The description has links to my written reference guide for this video. It also has a FAQ and corrections section. Feel free to drop a comment and I may well add it to that section. Thank you for watching and I will see you next time!
It seems like you're unaware of how armor values work in the game. Pilestedt, the CEO of Arrowhead, stated on Twitter that enemy armor values basically range from 0 to 9. Where 0 means there's no armor, 1, 2 and 3 means it will be Light Armor. Likewise, 4, 5 and 6 are Medium armor and 7, 8 and 9 are Heavy armor. Those same values carry over to Armor Penetration on weapons. If a weapon falls short of the armor value, it doesn't do any damage and deflects right off. If it matches the armor value, it will do 50% damage. If it exceeds the armor value, it does 100% damage. This is why some weapons with Light Armor Penetration can penetrate Light armors better than other weapons with Light Armor Penetration.
@@tEzekielt indeed, I did seem to miss hearing this information. I will look into it further and for future tests see if I can identify it. Edit* I will add your point to the FAQ when I have a moment. Thank you.
We need a Liberator with the. armor piercing bullet that is full auto. That burst is weak AF. And the semi auto, wilp not shoot as fast as you press the trigger. There is always a couple of shot that will "jam" and not work. Its utter shit.
what WheelchairBilly means is that you will most likely be the suitable candidate for this position according to the algorythm ;) Thank you for your efforts, diver
This is how you do it. 15 seconds in, and Gaming Existence gets straight to the point of the video. S-tier RU-vidr. No fluff or padding, just gets straight to the reason I clicked on the video. I NEVER "like and subscribe" but, dammit, if this the way he does business he's got me.
its a great video and I think it was really informative but there is still a significant amount of fluff, I dont need an explanation of every bug as they come on screen, the first 25 seconds of the brood commander is has nothing to with its armour
@@liamellis5250 An explanation of the bugs is not fluff, it’s useful for people are are less experienced with the bug types and makes the video viable for an audience that have not watched a lot of other Helldiver content, meaning its helpful to noobs.
@@liamellis5250 Not everyone is a pro like you Liam. Some people might not know this information, and it ties into why you would want to prioritize Brood Commanders over other targets.
The info is as solid as I can find anywhere on the internet, all packaged in a beautifully executed video with very clean presentation. Friggin' bravo! :D
I think much of the confusion about penetration comes from the translation from the real, behind the scenes numbers, to the descriptions on the weapons. Afaik the devs have confirmed on social media that armor penetration and armor value use a 10 point scale. If AP < AV, you get a 0 damage ricochet. If AP = AV, you get a reduced damage hit (the white marker with ~60% damage reduction). If AP > AV, you get full penetration and full damage. This knowledge is touched on in your FAQ section. What interests me more than the specifics of partial damage is the specifics of armor and pen numbers. I wonder if enough hit marker feedback could allow us to reverse engineer the numbers for bugs and weapons. So for example, let's look at the brood commander's head. It has light armor, so somewhere between 1-3. But the Slugger fully penetrates it, meaning it can't have a full 3 points of armor unless the Slugger is secretly a medium penetration gun. My guess is that the Slugger has an AP of 3 and the breaker and liberator are at either 1 or 2. Here's another example. You claimed that the Hive Guard's head and forearms have medium armor, but my guess is that it actually has light armor at AV = 3, because the Slugger gets a partial penetration (Slugger likely having an AP value of 3, the highest of light penetration). --- If you do a follow up about penetration, I would love to see a comparison among medium penetration weapons including support weapons, to see if what armor each of them can and can't fully penetrate.
The slugger doesn't fire pellets. It literally fires a slug. Hence the name. But I appreciate all the information provided and appreciate that this probably took a lot of your time to do. *Salute*
This Video just proves that we REALLY need an Info Station in the game, on our ship, where we can see stats of encountered enemies and more discovered Weakpoints of them. In a game where it's so Important to Hit the Shots, it's also SOO IMPORTANT TO HAVE INFORMATION!!! EDIT: No my point to addition is, that there needs to be a system where you maybe have to find the weakpoints of a given enemy. Not to be "spoonfed" with already given information. 1. A new encountered creature will give the Index a slot. There is now an allround Info about such creature. 2. New Index updates will be proceduraly % given, when hit a weakpoint 'x' amount of times. 3. It is a needed feature for Sci-Fi / Fiction genres to have info about the world. EDIT 2: We need to give the devs more time, I am sure they will make this game step by step a better masterpiece.
