Do you have any actual proofs that the "crits" exist other than your gut feeling, as opposed to confusing the headshot mechanic with it?

"this game isn't that hard" my dumb ass choking on a baker's dozen of bile titans and a parade of chargers on my first helldive: 😭💀

I always just assumed enemy headshots themselves were the "random critical hits" I think finding out that enemies have actual random critical hits on top of the headshots they can potentially do has caused my soul to leave my body.

@16:26 As a certified jump pack fan, I just have to correct you on this: we don't use the jump pack because it's optimal or even great, we use it because it's actually fun traversing huge maps with it. That being said, we'd very much like it if they replaced the current jump pack with this new dark fluid one that for some reason has a much lower cooldown and a damage aoe on launch. Honestly, the fact that I'm not using the 380HE solely off the fact that once the barrage is over I am out of a precious strat slot for 4 minutes just goes to show it's not as OP as it seems in a game where your personal TTK is somewhere between 5 to 10 seconds; it's just a shame there is literally no orbital that can functionally nuke an area like the Eagle Airstrike without having a cooldown of 2+ minutes. For one use. Compared to Airstrike's 2/3 uses. Similarly, it's a shame there is effectively no armor in the game that can allow you to survive while playing it loud so you can actually properly dump the military industrial complex on your enemies; you can come close with a heavy armor that gives you 6 stims, but that is assuming you don't get continuously hitstunned out of the stimming animation -- and *_THAT_* is assuming you don't instadie in the first place from a headshot boosted by a random crit for some ungodly reason.

I put 231 hours in this game and I literally bought a PlayStation for this game. I will say I completely agree. This game is absolutely broken, but I do love it and I do have the feeling that they were really not ready to have this many players and so it’s gonna take them a long time to actually fix it. But it will get there at some point.

How to kill bugs according to a steam community post: "For bugs, it's best to shoot them in the head. Except when it isn't, so it's best to shoot them in the legs. Don't shoot the armoured bits, except when your'e supposed to shoot the armoured bits. But don't keep shooting the armoured bits with anti-armour because that's bad. Shoot them in the weak points, except when you shouldn't shoot them in the weak points because those aren't weak points. How do you know which is which? Trial and error + rote memorisation" The armor and overall enemy hitbox design should probably be reworked before they try to fix the guns and strategems. Although that probably won't happen with the illuminate coming in with likely the same poor design decisions.

The devs honestly just.. Don't seem to understand having different weapons fill a different niche and not being great but not terrible. Like, anytime a niche weapon comes out like the Crossbow, where it's not amazing but in the right hands it can do really good and it's pluses are balanced by the bolt drop and whatnot, so then the devs see it as too good and need to eliminate the niche. We can't have that. Weapons need to either be really good and simple, or super niche and terrible.

I would **ADORE** A SEAF Outpost Drop, or "SEAF Support" Mission where we are helping SEAF Take over an area on the frontline, Also from the Math about what we know about the SEAF Stratagem, 5 Boys, 2 Uses, So if all 4 Players take them, Thats 40 SEAF boyos to do some goofy stuff with, 60 if they host an event where we get an extra free-use of them

your commentary on the 380 to me is wild because of how differently i view it, yes its a heavy outpost clearer that is incredible, but the objectives that i need strategems for, all require me to be inside the objective, not shelling it from a distance, i much prefer the eagle airstrike (i want it to be more powerful specifically against devestators, but have less splash on chaff, this would make it distinct from the cluster strike) I might be thinking about it wrong I feel that the less useful strategems all need cooldown reduction In regards to the modifiers, i think the design blueprint of the negative modifiers should be the spore bug missions, where you can remove the negative by completing a side objective, e.g. on a bot mission have the aa side objective apply instead of the reduced slots, the aa side objective or maybe use the sam site one to prevent eagles, and to mark exactly where you can remove the penalty i think the modifiers should be able to be engaged with in mission, let me turn off the orbital scatter by disabling a strategm jammer. or activating a radar, you could even add a funny factor by turning off illegal broadcasts improves the call in time, because the super destroyer can get closer without hearing impure thoughts while these propositions might not be fantastic, they use the current mechanics while reducing the fustration around these painful modifiers

Overwatch following the "only buff, never nerf" philosophy is blatantly untrue, every balance patch has a multitude of buffs and nerfs, its just that it is very rare a nerf flat out destroys a character. That said the balance is fucking awful

