A comprehensive and attempted objective look at the guns

[ShirowMasamune]

I will be updating this as New guns and new enemies come out, But i wanted to try to break down the weapons, Where they are useful. Where they are not so useful. Where they work in conjuction and so on. if i have missed anything let me know, Id also like to know peoples favourites.


Before we Begin, No matter what anyone says over all, Depending on your play style depends on what you find useful, You might find Certain tactics not to your liking, As stated with one of the guns, It has split people right down the middle with half saying its useless and half saying its the best. If you have Different views or have found tactics that maybe few others have thought of. Feel free to post corrections or personal takes, and keep in mind that no matter how straight to the facts i might try to be, It would also be based on my testing with my play style. There are things i might forget to mention or even not realise, and be sure to check over the comments for other peoples takes as well. Thank you ^_^


The Starting Pistol... and it's Alts.

The standard pistol has a decently fast fire rate, Is hit scan so it has incredibly range, and can easily be used up close as well. the damage enough to 1 shot lower teir enemies, May require a head shot. For the slightly tankier enemies, it takes significantly more shots, How ever. Basic pistol only, is possibly to pull off thanks to the Majority of the enemies having low Hp, It is not a throw away weapon as there will always be circumstances where it is useful

The Piercer Alt Fire.
A charged beam that hits 3 times. Useful for taking out or softening priority targets. As the name suggests, it pierces, but only 3 times And thankfully it only Pierces if the enemy it hits dies, Making it still useful for bosses as all 3 will hit a single target. It is a little more situational than the standard fire, but those situations do arise.

The MarksMan Alt Fire,
It is initially easy to overlook this as style for styles sake but if you have the terrain for it, you can hit enemies over cover or around corners with the coin, Helps in low hp situations if you have the cover. If you know when enemies will spawn you can chain all 4 coins just as they spawn to take out most of them before a fire fight starts. and since the ricochet aims for the weak points of the enemies, the damage is often quite high as well. able to kill some mid tier enemies with the right timing and able to deal large chunks of damage to higher tier enemies as well. The situations where this will be Combat useful are much fewer and farther between however, There is always usually a better solution to the problems you might be facing.


The Shotguns.
Core Eject Alt Standard Fire.
The standard fire is a little slow on this one, It has a high damage output but it is not useful for groups, at close range the spread is small, and at long range the spread is to high. Less about clearing groups and more dealing heavy damage to single targets. And more importantly Getting the Health from the enemies,

Core Eject. Effectively a grenade, It explodes on impact with a relatively small area of effect, With a lot less damage than i feel it should do, The grenade flies further than you will ever need it to fly fully charged, so range is not a problem. without a charge the explosion will hit you. Like the Marksman. The combat scenarios where the grenade will be useful are few, The shotgun itself has a built in option that is more effective in combat and that is the ability to punch the shell, This takes a little timing, but when you are used to it, it makes the shotgun much more effective at long range, and from shooting repeatedly, Looks like the explosion is a little bigger than the grenade also. You can now Shoot the Ejected Core to make it explode


The Pump charge.
The standard fire Fires slightly faster than the core eject, Making it more useful in combat in general, and the pump charge allows you to increase the pellet count for higher damage. Again at long range the spread is way to high to be effective. But at close range the damage it deals might be seen as a little excessive, The over charge however is the dark horse here. If you are willing to risk 50 points of Hp. You can deal with enemies like the Malicious face In 1 hit. I say Risk, Because you can avoid the damage of the over charges huge explosion, but it requires timing that you can easily mess up. The explosion radius is very high and the damage is massive, making it useful for dealing with the higher tier enemies and also wiping out all of the lowest tier enemies that might be surrounding you Combat wise this shotgun has the most uses, as being close to heal from enemies is useful, and this is the best close range weapon in the game so far.


