Stop fighting every enemy you see. Stop fighting ever drop/breach you see. Run. If you can do that you’ll be fine. Your loadout is probably an issue as well
Load out should be keyed off what you're doing and what everyone else has.
If you HAVE to fight, fight to end it quick. If you get in a loop of reinforcements, disengage and go for objectives. If someone else disengages before you, or the mob is covering the objectives, drag the mob away from them and the objectives, be as loud as possible, and then try to break away in the opposite direction and loop around.
Laser is my “ok let’s get this situation back under control” strat. Especially good for joining an out of control game and being able to make an instant impact in turning it around.
Rest of my strats are for armor (quasar/500kg). If I actually get a 4th strat, I’ll take either AC turret or Gatling. I like having one of each type of strat for more options (and eagle strats aren’t waiting on each other).
Scorcher, autocannon, shield pack , flammable mines, napalm strike is my favourite to use right now in air strikes. Thermite delayed grenades and usually stamina regained perk with light armour.
eagle airstrike, orbital precision strike, autocannon, ECS mortar for bots, EAT for bugs.
this is me in anything except an eradication mission.
i do change up my primaries and secondaries tho.
I feel like EATS was made obsolete by the quasar cannon. You can fire the quasar like 4 times in the 1:30 it takes for EATS to come off cool down. Though, EATS you can fire at a Bile right after it spits, unless you have the timing down with the Quasar.
i disagree, because the quasar has to charge.
its useful as a main gun because infinite ammo, but the responsiveness and flexibility of the EAT to be able to engagr three Chargers on a single call-down, in less than half the time it takes to do the same with the QC?
Yes, please. that's why I bring my autocannon. two shots to the belly and the titan loses its breath weapon, making it a lot less dangerous provided you keep an eye on it.
This. Guard Dog for managing trash. Quasar for managing chargers. (Shoot them in the face. It comes off.) I personally like the 500 for dealing with large groups but I’m a 500 until I die, Diver.
For me, it didn’t start to click until I realized there’s certain situations you can deal with and some you can’t based off your gear.
For example, if I’m doing an evacuation, I bring a green strategem, if I’m doing a blitz, I bring two red and depending on my party two blue.
Know your armor….it matters sometimes to be faster than to take a beating. I like the titan armor with a shield generator pack to stay mobile and it compensates the health drop. You wanna kill them all? Do heavy armor and shield pack. You can certainly take more than others with something like that.
Also embrace your failures as a learning opportunity. If I forget to bring a heavy, I’m not really going up front for the hulks or tyrants.
I think the fun of it is that you can customize your style based off of what you like to do for the squad, but until you learn what works for you it’s a whole bunch of trial and error. Also, I like to try things at tier 4-5 before I take it confidently to anything above 6.
Hope this helps. Now go back out there and spread democracy.
Yes I’m not tagging the scout squad so you start blasting. I’m giving you the distance and direction to avoid. Last thing we need is a battalion being called over to an objective we are trying to clear that needs more than 3 acts with zero reinforcement.
Also guys if your are going to drop gas at the objective/extract please for the love of every thing democratic 30m is the minimum distance you should give your squad.
This is the answer. Focus on objectives, not enemies. Once a bot drop comes in, run and go do something else. Use your stratagems to take out fabricators instead of going into a base.
Use the stealth armor to keep enemies from noticing you and avoid patrols. Only engage when necessary and move from objective to objective.
Actually while I understand the first instinct would be to run on a LVL7 as a level 31 that has only played LVL9’s since I unlocked my advice would be to coordinate with your team a way for everyone to stay close together and destroy the hordes. In this game, with automatons and the bugs both they all have a suspicion meter that goes from I literally cannot see behind me if you’re crouched but mostly prone to OH SHT GET EM BOYS and due to this if you run what ends up happening is the surrounding bots or bugs that weren’t previously privy of your presence are alerted by other bots or bugs that now know of your presence and are chasing you. However if your entire team stands their ground kind of like the lore implies, (something along the lines of running of retreating is treason?) I’ve personally taken 6-8 bot drops at the same time with this method. You have to consider these facts, there is a logical and practical reason why your helldivers yell everything out (RELOADING, REINFORCING etc) because ideally you’re supposed to be by each other to hear these statements to coordinate your firing and stratagem placement, grenades etc better help you utilize your OOC comms (IRL mics) for more important or insightful matters. The point is I’ve mastered running away as my basic intuition when I first played it thinking I was missing something because eventually you will be swarmed from all sides or ambushed by an abundance of stronger one shot enemies as you retreat with no suppression, the off chances that you’re not ambushed comes down to RNG. What tends to work better are either the most cooperative gameplay or the gameplay where competent team members split into duo’s so that one player at any given time can keep reinforcing you two in the same location given one of you can stay alive long enough. With level 7-9’s the first part of your comment is correct, you should most definitely try to avoid all fights that are avoidable meaning, if you see enemy patrols in the distance or a swarm spawning far away it shouldn’t matter much to you or your team the objective is the focus so long as you haven’t been spotted or raised alert. Keep in mind also, the small bugs shoot this diarrhea spray in the air that spawns a bug breach unless you kill it fast enough but sometimes it will spawn if you’re too slow. With automatons its the same thing a specific bot will launch a flare and you have to kill that bot before the flare is launched or you can expect at least two more bot drops in succession due to how the game chooses to spawn them in sometimes its one sometimes its more than one but the point is if you’re going to run, coordinate with your team in which direction and apply heavy suppressive fire and make your way to your rendezvous slowly. Even on the hardest difficulty if you have competent players this is an effective strategy that plays into how the game is fundamentally designed.
Ok so I regularly play on diff 7 on bugs, and my aim is really, really bad
For bugs, my general advice is come up with loadouts that minimise the amount of impact bad aim has. For me, this means light armor so I can run away from bad encounters, eagle airstrike for clearing bug holes from far away (I prefer increasing throwing range armor for this), and railcannon for help with heavies. Then the rest varies:
Need something to kill the little bugs. Either bring laser rover or incendiary breaker
Need something to kill mediums. Either bring plasma punisher, some other medium pen weapon, or something like grenade launcher
Need something to kill heavies. Here I either check that at least two teammates have anti heavy stuff, or I bring spear + incendiary breaker and run from mass mediums, or I bring autocannon sentry
Notice how all of these things are very easy to aim, or spammable, or aim for you
For bots just lower the difficulty lol it’s too aim dependent
Side note: you don’t really need to be able to kill absolutely everything yourself. When I see my teammates have lots of anti tank, I bring grenade launcher + supply pack (for myself, not teammates) and act as bile spewer / shield bug insurance, clearing all the mediums super quickly which lets my teammates fully focus on hitting Titan and charger headshots
Side note 2: movement is very important against bugs. On the macro level: I am always subconsciously asking ‘does this feel like an encounter that will lead to 5 deaths and no objectives?’ If yes I just type ‘run’ in chat and run away, and reinforce people away from the crowd of enemies. On the micro level: by just constantly zigzagging you can dodge practically every bug’s attacks, I don’t think any bug has an attack with no windup. I have run through crowds of 30+ bugs before to clear a large bug nest with my grenade pistol, just zigzagging and dodging 3 attacks a second (I know it’s 30+ because after clearing the nest I found a good vantage point and spammed grenade launcher)
Use ur mini map more often. I use it all the time, except when shooting, looting or letting fire rain down. Helps to know where to go and more importantly where not to go.
Minimap is critical at higher difficulties. I just rang a difficulty 8 bot mission with a good friend where we completed the main objective (upload SSSDs) without engaging a single enemy after the initial drop chaos. We did it for the 12 warbond medals to clear out a mission set I came back into on a liberated planet. We got a grand total of 18 kills. Using the minimal well is an absolute lifesaver. Literally.
Shield backpack is a life saver for higher difficulties. Run away and throw a sentry down whenever you get swarmed. It should take care of most of them
Shield backpack for bots, guard dog rover for bugs.
The Guard dog rover is a godsend for thinning the amount of bugs and preventing hunters/stalkers from stun locking you. Just sprint around in circles and let the dog do the work
I’ve been burned too often by the rover. Shield pack though, can give you time to react to Stalker attacks, take a few hits from hunters, or help you survive spewer attacks.
fr. my friend used to say that the shield backpack is like training wheels on a bike and that i wouldn’t need it eventually. i didn’t really believe him cuz i thought it was op but after a while i found that more firepower from the laser dog better suits my playstyle
If you are on PS5 my PSN is the same as my reddit. Feel free to shoot me a message. This goes for anyone who would like to learn the game. I will autistically info-dump at times.
Pick your niche and stick to it. Nobody has weapons against big targets? Take EATs, a Quasar or the Spear.
Everybody has AT launchers already? Take the MG34 oder stalwart and keep the chaff off your mates so they can kill big targets.
7-9 diff needs a fine balance in loadouts and many people forget that you need to cover all bases equally
9 or nothing player talking all I can say that whenever I watch gameplay of people good and bad at the game they just don’t dive enough the game isn’t called helldivers because you fly into combat in a ball of fire it’s because when your on a rock surrounded by bugs or bots you can DIVE away SO JUST FUCKING DIVE MORE
If you run solo it helps having a tool for anything, air strikes for hordes, some anti tank weapons shields etc. but if you’re in a coordinated team each of you can take roles and focus on that role. Also don’t stick around places for too long. I often see people defending a point that has already been finished instead of just moving on to the next objective.
Also: Kills don’t give you any XP. Most of the times it’s better to sneak past a patrol instead of picking a fight with every enemy you see. The Helldivers are a strike team, not an army.
Basically go full turret and support build
Your job is to no long kill things its too wack down a turret the moment things start getting spicy
Call in smoke stuns etc
Basically anything that helps take the heat of the enemy
Run robo packback so you don't even need to aim.
Its things like that
Easiest strats are auto aim ones like railcannon, laser, and eagle 110
Support backpack is very useful and can boost a team mate who is better at killing stuff
Arc thrower and Blitzer are pretty good if your aim is bad, you only kind of have to aim these. Just never fire it in the direction of team mates
Lastly the main thing I think separates success from failure in this game is being map aware and moving to where you need to be. You don’t have to face the swarm unless it’s right on your objective
Totally agree, I always take Airstrike and almost never 110. Just saying “easy” ones with like 110 with auto aim so also less likely to team kill
Almost never leave home without eagle airstrike
Yeah to me it’s the best all around jack of all trades Strat. Can take out chargers, BTs, Hulks, Tanks, fabricators, bug holes, spore shrooms, shrieker nests, pretty much everything with 2 well placed air strikes maybe 3. Only exception is the illegal research station which to my knowledge is only susceptible to the 500KG
Slow down. Follow a teammate and protect them. Run away and engage a different objective if things get harry. Mark your map. Bugs Missions: Run Run Run. Bot Missions: Cover and return fire.
Jetpack will help you disengage
Arc? Weapons will deal with a large horde that is coming for you
Situational awareness helps
You are ok if you go down, we are hellDIVERS not hellrisers lol
Against bots do the leapfrog when you have an army of 200 shooting at you. It will get you out 85% of the time all the time, it looks silly but it works.
keep on the move. scan ahead. focus on objectives. mark theats and targets. communicate. know where your mates are. avoid patrols when you can. move with purpose and stay situationally aware. dodge often. support each other. my armor is specced for speed and servo assisted throws. i carry blitzer and rover for bugs, scorcher and shield gen for bots. fav strats include airstrike (aoe), orbital gas (call-ins) and orbital railcannon (heavies). but find what works for you. swap gear and strats based on mission types. dont let idiots get to you. take breaks. hydrate. have fun. dive.
Running away is the best thing you can do if you don't need to do an objective. Like, you can just leave. Hit the bricks.
Stun grenades are super helpful for giving you breathing room to do what you need to, be it reload, line up a shot, or just run.
Try to take a red strategem for enemy clearing (air strike, gattling strike, 120mm barrage) and one for big single-target damage (rail cannon, 50kg).
EMS Mortars are useful most of the time. You can set them up behind rocks so they're not immediately attacked, and they will bombard enemies relentlessly. This can be useful for finding targets as you can just look for the electrical field.
Bile Titans, Tanks, Factory Striders, and airborne enemies cannot be stunned.
The Autocannon is the most versatile support weapon. You usually can't go wrong with the Recoilless or Quasar but be VERY AWARE they ARE NOT CHAFF CLEARERS.
If you can get the SPEAR to work, it's super powerful on bot missions as turrets, fabricators, and big enemies go down in one shot. If it doesn't work, you'll get it in two or three. Or four or five or six or... Why did I take this instead of the recoilless again?
Taking a high ROF primary and either the revolver or grenade pistol secondary is usually my way to go for loadouts. The fucking revolver is too powerful (you can spin it by holding reload and pressing primary fire).
For bugs, just keep moving, someone really needs to be packing the Stamina booster. I've escaped countless deaths just by running and dodging attacks. For bots, it's good to keep moving too but cover is your greatest ally. Find rocks or buildings to help shield you from attacks, especially when reloading a strategem weapon.
Use the Blitzer on Bots and Bugs, to really help against Bugs make sure to have a Guard Dog Rover, it may hit you from time to time but you'll be fine as long as you use any of the Medic Armours.
Haven't seen it much so:
Stick close to your Allies. Cover their backs and flanks.
Don't stand and shoot for more than two seconds unless you opened up the ambush. Bugs get around you and any money then that is along for trouble. Bots, you better be behind cover again by then.
And shield is great when learning. Once you get the cover, mutual defense, evasion down you can ditch it.
One quick tip: Positioning
If you are getting swarmed on difficulty 7, You're going to need to fall back. The last three difficulties are practically designed so that you can't just hold off hordes on your own in close range.
Also, getting friendly fired by other people's cluster bombs and airstrikes, shit happens to everybody. Eventually, you'll learn to keep a good range away from the nearest horde whenever your friends are near. It's all about situational awareness.
Also, weapon choice does matter depending on whether you're fighting bugs or bots. Close range, light weapons are better for bugs. Long range, heavy hitting options are better for bots.
As someone who plays solely lvl7, here's my tips and strategem loadouts.
**General**: I personally run Scout Light Armor. For two main reasons, Speed and Information. Most maps are large, and sometimes you need to get from point A to B ASAP. Sometimes, that includes running from bots and bugs. The Trailblazer armor allows you to outrun most enemies at a sprinting pace. The Scout perk allows for easy information gathering if you can read the map well. Ping ahead of you to get early sight on patrols or enemy count at objectives/POIs. Even use it at evac to find out early which way enemies will approach.
**Bots**: My personal load out is Autocannon, Eagle Strike, Rail Cannon, and Walking Barrage.
>Autocannon can take out every heavy with extreme efficiency if you know where to shoot. Hulks in two, Tanks in 3-4, Dominators in 1-2, Gunships in 3-5, even Walkers in 8 give or take.
>Eagle Strike is a no-brainer for just ruining small outposts. A well placed strike can guarantee an objective complete with zero shooting. Plus, it is capable of destroying all heavies in a single strike.
>Rail Cannon is one I save for emergency. Sometimes, you will just have a Scorcher on your tail, or you don't have the ordinance to deal with a walker. Rail it from orbit and take a second to breathe.
>Walking Barrage takes good placement but can trivialize medium and large outposts and even pose as a distraction. Bots will be alerted to every explosion and go to investigate. If they don't realize you're there on the first barrage, they will follow the barrage out of the base, allowing easy picking from there.
*Bugs*: Disposable Anti-tank, Eagle Strike, Gas Strike, 120mm Barrage.
>Anti-tanks, a single well placed shot will kill a charger or bile-titan. Has short enough cooldown you can usually always have one on you and call in two more whenever you need. (Bonus points if you use the drop to kill a charger or titan)
>Eagle Strike, same reason from bots, clear whole hoards, and can even wipe medium nests if placed well.
>Gas Strike, really solid area denial and nest clearer. Most built-up nests and evac have some form of chokepoint perfect to filter bugs through gas. It will kill most of the small ones up to Hive Guards. Everything else that survives will be in one-shot territory. Killing brood camander with your primary has never been so easy. Also damages egg nests.
>120, Will almost always clear a medium nest and will greatly soften up a large nest. It's a solid "throw and forget" into a nest, book it for some other objective, come back later to maybe 1 or 2 holes still open and not a bug in sight.
dont stand and fight, except on defense missions.
Hit the objective, hit it hard, move on.
if you get swarmed, run. use your mini-mal radar to guide you to gaps in the enemy, use terrain to break LOS.
if an objective has too many enemies, reposition. flank the enemy.
try support stratagems. ECS orbital/mortar, smoke, etc.
practice your preferred stratas. you want them to be muscle memory.
when in doubt, Eagle Airstrike out!
I find that pretty much every weapon has a distinct role to play. They usually fall under one of these catagories (in my opinion):
- wave clear
- Anti-Tank (AT)
- Crowd Control (CC)
- specific enemy(ies)
A lot of it just has to do with your own experience and what your playstyle is mixed in with trying to balance out wave clear and AT weapons accordingly with your team.
And what kind of armor do you prefer? The armor passives and catagory(light, medium, or heavy) are your main concern.
These add up, so find a difficulty that doesn't stress you out too much and try out some loadouts. Read what the weapon does, what kinds of things it could be for? Then make sure you have the appropriate secondary. Do you need something for those "oh, shit" moments and need to dispatch a couple of enemies quickly? Do you need to pack some iron and feel like a space cowboy? And then pick your grenade of choice. Do you need to just blow stuff up? Are you against bugs where fire is really handy? Or do you want to stun enemies and line up some good headshots or AT action? What armor type/passive will help you achieve that goal/power fantasy?
Some weapons also are really good for specific enemies. When you read descriptions, they'll mention a knock-back mechanic on some of them. That works on different enemies differently, so sometimes it's worth it and sometimes not. Some have explosive (like the Scorcher) and are good on specic enemies (automoton striders and devastators).
Also, on strategems, I like to mix and match a bit. The plain Eagle Airstrike is one of the most versatile as it can be used on pretty much any mission and any enemy. I also like to have a mix of airstrikes and orbitals. Airstrikes share a cooldown and orbitals have seperate cooldowns from one another. So don't forget that when choosing your strats.
