Helldivers 2 Devs Promise To Tune Down Heavy Armor Bugs In Response To Nerf Complaints

Last week saw Helldivers 2 receive its first balance update, which proved to be extremely unpopular with the game’s community, particularly because of the nerfs it made to the Railgun and other fan-favorite weapons.

Prior to the update, the Railgun was the weapon of choice for taking down heavily armored bugs like the Bile Titan and Charger in higher difficulty missions. The one shot one kill weapon’s effectiveness, however, was significantly reduced following the nerf and subsequently made it harder for players to take down the monstrous bugs.

Amid the ensuing backlash, Arrowhead Games explained that the nerfs were necessary to encourage the use of support weapons and stratagems as primary offensive tools in line with the studio’s vision. That being said, the team is willing to make a few concessions to appease the soldiers of Super Earth. Unfortunately, they won’t be buffing the Railgun back to its former glory. Instead, the team is looking into adjusting the spawn rates and health pools of tougher enemies.

“I wanted to take a moment this afternoon to let you all know that we've heard your concerns over the last few days regarding enemy spawns, enemy armour, and the ability to kill these enemies,” an associate community manager said on Discord. “I can confirm that we're currently looking at changes to the spawn rates and health pools of heavy enemies, and will be attempting to spread them out more to prevent large spikes of tougher mobs appearing at the same time, as well as making them a bit easier to bring down. This change should go out in a future hotfix—no date as of yet.”

The team has also removed the 50% damage penalty for the Recoilless Rifle and the EAT-17 Anti-Tank Weapon when hitting enemies at an angle that deflects the shot. “[…] Combined with the upcoming adjustment to health and spawn rates, this should make the larger enemies a bit less common, instead spawning more ‘chaff’ enemies to support them, and should allow players to bring these enemies down with a single well-placed shot,” the Arrrowhead CM added.

Both weapons are significantly slower than the Railgun during its glory days but they should be able to deal with the thick-skinned bugs just the same. There’s also the Flamethrower, which was buffed with the update to make it more effective against Chargers and smaller bugs. I’m not sure how it fares against Titans but you’re probably better off using something with a little more range.

Meanwhile, Helldivers 2 players have finally managed to unlock the EXO-45 Patriot Exosuit when they steamrolled through the entrenched Automatons on Tien Kwan and liberated the factory planet four times faster than the developers anticipated.

If you’ve been experiencing server issues, its because everyone is clamoring to jump into the newly unlocked mechs. Arrowhead says that they’re aware of the issues and are doing what they can to fix them.

Hey everyone!

With the successful push from the community to take Tien Kwan and the subsequent enabling of the mechs our servers have a hard time coping, the team is aware and doing what they can to mitigate. This intermittent issue is caused by too many trying to acquire the…

— Pilestedt (@Pilestedt) March 8, 2024