This guide will not guide you throught step by step on how to do these various changes to your pc.
it is a guide that will help you figure out what is causing your problem and avoid searching for hours the web in hope of a solution without being able to diagnose the real culprit.
I will show you the various most common problems that cause your laptop/pc to have performance issues and I'll tell you the effect they had on my Laptop.

I'm creating this after my 2 weeks adventure on how to fix these problems, and finding various mixed recommendation that have improved performance and I'll do my best to explain if these problem are effecting your pc and you have to fix it, or if it doesn't matter and you can move on to something else.
take it as a little help to diagnose your pc~

After playing at 20fps through most of these optimization I've found this to be the one that made the biggest difference.
I've updated my ram from 8GB, to 16GB with 2x8GB ram.
this alone improved my performance the most, going from 20fps, to 40fps in the worst scenarios, and 60fps usually.

if you have poor performance and you have 8GB of ram you have to buy more, it is sadly the only way, you can attempt to follow the guide, but in my experience you won't be able to tell much difference and maybe see a 3-6fps improvements.
if you already have 16GB or more than continue on with the guide.

this is the second biggest issue you have to solve, if your temperature are above 85°C you are most likely thermal throttling and this will cause massive performance drops on any PC no matter how powerfull.

if you have an asus tuf use armory crate to check your temps in the middle of a game, or use MSI afterburner or any other program to check your temps and make sure they aren't too high.

if they are, here is a list of things you can try to fix it:


Open that darling up, and blow some dust off the fans with a toothbrush or compressed air.
search on the internet your laptop to see in more detail how to open it up and clean it.

on my asus TUF I have "TURBO mode" which puts an aggressive overclock on the CPU, giving +20°C just by being idle!
during gameplay it didn't take much to go to 90+ °C
if you have manual mode make sure to adjust it so that turbo mode uses "efficient at guaranteed" or "disabled" during turbo mode.
in case you have my problem and armory crate is absolutely useless for manual control, I recommend uninstalling armory crate (even if you have manual control) and download G-Helper.
it is lighter, and more efficient, and allows far more control.
G-Helper link: https://github.com/seerge/g-helper

if you have other Laptops you will have to search to web for how to check if your CPU/GPU is overclocked and if not, how to undervolt it to prevent high temps.
there are plenty of in detail guides that will help you figuring out how to do it.
some can do it just from control panel, some need a specific application.

Open steam, go to helldivers 2 --> launch options --> copy and paste: "--use-d3d11"
(without semicolons)

this will activate dx11, and will usually improve FPS stability, increase performance and reduce the amount of crashes you experience.
it is a fast and easy step to do, I wouldn't see much reason to avoid it.

Credit to Reddit user: kjeldorans
link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1axwnla/all_the_tips_i_found_to_improve_fps_on_nvidia_gpu/

in his guide you will find plenty of other tips you can try, and I recommend reading through it.
the Nvidia NIS is the most valuable part as it will give you the biggest improvement.

My laptop on the Nvidia control panel doesn't have "image scaling" and yours might too.
if you don't there is sadly nothing you can do.
by researching why I've found out that screen resolution (which would be changed by image scaling option) is controlled by the integrated GPU, so in my example an Intel GPU.
this means Nvidia can't control your screen resolution and therefore can't use NIS.
(but you can change resolution with intel control center, or whatever brand program your GPU is)
if your integrated GPU is Nvidia you should be able to make this change, so try it, there is nothing to lose!

thanks to reddit user: Ann0ying
link: https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/1avbh8m/improve_helldivers_2_performance_on_the_deck/

his guide will guide you how to change the game options through files, a user in the comments will also give you a link to download the file with the settings already changed so you don't have to do it manually.

your graphics will drop a lot!
so don't expect much beauty after this change, this is why it is a "last hail mary"
but the performance improvement is undeniable.
on my 8GB ram I didn't see much improvement at all tho, went from avg. 20fps --> 25fps
but if ram isn't a problem for you than this will surely help you.

if nothing in this guide has helped you find the problem yet, than a few things remain to consider.
most likely if you are reading this guide you would already know this but
check if your CPU and GPU can run this game, and if your GPU has enough VRAM.

a rapid list:

• make sure to not use the game frame limiting as its extremely scuffed and can kill the performance of any computer no matter how powerful.
  
• Turn off Vsync
  
• Try "async compute" in helldivers option, some see improvement, some don't. usually useful if you have a CPU bottleneck.
  
• Increase GPU load by increasing graphics settings, this worked for me, for some reason higher resolution and graphics settings increased my performance instead of reducing it.
  
• use "performance" or "super sampling" render scale.
  somewhere on the web I've read that these option use a different scaling method that boosted performance for some, it worked for me as well, as super sampling showed me better performance than "native" or "quality"

This is all I have for now!
if you have found a solution to your performance struggle make sure to comment it as other users can find it useful!
also, if you comment something that isn't on this guide I'll make sure to add it and credit you.