Reasons you keep failing/dying on 10s in PUGs

[BattleCry1791]

I'm a 150 with over 1k hours in game and have completed 1933 of 1958 missions. I have 1 person my friends list, and I maybe play with them once a week.
Since making 150, all I do is look for sub level 80s running 10s and try to help them complete the mission and score the supers. I usually play 3 games daily.

If you just enjoy the game and don't care too much about completing the objectives, then this post isn't for you. If you do want to progress through the game and are struggling, this post is designed to help you, though it may make you feel dumb. Just remember, I'm helping.

Top reasons why you keep dying or failing the mission on 10s (8s and above really)

1) You chose bad drop points

Never land directly next to an obj. Find a nice spot away from the red. You're going to get a breach or bot drop as soon as you engage (or get engaged), so might as well not add a heavy nest or mega fortress into the mix.

It's not uncommon to see multiple deaths in the first three minutes of an instance because no one had a chance to grab their support weapons and packs because the squad was dropped in the center of a map next to a major spawn point.

Note: If you still need Super Samples, they are almost always somewhere the game does not normally lead you. Read that again. Where ever there is a large spot of nothing on the map, is almost a sure sign that that there is something, you just have to find it.

2) You keep fighting from the center of the map

Your drop in should be on the outskirts of the map and you should figure out a path that's clockwise or counter clockwise and work the edges (if the planet type allows for it). Only go to the middle of the map if you need to, and only once you've cleared a retreat path.
The idea is to prevent from getting hit from 360 degrees of fire. Do whatever you can to keep from getting hit by 360 degrees of fire. If you attack from the edges, you limit your vulnerability. It sometimes means living with traitor countdowns more than you'd like, but it keeps you alive. You can't defend democracy if you're dead.

3) You brought the wrong load out.

It's a 10. Granted they're easier than they used to be, but it is the hardest part of the game.

If playing with friends or a group that you know can handle it, bring what you want, but for PUGs, the concept of "I like it so I'm running it" will simply leave one less diver to defend democracy multiple times over and possibly lead to a wipe.

Bring DPS. Leaves your cars, jet packs, and anything that can't kill mediums and heavies on the Super Destroyer. That means leave the Cluster bomb at home. If it can't break medium and heavy armor, then it had better be able to stun like an Arc Blitzer, Purifier, Punisher Plasma, or a Cookout. On a 10, the majority of your bots and bugs are armored.

For wide open maps, even ones that have you tied to control points - leave the minefields at home, especially against bugs. they're great for defense missions, especially when layered, but they don't have enough direct force applications to be super viable. Mostly they TK your teammates when they are running for their lives. Against bugs, you want clean ground. Same for the squids.

Bring something for the heavy spam. Especially if you're running a PUG. Quasars keep you on the move, but any of the missile launching support weapons can work. If you can't live through 3 bile titans and 5 chargers occupying the same area as you by yourself, you need to step down from 10s.

4) You stopped moving.
Whether its bots, bugs, or squids, you cannot stand still. Ever. If you aren't fighting, you should be checking your environment - all the time. Even if you are fighting, and you find yourself shooting in one direction for more than 3 or 5 seconds, you should check your other 270 degrees while you reload and retreat, or if you're reloading from cover.
This goes triple if you're near other divers and all four of you are shooting in one direction.

If you're reloading a recoiless or spear, you should be 360 in your view while your diver is in the loading animation.

5) As a squad leader, and you're running PUGs, you may not be watching the team like you should. If you have someone dying repeatedly, you have every right to kick them. There's 3 other people in that instance that aren't dying needlessly trying to complete the objectives. They count too. If I see someone dying constantly, to the point where they alone are responsible for taking up half the team's reinforcements, I kick with impunity.

It's your squad, your rules. You can control how the instance plays out.

6) You're playing with the sound off
And that's on you. I can always tell when people are playing with their sound off - they die all the time. The game gives you verbal signs of what's about to happen, use them.

Summation:
If you're dying all the time, or you're failing missions in PUGs, it may not because you're bad at the game, it may be just be your approach to the game needs some tweaking.
Just remember, dying isn't just a stat, when you die, there's a strong chance you may not be able to recover your gear, so you're not at full strength and it increases the chance you will die again.

