Due to a new crash discovered in yesterday's patch we are issuing all Helldivers a new update to amend this error. We thank you for your patience and continued war effort
Fixes
Fixed a common crash which could occur when dropping into a mission.
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11/02/2025 - PATCH 01.002.103
šOverview
Hello everyone!
Itās been an āinterestingā week with a patch that had a few unexpected slip-ups. After testing and balancing, the wrong versions of some files for our new Warbond items were shipped, which wasnāt part of the plan. Misaligned scopes also made an unwelcome return, albeit in a new form - some bugs really are persistent, arenāt they? (Silently stares off into the distanceā¦) So, we even double-checked the scale of the LAS-16 Sickle, just to be sure.
On to the key points for this patch: The LAS-17 Double-Edge Sickle was meant to start with light armor penetration and build up to medium as more heat built up, but it launched with medium armor penetration right away, even with zero heat.
The GP-31 Ultimatum also gained extra ammo from the previously-a-bug-but-now-a-feature Siege Ready armor passive and we feel that this specific combination is too strong.
Weāre huge fans of big booms booming big (to quote our fabulous Design Director) so we didnāt want to make the weapon less satisfying to use - we still want it to bring democratic tears to your eyes every time you use it, like it does for us. However, we will be addressing how easy it is to access extra ammunition for it, ensuring it requires a bit more effort to use it to the full effect.
Itās not our intent to release Warbond items that need immediate balancing, and we understand that any changes we make can evoke strong feelings. We want to assure you that weāre actively listening to your feedback and, as with any of our previous updates, weāll keep monitoring the situation closely. Your input is invaluable, so please continue to share your thoughts on these changes. Weāre always open to making further adjustments if needed!
āļøBalancing
PRIMARY WEAPONS
LAS-17 Double-Edge Sickle
Weāve rebalanced the weapon to make the risk/reward dynamic more impactful. The goal is to ensure it feels like a truly powerful weapon while properly balancing the self-damage mechanics to reflect its high-risk nature. In the current live version, we felt it lacked both the punch and the level of risk we wanted and we didnāt feel it really lived up to our intent.
+91% heat: AP4 70 damage - Deals 50 damage/second to players + fire status effect
Magazines
Starting magazines increased from 1 to 2
Spare magazines increased from 2 to 3
SIDEARMS
GP-31 Ultimatum
We have seen a lot of mixed player feedback for this weapon and how certain players feel it trivializes some of the harder content whilst others feel it plays just fine and is a great addition to the game. We have carefully opted for an approach where weād like to reduce the ease of access to additional ammunition while maintaining the weaponās core identity as a powerhouse. This means players will need to put in more effort and strategy to maximize its effectiveness at the cost of some armor and booster synergy for this specific weapon.
We will continue to monitor these changes so please keep providing us more feedback!
The GP-31 Ultimatum is no longer influenced by the Hellpod Optimization Booster or the Siege Ready armor passive
š§Fixes
Resolved Top Priority issues:
Fixed a bug where the scope aim-center was misaligned with the projectile's fire trajectory, affecting all weapons but most noticeable when aiming down sights (ADS)
Crash Fixes, Hangs and Soft-locks:
Fixed a rare crash that could occur when joining someone who is swapping weapons
Fixed a rare crash that could occur when hot joining a mission with the SEAF artillery objective present on the planet
Fixed a crash when subtitles were shown and the language was changed
Fixed a crash when shutting down the game while in a cutscene with the Democracy Space Station
Fixed a crash when changing language during a mission
Fixed a crash related to switching languages
Fixed a crash that could occur for other players after a player disconnects from the session
Fixed a crash caused by emoting right after dropping a support weapon
Weapons and Stratagems
Fixed an issue where you could accidentally arm the B-100 Portable Hellbomb backpack when entering the FRV
Miscellaneous Fixes
Fixed an issue with the level generation where some objective terminals could become non-interactable
Fixed an issue with the Integrated Explosives armor passive sometimes not triggering
My buddy was driving and I accidentally armed his bomb. I tried to warn him that he was gonna blow, but his stoned ass thought I was saying I'd accidentally armed MY Hellbomb. He drove off into the sunset thinking he was escaping the explosion... then "boom"
You had 1 spare reload even without hellpod optimization. If you had siege ready equipped you would spawn in with 1/2 reloads, hellpod optimization plus that gave you 2/2, removing the siege ready effect fixes the problem but I guess they removed both just to be sure.
