Ngl, when I saw the Harvester tank a Railgun Strike, 500kg, Several Autocannon shots, and it just kept on trucking made me sweat but also excited. Nice to know my team and I were all aiming at the wrong spot 😂.
the shield absorbs energy frighteningly will. pro tip: if you have no other options, destroying the shield with your primary can enable your teammates to take it down much more easily. especially if they have something with limited ammo like an EAT or a helldrop
Didn't see them tank any 500kgs myself, the ones I threw at them hit them in the shield, taking it out with the impact and getting the bomb stuck midair, and then the explosion taking the harvester out. But I guess the shield can tank the explosion if the bomb lands near them, but their shield is up.
@@Drackzgull the 500Kg is kind of inconsistent, if it drops right below them its a guaranteed kill, but they seem to be tall enough that that can walk off the explosion by being a bit off the center of it
ive seen people running the laser cannon more than ever against them, and my first thoughts were that they accidentally chose it because it looks like the quasar. glad i was wrong
I think the reason they take the 500kg so well is because its damage is all explosive loaded, and it seems to have very high explosive damage resistance, part of why plasma weapons suck against it And the legs are all separate, so it being able to damage them all is cool but the damage doesn't fully transfer to main health pool, and the main body is high up enough to take reduced damage from distance anyway
I find the Harvesters very fun to fight for large units. They're tall and intimidating, marching and yelling from afar before using a long range laser. Despite that they're not total bullet sponges if you know where to shoot. Plus I like how they recoil and move with every shot you land on them, making them feel much more alive than their bot and bug counterparts. I can't wait to see their actual titan class units, because I can imagine those are going to be much more harrowing to fight.
Believe me, you don't want to see what's next... The model was leaked but to no suprise it's the one H1 players expected. I won't spoil but it's frightening... Can't wait to take revenge!
I wish Bile Titans flinched more when hit by something substantial, or at least react emotionally, get angry, etc... some kind of interactive response would be nice.
The regular machine gun is my go-to weapon for this enemy faction so far, I found it to be incredibly fun to use and really good against all of the enemy types.
I pair it with the scorcher as my primary, grenade pistol for secondary, and incendiary-impact or gas grenades. This loadout totally trivializes this faction and makes soloing a total breeze on difficulty 10!
MG43 has been my favorite weapon for a while, and it's definitely strong against Illumunant. It can handle just about everything, even if it isn't the best weapon for any particular enemy unit. its a nice all round support weapon. Handles crowds well, and at the same time, handles the overseers and armored units very well. I think the torcher and the Support Flamethrower are the best, though, particularly in the city. These weapons totally suck when you're outside the city, and often fail to handle drops and crowds. But inside the city, where enemies are always close and funneled through little gaps and ally ways or squeezed around corners, the flame weapons just dominate. I love take the arc armor, the support Flamethrower, and just walking up to the harvesters. You aggro the harvestor, tank all the shots, and kill it solo with the Flamethrower. It's kind of funny to do when the rest of your team is running away and trying to stay away from the crowds, while you walk _towards_ the danger, virtually invincible with your arc armor on. But man, the flame weapons are deficient when you're in the hills. You have to have some way of dealing accurate ranged damage, or a teammate willing/able to carry, when you're outside the city. It can make the extracts very painful.
@@pluviumpingkI like the MG a lot too. I'm curious what you find yourself using the scorcher for? Is it basically your "sidearm" for when the MG runs dry? Personally, I think either explosive crossbow or grenade pistol are a must for killing the spawners. But I'm not sure what to take in the last spot. Been thinking a fire weapon for fighting in the cities would be good; torcher with nade pistol or crisper with explosive crossbow.
This+Liberator, Peacemaker,OPS,MG Sentry, Guard Dog and Frag was my favourite loadout. So many standard weapons/stratagems (meaning nothing exotic from a warbond or so) perfrom amazing
The MG paired with the gun Guard Dog is brilliant in the urban setting too, and can handle everything the illuminate is currently fielding pretty comfortably. It's just as good dealing with hordes of voteless as it is the harvesters and overseers. It's even more fun when several of you are running it, for more dakka, and you can leave your other two slots for demolition stratagems too
I absolutely LOVED the HMG against the Harvesters. Lowest RPM, diving into prone and I took out one Harvester after the other. One time I had 3 of them lasering at me, missing, and then falling victim to the HMG
@@iceicebabie Absolutely. And I've found if you stay on the move and circle them they won't hit you with their zap attack. UA-camr are overhyping the Harvesters saying you need arc resistant armor or whatnot. Either prone or running circles and they'll never kill you. I'd go as far as saying the Harvesters by themselves are some of the easiest Illuminate (we've seen so far.) They only become a problem if they are surrounded by fodder, and even then - they aren't the danger, the fodder is. You just simply monkey brain default target the gigantic tripod firing deathlasers at you, when in reality the voteless are moving in to slap your cheeks
Same here, I randomly picked one up on a mission and that's my go-to for Illuminate, they also shred shields so you don't even need to waste an airstrike on ships.
