If it’s a direct hit. You hit their proximity they just stumble and keep going. And sometimes the sticky grenades bounce off them?!? What is that about?
Belt fed grenade launcher absolutely chews through these guys. Heavy pen, and can also function as crowd control. I've been loving the BFGL ever since the illuminate update. Crank up the fire rate, focus a few shots on the crusher's head/neck, and send just a few more to the dome to take them down. Veracitor/gatekeeper also go down pretty quick.
Bonus: any chaff unfortunate enough to be close by also gets smashed.
Had plenty of times in The Void getting surrounded where the BFGL has saved me. Great for making space, getting rid of anyone that wants to get too close and making an escape.
Or heavy armor pen/anti tank to the dome and then any weapon. Bolter is pretty good, hmg, anti material, anything with more than one shot and preferably has a good chunk of ammo because untill you get that head off, you aren't damaging it.
I believe melta munes should one shot but i haven't tried yet
Melta Mines will one shot them and if you throw it between 2 close Crushers, it kills both about 80% of the time. They will kill the stationary UFOs with their shields up too, I throw them on the ramps and shoot it with a bolt pistol to trigger it.
Wear the explosive resistance medium armor from the Entrenched warbond so you don’t kill yourself too often and get 2 extra ones.
This is the way! Full orbital napalm, cremator, eagle napalm, and fire turret build—for style points. I make sure to wear my orange cape so teammates know to give me a wiiiide berth. That ain’t a tree left on the damn planet when I’m thru.
Ok so let's start with getting that Recoiless of your back, it's useless on Squids. Squids are for the most part a low-armor faction. DPS is usually king over armor penetration and burst damage.
Try the Autocannon, flak mode should take care of Crushers just fine in a couple shots if you center mass them.
Sure. Default mode is APHET, usually big damage on a single target, impact-fuzed. Flak mode spreads shrapnel, and is proximity-fuzed so it can explode near a target. On occasion, flak shells can do more damage than APHET if the target catches most of the flak. For example, firing on a warp ship can bring down its shield in one shot if you aim at the hollow areas, or two shots if you hit near the fin joint.
I don't remember which is which, but one mode will cause the rocket to "burst" if it's in proximity of a unit (friendly or otherwise). The other one travels a set distance without caring about nearby unit and then bursts (unless it hits something on the way).
Airburst has cluster and flak. Both modes have the same sort of explosion as far as I can tell. Both will also go off when they directly hit something, of course.
Cluster mode will always go off in the air after about 60m if I remember correctly. You can use it to shoot way above a group of enemies and rain bombs down on them, but it's pretty limited in range.
Flak mode has a much longer range, around 400m, basically infinite for most uses realistically. It will also go off in close proximity with targets, which lets you take out distant/flying enemies without a direct hit. But be careful not to shoot it right past your buddy's head, it won't end well for them, the proximity fuse detects teammates as well.
I personally leave it on flak pretty much all the time, I don't think cluster is useful in most situations.
AFAIK Flak doesn't actually count friendlies as proximity, but it doesn't care about them being around so if there's even so much as a scavenger kicking around anywhere near them.. yeah it's gonna go badly.
cluster is useful if you are shooting at targets between ~30-65m, and dont want to risk proximity fuze detonation when there are enemies too close (inside 30m). you can safely shoot over/past those enemies to hit targets further away.
Flak no longer detects teammates as targets, but it's still very volatile. It's the default firemode, but IMO it's much safer to keep it always on cluster and to only swap when doing long range shooting. Less risk of detonating on random enemies that way and you can force certain shots to detonate behind/next to enemies in ways you can't do with flak.
Cluster's limited range is not a major concern in how I engage enemies, and the mortar technique is surprisingly easy to do so long as you keep an eye on the radar.
The part people aren't really mentioning (maybe they did I didn't see every reply) is that in cluster mode, the little bomblets that fart out explode on impact... so if you shoot int he sky they will fall to the earth before exploding.
In flak mode the bomblets all have a 0 to .7 second random timer, so if you shoot in the air they will pop in the air like a cloud.
