Big update inbound August 6th! A bunch of new enemies, mission types, difficulty 10, kicked players being put into their own game with all rewards, social menu fixes, and more unannounced stuff.

https://blog.playstation.com/2024/07/23/helldivers-2s-biggest-update-yet-escalation-of-freedom-drops-august-6/

I still want to play this game.

https://xboxera.com/2024/07/22/is-helldivers-2-coming-to-xbox/

Yeah I'm looking forward to this.

They're threatening to give us the anti-tank mines if we don't complete the order. For those wondering, the community has refused the AT-mine reward multiple times and it's become a meme at this point lol.

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I read that then read it again because initially I thought it was both the reward for success AND the punishment for failure

Yeah I laughed hard/loud enough at that MO that my wife said "I don't wanna know" because she assumed it was an inappropriate meme or something.

Haven't got a chance to play the update yet, but it appears that they nerfed the Breaker Incendiary and the Flamethrower

Watching some of the clips on YouTube and Reddit; the new enemies are pretty cool.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/553850/announcements/detail/4339865428695343824

Personally I think they could have made the Breaker both better and more balanced just by narrowing the spread.  The only time I ever use the flamer is when there is a daily personal order requiring it.  I'm 99% of the time a machinegunner and the balance on those is great right now, especially with the Eagle Airstrike and Orbital Gatling to allow you to deal with enemy heavies now and then.

The lower toughness on the dropship and gunship engines is gonna be great for the HMG.

I'm interested to see the new mission types.  Really hoping for a sample exchange system soon since I'm maxed out on everything except samples and I'm grinding those for ship modules.

Greater risk, greater rewards! (that you can't spend on anything and are completely meaningless, but you'll get more of them!!)

Let me buy a 5th stratagem slot with samples or req slips or medals or all 3.  Or rent one to burn all of this maxed out shit on.  That would be something at least.

Eh Super Helldive ain't no thing

I haven't jumped on yet but hopefully will get in a session later this week.

Ran a pack on 9 to unlock 10, then did a complete pack. 10s are fun. We completed a pack but couldn't come close to clearing them. It took everything to do main and the new side missions.

The new bugs are cool. Definitely changed the dynamic. Bring a 380 or two for the super nest.

Hell yeah man barrage party time.  New cooldown on the 120mm may make it viable as an "always take" stratagem.

Damn I forgot about the 120 changes.  I'll have to try it out tonight.

I highly recommend considering the 380 a must have (at the squad level) to soften up a Super Nest though.  They're basically multiple normal nests linked together in close proximity and from what I saw, only have 2 entrances making it very difficult to simply clear the area by engaging and falling back until any active bugs are dead, then re-entering to close holes, which seems a rather typical method for light/medium/heavy nests.

One of them we went into and there were, just idle, 3 bile titans, 6 behemoth chargers, 3-4 regular chargers, at least one of the new graboid chargers (which aren't completely bullet proof thank god) not to mention the swarm of hunters spitters and alpha brood commanders.



I also happened on to a stalker nest that seemed to be bugged.  There were 20+ stalkers stacked up just outside one of the bug holes and another 6-8 roaming in a 30 foot radius.  Actually shocked/scared me  That was the first time I called in an orbital laser for stalkers

The biggest change on 10 seems to be the rate of breeches and patrols, with a slight change to mix.  There are slightly fewer behemoths or other heavies, significantly more trash and medium mobs, as a percentage of mix.  But SIGNIFICANTLY higher spawn rates.  

Once I went with another guy to do the first part of the data upload mission, so one instance of a terminal, dropping a strategem ssd, then uploading to the relay.  It's generally a cakewalk, even on 9.  Something you can often do alone, or easily as a pair.

I burned 2 orbital lasers and dropped my autocannon sentry 4 times before we were able to breath long enough to actually start the terminal and do the objective.  We really should have broken contact, allowed things to despawn and came back, but it was just interesting to see how long it would go.  The initial breech was 3 at once, then as they petered out, we'd get a roaming patrol from 2 different directions, by time the patrols were cleared, another breech, rinse repeat.  It was ridiculous.  