I definitely agree with the fact this game isn't that hard, actually. It is incredibly easy to rush the objectives, do them, and then simply kill yourself instead of wasting time to try and extract. But I wanna clear up some things as someone who's been lurking discussions, analyses, balance patches and various external sites who've done datamining on the game. The only thing that broken arms do is increase aim sway. yeah that's it. At least broken legs disable sprinting and decrease move speed. Also, stims _technically_ aren't invicibility, but they might as well be because they heal you so fast, anything that isn't an instant kill or more than 6 Heavy Devastators shooting at once is shrugged off. Crit chance does not exist in this game. What DOES exist, is multiple hit regions with different Damage Taken % for Helldivers. And bad hit registration. What you're experiencing is what I can only assume to be random headshots, taking simultaneous hits, and melee attacks hitting multiple hitboxes. But you can't control where and how you get hit, so that is what makes it a bullshit damage casino. The "This mission has more of X enemy type" DOES, in fact, exist. It is just not communicated anywhere, ever, and is only on the Terminid front. You have the exciting chance of rolling these kinds of enemy compositions: 1. Infinite Nursing Spewers (with no Titans and almost no Chargers to speak of) 2. Too many Bile Spewers and every Warrior is a Bile Warrior 3. I hope you like Hive Guards 4. More Bile Titans than normal These are only the ones I've noticed while playing Helldive, and I couldn't tell you for certain if they're exclusive or not. I have noticed that there are sometimes more Shredder Tanks than Annihilator Tanks, and sometimes more Rocket Hulks than Flamethrower Hulks between Automaton missions, but I can't tell if this is due to enemy composition or just dropship RNG. I agree Strategem balance is, and always was, completely out of wack. I'd say your idea to add more slots and have better Strategems cost more slots than others could be the way to fix their balance without handicapping the good ones to be bad. Oh yeah, shoot Gunships in the thrusters like you do with Dropships. The Laser Cannon specifically melts Gunships like butter. And yes, the Scorcher can kill them, too. (Don't tell Alexus.) If any of you want to read up on exact numbers, here's a few links for y'all: Weapon stats invadersfromplanet.space/helldivers-2/ Enemy stats helldivers.io/Enemies A spreadsheet of how much damage you take with different armor values/perks github.com/zeddidragon/helldivers-calc/blob/main/data/armor-values.csv

Oh yeah for sure if they try to nerf weapon stratagems there will be bricks through arrowheads windows

Going to input a bit- as far as community testing / datamining is concerned so far, there is no additional random crit chance on top of headshots. There can be desync where you take the damage of a headshot but on your screen it appears to be a body or limb shot. Not to mention rockets have direct damage, although explosions multiplying their damage by hitting all your limbs is gone now and you can usually tank a rocket. If it isn't to the head. I stand by player headshots being a bad design choice for the game.

As much as it saddens to say it, yeah. Strategems aren’t made equal. They either need a rebalance or having stronger starts cost something more. All in all, a lot of useful information was brought up. Personally, I’m still stuck on doing difficulty 4 missions solo, going up in difficulty slowly and as time allows.

Worst modifier ever is the “AA Defenses” taking a stratagem slot from you… like how does that make sense? Is the AA of automatons so powerful they can stop a 380 barrage from SPACE?!

Kinda wack that after the big patch since this video, i honestly feel like difficulty grew worse, especially with bots. Patrols are constantly shoved in your face so that youre almost always engaging the enemy, unless you really lean on stealth. And if a fight goes bad and you try to run, you just run into another patrol. It grows very tiring when youre given very little breathing room. To quote another post i liked, "HD2 cant decide if it wants to be a horde shooter or a slower tactical shooter, so it makes you do both but punishes either style"

There's literally a screen cap from steam support refunds stating the region locking comes from the publisher. How ever I could also see steam not letting it back till sony makes guarantees. USA might have lack consumer protection laws but the EU usually is better

you take the word right out of my mouth i like it feel the same and every time i try to point out something like this Helldivers 2 fan be like "SKILL ISSUE" "GIT GUD" and i was like bro i'm 200+ hours now play 7-9 all the time this unbalannce is something should be fix

The thing that frustrates me the most in this game is how random damage on enemies feels. Shooting with diligence to the torso of a base bot sometimes takes one shot to kill them, sometimes up to three. Using flamethower on charger's front leg sometimes melts them in 3 seconds, sometimes takes a whole mag and they are still alive after that. 500kg bomb explosion range seems to change every time you call it: it doesn't destroy a bug hole 10 meters away from the bomb but the next time it kills you 20 meters away.

This game could use some major reworking though i would call helldivers an "elite squad" since although the in game propaganda makes it seem like they are, with how easily they die and how many respawns we get, along with the tutorial, thr game makes it clear that helldivers are a very large force of disposable sentient target designators I think some stratagems are more useful than you give credit for, gas specifically is pretty good at dealing with groups while having far less cooldown than other wave clearers. And honestly the 380 is pretty useless to me, some time i get evey lucky and it decimates, but a lot of the time the spread is just way to wide and it doesn't hit very much

I liked this video a lot, it's fun to hear what someone who's broken the game in two thinks about all the different mechanics. As you've said, winning in this game is more about knowing the exploits and broken mechanics than it is raw mechanical skill. The lack of telegraphing across the board is really annoying,. It's super frustrating to have to come to find out that something that you thought worked actually didn't, and vice versa. This game is full-on Terraria level of guide-essential if you're trying to figure out how to optimize high difficultly play. I would love if they had a dedicated "Super strategem" slot (or a strategem budget like you suggested) for things like the 380 barrage, orbital laser, exoskeleton, ect, so that way there can be objectively busted stratagems without the need for nerfs to happen on anything worth using. As a primarily solo player, it's crazy to me just how much the game feels like it's being more and more impenetrable for me to actually play with every round of patches making the game less and less accessible without a full team. I know stealth is an option, but if you don't enjoy stealth (as I don't have the patience for it), I shouldn't be punished for wanting to play a primarily action focused game like an action game. The modifiers would work a lot better if you could just choose which ones were active and toggle them on and off for maybe extra rewards (sort of like how Halo's skulls work). Right now, it just feels like "Oh, which planet has the least annoying modifiers? I'll just play on that one", which feels less like making a fun decision and more like "Which of these two blows to the shin with a metal bat will make me limp less?". Honestly, adding in directly controllable modifiers to the difficulty other than vague nudges towards more or less difficulty in the 1-9 system would make actually getting an experience with the right amount of challenge far more possible Right now, it just feels like I'm either swimming in bug hell or coasting through a free win, with very little in-between.

