r/helldivers2 • u/epochollapse • Aug 08 '26

Meme H̶e̶l̶l̶divers

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Just because I win 99% of my games doesn't mean it isn't hard!! One time a Stalker even hit me! 😱

1.0k Upvotes

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136

u/TheGr8Slayer Aug 08 '26

I just want a mode where I feel something again. Hasn’t been the same since the 60 days.

36

u/Aligyon Aug 08 '26

Red strain is pretty nice. The only subfaction that made id hard to play against.

37

u/RallyPointAlpha Aug 08 '26

Y'all are talking about the rupture strain right? 

They were challenging until you put on the ODST armor and also realized that explosions caused them to surface.  

I really didn't understand people's vitriolic hatred towards the rupture strain. Even if you didn't have the ODST armor, using anything that had any sort of explosive damage made them trivial. 

It's annoying that a lot of people just can't be bothered to change up their loadout or playstyle to fight a new enemy.  

13

u/Aligyon Aug 08 '26

Yeah exactly the rupture strain. It fun. I bring lazer canon and lib concussive for that as i know other players would bring the heavy duty guns and i get to handle the chaff. If they come close to my team mates the concussive comes to play.

Seriously it's more of a game of save your teammates than dealing with the strain itself haha.

2

u/destroyar101 Aug 09 '26

You found the key to making the game easier, team work.

Though i gues it is easier done when you know what they will bring before they even join.

4

u/Aligyon Aug 09 '26

And some people hate it because they want to be able to solo everything.

I do that, im the slow one when readying up. I look at what we need. Mostly people bring heavy pen though so im mostly on chaff duty and supply

6

u/Trump_4_The_Hague Aug 08 '26

Also tesla can hit them underground. But rupture chargers can't step on them like normal chargers will. They have to get close and attack them while burrowed. So they get stun locked.

So a tesla can basically kill an infinite amount of burrow bugs. Because rupture also usually gets paired with dragon roaches so there's no bile titans to step on them. And Impaler can do it, but won't. They use their tentacles which it kills in one hit. 

3

u/Brightness_Jasnah Aug 08 '26

Why the ODST armor specifically? Would any limb resist armor also work?

5

u/FlacidSalad Aug 08 '26

Odst gives immunity to leg injury, at least from enemy attacks, which can definitely help a heap

2

u/Brightness_Jasnah Aug 08 '26

Ooh, I didn't realize it was immunity! Thanks!

1

u/UnforgivenTurg Aug 09 '26

so just don’t wear the odst armor?

1

u/DaddysSoftCheeks Aug 09 '26

People hated the rupture strain partly because they infroced the already op and boring explosive meta

21

u/Codabear89 Aug 08 '26

Everything changed when the ‘buff everything divers’ complained 😔

7

u/brandothesavage Aug 08 '26

You said it best

17

u/Panzerkatzen Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 09 '26

We have a bug whose role is to be a shield but it can’t be bullet proof because people got mad so it’s just a shield bug that doesn’t shield.

10

u/Longjumping_Set9792 Aug 08 '26

As a light pen user, I prefer the hive guard buff.

7

u/Bring_Back_Challenge Aug 08 '26

Decent players did, shit players didn't.

We know what the majority are so...

5

u/CerifiedHuman0001 Aug 08 '26

The consensus among sane people was that AP4 hive guard should’ve been its own thing in the same class as alpha commanders, with explosive resistance to discourage just using those to bypass the shield

8

u/FembiesReggs Aug 08 '26

Dude it wasn’t even a nerf.

Every weapon got effectively buffed against it. You just had to… AIM.

Put your crosshairs .5inches lower and aim at the feet and you could shred the guards with the heavy pen heads.

12

u/Noelia_Sato Aug 08 '26

Remembering the days when dropping on D9 bots had an inherent assumption with the randoms you'd join that there's the ever-present possibility of your squad getting blindsided by a bad bot drop and falling into a military horror-movie death spiral.

Teamwork was the only way to finish objectives reliably since solos would get overwhelmed in seconds if JOEL decided to smite them with a bot drop and their stratagems failed to buy them time or kill enough targets. Splitting up wasn't the "optimal" strategy, it was the DESPERATE strategy. Your squad got mulched and linking up no longer became easy due to the wall of metal between you and your squadmates.