It was a super sick moment when one of my buddies figure this out two he sounded absolutely ecstatic as he told us just straight “GO FOR THE JOINTS GO FOR THE LEG JOINTS AND THE FUCKS FOLD”
"generally everything seems to work against the harvesters" realizing that the harvester is probably a medium unit from that line,which means even more tanki units will be introduced
There were far more tanky illuminate enemies in HD1. These guys were always just the first reponders when an alarm was raised. I can't wait for when the other mind-controlly squids show up.
I really like the AMR as when a harvester hasn't detected you yet you can break one of the shield generator points in one shot, saving you the trouble of breaking the shield and instantly being able to go for a joint
one thing I found with the Spear is that it can actually one shot, I think it's just that if it hits one of the fins on the head it fails to kill. The fins on the head are what allow it to make it's shield but they also have a separate HP pool from the main body, so it can block the rocket.
Yep. If you fire from the side or about a 45-60° angle however its a guaranteed kill. People just have become brain pilled to direct face any enemy due to the vast majority of the large/huge enemy variants of both Bots and Bugs being a one shot to the face plate.
Whoever designed the Harvester has obviously eaten crab legs. Crab legs have weak points at the joints that are used to take them apart and get the crabby goodness.
Thank you so much diver. I'm scared about them "rebalancing" these though. At least you'll have a constant reason to make content that we'll definitely watch!
the Halt shotgun is a must-bring for me, having the stun ammo available to deal with Overseers more easily while also having a medium armor pen shotgun is absolutely amazing, plus its ammo count is ridiculously high, and even more so if you bring one of the new armor sets that increase your primary weapon ammo and reload speed (which, i should let you all know, works on the Machine Gun and Stalwart Stratagems as well. i havnt tested the HMG stratagem with it yet, but if its counting for the standard MG id be amazed if it didnt work for the HMG too)
Absolutely great to deal with the flying overseers and the scout drone. Blitzer is better for the swarms of voteless but it’s a tough choice between the two.
Yeah because these are only the weakest units. The walkers are effectively the same "class" as chargers and dominators...which means we still haven't seen their equivalent of Titans, Hulks, Thrasher, or Factory Striders. Nor their version of tanks 😳
Jumping in with a jump pack and torching the harvesters with a flamethrower is so fun, it's like slaying a dragon except you are the dragon and you are slaying a really tall knight
Fun fact you can also target the toes on the harvester by getting in close with any of the cutting edge warbond armor and firing machine gun or even smaller arms weapons like Senator and Verdict. Takes a clip and a half depending on accuracy with Verdict.
The Eruptor's capability to one-shot the shield is likely due to the flak shrapnels. that means it is likely that AC's flak ammo would be super effective against it as well. Time to test.
Not nearly as effective against Warp Ship shields, though. Seems to heal all the damage before you can get the next shot off. Even tried indirect shots that showered more shrapnel.
@@nayhemyou have to aim towards the bottom, or the bottom of the ramps, it can take the shield out of both saucers and harvesters in 1-3 well placed shots, if not, you’re hitting it wrong, utilize shrapnel. I take eruptor on all fronts, and it absolutely crushes illuminate, often never needing to use anything else for warp shields. In conjunction with verdict, harvesters are stunlocked and it’s no threat and dies quickly. Verdict by itself is probably no good but it is incredible at following up shots while not keeping downtime on your eruptor stun locking the harvesters. Gun dog helps, but not needed.
Spear can one shot if you can get the missile to aim lower and hit the joints with aoe. Sidenote, you can one shot spaceships as well with the spear if you aim low enough.
I appreciate you coming back to fix mistakes in a previous video, that’s really cool. When I used the spear, I would 1-shot the Harvesters 70% of the time. When you’re not shooting at them head-on then it seems to hit the joint pretty consistently. Lying down with it to change the arc of the rocket might help as well, if there’s no obstacles.
Tbh taking down an alien tripod with a M1903 with only 15 shots is kinda cool. Hitting a difficult target with clean shots, that's what makes it magnificent.
My niece and I were struggling to fight these things the first time we encountered them. We thought the eyeball was the weakness since it was glowing and such, so when it didn't work and dying a lot. We figure out that the joints near the body are actually the weakspot on the second Harvester as we start killing these things left to right. Just that the only struggle we fight against are the Overseers. Especially the flying ones.
The arc thrower is my absolute go to. It SHREDS through hordes and the ability to stun lock AND kill harvesters makes it a real S tier support weapon imo. Pair it with a rover guard dog and BAM. You're invincible.
Tip for the AMR: For unalert harvesters, land your first shot on the shield generator. This avoids wasting follow-up shots on the shield, and makes the harvester easier to deal with if you get interrupted while killing it.
The thing I like best about the harvesters is that teamwork can really help. With a lot of other heavies you end up with multiple people wasting rockets shooting the same guy at the same time. With these you have a little more time and can focus fire so that just about every bullet is useful. You can even try to follow tracers to see which leg folks started shooting at.
i love that in this new faction, all the old bad primaries, secondaries, supports, and strategems, are all now viable and some are even meta. strafing run, commando, etc
Sickle plus Laser Cannon is really solid. The sickle drops the shield quickly, and after that the laser cannon makes short work of them. It helps that both are about equally good against the other enemies, and alternating between them lets you avoid overheating while firing constantly.
