Helldivers 2 Best Loadouts for Bug and Bot Fronts

Picking gear in Helldivers 2 gets a lot simpler once you split the galaxy into two problems. Bugs want to drown you in bodies, so you need fast swarm clear and a way to delete the big armored ones before they reach you. Bots shoot back from across the map, so range, precision, and armor punch matter way more than spray. The good news is a handful of guns, stratagems, and boosters carry you across both fronts without swapping your whole loadout every match. Here's what's actually worth running right now.

Primary Weapons That Handle Both Fronts

Your primary is the gun you'll fire most, so it has to pull weight on whatever planet the destroyer drops you on. Most primaries lean hard one way. Spray weapons love bugs but bounce off bot armor, and hard-hitting single-shot guns melt bots but choke when fifty hunters crawl over you. A few sit in the middle and don't really care which side you're fighting.

The R-36 Eruptor

The Eruptor fires jet-assisted shells that explode on impact and throw shrapnel everywhere, and it's one of the few primaries with heavy armor penetration. That pen tier matters more than the raw damage, because it means you can chew through medium armor and crack open bug spawners and bot fabricators with the same gun. It handles devastators and hive guards at range, and the explosion clips grouped-up trash mobs for free.

There's a catch, and it's a real one. The shrapnel fans out in all directions, so firing this thing point-blank is a good way to blow yourself up. The fix is spacing. Treat the Eruptor like a mini marksman rifle, and if something gets in your face, switch to a fast sidearm rather than panic-firing. On bug missions that can be kind of a pain during a charger rush, so pair it with the Senator or a Grenade Pistol for close emergencies.

The JAR-5 Dominator

If you want medium penetration without the self-damage risk, the Dominator is the safer pick. It lobs two-stage jet rounds that pop inside a target, hits for about 200 damage a shot, and carries 15 rounds per mag. A headshot drops most medium automatons in one trigger pull, and the medium pen lets you shred warrior bugs and bot dev squads without switching weapons.

So pick your shots. The slow fire rate and small mag mean trigger discipline wins fights, and dumping the mag into a single charger wastes ammo a support weapon would spend better.

The PLAS-101 Purifier

The Purifier charges up a plasma ball that handles medium armor and groups nicely. It shines brightest on the bot front, where the splash clears infantry clusters and the charged shots crack open dev packs. Against bugs it still works, but the charge time eats ammo fast when the swarm gets thick, so it feels more at home patrolling bot planets.

Safe picks if you lack the warbond guns

Not everyone has unlocked the premium warbond primaries, and that's fine. The Plas-1 Scorcher is a solid all-rounder with decent splash and medium pen, and the AR-23P Liberator Penetrator gives you medium pen in a fast-firing rifle that's friendly on both fronts. Grab the Scorcher if you want punch, the Penetrator if you want spray. Both are way better than their reputation on lower difficulties.

Support Weapon Picks for Terminid Swarms

Bugs test you in two ways at once. Small bugs arrive in huge waves that overwhelm spray, and the big ones, the chargers, bile titans, and impalers, want to delete you in one or two hits. A good bug support weapon either hoses down the swarm or removes a heavy from the board, and the best loadouts carry one of each.

AC-8 Autocannon

The Autocannon is the workhorse of the bug front. It carries a ton of ammo, fires fast enough to thin packs, and the rounds one-tap most medium bugs. It also breaks charger legs at range and pops bug spawners in a couple of hits. There's no backpack required, which keeps that slot free for a rover or a supply pack. The reload takes a moment, so kick it off while you're moving between fights rather than mid-swarm.

The one weak spot is true heavies. A bile titan soaks a lot of autocannon rounds, and you'll usually spend a stratagem or two on it instead.

Quasar Cannon

The Quasar is the closest thing to a delete button for heavies. Charge it up and a single shot to the leg strips a charger, and a charged head shot can fold a bile titan or drop an impaler with its tentacles out. No backpack means your pack slot stays open, which is huge for bug missions where you want a rover or a shield.

