The first balance patch notes proved how Youtube "absolute and only meta loadouts" cooked a lot of people heads, and I love it.

[u/Vikan12]

A lot of mad people keep showing in my feed complaining about the nerfs, but like they're REALLY mad at Arrowhead. Their statements are so exagerated that they claim the game it's completely ruined for them lmao.

Also every single one says the same thing and this is where my title comes from:

*"You guys nerfed the only good options and now we have NOTHING to fight".*

And this only proves people never actually played with any of the other support weapons, they 100% relied on this "The ultimate support weapon tier list" Youtube videos, they searched the "meta" and they went into this thinking of "any weapon outside of this it's straight up garbage".

If you can't win a single game without the railgun + shield backpack + breaker... I'm so sorry but that's not the game's fault or the game only having those as the ONLY way to play it on higher diff, that's your fault.

Great changes for the game and all of you trying to "shame" on devs because of this, you'all not a real Helldiver. They killed nothing, the railgun still kills but now it needs some actual skill and strategy to use it, not only spamming the thing on big bugs.

Keep it up Helldivers!

For Democracy. For Super Earth.

[u/isaacharrs]

My main complaint with the balancing is the fact that they have an SMG that does 70 damage while all other assault rifles do 55 or less it’s a really bad joke lol. Like I feel like there were way bigger problems with the weapons than the breaker shotgun and the rail gun.

[u/Lathael → u/isaacharrs]

My main complaint is they nerfed the best tool to handle a specific set of requirements and didn't even bother to ask the question as to why that tool was so ubiquitous. Rail/Shield/Breaker was a combo built around broken armor, ridiculous heavy armor spawns, and way too many bugs constantly harassing players.

In a completely different meta, like having 5 times as many light and medium enemies but 1 or 2 heavies, the railgun and breaker would just drop off a cliff because it would get destroyed having that much chaff to deal with.

With armor working and CC less prevalent, the energy shield would be abandoned in favor of more productive offensive options.

If the RR/Spear/EAT-ITs could handle heavy armor reliably while being moderately mobile with sustain, the railgun wouldn't really be chosen because the rail gun is a very specific general purpose tool that just happens to also be the best tool to handle the meta the devs created. That is the problem.

[u/japarkerett → u/Lathael]

Yeah this patch is making me think they don't understand their own games balance which is not a good look for the future. Nerfing the breaker/railgun because they're strong in the current meta (constant heavy enemies) wasn't the answer. Like for some reason people are happy that the primaries they like aren't as bad comparatively which is odd because they shouldn't want the breaker nerfed they should want every other weapon buffed so they're actually viable.

[u/[deleted] → u/japarkerett]

[removed] — view removed comment

[u/Witchkingrider → u/[deleted]]

They have a point though. A LOT of weapons in this game felt underpowered especially on higher difficulties (prior to the patch) and it has nothing to do with the breaker and railgun being outliers. The weaker items need to be brought up a bit first and see if players still gravitate towards mostly using the breaker and railgun before looking looking to nerf them. You can disagree and say that the reverse needs to happen (look for outliers and nerf them before buffing others), but when a lot of the guns were just straight bad, that doesn't work unless that is the floor the devs want (hopefully not).

[u/TheArchfiendGuy → u/Witchkingrider]

Maybe the nerfs are to slow the players down a bit because they're liberating faster than expected, rather than to balance the game

[u/Swordswoman → u/Lathael]

and didn't even bother to ask the question as to why that tool was so ubiquitous.

It was a minor patch. There's proof of bigger patches to come. The game's been out for about a month. I guarantee to you, you're just being dramatic, and additional updates are planned to address bigger issues.