Nail gun.
From the things i have read from people, This is certainly the most confusing weapon, Half the people saying its useless, the other half saying its over powered. The nail gun deals mid to high damage at close to mid range because of its extremely fast fire rate, It also makes a lot of enemies stutter it does not usually kill anything faster than the shotgun would, But when the enemies are stuttering who needs to kill them faster. So whats the catch ? Its blood. Where as the Shotgun might leave a large hole, The nails leave small holes, and the nails also basically plug those holes, The blood you get from using the nail gun effectively makes it a light Regeneration rather than a full heal like the shotgun often is and can be. The Attractor can be Strategically handy, And also quite devastating if you nail a strong enemy in the head with a magnet and load its face full of steel, But in difficult fights, you are often better pressed to maximise your damage and your healing. the nail gun does not truly come in to its own until you unlock the heatsink Where you can stick a magnet in to someones head. and then proceed to load them with an huge ammount of nails that are on fire. The damage on using and hitting Both charges of the heatsink deals massive damage to the bosses, including absolutly mincing the Act 1 final boss.
It is not as universally useful as the shotgun, But it is powerful

The Rail Gun.
Electric
Decently powerful Piercing blast, Good for dealing a large ammount of damage. or clearing out a lot of enemies in a line, It is instant, and is useful as a opening or a closing move, But Because of the charge time this is obviously not a primary weapon, Its a secondary weapon where the developers misunderstood what the term secondary means. It is effectively your smart bomb option, Limited use, But devastating.


Screwdriver.....
I actually need help with this one. i have been testing it out a little bit, and i am just not seeing it. It deals Slow damage over time, Which is not as good as any of the other versions of the Rail cannon. And im not seeing where it is good combined with anything compared to using the Heat sink in conjuction to deleting the enemies with the Electic rail gun. If anyone has spotted a use for this., please comment and let me know.

Malicious.
This is the logical antithesis to the shotgun, The shotgun is fantastic for heavy damage against single targets. This is useful for killing all lower teir enemies in a large area, while dealing an okay amount of damage to anything that survives, This is a great way of clearing enemies out when you want to focus on the malicious faces or the stone statues,


The Revolver Upgrade...
an effective 2X boost in power from the standard, Enemies that would have taken 2 shots before. Now take 1. things that take 4 to 5 now often take 2. The shooting speed is slightly less than standard. but the power easily justifies that.This is the strongest long range weapon the game currently has to offer. The Piercer Alt of the upgrade is significantly stronger, using in conjunction with the electric rail gun to kill the faces from afar with great ease,

I only just Found out you can use the marksman with the upgraded pistol. and also that you can Deflect any hit scan shot off of the coin. so the The coin is slightly more powerful than i thought.

[Venc Ganence]

I'll go through them in the same order you did.

I think you nailed piercer. It is a simple but effective tool that can be used to score chunks of damage or take out multiple fodder enemies with proper positioning.

You haven't fully experienced the Marksman variant in all its glory. The coin's trajectory is never random, always dependent upon your own movement at the time of throw. With a bit of practice, shooting this coin becomes easy. Against flighty enemies like V2, or in chaotic fights where you have to focus on moving, hitting a flicked coin is much easier than tracking a target at high speed. Multiple coins also do not behave how you imply: tossing multiple coins will cause the shot to ricochet between all the airborne coins before hitting an enemy, each ricochet doubling the damage of the shot. Additionally, any hitscan attack can be ricocheted off the coin, including enemy attacks. It is possible but difficult to reflect attacks back at bosses, such as the Malicious Face's laser or V2's revolver. Also the Railcannon. Electric and Malicious are both hitscan, and so both can be ricocheted off the coin (or multiple) for both easy targeting and higher damage. The coin can also be punched, shooting into an enemy's weakspot and then bouncing off, ready to be shot or punched again. Punching is admittedly very difficult to execute.

Core Eject has slightly tighter spread than Pump Action, even at pump's lowest pellet count. Core Eject's explosion is the same size and slightly higher damage than Projectile Boost, with the full charge being effectively a safer and more reliable Projectile Boost. No charge is useful for carpet bombing, as you can jump over a group of fodder, eject and dash away. Similar to full pump explosion, you can also no charge and dash to evade the self harm while grounded.

Pump Action is pretty much covered. Save for the ability to use the over pump as a rocket jump. There's some secrets that require this or something similar to attain.

The nailgun is a safe option. It's not great for score or healing, but the sheer volume of fire makes it useful for fodder and its magnet makes that torrent useful for other enemies. Heat Sink is best used in conjunction with the Magnet to focus all the nails on one target, as you stated. When struggling against enemies, the nailgun is a crutch that can be relied on; stick the enemy with a magnet, hold down fire, and focus on evasion. The magnet handles the aiming for you. The nailgun can be used for building score, but only as a trap. Using multiple magnets, or a single magnet when short on time, a kill zone can be set up to lead enemies through. While few enemies are durable enough to make full use of this feature, the nailgun + magnet can also be used to launch enemies, which is often fatal.

