Has anyone been able to make it work? (I main vet) I don’t expect it to be at bolter/autopistol tier, but I was hoping I could at least make it competitive relative to the Mk1 Agrip. I’m, no joke, having more success with the Kant MG IV Lasgun when it comes to scratching the “just barely” threshold. No such luck with either the Accatran VII or the VId. I just can’t seem to squeeze enough DPS out of em to be relevant in anything beyond Auric non-STG T5s.
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You can run VId. +Maniac, +critrate, Infernus(IV) + whatever. Talents: 1,3,2,1,1,2. Rashad to kill specials that are close.
It’s not that bad, just needs a lot of ammo pickups.
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That’s a decent set up, but it just doesn’t work at Auric T5 STG and Maelstrom in my experience. I can survive with it, i can even get above 300k dmg too. But I’m still deadweight to my team unless I’m running a full grenedier kit and manage to out-melee the team’s Zealot and/or Ogryn (impossible if they’re competent). It works a little better with the sustained fire talent/feat, but it’s still not enough even then.
My evaluation criteria here is being able to deal with a special wave in a given direction (usually the rear or a flank) either on my own or until relieved by the team. It neither has the CC or DMG to do it, if my team is having to deal with mutants or dogs that made it past me, I failed.
Well, it certainly fails your criteria then, but the weapon is not for that. Mutants are one of its weak points.
It’s great against shooters including the elite variant (I find it way more comfortable than using standard lasgun). Great against most elites, and can deal with most specials (struggling against mutants and flamers).
Running it with the above build is enough to top damage charts. Never feeling like a deadweight. At least on Auric T5 STG.
Not I, but I gave up on them long ago. They’re all way too ammo inefficient for anything above vanilla t5, at least for the way I like to play. They’d need at least a buff to their stagger potential to be viable at the top end, imo.
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I’m aware, but so is the Vraks Mk III, and I can still delete or at least maul an STG or a Maelstrom mutant wave (assuming they’re not spawning on top of the team) if I stack anti-special and anti-maniac perks. That’s without deadshot too. Not the case with this one, if infernus hadn’t been nerfed I might’ve been able to bridge the gap with a crit build, maybe. It’s why I’m kinda stumped trying to nail a viable build, I really like reccy lasguns, and I’d don’t want to play lower diffs to be able to make the most out of em.
I don’t dispute that. I agree that it’s great at plinking shooters, and ok at dealing with non-maniac stuff.
Stacking DMG is the easy part, it’s making sure I’m protecting my team and giving them the space to deal with stuff in their sectors while doing it is the hard part. I typically play pubs, so I usually end up doing the jobs other folks rarely do (running overwatch, holding flanks and/or the rear). I can pretty reliably plink shooters, gunners, and reapers with nearly any gun, and I rarely need to slap flak dmg on most of my weapons.
In STG and Maelstrom I’ve found that what often makes or breaks runs for me is being able to keep dogs and mutants from coming into coherency and fixing or breaking up the team. It’s why I don’t bother with counterfire builds anymore (even though I love them). Ranged stuff is only really a threat if the rest of the team is braindead, and in that case we’ll wipe 75% of the time the moment we get hit by a Chaos Spawn early on anyways. The other, more frequent case where ranged is a threat is when we fail to keep dogs and mutants from splitting and isolating us during the firefight.
So for me it comes down to being able to delete doggos and mutants before they come close. This applies to grenadiers and flamers too, but they’re easy to take down before they disrupt the team even without adding anti-maniac to weapons weak against them.
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I get where you are coming from, I just don’t think that judging the weapon based on one specific playstyle is good. I play all classes and try to play to the build’s strength. Maybe try playing differently when using it.
One other thing is that you should really try it with crit+Infernus (but without Deadshot) if you aren’t doing that because I feel like it really pulls its weight even after the nerf.
I’m not saying it’s great, but it’s totally usable. Pugs can carry some of their own weight at least. 
It might help to say which variant of the recon you’re talking about. They’re all bad, imo, but the slowest firing one is slightly less bad than the others.
For the rapid fire variants, they have no fire mode that suits this game.
If they’re ADS’d they’re basically a beam weapon. This is horrible for this game, because beam weapons rely on the ability to continually and reliably track weakspots. That’s nearly impossible with these guns because the sights are garbage and enemies move too erratically.
When not ADS’d they’re just SMGs with terrible ammo efficiency and no stagger value.
The slower variant is basically just a Kant IV with terrible sights and lower damage per shot.
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My recon las build is very similar to the one suggested above:
Talents: 1,1,2,1,3,2 (1,3,2,1,1,2 also acceptable)
MK VId with 80 in every stat except mobility (50+%), Lvl4 Infernus and headhunter, crit chance and maniac damage.
Backed up with an anti armor melee weapon (Rashad with BM and decimator here) of your choice and you have a pretty well rounded build.
