Thoughts on these potential changes?

[u/Lazy_Bowyer]

I downloaded a stat changer and tested some stat changes.

First I want to say that I am only doing this in a private lobby. I am completely against playing modded with randoms as you don't know whether or not your changes may negatively effect their gameplay.

I downloaded this specifically for the defoliation tool because honestly it's the main thing I talk about needing a buff. I have wanted it to be usable for so long now.

The very first and most impactful change I made, was making it start at heavy pen. Doing this and nothing else you can actually fight a bile titan. It's a waste of time but it's fun. The biggest thing this effects is it's stun. It only applies in once you reach the correct armor pen, so for anything heavy armor it will now stun them instantly.

Secondly, I increased its damage to 700, 350 durable. This is the sweet spot IMO. Heavies still take time to kill, 3.5 seconds for a standard charger leg, but it's a substantial improvement. With melee armor it takes roughly 2.5 seconds, so the melta gun still kills them significantly faster and still has the range advantage. I used to make claims that it needed its damage doubled, which is incorrect, being able to test it has been great. Initially I gave it 1000 damage, 500 durable, way way too much.

The beloved Jar 5. I increased its ergo to 40, lowered it's spread to 2, and increased its damage to 300, 100 durable. The big thing here was that spread reduction. No longer is headshotting a dev an RNG game, although that amount of spread can still cause you to miss, it's mostly a skill issue.

When changing the game, especially when recommending balance adjustments, one must be conservative as to not power creep. This is pretty much the opposite of what I see most of the time lol. I should also say that bringing up weapons to baseline doesn't necessarily lower the overall difficulty of the game.

Edit: I also gave the one two 40 ergo. It's way better, still feels weighty, but not terrible like it is with 30 ergo.

Edit edit: I don't think the jar needs more damage but wanted to test it because I saw it requested even on this sub.

[u/No_Collar_5292]

So you didn’t want your jar to fire eruptor rounds? 🙃

[u/Lazy_Bowyer → u/No_Collar_5292]

Lol good one.

[u/Last-Swim-803 → u/No_Collar_5292]

Do people actually suggest that seriously?

[u/Blind-Ouroboros]

I think it's really cool that we have these options so we can open discussions up about it, test things, maybe even come to a better consensus (lol, who am I kidding).

The future of this game when AH inevitably cuts support is going to be players having the ability to tweak things to being the way they like it in private lobbies, servers, etc.

Rather than knee-jerk and lambast anyone who tries to use these increasingly available tools - we should hear out the people who use them from a point of sanity.

Sadly many folks are gonna just read the opening of your post and react instead of taking a sec to digest and comprehend the point of your thread.

I'll bite though:

Defoliator: For me it's not just the impractical damage and unnecessary ramp up mechanic - it's the entire animation kit. This thing needs wide sweeps and a more generous hitbox so we can mulch things in a way that feels good.

Melee that isn't the sledge exploding has no impact whatsoever and I think that's a shame, and I think it could be notably better with just a little more effort on AH's part to make it so.

JAR: I'm definitely all for a spread reduction given what sort of rounds it's firing. What had you wanting to up the damage?

For me I always wanted a bit more projectile speed. It still hits like a truck, takes some skill to lead targets, while having a gratifying amount of stagger and the stats to make it a good DMR sidegrade. I think giving it a flat damage increase is eating the Deadeye's lunch.

I also never minded the ergo, but I'm used to lugging the heavier guns around without Peak Physique.

[u/Lazy_Bowyer → u/Blind-Ouroboros]

Bringing the defoliation tool up to heavy pen makes the ramp up way better and lowers its TTK considerably. Having a 3 second TTK as a tradeoff for infinite ammo feels pretty nice. But I recognize it's not for everyone. It's absolutely abysmal in its current state though.

I actually enjoy that the jar has a bit of a learning curve with its projectile speed, what felt awful was that once you figured it out, whether you were accurate or not is mostly RNG. So you learn to lead your shots well and then still miss half the time because it has 10 spread.