And I am not pleased with the Incendiary magazine count nerf.  Basically forced me to bring the supply pack.  I would have preferred a damage reduction, a DOT reduction, a spread increase, weapons handling reduction, more recoil than they did give it, practically ANYTHING but a decrease in mag capacity or mag count.  I can't tell how many times I went from resupply or reinforcement to bingo ammo before even getting a chance to find my support weapon or call a new one down.  I tried the OG Breaker once, but it's so limited on capacity that you're constantly reloading, and I've definitely become trained to "wound and let burn" with the incendiary which was really difficult to get out of the habit of.  

On the last round where we completed the mission but couldn't make evac, the squad used a combined 94 stims and had 30 combined deaths

still no promised cape regarding the sony incident?

No and if these fucking children keep review bombing them it won't happen.

Seriously GenX gamers are the best gamers.  Everyone younger than us whines and moans when the play is balanced.  If you can't Helldive then go on lower difficulty until you Git Gud.  THAT IS WHY THERE ARE DIFFICULTY LEVELS.  Running out of ammo on lvl6?  Okay then get better or go down to lvl5 or figure out why.  Maybe you need to play team quartermaster.  Maybe you need a machinegunner on your squad for low level mobs.  Flamer can't kill Chargers anymore?  Well then stop bitching and look at your team's loadout screen - bring some EATs or something if no one else is playing anti-armor role.

Everyone wants to just decimate on the hardest difficulty.  The real retardation is these Youtube channels that are amplifying this message, because the same guys talking about needing higher difficulty to retain players are then turning around and bitching when balancing a weapon made the game harder at the higher difficulties.  WTF?

Whatever - the most fun gameplay is when you're on the razor's edge.  When you are watching your orbitals and supply count down you've got one grenade, your secondary, and a few shots on your primary and someone fucks up and triggers a bug breach and suddenly you're trying to outmaneuver three bile titans and some behemoths.

Anyways I stayed up way too late last night to get in a full three HD missions to unlock lvl10 so I will probably drop into some of those games this weekend.

That was never resolved FYI. There are still a bunch of countries barred even after they said the issues were reversed/fixed. Lots of people outta money still.

This warbond definitely feels like the weakest one. The fire armor is... kind of pointless. You still have to stim through being set on fire; it just gives you more time in exchange for useful armor benefits. The flamers are weaker versions of the support, but the primary is nice to free up a stratagem slot. Punisher incendiary is alright.  Hellpod lighting the ground on fire sounds like a bad time... I haven't tried it yet though.


For the patch I love the new 120mm. It's about a must take for me now.

Agreed.

Concur particularly on the 120.  It now performs better than just "a weaker 380" and the improved cool down makes it tough to leave behind.



A couple clips from level 10 bugs.  Want stalkers?  We got stalkers.  I dropped an orbital laser on what was remaining upon reinforce and killed 19 more



Also, the Impaler has quite an arm.  This is the first time I've become a traitor before touching the ground



Weird how the capture gets my squad's voice chat but not mine.

LMAO I just got out of my first level 10 and I got launched so hard by an Impaler that I went back into orbit and my team was ready to extract by the time I landed.  There was a traitor barrage going on the whole fucking game.

Holy shit I was laughing so hard I've got a headache.

Whatever they got out with the egg sample thing.

They seem to have fixed my friends list so here's a fresh code 2344-8101

Big patch today. Massive buffs to almost every weapon, Railgun and Eruptor are elite again, lots of nerfs to enemies and fixes to their weak spots, Automaton buildings now have health so you can destroy them with anti-armor weapons, you can equip 4 emotes with an emote wheel, headshots by enemies on Helldivers nerfed, and some adjustments to planet modifiers so they're not as bad as they were.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/553850/view/7147864422081646859?l=english

New Warbond comes out Thursday and is all about gas, with anti-gas armor and a pistol that shoots stims so you can heal your team from a distance. Oh and they buffed gas too.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/553850/view/4590945546838299705?l=english

This last patch was fucking epic.  I'm seeing 5-8X the players online as of last night and it was super easy to get games again.

I'm actually playing around with loadouts for the first time in months just to try out some of the stuff I never did because it didn't seem viable.

