Snipers blow chunks in Helldivers 2, and here’s why.
The Diligence does a pathetic 165 damage and basically isn’t worth using, especially since it can’t penetrate armor. It probably is similar to a 5.56 rifle which means it should be medium armor penetrating at least. It’s literally outperformed by almost every other weapon in the game for either penetration, damage, or both.
The Diligence Counter Sniper does 200 damage, which is OK, but still pathetic. Penetrates medium armor, but is embarrassed by the fact that the Senator does the same 200 damage and penetrates heavy armor. I’ve got a news flash for Helldivers devs - there is no universe where a revolver does more penetration than a fucking sniper rifle. The Counter Sniper is probably a .50 BMG rifle or similar, and if I shoot a Charger or Hulk in the face, it should immediately sit right down on its ass. The Senator, since it fires a slower round, should be the one doing medium penetration.
The Eruptor is pay-to-win, since it’s the only usable sniper rifle in the game, but it’s crippled by short range(the round explodes after a short distance) - so why bother putting a sniper scope on it at all? It’s the only rifle capable of clearing out medium bugs just fine, but not due to precise sniper shots - due to exploding rounds. The rounds bounce off Bile Titans unless you hit them juuuust right - but it can one-shot a Factory Strider from beneath(as it should). It’s utterly incapable of damaging a Charger at all, unless for some reason the Charger is heading away from you.
Here’s how sniper rifles should work: the recoil should be horrendous unless you’re prone. The Diligence should penetrate medium armor. The Counter Sniper should penetrate heavy armor. The Eruptor should penetrate heavy armor, stun, and clear the surrounding area with the explosion. There is very little, if any, armor that we know of that can stop a .50 BMG, so there’s basically no bug or bot that should be able to take Counter Sniper rounds or greater and keep walking.
Sniper rifles are meant to be slow firing, high damage weapons that reward precision, and penetrate effortlessly. I should be able to find a spot, see a long distance with the scope and ping for my team, and land shots in critical hit points at range and bring large enemies to their knees while my team is working on crowd control. Unfortunately, most of the sniper rifles in this game are fucking useless, because the devs feel like you’re supposed to bring a rocket launcher instead of a precision rifle.
Signed, the teammate who wants to play as a sniper, but can’t, because there are no good long range rifles in the game.
I also posted this rant to Steam Community if you want to discuss there.
As someone that almost exclusively uses snipers against bugs and bots alike, and plays bugs probably 90% of my time, I could not disagree more. This diligence is definitely not as punchy as the CS, but it’s great for groups of chaff. The CS is amazing, and I’m consistently getting 500+ kills and out performing the rest of my 3 man team. With the way I play them, the eruptor and diligence are nearly interchangeable, and I get a ton of kills either way.
How? My loadout is a jump pack and either a commando, EAT, or quasar. My strategems are usually a 500 kg for emergencies when my AT is down and an orbital Gatling for helping manage big breaches. For reference, I only play on difficulty 8-10, depending on how casual my group is feeling on any day.
Step 1: Find bugs/objective
Step 2: Jump pack on top of a rock, or a building if one isn’t available. Worst case scenario where you can’t find solid high ground, use the jump pack often to reposition to a clear line of sight with plenty of time to stand and shoot.
Step 3: Use your sniper for its optimal use. Diligence? Closer range picking off hunters, scavs, and warriors. CS, the more powerful option imo, target warriors (one shot head), hunters (one shot head and body), and medium targets (hive guard and alpha commanders, both 3 shots head). This thing feels like the old breaker, but at range. It just destroys. If you’re using the eruptor, shoot it into groups. Don’t focus alpha commanders too much, let the shrapnel deal with them.
Step 4: Profit. Use your primary to deal with patrols before they can get close enough to breach, use your secondary revolver to kill alpha commanders and hive guards rapidly and while saving ammo, and use your anti tank to deal with any heavy threats ahead of time. Anything gets close enough to breach, drop a Gatling barrage on the breach use AT or 500 kgs to kill stray heavies.
I usually finish a mission with no deaths, and always with by far the most kills while running this loadout. Snipers cannot deal with all threats, but they’re excellent at thinning out enemy groups with very high ammo efficiency.
And I’m not even mentioning bots. Against bots, all the snipers kick ASS. My CS is one shotting entire patrols of devastators from miles away, my eruptor clears patrols of all kinds easily, and the AT options are so much more consistent against bots. Bots are too easy with snipers. And definitely run the revolver for a low ammo pocket sniper that can deal with rapid hunter packs and charging alpha commander patrols alike.
TLDR: Snipers are really good, they’re my main choice, and I’m out performing everyone else. If it’s against bots, they’re even more incredible.
They’re not called sniper rifles. They’re categorized in your loadout as “Marksman rifles”. Important distinction. Marksman rifles are usually in lighter calibers than true “sniper rifles”, as they’re meant for shorter ranges.
