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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arc based weapons are very inconsistent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you for making this video!!

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

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

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

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

Why is a tesla tower video 23 minutes long.

loving all these helldiver dives of the gear

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

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

About the unpriming, I'm not sure if it works as well as a client because I have been zapped while prone. When it comes to its performance though, I have had the most success on bug High Value Asset Extraction by placing it on top of stairs next to a gate, and using napalm strikes to burn the access to the stairs, all while being posted up at the gate behind. It can do a lot of work IF you cover it and "tower defense strategy" so that the enemies need to walk quite a bit to get in melee range. Chargers would not reach it or prioritize it, but any bile titan would ruin the fun. But really though, Napalm strike + Tesla Tower is an amazing combo against hordes defensively. It works because you are close enough to draw aggro, it's elevated so it takes longer for bugs to reach it all while it's able to damage them, and you also cover its back. I think it needs more health AND/OR be less prioritized in terms of aggro compared to players or other sentries, more range with a priority system to prioritize enemies for gameplay/fun reasons OR a higher fire rate, stagger because look at the lightning on that thing, an audio cue for when you are targeted, like a buzzing static noise like when thunder is about to hit you, and, most importantly, they need to fix arc weapons so that they arc properly.

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

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

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

I came to this video to see if I could learn tips and tricks for using the Tesla Tower. I learned two things: One, the Tesla Tower is even more confusing than I thought it was. Two, I can punch-block automaton grenades?! XD

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

Been loving the Arch Thrower. Such a great fun weapon. Even started using the Arch Blitzer on Bug missions only. Very surprised by its effectiveness. I gotta completely agree with you on the Tesla Tower. Been using it on Defense mission with Bots and Bugs and it almost immediately dies every time. I even have the new upgrade for explosive resistance and I can’t tell the difference. Seen one rocket take it down. The devs need to take a good look at it. It needs love.

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

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

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

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

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

Shocking information! What an electrifying experience!

I think another thing that needs to be tested is how the tesla tower performs when there's two to four covering an area. As sucky as it is for them to target each other; I still want to see what it would be like for four towers to hide behind a corner and ambush targets. Maybe the 3 second delay could be countered when there's already three other towers priming? I think some of the ways the tower needs to be buffed to be viable is to allow it to do heavier stuns and resist a little more damage.

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

Great Video , very good information.

Great job with the extensive testing. Sounds like the Tesla Tower can be summed up in two words though. "Not worth".

Plottwist: Tesla Tower is more effective on players (PVP Foreshadowing)

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

You said the tower reaches farther and hits more chains than the other arc weapons. Considering this, and that helldivers are the most conductive targets for the tesla tower (because we carry and call in the most metallic objects on the field) can we call in the tower on ourselves, wear the arc resistant armor, and be the hottest damn capacitor the tower's ever seen? AKA can i have the tower fire at me then arc to nearby enemies?

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

Can you use a Tesla tower to extend the range of arc thrower and chain it to further distance?

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

That fkn Tesla Tower will kill you faster then any bug

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

Very impressive testing.

rly informative and good video

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

Step one, throw it at your team. Step two, profit

the only meta use ive seen for the tesla tower in my 150 hours is when the Silo event was goin from the major order a month ago, i remember it was good area denial with a decent cooldown

only telsa could be viable would be to increase it health or make it invulnerable and only stuns enemies. Also make it quick it replenish so it can be used as distraction device.

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

Feels like this (and the mines) are only good at like difficulties 1-4, where the Chargers are few and Titans non-existant.

I use them when running away from bugs. I will go between rocks or a small opening and place one down in the smallest opening.

EMS orbital strike + Tesla is a thing and the only wayto use her well, very good against bug, not that bad against automaton, thx.

Well done. Very through.

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

Would be cool if they let it generate a persistent EMS field while it is active.

Did they even test this game before they launched it? All these issues makes me feel like we paid 40 bucks for an early access game. If I were to design this thing, I'd make it work like a plasma ball toy that consistently shocks everything that gets too close, instead of one bolt every 3 seconds. To balance it I'd just make it get weaker the more enemies are being shocked at once, so it's strongest in single target like originally designed but still decent for add clear

Thanks for this, I 2as thinking of buying it next. That's going to the end of the list now 😂

was playing defense and put tesla on stairs kinda on titan head level and think it managed to kill him, dunno was on helldive and to much of thing are happening to be sure