Controversial thought… maybe you’re it’s just user error? Because the devs have said many times, this game will never be a pay to win game. All guns are pretty balanced, and if you can finish missions on bots with the tools provided, maybe you should stick to bugs since they can’t shoot back? 😮 not even trying to be mean, just tired of everyone complaining about the game instead of enjoying it. It crashes, it’s buggy, it’s not perfect, okay? Go play COD? Go play destiny 2 or fallout 4 like everyone else. It’s a fun game, you’re not meant to be unstoppable. It’s a skill based game, not a “meta” based game.

"Now it takes the Eruptor multiple shots to kill things at the same rate as the Jar-5" Arrowhead Balance Team: "Thank you so much for your feedback, we hear your voices and we have nerfed the Jar-5"

The way I see it, the new Warbond is pre-nerfed to save us the effort of liking a gun then having to give it up when it's inevitably nerfed.

The Tenderizer is a « high caliber weapon » with reduced magazine capacity for that reason. Liberator: I didn’t know I was part of that high caliber gang… No no no wait Alexus, god, no! Don’t nerf my magazine size!

...a winter themed Warbond and the armor doesn't do anything for the snow? What in the fuck are they thinking?

Lmao they prolly forgot they buffed the liberator to have the same damage stat as the tenderizer.

alexus couldn't balance himself on the toilet if he tried

I saw a post saying “FYI: the smg stun locks stalkers!” Indeed. It did stun lock ONE stalker. It also took the entire magazine to kill it.

These are supposed to be 'Arctic Armors' yet there isn't an additional perk that stops you from sliding on ice and sinks less on snow. There are more important things they could do than weapon balancing.

Arrowhead needs to seriously work on how they balance, and set weapon values.

1:28 You just killed muscle enhancement. Rip. Will be dead next patch.

“We looked at the data and none of the weapons show a high chance of mission success…. But they are popular so we are nerfing them”-Arrowhead

New Warbond is trash! The Tenderizer is worse than assault rifle we started with in the game.The Pummeler is worse than the other smg we've had since the game came out too. All these new guns are useless. They need to fire Alexus and the rest of their balancing team honestly. Watch them nerf the decent primaries in order to make these guns seem viable

Literally what reason is there to pick Tenderizer? They're releasing premium weapons pre-nerfed bro 😭

I played with the SMG and Assault Rifle and it's honestly mind-boggling that they released an assault rifle that is objectively worse than your starting default weapon. Absolutely shocking level of incompetence for a veteran game studio.

I like what you said “lots of options, but little choice.” We are almost certainly given the illusion of choice here. And not only that, but it’s as if they’re offering us several cuts of steak. We pick the medium rare steak “sorry you can’t eat that, it has pink” they proceed to cook it until it’s burnt. Then we take the medium well “uh oh, a few of those still have pink” they burn those too. Now we are left with a couple medium well steaks with no pink, and a good portion of well done and burnt steaks that nobody wants to eat. Don’t invite your players to a barbecue, and serve them only well done steak and pretend like that’s variety. Maybe I want some chicken, or sausages. Or heck, I’d take fruits and vegetables at this point. But I only get burnt or unburnt steak.

At this point, one has to think that the people working in balancing, especially lead balancing Alexus(the same lead balancing Alexus who was in charge of balancing for Hello Neighbor 2), are purposefully trying to tank this game based on jealousy or something else. Unless you are brain-damaged, there is no way these weapons should have been released in this state. For those that don't know, Hello Neighbor 2 was a really fun game about sneaking into your neighbor's house. You could hide under the bed, trick him, and do a lot of fun things. This is a very crude description, but you get the point. When Alexus got a hold of Hello Neighbor 2, he took away hiding under bed, took away fun tricks, made the game terrible. The game obviously tanked, and now this scumbag showed up as lead balance dev for Helldivers 2. If he is not removed, Helldivers 2 will be a cautionary tale about how if your lead balance dev runs rampant, he can singlehandedly destroy your game. He's had multiple chances to make things right, but all he's done is dig his heels in and embarrass himself every time he spoke by responding with nonsense. Eruptor nerf for example, he claims no breakpoints were changed. Clearly brain damaged as it only takes 2 minutes to prove that is wildly incorrect. Takes 3-4 shots where it only took 1 previously. No one asked him to nerf Eruptor, yet here we are. He is either acting with malicious intent, or is a complete idiot. Remove Alexus, give his job to the lowest of interns, and I can guarantee you the game would improve exponentially.

