Helldivers 2 - the tesla tower is shockingly confusing 

Besides buffing it's damage and stagger potential, I think you could make a neat interaction by having you shoot the arc thrower at the Tesla tower and basically juice it up making its next discharge stronger. (much like in Red Alert 2 you had tesla troopers juice up the tesla tower there)

So here's the list of issues: 1. Targeting dead bodies 2. Targeting samples 3. Targeting enemies but not firing 4. Not chaining lightning when enemies are too close (gets it killed instantly) 5. Too slow of a firing rate to be useful on killing anything above a medium sized bug. 6. Too little health.

I can tell you right now, the 50% reduction to explosions means absolutely fucking nothing. A single rocket will still kill it

Thankfully got a situation today where the Telsa Tower had about 40 seconds to attack a stuck Charger. After seeing no effect, Arc Thrower still took the same 6 shots to the head to kill the Charger, implying the Telsa Tower did 0 damage the whole time. Unfortunate experience.

There's something I love about the fact that this is like a wild animal and you're trying to understand it's behavior

There's a ton of bugs in this game around object detection and clipping. I reckon a lot of the Spear's problems are also the tesla weapons'.

I remember how in the first game the Tesla tower was an absolute menace, attacking all enemies in it's range at once and staggering them for a moment, allowing it to kill even chargers reliably. Unfortunately the single targeting and especially the much longer ranges at which fights take place in HD 2 already make it unreliable even before taking all the inconsistencies into account :(

For a long time I was and still am big arc thrower fanboy, but the fact this thing refuses to target enemies close to you sometimes drives me absolutely crazy

i like using it against the bugs exclusivly, its great to throw onto a bug breach, and my favourite use is when there are flying bugs you can prone under it and just bait them into getting fried

bro, huge respect for the disclaimer about flashing lights. im not personally sensitive to that, but i have never seen anyone on youtube put a disclaimer for that. thanks for caring!

As a arc thrower user I feel all this pain and more shooting nothing with clear targets to see is so frustrating

We need a dev to see this, maybe it will get a massive bug fix and slight rework in the future!!

In HD1 this tower was, tricky, but a Lot more useful once the healing beam was upgraded to repair machines. Basically, it allows us to repair towers from a distance, meaning the tower was much more sustainable.

This thing was great back in the E-710 defense missions. The bugs were so focused on attacking the generators it would almost always survive its entire life and kill a ton of bugs, and it doesn't damage the generators.

Tesla towers where extremely useful on that first bug generator defense missions. 1. It didn't shoot generators 2. EMS cannons were also great in that mission

Arc based weapons are very inconsistent.

I find that the Tesla tower acts more like a minefield than a turret since it's more of a stationary AoE than an aimed unit.

Very thorough job. I'd assume Arrowhead is aware of the issues but is focused on fixing crashes and disconnects as a priority. Hopefully they get to it eventually. My take way was only use it if you can get on top of it and lay down to protect it 😁. (PS thanks again for not using colorful language). Keep it up man!

It really shines when hunter swarms spawn, cause its mostly consistent against them, or if you can get it to deploy on a rock where chargers can't ram it.

Here is a tip for the bugs; if you throw it next to one of the many large rocks that has a bit of rock jutting out above where you threw it, the Tesla Tower will land on the rock. This keeps Chargers away from it and only Spewers and Titans can do any real damage to it. A bonus is that Chargers will stand at the base of the rock looking at it forever allowing you to kill them with ease.

Great video Bro - your research is commendable. Understanding all these different Stratagems and how they usually work might just make the difference on the battlefield.

Funny enough I beat Helldive campaign (SOLO) against the bugs using the flame thrower and Tesla tower, it was pretty fun creating a hazard field. But sadly I think arc and lighting builds need more love from the devs after changes. It was a challenge but I had so many kills.

Nice video dude, I enjoy listening to your investigations. I also appreciate the flash warning at the beginning, it's rare to see! 😊

I usually throw it together with a mortar away from objectives. The Mortar attracts all of the enemies with a long range and the tesla tower zaps all the enemies running towards it. It's really good for crowd control and moving enemies away from an objective, which then gives you more time to kill everything.

