God, a guard dog punisher would be so cool, but also probably instantly splatter my brains out trying to shoot a scavenger at my feet. Its not quite as scary as the idea of a flamethrower guard dog, but man it ain't too far off lol
Maybe we'll get a new Eagle stratagem or something.. I have a bunch of ideas for stratagems that would be fun to have in the game... Maybe I'll get around to making that next..
While I agree I feel it should be a new stratafem Make it like the orbital gatling barrage but faster and snapper and call it like an Eagle AT Gatling Run. Less cooldowns than the normal
@@ExValeFormake more viable options, the difficulty shouldnt hinder your loadout so much, the encounters itself is what is hard, darktide, deeprock, left4dead, cod zombies does these exact things
"A swarm of macteria is onto you, get ready!" Make me alert immediately. "Thats not good, something.... BIG is heading your way." Flinches a lil. But it's only the dreadnought that shows up. What's stopping helldivers from having anomaly encounters too? I rather fight 400 scavangers from a single bug breaches then be pressured by a bile titan with a hard to hit qweakspot (still the head despite the changes) Savangers won't be hard, but a huge time waster, applying pressure in a diffrent way. Better have the resupply ready. O_o
@@loafofbread9400deep rock literally has a class based system and different roles and strengths for each class. I think the devs should encourage specialization more and not let general all rounder builds be meta.
Another option for Machine Gun Sentry would be to give it two charges per cooldown, like an Eagle. Balance between the raw damage of the Gatling or a pair of MGs covering multiple approaches or setting up a nasty crossfire.
IIRC currently you can only have one of any turret type up at a time. Making the MG an exception would be cool as well. Tho idk if it would make sense lore-wise
My suggestion is a little more simple, just increase the armor penetration to be in like with the MG stratagem we get. It's the same MG, unlike that Autocannon sentry and man portable, so they should have the same armor peneration. It'll bridge the Gatling and Autocannon sentry, by giving a sentry able to deal with Brood Commanders, Hive Guards, and Devestators without having to resort to the slower targeting and firing Autocannon sentry.
Thats actually wrong. Hop in to a lebel 1 mission and keep the enemies away from them, you can theoretically call multiple down. They don't despawn when another shows. @@belzebubukas
@@CodexQuinn Just yesterday I was playing and called in an extra autocannon (was at difficulty 7, tho I'd assume it makes no difference). It did take the old autocannon like 10 seconds to move into the ground, but it did so *without shooting a single round since I called in a new one*. I think you might have called in a new one and immediately went "well that works" without waitying a bit. If they really did stick around until you had, say, 3 turrets of the same kind, that'd be interesting to look into
As soon as you said lower the precision strike cooldown my immediate thought was “hey, that means you can have a constantly rotating chain of EMS, Gas and Precision strikes” and then you agreed on that very point lol. The gas strike in particular became my favorite strike for bugs after the DOT fixes
Your idea of retooling the default Guard Dog into a Punisher is really good (and I am now upset it won't happen). I'd take it becoming a Liberator Concussive. Hell I'd take it actually gaining ammo from ammo boxes... I have no idea how they want anyone to use it. Still can't get over them trying to make it more viable by 'nerfing' the Rover which only made the Rover even better by severely decreasing its friendly fire. This is way better.
If it just had as many reload as the liberator it would be a lot better. The guns really potent (headshot king) but it’s ammo can’t reload off ground drops and the number of reloads available barely lasts the cool-down of a supply drop.
@@IRMentat Even if it had the exact same ammo economy of the liberator it would still be a bit underwhelming because of how wasteful it is. Really need the option to toggle off our guard dogs so we can prevent them from getting stuck on something they can't hope to damage.
While I agree I think it just needs the mags buffed to 45. If they make it lib conc I would like it as a new guard dog. I know it kinda sucks but just the mag buff alone and making it more like the lib would he cool or giving it extended mags. I would love mounting any primary to a guard dog and then needing a secondary too and just get rid of the guard dogs that have primaries built in. You just press 5 to deploy and it takes your equipped primary
Instead of changing the weapon the Guard Dog uses, I'd simply like to see it buffed, better ammo economy, smarter AI (wont shoot stuff it can't damage), and attempts to hit weak points. And then we can have additional Guard Dogs that utilizes other weapons! ↓↓↓ • Guard Dog "Barker" uses the Liberator Concussive. Prioritizes medium targets and will not shoot stuff it can't damage. • Guard Dog "Cerberus" uses the Incendiary Breaker in 3 shot mode, with a notable pause between each salvo, and a slightly longer reload. Prioritizes small targets that are not aflame. • Guard Dog "Pointer" uses the Explosive Crossbow (quiet sound profile). Very fast target acquisition, paints it's target with a laser pointer. Targets anything it can damage, but won't fire unless its wearer has fired recently (this would be the stealth dog). • Guard Dog "Pittie" uses the Eruptor Rifle. Targets ANYTHING that has made noise recently, or looks like it could make noise, or anything shiny or brightly colored, or edible, or moving (especially capes). Unlimited ammo (its powered by hate). Active even if unattended. Okay the last one was a joke, but you get the idea, give us more options to play around with. The laser dog "Rover" would still have its niche of extremely high up time and consistent damage, but a bit stupid when it comes to choosing a target (including targeting stuff it can't hurt).
imagine beign at extract with 0 reinforcements and a bunch of samples in your pockets, about to extract but then your punisher dog blast your ass in 1 shot because a bug was behind you
@jeydonfal1 I've been headshot by my Lazer Doggo while aiming my quasar at a bug hole 3 times now.... I'm hoping crouching will be enough to prevent a 4th time, lol.
Eagle gating barrage is actually so good. It can shred through anything up to a hunter and you can throw it directly at your feet since it calls in so quickly and starts directly where the beacon is dropped. I love it on missions where I’m likely to be running from a bajillion tiny bugs
Guard Dog suggestions is different enough that it should just be a new stratagem IMO. To fix the regular guard dog you just need to improve its staying power and target acquisition. A Punisher variant would be neat as a new strategem however.
In hindsight, it should have a different thing haha. But buffing the Guard Dog still doesn't change the fact that its function is the same as the Rover - ad clear support..
Maybe if the guard dog had a liberator penetrator alongside damage buffs and an AI that prioritized medium armoured enemies, it could be helpful with taking down medium enemies? Or a liberator concussive for CC?
@@rykenxiv True, but it's like comparing the Sickle or Scythe to the Liberator. They're actually supposed to be the same role, but with different logistical gameplay related to ammo management, and planet temperature considerations. So the Guard Dog should have the same role as the rover, but with ammo considerations. I just think the ammo considerations aren't tuned well currently. I also think the rover should be affected by planet temperature like other laser weapons are. It really just needs to carry enough magazines of ammo to generally last between ammo pickups if you're consistently resupplying, like any other handheld ballistic weapon.
@@Ashnal huh, didn't thought about that, but I don't think they will implement that change to the rover, seeing how much nerfing we are getting, I can guess the community will see that change as a nerf
@@lostinthenight2005 Depends on how you adjust it. You could make it a neutral change where it overheats a bit faster than now on hot planets, but overheats slower on cold planets, and stays the same on planets without climate mods. This would encourage more loadout variance (a good thing) based on planet. I just think it would make the most sense to get the two guard dogs in line with how handheld ballistic vs laser weaponry works.
One other change I'd like is for the OPS to be unaffected by the orbital scatter modifier. It's completley useless when that modifier is active, and furthermore its name becomes inaccurate. It'd also give it a slightly reliability boost vs other orbital stratagems
Yeah, that always bothered me a bit. Sometimes it's right on target and other times it'll land nowhere near the beacon. So it's not even consistent in its inaccuracy with the Orbital Scatter modifier.
I would also like it to come in a little faster. You have to lead it so much, which seems to be okay with the 500kg which has a slightly more forgiving AOE. If the precision strike is truly to be that precise, it should also come in quicker to be more responsive.
Fuck that. Remove _all_ negative strategem modifiers from the game. Seriously, when have you ever told yourself "You know something? The orbital scattering modifier is great fun, and twiddling my thumbs waiting for a drop under the call down time modifier is absolutely sublime entertainment." If they aren't a fun challenge (and none of them are) they should be removed and replaced by something that is.
@@ultimatemaster2407 It massively botters me, that should just be removed from the game period. why have an modifier that invalidates an entire section of stratagems that are great against that specific faction?
In addition to your suggestions for the exosuits, I'd really love it if taking a mech gave you a special limited use mech reload/repair stratagem. Something to call down a big ammo crate so you can spend a few seconds lugging ammo back to your mech and giving it little patch up. Even Helldive missions generally have enough downtime SOMEWHERE that you can do that... if you're in a full squad that is. Edit: Re: Orbital precision strike. The buff I would like to give the stratagem itself is to reduce the base call in time down to match the other non-barrage/railcannon orbitals: from 4s down to 2s. That way it can be much snappier to use. Additionally, some of the orbital ship modules should be buffed. Currently the eagle modules are way more effective in increasing the output of eagles compared to orbitals. Also doesn't help that several orbital modules ONLY affect barrages. I also think all emplacements should get to benefit from all sentry buffing modules.
Well, HD1 had a support weapon stratagem that allowed you to fire a beam that healed Helldivers and mech/vehicles, and I think would also damage enemies somewhat, adding that in (possibly also with some way to resupply mechs/vehicles ammo) would see those stratagems used more.
I think mechs should benefit from the sentry modules as well, a patriot with +50% health and 50% explosive damage resistance sounds like an actually fun strat to use against bots
@@kirbyplush240Not to mention cooldown, maybe the rotation speed upgrade making arms extremely more precise in aiming, cooldown benefit of 10% and 50% ammo benefit
I like the idea of dropping down a little mobile mech gas station that you could load your mech into, then get out and service it to refill ammo, armor, and HP. Of course the whole team could help to operate the station like a pit crew to make it work faster.
I love these balancing videos you're doing, they're a much needed breath of fresh air from all the rage I've been seeing around the game recently. I'd certainly be very happy to see changes like this made, I've been absolutely dying to experiment with different loadouts but just keep falling into a rut of using what I know works because of the inconsistency and ineffectiveness of other options.
Thank you for coming at this game with a level head and providing solutions instead of complaining like others. Same goes for your AR video and many others. The data is fantastic and your proposed changes seem to incorporate “fairness” and fun, and feel.
I would add 2 things: (1) The Orbital Gatling Barrage has a pretty low volume of fire. I often saw warrior bugs walk through the area relatively unharmed. I would double its number of shots fired (keeping the same duration). This would further differentiate it from the eagle strafe by making it saturate a circular area rather than pepper a rectangle. (2) The Orbital Precision Strike should have a base Call-in Time of 2 seconds, reduced to 1 second with the upgrade. It currently takes 3 seconds to begin the firing sequence, and then another maybe 3-4 seconds until impact. The Complex Stratagem Planning modifier makes this stratagem useless against anything besides structures, as you have to wait almost 10 seconds until impact. A great use of the OPS is to bring Stun Grenades to lock down a Hulk or a Charger and then throw down the OPS. With the current Call-in Time, the stun doesn't last long enough and they'll just walk out of the blast radius.
