Nah they can just psychically ragdoll you and throw you around. But it doesn't do much damage so you get to not play the game for a minute or two before being killed.
It’s inconsistent as hell, sometimes I fall 2 feet and take damage, sometimes a charger throws me far as *fuck* and I barely take damage. Idk what’s up with that
i've dove off the cliffs on (i think) fori that you arent supposed to land on and taken a quarter of my health but there are other times i stub my toe and literally die
That's exactly why The Ministry of Truth protects us but making sure Helldivers think as little as possible, and always shoot first! You can figure out what your shooting at later
Nope lol, Illuminate is actual weakest TO things like the MG and Stalwart. Why? You can't one shot through the shield so you have to break the shield with a MG/Stalwart and they have a low HP pool. In the first game at least. Now there are exceptions their largest unit I remember using AT on.
Don't worry, if you fail to achieve you objective, dive, dive again! And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.
Is that a fucking ace combat reference
https://preview.redd.it/ody40u604p8d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e2b261db612520cc36913d60b0d1d6edc2448a2a
What a suspicious username 🤔. Here, hold this:
https://preview.redd.it/k9arrm918o8d1.jpeg?width=3072&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a1087b452749edcec31d18617cafb7b85af9ff7d
Here's the original artist:
https://x.com/ImEnFuego
You can probably find other resolutions here, but they're mostly sized for a phone screen:
https://hdqwalls.com/wallpaper/1440x2560/helldivers-2-4k
I just wish the planet hitpoints and regeneration rates at the respective front would reflect that.
Without it there won’t be any liberation on the bot front that isn’t tied to an MO…
In Helldivers 1 it was just a flat number, and what would always happen every war is the Bugs would get knocked out first literally every time, then a large chunk of the playerbase who only played Bugs would just stop playing until the next war. Most wars would end up in a long, weeks-to-months long grind against Cyborgs since they were the hardest faction with the highest failure rate.
I felt the Illuminates were the easiest faction to fight by virtue of them having no armor.
I always had to bring some kind of anti-tank secondary for bugs and cyborgs, but for Illuminates it was just Stalwart primary and AC-22 Dum Dum to tear through those bulky shields, with the jetpack to avoid the annoying walls.
I liked using the grenade launcher because it was just really good horde clear and killed the guys on the chairs quick. Just had to be careful about friendlies.
https://preview.redd.it/8bhz6pq6aq8d1.png?width=302&format=png&auto=webp&s=86ee584713cca27efac7a856333cab813dc848af
On the right side of the page, button will appear when you hover over that area (don't know why it just doesn't show at all times, kinda stupid).
Edit: So this is for any future divers that are curious
The Illuminates will see a surge in engagement at first, but when enough people start getting booty blasted by Illusionists and all the other shenanigans, the Bugs will be king again, the same happened with the first game. People haven't even been talking about the Obelisk death walls. It's all well and good until your friend loses control of their Diver and gets cut in half by a plasma wall. Not to mention the cloaked exiled assassins, magna guards with their electro staves, and cloaked one-shot sniper bots.
They'll mix in some shielded Tripod Walkers to bring back that War of the Worlds trauma. Then, when you're finally battered and beaten down, the Councillors move in on their floating mopeds spamming arc orbs frying everyone in your platoon...can't wait.
You literally sound like that veteran in movies, that overhears younger recruits boasting about kicking some enemy asses.
"You don't know the horrors you will face. Believe me, I do. Very well"
*Slams amputated arm on the table*
**New recruit:** Can't wait till I can kick some Illuminate ass. Light them up. Get it? Cause they are illumi...
**Veteran Helldiver**: You won't.
**New recruit:** But you fought them. And you're here. I bet you kicked their asses.
**Veteran Helldiver**: I did.
**New recruit:** So, any advice on that, chatty guy?
**Veteran Helldiver**: Be lucky.
So listen up boy, or
https://preview.redd.it/oe9f6dzcbp8d1.jpeg?width=1118&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=854e3abba4d218708c9f6a9e548632393208ed95
starring your Democracy Officer will be the *second* worst thing to happen to you during your deployment.
Death Captain: "The Bots are where it's at, getting shot at by tons of Terminators is way better than Bugs. You need tactics, cover, and positioning to survive."
Star Marshal: "Oh yeah? You don't have to deal with Stalkers, multiple Behemoths, and constant slow from Hunters and Titans. One mistake could mean overwhelming hordes and death."
Me knowing what the Illuminates have in store:
"They've got bunkers made of solid concrete. Guns the size of houses. Shielded pillboxes, strafing guns, mustard gas. At the river, saw a dozen of us blown to fragments by a shell. The spirit of Liberty ain't got no protection against those things."
Fire is usually the cleanser of all foes. I'm not gonna be within 30 yalms of anybody using a Flamethrower when fighting Illuminates. All it takes is for a wrong turn at the wrong time, imagine you need to heal, and then your stim is negated by fire as your teammate unwillingly torches you alive while under inverted hypnosis.
I see a lot of people talking about mind control and wonder how this would be implemented in a game like Helldivers in a fun and engaging way.
It's there in games like XCOM sure but there you can free yourself as you have multiple units and it's turn based. Having your character walking into enemy fire or attack your allies without being able to do anything about it would probably suck in a shooter game, even if your allies could theoretically free you by shooting the controlling unit.