@@greggreg2458 The Sickle is better. The Scythe is like the Laser Cannon, but with less damage output and armor penetration, and even the Laser Cannon has inferior DPS to the Sickle. For comparison's sake, shoot at an Illuminate spawner and see how long it takes to drop the shields with each weapon.
Alternately, you can run sickle plus arc thrower, with grenade pistol secondary and thermite grenades. The arc thrower is excellent horde clear and kills overseers in four shots, stunning on the first hit. While it will take quite a while to kill a harvester, it stuns them the entire time, allowing you to advance and throw a thermite at it or teammates with laser cannons or other weapons to kill it while it's helpless. Sickle drops shields on spawners and harvesters, and kills random stray voteless. If you have a teammate with a laser cannon, the two of you can safely murder harvesters in seconds.
Good info! I don’t have a lot of time to play test everything. When Calypso was under attack I was relying on my stalwart to break the shield and an eagle 500kg to delete these things. Using the senator when that was on cool down.
Thanks for all the data :) However the secret best weapon against the harvesters: moving your character ever so slightly to the left or right when it fires. I literally never kill harvesters, because.... I actually don't have to. Just run away. They are slow and they fire slowly. I use fire and the purifier to deal with overseers and voteless, and the harvesters just sort of wobble around without being any sort of problem. Sometimes I miss one and it takes my head off because I don't see it charging up, but it has only happened two or three times.
It feels like (certainly not confirmed) the joints and shields are explosive resistant. Plasma punisher and plasma scorcher are medium pen on the explosion and only light pen on the projectile. If this is true then those weapons will not be doing damage to the joints at all. The purifier "works" but is disappointing because it is my belief that only the projectile is doing the damage, not the explosive. Thanks for the follow up video. It's been fun doing some experiments myself over the last few days. :)
Great video. I just started playing Helldivers 2 again after several months. This is very helpful. I've been killing it with arc thrower and laser guard dog and getting the highest kill counts in my teams but my abilities against harvesters is lacking. I'm goin to try adding the crisper flamethrower to round it out.
Love the liberator concussive/dominator/torcher and the crisper/p19 as my loadout, the liberator guard dog, and three offensive stratagems. So damn good against these squids
The adjudicatior has heavy recoil. What you are experiencing as "almost no recoil“ is the result of using the scope or aiming down sights. Your gun bounces all over the place in third person view but when you aim down sights in first person mode it brings even the heaviest of recoils completely under control. This has been the case since day one in the game.
I've been bringing the commando and a jetpack to every mission. It can one shot the legs, easy to aim, super short cool down, and if you can break a ships shields with a long range primary you can snipe outposts from across the map. Then I just jetpack around the city walls
MG-43 is definitely my favourite support weapon against the Illuminate so far. Haven't tried the HMG yet tho bc I don't want to use it without the proper armour passive, and I don't want to switch my armour either. I like my current drip
Many content creators will use the level 3ish assassinate-style missions to test these things. You can drop in right near the enemy in question, do your test, alt+f4, start game, and repeat. Bonus is that you will have an identical map when replaying in this fashion so if you find a good one with two close by then you can keep it
I like to snip the shield generator with the first shot of the AMR while the shild is not up yet then take the leg out really nice combo. An you can still use it against the other armored enemies.
Really enjoying how with the illuminate some of the lesser support weapons are better for them and the usual go to picks are not as good, WE LOVE BUILD DIVERSITY
Yeah, I'm not for sure, but I think that the Illuminates have a high energy resistance (at least against primaries) I've only done a few runs to test things out, but the Blitzer, Scythe, and Scorcher all took way too many shots for everything. The arc thrower and ion cannon still seem good, though.
Omfg thank you for this video! I took in the commando along side my stalwart and I was frying and one shotting harvesters. I wish I wouldn’t known the weak spot early haha
That explains why I wasn’t struggling with the harvester compared to my other teammates! I think I have watched too much Star Wars because I keep kneecapping these vile beasts! And I guess I learned that from Star Wars
You should do a refresher video for all the people like myself who haven't played in months, but are coming back for the Illuminate. I haven't played since the jungle warbond, so I've missed quite a few big updates and guns/gear. I don't know what's changed or what new thing is good or what isn't.
Before even watching, in my experience the autocannon mech goes crazy because you can just brute force through the shield or just call in the Commando rocket launcher before they see you to insta kill
My top build atm is the breaker incindiary, granade pistol, incindiary impact, HMG, Supply pack with the eng kit armor. You just wreck everything with that. For offensive strats i bring 500kg an orbital precision to deal with the spawners quickly or get rid of some enemys in a pinch.
1:29 The joints don't have the same health values, noticed that the AMR takes out the joints in the actual legs in 3 shots, while the joints next to its body that connects the leg needs 4 shots. I still go for the 4 shot kill because that is a lot easier to hit than the smaller leg joints, they move a lot more and get covered with armor plating whenever it moves its legs.