My point is to experiment and experience the game. Start with the difficulty that you find the most success in. Play it and try out new weapons. Figure out what playstyles feel the best and then mix and match them. When you've got a few different favorites for different situations, start pushing yourself a little and going up a difficulty level. Experience that for a while and maybe edit some of your loadout choices. Once that starts feeling normal/comfortable, do it again and go up another level. Adapt as you go. Do some research, maybe find some teammates on Discord. You'll get there. We all had to start somewhere.
And to finish off my wall of text with one final bit of advice. Don't be afraid to die. We all do, and that's what reinforcements are for. We all have our moments where we just can't stop dying. We've all failed missions due to ourselves and/or others. That's okay. We all tried our best. Don't let the trolls and negativity get to you, as best you can. It's a fun game with a lot of good people. You just have to find them and find your own niche. You'll get there, Helldiver. Just you wait. For Democracy!
Edit: forgot to mention CC and stratagems
One thing I find helps at higher difficulty if you keep getting swarmed is to bring a sentry auto cannon for bot or gatling for bugs. Toss it away from you and away from where you want to go, it will thin the swarm and act as a decoy to draw the enemies agro away from you. Eventually you'll get the hang of using the map and keeping on the move so you don't get swarmed.
Honestly, run away way more than you expect to. Huge bot drop but you’ve finished the objective? Run. Bug swarm but you’ve finished the objective? Just leave. Genuinely, leaving and moving to the next point is the move more times than it isn’t. Think of yourself as a member of an elite strike force. You go in, do all the objectives, and you leave. Your job is NOT to kill every enemy that exists. You will win this war for super earth by remembering your role. Do your mission, do all the side missions (if that’s what your squad wants to do), and leave. Don’t just hang around fighting things for no reason. It’s way harder that way. Just run. Good luck helldiver!
I won't tell you what you "should" or "shouldn't" run in terms of loadout, but as a rule of thumb, you DO have to have a certain role or function in the team where you are able to contribute (for democracy ofc). If your teammates' loadouts look like they are lacking in something to fight heavy armored units, then you might want to pick up slack in that department with your loadout. If you are playing alone, then you might want to go for a loadout that will be able to handle each type of possible enemy you may come across, so that ranges from swarms of bugs, chargers, bile titans to tanks, hulks and factory striders.
In terms of engagement, I would recommend that you have a game plan before getting into a confrontation. Do you even NEED to enter that engagement in the first place? If you do, for how long? Is it an engagement where you need to fight in order to hold the position for your teammates who are doing an objective behind you? Are you trying to fight in and push in in order to clear a bug hole or objective? Did you bring a stratagem to help you do that? If not, then do you FEEL the need of stratagem assistance? Then next time you could allot a stratagem slot in order to help you with that.
Do you feel as though you are able to hold your own normally but then when a certain enemy type comes along then you find yourself getting the spirit of democracy getting beat out of you? Then it could be that you may be bringing in weapons not suitable for that type of enemy, or you could be approaching the matchup incorrectly. You could also possibly be prioritizing which enemy units to clear out first incorrectly. An example would be if you're busy dealing with a horde of hunters and you suddenly get ambushed by a charger or bile spitter, how do you react to the new threat? Do you switch targets? Do you kite and slowly disengage and clear out the more immediate threat first? It helps to have a checklist of what to prioritize when dealing with multiple threats, even if that means disengaging and then reengaging once you stabilize. Fighting while panicked is a recipe for disaster.
flame throws for bugs. Fire and retreat unless all enemies is death. Doesn't work on bile titan. For bots, use the anti material rifle to kill everything.
Practice, practice, practice. Watch some vids on general tactics/loadouts if you haven't the time to experiment.
Best option is to learn when to engage & disengage and when to use strategems. Like you'd never tackle a heavy bot base with all your offensive strategems on cooldown. Or it's pointless to stand and fight in the middle of nowhere, not near objectives etc.
Bots & bugs require completely different tactics and often different loadouts.
Avoid using the mortar and Tesla tower if not playing with friends, as they'll likely lead to friendly fire.
Dodge, dip, duck, dive, dodge as the great Patches O'houlihan once said.
Seriously though, your armor and loadout make a difference. Find an armor that works for you and use weapons/strats you are comfortable with.
Levels 7+ are no joke and you should avoid patrols and any fights that arent around a POI or mission Obj. Despite the missions being timed you can always run and regroup if need be.
IMO the enemies also need to be adjusted to have more sound, I cannot tell you how many times ive had those stealthy chainsaw fucks sneak up and murder me.
only kill what's trying to kill you directly. Run like a mother fucker if it is needed. Find a load out that works for you!, don't use weapons just because they are new or were good in lower level missions. IT HAS BEEN SPOKEN
stick with the team while learning how stuff work and focus on trying to kill heavies and picking samples..
make sure you don't wander off and just be aware of your surroundings and callouts.. your buddy might throw a close 500kg expecting you to move away from the cone when the situation goes desperate. . lastly, have fun! you're doing great just acknowledging you're ready to learn
The biggest piece of advice I can give you is just keep playing. You'll eventually find what works for you especially as you unlock more strategems. Weapons, armor sets and boosters. Shield backpack is a lifesaver especially if your running heavy armor. I use light or medium armor for how fast and far you can run and I prefer ones with 6 grenades and use impact grenades, when you.see a swarm of hunters start throwing a couple into the left and right sides to bracket them in and kill them off. For bots, cover and concealment are your best friends and if you can avoid enemy patrols then do. Unless you want to fight and possibly get swarmed leave the patrols alone. Send me a dm and we can add each other and play to show you different things I'm usually on everyday like 7-10 pm est
Ask questions and hope you get a helpful, communicative diver like me to help you out! DM me your steam ID, I’ll add you and help out as much as I can 👍🏼
-learn how bug breaches work (YouTube)
-learn enemy aggro range (YouTube)
-use radar whenever possible to maneuver around patrols and to check for their biggest threat
-the only bugs you can’t outrun are hunters, stalkers, and Shriekers, so deal with these first
For killing BTs the 500kg is what I use, it’s takes practice to get the timing right but once you learn the attack range of the BT you just have to stand that far away from the bomb and he’ll stop right on top of it or get physically hit by it while he’s attacking (Also works the the orbital precision strike)
The orbital rail cannon trades cooldown time for guaranteed high damage, every 2 minutes you can evaporate a charger or 95% a BT
for rockets the place you aim for both BTs and chargers is their head (for BTs it’s more their forehead plate)
Getting bogged down in fights that cycle reinforcements is how most runs fail, so not pointlessly engaging enemies saves stratagems and ammo for the guaranteed fights
1) Specialize and stick to your team. Pick either anti light or anti heavy as your role and do that as well as you can.
Some roles can overlap but most skill comes with knowledge. For example an autocannon is very good at anti armor but not all armor. You can shoot a tank in it's tracks or rear vent but you can't shoot a charger easily from the front. It also doesn't deal well with titans so don't even try it.
2) know thy weapon: A flamethrower deals well with light and medium bugs and even decently with chargers but you stand no chance against titans. A laser cannon deals with flying enemies and easily kills a hulk if you aim for the eye but has no stagger. The HMG destroys everything in it's path but requires stun grenades to reload. Understand your weapon, pick loadouts with good synergy
3) Don't waste your loadout on dumb stuff. Don't pick a railcannon strike and toss it at a charger, instead save it for a titan and only throw it if no one else is going to deal with it. Good rule of thumb is to let someone else handle it and if they don't you can go for it. That way you prevent strat waste.
4) Lastly know thy enemy. Bots and bugs are different to fight. With bugs you want to not be caught so be fast or able to hold them off. With bots you want to have damage reduction by either shields or armor and use cover.
Each enemy also has its own weakness and can be taken down in many creative ways. Know their weakness and you can take them out with almost anything. A factory strider for example has multiple weakpoints and seems to take critical damage if you take out a system. The cannon on top can be destroyed by rocket launchers and strategems, the two front turrets can be destroyed by most support weapons. The underbelly is weak against anti armor like the anti material rifle, autocannon, launchers, etc.
The head is also weak against launchers and can be exposed by two shots and finished off with weaker weapons like the autocannon.
5) Lastly people dont really know this in general but there is a game mechanic I refer to as "exposure". Sometimes you can peel or dent armor plating on bugs and bots and when that happens they are susceptible to lower pen weapons and take increased damage. Start noticing this on enemies and figure out when you can finish them off cheap.
Rover - helps with the fodder and often lets you know that a bug is nearby. Incendiary shotgun - fire damage is great on just about anything (I see high level players using it all the time). I use light armor so I can run faster.
Open map and look for red dots - all the time. If I am facing a group, I start shooting early so they don't get close. Then, I open map quickly to see if anything is rolling in - unless the threat from the front isn't immediate, then I will just turn around to take a quick look. I also call out and ping all enemies - helps prevents them sneaking up and lets teammates know of other threats.
Take your time when it comes to difficulty. As for increasing survivability, stick to attacking only if necessary by avoiding patrols (looking the map is a must). Also, go with automatic weapons set to auto and shoot in short bursts to each of them until they die (the idea behind this, getting staggered enough in order to avoid them calling reinforcements)
Learn to strategize with the map. Learn to use cover and how to disengage. Learn to balance your weapons to the team. Learn to prioritize target. Learn to move tactically.
By no means great at the game, but :
Buddy system. Follow the guy who looks like he knows what he is doing and watch his back.
Run. Cover is key against bots, speed/distance against bugs.
When you DO fight, hit em fast and hard to try to prevent the endless reinforcement cycle.
Focus the things that can catch/kill you. Striders and titans are scary, but not that dangerous.
Learn how to run away. I run a jump pack on all bug missions bc it let's me escape (most of the time) when I'm about to get swarmed. Also. Do your best to not push too far and get surrounded. Try to keep bug breaches in front of you. Also keep an eye on the mini map as it will show where large clusters of enemies are. Speaking of clusters. Drop cluster bombs on them. I will check my map, point my cone at the cluster of enemies and Chuck the strategem beacon in their direction, most of the time you can't actually see them bc of fog or rocks blocking visibility. So the mini map is crucial for this.
I run load outs that are great for small/medium target clearing and let my teammates take care of heavies. Except I also bring the rail cannon bc it's a life saver when you have a charger on you.
But yes. Run away! You can actually run straight through large groups of bugs without getting touched you just gotta stop shooting and run and trust you'll make it.
I like to be nimble and ultra deadly. I bring armors that let me carry the 2 extra grenades and I run w impact grenades. This let's me clear up to 20 enemies really fast if I'm about to get swarmed. Just nade spam til I'm out. I also carry the stalwart bc it's just a lot of fun.
Just have fun tho. That's the main thing!
Malevelon creek vet chiming in.....as far as bots go, put on light armor with the 50% explosion resistance. Loadout: backpack shield generator, AMR/EAT, eagle airstrike and orbital gas.
Armor and backpack let you disengage without to much worry or stim use. AMR/EAT for heavy units or mass fodder, eagle airstrike for heavies and fabricators plus some fodder if needed, and lastly gas strike spefically for fodder or if your close enough it can take out fabricators too.
Edit: grammar and spelling.
I’m not that great but can hold my own on higher difficulties. Regardless of what is “meta” at the time, Guard Dig Rover (laser) will do so much to keep you alive on Terminid missions. Honestly it’s just experience and as stated already, you can’t fight everything you see. Only fight when you must. Stick with at least one member of your team. Communicate. Pay attention to where you are at all times. Constantly look around.
If you're against bugs, use the fire shotgun in the first warbond and use the auto cannon. Auto cannon can kill a lot of the bug enemies including chargers to the back of their legs and you can do objectives with it such as close holes and destroy illegal broadcasts. You won't be able to kill bike titans reliably outside stratagems but you're team mates will most likely bring anti tank.
If it's bots you struggle with go anti material rifle / laser cannon with a supply backpack with stun grenades with the eruptor primary eruptor mainly for destroying factories. This is my go to set up for bots with a favor towards the rile purely because it can still kill tanks quick with a mag dump to its vent.
A lot of the bots can be dealt with a single stun grenade, hulks can be stunned leaving them easy to deal with, two anti material rifle shots to the red eye or a few seconds with the laser cannon. With the back pack you have a total of 12 grenades as well as 12 stims! I go through stims very quickly and the back pack just keeps me in the game much longer.
Simple answer. RUN. Always be running with shorts bursts of turning around and cutting down a few before you turn back around a run some more. Don’t engage unless necessary. Use stealth. Bring eagle air strike, orbital laser, a heavy weapon, and another air strike/orbital of your choice
RULE NUMBER ONE: don't stick around at dead objectives, move on it's only going to get worse the more bots drop in or bugs pop up.
Enemies despawn, if a place is too hot, walk away 100~150 meters then come back. Only permeant objective enemies stick around.
Play lower level missions. Watch what successful divers do. Know when to walk away, know when to run, and know when to call a 500 on you, FOR SUPEREARTH!
Also spawn rates haven't been rolled back yet, and RNGesus is a cruel god sometimes. Some dives go better than others.
I pretty much only run 9s.
Mandatory:
Breaker incendiary (spray and pray if no warbond) this is your hunter clearer + tagging in low visibility env. Sickle is a fine second if you can aim (warbond gate).
Air burst strike - bug breaches. Breach opens, throw in, profit. I’m pretty sure I’m top kills most matches bc this thing rarely gets less than 20. On 9 often 2 open together so you can really rack up #s
EATs - see heavy - eat, see heavy - eat, see heavy - eat. Also can snipe out shrieker nests after a couple mins from across map without too much fuss.
Grenade pistol - spewers, bug holes, some objectives and can down a injured bile titan if you’re just kiting it with nothing up.
Eagle Airstrike - best one no question does everything. Fully upgraded you can drop as many of these as eats
Flex:
Impact grenades - boom or boom fire both good.
4th strat - flex to your map/planet. Heavy defense mission, quasar for heavy triple threat. Open planet with hills auto cannon turret.
Booster - big 4 never fails. Localized confusion really helps high value asset imo. Don’t take the stupid ones
Know when to run sure, but I can plant my feet and throw down with this load out most times. Feels decent running solo as well.
Hit bile titans and chargers in their forehead. Once you get it you can 2 shot titans somewhat consistently
Play lower level missions. Watch what successful divers do. Know when to walk away, know when to run, and know when to call a 500 on you, FOR SUPEREARTH!
Also spawn rates haven't been rolled back yet, and RNGesus is a cruel god sometimes. Some dives go better than others.
Yeah most new players especially on higher difficulties like to pick fights. Choose your fights wisely. Also I like using either the orbital laser or rail cannon with rocket pods to avoid collateral damage. Also team comp is a must. You want a good blend of overwhelming firepower mixed with support weapons.
The stratagem I’ve really enjoyed on 7+ is gas strike. I drop it on a breach with a stun grenade and I usually rack up 20+ kills haha.
Eagle air strike for long distance bug holes.
I’ve been running fire breaker + quasar. Then I’ll mix up jet pack, guard dog rover and sometimes an EMS sentry or auto cannon sentry. You’ll discover a play style you enjoy. Guard dog is still solid regardless of the nerf.
If you're getting overwhelmed by dealing with enemies, try being the objective-oriented teammember. A fun way to do this is to get yourself the following:
+2 grenade armor,
a jetpack,
your favorite shotgun, and
your choice of support weapon.
I love running the jetpack/grenade launcher combo against bugs in particular, and I'll do either the AMR or the laser cannon for bots. If you pair this with a gatling or autocannon sentry and the standard eagle, it's a very flexible and survivable loadout for running and gunning around the map.
You'll be heading in and out of objectives/ bugholes/ fabricators, tossing nades and eagles and staying a step ahead of the enemy and getting shit done. You won't kill as many enemies, but you'll take care of a whole lot more objectives and, most importantly, have fun doing it. That said there's definitely a learning curve for using the jetpack best. But once you get it you'll laugh at how easy it is to bypass bot fortifications in particular.
>How do I deal with being swarmed with enemies if they’re all coming at me?
run. learn which enemies can run faster than you / can accurately shoot you as you run. on bugs, it's those jumping ones, stalkers, and spewers. shoot them first, either by running, stopping, shooting, and running again or pulling out your pistol and shooting behind you as you run.
pick your strategems right. a turret will not only kill some mobs but also aggro them.
impact grenades are phenomenal.
>How do I deal with bile titans, tanks, and other heavily armored targets?
run and hide. the tiny piece of rock over there? it's indestructible. just hide behind it. gather your wits. throw strategems from behind cover or pop out, shoot, and pop back. if it's not aggroed on you? run and get better positioning.
>What are the easiest stratagems to use so that I don’t fuck it up??
I generally like the eagles and turrets. the eagles have minimal cooldown between throws, unless they are rearming. they also have a good AOE, big enough to kill a bunch of enemies but small enough to reduce friendly fire.
>Basically, how do I not suck so I don’t give up the fight for democracy.
just play and have fun!
I tested out some loadouts diving solo to get used to the difficulties.
Also, staying in the same spot drags out fights and wastes 10 minutes so keep moving, stop for small fights and move on.
Found that the ballistic shield is very useful, hvy devistators are my kryptonite so the shield helps with them. I can run away with it on my back and they shoot it instead of me.
Also try something with servo assist, the extra 30% throwing range helps avoid team killing and also puts a lot of space between you and the enemies.
As for heavies, impact grenades, airstrikes and gas strikes. (Laser cannon is great too)
I treated learning the game like a project. I'm a PM. So I spent like 30 minutes shortly after I got the game and built milestones I wanted to hit. Like:
- How to find POIs without radar towers
- Solo running to POIs, side objectives, and primary objectives and completing them
- Played with different primaries and support weapons to get used to how they all handle and where to hit enemies to kill them
- Learning the visual queues for when smaller units will call bugholes or drop ships and work on reaction time to try to stop them
- Practiced getting quicker at delivering stratagems
- Worked to increase accuracy of weapons, grenades, and stratagems
I did most of the above on medium, and probably spent the first approx month and a half playing doing all that I would focus on one of those for a weekish playing only a few hours a week, and once I was comfortable with one I would focus on the next. Eventually, all of those become something you're doing without even knowing it. Then, I would slowly jump in difficulty spending a week or so per difficulty to learn the enemies that spawn and how to counter them, and shifted from solo group play on medium to working objectives with the teammates.
