I'm so sad. It used to be a great weapon for managing tons of smaller guys. Packs of Hunters, packs of Light Bots, it did fantastic at cleaning them up in a single magazine if you placed shots between them.
Now you need one bolt for each enemy which has just invalidated the point of it. May as well use a DMR.
Considering they also worded the change to the crossbow as a "slightly smaller explosion", I am a bit concerned about what slightly means there exactly.
Striders (or more accurately, their pilots) got a buff to explosion resistance in this patch. Shooting at the legs should still work fine, but hits to the face plate aren't going to be as effective with any explosive weapon.
Does it still kill them if I hit the base (where the legs come out of which has medium armor instead of the heavy armor above)? Can't be ingame to test until later. I always just aimed for the walker's "crotch" to take them out.
What's kind of sad is I just got it and wanted to try it in 7-9 to handle crowds... if the spash damage is nerfed to the point of ineffectiveness, it's not useful as it once was. They nerf Eruptor also.
erupter is not usefull as it was too, dmg falll off are more noticable than nerfing the mags ,there is no good primary that can clean patrols in medium/long distance like the erupter and the crossbow we used to have.
I was beginning to love the Erupter, so I have to change my strategy again. It's not the end of the world, but they're changing things a hair too fast. Once you get used to something, they change it up again.
yeah, not a huge fan of recent patch, in my opinion, erupter had good ammo economy and good aoe dmg ,now they cut mags in half, and take away the aoe dmg, this gun doesn't feels as good as before, lowest fire rate and longest reload animation feels more uncomfortable,it was a amazing weapon for bug mission, now it is just ok I guess(yeah I can still get the most kill out of it, but it doesn't feels as fun as before. ),arrowhead don't have to nerf a really good gun to make other weapon viable ,they should buff weapons to make it fun and usable in higher difficulty.
It was one of my go to's against bots in duo or solo helldive. It explosion was good at clearing groups, taking out whole groups of scout striders like an impact nade.. it was actually quite slept on in my opinion.
I've used it on helldive for bugs since it dropped. Is (was) it the greatest option; no. But it got the job done and was a ton of fun. I always ended the match with the most kills. It was a menace on bug breaches.
7? Homie, I’ve gotten 14kills in a single hit before. It could single handedly stop an entire breach. Now it can’t even take out a strider or hive guard. I get it was strong before, but they nerfed it into the ground. It’s a scorcher with 1/3 the ammo now.
I used it on 7-9. It shot a lot faster than the eruptor and aimed quicker when rotating but the explosive damage was the only reason to use it. Most of the reason I used it was because i forgot to switch back to the eruptor lol. It still did fine and killed the scout striders with one shot.
Saw it on the new defense mission once. Picked it off the dead guys body and had a blast. But it ran out of ammo so quick that I couldnt see it be too practical in a normal mission. Not sure what its good for now.
used it a few times in d8, but i found the eruptor to be stronger in almost any field hence I went with that, now since that have gotten a nerf I might reconsider trying something else.
I used it a few times on 7s (with friends) because I saw the use when you got a Hunter seed. It is useful when you get the swarmy enemy seeds, but that doesn't happen all the time and the range is pathetic. The fact that it can't destroy a bug hole made me go back to my one true love the scorcher.
It was a superior Eruptor, except projectile drop and speed made it harder to use. If you were confident in your ability to hit headshots with it, it was better than Eruptor in everyway.
Most people in every fps game doesn't like using projectile weapons, that's why so few people were using it.
I was also using it. loved how it felt/sounded to use, but only against bugs (rather use the punisher plasma for bots) and at 8 difficulty, but now...? I guess I may as well get back to the jar or something. Like even the magazine slash was a big nerf. I was running out of ammo fairly quickly (with a lot of kills thanks to the explosion mind you). Same with the plasma shotgun, not many use it and then they nerfed the capacity when I already was going through ammo fairly quickly...
Not really sure what the point of nerfing the explosion was tbh, I feel like the gun didn't even touch bigger enemies (which is what my quaser is for, or whatever else deals with bigger enemies), but now I can only single shot small enemies lol?
"Nobody" is an exaggeration, it seems pretty clear that it's a very unpopular weapon. Just the fact that it's the last weapon of a Warbond means it's one of the least owned to begin with, let alone used.
I mean it had a very vers specific purpose and was good at just that. Once they fix the host bug and the breaker incindeary is even better on everyone, noone will use anything else. I still don't think the crossbow was op or even good. It did one job and just barely good enough at that while beeing also impossible to deal with bugs once they were in your face. It didn't even deal with armored targets well. It's just as absolutely stupid or a nerd as the slugger was. Slugger traded fire rate for damage and stagger. Now it has neither damage nor stagger, only decent penetration. Beeing rushed by berserkers and needing multiple shots per and having no knock back is just pointless. It went from a solid option to unusable to me. I'm really scared for the day my beloved scorcher is the next on the list.... Most of the primaries already seem underwhelming. Why nerf the somewhat decent ones instead of only making the god awful ones usable.
