@@jxemama Tradeskills? I don't think there are any ways to respec your tradeskill yet. Whatever the character has, they're stuck with. You would have to kick someone out of your community and completely replace them to choose new tradeskills.
My favorite class setup is Marathon for no cost running, discipline for more light capacity, and gunslinger. I shoot and sprint and dodge until I get my stamina back.
Snap shot has the best synergy for any fight. 6 Zombies become 2 in a matter of seconds then you just clean up. One shot Ferals is worth it by itself. Gunslinger is king.
It's definitely my favorite of the shooting skills though I don't use the aim snap too frequently as I typically shoot from beyond the range of the aim snap or am fighting in melee combat. I always pick it for the faster reloading first and foremost.
@@GitGudFox There's a huge difference between using a controller or mouse/keyboard for this game, especially for the gunplay. The aim snap will be incredibly useful for a controller, but doesn't give any benefit for the mouse.
Very late to this party, but I agree with Michael. Even before all the DLC, addtions, and tweaks to the gameplay and additons of dread and nightmare zones, Weapon Handling saved a lot of headache in the broken weapon department. Pre-crossbow introduction, Wepaon Handling was mandatory on most of any community I had.
I choose weapon handling now 80% of the time after becoming more experienced. Previously I figured I would just repair like you said but the biggest headache of all I having a gun break when you need it most.
I prefer gun-slinging, IMO its the best active skill for shooting. All of my "Adventure" characters all have gunsllinger, which increases confidence in a survivor running about alone.
I love weaponhandling, free gun repair at zero part cost. Guns break all the time, doesnt need to be full auto “jam” and weaponhandling fixed it. At least have one person in your community to fix your guns. Great vid man!!
I can't say that has been my experience. This was the first time I've had a weapon jam in my going on 400 hours of gameplay. I also had to specifically go out of my way to cause a jam to occur just for this video. I could see the value of having 1 member of your community as your designated weapons handler though. I might even do that myself.
@@BrianBarry34 Ah, I see the issue. If you visited my locker, you wouldn't find a single broken gun in sight. I never allow my weapons to break. Sometimes my melee weapons break, but I've never had a gun break or jam until this video.
Git Gud Fox oh well go ahead and grab something like a small handgun (non revolver) like an G17. They break fairly easily. You can see what I’m saying about the repair cost being free. I usually never repair guns before they break. Worth checking out :)
@@BrianBarry34 I see what you're saying now. You're saying that you intentionally use guns until they break to activate the Weapons Handling ability and repair them for free. That makes more sense. The way I initially translated you was that you were implying your weapons just broke down all the time for no reasons, but they break for a specific reason. They break because you intentionally break them to repair them for free.
You didnt cover the fact that weapon handling fixes any weapon when its broken, and can be done multiple times before you eventually have to repair the weapon again. Weapon handling has major value on long looting runs or plague busting. It doesnt just fix a "jammed" weapon,it makes all broken weapons fireable again.
It's because jammed and broken are basically similar terms. In fact, I don't even think Undead Labs should have used the word "jammed" because mechanistically it just means damaged. Weapons Handling repairs damaged weapons. That is the correct wording of it, but I chose to use Undead Labs' terms.
Gunslinging is by far the best shooting ability available to any survivor. I'm hoping to see a more in depth skill progression in state of decay 3 for all skills.
Undead Labs are pretty terrible at designing interesting and complex mechanics, so I expect SoD3 to be similarly shallow to SoD2 where it isn't hard to clearly figure out what's best and 2nd best.
@@GitGudFoxDamn that's harsh... I think the mechanics, especially combat, are actually very well made in my opinion. Who am I tho.. I'm not a TH-camr at all so I can't prove that. But I do have 25-30 years of gaming experience, playing tournaments before e-sports was a thing, partially retired because my eyes lose vision once in a while from all the screen time. Wear blue-light reducing glasses...they've taken my inability to play anymore down to an ability to play again sometimes.
Weapons Handling can be useful early game, especially when your RNG gives you few parts, fragile firearms, and a more-than-usual bad first week. In one of my most recent playthroughs, my survivors found 2 KSG shotguns and barely a hundred parts in their first few days in the Valley. Even scrapping surplus melee weapons was hard to maintain them, since the KSG's the most fragile shotty in the game, breaking down roughly every 40 shells, or nearly three full magazines. So in pragmatic desperation, my first leveled-up shooter got Weapons Handling to squeeze out the last two shell to finish of the third mag and even a fourth and fifth round of 12-gauge shells. And it paid off; One time I was killing a Plague Heart, my KSG jammed and several Plague Zombies and a Feral were charging in to prevent me from killing the Heart, but sheer luck and good timing allowed my charrie to fix her KSG juuust long enough to blast away a charging feral and get two more rounds into the Heart, popping it and nearly crashing my XB1 from the 10+ Plague Zombies ragdolling all around. So if you start a new game, especially in Dread or Nightmare Mode, Weapon Handling can literally save your favourite survivor from getting mobbed.
I never use it in Nightmare Zone since I don't want to fire a shotgun in NZ except in specific situations, but it would be pretty useful when a ton of zombies appear.
My son is 2 now and he will sit and watch your videos with me, he noticed your youtube emblem by the subscribe button, and on the last video discussing wits skills, when you concluded he started saying "Bye bye fox." Not sure if you have kids but take my word for it it was adorable
I just don't know how you only have 645 subs dear Lord man you put a lot of time and your videos are awesome great job brother I been playing the game for awhile and had not seen the weapons abilities this close before, I use weapon handling almost in all my toons cause for some reason my weapons kind it jam fairly quickly but I think I am going to try gunslinging and sharpshooting more.
I think that's because of 2 things. 1) Weapons Handling is always an option... even if your character only gets a single advanced shooting skill... it's going to be Weapons Handling, so picking Weapons Handling is always an option. 2) Weapons Handling has the most obvious effect: you save parts. The other skills may be unclear as to how valuable they are to you while it's easier to visualize saving parts. Humans have this tendency we call "risk aversion" which is a psychological thing that causes us to fear the pain of loss more than love the joy of gains. That is to say if a coin flipping game caused you to gain $5 on correct guesses and lose $5 on incorrect guesses, you probably wouldn't play because risk aversion dislikes even odds for loss. ANYWAYS, the point I'm trying to raise is that risk aversion would naturally cause us to gravitate towards "safe picks" with obvious effects we can see the value in. The other perks don't seem as attractive until their value is clearly explained.
@@GitGudFox nice perspective. I´d like to add: Weapon Handling is a good choice for beginners -> no real active to know how to use except saving my ass by reloading/fixing the gun i forgot to repair.....again. (Maybe you remember having parts issues before u learned to kill Zeds in parts friendlier ways than running them over or beating the crab out of them.) Once i grew accustomed to the game mechanics and started to develop my strategies and my own playstyle, the experimenting started too. I ended up with sharpshooting and shotguns as a way to get rid of all the followers i tend to acquire. Which brings me to my conclusion that each player will have to find out his own playstyle and the best skills to use. You testing different weapens (fighting styles) and comparing skill users vs non skill users provides really good data and definetly inspired me to try out more ways. You haven´t sen a working lawnmower by any chance?
That opening scene is the most concise representation of Borderlands 3 i've ever seen. that shits how i felt when i sacrificed myself to the marcus statue behind the dead W4RD3N in BL2 for a green torgue shotgun
I almost always go weapon handling. Repairing is super expensive, and every gun can break/jam except revolvers, bolts, and xbows. I used to only use those types of weapons, which saves a lot of headaches, but suffers from slow ROF, or Reload, or both, but are reliable and cheap to operate. However, with weapon handling, I can take any ol piece, even if its yellow and ready to jam, I don't care, I just watch my shots for that jam so I'm not caught in a bad situation with a yellow weapon.
I been going all weapon handling. Since neighbors are so demanding I end up doing like 4 or 5 missions back to back. Gets old going to a outpost for ammo let alone weapon repairs. Also with more zombies in the game not compared to release day. It's like 1 shot two kills with so many zombies grouped together. Also its so easy to have good aim. Don't really need any of the skills. But select weapon handling so weapons last a little bit longer.
Not what I'd do on Nightmare Zone because you're going to want the firepower offered by Gunslinging, but on Standard Zone and Dread Zone, none of these choice REALLY matter in the long run. Each survivor can just pick whichever one they like to use the most without consequence.
I wished i had skilled weapon handling to clear jammed guns when in mid fight with a hordes. And it does cost a lot to repair those guns and the parts are not that abundant especially during early play through. its certaintly not the worst skill imo. Great videos man loving the content.
It might be better than Assault in that it's a "one of skill" where you want 1 person in the community to have it. That might raise its value up to 3rd in the list, but I think I'd still list it as 4th because after you have 1 of them, having multiple Weapons Handlers doesn't really increase in value.
@@GitGudFox but them saying clear the jammed weapons does not actually fix it it just temporarily unjams it, so it can get jammed again sooner after a weapon is unjammed. So if just have 1 survivor with the skill and fixes the gun, then when another survivor uses it, it still prone to get jammed as it isn't fully fixed and thus making that skill needed if wanting to play in such way
@@menikenpis Interesting, I guess that kind of playstyle just doesn't come across to me as super great. It sounds more like you get trapped into using it to get value out of it. I thought about it a bit more and also remember that while parts are more scarce in the beginning of the game, zombies are also more scarce to the point that early game hordes are like 4 zombies. When zombie density is so low, the only time I would shoot something is to purposefully level up shooting or because I'm just in the mood to shoot them.
Yep, that's what I like. Gunslinging makes weapons a lot more fun to use. There were a lot of weapons I didn't like using because of how long it took to get the drum mag into the gun.
ah btw. the problem I had with the fertilizer and the garden. It is a bug. I took it away and put it again into the mod slot. and then it worked as intended.
i really wanted to get in to this game but it was so overwhelming but thanks to your video im lovin it now! gotta say thanks Fox even if this game came out 2 years ago haha
I like Weapon handling for anything other than bolt action rifles. And I like Sharpshooter when combined with the CLEO Blast Rifle. And the aformentioned rifle is imo the best bolt action rifle due to its reletively high rate of fire and high damage output (and being the only CLEO weapon that won't break) with the downsides being weight and the ammo being a bit hard to get sometimes.
@@GitGudFox The RTX Wolverine is a great shotgun to just mow down dozens of zombies without wasting a whole lot of ammo. I just recently did this when dealing with a bunch of hordes at once and when it got overwhelming I just used either boom boxes or fuel bombs. With the added bonus of not worrying about the gun breaking mid fight.
i think you need to give weapon handling another look! i've been playing on pc and i only use single fire on all my guns. ive noticed that my guns do jam or break quite often. the ability to auto repair guns and fix jams by just reloading is so amazing. especially since i use suppressors on all my guns. suppressors significantly lower the life of your weapon but with weapon handling that isnt an issue. also the perk saves on parts which can quickly become a rare resource at times. also i like to volunteer quite a bit cause its a good way to get free materials/loot and influence. i usually take my ak with the 150 drum mag and weapon handling is really great with that cause i can just rip through a bunch of stuff on other peoples map without having to worry about going back to base or to an outpost.