@@criss26565 would you also like to buy a board game, open the box, see all the components, but you'd have to go on the internet to find out the rules of the game?
loved this analytical breakdown, hope to see more information in a series about more guns, enemy breakdowns, and maybe even stratagems or overall game tips like how to progress through different mission objectives, how to read your map, etc. Subscribed for sure! Appreciate the hard work and clean editing!
Thanks for the research! It's also worth mentioning that soft body areas on bugs recieve reduced damage by standard weapons (the side of spewer for example). If a weapon has the 'explosive' characteristic, it doesn't get that damage reduction.
I believe a dev confirmed there are 10 levels of armour. Supposedly, there are multiple levels of "light" "medium" and "heavy" armour penetration. My guess is that 1-3 is light, 4-6 is medium 7-9 is heavy and 10 is some sort of impenetrable armour. When your armour penetration matches the enemy's armour level (on the spot you hit), you get the grey hit marker and deal very little damage, but you do deal damage. When you have higher armour pen than the enemy's armour level, you deal much more damage but still not full damage (red hit marker). To deal full damage, you need the "explosive" ammo type to hit at weak point AND penetrate the armour (red hit marker). If you have less penetration than the spot you hit, you deal 0 damage, your shot ricocheting. I am not a dev, but this is my understanding of the armour system and thus far it has proven anecdotally true.
You can crack through what even the toughest of armor with a powerful enough explosive I believe how you deal with armored targets is either you burn it or nuke it
I did some datamining. Most guns are 2, old spray&pray is 1. "Medium pen" guns are 3, including the slugger and revolver- they have mistakes in the description. Autocannon/AMR are 4, matching hulk faces. Chargers are 5. I think buildings may be higher.
@@bluedot5555 that explains alot as i have noticed my revolver blows through the armor of hive guards and some bots. Part of the reason i have kept it.
This is possibly the best and most straightforward video on Armour Penetration on the whole of RU-vid. Thanks for your service, Helldiver. I'll definitely be pulling out the Slugger more often, and I might even stop being so hard on the AR-23P...
Very helpful! One small note: the slugger has lower pellet spread than other shotguns because, it in fact, does not use pellets, and doesnt spread. Slugger! 😊
You seem to be unironically the only good helldivers 2 youtuber, giving actual good numbers and not just recycled old patch notes or wild wrong opinions.
because it's the base line doesn't mean it's reduced, imagine if there was a "no penetration" weapon then it would show that L.A.P does more dmg. but because l.a.p is the baseline compared to more pen makes it look like it does no damage
I really enjoy this game but absolutely stupid shit like the way they implemented armor in this game just ruins the flow of combat. All they had to do was look at something like DRG to see how to properly implement an effective but destructible armor system. But judging by their reactions to the recent player feedback on their changes, the devs have their heads too far up their asses to separate tedium from fun.
@@oak1691 The first infographic in the video literally shows that there is a 60% loss in damage on light armor penetration to a Brood Commander for the baseline liberator assault rifle. It is literally losing damage. That means you're doing 22 dmg a shot instead of 55 per shot. That does mean it is reduced. The legs would result in full damage. The fact that it just tells you 'light armor penetration' but doesn't really key that in that you might still have damage loss is kind of disingenuous and not something someone really learns without doing tests like this. A non light armor piercing weapon would just mean it's only able to hit no armor areas but always has consistent damage with those areas. Medium armor penetration just seems like a requirement if you want to have consistent, baseline damage and LAP for when you want to focus on no armor areas for maximum damage over the consistent but lesser medium armor pen. That or just run the slugger shotgun and ignore all of it.
I’ve been playing since launch and probably watched every helldivers RU-vid video out there and this is the most detailed breakdown I’ve seen yet. Thanks for all your effort. Definitely getting a subscription for this one!
