How Primary Weapons Feel After the New Patch in Helldivers 2 

This update seemed mostly focused on stratagems, so it is no surprise that primaries are still a bit week. I am glad that they are improved overall however, and I am sure new updates will only make it better!

You said it right when you said "Guns with personality is a good thing"

Purifier needs more damage to make up for the charge time

Watching purifier fail to kill a pack of berserkers with multiple shot is just fucking disgusting. Currently, it's in the trash bin with the Lib Pen.

Purifier still sucks hard. The penetration was an issue, but the lack of damage was fatal. Since the damage was not increased, it remains trash. The durable damage buffs were fine, but it is like fixing a car door dent while the engine is dead. Still doesn’t drive and there is no use for it. Example, the diligence still sucks because it misses every crucial damage breakpoint so there is zero reason to ever bring it over the counter sniper.

I feel like they watch the top 1% of players and base their buffs and nerfs on them

I tried out the updates to Eruptor and Crossbow. They still feel a bit lacking compared to the old versions. The old versions at release had a bit bigger explosion radius. It does feel nice to be able to close bugholes / spawners / open containers finally with crossbow though.

The only way the Purifier is ever going to become usable without handicapping yourself, if they spiked the damage considerably, or made it so there’s no movement penalty for charging the weapon and maybe reduced charge time a bit.

On the point about weapons having personality the weapons I use the most is punisher plasma because of the unique arc it has and the defender smg to pair with a shield all the other weapons ether feel mid or boring (I don’t have polar patriots or viper commandos yet)

they broke my blitzar with the plumber debuff

Absolutely correct about about the eruptor. I loved the original, but its not like i felt the game was easier, it was more fun, but it came with risks, u cant "quick fire" or u blow yourself up, it took ages to line up, and i killed myself so many damn times....it wasnt the "perfect" weapon, but it was my weapon, and i want it back goddammit!!!!

Been trying to find a gun for primarily fighting bots besides the scicle all my friends run it and just gets dull, I forgot the name but the green sniper I just started using I just want more accuracy on guns in general

never heard of animal well before you & it seems interesting, thanks for sharing & love you poopman keep up the great work it was so awesome when I found you during Factions, look at you now!

While it is nice to have buffs across the board. I'm still annoyed that the ammo economy is still bad, I tried using the Tenderiser and even though I was facing a small amount of enemies I was reloading a lot more then I would like which is annoying imo. Being stuck with the sickle or Blitzer can be tiresome tbh.

I think you hit the nail regarding the Eruptor and Pummeler: they had personality, but it seems like AH only wants weapons to be numbers to be balanced. What made the Eruptor so fun to use what that it wasn't your usual headshot precision weapon. No, the best way in many cases was to shoot the ground under the enemy or the wall behind them to get as much shrapnel as possible to hit. Now it's just a slow firing AMR with splash damage, and headshots are a must to kill Stalkers and Devestators... It's not trash anymore, it's OK to bring, but every shit just hurts because I remember how fun I used to have with it.

One thing for sure about Helldivers, with every patch there is going to be a nerf. Its like the devs think they made a f***ing fighting game

I think it was, overall, a good and positive update. With how much work needs done, though, I honestly hope this is the scale and quality of patches we're able to get for the next several patches. If they give us one of these every month for the next few months, I think the game will be in a very good place.

No one is talking about how usable the marksman rifles are now. You don’t necessarily need to head shot bots anymore since they damage the body by much more now (particularly the regular diligence).

I love the horseshoe dot on the liberator penetrator. Glad they cleaned up the Crosshair on the other ARs but wish they’d give you the option to swap it out with a horseshoe dot or a chevron

Pummeler nerf hurts. One of my favorite loadouts is Pummeler+BalisticShield, allowing me to act as a dmg sponge AND stun larger enemies for my team to take out.

