Helldivers 2 - I Tested The New Polar Patriots Warbond on Helldive Difficulty... Let's Talk About It 

Apologies for the slightly negative tone of the video, I generally prefer to just focus on the good side of things, but I chose to make the video to express that I'm not a fan of the overly careful approach to adding weapons. I think it's bad for the game. If warbonds released good weapons players would keep coming back to play with the HOT new toys. Instead it's like, "meh. Just a warbond full of meh choices. Pass, ill go back to another game" I understand trying to avoid creating obviously overpowered weapons, but personally I prefer them aiming high then slightly tweaking down weapons to make it less OP then releasing some of these wet noodles weapons. E.g.: the breaker. It was clearly king. The best of weapons (against bugs). They reduced the mag count by only 3 shots. And guess what? People suddenly went for other weapons, even though the breakers pretty much as powerful as ever. I honestly think that was a solid nerf they did. They didn't have to kill the weapon to shift players preferences. Just a slight tweak. tldr: I think they should be less afraid of releasing DECENT weapons. And then giving them a SLIGHT tweak if they "dominate" the primary weapon meta. Also.. armor passives? Where they at? 😭

Most dissapointing to me is failing to deliver on the polar theme. Why are there no heat-based laser weapons, the ones that get a boost on cold planets, why don't the armors have passives like "blizzards don't reduce your vision and mobility as much, you no longer slip on ice", why is the grenade an incendiary one?

And the head of balancing said that all wepons were "S tier.". What a joke.

I like how the community has collectively and politely sent the purifier back to the kitchen to cook a little more

Not a surprise considering that Arrowhead's Balancing guy is constantly trolling people on Twitter.

They could've made a niche armour passive that made you 75% harder to detect on snowy planets. They also could've made it like HD1 where the armour with spiked boots doesn't slow you down in water, snow, mud, etc. Smh wasted potential 🤦

The “it takes like 2-3 business days in between each shot” had me rolling! 😂

Cod devs: Make Paid DLC weapons OP Hell diver devs: Make free Weapons better than battle-pass weapons

so far i like every one on the helldivers team except their lead balance designer. he acts like a dick and doesn’t really listen to any community advice. not asking for them to listen to every single thing we complain about but fighting back against the community just makes it seem like he’s got an ego issue

The way you put it in your conclusions was spot on. We all want “new fancy toys to play with.” Helldivers appeals to our inner 9 year old. Takes us back to days where we’d play with green plastic soldiers in our world of make believe. And the key is no PvP, so no sweating (atleast not as much sweating as compared to PvP games). So the “toys” we play with, like the breaker, the quasar or the mechs, help build that experience. But… we’ve all had that one Christmas when we were kids, where we thought our parents would give us a Wii, or a new bike, only for it to end up being an underwhelming book. This feels an awful lot like that. After the regular warbond at the start of the game and the first premium of warbond, which in retrospect were great, we were spoiled for choice, when it came to picking our primaries. Which is why we had such high expectations, for future warbonds. Those same future warbonds ended up being very poor, so we’ll have to wait and see what the next one holds. Anyway thanks for reading through my yap. Here’s a TLDR: I agree with takibo. New warbond is underwhelming AF.

Also not sure why the devs don't want "meta". This is a PvE game not PvP - let the good guns be good and buff the bad ones

The shock booster does NOT block off slow. It makes slow clear off you a second or so sooner

The lowest hanging fruit (like you mentioned) is environmental modifiers on the armor sets. If they put a ceramic armor set that makes you immune to fire tornados everybody would be excited. Movement speed, reload speed, reduced recoil on snow worlds. You could even do something silly like make one random stratagem available during ion storms (or keep your map)

I do appreciate that the game isn't pay to win and the weapons you need aren't hidden behind warbonds. But I also agree that dumping in underwhelming and outright bad weapons isn't great for long term player excitement and engagement.