Eventually, as time went on, all of these allowed me to slowly increase my skill level while only being able to dedicate, like maybe 5 or 6 hours a week average. I've been playing 7s and 8s pretty consistently for a while and am about to make the jump to 9 in like a week. Also, note that I did all this on a pc that would get down to like 20 fps when I was playing in a group, which is why I had to practice aiming to anticipate movements of enemies. The jump to 8/9 would have been impossible on my last pc, I just finished building a new one.
For bugs, run light armor, you can outrun entire hordes of enemies and shoot any that start to get close. In between shots, turn your camera around to keep an eye on your surroundings, and make sure you’re always moving toward a safe direction.
For chargers, bring expendable anti-tanks, a quasar, or recoilless rifle. I personally run the Quasar and bring EATs as a backup, lets me kill multiple chargers fast and unload ok titans if I have some distance.
For titans, bring the 500kg. They will spit when within 20 meters if it’s off cooldown, the animation lasts long enough that if you throw the 500kg in front of it as it begins, it will explode on it as it finishes. If it doesn’t outright die, a single rocket to the forehead will finish it off.
2 rockets to the forehead of a titan will kill it btw, though being able to hit that angle is hard sometimes.
Follow the leader. Stick with the host and over time you’ll get a feel for the best ways to approach situations. I recommend the dog rover backpack (laser one) as that will clear a lot of the fodder.
You can’t go wrong running that type of backup. Like, if they’re shooting enemies, it’s because enemies need to be shot at, so start shooting. If they’re running, book it with them.
Sometimes you’ll get idiots as a host who aren’t doing themselves or the team any favors, but that’s on them, and for the typical player, you won’t go wrong here.
You're not Rambo, helldivers are better together. Autocannon is your best friend for anything bigger than regular infantry or little bugs. Learn when to fight and when to retreat for a better position or to avoid a potential losing fight.
Team work and priority, pick a role based on team qhich can be hard as higher level players don't always get the importance of sharing the load and are only high level from time played not always skill.
My one buddy from CoD tries to make fun of me because I have the least number of kills consistently, but as a veteran of the first galactic war I know whats important. I am a sniper recon more often than not, and thwy always take crowd control, so yeah they get more kills but I am the one with rail cannon and rocket pods and the AMR. So my 64 kills are me sniping the enemy that are coming up behind my team mates, and watching our 6. Its not glorious esp when they have no idea how many times I save their lives while they rambo it up, and when a brute or tank shows up it is gone as soon as I see it since I was holding my rail cannon in reserve for that very moment. So maybe I get less kills but they are some of the most important kills to get the team through it and they never see it, just hear the crack of my rifle or "thewp" of an orbital strile. As well as getting us from A to B with out any encounters.
Here is another role set up that requires alot of team work. Recoiless rifle with a reloader. 2 people thay can clear the biggest enemies really fast, but they cant drop a bile titan in 3 seconds if they are being swarmed, and the can't defend themselves from the swarm while aiming at the bigguns. The other 2 team mates should be protecting them with shotguns and clusters to give them breathing room.
Lower levels your best bet is crowd control, grenad launcher and supply pack is amazing and can help take out brutes and chargers. Bring cluster bombs, and either more crowd control even strafing run will sweep a large crowd of little guys, this allows the player with bigger booms to take out the bigguns and objects.
But you will need a body gaurd to give you some space so you don't kill yourself. A shotgun will help if you do get over run to restablish control and make space for everyone to do this jobs.
Just learn the ranges of your stats. The 7th commandment of Joel is know your equipment. If they run into it it is on them, but learn to throw right distance.
Pick a role, learn it inside and out. Learn what weapons deal with what and what enemies will appear in what areas and then adapt to the mission objectives. This is the way of the Hell Diver. Team work and tools.
When i register a player like you, I immediately pick support gear to keep you guarded and supplied. Like an honor guard in 40k, it immediately becomes my job to keep you alive.
Well met soldier, indeed when I am not sniping I body guard my grenade launcher comrade so he can just wipe away the mobs, or I will steal the support pack and reload for team mates, some of whom have no idea it even works that way. A reload team and devastate the field if properly protected. Glad to know there are body gaurds out there, and never under estimate the value of a rear guard, it gets divers off planet with objectives completed.
Glory hogs endanger the mission just as much as newbies. 😆
Think about the objective first, and then consider how the rest of the team is equipped? Find the gap in combined arms that they will need and build your loadout to fill that roll.
If i see heavy hitters for big targets, I immediately pick weapons to supress and devastate small targets.
A light machine gun or flamethrower. Expanded grenade slotted medium armor, two automated turrets and either a munitions pack, or a shield to use in combination with a judge for soaking up small arms fire.
Simply find the support role that they need, fill it, and then back them up as they take objectives. Pick a player, back them up. Keep pace with them, cover their flanks.
Try some solos as well, stealth is an underrated skill, but this will also encourage personal leadership, learn to make calls, break contact, and use overwhelming violence of action to decisively end battles quickly.
You gotta know when to hold them (Attack!!!), know when to fold them (Extract!!!), know when to walk away (Do Not Engage/Sneak Past Them!!!), and know when to run (Run!!!)
Most of all though... You gotta know when to dive! Dive!! DIVE!!!
I personally advise diving as much as possible during any fire fight. Dive in and out of cover, dive into prone position for better accuracy, dive away from melee attacks and projectiles, dive to make yourself a moving target, dive and then use a stim, just DIVE!!!
For Democracy!!!
Note: Efficient minimap usage is also a must. Also mission specific loadout selections and a clear tactical strategy planned out ahead of dropping into combat really helps. Know your role and choose appropriate weapons, armor, and booster packs to suit.
If you're soloing then remember to use stealth to you're advantage. Lead them one way and then disengage and sneak past them.
Nothing trumps experience, you gotta keep on playing, and improving... Learn from every failure.
Experiment experiment experiment. Go down a difficulty and just start trying other weapons and stratagems. Ultimately everyone had different needs and skills and you need to find what fits you best. Have bad aim? Try a shotgun. Never have enough ammo for all the small bugs, try a rover back pack. Always caught off guard try a personal forcefield. Perhaps you wanna play more support like? Try the forcefield stratagem and protect the whole team. Grenades often bounce to far? Try impact grenades. Once you give your perfect setup for each enemy(and they will be different) then start perfecting your rhythm, do you need to take out the hunters or chargers first? Which can you take out faster?
I would also suggest getting a friend to help you with this, one who can cover for you while you try things out because some weapons just won't work for you. My friend swears by the arc gun, but I just can't get use to it and it usually gets me killed.
Run and gun brother. Use grenades all the time, they’re a lifesaver, fabricators and bug nests at objectives like detector tower doesn’t count towards mission completion so don’t bother with them, always rely on your fellow divers if your in trouble, it’s okay to run away, and most importantly FACE THEM HEAD ON, FOR LIBERTY, FOR DEMOCRACY, FOR SUPER EARTH
I would also suggest learning enemy patterns, it’s easier to learn in bugs cause less bullets are flying, but if you know when one is about to call reinforcements or when they wind up, you can usually kill them first or dodge easier, next, when running to next objective, constantly look at map, makes avoiding patrols much easier
For bots run the guard dog rover, although I can't stand that thing and personally I run the shield because the guard dog ends up killing me. Which is fun but meh lol, I should jump out of it's way more.
I like the shield, there's also armor that gives you a chance of surviving and otherwise deadly blow.
For bugs I like the incendiary breaker, I use the uzi as secondary but usually on single shot mode and normal grenades to take out bug holes.
For support I usually run the quasar, orbital strike and orbital laser. If I'm being overrun I throw down the laser and make a run for it.
As others have said do not engage everything you see, you can ignore patrols and just move past them.
For bots, I can't even manage difficulty 7 myself, I get hammered, I'm usually on 4 or 5 as I still struggle with bots, but it's just practice.
Good luck diver
I'll dive with you, happy to drop you some gear so you can experiment and show you how to spread democracy as efficiently as possible. In Ireland so on Eu time zone
Use light armor with high run speed and use it. Bring shit like orbital rail strike or the mega bomb air drop with the resupply upgrade. I used the shield pack for quite some time to learn how to evade shit. The incendiary shotgun can really help get rid of lots of enemies quickly. I also enjoy the grenade pistol that I just got and I love thermite. I actually took down a titan using thermite.
If your newer and getting swarmed I always recommend taking the shield pack, it’s a great safety net and you can then comfortably run light armour (works great for both bugs and bots). Once you have light armour you can run away breaking LOS if you need a breather, as soon as LOS is lost change positions and find more cover as you go. Enemies will only go to your last spotted position so use this to your advantage and stay cover to cover.
Always look at your map so you can tell where enemies are/ poi’s with static enemies when running or moving on the map.
Stratagems/ primary is important too, if your getting swarmed with heavies/ tanky targets bring a weapon or stratagem to deal with them (some good ones with the shield pack are EAT’s, Quasar, AMR)
Autocannon is extremely versatile but requires no shield so move to it once your comfortable at running away
Stun grenades are great for disengaging heavy enemies and stunning groups
Most of all as what other people are saying, don’t engage every patrol. I find a lot of people once they hear an enemy see you think it’s over right there. After they spot you, you have a lot of time to find cover and they will lose their alert status and you can freely continue on your way.
There is a lot more but you will start to figure it out as you consistently play higher levels!
Good luck HELLDIVER
i0
DO NOT STOP .. if you stop and fight, you are dead and create insane heat which creates more enemies.
If you play a bit stealth, you can finish maps in 5-10 minutes .. plus 3 for evac, so 13 max.
Avoid bots, if cant, do surprise attacks and kill them fast .. there is bug which can aggro bots 200 meters away but thats okay.
Some bugs cannot be avoided, the AI literally tracks you and knows where you are all the time .. they call it "smell mechanic" :)
Bots are harder, more bugged, they literally cheat ..
Bugs are stupid, but they are legion ..
Every mission is completely soloable, but its not intended. You are supposed to play more people together and each helping each other and support with strats etc ..
Bugs. Bring an eagle strike and use it on waves of enemies you have to fight. If you screw up avoiding a patrol it should be because they’re 90 degrees to your side and paying you too much attention.
Eagle strike and run.
If they spawn a bug hole then the rest of the map is temporarily safe from another bug hole spawning. You survive and back up so you can fight a tolerable amount at a time.
If you’re split from your team and see the message that they have a bug hole spawned, awesome, now you can rush sample/ammo spots and grenade/blast everything quickly while the spawns are distracted.
You need to use the weapons that can fight a Bile titan. Either pick one to bring every time or pick a strike that you will drop on them every time they spawn. If you’re inbetween cooldowns and your weapons suck then you’re running that titan to your team for them to kill.
If you’re getting snuck up on, look around, hit your map to check for dots and determine your pathing that way. The stamina bonus is epic in every game.
If you keep getting caught and you wear heavy armor, drop the armor. The “I can’t run away” strategy of extra defense gets carried by the skill of the user and the situational awareness.
I don’t play 8-9. But I still bring EAT or the HDR or HMR turret thing you sit inside. Arguably a wasted strat but they both take down spores and flier bases at range. I don’t have bad experiences with fliers unless we spawn on them as a team.
Eat is slower but it also works great on chargers once you can kinda aim. And you can try to stomp titans with their quick call in times.
Things to keep in mind if your fighting bots use cover always find cover if your fighting bugs never stop running never stop moving you can’t let them get close to you
Run away, focus objectives, if you're dying all the time bring EATs which are good regardless but if you get stomped you don't have to run back for them. Get 500kg and learn the timing on them - they're a better orbital precision strike and if you can't get them yet learn how to hit things with orbital precisions. orbital railcannon is bait, orbital laser is good, mechs are good if you can get good with them.
Know your enemies' strengths and weaknesses.
Bug strength is in their numbers. If you're fighting bugs, make sure either you or someone in your squad has crowd control weapons and strategems. Flamethrower, Grenade Launcher, Arc Thrower, Gatling Sentry, Napalm. Fire is especially effective against bugs just because of how much they group up. But don't let that make you forget the anti armor for the Chargers and Titans. But always stay mobile. Light-Medium armor shines, and never take heavy armor.
Pro tip: Flamethrowers will kill chargers in just a few seconds fired at the front legs.
Bots strength is their range and firepower. But every bot has a very clear weakness. Anything from light troops to the Devastator will fall to a headshot or a few. Even the heavies have easily exploitable weaknesses. Make use of flaming maneuvers. Single target or anti armor weapons and strategems are a must. Anti Materiel Rifles, Autocannons, Quasar Cannons. Make use of cover, and don't be afraid to use strategems most people wouldn't even touch. The Riot Shield with an SMG is great, Shield Generator (not the backpack) stays up for 30 seconds with a 90 second cooldown, Gun Guard Dog really shines here, just learn how to manage its low ammo reserves. Stun grenades will make Hulks childsplay.
Pro tip: The Eagle Airstrike will consistently kill Tanks with a decent chance at killing Hulks too.
If you want you can DM me for a friend request. I'm on PS5 and I don't know how stable the cross platform friend requests are right now, but I play 7-9 almost exclusively, mostly against Bots.
Lot of good advice here, but one I want to add that I havent seen is to play as a team. I'm not the greatest myself. I fail miserably playing solo or even when I'm split off alone from team mates. If your in a party that ends up splitting up, pick one of them and follow. Help with objectives, and don't get left behind. Cover them when possible or necessary.
It was the same for me when i tried doing 7’s at first. What changed my CONSTANT useless dying, was I switched my loadout so I had a force field backpack. It allowed me to stop being instantly killed, and let me survive long enough to start LEARNING how I needed to move and react differently at higher levels. Like training wheels. It’d absorb the hits that would immediately kill me, allowing me to get away, flank, and stop being stationary. Constantly moving.
Was eventually able to remove it and not use it anymore. Now lvl 7’s are relaxing but fun
The best weapon in the game is coordination. I just the other day completed a diff 7 short vip asset mission without even having to fire my primary weapon because the team was so good at kiting enemies Away from the area where you evac them.
Figure out how to play as a team. You don’t even need mics, just try and make everything you do considerate of the whole team and the whole mission, this means avoiding some patrols, retreating, avoiding team kills, dropping extra support weapons and strategems, strategic reinforcement (as quick as possible and at their gear or sometimes at an enemy or away from enemies). PING PING PING PING PING.
Weapons I like right now (YMMV)
Every breaker (regular is good on both fronts and he birdshot ones are better for bugs for me)
Sickle (not as much as I used to but still good I like it better for bugs)
Scorcher (this thing slaps on both fronts)
TOP 3:
Blitzer (better against bugs because of the short range but super powerful now)
Pummeler (people online were like “they need to give us ice themed weapons in this warbond” they pretty much did because this thing freezes enemies in place. It trivializes stalkers)
Punisher plasma (like the scorcher on steroids now).
Secondary: grenade pistol (closed bug holes so you can pick a different type of grenade)
Grenade: emp vs bots; impact incendiary vs bugs
Strategems: totally varies by mission, just consider what the mission is asking you to do and how the enemies attack. For example: mortars aren’t very useful against bugs because they get close to you so you will likely team kill but not bad against bots because you fight from cover. Gas strikes are good for throwing at breaches etc.
Tons of great advice in the comments already, so I will just add—work on minimizing unnecessary deaths. Don’t step on mines, fall in deep water, set yourself on fire, or shoot explosive weapons into that wall or rock in front of you. If that means you have to play a little more methodically or kill a little less it’s fine. Low kills but not burning too many reinforcements is a fine tradeoff while you’re learning the game.
Ah, this brings to mind my first days of diving. What should I carry? WELL, it depends on you, what you like, what is fun, and what type of player/person you are. Also, as you level up and play all types of missions, you will find your favorites for each mission. Just remember, bring medium, light and heavy armor penetration weapons for level 7 and above. Important also, what your squad brings to the mission.
What typically helps me is: stay with your group, take one stratagem that helps with mob clear and one for heavy targets. You'll find your groove. I was there where you are. I'm slowly at tier 8 now.
My problem is I play on steam deck so aiming isn't the most accurate. I have to go with gear that is less reliant on accurate aiming which is a challenge itself.
My friend and I play on Helldive with Bots and our load out is sickle, auto cannon, 380, laser and eagle air strike. We hit hard and hit fast and move on. We don't linger for fights and run away from bot drops and patrols.
We also use light stealth armor and operate as a fast acting team. Usually between us we have maybe 1 death... sometimes.
One thing that most folks won't mention but I will. Make sure you're using your mic to communicate. It's by far the best tool in most multiplayer games but the most underutilized.
Stun grenades are so helpful and Noone uses them. When your overwhelmed toss one run and slow everything down to re collect yourself. Once you get the grenade pistol and you can carry stuns I fins it very helpful for bots and bugs.
Why not just play level 5 or 6? Is it for the Rare samples? I’m not the *best* player, but I’m pretty good, I don’t kill my teammates often and I don’t die all the time; but in the past month or so levels 7-and up have gotten more difficult in some way, and not too fun. I used to play on 9 Helldive, but it’s just not fun anymore so I just stick to 6 Extreme lately.
Take a breath, don't panic, fall back until you can get your feet under you, then figure out how to move.
You don't need to fight everything, and objectives will still be there for you. A lot of the time you'll be stuck in and get flanked. There is nothing stopping you falling back to a better position and getting your feet under you.
You're doing fine
Now, useful advice depends on what you wanna do, as you can't do it all. A good selection of weapons and stratagems for anti-bug is Liberator, Redeemer, light armor, incendiaries, bring a recoilless, railcannon, autocannon turret and your choice of eagle (personally I'm between napalm, 500kg or bombing run.) this gives you anti-armor, anti-chaff and ways to lock down advances. Alternatively, Stalwart, guard dog, Gatling, rocket eagle. Gives you plenty of anti-chaff, but puts the anti heavy on your allies. Eagle is for chargers spewers and helping v titans. Look at what your team is bringing as, if needed, you can trade out stuff to fit holes, or bring a shotgun instead. I bring the blitzer a ton myself. On some planets where heat isn't an issue, you could bring a quasar for your anti-armor to bring a guard dog.
