I can confirm that armored advance is GOATED. You have no idea of the failure cascade of being staggered in Ruthless difficulty. You get hit once and then 3-4 more Majoris/Extremis can get a hit in and you can be at almost no health in a literal second smashing buttons, hoping to get a execute. No stagger means you take the hit and have the ability to parry following attacks.
@NukerOfFace - Yeah, that was kinda my thinking, but was uncertain about recommending a perk which also opens you up to the possibility of getting deleted without the few s in stagger at the beginning of the animation since build guides are inherently geared towards new players or people having trouble with a thing. That said, with how janky ping can be, those few s wind up not mattering sometimes anyway, so 🤷♂️
@@baldsquidgaming It's important to be aware of this because it's true but so long as you stay focus, it improves your damage output because you can always respond. With us getting armor for parry now, it's even better.
Uhh vs the hive tyrant tho it's bad bad. Usually you get knock downed from it's attack, but with the perk you're just gonna eat all that and leave your hp depleted at the end
As a Power Fist Assault main, I couldn't agree more about playing whatever the hell you want. I solo Ruthless chaos missions with it, no problem. It's all about knowing your weapon and knowing your enemy and not being an idiot. The more you do something, the better you get at it. Even if it's not optimal. There's no greater weapon than a weapon you have fun with, and fun is lethal.
I do hope they improve it. I discovered how much damage a full charge does to Terminus enemies so thought I'd pick perks to focus that but the tree is so limited and missing a lot.
@@warriorfire8103 Me too, I hope they adjust and fix some things on it. Feels like there's a couple of bugs with it's AoE range and It could use a bit of a speed boost , maybe faster charges.
@@Zinriusminazen You should absolutely play whatever you want, even on Ruthless. Especially after the parry updates to shield health, you can literally use anything. You could use white weapons if you wanted to. The bread and butter for getting through any encounter is being able to parry well and it doesn't really matter what you're using as long as it isn't block.
Banner contested health, you can also pop a stim if there are no executes to get full health after the patch, ALSO alot of bulwark videos forget to mention this, Shield bash can also give you gunstrike opportunities on minoris enemies.
I didn't like the shield bash until I learned blocking cancels animations. Initially I hated how long shield bash left you just frozen for a bit at the end, but if you block after performing the shield bash, you can move immediately. (Block, not parry) Block canceling is great for speeding up the heavy strikes and I've had fun triple bashing majors ^_^
I LOVED Age of Reckoning, so good. Being able to just knockback players off of high ledges was OP. Then they changed knockback to just... idk, wasn't the same. Died before it got to live its best life.
I'll go even further with this, it cancels just about any attack animation. You can shield bash the frame any hit lands to combo it together or cancel a long recovery animation.
Its an amazing perk the last one in the tree. You pretty much can go in a parry everyone and larger targets dont become a problem. Enemies will not be able to stun you like that. Especially if you are good a parring. If you make a mistake you will still be able to correct it as you will not be knocked back
In my opinion, Armoured Advance is GOD tier. Just going wild with your weapon of choice and swinging away without a care (with a minoris parry here and there for armor), has carried me through having to solo hordes when my team dies. You become a beacon of hope with this perk as long as you can stay focused on how the horde is acting.
I recommend that you try out the other perk tree with the powersword, because the powesword has the powerstance, it doesn't really need the help with the damage against minorus enemies. I went with the speed style top row, that with the shield bash 25% damage boost perk, light attacks increase damage by 3% up to 30% (which also applies to powerstance) and the 50% boost to power rake helps you absolutly nuke majoris. Just try it out, I find it to be far more usable on ruthles difficulty.
I tried it and it just doesn't flow with combat well. It doesnt last long enough to set a combo off and shield bashing doesnt do enough to incorporate into the combos
What I've tested so far on the power sword is that the top tree give you more bang for buck, because all that investment for more melee dmg for minoris does jack shit. Because they will always die with the same number of hits from the power stance, perfect parries you one shot them and you can gunstrike them at no risk whatsoever for free armor segments. Where the sword really needs some help is the speed stance and dmg agains majoris and extremis, so every single dmg node and dmg agains these type of foes are borderline mandatory for a satisfying power swrod build. But then again, it´s all down to preference, absolutely everything in this game is viable. Edit: One other thing I should mention. Bulwark already strugles for damage. Yes you can build for arguably ~80% more survivability, but when you get into the flow the gameplay, you will not need any of those %dmg negation because as of right now, it is impossible to go down when playing as the bulwark if you approach the fights the right way. Bulwark is useless against Hive Tyrant tho, no matter the build (that boss is broken). That´s it, enjoy it.
