Totally new to pure gunning. I'm tempted to make Tundrus + Calahan, but I'm wondering if having recoil on two not-autogun weapons might make levels take too long. Plus I'm seeing people leghump iron slug, so I could just go with that over the other two, but I'd rather not invest in normal damage. I'm also tempted to go needle + polaris for FSC, but using two needles or two "pew pew pew, poof poof poof!" guns seems to be a bit of a turn off. That and how's gunning work into LD? I typically see techdriver switch shooting and not much else. Thoughts?
Good two-gun weapon set?
What's wrong with normal damage? The Iron Slug and Volcanic Pepperbox are excellent weapons and have enough damage to make them a threat to any monster.
You will probably want to get a Blitz if you plan on running FSC often but you can probably get a party to carry you if you are handy with a Shivermist.
Polaris/Wildfire are great weapons for PVP and if you know how to use them they can be a help in PVE when you wan to herd enemies.
Alchemers have high damage potential if you can work the charge attack or switch shoot.
Blasters are just easy to use.
Antiguas are good at pouring on a continuous stream of damage.
Tortoguns can create walls and you can reposition the enemy to your favor.
I could mention the Mixmaster but you probably don't even have the CE to barter for one.
Catalyzers are fun guns to play with but require a good bit of skill.
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The real question is why just 2 guns? I have several that I use. (lately been favoring that Pepperbox)
Well if you have to use 2 guns for everything, meaning that you won't ever change your load out, iron slug and volcanic pepperbox would probably be your best bet. You can do pretty much everything with those 2.
Having at least 3 guns would allow you to always have an effective weapon. If you were going to do with 3 guns, I'd recommend probably blitz needle, hail driver and umbra driver. That way, you can strafe with hail driver and then turn around to blitz them. Would work for most things, up until the danger missions. The new guns are OK, but they aren't going to be replacing blitz needle any time soon, and the drivers still offer high damage per second and that absurd charge attack.
If you aren't bound to crafting some number of guns, I'd recommend crafting most of the handguns. Most of the guns are fun and worth crafting, so you certainly won't be losing out when you craft one and having multiples of a damage type allows you to deal multiple types of damage. For instance, winter grave hits through crowds of enemies, damaging all of them, while umbra driver is used to deal loads of damage to a single enemy. Having both of them lets you take care of large crowds and single targets.
I mean two guns at a time, of course I plan to make more in the future. I just don't want to shoot myself in the foot with my first two weapons (on my new knight).
Ah, you're creating a new knight. In the other thread, I listed what I'd recommend to someone newer to the game-
1. Get the elemental and shadow blasters from basil, farming as many orbs as you can and selling other recipes for cash along the way. Start with magic cloak and hood. Use swift strike buckler as your shield, and work towards getting a volcanic plate shield for the final hall of heroes.
2. Beat all of the missions until the 5* hall of heroes, upgrading your weapons to 4* and leveling them to ten.
3. Earn the perfect mask of seerus, and upgrade your armor to chaos cloak. Leave your hood alone at level 10, as you won't need it until later.
4. Craft blitz needle, which will be your 5* weapon. Begin to work your way towards hail driver and iron slug.
But you've been around for a while and might have early access to operation crimson hammer. This would mean that you could craft the 1 and 3 star seerus mask variants, and get access to loads of handgun charge time reduction ahead of the curve, enabling you to make good use of tundrus and dark chaingun. If you can't access operation crimson hammer, then the blaster route would probably be best.
Eventually, you'll want to end up using the drivers, as those are incredible, so you could also start with their 2* alchemer counterparts.. but the blasters will be stronger until you can get them to 4 or 5* and stack some charge time reduction onto them, and even then the blasters would likely be useful. You don't have to take the blasters to 5* either though. You can just leave them at 4* and use them to farm until you get that charge time reduction, radiants, you know.
IMO, if you're going to go pure gun you need to rely on specialized damage types. Guns generally do less damage than swords, so if you want to have comparable damage to your doggeh companions, you'll need to exploit enemy weaknesses. The normal damage type guns aren't necessarily bad; they're just better as utility weapons rather than a DPS weapons. With few weapon slots, you can't really afford utility weapons.
If you're aiming for FSC, you'll need a Blitz to call yourself a respectable gunner. Alchemers are still one of the best DPS guns of the game, so I HIGHLY recommend you pick one up. You can go with any of the shadow guns and be perfectly fine (Grim Repeater is my personal fav, but Winter Grave and Umbra Driver are also respectable). I'd stay away from Antiguas as a pure gunner, because that'll give you carpal tunnel within 3 runs. If you grab a third weapon slot then feel free to pick up an Iron Slug or Pepperbox.