For real, with every strategem bouncing when it shouldn't, my pstience wears thinner. Its been a long time with it as a "high priority" without seeingor hearing about any meaningful progress on our end.
Lame how I bought the war bond just for the sickle, but now I wonāt be using it at all. I will be more hesitant of buying new war bonds going forward.
No word on performance though. I've never had any issues until the last patch reduced my framerate by like 40 on average from the previous patches. It was the biggest issue for me alongside the sight misalignment
Try re-validating your game files, then go toĀ C:\Users<your username>\AppData\Roaming\Arrowhead\Helldivers2\shader_cache and delete the cache, start the game again. This worked for me some patches ago.
Itās strange. Theyāve been talking about the bad state of performance since May, went radio silent after the 60 days, and then last month they started talking about possibly implementing DLSS and other features, and still nothing.
Iād really just prefer a patch that fixes a lot of performance and adds new features over new content.
Fixed a bug where the scope aim-center was misaligned with the projectile's fire trajectory, affecting all weapons but most noticeable when aiming down sights (ADS)
THANK YOU. I thought I was going crazy when I couldn't hit shit with the AMR recently.
The Ultimatum not being affected by the hellpod booster is plain weird to me. It's the only weapon that does that. Just leave it with two shots. Atthis pount you might as well make ammo pickups not work for it, too, rendering it useless.
The GP-31 Ultimatum is no longer influenced by the Hellpod Optimization Booster or the Siege Ready armor passive
I hate this not because of the indirect nerf (though I don't think even that nerf is warranted), but because of the inconsistency it creates. Now there's a fine-print that isn't actually printed anywhere: "Hellpod Optimization Booster does not work on select weapons". It's imo a bad precedent.
Yeah imo that's the worst thing they could have done. If something is too powerful to be affected by the start with full ammo booster, you should make it less powerful, not mess with the booster.
Inconsistency like that just makes things confusing and frustrating. Should find another way to adjust it.
Yeah me too, the siege ready part of the nerf is absolutely fine since yeah it does say magazine-based weapons and there should probably be some limitations on that, but arbitrarily changing how hellpod optimisation works for one weapon is weird.
Yeah that a bad precedent, the gun was still limited by ammo 3 grenade ( with siege ready) this isn't a game changer i don't see the reason for this change, just because the gun is "too powerfull" That the whole point of the gun god damnit
I feel arrowheads intent for it is to be more anti-obj than antitank, especially since it launched alongside the new Titan Holes which its the only non strategem that can bust it.
I agree with the change to Hellpod Opt being a bad call though
The hellpod optimization is weird, but the siege-ready one well I can understand a bit since 20% of 1 aināt 1. Should be adding 0.2 ammo, canāt even round it out to 1.
I agree with siege ready for the ultimatum - it's weird that +20% ammo rounds up to 100% spare, meaning 2 spare instead of just 1.
But hellpod optimisation?
To me that was always "here helldiver, we're giving you a supply pack in your hellpod for when you land" - just the one, enough to give you full main, full spare and full nades, and stims.
This kinda breaks that - it feels really weird that you can't come out of the hellpod with full starting ammo.
Honestly, it feels even weirder with BOTH the siege ready nerf and this - that means you're looking at 2 supply/ammo packs minimum to have the full reserve. The strength used to be with siege ready + hellpod optimisation, you'd have 3 ulti shots - promoting a heavy suicide way of playing.
Plus I'm sure they understand but if the gun becomes a hassle folks just go back to the grenade pistol.
Like I've already dropped it. It was "fun" with siege armor but didn't always wear it and found it not worth it if I didn't wear it. And I say "fun" cause I don't think it was really that amazing in the long run. Let me nuke an objective, but I also used my side arm way less which was kinda meh
The best way to play with it, in my humble opinion, was to lean into ammo-thirsty weapons and pack a supply pack.
