It's not just chargers. Bugs suck to fight, and bots rock.

[Dark Moon Felis]

Here's a short summary of my experience so far. I'm a relatively new diver, only managed to liberate at the Medium and Challenging level so far (not a lot of time to play and largely solo), so this isn't representative of all difficulties... but if these issues are here on Medium they're worse on Helldiver.

Bots:
-Are reasonably balanced in terms of speed, damage, and durability. They don't seem to have units that are simultaneously super-tanky and super-fast, big oneshotty things tend to have travel time and big windup tells (i.e., rockets you can see coming or gigantic turrets that visibly pause).
-Generally don't invalidate weaponry through sheer obscene armor thickness. You can get a ton of mileage out of an Explosive Liberator, for instance.
-Have good, visible weakspots on back AND front usually, that reward precision with quick kills and make it so you can't just hose with a Breaker. Heavy enemies tend to not turn so quickly their big weakspots become barely targetable for all but the fastest-shooting weapons.
-Can be evaded through good terrain management or simply running away, because they won't chase you forever at ludicrous speed and can't shoot through mountains.
-Actually have a timer on the ally-summoning beacon, so you can interrupt them reliably if you have a quick draw and good aim.
-Don't spawn in ridiculous numbers full of heavy units. They tend to spawn a lot of little mooks that are deadly but fragile, and one or two heavies.
-Have more interesting mechanics - turrets in the bases that are actually useful, varied structure objectives that airstrikes work nicely on, explosives, dropships I THINK you can shoot bots down from if you're quick.

*EDIT* The gigantic artillery turrets are the biggest exception I've seen. Their tracking is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, their projectile speed is so high it's just as hard to dodge at long range (>80m?) as it is at short range, and it oneshots you. The rockets on Rocket Devastators might be a bit too fast (faster than the normal rockets, and instagib fairly often from behind with little tell), but it's not nearly as bad as the big turrets, which you can't even take out without an airstrike or AT.

Bugs:
-Throw all that balance stuff out the window. They're lightning fast, deal a ton of damage that no armor seems to properly resist (unlike with guns and explosives), and are often extremely tanky. The heavies can oneshot you with bile spit or charges from point blank that can't be reliably dodged up close. The hunters stagger and swarm you, so they can just 100-0 you.
-Have absurd supertank armor very early on, and Challenging starts spamming Chargers and Spewers en masse. Most weapons are godawful because they'll either ricochet into your face, or just don't do enough DPS, or kill you with explosive damage.
-Have weakspots mainly only visible from the back, so you have to run around them (good luck if you're solo or the poor sucker with aggro), and even shooting said weakspots won't kill them half as quickly. Chargers will turn extremely quickly once they've recovered, the fat bile enemies are way faster and turn more quickly than they have any right to, hunters and stalkers will rush you down and outrun you at any speed...
-Can't be evaded unless they just didn't see you. They'll ignore smoke clouds half the time, run across the map faster than an ultralight Helldiver, and never give up until every last bug is dead.
-Have seemingly zero timer on the ally-summoning pheromones, so if you see orange it's too late and you'll get a breach in moments, faster than the dropship and probably full of warriors and hunters.
-Spawn. Endlessly. Once they spot you, they'll start coming, and they don't stop coming and [insert Smash Mouth meme here]. It's not uncommon to just keep getting patrol spawns ON a side objective.
-Have barely any interesting mechanics other than "spawn more to overwhelm you". You can't blow up giant pods of bile to nuke crowds, turrets are always in the middle of nowhere, you can't preemptively shoot breaching bugs, and structures tend to be covered by overhangs and the like so airstrikes rarely work.

I went in solo against Medium Bots twice, and had a great time. Once I lost due to getting spawnkilled repeatedly by a bunch of heavy armored bots and chicken walkers, but I was in ultralight armor so it makes sense that a missile oneshots me, and I panicked and didn't use terrain properly so it's on me. Second time, flawless 100% map completion solo, and it was challenging but fair. In contrast, Medium Bugs feel two difficulties higher, and Challenging Bugs are unplayable solo due to frequently seeing packs of two Chargers and three Bile Spewers that can all oneshot you in medium Democracy Protects armor.

TL;DR: Nerf bugs overall to be on par with the bots. The bots are a fine enemy of Democracy as things stand.