There is one place that I love the TT. Bug exterminates with spewers. While yes, chargers and BTs will murder it, it also draws aggro from a ton of bile spewers and annihilates them. I toss one across the area from me and I can usually get at least 30 kills off of one unless a BT or charger pops up underneath them. Even if it does get wrecked by a charger or BT, it draws aggro from spewers from a huge range and it just wrecks them. One-shots spewers all day. I have seen one completely surrounded by spewer corpses and still hitting other bugs just fine, even arcing off of corpses to do it, and every one around the tower is one that isn't bothering you while you are reloading or lining up a shot on a heavy. Placement is important though. You want to put it somewhere open that the bugs have to path through but that limits avenues of attack. Next to walls is terrible since the walls tend to confuse the targeting (like with the other arc weapons). Probably the best example of a spot is the ramp down toward the center on the pit to the left of the sample pool. Put it in the open area at the top of that ramp and it catches three spawn locations, and the surrounding terrain keeps chargers and BTs from killing it instantly. Easy throw from the upper platform too. You will notice a massive drop in trash mobs, hunters, and spewers as long as it is up. Chargers often have to get close to actually charge there too and get a bit confused by the pathing, so I have seen one manage a charger kill from that spot a few times. Its like the arc thrower there though; shots to kill is both location and rng dependent. Both weapons seem to have a range of damage they deal based on nothing concrete I can identify. I have killed fresh chargers in seven clean shots with the arc thrower and also with 20 clean shots. I do think that if it arcs to another target it does more damage to that first hit, but its so damn random its hard to prove.

Im thinking, it has to do with being an entity with physics properties. Things that have no physics like exploding flowers, eggs, untouched samples are all do have physics properties ingame. But i think shooting samples kinda transforms them into another entity type, but weapons on the ground arent affected, also the shield meant to interact with projectiles in the game world, so it makes sense, that is shares a tag with the other items. So i would guess its a gameobject tag that tells the tower wether it can be hit or not and the devs simply haven't thought it completely through with all the possibilities.

I use with my mates in the Arc Bro configuration. All with Electricity resistant armor, all with tesla, all with arc thrower. It's a zapping nightmare for enemy. But yes... probably the only real situation where is strong.

It only really seems effective at area denial if you're teammates also stack Tesla towers around it but they'll still have the issue of falling apart as soon as armoured units can smell them

You need to place it on elevated ramps and use its range. It can reach very far down, and kill things that walk under it.

I love bringing the Tesla into Rocket Defense missions. It's wonderful kicking back and watching things try while Mortars and EMortars do work. The only thing I need to worry about is heavy enemies, which is what the 4th slot is for.

I personally like the tesla tower against bugs, the uptime is over 100% so on exterminate bug missions you can often just place one of these on one side of the map and just completely shut off that side of the map permanently unlike anything else can. Now, as soon as you go above hard difficulty and the charger and bile titan spawns start getting crazy on that mission type it becomes useless.... which means the tower is only good on lower difficulties where everything works. The problem is the uptime is the biggest draw of this tower and as soon as enemies spawn that can kill the tower it becomes useless and that's just a fundamental flaw. The arc tower also doesn't work as a panic tool like the gatling sentry does.

Regarding targeting the samples. There was a patch or two early on where they worked on samples not just hanging in the air after changes in landscape (from explosions) If you pay attention to samples after 'removing the ground' you will see that they suddenly become able to move, so they dont hang in the air, out of reach of helldivers. I think @TacoEric is spot on with it being a different entity, I think the devs had to change what the sample is in order to let it fall to the ground. Maybe they gave the original entity 1hp and then changed its propperties when its 'dead' I believe its related to the patch because this type of hackfix is prone to strange unforseen interactions, like being targeted by the tesla tower.

I still like it against bugs. Even on higher difficulties. It's super common for you to have a breach you don't want to stick around for, and if you throw one of these, the way it plays out, a charger will spawn, pay 100% attention to it, charge it, then stop. A bile titan will actually go through an entire spew animation. Everything else dies. This gives you plenty of time to just run away if you need to- and it has upside in killing the chargers (and unfortunately not the titans) if you can find a good spot for it. Even better it means you can bait a breach with it to put enemy breaches on cooldown, then just run away with zero consequence. That's an insane amount of breathing room. It's a really common fallacy to think less of something just because it doesn't itself get optimized. If the mine deployment killed chargers/titans with a single mine, it would be stupidly strong and still some part of your lizard brain would think "yeah, but all the mines didn't get used".

