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.
Aside from the HMG and recoilless both being support weapons, it’s not really feasible to use the recoilless if there are multiple of them, not to mention ammo concerns
But the HMG is not a support weapon and the railgun is? I don’t quite get the point.
We can take down 4 chargers at the same time with this strategy with 2 people with recoilless. More than that and the orbital laser or railcannon have to come out.
I think what I didn’t like is: I could maybe agree with their line of thought for the changes they made to the weapons. I don’t like that they prioritized these as the first balance patch.
As many have said it was meta because of the abundance of chargers/heavy enemies in 7-9 for folks trying to get the super samples.
Before the high difficulties felt chaotic but at least doable. Now… it still is but it’s even more running and kiting. To me it’s a less fun gameplay loop.
And the “arrogance” is probably perceived from the other dev comments like “get good” “stop clutching your pearls” “goodbye crutches”. If that’s how the devs feel, it’s easy to imagine the balance person, who prioritized removing tools vs making the reason the tools were needed first, thinks the same way.
I rather disliked the whole ‘your primary weapon is not supposed to be the weapon you primarily use’. Fine then rename them to small, medium, large or something instead of leading me to believe I should be able to kill a smaller horde without a Destroyer or Eagle.
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.
Meh, I disagree. With the “meta” loadout of breaker, shield, and railgun, even helldiver difficulty can be relatively easy as long as you can avoid getting surrounded. If the goal is to always feel like you need to work together and barely make it out alive, these changes make sense. I personally prefer that there isn’t one correct way to play the higher difficulties.
I personally prefer that there isn’t one correct way to play the higher difficulties.
I agree that there should be many viable ways to at higher difficulties. I just think that nerfing the only way that seems to work without providing alternatives doesn’t seem like the way to go about making that happen.
The man in the ivory tower even says under the railgun heading that they are aware that one of the reasons the railgun is popular is because other anti-armor sucks.
Respectfully sir that’s like the only reason.
Your CEO said on Twitter that the ass of a charger is not a weak point, merely an unarmored point; well all the same I need my partner to get the charger to face the other way to hit its butt since I need multiple recoilless rounds to kill it.
Maybe my friends are too drunk but with the shield and the railgun we still get about three bile titans per breach and breaches retrigger regularly. With automatons it is easy for us to kite circularly, thereby reducing the number of patrols we drag in, but the speed of bugs leads us to back pedal across the map. If you care to share advice I would welcome it.
Mostly just “keep moving”. If you spread out a bit, generally one person or group will take most of the heat while things are relatively quiet for the others. Heat team basically just has to keep running while the other team does the objective. If a bug hole opens up on the objective, run away and circle back. Chargers and hunters seem the most capable of catching up, but the hunters are pretty easy to kill. For the chargers, they seem almost hard coded to take a longer stagger if you dive out of the way instead of just moving out of their turn radius, so you can dodge a charge and gain a little more time to escape.
Don’t underestimate smoke, it can be pretty handy in keeping things off your back. Call down supplies often, even if you can’t necessarily get to them all. They have a pretty short cool down so don’t be afraid to waste a few or take multiple if no one else is nearby. Honestly I wouldn’t worry about bile titans too much unless they’re on an objective (or are an objective). They can be outrun and will eventually lose interest, and their attacks have fairly limited range with a big windup.
Granted I haven’t tried all this since the update so take it with a grain of salt. I do plan to try it again this weekend so I’ll report back.
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.
I’m getting irrationally angry at everyone crying about the hard difficulties being “too hard”. Diff 7, which is the last “mandatory” difficulty to obtain everything in the game, has decent balance imo. It’s not easy by any stretch but it’s not impossible, or even “too hard”. It’s challenging and can definitely get very chaotic, even if you bring your A-game, and that’s good.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Aside from the HMG and recoilless both being support weapons, it’s not really feasible to use the recoilless if there are multiple of them, not to mention ammo concerns
But the HMG is not a support weapon and the railgun is? I don’t quite get the point.
