“I’m honestly heartbroken…” Helldivers 2’s latest patch upsets lovers of a gun that once caused accidental self-murders so much that they’re drawing MS Paint diagrams

Uh oh. The pretty titchy Helldivers 2 patch that dropped yesterday has managed to earn the ire of players who love a certain gun. It’s the Eruptor, and as you might have guessed if you’re a HD2 veteran, the tweak that’s caused the aggro is to the shrapnel the gun kicks out in order to do a lot of its damage.

For the folks who don’t have an empirical knowledge of every weapon and stratagem in Helldivers 2, the Eruptor and its shrapnel made headlines last year because the rogue bits of metal turned out to be behind a wave of weird instances of divers suddenly dying to their own gunfire. What followed was the removal of shrapnel by Arrowhead, something Eruptor fans weren’t best pleased about, before the gun finally got a proper revamp heading into autumn.

Since then, it’s been earning pretty good reviews, even getting a handy buff to its armour penetration in last week’s big balancing update. However, the comparatively titchy patch 01.002.201 that Arrowhead put out yesterday made one tweak that seems to instantly evaporated a lot of the good vibes folks had about the gun.

“Fixed an issue where shrapnel from surface-hits was forced in a roughly south-west direction,” the change in question reads, “Shrapnel should now properly fly out in a 180-ish arc in the direction of the surface hit.” Sounds fine, but according to a bunch of Eruptor hardcores on the game’s subreddit, this has resulted in the gun’s performance being nerfed to a noticeable degree.

“I initially thought it meant that shrapnel would go in the same direction you’re shooting, but after trying it in game it seems like it’s the opposite,” wrote one player who’s gone as far as opening up and MS Paint and whacking together some crude diagrams that aim to indicate how they reckon the shrapnel’s now behaving, “Shrapnel goes away from the hit point. So, while before I was able to one shot brood commanders, now it mostly doesn’t happen even if I get a headshot, all the shrapnel just explodes back towards you and away from the target.”

“By the wording of it, it seems unclear as to whether this change is intended to apply to enemy hits or just surfaces such as the ground,” reads another post, “If it is just the latter then ostensibly the wording makes perfect sense, but currently in-game even on direct hits on the enemy the shrapnel just flies backwards which both looks and feels nonsensical and cartoonish.

“If anyone at Arrowhead sees this (I have formally submitted a bug report as this does not logically seem intended with the wording) we need some clarification as to whether or not this is meant to apply to enemy (not surface) hits or not. Regardless, I would sincerely request a full reversion until a proper fix can be implemented as this has rendered the weapon nearly worthless in my matches.”

We’ll have to see if the studio does say anything about this tweak and whether it’s working as intended. Have you given the Eruptor a go since this patch dropped, and how did it perform? Let us know below!