I see why pilestedt was unsure about releasing this warbond and wanted to delay it. After all the outrage about nerfing weapons releasing 3 mid to bad tier weapons 2 days after would make the situation so much worse. tbh im worried for AH

Someone on reddit showed that the Tenderizer is literally just an old version of the Liberator, it uses the old ammo system where you have 10 mags and a supply pack gives you 5 mags. Its not only a straight downgrade to the current liberator in every stat (except 5 recoil) but its just a copy paste of an older starting weapon. Very creative arrowhead.

I’m not buying anymore warbonds period until Arrowhead changes direction on their weapon balancing.

i like how the two first armors are just black and white reskins of each other, really shows how creative arrowhead is and how much variety they want to implement.

1~4 difficulty weapons.

6:31 When I watched the trailer for this warbond, I was so sure that the armors would have a passive to walk easily through all terrains. They have spikes on the boot. And then, nothing.

Ima be honest...I love Helldivers 2, I've put 265 hours in it in two months and now...I'm not really even playing anymore. I got bored. I've called them out for their poor balancing and poor implementation of new ideas and warbounds and got hate in the past but now here we are again. I feel like they missed the mark with basically avery single warbound released, and especially with content updates. They had an amazing opportunity to keep us engaged after the massive push of the community to defeat the Automatons and that was the perfect window to develope the story further and release the Illuminates, but instead they just brought them back like nothing mattered. Also, they leaked many future content, many of which has yet to drop...it was cool at first because we thought we would see those things very soon, but instead we're still waiting on the new mech, the vehicles, the Commando, the Nuke, the Carpet Bomb, AA airstrike and so on....a lot of weird decisions from the management team in my opinion.

The game has lost a lot fun for me and my friend grp, and I noticed we were playing a lot less even with new content coming - All the loadouts my friends used to enjoy got nerfed to oblivion Instead of making underwhelming weapon better, they made good weapon underwhelming (so we just end up with less variety). The game is still easy as a 4man grp even on diff 9, we just get less tool to play with, - Solo playing has become exhausting with the patrol changes that still doesn't seem to work the way they intended it to (as we are getting 4man grp patrol timer, regardless of the number of players - when it used to be a different timer before depending on player count, this was tested by Luchs and has a YT video about it) I really hope they bring back the railgun and the quasar, so we can have a lot of multiple loadouts, even at higher difficulties : amr/any backpack, autocannon, quasar/any backpack, railgun/any backpack + better primaries. The railgun was supposed a high risk high reward weapon, but it's just a weapon that can kill you while doing less damage than the AMR or the Autocannon anyway. All the nerfs are narrowing down the tool we can use, when players just want variety and replayability - being gaslighted about it by the devs on discord is beyond obnoxious.

I'm with ya brotha, just glad the CEO see's we aren't having fun and plans on talking to the balancing team, dudes the only one who plays the game it feels

funny how its called Polar patriot but the incendiary grenade is the best thing in it

Thank you, people are to scared to say it’s trash.

Another important issue to note is that there's like this psychological dread to committing hours and money into new content for this game. I had 100+ hours since launch and loved it, but now find myself making excuses to not play. I would chalk this up to just being a personal thing, but my entire squad group feels the same way. When there's no guarantee the game will feel and play the way you enjoy from one week to the next because of regressive balancing, people simply move on and interest wanes... you said it best - this is how a game dies in slow motion.

Im so stumped by this games balancing team. The verdict is a straight downgrade to the senator IN EVERY WAY POSSIBLE. How does this even pass quality testing? Whats even the point of it?!

"A lot of options but very little choice" is a fantastic, FANTASTIC way of summarizing the direction that Helldivers 2 is going. We've gotten 3 extra warbonds to expand the number of things we can choose, but every one of them seems to have resulted in narrowing down the ones we can actually use if we want to have a good time.

