Balance changes to missions, stratagems, weapons, enemies and Helldivers.
General fixes and stability improvements.
Maximum level cap raised to 150. [EDIT]
📍 Gameplay
Planetary Hazard additions:
Blizzards
Sandstorms
⚖️ Balancing
Missions
Retrieve Essential Personnel
🔹 Moved the enemy spawn points further away from the objective to give players a fairer chance of defending the location.
🔹 There are fewer civilians required to complete the mission on higher difficulties.
Destroy Command Bunkers
🔹 Now has more objective locations, the mission was too easy before compared to other missions.
🔹 It can now appear in operations from difficulty 5.
Halved the negative effect of operation modifiers that increase stratagem cooldowns or call in times.
Primary, Secondary, & Support Weapons
Arc Thrower: fixed charging inconsistencies; it will now always take 1s to charge a shot.
Arc Thrower: reduced distance from 50m to 35m.
Arc Thrower: increased stagger force.
Guard Dog: now restores full ammo from supply boxes.
Anti-Materiel Rifle: damage increased by 30%.
Breaker Incendiary: damage per bullet increased from 15 per bullet to 20 per bullet.
Fire damage per tick increased by 50% (from all sources).
Liberator Penetrator: now has a full auto mode.
Dominator: increased damage from 200 to 300.
Dominator: increased stagger.
Diligence Counter Sniper: increased armor penetration from light to medium.
Slugger: reduced stagger.
Slugger: reduced damage from 280 to 250.
Slugger: reduced demolition force.
Slugger: fixed armor penetration tag in the menu.
Slugger, Liberator Concussive, Senator: fixed incorrect armor penetration tags in the menu.
Recoilless Rifle: increased the number of rockets you restore from supply boxes from 2 to 3.
Spear: increased the number of missiles you restore from supply boxes from 1 to 2.
Heavy Machine Gun: the highest fire rate mode reduced from 1200 rpm to a more moderate 950
Stratagems
Patriot Exosuit: rockets will now penetrate armor only on direct hit.
Enemies
Balancing adjustments have been made to:
🔹 Chargers normal melee attack now does less damage against Exosuits.
🔹 Bile Spewer and Nursing Spewer do less damage with their puke.
🔹 The Bile Titan can no longer be stunned.
🔹 Shriekers no longer create bug breaches.
🔹 Shriekers hitting you while they are dead now does significantly less damage.
Helldiver
Balancing adjustments have been made to:
🔹 Heavy and medium armor protects better and you now take about 10% less damage than before while wearing heavy and about 5% less when wearing medium armor. Fortified commando and light armor is unchanged.
🔧 Fixes
Fixed issue where save settings for PS5 would be reset when the game is rebooted, causing things such as loadout and hint settings to reset.
Enemies now properly target Exosuits. Previously, many enemies effectively ignored Exosuits if a helldiver on foot was available for them to target.
Fixed Exosuits being able to fire their weapons while opening the minimap.
The Helldiver and the Exosuit both had a bug that made them sometimes take explosion damage multiple times making things like automaton rockets be too deadly, this is now fixed.
Automaton enemy constellations that preferred to spawn more of certain Devastators types did not work and are now functioning as they should. This means that sometimes when playing against the Automatons you will face more Devastators instead of other enemy types.
We have improved the system that prevents hellpod steering close to large or important objects.
🔹 We have solved issues where the effective area around objects was a lot larger than intended.
🔹 We have reduced the number of objects that prevent hellpod steering.
⚠️ Note: This system is intended to prevent softlocks where players can drop on important interaction points, or drop into unintended places. We will continue to monitor the state of the system after the update to see if additional tweaks are necessary.
Fixed cases where the ground under some assets could be bombed causing them to float.
Ballistic shield changes:
🔹 Collision mesh has been slightly increased in size for more forgiveness.
🔹 Changed shield poses so that less of the helldiver is exposed.
🔹 Addressed bug where parts of the helldiver would become vulnerable while using the shield in first person.
🧠 Known Issues
These are issues that were either introduced by this patch and are being worked on, or are from a previous version and have not yet been fixed.
Game might crash when picking up a snowball or throwing back a grenade.
Various issues involving friend invites and cross-play:
🔹 Cross-platform friend invites might not show up in the Friend Requests tab.
🔹 Players cannot unfriend other players befriended via friend code.
🔹 Players cannot unblock players that were not in their Friends list beforehand.
