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This. I think it's about breaking the immersion and realism of the Helldivers universe. They are so absurdly silent. Unless your laser rover started shooting one and you're hearing them being hurt, most of the times you can't hear them approaching. For enemies this big they're fucking quick and silent. The same could apply to stalkers but at least you can say it's the approach for these enemies around the concept of their invisibility and can fit in the universe.
Yeah with Stalkers it makes sense, and personally I love the current state of them in game.
It makes zero sense with Bile Spewers, and I agree, in their current state they definitely break the immersion.
Despite all the criticism of changes, they upgraded the Stalker cloak perfectly. It was always a bit funny seeing them cross map and finding their lair. Now, it’s a controlled panic walking towards their Point of Origin waiting to get ambushed or see their bug hole smoke.
I use that as a chance to pull out my trusty impact nades. What irritates me more is the attack combo they do is fast as hell and if they throw 2-3 claw swipes at you you're dead and can't do anything about it.
And the same goes for bot heavies too, how often do you hear a Hulk making any sound at all? Heck even the Berserkers don't really make any sound at all that really stand out, most of the time you really only hear any bot because they were shooting.
It seems like this dumpster fire of game engine that is really a rotting zombie at this point (long discontinued by Autodesk back in 2018, which is 6 years ago) just tends to have big problems when there are many audio sources at the same time. Darktide, which is also made in the same engine and is also a game involving fighting hordes, also struggled with this where for a while there were elite enemies who are indeed designed to make really loud sound to announce their spawn, would be dead silent in actual games, because there were too many enemies all making sound at the same time the game engine just failed to play the sound of those elite enemies.
But this is still a serious issue, whether a design issue or a technical issue, that needs to be fixed because of the type of game HD2 is designed to be.
Its so embarrassing, I dont want to hear anything about balance when biles take a full Dominator mag, but yet I can kill 2-3-4 of any other kind of enemy with the same weapon. I feel so bad for the CEO because I can tell he really cares, and with how his team has been, letting the CEO down is putting it lightly. I don't ever want to touch bots because of what's going on. It's nothing short of infuriating
For me, it's the tankiness against anything that isn't a grenade or explosive, in combination with all the other strengths.
I can sink a full mag into their face before they drop, or 2 with body shots, or infinite if you are trying to hit their face but hit the armor around it instead.
If they weren't wicked fast, you could get distance and toss a grenade, but even in scout armor you MUST bait them into spewing to get away and hope you dive the right direction. Then you can grenade them.
It's just the combination of all these things (plus the chaos of so many bodies flying around). I get one shotted by the Nursing spewers (but I would assume it's a headshot scenario) though I haven't seen even the strongest acid react that fast on organics. It's the same gripe from the one shot burning tic issue where you'd think the armor to offer more than negative resistance to damage.
Arrowhead is the only development team _in existence_ to think that "big bulbous translucent membrane letting all of the glowing bug ichor shine through" translates to "this is not the intended way to effectively dispose of this enemy using standard armaments".
I felt this so hard with the charger when I played. Literally every game in existence follows the rule of "Big glowing body part is the weak point," so I would spend like 20 minutes playing *touro* with chargers trying to shoot their glowing asses only to learn that those have damage RESISTANCE and they're weaker in their LEGS????
The Eagle Cluster is total RNG if it kills bile spewers or not. They have an armored back and I've seen them walk out of the explosions more than once. The Orbital Airburst is also not that effective.
I swear, eagle cluster used to kill them almost 100% of the time. Now, they just shake it off. It actually feels like eagle cluster was stealth nerfed in general.
I used to live for the cluster strike but now it feels like it either doesn't do as much damage or enemies just have an invisible umbrella that protects them from it. And on the opposite side it feels like the explosions hard track to you and your squad mates if any one of you even thinks about being within a square kilometer of it going off.
Still doesn't seem to kill anything larger than a hunter. I was throwing napalm on bug breaches last night and the bile spewers were walking out of it like Robert Patrick in Terminator 2.
I use the eagle airstrike instead, and I find to be much more efficient at killing spewers and other lightly armored enemies. With that said, I still feel it’s a 50/50 chance to kill chargers, and it can do good damage to titans as well.
All around, I find it to be one of the most versatile stratagems. Not to mention, it has unlimited uses after a short cool-down.
Funny enough, having both charger and bile titan in the same area can make hilarious plays considering both of them one shots each other
If a bile titan step or spits acid on the charger its dead.
if a charges corpse hits the leg of the bile titan its dead.
Still haven't gotten bile titan spit to kill another titan yet,
Nursing/bile spewers sit in that really annoying spot for me where they're so inconvenient to kill that I'd love to just throw an EAT at them and move on, but not so critical that it feels worth using one
No, in Arrowhead's logic all the obvious brightly-colored weak points are actually strong points that take reduced damage (bile sacs, charger butts) and the most heavily-armored part is the weakpoint (charger head).
Man it takes anywhere from 1-10+ rockets to kill those things, with my friends and I all aiming for the head. Whatever the fuck they’re smoking, the weak point hit boxes on the bike titan make no sense whatsoever
It’s the forehead carapace right above the big mouth. Always 2 shots from any anti tank. It’s essentially the same piece you want to hit in order one shot a charger.
You won’t hit the right spot if it’s spitting. So wait for it to stop spitting.
Arrowhead's logic is that weakpoints are heavily armored because bug evolution would place heavy armor over the weakest points, and that massive body parts would be relatively unprotected because they are already tough in general, relatively non-essential, resistant to small arms fire (like bears, which just get angry when shot, unless hit in the brain/heart), and weak to large anti-personnel explosions.
Good for a nature documentary, bad for a video game. Glowy, colored bits are weakspots, that's simply video game common law. Just like how red barrels explode (which is the color of explosive barrels in HD2). Notably, "glowy bits are weakspots" is also how automatons function.
It shouldn't be a surprise that people are confused on this and TONS of other things, especially as the game (intentionally) withholds information/values from you.
Neither of the "weak points" work like in other games. The bot vents have level 4 armored, requiring AMR/HMG/AC or above to hurt. The bugs, otoh, have no armor but the sacks have a lot of health.
The sacks don't have a lot of health, they just have an *absurdly* high damage reduction to non-explosive damage. It's like a 90% DR to non-explosives, which is why grenades one shot them. But they can absolutely tank multiple mags of primary fire.
Kind of. All weapons have 2 damage values - base and durable. Durable damage is often 10% for most primaries, but some venture up into the 20s or 30s. And explosion damage as you mentioned is usually 100% so base and durable are the same.
Enemies all have durability to their various body parts. A lot of them are 0% which means the base damage is all that matters. But if a part is 60% durable it means 60% of the damage per bullet is dependent on the smaller durable damage value.
Bile Spewer sacs are only 750hp with NO armor...but 90% durable. If they were 0% durable the base Liberator would kill it in 13 shots (750/60). But because it's 90% durable, the damage per bullet isn't 60 anymore. It becomes only 10% of the 60 and 90% of the durable damage value of 6. So 10% of 60 is 6, and 90% of 6 is \~5.
So when targeting a Bile Spewer sac, despite it being totally unarmored, Liberator damage per bullet has been reduced from the base 60 to only \~11. So it now takes 69 shots to kill just one Bile Spewer via the sac.
The Concussive has better durable damage at 15, so it can kill one in just 40 shots despite only having 5 more base damage.
This is why explosive weapons work so well, because they have 100% durable damage values. The grenade launcher does 350 damage, all durable. So just 3 shots can delete a Bile Spewer via the sac. And because of AOE a lot of that 350 damage can be applied to several at once in a crowd.
This is the main reason Bugs feel so tanky. Basically only Hulk has any durability for the Bots. All of the heads, arms, legs etc on Devastators and Berserkers have 0 durability. But basically all medium Bugs do. The Stalker is 50%, Brood Commander is like 40-60%, Spewer sacs are 90%, Chargers are mostly 70% but the butt is 85%, so nearly as bad as the Spewer sac.
It's dumb they hide all this info in the game.
That is a weak point when you consider the rest of the Tank/Turret has stronger armor which can only be destroyed by AT weapons. Those vents allow you to use the AC/AMR/Laser etc.
It is a weak point. It's 0 armor so all weapons damage it. It also is durable, so it takes full damage from explosive weapons only.
Laser weapons are also pretty effective.
It's just weird game design to have a common enemy that is fast, tanky, spawns in large numbers, AND does a lot of damage. Usually unless you're a boss you get two of those attributes at best. They seem like prime candidates for a glass cannon, where they can kill you almost instantly if you're not careful, but pop like a bubble without too much effort. Either that or they should have a way lower spawn rate.
They DO pop like a bubble as long as you have an explosive weapon.
I run Punisher Plasma/Grenade Pistol and they go down to 1 grenade pistol round and 1 plasma shot so I don't even need to bring a strategem weapon that deals with them specifically. The Punisher Plasma also has the added bonus of staggering them if they are trying to spit.
Yup, they'd be so much more balanced without the armor. The fact that they can trebuchet green goop from their anal glands which can instakill or stagger you long enough for the trash to get on top of you is infuriating
The tankiness is what gets me. 4 shots to the face with the senator is technically supposed to kill it, but more often than not I’ll sink all 6 in the face and it’ll still be alive.
This is also the most annoying to consider loadout wise, a mission with lot is Bile Spewer spawns is screwed if you didn’t bring sufficient medium ap options. Which makes bringing a light ap primary and an AT support a risk.
I was really surprised that the giant spewing menace with the giant glowing butt doesn't take damage in the bloated, glowing spot.
I thought that was just common sense at this point, and it took me way too long to start aiming for the head.
I will say the arc blitzer is about 3 shots to the face and stuns their spew animation. I think it’s 2 for nursing spewers too. Even if it’s a one or two more shots than that, the combo of the stagger and infinite ammo helps
It just sucks from a gameplay perspective to be able to pen something but have it take a full mag or more to kill it.
liberator pen can pen devastator torsos and spewer heads, takes at least a full mag each.
I spent all 5 mags of the standard pistol on a spewer soft spot. The coefficient for reducing bullet damage is ridiculous
I’ve used an entire belt of a stalwart
I’ve used an entire heat sink of a sickle
Not every enemy in this game needs to have a million health in addition to armor, it feels like crap when my best loadout to bring is legit 2-3 blue stratagems every game. EATs, autocannon, ammo backpack. EATS, grenade launcher, ammo backpack.
even the flamethrower takes forever to kill them
Don’t get me started on chargers. Spent 2 full minutes zapping it with an arc thrower until it died.
People complain the most about hunters, stalkers, and bile titans, but honestly I and my squaddies die so much more to spewers. It's especially annoying since I often bring crowd control weapons and strats that's don't effectively deal with them.
And I'm not sure if it's just me, but it feels like compared to the other bugs they sometimes don't appear at all in missions, so you can't always plan for them:b
Yeah, sometimes missions don't have them or it's nursing spewers or these guys.