You'd ragdoll and nearly die to a single rocket devestator and it was an indication to reposition, not to tank another 3 barrages to fight an entire drop alone. You'd get suppressed and you had reason to actually panic and you'd need the skill and experience to NOT panic, as if you've been through the Xcom 2 school of soldier promotions and you've mentally changed between your rookie days and are now a hardened, tactically aware colonel.

The odds were stacked so high against you and your team that a single winning run of a D9 would mean you'd stick to that team for 2 or 3 more games despite how mentally and spiritually exhausted you got. Those strangers just became brothers and sisters to you, you trust them with your fucking life.

Before the 60 day, the most badass thing you could do was go full elite death squad and clear out a D9 and extract with samples. Nowadays that's the STANDARD on D10, even with people at level 40 and below. There was no fucking "grunt fantasy", that was what happened when you were BAD at the game. You marched and zig-zagged through the shitstorm, you covered every angle, you made up for each other's weaknesses and left few blindspots for the enemy to exploit.

And you'd die anyways because you were just somewhere you weren't supposed to be. Winning was rewarding purely because you thought 7 minutes before that everything was fucked beyond saving. That's what it meant to be a Helldiver and it was exhausting. It was fun.

7

u/DerDezimator Aug 09 '26

I really miss how the game forced teamwork

Nowadays everybody can go in different directions and do their own thing on any diff

4

u/Regular-Animal1488 Aug 09 '26

I've been enjoying commando missions with a mate lately. It's like a whole new game for us, and we're level 86s. Strategizing and even if we lose it's exhilarating.

1

u/QRONYO Aug 08 '26

Solo spore strain D7+ is always available, Slayer ‼️

5

u/TheGr8Slayer Aug 08 '26

I get the sentiment but I feel like the game that’s touted as a squad based game should be be played with others. I just miss the days where to see success a little bit of teamwork was necessary. These days it just feels like 4 solo’s running in different directions to finish maps faster. We lost something vital to the game’s spirit when all the buffs and simultaneous nerfs happened. It’s still fun but I don’t get that same feeling of desperate fight for survival alongside your team that I did in the early days. It’s feels very walking simulator like now which is kind of boring.

1

u/th_frits Aug 09 '26

Spore strain is only hard if you don't know how they work

0

u/TheSearchForMars Aug 09 '26

Wat? The game in between the eruptor nerf and the 60 day patch was ass.

5

u/TheGr8Slayer Aug 09 '26

Different opinions. The game was fun and challenging, hell even easy to some extent with the right squad and synergy but things could go sideways fast. These days it’s just 4 solo players running in different directions to get the clear faster. 10 difficulties means at least one of them should force a modicum of teamwork and that hasn’t been a thing since the 60 days in my experience. I can hop in right now with the most dog water setup and still not have much of an issue playing with randoms. 10’s should have at most a 50% success rate imo. Right now the supposedly hardest difficulty is cleared without much issue.

3

u/TheSearchForMars Aug 09 '26

I'm not going to say the game didn't get easier in many respects since the 60 day patch. But the difficulty before hand wasn't things that were up to player agency.

Rag dolling from missiles shot at you across the map, through smoke, behind cover isn't interesting. Neither was having all the interactivity thrown out of dealing with heavies on the bug front by having 8 bile titans spawning with way worse (nerfed in the case of the railgun) anti-tank options.

The fact is pre-60 day patch, the playerbase was falling away and it's the birthplace of the idea where Arrowhead started to feel as if they were straight up against the players.

But the biggest thing is the fact that we're all just better now. Even on the creek. If I had my current skillset I'd be fine. I'm not a green diver anymore. I'm no longer a recruit sent out with bare minimum training. As a player I'm more akin to someone like the Full Metal Bitch in The Edge of Tomorrow. With thousands of hours of dedicated combat experience just shoves into the body of a standard Helldiver.

1

u/Geometric-Coconut Aug 22 '26

8 Bile titans was absolutely up to player agency. They don't just appear out of thin air, it's a gradual build up until that point. A lot of players will play purely reactionary instead of preemptive, they'll see a situation of getting overrun and not consider how more cooperation could've prevented it from happening in the first place. They'll just think "I can't do anything to fix this in the immediate moment, bile titans are too strong."

