A Detailed REVIEW Of The CB-9 Explosive Crossbow | Helldiver's Handbook | Helldivers2

what is the true potential of the cb9 explosive crossbow and where does it really stand against the Eruptor I've gone all out to find the answer pushing the crossbow to its absolute potential to see what Heights it can reach greetings hell divers today we're taking an extremely deep dive into the cb9 explosive crossbow this video was actually supposed to be the follow-up video to Reginald's Eruptor guide where I compared it against the AMR and the marxman rifles as well well however because the crossbow kept being compared against the Eruptor as a worse version of it it was only natural that this video thoroughly examined that comparison both these weapons are very similar in that they both fire an explosive projectile at a limited range with a blast radius you know what other weapons share the same attributes grenade launchers so for this comparison you'll also be seeing stats for both the grenade launcher support weapon and the gp31 grenade pistol this video is expected to be very dense with information analysis and testing so hold on to your hell pods and let's get it on as usual we're going to dive right into the first of many comparison tables to give us an idea where each of the weapons stand in terms of paper stats here is the first part of the stat profile comparison this table looks at the damage output of the weapons along with other immediate stats that would be important during momentto moment combat while the stats here are self-explanatory the fire rate stat in this case doesn't measure the rounds per second like like I would normally do instead given the nature of the weapons in question it felt more appropriate to calculate how long it would take each shot from the respective weapons to happen giving you an idea on how fast or slow you can follow up shots for sustained fire now let's start analyzing what we've got here in terms of raw damage the grenade pistol Takes the Cake at 600 damage outpacing all other weapons by a good margin this is followed up by the crossbow in second place while the Eruptor and grenade launcher kind of have the same damage range on paper at least for the crossbow specifically its damage is split between impact and the explosion the impact damage consists of around 35 to 40% of the total damage while the explosive blast accounts for the remaining 60 to 65% making it pretty effective at taking out lesser enemies by simply shooting near them speaking of explosive blasts I know for a fact that the 380 damage listed on the Eruptor does not reflect its true damage distribution because it doesn't account for the second instance of strap no damage it causes when the projectile explodes this is something to keep in mind the Eruptor and the crossbow are equal in terms of magazine size something I feel is a little unbalanced but I'll get to that later this is half the size of what the grenade launcher has and is of course miles ahead of the grenade pistol's single round damage per mag on paper both the Eruptor and crossbow are more or less the same which is outdone by the grenade launcher in terms of fire rate the Eruptor is the slowest to fire a follow-up shot at 2.36 seconds compared to the crossbow Go 1.2 seconds yes I know you can technically cancel the rechambering of a new round for the Eruptor but for the sake of testing I do not account for unintended benefits however this will be taken into consideration when evaluating total performance damage per second wise both the Eruptor and crossbow are pretty pathetic meaning these weapons are not designed for burning down targets quickly but rather built to deal damage in huge bursts which is what you expect from an explosive weapon both these weapons have the same armor penetration of medium one allowing you to damage things like Hive guards directly through their front plate but only dealing 50% of the impact damage but where the crossbow has a decisive advantage over the Eruptor is in its aim drag this measures in seconds how far the weapon's aim is off from where you are actually looking at when moving your aim around if 0 seconds is perfect movement the Eruptor 1 second feels like aiming a weapon while underwater in a pool of Jell-O that was it for the first table still with me good because here is another one in this table we're comparing the resource economy of the weapons looking at its total ammo and resupply stats both the Eruptor and the crossbow have the same number of total magazines and because they have the same number of shots in the mag they have exactly the same total ammo total Firepower isn't that far off each other but it is interesting to see how much further ahead these weapons are when compared against the grenade launcher support weapon both the crossbow and the Eruptor also have the same ammo efficiency gaining back six mags or 50% of their total magazines carried from a single re Supply brick a small tip for both the crossbow and Eruptor reloading when you have one round left doesn't result in throwing the shot away instead because the last round is already chambered reloading artificially increases the size of a magazine by one allowing you to hold six shots instead of five pretty consistently from these two tables alone you can probably guess that if we account for the hidden strap no damage the ability to animation cancel the rechambering on the Eruptor the fact that it can destroy Buck holes and fabricators and can also break open Supply containers as a primary weapon it would seem that the Eruptor has the crossbow beat in terms of damage output utility and ease of use and indeed that would be the case the sheer power the Eruptor brings to the table for how easy it is to use makes it one of the most popular weapons for anyone to pick up you would be hard pressed to pick up the crossbow given what you've