Fire Alexus already. He’s an incompetent coward

When the warbond got announced and I noticed the spiked shoes I got really excited theorizing that we'd be getting armor with a passive that maybe lets us ignore the difficult terrain on ice maps, like no sliding on ice and being able to run through snow better. To see they just gave the armor the same passives we already got was incredibly disappointing. They really dropped the ball with this warbond, the gun I was looking forward to the most, the Tenderizer ended up being extremely mediocre but at least the pummeler is neat.

They should actually give you something to spend your samples on like an extended mag' or concusive rounds for your favourite primary. Game still has so many balance issues I remain sceptical if they're ever be sorted.

I really like your content, no annoying intro, no face cam, just your calm nature and pro gameplay. Keep up the great work! Greetings from Germany 😊

Tenderizer almost 100% are intended to deal alightly more damage per shot than Liberator, but then they buffed Liberator to deal 60 damage per shot (instead of 50 i think) And forgot aboit it before releasing ner AR. So based on that Tenderizer should deal around 20% more damage per shot over liberator, and soon be buffed to 75 damage

That's weird. I tried the motivational shots booster, and I couldn't tell what difference it was making. I was definitely still getting slowed, and if it did anything at all, it was only reducing the slow duration by something like 10%, to the point I couldn't notice its effect.

No need to apologize for the rants, we need more of them. These guys are the masters of dropping the ball

I wish I could see a comparison of the slow duration with and without the booster. Many people have reported vastly different experiences with motivational shocks.

Honestly I know you labeled this as negative but I think this is a really based take. They have to dam this flood of negativity before it really hurts the game. The difference in excitement between the Quasar release and this is pretty laughable at this point. Hell I'd take a single new weapon that was amazing over the whole Warbond being "meh".

thank goodness, i was worried i had to farm some super credits but it seems like the warbond is a safe skip. It shouldn't be the norm to be excited about every single warbond that comes out. It's better to inform about the warbond content first before purchase. In this case, it's a clear trap

I deeply regret getting this one, was hyped about the deagle, but it's even starting to question why paying (either with money or time collecting the rare supercredits) for low-tier garbage, useless bonus and don't start me on the armor sets

In the beginning, I was all for buying war bonds just to support the devs. I was hoping that these bonds would get better. The weapons are getting more and more trash with every bond. Then they nerf the already garbage weapons. Meanwhile, the community gets hyped over new capes. There's a reason "You'll die a lot" was part of the rollout and hype train. We're thinking the enemies would be the problem. No. It's because the weapons and armor passives aren't worth a damn. I haven't been willing to spend my real money since the second war bond. For me, the honeymoon phase is over. I may perform one operation a week, and that's only when I'm extremely bored. I know I'm not the only one.

I posted about this in your video yesterday, but I really think this info is important to spread, espcially in this channel that specializes in solo helldive. Some new information came out regarding patrol spawns in solo play that I think is extremely important. The Redditor gergination, the guy responsible for the amazing post and video that analyzed how patrol spawns work, has released a new video showcasing that patrol spawn rates are the same regardless of group size across all difficulties. This change was made with the recent patch that affected patrol spawns for non-full groups. As it stands in the game, a solo player on helldive will experience the same amount of patrols spawning as a full team on helldive. Not sure if I can link another video on RU-vid, but the video showing this is titled "Patch 1.000.300 Patrol Changes - Helldivers 2" and it was uploaded by the channel Luchs. As a solo player, seeing this shit felt so validating and infuriating.

I honestly thought they were going to do something like "New armor set, with boot spikes, results in no ice skating when player turns on ice" I thought that'd be a pretty slick addition!

I'm sorry Takibo, you have nothing on Alexus, he's tested these weapons on Helldive for the past couple weeks rigorously, with a team of competent Helldivers that play the game in solo and all group sizes, against both factions. *_SARCASM_*

Mix “10% harder to knock off balance” as the second effect on the “10% faster through snow” armor would be sick. An armor set the is better in some environments rather than against different enemies would add a ton of variety, but don’t make it worthless in Hot planets. They should also add “45% fire resistance” to the electrical resistance armor to get people to want to use it, and to let armors usually have 2 abilities.

