THE ROCKET SENTRY WAS UPDATED IN PATCH 1.000.400 Update Video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9BBGYccu4SY.html Rocket Sentry Changes: - Decreased spread - Prioritize larger targets - Increased target distance from 75 to 100m - Decreased Rockets per salvo 2 to 1 (to get a better ammo economy) - Increased explosion radius from 1m to 4m - Decreased explosion armor penetration (Explosion can no longer damage heavy armored enemies. The projectile still has enough AP to damage heavily armored targets.) - Increased projectile damage from 200 to 300
Someone should ask the devs to swap out the sentry explosive resistance with a small personal shield for the sentry instead. You know, because the explosion resistance doesn’t make a difference
It doesn't make a difference because its a multiplicative buff of x1.50 explosion resistance to the default resistance... which is 0... 0 x 1.5 is still zero, so it literally does nothing.
EMS mortar enjoyer here. When they fix it, I'll buy it. As of this posting, it doesn't help. I wish it did; it helps when good placement isn't good enough.
Have to think of the extreme end. How would it look if 4 divers all picked nothing but shielded sentries. Probably silly easy. I know there are already some missions that the current sentries make it so so easy. A built in shield would make those a cake walk
So I have found ONE niche senecio where the rocket sentry actually outshine the AC sentry. On evacuate high asset automation missions, the ones where you play tower defense till the timer runs out, if you place the sentry to only face at the area where the drop ships come and drop off the automatons, you can use the rocket sentry like a SAM turret. And it actually really does a quite impressive job at it too. So much that it turns the mission damn near trivial to complete even on helldivers difficulty. However, there is a trick that you got to do though. Since the drop-ships always come in at the same angle and stop at the same place to drop off their load, you have to position the rocket sentry in a spot where it pretty much faces the engines of the drop ship to one shot the drop ships before they can release their loads. And although the AC can do the same thing, because the AC runs through ammo a lot quicker than the rocket, you’ll only have the AC up for maybe a minute while the Rocket sentry will have a permanent up time in comparison. This is the one scenario where I run the rocket sentry over the AC sentry and it outperforms it.
If only killing Gunships was actually useful, killing a gunship kills small bots but anything not a basic trooper will survive the fall with inconsequential damage
@@akulazolota3733 Sounds like because it is. They gave the enemy cover. Taking down dropships only kills the passengers if they've already been released from the dropship and if, by chance, the explosions from the engines reach any of their released passengers on the ground. The passengers don't receive fall damage, and nobody can shoot through a crashed dropship at enemies staying beneath it, but the enemies can at you and can walk through it when they choose to. So it's a game changer in the sense that they've made it harder for their teammates--but that's how the devs wanted us to play the game; have teammates to make up for your shortcomings.
Your deep dive on these (i hate to say it) non-meta choices is the only reason i try them out lmao. I hate to try them especially on 3 stratagems mission, only for them to be a dud or unsuitable for the occurance. Good video mate, keep it up.
Appreciate your kind words! I like exploring the non-meta choices because everything that is non meta all work in such different ways so it's cool to at least see their potential and see just how impactful the weaknesses are. Thanks for your comment and thanks for checking out the video!
Heh, he could have shortened this video by 16 minutes by saying "just use the autocannon sentry instead" ;). A lot of detailed info though. I'm impressed.
I play lower difficulty(2-6) a lot. To farm rares, have fun, and to help new players see the flow of move-destroy-regroup-move and to make their missions more fun. It's a good opportunity to try out different stuff when you aren't heavily punished for not taking a really well planned loadout.
Its so annoying we cant drop sentries on high ground. They already have limited fire and health and the devs reduce their effectiveness further by not allowing deployment on high ground. Just pointless overbalancing BS
I feel that aside from just the rocket sentry, sentries in general would become 10x more useful if they can be consistently called on high ground platforms. Thanks for checking out the video!
For Bugs, Equip a stealth armor Equip a STUN Grenade (stop chargers running into your turret) Give yourself enough space from tne fight and always call in a Machine gun or gatlin sentry and pair it with the rocket sentry. The machine gun keeps all the tiny critters away while the rocket focuses the big guys. And ofcourse carry a Quasar, EAT etc. So help shoot the big targets with the rocket....you will SHRED. If you are doing this with Automatons, remove the machine gun and replace with Generator Shield Relay so the bots can't shoot it down.