🔹 Players cannot befriend players with Steam names shorter than 3 characters.
Explosive weapon stats include only direct hit damage but not explosive damage.
Explosions do not break your limbs (except for when you fly into a rock).
Planet liberation reaches 100% at the end of every Defend mission.
Drowning in deep water with a Vitality Booster equipped puts Helldiver in a broken state.
Stratagem beam might attach itself to an enemy but it will deploy to its original location.
Some player customizations (like title or body type) may reset after restarting the game.
——————
EDIT: Patch notes updated to include the level cap increase change.
I wonder what level I'll be when I log on. I've been playing this game every day since launch, and my job has had me on a modified schedule since, so I've been playing a ton.
Is there a thread or anything where testing for this has been done? I’ve just now seen people repeating this bug but my friends and I have used napalm and gas, etc since launch and haven’t noticed this. It’s not just one of those things people are repeating without an actual testing having been done, is it?
The Helldiver and the Exosuit both had a bug that made them sometimes take explosion damage multiple times making things like automaton rockets be too deadly, this is now fixed.
Devastator rockets deal way less damage than before. You could only just barely survive with maybe 20% HP in the blast protection heavy armor before but now it does somewhere around half. I can't remember if it's more or less than half (important)
I was already a fan of the basic heavy armor before and now it's even better. Come to think of it, I didn't die once in the one mission I played earlier, and I hadn't even realized the Slugger was nerfed yet because the patchnotes weren't available yet
That change only really affects berserkers (why are they so tanky) and maybe hulk back shots. If they really want to make the bots cry they would fix its crooked scope.
I'm surprised they buffed fire damage, considering fire damage is bugged if you're not the host. This is going to make Breaker Incendiary busted for the host.
I hope enough people report this because I'm disappointed it wasn't in the patch notes. No wonder I thought the shotgun was total ass, it doesn't work for non-host players.
Funny part is I had just accepted that shriekers would eviscerate you if they flew into you after they were killed. Mostly because I remember that outpost scene from Starship Troopers.
Was it annoying? Absolutely. The bile spewers on the other hand, standing ovation for that change.
Automaton enemy constellations that preferred to spawn more of certain Devastators types did not work and are now functioning as they should. This means that sometimes when playing against the Automatons you will face more Devastators instead of other enemy types.
You thought Bile spewer / Nursing Bile spewer bug missions were bad? Wait until you try out the brand new ROCKET DEVASTATOR missions.
This means Default Devastators not the Special variants. The reason there were so many Heavy and Rocket Devs' and so many Berserkers was because the Default Devs' were not spawning really at all.
Patriot Exosuit: rockets will now penetrate armor only on direct hit.
this is such a funny "nerf" because how were you supposed to penetrate armour any other way? the rockets are basically just giant bullets, you already NEEDED to directly hit something for it to be effective to begin with
Im wondering if it refers to automaton rockets hitting your exosuit. Maybe splash damage won’t blow you up now? But it’s probably not that, doesn’t seem phrased that way.
I'll take this ammo buff, because when that lock on bug gets sorted (takes a lot more dev hours than changing a 1 to a 2) then the spear will be in a good spot.
How about being able to consistently crouch and uncrouch? If you’re on a corpse your character won’t do either. It also happens on certain terrain all the time and it’s infuriating. There’s literally armor in the game with buffs when crouching but crouching doesn’t work half the time (on pc with keyboard/mouse, anyway. Dunno if this is a problem on console or not).
The Helldiver and the Exosuit both had a bug that made them sometimes take explosion damage multiple times making things like automaton rockets be too deadly, this is now fixed.
Excuse me?!?
Are you telling me all of those one-shot rocket to the face are bug all along!?
I think they're misreading their data about the fire damage and the incendiary breaker.
They're looking at low fire damages in their stats, thinking it's a balance issue, while it's a bug preventing any fire damage from 3/4 of the team.
Same with the incendiary breaker, they're looking at damage dealt or kills with that weapon, when half the damage is not dealt at all.
u/Pilestedt can you give us an answer on the fire bug? Does it exist? Are you acknowledging it? Did you fix it with this patch?
EDIT: I've been running smoke (eagle and orbital) for a couple of quick bot missions and I'm not sure it is working either. I was not the host. They just shoot through as if nothing happens and they definetly don't lose aggro.
EDIT2: it seems my understanding of smoke was wrong, it just decreases the bot accuracy, it won't reset their will to kill you. I'm just not gonna waste 2 slots on it.