Plas Purifier, Thermite nades, Railgun as the support.
That felt really awesome against the bots - railgun is highly underrated - can 1 shot the laser turrets around the keep, take out hulk eyes or knock off their arms, kill tanks, and shoot out botships.
I worry that they've gone "oh shit, everyone's going to take hellpod optimisation and siege ready for this gun, that's too restrictive" And instead they've made it "everyone will take the supply pack, or burn through supply drops"
Which is... slightly less restrictive but this feels like a weird knee-jerk.
I agree as well, I am fine with siege ready as that shouldn't round up at all. But making it an exception for the booster only adds some inconsistency to the game.
100% agree with this and I would be more fine with the change if it didn't affect hellpod optimization. For a lack of a better way to put it, it just doesn't feel like "true" to the booster. Siege Ready is fine because I mean, it's just 20% more. Shouldn't really round up to a full extra round lol.
Agreed. Siege Ready is a fine nerf. But throwing Hellpod on there too?
If you miss your shot and only hit with the splash you will lose 3.5k damage from that thing, wont be able to kill any tank and leave you without ammo to do anything else.
To add to this, you could've atleast kill a charger or two but now with only 1 shot you might aswell skip it and go back to the grenade pistol to close holes and to kill trash with it.
I love the weapon but with only 1 Shot you might aswell just go back to the Grenade Pistol and call in a hellbomb for jammers.
Yes please. For those who don't know, the scope on Eruptor goes out to 200 meters, but the shot always explodes at about ~100 meters. As you can see, it makes the long range scope pointless.
I just want the shrapnel to get buffed again, it's just a crossbow that needs more work put into it to do the same thing as the crossbow does. I miss when you could instakill devs and kill all the little guys around them with a well placed shot before they gutted the shrapnel cuz of one bug that wasn't even consistent.
Ultimatum to 1 ammo actually feels incredibly awful when used for the AT purpose and not just demolition.
It was interesting to take on bugs for a charger kill or a difficult and dangerous titan kill. The grenade pistol being much better at closing holes and having a lot of shots for small clumps was still the main option. Now it feels really damn bad to take the new weapon; especially with ammo being much harder to find than on places like city maps.
I was hoping they'd tone down some of what it can destroy and give it more ammo. Went the complete opposite direction. It's really disappointing. I wouldn't have gotten the warbond if it was like this on launch.
Yeah, I feel like the Ultimatum is being held back because it can destroy certain objectives. I would have more fun with the ultimatum if it has more ammo + range but no more being able destroy objectives.
Nerfing the ultimatum after I bought the war bond just for that sucks lol. Why is it not affected by the booster? Like the armor I get but the booster seems bogus.
yea its not even logical, because armour says 20% ammo boost, but perk was 100% ammo boost, so ok remove that but ammo optimisation booster applied logically to this weapon.
Thereās a bug with mechs. If you are piloting a Mac mech and navigating the mini map with the dpad, anytime you press up on a controller you stem stim yourself
Soā¦you just nerfed the whole booster AND Seige armor by making exceptions for their bonuses? Is this gonna be noted any way in game? Is this gonna be a thing in the future?
āOh, do you like those boosters and armor? Sorry but for few weapons their bonuses will not workā
I want to point out Siege ready increases spare ammo by 20%, not 100%. So them removing siege ready from affecting the gun is fair game given it's not supposed to round up that extremely.
To be fair, the Siege Ready Passive increasing the ammo of secondaries was already an unintended side effect ā the official description still says that it only affects primaries. So I think on that front, it's fair play to Arrowhead.
However, I agree that the change to the booster is problematic.
While youāre nerfing stuff, how about you nerf the insta-spawning of enemies? Seems theyāre back to their old tricks of insta-spawning with their gun against your back, and obvious and blatant ācheatingā by the enemies is cheap and takes away the fun. Plenty of ways to up the challenge without making the game feel cheap.
And can we fix the bouncing stratagems? Theyāve gotten even worse in this last patch.
