u/SaxPanther

>If you are already sore from the democratic path to 150, take a breath before you panic, this update comes with some genuinely great news for anyone who's already put in the hours.

>Let's be honest about what we're looking at here: Reaching level 150 already takes many, many hours of dedicated sessions… Several hundreds of missions across dozens of Galactic War campaigns. Reaching level 300 will take more than double that. This isn't a small bump; it's a genuine second act for anyone chasing the next rank.

> Level 300 is a marathon–not a sprint–designed to let you continue to demonstrate to your fellow Helldivers your skill and commitment to fighting for Super Earth.

>So if you've been running Super Helldive missions "for nothing" since hitting 150, surprise, you've actually been quietly stacking up levels 151, 152, 153, and beyond. You just haven't seen the number tick over yet.

>New veteran players (already at 150): Log in after the patch and watch your level jump based on banked XP. Keep playing normally in the meantime, every dive counts💪.

I'm tired boss. And it's cringe as fuck. How hard is it to write a fucking steam event or patch notes are we adults here?

Typhoon seems like one of the best vehicles in the game for RU, being one of the only 100 speed ground transports, low cost, enough HP to survive a single hit from most anti-tank weapons, and stealth bonus.

I'm torn about whether or not to use the autocannon. The autocannon is better for anti-helicopter (but not great for it), and better for infantry fire support (but not great for it), it gives it a smoke and more view range which is undoubtedly nice.

However, it is a pretty significant price increase for a vehicle that can only hold 1 squad (except Snaipery ofc) and it severely limits its role to quickly transport a bunch of recon/weapon specialists to specific locations and also limits its role for cheap flank screening because now you have more points sitting AFK in the forest.

Also, the Kord version is still a perfectly capable vehicle. I have used it quite well as QRF to defend my recon/weapon specialists, I have taken out helicopters with it, and now with the infantry resupplying having more cheaper ones on the field seems more valuable.

Anyone with more experience can offer their 2 cents?

In my opinion, the 2FK is the better tank, but they are both really good (with some drawbacks I will touch on later). WG really cooked with these, they are both super fun to play.

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Flair

The agent herself has some amazing traits. Preventing enemies from getting hit direction markers when you shoot them is amazing for flanking, usually getting you at least 1 more hit off but in general allow you to be much more effective on the flank. 10% extra damage while masked is great combined with her passive, but also each tank's abilities. Activating active camo or feign death both count as masked since it hides your nametag and health bar so they will activate this effect as well even if your energy is low, as well as any modules you have that activate on masked. The energy max is good due to synergy with her passive (no matter what your energy max, your passive always triggers at 70 energy, but your max energy does effect your starting energy so you can get your passive active from the jump), but the shell reload time improves your DPS and you generally want to build for the highest DPS on every tank. Lastly I prefer the -1 second switch time on the ultimate because it let's you abuse the power of this ability much more effectively.

Her ultimate itself is maybe the most fun ultimate the game so far. Like other ultimates, you can use it badly and get no value out of it- for example using it when you get low but getting destroyed before you have time to switch (this is part of why the faster switch time is so good). But when you get the hang of it, the possibilities are endless, and overall its pretty reliable to get at least some value out of. Both tanks have potentially long reload times, so typically the best use case is keeping both copies somewhat each other and keeping up a barrage of constant fire by swapping back and forth, attacking from slightly different angles and never having to wait out the long reload time and being able to heal up easily. But you can also use it to flank the enemy, and then switch back to the original copy when the enemies turn to face you. You can use it right before you would otherwise die to "nothing personnel kid" and teleport behind someone charging at you for the kill. She is also as far as I know the only agent that can refresh her ultimate while it is active, so you can use your ultimate right before you pick up an ultimate token in kill confirmed to essentially get a second ultimate you can use the moment your first one is destroyed.

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2KST:

The 2KST is great, and I think stock it's a little better than the 2FK. With that 2.7x ammo rack multiplier, you REALLY have to know where the ammo rack is on every tank, so I definitely recommend playing awhile with Hound before you try to jump into Flair. She has crazy burst damage if you can hit consistent crits, but if you can't the damage is quite pathetic and you have to deal with the longest reload speed in the game at 15 seconds. On top of that, you also have the weakest engine the game, combined with pretty mediocre turning and your handbrake is almost useless- overall its mobility is pretty bad. Although, with the module that gives 50% extra speed while masked, you have crazy high potential speed, but with such low engine power it's hard to actually take advantage of it most of the time. Overall, if you get good at managing your magazine and landing crits this tank will really shine.