[Fixo]

Yet everyone says the bots are harder, what gives ? maybe you didn't find a way to counter the bugs yet ? keep going at it, climb the difficulties, it's very manageable. I for one enjoy the difficulty both faction gives in their own ways.

TL;DR: Don't Nerf anything, If anything buff enemies in Helldiver difficulty.

[Cellar_Cat]

Honestly bugs are okay except:

— Their summon only needs to begin its animation to work. It's so short I've had one start during a reload animation and complete before the reload, and that's of the mag shotgun. So either you wipe them out instantly with AOE, or they endlessly spawn because some small football shaped insect behind a rock brings more, or a bigger one survived carpet bombing and summoned more before the smoke even cleared for you to target it.

— The sheer volume of fast moving chargers and the time/shots needed to strip armour or kill each one from behind. This very quickly snowballs.

Their other stuff isn't so bad. Spewers are dangerous but fragile, titans can be gutted easily to stop their spitting, and kited around until smaller ads are cleared. Smaller things either tend to be fragile or slow. Even the stalkers I don't mind so much, as clearing the legs on one side seems to end them quickly.

[Kashra Fall]

Bugs are awesome to fight. Bots are awesome to fight. The game is just awesome and it captures the feeling of being an invader on a planet very well. The power imbalance makes total sense with the bugs because they are bugs. They reproduce by the thousands per hatching process, you drop with 4 hell divers xD.

Bots overwhelm you over time with dropships of 8-10 at a time. But the big difference is, they are ranged primarily =P.

[Zyfodeus]

Bugs are just unfun, but we have no choice. The Breach Call can't be stopped and is annoying, they should lessen the spawn numbers per nest destroyed, only makes sense that way..

[MILKIE]

yeah im enjoying helldivers 2 but the automatons are a much MUCH more enjoyable enemy to fight against, they have emplacements to overcome, require you to use cover, actually allow you to prioritise targets if you see a warlord in the distance, their artillery and drop ships can keep the pressure on you but smart plays will typically allow you to breathe and reload AT weapons.

Meanwhile bugs youre just running around waiting for stratagems to restore because there is basically no way to break aggro so you can attack armoured opponents and even if you do, by the time you finally kill 1 another 7 have spawned.

[Willem]

When i started playing i thought i liked the Automatrons more but actually the bug's really grow on you i like them way more now.
You just need to know how to counter each enemy like i see you say weapons are awefull because ricocheted, they are not you are using them wrong a charger is armor plated your rifle doesn't do anything against armor you are just wasting ammo.
All enemies have small little mechanics once you figure them out it's gets soooo much easier

[Dark Moon Felis]

Originally posted by Fixo:

Yet everyone says the bots are harder, what gives ? maybe you didn't find a way to counter the bugs yet ? keep going at it, climb the difficulties, it's very manageable. I for one enjoy the difficulty both faction gives in their own ways.

TL;DR: Don't Nerf anything, If anything buff enemies in Helldiver difficulty.

"Git gud, there's no problem" is not an answer. You haven't given any details or any responses.

I have no idea why people think bots are harder. They'll kill you faster at range if you're in light armor, sure, but three headshots from a mere Explosive Liberator will cap one of the medium armored ones on medium difficulty, so maybe they can't hit heads.

Originally posted by Cellar_Cat:

Honestly bugs are okay except:

— Their summon only needs to begin its animation to work. It's so short I've had one start during a reload animation and complete before the reload, and that's of the mag shotgun. So either you wipe them out instantly with AOE, or they endlessly spawn because some small football shaped insect behind a rock brings more, or a bigger one survived carpet bombing and summoned more before the smoke even cleared for you to target it.

— The sheer volume of fast moving chargers and the time/shots needed to strip armour or kill each one from behind. This very quickly snowballs.

Their other stuff isn't so bad. Spewers are dangerous but fragile, titans can be gutted easily to stop their spitting, and kited around until smaller ads are cleared. Smaller things either tend to be fragile or slow. Even the stalkers I don't mind so much, as clearing the legs on one side seems to end them quickly.

Those are the main issues, yes. One charger is fine, albeit they turn too fast for such gigantic, tanky enemies. Two at once forming a giant wall of charging armor that takes half your FOV, flanked by three or four spewers? No thanks. Although hunters in particular are disgusting for solo/2p, because of how they stagger on every hit and run fast enough that you can barely manage to kill one before two others are on your face.

