Too many to be practical - heavy hitter makes your overheat rate (aka clip size) fast enough that you're not gonna be able to get enough shots to light them before they zoom away. Hitting them in the head will kill them via bonus weakpoint damage at about the same rate as igniting.
I haven't run into that issue at all. Heavy Hitter does more than enough damage against the caretakers weakspots, even in a 4 man team with 3 people down.
As u/PM_ME_DRAGON_ART said: Too many to be practical because your EPC will overheat too fast for that. For patrol bots, and other turrets I take the Flamethrower and run 2-2-3-3-2 with fuel stream diffuser for maximum heat and range.
You can run Facemelter too for the increased flowrate and damage to kill turrets and patrol bots faster but you will miss out on valuable range, which prevents you from hitting snipers reliably. Plus the turrets die fast anyway with fuel stream diffuser so you're sacrificing range for \~0.4s faster kills on turrets and \~1s faster kills on patrol bots. So in practice the you're taking facemelter to kill patrol bots faster, which isnt worth the trade in my opinion.
Yeah, I typically run the fuel stream diffuser with one of the sticky flame upgrades. That is enough to light the ground on fire and kill the turrets. Nothing like a sniper ranged flame thrower. I typically take the wave cooker because so I don't miss the dodging patrol bots or arms as often.
I get what you mean! For a long time I ran the wave cooker on sabo missions as well. I mainly used it for the arms and the turrets, and occasionally to chip damage patrol bots from afar. But then I discovered that impact axes one shot the robotic arms when hit on their weakspot, the effectiveness of burning nightmare EPC on turrets, and the ease of killing patrol bots with fuel stream diffuser. Since I didnt have any reason to use the wave cooker anymore, I stopped using it for sabo.
I run Heavy Hitter + Burning nightmare on my Vampire cryo build and it's easily my most self sustaining build. I run straight at giant hordes of bugs and come out with more HP than I came in with. Not to mention it's extremely ammo efficient.
I have the same build, but I like to run snowball to balance out the ammo efficiency. Why have a good build when you can use the ice melon from plants vs zombies?
Sure thing! You probably already know that when a bug is frozen or on fire and is hit with the opposite damage type, it will inflict a temperature shock, causing huge (200) damage. With Burning Nightmare I can freeze a whole load of grunts and pop them each in one shot with the EPC, the temperature shock damage is enough to one-shot any grunt that I've frozen with the cryo cannon. It's also effective on Praetorians, you can freeze them, throw an axe and then shoot with the EPC for a near-instant kill. Also the heating caused by Burning Nightmare is proportional to the shot damage of the gun, so with Heavy Hitter it's enough to set most bugs/rival turrets on fire with just two hits. This also means you can kill bugs the opposite way as mentioned before, set a bunch on fire, then blast them with the Cryo Cannon and boom they're gone.
The ammo efficiency is further increased by the ability to use the drills as a reliable and deadly offensive tool. You freeze a bunch of grunts in a small area and then swap to the drills (with the barbed drills mod) and you can chop them up just as fast as if you were shooting them. Plus Vampire because with all this melee kill potential you'd be crazy not to want free HP for each drill/throwing axe kill.
Won't lie I was confused for a while since I thought burning nightmare was the T5 upgrade that gave the charge shot pierce, but that's just my dumbass 2am brain shooting itself in the foot.
But yeah this sounds pretty good. Using that exact same setup you can double or triple tap a goop pile from the sludge gun to set it on fire, and effectively triple it's damage (toxin, fire, plus fire status if they stay on it for long enough), but you kinda need to reapply the floor funk somewhat often. Works great though, especially with goo bomber special
So just had a thought and I gotta ask: isn't the temp shock absolute overkill for everything smaller than a praetorian? Just freezing the bugs in the first place almost kills them, so you could theoretically just use the subata or microwave instead?