You can also take out the landed ships shields with a machine gun than toss 2 grenades in the door way blowing up the ships without strats. I think one commando rocket or at rockets will do it in one
The shields are best removed by any automatic ballistic weapon. And you only need the 1 grenade to destroy them. Even the gas grenade 1 shots them! I have yet to try out any AT-weapons because they seem pretty bad against the enemy lineup.
Nice to hear about the Commando. I've been running RR for a while now, but I do like having a jet pack. Not sure if the squids are back but should they return, I'll be giving the Commando a try.
The smaller inner/axel joint has less health and armor than the outer joints- you can onetap its leg with a quasar by hitting that, but if you hit anywhere else on the tripod it will not die.
idk when i use the Spear in team comp i usually one shot always, the positioning is what makes that weapon so powerful, usually to accomplish 1 shots you need to be in the 90 degree angle in front of the harvester and be at least 35-50 metres far. The closer it gets the less time the missile has time to come down and hit the eye. You need approximately just the distance to allow the Spear to reach rotation point and descend by a bit to allow to hit the weakspot
I beg you to do a breakdown of how the Overseers work. Armor values depending on body part, how many shots to destroy armor/kill, best weapons, etc. I struggle with them more than the tripods.
Hot take: the eyeball should be as good a weakspot as the legs. It's gonna end up being like the charger where it's easier to kill it by targetting it's legs, but less satisfying than dealing proper damage on it's head/rump
One thing I love about this game is that the devs aren't SUPER obvious about weak spots. We have to learn as we go and remember what weapon system does better against each enemy type. Most games are like "HIT HERE" and hold your hand. But this game doesn't do that.
it looks like even though the stalwart can't get the harvester it could still pair great with the primaries that can handle it like the jar dominator for harvester and overseers and stalwart for shields and crowds
Try autocannon Flak versus Shields. Putting a Flak round in the underbits of a parked Warp Ship or Harvester shield will pop it in fewer shots than APHET. That and it's great for ranged panic sniping on elevated overseers and watchers.
bayonet on the constitution kills it pretty fast. Weapon Wheel + reload + melee = stab super fast. so you can just poke its toe super fast and it falls over in less than 2s it's pretty funny.
The Commando looks REALLY good. I've been running the laser cannon but need to try the Commando (When I can stop disconnecting 3 minutes into a mission).
Realizes mistake in previous video's comments. Immediately gets to work on follow-up video retesting everything. Legend.
Honestly, just the fact that a mistake was made, called out, and immediately rectified is amazing in and of itself. Serious respect for that.
Yeah awesome creator 👍
I love how he missed this while testing the support weapons because his aim is too good
The problem is that the video with the mistake still there...
Ngl, when I saw the Harvester tank a Railgun Strike, 500kg, Several Autocannon shots, and it just kept on trucking made me sweat but also excited. Nice to know my team and I were all aiming at the wrong spot 😂.
the shield absorbs energy frighteningly will. pro tip: if you have no other options, destroying the shield with your primary can enable your teammates to take it down much more easily. especially if they have something with limited ammo like an EAT or a helldrop
Didn't see them tank any 500kgs myself, the ones I threw at them hit them in the shield, taking it out with the impact and getting the bomb stuck midair, and then the explosion taking the harvester out. But I guess the shield can tank the explosion if the bomb lands near them, but their shield is up.
@@Drackzgull the 500Kg is kind of inconsistent, if it drops right below them its a guaranteed kill, but they seem to be tall enough that that can walk off the explosion by being a bit off the center of it
ive seen people running the laser cannon more than ever against them, and my first thoughts were that they accidentally chose it because it looks like the quasar. glad i was wrong
I think the reason they take the 500kg so well is because its damage is all explosive loaded, and it seems to have very high explosive damage resistance, part of why plasma weapons suck against it
And the legs are all separate, so it being able to damage them all is cool but the damage doesn't fully transfer to main health pool, and the main body is high up enough to take reduced damage from distance anyway
I find the Harvesters very fun to fight for large units. They're tall and intimidating, marching and yelling from afar before using a long range laser. Despite that they're not total bullet sponges if you know where to shoot. Plus I like how they recoil and move with every shot you land on them, making them feel much more alive than their bot and bug counterparts. I can't wait to see their actual titan class units, because I can imagine those are going to be much more harrowing to fight.
yea i find them a lot more fun than any big bot (hulk is fun tho) and more fun than the titan
Believe me, you don't want to see what's next... The model was leaked but to no suprise it's the one H1 players expected. I won't spoil but it's frightening...
Can't wait to take revenge!
@@Mikeofzedead could you tell me where to find it? i am curious
I wish Bile Titans flinched more when hit by something substantial, or at least react emotionally, get angry, etc... some kind of interactive response would be nice.
I kinda hope they add harvester and Bile Titan variants that are stronger. Maybe make them an objective to take down on higher difficulties.
yeah respect for not only correcting the mistake, but even testing primaries as well. went above and beyond bro
The regular machine gun is my go-to weapon for this enemy faction so far, I found it to be incredibly fun to use and really good against all of the enemy types.