Your role is killing shooters and elites / specials with less than 2k HP except for reapers and staggered bulwarks. Anthing else is not worth shooting at.
The problems with this build are:
- it depends on your teams ability to deal with multiple crushers and overwhealming numbers of mixed enemies.
- it’s not particularly ammo efficient but far from the worst (good ammo stat helps a ton).
- TTK is rather slow on anything with more than 1.3k HP.
- this build has a power ceiling and it’s not the highest.
In my personal experience, it can be enough for HiSTG and maelstrom missions but that’s more due to the team being good or the mission being easy enough rather than the build being so powerful. I was able to prevent my team taking as much as a single bullet for several rooms at a time. It’s definitely powerful and good at its job, it just doesn’t do a whole lot else.
If you want versatility and an endless power ceiling, the recon las isn’t for you. If you want to delete shooters before they know what hit them, the recon las is for
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So you’re saying it’s a huge liability unless you’re in a premade. This alone puts it amongst the worst weapons in the game.
I really want the faster-firing variants to be good, because they are fun to use. I hope they give them some kind of buff at some point.
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No they are not straight up a liability, they are a specialized ranged weapon. Those two things are not the same. I also do not have to be in a premade to do what I outlined, I just have to look at what my team is bringing to the table and if I see that nobody brought an anti shooter weapon, I’ll bring the recon lasgun.
I wouldn’t call them top tier meta contendors but they are not among the worst weapons in the game. It’s one of the best anti shooter weapons you can bring and it deals with everything except muties and crushers pretty well.
It’s a fine inclusion to a team that can handle itsself. If you’re however expecting to be the one to kill 8 crushers in one mag or to carry your teammates, bring a boltgun instead.
The faster firing recon lasguns are the better ones of the bunch because they boast the fastest TTK.
The recon lasguns do not have the same power ceiling as a boltgun or a helbore but they are a fine choice to run, provided you know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
It’s not a mindless “I’ll do fine no matter how I use it” pick but a good pick non the less.
“Specialised” is just another word for “bad” in a game where a weapon’s usefulness is directly tied to its versatility.
Power ceilings are pointless to talk about with these guns, especially the faster firing variants, because you need near-perfect weakspot tracking at all times to even approach it.
They’re fun, I’ll definitely grant that, but in a pug setting you’re setting yourself up for failure by pigeonholing yourself into a single, hyper-specialised task.
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I put a lot of time into all three variants using auric hi-shock missions. Honestly they’re kind of crap, the 2 more so than the 6 and 7. But all three have issues.
The dealbreaker for me is that accatrans have very low, almost nonexistent stagger. It is not impossible to stagger an enemy with them, but it is basically impossible to interrupt an attack animation of any sort. Enemies will act like you’re spraying them with an empty water gun until they suddenly drop over dead in mid stride.
This forces you do dodge. Every. Single. Attack. And is most noticeable against specials like dogs, snipers and trappers. The lack of stopping power is also annoying when dealing with shooters in the open because you cannot stop them from moving into cover whereas an autogun will stumble and knock them over.
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That is just flat out wrong.
Versatility is an important factor, sure but the only one that matters? Absolutely not, no shot.
I don’t know what to tell you… I’m having no issue hitting mostly headshots, especially on the targets that that matters for.
there’s a few things to consider here:
- “only” doing one task isn’t automatically bad. That single task could be the most important one to do so then doing that single task very well doesn’t make it bad to only be able to do that.
- Then there’s the thing of how narrow (or wide) a task it is you’re specializing in. Being able to kill every single enemy well with only 2 exceptions, of which only one you truely “cannot” handle and the other too slowly, is by no means a narrow task to do well in. You do have a melee weapon with you to fill those gaps after all.
- Just blindly bringing a specialized weapon will inevitably have you bring the wrong tool. But blaming the tool for that is just silly.
Like I said a few times now, the recon lasgun isn’t bad or a liability, you can only do bad with it and become a liability more easely than other weapons.
“Only a bad carptenter blames his hammer” and all that…
I will give you that they are not outstanding choices for a lot of teams and the absolute highest difficulty content, that’s true enough. I however do find them to do well enough in far higher difficulty content than most people give them credit for.
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Agreed, but not enough IMO. At least relative to more flexible options like autoguns. Below is the one I’ve managed to make work best so far in my test runs. Currently trying to roll one like it with higher dmg or space to try out Maniac + Special instead of crit. Brunt and Hadron are conspiring with the mutant mafia to stop me atm though.
While I wouldn’t put it as harshly as Tzcheese (I don’t think it’s useless), I do lean towards his side of the argument. I feel like it’s pretty weak in the grander scheme of things even in its niche. Using it currently, even with the above build performing relatively well in Auric STGs, just makes me miss my Vraks Mk3. That’s kind of the problem with it, it’s specialized in a role where nearly any other weapon in the roster can perform just as well or better while still being way more versatile.