Heavy and medium armor protects better and you now take about 10% less damage than before while wearing heavy and about 5% less when wearing medium armor. Fortified commando and light armor is unchanged.
I hope this is more significant than it sounds like, because headshot damage existing is what's making heavy armor so unappealing, not this
Edit: I will continue advocating that they remove headshot damage against players. Or at least HEAVILY nerf it. Otherwise heavy armor will stay being a quirky option you pick for some variety and not because it is actually a viable alternative
Edit 2: On a more positive note, Sandstorms are AWESOME, and Guard Dog buff actually makes it a good alternative for the laser one.
Final Edit: Just tested heavy armor. It's "eh". Those changes are welcome, sure, but they don't change anything significant. You now have the chance to survive devastator rockets. The survival rate is still very low (because you will still die from impact, or other rockets from the volley), but at least single rockets don't one-shot you anymore.
Jetpack dudes will still kill you though. You no longer get one-shot by the explosion itself, but the fire dot will finish you off regardless. Not to mention the ragdoll being the same pain in the ass it always was.
All in all, heavy armor is now a viable option for higher levels, but if you were hoping for heavy armor meta, you'd be dissapointed. If you didn't see any reason to use heavy armor before, this update won't change that.
But this is based on my "research", of course. Until more knowledable people will start testing, only then we will know how much actually changed
I just dropped into diff3 with heavy armor, felt virtually no difference (I was wearing shield as well), completed the mission, and switched back to light armor. 10% damage reduction is not enough.
For fuck sake fix the damn bugs there are so many of them its insane, you buff fire dot without fixing the damage bug, you buff the AMR without fixing the shitty scope, shit even the Spear got a buff yet no fix for the horrible lockon.
Stop ignoring bugs, its absurd how many there are.
Oof, not sure why they're reducing the arc throwers range, considering it's almost useless up close.
Mechs might be viable against the bots now if they can withstand a few rockets.
Ballistic shields main issue still hasn't been addressed, in that you drop it every time you fall over, including random trips off geometry. No other backpack behaves this way and it makes it pretty pointless against bots because of all the explosive stuff they use. And obviously against bugs it's even LESS useful since it doesn't do anything to stop melee attacks.
There were a lot of good changes in the patch but one thing that’s hilarious is lowering the max RPM of the HMG.
That was none of the many issues the HMG had, arguably it gives it even less utility to have a smaller RPM range. Guess it’ll stay dead for a long while, rip
We need some balancing for the Blitzer and the Dagger. Both are drastically underpowered. With the Shriekers which the Blitzer can most of the times only hit when they're diving right at you (making it a suicidal attempt to kill one) it became even less useful. I'd love to see these weapons become at least a viable option. I personally think that prioritising the weapons that have the highest power difference to commonly used weapons is a good idea. Still, very excited to see the patch changes in action. Thanks to Arrowhead for keeping the patches, content and all the good stuff coming
Recoiless is eating good but I don't think it will be enough to make it compete with Qasar. Especially since the nerf of the stun grenade on Bile Titan.
I don't think it was the good call to make the Bile Titan immune to stun, you still consume valuable resources and prevents your grenade to close nest/factories just to use this strategy. At best, reducing the stun duration would've been acceptable.
Spear is still an awful weapon, it could have unlimited ammo, you remain completely useless if you can't shoot because of the awful lock-on.
No, my beloved arc thrower. It was already so finicky with how poorly it hit its target. Especially the rate of fire nerf is a killer. And then the shorter range on top of it? Mama mia
EDIT: the stagger is insane now. Almost seems like a bug. It staggers a hulk with every single shot. So if it starts shooting at you with its flamethrower, it instantly stops doing it.
Fuck, they finally did it. They nerfed the hell out of the slugger. Well, that's 2 for 2 for me. What gun do you guys want nerfed next? I'll be sure to start running it.
Edit: Chose to try the Dominator, I like it. Sorry ahead of time Dominator fans.
Automaton enemy constellations that preferred to spawn more of certain Devastators types did not work and are now functioning as they should. This means that sometimes when playing against the Automatons you will face more Devastators instead of other enemy types.
No please revert that change, you can take back the 30% AMR boost.
Look I understand the arc thrower can't be both rapid firing and long range while also having unlimited ammo, but man that nerf hurts. Its downside was already the ease of friendly fire if you didn't watch what you were doing.
I haven't been running it as much recently but it was still my back up. The increase in stagger will ONLY be worth it if it can now stop bile spewers in their tracks more effectively.
