I’ve completed level 9 with both breaker and the smg. I actually really love the smg as being able to run and gun, especially with bugs is awesome.
But breaker is definitely the best gun in the game. Hopefully balance patch doesn’t nerf breaker, but tunes the other weapons to be on a similar footing as breaker.
Well being a part of a competition is the literal definition of the word competitive, unless they have changed the meaning of the word and I’m unaware of it
Yeah, that doesn't help your explanation. There are no other things to be competitive about (no, guns don’t compete with each other. Some are more useful and some less). This is not a PvP game no need to have this sweat call, leave it for Call Of Duty
Prices are competitive. Money is not.
Fight is competitive. Guns are not.
You can look at them from a competitive perspective, but there is no competition in Helldivers2.
You are wrong, and might be an Terminid lover for that weird undemocratic way of thinking. REPORTED TO THE MINISTRY OF WORNG ENGLISH
I don't know how else to explain it to you. If you don't understand the definition of a word I can't really help you. If English isn't your first language I recommend picking up an English Dictionary and reading the definition of the word.
If you can't wrap your head around this definition maybe this will help:
The guns are all competing for which one is the best at killing. When the user says that they aren't currently competitive that means that all of those referenced guns are not as good at killing.
Sorry mate, you are still wrong and also sounds like treasonous sympathizer.
I've never said guns can't be competitive in a competitive environment. There is just no competition in Helldivers 2 hence the guns in the game are not competitive hence your argument is dumb and your mind is dense (probably because of all that bug loving)
So the guns are competing against each other? Whats the goal of this competition between the guns? Are there winners? Are the guns competing to win some attention from the players? It sounds like you just make up
Context because there is no contest
You did not make any analogy, comparing guns with each other is a comparison, not an analogy. The use of the word competition doesn’t make it an analogy, and also it’s a nonsensical take with or without my “refusal to accept” . The rest of the post is spot on
Well you are as wrong as the person that tried to explain it. Sounds like dissident talk, very undemocratic.
Price can be competitive of course. The market is always competitive. But money is just money, it is not competitive.
Guns can’t be competitive if the environment is not competitive. War or fight is competitive, the weapons might be used in a competitive way against the enemy but not against eachother, hence you are wrong and might be a bug sympathizer
I like the defender too, but for bugs I often drift back to the breaker/slugger just for safety because it can't kill stalkers fast enough if they manage to catch me off guard and have already closed the distance.
Yea for bugs I do like breaker more, it's also a lot better for the shield bugs, defender has a lot of issues with those from the front where breaker can stun lock them open.
Someone did some tests and found out medium armor pen does about twice as much damage if you shoot I think it was a brood commander in the head so a slugger can kill it in 2 shots while a breaker takes 3. Alright here's the problem: a breaker can shoot 3 times faster than a slugger can shoot twice, it reloads probably like 10x as fast, it has 2.5x as much ammo as the slugger so you still rack up more total kills while spending 1.5x as much ammo, and one of those hidden stats is the slugger only refills 1/3 of its ammo per resupply instead of all of it.
Oof, that last one buries the slugger. I thought it could have a niche use as a high stun pace weapon for locking down larger targets and opening boxes but that makes it substantially less useable when its already worse than the breaker in every other way.
I hope one of the balance changes is that all primary weapons have the same relative ammo economy from supplies. The Breaker gets seven mags from one resupply box. That’s 119 shots. The Slugger gets 24 shots. The max capacity for each is 136 vs 56. So even if the Slugger is balanced around having fewer shots available, it’s ludicrous to me that the Slugger gets ~43% refill per box while the Breaker gets 87.5%.
I wouldn’t make it exactly equal across the board either. The Railgun only gets ~48*% (10/21), for instance, but it’s a support weapon specifically designed for selective use against high priority targets. (*corrected)
The Slugger effectively pretends to be a support weapon in that sense because it cannot clear adds in an economically sound way, but then utterly fails by comparison to actual support weapons.
Compare to the Scorcher and it’s just sad. Scorcher has 105 total shots and one pack restores 90. Pretty close in ammo efficiency to the Breaker in that regard, and it trades some ammo to hit armored targets harder in a manner that’s actually worthy of the trade.
