OK, so I joined up about a week ago, and have been playing botmatches since I rarely see people, and I've had a couple of rounds against humans the past few days which have helped show the difference of pace and tactics necessary in such circumstances. As much as I have not yet had a large game, I feel I can somewhat extrapolate the idea from the smaller games I've had.

To cut a long story short too late, I've got what I would concern to be an endgame build focused on pistols, and was wondering about what others thought of the setup.

I've broken the list down into "core" abilities, "fun" tag-ons, and a "synergy" section for ease of reference, and have noted the crossovers where there is overlap, such as with Venom. Oh, and whilst I think of it, NRG = energise, and RAEG = explosive rage, 'natch...

Weapon loadout: Deagle/Shock as main, plausibly Sniper *cough*ruger*cough* as secondary for times of running away or low health pseudo-camping.

Core:

FF - 5
CC - 5
BB - 10
Regen - 10
Invis - 10
Crit - 10
NRG - 10
PB - 10
Dash - 5 (+2 Synergy)
Venom - 1 (Synergy)
Infect - 5
BF - 1 (Synergy)
SR - 1 (Synergy)

Fun:

Vap - 10
RAEG - 10

Synergy:

Venom - 1 (Core)
Dash - 2 (Core)
BF - 1 (Core)
SR - 1 (Core)
BT - 1
RAEG - 3 lol spare phys synergy
1 /cy/ synergy remaining


So it's a bit of a bodge in ways, kinda wrangling it to get there with synergies and such. If there's a way I can re-allocate sneakily later in the game, I'll probably reduce the FF to 1 for the sake of a few more points. Admittedly Vaporise and RAEG are there for the fun, and are more suited to teamplay or the zombie mode we're all waiting for, and could easily be cut if they seem too unweildy, but beyond that I quite like it. If I was to have the extra 20 points I'm honestly not sure where they'd go, and as much as part of me wants to take 4 points off FF for SR, I'm not sure whether 'tis needed or how it would re-balance the mana conservation in-game. And the rogue /cy/ point is 'cause I can't decide if Shockwave is likely to be one skill too many, or a much-needed measure, again, something i leave to your discretion for now. The BF is something I'd just throw on when I spawn then forget about, really.

Regardless, for the moment being, I'm working on levelling my mutant according to this set-up 'til your fine selves poke some holes through it for me to sew around.

Looks like a lot of Active skills... I already have a lot of trouble with just 5 active skills..

Use this to reset your skill tokens.

* Too many active skills. You'd only end up using a select few or have trouble trying to use the one you want. The idea here is that you'd want to minimize the number of active skills to the ones you'll truly use while placing everything else under passives.

* Low level BF without any Silver Shield is absolutely useless. Also, since you're using a sniper rifle, you would not want to have BF at all. If you decide to do away with a sniper rifle and use something else to complement your pistol or you think you still want the Silver Shield, then change BF to 1 (for fast cooldown) with Silver Shield 5-7 (can be higher if you intend to snipe, 5-7 is for general combat). Otherwise just forget about BF.

* So you have Plasma Ball, without any Firestorm. Your plasma ball is going to be very weak and rarely used and is furthermore not your core skill. It would be better if you moved those 10 skillpoints over to Stolen Seekers. A passive filler is better than an active filler. Alternatively, shift the points to Self-Repair, any remaining points can go to Stolen Seekers. If you can't or do not wish to put points into Stolen Seekers, put the skillpoints to use in the Mental skill tree.

* I personally think its better to have 5 Venom than 2 Venom. The longer duration will be helpful while maintaining the damage.

* Force Fields and Corpse are fine. Use it to charge. If you still intend to keep BT, use it to retreat.

* Your choice of passive skills are good save for Rage(explained below). Wise choice to use Regen when you are using a pistol and a sniper. Also wise to have crit to back you up, along with dash to escape.

* If you are desperate for skillpoints, remove points from Rage, because it is currently the most useless skill in the game and it slows your bullet speed to hell.

* Vapor is not really a "fun skill". It actually works in a small game with more than 2 people because it can serve as area denial to make people hesitate to walk past a chokepoint.