On the new equipment extraction mission throw it around 30-40 meters to the side of the door and use the ark gun to support it, for some reason the enemies wont aggro to it 80% of the time and they will try to smash in the doors.

Have been using the tesla on bug defence mission and it does manage to get a really nice amount of kills when its thrown at a bug breach. Really helps with getting rid of smaller bugs from one side and letting you focus on the other side.

You would think bugs touching it would get insta-killed 🤣 That would be a fun use case to bait chargers to take them out with it.

Leftbanktwo being used as the bgm made me flashback to playing LBP2 as a child and now im crying

Love the Tesla tower, also the 50% less damage for explosions is entirely useless cause one rocket kills all turrets regardless.

Step 1) Wait until the other hell-divers aren't looking Step 2) Deploy the tesla behind them.

Impressively thorough. I just recently picked up the tesla tower and was pretty confused how to work with it. Thanks for saving me a ton of time and frustration.

Your testing is incredible. You've put in a lot of work to give us this insight. I hope the devs see this and give it a buff.

Thank you and great testing, Helldiver. What I want to start seeing from people doing these tests are full team strategem effectiveness. A lot of the tests everyone conducts are from a personal loadout standpoint, which is understandable. But what I want to know is: what is the effectiveness of an entire team called down 4 Tesla Towers together at the same time. 4 120/380 Orbitals at the same time. 4 Gas Strikes at the same time (once DoT is fixed). That's what I'm interested in.

What about thinking about tesla tower not as a standalone automated stratagem that kills everything around that - but a supplementary stratagem that increase your personal and your teams ability to stand against the crowd of enemies (bugs in particular)? Where tesla tower is not really a defensive object to cover you and your team but the opposite - object to defend while it’s enhancing your kill potential. So for example: there is an overwhelming amount of bugs approaching your destination and you throw tesla tower between your team and the horde, while shredding the crowd with a machine gun or taking care of Chargers/Titans with heavier weaponry

I've had some success pairing the Tesla Tower with the Arc Thrower on Terminds. Place the tower between myself and an incoming horde. I run back and fire away, the enemies attack the Tower it drops and I try to fire at bugs that are attacking the tower. I've had good success with this on the smaller bugs on Helldive! But just one charger or Bile Titan will break it and ruin everything still

I use the tower on bug breaches. Ultimate crowd control for bugs… unit a biotitan pops. They just stomp it. 😅 Note: Biotitans can’t be stunned, but the EMS Mortar Sentry will slow them WAY down.

Arc Blitzer doesn't damage the Tesla Tower either. You are correct that the TT baits you into building around it, until your weapons, armor, grenades, and most your strats are chosen specifically to make this one piece of cool looking jank work. And when you do it you're incredibly good at trash clearing, but so's anyone with a Liberator.

Speaking about defensive stratagems, the mine fields are great for those "waves" mission.

Since the tower always targets, but doesn't damage the sentry weapons. I wonder if we'll get an energy weapon turret that this can charge up to extend its battery life. Maybe quasar cannon turret with increased fire rate, or a juiced up rover/scythe beam.

Ngl the idea of the tesla intercepting a projectile like jaeger's gadget would be op but cool

Here for the LBP music in the background

They should just rework it. Make it a deploy a static field that slowly damages and stuns the enemy. enemies and any enemy that is gets caught in it will create an arc that chains enemies and also applies the same effect. And if helldivers prone before the time limit let's say 2.5 seconds, then they are not effected. This is good because its the only offensive sentry that you can survive from if you get caught in it. Autocanoon, mortar, sentry, machine gun all are lethal if your careful, but with this purposed change, you have leeway to escape

Took one minute to realize how good this video was and how nice was to listen to you talking (I'm tired of the many content creators that can barely put two words together). Instantly subscribed.

The tesla tower is designed to be paired with the EMS strike. You drop both at the same time on a bug breach and since everything is slowed it has a chance to function. Ive gotten a 38 killstreak with it. It also helps to put them up on rock formations so they cant be attacked

My 3rd favourite team killing stratagem after 380mm and antipersonnel mines 😂

So much testing and detailed information. Thank you for your effort and great content.

