LOL... when you said I'm scared of the gatling... then seemed to dive straight through the stream of bullets. Only thing that came to mind was the old cartoons where the guy says "you missed me" then drinks some water and it comes out of all the holes. Totally pictured you and the rest of the guys sitting on Pelican during extract... them saying "sure looked like you got nailed by that sentry"... you saying "nah, I'm good"... then drinking water and it coming out of all the bullet holes in you.
I wish we could have a laboratory room in the ship where eggs and skulls would be ‘examined’ but eventually just be in overflowing boxes on the floor like excess stock.
Watching this on low brightness at night, this feels the most starship troopers it's felt for a while. Also enjoying the objective to destroy eggs whilst carrying one around with like a newborn.
I love this build! I actually started running this as my main vs. bugs about a week after the Eruptor dropped. It's still shockingly powerful, very glad to see it in the wild haha
New Spiked lets gooooo! Completely agreed on the balance stuff. It's way overblown. I'm clearing diff 10 fine on bugs, and will be doing bots today on Vandalon IV (am MO player). I just bring quasar, spear, RR, or commando depending on the overall team loadout. If I focus chaff, arc thrower and stalwart. Saw a very cool combo in a previous game - AT mines with tesla tower. Kills off chaff and baits heavies into the mines. Thought it was a pretty interesting strategy - going to be giving it a shot next time I play bugs.
Thanks for the vids! I love trying out your builds... definitely need new ones after the nerf to the magazine count of my favourite primary for bugs, the Incendiary Breaker 😢
iBreaker still works as both chaff clear and Charger killer, but you need to let enemies burn more rather than magdumping. If you really want to spam it like before, you can pair it with other hungry weapons like the GL + Supply Pack, or if you want to use it primarily as a Charger ass burster you can bring it with the Stalwart / MG which you then use as your primary. Maybe I'll do a build with it just to show how it's still top-tier.
@@newspiked7385 thanks! I run it with an autocannon now so I use the ibreaker primarily for chaff clear and the autocannon for armoured enemies rather than magdumping them with the ibreaker… then rely on stun grenades + orbital strike or 500kg for heavy enemies. Worked pretty good the last few games I played 😊
Excuse me, I was told by the HD2 reddit and discord that the stalwart was unusable and the only weapon that can kill a bug is the BI so this footage must be fake
People are just looking for things to be mad about. I will say it's kind of funny how AH's complaint about the Incendiary Breaker was that it was too reliable, and their fix was to take away a third of its ammunition. Please, make my Adjudicator more reliable, AH. I just want to be able to run an assault rifle without being required to take the supply pack.
I take it without a supply pack for bugs, even with an AT support weapon - instead I bring anti-chaff strats like sentries to deal with most of the lights while I focus on the mediums, e.g. th-cam.com/video/9N-4qTQksgE/w-d-xo.htmlsi=x-KQZ7jSVZjr5FzQ. Being the AT guy means you can protect the sentries better from Chargers, and you can end up with one of the highest kills without being the chaff clear guy.
I find it very reliable with a stun nade, and the spread can let you hit multiple Chargers more easily too. Behemoths might survive the hit but then bleed out.
It's been a bit depressing considering how much the devs have added to this update, just for people to get upset about a couple of not super significant nerfs. It's just weird imo
Exactly. New enemies are amazing (especially on the bug front), but almost nobody talks about it. As well as the fact that the game has about 70k online these days. But when the game's online dropped under 10k for a 1 day - literally everybody talked about it
@@newspiked7385 The game is still fun, and the top difficulties are still tough. That's what matters to me, and not being able to use the flamethrower to kill chargers as easily is not that big of an issue for a horde clear weapon
If you don’t complain about it they’ll never know you don’t like what they’re doing. Not gonna let a stupid and unnecessary nerf slip by just because they added a new difficulty and some variant enemies.
On the topic of balance in this game, I do think the mag nerf on the breaker incindiary from 6 to 4 was a bit much, 5 would been understandable with the direction the were going with it. Despite that and the fire damage nerf for Flamethrower, I am rather optimistic about the buffs for other weapons and the other new additions we got. Again, Crossbow being a one-handed weapon gives me reason to use it over other explosive weapons now, like pairing it with the ballistic shield. Anyway, I'm glad to see the Stalwart mixed with the Peak Physique armor. I like running those together against bugs these days! Only differences were that I used the Crossbow and Slugger as primaries instead last time I played.
For me, it's not about ther nerfs. The game is too buggy. Getting thrown into oblivion, reloading empty mags, stimming without healing. New enemies just made it worse. We saw Spiked throw a stun on a new charger and it got ignored. I'm tired of getting rocketed by devs in rocks. Objectives not working. Support weapons getting deployed underground. The game still feels like it's in beta testing.
I really do not like the nasty green visual effect when the acid rain rolls through, it’s too intrusive for me and unnecessary, the character already smokes why do i need my vision FUBAR? Same thing with that ugly yellow hue when you stim with that booster on
yea it starts to hurt my eyes after a while i have to take a break on crimsica so that i dont get a headache from all of the visual interference in this game
I think the eruptor needs a substantial buff to be useful in the current state of the game. Sure you can kill with it, but why would you use it over anything else other than a higher destruction stat?
One-shot ability on a bunch of medium enemies combined with an AoE that staggers, sniper accuracy, pops Spewers easily as well as tight groups of chaff, AoE means you can hit the front of MG emplacements to kill the gunner, or take out all the troopers in a bunker with one hit, one-shots Devastators and also the basic Striders (havent tried the shielded ones yet). It has a lot going for it other than just fab / bug hole sniping, which is already a prized ability. In this build it's my main tool for Hiveguards and kills them quick.
