Stalwart = what a lot of players think primaries should be. Semi-viable on high difficulties, better against bugs. Aim for the mouths or legs. Hipfire to clear trash mobs. MG-43 = every medium and small enemy is your feast. Viable on any difficulty and both factions. Get behind chargers and tanks to assplode them in seconds. Hipfire to clear most mobs. HMG-206 = instakill mediums, prey upon the heavies. The jack-of-all-trades, destroyer of shrieker nests and gunships. Hipfire upward to neuter bile titans (and rapidly kill them), or rapidly eviscerate factory striders. Headshot hulks or blow off their arms and legs rapidly. All bot AA and mortars and bunker turrets will face your wrath. Heavy cannon turrets tremble when you see their heatsinks. The only things that kill chargers faster are flamethrowers and dedicated anti-tank. You are both the chaff clear AND anti-air AND pinch hitter against all elites and heavies.
Okay, so some math to help add to this point? The MG-43 deals 90dmg/23d-dmg, the head armor of a Bile Spewer has 0% durability and is AV-3, matching with an equivalent AP-3 means we deal 65% damage = 58.5dmg (rounds down iirc) A Bile Spewer's head health is 300hp meaning it takes a minimum of 6rnds to kill, or 3.4% of your box assuming perfect accuracy. The reason why this may not feel soo consistent is probably because the Bile Spewer actually has two distinct hitboxes for its head, the unarmored mouth and the forehead with armor plates, so while its bobbing around? Shots may be landing between each hitbox and are adding to one's overall BTK. Still? The unarmored mouth is 300hp so it takes 4 shots from the MG-43, assuming 50% accuracy? One could potentially expend up to 20rnds before killing a Bile Spewer, only 11.4% of the MG's box. The ⅓ value may be coming from the fact that they're hitting the large fleshy exposed butt/abdomen? Which has 90% durability and only deals 60% of damage to the Spewers main HP, so not only would the MG's damage go down to 29dmg? It's further nerfed down to 17dmg and needs to burn through 750hp... This would take 45rnds which is 25.7% of the MG-43's total box... We're still short of a ⅓ even in the worse case scenario...
It's almost as if the discorder used exaggeration and catastrophizing to make their argument. Wait, emotional reasoning? In an online entertainment community? No way!
Yeah that was also my conclusion, OP was most likely aiming at the abdomen and not the head and just wrote it off as the gun was bad and went off on a tangent about how gun was bad he wasn't going to bother using it further.
@@CardboardBoxGod Interestingly, even if it's rather inefficient to hit the Abdomen? It's still a viable target for the MG to burst down if you just need to delete a Spewer from afar that's mortaring your position. It'd take just a little over 3 seconds at 900rpm to pop em which does use a little over ¼ of the MG's box, but if it's just a few you need to get rid of asap so they're not disrupting ya? It's suitable for this scenario specifically because it has the ammo for such a situation. The MG-43 & Adjudicator share the same round and the latter can't possibly mag dump fast enough nor with enough damage to accomplish this same thing, the MG stratagems as a whole aren't just super Primaries (which they functionally are) but serve a respectable niche in a Squad's build so long as Helldivers know how to apply em within the team.
I didnt even know you could take out spore spewers with an mg, thats awesome! Personally my favorite of the three is the HMG, really good for when you need something riddled with 12.5 mm swiss cheese holes, asap The only actual complaint that I can think of is that it's not too great against bile titans with the ricochet, small target, constant repositioning, general chaos, and ammo consumption, but I'm sure my three squadmates all running anti-tank launchers and my backup rail cannon strike will take care of it lol
@@Sairuken Yep! Its a pretty handy weapon if you’re always around teammates and if your team composition can support an MG player! As I said in the video the MG can efficiently kill mediums and lights but thats about it unfortunately.
@CardboardBoxGod The HMG can actually function well against Chargers and Impalers in a pinch too actually! For Chargers, if you shoot the soft spot of the butt, you can kill it in about 30-40 bullets, but you can also strip and shred the front leg in about 50-60 bullets. For Impalers, ignore the head weak spot and go for the legs- it'll take about 70-80 bullets. I haven't been able to test shooting at impaler butts though, but I imagine it'll have similar results as with Chargers. These might seem like big numbers, but if you go prone and set it to 750 rpm (max firing speed), it'll only take a couple seconds for each kill!
