Top 15 Best Underdog Stratagems, Weapons, and Boosters for Helldive Difficulty

My favorite part about the gatling sentry is that like all other sentries it focuses on the larger enemies such as bile titans and chargers despite not being able to penetrate their armour.

Airburst Strike is low key S tier against bugs. Throw that sucker on every breach you see and everything but the bile titans be getting mulched. I'm the only one I ever see run it, and I can consistently get 200+ more kills than my squadmates with it.

Another busting thing for supply pack is that if you use all of the supplies for your friends, you dont need to supply yourself before taking the resupply. It refills both the normal supply AND the backpack. So unload those grenade pistols like they are a true support weapon and have fun ALWAYS being topped off.

Omega underrated is the Melee, I'd bet at least half the people who play the game have ever even pushed the melee button. You can parry the Hunter jump with a melee, Hunter flying at you just clock it in the head and it will stagger back then you just pop a quick dome. Little automaton bots also die in 2 and the melee doesn't alert enemies to you. If you're playing stealth you can kill small bots before they can alert their allies. You're able to sneak into bases and as long as there isn't anything bigger than a small bot between you and the objective you can get in completely undetected, actually incredible for Strategem Jammers. It's niche as hell but it's amazing in the right situations. Another underrated weapon is the Redeemer in single fire mode. If you need a weapon that can just kill the small guys it's pretty amazing, pairing it with an unruly weapon like the Eruptor, Jar 5 or Slugger which isn't very good against the small units is great. It's just an extremely reliable weak headshot weapon that can kill infinite small bots, Scavengers and Hunters. I bet most people use the Redeemer in full auto mode to burst down medium tier units like Meat Saws and Brood Commanders but using it like the basic pistol is extremely underutilized and can filter out the Stalwart in more builds than not. Smokes against Bots is also really underutilized. The secret is to throw it when you're next to a LOS blocker then duck behind the sight blocker and run away, pairing it with stealth armor will let you escape so many situations.

The AR Guard Rover NEEDS medium armor pen, because its just wasting ammo. It would make it viable but still not even close to broken

Autocannon sentry claps cheeks for days. With good placement it can mow down multiple Titans and Chargers, plus it takes aggro from you and the homies. Been crutching on it since AH made the Quasar fire only once every leap year.

I’ve been using recoilless rifle since I unlocked it, still using it on most missions and I’m lvl 125. Such a fun weapon to use, and it’s so powerful. Really strong having an anti tank shot every 3 ish seconds in d9 for both bots and bugs. Pairs really well with sentries (specifically Gatling sentry) too since you can take out all the big stuff while the turret does the rest. Does require practice though to get the positioning optimized.

You know what's crazy? Orbital Airburst Strike cooldown was 75sec on release, along with Gas Strike, they were my two main strats all the time, then they nerfed Airburst to 100sec and I leave it, now it's 120sec, and it never got mentioned anywhere in a single patch note.

I think the eagle strafing run is also an underdog against bugs. It definitely needs more charges (absolutely criminal it has less than cluster) but it's super versatile because of how precise it is. There's a lot of situations where a cluster bomb would need to kill your teammates or yourself to hit the bugs but the strafing run can be spammed every encounter without friendly fire and in the right situation it can really thin out hordes of bugs. Especially effective against both types of spewers since they're such big targets.

The main thing you need to learn with the autocannon sentry is *range*. The damn thing can take out chargers and bile titans in quick succession, as long as it gets the 5 seconds it needs to aim at them. It's not ideal if the bugs get to it, but if you can keep it safe long enough for it to get it's cannon on target it can take out up to 4 bile titans in about 20 seconds. If you manage to set one up in advance it can do some serious work. It's an excellent ambush tool. As for the gatling sentry: The thing about sentries is that they're more than just bug killing. They also draw aggro. Which can give you the breathing room needed to get a situation under control. They also overpenetrate small size bugs I think, so they may be more effective in more enemy dense situations. Plus, they're excellent against the most important bug type to keep under control: Hunters. The advantage it has over the tesla tower is that it can do all that without being an extreme liability to the team. The reason why I don't prefer the JAR against bots is simple: Range matters. The bots are most effective at medium range. So that's the range you don't want to fight them at. That's also the range you use a JAR at.