With how volatile their pc port code is, I'm surprised balance is what they're focusing on months later

I agree with most, but I believe the Eruptor is in a sweet spot now I am using it now more than ever and it's great especially for closing holes and destroying factories from far away. =:D

As much as the Tenderizer got a lot of good attention, I do love how much better the ARs (not Penetrator) feel

the purifier just need a Tad bit more of SOMEthing and i think it be on a good spot right now not yet but SOON little one soon As for the Eruptor that thing on lunch have higher damage than 'support weapon stratigem' AS a Primaly gun slot So yeah NO but right now it also need something because the Xbow is too close on it's tail and it should have more distance buffer from the Xbow

The Purifier feels usable on bug missions but in my experience it was already ok on that side. The damage fall off change was nice but the explosion radius is still very small. I feel it’ll need a little more damage a bigger AoE to really solidify itself as a distinct weapon from the Punisher Plasma and Scorcher.

I just started. Seems like the standard riffle for ammo is the best hehe. I do like the burst of shotgut but it has no armor pen :)

I think I'm in love with the orbital barrage now

I didn’t even notice the nerf on the Pummeler cuz that’s not how I use it. The stagger is great for holding back hordes and taking them out without taking damage. I still prefer to clear chargers n spewers as quickly as possible through the conventional ways

150m+ and lived, that's not necessarily what you wanted, but it's something

Moral of the story : they don’t know how to buff they only know how to nerf

Mmm bowel movement

I like rocking punisher shotgun which knocks back bugs along with the flamethrower as support weopon. I know the breaker incendiary is the best vs bugs but im really bored with it and you barely have to aim with it, just point in the general direction and unleash. The slugger used to have knockback too but they took it away in a recent patch. The slugger is good vs the bots cuz of the medium armor pen

ive heard the ajudicators recoil is bugged to its pre buff value

Between Steel Veteran, Polar Patriot, and Viper Commando, which one should I get first?

they buffed the F tier weapons into D tier. wow, thanks for the work /sarc

I’ve had a bug twice that made it so that I could not activate the terminal of called in objective stratagems like geo survey drills. Couldn’t complete the mission. Really ruined my play session. This bug needs to get fixed yesterday.

Has the Eruptor always been that slow to move and target or is that a bit of a stealth nerf? I took it out the other day to test it out and found it was extremely slow to get it to move to target something in both scoped and third person mode compared to just about any other commonly used primary.

God fucking damn it. Even with the "game-saving" patch, they can't help but ruin a perfectly good gun. What the fuck is wrong with these people? They have gaming gold in their hands and they're just refusing to polish it. I'll start playing this game again when they actually make all the guns fun to use, instead of slightly improving a few useless ones and nerfing the fun out of the best ones. Even this patch feels weirdly resistant to letting the game be what EVERYONE wants it to be.

I hadn't used the Purifier before the patch but having giving it a try, it's alright but it's still doesn't feel as strong as it should be? It's for mid to long range combat that's for sure and it has decent stagger and stun but unless the group is tight together you'd end up trying to by time by stunning groups as opposed to just killing them. Only taken it out against bots cause I don't think the rush down of the bugs is good for it, but as shown in the footage the berserkers are bad enough if running the Purifier against bots.

Man I thought the last patch was awesome, many guns are great and fun to play and the warbond is my favorite so far. Also in-game the spirits are high and I'm having great fun matches with people. Then you see yt and it's a completely opposite vibe, it's too bad and a bit weird.

Werid you having trouble with pummeler. I can still stun lock them chargers. I use the pummeler when i use qusar cannon.

I still spend most of my time meleeing enemies when my Stalwart runs out of ammo.

10:16 yeah no im sick of fighting these developers there are too many yes men its not worth it anymore

I think arrowhead forgot about the liberator penetrator lmao

Difficultly 6 extreme feels so much harder than before. I normally play on 7 and right now 6 feels harder than 7

THE ONLY WEAPON THAT USES CLIPS IS THE AUTO CANNON TO RELOAD. everything else uses magazines.

Purifier still feels extremely pointless, to me. It shoots in a straight line instead of an arc, but the extra range that affords you over the Punisher Plasma doesn't feel anywhere near worth the drop in RoF and the impractically of the charge mechanic.

