Intuitively, an airburst projectile would be expected to simply explode in midair when it came within proximity of the target, or the ground. If I just heard the name and didn't know anything else about how it worked, I would expect it to be a simple radius explosion, or maybe blasting a cone in the direction the rocket is traveling, like the Orbital Airburst Strike (which always blasts downward because it's always being aimed downward). For what it's worth too, nearly every anti-aircraft weapon since WW2 has been a gun firing airburst shells, or a rocket with an airburst warhead.
There comes a moment for every hell diver using the air burst launcher for the first time when you TK your entire team and realize “oh, this isn’t a close range weapon”
something to keep in mind is that the airburst is capable of killing all heavy enemies (except for flying enemies and bile titans) although it requires carful aiming and a bit of luck. it can one shot hulks if you shoot them between the legs from the front (the back will take most of the explosions), it is capable of severely damaging chargers in one shot if you aim under them, it can one shot tanks if you can make the airburst explode from behind which isn't that difficult, and I've seen it land a killing blow on a factory strider when fired at it's belly. it also does a good job killing the machine guns on the factory strider as well. with that in mind the airburst is much better against automations than bugs mostly due to the distance of engagements. the airburst is quite unwieldy against close range enemies so the automations are my preferred targets. baby hunters also have a habit of jumping in front of the rocket causing a team wipe. it also can't kill bile titans which is why it often feels to me like it is required to bring AT on high level bug missions.
If aimed properly, this thing can oneshot Bile titans. you need to aim it at roughly half of the titans full height between the legs and the clusters will explode directly under the bile sacs and give it severe abdominal pain
Slight correction I wanted to give: Brood Commanders only have Light Armor. Out of the Terminid faction only Hive Guards and Bile Spewers (not Nursing Spewers) have any amount of medium armor currently. You can tell because light armor piercing ammunition reflects off medium armor while giving white damage hitmarkers on light armor, meanwhile medium armor piercing ammunition deals full damage to light armor and gets white damage hitmarkers on medium armor. Good video otherwise, might consider bringing it on egg destruction missions
I'm finding this is my go to "DEFEND" Support Weapon vs Autos. Usually b/c my Team takes up Cardinal Positions to cover. Between my Primary and my Strat's and this I'm able to hold down my Cardinal Direction all by myself and don't risk friendly fire. Mileage will vary in PUBS and LIKE THEY SAID IN ABOVE VIDEO IT'S BETTER VS BUGS.
A beast on those defence missions due to everything clumping together so much for sure. Even better if the team has good positioning like you mentioned.
In the evacuate valuable assets (tower defense) mission, airburst/500kg/double mortar is S+ tier. Airburst will take out anything besides hulks and factory striders consistently. Wait until almost the entire group is dropped from the drop ship, then fire so it detonates right as they hit the ground. EMS Mortar will stop the hulks and regular mortar will take them out. Airburst rocket launcher CAN take out the hulks, but you have to be above them and it has to detonate right behind their vents. Usually a two shot kill so I'd rather use dual mortar and maybe an eruptor round to finish them off while they're stunned. The 500kg is specifically for the factory striders. You CAN take them out with the Rocket Launcher, but it's so hit and miss I'd rather save the ammo for more large groups and rely on the eagle. Used to use the railcannon instead of the 500 but the cool down is killer on the higher difficulties, especially for it to not one shot the factory striders. Your mortars can also kill the strider is you keep aggro. Anyways, that lineup featuring the airburst rocket launcher is firmly S tier on those evacuate assets missions. Set up shop on the extract pad and you're good to go. You'll have the whole western half of the map covered so your other three teammates can team up and focus on the other side.
THANK YOU!! I’ve been so tired of hearing people calling this weapon complete garbage, when I’ve known it’s 100% them just using it wrong. I love using this to clear POI’s and Light Outposts, especially since it will wipe out all the enemies that can call Bot Drops/Bug Breaches quite often.