Enemies prioritize turrets over players anyway so the stealth effect is not so useful better to run engineer kit armor so you have more stun nades to throw.
i'm just seeing 16 minutes of explanation (and i do appreciate the deep dive as a viewer!) to tell me "just take the autocannon sentry" yes, it kills itself with enemies too close, but similar to understanding personal positioning, understanding where to put that thing is vital, not to mention, unlike the rocket sentry, it staggers hulks and chargers.
My current build is an Orbital drop bunker when comes to turrets, i pair the Autocannon with either the minigun or rocket sentry followed by the dome shield. Basically makes a safe zone for cover when fighting the bots.
From what you found, Like all turrets but mortars, position and line of sight are key to effectiveness. Having a gatling 20-30m in front of and below it or seperated by terrain will help clear light enemies , or a closer AC for medium and heavies. Additionally, like HM or AC emplacements, it will be a fine decision to have multiple on the team, like on geo surveys, where you have high ground and trigger a large enemy response. The sentries will possibly focus fire, significantly dropping TTK on heavies.
Chance and placement really affect how it works too. I had a factory strider drop directly on top of a rocket sentry where the sentry could shoot directly at belly doors, and it killed the factory strider in 3 volleys
They should either rework this into a SEAF sentry, targeting airborne enemies and bile titans only, with homing, or they should increase the firing rate to 4 rockets per shot instead of two, like a rocket devastator.
The problem is the rocket turret is inferior to the autocanon turret and the machine gun inferior to the Gatling so there’s never a reason to pick those 2. It doesn’t help that the bots can take them out almost instantaneously and from halfway across the map! I really hope they buff the underperforming turrets so we have more variety
They must of changed/reduced aggro on sentries recently. Prior usage, everything just swarmed them. I used some last night and things would walk passed it while getting blasted by it towards me, who was also blasting them. Never seen that happen before.
I want it to be good, but it's just inferior to the Autocannon in almost every way. It needs a massive buff. Higher armor penetration, bigger splash damage, and slight homing.
I am not positive, but i think that it has more overall ammo/damage than the auto cannon. But the auto cannon is more consistent and does the damage faster and to me, it seems to have more hp. Even with a build set up for chaff clear it seemed kinda meh except for the defense mission where everything comes through a choke point in order to get to the generators to stop our missile launches then it is more noticable how it out lasts the auto cannon. Also vs bugs chargers prioritise sentries which even further decreases their effectiveness. I almost never use sentries against bugs except maybe gatling and even then i would prefer orbital airburst followed by gatling barrage. If your teammates are dropping anti tank weapons then just bring a couple of eagles to offset your orbital strikes. You can only really get away with sentries on bot missions or really dam good positiong away from all the fighting against bugs but you will soon find everything on cooldown and they are still spawning in. I do wish the regular machine gun at least had much more ammo. I might be tempted to try gatling/ machine gun, but otherwise, you're probably better off with rover back back even without a support weapon as chaff clear. It wont plow you out of a pickle, but it simply does more over time.
They really do NEED to buff rocket sentry, i mean, with the name such as Rocket sentry, it does not do its intended work, buff either its fire rate or damage or explosive range so that each rocket affects multiple enemies, 1 of the 3 would make a big difference for this sentry and would actually very viable.
Before watching, it's good for medium enemies and down but once anything armoured turns up it might as well explode. I see no reason to take this over the Autocannon as the Rockets large enemy preference ruins it.
Just read the patch notes and it looks like sentries got buffed with some specific buffs coming to the rocket sentry. Will do an update soon! Appreciate you checking out the video!
Personally, the only reason I got it was for the Knight SMG. It's not the best gun but it's an SMG that shoots fast which I really like. The helmet and cape are really nice too. I bought it even though I already unlocked the steel vet warbond and still feel like it was worth. Hope that answers your question. Thanks for checking out the video!
I've seen it locked on to a couple of gunships the whole week but haven't seen it take any of them down. It either was carrying something of a higher priority such as a factory strider/tank, or it got out range too soon for the sentry to continue firing additional volleys at it. Thanks for checking out the video!