Best of luck
-BC

[CheeseEnjoyer776]

can you say it again i wasn't paying attention

[AnemoneMeer]

Not all light pen weapons on Diff 10 are bad, but you do need to know why you're taking it.

A good example is the Tenderizer on Bugs. It shreds through impalers with little issue, while having great accuracy at long range, one-tapping hunters and nearly instantly killing stalkers.

Another good example is the Defender or Pummeler with the Jump Pack. Bugs or squids. Your job becomes objective runner, and you're probably taking Light Gunner armor for this. Grab the SSSD and deliver it ASAP, or just generally run around spamming low cooldown damage stratagems from the air while running the bugs through fire.

[Vivianite]

i didnt have sound on can you repeat that

[Dragon_Dude1]

being level 150 doesn't mean your "good", it just means you don't have a life outside of this game(having over 1k hours, case in point).

[Baylock]

3 and 4 directly contradict one another.

By following 4, your load out is irrelevant. That bears saying a second time because this is the hardest part for some people to conceptualize. It. Is. Irrelevant.

You do not need to built for heavy armour pen. The fastest **single unit** killing threats may be heavies for bots, but for bugs they may as well not exist.

As much as Creek Crawling has me viewing bugs as significantly more annoying than bots, the fact of the matter is you nailed it with the header on 4.

Bugs are reliant on two tactics, and you're advocating, with 3, to shoot yourself in the foot by optimizing for the weaker of their two tactics. By focusing on heavies, you are prioritizing their useless units. Yes, Chargers and Bile Titans outrun you in a straight line, but they are trivial to simply juke. Titan vomit is easy to dodge and outside of that, neither unit can touch you unless you are severely hampered in mobility or you want them to touch you. Therein lies their true threat: the small bug horde.

In keeping with 4, you shall bring light armour. Anything else is death; what you cannot run from, you must shoot, and if you can no longer run from anything, you must shoot everything which isn't feasible, because it forces you to stop, violating the golden rule of 4.

The small bugs are your actual threat. They corral and distract you for the purposes of getting heavies the opening they need to kill you. If you clear them out, the heavies are utterly useless. Sure it may be a bit tricky to dodge and weave two or more chargers, but with no chaff to corral you, you have all the room in the world. With a few large mesas Bile Titans are hysterically easy to inflict "Musta been the wind" syndrome on.
You only need light pen, but at least one reliable source of medium is good to expidite hive guard kills in a pinch. Also does wonder for impalers, and if you've got no chaff around you and you *really* want to shoot everything, a solo charger can simply be shot in the butt until it dies with ease: it cannot hit you unless you allow it. Just juke the Bile Titan, but it can also be killed if it is isolated just the same as the charger, albeit its legs will get in the way of its belly a bit more.


For bots, medium pen is all you need. Bring a Quasar if you really want, but the only two units that can outpace you on Bots are jetpack bots which are exclusively light, and gunships, which can be killed with an MG-43 with ease. The only real 'need' for heavy pen is to reliably do some damage to far off turrets that are facing you, but you can use strats for that if you maintain trigger discipline and remember the tenant of anything that is not in your way or will not immediately be in your way isn't worth shooting. (Because it's just going to drag more things your way.)

But yes, follow 4. Never stop moving, and never shoot anything you don't absolutely need to. Every second you're not shooting something, unless actively hunting for samples or otherwise needing UI elements for interactables, keep that map up. Knowledge is half the battle and any patrol you can see, is a patrol you can avoid, and any patrol you avoid is a patrol that can't call in reinforcements- it's a a shot saved, and a shot you cannot possibly miss, because you didn't take it.

This is the crux of Super Helldive survival. Objectives and POIs first, everything else second. Indeed, you can't spread democracy if you're dead- and you run a significantly reduced chance of dying if you don't pick a fight with every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing that moves! Remember, you're a god at Helldivers 2 until you're not, and that's when you died because you got cocky and picked an avoidable fight. If it's not Exterminate, you don't need to shoot on sight (except for MO progression, but we're all pieces of a machine, you don't need to kill absolutely everything, remember that. We all do our part.)


