Thermite Grenade, Knight and Spray&Pray

[Frost Spectre]

Most topics here just complain NERF NERF, Helldivers is dying or it is about injecting positive politics...


So I will talk about the guns I think need to be improved as they're more or less obsolete.

Thermite needs time to burn, not seen it being useful against anything other than maybe Spewer variants, when you need something to deal damage when you retreat. And often anything with high armor will be killed faster with more dedicated Anti-Tank weapons.
The grenade also has a random chance of failing to stick to target when it impacts them, which is more infuriating as the grenade is only effective if it sticks to a target, being deflected and land on ground does nothing.
Oddly enough the final explosion looks like something incendiary, but from my experience, it is mostly just cosmetic effect, although it seems to do some damage as it can break bug holes.


Knight plays the same role as Defender, but worse, Defender has better ammo economy, because of doing more damage and slower firing rate allows better ammo conservation, Knight is just weaker Defender, more noticeable recoil because of the fire rate, even with recoil reduction from armor bonus it's still not that great to use, and the fire rate seems to be everything the Knight is. Tried using short bursts, but the results have been very bad anyway.
Read someone suggesting giving Knight Med AP, which also sounds great idea in my opinion, especially because the gun uses rounds with more penetrating potential, unlike Defender which clearly uses pistol rounds.


Spray&Pray is just worse Breaker Incendiary, the mag being only 1 shot more leads to no advantage over Incendiary, slower reload unlike with Incendiary and Incendiary does more damage. Simply put Incendiary does better at Spray and Pray than Spray&Pray, even if Incendiary shoots slower projectiles, that is not really a problem because it is a shotgun, and is great at shooting down Shriekers.
Dunno, maybe Spray&Pray needs more noticeable higher mag, instead of just 26 vs. Incendiary's 25?

[BerkmanGoesBoom]

try thermite against hulks(2 nades), tanks(2), turrets(2), heavy devs and everything lower(1)
especially with 'engineering kit' armor its quite handy - you will not have to waste stratagem to kill laser tank for example, no anti tank needed
you dont have to try flank the hulk(which you anyway have to stun first to do that)
Its even better with 'extra pod space' booster

[Vanta]

I can kinda talk to the thermites effectiveness, Haven't used the Knight and I do agree that the Spray and Pray needs a buff or a complete rework to make it standout from the Incendiary.

The thermite is essentially a back up, if you're running a loadout that doesn't run dedicated anti-tank you've got an anti-tank weapon in your back pocket to just yeet at anything you don't have the firepower to deal with.

It's very much so worth noting, it's surprisingly effective against Factory Striders in my experience aswell, as you can stick a few thermites onto a factory strider's weakspot and do big damage, sometimes killing it solo.

Pretty sure the Thermites can also kill a Bile Titan if you manage to stick enough onto it's face.

However, this requires multiple thermite grenades and can exhaust your entire supply of thermites if you aren't running the grenadier armors, so it's more a emergency trap card if you're not running a dedicated anti-superheavy weapon.

[Trig_Zero]

a change of perspective kind of buffs for each of those items/weapons
Thermite should be able to burn through terrain, vault doors, and walls of bot factories
Knight should hold 30~50% more ammo per mag and reduce the recoil further
Spray&Pray should shoot 50% more pellet per shot for it to be anywhere near as good as any other shotguns

[Hand's Hermit Permit]

I don't really have an opinion on Knight since I haven't been able to use it more than once, it being exclusive and all.

But the thermite is really trash. Yes, I'd love to be unable to seal but holes or break fabricators for the ability to spend all 4 of my grenades to get 1 charger kill eventually/ Great tradeoff, great grenade. It doesn't strip armor, and hitting a weakspot with it wont 1-shot anything heavy. If you want to take out heavies the grenade you use is the flashbang, which is ridiculous.

Spray-n-pray I don't use. It's just not strong or unique in any way. Maybe additional clip size or something.

[Footman]

Give Spray and Pray high end Medium Armor penetration, which in incentivizes using a short ranged weapon like that.

