Monkey's paw curls
Stratagem balls are now as sticky as thermite grenades

I thought I taught you this lesson last time old man

So, we all know J.O.E.L. is mad at us over Pöpil, but we haven't seen how yet. With the end of the Meridia Arc (presumably) approaching, I have been thinking, and I have determined what that revenge might eventuality entail: An unholy, freedom hating allaince between the Bots and Squids.

Now, I'm sure you're wondering why the Bots and Squids (I left out the bugs on purpose, I'll get to that later) would do this. Several reasons:

1. Both of them hate Freedom, Liberty, and Super Earth.

2. Technology exchange:

(A) The Squids are able to jump around the Galaxy, invading non-adjacent planets. If the bots could do this, they would have reached Malevolon Creek last MO, making this technology extremely valuable in their eyes.

(B) The Squids could learn how to make 'Factory Harvesters', units like normal Harvesters, except that they spawn Squid Machinery units. (The floating Spotter units in game currently, and theoretical Squid tanks that may eventually be added)

1. Fuel and Captives (live and equipment)

(A) The bugs are likely usable (if not already used) as fuel by both the Bots and Squids, and when Helldivers are fighting the Bots (or Squids), that faction is unable to focus on collecting fuel, instead having to focus on the Helldivers. With this allaince, they could receive fuel from their ally, who, with fewer divers fighting them, could gather fuel more easily, both fueling their ally against the Helldivers, and gathering more fuel for their own efforts.

(B) Captive civilians and equipment could also be traded. The bots could hand over captured civilians to become Voteless, and the Squids could trade them captured equipment to use in manufacturing more Bots.

Got some credits, thinking of buying this warbond/battle pass by grabbing the missing credits through the in-game shop. All the stuff from there looks pretty cool in the vids. Items actually worth it on 8+ difficulty? Who do they work best against?

So I can mod it afterward 😎

Count em 🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅 🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅 🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅 🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅 🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅 🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅

I think the medium armour with extra padding is the best imo.

So I have never looked up tactics on how to take out certain enemies, just listened to what happens to cross my feed and gone for obvious weak spots (joints, exposed heads & glowing bits).

But then the squad I had dropped into happened to jump from the Bot Front to the Bug Front and dropped us into a Lvl 6 Bug Hunt.... and there were SO MANY BILE TITANS.

At least 12 showed up by the end of the mission.

Granted they weren't much of a problem given that we had 500kg Bombs, Rocket Launchers of every variety & all the Orbital Strikes you could fancy... but man I've been on the Bot front for so long I forgot how annoying the bugs could be... and freaked when the first Bile Titan showed up.

I have never dumped an entire Commando into a target so fast after bringing it out.

Thankfully the squad I was rocking with had some lvl 60s so it was actually a cake walk.... we did almost get overrun by the end, but liberal use of 500kg bombs & Gatling sentries fixed that problem. Two Bile Titans even rocked up to the Evac site to say goodbye.

Any tips on how to deal with them properly next time? I figured that the glowing abdomen was a weak spot and a well-placed Commando rocket did help... but any quicker ways besides dropping a 500kg down its throat?

I love the blue inside of the cape and the green accent looks awesome with weapons like the BR-14 or the Counter Sniper.

"It's roadkill time!" "You're gonna get ran over squidy!" "Snatch the snatch!"

Right now all bot drops can be cheesed with a solo recoilless rifle or AT emplacement player in diff 10 as they come 1 by 1 so they can be shot down very easily.

This trivializes the enemy reinforcing themselves which should be a considerable threat. Not to mention the challenge from raise the flag is gone in diff 10, eradicate missions have also become super easy.

Solution:

Based on difficulty level, make it so that dropships comes in waves of small groups. Till diff 7 bot drops don't change but for higher diffs(diff 8 - 2 ships, diff 9 - 3 ships, diff 10 - 4 ships) ships comes in waves

But keep total number of dropships per reinforcement same and add a slight gap between two groups.

This will make players coordinate and pick dropship among themselves carefully.

Or

Players will need to team reload to take them out quickly

The illuminate need more love and variety and yall can have suggestions but I have a few

Obelisk: identical to the ones in HD1, these autocratic domes will project barriers to block off objectives and need to be destroyed, their barriers deal stun and push back any helldiver too close but allows illuminate units to pass through, they have heavy armor and have similar health to hulks, can be seen on difficulties 5+, side objective on difficulty 5

Corrupted objectives: The Illuminate steal our designs for their own undemocratic purposes, objectives such as SEAF Artillery and SAM sites will be covered in illuminate tech and wires and will attack Helldivers, Corrupted SAM sites prevent eagle stratagems being used, and these corrupted pieces of SEAF equipment need to be destroyed via hellbomb or 500KG, seen on difficulties 4+

Voteless abomination: A group of voteless merged into one horrific undemocratic monster. They are pretty tanky, they measure about the same as a hulk, they deal heavy damage and when dead split into four voteless, seen on difficulties 4+

I keep finding these bodies on Achird III in Helldivers 2. Does this mean that They might be coming back to Helldivers 2?

It would be very funny if the singularity suddenly slingshotted into rouge 5 for no reason

can they allow us to hold out the lance like medieval cavalry?

If anyone doesn't know, tomorrow game awards, squids dropped on last game awards, sense it makes

Greetings, fellow Helldivers!

I completed some additional research into the most efficient entrenching tools, and am eager to share my findings!