I recokon most people don't log on to Helldivers 2 the same way they log on to a competitive game looking for a challenge, there's a lot of people I met who play this high or drunk. The reason why the community loves buffs is as you said. Our current guns feel like nerf guns or super soakers, it’s kind of interesting because the devs response was use your stratagems. This game has an identity crisis in whether the player should be a forward observer that just throws beacons or a special forces operator that actually kills things with guns. Generally though I think duos are the most fun for this game. Solo is a bit of a drag. 4s feel too much of a mess. Side Note: You talk about Factory Striders but it's funny that the Charger's Weakspot isn't it's ass. 'Peak Enemy design' to make it's bottom damageable by regular weapons but also take forever because it's not a weakspot.

I almost thought this video was sincere until I heard you repeatedly insist the 380mm barrage is the best stratagem in the game and I realised it's actually a clever parody. You nearly had me!

The difference Localization Confusion makes is that the cooldown on reinforcement call ins goes from 2.5 minutes to 3 minutes, which is 30 seconds longer or a 20% increase in the timer. Percentages matches up with things like Vitality Booster which makes you take 20% less damage, or Stamina Booster which gives you about 20% more stamina and 20% more stamina recovery so that not only can you sprint for longer but you recover all your stamina in the same amount of time it takes to recover all your stamina without it even though you have more total stamina. Also, my issues with the game isn't as simple as just the nerfs to the weapons or increases in enemy spawns like most other players, but rather with all of the shadow buffs to the enemies they don't tell us about as well. Like how enemies will exclusively go for your head hitbox now, which make deaths incredibly fast as most enemies can kill you in two or three hits, or how bugs now attempt to surround you with an aggressiveness they didn't use to have like they're controlled by some overmind like they're the zerg or something, or how hunters can leap through terrain such as rocks or buildings becoming completely incorporeal in order to get to you before they swipe at you five times in succession to instakill you while your aim gets staggered so you're unable to stop it, or how they enabled meshes inside of objects to prevent us from shooting through them but didn't enable those meshes for the bots allowing them to just stick their guns into the cover you're using to two-tap you on the head, or in the case of the scout strider one-tap you since they fire two projectiles at the same time. Dying in a silly way where the enemy got a lucky hit in can be funny every once in a while, dying because you made a serious mistake and got into a bad situation I have no problems with, but it's not that fun when every death on a mission feels like the game just decided you weren't allowed to live anymore and cheated a death out of you. I still get through helldive difficulty, that's not the problem, the problem is that it's not fun anymore. It's become a total chore and a slog to get through a mission, because in order to play correctly you gotta run away from everything since there are just so many enemies and our weapons aren't suited for killing all of them and pretty much all of them are able to kill you incredibly quickly. It's just not as fun as it was a couple months ago. If you want a lot of enemies then our weapons need to be able to handle the amount thrown at us, but you can't also have them all be serious individual threats since then it just takes a small slip up or one of them getting a little bit lucky in order for you to be dead. They could have had it both ways, they have two factions, bugs could have been numerous with each being not very deadly while bots could be few but with each being a serious threat. As it stands they're both numerous and can kill you in well under a second. Hopefully with Pilestedt in the CCO role, rather than CEO, he can work on making the game fun and rewarding to play again, at least he seems to be listening to and communicating with the playerbase which is encouraging.

8:04 Shoot one of the four thrusters on the gunship in order to bring it down. You can do this with any weapon that penetrates medium-ish heavy-ish armor (I think the weakest weapons I've ever used for this are the heavy machine gun and the anti-material rifle). Also, I think you're just really good at the game. I still can't solo skill level 6 (extreme) against bots. Maybe I'm just bad at stealth or my awareness is poor, but I feel that I know how to take down every enemy in the game but I'm still just bad because it's easy for me to get overwhelmed, so I play on hard and extreme when I'm up against bots so that I have a chance. 10:54 I do like the primary weapons though, and I think they have a little more variety than you give them credit for. - The marksman weapons can one or two shot the devastators and shield guys with headshots. It's hard when you're getting shot, though, so you want to get the drop on your enemies or drop a bubble shield if you have to use it. - The pump action shotgun has such a huge "knockback" stat when you shoot enemies with it that it can stop shield minigunners from shooting at you if you hit the exposed parts of their arm or chest. It's good for stunlocking opponents. - The rifles are consistent against crowds, but can also hit weakpoints precisely. - The Defender SMG is like a one-handed rifle, so you can carry an objective item in your offhand, or even something like a ballistic shield. (I think the ballistic shield is slept on too; I once stood down an entire factory strider with one!). - The energy weapons have infinite ammo if you don't overheat, and they cool down even when you're not holding them. You can carry a laser rifle and a laser cannon and switch between them when one is about to overheat to effectively never stop shooting. The primaries aren't well suited to destroying heavies, but I don't have so much trouble scrapping mediums with them as long as I'm able to control part of the battle somehow so that I can line up a stable shot (such as dropping a bubble shield, or using the ballistic shield, or even wearing the shield backpack). 16:43 Team reload amplifies the fire rate of some very powerful support weapons. You might be sleeping on it. It's certainly very fun to perform. EDIT: 20:35 Valve themselves commented that no, they did not do this. Sony and Arrowhead did it. We shall see if they will reverse it in the future. I hope they do. 21:12 Yes. Sony is this insane. In the mid-2000's, they released music CDs that installed DRM rootkits on users computers in order to allow them to listen to music. These rootkits had huge security implications which hackers would later use to perform massive cyber attacks. This isn't their first rodeo in anti-consumer practices.

