Ranking ALL 11 Orbital Stratagems!!! Which is Best? / Orbital Tier List! | Helldivers 2 

99% of Helldivers stop using the 380mm Barrage right before it hits all the targets perfectly.

The final upgrade is such a meme. It’s like we realized sending people outside the ship to reload the cannons was way too inefficient. Like geeee what makes you think that.

Casino 380 is my favorite game!!! WILL IT HIT WILL IT MISS PLACE YOUR BETS NOW!!!

I once ran the 380, Walking, and 120 barrages at the same time. I completely melted the first bot base we found, then could call in nothing while they all cooled down.

Nah, railgun strike definitely has some major fear factor. Imagine your biggest teammate has a laser point at them and then they just die, no big explosion or flames, just death

i think the railgun has the best SOUND, making up a lot in terms of BOOM-factor

1:02 i love that eagles drop flares on their way out to cover their escape. nice touch of detail

Something to note about the Super Destroyers location in the sky is that its in the center of the map, so a good way to know what angle bombardments are gonna be coming from you can look at your map.

Gas Strike is an underdog for sure. Can spam it like crazy due to low cooldown. For the more patient diver I suppose..

People swear that the gunner on the barrages are automatons in disguise since it has a penchant of aiming where you and your team is even when they are far from the orb.

Of note. Gas orbital is really good to deal with eggs as at it will insta kills all eggs in its radius.

as someone whose consistently playing on 9, i can guarantee the jetpack, ems, and smoke all have their own uses that can prevent a bot from throwing out a flare to spawn 6 hulks, 2 tanks, and 35 mauraders/rocket devestators

The trick to the 380 is to have your whole team bring one on those tiny defense missions. When you get overwhelmed to the point you know you're going to die anyways, you just throw them all down and pray to Democracy.

I do have to say, EMS is S tier. The amount of control it provides is second to none. It helps the strikes kill, stops breaches / bot drops from happening to begin with and bogs those down if they are dropping. EMS followed by air burst, 120 or a grenade launcher can safely clear groups and keep them in place so the orbital can hit them more effectively. OFC it is Orbital Gas's best friend. People don't tend to use it because they think they, themselves, have to be able to kill everything and not accept it being a team game and you get greater value out of having 1 person take it than taking yet another 500kg. Also it can make the 500kg actually hit something, which is nice.

A tip for the Walking Barrage, if you're being chased by an army of bugs, and you know you're gonna be running pretty far, you can throw it forward at your feet and then book it, so that the barrage follows you and takes out everything right behind you.

One of the most interesting orbital combos that is very underrated is using both EMS + gas strikes. Both share the same cooldown length, so throwing them in short succession can let you keep enemies stuck in the gas for a long time for maximum DoT. This combo is particularly potent against bugs, as you can place them on bug breach and watch bugs melt and be helpless until the EMS expires. EMS strikes also synergize well with the EMS mortar, as the strike can initially fix targets in place for the mortar to keep them locked in place.

I absolutely love the Airburst Strike. I used to throw a Gatling Barrage on Bug Breaches, then I tried out the Airburst Strike and was blown away (just like all the bug limbs and pieces) by how much more effective it was. You can regularly rack up 30+ kills, and I think it can also damage heavier armored enemies a decent bit. Also it just looks so damn satisfying. It's like God's Divine Fly Swatter with how it just flattens everything in that area.

finally someone who actually sees the gas strike for what it can do. most tier list ive seen put it really low because it "doesn't deal with large targets" despite that not being its purpose.

I give you style points for giving style points. You Sir have my democratic thumbs up.

I dig your delivery, as always. As far as ranking videos go, I like 'em fun. Like this one.

I love the rail gun effects. The shot hits, the body drops (and then the bots explode). The raw precision nature of it is very appealing to me

The precision strike is awesome for another thing : It can destroy any (and I mean any) autonmaton structure : Jammer, detector, tower turret ... It also work well on tanks. That's about it, but against automaton that's also a lot.

See, I like the aesthetic for the orbital railgun strike. It has a wonderful cinematic quality of watching your prey get laser painted as the sword of Damocles becomes a when, and not an if. I think it's extra dramatic.

A full team of divers with 380s used all at once on a single large base all but guarantees its complete, magnificent annihilation. Youll never see a more majestic rain of hellfire short of the ICBM missions.