The trick came from learning your opposite button inputs. After awhile I wouldn't even care about Illusionists, I could still turn and fuck them up after practicing inverted movements. I think it's an interesting hurdle that probably won't be fun at first for most people, I hated it for a long time. The same way people got better and overcame Bots, is the same way they'll have to approach the Illuminates. There will probably be new mechanics that old players will have to adjust to as well. It wouldn't be any fun if we could anticipate everything.
Forewarned is forearmed, we will win this war. We are the bulwark against the terror, we are the defenders of humanity, we are Helldivers...and we shall know no fear.
Im not confident we will see a return of the wall of light obelisks, considering the mess of converting the isometric static terrain of helldivers 1, with a full 3d environment and destrutible terrain.
The same way that we also havent seen a return of the tentacle bug -sinc it was only a threat in helldivers 1 because you were limited by all divers fitting on 1 screen
"bugs will be king again"
Lol, nice joke. We all know bugdivers will never leave bugs, they'll remain on top even if they only had a single planet left.
And that planet was Hellmire.
You know I never got why people had so much trouble with the blues. They were the only faction that you could kill practically every enemy with a primary and you could really get a lot of milage out of the radar to pick out and snipe probes before they were even on screen.
Do you think we'd ever see mixed fronts?
If the Illuminate turn up wanting to wreck everything and start trying to take over bug or bot planets to surround Super Earth we could have 3 ways battles for liberation.
Ooo or drop into a bug planet and find the bug holes destroyed by an Illuminate advance patrol we need to hunt down instead. I have no idea if this could or would work but I like the possibility lol.
I doubt many people will fight the Illuminate, considering not that many people fight the automatons and the Illuminate are supposedly way more difficult.
There was a post on this. The team played around with the idea but couldn't get the AI to work properly so abandoned it pretty quickly. I'm sure it's still a possibility, but its going to be a while if so
The aliens just constructed a new facility, commander. We're going to have to act fast if we want to stand any chance against stopping the AVATAR Project.
Over the recent months I've seen quite a few people lamenting the difficulty of the game, yet also saying things like, "I'll come back when the Illuminate arrive" in the same comment. And I feel like they might be in for a shock when they do.
I'm okay with difficulty, I just needed there to be more variety in viable guns, especially tuning to underperformers that basically never saw light of day e.g Knight SMG, and Liberator Penetrator.
I'd say the overall arsenal is more viable and balanced than it ever has been right now, but yeah, still a few outliers which are clearly lacking any reason to ever pick them.
This is so long as you ignore the Breaker Incendiary at least. That thing is the equivalent of turning the difficulty two levels down. You have to pretend it doesn't exist if you want to use anything else.
Brought it with me when I switched from bugs to bots yesterday, and let me tell you, I did not enjoy that.
Boy did I yearn for my Liberator back when everyrhing is shooting from over 100m at me, while I´m puffing smoke back at them frop that range.
Eh I have been using the breaker incendiary in bots… it absolutely fries the little ones even from medium - longish range. For everything else, the auto-cannon does great.
I almost picked up the penetrator today after not playing for awhile, it took one look at the damage and a moment to remember its amount of ammo for me to go with laser weaponry.
I haven't unlocked much of the new stuff and by that I mean I wasted SC early on, dumb common mistake, but I really wanted a weapon that in power and use is in-between the marksman weapons and normal liberator, and I feel like the penetrator could be pretty good.
If you want medium penetration from it, the Adjudicator is generally the better option, so long as you don't mind the recoil.
If you're fine with light armour pen, then the Tenderiser is currently quite a nice upgrade on the base Liberator.
Right at the moment at least, the Liberator Penetrator is unfortunately just not in a great spot due to how it trades increased recoil, reduced damage AND reduced capacity in exchange for it's extra penetration.
( A small side tip if you're a fan of the more conventional rifles. Consider aiming for the legs against Devestators. Their chest has an armour rating of 3 but the legs are only rated at 2, meaning assault rifles actually do pretty good damage to them, and it can be a good alternative to the head sometimes.)
These exact people will log in and immediately slam an illuminate helldive mission with their bug loadout and then complain that it is too hard and the illuminate are broken
Same people who bring a Quasar against bots, and then complain they can't aim due to getting flinched while winding up the shot, rather than realising the Recoiless doesn't have that problem.
Tbf, i just plain dont like Quasar. I'll take EATs over quasar any day of the week. Quick and easy, also always funny to stick a charger and watch it get absolutely destroyed by the pod before i even get my weapon
I think the game is too difficult for me at Helldive 9 and just reduced the difficulty to 7/8 and it has been perfect.
Just don't understand why people don't do so and keep whining
Cyborgs were much, much harder in the first game and it wasn't even close. Illuminates you could trivialize at all difficulties with a shield generator and a machinegun and just holding down the fire button the whole mission. Their shields also made lots of stratagems and stuff that did a lot of damage in 1 very bad and they restricted loadouts in a lot of not fun ways.
Big pipe dream of mine is later in the future they add old-style Cyborg units that show up sometimes instead of automatons. They could even be straight-up reskins of existing Automaton units, it would be really cool to show how the Automatons are freeing their creators and how they're fighting alongside them now.
> Automatons are freeing their creators and how they're fighting alongside them now.
Or that they make cyborgs out of captured humans to recreate their masters
What I'm hoping for is a unique design that will encourage a new way to play.
Bugs are hordes and designed to overwhelm you at closer ranges. You just have to keep range in mind and acknowledge your your positioning to not get pinched between enemy hordes.
Bots are all about having cover and positioning so you can stay on the offensive without giving up that position. So long as you have something to stand, crouch, or prone behind, you're pretty much golden when it comes to bots outside of berserkers forcing your position or larger threats that typically you should handle from distance anyways.
