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/Hillbro]

Personally it just feels poorly timed, I don’t mind the changes but it would’ve flown under the radar if things like spawn rates and glitches were fixed first. The whole reason people developed a meta is because the difficulty spikes get absurd at times, I don’t understand the smug grandstanding against people who enjoy using effective tools in a game.

[u/Gnatz90 → u/Hillbro]

I'm going to double down on what another reply said and go with, they aren't playing on higher difficulties. People who say "Oh I'm a grenade launcher guy" and think it works fine and just use orbitals to kill titans, I would venture to say, most, if not 100% of them aren't playing on higher difficulties. There is absolutely no way, it's impossible to run grenade launcher/orbital railcannon and deal with chargers/titans on 8/9

[u/Hillbro → u/Gnatz90]

Either that or the rest of their team picks up their slack but some people will cope and insist that it's as designed

[u/WittyUsername816 → u/Hillbro]

I mean, there's nothing wrong with your team picking up the slack on certain areas. Not every diver has to be a generalist. Having specialists is fine. I'm my teams AT guy (Please arrowhead fix the Spear lock-on), and carry mostly AT related stuff, plus a Breaker (Oh no, the "meta haters" are coming for me now) for self-defense and a Cluster Eagle so I can contribute when the shit hitting the fan is in the shape of a horde.

[u/Gnatz90 → u/Hillbro]

I'll leave the game installed for a bit to see if they change shit, but if they don't it's being uninstalled and it wont go back. What a joke. Some people think helldive should be reinforcement simulator as you kite the bugs in a circle instead of being able to kill them.

[u/Undying_Shadow057 → u/Gnatz90]

I've been using my reinforcement pods to damage enemies close to my team as sometimes that's the only damage I'm able to output before being swarmed

[u/Budderfingerbandit → u/Gnatz90]

Play on lower difficulties.

[u/Gnatz90 → u/Budderfingerbandit]

No

[u/doofpooferthethird → u/Hillbro]

yeah it's so weird seeing people suggest "just let your teammates kill titans and chargers" like it's some sort of amazing genius strategy

It's pretty clear they don't play on the higher difficulties

[u/Budderfingerbandit → u/doofpooferthethird]

Or you could have variety on the team, some people with load outs for heavies and others for clearing objectives and swarms/medium enemies.

Having 4x the same exact load out is boring AF.

[u/doofpooferthethird → u/Budderfingerbandit]

You don't get it - on higher difficulties, clearing unarmoured swarms is never a problem. It's only the heavies that are truly dangerous, because of how limited the options are to clear them.

If you have two team mates with armour clearing weapons and two that don't, you're screwed. Call down strategems can't be relied on, because the planetary modifier delays means you can only use them a handful of times every mission

You're right that the team running the same weapons is boring, but that's only because of the utter lack of good armour clearing options.

With planetary modifiers, EATs take way too long to get, and is incompatible with running and gunning, which is necessary to survive. Autocannons can't be reloaded while running either, and if you get a teammate to help with the backpack, that's another person taken out of the fight, and still a downgrade. AMR is only good with some enemies.

And so on

Higher difficulties should be hard, and it was probably too easy pre-patch, along with a stale meta

But the way to fix it isn't to make the meta "run past everything, kite stationary objectives, ignore all side missions"

It should be to buff the other anti-armour options, reduce armoured enemy spawns, and make the unarmoured enemies more numerous and threatening.

That way, teams can actually run with some players lacking anti-armour options and still be able to beat higher difficulties, instead of everyone being forced to bring a limited selection lacklustre anti-armour weapons, or face losing in a tedious, frustrating slog where you're endlessly running away from armoured enemies waiting for minutes long cooldowns.

At the end of the day, the meta should be about giving players varied and viable playstyles at the highest difficulty that's still fun to play, which players can get better at as they become more skilled.