@@AtsuruIn my experience the Hive Tyrants weak point is headshots. I haven’t seen a melee character do well against it other than drawing its focus away form a sniper/heavy so they can get headshots in.
@@jackdetweiler3442 it's cause the hive tyrant recovers before your gun strike animation ends so even if you perfect dodge him when you try to gunstrike he punches you in the face like 90% of the time. Feels really bad to perfect dodge 2 attacks then parry one go for the gunstrike and then just loose half your health lol. :( bullwark struggles in that boss lmao
The "cant be knocked back perk" is awesome especially for the bulwark since he blocks much of the damage that knocks him back and does not necessarily take dmg. BUT the perk that makes you immune to knock back after shield bash is a little better I think because you can decide when you want to be immune, like when walking up to a sniper, just shield bash air, boom, shot wont knock you back
Not at all, power sword already has a perk that allows this as long as youre in power stance and Power fist cant be interrupted while charging. Youre simply able to get the benefits other ways which are not optional since you have to select the perk to go down the tree. This one within the class tree is optional
@@MachiavelliD4 isnt it Power Whirl Stance which is only while getting ready for the Power whirl? And with the Power fist, I was talking about moving towards targets while blocking damage which.
ya I like it on Powerfist as I'll trade Fully charged heavies often 1 shooting majors. I can only do this now due to to us now being able to get armor back from minoras parries. I just wish it worked on your allies grenades...
I've played a lot of Assault and the "shield on non-lethal gunstrikes" perk is great. I haven't fully levelled Bulwark yet, but I'm looking forward to using it along with the "no stagger when you have armour" since you'll be regenning armour like crazy with those perks.
@robtype0 Yeah that was my thinking when I commented on the final perk. Might be great, might be irrelevant; needs more playtime before I commit one way or the other. I think we might see some changes to everyone’s builds depending on just how badly Lethal difficulty chains us to a radiator.
@@baldsquidgamingits not worth it unless youre using a block weapon. Why? 1. You can already get the benefits regardless of armor via the power sword and power fist skill trees and 2. You want to parry incoming attacks anyways, so there arent that many times that you purposely let a blue attack hit you since youll be taking damage and not taking advantage of armor regeneration
@MachiavelliD4 Hey so this is a thing that another commenter corrected me on a few videos ago; might help you too. Heavy attacks as the game describes them aren't the blue/orange circles to parry or dodge respectively, those are specials. Heavy attacks are the normal attacks that stagger if they hit but aren't accompanied by the prompts. TMYK 🤯
I need to PSA this again but as of 3.0 version the Inspiration and Invigorating Icon effects are SWAPPED. I don’t know if they fixed it in 3.1 (unlikely) but if they didn’t you should always pick inspiration for the 7th column
@WTFYI - Yep, that's why I mentioned keeping track of / checking on the bugs in the video. Sure, I could pump out algorithm bait videos every time a perk works or doesn't, but that feels lame and gross.
@@baldsquidgaming most people only thinks the level 8 perk is bugged that gives you full contested health upon planting the flag. They do not recognize or even try the third row perk that keeps your white health full for the whole 15 seconds the flag is up.
Aha - Missed the boat on that game; friends at the time weren't gaming so it was all singleplayer stuff all the time for me when it released (2018ish iirc?)
@@baldsquidgaming it's still going strong. I think player numbers are the highest they've ever been. We've recently had the season five update, which brought us a whole new mission type and a new upgrade for each primary weapon.
8:34 This, holy fuck this. People are so concerned about optimizing everything and playing like a pro and yada yada yada. Do people really spend all their energy trying to boost their ego through the validation they get in video games? I like pushing myself to do my best but at the end of the day, ya gotta have fun doing it or you'll just be miserable chasing some hollow goal of feeling good about yourself. I appreciate your very well rounded views about things.
@ParkAir33 - TY for understanding the nuance! I think it's a balance between the 2 extremes of "Don't be That Guy." I'll be sarcastic AF about things like how people nerf themselves with weapon choice because it's funny and we all have that one thing we do it with, but so long as you're not negatively impacting other people to an egregious degree, get after it and have fun.
