Stress Testing Helldivers 2's Most ELECTRIC Gun

The ARC-3 Arc Thrower is the most popular weapon stratagem in Helldivers 2. Naturally you would assume that makes it the best gun in your support slot. But is that actually the case? We thoroughly review it here to find out.

[Deanthy]

They nerfed the arc thrower by making the game unplayable by crashing if you use it.

[Karpata]

4 Players with the Electric resistance armor and 4 Arc throwers is disgusting. Add 4 Tesla towers for fun if you like.

[stereoprologic]

The nerf came with yesterday's patch, by the Arc Thrower regularly crashing games... apparently.

[Yamyatos]

As somebody who used this weapon for the past couple douzen ingame hours, there is quite a bit wrong with this video, the core ones being:
- Aim above where you want to hit. This lets you hit the actual spot more often, as well as counteracting the not-actually-shooting issue (which is a collider problem, still annoying)
- Due to the above, many of the hit counts were wrong. You can kill striders in 2 shots and, iirc, chargers with 6 (head). For chargers keep in mind, if they turn, you start from 0 on a new limb.
- You *do not* have to fully charge the first shot. You just generally dont have to charge it fully. You can do about 1.5 shots a second or so, from the first shot onwards.

I also think i was able to kill hulks faster than 10 shots, but as my mate completely disliked automata for some reason i didnt really play against them too often in the past weeks.

The one problem i have with this gun is that you cant just keep it pressed. And before people comment on skill issue or me being lazy, i work on my PC all day. I literally get repetitive strain injury from this kind of design. Repeatedly holding and releasing a button for hours on end over multiple days or weeks is literally damaging to your body and not ergonomic at all. I do not want to encourage this, but there is people who made macros for it. Quite frankly, if i wasnt too lazy to do it and would intend to keep playing, i would do the same purely from an ergonomics viewpoint. The wanted or unwanted sideeffect is that you can completely min-max the dps.
Technically the whole undercharge thingy increases the skill ceiling of the gun and makes it more fun, both of which are good things. However, if it's intended they should give us the option to keep firing (at non-perfect rates maybe) while holding down the trigger. That would be a great option for the reload menu. However i just see them nerfing the weapon and completely removing this feature, as seems to happen to most things fun in this game. Afterwards it will probably end up being neither fun nor efficient to use, removing yet another weapon from the list of fun and usable support guns. I fear when i return to the game in a couple months it will be unplayable, but fingers crossed. They really need to do a thorough rebalance of literally everything. So many things dont even have a reason for existing right now. Guard Dog vs Rover for example. Most support weapons are just trash against heavy armor, but we need them to take out said heavy armor since stratagems are on way too long cooldowns (and half of them cant take out heavy armor either). As someone who doesnt usually play shooters and seeing how they literally want primaries to suck against most enemies anyways and tell us "use your stratagems" (and thanks for turning that into a meme btw) I would *love* if stratagem-only was a viable playstyle. But it simply is not. Too few slots. Too high cooldowns. Too many far too punishing modifiers (which are just unfun to top it off, next on the list of things they should rework). And so on.

[Epicmonk]

Another tip: aim above your target. When fired, the arc thrower projects a cone in front of it, and arcs to the first thing that intersects that cone, be it enemy, ally, corpse, or random rock outcropping. Aiming above your target allows the bottom part of the cone to skim just above the ground, improving range and accuracy.

[BobbieRys]

I can’t even play a full game MY GAME KEEPS CRASHING

[BlastedOblivion]

Fun fact about annoying headless bugs. House flies respiratory intake is in their torso so, if the rip their own heads off by accident (yes its a thing they do) they will live until they starve.

[Kensuke]

The Arc Thrower has plenty enough weaknesses to balance out its effectiveness in perfect conditions though:
1. It sucks at hitting close range targets
2. It is very easy to TK with it

Number 2 is especially important, because this means that you can't use it to peel off Hunters of your squadmates' backs, nor could you target a Charger or a Bile Titan someone is dancing around in (unless your squadmates have arc resistance).
You should try playing in Helldive difficulty level. If you can't get the space or chance to start shooting it, you're never gonna be able to shoot it.

The thing with the Bile Titan is an issue with the Bile Titan itself, not the Railgun nor the Arc Thrower. I've heard that people could sometimes one-shot them with the Orbital Rail Cannon Strike for the same reason.

As for the firing rate, someone did the tests and found out that you only have to charge up to 75% at any point, whether it's your first shot of a volley or not. It only _feels_ like the way it is because you're building up your rhythm and it feels like the volley shots charge up faster than the initial shot.

[icecityx]

For bugs, it hits center mass, no matter what direction you're looking at them. So if you're looking square on at a charger, it hits their head. Annoying to line up but once you kinda understand this, you can position it much better for attacking chargers. Additionally, the arcs generally go in like a 80 degree window behind the first connect, so its good to aim for the first bot/terminid in a horde.

I use the jump pack a lot because you really do need to be able to reposition yourself for optimal directional attacking.

[Sock]

Arc is life, if it wasnt crashing the game atm...

[thomasward]

Bile Titans also seem to come down a lot faster the higher up you are relative to their heads. Even with PC host if you’re at head level or above they come down very quickly.

[capjacm]

loving your channel and work Ermz! 🖤🖤🖤

[SleidT]

One thing, for Bile Titans, the Arc is the most effective when shot from the side and/or back of the titan. 2 to 4 shots and you will break one of his top back armor

[StarkMad]

Stress test the broken Exosuit. Aiming the missiles is completely useless after the “fix”.

[andrewa]

🖤🖤🖤

Your vids are fantastic, thanks for the content!

[phalmatticus]

ADS on this weapon is actually really useful for solving the misfire problem. Combined with aiming slightly above your targets as suggested elsewhere you can keep the lightning flowing regardless of terrain, light cover, and even the piles of enemy corpses you quickly rack up

[coqzilla]

Remember, if your shots aren't connecting, aim ABOVE what you want to shoot. The precision deviation is pretty generous so you can aim relatively high up above your target, it will also connect heads more consistently.

[franzmaier]

From my personal testing the bug seems to affect the health of the bile titan not a particular weapon. I have oneshot BTs with the EAT launcher while playing in a PS5 lobby and aiming for what used to be the railgun sweet spot.

[soldathun]

I think the soft spots after it hits armored targets can be used to hit the enemies with primaries like stripping the armor from a charger leg, but with less area

[dvdmenyu]

I don't get why everyone seems to think the half charge isn't intentional. You have to fully charge to warm it up and then let it rip to lock down an area, just like the flamethrower. Downsides are (besides the slow start up) inability to deal with enemies at point blank range and high risk of team killing, again, just like the flamethrower. If you have perfect positioning and line of sight it's OP, but if even one bug gets too close you have to run or panic switch weapon, both requiring another full charge before firing again. High risk/high reward at the best of times and borderline useless when getting swamped, just like unsafe railgun