Is it really that good to have a gun thay will pierce 5 enemies like perfected Punisher or MP5

[Saint Wolf]

They're good guns against wooden shielded enemies but when the metal shield shows up it becomes basically a useless trait.

Not to mention that, even though the MP5 it's prefer presented as a viable option against regents, bruh just don't miss with the snipe/M4.

But I'd love to hear your feedback over why I should use it given it takes from the spines I need to get tickets.

[Emerald Lance]

Punisher makes it possible to defeat regenerators with just a pistol, thus making the game realistically beatable with just pistol and knife. That and the wooden shield guys are the two biggest reasons that come to mind.

[Draescan]

The real prize from the punisher isn't the pierce. It centers fastest with no attachments. When it does center, it stays centered even if you move your aim around for quite a while, meaning you can be much more aggressive with it. If you don't move your mouse you can even walk a short while and it will stay centered. That's its true potential. It hits max stagger and crit chance faster than any other handgun in the game without the laser sight or the stock for the red9 which both cost you spinels. If you buy the punisher instantly with spinels the moment you can, you will have enough to buy an exclusive ticket if you skip the white plagas dog on pro to buy the ticket from the trader in one of the hardest sections of the game. Which means you can instantly place it on your preferred powerful weapon. The pierce is great but it's not why you want the punisher. Although it DEFINITELY helps save ammo vs wooden shields.

[ggAkatsukiP]

There's no reason to use LE5 or TMP. Matilda is the better smg.

As for Punisher, it has uses, but you need to back it up with other weapons. Same reason to why you need rifle because it cover the long range sniping that no other weapons can do. The only one occasion it would be mandatory is minimalist run if you don't have cat ears.

[vel']

At first I thought the same way and mostly in my first playthroughs of the game on Hardcore I just stuck to the Red9. But recently I tried the Punisher and it was a game changer for me in Professional difficulty, just because of the ammount of ammo you can save funneling enemies with that pierce and being able to kill 5-6 enemies with 3-4 shots. Also, I don't know if it's me or not, but the aim steadies much faster even when you move slightly with it, making it quite amazing at pushing enemies too. It's extremely useful specially if you're trying the S+ rank and go for minimum treasure possible, since you can easily obtain it at the point you reach the first merchant with his 2 first quests (5 spinels). It's upgrades are quite cost efficient and you can stun almost everything with 1-2 headshots of it with full power upgraded.

[JackieTheDemon]

Originally posted by Emerald Lance:

Punisher makes it possible to defeat regenerators with just a pistol, thus making the game realistically beatable with just pistol and knife. That and the wooden shield guys are the two biggest reasons that come to mind.

You can just stab them to death lol no pistol needed.

[Lunethex]

Originally posted by JackieTheDemon:

Originally posted by Emerald Lance:

Punisher makes it possible to defeat regenerators with just a pistol, thus making the game realistically beatable with just pistol and knife. That and the wooden shield guys are the two biggest reasons that come to mind.

You can just stab them to death lol no pistol needed.

But that's really boring.

[Harris]

Punisher I used a lot on my first run on Hardcore. The rationale for it was, headshots don't stagger reliably anyway and it's easy to miss with the enemies being aggressive, so I might as well don't bother and shoot center of mass, saving up ammo by hitting several baddies at a time.

Not gonna lie it's pretty fun and useful throughout village and especially castle since you don't need another weapon or waste ammo to defeat shields, but like you said at the island it walls off a cliff because of metal shields. That said, island takes up about maybe 20-25% of the playtime, castle is by far the largest chunk of the game and Punisher really shines there.

However, for Professional I switched to the starter pistol, with the rationale that if it takes 4 headshots to kill something, it's very likely for some of them to be crits, allowing to save up ammo. And also even if it doesn't crit, it opens up enemies for melee, and by that point I had Wolf Tail for more melee damage, so there's a synergy there. For my Professional S+ I went Sentinel Nine which is basically starter pistol on steroids, boasting high fire rate and a huge mag, while laser sight eliminates all aiming concerns.

Now, for the submachine guns. First thing to point out is they're not ammo efficient - they burn through it super fast, the accuracy and spread is garbage. Worse yet, they compete for L resources with rifles and grenades, and with how important flash grenades are this time round, and how you're realistically limited to only maxing out a few guns per run... long story short I find it hard to justify even running an smg.

If I had to run an smg however, LE5 sounds like a better TMP - it comes with the stock out of the box so you don't need spinels for it, it has good spread and recoil, it has neat bonuses of penetration and accepting scopes - so basically if you were only using a rifle for Regeneradors you now don't need one.

But here's one problem with LE5 - I wouldn't really use it before Cat Ears, without infinite ammo it's just not sustainable, it's very resource unfriendly and thus untithetic to Hardcore -Professional difficulties. And with Cat Ears I would rather use CQBR, which is a straight upgrade over LE5. Damage of 5 vs 1.20 (climbing to 15 for weak points!); higher effective range; faster reload.

[Tenshu]

Originally posted by Emerald Lance:

Punisher makes it possible to defeat regenerators with just a pistol, thus making the game realistically beatable with just pistol and knife. That and the wooden shield guys are the two biggest reasons that come to mind.

Doesn't make it possible, but a little easier and more ammo-efficient. You can still hit the weakpoints by shooting more chunks till you see the glowing parts.