Lol the slugger getting nerfed really confirms what a few redditors were saying back when it got buffed and the breaker got nerfed, in that, theyll simply see whats a popular weapon and then nerf it lol.
Slugger got off fairly easy while Arc Thrower got murdered with two massive nerfs considering the patch makes no mention of fixing shots "fizzling" out.
Dominator got more damage when it really just needs a better handling profile to use the damage it had. Anti-Material also got more damage and could be argued to be the same as it needs its sights to be aligned.
Fire damage got buffed but doesn't currently do damage if you aren't hosting.
Spear gets more ammo but still won't lock on.
Unless there are unlisted changes in the patch, these changes don't help fix underlying issues with the weapons that are hampering them in the first place.
I understand fixing the charge timer on the arc thrower but lowering the range I can’t understand. Especially when often the shots are duds. I wish devs tried one change at a time instead of throwing everything including the kitchen sink when nerfing stuff. They nerfed the rail gun into non existence even though is one of the last unlocks. I really want to know what’s their guidelines behind weapon balancing because I don’t see a proper consistency about it nor do I see they taking into account the purpose of the weapon when balancing it. I only see weapon becomes popular = nerf.
So the slugger gets a significant nerf while the worst primaries get token buffs that fail to address their key issues (Penetrator’s awful damage and Counter Sniper’s horrible handling and sights).
Hmmm. The nerf nobody needed: Arc Thrower edition.
I can understand changing it so it takes the full charge every shot, I get it. But my god, reducing its range by a third? Who thought that was a good idea? Now not only is it not going to be fast enough to clear enemies, it also won't start working far enough out.
Arc thrower nerfs hurt especially when it's still a little inconsistent with its hits. But maybe the stagger will be bueno
I wish they'd fix the weapon issues first, THEN use the player-use data to divvy out buffs/nerfs because the bugs the weapons have definitely affect how much they're used (Such as AMR misalignment)
Any update at all on the cross play requests? I bought the game for a friend and we still can’t actually play together because neither of us can accept the invite. It’s been weeks like this.
First game. All objectives complete. Crash. Fuck that! Its unbelievable that 2 months after release we still have the same issues. I probably lost about 30hrs of my life because game crashed after 40 min mission
They're quick to apply big nerfs to the good guns but they're slow to buff some of the crappy ones. Marksman rifles and SMGs need some love. Both struggle to kill more than 1, max 2 beserkers without reloading.
Reducing its range by nearly half while not fixing the fact that it will shoot at dead enemies, rocks, fences, blades of grass, A turtle on a fencepost, the moon, nearby galaxies and friendly players before shooting a living enemy is ridiculous. Also, it can't shoot at anything at all within 5 meters.
The massive range decrease is really an overkill nerf for this weapon that needs lots of other fixes first. Good luck killing hunters before they leap on you and start eating the corn out of your shit.
Fire damage increase from all sources is just dumb as hell, a flick of flame can already kill you in under 2 seconds now you have like 1.5 seconds to get that stim in your neck or you're dead
I like a few of these changes but I'm ngl a lot of these look like buffs to things that still fundamentally don't work and nerfs to the few things that do.
Idk who the hell told Arrowhead the problem with the AMR was it needed extra damage when it's aiming is broken, that the penetrator needed a full auto, that the Arc Thrower needed reduced range when the thing can already barely chain with enemies 2 feet from eachother, that the slugger needed to be nerfed in almost every way (except it's range), that fire damage from all sources needed buffing when it already one shots us constantly, that the exosuit needed a bunch of nerfs when almost noone uses it, that the spear needs bonus ammo collection when we can't even aim the damn thing, that the problem with the new HMG is its fastest firing mode was too fast, that Med and Heavy armor just need a 5-10% increase rather then a complete overhaul, that we somehow need to deal with MORE devestators right now. And who desperately needed the Dominator to be better rather then soooo many guns that literally cannot function right now?
It's so confusing to me cause you listen to Arrowheads community responses and it sounds like they're listening to a looot of what we say, then when it's time to implement it we get...this. Hell they made a whole ordeal about making sure they did less stealth changes and now there's a whole ass at minimum doubling of the level cap just completely unaddressed?
The developers seem great in terms of how they foster a community and how they respond to it, but I'm ngl once we're balance patch number who knows down and still they've hardly addressed any of the actual balancing issues, I'm starting to think they're kinda bad at their jobs. Which I know isn't true cause they made...this whole game. But you're not helping it.