I feel like the implication that they were doing non-breech loading before you get that upgrade to be right up there with the humor of any of the Eagle upgrades. Edit: But Hand Carts still takes the win. Hand carts. That is what we needed rare and exotic samples to find inspiration for. That is the technology innovation our warp 9.999999 capable ship was waiting for.

With the gas strike: it continues to damage units after it ends and after they exit the zone. The green cloud persists around their bodies and ticks away at their health. It's best used VS atomotons as it will eradicate their small units while heavily weakening their larger units. Greatly reducing the amount of rounds needed to finish them off. It's a life saver. Especially when facing a cluster of drop ships

The gas strike melts egg nests

I honestly love number crunching so these videos are fun to watch and it's great to learn more about orbitals since I don't use them that often. Id love to see sentry's next.

Once you brought up the frames, I instantly subbed. Great content to help us spread democracy my Friend!

Laser Orbital: Arguably the best stratagem in game. Downside: "huge cooldown and 3 usage per match"

380 is by far my favorite. My wife and I both bring it on nearly every mission. Why? When we run into massive hordes (whether assaulting a base or running away), one of us calls down 380 and we both high tail it out of there. That clears about 3/4 of the enemies in the area. This is especially helpful when we are running for our lives. When one of us is on cooldown, the other is probably up. Massive hordes don't scare us so much anymore.

You know how automatons have this thing where suppressive fire can reduce their accuracy? Well tossing the 380 into a base will allow you to start picking off bots far more safely from a distance since the constant barrage is tanking their accuracy. And if you're lucky, it might actually kill something too.

I find the 120 barrage extremely consistent. I’ve taken on a stealthy play style where I scout around the map and recon areas thoroughly before engaging; I bring the 120 every time to call in on bases/detector towers, and of all the times I’ve ever used it on a base, it’s only ever let me down twice. Amazing strat, can’t go without it.

I used orbital gas strike to kill a automaton tank. It was held by static field and it took the whole duration.

With the latest patch introducing a 15% tighter spread for barrages, I’ve seen lots of divers use the 380mm on bot bases, bunkers and air bases. Almost a guaranteed “fire and forget win” Keyword “almost” But it has to be used when you’re in a team that communicates because friendly fire isn’t.

I've been using gas strike a lot recently. Starting in the recent new defense mission where you protect the rockets down a small lane, I've realized that it's a rather strong option. Even if it doesn't straight up kill all enemies, it severely hurts them and make most enemies rather weak to any gunfire. Combine gas strike with a breaker and you can kill everything from a bug breach under a charger without breaking a sweat. That is at least for helldive difficulty. I've found that gas strike seems to kill way more enemies at a lower difficulty. Whether it has to do with enemy speed, health or just the quality of units being lower, I have no clue, but it kills way more. Simply the utility of it putting most enemies under half health at helldive difficulty on a 75~ seconds cooldown is something that I am in love with. Breaker, light armor, shield, railgun OR quasar and gas strike are almost always part of my loadout.

Walking Barrage with a friend is the best to do ever, makes good for clearing out Bot Bases

I always use orbital walking for its intended purpose and i have to say its one of my favourites for bots. Throw it in front of a heavy base and advance as each salvo lands, it'll soften up everything inside making it a little less chaotic.

You sound like a really nice person, a pleasure to watch your vids !

Orbital laser always especially vs bots, you can use it as a siege weapon that destroys their fabricators . It also reminds me of the hammer of dawn fron Gears of war 1,2,3 (4 and 5 dont exist)

I recently did a solo run on Draupnir with Walking, 120mm, and 380mm barrages and it was a BLAST. Being able to rotate them and just slam all objective sites was effective and very fun.

Galling can get 30+ kills if you drop it right on a bug breach. Also the cool down is roughly 70 seconds so it's up all the time. And it's great as a FPF for when you are retreating from a swarm

Love to see the appreciation for the gas strike. Always one of my choices against bugs since you basically never have to worry about breaches again

The barrages do something entirely different than the laser and rail cannon do. They are verrry practical 💜

Hell yeah new wile spice style list

The EMS strike is one of the best orbitals for solo players. You can launch one of these into a large group of enemies and then just go in while they’re all stunned and take them all out without any suppressed fire. And to top it off, it has unlimited uses.

I'd love to see a update where after fully upgrading your destroyer you can move on to a more powerful ship like a battleship or dreadnought, i can just imagine that type of ship having a 1000mm orbital strike strategem to use on stuff

I love running the 380 and walking barrages, use them all the time to clear out bases. They are particularly nice to have on blitz missions, where you can get 80% of your needed destructions from a large base with a single barrage. While it is random you tend to get enough use from them that way. And it looks coool.

