it pains me when i see my team trying desperately to hold a single, pointless rock in the middle of an open field because one guy tried to solo a patrol and now half the automaton army is dropping on their heads. this video needs more traction!
@@MrHocotateFreight if you think the bots suck to fight, I tell you that's a massive skill issue Only reason people have a problem with bots is because unlike the bugs, they are not a pushover. They actually shoot back, and you actually have to think about how to engage them, and exercise some patience You're more than entitled to feel the way you do, but as someone who prefers fighting bots over the termanids, I think you're full of guff
@@rambo-cambo3581he didn’t say it was a ridiculous challenge fighting the bots, he stated it’s a Pain when your teammates are just holding a single spot with No objective, only to try n fight off a Endless stream of black bloods, or even bugs. It’s a pointless, frustrating tactic too many HellDivers have to deal with, it either drains limited resources, waste time only making future waves harder as difficulty scales with time, or cost the team failure. Stop calling everything a “Skill Issue” it just comes off as cringe when you literally try and shoehorn it into Everything 🤣
Screw strategy, stratagem your way out of every problem, all the strategy you need is where to throw that ⬆️➡️⬇️⬇️⬇️ don’t be a stratagizer, be a strategemizer, just blow things up and don’t think so hard about it.
"O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible; and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands." ...yeah p much lol
Bugs: Haha, gun go brrrrrrrrrrr and bug go splash. Bots: We must learn the art of war to best counter them. always take cover, atack them when least expect it, cheese through the objectives with our strategems, and we must evitate the millions of rockets.
Bots: Glowing weak spots and carefully designed weaknesses to promote strategy and counterplay. Narrow cones of telegraphed vision and alert voice lines to encourage stealth, and few but specialized unit types making strategic snipers not just viable but often necessary. Bugs: Bring a bigger gun and fire hoping the problem will go away. Any strategy you have goes out the window when the horde of bile titans are alerted by infinitely spawning invisible stalkers smelling you from across the map. Violates every rule in the Geneva convention because they're bugs and don't give a damn.
@Reginald-sc9tk 100%. Both factions bring a different, not necessarily easier, playstyle to the game. The folks complaining about bots probably just got mowed down because they were trying to fight the bots the same way you fight the bugs, by staying on the move in wide open spaces
It's neither of those, it's just helldivers, it's a very simple game at it core, but they just made a coop shooter and the systems that go with it and let the players pick how they want to play.
@@fatrat92it's both of those things he said. Nothing about Helldivers is simple though, it has so many different complex layers to its missions with the stratagem system that I don't see how you could think that
Holy shit, a Helldivers youtuber that isn't just reading reddit posts or making click bait videos of the same NEW META OP BROKEN weapon videos for the 10000 time. Good work, it seems like you actually understand the game beyond just it being a "horde shooter."
Ikr thank God, I've blocked more channels in the last 2 weeks than I do in a year from the amount of pop up channels that share obvious lore or useless information you get from standing around your ship for 30 seconds 😂 either clipboard lady or the guy waiting at the map are constantly spewing exposition, which I love but doesn't need a whole 1 minute short made about a 4 second line being presented as new info
Sorry it took so long to get to this comment. I am very happy to have provided a higher quality viewing experience. Personally it came out of the exact same frustration. As much as I make videos I also watch them like everyone else and I wanted someone to go deeper and give me more. I probably went overboard but at least it was fun. Can't wait to make the next one! Though after the warbond tomorrow ;)
@@Reginald-sc9tk No, no not at all, you did not go overboard, i really like this style, maybe you could make more in this style, maybe not all the time, but i really like the more in-depth takes on this game you have.
Thats The Wile Spice. He's a buddy from our Darktide days and also has a TH-cam channel. He is thinking of doing a tutorial on them and the first step is F-ing around to find out as they say. Honestly I couldn't cut those clips, looked really cool.
@Reginald-sc9tk you have no idea how incredibly fun shield and smg is now that the shields been buffed. You can stand in front of those machine gun tanks and force them to turn around for your team to hit their backside. You're the frontliner. Also you can act as cover for your team by standing next to them as everyone runs. Just make sure you have the bots on your left side and you should block 90% of incoming shots. (Oh my bad I see you made a video on it lol. But the buff makes it arguably better than the energy shield on bots now if you run smg.)
It's cheese to me when you remove the randomness factor, which in this game takes the form of any enemy alertion. Because base guards will always guard the same spots, so if you can solo-sneak inside a base and quietly complete the objective at the terminal you can do it one million more times and it will always be the same. Zero variation, zero unpredictability, and boredom rises.
Reminds me if lethal mode in state of decay 2 The game can be obnoxiously easy but when you crank up the difficulty, THE most important skill is to learn when to run away
that’s why i follow the lead of whoever decides to ping; if i see that you ping and are running past the patrol, i’ll follow. but if i hear the ping followed by shooting, best believe im engaging. i also make sure that if im pinging i run around the patrol as best as i can and hope the rest of the squad gets it
@@frumsmcnoodles323 Same. Call me a bad team player, but when an objective is done I'm gone regardless of how many bots and how many divers are brawling. They keep the bots distracted, I go off and do something that needs doing. I can't tell you how many times I've zipped away from an engagement mid-fight using the jump pack and scout armor.
so many of the people i play with complain that i "run away" when we get dropped on. tactically retreating and flanking/enveloping from behind left/right of the group are always the best options no matter what firefight you get into. i was infantry in the USMC, and you explained all of this all beautifully.
Had a great time solo last night heavily leaning on the "prepare to run away" strat. Lured plenty of heavy armor to the rocket turret i left on the hill where I had come in; made it very easy to trail everything I needed straight to it then turn and go right back!
Kiting is something lots of people who play games like this intuitively learn, I can see why some folks drop into this game and expect it to turn out like that ‘man on the hill with the big machine gun fending off hordes’, but coming from deep rock that playstyle simply isn’t viable. We need vids like these so these folks can at least understand what it’s we are trying to do.
Thank you so much for the compliment on my explanations. I am hoping to talk about flanking/enveloping and other manuevers in the next one. Might be a bit though, these take a lot of time. I hope other players see this video and stop giving you a hard time on "running away" because taking bad fights is just dying for no reason.
Honestly it's like people forget that we get no rewards for killing. That patrol will despawn, the enemies will drop aggro if you drop site to them, and only like 2 unit types can keep up with a 'Diver in medium armor. If things get hairy, we should just leave. If we absolutely need to pick up something in the area (like samples or a SSSD) we can always come back.
I mean, yea pretty much. Though I would say that specific quote is more about "stop being dumb and just throwing dudes at the problem and actually look at what your enemy is doing"
It's the most important lesson for Helldivers. Most of the heavy losses I see are because people got pinned in a fight and didn't realize disengaging is an option AND the primary way to create a different tactical scenario.
@@synapse0 I had a scenario recently playing with my friends where we tried to clear a stratagem jammer and we lost most of our reinforces, but the moment we spread out to complete the rest of the objectives, it was smooth sailing. It's the ability to recognize a lost battle, and to move on that is so difficult
I was reminded of my favorite quote the other day when my friends and I were holding a position against a bot drop and I was taking the anti-armor role with EAT-17s, but our positioning was poor and my friend kept getting hit by the exhaust from my rocket launchers. "Watch the backblast, idiot" - Sun Tzu
My friends constantly dying to back blast is the exact reason I've just been taking the railgun. Still takes out the heavies which is what they want me for since I'm the one that can hit the heads best out of our group. Now they don't die to back blast but the one time my friend ran in front of me right as I was firing and the others were like "Don't step in front of the barrel moron!"
Boy you guys really have your teammates up your ass. Never once had a problem with backblast in HD2. If they're that close you're blocking each others' lines of fire anyway and creating sweet explosives opportunities for the enemy
First helldivers video I've watched that genuinely helps with strategy without just saying "use this gun or armor". And this is saying a lot because I've seen tons of vids on this topic.
My pleasure. In fact if you keep an eye out in a few examples I use for footage one of my friends found an MG on the ground and was using it. Very satisfying.
@@binnieb173nice try cupcake. Infantry is always the queen. Artillery will always remain the king and save the queen when she bites off more than she can chew.
I also recommend ADP 3-90 Offense and Defense, the Ranger Handbook, and Scout Platoon for inspiration. Subjects to cover: raid, attack, battle drills, characteristics of the offense, principles of patrolling, and fundamentals of reconnaissance. Lmk if you’d like to discuss them in detail, I’d be happy to chat over discord.
Hey! Thanks so much. You're actually the first person to give me a super thanks of any kind and I really appreciate it. I'm not exactly doing this for money but the revenue does help in various ways so you have my gratitude. You're absolutely welcome to join my discord and I'd love to chat with you on the proposed subjects. I think its an under-explored area in games and is just a personal interest of mine. discord.gg/uhBBU552
Love it when a teammate positions himself in an open area and starts taking out a shield rocket boi, ignoring the regural bots and having 4 ships summoned onto him as a result
This is amazing. I love the incorporation of real military strategy. I'm a USMC Infantry vet and I think you did a solid job handling infantry doctrine. Good work!
@@Reginald-sc9tk I haven't heard "L shaped ambush" or "enfilading fire" in years, and it was soothing to my soul. I think it speaks to both the quality of this game and the quality of your channel that the tactics can be applied so well to Helldivers. I hope your channel grows! I already shared the video with all my diving buddies on Discord.
You've pretty much hit the nail on the head here. I've been running a Defensive Trench doctrine whenever I've played for the past month now (digging cover with explosives to augment my teams power), and I fully agree with every point you've raised about terrain. I'm surprised less people like bots, it makes for such a cool tactical theater.
Bots are just irritating for a new or casual player. Most weapons do not damage them, and most of the objectives are very finicky. Bugs you can be effective with a diverse range of tools and strategies and are not forced into a narrow range of options
A lot of times in games when it’s advertised that you need to change up your tactics or build based on what you’re facing it’s pretty much just fluff and there’s still an objectively best way to play every time. Arrowhead has aggressively made sure that that’s not the case and you do need to change up your tactics and build based on what you’re facing and even what mission type. A lot of people aren’t used to that but I find it wonderful when you learn to accept it as it makes your whole arsenal feel more worth having.
@@ghoulbuster1 Im seconding this comment! I imagine either an explosive stratagem, grenade, support weapon, I don't know. But please, what are you doing specifically to be running TACTICAL TRENCH WARFARE???? I NEED ANSWERS!!
@@orionstokesweiss2344 Every primary that I've used can drop infantry and devastators. Only a couple can drop walkers head on (you can still flank) and their heavy armor. I've had more success with a wider variety of weapons against bots then bugs. Horde clear can still work against bots (as you can see with the flamethrower in the video) and they have more spots that you can just shoot to kill with light armor penetrating weapons.
You captured my full attention when you started quoting the US Military Manual. This was probably the most entertaining and informative video I've watched about Helldivers. Also I now want an in game title called "Heaven-born Captain".
I'm a noob with less than 10 hours in the game, but it's satisfying to see my intuitions about fighting the automatons being validated. Bugs feel like a horde shooter, and automatons feel much more guerilla and tactical. It's a fantastic paring of play flavors, honestly, and I very much understand why people either gravitate towards one or the other. They feel *very* distinct.
It’s funny, I’ve never heard of enfilade before this, but that’s the strategy I generally always use against bots because it just naturally puts me out of focus for the bots and where I can more easily hit their weak spots. Props to this game to encouraging actual, real world military strategy.