It excels in the missions where yoy meed to defend generators, great for cheesing eradications, and its super good for placing by the door of the pelican

Thank you for making this video!!

I found it somewhat useful on mission to just clear bug Numbers in area those 12 min mission where lost of small mobs just spawn alot around, it can hold it own side, piles and chargers just destroys them too easily. Tip. You can trow it otherside of walls and it can shoot enemies trough it no matter of los, if there is enemies on it range. Fun idea could be that on destoyed it could exlode to damage or stuns enemies around it

I usually use the TT to guard my EMS mortar. I throw them next time each other and the enemy will agro the mortar and the tower will kill them. If I see it being overwhelmed I’ll throw so arcs to it to help it out. That’s the best use case I’ve seen

Good video bro. Hope u making more of these. About the tesla tower, I think to make it "feel good to use" it's gotta be reconsidered from the ground up. But knowing Arrowhead only has 100 people working on everything new AND fixing gamebreaking bugs. I can't ever think they can even spare a single head to address this.

Thoughts for Tower improvement: fire at all targets nearby not just one (maybe in a smaller aoe than the bolt), multiple towers can chain to each other, stun effect on hit

You can use the arc body armor -95% arc damage so that way the teslas dont do damage to you so you can stand next to it and wont do that much damage

Huh this is weird, i've had almost the opposite results that you have had. I really do appreciate this amount of testing, it's fantastic. I use the tesla tower in combination with the gatling barrage and quasar, I use it to destroy patrols or anything I pull from hives, in my experience it easily mulches anything that isn't a charger (it can still kill them, it's that they charge into it before they can get hit enough) or bile titan. I've pulled multiple patrols through the same tesla tower getting a lot of use out of it, I think where it really falls flat is with team play, where you are likely to throw the thing it's likely to get an airstrike on top of it. Splitting off from the group is my usual role in the squad, I will clear half the map while the others clear the rest and this thing has been an absolute joy to watch gore bugs, I didn't know it suffered from the same issues that the arc thrower did with targeting but the only time i'd notice it getting destroyed was if multiple bile spewers were on it or the previous 2 threats came along.

One thing i noticed, is that enemies only target the battery part at the bottom. So if you where to put it behind a small rock, any bots or maybe a bile titan will try to aim for the battery but since the rock is in the way, they instead hit the rock. Unless you are behind it, in which case they aim towards you and destroy it. The only issue with bots is that usually they just stand there, just outside the range of the tesla tower. So they dont really get zapped. But i guess if you are followed by a huge squad of enemies, its a good distraction?

Wow! You did quite the in depth review on this. Well done! This must have taken a lot of time!

My feeling exactly, it is cool but niche and under performs atm, zaps you if you are prone near it when it shoots at an enemie, found that the hard way, hope it gets some love in the future.

Exact same issues with the Arc thrower. I charge it and hear it chirp, literally nothing but empty space (Visually) between me and the target and the arc just does not fire or goes else were. you see the ionization cloud track to what got targeted, but you don't see the bolt

The one buff I'd love to see is 100% arc damage armor. Then, YOU BECOME THE TESLA TOWER CONDUCTOR! Imagine, running around the tower, aiming its lightning through your body!

The 'Gameplay and Uses' Section really answered a lot of questions I had about this thing! I always like Lightning Weapons in Game, shame that this seems kind of half baked.

Your research is admirable. Such a weird stratagem. It's been responsible for some crazy kill streaks, but its behavior is super inconsistent.

The 50% explosion resistance is useless. Every sentry can still get one shot by a rocket

Thank you for your hard work! Didnt know about the priming stage of the tower. I love using the tesla. As soon as i throw it down i just distance myself and cover other areas instead so i dont know much about its mechanics

IDK how, but my experience varies wildly from your in terms of Tesla Tower's survivability. Haven't tried using it against bots, but versus bugs it never went down to ANYTHING other than heavies and friendly fire, meaning if you somehow manage to protect it from titans and chargers, it completely stops large groups and bullies breaches.

