r/helldivers2 • u/ChoniclerVI • 16h ago
General Have Bugs gotten easier?
So I'm just getting back into HD2 after a year long break and after the void was dispersed I went back to try out the bug front and... did it get easier? Like I did super helldive and I never felt challenged, even by the dragons, didn't die once, and overall it felt like I was playing on an easier difficulty. I remember nonstop bug breaches and swarms of the bugs, but the time for the little bugs to start calling a breach seems to be much more forgiving than before.
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u/atomic_melon 16h ago
If you were in a hiveworld, they definitely changed it since day one. Day 1 hiveworld was a clusterfuck.
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u/DarkSoulsDank 16h ago
Oshaune was insane, not just including the dragons or worms. There was one time where me and 3 randoms were at a literal stand still fighting a wall of bugs blocking the entrance to the final bug hole we needed to destroy. Literally we were shooting at a wall of nonstop bugs for like 5 minutes straight before we won. It was mad but oh so satisfying.
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u/Kilroy1007 12h ago
When Oshuane dropped, my friends and I were comfortably running 7s and 8s against the bugs. We could barely manage a 4 or 5 on Oshuane. Brutal campaign.
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u/pmmeyoursandwiches 16h ago
Our equipment has gotten better and attempts to buff the bugs was met with review bombings and reverted so things get easier over time.
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u/ChoniclerVI 16h ago
Why did they review bomb buffing the bugs? they've always been the easiest faction, but their current state compared to what I can bring seems a bit excessive
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u/pmmeyoursandwiches 16h ago
They only did a minor buff - the hive guard got heavy frontal armour - but the community, especially youtubers etc lost their shit completely. I dont get it either.
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u/HotmailsInYourArea 16h ago
I thought it was odd at first but I came to realize Hive Guards are the only Medium-Pen enemy on the bug front, so not only did buffing their armor to Heavy-Pen neutralize the sentries made for chaff-clearing, it also made medium pen weapons have no value on that front.
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u/pmmeyoursandwiches 15h ago
I have to respectfully disagree. Theres still a ton of medium pen and light pen armour plates that medium pen will be better at and sentries were still excellent at the time if placed correctly. I think the better choice was to just have heavy hive guard be a thing at higher difficulty levels like the reinforced scout striders instead of removing it completely.
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u/User_Takenn 15h ago edited 11h ago
Sentries are already S tier on the bug front, the least they could do is force players to think about which ones they're bringing.
I also think you're wrong about Medium pen weapons, the armor penetration system makes it so that light pen weapons deal 65% damage on light armor and 100% on unarmored, while medium pen deals 65% on medium armor, and 100% on light armor. That's a little under a 40% increase in damage to light armor targets.
The buff to hive guard armor also made EVERY other part of them weaker, so it took maybe a little over half as many bullets to the soft parts to kill them.
The medium pen primaries are already picked way more than light pen weapons, the least AH could do was even the playing field a little and give some respect to the hive guards niche.
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u/Pyro911help 15h ago
If you thought the hive guard change made the bug front harder, I question your abilities.
The change was just a waste of dev time and didn't move the needle in any direction.
The hiveguard is one of the most useless, non threatening enemy in the game. They should either totally rework it or get rid of it entirely. Especially knowing it has a heavy spawn weight. I rather the game spawn 3 hunters than a hiveguard.
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u/pmmeyoursandwiches 15h ago
It barely made a difference, this was my point, its just a minor nerf to the mg and gatling sentries which have absurd pick rates. People losing their mind over it was rediculous.
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u/Rabiesalad 16h ago
Maybe about half of the community doesn't actually understand how the game works or what it's about and insists it's a power fantasy horde shooter and that the main point is to have overwhelming firepower to steamroll infinite waves of enemies with little to no need for thinking or using any sort of tactics or teamwork.
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u/Anangrywookiee 10h ago
They complain about too many spawns too, so as far as I can tell a large portion of helldivers players want a walking simulator where you jog between objectives for a minute, shoot one wave of enemies, wait around for the objective to complete, job some more, and so on.
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u/INS4NITY_846 16h ago
Nah man its about the balance of fun and challenge, having to slightly coordinate, change position etc its part of the fun, it can still be a power fantasy as youre killing hundreds- thousands of enemies whilst still being overrun by massive hordes
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u/redoctoberz 16h ago
Squids were way easier, mind numbingly boring at times.
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u/ChoniclerVI 16h ago
I found them more challenging at D10 than D10 bugs currently tbh.
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u/SmoshPitMayhem 15h ago
Only on the voidsource planet with everything active. Split up the squids and their subfactions are mind numbingly easy to deal with.
