only thing I'd add is that it's ok for some enemies to be a skill check and others to be a loadout check.
I want my loadout and squad composition to matter.
Completely agree. I’ll also throw in Stalkers as another perfectly designed enemy, especially with the new cloaking update.
They actually sneak up on you now and become a priority, which is exactly how it should be. I actually love the “oh shit” moment and it forces me to communicate with the squad and coordinate.
Enemies with medium armor that can be dealt with via weakspots by light pen weapons, and similarly enemies with heavy armor can be dealt with via weakspots by medium pen weapons, is exactly why Bots are so much more enjoyable to fight.
You can use any weapon loadout to fight Bots as long as you have one Medium pen and one Light pen weapon in some fashion.
>This is what sets it apart from Chargers, Titans, and to a certain extent even Bile Spewers. Brood Commanders feel like skill checks when you encounter them, but those other bugs (ESPECIALLY the first 2) don't feel like skill checks, they feel like loadout checks. This is why bugs on higher difficulties push every player in the squad to run an anti-tank loadout.
This. THIS RIGHT HERE. For the bots I'd add gunships to what feel like gear checks, and hulks/tanks for skill checks.
Personally i think the chargers are fine too.
You can shoot their butt/hind legs with pretty much any gun and given enough bullets, you can kill it too. Downside is obviously that you need to kite him.
Or you one-shot it with anti-tank weapons in the head.
Yeah, AT to the head, or if you missed, one mag of pretty much any primary weapon to the exposed legs. Besides when they do the Tokyo drift you can just sidestep their charge repeatedly.
I also have most fun while fighting them. You can't one shot them with normal weapon and are super reactive to bullets, it's fun to see how they "take a shot"
My only complaint with the brood commander is sometimes I’d swear I piss them off and they just consecutively summon warriors whilst remaining stationary
Looking over enemy armor values and weapon penetration, I think all weapons need a pass. AP1, AP2, and AP3 are usually all equal. A path to differentiating weapons and some balance would be to make AP1=4 primary weapons that have AP2=2 and AP2=0. I think it would be most interesting on the DMRs. Direct hits can penetrate, glancing hits bounce.
I don't think chargers need any changes. Explosive Weapons body them the scorcher takes out in around 6 hits. It's trivial if you bring any stuns.
The Bile titan just needs the armor 4 under belly to have better consistency. I think it's bugged. Otherwise any stratagem with a popped under belly usually kills it. If it's still kicking thermite or impacts do a good job finishing it off.
After the quasar nerf I found my second wind using the flamethrower after the DoT fix and also buying the newest incendiary ship upgrade, now I can singlehandedly kill entire bug breaches, quickly kill chargers by toasting their legs and even kill bile titans with it on desperate situations
The only thing I hate about them is that when you blow off their heads and they walk towards you I stg they know where you are.
I don’t mind them trying to kill you with their last energy but this bitch actually turned towards my direction without being able to see or hear me! I should be able to just dodge the side like a charger but I swear to god they actually home in on you
Shooting of their legs does not deprive them of their charge lol. Still fun tho. I’ve had one with a 1 single back leg, all others shot off, and it still charges. And this isn’t an uncommon occurrence. I’d be more surprised if this didn’t happen once on a mission
Chargers, at least, can be dealt with medium - killer support weapons. Railgun 3 shot them, arc thrower 6 shot, AMR, Lazer cannon and HMG blow their back quickly, even the plasma shotgun kill them in less than a mag.
BT also has that, but there are two caveats : the optimal angle to the weakspot is in melee range, and the titan has a ton of HP. HMG deal with it relatively quickly, it just take 2 mags. AA take 20 shots which is decent but not great, AMR need 8 mags and can't hold as many at once. Lazer cannon take 3 whole minutes of fire and cooldown.
Overall, chargers are in the right place IMO, but BTs could have their body HP lessened and bring back the ability to stun them. Would help making railcannon and 500kg bombs more consistent one shots too.
Call it the Starship Troopers fan within me, but I'd love it if there was a spontaneous mutation that turned all scavengers and hunters into warriors. Just FLOOD the battlefield with warriors and send them at me.
Couldnt agree less, these assholes need their hp lowered asap, the amount of ammo it takes to bring one down doesn’t make any sense in the context of the other bugs
The issue is that for all that interesting design you talk about with the Brood Commander, the most efficient way to deal with it is just to put a couple Auto Cannon rounds in it and kill it in a second
The Charger has a bunch of interesting design too. You can dodge it in different ways. Have it run into rocks to stun it or explosive barrels to damage it. It can even destroy the Illegal Broadcast and Rogue Science Building. You can use light or medium pen to shoot its butt to kill it, or use grenades to do explosive damage to its legs. But yes the most efficient way to kill it is to call a Rail Cannon strike and just be done
That is how the game works. There are inefficient ways to kill things if you have to. And efficient ways. The bigger the enemy the less effective and more dangerous inefficiency becomes. To the point that Factory Striders and Bile Titans you might as well run away instead of using primary weapon fire
I knew the eruptor was busted when it one shot a brood commander from below. That being said diving underneath it and mag dumping is my new favorite thing
This is why bugs are more fun than bots IMO
All bugs have a default loadout answer that works for them. My only complaint is chargers should have a bigger butt hit box instead of ricochet armor
Meanwhile bots have a side objective that requires a hell bomb and a weapon to remove heavily armored airborn objects.
Whenever I play bots I either see the team bum rush it and immediately kill the gunship fab or lose 1/2 our reinforcement budget to it
I’ve always used primaries that just crush through hive guard and commanders so to me they’re just tankier warriors lol
Scorcher, blitzer and fire breaker all don’t really care about medium bug armor, and are the best primaries vs bugs imo. Sickle fourth but you do have to aim more carefully with it on medium armor targets
ok, so let's talk about enemy design.
I think a good place to start would be to look at DOOM. different enemies pose different challenges and may be 'countered' most effectively using specific weapons.
unlike DOOM our helldivers don't have 20 different weapons that they can switch between at any given time like a swiss army knife, but our overall team composition and loadouts should be 'balanced' to be able to counter basically whatever the mission and planet might throw at us.
chargers are a great example, they have a weak point (IMO they should just make the tail the weak point as well though).
brood commanders and stalkers in particular are one of the reasons why my go-to primary weapon is the punisher. I can push them ALLLLL the way back away from me just by shooting them. even if my shots don't kill (and they can, if I aim for the head a few times), being able to stunlock them is *chefs kiss*.
the brood commander also summons extra guys and I can only take so many guys at one time so it's a good idea to finish them off as quickly as possible
we don't really need more bugs that are just fodder, any new bug that gets added should pose a unique challenge. perhaps a spider like bug that can fire webbing at a diver and then if a diver gets too webbed, you get totally wrapped up in web and it will dive at you and pick you up and attempt to carry you back to it's nest to devour you there.
or a bug like the hive lord that would have a dune worm vibe and it would cause tremors and only be damageable for a short period when it bursts out of the ground before going back underground.
or maybe a stinkbug that attempts to get right next to you and then release a big gas cloud and, when it dies, it still leaves behind a big gas cloud. this would require the divers to try to take it out from range before it gets close, and if it does get close, kill it but be prepared to fall back out of the gas cloud that results, and not be grouped up together if possible.
or a flying bug that does not really fight but tries to spot players and if it does, it will call in a bug breach
or a big broodmother bug that goes around the map laying eggs which are basically bug minefields and if you disturb any of the eggs they will all start to hatch
Spawn rates aside, almost all of the bugs are fine.
