While the knife isn't very good, it is funny to note it does almost double the durable damage of the new mech.

Anecdotal evidence from Reddit claims that knives ignore shields (i.e. the Shield Generator backpack strat), so they're potentially much more useful than grenades once the Illuminate join the war

In my opinion, u should be able to pick the knives up after throwing them

saw a reddit post that someone used the throwing knife on a teammate and it went right though the persona shield generator. That led a lot of people to speculate that the knives are really meant for illuminate faction since in HD1 they used a lot of shields that you had to take out before damaging them directly.

Instead of taking up a grenade slot, it would be so cool if there was a melee slot to override the usual buttstock punch. I'd even be fine with it having limited uses as it does now, but when you're "out" you start swinging with a knife instead of throwing. That would give some fun options to create different melee weapons later on like power gloves or archaic weapons like swords and spears.

the knife should have a gimmick, like "Magnetized, so it returns to your hand when pressing fire again" or "Inflicts shock/burn/stun helping against priority threats", or maybe "homing beacon, nearby stratagems now track the knife to drop directly on it" or "Armorer breaking, Places hit with the knife counts as exposed armor, allowing you to shoot into the knifes spot to inflict direct damage" If its damage/DPS isn't useful, it should have synergistic utility

The fact this warbond didn't let Old Painless out of the bag should be a crime.

Heldivers: bring knife to a hellbomb fight

I honestly feel the throwing knife would've been better as a secondary rather than a grenade, along with having much more if them to help it fit that role. They're slower than other current secondaries, but they also don't need to be reloaded at all and are completely silent so they'd still find use in said role rather than taking up a valuable grenade slot.

BUFF THE ARMOR PENETRATION. Imagine seeing a knife in the face of a hulk as it explodes

Missed opportunity to not allow melee with the knife

Getting extra armor pen so we 2-3 shot hulks to the face WOULD BE HELLA FUN!

It completely makes sense in terms of realism that it wouldn’t damage certain armour but they are going to need to give us a massive capacity of knives to make them viable. Also retrievable knives, lots of stagger so we can use them as a single target stun grenade and maybe gives us a damage buff if you ricochet the knife to a second enemy?

They should make it so that when you throw them, you can pick them back up. You should also deal double damage with melee attacks imho (as long as you have at least 1 knife available). The new armor set passive should apply to throwing knives too. Even with those changes you wouldn't call them "good". Feels like a big missed opportunity.

I can’t see any way to make a knife competitive to a grenade. The knife should be a free backup you get when grenades run out.

It needs: re pick up and possibly the bleeding effect if hit by one.

They're alright for stealth. I pretty much expected them to be exactly this strong. But I did think they'd go with 12 instead of 8, due to how much versatility you lose out on.

It feels like you should have more knifes I really don't think 2 knives are doing the work of a single grenade. But it is possible there may be a really high skill cap on them with the bounce. You really should be able to stab it's a freaking knife and knifes should also be able to be picked up. On the other end they could make the knifes a little weaker but give you infinite of them.

4:42 bottom left ayo???

It would be interesting if the knives were electrified and could stun individual targets if left alive. They could arc between multiple knives to make up for the lack of crowd control.

thinking about "commando" theme.....its about stealth i think...this probably do 0 aggro... thinking about sound....it should be the most stealth weapon

Charger legs have been known to have weak points that medium penetration will go through. 6 shots from the senator will kill a charger if you hit the same leg each time

Man, I appreciate the armor value being as high as it is, but being able to melee with it and pick it up should definitely be a standard thing

One of the first things I did with the throwing knife is headshot myself by diving backwards into shallow water (to trigger the janky animation) and throwing it.

yeah this is about what I expected. They are a stealth option for grenades. against bots, it's not really uncommon when you try to stealth on them to find a situation where a silent takedown would let you get in unseen, but can't quite get in melee range for it undetected. This is just a neat option for stealth commitment, specially if you bring an orbital EMP to substitute the stun grenades.

Great video

As far as the current Galactic War stands, throwing knife is useful when you run out of ammo and you need to finish off one more foe. But in that case, I'd rather bring an impact AND be able to break bug holes

Yeah if you could pick up spent knives, I feel like it would be a good weapon. You still might not always take it over grenades, but at least then it would be good enough that you'd seriously consider it. I think that's the kind of balance the game needs. If we had more loadouts that worked, it would be pretty cool

Looks like it does more DMG than the purifier after the buff 😅

They should allow it to be picked up

Honestly it seems like the knifes are best at staggering enemies while doing a nice chunk of dmg. A fun alternative to nads and a good addition to the game

My personal change wish for this weapon would be that you can only carry one but you can kill hulks and chargers with it if you hit the weakspot making it a high skill weapon that looks cool

Great work catching the bounce mechanic! If AH can work out the tech, guaranteeing a set number of minimum bounces would be a fun way to buff the knife in the future.

"But what kind of madman would actually attempt to kill a factory strider with throwing knives" a true and patriotic helldiver

They need to make it mega critical strike like guaranteed one shot on the hulk if you hit the eye, also give enough armor pen to hit hulk eye obviously

"Imagine the scenario, you just ran out of ammo, a bug is closing in, and you dive backwards and throw a knife right into its head" - Someone who apparently has never actually played Helldivers 2.