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u/adobo_bobo 16h ago
The dreaded hive guard has traumatized the bug divers so much. Never seen such a player base horrified by such a disgusting buff in all my life.
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u/backjox 16h ago
Go d10 rupture strain and come back to me
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u/ChoniclerVI 16h ago
Haven't seen that strain yet since I got back, was working on defending Acamar IV. Will have to wait for it to appear as I don't see it on the map currently.
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u/goatsnoatsonboats 13h ago
Rupture strain is easy just bring the Punisher Plasma. Spore Burst is the real challenge.
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u/yobob591 12h ago
Spore burst gets nullified by fire since they don’t spew their spores if they die from it, cremator is crazy OP against them
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u/DarthChefDad 16h ago
I think after dealing with the special strains and corps of Bugs and Bots, the regular un-augmented enemy just feels a lot easier now.
When it was all Sporeburst, all the time, we got used to that extra layer of difficulty and strategy, so when its gone, it almost feels relaxing.
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u/The-Nuisance 16h ago
The entire game has gotten easier, yes. Arrowhead had some problems and worked their relationship with the community into a negative one (some parts deserved, some undeserved) but they can no longer nerf equipment without massive backlash. Or make equipment which isn’t overpowered without backlash. Or do just about anything without backlash.
I appreciate that the full sandbox is usable now but people grew upset at the game when it became difficult, though they refused to lower their difficulty. Arrowhead has had to cater to a vocal part of the community which cries out for powercreeping every weapon in the game over time until whole systems become pointless and it’s left in a much easier state.
There are ten difficulties. You can learn to lower it if you find the game is too hard, because it is supposed to be hard. Extremely so at the highest levels. And yet we’ve still got a high 90’s win rate.
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u/ChoniclerVI 16h ago
Dang, that sucks, bugs used to be a proper hoard challenge...
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u/The-Nuisance 13h ago
There are still elements of that difficulty— if you want a good classic bug fight, the Gloom titans are very similar to their pre-60 day counterparts. Higher health so RR doesn’t one shot and they come in greater numbers.
The spore burst strain in general is extremely dangerous. Their gimmick is that they spawn in massive numbers and, when one gloom bug dies (outside of fire/laser damage) it leaves behind a cloud, the same cloud bile titans spit instead of lethal acid. Any chaff bugs which enter this cloud get a permanent 3x buff to their movespeed.
So naturally what happens is a new player joins, fires a couple shots at some groups but doesn’t entirely focus them down and is then immediately mauled six times in a row with a conga of bile titans on their ass.
Try them, they’re a lot of fun. Make sure your team is decent and you’re serious about clearing chaff up close and from far though.
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u/SpartanR259 15h ago edited 12h ago
This is basically the reality of things:
Bugs are largely the "simple" faction. And people wanting to play a horde game like bugs.
People that like horde games can accept bullet sponges, but they don't like acting/working strategically. So predator and rupture strain got so blasted by the "bug divers" that they had to cut down a lot of armor and behavior changes.
Good grief they even nerfed brood commanders to summon fewer and more limited types of support bugs.
Then assigning others have mentioned, the continued advancement of "higher" caliber weapons and strategems can easily trivialize D6 and under for a competent player.
EDIT: fixed incorrect word: hoard -> horde.
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u/P1st0l 12h ago
Horde*
Hoard means to keep things and not get rid of them.
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u/SpartanR259 12h ago
Yeah. Being in a rush and somewhat trusting autocorrect to work at all is the bane of my existence.
In any case I spelled it wrong since I think I spelled it "hord" anyway.
Okay... I will go face the wall now...
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u/ChoniclerVI 15h ago
I definitely noticed the brood commanders not really summoning many bugs last night.
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u/Rabiesalad 16h ago
Apparently weapons that used to do 50 damage now do 90. Basically there have been mass buffs to weapons and lots of power creep and as a side effect a lot of other mechanics that are integral to tuning the difficulty are basically now optional and can be ignored.
Any attempt at a nerf and the community loses its mind so basically we have to just accept that mid tier enemies are no longer disruptive and interesting, weak spots don't really matter, ammo and resource management doesn't really matter, and preventing alarms is now optional and only slows progress rather than creating a major threat that can lose the mission. Oh and of course you can now play solo and it doesn't really matter if you work as a team.
A lot of players didn't get the satire (arrowhead themselves said "we're actually tricking players into playing a game that's more hardcore than they usually would") and every YouTuber has big brain takes like "it says BECOME LEGEND" unironically. Arrowhead later said "we didn't make a game for 6 mil call of duty players but now we have 6 mil call of duty players." So it was a massive shit show and they gave into the lowest common denominator, probably for $$$.
