Helldivers 2 update 1.000.100 brings inevitably unpopular balance changes

thesixthaxis.com:

With the server woes largely behind them, Arrowhead Games has been able to shift their focus and release the first big balance update for Helldivers 2. Update 1.000.100 dropped like it was hot yesterday, and was immediately met with dismay and despair at how Arrowhead has tweaked the Breaker / Railgun / Shield meta that had dominated the game since launch.

But, is it really all that bad?

Alongside the update, Arrowhead Head of Product Testing Patrik Lasota also gave an explanation for the changes and the overarching philosophy. While “nerfs” are never popular, the team has the difficult task of trying to make it so that there are multiple options for players across a spectrum of increasingly crazy difficulty levels, while still maintaining that over-the-top, explosive military power fantasy that helps make the game so fun.

So, the go-to weapons had to be tweaks. The Breaker’s magazine capacity has decreased and recoil increased, because it’s meant to be a crazy automatic shotgun that rampages through ammo, just like in the original. The Railgun now needs more precise shots at enemy weak spots and the use of the overpowered Unsafe Mode to be most effective, and there’s now an increased delay to the Shield Generator to recharge.

This will inevitably reduce the viability of this combo, but Arrowhead’s aim is always that you should be using Stratagems and trying to work in a team. Some players quickly pointed to team combos of a Recoilless Rifle to knock through heavy armour, before the Autocannon blasts that the revealed weakspots as a Railgun alternative, though this requires more coordination.

Personally, I still have plenty of fun with the game on Challenging and Hard difficulties, where the challenge isn’t quite so extreme and there were always more viable options than the peak meta. However, the reaction to this has been swift and negative with clickbait YouTube videos flooding out from players. No doubt Arrowhead will look at the underlying statistics to see how and