The unarmored ragers are far FAR more common then the flak armored counterpart. Out of all the rounds i’ve played this week (around 15 i think) i’ve only once met a pack of armored ragers (auric only).
every dreg enemy is unarmored (that includes bruisers, aim for the torso not the head)
cannon fodder are also all unarmored
bulwark and reaper are also unarmored
monsters are unarmored
from specials : hound, mutant, pox flamer (?), sniper, pox nade are unarmored.
There is a very decent amount of enemies without any armor. So no, it would not be horrendous.
Or maybe it would be and im wrong, probably will never find out.
As of right now, there is no point whatsoever to consider if you’re going to go up against dregs or scabs (dregs are all unarmored, scabs are all armored). I think its a waste of potential. Being able to see it before a mission starts and equip appropriate weapons/build for the game would be nice. Just like in warframe. But i digress.
I don’t think you know how this game works very well. Lot of things to correct here.
First there are 2 types of bruisers. Yes dreg has unarmoured bodies. Scab bruisers however have flak everywhere but their head.
The “unarmoured” Ragers are in fact not in the “unarmoured” category, but maniac, which Shredder already has very good modifiers for, no change required there they handle those guys pretty good as is.
As for cannon fodder, groaners are unarmoured, poxwalkers are infested. These are two distinct armour categories that many weapons have radically different multipliers for.
Bulwarks, Reapers, and bosses are NOT unarmoured. They are unyielding, which is again a different armour category entirely which many weapons have radically different multipliers for.
Out of the specials you listed, those are a range of infested (hound), unarmoured (sniper), and maniac armour categories.
You can check these by hitting these enemies in meat grinder and seeing what tag pops up next to their health bar. Also note some enemies like reapers have different armour types on different hitzones.
Im very well aware of types of enemies.
When i said “unarmored” i meant it in a “wearing a piece of metal or not” type of way.
Say ragers aka maniac “armor” are not wearing any protective shell, thus shredder would be effective on them and apply loads of bleed and cleave through them.
Same with any other enemy that doesnt wear any protective material on them.
Ok you should really be a lot more careful with your words then, since “unarmoured” already has a very clearly defined meaning in the context of this game.
Even with that clarified I think the idea of making a weapon with short effective range unusable against flak is a terrible, terrible idea. So I say we agree to disagree and leave it there.
The point of hordes is to side track you until suddenly a special or pack of elites turn up, when either you pinned in and can’t dodge, or you’re too distracted.
There is some value to thinning the horde, literally, with ranged weapon in some instances I feel. Simply so the above is less likely to occur. But in other cases, I acknowledge that leaving them for the melee buffs or ammo conservation is the best strategy. Mix and match.
I think some light hosing can be effective at all levels. If you’re going to town on a horde with a per-shot based gun though (e.g. plasma, las or bullet gun … vs flamer, or purg staff) then you’re probably going to get team mates upset when an ammo shortage happens.
For melee there’s too many ways to list them all but some of my usuals are prolly Devil’s Claw IV/VII (Rampage & Shred) or Heavy Sword IX (Rampage & Headtaker) with crit and/or attack speed talents. My singular favorite would be the Crusher with Skullcrusher & Trauma / Hammerblow. With a stamina curio & stamina efficiency perks and using the Crusher right (focus on headshots & crits & spam the heck out of that push-attack against groups) it’s a fantastic weapon that cleaves through everything but oggies like butter. Ofc you can go with the new Evi light spams too, like I said there are many weapons for this.
For ranged even looking for “horde clear” is wrong. No weapon including the flamer has the kind of ammo economy to pull that off. That said, mixed horde clear is definitely something some weapons can afford to do and do well. The best choices by far would be either Kantrael or Lawbringer shotties with Scattershot & Man-Stopper, and in a crit build (so Blazing Piety). Man-Stopper makes every crit have infinite cleave (penetrates everything but oggies & monsters). But shotties are advanced weapons. You need to use all firing modes almost constantly.