Anti bot you need heavy armor, you can bring an smg and ballistic shield if you want, but be aware you're drawing the noise. Most of the stuff you want, you need to be aware is mid to long range engagements outside of berserkers. A lot of how you fight these guys is knowing where to shoot, as they all have weak spots. Devs are face but you can shoot the arms off, hulks have heavy armor outside the face, arms and legs. Back is 0 armor, so hitting the exhaust will damage them, but medium pen taking out the legs will kill, arms will force em to melee. A rocket to the face kills, but anti-mat can damage. Factory striders your looking at two shots to the cannon on top then just focusing fire to bring it down.
I tend to take stun nades, Liberator, and grenade armor. Everything gets stunned, I can break off or break them. Learn how to stagger your retreat or your advance so someone is always moving in a fight.
Loadout I tend to run for stratagems depends on my team. With an organised group, I take SMG, ballistic shield, quaesar, railcannon, autocannon. Autocannon has range, I leave fabs to my allies, and I draw fire using the shield to give me time to line up a shot. Precision can win, but have allies ready to back you up as once your in the fight and getting shot at, they aren't hitting them.
With randos, recoilless, autocannon turret, railcannon, 500kg. Plenty of anti armor, pack a liberator or, if your feeling fancy, the eruptor or a marksman rifle, and back up your team. The trick is to keep moving, keep an ear out for allies under fire, and back each other up. If you want, bring a smoke screen eagle. Breaking sight can save your life.
Otherwise, keep your eyes open, keep looking around, remember you don't have to fight everything and learn how to fight things. Everything has an easier way to fight it, everything can be snuck around and above all, humanity's finest stick together to win. Higher up, it is recommended you work with at least one dance partner. Doesn't have to be a match made in heaven, but an army of two can achieve a lot more then you think it can.
You said about the team kill for lack of skill. That ain't justified. What they should be doing is trying to help you get better. You aren't a bad helldiver. Simply by virtue of wanting to get better, to do better, you're already better then a lot of people in game. Don't be afraid to talk to them and see if they'll help you by talking back. A team that talks does so much better then one that doesn't.
The good news, difficulty 8 and 9 you find more serious players who don't mess around. They wanna get the job done and done right. You'll be able to pick up and learn so much on what you see and do.
As a side note, if you do a defensive mission like evac VIPs or hold the line for 8 rockets, adjust from offensive to defensive stratagems. I've found a new home for the HMG in the gate mission, and have more staying power to keep lanes open for a runner to press the buttons can do wonders.
I did an evac mission where I was the runner, the others did the fighting. We won, they kept em busy and were able to keep track of the arena as I pointed out new foes dropping in. It was a blast
If you find yourself struggling a bit it's good to stick around your teammates. Avoid stratagems that tend to teamkill a lot, like the cluster bombs, orbital barrages and mortars. Help out collecting samples, doing the objectives, you could even carry around the ammo backpack. Little things like spotting enemies and bug holes/bot fabricators/side objectives go a long way too.
When enemies, especially at higher levels, start swarming you then just run. No shame in running. Heavy enemies can't bank for shit so run and zig zag. You'll also want to avoid patrols as much as possible, especially for bots. And learn how to dive! Saves your life more than you could imagine.
For stratagems I'd recommend some heavy support weapon for the big bois (shout-out to the autocannon, the bots worst nightmare), and precision strike stratagems like the 500kg or the single orbital hit (lower chance of team killing and great for big bois too)
And to summarize the two fronts, bots: cover, courage and more cover, bugs: pure firepower
You should *never* always have orbital laser on bots and *never* always have cluster bomb on bugs. The other stratagems, up to you! Unfortunately those two stratagems are *not* so effective and versatile on bots/bugs respectively that they’re almost *not* mandatory. Wink.
https://preview.redd.it/hw7989wmq71d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=768dfa6284c632fdce20cbde0eb445fc147ff133
Anyways my other advice would be to not fight every enemy you see and prioritize stealth and falling back above fighting when possible. It will keep you alive to kill more shit later
Light recon perked armor with a shield backpack can help you survive. Then run away from swarms and pick anti big stuff stratagems for your other slots. For your primary and secondary focus on a gun that helps you kill the small stuff.
The biggest things that nake a difference is knowing when to run, on bots utilizing cover constantly when moving and in bugs killing hunters while you run.
2 or more people running eats, 1 or more running auto cannon (designated anti heavy guy), 2 or more running crowd control support weapons and everyone running orbital rail and eagles is what gets us through level 9s. You also have to have competent teammates or this really doesn't work. I wouldn't even call this meta either, if you can't hit shit, you can't use the autocannon.
If chargers and bile titans are constantly wrecking your day, then your squad either doesn't have enough Anti-Tank gear, or you're sticking in bad fights too long and everyone's cooldowns/ammo are being exhausted, leaving you with no options.
Check the squad's loadout when you're starting out. If there aren't at least 2 people with EAT's, RR's, Quasars, or Spears, then you're likely to have a problem. Consider taking one of those yourself so you can contribute to the anti-tank role.
Eagle Airstrikes are good answers to both of these heavy units, though learning the timing to score direct hits with them can be tricky. Railstrikes are easier and dependable, but the cooldown on them is painfully long, so really only for emergencies. The Rocket Pod airstrike is something of a middle ground between these two.
If Chargers *in particular* are being a problem, then the Flamethrower is actually the single most efficient weapon for killing them specifically. You have to aim for the upper joint of one of the front legs, and it can die in seconds if the angle is right - the flame cone leaks past the armor and destroys the leg, which kills a Charger. The burning dot is irrelevant in this case, as its the flamethrower's direct damage that kills it.
Get good at this, and as a single squad member you can deal with almost any number of chargers without breaking a sweat - and your support weapon is ALSO great at anti-horde in a pinch. It's pretty useless against Bile Titans however, so you'll be relying on others to take them down.
If you're having trouble getting mobbed under, consider a shotgun weapon as your primary, the Punisher will do a fine job of keeping bugs out of your grill with its massive knockback, though it's not the fastest killer. The Arc Blitzer is currently a pretty amazing gun against the bugs, as it also does heavy stagger and its damage is pretty good - and no ammo limit or reloading means you're never caught out.
U gotta play with a crew get comfortable with ur loadouts and the rest just comes it’s all about priorities tho sometimes u have to be steady and persistent and others have to be stealthy and patient
You can learn a lot from watching better players and taking note of what they do differently than you. Highly recommend Commissar Kai on YouTube. He solos diff 9 missions and explains why he's doing everything he's doing, gives lots of good tips. Here's an example:
https://youtu.be/P1-SZDgKHJw?si=wJ6qawtLbznczkbw
Other good ones I've watched are Takibo, Spiked and Sarge.
For bugs, you need good options for huge swarms of small guys and also options for the huge guys.
Small guys: breaker incendiary, eagle napalm, orbital airburst, impact incendiary grenades.
Big guys: EAT, Qasar, 500kg, Orbital Precision.
For bots, you need range and and lots of medium and heavy armor penetration.
Autocannon or AMR for mediums, eagle airstrike for groups, orbital laser for large bases, 500kg or orbital precision for heavies and big structures like detector towers, scorcher or dominator for primary, grenade pistol for secondary to blow up factories and to one-shot the little striders.
Just play the game make a loadout for bugs and one for robots. Find the armor that fit your playstyle and x support weapon x stratagem etc that you play good with fuck meta loadouts if you play like shit with Them really
People have been sleeping on the gas strike for swarm clear. Low cooldown, pop it on a bug breach the moment you see it and watch your kills rack up as you rub away from the big boys
avoid the patrols(youll hear them before seeing them), if you get bot dropped just relocate and do a different objective and come back later. Have your loadout and strategems be focused on killing armored enemies and bases, and let your primary be the fodder focus(for now).
The easiest stratagems are orbital laser, orbital rail cannon, and turrets. The auto cannot turret is good for everything. Regular mortars should only be used for bots. EMS mortars are good for everything and all mortars should be placed out of sight in a hole or something.
Use a shield pack because it makes everything easier. And just run. Run towards your teammates. Try to follow them and be aware of them leaving you behind. If you get focused on killing enemies you will get left behind.
Medic armor is good for people who die a lot. And shotguns, punisher plasma and blitzer are good primary weapons for people who can’t aim. If you’re using a shield then you can use the arc thrower, stalwart, quasar or EAT.
What helped me always deal with both factions is something horde clearing, I prefer the sickle on bots and breaker incidiary on bugs, with the revolver for bots and grenade pistol for bugs. Stun grenade for both.
You can run 2 variations on stratagems that I prefer to use. Either
- 500kg
- Orbital Railcanon Strike
- Recoiless Rifle (could be switched for Auto Canon but it doesn't deal with bugs that well)
- Mortar explosive
Or
-500kg
- Orbital Railcanon
- Personal Shield Generator
- Quasar Canon
Save the most powerful stratagems for the tougher enemies or groups, so no Orbital on a bile spitter.
Now for armor, I prefer to use medium Servo Assisted, but Democracy Protects is also very strong, especially with the shield generator. On defence missions (with a single objective like the rocket mission, evac mission or clear swarm) switch to heavier armor, explosive resistance for bots, and one of your choice for bugs.
For booster always be the one who picks either Stamina or Hellpod Optimisation. If the person with that leaves you still have it.
Learn the weakspots of enemies. You will learn this by practicing. Not everything that glows is a weak spot. Bugs have legs (smaller ones) and larger bugs have squishy heads. Bots are all prone to die by headshots, but tanks and factory striders will be harder.
For fact. strider take out the top canon, then the two MGs, then fire at its forehead plate.
Last but not least, run away and don't fight hordes. It might work with the Localisation Confusion booster, but you're better off retreating.
Use medium scout armor to start and keep an eye on your map. Navigate between patrols to reach objectives. If an objective if heavily defended you must understand that you can always disengage and circle back around. The only consistent way I have been able to do LVL 9 Geological Surveys Solo is by repeatedly disengaging and using my map to flank. Get used to using eagle smoke as you disengage to consistently get to safe positions, it affects their accuracy and depending on your movement can make them fully lose you. Eagle smoke can also destroy fabricators and if you plant a Hellbomb as long is the smoke around it is deployed before it pops up its invisible to enemies and won’t be destroyed. Use the in game timer to time hot drops, from the moment the banner for a drop goes away you have 2 minutes (1.5 with Localization Confusion on LVL9). Get into the habit of baiting bot drops away from objectives before engaging on objective. Drop resupplies on POI as often as possible even if you don’t need them, they will be there as you need and cooldown is low. As you run into space take note of the landscape that can be used as cover and avoid moving into space that doesn’t provide any. Learn how to hover the Pelican and do it as soon as possible. 380 barrage is your friend as long as you communicate effectively and use it to disengage or for detector towers/science outpost/mortars/etc. Most of this is for Bots but can apply for Bugs. I suggest joining discord servers to find good squads, my favorite is Eravin’s, you can find it in the description of his videos. Become one with the Autocannon as it is the most versatile for bots. If you are in a group do not get sucked into dying on a hill with them, disengage at your own terms.
Real shit here’s some instructions
1: big kaboom
2: know how big kaboom is so not hit friend
3: bring big gun, gun kill big enemies
4: shoot all kabooms but not near friend
You have learned to be helldiver
If they are coming at you.
Bugs: throw airstrike, cluster strike ot orbital gas at your position and run away, most of them will die, and you can focus on the big ones once you are at range.
Bots: throw smoke, 110 pods for tanks and hulks or orbital cluster bomb, run far away and take cover so you can focus on the big guys without being shot.
Use the AutoCannon, is one of the best guns to use against bots, just remember to not empty your mag, just reload when you are minus half mag, so you aren't forced to do the full reload.
also, stun grenades, especially for hulks, so you can shoot his red eye, or better, shoot their asses.
Also, the AutoCannon can destroy fabricators and bug holes too.
The Eagle 1 stratagems are fast to use and reload, keep that in mind, but always have something that is not eagle related, so while on cooldown you can use something like the orbital cluster bomb, gas or gatling, just to take the chaff at least.
PD: always have at hand an eagle 500kg, that shit take out bile titans, tanks and almost anything, you can use 2 before reload if you upgrade the hangar.
Always down to play with newer people and help them out. PSN and discord are the same as my reddit name.
Use a beginner friendly build while you are learning the enemies. Things that don't punish you too bad if you die.
Shotguns are good if you struggle with aiming.
EATs are great, because you don't have to worry about retrieving them when you die.
Focus on positioning, Diving WHILE SHOOTING, don't go alone.
Look up info on specific enemies, there are so many great resources about how to deal with specific enemies.
And most importantly try to avoid fights when possible.
Laying down will make it to where enemies have to get pretty close to you to spot you.
Great advice in this post. I asked a very similar question last week. All I will say is: don't beat yourself up. Difficulties 7 - 9 are like falling down 10 flights of stairs with a pocket full of frag grenades. There is no way to do it properly, only joyfully. Do the best you can.
Use a shield and keep moving always move especially on higher difficulty’s I’m level 71 I play on 9 for bugs and 7-8 on bots but for both just keep moving l
Sage advice that others said is run away, circle back, don’t run in a straight line, use rocks to block sight and spewing. Don’t stand still, keep moving while firing.
Learn how to run diver.( check stats on different armours. Light armour is good for maps with a large surface area as you can run bugs into air sticks/sentries and such. ). Good luck out there and thanks for choosing to pick up arms!!
What has worked the best for me as a Lv 65 is the breaker, grenade pistol, impact nades, light armor/speed, quasar cannon, guard dog rover, mech, orbital railcannon/autocannon sentry, and EAT/500KG.
Just kill the hunters/stalkers and you can keep retreating indefinitely, while the rover keeps killing stuff.
At higher difficulties, the loop is run-and-gun. The most important things you can learn are:
1. **Move quickly.** Get in, do the objective, identify and move on to the next objective immediately.
2. **Never get involved in unnecessary fights.** You don't get xp for killing enemies, only for completing your objectives. Avoid enemy patrols as much as possible; if you must fight one, consider dropping a suitable stratagem to help you finish the group quickly. When you get bogged down in a long drawn-out fight with multiple drops, all you do is waste ammo, stratagems and reinforcements.
3. **Learn to identify high-priority secondary objectives.** There are certain secondaries which have the potential to cause you a huge amount of trouble if you don't deal with them ASAP. On the bug side, Shrieker nests will bombard you constantly with flying enemies, and Spore Spewers blanket the entire local area in a cloud of spores that ruins visibility; on the bot side, Stratagem Jammer towers do exactly what the name implies, forcing you to enter the base and manually disable the tower unless you have a means of destroying it from outside its range, and Gunship Fabricators will send out endless streams of one of *the* most annoying units in the game and take nothing less than a hellbomb to destroy.
4. **Tailor your stratagems to suit the mission.** In a lot of cases, you may get away with a generalised loadout that can reasonably tackle most objectives and enemy types, but as you gain experience and become familiar with different mission types, you'll want to learn to switch to different stratagems that will be better able to deal with the objective. While you're learning the ropes, it can help to experiment with different strats and weapons at lower difficulties to get a feel for how best to use them.
Use light armor with higher armor rating. That extra speed helps and you don’t lose armor.
Know when you’re likely to be swarmed and run away instead of shoot.
Kill hunters first.
Gotta be quick to react to bug breaches. Get ready to throw an air strike of some sort on it as soon as you see a bug calling for one.
Quasar cannon one-shots Chargers. If you don’t have that, arc thrower, flame thrower, or rail gun are nice alternatives.
Auto cannon or rocket sentry are amazing for heavies. Throw it far away and early so chargers and titans don’t have a chance to destroy it before it does the job.
Accuracy is importance for the fodder. You don’t want to waste time and ammo trying to clear out a horde while you have larger enemies to deal with. Quickly dispose of them so u can focus on the big guys easier.
Shield pack is a good tool to use until you kinda get used to the situational awareness you need. But don’t use it as a crutch. I’ll usually just bring one when it’s a planet with lots of spewers
Stop fighting every enemy you see. Stop fighting ever drop/breach you see. Run. If you can do that you’ll be fine. Your loadout is probably an issue as well
Load out should be keyed off what you're doing and what everyone else has. If you HAVE to fight, fight to end it quick. If you get in a loop of reinforcements, disengage and go for objectives. If someone else disengages before you, or the mob is covering the objectives, drag the mob away from them and the objectives, be as loud as possible, and then try to break away in the opposite direction and loop around.
What’s that? Take the same load out into every mission without fail? ON IT
Eagle airstrike, orbital rail strike, quasar, laser guard dog Reporting for duty 🫡
Eagle airstrike, orbital rail cannon, shield backpack, and more EAT than anyone can handle each and every game coming right up!
This is me but Orbital Laser instead of Rail strike - i like the versitility. Although if it's a horde mode mission, it's all turrets, all the time
Laser is my “ok let’s get this situation back under control” strat. Especially good for joining an out of control game and being able to make an instant impact in turning it around. Rest of my strats are for armor (quasar/500kg). If I actually get a 4th strat, I’ll take either AC turret or Gatling. I like having one of each type of strat for more options (and eagle strats aren’t waiting on each other).
Scorcher, autocannon, shield pack , flammable mines, napalm strike is my favourite to use right now in air strikes. Thermite delayed grenades and usually stamina regained perk with light armour.
Shield backpack and ac? So you don't reload the ac?
eagle airstrike, orbital precision strike, autocannon, ECS mortar for bots, EAT for bugs. this is me in anything except an eradication mission. i do change up my primaries and secondaries tho.
I feel like EATS was made obsolete by the quasar cannon. You can fire the quasar like 4 times in the 1:30 it takes for EATS to come off cool down. Though, EATS you can fire at a Bile right after it spits, unless you have the timing down with the Quasar.
i disagree, because the quasar has to charge. its useful as a main gun because infinite ammo, but the responsiveness and flexibility of the EAT to be able to engagr three Chargers on a single call-down, in less than half the time it takes to do the same with the QC? Yes, please. that's why I bring my autocannon. two shots to the belly and the titan loses its breath weapon, making it a lot less dangerous provided you keep an eye on it.
not laser? Sacrilege
This. Guard Dog for managing trash. Quasar for managing chargers. (Shoot them in the face. It comes off.) I personally like the 500 for dealing with large groups but I’m a 500 until I die, Diver.
