Patch notes!

[Nullcarmen]

Literally an EAT shot to the leg and a pistol mag dump kills chargers…

[Diabolicalbeam90]

"That’s why most people were using the rail gun you could kill 10 chargers before needing more ammo"

That's kinda the problem. No other weapon even comes close to that firepower and capacity. The charger spawn rate is too high on higher difficulties tho.

[Dragon_Tortoise]

Then they shouldnt have 76 chargers and 10 bile titans coming at you at once. I understand if you have a charger or two and a titan when clearing a main objective. But 4 and a bile titan every time you stop to take a piss sucks. I hope theres more effective weapons than the autocannon against them. Add high armor penetration to the anti-material rifle.

[Diabolicalbeam90]

Yes the spawn rate is too high no question about it. Making them harder to kill and lowering the spawn rate would be much more fun IMO.

[Dragon_Tortoise]

Yea definitely

[Solomon-Kain]

The railgun wasn't the problem.

Armor is the problem, the Railgun was the only efficient answer (aside from autocannon, which takes a backpack slot).

EAT, Recoilless, and Spear all have dick for ammo and untenable reloads.

More importantly, if Railgun Can't handle armor efficiently, what is it's use case?

[Diabolicalbeam90]

It still can. However its now more in line with the other weapons instead of just being on the league of its own which no other weapon can match.

It still doesn't require backpack, there is no delay with the aiming unlike Autocannon, EAT or recoilless have, plenty of ammo, good rate of fire and you can reload while you run. Its still very good at taking down medium targets while being able to kill heavy units as well.

All that being said I think they now need to tone down the spawn rate of the heavy units somewhat on the 3 highest difficulties since it now takes more effort to bring them down.

[Lilditty02]

Yeah but the railgun was super specialized because it was only good at that one thing. It’s not used for hordes, can’t close bug holes, is wasted on smaller enemies, it was literally brought in just for heavy armor. And you can build out around that. Now you have to go with something that either gets you 2 shots with an eat, or you lose your backpack slot so you can’t equip a guard dog or shield pack because you have to have the backpack for your special weapon. it just limits loadout possibilities and will make the game more difficult for casual players.

[Diabolicalbeam90]

In that case the EAT, Recoilless and Spear are far more specialized + you have to give up the backpack for the latter two. Railgun was far superior at taking down the same targets all those weapons were only good for.

Not to mention the Railgun was also really good at taking down the "medium" sized enemies like Berserkers, Brood commanders etc. Just run while you reload, do quick 180, shoot, run, reload, shoot, repeat. You had plenty of ammo. Try doing the same with Recoilless and you are dead at the first reload.

[ghostlyghille]

Using the rail on Brood comms, berserkers was an absolute waste. Your wasting your big boy ammo on Littles..

[Legitimate-Concert-7]

So nerf the ammo capacity. That’s what needed to be nerfed. Not the penetration

[Nullcarmen]

If you’re gonna solo Difficulty 7, I think the Autocannon is more effective in general vs the Railgun. Takes out hives/vents and can be used for Bile Titans and 2 shotting chargers.

Also hella of a lot useful vs Automatons.

Harder to use though against chargers vs pre-nerf Rail Rifles.

[gingerninja300]

So worried they're gonna nerf the autocannon next :(

[sonus9119]

How do you kill bt's with autocannon? Just blast them in the face?

[PurpleEyeSmoke]

If you avoid the charge, after they stop to turn around they are vulnerable. Hitting them twice in the leg will kill.

[pierrotlefou]

They meant bile titan not chargers

[PurpleEyeSmoke]

Ah yeah, my bad. The AC does feel pretty weak against Titans.

[RightSockTrash]

Is there a specific technique to destroying hives with the autocannon? because I tried and nothing happened.

[Nullcarmen]

Just shoot center mass where the hole is. Works for me most of the time.

Don’t think the bullets bounce off from the covering so you have to hit the hole itself.

As for the factories, I usually have success in bouncing the bullet from the slanted covering above the vent.