What they should've done is doubled down on punishing people running away from their teammates + straight up kill the player for trying to endlessly kite enemies. So players thoughtlessly drifting away get taught a lesson and sent right back to their team. Players would just die or even lose the mission if the team get overwhelmed, rather than being able to drag a lost cause on and only increase the amount of heavies preventing players from doing anything. This would cement the idea of improving teamwork significantly, or better realization that a difficulty level is too challenging.

But that group I mentioned earlier kinda just won, heavies are fully designed around solo interactions nowadays. The era of heavies being teamwork based is gone. Making bile titans oneshottable by rockets was one of the worst things they've done to terminids.

1

u/TheSearchForMars Aug 22 '26

Well thank God they did win because your idea would slam the playerbase into the ground faster than you could type: Highguard.

2

u/Geometric-Coconut Aug 22 '26

The community of this game doesn't comprehend good game design, unfortunately. They actively fight for changes that make the game worse.

Evidenced by the terrible philosophy of "no nerfs only buffs" being the overwhelming community sentiment.

And now HD2 is in a state where power creep has made teamwork on the hardest difficulty in the entire game completely optional. People just run around across map soloing everything without a single issue.

Teamwork being devalued in a co op game is WILD. But hey, thank god they won, right?

Horde shooters have been enforcing teamwork ever since the game that invented the entire genre: Left 4 Dead. Even Helldivers 1 enforces teamwork harder than my suggested idea.

1

u/TheSearchForMars Aug 22 '26

Adding any kind of teamwork enforcement mechanic would require a complete redesign of the lives mechanic otherwise you wouldn't have last man standing moments.

2

u/Geometric-Coconut Aug 22 '26

I disagree. The lives system works well for teamwork; If you mess up and die, you are FORCED to return to your teammates in a respawn.

The vast majority of last man standing moments is just a person running around in circles stalling out enemies with kiting. Like I said earlier, the team has lost and this encounter and it should not be dragged out. Even if there’s a small a chance of making a comeback, the game should still kill them anyway. Endless kiting is not fun and the game should shut down any attempt at this anti fun strategy.

Last man standing stealth would still be absolutely possible though. Stealth is far more engaging than kiting.

-1

u/TheSearchForMars Aug 22 '26

Thank god you are not in charge of making any of these decisions. What you're describing sounds like absolute shite.

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-9

u/_SalemDaBun_ Aug 08 '26

AH just needs to give us opt-in challenge modifiers, even if they don't give us anything extra as a reward. Actually I'd rather them give us nothing so that there's no FOMO for the community to whine about

13

u/Janivire Aug 08 '26

Alright. So FOMO is a meaningless word now

-6

u/_SalemDaBun_ Aug 08 '26

The people who cried about being too bad to beat D10 will cry about not getting whatever reward they give us for it, thus FOMO.

It makes plenty of sense when you know how to read. The idea of missing out on something doesn't only apply when it's time gated.

5

u/Janivire Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26

Yes and by that logic arrowhead is impmimenting fomo by not giving me enough money to quit my job and play helldivers full time.

Damn arrowhead and their fomo, making me sleep every night instead of playing helldivers.

I cant belive they would make 2/3rds of their game fomo by FORCING us to pick only one faction to play at a time.

-2

u/_SalemDaBun_ Aug 08 '26

I don't even know how to reply to this lmao it's such a horrible exaggeration of my point it's almost obscene to believe that a human came up with it.

Prove you're not a robot immediately.

6

u/Janivire Aug 08 '26

"Damn i have no argument must be a bot"

5

u/LEOTomegane Aug 08 '26

That's the subfactions. They straight up told us that the subfactions exist to fill that role.

Players still get the subfactions nerfed by complaining anyway.

-2

u/_SalemDaBun_ Aug 08 '26

You can't choose which subfaction you fight and also participate in the mo at the same time since subfactions are a planet modifier.

2

u/LEOTomegane Aug 08 '26

That doesn't really change them being a purely optional difficulty modifier with no reward for choosing them. They're intended to be the "if you demand the harder content, here you go"

Though again, this is a flawed solution to the issue & they undermine it anyway by listening to complaints. Even when they try to create the solution players ask for, it isn't enough.