A primer on ghoul builds

[Zylli]

I have been taking a break from FO76 for a while. The new playable ghoul system coming out on the 18th looks very interesting. So I wanted to start a discussion on builds and possibly get some additional ideas from others.

Feral or not?

From what I can tell, ghouls are forced to choose between melee or ranged. If you go with feral status, you gain a melee damage buff at the expense of not being able to use chems and your accuracy is so bad you shoot sideways. Going non-feral gives you the accuracy back but takes away the melee damage bonus. There doesn't seem to be any point in trying to go halfway in between. Also, due to the it seems to be a choice one doesn't want to switch too often.

Power Armor and Radiation

Ghouls gain an extra health bar called "glow" from radiation. It would seem going with regular armor is the obvious choice, but consider the following:

Radiation isn't very common in Appalachia in the first place. Nuke zones are the only large-coverage sources of significant radiation. Some events have barrels or other easily-avoidable radiation hazards. Many events have no source of radiation. My point is that you have to go out of your way to get radiated from the environment, so even without power armor, you will often be fighting in areas with no radiation readily available.

Glow seems incredibly important for activating certain perk cards, which greatly increase your damage, feral or not. Wearing power armor seems like a good choice for protecting your glow bar. To restore glow, Toxic Goo is easy to obtain.

Mutations and Consumable Buffs

As far as I can tell, ghouls will still benefit from mutations and food/drink buffs. Ghouls will need to use serums to acquire mutations because they are immune to radiation. This also means herbivore and carnivore are important for improving food buffs.

BiS Legendary Effects

Overeater's doesn't work on ghouls, and Bloodied/Unyielding is not practical due to having no way to control your health bar. For the first star on armors, nothing stands out as being useful in most situations. The extra DR/ER effects are pointless when you can easily get into diminishing returns without power armor. Some mix of the -15% damage from certain factions might be good to equip, especially for the raid. Nothing really changes for the second or third stars for ghouls.

Furious weapons will be competitive with Bloodied, even if you're not a ghoul. Stacks are now called "Onslaught" and certain perk cards can increase your max stacks to exceed the damage bonus provided by Bloodied. Gunslinger Master makes you start off with max stacks, which benefits slow weapons more than fast ones because you get one stack per second with that perk card active. I can see single-shot firearms and non-automatic melee being competitive again due to Onslaught mechanics.

Build Ideas

I have three ideas for ghoul builds.

Unarmed Regular Armor Ghoul Build[nukesdragons.com]
Theoretically, this build would focus on landing power attacks with a fist weapon.

The next two builds lack certain mutations because the intent is to be able to switch between them without having to redo your serums.

Two-Handed Power Armor Ghoul[nukesdragons.com]
Again, the focus would be on using power attacks. Keep in mind power armor will ADD 10 strength, which isn't shown in the build editor at the time of writing this.

Plasma Caster Power Armor Ghoul[nukesdragons.com]
This build would focus on using the plasma caster, dealing big hits with criticals enhanced by ghoul's glow perk card. Achieving crits every other shot might require food buffs and/or legendary effects.

If you have any ideas, questions, or feedback, I would be interested in reading it. Thanks!

[Mooman]

What I plan to do is play a no glow tank ghoul. The glow system is garbage and only good if you spam toxic goo etc.

For tankyness it'll be Solar Armour, Battle Genes perk (in combat healing) and the legendary perk that reduces feralness and HP per kill. It's all about maximising passive HP gain.

Plenty of ghoul perks will work without glow such as reload speed, VATS skills, weak points etc.

I'll mostly use 'cowboy' (no, not because of the tv show...) single load weapons, lever action, pump shotgun or single action revolver. The ghoul reload perk really helps here.

It's a 'ghoul lite' build and about all I care to do with the system. All my other characters will stay human as they work fine or get good utility from ghoul allergic perks or legendary effects.

[X3]

I've noticed if you apply mutations after transformation you don't get any of its negative effects. Unless its a bug.

[Phantom]

Originally posted by X3:

I've noticed if you apply mutations after transformation you don't get any of its negative effects. Unless its a bug.

ghouls only can get mutations from serums

serums suppress the negative effects for an hour

[Percello]

I've been contemplating a build. Here me out:

A close ranged, gamma gun, onslaught, pistol ghoul build. Not only will you do nice damage, but the radiation aoe will also keep your glow up or maxed. I haven't worked out any of the other stuff yet, though. I'm thinking like.. a Furious, Faster fire rate, faster reload, Encircler's Gamma gun.

I dunno. Theorycrafting is fun.

[OGPG]

Being a Ghoul is already a Mutation.
Serums Mutations shouldnt be able to work on them.
Ghoul will be an OP Class.
This is a poor design choice IMHO

[OranTruk]

Sheepsquatch Staff can be poisoned or flamed for around 500 extra damage. The Alien Enforcer also has added effect. Bear Head maybe? Quad Explosive Western Revolver is great.

[Wack-A-Mole MLRS]

Originally posted by Mooman:

What I plan to do is play a no glow tank ghoul. The glow system is garbage and only good if you spam toxic goo etc.

For tankyness it'll be Solar Armour, Battle Genes perk (in combat healing) and the legendary perk that reduces feralness and HP per kill. It's all about maximising passive HP gain.

Plenty of ghoul perks will work without glow such as reload speed, VATS skills, weak points etc.

I'll mostly use 'cowboy' (no, not because of the tv show...) single load weapons, lever action, pump shotgun or single action revolver. The ghoul reload perk really helps here.

It's a 'ghoul lite' build and about all I care to do with the system. All my other characters will stay human as they work fine or get good utility from ghoul allergic perks or legendary effects.

To much this and that. I'm just going to run around naked. If I can't shoot up at least I will scare then away.

[Mooman]

Originally posted by Percello:

I've been contemplating a build. Here me out:

A close ranged, gamma gun, onslaught, pistol ghoul build. Not only will you do nice damage, but the radiation aoe will also keep your glow up or maxed. I haven't worked out any of the other stuff yet, though. I'm thinking like.. a Furious, Faster fire rate, faster reload, Encircler's Gamma gun.

I dunno. Theorycrafting is fun.

I tried that on the PTS, didn't work. The amount you use for glow abilities outweighs the amount you get back.

Particularly if you try to max it by using the 2 glow abilities (one regular one energy weapons).

But... PTS is always high lag for me so it might actually work better on live.