I miss the Tesla from the first game, one ems and it would hold down an area forever 😩

Kinda my experience with sentries in general. I hail Mary it across the map and the moment it spawns a charger or titan agros on it despite me shooting at them. Boom gone. Agro to towers should be reduced or something. Right now 7/10 times they get mowed over before being effective.

loving all these helldiver dives of the gear

You would be a great asset to any developer's testing team.

I say: smoke shouldn't counter it = tesla + smoke strike to make things get in range and die before they kill it

Bro, you put in WORK! Great job man, i appreciate caite i all!

From what I've seen the explosion resist on sentries is probably bugged lol, doesn't actually seem to do anything

Brother, that is some high-quality science. Good stuff.

Tower is amazing. Consistent enough in my book. Made the TCS missions negligible on 7s

Excellent video. Informative and depressing. Could you use the invisible wall to access previously unreachable high ground?

Honestly love the tesla tower, arc thrower, and just about everything from the cutting edge warbond. I think the tower has the same issues as the blitzer, it doesn't really know how to pick targets consistently.

Tesla tower would probably be a bit better if it just did pulses of area damage with consistent range and no arcing.

Give it arc thrower stagger and consist targeting & I feel like this thing would be a monster. Maybe even shoot in multiple directions at once per shot to make up for that prime effect.

I think the solution is to make it indestructible but a shorter active duration. And to fix the arc weapon targeting. So tired of dead bodies blocking my arc shots

We need to be able to super charge the tesla tower for boosted range

I don't know if this is just my experience, but have you noticed whether the ems field negates the arc chain sometimes? I use the arc thrower quite often, and I've seen the ems field from mortars block my arc shots sometimes. Maybe this might help determine if the tower arcs and the arc thrower arcs are different engine/code-wise.

I started to get bored with using my regular build and started running the Tesla tower every match and it's got a lot of advantages. The best way to use it is to throw it when there's a patrol or you're being chased by a bunch of bugs. Being able to drop it nearly every 2 minutes, you can use it often, and I've gotten 50+ killstreaks with it as I've gotten better at using it. I use it on the defend missions and ended upwards of 570 kills on suicide mission. They need to be placed in corners near the door, and you need to deal with any chargers using a quasar. Higher difficulties it is not viable, however, as there are too many chargers and bile titans

good info, thanks. think i still haven't used this since i unlocked it. that's unlikely to change

Another important thing about the tesla tower is IT CAN HEADSHOT

I remember trying out Tesla during a Defense mission because I thought that'd be where it'd shine, since it'd have plenty of enemies to chain to. Not only did it get destroyed, immediately, almost constantly. I don't think I even got more than maybe one or two kills on some bot troopers during that whole mission. Tesla has to be bugged or just grossly underpowered. I'd hope that one day they jack the firing rate of it way up and give it a damage bump (at least enough to one shot all varieties of bot troopers, and up to warrior type bugs) AND give it vastly more HP so that it can do its job as a mob zapper that's fantastic at dealing with smaller infantry. Tesla tower just needs help, because otherwise it's more of a hinderance than a help, and a waste of a stratagem slot, it's genuinely more dangerous to you and your team than it ever was to the enemy.

If the lock on is anything like the spear it doesn't surprise me how borked it is.

Can’t wait till we’re in a Tesla Tower meta. Thank you for this testing.

What a well made video! I learned so much. I know that there are a ton of other stratagems to use other than the tesla tower haha

There is another way to survive it without either a shield gen or "electrical conduit" armor any "Liberty protects" armor can proc on the 50% chance and save you at 1 hp, has happened to me several times, even with the arc thrower friendly fire

I don’t use it that much but I have seen a buddy use it with the upgrades and it is a killer at extraction

My takeaway from this video is how OP the tesla tower is lol. 3 minutes? That’s insane. Why take an eagle to get like 7 kills when this thing can get as many kills as an eagle within the first 10 seconds? It’s a turret and you can’t just throw it directly into the enemy. I think this is great when you’re swarmed. Just throw it behind you, prone, and kill everything as long as there is no charger. How I would use this is by placing it somewhere I can retreat to if things get hairy and use it as additional support.

What's annoying is they keep adding new weapons but more than a third of the weapons and stratagems Are borderline useless, so they effectively do not exist.