Edit: Forgot to mention the entire reason I bothered replying. Take the Jump Pack. It directly ties into 4 and can get you out of sticky situations in a way the shield can't. (It is also a vital anti-PUG tool to get you away from them when they inevitably decide to shoot everything, get in over their head, panic, and chase you down to make it your problem. This is your mantra: The pugs are going to eat all the lives. You cannot die. The objective comes first. You cannot die. The one responsible for the objective is you. You cannot die. Do not rely on pugs to do your job. You cannot die.

The first layer on the survivability onion is don't be there. The second is don't be seen. The jump pack functions for the third layer: don't be targeted. You can't be shot as a sitting duck in the middle of a horde if you can vault the horde and break Line-of-Sight, allowing you to disengage and reestablish stealth, which is your armour.

[beaky]

Point 2 is the most infuriating part of playing with randoms. 95% of the time it's easiest to go either counter clockwise or clockwise around the map. This is just due to how objectives are spaced out. What really sucks is when you have a full team on diff 10 and once you drop in, your team just seems to spread out and just do whatever objective or nest they deem fit, instead of looking at the map and following it in a logical pattern.

[BattleCry1791]

İlk olarak Baylock tarafından gönderildi:

a bunch of stuff that missed the point of the audience the post is intended for.

What exactly do you think most people spec for in the first place if they aren't speccing for the heavies and mediums? The smaller bugs and maybe the medium bots, as well as the basic squids.
Most lower level players spec for the little ads because that's what you deal with primarily in 7s and below. That's not the problem, it's like recommending people breath. The issue is often that's that's ALL they spec for.

The jump pack doesn't help you take objectives, airstrikes, sentries and bullet rovers do.

While I believe the B08 Light gunner armor is the best in game for bugs (100 armor and 550 speed), if I listed what I think the "best" load outs are, then all I'd be doing is establishing meta based on my personal preference and playstyle.

Which was not the point of the post. The point was to offer some advice to those that might be struggling based on what I see on a weekly basis. And if they only take away one part of it, they're still better off than they were.

If they wear heavy armor, but bring a bullet rover with a flamethrower and a crossbow - they'll probably be alright if they stick to the edges of the map - it'll take forever, but it can work. Against bugs and squids speed is king, but there are plenty of ways around that like energy shields - which I don't advocate for because it's about as useless as jet pack for killing whats in front of you.

But the point of the post was not to offer what is optimal, it was to offer what to avoid. If any diver that is struggling to complete 10s in PUGs is able to follow any one, if not two of the things I listed they will see an immediate improvement in their experience in game.

But that's the rub - it's a somewhat long post as is, attention spans are short, so what are the odds anyone might take away all those talking points? Nil.

You strike me as someone that doesn't understand people very well and the real reason you replied is because you like running jet packs and felt personally attacked.

Which is not my problem.

[BattleCry1791]

İlk olarak CheeseEnjoyer776 tarafından gönderildi:

can you say it again i wasn't paying attention

tldnr version:

"stop sucking"

[Dundo]

3 is the only point that matters.
All you need is 3 from OP and spatial awareness, everything else is bogus.

[CheeseEnjoyer776]

İlk olarak BattleCry1791 tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak CheeseEnjoyer776 tarafından gönderildi:

can you say it again i wasn't paying attention

tldnr version:

"stop sucking"

i thought you wanted me to swallow?

[an entire Roman legion]

İlk olarak Dragon_Dude1 tarafından gönderildi:

being level 150 doesn't mean your "good", it just means you don't have a life outside of this game(having over 1k hours, case in point).

ok mr "played-130-hrs-in-the-past-two-weeks"

[Rawbutt Gorillaman]

Idk man I equipped the FS-23 Battle Master heavy armor a long, looooong time ago and have yet to use anything else. I run Lib Pen as my main, usually bring one of the Walkers, Orbital Laser, the Heavy portable Machine gun, then whatever else I decide to fill in the blank. Sure I die occasionally, HD2 is great to play with a buzz, but I've never bought into a meta build of any kind. Also heavy armor gets ♥♥♥♥ on constantly but at the rate most squads move I never fall behind. I can aggro the big boys if needed and survive like a millisecond longer if I need to get lucky. ♥♥♥♥ man I seem to die less than the peeps running jet packs and arc throwers. Now I am completely aware that my build is absolutely dogshite but it's dogshite that works for me and reliably keeps me alive, every now and then, the last one alive.

