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Stratagems are a key part of Helldivers 2 and players get to carry four with them to every mission. These can range from weapons such as the Commando Rocket Launcher to take down larger enemies, being able to call down bombs, and many other methods to serve Liber-tea to your enemies. One of the more popular ones is the Guard Dog, a floating robot that hunts out enemies to attack. While it is a great Stratagem, it also has many flaws and needs some major changes which could make it one of the best options to carry in the game.
U/Serious87 took to Reddit to suggest that “Pressing the backpack special button with Guard-dogs should toggle them ON/OFF,” they said, going on to say that “You should be able to toggle both the Guard-dog and Guard-dog Rover backpacks on/off with the backpack special button. The mechanics of this should be that the drone simply lands back on the backpack and remains inactive until toggled back on.”
For those that don’t know, and I must admit having never used any of the Stratagems that utilize it, I didn’t know this, but U/Taolan13 explains that “On Keyboard, the 5 button activates your backpack. At present, this is only used for the supply backpack. It was previously used to activate the ballistic shield backpack, but it is now automatically pulled out any time you are using a one-handed weapon and not carrying an objective package.” This is also done on a controller by pressing down on the D-Pad.
This would be a great quality-of-life change for the Stratagem and would make it much more viable to use. One of the more frustrating aspects of the Stratagem is that it can’t be switched, which makes trying to be stealthy and avoid a patrol more difficult due to it focusing on them which alerts them to your location.
With Arrowhead Game Studios focusing on quality over quantity when it comes to updates and no longer doing reactionary nerfs and buffs. This means that we could see much-needed quality-of-life changes made to Guard Dog and other Stratagems as many are broken in their own ways. But, we will have a while to wait before we find out what the developers are working on next, as the team is currently on summer vacation.
While we wait for their return, players are still hard at work fighting the Galactic War, with the latest Major seeing Super Earth cut off supply lines in the Andromeda Sector. The next Major Order should go live tomorrow and it will be interesting to see whether the story continues to focus on the Automatons or whether we will head back to Terminid planets. Regardless of which direction the Major Order goes in, it is important to be suitably equipped because both factions require different strategies. To help with this, we highly recommend checking out our Helldivers 2 best weapons guide and best armor guide.
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