Attention, Helldivers.
A hotfix is planned for Wednesday, May 6. This will revert the Hive Guard and fix an issue introduced in Patch 6.2.1 where armor values were incorrectly swapped between the Legs and Claws.
Updated Hive Guard stats:
Main Body
- Armor increased from 1 → 2
- Health increased from 375 → 500
Head
- Armor decreased from 4 → 3
Front Legs
- Armor increased from 2 → 3
Claws
- Armor decreased from 3 → 1
We are reviewing player feedback, including durability damage, so next week we will also address some of these questions and others which our founder has received in various forums.
i play on ~~oshaune~~ edit: omicron pretty much exclusively. i run eruptor/stalwart. i noticed pretty much no change to my playstyle with the hiveguard change: if i dont punch em in the face i cut the legs from under em. i really dont understand the fuss about that part. that said, i dont understand why thr change was made in the first place. it addresses a problem nobody had in a way nobody asked for, as far as i can tell. im a bit upset about the durability damage changes, though. bots and illuminates are in a good place durability damage wise, so we're increasing dd across the board? dafuq? as if frv wasnt fragile enough already.
I think for a section of the player base, like yourself, it wouldn't change much. But if you used medium pen (including sentries) it means a bit (MG) or a lot (sentries, maxigun). It kinda just made a couple loadout options worse (not fully unviable or anything, but worse). And like you said the main question I've seen people ask is: why?
And yeah, durable damage is baffling. Just the melee damage and acid being buffed would be questionable imo, but maybe it's needed. Whatever. But why say bot and illuminate mech damage is fine and then buff it anyway? And why not even address how that might affect the FRV, the Gator, etc.? Probably because they didn't consider them, but if they did they should say that because obviously the players will have concerns.
Also: state the damned numbers.
Eruptor/crossbow was already the meta, doing this just reinforced it. Anyone running medium pen would've immediately noticed the change. Hell, I dropped in day 1 of the patch after getting the new SMG (gallant, it's medium pen) and I genuinely thought the penetration was broken because it was bouncing off hive guard faces. They're one of the few enemy bugs that actually had medium pen, and were the most prolific of the few.
Primaries in general are kind of useless against bugs, you burn a whole clip to kill a handful that are replaced by two dozen more. Hence why explosive primaries are meta; they actually do something to stem the tide.