If weapon attachments are incoming like its been rumored it'll perhaps make the rifles more useful. If they can be more Swiss army by being the more open platform for attachments it'll iron out a lot of their shortcomings.

Don't apologize for the negativity, you were giving genuinely constructive criticisms that you explained very well, and made sense. I hope the developers see content like this instead of the depths of .. I don't even know what word to use to describe the Discord and posts on Reddit about the nerfs and guns and everything in between. I have been enjoying the Tenderizer as a burst weapon myself, but only because I was a gigantic Halo 2 fan, and it tickles my balls to be using a battle rifle against aliens again.

"A game for everyone is a game for noone" is a cool sentiment and all, but I feel like in some part it has mutated into "There is one right way to play this game and everything else needs to be annihilated". I wish they'd take a W every now and then and just go with the stuff that people enjoy, instead of just smacking things down for being popular and being afraid to make things powerful. Basically, the current balance dev is the kind of guy who would have patched rocket jumping out of Quake because it's "not part of the original vision".

Arrowhead hates assault rifles. They're all dog shit. Every last one.

Love the incendiary grenade from POLAR PATRIOTS. Maybe they’ll introduce some cold/slowing liquid gas weapons in another warbond. They could call it Hellfire Divers or something.

I don't have much free time, but your gameplay is so enjoyable. I really like this video. It's like you tested it for real, not like some other channel that just tries to make the video about the new Warbond as fast as possible. +sub keep going bro

Thank you for another great video!

In pursuit of preventing there being a "meta" forming, I find myself finding less fun trying out different setup combinations to try, but rather look for the best ie. Meta build.... I am no longer giving subpar support weapons a chance and just sticking with the autocannon because the main weapon incompetence doesn't leave much room for playing around. Gj balance team

On the note of armour passives, I hope that they unlink them from your specific armour soon, but keep them within the class, so that armour itself becomes more of a cosmetic option, like helmets. Ie - you can use any heavy armour passive / stat set with any heavy armour

Hey man loving the video so far. Just wondering what you think is the best armour in the game?

My #1 wanted feature (besides armor painting) is the ability to pick any perk for any armor. It would improve the game so much for me to be able to play Fashion Spaceman Dressup and pick the passive that I want to use for the mission.

At this point there is no excuse, its a team of incompetent devs that struck lightning in a bottle.

Wait, did they fix/update the ‘Motivational Shock’ booster? I used it for hours last night and my team and I noticed zero difference from getting hit by hunters or various types of spew.

I had a fun idea beforehand for armor passives in warbonds to synergize with their weapons/utilities in said warbond. Like for cutting edge it would extend any stun by a factor of 1.5s and decrease the charge up time for energy weapons to start firing. This would be a good set for any energy weapon and make a powerful grenade even more powerful.

The armor is honestly even worse than you mentioned. Two of the armors are just palette swaps and for some reason, a simple palette swap turns Servo-Assisted armor into Fortified armor. Neither of those armors take any design cues from other Fortified or Servo-Assisted armor either, like a face-plate or a bigger, asymmetrical shoulder guard like you see on other Fortified armor or mechanized limbs like you see on other Servo-Assisted armor. If they wanted to make meaningfully different armor, they could have changed the stats around a bit, maybe make the heavy armor a bit faster than other heavy armor, since it looks lighter. Make the scout armor a bit slower, since it's supposed to snow armor, thus it'd be harder to move around in. But nope, same exact stats as stuff we already have. The armor especially tells me they ran out of time. Clearly, the armor with the snowboots was supposed to have some new passive and there was supposed to be a third one too, but they ran out of time and just slapped old passives on there without any rhyme or reason and for the third armor just gave us the Trailblazer Scout but blue. Not to mention that all the armor has a new CW prefix. These prefixes usually correlate to passives. CM is Combat Medic with the Med-kit passive. CE is Combat Engineer with Engineering Kit. SA is Servo-Assisted, etc. But nope. CW means absolutely jack-shit. Nothing new at all. That tells me there was supposed to be a CW passive, but they couldn't implement it in time, so they snubbed it but left the new prefix on for some reason. Arrowhead, please slow down the release of these Warbonds to ensure their quality. For Liberty's sake, the very first gun even shipped with the wrong damn colors.