For a precious support weapon slot it is pretty garbage though. This vid just reinforces that by showing how few enemy types it's actually useful against. It needs to have higher armor penetration on direct hit.
It is pretty shit... the RNG on the frag spawns can either make you do some nice looking chaff wiping or straight up hit nothing at all... it's a poorly tested weapon like most in the game since the balance devs are.... well they're doing something alright.
Great in the escort scientist missions. You just chill on the landingpad with resupply and EAT and take big chunks out of every bug breach while your teammates press buttons
In the evacuate valuable assets (tower defense) mission, airburst/500kg/double mortar is S+ tier. Airburst will take out anything besides hulks and factory striders consistently. Wait until almost the entire group is dropped from the drop ship, then fire so it detonates right as they hit the ground. EMS Mortar will stop the hulks and regular mortar will take them out. Airburst rocket launcher CAN take out the hulks, but you have to be above them and it has to detonate right behind their vents. Usually a two shot kill so I'd rather use dual mortar and maybe an eruptor round to finish them off while they're stunned. The 500kg is specifically for the factory striders. You CAN take them out with the Rocket Launcher, but it's so hit and miss I'd rather save the ammo for more large groups and rely on the eagle. Used to use the railcannon instead of the 500 but the cool down is killer on the higher difficulties, especially for it to not one shot the factory striders. Your mortars can also kill the strider is you keep aggro. Anyways, that lineup featuring the airburst rocket launcher is firmly S tier on those evacuate assets missions. Set up shop on the extract pad and you're good to go. You'll have the whole western half of the map covered so your other three teammates can team up and focus on the other side.
An excellent guide for a support weapon that's hardly been picked since it was unlocked! I haven't tried it again after they fixed most of the proximity issues. Hard to make it work in solo runs because of its atrocious reload, alongside other weaknesses, lol. That being said, it is a funny weapon that I'd one day love to test out with a friend willing to team reload for me in a base defense mission.
I love the ABRL but only against bots (can’t stand the reload on bugs). I can consistently 1-2 shot tanks/turrets and hulks but it all comes down to perfect placement. For hulks you can shoot between the legs if you have an angle to land it behind, but if you can get a slight angle and shoot right behind one of their feet it’s a lot more consistent. With tanks/turrets you need them to actually be facing you and you shoot at the back corner. The goal with both is to concentrate the cluster into a smaller area basically. The same logic applies for smaller bots as well. For devastators it’s better to shoot at the ground but for chaff bots you can shoot above for more coverage. I’ve also seen clips of it 1 shotting Factory Striders if you can get them all to detonate under the belly but very hard to pull off
Honestly, I love this weapon to bits and it's my go to for bug missions! Comes in handy when clearing large clusters (pun intended) of bugs at a distance. Very useful for waiting for Pelican 1 too! The loadout you recommended is mostly like mine: Incen Breaker to deal with bugs close to me and the Grenade Pistol to close bug holes and as a back up, though I rock impact grenades instead to give myself a bit of room.
Same here, its a treat to use. Chucking into hordes of bugs is amazing haha. & I Impacts are great. Think I just fell in love with stuns to stop Chargers in their tracks.
You can also kill fabricators 90% of the time by shooting the circular symbol on the side of them as well. The bot cannon towers can also be killed in a couple of shots by hitting the turret ring (the space between the gun turret and the tower). I also saw someone say you can take out factory striders by shooting underneath them, but I have yet to try that myself. And lastly, don't forget that your shots can set off unexploded hellbombs so maybe give it a sec before rushing back into the kill zone. Good diving!
I religiously use the airburst. I use it as crowd control and to instantly pop the abdomens on bile titans. I usually get over 100 kills more than the next player up in kill count. I love the airburst. Its a support weapon meant to control woth a bit of distance between u and your squad and the enemy.
I find it really helpful with extracts on bug planets even on helldive difficulty, taking out most if not all of the horde of bugs that beeline for the extract at a distance makes it way less chaotic. Also helpful if you're kiting away a huge group from your teammates, kite them towards a choke point and fire, I've had 40+ kills on a single rocket.
