Know Your Role

Know your role!
Helldiver, if you want to spread managed democracy you need to know your role. You are the shock troop of Liberty. You are a highly trained special forces operative that showers Managed Democracy on your objectives. You spill oil and rain blood. You are not the Super Earth Armed Forces (SEAF). If eradication is the goal, then the ground would be shaking under the weight of our troops and shells. They are not needed, you are needed! Your elected officials need you to complete these objectives with precision and heroism so that Managed Democracy can spread.

There will be times in which you will be the last one standing amongst the charred remains of the fallen. This is glorious Managed Democracy.

There will be times in which you will be rapidly moving between objectives and avoiding hellfire. This is also glorious Managed Democracy.

Knowing the correct tactics to use in each situation will be the difference between a successful mission with sample extraction and utter failure.

It is wise to think of each item available to you as falling into one of the following roles. This will help you synergize either your own loadout, or synergize your loadout with your fellow Helldivers.

Area of Effect (AOE)
These items are intended to do destruction across a multiple enemies. Do note that while it references enemies, fellow Helldivers will also be affected by these items. You will need to learn to aim carefully or risk losing all of your reinforcements.

Precision
These items are design to kill that one thing right away. They will pick apart enemy groups focusing upon a select one or two key individuals nullifying their threat. You can use these in chaotic fights or close combat with nearby Helldivers with low risk of friendly fire.

Light Armor
Common troops are the most frequently encountered enemy. While individually they are easy to eliminate, as a group they often work in coordination with each other to make your life hell. If left alone, many have the ability to call in additional reinforcements. Many a Helldiver has dived their last underestimating the threat they pose. These items are designed to quickly and efficiently remove large quantities of common troops before reinforcements are called. However, many of these items are limited to light armor and will have little effect on medium or heavy.

Medium Armor
You know its a bad day when you see shielded devastators surrounding a rocket devastator. Unless you come prepared for them. Medium armor troops appear in smaller numbers. As a result, these items tend to have a smaller AOE radius - if any - and ammo efficiency is a greater concern. You can use these items easily on lightly armored enemies, but run the risk of running out of ammunition for the medium armor targets.

Heavy Armor
There is nothing as exhilarating as seeing a Hulk emerge from behind cover. Every Helldiver looks forward to the chance of spill that oil. But that requires an item able to pierce it's armor first. As heavy armor troops are encountered far less frequently than others, items designed to spill oil and rain blood tend to be very precise and limited in use and charges. You should be aware of ammunition and cooldown time as using these items on a medium armor target is all well and good, until that Bile Titan emerges from the spore cloud and you don't have a way to take it down.

Defensive
These items are designed to make one spot as free as the Halls of Constitution. The vast majority of them will not move with you Helldiver and they are best used when you are required to spend time in the same area completing an objective.

So Helldiver, there are two schools of thought when creating a loadout. You build yourself to be a Jack-of-all-Trades. This involves you selecting items that will let you handle most, if not all, threats you encounter. While it sounds good, the trade off is that these loadouts tend to not kill efficiently requiring more time and ammo to eliminate the threat. The other way to build is to create a specialty for yourself focusing on 1 or 2 roles while your team mates focus upon other roles. This synergy makes for very effective and efficient missions. However, the drawback is that if that team mate is dead or you find yourself solo...you will find a threat you are unable to eliminate.

Both approaches are viable in completing missions. What is not viable is you not realizing your own limitations. This leads to Helldivers engaging in patrols being unable to eliminate them quickly and having a flood of reinforcements arrive within seconds. This leads to Helldivers charging a position trying to overcome a tank or cannon battery only to watch their reinforcements dwindle to zero.

Tactical retreats are just as important as tactical strikes. The best Helldivers know when to use each.