HELLDIVERS™ 2: Helldive-Tested Build Guide for Both Fronts

Hey you. Are you seeing your name on the Wall of Martyrs too many times? Are your bones being crushed and chopped up time and time again by terminid hordes? Are your organs being constantly perforated by automaton lasers? If so, then you’re in luck. I’ve tested the following two builds out extensively and have found great success on both, including zero-death runs on Helldive difficulty. I do not claim that these builds are the best in the game for facing their respective factions, but I’ve found these to be reliable builds for extended survival and maximizing resources while being equipped to take down most high-value targets.

I will note that this guide assumes that you have ownership over at least the Cutting Edge (CE), Democratic Detonation (DD), and Polar Patriots (PP) warbonds in order to access the weaponry for each build, as well as significant upgrades to your Super Destroyer’s modules up to tier 4. While the absence of these upgrades will not break the builds, I haven’t tested them without the upgrades and so you may find some difficulty using them.

Now, let’s get into the builds!

This section will highlight the weaponry used for both builds. With these being your secondary and grenade, you will find yourself using them often.

This handy little tool provides us with a reliable way to destroy enemy spawners. While our strategems will be explosive for both builds, they can sometimes be unreliable, especially in the case of bug nests with their haphazard placement and protection by the terrain. In a pinch, the grenade pistol can be used to clear groups of chaff or deal heavy damage to larger units. Additionally, we save a strategem use whenever one of those illegal broadcast towers shows up.

Some divers may see the stun grenade as obsolete compared to its more explosive brothers – after all, grenades are meant to kill, right? Well, explosive grenades won’t stop a charger or hulk running as fast as their little legs can carry them, which is where the stun grenade comes in. By halting enemies in their tracks, you have the time to get your support weapon’s shots off, putting those heavies right into the ground where they belong.

This is, without a doubt, the most important part of the builds. Ensure that your helmet and cape suitably match your armor. When in doubt, ask for peer opinions on your outfit and adapt accordingly. Dropping without proper fashion sense isn’t just embarrassing, it’s downright treasonous. You have multiple opportunities to acquire complimentary pieces, so claim those opportunities and style yourself as a fashionable killing machine!

Terminids. As essential as they are to Super Earth, they are certainly a pain to fight. With vast numbers, durable units, deadly range, and melee tendency, they are the reason why I have vastly more Automaton kills under my belt than their ugly kind. I could never understand why such a significant amount of people kept to fighting the bugs while the bot front was losing ground, even without all the bug-related major orders. It doesn’t matter much to me now, because this build helped me go from bug food to E-710 tycoon.

“What!? Not the Breaker Incendiary!?” While the fire damage is nice to have in clearing smaller bugs, many times I see people rapid-firing it because the fire damage is too slow. This is where the Blitzer succeeds. Its electric shot, while short-ranged, can clear out multiple tiny bugs at a time, as well as fry hunters and decapitate warriors and hive guards. It also puts up a good shot against brood commanders and spewers, though you may have to hit the latter in the face for maximum effect. Because the Blitzer is the only primary in the game that does Arc damage, not many know how powerful it is against armor, although there’s a better option than this for those heavier enemies. Furthermore, arc weapons don’t need to ever reload, meaning that you can keep firing as long as you have enough blood in you to pull that trigger.

It takes a little bit of getting used to, but the Arc Thrower is deceptively powerful. It has much longer range than its primary little brother, the Blitzer, and chains in a line of up to three (3) targets, or four (4) targets with the Circuit Expansion module upgrade. It takes around one and a half (1.5) seconds to charge up, but subsequent charges reduce this timer to a point, allowing rapid discharging of chains throughout swarms. Naturally, this will decimate most enemies up to brood commanders. No enemy is immune to such democratic discharge of electoral electricity, meaning that chargers and bile titans are vulnerable to the arc thrower. It takes upwards of 15 shots to kill a charger; bile titans will go down, but I’d say it’s better to lure them and have your squadmates take them out.

For bugs, the name of the game is speed. Maintaining the distance between yourself and the terminids is vital for survival. While other light armors provide better speed bonuses, the Trench Paramedic armor also buffs your stims significantly with its Med-Kit passive, providing an extra 2 stims while also extending their duration. This allows you to repair your limbs, reset your stamina, and remain alive in sticky situations more often than other armors. If you don’t have this armor, I’d recommend one of the medium armors that have the Med-Kit passive.