The EMP field is an amazing ability. It gives you the same tactical indirect fighting similar to the Marder which makes this thing a menace fighting around the point with lots of objects around. 3 things to note: first, hitting anything other than an enemy or the ground fizzles the ability, so be careful to avoiding hitting walls. Second, enemies can easily take out the EMP device by running it over or shooting it- so you generally would rather not place it directly in front of them. Thirdly, getting a direct hit deals 1000 damage and applies the slow instantly, but only does one instance of AoE damage. So if you are trying to attack 3 tanks at once, you might want to put it on the ground where the pulse will hit all three, rather than hitting one of them directly. But in a 1v1, you can wipe out light tanks instantly by lobbing the grenade directly at them and combining it with a simultaneous ammo rack.

The stealth is not great, mainly because you are not really invisible, and even worse, you can still be seen in thermal vision. However, if you are in someone's peripheral vision there's a good chance they might not see you, so it can still be good for flanking or hiding in a corner, but not a frontal assault. But the main benefit of this is that while you are invisible, you are masked. This means you can get the 10% extra damage from Flare's trait, the 30% damage from the utility mod, and the 50% speed boost from the mobility mod, even if your passive is on cooldown or your energy is too low for it to trigger. Plus, it can't be removed by taking damage the way your passive can. So you can think of the stealth like "+40% damage bonus on your next shot".

In terms of modules:

• For the camo mod, either go for the smoke if you want to lean more into using the thermals, or the extra charges one if you want to lean more into using stealth primarily to buff your next shot. The smoke mode can really help conceal your getaway if the enemy doesn't have thermal vision, but if you're trying to hide out in the open without moving sometimes it can actually give away your position, and then when the enemy uses thermals to see in the smoke they see you. I personally use the stealth but it's down to personal preference.

• For the EMP trap, the legendary mod is good since all the damage from the pulses gets dealt quickly and it regenerates your energy, but this comes at the cost of providing less area denial. Personally I went for the mod that increases radius simply because it makes it easier and more reliable to hit with and improves its ability as an area denial tool. I'm not a fan of the mods that remove slowed since slowed is a really good effect already.

• For the firepower mod, the AP mod is unfortunately not very good. You lose the massive crit multipliers from the HEAT shell, but you also have lower velocity and base damage, so overall the damage is significantly lower. You hit ammo racks for about 800 instead of 1200. Plus, you only have 144m optimal range so you can't do long range sniping anymore. Yes, the faster fire rate and autoloader are both very convenient and have their benefits, but overall not worth the huge losses, especially considering it also lowers your max energy by a lot. I instead went with the blue mod that gives and extra shell and restores energy on crits as these are both great effects without any downsides. I actually haven't tried the canister shell yet but I would like to eventually, although I don't think it will be good overall I can see some crazy plays with it. And if you're on a budget for tech points honestly even the grey fire rate upgrade is great too.

• For mobility the only choice imo is the extra 50% movement speed while masked. Yes, it does make your bad engine power even worse, but being able to flank at 90 kph is amazing. And it gives a nice buff to your lacking turn speed as well. Unfortunately the engine power is so low that it's hard to get full benefit out of the high speed a lot of the times but when you can use it well it's worth it.

• For the first utility mod, the extra damage is the best. The energy cost is basically nothing when you have on-demand masking from your active camo and energy regen on every crit. But man, you can hit some crazy numbers, like 1500-1600 on your opening shot. The other options aren't bad but the damage is too good to pass up.

• Lastly for the second utility mod, imo you have to take the thermal on every tank that has it. Thermal is just too good for quickly spotting enemies and dealing with smoke. You can take exhaust smoke and the smoke camo and play a bit like the Leo 1 at close range bullying people who don't have thermals.

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2FK:

The 2FK kinda feels a little rough at first but it's quickly become one of my favorite tanks in the game, especially with upgrades. Having the autoreloading magazine also makes it a lot more forgiving than other magazine-based tanks since you are always reloading no matter what. There is also plenty of room for skill expression since you can curve the ATGMs and hit some frontal ammo racks that aren't really possible with the 2KST. Not to mention that it has much better armor penetration in general so you can just hit a lot of tanks in the front without aiming to precisely. Without the EMP zone, the 2FK is definitely more vulnerable to being rushed and you have less tactical capabilities in CQC. But the feign death ability is much more useful than the 2KST's stealth, and the ATGM's have more burst damage potential when you have both tanks fully upgraded. So those put it a bit ahead for me.

