Helldivers 2 gets its first rebalance patch
Helldivers 2 gets its first rebalance patch
Arrowhead Studios releases the first major rebalance patch for Helldivers 2, introducing a variety of new challenges and a few key nerfs.
The reason the railgun was popular was because it was the only effective way to deal with chargers. To nerf that and leave other AT weapons / charger health and armor untouched is really fucking stupid.
I played a few games after the patch and I came to a similar opinion. I don't think the railgun was the real issue. The chargers were the issue and people were using the railgun because it was by far the best option against chargers.
I don't think the railgun needed such a nerf. I think the flamer buff and breaker nerf together would've brought railgun numbers down, because flamer is now crazy good against chargers while also being good against patrols. At least you would've had to choose between the range of the railgun or the crowd control of the flamer. Now I'm just going to be using the flamer, which creates the same issue as before just with a different gun.
The chargers work pretty well with a shot from the recoilless rifle in one of the front legs followed by a magazine of the primary gun in the now exposed leg.
HMG + recoilless also works pretty well, rocket in leg and 1-2 seconds with the HMG and he's gone.
Only downside is the reload time so if you have 2 or more chargers somebody has to kite them while you reload.
Hard agree.
Arrowhead published a blog post where they went into detail about their design philosophy: https://www.arrowheadgamestudios.com/2024/03/balancing-the-firepower-in-helldivers-2/
I did not like the subtle arrogance behind their rationale here for the changes.
It feels like the game balance team hasn't played the game on the higher difficulties. If your primary weapon isn't supposed to be able to deal with tanks, then your strategems are your only option. But nerfing the railgun without giving us other alternatives makes killing massive amounts of tanks impossible. I doubt the buffs to the flamethrower and laser cannon are going to be enough.
I don't think it's arrogant, I think it's actually really interesting how they talk about the "fantasy" of the game. I get not everyone plays the game for the same reason, but I understand the devs' vision of the game really being about the feel of being a hero against the odds, not having the most effecient loadout or unlocking everything as fast as possible.
The expendable AT rifle and recoilless rifle are both more effective against chargers than the railgun is, with the exception of a high number of chargers at once. They both take off leg armor in one hit and stagger the chargers.
…unless they nerfed those too.
Easy thing to say when you're only playing up to 5. Where my group stands, playing 7-9, the rail gun, with its higher dps, is the gun we need to complete ops.
I realize you address the number of chargers in your comment, but this change also cripples players that are more solo oriented.
Seems like the laser cannon is supposed to sort of fill some of that gap.
No the laser cannon is supposed to be an lmg that you don't need to reload. It only got its buff because people were confused about a weapon with 'cannon' in the name, that you have to rest on your shoulder, getting completely blocked by armor. But initially the lascan was completely in line with other laser weapons.
Even the orbital laser weapon only kills chargers and bile titans by reapplying the fire DoT unless you strip top armor first. And the scythe primary weapon is a complete waste of everyone's time since it is eclipsed by any DMR.
Always pretty lame to see weapon nerfs in pvm games since I couldn’t care less what someone’s abusing to hit their endgame quicker.
I don’t play with randoms so for me the fun of stonger gear is that I can fill the rest of my gear with joke gear. Sometimes my group will rock all mines and mortar sentry to try and blow each other up.
Edit: the railgun did need a nerf tho I mainly mean like the other smaller weapon changes.
Im fine with it, it means the game is more balanced overall and other builds become equally viable. At the end of the day it gives more choices for players.
always fine with balancing things but this just feels like the usual trend all games have these days where they’ll nerf first then a month from now have a list of buffs.
I could see the urgency of nerfing the railgun because I imagine every little gremlin is abusing it rn. It’s always the small nerfs like -3 rounds in the breaker that I roll my eyes at and wished they’d just wait until they roll out the buffs to do those.
I’m not going to see any gameplay changes while I’m running from 2 bile titans plus horde and my breaker plunks 3 less times.
