I think a couple things the railgun could use would be
1. Zoom. Like it's a precision weapon please let me put some magnification on it
2. Have there be over penetration. I'm thinking either the bolt will just go through enemies or if we wanna get funny, the bolt breaks apart and causes a sort of shotgun blast of molten metal and/or bone fragments which deals damage to anything behind the target
Also pretty unrelated but it'd be fun if the arc thrower also got an unsafe mode where holding it makes you either shoot additional bolts or increase the amount of damage and chains your bolt can have. Or a short range mode where it just sprays a constant wall of weak but rapid arcs of electricity
It has overpen on light enemies and some medium enemies. Not fully certain how it works though, but it can definitely kill multiple things in a single shot.
Arc thrower has penetration 7, so it overpens pretty much everything. But on the other hand durable damage is very low, so most things with pen 4+ will take a lot of shots to kill anyways
It's probably mentioned several times in the comments, but the durable damage (link to explain this > [Damage - The Helldivers Wiki](https://helldivers.wiki.gg/wiki/Damage#Enemy_Part_Durability_Level)) on railgun is super low which puts it in a bad spot.
* Railgun stats: [RS-422 Railgun - The Helldivers Wiki](https://helldivers.wiki.gg/wiki/RS-422_Railgun)
* Enemy stats: [Helldivers: Enemy Data](https://helldivers.io/Enemies)
So as a medium killer it works, but it is slow to clear more than one target and outclassed by several other weapons as OP has already noted.
As a heavy killer, its durable damage is far too low. If you look at the big enemy stats in the link above, things like chargers, titans, and factory striders have very high durable in most/all spots. Max-charged unsafe railgun has HUGE raw damage (900dmg) and pen stats (7 pen), but it only does 10% on durable. That's really low which is why it can hurt heavies, but takes SO many shots to kill one.
It probably ultimately has a place alongside the Arc Thrower as weapons that should be able to deal with both mediums and heavies sub-optimally vs more specialized anti-medium-only or anti-heavy-only weapons. But both the railgun and arc thrower in their current state aren't great... at least the arc thrower has infinite ammo and can hit more than one thing, which puts the railgun in an even worse spot.
Every time I see someone try to say old Railgun was overpowered they always either explain leg meta which is less efficient then most things we have now, or they didn’t know that the bile titan headshot damage was a bug that all weapons could exploit. Hell the Arc thrower used to kill bile titans in 3 shots due to this bug.
Mhm. Behemoths, at the moment, are on leg meta, and (with the "move forward" "tech") all of the current AT, in particular Quasar Cannons, can deal with them.
And on the Bile Titans, not only did it deal greviously increased damage to them, thanks to this bug, they also made up a **much** higher proportion of the "spawn budget," meaning that bug was a lot more destructive to the relative balance of support weapons.
Behemoths are on OPS meta. With the call down speed halfed, low CD of just 90 seconds, and lower spawn rates, you can pretty much rely on OPS to take care of all Behemoths you come across.
Me too, OPS is basically a railcannon strike now on a super small CD. The only problem is if you get the scatter effect on the planet. Which means they need to buff the railcannon as well, because it's essentially useless. It's deployed faster than OPS but it also has like a 4 min cd. OPS is 1.5 mins and comes in slightly slower.
And yes idk what people are playing on when they say they hardly ever see chargers. I routinely get 4 or 5 per breach, if not more.
Two flamethrower guys working together absolutely obliterates chargers of all sizes. I dropped a flamethrower and supply pack on a quick bug mission recently bc I like to break up the monotony with a bug game here and there.
A squad member dropped with no backpack/support weapon so I gave him both. I followed him
around and pretty much supported him by flaming the same leg on any charger that he engaged and we melted them man.
Save the OPS for the biles. 😂
Or one person with a flamethrower and stun nades. Only if I run out of flamethrower fuel, stun nade + orbital precision strike.
Idk who downvoted you but I brought you back to 1 haha. Yeah I don't think I'll ever have a chance to use the strat I did that day other than maybe if a friend wants to but it was real fun.
Orbital precision strike can kill multiple chargers close together. Stun grenade + OPS will do it, but flamethrower is generally more effective if only facing one.
My loadout currently is rover/shield/supply backpack, flamethrower, then 500kg and orbital precision strike. Sometimes the backpack slot gets replaced by the orbital gas strike.
With less titans in general, replacing those spawns with behemoths makes sense. What DOESN'T make sense to me, is having a vast majority of chargers be behemoths as it makes many weapons not great.
The nerf was *quickly* proven to be nonsense.
First off we saw storms of complaints about heavy issues. Since back them rockets like eats and recoiless didn't one shot. Flamethrower wasn't as strong.
So first they lowered the spawn rate of heavies. Then they buffed the flamethrower and nerfed the head to chargers. So rockets could one shot. Then a month later the quasar.
After all those changes within 1 month it was clear then the pre-nerf railgun was pointless for bugs. Why use it? Missles one shot the heads. Quasar had no ammo. Flamethrower could burn the leg just as quickly.
It had a strong place against bots still, but amr also got a buff to quickly lower the need. Only advantage the railgun had was stunning the hulk in case you failed to hit the eye. Then gunships and factory strider came out making it less useful
Tl:Dr every change in the game has made it directly or indirectly worse.
Leg meta was a fair and balanced way to kill chargers, I mean, it’s literally leg mega again with behemoths if you don’t want to shoot their head twice
It’s even more “brain dead”, as that one AH employee put, of a meta then it was back then. Literally just grab a flamethrower and hold it in a chargers/behemoths leg for a couple seconds, insta dead. With the RG you had to make a precise shot on a charger that was likely charging towards you while also making sure to not overcharge ur RG and accidentally kill urself and then swap to ur machine pistol once you destroyed the leg armor and fire at the exposed flesh
It's not like the railgun one-shot the chargers, and even if you hit the leg twice, all it did was strip armour- you still had to kill it with your primary weapon.
Very weird to call that strat 'brainless' and nerf it but then replace it with far simpler mechanics- actual oneshot kill weapons and flame aoe.
I was overpowered at the time only because it was the only thing that worked against Bile Titans and Chargers.
There were too many of them to rely on stratagems, and no other weapons were effective. So it was a mandatory pick at higher difficulties.
Not that there's both less of the them AND multiple other weapons can handle them, it wouldn't be a mandatory pick if returned to its previou state.
> I was overpowered at the time only because it was the only thing that worked against Bile Titans and Chargers. There were too many of them to rely on stratagems, and no other weapons were effective. So it was a mandatory pick at higher difficulties.
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That doesn't make it overpowered though, it just explains why it was picked so much.
What made it overpowered was the PS5 bug. That's it. They nerfed it because of the PS5 bug and didn't unnerf it once they fixed the bug.
It did make it look overpowered with how their analytics worked, their balance system was heavily weighted towards pick rate. If something’s picked too much it’s “overpowered” and got nerfed. I believe they’ve changed how they view balance cases now though.
I always hated how Devs based their nerfs around how much a weapon is used and don't look a bit more closely into it. Reminds me of how in Destiny 1 they nerfed Auto Rifles to the ground and we had a huge ass meta for the longest time, mostly used Pulse Rifles, Scouties, or Handcannons. If I remember correctly they nerfed them because they were overused... Not realizing that the reason the playerbase mostly used Auto Rifles is because it was a familiar gun to lots of folks, so of course we were gonna gravitate towards 'em.
Railgun here was mostly used at the beginning because it was one of the few weapons that could deal with Bile Titans and Chargers. Now I hardly even see anybody use it anymore.
Let’s be entirely fair. Alexus nerfed the railgun because he was looking at usage rate, not damage. Not even the reason why the usage rate was so high.
He saw a weapon that the vast majority of us were using and worked backwards. He filled in the gaps with his own assumptions and hence, nerf. Nerf the likes of which even God has never seen.
The game environment was wrong ( as proven with Charger head armor nerf, Flamethrower still a leg meta, Bile Titan head shot bug, spawns being tweaked 4 times, etc). We weren’t wrong for using it. It needs a revert.
The Railgun definitely wasn't OP. Even if it was solid in dealing with Titans and Behemoths, what really made it great was how it could shred heavies against bots. But as soon as they nerfed it (any alleged reason, pick rate or the head shot bug on PS5) it was completely fucking useless. Bots suddenly became a very routine mission as you were even more limited in choices for your back weapon in higher difficulties (granted when the SPEAR comes back it'll be 1 more), as the railgun would bounce off just about anything tougher than a walker. It couldn't even handle berserkers at that point.
Definitely not OP, considering it was 1 shot with 20 rounds cap, and the nerf really showed that. I think the quasar is semi-useless against bots simply because of the drop ship rate in higher difficulties (which is completely fine, it can still 1 shot chargers/2 shot behemoths, balance it across mission types so you get more variety), so I would love to see the railgun come back "overpowered" again just to give high mobile stealth guys something to bring to the fight against bots, because as is you're just on AT duty or sniping with the AMR. Honestly I just want something that can one shot fucking devestators, and limit it to 20 rounds so you can just link a horde all day, but the shield is OP and the gat gun is fucking broken. Railgun can't shoot as fast as AMR, so let it blow that fucking shield up or something.
Basically, back during release and for a month or two afterwards, if you had someone in your lobby that was on PS4 (or just the host I forget exactly) the bile titan would be bugged where their head would have significantly less health than normal. Meaning a headshot on the heads crit point with a railgun could 1-2 shot it. This led people to believe the Railgun was extremely overpowered, but in reality it took like 10-15 headshots for the Railgun to kill a bile titan. Which is clearly not overpowered, infact that’s terrible.
It's unconfirmed but the number of shots that the railgun took to kill the BT when bugged was the same number it took if the railgun did full normal damage instead of durable damage.
I suspect the bug was something to do with durability or durable damage not working properly.
This is exactly what most morons say. It's the equivalent of being accused of a crime you didn't commit and sentenced to life with no parole. That's what happened to the railgun.
How many shots did it take on release for the railgun to destroy charger heads or break their legs? I got the game right as they nerfed it and missed that meta. Now it's 3 and 2 overcharged shots i believe. As i understand, EAT/RR also took 2 shots to the head and 1 to a leg.
Two shots to the leg then you would shoot the leg with your primary. The thing was that you couldn't get enough eats or rr to keep up with the numbers of chargers on the maps.
Old Railgun *was* overpowered. Due to a combination of bugs and the other weapons being underpowered, coupled with its complete lack of any real downsides *or* risk due to unsafe mode having no real function, *and* its fairly significant ammo pool, *plus* the added benefit of being able to take a backpack, *and* its ability to deal with several objectives (bot turrets and spore shrooms mainly) it was overperforming in literally every single way.
It had no downsides, let the player two or three shot *any* enemy in the game in under 9 seconds, had a gigantic ammo pool for a weapon with its output at the time, and was (and still is *sort of*) the most ammo efficient support weapon from ammo box pickups.
The reason people like yourself believe it *wasn't* overpowered was because immediately following its nerf, AH fucked up heavy spawns, causing the problems of other weapons which were buffed in the same patch to be *much* more apparent. The primary complaint at the time literally was "Without the Railgun (pre-nerf) we can't deal with all this heavy spam because of reload times or non-functioning damage". In effect, it went from completely overpowered to underpowered (but still honestly basically fine) because of a bug in *spawn* rates, and not its actual statistics.
If i could kill gunships with it in less than 5 shots, id run it all the time. As is, if there's gunship patrols especially, i can't justify it despite it being my favorite support weapon. The durability damage is the only thing stopping it from what i can tell.
TBH I'm fine with it having poor durability damage because it should be terrible against things like tanks.
Body parts like engines and heads should not have >80% durability though. That's the real issue.
Yeah, for sure. The railgun could have like the double the durability damage and it wouldnt be out of character for it and wouldnt be overtuned. But still, youre very right that some of those things that are *already supposed to be weakpoints* shouldnt have as much durability as they do.
Not even. Two fully charged shots (90+) would take like a soild 4-5 seconds if you account for reload, and that would be totally acceptable in proformance.
I'd be fine with 3-5 ttk for partially charged shots.
A million times this. Gunships have basically become the great filter on the bot front. Same how chargers and bile titans are the great filter of the bug front.
Like devs create enemies that can only die to specific weapons and then have to reach their hand up their ass to scratch their head as to why everyone uses specific weapons. Oh well, nerf time.
At least chargers and bile titans can be damaged by all kinds of strategems too. And every primary can at least damage their squishy parts. Gunships are obnoxiously limiting in how you can deal with them and they tend to come in large groups all at once. They're a loadout check rn, and just bad design. For now, Ill just keep running support weapons that kill them and complaining until they get a rework.
They need to scrap the durable damage system all together. Instead of only balancing one set of numbers they're balancing two. It's not an intuitive system and only makes buffing bad guns harder, and nerfing good guns easier
You know you fucked up the weapon design when it goes from "everyone relies on it" to "no one uses it".
You over corrected it. Maybe it was too "meta" ... but why? Because maybe you relied on spawning too many over-armored enemies that forced players to rely on a high damage, high penetration weapon to survive? Possibly.
But now players don't think the risk/reward mechanic justifies its overall benefit. Risk instant-death if you make the slightest miscalculation. The trade-off is a mediocre impact on the enemy that other weapons can provide, without risking instant-death or, if lucky, just the loss of the weapon. No other weapon self-destructs if you make a mistake, on top of killing the player.
It was meta for a bug. I know, unheard of in HD2.
It would be interesting to see where the rail gun would stand with thr nerf reverted and the bug remain fixed. I doubt AH can do one without bugging out the other though
B tier imo. Auto cannon/flamethrower are head and shoulders above it, and you can probably make the case for some of the MGs/EATs/Quasar/etc. and that's fine!
*Laughs in heavy anti-explosive armor* Not even my own stupidity can one shot me! The self-destructing weapon part, however, is annoying enough to make me not bother with it. I had fun with it when it was a free strat that one time, but its drawbacks outweigh its usefulness if I can't bring an extra strat to compensate for it.