Slick robot break dancing at the end there. 😎

I'm actually happy to have another skin for the stealth armor, tho I also am sad about them not exploring new passives possibilities.

I COMPLETELY agree with the whole “trying to perfect the meta” idea and that they should forget about that, I think you are right on the money lol

The devs are just way too scared about having any weapon seem even slightly OP and in a PVE game like this they are nerfing the fun or potential fun we can actually have. They need to grow some balls, give us some OP shit and let us have fun mindlessly slaughtering waves of enemies. I just dont understand the balancing philosophy. Even if they release it OP to make it fun and exciting then nerf it afterwards i would be happy. The armor passives also need some serious work. Still a great game though but i do hope things change going forward.

You didnt even test the motivational shock booster, clearly. You DO still get slowed down.

They should have did 1 of 2 things… 1: focused on stagger and medium armor penetration to make it like freezing… or 2: waited on this warbond and tapped into cryo weapons… this whole warbond doesn’t make sense to me lol

There is alot of fun attributes/bonuses gear could have in this game. And alot of usage ideas for extra samples... be it for matchboosts or helping the common war effort. As well as planets themselves providing bonuses or fun gear to the common war effort if they are under control. I really liked their idea about different HUDs for different helmets.

Man, I like you even more now that you said "magazine" instead of clip. Thank you for using correct gun nomenclature for us OCD gun nuts. XD

I did notice, with teammates the new booster seems significantly less effective if at all, idk if that effect could be split up between players but holy did I notice a difference

We could have different passives for every armor, make a poll in community or start using creativity. Agree with you takibo, warband only gave us mildly usefull smg, one passive stratagem, pistol variant with no extra fun(senator from wish) and made regular impact grenade obsolete. I love the game, but if they keep nerfing stuff, dont add more armor passives and new content are just "worse guns" I fear many will stop playing due to crazy choices, it would be a shame. Thx and keep up the great work

Strong agree on the armor passives. It's really insane. Like at the bare minimum, you can take pre-existing stuff and match it up with pre-existing stuff. For example, passive: Grenadier +2 grenade +30% throwing distance. Boom! Done. New armor that takes almost no design time, not overpowered but would see play. And hey, just for giggles, maybe make a hidden passive on the polar armor set that makes it so you slide on ice less.

Hi, maybe a common question, and I apologize for that, but since you said you're a solo player I'd like your opinion on solo play. I have been thinking about getting the game for a while now, but I keep reading that it's a co-op game through and through, and that at certain points it's nearly impossible to play solo. Maybe people can let me know what they think, is the game worth getting if you're mainly playing solo, or do you have to engage in multiplayer for it to be good?

With that tenderizer gun "higher caliber", it could mean that they wanted to make it deal more dmg per shot. Somebody probably thought it would be "too op" and they nerfed it. Same with the idea that it was supposed to penetrate medium armor, but here they could also think "we have medium armom penetrating gun, why do we need another?".

I'm almost wondering if the dev who knew how to code armor passives left the company and literally no one at AH knows the black magic required to code armor passives. Is it that hard to code modifiers to damage or whatever for armor passives? Also I could swear I saw a video showing the booster for this war bond didn't work. Maybe he was mistaken.

For armor talents they could add fire, stagger resistance, reload faster, resistance to planet elements, boost certain weapons, backpack or strategems etc etc

Just pointing out that "high calibre" does not automatically denote armor-piercing capability, in fact, smaller calibre rounds with a similar powder load have MORE penetrating power.

I'm pretty close to hitting 1000 super credits again, and, well, thinking I'm just going to sit on it. Seems like all the war bond guns are meh or get nurfed, so none of them really look that appealing right now.