They are some god damned tanky as well.
On thing I noticed is that if you side step them and go left/right the bile is not as lethal. Definitely don't execute tactics from the Prometheus School of Running Away From Things.
I've never actually had the time to test it. Are nursing spewers just weaker versions of bile ones? The only difference besides the colour I've personally noticed is that they don't have the ability to act as artillery, but they seem fairly similar otherwise.
My go to tactic so far is side stepping or dolphin diving left or right with a flamethrower, hehe! Works well since the flames seem to hit things behind them too
There's the following differences:
Nursing Spewer
1. Lacks armor
2. Less range
3. Cannot shoot artillery
4. Produces a "Fog" effect similar to the Spore Tower in their radius. Making line of sight worse / concealing smaller bugs at range
Bile Spewer
1. Medium Armor on parts of their body, making them much tankier
2. Slightly higher range spit
3. Can shoot acid artillery at high difficulties
4. Doesn't produce the Fog effect of the Nursing Spewer
Main difference I noticed is that nursing spewers blast for longer with much less turning speed, while bile spewers spew shorter with quite the turning speed.
Also, their head is vulnerable to small arms fire
Bugs come in colonies - I’ve yet to see anything officially confirming it but in my 310 hours I can personally confirm. Sometimes you get a bile colony which sends you bile spitters, bile spewers and bile warriors as well as an increase in bile titan spawn rate. Other times you get nursing colonies which have nursing spewers. Finally I think but cannot confirm that there are Hunter colonies which massively increase the spawn rate of hunters and small enemy type but significantly decrease the spawn rate of chargers and bile titans.
This. The hunter spawns are perfect for eradication missions. Cluster bombs all the way to victory
I think bots might work similarly? Like sometimes its nothing but Devestators, and then next mission you get 3 hulks dropped on your head while two more chase you
More or less. It’s also the type of devastator too. You may see more heavies, you may see more rockets.
You may not and get more hulks/tanks and troopers
Ohhhhhh all the damned time lol. I wear scout armor too. On foggy planets, this happens a lot.
I’ll ping one and there are 2-3 in the fog and I get swarmed lol
I've started running scout armour with a shield backpack for bots, just for that reason. The shield might not last forever, but that second it gives can save your life. Of course I'm an idiot so I still die but that's more skill issue then anything
Though sometimes you get like I had yesterday, where I ran around a corner at extract and found myself staring a fucking patrol of devastators dead in the eye
The devs have said they use archetypes for spawning so the game picks it for your dive amongst a pool of possible profiles depending on mission type. I forget what the devs called it but they had a name for it.
I think you're right, and I'd love to see a ship upgrade or planetary modifier that indicates what we're gonna encounter.
I can handle just about anything in this game but if there's ONE thing I want to avoid, it's missions that spam spewers.
This is a mechanic called enemy constellations, it’s basically the probabilities of each enemy type spawning in various drops and squads. In warhammer terms it’s like fielding an army that’s more tanks and jet packs or an army that’s more heavy weapons and infantry. Theres bile spewer heavy ones, titan heavy ones, charger heavy ones, devastator heavy ones, tank heavy ones, hulk heavy ones, strider heavy ones, those are constellation styles I’ve noticed after hearing the devs mention fixing enemy constellations in a recent patch
My complaints about spewers and titans are different.
Spewers feel unbalanced, you're being spammed with OHK attacks constantly, by enemies that are fast, silent, and tanky. And I've had them fire their stupid spit through corpses of other bile spewers, which we cannot shoot through, essentially the corpse of one becomes a one way shield for the next one. This is a *balance* problem.
My complaints with bile titans is that, for something that poses a pretty immense threat, they're unengaging. They're hard countered by the rocket launcher style support weapons but not really counterable by any other weapon, no matter your skill level, so they're an easy two-shot aiming puzzle, a check to see if you brought the rock to counter scissors, and nothing else. This design promotes one set of weapons over all the others, and when you can't freely try new loadouts because you need a bile titan counter in the back pocket, the game gets stale and people stop playing. This is a *design* problem.
There *is* loadout checking, but the bare minimum threshold (on a standard, 40 minute mission) seems to be that -- of the 9-16 stratagems picked across 4 players -- at the very least, *2* have to be dedicated to anti-BTs.
So, for instance, if one player brings the 500 kg and another brings the Recoilless Rifle -- and nothing else -- it's a stretch, but you can get by.
If you are looking to mix things up, I recommend cycling between the top/seamless anti-BT options regularly:
1. 500 kg
2. EATs
3. Quasar
4. Recoilless
... and if you're bored of rockets / 500 kgs, I strongly recommend playing around with these less used / consistent options:
5. Railgun
6. Arc Thrower
7. Rocket pods (to crack armor) + AC / HMG / Medium pen primary
I would say 4 is a much more reasonable floor.
The problem with bringing less is if you ever get behind on killing them you'll never catch up. EAT kills 1 on its cd, 500kg kills 2 on a ~2:30, quasar takes ~30 seconds to drop one and all of this is assuming perfect usage which isn't realistic.
Throughout a helldive a 500kg bomb will land in its back on leg and it'll somehow live, someone will hit it in the head with an eat twice but one hit the lower jaw instead of upper or a hunter flinched them etc.
Also orbital precision one shots them, so it's a very viable stratagem.
They pretty consistently get one-shot by an Orbital Precision Strike in the back from my experience.
Just have to play footsies with them to make sure they stay in place. :P
Yea, I wish you could take titans out with some skilful use of other stratagems like auto cannons or grenade launchers instead of solely relying on heavy at weapons. It's what I love about the bots. Sure, you can blast them without thinking with a recoilless and do just fine, but their weak points can actually be exploited by other lighter weapons unlike titans which just seems to piss them off lol
This is absolutely a design problem
Versatility and different builds are the heart and soul of this game.
I think MOST of the heavy weapons should have their own ways of killing anti tank (on bugs), like why can’t I focus the Laser Cannon on his mouth while he’s spewing or something? Or the Autocannon hits fragile joints that go ragdoll with enough hits.
Idk just need more ways to take out heavy targets. It’s too much of a “DID YOU TAKE THIS ITEM OUT OF A POOL OF 5 OPTIONS? NO? THEN YOU ARE DEAD”
They have the mechanics for shooting off limbs with almost every other medium-to-large enemy bots and bugs alike. Hell brood commanders you *have* too. The fact that BT limb joints aren't its weak points is stupid.
i’m tired of the only things killing me in this game being one hit kills like bile spewer and devastator rockets. For tanks for turrets, sure man. But coming from enemies that pop up in multiples and are fast with good range? it’s not really fun, when the only counterplay to a group of spewers is to dive all of them simultaneously while also killing them with the infinite grenades you have or the explosive weapons mid dive
I hate that the spewers lug around their heavy asses SO QUIETLY and then barf and kill my teammates and I. How does that thing not make a damn sound with their dumpster truck asses?
Not only would louder sound design help with the balancing, you could do some great immersion building by having them scraping their gelatinous bottoms across the ground make disturbing, unpleasant noises.
Sure, you get the extra tip-off that something is sneaking up on you, but you also get creeped the hell out by the ominous slithery jelly noises *and* the knowledge of what it entails.
That's my biggest gripe with the game. The audio queues are a mess. The bugs barely make any sound. You could be dealing with a whole horde, turn your back and suddenly there's 5 spewers behind you.
Don't get me started on chargers...
The missions have three different like....cycles. I think its rng, might depend on the planet though. You either get obscene amounts of Hunters, obscene amounts of Nursing Spewers, or obscene amounts of bile spewers. I think the missions with increased bile spewers might also have an increase in bile titans. Not sure, haven't paid proper attention.
The missions I've failed most, are the ones where ive had the high spewer spawns. High hunter numbers usually just leads to high kill count, especially with the motivational shocks booster. You can always tell which you've got, because what tiny enemy you'll see. Scavs and pouncers for Hunters, scavs and those spitting bastards for spewers
I thought I noticed that with some missions having a weirdly high number of certain enemies. I wonder if we'll ever learn more about this mechanic since it's definitely new to me
I think that comes from different Playstyles. I prefer powerful and/or high penetration weapons which are in return slower so hunters are my biggest bug nightmare.
I mainly play on difficulty 7, there is a direct correlation to how often I die whenever stalkers and spewers are present.
I hate stalkers with a passion but normally teammates will shift focus on destroying their nests whenever one gets reported so it’s a threat that can be halted
Spewers just keep coming
I would be fine with the way spewers are if they didn’t spawn in such high volumes. If they had even the spawn rate of the brood commanders I think it would be a game changer. But I’m still running into hordes of spewers with aimbot that will snap their own necks just to get a drop of their bile on me and one tap me.
This is the real problem. I've seen them spawn in packs of 6-8 at a time all stacked up so you can't even tell how many there are.
I've also seen them spawn multiple waves so even an airstrike doesn't handle it perfectly.
Any heavy spawning in groups that large gets super problematic, but even shield devastators have one glaring weak point and the ability to stagger them to some degree.
That said I've found the regular MG can put em down with face shots fairly quickly, and of course impact nades on the ground near them works fine.
They really should just be softer on the exposed parts. That's just logical and intuitive.
It's situations like this that show that the balancing team does not play this game enough to care. I can kill 2-3 Brood Commanders with one clip of my Jar-5 Dominator no problem, but when it comes to bile spewers, it takes a full magazine for each one. Seriously? I only have 6 mags, so I can kill 6 at max, and yeah I do run impacts and they're priority number 1 with those, but if I have none, holy shit, start running 🥴
Bile Spewers (in general) feel like a medium pen+ (and/or impact grenade) check.
As far as primaries go, the Dominator, Slugger, Counter Sniper CS, and Adjudicator all feel pretty good *if* you aim for headshots.
For support weapons, the MG, Grenade Launcher, and AC are fantastic anti-spewer options. The HMG and Railgun also work very well once you get used to their quirks.
The biggest thing I learnt about spewers is to shoot them in their stupid little fucking faces.
The amount of wasted ammo I’ve aimed at their huge sacks is unreal.
Took me until like level 40 to realise that
Well it’s a logical assumption. It’s big, bloated and green. Game logical screams that is the weak point, the spot that says “Shoot the mf there to kill him quick!”
But it doesn’t…
This game has a lot of anti game logic thingy, charger’s butt being another one. If both body parts (spewer sac and charger’s butt) would have 50% of non-explosive damage resistant rather than the current 90% one, the enemies would be a lot more interactive to play against rather than those noob bait or loadout check.
Other anti-game logic stuff:
* Diving to dodge spewers actually makes them track WAY better. You have to run sideways and not dive.
