Fire is good on lower hazards too! Should never underestimate the upside of fire's low attention cost :) The other elements (especially when considering driller primaries) tend to require more active investment and don't gain the simplicity of fire-and-forget. Igniting the floors and walking away to let everything die while you push objectives is real strong on any bug density, and when bugs move slower through those flames (as they do on lower hazards!), they burn even better. It definitely scales the best into modded though for sure, because fire spread is cracked and the upside of not having to actively shoot bugs longer than a single bolt or a puff of sticky flames is real useful when pacing becomes so important to success.
I'm not sure if you'd be interested in this or not but I've always wanted to see someone do a run with the Karl class mod using Hellfire and Volatile bullets to see if it would actually be viable
@Beastly21100 My friend you may be underestimating the power of hellfire :) Coilgun is straight busted with the fear mod! I'm not opposed to karl class shenanigans at all (I've done a few off camera - like I recently took drillers ripper grenade on scout to see if I could make it work - spoiler alert: I killed myself with it lmao), but honestly hellfire on its own is enough to carry 6x2 as long as you can go fast enough to not run out of ammo! I just completed a lil egg map with just hellfire (I'm sorta digging this single weapon challenge miniseries lol) and that'll be uploaded for tuesday if things go well! UPDATE: i got busy; the egg map was boring; i want to run a mining mission at some point instead so it can show off different positions instead of me holding a single boring hallway the whole map
@ojb_ yeah hellfire is busted but I feel like the higher the enemy density the more busted it gets. I can easily imagine it carrying 6x2 because you'll get extreme value out of almost every shot. But on vanilla haz 5 I feel like it's easier to waste ammo on small amounts of bugs and run into problems later on if it's the only gun you're using.
This is sorta tangential to the idea you're bringing up here, but I've seen this notion before and I want to hopefully squash it for anyone that might think this way (Please believe I'm not calling you out, this is into the void!): The use of 40 nitra resups on something like 6x2 and the increased bug density certainly does not make anything easier. Guns that are strong into modded are still strong into vanilla; if not even more so. The stuff that's strong for us modded geeks is virtually obscene into the base game simply because we're forced into extracting as much value as we can to beat the pain that is modded. AOE gets better in modded, sure. But AOE tools are still fine into haz5 and don't get punished on an easier difficulty at all. Firespread may be less powerful, but it doesn't matter because there are far less bugs that you don't even tend to need it. The nice thing about haz5 over haz6+ is that you can always run away from bugs. With adequate kiting ability, you can ALWAYS outrun any floor based enemy. The bugs are slower than your sprint, which means you can finish entire maps simply by running away. The enemies that prevent you from doing this (stationaries like spitballers locking down an area, grabbers flying at you, etc.) don't exist in enough numbers in the base game to be all that threatening on the grand scheme of that coward strat. What this means is you can spend the time ignoring things that you simply cannot on 6+, and essentially force the creation of scenarios that mimic the everyday life of a 6x2 player. Sure, the spawn cap is low enough that you could pop 8 eggs on haz5 and not even come close to the danger that is a single Lx2 swarm, but it doesn't matter. Modded difficulties aren't a "different" game from vanilla. We're not space aliens playing something totally different than the average player. What modded does is not "break the balance of the game" but rather we take the absolute hardest things you'll encounter in an extremely rare haz5 mission, and duplicate that over and over. I'm bringing this up not to criticize you or your opinion, but to try and argue against the idea that it's "easier to waste ammo on small amounts of bugs and run into problems later on". The fact is that you're allowed to ignore these small amounts of bugs almost entirely in the base game. If you're on a team, a driller with sticky flames can paint the floor on their way past without even looking back and know they all die. If you're solo, you can run past (maybe power attack a group on your way by) and bosco can cleanup small numbers of bugs with limited effort. The fact that vanilla resups cost 80 and modded cost 40 (or 60) does not enter into the equation whatsoever here; modded maps fight much more than double the enemies of the base game - there are far more tanky stationary enemies, initial encounter spawns, and the waves themselves are much more common and bigger than vanilla. An ammo inefficient gun focused on max damage into haz6 still slaps into haz5, if not even more so. Bug health pools don't really change on the vast majority of enemies (the balance of haz6 is intended to not change any breakpoints!), and really what it comes down to is pacing. Haz5 lets you pace fast enough to ignore the small amounts of bugs until you can build up enough followers to spam efficiently, if you'd like. The things that something like hellfire does well into modded remain just as strong into vanilla. I just felt the urge to talk about this today, and I really hope it doesn't come across as "umm aktually" pretentious ego shit of me shitting on you randomly, because I think it's interesting to think about. I appreciate your frequent comments and the discussions you help bring up, because I personally believe the value of a crappy channel like mine isn't the gameplay but rather the theorycrafting and discussions we get to have in the comments. I hope making arguments like this doesn't turn people off, because I really think they're useful. They're definitely useful for me at least as I get to think more about things I might not otherwise, you know. And I'm a fucking geek that digs that shit.