The reload speed from gunslinging is the best feature for me. Too many times I'm trying to reload a weapon in a fight with hordes of zombies and freaks and I get interrupted trying to reload. The aim snap is also nice, but I hardly I hardly ever use it on anything but ferals. Manual aim is nearly as good and doesn't waste stamina I'll need for melee.
You have to have pretty elite levels of aim to have comparable aim to aim snap. For example, I'm a platinum level player in Halo which is considered more advanced than average (top 30%), and aim snap is still superior to my aim. More importantly, melee is only useful in non-threatening battles where zombies are small to moderate in number. You use melee to conserve bullets in fights that aren't very dangerous. In any battle that is actually relevant, you're going to care about maximum killing power rather than saving stamina for melee which is not useful against larger amounts of zombies. As you increase the game's difficulty, the only way to avoid periodic large battles is just to sneak around 24/7.
@@GitGudFox I play on dread level. My aim is decent, but not elite. I find melee useful even with larger hordes at this difficulty. I can knock down several zombies with one swing to make some space for me or my companion to act. If they are shooting then I'm clubbing for them. If they are in melee then the zombies on them are easy targets to head pop. If we are both in melee then shooting is difficult and melee is good for making some space. If we are both unrestricted in shooting and reloading then the threat probably isn't that great. (gunslinging reload speed is very useful here) The less I am forced to use my gun, the better life is. Shotguns actually work pretty well in hordes up close. They are very loud though.
Always go weapon handling simply because guns "jam" quite often for me(only use single-fire), and they usually break at the worst times. Though may start making a few sharpshooter shotgun survivors, since I get a decent amount of shotguns/ammo but rarely use them since they aren't as efficient as just kiting and HS groups. Yet that combo seems like it would work nicely, especially on missions where you need to save someone....Also tempted to let a siege build up on the mission that wants you to use the scent blocker, with that combo...
I think on console, gunslinging is easily supreme to any other ability on an individual survivor level. Ferals are easily a bigger threat on console than on PC and on higher difficulty game modes, shotguns are quite hard to come by, let alone shotgun ammo itself. When you’re relying on .22 and 9mm gunslinging is very easily the best, especially on console. Now I’ve not played PC but I’d suspect sharpshooting on PC may be slightly better or at least have its place when it comes to specialisation.
Do you have any videos on preferred skills for nightmare? Or even weapons. Obviously anything with a high quietness. I been reading stuff on reddit and have several playthroughs done and completed. Had a survivor who's been around for almost since the release date. Always like hearing other players thoughts on the game. Also if you did a weapon breakdown. When to use them and why? I normally keep assault weapons at home and try to keep anyone looking for loot carrying lightweight weapons just so I can move around better. What are your thoughts. I like the short videos for when I'm commuting. At my desk its normally the long playthroughs ones
Well, I'd divide weapons into 3 categories. 1) Home defense 2) In the field 3) Special situation The best home defense weapon has been the B50FG time and time again. It works well even on the Nightmare Zone. The best in the field weapon has been the Echo-X3 Repeating Crossbow, but a silenced gun can also work. The best special situation weapon has been the pyrolauncher for me which has been useful for destroying plague hearts and burning ferals when they appear in large numbers in the Nightmare Zone. Most people can be used I think. The weakest pistols in the game still kill most zombies in 1 head shot. Shotguns and revolvers can be a problem since they can't be silenced except for the Echo variations, but some shotguns like the Devgru are still really good for defending the base.
I was thinking the same. For the most part I found many shotguns useless. Tf they're either too heavy or loud. I use the mod tool in my playthroughs because you can put suppressors on 12 gauges. However, due to weight I still find them unfavorable in nightmare. The echo weapons in heartland are good in nightmare. But they aren't that great. I do my best to keep things bolt action with handmade or improvised suppressors. I love the repeating crossbow but it's very rare. I only looted it 3 times ever. I would like to even more if I knew how to put a scope on it. What I might do is when I get one, mod it into a fire arm, add a suppressor to it and in the mod tool change it to a scope. It would definitely make it worth it. Love the game too much
If the X3 had a scope, it'd probably be... peerless on Nightmare Zone. In Standard Zone, it's probably the Eternal Guard's Infinite Rage or whatever other 100 round capacity weapon you can find. Shotguns with sharpshooting can be extremely powerful in all out combat as the bullet penetration applies to every pellet the shotgun fires allowing it to "sweep through" without need for lining up shots or getting lucky.
I use Sharpshooting with 9 mm and .45 guns. It works like 7.62/5.56 bullets. Gunslinging + x3 crossbow is the best choice. Weapon handling works fine with 5.56 and 7.62 weapons with big magazine because 5.56 and 7.62 have sharpshooting ability as well also big magazine doesnt need to reload.
I prefer to have a gunslinger and a weapon handler in my exploration runs, just in case my automatic weapons get broken! I love revolvers and bolt action rifles. My prefered weapons are: Timberwolf, Hunter's Viper, Devgru X12 I, Restored Echo-S1 Revolver, Vulture King and the cowboys weapons! XD Timberwolf is king! XD
4:57 channeling that inner Isaac Clarke. Also, it amazes me how many of these skill descriptions I never bothered to read. I honestly didn't know you had to click a button to snap with gunslinging. I thought it just worked when it wanted, since it sometimes locked on when I aimed in. I always just picked it for the reload speed. Hell, I never noticed the punch through with sharpshooting till today with a shotgun. Going for head shots, or running down hordes with cars, really does trivialize everything. Except juggs and slightly high rocks. The bane of vehicles.
I'm actually thinking about my next random game playthrough being Dead Space 1. Maybe I'll do the whole trilogy, not all in a row though. I think these videos have furthered reduced any threat and fear I might have of any enemy in the game. Stabbing juggernauts to death, efficiently, with a screw driver? Kicking and stomping a feral to death? It's hard to take them seriously after all of it. Yeah, most people would think "sharpshooter" implies you should use a long range weapon; however, I have played Warframe for about 3 years, and you quickly learn that punchthrough effects are always best on weapons with little need for accuracy as you don't have to "setup" for chain hits. You just open fire into a crowd, and the spray of munitions does all the work for you.
Assault seems to be the kind of skill you'd take when carrying shotguns, when your job isn't to pick off zeds one by one, but to knock plenty down so you and your partners can get a breather. That or if the survivor you're using uses blades/knives, so they can't use blunt weapons to knock them over effectively. That or when you're dealing with armored zombies often and shooting in general isn't a good idea, but you do it to get them down.
I like weapon handling too. Most of time I’m using parts to create repair kit for vehicles so it’s pretty useful for me to have at least 1 member with that skill
Skills like Weapons Handling are what I call "1 ofs" or "2 ofs" where you want 1 or 2 members in your community to have it, but I wouldn't make it my primary skill pick.
I think you Tested the Assault Feature incorrectly, when I use it, its about staying ADS(aim Down sight) you'll burn through alot of ammo and need a secondary on quick equip stand by but its about standing your ground. If any zombies do push into you kick them over shoot the most immediate threat and then decide if the head shot is safer than melee to finish off kicked Zed(also great with your back on a wall indoors)
I tested it more extensively over the course of my Nightmare Zone series including kicking a plague heart to death. The problem with it is that it doesn't solve any problems in SOD2 that need to be solved. It's only good against small numbers of zombies, but there are many other skills that could do this exact job such as close combat or swordplay which are half the options in the fighting skill category. I'd go so far as to say is possibly the worst skill in the entire game among the 4 core skills, wits, cardio, fighting, and shooting.
My shooting skill is prepared for Blood Feral. That's why I always choose Assault. Fast reload + chance of knockdown.👍 Second choice is Weapon Handling.
Fox, do you still order the skills like this since you moved to Nightmare, where parts are hella scarce? I go Gunslinging first then Weapon Handling second in Dread Zone and it seems to be working well.
I think the assault 50% knockdown could show its worth for a character or person that cant headshot really well with a automatic weapon that uses cheap plentiful weapon ammo So a character thats really good in melee, can use a automatic with cheap bullets like 9 mm and spray into a horde to knock most of them down so they can melee the one that's still standing coming to them
I’d like to add info that was either left out, or is new, I’ve never used gun handling, I have no comment for it For sharp shooting, the bullet piercing is very helpful, the only problem I’ve ever had with it, is that, if you use a crossbow, you bolts pierce through them, so you can’t just go and grab it out of their heads, the bolts may be like 50-80 meters away which can be a problem, but at the same time, it’s helpful because you can stealth kill 2-3 zombies with a single crossbow bolt I’ve never used assault, so I have no comment on that skill For gunslinging, the aim lock can be used with crossbows for very quick quite headshots at close range, the reload speed is helpful, but aim lock can only be used in a closer range, and only if you have zoom on your gun toggled off, so you can use it on a long range rifle, but you have to have zoom toggled off, I’ve also noticed that on very long range rifles, the aim lock can lock on from a farther distance, and shorter ranged weapons like shotguns, don’t lock on unless you’re decently close, also, using it with a shotgun still makes your crosshairs super small, and I can’t say this for certain, but it feels like it completely removes the spread that shotguns have while it’s aim locked, I can’t say for certain, but a few times, I’ve used it and nearby zombies were not injured, and using it on a bloater would cause them to do the headshot death where the leaks out like a ballon, rather than popping and exploding
Damn I miss those Guides. you‘re by far the best State of decay 2 TH-camr and Im pretty sure I watched every single guide, but there’s one thing I don’t understand, why didn’t you do a Utilities Guide?
I started off using Weapon Handling most when the game first came out. Now my order would be 1. Gunslinging 2. Weapon Handling. ( great when doing a fresh start in Nightmare ) 3. Sharp Shooting 4. Assault. I wish Shooting was broke down into Gun Classes (Assault, SMG, Shotguns, Marksman (sniping) They are closely resembled currently, but they could be more specific. 3.
Yeah, I'd like to see quicker reloads to weapon handling and quicker AR reloads to assault (at least). Even if they are not as quick as gunslinging. I think gunslinging is 200%, so they could do something like 150%.
LOL this was recommended after watching your nightmare zone S02E05 He can't be trusted @ 6:52, sorry, I had to laugh at the foreshadowing. If I hadn't already commented on one of your other videos, I always choose gunslinging, when possible, just for the reload speed. After finding my 1st eternal guard's infinite rage, having to wait, what felt like hours, to reload... Gunslinging or exile. Of course now there are respec books, but those degrade the learning exp, so it takes longer to specialize
thanks, because of this video I know what to choose shooting for my Perfect ninja Looks like you can make a video of a "Build" that combine the skills which complement each other and the weapon that fit in the build
I could, and I might eventually do it, but even on Nightmare Zone, you can play effectively without any advanced skills at all. The game isn't hard enough to motivate me to really think about skill combos.
The best way to use Assault skill is to immediately go into a crouching animation for knife kill or down kill after knockdown. Or to effectively use this at bottleneck choke points like door entries. It's easier to use at enclosed spaces since it temporary goes into first person view from gun aim to kick.
So you're saying it has synergy with close combat? That would let you execute with the knife crouching or not. I did feel like it was a better knockdown option for melee executions than shooting them, but I only had 1 Assault guy who was also trained in Striking. The kick would be better than the shove for sure. It still feels a awkward to use, though.
