HELLDIVERS 2: Weapons Tier List

Very obviously the best non-stratagem weapon in the game, by a huge margin. The sheer amount of damage output it provides lets you kill a bug charger in just one mag to the back. Oneshots most weak enemies, turns non-armoured targets into mincemeat, and bruteforces through light armour. Despite being a shotgun, has basically infinite range, as the pellet spread and damage falloff are nonexistent.

Perhaps even more obviously, the best stratagem weapon in the game, by an ever huger margin. Rail Gun delivers powerful and precise shots, which penetrate all armour and even enemies, if they happen to stand in a line. Adding to that are the lightning-fast reload and a generious amount of spare ammo. Supply packs restore half the ammunition, i.e. a lot.

The “What the stat screen doesn’t tell you” kind of gun. Despite seemingly disappointing stats, the slugger more than makes up for it with its extraordinary ability to stun enemies on damaging shots, stunlocking them with continuous firing. This is further augmented by it being able to punch through even medium armour. Slugger can also boast having the highest damage per shot, which comes in handy when dealing with weakpoints, as you need to land less shots on those, making the task less aim-intensive. While not a DPS powerhouse, Slugger provides a ton of utility that helps you survive on the field.
A big downside, that keeps it out of S tier: Slugger has pathetic total ammo count. Ammo pack stratagem is mandatory to keeping the gun firing. This also makes shooting at low-level threats a huge waste of ammo.

By the grace of being a secondary weapon, the Redeemer has less boxes to tick in order to be a good weapon. It can put up an avalanche of accurate fire, with great DPS and damage per shot. But for the lacklustre ammo capacity, it could be used as a primary weapon.

A shoulder-fired magazine-fed autocannon. Amazing damage on weakpoints, good magazine size, comparatively fast reload for a weapon of its class (although empty reloads are much longer).
What brings it down is it’s inability to deal with heavy armour. This means that, picking this weapon, you’re denying yourself any reliable means of AT to deal with Titans and Tanks. Also struggles at piercing Hulks’ armour.

Dominator acts as a competitor to the Slugger in the role of utility DPS, but does it worse overall. The damage is lower, the stagger is weaker, the reload speed is pitifull. The higher ammo count is its only upside.

A side-grade to the dominator. Does some things better and other things worse. In particular, this gun, as of right now, is the only primary with ostensible AoE properties. Though quite small in radius, the explosion from each impact can damage tightly-packed groups of enemies; but much more often you’ll be killing either yourself or your teammates with that AoE.
The more important & useful aspect of the AoE is its armour ignoration. As such, frontal hits on cyborg striders kill the pilot, hits on gunner’s shield destroy the shield, and hits on bugs’ hiveguards goes through their plating.
Scorcher can boast nearly imperceptible recoil and faster reload times than the Dominator, but, crushingly to the former, the damage per shot is cut in half. Considering that the magsizes and total ammo are identical for both guns, Scorcher also has half the total damage of Dominator, which makes it extremely ammo hungry. This also means that Scorcher struggles with defeating chonkier enemies, like bugs’ Brood Commanders, which Dominator decapitates in just two headshots.

A rocket launcher that fires pringles tubes. Good at breaking armour, mediocre at dealing damage. Cripplingly slow reload time without an assistant, and low amount of spare ammunition, considering it’s only enough to kill you 3 chargers at most.

A one-shot disposable rocket launcher, provided in two copies. Can be called in every 70 seconds. Other than that, pretty much same stats as the Recoilless Rifle.

A belt-fed grenade launcher firing HE grenades. Good crowd-control capabilities, to quickly clear big groups of small-to-medium enemies. Can deal some damage to bigger enemies through already broken armour. Grenades themselves have a safety fuze, so they don’t go off on close impact.

Diligence is the gun you use if you’re (somehow) planning to stay away from the frontline and need the extra scope zoom. Or you don’t want to constantly switch between your primary and secondary to deal with every small bug or cyborg to save Slugger ammo. Otherwise, Diligence is strictly a downgrade to Slugger.