Now I'm ready, ♥♥♥♥ on it and me.

[BattleCry1791]

İlk olarak CheeseEnjoyer776 tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak BattleCry1791 tarafından gönderildi:

tldnr version:

"stop sucking"

i thought you wanted me to swallow?

ONLY if you make eye contact, which you never do, and it just ruins the whole thing.

[Khalani]

İlk olarak Rawbutt Gorillaman tarafından gönderildi:

Idk man I equipped the FS-23 Battle Master heavy armor a long, looooong time ago and have yet to use anything else. I run Lib Pen as my main, usually bring one of the Walkers, Orbital Laser, the Heavy portable Machine gun, then whatever else I decide to fill in the blank. Sure I die occasionally, HD2 is great to play with a buzz, but I've never bought into a meta build of any kind. Also heavy armor gets ♥♥♥♥ on constantly but at the rate most squads move I never fall behind. I can aggro the big boys if needed and survive like a millisecond longer if I need to get lucky. ♥♥♥♥ man I seem to die less than the peeps running jet packs and arc throwers. Now I am completely aware that my build is absolutely dogshite but it's dogshite that works for me and reliably keeps me alive, every now and then, the last one alive.

Now I'm ready, ♥♥♥♥ on it and me. :Darling:

Sounds like a solid loadout to me to be honest. HMG can deal with elite stuff and can help with medium enemies in a pinch.
I probably would switch out the lib penetrator for something with more ammo to have better options for chaff.

But I'm also not a big fan of ignoring breaches. I believe if everyone pulls their weight you can actually stop and deal with breaches, then continue.
Otherwise you will constantly be on the run, accidents happen and people might lose their loadout because it might become buried in bugs.

Also it is a lot more fun to shoot those little ♥♥♥♥♥ instead of just running away.
The probably biggest problem playing with randoms is that everyone splits up and chaos takes over. That way you will never kill the bugs before another breach happens and then you are stuck in a death loop or will run out of time at some point.

Since the big armor rework it is so much easier to stand your ground, people should make use of it, but that's just my opinion. I "only" have 700h so far, so I'm not as experienced as OP ;)

[BattleCry1791]

İlk olarak Rawbutt Gorillaman tarafından gönderildi:

Idk man I equipped the FS-23 Battle Master heavy armor a long, looooong time ago and have yet to use anything else. I run Lib Pen as my main, usually bring one of the Walkers, Orbital Laser, the Heavy portable Machine gun, then whatever else I decide to fill in the blank. Sure I die occasionally, HD2 is great to play with a buzz, but I've never bought into a meta build of any kind. Also heavy armor gets ♥♥♥♥ on constantly but at the rate most squads move I never fall behind. I can aggro the big boys if needed and survive like a millisecond longer if I need to get lucky. ♥♥♥♥ man I seem to die less than the peeps running jet packs and arc throwers. Now I am completely aware that my build is absolutely dogshite but it's dogshite that works for me and reliably keeps me alive, every now and then, the last one alive.

Now I'm ready, ♥♥♥♥ on it and me. :Darling:

Notice I didn't say anything about what armor to run. During the incendiary blitz, I ran a Salamander. The one person on my friends list exclusively ran anti explosive heavy armor for around half a year.

While I don't think your load out is optimal, it's not horrible. It's better than a player running a jet pack, a car, a cluster bomb, and the TK3000 (the airburst launcher) on a jungle planet.

All of your stratagems are DPS and your primary weapon works. You've got something for heavies, which is more than I can say for a lot of players.

It's really not about Meta, it's about completing objectives. Good on you.