This first point about flanking is massive for people who struggle with bots, the way I simplify it in my head is I ideally want to flank the bots and bottle neck the bugs
Light armor with the Scout (aka stealth) passive is great for hit and run tactics. The enemy won't notice you from afar and you can sneak quite close so you can have the drop on them then sprint away, break line of sight and disappear until the spot calms down. The map ping passive is great for scouting ahead and see enemy positions before even getting there. Perfect for guerilla warfare with stuff like the Quasar and Autocannon that can pop fabricators and heavy enemies. Heavy and Medium armors are great when you will go toe to toe with the bots with the intention of wreckingball through them! In fact, when we play harder difficulties, we have a healthy mix of armor types and stratagems with us. 2 or 3 player equipped to deal with threats face to face. 1 or 2 player equipped for blitzing around, flanking, ambushing, sneak completing objectives and looting. A great deal of objectives can be completed mostly silently by a helldiver or two while the rest raises hell elsewhere. If the enemy called in reinforcement at the loud team, the sneaky team won't need to worry about them cause its on cooldown. Orbital Laser is my favorite fire and forget weapon against automatons. Sneak in, toss it into the enemy base / objective, let it wreck havoc then kick down the doors and finish the stragglers!
@@sirrealism7300 Not sure. Its just a versatile playstyle which you can further toy with depending on the weapons and Stratagems of your choices. Nothing is set in stone.
unlocked orbital laser last night, took it for a spin on some smaller targets early in the mission, slowly get in the shit, realize orbital laser only has 3 uses, *skull*
Doesn't last long, and 9/10 on higher difficulties you need to move constantly, you really shouldn't be standing anywhere that long that isn't an objective And ngl when I'm attacked on difficulty 9 at an objective, the most efficient thing is to leave and drag the aggro elsewhere And the bots and bugs on higher difficulties swarm you easily, no bubble shield is going to save you from that CQB. Once they're in there bubble is useless.
@@rambo-cambo3581shield is great even on higher difficulties (8-9) it makes it 10x easier to run across a small bit of open terrain and retreat and also tends to save a lot of stims
Can work well as an opener on kill bot missions since movement is pretty restricted anyway, and can allow the powerhouse that is the heavy machine gun turret to do its thing. You can often get through half of the kill quota in the first few minutes. The short cooldown can also give you a bit of respite when you really need it.
“I love attacking my enemy where he is…” *checks notes* “Unpraired?” Absolutely great guide though, this was so fascinating, I cannot wait for the next one
As an experienced bot player who hard carries randoms; this video is excellent. The tactics here will really get you places. The emphasis on ambushes is great. The loadout is pretty much the same as what I use with exception of armor. You will benefit greatly from light armor, but only after you learn to survive. The scorcher primary can be really good if you have a team ripe with sickles, but if not the sickle is the best all arounder. Stealth and knowing when to engage/retreat are key. I'd also highly suggest dropping the super samples near extract. Even S-tier players die and can't recover gear sometimes. It's ok; just get your main objective done and continue to spread freedom, peace, prosperity and extreme managed democracy throughout the galaxy
The tips you've added here are excellent. I'm especially fond of "you will benefit greatly from light armor, but only after you learn to survive." I think that's pretty much what I was getting at and said more concisely.
legit just learned last night you can drop off samples; this makes late game so much less stressful hoping your rando squad doesn't leave you for dead. With some proper planning, now they can afford to!
I think it's wonderful that the bots and bugs require such different tactics, bots: method over sheer power. Bugs: sheer power over method. I love the difference in how the engagements are handled and arrowhead knocked it out of the park
Absolutely, and thank you for your solid and concise tutorial that was easy to follow and had lots of very solid tips. I am glad it seems to have performed very well.
Advice I want to give from trying out heavy armor last night is to be very aware you are going to be slower than the rest of the team. If they are randoms, they will leave you behind/ you’ll get caught by a patrol your squad sneaks by cause you can’t keep up. Move proactively and first. Avoid being the rearguard.
Yeah I like to take the ballistic shield and draw devastator fire so the team can take them out easier, but it's tough to get in front in the first place with the heavy armor if I'm not leading the way to the fight.
imo heavy armor should probably be across the board for assault action except for your machinegunner. the guy who's gonna be taking a good position needs mobility, so infiltrator or trailblazer. violence of action should suffice for sheer protection, and ideally the guy with the light armor has an e-shield to absorb incidental hits without needing to interrupt for healing. i think the pointdiver might wanna consider the ballistic shield? but its not an excuse to take fire tbh, more to make sure you can tackle a position w/ more confidence.
Being the rearguard is sometimes fun though, though it helps to take a completely separate route as well (partially because you got split up by a patrol but still)
I've been doing this out of habit since my days on Battlefield 4 yet never realised they were actual military stuff. Helldivers 2 brought me back to the boots on the ground experience that I had kind of forgot about for the past 4 or 5 years.
This is so, so much better than just some guy telling you what equipment to use where. Even having adjusted to bots a bit more, helps a lot to have some of these ideas and strategies put into words in addition to expanding on them a little, great work on the video!
I absolutely love that this game is sophisticated enough to benefit from real world combat strategy. I'm gonna send this to my squad so we can start practicing tactics
As a Certified Creek Crawler I cannot give this better praise. I frequently drop on pug games and as just one man do more damage in the same amount of time then it takes 3 pugs going hog wild, as they are attracting all the heat while I'm methodically picking apart base after base after POI 90% of the time hitting them without them knowing I was there. Pick your fights and don't fuss over the chaff is what I try to tell anyone I'm teaching to deal with Bots. if it isn't sitting on an objective it can more often then not be ignored. and if it can't be that's when you lay the hammer down. and as you preached in the video. pick off the weak boys first then mop up the fat boys who can't scream.
The concept of enfilading fire is very important for the use of the new HMG. People complain that it doesn't have enough ammo, which is arguably true, but one 75 round magazine is easily all you need to devastate huge groups of bots so long as you are positioned to rake the column with enfilading fire. I've gotten over 20 kills with one mag just sweeping it over a group of clumped soldier bots, very satisfying.
How does it compare in this role to the MG43? I'm sure it's the appropriate way to use the HMG but I'm just curious. I've only heard negative things so far and haven't used it much.
@@Reginald-sc9tk I find that the mg43 requires much more aiming at specific targets and jumping between, while HMG is more of a bullet laser beam that you can drag over weaker enemies and kill them with very little thought as you transition between enemies that have heavier armor. The best reason to bring HMG is because of its vastly greater armor penetration, it can engage a wider range of targets and dispatch them faster, even including the hulk, as it can penetrate the faceplate. HMG is still hard to recommend due to how unwieldy it is, but between the two weapons I personally prefer HMG over MG43 for bots quite easily.
@@Reginald-sc9tkI’d say the HMG is a compromise between dedicated AI and dedicated AT. MG-43 takes about as much time to dispatch infantry as HMG, but is far more wieldy, has way better recoil control and has more ammo. Proper AT does a far better job at taking out heavies. But HMG is better than nothing when you planned to do anti-infantry and suddenly bump into a Hulk.
@@Reginald-sc9tk The MG43 can't take out the devastators easily. There is a video somewhere explaining that it deals 50% damage to medium armor whereas the MG206 does 100% damage. So in patrols with mostly troopers the MG43 is better because of the increase in ammo but the MG206 is better for patrols with more medium armored enemies. The sights are not aligned correctly though and the reticle is far off from where the bullet traces are going when firing more than one round at a time. Just go into a mission or two and get used to where the tracers are going. I find if you ignore the dot and look squarely in the center of the sight ring you will hit your mark more often than not if you can compensate for the recoil.
There’s something that just hits different when you enter a lobby with randoms that are willing to strategize. The amount of insane plays you can pull off like baiting entire hoards of enemies to chase one or two people, or funneling them into a choke point with fire/gas from behind while your allies fuck em up from the front.
It’s so crazy how fighting the robots has slowly shaped my thinking into modern war tactics. A lot of the stuff you are teaching I’ve already figured out because of helldivers.
Military tactics, history, and practical knowledge to use in the field. If this was out and available for all Helldivers during the first week, Melevolon Creek might have been overtaken then! Excellent video - made me think about my own tactics in my games (only for other teammates to throw a wrench into the plans by blowing my position or pulling aggro when we are at a disadvantageous position...)
Thanks so much! I wish I had had the idea for this sooner but at least it's out for the final push on phase 4 of the major order against filthy bot scum. My hope is that if this guide gains a bit of traction we will see a bit more of random players playing sharply. Personally I've seen some great and some not so great randoms. Also we still gotta get that game in! I've been heads down this week but I'll ping you this weekend.
Its rare to find a guide that teaches tactics and strategies instead of tips and tricks Well done Edit: Been applying the things I learnt here and found great success, its actually fun for a Bug Squasher like me to fight bots now 🤣
I have another pro tip for you fellas. If you want to do good, find what you like and are comfortable with. I’m most comfortable with the standard issue armor because it looks cool. I often do better when I wear this armor because I like it. If you like something weird in this game or something that isn’t inherently useful, rock it. It’s amazing how much of this game is mental over skill.
As someone who likes making video games I have been taking SO many notes from Arrowhead. The amount of tools at your disposal and how weirdly effective a large combination of them are is definitely keeping the playerbase fresh and happy
I was struggling with light armor because my friends were all using it to get around quicker so I used it to keep up. Came to realize that whenever we get into a gunfight that we can't easily back out of I'm usually trying to draw the aggro. Once I made the switch to heavy armor and the deployable shield my gameplay became so much better.
Hearing about Sun Tzu in relation to Helldivers was both unexpected and very pleasant, given I’ve read the Art of War myself and try to use my understanding of it while playing
I have the Nuclear Radar ship upgrade and I often bring the UAV booster when I can afford to. Let me tell you dude, I can see everything and avoid it before it becomes a problem. Stealth has never been so easy.
If you're having trouble imagining enfilading fire it's the eagle strafing run. Literally a straight line of death from you to the enemy. Defilading fire would be the airstrike with a line of bombs going across your vision. Combining these two strats correctly is the ideal situation for an ambush.
I actually learned about enfilading fire before I knew what it was called. I learned this playing gears of war 2, where cover is the most important resource. It is especially effective when you have a weapon that can provide sustained fire or damage multiple opponents at once.
Same here. Most of my flanking instincts were honed to a razors edge playing Gears of War & is now coming in very handy in another 3rd person shooter like Helldivers 2.
Finally a vid that teaches small unit tactics to those who don’t get how to fight against the bots! As much as I love fighting the bugs, the bots really are a thinking Divers’ game where the proper use of stealth, teamwork, and maneuvering can really make the game much more fun. I hope more Divers watch your vid so they get what I mean when I tell them to fall back or flank the bots. Great vid!
Great video. Having read and practiced these manuals, you did a great job summarizing the contents and ideas and providing practical examples. To reinforce your point, even with playing with randoms, have a mic even if nobody else is talking. You can save your entire squad with a quick "contact right/left/forward/rear/etc" if they're about to get ambushed or walk into a large group unknowingly.
Thank you! I appreciate receiving feedback on my explanations since I'm doing them with limited personal experience. I agree, randoms can be coordinated with in a number of ways. It can be huge to do so.
