Balance suggestion: A new Anti-Armor role

[VoiD]

Weapons in Helldivers 2 suffer at higher difficulties from their binary nature, either they pierce armor, or they don't.

If they don't, they end up being considered useless, no point in having "great DPS" when you're being chased around by 3 chargers and 2 titans when ♥♥♥♥ hits then fan thinking "man, I really wish I hadn't gotten this POS weapon instead of the railgun for this match".

So here's an idea:

What if some weapons had armor piercing damage, just like the Railgun, meant to deal damage through armor, but it didn't actually shred any of it because:

Other weapons could have a different role with armor shreding capabilities instead, think of lasers, flamers or machineguns melting/chiping the enemy's armor instead of piercing through it, eventually stripping the outer layers so small arms can finally start dealing damage to your targets.

Of course the mechanic could have different levels of armor stripping as well, while some targets are imune to lower tiers, it wouldn't make much sense for a machinegun to strip armor off a tank, for example, but I can imagine it working against a charger, meanwhile a powerful laser, like the support version, could melt away the armor from the largest titans and tanks no problem.

[Kashra Fall]

Rail gun when released at the right time, can actually pierce an enemy and hit multiple parts of it or enemies behind it. I do it sometimes against hive guardians and it kills 1-2 warriors running behind them. I haven't figured out the timing on the charge though, as it is all muscle memory, it just "Happens" at times. It wouldn't make much sense that armor didn't crack though, considering it was infact penetrated.

[Guardian_Angel]

The game balance needs to be overhauled entirely. High Difficulty gameplay right now boils down to either stealth or railgun spamming.

Enemies are way too overtuned, weapons are way too weak.

Ammo economy is completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up. Most people keep praising the shield pack, but at the rate that enemies spawn on Dif 9, the ammo pack is mandatory.

Taking multiple instances of the same stratagem should come back.

AT meta should take a chill pill.

Game should stop taking control away from the player. Every second enemy either slows, staggers or ragdolls you. Getting chain ragdolled and being completely powerless when that happens sucks all the fun out of the game.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Guardian_Angel:

The game balance needs to be overhauled entirely. High Difficulty gameplay right now boils down to either stealth or railgun spamming.

Enemies are way too overtuned, weapons are way too weak.

Ammo economy is completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up. Most people keep praising the shield pack, but at the rate that enemies spawn on Dif 9, the ammo pack is mandatory.

Taking multiple instances of the same stratagem should come back.

AT meta should take a chill pill.

Game should stop taking control away from the player. Every second enemy either slows, staggers or ragdolls you. Getting chain ragdolled and being completely powerless when that happens sucks all the fun out of the game.

Tbh I think enemies are fine, in general, the trash clearing options are great, the issue, as you said, is the AT meta.

I mean, even weapons like the machinegun, the flamer, the arc gun, even sentry turrets and flak bombardments do an excelent job at wiping out all of the trash even in helldive difficulty.

But if you use any of them you're wasting one of the very limited (4) slots you could have used to bring something with AT instead. And you can clear, even if slowly, trash mobs with less than optimal gear for it, any primary or secondary weapon will allow you to fight against the horde, AT however doesn't work like that, if you don't bring very specific stratagems you can do absolutely nothing against them, so it's a rather "suicidal" choice.


I mean, it can work, just the last night I joined a helldive difficulty mission to destroy eggs with 4 orbital bobardments (laser, 120mm, 380mm, walking barrage) and no support weapons/backpack, I took a flamer from some guy who died eventually and cleared all the nests with bombardments (use them all at once, destroy a couple of surviving eggs manually, the nest will be cleared out by the bombardment anyway) so we did win, but my life running away from titans and burning a few chargers with the flamer from time to time wasn't exactly the most fun experience I've had.

[Little Critter]

Originally posted by Guardian_Angel:

The game balance needs to be overhauled entirely. High Difficulty gameplay right now boils down to either stealth or railgun spamming.

Enemies are way too overtuned, weapons are way too weak.

Ammo economy is completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up. Most people keep praising the shield pack, but at the rate that enemies spawn on Dif 9, the ammo pack is mandatory.

Taking multiple instances of the same stratagem should come back.

AT meta should take a chill pill.

Game should stop taking control away from the player. Every second enemy either slows, staggers or ragdolls you. Getting chain ragdolled and being completely powerless when that happens sucks all the fun out of the game.

Call down napalm, use static field, cut LOS with smokes, or just running works for me 90% of the time. Most of the trouble stems from people sticking around for too long.