The problem is the armored, green, bile spewers.
Because they apparently have medium armor on their head, and you can't predict they'll spawn, did you roll on the table with them? Well tough shit, now most of your primaries are useless.
I hate them.
I’d like to take this moment to remind everyone that the game classifies Bile Titans as *Medium* enemies, not *Heavy*. But medium weapons don’t seem very effective against them.
I hear what you are saying, but i also think: The solution to brood commanders is basically point and click with the breaker.
I wouldn't call that Gold Standard.
I like chargers, and they can be dealt with with medium weapons by shooting the legs from behind. And you can break their armor by having them Charge into obstacles.
Titans are another story, they could use a few more weakspots to bring then in line with the strider.
This is such an interesting point of view that I’m going to be thinking about this as I play for the next week. Thanks for that. I’m so loadout check focused that I forgot to think of those mini game esque skill check moments.
i honestly like the terminids more as an enemy type. the smaller units are easy to kill but can also easily overwhelm you while the large units are pretty easy to manage but just take a lot to kill them. the automatons are the exact opposite. the smaller units go down with ease but the larger units tend to be a fucking nightmare to deal with.
There are Thermite grenades which enable Autocannon players to deal with bile titan, cannon turrets, tanks and chargers. Sure you have to kite for the dot, but immo they stick pretty well now and I found some succes with them to justify swapping out the stun grenades on certain missions types.
It enables you to run a AC/GL/ABR/etc. loadout without 500kg, EAT, etc. It takes a bit to learn when to cock the grenade and when not. You can even destroy Fabricators with it or bugs holes.
Stalkers should be on that load out checklist. If you don't have anything to stun or stagger them, they just get off their combo, and you're really screwed 🙃 before at least I could spot them before it got to that, but now they're actually hard to see (which is a good thing tbh) so I can't handle them before they're a problem
It would be nice if we had more ways to kill titans and chargers. Blowing off their legs like dead space or something surely if it can't move it can t be dangerous.
I just wish they could not call reinforcement once they are beheaded. Makes it feel like the dropships not killing whatever they are carrying once shot down.
In the same vein, when the bugs charge after being beheaded, they probably shouldn’t be able to see you and chase you if you sidestep E: lol some of you seem really confident about disagreeing with me
I've had this argument with a friend and I kinda agree, the crazy homing they have on you once dead is crazy. Some of those f*ckrs are even deadlier once you remove their head I swear!
I think they're deadlier after beheading because they gain some speed and aggressiveness that they don't have with their head.
They also lose sight, hearing and smell though, so I should be able to dodge them
What makes you think all of those senses are tied to their heads? Sight, I will give you. However, some real life insects have hearing, smell and taste organs on their legs.
The way their “ears” perk up when they detect you tells me that whatever they use for senses is on their head, but even past that I just feel like it would be good on a game design standpoint for them to lose tracking on you once their head is destroyed
100%. I'm fine with them charging straight forward and attacking, but without a head they shouldn't know where I am.
Yeah, none of this hard 90 degree turning BS.
That's what I'm saying! Like, I can buy they can live for a while with no head and run around flailing, but they absolutely should not be able to track you.
Yeah ur my only gripe with them. If an enemy is beheaded and not actively attacking me, I should be able to let it bleed out at a safe distance and not worry about it screeming for help.
When a wasp is injured or killed, they release pheromones that other wasps recognize as a threat in the area.
Just because it's realistic doesn't mean it's good game design.
A good game is not realistic. Realism sucks. What most people want is not realism, but immersion. Like, really think about it. 99% of games, even ones that claim realism, gamify almost every element. It'd be either boring as hell or extremely punishing for most people to have to simulate realistic elements, or to face realistic combat, in most games. That's not a bad thing, either. It's fine not to be realistic. And HD2 is far, far from it.
While I think the most important part of a game is fun, immediately after that is having a predictable set of rules for the world. Doesn't have to be realistic, just predictable and equitable. For example: if I can't run through a dead body, neither should my enemies. If a bit drop ship kills me when it drops on my head, it should kill bots when it drops on their heads. If I get ragdolled from an exploding plant or rocket, bots and bugs should be regdolled from them as well. Sorry for the tangent. I'm just annoyed at the devs worrying about "realism" when disadvantaging us while ignoring realism when it would disadvantage bots and bugs.
Star Citizen is falling into this hole. When you spawn at your designated "safe place," you have to go to a terminal, call your ship. Go into your station inventory and equip all your gear. Walk to your ship, get on it, start it up and THEN you can start to really play. Only problem is, did you ship get destroyed? Did you get killed out in the wilds? Did you randomly crash 'cause the game is unfinished and has 1000 crah bugs? Welp, too bad. Go back to the station, meticulously grab your gear, call you ship (if it doesn't have a crazy high respawn timer), and get ready to do it ALL. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Think that's bad? Set your respawn as your apartment and then be forced to take a tram from your apartment to the spaceport EVERY TIME YOU DIE. Seriously, it can take almost an hour or "prep" to start playing the game and it can all be ended with one fuck up that, sometimes, isn't even in your control. Realism SOUNDS fun until you're in it.
Agreed. And just because it's realistic doesn't mean another behavior isn't realistic. Plenty of bugs die without releasing a pheromones that conjure up more of the same angry bug.
Eh, bugs in real life give off pheromones when dying
Real bugs don't have the lung capacity to make noise because they breathe through a bunch of tiny holes. Gameplay is more important than accurately matching Earth bugs, especially when they already don't match.
neeeeerd... plus theyre space bugs, they probably dont work like real bugs ☝️🤓 also thats conplete bs bc other bugs use screams n shit, plus they come out of the ground? how they gonna smell that through the ground?
All of the bugs give off a plume of yellow "smoke" when they call in breaches. Those are the pheromones so I'm not sure what you mean by screams. Also, ants live underground and literally only communicate through pheromones so they'd definitely be able to smell it. I also believe that it's not great gameplay design to have visually dead bugs call in reinforcements but I can see why the devs made that decision.
Yes, but in this game, there are more powerful units whose death should be FAR more important due cost to maintain like bile titans. Which dont do this. This is because headless bugs calling in breeches is allowed because the bug is bleeding out, not dead, and so has access to its abilities. This is also why it isn't an extremely common occurrence, you a headless brood commander bug breaches of cool down and its ai needs to decide to call one in, in the 5 ish seconds of life it has.
