As a weary veteran of Helldivers 2's galactic war, I thought I'd seen it all. I've seen helldivers choke to death on infinite gas bombs. I've seen bile titans brought down by yeeting a charger through them. But technology evolves rapidly in war, and a recent addition to Super Earth's arsenal has unlocked whole new feats of valour from its citizens.
That addition is the Lift-860 hover pack, which cruised into Helldivers 2 as part of the recent Borderline Justice warbond. A beefed-up version of the jump pack, the hover pack stratagem enables players to maintain their position in the air for a short duration.
Like the jump pack, the hover pack is handy for quickly accessing higher vantage points or getting out of a tight spot, like evading a cluster of rapidly encroaching terminids. But one inventive helldiver, inspired by freedom, had a vision: what if you combined a hover pack with a flamethrower? More than that, what if you flew that combination straight at a bile titan's face?
The results of such an experiment were recently posted to reddit. Titled 'holy mother of hover pack', the short video clip shows a group of helldivers fleeing from an oncoming bile titan, when one brave soldier named cur1y_n3ctar suddenly splits from the pack. Ascending into the sky, cur1y flies between the bile titan's front legs, and while still airborne, unleashes death warmed up to 800°C right into the creature's maw.
holy mother of hover pack from r/Helldivers
The responses are, naturally, ecstatic. "Well, that was extremely metal" says Good_Policy3529, while Nknk astutely observes "God, when this game is good it's near unbeatable for organic cinematic moments." But it's bja276555 who gives this technique the name it deserves, saying "Ok, so dragon builds are a thing now".
In the time since the video was posted, more of the Helldivers 2 community has discovered the power of combining the flamethrower and the hover pack. While dragon build is the right name for this approach in my opinion, the community also refers to it as a "firefly build" named after Batman's pyromaniac supervillain.
It's fascinating this build should emerge days before the first anniversary of Malevelon Creek, Helldivers 2's most famous battle, often referred to as "robot Vietnam". It looks increasingly likely that the game's automaton faction will attack the Creek again on or around the anniversary date, this time with specialised flame units known as the incineration corps. Consequently, we could soon see a second Malevelon where the Helldivers fight fire with (flying) fire. If this does happen, then I will be first in line for the pyrotechnics show.
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