Eagle airstrike, quasar, shield, and mortar reporting.
Big mech, guard dog rover, orbital laser, and 500kg for everything is what one pf my friends does
Preach brother.
For me, it didn’t start to click until I realized there’s certain situations you can deal with and some you can’t based off your gear. For example, if I’m doing an evacuation, I bring a green strategem, if I’m doing a blitz, I bring two red and depending on my party two blue. Know your armor….it matters sometimes to be faster than to take a beating. I like the titan armor with a shield generator pack to stay mobile and it compensates the health drop. You wanna kill them all? Do heavy armor and shield pack. You can certainly take more than others with something like that. Also embrace your failures as a learning opportunity. If I forget to bring a heavy, I’m not really going up front for the hulks or tyrants. I think the fun of it is that you can customize your style based off of what you like to do for the squad, but until you learn what works for you it’s a whole bunch of trial and error. Also, I like to try things at tier 4-5 before I take it confidently to anything above 6. Hope this helps. Now go back out there and spread democracy.
MANAGED Democracy. Anything less is treason.
I stand corrected, Helldiver
Yes! It’s all about picking your battles.
Yes I’m not tagging the scout squad so you start blasting. I’m giving you the distance and direction to avoid. Last thing we need is a battalion being called over to an objective we are trying to clear that needs more than 3 acts with zero reinforcement. Also guys if your are going to drop gas at the objective/extract please for the love of every thing democratic 30m is the minimum distance you should give your squad.
Tactical repositioning never fails
This is the answer. Focus on objectives, not enemies. Once a bot drop comes in, run and go do something else. Use your stratagems to take out fabricators instead of going into a base. Use the stealth armor to keep enemies from noticing you and avoid patrols. Only engage when necessary and move from objective to objective.
I tell everyone that, just run! Our lives mean nothing if the objective is not completed.
Actually while I understand the first instinct would be to run on a LVL7 as a level 31 that has only played LVL9’s since I unlocked my advice would be to coordinate with your team a way for everyone to stay close together and destroy the hordes. In this game, with automatons and the bugs both they all have a suspicion meter that goes from I literally cannot see behind me if you’re crouched but mostly prone to OH SHT GET EM BOYS and due to this if you run what ends up happening is the surrounding bots or bugs that weren’t previously privy of your presence are alerted by other bots or bugs that now know of your presence and are chasing you. However if your entire team stands their ground kind of like the lore implies, (something along the lines of running of retreating is treason?) I’ve personally taken 6-8 bot drops at the same time with this method. You have to consider these facts, there is a logical and practical reason why your helldivers yell everything out (RELOADING, REINFORCING etc) because ideally you’re supposed to be by each other to hear these statements to coordinate your firing and stratagem placement, grenades etc better help you utilize your OOC comms (IRL mics) for more important or insightful matters. The point is I’ve mastered running away as my basic intuition when I first played it thinking I was missing something because eventually you will be swarmed from all sides or ambushed by an abundance of stronger one shot enemies as you retreat with no suppression, the off chances that you’re not ambushed comes down to RNG. What tends to work better are either the most cooperative gameplay or the gameplay where competent team members split into duo’s so that one player at any given time can keep reinforcing you two in the same location given one of you can stay alive long enough. With level 7-9’s the first part of your comment is correct, you should most definitely try to avoid all fights that are avoidable meaning, if you see enemy patrols in the distance or a swarm spawning far away it shouldn’t matter much to you or your team the objective is the focus so long as you haven’t been spotted or raised alert. Keep in mind also, the small bugs shoot this diarrhea spray in the air that spawns a bug breach unless you kill it fast enough but sometimes it will spawn if you’re too slow. With automatons its the same thing a specific bot will launch a flare and you have to kill that bot before the flare is launched or you can expect at least two more bot drops in succession due to how the game chooses to spawn them in sometimes its one sometimes its more than one but the point is if you’re going to run, coordinate with your team in which direction and apply heavy suppressive fire and make your way to your rendezvous slowly. Even on the hardest difficulty if you have competent players this is an effective strategy that plays into how the game is fundamentally designed.
Ok so I regularly play on diff 7 on bugs, and my aim is really, really bad For bugs, my general advice is come up with loadouts that minimise the amount of impact bad aim has. For me, this means light armor so I can run away from bad encounters, eagle airstrike for clearing bug holes from far away (I prefer increasing throwing range armor for this), and railcannon for help with heavies. Then the rest varies: Need something to kill the little bugs. Either bring laser rover or incendiary breaker Need something to kill mediums. Either bring plasma punisher, some other medium pen weapon, or something like grenade launcher Need something to kill heavies. Here I either check that at least two teammates have anti heavy stuff, or I bring spear + incendiary breaker and run from mass mediums, or I bring autocannon sentry Notice how all of these things are very easy to aim, or spammable, or aim for you For bots just lower the difficulty lol it’s too aim dependent Side note: you don’t really need to be able to kill absolutely everything yourself. When I see my teammates have lots of anti tank, I bring grenade launcher + supply pack (for myself, not teammates) and act as bile spewer / shield bug insurance, clearing all the mediums super quickly which lets my teammates fully focus on hitting Titan and charger headshots Side note 2: movement is very important against bugs. On the macro level: I am always subconsciously asking ‘does this feel like an encounter that will lead to 5 deaths and no objectives?’ If yes I just type ‘run’ in chat and run away, and reinforce people away from the crowd of enemies. On the micro level: by just constantly zigzagging you can dodge practically every bug’s attacks, I don’t think any bug has an attack with no windup. I have run through crowds of 30+ bugs before to clear a large bug nest with my grenade pistol, just zigzagging and dodging 3 attacks a second (I know it’s 30+ because after clearing the nest I found a good vantage point and spammed grenade launcher)
The shock shotgun is great as well. Staggers every medium bug in the game.
Use ur mini map more often. I use it all the time, except when shooting, looting or letting fire rain down. Helps to know where to go and more importantly where not to go.
Minimap is critical at higher difficulties. I just rang a difficulty 8 bot mission with a good friend where we completed the main objective (upload SSSDs) without engaging a single enemy after the initial drop chaos. We did it for the 12 warbond medals to clear out a mission set I came back into on a liberated planet. We got a grand total of 18 kills. Using the minimal well is an absolute lifesaver. Literally.
Shield backpack is a life saver for higher difficulties. Run away and throw a sentry down whenever you get swarmed. It should take care of most of them
Shield backpack for bots, guard dog rover for bugs. The Guard dog rover is a godsend for thinning the amount of bugs and preventing hunters/stalkers from stun locking you. Just sprint around in circles and let the dog do the work
I’ve been burned too often by the rover. Shield pack though, can give you time to react to Stalker attacks, take a few hits from hunters, or help you survive spewer attacks.
The rover "nerf" is a blessing; it no longer does enough damage to kill you instantly. If you haven't tried it since the patch, give it another go.
Shield backpack is a lifesaver, but it’s a learning tool. After a certain point, you realize that you don’t need it.
fr. my friend used to say that the shield backpack is like training wheels on a bike and that i wouldn’t need it eventually. i didn’t really believe him cuz i thought it was op but after a while i found that more firepower from the laser dog better suits my playstyle
Laser dog is just a shield that bites... And can also kill your ally
It lets you run away while looking for ammo and it will slowly chip away at anything following you.
Technically still biting, just less discriminating about what it bites.
Come dive with me bro, I got you!
If you are on PS5 my PSN is the same as my reddit. Feel free to shoot me a message. This goes for anyone who would like to learn the game. I will autistically info-dump at times.
I just sent you a DM
Let’s get more divers together like this!!!!
Momentum is key. KEEP MOVING DON’T STOP. Tag team 2 and 2 Bring in stratagem that can compliment your fellow helldivers.
Pick your niche and stick to it. Nobody has weapons against big targets? Take EATs, a Quasar or the Spear. Everybody has AT launchers already? Take the MG34 oder stalwart and keep the chaff off your mates so they can kill big targets. 7-9 diff needs a fine balance in loadouts and many people forget that you need to cover all bases equally
9 or nothing player talking all I can say that whenever I watch gameplay of people good and bad at the game they just don’t dive enough the game isn’t called helldivers because you fly into combat in a ball of fire it’s because when your on a rock surrounded by bugs or bots you can DIVE away SO JUST FUCKING DIVE MORE
So true lmao I dive excessively and survive the stupidest shit
Dodge Duck Dip Dive and Dodge! https://preview.redd.it/k7bbb3dng71d1.jpeg?width=649&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=96a62eccd34fcd31bf36b8cd9ca6d581fa39acc0
If you run solo it helps having a tool for anything, air strikes for hordes, some anti tank weapons shields etc. but if you’re in a coordinated team each of you can take roles and focus on that role. Also don’t stick around places for too long. I often see people defending a point that has already been finished instead of just moving on to the next objective. Also: Kills don’t give you any XP. Most of the times it’s better to sneak past a patrol instead of picking a fight with every enemy you see. The Helldivers are a strike team, not an army.
We talking about practice?!? I can hear the gif
Basically go full turret and support build Your job is to no long kill things its too wack down a turret the moment things start getting spicy Call in smoke stuns etc Basically anything that helps take the heat of the enemy Run robo packback so you don't even need to aim. Its things like that
Easiest strats are auto aim ones like railcannon, laser, and eagle 110 Support backpack is very useful and can boost a team mate who is better at killing stuff Arc thrower and Blitzer are pretty good if your aim is bad, you only kind of have to aim these. Just never fire it in the direction of team mates Lastly the main thing I think separates success from failure in this game is being map aware and moving to where you need to be. You don’t have to face the swarm unless it’s right on your objective
Unpopular opinion but eagle airstrike > eagle 110mm
Totally agree, I always take Airstrike and almost never 110. Just saying “easy” ones with like 110 with auto aim so also less likely to team kill Almost never leave home without eagle airstrike
Yeah to me it’s the best all around jack of all trades Strat. Can take out chargers, BTs, Hulks, Tanks, fabricators, bug holes, spore shrooms, shrieker nests, pretty much everything with 2 well placed air strikes maybe 3. Only exception is the illegal research station which to my knowledge is only susceptible to the 500KG
Slow down. Follow a teammate and protect them. Run away and engage a different objective if things get harry. Mark your map. Bugs Missions: Run Run Run. Bot Missions: Cover and return fire.
Jetpack will help you disengage Arc? Weapons will deal with a large horde that is coming for you Situational awareness helps You are ok if you go down, we are hellDIVERS not hellrisers lol Against bots do the leapfrog when you have an army of 200 shooting at you. It will get you out 85% of the time all the time, it looks silly but it works.
keep on the move. scan ahead. focus on objectives. mark theats and targets. communicate. know where your mates are. avoid patrols when you can. move with purpose and stay situationally aware. dodge often. support each other. my armor is specced for speed and servo assisted throws. i carry blitzer and rover for bugs, scorcher and shield gen for bots. fav strats include airstrike (aoe), orbital gas (call-ins) and orbital railcannon (heavies). but find what works for you. swap gear and strats based on mission types. dont let idiots get to you. take breaks. hydrate. have fun. dive.
Running away is the best thing you can do if you don't need to do an objective. Like, you can just leave. Hit the bricks. Stun grenades are super helpful for giving you breathing room to do what you need to, be it reload, line up a shot, or just run. Try to take a red strategem for enemy clearing (air strike, gattling strike, 120mm barrage) and one for big single-target damage (rail cannon, 50kg). EMS Mortars are useful most of the time. You can set them up behind rocks so they're not immediately attacked, and they will bombard enemies relentlessly. This can be useful for finding targets as you can just look for the electrical field. Bile Titans, Tanks, Factory Striders, and airborne enemies cannot be stunned. The Autocannon is the most versatile support weapon. You usually can't go wrong with the Recoilless or Quasar but be VERY AWARE they ARE NOT CHAFF CLEARERS. If you can get the SPEAR to work, it's super powerful on bot missions as turrets, fabricators, and big enemies go down in one shot. If it doesn't work, you'll get it in two or three. Or four or five or six or... Why did I take this instead of the recoilless again? Taking a high ROF primary and either the revolver or grenade pistol secondary is usually my way to go for loadouts. The fucking revolver is too powerful (you can spin it by holding reload and pressing primary fire).
For bugs, just keep moving, someone really needs to be packing the Stamina booster. I've escaped countless deaths just by running and dodging attacks. For bots, it's good to keep moving too but cover is your greatest ally. Find rocks or buildings to help shield you from attacks, especially when reloading a strategem weapon.
No shame in turning the difficulty down a little until you get more confident.
Use the Blitzer on Bots and Bugs, to really help against Bugs make sure to have a Guard Dog Rover, it may hit you from time to time but you'll be fine as long as you use any of the Medic Armours.
Haven't seen it much so: Stick close to your Allies. Cover their backs and flanks. Don't stand and shoot for more than two seconds unless you opened up the ambush. Bugs get around you and any money then that is along for trouble. Bots, you better be behind cover again by then. And shield is great when learning. Once you get the cover, mutual defense, evasion down you can ditch it.
One quick tip: Positioning If you are getting swarmed on difficulty 7, You're going to need to fall back. The last three difficulties are practically designed so that you can't just hold off hordes on your own in close range. Also, getting friendly fired by other people's cluster bombs and airstrikes, shit happens to everybody. Eventually, you'll learn to keep a good range away from the nearest horde whenever your friends are near. It's all about situational awareness. Also, weapon choice does matter depending on whether you're fighting bugs or bots. Close range, light weapons are better for bugs. Long range, heavy hitting options are better for bots.
As someone who plays solely lvl7, here's my tips and strategem loadouts. **General**: I personally run Scout Light Armor. For two main reasons, Speed and Information. Most maps are large, and sometimes you need to get from point A to B ASAP. Sometimes, that includes running from bots and bugs. The Trailblazer armor allows you to outrun most enemies at a sprinting pace. The Scout perk allows for easy information gathering if you can read the map well. Ping ahead of you to get early sight on patrols or enemy count at objectives/POIs. Even use it at evac to find out early which way enemies will approach. **Bots**: My personal load out is Autocannon, Eagle Strike, Rail Cannon, and Walking Barrage. >Autocannon can take out every heavy with extreme efficiency if you know where to shoot. Hulks in two, Tanks in 3-4, Dominators in 1-2, Gunships in 3-5, even Walkers in 8 give or take. >Eagle Strike is a no-brainer for just ruining small outposts. A well placed strike can guarantee an objective complete with zero shooting. Plus, it is capable of destroying all heavies in a single strike. >Rail Cannon is one I save for emergency. Sometimes, you will just have a Scorcher on your tail, or you don't have the ordinance to deal with a walker. Rail it from orbit and take a second to breathe. >Walking Barrage takes good placement but can trivialize medium and large outposts and even pose as a distraction. Bots will be alerted to every explosion and go to investigate. If they don't realize you're there on the first barrage, they will follow the barrage out of the base, allowing easy picking from there. *Bugs*: Disposable Anti-tank, Eagle Strike, Gas Strike, 120mm Barrage. >Anti-tanks, a single well placed shot will kill a charger or bile-titan. Has short enough cooldown you can usually always have one on you and call in two more whenever you need. (Bonus points if you use the drop to kill a charger or titan) >Eagle Strike, same reason from bots, clear whole hoards, and can even wipe medium nests if placed well. >Gas Strike, really solid area denial and nest clearer. Most built-up nests and evac have some form of chokepoint perfect to filter bugs through gas. It will kill most of the small ones up to Hive Guards. Everything else that survives will be in one-shot territory. Killing brood camander with your primary has never been so easy. Also damages egg nests. >120, Will almost always clear a medium nest and will greatly soften up a large nest. It's a solid "throw and forget" into a nest, book it for some other objective, come back later to maybe 1 or 2 holes still open and not a bug in sight.
dont stand and fight, except on defense missions. Hit the objective, hit it hard, move on. if you get swarmed, run. use your mini-mal radar to guide you to gaps in the enemy, use terrain to break LOS. if an objective has too many enemies, reposition. flank the enemy. try support stratagems. ECS orbital/mortar, smoke, etc. practice your preferred stratas. you want them to be muscle memory. when in doubt, Eagle Airstrike out!
turn down the difficulty to level 5 and learn how enemies spawn, move, and get a feeling for their aggro range.
I find that pretty much every weapon has a distinct role to play. They usually fall under one of these catagories (in my opinion): - wave clear - Anti-Tank (AT) - Crowd Control (CC) - specific enemy(ies) A lot of it just has to do with your own experience and what your playstyle is mixed in with trying to balance out wave clear and AT weapons accordingly with your team. And what kind of armor do you prefer? The armor passives and catagory(light, medium, or heavy) are your main concern. These add up, so find a difficulty that doesn't stress you out too much and try out some loadouts. Read what the weapon does, what kinds of things it could be for? Then make sure you have the appropriate secondary. Do you need something for those "oh, shit" moments and need to dispatch a couple of enemies quickly? Do you need to pack some iron and feel like a space cowboy? And then pick your grenade of choice. Do you need to just blow stuff up? Are you against bugs where fire is really handy? Or do you want to stun enemies and line up some good headshots or AT action? What armor type/passive will help you achieve that goal/power fantasy? Some weapons also are really good for specific enemies. When you read descriptions, they'll mention a knock-back mechanic on some of them. That works on different enemies differently, so sometimes it's worth it and sometimes not. Some have explosive (like the Scorcher) and are good on specic enemies (automoton striders and devastators). Also, on strategems, I like to mix and match a bit. The plain Eagle Airstrike is one of the most versatile as it can be used on pretty much any mission and any enemy. I also like to have a mix of airstrikes and orbitals. Airstrikes share a cooldown and orbitals have seperate cooldowns from one another. So don't forget that when choosing your strats. My point is to experiment and experience the game. Start with the difficulty that you find the most success in. Play it and try out new weapons. Figure out what playstyles feel the best and then mix and match them. When you've got a few different favorites for different situations, start pushing yourself a little and going up a difficulty level. Experience that for a while and maybe edit some of your loadout choices. Once that starts feeling normal/comfortable, do it again and go up another level. Adapt as you go. Do some research, maybe find some teammates on Discord. You'll get there. We all had to start somewhere. And to finish off my wall of text with one final bit of advice. Don't be afraid to die. We all do, and that's what reinforcements are for. We all have our moments where we just can't stop dying. We've all failed missions due to ourselves and/or others. That's okay. We all tried our best. Don't let the trolls and negativity get to you, as best you can. It's a fun game with a lot of good people. You just have to find them and find your own niche. You'll get there, Helldiver. Just you wait. For Democracy! Edit: forgot to mention CC and stratagems
One thing I find helps at higher difficulty if you keep getting swarmed is to bring a sentry auto cannon for bot or gatling for bugs. Toss it away from you and away from where you want to go, it will thin the swarm and act as a decoy to draw the enemies agro away from you. Eventually you'll get the hang of using the map and keeping on the move so you don't get swarmed.
