Helldivers 2 - the tesla tower is shockingly confusing

hello everyone today we're going to be talking about the Tesla tower defense strategy so when our Super Destroyer came with some new ship modules they had some strateg specific upgrades and there was a lot of coverage about how insane fire was and to be fair they were right but there was also a bit of adjustments to the defense strategy such as the Tesla Tower which was affected by actually two of the new ship modules starting with the circuit expansion upgrade Arc based weapons are able to jump its lightning to one more enemy pretty neat with the blast absorption upgrade sentries have 50% less damage from explosion even pretty neater now as it sounds is just enough to make something like the Tesla Tower work and after spending the part of my week here doing a deep dive on Tesa Tower I've compiled a list of what I found out I answered this endeavor with a lot of questions to leave with only some answers but even a lot more questions and there's a lot I'm going to be talking about this video so here's I'm going to be structuring it so we're first going to talk about the very basics of the Tes Tower and then we're going to talk about Its Behavior Uh it's processed for both priming and firing next we're going to be covering its interactions which as a heads up there are a lot of different interactions right up next we're going to be covering some gameplay scenarios what offensive and defensive potential there could be for something like the Tesla Tower and then lastly we're going to wrap it up with some interesting tips and things I found out about as well as my final thoughts on a Tesla Tower and just my general confusion about how Arc based weapons work in this game as a whole also as to Quick disclaimer here the Tesla Tower will be shown a lot so with that comes a lot of flashing lights so this is just a warning so those who may be be sensitive to those things but if you're fine with that I'd like to welcome you aboard the Martyr of science uh Nam so because a lot of Hell divers needed to be reinforced for the sake of this knowledge so starting with the description of what the game tells us about the Tesla Tower as well as some basic things about it the Tesla Tower is a turret which fires electrical charges at Targets at close range to avoid Friendly Fire remain prone and we're going to be coming back to the sentence a lot actually so keep that in mind beyond that compared to the other turrets it say the tower has a lower cool down of and2 minutes while the rest of the sentries have a 3-minute cool down minus the shield generator which has a 1 and 1/2 minute cool down beyond that it also has a lifespan of 3 minutes meaning you can have two Tesla Towers up at the same time giving it a lot of potential with it's frequent up time now onto Behavior upon calling in a Tesla Tower it will Sprout up sparking a bit and it's ready from the get-go if you were to compare this to other turrets take the autoc Canon turret for example the moment it exits its hell pod is going to start looking around for enemies try to face the barrel towards them and then fire now the Tesla Tower has no Barrel but will still try to identify enemies within its range from what I've tested the effective range seems to be about 20 M so anything within 20 M will initiate its first stage the priming and now when I say anything take this Loosely as I still have no clear idea of what will initiate the priming all I know is Hell divers terides and automatons alike will initiate the priming but I have not seen it Prime when something near like a Canon turret and I have not seen it Prime when next to civilians on those extraction missions when the has the tower does prime you can visually see this by the flare of electrical curage near the top of the tower priming takes about 1 and 1/2 seconds but before we get into firing a little bit more on on the priming part of it there are multiple ways to reset the priming one is by simply leaving the effective range within 1 and half seconds so if you were 21 M away from it you enter 20 M it starts to flare up you walk back you reset the priming the priming does not stay consistent so if you were to stay in there for 7 seconds and leave and then go back in for another 7 Seconds the next moment you come in you will not not get zbed within .1 seconds it needs to be the whole 1 and 1/2 seconds again another way of resetting the priming as a hell diver is just by going to a prone state and you do not have to be specifically prone to reset the priming if you were to be standing or crouching then wait 1.4 seconds and then hit your prone button or your dive button the tower will immediately reset so even if you're in a process of going into your prone state or you're in the air falling as you're diving the tower will not prime even if you were to die from somewhere like a high platform the tower will not prime as you are falling however being being ragd dolled is not the same as being prone or diving even if you're like flat on the floor if you are ragd dolled the tower will start to charge up and given how bad your ragd doll is you might not even have a chance to respond because you still have a get up animation that you can't act out of so just be aware of that lastly the only other way to reset the priming is by breaking line of sight meaning you can still be within the range but because it can't see you it cannot Prime so unlike the mortars which can attack enemies behind cover just so long as within their range sentries and the tower alike cannot attack attack something unless it sees it on top of it being within the effective range however unlike the centuries you can pretty much easily tell from what point of origin the centuries will be viewing from more often than not it's the barrel of the weapon but for the