Helldivers 2 received a new update today, June 13, and it seems that Arrowhead Game Studios wants to change things up quite a bit. From balancing tweaks to recoil stance modifiers and general gameplay changes, there’s a lot to boil, so I’d leave you with the patch notes included below.
HELLDIVERS 2 PATCH 01.000.400 Notes
Freedoms Greetings Helldivers, I’m your host Release Captain Carlberg bringing you democracy’s latest and greatest from Super Earth’s superior minds. It’s a lot of information, so let’s dive in!
Overview
For this patch, some of the major areas of interest are:
- Visible Supply Lines & Attack Origins in the Galactic War
- Stratagem, weapon, planet, and enemy balancing updates
- Various crash fixes, stability improvements, and other updates
- Invite-only lobby creation
- The rightmost option in the Lobby settings. Currently only localized in English. Additional languages coming in the next patch.
Balancing
Goal with Stratagem Balance Changes
- Buff up some of the weaker stratagems to make them more viable and add more possibilities for variety in the loadouts.
- Make a few stratagems more consistent while keeping a similar or higher power level.
- Explore additional stratagems that might need buffs or changes to be more viable.
- Improve communication of goals with the changes (please see the linked blog post for more information).
A/MLS-4X Rocket Sentry
- Decreased spread
- Prioritize larger targets
- Increased target distance from 75 to 100m
- Decreased Rockets per salvo 2 to 1 (to get a better ammo economy)
- Increased explosion radius from 1m to 4m
- Decreased explosion armor penetration (Explosion can no longer damage heavy armored enemies. The projectile still has enough AP to damage heavily armored targets.)
- Increased projectile damage from 200 to 300
A/MG-43 Machine Gun Sentry
- Reduced cooldown from 180 sec to 120 sec
A/MG-43 Machine Gun Sentry, A/G-16 Gatling Sentry, A/MLS-4X Rocket Sentry, A/AC-8 Autocannon Sentry, A/M-12 Mortar Sentry, A/M-23 EMS Mortar Sentry
- Increased durability from 0% to 80%
E/MG-101 HMG Emplacement
- Increased rotation speed by 100%
MD-6 Anti-Personnel Minefield
- Increased explosion damage from 250 to 350
MD-I4 Incendiary Mines
- Increased explosion damage from 150 to 210
Orbital Gatling
- Increased fire rate by 25%
- Increased rounds per salvo from 30 to 60
- Increased armor penetration (Can damage heavy armored enemies)
- Decreased cooldown from 80 sec to 70 sec
Orbital Precision Strike
- Decreased cooldown from 100 sec to 90 sec
- Decreased Spawn/Call-in time from 4 sec to 2 sec
Orbital Airburst Strike
- Decreased cooldown from 120 sec to 100 sec
Eagle 110MM Rocket Pods
- Improved targeting
- Increased projectile armor penetration (now does 100% damage to heavily armored enemies instead of 50%)
- Decreased projectile damage from 600 to 250 (to compensate for the improved targeting and the extra damage from the increased armor penetration.)
- Decreased explosion armor penetration (explosion can no longer damage heavily armored enemies)
Eagle Strafing Run
- Increased uses from 3 to 4
- Increased armor penetration, can now damage heavily armored enemies
GL-21 Grenade Launcher
- Increased explosion damage from 350 to 400
MG-206 Heavy Machine Gun
- Increased projectile damage from 100 to 150
- Increased projectile damage against durable body parts from 23% to 33%
- Decreased fire rate from 450/750/900 to 450/600/750
- Decreased reload time from 7 to 5.5 sec
- Increased stagger strength
MG-43 Machine Gun
- Decreased reload time from 4 to 3.5 seconds
- Increased max amount of Magazines from 3 to 4
MG-43 Machine Gun, A/MG-43 Machine Gun Sentry, A/G-16 Gatling Sentry and EXO-45 Patriot Exosuits Gatling
- Increased projectile damage from 80 to 90
- Increased projectile damage against durable body parts from 7.5% to 25%
AR-23 Liberator, M-105 Stalwart, and AX/AR-23 “Guard dog”
- Increased projectile damage against durable body parts from 10% to 23%
AR-23C Liberator Concussive
- Increased projectile damage against durable body parts from 23% to 35%
BR-14 Adjudicator
- Increased magazine capacity from 25 to 30
- Increased projectile damage against durable body parts from 10% to 20%
AR-61 Tenderizer
- Increased projectile damage from 60 to 95
- Increased projectile damage against durable body parts from 10% to 17%
- Decreased ammo capacity from 35 to 30
- Decreased number of magazines from 10 to 8
- Increased stagger strength
PLAS-101 Purifier
- Increased projectile armor penetration to be the same as the explosion
- Decreased explosion damage falloff
CB-9 Explosive Crossbow
- Increased explosion armor penetration to be the same as the projectile
- Increased demolition strength (Can destroy Bug holes and Bot Fabricator buildings)
- Added medium penetration tag
R-36 Eruptor
- Increased total damage from 420 to 570 damage per shot
R-63 Diligence
- Increased projectile damage against durable body parts from 10% to 25%
Other Changes
Recoil Stance Modifiers
- Updated recoil stance modifiers to make them more consistent and reward being prone more.