Since the hotfix/patch for the RL-77 to make it less sensitive this weapon has be come my go to for all bot missions. I can with about the same reliability as a quazar, recoiless, or EAT take out almost every heavy target/ tower or factory in a single shot the exception for factory striders. It all about knowing where and to shoot and hitting the correct spot. - Tanks booth types: just under the turret from any angle, the turrent's vent or front works best. can be done it one shot. - Tank towers: same deal where the turret meets the base and head on or vent sides work best. - Hulks: shoot from the front between the legs, this will normally blow out it's back or set it on fire. From the side shoot a leg same deal, normally takes one or two shots, and enough damge if not you can finish off with an impact grenade or any weapon that will damage the back. factory buildings: from the side. aim directly at the middle of the logo if your lined up striate on, if your at an angle aim for the red light near the base of the front panels if you coming up on the back. from the front aim at the base of vents. most of the time it's one shot, if not you may need to adjust your angle of attack. Note that dead bodies of med or heavy targets near by can make it explode prematurely if the rocket does not hit the target then it will not take them for the above.
I was afraid when all the videos said the support strategem sucked when its preview was available, but after using it? THIS IS SO GOOD, AND FUN TOO I've only been using it on bot missions so far and it does a fantastic job for crowd control, specially for patrols and farher outposts.
you forgot one very important detail sir. if you fire it while prone, it's proximity fuse deactivates entirely. thus it will only detonate on contact. obv this is super helpful depending on how you use it.
I like this weapon coupled with eagle cluster to melt the unarmored troops that are usually capable of opening bug holes/calling bot drops. you'll need your buddies for the heavy units and your primary should be capable of taking down medium armor. this weapons isnt meant to be used close range so fire it many meters away from the squad and on a clump of enemies. its a fun weapon overall
i personaly love to run a "john cluster strike" build, with the airburst, orbital cluster, and eagle cluster, along some other stratagem that is either explosive or anti-tank (you could run it with the eruptor before they removed the shrapnel, but i higly advise to take something to deal with the small bugs and straglers, like an AR or shotgun) the ability to single handedly deal with most grunts during bug breaches with 3 stratagems is prety good, but you need a team with anti tank stuff for the bile titans
@@TheWileSpiceyah so good, good long range anti infantry sniper. The moments when I noticed I had it equipped and fired instead of the breaker shotgun 😂
I have 1 shot tanks, and turrets from the side. And once from the front. I have also on multiple occasions seemingly 1shot hulks, hut it usually takes 3 I have also 1shot fabricators from multiple different angles, even the back. None of what I mentioned above is consistent
I really want to like it, but that reload speed really kill the weapon that supposedly falls into crowd control category considering grenade launcher can shoot faster&more safer to use on medium range.
I tried it for abit and with the recent change to spawnrates to churn more light enemies, this thing is pretty fun. Pretty inconsistent though. I like to pair it with the plasma punisher to finish off weakened devastators
Using the airbrurst I have one shot both hulks and turrets with direct hits to the rear vents. Also the mini explosives can destroy fabricators if you manage to get one to launch into the vent so you don't have to put the entire charge inside it
I think there's definitely some element of luck when securing one shots with this weapon sometimes. I was never able to take a Hulk out in one shot. Though tanks & turrets yes.
6:16 you can actually destroy them by shooting at the back of the vent or roof (from the back!), sometimes it works too! this thing is OP, I've cleared 5-6 fabricators just by standing on a top of a mountain
It can kill chargers but like you said its a pain, just like another comment said, its similar to killing bile titans. If you get the clusters to detonate under it correctly, it will shred the charger. Same applies to factory striders.
Honestly the higher the mission difficulty to better this weapon is. Plus most people are going to bring anti-tank weapons so you might as well kill all the chaff. Also do try and shoot over enemy's since anything under the detonation can actually get away without taking any damage since the bombs don't fall down
Best part of the airburst for me is that you can snipe a bot fab from a crazy distance away. I'd usually suggest bring it with EAT-17s for when you need to deal with heavies too.