I think in the buffdivers patch they were reduced back down to AV2 (as well as shrieker nests!) They're just tough enough that even 2k damage from a QC or EAT doesn't oneshot.
I personally main the flamethrower, but I think the MG is fine. On the off chance I pack it on diff 10, I basically generate a constant killzone around the squad, it's not a hard weapon to use.
I love people who just "shoot at the places where it has no armor" and thinking it will deal high DPS to the target. Well, HD2 doesn't work like that, and it's not like a target has a single health pool, they have multiple (for each part). Some parts will trigger kill event or bleeding event once destroyed (like the head or charger's stomach, for instances). So different enemies have different way to engage, for efficient kills. I bet that discord user shot at the big green stomach, the hit marker sure will show red mark, indicates "full damage, no armor", but that stomach has like the second highest HP pool ever among the bug faction. I guess people don't really use MG and HMG due to the stationary reload. But I absolutely love HMG in bot, since HMG can rub the Factory Strider's underbelly so hard that they get BSOD.
I think if anything would buff the MG to make it more popular, it's making these sorts of mechanics a little less opaque. Those mechanics are great for the game and add a level of depth to fighting enemies and choosing weakspots based on the weapon you're using, but it's also something that is hard to realize unless someone tells you. Maybe add advanced training missions including these with rewards for completion, or a shooting range where you can test out your damage and practice aiming for weakspots against various enemies in a more controlled environment. Kinda like aimlabs for HD2.
@@GamerKiwi I think another way is add weapon customization or attachment customization, which then player can somewhat optimize the gun for their playstyle. Like "magazine has less bullet but reload faster" kind of magazine customization.
I agree with the cardboard box guy mostly. Although I loath the HMG and will take the MG43 on bots over it and just pair it with a commando and HMGE instead(because I just hate how the HMG feels and looks and plays and I’d rather take two strategems that are fun for me over one that I loath but could work lol). Stalwart is doable on bots, but I want stagger on bot side over aiming for weak points. I’ll more often take stalwart over MG43 on bugs for chaff clearing, but it also depends on the seed and environment. Plus loadout mood. If I jetpack, I’ll crossbow and stalwart. If I supply pack, I’ll inc breaker and MG43. If it’s a jungle planet I almost always MG43 though just because it shreds in close quarters very quickly. It just depends essentially, but yeah lol. People who say the stalwart or MG43 are bad just don’t know
HMG is terrible and it's mostly because of a lack of durable damage. The weapon has a lot of downsides that make sense (high recoil, mediocre optic, slow reload, worse ammo economy than other MGs) but then doesn't pack anywhere near enough punch to actually make those downsides worth the trade. If they just upped the damage a little and the durable damage a LOT it would feel much better and potentially feel like a viable pick, but right now it's a chore to use. The devs seem to think that making it AP4 is a good enough trade over the MG and it's just not when we have so many other AP4+ options and no clear-cut reason to specifically take an AP4 machine gun over, say, the Autocannon, AMR, Railgun, and other medium enemy killers. The HMG's ammo economy and reload are way too bad to be worth shooting much chaff with it, so they need to make it competitive at what people actually use it for, killing medium/heavy enemies. That, or they could try and reduce some of these downsides and make it close the gap between the MG for trash clear and the AP4 options for a medium/light AT type of role, but I don't see that working well.
@@bonehed1 I agree with everything you say, and I just want to add to it that(prepare for the most petty, opinionated rant ever lol) the ammo drum on the HMG is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s Bethesda firearm design bad. It makes no sense at all. Do the rounds just twist at an awkward angle and are then force fed into the belt leading to the feeding tray of the HMG? What nonsense is that?!? Why is it like that and not just directly from the side of the drum magazine??? WHYYYYYY IS IT SO BETHESDA CURSED?! lol
I've taken MGs into level 10 missions since we've gotten the ammo buff. Especially against bugs really useful. Strap a Supply backpack on and you are gucchi for ammo. Bayonet is also really fun with it
3:01 to be fair your comparison is with a primary incendiary shotgun who’s main purpose is to let the enemies burn to death over time rather than outputting upfront damage, you just shot them before they died.