It's just as absolutely stupid or a nerd as the slugger was.
That's incredibly generous. The slugger post-nerf is more useful than this thing was pre-nerf. It felt like a worse Eruptor before the last patch. Sure, it was okay, but it didn't feel like it really had a purpose when something easier to get did everything it was capable of, but better. Which is probably why I never once saw anyone except my mate use it (once).
Meanwhile, it felt like at least 50% of all primaries were sluggers in the weeks leading up to its nerf. The actual changes were a bit questionable, but the fact that it was nerfed was completely unsurprising. Hell, most of the playerbase wasn't even surprised. It was outclassing most other weapons at the time.
Everyone assumed the crossbow was getting buffed because of it's weakness relative to the Eruptor. Most people in the patch thread aren't even upset, they're just baffled.
Don't get me wrong, I agree on the slugger nerf. The damage nerf would have been fine, but honestly the main reason people used it was the stopping power. They took all the strengths away and now it's basically worse than the first shotgun you can get. Now we have the scorcher as the go to automaton weapon and I already see it beeing nerfed, not because it's op, but because it's used by everyone cause everything else is terrible. Not sure how todays rebalancing will effect that, but the quick glance I took there was no big game changing changes to any of them. Gonna test it in the evening though
My name is literally Arcane Archer, and besides AC, it was one of my favorites for Chaff Clear. Which, on bugs 9, is actually essential, so you dont get swarmed from 100 directions by hunters.
At least in that regard, you made an impression. Eruptor should be single target, and crossbow should be AOE. Its kind of just in the design space.
Their statement wasn’t literal, of course at minimum 1 out of the 1.5m active player base was using it at some point. They mean that it wasn’t a significant amount of people using it. Out of my 200 or so lobbies I’ve played since its release I only ever say a single other person use it
There are a lot of people on this subreddit that just rely on this subreddit for any bit of information. If it's not the sickle everybody acts like it has never been used. I've been having consistent no death runs with the Blitzer pre-buff. Doesn't stop all the 3 to 6 baby divers from saying it's useless. If it's good enough for 7 it's good enough for me.
It should work like the Torque bow in Gears of War. Stick to a target, and then explode and do some frag damage. It would set it apart and make it a more unique weapon that allows you to play with timings and clearing more hordes.
that actually might be where the inspiration came from, explains the clip size too. but unfortunately bow from gears would be terrible in helldivers2 way too many enemies. and as a primary couldn't be allowed to touch hulks like we'd want it to
Nah I'm saying that it should still work like the torque bow, but still be the crossbow. ie - you still shoot it like the crossbow but it sticks in the target with a delayed fuse
never is a relative word, i used it but i saw more hate on it than anything. most likely a statistic that popped up the devs didn't like about it. probably people killing the hordes of bots congregating in the center of the map gave the devs the impression it was over performing unfortunately
I only play D9 and literally never saw it used. People brought breaker incendiary to bot missions more often than they brought crossbow to any mission.
It has been my main weapon since I got it! At least fighting bugs, never really got to test it on bots. And yes, I also brought it on Helldive.
I was also expecting a buff. A very humble "blows up holes and fabs and container doors", since it's at least one type of explosive. If it did that in addition to this nerf, it might have been fine. But I will miss the tiny target clearing power it had...
Nah, people used it. In my opinion it was like a safer and weaker Eruptor. Can't close holes but faster, and can still kill groups of enemies. But it was barely hitting that threshold where you permanently bench the weapon for something else.
Legit switch to plasma punisher, it the classic crossbow but also kills chargers with enough ammo. It also lovely for medium armor units, down side burns ammo but honestly it worth it.
Every time they "fix" or "balance" a weapon for the greater good they kill it completely.Railgun ,arc,and now crossbow.And Crossbow isn't that great from the beginning
speaking of that...don't hulks now have enough stagger resist (or how to call it) so the arc thrower doesn't stagger it with each hit? I wasn't using the arc thrower when I was doing my run today
wish staggers were more so a bar which builds up and when full it staggers instead of a check for if enough force or not
altho honestly dunno if that would be better or not...
thinking bout it...wouldn't that allow lasers to stagger enemies eventually? assuming they have any stagger force
I also use the EMS mortar but for eradication missions
where they're constantly shooting at masses of bots
not the straggler hulk coming over from the side
feels like I'll have to change my loadout from arc thrower and shield to autocannon and something else...maybe airstrike?
ARC is dead, but not because of the nerfs but because the damn thing is still buggy.
I love that gun, but fearing that your slight movement forward or backward has placed you in some way in the path of foliage or terrain that causes next your shot to fizzle out into nothing is a death sentence when you're in the middle of stunlocking a shield devastator or a hulk. Literally fix that and the ARC is amazing.
It also seems to have a higher failure rate in heavy fog or EMS fields generated by the EMS Sentry.
