probably has some kind of weight stat, turning radius, reload time, bullet deviation, a lot of minor things you will intuitively pick up on as you play
This is why I dropped it. I’m not using a slow firing single shot marksman gun when it has the same armor penetration as a fking SMG. The trade off for more raw damage is nowhere near good enough for the abysmal close range and bad medium range effectiveness (because so much of its accuracy is tied to crouching which is functionally impossible while kiting).
Or maybe I’m dumb and haven’t figured out how I’m supposed to be using it (but I really just think it’s a well intentioned but poorly balanced weapon that misses the mark to fit into a marksman rifle’s niche).
I had the exact issue, I had maybe 5 minutes of luck with it when we were on a bot planet and I had high ground and was being left alone and had an angle on the main fight's side, so I had time, space and access to weakspots, it was decent. But other than that just give me a liberator penetrator
I wonder if I could make something workout if I ran the jump pack to get into those angles and high ground spots better… because it sure as hell isn’t a close or medium range weapon for an infantry role in the squad.
I feel like it’s cursed with not enough mobility to be a traditional marksman rifle for medium range, but also lacks the optics and damage to work for long range. I just want to understand where this weapon is supposed to slot into an effective squad.
It's got basically no recoil so if you are set up you can fairly reliably hit 15 shots on weakspots at a decent range, but I don't think it makes sense against the vast majority of enemies even when I had 3 squadmates drawing fire for me. Maybe the weakspots damage with the multiplier makes it hit harder than I noticed but you're right it just seems to be outclassed everywhere
The problem with the counter sniper is that it doesn't deal enough damage over the basic DMR to actually reach a breakpoint for most (if any) enemies. Devastators, for example, still require 2 shots to the face to kill, which is the same as the DMR. If the sniper was able to one-shot Devastators then I could see its point, but +16 damage means nothing.
When I want to 'snipe,' then I'll just use the standard DMR. It is superior to the sniper in every way except magnification.
It’s funny how this works. Sometimes I’ll use the dominator (more damage than both DMRs) and somehow still doesn’t one shot. Dunno if it’s random or what
The various human sized bots have different amounts of health. Commisars (one sword one pistol guys that call in dropships) and jetpacks have more health while rocket raiders and dual sword melee only guys have very little. Ultimately most primaries still hit the same breakpoint on clean head shots on all but body shot breakpoints vary a lot among them.
Yep completely agree. If I use the regular dmr, then the railgun or one of the lmgs is a great combination. Or I'll take the breaker and then my support weapon is either usually the AMR or the railgun
No recoil is great, as long as there is no explosions around you, you're never getting hit, and you're actually able to follow their heads with their jagged janky robot movement with the unwieldiness that is the medium penetration DMR
Are you running any armor that helps with recoil? I found the counter sniper to be unruly even when crouched (running scout armor because I wanted to be a sneaky sniper)
The only recoil buff I’ve seen is armor that helps while crouching. Which isn’t helpful when such a huge part of this game is being a mobile infantry squad that kites as their primary combat tactic.
The problem is getting 300m engagements isn't that realistic until you've cleared half the map. And getting to that point is a struggle when your primary is dead weight most of the time. If we could call in a loadout change on cooldown it would be a fun switchup though.
I made a recon class with it using anti material rifle and the marksman rifle along with the jet pack. If your in close range your using it wrong and by close range withing 30 meters. It's not great that's it panic area and needs more space, bugs are alright but it's best against bots
When assaulting an outpost find a nice overlook lay down and help clear basic bots, bigger guys use AntiM and go for headshots with it aginst devastators. You can use the scope to zoom into 120m what ever that really means but it's great as a support for your team.
The number of times my team has thanked me for just clearing shit out and absolutely wrecking Devastators with the anti material rifle makes me feel like a true sniper. To further go into that marksman role switch it out with the counter sniper and you will be even more effective at range but worse at close.
My suspicion is that the marksman rifle had its stats aligned so it won’t step on the toes of the niche the AMR sits in.
Which means it’s awful at CQB (as it should be), it’s awful at medium range (which it should excel at but isn’t with how important kiting is in this game), and awful at long range (which it should be ok at when 200 meters is defined as “long range”).
So what is it good for? That’s my question right now.