[[REDACTED]]

Originally posted by Frost Spectre:

Most topics here just complain NERF NERF, Helldivers is dying or it is about injecting positive politics...


So I will talk about the guns I think need to be improved as they're more or less obsolete.

Thermite needs time to burn, not seen it being useful against anything other than maybe Spewer variants, when you need something to deal damage when you retreat. And often anything with high armor will be killed faster with more dedicated Anti-Tank weapons.
The grenade also has a random chance of failing to stick to target when it impacts them, which is more infuriating as the grenade is only effective if it sticks to a target, being deflected and land on ground does nothing.
Oddly enough the final explosion looks like something incendiary, but from my experience, it is mostly just cosmetic effect, although it seems to do some damage as it can break bug holes.


Knight plays the same role as Defender, but worse, Defender has better ammo economy, because of doing more damage and slower firing rate allows better ammo conservation, Knight is just weaker Defender, more noticeable recoil because of the fire rate, even with recoil reduction from armor bonus it's still not that great to use, and the fire rate seems to be everything the Knight is. Tried using short bursts, but the results have been very bad anyway.
Read someone suggesting giving Knight Med AP, which also sounds great idea in my opinion, especially because the gun uses rounds with more penetrating potential, unlike Defender which clearly uses pistol rounds.


Spray&Pray is just worse Breaker Incendiary, the mag being only 1 shot more leads to no advantage over Incendiary, slower reload unlike with Incendiary and Incendiary does more damage. Simply put Incendiary does better at Spray and Pray than Spray&Pray, even if Incendiary shoots slower projectiles, that is not really a problem because it is a shotgun, and is great at shooting down Shriekers.
Dunno, maybe Spray&Pray needs more noticeable higher mag, instead of just 26 vs. Incendiary's 25?

Knight will never be good, it's an exclusive.

[Sleepy_Walker]

Originally posted by Vanta:

The thermite is essentially a back up, if you're running a loadout that doesn't run dedicated anti-tank you've got an anti-tank weapon in your back pocket to just yeet at anything you don't have the firepower to deal with.

It's very much so worth noting, it's surprisingly effective against Factory Striders in my experience aswell, as you can stick a few thermites onto a factory strider's weakspot and do big damage, sometimes killing it solo.

In my thermite testing, Factory Striders generally take full damage from thermite when they are stuck, that is they take 1150 damage per grenade. They have over 5000 health, which means they very consistently take 5 thermite to kill them (unless one was used on the cannon turret, which then it takes 6). Thermite effects do not stack, so dumping a bunch and running away isn't going to do more damage.....admittedly I only did test tossing thermite on the the same underbelly door and the face, so it could possibly stack if just spreading a lot of them out on different parts.

Overall I don't find them effective against Factory Striders, simply because 5 thermites @ 7 seconds each is 35 seconds of waiting around if you just use thermite. It is a last resort or a support option do more general damage to the thing.

Having said that, I also like to use them as handy backup AT options. I do wish they were more reliable at dealing that fantastic damage, with hulks and devastators not registering they are being burned by one depending on where the grenade is stuck (face sticks are bad).

[Hawk]

Yeah Knight needs to significantly reduced recoil, worst case drop the ROF to 1,100 for "balance" means and like all other full auto weapons give it more magazines. Oh and damage needs to be drastically increased, the thing is weaker than every single secondary at this point and it's in the primary slot, all easy fixes that will not make it overpowered in the slightest. If you're not going to increase the damage then increase the mag capacity by 2 fold because right now it's just a .22LR SMG that has way too much recoil. The suggestion of giving it AP medium level is great and all but the damage is so poor that it would do nothing given how AH did their backwards armor pen model.

Spray and Pray yeah... their "fix and buff" was garbage, it's still the single least used shotgun in the entire game for the entire life span of the game, and it's a free unlock! More pellets is a good idea which would increase it's total damage output without increasing the damage per pellet. Honestly an increase in damage is really all that it needs, weather they do that via more pellets or damage per pellet would be fine I think.

Thermite yeah... it's never been good, needs a complete overhaul, either make it armor strip with 1 nade so that you still need to shoot a stripped section with medium or primary weapons... or... I don't know honestly. If the idea was for armor strip then it needs to actually do that without wasting my entire compliment on a single charger or target.