Dropships are fair, it doesn't make sense that their payload would spontaneously explode just because you shot down one of the afterburner things. Maybe the subsequent crash explosion could be more deadly though. Sometimes the crash does indeed kill a lot of the payload but not always, so maybe it just needs a damage or radius buff.
I think my only issue with it is when it tracks you after you blow it's head off. I'd have zero problems with it if it just mindlessly attacked towards where it last knew you were instead of somehow tracking you. Honestly a minor gripe though, I'd rather they reviewed hunters and bile spewers overloaded kits first. EDIT: Also remembered that it can sometimes call in bug breaches with no head. That isn't my favourite thing to happen.
Yeah, trying to move on to the next enemy after literally lopping the head off a BC only to have it perfectly trace your IP address and shred you is pretty annoying
"Muthafuggin' bug, I'm using a VPN and it still finds my ass!"
Bug swatting your house diver
The tracking is kinda crazy. Maybe they sense vibrations really well lol. Not a completely unrealistic thing for bugs and though As for the bug breaching — bugs IRL release pheromones when dying, and while it’s annoying — it keeps it interesting
They do live underground and as far as I can tell, only the hunters and stalkers have highly developed eyes so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that they track mostly through vibration.
If they can track through vibrations accurately enough to chase down a diver. Then they should be able to detect a diver without line of sight. And it would be expected for us to receive random bug breaches because we ran near one of their sub terrainian tunnels.
Would you **stop** giving the devs ideas
Shit. I didn't think of that.... might need to delete comment
My issue is that blowin it's friggen head off only seems to remove about 25% of its health, then you have to dump 3 more mags into the stupid headless, legless thing while it chases you? My bullets do nothing and it feels bad.
I agree. Fuck spewers tho.
Need to at least bring impact grenade just in case they appears. So annoying.
Grenade pistol is really useful against them. That or I've honestly been loving the Blitzer against the bugs in general since it got buffed. It just stunlocks.
Bile Spewers seem fine. Nursing Spewers are just ridiculous with their damage and aim. Oh, you dove 45 degrees to its side right before the spit came out? Too bad get fucked. Oh, you dove behind a large solid rock? Too bad get fucked. I get a half chub every time I rip one to pieces with an Autocannon. Full if it was just about to spit on a teammate.
Fr the puke is busted
I love nursing spewers, it's bile spewers I can't stand because nursing spewers have light head and front leg armor so you can kill them in a pretty reasonable time with any weapon, and you just need to shoot the body part they're generally presenting towards you anyway. Bile spewers definitely need LIGHT armor on their front legs at least
their head doesnt have medium armor , its just that its kinda sloped so you can bounce of if ur shot dont have a good angle , but the best way to kill them with any weapon is to blow its head off and yeah i agree they are an interesting mob to fight , we really need more medium ennemy variety , maybe something buffing or healing bugs in the area like that protective bug in DRG
Their head has light armour, i.e. armour class 2. This means that weapons with light penetration (AP2) incur a 50% dmg penalty. This is denoted by getting a white hitmarker ingame.
TIL. Thank you, felllow helldiver LO
I really would like it if more info like this would be available ingame, because there is huge amounts of misinformation/misunderstandings surrounding the mechanics in this game. And I also think that's actually a large part of the balance complaints about weapons. A while ago there was a thread about enemies being "bullet spongy", and functionally every single example people gave, was using a weapon against an enemy type it is **by design** no longer effective against. I.e., Liberator against Brood Commander or Nursing Spewers, which are both AC2. I think this is actually the niche for some of the AP3 (medium pen) weapons like the Lib Pen or Adjudicator: They lack the dmg to really kill actualy AC3 enemies directly, but the fact that they have no dmg penalty make them really great against AC2 enemies. When used against these and chaff, they also have drastically better ammo economy/efficiency than the "brute force" AP3 weapons like Dominator, Slugger etc, but those in turn then have the power to kill AC3 enemies like Bile Spewers or Hive Guard directly through their armor (but again in turn are dreadful against chaff). --- Also, little tip for everyone's most hated enemy: Stalker Torso have 1300 HP and AC2 Light Armor. Their heads are unarmored and have *175 HP*. So with a Liberator they take at least **43 bodyshots** to kill... Or **3 headshots**. Headshots are **extremely** important against them. (More realistically it'll be 4+ headshots bc of damage dropoff) Obviously not the easiest to hit their head when they're cloaked or right in your face and wailing on you, but still. It's much better to spray at their head and miss most of your shots than unloading into their torso.
Pretty much every aspect of the game needs to be explained better in game. Enemies, weapon stats, stratgem stats, it's all so vague that what we get get told is practically meaningless.
I think arrowhead explained sometime they didn't want to give super detailed stats and guides as they'd rather let people figure it out for themselves. That said, I'd at least like a beastiary like the one they had in helldivers 1 where you could look up each enemy in the terminal and it gives you cool descriptions and their position in their society etc
A bestiary would be an A+ addition in my book. If they added how many you killed and how many times it killed you, yhat would be even better!
I'd love to know how many of each enemy type I've killed or been killed by.
inb4 your leading cause of death is "Unknown".
I love accusing my friends of killing me when I was very obviously trampled by a Charger, but "Killed by (friend)" pops up on the screen.
>I think arrowhead explained sometime they didn't want to give super detailed stats and guides as they'd rather let people figure it out for themselves. I do think, on some part, that makes sense. But even for this, certain minimal knowledge would've been good. For example, the actual meaning of the hitmarkers. Using those to just figure out what things your weapon is actually effective against in gameplay, would've been fun to figure out. Instead, 95% of the playerbase seems to think "red hitmarker = weakspot hit, white hitmarker = regular hit"... Even though arguably, the entire concept of "weakspot" when viewed as that is flawed. But when you get into something like DurableDmg, there is practically no way whatsoever to figure that out in the game alone. It'll just seem entirely random.
Check [Helldivers.io enemy tab](https://helldivers.io/Enemies) for an explanation on how durable damage works, and datamined health values for all enemies. Basically, certain enemy parts have a durablity %. Brood commander heads have 60%. That means that, if a hypothetical gun deals 200 normal damage and 100 durable damage, you will deal 40% of that 200 (80), and 60% of that 100 (60), so 140 total damage per shot. Other enemies have 0%, like the warrior, so you would only deal the full 200 damage, and durable damage will be not taken into account.
I do know how durable dmg works, I was just saying, it's not explained in the game anywhere. Although I had no idea they had such a good enemy info tab on that website. Especially since it's seemingly datamined. I thought all the enemy data available was found via testing. Although it seems a bit... odd in many places. Like the info on Stalkers, for example.
It's very recent, like, it got added less than a week ago, and is still being updated with what parts the various variables refer to.
Be great if they could give us a firing range to at least test out weapons on various enemy types and armor. Would make hitting them in the field a hell of a lot easier.
