Doing My Part
This guide is a direct continuation of my previous guide. The Biggest Mistake You’re Making in Helldiver’s 2 – Running Away. Helldivers 2 has evolved quite a bit since I made that guide so an update is warranted. I also wanted to take into account a lot of the feedback I got from that guide and address some of the criticisms I received.
You can find a video version of this guide on YouTube!
This guide will provide some additional clarity on my previous thoughts and hopefully provide some more actionable suggestions for the average player base. By that I mean, playing with randoms with little to no voice communication. These tips are universal, however. They should help your success rate on any difficulty whether you are playing with friends or complete strangers.
Tip 1: Stick Together
The number one thing that will ensure a successful and fun mission in Helldivers 2 is sticking together. The number of enemies scales with the number of players, and coordinated firepower is what the game expects when it throws hordes your way.
But beyond that, when playing with randoms you should try to never split up, simply because splitting up takes more coordination than you can reasonably muster without voice chat. At least without entirely screwing over some of the players.
For example, maybe two people are on one side of the map, and one of them dies. Then a player on the other side of the map reflexively calls in reinforcements leaving the newly respawned player miles away from whatever it was they were doing, away from their gear, and leaving the other player stranded alone. Or maybe two players have anti-armor load-outs and two players have horde breaker load-outs. Without proper communication, you can’t ensure that each pair have the opposite loads out to cover all threats.
So how do you stick together with random players who aren’t verbally speaking? There are a couple of ways to encourage it. Firstly, if you aren’t the host, you stick with the host. I view hosts as the squad leader, regardless of their level, or how many hours I have over them. Where they go, I go. If they make bad decisions, I’m with them until the end of the line.
If you don’t like that idea, just host the game yourself and expect the other randoms to treat you as the squad leader, whether they actually do it or not. That means as a host, you always need to mark the next location you’re travelling to on the map. Without someone taking the initiative, people tend to be aimless and scatter. Always make sure the squad has a target.
After that, lead by example. Take a second to turn around and wait on your fellow Helldivers after you take the lead, especially if you’re in light armor. This instantly communicates that you not only want to stick together, but you are also attempting to work with them by not leaving them behind.
You are definitely going to run into some stubborn folks, and this may ruffle some feathers. But you have a kick function for a reason. Don’t kick people blindly, but if two players are sticking with you and a third insists on having main character syndrome and flies solo, type a warning in the text chat. If they ignore it, kick them. Anyone can host the game, so by choosing to play in another host’s game, they are passively agreeing to the host’s “house rules” so to speak.
Anyone who doesn’t like the host’s house rules can simply take their ball, go home, and throw their own party. It’s as simple as that.
Tip 2: Be Flexible With Your Loadouts
The higher the difficulty you play on, the more important coordinated load-outs are. When playing with randoms, this coordination is nonexistent. However, it pays to stay flexible. I don’t have a meta load out. I can use any weapon and any stratagem and I highly encourage people to play with a variety of load-outs so you can fill any gaps a squad might have.
When playing with randoms, I wait to see what they pick and I fill in any potential weak points. There are two major roles a squad needs to fill, Anti Armor, and Anti Horde. That’s straightforward, if you are light on either, simply take a support weapon or a couple of related stratagems to compensate. However, the are a couple of other gaps I like to keep an eye on.
I want to be sure that the squad isn’t weak to a specific enemy type if they were to show up. Most commonly, this tends to be Bile Spewers, Scout Striders, and Flyers. For Scout Striders and Bile Spewers, someone needs to pack a good explosive weapon such as the Plasma Punisher. If someone has a Grenade Launcher or Auto Cannon, they technically have that niche covered, but I don’t want to count on a single random to cover a common enemy type with their support weapons, so I’ll generally fill it anyway.
For Flyers, it varies. Plenty of support weapons can take down automaton Gunships. As long as someone is packing an AMR, Autocannon, Spear, Quesar, Recoiless, or Laser Cannon, I usually don’t sweat it. Those players will almost certainly focus on the gunships when they appear.
For Shriekers on the other hand, I tend to want a Gatling Sentry to cover the team as they move in on a nest. Most popular primary weapons take a lot of skill to effectively bring down a horde of Shriekers under pressure, and in the chaos of randoms, I don’t want to count on that. If I can’t make space for the sentry, I’ll take an Incendiary Breaker.
I also keep an eye on how capable the team is of taking down Fabricators and Bug Holes without the aid of stratagems. I personally favor Stun Grenades or Thermite when I play, but if the squad is lacking in that department I’ll swap to Impact Grenades or switch my secondary to the Grenade Pistol. Just make sure not to leave yourself too vulnerable. If you take the Grenade Pistol for example, don’t take any explosive primary weapon or you’re gonna have a bad time if an enemy gets up close and personal.
Finally, try not to double up on stratagems, because no one is going to coordinate their usage. When the entire squad takes Rail Cannon Strike, for example. Every time a Charger shows up, everyone’s going to chuck one, and multiple strikes will get wasted because only one was needed. If my team is heavy on airstrikes and bombardments, I’ll take some sentries or a mech, some smoke if we’re fighting Automatons or an EMS strike for some utility.
