Over the past few days, the Twitter account of Helldivers 2 has been sharing initial details about a primarily buff-focused balance patch headed for the co-op PvE shooter, particularly in the face of players’ continued fury over Arrowhead Game Studios’ perceived desire to nerf the fun out of the game in the interest of balance. Today marks the day when those updates are live, with a long and far-reaching list of adjustments to practically all of its weapons, stratagems, enemies, and mechanics.
As one might anticipate, there are a lot of changes here, but some of the highlights include significantly increased effectiveness of anti-tank and armor penetrating weapons, a reversion of fire damage to pre-nerf values, the readjusted return of shrapnel damage to be more devastating to enemies yet kinder to friends, the end of recoil for laser weapons, and stratagem buffs like the 500kg Bomb having a significantly bigger blast radius and sentry turrets doing more stagger damage.
The patch applies some tweaks to enemies too, modifying their armor and health values as well as changing some of their attack behaviors like Chargers being less capable of turning while running down players and Rocket Devastators having a limited ammo supply. There are some buffs to certain factors here and there, but things generally fall to the nerf side. Arrowhead does note that this all may make the game easier but it will listen to player feedback.
Other additions of note include an emote wheel, a display on the galactic map of strategically important assets, specific planetary effects engaging only in certain situations instead of constantly, and a huge list of fixes. There is definitely a whole lot to take in, so prepare for a hefty patch notes reading session or let a couple of Arrowhead’s devs do it for you in the nearly 35-minute video below.