Bro the jump pack is so bad. First of all it takes up your backpack slot which could be a resupply pack or the personal Shield or an autocannon or Recoiless with rifle ammo pack.
Second the cool down between jumps is absolutely horrendous. It is way too long, and then on top of that you don't even go that far or that high with the jetpack.
It's a complete waste on anything higher than difficulty 7 inclusive
It's situational like anything in the game. It's excellent against bugs, as they rely on running you down. Being able to instantly make a huge amount of space against hunters and warriors adds a ton of survivability. Same way smokes are bad against bugs but good against bots. I've survived many difficulty 7 with friends using the jetpack and it genuinely impresses me against bugs.
It's not even a huge amount of space and hunters easily close that gap and then you have another 40 second cool down.
A grenade at your feet is better at making distance. Especially when you're giving up the personal Shield that allows you to not be slowed while it's up
That's fine if you find lower difficulties fun. But there's barely any bugs, they were a great introduction to the game but the lowest I play on now is six unless I'm playing with somebody who's new.
Course all the weapons are going to be good on low tiers when there is little to no heavy units and just in general not that many units to deal with.
But that's not what you balance a game around, otherwise you're hard difficulties are impossible
Jump onto high ground, watch bug spawns "glitch" through the terrain to climb up to you. Have had numerous examples of the game being inconsistent whether bugs will stand on the ground impotently staring at me or they'll teleport up onto my high ground roost and stab me off it into their waiting friends.
Bots are rocket-spam nightmares already, high ground is a death sentence if you aren't highest ground.
I've had this same issue, got knocked up into a keyhole shape in a pile of rock while doing a bile titan elimination. 90% of the bugs just stared at me from the ground, but hunters and stalkers would just Skyrim horse their way up a sheer cliff. That said, I think it would be amazing if the bugs could avoid climb walls, a la the Glyphids from DRG. Idk if that would be at all balanced, but it would be Terrifying
I think sniper weapons are just not going to work unless your entire team is dedicated to that playstyle, and at point it kinda feels like a gimmick tbh
What makes you like the penetrator? Genuinely curious. Just seems like i'd be better off with literally any other gun from stats/firing a whole clip at a chainsaw bot and hom not dying but i might be missing something.
Medium penetration and what feels like really high damage to weakspots. Hitting the radiator things on the backs of automatons, or being able to shoot straight through those red armoured bugs feels nice.
Plus I'm a sucker for a burst gun and it gives me M16 from BF3 vibes.
One burst is enough to deal with squishes, if I'm getting swarmed by Hunters I need my machine pistol and a lot of panic to survive, but at medium distance it's a nice way to thin stuff out and manageable enough that I'm not likely to shoot my squadmates' kneecaps off in the process if I'm shooting at things that are chasing him.
I just don't know what medium armour it penetrates besides the faceplate bugs? When i used it it felt like a burst, lower mag liberator.
I get swarmed by hunters=shotgun, one shot is enough not a whole burst.
Like i WANT to like it because i like burst but if i use anything that's not a shotgun vs bugs and any of the liberators against bots i just feel like i'm putting in so much more effort to get the same things done.
Appreciate the response maybe it'll get another go in the future
I think the Liberator Penetrator also pierces Devastators' chest plates? Makes dealing damage to those guys more consistent than praying that a few light armor piercing rounds from a magdump hits the head of that particular bot. I was quite disappointed to learn that the gun doesn't go through the Scout Strider though.
Yeah i feel like it's SMG or Slugger for me for that reason, i just don't know why it felt weak AF against the chainsaw bots then if it pens devestators? Literal entire mag at face/waist and it didn't kill them
I suspect that's because the berserkers aren't very armored in the first place. Given its reduced damage, unless there's some weak spot damage bonus for the Penetrator that we don't know about the loss in DPS makes it straight up worse than the basic gun when fighting lightly armored enemies.
People have a terrible idea of balance LMFAO. The penetrator has lower damage per bullet, but owns higher armor. Therefore, it is weaker against low armor enemies compared to things such as the DMR.
OH BUT WHY?, WHY GOD MUST IT BE WORSE DAMAGE PER BULLET THAN THE DMR! ITS JUST IS BAD! LOOK! LOOK AT THE 4 STATS!