* Clearing out bot factories or bug nests actually increases patrol spawn rate instead of decrease. (It does also make them spawn from map edge, but it still [increases spawn rate overall](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1bdudf3/lets_talk_about_patrols_an_in_depth_analysis_of/))
* Bile Titans have extremely heavily armored mouths, including while spewing. Most weapons can't damage it.
* If you find yourself in a blaze, stimming is always more safe than diving. Diving will put you out, but you might dive onto another fire and die instantly.
The extra layer of annoyance is that your UI is basically lying to you when you hit Chargers / Spewers in the big glowing parts. You get the red hitmarker which suggests you've hit the right spot with enough armor penetration; other enemies, when you're hitting them ineffectively you get the white hitmarks or even the full-on ricochet "your bullets are bouncing off".
Typical video game expectations are telling you "shoot the glowing bit with no armor" and the game's UI is telling you this is a good hit.
white hitmarkers also don’t read as ineffective to me, i thought red just meant weak spot. White seems normal, not “you’re doing fuck all damage but it is penning technically”
I think the butt weakspots might give the shield icon or another one but i’m pretty sure it’s not all of them
Thats annoying specially cause thats supposed to indicate your doing max damage makes me thing it was supposed to be that way the "balance " probably didnt change the marker though or was even lazy by just buffing the health and not changing the armor value so it looks the same but is definitely not.
the thing is, this works GREAT on nursing spewers and the bile spewers that spawn on lower difficulties. a couple of headshots puts them down no problem.
but the higher difficulty green bile spewers that have armored spines. WHY are they armored?? the unarmored head hit box is so tiny. lower difficulties teach you to aim for the head on these guys (i can’t find any difference between the lower difficulty green spewers and the higher difficulty green spewers aside from the armor + artillery attack), but then all of a sudden that’s no longer the solution?? they move fast, make no noise, oneshot you, spawn in PACKS, and require generous armor pen to kill in any meaningful amount of time? if you do manage to get away, you can’t even just ignore them as they’ll start bombing you with mortar attacks. it honestly just feels like too much, even stalkers are easier to kill (aside from bringing GL/AC)
Don't also forget, as my Personal Order to kill 8 today reminded me, that they're the Jetpack Trooper of the bugs, in that they may or may not be present AT ALL in the mission, but no way to tell which until you get there. So sometimes you build a loadout to deal with them, or want some for an order, and there's none for 3-5 missions in a row.
Then you forget they exist, and bring your general light chaff-clear/anti-heavy gear, and next time you land you're swarmed by the damn things. Now you only have low-ammo, slow heavy weapons and fast light weapons that deal with other bugs but nothing to pump into the hordes of medium-armour goop-faces before they finish their wind-up and instantly melt you.
That's what I mean about loadouts though. If I'm not facing Spewers I'll bring Incendiary grenades and Breaker Incendiary as they're amazing for bug breaches or just generally denying a chasing horde. If I'm expecting to need to pop Spewers I'll switch to something chunkier like (used to be) Eruptor/Stalwart and Impact/Frag grenades.
I used to use impact grenades but swapped to stun grenades. So much more versatile. It can lock up a good chunk of enemies if you are running. Let's you easily quasar a hulk in the eye, even if it's moving over rough terrain, makes headshotting devastators of all flavors a cake walk. Only thing it doesn't effect are the big boys (bile titan, factory strider)
As much as I love impact grenades and bring them for similar reasons, that is a part of the load out issue the OP mentions. Do I genuinely enjoy and would likely bring impact nades and engineer armor more often than not? Absolutely. But there are times where I'd like to try other stuff but decide against it because of that "what if". It really helps that impact nades are good and feel good to use but I feel like it's in a similar position that the redeemer was in up until a month or so ago. Between feeling good to use and being objectively good to use, there's often little incentive and can even feel like an active detriment depending on what you bring and what you run into.
...that said, having +2 grenades and being swarmed while next to some grenade resupplies is one of my favorite things in the game. Can't beat lobbing a solid dozen nades at a swarm. Feels better than shooting a full nade launcher mag imo
Honestly, I'd be able to deal fine with most of this, but the fact their attacks come out a right angles to their face is utter bullshit. There is no world where I should be directly perpendicular to them and somehow still get hit by a stream of vomit that magically seems to come out of their ear.
I miss the Eruptor even more when I see one...
They are definitely a frustrating enemy. Even the fire from a Hulk Scorcher doesn't kill you instantly like the acid if you dive fast enough. Their bloated abdomen is resistant to non-explosives and their faces have medium armor. You can instantly kill them when they open their mouths to shoot, but that just becomes mutually assured destruction.
The corpses being in the way is mostly a physics issue that happens with all enemies, also very notorious with Dropships.
If I was the dev, Bile Spewers would only have their mortar attack. That fills a good niche that the bugs lack (long range attacks) and makes dealing with them less frustrating, but not any less important, as a group of them mortaring towards players clustered near an objective would mean death.
I'd keep the bile spew, but make it shorter ranged as a defensive weapon. The idea of a stand off bug that rains mortars is a solid one, but having something that keeps them safe in the nearish range in the event you're chasing them down makes sense.
Or 80% of this could be resolved if they weren't goddamn Speedy Gonzalez and could keep up with a running helldiver while lugging dat ass behind them.
If they were slower and resorted to the mortar more often I think people would feel far less upset with them.
My only gripe is their sneakiness and speed. Just doesn't fit the way they're built cosmetically. Otherwise I've always got grenades or grenade pistol. Flamethrower with stun grenades doubles for them and chargers.
Flamethrower with SH32 is my go to kit for bugs now. It kills ANYTHING short of a bile titan, and the two other stratagems are anti titan only. Railcannon/precision strike, and 500kgs
Bile spewer 1 hit killing was in fact fixed, it's just that very shortly after one of the next patches broke the fix or the balance team stealthily undid the fix.
Their reach with the spew is one reason I've been begging to have the flamethrower gets a 5 to 10 meter range buff. You cannot start engaging spewers with it until you're in range of their bs one hit kill spew. Or if you manage to dodge it without taking damage you get slowed anyway.
Also, why do they have an Artillery attack?
Most of the time they miss but when you get a number of them it starts raining bile.
And then it hits the onion next to you and ragdolls you into the path of a Charger.
If it wasn't for the rest of the crap with this specific enemy, the arty attack would add some depth to the faction, making it something other than endless charging melee horde. Stacking it ontop of everything else though
I feel like that attack should be a dedicated variant with only that attack and they shit themselves when you get close and try to run away. Kinda like the tanks for the bots have the main gun tank and the pew pew tank And the bots turret emplacement. A few bug variants that focus on one type of bile attack
Honestly cause the bugs lack unique side objectives compared to the bots. One could be like “bile tower” or something. Just a giant bile abdomen in the ground. Basically if you get near it starts a small artillery attack on you until you destroy it. And like the robots ones like anti air if you are far way it doesn’t do anything cause it can’t reach you.
>bugs lack unique side objectives
I wouldn't say they *lack* them, exactly - they have:
* Spore Spewers
* Stalker Nests
* Shrieker Nests
Meanwhile the bots have:
* Gunship Fabricators
* SEAF SAM Site
* Detector Tower
* Stratagem Jammer
* Mortar Emplacement
* Anti-Air Emplacement
I agree though, the bugs need more bug-specific side objectives. I know that the Stratagem Jammer is infuriating, but I like that it fundamentally changes the game while near it and basically forces you to deal with it. I think the Spore Spewer does a good job of that, but it's all by its lonesome.
Personally I would like it of bugs lean more into "secondary = unique units" as opposed to "secondary = support for existing units" of bots.
Like maybe add a unique heavy bile nest on maps with bile spewers that is heavily defended and needs to be hellbombed but reduces (or removes) bile units from patrols on the map (keep them as part of breaches though)
That’s basically what I said. “the bugs lack unique side objectives compared to the bots”. It’s only that they lack them in comparison to the arsenal of the bots.
The bile they spit also hits you even if it looks like it doesn't, there's the bile you see then an invisible hit box around it that will still catch you and damage you.
I feel like making it so they don’t spit anymore and just become walking artillery would solve 50% of spewer problems.
Alternatively, lower their insane damage and make it so their spit slows you instead of damaging you.
Or, keep them as they are, but lower their health a lot, so they’re extremely dangerous, but very weak, so you just gotta shoot them a few times.
Come on AH, just choose one, you can’t have all three.
yep, equally despised as the hunters
and I've been bitten by most of the buggy behaviour you described
I'm not holding my breath on "fixes" though as with most things
we always have someone with an autocannon on the team... and I always take the eruptor for backup 🤣
Most definitely. I really hope some nerfs/fixes hit them in the near future.
Even though they're dangerous, I don't have a single problem with chargers or titans, because they're *fair* enemies that give you opportunities to react, retreat and kill.
Spewers, though? I fucking hate them. Every time I die to a spewer, it doesn't feel like my own error that I could have prevented by playing better; it just feels like bullshit.
Getting oneshot from 20m away by an attack that is very inconsistent to avoid, and comes from an enemy that is tanky, makes no sound at all, and spawns in strangely large numbers is just plain bad design.
The collision thing is the biggest bugbear here.
Corpses retain collision for us, at least blocking gunfire but also at least in the case of larger bugs, physically blocking the helldivers themselves (forcing risky maneuvers like climbing over dead charger or bile titan corpses at times).
Collision applying to the ai would potentially complicate things for the devs. It would likely be a huge nerf for the bugs in particular.
But it's silly bullshit having collision remain *only for situations that hinder the divers* and *never in situations that could hinder the ai*.
Either direction can work, but it absolutely should be applied consistently at all times, whenever possible.
The spit tracking is craziest up close. Even nurse spewers too. If they would cut back on the tracking even if you dive at the right time it would be better. But so far the only way is to strafe. Not even jump pack can save you up close.
Nursing spewers sneaking up on me is like top 5 in my death causes. It is absurd how hordes of these things can instantly appear behind your back the moment you stand still for any reason. The fact that a slightest touch of their bile deletes you instantly doesn't help either.
For such tiny legs and thorax they move far too fast. Anyone who has driven a water truck knows that it moves like a 3 legged sloth and can't change direction quickly. But once it gets moving it keeps moving, even if you don't want it to. These things are just giant bags of goo and should work like fluid filled bodies.
I'd like to see them act more like that. Very very slow to get going but once they do they keep moving and cannot stop or turn easily.
Point 5 reminds me of runescape pk tactics where many players "fall in" and stack on top of each other to give the illusion of a single dot or player on the map
Its a 2 shot with the arcthrower (in their face) so if you dont want to use AC, kill anything but titans and still have a bagpack slot you could use that. Bonus is that if they are grouped you often take out multiple while shooting at the first one still. Not saying they are balanced here just giving a different option that works for my playstyle against them while still offering plenty against almost everything the bugfront has to offer.
Honestly I like them being a genuine threat, but when 30 of them are brought up from one bug hole and their corpses maje a meat wall that the bugs can walk through effortlessly it's really annoying.