The thermite as an anti-armor grenade is a game changer.  Now I can run a enemy-specific primary, grenade pistol, thermite grenades (with +2 capacity armor), MG (LMG for bugs HMG for bots), and supply pack and then tailor my other two stratagem slots for the mission or to compliment team loadouts and I never feel under-powered.  I love my quartermaster/machinegunner loadout plus now native antitank for "oh, shit" moments.  Also covers the need for anti-armor if you hit exfil after your destroyer has left orbit.

I killed a fucking Bile Titan with a thermite grenade to the head last night!

I've fallen in love all over again.

How viable is the HMG/Autocannon/Railgun against Behemoth Chargers and Bile Titans now?  I can't play until Thursday evening

The thing that was getting old for me is the way the balance made it almost necessary to just run from every fight.  At one point, if you had 2-3 behemoths and 2-3 bile titans and a couple regular chargers (with all the trash that comes along with them) a 4 man squad simply didn't have enough ordnance available to do anything but kill the trash and run/avoid the heavies.

This sounds so refreshing. I was getting frustrated that only 1-2 weapons were viable and 80% of my loadout was meaningless. I'm glad they're shifting away from nerfing everything to more lethal weapons with higher quantities of enemies.

Yeah the thermite grenade is basically best-in-slot now. Kills almost everything in 1 hit by itself; bile titans need a headshot with it though, but a body shot will mostly kill it then just finish it off with whatever.

Completing today's Personal Order with the machine gun was a blast. I could just keep the machine gun + supply pack up 24/7 and use thermite grenades on any charger or titan.

I feel like orbital and eagle stratagems are now obsolete and all you really need is a whole team with a bunch of weapon stratagems and one or two supply packs.

I only run HMG against bots but the emplacement looks like it can take care of the BTs at least.  Against bots the new durable damage buff on the HMG makes it fantastic.  It will kill hulks much more easily now and the thermite takes care of them when your belt runs out.  I never ran AC or Railgun because the former didn't really speak to my play style and the latter has been pretty feckless since I started playing.

The 500kg is fucking great now - no more BT walking out of the blast in my limited experience so far.

Logged back in tonight after weeks of not playing.  While the guns feel better... the game has lost the spark for me. And new warbond seems to hands down be the worst one ever. Maybe I'll try it again in a couple months or so.

I am Going to come back in a week.  Have not played since July.

Okay I played a couple more missions tonight. Lib concussive + grenade launcher rocks. The dagger is a good sidearm now. I love the napalm orbital strike (aka grid square eliminator). Thermite is awesome and a fire and forget on chargers or other heavies.

Yeah I'm back to playing nearly every evening.

They nerfed the spawn rates on Eradicate missions just a bit too much to be any kind of challenge BUT over all I dig the current difficulty balance.  I'm much happier with more enemies I can actually kill than fewer total enemies that half of which I can't even touch without a strategem.

Prior to the major update so much of the armor/HP/weapon dmg characteristics were so nonsensical it annoyed me at a visceral level.  For example, the Autocannon couldn't touch a Bile Titan no matter how damaged it was, but a frag (which should have next to zero armor pen) to the face would reliably kill them after they soaked up an orbital rail cannon strike.  Stuff like that.

The current situation where things like the HMG or AC certainly aren't optimal for handling heavily armored enemies but at least have some effect is far more sensible.  The Recoiless Rifle should have been one of if not the most powerful tool we had for heavy armor, maybe tied with the Spear, but it wasn't.  Now it can one shot Factory Striders if you hit it in the redeye like with a Hulk.  Which takes some doing if you haven't snuck into position to take a shot.

Bugs are fun again.

Oh man, the flak autocannon...

Can't wait to try that.  AC main for bugs now maybe, at least on planets with spewers

AC has always been my main for bug planets and I've been really happy with the improvements.

Really?  I never liked it for bugs.  Too little splash/frag for swarms and not enough penetration for heavies, even after the last buff it seemed pretty ineffective on heavies.

But maybe I was just using it wrong

I find it's good against medium sized stuff like brood commanders and spewers. While my team is targeting smaller or much larger bugs, I keep the medium sized ones away.