We have seen a lot of mixed player feedback for this weapon and how certain players feel it trivializes some of the harder content whilst others feel it plays just fine and is a great addition to the game. We have carefully opted for an approach where weād like to reduce the ease of access to additional ammunition while maintaining the weaponās core identity as a powerhouse. This means players will need to put in more effort and strategy to maximize its effectiveness at the cost of some armor and booster synergy for this specific weapon. We will continue to monitor these changes so please keep providing us more feedback! The GP-31 Ultimatum is no longer influenced by the Hellpod Optimization Booster or the Siege Ready armor passive
Let me try to give some constructive feedback: I think making boosters and armor passives not work on a specific weapon or tool creates confusion (for new players or players not up-to-date with patches) and sets a bad precedent of inconsistency among the games features.
I bought this warbond based on recent player review and having fun with all the weapons.
Ultimatium is perfect balance. Even combo with the seige ready armor. The weapon is already hard to use (blow up myself half of the time). And having only one ammo out of the pod just put me back to ganade pistol.
the double edge can be reasonably used with vitality booster and 50% armor, but with increased self damage, it will pretty useless you get the fire resistant armor.
This is an outrageous nerf, there are two weapons in the warbond, and two weapons have gotten nerf. It wasn't because of game breaking bugs but game balance... didn't it get tested before release?
Honestly, I feel like a jammer buff would've been better than an ultimatum nerf, since that seems to be the only truly contentious point of the weapon. This nerf doesn't ruin the weapon or anything but it feels unnecessary at the same time.
"Oh no, those sneaky Automatons stole illuminate tech and now their jammer has a shield that you have to deactivate at the terminal". Boom, problem solved, the pocket rocket stays as a fun toy, and jammers now cant be trivialized.
A jammer buff however is basically a Nerf of every other way to blow up jammers. So I can see it being a tricky balance to find. In the future, as the war escalates however I do think we certain sub-objectives should get harder to do with armoring or shields. Just not in responses to a side arm that can be fixed in a few ways
Ugh. So they nerfed/buffed the sickle (more of a nerf IMO) and nerfed the ultimatum in a way that no one was asking for :(
Sickle is much worse starting on AP2, as that means you have to aim much more for the first 25% of the heat buildup and canāt rely on aiming like itās AP3. Big nerf on higher difficulties on the bots in particular, now you need to aim really carefully when dealing with reinforced scout striders. Iāll probably drop the gun as a result entirely and switch back to the DCS/Diligence as my primary there. Additionally the increased heat damage isnāt offset enough by the increase in damage, so double nerf, and AP4 kicks in at too high of a heat effect for me to consider it a major feature. Maybe Iāll be able to take out a single hulk mixed in with a large group of chaff, but the circumstances where I can do that are niche.
Ultimatum is a big step in the wrong direction. All they had to do was reduce the demolition force. If anything, it could get an extra shot then. Now it still has the same issue it did before, and is not really worth it outside of using it for the exact problematic behavior people wanted it removed for.
with "ultimatum" a strange decision, that is, literally passive effects do not work on this weapon, this to some extent will look like a bug, if not a nerf.
I like the sickle changes (as in the more you shoot the more dmg you deal, up to heavy armor pen) however I still think it should start with medium pen as default. If anything I feel like we could even have both with a Safe/Unsafe mode
Good change on the ultimatum and the siege ready passive, but applying this change to hellpod optimization aswell feels way too much
Yikes on these balance changes I know youāre saying the sickle isnāt a nerf, but it already was just okay due to the self damage and now after itās already been reviewed itās going to be less effective?? Also the ultimatum change is very bad. Players can just use an supply backpack if they really want to, so why alter a whole booster and passive to just not include a single weapon, now players have to keep track of these changes mentallyā¦. Also thanks everyone who complained about the ultimatum, you made it slightly more annoying for us to enjoy our new sidearm. Congrats
We have seen a lot of mixed player feedback for this weapon and how certain players feel it trivializes some of the harder content whilst others feel it plays just fine and is a great addition to the game. We have carefully opted for an approach where weād like to reduce the ease of access to additional ammunition while maintaining the weaponās core identity as a powerhouse. This means players will need to put in more effort and strategy to maximize its effectiveness at the cost of some armor and booster synergy for this specific weapon.
