Helldivers 2 Firepower Guide for MG 43

MG43, also known as the light machine gun that you get at the very start of Helldivers, is a fascinating weapon to equip early on for beginners.

This is the first weapon stratagem that you get. You get this right at the very start of the game so you don't need to buy it whatsoever, it's just with you right away. You use it in the tutorial as well which is pretty cool.

This seems to be based on other LMGs similar to the MG42. In this Helldivers 2 Firepower Guide for MG 43, we will be looking at all the details of this early-game light machine gun, including its pros and cons, and what scenarios we find it the most useful in.

About MG 43 in Helldivers 2 - Basic Stats

MG 43 Rate of Fire

So first up the LMG has a cooldown of 480 seconds or 8 minutes. That's a pretty long cooldown. It's not the longest out of any of the support weapons that you can get but it is quite a wait.

The good news is that you can find the MG43 just lying around areas pretty common to find.

So this isn't going to be one of the hardest weapons to find on the ground which makes it pretty cool if you like this weapon but don't want to take it as one of your stratagems, there's always an option there. 

Unlocking and Calling Time

This is unlocked by default so you don't have to buy this at all. There is no investment, so you're stuck with this whether you like it or not. The calling time is 8 seconds.

Calling time usually doesn't matter that much for a lot of these types of weapons since you're usually going to call it in at the very start of the match or you're going to call it in in an area where there's not going to be a whole lot of things going around. 

However, always remember that you can use the calling as an actual weapon so if you want to stick this to an enemy you can do that if you would like to. 

Helldivers 2 MG 43 Rates of Fire - Modes

Interestingly enough this has three different rates of fire depending on which one you switch it to.

You can change the rate of fire by just holding in your reload button and then at least on the mouse and keyboard you right-click to go through the options.

The machine gun is always in full auto so you can't switch it to semi-auto or anything like that.

This has a rate of fire of either 260 rounds per minute, 750 rounds per minute, or 900 rounds per minute. You can alternate between the rates of fire so that way you can adjust this to whatever situation you find yourself in. 

With the lower rate of fire you have much less recoil however you have a lot less pressure down range so if you're running and gunning with the light machine gun this one actually does make sense and that's sometimes what we keep it on.

Usually, we don't recommend changing it off to 750 because that still feels fairly manageable firing it from the hip. It's also very manageable if you ADS this and the weapon gets more manageable if you're crouching or laying prone. If you're lying prone then the gun has no recoil.

At 900 rounds per minute, it does have a lot of recoil and it's very difficult to hip fire this unless there's just a huge swarm of things right on top of you in which case then by all means go ham with it but at longer ranges.

If you're not lying prone or you're not crouching down it can be kind of difficult to aim with this thing. This holds 150 rounds in it, 450 rounds in total since you can hold two spare mags. 

Once you go to reload this does dump everything in the mag just like most of the weapons in this game aside from the pump shotguns that reload one shell at a time.

So be wary of that whenever you are going to reload this and whenever you are reloading the light machine gun this does make it so that you stop in place and you start reloading and you can’t do anything else.

MG 43 Armor Penetration

The MG43 also has medium armor penetration which is quite good that makes it so you can punch through certain armor types makes so you can hurt almost any type of bug besides the heavy bugs and bile titans they're about the only two that can shrug this off at least if you're hitting them in the armored spots. 

In the weak spots, you can still do okay damage to them not as much as certain other stratagems or other weapons in general but you can still hurt them. 

Helldivers 2 MG 43 against Enemies

Any of the smaller bugs you can just shred right through you don't need to be aiming for any sort of weak spot aim at the head keep firing or aim at the body depending on what the distance is and you can shred through hordes of them.

The same thing goes with the robots for the most part. For any of the bots you can usually just aim for the body, for the walkers you can actually shoot them in the legs and rip them apart fairly fast with the MG43 which is good. 

Against big enemies like hulks, this doesn't work very well because you can hit them in the eye but it's really difficult to keep the full auto gun on them and still stay at a distance where you're not in danger of their flamethrower.