The AMR, as someone else mentioned, is an anti-materiel sniper rifle. Now, I agree that the counter sniper should have heavy pen and the diligence should have medium, because it would make them both more useful on bugs and bots alike (though mostly bugs, they’re already great on bots). But they should absolutely be doing less damage than the AMR, and that’s gonna be a hard balance to strike – how would you be able to justify the AMR’s existence and use if a primary weapon could do what it does?
OP completely fails to recognize the AMR’s existence, but seems to think the Marksman Rifles should themselves be absolutely devastating to CHARGERS. If the Diligence Counter-Sniper is, in OPs world, supposed to be a .50 BMG, one can only assume the AMR should be at a minimum a 20mm cannon, at which point the Autocannon has to go up to, what, 50mm? And things like the Recoiless Rifle and other dedicated anti-armor weapons should just gib a charger with a single body shot.
Apart from ignoring that the AMR is exactly the weapon he wants, and his mistaken identification of DMR-style weapons as “Sniper Rifles,” OP just doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He states “There is very little, if any, armor that we know of that can stop a .50 BMG” which is just so hilariously wrong that that statement alone should flag the whole post as nonsense. We’re not just talking about plates that can fit in a human-sized plate carrier chest rig, we’re talking about alien bugs the size of an up-armored garbage truck. We’re talking about literal walking tanks, and for that matter actual tanks.
Yeah, I didn’t want to say it quite so harshly, but while I would welcome a heavy penetrating primary rifle that can punch holes in those armored up garbage trucks, I can’t help but think it would just negate any reason to bring the AMR. They’d have to give the AMR a buff it frankly doesn’t need (really, it’s good where it is) to keep it relevant – and then yes, indeed, it might as well be firing 20mm.
also yeah even a bullet that can (or should) punch holes in bug armor should not be capable of penetrating literal, actual tanks; as tank armor has outgrown what is capable of being penetrated by something man-portable (or, well – shoulder-firing, closed breech guns, to be more specific) since the 1940s. An overambitious ant, yes, sure, punching holes through thick chitin I can believe; but not engineered thick steel plate.
Yeah super weird take. The diligence and CS have been buffed over what they used to be, and they were absolutely viable before. The senator having heavy pen is kinda weird, but it only has 6 rounds to balance that out. A heavy pen 15 round mag would be kinda silly. Plus they’ve stripped armor from devaststors making them easier to kill than ever, and basically every strategem has armor pen now.
OP if you wanna feel like a god and solo everything with a primary, play on 3 or lower. Otherwise bring AT or aim for the face. Or bring the fire breaker to bugs, that legit kills everything smaller than a titan.
The Diligence is a DMR (or SPR), it excels at accurate fire without losing too much in terms of ammo capacity and sustained rate of fire. Use it against bots, it is a surprisingly good chaff weapon and can take good care of devastators if you aim is true. Could you just use a Tenderiser instead? Yeah, probably.
The CS is something I never bothered with - I suppose it is a bit better suited for Devastators and maybe shooting the joints on a scout strider?
The Erupton is … special. Why you classify it as a sniper rifle is beyond me, but you do you. I also wonder what you were expecting from a sniper rifle when shooting bugs - enemies that will quite easily overwhelm you with a combination of sheer numbers and armoured support (can’t kill hunters if you need to dodge a Charger). The AMR will take good care of the medium weights, such as Brood/Alpha Commanders and Hive Guards and can still take on Hulks and Chargers in a pinch. No clue why you think that a rifle-calibre or intermediate cartridge should take out armoured units.
Tl,DR: Hard disagree on your take.
There’s the AMR, which is the only “sniper” in the game imo. But it takes up a stratagem slot and isn’t nearly as penetrating as I’d like it to be. I only really use it if I find it laying around in the wild.
Tbh I think the whole game is designed away from a sniper play style, which is a little disappointing. But I’m willing to forgive it with how fun it is otherwise.
yeah tbh I think OP’s playing the wrong game if they’re looking for a sniping experience. Sniping usually involves staying a long ways away from the action, HD2 has enemies constantly spawning on or very near your position. The only way to effectively snipe when that happens is to get really really good at repositioning to higher ground really quickly, and sometimes that isn’t really an option, jump pack be damned, depending on map conditions. In fact frequently, even if you are on higher ground where bugs shouldn’t be able to get to you, they will often phase upwards through the terrain to reach you.
On bots, sure, they can engage from longer distances, but the same problem applies – they drop in pretty close, making whatever advantage you have from distance, disappear.
Yeah, with the spawn distances and the amount of enemies, there’s very little space for a true sniping experience. Plus with the destructible environment, high ground is very rarely guaranteed. Plus, the camera shake mechanics aren’t the most conducive to sniping. I do think that if OP wants a more sniper-ey experience, they’re in their right to request it since it’s a PvE game and the most important thing is to have fun. Maybe they could introduce some more variety into the sniper lineup, like different types of rounds. Or maybe a new planet that’s got lots of close spaced high ground where staying at ground level means you get boxed in by enemies
Shit, I hope we get programmable ammo for the AMR. Being able to select explosive rounds vs heavy penetrating rounds vs EMP/stun rounds would be rad.