[Myth Alric]

The enemies actually have complex models, with differing armor in differing locations and they all have weak spots where any weapon can damage them.

[Little Critter]

Originally posted by Myth Alric:

The enemies actually have complex models, with differing armor in differing locations and they all have weak spots where any weapon can damage them.

Actually taking the time to shoot a charger in it's ass is a waste of time. It's better to use railgun/disposable/recoilless on one of it's front legs and just blast the exposed bit with your primary.

[Guardian_Angel]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Tbh I think enemies are fine, in general, the trash clearing options are great, the issue, as you said, is the AT meta.

But if you use any of them you're wasting one of the very limited (4) slots you could have used to bring something with AT instead. And you can clear, even if slowly, trash mobs with less than optimal gear for it, any primary or secondary weapon will allow you to fight against the horde, AT however doesn't work like that, if you don't bring very specific stratagems you can do absolutely nothing against them, so it's a rather "suicidal" choice.


I mean, it can work, just the last night I joined a helldive difficulty mission to destroy eggs with 4 orbital bobardments (laser, 120mm, 380mm, walking barrage) and no support weapons/backpack, I took a flamer from some guy who died eventually and cleared all the nests with bombardments (use them all at once, destroy a couple of surviving eggs manually, the nest will be cleared out by the bombardment anyway) so we did win, but my life running away from titans and burning a few chargers with the flamer from time to time wasn't exactly the most fun experience I've had.

Bug faction indeed has less unbearable enemies, but they still don't need to be so oppressive, given their numbers.
Stalkers should be more susceptible to stagger or they should retreat more readily when fired upon.
Chargers should have longer cooldowns between charges, and their turn rate should be adjusted, right now they can do a 360 almost on the spot and still ram you.

Cyborgs are much worse, in that most enemy types are very annoying to fight against, which is compounded by the issue of guns being too weak.
Rocket devastators spam one-shot rockets non-stop, while themselves being very tanky to normal weapons.
Heavy Gunners completely throw of your aim whenever they hit you, and have the same amount of bulkiness.
Hulks just hands down are nearly impossible to kill solo without AT guns, and due to their small size they also resist airstrikes and rocket pods.
Even the weakest enemies can oneshot you, like cyborgs with rocket launchers, and jump pack ones leaping on your head and then exploding after being hit once.

Originally posted by VoiD:

I mean, even weapons like the machinegun, the flamer, the arc gun, even sentry turrets and flak bombardments do an excelent job at wiping out all of the trash even in helldive difficulty.

The machine gun feels great, but it both can't deal with heavy armour and it runs out of ammo very quickly, necessitating the use of an ammo pack.

The flamethrower is awful. It has low range, deals laughable direct damage, and runs out of ammo fast as well. It struggles killing even the smallest bugs, with you having to constantly back away because enemies simply aren't dying. Oh, and firing the flamethrower next to enemies will set you on fire as well.

The arc gun suffers from faulty targetting. When firing next to enemies, or behind the corner, or through objects/corpses, the lightning bolt goes all over the place or doesn't spawn at all. Also, hitting only 3 enemies per shot is quite unimpressive, especially at higher difficulties, where you fight up to 50 enemies at a time.

I can go on about most other guns in the game, including most AT guns. Like, what's the point of the Recoilless Rifle/EAT, when the railgun does everything RL does but better? Why Spear Exists? Etc.

[DrunkBunny94]

Originally posted by Guardian_Angel:

I cant disagree more.

The bots are far better balanced and far more bearable than the bugs.
The bugs as OP says are binary, you either pen or you don't the charger has heavy armour and its exposed belly takes forever to kill through - same issue the bile titans, plus and due to the nature of the bugs wanting to melee you the breaker is by far the best option, hence railgun+breaker being the meta.

The bots however have multiple weakspots making more weapons viable, like the diligence sniper or the liberator penetrator or the plas scorcher or the slugger all are much better at hitting weakspots than the breaker so they all have a place (breakers still good for the berserkers but its not the best option by miles).

Devastators have light armour on their heads so they can be penned by small arms fire - the diligence 2 taps them, the AMR 1 shots them the railgun 1 shots them although its got so much spread you often use more shots going through the body.
Ofc all variants die to an airstrike which each player has 3 of every 2min so they arent the end of the world.

Hulks have medium armour on their heads so lots of weapons can penetrate and kill them like the anti material rifle can 2 shot them.
The railgun can 1 shot them but its got spread so you end up killing them with like 3 or 4 shots to the body rather than the 1 to the "head".
AT and other explosives are okay if you can get behind and shoot the weakspots.