@@PurpleCyanideTube The idea was to show how not all guns can clear trash/chaff efficiently on their own. Not me walking in and clearing already near dead mobs.
I don’t think a single extra kill is really the big argument you think it is for an MG, but it’s not as bad as he exaggerates it is. Still not great though.
I think it's better than people are giving it credit for, the thing chews through bugs like no tomorrow, and if you just aim, the spewers aren't an issue at all. Even with a stalwart.
The fact that crossbow can EAT and CHEW any unit for breakfast when you need to actually aim - that is the problem And I'd say it's not a crossbow problem. It's more about "durable damage something something" Because really. 1 crossbow "mag" is enough to wipe out 20+ enemies if they are walking in groups. And it's a primary one-handed😂
I prefer stalwart on bugs because of the reload letting me be a bit more agressive with my positioning. (Yes I run through bug hoards on difficulty 10 despite being a stealth diver on bots FITE ME). While MGs are technically less optimal than some other options (last I remember) they are still really REALLY GOOD (and fun).
I bring MGs all the time to both fronts specifically for AD clear and it makes a large different when everyone else is rocking AT. We both do our jobs and the missions goes smoothly. I'll take the machine gun over the autocannon as a perfectly balanced weapons any day.
Maybe include data from the wiki on the stats of armored bile spewers and the mg for extra added effect paper math and feild demonstrations go hand in hand after all
I love the MG for bugs I almost always us MG / gatling barrage / MG turret / and liberator guard dog to get as many bullets flying as possible. Almost always get +500 kills at the end.
His argument already lost all validity when he said "clip"
@@Me-oo7kw I’m glad someone else picked that up lol
"They're mags. MAGS. you absolute bafoon" or smth like that
@@jedicrafter1767 Still wrong - the Stalwart, MG-43 and MG-206 are all belt-fed
@@PineCone227_ Belt-fed from a box mag, no?
Stalwart = what a lot of players think primaries should be. Semi-viable on high difficulties, better against bugs. Aim for the mouths or legs. Hipfire to clear trash mobs.
MG-43 = every medium and small enemy is your feast. Viable on any difficulty and both factions. Get behind chargers and tanks to assplode them in seconds. Hipfire to clear most mobs.
HMG-206 = instakill mediums, prey upon the heavies. The jack-of-all-trades, destroyer of shrieker nests and gunships. Hipfire upward to neuter bile titans (and rapidly kill them), or rapidly eviscerate factory striders. Headshot hulks or blow off their arms and legs rapidly. All bot AA and mortars and bunker turrets will face your wrath. Heavy cannon turrets tremble when you see their heatsinks. The only things that kill chargers faster are flamethrowers and dedicated anti-tank. You are both the chaff clear AND anti-air AND pinch hitter against all elites and heavies.
Okay, so some math to help add to this point?
The MG-43 deals 90dmg/23d-dmg, the head armor of a Bile Spewer has 0% durability and is AV-3, matching with an equivalent AP-3 means we deal 65% damage = 58.5dmg (rounds down iirc)
A Bile Spewer's head health is 300hp meaning it takes a minimum of 6rnds to kill, or 3.4% of your box assuming perfect accuracy. The reason why this may not feel soo consistent is probably because the Bile Spewer actually has two distinct hitboxes for its head, the unarmored mouth and the forehead with armor plates, so while its bobbing around? Shots may be landing between each hitbox and are adding to one's overall BTK.
Still? The unarmored mouth is 300hp so it takes 4 shots from the MG-43, assuming 50% accuracy? One could potentially expend up to 20rnds before killing a Bile Spewer, only 11.4% of the MG's box.
The ⅓ value may be coming from the fact that they're hitting the large fleshy exposed butt/abdomen? Which has 90% durability and only deals 60% of damage to the Spewers main HP, so not only would the MG's damage go down to 29dmg? It's further nerfed down to 17dmg and needs to burn through 750hp...
This would take 45rnds which is 25.7% of the MG-43's total box... We're still short of a ⅓ even in the worse case scenario...
It's almost as if the discorder used exaggeration and catastrophizing to make their argument. Wait, emotional reasoning? In an online entertainment community? No way!