Your analysis of the Railcannon by itself is in line with my own experience. Electric is good single target while Malicious is good room clear. However, Screwdriver is not very practical. Screwdriver changes from hitscan to projectile, with an arc. On top of that, the overall damage is only slightly more than Electric (confirmed on Malicious Face in 0-1).

What you're missing from the Railcannon I mentioned above for Marksman: all hitscan attacks can ricochet off the coins. The coins can make for easier targets than the enemies themselves, and also increase damage. Malicious seems to be harder to hit the coin with than Electric, however.

The Alternate revolver fires at half the rate of the standard version, with double the damage. Even the charge up, damage and cooldown time for the Piercer's shot are doubled. The Alternate also cannot make use of the split shot functionality of Marksman. Only standard can shoot a coin at it's zenith to split the bullet in two, hitting two separate enemies. The Alternate revolver is arguably the best healing tool, as a point blank headshot actually full heals you, where the shotgun heals a lot but not fully.

You didn't mention the arms at all. I'm not qualified to compare the two, as I have a preference for being able to parry (and therefore Projectile Boost) but the Knuckleblaster has more depth to it than meets the eye. It can be used to push enemies, clear fodder, deal a delayed double hit to single targets, but can also launch, which is an application I have not dabbled in. I also hear the shockwave can deflect projectiles.

[ShirowMasamune]

Thank you for all of that Venc Ganence ^_^. I was personally going with more of the combat aspects, which is why i never mentioned Rocket jump, But i should have I should have Also mentioned that there are specific perfect timings with the Marksman. And as stated right at the very very end, i only just found out that the marksman works with any hit scan ^_^.

Its weird, I tested the Drill against Swords machine, and the damage was not as much as the electric..... Different enemy weaknesses ? or random RNG ??

I was more attempting to not Praise the Holy hand cannon too much, Because personally speaking i have been soloing with that gun Because it is amazing. And i didnt want to over step in to the territory of " This gun is perfect and the best, screw all the guns" so i went through testing the guns 1 by 1 against various things.

That does lead me to add something very important to the list though, so thank you for that.

[Durendal.exe]

The thing about screwdriver, is that it causes monumental, constant bleeding. Essentially turning whatever it's stuck to into a mobile and near-instant health regen point until the screw wears off or it dies. This is staggeringly situational in actual usefulness, and I fire it functionally never. It may have utility in combo with close-range nailgun use to keep the DPS and still get to heal?

Some notable quirks you maybe missed on the alt revolver; the alt revolver round will not splitshot coins. Secondarily, it isn't a double-damage raytrace, it's a two-shot piercing trace. Which means both that it will hit two guys, and that it can break glass without charging.

...Though I've seen it kill two husks in a line, which require two pistol shots each normally, so the exact nature of its relationship of damage to pierce count is mildly confusing. It may be double damage and two-pierce, but I'm inconclusive on this.

I personally find the shotgun parry timing more or less impossible. Or too inconsistent to rely on. I use the grenades mostly as uncharged bombs while dashing over groups of enemies

I spent some time testing it and can confirm what Venc says about the knuckleduster; it can indeed deflect projectiles with the shockwave. They don't, however, go anywhere in particular, so this is much more defensive than parrying with the feedbacker.

I've moved arm switch to a thumbkey on my mouse, and usually hotswap to red expressly for punching things off cliffs or finishing medium fodder. The scattershot guys can usually be finished with a punch after an alt revolver headshot. Husks of both kinds simply explode when punched with it.

[ShirowMasamune]

feels like everything does the screwdrivers job better, The switch from weapon to weapon might not be long, But currently nothing has the Hp to warrant screwdriver in the head in combination with other things. Electric from what i have witnessed does more damage instantly. Although Venc has contested that so i guess theres either RNG damage or Different enemies take different damage differently. Maybe we will see more from it in future, Give it its own charge, a few extra drills. and then be able to use the electric to Chain Lightning anything with a drill in its bonce. Currently as it is though, Not many people have found any use that makes it particually better than anything else.

