Best team composition and skill recommendation for nightmare 10+ / infinite 30 min+ ?

[shortymacfat46]

I barely survived with a bit of luck on nightmare difficulty for 10mins.
Team comp was: A thousand blade ghost, M4 SWAT, and medic as the last character for sustain.

[ultra]

Engineer for shied must have, drop medic out! All items on dmg and skill cooldown, swat or tank on your choice, gl

[Irrelevant]

Engi for shield. Tank for passive and rocket launcher. Ghost for buff and AoE attacks. You can be some kind of a lawnmower with this setup as well as you can add single target dmg because the shield is taking care of trash mobs untill 50ish minutes. Just go for all skill cooldwons you can get but never go to 0 CD (still think this is not intended thou) because the game will go cray cray and crash.
You have okayish weapons for single target good AoE clear and some of the most worthwhile skills/buffs ingame with this setup. You can choose if you go for a strong early game with ghost to get his stuff up and running or you can go the Engii shield route at first this is up to you. I'm lazy so I go with the Engi and shield always since he was level 3 and the achivements done ^^.

[ultra]

Originally posted by Irrelevant:

Engi for shield. Tank for passive and rocket launcher. Ghost for buff and AoE attacks. You can be some kind of a lawnmower with this setup as well as you can add single target dmg because the shield is taking care of trash mobs untill 50ish minutes. Just go for all skill cooldwons you can get but never go to 0 CD (still think this is not intended thou) because the game will go cray cray and crash.
You have okayish weapons for single target good AoE clear and some of the most worthwhile skills/buffs ingame with this setup. You can choose if you go for a strong early game with ghost to get his stuff up and running or you can go the Engii shield route at first this is up to you. I'm lazy so I go with the Engi and shield always since he was level 3 and the achivements done ^^.

Yep 3 AOE skills here shield, blades and blades
This must have

[rmz]

As for nightmare I've done swat/tank/engineer and swat/tank/huntress so far.
As for normal 30+ runs everything is viable with the most afk friendly setup being swat/ghost/engineer, 45+ things start to get tricky as mobs are freakish fast. Personally I've made it to about 51mins with swat/ghost/engineer, 40+ with several different setups with swat at the core.

[Rahlence]

My highest was 50:53 with medic/engi/swat. Not sure what would be best; X/Engi/Swat is my goto, though. Shield + Turret is so good with max out cooldown.

[chaos915]

I made it somewhere around 53-54 minutes with Tank/Ghost/Medic(with pistol). I almost made it an hour but I got one shotted(from 2000 hp) by a charger that I couldn't see coming(it was off screen)

[Rahlence]

Originally posted by chaos915:

I made it somewhere around 53-54 minutes with Tank/Ghost/Medic(with pistol). I almost made it an hour but I got one shotted(from 2000 hp) by a charger that I couldn't see coming(it was off screen)

That's how my late runs always end; random charger hits from offscreen while I am dodging the swinging dudes.

[Камень]

Originally posted by chaos915:

I made it somewhere around 53-54 minutes with Tank/Ghost/Medic(with pistol). I almost made it an hour but I got one shotted(from 2000 hp) by a charger that I couldn't see coming(it was off screen)

at some point bosses just do so much damage - they don't care about your health, armor and even Stone Skin pickup. Theoretical max damage is around 7k now. It is just dodge the ball game from that point.
But i had some fin moments - hunters get so much speed, they can't turn fast enough and start orbiting team if they miss.

[Oddball]

I just across this combo and did very well with it surprisingly (but it was just a 24 hr game, not nightmare):

Tank + Engineer + Huntress (or whatever you want really)
- Engineer's Energy Shield (WTH!?!) seems the best AOE damage hands down, can plow through mobs and vaporize them
- Tank's bomb drops are insane
- place crate upgrades into "- Skill Cooldown" as much as you can stomach. Once you get skill cool down into the 40% range, the Energy Shield becomes permanent (never drops, always on), and bomb drops are constant
- Huntress was a surprise, because when you have perma-energy shield, you can stand around longer and let mobs come to you. The huntress rain of arrows just serves as another bomb drop, and just wipes out anything near the player. I previously thought her rain of arrows were useless because I was running around so much, but when you camp more and move less, it becomes very deadly. She could be replaced by SWAT or whatever though.

This makes a lot of the other roles and skills of players a bit useless, as the large diameter aoe of the energy shield makes the swirling razors of the tank less important, same as with Ghost not able to melee etc.

[|||||||||||]

53 minutes how? After 35 minute mark basically everything oneshots you, unless you got super lucky with defensive powerups dodge/armor which are rare af.