Autocannon Sentry is amazing against bots. Takes out hulks and mediums consistently. Just hope there isn't a dropship for it to waste rounds on tho lol. No idea what I would ever pick rocket sentry for, it just doesn't punch hard enough.

Guard Dog needs to be able to resupply half ammo off of ammo packs. Needing resupply pickups is too feels bad, will never be picked over rover sadly 😞 Oh shit! I had no idea Airburst could kill Chargers! Pro tip: Airburst will kill Bile Titan if the back armor is stripped (big hole in the back armor with orange guts showing)

They really should just make the MG turret be an HMG turret instead.

As someone who has been using Ammo Backpack since launch, I have a few gameplay tips. 1, be greedin'. Don't go handing out Refills off of the HUD, because the HUD's broken and doesn't actually display proper information after the first refill. If an ally uses the "Need ammo" callout or asks for it in VC or TC, go ahead and hand one out, even when using the HMG you will have more than enough to go around, so long as you only give to those who need it. 2, be frugal. When with the squad, be sure to have an empty node on the pack before you touch the Resupply call-in's nodes, you refill both your ammo and a backpack node off of a single resupply call-in's node, effectively double dipping on the ammo you recieve. 3, be shootin'. You will not run out of ammo in fights, almost ever. Keep the pressure up. Ignore ammo counts and mag dump pretty much every compound you come across, and be sure to refill your magazines between every fight, no matter how many bullet's you've actually fired, because a full mag is better than saving 30 bullets in your HMG or 2 grenades in your GL. 4, be stimmin'. You have 8 extra stims on your back, so make use of them whenever possible. Always stim back to full. When sprinting across the map, take damage somehow and pop a stim when your stamina bottoms out to fully refill it instantly and have infinite stamina for a short duration. 5, be nadin'. You have 8 extra grenades on your back, so you best be tossing them. Take impacts if your build lack a good strider-killer, take smokes and stealth for minutes at a time, take stun to play the game on easy mode, seriously stuns are so strong with this pack because you can basically toss them with impunity. GL or Grenade Pistol allows you to still preform essential HELLDIVER tasks like nests and fabs, and if you haven't tried using GL as a primary with the Ammo Pack, I HIGHLY recommend, GL refills both it's mags off of one node, meaning you can haul around some 120 or so Grenades at a time, and it's so consistent for taking out striders you can bring the instant-win stun grenades as your throwable.

I swear by the eagle strafing run. It's different from all others in that it's angled away from you and not perpendicular. This means that it's good with softening up and clearing out groups of enemies that are chasing you. Get them through a choke and it thins out the mooks easy-peasy. Even takes down Dominators occationally. I very commonly throw that thing at my own feet when getting swarmed, jump onto my back and watch the strafe as I reload.

I switched to recoilless after the quasar nerf and I actually like it more, the reload animation cancels make it more involved to use

I use the Orbital Airburst all the dang time. One of my favorites. Placed correctly it will also take out hulks and tanks if enough of the splash hits the heat vents. Especially if you trick tanks into getting stuck. And I really just love how damn dangerous it is.

On the sentries I personally run the Auto Cannon heavily. Even though like you said it tends to kill itself, get overrun, or shoot at the least important target, but when it gets put in a good position with some range it is on like Donkey Kong. It will wreck everything and anything short of Bile Titans that can't be staggered and tend to charge it down. But it can and will absolutely still wreck a titan if it's given a chance and a bit of range. I like to wing it off a ways as I'm being chased to unload on my pursuers or just simply as a distraction to draw enemies away as I bail and run. Or toss it on the rim of a large nest or out a bit from a bot base to position it to start unloading on stuff before I go in. When I hear and see that thing start hammering into something it's just so satisfying. But like you said it can also be infuriating all to often such as when I wing it off to the side somewhere and a massive patrol spawns right next to it and obliterates it or draws it's attention away from the Titan or Chargers that are hot on my heels lol.

Part of the reason the supply backpack is slept on is because it doesn't "make sense". It basically gives you an extra supply pack from the resupply pod. By carrying an empty backpack, your helldiver gets double the grenades/ stims, and ammo from the same pack. It makes zero sense physically and it's not something a player would expect without being told about it or using the supply backpack themselves.

Love the in-video visual timestamps of the weapons, very clever