What are your thoughts on AV Drak? I think it’s both similar and not. The fear is op but igniting anything bigger than a slasher is a pain. I don’t see it used often and I was curious if that’s because there’s a “op” stigma around it. I did a pheroless escort with it and it took me about 8 hours of attempts so I’m honestly not sure where to put it in terms of balance. It definitely ain’t phero nade broken tho I think.
I think it's fine from a power level perspective (maybe low A-tier / high B-tier?), but I'm not crazy about the playstyle so that's why I tend to avoid it myself. A lot of AV gameplay tends to devolve into "why bother aiming: just hold left click and shoot the floor", and it feels like it takes out a large portion of the game space for me. I want to have to care about weakpoints and interacting with the many mechanics that expand from having to aim to confirm kills, and AV (just like the crossbow!) sidesteps a lot of that "fun" in favor of lower effort clear that revolves almost entirely around overheat cycles. You can shoot enemies, but I feel like it's mostly just placebo and the only thing that matters is the overheat lol. But this is just me being me, and I definitely don't want everybody to share my own weird views on things! I think it combos pretty excellently into IFGs and of the two "real" wave clear primaries (the other contender being electrifying reload gk2), I think I personally lean on the side of AV drak being a tiny bit stronger (just don't tell groceries I said that). And that's on the back of fire being strong for offense and AOE fear being very good for defense. I haven't attempted a pheroless salvage with AV but I suspect it could be a strong contender in that challenge specifically because of the fear+IFG combo. But as you said: it's definitely not phero levels of broken (not by a long shot, but nothing really is) and I don't think it's anywhere close to coilgun either, so it definitely wouldn't be a free win by any stretch of the imagination (salvage is fucked). I think AV drak is held back primarily by the nature of it being non-TEF base drak where the range isn't great and the damage is non existent, so you definitely still have to work hard to get things to happen! Congrats on beating an escort btw - can't believe I missed when that first came out! I think that's the first pheroless 'rang win on 6x2! :)
@@ojb_ Firstly, thanks for the reply and the congratulations for my escort win. Secondly, I agree with you on the "devolves into overheat cycles" gameplay loop; but I will point out that i usually end up focusing on guards with the armor break mod since you cant ignite them, so i will say that I personally have at least a small game plan. The other thing i wanted to mention is that I am a terrible FPS player. My aim is god-awful atrocious even on predictable targets, which is why I gravitate towards things that can compensate for that. I do definitely agree with you on the fire bolts, although I can never seem to get them to work (i just get overrun because I'm a boomerang enjoyer (haha, but actually I use rangs to kill web spitters that cover the ceiling to make up for non-accelerated shots Drak's weakness to many distant purple beasts). Scout is tied with driller for my worst class. I just don't dodge well; I prefer to set up a defensive position (repellant my beloved) and take on enemies headfirst (hence my 700+ hours on Engie). I really admire your scout gameplay, but I just can't keep up, and since I'm (oxymoron incoming) a casual tryhard, I just stick to the shallow end of the pool. _Although_, I am looking into doing a 6x2 EDD/DD TS. I already do them 7x2 with my buddy so how hard can it be? *major /s there* Sorry my reply is all over the place, I feel the need to justify my playstyle all the time, so I just kind of stream-of-consciousness'd it lol. Have a good one.