I pair it with the scorcher as my primary, grenade pistol for secondary, and incendiary-impact or gas grenades. This loadout totally trivializes this faction and makes soloing a total breeze on difficulty 10!
MG43 has been my favorite weapon for a while, and it's definitely strong against Illumunant. It can handle just about everything, even if it isn't the best weapon for any particular enemy unit. its a nice all round support weapon. Handles crowds well, and at the same time, handles the overseers and armored units very well.
I think the torcher and the Support Flamethrower are the best, though, particularly in the city. These weapons totally suck when you're outside the city, and often fail to handle drops and crowds. But inside the city, where enemies are always close and funneled through little gaps and ally ways or squeezed around corners, the flame weapons just dominate.
I love take the arc armor, the support Flamethrower, and just walking up to the harvesters. You aggro the harvestor, tank all the shots, and kill it solo with the Flamethrower. It's kind of funny to do when the rest of your team is running away and trying to stay away from the crowds, while you walk _towards_ the danger, virtually invincible with your arc armor on.
But man, the flame weapons are deficient when you're in the hills. You have to have some way of dealing accurate ranged damage, or a teammate willing/able to carry, when you're outside the city. It can make the extracts very painful.
@@pluviumpingkI like the MG a lot too. I'm curious what you find yourself using the scorcher for? Is it basically your "sidearm" for when the MG runs dry?
Personally, I think either explosive crossbow or grenade pistol are a must for killing the spawners. But I'm not sure what to take in the last spot. Been thinking a fire weapon for fighting in the cities would be good; torcher with nade pistol or crisper with explosive crossbow.
This+Liberator, Peacemaker,OPS,MG Sentry, Guard Dog and Frag was my favourite loadout. So many standard weapons/stratagems (meaning nothing exotic from a warbond or so) perfrom amazing
The MG paired with the gun Guard Dog is brilliant in the urban setting too, and can handle everything the illuminate is currently fielding pretty comfortably. It's just as good dealing with hordes of voteless as it is the harvesters and overseers. It's even more fun when several of you are running it, for more dakka, and you can leave your other two slots for demolition stratagems too
I absolutely LOVED the HMG against the Harvesters. Lowest RPM, diving into prone and I took out one Harvester after the other. One time I had 3 of them lasering at me, missing, and then falling victim to the HMG
Prone seems to save you from their beam most of the time. Definitely the way to go!!
@@iceicebabie
Absolutely. And I've found if you stay on the move and circle them they won't hit you with their zap attack. UA-camr are overhyping the Harvesters saying you need arc resistant armor or whatnot. Either prone or running circles and they'll never kill you.
I'd go as far as saying the Harvesters by themselves are some of the easiest Illuminate (we've seen so far.) They only become a problem if they are surrounded by fodder, and even then - they aren't the danger, the fodder is. You just simply monkey brain default target the gigantic tripod firing deathlasers at you, when in reality the voteless are moving in to slap your cheeks
Same here, I randomly picked one up on a mission and that's my go-to for Illuminate, they also shred shields so you don't even need to waste an airstrike on ships.
HMG on a defense mission with hmg turret, gatling turret, machine gun turret, and patriot mech is so. Much. Fun.
It was a super sick moment when one of my buddies figure this out two he sounded absolutely ecstatic as he told us just straight “GO FOR THE JOINTS GO FOR THE LEG JOINTS AND THE FUCKS FOLD”
Worth noting, the AMR can take out the harvesters shield generator in 1 hit, before it even puts its shield up.
where is the location of the shield generator on the harvester?
@@kaleidoscope3234the top little prong on their head
@@kaleidoscope3234 I couldn’t edit my comment earlier lol, but it’s the horn on top of its hesd
Anyone figure out what the lower horn is for yet? Is that responsible for the close-range tesla attack?
@@HoepRemains That's the other part of the shield generator, so it has the same effect as destroying the top one
"generally everything seems to work against the harvesters" realizing that the harvester is probably a medium unit from that line,which means even more tanki units will be introduced
Uh yeah. Its the target of level 3 missions. Just like chargers and hulks.
There were far more tanky illuminate enemies in HD1. These guys were always just the first reponders when an alarm was raised. I can't wait for when the other mind-controlly squids show up.
@Scarifar1 I hope they come soon. It's getting boring, and im back to Automaton already 😂
I really like the AMR as when a harvester hasn't detected you yet you can break one of the shield generator points in one shot, saving you the trouble of breaking the shield and instantly being able to go for a joint
Too bad we won't get to fight the squid again, EVER.
All of them are already dead, 100%. Nothing survives 100% of dead.
Cough cough.. todays major order... lol
This aged well
one thing I found with the Spear is that it can actually one shot, I think it's just that if it hits one of the fins on the head it fails to kill. The fins on the head are what allow it to make it's shield but they also have a separate HP pool from the main body, so it can block the rocket.
Yep. If you fire from the side or about a 45-60° angle however its a guaranteed kill. People just have become brain pilled to direct face any enemy due to the vast majority of the large/huge enemy variants of both Bots and Bugs being a one shot to the face plate.
Whoever designed the Harvester has obviously eaten crab legs. Crab legs have weak points at the joints that are used to take them apart and get the crabby goodness.