His research was not in vain as this give him more content and is more info. This also shows how large the damage difference between the shotguns and everything else. I wanna see where energy weapons fall!
This video perfectly demonstrates why I've been using the Slugger. Ammo efficient and works wonders even against armored targets. What's not to love!? Future video suggestion: maybe cover the effects of the various other damage subtypes like heat or electric? Since clear information isn't provided in game its hard to tell what to expect from those types of weapons and their effects on different bots and bugs.
This is exactly the video I was looking for when it came to finding the weak spots on some of these bugs because I don’t have a whole lot of time to do trial and error to play and my friends without kids seem to be leaving me behind when it comes to skill, weapons, and Credits so this helps me out a lot to speed up my progress with the game.
Yeah I'm in a similar boat to you - I don't get much time in during the week and found the last patch made things difficult with some of the weapons I had. Early days at lower levels the AP Liberator is useful alongside something like the Stalwart to thin the chaff. Grenades (including launcher) also do good work on spewers. Look into the Arc Thrower as well - if you get the timing right for higher rate of fire (there are vids that explain it) it's pretty effective.
Thank you for this detailed analysis! I was really confused about certain weapons' penetration ratings (for example my favoured machine gun stratagem), and this explains how it can be so effective at headshotting spewers and hive guards while being practically useless against chargers. On a side note, hive guards have this interesting behaviour where they will stop and put down their head while retracting their forelegs, forming a shield of armoured chitin to protect their vulnerable fleshy parts. This behaviour is _very_ exploitable, as a moderately rigorous suppressive fire can keep this particular type of bug rooted in place - providing a very convenient opportunity to detonate a grenade right under them. On a side note, would love to see a similar video on the Automatons, as their hit zones and penetration ratings are even more confusing to me than these of the bugs.
Great video, thank you! One thought I have about armor and especially the Stalkers is: It's mentioned in a tip (and it's been a pretty big part of Helldivers 1 gunplay) that the angle of a hit is relevant to armor penetration. I assume you're aware, since you made sure to hit enemies head on, but I think it might be the reason for those white hits on the Stalkers. Their body shape is basically angled (light) armor all over, so it makes sense they're likely to only take grazing shots, still penetrating due to low armor, but lowering penetration enough to get the lower damage score. (Especially when combined with the knowledge shared by Pilestedt that you acknowledge in the FAQ. I could easily see how a Stalker has an armor rating of only 1 or 2 in most places, but it gets upped whenever your shots hit at a bad angle.)
I always try to remember to leave a like with any video I got some benefit from, but I rarely go as far as to leave a comment if I don't already have something I want to say. However, as someone who has spent many hours doing analysis like this in other games, I know how painstaking and tedious it can be just to get the footage, let alone sort through it and edit into something coherent. This comment along with the like is the least I can do. I genuinely appreciate the time you invested into putting this video together. Hell, I'm also throwing a sub your way because I really like how scientific and data driven your analysis was rather than simply how the weapon "feels". Bravo, good sir.
I’m really surprised you only have just a few thousand subs. The quality of your videos is super good and you seem to be pretty thorough with your information. Keep it up and I look forward to more videos!
This incredibly in depth analysis of weapon damage is alarmingly close to being curious about alien biology and history. Remember that curiosity leads to undemocratic thinking and we wouldn't want anyone to think you're a traitor, now would we?
Dude, this is the BEST break down of the bugs and how to take care of them. EVERY Helldiver needs to see this, it should be part of the darn training! While other creators are focusing on "YoU GoTtA BrInG ThIs ExAcT LoAdOuT Or yOu cAnT WiN" you're actually providing valuable information! Thank you so much!
Well done this is very in-depth, I can tell you must have spent a lot of time and effort to get all the footage and test everything and it really shows.
I've come back to watch this a second time. Thanks again. this video has lead to me choosing the slugger as my main weapon and im having a great time with it.
This is super awesome and helpful. I am usually an overwhelming firepower kind of guy but as I work on doing higher and higher missions I realize I need more tactics like where to hit with the least armor and what armor pen I need. Also, 9:50 looks like the Stalker has an armored plate just above the mouth that kind of blends in with it's normal colors, might be where the random reduced damage due to armor is coming from.