Unfortunately, I don’t have a super secret way of having the rocket sentry outperform the rocket sentry. The rocket sentry is in need of some love and this video highlights that as well as the neat things that exist about it such as it being able to target and destroy certain structures. Thanks for checking out the video!
the rocket sentry could be really good but as it is especially without a blast radius, its just a diet autocannon sentry. they need to buff it and make it more unique because i really would like to have something other than the gattling sentry that can easily target single enemies and help wave clear
Imagine you send a sniper on a mission to take out an enemy officer. He says he will prioritize Officer Joe, he returns from the mission and only shot privates. When you ask him why he says he prioritized the closest target, but if there was a tie between officer Joe and a private officer Joe would be dead You'd probably shoot your sniper for rampant incompetence. The rocket sentry targeting absolutely needs to be fixed, that or it's target priority section should be removed from the description
This is a fantastic sentry so long as you take its characteristics in mind. To get more out of its anti armor rockets you should run this on a crowd control build as an anti armor pocket pick. Weapons like the air burst and stalwart are going to quickly clear the board of all the chaff so the sentry can target the heavies. Eagle cluster, gas, napalm, orbital gatling, orbital air burst and mines are all good picks to compliment. The rocket sentry works best when it can focus its fire onto its intended targets from moderate range. Something to note about sentries as a whole is that enemies not targeting a hell diver will prioritize sentries. This is important with the rocket sentry as it has a minimum range. Knowing this allows you to use that to your advantage. You can place a sentry at an angle your not attacking from to catch enemies in a cross fire. This forces the enemy to either target you or the sentry thus dividing enemy aggression. You can also use the sentry as bait for retreats or for hit and run ambushes. Good placement and good weapon and stratagem synergy is going to allow you to get a lot more out of this sentry then just picking it at random.
Great insight! I didn't think about having your build circle around clearing out the small units so that all is left are the heavy/armored units for the rocket sentry. Appreciate your comment and thanks for checking out the video!
@@Wallbouncing no problem. There are a lot of little mechanics and details that are easily missed in this game so its always nice to share some of the things I have tried out.
The only time I use rocket sentries is if I'm running an all turret build, at which point I use it when the Auto Cannon Sentry is on cooldown. It's to the AC sentry like the MG is to the Gatling Sentry: not inherently bad, but subpar and only really viable if you need a second turret of the same kind you already have. Great video!
I don’t think that the MG sentry is too bad, and it actually has an advantage on uptime over the Gatling sentry when enemies are fairly distanced from one another when forced to turn a considerable degree of rotation. It also won’t burn ammo as severely into gathering bodies in front of it if placed at the same or lower elevation from enemies like the Gatling will, it just needs the distance to maintain its own safety so its lower TTK can give it time to chew its food. The slower fire rate is also safer for allies that push on the firing line of the turret. As it exists right now, the ammo efficiency it does outperform the Gatling on is a negligible difference in amount of targets it would clear and is only valued for its safety- making it only relatively effective when centrally placed in a very wide open area for liberal engagement of several patrols or when pushing Terminid outposts with at your back while you remain in the line of fire. I really want them to buff the ammo capacity to give it more uptime. Keep its TTK lower than the Gatling, just give it more sustainability with ammo to lean into the “safer and comfortable” sentry option.
Loving the Deep Dive series. Auto Cannons are just so much better, sound cooler, only thing Rocket takes home is the looks. Love the look of rockets streaking out overhead and smacking something.
Appreciate your kind words. I do like the way the rockets look traveling across the map. I just wish it was strong enough to be viable in higher difficulty dives. Thanks for checking out the video!
The rocket sentry has a much simpler strategem code to enter, which is helpful in tense situations. And with its firing pattern, and included reload it seems to stick around longer than the autocannon
I'd love for the rocket turret to have some kind of guidance for large units. It would make it extremely useful against flying enemies, as long as you can keep smaller enemies from reaching the turret
You know what this turret needs to be truly viable? Homing rockets. Change it into a missile turret and the accuracy problem would be gone, AND it would be indispensible around gunship fabricators.