[ulzgoroth]

As somebody who generally finds all the shotguns bad, I did some experimentation and found the Spray&Pray the least bad shotgun, because it can be used similarly to an assault rifle with the most success.

[Madjar]

The knight is fine, not everything needs to be a medium pen killer
I can use it to pick up the slack dealing with groups of trash when I run a sniper kit

[Trig_Zero]

Originally posted by Madjar:

The knight is fine, not everything needs to be a medium pen killer
I can use it to pick up the slack dealing with groups of trash when I run a sniper kit

well the problem is full auto is juust unreliable to control
it was worse on launch, the recoil was as high as base liberator back then
even now its lowered by a lot, its still bad
using it singlle shot is just wrong, that leaves the burst
which is where the damage falloff comes in
yet the recoil paired with the fire rate, even in burst, makes it hard to keep all 3 shot on target weakspots when u need it

[Sleepy_Walker]

Originally posted by Trig_Zero:

Originally posted by Madjar:

The knight is fine, not everything needs to be a medium pen killer
I can use it to pick up the slack dealing with groups of trash when I run a sniper kit

well the problem is full auto is juust unreliable to control
it was worse on launch, the recoil was as high as base liberator back then
even now its lowered by a lot, its still bad
using it singlle shot is just wrong, that leaves the burst
which is where the damage falloff comes in
yet the recoil paired with the fire rate, even in burst, makes it hard to keep all 3 shot on target weakspots when u need it

Recoil in ADS is a lot more manageable and Knight has the fastest base ADS speed in the game (nearly instant as best I can tell) and no drift/delay in aiming. I suggest using in in 1st person when shooting or pairing with a shield so being close isn't as big an issue (ballistic shield bugs aside).

[Trig_Zero]

Originally posted by Sleepy_Walker:

Originally posted by Trig_Zero:

well the problem is full auto is juust unreliable to control
it was worse on launch, the recoil was as high as base liberator back then
even now its lowered by a lot, its still bad
using it singlle shot is just wrong, that leaves the burst
which is where the damage falloff comes in
yet the recoil paired with the fire rate, even in burst, makes it hard to keep all 3 shot on target weakspots when u need it

Recoil in ADS is a lot more manageable and Knight has the fastest base ADS speed in the game (nearly instant as best I can tell) and no drift/delay in aiming. I suggest using in in 1st person when shooting or pairing with a shield so being close isn't as big an issue (ballistic shield bugs aside).

idk bout u but using ADS with quick fire weapons up close blurs up everything
i have screenshake at the minimum, but it still happens
throws off my target awareness
i only use ADS when i tap-fire with medium~long range weapons

[Sleepy_Walker]

Originally posted by Trig_Zero:

Originally posted by Sleepy_Walker:

Recoil in ADS is a lot more manageable and Knight has the fastest base ADS speed in the game (nearly instant as best I can tell) and no drift/delay in aiming. I suggest using in in 1st person when shooting or pairing with a shield so being close isn't as big an issue (ballistic shield bugs aside).

idk bout u but using ADS with quick fire weapons up close blurs up everything
i have screenshake at the minimum, but it still happens
throws off my target awareness
i only use ADS when i tap-fire with medium~long range weapons

Interesting, I do not have this happen. Something to due with motion blur or depth of field settings in the menu? I would not recommend Knight or Liberator Carbine for you if you cannot see in 1st person.

[Trig_Zero]

Originally posted by Sleepy_Walker:

Originally posted by Trig_Zero:

idk bout u but using ADS with quick fire weapons up close blurs up everything
i have screenshake at the minimum, but it still happens
throws off my target awareness
i only use ADS when i tap-fire with medium~long range weapons

Interesting, I do not have this happen. Something to due with motion blur or depth of field settings in the menu? I would not recommend Knight or Liberator Carbine for you if you cannot see in 1st person.

sadly everything is off, my potato pc cann't disperse the heat very well
i mainly use guns with minimum recoil nowadays
Knight is somewhat manageable if i don't use ADS