Stress Testing Helldivers 2's Most EXPLOSIVE Gun

The JAR-5 Dominator is currently the most explosive gun in Helldivers 2. Naturally you would assume that makes it the best gun in your primary slot. But is that actually the case? We thoroughly review it here to find out.

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[ErmzPlays]

Just realized I misspoke and said it allows you to carry 8 mags. It is in fact 7 (including the one in your gun).

[radugherman]

As someone who rushed to unlock this I can confirm the disappointment.

[KalvinKoolAidKool]

If there’s anything this game disappoint me the most is that they have such cool guns and design and abilities yet they all suck ass

[DragonAl]

The real thing holding it back is the aim lag, without it, you have a slightly faster firing slugger. Hopefully it gets a buff to remove the lag, or buff to add a small explosive AOE.

[satanicdude]

"Mom can I have a bolter?"
-"We have a bolter at home"
The bolter at home:

[Zerethon]

So, as someone who mains the crap out of this thing, a few notes from my experience:

1.) It's basically a "Gyrojet" Rifle, if you watch, the rounds actually "Ignite" after a short distance and gain the rocket-like smoke trail and gain some speed it feels like, this also makes it seemingly less effective up close (It'll shred even decently heavy bots from a range on headshots, but up close it takes a few more rounds, a dev could probably clarify it)

2.) It acts more like a 500kg than a normal "Explosive" projectile, there's not a lot of splash damage as it basically blows up in your target, rather than on it, which means it does a TON of damage to crit/weak points but won't say, take a bot off a strider through the armor the way the autocannon will (The round bounces off the heavy plate and doesn't stick as you saw) but will still blow the legs off from the front pretty easy

3.) Always keep it in burst, the slow fire rate means you can easily tap off 1-2 rounds, and it's best used as a DMR type weapon at mid range, it's easily to shred a group of bots or bugs

The problems though, Yeah, it feels like aiming with the gun taped to a car door or something, and on BEEG target weakpoints (Tanks, turrets, hulks) that have waaay more health and seemingly armor, it's kinda shit, and that hurts me. But i'm usually superglued to my AC-8 anyways and it deals with them in a couple rounds

Compared to the slugger, it's more of a toss-up, the slugger is better up close, but reloads slower (Rounds reload vs full mag) and is less predictable at range, but mostly fills the same slot. For bugs honestly i usually use the incendiary breaker (It can still pop heads like the breaker up close, but also has the ability to ignite and suppress certain targets)

End of the day? The JAR Needs some shaped charge type rounds to make up for the clunkiness (EG: Doesn't break armor, but damages -through- it) so that it's like, a mini EAT or Recoilless, i'm fine with it not having an AOE to the shot if it basically could blow holes through armor if, say, the shot was past the ignite range (The distance where it starts trailing smoke, it gains the heavier AP effect)

Yeah it's jank i have to play around, but i spent years making jank work in warframe with the Seer i can handle this thing.

[capital]

it would be better if the fire rate was faster, they never said they want the main guns to SUCK, but they dont want us to solely rely on those guns to finish missions. I get why they say that, they probably put ALOT MORE work into strats and stuff than into guns but tbh I think having an effective main weapon actually gives us TIME to use our strats.

[Ruethless]

I feel like people have a misunderstanding of “Explosive” damage. And for good reason, it’s not that it explodes, it just does more “weak spot” damage than other weapons. The scorcher can take out walkers not because of its penetration or explosive damage, but because of the splash damage of its plasma rounds. That being said, the JAR-5 Dominator, unfortunately, sucks. It just doesn’t feel as impactful as you would think

[MeterLP]

For the burst mode, it has to be mentioned that you dont have to fire the three shots. You can still fire single shots by tap firing while in burst mode.

[Micholex]

Idea for a drinking game:
Take a shot everytime Ermz praises the Slugger

[deadlyapollo]

my problem with it is the description. It fires JET PROPELLED STEEL, it SHOULD go through damn near anything and the explosive aspect sounds like it should do lots of damage vs the SCORCHER which fires HOT GAS and can two shot striders and basically melt the Bots. That's why I don't like the Jar-5

[sludgemouth]

Devs: use your strategams more
Also devs: +100% call in time, +50% cooldown time, -1 slot, scrambled strategams.

[averymullen]

LMAO at your outro, dude the gun really really got you down 😂😂😂
Fantastic review man thank you for your medal sacrifice

[Woogsie]

One thing I didn’t see you cover. Is that when the round penetrates a weak point of any enemy. It explodes from within causing more damage than other ballistics in the game. I think that JAR description would benefit greatly from this type of notation and inform players how to be more effective with it.

[biddaminesquire]

I hate how the gun handles. It feels like the LMG when aiming. Very hard to hit close enemies when you hold the thing

[Michael-exlk]

It needs better handling. Honestly. The slow projectile is enough of a nerf. They did not need to make it also slow to aim too.

[AnthonyAEIRL]

Fun fact I noticed last night that they’ve actually renamed the liberator explosive to Concussive 😁

[lekarabbit]

I use the dominator as my main weapon. You are missing it's greatest strength. It's actually more of a sniper great at long to mid range because of is jet propelled rounds. But definitely could use some better aiming and armor penetration. I think It should be much slower at shooting in exchange for more power and aiming.

[RashaKahn]

I unlocked this thinking it would work well against the automatons and the AP would help against the striders, man I was pissed when it couldn’t penetrate them.

[Shadowjones]

Note for Bile Titans - Explosive Rounds do extra damage to their 2 sacs located under them. You can make quick work of deleting these sacks with any explosive weapon. They then lose the ability to spew bile - and will be pretty much 1 shottable from any other big weapon/stratagem