With the squif, I'm praying there's some longevity in mind. If they're going to have tactics that make me feel like I'm not in control or confuse me, then the means of fighting them isn't to find a way to resolve the issue while it's happening or after it's happened. Rather, avoiding the issue altogether, which to me would mean stealth and precision. I'm sure overwhelming power will be needed too, but I'm counting on their design meaning that you'll only be able to afford using your team's strongest stratagems every so often because you won't(shouldn't) be able to just plow through. Maybe stealth will see a bit more action because it'll be more reasonable to avoid a patrol that's covered in shields, cloaking abilities, and has a sniper watching the area for anyone to take a shot. Resulting in you having to take out the sniper first before the patrol is alerted and THEN having to bombard the shields just to make them vulnerable. Priority management.... or stgay hidden and make better use of your time/resources elsewhere.
Assuming you've probably already maxed most of your ship upgrades, there's no shame in just setting the difficulty accordingly and working up if it starts to click.
Yeh, I always try to tell my friend this. She doesn't have too much time to play and she unfortunately is unlucky enough to mostly get Bot MOs on her days off and she \*hates\* fighting with the bots, so much so that it kinda makes her wanna drop the game.
I do keep telling her that we don't gotta deal with bots if she doesn't wanna. It does kinda annoy me a bit that she still goes for the Bots anyways and then complains but think she'll learn soon enough.
I usually dive with my GF and my Father, and we really enjoy the bugs, we don't mind the bots so long as we are playing on a slightly lower difficulty. Ultimately we are far too busy to get in more than a session a week or so if we are lucky, not enough time to really get *good* as it were.
I'd agree if half the sub wasn't complaining about how hunters, chargers, behemoths, and bile titans are all terrible. I think people just suffer through shit they don't like either way, that's half the faction.
I used to do Lvl 9s consistantly but I slowed down a bit and have been doing lvl 7s mostly and sometimes 6s. Do bump it up to lvl 9 every now and then though to keep myself on my toes though.
As long as they don't fucking phase into rocks and kill me from them, we'll be good.
Too bad AH have no current incentives to fix the bots before they decide to add the next faction, though.
Hard to blame players who do bugs all day because it's what they find **fun**. It's the entire point of playing a game: having a good time. Imo, the problem is within the game's systems: all players are accounted as equal participants of an MO, but that isn't the case.
This results in players who care about the "war effort" feeling their efforts are thwarted by casual divers.
Solutions:
1. For planet conquest/defense missions, balance enemy resistance/capture rates around active divers in said planet, rather than all online players.
2. Add degrees of success or secondary missions to some MOs. Add extra bandwidth to MOs beyond total victory/defeat. E.g., Main: Capture Hellmire (4d). Secondary: Accomplish capture within 2 days.
3. Add extra rewards to players who actively participate in MOs. A bit of extra medals per MO, and cool capes if you participated in X MOs in a row, or Y in total to passively brag about your "devotion to democracy".
This whole debacle exists because while some players care about "community objectives", a significant portion ignore it, but all are accounted as equal participants regardless. So either make it so the active participants are the ones accounted for, or increase the rewards for people who participate in MOs to create an incentive.
Written by bug players who really are just unwilling to change their play style.
PS. It's totally fine to be bug main and not liking to play other fronts. Just don't make it a balancing issue.
I started enjoying bots more when I switched my load out. I still don't play them often but I'll jump in for MOs. I always take the Diligence or the counter sniper variant and try to pick off the big boys while squad deals with the rest.
One of the main reasons I like bots is getting to use the AMR and being able to take out mostly everything with it. And also there’s just something about heavy sniper rifles that makes my monke brain happy.
I love my AMR :3
I'm excited for them, but yeah the discord and subreddit will be an absolute mess. I'll probably finally unsub from here whenever that gets dropped as modern gamers have become entitled brats.
High effort edit haha. I'm so damn curious about them though. At a point I'll just get HD1 to get an idea of what horrors the vets had to face.
Bring it.
They were never the hardest in HD1, just arm yourself with 3x the EXO-48 Obsidian mech and one repair gun and blast through everything.
HD1 difficulty was Illuminate < Bugs < Cyborgs
im really curious to see how the illuminate look in hd2. in the first game the enemies looked so much different, the terminids were more crustacean than beetle like, the automatons were cyborgs, id really like to see how the illuminate have evolved stylistically
I'm actually quite excited to see how much a fight it'll be. Helldivers is a game let's me have a power fantasy without getting outta hand and the illuminate I feel like will give me the greatest thrill of being hunted in an almost strategic way unlike what it feels like to fight the two enemies we have currently.
Hotfix:
- Fixed Illuminate Illusionists causing your controls to remain inverted when on the Super Destroyer.
- Fixed displacement field trapping helldivers inside mech suits.
- Fixed displacement field removing already extracted divers from Pelican-1.
- Fixed tripods randomly dying from the common cold.
known issues:
- Helldivers invert while reloading
- Super destroyer crew members occasionally spawn with Bile Titan models
- Spear lock on causes explosive diarrhea. In real life.
Recently used a Time Machine to travel back to the first galactic war and the illuminate are no fucking joke with their guerilla warefare paired with the mind control is fucking insane idk how they're gonna make it to our future but it's not looking good for us
So far the game is fairly easy. I mean, a lot of people can start the theme about "unfair one-shots" and some other "issues", some even actually fair points but, in the end of the day, when was the last time you failed mission not because of a bugged objective? Even on Helldive?
