Helldivers 2 Receives Massive Rebalancing Patch

It looks like there may be plenty of reasons to dive back into the fight for Super Earth because Helldivers 2 just received what seems like its most significant balancing update thus far. Patch 1.001.100 gives buffs to a long list of weapons and stratagems, hopefully bringing them closer to the small arsenal most players have been using at higher difficulties. For instance, the Railgun, a cool but fairly ineffectual support weapon, got a massive damage increase, while the previously unused Thermite grenade got a 20x damage boost.

Another significant change is that beefy enemies like Bile Titans and Hulks have been reworked, now taking increased damage even if you aren’t using an anti-armor weapon. Before, armor-penetrating ordinance was basically a must-have because some foes were incredibly tough to kill without it, but this change means loadouts can be more flexible, with support weapons like the light machine guns now being more effective. Additionally, tons of enemies have had their behavior altered, like how Chargers will now rush you less frequently, and Impalers won’t be able to knock you into the stratosphere with their tentacles. Another update to alleviate headaches is that headshots now deal less damage to players, meaning it’s less likely to die from a random stray bot bullet.

While Helldivers 2 has been one of this year’s breakout successes, many players had soured on some of its post-launch balancing decisions because, especially at the highest difficulty levels, using anything besides meta weapons could make your life significantly harder. It felt like there was a lot of miscommunication between the game’s community and its developers because while the Arrowhead Game Studios understandably wanted to maintain a sense of difficulty, they frequently went about this by nerfing weapons and stratagems so severely that many of them became underwhelming.

However, early reactions to this patch seem quite positive, with many reporting that it’s brought a long list of weapons and strategies that were virtually ignored back into the fold, hopefully bringing much more variety to the experience while still maintaining the skull-crushing challenge. Helldiver 2’s lifecycle has been a wild ride thus far, but hopefully, this patch signals that future mishaps are going to be relegated to in-game disasters, like a buddy dropping an airstrike on your head, and not unfortunate circumstances outside your play sessions.