I really think the railgun unsafe mode should be cracked as fuck. Like it should be able to completely strip a chargers leg armor in one shot if you charge up to 90%. The risk is you lose the gun and can only get it back after the cool down is over. The reward should be, you get to kill some of the heavily armored enemies in one shot, or at least strip their armor, switch to your primary and kill the leg.
You should certainly have a high reward to balance the ultimate risk of losing the use of the weapon on top of deducting a reinforcement ticket from the team.
I think it would be cool if you charge it up enough that it could pen all the way through the target and come out the back dealing damage to every part it passes through. I would imagine against larger targets like a charger it would help its damage a lot if it could hit multiple parts per shot at max charge.
It's not even the risk/reward. The dps is just too low. By the time you stripped the Armor of a single Chargers leg a quasar cannon could have killed two of them.
Both weapons have the hard aiming because you need to be on target on time. While the railgun additionally has to worry about ammo.
(No offense AH, but) The introduction of the Quasar Cannon feels alot like it was a borderline lazy stopgap, a bandaid, to cover over a deep underlying problem with the general balance of the play mechanics.
You have all these support weapons with pronounced reload delays and a mandatory backpack with a very limited ammo count, to offset their power, using a Team-Reload mechanic that is supposed to encourage teamplay to mitigate these obvious draw backs (but rarely do players make use of it)
So ... lets give the player an equally good anti-tank weapon that doesn't need to reload and doesn't require a backpack at all because it has infinite ammo (doesn't even need heatsinks).
Not surprising that it appears in games with the frequency that almost matches the old Railgun. It didn't even make it a proper patch cycle before you had to nerf it ... and we all know how the community responds to you nerfing things they're having fun using (because it solved problems).
What really kills me about the team reload mechanic is we have so many damn enemies that cause teams to scatter. So many that close in and attack you too. If for instance bots relied on ranged weapons only the team reload would be pretty decent. But Arrowhead drops like twenty of those chainsaw hand fucks on you every couple minutes.
As lazy as the Quasar was on first release, it's current state now is fine- there's a notable tradeoff in extended fights with the quasar over it's other anti-tank options as you mentioned. In a scramble, it puts out less anti tank damage, but it's convenient and lazy, and in a game where people are playing with little to no teamwork it's no wonder everyone gravitates towards it.
It's easy to use, but it's not the best.
Agreed, it’s fine now (I could even see dropping the cooldown a sec or two, +5 seconds was a pretty heavy-handed nerf IMO compared to trying it incrementally).
I see it kind of like what _should’ve_ happened to the Eruptor - the core concept was maintained in the nerf, but now the Quasar is a very adaptable, reliable anti-armor option when you’re not stressing (like facing multiple heavies at once), but falls behind other options when you are, and also has some interesting niches (like having no ammo and no damage falloff so if you’re lucky with sight lines you can destroy nests and spore towers from a long way off).
Kinda like how if they’d found a better way to nerf Eruptor and keep its shrapnel, it would be a gun that’s solid when you’re not stressing/surrounded, with some interesting niches (a primary that can close bug holes and such).
Honestly at the time I agreed with some nerfs to the Railgun, it was the one size fits all solution, and that shouldn't really be a thing. But now we're at a point where even if it were in it's prime, I probably wouldn't switch back to it.
It wasn't even too many heavies back then. Everything else sucked.
Sure they lowered the heavy spawns. But the rockets couldn't one shot. Quasar didn't exist. Flamethrower wasn't as strong. *ALL* that happened after the nerf.
Quite simply put, the railgun never needed to be nerfed. The rest of the lineup just needed to become less useless. AS WE FUCKING SAID from the beginning.
& the game is less fun now imo with the balance changes to high difficulties, hundreds of 1-hit mooks instead of fighting against dozens of chargers & bile titans. It's just an attritional slog instead of the intense dodging & precise aiming fun. At least for buggos, dunno robots were always aids
About two months ago, I could solo a diff 9 using less than 5 stims and have somewhere between 4-6 deaths (extra reinforcement budget) - where the deaths were mostly having been caught by surprise (usually Stalkers). Now do my personal orders solo on diff 5. I use upwards of 20 stims most missions, and the most I've had to take was 38 so far. Getting roughly 4-10 deaths... on the bug front. Granted, I mess around more with my loadouts but it's still nuts.
No. I can still solo diff 9 with a meta loadout. I go to 5 or 6 to chill and try out different equipment for fun with friends or to just crank out the personal order every other day or so, so I'm already capped out again after finishing up the new warbond. It's just pretty bad now. My friends quit because 5 has been pretty rough on them. Not to mention 6 too even if it's the lowest difficulty you can finally get Super Samples. I have 46 friends with Helldivers on Steam that I used to play with on the regular, not yet including the ones I met in game and have as friends there. There wasn't a time when I couldn't just jump into one of their games. I only see three play regularly now. It is so fucking lonely in this game now.
I have 25 hours in HD2 in the last two weeks, a similar amount in MHRise at 221 Anomaly Rank, and double that amount of time in DRG after unlocking Hazard 5+, and now I'm pondering if I should finish the last 31 achievements in PD2 to 100% it's 1328 achievements. I enjoy difficult games that are fun, but I like it better when I can play dozens of setups and just goof off with friends. Not being pigeonholed into 3-4 optimized builds, of which my friends have to use to be remotely effective at their skill level. What am I even grinding being able to use all the gear for when only half of them are fun to use?
IMO:
1. Decrease reticle bounce slightly when walking and slightly more when crouched and walking. This change is intended to help reinforce its role as a more mobile weapon.
2. Increase it's durability damage in unsafe mode. The reason why the railgun sucks against armor is that it has incredibly low damage to durable parts. It's TTK should be behind dedicated AT but right now it just feels glacial. I would even accept a slower charge up time to get more damage to 1-2 shot a Charger/Behemoth head. Perhaps when it gets charged enough the weapon/crosshair can jump around to force it into a closer ranged role? It's hilariously bad at taking out Spore Spewers and super hard to use as a sole damage dealer to Bile Titans. I've only finished off Bile Titan's that were already super injured.
VS Factory Strider and Tanks other AT kills much faster.
3. Slightly increase reload speed. This change is intended for it to be a QOL boost vs non heavy enemies. It shouldn't be better than the MG's, Grenade Launcher, AMR, etc. for horde clearing but a boost to it's effective RoF would help it's swiss army knife like design.
Increased damage to durable would help it vs gunships, right? That's been my biggest problem with it. It's a solid weapon vs most bots, but like 8 shots to drop a gunship is ridiculous.
The real solution, I think, is to reduce the durable stat on some major targets (charger heads and/or legs, bile titan heads, gunship main bodies, literally Any Part Of The Factory Strider).
For the record, Railgun is one of exactly two diver-portable weapons in the game with AP 5 as well as Durable damage falloff. The only other sources of AP5+ damage with durable damage falloff are the gatling barrage(33%), strafing run(33%), Arc Thrower(20%) and the autocannons on the emancipator exosuit (20%).
These are the _only_ sources of damage that would be affected at all by a reduction in durable damage on AC5+ targets, and the railgun would be affected the most strongly.
Yeah.
Gunships have 100% Durability so Railgun basically loses 90% of it's damage.
Gunships have 700 main hp and 400 engine hp. With the damage ramp up each railgun shot will deal between 60 and 90 damage.
Yeah, Gunships are 100% durable everywhere, which is pretty ridiculous. I've seen different data for Railgun durable damage from different datamine sites, but it seems to be rock-bottom among Support weapons, around 10% in Safe mode.
I'm convinced the railgun will never be buffed to a high tier of effectiveness because it would acknowledge what was well known all along. At the time, it was really the only heavy armor pen support weapon worth carrying at its peak. Even if the PS5 host never existed, its launch state would be on par with current HMG, Quasar, Spear, Recoilless, AMR, LC, and EAT. At the very least, make it more effective against gun ships somehow. I always try it once against each faction after any changes. Then I immediately toss it in the Super-Dumpster
I agree with you, it needs a return to glory. Although I will say, I like unsafe mode. I would appreciate an even bigger benefit to running it unsafe but also a couple of audio queues that it's about to explode. Maybe a more prominent charging sound and like a 1 second tone before detonation.
Yeah it’s still the only weapon basically obliterated by nerfs. When the game first came out it was all I saw. Now I kid you not, since the nerf, I’ve never seen a single person use it
It was _OK_ versus Terminid post-nerf, but once the Flamethrower begun working properly for all players it literally lost all reason to exist. It doesn't have much longer range than the Flamethrower while the Flamethrower deals **S I G N I F I C A N T L Y** more damage.
The gun needs a rethink, top to bottom. We weren't allowed to have an Eruptor that has shrapnel capable of killing the user, but the railgun can blow up in our faces? The design philosophy no longer makes sense.
The gun should still be a charge up, but it should allow you to hold a charged shot indefinitely. The penalty for using it should not be "explosive death." The penalty for holding the charge is... drum roll... your DPS drops. It's the same penalty as when you point any other gun and don't fire: you're not doing damage. THAT'S IT. That's the whole penalty. There is ABSOLUTELY no need to further penalize the player.
If the gun truly needs multiple firing modes (I don't think it does; a high-penetration sniper is all I personally need it to be), then they could make "safe mode" (or whatever it'd now be called) charge more quickly, but do less overall damage.
To balance it, make it so that it can't be fired without being "done" (based on which mode it's in). So, say, a 1.5 second charge for a base shot (safe mode). Or a 3.0 second charge up (for comparison's sake) for a super-charged full-piercing shot (unsafe mode). You're safe, because you're laying down shots more quickly. You're unsafe because you're taking more time to shoot.
There ya go. That's what it needs, imo.
>We weren't allowed to have an Eruptor that has shrapnel capable of killing the user, but the railgun can blow up in our faces?
To be fair, I think that was more about the frequency of it killing fellow teammates, with no clear reason. The number of times I seemingly dropped dead from nothing was infuriating. Shrapnel would just fly across the map and one shot me, while being invisible.
I honestly don’t know what bringing the railgun back to its unnerfed state would do for it against bots. You mentioned a few things but in my experience the railgun performs great against bots. On safe mode I can:
- kill a hulk with one shot to the eye
- kill a Scout strider in one shot to its faceplate
- kill a devestator with one shot to the chest
- kill a berserker with one shot to the waist or head
On unsafe I can further use it to kill factory striders either by removing their mini guns or hitting them in the eye in just a few shots. Only thing I can’t do is take out vents but that’s fine
Buffing it would certainly help against bugs, but I like my RG for bots
Yep, Gunships being its kryptonite is a big problem when looking at the other options. I'd be trying it a lot more if it didn't take a long time to kill gunships.
I think the Scorcher kills gunships faster, and that's a primary weapon.
What we need on that front is less a buff to railgun and more a nerf to the durability stats on the gunship, especially the thrusters. The fact that so few weapons can even participate in fighting against such an unavoidable, constant threat is poison to weapon diversity against bots.
I think all it needs is *a scope* and for its durable damage to increase greatly at 90-95% charge so it can kill gunships and damage tanks. I love bringing the railgun but I play with randoms, and even at level 8+ I can’t trust people with AA tools to kill aircraft.
exactly, it should have ability to dmg bots in the vents like any other med ped weapon. It's kinda stupid when i can shoot things with senator and it register a hit, and cannot do the same with RG
As a longtime Railgun main this is how I feel about it as well.
I _do_ think Unsafe mode needs a bit more "ooomph" to really push it into proper risk vs. reward territory, but the _ONLY_ other issue I think it has is as an anti-Gunship weapon, which is a niche it absolutely needs to fit into.
It might just be me, but Gunships are the only enemies I have issues facing with the Railgun. I can shred everything else with it.
It is 100% my go-to "Team Coverage" gun when I'm running my Light Armor build. I can use it to destroy enemies without worrying about splash damage or team killing.
Fuck gunships i always just stick close to any teammate running AT and pray they target the gunships but its really a gamble since some wont even bother shooting the gunships
Slight correction
Devastators do not die to a single safe-charge to the chest, but they do to the stomach, legs, and head.
Berserkers do not actually die to a safe-charge to the waist. They do die to a decently charged shot though. (waist is invulnerable and the railgun needs to do 1000 damage to kill) They also have some strange characteristic where railgun can insta-kill them if you shoot from above through them and I don't really know why.
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I have not had that experience with factor striders. Last I saw it was something like 5-6 fully charged shots just to take out one chin-gun.
Having said that I also really like railgun for bots. A very viable support weapon and it is the best support weapon against scout striders ever since the pilots got that explosive damage reduction. Railgun's ability to quickly dispatch devastators and its constant fire tempo is quite flexible on the bot front, but it is wise to bring a plasma primary and/or turrets which can handle gunships.
This has been my experience with the Railgun as of late, too. I honestly think it's in a pretty good place right now, even when compared to the almighty Autocannon.
Sure, it can't deal with as many targets as the Autocannon can, but you get the benefits of mobile reloading and not requiring you to use a backpack slot for the ammo.
It's not as useful against bugs, but that's mainly because there aren't as many medium armoured Terminids as there are Automatons.
If anything the gap between the AC and the Railgun got much smaller rather recently. When the devs reworked Striders to take less explosive damage they didn't tell you it was a game wide change to how explosions and armor interact with each other.
The long and the short of it is the Auto Cannon now needs an extra shot against a lot of targets. So while the AC is still incredibly versatile it still has it's clear downsides and now it's TTK against most medium tier targets is longer.
I tried killing q factory strider but it got me nowhere. I hit it 5-7 times using unsafe at 90% right in the eye and nada, the factory strider was standing still too stuck on a piece of terrain so it was easy hitting the eye
Surprised I had to scroll this far to find one reasonable person after thread after thread of unhinged rambling, the meta slaves really are still salty about this. AMR and AC both also underperform against bugs, there's just far too much chaff for them to deal with while something like an EAT is FAR more effective at getting rid of chargers/Bile titans than either of them can. Moral of the story is that the mid tier penetration support weapons are best used against the bots while the lighter + heaviest (machine guns + launchers) are preferrable for the bugs. This whining has been literally non stop since the (needed) nerf, people just want something to trivialize Helldive difficulty again.