In those times where you need to hold a position or fend off an ambush, the shield generator backpack is the best defensive tool. In cases where you might be concussed or knocked down by an attack, the shield will take damage in your stead, allowing you to retaliate quickly and dispatch the threat before it puts you into an unfavorable position. This is especially useful against stalkers; I’ve waded through a couple dozen or so of them heading over to destroy their lair, and were it not for the shield generator I would have been knocked over and turned into ribbons before I had the chance of firing a shot, meaning my squadmates would have a horde of invisible bugs heading over to them. Especially considering the lower protection of the light armor, the shield generator is the keystone of this build.

Breathe deep, take in the sweet smell of burning bug flesh. While it might not have the clearance of the cluster bomb, the value one can get from a well-placed napalm strike compensates it. When a single scavenger summons a swarm, your napalm strike will be able to stop the breach by torching every bug that spawns. Of course, the damage over time may not be enough to kill larger bugs, but it will weaken them significantly while also removing chaff spawns. Additionally, the wall of fire works great when being chased or holding choke points, as both cases will slow down enemy advance and thin their numbers. It can also clear smaller bug nests or Minor POIs in a pinch, although you will have to wait for the fire to dissipate.

While the above strategems are crucial to the build, there are plenty of other strategems you can take to bring the pain to those double-jointed freaks. The Orbital Gas Strike is awesome for precision breach closure and area clear, as it has such a low cooldown that you’ll have it ready for most of your encounters. The Orbital 380mm HE Barrage is also great for clearing heavy nests or secondary objectives that are swarming with too many enemies to get close, being able to take down even bile titans if they are directly hit. Turrets are never a bad option either, and for bugs I’d recommend the Gatling Sentry for even more chaff clearance or the EMS Mortar Sentry for area denial. If you feel the need for dedicated heavy clearance for bile titans, I would choose the Orbital Railcannon Strike over the Eagle 500kg Bomb as it’s much more accurate and isn’t tied to your eagle’s supply.

Your Arc Thrower will be your primary weapon for dealing with most enemies. Maintain a safe distance and fire slightly above the enemies’ heads to get more out of the lock on. When dealing with small numbers of chaff, use the Blitzer to dispatch them, as it has no charge up time.The Blitzer is also very effective in case you need to quickly dispatch enemies like jumping hunters or charging brood commanders. Save your grenade pistol rounds for bug holes and containers, as your arc weapons provide more than enough damage. Stun grenades can be cooked so that they detonate in-flight, but beware of their short cook time so that you don’t stun yourself. Remember that stims can be used to reset stamina, so check to see if your health is low enough to warrant stim usage.

Many people find Automatons difficult due to their strategy of overwhelming fire on top of heavy armor. While a good tactical rock is their greatest counter, holding such a position can prove troublesome with the bots’ slow yet steady advance, forcing a radically new approach to dealing with them than the bugs. As such, we will fight fire with fire by rinsing the communist agenda of the heavy hevastator out with Liber-tea and adopting a less mobile but much more resilient playstyle.

This beast of a gun combines the greatness of the SMG-37 Defender with concussive rounds, which have a high chance to stun enemies for a short period of time as long as the hit deals damage. This gun has all your horde clear needs covered, stopping enemies in their tracks and leaving them helpless to you beheading them with bullets. Keep in mind that with the light armor penetration you will need to aim for the weakpoints of anything larger than a trooper, but once you do hit that spot you’ll take that enemy out of the fight for a bit, letting you focus on others. The bonus of using this gun over any other weapon that provides a stun is its One-Handed trait, letting us combo with the…

Isn’t it strange how this piece of metal is more durable than our exosuits? The ballistic shield allows complete damage nullification from any small-arms fire that hits its surface, including that from heavy devastators, shredder tanks, mounted machine guns, and gunships. The shield can only be damaged by explosive weaponry, such as that from rocket devastators or annihilator tank turrets. Since only a few bots use such weaponry, you’ll have a major advantage when pushing an enemy position, being able to ignore most damage while returning fire with your Pummeler. The reload animations for first and third person appear to be different, so reload in third person view to maintain the shield surface in front of you. Be mindful of your flanks, and you’ll be nearly unstoppable.