The exiting part about Helldiver‘ weapons is that they will never have the same stats so in the future we might se the plasma rifle top the scorcher or maybe the AR is gonna top it’s class bc Arrowhead actually listens to the community with this kind of stuff

8:13 Wait what, did they stealth patch this thing? Because I tested it within days of launch and it looked like it just removed specific slows (from enemy attacks only) like ~1 second quicker.

The Sickle is the only "AR" that actually feels like it performs as well as the others ought to.

I feel like this warbond was a good opportunity for a new type of weapon: cryo, a damage over time weapon (weaker than flamethrower) that slows down enemies substantially, maybe even freeze them if they take so much cryo and then they take massive damage. Armour should've had more unique perks on it too, like cryo resistance (see above), and, on the flip side, perhaps heat resistance, making it a good armour for the extreme weathers. Understanding game dev though, that's A LOT to do in one month.

The tenderizer has the sickles scope which i like better than the liberators, With the addition of the speed loader to the Senator The Virdict is pointless. The pummeler is pretty good and fun to use but you could just use the sickle and kill it quicker. The purifier is more powerful than the scorcher and helps with ammo economy is what I have found. It 2 shots striders and can stun lock the devastators. I find myself missing with it alot for some reason

I think yhey should slow down on the releasing of warbonds

This is the first warbond I hadn’t bought as soon as it came out. There were some leaks of the weapons before it dropped and it all just looked underwhelming. I’m sure I’ll buy it once some of the guns get a buff though. I will say the purifier is probably the only semi-interesting gun if it gets a buff. I find ballistic ARs/SMGs kind of boring because they all feel similar imo. Also, the armors in the game in general have pretty much not been exciting. I’m confident they’ll do more with them, but it’s never a bright spot in the warbond that I look forward to. Pretty much just the guns and grenades.

Was really hoping for a frost grenade that mimicked one of those plants on the frost world. And yeah, actual winter armor that interacts with the neat environmental effects like blizzards.

Hey Takibo, can you talk about the performance issues of the game in one of your videos? The game is terribly optimized and I'm always CPU bound. Upon looking at any forum for the same issue, thousands of other helldivers are also having high CPU usage on the game too, making high FPS impossible to get regardless of the GPU. For me I have a 10900k + 4090 and am getting 40-60 fps regardless of the game settings. In comparison in Cyberpunk and Hogwarts legacy on max settings, I get 200 fps. I would like the word to be spread more so the devs would look into it.

I’ve heard that the motivational shocks one doesn’t work as he’s saying in the video, and I don’t have it to test for myself? Can someone tell me if he’s right and it completely gets rid of the slowing effect?

Could have had passives on the armor: Less recoil on cold/icy planet types, slower stamina drain in cold conditions. We could have had a Frostbite Impact grenade that freezes the molecules in the air around it, causing slow on enemies which would have been a tight meta against bugs.

You said its been a while since a warbond gave us anything noteworthy, did you not use the eruptor before the nerf?

I think a perfect idea would be to make the armor ideas themed based off of the warbond they are apart of. The new warbond is polar patriots, why not make some armor passives that help on cold/snowy planets. steeled veterans was more fire based, why not make those armors have passives that help on hot and firey planets? It would help give them some creative ideas and also would give each armor set a niche set that they could fill.

liberator concussive is the only primary ill bring against tier 9 bugs. it absolutely is relevant. the stagger and stun lock ability with it is amazing.

The devs are really in a lose-lose situation. If they make warbond items too unique/powerful, people will say it’s pay-to-win; if they make warbond items too weak, people will say it’s not worth picking up. I certainly don’t envy their jobs, but overall I’m happy with their openness to change and adjust their approach.

Polar Plating passive: reduces heat build up in energy weapons by 30%, Helldiver’s movement is not impeded by deep snow or slippery ice. It should have been something like this.

