Helldivers 2: Best Armor Passives Against The Illuminate
When setting up your Helldivers, it's easy to overlook armor in the rush to try out new weapons. But Helldivers 2 is packed to the brim with exciting armor passives that can completely change your build, improve your weapon loadout, and even turn your corpse into a bomb.
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PostsWe'll put fashion aside for now and focus solely on the passives that these armor pieces bring to the fold. We are also looking at how these are particularly effective against the Illuminate.
Helmets and capes have no passives or stats attached. You can pick these solely off of fashion.
8 Democracy Protects
Democracy Protects is a great armor passive to have against any faction, and the Illuminate are no exception to that. This passive gives you a 50 percent chance not to die when taking lethal damage. Having that coin flip can help you stay on your feet when certain death comes after you, which is great for the high damage that the Illuminate pumps out.
Furthermore, Democracy Protects prevents all damage from chest bleeding. That'll stop you from having to burn a stim to stop the bleeding and give you more chances to stay on your feet.
The coin flip is nice, but some things are still an auto-kill. If a Harvester cuts you in half with its beam attack, this armor isn't going to keep you in one piece.
7 Extra Padding
Extra Padding is another passive that'll be useful no matter who you're fighting. This is a simple passive that just makes you tankier outright, making it easier for you to survive high damage without offering anything flashy.
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PostsExtra Padding adds 50 to the armor rating of your armor regardless of its type. A good use is to grab medium armor with Extra Padding to keep the better stamina and speed of medium armor while keeping the higher durability of heavy armor.
Don't mind heavy armor? Using heavy armor with Extra Padding nets you a total armor rating of 200. This is a great way to become nigh-invincible, but don't think you're unkillable.
6 Fortified
Fortified is an exceptional passive for people who like to stay immobile while they take out priority targets. The Fortified passive gives you 30 percent extra reduction to your recoil when crouching or prone. If you take the Machine Gun support weapon against the Illuminate to chop down Harvesters, this passive effectively removes recoil when crouched or prone.
Fortified also offers a 50 percent resistance to explosive damage, which is great for taking out structures. A misplaced grenade or an exploding Illuminate ship is much easier to handle with the Fortified buff.
The MG and HMG support weapons are fan favorites against the Illuminate. This passive's recoil reduction brings the HMG's recoil under control.
5 Integrated Explosives
Speaking of explosions, if you've ever wanted to take out the last few Voteless when they finally bring you down, then Integrated Explosives is for you. Integrated Explosives gives you a buffer of a little more than a second before causing a rather intense explosion on your corpse.
IE will only go off once you've died, so you don't have to worry about accidentally blowing yourself up. With how many melee enemies the Illuminate field, this is a great armor passive for clearing the way for your fellow Divers.
This passive can kill your fellow Helldivers! Do your best to put some distance between yourself and your allies if you know your death is approaching quickly.
4 Servo-Assisted
Throwing grenades is great, but unless you're using the Seeker grenade, you're going to have to deal with some range issues. While you can definitely get some distance on your grenades, greater distance is always better. Using this armor passive adds another 30 percent to your throwing range to help you take out objectives safely.
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PostsAnother benefit is that Servo Assisted adds another 50 percent to limb health. That's an excellent passive against the Illuminate since the melee Overseers do a gratuitous amount of limb damage.
It can be tough to get a grenade in the sweet spot to blow up an Illuminate ship. You may prefer anti-personnel grenades instead.
3 Siege-Ready
Siege-Ready is one of the most popular armor passives in the game. This passive gives you a 30 percent faster reload speed for your primary weapons, helping you keep up with your rate of fire. For shotguns and full-auto assault rifles, this quicker reload speed gets you out of trouble much faster.
The second portion of Siege-Ready is to give you more ammo for your primaries as well. This passive gives you 20 percent more ammo for your primary weapon, giving you a bit longer before you have to call down a resupply. Illuminate maps tend to be packed with scattered ammo crates, so this helps you stay topped up.
If a weapon doesn't need to reload or have ammo, then Siege-Ready is significantly less useful. We do not recommend this passive with Laser weapons for this reason.
2 Engineering Kit
Engineering Kit is another great choice for anyone who's looking to max out their throwable inventory. This passive gives you +2 to your initial inventory of throwables. That counts all throwables, making it ideal for bringing more of your favorite projectile. The passive also adds +2 to your maximum capacity of throwables.
The second portion of this passive reduces recoil when crouching or prone by 30 percent. These two passives don't go together flawlessly, but that means it's great for a general build instead of focusing in on being able to do one thing well.
Having more grenades is great, but against the Illuminate, we prefer Seeker grenades. This passive means you can have half a dozen of these grenades flying around you at once.
1 Electrical Conduit
One of the biggest challenges the Illuminate present to Helldivers is the arc damage they're packing. Their floating Watcher scouts can close distance and shock you to slow you down and deal some good damage. But the biggest challenge comes from the static Tesla Towers that the Illuminate uses as fortifications.
If you're sprinting into one of these, it's difficult to stop before you're quite literally cooked. These are also often one-shot, making them one of the biggest challenges the faction can present. The 95 percent reduction in arc damage that Electrical Conduit presents doesn't just make these towers virtually harmless, but it also almost completely negates other sources.
Why limit yourself to countering enemies? Electrical Conduit is a great passive if you want to run your own Tesla Sentry, Arc Thrower support weapon, or other source of arc damage.
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Shooter Systems 10.0/10 OpenCritic Reviews Top Critic Avg: 83/100 Critics Rec: 90% Released February 8, 2024 ESRB M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Intense Violence Developer(s) Arrowhead Game Studios Publisher(s) Sony Engine bitsquidWHERE TO PLAY
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