Runs well with the gatling sentry against bugs. Sentry will give you the space to fire and reload the weapon safely, however make sure you’re away from your teammates lmao. Still feel like it deserves a 3 second reload with how needy it is in other ways.
This guide has shown me that it is way more effective at being an accident than placing incendiary and anti-personnel mines right on the objective so my teammates have to face me and the enemy before they can extract.
It's a cool weapon, butI do think you should be rewarded when you shoot between the lower tier heavy units legs. A consistent 2 shots to destroy a sack or battery pack would make the weapon feel a lot better taking a slow loading rocket imo.
So what is the actual use case for this weapon? If feels like it does the same thing as the Eagle Clusterbomb but less reliably in terms of clearing small targets. Like when would you pick this weapon?
Thats pretty much it. It can secure some heavy target kills on Tanks / Hulks. But otherwise there are many more stronger options, so you choose this weapon when you want to have some fun really.
Very ideal to be wearing armor with fortified passive when using this. If it detonates close, you're very likely to survive and not take significant damage.
Sending in one rocket and clearing an entire egg nest is one of the best feelings in the game. And I’ll admit that it isn’t a great stratagem but it is so much fun that I don’t care.
You Can actually damage hulk from the front and even kill Them In two shots that Way with shooting the besked Them and it detonating behind Them though it might not be worth it to find that sweat shot that hits the most clusters
my annoyance is that my plas-shotgun can kill gunship if the projectile hit but this god damn launcher can't, i pondered if the rocket is medium or light armor penetration (not counting bomblets) it that pet peeves that annoyed the hell out of me but i find this rocket is very effective against robot over bugs because robot have better weakspot than bugs themselves
While the weapon many not easily kill heavies it still hurts them. There is value in being able to blast and area with an airburst then move in for mop up. I do not recommend the breaker with this weapon as you need to be at long range to use it. It makes more sense to bring a longer ranged gun and just stay out of close ranged combat all together. If your being effective with the weapon your not going to get swarmed. The added space will allow you to reload the launcher safer.
I find on level 9, there's too many bugs that are able to gap close while you're reloading personally. The incendiary breaker is just too good not to take as well! Definitely get good value from directly attacking the heavier targets though.
I personally feel it shines on bots (for clearing the hordes of smaller enemies on helldive). Hear me out, 2 people run airburst and 2 run quasar/spear/anti tank; then everyone runs orbital railcannon and 110mm rocket pods (with the extra stratagem slot being personal preference). At this point you can mob clear, destroy structures and delete heavies as long as the team sticks together. Edit: if the 2 people not running airburst run quasar and ammo backpack then you have a heavy deleter/airship destroyer with unlimited ammo with the benefit of being able to fund your airburst user's debilitating ammo addiction.
It's too weird of a weapon. If AH intends for the support weapons to deal with medium-heavy targets but then makes something like this to deal with the light enemy swarms, why would they intend primary and secondary weapons as anti-swarm weapons?
but internet guy, I've already used the airburst successfullly, post-patch. I told everyone it's OP, wihch it is a little. so what do you have to offer?
It's crazy because it is such a guaranteed kill on allies even with explosive resist or heavy armor, yet is so TERRIBLE at killing anything with more armor than a warrior. So most bot targets that aren't one shot by a handgun ignore the weapon and 80% of a bug population require at least 2 shooters, even though big targets should take extra damage from explosive damage. It needs to be more lethal to bile spewers because there's no chance something that has this many explosive damage outputs takes 2-3 entire rockets to kill spewers.
I can help shorten this significantly. Step 1 - PUB with 4 poor bastards or your frans if they aren't tired of dying yet. Step 2 - Equip Airburst and any heavy explosion resistance armor. If you are nice warn your team. (Add impact incendiary and breaker incendiary if you wanna be a complete TIMMAY!) Step 3 - GIBLETS AND LULZ!
