Quick Tips for Hard+ Difficulty?

[Supersysscvi]

I've been playing the game at lower difficulties, trying to get a feel for Helldivers 2 and online co-op play. I struggled on Challenging difficulty against the bugs, since that's when Chargers start spawning, but it seems like everyone says higher difficulties are where the real challenge is.

What my basic loadout would be in randoms, I'm guessing, is:

- Defender (SMG)
- Redeemer Pistol
- EAT
- "Guard Dog" Rover/Ammo Pack for bugs ; Ballistics Shield/Ammo Pack for bots
- Eagle Airstrike
- Autocannon for bugs ; Autocannon/EMS Mortar for bots

So before I dive in, I thought to ask: what should I be looking out for with supporting my team with? Any advice?

[Akulvo]

I'd suggest trying out the anti-material rifle against the bots. It will 1 shot head shot all of the bots, 2 shot head shot the hulks, and if you come across a tank then you can use a precision strike or something. Your main hand weapon can even be the liberator but its based on preference. You can use the auto canon for similar results but it will take 2-3 shots for the devastators but you don't need to hit head shots. For the hulks, its hard to hit the head with the autocanon but its 2-3 hits as well.

Anti-Material Rifle Setup: Eagle Airstrike or Eagle Cluster Bombs (airstrike for bots, cluster for bots), Anti-Mat rifle, Orbital Precision Strike or Laser or 500 bomb(or whatever orbital you prefer), and the final one is your niche pick Supply Pack or Guard Dog or even the disposable launcher. Call in the disposable launcher, shoot that ♥♥♥♥ at a tank or hulk, then pick up your anti-mat rifle again.

Auto-Canon Setup: Pretty much the exact same, though you can't really pick a backpack slot if you want to reload your auto-canon.

If you encounter tanks or bile titans, you hit them with a strike. Tanks can be taken out with air strikes on a direct hit, sometimes you get unlucky and the bombs spread around it instead but another follow up strike should finish it off. For bile titans, you will need the orbital laser or your disposable rocket. The other weapons will struggle immensely; autocanon can pop its sack but you'll probably run out of ammo doing so and even then you'll need something capable of piercing its armor to finish it off.

Once you hit level 20, I highly recommend taking the railgun and orbital rail strike. The rail gun 1 shot head shots the hulks, 2 shot body shots everything else or 1 shot headshots, if you're dealing with bugs then you shoot their front leg twice to break the armor to finish them off. It will also 1 shot head shot the fat spitters, don't aim for their body with any weapon, go for their head. For bile titans, just use your rail or laser, if those aren't up then either run around until they are or spam overcharged railgun strikes at it until it flops over. The shield pack is also pretty insane, though it won't save you from tank shots or getting hit by 2 rockets at the same time so its only really good against small arms fire to prevent chip damage. The shield pack has saved me a few times from bug swarms or bot laser gun spam, especially the hunters and heavy devastators (the shield dudes).
Alternatively at level 20, you could also take the spear to deal with the ultra heavy enemies like hulks

Some combat tips: use your specialty arms to deal with heavy and armored enemies, normal arms to deal with the small and mediums, and orbital and eagle strikes to deal with the ultra heavy armored enemies. For bots, use a lot of cover, specifically rocks since those can't get destroyed. If you are struggling with taking down enemies, aim for their weapon arms instead, they are lightly armored and can be destroyed quickly. It won't kill them but it will stop them from shooting at you and give you some breathing room. If its a rocket devastator, shoot their rocket pods to turn them into a normal devastator. This also works for hulks as well, the right arms (the left arm for the hulks) is also the most dangerous weapon they got; flame thrower or rocket pods so aim for that first.
For bug tips, just run around a lot. Aim for the hunters and spitters first, all the others are either too slow to even worry about or too heavily armored to be quickly taken out. You can shoot out their legs to remove a lot of their damage and make them start bleeding out. For the brood commander, just shoot its head. I know it will survive for a bit longer, but if you just keep running around it will die before it can bother you. Your only real threats are being swarmed by hunters, chargers, and stalkers. If you spot a stalker, kill it and IMMEDIATELY go in the direction is spawned to find its nest. Blow that ♥♥♥♥ up quickly because otherwise they will just kill you over and over again. For chargers, it depends on your weapon, which is why I highly recommend the disposable as an option early on to blow up its leg and then finish off the weakened leg with your primary weapon. And lastly, for titans just orbital strike them. The eagle strikes won't hit unless you use the 500 bomb.