Tesla Tower given its design it's kind of hard to tell what exactly is looking at me if that makes sense and from what I've tested it is not the top of the tower it's more so along the middle of the shaft um you can have a visual with the top of the tower and be exposed to it and will not prime but expose yourself to a slightly lower part of it and it start to look a little bit more active and there's a couple of ways to break line a sight with a tower you can Crouch behind some boxes and stand behind a wall you can use a smoke grenade or even the eagle and orbital smokes to prevent the Tesla Tower from priming those are just a couple ways that I find out lastly before the Tesla tower has fired it will need to charge before it can even begin the priming charging takes 1 and 1 half seconds and this is indicated by an audible que the sound Q only plays after it has fired and will play regardless if anything is around it or not if you you would have Prime the Tesla Tower move away and then come back next to it the audio ke will not play again so at that point all you have left is to be visually aware of it because that's the thing about the priming it is silent it for some reason plays no sound so on to firing which is where the Tesla tower has a complete mind of its own I want you to refer back to what the game told us about the Tesla Tower which is to avoid Friendly Fire remain prone and that only applies from what I've seen to the prime because when the Tesla Tower fires it will fire at almost all always the next closest thing I know I said almost always but that's the thing the firing part of the tower is the most inconsistent part of it it just makes me want to like rip my hair out there is no clearly defined rules from what the Tesla Tower will fire at best rule of thumb I have is that it will fire at the closest thing next to it as to what exactly classifies as a Target to it that's yet to be fully understood I have several examples of me being prone close to the tower as bugs and Bots approach it the moment they get in range it begins to Prime because I'm prone so it won't Prime but the moment it fires it hits me I've also seen it fire at anything in a Hell pod several different strategems and will even fire and hit well looks to beat nothing as much as I have of examples of hitting an odd Target I equally have it firing and hitting God knows what I watch this thing Prime I watch the top of it flare I see it fire but I don't see where it fires too or the effects of it firing I seen both Bots and bugs alike walk right next to it trigger the priming and then when it fires and Tower goes off they are not affected I feel that it is kindy of hit something and I think it found a Target and it fired at it but it wasn't even a real Target to begin with and that was a constant issue I was having with the Tesla Tower and and this takeaways into my next section which are the examples the interactions so as I said before the Tesla Tower will fire at things such as hell pods or even other sentes as a reminder hell pods are those things that your weapons come in on or your backpacks come in on if you would have call in a quazer cannon or a jumpack and it comes in that pod once you would to pick up the weapon or backpack the p R trct back into the ground if you didn't pick up the strategy and you walk within the range of the tower to trigger the priming it will charge up and it will fire and if the pot is closer to it than you are it will hit that pot the same things happens with centries but it won't damage them it can hit it for a lot of times and it will just remain there even the resupply podt and there are from what I tested three strategems that will get hit and will get affected by it the first is the pilot exo suit and whether you are in it or whether is closer to it than you are at the end of the priming stage it will get hit and from what I've seen it takes about two shots to actually destroy the exop pilotu the second is the regular guard dog the one that's equipped with the Liberator not the LA weapon so I've seen this Tesla Tower shoot it directly and even have it arced towards me which is really interesting because it only affects that version of the guard dog but not the other version of the guard dog for some reason and lastly it also affects the ballistic shield if you were to put the ballistic shield on the floor it will shoot the ballistic shield and it will Arc towards you if you're close enough to it and after two shots it can even destroy the ballistic shield also if you were to use a shield backpack it will tank one hit for you from the Tesla Tower but it won't be destroyed it'll just simply need to recharge and that's why I'm not grouping it with the rest of the three mention and again as for why it specifically will Target the liberary guard dog but not the guard dog Rover just goes to show how inconsistent the targeting for the Tesla Tower is I've seen it attack both incendiary and regular mines from those mine strategems I've seen it attack the heavy machine gun placement even if you're on it but if you were on it and the front of the gun is facing the tower it won't affect you but if you were to turn around when you're back facing towards the tower it will then start to hit you and there's a lot more interactions beyond that but something I also want to really highlight here because of just how crazy it made me was that it will attack but not all the time samples for some reason it seems that the tesed tower can identify a sample as two different things the first being an untouched sample you know it's spawned to the world has never been interacted with and then there's another sample one that's been interacted with in some way it's never been picked up but let's say you shot at it or around it with an explosive weapon you warp the ground you destroyed