Helldivers 2 Players Are Running Into a Frustrating Damage Bug

gamerant.com:

Helldivers 2 players have begun expressing their frustration over bugs affecting their game experience, with one particular damage issue taking center stage. Their discontent is growing more vocal as the persistent issue is undermining the effectiveness of new Helldivers 2 weapons and content added by updates.

With hundreds of thousands of players prosecuting the Helldivers 2 Galactic War on a daily basis, there's no denying that the game is a massive surprise success. However, that success comes with its own price, as the sheer number of players flocking to the game revealed a number of bugs and stability issues that developer Arrowhead Game Studios struggled to deal with in a timely manner. The issues were particularly pronounced in the first weeks following the game's launch, with many players unable to even connect to a match.

Though Helldivers 2 is arguably past its worst bugs and stability problems, a number of issues remain to bedevil dedicated players. Frustration with one persistent bug related to damage-over-time effects (such as from fire grenades or weapons like flamethrowers) reached a vocal pitch within the community, with players taking to the Helldivers 2 Reddit and Discord communities to complain. The bug is related to network syncing and can cause damage-over-time effects to simply not work when dealt by players who are not the hosts of a session. Simply put, fire damage can become effectively nonfunctional if a player has merely joined another Helldiver's game rather than hosting their own.

This bug is particularly vexing in light of the latest updates to the game. Recent weapon balance patches upgraded the damage dealt by fire weapons considerably. Flamethrowers got a massive damage boost, and new Helldivers 2 ship upgrades increase fire damage even further. Even the latest Helldivers 2 War Bond introduced the Thermite Grenade, a powerful weapon that burns through enemy armor using a strong damage-over-time effect. Unfortunately, the bug, when it