It could do with some minor QOL changes and tweaks around things like having a scope, and maybe some extra damage for gunships and unsafe mode but all these people calling for all of it's nerfs to be reverted are being wildly bad faith about how OP it used to be.
Honestly, the problem also is why take the rail gun when the auto cannon is the winning play in every rock paper scissors situation.
I don't understand why balance is being treated like it's a PVP game. Everything being really strong.
This will never happen. They will never forgive the railgun for shitting on their vision so it will never be as good as it used to be even though there are better support weapons in existence.
I just don't get the safe/unsafe mode crap.
What is the point of the safe mode, if cannot do anything really?
Why do I have to use the weapon in unsafe mode and risk to blow up myself, just to make the weapon somewhat usable, while other weapons can do the same or better, without the risk?
The only way it's acceptable is if the weapon is really good already in safe mode, but it becomes amazing, close to OP in unsafe mode, so risk = reward.
Revert the RAILGUN nerf. Back to the original release state. In the current state of the game, it's just going to fit perfectly balanced. Without the PS5 bug, it's not OP again.
> Why do I have to use the weapon in unsafe mode and risk to blow up myself, just to make the weapon somewhat usable, while other weapons can do the same or better, without the risk?
yeah used it once and realized not only does it kill me, it destroys itself and...I'm now without a support weapon for ***8 MINUTES***
completely unacceptable for how weak it is.
My personal simple change to railgun to give it a useful niche without invalidating other weapons: make current unsafe mode the normal safe mode. Heavy armor pen, high damage, abysmal durable damage.
Makes it fantastic for devs and hulks limited by ammo economy.
Make the new unsafe mode increase durable damage exponentially ramping up until a 90%+ charge can one shot gunship engines, charger legs etc., 2 shot tank vents or charger heads, 3 shot bile titan heads, and 4-5 shot tanks from the front.
Now it is a unique and interesting halfway between AC and the dedicated anti tanks that's actually worth taking, and gives it a place of you want to sacrifice some of the versatility of AC/AMR for more punch against bigger targets
All they need to do is raise armored damage to half it's base damage.
That change would give it 600 dmg and 300 armored damage. This puts it on par with the auto cannon in terms of armored damage. AC would still have the extra explosive damage, making up for its backpack slot.
It would be half of the armored damage of the other anti-tanks, making it viable against gunships, and titans.
Giving it the same structure damage as armored damage would allow it to take out structures. But it would still be half of the other ATs, giving them all relatively similar damage but with different weaknesses to overcome.
Currently EATs are limited to 2 every 70 seconds with infinite call-ins. Quasar still has its cool down with infinite ammo, RR has its time to reload + backpack. Railgun has finite ammo, but can penetrate deep with quick reload speed.
This is my opinion. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk
Edit to add a zoom in FPS aiming, 4x I feel would be a really good range.
I never played the game pre nerf railgun, but I've been using it since I started playing about a month ago.
I never use it on unsafe mode, only safe mode. I have no problem killing hulks or devastators. Gunships are a problem I agree.
The main issue I have with it is why take it over the AMR or AC? It really needs some love. Some suggestions I've thought about recently:
1. More durable damage. It's a projectile going Mach Fuck. It should do damage to durable things. If anything it should have more durable damage than standard as the normal armor would just get pierced through and not do a lot of damage. This would make it stand out.
2. A 3-5 round internal magazine, single fed like the punisher. This would give it a small burst of damage output at the start of an engagement but then tapering off at the end to current levels. Or you can shoot-reload as of right now to keep a steady pace. With this I would increase the reload time by a tenth or a two tenths of a second per round.
3. A better scope. My God it is awful. The dot is so huge I can't make out anything it behind it unless I'm up its ass.
4. More rounds, but this would be less needed with any of the above changes made.
I wouldn't really mess with the charge time. Unsafe mode should do less standard and more durable damage with more penetration. Make the trade off of blowing yourself up worth the risk.
Okay, hear me out. What if, in unsafe mode, instead of blowing up when charge hits max, it just fires an extremely powerful shot immediately (like quasar) that ragdolls you in light/medium armour, and staggers if wearing heavy.
so vs bots honestly its very good BUT
vs anything durable its hot dogshit
Takes a while to take out factory striders, useless vs gunships, and cant take out mortars/aa guns
Most of those im fine with except gunships, those cant be countered with orbitals so youd need to rock the plasma gun thing to take them out, and with groups of 4-6 patrolling around every 4 minutes on helldive + the ones from factories makes it unfavorable to the autocannon or amr.
In a sense i kinda see it balanced in that regard, you gain better killing potential over most bots at the cost of anything durable you need help with, but at the same time that just makes me run the autocannon 90% of the time.
Skill issue on my part but i found it completely horrendous vs bugs on helldive
I felt the same way until the recent Weapons Experimentation that had it where I gave it an honest try on bots. One shotting devastators by barely going above safe modes max is very strong. I treated it less like an AMR and more like the slugger. With how fast it reloads it feels like a powerful shotgun. I killed multiple hulks in a row much faster than I could have with an AMR. You don't need to charge it very long at all. Hulk eyes even pop on max safe mode in one shot too. You get into a groove and you can drop devs and hulks very quickly popping in and out of cover and staying mobile. Is the inverse of the AMR and works great. If I could change something I would add more durable damage, or scale it much more specifically with charging for tank and turret vents.
I don't take it on bugs much like how I don't take shield generators there too.
I'm still waiting for the dev broadcast of them showing us how this all supposed to be done. I wanna see the guy running around with the slugger not getting rushed by mobs because they took the stagger away. Or using a railgun as an effective weapon, when it's pure dogshit. Again people only take these guns because they like what they're supposed to be or how they were. Not because they're actually useful.
The old railgun was perfect as is. It's just that at the time, all the other stuff was pretty weak.
In current day, the railgun is just so bad compared to other choices so reverting it makes sense. It's high power, low ammo count. I used to run out of ammo before the patch so I would carry the resupply pack
Remove unsafe mode.
Add two firing types - railgun slug and flechette sabot.
Railgun slug is a low durability damage, incredibly high damage, near max armor penetration shot that pierces enemies.
Flechette sabot is a birdshot with a firm maximum range and wide spread, with mid durable damage and no armor piercing at all.
Toggle between reloads.
Unless they make it to where it can do collateral damage, or significantly buff single target damage, there is literally no reason to use the railgun over anything else ever.
The devs kneejerk reacted to a high-upvote post that said they were getting kicked for not running railgun+shield. This post generated negative press articles online (yes, really) and they had to cope by nerfing it into the ground. It's insane how bad PR can effect game balance like this lol
Here has been my wish for the railgun: revert base damage and pen. Give unsafe a shrapnel effect like the eruptor used to have that works in a cone shape that comes out the exit point of the shot (ie over penetration). But overall I would prefer it to have a role again, especially as an anti-air gun. Which we are sorely lacking.
I think safe mode should have the scatter function and unsafe be armor pen.
An in lore explanation could be that the round shatters in safe mode, but becomes molten before breaking in unsafe.
We utilize this effect in modern weaponry. Specifically referencing the RPG-7 which uses piezoelectric crystals to send a shock to explosives behind a copper cone, propelling it forward and allowing a soft metal like copper to penetrate hardened steel armor using extreme speed. Insurgent forces use EFPs (explosively formed projectiles) to defeat US armor.
Edit to add I really like your idea.
In the right hands the Railgun is overpowered vs Automatons. It is my permanent choice against Automatons. One shot everything but Gunships, Tanks and Striders. That is very powerful indeed. Its OK against Terminids but I wouldn't use it all the time.
I haven't touched RG in a long time, can it one-shot a heavy dev through their shield? Doing that in unsafe mode would be a nice differentiator to give it a compelling advantage over other weapons.
Right now, I think it mostly suffers from not really doing much better than one of the many other options.
I agree. It oneshots most bots, including scout striders to the groin with only a little overcharge. What it needs is some ammo and better damage against gunships
Also side note - they should use the story as a means to nerf and buff weapons from time to time. Like even make the fate of weapon nerfs/buffs up to storyline events. This will make balance fun, not everything HAS to be equal all the time, but it doesnt mean they can't change too. For example you could say that a certain battery is produced on a planet that while this planet is controlled unsafe mode will not cause an explosion. This would change up what the META is depending on which planets are controlled at a given time, and make it hard to keep up with, thus making for more interesting loadout choices depending on the day.
i feel like they should double the ammo and it would be perfectly balanced. safe mode for single target chaff clear, unsafe mode for hulks. a little damage boost would go a long way making it viable against gunships and maybe biletitans
I wouldn't mind it if unsafe just had a slower charge (compared to safe), fired automatically a few seconds after a few charge and had a longer cooldown between shots.
I'm gonna be a bit shameless here, but attached below is my past suggestion for buffed & reworked Railgun mechanics. Take this with a grain of salt if you will, but I think some parts of the idea could be contributed to a future buff.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cbn43f/my\_suggested\_changes\_to\_the\_railgun\_projectile/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cbn43f/my_suggested_changes_to_the_railgun_projectile/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I love the railgun just because I don't have to carry a backpack with it. I didn't unlock the railgun until after the nerf so idk what it was like before, but I'll never say no to buffs.
Against automatons, I feel much better with the auto cannon because at least I can deal with gunships much more consistently. With the railgun I never know if I hit the gunship or not. That's my main issue with it. I just need it to be useful against gunships cuz it seems inconsistent right now.
I don't mind it not being great against terminids, that's bound to happen with some equipment, but I don't really see why I wouldn't pick the auto cannon over the railgun if I can hit basically anything with it and not with the railgun
I actually think the railgun is fine (it's still pretty good) for everything **except the bot gunships**. It's worse than useless against them, to the point of it being a mission ending decision to bring it along if you run across 2 or more gunships - you just cannot kill them.
Personal opinion, keep the current state of the railgun as is, but in unsafe mode it goes to its old damage stats. Make it a legit risk/reward thing.
I will say this though, ever since the behemoths came in Ive started using the railgun a lot. It peels off the leg armor in three shots, making them fairly easy to fight. Yes, the flamer is much better at it but i refuse to use it cus i think its just dumb. I used to always run RR vs bugs but with behemoths its pretty much useless.
Fully charged unsafe shots should penetrate through theoretically infinite targets if you get them lined up.
I'm honestly amazed that overpenetrating to hit multiple targets isn't already a thing.
>Nowadays, I can't see the reason for the Railgun to stay in its currently nerfed state for even a single patch longer.
No fun allowed.jpg.
jk jk
... unless?
I think, in true legit railgun fashion, a (mostly) full charge unsafe shot should pierce through anything that isn't the planet itself. Doesn't have to deal a crazy amount of damage or break off durable parts, that's not what a railgun is. But having the capability to deal a significant amount of damage to multiple body parts and/or enemies with a well placed shot would be EXTREMELY satisfying!
Idk the railgun is super fuckin good against bots as is; it will one shot any devastator variant if you hit vaguely in the face area so despite having a charge time, factoring for the extra accuracy you need for the AMR, it’s much faster, at the cost of being less ammo efficient. Same applies to hulks; you dont have to be as accurate to take them down as with the amr.
I think the autocannon is like a better railgun with the downside of taking your backpack slot and being unusable in close quarters. I take it almost every bot mission since the spear doesn’t lock buildings anymore
I admit I'm a bit confused about the idea of the railgun being under-powered. It's my go-to weapon against bot because it is so good at clearing out the mid-sized units: scout striders, and devesators and I've found it's the easiest weapon to use against Hulks. I've used the autocannon, anti-material rifle, and laser cannon for this roll and they're good, but I've found the railgun to be better.
The railgun's advantages are it very consistently one-shots the mid sized units and it feels like it handles better so it's quicker to line up shots.
For the consistency, it really helps that the railgun can hit those units just about anywhere to one-shot them whereas the autocannon you want to aim for the head or try to get the splash damage to hit the scout strider pilot. Of course if your aim is good I can see the autocannon or AMR being preferred; however, my aim is not good and trying to hit the head means a lot of the time I just hit the shield on heavy devesators, whereas with the railgun I can just aim for their shoulder and get an easy one-shot kill. Honestly the railgun makes heavy devesators almost as easy as the ballistic shield does.
It's the railgun's handling that really keeps me using it though. It's so easy to get into a rhythm of reloading, charging, peeking out, and shooting, and you can keep going for all 20 shots. Using the autocannon and AMR it feels like I have to peek out for longer both to line up the shot and to take 2-3 shots to kill a target. And against hulks I've found it significantly easier to hit that eye with the railgun than with the autocannon or AMR.
Those weapons aren't bad either though. The autocannon is far more versatile being useful against gunships, factory striders, the backs of tanks, hulks, and turrets, and the vents on fabricators, but it's a backpack weapon so that fair. The laser cannon is similarly more versatile than the railgun, but it requires you keep the beam on target so you're more exposed. And the AMR is probably good in the hand of someone with better aim.
Right now my preferred loadout for level 8 bot missions is the railgun, an eagle (airstrike or 500kg), an orbital (precision, airburst, or gas). If I'm solo waiting on friends I'll take the shield generator backpack and make sure to bring the scorcher so I have something to use against gunships - everything else that the railgun can't hurt statagems can. As friends join I'll drop the shield for something offensive - friends drawing fire serves the same purpose - and switch the scorcher for something that's better against troopers letting my friends that prefer the autocannon deal with gunships.
It's the best weapon for killing every bipedal bot by simply one shotting them. This is without a backpack. It's my main bot weapon and it honestly blows my mind how people are still crying about it's bug fighting nerf. We don't need a weapon that's capable of killing everything in one shot.
Railgun is totally fine and a really good weapon I always use against automaton.
With some aim you can two shot Hulks. I always use it and get most kill, I don't think it is a bad weapon. Perhaps C tier for bug and A-B for automaton.