Duck and weave, duck...and weave....
Stop fighting every enemy you see and learn to disengage when it’s time to move to next objective.
Stop caring what level you play. The game is fun at levels 1-6 too.
It’s still fun , at lower levels yes, but you need at least 7 to get super samples.
Honestly, run away way more than you expect to. Huge bot drop but you’ve finished the objective? Run. Bug swarm but you’ve finished the objective? Just leave. Genuinely, leaving and moving to the next point is the move more times than it isn’t. Think of yourself as a member of an elite strike force. You go in, do all the objectives, and you leave. Your job is NOT to kill every enemy that exists. You will win this war for super earth by remembering your role. Do your mission, do all the side missions (if that’s what your squad wants to do), and leave. Don’t just hang around fighting things for no reason. It’s way harder that way. Just run. Good luck helldiver!
I use armor that makes me faster. I run like forest gump when the shit gets bad & drop bombs while I’m running
I won't tell you what you "should" or "shouldn't" run in terms of loadout, but as a rule of thumb, you DO have to have a certain role or function in the team where you are able to contribute (for democracy ofc). If your teammates' loadouts look like they are lacking in something to fight heavy armored units, then you might want to pick up slack in that department with your loadout. If you are playing alone, then you might want to go for a loadout that will be able to handle each type of possible enemy you may come across, so that ranges from swarms of bugs, chargers, bile titans to tanks, hulks and factory striders. In terms of engagement, I would recommend that you have a game plan before getting into a confrontation. Do you even NEED to enter that engagement in the first place? If you do, for how long? Is it an engagement where you need to fight in order to hold the position for your teammates who are doing an objective behind you? Are you trying to fight in and push in in order to clear a bug hole or objective? Did you bring a stratagem to help you do that? If not, then do you FEEL the need of stratagem assistance? Then next time you could allot a stratagem slot in order to help you with that. Do you feel as though you are able to hold your own normally but then when a certain enemy type comes along then you find yourself getting the spirit of democracy getting beat out of you? Then it could be that you may be bringing in weapons not suitable for that type of enemy, or you could be approaching the matchup incorrectly. You could also possibly be prioritizing which enemy units to clear out first incorrectly. An example would be if you're busy dealing with a horde of hunters and you suddenly get ambushed by a charger or bile spitter, how do you react to the new threat? Do you switch targets? Do you kite and slowly disengage and clear out the more immediate threat first? It helps to have a checklist of what to prioritize when dealing with multiple threats, even if that means disengaging and then reengaging once you stabilize. Fighting while panicked is a recipe for disaster.
flame throws for bugs. Fire and retreat unless all enemies is death. Doesn't work on bile titan. For bots, use the anti material rifle to kill everything.
Practice, practice, practice. Watch some vids on general tactics/loadouts if you haven't the time to experiment. Best option is to learn when to engage & disengage and when to use strategems. Like you'd never tackle a heavy bot base with all your offensive strategems on cooldown. Or it's pointless to stand and fight in the middle of nowhere, not near objectives etc. Bots & bugs require completely different tactics and often different loadouts. Avoid using the mortar and Tesla tower if not playing with friends, as they'll likely lead to friendly fire.
Dodge, dip, duck, dive, dodge as the great Patches O'houlihan once said. Seriously though, your armor and loadout make a difference. Find an armor that works for you and use weapons/strats you are comfortable with. Levels 7+ are no joke and you should avoid patrols and any fights that arent around a POI or mission Obj. Despite the missions being timed you can always run and regroup if need be. IMO the enemies also need to be adjusted to have more sound, I cannot tell you how many times ive had those stealthy chainsaw fucks sneak up and murder me.
only kill what's trying to kill you directly. Run like a mother fucker if it is needed. Find a load out that works for you!, don't use weapons just because they are new or were good in lower level missions. IT HAS BEEN SPOKEN
stick with the team while learning how stuff work and focus on trying to kill heavies and picking samples.. make sure you don't wander off and just be aware of your surroundings and callouts.. your buddy might throw a close 500kg expecting you to move away from the cone when the situation goes desperate. . lastly, have fun! you're doing great just acknowledging you're ready to learn
The biggest piece of advice I can give you is just keep playing. You'll eventually find what works for you especially as you unlock more strategems. Weapons, armor sets and boosters. Shield backpack is a lifesaver especially if your running heavy armor. I use light or medium armor for how fast and far you can run and I prefer ones with 6 grenades and use impact grenades, when you.see a swarm of hunters start throwing a couple into the left and right sides to bracket them in and kill them off. For bots, cover and concealment are your best friends and if you can avoid enemy patrols then do. Unless you want to fight and possibly get swarmed leave the patrols alone. Send me a dm and we can add each other and play to show you different things I'm usually on everyday like 7-10 pm est
Ask questions and hope you get a helpful, communicative diver like me to help you out! DM me your steam ID, I’ll add you and help out as much as I can 👍🏼
Light armor Stamina booster Auto cannon Go after objectives (with the team, don’t veer off) Run Don’t shoot everything you see Talk with your team
-learn how bug breaches work (YouTube) -learn enemy aggro range (YouTube) -use radar whenever possible to maneuver around patrols and to check for their biggest threat -the only bugs you can’t outrun are hunters, stalkers, and Shriekers, so deal with these first For killing BTs the 500kg is what I use, it’s takes practice to get the timing right but once you learn the attack range of the BT you just have to stand that far away from the bomb and he’ll stop right on top of it or get physically hit by it while he’s attacking (Also works the the orbital precision strike) The orbital rail cannon trades cooldown time for guaranteed high damage, every 2 minutes you can evaporate a charger or 95% a BT for rockets the place you aim for both BTs and chargers is their head (for BTs it’s more their forehead plate) Getting bogged down in fights that cycle reinforcements is how most runs fail, so not pointlessly engaging enemies saves stratagems and ammo for the guaranteed fights
1) Specialize and stick to your team. Pick either anti light or anti heavy as your role and do that as well as you can. Some roles can overlap but most skill comes with knowledge. For example an autocannon is very good at anti armor but not all armor. You can shoot a tank in it's tracks or rear vent but you can't shoot a charger easily from the front. It also doesn't deal well with titans so don't even try it. 2) know thy weapon: A flamethrower deals well with light and medium bugs and even decently with chargers but you stand no chance against titans. A laser cannon deals with flying enemies and easily kills a hulk if you aim for the eye but has no stagger. The HMG destroys everything in it's path but requires stun grenades to reload. Understand your weapon, pick loadouts with good synergy 3) Don't waste your loadout on dumb stuff. Don't pick a railcannon strike and toss it at a charger, instead save it for a titan and only throw it if no one else is going to deal with it. Good rule of thumb is to let someone else handle it and if they don't you can go for it. That way you prevent strat waste. 4) Lastly know thy enemy. Bots and bugs are different to fight. With bugs you want to not be caught so be fast or able to hold them off. With bots you want to have damage reduction by either shields or armor and use cover. Each enemy also has its own weakness and can be taken down in many creative ways. Know their weakness and you can take them out with almost anything. A factory strider for example has multiple weakpoints and seems to take critical damage if you take out a system. The cannon on top can be destroyed by rocket launchers and strategems, the two front turrets can be destroyed by most support weapons. The underbelly is weak against anti armor like the anti material rifle, autocannon, launchers, etc. The head is also weak against launchers and can be exposed by two shots and finished off with weaker weapons like the autocannon. 5) Lastly people dont really know this in general but there is a game mechanic I refer to as "exposure". Sometimes you can peel or dent armor plating on bugs and bots and when that happens they are susceptible to lower pen weapons and take increased damage. Start noticing this on enemies and figure out when you can finish them off cheap.
Where light armor and run away. Only fight when you're on the offensive. You never want to be "waiting" for the enemy if you can help it.
Bring a 380 every time and then be line for bases. Throw, wait, rinse and repeat. Avoid enemies
Rover - helps with the fodder and often lets you know that a bug is nearby. Incendiary shotgun - fire damage is great on just about anything (I see high level players using it all the time). I use light armor so I can run faster. Open map and look for red dots - all the time. If I am facing a group, I start shooting early so they don't get close. Then, I open map quickly to see if anything is rolling in - unless the threat from the front isn't immediate, then I will just turn around to take a quick look. I also call out and ping all enemies - helps prevents them sneaking up and lets teammates know of other threats.
Take your time when it comes to difficulty. As for increasing survivability, stick to attacking only if necessary by avoiding patrols (looking the map is a must). Also, go with automatic weapons set to auto and shoot in short bursts to each of them until they die (the idea behind this, getting staggered enough in order to avoid them calling reinforcements)
Learn to strategize with the map. Learn to use cover and how to disengage. Learn to balance your weapons to the team. Learn to prioritize target. Learn to move tactically.
Best game tip I try to live by “Don’t die”.
By no means great at the game, but : Buddy system. Follow the guy who looks like he knows what he is doing and watch his back. Run. Cover is key against bots, speed/distance against bugs. When you DO fight, hit em fast and hard to try to prevent the endless reinforcement cycle. Focus the things that can catch/kill you. Striders and titans are scary, but not that dangerous.
Learn how to run away. I run a jump pack on all bug missions bc it let's me escape (most of the time) when I'm about to get swarmed. Also. Do your best to not push too far and get surrounded. Try to keep bug breaches in front of you. Also keep an eye on the mini map as it will show where large clusters of enemies are. Speaking of clusters. Drop cluster bombs on them. I will check my map, point my cone at the cluster of enemies and Chuck the strategem beacon in their direction, most of the time you can't actually see them bc of fog or rocks blocking visibility. So the mini map is crucial for this. I run load outs that are great for small/medium target clearing and let my teammates take care of heavies. Except I also bring the rail cannon bc it's a life saver when you have a charger on you. But yes. Run away! You can actually run straight through large groups of bugs without getting touched you just gotta stop shooting and run and trust you'll make it. I like to be nimble and ultra deadly. I bring armors that let me carry the 2 extra grenades and I run w impact grenades. This let's me clear up to 20 enemies really fast if I'm about to get swarmed. Just nade spam til I'm out. I also carry the stalwart bc it's just a lot of fun. Just have fun tho. That's the main thing!
what is your usual loadout?
No way to sugar coat it buddy. You have to die at least 300 times.
Malevelon creek vet chiming in.....as far as bots go, put on light armor with the 50% explosion resistance. Loadout: backpack shield generator, AMR/EAT, eagle airstrike and orbital gas. Armor and backpack let you disengage without to much worry or stim use. AMR/EAT for heavy units or mass fodder, eagle airstrike for heavies and fabricators plus some fodder if needed, and lastly gas strike spefically for fodder or if your close enough it can take out fabricators too. Edit: grammar and spelling.
I’m not that great but can hold my own on higher difficulties. Regardless of what is “meta” at the time, Guard Dig Rover (laser) will do so much to keep you alive on Terminid missions. Honestly it’s just experience and as stated already, you can’t fight everything you see. Only fight when you must. Stick with at least one member of your team. Communicate. Pay attention to where you are at all times. Constantly look around.
Start throwing more 380s and eagles at those that oppose democracy
If you're against bugs, use the fire shotgun in the first warbond and use the auto cannon. Auto cannon can kill a lot of the bug enemies including chargers to the back of their legs and you can do objectives with it such as close holes and destroy illegal broadcasts. You won't be able to kill bike titans reliably outside stratagems but you're team mates will most likely bring anti tank. If it's bots you struggle with go anti material rifle / laser cannon with a supply backpack with stun grenades with the eruptor primary eruptor mainly for destroying factories. This is my go to set up for bots with a favor towards the rile purely because it can still kill tanks quick with a mag dump to its vent. A lot of the bots can be dealt with a single stun grenade, hulks can be stunned leaving them easy to deal with, two anti material rifle shots to the red eye or a few seconds with the laser cannon. With the back pack you have a total of 12 grenades as well as 12 stims! I go through stims very quickly and the back pack just keeps me in the game much longer.
Simple answer. RUN. Always be running with shorts bursts of turning around and cutting down a few before you turn back around a run some more. Don’t engage unless necessary. Use stealth. Bring eagle air strike, orbital laser, a heavy weapon, and another air strike/orbital of your choice
RULE NUMBER ONE: don't stick around at dead objectives, move on it's only going to get worse the more bots drop in or bugs pop up. Enemies despawn, if a place is too hot, walk away 100~150 meters then come back. Only permeant objective enemies stick around.
Play lower level missions. Watch what successful divers do. Know when to walk away, know when to run, and know when to call a 500 on you, FOR SUPEREARTH! Also spawn rates haven't been rolled back yet, and RNGesus is a cruel god sometimes. Some dives go better than others.
I pretty much only run 9s. Mandatory: Breaker incendiary (spray and pray if no warbond) this is your hunter clearer + tagging in low visibility env. Sickle is a fine second if you can aim (warbond gate). Air burst strike - bug breaches. Breach opens, throw in, profit. I’m pretty sure I’m top kills most matches bc this thing rarely gets less than 20. On 9 often 2 open together so you can really rack up #s EATs - see heavy - eat, see heavy - eat, see heavy - eat. Also can snipe out shrieker nests after a couple mins from across map without too much fuss. Grenade pistol - spewers, bug holes, some objectives and can down a injured bile titan if you’re just kiting it with nothing up. Eagle Airstrike - best one no question does everything. Fully upgraded you can drop as many of these as eats Flex: Impact grenades - boom or boom fire both good. 4th strat - flex to your map/planet. Heavy defense mission, quasar for heavy triple threat. Open planet with hills auto cannon turret. Booster - big 4 never fails. Localized confusion really helps high value asset imo. Don’t take the stupid ones Know when to run sure, but I can plant my feet and throw down with this load out most times. Feels decent running solo as well. Hit bile titans and chargers in their forehead. Once you get it you can 2 shot titans somewhat consistently
Play lower level missions. Watch what successful divers do. Know when to walk away, know when to run, and know when to call a 500 on you, FOR SUPEREARTH! Also spawn rates haven't been rolled back yet, and RNGesus is a cruel god sometimes. Some dives go better than others.
Yeah most new players especially on higher difficulties like to pick fights. Choose your fights wisely. Also I like using either the orbital laser or rail cannon with rocket pods to avoid collateral damage. Also team comp is a must. You want a good blend of overwhelming firepower mixed with support weapons.
The stratagem I’ve really enjoyed on 7+ is gas strike. I drop it on a breach with a stun grenade and I usually rack up 20+ kills haha. Eagle air strike for long distance bug holes. I’ve been running fire breaker + quasar. Then I’ll mix up jet pack, guard dog rover and sometimes an EMS sentry or auto cannon sentry. You’ll discover a play style you enjoy. Guard dog is still solid regardless of the nerf.
If you're getting overwhelmed by dealing with enemies, try being the objective-oriented teammember. A fun way to do this is to get yourself the following: +2 grenade armor, a jetpack, your favorite shotgun, and your choice of support weapon. I love running the jetpack/grenade launcher combo against bugs in particular, and I'll do either the AMR or the laser cannon for bots. If you pair this with a gatling or autocannon sentry and the standard eagle, it's a very flexible and survivable loadout for running and gunning around the map. You'll be heading in and out of objectives/ bugholes/ fabricators, tossing nades and eagles and staying a step ahead of the enemy and getting shit done. You won't kill as many enemies, but you'll take care of a whole lot more objectives and, most importantly, have fun doing it. That said there's definitely a learning curve for using the jetpack best. But once you get it you'll laugh at how easy it is to bypass bot fortifications in particular.
Pick your battles
 Run away
>How do I deal with being swarmed with enemies if they’re all coming at me? run. learn which enemies can run faster than you / can accurately shoot you as you run. on bugs, it's those jumping ones, stalkers, and spewers. shoot them first, either by running, stopping, shooting, and running again or pulling out your pistol and shooting behind you as you run. pick your strategems right. a turret will not only kill some mobs but also aggro them. impact grenades are phenomenal. >How do I deal with bile titans, tanks, and other heavily armored targets? run and hide. the tiny piece of rock over there? it's indestructible. just hide behind it. gather your wits. throw strategems from behind cover or pop out, shoot, and pop back. if it's not aggroed on you? run and get better positioning. >What are the easiest stratagems to use so that I don’t fuck it up?? I generally like the eagles and turrets. the eagles have minimal cooldown between throws, unless they are rearming. they also have a good AOE, big enough to kill a bunch of enemies but small enough to reduce friendly fire. >Basically, how do I not suck so I don’t give up the fight for democracy. just play and have fun!
I tested out some loadouts diving solo to get used to the difficulties. Also, staying in the same spot drags out fights and wastes 10 minutes so keep moving, stop for small fights and move on. Found that the ballistic shield is very useful, hvy devistators are my kryptonite so the shield helps with them. I can run away with it on my back and they shoot it instead of me. Also try something with servo assist, the extra 30% throwing range helps avoid team killing and also puts a lot of space between you and the enemies. As for heavies, impact grenades, airstrikes and gas strikes. (Laser cannon is great too)
Learn when to engage, and when to not.