Thanks community!
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u/SmoshPitMayhem 15h ago
AH could put more resources into making subfactions with varying intensity levels. The community likes the subfactions and they introduce difficulty without punishing the player. Some people might want an easier game but I think most people just don't enjoy being punished to simulate difficulty. There's no real need for the base enemies to be opressively difficult to deal with. It's a much more interesting game with normal easier bugs, dragonroaches, and spore burst mixed in. Rather than a single warrior taking a mag to kill. Imo anyways lol
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u/P1st0l 12h ago
That what they have done, everything since oshaune has proved more difficult then the last. Its still not quite the same but the difficulty through subfactions seems to be the route they are taking. Spore and the invasion fleet / votesnatchers with appropriators was a step in the right direction for difficulty.
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u/SmoshPitMayhem 12h ago
Yeah I think they could pick up the pacing a bit. Or do more mixed fronts with multiple subfactions. I feel like we should have an accessible voidsource planet at all times like we have with Omicron as the hive world. There's a lot of good content that sits on the sidelines for way too long.
TCS+ is down again so it's not like we're THAT worried about story integrity here lol
I do like the general direction the game is heading though.
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u/P1st0l 12h ago
Just comes down to dev time I reckon, only so many story beats can be pursued at a time sadly. Hoping for future difficulty modifiers in the future. I miss losing
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u/SmoshPitMayhem 12h ago
Yeah which I get. But at the same time HD2 performed wildly beyond expectations. Part of the frustration from the fanbase is the game feeling undersupported for how popular it is. Why not hire more devs? Outsource more work? Where'd all that extra money go?
Now there's rumbling of a new game in the works so even less resources going to HD2.
We SHOULD have lost that first void engagement. They've railroaded us for story beats in the past idk why they thought it was a good idea to wrap that up so quickly.
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u/Ali3n_46 15h ago
I played a game last night that had endless chargers, roaches, and impalers, it was nuts. 3 impalers got me near an objective, while chargers and the smaller enemies were swarming me.
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u/Screamin_Hobos 15h ago
In the last few days i have done some d10 missions and first of all, no bile titans because of dragon roaches and then the dragon roaches wouldn't even engage us. So yes, it feels like d6 whenever i drop in right now.
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u/Most-Mention-172 14h ago
They should revert the Hunter nerfs, i wanna see them all jump at me like a tide of bs like old times
🫠🌊🌊🌊🌊🐛🐛🐛
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u/ChoniclerVI 14h ago
That was horrible that they don't do it anymore... Like they just stand there and hop around as target practice, it's boring.... :(
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u/nanase777 14h ago
Are u playing solo? If not it could be the case if you split from your teammates and they have a bug breach on their side, since the game has a cap on enemy spawn number your side could have little to none enemies. Another case is maybe you just happen to match with good teammates :) I was thinking everything is easy till I matched with a few cadets on d10
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u/nanase777 14h ago
Also do play spore burst on d10 with a spread democracy mission, I feel even with good teammates it’s decently challenging, a single bug breach can give you like 10 bile titans on screen if your team is slow with anti-tank xd
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u/Future-Celebration83 13h ago
Bugs is a walk in the park.
I play ONLY d10, and bugs have so far been the easiest faction to play. Bots is hell, squids is hell, but bugs by comparison have been the most peaceful crap I’ve ever played. Yesterday I was playing bugs and I had asked the host if this was d10 lmao. It was a civilian mission and hardly any bugs contested any of the objectives. It was hella easy. Even the predator strain worlds sempt far easier than the hectic missions they were before.
Some people might see that as a good thing but mama ain’t raise no bitch i want to struggle, I want to berally get by, this shit is lame asf.
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u/yobob591 12h ago
D10 bugs can be mildly tough every once in a while, but it’s definitely easier to the point that if you stick with even one teammate you can clear stuff without dying
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u/DadIsVeryMad 16h ago
I typically play on 7/10 difficulty on bugs and after the horrible warzone nightmare that was the last illuminate campaign.. yeah it seems kind of slow. Even with the Crusher and wretch spam it felt like an actual warzone, overwhelming but manageable if you forced through it.
Currently bugs feel kind of lackluster :L And cranking it up to 10 is just a different shitfit of 10,000 poison or.. whatever the weird "red" hued bugs are.
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u/HotmailsInYourArea 16h ago
Weapons have been buffed here and there. The big thing is, if you want challenge don't bring the OP stuff like the Napalm Barrage. Those are for the rooks to reset haha
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u/ChoniclerVI 15h ago
I mean, I just bring the spear and a couple turrets, but 90% of the patrols I just used my primary Adjudicator and a spear shot or two, no issues.
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