Feign death is an incredibly fun ability that is better than you might expect. The trick is knowing when to use it, and honestly sometimes it's out of your control. It's pretty much never going to work against certain tanks as well like the Bradley since they will just keep shooting you. What you want to do is make it convincingly seem like you died to a shot. If there's only 1 enemy, what you want to do is wait until they are about to fire a shot that will almost-but-not-quite kill you, and you try to time it so that your ability triggers right as it hits. If there are multiple enemies shooting at you, it is much easier- just try to make one of them think that the other one killed you. Try to time it with the cadence of attacks so that it's believable. Like if one person fired at you and then their teammate fires, it might seem weird if you blow up one second later since both players would have obviously been reloading, so sometimes you might want to wait a couple seconds. You might not get to make a lot of plays with it, but when you pull it off, it's so satisfying. The other easier way to use it is in advance instead of in someone's face. It's a great way to buy yourself some extra time to heal up or reload more ATGMs before an engagement if you know someone is heading your way. It's also a great way to safely capture or contest a point.

Electro-optical jammers is another one of those abilities that really depends on who you are facing. Regular single-shot cannons can get around the accuracy debuff effect by flicking onto you at the last second, so it probably won't save you from a M1E1 or something. But it makes you very difficult to hit with ATGMs, and the majority of autocannon shots will miss you- although when enemies get up close it won't really matter. It's particularly good against Fuzzer who exclusively uses ATGMs and autocannons, but unfortunately it's unreliable as a survival tool because you're gonna be relying on RNG. Just bear in mind what situations you can rely on it and which ones you can't. Also, keep in mind that the big lights on your tank that glow when this ability is active don't go away when you activate feign death and are a dead giveaway! So if you plan on using feign death don't use this ability right beforehand.

For modules:

• For feign death, honestly all the options are good, it just depends on how you want to use it. If you want to use it to try to trick people in their face or hide in plain sight, you probably want to use the wraith mod since it hides you from thermals as well (this is a huge reason why this ability is much better than the active camo stealth imo). The two other mods both complement different playstyles as well- if you just want to pop it quick for a damage buff when flanking, take the one that gives increased crit damage. If you want to lie in wait to ambush people, take the one that gives increased duration and lets you shoot without ending the ability (remember it triggers the 10% bonus from your agent passive as well). I personally use the wraith mod just because it makes the ability more reliable for hiding from enemies, but it comes down to playstyle preference.

• For electro optical jammers, the purple one is the best primarily because it just gives the most duration, and the warded is a nice little extra buff, but if you don't like the cost increase or if you don't have enough mod space you can just go with the grey duration bonus one instead.

• For the first firepower mod, you want the fire rate bonus. The ammo crit modifier only gives you like 3% more damage, so unless you really want to go all in one maximizing single shot damage, the fire rate one increases both your burst DPS and your sustained DPS by almost 7% which is generally better imo. I actually have not tried the twist shot mod, but just based on the UI numbers it seems pretty awful. Maybe it has something else going on that makes it good? Yes it can do a little bit more damage per shot and you can fire-and-forget which is nice for peeking but the 10 second reload time seems painful.

• For the second firepower mod, this is one of those game-changing legendary mods that feels like a huge upgrade when you get it. First off, the insane DPS increase. Remember that mathematically speaking, a 25.3% fire interval reduction actually works out to about a 34% increase in DPS. Combine that with the extra damage, and the extra fire rate from the first firepower mod, and in total you actually have an insane 50.5% DPS increase over the stock 2FK. Plus just as a bonus, you restore you full energy if you kill someone with a shot from masked state- which means that if you are low on energy, you can pop feign death right before you fire the killshot and instantly get your full energy back. Overall this is more than worth the tiny debuff to speed and max energy. In practice this makes you an incredible flanker. You can burst down a lot of tanks before they can even turn their turret to face you, especially combined with the agent traits I recommended that remove enemy directional indicators and give you even faster fire rate and extra damage while masked. The nice thing about this is that you don't have to worry about your HP as much- you can pull off a good flank with only 1 HP if you destroy the enemy before they can fire back. Since your fire rate is so fast, it also reduces your chance of getting attacked from behind yourself, since you can dump your missiles and leave faster.