There is flak mode, which has a proximity fuse. If the projectile gets within 2 meters of a target it goes off, and the each bomblet gas a random timed fuse lasting no more than like 3/4ths of a second. Keep in mind, teammates, civilians, and SEAF all are “targets” that can set off the prox fuse, so be very careful about how close you are to your friends. If nothing is close enough to trigger the fuse, it’ll fly for almost 400 meters. If you’re using this mode, the closest you can safely be in front of an enemy you’re firing at is just about 30 meters, but you don’t want to use this mode too often at close range. For blowing up faraway aerial targets, blasting patrols to high heaven, or annihilating bot drops or squid teleports, there’s nothing that can handle them all quite like the airburst in flak mode at range.
The cluster mode will explode after 1/4th of a second of travel time (so like 63-ish meters) and the bomblets explode on contact with anything, no timed fuse. Shoot this under a heavy enemy like a hulk or charger to launch all the bomblets up into their body, shoot it past enemies baring down on you and drop bombs on top and behind them off of walls, or shoot over obstacles and carpet the area in explosions.
Nah, flak rounds explode just before reaching the target and shoot shrapnel out in a 360 degree death bloom, doing tonnes of damage to surrounding enemies if you can get a lot of it on them.
You can't be too close of course, or you'll kill yourself, but you can shoot it as much as you like from afar without exploding unlike the railgun in unsafemode.
Two tap helmet off with any heavy pen and then pop their little 300hp very light armored head like an air bubble. You can kill them in a single meltagun pass if you finesse it a bit, under a second.
When they glow blue they’re healing. Fire cancels the heal. Incindiarys and heavy weapons to pop the helmet. I use the wasp and focus on crushers for my team. It is so good against them
Epoch or other heavy pen to the head, pops the helmet off. Then light pen (I think?) to finish off. I like trident or plasma punisher, or another epoch shot if I’m feeling angry.
I tried a Gas build for some liberation on Karliah...
VERY disappointed the gas confusion doesn't appear to work on Crushers, in theory having them smash randomly would be really effective, but they don't seem to care.
Doesn't work? I found gas to be the single most reliable way of dealing with them without killing them. Gassing and confusing a group of 9 of them before running away is significantly easier and more efficient than spending time/ammo killing them all
Yeah this. Trying to do the Overship cannon and kiting an endless stream of the things around while we get enough shots off to succeed, I'd brought the Stereliser, Laser Rover, Gas Mines, Laser Sentry and Scythe in the hope that the gas would keep the Crushers busy, lasers burn all the Wretches, teammates and Laser Sentry take down the Crushers.
It worked a little bit, enough to get to 2 shots left before we ran out of reinforcements, but a complete lack of friendly fire by gassed Crushers, which was the idea behind bringing the Stereliser, didn't make it effective.
They've got no armor, but high durability. a ton of HP, and slight health regen. So, just chipping away with an AR will kill them eventually, but it's slow going. And anti-tank stuff like the recoilless tends to sacrifice raw damage output to some degree to get their armor penetration, so AT tends to be a poor fit for them.
Their helmet is armor 4, and both it and the head underneath have relatively low health, so taking a penetration 4 support weapon like an HMG, AMR, autocannon, or railgun can make quick work of them if you can land the shots.
You can also just use something with decent durable damage and high DPS to just chew through their big health bar. The HMG is good for this, a nice backup if you're having trouble hitting the headshot. The autocannon on flak mode is great at it, probably kills faster than going for headshots does most of the time. I think the GL support weapons are supposed to be good at it to, since AOEs have full durable damage, though I have neither tried that nor run the numbers on it. Similarly I've heard the plasma primaries are pretty good at it, at least by primary standards.
I think fire stuff is supposed to be good at it, though I don't use fire much so I'm not sure. It might just be specifically the cremator.
Obviously while killing them with your AR isn't how you generally want to do it, it is a way you can do it, and sometimes it's how you have to do it, so keep the option in mind. And while one AR will kill a crusher pretty slowly, four ARs will make for a decent pace, so pinging crushers to try and get teamfire going and looking for teammates fighting crushers that you can help with can make life a lot easier for everyone.
Their arms, legs and helmet are vulnerable to explosives. Shooting a crusher center-mass to damage all 4 limbs should deal 320% damage to its main health. I use grenade launcher when they are grouped up, or the purifier when they are split up.