@@newspiked7385 Yes. The problem with it is that it’s slower at doing so than other guns. Slugger can do everything here but AoE, and if it can’t, it can still probably deal with more enemies in a similar amount of time. It has its niche, but saying it’s in a healthy state is just wrong rn imo.
@@Peter-Slash the "buts" are exactly what have been taken into account for balance. It can take out a group of troopers faster than a slugger ever could with one shot, if they're grouped up. It's one of only 2 primaries that can take out bug holes and fabricators, which frees up your nade slot for stuns, which opens up more possibilities. It's not meant to be magdumped into an enemy, that's not how you balance high damage slow-firing AOE weapons, they're all about breakpoints and one-shot damage. The slow firerate is offset by the fact that you need time to acquire your next target as you killed your first in one shot. Using it on single troopers or Charger asses will be inefficient, as those aren't its intended targets.
@@newspiked7385 Agreed. I think the eruptor is in a good spot. If anything maybe bump ammo up to 40, but in terms of power and kill potential I really like where it's at.
Sorry to double comment, just see it as more fuel for the algorithm I guess. The way I see it, the balancing team is neglecting weapons that are bad and unused and instead are nerfing weapons that are good and loved. They see the solution to the otherwise rather unsatisfactory primary weapons as the problem. They see it all backwards and it’s killing the game. They need to focus on making unfun weapons fun instead of making fun weapons less fun. Most are not downright accusing the devs of being “fun police” but are instead using the phrase as a way to highlight the flaws in their current mindset.
I've heard the first line repeated a lot, but I think you have to be ignoring all the buffs the weapons have received since launch. Liberator Liberator Concussive Tenderizer Adjudicator Diligence Diligence CS Punisher Breaker Spray & Pray Crossbow Dominator Plasma Punisher Blitzer Scythe Purifier Peacemaker Dagger If you look at the support weapons, only the Quasar, Arc Thrower, Railgun and Flamer can be said to have been overall nerfed (though they received smaller buffs to try to compensate) from their state at release. Every other weapon except the Commando and Autocannon has received buffs, and are seeing a ton of use. I never particularly liked it, but even now people still really like the Quasar, and despite all the hate the Arc Thrower and Railgun are still excellent now (with the recent Gunship durability change, it's now basically in the same category as AMR / AC / HMG / LC as being able to handle pretty much everything on the Bot front). When I look at how good so many of the weapons are, and yet people are still talking about how tight the meta is and how everything else underperforms, I really have to come to the conclusion that people are so tied to a meta they saw online that they haven't put the time in to learn how to use the other weapons. Part of the reason why I put out so many videos with me and my team using 'off-meta' is to show just how much variety is on offer (and because playing with other toys is fun!), so hopefully that variety comes across when you watch them.
I think you guys were attacking strawmen regarding the balancing issue. For example, I dont really think i heard anyone say the incendiary breaker was unusable. More that it was a needless change. And i think the "buffing over nerfing" argument has more to do with AH's apparent default reaction to meta weapons. Not that you should never nerf ever, just that it makes no sense to primarily use nerfs to balance your weapons when (1) most weapons are just not as reliable as the meta weapons and (2) a PvE game doesnt have the same dynamic as a PvP game. You dont really need to nerf weapons when you can simply buff the enemies. Pretty big example being the charger behemoth. It is kinda easy to one tap a regular charger in the head, so they make a charger that you cant kill as easily, and they can gently adjust the difficulty by simply controlling how many of each type there is on the map. Thats a nerf that nobody perceives as such. Which also goes into another point, the flamethrower nerf was quite radical. I dont think the backlash would be so great if all they did was have a functioning AP for flamethrowers on chargers, then adjusted it based on what type of flamethrower is being used. I think you could even nerf the support weapon to take a full canister and people still wouldn't be this mad.