heard about the Eruptor not to mention the crossbow has a very real risk of blowing yourself up if you are too close but that got me wondering what is the risk of blowing yourself up with the Eruptor surely with all that Firepower you're carrying around you're at risk of killing yourself if you blast it too close I decided to find out what the lethal self- damage ranges were for both these weapons and compare it using different armor types turns out your armor type be it light medium or heavy has no bearing on the damage you receive from the blast it doesn't matter what you wear you will still take the same amount of damage which in the case of the crossbow if you are less than 7.5 M from from the blast radius you will kill yourself meanwhile for the Eruptor you can't kill yourself with the blast at all if you are at full health you heard that right even with the lighters of armors you'd be left with around 24% Health if you point blank shot the floor with the Eruptor this was ridiculous not only does the Eruptor have all that power and a bunch of other benefits but it's also technically safer to use than the crossbow at closer ranges although armor types didn't matter what did affect your survivability was having explosive resistance this passive is a GameChanger for the crossbow because it meant you could survive a point blank shot as well here is the table capturing everything I've just talked about the takeaway from this table is that as long as you have the explosive resistance passive on your armor your experience with the crossbow will improve greatly since you won't be killing yourself as easily anymore this will help a lot in getting more practice since mistakes won't be as punishing but also allows you to take more risk in closer engagements too now that we've talked about how not to blow yourself up with the crossbow let's talk about blowing enemies up and how many shots you're going to need I'll bring up the crossbow brickpoint tables here for you to see at your own Leisure I won't be going through it because there's already a lot of content out there showing the breakpoints in action but if you want more information you can always pause and read the notes I've left behind for each enemy I actually built these tables imagining that they came as part of the manual with your crossbow you'd get your newly issued cb9 explosive crossbow and when you unboxed it that would be a little book booklet of break points that came along that you could read while you were in your HELLP pod on the way down at this point in the video we've talked at length about the comparison between the Eruptor and the crossbow we've covered the Eruptor stats its capabilities the fact that it is also for some reason safer than the crossbow despite effectively having a missile for a projectile all of this points to the crossbow being the inferior weapon when compared to the Eruptor potential but here's the thing what we haven't actually seen is where the crossbows true potential really lies there's this quote that came to mind when I was running the comparison between these two weapons if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will live its life believing it is stupid in other words if you only compare the performance of the crossbow against the areas of performance where you know the Eruptor excels in you go on believing that the crossbow is pretty weak after all if you gave up on the crossbow after playing a handful of games you probably didn't bother trying to find out what the crossbow can really do did you that is what we'll explore in the second half of this video to do this I'll have to confess something I didn't actually show you all the stat tables yet in fact I kept tucked away in this section one of the most important ones the projectile comparison table this table shows you the stats of the projectiles of the weapons in question starting with projectile speed this is how fast a weapons projectile will take to reach 50 m upon firing as you can see the crossbows bolt is the slowest among all weapons here needing 1 second to reach 50 m while the rest take around 0.75 seconds on average the blast radius variable measures the size of the explosion where the projectile makes contact with a surface and the blast fallof measures the distance from the center of impact in which you begin to lose damage for the crossbow you deal full damage within 5 m while the Eruptor still does its full damage further out at 6 m a side note the crossbow actually has a really steep blast fall off after 6 M expect to lose around 70 to 80% of your blast damage from 7 m onwards now you're probably looking at the max range stat on the table and wondering why the crossbow stat is blanked out well I want you to look at the table and the other weapons on it and think about how far the crossbow can actually shoot we know the Eruptor has a max range of about 125 M thanks to Regin not's testing I have done the measurements for both the grenade launcher and Pistol and they both have the same max range of about 115 M can you guess where the crossbow lies 125 m 150 m 2 200 M maybe the answer is 360 M almost three times more than the Eruptor now I know what you're thinking but Ren it's not like you're ever going to snipe at something 360 M away anyway besides you have to consider the projectile drop off the weapon and if you can even see the enemy at that distance that is a very true Point 360 m is just the potential the crossbow has realistically you probably won't be using all that range to your advantage anyway most people are struggling to even hit targets Beyond 30 to 40 m away now to be fair the crossbow doesn't make it easy when it comes to aiming so it's understandable why some people might find it frustrating to try and use the crossbow but this is where this Rangefinder chart I've made will come in handy to use this chart you