Tip 3: Cover Your Teammates
I already did a guide on not running away and it applies heavily with randoms because they don’t know that you are running away and leaving them to die. To play well, everyone on the team has to be able to assume that everyone else is going to follow a very basic principle. That principle is that during a fight, they will always be shooting, or preparing to shoot.
However, simply shooting isn’t enough. You need to shoot enemies that are actively impeding your teammates from doing what they need to do. This is true whether they are using a terminal, reloading a machine gun, or taking aim at an incoming Bile Titan.
When I’m pulling my gun out without a specific target in mind, my number one priority is to shoot any enemies that are either closing in on a teammate or pinning them down with laser fire or rockets. Allowing my teammates room to breathe ensures they can make the most of their load-outs.
As I mentioned before, there are two major roles in a squad, anti-armor and anti-horde. If you are an anti-armor player, your focus has to switch to the heavy enemies when they appear. But believe it or not, this is the easiest of the two roles because it’s a focused job. Anyone who brings an anti-armor support weapon is going to inherently focus on a heavy enemy when they appear, that’s why they brought the weapon!
However, the anti-horde role is less obvious but critically important. Here’s the thing. The major role that heavy enemies play in Helldivers 2 isn’t even to kill you directly, it’s to disrupt your team. If you are being chased around by a Hulk or Charger, you aren’t shooting. If you aren’t shooting, enemies aren’t dying and if enemies aren’t dying, they are multiplying.
The anti-armor player is vulnerable to the horde when dealing with heavy enemies. If they are being harassed, they can’t properly aim, fire, or reload their anti-armor weaponry. When they have to stop and fight off a horde themselves, those are precious seconds that a heavy enemy is left free to wreak havoc on your team.
If you are one of the players in the anti-horde role and those Chargers, Bile Titans and Hulks start showing up. The most effective thing you can do is immediately find your anti-armor teammates and make sure nothing interrupts them. They need you, just like you need that Heavy Enemy to die so you don’t end up running in circles from an enemy you can’t hurt for the next 10 minutes.
Tip 4: Help Your Teammates
When a random dies, they are absolutely going to beeline to where they died to get their gear and samples. You might as well accept that now. To be fair, a player’s support weapon is pretty critical to their role so honestly you want them to have it as much as possible. So it makes sense to call them in pretty close to it.
Go a step further, however. I try to ping where their gear is and help them get to it. This prevents a death spiral of corpse running, keeps your team at maximum strength, and once again communicates your willingness to work together.
I mentioned before that running away is bad, but occasionally you have some folks seemingly stuck in one place. This is almost always because they are pinned down and entrenched. You might be tempted to bail out and call them down far away after they die. But they will be less effective until they can call down another support weapon. Go and help them, you would be surprised how many people start moving their feet once they feel safe enough to do so.
Updated Previous Guide Tip: Stop Running Away
I’m not going to repeat everything from my previous guide, but it’s relevant now more than ever. Many of the enemies in the game have quietly received speed boosts that occur when they need to catch up to a Helldiver. The effect is most apparent on the Automatons, but many of the Terminids do it as well.
The fact of the matter is, you aren’t going to outrun enemies in many circumstances, you’re just going to pass the aggro to someone else. Four players are capable of taking breaches and dropships without getting overrun, even on difficulty 9. Running is one of the reasons you get overwhelmed as you allow the invisible timer between enemy alerts to run down and aggro enemies from nearby POIs. Even if you somehow avoid that, the enemies chasing you pull nearby enemies into an aggro train of pain.
This doesn’t mean you should never run, and you don’t have to stand in one spot until the last enemy dies. Just make sure you’re turning around to pop the stragglers so they can’t call in an alert. You should also try to reposition to better terrain when possible, just don’t leave your teammates to die when you do it.
With randoms, this can be a bit messy. If you aren’t the host, stick with the host, even if they run. It’s going to make things worse, but the most important factor in the game is to stick together. As you run, continually turn back to thin out the enemy numbers and cover any nearby teammates that get left behind. Trust me, they will love you for it.
If you’re the host and people try to bail out of fights. Warn them through text chat (On PlayStation 5 you can hold the touchpad to open up text chat). If they don’t listen, kick them. You’re house, your rules.
Updated Previous Guide Tip: Don’t Bother Sneaking
My stance on stealth has somewhat changed since I wrote my last guide. It’s worth knowing how the alert system, patrols, and stealth system works. But in practice, it’s largely a waste of time to use, literally. 40 minutes isn’t a lot of time to clear the map, and clearing the map offers the most exp and thus the most liberation progress.
You simply don’t have time to waste laying in the bushes while waiting for a patrol to walk by when it would be infinitely faster just to take it out. If another fight happens nearby, they are gonna come and hit you in the back anyway, making that waste of time even worse.
Furthermore, you aren’t going to be able to coordinate with randoms about when to be quiet, and when to go loud. So follow this rule of thumb about being aggressively cautious.