Sadly, if you go online on reddit or discord you'll find a lot of people saying the gun's been ruined, so I don't think we were exaggerating at all. And if people really thought it was simply unnecessary, how does that justify the kind of doomposting and review bombing you're seeing everywhere? It's frankly immature behaviour. I also have to take issue with the common depiction of AH as being obssessed with nerfs and not buffing the other weapons. If you take a look at the patch notes since release, you'll see that the vast majority of the weapons have received buffs to try and bring up the lower end, it's not just bringing down the higher end. Liberator Liberator Concussive Tenderizer Adjudicator Diligence Diligence CS Punisher Breaker Spray & Pray Crossbow Dominator Plasma Punisher Blitzer Scythe Purifier Peacemaker Dagger All of those have been buffed since release, with some of those changes launching them from barely touched to top-tier (Tenderizer, Diligence CS, Dominator, Blitzer for example) - and that's not even looking at the support weapons. It's not been their default action to just nerf, they've consistently been buffing our tools, and the proof is in the pudding, if you take a look through my Helldive videos you'll see me use basically every weapon at some point, with only 3 primaries that I'd consider below par currrently (Liberator Penetrator, Liberator Concussive, and maybe the Purifier though I've seen good results in other people's hands). Even in this very update, we saw significant buffs to the Slugger (bringing it back to its old glory), the Crossbow, the Walking and the 120mm Barrages - yet people are still saying with a straight face that all we get are nerfs, and the AH are just motivated by nerfing our fun. It's wilful ignorance / outrage bandwagoning, at a certain point. I also have to take issue with the PvE argument. Good balance matters whether it's in PvP or PvE. You can't simply buff the enemies all the time, because: a) it takes far more development time to bring every other weapon in the game up to the level of the outlier than it does to just fix the one outlier b) the outlier may be the one that's exceeding the intended power level of that class of weapons, not that the others are underperforming c) power creep - if you do bring everything up, you weaken the overall challenge, so you have to compensate by bringing up the enemy difficulty, which is yet more work d) bringing up the enemy difficulty is not infinitely scalable. Taking the higher enemy HP route leads to bullet sponges and your weapons feel weak again, and increasing the enemy count puts more and more stress on lower end machines - in a game where people are already complaining about performance issues. Power creep can happen with many changes happening slowly over time, so you have to keep a lid on it or it gets out of control. The Behemoth is a good example of how to shake up the meta, but increasing the number of Behemoths for example doesn't actually help reduce the dominance of the iBreaker - in fact as one of the few primaries that can reliably burst a Charger's ass within one stun, it just increases the gap between it and the majority of primaries that can't. It also has other consequences regarding the balance between the AT support weapons and the non-AT support weapons. One of the strengths of this game has been that even the chaff enemies continue to pose a threat even at max difficulty, so there's always a place for trash clear support weapons and strats. If you just keep increasing the number of tanks (as we saw in earlier patches), everyone's pushed to pick more AT, and there's even more pressure on primary weapons to do all of the trash clearing...pushing even more people towards the iBreaker. The criticisms of the Flamethrower nerf I can understand a lot more, as I didn't particularly rate it as a trash clearer to begin with compared with the MGs, so if they wanted to shift the Flamer from being decent trash clear + excellent close-range Charger killer to pure trash clear, it needed some kind of buff for its range, AOE or like you suggest the AP allowing it to still penetrate through mediums. That still doesn't justify a lot of the online reaction - no, there are still plenty of tools for taking out the number of Chargers at high-level. It doesn't ruin the other weapons released in the Warbond - both the secondary and primary flamer are actually really good without inheriting the old support flamer's anti-armour properties, so all the memeing about "nerf fire, then release fire warbond" is off the mark. No, there were still plenty of great changes in this update + warbond, and yes they were right to release a trailer showcasing all the new stuff, as this update has been the biggest shake-up of the top-end challenge so far, and has made the biggest difference to players like me in continuing to enjoy the game.
@@newspiked7385great points, I think many of the issues concerning damage could be addressed with weapons having perks or abilities that allow for things like armor penetration or reduced damage to armor that eventually breaks it. The railgun could penetrate the longer you charge it, either shredding armor or punching through multiple weaker enemies or even their bodies. In EDF6, the Fang Sniper rifle and railgun tank both do this: the rifle hits three targets and stops unless it hits heavy armor, and the railgun tank seems to go on forever. In short, I’d like the primary weapons to have more personality, and not be completely ineffective unless you’re in a specific situation like being on the side or behind the charger. Acid weapons in EDF are the most effective towards armor besides the designated weapons, and I think having the chemical strike or a chemical launcher (like in EDF6) have this effect would give players more chances to be creative. I think AH and the doomers need to think outside of the box. GG.
@newspiked7385 @newspiked7385 I gave it another look, and I might have still missed the "breaker is ruined" talk . Though I see that doomer sentiment very strongly for the game at large due to the flamethrower, as some part of a trend. I really don't have any issue with your position on their behavior, regardless of if I agree or not, but I think there is more to this than what is being discussed. But first, I need to clarify some things (1) what I meant by Arrowhead's default reaction to meta weapons. I do mean their reaction to the meta weapons specifically, not overall balancing philosophy. They specifically point to strong, "reliable" weapons being nerfed as their point of contention, not that it's the only action arrowhead does. I think it's more that they don't want Arrowhead doing any nerfs to these weapons until the underused weapons are up to par with the weapons they use. And (2) the difference in balancing PvP and PvE. I wasn't saying that enemies could simply be buffed all the time, just that you have more attractive options in lowering the effectiveness in a weapon than with PvP, which in this case could be making the enemies stronger. Frankly, I haven't seen online discussion go this far into the weeds of how a "nerfs are never necessary" approach would work. Again, it seems the position is that many of the underpicked weapons should be buffed and not the already attractive weapons being nerfed, which takes me out of clarifying earlier statements and into the main point. There are more things working to drum up this fervor than "skill issue" or "bandwagoning." I think many players, regardless of their skill levels, are set in their desired set of weapons after playing for some time. This isn't to say people are just maining one loadout (Most people I play with always change their weapons in between ops or missions). Just that there is a group of weapons that they lean on when maybe they go into a level they aren't used to, or play with low-level Randoms, etc. Now here comes a whole other entity, making such "drastic" changes to these weapons you've come to be comfortable with, now these weapons you used to trust just became strange to you in one update. There's likely even more that goes into this, but at least from where I'm standing, a big component of this outrage can be encapsulated in this one word: alienation. I think Arrowhead's response and posture to this is actually perfect. Hypothetically, the changes they made would probably be just fine if they weren't *changes.* If these were how things were at launch, the game would've risen to the same kind of fame. So the actual decisions are not really the issue here. Framing things as a lack of deeper communication with the community cuts to the meat and potatoes of the issue, all while not taking on an onus they don't deserve. If these changes were slow-rolled with player suggestions in a test server environment, the hype of this update wouldn't get drowned out with outrage. Again, I don't take any issue with your position on the behavior of the people on reddit and discord, but I would hope you at least empathize (not necessarily sympathize) with them. Unlike many..many....many other cases, I actually buy the idea of "everyone wants the same thing" with this community.