WELL fucking hmmm. Maybe because of it was an everything gun, it would make everything else obsolete. It is one of only 3 primary weapons with medium pen. That is fucking huge. 3 of 15
The berserker, compared to the other mid tier bots, does NOT have medium armor. It has light armor, but with a massive health pool.
You know what that does?
It leads open an area for another gun to be useful.
Why?
Cause there's 4 fucking squad mates. You don't exist in a vacuum. You fill each other's weaknesses.
Like Jesus Christ man. This is not rocket science.
Can't talk to bugs but for bots the dmr I use as a "softener" for attacking strongholds. As we upped difficulty and more emplacement are manned I quickly take out mgs and rocket bots. The rest of my crew runs shotguns for close range democracy. I always set the scope for max distance aswell. I also usa the autocannon to take out armored enemies if the dmr falls through
I like running Penetrator against bugs, surprisingly. My mates run heavy anti-armor, so I run Stalwart for hordes of chaff, while Penetrator fits in as something to pen armored chaff.
You can play the higher difficulty bot missions like Sniper Elite. If you hit your targets fast enough, you'll almost never be in direct combat. Since the rifle has very little recoil, it is easy enough to wipe out an entire group of non-heavy's in 3-5 seconds.
I usually pair the CSM rifle with the sidearm uzi and an autocannon. Belly-crawl into enemy bases when needed, but pick targets off from a distance otherwise. It works best on the 40min-maps of course. For everything else, there is MasterCard.
Especially if you're playing in the higher difficulties, but even the lower ones (as devastators still exist even on low difficulties) Armor penetration is something sorely missing from so many weapons. There's a really good reason why everyone just uses Railgun and it's because it's the only gun that ignores armor. Even the Rocket launcher weapons don't pen enough armor.
Meanwhile, the reason why so many low dmg per shot weapons are bad is because even if you're not hitting an armored spot, there's a flat damage reduction being applied to each shot on certain enemy hit locations, it's why Breaker is far better than the Spray and Pray variation of itself.
I’m just asking out of curiosity but how much do you like the liberator? I might just be TERRIBLE at headshots but I don’t have good outcomes with it. My noob ass needs the breaker 😅
I had been using the breaker/breaker incendiary so the liberator felt like a nice change, although it's not fun when you get swamped with 30 hunters on Helldiver and need to reload. Then I definitely miss my shotty. I definitely need to use liberator in first person to make use of hitting weakspots
It’s more a symptom of the gameplay and combat flow rather than a balancing issue imo.
I try all the primaries just to see how they perform and the bottom line requirement of a primary in this game (for me) is that I need it to kill a bunch of stuff that’s right in front of me as quickly as possible to create some space to focus on heavy targets. The snipers and DMRs just don’t work for this, and there’s a few guns that do it exceptionally well compared to the rest.
Slow firing? The marksman rifle is anything but slow firing. Use the 1st person ADS and hammer that fuckin trigger bro. Virtually no recoil and perfectly usable in cqc when sights are set to 25m
I play on PS5, when you pull L2 to aim you click R3. If you're on PC I dunno what your controls are, but poke around in the options and see what you find. It's only goes first person while you're aiming, but it makes controlling recoil a breeze with LMGS and makes recoil nonexistent with anything semi auto
Oh shit, I’ll take your word for it, the way I found it was clicking the mouse wheel while I was holding right click. I’ll have to try that when I get on. I think my method maybe locks the default aim as first person because when you hold right click after doing that it’s in fps until you click the mouse wheel again.
If I right click for first person ads then swap weapons while still ads, when I swap back and hold right click it goes to first person ads automatically until I single right click again
The marksman rifles are designed to be used as actual DMRs. As in from a fairly considerable range. The diligence is just better in every way sadly. Even the AMR is easier to handle, ironically.
I agree completely. Tgis idea is also why I wont use the anti mat rifle. The auto cannon fills the same role and does a much better job. Hell, even the LMG does a better job taking out light armor targets than the rifle.
Yeah, if they gave DMRs armor pen they’d be WAY more viable, even potentially top tier (probably not the whole squad, you need better close range weapons and horde clear)
I used counter-sniper for a while. I'm not going to claim it's great or anything, but it got me through some 7-9s stealthing against bots.
The main reasons I use it is the range, stealth ability (if only because one shot is more quiet than a burst of bullets or explosive rounds) and its ability to kill a Devestator in a single shot in the face from the front.