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The Orbital Laser is hilariously OP. You have found a large Bot Base with 2 turrets? Just throw in a laser and all fabricators and turrets are gone. You just need to go in, kill the remaining bots and take essentially free samples

I use the smoke for times when the squad gets overrun. placing smoke during a tactical retreat breaks line of sight and gives time for quick resupply. the gas is great for those choke points (bridges, canyons, etc) where the enemy has to go through the cloud to reach you, those that live, are weakened considerably. cheers.

We ran 4 380 barrage the other night against the bots. All 4 of us threw them at once on a large base. The ensuing destruction was hilarious lol

Combining the EMS & gas can be really, really effective while kiting large amounts of bugs in higher tiers. The matching low cooldowns synergize well and help make up for using two slots. Though apparently on current patch all dot effects, like gas, are not working if you aren't the host. Which is very unfortunate.

8:21 I feel kinda bad for the little guy XD

I love the 380 and the 120 they’re a must for really hard bot missions sneak up to a base throw both in the middle of the base walk out that base will most likely be completely destroyed. You never even had to enter.

Fantastic vids, they should play these on the ship

orbital precision strike is amazing against high difficulty clankers as it can kill everything with this low CD, its a bit harder to use then railcannon but u get to spam it more. Unless u got the 2 time deployment modificator (which make it feel terrible to use due to the whopping 10 sec) I actually prefer to run precision strike to railcannon

suggested rework for orbital barrages: give the 120 and 380 barrages a tracking area around where you throw it. As of current barrages are extremely slow to deploy and have very little effect on any faction or difficulty, giving them aiming would help them in being more effective. In the same vein I think that eagles should have a bit more randomness to their deployment area since aside from railcannon, airburst, and laser none of the orbitals are worth running over any eagle strike aside from eagle smoke.

I think the sound that accompanies the railcannon strike makes it top teir asstheticlly to me!

awesome video

How to use 380mm : - throw 380mm stratagem - find and stand on the highest rock near the beacon - use hug emoji towards the raining barrage Did it kill the enemy? no Did I looks cool? Yes

Love farming samples just to have a modifier of +50% cool downs.... Also, great vid with awesome info.

The walking barrage and 380 are amazing when paired with another player, my buddies and I always run it together.

One thing i use the walking barrage for is helping an advance to a big bot outpost, because as soon as we get spotted the bots will most of the time send out a squad or two to defend it. Its a badass sight, especially when you are fighting through a field or up a hill.

I'm personally not a fan of the rail cannon. It can only be used for big targets and has a very long cooldown, making it poorly suited for higher difficulties where large enemies are very common. I generally prefer the 500 kg bomb. You get 2 uses and a shorter rearm time than the rail cannon's cooldown. Even if you don't get a direct hit on a bile titan, it will be very weak and easy to finish off. The orbital laser though is excellent. Accurate, takes out objectives, and minimal friendly fire. Large targets significantly slow it down but it will take them out if you need it to.

Railgun doesn't have a lot of style? That's a bold face lie my mate! It isn't flashy, but there is something beautiful in simple, direct effect of a hit. The grace of a single decapitating strike that just does what its supposed to, without unnecessary fanfare is a quintessential beauty of professional efficiency at its finest. It has a style. Its own unique, terryfying style.

When you test the stratagems alone trying to control for variables, you may indeed value these precision strikes like railgun and laser because they can always give you decent value, while the less predictable barrages possessing higher variability but potentially higher value, might seem too unpredictable to rely on. I think what most people don't appreciate enough is that most of the time you're playing with 3 other helldivers who all bring their stratagems into battle. If you coordinate just a little bit and throw your 380mm barrages into a thick base, you effectively negate the unpredictability by increasing the numbers and get maximum value for your stratagems. Higher numbers virtually eliminate the variability. 3x 380mm barrages beats 3x laser or 3x railgun any day of the week in terms of destructive value it provides. You can always bring in a support weapon like the always reliable EAT to deal with the individual big threats that require more cutesy precision.

Barrages are not random. They follow a pattern. They are essentially an area effect weapon and the greater the area of the target (and enemy saturation within the area), the better the effect. They work wonders on Automaton command bunkers, heavy outposts, and are perfect for extermination missions. With 3x 380mm, a good team can destroy 3 commands bunkers on Impossible in 7 minutes (including extraction) by going solo and using this strategem.

