How to deal with hordes of armored nurser bugs OTHER than the machine gun?

[Badass_Ben]

This is what wrecks my squad- when you are facing LARGE numbers of the nurser bugs that spew green ♥♥♥♥, and are also armored

Primary weapons are ineffective, and there arent enough rockets within a team to effectively rely on them for killing them AND the other larger threats

The only option it seems, is to ALWAYS have at least 2 players armed with the heavy machine gun, as thats the only viable counter to these guys in droves.

[jonnydoh]

The one time I really appreciate laser guard dogs is that they can take out these guys while you're trying to run away.

But as others have said-- autocannon, impact grenades, grenade launcher, orbitals, eagles, machine gun, exo suit... Even some of the primaries work. Breaker incendiary works too, but you need to unload just about a full clip.

[Saurdaukar]

the scorcher wrecks these guys.

[Mander]

Originally posted by Myth Alric:

The grenade launcher is really good against them. Both versions of spewing bugs die in one shot from grenades, so you can just throw normal grenades at them too.

Grenade Launchers galore. PIck jetpack, find a sniper nest. Let democracy rains.

[Luciole]

Spray and pray shotgun is incredibly good with it's high capacity and high pellets counts to decimate waves of little bugs and some medium ones too.
But really , the stalwart ihas become even more necessary than before ...and this gun shreds them.
If you have a guy running that gun or this cousin , praise him.

[Katitoff]

Impace grenade
Grenade launcher
Airburst barrage
Cluster bombing
Gattling turret
Dominator(2 shots to the head)
Scorcher(2-3 shots to the head)
Liberator Penetrator(2-3 bursts to the head)
Lascannon(yes, head)
Autocannon(about 2 shots to the head)
AMR(single well placed headshot)
Slugger(2-4 shots to the head)
Arc Thrower

[Nihil]

Throw an impact grenade at them and they die from one pop.

[Nihil]

Originally posted by Katitoff:

Impace grenade
Grenade launcher
Airburst barrage
Cluster bombing
Gattling turret
Dominator(2 shots to the head)
Scorcher(2-3 shots to the head)
Liberator Penetrator(2-3 bursts to the head)
Lascannon(yes, head)
Autocannon(about 2 shots to the head)
AMR(single well placed headshot)
Slugger(2-4 shots to the head)
Arc Thrower

Airburst is freaking awesome. I bring it to every bug mission.
Freaking easy to activate (3x right arrow) and covers a large area. With fast cooldown.

[TheAceOfSpodes]

Autocannon is my go-to. Arc Thrower works alright. Slugger, Dominator and Plasma Scorcher work pretty well.

[Lesurous]

Arc Thrower is my go-to bug horde clearing weapon. Can be finicky, mainly when there's bodies/obstacles in the way, but it's limitless ammo and chain lightning lets you sustainably clear hordes. Since it's fully armor piercing and can headshot, you can two tap spewers. Just keep in mind what I said about bodies, dead spewers especially can be annoying, but just wait till the next one pokes it's head through their corpse.


When there's a large horde of low tier enemies, after your first shot you only need to charge to about 50% power to shoot again. Tougher enemies like brood commanders and chargers, you're gonna want to always charge to full. If you're hounded by a charger and being pressured by other bugs, 3 charged shots to their side completely removes their carapace, letting you dump rounds with your base loadout.


The biggest threats to you with the Arc Thrower are Bile Titans, Stalkers, and team killing. Personally, find a twisted sense of pleasure with the last one, don't do it intentionally but nothing makes you feel more dangerous than instantly deleting someone from existence with the most aggressive arc chains. You even start to wonder if Helldivers are lightning rods.

[tom tomorrow]

It sounds like you're shooting them in the bile sac. Don't do that. Shoot them in the face. You can one mag them with the SMG if your aim is on point.

[Noctover]

These are the hardest bugs in the game imo. They are considered "trash" so there are DOZENS of them at any given time, half of them are behind hills mortaring you so you need to keep looking up, they take a full mag of primary, like to play dead and at least 2-3 railgun shots. They spit from a far and through any obstacles, and somehow SO stealthy and follow you with their spit even if you dive which is also usually a 1 shot.

Impact grenades work well but you only have 4, and there will certainly be more than 4 of them. Grenade launcher is good but we don't get the privilege of knowing they will be on the map when we go in so cant equip specifically for it.

Now that the medium spawns have been nerfed and trash spawns increased, we can expect to see more of them.

[JinxTheWorld]

The anti material rifle will one shot them in the head. Sadly it sucks for everything else lol.

[Sophie]

impact nades and grenade launcher work well (be sure to aim to the side of the green ones so you avoid their back armor)

slugger is also pretty good. it takes 2-4 shots to deal with one through the head

medium armor pen > aim for head

hidden +dmg% on weakpoint stat (counter sniper, scorcher), aim for the side of the sack.


theyre very similar to praetorians from DRG, afaik. their "weakpoint" provides no bonus damage itself, but some weapons have an inherit multiplier to weakpoints. the head under the armor has much less health than the sack, but its guarded by armor that requires medium armor pen. breaking either the head, or the sack, kills it

edit: i got nothing on avoiding its vomit or slow though. they really need to tune that up.

[Mr Diegos]

arc thrower - 2-3 sec to kill one, or multiple in a row.

[JustKampi]

Autocannon, GL, Slugger, Impact nades, Arc Thrower and still RG (just use it in unsafe mode)