@@BRAINSPLATTER16 It’s still overpowered, but in a reasonable spot. People crying that they can’t spray and pray everything but biles spewers and titans aren’t very creative when killing bugs.
Thanks for your reply, it's all been very civil which is refreshing :) For (1) I guess how I see it is, AH are bringing up the other guns at the same time as nerfing the overperformers. IIRC when the Railgun was hit with its first nerfs, was the same time when they changed the Charger head HP so that EATS, RR and later Quasar would be able to one-shot them. Incendiary Breaker ammo capacity was nerfed, but if players want to hold the trigger down like they used to, the Breaker Spray & Pray has been buffed for a few patches now, performing much the same role of great light enemy trash clear, as well as good damage on Charger asses, with some advantages like a slightly tighter choke and the ability to shoot enemies near your teammates without setting them on fire. People keep asking for underperformers to be brought on par, but they have been, both amongst the primaries and support weapons. I think the underlying reason why people have felt they weren't up to par was simply that the stuff that people complained the most about - the Railgun, Arc Thrower, and now the Flamethrower - simply did too many things too well (specifically on the Bug front), and people grew accustomed to that power level. The Railgun could one-shot mediums, and at the same time 2-shot Chargers (and thanks to the Playstation bug, Titans too). Flamer could clear all kinds of chaff, and also delete Chargers in 2 seconds with ease. The Arc Thrower could stunlock Chargers while keeping an entire horde at bay, and with enough time could take out BTs. People thought this was what all support weapons should be capable of, when really what AH envisioned was Chaff specialists (e.g. the MGs) and AT Specialists (e.g. the RR) excelling at their roles and being weak against enemies on the opposite end, with Generalists covering a bit of both. How much the AC and AMR dominate on the Bot front is a discussion for another day, but I think what people are struggling with is clinging to the idea of the support weapon that excels at practically everything. Funnily enough, AH haven't truly downgraded those weapons that much - Railgun is back to 2-shotting Charger legs for the primary finish, with a 3-shot for Behemoths; Arc Thrower is still an amazing trash killer and can take on Chargers in decent time, but not Behemoths; and the Flamer can still clear trash well while bursting the asses of both Charger types in a couple of seconds. I can think of a few small buffs for each of them, but their overall power level is good enough for max level play. For (2), I think that's a fair point, but also a more nuanced point than I've seen online, which sadly have been as simplistic as "this is PvE, balance is unimportant, don't nerf my fun". I think I also gave my reasons why buffing all the other weapons and the enemies as well rather than just nerfing the problematic gun can cause a lot more problems than it solves, when the alternative is simply for players to not overreact to nerfs and think every nerf must make their gun less fun. There have been instances where a nerfed gun / character actually makes them more fun for me to use, as I feel like I'm actually earning my victories more when using them, but this doesn't seem to be shared by the people complaining about even the more minor nerfs. Agree a lot with your later points. I can definitely understand the feeling of becoming comfortable with a set of weapons if you don't really want to experiment much, then having those tools switched up, sometimes drastically. But as you pointed out, unfortunately the mistake wasn't really the nerf, but releasing those weapons in that state to begin with. Once the weapons have been released in an OP state, it becomes very difficult to bring in the necessary nerfs without uproar. But players should have the ability to recognise when it's necessary. If devs aren't allowed to nerf stuff after they're introduced, or even before release (see all the accusations of "pre-nerfs", the only avenue you leave for the designers is power creep, which can lead to the slow death of a game. Better communication from AH, I can agree with. It would be great for some deeper dives into their balancing decisions, though I am sceptical of some people's ability to try to understand what they're going for instead of immediately trying to twist words and find inconsistencies. Not rushing content out in a clearly incomplete state (as we had with the Tenderizer for example) is another. But there are things that the player community could improve at as well. It's not solely down to the developers to promote a better understanding of the game's design, it also requires a willingness on the part of the players too, and sadly a lot of that has been missing from the online discourse.
"People complaining about nerfs LOLOLOLOL" Can't help but notice that none of your Terminid videos since the patch feature a single flamethrower. Mid-wits
![สั่งทอง.. จาก temu ของจริงป่ะ? ( part : 1/2 ) [โกงไหมครับ ep.94 ] | DOM](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/2tYS1qTMB78/mqdefault.jpg)
LOL... when you said I'm scared of the gatling... then seemed to dive straight through the stream of bullets. Only thing that came to mind was the old cartoons where the guy says "you missed me" then drinks some water and it comes out of all the holes. Totally pictured you and the rest of the guys sitting on Pelican during extract... them saying "sure looked like you got nailed by that sentry"... you saying "nah, I'm good"... then drinking water and it coming out of all the bullet holes in you.
Lool, examine the cape and it's complete shredded.
I wish we could have a laboratory room in the ship where eggs and skulls would be ‘examined’ but eventually just be in overflowing boxes on the floor like excess stock.
in general a personal space would be nice where you can spend samples for decoration! that way samples have more of a meaning
Loving the banter making fun of the unfair negativity this game keeps getting.
Awesome gameplay as usual.
MGs feel like they're in a good spot now, especially with the Peak Physique armors.
Watching this on low brightness at night, this feels the most starship troopers it's felt for a while.
Also enjoying the objective to destroy eggs whilst carrying one around with like a newborn.
Epic Gameplay ! The precision and reload on the Stalwart is incredible. That Stalwart just wrecks shop!
I love this build! I actually started running this as my main vs. bugs about a week after the Eruptor dropped. It's still shockingly powerful, very glad to see it in the wild haha
Yeah, great balance of trash clear, lots of strikes for heavies, and Eruptor for bug holes and mediums, everything's covered!
