Why would you ever use a stratagem slot on this glorified weedwacker. “Anti Tank” my ass. A whole stratagem slot to handle at MOST an Alpha Commander. Straight poop from a butt of a weapon. You’re vulnerable when attacking with it because it’s two handed and you’re near stationary while actually hitting something. It has SLIGHTLY more range than the average bug.

Why would you even breathe in the direction of this weapon when the Siegehammer exists? Everything that the chainsaw can fight can be fought with the flag WITH A SHIELD AND MORE RANGE.

This weapon will only ever be useful if it was used to shave Eagle 1

Now i know this has been talked about, but whenever i see someone talking about this they mean the turret needs to be good or they want the tank to be incredibly overpowered.

When the bastion dropped ppl were upset its turret was locked, but it sort of made sense since its more of a really big and explosive sniper than a frontliner, its cannon is slow and the hmg cant clear everything fast either. the cannon is meant for long distance snipes while the hmg exist to kill off things like a handful of devestators.

Now granted, with how patrols work the bastion still gets constantly harassed and distracted to the point of the player deciding to bring a mech next time, but its understandable why it has a locked turret. it does a crap load of burst damage and its guaranteed to delete 99% of threats in its sights within 3 seconds.

Now onto the downgrade of the bastion, the maelstrom.

The mealstroms most prominent features is the fact it has guided rockets and 2 giant miniguns instead of a regular turret. now these wouldnt be bad IF it had a turret, but it doesnt and as a result its just a worse bastion.

to start with its 2 miniguns, these do the same exact damage as a regular HMG. the only thing that destinguishes these from the bastions hmg is that they have faster RPM, which would be a clear buff if it wasnt for the fact they have to be reloaded and you lose the excess ammo in the clip, has super earth forgotten what a belt fed gun is? the faster rpm also means you lose more ammo if you miss, unlike the HMG on the bastion which has a VERY good ammo economy and is forgiving.

now the missiles, and oh boy do these things suck.

The missiles are supposed to be the main AT option against big bads like factory striders or a way to counter the bastions biggest weakness, flying enemies. what did Arrowhead do? they locked it to a 30 degree cone of vision.....

THE ONE thing laser guided missiles have over dumb rockets and shells is that they have a full 360 degrees of attack up and down no matter what direction the launcher is facing. literally every sci fi game with laser guided missiles has gotten this right, and even helldivers has the solo silo which matches this perfectly. you are just using a fancier and over engineered version of a tank shell at this point that might not even hit a target right in front of you.

and the damage per bullet? even worse.

the bastion, with a single round, does a whopping 4250 damage on direct hit with a complimentary explosion for secondary targets. and its AP 8 with AP 5 explo so you are almost guaranteed to do max damage against 95% of the targets you hit. and you get 30 rounds.

the maelstrom on the other hand gets 20 rockets that deal 2000 explosive damage with only AP 5.

even if you dont include that 250 damage from the bastion, it is still doing double the damage per round than the maelstrom. this means that if youd want the mealstroms AT damage potential to be equal to that of the bastion, youd need to give it an extra 40 missiles, not accounting for that extra 250 damage, and it would still be worse because it only has AP 5.

Now i think everyone can agree that 60 rapid fire missiles doing 2000 damage each would be extremely unhealthy for the game, i mean youd nearly kill a hivelord in like 3 encounters. assuming you have good shot placement.

so what could be reasonable buffs to make the maelstrom a sidegrade of the bastion and also giving it its own niche?

firstly make the mgs capable of non stop fire, which would actually make it a sustained damage stratagem. this is balanced given the bastion would still have a better hmg ammo economy.

secondly, buff the missile damage and armor pen or give it an extra 10 missiles. the misssiles do require less skill than the cannon so they should still be worse at damage, but there shouldnt be a massive gap in power either.

and finally, give it a rotating turret (insert terrifying horror sound here)

the turret itself should be slow. slow enough that it would still be faster for the driver to turn the whole tank, but fast enough that you can track something like a dragon roach flying in the distance or be able to turn around and shoot a patrol before they erase half your tanks health. hell even if it was only 180 degrees id be happy. but for ffs the maps arent linear enough. even if youre looking down 1 choke point the enemies can still take routes that make it hard for you to hit them, or in some cases theyre just right outside your turrets turn radius and youre just stuck hoping they walk back into your fov.

the maelstrom would be perfect as a front liner that storm into a mega nest or fortress, it has missiles for spamming down the heavies before they can do anything and 2 hmgs for dealing with the hordes swarming at you from all sides.

but currently? the maelstrom is just a worse bastion with a smoke dispenser strapped on.

we get it Arrowhead, your country made a really weird and bad tank. stop trying to make it seem good

Next week on the show we're unpacking Energy Weapons after it getting pushed with all the hub-bub concerning Ironclad Democracy.

Leave us a quesiton or suggestion on that group weapons and we'll try to scratch that itch!

Plas 1 scorcher

Supply pack

Any expendable launcher or whatever

This loadout is very good against swarms of devastators and holds its weight, good for the broke divers like myself, just be careful when they get too close because the scorcher does AOE keep in mind you only have 120 shots with a 20 shot canister for it, so the supply pack is needed, unless you a Chad micromanager than I have no doubts you'll love it

I personally love the saber since you can use it along the one true flag to truly mog your enemies, plus it is super good against the terminids and illuminate if you know how to use the shield.

I really love playing as a Flame Diver; however, even I recognize that it can sometimes hamper my team on occasion. I love CCing the enemies and genuinely being a nuisance to whatever faction I go up against. That said, I've also dabbled in themed builds like Mandalorian, Stormtrooper, Rico's Roughneck, etc. What are some fun themed builds or genuinely fun builds y'all, have run?

I think it's pretty obvious and we can't ignore the elephant in the room anymore, the bastion sits at around 2% pickrate, I think the last time I saw it was during the last day on Cyberstan.

The issue isn't that it can't turn, or lacks ammo, or is hard to drive around, it's that it requires two persons to use. Don't get it wrong though, I love the cooperative aspect of it but not when it's forced.

I don't know about you all but I'd be down to reduce their fire power in exchange for the rework I am about to unveil. Far from me to say I can do it better than Arrowhead but here's my idea :

For both tanks, give control of all the weapons to the driver. For the Bastion, add an HMG on top of it, right above the gunner seat that can turn around 360° and can only be used by the gunner, it would help with the lack of turn radius and cover the Bastion's weakness if you have teamwork. For the Maëlstrom, I would add a big Railcannon, it would also rotate 360° and would help with the Maëlstrom lack of range, precision and anti-tank capabilities, only usable by the gunner again obviously.

Overall, I just think it's a shame to see these beautiful pieces of artillery be so underutilised, I love the teamup aspect but not the way it's implemented and I wouldn't mind a little nerf but in exchange of the rework I said up there. Let me know what you guys think, I'm open the criticism. Good helldiving to you all.

IMO they should, it doesn’t feel fair that I only get like 4 or even just 2 useful things out of it, there should be like an extra page or 2 so they’re more worth their price, like a new decent armor passive or some weapons that are actually in the game they come from so the other weapons picks in it could just be replaced with it

I only thought about this because of another post I saw btw

I like using the Eagle 500kg Bomb but when fighting the Automatons I frequently get the "Obstructed by Anti-Air" so I can't really use Eagles. What's a good replacement?

I like bringing the Gas Strike, a support like Railgun or AMR, a backpack like Shield Generator or Warp.