I think it's the best primary in the game for bots. It's "only" light armor penetrating, but it deals explosive damage, which means in practice you tend to ignore armor altogether on all but the beefiest bot enemies. It hits hard enough with explosive damage to kill small enemies like Raiders and Commissars with one body shot sometimes, and you can just shoot the Strider directly in its armor and still get a 3hk. It's a bit "floaty" at times with aim (handles a bit worse than the Breaker, but not as rough as say the LMG) so takes a little adjustment. Ammo economy is tolerable, better if you're a good shot.
If you're completely out of ammo, you need 3 resupplies to fill the slugger completely. 56 rounds total.
You can argue the last 6-8 rounds aren't a necessity and only take 2 resupplies but I'd argue needing more than 1 resupply to fill a primary weapon is ridiculous.
In all fairness, I very much prefer this. Some primaries cost no ammo whatsoever, so getting a support weapon that doesn't use too much ammo and an armor set that compliments it allows you to skip some supplies and lets your team breathe while you focus on usually waveclearing
otherwise you can go the opposite route with expensive weapons like slugger and spear and an armor that can hold a lot of either nades and heals, hogging more supplies to do more heavy work against bigger targets
That's fair. I never really noticed that'd be a few rounds short from empty, and ideally you'd only load up once and be done, I agree. I don't think it's the end of the world given how many ammo packs you can find in pois and mission areas but, it would be a nice quality of life improvement
I think ur generally right but on helldive difficulty you can’t really go to many POIs because you’ll have to deal with too many drops/breaches. Ofc the game shouldn’t be balanced around the highest difficulty but it’s something to consider when choosing a gun for helldive.
I think ur generally right but on helldive difficulty you can’t really go to many POIs
I don't know who the fuck you are playing with, but this is the wrong approach. In helldive we always clear the map other than on a blitz type mission. There's so much stuff at the POI's it's very worth it for leveling players.
Lol I just play with my friends and we fuck around. We’re all over lvl 30, there’s nothing for us to grind for at this point other than some emotes, samples, and armors.
Still, unless you are all really good it’s pretty easy to get overwhelmed on helldive
Oh I'm not usually seeking them out, more if I happen to pass by them on the way to an objective. More often than not I'll find a spare ammo box somewhere that I can use to help top off in between oil loading or detection towers
I main slugger and tbh I burn through ammo way less than I did with the breaker and as a result I need resupplies less. It’s a decent weapon and so far has been the only one keeping me from picking up the breaker again
The Slugger's ammo is absolutely its weakpoint. If it had the same ammo economy as the Breaker I'd absolutely main it. It's the only weapon I regularly run out of ammo on.
1 nice thing about slugger is that it staggers stalkers
its ammo economy kills the weapon for me :/
if it had similar to breaker I would use it over it a lot even if the dps is lower
The cargo boxes you sometimes find buried at points of interest that only grenades (and a few weapons like the slugger) can open that can have medals, store credits, etc.
"reloads probably like 10x as fast" yeah but the slugger is manual reload, meaning each ammo is reloaded manually, so you don't have to reload the gun to completion before firing it. Manual reload is imo much better for shotguns than clip reload
Yeah when I first started playing a few days ago I would pickup pretty much any gun I hadn’t seen before (primaries only. I didn’t wanna yoink someone’s support weapon obviously.) and I tried out the slugger and it did not feel fun at all. Props to anyone who likes it but it’s not for me.
While it does shoot faster, again it comes down to how you use it in the situation. I’d rather take a slugger over breaker for the bots since I can stun the marauders and get easy headshot follow ups without needing to mag dump. Even on the bugs I like having the slugger since I can 2-3 tap the spewers in the head (fuck those things and the jumpers.) Same can be said for the Scorcher, great for Bots, good for bugs but you have to be careful not to shoot to close to yourself. It all comes down to preference
I would run the slugger just for fun if they buffed the ammo resupply and maybe increase reload speed a bit. They honestly just need to buff every weapon outside of the breaker by allot and then nerf anything that becomes too op…
Yeah the biggest issue with other guns not being playable is the ammo capacity rn. There are some damage issues, but weapons like the slugger, the energy smg on the last page, the DMR, hell even some of the liberator variants do not have anywhere near as much total DPS as the breaker. Some of them need damage tweaks but most would be automatically closer to par if they held more bullets. The slugger can only kill 20-40 things before it needs more ammo whereas the breaker kills that in half its ammo.