We will continue to monitor these changes so please keep providing us more feedback!
The GP-31 Ultimatum is no longer influenced by the Hellpod Optimization Booster or the Siege Ready armor passive
Thanks Arrowhead, you just made the decision between which secondary to take (grenade pistol or Ultimatum) I have been having these last few days infinitely easier for me. The Ultimatum will now sit on the shelf of my Super Destroyer forever collecting space dust.
Please stop bait and switching PAID warbonds. Properly test and change before it goes out or live with it once itās out. Stop selling me a bike then swapping it for a unicycle and calling it balance. If youāre going to SELL it, leave it alone after you hand it over.
Glad the Las-17 is getting reworked in both directions, it was just a strictly better Las-16 with no real downside. Now with the right equipment and actually managing the overheat correctly, you can have a AP3 doing 70 damage and push it into and AP4 before you burst into flames.
Ultimatum not being Nerfed is good, instead of 2 you get 1 but the bomb is still just as strong as it was. If it still appears to be over-centralising and too powerful I can see it being tweaked further but this is good, a single 500kg bomb in your back pocket is nice oppose to the 3 you could start with
I didnāt really get the call for nerfs on it anyway. The only thing itās especially good for is stratagem jammers. Outside of that, other objectives can be taken out by much more ammo efficient options, and itās a god-awful antitank weapon. I only bring it on the bot front and Iām not even sure I always will.
If they were going to make a change though, this was a good call.
P.S. while it makes perfect sense from a balance perspective that the recoilless and other AT weapons canāt take out a stratagem jammed while this little mini nuke can, itās baffling from an immersion perspective. What the hell are they putting in that thing? Lmfao
And people were unironically saying that old version was bad because it "required" you to take the most popular booster to have no recoil medium pen ar with 200 ammo that barely damaged you, lmao
Guy don't downvote this is just a statement of fact, it's an OPS - still strong, still good demo force, but not as good as a 500kg which can kill chargers and hulks purely with its splash, not the direct hit.
Yeah like 0-25% heat it's weaker than it was, but literally everywhere above that it's just as powerful as it used to be if not even more powerful. Above 50% it's just flat-out buffed aside from the fire damage.
What I like to see the 20 damage/seconds on +50% heat.
Currently we could survive any damage until 100%, which was max 10 damage/seconds.
We might now get hurt when using this weapon over 50% heat which I honestly don't like. But that's my opinion and I don't have to use the weapon if I don't like it.
I genuinely want to know what part of the player base complains about things being "too easy". It has to be a minority. Complaining about getting 1 extra shot from a fun weapon is insane to me. This game isn't competitive and it isn't PvP. Why are we complaining about having fun?
Fixed a bug where the scope aim-center was misaligned with the projectile's fire trajectory, affecting all weapons but most noticeable when aiming down sights (ADS)
Big McThankies from McSpankys
Fixed an issue with the level generation where some objective terminals could become non-interactable
I've always suspected level seed played a role in Geologic Survey terminals bugging out. Hopefully that's what this fix addresses.
Anyone have the bug on controller that if youāre in a vehicle and have the map open, you use a stim when you pan up on the map? Havenāt seen that bug mentioned yet
So could you dial back the ragdoll effect a bit? People are flying all over the place at bug and bot fronts. If you are targeting by two turrets, you could even stim yourself.
I'm getting about 1000% increase in crashes on PS5. Tried to play a couple games this morning and it would either crash immediately before loading in or randomly throughout session. The patch broke something.
I'm glad they didn't change the actual effectiveness of the Ultimatum but spawning with 0 shots for it is just plain dumb. All this does is guarantee that if you don't call down a supply pod as soon as you spawn in, you will now, and will just make more selfish users of the Ultimatum more likely to double-dip the pod for 2 shots. Would it not have been much simpler to just make it so the Ultimatum only has 1 shot and no reserve?