basically want to line up the head of your target beneath the line that matches the distance of your target so if your target is 40 m away you'll want to line up their head or the highest part of their body to where the 40 m line is and you hit them Dead on at that range it's going to be a little difficult at first if you're not used to visualizing the distance and making the estimations on the fly but that's one of the beautiful things of the crossbow it rewards your practice in a way the Eruptor doesn't over time as you get used to the crossbow making shots at 80 M becomes second nature and you reach a point where you couldn't imagine yourself not Landing those shots anymore keep in mind that because your shots have a 5 m blast radius it's actually a lot more forgiving even if you happen to over or undershoot a bit but what about further than 80 M as far as our scope goes we've run out of fix points to consistently fire beyond that range however there is something else we can use that can act as a fix point the Ping markers whenever you mark an enemy an object or a location there will be a marker that pops up in the shape of a square that marker is always the same size no matter where you are pinging whether it's 5 m in front of you or even 100 m and Beyond because of this we can use this as a third fix point to adjust our aim relative to the Ping marker rather than the actual Target doing so allows you to reliably shoot at Targets far beyond our 80 M range limit with the scope alone here are the marking points for 90 M and 100 m for 90 M you want to have a small gap between the iron sights at the bottom of the Ping marker for 100 m you'll want the bottom of the Ping marker to connect with the top of the iron sights I could keep giving you marking points for further distances but I think after you're used to sniping at 100 m without a problem you can easily learn to find out the marking points for any distance with this technique just memorize where on the body of the crossbow does the Ping marker need to be for your shots to reach that distance finally there is one more tactical application of the crossbow that I have not seen any other weapon accomplish nearly as well for me to explain this I'll need to introduce another term vertical Arc distance this is the weapons projectile AR when you aim straight up into the sky because your aim can't get any higher than looking 90° upwards it is a consistent fix point from which we can measure how far your shots will land in the case of the grenade launcher and grenade pistol they have a vertical Arc distance of about 45 M this means if you aim straight up at a given Direction the projectiles from the grenade launcher will land about 45 M scoped in front of you of course because you are shooting straight up it's going to take some time for the projectile to come back down in the grenade launcher and the grenade pistol's case it will take around 8.12 2 seconds to reach that 45 M impact distance for the crossbow it has a vertical Arc distance of 180 M and it takes a whopping 17.7 seconds for the boat to reach that distance sounds impressive but if you think about it trying to hit a Target exactly 100 m away after waiting 17.7 seconds isn't all that it's made out to be in fact in the vast majority of your engagements you probably won't even make use of this capability at all so what's the point of this unless your target is standing completely still at exactly 180 M away this use is very limited because the crossbow can't destroy Fabricators or bug holes even using it as a motar or a poor man's 120 mm barrage won't be of any use in taking out these objectives ah but we don't need it to take out objectives or kill units we just need it to land nearby if you fire a handful of bolts into a fabricator Outpost for example the explosions from your bolts will cause the Bots to be on high alert thinking they are about to get attacked because they can't immediately see you in their Panic they are very likely to call in a bot drop at their location further reinforcing the area ordinarily this would be a terrible thing for us however we aren't actually going to attack the target Outpost in fact the reality is we're going to advance in a complete opposite direction from where the bot drop occurred what we've done with this move is misdirect the Bots into thinking we're going to Assault The Outpost causing them to call in reinforcements into a location we won't be going to this places the bot drop on cool down for the next minute or minute and a half allowing the team to attack an objective like a strat Jam Jammer gunship base or a motor outpost on the other side of the map without worrying about a bot drop being called in there however there are a couple of things to take note of in order for this to work consistently first we'll need to be able to consistently plant our boats exactly where we want them we know the vertical Arc distance is a fixed 180 m but to pinpoint its exact location we'll need to make use of the mini map ping and the compass in our heads up display pinging the exact location of the mini map tells us how far or how close we are to the 180 M Sweet Spot while the compass tells us which direction we will need to face exactly this is how Compass do once we've reached the correct distance our job isn't done yet because there is one interaction that needs to be accounted for static enemy spawns in objectives and outpost don't actually appear until you're about roughly 140 M away you can observe this by having any armor with the Scout passive pinging a fabricator Outpost from further than 150 M away and you'll notice your radar does not detect any enemies in the area this means firing your shots into an outpost at 180 M doesn't actually do anything since there aren't any enemies to alert instead to make this tactic work we can take advantage of the fact that