This is our armor-busting weapon, mainly to cover our bases against heavy non-tank armor. The railgun provides a fast and effective way to deal with scout striders’ heavy armor when flanking isn’t an option. It also can one-shot hulks through their eye, even on safe, which is why you have your stun grenades to freeze the hulk and ensure your shot hits. You can also cleave devastators and berserkers in half or take out heavy devastators with one shot to their backpacks. The one front the railgun struggles with is with tank weakspots, but you can easily 2-3 tap those with your grenade pistol.

With rocket devastators as spammy as they are, you’ll want to find a way to reduce the number of times your innard are liquefied by explosives. Luckily, the Ministry of Defense provides, with plenty of options throughout the warbonds and super store for you to choose from that are Heavy Armor with the Fortified passive. I personally run the FS-55 Devastator (DD) set, but the choice is up to you as to which set you think looks best. By increasing our armor score along with 50% resistance to explosive damage, we’ll be able to survive devastator and gunship rockets where we may have normally died. Note that the knockback still applies, so be mindful that you don’t get knocked to a death by fall damage.

Can’t go wrong with this classic. Eagle-1’s bread and butter airstrike cuts down patrols and fabricators with ease, but it also serves as our anti-tank weapon. Sticking a tank with the beacon almost guarantees its death, and the line of bombs, when aimed longways, can decimate factory striders. There’s no need for DOT effects or wide-range splash damage that the napalm and cluster bomb strikes provide, so sticking with the basic airstrike provides us with excellent crowd clearance when we need it without any of the gimmicks that may take off damage or armor penetration, which helps to take down mortar emplacements or detector towers.

In case your operation has an Anti-Air Defenses modifier, don’t worry about taking these strategems. The best thing to round off this build is the Autocannon Sentry, which will provide us a way to take care of gunships in case our teammates don’t have any good counters. The Orbital 380mm HE Barrage is also good for clearing out heavy outposts or anything that your eagle isn’t available to hit. If you really feel underconfident about armored targets, take the Eagle 110mm Rocket Pods, as they can double for taking out light outpost fabricators.

One final note before we get to the next section is utilizing the shield to its fullest. Your shield will not suddenly stop protecting you until it fully breaks, meaning that cycling it to your back by holding the railgun will give you protection while running from enemies. If you are on their flanks, keep the enemy on your left with your Pummeler equipped. When pusing forward, hold down the aim button and be sure you are in third person view when reloading, as the first person reload animation has you moving your shield aside.

As someone who has used the 500kg bomb more times than I can count, it feels more like a meme than an effective weapon. It works well at dealing massive damage to everything in its radius, but said radius is deceptively small horizontally. Our builds already provide answers for most enemies and don’t factor in the builds of squadmates. While I love a good explosion, the other eagle strategems listed are much better suited for their respective jobs than the 500kg.

The Arc Thrower, with its electricity jumping to anything living, has the capability of severely injuring or outright killing your squadmates unless they’re wearing any of the armor from the CE warbond for whatever reason. To avoid this, ensure that you are in front of any squadmates you’re fighting with or keep them out of your line of sight. If they have to be close, keep them out of your aiming reticle and angle your gun higher to make sure you get hits.

That’s awesome! You may find some aspects of one of the builds to not be to your liking, so you are completely welcome to switch things around to suit your needs. Hell, I adapted these builds from others to suit my own needs, and I’ve found much more success running these setups than those provided from those sources. At the end of the day, Helldivers 2 is a game, and you should use what you want to get the maximum enjoyment out of it. You could swap the Blitzer for the Breaker Incendiary, the Railgun for an EAT, or toss the shield generator for the jump pack. So long as you’re stomping the enemies of Super Earth (and wearing attire complementary to your armor), arm yourself with whatever you find works best for you :).

Take whatever needs taking, and keep your team in mind. While Hellpod Space Optimization may not be as useful to you on the Bug Zapper build, your teammates will appreciate spawning in with all their equipment at full. I generally lock in HSO at the start of missions unless there’s a lower-level player that may not have many boosters unlocked so that everyone can bring a booster to the mission.

As a Helldiver, you are responsible for knowing which weapons and strategems to bring to the front. By educating you on the tools I bring to my missions, I hope to pass onto you and your squad a better understanding of weapons and tactics you may not have thought of — nor have our enemies, unintelligent alien rabble that they are. Take these tactics, head out there, and make Super Earth proud!