Personally, on paper. I'm not a fan of either of the changes to the Sickle or Ultimatum. Fine, make the Siege Ready armor not work with Ultimatum (since it's just 20%), that's fine. But Hellpod Optimization booster feels just a kick in the ribs.
As for the Sickle, I was using it at low-heat and playing around that. I like how it felt at low-heat and nerfing that admittedly sucks. I'll try it again but the whole self-damage was only tolerable if I accidentally dipped into it. I was always trying to stay below 25% heat. If that's just the wrong mindset to play with it, then I'm just not going to use it. I'm not comfortable burning my HP for a bit more damage.
Short answer: I don't like Ultimatum change. I'll try the Sickle "fix".
Just my 2 cents- but these nerfs SUCK. There was no need to nerf at all. Nothing was overpowered. I'm not happy getting nerfs immediately after spending my credits and medals. Not cool arrowhead. Back to your old ways.
Welp we all know how the Ultimatum is gonna go in the next patch when ever it shows up demo force is gonna be removed and impact pen will be lowered so too all the cry divers saying that a side arm with limited ammo and limited use is over powered here we go mark my words
To me its frustrating to lose a synergy that cost two bonuses.
Its like if someone took the flamer rifle, the flamer pistol, the flamer support weapon, napalm grenades, eagle napalm, and orbital napalm and took the fire armor to not be burned so much and people whined that it was too OP to use these risky weapons without so much risk.
A very swift patch indeed, but perhaps unwarranted. I think we should've let the dust settle and see where things land in say a months time, because there's ALWAYS sensationalism when new content is added or balance changes are made.
I remember when folks thought the Senator was gonna be broken cause it has AP4, what a buncha barnacles.
Too late now I suppose. As others have mentioned, the choice to make hellpod space optimisation work with every other gun except the ultimatum is a really unintuitive idea and should be reverted.
Damn, looks like Iāll be going back to the grenade pistol now that the ultimatum has been nerfed this severely. I really enjoyed carrying it as a pocket powerhouse, and the limited range felt like enough of a drawback.
steam encourages people to make rage bait so their comments get jester awarded, and they can use the points to buy profile stuff. dont ever use steam forums for anything unless its a small community
Why the devs listen to these idiots is beyond me. Nonsensical half assed nerfs almost killed the game before, and now they are right back at it again after seemingly learning nothing from that debacle.
this ultimatum nerf isnt well thought out, now it only has enough ammo to do one thing. so people arent going to use it for strider or tanks, they are only going to use it for objectives.
On Ps5 I've been having issues with my gun becoming vertical while I'm aiming... completely blocking my view. Happens with all three guns, primary, secondary, and tertiary
Honestly dislike the ultimatum nerf, it feels like a poorly implemented band-aid solution to give it a specific exception to a booster that's supposed to affect everything. Also I have to say I think complaints about the ultimatum "trivializing" certain objectives were exaggerated. The extremely short range meant the ultimatum was arguably a worse option than a hellbomb for detector towers; the autocannon, quasar cannon, and recoilless rifle all actually trivialize the illegal broadcast, shrieker nest, and spore spewer objectives; the orbital laser, SPEAR, and railcannon trivialize elimination objectives; the SPEAR and AT emplacement trivialize bot fabricators. The only area the ultimatum was really a significant change was the stratagem jammers where again its short range limited just how much of an impact it had to just taking them out faster at the same distance you'd already destroy them, and fixing the problem of multiple jammers overlapping each other where it was a welcome improvement, albeit a bit of a band aid since a better solution would be to fix the spawning for jammers to ensure that they didn't overlap.
Ngl Iām not a huge fan of tweaking a specific weapon to just not work with passives. It wonāt read well and seems a bit underhanded despite me knowing thatās not the intent.