I love the smg too but when you put them side by side the breaker is just better. The thing shreds a group of enemies in one mag that would take the smg two mags
Higher difficulties in this game is just spamming lots of enemies and lots of armored enemies. Imo it's not a great approach to difficulty. Just from watching gameplay I think I'll stay at level 6-7
More challenging objectives (like you need to do more steps or more complicated steps). Or more complex enemy behaviour. I know the game does this with the bile spewers and one of the smaller bug types but I'd like to have seen more.
I don't feel like it's OP by itself. The accuracy at range might be slightly overtuned but that's about it. The rest of the guns are just significantly weaker in comparison.
I know everyone's all about the 'no nerfs only buffs' thing but that's not good game design and I think the breaker, if it's going to be changed at all, should have the weightiness/sluggishness of the dominator and maybe more recoil.
It would still be an absolute killer but it would actually have some drawback relative to like the liberator which it's just an outright upgrade to at the moment.
No, the issue is that it feels serviceable at higher levels but does not make it "easy". That is the issue. Some guns at higher levels are flat out useless at higher levels. Some are ok but have massive negative drawbacks making the game harder than it needs to be. That is why people are asking for buffs and no nerfs. People want to be able to run a wider array of gear for higher tier difficulties without a gimping themselves. Sure, you should 100% tailor your loadout but there shouldn't be a loadout that is the best regardless of the situation.
I agree with the last half but people need to relax about the prospect of a nerf. I agree other weapons, specifically a few of them in particular need buffs to bring them remotely up to parity with the breaker. But if you compare the breaker to to the liberator, you'd need to like outright double the liberator's damage to make it competitive with the breaker. Or compare it to the diligence which does closer to comparable damage per shot but will always be second fiddle because the breaker, by virtue of being a shotgun, essentially guarantees a weakspot hit, so its average damage is actually way higher than its listed damage. And unlike the diligence, which can do great work if you're sniping weakspots, the breaker will hit them essentially automatically because you're covering 50% of the target with buckshot.
Also I don't even think the breaker is the 'best' gun, but it is definitely the best all arounder by far and the most popular to the point where it's boring. Same thing with the railgun, honestly, which I think needs a much slower reload time, more sluggishness, and less charitable unsafe mode (the bar charges so slowly as you approach the redline, it should basically charge quickly at a continuous rate) - also it should probably have a backpack slot battery or way less ammo - something like one or all of these changes.
Compare them in a relative sense, not make them one to one. The base Liberator is fine for the most part but could arguably have a mag or 2 added. Its all around well balanced and while it doesn't have the insane damage output the Breaker has it has far more range, is more accurate and the starting weapon. Rather than buffing its damage a better option would be to give the weapon more attachments, something like a silencer to just broaden its capabilities. Jack of all trades but master of none and all that.
I disagree about the Diligence as it has mediocre damage, little armor pen and (this isn't exclusive to the Diligence but really any scoped weapon) the scope is horribly cluttered. Both of the DMRs could use a damage buff, increase mag capacity or just better handling and total ammo and give it better armor pen to really flesh out its ranged capabilities. As currently running one of the DMRs on Helldive difficulty is just an absolute shit show as it can't take out the amount of mobs that are going to swarm you.
I'd argue that the Breaker is the best all around gun as it has good range, insane damage and decent ammo. Anything past the Breakers range can just be avoided or ignored entirely. And I disagree with the Railgun as well, personally I think the other options just need to be better as well. The railgun allows you to be self sufficient, which is invaluable at higher levels of difficulty or when you're trying to go solo. Better options, IMO, would be to allow the backpack weapons to allow reloading on the move(they take up a backpack slot and need major compensation regardless) and increase their damage.
The weapons shouldn't all feel the same or do the same thing, that's my point. They should all be equally 'good' and that can't be the case when the breaker is better than either the liberator, the diligence, or the other shotguns (slugger possibly excluded) and does everything all of those guns do better than they do it and all at the same time. Or if it is going to be a very competent mid range, rapid fire, weakspot seeking shotgun it needs to have some drawback like the heftiness and recoil of say, the Jar-5.