> gravitate towards things that can compensate for that FWIW when watching your escort run and skimming through some of your 7x2 EDD's: you are perhaps a much better scout player than you are giving yourself credit for :) I don't think MY aim is all that particularly good either, and I miss a fair amount of shots myself haha. I tend to make up for my own poor movement and consistent periods of "I can't hit the broad side of a barn" with some reasonably strong decision making and positioning choices. I think that's where my own strengths tend to lie and it's sorta born out of my own framerate limitations / potato pc forcing me to try and work around those downsides. That aspect of my playstyle is really hard to try and teach/share because it's so dependent on experience / choosing incorrectly in the past and learning from those mistakes / etc. A lot of what works for me as a player / my own opinions on what's "fun" is super subjective and based on my own past experiences as a FPS player. I'm an exile from team fortress 2 (the last big shooter I played for thousands of hrs prior to discovering DRG back in like 2018) and those 4.5k hrs really do tend to transfer a lot of specific things/beliefs/opinions over. And that is a vastly different game than something like counter strike or valorant or fortnite or other modern shooters that others may come from, and I want to absolutely double down on the idea that bringing experience in from other games (or even not at all) results in a lot of different skills that don't all transfer in together or even similar to other people from the same game. The things I end up vibing with are very unlikely to suit everybody else and a lot of that is just personal preference. And that's a good thing, I think. This is sorta why I stress that others SHOULDN'T blindly follow in my opinions until they try things and see if it's fun for them regardless of my own thoughts, because there are a lot of things that just will vary widely from player to player. There's absolutely no shame to liking things I don't like, and honestly it's great that we can get so much variety in playstyles even into modded! Best piece of advice I can give: please don't feel the need to justify your playstyle to anyone. I've been there with pheromone nades myself due to the stigma and I'll say from experience, it *really* doesn't matter. If you have fun with it, keep having fun. Don't let others (especially me) try and convince you out of things lol. It sounds cheesy, but it's something I wish I was told earlier myself. There have been points where I've lost some of the fun of the game trying to grind for something specific to try and "prove" myself, and really that's just a path to hard burnout. It took a while for me to finally learn that the real fun is just uploading whatever suits my fancy at the moment, and to really not care too much about impressing anyone anymore haha. There's room to explore ALL sorts of overclocks and builds in this game still, and a lot more to discover by straying from any established meta. So by all means, take that AV/rang setup and do some fun new stuff / make some miracles happen :D. The scene doesn't leap forward by playing the same way as everyone else :) --- If you do end up trying out some 6x2 TS dives, I do recommend trying them out on 6x2 iota rather than the full 6x2, because you'll get those same difficulty spikes while not having to drown in an extra half hour of busy work. From my own experience: iota dives are a lot more fun and less grindy. Good luck!
Thanks for this video, I could never find a way to consistently kill naenocyte jellyfish/shredders with fire bolts. Did you have this video planned or was it in response to comments in the last video?
Pheromones are definitely key to the flying trash enemies, for sure. I use that in my Lx2 as well - they tend to get deleted by the attacks of the melee enemies because they are forced to get in close. I like leaving a brood nexus alive as well just to have a consistent thing to pull aggro off myself if there's a lot of flyers and no melee enemies around to hurt them for me. An ignited brood nexus can firespread to kill jellies, but it's inconsistent unfortunately. Much easier to drag them through a (very) tight choke with enough firebolts inside that they ignite as they pass through, if you're not able to use a praetorian or something to spit on them/burn them/bite them (which is usually the easiest/quickest option). This video was 95% unplanned - just as a response to the other comments sorta deal. There was 5% of me that knew this sort of run was possible, but I had never tried it before so I just figured it was a solid time as ever to test my theory!
Crazy how fire goes from one of the weaker damage types in lower hazard levels to absolutely essential in modded difficulties
Fire is good on lower hazards too! Should never underestimate the upside of fire's low attention cost :) The other elements (especially when considering driller primaries) tend to require more active investment and don't gain the simplicity of fire-and-forget. Igniting the floors and walking away to let everything die while you push objectives is real strong on any bug density, and when bugs move slower through those flames (as they do on lower hazards!), they burn even better. It definitely scales the best into modded though for sure, because fire spread is cracked and the upside of not having to actively shoot bugs longer than a single bolt or a puff of sticky flames is real useful when pacing becomes so important to success.