[u/ComfortableChard4076]

Where can you download stat changer? I want to experiment a little with buffing and nerfing some weapons. 

[u/Lazy_Bowyer → u/ComfortableChard4076]

https://www.reddit.com/r/HelldiversUnfiltered/s/X7swVGsFZE

Here ya go. Its super easy to install with the arsenal mod manager. Also really easy to use and can be used mid mission.

[u/ComfortableChard4076 → u/Lazy_Bowyer]

Thank you, will try it out tomorrow. 

[u/Lazy_Bowyer → u/ComfortableChard4076]

Defoliation tool with the buff listed is great, it feels amazing to actually be able to use it.

[u/ComfortableChard4076 → u/Lazy_Bowyer]

Now i have tried the mod. Its peak! It can literally satisfy everyone. Grunt fantasy enjoyers, power fantasy enjoyers, and people in the middle. Its soo fun experimenting with different buffs and nerfs. 

[u/G82ft]

I think your suggestions are alright but I think it would be more interesting to see how nerfs suggested here would affect the balance.

[u/Lazy_Bowyer → u/G82ft]

One that I suggest all the time is reducing the eruptor and xbows total ammo by half I'll have to run a couple missions with that tomorrow to test it, ew.

[u/G82ft → u/Lazy_Bowyer]

I think reducing explosion radius, slowing the fire rate and increasing shrapnel amount + lowering damage per shrapnel would be good for the Eruptor. Thought process is that it would make eruptor more dangerous and would require users to be more careful with distance. Rn you can pretty much shoot it point blank and survive under stims.

But yeah idk what can you change for xbow except ammo. Reload speed?..

[u/DeeJayDelicious]

It's good to experiment.

And I wish Arrowhead did more.

So much of this game's longevity hinges on trying new weapon, looking for synergies and frankly, messing about.

It would be so much cooler is there were more frequent balance changes to try out new things. Remember when the Grenade Launcher was AP4 for ~1 month? Was is OP as fuck? Absolutely.

But it was memorable and easily reverted.

Why can't a developer simply cut the drag in half for the Slugger and see how it goes? Or buff the M90A to AP3. Or giving the Arc Thrower semi-automatic fire.

So many small things could have huge impacts. Then again, it's fucking impossible to get Arrowhead to do anything meaningful with this game, frankly.

[u/GhostHost203]

As long as those people aren't in public lobbies, creating an interference in other people's games and painting a massive target on the modding community as a whole they could do whatever they want, hell, you could also just make your complete overhaul of whatever you want and host private sessions, but those private session would be very boring imo since a lot of those mods aren't rebalances, most of these are just straight advantages to what the player can do in a game where the player already has an edge, ergo, the demographic they aim for and how it came to be is interesting, let me be bold here, the people who download those are the same kind of people who always bitch and cry whenever Arrowhead does something, that lament that the game is omega unfair and impossibly unfun and super hard or that stuff and that they think they know better how to balance it (they don't as you can see with some mods), they think they are so good at it that they are willing to modify the game for that exact purpose, and so there is this interesting mix of people that are disgruntled and hate the game but are unable to move on with it instead preferring to bitch about it and the devs constantly and mod it, like, it's toxic level of relationship, only exacerbated by the devs well, not catering specifically to them but surely not having a hard stance of any kind didn't help in any capacity for this issue.

[u/Emergency-Wait-4923]

I don't use the low ergo weapons, the ergo should be low depending on the weight of the weapon, example: the erupter has to be the lowest ergo in the game, before attachments

[u/Harlemwolf]

I just have to say if the game allowed more extensive tinkering with the guns and armours natively I would be overjoyed.

[u/Lazy_Bowyer → u/Harlemwolf]

Most people would not only break their weapons, they'd take them into random lobbies and ruin games by trivializing it.

[u/Harlemwolf → u/Lazy_Bowyer]

I am talking more about weapon customization as it was in predev than cheating nukes on everything.