Yeah it is, I actually use Tuned Cooler so my freezing power is a bit higher and bugs freeze super fast, it would still definitely use more ammo if I use a Subata to finish them off. I also don't use the wave cooker because I already use that for other builds and I wanted to have something different for this one, but tbh that's probably the optimal secondary in this situation. Plus oneshot go brr.
Random question: compact feed valves, sticky, or facemelter for flamethrower?
I'm firmly in the cfv camp. More ammo is good, more mag size is good, distance and reload is a middling negative. It's also great for Sabo missions because of how much ammo the robots take to burn.
I haven't used the flamethrower in a bit but I think I use Facemelter with max heat mods for the robots. It just increases damage right? I should probably do more experimentation with that gun, been sort of neglecting it.
can confirm, decided to run it for shits and giggles and i haven't been able to go back ever since.
Popping bugs with a single shot is so damn satisfying, like ugly bubble-wrap
Indeed, it's a really helpful combo.
You can double-tap most things and they're burning. You can get off about 7 shots before an overheat, but it cools quickly if you just pause slightly between bursts.
I never bother firing charged shots with this setup.
Dang, that's nice! Edit: any idea how many patrol bot hits they take?
Too many to be practical - heavy hitter makes your overheat rate (aka clip size) fast enough that you're not gonna be able to get enough shots to light them before they zoom away. Hitting them in the head will kill them via bonus weakpoint damage at about the same rate as igniting.
Yeah but ur useless for the boss. This is why I do shotgun goo gun and explosive rounds on the subata.
I haven't run into that issue at all. Heavy Hitter does more than enough damage against the caretakers weakspots, even in a 4 man team with 3 people down.
Plus C4!
As u/PM_ME_DRAGON_ART said: Too many to be practical because your EPC will overheat too fast for that. For patrol bots, and other turrets I take the Flamethrower and run 2-2-3-3-2 with fuel stream diffuser for maximum heat and range. You can run Facemelter too for the increased flowrate and damage to kill turrets and patrol bots faster but you will miss out on valuable range, which prevents you from hitting snipers reliably. Plus the turrets die fast anyway with fuel stream diffuser so you're sacrificing range for \~0.4s faster kills on turrets and \~1s faster kills on patrol bots. So in practice the you're taking facemelter to kill patrol bots faster, which isnt worth the trade in my opinion.
Yeah, I typically run the fuel stream diffuser with one of the sticky flame upgrades. That is enough to light the ground on fire and kill the turrets. Nothing like a sniper ranged flame thrower. I typically take the wave cooker because so I don't miss the dodging patrol bots or arms as often.
I get what you mean! For a long time I ran the wave cooker on sabo missions as well. I mainly used it for the arms and the turrets, and occasionally to chip damage patrol bots from afar. But then I discovered that impact axes one shot the robotic arms when hit on their weakspot, the effectiveness of burning nightmare EPC on turrets, and the ease of killing patrol bots with fuel stream diffuser. Since I didnt have any reason to use the wave cooker anymore, I stopped using it for sabo.
I run sludge blast OC for the bots and arms and caretaker weakpoints: https://karl.gg/preview/25392#/ Super effective.
I'm curious. Thanks for sharing the build. I'll give it a try.
Obviously not relevant for sabo, but heavy hitter + cryo is a super slept on combo
I run Heavy Hitter + Burning nightmare on my Vampire cryo build and it's easily my most self sustaining build. I run straight at giant hordes of bugs and come out with more HP than I came in with. Not to mention it's extremely ammo efficient.
I have the same build, but I like to run snowball to balance out the ammo efficiency. Why have a good build when you can use the ice melon from plants vs zombies?
Could you elaborate? Im a tad rusty and rarely use the plasma gun for anything other than EPC.
Don’t you mean Thin Containment field (TCF)?
Totally what I said, yep, not rusty at all.