You make me think scouts can do anything. Then one joins my salvage and starts a corestone event while the team is separated and we all die.
well, i guess that is part of the anything :) rofl
I read the comment thread on your last video and was looking forward to seeing this :)
100th sub! Love watching these vids :)
Thank you! That's awesome :)
I'm not sure if you'd be interested in this or not but I've always wanted to see someone do a run with the Karl class mod using Hellfire and Volatile bullets to see if it would actually be viable
Does this mod allow you to take two secondarys? Otherwise that is impossible since both of those are on secondary weapons
@cherryrook8684 yes allows you to take any tool or weapon in any slot
@Beastly21100
My friend you may be underestimating the power of hellfire :) Coilgun is straight busted with the fear mod!
I'm not opposed to karl class shenanigans at all (I've done a few off camera - like I recently took drillers ripper grenade on scout to see if I could make it work - spoiler alert: I killed myself with it lmao), but honestly hellfire on its own is enough to carry 6x2 as long as you can go fast enough to not run out of ammo!
I just completed a lil egg map with just hellfire (I'm sorta digging this single weapon challenge miniseries lol) and that'll be uploaded for tuesday if things go well!
UPDATE: i got busy; the egg map was boring; i want to run a mining mission at some point instead so it can show off different positions instead of me holding a single boring hallway the whole map
@ojb_ yeah hellfire is busted but I feel like the higher the enemy density the more busted it gets. I can easily imagine it carrying 6x2 because you'll get extreme value out of almost every shot. But on vanilla haz 5 I feel like it's easier to waste ammo on small amounts of bugs and run into problems later on if it's the only gun you're using.
This is sorta tangential to the idea you're bringing up here, but I've seen this notion before and I want to hopefully squash it for anyone that might think this way (Please believe I'm not calling you out, this is into the void!):
The use of 40 nitra resups on something like 6x2 and the increased bug density certainly does not make anything easier. Guns that are strong into modded are still strong into vanilla; if not even more so. The stuff that's strong for us modded geeks is virtually obscene into the base game simply because we're forced into extracting as much value as we can to beat the pain that is modded. AOE gets better in modded, sure. But AOE tools are still fine into haz5 and don't get punished on an easier difficulty at all. Firespread may be less powerful, but it doesn't matter because there are far less bugs that you don't even tend to need it.
The nice thing about haz5 over haz6+ is that you can always run away from bugs. With adequate kiting ability, you can ALWAYS outrun any floor based enemy. The bugs are slower than your sprint, which means you can finish entire maps simply by running away. The enemies that prevent you from doing this (stationaries like spitballers locking down an area, grabbers flying at you, etc.) don't exist in enough numbers in the base game to be all that threatening on the grand scheme of that coward strat. What this means is you can spend the time ignoring things that you simply cannot on 6+, and essentially force the creation of scenarios that mimic the everyday life of a 6x2 player. Sure, the spawn cap is low enough that you could pop 8 eggs on haz5 and not even come close to the danger that is a single Lx2 swarm, but it doesn't matter. Modded difficulties aren't a "different" game from vanilla. We're not space aliens playing something totally different than the average player. What modded does is not "break the balance of the game" but rather we take the absolute hardest things you'll encounter in an extremely rare haz5 mission, and duplicate that over and over.
I'm bringing this up not to criticize you or your opinion, but to try and argue against the idea that it's "easier to waste ammo on small amounts of bugs and run into problems later on". The fact is that you're allowed to ignore these small amounts of bugs almost entirely in the base game. If you're on a team, a driller with sticky flames can paint the floor on their way past without even looking back and know they all die. If you're solo, you can run past (maybe power attack a group on your way by) and bosco can cleanup small numbers of bugs with limited effort. The fact that vanilla resups cost 80 and modded cost 40 (or 60) does not enter into the equation whatsoever here; modded maps fight much more than double the enemies of the base game - there are far more tanky stationary enemies, initial encounter spawns, and the waves themselves are much more common and bigger than vanilla. An ammo inefficient gun focused on max damage into haz6 still slaps into haz5, if not even more so. Bug health pools don't really change on the vast majority of enemies (the balance of haz6 is intended to not change any breakpoints!), and really what it comes down to is pacing.
