Advanced Helldivers 2 Combat Tips for New Players (Not in the Tutorial)

You may only have had 8 minutes of training or less, but this guide will get you up to date to Helldive in no time. This is a speedrun through the tactics you need to know to defeat Hard, Impossible and Helldive with ease, even in the earlier levels. If you’re past the early game and ready to dive deep into the mechanics, here are the unknown things the game doesn’t tell you regarding Helldivers 2.

Movement and Stratagems

• You can bind them to your arrow keys, mouse keys or some other keys so you can keep running and moving while using stratagems.
• Diving is useful always. You should dive whenever is possible and practice a lot. Diving backward is better than diving INTO the enemy.
• Spam the pickup button when carrying things, it’ll help you move a bit faster.
• Remember stratagems drop when you die if you’re holding it.
• Kneel and prone as much as possible to reduce your hit box, especially with bots.

Weapons and Gameplay

• Always prioritize the most dangerous enemy on the field. This is either the enemies about to do damage to you or the most dangerous enemy on the field. A lot of the small fry can be dealt with via AoE or consequential damage as you deal with higher value targets.
• Interrupt enemy reinforcements. Use your stratagems are on tunnels and fire at drop ships.
• Destroy drop ships with explosives like the rocket launcher.
• Throw an SoS beacon if your team isn’t full asap.
• Always do the communication tower if possible as it will unveil the map.
• Bots will shoot a flare along with bugs which shake the ground and howl to summon reinforcements. These are telegraphed and can be stopped (and should be, you’re not rewarded for more kills).
• Press R (default on PC) or square to switch fire modes. This lets you do more or less damage with exchanges for safety. This also helps you turn the lights on or off.

Dealing with Objectives Quickly

• An autocannon or similarly powered weapon can take out burrows, factories, towers, etc.
• Spore towers on bug maps can be defeated. They take damage from almost anywhere on the map.
• Do the objective stratagem quickly before enemies begin to surge.
• You don’t always have to do everything on a map. The longer you’re on a map, the more enemies will spawn. There’s an active multiplier for enemies based on the time you’re on map.
• Fabricators can be nade’d through the door.

Multiplayer

• Always reinforce.
• Avoid friendly fire when possible.
• Reinforce a teammate strategically: throw them somewhere safe OR throw them at an objective (for instance fabricators can be destroyed by hellpods).
• Kill stalkers always first (big clawed bug) and make sure to take out their layer. They’re a big pain for teams.
• Make sure someone has anti-armor weaponry on the team.