I hadnt played for a couple weeks due to repetition boredom. Looks like I'll be extending that hiatus. Helldivers 2 is a great game, but it's gotten a bit stale.

Where are the chainsaw swords as secondary??? We need some crazy melee weapons!

9:00 They did say that their working on new passives and that they aren't working(?) but even so give us some that are mixes of existing ones gives us a passive that's like armor padding and the scout markings or the stealth and 2 more stims

They should make a booster that reduces the time it takes for the pelican to arrive for extraction once called in after every enemy kill.

Appreciate the tone of your video! Honest criticism and valid disappointment without any doomsday sensationalism. Nice work.

yep, right there with you. I tried the weapons once, shelved them and went back to my normal load out. So disappointing I can see no reason to use any of them over my preferred loadout

I didn’t even notice the booster when I first used it I was still getting hella slowed by hunters and the Bile spit

The weapon balancing is kinda delicate. Just sharing some experience as someone who run Liberator at Helldive(bugs) quite often. In short, Liberator and Tenderizer perform better at different engage range. Liberator is better at melee range getting you out from 4 hunters jumping on you; Tenderizer is better at mid range, easier to put bullet to the same point. Tenderizer also stagger bot better, take out brood and nurse head with less bullets, better against medium/stalkers than Liberator. This is generally true to most AR. They do better on something that is not on paper data. AH is actually quite good at balancing, making every gun viable in Helldive difficulty. The problem is being so delicate without balancing the "Fun" element of the gun. It is the gun doesn't feel fun to play (although it works). Let say AR for Automaton, the animation (Gun and enemy) just make it impossible to consistently put rounds on the Devastator's head. Then for some reason they deal no damage to armor around their head. You have to be pinpoint accurate while having recoil, enemy body move in a pendulum pattern, and getting hit sway the gun so much you lose track. Shooting any other part either deal no damage, or ask for 2 full mag to kill it. It just ask for too much to use some weapon, while some just need to hit any body part. So you end up having Dominator that has high recoil performs better at all situation against bot, Tenderizer low recoil give no value against bot, thus worse. If they are so delicate on every aspect of the gun, they shouldn't just balance around data and numbers, which makes things works but not fun. Just like how esport ruin many games in the past decade.

Does the incendiary impact close bug holes and factories?

they should've gave the Arctic Ranger armor set a passive that either reduces or completely negates the effects of blizzards and sandstorms. Maybe some kind of night vision? I mean if were far enough into the future where we are conquering planets with spaceships and orbital lasers, then something like night vision should theoretically be possible.

they could make it to where the spikes help you crawl faster too! i notice they look like boots specialized for climbing ice walls

With all the things they're doing right about the live service model, I agree this is the big mistake. Gachas are popular because new characters are hot and often OP, they usually never nerf them directly and instead tweak the other aspects of the game around it: add new enemies to counter them later that are weak to the new hot character and the cycle continues. It's a delicate balance in that case too but it makes people come back and spend for it no doubt. I'm not saying this needs to have that drastic approach, but when your only monetization model past the initial sales boost is a mediocre addition of "eh it's fine", we have a problem. This definitely hurts the longevity of the game in addition to the awful balance choices. It's sad because if this continues the game's plenty of good things will be overshadowed and it's gonna die...

I tried the purifier on a level 2 bug mission, I happen to find a flame thrower on the map, good thing or I would have fail the mission. It is just as you said : not powerfull enough to rapidly kill ennemis, not enough splash damage for it to be usefull, and a terrible time between each shot who make you unable to avoid getting swarmed. I tried it once, and unless some major buff, I don't think I will ever use it again.

assault rifles definitely need something, I do think the game would benefit from some general established base lines depending on what type of weapon it falls under. For example AR's have little fall off and do their max damage within a 100-150 meters, past that they get some more fall off and lose some damage, along with across the board having at least the lower end of medium armor pen. SMG's should then excel within 50-75 meters but also generally only be light armor pen. Shotguns generally operate within the same range as SMG's but can in cases like the slugger where it fires a slug have slightly larger operative ranges and similarly occupy anywhere from light to medium penetration depending on the rounds they chamber. DMR's can occupy the 150m+ areas and have the upper end of medium armor pen. having some general base lines ensures that each category of weapon can have roles it excels in and allows tuning within its group so you can then balance around things other then direct stats and instead work towards making each gun within its own grouping feel unique from each other.