I think the patch was great. The purifier is now pretty good and the nice thing about the AR buffs is that you can now shoot a long way across a map and get multiple hits on a target and be able to clear the way ahead of your team if you aren't getting swarmed. I love the buff on the nade launcher which is my favourite support and the buffs on the strategems are awesome. There is still more work to do, but the game is now fun again. It stopped being fun about 6 weeks ago after all the nerfs. It's back to being fun. I hope Arrowhead have learnt their lesson. Nerf peoples favourite weapons and they stop playing. They took the player base from 450k down to 20k average players with all the nerfs. Now it's back up to 50 to 70k with the buffs. They need to realise that when they nerf weapons, they are actuallly nerfing the game.

And the Patch and Warbond are shit !!

The plas-101 purifier stil isn't very effective It has medium 1 penetration (please correct me if wrong) so it does half its damage to anything with the same (or close to?) armor pen, if the explosion does 250 and the shot does 250 it should deal 500 damage to anything with light armor Problem is most bots have medium 1 - 2 armor and if they don't then they most likely don't have over 500 hp, for it's mediocre damage it doesn't feel like the super slow firerate is worth it Armor value problem? use it on bugs then? the purifier is meant to be used at high - medium range which in the higher difficulties of bugs isn't that common to stay like that for an encounter, unless you play in the backline (shoot behind/to the side of groups) So in my opinion it's either better for bugs or it needs an armor pen increase AH should really feel more free to tweek the numbers on weapons until they see it at a state they like, make it a limited time event of "experimental ammunition" on a certain few planets for a few days and see the results

I want my stagger back on the Slugger... god I loved that gun... then they removed tits stagger and made it useless

Nah, eruptor was oooooover powered at release. Whole lobbies brought it and nothing else. Cleared objectives, enemies, chargers, GROUPS of devatators. It was better than even support weapons. But now it’s gimped of course. Needs a little tune somewhere, but it’s problem that they should have seen coming. There’s almost no ways to make it good without making it overpowered - damage breakpoint-wise, without buffing everything else into boringness as well.

They feel like they don't have enough ammo

Need more capacity on rifle and Pistol

The Eruptor is fine to me, it has enough damage compare to some other marksman rifle and can close fabricator, also recovered the 1 shot on the front plate of scout strider, which is nice to me, i understand the shrapnel lover, and how you would like it to be at the level it was, but it was WAY too strong before, like i didn't know until i saw your clip there, but being able to 1 shot the ass of a charger is insane, even support weapons aren't that strong, i feel it balanced, while still being fun where it is now, i don't mind having the shrapnel back, but less powerful tho :) The crossbow, i like the fact that it blow up bug hole now, but i would like at least a bit more aoe range, or damage, i sometime noticed that if i shoot the ground to touch multiple hunter, they survived about 3-4 shot before dying, which suck a bit in my opionion. I did not play with the Pummeler yet, i do agree with the nerf they did for the charger, it shouldn't be getting stun easily, but i hope they will buff the stun to medium back to where it was, maybe nerf the damage a bit or the magazine to compensate, i did feel that compared to Defender it was too strong considering it could stun lock almost everything and only had 5 less damage. For the Adjudicator, i had fun with it today while playing duo with my friends against bugs on diff 6, it did felt better. I didn't really play much with the Tenderizer yet, but it felt lacking in ammunition, i reload too often with it, but considering i only did 2-3 mission when the patch came out, i can't really say much about it, might have used it wrong too, probably need to burst like i did with Adjucator, don't remember if i did tho. Heavy Machine Gun Felt great, i would love it to have at least a hundred ammo, but it does pack a punch now at least. Mechs feels better, more damage on the machine gun and you can aim more down AND your left gun is more accurate, can finally use the rocket, and speaking about those rocket, they need a buff, only 14 of them, can't even 1 shot a charger and you only have 2 call in so it's a total of 28 rocket with a 10 minutes cooldown and considering you at best 2 shot heavy, it's only 14 kills, that is if you aim perfectly and there isn't some other bullshit hitbox collision, for example, if you shoot a charger in the head multiple time in a row, and even if you see those rocket hitting the face, you will need 3-5 of them cause why not. (more testing needed, maybe i needed to aim a bit higher on the head or something after the first rocket hit him) Purifier sucks for me, i much prefer use the scorcher or plasma shotgun, im not a big fan of the wind-up mechanic, even tho im fine with bolt action funny enough. I didn't play bugs on 7+ yet, so i can't say about why i see so much hate with patrol, i like the fact we have flying patrol too, it's really cool, didn't play much and so far on my 7 bugs mission i did not see shriker patrol, i did see bots gunship tho, i understand the argument yeah, they want us to have more diversity but they add thing like that which force you to use certain type of weapons...but yeah, i don't care about those, i just shoot them down with my heavy machine gun lol i don't think we ever had as much possible diversity as we have now, might be wrong, but that's how i felt, didn't seem to have heavy problem on diff 5 and 6, saw people complain about them and it seems there is a problem, but i had more fun than ever with my duo, so not really sure about 7+ but 6 and less is fun. That's everything that is coming to my mind at the moment, so that's it for what i think of the balance change so far, have fun gamer, it was TurtleOne, Over (because i liked playing Heavy armor, so i was the slowest, and name code always have number in them, hence why TurtleOne, i like it)