• For the engine mod, this one is personal preference, but I personally prefer the blue mod since engine power gives you better acceleration and hill climbing speed which I find good for quickly escaping danger or flanking. But hull traverse is a useful stat as well so it's down to what you like.

• Lastly, for the recon mod, again I think if a tank has access to thermal vision you kinda have to take it. But especially since the 2FK can use phantom curtain, this makes it so much better. Not only can you see through enemy's defensive smoke, or obscuring abilities like Chopper's ultimate, you can also use it to hide your own position and reduce counterplay against you. Plus having 2 charges makes it great for repairing tracks and getting to safety. And hey, you can even easily spot enemy 2KST's in stealth. I actually have no idea what the "disruptive influence device" mentioned in the ability description is, I have never noticed the Patch Up effect going off and 10 HP per second is worthless anyway, but if anyone knows how it works please let me know.

Just had a game with 3/5 afk teammates. Let us remove certain modes from matchmaking preferences, nobody wants to play kill confirmed as a slow ass objective-focused vehicle.

Seriously what is the point of this thing, I can consistently get top score as every other tank in the game but this one I struggle to even get an average score. It just has every disadvantage with no clear role. It's also the hardest tank to play, the most punishing when you get caught in a bad position, it demands extremely high levels of map awareness and positioning skill to play decently well.

It's a heavy tank with some ramming bonuses, so it must be faster or more maneuverable than other heavy tanks, right? Nope, in some ways it's actually less maneuverable than other heavy tanks in fact. The ramming is completely pointless when you are so slow, you're almost never in a position to ram anyone- and doing so would usually just put you in a bad situation anyway.

Ah well, if it's so slow it must have great defenses, right? No, it has the worst defenses of any heavy tank. No ERA, and no defensive abilities. If you get caught out in the open, you're dead. What's worse, it has a massive frontal weakspot that's extremely easy to hit, and it's uniquely right in front of the turret ammo rack meaning that tanks with HEAT rounds can ammo rack you from the front. It's not the only tank that can be ammo racked from the front, but other ones that can be have a bunch of huge advantages to justify this. Yes, you can turn the turret to the side between shots to hide your weakspot, but this opens you up to taking side turret shots. There isn't really a perfect angle where you can have any degree of safety. And that's just assuming you're facing one enemy directly in front of you and then flanking doesn't exist.

Ah, well if it's slow and easy to kill, it must have some really strong weaponry, right? No, it has the worst gun in the game, actually. It has some of the worst moving accuracy in the game- good luck ammo racking the Abrams that you flanked. You're gonna have to stop and wait for your aim to focus for a second, and hope nobody comes up behind you or notices you during that time. And the stationary accuracy is nothing special. It's DPS and penetration aren't the worst but they also aren't impressive. It doesn't have access to any special ammo types. And it's also limited to fairly short range due to its high dropoff and mediocre velocity.

Well if it's slow, easy to kill, with a bad gun, it must have some really powerful abilities right? No, it has 2 abilities that are just worse versions of similar abilities on other tanks. It's minefield is just a worse version of the Marder's mines, being lower damage, and easier to avoid, which also cost more energy to deploy and doesn't have access to a module which restores energy on kill. And it's demolition charges are just a worse version of the AVLT's grenades- they are way harder to hit with, have a smaller area of effect, and deal less damage. They have an arcing trajectory which technically lets them sometimes strike over cover but in practice it's very rare that you are able to utilize this effect.

Well if it has bad mobility, bad survivability, bad weaponry, and bad abilities, it must just be one of those tanks that you have to unlock the higher tier modules for it to really shine, right? No, it does not have any game-changing modules- all of the offensive modules for abilities and firepower have fairly minor effects, and almost anything that gives a decent bonus comes with a very punishing drawback for some reason.

For example, a module that gives you 6% damage reduction when you take a critical hit also makes you take 6% more critical damage (???). It's highest tier firepower module gives -10% damage (???). There's a ramming module that gives you an insanely powerful 2% ramming damage resistance bonus when you ram someone. 2% less ramming damage, what a game changer!!!! Oh yeah and it also gives you a massive maneuverability nerf so good luck actually ramming anybody. It's only legendary module, for, allegedly, "toughness", gives you -10% health and further penalizes your already bad hull traverse and turret traverse speed, while giving extremely mediocre and situational defensive benefits that won't help you at all 90% of the time. Overall it's one of the few legendary modules that objectively makes your tank worse.