New Spiked lets gooooo!
Completely agreed on the balance stuff. It's way overblown. I'm clearing diff 10 fine on bugs, and will be doing bots today on Vandalon IV (am MO player). I just bring quasar, spear, RR, or commando depending on the overall team loadout. If I focus chaff, arc thrower and stalwart.
Saw a very cool combo in a previous game - AT mines with tesla tower. Kills off chaff and baits heavies into the mines. Thought it was a pretty interesting strategy - going to be giving it a shot next time I play bugs.
Next level thinking, using their turret aggro against them.
oh this definitely sounds tasty
might give it a go soon
NICE.
I will use this strat next time.
I like these videos bc I kind of expect different load outs every time and it’s a bit refreshing…Lol!
Mixing it up keeps it fresh for me too :) gotta do some runs with the 2 new flamers soon as well
@@newspiked7385 actually remember to use them? w o w
This was insane. Excellent job.
I'm impressed by the skill level displayed here, but I'm more impressed with how they even see anything.
The loadout of a true gigachad
A Spiked video before bed? Cheers!
Thanks for the vids! I love trying out your builds... definitely need new ones after the nerf to the magazine count of my favourite primary for bugs, the Incendiary Breaker 😢
It's absolutely criminal that they did that.
iBreaker still works as both chaff clear and Charger killer, but you need to let enemies burn more rather than magdumping. If you really want to spam it like before, you can pair it with other hungry weapons like the GL + Supply Pack, or if you want to use it primarily as a Charger ass burster you can bring it with the Stalwart / MG which you then use as your primary. Maybe I'll do a build with it just to show how it's still top-tier.
@@newspiked7385 thanks! I run it with an autocannon now so I use the ibreaker primarily for chaff clear and the autocannon for armoured enemies rather than magdumping them with the ibreaker… then rely on stun grenades + orbital strike or 500kg for heavy enemies. Worked pretty good the last few games I played 😊
Ayyy he's here
Movie night cinema 🎦
7,378 shots fired lmao
Teamwork👍👏
Excuse me, I was told by the HD2 reddit and discord that the stalwart was unusable and the only weapon that can kill a bug is the BI so this footage must be fake
People are just looking for things to be mad about.
I will say it's kind of funny how AH's complaint about the Incendiary Breaker was that it was too reliable, and their fix was to take away a third of its ammunition.
Please, make my Adjudicator more reliable, AH. I just want to be able to run an assault rifle without being required to take the supply pack.
I take it without a supply pack for bugs, even with an AT support weapon - instead I bring anti-chaff strats like sentries to deal with most of the lights while I focus on the mediums, e.g. th-cam.com/video/9N-4qTQksgE/w-d-xo.htmlsi=x-KQZ7jSVZjr5FzQ. Being the AT guy means you can protect the sentries better from Chargers, and you can end up with one of the highest kills without being the chaff clear guy.
How reliable do you find the eagle airstrike in taking out chargers?
50/50. Orbital precision strike is much more reliable in this regard
I find it very reliable with a stun nade, and the spread can let you hit multiple Chargers more easily too. Behemoths might survive the hit but then bleed out.
Does anyone know how to set the aiming telescope mode so that the aiming is influenced by the controller movement and you only move with the stick
Sorry, not sure :/
> Stalwart supremacy
> has trouble killing hive guards from the front
9:46 lol
That's what the Eruptor is for :) or my teammate's flames
It's been a bit depressing considering how much the devs have added to this update, just for people to get upset about a couple of not super significant nerfs. It's just weird imo
Exactly. New enemies are amazing (especially on the bug front), but almost nobody talks about it. As well as the fact that the game has about 70k online these days. But when the game's online dropped under 10k for a 1 day - literally everybody talked about it
A new challenge is what I wanted the most, and lvl 10 plus the new enemies and the mega nests have absolutely delivered.
@@newspiked7385 The game is still fun, and the top difficulties are still tough. That's what matters to me, and not being able to use the flamethrower to kill chargers as easily is not that big of an issue for a horde clear weapon
@@beleth57yeah, I only wish they hadn't messed with the fire visual effects, now it looks like a big blowtorch instead of a flamethrower
If you don’t complain about it they’ll never know you don’t like what they’re doing. Not gonna let a stupid and unnecessary nerf slip by just because they added a new difficulty and some variant enemies.
27:21 How do you know which direction the strike comes from??
It's perpenidcular to the direction from which you throw the stratagem from.
@@Hargrovius OHHHHH okok. Thanks!!
I had to leave the main subreddit because of all the tantrums and rudeness. I swear the average Redditor is an overgrown child
On the topic of balance in this game, I do think the mag nerf on the breaker incindiary from 6 to 4 was a bit much, 5 would been understandable with the direction the were going with it. Despite that and the fire damage nerf for Flamethrower, I am rather optimistic about the buffs for other weapons and the other new additions we got. Again, Crossbow being a one-handed weapon gives me reason to use it over other explosive weapons now, like pairing it with the ballistic shield.
Anyway, I'm glad to see the Stalwart mixed with the Peak Physique armor. I like running those together against bugs these days! Only differences were that I used the Crossbow and Slugger as primaries instead last time I played.
For me, it's not about ther nerfs. The game is too buggy. Getting thrown into oblivion, reloading empty mags, stimming without healing. New enemies just made it worse. We saw Spiked throw a stun on a new charger and it got ignored. I'm tired of getting rocketed by devs in rocks. Objectives not working. Support weapons getting deployed underground. The game still feels like it's in beta testing.