Poor penetrator it was already so bad

Thanks finally somebody says it the guns felt awesome before they just need to put them back to where they were

*reads magazine *says clip right after*

Patrol spawns are still fucked

PLAS -101 PURIFIER is still false advertising it still does not kill scout striders in one shot. the liberators should all have at least 45 round MAGAZINES THEY ARE NOT CLIPS. The automatic fire mode added to the penetrator was not the buff it needed it needs 45 round magazines and 5 more damage since it got skipped over when the other liberators got 5 more damage. the concussive should have its recoil changed to 15 and fire rate increased to 595 so its like the pummeler in addition to the 45 round MAGAZINES.

They slightly buff the guns then littered the field with charger behemoths, a charger that’s twice as hard to kill, now explain how this is supposed to make the game more fun.

Wait... The pummeler was stunning *CHARGERS* ?! I never used it for bugs, just shield and pummeler with bots. Devastator stuns make sense... But a CHARGER? That... Definitevely sounds like it needed nerfed.

Eruptor is trash without shrapnel. I hate it so much.

I honestly don't see why people say this patch is great. They buffed some weaker stratagems to make them more viable which feels nice. The weapon "buffs" don't really do anything. Rifes feel almost exactly the same. They nerfed the fun out of another weapon. Also with the enemy changes you are locked into an even tighter stratagem meta than before. For bots you have to bring something for patroling ships. For bugs you have to take out the dozens of behemoth chargers chasing you. Then the new warbond also feels bad. The weapons are actually worse than polar patriots on release because at least it had the pummeler. The cosmetics are better I will give it that. I'm sorry for ranting. The game feels worse to me and everyone is calling it great. We waited over a month for this patch.

Not much of a "game saver"...

yeah the pummeler was good w the ballistic shield but they ruined both of those things lol they keep fucking up and nerfing shit with every new update

The shield doesn't even work right now? WHy in th fuck would they nerf this?

Pummeler still staggers devs but not as well as before. It's kinda just a higher dps lib conc, so still pretty lame. Tenderizer is so good against bots it's not even funny.

play?

For me the patch is ok but as we all know if there's a patch there would be bugs along with it.

Please say magazine and not clip. I don't think democracy is spread by hair clips :P

Such an unnecessary nerf

this update is not good. it shows AH hasn't learned from their mistakes. they think they are still right.. they just giving up some ground to appease the player base. They didn't buff for the sake of balance.

Its a mag, not a clip.

wtf is your pfp & name man. just for that i'm disliking the video but overall good video.

I like the buffs, but I dislike all the nerfs to enemies...idk why people were complaining so much about the meta before and it being difficult, that's why it was fun

0:13 quality of life have been improve. huh devs literally killed the only good thing about the spear launcher (sniping fabricators)

game still ass lmao

You didn't include the Carbondale guns, tenderizer is beastmode

The day Arrowhead buffs all the primaries is the day I stop playing. I love feeling underpowered and surrounded. Please don't concede your vision for the game because so many players don't understand the core design of the game.