If enemies are in your way, fight them. If a patrol is a good distance away, ignore them. It’s that simple. Use your radar and make sure you aren’t going to accidentally aggro nearby POI guards as you travel between objectives. If a teammate goes loud, go loud with them. It’s faster to help them destroy whatever they attacked than to roll your eyes that they could have ignored it. In the words of Bruce Lee, be like water. Take the shape of whatever vessel you are poured into.
Addressing the Criticism From My Last Guide
I received a lot of rather hostile pushback when I published my previous guide. I’m not surprised. If a guide doesn’t rock the boat a bit, it probably wasn’t needed in the first place. However, it’s worth addressing some of it, especially in the context of playing with randoms.
Criticism 1: Gideon Lies! Running Away Works!
It might, for one person running away. Your teammates being left behind to deal with your share of the load might feel otherwise. Every point I made in my previous guide remains true. But let me elaborate further.
It was always difficult to actually run away without attracting even more enemies. It was doable in solo play where there were fewer enemies, and you could sprint around in light armor, using smoke for cover and only worrying about yourself. If you did manage to get away, most enemies would despawn.
However, in the context of a multiplayer game with four players worth of enemies, alerts, and patrols. It’s not possible. You might get away, but only because you passed that aggro to another player. If everyone runs, someone is still going to end up getting seen, if not by the initial horde, a second one and you will end up getting sandwiched.
To make matters worse, many enemies have started to receive speed boosts to catch up to distant Helldivers. Take a second to look behind you when you’re trying to escape, you will notice that enemies are very persistent now, and may Democracy help you if you happen to be wearing heavy armor.
Running away, in most cases. Simply makes the situation worse. Getting overwhelmed in a fight isn’t an indicator that you’re supposed to run. It’s an indicator that you lost a winnable fight. Maybe you’re on too high a difficulty, or maybe your load-outs aren’t complementary. There could be any number of reasons a group gets bogged down and overrun. But running just makes it snowball further unless someone successfully pulls off the last stand maneuver I detailed in my previous guide.
Criticism 2: Gideon’s Wrong! I Carry The Team By Going Solo!
I’m going to take the kid gloves off for this one because this criticism comes from a very dishonest place. Solo runners aren’t carrying anything other than the weight of the bullshit occupying their bowels.
Here’s what’s happening. You are running off alone being all sneaky and the moment you see that breach/dropship notification, you decide to fight the small handful of enemies at an objective. Mean while your team fights an entire army while missing 25% of their firepower and stratagems. You aren’t carrying them, they are carrying you by drawing all the attention, and you’re doing it on purpose.
Cut the crap. You know you are exploiting the fact that only one alert can be active at a time to go around pretending to be the main character. In order to do that, you have to use the rest of the team as your scapegoats, whether they want to be or not. The entire mission becomes much harder for them and then you have the audacity to brag about it.
It’s a borderline exploit that arose from the fact that Helldivers 2 can only support so many active enemies at a time, and it comes at the cost of screwing your team out of a teammate in a team-focused game. It has no place in a guide, and the fact that you can do it doesn’t invalidate anything in my guides.
If anyone thinks I’m being too harsh. Think about this. Why don’t these solo lone wolves simply play solo? Because they can’t. They need someone to draw the breaches and drop ship alerts so they can roll by with minimal resistance. They would get bodied otherwise.
So here’s the thing. If you are with a group of friends and you want to split up and exploit the spawn system. More power to you, play however you want.
But with randoms? You’re a complete jerk and I’d advise any and all hosts to kick you from the game. Stick together.
Kindness Begets Kindness
This may surprise you, but when we aren’t fighting for resources, humans are naturally inclined to work together in a quid pro quo manner. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. You would be shocked how many randoms are suddenly receptive to working together, the moment they realize that someone else is willing. Remember at the start of each match, every random assumes you are as dumb and selfish as you assume they are going to be. Extend them a hand first, and they may just grab it.
By attempting to stick together, covering your teammates, and helping them out when they need it. You communicate your willingness to cooperate, and cooperation is baked into how we as humans evolved. Without voice chat, people will automatically interpret aggressive actions as hostile, and helpful actions as kind and respond the exact same way.
Once a random realizes you are helping them, their imagination fills in the blanks left behind by the lack of your physical presence or voice, and they likely end up viewing you in a greater light than you would otherwise reasonably deserve. In my experience, they go out of their way to help you in return. You stop being just another random. You become a teammate.
Most people playing Helldivers 2 want to work together. They just don’t have the energy for the extra social interaction that voice chat entails. When you first load in together, you’re a faceless stranger, but by allowing your Helldiver to become your body language, you can still coax a level of trust in your fellow teammates. And heck, if you really enjoy playing with someone, send them a friend request. Today’s randoms could be tomorrow’s premade group of battle buddies.
If you found this guide helpful, be sure to share it with others!
You might also enjoy my previous Helldivers 2 Guide, or my Helldivers 2 Review