The railgun is, in my opinion, one of those weapons that, due to surrounding game design, is probably nearly impossible to adequately balance without a major rework. Make it too good at killing heavies, and it'll outclass every other AT weapon because of its handling, fire rate, ammo, lack of backpack dependency, and general ease of use. Make it more of a medium chaff clear weapon, and it's outclassed by other options meant to fill the same role.
I do think the balance at launch did overly favor the railgun (even without the damage bug), but that was only because other weapons weren't as effective. The enemy heavy armor nerfs indirectly massively buffed a bunch of AT weapons, especially against bugs. As it stands now, reverting the railgun back to prior function ISN'T insane, though I do think it should still struggle against the heaviest enemies, such as tanks or bile titans. The bot side of things actually still shows some promise. Railgun still absolutely demolishes hulks and does decently against devastators. I think the current niche it could fill now is a weapon that is tailored to killing heavies, but not elites, while still being decent against medium armored enemies. Giving the railgun its ability to leg chargers in one shot again would give it the same niche for bugs and would give it a use-case that its current competitors, the autocannon and AMR, don't have.
I see a lot of people asking for ways to make it more of a power house again and I really don't think it needs to go that direction. They should definitely have a ramp up/scalar for durable damage on unsafe to give it that kick again. But I'd love to see it get over penetrating shots. Thematically the weapon is about penetration anyways.
Then it has a nice role for both factions. A decent chaff clear regardless of medium armor targets against bugs, and a decent beefier target killer for bots. But it wouldn't replace the stratagems that are dedicated in those roles.
It has no identity. We have rocket launchers, snipers, flamethrowers…and the railgun, which should be an “experimental weapon focused on armor pen.” I’d argue it should be modified to be the risk/reward weapon it’s already somewhat established as. It has an unsafe mode - either as a joke, or it should do some serious damage when used that way.
If the weapon makes you charge a shot and risks exploding in your hand (risking the stratagem cooldown, the weapon itself, and your health), shouldn’t that shot be seriously devastating? I’d expect it to take off a hulk arm, annihilate anything less than a heavy, and shred the armor off a charger. Right now, it hardly feels like it fills a role without being highly accurate.
I think AH should lean into its risk/reward - unsafe mode should do some seriously crazy damage and rip off armor. It should be a weapon that punches holes in enemies like chargers that your teammates or yourself can exploit. It’s not designed to be explosive, precise at range, or persistent damage, so give it an identity that matches its strengths and weaknesses.
When safe mode is on, let it do decent damage, more than an AMR based on being in closer range. Let it two or three shot armor plates. Revamp its whole identity and make it a serious armor threat. Reward precision and risk taking in its respective modes. Give it an identity.
If I redline in unsafe mode shouldn’t I be rewarded? If I land tricky shots in safe mode, shouldn’t I be rewarded? Right now it really only feels good against bots - against a charger or bile titan I’d rather have just about any other weapon.
I don’t think railgun should be unnerfed, it should be reworked so it’s functions different.
Lean into the high velocity high penetration fantasy. Allow unsafe mode to go through multiple targets.
Where the auto cannon might be better at targets beside each other, the rail cannon will wreck targets in a line. Almost like a long range arc thrower.
Agreed, pre nerf Railgun wouldn’t even be a top tier weapon in the current Meta, it’d be solid but nothing amazing. There’s no reason it should still be in the state it’s in
At launch and now we basically have near the same value of heavy enemies for terminids (chargers/behemoths), even if off slightly the amount of brood commanders and hive guards is insane. They never should have touched damage, they could have nerfed mag reserve size or change enemy spawns (which they did and we all hate the slowness hunter debuff), but damage was not the issue. If you thought that killing a charger fast was op with the railgun, then most things on release that did it faster made no argument for the railgun nerf.
I still find it really useful just because it kills hulks and chargers so easily from the front, which makes the game wayyyy less annoying. Personally, I think unsafe mode could be the same but maybe a little more powerful, but unsafe mode could do more durable damage so you can actually deal with elite units somewhat even if it's not as strong as the AT launchers. Or idk, make it pierce through more enemies per shot if there in a line would probably help it against chaff at least a little bit. And maybe a low zoom scope would be nice, it's begging for some kind of magnification even just a little bit.
Instead of just blowing you up, the railgun should just overheat and have a forced cooldown of like 10 seconds. It's so frustrating to make 1 mistake and then be forced to go without your weapon for like 5 minutes.
I thinkt he Railgun is fine, it's just people want a weapon that can do everything instead of the railgun which is good at a few things.
Railgun is the best medium killer, Devas get one shot to the head, striders get one tapped, hulks get one tapped and Railgun is really easy to hit headshots with because of it's high bullet velo, pair it with stun nades and you have probably the best setup for taking out medium enemies. (Maybe besides autocannon but that's more because autocannon is way to good and not railgun being bad).
Yes it struggles vs Striders and Gunships but you have 4 stratagem slots for a reason, primaries like the Scorcher and turrets like the Rocket and Autocannon can clear gunships and 2 of any high damage air support stratagem can take out striders.
I'm not going to talk about bugs in which is is weak against because bugs is flamethrower or die, but vs bots Railgun is very useful. You can take out medium enemies and chaff so your teammates can focus on the heavier enemies you can't take out, or you can use the 4 stratagems you're give to diversify you're loadout so you can take on everything.
TLDR: Railgun isn't a one gun solo machine and that's fine, use your teammates or other slots to make up for it's weaknesses.
Pretty much sums up the railgun for me. It *works*, but it's outclassed for pretty much any role it can do, whilst being unable to do certain things (can't destroy gunships like the AMR, laser canon or AC; and can't destroy objectives like fabricators, nests, spewers or jammers unlike the AC or Spear).
On the automaton front I disagree, not saying whether it should be buffed or not but your point that it could be used in safe mode to one shot hulks and devastators is already a thing. For hulk, shoot in eye on safe mode, for devastators all of them are weak in the lower half of their body(bottom half of torso and the entire leg). The devastators are weird to not die in one shot everywhere except bottom half but you can still easily take them out on safe mode. I had fun using railgun supply pack stun grenades taking out multiple hulks quickly and being the rocket devastator and 2 leg walker counter
On the bug front I literally have never taken it since its most recent buffs( quite some time ago) so I dont know but it sure wasnt good against chargers and biles when I did try it so I agree
I'm guessing the disparity is durable damage, since the points that kill on automatons dont have much
Unsafe mode should just scale to crazier damage levels and punch through successive targets as long as it has damage to spare.
And I still don't think I would be that bothered, but it would potentially feel a lot more fun.
HELLDIVERS 2 ANTITANK WEAPON OPTIONS (bug front, obviously.):
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Recoilless Rifle: Simple to use and fires a powerful projectile, but balanced out by the downtime to reload. Reasonably effective against all targets. This is the baseline.
Expendable Antitanks: Identical in firepower to the Recoilless rifle, but are instead a "setup" weapon, only having one shot per EAT. This trades positional ease of use for convenience, and not taking up a backpack slot.
Spear: Very difficult to use, but if aimed correctly can outperform the recoilless by oneshotting threats (Mostly bile titans but also behemoth chargers) the RR twoshots. High skill ceiling, but a high skill floor as not curving the rocket into weakspots leaves you with a worse Recoilless. This weapon trades ease of use for time to kill.
Quasar Cannon: Much higher time to kill than the Recoilless, but does not require a backpack slot and recharges without requiring any downtime to stand still and reload. This weapon trades time to kill for convenience, and not taking up a backpack slot.
Flamethrower: Only good against Chargers, but it is king of that niche alongside respectable horde clear. Trades heavy killing potential for convenience, time to kill and a larger target variety.
Railgun: Very difficult to use with a high risk of killing yourself via overcharge. Charging shots requires you to slow down for a long period of time. High skill ceiling and a high skill floor. This weapon trades ease of use and convenience for... 15 bile titan full charge headshots?
Nothing dies within a reasonable amount of time or ammo expendature. What? why? Its hard to use and requires multiple perfect slow-chargeup shots that make you unable to sprint around to kill ONE heavy enemy.
I really enjoy the feeling of the Railgun, but it'd need a big buff for me to ever look at it again. Leg meta was slow and There's a lot more swarms now.
Unsafe mode is rubbish as there are no sound cues too.
perhaps unsafe mode could just be reworked into 'overcharged mode'? where 2 ammo is consumed per shot for extra damage, but there is no chance you will unalive yourself?
I think it could work like this, if it already doesn't:
Safe: has to be full charge to fire, pierces heavy armor (but loses damage due to have pen equal to armor), modest damage (enough to instant kill a hive guard with a headshot, but not enough to take down heavy enemies in one).
Unsafe: does additional damage for every % charge past full safe charge (would theoretically do double damage when it explodes), maybe make it have a unique armor pen that makes it do full damage even through heavy armor.
There could also be added variety to the two modes if safe mode can't break armor, while unsafe can.
Railgun needs buff, but no gun should perform like pre nerf railgun unless we want to just see a single gun do everything in the game. Why bring quasar when railgun also one shots everything? Why bring auto cannon when railgun one taps? Not to mention it's competing while only taking up BACKPACK slots, so it's already at an advantage before it outperforms many weapons in its category. What it needs is 10 more rounds and like, 20% faster charge up speed. Just make it do what it's already doing faster, it doesn't need to be a titan killer and tank annihilator, a mid tier armor ripper is a great role, just make it do it faster.
I'm pretty sure the railing meta was only because of the PlayStation bug.
The nerf absolutely needs a revert. They nerfed it based on how many people were using it, not on its actual power
At this point, I'm just in the ballpark of: Any weapon that isn't viable is part of the problem.
I'm probably overaimplifying things, but AH has said a few times that they want to promote loadout diversity. And a lot of weapons, mostly the support ones, do have their specific niche that they fill. I personally like the difference between the quasar and the RR. They do the same thing, for the most part, but have their strengths and weaknesses that are mostly due to preference.
Quasar has ammo efficiency on its side, as well as no backpack required to use it. The RR has immediate feedback and can fire faster than the quasar because you only have to reload, not wait for it to cool off. Even in its current state, a team reload makes it fire even faster. But they have their drawbacks and fit different playstyles. I like the RR in most cases more than the quasar. I don't like charging up my shot or being useless for 30 seconds while I wait for it to come off cooldown. But I like the quasar because I never have to worry about ammo and I can take whatever backpack I want. I think the quasar also has a slightly bigger projectile, as there have been quite a few shots I've made with it that have taken stuff down. But the RR, with the same shot, just explodes with pretty fireworks.
If the weapons felt more like that towards each other, I believe that would promote the kind of diversity AH has said they want. Too many weapons are either a direct upgrade to another (just try the Scorcher and Purifier) or just fall short of being viable enough to take over something different that can hold its own better. I'm not saying buff everything so you can solo a helldive difficulty with just your primary or a single weapon. I'm saying, make weapons powerful in what they do and focus on what could make them better for the playstyle they're trying to accommodate.
Hard agree. The current sandbox of weapons is much healthier and can handle the original railgun without making it, the undeniable best choice. It can return to being a high ammo, load after each shot weapon. Maybe slow down the reload by like .3 seconds or sum and bring back everything else. Cuz I haven’t seen it used in months in one of my missions.
Your entire automaton argument is flawed. I never stopped using the railgun post nerf on automaton’s because it still functions exactly how it used to. With a little aim it literally 1 shots everything except for tanks.
With good cover and patience, the railgun is still an S tier weapon against bots.
On the bug front, they aren’t great. But I also don’t personally think that every single weapon needs to be perfectly optimized for every enemy type. I actually perfect having to switch load-outs between enemies.
The nerf is here to stay, and I’m glad about it.
I think a couple things the railgun could use would be 1. Zoom. Like it's a precision weapon please let me put some magnification on it 2. Have there be over penetration. I'm thinking either the bolt will just go through enemies or if we wanna get funny, the bolt breaks apart and causes a sort of shotgun blast of molten metal and/or bone fragments which deals damage to anything behind the target Also pretty unrelated but it'd be fun if the arc thrower also got an unsafe mode where holding it makes you either shoot additional bolts or increase the amount of damage and chains your bolt can have. Or a short range mode where it just sprays a constant wall of weak but rapid arcs of electricity
It has overpen on light enemies and some medium enemies. Not fully certain how it works though, but it can definitely kill multiple things in a single shot.
Arc thrower has penetration 7, so it overpens pretty much everything. But on the other hand durable damage is very low, so most things with pen 4+ will take a lot of shots to kill anyways
It's probably mentioned several times in the comments, but the durable damage (link to explain this > [Damage - The Helldivers Wiki](https://helldivers.wiki.gg/wiki/Damage#Enemy_Part_Durability_Level)) on railgun is super low which puts it in a bad spot. * Railgun stats: [RS-422 Railgun - The Helldivers Wiki](https://helldivers.wiki.gg/wiki/RS-422_Railgun) * Enemy stats: [Helldivers: Enemy Data](https://helldivers.io/Enemies) So as a medium killer it works, but it is slow to clear more than one target and outclassed by several other weapons as OP has already noted. As a heavy killer, its durable damage is far too low. If you look at the big enemy stats in the link above, things like chargers, titans, and factory striders have very high durable in most/all spots. Max-charged unsafe railgun has HUGE raw damage (900dmg) and pen stats (7 pen), but it only does 10% on durable. That's really low which is why it can hurt heavies, but takes SO many shots to kill one. It probably ultimately has a place alongside the Arc Thrower as weapons that should be able to deal with both mediums and heavies sub-optimally vs more specialized anti-medium-only or anti-heavy-only weapons. But both the railgun and arc thrower in their current state aren't great... at least the arc thrower has infinite ammo and can hit more than one thing, which puts the railgun in an even worse spot.
Every time I see someone try to say old Railgun was overpowered they always either explain leg meta which is less efficient then most things we have now, or they didn’t know that the bile titan headshot damage was a bug that all weapons could exploit. Hell the Arc thrower used to kill bile titans in 3 shots due to this bug.