your shots will need around 18 seconds to land by first firing your shots from the 180 M Mark and then moving towards the outp post until the enemy spawns are triggered once the enemies have called in a but drop or breach you can turn tail and run away from the area and you will have two because it won't be long before a handful of them approach your last known location after the last boat has landed at this point you can rally with your team at the real front and support them from the rear with your awesome aiming that you've certainly mastered with the help of this guide continue misdirecting as necessary if the opportunity presents itself this final section will cover some of the loadout suggestions that in my opinion work very well with the crossbow weapons that compensate for its weakness like the ability to destroy structures or take out heavy units effectively will decide how the rest of the build is likely to follow personally I love pairing the quaza cannon with the crossbow as it offers me everything I need to make up for the crossbows weaknesses furthermore both the crossbow and the quazar share the same ideal circumstances they both would much prefer to have a good amount of distance between them and the enemy stun grenades are a reliable way to create space in a jiffy if you are being overrun by bugs jetpack Troopers and Berserkers the ability to stun heavy targets like Chargers and hulks enables you to get pinpoint shots off with the quaza or expose them long enough for the crossbow to strike at their weak spots to bring them down in wanting to create distance I also find the jumpack to be a very versatile backpack to have especially against bugs not only can you extract yourself from a situation where there is a very real risk of you blowing yourself up from shooting too close but you can utilize the jump Pack's flight duration to reload your crossbow and byy time for your quaza Cannon to cool down or to even pre-charge it reducing the amount of time you need to wait to get the shot off what pairs very well with the crossbow and the stun grenade is the supply pack because you'll be firing and missing a lot of bolts as you get used to aiming with the crossbow the resupply pack offers you the ability to take more shots at further ranges to build up your muscle memory for aiming the more practice you can get in a single Mission by seizing more sniping opportunities the faster you'll improve by sheer number of shots taken not to mention always being able to refill your stun grenades on the Fly is just incredibly good too for those of you who for reasons refuse to wear anything with explosive resistance might find use in the shield generator backpack while generally increasing your survivability it also makes close range shots less punishing though I would still highly recommend wearing explosive resistance either way a special mention for the EMS orbital strike and the EMS Sentry anything that can get enemies to stand still and Clump up drastically improves the value of explosive weapons with that we've come to the end of this video we've learned a tremendous amount about the crossbow from how it Stacks up against the Eruptor in terms of stats and performance to how we can learn to improve our aim better and even using it as a phantom artillery piece for tactical misdirection while I will say that the flexibility and power of the crossbow does indeed fall below the Eruptor the threshold needed to be effective with the crossbow is also higher and also presents a much higher skill ceiling to reach the weaknesses of the crossbow can be compensated for with the rest of your Loadout without overlapping function functions leaving you with nothing else but to improve your aim to exceed the Eruptor in that regard hopefully with the guidance of this video you'll be consistently making 150 M shots and Beyond in no time and when you've reached that level of precision and accuracy it is the enemy that will be warned about being in range of artillery fire you are the artillery now in terms of Buffs there are only two areas which I feel the crossbow could use a little more lovees to make it stand apart more from the Eruptor number one is having a larger clip size the fact that you can carry the same amount of ammunition as the Eruptor makes no sense to me I would like to see the crossbows clip size bumped up by two giving a total ammo Improvement of 84 bolts as well as having more staying power in a firefight secondly I would like to see an increase to the Stagger of the direct impacts I think one of the more frustrating parts of the crossbow is that its stagger basically doesn't do very much at all it doesn't have enough stopping power to knock things like rocket Devastators out of their lock on animation or keep Berserkers in check being able to do so would make it a lot more reliable in close quarters combat as well as a support weapon I think with these two Buffs the crossbow would be in a very good place as a close combat firefighting weapon that can shine even at extreme ranges across all sorts of terrain if you have the AIM for it this video took a very long time to put together partly because I was busy with work but also because I felt that proper Justice needed to be done to show that the crossbow is not a weak weapon hopefully I've been able to do just that with this review and guide if you want to share the way of the crossbow with anyone I hope this video will be able to change some minds or at least give you reason to give the crossbow another goal if you've enjoyed this video and want to see more Deep dive reviews and guides consider dropping a like and subscribing thank you all for watching and I will see you in the next one over and out hell divers

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Length: 21min 24sec (1284 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 21 2024