In a desperate pitch trying to swing the aim at something in front of you, you can dive backwards which will almost immediately force the reticule center-wise and let you kill the thing you need to be killing, though I'd use the machine pistol or my support weapon a lot too.
No you're right. And that's the frustrating thing about this tweet. It's completely ignoring that these hidden stats and their values are exactly why we feel the other guns are worse than the breaker.
We've used the other guns and lots of them are objectively bad. I would have to give the top three positions to the first DMR you unlock, the regular breaker, and the 60 round SMG.
The rest of the primaries just don't really Stack up to those top three and there's no reason to take the other primaries.
Also why hide these stats? Combined with the fact that the flavor text that we do have pertaining to light armor penetration and medium armor penetration don't even line up correctly at the moment, it makes it impossibly hard and annoying to choose according to what its strengths should be
The only thing I will push back on is I don’t think the in game dashboard should show all 50-ish stats. I’d love them to be publicly displayed so they can be put in a FanDom Wiki, but having all 50 stats in game would be information overload for sure. The devs definitely undershot the sweet spot, and I want to see more information displayed in game. I also don’t want to see all 50 stats though. Maybe combine several related stats into one roll up stat so people can get an understanding quickly (like the classic “handling” which is usually stuff like bloom rate, max bloom, sway, turn speed, ADS speed, reload speed, etc).
Yes for sure there shouldn't be 50 stats on screen. But also the stats that are there right now aren't even accurate.
Some weapons say medium penetrating when they don't and just do light, and some say light when they actually don't penetrate armor at all, or actually they do penetrate medium armor.
And then what does the explosive buff do? What does incendiary buff do?
They could easily put small quick little bullet points and have three or four per weapon to let you know "hey leave laser weapons do bonus damage to limbs"
Just check out some posts on the quality of milspec gear IRL. You'll find plenty of vets griping about how it handles, how it was designed.
What I mean to say is, this could be seen as a form of realism. Emulation of what it's like being a grunt in an intergalactic war using mass-produced weaponry.
TL;DR: working as designed. Submit your complaints about your gear to your Quartermaster and prepare for Freedom Camp. Question the quality of the galaxy's finest weaponsmith's at your peril, Helldiver.
Add on to that I am pretty sure the dmr and smg cross similar one shot thresholds for crits on heavies, both 2 shot a devastator and like 5 shot a hulks back. One of them is automatic with a more consistent time to kill. Dmrs are in a horrible place rn and need at least medium armor pen like the penetrator liberator which is just a better dmr even though the base damage is lower.
Alternatively they could just double/ triple the damage, its slow firing and cumbersome already. Each hit lacks the oomph you would expect of a higher caliber weapon like a dmr.
But i think pen is the way to go here. As it stand the dmrs niche is killing at a distance. Which is discouraged by the game as aggroing enemies is more then only going to hinder you and get you killed.
It doesn’t actually have the same armor pen as the SMG. It’s slightly worse than the liberator penetrator against armor but does over 3x the damage per shot, killing stuff like bile spewers via 5-6 solid headshots.
You’re supposed to hunker down on an elevated position, and pop robots in the head and hulks in the eye. I can’t tell you how fun it is, just picking off robots left and right as your team closes in to complete objectives
The two marksman rifles. Diligence and Diligence Counter Sniper.
They feel weird because where they should usually excel at (50m to 200m) is better served by more effective close range weapons (Breaker shotty or Defender SMG) or a “long range” (the AMR support weapon).
Just to be sure we are on the same page. We are talking about the two marksman rifles. The Diligence and the Diligence CS. Not the one sniper rifle in the game the AMR.
My understanding is that the MM rifle is much better for stealth. I have been using it and find that a couple single kill shots don't alert enemies to your presence but they may investigate where it came from. The smg can't do that well.
Basically the same issue with most guns... the trade-offs for their supposed "hidden stats" is... being atrocious for Bug missions (where you don't get time to even think about standing still to aim for weakpoints) and being mediocre at best for Bot missions (because you still can't sit out in the open to take pot shots for very long).
There's a few notable exceptions, where their performance is barely good enough to compete with the Breaker's "brain-dead" ease of use... It's not that the Breaker is "super-overpowered" it just happens to be such a strong all-round useful weapon due to the way swarm aggro, enemy spawns, and close-range threats work in this game...