some crates the Tesla Tower will now fire at that second sample and given the fact that it interacts with samples that way I've tried to drop my weapon see if it interacts with that it doesn't I tried to drop the actual vial sample container it doesn't interact with that and you would think it would also do the same thing to those spare ammo boxes that spawn on the map but it doesn't even if you're interact with it or like shoot the ground so it just doesn't Target it for some reason I've placed the Tesla Tower beside objectives such as as the terminate eggs or the illegal broadcast station it doesn't destroy anything there I've placed it next to planets Hazard such as those plants that slow you or those bug sports that slow you and it doesn't ago towards them either so I'm just very confused as I'm observing this I'm trying to find one thing which is a pattern which is what about these things that it's identifying and shooting at is similar to another and and it's hard to find patterns and similarities when it will hit at things like me and a bot and a bug but will also attack things such as a common sample that has been Disturbed and all this talk about firing has only been about the initial Target because again it's an arc based weapon so it has chain lightning and the second part is even a little bit more fuzzier believe me and although I've never observed the initial Target to ever be a corpse be a tomaton bug or Hell diver I've seen the lightning hit something that is alive to chain to something that isn't alive I've also seen a chain from myself to something I was not expecting also the range of the chain seems to be a lot more higher than it is with something like the ark thrower when the Tesla tower hit something it has a pretty wide range of what it could hit through this testing and the way it fires I'm thinking that the arc lightning that's within the Tesla Tower is very different from the one that comes from the ark thrower which is also confusing to me I've seen the Tesla Tower jump to a lot of enemies giving me as much as a 9 multi-kill when the ark Thor I believe at most has only given me four I've seen the range for the chain to be a lot longer than it is for the arc thrower and because of that jumping range that the Tesla tower has if I was a stand within range of 20 m and it primes and Fires at me and it it can channel to something behind me that's even further away so the actual effect of range of the Tesla Tower is still to be decided now for something so incredibly inconsistent you know where is the Silver Lining what's the Saving Grace with this and if I had to find one thing that's redeemable about this is that when it hits it hits hard take hell divers for example take you and me so I've tested this with light armor and heavy armor and at both times it completely just one- shotted me just zap poof red missed the only way to survive a shot from what I've seen is with armor that comes from The Cutting Edge war bond which has a specific armor perk that reduces Arc based damage by 95% so take that for example despite a large reduction of damage it will still take around six shots to kill you even when you're wearing it though most of the times you will you will die in five because the Tesla Tower almost always hits you in the Torso and that could trigger a chest injury and you'll lose a lot of HP from the bleed out but crunching those numbers without the armor that's specifically giving you Arc resistance that tesat Tower can basically kill you about three times over and then some now if you were to take this set of bots in the bugs it can completely do away with a smaller units and when it comes to the bigger ones it can do quite a number on them too I've seen that at times one shot brute commanders Berserkers and even a Hulk if it hits it right in the face like can it kill a ball Titan or a charger though I believe it can but it'll never get the chance and as for a factory Strider I just think we're thinking a bit too far ahead of ourselves here as we jump into the gameplay section of this video I just want to give you all the TDR let you know that the Tesla Tower performs poorly both offensively and defensively and this is a whole another point about the Tesla Tower cuz let's say it was consistent with the way it fires it will always hit what you believe it to hit and it will prioritize the enemies instead of you or instead of that common Temple it still is very inconsistent with its performance because given the fact that it has extreme effectiveness at only close range one can think of it as some sort of area denial strategy and if the stars align it can do that job well but when you bring a strategy to to your hell Dive Level Mission you want something to be consistent and effective to fill one of those slots and the Tesla Tower is neither take for example the other area denial defense strategems the anti-personnel mines it does what you expect it to do every time the moment it drops it gets out the HELLP pod fans the mines out it has already served its purpose it has a choke point that is now litered with explosive ordinance even though it's not the most effective you know how effective it will be because it's consistent it gets the job done if you were to throw a Tesla turret into a choke point you cannot guarantee how effective it will be it can live for the next 5 seconds or it can live for the whole 3 minutes because it's Effectiveness is tied to how long it is up for in this testing period I must have thrown maybe a 100 Tesla Towers not one of them in my hell dive missions have lived to adulthood none have made it to the senior nursing home they've all died young they never got a chance to make it back into the Pod they maybe just had about 20 30 seconds worth of life before getting destroyed and when I was playing this I did one