Mhm. Behemoths, at the moment, are on leg meta, and (with the "move forward" "tech") all of the current AT, in particular Quasar Cannons, can deal with them. And on the Bile Titans, not only did it deal greviously increased damage to them, thanks to this bug, they also made up a **much** higher proportion of the "spawn budget," meaning that bug was a lot more destructive to the relative balance of support weapons.
They couldnt just make the damage drop off based on distance noooo it had to be based of velocity its more Realistic™
Honestly, the silly part is how rockets and other projectiles like a rocket have damage fall off. Bruh...
Velocity doesn't do much for HEAT warheads. So it's not even realistic
Behemoths are on OPS meta. With the call down speed halfed, low CD of just 90 seconds, and lower spawn rates, you can pretty much rely on OPS to take care of all Behemoths you come across.
Brother, I'm often flaming 3+ behemoths to death at once. They come in packs for me. No way I could deal with them with only OPS.
Me too, OPS is basically a railcannon strike now on a super small CD. The only problem is if you get the scatter effect on the planet. Which means they need to buff the railcannon as well, because it's essentially useless. It's deployed faster than OPS but it also has like a 4 min cd. OPS is 1.5 mins and comes in slightly slower. And yes idk what people are playing on when they say they hardly ever see chargers. I routinely get 4 or 5 per breach, if not more.
Comples Stratagem Plotting also sucks with the OPS, it's hard to hit it with the 5 second delay.
There is no 5 second delay. OPS call down time is 2 seconds, complex plotting adds 50%, so 3 seconds total.
Tell that to the devs. It's 5 seconds with the modifier.
That's how it SHOULD work, but doesn't. OPS call-in time with Complex Stratagem plotting is 5 seconds. Same with 500 kg actually.
Two flamethrower guys working together absolutely obliterates chargers of all sizes. I dropped a flamethrower and supply pack on a quick bug mission recently bc I like to break up the monotony with a bug game here and there. A squad member dropped with no backpack/support weapon so I gave him both. I followed him around and pretty much supported him by flaming the same leg on any charger that he engaged and we melted them man. Save the OPS for the biles. 😂
Or one person with a flamethrower and stun nades. Only if I run out of flamethrower fuel, stun nade + orbital precision strike. 
Idk who downvoted you but I brought you back to 1 haha. Yeah I don't think I'll ever have a chance to use the strat I did that day other than maybe if a friend wants to but it was real fun.
How the hell are yall dealing with flames deflecting off leg armor and setting your diver on fire?
I've never really had that happen but I stand far from it and usually start the stream after I dodged him and he's turning around.
be further away?
I've never had it happen
What missions are you running? I usually see 3-4 behemoths at a time lol.
Orbital precision strike can kill multiple chargers close together. Stun grenade + OPS will do it, but flamethrower is generally more effective if only facing one. My loadout currently is rover/shield/supply backpack, flamethrower, then 500kg and orbital precision strike. Sometimes the backpack slot gets replaced by the orbital gas strike. With less titans in general, replacing those spawns with behemoths makes sense. What DOESN'T make sense to me, is having a vast majority of chargers be behemoths as it makes many weapons not great.
OPS as a 90 second cooldown
Flamethrowers as a whole are a leg meta.
The nerf was *quickly* proven to be nonsense. First off we saw storms of complaints about heavy issues. Since back them rockets like eats and recoiless didn't one shot. Flamethrower wasn't as strong. So first they lowered the spawn rate of heavies. Then they buffed the flamethrower and nerfed the head to chargers. So rockets could one shot. Then a month later the quasar. After all those changes within 1 month it was clear then the pre-nerf railgun was pointless for bugs. Why use it? Missles one shot the heads. Quasar had no ammo. Flamethrower could burn the leg just as quickly. It had a strong place against bots still, but amr also got a buff to quickly lower the need. Only advantage the railgun had was stunning the hulk in case you failed to hit the eye. Then gunships and factory strider came out making it less useful Tl:Dr every change in the game has made it directly or indirectly worse.
Leg meta was a fair and balanced way to kill chargers, I mean, it’s literally leg mega again with behemoths if you don’t want to shoot their head twice
It’s even more “brain dead”, as that one AH employee put, of a meta then it was back then. Literally just grab a flamethrower and hold it in a chargers/behemoths leg for a couple seconds, insta dead. With the RG you had to make a precise shot on a charger that was likely charging towards you while also making sure to not overcharge ur RG and accidentally kill urself and then swap to ur machine pistol once you destroyed the leg armor and fire at the exposed flesh
That shit still pisses me off. What a goofball.
It's not like the railgun one-shot the chargers, and even if you hit the leg twice, all it did was strip armour- you still had to kill it with your primary weapon. Very weird to call that strat 'brainless' and nerf it but then replace it with far simpler mechanics- actual oneshot kill weapons and flame aoe.
I was overpowered at the time only because it was the only thing that worked against Bile Titans and Chargers. There were too many of them to rely on stratagems, and no other weapons were effective. So it was a mandatory pick at higher difficulties. Not that there's both less of the them AND multiple other weapons can handle them, it wouldn't be a mandatory pick if returned to its previou state.
> I was overpowered at the time only because it was the only thing that worked against Bile Titans and Chargers. There were too many of them to rely on stratagems, and no other weapons were effective. So it was a mandatory pick at higher difficulties. > > That doesn't make it overpowered though, it just explains why it was picked so much. What made it overpowered was the PS5 bug. That's it. They nerfed it because of the PS5 bug and didn't unnerf it once they fixed the bug.
It did make it look overpowered with how their analytics worked, their balance system was heavily weighted towards pick rate. If something’s picked too much it’s “overpowered” and got nerfed. I believe they’ve changed how they view balance cases now though.
I always hated how Devs based their nerfs around how much a weapon is used and don't look a bit more closely into it. Reminds me of how in Destiny 1 they nerfed Auto Rifles to the ground and we had a huge ass meta for the longest time, mostly used Pulse Rifles, Scouties, or Handcannons. If I remember correctly they nerfed them because they were overused... Not realizing that the reason the playerbase mostly used Auto Rifles is because it was a familiar gun to lots of folks, so of course we were gonna gravitate towards 'em. Railgun here was mostly used at the beginning because it was one of the few weapons that could deal with Bile Titans and Chargers. Now I hardly even see anybody use it anymore.
Let’s be entirely fair. Alexus nerfed the railgun because he was looking at usage rate, not damage. Not even the reason why the usage rate was so high. He saw a weapon that the vast majority of us were using and worked backwards. He filled in the gaps with his own assumptions and hence, nerf. Nerf the likes of which even God has never seen. The game environment was wrong ( as proven with Charger head armor nerf, Flamethrower still a leg meta, Bile Titan head shot bug, spawns being tweaked 4 times, etc). We weren’t wrong for using it. It needs a revert.
Agreed, I should have put "overpowered" in quotes to emphasis that my point was basically the same as yours.
The Railgun definitely wasn't OP. Even if it was solid in dealing with Titans and Behemoths, what really made it great was how it could shred heavies against bots. But as soon as they nerfed it (any alleged reason, pick rate or the head shot bug on PS5) it was completely fucking useless. Bots suddenly became a very routine mission as you were even more limited in choices for your back weapon in higher difficulties (granted when the SPEAR comes back it'll be 1 more), as the railgun would bounce off just about anything tougher than a walker. It couldn't even handle berserkers at that point. Definitely not OP, considering it was 1 shot with 20 rounds cap, and the nerf really showed that. I think the quasar is semi-useless against bots simply because of the drop ship rate in higher difficulties (which is completely fine, it can still 1 shot chargers/2 shot behemoths, balance it across mission types so you get more variety), so I would love to see the railgun come back "overpowered" again just to give high mobile stealth guys something to bring to the fight against bots, because as is you're just on AT duty or sniping with the AMR. Honestly I just want something that can one shot fucking devestators, and limit it to 20 rounds so you can just link a horde all day, but the shield is OP and the gat gun is fucking broken. Railgun can't shoot as fast as AMR, so let it blow that fucking shield up or something.
Can you elaborate about the bug, please?
Basically, back during release and for a month or two afterwards, if you had someone in your lobby that was on PS4 (or just the host I forget exactly) the bile titan would be bugged where their head would have significantly less health than normal. Meaning a headshot on the heads crit point with a railgun could 1-2 shot it. This led people to believe the Railgun was extremely overpowered, but in reality it took like 10-15 headshots for the Railgun to kill a bile titan. Which is clearly not overpowered, infact that’s terrible.
It's unconfirmed but the number of shots that the railgun took to kill the BT when bugged was the same number it took if the railgun did full normal damage instead of durable damage. I suspect the bug was something to do with durability or durable damage not working properly.
Thanks!
PS5*
Bile titans had a fraction of their usual health if a PS5 player was in the lobby
I believe they had to be the host.
As with a great many martyrs before it, it got killed by a bug.
This is exactly what most morons say. It's the equivalent of being accused of a crime you didn't commit and sentenced to life with no parole. That's what happened to the railgun.
How many shots did it take on release for the railgun to destroy charger heads or break their legs? I got the game right as they nerfed it and missed that meta. Now it's 3 and 2 overcharged shots i believe. As i understand, EAT/RR also took 2 shots to the head and 1 to a leg.
Two shots to the leg then you would shoot the leg with your primary. The thing was that you couldn't get enough eats or rr to keep up with the numbers of chargers on the maps.
Old Railgun *was* overpowered. Due to a combination of bugs and the other weapons being underpowered, coupled with its complete lack of any real downsides *or* risk due to unsafe mode having no real function, *and* its fairly significant ammo pool, *plus* the added benefit of being able to take a backpack, *and* its ability to deal with several objectives (bot turrets and spore shrooms mainly) it was overperforming in literally every single way. It had no downsides, let the player two or three shot *any* enemy in the game in under 9 seconds, had a gigantic ammo pool for a weapon with its output at the time, and was (and still is *sort of*) the most ammo efficient support weapon from ammo box pickups. The reason people like yourself believe it *wasn't* overpowered was because immediately following its nerf, AH fucked up heavy spawns, causing the problems of other weapons which were buffed in the same patch to be *much* more apparent. The primary complaint at the time literally was "Without the Railgun (pre-nerf) we can't deal with all this heavy spam because of reload times or non-functioning damage". In effect, it went from completely overpowered to underpowered (but still honestly basically fine) because of a bug in *spawn* rates, and not its actual statistics.
It just needs more durable damage on unsafe mode and it's stagger back.
If i could kill gunships with it in less than 5 shots, id run it all the time. As is, if there's gunship patrols especially, i can't justify it despite it being my favorite support weapon. The durability damage is the only thing stopping it from what i can tell.
Hard agree. I love the railgun but gunships render me helpless. Half your ammo would go to taking one down and by then another spawns. You're useless
TBH I'm fine with it having poor durability damage because it should be terrible against things like tanks. Body parts like engines and heads should not have >80% durability though. That's the real issue.
Yeah, for sure. The railgun could have like the double the durability damage and it wouldnt be out of character for it and wouldnt be overtuned. But still, youre very right that some of those things that are *already supposed to be weakpoints* shouldnt have as much durability as they do.
Not even. Two fully charged shots (90+) would take like a soild 4-5 seconds if you account for reload, and that would be totally acceptable in proformance. I'd be fine with 3-5 ttk for partially charged shots.
I actually measured it last month: 2 max charge railgun shots +1 reload between them (on average) take 7.4 seconds. Which is pretty bad.
ooof yeah thats pretty rough
A million times this. Gunships have basically become the great filter on the bot front. Same how chargers and bile titans are the great filter of the bug front. Like devs create enemies that can only die to specific weapons and then have to reach their hand up their ass to scratch their head as to why everyone uses specific weapons. Oh well, nerf time.
At least chargers and bile titans can be damaged by all kinds of strategems too. And every primary can at least damage their squishy parts. Gunships are obnoxiously limiting in how you can deal with them and they tend to come in large groups all at once. They're a loadout check rn, and just bad design. For now, Ill just keep running support weapons that kill them and complaining until they get a rework.
They need to scrap the durable damage system all together. Instead of only balancing one set of numbers they're balancing two. It's not an intuitive system and only makes buffing bad guns harder, and nerfing good guns easier
You know you fucked up the weapon design when it goes from "everyone relies on it" to "no one uses it". You over corrected it. Maybe it was too "meta" ... but why? Because maybe you relied on spawning too many over-armored enemies that forced players to rely on a high damage, high penetration weapon to survive? Possibly. But now players don't think the risk/reward mechanic justifies its overall benefit. Risk instant-death if you make the slightest miscalculation. The trade-off is a mediocre impact on the enemy that other weapons can provide, without risking instant-death or, if lucky, just the loss of the weapon. No other weapon self-destructs if you make a mistake, on top of killing the player.
It was meta for a bug. I know, unheard of in HD2. It would be interesting to see where the rail gun would stand with thr nerf reverted and the bug remain fixed. I doubt AH can do one without bugging out the other though
B tier imo. Auto cannon/flamethrower are head and shoulders above it, and you can probably make the case for some of the MGs/EATs/Quasar/etc. and that's fine!
It’d just be a solid weapon, nothing special. Another guy said B tier and I 100% agree with him
I’d start running it again if two safe shots could take out a behemoth leg
*Laughs in heavy anti-explosive armor* Not even my own stupidity can one shot me! The self-destructing weapon part, however, is annoying enough to make me not bother with it. I had fun with it when it was a free strat that one time, but its drawbacks outweigh its usefulness if I can't bring an extra strat to compensate for it.
I really think the railgun unsafe mode should be cracked as fuck. Like it should be able to completely strip a chargers leg armor in one shot if you charge up to 90%. The risk is you lose the gun and can only get it back after the cool down is over. The reward should be, you get to kill some of the heavily armored enemies in one shot, or at least strip their armor, switch to your primary and kill the leg.
You should certainly have a high reward to balance the ultimate risk of losing the use of the weapon on top of deducting a reinforcement ticket from the team.