The ATAT/striders have medium armour on their front but the driver is exposed so frag/impact grenades are great but so are weapons with AoE like the GL, autocannon, but can also be burned out by the incendiary shotgun.

You don't *need* a shield gen, they're good don't get me wrong but you can also use distractions like mortars behind cover to draw their fire (they'll shoot it even without LoS) and let you shoot them freely, or you can use cover and ofc armours like 50% explosive resistance or 50% chance to not die mean you survive a hit.
The most frustrating thing about the rockets is the rag-doll-ing meaning you often get chain CC'd to death even if you survive the a rocket - this goes for the energy shield too.

I thought the machine guns felt meh, like a higher recoil breaker with a stationery reload, the stalwark was even weaker...

EAT and recoilless can shred armour but also do explosive damage which does 10x damage to weakspots compared to other weapons, this is how the EAT will 1 shot a tank to the rear.

Spear 1 shots bile titans to the head and 1 shots chargers, I didn't like it against the robots, it only seems to kill to the weakspots to the rear and if you get the flank off its easier to use the EAT/recoilless than wait for the lockon. Also the spear has a real ammo problem as you dont get much/any back from ammo resupplies.

[Guardian_Angel]

Originally posted by DrunkBunny94:

The bots are far better balanced and far more bearable than the bugs.
The bugs as OP says are binary, you either pen or you don't

Bugs and cyborgs are identical in heavy armour distribution, with both factions having the same number of enemies that take far too much time and effort to defeat without AT weaponry.

Originally posted by DrunkBunny94:

the charger has heavy armour and its exposed belly takes forever to kill through

Breaker destroys their back in one mag. Scorcher does so in 8-10 shots, 2/3 of a mag, plus it exposes their leg armour for consecutive shots.

That is to say, there definitely are ways to kill chargers without AT. It's just not effective when you're being chased around by 10 of them at the same time. The same exact issue that cyborgs have, except cyborgs have it even worse.

Originally posted by DrunkBunny94:

The bots however have multiple weakspots making more weapons viable, like the diligence sniper or the liberator penetrator or the plas scorcher or the slugger all are much better at hitting weakspots than the breaker so they all have a place (breakers still good for the berserkers but its not the best option by miles).

Just as bugs have multiple weakspots, which are much easier to hit, because the weakspots themselves are bigger, and bugs don't retaliate via firing oneshot rockets from 5 kilometres away.

Breaker is also still the best choice for cyborgs, because you can't beat raw DPS that it offers. Scorcher and slugger are ok, just as ok as they are against bugs, just different ones.

Originally posted by DrunkBunny94:

Devastators have light armour on their heads so they can be penned by small arms fire - the diligence 2 taps them, the AMR 1 shots them the railgun 1 shots them although its got so much spread you often use more shots going through the body.
Ofc all variants die to an airstrike which each player has 3 of every 2min so they arent the end of the world.

With how the aiming works in this game, and given the size of their eye, landing even one weakpoint shot on a devastator is challenging, and having to do it twice is a dealbreaker. When 6 of them constantly barrage you with missiles, you will not have time nor ability to even take aim at them. That makes diligence practically useless at dealing with cyborgs.

AMR is a meme.

Railgun is meta. But even railgun doesn't one shot them, unless you hit them in the weakspot, which, for a medium enemy, is quite frankly, ridiculous.

Airstrikes are not a reliable way of dealing with enemies, especially on higher difficulties, with doubled cooldowns and call times.

Originally posted by DrunkBunny94:

Hulks have medium armour on their heads so lots of weapons can penetrate and kill them like the anti material rifle can 2 shot them.
The railgun can 1 shot them but its got spread so you end up killing them with like 3 or 4 shots to the body rather than the 1 to the "head".
AT and other explosives are okay if you can get behind and shoot the weakspots.

Only Auto-Cannon and up can penetrate hulks from the front. I say 'penetrate', not 'kill'. The eye hit does oneshot, but, same as devastators, you're not hitting that thing reliably, ever. Not to mention, unless it's a railgun you're firing, you still have to contend with the hulk marching at you.

Originally posted by DrunkBunny94:

The ATAT/striders have medium armour on their front but the driver is exposed so frag/impact grenades are great but so are weapons with AoE like the GL, autocannon, but can also be burned out by the incendiary shotgun.

Walkers take the same niche as bugs' hive guards - tank hits for their more threatening buddies. Except for the fact that, unlike hive guards, walkers can still get a lucky hit streak and two tap you from any range.