The cost is the charge time and the cooldown. Each shot puts the gun on a long recharge, so you can't spam it. That's the trade for not carrying ammo or a backpack, and on bugs it's usually a fine deal.

Flamethrower

When the swarm crawls over your position, the Flamethrower bails you out. It melts packs of small bugs in seconds and, maybe surprisingly, burns chargers down fast if you sweep the legs. It's a close-range panic button and a crowd-clearer in one. The downside is range, since you have to let bugs get close, which gets sketchy against bile spewers and stalkers. Run it when the rest of your kit handles long range.

The Spear as a ranged option

The Spear locks on and fires a heavy rocket that drops bile titans from across the map. The lock-on can be finicky, more so on fast-moving chargers, but for big stationary targets it's reliable. It pairs nicely with an autocannon or quasar user who handles the small stuff.

Grenades for bug spawners

Carry the G-12 High Explosive or impact grenades and save them for spawners. Dropping a grenade into a spawner hole closes it for good, and the autocannon or Eruptor can finish the job on armor. A grenade pistol in the sidearm slot gives you a backup spawner-buster without spending a grenade charge.

Support Weapon Picks for Automaton Patrols

Bots flip the script. They don't swarm your feet the way bugs do. Instead, dev squads shoot at you from range, hulks charge with flamethrowers, and tanks plus factory striders dump heavy fire that flattens you in the open. So your support kit leans toward precision and armor punch, with a little crowd control for the rocket dev packs.

Anti-Materiel Rifle

The Anti-Materiel Rifle is cheap to run and quietly one of the best bot guns in the game. The light and medium pen pops heads on basic troopers and devastators, and the scope lets you pick off turret heads and hulk eye slits at distance. It carries plenty of ammo and has no backpack, so it's perfect for a long patrol where you're picking fights from outside bot range.

The thing it can't do is crack a tank or a factory strider. Save those for heavier tools.

GR-8 Recoilless Rifle

When a tank rolls up, the Recoilless is the answer. It fires heavy-pen rounds that hit hard, and the wiki puts its damage somewhere in the 750 to 3200 range depending on the shell type and where you connect. A shot to a tank turret or a strider face plate does real work, and the backpack buddy reload keeps you shooting through a bot assault. The backpack is the cost, so you're trading your pack slot for raw anti-tank.

The Recoilless also strips charger armor on the bug front, which makes it a genuine two-front pick if your team runs a supply pack to keep shells flowing.

EAT-17 Expendable Anti-Tank

The Expendable Anti-Tank is the flexible pick for squads that can't commit a backpack. Call it down, grab a one-shot launcher, hit a heavy, then call it again. The short cooldown means you basically always have anti-tank on tap, and since it's a stratagem and not a held weapon, your hands stay free for an autocannon or AMR. It pairs beautifully with thermite grenades.

Autocannon on bots too

The Autocannon returns here because it's that good across both fronts. On bots it shreds fabricators, pops rocket devs, and knocks out gunships. It's the safe pick when you're not sure what the mission will throw at you, and it covers the gaps a pure anti-tank build leaves open.

Sidearm and grenade backup

A GP-31 Grenade Pistol in the sidearm slot closes fabricators and catches shielded devs off guard. For grenades, the G-123 Thermite sticks to a heavy and burns through armor, which is the best answer for hulks and tanks when your support weapon is busy. Thermites turn any loadout into a temporary anti-tank kit, so a lot of botdivers run them by default.

Booster Combinations Worth Running Every Match

Boosters are the easy slot to forget, but the right four can carry a squad. Each player brings one, and the effects stack across the team for the whole mission. The strongest lineup covers survival, stamina, and supply, then fills the last slot with whatever the planet demands.

The core three you almost never drop

Hellpod Space Optimization is the closest thing to a freebie. Whenever someone respawns, their reinforced pod drops with a full load of ammo, stims, and grenades instead of an empty one. On higher difficulties where people die and come back a lot, this keeps the squad topped up without wasting supply drops.

Vitality Enhancement bumps everyone's max health up by about 30 percent and toughens limbs against injury. That extra health pool is the difference between surviving a stray rocket and crawling into reinforcement, so most squads treat it as mandatory.