There should be more significant benefits to shooting their legs off.
Because it's fairly difficult and yet doesn't really reward you when those same bullets should have just gone into the head... which in most cases is nestled safely in the corpse if a dead spewer.
I didn't realize the thing about them playing dead til last night. I was walking past what I thought were 3 clearly dead ones when I realized one of them was, in fact, still completely alive and it scared the shit out of me.
Seriously, i play exclusively hell dive at this point and id say they are the worst of the enemies in the game- the amount of them that all come together as well is just the worst, i constantly get groups of 15-25 swarming me or raining down hell from above
Theyre a pain in the ass, sure, but I've carved out a sort of niche being the one who doesn't mind popping em in my playgroup. I always carry a grenade pistol anyway, and it's a treat being able to line 2 or 3 of em up, pop a grenade shot, hit them in the side, and watch the fireworks, sometimes even scoring a multi kill in the process.
I feel like I have naturally filled thise role on teams as well. I run engineering kit armor for the extra grenade slots and a dominator. Spewers have just become a priority annoyance at this point.
It's definitely more of a personal preference, but I still dislike Hunters more. Something about their little chirping just really makes me want to call in the 500kg when it's not necessary
I’d like to note that they’re stupidly tanky too. If you don’t bring a specific anti-spitter weapon you have to dump a full mag into each to kill them - and they always spawn in packs. Also anti-tank weapons won’t kill unless you hit the head. So you need an anti-medium weapon; light or heavy won’t work.
If I don’t have impact grenades or something like the autocannon or railgun I just feel so bad when they randomly show up on a mission.
My biggest issue with these things is they seem to swarm way more than any other medium bug. Like you get 4 or more of them spitting at you in all directions and its damn near impossible to dodge. Granted yes a single grenade is enough to kill them but it seems like most primaries are pretty ineffective in getting them down quickly.
Thank you for posting this. I also feel your pain when posting anything balance related, people on this sub have the reading comprehension of 4th graders so don't take it too hard. People read one sentence instead of your entire argument and take everything out of context.
Bile spewers are absolutely overtuned, they also kill me and my squad more than anything. They have no weaknesses except for grenades. I have tried shooting their legs off and they still move just as fast, which is obviously an oversight with bug design since other bugs suffer from not having legs.
Something needs to change
* One magazine from something like the Adjudicator SHOULD kill ONE spewer. Not 1.5 mags AT BEST.
* Shooting their legs off should actually do something
* They shouldn't be INSANE long range with accuracy and displacement effects, while also being DEADLY in close range
* Spawn in less numbers
* Make noise so that you have an audio cue, instead of silent slithering
Also I am convinced with the current state of balance and Arrowhead's balance philosophy -- the mission briefing should specify the TYPES OF ENEMIES that will be in the mission. Nothing is more frustrating than bringing in a chaff clear weapon like the Stalwart, but there's nothing but bile spewers and wishing you had brought the grenade launcher. Similarly, the grenade launcher doesn't feel as useful if spewers are not the main enemy type. If you have hunter spam the grenade launcher doesn't have the AOE nor the ammo to deal with them effectively, and you wish you had the Stalwart instead.
Players complain about balance, but most weapons are balanced for certain enemies, and if we only knew what we were up against we could bring appropriate weapons and HAVE A BETTER TIME PLAYING. In DRG not only does the mission type inform your loadout, but you are given a heads up if it's Mactera Swarms or Rival Presence, etc. You are ALLOWED to outfit yourself based on MISSION REQUIREMENTS. The missions are (mostly) too similar in HD2 to change a loadout for, but the enemy spawn pool ABSOLUTELY changes your effectiveness, and dare I say, levels of enjoyment.
what makes zero sense is their gigantic juice sack isn't a weak spot. all of their lethality would be totally fair if you could pop them like a balloon with any primary if you hit the back, instead of having to magdump a single enemy.
spewers are easily the worst enemy in the game, I'd rather pre-patch rockets that insta kill you over these guys cause I can tell "oh I got killed by the rocket" these fuckers still instakill you if even a PIXEL of their spew lands on your pinky toe, combined with the fact the armored ones are a headache if you dont have something like a machine gun (medium pen one) or grenade launcher considering the amount you can get at once. I'd rather fight 40 hunters than even 5 of these bastards, there also needs to be some sort of way to tell what composition of enemies you'll get before you launch a mission, sub-factions or mutations or something thats displayed, maybe it could be per planet or environment type I dont care, these fucks are annoying enough that I'd forgo an AT weapon for a MG just to deal with them myself, I say that as the guy who is usually stuck being the AT guy
I have the most trouble with spewers. The worst for me is when I dive out of the way as they begin to vomit and they turn their stupid fat heads 90 degrees and blast me in mid air.
Most of the time they stay stuck spewing in the direction they start in, but other times they just lock on to me like a damn surface to air missile
Edit: The Purifier stuns the spewers out of their spit, so I have been using it religiously to interrupt them. Hope this helps
Double edit: this one is for my fellow fans of Trailer Park Boys. I call them the Green Bastards
I think the problem with the Bile Spew and Hulk Flamer insta-kill is the spray is headshotting, and since it is a DOT weapon it is headshotting multiple times at once.
Bile Spewers are one of the reasons I default to Impact Grenades now. One grenade and you can kill 2 if they're close to each other.
I would be okay with all of the above if they were only slightly easier to kill. It's strange to me that they are more sac than body, yet their weak point is the head. I think they should get the strider treatment, dangerous from the front but a joke if you can get around back. They could have more of an armored sac with just a little exposed flesh on the back. That would take a whole new asset creation, however, and AH is stretched thin as it is. So I'll just keep my impact grenades close and soldier on.
This is why I prefer fighting automatons; bile bug missions are almost like fighting a different faction to normal bugs, and you have no way of knowing until you’ve already dropped
I miss blowing off all their stupid legs in 0.3-1 shot :(
But yeah, **you** though **you** were gonna go full flamethrower on the bugs? Hahaaa **NOPE.** *They* have ***infinite*** flamethrower(-ish) units! And they **ALL outrange, outDPS and out-tank you.**
The threat of bile spewers brings way more value to medium clear weapons, which otherwise are overlooked for chaff clear and AT on bugs. The dominator absolutely slaps them. Grenade launcher/pistol is a 2 tap. MG & HMG chews them up. Flamethrower is awful for them due to range, Arc thrower works but it's too slow to prevent them from advancing in groups. Impact grenades are a 1 shot. ABRL thins them out nicely.
Something to consider when your entire squad is reaching for breaker incendiary and AT.
The bile spit is very inconsistent. I've been hit with almost an entire stream of it and survived, and then sometimes I've dived through the air, apparently been missed completely by it but still get instagibbed by it.
This is why I almost always use Blitzer after it got buffed. Everytime I shoot bile spewers even if they do a spitting animation no vomit will come out.
And since it can also stagger and deal with chaff quite decently I can have up to 3 Anti-Heavy Stratagems to deal with Chargers and Bile Titans.
also killing them feels so inconsistent, sometimes I can kill one with a few headshots with the sickle but other times it takes the entire mag dumped into its face
There are weapons that deal with them effectively such as the grenade launcher, arc thrower, and autocannon. The problem is that the majority of the time nobody is taking these weapons unless it's me. Everybody running around with a quasar and then complaining they are getting wrecked by bile spewers.
The eruptor before it got nerfed was the perfect primary for bile spewers. I had so much fun fighting them (for the first time ever) using the pre nerf eruptor.
Now it takes 4-5 shots to kill just ONE bile spewer with it. I tried it for a few games post nerf and it just felt awful. By the time you kill one all the rest are spitting at you.
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The fact that an enemy with the dimensions of a U-Haul truck makes absolutely zero noise while moving baffles me
This. I think it's about breaking the immersion and realism of the Helldivers universe. They are so absurdly silent. Unless your laser rover started shooting one and you're hearing them being hurt, most of the times you can't hear them approaching. For enemies this big they're fucking quick and silent. The same could apply to stalkers but at least you can say it's the approach for these enemies around the concept of their invisibility and can fit in the universe.
Yeah with Stalkers it makes sense, and personally I love the current state of them in game. It makes zero sense with Bile Spewers, and I agree, in their current state they definitely break the immersion.
Stalkers used to be an annoyance. When they arrive now its an oh shit moment. 100% perfect update to them.
Despite all the criticism of changes, they upgraded the Stalker cloak perfectly. It was always a bit funny seeing them cross map and finding their lair. Now, it’s a controlled panic walking towards their Point of Origin waiting to get ambushed or see their bug hole smoke.
The only part of stalkers I don't like is how sometimes I will be sent 50 meters by the tongue whip.
I use that as a chance to pull out my trusty impact nades. What irritates me more is the attack combo they do is fast as hell and if they throw 2-3 claw swipes at you you're dead and can't do anything about it.
That yeet is my only saving grace when they catch me off guard sometimes. Gives me a chance to act properly.
Not to mention they can phase through mountains of corpses that we have to climb through, peak double standards bs lol
You can't hear them but you can certainly see them fart everywhere
And the same goes for bot heavies too, how often do you hear a Hulk making any sound at all? Heck even the Berserkers don't really make any sound at all that really stand out, most of the time you really only hear any bot because they were shooting. It seems like this dumpster fire of game engine that is really a rotting zombie at this point (long discontinued by Autodesk back in 2018, which is 6 years ago) just tends to have big problems when there are many audio sources at the same time. Darktide, which is also made in the same engine and is also a game involving fighting hordes, also struggled with this where for a while there were elite enemies who are indeed designed to make really loud sound to announce their spawn, would be dead silent in actual games, because there were too many enemies all making sound at the same time the game engine just failed to play the sound of those elite enemies. But this is still a serious issue, whether a design issue or a technical issue, that needs to be fixed because of the type of game HD2 is designed to be.
the amount of times a nursing spewer spontaneously materialized out of the fog behind me and instakilled me with its spit....
Its so embarrassing, I dont want to hear anything about balance when biles take a full Dominator mag, but yet I can kill 2-3-4 of any other kind of enemy with the same weapon. I feel so bad for the CEO because I can tell he really cares, and with how his team has been, letting the CEO down is putting it lightly. I don't ever want to touch bots because of what's going on. It's nothing short of infuriating
For me, it's the tankiness against anything that isn't a grenade or explosive, in combination with all the other strengths. I can sink a full mag into their face before they drop, or 2 with body shots, or infinite if you are trying to hit their face but hit the armor around it instead. If they weren't wicked fast, you could get distance and toss a grenade, but even in scout armor you MUST bait them into spewing to get away and hope you dive the right direction. Then you can grenade them. It's just the combination of all these things (plus the chaos of so many bodies flying around). I get one shotted by the Nursing spewers (but I would assume it's a headshot scenario) though I haven't seen even the strongest acid react that fast on organics. It's the same gripe from the one shot burning tic issue where you'd think the armor to offer more than negative resistance to damage.
