I believe the reason for the name change is so that people don't think "explosive" means aoe damage, like the JAR-5 Dominator. The bullets do explode to the point of creating a concussive force on the target, but not enough to spread heat or shrapnel to anything in the vicinity. I assume people might have reported the Explosive Liberator's inability to do aoe damage as a bug, and honestly I never got the gun myself because that's what I thought they meant by Explosive Liberator. Went to check, apparently JAR-5 Dominator doesn't do aoe damage, and it's no longer got the explosive trait despite being in the explosive category. No idea what's going on there.

The game devs seem to have made a distinction between explosive trait and explosive category. Trait deals concussive/stagger, but category deals small aoe.

It is explosive. Among the assault rifles, it takes the fewest shots to kill a charger from the back. It couldnt do that if it wasnt explosive

@@phylippezimmermannpaquin2062 actually it takes the same amount of shots a standard lib does to the butt of a charger it was tested. Also, @NoIsHub, JAR-5 is still explosive, it destroys charger butts in like 7-10 shots. it doesn't need the explosive trait because it's in the Explosive Type Category.

@@lupvirga i was watching a video testing them yesterday so one of our sources is wrong

It is worth mentioning though that, although it does do more damage, it typically only keeps up with shots to kill of the standard liberator and never out performs against it. I hope they eventually buff it as there are just better options for medium pen right now and it gets left in the dirt quite a bit

Stalkers take like 2 magazines to kill. By that time they're eating your face...

​@@TheDapperSaintI think that's fine, when it's situationally gonna be more useful against the heavier armor guys. Weapons should be side grades, not upgrades IMO.

@@AlexDenton0451 I wish that was the case but the issue though is that it isn't sadly. The penetrator specifically underperforms in every area. - it's the bottom of the totem pole for assault rifles. - it's performance is overshadowed at mid-long range by actual marksmans - it's the worst option as far as medium pen goes BY FAR. And to top it off, a lot of the theoretical boons that come with medium pen are somewhat redundant due to low damage. You don't do critical damage for piercing the chest of devastators for instance. It takes mag dumping to do anything through that armor you penetrated, when you could've just dinked them in the head with any gun and killed faster. Yeah you can shoot the legs of striders, but it's ineffective at best and alternatives like scorcher are just objectively better at taking them out. I think medium penetration overall needs a rework tbh, but weapons like slugger don't suffer as much because they are at there roots a good gun, while the penetrator is a liberator with the gimmick of medium pen with crippled stats to "balance" it. There is only one case where the penetrator shines, and that's the weak point multiplier on brood commanders specifically, but even then the slugger and dominator get the same boon

@@TheDapperSaint If the penetrator has the same mag cap like the default it would've been alright. Choosing other primary guns should be about which target YOU want to prioritize. Concussion for heavy, Penetrator for medium, and default for adds.

It also does 4x headshot damage, which is tremendous against something like a bile spewer.

It still can use more ammo.

It had a bottleneck though, being the fire rate.

​@@thelouster5815 That's my biggest gripe with it

@@Brother_O4TS Increase its ammo to 36 and give it an extra mag or 2 and it’d be fine.

Sorry to say, but Liberator Concussive is pure cock'n'ball torture to use. It's likely to see enemy die from epilepsy than from the dmg this gun provides.

Its great that you have fun playing in this role, but most people prefer to be the damage dealer, so this weapon is antifun for the majority of the players

@@jingetsu4472 haha I get the feel. When I initially started using it I wasn’t a fan, a lot of the weapons with less snappy ergonomics feel odd. I feel it benefits pretty decently from armour with the +30% accuracy when crouched/prone but it’s not necessary. I still can’t disagree that compared to other weapons it’s not “amazing” by any regards.

