Helldivers 2 Best Stratagems: Build Around Cooldowns

The three pools

Eagle strikes share one rearm. Fire all your Eagle charges and the whole set goes to the ship to reload together. Four Eagles is not four times the firepower; it is one burst followed by a long silence. Orbital strikes burn individual charges or individual cooldowns. The railcannon, the laser, the gas and the barrages each track themselves, so two orbitals are two independent clocks. Sentries, emplacements and backpacks spend time rather than charges. A sentry is a duration; an HMG emplacement is a fixed gun; a shield relay is an area that expires. They also occupy ground you have to defend. A loadout built from one pool starves itself. A loadout that splits across pools keeps something available at almost every moment of a mission.

Against Terminids

Bugs come in volume and in a small number of armor problems, so the loadout wants area denial plus one anti-armor answer. Eagle Airstrike covers the volume and can be thrown at a breach as it opens. A 500kg answers a Bile Titan and a nest cluster at the same time. Gas or a gas mortar sentry holds the corridor while you work. The trap is bringing three Eagles. You get one spectacular thirty seconds and then nothing while a second breach opens. Two Eagles and one orbital keeps a second clock running — the breach mechanics page explains why that second clock matters more than the first.

Against Automatons

Bots punish standing still and reward removing one threat at a time. Orbital Railcannon deletes a Hulk or a tank without asking you to aim. A shield generator relay turns an exposed position into a firing position. An EMS mortar buys the seconds needed to move. Against bots, the value of a stratagem is measured in how much enemy fire it stops, not how many units it kills — see the Hulk counter and tank counter for what the gun has to do after the strike lands.

Against the Illuminate

Squids punish single-target overkill and reward stunlock. The Arc Thrower locks Watchers, Overseers and Harvesters in place, which converts a chaotic urban fight into a queue. Pair it with something that breaks shields fast and an orbital for the moment a Warp Ship grounds.

The slot that pays for itself

One slot should always be a support weapon you can call down and re-acquire, because dying near your own gear is the normal case on high difficulty. The durable damage page explains why the weapon’s effective damage against a heavy unit is lower than the number on the card, and that gap is what decides whether a support weapon is worth a slot.