Today’s personal order, or whatever it’s called made people use so ridiculously many 380mm barrages 💀 I have never ever died so many times in a single mission

I’m glad Laser and Railcannon are at the top, but I’m not sure why Airburst and Gas are in A, I personally think there is a large cap between Laser/Rail and Precision, which I think is fine in B, and then everything else is below Precision. Nobody is actually using any of these orbitals except laser and railcannon. If you are running Helldive Bots, and you only get three stratagems, you just use autocannon, laser, railcannon. There’s no reason to consider anything else from orbitals. If I get a 4th spot, it’s going to be Eagle Airstrike for fabs.

I've subscribed to your channel based on how comprehensive and detail oriented your analyses and ratings are. Doing a good job, keep it up. The video is a wee bit misleading though as the title doesn't say that you are ranking based on aesthetics.

As someone who mostly uses the Air Burst orbital, it’s nice to see someone else give it some love.

I’ve been have pretty good success planning the walking barrage by checking where my destroyer is first. It seems like the pattern is consistent and you can plan for it if you have time. Can usually walk it right in to a fabricator stronghold and consistently land hits.

I love the orbital lazer, it kills things like detector towers (does not target it, but if u throw the ball inside it, it works), and the rail strike because it kills command bunkers.

EMS goes really well with gas and precision strikes. Helps keep targets in gas or blast radius. Also with a short cooldown the value can be well worth it.

I think that the artillery barrages other than walking could use a minor amount of aiming at enemies. I was thinking it would randomly place small zones where a shell would land, and prioritize landing on the largest enemies. That way, it stays random and wide, but becomes more consistent

The Orbital EMS Strike is insanely useful for Bot missions. Pair it up with an autocannon user and suddenly that horde of devastators and/or hulks turns into a point and click adventure. I personally run Rocket Pods, Orbital EMS Strike, Railcannon Strike and Autocannon, alongside the JAR-5 Dominator, (any secondary, usually Grenade Pistol or Senator) and stun grenades. The EMS factor of this build is it’s bread and butter, efficiently stopping most of the bots in their tracks and opening up opportunities to easily deal with Heavy Devastators, All Kinds of Hulks, and those oh so easily hated Rocket Devastators. You can even pop an EMS down to completely leave an engagement. Just throw it down and run for the hills.

I picked up Gas fairly recently and I do have to agree that it is really good if your aim is true and you gotta deal with tons of trash just piling up on you. Downside I personally experienced tho is that people mistake it for the smoke and then suffocate subsequently.

Getting all four people to run the 120mm + 360mm barrages is awesome lol. It looks insane, and the area where the bases used to be looks like photographs from WW1.

railgun cannon being a 4 is wild. The sound of it coming down is memorable and watching it come down at night in the heat of battle really adds to the ambiance.

The Orbital Laser is my go to for a hot drop. It will deal with most of the aggro while giving you time to find space to call in your support weapons and get your bearings.

the airburst can have massive variations with its area however, which is important to consider. the shell bursts when something is close enough below it, so if you have an inconvenient building/rock and an angle due to destroyer position, it can hit at a massively different part than what you aimed at. like exactly in your face while you are standing 50 m away from the beacon

Gas Strike finally seeing some love 💚

Just got my final upgrade today, the hellpod steering lol. Now Im just saving up samples for any possible future upgrades

Walking barrage is very useful during those elimination missions on higher difficulties. We've all seen it, where the enemy completely overwhelms your position and pushes everyone back, where they're on the run for their lives constantly. Get your team to equip themselves with the following loadout: - Eagle bombing run (for dealing with smaller targets) - Eagle 500k (for bombing hulks / titans) - Orbital Laser (for clearing larger swaths of enemies) - Walking Barrage (for when you're on the run and desperately need the area cleared) Even with just 2 or 3 people with this setup, the enemies won't stand a chance. When I'm on my own with randoms and the only person running this setup, I regularly have the most kills.

I love running EMS Strikeand arc cannon, great for a fast deployed kill zone.

I love using both he barrages throwing them into a large base and watching the fireworks

For me, Gatling is SStier : - Almost instant deployement - Very small cooldown time - Can wipe an entire patrol/drop ship squad in an instant. Perfect for clearing all the small and medium groups of bugs and bots plus you can just spam it every minutes or something. I find the airburst too long to deploy and too inconsistent mainly because its SO SLOW (For what it's designed to do obviously it's kinda quick compared to the rest) I also think that it's way easier to land it on a target (even moving) than the airburst because of that. You throw your beacon, it lights up, and the thing is teared to shreds instantly. No need to predict it's movement. It also stun small and bigger ennemies for the duration of the bombardement, so the ennemy won't, you know, take advantage of the 4 VERY LONG SECONDS between two shots to leave the area or you can throw another stratagem to deal with the big guys while they're stunned. I love it. It's awesome. Spam it.