Infinite impact grenades is still the meta. I don’t think the devs even know how to properly add new additions to the game in the way people want to. I mean they can’t even figure out how to fix the spear’s locking and trajectory. They even tried to fix the infinite grenade glitch but instead of it giving you a negative number of grenades it just gives you billions lol.

I've seen mixed reviews of the new booster. Some claim it works on a wide variety of enemy attacks, while others claim that it works on almost nothing. Specifically, I've seen claims it doesn't work against hunter attacks or against Bile Titan attacks, but only works against normal bile-spewer attacks, making it especially niche. I've also seen nothing on it in regards to fighting bots.

They should do an upgrade system for all weapon categories. And these should require a ton of samples. Samples are pretty useless now. For example, for AR's level 1 upgrade you increase magazine size by 10, level 2 you increase fire rate by 30%, level 3 you increase damage by 30%, level 4 you add an effect to weapon (like burning, concussive, stagger, etc) and final level 5 upgrade you unlock medium armor penetration. This would require thousands of samples. This would be so cool and give players something to grind for. Otherwise, there is no progression. As time goes by, make enemies stronger too

I tried the new booster I couldn’t see any difference when being slowed.Bile spewers,Bile Titans,hunters were still applying slow.Like I literally couldn’t tell it was working.🤷🏻‍♂️

the stun smg with jump pack and options to deal with charger/bile/ ive been speed running samples on helldiver with low kills

When i tried out the plas-101 purifier i felt like it deals less damage than the plas-1 scorcher but got some great AoE stagger against devestators, sure the stagger is okey but if it takes me close to a third or even half a magazine to kill any devestator type then that is a no go for me (mainly feels like the projectile is touching the edges close to the head instead of right on the head). The charge up on the plas-101 is more of a nuisance and does not feel good at all so it just feels clunky and shoots too slow for my taste to be of any use against bugs. Also i am not a fan of the projectiles drop off over medium to long distances, makes it feel like the plasma shotgun but with longer range. I simply expected more from this weapon to be more like a middle ground between the plas-1 and the railgun with some more AoE. And ye about the AR-61..... really controllable with 0 effort and more magazines but too low damage or pen to stand out against the other AR's even tho we got a description that tells a completely different story. Pretty much all of the AR's are in a sad state right now..... with an small exception to the BR-14 Adjudicator for dealing 80 damage and medium 1 armor pen.

I feel like they should have armor based on environments like polar armor gives you anti slip or something while on ice, the grenade should have been a freeze grenade that slows enemies and maybe add a damage multiplier when using fire on them while slowed.

The purifier is definitely the biggest disappointment. I so badly wish it was good because I love that playstyle of putting yourself at risk charging an explosive weapon (which could kill you if shot close enough) and being able to destroy enemies with one shot. But for some reason they decided to give it terrible damage. I get it, they thought "hey, the scorcher is good as is, so I bet it would be balanced if we released a version that shoots slower but has larger AOE", but they forgot to give it more damage to compensate for the slower rate of fire. On top of that, the larger AOE means that it becomes impossible to hit devastator weakspots, which is one of the plas scorcher's strengths. All in all, good idea for a gun, but they are very clearly rushed in the studio and did not give enough thought to the weapon. It's very disappointing to see so much potential for a weapon wasted by a lack of consideration for its mechanics. In the future, I hope they slow down with the battlepasses and/or enlist more developers to lighten the load. Mistakes like the ones made in this battlepass seem to mainly be due to time constraints. I'd much rather a slower rate of new content at much higher quality versus frequent and rushed content, but I do still have faith that good balancing changes will come in the future.