This Warbond is dog shit… they missed the mark so hard. The name “Polar Patriots” makes you think, “oh maybe the new armor has new perks, like allowing the cleats/ice spikes to negate blizzard slow, or stops you from sliding on ice”. Nope. Maybe the new weapons are good? Nope. Tenderizer is just a worse Liberator, the Pummeler has stun, and is cool, so that’s DEFINITELY getting nerfed. The final gun is just a worse Scorcher. What a fail, the “balancing” dev needs a new job.

Literally the only reason I want to grind this warbond. It’s for the electric guitar victory pose and the CW-Kodiak helmet. I don’t care about the rest.

Booster doesn't work against bug spore exploder things on the ground or the little green guys that spit at you. Definitely a bit of a miss. Guess they should've delayed it...

Love how the heavy armors have ice cleats, but don't stop you from sliding on ice.

They're already suffering from realizing that their current practice involves developing 36 new weapons and armor sets every year consistently Its not at all sustainable, they need to change their philosophy

“A lot of options, but very little choice”.. this is perfect.

2:42 Not sure about headshots, but bodyshots with the Pummeller do stun devastators. Berserkers for sure; I pushed back berserker swarms with it in my first test of it. However not every shot seems to stagger them or the other devastators, more like a 50% chance to stagger and it does nothing if it deflects off the armor. It might take 2 or 3 bodyshots to stagger which, for a low ROF weapon like the Pummeller, can be kind of annoying. But it absolutely does stagger them.

6:53 tbh I completely agree, maybe something like Winter warrior passive: 1.Snow doesn’t slow you down as much 2. Enemies detection range decreased by 40%( blending in snow) Alternatives passives: 1. better accuracy (you don’t shiver when cold) 2. have better grip on ice (spikes on shoes) 3. Run faster and slide farther after diving on ice (spikes on shoes again) 4. Better incendiary damage ( put hand warmers in the guns(AH love fire damage))

We're all just living in the balance team's world, and it ain't pretty... or cheap for that matter.

New balancing philosophy, release very mid-bad weapons then buff it to the point of barely usable = players happy. Hope this isn’t the case.

Enjoying very much your videos OhDough! Thanks so much for getting up on the fence and speaking out about the poor balancing of weapons/stratagems in Helldivers II. I hope the developers get their act together soon. Peace.

When you compared the jar5 dominator to the eruptor, something else you should keep in mind is that the jar5 dominator technically has twice the amount of damage the eruptor does and its magazine. I'd love to understand how that's balanced, especially after the Nerf to the Eruptor

I think polar patriot should have Light/Medium/Heavy armor with the passives "Snowshoes: Movement in deep snow is increased" and ""Winter Camoflauge: Decreases range at which you can be detected in the snow." Like they're minimum contrast gear for a snowy environment. It only makes sense that they could, for example, have wider shoe bases to spread your weight out, preventing you from sinking so deeply into the snow if it's meant for SNOW combat, and if they're all white colors to blend in, then it makes sense for it to be harder for enemies to spot you and lower their chase/leash radius. It would also be a distinct buff specifically for snow environments so it wouldn't overlap with the general reduction of the scout armor.

Their warbond release method is interesting. One mid functional weapon and the rest is bollocks. Then wait a week and the functional weapon will be nerfed. It’s hardly anything to look forward to.

I genuinely don't understand how the FIFTH warbond still has light armor primaries... who is this for? Massive ammo capacity is mandatory as the tradeoff for doing no damage against 75% of the enemies, yet we got another very low mag size AR. Why? No more light armor primaries unless they're heads and shoulders above the ones we currently have.

Yeah I loved the eruptor, used to oneshot stalkers and made it a lot easier when they were chasing you, but now it takes about 3 ish shots to take one down and saying they are generally attacking you in groups and the long wait between shots it feels terrible compared to pre-nerf.

It feels like weve gotten zero content in almost 2 months tbh. Like we got the airburst and this new warbond, but both of those seem so useless that i dont even bother using them so the game feels like its had no update for weeks

In the future we can’t seem to increase magazine size or make weapons that can pierce medium to heavy armor.

You’d think with the recent community issues around balancing, this would have been a decent drop. But one thing I thought of is, I work in game dev, future content for live can be in progress several months ahead of release date, although it seems to be tighter at Arrowhead. I think my point is the community feedback probably hasn’t affected this release. Hopefully better to come, along with patches for previous Warbonds.