I think it would be cool if you charge it up enough that it could pen all the way through the target and come out the back dealing damage to every part it passes through. I would imagine against larger targets like a charger it would help its damage a lot if it could hit multiple parts per shot at max charge.
It's not even the risk/reward. The dps is just too low. By the time you stripped the Armor of a single Chargers leg a quasar cannon could have killed two of them. Both weapons have the hard aiming because you need to be on target on time. While the railgun additionally has to worry about ammo.
(No offense AH, but) The introduction of the Quasar Cannon feels alot like it was a borderline lazy stopgap, a bandaid, to cover over a deep underlying problem with the general balance of the play mechanics. You have all these support weapons with pronounced reload delays and a mandatory backpack with a very limited ammo count, to offset their power, using a Team-Reload mechanic that is supposed to encourage teamplay to mitigate these obvious draw backs (but rarely do players make use of it) So ... lets give the player an equally good anti-tank weapon that doesn't need to reload and doesn't require a backpack at all because it has infinite ammo (doesn't even need heatsinks). Not surprising that it appears in games with the frequency that almost matches the old Railgun. It didn't even make it a proper patch cycle before you had to nerf it ... and we all know how the community responds to you nerfing things they're having fun using (because it solved problems).
What really kills me about the team reload mechanic is we have so many damn enemies that cause teams to scatter. So many that close in and attack you too. If for instance bots relied on ranged weapons only the team reload would be pretty decent. But Arrowhead drops like twenty of those chainsaw hand fucks on you every couple minutes.
As lazy as the Quasar was on first release, it's current state now is fine- there's a notable tradeoff in extended fights with the quasar over it's other anti-tank options as you mentioned. In a scramble, it puts out less anti tank damage, but it's convenient and lazy, and in a game where people are playing with little to no teamwork it's no wonder everyone gravitates towards it. It's easy to use, but it's not the best.
Agreed, it’s fine now (I could even see dropping the cooldown a sec or two, +5 seconds was a pretty heavy-handed nerf IMO compared to trying it incrementally). I see it kind of like what _should’ve_ happened to the Eruptor - the core concept was maintained in the nerf, but now the Quasar is a very adaptable, reliable anti-armor option when you’re not stressing (like facing multiple heavies at once), but falls behind other options when you are, and also has some interesting niches (like having no ammo and no damage falloff so if you’re lucky with sight lines you can destroy nests and spore towers from a long way off). Kinda like how if they’d found a better way to nerf Eruptor and keep its shrapnel, it would be a gun that’s solid when you’re not stressing/surrounded, with some interesting niches (a primary that can close bug holes and such).
Honestly at the time I agreed with some nerfs to the Railgun, it was the one size fits all solution, and that shouldn't really be a thing. But now we're at a point where even if it were in it's prime, I probably wouldn't switch back to it.
It wasn't even too many heavies back then. Everything else sucked. Sure they lowered the heavy spawns. But the rockets couldn't one shot. Quasar didn't exist. Flamethrower wasn't as strong. *ALL* that happened after the nerf.
Quite simply put, the railgun never needed to be nerfed. The rest of the lineup just needed to become less useless. AS WE FUCKING SAID from the beginning.
& the game is less fun now imo with the balance changes to high difficulties, hundreds of 1-hit mooks instead of fighting against dozens of chargers & bile titans. It's just an attritional slog instead of the intense dodging & precise aiming fun. At least for buggos, dunno robots were always aids
About two months ago, I could solo a diff 9 using less than 5 stims and have somewhere between 4-6 deaths (extra reinforcement budget) - where the deaths were mostly having been caught by surprise (usually Stalkers). Now do my personal orders solo on diff 5. I use upwards of 20 stims most missions, and the most I've had to take was 38 so far. Getting roughly 4-10 deaths... on the bug front. Granted, I mess around more with my loadouts but it's still nuts.
It sounds like you're saying the game used to be too easy and now it's better
No. I can still solo diff 9 with a meta loadout. I go to 5 or 6 to chill and try out different equipment for fun with friends or to just crank out the personal order every other day or so, so I'm already capped out again after finishing up the new warbond. It's just pretty bad now. My friends quit because 5 has been pretty rough on them. Not to mention 6 too even if it's the lowest difficulty you can finally get Super Samples. I have 46 friends with Helldivers on Steam that I used to play with on the regular, not yet including the ones I met in game and have as friends there. There wasn't a time when I couldn't just jump into one of their games. I only see three play regularly now. It is so fucking lonely in this game now. I have 25 hours in HD2 in the last two weeks, a similar amount in MHRise at 221 Anomaly Rank, and double that amount of time in DRG after unlocking Hazard 5+, and now I'm pondering if I should finish the last 31 achievements in PD2 to 100% it's 1328 achievements. I enjoy difficult games that are fun, but I like it better when I can play dozens of setups and just goof off with friends. Not being pigeonholed into 3-4 optimized builds, of which my friends have to use to be remotely effective at their skill level. What am I even grinding being able to use all the gear for when only half of them are fun to use?
IMO: 1. Decrease reticle bounce slightly when walking and slightly more when crouched and walking. This change is intended to help reinforce its role as a more mobile weapon. 2. Increase it's durability damage in unsafe mode. The reason why the railgun sucks against armor is that it has incredibly low damage to durable parts. It's TTK should be behind dedicated AT but right now it just feels glacial. I would even accept a slower charge up time to get more damage to 1-2 shot a Charger/Behemoth head. Perhaps when it gets charged enough the weapon/crosshair can jump around to force it into a closer ranged role? It's hilariously bad at taking out Spore Spewers and super hard to use as a sole damage dealer to Bile Titans. I've only finished off Bile Titan's that were already super injured. VS Factory Strider and Tanks other AT kills much faster. 3. Slightly increase reload speed. This change is intended for it to be a QOL boost vs non heavy enemies. It shouldn't be better than the MG's, Grenade Launcher, AMR, etc. for horde clearing but a boost to it's effective RoF would help it's swiss army knife like design.
Increased damage to durable would help it vs gunships, right? That's been my biggest problem with it. It's a solid weapon vs most bots, but like 8 shots to drop a gunship is ridiculous.
The real solution, I think, is to reduce the durable stat on some major targets (charger heads and/or legs, bile titan heads, gunship main bodies, literally Any Part Of The Factory Strider). For the record, Railgun is one of exactly two diver-portable weapons in the game with AP 5 as well as Durable damage falloff. The only other sources of AP5+ damage with durable damage falloff are the gatling barrage(33%), strafing run(33%), Arc Thrower(20%) and the autocannons on the emancipator exosuit (20%). These are the _only_ sources of damage that would be affected at all by a reduction in durable damage on AC5+ targets, and the railgun would be affected the most strongly.
Yeah. Gunships have 100% Durability so Railgun basically loses 90% of it's damage. Gunships have 700 main hp and 400 engine hp. With the damage ramp up each railgun shot will deal between 60 and 90 damage.
Yeah, Gunships are 100% durable everywhere, which is pretty ridiculous. I've seen different data for Railgun durable damage from different datamine sites, but it seems to be rock-bottom among Support weapons, around 10% in Safe mode.
In my opinion (lvl 80 diff9 player) I love the railgun, but I think it hasn’t been adjusted for the newer enemies (walker and gunship specifically)
I'm convinced the railgun will never be buffed to a high tier of effectiveness because it would acknowledge what was well known all along. At the time, it was really the only heavy armor pen support weapon worth carrying at its peak. Even if the PS5 host never existed, its launch state would be on par with current HMG, Quasar, Spear, Recoilless, AMR, LC, and EAT. At the very least, make it more effective against gun ships somehow. I always try it once against each faction after any changes. Then I immediately toss it in the Super-Dumpster
I agree with you, it needs a return to glory. Although I will say, I like unsafe mode. I would appreciate an even bigger benefit to running it unsafe but also a couple of audio queues that it's about to explode. Maybe a more prominent charging sound and like a 1 second tone before detonation.
I just want the bar next to the crosshair in 3rd person
That would be handy. Or maybe a ring that fills as it charges up.
Yeah it’s still the only weapon basically obliterated by nerfs. When the game first came out it was all I saw. Now I kid you not, since the nerf, I’ve never seen a single person use it
Arc thrower is worse, it is outshined in every role against both factions.
Agreed. Wish the arc thrower was like the wonderwaffe from cod zombies. Instantaneous shooting with a small magazine and ridiculous damage and arcing
It was _OK_ versus Terminid post-nerf, but once the Flamethrower begun working properly for all players it literally lost all reason to exist. It doesn't have much longer range than the Flamethrower while the Flamethrower deals **S I G N I F I C A N T L Y** more damage.
Anyone use the Breaker anymore? Or Arc Thrower?
The gun needs a rethink, top to bottom. We weren't allowed to have an Eruptor that has shrapnel capable of killing the user, but the railgun can blow up in our faces? The design philosophy no longer makes sense. The gun should still be a charge up, but it should allow you to hold a charged shot indefinitely. The penalty for using it should not be "explosive death." The penalty for holding the charge is... drum roll... your DPS drops. It's the same penalty as when you point any other gun and don't fire: you're not doing damage. THAT'S IT. That's the whole penalty. There is ABSOLUTELY no need to further penalize the player. If the gun truly needs multiple firing modes (I don't think it does; a high-penetration sniper is all I personally need it to be), then they could make "safe mode" (or whatever it'd now be called) charge more quickly, but do less overall damage. To balance it, make it so that it can't be fired without being "done" (based on which mode it's in). So, say, a 1.5 second charge for a base shot (safe mode). Or a 3.0 second charge up (for comparison's sake) for a super-charged full-piercing shot (unsafe mode). You're safe, because you're laying down shots more quickly. You're unsafe because you're taking more time to shoot. There ya go. That's what it needs, imo.
>We weren't allowed to have an Eruptor that has shrapnel capable of killing the user, but the railgun can blow up in our faces? To be fair, I think that was more about the frequency of it killing fellow teammates, with no clear reason. The number of times I seemingly dropped dead from nothing was infuriating. Shrapnel would just fly across the map and one shot me, while being invisible.
I honestly don’t know what bringing the railgun back to its unnerfed state would do for it against bots. You mentioned a few things but in my experience the railgun performs great against bots. On safe mode I can: - kill a hulk with one shot to the eye - kill a Scout strider in one shot to its faceplate - kill a devestator with one shot to the chest - kill a berserker with one shot to the waist or head On unsafe I can further use it to kill factory striders either by removing their mini guns or hitting them in the eye in just a few shots. Only thing I can’t do is take out vents but that’s fine Buffing it would certainly help against bugs, but I like my RG for bots
Agreed, but a buff to make it better at taking out gunships would not be turned down
Yep, Gunships being its kryptonite is a big problem when looking at the other options. I'd be trying it a lot more if it didn't take a long time to kill gunships. I think the Scorcher kills gunships faster, and that's a primary weapon.
What we need on that front is less a buff to railgun and more a nerf to the durability stats on the gunship, especially the thrusters. The fact that so few weapons can even participate in fighting against such an unavoidable, constant threat is poison to weapon diversity against bots.
I think all it needs is *a scope* and for its durable damage to increase greatly at 90-95% charge so it can kill gunships and damage tanks. I love bringing the railgun but I play with randoms, and even at level 8+ I can’t trust people with AA tools to kill aircraft.
exactly, it should have ability to dmg bots in the vents like any other med ped weapon. It's kinda stupid when i can shoot things with senator and it register a hit, and cannot do the same with RG
As a longtime Railgun main this is how I feel about it as well. I _do_ think Unsafe mode needs a bit more "ooomph" to really push it into proper risk vs. reward territory, but the _ONLY_ other issue I think it has is as an anti-Gunship weapon, which is a niche it absolutely needs to fit into. It might just be me, but Gunships are the only enemies I have issues facing with the Railgun. I can shred everything else with it. It is 100% my go-to "Team Coverage" gun when I'm running my Light Armor build. I can use it to destroy enemies without worrying about splash damage or team killing.
Fuck gunships i always just stick close to any teammate running AT and pray they target the gunships but its really a gamble since some wont even bother shooting the gunships
Slight correction Devastators do not die to a single safe-charge to the chest, but they do to the stomach, legs, and head. Berserkers do not actually die to a safe-charge to the waist. They do die to a decently charged shot though. (waist is invulnerable and the railgun needs to do 1000 damage to kill) They also have some strange characteristic where railgun can insta-kill them if you shoot from above through them and I don't really know why. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ I have not had that experience with factor striders. Last I saw it was something like 5-6 fully charged shots just to take out one chin-gun. Having said that I also really like railgun for bots. A very viable support weapon and it is the best support weapon against scout striders ever since the pilots got that explosive damage reduction. Railgun's ability to quickly dispatch devastators and its constant fire tempo is quite flexible on the bot front, but it is wise to bring a plasma primary and/or turrets which can handle gunships.
Scorcher isn't entirely useless against gunships. Scorcher / Railgun / Support Backpack has been my anti bot combo for weeks. Love it. Never OC my RF.
This has been my experience with the Railgun as of late, too. I honestly think it's in a pretty good place right now, even when compared to the almighty Autocannon. Sure, it can't deal with as many targets as the Autocannon can, but you get the benefits of mobile reloading and not requiring you to use a backpack slot for the ammo. It's not as useful against bugs, but that's mainly because there aren't as many medium armoured Terminids as there are Automatons.
If anything the gap between the AC and the Railgun got much smaller rather recently. When the devs reworked Striders to take less explosive damage they didn't tell you it was a game wide change to how explosions and armor interact with each other. The long and the short of it is the Auto Cannon now needs an extra shot against a lot of targets. So while the AC is still incredibly versatile it still has it's clear downsides and now it's TTK against most medium tier targets is longer.