@chrissideris9242 - Yep, feel I was pretty clear about the benefits to top tree, and that I wasn't sold on that bottom line, and wanted to include both options for completeness's sake :)
Know what I finally realized? The consecutive 3% per hit perk works on power style!!! It only says light, not fast style. I'd been unconsciously assuming it was geared only for speed style.
Step 1: dont run shock bulwark. 25% bonous damage every 30 seconds on a perfect parry isn't worth it in comparison to losing.... 2. The passive Imortallity build has + 85% more survivability than shock build with no cooldowns. (Barring your banner, which with half decent play you'll never need for yourself. So your options are.... supirt the team with heals and armour anmwhile never dying while carrying ruthless missions so even if a player or 2 does for whatever reason, go down and out.... you'll never die and they can respawn for garenteed mission pass with the immortal build..... or.... give the team 25% more damage in a 5 meter radius (which is fuck all) every 30 seconds while losing a metric ton of suvival. Its all down to preference but i know for sure as someone who runs Ruthless all day.... Imortallity tank is always a hard welcome, i love those heals ❤️ thank you for your service!! I cry when i see that tiny 5m radius pool of lightning on the floor with nothing in it every 30 seconds. (Assuming they can even perfect parry every 30 seconds) 😢
@The-Spanish-Inquisition490 - 0:25 "I can see the Bulwark going a couple different ways here." Steel within and Armor Reinforcement are both valid vs Defensive Advantage, as I'd said in the video. I disagree that it rises to your "85% more survivability" but hey, different people need different levels of help staying alive. Multiple valid paths imo 😉 Edit: Perk Names are hard -.-
On Power Whirl: Misspoke and noticed after upload - any attack on the second input works.
I can confirm that armored advance is GOATED. You have no idea of the failure cascade of being staggered in Ruthless difficulty. You get hit once and then 3-4 more Majoris/Extremis can get a hit in and you can be at almost no health in a literal second smashing buttons, hoping to get a execute. No stagger means you take the hit and have the ability to parry following attacks.
@NukerOfFace - Yeah, that was kinda my thinking, but was uncertain about recommending a perk which also opens you up to the possibility of getting deleted without the few s in stagger at the beginning of the animation since build guides are inherently geared towards new players or people having trouble with a thing. That said, with how janky ping can be, those few s wind up not mattering sometimes anyway, so 🤷♂️
@@baldsquidgaming It's important to be aware of this because it's true but so long as you stay focus, it improves your damage output because you can always respond. With us getting armor for parry now, it's even better.
Uhh vs the hive tyrant tho it's bad bad. Usually you get knock downed from it's attack, but with the perk you're just gonna eat all that and leave your hp depleted at the end
As a Power Fist Assault main, I couldn't agree more about playing whatever the hell you want.
I solo Ruthless chaos missions with it, no problem. It's all about knowing your weapon and knowing your enemy and not being an idiot.
The more you do something, the better you get at it. Even if it's not optimal. There's no greater weapon than a weapon you have fun with, and fun is lethal.
I do hope they improve it. I discovered how much damage a full charge does to Terminus enemies so thought I'd pick perks to focus that but the tree is so limited and missing a lot.
@@warriorfire8103 Me too, I hope they adjust and fix some things on it. Feels like there's a couple of bugs with it's AoE range and It could use a bit of a speed boost , maybe faster charges.
@@Zinriusminazen You should absolutely play whatever you want, even on Ruthless. Especially after the parry updates to shield health, you can literally use anything. You could use white weapons if you wanted to. The bread and butter for getting through any encounter is being able to parry well and it doesn't really matter what you're using as long as it isn't block.
Banner contested health, you can also pop a stim if there are no executes to get full health after the patch, ALSO alot of bulwark videos forget to mention this, Shield bash can also give you gunstrike opportunities on minoris enemies.
I didn't like the shield bash until I learned blocking cancels animations. Initially I hated how long shield bash left you just frozen for a bit at the end, but if you block after performing the shield bash, you can move immediately. (Block, not parry)
Block canceling is great for speeding up the heavy strikes and I've had fun triple bashing majors ^_^
@warriorfire8103 - I'd not considered block cancelling after the bash. Good tip.
I LOVED Age of Reckoning, so good.
Being able to just knockback players off of high ledges was OP.
Then they changed knockback to just... idk, wasn't the same.
Died before it got to live its best life.
General tip.
Blocking cancels lots of animations, including shield bash and Power Rake.