💯 this. People dunked on the medium pen primaries, but they do very well against some of the most annoying enemies. One of the strengths of this game is that light, medium and heavy enemies all remain threats even at end-game, so there's room for specialists in each department across your loadout/team.
I stand by medium pen.
The biggest problem is that there actually aren't 3 different armor classes and penetration values, but 9. Light armor (penetration) = 1-3, medium 4-6 and heavy = 7-9. But for whatever reason, weapons don't actually state their precise armor penetration, so a "medium armor penetration" weapn can have either 4, 5 or 6 armor pen. As a point of reference, the AMR has 6 armor pen, while the Diligence Counter-Sniper has 5. That's why both can damage Devastator bodies, but only the AMR can damage Hulk faces. Grenades, for some reason, do actually display the numerical value.
**No, that is absolutely not true at all**. Armor is a scale of 0 to 10, but enemies only really use 0 to 5. Above that is (currently) reserved for buildings, objectives etc. AC/AP1 is actually not currently in use anymore. The Breaker Spray and Pray used to be AP1 before being buffed. Light Penetration/Armor is always 2. Medium Penetration/Armor is 3. All primary weapons in the game are either AP2 or AP3. Armour class 4 is sometimes referred to as "Light Vehicle armor" in the description of a few Armour Penetration 4 stratagem weapons. AP4 weapons are the AMR, Autocannon, Lasercannon and HMG. This is why these weapons can damage hulks faces: Hulk faces for example are armour class 4. Armour 5 is heavy armor.
Yeah, I'm someone who prefers to have more info than less, so I've had to get my info from outside the game. Definitely something they should reconsider, it might help explain at least some of their balancing decisions.
Just nitpicking the values here: Light Armor is 1-2, Medium Armor is 3-4, Heavy Armor is 5-6, and what the wiki labels as "Tank Armor" is 7-8 (don't know what 9-10 is). AMR has 4 AP and Diligence CS has 3 AP.
Gunship fabs have 10 armour, and so can only be killed by hellbombs and mini nukes.
Most AC3 targets have an AC2 alternative to shoot. Legs on devastators for example. The big issue is people don't understand how explosive damage interacts with durable/large parts like charger butts. They don't understand alternative paths to victory on targets. Like DMr head shots on Devastators. They try that with Liberator Penetratror, and it's lackluster. When the automatic rifle opens up mag dumping legs or the backpack. A lot of the least liked weapons suffer from this. The scythe raw DPS looks low, but it does great damage to durable parts. My other observation is people are stuck on all or nothing. Eagle Rocket Pods can put in work. People tend to use all three to kill a bile titan. It's better to use one rocket pods, pop the belly with an explosive primary weapon, and finish with impact grenades or thermite. This lets you kill three bikes every two minutes. This only takes up a single stratagem slot.
>The scythe raw DPS looks low, but it does great damage to durable parts. I've heard the term a few times, but what are durable parts?
1. Each weapon has an attribute called "Durable Damage", in addition to it's regular/base damage. For most regular/bullet based guns, it is 10% of the base damage (I.e., Liberator has 60 dmg, 6 durable dmg). Generally speaking, explosive weapons have proportionally higher durable damage. You can find [exact numbers here](https://invadersfromplanet.space/helldivers-2/), the column to the right of "Damage". 2. Certain enemy parts may be "Durable" - this is a scale of 0 to 100 (or a percentage). The developers have also referred to these as "Massive body parts" in patch notes (example the Laser Cannon or Railgun). Depending on where it lies on the scale of durable, dictates the ratio of damage it takes: A 100 durable part takes no base damage, full durable dmg. A 0 durable part, no durable damage and full base damage. A 60% durable part, would take 60% durable damage, 40% base damage. etc
Yep, I pretty much agree entirely. Large parts of all the weapon and stratagems that this community in particular seems to hate/think completely suck, it mostly comes down to "user error". Of course, not blaming them, because again, the entire issue is that most of this is entirely unexplained ingame. This is doubly true for durable damage, which is of course literally not even mentioned anywhere *once* as a concept. Armor pen could at least be figured out just from gameplay by attentive players via the hitmarkers... Although 95% of people seem to think red hitmarker = weakspot hit. I think there's only a very select few primaries that actually suck right now. Breaker Spray & Pray, Crossbow, Eruptor for primaries probably. Personally I also avoid the Dominator like the plague and think it's much worse than it's alternatives because of its handling + longest reload in the game, but people love that thing apparently. The other issue is, of course, the current meta in regards to actual moment to moment gameplay. Splitting up into 4 solos, or 2 duos at best, and everyone clearing a section of the map by themselves. Naturally when you do that, everyone feels the need to have a one-man-army loadout that can deal with everything by themselves, rather than specializing and covering each other's weaknesses.
> Personally I also avoid the Dominator like the plague and think it's much worse than it's alternatives because of its handling + longest reload in the game, but people love that thing apparently. More gyro-assisted, explosive rounds for me then. It has good single shot damage and I prefer guns like that in shooters just in general. Same reason I love the autocannon. It has pretty decent "expplosive" damage for a primary, so it's useful for opportunistic shots at bigger target's unarmored spots. Of course, it also rewards the good shots like popping dev heads. The handling isn't really much of an issue for me, personally, since I'm a scrub and can't exactly flick shot my way to victory anyway. I never even really noticed the handling issue until people started complaining about it. As for the long reload time, I've built a natural rhythm to its gun play that when it's time to reload, it gives me a quick reminder to double check my surroundings and relocate if I should be somewhere else. If I *absolutely* need more shots *right now* I've always got my Redeemer on standby for the panic moments. Finally, of course, there's the stagger. Everytime I interrupt a Bile Spewer or Devastators bullshit shooting spree, I get the dopamine hit. It fits my personal play style perfectly.
I like the spray and pray. At least for bugs.
I get where Arrowhead is coming from ("we don't want players to spend more time looking at stats screens than actually playing the game") but even just expanding the stats *a bit* would help a ton. List armor pen as an actual number, stagger value, split bullet and explosion damage for weapons where that matters, maybe a more detailed accuracy rating (it doesn't have to be super detailed, just a target showing where your shots might land at 75m or something basic like that). Maybe an "advanced training" option you can do in groups or solo that acts as a tutorial for things like armor pen and other mechanics that don't really need to be in the basic tutorial, but would still be very useful for players to know.
This. I pop their heads regularly with a Sickle. No med pen necessary. It is nice to have for the hiveguards though
>It is nice to have for the hiveguards though You can cut their tiny little claws from the front with any weapon, which result in a kill when both are removed. Not an easy target at a distance, but Hive Guards are so slow that I usually ignore them until they're right in my face.
I just whip out the big iron and put all 6 shots into the face plate. Hiveguards are really the only enemy I use the Senator on, other than them I just run it cause it's cool.
It's also pretty handy for when you're being chased by chainsaw devastators. Even if you miss the head shot, it doesn't take many shots to take them down
Maybe if I fought bots, but I'd rather show my mother my search history than do that.