I try to flee when I realize that I'm not fighting for anything. The more you flee when you realize you're not achieving anything, the more you become used to thinking like that- disengaging and re-engaging when it suits you to do so. Unless you get pinned behind a single piece of cover, being flanked by rocket and heavy devastators, with your team trying to open a friendship door a klick away. At that point you might as well throw out whatever stratagems you have and think of England.
Probably the best Helldivers vid I've seen yet. I use a lot of these strats to go off and solo objectives when playing with my friends (They tend to go off and start huge fire fights, but since I always run off to the other side of the map, that just means less heat on me. Lets me focus on hit and running bases, grabbing samples, completing objs etc while they have fun ripping and tearing away).
My go-to load out for bots is medium fortified armor, defender smg and senator, incendiary grenade ballistic shield, AMR, eagle rocket pods, and usually Gatling barrage if the 4th slot is open. The AMR can 2 shot hulks if you shoot them in the head, which can be tricky up close, but at a distance is incredibly easy. The ballistic shield has been buffed recently, and a number of the bugs with it have been fixed. If you hold it, it pretty much makes you completely invulnerable to any shots fired from a general direction, and can prevent you from dying to rockets. Furthermore, when you un equip it, it goes on your back, where it protects your back and head from headshots from the rear. incendiary grenades can create temporary zones, that if used correctly, can deal MASSIVE damage to a tightly packed patrol in a choke point, or can be used to time enemies into easy kill zones. Eagle rocket pods aren’t great against small things, but they one shot tanks, turrets, and fabricators. Orbital Gatling barrage has an incredibly short cooldown, and kills every light enemy is a fairly decent radius. Great for getting the jump on patrols and taking out striders.
Guerilla warfare is also technically viable in Helldivers. Units spawned by bot drops (and bug breaches) despawn if you get far enough away from them, so you can soften up the outer defenses of a fabricator base (picking off things like the HMG infantry, walker pilots, or rocket devastators) and just leave once a bot drop is called to complete other objectives (which will be easier with bot drops on cooldown) Then you just circle back later to actually finish the job.
As soon as you referenced FM 7-8 I instantly subscribed. I'm an army veteran, recently downloaded helldivers last month. Can't tell you how many times field manuals have been drilled into our heads. That's always great stuff and glad to see it being used here! Another thing you may want to look at is IMT (individual movement techniques) Specifically the 3-5 second rush and team bounding. 3-5 second rush is going from sprinting to prone essentially in 3-5 seconds. Team bounding is essentially the same thing but as a fire team. Each time a helldiver is in the prone lay down suppressing fire in your sector across the target area. Great way for covering ground Looking forward to watching more vids! Keep it up! PS: the 3-5 second rush should take about the amount of time it takes to say "I'm up, he sees me, I'm down"
The expendable rockets or autocannons are great for triggering ambushes if your other squad members are set up on a L or line ambush. Never use delayed explosives like the grenade launcher or delayed weapons it'll most likely trigger the ambush before needed and it's real world tactic.
"Heaven and Earth and Earth and Heaven, and when 'one' knows Heaven Earth Heaven - earTH HHeaven Heavearth eareven hevereneartheheaven" - Sun Tzu ...and the hipsters go WILD!!!
I've been trying to get my team to watch this, there's so much in it to digest and use. Tactics are the stratagems we use with no cooldown or slot lock. You just equipped me with more tactics, thank you kindly for that. Subbed and looking forward to more. I feel way more prepared to fight bots than bugs at this rate, and prefer bots now when given the choice.
Best tips I have for solo play/playing with randoms at high difficulty are: Take eagle airstrike. It is the most versatile stratagem. Use it on fabricators when attacking outposts or bot drops when defending at a main objective. Its got 3 uses and its rearm cooldown is low even after you use them all. 80% of the time you can destroy a light or medium outpost by just chucking one at the fabricator without having to fire a single shot at the defenders. Grenades are great for clearing out groups of enemy infantry quickly, prevent bot drops from larger infantry groups by hitting as many as possible with a grenade and quickly cleaning out the rest with your primary before they can react. Don't fight when you don't have to. Scout armor is amazing for this reason, the passive decrease in detection radius, extra mobility, and ability to ping the map are in combination far better than more armor, the easiest way to avoid dying is to control which fights you actually take, being slow and not knowing where their patrols are coming from/what corridors are clear to maneuver through is going to get you killed more than random one-shots are, especially if you have the shield pack and health booster to insulate against them. Always be ready to disengage fights. Bots are slow, especially compared to scout armor. You can outrun them easily. Break line of sight and double back once they have split off the objective you are looking to attack. Shield pack, Breaker, and Railgun are still extremely effective against bots even after the nerfs. Sweep around and kill the small groups of infantry on the outskirts of main objectives before starting them, otherwise they will get caught in fights and you will have more bot drops than you can deal with. Orbital laser or 380s are good for clearing a main objective/heavy outpost before moving into it if you have 4 stratagem slots. Tell your squadmates what you plan to do and what they should do. People often listen even if they don't have a mic to respond, and even some very minimal guidance can make your squad much more effective. This goes double if you are running scout armor, call out incoming patrols and use waypoints to navigate your squad around them.
This is a wonderful video! Just makes sense from an in-world rp angle that as helldiver squads level up they employ more complex military tactics. My squad and I have learned some of things mentioned here through (deadly) experience but it is refreshing to see it all laid out and explained expertly. Keep it up, helldiver!
Good video, most of my friends already fight like this so there's not much I can take; however I do have something I can add that I've told them to do themselves. At 17:41, you mention that open ground has “no cover.” While that’s factually correct, I like to say that it's not true. You see, the game’s terrain is deformable, and there’s a cool little known real-life technique called “micro-cover.” When you lie prone on a flat surface, it you can see all sorts of bumps and irregularities. If you’ve called in an orbitals or thrown grenades during combat, you’ve created some of those deformations yourself, and if the crater is deep enough, it can serve as cover. Bots aren’t usually very accurate too so by going prone inside one, you can establish a small, fortified position and avoid getting instantly killed. It's really good for bounding from point A to point B. I’ve found that using micro-cover is only a bad idea when facing Hulks, Meatsaws, or Tanks. However, against Striders, Walkers, and Devastators, it’s a blessing; assuming they're not too close to you. Of course, you should know when to use this tactic and normally diving into an empty field will lead to your doom, but it helps. Also, for clarification on how deep a crater should be in game, if in first person prone, the crater everything slightly under the middle of the screen (so like 35-40% obscured), that's good enough. The deeper the better of course.
This is something that I’m surprised a lot of people haven’t clued into yet. The bots are basically fucked if you head glitch them and laying prone makes your hit box from the front the size of a basketball making anything but rockets miss you 90% of the time. as long as whatever is infront of me isn’t completely flat literally anything is usable cover for bots and so many people die not using it to their advantage
I find that if you go prone the bots just instantly headshot you more often. However if you go prone parallel to the enemy some of the bullets hit your body rather than just like homing on your head. For that reason I always die of to the side.
A lot them will say some shit like _"JuSt LeT mE hAvE mY fUn"_ bro there is no way you are having fun getting combo'd with rocket devastators in mid-air.
So this is my first time viewing a video from your channel, and I gotta say this kind of style is right up my alley. I like the dive into the wisdom from a great tactician and turning that into practical tools to apply to the game. The formatting was also clear, concise, and had an engaging flow between sections
This was really enjoyable and actually taught me something new I can readily apply next time I play. As you and many others have already said, there's a tonne of TH-camrs basically stating the bleeding obvious or even just making videos based on the in game training manual quotes. It's really nice to find a creator making useful and well produced content. Looking forward to the next video.
Thank you so much, I do really appreciate it and I'm glad you learned something. I was hoping to leave people with something more than just game knowledge after watching but still fully applying to the game.
An advantage when fighting bot unlike bugs is that YOU CAN OUTRUN THEM but extremely hard to OUTGUN THEM Meanwhile with bugs, YOU CAN OUTGUN THEM but quite hard to OUTRUN THEM
Enfilading fire effectiveness is why the Eagle Strafe is the most underrated strategem in the game. Only fodder can call in drops. Strafe wipes out all fodder in a patrol. No more bot drops.
@@Reginald-sc9tk It's the fastest Eagle strike, and does land faster than they launch flares (assuming you aren't seen). I usually follow it with a frag grenade or 2, just to be sure.
@Reginald-sc9tk Yes. The range is longer than you'd expect, too. You can start the run from pretty far away from the patrol. The tail of the run will catch them. If things go bad, you are far enough to disengage easily.
I'll add, it takes practice to know the AOE, both width and length. After a few days, you should be able to anticipate who it's going to hit. You can already know who's left to target. Bonus reason it's underrated: With practice, it's almost impossible to teamkill. It fires almost immediately. You can drop it at your feet, take two steps back, and be perfectly fine. Worst I've gotten is a little ragdoll once from trying to prove to a friend how close to the beam you can stand.
It's refreshing to see someone actually take the time to put together a well thought-out and carefully detailed guide to bot combat. Also I learned a new trick to use. The 'Diving throw' I saw at 20:12. Buddy of mine's calling it the 'Fast ball'
Amazing guide! Your basic explanation of tactics is hopefully very helpful to those who have not been taught before. This video will hopefully make my friends stop blind firing at everything and asking me why I’m crawling around bases!
I have not played a lot on difficulty 7 or higher, but I have enjoyed using the second version of the Marksman rifle that recently got a armour penetration increase, and the autocannon. Engaging enemies at 200+ meters with the accurate rifle and having the autocannon to destroy bot factories from afar and taking down bigger threaths. Using the lightest armour in the game and the radar range booster, its quite easy to cover a lot of ground and avoid unnecessary combat by just looking at the map every few seconds.
This was a great video. I hated fighting bots, but after watching your video, it literally transformed my game. Really appreciate it. As long as you do not engage them directly, or maybe just get jumped, it's actually fairly straightforward to not die. Big thanks!
FYI while the video format is ultrawide, on my ultrawide monitor it's both letterboxed *and* pillarboxed, due to being rendered with black borders on 16:9. I'd use the plugins that fix it by zooming in, but they started opening tabs with ads :( Great vid though! Thank you for this
Sorry about that, I've been trying to come up with solutions to the problem and will probably just buy a different monitor at this point for recording.
I already thought this channel was a bop when I saw you covering underutilized stratagems and weaponry, but this is on a whole other level! Wish I had seen this before the Automaton fleet made its most recent assault, but better late than never! Time to spread this video like the plague.
What a wonderful video. I feel like I understood how to fight bots on a mechanical level, but I never really understood the tactical implications until now. I'm gonna have to share this video with my friends. Thank you for sharing!
Great video! One thing I love is when I'm in a game with someone or a fire team that knows how to properly break contact. For instance, if you're in a 2-person element, troop A provides covering fire while troop B moves away from the enemy and to cover (covering fire can be small arms fire, grenades, or strategems that ether damage the enemy or conceal movement). Once in cover, troop B then provides covering fire while troop A bounds away from the enemy to separate cover. This process is repeated until: A. The enemy has disengaged B. The enemy has been defeated through attrition or C. The unit finds key terrain that puts them at a defensive advantage.