- Almost all modifiers will improve the recoil; only two have been made worse (by 10%).
General Gameplay
- Removed operation modifier AA-Defenses: Reducing the stratagem slots by 1
- We want to look over the operation modifiers in the future. Right now, there are too few of them, which become repetitive, and the ones we have do not create variety or promote different playstyles. For now, we removed this one because it only encourages the players to bring the best stratagems and does not promote variety.
- Disabled the Retrieve Essential Personnel defend event mission for the time being
- This is to give the mission the proper attention and care that it deserves as it is now deemed not fun enough or performing as we want it to.
- Super Samples now spawn on difficulty 6. The reason for this change is that we feel that their existence only on difficulty 7+ forced some players to play the game on a harder difficulty than they wanted to comfortably play on. We do, however, still want a gating of them but a less punishing one.
- The SEAF Artillery stratagem is no longer blocked by stratagem jammers or Ion Storms and is available after the mission timer ends and the destroyer leaves close orbit.
- Enemies in melee range of the gates in the Evacuate High-Value Assets mission will now attack it more consistently.
- Added the ability to chat from in-game menus and mission loading screen.
- Updated some first-person crosshairs to improve readability.
Social
- Invite-Only lobbies are now supported
Armors
- New armor passive Peak Physique (+50% melee damage, +30% weapon ergonomics)
Planets & Hazards
Spike Plant
- The spike plant that appears on certain planets has been reworked.
- No longer causes bleed or stamina drain if hit by the plant explosion or spikes.
- Now “pops” three times, sending spikes everywhere, dealing increased damage.
Fire Tornados
- Fire tornados have had their behavior changed.
- They should no longer feel like they actively respond to player movement and should move more randomly.
- While a fire tornado storm takes place, enemy vision is reduced. Player vision is unaffected.
- Fire tornados being more random should result in more variance in situations players find themselves in. Tornados are significantly less likely to pile up and overlap on extraction points or objectives and will generally be a bit easier to deal with.
Tremors
- Tremors have had their spawning tweaked to be slightly more random.
- Tremors have had their epicenter size and effect range increased.
- These changes should result in more situations where enemies away from the player get stunned, as well as reducing how consistently the player has a tremor occur next to them.
Ion Storms
- Added additional VFX for Ion Storms.
Visibility
- A lot of planets have had their fog amounts tweaked to be a bit less harsh and dense, to provide less fatigue from constantly fighting on planets with bad visibility. We still intend there to be foggy planets with worse visibility, but the balance was a bit off.
- Desert planets such as Erata Prime, Chort Bay, Hellmire, and similar.
- Highlands planets such as Varylia 5, Matar Bay, Oshaune, and similar.
- Artificial light sources have had their intensity rebalanced and reduced across the board to fix situations of lights completely blinding the player.
Unexploded Hellbomb
- The unexploded malfunctioning hellbombs that can sometimes be found on planets will now explode immediately if hit with strong explosions or heavy weaponry. They will still have the same delay if hit by small arms fire or weaker attacks.
Vegetation
- Vegetation that’s large enough to slow the player now has an extra function.
- When inside the vegetation, Helldivers will be harder to detect, reducing their detection range by enemies. This effect stacks with other detection-reducing effects such