I'll go even further with this, it cancels just about any attack animation. You can shield bash the frame any hit lands to combo it together or cancel a long recovery animation.
@tyrfang saved me a lot of time I've tried to parry a heavy. Now I can cancel and dodge
Its an amazing perk the last one in the tree. You pretty much can go in a parry everyone and larger targets dont become a problem. Enemies will not be able to stun you like that. Especially if you are good a parring. If you make a mistake you will still be able to correct it as you will not be knocked back
In my opinion, Armoured Advance is GOD tier. Just going wild with your weapon of choice and swinging away without a care (with a minoris parry here and there for armor), has carried me through having to solo hordes when my team dies. You become a beacon of hope with this perk as long as you can stay focused on how the horde is acting.
I recommend that you try out the other perk tree with the powersword, because the powesword has the powerstance, it doesn't really need the help with the damage against minorus enemies. I went with the speed style top row, that with the shield bash 25% damage boost perk, light attacks increase damage by 3% up to 30% (which also applies to powerstance) and the 50% boost to power rake helps you absolutly nuke majoris. Just try it out, I find it to be far more usable on ruthles difficulty.
The shield Bash 25% damage perk functions but it's not giving off any ques anymore. So if you want to try it, it's working.
I tried it and it just doesn't flow with combat well. It doesnt last long enough to set a combo off and shield bashing doesnt do enough to incorporate into the combos
To day I start to play with bulwark so this helps. (lvl 3 as writing this comment)
After a day I'm lvl 14.
Bro I thought heavy multimelta was fun. Bulwark power sword with correct parry is like a god of war.
What I've tested so far on the power sword is that the top tree give you more bang for buck, because all that investment for more melee dmg for minoris does jack shit. Because they will always die with the same number of hits from the power stance, perfect parries you one shot them and you can gunstrike them at no risk whatsoever for free armor segments. Where the sword really needs some help is the speed stance and dmg agains majoris and extremis, so every single dmg node and dmg agains these type of foes are borderline mandatory for a satisfying power swrod build. But then again, it´s all down to preference, absolutely everything in this game is viable.
Edit:
One other thing I should mention. Bulwark already strugles for damage. Yes you can build for arguably ~80% more survivability, but when you get into the flow the gameplay, you will not need any of those %dmg negation because as of right now, it is impossible to go down when playing as the bulwark if you approach the fights the right way. Bulwark is useless against Hive Tyrant tho, no matter the build (that boss is broken).
That´s it, enjoy it.
What's wrong with the hive tyrant? Legitimate question. I generally don't play levels with bosses as I prefer fighting hoards.
@@AtsuruIn my experience the Hive Tyrants weak point is headshots. I haven’t seen a melee character do well against it other than drawing its focus away form a sniper/heavy so they can get headshots in.
@@jackdetweiler3442 it's cause the hive tyrant recovers before your gun strike animation ends so even if you perfect dodge him when you try to gunstrike he punches you in the face like 90% of the time. Feels really bad to perfect dodge 2 attacks then parry one go for the gunstrike and then just loose half your health lol. :( bullwark struggles in that boss lmao
The "cant be knocked back perk" is awesome especially for the bulwark since he blocks much of the damage that knocks him back and does not necessarily take dmg. BUT the perk that makes you immune to knock back after shield bash is a little better I think because you can decide when you want to be immune, like when walking up to a sniper, just shield bash air, boom, shot wont knock you back
Not at all, power sword already has a perk that allows this as long as youre in power stance and Power fist cant be interrupted while charging. Youre simply able to get the benefits other ways which are not optional since you have to select the perk to go down the tree. This one within the class tree is optional
@@MachiavelliD4 isnt it Power Whirl Stance which is only while getting ready for the Power whirl? And with the Power fist, I was talking about moving towards targets while blocking damage which.
ya I like it on Powerfist as I'll trade Fully charged heavies often 1 shooting majors. I can only do this now due to to us now being able to get armor back from minoras parries.
I just wish it worked on your allies grenades...
I've played a lot of Assault and the "shield on non-lethal gunstrikes" perk is great. I haven't fully levelled Bulwark yet, but I'm looking forward to using it along with the "no stagger when you have armour" since you'll be regenning armour like crazy with those perks.
@robtype0 Yeah that was my thinking when I commented on the final perk. Might be great, might be irrelevant; needs more playtime before I commit one way or the other. I think we might see some changes to everyone’s builds depending on just how badly Lethal difficulty chains us to a radiator.