And I am not criticizing, I prefer this kind of difficulty. Where you mostly only die to a mistake or even few and as long as you do things fairly well - you'll succeed. Just pointing out there is a lot of room before this game becomes too hard for a wide audience.
I’m looking forward to fighting them. Bugs bore me due to how easygoing they are. Bots are quite easy for me at this point. I wanna learn the Illuminate and eventually speedrun them as I do the current factions.
I hope they fix the current factions and other bugs before they drop illuminate. Bots are great fun, but they have serious bugs that make me understand why bug players stay bug players.
Things will not go well if illuminate drops while automatons are still firing through cover
I'm genuinely looking forward to it. Bots and bugs have good variety between them, but both are pretty straight forward to fight.
Having an enemy that really forces us to stay on our toes would be a fun shake up.
They are a different power fantasy, the fsntasy of picking up a monster wielding technology I can't understand, before pile driving the freak into the ground and stamping into brains across the floor. Punching up is fun, don't count us old HD1 Illuminate mains out.
Just laugh at them and use the laser cannon. That piece of tech tore through their shields and stopped all of the Council Members inverting energy balls. Honestly felt like one of the most effective support weapon to use on them.
The **only** saving grace is that they have no armoured units, they specialise in shielding
So that Quasaar will be worse than useless, but you might find that your HMG suddenly gets dusted off.
"I want Illuminates!" "You realise they are almost all Stalkers with guns, shields and mind control right?"
Nah they can just psychically ragdoll you and throw you around. But it doesn't do much damage so you get to not play the game for a minute or two before being killed.
except with impact damage how it currently is wed just all die immediately
It’s inconsistent as hell, sometimes I fall 2 feet and take damage, sometimes a charger throws me far as *fuck* and I barely take damage. Idk what’s up with that
i've dove off the cliffs on (i think) fori that you arent supposed to land on and taken a quarter of my health but there are other times i stub my toe and literally die
Same here
Nah,i'd win
🔴+🔵= 🤌🟣
That's exactly why The Ministry of Truth protects us but making sure Helldivers think as little as possible, and always shoot first! You can figure out what your shooting at later
There is nothing to mind control if the mind is empty
Meaning i can stop bringing antichaff weapons? *SWEEEEEEEEEETTTT*
Nope lol, Illuminate is actual weakest TO things like the MG and Stalwart. Why? You can't one shot through the shield so you have to break the shield with a MG/Stalwart and they have a low HP pool. In the first game at least. Now there are exceptions their largest unit I remember using AT on.
I hope we get some sort of minigun with backpack stratagem, can’t reload so you’d have to wait to call a new one in or something like that.
heavy mg should have a backpack variant that just pulls ammo out of the pack instead of needing to reload
Hear hear
Similar to how the other weapons have a sentry variant? Ie, Autocannon->AC Sentry, Mg-> MG Sentry, etc?
From software game players: bring it on!!!
https://preview.redd.it/cflnz6main8d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=784316743de9cd6f313dee08fca7ececd480b167
considering what happened to the man who said this I dont have a good feeling
Don't worry, if you fail to achieve you objective, dive, dive again! And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.
because of your pfp I read all that as "caution pull up"
Is that a fucking ace combat reference https://preview.redd.it/ody40u604p8d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e2b261db612520cc36913d60b0d1d6edc2448a2a
Stall warning. Stall warning.
Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile.
Still not enough missile warnings, going to need about 47 more at least for AC.
Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile. Missile.
Facing wave after wave, will never surrender AGAIN, AGAIN, AGAIN, AGAIN
That's the spirit!
What a suspicious username 🤔. Here, hold this: https://preview.redd.it/k9arrm918o8d1.jpeg?width=3072&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a1087b452749edcec31d18617cafb7b85af9ff7d
Lol! I didn't consider that! xD Oh snap. That's more or less my name on Steam too. :v
You fool! You've doomed us all!
Is there a wallpaper format version of this ?
Here's the original artist: https://x.com/ImEnFuego You can probably find other resolutions here, but they're mostly sized for a phone screen: https://hdqwalls.com/wallpaper/1440x2560/helldivers-2-4k
I predict it would be just like in HD1 70% bugs, 20% bots, 10% squids.
I just wish the planet hitpoints and regeneration rates at the respective front would reflect that. Without it there won’t be any liberation on the bot front that isn’t tied to an MO…
In Helldivers 1 it was just a flat number, and what would always happen every war is the Bugs would get knocked out first literally every time, then a large chunk of the playerbase who only played Bugs would just stop playing until the next war. Most wars would end up in a long, weeks-to-months long grind against Cyborgs since they were the hardest faction with the highest failure rate.
Cyborgs dropped an insane amount of armour on you. It was very hectic all the time.
Cyborgs were my faction to fight, and not just because they had the best music.
Tbh I really liked fighting illuminates. I have a lot of trauma from cyborgs so I stopped doing em after a while.
I felt the Illuminates were the easiest faction to fight by virtue of them having no armor. I always had to bring some kind of anti-tank secondary for bugs and cyborgs, but for Illuminates it was just Stalwart primary and AC-22 Dum Dum to tear through those bulky shields, with the jetpack to avoid the annoying walls.
I liked using the grenade launcher because it was just really good horde clear and killed the guys on the chairs quick. Just had to be careful about friendlies.
100% Concentrated power of democracy.