Oof those extermination missions were always a fun end-cap after doing 30+ minute intense missions. Shame to see them extended.
Yeah, if they were concerned about people spamming those and nothing else, then I wish they'd balance the rewards / mission effort, rather than just extending the mission time.
Who gives a shit about people spamming then? They only drop common samples so at best all anyone can get from spamming them is xp, credits, warbonds, and the first tier of ship module upgrades if they grind them.
There's no value in XP after 20, no value in credits past your first ~50k when you have all the strategems you're interested in, warbonds are nice but mostly useless except for the boosters and breaker (which just got nerfed), and the first tier ship modules are just quality of life improvements which everyone should be able to get easily anyways after 20 hrs of play.
Is there a name for the phenomenon when a company or group has access to all of the metrics for a product or good then makes foolish decisions using that information?
Right now Arrowhead can deflect all criticism of their actions by saying "we made this decision based on the numbers" while ignoring the fact that metrics aren't magic numbers blindly meant to be followed, you are supposed to use them to discover underlying reasons for why those numbers exist in the first place.
This patch is a big L for me and a bad omen for what is to come of this game if the devs are making their decisions like this.
Why? The changes seem pretty sensible in regards to what was clearly above and below the power curve?
Hard agree. Played a 7 today and it felt really bad. Without balancing other weapons to make them viable, they just nerfed the only gun that can do shit.
I love the autocannon gun, but it's useless against bugs and only good against automatons.
I'll be sitting this patch out. It just wasn't fun to play with these changes.
I don't know if there's a term for that, but imo Rocket League had the same thing going for years. The game used to always queue a team based on the MMR of the highest ranked team member. People complained they couldn't play the game with their super low level friends in competitive play, so they changed it so it would average the rank between team members.
The reason I always hated this change was because an average bronze player can barely compete with an average silver player, and etc through the ranks. If you play in 2v2, then you can have a bronze and gold player against two silvers and the game thinks it's a fair fight. In reality, the gold player is likely going to run circles around both of the silvers while the bronze player barely needs to do anything except try and interfere with the silver team's defence for it to be no competition at all. I can only imagine the problem would have been even worse in 3v3 matches.
At least before when everyone queued by the highest ranked member's MMR, then you had to be selective about who you brought with to make sure they can carry their weight. After the change, they streamlined the smurfing and boosting problems the game already has.
Tried bringing it up in community discussions but the whole community (especially at the time) wanted to do nothing but circle jerk Psyonix's dicks with that same argument: "well Psyonix has the data and you don't, so how do you know this is a problem? They have the data and they made the change so clearly it must not be a problem"
Not gonna lie, I’m a little concerned after this patch. I don’t think it’s entirely unfair to make comparisons to the first game seeing as it’s a sequel (up to you to agree/disagree). But with this patch especially, the philosophy differences between the two are becoming more apparent.
In 1, there was almost no primary that was useless altogether. Certainly no support or AT that was useless. And even at the high levels the armor spam wasn’t as ridiculous and we had more reliable tools to deal with it.
If they want things to be harder, why did they change the reinforce system to be objectively easier? That system change is my single biggest 1>2 gripe.
This after seeing one of the devs back this balance patch by constantly (and imo not so professionally, but I’m a boomer like that I guess) on Discord chide people not happy about the changes to “just go play an idle game” if they want an easy power fantasy cake walk.
Like I said, major concerns for me. The response to this will tell the tale. I never could get into DRG primarily because they seemed to prioritize difficulty balancing way over having fun in combat. Same thing with Deadlink which should have been a fave of mine. I really hope to not see HD2 go that route when I’ve touted HD1 as one of my faves and a contender for best coop game of all time for years now.
And even at the high levels the armor spam wasn’t as ridiculous and we had more reliable tools to deal with it.
We have very different memories of this game. I remember the tanks spam at higher levels was even more egregious than in HD2. However I do agree that the anti amor options were basically all better. Especially in the stratagems department
I love the flame thrower.