Top 12 Most Fun to Use Stratagems in Helldivers 2

Fun is subjective, but in Helldivers 2, a stratagem that makes you grin the moment you call it down is a stratagem worth talking about. Whether it’s sheer destructive power, clever utility, or the kind of chaos that makes your fellow squadmates question your motives, fun comes in many forms in this game.

Some of these picks are tried-and-true community favorites, while others are criminally slept on. Either way, here are our top 10 most fun stratagems to use in Helldivers 2, in order.

12 E/MG-101 HMG Emplacement

The HMG Emplacement is one of the most underrated defensive stratagems in the game, and it isn’t particularly close. Twin heavy armor penetrating machine guns, on a 300-round internal magazine, and a cooldown of 180 seconds means it’s back up and ready when you need to place it in a different spot.

Nothing quite communicates “I am tired of being shot at” like sitting behind a pair of spinning HMGs and letting everything in front of you cease to exist. It works across all three factions, and with a teammate covering your flanks while you man the emplacement, it becomes a genuinely terrifying (for democracy’s enemies) defensive tool.

11 Orbital Napalm Barrage

Some stratagems are tools. The Orbital Napalm Barrage is a statement. Throw it into a dense bug nest or a horde of squids, take a few steps back, and just watch as everything within range gets acquainted with the concept of fire over an extended period of time.

It has a 240-second cooldown and a 7.45-second call-in time, which is fair considering what it does on impact. The area of effect is wide, the burn damage lingers well after the initial barrage, and on the Terminid and Illuminate fronts specifically, it tends to solve problems before they become problems.

10 Orbital 380mm HE Barrage

The 380mm HE Barrage is what happens when Managed Democracy decides subtlety is overrated. It only costs 7,500 Requisition Slips and is unlockable at Level 8, which means most Helldivers get their hands on it fairly early, and then spend the rest of their playtime looking for excuses to use it.

It is extremely effective at levelling Automaton compounds, and the unpredictable spread of the shells adds a particular element of tension that most stratagems don’t provide. A heads-up to your squad before throwing it is recommended. Whether or not they manage to get out of the way in time, however, is half the entertainment.

9 StA-X3 W.A.S.P. Launcher

Where the FAF-14 Spear locks on slowly and only targets large enemies or structures, the WASP locks on fast and can engage most enemy types, with the trade-off being lower damage and reduced armor penetration. The best use case is against medium-sized targets at long range, where the homing capability removes the need to aim entirely.

It has two firing modes: Burst, which allows you to fire each of the seven rockets individually in quick succession, and Artillery, which simultaneously launches all remaining missiles skyward in an overhead bombardment. Both modes are effective. Both modes are also extremely cinematic to watch, which is most of the reason it makes this list.

8  RL-77 Airburst Rocket Launcher

The Airburst Rocket Launcher has a reputation in the Helldivers 2 community, and that reputation is specifically about what happens when an inexperienced player gets hold of one. It is the support weapon most likely to cause a full squad wipe through sheer friendly-fire enthusiasm, and it has earned that title honestly.

That said, once you’ve committed its two firing modes to muscle memory, it becomes a highly devastating crowd-control weapon. Figuring out the difference through trial and error (over countless “collateral damage” situations), though, is very much part of the experience.

7 LIFT-182 Warp Pack

There is a theory that once a Helldiver discovers the Warp Pack, they are physically incapable of equipping any other backpack stratagem. The horizontal mobility it provides is in a different class from every other movement option in the game, with a five-second cooldown between jumps that keeps it available throughout a firefight.

It makes heavy armor loadouts significantly more viable by eliminating most of the mobility penalty, lets you pass through obstacles and enter bunkers without a second player, and is the single best Super Credits farming tool in the game for that reason.

6 M-1000 Maxigun

The Maxigun started as a community concept that Arrowhead turned into a real stratagem, which is already a great origin story. It’s a backpack-fed minigun with 750 rounds, a 1,500 RPM rate of fire, and medium armor penetration, and it cripples your movement the moment those barrels start spinning.

None of that last part matters once you’ve actually used it. There is no other support weapon in the game that gives you the same feeling of bracing under a metric ton of spinning steel and simply refusing to let anything past you. It performs particularly well against the Illuminate, and for any Helldiver who has ever looked at the Gatling Sentry and thought “I should be holding that,” this is the answer.