If the devs still refuse to give the sentries a shield in order to elongate their uptime (minding the fact the Blast Absorption ship module already does absolutely nothing), I think it would be incredibly beneficial for the turrets to have a mechanism which deploys a lure for enemies to focus on, so that the sentries don’t get immediately targeted and destroyed in a single hit. Aside from the mortar sentries being able to work effectively without line-of-sight, it is frustratingly absurd that you cannot flexibly place a turret without a charger or bile titan touching them just a single time and causing them to die instantly, or worse yet, having a rocket-wielding automaton cross-mapping your sentries with a single shot.
The form you have chosen to present is polished. I enjoy the clips referencing your observations supporting suggestions. You gather and present your data and supporting logic very well. You are very communicative, concise in diction, all as you are presenting well constructed suggestions for someone trying to make Helldivers 2 an exceptionally fun game. Thanks for the video, Ryken XIV.
I actually really like the standard guard dog. The biggest reason is it doesn't dome me in the back of the head every 2 seconds like the rover does. I think it just needs a bigger magazine and the ability to resupply some off world pick up ammo boxes.
Agreed. Ballistic guard dog does work, especially when it aimbot kills 5 bugs in 5 shots. I have never seen rover kill that fast and often I see it having trouble targeting some little scavenger on the ground.
I don't remember if you mentioned it but making it so the turrets and gaurd dogs (both of them) don't target enemies with higher armor class than them would help. And a cool in game lore way yo upgrade them could be adding a new mission time were we send bug and bot corpses to the ship with balloons like in metal gear solid. That way our scientists can make our weapons smarter and we get a new mission mode
Yes I wish this was a thing already. The turrets in the game right now are very effective until that one enemy shows up. Then it just dumps all its ammo out.
2:45 haha Increasing the health of the mine pod is incredibly insightful. I like the Guard Dog Punisher idea. With it, I may even be tempted to bring an AR for my primary. The difference in Strafing Run charges versus Cluster Bomb has always bothered me. Another possible boost to the Machine Gun Sentry would be to allow you to pull the MG off and carry it. This would allow you to bring it instead a Support weapon. The downside is it comes in with less ammo than the normal MG and you have to grab it, which might be difficult under fire. Great video, as usual, Ryken.
The most objective of all TH-camrs talking about Helldivers 2. I support every one of your ideas because they serve to the most important purpose, fun. Also they define each stratagems places and roles
I feel like a nice upgrade for the mine emplacements would be the deployer retracting once it spews out the mines, and then once a certain % of the field has been depleted, it pops back up for a second volley before being exhausted.
Awesome to see this video. I love how you justify and create distinct niches for items in helldivers. I hope arrowhead considers your ideas as I have similar feelings. I think we're really close to having a very diverse loadout, compared to the doomers and gloomers.
My one critique with your analyze is making the eagle and orbitals being used at the same rate overlooks a key detail about them being that orbitals are more powerful but slower tools. An eagle is suppose to be a fast response to something, while an orbital serves as a more forward planning use case. Your obital/eagle smoke changes highlight this very well in my opinion. Also yes the guard dog needs a change. Love how it doesn't harm friendly as much but oh man does it have no ammo.
While the idea of Orbitals being stronger than Eagles does make sense - as I've shown with the 500KG that isn't always the case.. So if an Eagle is going to bring (literally) more impact to a mission, the least a single precision strike (which is basically the same shell as the 380mm Barrage) could do is be fired more often to balance the scales a little!
This unbelievably good! I hope Arrowhead sees this, or someone forwards you videos to the CEO, or whatever his position is now. I do want to say though that the guard dog has a neat quirk of aiming for the head with bots. I actually enjoy bringing it to help kill heavy devastators. Although the rover is still better because it doesn't run out of ammo halfway through a fight lol. Keep up the good work! You have to be one of the better content creators for Helldivers I have ever seen!
Support weapon tweaks with lore explanations! Morgunson Arms has been somewhat disappointed in the effects of the APW against the Termind forces. So, they have developed a new round. This round should be able to penetrate heavy armor on hits perpendicular to the armor. (AP 5 on Direct Hits) This is ment to increase the effectiveness of the AMR against bugs, being able to down chargers in one magazine. The AMR I see as being a competitor to the Railgun. While the railgun boasts higher damage and penetration, the AMR delivers it's results on trigger pull, has more ammo in total, and a faster fire rate. The MG208 machine gun was never really intended for portable use. But they have managed to cut down on the weight of the magazines significantly, mainly by switching to more lightweight materials. It has also received the same New Ammo as the AMR. (The MG208 HMG now has 3 mags instead of just 2, AP 5 on Direct hits.) The RS-422 Railgun has suffered from some corners having to be cut in order to keep up with the massive demands from the Helldivers early in the war. The Super Cavitation Round required far too much manpower to manufacture previously, but now that the War is officially on, we can begin production of the improved round. But we're having to cut the ammo carried in order to ensure we can keep up with production. (Damage vs Massive increased from 60 to 390 on safe, and from 90 to 450 on Unsafe, the dot in the scope is now 50% smaller, rounds carried reduced from 20 to 10) In short, the railgun can now kill Bile Titans in two headshots, but the ammo capacity limits its role somewhat. Other Tweaks. Using technology recovered from destroyed Automoton gunships, we have increased the carrying capacity of the "Guard Dog" drones by nearly 100%, as such, we have decided to upgrade it's ammo capacity to 45 rounds, and have given it medium AP ammo, similar to the Liberator Penetrator. (Magsize increased to 45, The rifle has gained AP 3) For those who don't know what a Direct hit, this article on the wiki explains it. helldivers.wiki.gg/wiki/Damage#Armor_Penetration Lots of things in this article need more detail, so do your part and help fill out the wiki today!
id really like to see the MG sentry have more ammo as well. i agree with improving the overall uptime via a lowered CD, id also like it just to shoot longer. in any case, keep up the great work! my favorite helldivers 2 channel, by far! :D
More concept content! Yes! Love stuff like this. I'd like to throw an idea at ya. What if we had Stratagems with charges that were on individual cooldowns? Something I thought up recently was a rework of orbitals to lower the cooldown of the "main strike," and have additional charges be "banked" over an increasing period of time per charge. My idea for this is (base cooldown) + (15 seconds * Additional Charge Number). These additionals can be used while the main strike is on cooldown, but their timer is paused until the main strike is ready again. So, for Orbital Precision Strikes, you'd always drop with one ready. It's cooldown could be 67.5, as proposed. It's first additional charge timer would be (67.5) + (15 * 1) = 82.5 seconds. The second additional charge would be (67.5) + (15 * 2) = 97.5 seconds. The third, (67.5) + (15 * 3) = 112.5 seconds, and so on. If you dropped into a mission and didn't use your precision strike for 5 minutes, you'd have 4 Orbital Precision strikes. The first charge, and 3 banked, as the first three charges would take a total of 292.5 seconds to build. Doing it this way results in less strikes over the course of a mission, but the option to have more to throw at a particular problem. If you did nothing but bank Orbital Precision Strikes from the start of a mission until you had to use them or the Destroyer leaves orbit, you'd have 14 of them and 2 minutes 38 seconds to burn through them before they end up wasted. This also creates room for flexibility in it's use. It can be thrown often, or it can be held back to have a second or third shell ready in case the first misses or more problems show up. It also means that the time spent where the main strike is ready isn't time entirely wasted. Obviously the numbers can be tweaked, but I think the idea of Orbitals having at least one backup charge that is tied to whether the main one is on cooldown or not is an interesting idea and would create more cases where a player is given more to consider based on the state of the cooldowns, without stepping on the Eagle's toes. Or talons, even...
Genuinely impressed by the grasp of good game design on display, here. Anyone can provide an overzealous buff that'd overshadow other options, or a modest change in statistics that would ultimately change little, but these suggestions manage to navigate the narrow path it takes to broaden a tool's applicable usage by *refining its design space*, rather than simply increasing random numbers to support only a single statistic of use-case (i.e. damage or uptime). Every single proposed change is also considered not in a vacuum, but in the context of its surrounding options, as well as in full context of its role in the game's ludonarrative design. Which, again: impressive. Rather than upping the damage of the MG Sentry, or giving it just ammo and saying "good enough," the change to deployment time and durability really distinguishes it as both easier-to-use and also slightly different in role, as it's then less "commital" than the Gatling, which then even works to smooth out a new player's learning experience in terms of effective turret placement, as a lower cooldown and extra health can benefit both higher and lower players' use-case quite well, by lessening the punishment for mediocre placement for newbies while refining a role for skilled skirmishers in the process. It becomes more FUN, conceptually, while improving both its game feel and mechanical advantage... without intruding upon the dedicate firepower of the Gatling. And it's clear that a similar amount of thoughtful consideration has gone into every single one of these changes-- which I would *also* detail at-length, but, well, honestly? Every single one was explained without a wasted word, already, so it would be entirely redundant to retread. Though I will note how the increased Strafing Run charges and circular Orbital Smoke considerably impressed with their comparative analysis, and the creativity of the minefield fix by leveraging the deployment post as a lure, as well as the understanding to recognize that the guard dog is simply better off with a completely different weapon? Seriously solid stuff. One note I will quickly disagree with, however, is the guard dog's use of a shotgun. That would require basically creating an entirely new stratagem, whereas the current guard dog could be given a role equivalent to your suggestion by simply turning it into a DMR with some reasonable hitstun. The amount of actual coding could be dramatically reduced, by not requiring an entirely new firing mode, while still honing in on a new design space of "bullet guard dogs are about creating space with hitstun, while laser guard dogs have better raw firepower." A shotgun guard dog, however, would be a solid standalone stratagem, which could then have higher firepower than the DMR guard dog in return for lower range. Both, by firing single shots at a time (and, of course, having a *bigger* clip than the helldiver's equivalent, rather than *smaller*), would then have a useful role to play. The longer-ranged DMR guard dog could save you from an unspotted bile spewer or rocket devastator now and then, at-range, while the shotgun guard dog would more consistently handle hunters that are closing into melee. Honestly? I'd want to see a series of passes through basically *every* stratagem, just to see what else comes to mind. Fantastic work, genuinely, and I hope to see more! Or rather, I *do* see more, in that assault rifle balance pass, so I'm already subbed, for sure. ^^
Let us use supply packs while inside mechs to resupply them. Since you can't repair them like in the first game at least let us maintain them for longer.
Love videos like this, it's fun to share ideas and spitball changes. Hope you get around to making a video about your own ideas for stratagems I'd love to see what you can come up with.
An idea I had for the guard dogs was to make them turn on/off when pressing the "ressuply yourself" button of the supply pack. That way, you could turn off the dogs for stealth so they don't shoot at anything or to make it not shoot at heavy target if you want to preserve its ammo. A bit of skill expression you could say.