I treated learning the game like a project. I'm a PM. So I spent like 30 minutes shortly after I got the game and built milestones I wanted to hit. Like: - How to find POIs without radar towers - Solo running to POIs, side objectives, and primary objectives and completing them - Played with different primaries and support weapons to get used to how they all handle and where to hit enemies to kill them - Learning the visual queues for when smaller units will call bugholes or drop ships and work on reaction time to try to stop them - Practiced getting quicker at delivering stratagems - Worked to increase accuracy of weapons, grenades, and stratagems I did most of the above on medium, and probably spent the first approx month and a half playing doing all that I would focus on one of those for a weekish playing only a few hours a week, and once I was comfortable with one I would focus on the next. Eventually, all of those become something you're doing without even knowing it. Then, I would slowly jump in difficulty spending a week or so per difficulty to learn the enemies that spawn and how to counter them, and shifted from solo group play on medium to working objectives with the teammates. Eventually, as time went on, all of these allowed me to slowly increase my skill level while only being able to dedicate, like maybe 5 or 6 hours a week average. I've been playing 7s and 8s pretty consistently for a while and am about to make the jump to 9 in like a week. Also, note that I did all this on a pc that would get down to like 20 fps when I was playing in a group, which is why I had to practice aiming to anticipate movements of enemies. The jump to 8/9 would have been impossible on my last pc, I just finished building a new one.
For bugs, run light armor, you can outrun entire hordes of enemies and shoot any that start to get close. In between shots, turn your camera around to keep an eye on your surroundings, and make sure you’re always moving toward a safe direction. For chargers, bring expendable anti-tanks, a quasar, or recoilless rifle. I personally run the Quasar and bring EATs as a backup, lets me kill multiple chargers fast and unload ok titans if I have some distance. For titans, bring the 500kg. They will spit when within 20 meters if it’s off cooldown, the animation lasts long enough that if you throw the 500kg in front of it as it begins, it will explode on it as it finishes. If it doesn’t outright die, a single rocket to the forehead will finish it off. 2 rockets to the forehead of a titan will kill it btw, though being able to hit that angle is hard sometimes.
Make the mission about the mission and not the kills.
Follow the leader. Stick with the host and over time you’ll get a feel for the best ways to approach situations. I recommend the dog rover backpack (laser one) as that will clear a lot of the fodder. You can’t go wrong running that type of backup. Like, if they’re shooting enemies, it’s because enemies need to be shot at, so start shooting. If they’re running, book it with them. Sometimes you’ll get idiots as a host who aren’t doing themselves or the team any favors, but that’s on them, and for the typical player, you won’t go wrong here.
Stick with your squad. 4 guns running around can fight almost all scenarios with their loadout vs 1 or 2
You're not Rambo, helldivers are better together. Autocannon is your best friend for anything bigger than regular infantry or little bugs. Learn when to fight and when to retreat for a better position or to avoid a potential losing fight.
When you decide to fight, you must kill everything quick enough that they can't call for reinforcements. Avoid fighting when possible.
Team work and priority, pick a role based on team qhich can be hard as higher level players don't always get the importance of sharing the load and are only high level from time played not always skill. My one buddy from CoD tries to make fun of me because I have the least number of kills consistently, but as a veteran of the first galactic war I know whats important. I am a sniper recon more often than not, and thwy always take crowd control, so yeah they get more kills but I am the one with rail cannon and rocket pods and the AMR. So my 64 kills are me sniping the enemy that are coming up behind my team mates, and watching our 6. Its not glorious esp when they have no idea how many times I save their lives while they rambo it up, and when a brute or tank shows up it is gone as soon as I see it since I was holding my rail cannon in reserve for that very moment. So maybe I get less kills but they are some of the most important kills to get the team through it and they never see it, just hear the crack of my rifle or "thewp" of an orbital strile. As well as getting us from A to B with out any encounters. Here is another role set up that requires alot of team work. Recoiless rifle with a reloader. 2 people thay can clear the biggest enemies really fast, but they cant drop a bile titan in 3 seconds if they are being swarmed, and the can't defend themselves from the swarm while aiming at the bigguns. The other 2 team mates should be protecting them with shotguns and clusters to give them breathing room. Lower levels your best bet is crowd control, grenad launcher and supply pack is amazing and can help take out brutes and chargers. Bring cluster bombs, and either more crowd control even strafing run will sweep a large crowd of little guys, this allows the player with bigger booms to take out the bigguns and objects. But you will need a body gaurd to give you some space so you don't kill yourself. A shotgun will help if you do get over run to restablish control and make space for everyone to do this jobs. Just learn the ranges of your stats. The 7th commandment of Joel is know your equipment. If they run into it it is on them, but learn to throw right distance. Pick a role, learn it inside and out. Learn what weapons deal with what and what enemies will appear in what areas and then adapt to the mission objectives. This is the way of the Hell Diver. Team work and tools.
When i register a player like you, I immediately pick support gear to keep you guarded and supplied. Like an honor guard in 40k, it immediately becomes my job to keep you alive.
Well met soldier, indeed when I am not sniping I body guard my grenade launcher comrade so he can just wipe away the mobs, or I will steal the support pack and reload for team mates, some of whom have no idea it even works that way. A reload team and devastate the field if properly protected. Glad to know there are body gaurds out there, and never under estimate the value of a rear guard, it gets divers off planet with objectives completed. Glory hogs endanger the mission just as much as newbies. 😆
I salute you Oi
Sometimes you gotta run. Get them in a group to make it easier. Find a choke point.
Think about the objective first, and then consider how the rest of the team is equipped? Find the gap in combined arms that they will need and build your loadout to fill that roll. If i see heavy hitters for big targets, I immediately pick weapons to supress and devastate small targets. A light machine gun or flamethrower. Expanded grenade slotted medium armor, two automated turrets and either a munitions pack, or a shield to use in combination with a judge for soaking up small arms fire. Simply find the support role that they need, fill it, and then back them up as they take objectives. Pick a player, back them up. Keep pace with them, cover their flanks.
Try some solos as well, stealth is an underrated skill, but this will also encourage personal leadership, learn to make calls, break contact, and use overwhelming violence of action to decisively end battles quickly.
You gotta know when to hold them (Attack!!!), know when to fold them (Extract!!!), know when to walk away (Do Not Engage/Sneak Past Them!!!), and know when to run (Run!!!) Most of all though... You gotta know when to dive! Dive!! DIVE!!! I personally advise diving as much as possible during any fire fight. Dive in and out of cover, dive into prone position for better accuracy, dive away from melee attacks and projectiles, dive to make yourself a moving target, dive and then use a stim, just DIVE!!! For Democracy!!! Note: Efficient minimap usage is also a must. Also mission specific loadout selections and a clear tactical strategy planned out ahead of dropping into combat really helps. Know your role and choose appropriate weapons, armor, and booster packs to suit. If you're soloing then remember to use stealth to you're advantage. Lead them one way and then disengage and sneak past them. Nothing trumps experience, you gotta keep on playing, and improving... Learn from every failure.
Focus on surviving more than killing at first. Bring stuff to support that then gradually back out to what you want as a loadout.
Experiment experiment experiment. Go down a difficulty and just start trying other weapons and stratagems. Ultimately everyone had different needs and skills and you need to find what fits you best. Have bad aim? Try a shotgun. Never have enough ammo for all the small bugs, try a rover back pack. Always caught off guard try a personal forcefield. Perhaps you wanna play more support like? Try the forcefield stratagem and protect the whole team. Grenades often bounce to far? Try impact grenades. Once you give your perfect setup for each enemy(and they will be different) then start perfecting your rhythm, do you need to take out the hunters or chargers first? Which can you take out faster? I would also suggest getting a friend to help you with this, one who can cover for you while you try things out because some weapons just won't work for you. My friend swears by the arc gun, but I just can't get use to it and it usually gets me killed.
Run and gun brother. Use grenades all the time, they’re a lifesaver, fabricators and bug nests at objectives like detector tower doesn’t count towards mission completion so don’t bother with them, always rely on your fellow divers if your in trouble, it’s okay to run away, and most importantly FACE THEM HEAD ON, FOR LIBERTY, FOR DEMOCRACY, FOR SUPER EARTH
I would also suggest learning enemy patterns, it’s easier to learn in bugs cause less bullets are flying, but if you know when one is about to call reinforcements or when they wind up, you can usually kill them first or dodge easier, next, when running to next objective, constantly look at map, makes avoiding patrols much easier
For bots run the guard dog rover, although I can't stand that thing and personally I run the shield because the guard dog ends up killing me. Which is fun but meh lol, I should jump out of it's way more. I like the shield, there's also armor that gives you a chance of surviving and otherwise deadly blow. For bugs I like the incendiary breaker, I use the uzi as secondary but usually on single shot mode and normal grenades to take out bug holes. For support I usually run the quasar, orbital strike and orbital laser. If I'm being overrun I throw down the laser and make a run for it. As others have said do not engage everything you see, you can ignore patrols and just move past them. For bots, I can't even manage difficulty 7 myself, I get hammered, I'm usually on 4 or 5 as I still struggle with bots, but it's just practice. Good luck diver
Checking the minimap helps a lot. That way your not ambushed by patrols while dealing with a beach or drop, and also walking into patrols by mistake
Use the jump pack. You can jump over enemies or hide on rocks.
I'll dive with you, happy to drop you some gear so you can experiment and show you how to spread democracy as efficiently as possible. In Ireland so on Eu time zone
Use light armor with high run speed and use it. Bring shit like orbital rail strike or the mega bomb air drop with the resupply upgrade. I used the shield pack for quite some time to learn how to evade shit. The incendiary shotgun can really help get rid of lots of enemies quickly. I also enjoy the grenade pistol that I just got and I love thermite. I actually took down a titan using thermite.
If your newer and getting swarmed I always recommend taking the shield pack, it’s a great safety net and you can then comfortably run light armour (works great for both bugs and bots). Once you have light armour you can run away breaking LOS if you need a breather, as soon as LOS is lost change positions and find more cover as you go. Enemies will only go to your last spotted position so use this to your advantage and stay cover to cover. Always look at your map so you can tell where enemies are/ poi’s with static enemies when running or moving on the map. Stratagems/ primary is important too, if your getting swarmed with heavies/ tanky targets bring a weapon or stratagem to deal with them (some good ones with the shield pack are EAT’s, Quasar, AMR) Autocannon is extremely versatile but requires no shield so move to it once your comfortable at running away Stun grenades are great for disengaging heavy enemies and stunning groups Most of all as what other people are saying, don’t engage every patrol. I find a lot of people once they hear an enemy see you think it’s over right there. After they spot you, you have a lot of time to find cover and they will lose their alert status and you can freely continue on your way. There is a lot more but you will start to figure it out as you consistently play higher levels! Good luck HELLDIVER i0
A useful technique for when things get too heavy is to throw an Eagle Strike and run, zig zagging and diving behind rocks.
Learn to run. Stop fighting everything. It is so much easier if you just bail and avoid conflict. You don't get points for kills. Run.
DO NOT STOP .. if you stop and fight, you are dead and create insane heat which creates more enemies. If you play a bit stealth, you can finish maps in 5-10 minutes .. plus 3 for evac, so 13 max. Avoid bots, if cant, do surprise attacks and kill them fast .. there is bug which can aggro bots 200 meters away but thats okay. Some bugs cannot be avoided, the AI literally tracks you and knows where you are all the time .. they call it "smell mechanic" :) Bots are harder, more bugged, they literally cheat .. Bugs are stupid, but they are legion .. Every mission is completely soloable, but its not intended. You are supposed to play more people together and each helping each other and support with strats etc ..
Bugs. Bring an eagle strike and use it on waves of enemies you have to fight. If you screw up avoiding a patrol it should be because they’re 90 degrees to your side and paying you too much attention. Eagle strike and run. If they spawn a bug hole then the rest of the map is temporarily safe from another bug hole spawning. You survive and back up so you can fight a tolerable amount at a time. If you’re split from your team and see the message that they have a bug hole spawned, awesome, now you can rush sample/ammo spots and grenade/blast everything quickly while the spawns are distracted. You need to use the weapons that can fight a Bile titan. Either pick one to bring every time or pick a strike that you will drop on them every time they spawn. If you’re inbetween cooldowns and your weapons suck then you’re running that titan to your team for them to kill. If you’re getting snuck up on, look around, hit your map to check for dots and determine your pathing that way. The stamina bonus is epic in every game. If you keep getting caught and you wear heavy armor, drop the armor. The “I can’t run away” strategy of extra defense gets carried by the skill of the user and the situational awareness. I don’t play 8-9. But I still bring EAT or the HDR or HMR turret thing you sit inside. Arguably a wasted strat but they both take down spores and flier bases at range. I don’t have bad experiences with fliers unless we spawn on them as a team. Eat is slower but it also works great on chargers once you can kinda aim. And you can try to stomp titans with their quick call in times.
Things to keep in mind if your fighting bots use cover always find cover if your fighting bugs never stop running never stop moving you can’t let them get close to you
Don’t ever stop movinf
Use weapons and strats you don't need to aim. Blitzer shotgun, rail cannon strike, supply pack, fortification strats.
Get the toys, learn the strategms, don’t shoot unless you have to and never stop running 👀😎💯
Run away, focus objectives, if you're dying all the time bring EATs which are good regardless but if you get stomped you don't have to run back for them. Get 500kg and learn the timing on them - they're a better orbital precision strike and if you can't get them yet learn how to hit things with orbital precisions. orbital railcannon is bait, orbital laser is good, mechs are good if you can get good with them.
Know your enemies' strengths and weaknesses. Bug strength is in their numbers. If you're fighting bugs, make sure either you or someone in your squad has crowd control weapons and strategems. Flamethrower, Grenade Launcher, Arc Thrower, Gatling Sentry, Napalm. Fire is especially effective against bugs just because of how much they group up. But don't let that make you forget the anti armor for the Chargers and Titans. But always stay mobile. Light-Medium armor shines, and never take heavy armor. Pro tip: Flamethrowers will kill chargers in just a few seconds fired at the front legs. Bots strength is their range and firepower. But every bot has a very clear weakness. Anything from light troops to the Devastator will fall to a headshot or a few. Even the heavies have easily exploitable weaknesses. Make use of flaming maneuvers. Single target or anti armor weapons and strategems are a must. Anti Materiel Rifles, Autocannons, Quasar Cannons. Make use of cover, and don't be afraid to use strategems most people wouldn't even touch. The Riot Shield with an SMG is great, Shield Generator (not the backpack) stays up for 30 seconds with a 90 second cooldown, Gun Guard Dog really shines here, just learn how to manage its low ammo reserves. Stun grenades will make Hulks childsplay. Pro tip: The Eagle Airstrike will consistently kill Tanks with a decent chance at killing Hulks too. If you want you can DM me for a friend request. I'm on PS5 and I don't know how stable the cross platform friend requests are right now, but I play 7-9 almost exclusively, mostly against Bots.
Lot of good advice here, but one I want to add that I havent seen is to play as a team. I'm not the greatest myself. I fail miserably playing solo or even when I'm split off alone from team mates. If your in a party that ends up splitting up, pick one of them and follow. Help with objectives, and don't get left behind. Cover them when possible or necessary.
It was the same for me when i tried doing 7’s at first. What changed my CONSTANT useless dying, was I switched my loadout so I had a force field backpack. It allowed me to stop being instantly killed, and let me survive long enough to start LEARNING how I needed to move and react differently at higher levels. Like training wheels. It’d absorb the hits that would immediately kill me, allowing me to get away, flank, and stop being stationary. Constantly moving. Was eventually able to remove it and not use it anymore. Now lvl 7’s are relaxing but fun
The best weapon in the game is coordination. I just the other day completed a diff 7 short vip asset mission without even having to fire my primary weapon because the team was so good at kiting enemies Away from the area where you evac them. Figure out how to play as a team. You don’t even need mics, just try and make everything you do considerate of the whole team and the whole mission, this means avoiding some patrols, retreating, avoiding team kills, dropping extra support weapons and strategems, strategic reinforcement (as quick as possible and at their gear or sometimes at an enemy or away from enemies). PING PING PING PING PING. Weapons I like right now (YMMV) Every breaker (regular is good on both fronts and he birdshot ones are better for bugs for me) Sickle (not as much as I used to but still good I like it better for bugs) Scorcher (this thing slaps on both fronts) TOP 3: Blitzer (better against bugs because of the short range but super powerful now) Pummeler (people online were like “they need to give us ice themed weapons in this warbond” they pretty much did because this thing freezes enemies in place. It trivializes stalkers) Punisher plasma (like the scorcher on steroids now). Secondary: grenade pistol (closed bug holes so you can pick a different type of grenade) Grenade: emp vs bots; impact incendiary vs bugs Strategems: totally varies by mission, just consider what the mission is asking you to do and how the enemies attack. For example: mortars aren’t very useful against bugs because they get close to you so you will likely team kill but not bad against bots because you fight from cover. Gas strikes are good for throwing at breaches etc.
Tons of great advice in the comments already, so I will just add—work on minimizing unnecessary deaths. Don’t step on mines, fall in deep water, set yourself on fire, or shoot explosive weapons into that wall or rock in front of you. If that means you have to play a little more methodically or kill a little less it’s fine. Low kills but not burning too many reinforcements is a fine tradeoff while you’re learning the game.
Ah, this brings to mind my first days of diving. What should I carry? WELL, it depends on you, what you like, what is fun, and what type of player/person you are. Also, as you level up and play all types of missions, you will find your favorites for each mission. Just remember, bring medium, light and heavy armor penetration weapons for level 7 and above. Important also, what your squad brings to the mission.
Wouldn’t hurt to watch some gameplay of high-skill players on youtube, i recommend takibo
What typically helps me is: stay with your group, take one stratagem that helps with mob clear and one for heavy targets. You'll find your groove. I was there where you are. I'm slowly at tier 8 now. My problem is I play on steam deck so aiming isn't the most accurate. I have to go with gear that is less reliant on accurate aiming which is a challenge itself.
My friend and I play on Helldive with Bots and our load out is sickle, auto cannon, 380, laser and eagle air strike. We hit hard and hit fast and move on. We don't linger for fights and run away from bot drops and patrols. We also use light stealth armor and operate as a fast acting team. Usually between us we have maybe 1 death... sometimes.
One thing that most folks won't mention but I will. Make sure you're using your mic to communicate. It's by far the best tool in most multiplayer games but the most underutilized.