I really do not like the nasty green visual effect when the acid rain rolls through, it’s too intrusive for me and unnecessary, the character already smokes why do i need my vision FUBAR? Same thing with that ugly yellow hue when you stim with that booster on
That's a shame
they reduced the booster's visual effects and i find it pretty tolerable now, cool even
yea it starts to hurt my eyes after a while i have to take a break on crimsica so that i dont get a headache from all of the visual interference in this game
That plus the super stim effect at the same time can be pretty nasty, for sure. I kinda like it tho, ha
I think the eruptor needs a substantial buff to be useful in the current state of the game. Sure you can kill with it, but why would you use it over anything else other than a higher destruction stat?
One-shot ability on a bunch of medium enemies combined with an AoE that staggers, sniper accuracy, pops Spewers easily as well as tight groups of chaff, AoE means you can hit the front of MG emplacements to kill the gunner, or take out all the troopers in a bunker with one hit, one-shots Devastators and also the basic Striders (havent tried the shielded ones yet).
It has a lot going for it other than just fab / bug hole sniping, which is already a prized ability. In this build it's my main tool for Hiveguards and kills them quick.
@@newspiked7385 Yes. The problem with it is that it’s slower at doing so than other guns.
Slugger can do everything here but AoE, and if it can’t, it can still probably deal with more enemies in a similar amount of time. It has its niche, but saying it’s in a healthy state is just wrong rn imo.
@@Peter-SlashDisagree, the slugger is also fantastic but when it comes to utility it pales compared to the Eruptor
@@Peter-Slash the "buts" are exactly what have been taken into account for balance.
It can take out a group of troopers faster than a slugger ever could with one shot, if they're grouped up.
It's one of only 2 primaries that can take out bug holes and fabricators, which frees up your nade slot for stuns, which opens up more possibilities.
It's not meant to be magdumped into an enemy, that's not how you balance high damage slow-firing AOE weapons, they're all about breakpoints and one-shot damage. The slow firerate is offset by the fact that you need time to acquire your next target as you killed your first in one shot. Using it on single troopers or Charger asses will be inefficient, as those aren't its intended targets.
@@newspiked7385 Agreed. I think the eruptor is in a good spot. If anything maybe bump ammo up to 40, but in terms of power and kill potential I really like where it's at.
Sorry to double comment, just see it as more fuel for the algorithm I guess. The way I see it, the balancing team is neglecting weapons that are bad and unused and instead are nerfing weapons that are good and loved. They see the solution to the otherwise rather unsatisfactory primary weapons as the problem. They see it all backwards and it’s killing the game.
They need to focus on making unfun weapons fun instead of making fun weapons less fun. Most are not downright accusing the devs of being “fun police” but are instead using the phrase as a way to highlight the flaws in their current mindset.
I've heard the first line repeated a lot, but I think you have to be ignoring all the buffs the weapons have received since launch.
Liberator
Liberator Concussive
Tenderizer
Adjudicator
Diligence
Diligence CS
Punisher
Breaker Spray & Pray
Crossbow
Dominator
Plasma Punisher
Blitzer
Scythe
Purifier
Peacemaker
Dagger
If you look at the support weapons, only the Quasar, Arc Thrower, Railgun and Flamer can be said to have been overall nerfed (though they received smaller buffs to try to compensate) from their state at release. Every other weapon except the Commando and Autocannon has received buffs, and are seeing a ton of use. I never particularly liked it, but even now people still really like the Quasar, and despite all the hate the Arc Thrower and Railgun are still excellent now (with the recent Gunship durability change, it's now basically in the same category as AMR / AC / HMG / LC as being able to handle pretty much everything on the Bot front).
When I look at how good so many of the weapons are, and yet people are still talking about how tight the meta is and how everything else underperforms, I really have to come to the conclusion that people are so tied to a meta they saw online that they haven't put the time in to learn how to use the other weapons. Part of the reason why I put out so many videos with me and my team using 'off-meta' is to show just how much variety is on offer (and because playing with other toys is fun!), so hopefully that variety comes across when you watch them.
I think you guys were attacking strawmen regarding the balancing issue.
For example, I dont really think i heard anyone say the incendiary breaker was unusable. More that it was a needless change.
And i think the "buffing over nerfing" argument has more to do with AH's apparent default reaction to meta weapons. Not that you should never nerf ever, just that it makes no sense to primarily use nerfs to balance your weapons when (1) most weapons are just not as reliable as the meta weapons and (2) a PvE game doesnt have the same dynamic as a PvP game. You dont really need to nerf weapons when you can simply buff the enemies.
Pretty big example being the charger behemoth. It is kinda easy to one tap a regular charger in the head, so they make a charger that you cant kill as easily, and they can gently adjust the difficulty by simply controlling how many of each type there is on the map.
Thats a nerf that nobody perceives as such.
Which also goes into another point, the flamethrower nerf was quite radical.
I dont think the backlash would be so great if all they did was have a functioning AP for flamethrowers on chargers, then adjusted it based on what type of flamethrower is being used.
I think you could even nerf the support weapon to take a full canister and people still wouldn't be this mad.
Sadly, if you go online on reddit or discord you'll find a lot of people saying the gun's been ruined, so I don't think we were exaggerating at all. And if people really thought it was simply unnecessary, how does that justify the kind of doomposting and review bombing you're seeing everywhere? It's frankly immature behaviour.
I also have to take issue with the common depiction of AH as being obssessed with nerfs and not buffing the other weapons. If you take a look at the patch notes since release, you'll see that the vast majority of the weapons have received buffs to try and bring up the lower end, it's not just bringing down the higher end.