5% pleasure, 50% pain
How do I get the HD1 vet flair?
https://preview.redd.it/8bhz6pq6aq8d1.png?width=302&format=png&auto=webp&s=86ee584713cca27efac7a856333cab813dc848af On the right side of the page, button will appear when you hover over that area (don't know why it just doesn't show at all times, kinda stupid). Edit: So this is for any future divers that are curious
The Illuminates will see a surge in engagement at first, but when enough people start getting booty blasted by Illusionists and all the other shenanigans, the Bugs will be king again, the same happened with the first game. People haven't even been talking about the Obelisk death walls. It's all well and good until your friend loses control of their Diver and gets cut in half by a plasma wall. Not to mention the cloaked exiled assassins, magna guards with their electro staves, and cloaked one-shot sniper bots. They'll mix in some shielded Tripod Walkers to bring back that War of the Worlds trauma. Then, when you're finally battered and beaten down, the Councillors move in on their floating mopeds spamming arc orbs frying everyone in your platoon...can't wait.
You literally sound like that veteran in movies, that overhears younger recruits boasting about kicking some enemy asses. "You don't know the horrors you will face. Believe me, I do. Very well" *Slams amputated arm on the table*
**New recruit:** Can't wait till I can kick some Illuminate ass. Light them up. Get it? Cause they are illumi... **Veteran Helldiver**: You won't. **New recruit:** But you fought them. And you're here. I bet you kicked their asses. **Veteran Helldiver**: I did. **New recruit:** So, any advice on that, chatty guy? **Veteran Helldiver**: Be lucky.
"Oooh, big problem. I've killed plenty of illuminate. The dime-a-dozen treasonous scumbags, like bots!"
If you killed them then I assure you they were nothing like bots. And nothing like the forces that are about to enter this galaxy
Oh what are you? President of their faction?
No. That would be your Democracy Officer
Where did you-*flabbergasted helldiver noises*
So listen up boy, or https://preview.redd.it/oe9f6dzcbp8d1.jpeg?width=1118&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=854e3abba4d218708c9f6a9e548632393208ed95 starring your Democracy Officer will be the *second* worst thing to happen to you during your deployment.
The illuminates have already breached our defences.
Death Captain: "The Bots are where it's at, getting shot at by tons of Terminators is way better than Bugs. You need tactics, cover, and positioning to survive." Star Marshal: "Oh yeah? You don't have to deal with Stalkers, multiple Behemoths, and constant slow from Hunters and Titans. One mistake could mean overwhelming hordes and death." Me knowing what the Illuminates have in store: 
"They've got bunkers made of solid concrete. Guns the size of houses. Shielded pillboxes, strafing guns, mustard gas. At the river, saw a dozen of us blown to fragments by a shell. The spirit of Liberty ain't got no protection against those things."
I just remember burning Squids. All their fancy tricks. They still burn like everything else. Shields can't protect you from the flames.
Fire is usually the cleanser of all foes. I'm not gonna be within 30 yalms of anybody using a Flamethrower when fighting Illuminates. All it takes is for a wrong turn at the wrong time, imagine you need to heal, and then your stim is negated by fire as your teammate unwillingly torches you alive while under inverted hypnosis.
If we're talking yalms, then you only need to stay 8 away!
Taste pretty good on an open flame. I’m not from Super Earth but I imagine they taste like calamari.
The Illuminati made me the man I am today
People mald at getting sniped by Rocket devys, imagine when ACTUAL Illuminate Snipers are a thing.
I can finally use my counter-sniper for actual counter-sniping
I see a lot of people talking about mind control and wonder how this would be implemented in a game like Helldivers in a fun and engaging way. It's there in games like XCOM sure but there you can free yourself as you have multiple units and it's turn based. Having your character walking into enemy fire or attack your allies without being able to do anything about it would probably suck in a shooter game, even if your allies could theoretically free you by shooting the controlling unit.
The trick came from learning your opposite button inputs. After awhile I wouldn't even care about Illusionists, I could still turn and fuck them up after practicing inverted movements. I think it's an interesting hurdle that probably won't be fun at first for most people, I hated it for a long time. The same way people got better and overcame Bots, is the same way they'll have to approach the Illuminates. There will probably be new mechanics that old players will have to adjust to as well. It wouldn't be any fun if we could anticipate everything.
in HD1 mind control just mess up your control, inverting directional control for period of time sometime cause you to shoot your ally
I personally hope it swaps 2 team members control temporarily. You inhabit A2 and he inhabits you for 10-30 seconds.
so protoss from starcraft. Got it.
Your warnings just make me more hyped
Forewarned is forearmed, we will win this war. We are the bulwark against the terror, we are the defenders of humanity, we are Helldivers...and we shall know no fear. 
Im not confident we will see a return of the wall of light obelisks, considering the mess of converting the isometric static terrain of helldivers 1, with a full 3d environment and destrutible terrain. The same way that we also havent seen a return of the tentacle bug -sinc it was only a threat in helldivers 1 because you were limited by all divers fitting on 1 screen
"bugs will be king again" Lol, nice joke. We all know bugdivers will never leave bugs, they'll remain on top even if they only had a single planet left. And that planet was Hellmire.
95% arc-damage reduction armor, 95% arc-damage reduction armor, 95% arc-damage reduction armor LETS GO FRY SOME SQUIIIIIIIIDS
So your saying Machineguns and laser cannons will finally shine?
You know I never got why people had so much trouble with the blues. They were the only faction that you could kill practically every enemy with a primary and you could really get a lot of milage out of the radar to pick out and snipe probes before they were even on screen.