Originally posted by DrunkBunny94:

You don't *need* a shield gen, they're good don't get me wrong but you can also use distractions like mortars behind cover to draw their fire (they'll shoot it even without LoS) and let you shoot them freely, or you can use cover and ofc armours like 50% explosive resistance or 50% chance to not die mean you survive a hit.
The most frustrating thing about the rockets is the rag-doll-ing meaning you often get chain CC'd to death even if you survive the a rocket - this goes for the energy shield too.

The fact that I need this entire heap of items and strats to somewhat combat one medium enemy is pretty telling of the cyborg's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nature.

Originally posted by DrunkBunny94:

EAT and recoilless can shred armour but also do explosive damage which does 10x damage to weakspots compared to other weapons, this is how the EAT will 1 shot a tank to the rear.

Tanks are actually one of the least threatening cyborg enemies, and being able to kill them from the rear is a not a big feat.

Evidently, explosive damage does whatever it wants, because RL's and EAT's damage is very random even when shooting the exact same spot, but never high enough to justify bringing them along over the railgun.

Originally posted by DrunkBunny94:

Spear 1 shots bile titans to the head and 1 shots chargers, I didn't like it against the robots, it only seems to kill to the weakspots to the rear and if you get the flank off its easier to use the EAT/recoilless than wait for the lockon. Also the spear has a real ammo problem as you dont get much/any back from ammo resupplies.

Recoilless Rifle can sometimes oneshot titans to the head as well, believe it or not. And I'd honestly rather take that over having to fight with the locking system and non-existent ammo on the spear. Or better yet, just use rail gun.

[DrunkBunny94]

Originally posted by Guardian_Angel:

Meta is created around the easiest weapons to use. Just because you cant use others effectively doesn't mean others cant.

At the moment we've been playing basically only bots on Helldive for the war effort.
I've been rocking the diligence and AMR are an extremely ammo efficient combo, if you know how to peak corners and take 1 enemy at a time you can pretty easily deal with everything the bots can throw at you. The diligence can pretty consistently kill 10-15 of the smaller cyborgs per mag maybe 5 devastators but i typically use the AMR as it has enough ammo that even with imperfect accuracy you can kill more than the railgun.
The AMR has 48 rounds and a zoom scope and uses the same shots to kill vs Devastators the thing you are complaining the most, this kills then much faster.

But thats not it.
-The flame shotgun, great for killing striders and saving support ammo.
-The plas scorcher, basically the upgrade to the slugger for close range head clicking.
-The breaker, still useful for spamming berserkers on missions where you know you are going to get a lot of them
-The railgun, which is nice for turrets and objectives like mortars or AA, just VERY hungry if you're running a shield gen over the supply backpack.
-The EAT/RR we mostly use them in the scientist extract missions to stay ontop of the dropships if our strat is fighting rather than distracting (I'm almost going to miss scientist extraction when they finally fix it).
-The AC is also really good as it clears devastators very fast but its something I've seen less in the last 2 days probably as people started getting too reliant on using shields as a crutch lol.

But thats the point, there's actually room for these alternate loadouts and playstyles because the bots actually have weakspots in their armour to aim for.

Thinking the breaker is outright the best here and wanting the railgun to do more damage to kill devastators screams that you dont know how to position (pro tip: use cover!) and can't aim (which does take some getting used to as its very floaty/awkward). So you have a lot of room to improve.

Already covered the bugs but its so predictable, oh railgun is easier to use than the EAT/RR/Spear AND its more ammo efficient - no brainer, and oh the breaker because the weapons short to mid range and all the bugs walk into that range and die to its monstrous DPS, no brainer.
You might end up with someone using the GL or AC for obj's/hives.
So theres not really any variety which makes things, well, boring.

[Guardian_Angel]

Originally posted by DrunkBunny94:

Meta is created around the easiest weapons to use. Just because you cant use others effectively doesn't mean others cant.

It's actually in the name - Most Effective Tactic Available. That tactic being - using the breaker. No other primary comes even close to breaker's damage output, and damage output is the name of the game.

Originally posted by DrunkBunny94:

The diligence can pretty consistently kill 10-15 of the smaller cyborgs per mag maybe 5 devastators but i typically use the AMR as it has enough ammo that even with imperfect accuracy you can kill more than the railgun.
The AMR has 48 rounds and a zoom scope and uses the same shots to kill vs Devastators the thing you are complaining the most, this kills then much faster.

The starter rifle can pretty 'consistently' kill 11 devastators and 45 humanoid cyborgs. If they stand still and do nothing. But they don't.