A direct upgrade to the Liberator. Defender has more DPS, accuracy, faster reload, and more accuracy compared to the Liberator. It also allows you to carry a shield or an objective item without losing firepower.

Your starter gun. Nothing special, just middling on every front. Gets the job done, as long as the job doesn’t involve armour.

Remember when I said how Redeemer could be used as a primary? This is basically the Redeemer for your primary slot.
Unfortunately, even with the doubled ammo count, the Knight still constantly runs into ammo issues; more importantly, though, it offers nothing in the way of dealing with armour or staggering enemies.

A weaker autocannon. Less damage, even less armour pen, and, surprisingly, less spare ammo. Allows you to reload on the move, but that’s about it.

A medium machine gun firing full-size cartridges. Deals a lot of damage fast, and has medium armour-piercing capabilities. However, it runs out of ammo fast, and reloads immobilise you. Also, only restores one box per resupply, which is atrociously bad.

A tesla gun, firing off lightning bolts at enemies, potentially chaining between up to 2 additional enemies. Lightning ignores armour, but the bolt itself breaks armour at the point of contact.
A good crowd-control weapon, that additionally provides some armour shred and auxiliary damage against bigger enemies.
However, it has issues registering hits when firing at close range or through objects/corpses, and it can’t replace dedicated AT equipment.

I don’t know the idea behind this gun. You get +16 damage per shot (statistical uncertainty amount of damage), but lose 25% mag capacity and almost double the recoil. Do the math.

A massively inferior version of Breaker. You lose half the damage per shot for a drum mag and dragon breath rounds.

A pump-action breaker. Just why?

The Senator could’ve been a good alternative for the Redeemer – the damage is there. Unfortunately, it’s hard to be good when you only get 6 shots in the drum, and have to load 1 bullet each 3 business days.

A Liberator version with half the rate of fire of the original, and 50% less mag capacity. In exchange you get explosive rounds, which, if hitting weakpoints, let you deal… the same amount of DPS that the Liberator does? Amazing.

The starter pistol. Just a redeemer without the full auto mode and double the recoil, immediately powercrept and forgotten.

A top-attack fire-and-forget rocket launcher. Deals significantly better damage than the RL and EAT, but still not good enough to reliably one-shot enemies. The pros end here.

Spear requires target lock-on before firing, which itself requires you to stand at a perfect distance away from the target, and the target looking at a perfect angle, otherwise it won’t lock. This basically means that, most of the time you are limited to firing at extra-large / immobile targets.

If that wasn’t bad enough: you only get 4 rockets, with JUST 1 (ONE) rocket restored per resupply, and none at all from ammo boxes. You’ll be eeating through your teams’ entire supply pod to maybe kill 3 big enemies.

A light machine gun firing intermediate cartridges. Allows you to reload on the move, and can potentially have higher DPS than its bigger kin, provided you fire at unarmoured targets. This gun is allergic to armour, which is why it’s pretty bad.

This gun throws flames around. Quite ineffective at dealing with… well, pretty much anything. Both direct damage and burn DoT are low, as well as the range, which requires you to always stay near the enemy and risk: A) getting gunned down by cyborgs, B) getting mauled by bugs + setting yourself on fire.

I present to you the gun with the LOWEST damage per shot in the game. This so called “assault rifle”, a modification of the Liberator, trades damage and magsize for some armour penetration capability. But do you really need the armour pen, when you’re hitting weaker than a wet noodle?

Pros: might heat up a small cup of liber-tea in 5-7 minutes and 10 reloads.

Cons: kitchen appliances aren’t recommended as weapons in active war zones.

The king of memes in the Helldivers’ arsenal. The Spray’Pray Breaker is nearly identical to the Incendiary Breaker, except that instead of dragon breaths it has gusts of wind in the chamber. The gun is so comically feeble, that it needs to spend half the mag to kill even lightly-armoured low-threat enemies, because, apparently, it has NO armour-penetration whatsoever.

Now this one might actually boil a small pot of water, on a hot day.