I genuinelly dislike when other Helldivers youtubers are hating about game Devs decisions or game balance. I love your easy, fun to watch and very informative videos where you talk about how cool looks a weapon and how to use it if you like it and I want to thank you for it. It really sets the tone and it's so fun to read the comments section when it's just players having fun and sharing tips
'Tis my pleasure! Whilst some balancing decisions are whacky and I disagree with many of them its nice to just focus on the fun of the game. The CEO has addressed the balancing issues mentioning they've been off the mark, so we can hope for better, but enjoy what we have in the meantime.
It's stupid it cannot hurt chargers and biles. Arrowhead need to make all strat weapons valid as multi tools capable of countering everything, only having more of a effective side against certain things.
I make a point to try everything in the upper difficulty of the bot battlefield and in this theatre of war…it’s useless. It’s useful against bugs at hard difficulty or below but against bots on higher difficulty it’s a waste of a strat and a waste of a backpack. Stay away unless killing organics!
I just wish players would stop using it like it's an EAT or RR; they panic and shoot it at close range/point blank and end up getting killed, then complain that the weapon sucks.
I love getting nipped as I'm aiming and the weapon sway forces my shot to hit the ground 3 feet from me, instakilling mostly everything in a 10ft radius. I also love when I >think> I've swapped to another weapon and smoke something 5ft from me. the thing's just fun when it has such a large potential for user-error. personal fav weapon, by quite a bit.
2 cents from a Bug diver that plays on lvl 7-9. Skip this weapon. 1st problem It has a 5 second reload. If you play in a random team, people will not cover you, they will not wait for you. 2nd problem. Teammate runs in front of you, or you are running in to save a teammate. You cannot fire this. 3rd problem On high difficulties, 4 bug types are dangerous. Titan, Charger, Stalker and Bile spewer. This only works vs bile spewer. Bug breach...2 chargers...now what? 4th problem It takes up a backpack slot. You're better off taking the supply pack. Seriously. You get 8 extra grenades. And the ammo and the stims. 8 grenades can be used at any time and will kill lots of things, including the 4 above mentioned bug types. I'm serious here. This weapon is a fun, nonsense idea that should be skipped on high difficulty. Nice video BTW, keep it up. ❤ from me.
I play on same difficulties and rock this all the time... with so many choices to fill the other spots you can rock anything you think is fun and be just fine. also this thing wrecks havoc vs bots
You can destroy tanks even from the front in one well placed shot. You have to aim for the turret ring/"Driver hatch"*, right underneath the gun. Firing from elevation/on a Tank that is going down a hill, the probability of a one-hit kill increases. *The Automaton tanks seem to be unmanned, therefore, to give you a rough Idea where exactly you have to shoot, Google for pictures of the T-72 or M1 Abrams tanks.
Airburst not being good at anti-air in reality? One of the major revolutions in warfare in WWII was the development of airburst rounds specific to AA use. Honestly, a not small portion of the grief HD2 gets is because of how they name and describe things to us. Sure its an airburst rocket, but its mainly a cluster munition with airburst properties. So its name should reflect that.l so we dont have any misconceptions. Same for the 500kg bomb. Huge visual explosion, but tiny actual AoE. Acts more like an Armor Piercing Bomb with the anount of damage it does when it does hit. Should be named as such. Now we have the Eruptor, the non shrapnel shrapnel gun after the "nerf" And also the Tenderizer, "high caliber" its described, with its ejection port amd magazine reflecting that, but the actual thing in game is just another Liberator. Dont get me started on armor, and they need more distinct stratagem symbols, cause half of them look the same!
Oh I meant the launcher in the game specifically, not all airburst munitions. There does seem to be a mis-match with the description vs actuality on a lot of the things in game.
Proper guide to the airburst: Step 1: Choose anything else Step 2: There is no step 2. Choose literally anything else or your Teamkilling ass is getting kicked
