What the title says, what class, weapons, feats, and what makes it so good in your eyes? Feel free to also criticize, whether its mine or each other, but be constructive about it. To start things off mine is:
- Veteran Designated Marksman:
Key to this build is to leverage your core feats, and the synergy between deadshot and the punishing salvo blessing to protect your team from ranged and incoming threats. If you regularly play with lasguns, helbores, and can comfortably snipe with the boltgun and plasma guns you might be interested in this build if you want to try something new or challenge yourself if you run duck and dive instead of camo (details below). In essence, if you’re a skilled shooter with good situational awareness this build lets you get the best of both worlds as a vet (not as efficiently ofc), the precision of lasguns without the vulnerability to armor, and the stopping power of heavy weapons without sacrificing mobility and the ability to clear ranged chaff.
[Feats]
Core Feats:
-Sustained Fire, this will help you put down entire rooms worth of stuff on your own or it can also help extract you or your buddies from tough spots. It also synergizes very well with the fact that activating volley fire instantly draws your weapon, great for juggling between melee and popping threats when the turd hits the fan. This helps remedy the Mk1’s ammo efficiency problem.
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Deadshot, the sway reduction is what’s going to help you make the most of this build, it synergizes very well with the Punishing Salvo Blessing. The extra crit will allow you to drop things with 1 to 2 bursts. Throw in Sustained Fire to make sure most threats stay down.
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Sniper, cuz DMG
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Camo Expert; “Wait wut, lol?” Yes, camo expert, this will allow you to play aggressively without getting deleted, and also it will mitigate your relative vulnerability due to being stamina hungry during combat. This and your stamina regen perks will keep you alive. If you still struggle bring a Mk1 with Hit and Run + Punishing Salvo instead of Sustained Fire + Punishing Salvo. Why not duck and dive to deal with stamina starvation then? Camo expert is more versatile, you can use it to safely push rooms if you’re point man, you can use it to safely revive your resident Leroy Jenkins when he tries to rush a firing line for the tenth time, and you can use it to single-handedly clear out an entire STG wave on your own even if your team is being overrun. Finally, it can also let you survive if you overextend or are isolated if your team’s firing line is overrun.
“But OP, only pussies use camo!” Use your noggin guardsman, remember your training: FIRE AND MANEUVER! Not fire-maneuver, stop straffing like you’re on an arcade shooter or VT2. Be aggressive, yes, but be situationally aware, and move only when you need to. Move into cover, stop, fire, kill, rinse, and repeat.
“But muh unwavering focus!?” Every second you spend dealing with melee chaff is a second you don’t spend keeping your ogryn from being turned into swiss cheese, and your zealot from being spit roasted by trappers and flamers. With good situational awareness and smart positioning you will be vote kicked out of the game, not for being a shitbag sentry turret vet, but for falsely being accused of running an aimbot + wallhacks. Simple as.
“Why not duck and dive if stam becomes a problem then?” Same as above, you can’t afford the trade off in utility unless you’re a coked up John Wick, L337 G8mR. It is doable though, and you can do some insane room clearing, but you’re pretty much dancing on the knive’s edge the entire time, great if you’re an adrenaline starved sweatlord looking to challenge himself, but not advisable to average or above average folk, much less newbs and underperformers.
Other Feats:
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At Arm’s Length if you regularly play pubs (no matter how hard you try, you will frequently be isolated). Exhilarating takedown in premades or if you’re feeling lucky.
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Covering fire; demo team is the meta pick, I agree that more DMG is always good, but if you frequently need to pop grenades for anything other than extricating buddies from downs or being isolated by a horde, you’re messing up. With this build your job is to make sure your ogryn and zealot have the room to CC with impunity, overwatch, overwatch, never drop overwatch. Anything that can threaten your melee specialists will be dead before coming into coherency range, do not get sucked into the melee unless you can’t help it, maintain overwatch, kill shooters and specials.
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Bio Optic is only worthwhile in counterfire builds IMO.
[Weapons]
Flexibility and stopping power, with the above set plus the deadshot feat there is very little that I can’t drop with disciplined bursts of fire (bulwarks incl, melee for crushers). It’s hip fire spread is small enough to be relatively reliable for close work, and it’s recoil pattern is mild enough for it to even work for counter sniping and grenadier popping once you get used to it. It also has very good penetration, not boltgun tier, but it can take out multiple specials standing in STG conga lines or when 5 ragers clip into eachother. I’ve even found that its rounds can go through some grates and thin cover although they’re rare. Finally, IMO, it has one of the better ironsights between all autoguns (still needs tritium highlights like the rest though).
Caveats:
The important thing to keep in mind when using this one is to treat it like what it is, a battle rifle, and not an SMG. Most folks seem to treat almost anything capable of automatic fire like the latter in this game. You fire it in 3 to 5 round bursts at close and mid ranges, fire it it like a semi for long shots, and it will serve you well and reliably. Most end up shying away from the Mk1 when they notice it’s one glaring weakness, it horrendeous ammo efficiency and reserves. If anything about it needs a buff is it’s ammo reserve by at least an extra 2 to 4 magazines, and it’s base magazine size needs to be at least 30. Otherwise this is a very solid weapon that definitely deserves more love and attention from vets and zealots alike.
Pretty standard stuff here, tactical axes can work here too if you’re confident in your melee, and the extra mobility feels very good when paired with the Mk1. Any combat ax will do, rashad is my personal favorite, I like the feel of it, and it doesn’t feel like I’m trying to swing a polearm single handed like the antax does. Brutal momentum to take advantage of it’s relatively wide arcs for general crowd control. As you may have noticed looking at how the core of this build is deadshot + Mk1, you will be often starved for stamina, All or Nothing makes sure you can reliably stagger if not outright drop most things if you need to switch to melee in a pinch. If it’s chaff one or two light swings will deal with most, if it’s melee specials, always open with a V uppercut and follow with a heavy or a light combo to finish the job. You can also use V to reliably interrupt crusher melee attacks if you aim for the head, combo between V and heavies and you’ll pretty much stunlock them 90% of the time.
[Curios]
(1 wound or HP) + (HP) + (3 Stam or more HP)
Perks on all three:
- Stamina Recovery
- Ability Regen or HP
- Your preferred dmg mitigation (ideally sniper, bomber or flamer), or just more HP when running stamina recovery + ability regen