Hearing how the Orbital Walking Barrage is essentially just a straight line 380 with 3 or 4 shots makes me honestly think it should be at least in B Tier with the Vanilla Precision Strike or maybe even A Tier. Im definitely grabbing this to try an “upgrade” from the vanilla I always bring😂

One thing key to using the barrages well, is that it's absolutely vital to check the mission modifiers before picking them. The precision strike for example can be great, but it unfortunately suffers really badly from the increased call-down time which makes it far too sluggish to use with the accuracy it needs, and also becomes almost worthless if the increased scatter modifier is in effect. Which is a shame, since I think this effects the strikes reputation and usage quite a lot. Increased call down isn't as bad for most. For the big artillery barrages, it makes basically no difference in the typical use cases. Walking barrage perhaps hurt just a little, since it's more often used against incoming patrols or clusters of enemies. The Gas strike isn't much effected in it's role. The EMS can be hurt a bit since you have to use it more pre-emptively, than reactively, but still viable. And the gatling and airburst are still viable, but again will be a bit trickier to get on target. The increased call-down modifier generally hurts more against speedy bugs more than bots. Increased Scatter is the worst for orbital strikes. Gas and EMS get spoiled significantly by inaccurate placement, with Gas being especially dangerous to your own team when not landing where expected. The gatling barrage is less impacted, but will space it's shots out enough that it's going to lose a lot of it's damage, and fail to kill the specific cluster you wanted it too. The airburst strike can actually become more deadly than usual, with the extra spread being super effective at trash clearing, BUT it also becomes incredibly dangerous to use and very difficult to predict how far is safe or not, especially near the edge of the map. And all the larger artillery barrages force you to evacuate further, and have even less chance of hitting their targets. Generally, favour airstrikes or turrets if increased scatter is on.

I will say that the barrages are fun to use now with the ship module decreasing the spread. Though in the end, there are still better options that reliably hit their target. However, they do have significant advantage now with extermination missions. Ever since they changed them, I noticed on higher difficulties you reach a point where everyone more or less will get overrun. Chucking one of them down is a great way to clear out those extra enemies when it happens, even with the risk of the friendly fire. Of course I'm referring to people that only bring sentries and they dont even last us half way through.

The best thing about the 380 barrage is that I can just toss it in the general direction of things that seem undemocratic and it makes them go away. Though I find it's best paired with a second 380 barrage aimed for generally the same location.

love the 380, especially when you have 2 or 3 fellow helldivers launching it at the same time. just sit and watch

Just got the new T4 upgrade they rolled out for the 380 and 120 that tightens their spread, it’s actually really nice now

EMS strike is the most underrated orbital out there, especially against bugs. Being able to place a nogozone beetween you and your enemy or right on a bug breach trivialize all encounters that doesn't include a bunch of bile titans.

This video needs to be approved by the Ministry of Truth and put on the screens of every SES ship. I use the 380 MM HE barrage with medium to large nests not to close them only but to force bugs out of the crater so I can kill them with the arc thrower easily and then proceed to go in and close the remain holes with grenades/grenade launcher pistol. Sometimes you close the entire nest (medium one). Also since they don't see you until they get out of the crater (they go towards you as soon as the stratagem starts to rain on them) they don't usually call bug breaches, they are dead way before they can do it. You have to launch it just in the middle of the crater. Great video fellow helldiver. Now we know the best way to spread democracy. For Super Earth and may liberty prevail.

The 380 should have one out of every salvo target the position of a random enemy or ally in its aoe. Basically one of the shots out of every salvo should hunt targets like the mortar. I dont even care if it has the same mortar issue of travel time. I just want it to purposefully target something. Maybe give priority to bug holes/bot fabs

The EMS Strike is the most used strike in HD1 because of the chasing nature of most of the enemies in that game. It's also excellent for area defense near geological drills etc.

The barrage strikes are crazy when done in multiples. And pretty good as escape cover when running from big groups

Another bonus to the orbital precision strike is how easy it is to do the combination for it fast, so especially as you are learning the combos that one is much harder to mess up on and losing valuable seconds while being chased or under threat.