Git Gud Fox Just recently tested this more, even if you don't have Striking on your character you can use Assault kick from a crouched position if the zombie spotted you before making a stealth kill. LT+A (Assault Kick), joystick towards zed + holding B (into crouch), RT+X (immediately into knife kill)
love the video, its just perfect :) anyway atm i play normal mode and im bored of it, im looking to train few survivors to max with best skills, so i can use them in nightmare mode....can you make video about that, what skills to pick and how to equip survivors....
I thought it was completely ridiculous how they would take forever to load a drum magazine, but then I realized the devs must be implying that you're loading each bullet into the now empty drum magazine. The animation needs work for sure.
They sometimes even take forever to reload hunting rifles so I dont believe that's the case. Weapons similar to ones I fired off irl and Im like "oh come on, it does not take THAT long to reload that thing". Its as if these people have Parkinson's Disease.
@@DAN007thefoxx1 it doesn't take long to load a clip into a receiver, it takes a long time to load bullet after bullet into a mag. I bet the hunting rifle you're talking about has a mag. You might be right, I always just assumed the devs lacked the animation so that's why it just looks awkward.
I'd like to point out for it, since the newer updates I might be 3 years too late, but assault is just helps all around because they buffed it to allow you to carry more ammo. I hardly use gunsling for snap and I normally have drum guns so I normally don't reload often, only time I catch myself reloading is after the horde is dead, and I still got a few shots left. So assault is just good now because you can stack more ammo in your pouches.
It's still not as good as gunslinging even after the update. High capacity weapons have huge reloading times, and some of the strongest weapons in the game, like the Echo S1 Revolver, need gunslinging to be effective. But the most important thing is... Guns are bad. The higher the difficulty goes up, the worse guns get. The 2 best weapons in the game are: the Pyrolauncher, a weapon so powerful a single shot can wipe out dozens of zombies while being cheaper than any normal gun. And the Impaler, a vehicle that instantly kills blood ferals that touch it. It can mow down dozens of zombies for a fraction of the cost of guns.
@@GitGudFox idk personal preference. I personally lost touch with gunslinging. I found myself hardly ever using it and more stabbing or bashing faces in. If I do shoot I never miss really since key board and mouse warrior here. The reload is pointless since I only ever use assault rifles only. Edit: also I have two unbreakables and 1 blood plague survivor, sooo pyrolauncher and other stuff pointless when I just enjoy being a ruthless killer.
Nothing is more ruthless than the pyrolauncher. It will outkill any gun. All guns are inefficient and less ruthless compared to the pyrolauncher unless you specifically need to kill a juggernaut. Blood Plague Survivors (BPS) are also obsolete because you can get 100% immunity to blood plague and injuries with double primary care. It will get nerfed from the beta down to 90% immunity but still enough to make BPS useless since it applies to your entire community not just the BPS. However, until the update arrives, double primary surgery/pathology gives 100% immunity to blood plague and injuries to your entire community. Ultimately, personal playstyle is totally irrelevant to these kinds of guides as is personal skill level as it is useless information to the consumer of these kinds of guides.
ranking them would be like this Rank 1: Gunslinging - OP Aim Snap Rank 2: Weapon Handling - OP repairs, Best support for Gunslinging characters coz they can repair the weapon on the field, or once you deposit it on the base Rank 3: Sharpshooting Rank 4: Assault - kicking suks, you better press C to dodge instead of kicking
I just started playing and I've been surprisingly good at getting headshots in this game, even with pistols at longer range and no shooting skill. I'm not sure if that's mostly the game or if it's just my years of gaming coming into play.
9:38 Lies. Sniping 2-3 zombies with 1 bullet is one of my favorite things to do, I do it quite often. It's been one of my favorite things about the game so far lol. The shotgun looked even more fun.
I would choose weapon handling kuz of the name and the jamming part but after watching this I know what to choose. Thanks fox! If there are 4 options why does it only let us choose from 2?
Because not every character is eligible to learn each skill. If you level up enough characters, you will occasionally find a character that can only learn 1 skill. Sometimes you will get a character that can between between 3 skills, and rarely you will find a character that can pick between all 4 skills. You can use a retraining manual to force a specific skill however.
Yes, in one of my channel announcements I said I would do Nightmare reviews... but not for a while since I will need a powerful community to test the abilities.
@@GitGudFox oh thank you then. I just have to wait and hope I guess 😂 btw. Are you planning a video about the different cardio skills as well? Cheers mate
@@Snowville84 That one might take a while because I only have 2 of the 4 skills in my community. I'll have to get retraining manuals or constantly recruit people to see if I can naturally promote into the 2 skills I don't have.
Snap aim used to work 100% of the time but stupid ass Undead Labs broke it just like they did with the pop in hordes now, infinite respawning zombies in cleared buildings, spawning 4 or more hordes on you back to back when nothing was around & all you did was sneak into a house to search a box, spawning fearls & juggernauts together like they've grown sentient & are working in tandem, spawning about 6 ferals back to back in less than a minute, Ive recorded almost all of these but I almost got destroyed by a feral on 2 occasions due to the ability never working on the feral even when it was unaware of me & running in circles. I had to manually unload a mag into it to get it to stop tackling me & the other got killed by a trader.
Is that so? I didn't know that. I always used the skill somewhat casually and didn't pay direct attention to its reliability in the past. I mainly used it for the reloading.
Darth is correct. It’s more like 90% of the time works perfectly. Th other 10 % it simply doesn’t snap even with a zombie in FOV. Can’t quite figure out what the possible reason is.
I wanted to come back to this video (after more experience and thinking) to say that the assault skill isn't bad on shotguns, it's just too many of the guns are OP!!! The kick of the guns is control by a stat that goes from 1 to 15. Most shotguns have high kick stat with the saw-off shotgun being at 15 being the highest (and some .50 cal called Otoe Howlitzer). You shoot once with the sawed off and then you suddenly aiming at the sun lol. Now the weapon you tested was the DEVGRU X12 Infiltrator (one of the most OP weapons in the game). Even being a shotgun, it's kick stat is only 2! Matter of fact, just about all the best weapons in the game are under 2 except the timberwolf that is 4.5
There's nothing wrong with liking them, but when you are trying to measure something and make recommendations to people, you have to make sure what you like doesn't interfere with good advice.
I usually have one member use the weapon handling skill with a high capacity weapon and go ham on plague hearts. The others use either gunslinger or sharpshooting.
Weapon handling is alright to have on one community member of you don't have the red talon workshop. Put it on a character you wouldn't normally play as. Otherwise I pretty much always choose gunslinger if possible.
I know Michal already brought this up but man, on lethal I literally can't afford to not have almost everyone with weapon handling. Maybe I'm missing something but I can't find enough parts to ever repair anything lol Also, was the automatic-jamming-only a thing in the past? I virtually never do full auto and I still get plenty of jams. Finally, when it works, is the assault kick supposed to work the same as the powerhouse drop kick? I notice in the video when you assault kicked a feral it stunned him (assume you could have executed him). I don't pick assault any more because I've been burned by that kick so many times...
So jamming was just a bad description by undead labs that confused me. Jamming = broken. A weapon "jams" when its durability dies on it. I just don't really shoot things very much on Lethal Zone because I often don't fight zombies in such large numbers that I need to resort to shooting. I do keep a gun on me in case I need to shoot, but even then, I often use crossbows or other durability immune weapons such as bolt action rifles with advanced silencers.
@@GitGudFox Not gonna lie it took me longer than I'd like to admit to realize that jamming = broken. I'd be interested to see a new guide from you on the combat skills (fighting/shooting) in the context of Lethal - seems like it would be (understandably) drastically different compared to these guides.
To be honest, the order may change on some of them, but the orders still remain fairly accurate. Like if were to rate shooting skills it'd be... Gunslinging > Weapons Handling > Sharpshooting > Assault And like Gunslinging is like >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> compared to the other 3.
@@GitGudFox Yeah the need to headshot blood ferals multiple times really increases the value of gunslinging... Is that what you're basing it off of? Despite all the difficulty increases in lethal, for me the feral remains, by a long margin, the most lethal aspect of said difficulty.
It's basically efficiency in a different way. Like, the reason you want weapons handling is because of efficiency of parts etc. With Gunslinging, just imagine having like 99% accuracy. No wasted bullets, minimal damage because you use the smallest number of pulls of the trigger to remove a threat. You conserve resources in a different way, a proactive way rather than a defense/reactive way. Also, many of the best weapons in the game have extremely long reloading times.
My buddy that I play with typically chooses weapon handling while I choose gunslinging for the snapshot ability. Every time my weapon breaks/jams I just drop it for him so he can unjam it then he hands it back, super useful imo.
@@GitGudFox That is true, at the same time though I'm not drowning in parts to repair my weapons every time I return to base. I'm hoping to remedy that though once I get my base properly optimized with all the skill books I need.
@@GitGudFox I've tried bolt action rifles and crossbows(The repeating one as well) and I haven't found either of them to be as effective as my rtx hordebreaker. Burstfire for juggernauts, single shot for anything else. I'll look into the cnc mill you mentioned.
If you're using gunslinging, then every weapon should be effective. In your case, I would use something like the Prepper's 10/22 or the Fake-A47 since it's the same thing but utilizes cheaper ammunition. If it were me, I would use the repeating crossbow, the echo-S2 rifle, or the police sniper rifle.The later choices allow combat at the most extreme ranges while the repeating crossbow is the most effective general purpose weapon in Nightmare Zone due to its absolute silence, never jams, and the ammo can be recycled allowing you to stretch a single stack of ammo out very far. With resourcefulness, the rate of bolt recovery is something like 80% to 90% giving you as close as one could get to infinite ammo.
on nightmare, i think weapon handling is highly useful, at least for me i dont need gunslinging aim bot since i play on pc where i can aim really well. also weapons like submachine guns reload fast enough, so i just go for weapons that dont have a long reload time. but honestly, red talon soldiers are the best
Weapon Handling is one of those temporarily powerful skills. They're useful while parts are scarce, but once you get your community entrenched, and parts become plentiful through mass production with CNC mills and forges, it loses its value.
I give everybody weapon handling. I like to use my parts for everything but repairs, otherwise I tend to come up short when I need to craft resources or upgrades. The other thing is that it's handy when I get stranded too far away from an outpost without the marathon ability.
@@dzobie I have someone with metalworking which is basically the super CNC mill. Sometimes I run 2 CNC mills at once as well. My base is a factory at times.
What it should have been (while retaining everything they currently have): *Sharpshooting:* Bullet Time (from SOD 1) at stamina cost. Increased zoom, even with weapons without optics. *Weapon Handling:* Move faster while ADS. 200% faster reload, Dual wield pistols and SMGs. *Gunslinging:* As is *Assault:* Ammo Stack increased at every skill level. 90 rounds per slot at full level. Sprint into zombies causing them to fall over (except for Jugs). Imagine having a plague horde sprinting toward you? Leeroy Jenkins!
Assault's Kick should have been an enhancement to your Sprint that allows you to bowl non-Juggernaut enemies over on contact for a static stamina cost per impact.
