Claude on Question 15, Sep 30

Great question — "squad wiping" in HD2 usually means deleting patrols or breach/dropship waves fast. Here's how I'd approach it by faction:

The universal combo

Stun grenade → Eagle Airstrike (or Orbital Precision Strike). Stunning a clumped patrol and dropping an airstrike on top is the single most reliable "delete group" play in the game, and it works against anything. Eagle Airstrike's short cooldown + multiple uses per rearm makes it the workhorse stratagem.

Terminids

Bugs come in dense, tightly-packed waves, so burn and area denial dominate:

• •Primary: Breaker Incendiary or Cookout — DoT stacks across a whole swarm
• •Grenade: Incendiary Impact (Thermite if you want Charger/Bile Titan answers)
• •Stratagems: Orbital Gas Strike (absurd value for its cooldown), Napalm Eagle Airstrike, Orbital Gatling Barrage, and a Stalwart or MG-43 on high RPM for chaff
• •Fire + a chokepoint (corridor, rock gap) kills more than any single big bomb

Automatons

Bots spread out and shoot back, so you want precision and cover:

• •Primary: Sickle, Adjudicator, or Diligence Counter-Sniper for headshot deletes
• •Grenade: Impact or Thermite (Thermite melts Hulks/tanks)
• •Stratagems: Eagle Airstrike, Orbital Laser for outposts/heavy groups, Eagle Strafing Run (cheap, fast, shreds patrols in a line), and Autocannon or Laser Cannon as support
• •Armor: Fortified (explosive resist) if you're eating rocket devastator fire
• •Killing the dropship before it unloads with an AT weapon is often better than killing what it drops

Illuminate

Mixed threat profile — hordes of Voteless plus armored Overseers:

• •Primary: Cookout/Breaker Incendiary for Voteless, or Purifier/Dominator if you want to handle Overseers with the same gun
• •Stratagems: Gatling Sentry or Stalwart for chaff, Gas Strike for Voteless packs, and a solid AT option (Quasar Cannon, Recoilless) for Harvesters
• •Funnel Voteless — they beeline at you, so back into a doorway and mow them down

Efficiency tips that matter more than the loadout

• •Don't stack duplicates across your team. Four Eagle Airstrikes is worse than airstrike + laser + barrage + sentries.
• •Kill patrols before they spot you — one stealth airstrike beats ten minutes of reinforcement waves.
• •Sentries behind you, not in front. Gatling/Autocannon sentries placed on high ground behind the fight double your DPS for free.
• •Ammo economy: if your support weapon is your chaff clear, bring a stratagem that handles heavies, and vice versa.

One caveat: Arrowhead patches balance constantly, so specific weapon strength shifts — if something here feels weak, it probably got tuned since I last had solid info. Are you running bugs, bots, or squids mostly, and at what difficulty? I can tighten the recommendation.