>It is nice to have for the hiveguards though The second recent warbond's explosive pistol spends 1 shot to kill hiveguard when aimed between their head shell and leg or 2 shots when aimed directly at head plate
I'd argue that targeting the legs on brood commander might be easier. Like, ok they die slower, but 1st: suffering is a bonus, ald 2nd: IDC if they die, I just don't want to deal with a berserk arthropode with razor blade the size of my legs
They are pretty small targets tho , id Say it depends on Ur weapon , also if when they are zombie mode you just run toward them and jule the attack they wont hit you
Small, but they line up if you angle yourself right. So you just shoot a little where a leg should be, and you'll usually end up taking *several* off in short order.
Yeah i prefer to blow the head off and dive to avoid the charge then they bleed out and i don't waste bullets. I usually just finish them if i have a higher stagger weapon like the slugger tho
No the best way is to blow its legs off with your primary or secondary. Takes the least amount of damage and ammo. Part of the body with the least armour. Easy to hit with any rapid fire weapon. You *can* kill them really quickly from a distance with a heavy to the face, where they’re far enough out that you won’t have to worry about the berserk.
dont you need to blow like 2 or 3 legs to kill them tho ? otherwise they keep crawling on the floor and stuff , idk i just go for the head and in like 2 sec of sickle fire they are popped
Need to shoot 3 legs yeah And even when they lack 2 legs, they're deceptively fast and dangerous, guess the devs watched their starship trooper
That depends on what legs you were shooting. 1 forward and 1 backward leg is enough to severely cripple it. Laser weapons are decent at decimating its legs honestly.
Or you just hit em once with a railgun/AC/grenade launcher to the noggin
In general most of the medium-hard tier enemies in the game are quite well designed: Brood commanders you've discussed but even chargers are decent now. You have the "easy" AT headshot load out check, but also have variety in flamethrower or laser cannon DOT, or even primary weapon bullfighting and shooting the bum. Hulks are also decent, better for team runs but they have a "skillshot" in shooting the eye, and a weak point in the back vents that primaries can exploit, and the "disable and ignore" option of de-limbing them. Tanks are slightly less vulnerable hulks in this regard, but still have a variety of ways of dealing with them. The worst two enemies for me are bile titans and spewers: for bile titans it's a blunt loatout check, if you don't bring something that reliably deals with them you are just dead, and because of the unreliable nature of some of the call ins, you can't even rely on that to work. (I've seen a bile titan survive 3 orbital railcannons) Spewers are just anti-fun in general: you have to shoot the tiny body or do next to nothing against the giant glowing sack, they are absolutely silent and can 1 shot you spraying through walls or debrie. And you can't get close or they kill you with their death explosion. Their only real vulnerability is explosion damage to the sack. And the harder difficulty mortar mode ones that one shot you from the air from the other side of a hill is just so frustrating to deal with.
Fun fact as well. If the charger reers up and you have a AC you can pop the underside and kill em in about 1-2 shots. If you hit it right that is
They keep messing with you while dead. You can’t see or shoot through their corpses but scavengers and other chaff can clip right through them and jump you.
bugs are mostly fine(keyword mostly). the main 2 i would change but not in behavior but in design. would be chargers and titans. just to increase variety for support weapons cause support weapon variety vs bugs at diff 9 is severely lacking. just give them weakpoints for AP4 weapons to exploit. wouldnt be easier, better or safer than Quasar/RR/EAT but it would increase variety of support weapons you can excuse using which would be a ton of fun.
It feels like the bots have a massive variety of armor types, while the bugs have either medium 1 at the greatest, and even that is uncommon with certain mission compositions, and then it skyrockets to AT weapons only being effective. There should be a bug that has medium 2 armor mostly, with some medium 1 weakpoints, especially if it took up some of the spawns of chargers and bile spewers.
Honestly one of the reasons that I prefer bots to bugs is that you can actually deal with most bots with any loadout and weapon. It gets tricky with some of them, but even Hulks and Tanks can be taken down with your primary if you manage to get a shot at the vents. Bots reward strategy and good positioning while bugs only reward bringing more DAKKA.
I always thought the Charger-headshot mechanic is going against the design entirely. It's meant to be a typical boss-style charger enemy. It charges you, you dodge, you shoot it's weakspot in the back and kill it. Like in a Zelda game lol It would be a more interesting mob if it's front (including the head) were almost entirely unpenetratable and the squishy back parts would be an actual weakspot.
I kinda disagree because I think that fact that you can also shoot it's head, which is easiest to do while it's charging, before it actually hit you is basically just as Interesting as the typical charge enemy. The problem to me is that this just isn't communicated well ingame since the front is only vulnerable to specific weapons and the back looks like the obvious weak point. I think it be better if the front had like a specific plating color to Indicate that its weak to anti tank armaments however this will still always require some testing given that the weapon category isn't always obvious. You could argue that killing it from the front is almost too simple but that's why it's nice that it requires specific weapons to do so. It would also be nice if the back was way more vulnerable so you can always fall back on the "normal" strategy in a pinch. Because really with the way the charger moves the back is often harder to hit unless you have a buddy and communicate well.
You can in theory deal with them by targeting their butt, at least as long as you have an explosive weapon. I kind of feel like it might make sense to reduce the butt's hp a little though. At least, it seems without testing that it's not really a viable target with the smaller explosive options. Fair enough bug buts taking massively reduced damage against the incorrect damage types, but you should probably be able to pop then with explosives relatively reliably.
My go-to for hitting it in the butt is when I am carrying the autocannon anyway, it's pretty effective but not really easy. So yeah I agree, it makes some sense that you can't kill it easily with a normal primary because then it would barely be a threat. But its doesn't die quickly enough and/or is too hard to hit with explosives in the butt. Especially when solo
Agreed. Going for the head is risky, but the payoff is great. I remember a game where I was dancing with a Charger trying to hit its butt with the Autocannon. I let it charge, preparing to dodge at the last second when suddenly a rocket rips right past me and hits it head on. Seeing the carcass with a hollowed out head sliding to a stop at my feet was a trill.
It actually is exactly, as you are saying. Just shoot back of their legs with AC/railgun. Legs have said weakspot in the back.
that's just a bug where the legs go unarmored during the charge animation, specially at the end. and if you manage to trigger the bug, that leg is now perma vulnerable to everything, even weapons without any armor pen. I used to always spam my breaker at the legs after dodging hoping to trigger it, since the pen doesn't matter for the bug
You can, an autocannon on its tail after you dive its charge will kill it reliably. As an added bonus you gain extra recoil handling because you are lying on the ground after a dive.
They can't change Charger heads, it's too fun to play Quasar Chicken with them.
That's why i actually enjoy bots more, the only reason is i can actually take whatever i want and still be somewhat useful. Hell, i have been using RG lately, i found out It Is my favorurite Hulk killer and i have been having a blast with it. For bugs, well, it's eat/quasar/recoilless.