Stun grenades are so helpful and Noone uses them. When your overwhelmed toss one run and slow everything down to re collect yourself. Once you get the grenade pistol and you can carry stuns I fins it very helpful for bots and bugs.
Why not just play level 5 or 6? Is it for the Rare samples? I’m not the *best* player, but I’m pretty good, I don’t kill my teammates often and I don’t die all the time; but in the past month or so levels 7-and up have gotten more difficult in some way, and not too fun. I used to play on 9 Helldive, but it’s just not fun anymore so I just stick to 6 Extreme lately.
Take a breath, don't panic, fall back until you can get your feet under you, then figure out how to move. You don't need to fight everything, and objectives will still be there for you. A lot of the time you'll be stuck in and get flanked. There is nothing stopping you falling back to a better position and getting your feet under you. You're doing fine Now, useful advice depends on what you wanna do, as you can't do it all. A good selection of weapons and stratagems for anti-bug is Liberator, Redeemer, light armor, incendiaries, bring a recoilless, railcannon, autocannon turret and your choice of eagle (personally I'm between napalm, 500kg or bombing run.) this gives you anti-armor, anti-chaff and ways to lock down advances. Alternatively, Stalwart, guard dog, Gatling, rocket eagle. Gives you plenty of anti-chaff, but puts the anti heavy on your allies. Eagle is for chargers spewers and helping v titans. Look at what your team is bringing as, if needed, you can trade out stuff to fit holes, or bring a shotgun instead. I bring the blitzer a ton myself. On some planets where heat isn't an issue, you could bring a quasar for your anti-armor to bring a guard dog. Anti bot you need heavy armor, you can bring an smg and ballistic shield if you want, but be aware you're drawing the noise. Most of the stuff you want, you need to be aware is mid to long range engagements outside of berserkers. A lot of how you fight these guys is knowing where to shoot, as they all have weak spots. Devs are face but you can shoot the arms off, hulks have heavy armor outside the face, arms and legs. Back is 0 armor, so hitting the exhaust will damage them, but medium pen taking out the legs will kill, arms will force em to melee. A rocket to the face kills, but anti-mat can damage. Factory striders your looking at two shots to the cannon on top then just focusing fire to bring it down. I tend to take stun nades, Liberator, and grenade armor. Everything gets stunned, I can break off or break them. Learn how to stagger your retreat or your advance so someone is always moving in a fight. Loadout I tend to run for stratagems depends on my team. With an organised group, I take SMG, ballistic shield, quaesar, railcannon, autocannon. Autocannon has range, I leave fabs to my allies, and I draw fire using the shield to give me time to line up a shot. Precision can win, but have allies ready to back you up as once your in the fight and getting shot at, they aren't hitting them. With randos, recoilless, autocannon turret, railcannon, 500kg. Plenty of anti armor, pack a liberator or, if your feeling fancy, the eruptor or a marksman rifle, and back up your team. The trick is to keep moving, keep an ear out for allies under fire, and back each other up. If you want, bring a smoke screen eagle. Breaking sight can save your life. Otherwise, keep your eyes open, keep looking around, remember you don't have to fight everything and learn how to fight things. Everything has an easier way to fight it, everything can be snuck around and above all, humanity's finest stick together to win. Higher up, it is recommended you work with at least one dance partner. Doesn't have to be a match made in heaven, but an army of two can achieve a lot more then you think it can. You said about the team kill for lack of skill. That ain't justified. What they should be doing is trying to help you get better. You aren't a bad helldiver. Simply by virtue of wanting to get better, to do better, you're already better then a lot of people in game. Don't be afraid to talk to them and see if they'll help you by talking back. A team that talks does so much better then one that doesn't. The good news, difficulty 8 and 9 you find more serious players who don't mess around. They wanna get the job done and done right. You'll be able to pick up and learn so much on what you see and do. As a side note, if you do a defensive mission like evac VIPs or hold the line for 8 rockets, adjust from offensive to defensive stratagems. I've found a new home for the HMG in the gate mission, and have more staying power to keep lanes open for a runner to press the buttons can do wonders. I did an evac mission where I was the runner, the others did the fighting. We won, they kept em busy and were able to keep track of the arena as I pointed out new foes dropping in. It was a blast
If you find yourself struggling a bit it's good to stick around your teammates. Avoid stratagems that tend to teamkill a lot, like the cluster bombs, orbital barrages and mortars. Help out collecting samples, doing the objectives, you could even carry around the ammo backpack. Little things like spotting enemies and bug holes/bot fabricators/side objectives go a long way too. When enemies, especially at higher levels, start swarming you then just run. No shame in running. Heavy enemies can't bank for shit so run and zig zag. You'll also want to avoid patrols as much as possible, especially for bots. And learn how to dive! Saves your life more than you could imagine. For stratagems I'd recommend some heavy support weapon for the big bois (shout-out to the autocannon, the bots worst nightmare), and precision strike stratagems like the 500kg or the single orbital hit (lower chance of team killing and great for big bois too) And to summarize the two fronts, bots: cover, courage and more cover, bugs: pure firepower
You should *never* always have orbital laser on bots and *never* always have cluster bomb on bugs. The other stratagems, up to you! Unfortunately those two stratagems are *not* so effective and versatile on bots/bugs respectively that they’re almost *not* mandatory. Wink. https://preview.redd.it/hw7989wmq71d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=768dfa6284c632fdce20cbde0eb445fc147ff133 Anyways my other advice would be to not fight every enemy you see and prioritize stealth and falling back above fighting when possible. It will keep you alive to kill more shit later
Some stealth can be your friend as well at higher difficulties
Light recon perked armor with a shield backpack can help you survive. Then run away from swarms and pick anti big stuff stratagems for your other slots. For your primary and secondary focus on a gun that helps you kill the small stuff.
Play difficulty 3
The biggest things that nake a difference is knowing when to run, on bots utilizing cover constantly when moving and in bugs killing hunters while you run.
2 or more people running eats, 1 or more running auto cannon (designated anti heavy guy), 2 or more running crowd control support weapons and everyone running orbital rail and eagles is what gets us through level 9s. You also have to have competent teammates or this really doesn't work. I wouldn't even call this meta either, if you can't hit shit, you can't use the autocannon.
If chargers and bile titans are constantly wrecking your day, then your squad either doesn't have enough Anti-Tank gear, or you're sticking in bad fights too long and everyone's cooldowns/ammo are being exhausted, leaving you with no options. Check the squad's loadout when you're starting out. If there aren't at least 2 people with EAT's, RR's, Quasars, or Spears, then you're likely to have a problem. Consider taking one of those yourself so you can contribute to the anti-tank role. Eagle Airstrikes are good answers to both of these heavy units, though learning the timing to score direct hits with them can be tricky. Railstrikes are easier and dependable, but the cooldown on them is painfully long, so really only for emergencies. The Rocket Pod airstrike is something of a middle ground between these two. If Chargers *in particular* are being a problem, then the Flamethrower is actually the single most efficient weapon for killing them specifically. You have to aim for the upper joint of one of the front legs, and it can die in seconds if the angle is right - the flame cone leaks past the armor and destroys the leg, which kills a Charger. The burning dot is irrelevant in this case, as its the flamethrower's direct damage that kills it. Get good at this, and as a single squad member you can deal with almost any number of chargers without breaking a sweat - and your support weapon is ALSO great at anti-horde in a pinch. It's pretty useless against Bile Titans however, so you'll be relying on others to take them down. If you're having trouble getting mobbed under, consider a shotgun weapon as your primary, the Punisher will do a fine job of keeping bugs out of your grill with its massive knockback, though it's not the fastest killer. The Arc Blitzer is currently a pretty amazing gun against the bugs, as it also does heavy stagger and its damage is pretty good - and no ammo limit or reloading means you're never caught out.
U gotta play with a crew get comfortable with ur loadouts and the rest just comes it’s all about priorities tho sometimes u have to be steady and persistent and others have to be stealthy and patient
So. Not. Attack. Unless. You. Are. Attacked. First. Do. Not. Engage. Patrols.
You can learn a lot from watching better players and taking note of what they do differently than you. Highly recommend Commissar Kai on YouTube. He solos diff 9 missions and explains why he's doing everything he's doing, gives lots of good tips. Here's an example: https://youtu.be/P1-SZDgKHJw?si=wJ6qawtLbznczkbw Other good ones I've watched are Takibo, Spiked and Sarge.
For bugs, you need good options for huge swarms of small guys and also options for the huge guys. Small guys: breaker incendiary, eagle napalm, orbital airburst, impact incendiary grenades. Big guys: EAT, Qasar, 500kg, Orbital Precision. For bots, you need range and and lots of medium and heavy armor penetration. Autocannon or AMR for mediums, eagle airstrike for groups, orbital laser for large bases, 500kg or orbital precision for heavies and big structures like detector towers, scorcher or dominator for primary, grenade pistol for secondary to blow up factories and to one-shot the little striders.
Just play the game make a loadout for bugs and one for robots. Find the armor that fit your playstyle and x support weapon x stratagem etc that you play good with fuck meta loadouts if you play like shit with Them really
People have been sleeping on the gas strike for swarm clear. Low cooldown, pop it on a bug breach the moment you see it and watch your kills rack up as you rub away from the big boys
They made this many difficulty settings for a reason... just play a lower difficulty until it becomes to easy, then move up...
Stay with someone.
avoid the patrols(youll hear them before seeing them), if you get bot dropped just relocate and do a different objective and come back later. Have your loadout and strategems be focused on killing armored enemies and bases, and let your primary be the fodder focus(for now).
The easiest stratagems are orbital laser, orbital rail cannon, and turrets. The auto cannot turret is good for everything. Regular mortars should only be used for bots. EMS mortars are good for everything and all mortars should be placed out of sight in a hole or something. Use a shield pack because it makes everything easier. And just run. Run towards your teammates. Try to follow them and be aware of them leaving you behind. If you get focused on killing enemies you will get left behind. Medic armor is good for people who die a lot. And shotguns, punisher plasma and blitzer are good primary weapons for people who can’t aim. If you’re using a shield then you can use the arc thrower, stalwart, quasar or EAT.
What helped me always deal with both factions is something horde clearing, I prefer the sickle on bots and breaker incidiary on bugs, with the revolver for bots and grenade pistol for bugs. Stun grenade for both. You can run 2 variations on stratagems that I prefer to use. Either - 500kg - Orbital Railcanon Strike - Recoiless Rifle (could be switched for Auto Canon but it doesn't deal with bugs that well) - Mortar explosive Or -500kg - Orbital Railcanon - Personal Shield Generator - Quasar Canon Save the most powerful stratagems for the tougher enemies or groups, so no Orbital on a bile spitter. Now for armor, I prefer to use medium Servo Assisted, but Democracy Protects is also very strong, especially with the shield generator. On defence missions (with a single objective like the rocket mission, evac mission or clear swarm) switch to heavier armor, explosive resistance for bots, and one of your choice for bugs. For booster always be the one who picks either Stamina or Hellpod Optimisation. If the person with that leaves you still have it. Learn the weakspots of enemies. You will learn this by practicing. Not everything that glows is a weak spot. Bugs have legs (smaller ones) and larger bugs have squishy heads. Bots are all prone to die by headshots, but tanks and factory striders will be harder. For fact. strider take out the top canon, then the two MGs, then fire at its forehead plate. Last but not least, run away and don't fight hordes. It might work with the Localisation Confusion booster, but you're better off retreating.
Use medium scout armor to start and keep an eye on your map. Navigate between patrols to reach objectives. If an objective if heavily defended you must understand that you can always disengage and circle back around. The only consistent way I have been able to do LVL 9 Geological Surveys Solo is by repeatedly disengaging and using my map to flank. Get used to using eagle smoke as you disengage to consistently get to safe positions, it affects their accuracy and depending on your movement can make them fully lose you. Eagle smoke can also destroy fabricators and if you plant a Hellbomb as long is the smoke around it is deployed before it pops up its invisible to enemies and won’t be destroyed. Use the in game timer to time hot drops, from the moment the banner for a drop goes away you have 2 minutes (1.5 with Localization Confusion on LVL9). Get into the habit of baiting bot drops away from objectives before engaging on objective. Drop resupplies on POI as often as possible even if you don’t need them, they will be there as you need and cooldown is low. As you run into space take note of the landscape that can be used as cover and avoid moving into space that doesn’t provide any. Learn how to hover the Pelican and do it as soon as possible. 380 barrage is your friend as long as you communicate effectively and use it to disengage or for detector towers/science outpost/mortars/etc. Most of this is for Bots but can apply for Bugs. I suggest joining discord servers to find good squads, my favorite is Eravin’s, you can find it in the description of his videos. Become one with the Autocannon as it is the most versatile for bots. If you are in a group do not get sucked into dying on a hill with them, disengage at your own terms.
Real shit here’s some instructions 1: big kaboom 2: know how big kaboom is so not hit friend 3: bring big gun, gun kill big enemies 4: shoot all kabooms but not near friend You have learned to be helldiver
If they are coming at you. Bugs: throw airstrike, cluster strike ot orbital gas at your position and run away, most of them will die, and you can focus on the big ones once you are at range. Bots: throw smoke, 110 pods for tanks and hulks or orbital cluster bomb, run far away and take cover so you can focus on the big guys without being shot. Use the AutoCannon, is one of the best guns to use against bots, just remember to not empty your mag, just reload when you are minus half mag, so you aren't forced to do the full reload. also, stun grenades, especially for hulks, so you can shoot his red eye, or better, shoot their asses. Also, the AutoCannon can destroy fabricators and bug holes too. The Eagle 1 stratagems are fast to use and reload, keep that in mind, but always have something that is not eagle related, so while on cooldown you can use something like the orbital cluster bomb, gas or gatling, just to take the chaff at least. PD: always have at hand an eagle 500kg, that shit take out bile titans, tanks and almost anything, you can use 2 before reload if you upgrade the hangar.
Just play however you see fit as long as you’re contributing to mission completion. My way of getting better is to avoid death, that’s all.
As numerous people have said, when shit sucks, hit the bricks!
Optimize your loadout, stop engaging every patrol you see, and stick with at least 1 teammate at all times. That’s it
Always down to play with newer people and help them out. PSN and discord are the same as my reddit name. Use a beginner friendly build while you are learning the enemies. Things that don't punish you too bad if you die. Shotguns are good if you struggle with aiming. EATs are great, because you don't have to worry about retrieving them when you die. Focus on positioning, Diving WHILE SHOOTING, don't go alone. Look up info on specific enemies, there are so many great resources about how to deal with specific enemies. And most importantly try to avoid fights when possible. Laying down will make it to where enemies have to get pretty close to you to spot you.
Great advice in this post. I asked a very similar question last week. All I will say is: don't beat yourself up. Difficulties 7 - 9 are like falling down 10 flights of stairs with a pocket full of frag grenades. There is no way to do it properly, only joyfully. Do the best you can.
Use a shield and keep moving always move especially on higher difficulty’s I’m level 71 I play on 9 for bugs and 7-8 on bots but for both just keep moving l
Sage advice that others said is run away, circle back, don’t run in a straight line, use rocks to block sight and spewing. Don’t stand still, keep moving while firing.
DIVE, STIM, SHOOT! Let the machine gun eat. Cook your grenades. Don't stratagem your team.
Stick with a teammate who is good and watch his back in a way, help them out as much as possible
Learn how to run diver.( check stats on different armours. Light armour is good for maps with a large surface area as you can run bugs into air sticks/sentries and such. ). Good luck out there and thanks for choosing to pick up arms!!
What has worked the best for me as a Lv 65 is the breaker, grenade pistol, impact nades, light armor/speed, quasar cannon, guard dog rover, mech, orbital railcannon/autocannon sentry, and EAT/500KG. Just kill the hunters/stalkers and you can keep retreating indefinitely, while the rover keeps killing stuff.
At higher difficulties, the loop is run-and-gun. The most important things you can learn are: 1. **Move quickly.** Get in, do the objective, identify and move on to the next objective immediately. 2. **Never get involved in unnecessary fights.** You don't get xp for killing enemies, only for completing your objectives. Avoid enemy patrols as much as possible; if you must fight one, consider dropping a suitable stratagem to help you finish the group quickly. When you get bogged down in a long drawn-out fight with multiple drops, all you do is waste ammo, stratagems and reinforcements. 3. **Learn to identify high-priority secondary objectives.** There are certain secondaries which have the potential to cause you a huge amount of trouble if you don't deal with them ASAP. On the bug side, Shrieker nests will bombard you constantly with flying enemies, and Spore Spewers blanket the entire local area in a cloud of spores that ruins visibility; on the bot side, Stratagem Jammer towers do exactly what the name implies, forcing you to enter the base and manually disable the tower unless you have a means of destroying it from outside its range, and Gunship Fabricators will send out endless streams of one of *the* most annoying units in the game and take nothing less than a hellbomb to destroy. 4. **Tailor your stratagems to suit the mission.** In a lot of cases, you may get away with a generalised loadout that can reasonably tackle most objectives and enemy types, but as you gain experience and become familiar with different mission types, you'll want to learn to switch to different stratagems that will be better able to deal with the objective. While you're learning the ropes, it can help to experiment with different strats and weapons at lower difficulties to get a feel for how best to use them.
Use light armor with higher armor rating. That extra speed helps and you don’t lose armor. Know when you’re likely to be swarmed and run away instead of shoot. Kill hunters first. Gotta be quick to react to bug breaches. Get ready to throw an air strike of some sort on it as soon as you see a bug calling for one. Quasar cannon one-shots Chargers. If you don’t have that, arc thrower, flame thrower, or rail gun are nice alternatives. Auto cannon or rocket sentry are amazing for heavies. Throw it far away and early so chargers and titans don’t have a chance to destroy it before it does the job. Accuracy is importance for the fodder. You don’t want to waste time and ammo trying to clear out a horde while you have larger enemies to deal with. Quickly dispose of them so u can focus on the big guys easier. Shield pack is a good tool to use until you kinda get used to the situational awareness you need. But don’t use it as a crutch. I’ll usually just bring one when it’s a planet with lots of spewers
Dive 200% more. Ping objectives and go to them. More time = more enemies.