I am unsure on the exact nature of the revolver i have lined 2 husks and its only killed 1. and sometimes 2. i believe you are right on the 2 shot nature of the revolver though.

See i have the Knack of the shotgun parry, i can do that at will without missing a beat, But as mentioned Play styles vary, Its not a matter of being more or less skilled, just different. and i find myself not using it that much since i got the red Fist, Because that does more for me than the shotgun does.

I believe the knuckle blaster was recently updated to deal with projectiles if i remember the notes correctly. " Edit" It was updated to make it more accurate" i use the red fist mostly to detonate husks and on the flame thrower guys after dealing one shot with the revolver to the face because that deals with them

[Durendal.exe]

Oh I agree completely with the drill. It's not in a good place. I can see the design thinking behind it but it just doesn't pan out in practice, definitely.

Oh and for sure, the shotgun parry is objectively better than the grenades. Though I can see where maybe I need to work the red fist into my doings a little more, yeah.

See, I use the marksman revolver for the streetsweepers. A hitscan critshot on them detonates their fueltank, so the marksman coin will always make them explode. (There are times this is tactically inadvisable, but not times I won't risk it for the joy of explosions)

[ShirowMasamune]

On Cybergrind, i find myself opening every single wave with chaining 4 coins. That tends to immediatly detonate all of the street sweepers ^_^. Probably my most used weapon on cybergrind because of that,

But outside of cybergrind, my personal usuage of the marksman is limited.

[Durendal.exe]

Haha, same. Just slam-store jump to space and set off a full set of coins. If it doesn't clear out the street sweepers, it at least gets read of the drones. :P

That's fair. I find I use it pretty much whenever all four are off cool down, or any time I've got bad shots with anything else. Lot of places to work autohits into a routine. Everybody's got a method though! The rather lively arguments about which gun is "Actually OP" to me just indicates they're all solidly designed.

[HypetheKomodo]

I'm gonna defend the Screwdriver here: It has more consistent DPS than the other two mods, but it's only for bosses/elite enemies

It's also constant bleed, providing light (not bursty) healing through it's effect, and it's a LONG effect, and may win fights while you whittle down with other weapons (Super Rev and Pump Shotty being my go tos), it also has a very generous hitbox, and nothing feels worse than whiffing a Electric Railgun

Upon the end of it's effect, it only takes like 6-7 secs to launch another drill, so it's just a constant DoT on a boss/elite

In normal combat, sure, it's usually not as good as the other options, but in boss fights think Screwdriver holds it's own

[ShirowMasamune]

RC55 you do have a point on nothing feeling worse than whiffing the electric rail gun. I do occasionally miss.

Credit where Credit is due, You are right. It is relatively easy to land the screw driver, And it is guaranteed damage, It just feels with the Relatively low Hp the bosses have as it currently stands, The drill is a little on the " Why " side Especially with the size of the bosses and the elites being on the larger side.


again we go in to play styles i guess ^_^ my style usually does not call for letting the drill reach its full time.

[ImHelping]

Every time people claim "No you guys nailgun isn't bad! if anything having to juggle two weapon modes for two alt fires is OP!" I just sigh deeply at the sight of nails uselessly orbiting around a stone head or V2 or whatever it is I nailed between the eyes with a spike before firing nails at them.

To say nothing of how frequently worthless the primary fire is by itself.

"Hmm, how come I'm not using the nailgun on Minos?"
*does next to no damage to wall hands*
*nails flops out of the air like a poorly made paper airplane before they reach his face*

"Well maybe it's my fault for using a weapon poorly suited for shooting this face"
*flashbacks to rematch against double statue boys and the 'is the health glitched?... oh okay it's just dropping very slowly* fight*
"Totally can't be anything wrong with the guns, only with me. Clearly it can clear trash good with spray n pray!"
*group of basic baby enemies die slower and give less blood for the effort*

"Maybe I'm just not CLOSE ENOUGH!"
*let's bitey boys bite him to fill them with nails point blank for maximum nail blood*
"...Okay maybe I'm trying too hard to defend this gun's flaws."

OP weapon of the century, guys. Honest. The fact having the nerve to use both bursts makes the alt nailgun fire at 1 round a minute unless you get back to mashing swap buttons just rubs salt in the wound.