I feel like the rocket sentry would work better as a miniature SAM sentry. Aka: bigger damage (probably EAT damage but higher armor penetration), with slight tracking (not spear style, rather curving toward targets), but with a slower fire rate (1 salvo of 2 rockets every ~6 seconds) and less ammo (~24 rockets meaning ~12 salvos). The sentry would launch 2 high damage rockets with high armor penetration as it would use shaped charges, meaning it has the same low splash damage and range. It would be designed so that 1 salvo of 2 rockets would be able to single handedly take down a drop ship. But it wouldn't clear whole bot drops because the lower fire rate means it'd take down at a maximum of 2 drop ships per bot drop. (Because the sentries aim at center of mass instead of at the engines, it may need a damage buff specifically against dropships.) The tracking is there because as a SAM sentry, it is designed to deal with gunships as well, and gunships notoriously move around a lot, making even the recoilless hard to land. And of course, it should only be 1 salvo per gunship, especially since there's more of them. Now just because it's a surface-to-air missile, doesn't mean that its shaped charge rockets can't be useful elsewhere. Because of its high damage and penetration, it'd also be good at dealing with larger, more armored targets. Examples include Hulks, bile titans, chargers, tanks, factory striders, and fabricators (mostly convenient coincidence). Chargers and hulks should be a 1 salvo clear while tanks would be 2, and bile titans or factory striders would 3+. Now, having ~12 salvos by default (instead of 16) would seem overpowered as that is 12 chargers, 12 hulks, or 12 dropships. But keep in mind that it retains its low health, and since its fire rate is lower its acting as an automated recoilless rifle, specifically one that can't move and is thus easily overrun by cannon fodder. Side note: Its target acquisition should be better and target larger targets regardless since it should know it's futile to aim at a scavenger and waste its rockets. Especially if it's too close to shoot. TLDR: Can drop bot dropships for you to lessen the horde, dominates heavily armored targets, but is overrun easily by smaller enemies and is much less effective against the bugs since they rely on quantity instead of quality like the bots. (Might need tweaking, but overall, it should improve its current state by increasing both its upsides and downsides, specializing it.)
I feel like this sentry is just completely overshadowed by every other sentry. It's advertised purpose is done better by the AC sentry by leaps&bounds and despite being "explosive" it doesn't have any meaningful splash damage so it feels like there is 0 reason to run this over a gattling sentry, AC sentry or a mortar. It doesn't help that it's aim is godawful and loves to miss targets because it doesn't know it shoots a projectile.
BTW - This is the Worst Sentry out of them all, this thing is HORRIBLE = Use the Auto Cannon to take out Biles and any big targets. Also dont use Turrents for bots - they will just laser them...BUT the Auto cannon, with Huge Explosive AOE impact, WILL DESTROY Biles / Chragers etc etc = BUGS
I see someone else mentioned it but this thing is really designed to take down drop ships IMO. If you can get it behind a rock that breaks line of sight to ground forces so that it can only "see" dropships you are golden.
In all my time testing it and purposely trying to get it to hit dropships I wasn't able to take one down unfortunately. It'd always be the case where the dropship would get locked on, fired on a couple of times, but then would leave the effective range before the rocket sentry fires anything more. It would be that or the rocket sentry would lock on to something and couldn't kill it in time and the gunship just passes by. I'll keep trying though! Thanks for your comment and thanks for checking out the video!
If the rocket sentry actually did what it says in the description, it would be great. Problem is, it does not prioritize targets the way the description reads. It will blow shots away on random medium enemies while chargers and bile titans are within range, making it completely worthless, since the autocannon turret will do the same thing, faster, better and at longer range, with more accuracy, and with more ammo.
If they removed the sticky targeting, and made the rocket sentry automatically switch to the largest target not in it's deadzone, then it might be a decent side-grade to the AC turret. As is, it is unfortunately trash.
"it is even able to one shot a ballistic shield and outright destroy it" oh cool so it'll shred heavy devastators? 12:05 hmm why does this apple taste like bacon
Rocket Sentry should just be a salvo of arcing, highly aggressively tracking SPEAR missiles capable of achieving a lock around cover, so you can station them behind a rock their payload can arc over.
@Wallbouncing, I love the LBP background! Very fine video. Have you collaborated with RykenXIV, Cashcrop, Eravin, or Thiccfila at all? You guys among some others have been real helpful to us Helldivers out here, and I figure we are stronger together.
I hate the fact that you cant halt its fire (with all sentries). Theres so many times a sentry will just be shooting at a fucking wall, and theres notbing you can do about it. Also the fact the the sentries aim at little enemies. Imo autocannon, and rockets should only fire at heavies. Or atleast only aim at groups of small enemies, not a single one. So many times i see mortar throwing 4 SHELLS at one little scavenger. Truly is infuriating
Issue with the rockets from automations most of the damage (like the rocket sentry) are kinetic not the explosive damage. It may have more effect vs bile spewers I think.