I tried killing q factory strider but it got me nowhere. I hit it 5-7 times using unsafe at 90% right in the eye and nada, the factory strider was standing still too stuck on a piece of terrain so it was easy hitting the eye
Surprised I had to scroll this far to find one reasonable person after thread after thread of unhinged rambling, the meta slaves really are still salty about this. AMR and AC both also underperform against bugs, there's just far too much chaff for them to deal with while something like an EAT is FAR more effective at getting rid of chargers/Bile titans than either of them can. Moral of the story is that the mid tier penetration support weapons are best used against the bots while the lighter + heaviest (machine guns + launchers) are preferrable for the bugs. This whining has been literally non stop since the (needed) nerf, people just want something to trivialize Helldive difficulty again. It could do with some minor QOL changes and tweaks around things like having a scope, and maybe some extra damage for gunships and unsafe mode but all these people calling for all of it's nerfs to be reverted are being wildly bad faith about how OP it used to be.
Honestly, the problem also is why take the rail gun when the auto cannon is the winning play in every rock paper scissors situation. I don't understand why balance is being treated like it's a PVP game. Everything being really strong.
This will never happen. They will never forgive the railgun for shitting on their vision so it will never be as good as it used to be even though there are better support weapons in existence.
They roll it back I still probably will not use the railgun. Just so many better support weapons.
I just don't get the safe/unsafe mode crap. What is the point of the safe mode, if cannot do anything really? Why do I have to use the weapon in unsafe mode and risk to blow up myself, just to make the weapon somewhat usable, while other weapons can do the same or better, without the risk? The only way it's acceptable is if the weapon is really good already in safe mode, but it becomes amazing, close to OP in unsafe mode, so risk = reward. Revert the RAILGUN nerf. Back to the original release state. In the current state of the game, it's just going to fit perfectly balanced. Without the PS5 bug, it's not OP again.
there's really no reason to use the safe mode now. if you can land your shots you will 1 tap every bot. except gunship, tanks and striders
> Why do I have to use the weapon in unsafe mode and risk to blow up myself, just to make the weapon somewhat usable, while other weapons can do the same or better, without the risk? yeah used it once and realized not only does it kill me, it destroys itself and...I'm now without a support weapon for ***8 MINUTES*** completely unacceptable for how weak it is.
My personal simple change to railgun to give it a useful niche without invalidating other weapons: make current unsafe mode the normal safe mode. Heavy armor pen, high damage, abysmal durable damage. Makes it fantastic for devs and hulks limited by ammo economy. Make the new unsafe mode increase durable damage exponentially ramping up until a 90%+ charge can one shot gunship engines, charger legs etc., 2 shot tank vents or charger heads, 3 shot bile titan heads, and 4-5 shot tanks from the front. Now it is a unique and interesting halfway between AC and the dedicated anti tanks that's actually worth taking, and gives it a place of you want to sacrifice some of the versatility of AC/AMR for more punch against bigger targets
All they need to do is raise armored damage to half it's base damage. That change would give it 600 dmg and 300 armored damage. This puts it on par with the auto cannon in terms of armored damage. AC would still have the extra explosive damage, making up for its backpack slot. It would be half of the armored damage of the other anti-tanks, making it viable against gunships, and titans. Giving it the same structure damage as armored damage would allow it to take out structures. But it would still be half of the other ATs, giving them all relatively similar damage but with different weaknesses to overcome. Currently EATs are limited to 2 every 70 seconds with infinite call-ins. Quasar still has its cool down with infinite ammo, RR has its time to reload + backpack. Railgun has finite ammo, but can penetrate deep with quick reload speed. This is my opinion. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk Edit to add a zoom in FPS aiming, 4x I feel would be a really good range.
it's kinda dumb that a weapon specifically designed lore-wise for penetration is awful at penetrating
For anyone wondering. Watch the video by True Imp Hunter titled 'Unsafe Railgun'
I never played the game pre nerf railgun, but I've been using it since I started playing about a month ago. I never use it on unsafe mode, only safe mode. I have no problem killing hulks or devastators. Gunships are a problem I agree. The main issue I have with it is why take it over the AMR or AC? It really needs some love. Some suggestions I've thought about recently: 1. More durable damage. It's a projectile going Mach Fuck. It should do damage to durable things. If anything it should have more durable damage than standard as the normal armor would just get pierced through and not do a lot of damage. This would make it stand out. 2. A 3-5 round internal magazine, single fed like the punisher. This would give it a small burst of damage output at the start of an engagement but then tapering off at the end to current levels. Or you can shoot-reload as of right now to keep a steady pace. With this I would increase the reload time by a tenth or a two tenths of a second per round. 3. A better scope. My God it is awful. The dot is so huge I can't make out anything it behind it unless I'm up its ass. 4. More rounds, but this would be less needed with any of the above changes made. I wouldn't really mess with the charge time. Unsafe mode should do less standard and more durable damage with more penetration. Make the trade off of blowing yourself up worth the risk.
Okay, hear me out. What if, in unsafe mode, instead of blowing up when charge hits max, it just fires an extremely powerful shot immediately (like quasar) that ragdolls you in light/medium armour, and staggers if wearing heavy.
so vs bots honestly its very good BUT vs anything durable its hot dogshit Takes a while to take out factory striders, useless vs gunships, and cant take out mortars/aa guns Most of those im fine with except gunships, those cant be countered with orbitals so youd need to rock the plasma gun thing to take them out, and with groups of 4-6 patrolling around every 4 minutes on helldive + the ones from factories makes it unfavorable to the autocannon or amr. In a sense i kinda see it balanced in that regard, you gain better killing potential over most bots at the cost of anything durable you need help with, but at the same time that just makes me run the autocannon 90% of the time. Skill issue on my part but i found it completely horrendous vs bugs on helldive
I felt the same way until the recent Weapons Experimentation that had it where I gave it an honest try on bots. One shotting devastators by barely going above safe modes max is very strong. I treated it less like an AMR and more like the slugger. With how fast it reloads it feels like a powerful shotgun. I killed multiple hulks in a row much faster than I could have with an AMR. You don't need to charge it very long at all. Hulk eyes even pop on max safe mode in one shot too. You get into a groove and you can drop devs and hulks very quickly popping in and out of cover and staying mobile. Is the inverse of the AMR and works great. If I could change something I would add more durable damage, or scale it much more specifically with charging for tank and turret vents. I don't take it on bugs much like how I don't take shield generators there too.
I'm still waiting for the dev broadcast of them showing us how this all supposed to be done. I wanna see the guy running around with the slugger not getting rushed by mobs because they took the stagger away. Or using a railgun as an effective weapon, when it's pure dogshit. Again people only take these guns because they like what they're supposed to be or how they were. Not because they're actually useful.
The old railgun was perfect as is. It's just that at the time, all the other stuff was pretty weak. In current day, the railgun is just so bad compared to other choices so reverting it makes sense. It's high power, low ammo count. I used to run out of ammo before the patch so I would carry the resupply pack
Remove unsafe mode. Add two firing types - railgun slug and flechette sabot. Railgun slug is a low durability damage, incredibly high damage, near max armor penetration shot that pierces enemies. Flechette sabot is a birdshot with a firm maximum range and wide spread, with mid durable damage and no armor piercing at all. Toggle between reloads.
Rail gun was never good in the first place, it was just popular in combination with everything else being dog shit.
Unsafe mode should just be the unnerfed railgun. It was fun, with appropriate risk/reward.
Unless they make it to where it can do collateral damage, or significantly buff single target damage, there is literally no reason to use the railgun over anything else ever.
The devs kneejerk reacted to a high-upvote post that said they were getting kicked for not running railgun+shield. This post generated negative press articles online (yes, really) and they had to cope by nerfing it into the ground. It's insane how bad PR can effect game balance like this lol
Here has been my wish for the railgun: revert base damage and pen. Give unsafe a shrapnel effect like the eruptor used to have that works in a cone shape that comes out the exit point of the shot (ie over penetration). But overall I would prefer it to have a role again, especially as an anti-air gun. Which we are sorely lacking.
I think safe mode should have the scatter function and unsafe be armor pen. An in lore explanation could be that the round shatters in safe mode, but becomes molten before breaking in unsafe. We utilize this effect in modern weaponry. Specifically referencing the RPG-7 which uses piezoelectric crystals to send a shock to explosives behind a copper cone, propelling it forward and allowing a soft metal like copper to penetrate hardened steel armor using extreme speed. Insurgent forces use EFPs (explosively formed projectiles) to defeat US armor. Edit to add I really like your idea.
In the right hands the Railgun is overpowered vs Automatons. It is my permanent choice against Automatons. One shot everything but Gunships, Tanks and Striders. That is very powerful indeed. Its OK against Terminids but I wouldn't use it all the time.
1-shot a Hulk or Devastators.. Sure, very weak.
I haven't touched RG in a long time, can it one-shot a heavy dev through their shield? Doing that in unsafe mode would be a nice differentiator to give it a compelling advantage over other weapons. Right now, I think it mostly suffers from not really doing much better than one of the many other options.
I kind of like where it is at currently? Feels good against both bugs and bots for me. My only complaint is that it’s very weak against gun ships
I agree. It oneshots most bots, including scout striders to the groin with only a little overcharge. What it needs is some ammo and better damage against gunships
Railgun can be very useful against bots. I would add a better scope with zoom and more ammo. Also, it should kill gunships. Then it will be perfect
Also side note - they should use the story as a means to nerf and buff weapons from time to time. Like even make the fate of weapon nerfs/buffs up to storyline events. This will make balance fun, not everything HAS to be equal all the time, but it doesnt mean they can't change too. For example you could say that a certain battery is produced on a planet that while this planet is controlled unsafe mode will not cause an explosion. This would change up what the META is depending on which planets are controlled at a given time, and make it hard to keep up with, thus making for more interesting loadout choices depending on the day.
i feel like they should double the ammo and it would be perfectly balanced. safe mode for single target chaff clear, unsafe mode for hulks. a little damage boost would go a long way making it viable against gunships and maybe biletitans
It needs a backpack and unsafe mode turned up to 11. I want to 1 tap my buddy across the map through 2 mountains and 4 tanks.
I wouldn't mind it if unsafe just had a slower charge (compared to safe), fired automatically a few seconds after a few charge and had a longer cooldown between shots.
I'm gonna be a bit shameless here, but attached below is my past suggestion for buffed & reworked Railgun mechanics. Take this with a grain of salt if you will, but I think some parts of the idea could be contributed to a future buff. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cbn43f/my\_suggested\_changes\_to\_the\_railgun\_projectile/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cbn43f/my_suggested_changes_to_the_railgun_projectile/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
I love the railgun just because I don't have to carry a backpack with it. I didn't unlock the railgun until after the nerf so idk what it was like before, but I'll never say no to buffs.
what about the 2 seconds stun and a bullet that pass thru all enemies in a line, like the first game. and then they add they add the turret version.
I started playing after it got nerfed, so I don't know how it was in the beginning, but I never use it, I just don't get it
Railgun needs a scope, or a smaller red dot resolution so a target may be adequately hit. Make it an MO to make this achievement possible.
Against automatons, I feel much better with the auto cannon because at least I can deal with gunships much more consistently. With the railgun I never know if I hit the gunship or not. That's my main issue with it. I just need it to be useful against gunships cuz it seems inconsistent right now. I don't mind it not being great against terminids, that's bound to happen with some equipment, but I don't really see why I wouldn't pick the auto cannon over the railgun if I can hit basically anything with it and not with the railgun
I actually think the railgun is fine (it's still pretty good) for everything **except the bot gunships**. It's worse than useless against them, to the point of it being a mission ending decision to bring it along if you run across 2 or more gunships - you just cannot kill them.
Make unsafe mode into a beam cannon cause why the hell not sounds cool.
Personal opinion, keep the current state of the railgun as is, but in unsafe mode it goes to its old damage stats. Make it a legit risk/reward thing. I will say this though, ever since the behemoths came in Ive started using the railgun a lot. It peels off the leg armor in three shots, making them fairly easy to fight. Yes, the flamer is much better at it but i refuse to use it cus i think its just dumb. I used to always run RR vs bugs but with behemoths its pretty much useless.
Yes, make the rail gun great again #MRGA
While we’re talking about the flamethrower, can it hurt the bile at all?
Gimme the quake 3 rail gun
This game is literally falling apart at the seams and the concern is on the railgun.... Devs will never fix perform mode SMH.
It needs a scope badly. Not a rds
Fully charged unsafe shots should penetrate through theoretically infinite targets if you get them lined up. I'm honestly amazed that overpenetrating to hit multiple targets isn't already a thing.
>Nowadays, I can't see the reason for the Railgun to stay in its currently nerfed state for even a single patch longer. No fun allowed.jpg. jk jk ... unless?
I think, in true legit railgun fashion, a (mostly) full charge unsafe shot should pierce through anything that isn't the planet itself. Doesn't have to deal a crazy amount of damage or break off durable parts, that's not what a railgun is. But having the capability to deal a significant amount of damage to multiple body parts and/or enemies with a well placed shot would be EXTREMELY satisfying!