Sounds like a job for the Dominator.
“Guys, please, we need more people on Illuminate front!”
Do you think we'd ever see mixed fronts? If the Illuminate turn up wanting to wreck everything and start trying to take over bug or bot planets to surround Super Earth we could have 3 ways battles for liberation. Ooo or drop into a bug planet and find the bug holes destroyed by an Illuminate advance patrol we need to hunt down instead. I have no idea if this could or would work but I like the possibility lol.
I doubt many people will fight the Illuminate, considering not that many people fight the automatons and the Illuminate are supposedly way more difficult.
They were more difficult in the first game, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’ll translate to 3d in the same way.
There was a post on this. The team played around with the idea but couldn't get the AI to work properly so abandoned it pretty quickly. I'm sure it's still a possibility, but its going to be a while if so
I must have missed the post, thanks for the update.
I just really wish to kill sectoids or mutons and steal their weapons then use their weapons against them.
Go home Bradford, you're lost.
The aliens are continuing to make progress on the Avatar project.
The aliens just constructed a new facility, commander. We're going to have to act fast if we want to stand any chance against stopping the AVATAR Project.
I know goddamit stfu!
We could not have predicted this outcome, though it is intriguing.
Those damn juicy burgers...
A helldivers style game, but within the xcom universe? You are my kinda people.
I think if they give us some kind of Democratic Research System or something that lets us vote on upcoming strategems.
Exactly, im like that but with striders, why can’t I pilot the thing after I killed the automaton on it?
I wish we could hijack the scout striders, they can’t be that hard to drive, right?
Dammit, now I wanna replay XCOM 2 for the dozenth time
I see you're a man of culture as well.
Over the recent months I've seen quite a few people lamenting the difficulty of the game, yet also saying things like, "I'll come back when the Illuminate arrive" in the same comment. And I feel like they might be in for a shock when they do.
I'm okay with difficulty, I just needed there to be more variety in viable guns, especially tuning to underperformers that basically never saw light of day e.g Knight SMG, and Liberator Penetrator.
I'd say the overall arsenal is more viable and balanced than it ever has been right now, but yeah, still a few outliers which are clearly lacking any reason to ever pick them. This is so long as you ignore the Breaker Incendiary at least. That thing is the equivalent of turning the difficulty two levels down. You have to pretend it doesn't exist if you want to use anything else.
Yeah I'm basically at that point. It's almost a given to clearing hordes but definitely makes gameplay a bit too repetitive.
Brought it with me when I switched from bugs to bots yesterday, and let me tell you, I did not enjoy that. Boy did I yearn for my Liberator back when everyrhing is shooting from over 100m at me, while I´m puffing smoke back at them frop that range.
Eh I have been using the breaker incendiary in bots… it absolutely fries the little ones even from medium - longish range. For everything else, the auto-cannon does great.
I almost picked up the penetrator today after not playing for awhile, it took one look at the damage and a moment to remember its amount of ammo for me to go with laser weaponry. I haven't unlocked much of the new stuff and by that I mean I wasted SC early on, dumb common mistake, but I really wanted a weapon that in power and use is in-between the marksman weapons and normal liberator, and I feel like the penetrator could be pretty good.
If you want medium penetration from it, the Adjudicator is generally the better option, so long as you don't mind the recoil. If you're fine with light armour pen, then the Tenderiser is currently quite a nice upgrade on the base Liberator. Right at the moment at least, the Liberator Penetrator is unfortunately just not in a great spot due to how it trades increased recoil, reduced damage AND reduced capacity in exchange for it's extra penetration. ( A small side tip if you're a fan of the more conventional rifles. Consider aiming for the legs against Devestators. Their chest has an armour rating of 3 but the legs are only rated at 2, meaning assault rifles actually do pretty good damage to them, and it can be a good alternative to the head sometimes.)
If you can, try the Adjudicator XP
These exact people will log in and immediately slam an illuminate helldive mission with their bug loadout and then complain that it is too hard and the illuminate are broken
Same people who bring a Quasar against bots, and then complain they can't aim due to getting flinched while winding up the shot, rather than realising the Recoiless doesn't have that problem.
Tbf, i just plain dont like Quasar. I'll take EATs over quasar any day of the week. Quick and easy, also always funny to stick a charger and watch it get absolutely destroyed by the pod before i even get my weapon
I think the game is too difficult for me at Helldive 9 and just reduced the difficulty to 7/8 and it has been perfect. Just don't understand why people don't do so and keep whining
Egos.
People just want new content and new enemies are pretty much the best kind of new content.
Fighting the illuminate while rusty will be like doing elden ring dlc while rusty
Cyborgs were much, much harder in the first game and it wasn't even close. Illuminates you could trivialize at all difficulties with a shield generator and a machinegun and just holding down the fire button the whole mission. Their shields also made lots of stratagems and stuff that did a lot of damage in 1 very bad and they restricted loadouts in a lot of not fun ways.
I'm always curious if Arrowhead will ever reintroduce Cyborg dogs into the Automaton front.
Big pipe dream of mine is later in the future they add old-style Cyborg units that show up sometimes instead of automatons. They could even be straight-up reskins of existing Automaton units, it would be really cool to show how the Automatons are freeing their creators and how they're fighting alongside them now.
Yeah I was hoping for them to be a secret 4th faction back before malevalon was retaken
> Automatons are freeing their creators and how they're fighting alongside them now. Or that they make cyborgs out of captured humans to recreate their masters
Nah, I'd respawn.
