Completed this with friends twice on helldive, we rotated throwing down the gas cloud by the drill to kill the little ones, and used a spear/EATS and sentries. It's definitely challenging.
My son and I have a regular schedule of running missions in the evening. We run with just the two of us so we usually run medium. That was a painful mistake tonight on Meridia. So many Shriekers we could barely see the sky. Breaches everywhere. We made it in spite of it all. Over 2 thousand bugs dropped. ON MEDIUM.
The only difference is fewer bug types spawn, but the spawn rate is pretty much exactly the same and the shriekers at the end every bit as impossible to deal with
We dropped to Easy after the first run and managed well but it feels like the difficulty is 1 step higher than advertised. We're going again tonight with a whole different loadout. Hopefully we can pull off Medium.
Found success on dif 8 last night with a full 4 squad, all coordinating staggered orbital EMS strikes on top of the drill, HMG emplacements mowing down everything with EATs at the ready for chargers and titans.