If their back is turned to you you can spray this right into them and you'll kill them fast. The same thing goes with tanks otherwise you're not going to be hurting the tank anywhere but if you can hit it in the weak spot you can shred it fairly fast. It makes it so the MG43 is fairly flexible on any type of mission.

Pros of Helldivers 2 Firepower MG3

For the pros of the MG43, this one is quite flexible. It works well with just about anything so that's always nice you don't have to build towards it. You pick Helldivers 2 MG43 free of cost off the ground early on, so there isn’t much you can complain about.

This clears up hordes of really fast small and medium enemies and if you just want to be the crowd control of your team you can do it just with this weapon alone it is really good for that.

It also makes it so if you're holding an area you can just mow down absolutely everything. Against bigger enemies this doesn't work as well we'll talk about that in the cons but against small and medium enemies this shreds through just about everything and I guess the other pro is that this does have really good sustained fire for the most part. 

Assuming you have a full magazine in it it does take you quite a while to actually run through ammo with this so that usually gives you and your team plenty of time to at least push some of the wave back so that you can reload and then do it again to the same wave or to the next wave that's coming in.

So even on hold the area missions the MG43 can still be good. The generic pros of Helldivers 2 MG-43 are:

• Flexible

• High ROF (Rate of Fire)

• Good CC

Cons of Helldivers 2 Firepower MG 43

For the cons of the MG43, you can run through ammo with this sometimes pretty fast especially if you're like me and you accidentally reload pretty often and you mess up half of your magazine. 

So, then you lose like 75 rounds that you probably should have kept anyway, or sometimes even worse than that where I only fire like 20 rounds out and then go to reload. 

Another big con to this is that it doesn't do well against the big enemies we briefly talked about which were Biotitans. This doesn't affect them that much. You can hit them with it but it's not the best weapon. 

The chargers same type of thing as the big ram guys you can't hurt them too much unless their armor is already cracked if it's cracked then you can destroy them with the light machine gun and rip through them fast as if an ally breaks the armor on their leg and you just start firing at it with the light machine gun you will just shred them so that can be pretty good. 

Biotitans you never really get to that point it's just better to use explosives or call in stratagems to blow them up at least we found that to be the most effective way at least since the railgun kind of got nerfed where it can't just one-shot them anymore maybe you can with the unstable.

The generic cons of Helldivers 2 MG-43 are:

• Eats a ton of ammo

• Specifically weak against heavier enemies

Best Build/Loadout for Helldivers 2 MG 43 LMG

For MG43 Loadout and Build, we recommend going with the mg43 usually as a weapon stratagem and then taking a second weapon stratagem that kind of makes up for its weaknesses. 

The best are the expendable anti-tank rounds because they always come up; they only have a 70-second cooldown. You can just use that against any big things like chargers and bio titans, break them apart or kill them right away, and then just switch right back to my light machine going to be clearing up stuff. 

This works well in a team setting too because you can just keep having these up and other teammates can be taking the expendable anti-tank rounds if they think that they need them too.

After that the other two stratagems you can kind of go with whatever you'd like, usually a generic type of build. As an example, you might go with air strikes like the 500-kiloton bomb or precision strike. 

The precision strike is good too especially with how quickly it comes up so you could do that or strafing runs. If you are going out to defend the area, probably go with some sort of turret like the machine gun turret, maybe even the mortar turret depending on the area.

The turrets are almost always a decent option so long as you put them in pretty decent spots. You could potentially go with even more options like a shield you want to go with a backpack shield that could be pretty decent too. That way it also protects you whenever you are reloading your light machine gun.

Conclusion

Helldivers 2 MG 43 is a decent all-around weapon that you will never have issues with while taking on any mission type but it's also not the standout weapon. You can use it for crowd control, keeping all the small enemies away, and then your teammates clean up all the big ones. The MG 43 light machine gun is a little bit better against bugs than it is against robots but not even acceptable against heavier enemies. On top of all of this, you get the Helldivers 2 MG 43 early on, free of cost, without doing anything. So, there isn’t much we can complain about here. Follow our Helldivers 2 Firepower Guide for MG 43 for more details.