Be VERY careful with Pulsars. The worst thing you can do with a Pulsar is assume it's a DPS weapon. Do NOT use a Pulsar as a DPS gun against anything other than Gun Puppy equivalents. If you do, your teammates will hate you, and I'll spit in your breakfast cereal. Spamming a Pulsar may seem alright for the shooter, but for everyone else it's a HUGE pain in the rear.
Pulsars are good but the general principle behind good use is that you want to herd the enemies into a corner and keep them there. The biggest problem is when you try to herd what someone is trying to kill. (Supernova also a good safe weapon for tortodrones)
Pepperbox and I-Slug are great all around DPS weapons but honestly there will always be more specialized choices which are better in those special scenarios.
Pulsar spam is good if your team is built on that (if everyone is pulsar spamming go for it).
I dont know if it's been posted here but, you should try the Callahan and Wintergrave since you can use double switching on them. If you want to know how just check the wiki or mail me on SK.
I know I could switch shoot, but I'm wondering if the self stun would make it ineffective.
Pulsars I don't hate, but I really see them as sidearms for swordie strikers in LD (close range isn't an issue + strikers get range and demo capabilities they couldn't use with bombs)
There are no weapons in the game that can stun yourself when you use them. So far only Curse and Fire are self inflictable statuses.
I dont know if it's been posted here but, you should try the Callahan and Wintergrave
The original post and post #1 both mention that combination.
Orangeo, I too find that combination tempting. My concern is that the freeze will lessen the charge damage so much that Iron Slug is better than Winter Grave even against slimes and gremlins. I've asked about this in other threads, but I didn't get clear answers. So I'm going to try it myself.
Yes, Blitz Needle with an elemental gun is a good plan for Firestorm Citadel. Polaris has its uses --- mainly crowd-control --- but Nova/Storm Drivers do more damage, and are more fun because they reward skillful play. Well, Polaris also rewards skillful play, insofar as it punishes skill-less play. But I'd recommend Nova/Storm. Fehzor likes Hail Driver, but I find Hail Driver frustrating. If a regular shot causes freeze, then the next regular shot will often break that freeze. You certainly can't spam the regular shots. The charge certainly works though.
"stun yourself"
I mean the recoil. I was using the word "stun" generally, I guess I still gotta get my head back into SK terms.
I tried the switch shooting with those two and I can tell you that it does move you a significant amount after long term firing however, you can move normally since the first shot of those guns have little immobilizing duration.
It fires about 2 rounds per second while using the DS technique.
Oh I forgot to mention (a lot of things tend to slip my mind around 1:00am)
For enemies with shields and vanaduke, if you fire a magnus type charge at point blank you hit them like 7(?) Times (not sure exactly but it wrecks Trojans and deadnaughts)
And bopp, the winter grave charge usually gets in a lot of hits before freezing, and if it does freeze its a good way to set up another shot, I personally neverhad much of a problem with that (also freezing strikers in PvP is definitely a good reason to get it)
Thanks. But I wonder if you can give any insight on this more precise question.
With damage+6, which is more likely to kill a slime or gremlin in one charge shot: Iron Slug or Winter Grave?
"With damage+6, which is more likely to kill a slime or gremlin in one charge shot: Iron Slug or Winter Grave?"
Winter Grave, since it deals critical damage to gremlin and slime.
Yeah, probably what drew said (also, if something is near death while frozen the thaw damage will most likely finish them off)
If the status doesn't hit then the Winter Grave, this is rather unlikely so I would say it is a tie. Winter grave has effective damage but it's status hinders it Max potential, Iron slug doesn't hinder it Max potential but it isn't a Super Effective damage type.
I've noticed the status is more likely to be applied if you hit the enemy at point blank or a bit farther and less likely if it first hits about halfway or near the end, but that's just my observations (by this I mean instant status, like there is no prior damage)
Some of the responders seem to be missing the point. I know that Winter Grave does extra damage to gremlins and slimes. That's why I'm asking the question. Is the damage lost from having freeze "stop" the charge attack bigger than the damage gained from shadow?
Holy-Nightmare gets the question (thanks), but does not appear to have the detailed information I need.
Edit: Oohnorak, don't I want to hit at nearly point-blank range, to maximize my chances of one-shot-killing the target? I don't know exactly how the charge hits work nowadays.
I'll just add to what I said earlier
Due to my observations I think the winter grave would be better if you hit the enemy after the charge bullet has traveled halfway to the max range, but at point blank an iron slug would do better
Edit: as I said, I noticed it has a higher chance to inflict freeze on the first damage tick, so not really in this case
Thanks for clarifying. Let me just summarize what has been said here, even though we don't have detailed data to support these assertions. The topic is charging Iron Slug or Winter Grave against slimes and gremlins.
* At point blank range, Iron Slug does many hits at neutral damage, while Winter Grave probably does many fewer hits (due to freeze) with bonus damage. So Iron Slug is predicted to win on average.
