i just don’t like the flamethrower because it doesn’t kill fast enough for me but the knife doesn’t clear as well as a gun normally does.
editing to say that i posted this because using a knife for horde clear isn’t ideal and i would rather not have to switch off of a knife because i would then have to change most of my build which i don’t want to do and i don’t like the flamethrower because its not a fast enough killer for my tastes. i don’t want melee recommendations, please stop with the melee.
Honestly, flamer or nothing.
Flamer is the only gun made for horde clearing, paired with a TH is covers the weakness of this melee weapon (even if I think TH is bad)
If you want to clear hordes with a ranged weapon, then I think you won’t get friends as it would mean lot of wasted ammos.
As a zealot, except with a slow melee weapon like the TH, you should always be able to deal with hordes.
I honestly find flamer a great anti-armor weapon. Infinite cleave + lots of burn stacks can kill a whole group of Crushers and Bulwarks in a couple seconds, especially when you crank it all the way up with Overpressure and Blaze Away.
I’ve actually switched off the knife, it’s just not fun. Your best bet for any type of horde clear on Zealot is actually a melee weapon, especially since that’s what the class is based around anyways.
I would recommend the Mk2 Eviscerator with Savage Sweep or an Atrox Mk2 TacAxe with Brutal Momentum. Both are excellent at dealing with hordes with different utilities: the Eviscerator has extra cool factor and can also instakill Mutants and Reapers with a revved attack, while the TacAxe is better against heavy armor.
Highly disagree, scatter shotgun is the absolute best weapon for clearing hordes, braced autogun is very good too. And its hardly a waste of ammo.
Scatter shotgun is far better then the flamer because it doesnt make it impossible to see anything for the whole team in that direction, can take it out and start shooting 5x faster then the flamer, and overall uses less ammo to kill more mobs faster.
Flamer is great at keeping a horde at bay, but if you want it gone fast and reliably then scatter shotgun is the way to go.
However you will lose the ability to deal with ranged enemies reliably, so if you dont have a another teammate that will do that job for you it might be better to go with a braced autogun.
Not if you’re using a precision weapon like the knife. Yes technically you could keep the horde at bay but on higher difficulties you hardly have enough time to do it so slowly.
Forgot this one. You’re right, with man stopper and scattershot
However, I use it more for mixed horde than just on horde.
The beauty is that you don’t need to do that.
Sure if you compare with kickback, plasma and other OP weapons, or even a CA with BM, you will be slow. But if you take a dagger this is not to clear hordes. This does not mean that you won’t be able to deal with hordes.
Having played with a well-rolled mk3 knife for a good while as Zealot, I can confidently say this is total BS. Bleed stacks and lots of cleave is more than enough to tear through a horde of trash, plus pushes and dodges to prevent them from attacking you. Push attack is actually insane.
When i said “precision weapon” i mean with a precision build, as in built around backstabbing and headshots… Thought that was obvious.
You’re not going to have alot of cleave with that. Same as stealth monster killer thunder hammer.
honestly it requires some proper buffs and enchants but the shredder pistol really was my go to for a wile before i started to use other builds that didnt use chaff clear guns.
Shredder lost like at least a whole trash mob of cleave from the pinning fire nerf, possibly more, I vaguely remember enemy mass being increased a bit in patch 13 as well. It’s unfortunately a pretty questionable use of ammo to ever shoot it at hordes in its current state.
Personally cleave is the buff I want for Shredder so it could actually fill this exact niche decently (as well as being even better at removing nearby flamers and trappers surrounded by horde). Enough base cleave to hit up to 3 poxwalkers per shot with blaze away partially stacked would be about right to my mind.
IMO Shredder should be reworked to become an unarmored mob killer, with lots of cleave, super high bleed stacks (it is called the “shredder” after all), and absolutely worthless vs any armor.
It would be nice if the bleed stacks were high enough to become a very good monster slaying weapon, since they are unarmored.
I see no point in making the weapon decent vs flak/carapace since that role is already filled by the infantry/braced autoguns
If you want a balanced ranged weapon then just go with an autogun, but if you want to specialize in unarmored horde clearing and monster slaying then go with a shredder pistol.
Though to be honest ANY rework would be good for the shredder pistol since right now its completely useless.
Having a weapon with the effective range of Shredder then making it dysfunctional against common flak enemies like bruisers and ragers that get in your face sounds frankly horrendous.
Current Shredder still has very high stagger and a strong maniac modifier. It’s not like it’s difficult to find a niche for such a weapon without radically reworking it.
I maintain some cleave (and maybe more max ammo) would give it a decent niche without adjusting anything else. It’s really not even awful at the moment, just outcompeted, but like you can play the game fine with it.