Compare that to for example the legendary Smart Mine module for the Marder- you get twice as mines, an amazing bonus, and they last longer too, because why not- the only drawback is 15% longer cooldown. wtf?? Strongest ability upgrade for the XM1V: your shitty grenades have 10% larger blast radius. I don't even know what to say to that.

Can someone please tell me what I'm missing? Why is this thing so garbage? How are you supposed to play it? You can't flank with it. You can't defend a position with it. You can't do a head-on assault with it. What's the gameplay role? What's the playstyle? It feels like I'm just playing a damage pinata. It's too slow to make a cool play with it. It's abilities aren't very lethal and are easy to play around. It doesn't have much alpha damage, or long range capabilities, but you also get easily outplayed at close range and medium range by every other tank. Maybe it's better if you stick with teammates, but its too slow to stick with teammates so you get caught out alone all the time and it's terrible when alone.

I've played with it up to level 30 and I just don't see it getting any better. It just needs something. If it's supposed to be a ramming tank, give it better speed and maneuverability than other heavy tanks, or some kind of slow resistance and track survivability buff. If it's supposed to be a crowd control tank, makes its abilities actually effective and reliable for crowd control. Pick something.

Like if you look at the patch notes it's loaded with many requests the community has been asking for:

• Buffs to sterilizer and gas in general with more buffs planned

• Buffs to melee in general but especially the stun baton and chainsaw

• Buff to spear ammo

• Buff to flame sentry and laser sentry

• Better weakspots for War Strider

• Reduced AoE on bile titan spew

• Reduced Rocket Devastator stagger

• Shield Devestator's shield can be destroyed now

• Fixes for Fleshmobs phasing through terrain

and lastly

• Huge buffs to exosuit tankiness

Keep in mind that against Terminids, exo-suits did not need to be tankier. In fact for anyone who plays solo D10 a lot like myself we know that exo-suit is like a temporary powerup basically a free mega nest kill stratagem because it's so strong vs Terminids, albeit a bit limited in duration since you can only call in 3. So they:

• increased the damage terminids do to counter the huge buff that would be unnecessary on the bug front

Makes perfect sense, exo-suits would have been way too easy-mode on terminids without these changes, but they did need some love when used against the other factions. And they also reworked Hive Gaurds by giving them heavier armor but in turn making them more vulnerable to weakspot attacks, fire, explosives, etc. which is a good change to make them a more interesting enemy. So very sensible changes to enemies to make the game more fun.

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But then when you look at the comments section on the patch notes/youtube video people are FURIOUS! They act as though the increase to terminid durable damage is some kind of spiteful retaliation by the developers to punish the players. Like the developers are bullies who are messing with the players in order to get a rise out of them. Rather than developers trying to keep the game fun an engaging while being responsive to community feedback. Instead of wanting the game to be balanced, they seem to only want buffs to everything for the players and nerfs to everything for the enemies (how is that not just a skill issue? if the game is too hard you can lower the difficulty lol)

It's very strange because in most other co-op game communities, I see people actually complain when the developers nerf enemies too much because it makes the game too easy and boring. Players enjoy being challenged. So why is it different in Helldivers, too much of a casual audience maybe? Everyone wants to be able to play D10 with no challenge so they can feel like they are just as good as the youtuber they watch?

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Not to mention some of the nonsensical or straight up false claims like

• "they buffed ALL enemies damage by 2x so the mechs aren't actually any tankier" (simply untrue)

• "this will make sentries way too squishy" (you are supposed to protect your sentries from damage not just let them get swarmed and hope for the best, this should have basically no effect on normal gameplay for a competent player)

• "why does the Hivegaurd get more armor than the Bastion" (this makes no sense, obviously enemy weapons and player weapons are not exactly balanced the same way, player vehicles don't have weakspots for enemies to aim at since enemies are AI controlled and it would have no gameplay benefit just add inconsistency).

And I'm just like who are the people making these comments? Do they not maybe think about what they are saying for 2 seconds before typing? Overall it's a great update but it seems like people just want something to complain about.