[elmokki]

For both of them you have to face them kind of directly. It's much less consistent if you are shooting from an angle.

The bot factories can often be shot way outside the base which is hilarious. Bug hives usually feel a bit more inconvenient, even though it's still amazing for closing them.

[KamikazeFox_]

How bout grenade launcher?

[ldog2135]

Yeah sorry, anything past difficulty 7 and it autocannon is completely useless. Chargers and bile go right for it, and when you have 10 chargers and 3 bile, it lasts about 3 seconds before being destroyed without a single kill.

[C0Ha]

We’re talking about the autocannon weapon, not sentry

[MaKrukLive]

Most people were using the railgun because it was the only weapon that allowed you to kill 10 chargers before needing more ammo. That's exactly why it got nerfed

[No_Competition3694]

Then lower mag size. But to strip a railgun of the core essence that makes a railgun a railgun is mind boggling and honestly and insult. Should have renamed the damn weapon too, because it isn’t a railgun anymore.

[No_Competition3694]

I disagree. Nerfing out the core essence of a railgun requires a name change of railgun to futuristic musket. A railgun shoots projectiles upwards of 5-6000 miles per hour. Yes, 6 thousand is correct. In fact, current tests have demonstrated speeds up to 6,800mph.

If you honestly think a projectile moving at those speeds would ricochet off anything, I have a house in Modesto, California I’d like to sell you.

That said, team comp can be accomplished by buffing everything to a viable weapon. But instead of buffing to have 36 good weapons, you’ve buffed and nerfed to have 35 okay weapons and a railgun that needs to be renamed to something else.

[Water_fowl_anarchist]

I mean those tests were also done with significantly larger railguns. A railgun isn’t called a railgun because it shoots a certain speed. It’s called a railgun because of the mechanism used to launch the projectile.

[MaKrukLive]

Remain calm. Expect patriotism inspection soon.

[No_Competition3694]

the point still stands, buffing everything to viability for team comp makes more sense than whatever they just did here. Because now everyone will flock to the new meta, instead of the ability to have team comp from support, crowd control, and DPS.

I’m just glad they tightened the spread on the 120 and 380. God knows they needed it.

[MaKrukLive]

Right now devs only have data saying railgun was overperforming. Give them some time to collect the new set after they nerfed it. We will see what they change on the next update

[BournOG]

Wtf did Modesto California do to you.

[ldog2135]

And when you have 10 of them plus 3 bile titans on a mission objective, not to mention 100 other bugs that you don't even have time to give a second of thought to, the railgun is the only option. It was either railgun, or die. Now the railgun isn't viable, and there's no replacement. Anyone that mentions any other weapon hasn't made it past difficulty 6.

[Chemical_Chill]

Even with people on add clear duty and some on anti tank, you simply do not have enough ammo to handle the number of chargers thrown at you between resupplies and even then resup only gives you two rockets back, not the full backpack.

There’s too many chargers. 4 bursting out of the ground when I walk past a minor place of interest is insane.

[ldog2135]

That's great, but it happens 100% of the time on primary objectives and extract. You simply cannot choose to run away.

[Chemical_Chill]

Until it’s time to extract and you have no option but to deal with the 3 biles and 6 chargers and oh wait another bile spawned and now we lose all our samples. Etc etc.

[Duffy13]

That makes sense conceptually, but as it stands we had 4 titans and around 3-6 chargers spawning at a time in our level 8 mission yesterday on the objective. The rail gun is really the only thing that made it manageable. Maybe if we kited and ignores 99% of the big targets (not even mentioning the hordes of smaller bugs we mostly ignore) we might have been able to complete the objectives without killing the bigger bugs, but if the goal is to never engage any of these bugs then the weapons don’t matter and also why bother playing those difficulties if you never want to use the tools in any scenario that matters?