Its weird to me that in both this and the stealth video, you start out saying you cant find any info online, and then spread a bunch of misinformation thats easily searchable on youtube. Stuff like the wrong time for dropships and the localization booster, the difference in patrol spawn rates per difficulty, the effect of broken arms etc. all has evidence of how it works posted. Its a shame, cause your videos are solid besides the factual inaccuracies

As someone who's played Arrowhead's older games: this is a pretty common thing with them. Arrowhead has always known how to make fun, wacky and over-the-top games, but have simultaneously struggled with fixing bugs and balancing. I consistently have fun in this game simply by messing around and swapping between different difficulty levels, running solo when doing low level and hopping into random lobbies for high level. While the game *is* flawed, I wouldn't say I notice them too often on my own. The only ones that I feel *are* significant issues are the wackiness of hit-reg (hence the idea of the crits on enemies), and how the assault rifles feel the exact same as eachother.

First off, I do not know how people play and then still have to drop $ for warbonds. I buy armor from super store to get rid of extra super credits. 2nd, the scorcher is awesome and all, it's what last page of a 10 page warbond? It should be good (plasma punisher is better in all ways but magazine size) What most forget, this game has to be balanced for all types of players with all different squad composition, and for 9 difficulties, BUT also around player level, and 2/3 factions. There are some things that are garbage at late Game, but are awesome at the beginning (talking to you machine gun.) There are so many dots that have to connect. The game is still having growing pains. Give it a little time. I do know that we are getting new ship module upgrades in the future. I'd say that is the method they'll use to keep it balanced as best they can over like 174 different mechanics that all have to mesh all the time. I love this game, but it's a live service so half of the complaints can get filed under that. If the game is too easy, try different load outs. There are load outs that make it feel almost like a different game. If it's too hard, practice. I've played a lot of games over the years, and none of them have been perfect, but helldivers 2 avoids the biggest mistakes that most studios are addicted to. Last point, the community is half Chad's and half whiny little kids. It'd impossible to get a read on much (from AHs pov) when the communities most vocal critics come from one of two extremes. Half the nerfs we got started with someone crying about something. They fix it, and the same people continue to cry. If you don't want the answer stop asking the question. I hope to see you all on the battlefield with smiles and positivity. For democracy. For freedom. For happiness.

It would be great if there were modifiers that restricted your choice of stratagem beyond just "-1 stratagem lol". Stuff like "Munitions shortage, no offensive eagle or orbital stratagems" or "Absent Missile delivery, no EATs, Recoilless, Cluster or Spear" or "Requisition form error, restricts you to only one pre-determined Tac-Pack weapon system".

Id love to get a video passionately praising the 380 because you clearly want to

Wait, enemies get crit chances but we don't? absolutely mickey mouse game design right there

Honestly I like that not all weakspots and strategies are obvious, because finding ways to better overcome challenges feels INCREDIBLE!

Bro. This is the best analysis of two of my favorite games. I had to subscribe!

I always said this, this game is not difficult at all, it just full of cheap deaths, which are basically nothing burgers because of how many respawns you get + every respawn fully restocking all your ammo, stims and granades. Objetives need to be harder to complete WITHOUT just spawning a million enemies on it forcing players to just go another objetive while waiting them to despawn.

Guys, I think he bellieves 380 is actaully good, dont tell him

Are you sure you like this game?

Fantastic video, you hit the nail on the head about the game. It's really nice to hear someone not just blindly praise it and look deeper into it's flaws.

Strangely enough, I completely agree on all the disagreements. I feel like the best ways to solve those problems are probably different, but this video is just full of reasonable observations.

Glad to see someone else finding this game not difficult. Most of my deaths is from teamkilling or just bad luck. When you realize you can just outrun and kite everything, it becomes trivial.

i get so mad when people bring localization, like, i know what you’re doing is griefing, but i can’t prove it because AH hates telling us numbers for some reason? also i can’t type or change my mic settings in the ready up screen!!!!! also yes please a dark tide style enemy warning screen. i’d like to know if im gonna get swarmed by the barfing ticks

3:20 do you run with a squad or do you join pubs? because i've had at least 30 helldives where we were running around waiting for reinforcement budget to refill

one quick thing to note, crits aren't a thing. those are headshots. all body parts have different damage resistances, hovering around 80%, but headshots take 200%(160 with heavy armor), and enemies always try to aim for that; they just don't always hit their aim. if you survived a rocket to the face, it only looked like it hit your face.

It was confirmed by valve that it was sony that listed off those countries

The biggest issues I had with the "difficulty" are the random insta deaths you'll get hit by. It's inconsistent, and I hate all of it. The most recent patch fixed this, but anything that hits you with acid or fire could hit you multiple times with the same projectile. You could get hit 5 times by a single blob of acid, and now that I know they had crit chances, it just makes so much sense as to why you'd randomly insta die for being looked at by a Bile Spitter or standing next to fire.