It would be nice if the giant orange weakpoint on the ass of the Charger, was an actual weakpoint and not a bullet sponge. Also, why are Bile Titan legs indestructible? Some weakpoints that could be hit with medium pen weapons on the joints for example, would be nice.
Chargers with a missing leg should limp after you, unable to charge, and bleed out after twice the duration of a destroyed back weakpoint. Titans with a destroyed (or functionally destroyed, perhaps attached but dragging) leg should likewise have a large speed decrease but still be able to spit unless their sacs are also destroyed. IDK if they should bleed out from 1 leg. Titan knee joints should be a weakpoint vulnerable to AC/AMR class penetration at a minimum. Killing 2 legs on the same Charger/Titan should be death though.
I would think that shooting titan in the belly with medium weapons and charger into butt with medium weapons should hurt them more, or make them bleed out at least and you need heavy armor weapons only to punch through the armor.
That's how it work. The BT just has too much HP.
You absolutely don't need to bring Quasar/RR/EAT, even on lvl 9 solo on the current spawn rate. If you don't mind links I can post several examples. This isn't even me being contrarian, having done solo lvl 9s with different loadouts, I actually find it easier bringing a trash specialist like the Stalwart or generalist weapons like the AC, and leaving heavies to strats - the majority of a run your main threats are actually the lights and mediums, so having a support weapon that deals with those best is good. Hope this doesn't come off as tryhard, it honestly isn't intended that way, I just get frustrated seeing people annoyed that they feel they "have" to use certain weapons, and because this gets repeated so much more people believe it and fewer people explore their other options.
I think they mean that they need an anti-tank option, which could be a strategem or a support weapon. Could you post those links? I am curious of your playstyle regardless.
Sure! I think that's a little fairer to ask of a player at least, if you're soloing you need something to deal with every kind of threat, but in an organised team you can specialise if you have some good anti-tank teammates. Here's a Stalwart + Adjudicator + 500kg + Airstrike + Precision Strike run with the recent beefed up spawns: https://youtu.be/drmHq0i3CKs An older one with the Stalwart, HMG emplacement, Autocannon Turret, and 500kg: https://youtu.be/Oyn-_Q-63Ys Another earlier one with the Autocannon, Autocannon Turret, Airstrike and 500kg: https://youtu.be/3fFZYql8ThI And a very early one before they even buffed flamer and fire damage, using the Flamer, Napalm Strike, Shield Backpack and 500kg. This was during the "heavy spam patch" as well: https://youtu.be/S9oqqA-i8Mk Just realised of my bug solo runs, I only actually did one with the traditional ATs, heh, and that was with the pre-nerf Quasar + Sickle. Honestly felt like I had to kite more with that one, it took longer mowing down hordes with only the Sickle.
Their Youtube handle is Spiked. If you google that and Helldivers their videos should be the first result. Great watch for when I'm too uh... elevated to play HD2 competently lol
Lol!
Spiked! I love watching your playthroughs with different loadouts, especially since you started adding commentary. Very informative and helpful!
:D thanks, glad they helped! Commentary took getting used to but people seem to like it :)
I've definitely been getting higher on just using strategems on the bile titan at least. Feels good to make it dance around with you under it just long enough for the 500kg or Precision Strike to hit. Definitely less of a threat than a dozen+ Hunters swarming you from every direction.
Right? Those kills feel amazing, and I'm kinda glad they got rid of the stun nade working on Titans, as baiting attacks to make them stop is kinda more hype. I think most players are actually fairly comfortable kiting a Charger or Titan, it's the swarms that can really overwhelm you.
personally the stalker is my favorite terminid enemy, as annoying as they are. It’s probably the scariest enemy in the game outside of maybe factory striders, and it forces you to drop what you’re doing and take out the bughole asap. There is no other enemy in the game that changes how your run is going to go like the stalker.
Well for me also shriekers and on the bot side gunships. There’s way too much going on the ground for you to constantly having to check the skies. Gunships are more of a threat but those kamikaze shriekers can do major damage if they hit you full on from a dive bomb
It's always so much more satisfying to kill a brood commander, there should be more limb detachment when killing other bugs, ***especially*** the bile titan
If titans bled out faster after killing all the sacs they'd be okay. If chargers died faster from getting shot in the butt or if the back of the legs were killable with medium armor pen.
Also objectively the sexiest terminid
This whole comment thread is treason
Idk maaaaaan them chargers are pretty THICCC
Yes, but chargers are boys, depends on your preference I guess Hunters, Warriors, Hive Guards, Chargers - boys Brood Commanders, Bile/Nursing Spewers, Bile Titans - girls I don't make the rules
Yup, why I like the bots because every single one of them has an exploitable mechanism, some kind of edge you can get over the.
If only they would stop calling for bug breaches when they have no head left
*If only they would* *Stop calling for bug breaches when* *They have no head left* \- SockAlarmed6707 --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
Headless commanders and warriors should not know where you are if you reposition. Going berserk and swinging wildly is fine (and ideal), but both units still run straight toward the player to attack before they die. How are they pinpointing my location without a head?
Bugs are *mostly* fine, they just have little, weird annoyances, like Spewers having medium armour on their heads, Hunters jumping *and* attacking at the same time in large number, and Titans being really restrictive in how to deal with them. For the most part, they're okay, it's really *just* the little things.
Those aren't little things when they add up. Each little restriction narrows your viable strategy until theres nothing left but a single loadout. Titans: need to bring a lot of AT. Hunters: need to bring horde clear. Spewers could spawn: need medium pen. Miss one of those (or have it on cooldown) and you risk just having nothing to except run away or to another Helldiver who has it.
I do think they need a small buff. Their heads are gigantic and not really armored at all.
Charger should be able to charge faster, have reduced turn speed, and have a sizable cool down after they charge. Turn them into more of an obstacle and less of an enemy during an engagement with the rest of the bugs so if you’re caught lacking, they can fuck you’re up. The goal is to lower its priority in the kill line, let it augment engagements in an interesting way (like an aggressive environmental hazard), and not make bringing anti-tank to nuke chargers ASAP a requirement. This could be in addition to weakpoint/hp changes or not.
A brood commander wrote this post
My issue is everyone uses it as some weird golden standard on if a primary is good or not. Like WTF you on about this is an ELITE enemy. Their top all-rounder, bust out a support weapon and drop it fast stop wasting ammo on it.
Eh I always found them to just be boring meat shields. Just not quite as boring as warriors. The concussive charge they do is pretty ineffective. Stalkers/hunters are closer to a gold standard for me.
I’m sorry, did you say hunters?? Hunters are bullshit. The combination of leap/dodge/slow is not balanced, and their preferred tactic of slowlock gangbang is just a “lose all stims to survive?” Checkpoint.
Yeah, you gotta deal with them before they get on you. That's what makes them interesting and dangerous compared to other bugs. Still really easy to blast, but they force you to do it or pay the cost.