Liberator
Liberator Concussive
Tenderizer
Adjudicator
Diligence
Diligence CS
Punisher
Breaker Spray & Pray
Crossbow
Dominator
Plasma Punisher
Blitzer
Scythe
Purifier
Peacemaker
Dagger
All of those have been buffed since release, with some of those changes launching them from barely touched to top-tier (Tenderizer, Diligence CS, Dominator, Blitzer for example) - and that's not even looking at the support weapons. It's not been their default action to just nerf, they've consistently been buffing our tools, and the proof is in the pudding, if you take a look through my Helldive videos you'll see me use basically every weapon at some point, with only 3 primaries that I'd consider below par currrently (Liberator Penetrator, Liberator Concussive, and maybe the Purifier though I've seen good results in other people's hands).
Even in this very update, we saw significant buffs to the Slugger (bringing it back to its old glory), the Crossbow, the Walking and the 120mm Barrages - yet people are still saying with a straight face that all we get are nerfs, and the AH are just motivated by nerfing our fun. It's wilful ignorance / outrage bandwagoning, at a certain point.
I also have to take issue with the PvE argument. Good balance matters whether it's in PvP or PvE. You can't simply buff the enemies all the time, because:
a) it takes far more development time to bring every other weapon in the game up to the level of the outlier than it does to just fix the one outlier
b) the outlier may be the one that's exceeding the intended power level of that class of weapons, not that the others are underperforming
c) power creep - if you do bring everything up, you weaken the overall challenge, so you have to compensate by bringing up the enemy difficulty, which is yet more work
d) bringing up the enemy difficulty is not infinitely scalable. Taking the higher enemy HP route leads to bullet sponges and your weapons feel weak again, and increasing the enemy count puts more and more stress on lower end machines - in a game where people are already complaining about performance issues. Power creep can happen with many changes happening slowly over time, so you have to keep a lid on it or it gets out of control.
The Behemoth is a good example of how to shake up the meta, but increasing the number of Behemoths for example doesn't actually help reduce the dominance of the iBreaker - in fact as one of the few primaries that can reliably burst a Charger's ass within one stun, it just increases the gap between it and the majority of primaries that can't. It also has other consequences regarding the balance between the AT support weapons and the non-AT support weapons. One of the strengths of this game has been that even the chaff enemies continue to pose a threat even at max difficulty, so there's always a place for trash clear support weapons and strats. If you just keep increasing the number of tanks (as we saw in earlier patches), everyone's pushed to pick more AT, and there's even more pressure on primary weapons to do all of the trash clearing...pushing even more people towards the iBreaker.
The criticisms of the Flamethrower nerf I can understand a lot more, as I didn't particularly rate it as a trash clearer to begin with compared with the MGs, so if they wanted to shift the Flamer from being decent trash clear + excellent close-range Charger killer to pure trash clear, it needed some kind of buff for its range, AOE or like you suggest the AP allowing it to still penetrate through mediums.
That still doesn't justify a lot of the online reaction - no, there are still plenty of tools for taking out the number of Chargers at high-level. It doesn't ruin the other weapons released in the Warbond - both the secondary and primary flamer are actually really good without inheriting the old support flamer's anti-armour properties, so all the memeing about "nerf fire, then release fire warbond" is off the mark. No, there were still plenty of great changes in this update + warbond, and yes they were right to release a trailer showcasing all the new stuff, as this update has been the biggest shake-up of the top-end challenge so far, and has made the biggest difference to players like me in continuing to enjoy the game.
@@newspiked7385great points, I think many of the issues concerning damage could be addressed with weapons having perks or abilities that allow for things like armor penetration or reduced damage to armor that eventually breaks it.
The railgun could penetrate the longer you charge it, either shredding armor or punching through multiple weaker enemies or even their bodies. In EDF6, the Fang Sniper rifle and railgun tank both do this: the rifle hits three targets and stops unless it hits heavy armor, and the railgun tank seems to go on forever. In short, I’d like the primary weapons to have more personality, and not be completely ineffective unless you’re in a specific situation like being on the side or behind the charger.
Acid weapons in EDF are the most effective towards armor besides the designated weapons, and I think having the chemical strike or a chemical launcher (like in EDF6) have this effect would give players more chances to be creative. I think AH and the doomers need to think outside of the box. GG.
@newspiked7385 @newspiked7385 I gave it another look, and I might have still missed the "breaker is ruined" talk . Though I see that doomer sentiment very strongly for the game at large due to the flamethrower, as some part of a trend.
I really don't have any issue with your position on their behavior, regardless of if I agree or not, but I think there is more to this than what is being discussed.
But first, I need to clarify some things (1) what I meant by Arrowhead's default reaction to meta weapons.
I do mean their reaction to the meta weapons specifically, not overall balancing philosophy.
They specifically point to strong, "reliable" weapons being nerfed as their point of contention, not that it's the only action arrowhead does.
I think it's more that they don't want Arrowhead doing any nerfs to these weapons until the underused weapons are up to par with the weapons they use.
And (2) the difference in balancing PvP and PvE.
I wasn't saying that enemies could simply be buffed all the time, just that you have more attractive options in lowering the effectiveness in a weapon than with PvP, which in this case could be making the enemies stronger.
Frankly, I haven't seen online discussion go this far into the weeds of how a "nerfs are never necessary" approach would work. Again, it seems the position is that many of the underpicked weapons should be buffed and not the already attractive weapons being nerfed, which takes me out of clarifying earlier statements and into the main point.