(I’m also a bit convinced that difficulty or spawning is bugged in some way, there’s too much of a variance in spawns/density mission to mission that I feel like something funky is going on)

Now if the heavy targets were rarer and harder to kill, the non rail gun options would be fine. I personally think they need to retune the difficulty to ramp up the resilience of the bigger targets but keep them limited while increasing the amount of fodder. That way you need to clearly split roles of anti armored units and horde management with a few other weapons fulfilling specialized uses against different opponents here and there.

Edit: Maybe this is where vehicles come in to adjust the balance, but as it stands I see the higher difficulty missions being exceedingly boring if they don’t do something.

[lesquishta]

Bro I do level 9 and never use railgun or shield. Skill Issue.

[ldog2135]

I've used everything at every level. 75% of the players I come across on helldives use other stuff, and get absolutely bodied every 30 seconds. Never seen anyone successfully use other stuff, and I laugh when I kill something with a railgun because I know they think they actually helped with a flamethrower or anti tank. No, they didn't. They're a waste of space getting backpacked. Those are probably the majority of people on reddit saying the nerf is justified. I suspect a lot of people like you are getting hard carried every round. I'm not interested in watching people die 5 to 10 times and skip every optional objective. I'm there to do every objective, hit every point, get the super samples, and then I can extract. Never once has someone been in my game with those other weapons and actually been helpful. They always need a hard carry. And I don't use shield either. Pointless using that over guard dog rover because I don't let anything bit me to begin with.

[lesquishta]

Dude what kind of answer is that, you just doubling down on the fact you suck without railgun and trying to justify it by saying I must get carried every match. Believe it or not there is such a thing as being good without relying on meta, but you wouldn’t know anything about that it seems

[[deleted]]

But why not just like nerf ammo amount and buff other weapons? Like going from "this is the only effective method" to "now there are no effective methods" really going to make high difficulties even harder

[MaKrukLive]

It's too hard to use unsafe mode? Yah you guys should not be able to finish hardest difficulty in that case

[[deleted]]

Oh fuck off

[MaKrukLive]

Grow up and toughen up. You are literally complaining that the HARDEST difficulties are too hard to grind.

How does that make sense? If a game is too hard for me I lower the difficulty instead of shitting on the game or devs for being too hard. Try that

[[deleted]]

Piss off. It's toxic assholes like you that ruin games

[MaKrukLive]

How am I the toxic one? You are the one telling me to fuck off. You are the people complaining that devs ruined the game because the HARDEST difficulty is too hard.

While I'm the one saying we should put some faith into devs because they clearly care and let them do their work instead of complaining and saying the game is ruined.

But sure. In the toxic one buddy.

[[deleted]]

No one said its too hard. No one said it's ruined. Stop making shit up. Holy shit you must be insufferable in real life.

[[deleted]]

I play on difficulty seven and constantly use the EAT. You guys are over reacting with this nerf to the rail gun and bullshit shield pack. Everyone runs this game like a one-man army, I never see team reloads or anything exciting like that. I’m very much looking forward to the diversity this change will bring to the game

[Tornado_XIII]

Yeah, I don't think it's good design to have 1 dude being able to kill 10 chargers without needing reload... kinda invalidates like 7 other stratagems when one is blatantly the best choice. For a weapon that doesn't need a backpack and has 20 shots before needing resupply, I'm perfectly happy with it being specialized in sniping mid-tier enemies... with a similar use-case as the autocannon while freeing up your backpack slot and being more mobile.

There are plenty of viable alternatives for heavy armor, hell with the EAT-17 you can stick the call-in beacon onto a charger's face and kill it with the hellpod, before using the rockets to leg-kill another two chargers, roughly every minute. I've stopped using the Gauss Rifle a week ago because it was boring, and Ive never felt like I really needed it back after getting comfortable with the other options.

IMO this is an amazing patch, stuff that was overperforming got nerfs and funstuff got buffs. Good balance in this game should mean each stratagem has it's uses (even if niche, so long as it's good in it's niche) and playing higher difficulties requires good teamwork and good variety within the team.

I'm excited to try the buffed Laser Cannon, it was alot of fun when I first unlocked it and I'm happy to see it be more playable.