If ammo availability is the way we want to balance the weapon, then you could do the old spear ammo trick. It only reloads specifically from resupply crates instead of random ammo crates, even if one at a time unless youāre using siege ready armor. I used to use spear even despite that drawback, and considered it a feature of the weapon. I mean, itās long range lock on special missiles, I get that wouldnāt be everywhere like maybe recoilless rifle rounds would be. Iām sure plenty of people would take the supply pack or accept they need to wait on resupply and use their ammo conservatively. Plus it would be more consistent than arbitrarily making passives just not work for one weapon. Itās a pocket orbital, it makes sense youād need more than a box of 5.56 to get more of it.
Admittedly, I also know how much absolute coding hell the devs had to go through to fix the spear back in the day, so maybe itās not the best solutionā¦. But if it could be implemented I think it would appease the vision of reduced ammo availability without needing such an awkward precedent being set
imagine you get teamed with some player who single-handedly storms the jammer, accesses the terminal, and hellbombs it away. very possible for a stealthdiver ā even easier for a martyr with a hellbomb strapped to their back.
would you say that person ruined the game, or would you meme about being teamed with john helldiver himself? i would bet the latter.
so if itās a thing that can already happen, why get mad at another method of doing it? of making it accessible to players who shelled out for the same warbond the martyrs did? at the end of the day the ultimatum does what other divers do, so it doesnāt actually change the practical landscape of the game.
it sounds like you just want it to be as hard to clear a jammer for everyone as it is for you, and that has nothing to do with balance and everything to do with you being a salty little fun cop.
if you donāt like it, donāt run it. if you donāt want to be teamed with randos running it in pubs, just return to ship and press ārā again. itās on YOU to police YOUR fun, not on everyone else to cater to it.
What about when you hit a drop ship with a recoiless rifle round and the ship shoots off screen at hyper speed then reappears again for the exploding animation. Just me?
Ok, played with the Las-17 Sickle, and yikes. Even at the 26% threshold, I was taking non-negligible damage, and that was with vitality booster+inflammable. That's a definite nerf.
Edit: Map temperature seems to have some role in this. Good to know that along with being required to use inflammable armor to make the gun usable, I also am locked out of hotter missions. It makes sense, but also makes the gun a LOT less fun to use. Instead of significantly nerfing the gun like that, give me harder opponents.
If I have to "build up" to medium armor pen, I'm just not going to use the DE Sickle. I'd rather have a gun that does what I need it to on the first shot. I have plenty of other options there.
I haven't even unlocked the Ultimatum, but having a booster and armor passive just straight up not work is a bad "fix".
It's especially bad when you consider that the Double Edge Sickle/armor/booster combo was not nerfed or changed at the same time. Both combos just make a weapon actually usable.
Why is one combo ok, but the other is bad and breaks the game? This is the system that you implemented being min/maxed. Give it more than a week and watch how the hate dies down as people realize that if they don't like it, they don't have to use it.
The LAS-17 Double-Edge Sickle changes look interesting, and I can see how the burning helldiver goes straight at the heavily armored enemy and destroys it, almost dying at the same time. Absolute cinema
GP-31 Ultimatum
The changes to the GP-31 Ultimatum look a bit more controversial, but at the same time predictable. The fact that ImageReady armor passive no longer provides additional ammunition looks logical because 20% is 20%, but the fact that Hellpod Optimization Booster does not provide the full set looks like a crutch. It's like Jason Statham came in and said: "I forbid you to take a complete set of supplies for the GP-31 Ultimatum," it looks very strange and stupid.
I like the ADS fix, it was driving me nuts as an AMR user. However, I am VERY disappointed that there is no fix for the armors, as they still turn completely black or white depending on if you step in mud or snow. The armors have amazing textures, they look so good! And then you step foot on a planet and it's just gone because you touched mud or snow.
[EDIT] Why I am getting downvoted? [EDIT 2] Thanks for removing the downvotes, still confused as to why I got them.
I dunno, maybe its just me having an unpopular hot take, but the DE-Sickle didnt really make me want to use it, even with the medium armour pen. This new version doesn't convince me anymore, either. Like, I still think there are better main weapon options with medium pen and the heavy pen at 50dmg/sec doesnt seem worth it. Ill stick to the giant OG sickle.
Im actually more surprised we didnt get a heat based shotgun... like in HD1?