Haz5 lets you pace fast enough to ignore the small amounts of bugs until you can build up enough followers to spam efficiently, if you'd like. The things that something like hellfire does well into modded remain just as strong into vanilla.
I just felt the urge to talk about this today, and I really hope it doesn't come across as "umm aktually" pretentious ego shit of me shitting on you randomly, because I think it's interesting to think about. I appreciate your frequent comments and the discussions you help bring up, because I personally believe the value of a crappy channel like mine isn't the gameplay but rather the theorycrafting and discussions we get to have in the comments. I hope making arguments like this doesn't turn people off, because I really think they're useful. They're definitely useful for me at least as I get to think more about things I might not otherwise, you know. And I'm a fucking geek that digs that shit.
What are your thoughts on AV Drak? I think it’s both similar and not. The fear is op but igniting anything bigger than a slasher is a pain. I don’t see it used often and I was curious if that’s because there’s a “op” stigma around it. I did a pheroless escort with it and it took me about 8 hours of attempts so I’m honestly not sure where to put it in terms of balance. It definitely ain’t phero nade broken tho I think.
I think it's fine from a power level perspective (maybe low A-tier / high B-tier?), but I'm not crazy about the playstyle so that's why I tend to avoid it myself. A lot of AV gameplay tends to devolve into "why bother aiming: just hold left click and shoot the floor", and it feels like it takes out a large portion of the game space for me. I want to have to care about weakpoints and interacting with the many mechanics that expand from having to aim to confirm kills, and AV (just like the crossbow!) sidesteps a lot of that "fun" in favor of lower effort clear that revolves almost entirely around overheat cycles. You can shoot enemies, but I feel like it's mostly just placebo and the only thing that matters is the overheat lol. But this is just me being me, and I definitely don't want everybody to share my own weird views on things!
I think it combos pretty excellently into IFGs and of the two "real" wave clear primaries (the other contender being electrifying reload gk2), I think I personally lean on the side of AV drak being a tiny bit stronger (just don't tell groceries I said that). And that's on the back of fire being strong for offense and AOE fear being very good for defense.
I haven't attempted a pheroless salvage with AV but I suspect it could be a strong contender in that challenge specifically because of the fear+IFG combo. But as you said: it's definitely not phero levels of broken (not by a long shot, but nothing really is) and I don't think it's anywhere close to coilgun either, so it definitely wouldn't be a free win by any stretch of the imagination (salvage is fucked). I think AV drak is held back primarily by the nature of it being non-TEF base drak where the range isn't great and the damage is non existent, so you definitely still have to work hard to get things to happen!
Congrats on beating an escort btw - can't believe I missed when that first came out! I think that's the first pheroless 'rang win on 6x2! :)
@@ojb_ Firstly, thanks for the reply and the congratulations for my escort win. Secondly, I agree with you on the "devolves into overheat cycles" gameplay loop; but I will point out that i usually end up focusing on guards with the armor break mod since you cant ignite them, so i will say that I personally have at least a small game plan. The other thing i wanted to mention is that I am a terrible FPS player. My aim is god-awful atrocious even on predictable targets, which is why I gravitate towards things that can compensate for that. I do definitely agree with you on the fire bolts, although I can never seem to get them to work (i just get overrun because I'm a boomerang enjoyer (haha, but actually I use rangs to kill web spitters that cover the ceiling to make up for non-accelerated shots Drak's weakness to many distant purple beasts). Scout is tied with driller for my worst class. I just don't dodge well; I prefer to set up a defensive position (repellant my beloved) and take on enemies headfirst (hence my 700+ hours on Engie). I really admire your scout gameplay, but I just can't keep up, and since I'm (oxymoron incoming) a casual tryhard, I just stick to the shallow end of the pool. _Although_, I am looking into doing a 6x2 EDD/DD TS. I already do them 7x2 with my buddy so how hard can it be? *major /s there* Sorry my reply is all over the place, I feel the need to justify my playstyle all the time, so I just kind of stream-of-consciousness'd it lol. Have a good one.
