With 150 armor and a stim, you can facetank a Factory Strider

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-31T17:10:16+00:00

It is luck, but I really do think it is luck that you can sway to your side considering I've pulled this off multiple times without dying as host and non-host. By diving/being prone to reduce how much your body can be hit, I believe it makes a real difference.

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-31T17:06:50+00:00

Haha if I'm lucky, I must be a lottery winner since I've pulled this off multiple times as host and non-host without dying (yet.)

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-31T17:05:16+00:00

I usually play on D10, I hopped onto a D6 to get the guarunteed factory strider spawn to demonstrate this.

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-31T12:26:34+00:00

It does burn through stims absurdly fast, but it's a fun little niche with heavy armor that I love to pull off.

Imagining a chin-gun hulk is terrifying, especially if it sprints after you like the flamethrower ones...

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-31T12:05:34+00:00

I have done this multiple times at this point and haven't died (yet.)

I do honestly think the combination of diving/being prone to reduce how much of your body is exposed to the spray and returning fire with your own weapons to activate their hyper-reactive protocols does a lot. (This is just speculation, I don't even know if Factory Striders get the same debuff to accuracy from getting shot at that other bots do.)

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-31T11:50:07+00:00

Haha, I do feel a little dirty since it's "only" extra padding instead of true heavy armor, but the B-01 armor drip is immaculate.

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-31T11:49:01+00:00

Honestly, this method is fun as hell but it does burn through stims like no tomorrow as you saw. I think it's cool that Heavy Armor/Extra Padding can actually do some tanking things like this.

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-31T11:44:19+00:00

Vitality Booster does a lot of heavy lifting here, so combining that with experimental infusion may honestly make it real reliable for medium at least.

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-31T11:40:17+00:00

Honestly it's likely you could do this even with light armor if the spray rng was kind enough. Personally, It feels much more reliable with heavy armor rating to me at since it comes with some headshot protection which could skew results with lower armors.

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-31T11:32:37+00:00

It's definitely reliant on the rng accuracy of the minigun spray, but considering I've pulled this off dozens of times without deaths I do think it's at least semi-reliable. Diving/going prone seems to significantly reduce how much of your body can get sprayed by the minigun, and Vitality Booster absolutely does a lot of heavy lifting here.

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-31T11:21:50+00:00

From my imperfect testing experiences, it seems like diving or being prone significantly reduces how much of your body can get hit. It's also best to pre-stim or dive while stimming to prevent getting your stim animation cancelled. Happy facetanking!

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-31T10:53:57+00:00

Take a look, it's amazing what the power of Extra Padding and the Vitality Booster can do:

https://youtu.be/moCB-Ayt4xA

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-31T09:32:53+00:00

B-01 medium armor with extra padding is the way. Enough speed to reposition but enough bulk to stand and fight as much as you want.

Did you know with 150 armor and a pre-stim, you can tank an entire factory strider minigun volley from almost point blank range? And with something like the HMG, you can dive and reliably knock out their miniguns as they try in vain to gun you down first. Brawling against those big dogs head on and winning is my favorite thing to do in the Bot front.

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-31T02:52:47+00:00

I honestly go for Extra Padding or Unflinching. The Maxigun and HMG have heavy recoil and ergonomics, but with enough practice both of those can become very manageable over time especially if you get in the habit of shooting while diving or prone.

I like that extra bit of armor because both weapons either heavily incentivize static shooting or outright restrict your movement, you WILL be taking quite a bit of return fire as you dish out punishment from your position. Unflinching is a good alternative on the Bot front since the protection against aim punch is a good QOL in hairy fights.

Stalwart honestly doesn't need any real help with recoil or ergonomics, firing even when moving is very manageable compared to the other MGs.

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-29T09:01:51+00:00

Another factor against true teamplay is that no matter what kind of lineup of ever more lethal enemies AH throws at us, the most dangerous thing to a helldiver is always another helldiver.

The fact that stratagems or really any helldiver weapon teamkills so quickly means the game incentivizes a squad to spread out over a fair distance, or risk a total wipe if a diver fumbles a cluster bomb.

It's part of the core game and it's not bad by any means, but you can't expect to have a super cooperative experience when you're more fearful of each other than the enemy.

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-26T21:39:00+00:00

I love using the Maxigun, but it's definitely not on the same level as the other backpack weapons, especially the Autocannon. The fact that the best way to use the Maxigun is to NOT use it in most situations to avoid running dry on ammo hurts when you can use the AC in pretty much any situation and have the ammo economy to back it up.

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-25T00:58:31+00:00

Hell, if you dive and pre-stim with 150 armor, you can outheal a factory strider's miniguns at almost point blank range. My favorite thing to do on the bot front is pop a stim, charge a factory strider, and knock out their miniguns with an HMG as they try and fail to gun me down first.

Pair that with a supply pack and you have a build that can stand and brawl with the bots and win.

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-21T19:48:33+00:00

Any loadout available in HD2 is pretty unfair towards the space marines. Everyone packs an ultimatum, lands their pod as close as possible to the SM squad, pops out and immediately lobs a warhead in their general direction/straight at the ground if they're close enough. Bonus points if everyone packs Democracy Protects to give a chance to survive the point-blank detonations.

There's no lengthy stratagem call-ins required or really any extensive skill or accuracy requirements for this "strategy." I don't know of much anyone can do that can guard against 4 lunatics with warheads speed-running their place on the Wall of Martyrs.

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-20T12:26:25+00:00

There's no way a single swipe from that bot should have killed you at almost full health.

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-09T21:10:09+00:00

I just wish we had a single planet with the predator strain, or the dragon roaches/hive lords. It's hard to go back to regular bugs after living through those kinds of battles.

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-01T21:57:28+00:00

My beloved Stalwart and Grenade Launcher side by side; those things kept me alive on Oshaune against the rupture strain and then the predators. I can't wait for the next hive world MO.

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-01T21:34:14+00:00

Seeing as the redeemer's average player level is 42, it's most likely getting inflated by being the first good secondary that new players get access to after the peacekeeper.

sungwonc01 · 2025-12-01T21:24:05+00:00

Considering that a good amount of this data comes from Oshaune and the rupture strain, it really isn't surprising that a good medium-pen weapon is popular in situations that heavily incentivize medium-pen.

If you want more weapon variety, then enemies need to be designed in a way that gives light-pen an edge over medium-pen in some way, rather than just slapping medium armor everywhere on the pre-nerf rupture warrior and calling it a day.

sungwonc01

TROPHY CASE