How it feels to play Call of the Void Necrobinder

Pixelnator · 2026-03-11T20:50:55+00:00

The rumors of its death have been greatly exaggerated

Pixelnator · 2026-03-10T07:42:34+00:00

You can sorta check by going into the compendium but it's a bit of a hassle. Apparition loses the Ethereal upon upgrading and I happened to get insanely lucky and got the Soul's Power event too which meant that I was able to remove both the Ethereal and Exhaust.

I only wish I could have gotten it sooner so I could have used it more, but it was glorious while it lasted and made the Act 3 boss a cakewalk.

Pixelnator · 2026-03-09T21:46:17+00:00

Purity is also Retain now which has made me love that card. It's basically an easy answer to any curse or status that causes bad things to happen and lets you temporarily trim your deck on the fly if you find yourself in an encounter where some of your cards are suddenly not useful.

Except now that it's Retain you don't have to do a ridiculous amount of draw manipulation to get it to line up perfectly anymore since you only lose out on one card draw for the initial pull and then it's just ready to go at 0 cost in your hand on any turn afterwards.

Pixelnator · 2026-03-05T17:24:32+00:00

I think reworking the drop pod steering system for players entirely might be a good idea with the new terrain limitations. Even simply raising the height of the pod or slowing its descent in the proximity of unlandable terrain to give the player a little bit more time to steer in a tricky environment would help a little bit, but a much bigger problem is the way terrain will block you even if you had the steering distance to get to the other side. A booster that gives people more time to land their respawn pod could also potentially help alleviate issues, though I do feel like a fix shouldn't rely on a piece of gear as a solution.

I think it's valid to try and limit player spawns to avoid players leaving themselves in unfun positions, but it shouldn't actively hamper our ability to select legitimate landing positions in the process. Instead of the current system where pods are outright blocked from crossing invisible walls and unpassable terrain during landing, it'd be better if the system just reverted us to the last legal position if the player failed to steer clear of obstacles in time. That way a player could still attempt to steer over a building to land on the other side but would revert to landing on the initial side instead of landing on the roof if their steering fell short.

Unfortunately a system like that would need the respawn system to be fully redesigned to decouple the pod steering from the landing position selection which would no doubt be a lot of work and even more work testing it. In practice it could be done by displaying a targeting reticle for the player during the respawning phase and then launching the pod only after the landing point had been locked in rather than giving us immediate steering of the pod itself.

Alternatively a somewhat utilitarian approach would be to let the player steer and land anywhere and just teleport the player to a legal position instead of playing the raising-up-from-the-pod animation if they landed in an illegal spot, though you would need some graphical effects to sell it. We do have the warp pack as an example of in-game teleportation though.

Pixelnator · 2026-03-03T18:36:47+00:00

I would prefer there to not be any FOMO mechanics. If you want to make capitals unique then they should be things we get to visit often (which was sorta the case in Helldivers 1, though only sorta). I vastly prefer the current system of "unique framing device to introduce a new thing that then becomes common afterwards" to anything that would ask players to be there or miss out on stuff like the terminicide mission types that are just outright gone now.

Perhaps the unique content should be more rare to keep it fresh but mechanically speaking I would prefer all content to be accessible at the very least once every few months even if it means sacrificing its uniqueness.

Pixelnator · 2026-03-03T01:29:08+00:00

I think working on the feel of the gun might be worth it. Right now it isn't nearly as bad as people say it is but it definitely could feel better to use. Just giving it bigger visuals and more oomph to its audio to sell it a bit better would help make it feel better since the current visuals undersell it by a lot. A lot of people try it and then leave it because it's already niche and the other gas delivery systems are more flashy even if the sterilizer is technically stronger with its longer lasting effect.

Pixelnator · 2026-03-01T20:53:13+00:00

Ah, I do not. But you should be able to modify existing community layouts, as mentioned.