@@Magnus_Fraus i like to think of all of my weapons as tools for certain jobs and not just dps. Maybe it’s an affliction form the -Tide games but having a utility over dps often is more valuable to me (personally) but I get the need for a standard of dps. I suppose regardless of any case I can make for the weapon it’s heavy context sensitive, and depends on the playstyle you’re looking for. After a few days of helldives I find filling this “support” role more enjoyable, and just as viable, after a while

@Heavynaut tested it last weekend, at first it seemed okay, but when a bunch of hunters, sentinels and other high tier stuff showed up, that's when its' damage starts to feel low. But it's fun to stunlock hive commanders, pushing them back for 1m each bullet hit, or stunlocking 2 stalkers at one time. It seems that this gun needs a good secondary weapon to shine. Well, we'll get some of those in future.

nah, its useless, that stagger effect is its ONLY positive trait, it needs double damage, bigger magazine and actual explosive damage as it was originally advertised.

@@fubarexress6359 I wouldn't say useless I think as it does need a buff, but if you did give it both double damage and a bigger mag it would become OP. Though I would say messing with the mag size and ammo reserve would help alongside a slightly higher RoF, but it is fairly useful because stagger can save you on many occasions.

​@@fubarexress6359 It's literally called "concussive" lol

This game too fast paced for all that downtime, it's a sucky gun plain and simple

@@diswazzi1683 Nah I just think people have the wrong game plan when going into this game. Your primary and secondary are not kill tools, they're defense tools. They aren't meant to kill everything you point them at, just keep you and your team alive long enough to call in the next stratagem or reload the support weapons that actually kill things.

I thought his voice felt familiar

@@phylippezimmermannpaquin2062 This the great book of grudges?

No way he makes total war? 😮I recently gotten into warhammer total war and it's awesome!

@@Aircastegamer hes a great source of info on that game. helped me greatly during my vampire game

@phylippezimmermannpaquin2062 definitely will follow, been posting my gameplay footage in this account of warhammer total war, currently huge fan of The empire, slaanesh and choas dwarf.

You would think so but for some reason it just doesn’t feel good to use magazine is so small

I like using it on higher level bot missions, since the low-quality troops often have light armor, while pairing it with an anti-material rifle or Spear. Now if only the Diligence counter sniper could also get some medium pen action, since I would use it to reliably body one-shot light armor bots.

lol, just use the slugger

@@GameFuMaster Slugger, Jar-5, Scorcher, hell even the Punisher is better at penatrating the face place of medium bots than the Liberator Pen, it doesn't have the capacity nor the damage even after Arrowhead's pathetic attempt at buffing it with full auto.

@@hawk9mm yeah, you're still requiring like a full magazine to kill most things that have medium armor.

It doesn't damage yourself so it's nice on loadout centered around crowd control

If the only thing you're looking for is stagger then the punisher or slugger is a better option. Doesn't need a dedicated person to run the concussive

It says explosive in the traits still. I wouldn't be surprised if that's wrong though. It would explain it's performance at that job. Although I don't know why they'd take that away and make a bad weapon even worse.

​@@zerkyzerk it still works. Surprisingly it kills berserkers in red glow on belly much faster than dominator

longer reload in exchange for an extra 10 bullets?

That's really the problem with all the Liberator variants. There are other primary weapons that do the same job, but better. Sustained DPS: the Defender, Breaker, and Sickle. Long range precision: the Diligence. High stagger: the Punisher. Medium armor piercing: the Slugger and Dominator. Explosive weakpoint damage: the Scorcher and Plasma Punisher. Its fine for the standard Liberator to be the "jack of all trades, master of none" since its the starter gun. But the others, specifically the Concussive, feel like they need something more to make them stand out more.

Jack of all trades Master of none most often better then a Master of one, is a saying that only really works when the choice is be strong in one field be powerless in another and for a game where you Can have 3 weapons and some stratagems to help out with any problems specialising is best even if only specialising in a slot because you Can be a generalist by using all 3 slots rather then needing 3 generalist guns

But of course. Democracy demands it!

@@zerkyzerk nice!

They suck cock, stick to the breaker and slugger, THE ONLY 2 PRIMARY WEAPONS IN THE GAME

Yep, slugger has the knockback and the medium armour penetration, and is absolutely deadly

The main reason youd use the Liberator is it takes a shit ton of medals to unlock the Slugger, so its viable for like 20-30+ hours