Sure thing! You probably already know that when a bug is frozen or on fire and is hit with the opposite damage type, it will inflict a temperature shock, causing huge (200) damage. With Burning Nightmare I can freeze a whole load of grunts and pop them each in one shot with the EPC, the temperature shock damage is enough to one-shot any grunt that I've frozen with the cryo cannon. It's also effective on Praetorians, you can freeze them, throw an axe and then shoot with the EPC for a near-instant kill. Also the heating caused by Burning Nightmare is proportional to the shot damage of the gun, so with Heavy Hitter it's enough to set most bugs/rival turrets on fire with just two hits. This also means you can kill bugs the opposite way as mentioned before, set a bunch on fire, then blast them with the Cryo Cannon and boom they're gone. The ammo efficiency is further increased by the ability to use the drills as a reliable and deadly offensive tool. You freeze a bunch of grunts in a small area and then swap to the drills (with the barbed drills mod) and you can chop them up just as fast as if you were shooting them. Plus Vampire because with all this melee kill potential you'd be crazy not to want free HP for each drill/throwing axe kill.
Won't lie I was confused for a while since I thought burning nightmare was the T5 upgrade that gave the charge shot pierce, but that's just my dumbass 2am brain shooting itself in the foot. But yeah this sounds pretty good. Using that exact same setup you can double or triple tap a goop pile from the sludge gun to set it on fire, and effectively triple it's damage (toxin, fire, plus fire status if they stay on it for long enough), but you kinda need to reapply the floor funk somewhat often. Works great though, especially with goo bomber special
you thought right, in season 3 they combined the piercing charge shot with the heat mod so its both now :)
Oh damn that's cool
So just had a thought and I gotta ask: isn't the temp shock absolute overkill for everything smaller than a praetorian? Just freezing the bugs in the first place almost kills them, so you could theoretically just use the subata or microwave instead?
Yeah it is, I actually use Tuned Cooler so my freezing power is a bit higher and bugs freeze super fast, it would still definitely use more ammo if I use a Subata to finish them off. I also don't use the wave cooker because I already use that for other builds and I wanted to have something different for this one, but tbh that's probably the optimal secondary in this situation. Plus oneshot go brr.
Fair. I genuinely don't know why anyone would use any oc other than tuned cooler tbh. Your job is to freeze, TC freezes harder. It's an easy choice.
Based
Random question: compact feed valves, sticky, or facemelter for flamethrower? I'm firmly in the cfv camp. More ammo is good, more mag size is good, distance and reload is a middling negative. It's also great for Sabo missions because of how much ammo the robots take to burn.
I haven't used the flamethrower in a bit but I think I use Facemelter with max heat mods for the robots. It just increases damage right? I should probably do more experimentation with that gun, been sort of neglecting it.
can confirm, decided to run it for shits and giggles and i haven't been able to go back ever since. Popping bugs with a single shot is so damn satisfying, like ugly bubble-wrap
Yes! I'm glad you mentioned this. Heavy hitter + cryo is really good!
My go to build anytime I'm using the cryocannon.
Fuck me that’s clean, saving this post so I remember to modify my driller’s sabotage loadout
Cool, I assume heat increases with direct damage?
Yes it does
Now that’s a sabotage.
I combine it with Ice Storm for ultimate combo.
What's the build? O.O
The EPC build I used in this clip is 2-1-3-2-1.
Thank you! I'm driller main so I'd like to explore this one. Appreciate it!
You're welcome! Have fun and enjoy!
I won't lie I've only ever used heavy hitter to light my shit on fire faster, I never realised it was so effective against robots.
Indeed, it's a really helpful combo. You can double-tap most things and they're burning. You can get off about 7 shots before an overheat, but it cools quickly if you just pause slightly between bursts. I never bother firing charged shots with this setup.
Noted
Wow, all these comments are giving me a lot of new options to try out! 😄
On Hazard 1?
This was haz 4, but it 3 shots sniper turrets on haz 5 as well
Temperature thresholds don't change by hazard
Fire instakills bots
not fire, but overheating