It is ironic, at the time where the game is set and the technology we have and the weapons are garbage, humans already have advanced technology in the game, we travel at warp speed.

I'm convinced the devs are in absolute fear of giving the players any form of power, strength...etc

Even before the Snoy screw up I stopped playing Helldivers since April 22 due to the Nerfs alone. Every time I see a new weapon in a video at work and plan to work my way towards it on my day off I see another video showing it got nerfed to the ground before I could get it.

Snow themed armor that can walk through snow and not slip on ice. Deagle that can function as a one-handed weapon, but goes akimbo when not carrying a shield or SSSD. A heavy AR that lives somewhere between the basic ARs and the MG support weapon. These are things that would have been cool and new. Instead we got more of the same. I'm actually baffled that aside from the arc armors, we have gotten no new armor passives. We have now had 3 premium war bonds added to the game, but only one new, extremely niche armor passive added. A damage resistance passive that only protects us from ourselves as there are no enemies that use electric weapons, lmao.

I was thinking the exact same idea. I love some of the weapons in this game. I also love the visuals and have favorites. I also don't want the devs to nerf the weapons that I use, so I feel like I can't ever congratulate the devs for making any weapon in the game and say that it feels really good because the devs might hear that praise and nerf/ruin any weapon that I find enjoyable.

Just remember Alexus is responsible for Hello Neighbor 2 and Now Helldiver 2 with the worst balancing. I heard that he only play on Difficulty 4

They clearly don't play their game which is sad, excuse me you just have to test out for 5 minutes to check that all the warbond is an absolute trash. They really need to do something about this, this is no longer bearable , you had a chance to shine after that sony drama now you are just helldiving yourself

Regarding SMG + Shield: One handed weapons have two more uses. You can fire them behind you while running and you can carry the SSSD and still use your primary. If people want that, this might be for them. But I agree that it needs to do something that the defender isn't doing already.

The humorously named Tenderizer as is kinda fun, but I agree with the description. This class or their weapons really fall under a 22 caliber round (223/556) which I fully appreciate. The Markman class along with the Statagem machine guns are a 30 caliber, then the AMR and Eruptor are 50 calibers. I was saddened to read the description of the Tenderizer since Arrowhead has done a pretty good job in damage differences between weapon classes. I also didn't notice any difference on the Booster. 100% agree on the SMG on higher armor penetration. I agree on the armor. The fail was showing Crampons yet not lending any benefits. "A crampon is a traction device attached to footwear to improve mobility on snow and ice during ice climbing. Besides ice climbing, crampons are also used for secure travel on snow and ice, such as crossing glaciers, snowfields and icefields, ascending snow slopes, and scaling ice-covered rock." I'm still hopeful but we are definitely seeing the seems here.

Ever since the sickle was released I’ve never used another weapon. There’s just no point. Decent damage, unlimited ammo if you use it right, good rate of fire, good crowd control. Damn near 95% of all the guns blow

Arrowhead Studios testing their warbonds before releasing them, challenge level: IMPOSSIBLE

My head canon whoever is in charge of super earth's weapon manufactureing is slacking off and needs to be trialed for treason.

I agree that one-shotting chargers with an eruptor is excessive. With that said, the "exploit" was that players were unintentionally consistently doing more damage with the eruptor due to more shrapnel hitting the charger belly. My question is, how the hell did they not think players would do that? Of course a larger target area would mean more shrapnel hits, so of course players would aim at the bottom of a charger's fat ass. And the fix for this was to replace the "random" 100 shrapnel with a consistent 40 damage explosion, which sounds good on paper if the eruptor only exploded into a single bit of shrapnel. It doesn't, yet the balance team somehow thinks a single 40 damage is *better* than a cluster of 100 damage shrapnel. That's like saying you're buffing a shotgun's pellet consistency by replacing it with a pistol. Whoever's in charge of the game's balance team needs to sit down and ask themselves what they're actually doing. edit: Also, the only major buff patch I can think of that really shifted opinion on a weapon, to the point where I see it constantly, is the Jar-5 buff. You know, the one where they nerfed the slugger, then buffed the Jar-5 to basically be a better slugger?