@@baldsquidgamingits not worth it unless youre using a block weapon. Why? 1. You can already get the benefits regardless of armor via the power sword and power fist skill trees and 2. You want to parry incoming attacks anyways, so there arent that many times that you purposely let a blue attack hit you since youll be taking damage and not taking advantage of armor regeneration
@MachiavelliD4 Hey so this is a thing that another commenter corrected me on a few videos ago; might help you too. Heavy attacks as the game describes them aren't the blue/orange circles to parry or dodge respectively, those are specials. Heavy attacks are the normal attacks that stagger if they hit but aren't accompanied by the prompts. TMYK 🤯
I REMEMBER BLACK ORKS
I need to PSA this again but as of 3.0 version the Inspiration and Invigorating Icon effects are SWAPPED. I don’t know if they fixed it in 3.1 (unlikely) but if they didn’t you should always pick inspiration for the 7th column
@WTFYI - Yep, that's why I mentioned keeping track of / checking on the bugs in the video. Sure, I could pump out algorithm bait videos every time a perk works or doesn't, but that feels lame and gross.
@@baldsquidgaming most people only thinks the level 8 perk is bugged that gives you full contested health upon planting the flag. They do not recognize or even try the third row perk that keeps your white health full for the whole 15 seconds the flag is up.
Babe wake up. 40k LazyMaybe posted.
Eh?
@@baldsquidgaming LazyMaybe is a TH-camr who makes comprehensive guides very similar to this video for the weapons of Deep Rock Galactic.
Aha - Missed the boat on that game; friends at the time weren't gaming so it was all singleplayer stuff all the time for me when it released (2018ish iirc?)
@@baldsquidgaming it's still going strong. I think player numbers are the highest they've ever been. We've recently had the season five update, which brought us a whole new mission type and a new upgrade for each primary weapon.
8:34 This, holy fuck this. People are so concerned about optimizing everything and playing like a pro and yada yada yada. Do people really spend all their energy trying to boost their ego through the validation they get in video games? I like pushing myself to do my best but at the end of the day, ya gotta have fun doing it or you'll just be miserable chasing some hollow goal of feeling good about yourself. I appreciate your very well rounded views about things.
@ParkAir33 - TY for understanding the nuance! I think it's a balance between the 2 extremes of "Don't be That Guy." I'll be sarcastic AF about things like how people nerf themselves with weapon choice because it's funny and we all have that one thing we do it with, but so long as you're not negatively impacting other people to an egregious degree, get after it and have fun.
I thought intimidating Aura had a bug and cancelled out the ability to gun strike.
@brettgarnier107 - Didn't as of 2 days ago?
The upper tree in the sword is by far better, minoris die by parries anyway. You should not cleave them and give them opportunities to attack you.
@chrissideris9242 - Yep, feel I was pretty clear about the benefits to top tree, and that I wasn't sold on that bottom line, and wanted to include both options for completeness's sake :)
Know what I finally realized? The consecutive 3% per hit perk works on power style!!! It only says light, not fast style. I'd been unconsciously assuming it was geared only for speed style.
Step 1: dont run shock bulwark. 25% bonous damage every 30 seconds on a perfect parry isn't worth it in comparison to losing....
2. The passive Imortallity build has + 85% more survivability than shock build with no cooldowns. (Barring your banner, which with half decent play you'll never need for yourself.
So your options are.... supirt the team with heals and armour anmwhile never dying while carrying ruthless missions so even if a player or 2 does for whatever reason, go down and out.... you'll never die and they can respawn for garenteed mission pass with the immortal build..... or.... give the team 25% more damage in a 5 meter radius (which is fuck all) every 30 seconds while losing a metric ton of suvival.
Its all down to preference but i know for sure as someone who runs Ruthless all day.... Imortallity tank is always a hard welcome, i love those heals ❤️ thank you for your service!!
I cry when i see that tiny 5m radius pool of lightning on the floor with nothing in it every 30 seconds. (Assuming they can even perfect parry every 30 seconds) 😢
@The-Spanish-Inquisition490 - 0:25 "I can see the Bulwark going a couple different ways here."
Steel within and Armor Reinforcement are both valid vs Defensive Advantage, as I'd said in the video. I disagree that it rises to your "85% more survivability" but hey, different people need different levels of help staying alive. Multiple valid paths imo 😉
Edit: Perk Names are hard -.-
What perks do you use for the immortal build?