The key point here, I think, is that it struggles to safely put down disablers especially if you’re forced to fight them within their engagement ranges. Nevermind trying to put down a trapper hiding in a horde without dumping 1 or 2 mags. Here even stuff like the vraks mk3 outperforms it. It has the same problems as reccy lasguns too, it has low cleave, and is weak against maniacs. Basically, the game doesn’t give me any reason to pick it over a Mk1 Agrip or a Mk3 Vraks even in a counterfire build. Nevermind addressing the autopistol in the room (counterfire + sniper autopistol).
The hilarious thing about it as well is that even though it seems to be optimized for counterfire, the damn firing particle effects basically blind you. I can’t even use the pewpew mod to fix the issue since it can’t remove the muzzle flash effect. It forces you to burst or hip fire to keep on target. Which in turn not only lowers your TTK on ranged threats, but it also makes you more vulnerable to disablers (little to no stagger) regardless of whether you’re mag dumping with it or not. I’m pretty eagle eyed, but like this thing makes it hard to even keep track of tagged specials. I can manage it, but holysh*t, it makes it feel like a noob trap of a weapon too. Mind you the visibility issue is just as bad even after I swapped it’s garbage sights with a holographic sight with the custom weapons mod.
This all conspires to give it a skill ceiling that is not justified with it’s current DMG and TTK profiles and overall versatility. Especially in Auric STG and Maelstrom with their psychotic spawn patterns. Here being able to put down disablers quickly and safely without supporting fire, because the team is often being hit from all directions, makes or breaks most runs.
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I haven’t been experimenting it with too much (have been playing all classes equally where possible)
The perks aren’t what I want (thanks locks)
But honestly I felt infernus was underwhelming compared to Dumdum. Dumdum procs pretty decently far away too.
Bulwarks and Crushers you aren’t prepared for, but most everything else I felt I could handle. Just make sure you’re body shotting maulers and not head shots. Grenades aren’t very useful except for revives and to stagger bulwarks to open them up. Used powersword with it:
I ran this. Although I have considered grenade regen may be more helpful than highlighting priority targets (but I do randoms not premades and have gotten like 2-3 psykers before where it feels useless).
I also used the height mod to be as short as possible.
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No, there is not.
/thread
This is an interesting take. I suffer close to no accuracy problems with the weapon due to the muzzle flash.
I find it to be the easiest weapon to keep Counterfire up by far. Even the tiniest of bits that are not behind a cover can be reliably shot to keep Ult up even at long ranges. It’s ridiculously precise and has incredible TTK on shooters. Aim for heads and pull the weapon a bit down so if the hit is a crit and the enemy suddenly ducks you still hit it, but even hitting an arm will vaporize most shooters.
Also, the bit about hip firing… Just don’t. Hip fire is horrible and should only be used in a very few select circumstances.
I guess this is a problem with very thick hordes, right? With ult up pretty much any horde enemy gets vaporized in a straight line (not using hipfire obviously).
Edit: Just came to mind that burst firing really hurts your dps on masses and specials due to how crit streaks work on the weapon, so that might also be a bad thing to do if you are not just picking off shooters one by one.
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It’s not so much about accuracy, the CoD hit ticks pretty much make that angle a non-issue. My bigger issue is more on the situational awareness side of things. Basically, being able to track current targets, acquire new ones after taking down the last one and so on while engaging a group of enemies. Especially so in low-light sections of levels. It’s really obnoxious, especially when engaging large groups of moving enemies while making sure nothing is about to play grab-ass with you.
With ult up and regular hordes? Sure? But most hordes are pretty thick on average high diff runs. It’s a good way to burn through your reserve trying to delete that one trapper that’s about to drop your zealot from a blind spot or the grenadier that’s about to end the run. I recall a chasm logistratum run at the starting bridge where I managed to burn through most of my ammo trying to get at a damn sniper. Activated volley at least twice too if I’m not misremembering. It’s not like I was shooting into the pile of crates in front of the gatehouse chokepoint either since I saw him stagger every time a shot or two managed to make it through the wall of crap between us, lol.
I’m not trying to slander the thing. I really like it, besides the muzzle flash issue, I really like the feel and handling. I just can’t find a way to justify picking it over my AG1 or V3 for anything at or above Auric STG without feeling like I’m putting the team at a disadvantage. Shooters/Gunners/Reapers are just not that much of a threat at higher level play even when I’m forced to babysit suicidal zealots/ogryns on meth. Covering fire Kant4 + grenadier kit’s better for babysitting too anyways (although I’m just enabling them at that point).
Funny thing about DumDum is that it procs with any hit at any distance, but the damage only applies within whatever the game defines as close distance. Either way, I appreciate the build suggestion. I’m going try it out after I’m done with the Acc6d.
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Remind me again, how much ammo do the recons use per shot?
Even as an underpowered mess, it’s weird anything with 700 - 1000 ammo should be having ammo trouble.