I'm glad that the mutation system is optional

[xizar]

I think it's a nice idea, but I haven't seen any (at least in the first two rows that I've unlocked) that really look appealing, and those I've tried don't feel enjoyable to play. I don't need them to all be absent malus, but they swing way too far to that extreme.

[John]

I highly encourage you to use the Loose Cannon mutation to gain bonus damage at the cost of lower durability.

My one piece of advice is that in spite of how scary enemies look, the irony is that closing the distance is how you gain the advantage over their relatively underwhelming new hitscan attacks.

Trust me, you'll be glad you tried it :)

[Demon Swords]

Loose Cannon is extremly op and you can partially reduce the downside by just running the shielding upgrade as the shield tanking a hit prevents the double damage from applying. (though the patch switching shield to a 3 minute cool-down is a pretty big nerf to shield.)

Shroud is pretty op as well, but only if your running an extremely high fire rate + "every third shot shots 9 projectiles around you" + bleed and burn + Enemies out of vision are slower and take more damage. The nine projectiles around you effect will keep hitting enemies and you'll know where they are after damaging them even without vision. For this build, losing vision is a benefit as it enables the anti-vision upgrade and the only real downside is -15% movespeed for +75% bullet damage and +60% fire rate. (When I combined this with loose cannon I managed to kill the 20 min boss of Nightmare, map 1 in 5.9 seconds and the 30 minute boss in approximately 25 seconds. Combining these two mutations is an insanely strong build.)

Sprout is also pretty good, the increased enemies means more xp to gain and more things to trigger on-kill or ricochet effects. The +30% movement speed helps counter act upgrades and other mutations reduced movespeeds. The only real downside is faster enemies, but if your going for a damage heavy AoE build then your'll still be able to kill enemies before they can reach you anyways.

Vision battery isn't bad, but having to rapidly press M2 to alternate between Circle and cone vision is annoying.

Vitality and Tank are Garbage. More healing/ max health isn't really all that helpful with such step downside and losing the ability to pick better mutations. Haven't tried Behemoth, but its downsides seem too extreme for the upside. (especially since it screams wanting to combo with Tank, but if you actually did so, you would move so extremely slow that you would die very quickly.)

Robust might be decent if its your first mutation and a must have for endless, but Refine is definitely an endless only mutation.

Elemental is a bit awkward since many upgrades that deal damage also scale off bullet damage or will trigger in the direction your shooting. But I haven't tested this mutation enough to know if its actually strong or not.

I have yet to use agility, but I always bring it for runs. The ability to go from 1 health to full, then pick-up the boss heart for +1 max health is extremely appealing. The +40% movespeed and at least +1 heart is probably worth -10% xp if you grab it as your last mutation, but I have yet to use it since I keep running Sprout -> Shroud / Vision Battery / Elemental -> Loose Cannon.

[Arcane Azmadi]

Some of the Mutations are busted. Agility (full health restore or +1 max health if already at full and, more importantly, +40% move speed, in exchange for a trivial -10% exp malus) is practically necessary to beat the 4th and 5th bosses, as well as offset the movement penalties from most of the other Mutations. And as mentioned, Loose Cannon is game-breaking, since in this game even more than any other horde shooter, the trick is not getting hit in the first place rather than tanking damage- 0 damage doubled is 0.