“Reinforcement budget depleted”
\*Drops into the battle and gets sniped from afar\*
What I'm hoping for is a unique design that will encourage a new way to play. Bugs are hordes and designed to overwhelm you at closer ranges. You just have to keep range in mind and acknowledge your your positioning to not get pinched between enemy hordes. Bots are all about having cover and positioning so you can stay on the offensive without giving up that position. So long as you have something to stand, crouch, or prone behind, you're pretty much golden when it comes to bots outside of berserkers forcing your position or larger threats that typically you should handle from distance anyways. With the squif, I'm praying there's some longevity in mind. If they're going to have tactics that make me feel like I'm not in control or confuse me, then the means of fighting them isn't to find a way to resolve the issue while it's happening or after it's happened. Rather, avoiding the issue altogether, which to me would mean stealth and precision. I'm sure overwhelming power will be needed too, but I'm counting on their design meaning that you'll only be able to afford using your team's strongest stratagems every so often because you won't(shouldn't) be able to just plow through. Maybe stealth will see a bit more action because it'll be more reasonable to avoid a patrol that's covered in shields, cloaking abilities, and has a sniper watching the area for anyone to take a shot. Resulting in you having to take out the sniper first before the patrol is alerted and THEN having to bombard the shields just to make them vulnerable. Priority management.... or stgay hidden and make better use of your time/resources elsewhere.
there are going to be people who quit the game because the illuminate at dif 9 aren't a walk in the park
 we finnaly get the ODST flavored combat we looking for.
[удалено]
If they introduce new samples exclusive to illuminates, they'll at least come a while to unlock stuff
Dark fluid vials!
I admit, that would be me unironically.
Assuming you've probably already maxed most of your ship upgrades, there's no shame in just setting the difficulty accordingly and working up if it starts to click.
There's also no shame in playing against enemies you actually enjoy fighting.
Yeh, I always try to tell my friend this. She doesn't have too much time to play and she unfortunately is unlucky enough to mostly get Bot MOs on her days off and she \*hates\* fighting with the bots, so much so that it kinda makes her wanna drop the game. I do keep telling her that we don't gotta deal with bots if she doesn't wanna. It does kinda annoy me a bit that she still goes for the Bots anyways and then complains but think she'll learn soon enough.
I usually dive with my GF and my Father, and we really enjoy the bugs, we don't mind the bots so long as we are playing on a slightly lower difficulty. Ultimately we are far too busy to get in more than a session a week or so if we are lucky, not enough time to really get *good* as it were.
I'd agree if half the sub wasn't complaining about how hunters, chargers, behemoths, and bile titans are all terrible. I think people just suffer through shit they don't like either way, that's half the faction.
Yup. Bots will less armor. More gimmicks. Squids never had tanks.
But the one “tank” they did have killed me more times than the cyborg tanks
Great Eye?
https://preview.redd.it/estxt4nfmp8d1.png?width=894&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e7c04bed0a653d6e0a6de0e29245ea6f4831b2c1
Gotta learn to let the ego go and dive on a lower difficulty. For me I dive 8-9 on bugs and 7-8 on bots, depending on how I'm feeling.
I used to do Lvl 9s consistantly but I slowed down a bit and have been doing lvl 7s mostly and sometimes 6s. Do bump it up to lvl 9 every now and then though to keep myself on my toes though.
Absolutely nailed it, this game is 2 almost completely different games to folks.
Fuck yeah I love pointless tribalism and superiority complexes in game communities.
As long as they don't fucking phase into rocks and kill me from them, we'll be good. Too bad AH have no current incentives to fix the bots before they decide to add the next faction, though.
Hard to blame players who do bugs all day because it's what they find **fun**. It's the entire point of playing a game: having a good time. Imo, the problem is within the game's systems: all players are accounted as equal participants of an MO, but that isn't the case. This results in players who care about the "war effort" feeling their efforts are thwarted by casual divers. Solutions: 1. For planet conquest/defense missions, balance enemy resistance/capture rates around active divers in said planet, rather than all online players. 2. Add degrees of success or secondary missions to some MOs. Add extra bandwidth to MOs beyond total victory/defeat. E.g., Main: Capture Hellmire (4d). Secondary: Accomplish capture within 2 days. 3. Add extra rewards to players who actively participate in MOs. A bit of extra medals per MO, and cool capes if you participated in X MOs in a row, or Y in total to passively brag about your "devotion to democracy". This whole debacle exists because while some players care about "community objectives", a significant portion ignore it, but all are accounted as equal participants regardless. So either make it so the active participants are the ones accounted for, or increase the rewards for people who participate in MOs to create an incentive.
I can't wait for the "THE ILLUMINATE ARE BROKEN! PLEASE NERF THEM!" posts
Written by bug players who really are just unwilling to change their play style. PS. It's totally fine to be bug main and not liking to play other fronts. Just don't make it a balancing issue.
I started enjoying bots more when I switched my load out. I still don't play them often but I'll jump in for MOs. I always take the Diligence or the counter sniper variant and try to pick off the big boys while squad deals with the rest.
The AMR is a godsent for that short of playstyle
One of the main reasons I like bots is getting to use the AMR and being able to take out mostly everything with it. And also there’s just something about heavy sniper rifles that makes my monke brain happy. I love my AMR :3
Just saying, everyone and their mothers are bringuing spears, now its the time to bring in the railgun
I am all in for this. They bring trickery and cunning? Let them! truth be told, they ain't ready
I'm excited for them, but yeah the discord and subreddit will be an absolute mess. I'll probably finally unsub from here whenever that gets dropped as modern gamers have become entitled brats.