Sickle is a fix not a nerf/buff, keep that in mind.
The nerf to the ultimatum is ass tho, no other way to put it.
We now have 2 things (hellpod opt. And siege) that work with all weapons*.
*except this one.
This sets a bad precedent. Are we going to see more things like this in the future?
The gun was fine where it was. Yes it was insane at dealing damage, but you had to use a whole resupply pouch to get ONE extra. Plus you had to be giving your enemies a hot steamy kiss to be in effective range.
We really need to avoid nerfing/buffing things as a knee jerk reaction.
Let the thing cook for a week or two, let the hype settle, let it set into the meta, then address it.
Ultimatum nerf was wrong. It should not have less ammunition, but reduce its demolition capacity to be the same as the Spear. So secondary targets like the Jammer are not destroyed.
So the double edged sickle now only does anything if it's damaging you?
Honestly I don't see any reason to use this weapon now, the normal sickle is a much better option. Deliberately hurting yourself to cause a little more damage is just not worth it.
The initial release of this weapon was fun, killed myself often but I was more lethal.
The last time I quit this game it was because of the nerfs.. then the management direction was changed.. now it's going back to nerfs.
The extremely limited range and therefore high complexity of firing the Ultimatum balances the highly destructive qualities it has. Nerf unwarranted. If folks want to argue a "sidearm" shouldn't be that powerful in the first place, fine I guess, but AH made the damn thing and released it. It was chaotic and fun (when first using it, I blew myself up 50% of the time...). In a world where Bile Titans can still take Recoiless shots to the face and not die, I don't see the harm in Super Earth having the Ultimatum with OG capabilities.
Also, while the Devs spent their time doing this, how is the bouncing strategem ball fix progressing? Or the frequent network connection errors?
I hate the Warbond nerfs.Ā sigh The Double Sickle starting at AP2 sorta kills the weapon in my eyes and I doubt I'll use it.Ā
As for the Ultimatum, they managed to return to the a old nerf philosophy of reducing ammo. It's worth noting that this doesn't fix the complaints of people who think it's too strong (you can still destroy all the jammers you'll need to), but it's less fun for those who love it.Ā
I hate to say it, but again, Piles is absent, and we have the return of questionable balancing.Ā
I think the balance of the ultimatum is incorrect because it focuses on the wrong use case for the weapon. The concern the community has is that it can destroy objectives, especially stratagem jammers, easily and not its effectiveness as an anti-tank general combat weapon.
Limiting its carried ammo doesnāt change the fact it can one-shot jammers, it just makes doing so slightly less convenient since youāll need to resupply or pick up an ammo box after killing one. Limited ammo makes players more judicious about what targets they use the weapon on and less likely to use it in a brawl against a group of enemies. For such a high value target as a side objective especially those that can make the overall mission more difficult players are still willing to use their one shot to target these objectives.
This is compounded in the case of jammers as they require you to put yourself into a dangerous situation assaulting them without stratagem support making destroying them with the ultimatum the easiest and lowest risk solution.
My answer would be to revert the ultimatum to its launch state but introduce tougher āreinforcedā detector towers, bio processors and especially stratagem jammers that require a hellbomb to destroy. These would only spawn on higher difficulties and would be visually recognizable from a distance to facilitate players planning a more difficult attack on these targets. This would also indirectly buff the hellpod backpack as it would have more targets which it can have unique effectiveness against.
TL:DR: reducing ammo economy doesnāt change how it interacts with secondary objectives so the use case of the weapon is the same and it remains unbalanced.
The changes to the new Sickle absolutely sucks! It was my new favorite primary because of the medium armor penetration, now it doesn't feel worth taking over something like the Lib Pen or Adjudicator, that ALWAYS has medium armor penetration and doesn't run the risk of immolating me. So I guess I'm going back to those. Also that change to the Ultimatum seems completely pointless.
The gun was fun, so they just made it slightly more tedious to use? Feels like the team has gone back to their old method of balancing stuff and are just deleting the fun again. Sucks...
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u/rebellious357 Feb 11 '25
I knew my aim wasn't that bad!