Incels always complain about something! 😂😂😂

The smg pummeler is a really good point. Newer guns don’t necessarily need to be the best, but if they bring in something unique, should at least have them be viable. It was debatably the best smg, but that basically came down to personal preference. And it’s not bad now, but what made it unique doesn’t really site itself anymore. I’d rather it have less ammo or less mags than the stun nerfs it got. Or maybe just stun us at 100% but any following after four let’s say 10 seconds, is the reduced. Prevents stun lock, but still has the effect of full fir the first shot.

Between Steel Veteran, Polar Patriot, and Viper Commando, which one should I get first?

The Eruptor still needs a lot of work. The crossbow is far better at the moment, which is a shame. I love bolt-action rifles, and I really want to roll with this weapon but its performance doesn’t make up for its drawbacks.

The part about durability is just not true for all enemies; in fact, its just not true about A LOT of enemies. Most enemies that the AR can effectively deal with DONT HAVE DURABLE parts! Meaning they are NOT affected by durable damage buffs! If youre curious, the most iconic enemy that HAS durable part that can be damaged by AP2 weapons is the broodcommander! It has only a 60% durability on its head, so the durability damage the new AR23 round does to is, 8.4 (14*0.6), whereas previously it was 3.6. BUT considering their head armour is AP2, youre only doing half damage, meaning youre ONLY getting a 4.2 damage increase, from 1.8. You know how many bullets you save here? 2. From 16 bullets to 14 bullets. This is NOT substantial enough. For chargers and spewers youre getting more value since their abdomen take 100% durable damage and has no armour, but youre still spending A LOT of ammo just to pop one. We have better weapons to dealing with these guys, but this effectively means the buffs are WORTHLESS. For bots its even worse! Only parts that are covered in AP3 armours take ANY durable damage - its NOT making the liberator class weapons any better!

Purifier needs to have a primary fire mode like the scorcher but slower fire rate but a bit stronger, with the charge shot being an alt fire mode and MUCH more powerful but burns an entire mag using it.

The eruptor is back to oneshotting scout striders on the front plate, so thats good at least, imo they should also oneshot bile/nursing spewers too (maybe just up the durable damage?) so it could be least ok on bug side for that role. Also, im pretty sure the Pummeler stun change also hit the stun grenades too, though not 100% sure about that

Eruptor is a solid choice if you want to pair it with a MG. Been having a blast with the combo.

A lot of these are good until you get a gunship patrol or multiple gunship factories. Then pray your loadout you made 10 minutes ago included something medium armor penetrating, and even then your unloading full clips to just take 1 down.

I honestly think they need to stop changing both player power and enemy power in the same patch. The changes in power are a lot harder to judge properly when multiple variables on opposing ends of the equation are being altered at the same time.

I really like this game, played since day one! BUT it really is a buggy mess and the Balancing Team is Fakin INCOMPETENT!

Nobody uses the Purifier right, people keep using it like it's some railgun variant of the Scorcher. It's a lot more like a long-range Arc Rifle, being able to stunlock small groups of light to medium enemies at a distance, with an almost identical charge-fire cadence as the Arc Rifle.

Now that they decreased bile titans and increased the number of smaller mobs in higher difficulty, they should add more clips to primary weapons to make up for the higher amount of enemies you can actually use the primary weapon against.

i am pretty sure that there data showed them that people had fun with the pummeler so of course they needed to nerf it... its always the same with helldivers...

R36 need more aoe if the don't want to give back the shrapnels

All rifles should come stock with 40 round mags.

Am I the only one who uses the lib pen?

RIP Pummeler. 😭

They’re reasoning for the old eruptor not coming back was because they can’t find way to communicate why people get killed by the shrapnel flying around in game. And I feel like even tho we like the old one if they bring it back it would stur things up anyway

Swing and a miss for this update. Arrowhead seemingly don't want us to have fun. They act like it's a PvP game that requires intricate balance, rather than the PvE arcade shooter that it is. Focusing on stratagems really wasn't the best approach. Gun fights are much more fun than calling in stratagems to do damage for you. Primaries should be much more viable than they currently are; during Helldive difficulties, primaries often become near useless.