There are more things working to drum up this fervor than "skill issue" or "bandwagoning."
I think many players, regardless of their skill levels, are set in their desired set of weapons after playing for some time. This isn't to say people are just maining one loadout (Most people I play with always change their weapons in between ops or missions). Just that there is a group of weapons that they lean on when maybe they go into a level they aren't used to, or play with low-level Randoms, etc. Now here comes a whole other entity, making such "drastic" changes to these weapons you've come to be comfortable with, now these weapons you used to trust just became strange to you in one update.
There's likely even more that goes into this, but at least from where I'm standing, a big component of this outrage can be encapsulated in this one word: alienation.
I think Arrowhead's response and posture to this is actually perfect.
Hypothetically, the changes they made would probably be just fine if they weren't *changes.* If these were how things were at launch, the game would've risen to the same kind of fame. So the actual decisions are not really the issue here.
Framing things as a lack of deeper communication with the community cuts to the meat and potatoes of the issue, all while not taking on an onus they don't deserve.
If these changes were slow-rolled with player suggestions in a test server environment, the hype of this update wouldn't get drowned out with outrage.
Again, I don't take any issue with your position on the behavior of the people on reddit and discord, but I would hope you at least empathize (not necessarily sympathize) with them.
Unlike many..many....many other cases, I actually buy the idea of "everyone wants the same thing" with this community.
@@BRAINSPLATTER16
It’s still overpowered, but in a reasonable spot.
People crying that they can’t spray and pray everything but biles spewers and titans aren’t very creative when killing bugs.
Thanks for your reply, it's all been very civil which is refreshing :)
For (1) I guess how I see it is, AH are bringing up the other guns at the same time as nerfing the overperformers. IIRC when the Railgun was hit with its first nerfs, was the same time when they changed the Charger head HP so that EATS, RR and later Quasar would be able to one-shot them. Incendiary Breaker ammo capacity was nerfed, but if players want to hold the trigger down like they used to, the Breaker Spray & Pray has been buffed for a few patches now, performing much the same role of great light enemy trash clear, as well as good damage on Charger asses, with some advantages like a slightly tighter choke and the ability to shoot enemies near your teammates without setting them on fire. People keep asking for underperformers to be brought on par, but they have been, both amongst the primaries and support weapons.
I think the underlying reason why people have felt they weren't up to par was simply that the stuff that people complained the most about - the Railgun, Arc Thrower, and now the Flamethrower - simply did too many things too well (specifically on the Bug front), and people grew accustomed to that power level. The Railgun could one-shot mediums, and at the same time 2-shot Chargers (and thanks to the Playstation bug, Titans too). Flamer could clear all kinds of chaff, and also delete Chargers in 2 seconds with ease. The Arc Thrower could stunlock Chargers while keeping an entire horde at bay, and with enough time could take out BTs. People thought this was what all support weapons should be capable of, when really what AH envisioned was Chaff specialists (e.g. the MGs) and AT Specialists (e.g. the RR) excelling at their roles and being weak against enemies on the opposite end, with Generalists covering a bit of both. How much the AC and AMR dominate on the Bot front is a discussion for another day, but I think what people are struggling with is clinging to the idea of the support weapon that excels at practically everything.
Funnily enough, AH haven't truly downgraded those weapons that much - Railgun is back to 2-shotting Charger legs for the primary finish, with a 3-shot for Behemoths; Arc Thrower is still an amazing trash killer and can take on Chargers in decent time, but not Behemoths; and the Flamer can still clear trash well while bursting the asses of both Charger types in a couple of seconds. I can think of a few small buffs for each of them, but their overall power level is good enough for max level play.
For (2), I think that's a fair point, but also a more nuanced point than I've seen online, which sadly have been as simplistic as "this is PvE, balance is unimportant, don't nerf my fun". I think I also gave my reasons why buffing all the other weapons and the enemies as well rather than just nerfing the problematic gun can cause a lot more problems than it solves, when the alternative is simply for players to not overreact to nerfs and think every nerf must make their gun less fun. There have been instances where a nerfed gun / character actually makes them more fun for me to use, as I feel like I'm actually earning my victories more when using them, but this doesn't seem to be shared by the people complaining about even the more minor nerfs.
Agree a lot with your later points. I can definitely understand the feeling of becoming comfortable with a set of weapons if you don't really want to experiment much, then having those tools switched up, sometimes drastically. But as you pointed out, unfortunately the mistake wasn't really the nerf, but releasing those weapons in that state to begin with. Once the weapons have been released in an OP state, it becomes very difficult to bring in the necessary nerfs without uproar. But players should have the ability to recognise when it's necessary. If devs aren't allowed to nerf stuff after they're introduced, or even before release (see all the accusations of "pre-nerfs", the only avenue you leave for the designers is power creep, which can lead to the slow death of a game.
Better communication from AH, I can agree with. It would be great for some deeper dives into their balancing decisions, though I am sceptical of some people's ability to try to understand what they're going for instead of immediately trying to twist words and find inconsistencies. Not rushing content out in a clearly incomplete state (as we had with the Tenderizer for example) is another. But there are things that the player community could improve at as well. It's not solely down to the developers to promote a better understanding of the game's design, it also requires a willingness on the part of the players too, and sadly a lot of that has been missing from the online discourse.
Superioty complex from an easy game is wild lol
If the people complaining found it as easy as you...well they wouldn't be complaining about "losing" their crutch now would they :P
"People complaining about nerfs LOLOLOLOL"
Can't help but notice that none of your Terminid videos since the patch feature a single flamethrower. Mid-wits
See you soon ;)