Brood Commander (Helldivers 2)

"'Directing its foul brethren with a mixture of pheromone-like spores and fascist shrieks, the bloodthirsty Brood Commander is a rare and deadly strain known for its undeniable hatred of the right to vote.'"

Named after the strain of Terminids that existed during the First Galactic War, the Brood Commander is a heavy armoured and dangerous Terminid that is a variant of the Warrior and member of the nearly-extinct Terminid Leadership Cast.

These Brood Commanders looks nothing like the Brood Commander strain present during the First Galactic War, which led to theory that these Warrior strain Brood Commanders were in fact a lesser or lower members of the Terminid Leadership Caste. It believed after Super Earth exterminated the Terminid Leadership they attempted to eradicate the Terminid Leadership Caste from the Terminid genome, there by prevent the development of Leadership Caste Terminids that able to guide and direct the other Terminid Castes and allow Super Earth to more easily control them.

However, either due to oversight or Super Earth genetic tempering with Terminid DNA, these Warrior strain Brood Commanders started to appear to take control and organize Terminid hives to fight back against their enslavers. With the reappearance of this Leadership Caste, it might be matter of time before other members of the Leadership Caste Terminids might appear.

Tactics

 * Brood Commanders can be found in planets with bug missions even on the lowest possible difficulty settings, predominately found in hives. They are sometimes assigned their own special quest like Bile Spewers, Bile Titans and Chargers. Brood Commanders are armored yet they're much slower than the rest.
 * Brood Commanders have the ability to summon Warriors and Hive Guards to aid it in battle, the latter of which can also call in bug breaches, which means that if not dispatched in time a Brood Commander will bring in whole swarms along with them. Using Sentry guns, Eagle strikes, or Orbitals can dispatch them and their crew pretty quickly. Staggering a Brood Commander with hard hitting attacks can also disrupt its pheromone release.
 * The head of a Brood Commander is protected by light armor, which means it can soak up a decent amount of damage from light armor penetration weapons. It can take as much as 17 shots from a Liberator to the head to bring down a Brood Commander. On the other hand, medium armor penetration weapons such as the Slugger or the Liberator Penetrator can take down the Brood Commander via headshots much more efficiently, taking 2 slugs and 8 shots to the head respectively.
 * The Breaker is a rather efficient weapon against the Brood Commander as despite having only light armor penetration, its high damage and rapid rate of fire allows a Helldiver to down a Brood Commander with as little as 3 shots to the Head.
 * Their weak spot is their unarmored limbs- similar to the warrior caste. However, blowing off both front limbs will not kill the commander. It will try to continue to crawl to the Helldiver. So make sure to send a few extra bullets into its head way to ensure it stays down.

Abilities

 * The Commander can call in bug breaches similar to the Warrior and Scavenger caste.
 * In addition to its basic claw attacks it will also charge in a straight line and knock over and concuss any helldiver caught in its path. Sometimes it will kill outright if knocked directly into a wall.
 * The Commander also has a berserker ability when it's head is destroyed similar to the basic warrior caste. It will gain a significant amount of movement speed and attack speed for about 3 secs before expiring.

Trivia

 * The Brood Commander is named after a similar enemy from the first game. Similar to its counterpart, it is the most dangerous unit of the Bugs' infantry, possessing tough armor in the front and making a beserker sprint towards its enemies when heavily damaged.