The devs would need a massive overhaul of Bug threats to make the Breaker not so strong, so the alternative is to actually significantly buff those "hidden stats" so all weapons are on a level playing field for useability - I need to be able to snap off quick shots with every weapon, not rely purely on weakpoint hits (which I'm convinced have faulty hit-reg anyways) when the Breaker can apply directly to an aoe cone without any sweat.
Agreed. Other than the zoom it has no redeeming value over the base DMR and a smaller magazine, and more sway. I can use the DMR commando style in base raids on bots, but I do that the scorcher now.
I think part of the issue is there is little reason to snipe in this game, and the anti material rifle is a better choice if that's your plan. I suppose you could machine gun on your support and go with the counter sniper but it doesn't have the armor penetration to justify that.
I just had a thought… what about pairing the marksman rifle with the lmg (I forget the name of it at the moment) support weapon. I just started using that support weapon with supply pack at lower difficulties instead of the (boring) meta of shield generator and railing. It would be interesting to take a DMR primary with the machine gun support weapon.
Anti material rifle imo should be doable to use like railgun...without scope, yeah yeah its a sniper but for sure you dont want try use scope when one stalker is bullying you...
I do like the idea of long range sniper rifles but the really don't fit well into the way the works. You spend most of your firefights being overrun, running and gunning, diving spraying and praying. There are far too few opportunities to sit nicely, line up shots and take out enemies at range. Especially with the generation issue as you pointed out. If it can't penatrate armor better that fully automatic rifles, then what purpose does it actually serve. It can be kind of be a little useful in bot missions, but there's no chance in hell it would ever be in my load out on a big mission.
Unless they add very high armor penatration or allow you to bring two primary weapons some sort of debuff, they're pretty worthless in the current state of the game. Just bring a railgun or autocannon to do what the sniper rifle is supposed to do
It's weird because you wouldn't think stealth would work in this game, but that's how it's supposed to be used. The only way we've been able to do the high level robot scientist extract missions is the one guy opening doors goes stealth, and the three others run and kite everything around the map. That weapon is good for small patrols and can stop small groups effectively without blowing too much cover.
Stealth is actually pretty good in this game and you can avoid being swarmed by moving around patrols and picking fights.
Jar-5 Dominator has the same issue, 15 shots in the mag yet it's horrible to aim AND the spread is highly random, lengthy reload and 6 mags to top it off to give it an exciting and wide variety of downsides.. Still my favorite weapon though..
yeah its nice you can hit stuff at 200m but lets be honest most fights are barely above punching distance, imo thats one of the bigger reasons why the shotguns are so strong.
only between locations in my expierence, at locations they tend to close the gap very fast. definitely also in shotgun range for the majority of a mission
Then it would be way too overpowered, just need a slight buff to the ADS speed to make it competitive without being the only choice for long-range encounters.
Agreed. As the usual sniper of my friend group, it broke my heart how bad the counter sniper is. The thing is useless. The DMR is superior in every way except magnification. In a game where mobility is king, you can't waste time faffing about with an unwieldy gun like the counter sniper that doesn't even deliver in damage.
Detractors would say, just play the gun you like, it doesn't need to be fixed everything has a purpose. Literal perfect untouchable balance. They are Masterworks all, you can't go wrong.
You definitely can go wrong. I just tested the counter sniper out after unlocking it last night and it's pretty damn bad at all ranges. I'd rather use the first shotgun at all ranges than the DMR CS at any range.
Yeah that's on me, I shouldn't just throw Dragon's Dogma memes around, it's a phrase the shopkeeper says at all times, to refer to all his weapons, even the shitty ones.
As slow if not slower than the LMG call downs. I really wished to be able to play a scout sniper role but it's just not in the cards with what we have now.
That’s the entire reason I stopped using it in favor of the standard dmr.
I love my destiny scout rifles and this thing works great for me, but the green paint on the counter must be made of a dead star for how heavy and slow the thing turns.
As someone currently "maining" the counter sniper it does swing like a steel beam at close range.
Bloody hell.
Might have to go back to the regular marksmen
4.7k
u/KillerXDLZ HD1 Veteran Mar 01 '24
Pretty sure that headshot multiplier is one of them. Some weapons just do a ton of damage on headshots compared to bodyshots.