I'd argue that the backpack is a wasted slot and always was. With another orbital or eagle, you and your entire team could be knocking out enemies before you have to worry about eating a stray rocket from cover. A well placed Airburst will kill every Dev in a group every 67 seconds with the ship upgrade. A Clusterbomb will mop up any survivors that happened to get outside of the blast range. You can double up and throw both to clear out Devs and Grunts from small to mid sized encampments before they can even respond. Personally, in PUG situations, I often don't even bring a support weapon. For the most part people are focused on long cooldown anti-tank stuff. They get pinned down by all the Devs they can't kill quickly and that's when the call in spiral happens. Flanking tactics etc. are good. But most people do not give a flip about that. So in practical terms, covering your team's deficiencies is always going to be better than taking a prescribed loadout. Nothing makes me cringe like seeing 3 Shield packs, 3 500kgs and 3 "meta" support weapons. This is not an uncommon occurrence unfortunately. With the new armor changes, rockets aren't nearly so deadly. Certainly not as frequently. Shields should stay home. Most likely, you'll be able to pick one up off your teammate's corpse soon enough anyway.
I sorta agree, except on the support weapon part. Support weapons like the grenade launcher or stalwart are going to be mowing down trash constantly and more consistently than cluster bombs for example. I feel like if I'd be gimping myself too much I didn't bring one. But yeah, having two guys with Quasars and 500kgs, when one 500kg is pretty much enough, is a pain when running 8s or 9s. I've been seeing more randoms adapting their loadouts around their other teammates loadouts tho, which is nice ig
@@kokosik21 Yeah, my complaint is getting less relevant with time as people are more willing to change things up. But it's still pretty common that nobody brings anything to deal with trash. As to the clusters, I just find them incredibly valuable. I don't need LOS on targets in order to take them out with clusters. Servo + learning to estimate enemy distance from radar alone will take you very far. Though I am specifically talking about bots here and in my original post. If you're making stalwart work for you against bots that's great. I generally prefer to ambush them and then take out stragglers at a distance. If I bring a gun, it's either going to be AC or AMR.
I love this video. All the stuff I already try to keep in mind to minimize my deaths while making the most of my teammates' actions. If more devs/games took information like this into account, the industry and its communities would be so much smarter, complex, and better overall.
Excellent video. Very well organized. Very clean presentation. Time stamps are great. Much more useful than 99% of strategy guides. Superior tactics are gonna win out. Thanks, keep it up.
The old Laser cannon with the beam vs the Quasar? They don't really compare. The Laser cannon is good against infantry and some of the heavier enemies but the Quasar is more of an all purpose heavy and armor buster. The Quasar can get rid of fabricators, Hulks, Tanks, Turrets, Dropships, chargers, bile titans. The downside is the recharge between shots. The Laser cannon have no ammo and can fire long but you will be using it to fight ground troops up to medium armor. In summary, they fullfill vastly different roles.
Laser Cannon is very good if you can consistently hit weakspots. It'll burn down tanks and hulks really fast if you hold the beam on the heatsink. You can pop devastators quickly if you can hit them in the face or waist, but torso shots can burn them down eventually. If you don't mind not carrying frags, a stun grenade can do you wonders in taking out big targets.
Its very okay. On one hand, youre a triple laser threat (four, if you bring a rover buddy, and five if you have orbital laser), and you can melt most things in medium armor. You'll also be dealing consistent stream of damage On the other, youre not taking out any heavies any time soon. The TTK is also remarkably slow with the dagger and laser cannon. Things you can normally one shot with a quasar or EAT takes a few more seconds to die. All in all, its definitely possible to run the laser set, you probably just need to cover your bases with some anti-heavy stratagems
The laser cannon is very effective at gimping rocket devastators by shooting their rocket pods. I find that breaking as many rocket pods as I can while in a big fight can massively increase the teams survivability by reducing the amount of rockets flying around. After that you can start dispatching things at your leisure. It will kill all devastators heads very quickly if you can stay on target and completely melts raiders. Also try to release the trigger between acquiring your next target to give yourself a little more time before it begins to overheat. Another great use is it’s ability to providing sustained fire support to your teammates at range who might be caught alone with a patrol chasing them. So yeah it’s great when used properly. Also try pairing it with the guard dog (machine gun drone) and you can very easily take care of large groups on your own.
Good video! I had troubles with the art of war, and your direct relations to helldivers, terrain, and strategies is comprehensible while leaving lots of space for the imagination to fill in the gaps! Good job!
Honestly, I find bugs more challenging than bots, even after the nerfs to rockets. Bots you can just apply stealth. Bugs you have to weather the swarm.
Bugs are okay as long as you apply the engage and slow retreat concept. Engage and hit the big guys hard, then as you retreat you funnel all the small guys into line. I'm a flamethrower fan, and because it bypasses armour it does both of those things well.
I agreed with this! Your equipment also is more flexible with the bots. In general bugs have just more constant pressure applied to you and stuff like hunters and stalkers can push you into a doom spiral really damn fast. More so then hulks or devestators can imo
I feel like it’s two different kinds of challenges. With bots, the challenge comes mostly from their range, power, and armor. Their heaviest units are frighteningly difficult to deal with without the right tools, so heavy hitting weapons, and a lot of them, are a must. With bugs, the big guys are a nuisance, but on their own, are kinda pathetic and easily cheesed. They’re a distraction from the main show: the swarm. The tiniest bugs can bite off up to half your health bar if they get close, hunters slow you down enough for everything else can kill you, and bile spewers can one shot you if you aren’t careful. If your squad doesn’t have a way to keep the swarms at bay, you will know pain. So long as you do have something like a flamethrower, stalwart, MG, Arc thrower, grenade launcher, and/or AC in the mix, and the guys using them keep bugs off the Quasar, EAT, RR, and/or Spear users, bug missions can and will go smoothly. Though the numbers can still feel overwhelming at times.
Another banger of a video, Mr. Reginald! There’s something amusing to me about how in depth you can go for these kinds of tactics, but the advice itself is quite simple and easy to understand. Like, the enfilading fire section is basically, “line up your enemies to shoot them all easier”, which seems so easily understood and obvious, while at the same time making me think, “damn, that makes a lot of sense, why didn’t I think of that?” I think it’s a combination of the tactics themselves just being intuitive and your presentation being very clear and detailed. The visual aids and pictures definitely help as well, it makes the words make more sense for this poor illiterate Helldiver-in-training. Overall, a top-tier video, and I’m looking forward to your continuation! When the Illumina- I mean other… unholy, unknowable terrors seeking to extinguish the guiding beacon of liberty, democracy, and justice that is Super Earth rear their horrific heads, I’ll be eagerly awaiting for a guide from you, friend! Your quality and thoroughness are simply unmatched!
it pains me when i see my team trying desperately to hold a single, pointless rock in the middle of an open field because one guy tried to solo a patrol and now half the automaton army is dropping on their heads. this video needs more traction!
@@MrHocotateFreight if you think the bots suck to fight, I tell you that's a massive skill issue
Only reason people have a problem with bots is because unlike the bugs, they are not a pushover. They actually shoot back, and you actually have to think about how to engage them, and exercise some patience
You're more than entitled to feel the way you do, but as someone who prefers fighting bots over the termanids, I think you're full of guff
@@rambo-cambo3581he didn’t say it was a ridiculous challenge fighting the bots, he stated it’s a Pain when your teammates are just holding a single spot with No objective, only to try n fight off a Endless stream of black bloods, or even bugs. It’s a pointless, frustrating tactic too many HellDivers have to deal with, it either drains limited resources, waste time only making future waves harder as difficulty scales with time, or cost the team failure.
Stop calling everything a “Skill Issue” it just comes off as cringe when you literally try and shoehorn it into Everything 🤣
I'm not gonna lie, I'm absolutely guilty of doing this which is one reason why I thought to make this video. Pinned.
A lot of people wanna trade shots out in the open and don't realise you can skedaddle and fight from a better position
The thing that kills me is when I spawn one of them away from the flustercuck and they turn right back around and run into the meat grinder again.
When you're playing helldivers so much that your learning fucking military strategies. We salute you helldiver
Reminds me of some people who play 22:39 War Thunder a bit
Oops didn’t know I added a timestamp
For Democracy!
Screw strategy, stratagem your way out of every problem, all the strategy you need is where to throw that ⬆️➡️⬇️⬇️⬇️ don’t be a stratagizer, be a strategemizer, just blow things up and don’t think so hard about it.
TIL there is a real word for "Cross the T but on land".
"The sneaky guy, does not die" - sun tzu, the art of war
"Scout armor OP", Sun Tzu probably
This dude definitely gets it
❤
"O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible; and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands."
...yeah p much lol
“Stop making quotes I never said” - Sun Tzu, the Art of War
Bugs: Haha, gun go brrrrrrrrrrr and bug go splash.
Bots: We must learn the art of war to best counter them. always take cover, atack them when least expect it, cheese through the objectives with our strategems, and we must evitate the millions of rockets.
Bots: Glowing weak spots and carefully designed weaknesses to promote strategy and counterplay. Narrow cones of telegraphed vision and alert voice lines to encourage stealth, and few but specialized unit types making strategic snipers not just viable but often necessary.
Bugs: Bring a bigger gun and fire hoping the problem will go away. Any strategy you have goes out the window when the horde of bile titans are alerted by infinitely spawning invisible stalkers smelling you from across the map. Violates every rule in the Geneva convention because they're bugs and don't give a damn.
- and all of that is a good thing
@Reginald-sc9tk 100%. Both factions bring a different, not necessarily easier, playstyle to the game. The folks complaining about bots probably just got mowed down because they were trying to fight the bots the same way you fight the bugs, by staying on the move in wide open spaces
everybody gangsta until the hive guard calls in 3 titans and more hunters than you have bullets
Is it really cheese, though?
I think it’s really cool that Arrowhead has managed to create a silly horde shooter that’s also a tactical military extraction shooter
It's neither of those, it's just helldivers, it's a very simple game at it core, but they just made a coop shooter and the systems that go with it and let the players pick how they want to play.
@@fatrat92it's both of those things he said. Nothing about Helldivers is simple though, it has so many different complex layers to its missions with the stratagem system that I don't see how you could think that
@@fatrat92you literally said what he said with extra steps somehow disagreeing. Go to bed lmfao
@@uncleulysses2328 Yeah, thanks for reminding me, i should go to sleep.
@@fatrat92 ❤️
Holy shit, a Helldivers youtuber that isn't just reading reddit posts or making click bait videos of the same NEW META OP BROKEN weapon videos for the 10000 time. Good work, it seems like you actually understand the game beyond just it being a "horde shooter."
Ikr thank God, I've blocked more channels in the last 2 weeks than I do in a year from the amount of pop up channels that share obvious lore or useless information you get from standing around your ship for 30 seconds 😂 either clipboard lady or the guy waiting at the map are constantly spewing exposition, which I love but doesn't need a whole 1 minute short made about a 4 second line being presented as new info
Sorry it took so long to get to this comment. I am very happy to have provided a higher quality viewing experience. Personally it came out of the exact same frustration. As much as I make videos I also watch them like everyone else and I wanted someone to go deeper and give me more. I probably went overboard but at least it was fun. Can't wait to make the next one! Though after the warbond tomorrow ;)
@@Reginald-sc9tk No, no not at all, you did not go overboard, i really like this style, maybe you could make more in this style, maybe not all the time, but i really like the more in-depth takes on this game you have.
@fatrat600284 Thanks very much! I'll take your feedback to heart.
@@Reginald-sc9tk This wasn't overboard, you didn't take yourself too seriously or sound pretentions. Keep up the good work my dude
Happy to have cameo'd as a Pyromaniac taking the Flamethrower into Automatons haha. Very nice video!