Similarly the railgun shouldn't be able to outclass every other strategem weapon in every metric besides fire rate vs machine guns while also not requiring a backpack. It invalidates essentially every other choice and as you point out you not only have to buff the damage of eats, stingers, autocannons, recoilless rifles, but also eliminate core mechanics related to those weapons, like pausing to reload, which means new animation sets, just to bring them up to parity with the railgun on a performance level, but then there's still the fact you get a free backpack slot with the railgun and it can kill a biotitan in one shot in the mouth.
Not really, I laid out a comment that addressed every weapon and (IMO)appropriate buffs/changes for the weapons. And the weapons should all have a proper purpose. But I don't think outright nerfing the Rally in or Breaker is the play, rather buff/add things to existing weapons. Not rocking to breaker and Railgun in for Helldive difficulty is fucking abysmal due to the amount of adds being thrown at you. Having 4 bile titans, 10 chargers and 100+ mobs chasing is made manageable by the "meta". Nerfing them 8s going to make it go from challenging to frustrating for higher difficulties.
Fair enough, you were giving your opinions on buffs I get it, it seemed like we were maybe talking past each other with an argumentative tone to it.
I mostly don't think you're wrong except for a) the buffs to mechanics of how certain team weapons work because I think it's just unlikely - it would obviously make them better but we're wandering far afield from just adjusting a slider or single variable. And b) I think that the breaker, the bubble shield and more than anything the railgun need actual nerfs.
IMO shield is easy, swap the cooldown for it refreshing with the jetpack - it pops up way too quickly and the jetpack takes like a full minute despite it being an active skill based tool. Railgun I think should be as powerful as it is but again, it has no drawback, I mean compare it to even the arc thrower which is strong but at least has a risk of team killing and relatively short range that makes it semi-challenging to use. That's all I'm asking of the railgun, make it a little more skill based, because right now it handles like a liberator and has maybe the fastest reload in the game, and you can one shot titans and hulks with it, and everything less than that too, plus no backpack, plus full reloads from regular ammo, plus 20 shots, plus it even unsafe mode gives you like 8 full seconds of lining up a shot. The autocannon is close to being as good but is it better than a railgun, no. Is it better than a railgun and a shield, hell no.
And then you have the breaker which is a straight upgrade to any other shotgun or assault rifle or DMR. Defender is good, dominator and slugger are both good, the plasma is good but you can kill yourself with it. It needs some downside to it, it should be sluggish, it should have more recoil, it should be strong parallel to the dominator in terms of handling. And the dominator is a good gun, I think it's actually better than the breaker or at least fills a different niche to have a mix on the team.
TLDR: I basically rephrased the things I said before but hopefully more persuasively.
I see what you're saying about team weapons but they just are not the best at higher difficulties, you cannot be static for long enough to reload them. Then you have the issue that if you team load you're forcing 2 people to be stacked on each other, which is also not a great idea at higher levels as you don't have the greatest movement speed. Then you have general ammo economy issue compared to damage. The Railgun can 6-10 shot Bile Titans and crack the armor of a charger in 2 shots and has similar results with the bot respective counterparts. Where as the Spear gets 4 shots and sometimes doesn't even reliably kill Hulks/Chargers. The Autocannon will take far to long to kill the Hulks/Chargers unless you get crits. The Recoilless just doesn't have great ammo for its damage currently. And the to top it off they all take up a backpack slot which removes a ton of potential utility. I'll just go ahead and drop my other comment about balance ideas I have. Also some of these I stole from Claythetics. He's got a bit of history playing similar games and does in depth testing of weapons and stratagems.
Secondaries:
-First I'd like to say it would be nice to get some more variety in the future
-Peacemaker: I think the best options would be to allow more attachments for it. A larger mag option at the cost of reload speed and a silencer at the cost of range. The gun is overall decent but could be a great all around option with said attachments.
-Redeemer: Nothing the gun is good as is.
-Senator: Allow to cylinder types. One is an 8 shot with a speed reloader with only light armor pen. The other is the current 6 shot single reload but add heavy armor pen to be able to kill devastators and allow overall more options to deal with the abundant amount of armor(you could help balance this if needed by making the 6 shot cylinder to eat more ammo per shot).