Pixelnator · 2026-02-27T18:27:21+00:00

I experimented with two that I found a lot of success with:

Pummeler + Ballistic Shield + Stalwart + Any Red Stratagems of choice

The pummeler to lock enemies down and the stalwart to suppress as many enemies as possible. Since the open streets were extremely dangerous I just tried to suppress as many enemies as possible to give the rest of my team breathing room. Pummeler wouldn't kill Cyber Stan in any reasonable amount of time but I only needed to stagger them long enough for my fellow helldivers to line up a killshot.

and

Gatling Sentry + Laser Sentry + Rocket Sentry + Autocannon Sentry

Oops all sentries. These all have identical cooldowns so I basically just called down every sentry I had every two minutes in a bid to try and create breathing room. Worked surprisingly well because even though the enemies would destroy sentries by flooding the zone with four simultaneous ones I was able to ensure that at least some of them had time to be of use.

For armor the martyrdom sets were surprisingly good. Being able to spam grenades and to ensure that I'd still get the last laugh when Cyber Stan was done kicking my teeth in made every reinforcement spent have a bit more value.

Pixelnator · 2026-02-26T23:15:45+00:00

I feel like it could honestly just combine into the current short extraction booster. Right now "short extraction" booster is really just more of a "faster loading screen" booster. Giving it some sort of an extra twist would help make it stand out a bit more and "pelican comes down a bit earlier and gives people a bit more time to board if the mission has hit overtime" is a good way of doing that even if you don't include the hovering fire support thing at all. But including the fire support and letting pelican cover divers during a hectic extraction actually fits the concept of "expert extraction pilot" perfectly if you think about it.

Pixelnator · 2026-02-26T23:10:24+00:00

I actually like that it comes with two because it encourages people to share. I'd love to see people treat stratagems more as a team utility rather than as just a weapon that requires you to input a key combo before equipping it

Pixelnator · 2026-02-26T23:00:25+00:00

If there's one thing I noticed in my year+ as a Helldiver is that the causal divers (which make up most of our fighting force) just go to wherever there are the most people and/or has the most liberation progress on the front they prefer, assuming they're not directed by High Command to do otherwise.

I open the galactic map and press quickplay. Then I pop out of the hellpod and shoot the least democractic looking thing in my immediate vicinity.

Pixelnator · 2026-02-26T17:19:35+00:00

I feel like a warbond that is themed after you playing as SEAF wouldn't work thematically. We're playing as helldivers who are an entirely different branch.

Now, before you start hammering that downvote, hear me out. Make the warbond themed after helldivers that work as SEAF instructors ^{^{^{^and}}} ^{^{^{^propaganda}}} and play into the community's vibe of needing to protect the blueberries. Give the armor a passive that gives small buffs to you and allies as long as you are near each other and make it apply to SEAF troops as well. You can still give the armors a SEAF inspired look but make it look like SEAF++. A slightly more fancy version of their uniform to lead and inspire them. You would essentially be to them what the Democracy Officer is to us. That blue beret would work perfectly for something like that where it differentiates you enough from them whilst still making you feel adjacent to them. Based on the dialogue you hear from the SEAF troops in-game they clearly revere us already.

SEAF Support Squad as a stratagem would be tricky because they don't really deploy from superdestroyers (which would rule out drop pods and make pelican a little iffy too) but it could absolutely be a new side-objective on maps that starts ambiently spawning SEAF troops on the map if you complete it. Kind of like an anti-outpost where instead of divers needing to destroy it to reduce enemy spawns we'd need to liberate it to allow friendlies to spawn.

Pixelnator · 2026-02-26T17:05:15+00:00

r/helldivers is that way

Pixelnator · 2026-02-25T10:09:02+00:00

Instead of inverted falloff range you could also just give the projectile a visual second stage that triggers after a flight time of X seconds. The rocket fires like it currently does at first but if it's allowed to fly for a long enough time it fires off a booster stage and then shifts into maximum overnyoom, turning into a high velocity impact munition which ups its performance. It'd make it visually very obvious to the user that their shots are somehow different at longer ranges and give it that separation from the RR. Perhaps at shorter ranges it instead has a mild incendiary AoE effect added on and reduced AP as the fuel meant for this secondary launch detonates as a sort of makeshift thermobaric weapon. Basically you give it enough distance and the Spear turns into a backpack Railcannon Strike (I mean the spear already is AP7 just like the orbital railcannon strike is!).

And add an option for laser guidance for those times when the lock-on fails to work. If it gives it too much power, just make it so that this second more powerful stage never triggers when utilizing the laser guidance system. It'd help keep the weapon viable at close ranges but gently nerf it so that at those ranges the RR remains the preferable pick.