I still firmly believe what I've been saying since the start of this game: there needs to be less updates. They clearly can't handle so many updates so often, and while it's good we get content, it's weighed down heavily by most of it being bad. They need way more downtime between stuff than they currently do. They need to catch up on all of the bugs and crashes and actually making shit fun or useful.

Cutting edge and steeled veterans are the only warbond worth having right now. Jar 5 dominator, fire damage breaker, stun grenade, sickle and plasma punisher.

the game is absolutely fried. Stopped playing a month ago it was not ready to release (the game head literally admitted that several times) and what was working they decided to make not work anymore it was a good effort, it really was, but the game is done, I and many others are moving on

Your comment about keeping the good weapons in a witness protection program was enough to immediately get my subscription 😂

It's fun to have something else to work for to unlock, but there's nothing really good to be excited about unlocking in this warbond.

AH Balance Team: "We hear you. We'll will be buffing more weapons in the Polar Patriots war bond to have medium armor pen." Also AH Balance Team two seconds later: "To prevent players one tapping Wilburs from across the map, we've given Wilburs heavy armor to preserve the integrity of the game."

Out of all the builds I use in this game, I keep going back to the same builds I normally use for each. Bugs it's jar5 dominator, grenade pistol, stun name, 500kg, orbital rail, quasar, and hmg emplacement. Bots I use the same, but switch quasar for laser cannon or autocannon, and switch hmg emplacement for orbital laser and switch orbital rail for precision strike

One thing youre missing is how amazing the tendie sounds.. tickles the ear drums 😂

Remember, we need to get rid of the Alexus Kravchenko guy. He single-handedly destroyed his last game and is clearly antagonistic towards those who disagree with him. He will ruin this game and the CEO is a lovely guy but he needs to take a stronger stand against people like him and “Misty”

I still have to unlock the Cutting Edge warbond, which seems better in every ways.

The new booster is the epitome of "create a problem, sell the solution". Everyone's been complaining about the overuse of slow effects that are ruining the feel of the game, so naturally AH does nothing to fix that and instead creates a bandaid that makes those effects slightly less awful.

"ADMIRE THE WEAPONS IN THIS, NEW, SHINY WARBOND!" "ALREADY NERFED FOR YOUR PERSONAL CONVENIENCE!"

Still my biggest gripe of the last 2 warbonds has been that there's no new armor passive. It's such an under-utilized system and when you have such a strong theme like Polar Patriots you GOTTA give us something cool to work with. Movespeed in snow, no slide on ice, no fire rate reduction on cold planets... hell make it so snowballs do damage or stagger/stun. I trust they'll eventually get around to buffing the weapons but I really do hope they find the time to spice up armor passives eventually.

The tenderizer is just a paid liberator XD

helldivers has fallen into the same trap that every "live service" game falls into, being forced to pump out content like crazy leads to bad quality

I understand that the decision to nerf the breaker was probably made to diversify the gameplay, but considering the number of guns available now, if they were all balanced, we could possibly have the breaker's ammo capacity restored. It's the only shotgun I enjoy using apart from the incendiary shotgun.

I was really holding out hope for the Purifier. Given the charge up and fire rate you would expect it to be a heavy hitter like the eruptor (even in its current nerfed state). But it does almost the same damage as a single scorcher shot!? When factoring in fire rate that's like 30% of the DPS of the scorcher. It's unusable! WHO is making the decisions about how powerful these weapons should be?

I heard the Liberator was the outperforming every weapon and stratagem in the game. It would be a shame if the devs knew this 👀

Pummeler and impact incendiary are the only things worth mentioning imo. Still, id rather use the punisher and stun grenades. Back to V-rising he goes. Smart.

7:56 Adjudicator is actually not bad, I tried it in a few bug helldives today and it surprised me. It's gonna stay in my loadouts. Yes the recoil and small magazine is a rough combination, but you gotta treat it as something closer to a DMR or machine gun than an AR. Use the scope, fire in small bursts and actively try to not waste a single round. The damage and penetration you get in return are really good. Struggles with hunters and masses of chaff though. Would really benefit from the Stalwart being viable but you gotta bring that anti-tank... (Recoilless is insane right now btw thanks for the reload cancel tech)

Why the hell is the Tenderizer light-green and brown instead of usual Helldivers black&yellow pattern or dark-green like Diligence or Adjudicator? It looks like it's missing it's textures

What's the point in releasing guns in a paid warbond if they're gonna be esentially worse variations of already existing guns? When I heard that it was winter themed I thought it would have an ice thrower or an ice grenade along unique passives for the armors. To think that we're gonna have to wait an entire month to see if there's gonna be interesting new guns and all

Hoo boy, I was hoping once I left Overwatch I was done dealing with shit-ass balancing but here we are

Does anyone know if the flamer nerf for the hulks is working? Doesn't fell like it in the slightest.