You’re a real one for that. I often used the breaker incendiary before the recent buff, but you take it to the next level of badassery!
thank you for your patriotic service o7
Those clips had real aesthetics. I especially like the strider kills
You're insane. Lol
giga based
Whos the absolute madman thats running flamethrower on bots.
😂😂😂😂
Thats The Wile Spice. He's a buddy from our Darktide days and also has a TH-cam channel. He is thinking of doing a tutorial on them and the first step is F-ing around to find out as they say. Honestly I couldn't cut those clips, looked really cool.
@@Reginald-sc9tk he's incredible based for doing so, it was so cool.
I took flamethrower+shield by accident once because I thought we were fighting bugs lol it was not trash actually
@Reginald-sc9tk you have no idea how incredibly fun shield and smg is now that the shields been buffed. You can stand in front of those machine gun tanks and force them to turn around for your team to hit their backside. You're the frontliner. Also you can act as cover for your team by standing next to them as everyone runs. Just make sure you have the bots on your left side and you should block 90% of incoming shots.
(Oh my bad I see you made a video on it lol. But the buff makes it arguably better than the energy shield on bots now if you run smg.)
The fact that picking your battles is considered "cheese" by some is pure bug mission helldiver type shit lmao
I think its more just hucking stratagems into bases and leaving that is "cheese"
It's cheese to me when you remove the randomness factor, which in this game takes the form of any enemy alertion. Because base guards will always guard the same spots, so if you can solo-sneak inside a base and quietly complete the objective at the terminal you can do it one million more times and it will always be the same. Zero variation, zero unpredictability, and boredom rises.
@@Reginald-sc9tk I just hear "Valid military tactic" :D
@@Reginald-sc9tk We call that "a proportional response"
Reminds me if lethal mode in state of decay 2
The game can be obnoxiously easy but when you crank up the difficulty, THE most important skill is to learn when to run away
My favorite is when I ping a bot patrol on helldive to warn my team and they take it as a sign to shoot them.
This statement is extremely real.
that’s why i follow the lead of whoever decides to ping; if i see that you ping and are running past the patrol, i’ll follow. but if i hear the ping followed by shooting, best believe im engaging. i also make sure that if im pinging i run around the patrol as best as i can and hope the rest of the squad gets it
hey if they wanna bait the drop to let me go press objectives then I say more power to em
@@bryanzzz748 If I see the team make a terrible engage, I'm breaking LOS so I can reinforce them in a safe location 10 seconds later.
@@frumsmcnoodles323 Same. Call me a bad team player, but when an objective is done I'm gone regardless of how many bots and how many divers are brawling. They keep the bots distracted, I go off and do something that needs doing. I can't tell you how many times I've zipped away from an engagement mid-fight using the jump pack and scout armor.
so many of the people i play with complain that i "run away" when we get dropped on. tactically retreating and flanking/enveloping from behind left/right of the group are always the best options no matter what firefight you get into. i was infantry in the USMC, and you explained all of this all beautifully.
Had a great time solo last night heavily leaning on the "prepare to run away" strat. Lured plenty of heavy armor to the rocket turret i left on the hill where I had come in; made it very easy to trail everything I needed straight to it then turn and go right back!
Kiting is something lots of people who play games like this intuitively learn, I can see why some folks drop into this game and expect it to turn out like that ‘man on the hill with the big machine gun fending off hordes’, but coming from deep rock that playstyle simply isn’t viable. We need vids like these so these folks can at least understand what it’s we are trying to do.
Thank you so much for the compliment on my explanations. I am hoping to talk about flanking/enveloping and other manuevers in the next one. Might be a bit though, these take a lot of time. I hope other players see this video and stop giving you a hard time on "running away" because taking bad fights is just dying for no reason.
Honestly it's like people forget that we get no rewards for killing. That patrol will despawn, the enemies will drop aggro if you drop site to them, and only like 2 unit types can keep up with a 'Diver in medium armor.
If things get hairy, we should just leave. If we absolutely need to pick up something in the area (like samples or a SSSD) we can always come back.
@@leadpaintchips9461 counterpoint, the reward is fun. however yea it just gets too much eventually
I like how the Sun Tzu quote about water is just "Don't be stubborn and don't attack a stronger enemy, doofus" 11:20
I mean, yea pretty much. Though I would say that specific quote is more about "stop being dumb and just throwing dudes at the problem and actually look at what your enemy is doing"
@@Reginald-sc9tk Russia in WW2: "So, anyway..."
It's the most important lesson for Helldivers. Most of the heavy losses I see are because people got pinned in a fight and didn't realize disengaging is an option AND the primary way to create a different tactical scenario.
@@synapse0 I had a scenario recently playing with my friends where we tried to clear a stratagem jammer and we lost most of our reinforces, but the moment we spread out to complete the rest of the objectives, it was smooth sailing. It's the ability to recognize a lost battle, and to move on that is so difficult
TBF that's most of his writing, "Don't be stubborn! Pride doesn't win wars.".
I was reminded of my favorite quote the other day when my friends and I were holding a position against a bot drop and I was taking the anti-armor role with EAT-17s, but our positioning was poor and my friend kept getting hit by the exhaust from my rocket launchers.
"Watch the backblast, idiot" - Sun Tzu
Remember you need at least 8 feet of space and an open door to fire an EAT-17 indoors! - Sun Tzu
My friends constantly dying to back blast is the exact reason I've just been taking the railgun. Still takes out the heavies which is what they want me for since I'm the one that can hit the heads best out of our group. Now they don't die to back blast but the one time my friend ran in front of me right as I was firing and the others were like "Don't step in front of the barrel moron!"
Boy you guys really have your teammates up your ass. Never once had a problem with backblast in HD2. If they're that close you're blocking each others' lines of fire anyway and creating sweet explosives opportunities for the enemy
Can we just take a moment to appreciate that they actually programmed back blast as well.
First helldivers video I've watched that genuinely helps with strategy without just saying "use this gun or armor". And this is saying a lot because I've seen tons of vids on this topic.
I'm very glad to contribute to breaking that chain.
I haven't heard about enfilading fire in 20 years... Thank you for bring that gem back up from my machine gunning days.
My pleasure. In fact if you keep an eye out in a few examples I use for footage one of my friends found an MG on the ground and was using it. Very satisfying.
@@Reginald-sc9tk Cant wait to start playing HMG Emplacement ambush attack to automatons.
Same
Heavy weapons win battles
@@Grafvollundr well, artillery is the queen of battle :)
@@binnieb173nice try cupcake. Infantry is always the queen. Artillery will always remain the king and save the queen when she bites off more than she can chew.
I also recommend ADP 3-90 Offense and Defense, the Ranger Handbook, and Scout Platoon for inspiration. Subjects to cover: raid, attack, battle drills, characteristics of the offense, principles of patrolling, and fundamentals of reconnaissance. Lmk if you’d like to discuss them in detail, I’d be happy to chat over discord.
Hey! Thanks so much. You're actually the first person to give me a super thanks of any kind and I really appreciate it. I'm not exactly doing this for money but the revenue does help in various ways so you have my gratitude. You're absolutely welcome to join my discord and I'd love to chat with you on the proposed subjects. I think its an under-explored area in games and is just a personal interest of mine. discord.gg/uhBBU552
Enfilading fire but able to be understood in 1 minute, already can tell this is gonna be a good one
This is a high compliment for my work, thank you
Love it when a teammate positions himself in an open area and starts taking out a shield rocket boi, ignoring the regural bots and having 4 ships summoned onto him as a result
Is this the famed self-deleting ground?
This is amazing. I love the incorporation of real military strategy. I'm a USMC Infantry vet and I think you did a solid job handling infantry doctrine. Good work!
I take this as high praise, thank you very much!
@@Reginald-sc9tk I haven't heard "L shaped ambush" or "enfilading fire" in years, and it was soothing to my soul. I think it speaks to both the quality of this game and the quality of your channel that the tactics can be applied so well to Helldivers. I hope your channel grows! I already shared the video with all my diving buddies on Discord.
Oorah. 3/7 wpns company here
@@tacticalpause3767 Rah, devil.
3/9 Lima Company, Designated Marksman.
SFMF 3/8 Lima here
0:45 never been so excited to take an MCI class in my life. subscribed
Thanks!
@@Reginald-sc9tkI had a flashback as soon as I saw the book! Instant sub.
You've pretty much hit the nail on the head here. I've been running a Defensive Trench doctrine whenever I've played for the past month now (digging cover with explosives to augment my teams power), and I fully agree with every point you've raised about terrain. I'm surprised less people like bots, it makes for such a cool tactical theater.
Bots are just irritating for a new or casual player. Most weapons do not damage them, and most of the objectives are very finicky. Bugs you can be effective with a diverse range of tools and strategies and are not forced into a narrow range of options
A lot of times in games when it’s advertised that you need to change up your tactics or build based on what you’re facing it’s pretty much just fluff and there’s still an objectively best way to play every time. Arrowhead has aggressively made sure that that’s not the case and you do need to change up your tactics and build based on what you’re facing and even what mission type. A lot of people aren’t used to that but I find it wonderful when you learn to accept it as it makes your whole arsenal feel more worth having.
YOU CAN DIG HOLES?
@@ghoulbuster1 Im seconding this comment! I imagine either an explosive stratagem, grenade, support weapon, I don't know. But please, what are you doing specifically to be running TACTICAL TRENCH WARFARE???? I NEED ANSWERS!!
@@orionstokesweiss2344 Every primary that I've used can drop infantry and devastators. Only a couple can drop walkers head on (you can still flank) and their heavy armor.
I've had more success with a wider variety of weapons against bots then bugs. Horde clear can still work against bots (as you can see with the flamethrower in the video) and they have more spots that you can just shoot to kill with light armor penetrating weapons.
You captured my full attention when you started quoting the US Military Manual. This was probably the most entertaining and informative video I've watched about Helldivers.
Also I now want an in game title called "Heaven-born Captain".
Very glad I did! I wanted to add some depth to the conversation.
I'm a noob with less than 10 hours in the game, but it's satisfying to see my intuitions about fighting the automatons being validated. Bugs feel like a horde shooter, and automatons feel much more guerilla and tactical. It's a fantastic paring of play flavors, honestly, and I very much understand why people either gravitate towards one or the other. They feel *very* distinct.
It’s funny, I’ve never heard of enfilade before this, but that’s the strategy I generally always use against bots because it just naturally puts me out of focus for the bots and where I can more easily hit their weak spots. Props to this game to encouraging actual, real world military strategy.
This first point about flanking is massive for people who struggle with bots, the way I simplify it in my head is I ideally want to flank the bots and bottle neck the bugs
Thats very much right
Light armor with the Scout (aka stealth) passive is great for hit and run tactics. The enemy won't notice you from afar and you can sneak quite close so you can have the drop on them then sprint away, break line of sight and disappear until the spot calms down. The map ping passive is great for scouting ahead and see enemy positions before even getting there. Perfect for guerilla warfare with stuff like the Quasar and Autocannon that can pop fabricators and heavy enemies.
Heavy and Medium armors are great when you will go toe to toe with the bots with the intention of wreckingball through them!
In fact, when we play harder difficulties, we have a healthy mix of armor types and stratagems with us. 2 or 3 player equipped to deal with threats face to face. 1 or 2 player equipped for blitzing around, flanking, ambushing, sneak completing objectives and looting. A great deal of objectives can be completed mostly silently by a helldiver or two while the rest raises hell elsewhere. If the enemy called in reinforcement at the loud team, the sneaky team won't need to worry about them cause its on cooldown.