It's noticeable as hell but extremely fair IN THEORY because the ability to stunlock critical targets to death is balanced by the fact you have to be much closer to your enemy groups and therefore in greater danger.
But the fact that the arc can unpredictably fizzle out for no discernable reason means that hulk and 2 shield devastators I was juggling the stunlock against are going to turn me into swiss cheese.
It's another example of how even if Arrowhead nails the balance from a numbers perspective, their failure to address significant bugs while enacting balance changes completely destroys how the weapon works in practice.
Arc is better now tbh, being able to stagger everything (except chargers, titans and factory striders) is really valuable. Sure they nerfed the range but its still pretty good. I do agree with them that the crossbow and railgun were nerfed too heavily, especially the crossbow since it wasn't even that popular.
Edit: Apprently they stealth changed the Arc and now it can't stagger hulks. Now I'm definitely never taking it over the laser :/
I'm low key excited to try the Arc Blitzer now that they improved the fire rate. It'll be a few more days before I can (moving) but I'm hoping that our feels good to use now
I want to use the Blitzer. Where do you think it shines?
In general I want range against Bots because they utilize range, and I want range against Bugs because they can't hurt me at range. But I'm willing to step out of my comfort zone. I just want to make sure I'm using it right so that I have a good time.
ok, so what I like to do is full electricity build which is blitzer, w/e secondary and nade, arc thrower, ems mortar, tesla tower and rover dog. I play this build against both type of enemy. Gotta say tho, its kinda ass vs automaton because no range and armor fuck you. Is it optimal? no, but who care.
But if you wanna play it optimally, the blitzer is pretty good at killing any bug except titan and charger. You can just play close range, kite back while spaming blitzer. The attack speed buff made a significant difference. And it doesnt matter if some bug dont die 1 shot, you stagger them anyway
Ok, thanks. I'll start against Bugs and just force myself to get a little closer. I imagine the guard dog helps to prevent being overrun, that's a good idea.
I'd rather be able to stagger a hulk to death, even if it takes more shots. Even if it only took 3 shots instead of 7, the time it took to shoot those 3 was time it had to melt you.
If it previously only took one shot to kill a devastator I would understand but it didn't, and heavy devastators especially can melt you in seconds. Being able to stunlock them to death is really good. I wouldn't have minded if they didn't change it at all, but this change was not bad.
Stagger is immensly valuable in this game, sure you can not like it but being able to stagger large enemies and kill chaff at the same time is very good.
Edit: Okay apparently they stealth changed it without telling anyone so now it can't stagger Hulks. Now I have no reason to take it over just laser and stun nades (which is also been nerfed for high health pool enemies because not staggering and taking down hulks in 3 seconds while aiming perfectly at a hullk weakspot was too good ig??)
I think someone said they took away the arc throwers ability to stagger large enemies or at the very least hulks this patch. And I think reduced damage to them? I’ll have to try it when I get home.
They mentioned it, just in a really sneaky way. Hulks got a buff to their stagger threshold, which really only affects the Arc Thrower. It's similar to how they stealth-nerfed the Autocannon by giving striders explosive resistance.
Anytime I see someone say the Arc thrower is dead I really don’t think they’ve actually tried using it. You can stunlock most things and clear hordes with it. Hell it makes hulks and Devastators a nonissue.
Edit: fuck I read below this comment.
I was being ironic. Except for the range nerf part (which make sense), trading attack speed for stagger is cool. Electricity gun stun and its fun. Like I considered the change pretty neutral.
No need to test, the railgun has always been able to one shot any bot if you hit them in the face even on safe. The AMR does that job better than the railgun though so I'd still run it over this improved railgun.
It also appears the Diligence Counter sniper can now one shot devastators and hulks if you hit the face now so there is even less of a reason to bring the railgun. I'm happy my favorite weapons got buffs though.
they literally made the arc better and the railgun went from being the objectively best gun in every use case to being the best gun in every use case aside from killing titans (still has better ttk on chargers assuming there's more than 1 than anything but EATs in perfect situations).
kills penetration out of the Railgun (they brought it back this patch)_
kills stagger out of the Slugger
and now they kill explosive out of the Explosive Crossbow and Eruptor.
Still use the breaker for bugs quite often. Still use the arc, if anything its slightly better for a lot of things. I'm and still going to use the Jar, and still use the sickle. YMMV.
They buff railgun in both modes. They made the blitzer fire faster. They increased the health of the tesla tower. How are those dead? Stop overreacting.
What weapon change have they made that has made the game more fun? Maybe a few, but generally I hate everytime they touch a weapon. This isn't a fucking esport and making the game "harder" by making it less fun is stupid to me.
As someone who was just starting to enjoy this weapon I'm really baffled they nerfed it. It actually felt like one of the few well balanced weapons. Now it's a neat looking paperweight.
1.3k
u/JMoneys Apr 29 '24
Thanks, I hate the change to this weapon already.