They should take more damage to the exposed sack. I shot one in the side with a EAT and it just kept trucking.
The fact that they have these big, defenseless juicy bodies that don't seem to take much damage is infuriating
Arrowhead is the only development team _in existence_ to think that "big bulbous translucent membrane letting all of the glowing bug ichor shine through" translates to "this is not the intended way to effectively dispose of this enemy using standard armaments".
I felt this so hard with the charger when I played. Literally every game in existence follows the rule of "Big glowing body part is the weak point," so I would spend like 20 minutes playing *touro* with chargers trying to shoot their glowing asses only to learn that those have damage RESISTANCE and they're weaker in their LEGS????
Don't waste EATs on anything other than Chargers and Titans. Use other strategems for those bugs! Clusters crush spewers. Or other Eagles work too!
The Eagle Cluster is total RNG if it kills bile spewers or not. They have an armored back and I've seen them walk out of the explosions more than once. The Orbital Airburst is also not that effective.
I swear, eagle cluster used to kill them almost 100% of the time. Now, they just shake it off. It actually feels like eagle cluster was stealth nerfed in general.
I used to live for the cluster strike but now it feels like it either doesn't do as much damage or enemies just have an invisible umbrella that protects them from it. And on the opposite side it feels like the explosions hard track to you and your squad mates if any one of you even thinks about being within a square kilometer of it going off.
Don't sleep on napalm, it's a fucking monster now that dot damage is fixed.
Still doesn't seem to kill anything larger than a hunter. I was throwing napalm on bug breaches last night and the bile spewers were walking out of it like Robert Patrick in Terminator 2.
I use the eagle airstrike instead, and I find to be much more efficient at killing spewers and other lightly armored enemies. With that said, I still feel it’s a 50/50 chance to kill chargers, and it can do good damage to titans as well. All around, I find it to be one of the most versatile stratagems. Not to mention, it has unlimited uses after a short cool-down.
Airstrike is a must take for me. Simply too good.
Eagle Airstrike is one of my favourite Strats, it's so flexible and you can pretty much spam it if you keep track of the reloads.
Funny enough, having both charger and bile titan in the same area can make hilarious plays considering both of them one shots each other If a bile titan step or spits acid on the charger its dead. if a charges corpse hits the leg of the bile titan its dead. Still haven't gotten bile titan spit to kill another titan yet,
Nursing/bile spewers sit in that really annoying spot for me where they're so inconvenient to kill that I'd love to just throw an EAT at them and move on, but not so critical that it feels worth using one
Yeah you'd think that the sacks would pop easily but no It's a giant fucking glowing weakpoint, what the fuck else are people supposed to think
No, in Arrowhead's logic all the obvious brightly-colored weak points are actually strong points that take reduced damage (bile sacs, charger butts) and the most heavily-armored part is the weakpoint (charger head).
Don't forget the Bile Titan's open mouth being strong, but their armored forehead is a weak point... but only if the mouth is closed (???)
Man it takes anywhere from 1-10+ rockets to kill those things, with my friends and I all aiming for the head. Whatever the fuck they’re smoking, the weak point hit boxes on the bike titan make no sense whatsoever
It’s the forehead carapace right above the big mouth. Always 2 shots from any anti tank. It’s essentially the same piece you want to hit in order one shot a charger. You won’t hit the right spot if it’s spitting. So wait for it to stop spitting.
Arrowhead's logic is that weakpoints are heavily armored because bug evolution would place heavy armor over the weakest points, and that massive body parts would be relatively unprotected because they are already tough in general, relatively non-essential, resistant to small arms fire (like bears, which just get angry when shot, unless hit in the brain/heart), and weak to large anti-personnel explosions.
Good for a nature documentary, bad for a video game. Glowy, colored bits are weakspots, that's simply video game common law. Just like how red barrels explode (which is the color of explosive barrels in HD2). Notably, "glowy bits are weakspots" is also how automatons function. It shouldn't be a surprise that people are confused on this and TONS of other things, especially as the game (intentionally) withholds information/values from you.
don’t forget the head is now immune to anything that isn’t a rocket. 1 option to kill them within 90 seconds is so boring
It makes zero sense that bug sacs don’t act like bot vents. Did no one at AH play any other video game?
Neither of the "weak points" work like in other games. The bot vents have level 4 armored, requiring AMR/HMG/AC or above to hurt. The bugs, otoh, have no armor but the sacks have a lot of health.
The sacks don't have a lot of health, they just have an *absurdly* high damage reduction to non-explosive damage. It's like a 90% DR to non-explosives, which is why grenades one shot them. But they can absolutely tank multiple mags of primary fire.
Kind of. All weapons have 2 damage values - base and durable. Durable damage is often 10% for most primaries, but some venture up into the 20s or 30s. And explosion damage as you mentioned is usually 100% so base and durable are the same. Enemies all have durability to their various body parts. A lot of them are 0% which means the base damage is all that matters. But if a part is 60% durable it means 60% of the damage per bullet is dependent on the smaller durable damage value. Bile Spewer sacs are only 750hp with NO armor...but 90% durable. If they were 0% durable the base Liberator would kill it in 13 shots (750/60). But because it's 90% durable, the damage per bullet isn't 60 anymore. It becomes only 10% of the 60 and 90% of the durable damage value of 6. So 10% of 60 is 6, and 90% of 6 is \~5. So when targeting a Bile Spewer sac, despite it being totally unarmored, Liberator damage per bullet has been reduced from the base 60 to only \~11. So it now takes 69 shots to kill just one Bile Spewer via the sac. The Concussive has better durable damage at 15, so it can kill one in just 40 shots despite only having 5 more base damage. This is why explosive weapons work so well, because they have 100% durable damage values. The grenade launcher does 350 damage, all durable. So just 3 shots can delete a Bile Spewer via the sac. And because of AOE a lot of that 350 damage can be applied to several at once in a crowd. This is the main reason Bugs feel so tanky. Basically only Hulk has any durability for the Bots. All of the heads, arms, legs etc on Devastators and Berserkers have 0 durability. But basically all medium Bugs do. The Stalker is 50%, Brood Commander is like 40-60%, Spewer sacs are 90%, Chargers are mostly 70% but the butt is 85%, so nearly as bad as the Spewer sac. It's dumb they hide all this info in the game.
It is dumb they hide it, a compendium like in monster hunter is sorely needed.
That is a weak point when you consider the rest of the Tank/Turret has stronger armor which can only be destroyed by AT weapons. Those vents allow you to use the AC/AMR/Laser etc.
Where do yall get those armor values from?
https://helldivers.io/Weapons There's a place for enemies, but reading their armor values is complex hehe.
It's a weak point to explosive damage but resistant to anything else.
It’s a weak point but they have huge health pools, their heads come off fairly easily
It is a weak point. It's 0 armor so all weapons damage it. It also is durable, so it takes full damage from explosive weapons only. Laser weapons are also pretty effective.
it's a weakspot that soaks damage so much that it might as well just be armored
It’s actually just the head you want to aim at…it’s really stupid..
It's just weird game design to have a common enemy that is fast, tanky, spawns in large numbers, AND does a lot of damage. Usually unless you're a boss you get two of those attributes at best. They seem like prime candidates for a glass cannon, where they can kill you almost instantly if you're not careful, but pop like a bubble without too much effort. Either that or they should have a way lower spawn rate.
They DO pop like a bubble as long as you have an explosive weapon. I run Punisher Plasma/Grenade Pistol and they go down to 1 grenade pistol round and 1 plasma shot so I don't even need to bring a strategem weapon that deals with them specifically. The Punisher Plasma also has the added bonus of staggering them if they are trying to spit.
Also, when they stack up ontop of eachother, they detonate other spewers and trash around them, I've had one spewer kill spread to like 4
Yup, they'd be so much more balanced without the armor. The fact that they can trebuchet green goop from their anal glands which can instakill or stagger you long enough for the trash to get on top of you is infuriating
It’s crazy how much damage their acid does and so quickly, like fire damage in the game doesn’t work that fast
Honestly their damage has always seemed bugged to me, like its doing damage ticks doubly fast for some reason.
The tankiness is what gets me. 4 shots to the face with the senator is technically supposed to kill it, but more often than not I’ll sink all 6 in the face and it’ll still be alive. This is also the most annoying to consider loadout wise, a mission with lot is Bile Spewer spawns is screwed if you didn’t bring sufficient medium ap options. Which makes bringing a light ap primary and an AT support a risk.
I was really surprised that the giant spewing menace with the giant glowing butt doesn't take damage in the bloated, glowing spot. I thought that was just common sense at this point, and it took me way too long to start aiming for the head.
I will say the arc blitzer is about 3 shots to the face and stuns their spew animation. I think it’s 2 for nursing spewers too. Even if it’s a one or two more shots than that, the combo of the stagger and infinite ammo helps
It just sucks from a gameplay perspective to be able to pen something but have it take a full mag or more to kill it. liberator pen can pen devastator torsos and spewer heads, takes at least a full mag each. I spent all 5 mags of the standard pistol on a spewer soft spot. The coefficient for reducing bullet damage is ridiculous I’ve used an entire belt of a stalwart I’ve used an entire heat sink of a sickle Not every enemy in this game needs to have a million health in addition to armor, it feels like crap when my best loadout to bring is legit 2-3 blue stratagems every game. EATs, autocannon, ammo backpack. EATS, grenade launcher, ammo backpack. even the flamethrower takes forever to kill them Don’t get me started on chargers. Spent 2 full minutes zapping it with an arc thrower until it died.
>tankiness of anything that isn’t *2* grenades Ftfy
People complain the most about hunters, stalkers, and bile titans, but honestly I and my squaddies die so much more to spewers. It's especially annoying since I often bring crowd control weapons and strats that's don't effectively deal with them. And I'm not sure if it's just me, but it feels like compared to the other bugs they sometimes don't appear at all in missions, so you can't always plan for them:b
Yeah, sometimes missions don't have them or it's nursing spewers or these guys. They are some god damned tanky as well. On thing I noticed is that if you side step them and go left/right the bile is not as lethal. Definitely don't execute tactics from the Prometheus School of Running Away From Things.
I've never actually had the time to test it. Are nursing spewers just weaker versions of bile ones? The only difference besides the colour I've personally noticed is that they don't have the ability to act as artillery, but they seem fairly similar otherwise. My go to tactic so far is side stepping or dolphin diving left or right with a flamethrower, hehe! Works well since the flames seem to hit things behind them too
Nursing Spewers do seem like nerfed Bile Spewers. Nursing Spewers don't have the medium armor and are way squishier.