* At medium-to-long range, Iron Slug does a few hits at neutral damage, while Winter Grave probably does a few hits with bonus damage. So Winter Grave is predicted to win on average.
So I'm still not sure whether Callahan+Winter Grave is better than Callahan+Iron Slug. But probably I'll just craft Winter Grave and see for myself. I'm also trying Iron Slug alone on one of my alternate knights.
From what I have seen it is easier to freeze/refreeze enemies with the Winter Grave, this leads to safe and easy charge potential. Comparing it's effectiveness to say Callahan charge vs beasts would be iffy.
I can tell you that a head on, point blank Charge from a Callahan (no damage perks) can pretty much OHKO even Alpha Wolvers (wait till they pop up behind you and commit to a bite).
I have watched as Winter Grave charges stop an enemy in its tracks, from there the Winter Grave user can choose to ready another WG charge or go for another weapon charge.
On Freeze Immune enemies the Winter Grave is as devastating as a Callahan (minus stun) but there is only a tiny number of freeze immune monsters that are weak to shadow.
Callahan and Iron Slug have the more powerful charges but the Winter Grave has the most Setup potential (like other freeze weapons and vortexes) of the "Magnus family"
Insofar as your comments are directed to me: Thank you, but I am not interested in setting up frozen enemies for subsequent charges, and I am not interested in the general playability of the weapon.
I am interested in a very particular thing: Whether Winter Grave emits enough damage to one-shot-kill monsters (even though the charge misses many (?) of the monsters because it freezes them midway through).
Yes, provided it doesn't freeze them. For this one flaw it is best used as status spread and heavy damage vs large targets (giant lichens and JK take massive damage).
Both the guns are great for OSKing medics through crowds. The Magnus can hit Kats 4 times with one charge.
Edit; Yoikes, seems to be more than 4. Not to mention RJ.
Just keep in mind that without any charge time reduction, using guns like tundrus and magnus isn't going to be nearly as stellar as it would otherwise be, and that iron slug branches at 5*.
I cannot confirm Bopp's suspicion, but my experience so far leads me to share it. In particular, I find myself trying to set monsters up kinda close to and facing away from a barrier which will cause the bullet to explode, since they seem to more often get knocked out by a single shot that way than if the bullet leaves them behind due to Freeze. (If they're close enough to the barrier, facing doesn't matter and you just aim a wee bit behind them.) Trying to use the far end of the weapon's range doesn't work so well against teleporting Wolvers, but against Devilites you can still exploit their predictably dodging in one direction if there's something in the way of dodging in the opposite direction, just like we've been doing with most other guns.
I'm considering going for Iron Slug since the Freeze line is less reliable, and really only bothered with the Tundrus line because I've always wanted a Shadow + Freeze variant of some slow, heavy weapon. A Vortex bomb and/or a big purple Troika would have been my ideal, but between Graviton, Triglav and the Apocrea stuff that seems unlikely. :(
Back on-topic, for 2-slot gun specialists, combining Autoguns with Alchemers is still a great, solid choice. Before the update, I thought of the "standard gunslinger weapons" as Needle, Prismatech, Shadowtech, and Pepperbox. Equip Needle where Pierce is appropriate, Pepper where it isn't, and with whichever Alchemer is more appropriate. The new Shadow Autogun is easy to recommend, so if you don't like Normal damage, you can double up on Shadow weapons so you can swap out either Needle or Prisma as appropriate. I prefer having a Normal weapon, but it's not necessary if you can always equip any two you want of the other 3 types.
After using some Magnus-family guns for a while post-update, I can recommend all of them as at least second weapons for their damage types. They seem to combine well with both Autoguns and Alchemers and mostly perform very well, but I'm not yet confident recommending them as your first weapons of any damage types because the projectile collisions are still flaky, at least in my experience. YMMV, though- if they hit reliably for you, then by all means Magnus is great as a first weapon for Pierce. They're very charge-centric, and the charge knocks monsters hard, which you might sometimes want to avoid when playing in a party, but OTOH the uncharged attack serves up Gremlins on a silver platter for your party mates. ...and Wolvers too, which might be important if you're specialising in guns, now that I think about it.
If you're torn between Voltaic and Prismatic Alchemer, or between Needle and Magnus, consider what ridiculously handsome couples Blitz & Nova and Callahan & Storm make.
Blasters and Catalysers are great fun, but they're more frivolous things to get IMO, as with Antiguas.
Callahan and winter grave
An iron slug will help too if you don't want to freeze enemies but callahan doesn't work
So get all 3 and swap them around for different enemies
(Also the iron slug will work well on event enemies that take neutral from everything or are resistant to everything but normal, like cakes and tortodrones)