The Rocket Sentry NEEDS a rework. It isn't a good answer for anything. It's overshadowed by the Autocannon because it's almost identical in its behavior, except it's worse because the rockets are slower, and there's even _less_ AoE damage compared to AC. The rockets need AoE. The rockets need to travel faster or at least lead the target and hit more reliably. Pilestedt needs to sit down and ask his team what gives the Rocket Sentry its identity. Do you expect it to reasonably take down Gunships for you? It should be successful at doing that, right now, it's not. Do you expect it to clear more than one bug per volley in a tight group of Scavengers? It's not the ideal use-case, but It should be able to do that.
The fact that the rocket devastators launch 5 pinpoint accurate rockets, every 2 seconds, indefinitely is the biggest joke on the rocket sentry. Whoever is in charge this, balance or design, really needs to think it through before they ruin the game. ** Give the enemies woth special ammo types (flame gas, rockets) limited ammo!!! ** Problems solved.
The difference between large and small units can be seen on the radar - Striders are considered large targets (large red dots), while Devastators are infantry and are displayed as a small red dot. Bugs have the same “oddity” - the brood commander is considered an equivalent target in size to the charger - even an orbital railgun, if thrown between them, but closer to the commander, will target him. The Brood Leader also appears as a large dot on the radar, rather than a small dot like smaller bugs.
A whole video that could be summed up as: The rocket sentry is terrible, there is no situation where the autocanon sentry isn't vastly superior. The standard MG sentry will get far more kills. Don't bring it unless you have to.
Sentries are so goated when you max upgrade them but yeah, Rocket Sentry might be the worst one out of the bunch. Would rather have a Gatling, Machine Gun, Autocannon and Quasar Cannon set up
This thing would be good if it would only target bile spewers and up, devastators and up, and had some homing for aerial targets. As it stands, this isn’t a decent off meta pick, it’s just kinda bad by comparison to most other options.
Guys, just use the auto cannon turret. It's way better. Shreds hulks and factory striders, has the muzzle velocity to rarely miss it's targets. Rocket turret is just bad in comparison, in its current state
AutoCannon Sentry > Rocket Sentry but ultimately, the great thing about HellDivers, is you can run any loadout you want and still do serious damage in the game =]
In this state I‘d rather take the AC sentry it melts chargers. The R sentry could have less, but stronger and smarter ammo/targeting. Option to target manually‘d be a blast.
This is the worst sentry by far. Possible buffs would include making it shoot recoiless rockets, increase the splash damage to grenade launcher size, or increase the amount of rockets it shoots per volley. Plus it neeeeeeeds to be able to retarget to the largest unit at any time
Give it homing missiles and make it prioritize large high priority targets over chaff enemies. Right now it serves the same role as the autocannon sentry and does everything worse than it. Make the rocket sentry serve a unique role.
well that sucks. both the mech and this should get proper eat/rr rockets imo, right now this sentry is just a worse autocannon sentry it seems (at least it can't blow itself up)
The reason I take the rocket over the auto canon (other than style) is the long time it can stay up if undamaged but moreso, because it penetrates annihilator. Auto just bounces. I love this sentry but there are very few reasons to take it over the auto canon
They should replace the turrets rockets with the same ones fired out of the mech. Already balanced rocket and can actually compete against the auto cannon then.
i would take the rocket sentry over the gatling or machinegun everyday not gonna lie, the gatling just targets everything that i do not want it to (waste it’s ammo on a damn charger or hulk)
Such a disappointing sentry that needs a lot of work to be considered viable without being outclassed by the autocannon sentry for efficiency in the same role. Changes necessary for viability include considerations like: -tweaks to unit priority -ignoring units that close the 10m minimum threshold for firing range -following expected performance when prioritizing heavier units rather than priority in proximity -taking fabricators and drop ships out of the targeting pool if current interactions with rocket effects are preserved -faster projectile velocity or target tracking, maybe both -increased engagement range -More durable to explosives (all sentries need that) I really don’t think it needs any buffs to damage or rate of fire for the sake of keeping it balanced and avoiding competing with the autocannon sentry for a similar category in purpose, preserving its identity.
Appreciate your comment and I agree wit all the suggested changes you listed. It's important to make the rocket sentry effective but not to make it so similar to the autocannon. I think limiting the unit pool to just heavy units would be great since it will make the sentry turrets just for heavies, the auto cannon can be a good hybrid turret and the machine gun sentries are good for light units. Thanks for checking out the video!