The 50% (now 25%) cooldown increase time was actually worse than losing a strategem slot. The time between strategems was BRUTAL. Sure as hell wasn't gonna depend on someone else to get a bag/weapon to bring a strategem instead.

OVERWATCH NERFS STUFF ALL THE TIME WHAT ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT

The difficulty of this game are fighting against the bugs and obfuscation everywhere.

I don’t fight the bots willingly unless it has to do with the major order

The game is only "broken" at level 9. At level 7 it's well balanced and fun and you can take machinegun turrets and smoke strike if you want and still do well.

Before nerfing I would rather see the lackluster weapon/stratagem being buffed to an acceptabe - good level, leave the currently good option and then balance around that new base. I mean it is true that 500KG bomb is better than the orbital rail cannon strike but it doesnt necessarily means 500KG needs to be nerfed, but rather ORC needs to be buffed, either a damage buff or a cooldown buff. If we go straight into nerfing the few stratagem or weapon that are good we just end up with a boring game that isnt harder per say, just unecessary more time consumming. And yeah we really needs more modifier that arent a blanket increases in call time/CD or modifier that just makes a type of stratagem useless for the entire game.

3:15 I really have to call cap on this, unless you ONLY play with your friends, playing with randoms guarantees at least ONE helldive mission having shit hit the fan and burning through your reinforcements, more so with bots.

Crossbow was fantastic on bugs before the nerfs. It could oneshot small enemies in a huge radius, to the point that you could often score 15+ kills with a single bolt to the patrol/breach. And medium bugs it could stun, until you dump 3-5 bolts into them. All of that, with a clear drawback of extreme friendly fire radium and damage. Now it's just Punisher but with less ammo both in clip and overall, lower fire rate and slower reload.

The country restrictions are 100% sony's fault. Steam will change it when told to and already has done with HD2. It went from 177->180->175 from sony's request. Sony has quadrupled down on the restrictions with 3 other games since then. Plus the steam storepage for HD2 was removed from the restricted regions which is something the publishers can request from steam. The tweet sony made only mentioned not doing the May 30th restriction. They said nothing about not doing it in general or removing the region restrictions (which were not there 32 hours before the tweet). Personally, I think sony's reason for this is they're going to try the psn bs again at a later date

You made some great points about the little amount of stratagems we get. I agree that we should be able to have more in mission.

7:10 all Team Fortress 2 players just got flashbacks when you said "rare high moments."

Very valid and good points brought up in this video. I reviewed the game negatively because of the mentioned issues, bugs, and strange balance issues - but I still find myself itching to play a few games a week. One thing that baffles me to this day is why do the orbital strikes shoots and reloads like a musket when it's fired from your highly advanced super destroyer while the eagle airstrike can carry 3-5 entire barrages of rockets. I really love playing off meta stuff like precision strikes and gas strikes, but when all my orbitals are on cooldown, I really can't do much else to support my team...

The 380 is not a good stratagem.

In regards to the localization thing, I am 90% sure it sometimes just stops a call in. There have been times were I was 100% too slow to stop a bug breach, but it didn't happen.

Wait...the break action shotgun is an "extremely rare" world spawn? I run into half a dozen on pretty much every map I play...

valve said they didn't do it.

Did you know? On the Factory Strider's tummy, there are 2 doors. EACH DOOR HAS THEIR OWN SEPARATE HEALTH BAR. SHOOT ONLY ONE DOOR AND KILL THE STRIDER MUCH FASTER. THEY DIE IN 3 COMMANDO SHOTS TO A SINGLE DOOR FROM FULL HEALTH.

I haven't played overwatch since the Blitzchung thing in 2019 but I distinctly remember them nerf stuff

Idk what ur on about for half the video. Nerfing stratagems? The game is too easy? Sure the game isnt the hardest but its def not the easiest. Primaries need a buff, and then u literally get one shotted from across the map while playing vs bots, bugs nursing spewers and bile spewers kill u in .5 seconds from 30 ft away and u cant do anything ab jt when theres 50 of them, not to mention 10 titans and chargers coming at u at the same time. And not even mentioning stalkers will combo u and shoot u 50 ft back u better have brought a weapon that will stagger or u wont ever get away from them. Orbital barrage is prob one of the most useless stratagems so idk y u even brought up the idea of it taking at least 2 slots?? Lmao, u use it once every 4 min, its completely random so u cant target the big enemies and u cant even stand in its 50 meter blast radius so u hav to watch it from far and hope that it takes out wtv it is u wanna take out. Also mission modifiers r so stupid and annoying and not fun to play when orbital scatter is a thing and half of the fun and useful stratagems r now made entirely useless. Going to eagles now 500kg isnt even that op, u get 2 uses and then 2 min cooldown which i think theres no issue, eagles r prob the most balanced thing in this game, it makes the game fun and gives u a sense of being in an actual warzone. Its not like u dropping literal nukes, u still hav to time it and strategize ur eagles. Wat they need to do is buff armors make them useful, i can agree to lower reinforcements if that will be done especially after primary buffs bc if u hav “unlimited” lives it also takes away from the intensity of the game. Solo missions u should get more stratagems like u said. Half of ur video i agree w, like primary buffs and armor buffs and mission modifiers having potential to be better and more intense. but the half of the game being too easy and strategems being too op i do not. I think most things need a balance on both helldivers and enemy side but to make the game more fun and more intense, not to make the hardest game in the world.