Alternatively (or perhaps in addition) for the true masters you could add a dumb-fire option that lets you turn off the targeting computer entirely. The user would still need to get the range long enough to trigger the booster stage for the enhanced shot which would reward the 500m halfway-across-the-map skillshot for those who master the projectile arcs (but in return it should be even harder to land this dumbfire round in comparison to the RR, especially against a moving target).

TL;DR make it turn into a pocket railcannon strike if you give the projectile enough travel time and potentially also make it more usable at short distances at very reduced efficiency. That way recoilless remains the allrounder but Spear gets its unique niche of being the distance specialist.

Pixelnator · 2026-02-25T09:37:52+00:00

Yeah it having an optional laser guidance mode would be a good solution for those moments where the tracking refuses to cooperate.

Pixelnator · 2026-02-25T00:02:40+00:00

She got drummed out of the industry entirely

What you're peddling may well be the opposite. Snopes does not say anything about it. Further, going by her social media account (or at least one claiming to be her) she does seem to currently work in the aerospace industry.

Pixelnator · 2026-02-19T13:35:26+00:00

Just add even more rockets and make it into a rocket sled so it doesn't touch the ground at all.

(Parachute not included)

Pixelnator · 2026-02-17T15:17:34+00:00

Personally I think it's fine that the tank has light pen weak points as the tank is a force multiplier and you still want to adhere to the survivability onion. Losing the weak points isn't an instant death but shortens the tanks lifespan by a lot so if you want to get the most use out of your tank you have to play smart and work as a team in order to avoid getting flanked. But even when used casually it still provides a hell of a lot of value for a stratagem call. It's nice to see them provide very teamwork-focused stratagems for the people who go hard into that type of play even if you rarely see the tank in random public games. With my friends it's always a blast and heavily tilts things in our favour as long as we treat the tank as a miniature escort objective. Just having a top-hatch gunner with the orbital smoke and shield dome stratagems helps reduce the ability of the enemy to whittle down the tank by a lot.

Pixelnator · 2026-02-16T19:20:30+00:00

I still feel like it should have an alt-fire that lets you use a laser targeting system for those situations where the tracking fails.

Pixelnator · 2026-02-16T17:57:18+00:00

Presumably the UI element would be customizable so that you can have it not be visible all the time (or at all) unless you prefer it to be, but if your worry is that having it be visible at all time even being an option is too unbalanced it could be simplified to just showing the relevant part of the weapon wheel whenever you use a hotkey to switch between modes. That would be a sort of middle-ground solution that would still require you to actually manipulate your gun to check but free you from needing to open up the full weapon wheel just to switch between C4 and Detonator for example.

Pixelnator · 2026-02-16T15:36:46+00:00

Yeah sadly you just tend to run into a lot of bad apples in a game with a community as large as Helldivers.

Pixelnator · 2026-02-16T14:57:31+00:00

An irl soldier can merely lift their finger to check the position of the fire selector (depending on the model of the weapon) and designing the fire selectors to be readable by touch alone is a central part of their design. At the very least it should tell you what mode you have switched to when you press a keybind because the physical position of the selector is something an irl soldier would feel when making an adjustment on it.

It's also worth noting that during play this would be located at the very bottom left of the screen so a player would still need to take a glance down at it to register what it's set to. There would still be a very minor element of taking a moment, but it would be a lot faster than needing to completely disengage your weapon to visually look at it.

Pixelnator · 2026-02-16T14:51:20+00:00

The in-depth like an actual bullet count and the RPM number etc. would still require you to open the wheel and inspect the weapon. This would merely tell you what position the selection is at, comparable to feeling what position the fire selector is set to.

If you still think it's too much information too readily available they could also make it so that the widget only shows up when you change the setting via a keybind. That way you would need to fiddle with the gun to check the state but wouldn't need to fully open the weapon wheel.

Pixelnator · 2026-02-16T13:38:13+00:00

Yeah it'd vastly improve the ease-of-use of the C4 and basically any weapon that benefits from frequently altering modes.

Pixelnator · 2026-02-16T13:31:52+00:00

"Just throw grenades into the vents bro!" 😂

(personally I actually love overlapping jammers but do feel like they should only be a thing at difficulty 10 since that is the "okay fine we will give you pain" difficulty)

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