We can take down 4 chargers at the same time with this strategy with 2 people with recoilless. More than that and the orbital laser or railcannon have to come out.
Oh I thought you meant the machine gun as in the support weapon machine gun, my bad. Forgot about the emplacement one
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.
Subtle arrogance? It seems like a completely reasonable and well thought out post. People read way too much into normal posts.
I think what I didn’t like is: I could maybe agree with their line of thought for the changes they made to the weapons. I don’t like that they prioritized these as the first balance patch.
As many have said it was meta because of the abundance of chargers/heavy enemies in 7-9 for folks trying to get the super samples.
Before the high difficulties felt chaotic but at least doable. Now… it still is but it’s even more running and kiting. To me it’s a less fun gameplay loop.
And the “arrogance” is probably perceived from the other dev comments like “get good” “stop clutching your pearls” “goodbye crutches”. If that’s how the devs feel, it’s easy to imagine the balance person, who prioritized removing tools vs making the reason the tools were needed first, thinks the same way.
I rather disliked the whole ‘your primary weapon is not supposed to be the weapon you primarily use’. Fine then rename them to small, medium, large or something instead of leading me to believe I should be able to kill a smaller horde without a Destroyer or Eagle.
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.
Meh, I disagree. With the “meta” loadout of breaker, shield, and railgun, even helldiver difficulty can be relatively easy as long as you can avoid getting surrounded. If the goal is to always feel like you need to work together and barely make it out alive, these changes make sense. I personally prefer that there isn’t one correct way to play the higher difficulties.
I agree that there should be many viable ways to at higher difficulties. I just think that nerfing the only way that seems to work without providing alternatives doesn’t seem like the way to go about making that happen.
The man in the ivory tower even says under the railgun heading that they are aware that one of the reasons the railgun is popular is because other anti-armor sucks.
Respectfully sir that’s like the only reason. Your CEO said on Twitter that the ass of a charger is not a weak point, merely an unarmored point; well all the same I need my partner to get the charger to face the other way to hit its butt since I need multiple recoilless rounds to kill it.
Maybe my friends are too drunk but with the shield and the railgun we still get about three bile titans per breach and breaches retrigger regularly. With automatons it is easy for us to kite circularly, thereby reducing the number of patrols we drag in, but the speed of bugs leads us to back pedal across the map. If you care to share advice I would welcome it.
Mostly just “keep moving”. If you spread out a bit, generally one person or group will take most of the heat while things are relatively quiet for the others. Heat team basically just has to keep running while the other team does the objective. If a bug hole opens up on the objective, run away and circle back. Chargers and hunters seem the most capable of catching up, but the hunters are pretty easy to kill. For the chargers, they seem almost hard coded to take a longer stagger if you dive out of the way instead of just moving out of their turn radius, so you can dodge a charge and gain a little more time to escape.
Don’t underestimate smoke, it can be pretty handy in keeping things off your back. Call down supplies often, even if you can’t necessarily get to them all. They have a pretty short cool down so don’t be afraid to waste a few or take multiple if no one else is nearby. Honestly I wouldn’t worry about bile titans too much unless they’re on an objective (or are an objective). They can be outrun and will eventually lose interest, and their attacks have fairly limited range with a big windup.
Granted I haven’t tried all this since the update so take it with a grain of salt. I do plan to try it again this weekend so I’ll report back.
Played today. The buffs are not nearly enough.
Yeah, we were struggling with heavies playing just on Hard. We didn’t even bother to play anything higher than that.
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.
I’m getting irrationally angry at everyone crying about the hard difficulties being “too hard”. Diff 7, which is the last “mandatory” difficulty to obtain everything in the game, has decent balance imo. It’s not easy by any stretch but it’s not impossible, or even “too hard”. It’s challenging and can definitely get very chaotic, even if you bring your A-game, and that’s good.
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.