AMR is a very subpar choice for cyborgs. While it can do one-hit kills on devastators by hitting them in the eye, you, again, will never do it consistently. If you don't aim for the eye, you'd be lucky to down one devastator with 3 bodyshots, which takes too much time for a single enemy.
And when heavier armour comes out, your effectiveness hits rock bottom immediately.

You're also missing the point of this. It's not just about "killing more" than the railgun, it's about doing it effectively. The railgun can one-hit-kill by shooting devastators in 3 distinct spots, at a rapid rate, and it has 21 ammo on top of that. And it eliminates any other threat too. No other weapon does that with that much ammo, and reload time, and mobility.

Originally posted by DrunkBunny94:

But thats not it.
-The flame shotgun, great for killing striders and saving support ammo.
-The plas scorcher, basically the upgrade to the slugger for close range head clicking.
-The breaker, still useful for spamming berserkers on missions where you know you are going to get a lot of them
-The railgun, which is nice for turrets and objectives like mortars or AA, just VERY hungry if you're running a shield gen over the supply backpack.
-The EAT/RR we mostly use them in the scientist extract missions to stay ontop of the dropships if our strat is fighting rather than distracting (I'm almost going to miss scientist extraction when they finally fix it).
-The AC is also really good as it clears devastators very fast but its something I've seen less in the last 2 days probably as people started getting too reliant on using shields as a crutch lol.

- Striders aren't that big of a threat to waste a primary slot on killing them.

- Scorcher is not an upgrade to Slugger. They do completely different things, and Slugger is on average a better choice than Scorcher, because it one-shots devastators when shooting the eye, and staggers enemies on damaging shots, cancelling their attacks.

- You should be running ammo pack over the shield generator, unless you're playing coordinated stealth. All currently good weapons in the game with a mild exception of Breaker (Slugger, Scorcher, Dominator) suffer from massive ammo problems, and so do stratagem weapons.

- Auto Cannon has roughly the same efficiency as the AMR in dealing with devastators and above: mediocre. You're just sacrificing your backpack slot and mobility for no reason on top of that.

Originally posted by DrunkBunny94:

But thats the point, there's actually room for these alternate loadouts and playstyles because the bots actually have weakspots in their armour to aim for.

So do the bugs, and bugs actually have much easier-to-reach weakspots than cyborgs do. You can run Stalwart and Scorcher, and do well enough to stay above ground on bugs. Because bugs don't throw one-shot rockets at you every 2 seconds. You can outrun and outheal them through stim.

Originally posted by DrunkBunny94:

Thinking the breaker is outright the best here and wanting the railgun to do more damage to kill devastators screams that you dont know how to position (pro tip: use cover!) and can't aim (which does take some getting used to as its very floaty/awkward). So you have a lot of room to improve.

Breaker is outright the best generalist primary in the entire game, it's just a fact that most players have admitted to by now.

And I didn't say that 'railgun should do more damage to devastators', that's a strawman. What I did say, is that the railgun should one-shot devastators more consistently. It's a medium enemy, and should behave as such.

Originally posted by DrunkBunny94:

Already covered the bugs but its so predictable, oh railgun is easier to use than the EAT/RR/Spear AND its more ammo efficient - no brainer

RL and Spear quite literally have more use (and see more use) on bugs than they do on cyborgs.
RL exposes the charger's leg in a single shot, and deals with bile titans faster if you have a second player as loader.
Spear kills titans very fast if you are able to get a good angle on them.

Originally posted by DrunkBunny94:

and oh the breaker because the weapons short to mid range and all the bugs walk into that range and die to its monstrous DPS, no brainer.

Breaker has the same effective range as rifles because of its very low pellet spread and non-existent damage falloff.

But it's not a 'no brainer', just like the railgun isn't.

Slugger is great at staggering spewers & stalkers, killing hiveguards and one-shotting hunters.

Scorcher kills hiveguards very fast, destroys chargers, and mops up any bile titans that have exposed armours segments on them.

So forth.

Originally posted by DrunkBunny94:

You might end up with someone using the GL or AC for obj's/hives.
So theres not really any variety which makes things, well, boring.

Bugs have more variety in weapon and stratagem configurations than cyborgs do.
Bugs are more susceptible to damage, engage only in melee range, and only a few of them have one-hit-kill attacks. This gives you enough leeway to use even the more fringe loadouts. It doesn't mean you won't suffer by doing so, but at least you'll stay alive and be able to do objectives while your team does the brawling.