Arrowhead confirms Helldivers 2 players aren't being insta-killed by ricocheting rockets - shrapnel is the culprit, and it's being patched out alongside a weapon buff

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(Image credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has identified the cause of a mysterious phenomenon that's been insta-killing players after the latest patch.

For some context, a chunky Helldivers 2 balance patch recently tweaked the way shrapnel works, namely by giving it the potential to deal damage to the firer, whereas before these rebound shots were harmless. Following that change, a whole swath of players were initially convinced that the jet-assisted explosive shells they'd been firing from their Eruptors were reflecting off heavily armored enemies and killing them instantly. However, after a bit of detective work from the community strongly suggesting the culprit to instead be shrapnel, Arrowhead has now chimed in and officially put the mystery to bed.

The TLDR is that, no, the Eruptor's bullets weren't bouncing back and bodying players; it was indeed shrapnel from the exploding shells. "Currently, with the systems in place, only small arms should be able to ricochet on armor," reads a Reddit update from community manager SpitzerFX.

"This has since been debunked by the community, but nonetheless, our Ministry of Defense team also ran a number of tests today and confirmed that rockets and explosives are not ricocheting backwards," Spitzer said. "However, we have noticed another issue through these posts and community feedback that has identified the possibility for shots from the R-36 Eruptor to explode and rebound shrapnel at the shooter, which has a high enough damage value to instantly kill the player."

As a result, Arrowhead is "completely" removing the shrapnel effect from the Eruptor and buffing the weapon's damage output to compensate. "This should make it less lethal to the operator but just as powerful against enemies."

Don't worry either, the Eruptor's AoE damage won't be affected by this as, according to Spitzer, the damage to enemies dealt by shrapnel alone was "almost negligible." In fact, with the increase in direct hit damage, Arrowhead says this forthcoming update "will, overall, be a buff to the weapon."

"We apologise for this misunderstanding and thank you all for investigating these new changes so diligently, and for passing on your feedback to us," Spitzer said. "Hopefully this makes sense and these changes should help everyone survive better!"

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Otherwise, it sounds like ricochet damage is here to stay, at least for the time being. Arrowhead hasn't said anything about changing how that works, but at least we know it's only smaller bullets that have this potentially deleterious affect. In the meantime, proceed with great caution when using the Eruptor while Arrowhead works on a fix.

Now's a good time to point you toward our guide to the best Helldivers 2 armor.