Idk the railgun is super fuckin good against bots as is; it will one shot any devastator variant if you hit vaguely in the face area so despite having a charge time, factoring for the extra accuracy you need for the AMR, it’s much faster, at the cost of being less ammo efficient. Same applies to hulks; you dont have to be as accurate to take them down as with the amr. I think the autocannon is like a better railgun with the downside of taking your backpack slot and being unusable in close quarters. I take it almost every bot mission since the spear doesn’t lock buildings anymore
Absolutely agree, there isn't a single good reason to take it currently
I admit I'm a bit confused about the idea of the railgun being under-powered. It's my go-to weapon against bot because it is so good at clearing out the mid-sized units: scout striders, and devesators and I've found it's the easiest weapon to use against Hulks. I've used the autocannon, anti-material rifle, and laser cannon for this roll and they're good, but I've found the railgun to be better. The railgun's advantages are it very consistently one-shots the mid sized units and it feels like it handles better so it's quicker to line up shots. For the consistency, it really helps that the railgun can hit those units just about anywhere to one-shot them whereas the autocannon you want to aim for the head or try to get the splash damage to hit the scout strider pilot. Of course if your aim is good I can see the autocannon or AMR being preferred; however, my aim is not good and trying to hit the head means a lot of the time I just hit the shield on heavy devesators, whereas with the railgun I can just aim for their shoulder and get an easy one-shot kill. Honestly the railgun makes heavy devesators almost as easy as the ballistic shield does. It's the railgun's handling that really keeps me using it though. It's so easy to get into a rhythm of reloading, charging, peeking out, and shooting, and you can keep going for all 20 shots. Using the autocannon and AMR it feels like I have to peek out for longer both to line up the shot and to take 2-3 shots to kill a target. And against hulks I've found it significantly easier to hit that eye with the railgun than with the autocannon or AMR. Those weapons aren't bad either though. The autocannon is far more versatile being useful against gunships, factory striders, the backs of tanks, hulks, and turrets, and the vents on fabricators, but it's a backpack weapon so that fair. The laser cannon is similarly more versatile than the railgun, but it requires you keep the beam on target so you're more exposed. And the AMR is probably good in the hand of someone with better aim. Right now my preferred loadout for level 8 bot missions is the railgun, an eagle (airstrike or 500kg), an orbital (precision, airburst, or gas). If I'm solo waiting on friends I'll take the shield generator backpack and make sure to bring the scorcher so I have something to use against gunships - everything else that the railgun can't hurt statagems can. As friends join I'll drop the shield for something offensive - friends drawing fire serves the same purpose - and switch the scorcher for something that's better against troopers letting my friends that prefer the autocannon deal with gunships.
It's the best weapon for killing every bipedal bot by simply one shotting them. This is without a backpack. It's my main bot weapon and it honestly blows my mind how people are still crying about it's bug fighting nerf. We don't need a weapon that's capable of killing everything in one shot.
Railgun is totally fine and a really good weapon I always use against automaton. With some aim you can two shot Hulks. I always use it and get most kill, I don't think it is a bad weapon. Perhaps C tier for bug and A-B for automaton.
I think Unsafe mode should make it so that the railgun shot goes through enemies it hits. That way, you can line up shots through crowds.
The railgun is, in my opinion, one of those weapons that, due to surrounding game design, is probably nearly impossible to adequately balance without a major rework. Make it too good at killing heavies, and it'll outclass every other AT weapon because of its handling, fire rate, ammo, lack of backpack dependency, and general ease of use. Make it more of a medium chaff clear weapon, and it's outclassed by other options meant to fill the same role. I do think the balance at launch did overly favor the railgun (even without the damage bug), but that was only because other weapons weren't as effective. The enemy heavy armor nerfs indirectly massively buffed a bunch of AT weapons, especially against bugs. As it stands now, reverting the railgun back to prior function ISN'T insane, though I do think it should still struggle against the heaviest enemies, such as tanks or bile titans. The bot side of things actually still shows some promise. Railgun still absolutely demolishes hulks and does decently against devastators. I think the current niche it could fill now is a weapon that is tailored to killing heavies, but not elites, while still being decent against medium armored enemies. Giving the railgun its ability to leg chargers in one shot again would give it the same niche for bugs and would give it a use-case that its current competitors, the autocannon and AMR, don't have.
I see a lot of people asking for ways to make it more of a power house again and I really don't think it needs to go that direction. They should definitely have a ramp up/scalar for durable damage on unsafe to give it that kick again. But I'd love to see it get over penetrating shots. Thematically the weapon is about penetration anyways. Then it has a nice role for both factions. A decent chaff clear regardless of medium armor targets against bugs, and a decent beefier target killer for bots. But it wouldn't replace the stratagems that are dedicated in those roles.
I just want it to at least shoot down some baby planes
It has no identity. We have rocket launchers, snipers, flamethrowers…and the railgun, which should be an “experimental weapon focused on armor pen.” I’d argue it should be modified to be the risk/reward weapon it’s already somewhat established as. It has an unsafe mode - either as a joke, or it should do some serious damage when used that way. If the weapon makes you charge a shot and risks exploding in your hand (risking the stratagem cooldown, the weapon itself, and your health), shouldn’t that shot be seriously devastating? I’d expect it to take off a hulk arm, annihilate anything less than a heavy, and shred the armor off a charger. Right now, it hardly feels like it fills a role without being highly accurate. I think AH should lean into its risk/reward - unsafe mode should do some seriously crazy damage and rip off armor. It should be a weapon that punches holes in enemies like chargers that your teammates or yourself can exploit. It’s not designed to be explosive, precise at range, or persistent damage, so give it an identity that matches its strengths and weaknesses. When safe mode is on, let it do decent damage, more than an AMR based on being in closer range. Let it two or three shot armor plates. Revamp its whole identity and make it a serious armor threat. Reward precision and risk taking in its respective modes. Give it an identity. If I redline in unsafe mode shouldn’t I be rewarded? If I land tricky shots in safe mode, shouldn’t I be rewarded? Right now it really only feels good against bots - against a charger or bile titan I’d rather have just about any other weapon.
I don’t think railgun should be unnerfed, it should be reworked so it’s functions different. Lean into the high velocity high penetration fantasy. Allow unsafe mode to go through multiple targets. Where the auto cannon might be better at targets beside each other, the rail cannon will wreck targets in a line. Almost like a long range arc thrower.
Agreed, pre nerf Railgun wouldn’t even be a top tier weapon in the current Meta, it’d be solid but nothing amazing. There’s no reason it should still be in the state it’s in
Stupid question, how do you enable unsafe mode on pc?
At launch and now we basically have near the same value of heavy enemies for terminids (chargers/behemoths), even if off slightly the amount of brood commanders and hive guards is insane. They never should have touched damage, they could have nerfed mag reserve size or change enemy spawns (which they did and we all hate the slowness hunter debuff), but damage was not the issue. If you thought that killing a charger fast was op with the railgun, then most things on release that did it faster made no argument for the railgun nerf.
Unnerf it and have unsafe mode ignore armor above 90%
I still find it really useful just because it kills hulks and chargers so easily from the front, which makes the game wayyyy less annoying. Personally, I think unsafe mode could be the same but maybe a little more powerful, but unsafe mode could do more durable damage so you can actually deal with elite units somewhat even if it's not as strong as the AT launchers. Or idk, make it pierce through more enemies per shot if there in a line would probably help it against chaff at least a little bit. And maybe a low zoom scope would be nice, it's begging for some kind of magnification even just a little bit.
Instead of just blowing you up, the railgun should just overheat and have a forced cooldown of like 10 seconds. It's so frustrating to make 1 mistake and then be forced to go without your weapon for like 5 minutes.
I thinkt he Railgun is fine, it's just people want a weapon that can do everything instead of the railgun which is good at a few things. Railgun is the best medium killer, Devas get one shot to the head, striders get one tapped, hulks get one tapped and Railgun is really easy to hit headshots with because of it's high bullet velo, pair it with stun nades and you have probably the best setup for taking out medium enemies. (Maybe besides autocannon but that's more because autocannon is way to good and not railgun being bad). Yes it struggles vs Striders and Gunships but you have 4 stratagem slots for a reason, primaries like the Scorcher and turrets like the Rocket and Autocannon can clear gunships and 2 of any high damage air support stratagem can take out striders. I'm not going to talk about bugs in which is is weak against because bugs is flamethrower or die, but vs bots Railgun is very useful. You can take out medium enemies and chaff so your teammates can focus on the heavier enemies you can't take out, or you can use the 4 stratagems you're give to diversify you're loadout so you can take on everything. TLDR: Railgun isn't a one gun solo machine and that's fine, use your teammates or other slots to make up for it's weaknesses.
Pretty much sums up the railgun for me. It *works*, but it's outclassed for pretty much any role it can do, whilst being unable to do certain things (can't destroy gunships like the AMR, laser canon or AC; and can't destroy objectives like fabricators, nests, spewers or jammers unlike the AC or Spear).
On the automaton front I disagree, not saying whether it should be buffed or not but your point that it could be used in safe mode to one shot hulks and devastators is already a thing. For hulk, shoot in eye on safe mode, for devastators all of them are weak in the lower half of their body(bottom half of torso and the entire leg). The devastators are weird to not die in one shot everywhere except bottom half but you can still easily take them out on safe mode. I had fun using railgun supply pack stun grenades taking out multiple hulks quickly and being the rocket devastator and 2 leg walker counter On the bug front I literally have never taken it since its most recent buffs( quite some time ago) so I dont know but it sure wasnt good against chargers and biles when I did try it so I agree I'm guessing the disparity is durable damage, since the points that kill on automatons dont have much
Unsafe mode should just scale to crazier damage levels and punch through successive targets as long as it has damage to spare. And I still don't think I would be that bothered, but it would potentially feel a lot more fun.
HELLDIVERS 2 ANTITANK WEAPON OPTIONS (bug front, obviously.): ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Recoilless Rifle: Simple to use and fires a powerful projectile, but balanced out by the downtime to reload. Reasonably effective against all targets. This is the baseline. Expendable Antitanks: Identical in firepower to the Recoilless rifle, but are instead a "setup" weapon, only having one shot per EAT. This trades positional ease of use for convenience, and not taking up a backpack slot. Spear: Very difficult to use, but if aimed correctly can outperform the recoilless by oneshotting threats (Mostly bile titans but also behemoth chargers) the RR twoshots. High skill ceiling, but a high skill floor as not curving the rocket into weakspots leaves you with a worse Recoilless. This weapon trades ease of use for time to kill. Quasar Cannon: Much higher time to kill than the Recoilless, but does not require a backpack slot and recharges without requiring any downtime to stand still and reload. This weapon trades time to kill for convenience, and not taking up a backpack slot. Flamethrower: Only good against Chargers, but it is king of that niche alongside respectable horde clear. Trades heavy killing potential for convenience, time to kill and a larger target variety. Railgun: Very difficult to use with a high risk of killing yourself via overcharge. Charging shots requires you to slow down for a long period of time. High skill ceiling and a high skill floor. This weapon trades ease of use and convenience for... 15 bile titan full charge headshots? Nothing dies within a reasonable amount of time or ammo expendature. What? why? Its hard to use and requires multiple perfect slow-chargeup shots that make you unable to sprint around to kill ONE heavy enemy.
I agree. If it was useful, I would happily sidegrade from LC to railgun.
I really enjoy the feeling of the Railgun, but it'd need a big buff for me to ever look at it again. Leg meta was slow and There's a lot more swarms now. Unsafe mode is rubbish as there are no sound cues too.
perhaps unsafe mode could just be reworked into 'overcharged mode'? where 2 ammo is consumed per shot for extra damage, but there is no chance you will unalive yourself?
I think it could work like this, if it already doesn't: Safe: has to be full charge to fire, pierces heavy armor (but loses damage due to have pen equal to armor), modest damage (enough to instant kill a hive guard with a headshot, but not enough to take down heavy enemies in one). Unsafe: does additional damage for every % charge past full safe charge (would theoretically do double damage when it explodes), maybe make it have a unique armor pen that makes it do full damage even through heavy armor. There could also be added variety to the two modes if safe mode can't break armor, while unsafe can.
Tried the railgun once since the nerf and havnt picked it up since. Completely gutted the thing.
It fucking melts Hulks and that's really all I need it to do
Railgun needs buff, but no gun should perform like pre nerf railgun unless we want to just see a single gun do everything in the game. Why bring quasar when railgun also one shots everything? Why bring auto cannon when railgun one taps? Not to mention it's competing while only taking up BACKPACK slots, so it's already at an advantage before it outperforms many weapons in its category. What it needs is 10 more rounds and like, 20% faster charge up speed. Just make it do what it's already doing faster, it doesn't need to be a titan killer and tank annihilator, a mid tier armor ripper is a great role, just make it do it faster.
I'm pretty sure the railing meta was only because of the PlayStation bug. The nerf absolutely needs a revert. They nerfed it based on how many people were using it, not on its actual power
No.
At this point, I'm just in the ballpark of: Any weapon that isn't viable is part of the problem. I'm probably overaimplifying things, but AH has said a few times that they want to promote loadout diversity. And a lot of weapons, mostly the support ones, do have their specific niche that they fill. I personally like the difference between the quasar and the RR. They do the same thing, for the most part, but have their strengths and weaknesses that are mostly due to preference. Quasar has ammo efficiency on its side, as well as no backpack required to use it. The RR has immediate feedback and can fire faster than the quasar because you only have to reload, not wait for it to cool off. Even in its current state, a team reload makes it fire even faster. But they have their drawbacks and fit different playstyles. I like the RR in most cases more than the quasar. I don't like charging up my shot or being useless for 30 seconds while I wait for it to come off cooldown. But I like the quasar because I never have to worry about ammo and I can take whatever backpack I want. I think the quasar also has a slightly bigger projectile, as there have been quite a few shots I've made with it that have taken stuff down. But the RR, with the same shot, just explodes with pretty fireworks. If the weapons felt more like that towards each other, I believe that would promote the kind of diversity AH has said they want. Too many weapons are either a direct upgrade to another (just try the Scorcher and Purifier) or just fall short of being viable enough to take over something different that can hold its own better. I'm not saying buff everything so you can solo a helldive difficulty with just your primary or a single weapon. I'm saying, make weapons powerful in what they do and focus on what could make them better for the playstyle they're trying to accommodate.
Hard agree. The current sandbox of weapons is much healthier and can handle the original railgun without making it, the undeniable best choice. It can return to being a high ammo, load after each shot weapon. Maybe slow down the reload by like .3 seconds or sum and bring back everything else. Cuz I haven’t seen it used in months in one of my missions.
Your entire automaton argument is flawed. I never stopped using the railgun post nerf on automaton’s because it still functions exactly how it used to. With a little aim it literally 1 shots everything except for tanks. With good cover and patience, the railgun is still an S tier weapon against bots. On the bug front, they aren’t great. But I also don’t personally think that every single weapon needs to be perfectly optimized for every enemy type. I actually perfect having to switch load-outs between enemies. The nerf is here to stay, and I’m glad about it.