I love weapon handling, i just pick everthing of with an silenced ar on single fire and they breakdown easy, but that is because i use improvised silencers alot. This way i can keep going. In nightmare mode guns break down faster too. For me its weapon handling mostly.
I may re-evaluate weapons handling for nightmare mode, but I have great doubts it will exceed the value of gunslinging especially when you're attacked by a team of 3 ferals. Being able to reload faster and having the automatic headshots is going to be difficult to beat the value of.
THANK YOU. Everyone I see LOVES weapons handing and you took the words out of my mouth. Gunslinging is where it’s at with the aim snap and reload speed. Like 9 out of 12 of my community has gunslinging. Weapons handling is useless because by the time you comeback to your base after a day you can repair it. Assault and sharpshooting are meh. I always pick gunslinging or retrain to gunslinging. I’m just finally glad a TH-camr said weapon handling is the worst. Thank you.
Do they? I admit I don't really pay attention to the subreddit and what not. I can understand why people would like Weapons Handling since it seems like a good idea to save parts, but once you realize how readily available parts are, it loses a lot of its value.
hey! how can i obtain gunslinging skill? i should use automatic guns? coz when my shooting skill maxed i can only choose from 2 skills, and gunslinging is not an option. ty
It was a problem with Undead Labs' wording. Mechanically, "jams" are the same thing as a weapon breaking due to durability loss, so there is no "jam" in the game. It is just the weapon breaking down, so weapons handling allows you to restore a damaged weapon's durability a bit so it is usable temporarily.
@@GitGudFox oh OK cool thanks how do you even have time to reply to all the comments😂 I just started the game and you have given me a massive boost mailney for the base selecting u deserve loads more subs and rn I'm just watching every single one of your 5th ability stuff😂
Gunslinging and Weapon Handling are my preferences. Clearing jams is just ridiculously useful since fixing weapons is expensive. Gunslinging with a Bolt Scout (i think that's it) and an improvised silencer is the cheapest combo for my Gunslingers. Really any rifle that won't jam because bolt action, but that's the lightest I personally have found.I Plus Gunslinging hostile humans, since they have freak aim. Guess they have Gunslinging too. 😒 Mark Crilley? Is that you gaming? Love your artwork.😛 Sigh, this is the only game I still play on xbox. (Obviously joking, but similar enough sounding.)
I don't care too much for weapons handling (I will keep at least 1 in the community) simply because I don't find too much of a need to shoot things, so my weapons don't get damaged that badly, and when they do begin to wear down, I typically have 6 well spaced apart outposts across the map to swap weapons at.
The shooter skills should include the weapons itself. Assault: -X% Reload speed for shotguns, you kan run trough enemies and knock them down while you do it Sharpshooting: Lees recoil for Sniper, piercing through enemies Gunslinger: able to hold 2 Revolver (instead of a knife), kick down enemies in front of you and a forth one maybe something like supressor, where you slow down zombies if you use machineguns. These are just examples. But it should be more unique.
@@GitGudFox A lot of skills need a redesign. Most of them just boost something. But its not like one give -50% reload speed and -25% sway and the other gives -50% sway and 25% reload speed. No. One gives you 200% reload speed with every gun and the other gives you a buggy kick. Why should i pick assault than.
on xbox the snap shot is off for me. can rarely use it correctly. i can snap to a zombie's head but the zombie will get out of the way before i can fire. on pc it doesn't do that.
I could never come up with a better intro than this one either, so I gave up because nothing was going to be better than this obscure movie that most people have never heard of despite having Sean Connery in it.
@@josephbailey2840 you have to get a lounge to keep there moral up so they cost 1 large slot I still think they are worth I'm just a bit sick of daybreak for a little
There is, but it would require you to either memorize the traits because the traits tell you which skills they can upgrade into. For example, someone who "loved dancing" will definitely get "acrobatics" as a cardio option.
💯 there are a lot of stats that aren't obvious on their own like impact vs. knockdown. Another one is Lethality, we know it has something to do with how well you kill zombies, but we have no idea how it affects it.
I wanted to add my input into this On weapon handling. I personally see this as a garbage skill. And you could say its good for nightmare zone but I personally think its not worth it compared to the other skills and parts arent that hard to find. Even if they're reduced due to nightmare zone. And if you really have to you can turn your materials into parts. But not only that but I never really experience too much durability loss to my guns no matter what zone I play in. Despite the fact I use em alot because they're satisfying as hell. And if parts and materials are both a problem then choose the lumbermill over the fire station. Its a huge downgrade but I dont think its worth giving your survivors weapon handling. As youd probably have to give the majority of them weapon handling and the skill just isnt great. In assault however, I do see a bit more use for this. For example if your trying to shoot zombies but one zombie got too close to you, you can kick them in order to get them out of the way. It is however inconsistent, it also looks wonky due to the zoom effect not going away, and doesnt kick them far. So there isnt much use for it. The knockback of assault can be useful if you miss the zombie's head but it still hits a zombie's body. It gets them out of the way and makes them an easy kill. But if this actually makes a difference to you then your probably better off with gunslinging due to its snap ability. Also I think the recoil reduction can be very useful. After firing your weapon still goes up. It can make things a little bit harder once it goes above the heads, if your sensitivity is low then itll allow zombies to get a little closer to you, if its high then its straight up harder to aim at their heads. However if you dont suck then again it shouldnt be a big deal. I dont have anything to add on sharpshooting. Going back to gunslinging. I think the normal reload speeds in general of the game are very very slow. So the increase of reload speeds from this are amazing. Especially for manual reloads or drum mag reloads. Also if your having a heard time hitting a zombie you can snap to their head. Its especially useful for ferals. However if you have to rely on this it is impractical due to its stamina loss. If you cant aim at their heads I suggest dropping this skill so you can actually get decently good at the game, so you dont have to throw your stamina away to kill a zombie that generally isnt hard to hit. Its not a huge deal if you have a ton of energy drinks on you or snacks or any stamina items but thats inventory slots gone that you could use for scavenging, which also weights you down a little. The weight probably wont have any effect but ya never know.
Weapon Handling became a lot worse due to the global 100% durability increase. The reason why the assault kick isn't good for making distance between you and the zombies is because dodging backwards exists. Kicking a zombie gets a limited number of zombies farther away from you. Dodging backwards causes all zombies in front of you to be farther away, and it's possible to dodge, shoot, dodge, shoot, dodge, shoot in that pattern to fend off zombies with guns. You can also just run away to get distance then shoot.
Control your fire against juggs, don't shoot them while they are staggering back from damage. You'll find you need 35-40 shots to bring a jugg down if you don't shoot into them while they are staggered.
The game can still be played without any special skills. You just pick the most suitable thing available. If you really want Gunslinging, you can keep an eye out for the mysterious traders who can sell retraining books.
THE GUN IS GOOD.
@@jxemama THE SUB IS GOOD! Lol, I'm glad the video was helpful or entertaining.
@@jxemama Tradeskills? I don't think there are any ways to respec your tradeskill yet. Whatever the character has, they're stuck with. You would have to kick someone out of your community and completely replace them to choose new tradeskills.
@@jxemama I think I have an Independence review, but it is mixed with the Independence announcement.
The content is gud :)
Subbed for the Zardoz reference tho; fine work!
@@geroffmilan3328 First viewer to recognize the movie. Maybe I should have included Sean Connery shooting the viewer at the end of the intro.
Gunslinger plus energy drink equ- wait, where'd the horde go?
Or stimulants if you need to wipe out a town of zombies.
My favorite class setup is Marathon for no cost running, discipline for more light capacity, and gunslinger. I shoot and sprint and dodge until I get my stamina back.
Instant John wick at this point
Snap shot has the best synergy for any fight. 6 Zombies become 2 in a matter of seconds then you just clean up. One shot Ferals is worth it by itself. Gunslinger is king.
It's definitely my favorite of the shooting skills though I don't use the aim snap too frequently as I typically shoot from beyond the range of the aim snap or am fighting in melee combat. I always pick it for the faster reloading first and foremost.
@@GitGudFox There's a huge difference between using a controller or mouse/keyboard for this game, especially for the gunplay. The aim snap will be incredibly useful for a controller, but doesn't give any benefit for the mouse.
Snap is good for NPC fights as well
You should re-do these. The weapon handling skill is perfect for a new community in nightmare zone. saves a lot of parts!
I plan on doing Nightmare versions of all the skills.
Very late to this party, but I agree with Michael. Even before all the DLC, addtions, and tweaks to the gameplay and additons of dread and nightmare zones, Weapon Handling saved a lot of headache in the broken weapon department. Pre-crossbow introduction, Wepaon Handling was mandatory on most of any community I had.
I choose weapon handling now 80% of the time after becoming more experienced. Previously I figured I would just repair like you said but the biggest headache of all I having a gun break when you need it most.
I agree, with the new echo weapons added to the bounty broker I usually use weapon handling and scouting to reduce damage to my guns by 50%.
Even without nightmare mode, our non-automatic guns were jamming all the freaking time making this an excellent skill to have.
I prefer gun-slinging, IMO its the best active skill for shooting. All of my "Adventure" characters all have gunsllinger, which increases confidence in a survivor running about alone.
I have a very strict gun control
Policy: if there's a gun around,
I want to be in control of it.
PS
Great Video 🙂
Sound like you're the Warlord leader type.
valruhn blaauw - Clint Eastwood
I love weaponhandling, free gun repair at zero part cost. Guns break all the time, doesnt need to be full auto “jam” and weaponhandling fixed it. At least have one person in your community to fix your guns. Great vid man!!
I can't say that has been my experience. This was the first time I've had a weapon jam in my going on 400 hours of gameplay. I also had to specifically go out of my way to cause a jam to occur just for this video.
I could see the value of having 1 member of your community as your designated weapons handler though. I might even do that myself.
Git Gud Fox bro, go ahead and grab all of your broken guns in your locker, and then equip each one on your weaponhandler. Hit your trigger.
@@BrianBarry34 Ah, I see the issue. If you visited my locker, you wouldn't find a single broken gun in sight. I never allow my weapons to break. Sometimes my melee weapons break, but I've never had a gun break or jam until this video.
Git Gud Fox oh well go ahead and grab something like a small handgun (non revolver) like an G17. They break fairly easily. You can see what I’m saying about the repair cost being free. I usually never repair guns before they break. Worth checking out :)
@@BrianBarry34 I see what you're saying now. You're saying that you intentionally use guns until they break to activate the Weapons Handling ability and repair them for free. That makes more sense. The way I initially translated you was that you were implying your weapons just broke down all the time for no reasons, but they break for a specific reason. They break because you intentionally break them to repair them for free.
You didnt cover the fact that weapon handling fixes any weapon when its broken, and can be done multiple times before you eventually have to repair the weapon again. Weapon handling has major value on long looting runs or plague busting. It doesnt just fix a "jammed" weapon,it makes all broken weapons fireable again.
It's because jammed and broken are basically similar terms. In fact, I don't even think Undead Labs should have used the word "jammed" because mechanistically it just means damaged. Weapons Handling repairs damaged weapons. That is the correct wording of it, but I chose to use Undead Labs' terms.
@@GitGudFox it doesnt completely repair it tough you still if you want repair with parts
I really enjoy Fox’s videos. They are always very analytical and informative. Keep up the good work!