Yeah that was also my conclusion, OP was most likely aiming at the abdomen and not the head and just wrote it off as the gun was bad and went off on a tangent about how gun was bad he wasn't going to bother using it further.
@@CardboardBoxGod
Interestingly, even if it's rather inefficient to hit the Abdomen? It's still a viable target for the MG to burst down if you just need to delete a Spewer from afar that's mortaring your position. It'd take just a little over 3 seconds at 900rpm to pop em which does use a little over ¼ of the MG's box, but if it's just a few you need to get rid of asap so they're not disrupting ya? It's suitable for this scenario specifically because it has the ammo for such a situation.
The MG-43 & Adjudicator share the same round and the latter can't possibly mag dump fast enough nor with enough damage to accomplish this same thing, the MG stratagems as a whole aren't just super Primaries (which they functionally are) but serve a respectable niche in a Squad's build so long as Helldivers know how to apply em within the team.
I didnt even know you could take out spore spewers with an mg, thats awesome! Personally my favorite of the three is the HMG, really good for when you need something riddled with 12.5 mm swiss cheese holes, asap
The only actual complaint that I can think of is that it's not too great against bile titans with the ricochet, small target, constant repositioning, general chaos, and ammo consumption, but I'm sure my three squadmates all running anti-tank launchers and my backup rail cannon strike will take care of it lol
@@Sairuken Yep! Its a pretty handy weapon if you’re always around teammates and if your team composition can support an MG player! As I said in the video the MG can efficiently kill mediums and lights but thats about it unfortunately.
@CardboardBoxGod The HMG can actually function well against Chargers and Impalers in a pinch too actually! For Chargers, if you shoot the soft spot of the butt, you can kill it in about 30-40 bullets, but you can also strip and shred the front leg in about 50-60 bullets. For Impalers, ignore the head weak spot and go for the legs- it'll take about 70-80 bullets. I haven't been able to test shooting at impaler butts though, but I imagine it'll have similar results as with Chargers. These might seem like big numbers, but if you go prone and set it to 750 rpm (max firing speed), it'll only take a couple seconds for each kill!
I think in the buffdivers patch they were reduced back down to AV2 (as well as shrieker nests!)
They're just tough enough that even 2k damage from a QC or EAT doesn't oneshot.
i see the exact primary and secondary you're running and i need no further myths debunking. i am already locked in
I hope thats a good thing lol
I personally main the flamethrower, but I think the MG is fine. On the off chance I pack it on diff 10, I basically generate a constant killzone around the squad, it's not a hard weapon to use.
Based.
I literally just loaded into a diff 10 and we are all running different mg types execpt the person running expendables
I shit you not the first group of people I ran into for this video somebody had the Stalwart like the end of the vid lol
I love people who just "shoot at the places where it has no armor" and thinking it will deal high DPS to the target.
Well, HD2 doesn't work like that, and it's not like a target has a single health pool, they have multiple (for each part). Some parts will trigger kill event or bleeding event once destroyed (like the head or charger's stomach, for instances).
So different enemies have different way to engage, for efficient kills.
I bet that discord user shot at the big green stomach, the hit marker sure will show red mark, indicates "full damage, no armor", but that stomach has like the second highest HP pool ever among the bug faction.
I guess people don't really use MG and HMG due to the stationary reload. But I absolutely love HMG in bot, since HMG can rub the Factory Strider's underbelly so hard that they get BSOD.
I think if anything would buff the MG to make it more popular, it's making these sorts of mechanics a little less opaque. Those mechanics are great for the game and add a level of depth to fighting enemies and choosing weakspots based on the weapon you're using, but it's also something that is hard to realize unless someone tells you. Maybe add advanced training missions including these with rewards for completion, or a shooting range where you can test out your damage and practice aiming for weakspots against various enemies in a more controlled environment. Kinda like aimlabs for HD2.
@@GamerKiwi I think another way is add weapon customization or attachment customization, which then player can somewhat optimize the gun for their playstyle. Like "magazine has less bullet but reload faster" kind of magazine customization.
I agree with the cardboard box guy mostly. Although I loath the HMG and will take the MG43 on bots over it and just pair it with a commando and HMGE instead(because I just hate how the HMG feels and looks and plays and I’d rather take two strategems that are fun for me over one that I loath but could work lol). Stalwart is doable on bots, but I want stagger on bot side over aiming for weak points.
