After nearly a month of community complaints and patch notes, the Helldivers 2 Terminid problem is finally behind us. On the game’s highest difficulties, Divers no longer have to worry about armored bugs to anywhere near the extent they did before.
Since the game’s launch, the largest complaints from the Helldivers 2 community have concerned the Chargers and Bile Titans on Terminid planets. These hulking, armored behemoths are responsible for many player kills over the game’s month-long lifespan. And on higher difficulties, these things go from boss fights to basically as common as Scavengers, making their durability and damage ever-present during missions.
Thanks to March 12’s Patch 1.000.102, it’s now harder to get overwhelmed by these titanic beetles. A simple spawn rate reduction on them from Difficulties Seven to Nine is the first anti-bug factor introduced. The game’s hardest difficulties have replaced some Charger and Titan spawns with chaff—Hunters, Warriors, and the like. This means you need to spend less time kiting a Titan around and more time clearing the myriad of tiny enemies from your feet.
This is less of a hard nerf to Terminids and more a thematic overriding—there should be more small bugs crawling all over you than huge beetles, after all. It also improves the usefulness of crowd-clear options like Eagle Cluster Bombs and Strafing Runs, which otherwise couldn’t really cut it against armored enemy spam. And it’s not like those Hunter Slows make Chargers and Titans any less threatening, even if there are less of them.
However, that’s not all that’s changed with the refrigerators with legs. The devs noticed the strategy of shooting leg armor and proceeding to clear a Charger through their exposed thighs instead of more obvious weakpoints on their bodies. That won’t be the dominant strategy now—Chargers’ heads are now much easier kill-shots for explosive weapons, such as Recoilless Rifles and Expendable Anti-Tanks. This really upgrades these otherwise hard-to-use rocket launchers since being able to headshot the fewer bulky enemies running around gives them a very valuable niche. The Railgun and other armor piercing options can kill Charger heads easier as well, but those are far from one-shots.
The patch didn’t nerf the health of the Charger—only their head. Don’t expect to have an easier time shooting their butt or anything like that. Their legs are unchanged, though, so you can still kill a Charger by explosively stubbing their toe to death.
The patch also touched on some Stratagem and UI issues. Automatons were left untouched, and an annoying bug which caused Patriot Exosuit to self-detonate on turning is still around.