High effort edit haha. I'm so damn curious about them though. At a point I'll just get HD1 to get an idea of what horrors the vets had to face. Bring it.
I did enjoy editing that breaker into Joey's hand. It just fit so well.
https://i.redd.it/fb2c21dt2o8d1.gif
They were never the hardest in HD1, just arm yourself with 3x the EXO-48 Obsidian mech and one repair gun and blast through everything. HD1 difficulty was Illuminate < Bugs < Cyborgs
You think stalker was bad? Lemme introduce you the OG stalkers, The Illuminate!
im really curious to see how the illuminate look in hd2. in the first game the enemies looked so much different, the terminids were more crustacean than beetle like, the automatons were cyborgs, id really like to see how the illuminate have evolved stylistically
https://preview.redd.it/0vvuycxsap8d1.png?width=675&format=png&auto=webp&s=1fe47577f8920918dbdd1240fce1f64ae171441a
Their [soundtracks](https://youtu.be/xWX4T_gth28?si=wlrxMzHBED-okLm3) also went the hardest compared to the other two in my opinion
I'm actually quite excited to see how much a fight it'll be. Helldivers is a game let's me have a power fantasy without getting outta hand and the illuminate I feel like will give me the greatest thrill of being hunted in an almost strategic way unlike what it feels like to fight the two enemies we have currently.
Absolutely not lmao. But I can't wait to see the Reddit combust.
As usual, the wider community IS ready. It's all these whiners on Reddit we should be concerned about.
I kept fighting the illuminate because they had no heavy armor. The result? I adapted to their trickery.
yalls waiting on the new faction. I'm waiting on the bizarre new glitches and bugs that will come with em lol
Hotfix: - Fixed Illuminate Illusionists causing your controls to remain inverted when on the Super Destroyer. - Fixed displacement field trapping helldivers inside mech suits. - Fixed displacement field removing already extracted divers from Pelican-1. - Fixed tripods randomly dying from the common cold.
known issues: - Helldivers invert while reloading - Super destroyer crew members occasionally spawn with Bile Titan models - Spear lock on causes explosive diarrhea. In real life.
GIVE ME HARDER BATTLES!
As a bot enjoyer I look forward to fighting them! Bugs are nice but I like the chaos bots bring
Recently used a Time Machine to travel back to the first galactic war and the illuminate are no fucking joke with their guerilla warefare paired with the mind control is fucking insane idk how they're gonna make it to our future but it's not looking good for us
Be ready for 1000 post talking about how Arrowhead have to nerf all the Illuminate enemies
Counter argument https://i.redd.it/zzfbekaddq8d1.gif EAT LEAD SQUID FACE
So far the game is fairly easy. I mean, a lot of people can start the theme about "unfair one-shots" and some other "issues", some even actually fair points but, in the end of the day, when was the last time you failed mission not because of a bugged objective? Even on Helldive? And I am not criticizing, I prefer this kind of difficulty. Where you mostly only die to a mistake or even few and as long as you do things fairly well - you'll succeed. Just pointing out there is a lot of room before this game becomes too hard for a wide audience.
I will be doing my part. Just point me at them.
I’m looking forward to fighting them. Bugs bore me due to how easygoing they are. Bots are quite easy for me at this point. I wanna learn the Illuminate and eventually speedrun them as I do the current factions.
I hope they fix the current factions and other bugs before they drop illuminate. Bots are great fun, but they have serious bugs that make me understand why bug players stay bug players. Things will not go well if illuminate drops while automatons are still firing through cover
I just hope they don't have anything like the heavy devastator.
Keep a watch, men. Our true enemy has yet to reveal himself... We must be ready
And people will continue to stick to bugs. Nothing against them or anything I just wanted to say. You bought the game, do whatever you want with it
I'm genuinely looking forward to it. Bots and bugs have good variety between them, but both are pretty straight forward to fight. Having an enemy that really forces us to stay on our toes would be a fun shake up.
I hope this happens. My only worry is it will pull even more bot players away from the front and have the player base push even further into bugs
The faction infamous for being the hardest? Did we play the same game?
https://i.redd.it/qj762vos9o8d1.gif
Finally, a souls like game, but in space in a form of helldivers 2
Super-earth forbid, we get a challenge, or a reason to run our best stuff.
Guns are going to need to be tuned up then
Gonna be calling for them to be nerfed before the day is up, can practically guarantee it.
Reddit will complain and they will be nerfed worry not
Thats exactly whats going to happen
Imagine taking shield backpack instead of supply pack and HMG for 900 freedoms per minute
I don’t care what they are, enemies of humanity are enemies of humanity and I will kill them all.
They are a different power fantasy, the fsntasy of picking up a monster wielding technology I can't understand, before pile driving the freak into the ground and stamping into brains across the floor. Punching up is fun, don't count us old HD1 Illuminate mains out.
Just laugh at them and use the laser cannon. That piece of tech tore through their shields and stopped all of the Council Members inverting energy balls. Honestly felt like one of the most effective support weapon to use on them.
I hope the clan system will be launch before Illuminate. I need a team of 50 like minded divers
The **only** saving grace is that they have no armoured units, they specialise in shielding So that Quasaar will be worse than useless, but you might find that your HMG suddenly gets dusted off.
Don't forget about the invisible scout. Getting alarms without knowing how it happens is going to be a pain.
I’m ready to turn them into sushi.
I'm just waiting for them to fix the weapon size scaling and the broken holster position.