The knife should pin the enemy down for 3 seconds and do a small bleed effect, kinda like a weaker stun nade but with an effect to make it different.

They have already mentioned not only the idea of picking them back up but also using them as melee but nothing stuck well in development. To tell you the truth I'm not surprised I play hunt showdown and to this day you still lose knives or simply lose the ability to pick them up when by all rights you should be able to There is...the third option DRG make them hit REALLY hard

regarding the numbers for chargers: did you test only with behemoth chargers (beefier) or normal chargers as well?

I think it should be a secondary with retrievable ammo so you can still run stuns. The crosshair is also way off. Idk who the hell designed it but they need their eyes checked.

Anyone else noticed that the recoiless got its reload speed nerfed..?

Picking up missed knives is Apparently lost technology!

you can die from your own knife, today i found out and luckily i recorded that

Hey takibo - how many knifes would make knifes worth using, do you think? If you held 20? 100? Infinite? I don't think I would use them even if unlimited TBH, the other grenades are just so useful.

Oh yeah, there's something wrong with walker'S legs. I noticed it too. Some Dominator shots just bounced, some caused knockback but no or little damage, and sometimes the walker just went down with 2-3 into the leg. It's weird and the main reason I returned ot the plasma punisher.

I feel like they need to buff the knife to be effected by some boosters and armor passives like you noted. Also resupply to 10/10 not 8 with the engineering kit is probably a miss on their part.

Honestly they should make the knifes superheated and have them able to pen a hulks face plate. Making them a fun but risky alternative to the thermite grenade for taking out heavier enemies. This wouldn't be too OP imo but it would be pretty fun.

Its criminal the Knifes don't act as a Melee weapon when equipped

I've noticed that the throws of the knife seem inconsistent sometimes with how far they go as the knife seems to wobble sideways in midair. Is this an actual problem, or am I just misjudging the range?

We should be able to take out the knife like a grenade and melee with it. Also, picking it up after throwing would also make it better. Last, maybe ad a tiny tiny bit of auto-aim when throwing it at automaton heads. Those changes would massively improve it

FYI the Behemoth Charger variant now has different stats than the regular Charger, including a higher health pool, so you can't test weapons for Chargers on them anymore.

I think the best balace for using throwing knives, is that you can pick them back up only if they bounce or make their way to the ground. If you throw a knife into an enemy and it deals damage, you shouldn't be able to get it back and need to resupply

What's up legend.

"The enemy can't press a button, with a wounded hand!" =) Knives also have the hidden bonus of "Coolness + 3" Stay crunchy

A good idea would be to make knives deal more overall damage and add a synergy with armor: +1 AP while you wear servo-assisted armor and +50% dmg while you wear peak physique armor. That'd make them at least somehow useful in right circumstances. For now - it's just a meme, like a revolver had been before it got some love with loader and damage buff.

We need to be able to pick them back up and also used as a bayonet on our primary just like on HD1...

If only we can pick it back up

Takibo, i have a question. I recently made a damage calculator for myself for hd2, and ive checked multiple times if my formula is correct (which i do believe is). Issue is that for the knife with its 250 impact damage and 100 durable damage at ap3, the heatsinks of cannon turrets and tanks, which has Armour 3, should be taking 30 knives to destroy instead of 15. That is clearly not the case here. Ive ran my calculator against hulks heatsink, guard head, nursing spewer, and devastator chest - everything checks out, as shown in your video. Is there something funky going on here? I cant use the official discord, one is i got banned for reason unknown to me (despite having never posted there) and two the helldivers community is known to propagate a lot of false information. Any thoughts? Also i do believe the reason why for the cannon turret test you have 15 to 17 knives used is because of the angle at which the blade struck reducing their AP. Edit: for cannon turret it should be 15, theres no issue there. For tanks are you absolutely sure its the same as the cannon turrets? Seeing tanks have double the HP as cannon turrets

Should have been made into a meme weapon can pen and kill anything in 2 -3 knives as it has zero utility and you have to throw them

I wonder if it has a hidden mechanic such as it's damage is multiplied when used against bleeding targets.

I just dont know why you would ever pick this over either impact grenade.

You can equip and aim with the knife by pressing 4 on PC

charger legs armor inconsistencies has been a bug since release. All weapons can shoot charge legs when they are charging inconsistently. larger projectiles are much more consistent at bypassing the armor.

The knifes vs. heatsink testing is flawed, they updated the heat syncs to account for the direction in which the attack comes from. You should redo the test to see if there is a difference or not since they did put it in the patch notes, love the videos!

I was really hoping you would be able to melee with them with the gun equipped for bonus melee damage

I think Striders in particularly are bugged out. my Dominator is being very inconsistent when trying to take them out

Honestly, Viper Commando Warbond is awesome. Textures and armors look cool. We got new emote finally. The new armor perk is amazing (try it with something like Dominator, AC or HMG). Carbine is CQC monster and awesome against bugs. Bushwacker is just pocket sawn-off shotgun that melts even Berserkers and would probably fair well against Stalkers (didn't play bugs with it yet). Finally, while the knife is a bit niche, it's a massive game changer for stealth players of which there are some. You can finally take out some stragglers silently. It seems to even one shot Devastators if you hit their head which is good.