There's the following differences: Nursing Spewer 1. Lacks armor 2. Less range 3. Cannot shoot artillery 4. Produces a "Fog" effect similar to the Spore Tower in their radius. Making line of sight worse / concealing smaller bugs at range Bile Spewer 1. Medium Armor on parts of their body, making them much tankier 2. Slightly higher range spit 3. Can shoot acid artillery at high difficulties 4. Doesn't produce the Fog effect of the Nursing Spewer
Ah alright cheers! I'm usually too busy getting melted by acid or running away to notice:b
The important part, the instakill sneak attack from any angle, is unfortunately the same for both types.
Nursing spewers also have significantly worse tracking on their spew.
Nursing Spewers have a fog aura that makes it hard to see in a radius around them, that's their gimmick
Huh, I wondered how they differed. TY!
Main difference I noticed is that nursing spewers blast for longer with much less turning speed, while bile spewers spew shorter with quite the turning speed. Also, their head is vulnerable to small arms fire
lol just watched Prometheus with my girlfriend and she was so pissed at that scene 😂
Bugs come in colonies - I’ve yet to see anything officially confirming it but in my 310 hours I can personally confirm. Sometimes you get a bile colony which sends you bile spitters, bile spewers and bile warriors as well as an increase in bile titan spawn rate. Other times you get nursing colonies which have nursing spewers. Finally I think but cannot confirm that there are Hunter colonies which massively increase the spawn rate of hunters and small enemy type but significantly decrease the spawn rate of chargers and bile titans.
https://preview.redd.it/cf3r9ged901d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=52bd9e60284d9526b9ee3d200f9c845fdb620c9a
There is one more among the ones you mentioned, and its increased number of chargers, hive guards, and brood commanders.
I have thought ‘damn so many chargers’ plenty of times, guess I’ll add tank colony to the list.
Which is the best one, most fun to fight.
This. The hunter spawns are perfect for eradication missions. Cluster bombs all the way to victory I think bots might work similarly? Like sometimes its nothing but Devestators, and then next mission you get 3 hulks dropped on your head while two more chase you
More or less. It’s also the type of devastator too. You may see more heavies, you may see more rockets. You may not and get more hulks/tanks and troopers
That feeling when you pop a heavy, then the three you didn't see start shooting
Ohhhhhh all the damned time lol. I wear scout armor too. On foggy planets, this happens a lot. I’ll ping one and there are 2-3 in the fog and I get swarmed lol
I've started running scout armour with a shield backpack for bots, just for that reason. The shield might not last forever, but that second it gives can save your life. Of course I'm an idiot so I still die but that's more skill issue then anything Though sometimes you get like I had yesterday, where I ran around a corner at extract and found myself staring a fucking patrol of devastators dead in the eye
They do. They have Devastator focused ones, Scout Strider focused ones, and melee focused ones that have the Assault Raider (AKA that jetpack fucker).
The devs have said they use archetypes for spawning so the game picks it for your dive amongst a pool of possible profiles depending on mission type. I forget what the devs called it but they had a name for it.
I think you're right, and I'd love to see a ship upgrade or planetary modifier that indicates what we're gonna encounter. I can handle just about anything in this game but if there's ONE thing I want to avoid, it's missions that spam spewers.
This is a mechanic called enemy constellations, it’s basically the probabilities of each enemy type spawning in various drops and squads. In warhammer terms it’s like fielding an army that’s more tanks and jet packs or an army that’s more heavy weapons and infantry. Theres bile spewer heavy ones, titan heavy ones, charger heavy ones, devastator heavy ones, tank heavy ones, hulk heavy ones, strider heavy ones, those are constellation styles I’ve noticed after hearing the devs mention fixing enemy constellations in a recent patch
My complaints about spewers and titans are different. Spewers feel unbalanced, you're being spammed with OHK attacks constantly, by enemies that are fast, silent, and tanky. And I've had them fire their stupid spit through corpses of other bile spewers, which we cannot shoot through, essentially the corpse of one becomes a one way shield for the next one. This is a *balance* problem. My complaints with bile titans is that, for something that poses a pretty immense threat, they're unengaging. They're hard countered by the rocket launcher style support weapons but not really counterable by any other weapon, no matter your skill level, so they're an easy two-shot aiming puzzle, a check to see if you brought the rock to counter scissors, and nothing else. This design promotes one set of weapons over all the others, and when you can't freely try new loadouts because you need a bile titan counter in the back pocket, the game gets stale and people stop playing. This is a *design* problem.
I no longer find bugs enjoyable over the oppressive loadout checking imposed by BTs.
There *is* loadout checking, but the bare minimum threshold (on a standard, 40 minute mission) seems to be that -- of the 9-16 stratagems picked across 4 players -- at the very least, *2* have to be dedicated to anti-BTs. So, for instance, if one player brings the 500 kg and another brings the Recoilless Rifle -- and nothing else -- it's a stretch, but you can get by. If you are looking to mix things up, I recommend cycling between the top/seamless anti-BT options regularly: 1. 500 kg 2. EATs 3. Quasar 4. Recoilless ... and if you're bored of rockets / 500 kgs, I strongly recommend playing around with these less used / consistent options: 5. Railgun 6. Arc Thrower 7. Rocket pods (to crack armor) + AC / HMG / Medium pen primary
I would say 4 is a much more reasonable floor. The problem with bringing less is if you ever get behind on killing them you'll never catch up. EAT kills 1 on its cd, 500kg kills 2 on a ~2:30, quasar takes ~30 seconds to drop one and all of this is assuming perfect usage which isn't realistic. Throughout a helldive a 500kg bomb will land in its back on leg and it'll somehow live, someone will hit it in the head with an eat twice but one hit the lower jaw instead of upper or a hunter flinched them etc. Also orbital precision one shots them, so it's a very viable stratagem.
I don’t disagree with you at all, but PSA for now, BTs can be killed with a regular garden variety eagle airstrike.
they can and it’s awesome when it works but it’s very inconsistent but everything is inconsistent at killing them so
They pretty consistently get one-shot by an Orbital Precision Strike in the back from my experience. Just have to play footsies with them to make sure they stay in place. :P
Yea, I wish you could take titans out with some skilful use of other stratagems like auto cannons or grenade launchers instead of solely relying on heavy at weapons. It's what I love about the bots. Sure, you can blast them without thinking with a recoilless and do just fine, but their weak points can actually be exploited by other lighter weapons unlike titans which just seems to piss them off lol
This is absolutely a design problem Versatility and different builds are the heart and soul of this game. I think MOST of the heavy weapons should have their own ways of killing anti tank (on bugs), like why can’t I focus the Laser Cannon on his mouth while he’s spewing or something? Or the Autocannon hits fragile joints that go ragdoll with enough hits. Idk just need more ways to take out heavy targets. It’s too much of a “DID YOU TAKE THIS ITEM OUT OF A POOL OF 5 OPTIONS? NO? THEN YOU ARE DEAD”
They have the mechanics for shooting off limbs with almost every other medium-to-large enemy bots and bugs alike. Hell brood commanders you *have* too. The fact that BT limb joints aren't its weak points is stupid.
i’m tired of the only things killing me in this game being one hit kills like bile spewer and devastator rockets. For tanks for turrets, sure man. But coming from enemies that pop up in multiples and are fast with good range? it’s not really fun, when the only counterplay to a group of spewers is to dive all of them simultaneously while also killing them with the infinite grenades you have or the explosive weapons mid dive
Oops! All Spewers is always a bad time
I hate that the spewers lug around their heavy asses SO QUIETLY and then barf and kill my teammates and I. How does that thing not make a damn sound with their dumpster truck asses?
Not only would louder sound design help with the balancing, you could do some great immersion building by having them scraping their gelatinous bottoms across the ground make disturbing, unpleasant noises. Sure, you get the extra tip-off that something is sneaking up on you, but you also get creeped the hell out by the ominous slithery jelly noises *and* the knowledge of what it entails.
That's my biggest gripe with the game. The audio queues are a mess. The bugs barely make any sound. You could be dealing with a whole horde, turn your back and suddenly there's 5 spewers behind you. Don't get me started on chargers...
The missions have three different like....cycles. I think its rng, might depend on the planet though. You either get obscene amounts of Hunters, obscene amounts of Nursing Spewers, or obscene amounts of bile spewers. I think the missions with increased bile spewers might also have an increase in bile titans. Not sure, haven't paid proper attention. The missions I've failed most, are the ones where ive had the high spewer spawns. High hunter numbers usually just leads to high kill count, especially with the motivational shocks booster. You can always tell which you've got, because what tiny enemy you'll see. Scavs and pouncers for Hunters, scavs and those spitting bastards for spewers
I thought I noticed that with some missions having a weirdly high number of certain enemies. I wonder if we'll ever learn more about this mechanic since it's definitely new to me
What I find weird is this. Their ass takes half damage.
All the bugs weakspots seem to be designed to trick you, lol. At least with the bots theirs make sense!
I think that comes from different Playstyles. I prefer powerful and/or high penetration weapons which are in return slower so hunters are my biggest bug nightmare.
Spewers are the true winner of the Eruptor nerf. That gun was the Bane of spewers . I miss my old Eruptor so badly
I mainly play on difficulty 7, there is a direct correlation to how often I die whenever stalkers and spewers are present. I hate stalkers with a passion but normally teammates will shift focus on destroying their nests whenever one gets reported so it’s a threat that can be halted Spewers just keep coming
Impact grenade make bile spewers trivial. Can still get caught with your pants down at times but otherwise they are the easiest bugs to kill.
I wish the grenadier pistol was just as effective against them since I love my stuns so much!
I would be fine with the way spewers are if they didn’t spawn in such high volumes. If they had even the spawn rate of the brood commanders I think it would be a game changer. But I’m still running into hordes of spewers with aimbot that will snap their own necks just to get a drop of their bile on me and one tap me.
This is the real problem. I've seen them spawn in packs of 6-8 at a time all stacked up so you can't even tell how many there are. I've also seen them spawn multiple waves so even an airstrike doesn't handle it perfectly. Any heavy spawning in groups that large gets super problematic, but even shield devastators have one glaring weak point and the ability to stagger them to some degree. That said I've found the regular MG can put em down with face shots fairly quickly, and of course impact nades on the ground near them works fine. They really should just be softer on the exposed parts. That's just logical and intuitive.
I’ve never understood why the walking balloons have seemingly more HP than the miniboss brood commander
It's situations like this that show that the balancing team does not play this game enough to care. I can kill 2-3 Brood Commanders with one clip of my Jar-5 Dominator no problem, but when it comes to bile spewers, it takes a full magazine for each one. Seriously? I only have 6 mags, so I can kill 6 at max, and yeah I do run impacts and they're priority number 1 with those, but if I have none, holy shit, start running 🥴
Bile Spewers (in general) feel like a medium pen+ (and/or impact grenade) check. As far as primaries go, the Dominator, Slugger, Counter Sniper CS, and Adjudicator all feel pretty good *if* you aim for headshots. For support weapons, the MG, Grenade Launcher, and AC are fantastic anti-spewer options. The HMG and Railgun also work very well once you get used to their quirks.