OK i get it! your good at the game!

I believe localized confusion just prevents non-mission based enemy waves from spawning in more than one area of the map. So if youre separated from your group and they get get dropships called on them by non-mission events (bot flares/timed dropships) you have 3 minutes of no dropships getting called on you. It does not however, affect patrols or detector towers. If your team sticks together itll prevent the bot flare from stackkng too many times but im pretty sure this booster (like many other things in this game) doesnt always work right

20:23 Valve has gone on record saying they didn't restrict the game. It was done at Sony's request, not Valve's. I'd link the statement but KZfaq doesn't allow links in comments. I'd also like to point out Sony didn't restrict the contries at launch, when they would have already planned to implement the restriction. This means Sony did in fact pull the bone-headed move to try and sell the game in countries that couldn't access PSN. While I can't link the statement from Valve directly, searching "who restricted Helldivers 2 on steam" gives a reddit link to Valve's statement as the first result, at least when I do it.

You know an impressive amount about the game for only 100 hrs! 👍 There are a few things I'd care to add, though. Enemies don't deal critical chance hits persay, we are just vulnerable to headshots which they do hit occasionaly in their wild spraying patterns, so our weakness is the same as theirs. Also, you were mostly right about the clear outshining some in loadout varieties over others, but only because it seems like you were primarily showing gameplay from bots, many of the strategems and weapons are balanced effectively more to one side than the other, which I'm sure will only be expanded upon further with the Illuminate. There are more loadouts that are effective with relatively equal ceilings for skill-expression than people often consider. I compiled this list for a few friends already so I might as well shre it here. Major TLDR here! Some examples against bots: ---The Dominator is as META as the Scorcher, if not more, for two-shot killing devastotors to the legs, oneshotting to their heads and the same with any bodypart of the chaff at anyrange, and effectively 3-5ing berserkers, all with massive stagger only matched by the Plasma Punisher. There's little need for a shield when using staggering weapons. This makes backpack support weapon pairings more viable. Pair the Dominator with the grenade pistol as well for one-shotting Scout Sriders which the Dominator can't penatrate. ---The Plasma Punisher is nearly as strong as the Scorcher with added stagger and a wider AOE range. It is only slower in fire rate and projectile velocity as most of it's tradeoffs. ---The Autocannon is the most devastating support weapon against bots and a fair tradeoff to not having a defensive backpack. Pair it with the Sickle (or other speedy chaff weapon), as hte autocannon with be able to deal with all else including structures so you don't need grenades or the grenade pistol for those, so you can bring other throwables and secondaries. ---The Counter-sniper is a strong balance between enough fire rate with good handling for chaff while also being effective at one-shot headshots at nearly any range. Pair it with the shield backpack to help reduce flinching for easier shot landing. It's very satisfying weapon for seeking accuracy over brute force. ---The Ballistic shield can be paired with the Pummeler which can literally fully stun targets after 0.5 seconds of sustained fire, the Senator or grenade pistol, and the AMR or laser cannon. THe shield allows you to tap into the niche capabilities of more weapons like the SMGs and secondaries. Some examples against bugs more specifically: ---The Incendiary Breaker especially, but really most shotguns, are far more effective here due to the increse of chaff varieties and the close proximity crowding they do. ---This rule follows with other items like the flamethrower, mines, cluster explosives, nepalm and gas strikes all being more effective against the more crowded nature of the bugs. ---Rockets weapons such as the Recoiless Rifle, Quasar Cannon, and EATs are more of a fun over optimal choice against bots. They can take out dropships but often leave most of the bots alive and only obstructed which can be more of a detriment sometimes. They can also destroy cannons easier by just having the penetration to hit the front. But outside of those benefits, it does everything slower and can't clear as much volume as quickly or effeciently as the other support weapons while they all still have effictive ways of dealing with the heaviest foes too. These weapons are a more fitting choice against bugs at least as the only real heavies are Chargers and Titans, both of which the Rockets handle perfectly. ---Bile titans create a strange dynamic where you can find similar effectiveness to the Rocket META typically used aginst them with specific pairings that give credit to items less effective against bots overall. One of these is following one rocket shot with a singe railgun shot making EATs and the Railgun each more viable than they are otherwise. Another strategy is following a Railcannon or Rocket Pod shot that breaks the Titans top armor off with an explosive primary or secondary to quickly finish it off. This makes the Railcannon a better pick than against bots as well. ---A lot of these points stand out because most of the supports and strategems effective against bots can deal with their heavies equally and relatively quciker than most supports can deal with Chargers and especially Titans quickly while also being able to deal with medium enemies.

ah yes, a game review by the knowledgeable basic player. many good points I agree. however many flawed points. like saying 20 lives is too many without noting each player gets five lives individually shared with the team. then somehow says the game is too easy where they very much have not been playing in public lobbies where the bulk of smooth brains can barely make it a full match. though I give credit, the primaries and balance are all pretty terrible. also regarding blocked countries. its entirely a sony stance. they are doing the same with multiple of their games.

Personally, I've never really understood the hype around Helldivers 2. Granted, I haven't played it. But it looks... Unfinished? Actually, unpolished or flawed might be better words. I hear a lot about it from friends, and others on the internet. But uh.... None of it's glowing praise. It's like there's always something to whinge about. Granted, some of these moans are totally justified. As our wonderful Monarch Cassius has pointed out! ❤Plus the whole random crit systems seems like peak wank. But if I hear my friends moan about the AR-69 Wifebeater being nerfed again. I think I'm going to become the unabomber. Even PVE games need some semblance of challenge, and balance. Otherwise you might as well be playing the Sims.

