Helldivers 2 Players Call for Weapon Buffs So They Can Ditch This Meta Build

Helldivers 2 players hope for a meta shakeup.

Helldivers 2 has plenty of weapons and Strategems for players to choose from, but like any FPS, some weapons stand out more than others. In the case of Helldivers 2, "some weapons" is really just "one weapon," and that one weapon is the SG-225 Breaker Shotgun. It deals an incredible amount of damage, fires quite quickly, and has armor-piercing capabilities, too. Couple that with the ability to impact multiple enemies at once due to its spread and the fact that it's accessible pretty early on in Helldivers 2 after investing a few Medals into the base Warbonds track and you've got a recipe for a pretty powerful gun.

So, what do players want? Surprisingly enough, the calls from Helldivers 2 players aren't to have the Breaker nerfed. Instead, people are hoping for other Helldivers 2 weapons to get buffed. The current sentiment within the Helldivers 2 community isn't so much that the Breaker is overpowered, but it's more so that other weapons are simply far weaker than the Breaker, and buffing other options would allow players to more comfortably experiment with their builds.

A highly upvoted post within the Helldivers 2 subreddit shared a few days ago illustrates the meta situation well. The most popular Helldivers 2 weapon right now is definitely the Breaker, and a strong Strategem often used thanks to its piercing power and popularity gained through streamers is the Railgun. If you bring those and a Shield Generator Pack, the rest of your loadout is basically all personal preference since you'll be covered no matter what you encounter.

The default loadout at higher ranks, really hoping for some balance changes to shake things up
by u/YobaiYamete in Helldivers

"This has been the ONLY primary weapon that I have found to be perfect for Midrange/Close range. It has a super tight spread, great damage and it's full auto," one player said about the Breaker in a separate post. "Literally every other primary weapon feels like a BB gun next to this thing. Can we get a slight increase on damage for the other primary weapons to bring them in line with the breaker."

One weapon in particular that players want to see buffed is the Flamethrower. While spewing streams of flames at Terminids looks like something right out of a movie, it's far less effective than one might think. It looks cool, sure, and it can be effective at controlling choke points when bugs are distracted or have to go the long way to get to a Helldiver, but the fact that it doesn't stun enemies and you run the risk of setting yourself on fire makes it a hard sell compared to something more straightforward.

And buffs probably are on the way for Helldivers 2 weapons among other changes, but the game hasn't gotten an update of that nature just yet. Because so many people have been trying to play Helldivers 2, the updates the game's gotten so far have been more focused on improving the stability of servers and making it so that players can't sit idly in the game to hold their spot while someone else could be playing. Until those balance changes are released, players can simply embrace the meta like many have or can shun it and create their own builds that feel best which will hopefully be even stronger in the future.