The Patriot exosuit rockets do have enough damage to 2hit kill Bile Titans. 400 durable dmg, 6 AP. Titan head 750HP 5 armor. So why don't they? Because some jackass decided to put this in patch 01.000.200: "Patriot Exosuit: rockets will now penetrate armor only on direct hit." In other words, if you don't score a perfectly straight on hit you're either doing half damage or no damage (not sure which). This used to not be a thing. The Patriot used to do full damage regardless of the angle, killing BTs in 2 rockets. But the fun police said "No fun for you".
Most of the time it takes like 8 rockets to get 1 single bile titan for me, i mostly oneshot chargers with them, so either i dont get it or simply you arent allowed to get it either way anymore.
love this guard dog punisher concept! would like to see that as an option along with the liberator guard dog, always love more options. great ideas all around. i know the CCO at arrowhead seems to take in a lot of community feedback, and i hope he is seeing your videos.
I agree with all these changes. So excited about the precision strike because I love the fast orbitals! They aren't amazing but they help in a pinch and are usually ready when you need them.
what i'd personally change about the guard dog, is make it medium penetrating (to set it apart from the rover), make it gain ammo from ammo pickups, and generally make it so you're able to enable/disable any type of guard dog at-will by pressing the backpack action key, while holding it forces it to perform a reload/cool down
My own quick list ●Guard dog sniper with ability to manually set targets. ●Gas should spread out a bit more and last a bit longer with damage falloff. ●Another variant of the 3 Charge laser orbital where you can actively change its course with a laser pointer. ●Turrets could do with more damage/ammo but have limited cone of fire, flamer turret be nice. ●Jet pack needs a slowly regenerating pool of fuel that you can use WHENEVER with the ability to AIM when jumping. ●Mechs could do with a way to re-arm once or twice, a backpack maybe. ●In general we need more skill-based stratagems that could be considered op if used in the right hands, be nice to know if a diver has just farmed for their level or has fought for it ya know?
Actually would be great if the smoke screen would be a Willy Pete Strike since is how we do Smokescreens in our world. So it would give some DOT to the enemies directly hitted and slowing them down.
Honestly, you make a lot of great points. I'll definitely say for the mines I think it should pump out waves of mines after a certain time if the stratagem isn't destroyed. Make it a great stratagem. Same for sentries we should have the ability to reload them if they aren't destroyed.
What needs to be mentioned about the exosuits is that the stomp damage is abysmal. Warriors routinely take 3-4 sometimes more stomps when they should be killed in 2 maximum Hunters take 2, but at least scavengers can just be walked over. The stomp damage is usually blocked by the limbs of an enemy, rather than dealing damage to the torso since you can't kill via limbs. It needs to do 300 damage minimum and also have an aoe splash so it does damage to multiple parts.
21:00 this especially rings true what with the new exosuit falling below people's expectations. I hate to say it but a week from now that thing will follow the way of the previous exosuit. I hope AH incorporates even a fraction of your proposed changes.
I like the idea of having a mech suit uprade section in the ship, where you can unlock things like... • more ammo • mech reload (pick up the empty mech; restore 1 mech to your stratagem.) • 25% less time for mech cool downs
I like the idea behind these videos, but I think that some of the suggested changes feel overpowered. Like for the Orb Smoke, it would be better to frame the difference as either a larger single smoke or a longer lasting smoke, not both. Personally, make the number of smoke missles 9 and increase the duration of smoke from 25s to 33s. Also decrease the diffusion rate of this smoke. That would create a better difference between use cases of the different smoke.
Eagle strafing run should be used the same way an A-10 Warthog strafing run is used today; to kill heavy armor and deal with clusters of enemies. The A-10's GAU-8 can penetrate tank armor, and the Eagle is supposed to be a futuristic A-10. It makes no sense that the main gun is weaker than the A-10. It is practically an airsoft gun in comparison.
I agree with the strafe being underrated. My friends and I are plagued by connection issues still, so one level 7 I was the last man standing in the lobby and refused to go down swinging. Ended up kiting like 200 bugs around extraction and that strafe with its practically instant call down and super consistent damage area absolutely pulled me out of the fire. More charges would make it frankly indispensable, especially with how low the team damage risk is. The allied AI targeting priority really needs a rework atop the changes you suggested for turrets and the like. I never take turrets on bot missions anymore because they waste half of their ammo pinging rounds harmlessly off dropships instead of actually hitting enemies. I really like your ideas for the guard dog, though.
The exosuit was really good week 1! The reason it's bad now was the health rebalancing. The Exosuit used to be able to 2 hit kill Bile Titans with headshots, allowing it to kill many of them with the proper support. Once that reliability was removed, it went from a B tier option that was risky but could give you a really strong moment once or twice per mission (which is already HORRIBLE on its own) to an F tier option. I think the best way to buff them is allow supply packs/supply drops to replenish 10% of their total ammo pool, meaning if they run out of ammo you can potentially leave it in a safe place and replenish it later. It becomes a high firepower fragile weapons platform your team wants to play around and escort. It will still have that massive inherent risk of just exploding due to meteor or friendly fire, but if you fight through that it would have a unique team based gameplay niche of being a funnel for your supplies that everyone wants to keep safe for its wave clear. And higher uptime helps justify its massive 10 minute cooldown (WHY EVEN HAVE CHARGES AT 10 MINUTES? WHY!??!?!). Personally, my solution to the mech balance would be to add a Vehicle stratagem slot as a 5th slot, and weve already seen we will be getting atvs, all terrain vehicles and APCs. This would also help with the annoyance of spending 10 minutes a mission backtracking for no reason on certain maps.
maybe add the 5th vehicle stratagem as a ship module or classification? to get something to work on, because at the beginning we don't have access to vehicles, that would also explain the (current) limitation of only having only one exosuit in a mission loadout.
Or even something as simple as adding more interactions with stratagems. Use the supply pack to refill mech ammo pool, 1 square refills a quater of both gun pools, and then with the ship upgrade (which i think should apply to the supply pack) make it fill half per square. If stratagems were more interactable then even in their current state they have more value and add depth to the game.
These suggestions are fantastic👏🏼. The only one I would disagree with is the 500kg; I think it’s perfect how it is. Otherwise, I love how your suggestions give weaker variants of good strategems their own identity and uses, and I like that you’re mostly suggesting cooldown reductions and durability increases rather than just more damage. I agree 100% with this approach, and think it would really add to the fun factor while minimizing power creep. I would love to be able to use your versions of the strafing run, guard dog, precision strike, and MG sentry, in particular.
I like these change ideas a lot, especially the change to the machine gun sentry. I was thinking recently about how to change it not to be a direct downgrade to the gatling. I thought about increasing its armor pen, but that'd just make it a worse autocannon sentry. Having the machine gun sentry be offensive-oriented, while the Gatling is defense-oriented, is so genius and actually gives the MG a place in the game.
Its important to mention the fact that they changed the exosuits rockets to being AP0 if you do not land a direct hit. Meaning if you shoot at an angle of 26 degrees or higher - you will deal 0 damage except to things like scavengers cause they have 0 armor.
Geez, someone on AH hire this man already. I see way too many youtubers whining and making useless tier lists to complain about balancing, but you're out here providing legitimate, well thought out solutions.
9:37 Rocket sentry only receives 50% ammo upgrade to the first block of rockets. The reload block is normal unbuffed even after the +50%. Actually only gets +50% on 50% of its ammo which is only 25%. Side note, this is how you complain properly. State the issue, state the fix, and state both fairly. Nailed it bro. Keep up the great work
Instead of the Patriot packing an MG-43, they should upgrade it to a Heavy MG-206. Having much heavier AP would allow you to use less ammo while increasing its functionality against Brood Commanders, Spewers, Hive Guards, and all of the medium level stuff while still being able to deal with smaller stuff just fine. This would also make it a force against the bots while still making it vulnerable to rocket attacks. Having a 3rd mech available for cooldown (like the laser bombardment) would also help. Several times I've left an exosuit at the extract waiting for our return in order to cover us as the ammo is just enough to cover what we end up facing. For the Guard Dog, just replace the Liberator with a Liberator Penetrator and up the ammo count. The extra AP would do more damage to medium bugs and need less ammo. A Liberator Concussive would also be pretty nice since it would knock back enemies trying to close in on you and the lower fire rate means it would waste less ammo on single targets allowing it to switch more often. The Precision Strike should be a flat 60sec. It's a single 380mm round. Our ships have a full magazine of these things loaded for a barrage which only has a 240sec cooldown to reload. A Precision Strike is literally just one of the guns taking it's time to aim accurately. The full magazine is still there. The cooldown should be very short and the reason for 60sec rather than 15sec is something like position recalculating or something to do with the aiming software. Against bugs I take the 500kg as its better against Titans. But against bots I take the Precision Strike since anti-aircraft guns are too common and prevent any Eagles while the Orbitals are still active. Many of us have felt the pain when an AA battery spawns next to an Eye of Sauron Detector.
Another thing that would help 500kg and Precision Strike is if they actually hit where the stratagem beam IS instead of where it originally landed, its listed in the known bugs and hope it gets fixed soon.
6:33 Another big intrinsic problem with mines is that they get triggered by any physics collision, even enemy ragdolls. So you will frequently have situations where one scavenger will hit a mine, and then the dead body will fly forward and trigger 4 more, wasting them. So I propose that mines should vaporize smaller targets without creating ragdolls (e.g., like a railgun shot does against certain enemies).
Just want to saw first great video and ideas! I love constructive and thoughtful videos/feedback, it's very refreshing to some of the more...common takes lol. This got me thinking, and I like the idea of your orbital smoke change, but the true one step from greatness may be to turn it into a walking barrage. Bump the shells to 7 for consistency sake per volley, but have it take 2, maybe 3 steps from the beacon (so 3-4 volleys all together). This would really make it a stand-out as creating a circle of vision denial unfortunately doesn't seem like it'll do much when enemies will still randomly attack into the circle, and charge into it, which can confuse them but also means you could be effectively trapped. A walking barrage would give you that initial break, but could cover you until you reach more hard terrain to truly break off and leave your enemies in the dust. Perhaps more importantly it would let you not immediately aggro any patrols that you might be accidently running towards, or at the very least give you a window of opportunity to break away there. It would also give it a use case against bugs who would charge in, might continue charging along your last known position further into the smoke, then themselves be caught in a wall of smoke that they can't see out of. It could remain at 100/90s cooldown, everything else it currently has stat wise, since it's no longer competing in that similar vision denial style and the overall longer coverage time of the barrages would likely feel fair compared to the versatility of the eagles. As an aside because truly you've got some good ideas, and I don't want to seem like I'm just counter-arguing, but apparently the limitation of 2 charges per mech use is due to their own backend issues if too many vehicles get on field (saw this on reddit tbf). I've been thinking ever since the Patriot was released that it just needs to be taken off of a 2 use limit, as frankly even if the rockets could 1 tap a bile titan, even the ideal 14 bile titan kills is honestly pretty low for what can happen in 9s, especially since you will be forced to use some rockets on chargers as they are extreme threats to the mechs. If they are able to overcome that back-end issue, and uncap mechs they'll instantly be good since invoking a hard-cap when missions already have their own hard-time limits feels really bad. I imagine we will see mech upgrades that will probably be more universal as vehicle upgrades once we get more down the line. We'll likely see things like ammo economy, damage increases, or HP increases. Though a great upgrade I've never seen anyone mention that I would love to see is mech turn speed increase/walking speed increase. They aren't the slowest things but it's noticeably dragging when a charger is coming in on your right side and you've gotta swing around to get rockets on.