Stamina Enhancement adds stamina capacity and faster regen, which sounds boring until you're kiting a charger across a wide map. You sprint more, you kite longer, and you reach objectives without stopping every ten seconds.

The flexible fourth slot

With three slots locked in, the fourth comes down to taste and terrain.

Muscle Enhancement is the pick for rough ground. It speeds up movement through deep snow, mud, and dense brush, which comes up constantly on hive and jungle planets. If the mission involves dodging through bad terrain, this one earns its keep.

Expert Extraction Pilot cuts the time your extraction shuttle takes to arrive. It sounds minor, but a faster shuttle means less time standing in the open fending off a final push, and that's the moment most squads bleed tickets.

Flexible Reinforcement Budget adds extra lives to the team's reinforcement pool. On super helldive runs where a couple of bad pushes can burn your tickets, the extra buffer is cheap insurance.

Situational picks

Localization Confusion spreads out patrol spawns, so fewer enemies funnel toward your team at once. It shines on defense and eradication missions where you're pinned in one spot. UAV Recon pulses objectives and points of interest on the map, which helps a team hunt secondaries fast on big maps. Both are solid swaps if your fourth slot has nothing better to do.

A sample four-booster lineup

For a balanced squad, run Hellpod Space Optimization, Vitality Enhancement, Stamina Enhancement, and Muscle Enhancement. That covers respawn supply, survivability, mobility, and terrain. It's a boring lineup and it wins matches.

Backpack and Stratagem Slots for Flexibility

Your backpack and stratagem slots are where loadouts get flexible. The primary and support weapon handle the moment-to-moment fighting, but the pack and the four stratagems decide how you deal with the surprises, the heavies, and the oh-no moments. Building these for the front you're on turns a shaky run into a clean one.

Backpack picks

The B-1 Supply Pack is the generalist backpack that fits almost any build. It hands out ammo, stims, and grenades on demand, which keeps an autocannon or AMR shooting through a long mission. Run it solo or when your squad is light on supply drops.

The Guard Dog Rover, the floating laser pet most people just call the laser dog, is a bug-front favorite. It hovers over your shoulder and zaps anything that gets close, which buys you breathing room during a swarm. The gas dog variant layers damage over time on top, and a lot of bug players swear by it.

The SH-32 Shield Generator Pack is the bot-front pick. It throws a bubble that eats a couple of hits before it breaks, which is a lifesaver under bot fire where one rocket volley otherwise ends you. It's niche on bugs but borderline required on high-difficulty bot runs.

Bug stratagem packs

For Terminids, lean into wide-area damage and crowd clear. The Eagle Cluster Bomb spreads damage across a huge area, which deletes packs of hunters and scavengers in one pass. The Eagle Airstrike is the steady all-rounder that handles mediums and clips heavies. The Orbital Gas Strike lingers and keeps choke points clear, and the Eagle 500kg Bomb is your panic button for bile titans and tight chargers. A common four-pack is Cluster Bomb, Airstrike, Gas Strike, and 500kg.

Bot stratagem packs

On bots, you want a mix of crowd clear and heavy delete. The Eagle Airstrike still shines here, cutting through dev squads and clipping hulks. The Orbital Precision Strike drops a single heavy hit, around 4000 anti-tank damage on a direct connect, which folds tanks and striders. The Orbital Gatling Barrage sweeps a line that mows down infantry pushes, and the 500kg covers clustered heavies. For a sentry, an Autocannon Sentry or Rocket Sentry gives you a fire-and-forget tool that draws aggro while you reposition.

Matching the kit to the planet

The clean way to think about it is to lock the flexible picks, the Supply Pack or shield, the Airstrike, and the 500kg, then swap one or two slots for the front. Gas Strike and a laser dog on bugs, Precision Strike and a Gatling Barrage on bots. Keep the Autocannon as your support weapon and you've got a kit that handles whatever planet the destroyer throws at you without a full rebuild. Bring thermites either way, since they're the one item that punches a hulk on the bot front and a charger on the bug front with the same throw.