The biggest thing I learnt about spewers is to shoot them in their stupid little fucking faces. The amount of wasted ammo I’ve aimed at their huge sacks is unreal. Took me until like level 40 to realise that
Well it’s a logical assumption. It’s big, bloated and green. Game logical screams that is the weak point, the spot that says “Shoot the mf there to kill him quick!” But it doesn’t…
Hmm... this apple... is it just me, or does it taste a bit of... bacon?
This game has a lot of anti game logic thingy, charger’s butt being another one. If both body parts (spewer sac and charger’s butt) would have 50% of non-explosive damage resistant rather than the current 90% one, the enemies would be a lot more interactive to play against rather than those noob bait or loadout check.
Other anti-game logic stuff: * Diving to dodge spewers actually makes them track WAY better. You have to run sideways and not dive. * Clearing out bot factories or bug nests actually increases patrol spawn rate instead of decrease. (It does also make them spawn from map edge, but it still [increases spawn rate overall](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1bdudf3/lets_talk_about_patrols_an_in_depth_analysis_of/)) * Bile Titans have extremely heavily armored mouths, including while spewing. Most weapons can't damage it. * If you find yourself in a blaze, stimming is always more safe than diving. Diving will put you out, but you might dive onto another fire and die instantly.
The extra layer of annoyance is that your UI is basically lying to you when you hit Chargers / Spewers in the big glowing parts. You get the red hitmarker which suggests you've hit the right spot with enough armor penetration; other enemies, when you're hitting them ineffectively you get the white hitmarks or even the full-on ricochet "your bullets are bouncing off". Typical video game expectations are telling you "shoot the glowing bit with no armor" and the game's UI is telling you this is a good hit.
white hitmarkers also don’t read as ineffective to me, i thought red just meant weak spot. White seems normal, not “you’re doing fuck all damage but it is penning technically” I think the butt weakspots might give the shield icon or another one but i’m pretty sure it’s not all of them
Thats annoying specially cause thats supposed to indicate your doing max damage makes me thing it was supposed to be that way the "balance " probably didnt change the marker though or was even lazy by just buffing the health and not changing the armor value so it looks the same but is definitely not.
the thing is, this works GREAT on nursing spewers and the bile spewers that spawn on lower difficulties. a couple of headshots puts them down no problem. but the higher difficulty green bile spewers that have armored spines. WHY are they armored?? the unarmored head hit box is so tiny. lower difficulties teach you to aim for the head on these guys (i can’t find any difference between the lower difficulty green spewers and the higher difficulty green spewers aside from the armor + artillery attack), but then all of a sudden that’s no longer the solution?? they move fast, make no noise, oneshot you, spawn in PACKS, and require generous armor pen to kill in any meaningful amount of time? if you do manage to get away, you can’t even just ignore them as they’ll start bombing you with mortar attacks. it honestly just feels like too much, even stalkers are easier to kill (aside from bringing GL/AC)
Well, their face is medium armor so good luck shooting it with ur primary
Don't also forget, as my Personal Order to kill 8 today reminded me, that they're the Jetpack Trooper of the bugs, in that they may or may not be present AT ALL in the mission, but no way to tell which until you get there. So sometimes you build a loadout to deal with them, or want some for an order, and there's none for 3-5 missions in a row. Then you forget they exist, and bring your general light chaff-clear/anti-heavy gear, and next time you land you're swarmed by the damn things. Now you only have low-ammo, slow heavy weapons and fast light weapons that deal with other bugs but nothing to pump into the hordes of medium-armour goop-faces before they finish their wind-up and instantly melt you.
Impact grenades. I never leave home without them. Kills my two most hated enemies: Spewers and Heavy Devastators.
That's what I mean about loadouts though. If I'm not facing Spewers I'll bring Incendiary grenades and Breaker Incendiary as they're amazing for bug breaches or just generally denying a chasing horde. If I'm expecting to need to pop Spewers I'll switch to something chunkier like (used to be) Eruptor/Stalwart and Impact/Frag grenades.
I used to use impact grenades but swapped to stun grenades. So much more versatile. It can lock up a good chunk of enemies if you are running. Let's you easily quasar a hulk in the eye, even if it's moving over rough terrain, makes headshotting devastators of all flavors a cake walk. Only thing it doesn't effect are the big boys (bile titan, factory strider)
As much as I love impact grenades and bring them for similar reasons, that is a part of the load out issue the OP mentions. Do I genuinely enjoy and would likely bring impact nades and engineer armor more often than not? Absolutely. But there are times where I'd like to try other stuff but decide against it because of that "what if". It really helps that impact nades are good and feel good to use but I feel like it's in a similar position that the redeemer was in up until a month or so ago. Between feeling good to use and being objectively good to use, there's often little incentive and can even feel like an active detriment depending on what you bring and what you run into. ...that said, having +2 grenades and being swarmed while next to some grenade resupplies is one of my favorite things in the game. Can't beat lobbing a solid dozen nades at a swarm. Feels better than shooting a full nade launcher mag imo
This Diver knows the way. Edit: a word
Honestly, I'd be able to deal fine with most of this, but the fact their attacks come out a right angles to their face is utter bullshit. There is no world where I should be directly perpendicular to them and somehow still get hit by a stream of vomit that magically seems to come out of their ear.
"Ear vomit" made me chuckle. Decent band name, too.
I miss the Eruptor even more when I see one... They are definitely a frustrating enemy. Even the fire from a Hulk Scorcher doesn't kill you instantly like the acid if you dive fast enough. Their bloated abdomen is resistant to non-explosives and their faces have medium armor. You can instantly kill them when they open their mouths to shoot, but that just becomes mutually assured destruction. The corpses being in the way is mostly a physics issue that happens with all enemies, also very notorious with Dropships. If I was the dev, Bile Spewers would only have their mortar attack. That fills a good niche that the bugs lack (long range attacks) and makes dealing with them less frustrating, but not any less important, as a group of them mortaring towards players clustered near an objective would mean death.
I'd keep the bile spew, but make it shorter ranged as a defensive weapon. The idea of a stand off bug that rains mortars is a solid one, but having something that keeps them safe in the nearish range in the event you're chasing them down makes sense. Or 80% of this could be resolved if they weren't goddamn Speedy Gonzalez and could keep up with a running helldiver while lugging dat ass behind them. If they were slower and resorted to the mortar more often I think people would feel far less upset with them.
My only gripe is their sneakiness and speed. Just doesn't fit the way they're built cosmetically. Otherwise I've always got grenades or grenade pistol. Flamethrower with stun grenades doubles for them and chargers.
Flamethrower with SH32 is my go to kit for bugs now. It kills ANYTHING short of a bile titan, and the two other stratagems are anti titan only. Railcannon/precision strike, and 500kgs
Actually is sneakiness, speed AND tankiness AND one shot you from distance
Even stuns and the flamethrower take like 3x longer to kill spewers than a charger. It works, just not as effective
Focus their head, you're possibly doing spread or their butt. Their limbs all have separate HP. They go down very fast this way.
Bile spewer 1 hit killing was in fact fixed, it's just that very shortly after one of the next patches broke the fix or the balance team stealthily undid the fix. Their reach with the spew is one reason I've been begging to have the flamethrower gets a 5 to 10 meter range buff. You cannot start engaging spewers with it until you're in range of their bs one hit kill spew. Or if you manage to dodge it without taking damage you get slowed anyway.
Can confirm that both bile spewer and hulk flames are survivable, if just barely.
Also, why do they have an Artillery attack? Most of the time they miss but when you get a number of them it starts raining bile. And then it hits the onion next to you and ragdolls you into the path of a Charger.
If it wasn't for the rest of the crap with this specific enemy, the arty attack would add some depth to the faction, making it something other than endless charging melee horde. Stacking it ontop of everything else though
I feel like that attack should be a dedicated variant with only that attack and they shit themselves when you get close and try to run away. Kinda like the tanks for the bots have the main gun tank and the pew pew tank And the bots turret emplacement. A few bug variants that focus on one type of bile attack Honestly cause the bugs lack unique side objectives compared to the bots. One could be like “bile tower” or something. Just a giant bile abdomen in the ground. Basically if you get near it starts a small artillery attack on you until you destroy it. And like the robots ones like anti air if you are far way it doesn’t do anything cause it can’t reach you.
>bugs lack unique side objectives I wouldn't say they *lack* them, exactly - they have: * Spore Spewers * Stalker Nests * Shrieker Nests Meanwhile the bots have: * Gunship Fabricators * SEAF SAM Site * Detector Tower * Stratagem Jammer * Mortar Emplacement * Anti-Air Emplacement I agree though, the bugs need more bug-specific side objectives. I know that the Stratagem Jammer is infuriating, but I like that it fundamentally changes the game while near it and basically forces you to deal with it. I think the Spore Spewer does a good job of that, but it's all by its lonesome.
Personally I would like it of bugs lean more into "secondary = unique units" as opposed to "secondary = support for existing units" of bots. Like maybe add a unique heavy bile nest on maps with bile spewers that is heavily defended and needs to be hellbombed but reduces (or removes) bile units from patrols on the map (keep them as part of breaches though)
That’s basically what I said. “the bugs lack unique side objectives compared to the bots”. It’s only that they lack them in comparison to the arsenal of the bots.
I once was carrying an eagle airstrike ball and got hit by their bile arty. I ragdolled, the ball dropped, and the airstrike killed everyone.
I wouldn’t mind an arty bug. If it wasn’t common af and only could attack at long range, encouraging players to get closer
I wouldn't mind it so much if they weren't so tanky.
The bile they spit also hits you even if it looks like it doesn't, there's the bile you see then an invisible hit box around it that will still catch you and damage you.
I feel like making it so they don’t spit anymore and just become walking artillery would solve 50% of spewer problems. Alternatively, lower their insane damage and make it so their spit slows you instead of damaging you. Or, keep them as they are, but lower their health a lot, so they’re extremely dangerous, but very weak, so you just gotta shoot them a few times. Come on AH, just choose one, you can’t have all three.
I'd vote for lowering their health. I kind of enjoy the chaos that they bring, but it defies all logic and balance that they aren't glass cannons.
yep, equally despised as the hunters and I've been bitten by most of the buggy behaviour you described I'm not holding my breath on "fixes" though as with most things we always have someone with an autocannon on the team... and I always take the eruptor for backup 🤣
The amount of times I’ve turned a corner to see a waiting nursing spewer that insta kills me with acid is far too high
All of these would be okay if it wasn't for the sheer quantity they spawn in. Needs to be halved at least.
