[Update]: Helldivers 2's next Warbond is coming October 31st with a heavy SMG, plasma pistol and unflinching armor.

In order to rebuild community trust, as well as bring the game back from the brink of doom, Helldivers 2 developers have recently announced a 60-day plan. While the exact details are still few and far between, the first part of this effort will be launching on September 17th alongside a whole bunch of buffs.

First and foremost, enemy armor will be getting reworked, as will the armor penetration stat for players. The idea is to make the heavy enemies more vulnerable to a wider variety of weapons so players aren't just incentivized to use the same stratagems over and over again. The goal isn't to make heavy enemies pathetic so they'll likely get some buffs in return, but either way 'big bois' like Chargers, Bile Titans and Gunships will be a lot more straightforward to deal which is definitely a good thing given how often they can appear in some missions.

Keeping on with the theme of versatility, the September 17th patch will also make the Autocannon, Heavy Machine Gun and Anti-Materiel Rifle more effective against bugs so they won't just be primarily used on the bot front. Flamethrowers will also be getting some desperately needed improvements, though it doesn't look like these changes will be coming with the next update. Still, they are in the works!

The third and perhaps most important part of the announcement is that Arrowhead is now taking their testing a lot more seriously. As such the days of stratagems or weapons releasing straight up broken, or patches downgrading performance and reintroducing old bugs, should hopefully be over.

I'll reserve my judgment for when the update actually arrives, but it really does seem like going all the way down to Mostly Negative rating on Steam has finally shaken Arrowhead out of their stupor. Instead of dreading new updates, I'm actually looking forward to seeing my favorite weapons tweaked, and that is a very refreshing change!

Whatever the future may bring, I'll make sure to let you know once the September 17th update goes live.