I saw "stopping power" and thought that meant stagger. I saw new armour prefixes, CW, and thought new passives.

SMG's should be moved into the secondary weapon category.

everything apart from impact incendiary feels so lackluster, in current state this warbond should be half the price.

I think the main difference between the demolition warbond and the polar, is that no matter how over or underpowered they might have become...the demolition warbond at least has the 'concepts' of potentially interesting weapons, while the polar weapons are just mostly very obvious as to what they would become. Demolition had a DMR that could flick over to full-auto, a sniper rifle for a primary weapon, but it also had explosive ammo, and a crossbow, again, with explosive ammo. Oh, and almost forgot, a grenade pistol that we "hoped" would be another way of dealing with bug-holes/fabs. Theres a lot of ways those weapons could be really cool or really lame, but the "potential" for those concepts makes them fun to speculate. Now for the polar set? A "high caliber" rifle right after they converted the Adjudicator to being essentially a high caliber rifle. A concussive SMG, when nobody uses the concussive weapons nor the SMGs, so why would anyone use this. The pistol just looked like it would either be a "side-grade" or lower caliber version of the revolver. And finally, the only weapon with potential--a weapon that seems to be a mix of the Eruptor, Scorcher, Punisher Plasma, and the Arcthrower (I actually thought it was going to be single-shot reloads, kinda like the Railgun, but obviously have WAY higher damage than what we seemed to have gotten). The incindiary impact grenade is an example of a weapon we 'want', but is an example of the weapon having "no imagination" that could be applied to it. We knew exactly how it would work the moment it was mentioned--which is 'fine' once you get the weapon, but not so great when the rest of the pack is lacking imagination too.

I really liked the erupter. It killed bile spewers and brood commanders in one hit if you aimed right but it had enough downsides to ALREADY FEEL BALANCED. It complemented the stalwart on helldive bug missions so well. I was hoping the new warbond would have a erupter alternative but i got another turd for the collection instead.

i love this game but i’m finding it hard to consistently play as the game play is so repetitive after 30+ hours

the new stealth armor is great for drip, but thats it.

I totally thought the armor was gonna make it to where you didn't slide on ice, especially considering they have ice spikes on there shoes lol.

Step 1: warbond vote Step 2: release warbond Step 3: forget to make sure the warbond is actually good and ready for release... .....oops.....

ceo be like hehe maybe we arent balancing well. brother you are the ceo, step it up

I always used the defender on bugs for the sake of run and gun. The one weakness against the bugs w the defender was a stalker. Couldn’t run away because it will catch me. Everything else I can kill or run. But with this new warbond The pummeler is so much better than the defender, that I can’t imagine taking the defender on bugs again. I can go toe to toe with a stalker or two and stunlock them and kill them. The pummeler makes a no support weapons loadout against the bugs very viable. It’s super mobile. Great S-tier gun in my opinion.

Accurate take. I feel like the most you get from the pack is just the grenade and maybe the booster if it would make you immune to the slowing debuff from when you get hit by bugs, but probably only decent for team play where you'll have more choices for boosters. I'm guessing the numbers on the new AR were based on the old liberator numbers, or are just somehow bugged. They have said that the gun model is meant to be black and that the current green/brown skin is from an early build, so maybe the gun entirely is just not really the release version (despite making it to live). One thing I will say is that one handed weapons are nice for blind firing behind you so you can shoot while moving, so maybe the smg will be decent for that. Side thought on the Eruptor, my baseless hope is that the shrapnel removal is temporary while they take a second to put out all the other fires and, eventually, get back to restoring the fantasy of using the explosive sniper. It really needs the shrapnel to feel good, I think.

If they make the warbond too good people will complain it’s pay to win. If it sucks people say they’re getting ripped off. They won’t win no matter what they do.