Great video, thanks for following up on the previous one.
“Whaaaats up legends” says the legend himself.
This comment in every video of this legend
Glazer
Thank you so much diver. I'm scared about them "rebalancing" these though. At least you'll have a constant reason to make content that we'll definitely watch!
the Halt shotgun is a must-bring for me, having the stun ammo available to deal with Overseers more easily while also having a medium armor pen shotgun is absolutely amazing, plus its ammo count is ridiculously high, and even more so if you bring one of the new armor sets that increase your primary weapon ammo and reload speed (which, i should let you all know, works on the Machine Gun and Stalwart Stratagems as well. i havnt tested the HMG stratagem with it yet, but if its counting for the standard MG id be amazed if it didnt work for the HMG too)
Absolutely great to deal with the flying overseers and the scout drone. Blitzer is better for the swarms of voteless but it’s a tough choice between the two.
found your video on my homepage, was exactly what i was looking for. great work, keep it up
The Squids didn't stand a chance against the Might of the Helldivers!
I was blown away when i got on this morning and could only play the bots or bugs.
Well done, all around.
Yea its kinda sad because I liked fighting them. Oh well guess I should be happy they’re gone for good never to return.
Yeah because these are only the weakest units.
The walkers are effectively the same "class" as chargers and dominators...which means we still haven't seen their equivalent of Titans, Hulks, Thrasher, or Factory Striders. Nor their version of tanks 😳
That's so useful. Also since the squids are now gone its helpful to have this as a reminder for what to use when they return
@MassiveBunns when they return? My democracy officer told me those stupid squids are gone for good! They couldn’t even last a full day.
Jumping in with a jump pack and torching the harvesters with a flamethrower is so fun, it's like slaying a dragon except you are the dragon and you are slaying a really tall knight
That finesse shot @1:00 was slick my guy
Fun fact you can also target the toes on the harvester by getting in close with any of the cutting edge warbond armor and firing machine gun or even smaller arms weapons like Senator and Verdict. Takes a clip and a half depending on accuracy with Verdict.
If you shoot the Crown of the Harvester (Above The Eye) with the AMR, which is 1 shot, it disables the shield.
The Eruptor's capability to one-shot the shield is likely due to the flak shrapnels. that means it is likely that AC's flak ammo would be super effective against it as well. Time to test.
Not nearly as effective against Warp Ship shields, though. Seems to heal all the damage before you can get the next shot off. Even tried indirect shots that showered more shrapnel.
Did you test? 👀
@@nayhemyou have to aim towards the bottom, or the bottom of the ramps, it can take the shield out of both saucers and harvesters in 1-3 well placed shots, if not, you’re hitting it wrong, utilize shrapnel. I take eruptor on all fronts, and it absolutely crushes illuminate, often never needing to use anything else for warp shields. In conjunction with verdict, harvesters are stunlocked and it’s no threat and dies quickly. Verdict by itself is probably no good but it is incredible at following up shots while not keeping downtime on your eruptor stun locking the harvesters.
Gun dog helps, but not needed.
That Eruptor shot is just a bubble popping. Nice vid man
Having the weapon displayed in the bottom right corner is great.
Spear can one shot if you can get the missile to aim lower and hit the joints with aoe.
Sidenote, you can one shot spaceships as well with the spear if you aim low enough.
I appreciate you coming back to fix mistakes in a previous video, that’s really cool. When I used the spear, I would 1-shot the Harvesters 70% of the time. When you’re not shooting at them head-on then it seems to hit the joint pretty consistently. Lying down with it to change the arc of the rocket might help as well, if there’s no obstacles.
Tbh taking down an alien tripod with a M1903 with only 15 shots is kinda cool.
Hitting a difficult target with clean shots, that's what makes it magnificent.
Absolute legend, he re did everything because of a slight error
My niece and I were struggling to fight these things the first time we encountered them.
We thought the eyeball was the weakness since it was glowing and such, so when it didn't work and dying a lot.
We figure out that the joints near the body are actually the weakspot on the second Harvester as we start killing these things left to right.
Just that the only struggle we fight against are the Overseers.
Especially the flying ones.
The arc thrower is my absolute go to. It SHREDS through hordes and the ability to stun lock AND kill harvesters makes it a real S tier support weapon imo. Pair it with a rover guard dog and BAM. You're invincible.
Tip for the AMR: For unalert harvesters, land your first shot on the shield generator. This avoids wasting follow-up shots on the shield, and makes the harvester easier to deal with if you get interrupted while killing it.
The thing I like best about the harvesters is that teamwork can really help. With a lot of other heavies you end up with multiple people wasting rockets shooting the same guy at the same time. With these you have a little more time and can focus fire so that just about every bullet is useful. You can even try to follow tracers to see which leg folks started shooting at.
Thank you for this comprehensive guide and all your testing!
0:35 you didnt need to do him like that lol
i love that in this new faction, all the old bad primaries, secondaries, supports, and strategems, are all now viable and some are even meta. strafing run, commando, etc
You are making every R&D team from Super Earth proud!