Originally posted by MILKIE:

yeah im enjoying helldivers 2 but the automatons are a much MUCH more enjoyable enemy to fight against, they have emplacements to overcome, require you to use cover, actually allow you to prioritise targets if you see a warlord in the distance, their artillery and drop ships can keep the pressure on you but smart plays will typically allow you to breathe and reload AT weapons.

Meanwhile bugs youre just running around waiting for stratagems to restore because there is basically no way to break aggro so you can attack armoured opponents and even if you do, by the time you finally kill 1 another 7 have spawned.

Yup, full agreement here. I've run through smoke-spewing plants three times in a row and run around rocks for what felt like a quarter of a map, and still had the exact same charger on my ass, as if they had some kind of tracker tag on me. The one time terrain seems to be relevant for countering bugs? When your respawn pod drops onto a giant pillar and you're suddenly invincible unless you fall off the side.

Originally posted by Willem:

When i started playing i thought i liked the Automatrons more but actually the bug's really grow on you i like them way more now.
You just need to know how to counter each enemy like i see you say weapons are awefull because ricocheted, they are not you are using them wrong a charger is armor plated your rifle doesn't do anything against armor you are just wasting ammo.
All enemies have small little mechanics once you figure them out it's gets soooo much easier

I'm aware of how armor works, thanks. I know you can leg a few of the medium bugs to take them down much faster than trying to hit the mouth, for instance, so Warriors are rarely a problem anymore except in massive amounts. I'm not blindly shooting a submachine gun into the front plate and wondering "why am I doing zero damage", I'm unloading entire breaker mags into the butt of a charger point blank and not seeing it die, or several into the side of a spewer's bile sac and not getting the explosion. In solo, all the armor-stripping heavy guns are barely usable because they require backpacks.

Assuming the other player's an idiot who doesn't know what they're talking about is a pretty bad way to not answer any criticism.

[Netaris]

It depend on the weapons you've choosed. Fighting bots is mainly about long range anti-armor weaponry, bugs are mainly about close / middle range trashkilling with some anti-armor for chargers. I think chargers should spawn less, that's the real issue with bugs from my pov.

[Ed']

The patrols seem to spawn way to much, and you won't even know when you are fighting with patrols or normal enemies

[Mesond]

Bots might be harder but they also don't constantly make the player get stun locked.

Like chargers do. I swear, that one thing is why aliens suck. They're fast and tanky and can be so on a players ass they can't even breath. Every other alien I'm fine with.

Imagine being out of ammo, seperated from the team because of a large swarm. And being chased by a charger. You might have rockets but you can't reload because it charges into the player when they try too. 100% cooldown on supports as well, so that's out too. What's a player supposed to do there?

Bots will be different. They can chase with close range units but the player isn't always getting stun locked. There's a bit more breathing room even if hulks can one shot a player at full health. heavy armor is broken atm btw. So you can notice it more with robots but less with bugs because bots don't have to be right in the players face. It makes it easier to tell when the player gets hit by what.

[|BG|-Raveshaw]

Seems like someone should pay more attention to the Brasch Tactics Broadcasts.

[oldagetron]

I love fighting the bugs its so hilarious but i find the bots a bit less enjoyable. not as exciting atm for me.

[Team Triss]

There's no reason hitting a Bile Spewer with a RR or an EAT should not be a OHK, no matter where you hit it. I've had quite a few that just kept right on coming.

Plus, their spit should not track half as well as it does. I die plenty to them even though I'm in midair and dodging away.

[Myth Alric]

As long as it is just one charger, you can basically dance around it forever. They really are not that good at turning.

[Mesond]

Originally posted by Myth Alric:

As long as it is just one charger, you can basically dance around it forever. They really are not that good at turning.

But they can be good at running faster then the player. You can dodge a charger easily but without ammo and being cut off from others it's not going to stop being on your ass.

The charger won't remain alone forever either. At some point you're bound to stumble into a swarm. Then there's three titans, 5-10 charges, bile bugs, and swarms of smaller ones with stalkers. I'm not even speaking metaphorically.

Somehow we made it to evac. It was the starship troopers base being over run moment. That's how intense it got. The only reason I couldn't make it to evac myself was because chargers chased my down a cliff. They can even climb cliffs.

Other aliens can be persistent, but they can die easier. A charger is more persistent then a dog trying to hump my leg. I have legit been chased across entire maps. It keeps up somehow.