I’ll more often take stalwart over MG43 on bugs for chaff clearing, but it also depends on the seed and environment. Plus loadout mood. If I jetpack, I’ll crossbow and stalwart. If I supply pack, I’ll inc breaker and MG43. If it’s a jungle planet I almost always MG43 though just because it shreds in close quarters very quickly. It just depends essentially, but yeah lol. People who say the stalwart or MG43 are bad just don’t know
@@Citizen13 Definitely agree with your take and that CardboardBoxGod guy
HMG is terrible and it's mostly because of a lack of durable damage. The weapon has a lot of downsides that make sense (high recoil, mediocre optic, slow reload, worse ammo economy than other MGs) but then doesn't pack anywhere near enough punch to actually make those downsides worth the trade. If they just upped the damage a little and the durable damage a LOT it would feel much better and potentially feel like a viable pick, but right now it's a chore to use. The devs seem to think that making it AP4 is a good enough trade over the MG and it's just not when we have so many other AP4+ options and no clear-cut reason to specifically take an AP4 machine gun over, say, the Autocannon, AMR, Railgun, and other medium enemy killers. The HMG's ammo economy and reload are way too bad to be worth shooting much chaff with it, so they need to make it competitive at what people actually use it for, killing medium/heavy enemies. That, or they could try and reduce some of these downsides and make it close the gap between the MG for trash clear and the AP4 options for a medium/light AT type of role, but I don't see that working well.
@@bonehed1 I agree with everything you say, and I just want to add to it that(prepare for the most petty, opinionated rant ever lol) the ammo drum on the HMG is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s Bethesda firearm design bad. It makes no sense at all. Do the rounds just twist at an awkward angle and are then force fed into the belt leading to the feeding tray of the HMG? What nonsense is that?!? Why is it like that and not just directly from the side of the drum magazine??? WHYYYYYY IS IT SO BETHESDA CURSED?! lol
I've taken MGs into level 10 missions since we've gotten the ammo buff. Especially against bugs really useful.
Strap a Supply backpack on and you are gucchi for ammo. Bayonet is also really fun with it
@@Fangoros Pretty much! That ammo and capacity buff went a long way.
3:01 to be fair your comparison is with a primary incendiary shotgun who’s main purpose is to let the enemies burn to death over time rather than outputting upfront damage, you just shot them before they died.
@@PurpleCyanideTube The idea was to show how not all guns can clear trash/chaff efficiently on their own. Not me walking in and clearing already near dead mobs.
I don’t think a single extra kill is really the big argument you think it is for an MG, but it’s not as bad as he exaggerates it is. Still not great though.
I think it's better than people are giving it credit for, the thing chews through bugs like no tomorrow, and if you just aim, the spewers aren't an issue at all. Even with a stalwart.
I think it gets the point across, his aim was really sloppy and the weapon still performed twice as well as the doomer guy said it would
The fact that crossbow can EAT and CHEW any unit for breakfast when you need to actually aim - that is the problem
And I'd say it's not a crossbow problem. It's more about "durable damage something something"
Because really. 1 crossbow "mag" is enough to wipe out 20+ enemies if they are walking in groups.
And it's a primary one-handed😂
I prefer stalwart on bugs because of the reload letting me be a bit more agressive with my positioning. (Yes I run through bug hoards on difficulty 10 despite being a stealth diver on bots FITE ME).
While MGs are technically less optimal than some other options (last I remember) they are still really REALLY GOOD (and fun).
@@JAMBUILDER08 That’s a really nice way to put it (:
Stalwart-Squad assemble
I bring MGs all the time to both fronts specifically for AD clear and it makes a large different when everyone else is rocking AT. We both do our jobs and the missions goes smoothly. I'll take the machine gun over the autocannon as a perfectly balanced weapons any day.
Maybe include data from the wiki on the stats of armored bile spewers and the mg for extra added effect
paper math and feild demonstrations go hand in hand after all
I love the MG for bugs I almost always us MG / gatling barrage / MG turret / and liberator guard dog to get as many bullets flying as possible. Almost always get +500 kills at the end.
>Calls MG belts "clips"
Opinion rejected
@@PineCone227_ Couldn’t agree more lol