* Treat your Ruger more like the primary weapon, because then you can see further and take advantage of every sniping opportunity AND you can quickly draw out your Deagle (pistols can be drawn very quickly while Ruger takes a while to draw).


You can start off on the Mental skills first as they are the most useful in general, although placing 1 point into Energize first is acceptable as it'd help you find and pick up your gun without buying again. I don't recommend getting Regen until you can get Dash.

I know there's a few too many, hence things like BT and BF being purely there für die lulz.



Actually, the "PB" stood for "Phasic Bullets". I guess I should stop writing long posts just ere I retire to Nod haha...



You may well be right, but I'm thinking it does 20hp overall, not 20hp/s, and I was planning to use it largely as a BT beater considering I don't have plasma, relying more on the cheaper Energise for when I'm fighting in general w/ my pistols.



This is a problem I'm already encountering, namely that whenever I've been trying to make a pistol build it seems to turn into a sniper build. As much as I understand the link 'twixt the two, if I'm to start using a sniper as my main then I get the feeling it'll turn me from a mid-range runner to a long-range camper, which is contra to the way I play. Of course, I could always use it as a quick pot shot ere I charge in, but then that would snap me out of my invis and give me a lot of ground to cover before my pistols become useful, meaning if I was to do that, I might as well just take another sniper shot...yawn...



Do you mean it'd make me go back to get it? I don't see how having energise will help me find my gun, unless it gives it some kind of visual effect I've been unaware of or stops the enemy picking it up...



So I should do w/o passive healing 'til I've put 5 points in Dash? Seems a touch extreme...

This being said, if I'm to take those ten points from RAEG (and eliminating the synergy in BT for being superfluous), should I put them in to 5 Venom and 5 SS? it'd still leave me with two spare synergy in Physical that I'd know not what to do with...

Oh, and cheers for the input! Much obliged.

Oh, Phasic.
Phasic bullets kills your damage a lot and its quite rare to be able to use it to shoot around corners, so you might want to lower your levels in it.


It sure does have a visual effect when you're the owner of the energized gun.

See, Energize has numerous advantages:
* Sure your ammo count drops, but it drops by very little in general you won't notice it unless you go a very high level. At level 1, Deagle can still fire 7 bullets. Beyond that you'll fire 6.
* Increased bullet speed helps you aim. If you are the owner, the more kills the more bullet speed without any further loss in ammo.
* It makes the gun last longer on the ground, allowing you to pick it up and thus save money having to buy the gun again.
* To add to the previous point, a gun that YOU energized (ie: your gun), when dropped, will give off an orange aura which only you can see. You know that gun is yours if you see it glowing orange.


Its possible. You will automatically heal up after 5 seconds of not taking damage, and this is actually sufficient. Those healing skills are mostly for in-combat healing.

Besides, your first skills can be Invisibility. Big advantage for you to get out of sight and heal using the default passive healing, as well as to sneak up on someone. And if you get Dash early you can use this to an even greater level. Plus, Regen requires you to be near someone before it heals you, and having Dash will not only help you escape but also help you chase people and thus heal you.


You should. As for the 2 spare synergy in Physical, here's a useful suggestion:
* Deliberately remove 1 skillpoint from the Physical tree and put them in another tree, you'll end up having 1 Physical synergy. Treat the remaining synergy as a substitute for skillpoints. So for example, instead of having 5 Corpse Construction, you can remove 1 skillpoint and put the 1 synergy to get 4+1 Corpse Construction which works effectively the same as 5 Corpse Construction. The extra skillpoint that you removed can then go to SS to get 6 SS.

You're welcome =)

The problem with taking points from Phasic is that I need them to unlock Vaporise. I suppose I could take ten off and put them in BT, although it seems a touch unecessary, or I could take five off and put them in Shockwave, but I don't see myself using it all that often...

Oh, and if I've got ten points left over from taking them out of RAEG, should I stick them in BF or SS?

Put them into Self-Repair for faster healing.

As for BF or SS, SS. Because BF damage is generally too low and increasing BF level will also increase cooldown time which makes it worse for SS usage.

Interesting build man and welcome to the forums! Gotta ask though, why use a drake as your primary when other weapons are far stronger? Is it purely because it's cheap and lays your safe up for shock revolver?