I think the reason the Eagle Strikes are so much better than the Orbitals in every way is because the Eagles can be blocked by AA or Scrambler, while the Orbitals can only be blocked by Scrambler. Is this a good decision, definitely not, especially since it can be planned around, but I can see their mental process none the less.
I think that’s part of it, but more importantly I think Eagle Strikes are made to be better than Orbitals is because having more than one eagle strike in your load out is awkward. Balancing your usage of multiple Eagle Strikes and deciding when to start the rearm timer is a headache. For every eagle strike you take beyond the first one is going to have reduce the effect up time. It makes the eagle strike a sudo “slot” for your build, and means they can be stronger because they are taking up this slot.
For mines, I personally feel that the best approach is to let the central structure redeploy mines as they're used up. That would let the field last longer and handle more traffic. As it stands, mines are good for a few bugs, then the field is basically spent. There are enough individual mines left to kill YOU, but not enough to make a difference against enemies.
These are all wonderful ideas. Great vid! The lack of differentiation between stratagems that have Eagle and orbital pairs in another confounding design decision. The intuitive approach is make the orbitals stronger but one (or less) shots and the eagles weaker but faster and/or more uses. As is if there is a comparable Eagle stratagem it is almost strictly better. And Eagle can re-arm itself so fast that even if you have to go through a whole cooldown to get what you want it costs you all of, maybe, an extra minute, and even then the extra time is offset by getting more uses! Your comparison of something like smoke strikes is this exactly - there is basically zero reason to take orbital smoke - it’s not better even on paper. It make no sense to have that in the game if there’s a strictly better version available. I’m excited to see how they balance in the future because they know it’s a huge problem. Here’s hoping.
18:13 I always thought a cool role for the MGS is for it to have a way longer up time than the GGS, so just give it way more ammo. Also I like your idea of it being more “mobile” that way it feels like a sentry you place down for extra support defending an area for an extended period of time while the GGS is a clearing turret
There are a few thing I would like to suggest over or in combination with what you have suggested. For the rocket sentry, the big thing that makes it inferior to the Autocannon sentry is the Rocket sentry does not stagger enemies. An Autocannon sentry will stagger and stop a charging charger, the rocket sentry will not, which drastically decreases the Rocket sentry's survival and up time, when the enemies it is supposed to counter are able to destroy the sentry in a 1v1 condition 100% of the time. Second, with the Machine Gun sentry, I would genuinely up it's ammo count a bit, but most importantly increase it's armor penetration. It is using the same MG we get, unlike the Autocannon sentry(using the AC5 while Helldivers use the AC10) yet for some reason, the sentry, using the same MG we get, has less penetration. Thus penetration change would make the MG turret a real bridge between the Gatling(an anti-horde sentry) and the Autocannon sentry(an anti heavy/elite sentry) and really make the MG sentry a jack of all trades, able to wipe out devestators, Brood commanders and hive guards in high numbers, better than the Gatling, but worse than the Autocannon, while having the rate of fire to deal with small horde bugs and bots, which the Gatling does better, but the Autocannon does worse. Also as the first sentry, yes I do think the cool down time should be a little more forgiving.
One thing me and a friend were discussing about giving the mech more utility, would be allowing it to be resupplied via the ammo backpack, with the trade off being you have to manually reload it from the exterior. That said I do agree they feel way to squishy for what they are supposed to be, another thing we considered as well was allowing divers with the engineering kit perk to be allowed to repair it should it get damaged, so this kinda solves two problems the first being the squishy mech issue and the second being the samey feel of most of the armor perks, should we also get other vehicles in the future like we had in HD1 then that perk could also apply to them as well.
I love the idea of having a Bull headed Strategy change to make the Machine gun sentry Viable more durability to make sure it gets off it's limited stockpile even when thrown right into the Fray giving it some Serious Blitzing potential Especially if it's got a Slimmer Cooldown making it not feel so punishing to bring it Alot of these changes seem really damn cool and would be a Blast to whip out in a Tense situation
The strafing run needs to carry out its two strafes, and then return to the area and go into VTOL mode, and continue to machine gun enemies for a period of time as continued air support.
With the vanilla guard dog, my personal idea for buffing it was to simply swap it over to using the AP Liberator. This would reduce the mag dump issue by locking it to burst fire, making it go through its ammo much slower and more deliberately. This would give it the niche of being more useful vs the often armored bots (so rover would be best vs bugs and standard vs bots), and establish a clear intent for both variants. It would still need a total ammo increase as well, but the weapon swap would be the most relevant part as it would let newer players get access to a reliable anti-armor tool before they may have unlocked the actual weapon itself via the warbond.
I'd also love for there to be an upgrade for our mechs that gives it some sort of unique defensive tool, like one of the mechs could have a smoke field you could trigger on cooldown, while another might have those reactive armor plates that makes it much more resistant against rockets, or an on-cooldown EMS burst emitted from the mech itself to stun enemies around it.
Ryken, I love your content! This game does not give great in-game info... Do you have resources/websites that help you show some of the more esoteric knowledge?
Glad you like it! Helldivers.io is good resource that shows you the inner workings of the game (that's how I could pull some numbers on stratagems would be otherwise near impossible to test for!)
Honestly the buff Id like to see for both the mechs and emplacements is a back pack that repairs and reloads them. Not even to full but being able to extend their duration seems really good and flexible
I like the idea you have with the smoke, that would definitely make it different from the eagle's smoke along with the uptime. Yeah landmines need to do more damage, Maybe have a lower cooldown to use it some more. The guard dog doesn't even replenish when picking up ammo boxes is what I noticed. only from resupply box. If it was able to replenish from the random ammo drops that would be helpful. My suggestion would also be more ammo and bigger mag. I know this might be impossible BUT if you could switch out what liberator(or weapon) it could use. I could have one with med pen, or the concussive shots. I would like if the exosuit had more ammo and 2000 sounds pretty good as is the stronger rocket damage, as from your previous video you said it's equivalent to the EATs, but when I used it on a charger's head it needed 2 shots which an EATs would kill in one. Another thing people brought up is being able to reload the mech, I suggested that maybe there could be mech reload/repair station you can find or even call in to help reload the mech so it can stay in battle and not be dumped. Also having the ability to explode like a hellbomb would be great too when it dies or purposely detonated for taking out areas. Rocket sentry from my experience, I'd like if it turned and reacted faster to shooting targets. it's kind of too slow making it feel unresponsive. OR it could have homing rockets like the spear, that would be pretty sick to have. Yeah I always wondered why'd you'd pick strafing run over clusterbomb. aside from easy to aim, short call in time. it's still not as good as clusterbomb. But your suggestions would make me consider it more. But I'll probably play with it some more, just need to figure out which strata gem to take out. 500kg like everyone has complained about is legit, it needs a better stronger blast radius like come on Arrowhead, you didn't get an actual arrow to the head did they? Orbital precision strike, if it has a lower cooldown to 80 seconds like the gatling barrage or lower like the gas strike as you mentioned that would be pretty good, maybe you can get 3 shots in before they have to reload on the destroyer. Because I don't know why it takes so long to reload 1 shot for it. For the machine gun turret, yeah just lower cooldown so it gets more usage. Maybe even let us throw down 2 of them instead of one at a time before cooldown.
If your guard dog change is implemented, it would basically function on how it was it helldivers 1. It's mini stun allowed for primaries like the plas-scorcher to be used effectively since its incendiary effect will kill you if enemies get close enough.
arrowhead should hire you bud. i already like your approach and aims. however reworking the guard dog into a beautiful machine that fits well and makes sense indicates a level of understanding and vision that is unmatched by everyone else on YT (it's not even close).
God, a guard dog punisher would be so cool, but also probably instantly splatter my brains out trying to shoot a scavenger at my feet. Its not quite as scary as the idea of a flamethrower guard dog, but man it ain't too far off lol
flame thrower guard dog? you mean the teamkill backpack?
Nah this worse
U can stim when your on fire but a point blank shot to the head is death
I still want it tho
I would take a 500kg guard dog if they'd let me.
A sniper guard dog would better, slow firing but chunky with the ability to set targets for it manually.
That reminds me of the division 2 sniper sentry. Taking out priority targets while you focus on trash@@TheDwarfishjoe
The eagle strafing run needs to be turned into an A-10 Warthog, I want BRRRT
Maybe we'll get a new Eagle stratagem or something.. I have a bunch of ideas for stratagems that would be fun to have in the game... Maybe I'll get around to making that next..
@@rykenxivthat would be cool i know the former ceo (now cco) often loves hearing/seeing people's ideas for stratagems so it's def worth putting out
While I agree I feel it should be a new stratafem
Make it like the orbital gatling barrage but faster and snapper and call it like an Eagle AT Gatling Run. Less cooldowns than the normal
Hard yes! It could be an upgrade option and 100% of people would take it lol
Facts it needs to use depleted uranium rounds and pierce medium armor at least
"Enemies have equal health no matter the difficulty."
"Great, does that mean we can use everything on all difficulties?"
"No lol"
Enemies spawn in different quantities and there's more heavies on heavier levels, whats the problem?
@@ExValeFormake more viable options, the difficulty shouldnt hinder your loadout so much, the encounters itself is what is hard, darktide, deeprock, left4dead, cod zombies does these exact things
"A swarm of macteria is onto you, get ready!" Make me alert immediately.
"Thats not good, something.... BIG is heading your way." Flinches a lil. But it's only the dreadnought that shows up.
What's stopping helldivers from having anomaly encounters too? I rather fight 400 scavangers from a single bug breaches then be pressured by a bile titan with a hard to hit qweakspot (still the head despite the changes)
Savangers won't be hard, but a huge time waster, applying pressure in a diffrent way. Better have the resupply ready. O_o
@@loafofbread9400deep rock literally has a class based system and different roles and strengths for each class. I think the devs should encourage specialization more and not let general all rounder builds be meta.
@@maybeiamepic2263 i agree, thats how helldivers 1 shaped aswell
Another option for Machine Gun Sentry would be to give it two charges per cooldown, like an Eagle. Balance between the raw damage of the Gatling or a pair of MGs covering multiple approaches or setting up a nasty crossfire.