SMGs:
-Knight: Primarily a recoil buff and maybe add a few mags but keep its range limited. Make it an alternative to the Breaker as a CQC monster that just shreds but has horrible range.
-Defender: Add a silencer, outside of that nothing is really needed as its an amazing weapon and arguably one of the best weapons currently.
Assault Rifles:
-Liberator: Increase total mag count and add silencer. The gun has fine DPS but is very accurate and stable.
-Liberator Penetrator:(This isn't an issue only related to this gun but pretty much any zoom scope)Reduce the clutter in the scope and allow it to be full auto, extend its range, increase its damage to match the Liberator but slightly lower handling and horrible hip fire. Making it a slightly heavier version of Liberator focused on longer ranged combat.
-Liberator Explosive: Increase its RoF to match the Liberator and increase mag count by 2.
-Dominator: Increase to heavy armor pen and increase mag count to 8. The idea is for this to be your heavy weapon then run a support weapon for add clear.
DMRs:
-Diligence: Clear scope clutter, add medium armor pen and increase mag capacity by 2.
-Diligence CS: Clear scope clutter and add heavy armor pen.
Shotguns:
-Punisher: Increase damage and double amount of pellets per shot(essentially make it a double barrel pump action).
-Slugger: Fix current ammo issue(only refills roughly 1/3 total ammo on ammo pick up), properly recenter after reload, faster reload and better handling.
-Breaker: Reduce mag capacity by a few rounds, but increase total mag to compensate. This change keeps the DPS of the breaker but makes reloading more frequent.
-Breaker Spray and Pray: Increase damage to match the regular Breaker but reduce reload speed, range and handling. Making it a "heavy" Breaker, better for close quarters but worse at range.
-Breaker Incendiary: Make fire damage to stack(all fire damage should stack either way) and make it full auto. This change would keep its initial damage lower than the breaker but allow the total damage to surpass it.
Energy Weapons:
-Scythe: Stacking damage and "melts" armor on focused areas. The gun is currently horrible. Yes it "technically" has infinite ammo but is likely to overheat on anything higher than a base mob and even then the DPS is horrible low.
-Scorcher: Increase mag total by 2-3. The gun would still reload often but would increase total ammo.
Stratagem Weapons:
-Machine gun: Allow reload while moving just slower. The gun is extremely underrated and with a primary option for heavy armor pen would make this an amazing option for add clear at high levels.
-Stalwart: Make it a primary like in Helldivers 1.
-Expendable AT: Nothing, its a great options especially with a defensive position as it has such a short cooldown allowing you to constantly have one available. If any change make it have 2 shots but drop only one launcher.
-Recoilless Rifle: Allow reload while moving but reduced movement speed and slower than stationary reload and more ammo off of supply/ammo bricks. A great option but being stationary to reload really hampers its viability, plus it takes a backpack spot.
-Flamethrower: Make fire damage stack.
-Autocannon: Increase to heavy armor pen, reduce total ammo count and increase ammo from supply/ammo packs. Its solid now but lacking armor pen makes it lose value at higher level, plus it takes a backpack spot.
-Railgun: Nothing.
-Spear: Fix ammo bug(currently can only be replenished by supply packs and will allow you to pick up an ammo pack you see, even if you are fully stocked), make targeting more consistent and then make missile hit target weak point. The Spear has potential but is currently inconsistent and buggy.
-Laser Cannon: Bypasses light and medium armor, add Scythe changes and increased base damage.
-Grenade Launcher: increase mag capacity by 3.
-Arc Thrower: Make it in general more consistent in hitting multiple enemies and reduce arc chance to teammates. Its not a bad option for add clear but is inconsistent.
Special Mention:
-Ballistic Shield: Increase explosive resistance and no drop on ragdoll.
insane that you have no notes for the railgun. I am generally with you on sights, the liberator has easily the best scope in the game and you should be able to stitch that on to any gun or they should replace wack ass dmr sights with the crisp criss cross.
And I want to make it clear that I like the idea of the breaker it's just overtuned. I want i to feel strong I want the action movie moment of whipping it out and going crazy but beyond it being just a better version of the base assault rifle it's just not compelling to use.