Sickle plus Laser Cannon is really solid. The sickle drops the shield quickly, and after that the laser cannon makes short work of them. It helps that both are about equally good against the other enemies, and alternating between them lets you avoid overheating while firing constantly.
Newbie here, what about the Scythe?
@@greggreg2458 The Sickle is better. The Scythe is like the Laser Cannon, but with less damage output and armor penetration, and even the Laser Cannon has inferior DPS to the Sickle.
For comparison's sake, shoot at an Illuminate spawner and see how long it takes to drop the shields with each weapon.
Alternately, you can run sickle plus arc thrower, with grenade pistol secondary and thermite grenades. The arc thrower is excellent horde clear and kills overseers in four shots, stunning on the first hit. While it will take quite a while to kill a harvester, it stuns them the entire time, allowing you to advance and throw a thermite at it or teammates with laser cannons or other weapons to kill it while it's helpless. Sickle drops shields on spawners and harvesters, and kills random stray voteless. If you have a teammate with a laser cannon, the two of you can safely murder harvesters in seconds.
@@PaxEmpyrean Thank you very much very detailed.
The first 24 hours of fighting the illuminate was very exciting gameplay. Trying to figure these guys out was as scary as it was rewarding.
Posting a new vid so soon after the last - this guy might be the best hd2 youtuber out there
Thats what ive been waiting for
Good info! I don’t have a lot of time to play test everything. When Calypso was under attack I was relying on my stalwart to break the shield and an eagle 500kg to delete these things. Using the senator when that was on cool down.
Thanks for all the data :)
However the secret best weapon against the harvesters: moving your character ever so slightly to the left or right when it fires. I literally never kill harvesters, because.... I actually don't have to. Just run away. They are slow and they fire slowly. I use fire and the purifier to deal with overseers and voteless, and the harvesters just sort of wobble around without being any sort of problem. Sometimes I miss one and it takes my head off because I don't see it charging up, but it has only happened two or three times.
It feels like (certainly not confirmed) the joints and shields are explosive resistant. Plasma punisher and plasma scorcher are medium pen on the explosion and only light pen on the projectile. If this is true then those weapons will not be doing damage to the joints at all. The purifier "works" but is disappointing because it is my belief that only the projectile is doing the damage, not the explosive.
Thanks for the follow up video. It's been fun doing some experiments myself over the last few days. :)
Great video. I just started playing Helldivers 2 again after several months. This is very helpful. I've been killing it with arc thrower and laser guard dog and getting the highest kill counts in my teams but my abilities against harvesters is lacking. I'm goin to try adding the crisper flamethrower to round it out.
Love the liberator concussive/dominator/torcher and the crisper/p19 as my loadout, the liberator guard dog, and three offensive stratagems. So damn good against these squids
So many key facts here. Love it. Thanks.
Good info to know for when they inevitably try to mount their counterattack.
HMG Placement is great, Wipes out everything
The adjudicatior has heavy recoil. What you are experiencing as "almost no recoil“ is the result of using the scope or aiming down sights. Your gun bounces all over the place in third person view but when you aim down sights in first person mode it brings even the heaviest of recoils completely under control. This has been the case since day one in the game.
I've been bringing the commando and a jetpack to every mission. It can one shot the legs, easy to aim, super short cool down, and if you can break a ships shields with a long range primary you can snipe outposts from across the map. Then I just jetpack around the city walls
This is the most informative video I have watched, takibo, can you please take time to do top 3 load outs for each enemy type?
great video! right into the info, owns a mistake. subscribed!
MG-43 is definitely my favourite support weapon against the Illuminate so far. Haven't tried the HMG yet tho bc I don't want to use it without the proper armour passive, and I don't want to switch my armour either. I like my current drip
Thx must have taken ages waiting for so many harvesters
Many content creators will use the level 3ish assassinate-style missions to test these things. You can drop in right near the enemy in question, do your test, alt+f4, start game, and repeat. Bonus is that you will have an identical map when replaying in this fashion so if you find a good one with two close by then you can keep it
I like to snip the shield generator with the first shot of the AMR while the shild is not up yet then take the leg out really nice combo. An you can still use it against the other armored enemies.
Really enjoying how with the illuminate some of the lesser support weapons are better for them and the usual go to picks are not as good, WE LOVE BUILD DIVERSITY
Lasers do a lot of damage to the eye. Could be a mechanic of the beam.
Yeah, I'm not for sure, but I think that the Illuminates have a high energy resistance (at least against primaries) I've only done a few runs to test things out, but the Blitzer, Scythe, and Scorcher all took way too many shots for everything. The arc thrower and ion cannon still seem good, though.
I've had a great experience with the scorcher, but it does reeeaaalllyy suck at lowering shields. This much is true
Omfg thank you for this video! I took in the commando along side my stalwart and I was frying and one shotting harvesters. I wish I wouldn’t known the weak spot early haha
That explains why I wasn’t struggling with the harvester compared to my other teammates!
I think I have watched too much Star Wars because I keep kneecapping these vile beasts! And I guess I learned that from Star Wars
The MG43 was my main weapon this weekend. Good vs the big novo swarms, good vs the overseers and capable of taking down harvesters with ease at range.