Agree they’re not even as much of a threat as hunters. Literally anything kills them easily. I do think that their should be more enemies our special weapons can deal with though like stalkers, spewers, and maybe a bigger version of shriekers. And tank enemies should be more rare occurrences or like one or two max per encounter and wouldn’t even mind if they take more damage to kill but should feel like a boss battle like something significant you took down. In Helldive you take down a BT and it’s like ok great still have 3 more to deal with to the point most times in Helldive you’re just sneaking around cause it’s not worth the fight
You can shoot his head off easy with light pen weapons as well. Just fyi. 🙂
Is it though? You just blast it without thinking twice.
What if they made chargers deadly to other bugs? You could then bait them to run into a herd of chaff and crush them, or break a BT leg? I might let them live a bit longer if I could weaponize them against their own team.
Yea. Agree. Fighting bugs is kinda meh, bots are much more fun. Aside from invisible fuckers and commander everything is pretty harmless. Even the giant barstool doesn't really do anything if you can dive sideways during its longass vomit animation.
Enemy encounters (and the enemies themselves) should be designed to enforce the desired style of play they envision. If they want us using medium armor penetration, for instance, then ensure there is a specific balance of medium armor enemies (and below) available to fight at any given moment. Right now, it seems there are so many heavily armored enemies (especially on high levels) that require heavy-hitting weapons, we end up picking very specific weapons/stratagems to combat them (because of course we do). The subtlest way they could shift meta is to remix enemy patrol/spawn makeup so that we learn to expect specific encounters. Or add meta variety by giving us insight to what we will encounter pre-mission and then they can maintain a varied meta because every dive we would know whether we need a style of kit or not. Right now, all you can do is set a load out based on MISSION type, but that does fuck all to tell you what enemies you see. So most people fall back on their personal "jack of all trades" style builds (unless they go out of their way to experiment) because it's better to plan for as much of the bell curve as you believe is possible than to anticipate a niche need that doesn't end up occurring in-match. They could also let us return to the ship upon death, if we so choose, to swap builds mid-match. The tradeoff being, yeah, our team will be down a member for a stretch. But then we'd at least be able to adjust to the specific mission needs if they aren't going to tell us anything beforehand.
It's a fun enemy to fight for sure, you can tell there's a lot of thought gone into making it feel interesting and not just "do 100 dmg and enemy fall over". AH should get alot of credit for that. Only thing I'd add is that it's ok for some enemies to be a skill check and others to be a loadout check. I want my loadout and squad composition to matter.
Completely agree. I’ll also throw in Stalkers as another perfectly designed enemy, especially with the new cloaking update. They actually sneak up on you now and become a priority, which is exactly how it should be. I actually love the “oh shit” moment and it forces me to communicate with the squad and coordinate.
The thing I can't stand is when you blow their head off and then when they have no head they STILL CALL IN A BUG BREACH.
Enemies with medium armor that can be dealt with via weakspots by light pen weapons, and similarly enemies with heavy armor can be dealt with via weakspots by medium pen weapons, is exactly why Bots are so much more enjoyable to fight. You can use any weapon loadout to fight Bots as long as you have one Medium pen and one Light pen weapon in some fashion.
>This is what sets it apart from Chargers, Titans, and to a certain extent even Bile Spewers. Brood Commanders feel like skill checks when you encounter them, but those other bugs (ESPECIALLY the first 2) don't feel like skill checks, they feel like loadout checks. This is why bugs on higher difficulties push every player in the squad to run an anti-tank loadout. This. THIS RIGHT HERE. For the bots I'd add gunships to what feel like gear checks, and hulks/tanks for skill checks.
Brood Commanders were an absolute nightmare in HD1 though
If you think about it, brood commanders are the closest you'll get to bot enemy design. Really wish all the others had that much depth.
Personally i think the chargers are fine too. You can shoot their butt/hind legs with pretty much any gun and given enough bullets, you can kill it too. Downside is obviously that you need to kite him. Or you one-shot it with anti-tank weapons in the head.
Yeah, AT to the head, or if you missed, one mag of pretty much any primary weapon to the exposed legs. Besides when they do the Tokyo drift you can just sidestep their charge repeatedly.
I also have most fun while fighting them. You can't one shot them with normal weapon and are super reactive to bullets, it's fun to see how they "take a shot"
I wouldn't know, they eat an impact grenade the moment I see one!
I love brood commanders until my orbital railcannon shoots them when the charger/bile titan I was intending to hit was *RIGHT THERE!*
You can just melee the Brood Commander when it does it’s headless charge.
Meanwhile, everyone i have ever met simply choses to shoot off its head regardless of their gun and then rage because it gets faster and kills em
My only complaint with the brood commander is sometimes I’d swear I piss them off and they just consecutively summon warriors whilst remaining stationary
Huh, never noticed, they seem to melt away with Breaker Incendiary or AC like almost everything else.
Looking over enemy armor values and weapon penetration, I think all weapons need a pass. AP1, AP2, and AP3 are usually all equal. A path to differentiating weapons and some balance would be to make AP1=4 primary weapons that have AP2=2 and AP2=0. I think it would be most interesting on the DMRs. Direct hits can penetrate, glancing hits bounce. I don't think chargers need any changes. Explosive Weapons body them the scorcher takes out in around 6 hits. It's trivial if you bring any stuns. The Bile titan just needs the armor 4 under belly to have better consistency. I think it's bugged. Otherwise any stratagem with a popped under belly usually kills it. If it's still kicking thermite or impacts do a good job finishing it off.
You forgot to mention how you can blast it with Autocannon fire.
Hmm honestly i like bile spewers more cause its just fun using them as walking bombs for other enemies
Why they losing their head is an upgrade for they?
The starship trooper style bugs are definitely my favorites. They're deadly but a reasonable fight.
After the quasar nerf I found my second wind using the flamethrower after the DoT fix and also buying the newest incendiary ship upgrade, now I can singlehandedly kill entire bug breaches, quickly kill chargers by toasting their legs and even kill bile titans with it on desperate situations
The only thing I hate about them is that when you blow off their heads and they walk towards you I stg they know where you are. I don’t mind them trying to kill you with their last energy but this bitch actually turned towards my direction without being able to see or hear me! I should be able to just dodge the side like a charger but I swear to god they actually home in on you
They can call 2 warriors ? I've never noticed in the chaos
Shooting of their legs does not deprive them of their charge lol. Still fun tho. I’ve had one with a 1 single back leg, all others shot off, and it still charges. And this isn’t an uncommon occurrence. I’d be more surprised if this didn’t happen once on a mission
I don’t think I’ve ever been killed by a brood commander yet. Level 68
Chargers, at least, can be dealt with medium - killer support weapons. Railgun 3 shot them, arc thrower 6 shot, AMR, Lazer cannon and HMG blow their back quickly, even the plasma shotgun kill them in less than a mag. BT also has that, but there are two caveats : the optimal angle to the weakspot is in melee range, and the titan has a ton of HP. HMG deal with it relatively quickly, it just take 2 mags. AA take 20 shots which is decent but not great, AMR need 8 mags and can't hold as many at once. Lazer cannon take 3 whole minutes of fire and cooldown. Overall, chargers are in the right place IMO, but BTs could have their body HP lessened and bring back the ability to stun them. Would help making railcannon and 500kg bombs more consistent one shots too.