They should make it where if you hit something with the knife it would have an electric discharge and deal extra damage to the hit unit causing stun too.

If you could pick them back up they would absolutely be worth considering for regular use. Otherwise I guess they are fun for a change but hard to take seriously when compared to grenades

How do you apply the Paint from this warbond to the Exosuit??

Would be nice to pick them up after throwing, and being able to use them as a melee weapon

Definitely need to petition Arrowhead to allow us to do melee attacks with the throwing knife. Would be great for stealth.

The bug with the resupply is still present so maybe when that is fixed we will also get full knifes with a supply pack

It just occurred to me that if you reload a lot this is actually pretty good. A nice "SWEET LIBERTY" weapon when you need to reload everything. "me with my plasma punisher, revolver, and autocannon." It may also be pretty good with the blitzer to give you something to use between reloads.

The fact that it takes the grenade slot and you can’t one shot a spewer head, useless

It does seem to stagger the berserkers in the final clip! Not bad.

It seems that, at least for now, the knives are not a practical option for missions above difficulty 3. I’m not opposed to a single-target throwable, but it needs to be surgically accurate and an instant kill for the vast majority of enemies currently in the game, just to be a decent alternative to the more versatile grenades. Even after that, it would have to be a very specific build that works in tandem with a varied team. One can already feel the loss of destructive potential when wielding stun grenades, and even those make up for it with their unique ability and surprisingly easy cooking.

I watched a video of a guy using them and it was triggering alerts from bots even when they were prone wearing scout armor. Is it really silent.

Ayo, 11 charger back shots is crazy

What about the armored Bile Spewers? e.g. the "mortar bugs"? They have armored faces.

i think they should keep the damage to the charger. that would be a fun little bonus

how many knives for the special stalkers?

Yeah knives need a buff. Pick up and full re-stock on any ammo box pick up. Even if you had infinite ammo with knives they wouldn't be op.

I never expected the knife to be good. It's a meme weapon. A movie reference. However, I do hope that if melee gets added (which is going to take a fair bit of time, I'm assuming) that the knife gets moved to that category and becomes more useful

The knife is cool and I'm sure a good diver can make it work. But it needs some serious tweaks. You should be able to both pick them up and use them for melee. Also if an impact can do so much a knife can't the knife needs to be really good at what it does. I feel like it should sever most limbs with one and kill up to a hive in one shot. devs and broods in two. It has to really stand out as it isn't killing any heavies or taking out and infrastructure. It also can only kill one at a time and it needs to do that really well.

What about the new booster?

There's a ricochet icon!????!?! I have never seen that pop up ever, even if my shots are ricocheting off something and the animation of it doing that is visible.

Feels like knives should be a secondary, instead of using grenade slot

Do they count as melee kills in career stats? I really hope not

I need tactical tomahawks, and they need to make them both usable in melee, giving you the dmg buff. Also, the muscle enhancements should do what it says it does and buff it more...

Meanwhile DRG has throwing axes that are incredible and probably drillers best throwable. Cause they do huge damage and have a little shockwave

I hope they give us like 25 knives so we can go completely silent or something, a knife only run would be sweet Also we should be able to equip it as a ‘melee weapon’ for increased melee damage I used a new armor set last night and the 50% melee damage increase wasn’t really noticeable. With a knife adding another layer to that though, I could see it being better. In a game that punishes you for being close to enemies, I don’t think it would be OP for them to give us viable melee options. Hell, I would love a primary gun that has worse stats than the liberator but an axe bayonet or something for a massive melee boost.

Sometimes it's okay for something to not be as efficient as a grenade. Sometimes, its okay if it looks cool and is fun.

The charger is not a bug, the AMR has armour pen 3 and it can hit the legs. The legs have lower armour pen than the face. However pretty sure the AMR takes more shots.

Will it one-shot your teammate with a body or limb shot?

I feel like since this is a one enemy type throwable it should be a oneshot for any enemy you can hit in the head whos armor isnt strong enough and to balance it make your restock only give you 2 or so knives so you cant just oneshot every enemy as long as you can scavange enough. Or let you reuse knives from killed enemies who you hit with no damage change.

I hope thermites get buffed some day

Should limit the carry amount to 3, but allow you to pick them back up. They need something more to make them viable. Non explosive, so very limited. Therefore at least let us pick them up continually.

Knives are a funny stealth meme that might be… usable against the illuminate whenever they show up. Frankly I didn’t expect much else from them and don’t really care if they’re viable compared to grenades.

Besides illuminate possibilities with these, this makes me sad. I was hoping since the armour passive was melee dmg that the knife would enhance melee. Or at the very least we could pick the damn things up. Mabye one day...I just want it to replace my hilt bash with a face stab, is that so much to ask :( At least the bushwacker is pretty sick.