I have found if you manage to hit the foot it can die in only 2 AMR shots however it is much easier/consistent to hit the joints
You should do a refresher video for all the people like myself who haven't played in months, but are coming back for the Illuminate.
I haven't played since the jungle warbond, so I've missed quite a few big updates and guns/gear. I don't know what's changed or what new thing is good or what isn't.
Before even watching, in my experience the autocannon mech goes crazy because you can just brute force through the shield or just call in the Commando rocket launcher before they see you to insta kill
My top build atm is the breaker incindiary, granade pistol, incindiary impact, HMG, Supply pack with the eng kit armor. You just wreck everything with that. For offensive strats i bring 500kg an orbital precision to deal with the spawners quickly or get rid of some enemys in a pinch.
This could've useful... When the squids are invading, there's no more squids yet...
squids are gone forever, we completely eradicated them as a species. Thank Liberty!
THEY ARE BACK
You gotta be kidding
3:51, sounds like praise, but might be undemocratic?
1:29 The joints don't have the same health values, noticed that the AMR takes out the joints in the actual legs in 3 shots, while the joints next to its body that connects the leg needs 4 shots.
I still go for the 4 shot kill because that is a lot easier to hit than the smaller leg joints, they move a lot more and get covered with armor plating whenever it moves its legs.
I think the funniest strat I’ve seen is my brother charging in with a flamethrower and electrical resistance armor to cook its underside
I feel like a caveman who's just been given the secret of fire
AMR also one shots to the flying overseer jetpack, which is an easier target when ambushing or helping another player too!
You can also take out the landed ships shields with a machine gun than toss 2 grenades in the door way blowing up the ships without strats. I think one commando rocket or at rockets will do it in one
The shields are best removed by any automatic ballistic weapon. And you only need the 1 grenade to destroy them. Even the gas grenade 1 shots them!
I have yet to try out any AT-weapons because they seem pretty bad against the enemy lineup.
MG43 + Supply Pack is still the *GOAT.* Even at the lowest fire rate it melts voteless, tears apart overseers, and can down harvesters in seconds.
Nice to hear about the Commando.
I've been running RR for a while now, but I do like having a jet pack.
Not sure if the squids are back but should they return, I'll be giving the Commando a try.
I did see some footage of the verdict killing the harvester in less than a mag by shooting a weak spot lower down the leg
I like the harvesters being a glass cannon. They can one shot you with their laser or arc but they go down much easier than biles
The smaller inner/axel joint has less health and armor than the outer joints- you can onetap its leg with a quasar by hitting that, but if you hit anywhere else on the tripod it will not die.
flamer had the harvester doing the moonwalk 😂
idk when i use the Spear in team comp i usually one shot always, the positioning is what makes that weapon so powerful, usually to accomplish 1 shots you need to be in the 90 degree angle in front of the harvester and be at least 35-50 metres far. The closer it gets the less time the missile has time to come down and hit the eye. You need approximately just the distance to allow the Spear to reach rotation point and descend by a bit to allow to hit the weakspot
I beg you to do a breakdown of how the Overseers work. Armor values depending on body part, how many shots to destroy armor/kill, best weapons, etc. I struggle with them more than the tripods.
9:00 and crunch down or laydown for less recoil and you can use armour that reduce recoil while crunching down also.
Man I have been frozen in the pod for a while when they had to take a step back and fix a lot. I think it’s time to thaw. FOR LIBERTY!
Hot take: the eyeball should be as good a weakspot as the legs. It's gonna end up being like the charger where it's easier to kill it by targetting it's legs, but less satisfying than dealing proper damage on it's head/rump
This is awesome, thank you!
One thing I love about this game is that the devs aren't SUPER obvious about weak spots. We have to learn as we go and remember what weapon system does better against each enemy type. Most games are like "HIT HERE" and hold your hand. But this game doesn't do that.
it looks like even though the stalwart can't get the harvester it could still pair great with the primaries that can handle it like the jar dominator for harvester and overseers and stalwart for shields and crowds
Try autocannon Flak versus Shields. Putting a Flak round in the underbits of a parked Warp Ship or Harvester shield will pop it in fewer shots than APHET. That and it's great for ranged panic sniping on elevated overseers and watchers.
You can throw 2-3 impact grenades when the shield is down and that can do it
This is like that scene of Sauron from The Lego Batman movie.
Fun fact: two well-timed high explosive (not impact) grenades are enough to take out the tripods.
the benefits of the machine guns, is that you have a machine gun against the hordes, and the overseers.
FIY the new passive doesn't effect only your primary's mag reserve, but also your support!
Super helpful thank you legend
bayonet on the constitution kills it pretty fast. Weapon Wheel + reload + melee = stab super fast. so you can just poke its toe super fast and it falls over in less than 2s it's pretty funny.
Harvesters trigger our gamer instinces and made us shoot it in the eye...
the illumate were aware of this and capitalized on our habits
Purifier works pretty alright against the overseers
The Commando looks REALLY good. I've been running the laser cannon but need to try the Commando (When I can stop disconnecting 3 minutes into a mission).