IIRC currently you can only have one of any turret type up at a time. Making the MG an exception would be cool as well. Tho idk if it would make sense lore-wise
My suggestion is a little more simple, just increase the armor penetration to be in like with the MG stratagem we get. It's the same MG, unlike that Autocannon sentry and man portable, so they should have the same armor peneration. It'll bridge the Gatling and Autocannon sentry, by giving a sentry able to deal with Brood Commanders, Hive Guards, and Devestators without having to resort to the slower targeting and firing Autocannon sentry.
Thats actually wrong. Hop in to a lebel 1 mission and keep the enemies away from them, you can theoretically call multiple down. They don't despawn when another shows.
@@belzebubukas
@@CodexQuinn Just yesterday I was playing and called in an extra autocannon (was at difficulty 7, tho I'd assume it makes no difference). It did take the old autocannon like 10 seconds to move into the ground, but it did so *without shooting a single round since I called in a new one*. I think you might have called in a new one and immediately went "well that works" without waitying a bit. If they really did stick around until you had, say, 3 turrets of the same kind, that'd be interesting to look into
@@belzebubukas really? Hm. Ill test it again tmrw on low and see then. I dont remember if i did let them fire
As soon as you said lower the precision strike cooldown my immediate thought was “hey, that means you can have a constantly rotating chain of EMS, Gas and Precision strikes” and then you agreed on that very point lol. The gas strike in particular became my favorite strike for bugs after the DOT fixes
Would make it more fun just absolute churn out enemies but add more enemies, and more specialized enemies
I CAST *25% RESUPPLY TIME* and *50% CALL IN TIME*
Your idea of retooling the default Guard Dog into a Punisher is really good (and I am now upset it won't happen).
I'd take it becoming a Liberator Concussive. Hell I'd take it actually gaining ammo from ammo boxes... I have no idea how they want anyone to use it. Still can't get over them trying to make it more viable by 'nerfing' the Rover which only made the Rover even better by severely decreasing its friendly fire. This is way better.
If it just had as many reload as the liberator it would be a lot better. The guns really potent (headshot king) but it’s ammo can’t reload off ground drops and the number of reloads available barely lasts the cool-down of a supply drop.
@@IRMentat Even if it had the exact same ammo economy of the liberator it would still be a bit underwhelming because of how wasteful it is. Really need the option to toggle off our guard dogs so we can prevent them from getting stuck on something they can't hope to damage.
While I agree I think it just needs the mags buffed to 45. If they make it lib conc I would like it as a new guard dog.
I know it kinda sucks but just the mag buff alone and making it more like the lib would he cool or giving it extended mags. I would love mounting any primary to a guard dog and then needing a secondary too and just get rid of the guard dogs that have primaries built in. You just press 5 to deploy and it takes your equipped primary
Instead of changing the weapon the Guard Dog uses, I'd simply like to see it buffed, better ammo economy, smarter AI (wont shoot stuff it can't damage), and attempts to hit weak points.
And then we can have additional Guard Dogs that utilizes other weapons! ↓↓↓
• Guard Dog "Barker" uses the Liberator Concussive. Prioritizes medium targets and will not shoot stuff it can't damage.
• Guard Dog "Cerberus" uses the Incendiary Breaker in 3 shot mode, with a notable pause between each salvo, and a slightly longer reload. Prioritizes small targets that are not aflame.
• Guard Dog "Pointer" uses the Explosive Crossbow (quiet sound profile). Very fast target acquisition, paints it's target with a laser pointer. Targets anything it can damage, but won't fire unless its wearer has fired recently (this would be the stealth dog).
• Guard Dog "Pittie" uses the Eruptor Rifle. Targets ANYTHING that has made noise recently, or looks like it could make noise, or anything shiny or brightly colored, or edible, or moving (especially capes). Unlimited ammo (its powered by hate). Active even if unattended.
Okay the last one was a joke, but you get the idea, give us more options to play around with. The laser dog "Rover" would still have its niche of extremely high up time and consistent damage, but a bit stupid when it comes to choosing a target (including targeting stuff it can't hurt).
@@atticlion7648 iirc u can toggle them off by clicking 5 on pc, same keybind as using the supply pack. Not sure tho as I dont use guard dogs
Maybe you should be the balance guy. Or at least a second opinion 🤔
Haha - best I can offer is perspective and hope someone at Arrowhead takes notice :)
imagine beign at extract with 0 reinforcements and a bunch of samples in your pockets, about to extract but then your punisher dog blast your ass in 1 shot because a bug was behind you
@jeydonfal1 I've been headshot by my Lazer Doggo while aiming my quasar at a bug hole 3 times now.... I'm hoping crouching will be enough to prevent a 4th time, lol.
@@jeydonfal1 The griefing from the punisher dog would be insane lol
@@jeydonfal1I have had that happen. That dog is not trained properly and needs to be kept on a tight leash.
Eagle gating barrage is actually so good. It can shred through anything up to a hunter and you can throw it directly at your feet since it calls in so quickly and starts directly where the beacon is dropped. I love it on missions where I’m likely to be running from a bajillion tiny bugs
For the rocket Sentry, adding on a concussive mechanic so it staggers enemies would make it viable.
Yeah. As is, even with the buffs, it would still just be a bad Autocannon sentry. This would give it some sort of unique purpose, at least.
Rockets have travel time, can miss, lower range, shorter burst... maybe give it 8 spear missiles to fire?
Guard Dog suggestions is different enough that it should just be a new stratagem IMO. To fix the regular guard dog you just need to improve its staying power and target acquisition. A Punisher variant would be neat as a new strategem however.
In hindsight, it should have a different thing haha. But buffing the Guard Dog still doesn't change the fact that its function is the same as the Rover - ad clear support..
Maybe if the guard dog had a liberator penetrator alongside damage buffs and an AI that prioritized medium armoured enemies, it could be helpful with taking down medium enemies? Or a liberator concussive for CC?
@@rykenxiv True, but it's like comparing the Sickle or Scythe to the Liberator. They're actually supposed to be the same role, but with different logistical gameplay related to ammo management, and planet temperature considerations.
So the Guard Dog should have the same role as the rover, but with ammo considerations. I just think the ammo considerations aren't tuned well currently. I also think the rover should be affected by planet temperature like other laser weapons are.
It really just needs to carry enough magazines of ammo to generally last between ammo pickups if you're consistently resupplying, like any other handheld ballistic weapon.
@@Ashnal huh, didn't thought about that, but I don't think they will implement that change to the rover, seeing how much nerfing we are getting, I can guess the community will see that change as a nerf
@@lostinthenight2005 Depends on how you adjust it. You could make it a neutral change where it overheats a bit faster than now on hot planets, but overheats slower on cold planets, and stays the same on planets without climate mods.
This would encourage more loadout variance (a good thing) based on planet.
I just think it would make the most sense to get the two guard dogs in line with how handheld ballistic vs laser weaponry works.
One other change I'd like is for the OPS to be unaffected by the orbital scatter modifier. It's completley useless when that modifier is active, and furthermore its name becomes inaccurate. It'd also give it a slightly reliability boost vs other orbital stratagems
Yeah, that always bothered me a bit. Sometimes it's right on target and other times it'll land nowhere near the beacon. So it's not even consistent in its inaccuracy with the Orbital Scatter modifier.
I would also like it to come in a little faster. You have to lead it so much, which seems to be okay with the 500kg which has a slightly more forgiving AOE. If the precision strike is truly to be that precise, it should also come in quicker to be more responsive.
@@agedgouda8809 agreed. I think a 3 second call in time would be awesome instead of the current 5
Fuck that. Remove _all_ negative strategem modifiers from the game. Seriously, when have you ever told yourself "You know something? The orbital scattering modifier is great fun, and twiddling my thumbs waiting for a drop under the call down time modifier is absolutely sublime entertainment."
If they aren't a fun challenge (and none of them are) they should be removed and replaced by something that is.
@@ultimatemaster2407 It massively botters me, that should just be removed from the game period.
why have an modifier that invalidates an entire section of stratagems that are great against that specific faction?
In addition to your suggestions for the exosuits, I'd really love it if taking a mech gave you a special limited use mech reload/repair stratagem. Something to call down a big ammo crate so you can spend a few seconds lugging ammo back to your mech and giving it little patch up. Even Helldive missions generally have enough downtime SOMEWHERE that you can do that... if you're in a full squad that is.
Edit: Re: Orbital precision strike. The buff I would like to give the stratagem itself is to reduce the base call in time down to match the other non-barrage/railcannon orbitals: from 4s down to 2s. That way it can be much snappier to use.
Additionally, some of the orbital ship modules should be buffed. Currently the eagle modules are way more effective in increasing the output of eagles compared to orbitals. Also doesn't help that several orbital modules ONLY affect barrages.
I also think all emplacements should get to benefit from all sentry buffing modules.
Well, HD1 had a support weapon stratagem that allowed you to fire a beam that healed Helldivers and mech/vehicles, and I think would also damage enemies somewhat, adding that in (possibly also with some way to resupply mechs/vehicles ammo) would see those stratagems used more.
I believe there's a mechanic bay "under construction" in the super destroyer, so hopefully someday we get the mech/vehicle upgrades.
Someday...
I think mechs should benefit from the sentry modules as well, a patriot with +50% health and 50% explosive damage resistance sounds like an actually fun strat to use against bots
@@kirbyplush240Not to mention cooldown, maybe the rotation speed upgrade making arms extremely more precise in aiming, cooldown benefit of 10% and 50% ammo benefit
I like the idea of dropping down a little mobile mech gas station that you could load your mech into, then get out and service it to refill ammo, armor, and HP. Of course the whole team could help to operate the station like a pit crew to make it work faster.
I love these balancing videos you're doing, they're a much needed breath of fresh air from all the rage I've been seeing around the game recently. I'd certainly be very happy to see changes like this made, I've been absolutely dying to experiment with different loadouts but just keep falling into a rut of using what I know works because of the inconsistency and ineffectiveness of other options.
Honestly they should just hire you for balancing.
The bar is really not high atm 😄
The cut at the mine incident is *chefs kiss
Thank you for coming at this game with a level head and providing solutions instead of complaining like others. Same goes for your AR video and many others. The data is fantastic and your proposed changes seem to incorporate “fairness” and fun, and feel.
Ryken is the best HD2 content creator bar none, same as he was for Darktide. Absolute chad
I would add 2 things:
(1) The Orbital Gatling Barrage has a pretty low volume of fire. I often saw warrior bugs walk through the area relatively unharmed. I would double its number of shots fired (keeping the same duration). This would further differentiate it from the eagle strafe by making it saturate a circular area rather than pepper a rectangle.
