The Ultimate Meta Breakdown

[Mk_C]

Here I will address the most notorious meta kits, stratagems and practices in a fashion that leaves no possible space for discussion. Keep reading and you'll find an final conclusion to all of the annoying meta arguments, backed by nothing but pure and indesputable facts.

Railgun + Shield pack

Railgun + Shield pack is a bad, weak and ineffective kit. Even beyond the recent nerf, railguns is seriously limited by the amount of damage you can deliver with it to heavily armored targets, both in it's fire rate and ammo supply. It stands out as the least demanding AT weapon with the lowest costs of poor aim and least demand for cooperation. Similarly, shield pack makes it's only contribution in preventing damage from ranged attacks - damage which should not be an issue when fighting bugs period, and would not be an issue against Automatons if you rememberd to use cover. So it takes up a stratagem slot and a place on your back only to occasionally prevent damage that you are already preventing without it if you apply a minimal ammount of effort and situational awareness, all while not providing additional ammo (and thus damage) like the ammo pack, not giving extra DPS like the dog, not helping heavy weapons with a higher rate of fire like their packs, not doing anything other than keeping you from humiliating reinforcements that you bring on yourself with your own mistakes and lack of situational awareness. Both of these options thrive on making your mistakes less punishing and reducing the need for cooperation (and thus putting less strain on your definitely subpar social skills) at the cost of lower actual contribution to the mission effort, which is what makes them into permanent noob traps.

PSA: no in-game level or playtime can keep you (yes, YOU PERSONALLY, CITIZEN!) from being a noob. You stop being a noob by applying democracy to your brain, and as a result applying your brain to the game mechanics and your own in-game habits, not by grinding 500 blitz missions on Medium and making your numbers bigger.

Shotguns

Shotguns are bad, weak and ineffective primaries, owing less to their limited effective range (which is, in fact, not that limited at all ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥), but by the amount of time you spend reloading them. Simple math cam show us that any AR and even most DMRs are simply better at putting damage downrange over an extended period of time than any shotgun. You love shotguns because they feel powerful during their damage bursts, and then you hit reload, which you (naturally!) did not coordinate with your squadmates, and you (naturally) blame your immedeate death on said squadmates not providing you with fire support during your reload - that being only a partial misattribution of blame, since they did not cover you due to being very busy reloading their own shotguns. In general, shotguns have no real upsides beyond their massive burst damage, and so any comp that uses them should be the one that is built around utilizing that burst damage and requiring it to get things done - which is not what they are actually used for, and that inevitably makes them bad, weak and ineffective.

Orbital Laser and Railstrike

Orbital Laser and Railstrike are bad, weak and ineffective stratagems. The immediate effect is obvious, but when you factor in the immense cooldown times, it makes equally obvious the limit of their impact. You may use either in a critical situation when you (naturally!) panic and tilt, and they are very likely to do more good than anything else you might do in such an undemocratic state of mind - but the immediate effect they bring is still extremely unlikely to immediately rectify any sort of an infuriating and frustrating critical situation of that kind, i.e.:
- Being chased around by 5+ chargers;
- Finding yourself between 2 auto defensive towers and 2 Annihilators.
- Someone connecting to your public lobby that you yourself have set to "public" in the settings and taking your friend's spot on the team.
So afterwards you find yourself with most (or all) of the same problem still at hand, and your main hope for dealing with it now being on a long, long, loooooooooooooooooooong cooldown. The true issue here is that both of those stratagems seem better than most at solving a critical hellscape cascade, but are actually terrible at preventing them because you save and hoard them in situations where you would freely use many other underrated stratagems, which would prevent the cascade in the first place. You are prepairing for a fail state with means that don't actually get you out of said fail state. And while more reasonable use might make those two stratagems incredibly powerful, I will not consider such uses here for the rational, democratic and objective reasons of "I won't because I don't want to", which unfortunately makes them universally bad, weak and ineffective in any context possible or imaginable. Moving on.

Splitting up to cover more map

Splitting up to cover more map is a bad, weak and ineffective tactic for a very, very, simple reason: it depends on luck for our little solo adventures going smoothly. If we count on luck, we can just count on going trhrough the POIs and objectives together quckly enough, which is in fact more reliable than never getting killed solo. One might argue that abusing the breach/drop system's limit to a single one active on a map makes every solo runner's efforts that much less challenging, and to that I would give you two points:
1. WHO is taking that single active breach while you are free to engage patrols and guards with no threat of another one happening to you?
2. Definition of the word "every" from the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
3. Democracy.
4. A wall that you should face now for being undemocratic, bad, weak and ineffective.

AMR + mobility + stealth + smoke

AMR + mobility + stealth + smoke is a bad, weak and ineffective comp, because AMR's sights are misaligned, and everyone knows that it sucks, and everyone knowing that makes it true because that's how democracy works, and democracy is objective and true and correct and supports my opinion which is in fact a fact and not an opinion. Deal with it.

Arc Thrower

Arc Thrower is weak, ineffective, sucks and unfree because I personally don't like it. It doesn't feel satisfying enough and the firing sound is annoying so it irks me. The weapon not fitting my own personal subjective preferences is indisputably the most objective and unforgivable downside it can have. This point cannot be challenged because I am plain simply correct and cannot be wrong since being wrong would affect my personal Liberty, and nothing can ever affect my Liberty in any way whatsoever because I'm a loyal Super Earth citizen. My Liberty is in fact more absolute that the gravitational constant and the speed of light, which btw are undemocratic and were most likely set up by Automatons to undermine the Helldivers corps by giving us slower orbital drops and longer FTL jumps respectively. We should pre-emptively bomb photons and liberate gravity ASAP ♥♥♥♥ you Einstein you German authoritarian clanker-sympathizing plutocrat we WILL planet drop in hellpods at 500000000000 km/femtosecond because we are free to do so.

The conclusion I'm leading you towards here is that all meta options are bad, weak and ineffective. On an unrelated note, all non-meta options are also bad, weak and ineffective. In fact, any particular kit, strategy or preferred method of play that you came up with is bad, weak and ineffective. The only approach that is not bad, weak and ineffective is the one I personally use, and that is only defined by not being whatever you use.

I am right, and you are wrong

.

That is the only real, and truly factual meta, and it will remain so forever regardless of your decisions, actions or opinions. Simple democracy at work, and you better respect that.

==================================================================

This message is approved by the Super Earth Ministry of Truth. Further discussion on the issue is not recognized as sufficiently democratic, and will serve as grounds for investigation. The only acceptable responces to this topic are as follows:
1. "You have preserved our way of life. sir!"
2."My body for Super Earth!"
3. "SWEET LIBERTY MY LEG".

Democracy prevails!

[Graf Vigah]

Nice try Joel.

[Urist]

TL;DR

[ACEsino]

How about you met a girl

[Mk_C]

Originally posted by ACEsino:

How about you met a girl

No.

[Queltis]

If you want to choose people's layouts for them find 3 subs to run the game with. The rest of us are fine with choosing our own loadouts.

[jester]

The only "ultimate" here is the stupidity in this post.

[Cole]

Originally posted by ACEsino:

How about you met a girl

The only girl is most likely a body pillow for the op.

[Sakaanur]

Judging by the amount of times you used democratic and liberty in that wall of text, leaves me no choice but to agree with everything you said.

[Ordaeli]

Originally posted by ACEsino:

How about you met a girl

Girls are bad, weak, and ineffective stratagems.