defensive mission on each the extract High by assets and then just another mission type just to see if there was any other potential variety with the Tesla tower now onto gameplay and before I talk about my experience with it in Hell dive missions I want you all to know that I didn't just take it throw it watch it go and die and then complain about it I tried my best to make it work I revolved my Loadout and my strategems to try and complement it and the most success if you even want to call it that is when I placed it near the enemy but not too close to my teammates and I will just assist the Tower with uh stun grenades and EMS mortars now without even going going into gamep play the fact that I had to take a grenade slot and another strategy slot just to complement the tower just shows how poorly feasible this is on higher difficulty missions the hardest part about this on bug planets was a fighting against Chargers and B Titans because B Titans can't be stunned anymore so they're going to look at it they're going to give it one volley of bile spew and then it's going to be destroyed Chargers will just take one or two shots but they'll still Ram through it and it will destroy immediately and it would be nice if the Tesla Tower had stronger Arc because you know it's it's a it's like six times the size of the AR thrower so it would be nice if it could at least stagger the charger as for the other Mission type on the bug Planet I kind of tried the same strategy of throwing an EMS mortar beside me to stun a group of enemies and then throwing the Tesla Tower onto the nowon enemies and here it did a little bit better but I also knew I could have just taken a whole other list of more efficient options than just committing two strategems to clear out one area when there would be a buck breach I would throw the tower beside where they will be spawning it would clear out the small group of scavengers and Hunters but when it comes to a b Titan it will charge that was pretty much the end of it the only way I can see the only world I can see a Tesla Tower working is if you were to throw it on some level platform where bugs cannot easily reach it and if you are able to draw the aggra of the Chargers and B Titan so that it can do away with all the little father while you would deal with the Heavies for the bot planets it was kind of the same deal on the defense Mission I laid it out where enemies would approach and supported it with stun grenades and AMS mortar the first wave of B drops would get stunned but it would not take long for some units at much further range to ago towards the tower and just just and just destroy it from with explosions and bullets from afar again since it doesn't stagger hulks can easily just run up to it after taking a shot or two and just one hit melee it Factory Striders would just laser from afar I tried placing it behind Corners so it wouldn't get seen but after the first group of enemies walk into that corner and Get Zapped the enemies now know that it's there and they will aggro to it the moment they're around it for the other Mission type it was very hard to find much uses there as well I tried that same approach of stunning a group of enemies beforehand and then throwing it into them or near them when they're stunned but the stun doesn't last so long and you can't stun everyone because they're kind of spread out so one group will be stunned the other won't they're going to acto towards the tower and then destroy it and even if a good chunk of them were to be stunned it doesn't kill them as fast as you may hope it would because 3 seconds between every shot due to the charging and the priming is actually a long time and I've also tried a different approach where instead of taking EMS mortar I would use the orbital smoke or the eagle smokes and I would smoke an area and then throw the Tesla Tower in it so that they can't see it but they will walk towards it and when they're right up next to it the tower will identify them and then zap them but after that first zap the enemies now know what's there despite it being in the smoke so they're going to just shoot into the smoke and pretty much destroy it in terms of gameplay scenarios I just couldn't find much use cases or even a nce condition where the tower will be really effective and despite from the Bots being able to attack it from a range I just feel like it performs better there than against the bugs B Titans and chargers are just common place in higher difficulties and they will just one-hot the Tesla Tower no matter what and there was little counterplay you can do for a b t you cannot stun so that's it for game playay now we're going to move on to some more General notes and some side things I have here starting with the shield generator relay I can already hear a lot of you saying why not pair it with the shield strategy it can protect the Tesla Tower while it's inside so it won't die so fast and I've tried that but since the shield relay is similar to those hell pods or to those other sentries if you were to stand next to it a primate it will fire at the closest thing next to it with just so happens to be the shield generator relay and I mentioned it earlier that there was the armor sets from The Cutting Ed war bond to let you survive from it there's actually another armor set that lets you survive and that's any armor with the Democracy protects perk this is the one where you have 50% chance of surviving lethal damage and speaking about the shoot the firing of the Tesla Tower it can actually miss if you're going fast enough believe it or not in my testing I had a jump pack just to test if it was able to hit you midair which it can but if you would go full Sprint and jump alongside the Tesla Tower you'll see that the shot could still miss more on the jump pack there is a invisible wall above