(2) The Orbital Precision Strike should have a base Call-in Time of 2 seconds, reduced to 1 second with the upgrade. It currently takes 3 seconds to begin the firing sequence, and then another maybe 3-4 seconds until impact. The Complex Stratagem Planning modifier makes this stratagem useless against anything besides structures, as you have to wait almost 10 seconds until impact. A great use of the OPS is to bring Stun Grenades to lock down a Hulk or a Charger and then throw down the OPS. With the current Call-in Time, the stun doesn't last long enough and they'll just walk out of the blast radius.
Lisan Al Gaib!!!
@@keanxavier NO ONE IN THIS ROOM CAN STAND AGAINST ME
Really nice to see some constructive criticism among the discourse that isn’t just “buff it, idk.” The focus on roles/use-cases is KEY.
If the devs still refuse to give the sentries a shield in order to elongate their uptime (minding the fact the Blast Absorption ship module already does absolutely nothing), I think it would be incredibly beneficial for the turrets to have a mechanism which deploys a lure for enemies to focus on, so that the sentries don’t get immediately targeted and destroyed in a single hit.
Aside from the mortar sentries being able to work effectively without line-of-sight, it is frustratingly absurd that you cannot flexibly place a turret without a charger or bile titan touching them just a single time and causing them to die instantly, or worse yet, having a rocket-wielding automaton cross-mapping your sentries with a single shot.
The form you have chosen to present is polished. I enjoy the clips referencing your observations supporting suggestions. You gather and present your data and supporting logic very well. You are very communicative, concise in diction, all as you are presenting well constructed suggestions for someone trying to make Helldivers 2 an exceptionally fun game.
Thanks for the video, Ryken XIV.
I actually really like the standard guard dog. The biggest reason is it doesn't dome me in the back of the head every 2 seconds like the rover does. I think it just needs a bigger magazine and the ability to resupply some off world pick up ammo boxes.
Agreed. Ballistic guard dog does work, especially when it aimbot kills 5 bugs in 5 shots. I have never seen rover kill that fast and often I see it having trouble targeting some little scavenger on the ground.
I love your balance idea videos because you always take a sensible view on everything. Not wanting to buff something so it overshadows another.
Balance that goes deeper just numbers. You do it right and I'd love to use every single suggestion you made!
I don't remember if you mentioned it but making it so the turrets and gaurd dogs (both of them) don't target enemies with higher armor class than them would help. And a cool in game lore way yo upgrade them could be adding a new mission time were we send bug and bot corpses to the ship with balloons like in metal gear solid. That way our scientists can make our weapons smarter and we get a new mission mode
Yes I wish this was a thing already. The turrets in the game right now are very effective until that one enemy shows up. Then it just dumps all its ammo out.
2:45 haha
Increasing the health of the mine pod is incredibly insightful.
I like the Guard Dog Punisher idea. With it, I may even be tempted to bring an AR for my primary.
The difference in Strafing Run charges versus Cluster Bomb has always bothered me.
Another possible boost to the Machine Gun Sentry would be to allow you to pull the MG off and carry it. This would allow you to bring it instead a Support weapon. The downside is it comes in with less ammo than the normal MG and you have to grab it, which might be difficult under fire.
Great video, as usual, Ryken.
The most objective of all TH-camrs talking about Helldivers 2. I support every one of your ideas because they serve to the most important purpose, fun. Also they define each stratagems places and roles
I feel like a nice upgrade for the mine emplacements would be the deployer retracting once it spews out the mines, and then once a certain % of the field has been depleted, it pops back up for a second volley before being exhausted.
Get this guy on the balance team right now
I love hearing from you about Helldivers. You're always so conscientious and detailed!
Awesome to see this video. I love how you justify and create distinct niches for items in helldivers.
I hope arrowhead considers your ideas as I have similar feelings. I think we're really close to having a very diverse loadout, compared to the doomers and gloomers.
We're getting there for sure! The pieces are in place, just a little tweaking needed!
My one critique with your analyze is making the eagle and orbitals being used at the same rate overlooks a key detail about them being that orbitals are more powerful but slower tools. An eagle is suppose to be a fast response to something, while an orbital serves as a more forward planning use case.
Your obital/eagle smoke changes highlight this very well in my opinion.
Also yes the guard dog needs a change. Love how it doesn't harm friendly as much but oh man does it have no ammo.
While the idea of Orbitals being stronger than Eagles does make sense - as I've shown with the 500KG that isn't always the case.. So if an Eagle is going to bring (literally) more impact to a mission, the least a single precision strike (which is basically the same shell as the 380mm Barrage) could do is be fired more often to balance the scales a little!
My favorite Helldiver on TH-cam
This unbelievably good! I hope Arrowhead sees this, or someone forwards you videos to the CEO, or whatever his position is now. I do want to say though that the guard dog has a neat quirk of aiming for the head with bots. I actually enjoy bringing it to help kill heavy devastators. Although the rover is still better because it doesn't run out of ammo halfway through a fight lol.
Keep up the good work! You have to be one of the better content creators for Helldivers I have ever seen!
Great video! Keep up the good work!
You're really good at balancing. Like UNGODLY good at balancing. AH if you see this you MUST add him as part of the balance team
Support weapon tweaks with lore explanations!
Morgunson Arms has been somewhat disappointed in the effects of the APW against the Termind forces. So, they have developed a new round. This round should be able to penetrate heavy armor on hits perpendicular to the armor.
(AP 5 on Direct Hits)
This is ment to increase the effectiveness of the AMR against bugs, being able to down chargers in one magazine. The AMR I see as being a competitor to the Railgun. While the railgun boasts higher damage and penetration, the AMR delivers it's results on trigger pull, has more ammo in total, and a faster fire rate.
The MG208 machine gun was never really intended for portable use. But they have managed to cut down on the weight of the magazines significantly, mainly by switching to more lightweight materials. It has also received the same New Ammo as the AMR.
(The MG208 HMG now has 3 mags instead of just 2, AP 5 on Direct hits.)
The RS-422 Railgun has suffered from some corners having to be cut in order to keep up with the massive demands from the Helldivers early in the war. The Super Cavitation Round required far too much manpower to manufacture previously, but now that the War is officially on, we can begin production of the improved round. But we're having to cut the ammo carried in order to ensure we can keep up with production.
(Damage vs Massive increased from 60 to 390 on safe, and from 90 to 450 on Unsafe, the dot in the scope is now 50% smaller, rounds carried reduced from 20 to 10)
In short, the railgun can now kill Bile Titans in two headshots, but the ammo capacity limits its role somewhat.
Other Tweaks.
Using technology recovered from destroyed Automoton gunships, we have increased the carrying capacity of the "Guard Dog" drones by nearly 100%, as such, we have decided to upgrade it's ammo capacity to 45 rounds, and have given it medium AP ammo, similar to the Liberator Penetrator.
(Magsize increased to 45, The rifle has gained AP 3)
For those who don't know what a Direct hit, this article on the wiki explains it.
helldivers.wiki.gg/wiki/Damage#Armor_Penetration
Lots of things in this article need more detail, so do your part and help fill out the wiki today!
I was hoping railgun was on this list.
Needs love badly.
Railgun just needs a durable damage buff. Crazy how bad it is at taking out gunships and front strider guns.
id really like to see the MG sentry have more ammo as well. i agree with improving the overall uptime via a lowered CD, id also like it just to shoot longer.
in any case, keep up the great work! my favorite helldivers 2 channel, by far! :D
Good ideas! Like a lot of these!
More concept content! Yes! Love stuff like this.
I'd like to throw an idea at ya. What if we had Stratagems with charges that were on individual cooldowns? Something I thought up recently was a rework of orbitals to lower the cooldown of the "main strike," and have additional charges be "banked" over an increasing period of time per charge. My idea for this is (base cooldown) + (15 seconds * Additional Charge Number). These additionals can be used while the main strike is on cooldown, but their timer is paused until the main strike is ready again.
So, for Orbital Precision Strikes, you'd always drop with one ready. It's cooldown could be 67.5, as proposed. It's first additional charge timer would be (67.5) + (15 * 1) = 82.5 seconds.
The second additional charge would be (67.5) + (15 * 2) = 97.5 seconds. The third, (67.5) + (15 * 3) = 112.5 seconds, and so on.
If you dropped into a mission and didn't use your precision strike for 5 minutes, you'd have 4 Orbital Precision strikes. The first charge, and 3 banked, as the first three charges would take a total of 292.5 seconds to build.
Doing it this way results in less strikes over the course of a mission, but the option to have more to throw at a particular problem. If you did nothing but bank Orbital Precision Strikes from the start of a mission until you had to use them or the Destroyer leaves orbit, you'd have 14 of them and 2 minutes 38 seconds to burn through them before they end up wasted.
This also creates room for flexibility in it's use. It can be thrown often, or it can be held back to have a second or third shell ready in case the first misses or more problems show up. It also means that the time spent where the main strike is ready isn't time entirely wasted.
Obviously the numbers can be tweaked, but I think the idea of Orbitals having at least one backup charge that is tied to whether the main one is on cooldown or not is an interesting idea and would create more cases where a player is given more to consider based on the state of the cooldowns, without stepping on the Eagle's toes. Or talons, even...
Genuinely impressed by the grasp of good game design on display, here. Anyone can provide an overzealous buff that'd overshadow other options, or a modest change in statistics that would ultimately change little, but these suggestions manage to navigate the narrow path it takes to broaden a tool's applicable usage by *refining its design space*, rather than simply increasing random numbers to support only a single statistic of use-case (i.e. damage or uptime). Every single proposed change is also considered not in a vacuum, but in the context of its surrounding options, as well as in full context of its role in the game's ludonarrative design. Which, again: impressive.
Rather than upping the damage of the MG Sentry, or giving it just ammo and saying "good enough," the change to deployment time and durability really distinguishes it as both easier-to-use and also slightly different in role, as it's then less "commital" than the Gatling, which then even works to smooth out a new player's learning experience in terms of effective turret placement, as a lower cooldown and extra health can benefit both higher and lower players' use-case quite well, by lessening the punishment for mediocre placement for newbies while refining a role for skilled skirmishers in the process. It becomes more FUN, conceptually, while improving both its game feel and mechanical advantage... without intruding upon the dedicate firepower of the Gatling.
And it's clear that a similar amount of thoughtful consideration has gone into every single one of these changes-- which I would *also* detail at-length, but, well, honestly? Every single one was explained without a wasted word, already, so it would be entirely redundant to retread. Though I will note how the increased Strafing Run charges and circular Orbital Smoke considerably impressed with their comparative analysis, and the creativity of the minefield fix by leveraging the deployment post as a lure, as well as the understanding to recognize that the guard dog is simply better off with a completely different weapon? Seriously solid stuff.
One note I will quickly disagree with, however, is the guard dog's use of a shotgun. That would require basically creating an entirely new stratagem, whereas the current guard dog could be given a role equivalent to your suggestion by simply turning it into a DMR with some reasonable hitstun. The amount of actual coding could be dramatically reduced, by not requiring an entirely new firing mode, while still honing in on a new design space of "bullet guard dogs are about creating space with hitstun, while laser guard dogs have better raw firepower."