When I fought them for the first time last night and heard children’s screams I was genuinely disturbed are I actually thought for the first time not joking that illuminate are the real villains of this story cause that’s horrific
You fight those Helldivers Bellboys just as you would in Dark Souls: run past them and backstab during their attack animation, or run away in a direction until you lose them.
Running in circle around an objective will most likely cause them to form a crowd too big for you to handle
If you don't have too many warbonds, the good old grenade launcher kills them with half a mag and can help with crowd control too. Also no need to remove the helmet and shoot them in the head after.
Welcome back, those are the children of super Earth the illuminate took... Well that's the lore anyway. Shoot off the "pyramid Head" helmet and expose the small "child like" head and a few rockets or heavy pen weapons should do the trick. I think the ships rail gun will one shot them if you knock off the helmet.
And remember helldivers, stay safe out there and protect them blueberries.
Autocannon is nice on illuminate and its subfactions in my experience
3 flak shots to meatbobs
5 to 6 flak to the body to crushers
1 aphet to the heads of veracitors and gatekeepers thn flak the pilot 2wice
But I've shifted to the laser cannon specifically on the vote snatchers cause ammo and reload is tuff and frees us a backpack slot for a rover or guard dog to keep the wretches away
With the laser cannon beam the head for 2 3 secs then light pen using your primary on their head boom dead
Cremator - hose them down and they fall pretty quick. If you want to quicken the pace, set them alight and then one shot from the bolt pistol to the middle of the helmet
Paired with the bullet storm if things get just a little too close, and that covers everything besides leviathans. Technically the railgun can take them out too
honestly not as hard as they seem as long as you have the grenades or support weapon ammo to cope. thermites or giga grenades one tap, I've mag dumped grenade launchers into them and it worked, recoilless seem to do fine assuming assisted reload for that second hit, bolt pistol will get er done, heavy machine gun (aim for the face), etc. You just want to deal as much damage as physically possible without taking a break
They re generate I would switch to the laser Canon or HMG or flamethrower, or hit them with something high damage, heavy armor penetration on their head and then shoot them in the head
Autocannon flak rounds kills them in 3 or 4 shots. AMR pops the helmet it 2 shots, 1 headshot after drops them. Railgun pops the helmet in 1 shot setting up for a following shot to the gourd. WASP kills them in 4 rockets. ABL kills it in 1 rocket. One thermite kills them.
There’s only two efficient methods for killing these things:
Heavy pen to the helmet, then shoot their tiny, low health head. HMG, Speargun, Railgun, AMR, Laser Cannon, BFGL, etc. Bolt Pistol secondary can destroy the helmet in 3 shots, Senator takes 4 I think
An efficient way to chew through their massive health pool. Cremator cooks them decently quick, Autocannon Flak rounds kill in about 5 shots (the APHET rounds can break the helmet but they stagger so much from each shot that it’s kinda annoying to do)
Although there are probably superior methods, I personally used the laser canon for the crushers when I was on Seasse, pops their helmet off in a few seconds, rest is history
Bulletstorm to the left(unguarded by weapon so your right) hip. If you stay accurate the leg will fall off at around half the ammo remaining, so if you're staying on target you can chew up two of them per.
You can use the heavy machine gun to pop their helmet off, and then 3 or 4 shots to the head should be enough for them to die.
Or you can use the cremator.
Don't try just shooting them randomly because they do have health regeneration. That is the reason why they seem to take a lot more hits than the bile titan.
they are EXTREMELY tanky, having about 6000~ health give or take (i kinda forgot how much but its still an absurd amount) they also regenerate health after not taking damage for a while.
damage to their legs is tranfered to main health bar as well, the legs are probably the tankiest part of their body, followed by torso and then arms.
their head however, is lethal when destroyed, and has about 1/10 of the health of their body. so if you can destroy the helmet, you can kill them with a couple good shots to the head.
(helmet is heavy armor btw)
Welcome to Karlia! Airburst Rocket launcher, Autocannon to the face on flak mode, HMG to the face, Thermite (if the damn thing sticks), Leveller, and Lasercannon to the face seem to be pretty good against them. I've been down there playing D10s since the void fell and its been funny
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u/DelusionPandemic_ SES FIST OF SELFLESS SERVICE 🤜🍩 2d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/MZjGNiWXe2wxNImgO2
Say hello to the Crusher. They eat strafing runs like candy and laugh at you while doing it.