Last week saw the new Servants of Freedom Warbond released in Helldivers 2, with each of its new weapons and stratagems offering some pretty extreme firepower in exchange for equally extreme risk to the user and any allies near them. The B-100 Portable Hellbomb, for example, is a wearable backpack nuke that only gives you 10 seconds to get clear of its blast radius once you drop it to take out an objective, while the single-shot GP-31 Ultimatum grenade pistol fires a heavy Fallout-style mini nuke with all the destructive — and teamkilling — potential of an Eagle 500kg Bomb. Even the battle pass' new armor sets are absurdly dangerous to drop with, as they make their wearer explode and obliterate anything around them upon death.
Much of the community's attention has been focused on the ridiculousness of the Hellbomb backpack and the Ultimatum in the days following Servants of Freedom's launch, but personally, I've been addicted to the LAS-17 Double-Edge Sickle — a variant of the regular rapid-fire laser primary with extra stopping power, but also the hilarious side effect of burning the wielder and eventually even lighting them on fire if fired continuously for long enough. With the right setup (the Vitality Enhancement booster and fire-resistant armor) I've been able to take full advantage of its extra oomph while almost completely mitigating its drawbacks, so I was pretty ecstatic to learn that a new patch released this morning made it even better.
The update is a small one and only includes a few adjustments and bugfixes, but the change it made to the Double-Edge Sickle is actually quite significant. Before, the weapon had flat medium armor penetration and a static damage value of 55 regardless of its heat buildup. Developer Arrowhead says this was a bug, though, and now, it starts off with only light armor penetration, but builds up to where it was before at the 26-50% heat level, gets a damage bump up to 70 at 51-90% heat, and fully ramps up to heavy armor penetration at 91%+ heat (the part where it barbecues the user).
Basically, the Double-Edge's initial effectiveness got a small penetration nerf, but once it heats up, that bad boy slaps like Lady Liberty's backhand. It was already an excellent high-risk, high-reward weapon my friends and I were having a ton of fun building around, but now it's an absolute monster that can rip through all but the heaviest enemy units with sustained fire. Slot it into a Flamethrower loadout with flame-resistant armor, Vitality Enhancement, and a Supply Pack for constant stim refills, and you'll have a grand time.
The other big change in Patch 01.002.103 is a nerf to the aforementioned Ultimatum that stops it from getting an extra reserve shot from the Hellpod Optimization booster and the Siege Ready armor passive. This one is definitely a bummer, though I can totally understand why Arrowhead doesn't want players to be able to shoot two 500kg-level explosives before needing to find an ammo resupply. Ammo packs aren't terribly hard to come by in Helldivers 2's large open maps, anyway, so I have a feeling this nerf will barely be felt in gameplay.
"It’s not our intent to release Warbond items that need immediate balancing, and we understand that any changes we make can evoke strong feelings. We want to assure you that we’re actively listening to your feedback and, as with any of our previous updates, we’ll keep monitoring the situation closely," Arrowhead wrote in the news post for the update. "Your input is invaluable, so please continue to share your thoughts on these changes. We’re always open to making further adjustments if needed!"
Beyond tweaks to the Double-Edge Sickle and the Ultimatum, this patch also squashed a few noteworthy bugs. The most annoying of these was an issue that was making every weapon fire slightly above your crosshair (most noticeable when aiming down sights), but glitches that stopped objective terminals from working and (hilariously) armed Portable Hellbombs when entering a Fast Recon Vehicle have been fixed, too. For the complete patch notes, make sure you read the section below.
This patch and its buff to the Double-Edge Sickle couldn't have come at a better time, largely because that weapon is devastatingly effective against the squid-like aliens of the Illuminate that are currently moving the Meridian Black Hole towards the Super Earth-controlled planet of Angel's Venture. It's using dark matter collected from its invasions to do this, and while we have no idea what will happen if the faction succeeds in its effort, there's no way it'll be anything good.
With that in mind, Super Earth High Command has ordered all Helldivers to fight the Illuminate tooth-and-nail on any front that opens, and this new Sickle is the perfect weapon to take along while doing so. Its high volume of hard-hitting laser bolts makes it fantastic against hordes of Voteless zombies and their Overseer commanders alike, and when its damage and armor penetration is ramped up, it can even shred the Illuminate's towering Harvester walkers as long as you hit the weak spot connecting their legs to their heads.
Helldivers 2 01.002.103 patch notes
Here are the official patch notes for Helldivers 2 Patch 01.002.103, taken directly from Arrowhead's news post about the update.
Balancing
- LAS-17 Double-Edge Sickle
- We’ve rebalanced the weapon to make the risk/reward dynamic more impactful. The goal is to ensure it feels like a truly powerful weapon while properly balancing the self-damage mechanics to reflect its high-risk nature. In the current live version, we felt it lacked both the punch and the level of risk we wanted and we didn’t feel it really lived up to our intent.
- OLD
- 0-25% heat: AP3 55 damage - Deals 0 damage/second to players
- 26-90% heat: AP3 55 damage - Deals 10 damage/second to players
- +91% heat: AP3 55 damage - Deals 50 damage/second to players + fire status effect
- NEW
- 0-25% heat: AP2 55 damage - Deals 0 damage/second to players
- 26-50% heat: AP3 55 damage - Deals 10 damage/second to players
- 51-90% heat: AP3 70 damage - Deals 20 damage/second to players
- +91% heat: AP4 70 damage - Deals 50 damage/second to players + fire status effect
- Magazines
- Starting magazines increased from 1 to 2
- Spare magazines increased from 2 to 3
- GP-31 Ultimatum
- We have seen a lot of mixed player feedback for this weapon and how certain players feel it trivializes some of the harder content whilst others feel it plays just fine and is a great addition to the game. We have carefully opted for an approach where we’d like to reduce the ease of access to additional ammunition while maintaining the weapon’s core identity as a powerhouse. This means players will need to put in more effort and strategy to maximize its effectiveness at the cost of some armor and booster synergy for this specific weapon. We will continue to monitor these changes so please keep providing us more feedback!
- The GP-31 Ultimatum is no longer influenced by the Hellpod Optimization Booster or the Siege Ready armor passive
Fixes
Resolved Top Priority issues:
- Fixed a bug where the scope aim-center was misaligned with the projectile's fire trajectory, affecting all weapons but most noticeable when aiming down sights (ADS)
Crash Fixes, Hangs and Soft-locks:
- Fixed a rare crash that could occur when joining someone who is swapping weapons
- Fixed a rare crash that could occur when hot joining a mission with the SEAF artillery objective present on the planet
- Fixed a crash when subtitles were shown and the language was changed
- Fixed a crash when shutting down the game while in a cutscene with the Democracy Space Station
- Fixed a crash when changing language during a mission
- Fixed a crash related to switching languages
- Fixed a crash that could occur for other players after a player disconnects from the session
- Fixed a crash caused by emoting right after dropping a support weapon
Weapons and Stratagems
- Fixed an issue where you could accidentally arm the B-100 Portable Hellbomb backpack when entering the FRV
Miscellaneous Fixes
- Fixed an issue with the level generation where some objective terminals could become non-interactable
- Fixed an issue with the Integrated Explosives armor passive sometimes not triggering