I'm glad to hear that. Sometimes I wonder if SoD2 is too basic to need analysis, but people seem to like it.
Gunslinging is by far the best shooting ability available to any survivor. I'm hoping to see a more in depth skill progression in state of decay 3 for all skills.
Undead Labs are pretty terrible at designing interesting and complex mechanics, so I expect SoD3 to be similarly shallow to SoD2 where it isn't hard to clearly figure out what's best and 2nd best.
@@GitGudFoxDamn that's harsh... I think the mechanics, especially combat, are actually very well made in my opinion. Who am I tho.. I'm not a TH-camr at all so I can't prove that. But I do have 25-30 years of gaming experience, playing tournaments before e-sports was a thing, partially retired because my eyes lose vision once in a while from all the screen time.
Wear blue-light reducing glasses...they've taken my inability to play anymore down to an ability to play again sometimes.
Weapons Handling can be useful early game, especially when your RNG gives you few parts, fragile firearms, and a more-than-usual bad first week.
In one of my most recent playthroughs, my survivors found 2 KSG shotguns and barely a hundred parts in their first few days in the Valley. Even scrapping surplus melee weapons was hard to maintain them, since the KSG's the most fragile shotty in the game, breaking down roughly every 40 shells, or nearly three full magazines. So in pragmatic desperation, my first leveled-up shooter got Weapons Handling to squeeze out the last two shell to finish of the third mag and even a fourth and fifth round of 12-gauge shells.
And it paid off; One time I was killing a Plague Heart, my KSG jammed and several Plague Zombies and a Feral were charging in to prevent me from killing the Heart, but sheer luck and good timing allowed my charrie to fix her KSG juuust long enough to blast away a charging feral and get two more rounds into the Heart, popping it and nearly crashing my XB1 from the 10+ Plague Zombies ragdolling all around.
So if you start a new game, especially in Dread or Nightmare Mode, Weapon Handling can literally save your favourite survivor from getting mobbed.
It can. I tend to just use crossbows though since they don't suffer durability damage.
You got me wanting to change my favorite and oldest played character from assault to sharpshooting over the shotgun points.
I never use it in Nightmare Zone since I don't want to fire a shotgun in NZ except in specific situations, but it would be pretty useful when a ton of zombies appear.
Coming back to the game after a while, gotta rewatch these vods.
My son is 2 now and he will sit and watch your videos with me, he noticed your youtube emblem by the subscribe button, and on the last video discussing wits skills, when you concluded he started saying "Bye bye fox." Not sure if you have kids but take my word for it it was adorable
I really enjoy these in depth videos. Makes my choices so much easier. Thanks again!
This original voice over for this was 20 minutes, but I was able to shave off about 5 minutes in the audio mastering process.
I just don't know how you only have 645 subs dear Lord man you put a lot of time and your videos are awesome great job brother I been playing the game for awhile and had not seen the weapons abilities this close before, I use weapon handling almost in all my toons cause for some reason my weapons kind it jam fairly quickly but I think I am going to try gunslinging and sharpshooting more.
I think that's because of 2 things.
1) Weapons Handling is always an option... even if your character only gets a single advanced shooting skill... it's going to be Weapons Handling, so picking Weapons Handling is always an option.
2) Weapons Handling has the most obvious effect: you save parts. The other skills may be unclear as to how valuable they are to you while it's easier to visualize saving parts.
Humans have this tendency we call "risk aversion" which is a psychological thing that causes us to fear the pain of loss more than love the joy of gains. That is to say if a coin flipping game caused you to gain $5 on correct guesses and lose $5 on incorrect guesses, you probably wouldn't play because risk aversion dislikes even odds for loss.
ANYWAYS, the point I'm trying to raise is that risk aversion would naturally cause us to gravitate towards "safe picks" with obvious effects we can see the value in. The other perks don't seem as attractive until their value is clearly explained.
6.6k now
Markus Mitchell 11k now
@@GitGudFox nice perspective. I´d like to add: Weapon Handling is a good choice for beginners -> no real active to know how to use except saving my ass by reloading/fixing the gun i forgot to repair.....again. (Maybe you remember having parts issues before u learned to kill Zeds in parts friendlier ways than running them over or beating the crab out of them.) Once i grew accustomed to the game mechanics and started to develop my strategies and my own playstyle, the experimenting started too. I ended up with sharpshooting and shotguns as a way to get rid of all the followers i tend to acquire. Which brings me to my conclusion that each player will have to find out his own playstyle and the best skills to use. You testing different weapens (fighting styles) and comparing skill users vs non skill users provides really good data and definetly inspired me to try out more ways. You haven´t sen a working lawnmower by any chance?
21k.. this exponential curve looks familiar
I'm over here using a CLEO Mace and Sledgehammer. This man just killed a feral by curb stomping his ass faster than I can with a weapon!
excellent guides mate, straight to the point. no bs
I try to limit my introductions to 30-60 seconds to stay on task.
Thanks for the fantastic video. Sharpshooting is my go to because of the crowd control capability.
It's pretty satisfying to wipe out crowds of zombies with sharpshooting.
That opening scene is the most concise representation of Borderlands 3 i've ever seen.
that shits how i felt when i sacrificed myself to the marcus statue behind the dead W4RD3N in BL2 for a green torgue shotgun
It's such an obscure movie too.
I almost always go weapon handling. Repairing is super expensive, and every gun can break/jam except revolvers, bolts, and xbows. I used to only use those types of weapons, which saves a lot of headaches, but suffers from slow ROF, or Reload, or both, but are reliable and cheap to operate. However, with weapon handling, I can take any ol piece, even if its yellow and ready to jam, I don't care, I just watch my shots for that jam so I'm not caught in a bad situation with a yellow weapon.
I been going all weapon handling. Since neighbors are so demanding I end up doing like 4 or 5 missions back to back. Gets old going to a outpost for ammo let alone weapon repairs. Also with more zombies in the game not compared to release day. It's like 1 shot two kills with so many zombies grouped together. Also its so easy to have good aim. Don't really need any of the skills. But select weapon handling so weapons last a little bit longer.
Not what I'd do on Nightmare Zone because you're going to want the firepower offered by Gunslinging, but on Standard Zone and Dread Zone, none of these choice REALLY matter in the long run. Each survivor can just pick whichever one they like to use the most without consequence.
I like this channel i have been looking for someone to do analysis on SOD 2 like what this guy is doing. I sub right away!
I haven't been able to make the guides as quickly as I used to, but I still work on them.
I wished i had skilled weapon handling to clear jammed guns when in mid fight with a hordes. And it does cost a lot to repair those guns and the parts are not that abundant especially during early play through. its certaintly not the worst skill imo. Great videos man loving the content.
It might be better than Assault in that it's a "one of skill" where you want 1 person in the community to have it. That might raise its value up to 3rd in the list, but I think I'd still list it as 4th because after you have 1 of them, having multiple Weapons Handlers doesn't really increase in value.
@@GitGudFox but them saying clear the jammed weapons does not actually fix it it just temporarily unjams it, so it can get jammed again sooner after a weapon is unjammed. So if just have 1 survivor with the skill and fixes the gun, then when another survivor uses it, it still prone to get jammed as it isn't fully fixed and thus making that skill needed if wanting to play in such way
@@menikenpis Interesting, I guess that kind of playstyle just doesn't come across to me as super great. It sounds more like you get trapped into using it to get value out of it.
I thought about it a bit more and also remember that while parts are more scarce in the beginning of the game, zombies are also more scarce to the point that early game hordes are like 4 zombies. When zombie density is so low, the only time I would shoot something is to purposefully level up shooting or because I'm just in the mood to shoot them.
Gun-slinging first
Sharpshooting
Assault
Weapon-handling last
Nice video bro👍
Yep, that's what I like. Gunslinging makes weapons a lot more fun to use. There were a lot of weapons I didn't like using because of how long it took to get the drum mag into the gun.
@@GitGudFox exactly. Most of my survivors have Gun-slinging
Well put together vid! Enjoyed it greatly!
I'd probably do this video a bit differently if I redid it, but I am still mostly happy with the information, and my ratings would still be the same.
Shotgun and sharpshooting... yammi
Ok when I think about it: A shotgun review would be nice ;-)
Yeah! It's the easiest way to use the bullet penetration of Sharpshooting. You just aim and shoot.
ah btw. the problem I had with the fertilizer and the garden. It is a bug. I took it away and put it again into the mod slot. and then it worked as intended.
Gunslinging and weapon handling are my favourite. I got the red talon guys only so they all know both 😎
I haven't tried any of those guys yet. I got pretty burned out of Daybreak grinding out the unlocks for the facility video.
i really wanted to get in to this game but it was so overwhelming but thanks to your video im lovin it now! gotta say thanks Fox even if this game came out 2 years ago haha
I like Weapon handling for anything other than bolt action rifles. And I like Sharpshooter when combined with the CLEO Blast Rifle. And the aformentioned rifle is imo the best bolt action rifle due to its reletively high rate of fire and high damage output (and being the only CLEO weapon that won't break) with the downsides being weight and the ammo being a bit hard to get sometimes.
I don't like the steam it ejects. It often gets in my way of shooting. I like the Echo S2 and Police Sniper Rifle for bolt actions.
@@GitGudFox The RTX Wolverine is a great shotgun to just mow down dozens of zombies without wasting a whole lot of ammo. I just recently did this when dealing with a bunch of hordes at once and when it got overwhelming I just used either boom boxes or fuel bombs. With the added bonus of not worrying about the gun breaking mid fight.
i think you need to give weapon handling another look! i've been playing on pc and i only use single fire on all my guns. ive noticed that my guns do jam or break quite often. the ability to auto repair guns and fix jams by just reloading is so amazing. especially since i use suppressors on all my guns. suppressors significantly lower the life of your weapon but with weapon handling that isnt an issue. also the perk saves on parts which can quickly become a rare resource at times. also i like to volunteer quite a bit cause its a good way to get free materials/loot and influence. i usually take my ak with the 150 drum mag and weapon handling is really great with that cause i can just rip through a bunch of stuff on other peoples map without having to worry about going back to base or to an outpost.
It's because Undead Lab's wording is poor. Jamming is the same thing as breaking, so I was looking for a different condition than breaking.
@@GitGudFox Ah I see! I agree, their wording could have been better.
@@GitGudFox "guns don't degrade, only the dead degrade"
Far cry 2
The reload speed from gunslinging is the best feature for me. Too many times I'm trying to reload a weapon in a fight with hordes of zombies and freaks and I get interrupted trying to reload. The aim snap is also nice, but I hardly I hardly ever use it on anything but ferals. Manual aim is nearly as good and doesn't waste stamina I'll need for melee.
You have to have pretty elite levels of aim to have comparable aim to aim snap. For example, I'm a platinum level player in Halo which is considered more advanced than average (top 30%), and aim snap is still superior to my aim.
More importantly, melee is only useful in non-threatening battles where zombies are small to moderate in number. You use melee to conserve bullets in fights that aren't very dangerous.
In any battle that is actually relevant, you're going to care about maximum killing power rather than saving stamina for melee which is not useful against larger amounts of zombies.