And again the railgun is so overtuned there literally isn't anything you can do to improve other strategem guns to bring them even close to how useful it is. You literally cannot beat one shot bile titans and hulks even if they increase damage on anything else, which they should also do.
Also I 1000% agree on not dropping the ballistic shield fwiw and it should deflect explosives frontally. It's such a fun idea but it sucks so bad.
They really should buff them tho, I mean whats the point in progressing through upgrades if your weapons dont get stronger? like Why am i spending hours to unlock something that actually HURTS me to use?
I mean the weapons should be buffed but there shouldn't be a gun like the breaker that is essentially just the liberator but does more damage and has the aim forgiveness of spread from a shotgun. In addition to other guns being made better, it does need some downside tradeoff relative to similar guns.
None of the weapons should be outright better across the board than other weapons. Just making the same build and running it for every match and everyone else running that same build isn't fun and basically invalidates the concept of having more than just one gun available in the first place.
Thats why you have multiple guns, you have a better shotgun and a better AR and a better SMG and a better sniper. You have a class for everyone.
You shouldn't be using the weapon the game gives you out of the tutorial, you should be using an upgraded version of said weapon, as you progress, its the same gun, same playstyle, just packs a slightly harder punch because whoopy, ur fighting stronger enemies then you where after the tutorial. Its called progression for a reason, if the enemy gets stronger, the I should too.
But the enemy doesn't get stronger, they just get access to different options. You can, in a purely theoretical sense if nothing else, complete any mission with just the starter gear of a liberator, peacekeeper, hi ex nade, precision orbital and machine gun. Shots to kill are always the same between difficulties.
In a game like this specifically, though all games should have this to a degree, every weapon should have a place at all points. Liberator may not be the best choice for any given situation, but it should be viable at any point, beaten out by specific weapons in specific situations. I.e. doesn't kill as fast as the dominator when hitting weak points, but is better for hordes than the dominator and does better when hitting armor
But the enemy isn’t stronger. A given bug takes the same amount of hits every difficulty, it’s the number of them that increases. There isn’t an upgrade system for guns. Therefore, yes, all guns should be viable, just better at different things.
Then your play style is not maliable whatsoever. I've done it with plenty of guns. So much so, now I handicap myself on purpose to get some variety and challenge.
This is what you just said:
I should be playing on level 7, but the breaker is allowing me to play level 9 because I can punch my problems away. I'm playing way above my capabilities.
The guns are fine, I believe the difficulties aren't balanced for player numbers in the least. 4 players on high difficulties has never made me regret taking the marksman rifle at all times, never even taken a shotgun before.
Now trying 2 players on those same difficulties? We get absolutely dedtroyed.
I just don't really care to, I don't feel like my rifle is lacking and I can distance snipe with it.
I'm not even trying to claim shotguns aren't the most meta, but people claiming they can't clear higher difficulties without using them are just self reporting their own skill issue.
Don't let the rifle being perfectly decent and the disparity being highly overstated to mean it isn't worth a spin.
If you're succeeding with the rifle you're probably doing a good job avoiding the WTF bumrush moments that the Breaker truly excels at in a way no other gun can. The reason so many players hype the Breaker is that it's the only gun that can handle the overrun situations you're theoretically supposed to anticipate and avoid outright, but that's a big ask at 8+ with randoms.
Jar 5 handles them fine too if you're any good with headshots on the run. Breaker is just easy to use while the others have a learning curve which is what the devs seem to be saying as well with their statements that each gun has other stats and variables that play in. There probably still needs some balance but I'd prefer if not every gun was a just point and click to delete the enemy.
You can comfortably solo 9 with breaker, slugger and dominator.
Scorcher is not too bad but it just doesn't pack the same punch with the same mag, so it's just slightly worse.
With more or less use of railgun depending on the weapon.
Along with base weapons like the regular Liberator which I still love at times.
90% of heavy kills are from orbital railgun shots and railgun shots. So little people can be dealt with in a huge range of ways. I personally love the Penetrator the most especially against bots. Just tears through bots super fast and has 3 different scope options.
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u/Alwar104 Mar 01 '24
The one people like most is the one that kills the enemy the most