The main takeaways here aren't wrong. Max difficulty is fine in a full party, we have little control of whether or not we take large amounts of damage, nerf can be warranted. Still, some data if you're interested: I don't think anyone has found any proof of crits, (nothing about crits mentioned in damage info, projectile info, beam info, arc info, weapon info, throwable info etc, we have access to all of these with developer comments, but I haven't personally trawled through anywhere near all the info available yet) but we've found plenty evidence of hitboxes being jank. For instance, when shooting Spear at a Bile TItan, you can get the following results: - Hitting the head + explosion damage (1100 damage) - Hitting the head, explosion damage absent for no reason (1000 damage) - Hitting near the head, explosion damage included. (100 damage) There's also Dev rockets having a proximity detonation, meaning it should explode near you, but timing issues can cause the rocket to land inside you and still do direct + explosion damage when it should just explode nearby, doing the much smaller explosion damage (why does it even have direct damage, let alone such a large amount?). Plasma Punisher has the same issue. Enemy variants exists on difficulties. Warriors get meatier on D4, Hunters I believe bumps up on 7. A lot of enemies have 3 variants like this, not all of them bump on in health which says to me maybe they have behavioral changes.

I just play the game with the mentality that it's equivalent to a game in beta. Anything that doesn't work properly will be fixed at some point later. I'm just happy to be part of the development journey.

Rare high moments i’m getting flashbacks to tf2

I thought broken arm means slower reload speed and maybe weapon sway.

I like the idea of having different weights to each stratagems. Like we could have 100 points for a dive, and the 380 would costs 50 points, the orbital smoke 0, airstrike 20, etc... This could lead to funny builds and would allow players to have more than 4 stratagems (in a game where, as you rightfully said, strategems are the core of the combat mechanic). Nice video !

I was summoned by jump pack slander. Jump pack lets you access highground that would normally be inaccessible, break LOS whenever you want to to start hiding from enemies, its an instant disengage to let you reload or stim while flying and then be ready to keep fighting once you land, and it gives you extra momentum to add into grenade or strategem throws to give you essentially servo arms. Jump pack is a solid choice and does alot for its playstyle, even if that playstyle is not one others can appreciate.

I've heard whispers and rumors of stealth, and I haven't quite decrypted that enigma, but what I *DID* find out is that it's faster and more efficient to liberate a planet if you grind Trivial en mass as opposed to playing on the harder difficulties...unless a Helldive's Squad Impact is upwards of 100! Because assuming it takes like 90 or 100 minutes for that, and Trivial can be beat in about 3 minutes on the right mission type, 30 Trivial = 1 Helldive in terms of time spent completing. The Liberty (and XP that dictates Squad Impact) are not proportional to this time spent, PARTICULARLY as players are less focused on winning and more focused on looting (an additional inefficiency), and when there's 50k Helldivers online, the Squad Impact for Trivial is 2 and Challenging is 4. But Challenging takes 10 times as long as Trivial to complete, so I imagine this imbalance is magnified in Helldive. The takeaway is simple: less fun is more efficient, and no, people will NOT optimize the fun out of a game, at least not in this case. P.S. tedium under stress sounds like a good skill to build, *ESPECIALLY* when framed in a specifically military/combat context. P.P.S. The 380mm is too unwieldy to be really effective; maybe that Destroyer upgrade makes it more "consistently on-point", but personally, if it were an option, I'd rather modify Hellbombs with 2 changes. 1) No button pressing to arm the bomb, and 2) arm Eagle to carpet bomb a region with said Improved Hellbombs. That's how you do the 380mm's purpose. Semper Bellum!

The localization booster increased time between reinforcements by 40 secs iirc, so its pretty decent

17:33 Yes please. I want to stop using the eagle airstrike. There is no other reason why I use it besides making sure that I have a lower chance of failing. The stratagem rebalance would actually inspire alot of users to use "worse" stratagems

I don’t know where to begin with thsi

Suprised you like the 380 how do you use it i notice its not great for swarms they run through and only a few die and you have to be lucky for it to kill a tank

Your proposed idea for a Strategem overhaul reminded me of Mass Effect 3, and how carrying lighter or heavier guns would improve or penalize the cooldown times of your powers.

I agree, my main issue with balancing is that weapons have no unique characteristics whatsoever, after almost 200 hours of playing i can 100% guarantee you that there is no reason to not pick one of these two loadouts: Bots: Scorcher(kills: everything, except the strider, it can injure it, but killing it with it is way too costly) Revolver (has the most power and armor penetration) Railgun( one shots hulks on unsafe and 1-2 shots devastators) Shield Backpack, 500kg or eagle airstrike, railcannon strike or orbital laser. Bugs: Sickle( infinite ar to kill fodder with) Breaker Incendiary( ridiculous damage and ammo efficiency) Revolver(kill larger fodder) Quasar Cannon or Expandable Anti tank( to kill bile titans, chargers and objectives) Shield backpack( to stop acid from one shotting you) 500kg or eagle airstrike, railcannon strike(bile titans) or orbital laser(also bile titans). And its not like those strategems and weapons are all overpowered, its just that they are the only ones that together synergize in a way that enables me to reliably kill large groups of ANYTHING that the game throws at me, its the only way a solo can face the increased hordes of patrols without either: running away, avoiding patrols or clutching/popping off during the entire mission. The scorcher especially proves to be the most reliable weapon in the entire game, just due to the fact that it can kill ANYTHING, even if its very ammo inefficient, i dont think it deserves a nerf, i think it fits the role of an all rounder pretty well, its just that other weapons need to get reworked to fit their role better. "But the Jar-5 dominator is statistically better than the scorcher" The jar-5 is a REALLY good weapon, it trades the ability to ignore the armor on scout triders for the ability to kill striders, its just that its not practical to actually kill striders with it, so you are just trading being able to kill one of the most common enemies in the game for a lower ttk, it fits no role as a weapon. Every weapon should follow this, it either: kills a lot of something small really fast, kills a lot of something hard really fast, kills everything really slow or kills something really big fast.