As you increase the game's difficulty, the only way to avoid periodic large battles is just to sneak around 24/7.
@@GitGudFox I play on dread level. My aim is decent, but not elite. I find melee useful even with larger hordes at this difficulty. I can knock down several zombies with one swing to make some space for me or my companion to act. If they are shooting then I'm clubbing for them. If they are in melee then the zombies on them are easy targets to head pop. If we are both in melee then shooting is difficult and melee is good for making some space. If we are both unrestricted in shooting and reloading then the threat probably isn't that great. (gunslinging reload speed is very useful here) The less I am forced to use my gun, the better life is. Shotguns actually work pretty well in hordes up close. They are very loud though.
Very useful video, thanks for sharing it mate.
Always go weapon handling simply because guns "jam" quite often for me(only use single-fire), and they usually break at the worst times. Though may start making a few sharpshooter shotgun survivors, since I get a decent amount of shotguns/ammo but rarely use them since they aren't as efficient as just kiting and HS groups. Yet that combo seems like it would work nicely, especially on missions where you need to save someone....Also tempted to let a siege build up on the mission that wants you to use the scent blocker, with that combo...
I always keep my weapons well maintained, so I rarely have breakdowns. I don't think I've had to deal with a broken weapon in months.
Yes thank you I found that to be very helpful I love State of Decay 2
I'm glad the video succeeded in its purpose then, and I thank you for taking the time to watch it!
I think on console, gunslinging is easily supreme to any other ability on an individual survivor level. Ferals are easily a bigger threat on console than on PC and on higher difficulty game modes, shotguns are quite hard to come by, let alone shotgun ammo itself. When you’re relying on .22 and 9mm gunslinging is very easily the best, especially on console.
Now I’ve not played PC but I’d suspect sharpshooting on PC may be slightly better or at least have its place when it comes to specialisation.
Do you have any videos on preferred skills for nightmare? Or even weapons. Obviously anything with a high quietness. I been reading stuff on reddit and have several playthroughs done and completed. Had a survivor who's been around for almost since the release date. Always like hearing other players thoughts on the game. Also if you did a weapon breakdown. When to use them and why? I normally keep assault weapons at home and try to keep anyone looking for loot carrying lightweight weapons just so I can move around better. What are your thoughts. I like the short videos for when I'm commuting. At my desk its normally the long playthroughs ones
Well, I'd divide weapons into 3 categories.
1) Home defense
2) In the field
3) Special situation
The best home defense weapon has been the B50FG time and time again. It works well even on the Nightmare Zone.
The best in the field weapon has been the Echo-X3 Repeating Crossbow, but a silenced gun can also work.
The best special situation weapon has been the pyrolauncher for me which has been useful for destroying plague hearts and burning ferals when they appear in large numbers in the Nightmare Zone.
Most people can be used I think. The weakest pistols in the game still kill most zombies in 1 head shot. Shotguns and revolvers can be a problem since they can't be silenced except for the Echo variations, but some shotguns like the Devgru are still really good for defending the base.
I was thinking the same. For the most part I found many shotguns useless. Tf they're either too heavy or loud. I use the mod tool in my playthroughs because you can put suppressors on 12 gauges. However, due to weight I still find them unfavorable in nightmare. The echo weapons in heartland are good in nightmare. But they aren't that great. I do my best to keep things bolt action with handmade or improvised suppressors. I love the repeating crossbow but it's very rare. I only looted it 3 times ever. I would like to even more if I knew how to put a scope on it. What I might do is when I get one, mod it into a fire arm, add a suppressor to it and in the mod tool change it to a scope. It would definitely make it worth it. Love the game too much
If the X3 had a scope, it'd probably be... peerless on Nightmare Zone. In Standard Zone, it's probably the Eternal Guard's Infinite Rage or whatever other 100 round capacity weapon you can find.
Shotguns with sharpshooting can be extremely powerful in all out combat as the bullet penetration applies to every pellet the shotgun fires allowing it to "sweep through" without need for lining up shots or getting lucky.
I use Sharpshooting with 9 mm and .45 guns. It works like 7.62/5.56 bullets. Gunslinging + x3 crossbow is the best choice. Weapon handling works fine with 5.56 and 7.62 weapons with big magazine because 5.56 and 7.62 have sharpshooting ability as well also big magazine doesnt need to reload.
If I could get gunslinging on every one of my guys, I'd do it. It is definitely my favorite skill.
I prefer to have a gunslinger and a weapon handler in my exploration runs, just in case my automatic weapons get broken! I love revolvers and bolt action rifles. My prefered weapons are: Timberwolf, Hunter's Viper, Devgru X12 I, Restored Echo-S1 Revolver, Vulture King and the cowboys weapons! XD
Timberwolf is king! XD
4:57 channeling that inner Isaac Clarke. Also, it amazes me how many of these skill descriptions I never bothered to read. I honestly didn't know you had to click a button to snap with gunslinging. I thought it just worked when it wanted, since it sometimes locked on when I aimed in. I always just picked it for the reload speed. Hell, I never noticed the punch through with sharpshooting till today with a shotgun. Going for head shots, or running down hordes with cars, really does trivialize everything.
Except juggs and slightly high rocks. The bane of vehicles.
I'm actually thinking about my next random game playthrough being Dead Space 1. Maybe I'll do the whole trilogy, not all in a row though.
I think these videos have furthered reduced any threat and fear I might have of any enemy in the game. Stabbing juggernauts to death, efficiently, with a screw driver? Kicking and stomping a feral to death? It's hard to take them seriously after all of it.
Yeah, most people would think "sharpshooter" implies you should use a long range weapon; however, I have played Warframe for about 3 years, and you quickly learn that punchthrough effects are always best on weapons with little need for accuracy as you don't have to "setup" for chain hits. You just open fire into a crowd, and the spray of munitions does all the work for you.
Assault seems to be the kind of skill you'd take when carrying shotguns, when your job isn't to pick off zeds one by one, but to knock plenty down so you and your partners can get a breather. That or if the survivor you're using uses blades/knives, so they can't use blunt weapons to knock them over effectively. That or when you're dealing with armored zombies often and shooting in general isn't a good idea, but you do it to get them down.
I like weapon handling too. Most of time I’m using parts to create repair kit for vehicles so it’s pretty useful for me to have at least 1 member with that skill
Skills like Weapons Handling are what I call "1 ofs" or "2 ofs" where you want 1 or 2 members in your community to have it, but I wouldn't make it my primary skill pick.
I make a character solely for adventuring, I choose gunslinging to give another option especially against hordes
If I could give everyone gunslinging, I would. I guess I could with retraining manuals, and I probably will in time.
I think you Tested the Assault Feature incorrectly, when I use it, its about staying ADS(aim Down sight) you'll burn through alot of ammo and need a secondary on quick equip stand by but its about standing your ground. If any zombies do push into you kick them over shoot the most immediate threat and then decide if the head shot is safer than melee to finish off kicked Zed(also great with your back on a wall indoors)
I tested it more extensively over the course of my Nightmare Zone series including kicking a plague heart to death. The problem with it is that it doesn't solve any problems in SOD2 that need to be solved. It's only good against small numbers of zombies, but there are many other skills that could do this exact job such as close combat or swordplay which are half the options in the fighting skill category.
I'd go so far as to say is possibly the worst skill in the entire game among the 4 core skills, wits, cardio, fighting, and shooting.
Very good information. I never would have thought Gunslinging would be such a good choice.
Even if you have remarkable accuracy, the reloading speed is vital for a lot of end game weapons that often have slow reload times.
3 words. "Red Talon Opritive." :3
My shooting skill is prepared for Blood Feral. That's why I always choose Assault. Fast reload + chance of knockdown.👍 Second choice is Weapon Handling.
Fox, do you still order the skills like this since you moved to Nightmare, where parts are hella scarce? I go Gunslinging first then Weapon Handling second in Dread Zone and it seems to be working well.
I have not re-evaluated any of these for Nightmare Zone. Gunslinging is going to be number 1 most likely, but I'm not sure about the others.
I think the assault 50% knockdown could show its worth for a character or person that cant headshot really well with a automatic weapon that uses cheap plentiful weapon ammo
So a character thats really good in melee, can use a automatic with cheap bullets like 9 mm and spray into a horde to knock most of them down so they can melee the one that's still standing coming to them
I prefer to use fire if there's so many enemies that headshot placement is a problem. Fire is one of the best weapons in SoD2.
I’d like to add info that was either left out, or is new,
I’ve never used gun handling, I have no comment for it
For sharp shooting, the bullet piercing is very helpful, the only problem I’ve ever had with it, is that, if you use a crossbow, you bolts pierce through them, so you can’t just go and grab it out of their heads, the bolts may be like 50-80 meters away which can be a problem, but at the same time, it’s helpful because you can stealth kill 2-3 zombies with a single crossbow bolt
I’ve never used assault, so I have no comment on that skill
For gunslinging, the aim lock can be used with crossbows for very quick quite headshots at close range, the reload speed is helpful, but aim lock can only be used in a closer range, and only if you have zoom on your gun toggled off, so you can use it on a long range rifle, but you have to have zoom toggled off, I’ve also noticed that on very long range rifles, the aim lock can lock on from a farther distance, and shorter ranged weapons like shotguns, don’t lock on unless you’re decently close, also, using it with a shotgun still makes your crosshairs super small, and I can’t say this for certain, but it feels like it completely removes the spread that shotguns have while it’s aim locked, I can’t say for certain, but a few times, I’ve used it and nearby zombies were not injured, and using it on a bloater would cause them to do the headshot death where the leaks out like a ballon, rather than popping and exploding
Damn I miss those Guides. you‘re by far the best State of decay 2 TH-camr and Im pretty sure I watched every single guide, but there’s one thing I don’t understand, why didn’t you do a Utilities Guide?
Got distracted by other things.
I started off using Weapon Handling most when the game first came out.
Now my order would be
1. Gunslinging
2. Weapon Handling. ( great when doing a fresh start in Nightmare )
3. Sharp Shooting
4. Assault.
I wish Shooting was broke down into Gun Classes (Assault, SMG, Shotguns, Marksman (sniping) They are closely resembled currently, but they could be more specific.
3.
Assault needs a redesign. Its problem is that it doesn't solve any problems that need to be solved.
Yeah, I'd like to see quicker reloads to weapon handling and quicker AR reloads to assault (at least). Even if they are not as quick as gunslinging. I think gunslinging is 200%, so they could do something like 150%.
LOL this was recommended after watching your nightmare zone S02E05 He can't be trusted @ 6:52, sorry, I had to laugh at the foreshadowing. If I hadn't already commented on one of your other videos, I always choose gunslinging, when possible, just for the reload speed. After finding my 1st eternal guard's infinite rage, having to wait, what felt like hours, to reload... Gunslinging or exile. Of course now there are respec books, but those degrade the learning exp, so it takes longer to specialize
Gunslinging is incredibly powerful. Sharpshooting is amazing with automatic shotguns like the DevGru.
thanks, because of this video I know what to choose shooting for my Perfect ninja
Looks like you can make a video of a "Build" that combine the skills which complement each other and the weapon that fit in the build
I could, and I might eventually do it, but even on Nightmare Zone, you can play effectively without any advanced skills at all. The game isn't hard enough to motivate me to really think about skill combos.