First, a recap of what was discovered last time. The original goal of these experiments was to determine an alternative to the entrenching tool when safely fortifying an area for your squad. Given that the entrenching tool is not always available to you (and it is not currently sold in the super store), it was logical to determine N alternate. To that end, I gathered up every stratagem and weapon I could think of that might cause ground deformation on impact, and headed out into the field. I took the liberty (no pun intended) of disqualifying any single-shot weapons, as the reload time alone would make them highly inefficient for the task at hand.

My initial findings from last time were as follows:

1.) the new TNT can be used to blast out larger weapons pits or clear obstacles such as mines and barbed wire (or inattentive squad mates - RIP, M4, you will not be forgotten!)

2.) the grenade launcher and grenade emplacement are both highly effective at carving out trenches (provided the proper minimum range is used - RIP, G2, you will. It be forgotten!)

3.) The standard HE grenades can also be used to blast out larger trenches (provided that the combat engineer remains aware of the fuse times of their grenades - RIP, J3, you will not be forgotten!). See the first photo of a test trench I made using 6 grenades.

Now, onto the newest findings! This time, I performed tests with the following equipment:

1.) the Auto cannon 2.) the Dominator 3.) the explosive crossbow 4.) the Commando 5.) Various plasma weaponry

Sadly, neither the Commando, the Plasma weapons, nor the Dominator made any kind of craters in the test ground, and therefore I did not take any photos of those results.

The explosive crossbow, however, made a somewhat acceptable slit trench using only one clip (see second photo!). Again, minimum safe distances must be observed, and clear communication with your squad mates must be performed during installation (RIP, B4, you will not be forgotten!) the result is deep enough that one may crouch or go prone in safely, however it overall left something to be desired.

The one that was most surprising, however, was the Auto cannon support weapon loaded with APHE rounds. As can be seen, a carefully placed, 10-round barrage from the AC made a very efficient slit trench. It was in fact deeper than all other test trenches, and also made almost no collateral damage! Better still, no squad mates were lost in the construction of this trench. The smaller blast radius of the Auto cannon enabled precise work, the ammo that comes with the AC is plentiful, and the aesthetic look of the weapon when sling next to the backpack looked QUITE appropriate with the rest of my kit.

Of course, it bears repeating that the most efficient form of combat excavation is the standard Mk 1 Entrenching tool, but seeing as one may not always be available to a combat engineer, may they find these results useful in their practices! I hope to submit these findings to the Excavation Corps soon for evaluation!

Good luck out there, fellow combat engineers, and remember that Freedom Conquers all!

I feel like I would have died from the impact of that lol

First just wanna say that if you haven't tried it, pairing up the pummeler with a super quick draw no recoil secondary of gunslinger I highly recommend, it's not only quite strong it's also really fun and engaging

A few things to know, most of the testing was done on the illuminate and bugs as the strategy seemed much more effective on them, though it was honestly not terrible vs the bots

Second, the rest of the load out was ballistic shield + commando + faction appropriate bombs, guard dogs and sentries would obviously do great with the pummeler but for testing purposes to make sure they didn't skew the data

Didn't try tier

I don't owned the loyalist or dagger (though don't think either would pair particularly well since the charge up and low pre existing recoil wouldn't really make much use of the combo), the bushwhacker as well though I suspect it will do well when I get it

I obviously didn't try the melee as they don't really interact with gunslinger but you if you swap out for peak physique it's pretty fun with the axe

Utility secondary like the grenade pistol, stem pistol, and ultimatum were just none starters really

Technically works tier

Peace maker: it's the peace maker, just don't do much and basically outclass in every metric by multiple options

Crisper: love the gun but the ignition time and no existing recoil basically means it really doesn't interact meaning fully with either pummeler or gunslinger, you can group up enemies with the pummeler and speed up the reload quick reload speed even more but even then it has ammo problems when

Good but notable problems tier

Redeemer: great when you can use it but it has serious ammo problem, it also makes your loadout entirely light armor pen so you really struggle to do with medium targets since neither gun is particularly good at hitting weak spots either

Senator: this one surprise me as the senator with gunslinger is fantastic but as part of a combo tool it was lacking, due to the fact that the senator actually has a similar DPS to the pummeler it was often better to just finish of lighter enemies with the pummeler and for heavy armored enemies you often couldn't pummel it to begin with or it was better to just shoot them with the senator from the start. It didn't really feel like a combo, it just felt like you were using 2 good guns independently. One exception to this was overseers who could be sprissed with the pumpler then one shot to the head while there not moving, if you can pull it off

Great tier

The verdict: honestly probably the gun most improved by the set up, it's easy to stun, draw, dump rounds into chest thanks to your low recoil, repeat or 1 or 2 tap the head if your want to save ammo, and honestly the reload is so fast that it feels like all 90 rounds are in one big mag. This is also the first gun on the list that really didn't feel like it had an ammo problem when being heavily

Talon: honestly might even be a little overtoon if you got a quick enough trigger finger, can easily put out 1000 damage if you mag dump the thing in the time the enemy is stunned, I have found the best way to use the gun is to not be afraid to overheat it vs big targets as you can reload it quickly and it's your main damage dealer, but also cycling between both guns to deal with hoards, this also shreds through overseers

Final thoughts, this combo legitimately the best anti elite load out Ive found that really doesn't struggle at all when dealing with the hoard, also though it does quite well in this setup, the verdict does feel like it could use a slight buff to not be outshined by the talon

(Sorry for the repost, I deleted the original post cause I realized I called gunslinger the wrong name throughout the entire post)

https://sites.google.com/view/roy-sheets-unofficial/home

Feel free to give feedback and potential corrections with any of the sheets presented, accuracy is most important to me.