Orbital Laser is my favorite fire and forget weapon against automatons. Sneak in, toss it into the enemy base / objective, let it wreck havoc then kick down the doors and finish the stragglers!
Ghostdiver all day. "Aggresive stealth" playstyle is so underrated
I'm a solo and this is exactly how I like to play
Isn't this the meta?
@@sirrealism7300 Not sure. Its just a versatile playstyle which you can further toy with depending on the weapons and Stratagems of your choices. Nothing is set in stone.
unlocked orbital laser last night, took it for a spin on some smaller targets early in the mission, slowly get in the shit, realize orbital laser only has 3 uses, *skull*
One thing I'll say is if your comfortable playing without the backpack shield generator consider bringing the shield dome. Very nice to use in a team
Doesn't last long, and 9/10 on higher difficulties you need to move constantly, you really shouldn't be standing anywhere that long that isn't an objective
And ngl when I'm attacked on difficulty 9 at an objective, the most efficient thing is to leave and drag the aggro elsewhere
And the bots and bugs on higher difficulties swarm you easily, no bubble shield is going to save you from that CQB. Once they're in there bubble is useless.
@@rambo-cambo3581 it's for bots for sure. I suppose un the last difficultiescitz not as good, it always helped us on extractions and siege positions
Actually, a lot of enemies will aggro your shield generator before you, so you can use it as bait and drop a 500kg on it to kill the entire bunch
@@rambo-cambo3581shield is great even on higher difficulties (8-9) it makes it 10x easier to run across a small bit of open terrain and retreat and also tends to save a lot of stims
Can work well as an opener on kill bot missions since movement is pretty restricted anyway, and can allow the powerhouse that is the heavy machine gun turret to do its thing. You can often get through half of the kill quota in the first few minutes.
The short cooldown can also give you a bit of respite when you really need it.
“I love attacking my enemy where he is…”
*checks notes*
“Unpraired?”
Absolutely great guide though, this was so fascinating, I cannot wait for the next one
Yep saw that too 19:39
cursed typos. Or whatever my hands were doing at the time.
@@Reginald-sc9tk ita alright not every HellDiver is given the privilege of Managed Grammacracy
Very nice video good sir, it really changes on those "ULTIMATE LOADOUT" videos around there.
Thank you! That's precisely what I was hoping to achieve
As an experienced bot player who hard carries randoms; this video is excellent. The tactics here will really get you places. The emphasis on ambushes is great. The loadout is pretty much the same as what I use with exception of armor. You will benefit greatly from light armor, but only after you learn to survive. The scorcher primary can be really good if you have a team ripe with sickles, but if not the sickle is the best all arounder. Stealth and knowing when to engage/retreat are key. I'd also highly suggest dropping the super samples near extract. Even S-tier players die and can't recover gear sometimes. It's ok; just get your main objective done and continue to spread freedom, peace, prosperity and extreme managed democracy throughout the galaxy
The tips you've added here are excellent. I'm especially fond of "you will benefit greatly from light armor, but only after you learn to survive." I think that's pretty much what I was getting at and said more concisely.
legit just learned last night you can drop off samples; this makes late game so much less stressful hoping your rando squad doesn't leave you for dead. With some proper planning, now they can afford to!
I think it's wonderful that the bots and bugs require such different tactics, bots: method over sheer power. Bugs: sheer power over method. I love the difference in how the engagements are handled and arrowhead knocked it out of the park
Thanks for the shout out mate! I appreciate it.
Absolutely, and thank you for your solid and concise tutorial that was easy to follow and had lots of very solid tips. I am glad it seems to have performed very well.
This game is going to make us into military academists without even hitting our 30’s
Advice I want to give from trying out heavy armor last night is to be very aware you are going to be slower than the rest of the team. If they are randoms, they will leave you behind/ you’ll get caught by a patrol your squad sneaks by cause you can’t keep up. Move proactively and first. Avoid being the rearguard.
Yeah I like to take the ballistic shield and draw devastator fire so the team can take them out easier, but it's tough to get in front in the first place with the heavy armor if I'm not leading the way to the fight.
Heavy armor and a sniper and become the teams head popper and elite eliminator.
Taking the jump pack can help mitigate this
imo heavy armor should probably be across the board for assault action except for your machinegunner. the guy who's gonna be taking a good position needs mobility, so infiltrator or trailblazer.
violence of action should suffice for sheer protection, and ideally the guy with the light armor has an e-shield to absorb incidental hits without needing to interrupt for healing.
i think the pointdiver might wanna consider the ballistic shield? but its not an excuse to take fire tbh, more to make sure you can tackle a position w/ more confidence.
Being the rearguard is sometimes fun though, though it helps to take a completely separate route as well (partially because you got split up by a patrol but still)
I've been doing this out of habit since my days on Battlefield 4 yet never realised they were actual military stuff.
Helldivers 2 brought me back to the boots on the ground experience that I had kind of forgot about for the past 4 or 5 years.
I've heard similar things from various people. Codification of instinct often allows higher efficiency.
This is so, so much better than just some guy telling you what equipment to use where. Even having adjusted to bots a bit more, helps a lot to have some of these ideas and strategies put into words in addition to expanding on them a little, great work on the video!
I absolutely love that this game is sophisticated enough to benefit from real world combat strategy. I'm gonna send this to my squad so we can start practicing tactics
Me too! It's super fun and just adds to the fun of playing it.
As a Certified Creek Crawler I cannot give this better praise. I frequently drop on pug games and as just one man do more damage in the same amount of time then it takes 3 pugs going hog wild, as they are attracting all the heat while I'm methodically picking apart base after base after POI 90% of the time hitting them without them knowing I was there.
Pick your fights and don't fuss over the chaff is what I try to tell anyone I'm teaching to deal with Bots. if it isn't sitting on an objective it can more often then not be ignored. and if it can't be that's when you lay the hammer down. and as you preached in the video. pick off the weak boys first then mop up the fat boys who can't scream.
You are the biggest blessing to the HD2 community that I am aware of
The concept of enfilading fire is very important for the use of the new HMG. People complain that it doesn't have enough ammo, which is arguably true, but one 75 round magazine is easily all you need to devastate huge groups of bots so long as you are positioned to rake the column with enfilading fire. I've gotten over 20 kills with one mag just sweeping it over a group of clumped soldier bots, very satisfying.
How does it compare in this role to the MG43? I'm sure it's the appropriate way to use the HMG but I'm just curious. I've only heard negative things so far and haven't used it much.
@@Reginald-sc9tk I find that the mg43 requires much more aiming at specific targets and jumping between, while HMG is more of a bullet laser beam that you can drag over weaker enemies and kill them with very little thought as you transition between enemies that have heavier armor. The best reason to bring HMG is because of its vastly greater armor penetration, it can engage a wider range of targets and dispatch them faster, even including the hulk, as it can penetrate the faceplate. HMG is still hard to recommend due to how unwieldy it is, but between the two weapons I personally prefer HMG over MG43 for bots quite easily.
@@Chimerathon ok cool, I will give it a shot one of these times.
@@Reginald-sc9tkI’d say the HMG is a compromise between dedicated AI and dedicated AT. MG-43 takes about as much time to dispatch infantry as HMG, but is far more wieldy, has way better recoil control and has more ammo. Proper AT does a far better job at taking out heavies. But HMG is better than nothing when you planned to do anti-infantry and suddenly bump into a Hulk.
@@Reginald-sc9tk The MG43 can't take out the devastators easily. There is a video somewhere explaining that it deals 50% damage to medium armor whereas the MG206 does 100% damage. So in patrols with mostly troopers the MG43 is better because of the increase in ammo but the MG206 is better for patrols with more medium armored enemies. The sights are not aligned correctly though and the reticle is far off from where the bullet traces are going when firing more than one round at a time. Just go into a mission or two and get used to where the tracers are going. I find if you ignore the dot and look squarely in the center of the sight ring you will hit your mark more often than not if you can compensate for the recoil.
There’s something that just hits different when you enter a lobby with randoms that are willing to strategize. The amount of insane plays you can pull off like baiting entire hoards of enemies to chase one or two people, or funneling them into a choke point with fire/gas from behind while your allies fuck em up from the front.
Its very fun, and kinda why I made this video. Bots allow you to choose to play a deeper game if you want.
It’s so crazy how fighting the robots has slowly shaped my thinking into modern war tactics.
A lot of the stuff you are teaching I’ve already figured out because of helldivers.
Military tactics, history, and practical knowledge to use in the field. If this was out and available for all Helldivers during the first week, Melevolon Creek might have been overtaken then!
Excellent video - made me think about my own tactics in my games (only for other teammates to throw a wrench into the plans by blowing my position or pulling aggro when we are at a disadvantageous position...)
Thanks so much! I wish I had had the idea for this sooner but at least it's out for the final push on phase 4 of the major order against filthy bot scum.
My hope is that if this guide gains a bit of traction we will see a bit more of random players playing sharply. Personally I've seen some great and some not so great randoms. Also we still gotta get that game in! I've been heads down this week but I'll ping you this weekend.
Its rare to find a guide that teaches tactics and strategies instead of tips and tricks
Well done
Edit: Been applying the things I learnt here and found great success, its actually fun for a Bug Squasher like me to fight bots now 🤣
I'm glad I got to your post after your edit. Thanks so much for letting me know this guide helped you have more fun, that was exactly why I made it.
I have another pro tip for you fellas. If you want to do good, find what you like and are comfortable with. I’m most comfortable with the standard issue armor because it looks cool. I often do better when I wear this armor because I like it. If you like something weird in this game or something that isn’t inherently useful, rock it. It’s amazing how much of this game is mental over skill.
As someone who likes making video games I have been taking SO many notes from Arrowhead. The amount of tools at your disposal and how weirdly effective a large combination of them are is definitely keeping the playerbase fresh and happy
Jetpack+Grenade Launcher ❤️🔥
I was struggling with light armor because my friends were all using it to get around quicker so I used it to keep up. Came to realize that whenever we get into a gunfight that we can't easily back out of I'm usually trying to draw the aggro. Once I made the switch to heavy armor and the deployable shield my gameplay became so much better.
@@TheJestersDoor thats a battlefront 2 player right there
This one has been super fun. Like trivia+advice+thoughts is a good mix.
Thank you very much!
Hearing about Sun Tzu in relation to Helldivers was both unexpected and very pleasant, given I’ve read the Art of War myself and try to use my understanding of it while playing
I'm glad to hear you enjoyed that section and that you've also tried to apply it. I think its a remarkably fun exercise.
The radar armour is a godsend for patrols. Ping the entire area to measure a patrol
Helps find stashes, too. Ping a random area. Static enemies? They are guarding something. And usually they do not guard worthless stuff.
I have the Nuclear Radar ship upgrade and I often bring the UAV booster when I can afford to. Let me tell you dude, I can see everything and avoid it before it becomes a problem. Stealth has never been so easy.
This is the most helpful, practical, no-nonsense guide I've seen for this game. I've subscribed, and I hope to see more!
Thanks very much! I look forwards to more as soon as I am able.
If you're having trouble imagining enfilading fire it's the eagle strafing run. Literally a straight line of death from you to the enemy. Defilading fire would be the airstrike with a line of bombs going across your vision. Combining these two strats correctly is the ideal situation for an ambush.
