Helldivers are currently engaged in an all-out war over Planet X-45. Thanks to a massive order that has everyone scratching their heads over the potential rewards of the mysterious interplanetary battle station. The order is scheduled to end soon, and players have been making good progress, but a renewed attack from a sneaky automaton on the last day has resulted in an all-out war, with more than 50% of all the Helldivers converging on the planet.

Aside from the official narrative, the brave soldiers defending democracy have discovered a new kind of bug. Hell Diver 2 incorporates fall damage, which, depending on the circumstances, can be just as deadly as the Vile Titan. Mostly a minor factor, since players need to be careful from what height they jump from, but it can be deadly damage when fighting on high ground or especially when at the epicenter of an explosion. In the latter case, even if the hell-diver survives the initial damage, he or she tends to be rolled around the map (which some players attribute to the somewhat glitchy physics in itself), and the impact can be fatal.

Players have now found that a simple method of triggering an emote animation when in the air can greatly reduce fall damage. The video below shows a Helldiver coming in hot, landing his pod on an automaton tank, destroying the tank, and triggering an explosion as the avatar exits the Hellpod. The explosion sends them into the stratosphere, but mid-arc an emote is triggered and the Helldiver character quickly changes from a rampant state to a strangely rigid posture. They thus sail through the air and land safely from a fall that should have been several times more deadly.

Players have tested this and seen damage reduction at various heights, but it consistently reduced damage and did not make the fatal fall fatal. More curiously, it works with both "hug" and "salute" emotes, but the former is slightly more effective.

My guess is that this is a function of Helldivers 2's physics, with a strange mix of precision and falloff. For example, landing on the ass is a deliberate way to reliably reduce damage, but landing on the head is always bad news. However, players usually do not have some control over this. If launched head-first onto a rock, the body would not normally be able to turn around. However, the emote animation does exactly this.

Therefore, it is theorized that the rigid posture caused by emoting in mid-air causes the Hell Diver model, upon landing, to inflict damage to a single limb, such as an arm, rather than multiple limbs at the point of impact, stacking up to a fatal level.

What is most interesting about this is that the helldiver's body becomes rigid in the air. It will be a day until someone puts a helmet on this diver:

This emote dropping glitch has been unofficially named the democracy T-pose, but it remains to be seen if Arrowhead will lean into this bug or ruthlessly excise it in the next patch. Until then, get out there and take action. If we take too much action, let's stiffen up for victory.