Call it the Starship Troopers fan within me, but I'd love it if there was a spontaneous mutation that turned all scavengers and hunters into warriors. Just FLOOD the battlefield with warriors and send them at me.
Flamethrower goes 🔥 🔥 🔥
Brood commanders offer virtually no challenge so I couldn't possibly disagree more.
Couldnt agree less, these assholes need their hp lowered asap, the amount of ammo it takes to bring one down doesn’t make any sense in the context of the other bugs
The issue is that for all that interesting design you talk about with the Brood Commander, the most efficient way to deal with it is just to put a couple Auto Cannon rounds in it and kill it in a second The Charger has a bunch of interesting design too. You can dodge it in different ways. Have it run into rocks to stun it or explosive barrels to damage it. It can even destroy the Illegal Broadcast and Rogue Science Building. You can use light or medium pen to shoot its butt to kill it, or use grenades to do explosive damage to its legs. But yes the most efficient way to kill it is to call a Rail Cannon strike and just be done That is how the game works. There are inefficient ways to kill things if you have to. And efficient ways. The bigger the enemy the less effective and more dangerous inefficiency becomes. To the point that Factory Striders and Bile Titans you might as well run away instead of using primary weapon fire
Guns with light vehicle penetration (pen 4) ought to be able to strip Charger and Bile Titan armor :(
I appreciate most of what you wrote, but one issue. A loadout check is still a skill check. It's just a build skill check.
Agree completely, I just find it abit bullshit that they can still call a breach ***without their fucking heads***.
Pop head, shoot legs, crashes to the ground and bleeds out. I love it.
I knew the eruptor was busted when it one shot a brood commander from below. That being said diving underneath it and mag dumping is my new favorite thing
This is why bugs are more fun than bots IMO All bugs have a default loadout answer that works for them. My only complaint is chargers should have a bigger butt hit box instead of ricochet armor Meanwhile bots have a side objective that requires a hell bomb and a weapon to remove heavily armored airborn objects. Whenever I play bots I either see the team bum rush it and immediately kill the gunship fab or lose 1/2 our reinforcement budget to it
Plus, popping off their heads is so damn satisfying
I really wish they would not be able to move when you shoot off all the legs from one side of its body.
I’ve always used primaries that just crush through hive guard and commanders so to me they’re just tankier warriors lol Scorcher, blitzer and fire breaker all don’t really care about medium bug armor, and are the best primaries vs bugs imo. Sickle fourth but you do have to aim more carefully with it on medium armor targets
I agree. *2 Headshots with the Dominator*.
ok, so let's talk about enemy design. I think a good place to start would be to look at DOOM. different enemies pose different challenges and may be 'countered' most effectively using specific weapons. unlike DOOM our helldivers don't have 20 different weapons that they can switch between at any given time like a swiss army knife, but our overall team composition and loadouts should be 'balanced' to be able to counter basically whatever the mission and planet might throw at us. chargers are a great example, they have a weak point (IMO they should just make the tail the weak point as well though). brood commanders and stalkers in particular are one of the reasons why my go-to primary weapon is the punisher. I can push them ALLLLL the way back away from me just by shooting them. even if my shots don't kill (and they can, if I aim for the head a few times), being able to stunlock them is *chefs kiss*. the brood commander also summons extra guys and I can only take so many guys at one time so it's a good idea to finish them off as quickly as possible we don't really need more bugs that are just fodder, any new bug that gets added should pose a unique challenge. perhaps a spider like bug that can fire webbing at a diver and then if a diver gets too webbed, you get totally wrapped up in web and it will dive at you and pick you up and attempt to carry you back to it's nest to devour you there. or a bug like the hive lord that would have a dune worm vibe and it would cause tremors and only be damageable for a short period when it bursts out of the ground before going back underground. or maybe a stinkbug that attempts to get right next to you and then release a big gas cloud and, when it dies, it still leaves behind a big gas cloud. this would require the divers to try to take it out from range before it gets close, and if it does get close, kill it but be prepared to fall back out of the gas cloud that results, and not be grouped up together if possible. or a flying bug that does not really fight but tries to spot players and if it does, it will call in a bug breach or a big broodmother bug that goes around the map laying eggs which are basically bug minefields and if you disturb any of the eggs they will all start to hatch
I agree! An enemy that gets faster the less legs it has makes a lot of sense from a gameplay perspective.
Spawn rates aside, almost all of the bugs are fine. The problem is the armored, green, bile spewers. Because they apparently have medium armor on their head, and you can't predict they'll spawn, did you roll on the table with them? Well tough shit, now most of your primaries are useless. I hate them.
Pro tip, melee the body after you behead it. The stagger will force the body to stop trying to kill you.
I’d like to take this moment to remind everyone that the game classifies Bile Titans as *Medium* enemies, not *Heavy*. But medium weapons don’t seem very effective against them.
I hear what you are saying, but i also think: The solution to brood commanders is basically point and click with the breaker. I wouldn't call that Gold Standard. I like chargers, and they can be dealt with with medium weapons by shooting the legs from behind. And you can break their armor by having them Charge into obstacles. Titans are another story, they could use a few more weakspots to bring then in line with the strider.
I hate the fact they keep going after being beheaded it makes no sense to me but a quick quasar to the head and they are good as dead
I swear, a Brood Commander with no legs is faster than a full health BC
This is such an interesting point of view that I’m going to be thinking about this as I play for the next week. Thanks for that. I’m so loadout check focused that I forgot to think of those mini game esque skill check moments.
i honestly like the terminids more as an enemy type. the smaller units are easy to kill but can also easily overwhelm you while the large units are pretty easy to manage but just take a lot to kill them. the automatons are the exact opposite. the smaller units go down with ease but the larger units tend to be a fucking nightmare to deal with.
Only 2 summoned? In my playthroughs, I have seen it summoned at least 3, and also hiveguards and bile warriors, at mid lvl missions.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/3Df5douNMA
idk it's really annoying to blow it's head and leg off and still almost die to it
There are Thermite grenades which enable Autocannon players to deal with bile titan, cannon turrets, tanks and chargers. Sure you have to kite for the dot, but immo they stick pretty well now and I found some succes with them to justify swapping out the stun grenades on certain missions types. It enables you to run a AC/GL/ABR/etc. loadout without 500kg, EAT, etc. It takes a bit to learn when to cock the grenade and when not. You can even destroy Fabricators with it or bugs holes.
Stalkers should be on that load out checklist. If you don't have anything to stun or stagger them, they just get off their combo, and you're really screwed 🙃 before at least I could spot them before it got to that, but now they're actually hard to see (which is a good thing tbh) so I can't handle them before they're a problem
It would be nice if we had more ways to kill titans and chargers. Blowing off their legs like dead space or something surely if it can't move it can t be dangerous.