A shotgun guard dog, however, would be a solid standalone stratagem, which could then have higher firepower than the DMR guard dog in return for lower range. Both, by firing single shots at a time (and, of course, having a *bigger* clip than the helldiver's equivalent, rather than *smaller*), would then have a useful role to play. The longer-ranged DMR guard dog could save you from an unspotted bile spewer or rocket devastator now and then, at-range, while the shotgun guard dog would more consistently handle hunters that are closing into melee.
Honestly? I'd want to see a series of passes through basically *every* stratagem, just to see what else comes to mind. Fantastic work, genuinely, and I hope to see more! Or rather, I *do* see more, in that assault rifle balance pass, so I'm already subbed, for sure. ^^
Let us use supply packs while inside mechs to resupply them. Since you can't repair them like in the first game at least let us maintain them for longer.
Love videos like this, it's fun to share ideas and spitball changes. Hope you get around to making a video about your own ideas for stratagems I'd love to see what you can come up with.
An idea I had for the guard dogs was to make them turn on/off when pressing the "ressuply yourself" button of the supply pack. That way, you could turn off the dogs for stealth so they don't shoot at anything or to make it not shoot at heavy target if you want to preserve its ammo. A bit of skill expression you could say.
Well i have something to listen to on my wat home later. Thanks for that mate!
Can't wait to see you do videos on support weapons.
The Patriot exosuit rockets do have enough damage to 2hit kill Bile Titans. 400 durable dmg, 6 AP. Titan head 750HP 5 armor. So why don't they? Because some jackass decided to put this in patch 01.000.200: "Patriot Exosuit: rockets will now penetrate armor only on direct hit." In other words, if you don't score a perfectly straight on hit you're either doing half damage or no damage (not sure which). This used to not be a thing. The Patriot used to do full damage regardless of the angle, killing BTs in 2 rockets. But the fun police said "No fun for you".
Most of the time it takes like 8 rockets to get 1 single bile titan for me, i mostly oneshot chargers with them, so either i dont get it or simply you arent allowed to get it either way anymore.
love this guard dog punisher concept! would like to see that as an option along with the liberator guard dog, always love more options. great ideas all around. i know the CCO at arrowhead seems to take in a lot of community feedback, and i hope he is seeing your videos.
I agree with all these changes. So excited about the precision strike because I love the fast orbitals! They aren't amazing but they help in a pinch and are usually ready when you need them.
what i'd personally change about the guard dog, is make it medium penetrating (to set it apart from the rover), make it gain ammo from ammo pickups, and generally make it so you're able to enable/disable any type of guard dog at-will by pressing the backpack action key, while holding it forces it to perform a reload/cool down
My own quick list
●Guard dog sniper with ability to manually set targets.
●Gas should spread out a bit more and last a bit longer with damage falloff.
●Another variant of the 3 Charge laser orbital where you can actively change its course with a laser pointer.
●Turrets could do with more damage/ammo but have limited cone of fire, flamer turret be nice.
●Jet pack needs a slowly regenerating pool of fuel that you can use WHENEVER with the ability to AIM when jumping.
●Mechs could do with a way to re-arm once or twice, a backpack maybe.
●In general we need more skill-based stratagems that could be considered op if used in the right hands, be nice to know if a diver has just farmed for their level or has fought for it ya know?
The smoke can stay the same, it just needs like 3-5 charges like the cluster bomb.
Actually would be great if the smoke screen would be a Willy Pete Strike since is how we do Smokescreens in our world.
So it would give some DOT to the enemies directly hitted and slowing them down.
Holy crap guys we need to be spamming the Discord with this video, these changes are fantastic!
Love that you've really thought these out :)
Honestly, you make a lot of great points. I'll definitely say for the mines I think it should pump out waves of mines after a certain time if the stratagem isn't destroyed. Make it a great stratagem. Same for sentries we should have the ability to reload them if they aren't destroyed.
What needs to be mentioned about the exosuits is that the stomp damage is abysmal.
Warriors routinely take 3-4 sometimes more stomps when they should be killed in 2 maximum
Hunters take 2, but at least scavengers can just be walked over.
The stomp damage is usually blocked by the limbs of an enemy, rather than dealing damage to the torso since you can't kill via limbs.
It needs to do 300 damage minimum and also have an aoe splash so it does damage to multiple parts.
21:00 this especially rings true what with the new exosuit falling below people's expectations. I hate to say it but a week from now that thing will follow the way of the previous exosuit. I hope AH incorporates even a fraction of your proposed changes.
That's mate, another great vid. Guard Dog 'Rottweiler' with the Punisher would be dope 🤩
I like the idea of having a mech suit uprade section in the ship, where you can unlock things like...
• more ammo
• mech reload (pick up the empty mech; restore 1 mech to your stratagem.)
• 25% less time for mech cool downs
I like the idea behind these videos, but I think that some of the suggested changes feel overpowered. Like for the Orb Smoke, it would be better to frame the difference as either a larger single smoke or a longer lasting smoke, not both. Personally, make the number of smoke missles 9 and increase the duration of smoke from 25s to 33s. Also decrease the diffusion rate of this smoke. That would create a better difference between use cases of the different smoke.
Eagle strafing run should be used the same way an A-10 Warthog strafing run is used today; to kill heavy armor and deal with clusters of enemies. The A-10's GAU-8 can penetrate tank armor, and the Eagle is supposed to be a futuristic A-10. It makes no sense that the main gun is weaker than the A-10. It is practically an airsoft gun in comparison.
I agree with the strafe being underrated. My friends and I are plagued by connection issues still, so one level 7 I was the last man standing in the lobby and refused to go down swinging. Ended up kiting like 200 bugs around extraction and that strafe with its practically instant call down and super consistent damage area absolutely pulled me out of the fire. More charges would make it frankly indispensable, especially with how low the team damage risk is.
The allied AI targeting priority really needs a rework atop the changes you suggested for turrets and the like. I never take turrets on bot missions anymore because they waste half of their ammo pinging rounds harmlessly off dropships instead of actually hitting enemies. I really like your ideas for the guard dog, though.
The exosuit was really good week 1! The reason it's bad now was the health rebalancing. The Exosuit used to be able to 2 hit kill Bile Titans with headshots, allowing it to kill many of them with the proper support. Once that reliability was removed, it went from a B tier option that was risky but could give you a really strong moment once or twice per mission (which is already HORRIBLE on its own) to an F tier option. I think the best way to buff them is allow supply packs/supply drops to replenish 10% of their total ammo pool, meaning if they run out of ammo you can potentially leave it in a safe place and replenish it later. It becomes a high firepower fragile weapons platform your team wants to play around and escort. It will still have that massive inherent risk of just exploding due to meteor or friendly fire, but if you fight through that it would have a unique team based gameplay niche of being a funnel for your supplies that everyone wants to keep safe for its wave clear. And higher uptime helps justify its massive 10 minute cooldown (WHY EVEN HAVE CHARGES AT 10 MINUTES? WHY!??!?!).
Personally, my solution to the mech balance would be to add a Vehicle stratagem slot as a 5th slot, and weve already seen we will be getting atvs, all terrain vehicles and APCs. This would also help with the annoyance of spending 10 minutes a mission backtracking for no reason on certain maps.
maybe add the 5th vehicle stratagem as a ship module or classification? to get something to work on, because at the beginning we don't have access to vehicles, that would also explain the (current) limitation of only having only one exosuit in a mission loadout.
Or even something as simple as adding more interactions with stratagems. Use the supply pack to refill mech ammo pool, 1 square refills a quater of both gun pools, and then with the ship upgrade (which i think should apply to the supply pack) make it fill half per square. If stratagems were more interactable then even in their current state they have more value and add depth to the game.
These suggestions are fantastic👏🏼. The only one I would disagree with is the 500kg; I think it’s perfect how it is. Otherwise, I love how your suggestions give weaker variants of good strategems their own identity and uses, and I like that you’re mostly suggesting cooldown reductions and durability increases rather than just more damage. I agree 100% with this approach, and think it would really add to the fun factor while minimizing power creep. I would love to be able to use your versions of the strafing run, guard dog, precision strike, and MG sentry, in particular.
I like these change ideas a lot, especially the change to the machine gun sentry.
I was thinking recently about how to change it not to be a direct downgrade to the gatling. I thought about increasing its armor pen, but that'd just make it a worse autocannon sentry.
Having the machine gun sentry be offensive-oriented, while the Gatling is defense-oriented, is so genius and actually gives the MG a place in the game.
Your videos are fantastic. Keep up the great work!
Honestly, all great thoughts and reasoning abput keeping/solidifying the identity of the strats
Its important to mention the fact that they changed the exosuits rockets to being AP0 if you do not land a direct hit. Meaning if you shoot at an angle of 26 degrees or higher - you will deal 0 damage except to things like scavengers cause they have 0 armor.
Another very informative great video man!
Geez, someone on AH hire this man already. I see way too many youtubers whining and making useless tier lists to complain about balancing, but you're out here providing legitimate, well thought out solutions.
9:37 Rocket sentry only receives 50% ammo upgrade to the first block of rockets. The reload block is normal unbuffed even after the +50%. Actually only gets +50% on 50% of its ammo which is only 25%.
Side note, this is how you complain properly. State the issue, state the fix, and state both fairly. Nailed it bro. Keep up the great work
Instead of the Patriot packing an MG-43, they should upgrade it to a Heavy MG-206. Having much heavier AP would allow you to use less ammo while increasing its functionality against Brood Commanders, Spewers, Hive Guards, and all of the medium level stuff while still being able to deal with smaller stuff just fine. This would also make it a force against the bots while still making it vulnerable to rocket attacks. Having a 3rd mech available for cooldown (like the laser bombardment) would also help. Several times I've left an exosuit at the extract waiting for our return in order to cover us as the ammo is just enough to cover what we end up facing.
For the Guard Dog, just replace the Liberator with a Liberator Penetrator and up the ammo count. The extra AP would do more damage to medium bugs and need less ammo. A Liberator Concussive would also be pretty nice since it would knock back enemies trying to close in on you and the lower fire rate means it would waste less ammo on single targets allowing it to switch more often.
The Precision Strike should be a flat 60sec. It's a single 380mm round. Our ships have a full magazine of these things loaded for a barrage which only has a 240sec cooldown to reload. A Precision Strike is literally just one of the guns taking it's time to aim accurately. The full magazine is still there. The cooldown should be very short and the reason for 60sec rather than 15sec is something like position recalculating or something to do with the aiming software. Against bugs I take the 500kg as its better against Titans. But against bots I take the Precision Strike since anti-aircraft guns are too common and prevent any Eagles while the Orbitals are still active. Many of us have felt the pain when an AA battery spawns next to an Eye of Sauron Detector.
Another thing that would help 500kg and Precision Strike is if they actually hit where the stratagem beam IS instead of where it originally landed, its listed in the known bugs and hope it gets fixed soon.