Hip shots are the fastest & have the largest spread so they stack Scattershot easily
ADS shots get massive bonus finesse dmg depending on the shotty and compress the spread so more dmg and range against priority targets
Kantrael special does almost no direct dmg, but adds 3-6 burn, huge stagger and has innate infinite cleave. So its amazing for stacking Scattershot or DoT’s vs groups or bosses, and lets you 2-tap snipers from extreme range.
Lawbringer special is all about spread & increased dmg & stagger. More importantly its bullets are spread perfectly horizontally, allowing for cleaving headshots in a cone which with its finesse bonuses means absolutely decimating mixed hordes with just a few shots.
The easiest option here would be just taking Kantrael and firing normally, since it has the highest base spread and dmg. Even if you don’t make use of its other tools, it will let you cleave through lines and packed groups of hordes & specials with a few shots each. And if you’re far enough away from a massive horde chokepoint, just putting 2-3 special rounds in there will burn the lot of them down, so it can be very ammo economic too.
Overall if you use spread specials for hordes, and ADS for special+ enemies, these 2 shotties can be very ammo economic and powerful at both jobs at once.
Agripinaa BAG definitely deserves a special mention too. It’s a hip-fire only weapon but has some penetration and fantastic stopping power, so it’s an easy, fast and fantastically strong weapon for mowing down the brunt of a horde or some group of specials or ragers in particular.
would agree with you before xbox release… but not now. Before xbox release, you could use a ranged weapon to lower the giant horde incoming. Now, the game spawn several horde groups that are launched on players at regular intervals.
Please emprah no.
For starters it has a lower cap on fire and doesn’t have infinite cleave for a while now. It was always a trap, now more than ever, spamming special fire shots is usually a waste of ammo.
it was literally just pinning fire, because being able to get double damage from just that blessing and then hold onto it from target to target until you reload was pretty dumb. they didn’t need to remove executioner stance reloading your gun, they needed to nerf that. unfortunately executioner stance got caught in the crossfire and is now garbage.
Wait, how is the reload exe stance nerf related to the pinning fire carryover? I agree it’s silly, but did they ever give a reason or that it was because of PF (not Floyd) ?
P.S. I saw one of your replies 2 weeks later, reply to poster like Al did instead of thread or I can’t upvote you lol.
Just took it for a test in the psykhanium. The special still has significant extra cleave even if it’s not infinite as before, which explains why I missed that it was changed:
Normal shots cleave through <2 mass once, so you can shoot through 1 pox trash to hit another behind it but it won’t cleave through stronger mobs like specials at all
Specials cleave >4 and <10 mass up to 3 times, so it goes through everything except oggies, scab ragers, and muties. With trash it can penetrate to hit 4 in a line, less with anything else.
More importantly Man-Stopper crits still get infinite cleave including DoT
The DoT is still capped at 10 stacks, which is a LOT. Any DoT at 10 stacks is enough to kill specials & some elites, seriously soften other elites, and decimate hordes in a fraction of the time. And while the special does little direct dmg it’s enough to make a difference with the DoT’s on top.
All in all this changes virtually nothing about what I said for a Scattershot & Man-Stopper shotty. The Special will still be your best option for stacking Scatter. Since Kantrael has massive dmg loss at range but the DoT doesn’t care about range, 2-3 specials into a crowd at low mid range or more, especially with the cleave difference, will do way more dmg on account of the DoTs than regular shots. 2 specials for a 10-stack DoT on bosses will by far exceed the dmg of 2 regular shots, and the specials being your only sensible choice against snipers hasn’t changed at all.
For example 3-4 specials will wipe out most to all of a mixed horde over any distance in 5s or so. 3-4 regular shots will at best cleave a line or two if you’re really close, at worst or at range do almost nothing at all.
Anyone at all is free to go to the psykhanium, line up mobs and see the difference for themselves.