the tower which I did not expect but what I also did not expect was there is a limit to the wall that you can actually reach so you can jumpack if you go from a high enough distance and mantle up this invisible wall and you can just actually sit there and lay there additionally on the firing of the Tesla Tower it does not interrupt most things it will not reset your spe charge it will not reset aazar Cannon charge you will be able to interact with things such as the radar station without being knocked off of it but it will knock you off of a terminal if it damages you there to compensate for this maybe what you can do is take a smoke grenade call a Tesla Tower next to you to to protect you smoke yourself off and then do the terminal it's not a big tip just something to be aware of as a potential use case and since it has a tower of fire at centries alike and it's possible to have at a given time two towers together you can even have this epilepsy inducing situation where they both Prime because you're near it but they both fire at each other a little bit more notes I have here about line of sight is that it's able to recognize you through things such as a shield generator relay and even offence it can prime but it won't be able to reach you you also cover early on how things such as smoke can obscure line of sight for the Tesla Tower but same thing can happen to planetary conditions such as the blizzard where the range for the tower goes from 20 M to 10 m also despite the odd things that the tower will Target it does not seem to Target grenades I've thrown thermites on the ground stuck to it next to it and I will throw a grenade in the air next to it hoping it would respond like a jagger but it wouldn't also the Tesla Tower even though it's retracting back into the ground after 3 minute lifespan it could still fire one more additional shot meaning that even in the ground there's still a period of AC ity lastly the ark Thor cannot damage the Tesla Tower I've tried aiming with it directly but every shot seems to just not register any hit on it so overall I'm walking away from this experience more confused than ever beyond my initial Endeavor of trying to understand a Tesla Tower I'm at a point now where I'm trying to better understand how the actual Arc lightning in this game works I can't tell what is being targeted by this thing and why so even if the tower was able to shoot at Targets consistently the fact that it can't even survive on the field as a defensive strategy no less meant for for area denial just shows how bottom of the list it is in terms of effective strategems I also just wondered why it cannot stagger enemies the way that the arcer can I wonder why despite it being a strategy meant for Frontline uses it has just as much health as something in the back line like a mortar an extra boost to health would be nice and yes explosive resistance was a very nice thing to give it as well as the other sentries but this thing will be destroyed most of the Times by melee attacks volleys of bile and concentrated fire so there's a lot of things that you can still do with this with the tower I believe to make it a lot more useful because don't get me wrong I love the ark Thor I love the Tesla Tower and I love it not in the mechanical sense in terms of Effectiveness just as a game in terms of design it's very futuristic sci-fi looking it has a very interesting way of dispatching enemies lightning of all things yeah we have bullets yeah we have fire yeah we have Rockets but lightning you know I mean what's not to love well a whole lot actually but I want to like it I know I can get a lot more value from my missions by bringing other more useful strategies and when I took my first step into this deep dive I just had this existing notion that the under usage of the tower was because people didn't quite understand it but even after spending a lot of time trying to understand it I'm just I'm more confused than ever I'm hoping the devs are aware of this and I'm hoping that as they continue to maybe introduce new arc based weapons or make adjustments to the ark thrower I just hope that the Tesla Tower isn't begun and despite all of its flaws we still have to acknowledge the fact that it's in this game meaning there may be a time when you see someone bring it in for whatever reason so if you just so happen to meet someone who brings it in just stay 20 M away from it you need to visually just see if it's priming and dive during the stage if you think it's going to shoot at something and if it's going to shoot at something and you can't get far away from it just try not to be the closest thing next to it if you were to take it again for whatever reason I'm not going to judge just be sure to let your team know that you're using it cuz not everyone will know how this thing works and I'm not going to blame them it's a very unique looking strategy and enlightening in this game is just a thing to be understood and if there's anyone out there looking to carry on this torch you know any of you genius Einstein level heal divers out there if you figure out something about this can you please let me know you will help me sleep a lot easier at night and that's all I have for today though so if you like what you see like what you heard please like And subscribe I like to make a lot of Hell divers 2 content and have a lot of ideas curling the work so if you're interested stay tuned and again thanks for checking out my video and have a nice day another victory for the right side of History [Music]

Channel: Wallbouncing

Views: 63,542

Keywords: Helldivers 2, Helldivers 2 Review, Helldivers 2 Tesla Tower, Helldivers 2 Arc Lightning, Helldivers 2 Defense Strategem, Helldivers 2 Gameplay

Id: cNVe2HDXBbw

Length: 23min 30sec (1410 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 21 2024