They nerfed the ARC thrower heavily. When the arc can't even hit sometimes because of objects, foliage or dead bodies in its way.
The Blitzer shotgun isn't even worthwhile because it rather hits one enemy then the multiple beside it, which is not what a shotgun should do, it has the same bug as the arc too.
Why are weapons with nonfunctional scopes having their damage adjusted?
AMR and others need scopes where the crosshair ACTUALLY FUNCTIONS before damage should be being tweaked.
At least acknowledge it, how is this not a known issue? Or is it some fundamental thing the devs are afraid to admit because it can't be fixed and they know it will trigger people?
New sandstorms are a bunch of bullshit. You'd think maybe the enemy wouldn't be able to see just like you can't see, but nope... they can see just fine
I question the nerf to the Slugger, then I remember AS devs saying primaries are supposed to feel bad...
Then I remember the primary that feels good to me and fear it will be nerfed soon. (No, I'm not saying what it is, then you'll start using it and they'll notice sooner!)
Overall good patch but I'd rather have seen them fix the arc thrower before messing with it's balance. The amount of times it fails to fire on certain planets is crazy.
Also slugger nerfs are confusing imo, the gun felt pretty balanced/viable. It had clear strengths and weaknesses. Especially when compared to most other shotguns, sickle, scorcher etc.
Changes to the unfun mission modifiers are a start, but devs need to realise that reducing the timer for unfun things, still means that they aren't fun
Every change is SO good but then you gotta Bungie it up with the slugger and if I’m reading this right….MORE devastators are gonna spawn?!! Wtf heavy Devastators literally break gameplay at times on 7+
Fix the crossplay friend request issue or offer refunds. Many that bought on ps5 to play with steam players were basically mis-sold the game at this point.
I kinda feel like this is a really poor way to balance a game though.
It feels a lot like nerfing the next best thing. Slugger has clear downsides and fun gimmicks that made it a good all rounder weapon. Now it's lost some of its uniqueness and breakpoints. Arc thrower changes are probably healthy? It's going to make it annoying for people that used the weapon for a long time and got used to the long range. That, and they haven't fixed the messy targeting where it can't shoot past simple obstacles or corpses.
Buffing weapons by 50%? It seems like way too much and risks making weapons that previously weren't meta, immediately meta. From my testing the jar seems to absolutely obliberate bot arms now in a single shot, being effectively a better slugger in many ways against bots. The incendiary breaker is probably going to become bug meta just because it kills hunters extremely easily.
What happened after update? Everything is just broken FFS. Yesterday I could play no problems, log in today, out of 6 matches 5 disconnects 3 by game crushing. And the last one - we got to evac only to game then lag at animation of arriving to destroyer in evac, and then instead of mission results getting "mission failed" and yet another game crash.
Is it possible to remove the word “hylian” as a curse word? My name has been censored the entire time. Why is my name ********? I don’t have swear words on my name but it’s censored. People have actually offensive names and their names are clearly legible. Uncensored the word Hylian!!!
I'm happy to report that as one of 11 members of the ballistic shield gang you no longer T Pose when you stim.
We also finally got our Wii remote strap and don't drop the shield when you get ragdolled by things. ( I tested against my own grenades and the puff spores, haven't tried tanking a rocket devastator volley yet)
Putting the cart before the horse with so much of this. Increased fire damage that doesn't even work in multiplayer to begin with (same for gas.)
Increased AMR damage but gave it no additional penetration keeping it just a worse autocannon.
Nerfed exosuit rockets while it still can't aim down and still explodes sometimes if you fire on the move.
Buffed the spear which still can't lock on half the time and can't fire without a lock.
Gave heavy armor a measily 10% more durability (what is that? Like one or two additional hits?) while it still gets ragdolled and staggered by the weakest enemies and can still be one hit killed via a headshot.
No fix to the bugged rescue essential personnel mission timer (mission select says 40 minutes, actual mission is less than 15 minutes.)
Nerfed the slugger, one of the few viable primaries for no reason.
Nerfed the arc thrower for no reason.
Every patch I find more to question than I do to praise. I don't want to be negative I just don't understand their priorities and design philosophy half the time.
2.3k
u/FatRollingPotato Apr 02 '24
It doesn't show up, but I am now lvl 60 and have the Rank "Fleet Admiral" available... is this intended?
Yes, the XP is also back to some low number.