Helldivers 2’s community has been asking for a buff to the flamethrower, rather than a nerf like the flame weapon received in the Freedom Upgrade update, and Arrowhead appears to be making that happen, now offering more information on how it plans to crank up the in-game heat again.
Last week, the studio gave us a brief update on the plans for the update, now known as Patch 01.001.007. “We are also working on further improvements to the flamethrower weapon,” it wrote at the time, but here’s some info on what exactly those improvements will be.
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“We heard you loud and clear, and the Flamethrower’s damage has been increased by 33%,” Arrowhead said in the first of a series of posts ahead of the September 17 patch’s release, providing more details about the update. “The Flamethrower’s mechanics will be restored to how they were prior to the ‘Free Upgrade’ update, and the flame weapon will now deal damage to heavier enemies such as Chargers, Bile Titans, Impalers, and Hulks.”
“We just went back,” developer Niklas Malmborg said of the upcoming changes in a brief video chat with Arrowhead chief business officer Johan Pilestedt, “and there are some things that need to be addressed, but this is the right thing to do.” The two went on to talk about how you can blast fire at giant bugs with the added armor penetration these weapons are getting in the update, with Pilestedt likening a fight with the Hulk to a “cooking showdown.”
As mentioned before, this doesn’t seem to be the last information we get about the comping update, with Arrowhead writing in a tweet: “One enhancement a day to keep the bugs away. Excited to share more details about the upcoming update, which will include major changes designed to improve y our experience in Helldivers 2. From now on, we’ll provide more and more information about the September 17th update every day.”
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Following the announcement, Pilestedt urged players to wait for more updates on Discord, while also offering some explanation for the change. “I’ve seen a lot of people commenting that changing numbers etc takes a long time,” he wrote, “and while that’s true individually, the update we’re rolling out now is part of a larger, holistic move to recalibrate how the game plays.
“We realize that the reason many of you are excited about tools like the flamethrower, railgun, flamethrower, etc. is that based on the descriptions of those weapons, they can be more effective against heavily armored enemies than they should be. As a result, the changes we need to make are a bit bigger than just bringing the flamethrower back to where it was, and also bringing the other weapons up to the level you (and I) think they should have been from the beginning.
“The gameplay will be richer with this update,” he concluded, “with more tools that will have varying degrees of effectiveness, and specialized tools that will be better at dealing with their targets.”
Are you excited to try out your favorite flamethrower again when the next major update for Hellraiser 2 arrives? Let us know below!