Helldivers 2 received its first balance patch yesterday, and as expected, it didn't do too well.

In case you didn't know, one of the best weapons on the higher difficulty levels received a significant nerf due to its overuse. According to Arrowhead, the railgun was intended to be an "anti-tank sniper rifle," rather than the best support weapon. It used to be able to subdue a Charger or Vile Titan with a few bullets.

It can still take down heavily armored opponents, but it requires a bit more skill." In the "unsafe" mode, the power of armor-piercing rounds is also increased, although if you keep shooting long enough you may get blown up. Damage to limbs is also reduced, so you need to aim for headshots.

Upon the patch's release, designer Alex Kravchenko stated: "It should not come from universal knowledge of which gun is the most powerful, but from personal preference. Nor was the patch a one-size-fits-all nerf. The flamethrower is now even capable of handling the charger, albeit slightly slower than in those halcyon railgun days. Nonetheless, players (at least the loudest ones) are a bit angry.

This has been made a bit worse by some scathing comments made by various Arrowhead developers on Discord. [Of course not. However, it should be emphasized that most of these screenshots are detached from the inflammatory messages surrounding them and taken out of context.

Ideally, everyone should remain calm, but this server has over 100,000 members at this point. If a fraction of those people were yelling at me in real time, I might lose my temper a bit, as anyone would. Let's move on.

I felt the sweet kiss of the railgun, but I myself am still climbing the hardest part. However, guide writer Sean Martin is jumping into the trenches on difficulty 9 after the patch. He almost agrees that the game's highest difficulty level feels much more miserable than it does now.

That's why you see players posting screenshots of seven bile titans having an impromptu vomiting mayhem around an evacuation shuttle. They look as common as flies on Helldive difficulty and often join the cadre of chargers to swat you down.

In the pre-railgun nerf world, these beasts were manageable - as a well-trained user could blow a titan's head off with a few shots. Their stopping power also afforded them the luxury of crowd control while busting the kneecaps of the chargers. The weapon's unsafe firing mode can emulate some of its former strength, but it is difficult to handle the weapon delicately when a beehive is closing in.

While the "just use the stratagem" meme is widespread, there is some truth to players' complaints. There are other anti-tank weapons, but they are unwieldy and slow-moving. There are anti-tank stratagems, but they have very long cooldowns and limited use.

Railguns were effective not only because of their stopping power, but also because they were easy to use and fast to fire. They were able to eliminate squads of bilious giants before they became completely unmanageable. My guess is that either the higher difficulty options need to leave the big guys out in the cold, or the game needs better anti-tank options.

That said, this is the first balance patch in the game's history, and it's not the end of the world if things get a little less pleasant while Arrowhead figures things out. The introduction of mechs and vehicles will change the meta so much that there may be nothing to complain about.