[Beravin]

Its really hard to answer when you dont share your level. Tactics are very different from a level 10 vs a level 20, since it determines what stratagems you can bring.

That said, the best thing you can ever do is specialize against armour. It is almost always the biggest issue on anything higher than challenging. That means things like the railgun, orbital railcannon, orbital laser, 500kg bomb, etc. The right build can change a mission from running away from bile titans constantly to progressing steadily and smoothly.

[Seth Abercromby]

The AMR definitely stays viable against bots with how much ammo you're getting for it. The railgun does definitely offer a lot of flexibility by virtue of naturally piercing heavy armor though, which also makes it overperform greatly when it comes to taking down chargers and titans on the bug side, which lack viable weakpoints for medium armor piercing weapons like the AC and AMR.

That's not to say there is no merit to taking the AMR against bugs though, while it struggles to be useful against the 'boss' bugs, it can very quickly eliminate just about everything else with plenty of ammo to spare. Warriors and brood commanders can be sniped long before they have any chance to fight back, and the otherwise extremely dangerous spitter bugs die to a clean headshot every single time. Just be aware that you will be entirely dependent on your team and strategems to deal with chargers and titans, so it's good when at least one person has a railgun on hand the closer you get to difficulty 7+.

[ImHelping]

Remember that stealth mostly only works on natural patrols, and the game will still shamelessly directs old patrols towards your objective, or spawns new stuff on top of them.

Every "But I solo the whole map with STEALTH! Just run away from everything problem solved!" post tends to leave out that crucial detail, getting people who trusted them killed when a breach opens literally twenty feet away from a mining sample drill or whatever and they were unprepared because they fell for "Stealth is overpowered" posting.

Stealth is great. Stealth saves you a lot of time in travel. Stealth is not convincing yourself "Those enemies ignoring me now, will NEVER be a problem later!"

[Akulvo]

Originally posted by ImHelping:

Remember that stealth mostly only works on natural patrols, and the game will still shamelessly directs old patrols towards your objective, or spawns new stuff on top of them.

Every "But I solo the whole map with STEALTH! Just run away from everything problem solved!" post tends to leave out that crucial detail, getting people who trusted them killed when a breach opens literally twenty feet away from a mining sample drill or whatever and they were unprepared because they fell for "Stealth is overpowered" posting.

Stealth is great. Stealth saves you a lot of time in travel. Stealth is not convincing yourself "Those enemies ignoring me now, will NEVER be a problem later!"

To play devils advocate, you use stealth to avoid having to use your strategems and ammo on the patrol drops, instead using them on drops by objectives. When I do solo stealth runs, its more of me just running past everything and going cover to cover (though playing solo is pretty damn boring tbh). Even if a patrol does spot you, you just keep running. Its really effective, especially since air strike can deal light and medium outposts easily and 2 air strikes can take out the heavy outposts, for bots that is. For bugs, I use a grenade launcher to snipe their nests for similar results.

That being said, in group games everyone has to be on the same page. If you're stealthing and running past everything, so do the rest of your teammates or they'll be fighting every single mob you aggro. If they can't keep up, they'll get pinned down and be left behind. So its not really a good team work strategy lol. Best to just fight the patrols that do spot you or kill the faster enemies in the patrol and run away from the rest. If I do that, I'm usually killing the berserkers, rocket devastators, walkers, flamethrower hulks, and lmg bots. Everything else can be ignored though.