6:33 Another big intrinsic problem with mines is that they get triggered by any physics collision, even enemy ragdolls. So you will frequently have situations where one scavenger will hit a mine, and then the dead body will fly forward and trigger 4 more, wasting them.
So I propose that mines should vaporize smaller targets without creating ragdolls (e.g., like a railgun shot does against certain enemies).
Imo the OPS should also get less call in time by at least a second
Just want to saw first great video and ideas! I love constructive and thoughtful videos/feedback, it's very refreshing to some of the more...common takes lol.
This got me thinking, and I like the idea of your orbital smoke change, but the true one step from greatness may be to turn it into a walking barrage. Bump the shells to 7 for consistency sake per volley, but have it take 2, maybe 3 steps from the beacon (so 3-4 volleys all together). This would really make it a stand-out as creating a circle of vision denial unfortunately doesn't seem like it'll do much when enemies will still randomly attack into the circle, and charge into it, which can confuse them but also means you could be effectively trapped. A walking barrage would give you that initial break, but could cover you until you reach more hard terrain to truly break off and leave your enemies in the dust. Perhaps more importantly it would let you not immediately aggro any patrols that you might be accidently running towards, or at the very least give you a window of opportunity to break away there.
It would also give it a use case against bugs who would charge in, might continue charging along your last known position further into the smoke, then themselves be caught in a wall of smoke that they can't see out of. It could remain at 100/90s cooldown, everything else it currently has stat wise, since it's no longer competing in that similar vision denial style and the overall longer coverage time of the barrages would likely feel fair compared to the versatility of the eagles.
As an aside because truly you've got some good ideas, and I don't want to seem like I'm just counter-arguing, but apparently the limitation of 2 charges per mech use is due to their own backend issues if too many vehicles get on field (saw this on reddit tbf). I've been thinking ever since the Patriot was released that it just needs to be taken off of a 2 use limit, as frankly even if the rockets could 1 tap a bile titan, even the ideal 14 bile titan kills is honestly pretty low for what can happen in 9s, especially since you will be forced to use some rockets on chargers as they are extreme threats to the mechs. If they are able to overcome that back-end issue, and uncap mechs they'll instantly be good since invoking a hard-cap when missions already have their own hard-time limits feels really bad.
I imagine we will see mech upgrades that will probably be more universal as vehicle upgrades once we get more down the line. We'll likely see things like ammo economy, damage increases, or HP increases. Though a great upgrade I've never seen anyone mention that I would love to see is mech turn speed increase/walking speed increase. They aren't the slowest things but it's noticeably dragging when a charger is coming in on your right side and you've gotta swing around to get rockets on.
heres an idea for the guard dog - how about make it moddable, like having the hability of using any primary or secundary weapon that use normal ammo
I think the reason the Eagle Strikes are so much better than the Orbitals in every way is because the Eagles can be blocked by AA or Scrambler, while the Orbitals can only be blocked by Scrambler. Is this a good decision, definitely not, especially since it can be planned around, but I can see their mental process none the less.
I think that’s part of it, but more importantly I think Eagle Strikes are made to be better than Orbitals is because having more than one eagle strike in your load out is awkward. Balancing your usage of multiple Eagle Strikes and deciding when to start the rearm timer is a headache. For every eagle strike you take beyond the first one is going to have reduce the effect up time. It makes the eagle strike a sudo “slot” for your build, and means they can be stronger because they are taking up this slot.
For mines, I personally feel that the best approach is to let the central structure redeploy mines as they're used up. That would let the field last longer and handle more traffic. As it stands, mines are good for a few bugs, then the field is basically spent. There are enough individual mines left to kill YOU, but not enough to make a difference against enemies.
Fantastic ideas here, I really like where you're going with these. I'd be thrilled to see Arrowhead implement some or all of these!
These are all wonderful ideas. Great vid!
The lack of differentiation between stratagems that have Eagle and orbital pairs in another confounding design decision.
The intuitive approach is make the orbitals stronger but one (or less) shots and the eagles weaker but faster and/or more uses. As is if there is a comparable Eagle stratagem it is almost strictly better. And Eagle can re-arm itself so fast that even if you have to go through a whole cooldown to get what you want it costs you all of, maybe, an extra minute, and even then the extra time is offset by getting more uses!
Your comparison of something like smoke strikes is this exactly - there is basically zero reason to take orbital smoke - it’s not better even on paper. It make no sense to have that in the game if there’s a strictly better version available.
I’m excited to see how they balance in the future because they know it’s a huge problem. Here’s hoping.
18:13
I always thought a cool role for the MGS is for it to have a way longer up time than the GGS, so just give it way more ammo. Also I like your idea of it being more “mobile” that way it feels like a sentry you place down for extra support defending an area for an extended period of time while the GGS is a clearing turret
There are a few thing I would like to suggest over or in combination with what you have suggested.
For the rocket sentry, the big thing that makes it inferior to the Autocannon sentry is the Rocket sentry does not stagger enemies. An Autocannon sentry will stagger and stop a charging charger, the rocket sentry will not, which drastically decreases the Rocket sentry's survival and up time, when the enemies it is supposed to counter are able to destroy the sentry in a 1v1 condition 100% of the time.
Second, with the Machine Gun sentry, I would genuinely up it's ammo count a bit, but most importantly increase it's armor penetration. It is using the same MG we get, unlike the Autocannon sentry(using the AC5 while Helldivers use the AC10) yet for some reason, the sentry, using the same MG we get, has less penetration. Thus penetration change would make the MG turret a real bridge between the Gatling(an anti-horde sentry) and the Autocannon sentry(an anti heavy/elite sentry) and really make the MG sentry a jack of all trades, able to wipe out devestators, Brood commanders and hive guards in high numbers, better than the Gatling, but worse than the Autocannon, while having the rate of fire to deal with small horde bugs and bots, which the Gatling does better, but the Autocannon does worse. Also as the first sentry, yes I do think the cool down time should be a little more forgiving.
4:06 the difference in the first line is -50%, -100% would be zero.
Loved your ideias!
One thing me and a friend were discussing about giving the mech more utility, would be allowing it to be resupplied via the ammo backpack, with the trade off being you have to manually reload it from the exterior. That said I do agree they feel way to squishy for what they are supposed to be, another thing we considered as well was allowing divers with the engineering kit perk to be allowed to repair it should it get damaged, so this kinda solves two problems the first being the squishy mech issue and the second being the samey feel of most of the armor perks, should we also get other vehicles in the future like we had in HD1 then that perk could also apply to them as well.
I love the idea of having a Bull headed Strategy change to make the Machine gun sentry Viable more durability to make sure it gets off it's limited stockpile even when thrown right into the Fray giving it some Serious Blitzing potential Especially if it's got a Slimmer Cooldown making it not feel so punishing to bring it
Alot of these changes seem really damn cool and would be a Blast to whip out in a Tense situation
The Gatling barrage is a bit underpowered too.
Came for the suggestions. Stayed for the hilarious mine footage.
If you were the head balance dev I'd play this game religiously these are amazing ideas
It would also be interesting to see the MG Sentry as the only "SMART" sentry, where it won't shoot at teammates in between it and the enemy.
The strafing run needs to carry out its two strafes, and then return to the area and go into VTOL mode, and continue to machine gun enemies for a period of time as continued air support.
Very good analysis, agreed on all points. Your timestamp for the Tesla tower is missing though. 11:39
I really like your suggestions, hope the devs are thinking in the same way.
With the vanilla guard dog, my personal idea for buffing it was to simply swap it over to using the AP Liberator.
This would reduce the mag dump issue by locking it to burst fire, making it go through its ammo much slower and more deliberately.
This would give it the niche of being more useful vs the often armored bots (so rover would be best vs bugs and standard vs bots), and establish a clear intent for both variants.
It would still need a total ammo increase as well, but the weapon swap would be the most relevant part as it would let newer players get access to a reliable anti-armor tool before they may have unlocked the actual weapon itself via the warbond.
I'd also love for there to be an upgrade for our mechs that gives it some sort of unique defensive tool, like one of the mechs could have a smoke field you could trigger on cooldown, while another might have those reactive armor plates that makes it much more resistant against rockets, or an on-cooldown EMS burst emitted from the mech itself to stun enemies around it.
Ryken, I love your content! This game does not give great in-game info... Do you have resources/websites that help you show some of the more esoteric knowledge?
Glad you like it! Helldivers.io is good resource that shows you the inner workings of the game (that's how I could pull some numbers on stratagems would be otherwise near impossible to test for!)
Honestly the buff Id like to see for both the mechs and emplacements is a back pack that repairs and reloads them. Not even to full but being able to extend their duration seems really good and flexible
I like the idea you have with the smoke, that would definitely make it different from the eagle's smoke along with the uptime.
Yeah landmines need to do more damage, Maybe have a lower cooldown to use it some more.
The guard dog doesn't even replenish when picking up ammo boxes is what I noticed. only from resupply box. If it was able to replenish from the random ammo drops that would be helpful. My suggestion would also be more ammo and bigger mag. I know this might be impossible BUT if you could switch out what liberator(or weapon) it could use. I could have one with med pen, or the concussive shots.
I would like if the exosuit had more ammo and 2000 sounds pretty good as is the stronger rocket damage, as from your previous video you said it's equivalent to the EATs, but when I used it on a charger's head it needed 2 shots which an EATs would kill in one. Another thing people brought up is being able to reload the mech, I suggested that maybe there could be mech reload/repair station you can find or even call in to help reload the mech so it can stay in battle and not be dumped. Also having the ability to explode like a hellbomb would be great too when it dies or purposely detonated for taking out areas.
Rocket sentry from my experience, I'd like if it turned and reacted faster to shooting targets. it's kind of too slow making it feel unresponsive. OR it could have homing rockets like the spear, that would be pretty sick to have.
Yeah I always wondered why'd you'd pick strafing run over clusterbomb. aside from easy to aim, short call in time. it's still not as good as clusterbomb. But your suggestions would make me consider it more. But I'll probably play with it some more, just need to figure out which strata gem to take out.
500kg like everyone has complained about is legit, it needs a better stronger blast radius like come on Arrowhead, you didn't get an actual arrow to the head did they?
Orbital precision strike, if it has a lower cooldown to 80 seconds like the gatling barrage or lower like the gas strike as you mentioned that would be pretty good, maybe you can get 3 shots in before they have to reload on the destroyer. Because I don't know why it takes so long to reload 1 shot for it.
For the machine gun turret, yeah just lower cooldown so it gets more usage. Maybe even let us throw down 2 of them instead of one at a time before cooldown.
If your guard dog change is implemented, it would basically function on how it was it helldivers 1.
It's mini stun allowed for primaries like the plas-scorcher to be used effectively since its incendiary effect will kill you if enemies get close enough.
arrowhead should hire you bud. i already like your approach and aims. however reworking the guard dog into a beautiful machine that fits well and makes sense indicates a level of understanding and vision that is unmatched by everyone else on YT (it's not even close).