Love the Zardoz reference!
The best way to use Assault skill is to immediately go into a crouching animation for knife kill or down kill after knockdown.
Or to effectively use this at bottleneck choke points like door entries.
It's easier to use at enclosed spaces since it temporary goes into first person view from gun aim to kick.
So you're saying it has synergy with close combat? That would let you execute with the knife crouching or not. I did feel like it was a better knockdown option for melee executions than shooting them, but I only had 1 Assault guy who was also trained in Striking. The kick would be better than the shove for sure. It still feels a awkward to use, though.
Git Gud Fox
Just recently tested this more, even if you don't have Striking on your character you can use Assault kick from a crouched position if the zombie spotted you before making a stealth kill.
LT+A (Assault Kick), joystick towards zed + holding B (into crouch), RT+X (immediately into knife kill)
love the video, its just perfect :) anyway atm i play normal mode and im bored of it, im looking to train few survivors to max with best skills, so i can use them in nightmare mode....can you make video about that, what skills to pick and how to equip survivors....
Why don't you try a fresh start in Dread Zone first? Learning how to survive with little is what makes you a stronger SoD2 player.
i dont like medium settings :) its either easy or hard for me :D@@GitGudFox
I thought it was completely ridiculous how they would take forever to load a drum magazine, but then I realized the devs must be implying that you're loading each bullet into the now empty drum magazine. The animation needs work for sure.
I figured it's because they were stupid.
They sometimes even take forever to reload hunting rifles so I dont believe that's the case. Weapons similar to ones I fired off irl and Im like "oh come on, it does not take THAT long to reload that thing". Its as if these people have Parkinson's Disease.
@@DAN007thefoxx1 it doesn't take long to load a clip into a receiver, it takes a long time to load bullet after bullet into a mag. I bet the hunting rifle you're talking about has a mag. You might be right, I always just assumed the devs lacked the animation so that's why it just looks awkward.
@@DrummahMike Well yeah I meant clip fed guns.
I'd like to point out for it, since the newer updates I might be 3 years too late, but assault is just helps all around because they buffed it to allow you to carry more ammo. I hardly use gunsling for snap and I normally have drum guns so I normally don't reload often, only time I catch myself reloading is after the horde is dead, and I still got a few shots left. So assault is just good now because you can stack more ammo in your pouches.
It's still not as good as gunslinging even after the update. High capacity weapons have huge reloading times, and some of the strongest weapons in the game, like the Echo S1 Revolver, need gunslinging to be effective.
But the most important thing is...
Guns are bad. The higher the difficulty goes up, the worse guns get. The 2 best weapons in the game are: the Pyrolauncher, a weapon so powerful a single shot can wipe out dozens of zombies while being cheaper than any normal gun.
And the Impaler, a vehicle that instantly kills blood ferals that touch it. It can mow down dozens of zombies for a fraction of the cost of guns.
@@GitGudFox idk personal preference. I personally lost touch with gunslinging. I found myself hardly ever using it and more stabbing or bashing faces in. If I do shoot I never miss really since key board and mouse warrior here. The reload is pointless since I only ever use assault rifles only.
Edit: also I have two unbreakables and 1 blood plague survivor, sooo pyrolauncher and other stuff pointless when I just enjoy being a ruthless killer.
Nothing is more ruthless than the pyrolauncher. It will outkill any gun. All guns are inefficient and less ruthless compared to the pyrolauncher unless you specifically need to kill a juggernaut.
Blood Plague Survivors (BPS) are also obsolete because you can get 100% immunity to blood plague and injuries with double primary care. It will get nerfed from the beta down to 90% immunity but still enough to make BPS useless since it applies to your entire community not just the BPS.
However, until the update arrives, double primary surgery/pathology gives 100% immunity to blood plague and injuries to your entire community.
Ultimately, personal playstyle is totally irrelevant to these kinds of guides as is personal skill level as it is useless information to the consumer of these kinds of guides.
ranking them would be like this
Rank 1: Gunslinging - OP Aim Snap
Rank 2: Weapon Handling - OP repairs, Best support for Gunslinging characters coz they can repair the weapon on the field, or once you deposit it on the base
Rank 3: Sharpshooting
Rank 4: Assault - kicking suks, you better press C to dodge instead of kicking
I don’t do weapon handling much because I tend to mostly use revolvers, pump shotties, bolt actions etc
You want at least one long weapon handler! I don’t know why you don’t get the jams, but I feel like I get a jam after 3 magazines.
Weapon handling saves you because you can Unjam guns
It's probably worth it to have 1 handler for repairs.
agreed in the middle of a heated fight, the last thing you want to be worrying about, is if your gun is going to jam, this removes that scare factor.
Does the assault kick get the feral to an executable state? If so is this the same for dread and nightmare?
It requires a lot of kicks to affect the feral. It's not worth using for that purpose.
I just started playing and I've been surprisingly good at getting headshots in this game, even with pistols at longer range and no shooting skill. I'm not sure if that's mostly the game or if it's just my years of gaming coming into play.
Why not both?
Did u ever do the skill analysis for the best skills in nightmare zone? If so could u send me the link, that’d be awesome
Nah, I never got around to it.
9:38 Lies. Sniping 2-3 zombies with 1 bullet is one of my favorite things to do, I do it quite often. It's been one of my favorite things about the game so far lol. The shotgun looked even more fun.
I would choose weapon handling kuz of the name and the jamming part but after watching this I know what to choose. Thanks fox!
If there are 4 options why does it only let us choose from 2?
Because not every character is eligible to learn each skill. If you level up enough characters, you will occasionally find a character that can only learn 1 skill. Sometimes you will get a character that can between between 3 skills, and rarely you will find a character that can pick between all 4 skills.
You can use a retraining manual to force a specific skill however.
So, since the difficulty levels have been introduced, have you thought about redoing these vids?
Yes, in one of my channel announcements I said I would do Nightmare reviews... but not for a while since I will need a powerful community to test the abilities.
Btw. How do you get these respec books? Till now never have had any chance to get my hands on these.
You have to buy them from the mysterious traders that appear on the weekends.
@@GitGudFox oh thank you then. I just have to wait and hope I guess 😂 btw. Are you planning a video about the different cardio skills as well? Cheers mate
@@Snowville84 That one might take a while because I only have 2 of the 4 skills in my community. I'll have to get retraining manuals or constantly recruit people to see if I can naturally promote into the 2 skills I don't have.
Snap aim used to work 100% of the time but stupid ass Undead Labs broke it just like they did with the pop in hordes now, infinite respawning zombies in cleared buildings, spawning 4 or more hordes on you back to back when nothing was around & all you did was sneak into a house to search a box, spawning fearls & juggernauts together like they've grown sentient & are working in tandem, spawning about 6 ferals back to back in less than a minute, Ive recorded almost all of these but
I almost got destroyed by a feral on 2 occasions due to the ability never working on the feral even when it was unaware of me & running in circles. I had to manually unload a mag into it to get it to stop tackling me & the other got killed by a trader.
Is that so? I didn't know that. I always used the skill somewhat casually and didn't pay direct attention to its reliability in the past. I mainly used it for the reloading.
I one shot Ferals with with Gunslinger. Never have issues.
Darth is correct. It’s more like 90% of the time works perfectly. Th other 10 % it simply doesn’t snap even with a zombie in FOV. Can’t quite figure out what the possible reason is.
I wanted to come back to this video (after more experience and thinking) to say that the assault skill isn't bad on shotguns, it's just too many of the guns are OP!!! The kick of the guns is control by a stat that goes from 1 to 15. Most shotguns have high kick stat with the saw-off shotgun being at 15 being the highest (and some .50 cal called Otoe Howlitzer). You shoot once with the sawed off and then you suddenly aiming at the sun lol. Now the weapon you tested was the DEVGRU X12 Infiltrator (one of the most OP weapons in the game). Even being a shotgun, it's kick stat is only 2! Matter of fact, just about all the best weapons in the game are under 2 except the timberwolf that is 4.5
Thing is that shotguns aren't very good in general though. You would seldom use them on higher difficulties.
@@GitGudFox 😥 I like shotguns
There's nothing wrong with liking them, but when you are trying to measure something and make recommendations to people, you have to make sure what you like doesn't interfere with good advice.
I usually have one member use the weapon handling skill with a high capacity weapon and go ham on plague hearts. The others use either gunslinger or sharpshooting.
Ever try powerhouse + close combat + stealth
I have done powerhouse and close combat but not with stealth.
Weapon handling is alright to have on one community member of you don't have the red talon workshop. Put it on a character you wouldn't normally play as. Otherwise I pretty much always choose gunslinger if possible.
I know Michal already brought this up but man, on lethal I literally can't afford to not have almost everyone with weapon handling. Maybe I'm missing something but I can't find enough parts to ever repair anything lol
Also, was the automatic-jamming-only a thing in the past? I virtually never do full auto and I still get plenty of jams.
Finally, when it works, is the assault kick supposed to work the same as the powerhouse drop kick? I notice in the video when you assault kicked a feral it stunned him (assume you could have executed him). I don't pick assault any more because I've been burned by that kick so many times...
So jamming was just a bad description by undead labs that confused me. Jamming = broken. A weapon "jams" when its durability dies on it.
I just don't really shoot things very much on Lethal Zone because I often don't fight zombies in such large numbers that I need to resort to shooting. I do keep a gun on me in case I need to shoot, but even then, I often use crossbows or other durability immune weapons such as bolt action rifles with advanced silencers.
@@GitGudFox Not gonna lie it took me longer than I'd like to admit to realize that jamming = broken. I'd be interested to see a new guide from you on the combat skills (fighting/shooting) in the context of Lethal - seems like it would be (understandably) drastically different compared to these guides.
To be honest, the order may change on some of them, but the orders still remain fairly accurate. Like if were to rate shooting skills it'd be...
Gunslinging > Weapons Handling > Sharpshooting > Assault
And like Gunslinging is like >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> compared to the other 3.
@@GitGudFox Yeah the need to headshot blood ferals multiple times really increases the value of gunslinging... Is that what you're basing it off of? Despite all the difficulty increases in lethal, for me the feral remains, by a long margin, the most lethal aspect of said difficulty.
It's basically efficiency in a different way.
Like, the reason you want weapons handling is because of efficiency of parts etc.
With Gunslinging, just imagine having like 99% accuracy. No wasted bullets, minimal damage because you use the smallest number of pulls of the trigger to remove a threat. You conserve resources in a different way, a proactive way rather than a defense/reactive way.
Also, many of the best weapons in the game have extremely long reloading times.
My buddy that I play with typically chooses weapon handling while I choose gunslinging for the snapshot ability. Every time my weapon breaks/jams I just drop it for him so he can unjam it then he hands it back, super useful imo.
Only if you allow your weapons to jam in the first place. In the 170 episodes of Nightmare Zone, my weapons have jammed less than 5 times.
@@GitGudFox That is true, at the same time though I'm not drowning in parts to repair my weapons every time I return to base. I'm hoping to remedy that though once I get my base properly optimized with all the skill books I need.
All you need is a CNC mill and weapons that don't take damage in the first place like crossbows and bolt-action rifles.