5 EAT-17 Expendable Anti-Tank

The EAT-17 is unlocked at Level 3 for 3,000 Requisition Slips, which makes it one of the earliest stratagems available, and also, somehow, one of the most consistently useful across every difficulty and every faction. Each call-in drops two launchers with a 70-second cooldown, which means reliable anti-armor access throughout the entire mission.

The hellpod itself has a demolition force of 40, which means it can close Bile Titan nests and destroy Automaton Fabricators on impact. Strategically littering the battlefield with EATs so your squad always has one within reach is also a valid strategy, and spamming something off a 70-second cooldown never stops being fun.

4 B/MD C4 Pack

The C4 Pack is from the Redacted Regiment warbond, and it eats up both your Support Weapon and Backpack slot if you choose to equip it in a mission. That’s a steep price, and most Helldivers see it and immediately reach for something else.

Those are the players who miss out on the chance to spend an entire mission playing Super Earth’s version of James Bond. Slip through a bot outpost undetected, stick C4 on every Fabricator you pass, get to high ground, and press the button. No shooting, no alerts, just a very large simultaneous explosion and the quiet satisfaction of a job well done. Against Automatons, it genuinely never gets old.

3 TD-220 Bastion

The Bastion arrived carrying more weight than just a 120mm cannon. For veterans of the First Galactic War, it was a piece of history finally making it into the sequel. For newer Helldivers who’d been asking for it since launch, it was a long time coming regardless.

It has taken its share of criticism for being more fragile than a vehicle of its size arguably should be in higher difficulty missions, and that’s more or less fair. But learning to steer it, coordinating with a gunner, or being the gunner while someone else drives is a specific kind of fun that no other stratagem on this list can replicate.

2 LAS-98 Laser Cannon

If the last time you used the Laser Cannon was before the March 17 patch bumped its beam range from 200m to 1,000m, you’ve been missing out for a while now. No recoil, minimal sway, and damage that compounds the longer the beam stays on a target made it a solid pick even before that change.

What the range buff actually unlocked is the ability to stand on a cliff a full kilometer out and watch a bot’s joint slowly melt off in real time. The ammo pool is infinite, so heat management is the only thing standing between you and an endlessly sustained beam. Learning that rhythm across a long engagement is, frankly, its own kind of fun.

1 B-100 Portable Hellbomb

The Portable Hellbomb is on page three of the Servants of Freedom warbond and costs 110 medals. The concept is simple: a miniaturised NUX-223 Hellbomb worn as a backpack, armed either by the wearer or by any teammate who gets close enough to press the action button. It explodes after 10 seconds, with no way to disarm it once triggered.

It one-shots every ground enemy smaller than a Hive Lord within a 25-metre kill radius, with an effective blast radius of up to 45 metres, and can even be used to destroy those stubborn Stratagem Jammers on the bot front. The chaos, the alarm, the sprinting, the ten-second countdown, and the very large explosion at the end of it all is the most fun Helldivers 2 has to offer in a single stratagem slot.

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Here’s a quick look at all ten picks in order:

RankStratagemSource

1	B-100 Portable Hellbomb	Servants of Freedom Warbond
2	LAS-98 Laser Cannon	Engineering Bay (Level 5)
3	TD-220 Bastion	Hangar (Level 1)
4	B/MD C4 Pack	Redacted Regiment Warbond
5	EAT-17 Expendable Anti-Tank	Patriotic Administration Center (Level 3)
6	M-1000 Maxigun	Python Commandos Warbond
7	LIFT-182 Warp Pack	Control Group Warbond
8	RL-77 Airburst Rocket Launcher	Patriotic Administration Center (Level 15)
9	StA-X3 W.A.S.P. Launcher	Patriotic Administration Center (Level 20)
10	Orbital 380mm HE Barrage	Orbital Cannons (Level 8)
11	Orbital Napalm Barrage	Ship Management (Level 18)
12	E/MG-101 HMG Emplacement	Ship Management (Level 10)

And finally, below are answers to a few questions that tend to come up around a list like this one:

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Which stratagem on this list do you think deserves more love from the community? Let us know in the comments below!