Absolutely adored the format and content of the video. You're doing liberty's work out here, soldier.
I actually learned about enfilading fire before I knew what it was called. I learned this playing gears of war 2, where cover is the most important resource. It is especially effective when you have a weapon that can provide sustained fire or damage multiple opponents at once.
Same here. Most of my flanking instincts were honed to a razors edge playing Gears of War & is now coming in very handy in another 3rd person shooter like Helldivers 2.
Finally a vid that teaches small unit tactics to those who don’t get how to fight against the bots! As much as I love fighting the bugs, the bots really are a thinking Divers’ game where the proper use of stealth, teamwork, and maneuvering can really make the game much more fun. I hope more Divers watch your vid so they get what I mean when I tell them to fall back or flank the bots. Great vid!
As someone who’s in the military it’s really cool seeing everyone learn small squad tactics
Great video. Having read and practiced these manuals, you did a great job summarizing the contents and ideas and providing practical examples. To reinforce your point, even with playing with randoms, have a mic even if nobody else is talking. You can save your entire squad with a quick "contact right/left/forward/rear/etc" if they're about to get ambushed or walk into a large group unknowingly.
Thank you! I appreciate receiving feedback on my explanations since I'm doing them with limited personal experience.
I agree, randoms can be coordinated with in a number of ways. It can be huge to do so.
I try to flee when I realize that I'm not fighting for anything. The more you flee when you realize you're not achieving anything, the more you become used to thinking like that- disengaging and re-engaging when it suits you to do so.
Unless you get pinned behind a single piece of cover, being flanked by rocket and heavy devastators, with your team trying to open a friendship door a klick away. At that point you might as well throw out whatever stratagems you have and think of England.
Probably the best Helldivers vid I've seen yet. I use a lot of these strats to go off and solo objectives when playing with my friends (They tend to go off and start huge fire fights, but since I always run off to the other side of the map, that just means less heat on me. Lets me focus on hit and running bases, grabbing samples, completing objs etc while they have fun ripping and tearing away).
Its honestly not a bad way to play. Decoy and destroy.
My philosophy on bots is the little ones go first. Not just the bot drops but i always seem to die to a c3po with a rocket every times from no where
My go-to load out for bots is medium fortified armor, defender smg and senator, incendiary grenade ballistic shield, AMR, eagle rocket pods, and usually Gatling barrage if the 4th slot is open.
The AMR can 2 shot hulks if you shoot them in the head, which can be tricky up close, but at a distance is incredibly easy.
The ballistic shield has been buffed recently, and a number of the bugs with it have been fixed. If you hold it, it pretty much makes you completely invulnerable to any shots fired from a general direction, and can prevent you from dying to rockets. Furthermore, when you un equip it, it goes on your back, where it protects your back and head from headshots from the rear.
incendiary grenades can create temporary zones, that if used correctly, can deal MASSIVE damage to a tightly packed patrol in a choke point, or can be used to time enemies into easy kill zones.
Eagle rocket pods aren’t great against small things, but they one shot tanks, turrets, and fabricators.
Orbital Gatling barrage has an incredibly short cooldown, and kills every light enemy is a fairly decent radius. Great for getting the jump on patrols and taking out striders.
Guerilla warfare is also technically viable in Helldivers. Units spawned by bot drops (and bug breaches) despawn if you get far enough away from them, so you can soften up the outer defenses of a fabricator base (picking off things like the HMG infantry, walker pilots, or rocket devastators) and just leave once a bot drop is called to complete other objectives (which will be easier with bot drops on cooldown)
Then you just circle back later to actually finish the job.
Quite so!
As soon as you referenced FM 7-8 I instantly subscribed. I'm an army veteran, recently downloaded helldivers last month. Can't tell you how many times field manuals have been drilled into our heads. That's always great stuff and glad to see it being used here!
Another thing you may want to look at is IMT (individual movement techniques)
Specifically the 3-5 second rush and team bounding.
3-5 second rush is going from sprinting to prone essentially in 3-5 seconds.
Team bounding is essentially the same thing but as a fire team. Each time a helldiver is in the prone lay down suppressing fire in your sector across the target area. Great way for covering ground
Looking forward to watching more vids! Keep it up!
PS: the 3-5 second rush should take about the amount of time it takes to say "I'm up, he sees me, I'm down"
This kinda thing could be very fun to do into bots with an MG team. One interesting part of HD2 is suppression mechanics.
@Reginald-sc9tk definitely!
The expendable rockets or autocannons are great for triggering ambushes if your other squad members are set up on a L or line ambush. Never use delayed explosives like the grenade launcher or delayed weapons it'll most likely trigger the ambush before needed and it's real world tactic.
19.1 subscribers and the quality of a million. Subscribed, and I will definitely be watching the other tutorials!
Thanks so much for your kind words.
19:37 - All warfare is based. - Sun Tzu
Based. - Sun Tzu
"Heaven and Earth and Earth and Heaven, and when 'one' knows Heaven Earth Heaven - earTH HHeaven Heavearth eareven hevereneartheheaven" - Sun Tzu
...and the hipsters go WILD!!!
I've been trying to get my team to watch this, there's so much in it to digest and use. Tactics are the stratagems we use with no cooldown or slot lock. You just equipped me with more tactics, thank you kindly for that. Subbed and looking forward to more. I feel way more prepared to fight bots than bugs at this rate, and prefer bots now when given the choice.
I hope to have something for bugs eventually
Best tips I have for solo play/playing with randoms at high difficulty are:
Take eagle airstrike. It is the most versatile stratagem. Use it on fabricators when attacking outposts or bot drops when defending at a main objective. Its got 3 uses and its rearm cooldown is low even after you use them all. 80% of the time you can destroy a light or medium outpost by just chucking one at the fabricator without having to fire a single shot at the defenders.
Grenades are great for clearing out groups of enemy infantry quickly, prevent bot drops from larger infantry groups by hitting as many as possible with a grenade and quickly cleaning out the rest with your primary before they can react.
Don't fight when you don't have to. Scout armor is amazing for this reason, the passive decrease in detection radius, extra mobility, and ability to ping the map are in combination far better than more armor, the easiest way to avoid dying is to control which fights you actually take, being slow and not knowing where their patrols are coming from/what corridors are clear to maneuver through is going to get you killed more than random one-shots are, especially if you have the shield pack and health booster to insulate against them.
Always be ready to disengage fights. Bots are slow, especially compared to scout armor. You can outrun them easily. Break line of sight and double back once they have split off the objective you are looking to attack.
Shield pack, Breaker, and Railgun are still extremely effective against bots even after the nerfs.
Sweep around and kill the small groups of infantry on the outskirts of main objectives before starting them, otherwise they will get caught in fights and you will have more bot drops than you can deal with.
Orbital laser or 380s are good for clearing a main objective/heavy outpost before moving into it if you have 4 stratagem slots.
Tell your squadmates what you plan to do and what they should do. People often listen even if they don't have a mic to respond, and even some very minimal guidance can make your squad much more effective. This goes double if you are running scout armor, call out incoming patrols and use waypoints to navigate your squad around them.
This is a wonderful video! Just makes sense from an in-world rp angle that as helldiver squads level up they employ more complex military tactics. My squad and I have learned some of things mentioned here through (deadly) experience but it is refreshing to see it all laid out and explained expertly. Keep it up, helldiver!
If my squad starts a prolonged engagement against bots. They have become the distraction for me to disengage and sneak to where I need to be
Damn right
Having two serve as distraction while the others smash bases can work really well
This was a million times better than I expected! Educational, entertaining, and well structured! You have truly gone beyond.
Thanks so very much!
Good video, most of my friends already fight like this so there's not much I can take; however I do have something I can add that I've told them to do themselves.
At 17:41, you mention that open ground has “no cover.” While that’s factually correct, I like to say that it's not true. You see, the game’s terrain is deformable, and there’s a cool little known real-life technique called “micro-cover.” When you lie prone on a flat surface, it you can see all sorts of bumps and irregularities. If you’ve called in an orbitals or thrown grenades during combat, you’ve created some of those deformations yourself, and if the crater is deep enough, it can serve as cover. Bots aren’t usually very accurate too so by going prone inside one, you can establish a small, fortified position and avoid getting instantly killed. It's really good for bounding from point A to point B. I’ve found that using micro-cover is only a bad idea when facing Hulks, Meatsaws, or Tanks. However, against Striders, Walkers, and Devastators, it’s a blessing; assuming they're not too close to you. Of course, you should know when to use this tactic and normally diving into an empty field will lead to your doom, but it helps.
Also, for clarification on how deep a crater should be in game, if in first person prone, the crater everything slightly under the middle of the screen (so like 35-40% obscured), that's good enough. The deeper the better of course.
This is something that I’m surprised a lot of people haven’t clued into yet. The bots are basically fucked if you head glitch them and laying prone makes your hit box from the front the size of a basketball making anything but rockets miss you 90% of the time. as long as whatever is infront of me isn’t completely flat literally anything is usable cover for bots and so many people die not using it to their advantage
I find that if you go prone the bots just instantly headshot you more often. However if you go prone parallel to the enemy some of the bullets hit your body rather than just like homing on your head. For that reason I always die of to the side.
I love listening to this kind of stuff like a podcast while working. Good info.
As a big long podcast listener myself I take this as a high compliment. Thanks
Automatons are so much more easier if you go for stealth.
But my trigger-happy teammates think otherwise
A lot them will say some shit like _"JuSt LeT mE hAvE mY fUn"_ bro there is no way you are having fun getting combo'd with rocket devastators in mid-air.
They obviously are having fun if they keep doing it @@kylestanley7843
So this is my first time viewing a video from your channel, and I gotta say this kind of style is right up my alley. I like the dive into the wisdom from a great tactician and turning that into practical tools to apply to the game. The formatting was also clear, concise, and had an engaging flow between sections
Thanks very much! I'm still catching up on comments so I apologize for the late reply but I appreciate your feedback very much.
"Watch out for those (wrist) rockets!"
Just like in the simulations!
This was really enjoyable and actually taught me something new I can readily apply next time I play. As you and many others have already said, there's a tonne of TH-camrs basically stating the bleeding obvious or even just making videos based on the in game training manual quotes. It's really nice to find a creator making useful and well produced content. Looking forward to the next video.
Thank you so much, I do really appreciate it and I'm glad you learned something. I was hoping to leave people with something more than just game knowledge after watching but still fully applying to the game.
An advantage when fighting bot unlike bugs is that YOU CAN OUTRUN THEM but extremely hard to OUTGUN THEM
Meanwhile with bugs, YOU CAN OUTGUN THEM but quite hard to OUTRUN THEM
Amazing video.
I'm all about applied tactics, I love Sun Tzu.
Your explanation of infantry doctrine and ingame use are just soooooo good.
10/10
Enfilading fire effectiveness is why the Eagle Strafe is the most underrated strategem in the game. Only fodder can call in drops. Strafe wipes out all fodder in a patrol. No more bot drops.
Does it strike before the bots can launch flares? Because red beams make angry bots generally.
@@Reginald-sc9tkime eagle's go off before flares do, pairs well with getting their attention and picking a few off while keeping them still
@@Reginald-sc9tk It's the fastest Eagle strike, and does land faster than they launch flares (assuming you aren't seen). I usually follow it with a frag grenade or 2, just to be sure.