Really appreciate this! I feel like the game designers did a great job with the visual and audio cues for weak points, and a lot of my game instincts were confirmed in this
Concise, clean, informative and easy to watch! Plus a write up and FAQ with updates and corrections?? Democracy couldn’t ask for a better researcher, analyst and scientist!
About the Charger. Removing the armor with explosive weapon on the front legs exposes his weak spots. A few shots bringing him down. Not sure about the numbers. Great analysis by the way.
Very enjoyable and informative video Just one information correction brood commanders themself can call a breach (iv had lot of cases of them doing it post death which seems to be their favorite time) Everything else *chefs kiss* lovely, love visual representation of everything + ammount of information ❤
very well done and showed. I rarely sub youtubers anymore, as I mostly don't want to get notified about every video and I have too many subscribed already. I have to make an exception for this one tho as this was really superbly done!
Amazingly detailed content that must have taken ages to compile and edit for our viewing pleasure. But rest assured, your effort is super useful very appreciated. Thank you, and good luck building your audience.
I love data content. I have friends that keep saying that it's hard to get these numbers for the game but here is someone dedicated enough to do this. I'd love to see automaton data too.
i believe the variance with stalkers when trying to get a read on health totals and armor has to do with angled shots because of the sleek and angular shape they have, combined with their speed, even shots that should solidly pierce may become partial-penetrations
I didn’t realize there were different body parts (beyond say, front armor) until people started mentioning rockets to charger legs (pre buff to recoilless/EAT). Now I’m seeing this is way more like tarkov when it comes to combat. The charger’s got a whole anatomy to it, haha. Thanks for concise vid!
Found this video and couldn't be happier to find such a comprehensive guide for someone trying to figure out how to deal with the hordes! Will suss your other videos too!
This is SUPER helpful! Im new to the game so I’ve been so frustrated dealing with Chargers and Brood Commanders nonstop so I’m gonna try these guns out against them
You're more than just doing your part, now we can aim at the nerve stem to put them down for good! Id love information on damage breakdowns and information for multiple target weapons such as the flamethrower, arc thrower, railgun, and overpenetrating and explosive weapons that hit more than one target segment!
Devs: We want you to not care about how a weapon preforms and just use what feels good/fun for you. Also devs: Hey so pretty much every primary can't handle some of the most common bugs because lol armor. Love this game to death, I play it quite a bit, but coming from HD1 these choices are maddening to say the least. It has been a few years since I've played HD1, but I don't remember ever feeling this sense of frustration regarding weapons and dealing with armor. Edit to add: Thank you for this analysis, I found it at random and it does more than just provide (what should have been in-game already) beastiary knowledge of bug armor, it also provides a deep-enough-to-be-useful delved look into how armor pen works as a whole. I appreciate you.
A really quick way to deal with a bile titan is with the Spear stratagem. If you can spot one before it gets too close, it'll give you time to lock on to it's head allowing you to kill it with the first shot. I've used this a few times with friends when we tested different methods of killing them ourselves. The downside is that the spear locking mechanics are a bit finicky, especially with moving targets, and it's hard to use the spear in many other situations against the bugs. The major benefit is that you can eliminate big targets from extremely far away with the spear.
"Slugger and its far tighter pellet spread". You probably misworded or you might not know, but it's a slug shell it shoots. No spread. Just a single shell/slug. Appreciate the video very much. Keep up the good work!
This is an excellent video for new comers, I recently started playing and struggling on solo missions this info will help me alot on choosing the proper weapons for each mission thanks
Absolutely love this video thank you so much for makin it man! been using the slugger a lot in the past week and ive been curious about what its strengths are in detail!
If you have access to the new stun grenades, cooking one so it blows up on a bile titan can stun them for a couple seconds, giving you time to have a 500kg land on them.
Phenomenal editing, visuals, and presentation. You earned a new sub. It seems like the slugger should have "Medium Armor Penetrating" on its tooltip considering its impressive performance against medium armor, no?