"Im not paying 10 dollars for that"... how in the fuck you know all these exploits but dont know you dont have to pay for anything... Let alone not knowing double barrell shotgun is stratagem weapon?!

the truth is that enemies spawns are like an inverted pyramid, all armor and weapons systems are currently shallow and weapon stats and performance were not analysed correctly for the most part but lets see what will happen compared to the rest of the games this one has a solid base for it so adjustments and implementing new thing will make it better

"They'll be able to shoot you with standard accuracy directly through the smoke anyway" they say, as the background footage shows not a single shot hitting them through the smoke. No but like, did you place that smoke before being spotted or afterwards? Just asking because the footage seems to contradict your statement due to a lack of context.

Good video. I'm at 250 hours currently. Love this game. I think I just have too much fun laying about and living my best Helldiver lif...multiple deaths, to utilize exploits. Just too boring man, like you said. Especially at level 9. It's just way more fun to play the game the in-universe way, for Managed Democracy and all that rp stuff. I also play with randoms a lot so that's probably the biggest yank of the ol' gachapon right there, and quite the source of entertainment for me.

2:23 Stealth is great for bots but doesn't work for bugs

Apparently, the region locking for Helldivers 2 was supposed to be in place, but wasn't due to administration error? It's really weird to me, the entire situation honestly.

100% agreed with this. I'll have fun with EDF6 until they fix all the mess they've made

Get this man hired by Arrowhead. He’ll solve it all single handedly.

Back to ROCK AND STONE

Oddly the game weapon/strategem balance feels pretty balanced on bugs, but the bots are objectively more fun imo. Also, I bring the auto cannon turret simply as it’s good, while also requiring a bit of skill to not die

You don't sound like you want helldivers 2 to change for the better...you sound like you want helldivers 3 , there is literally not a single part of the gameplay that you didn't criticize, and your suggestions are all "delete everything and make it again from scratch" you also say everything is easy and you have too many lives in 4 player but somehow also complain that level 9 is too un balanced and hard...and you exclusively are teaching us how to abuse the mechanics of the game for "being optional" and then still complain your not having fun....look I'm not saying you don't have valid criticism, I'm saying do a double take on your opinions.

Broken arms increase aim sway, and literally nothing else Pretty much irrelevant outside of 100m+ headshots

At the very least Johan Pilestadt cares about the game he made

Love your idea about "strategem bandwidth"

I'm not going to argue that the game's equipment is well balanced: I feel like many weapons are way too similar and that random damage is bullshit. Those are unfortunate parts of the game you can't really get around, but the extremely questionable stratagem balancing isn't a huge deal to me when each loadout still offers a unique way to play the game. Throwing out the "meta" stratagems and avoiding any and all enemy encounters are both very clearly more effective options than the alternatives, but I love this game because equipping some funky loadouts can make the game so much fun, even with the weird balancing, and I hope this is an idea that Arrowhead keeps in mind going forward.

Personally I've been having fun playing significantly off meta a lot as long as I am with friends. However , for some reason whenever i get a random they tend to run into enemies and die literally 10-15 times in a row. Every. Damn. Time. I'm only 60 hours in and never have played stealth that much, but holy hell playing with randoms seems completely like hell. I might try to learn the stealth mechanics at this point to just not deal with bad teammates as much tbh.

One time me and my dad came over a hill towards a SEAF site, and found a patrol of like 30 grunts. It was super-fun to get myself behind them with a stalwart, and just mow them all down in a classic ambush. I think this was like difficulty 3 mind you, but still. No bot drop, absolutely off cooldown. The game can absolutely handle it, so this one seems pretty obvious to me. As for the two stratagems... hard choice. 500kg with extra airstrike capacity is a obvious one, precision strike before that point, but maybe smoke strikes? Smoke makes the game so much easier against bots, giving you a nice out for bad situations, a way of handling objectives in the middle of enemy swarms, ect. Its just so good. But i would say auto-cannon/flamethrower. The autocannon is niche as hell against the bugs, but dominates against bots. Flamethrower is similar, but for bugs. I still prefer the autocannon even against bugs, but the flamethrower is what i would take if i wanted to try hard bugs imo. Honorable mention to AMR and supply backpack. Pocket autocannon, 200m scope, nearly unlimited ammo, stims and grenades, or an extra 4 supply boxes for the team. Also, supply backpack is the first backpack you can get i think, so great loadout for new players. Also, smoke is great, already listed some reasons. But another one, it can destroy bot factories if you hit them directly.

No nerfs!