@Reginald-sc9tk Yes. The range is longer than you'd expect, too. You can start the run from pretty far away from the patrol. The tail of the run will catch them. If things go bad, you are far enough to disengage easily.
I'll add, it takes practice to know the AOE, both width and length. After a few days, you should be able to anticipate who it's going to hit. You can already know who's left to target.
Bonus reason it's underrated: With practice, it's almost impossible to teamkill. It fires almost immediately. You can drop it at your feet, take two steps back, and be perfectly fine. Worst I've gotten is a little ragdoll once from trying to prove to a friend how close to the beam you can stand.
It's refreshing to see someone actually take the time to put together a well thought-out and carefully detailed guide to bot combat.
Also I learned a new trick to use. The 'Diving throw' I saw at 20:12. Buddy of mine's calling it the 'Fast ball'
Heck yeah. Giving that dive throw a simple name is a smart idea.
It goes to show. When shooting bots. I focus on turning every rocket bot into molten slag, shouting "GO BURN OUT YOUR FUSE SOMEHWERE ELSE ROCKET MAN!"
The real question is can you shoot Rockets out of the air and if not why not
@@Reginald-sc9tk it wouldn't surprise me if it's actually technically possible, it's just way too hard in practice due to their size and speed.
Amazing guide! Your basic explanation of tactics is hopefully very helpful to those who have not been taught before. This video will hopefully make my friends stop blind firing at everything and asking me why I’m crawling around bases!
I hope so too! I intend to talk guerrilla tactics soon.
I have not played a lot on difficulty 7 or higher, but I have enjoyed using the second version of the Marksman rifle that recently got a armour penetration increase, and the autocannon.
Engaging enemies at 200+ meters with the accurate rifle and having the autocannon to destroy bot factories from afar and taking down bigger threaths.
Using the lightest armour in the game and the radar range booster, its quite easy to cover a lot of ground and avoid unnecessary combat by just looking at the map every few seconds.
This was a great video. I hated fighting bots, but after watching your video, it literally transformed my game. Really appreciate it. As long as you do not engage them directly, or maybe just get jumped, it's actually fairly straightforward to not die. Big thanks!
Glad it helped!
this is some next level tism but i actually respect the thought and work you put into this even if its a complete nerd out
Not going to lie this was one of the most fun videos to make that I've done. Glad you liked it.
FYI while the video format is ultrawide, on my ultrawide monitor it's both letterboxed *and* pillarboxed, due to being rendered with black borders on 16:9. I'd use the plugins that fix it by zooming in, but they started opening tabs with ads :(
Great vid though! Thank you for this
Sorry about that, I've been trying to come up with solutions to the problem and will probably just buy a different monitor at this point for recording.
@@Reginald-sc9tk you can just upload the videos at ultrawide ratio, youtube will do the rest
I already thought this channel was a bop when I saw you covering underutilized stratagems and weaponry, but this is on a whole other level! Wish I had seen this before the Automaton fleet made its most recent assault, but better late than never! Time to spread this video like the plague.
With any fortune it will inspire others to create their own more sophisticated approaches so we may drive the automaton out of the galaxy once more
0:02 SunZue said that! And I bet he knows a little bit more about winning than you do pal because he invented it!
What a wonderful video. I feel like I understood how to fight bots on a mechanical level, but I never really understood the tactical implications until now. I'm gonna have to share this video with my friends. Thank you for sharing!
Imagine making this video but we already have erradicated automs xD
Great video!
One thing I love is when I'm in a game with someone or a fire team that knows how to properly break contact. For instance, if you're in a 2-person element, troop A provides covering fire while troop B moves away from the enemy and to cover (covering fire can be small arms fire, grenades, or strategems that ether damage the enemy or conceal movement). Once in cover, troop B then provides covering fire while troop A bounds away from the enemy to separate cover. This process is repeated until:
A. The enemy has disengaged
B. The enemy has been defeated through attrition or
C. The unit finds key terrain that puts them at a defensive advantage.
I'd argue that the backpack is a wasted slot and always was. With another orbital or eagle, you and your entire team could be knocking out enemies before you have to worry about eating a stray rocket from cover. A well placed Airburst will kill every Dev in a group every 67 seconds with the ship upgrade. A Clusterbomb will mop up any survivors that happened to get outside of the blast range. You can double up and throw both to clear out Devs and Grunts from small to mid sized encampments before they can even respond.
Personally, in PUG situations, I often don't even bring a support weapon. For the most part people are focused on long cooldown anti-tank stuff. They get pinned down by all the Devs they can't kill quickly and that's when the call in spiral happens. Flanking tactics etc. are good. But most people do not give a flip about that. So in practical terms, covering your team's deficiencies is always going to be better than taking a prescribed loadout.
Nothing makes me cringe like seeing 3 Shield packs, 3 500kgs and 3 "meta" support weapons. This is not an uncommon occurrence unfortunately. With the new armor changes, rockets aren't nearly so deadly. Certainly not as frequently. Shields should stay home. Most likely, you'll be able to pick one up off your teammate's corpse soon enough anyway.
I sorta agree, except on the support weapon part. Support weapons like the grenade launcher or stalwart are going to be mowing down trash constantly and more consistently than cluster bombs for example. I feel like if I'd be gimping myself too much I didn't bring one. But yeah, having two guys with Quasars and 500kgs, when one 500kg is pretty much enough, is a pain when running 8s or 9s. I've been seeing more randoms adapting their loadouts around their other teammates loadouts tho, which is nice ig
@@kokosik21 Yeah, my complaint is getting less relevant with time as people are more willing to change things up. But it's still pretty common that nobody brings anything to deal with trash.
As to the clusters, I just find them incredibly valuable. I don't need LOS on targets in order to take them out with clusters. Servo + learning to estimate enemy distance from radar alone will take you very far. Though I am specifically talking about bots here and in my original post. If you're making stalwart work for you against bots that's great. I generally prefer to ambush them and then take out stragglers at a distance. If I bring a gun, it's either going to be AC or AMR.
I love this video. All the stuff I already try to keep in mind to minimize my deaths while making the most of my teammates' actions. If more devs/games took information like this into account, the industry and its communities would be so much smarter, complex, and better overall.
Bots? Never heard of them
Excellent video. Very well organized. Very clean presentation. Time stamps are great. Much more useful than 99% of strategy guides. Superior tactics are gonna win out. Thanks, keep it up.
Thank you very much! I appreciate your feedback.
How feasible is the laser cannon instead of the quasar? I just love the inf ammo cycle that can be achieved combined with the sickle and dagger
The old Laser cannon with the beam vs the Quasar? They don't really compare. The Laser cannon is good against infantry and some of the heavier enemies but the Quasar is more of an all purpose heavy and armor buster. The Quasar can get rid of fabricators, Hulks, Tanks, Turrets, Dropships, chargers, bile titans. The downside is the recharge between shots. The Laser cannon have no ammo and can fire long but you will be using it to fight ground troops up to medium armor.
In summary, they fullfill vastly different roles.
Laser Cannon is very good if you can consistently hit weakspots. It'll burn down tanks and hulks really fast if you hold the beam on the heatsink. You can pop devastators quickly if you can hit them in the face or waist, but torso shots can burn them down eventually. If you don't mind not carrying frags, a stun grenade can do you wonders in taking out big targets.
Its very okay. On one hand, youre a triple laser threat (four, if you bring a rover buddy, and five if you have orbital laser), and you can melt most things in medium armor. You'll also be dealing consistent stream of damage
On the other, youre not taking out any heavies any time soon. The TTK is also remarkably slow with the dagger and laser cannon. Things you can normally one shot with a quasar or EAT takes a few more seconds to die.
All in all, its definitely possible to run the laser set, you probably just need to cover your bases with some anti-heavy stratagems
@@CheemsofRegret this is what I was thinking, 'cause I do always take the 500kg and Orbital Cannon anyway
The laser cannon is very effective at gimping rocket devastators by shooting their rocket pods. I find that breaking as many rocket pods as I can while in a big fight can massively increase the teams survivability by reducing the amount of rockets flying around. After that you can start dispatching things at your leisure.
It will kill all devastators heads very quickly if you can stay on target and completely melts raiders. Also try to release the trigger between acquiring your next target to give yourself a little more time before it begins to overheat.
Another great use is it’s ability to providing sustained fire support to your teammates at range who might be caught alone with a patrol chasing them. So yeah it’s great when used properly.
Also try pairing it with the guard dog (machine gun drone) and you can very easily take care of large groups on your own.
Brother, this was legit. I see you getting to 100k subs before the end of the year with this type of content
Poor guy didn’t know this knowledge will become irrelevant 2 days later
In this case I actually did. I put out the guide to ensure a victory.
(And because they'll be back. Don't tell the ministry of truth i know)
@@Reginald-sc9tk :D
Good video! I had troubles with the art of war, and your direct relations to helldivers, terrain, and strategies is comprehensible while leaving lots of space for the imagination to fill in the gaps! Good job!
Honestly, I find bugs more challenging than bots, even after the nerfs to rockets. Bots you can just apply stealth. Bugs you have to weather the swarm.
Bugs are okay as long as you apply the engage and slow retreat concept. Engage and hit the big guys hard, then as you retreat you funnel all the small guys into line. I'm a flamethrower fan, and because it bypasses armour it does both of those things well.
I actually agree with you, not least because bug heavies are so resistant while bot heavies have weak points.
I agreed with this! Your equipment also is more flexible with the bots. In general bugs have just more constant pressure applied to you and stuff like hunters and stalkers can push you into a doom spiral really damn fast. More so then hulks or devestators can imo
I feel like it’s two different kinds of challenges. With bots, the challenge comes mostly from their range, power, and armor. Their heaviest units are frighteningly difficult to deal with without the right tools, so heavy hitting weapons, and a lot of them, are a must. With bugs, the big guys are a nuisance, but on their own, are kinda pathetic and easily cheesed. They’re a distraction from the main show: the swarm. The tiniest bugs can bite off up to half your health bar if they get close, hunters slow you down enough for everything else can kill you, and bile spewers can one shot you if you aren’t careful. If your squad doesn’t have a way to keep the swarms at bay, you will know pain. So long as you do have something like a flamethrower, stalwart, MG, Arc thrower, grenade launcher, and/or AC in the mix, and the guys using them keep bugs off the Quasar, EAT, RR, and/or Spear users, bug missions can and will go smoothly. Though the numbers can still feel overwhelming at times.
Bugs are very simple. just keep running.
Another banger of a video, Mr. Reginald! There’s something amusing to me about how in depth you can go for these kinds of tactics, but the advice itself is quite simple and easy to understand. Like, the enfilading fire section is basically, “line up your enemies to shoot them all easier”, which seems so easily understood and obvious, while at the same time making me think, “damn, that makes a lot of sense, why didn’t I think of that?” I think it’s a combination of the tactics themselves just being intuitive and your presentation being very clear and detailed. The visual aids and pictures definitely help as well, it makes the words make more sense for this poor illiterate Helldiver-in-training.
Overall, a top-tier video, and I’m looking forward to your continuation! When the Illumina- I mean other… unholy, unknowable terrors seeking to extinguish the guiding beacon of liberty, democracy, and justice that is Super Earth rear their horrific heads, I’ll be eagerly awaiting for a guide from you, friend! Your quality and thoroughness are simply unmatched!
Thanks very much for your detailed feedback as always. Sorry it took so long to respond. The volume is beyond anything I've contented with so far.