I tried theese compositions so far:

1) Engi + tank + medic -- Not terrible but you miss a 1/3 of dps because of medic. I dont know what you guys smoking, but past 20ish min shield does not kill zombies, permanent or not. You rely heavily on skill damage and cdr. And it was not viable after 30 min mark for me because bosses started to pile up due to lack of single target dps.

2) Engi + tank + huntress -- Liked this one better, the damage is good. The decoy takes care of the axe-man. Everything seems to work, but after 35 min you still getting oneshotted.

3) Ghost (1k cuts) + swat (AR) + tank (MG) -- This is my favorite so far. The damage is absolutely crazy, bosses getting vaporized. Ghost with 1k cuts is far superior than engi shield, gets even better with some fire rate buffs, which also benefit the rest of the team. However, the culprit is still the same, getting oneshot for 4k damage past 35min mark.

[Oddball]

Originally posted by |||||||||||:

53 minutes how? After 35 minute mark basically everything oneshots you, unless you got super lucky with defensive powerups dodge/armor which are rare af.

I tried theese compositions so far:

1) Engi + tank + medic -- Not terrible but you miss a 1/3 of dps because of medic. I dont know what you guys smoking, but past 20ish min shield does not kill zombies, permanent or not. You rely heavily on skill damage and cdr. And it was not viable after 30 min mark for me because bosses started to pile up due to lack of single target dps.

2) Engi + tank + huntress -- Liked this one better, the damage is good. The decoy takes care of the axe-man. Everything seems to work, but after 35 min you still getting oneshotted.

3) Ghost (1k cuts) + swat (AR) + tank (MG) -- This is my favorite so far. The damage is absolutely crazy, bosses getting vaporized. Ghost with 1k cuts is far superior than engi shield, gets even better with some fire rate buffs, which also benefit the rest of the team. However, the culprit is still the same, getting oneshot for 4k damage past 35min mark.

Yeah for 1) you sacrifice dps for healing...
2) is cool as well for the Huntress freeze arrows... really helps slow mobs down, even bosses
3) Had tried this before I found the energy shield, may switch back and compare again now that everyone is rank 3

[Oddball]

Ghost + Engineer + Tank in a 40 mins game:

The comparison of big damage weapons/skills below,

Tank
- Bomb Drop 2.3M dam
- Mini Gun 1.5M dam

Ghost
- Thousand Cuts 240K dam
- Kuna Dance 453K dam
- Shuriken 634K dam
- Katana splash 18K

Engineer
- Energy Shield 1.07M dam
- Elec Turret 306K dam
- Electrocution 433K dam
- Guns combined 490K dam

So in this combination, it appears the greater aoe range of the Energy shield does reduce Ghost's aoe damage output and melee weapon damage (only 18K!), but Ghost's skills would serve as a nice close-proximity damage for stuff that gets inside the energy shield bubble.

Very surprising the damage output of random bomb drops! It's always killing something on crowded maps.

[|||||||||||]

Yea well you cant make any assumptions like this, see. When i was runing Engi-Tank-Medic with cdr build, my bombargment, and sawblades, and shield (basicaly all secondary skills) would perform really well. I was astonished that bombardment alone did 900+ dps. Does this makes it a good skill? Nop. It means that my main weapons damage is so low that there are too many zombies crowding the map, therefore AOE abilities can clock some big numbers. In damage done at least, not in kills exactly.

When i was runing Ghost-Swat-Tank, it was all about main weapons. AOE abilities were just a bonus damage on the side. So in this composition bombardment clocked pathetic ~170-200k dps, does it make it a bad skill? Nop. its just the damage from main weapons so high that there are barely any zombies on the screen for AOE skills to benefit.

Its all about balance, and the only thing that counts is overall combined dps (and damage done) of the WHOLE party. Not the dps of individual characters. And definately not the dps of individual skills. Skills and characters compete with eachother for targets.

[|||||||||||]

I really liked the quote they give you when you complete hardcore. Not everything that can be counted matter and not everything that matters can be counted. Or something like that. Very fitting imo.

[Oddball]

Originally posted by |||||||||||:

Its all about balance, and the only thing that counts is overall combined dps (and damage done) of the WHOLE party. Not the dps of individual characters. And definately not the dps of individual skills. Skills and characters compete with eachother for targets.

Yes, as a control volume around the entire map time, damage is dealt collectively by the team in order to progress to a certain time/duration. But I'd like to better understand which weapons/skills are trading off from others among the different combinations, and which combinations tend to allow for longer duration runs. Then it'll also be easier to understand which weapons/skills are worth upgrading and which are not, for efficiencies sake.