@@GitGudFox I've tried bolt action rifles and crossbows(The repeating one as well) and I haven't found either of them to be as effective as my rtx hordebreaker. Burstfire for juggernauts, single shot for anything else. I'll look into the cnc mill you mentioned.
If you're using gunslinging, then every weapon should be effective. In your case, I would use something like the Prepper's 10/22 or the Fake-A47 since it's the same thing but utilizes cheaper ammunition.
If it were me, I would use the repeating crossbow, the echo-S2 rifle, or the police sniper rifle.The later choices allow combat at the most extreme ranges while the repeating crossbow is the most effective general purpose weapon in Nightmare Zone due to its absolute silence, never jams, and the ammo can be recycled allowing you to stretch a single stack of ammo out very far. With resourcefulness, the rate of bolt recovery is something like 80% to 90% giving you as close as one could get to infinite ammo.
on nightmare, i think weapon handling is highly useful, at least for me i dont need gunslinging aim bot since i play on pc where i can aim really well. also weapons like submachine guns reload fast enough, so i just go for weapons that dont have a long reload time. but honestly, red talon soldiers are the best
Weapon Handling is one of those temporarily powerful skills. They're useful while parts are scarce, but once you get your community entrenched, and parts become plentiful through mass production with CNC mills and forges, it loses its value.
I give everybody weapon handling. I like to use my parts for everything but repairs, otherwise I tend to come up short when I need to craft resources or upgrades. The other thing is that it's handy when I get stranded too far away from an outpost without the marathon ability.
There where you will have a ton of extra parts. I have like 6000 parts for example and you'll have no way to spend them all.
@@GitGudFox i suppose...I mean I just got the cnc mill for the first time today lol.
@@dzobie I have someone with metalworking which is basically the super CNC mill. Sometimes I run 2 CNC mills at once as well. My base is a factory at times.
@@GitGudFox wow ok. (rubs chin) I see I'm not a jedi yet lol
Sharpshooter hands down! Love love love
What it should have been (while retaining everything they currently have):
*Sharpshooting:* Bullet Time (from SOD 1) at stamina cost. Increased zoom, even with weapons without optics.
*Weapon Handling:* Move faster while ADS. 200% faster reload, Dual wield pistols and SMGs.
*Gunslinging:* As is
*Assault:* Ammo Stack increased at every skill level. 90 rounds per slot at full level. Sprint into zombies causing them to fall over (except for Jugs). Imagine having a plague horde sprinting toward you? Leeroy Jenkins!
Was bullet time some sort of slow down? That wouldn’t work in sod2 with coop.
Zach B Too bad for coop then. It doesn’t mean single player has to suffer.
Assault's Kick should have been an enhancement to your Sprint that allows you to bowl non-Juggernaut enemies over on contact for a static stamina cost per impact.
The gun is good lol. What film is that? I watched that as a kid
Zardoz, Sean Connery is in it which is wild.
I love weapon handling, i just pick everthing of with an silenced ar on single fire and they breakdown easy, but that is because i use improvised silencers alot. This way i can keep going. In nightmare mode guns break down faster too. For me its weapon handling mostly.
I may re-evaluate weapons handling for nightmare mode, but I have great doubts it will exceed the value of gunslinging especially when you're attacked by a team of 3 ferals. Being able to reload faster and having the automatic headshots is going to be difficult to beat the value of.
THANK YOU. Everyone I see LOVES weapons handing and you took the words out of my mouth. Gunslinging is where it’s at with the aim snap and reload speed. Like 9 out of 12 of my community has gunslinging. Weapons handling is useless because by the time you comeback to your base after a day you can repair it. Assault and sharpshooting are meh. I always pick gunslinging or retrain to gunslinging. I’m just finally glad a TH-camr said weapon handling is the worst. Thank you.
Do they? I admit I don't really pay attention to the subreddit and what not. I can understand why people would like Weapons Handling since it seems like a good idea to save parts, but once you realize how readily available parts are, it loses a lot of its value.
hey! how can i obtain gunslinging skill? i should use automatic guns? coz when my shooting skill maxed i can only choose from 2 skills, and gunslinging is not an option. ty
It's random what skills your guy can learn. If you get a shooting retraining manual, you can force existing survivors to learn it.
@@GitGudFox omg man thanks for answering! subscribed, and watching your nightmare zone videos! U are awesome!Keep up!
You're a gud fox. Thank you.
Hey ! How your characters have so much stamina? Mine is exhousted very fast....
I often choose backpacking as my cardio skill.
My weapons jam all the time especially shotguns and I never go auto
It was a problem with Undead Labs' wording. Mechanically, "jams" are the same thing as a weapon breaking due to durability loss, so there is no "jam" in the game. It is just the weapon breaking down, so weapons handling allows you to restore a damaged weapon's durability a bit so it is usable temporarily.
@@GitGudFox oh OK cool thanks how do you even have time to reply to all the comments😂 I just started the game and you have given me a massive boost mailney for the base selecting u deserve loads more subs and rn I'm just watching every single one of your 5th ability stuff😂
I tend to wait about a day then just dedicate about 30-45 minutes to answering all of the comments I haven't read.
Gunslinging and Weapon Handling are my preferences. Clearing jams is just ridiculously useful since fixing weapons is expensive. Gunslinging with a Bolt Scout (i think that's it) and an improvised silencer is the cheapest combo for my Gunslingers. Really any rifle that won't jam because bolt action, but that's the lightest I personally have found.I
Plus Gunslinging hostile humans, since they have freak aim. Guess they have Gunslinging too. 😒
Mark Crilley? Is that you gaming? Love your artwork.😛
Sigh, this is the only game I still play on xbox.
(Obviously joking, but similar enough sounding.)
I don't care too much for weapons handling (I will keep at least 1 in the community) simply because I don't find too much of a need to shoot things, so my weapons don't get damaged that badly, and when they do begin to wear down, I typically have 6 well spaced apart outposts across the map to swap weapons at.
The shooter skills should include the weapons itself.
Assault: -X% Reload speed for shotguns, you kan run trough enemies and knock them down while you do it
Sharpshooting: Lees recoil for Sniper, piercing through enemies
Gunslinger: able to hold 2 Revolver (instead of a knife), kick down enemies in front of you
and a forth one maybe something like supressor, where you slow down zombies if you use machineguns.
These are just examples. But it should be more unique.
Assault is so bad it needs a redesign.
@@GitGudFox A lot of skills need a redesign. Most of them just boost something. But its not like one give -50% reload speed and -25% sway and the other gives -50% sway and 25% reload speed. No. One gives you 200% reload speed with every gun and the other gives you a buggy kick. Why should i pick assault than.
on xbox the snap shot is off for me. can rarely use it correctly. i can snap to a zombie's head but the zombie will get out of the way before i can fire. on pc it doesn't do that.
I think it's because of the latency or perhaps the differences in framerate.
That intro clip is like heaven
I could never come up with a better intro than this one either, so I gave up because nothing was going to be better than this obscure movie that most people have never heard of despite having Sean Connery in it.
I have 5 Red talons they have it all but I do prefer gunslinger if I have to choose
It sounds like you're making a full community of RT mercs.
Trying but they fighting constantly unless I run board games every 15 minutes
@@trentwolter208 yeah I thought of doing the same but they are so irritated that I am not sure they are worth the headache
@@josephbailey2840 you have to get a lounge to keep there moral up so they cost 1 large slot I still think they are worth I'm just a bit sick of daybreak for a little
Is there a way to predict or calculate what the skills will be able to evolve into?
There is, but it would require you to either memorize the traits because the traits tell you which skills they can upgrade into. For example, someone who "loved dancing" will definitely get "acrobatics" as a cardio option.
I'm glad you went through these because wow these devs really did a horrible job with these perks lol
💯 there are a lot of stats that aren't obvious on their own like impact vs. knockdown. Another one is Lethality, we know it has something to do with how well you kill zombies, but we have no idea how it affects it.
I wanted to add my input into this
On weapon handling. I personally see this as a garbage skill. And you could say its good for nightmare zone but I personally think its not worth it compared to the other skills and parts arent that hard to find. Even if they're reduced due to nightmare zone. And if you really have to you can turn your materials into parts. But not only that but I never really experience too much durability loss to my guns no matter what zone I play in. Despite the fact I use em alot because they're satisfying as hell. And if parts and materials are both a problem then choose the lumbermill over the fire station. Its a huge downgrade but I dont think its worth giving your survivors weapon handling. As youd probably have to give the majority of them weapon handling and the skill just isnt great.
In assault however, I do see a bit more use for this. For example if your trying to shoot zombies but one zombie got too close to you, you can kick them in order to get them out of the way. It is however inconsistent, it also looks wonky due to the zoom effect not going away, and doesnt kick them far. So there isnt much use for it. The knockback of assault can be useful if you miss the zombie's head but it still hits a zombie's body. It gets them out of the way and makes them an easy kill. But if this actually makes a difference to you then your probably better off with gunslinging due to its snap ability. Also I think the recoil reduction can be very useful. After firing your weapon still goes up. It can make things a little bit harder once it goes above the heads, if your sensitivity is low then itll allow zombies to get a little closer to you, if its high then its straight up harder to aim at their heads. However if you dont suck then again it shouldnt be a big deal.
I dont have anything to add on sharpshooting.
Going back to gunslinging. I think the normal reload speeds in general of the game are very very slow. So the increase of reload speeds from this are amazing. Especially for manual reloads or drum mag reloads. Also if your having a heard time hitting a zombie you can snap to their head. Its especially useful for ferals. However if you have to rely on this it is impractical due to its stamina loss. If you cant aim at their heads I suggest dropping this skill so you can actually get decently good at the game, so you dont have to throw your stamina away to kill a zombie that generally isnt hard to hit. Its not a huge deal if you have a ton of energy drinks on you or snacks or any stamina items but thats inventory slots gone that you could use for scavenging, which also weights you down a little. The weight probably wont have any effect but ya never know.
Weapon Handling became a lot worse due to the global 100% durability increase.
The reason why the assault kick isn't good for making distance between you and the zombies is because dodging backwards exists. Kicking a zombie gets a limited number of zombies farther away from you. Dodging backwards causes all zombies in front of you to be farther away, and it's possible to dodge, shoot, dodge, shoot, dodge, shoot in that pattern to fend off zombies with guns. You can also just run away to get distance then shoot.
@@GitGudFox Good point
“100 bullets”
Me: ;-; *hides my m4 with 50 billets*
50 is more than enough for the game.
Except juggernauts....but that’s what my Timberwolf is for :D
Control your fire against juggs, don't shoot them while they are staggering back from damage. You'll find you need 35-40 shots to bring a jugg down if you don't shoot into them while they are staggered.
Hmmm
I still think the Timberwolf with my 300 bullets is better :D
So what do I do if I don't have the better choices available?like I never get gunslinging
The game can still be played without any special skills. You just pick the most suitable thing available. If you really want Gunslinging, you can keep an eye out for the mysterious traders who can sell retraining books.
@@GitGudFox I got the worst of luck then, because Everytime I showed up to them, they were surrounded by hordes. But I'll know next time to help them
Guns break so much more w/o weapon handling. Also full auto is great for huge horde headshot strafing