[ShirowMasamune]

Hey, if you are not finding a use for the nail gun that's down to your play style and there is nothing wrong with that at all., No amount of people telling you that you are using it wrong is going to change you mind or your play style, and if you are clearing the game anyway, it hardly matters if you don't like the nail gun. or are not finding any practical uses for it.

I'm seeing more people than i thought defend the screw driver in general, and that is as worthless to me as the nail gun appears to be for you.

[Dr.Drake]

Coin is OP

[ZetaStriker]

I like the Nailgun myself, although I usually use it either for trap plays for quick style gain as I mow down large groups of melee enemies, or to magnet and alt fire a miniboss/boss. I wish the launch functionality worked on more enemies though, I think it's really cool but as others have said things die too quick for it to be needed. Hopefully the higher difficulties fill this niche one they're done, like they would in a Devil May Cry game. I will say that I've seen streams where people do obnoxious damage with the Nailgun alt fire at point blank without a magnet though, killing the faces instantly.

Only other thing I wanted to comment on was the coin, when Venc put up his defense of it he mentioned punching the coin is hard to do. There is a trick to it. Start backing up, just for a half second or so, and throw the coin while backing up. Then step forward and it'll always be in punch range if that's what you wanted.

[Durendal.exe]

Oprindeligt skrevet af ZetaStriker:

I will say that I've seen streams where people do obnoxious damage with the Nailgun alt fire at point blank without a magnet though, killing the faces instantly.

The magnet being in an enemy sets all incoming nail damage to half. Or, it did in an earlier build. I'm sure it still decreases damage, but I don't know the ratio now. There was a...bug? then that multiple magnets stacked this penalty. Which might be what Helping is running into, saying it's only doing chip damage.

So fast removal, close range overheat bursts with no magnet are ideal. The magnet's best for range or when you can't look at the target for some...reason? But it's best not put into enemies at all. (No damage malus to the ground!) One exception here is if you have an existing nailball, where putting the magnet into an enemy will draw them to it. Or it to them, in some cases. Nails and magnets are always drawn together, even if they're stuck in an enemy, which can be abused lightly a few ways.

It's jank and useless, but I find putting a magnet off a cliff, then nailing a bunch of enemies and letting them get hung off until the magnet breaks and drops them hilarious.

Overheat nails are also faster, so they can't be trusted to directly hit a magnet. They can saturate a trap quickly, but they're better without the magnet for directly killing things.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Dr.Drake:

Coin is OP

Gloriously so.

[ImHelping]

Oprindeligt skrevet af ShirowMasamune:

Hey, if you are not finding a use for the nail gun that's down to your play style and there is nothing wrong with that at all., No amount of people telling you that you are using it wrong is going to change you mind or your play style, and if you are clearing the game anyway, it hardly matters if you don't like the nail gun. or are not finding any practical uses for it.

I'm seeing more people than i thought defend the screw driver in general, and that is as worthless to me as the nail gun appears to be for you.

*glitchy nails orbit around an enemy with a magnet spike sticking out of them instead of hurting them*
"Clearly this is perfect, and the only problem is me and my playstyle not giving this perfect and wonderful gun a fair chance."

And yet, people still reach for the 'Git gud, you just mad cuz bad' defense when they have nothing of substance to defend rough edges with.

Rail gun is drill lackluster, but it is far less glitchy in it's disappointment, and requires far less setup for the letdown of a payoff. So of course people will defend it more by comparison.

Granted, my mindset has been shaped by watching people claim anything and everything is based on "Pure skill" when the real reason you beat a boss is planning for them to no-clip attacks through walls.

Or complain food that makes you vomit blood in a survival game is OP because it grows on trees... while you have sci-fi wildlife respawning. No no, barfing blood is OP because it saved you button presses.

Or declare mercy invincibility in a sonic clone means "You don't get REAL oldschool platformer gameplay!", when the only reason most of the playerbase dies is chained hits or being air juggled instead of the pits and running out of air.

Or whine that a lack of companion permadeath by default means a game is for casual babies. even as they no-clip through railings 300 feet above the ground or can't even walk past a safety cone without the physics engine mangling themselves.

People will say any wild insanity with no basis on reality, if they think it will make them sound like a more big boy gamer.