> gravitate towards things that can compensate for that
FWIW when watching your escort run and skimming through some of your 7x2 EDD's: you are perhaps a much better scout player than you are giving yourself credit for :) I don't think MY aim is all that particularly good either, and I miss a fair amount of shots myself haha. I tend to make up for my own poor movement and consistent periods of "I can't hit the broad side of a barn" with some reasonably strong decision making and positioning choices. I think that's where my own strengths tend to lie and it's sorta born out of my own framerate limitations / potato pc forcing me to try and work around those downsides. That aspect of my playstyle is really hard to try and teach/share because it's so dependent on experience / choosing incorrectly in the past and learning from those mistakes / etc.
A lot of what works for me as a player / my own opinions on what's "fun" is super subjective and based on my own past experiences as a FPS player. I'm an exile from team fortress 2 (the last big shooter I played for thousands of hrs prior to discovering DRG back in like 2018) and those 4.5k hrs really do tend to transfer a lot of specific things/beliefs/opinions over. And that is a vastly different game than something like counter strike or valorant or fortnite or other modern shooters that others may come from, and I want to absolutely double down on the idea that bringing experience in from other games (or even not at all) results in a lot of different skills that don't all transfer in together or even similar to other people from the same game.
The things I end up vibing with are very unlikely to suit everybody else and a lot of that is just personal preference. And that's a good thing, I think. This is sorta why I stress that others SHOULDN'T blindly follow in my opinions until they try things and see if it's fun for them regardless of my own thoughts, because there are a lot of things that just will vary widely from player to player. There's absolutely no shame to liking things I don't like, and honestly it's great that we can get so much variety in playstyles even into modded!
Best piece of advice I can give: please don't feel the need to justify your playstyle to anyone. I've been there with pheromone nades myself due to the stigma and I'll say from experience, it *really* doesn't matter. If you have fun with it, keep having fun. Don't let others (especially me) try and convince you out of things lol. It sounds cheesy, but it's something I wish I was told earlier myself. There have been points where I've lost some of the fun of the game trying to grind for something specific to try and "prove" myself, and really that's just a path to hard burnout. It took a while for me to finally learn that the real fun is just uploading whatever suits my fancy at the moment, and to really not care too much about impressing anyone anymore haha.
There's room to explore ALL sorts of overclocks and builds in this game still, and a lot more to discover by straying from any established meta. So by all means, take that AV/rang setup and do some fun new stuff / make some miracles happen :D. The scene doesn't leap forward by playing the same way as everyone else :)
---
If you do end up trying out some 6x2 TS dives, I do recommend trying them out on 6x2 iota rather than the full 6x2, because you'll get those same difficulty spikes while not having to drown in an extra half hour of busy work. From my own experience: iota dives are a lot more fun and less grindy. Good luck!
Thanks for this video, I could never find a way to consistently kill naenocyte jellyfish/shredders with fire bolts.
Did you have this video planned or was it in response to comments in the last video?
Pheromones are definitely key to the flying trash enemies, for sure. I use that in my Lx2 as well - they tend to get deleted by the attacks of the melee enemies because they are forced to get in close. I like leaving a brood nexus alive as well just to have a consistent thing to pull aggro off myself if there's a lot of flyers and no melee enemies around to hurt them for me. An ignited brood nexus can firespread to kill jellies, but it's inconsistent unfortunately. Much easier to drag them through a (very) tight choke with enough firebolts inside that they ignite as they pass through, if you're not able to use a praetorian or something to spit on them/burn them/bite them (which is usually the easiest/quickest option).
This video was 95% unplanned - just as a response to the other comments sorta deal. There was 5% of me that knew this sort of run was possible, but I had never tried it before so I just figured it was a solid time as ever to test my theory!
Modded game without nausiating FOV? Impossible
lots of modded players tryin' to set their FOV so high that they see the future smh :)
This is the kid no one wants to play with
A little unhinged, creepy, who wouldn't want them as a friend
lmao a little unhinged is like my mantra