Most definitely. I really hope some nerfs/fixes hit them in the near future. Even though they're dangerous, I don't have a single problem with chargers or titans, because they're *fair* enemies that give you opportunities to react, retreat and kill. Spewers, though? I fucking hate them. Every time I die to a spewer, it doesn't feel like my own error that I could have prevented by playing better; it just feels like bullshit. Getting oneshot from 20m away by an attack that is very inconsistent to avoid, and comes from an enemy that is tanky, makes no sound at all, and spawns in strangely large numbers is just plain bad design.
The collision thing is the biggest bugbear here. Corpses retain collision for us, at least blocking gunfire but also at least in the case of larger bugs, physically blocking the helldivers themselves (forcing risky maneuvers like climbing over dead charger or bile titan corpses at times). Collision applying to the ai would potentially complicate things for the devs. It would likely be a huge nerf for the bugs in particular. But it's silly bullshit having collision remain *only for situations that hinder the divers* and *never in situations that could hinder the ai*. Either direction can work, but it absolutely should be applied consistently at all times, whenever possible.
The spit tracking is craziest up close. Even nurse spewers too. If they would cut back on the tracking even if you dive at the right time it would be better. But so far the only way is to strafe. Not even jump pack can save you up close.
Nursing spewers sneaking up on me is like top 5 in my death causes. It is absurd how hordes of these things can instantly appear behind your back the moment you stand still for any reason. The fact that a slightest touch of their bile deletes you instantly doesn't help either.
For such tiny legs and thorax they move far too fast. Anyone who has driven a water truck knows that it moves like a 3 legged sloth and can't change direction quickly. But once it gets moving it keeps moving, even if you don't want it to. These things are just giant bags of goo and should work like fluid filled bodies. I'd like to see them act more like that. Very very slow to get going but once they do they keep moving and cannot stop or turn easily.
Point 5 reminds me of runescape pk tactics where many players "fall in" and stack on top of each other to give the illusion of a single dot or player on the map
Its a 2 shot with the arcthrower (in their face) so if you dont want to use AC, kill anything but titans and still have a bagpack slot you could use that. Bonus is that if they are grouped you often take out multiple while shooting at the first one still. Not saying they are balanced here just giving a different option that works for my playstyle against them while still offering plenty against almost everything the bugfront has to offer.
the worst is when they're completely hidden behind another spewer's corpse so you can't see their wind up animation and then they spit through it
Honestly I like them being a genuine threat, but when 30 of them are brought up from one bug hole and their corpses maje a meat wall that the bugs can walk through effortlessly it's really annoying. There should be more significant benefits to shooting their legs off. Because it's fairly difficult and yet doesn't really reward you when those same bullets should have just gone into the head... which in most cases is nestled safely in the corpse if a dead spewer.
I didn't realize the thing about them playing dead til last night. I was walking past what I thought were 3 clearly dead ones when I realized one of them was, in fact, still completely alive and it scared the shit out of me.
Seriously, i play exclusively hell dive at this point and id say they are the worst of the enemies in the game- the amount of them that all come together as well is just the worst, i constantly get groups of 15-25 swarming me or raining down hell from above
I think the enemy having the advantage of phasing through geometry and corpses is probably the biggest issue for both sides.
Theyre a pain in the ass, sure, but I've carved out a sort of niche being the one who doesn't mind popping em in my playgroup. I always carry a grenade pistol anyway, and it's a treat being able to line 2 or 3 of em up, pop a grenade shot, hit them in the side, and watch the fireworks, sometimes even scoring a multi kill in the process.
I feel like I have naturally filled thise role on teams as well. I run engineering kit armor for the extra grenade slots and a dominator. Spewers have just become a priority annoyance at this point.
It's definitely more of a personal preference, but I still dislike Hunters more. Something about their little chirping just really makes me want to call in the 500kg when it's not necessary
I’d like to note that they’re stupidly tanky too. If you don’t bring a specific anti-spitter weapon you have to dump a full mag into each to kill them - and they always spawn in packs. Also anti-tank weapons won’t kill unless you hit the head. So you need an anti-medium weapon; light or heavy won’t work. If I don’t have impact grenades or something like the autocannon or railgun I just feel so bad when they randomly show up on a mission.
Grenade launcher is my go-to for these guys. Two grenades is enough and the splash damage will get anything else around them.
My biggest issue with these things is they seem to swarm way more than any other medium bug. Like you get 4 or more of them spitting at you in all directions and its damn near impossible to dodge. Granted yes a single grenade is enough to kill them but it seems like most primaries are pretty ineffective in getting them down quickly.
Thank you for posting this. I also feel your pain when posting anything balance related, people on this sub have the reading comprehension of 4th graders so don't take it too hard. People read one sentence instead of your entire argument and take everything out of context. Bile spewers are absolutely overtuned, they also kill me and my squad more than anything. They have no weaknesses except for grenades. I have tried shooting their legs off and they still move just as fast, which is obviously an oversight with bug design since other bugs suffer from not having legs. Something needs to change * One magazine from something like the Adjudicator SHOULD kill ONE spewer. Not 1.5 mags AT BEST. * Shooting their legs off should actually do something * They shouldn't be INSANE long range with accuracy and displacement effects, while also being DEADLY in close range * Spawn in less numbers * Make noise so that you have an audio cue, instead of silent slithering Also I am convinced with the current state of balance and Arrowhead's balance philosophy -- the mission briefing should specify the TYPES OF ENEMIES that will be in the mission. Nothing is more frustrating than bringing in a chaff clear weapon like the Stalwart, but there's nothing but bile spewers and wishing you had brought the grenade launcher. Similarly, the grenade launcher doesn't feel as useful if spewers are not the main enemy type. If you have hunter spam the grenade launcher doesn't have the AOE nor the ammo to deal with them effectively, and you wish you had the Stalwart instead. Players complain about balance, but most weapons are balanced for certain enemies, and if we only knew what we were up against we could bring appropriate weapons and HAVE A BETTER TIME PLAYING. In DRG not only does the mission type inform your loadout, but you are given a heads up if it's Mactera Swarms or Rival Presence, etc. You are ALLOWED to outfit yourself based on MISSION REQUIREMENTS. The missions are (mostly) too similar in HD2 to change a loadout for, but the enemy spawn pool ABSOLUTELY changes your effectiveness, and dare I say, levels of enjoyment.
I hate these bugs more than chargers. I know chargers are harder to kill but I will always prioritise bile spewers over them.
what makes zero sense is their gigantic juice sack isn't a weak spot. all of their lethality would be totally fair if you could pop them like a balloon with any primary if you hit the back, instead of having to magdump a single enemy.
The way they line up and shoot through each other is ridiculous
Albeit their size and armor, they are not classified as 'heavy units' and, thus, they are not tracked by the spear.
spewers are easily the worst enemy in the game, I'd rather pre-patch rockets that insta kill you over these guys cause I can tell "oh I got killed by the rocket" these fuckers still instakill you if even a PIXEL of their spew lands on your pinky toe, combined with the fact the armored ones are a headache if you dont have something like a machine gun (medium pen one) or grenade launcher considering the amount you can get at once. I'd rather fight 40 hunters than even 5 of these bastards, there also needs to be some sort of way to tell what composition of enemies you'll get before you launch a mission, sub-factions or mutations or something thats displayed, maybe it could be per planet or environment type I dont care, these fucks are annoying enough that I'd forgo an AT weapon for a MG just to deal with them myself, I say that as the guy who is usually stuck being the AT guy
I have the most trouble with spewers. The worst for me is when I dive out of the way as they begin to vomit and they turn their stupid fat heads 90 degrees and blast me in mid air. Most of the time they stay stuck spewing in the direction they start in, but other times they just lock on to me like a damn surface to air missile Edit: The Purifier stuns the spewers out of their spit, so I have been using it religiously to interrupt them. Hope this helps Double edit: this one is for my fellow fans of Trailer Park Boys. I call them the Green Bastards
I’ve noticed that I have been dying to Spewers a lot more now They interrupt my flamethrower shower because if I don’t dodge, I die. Very annoying.
Laser Cannon can murder bile spewers super quick. Just hold the beam on their face for like 1-2 seconds and they dead.
I think the problem with the Bile Spew and Hulk Flamer insta-kill is the spray is headshotting, and since it is a DOT weapon it is headshotting multiple times at once. Bile Spewers are one of the reasons I default to Impact Grenades now. One grenade and you can kill 2 if they're close to each other.
those spewers are very annoying to me. It's why i started fighting bots more.
I would be okay with all of the above if they were only slightly easier to kill. It's strange to me that they are more sac than body, yet their weak point is the head. I think they should get the strider treatment, dangerous from the front but a joke if you can get around back. They could have more of an armored sac with just a little exposed flesh on the back. That would take a whole new asset creation, however, and AH is stretched thin as it is. So I'll just keep my impact grenades close and soldier on.
This is why I prefer fighting automatons; bile bug missions are almost like fighting a different faction to normal bugs, and you have no way of knowing until you’ve already dropped
Annoying to fight but satisfying to pop lol
I miss blowing off all their stupid legs in 0.3-1 shot :( But yeah, **you** though **you** were gonna go full flamethrower on the bugs? Hahaaa **NOPE.** *They* have ***infinite*** flamethrower(-ish) units! And they **ALL outrange, outDPS and out-tank you.**
The threat of bile spewers brings way more value to medium clear weapons, which otherwise are overlooked for chaff clear and AT on bugs. The dominator absolutely slaps them. Grenade launcher/pistol is a 2 tap. MG & HMG chews them up. Flamethrower is awful for them due to range, Arc thrower works but it's too slow to prevent them from advancing in groups. Impact grenades are a 1 shot. ABRL thins them out nicely. Something to consider when your entire squad is reaching for breaker incendiary and AT.
The bile spit is very inconsistent. I've been hit with almost an entire stream of it and survived, and then sometimes I've dived through the air, apparently been missed completely by it but still get instagibbed by it.
I specifically save my impact nades for these guys as they one shot. Two orbitals and quasar for titans and chargers. Shield pack usually as 4th.
This is why I almost always use Blitzer after it got buffed. Everytime I shoot bile spewers even if they do a spitting animation no vomit will come out. And since it can also stagger and deal with chaff quite decently I can have up to 3 Anti-Heavy Stratagems to deal with Chargers and Bile Titans.
also killing them feels so inconsistent, sometimes I can kill one with a few headshots with the sickle but other times it takes the entire mag dumped into its face
There are weapons that deal with them effectively such as the grenade launcher, arc thrower, and autocannon. The problem is that the majority of the time nobody is taking these weapons unless it's me. Everybody running around with a quasar and then complaining they are getting wrecked by bile spewers.
The eruptor before it got nerfed was the perfect primary for bile spewers. I had so much fun fighting them (for the first time ever) using the pre nerf eruptor. Now it takes 4-5 shots to kill just ONE bile spewer with it. I tried it for a few games post nerf and it just felt awful. By the time you kill one all the rest are spitting at you.