Tips for Zone 2?

[Harlequin]

TLDR Need Advice on how to beat zone 2

Got the game yesterday and having a blast with it. Did zone 1 story mission and completed it in 2 runs and then completed the off missions really easily. I hop into zone 2 and decide to try the side missions to get the rewards and my god not sure if its just me but it feels like hell. I've tried different builds and approaching things at different angles but i can never get farther than sector 13ish. I don't want to go back to zone 1 since it was easy and i wont get any progression but I'm struggling my ass off with zone 2, and in my opinion the only reason glass cannon is hard is cause of the no healing, I try to keep my melee lvled up but i always end up taking hits trying to take out the shields and i know element procs kill them through the shield but that's if i can get procs off on the remaining enemies before killing them. The farthest I got was the story mission (I completed the spider based side mission which was MUCH easier than the other zone 2 missions) was to sector 20 (i think) where they have the next wave type room. I used the minigun with the ammo crit augment and ammo based upgrades, I ended up dying to the wave of void spiders cause i couldn't escape their pull and they just went off one after another after cornering me and now i haven't been able to get back. So whats a good load out or weapon set up or anything for zone 2 that can help me beat it?

[Harlequin]

Ok so kinda figured it out just now, Just run lightning. thats it, get the perk and hope you can get its sub perks quickly and then do element dmg and proc. Nearly completed the glass cannon one doing this, only died cause of a sniper :/

[Special Ed Forces]

For Glass Cannon, I was told to use Void with the Tendrils proc. That will kill even the ranged immune characters.

[Failsauce]

I just breezed through standard Zone 2 with a full void build. Kept getting smashed using lightning. Then again, RNJeezus is brutal in this game.

[Flak Monkey]

It was pretty easy with melee build. Ghost blade is very strong perk tree.

[DrunkBunny94]

I've found the sniper, charge sniper and DMR to be really strong, especially early/mid game.
ADS weakspot/Crit augment is a huge damage boost letting you 1 tap most enemies and maybe 2-3 tapping the early elites (hell even on solo you can still 1 tap a lot of things early on which is kinda crazy), if you get 2rounds per 5m traveled, 15% ammo on dash, or scrap restores ammo you never have to reload so you shoot constantly.

You can see enemies through the walls so you can line up your shots for easy headshots (zoom in and out as needed), while also positioning in ways where you wont pull to much at once as you have a better visual on where everything is.

Theres also a lot of other items that you can pivot to/from like full HP enemies take extra damage is amazing with snipers, first shot in the mag damage is also great with snipers but keeps the door open to pivot into swap builds.

But any automatic can also work really well with ADS although i'd recommend freeze more with them as your TTK is going to be higher.

For perks:
Grenades are under-rated. with a little bit of damage you can easily start dealing 5k+ per frag and with 2-4 frags you can panic throw your way out of a lot of bad scenarios. Just gotta remember to sit and wait a lil after each room to let them come off cooldown.
Also grenades have HUGE elem proc chance. I've 1 shot entire rooms with 1 tendril frag lol. The elemental damage also bypasses the "ranged only" enemies.
Honestly they just scale insanely well with a ton of modifiers due to high base proc chances and scale with loads of items and work great with crit too.

The Swap perk is really strong. You get like 70% damage flat, plus 25% damage after killing an enemy, which im pretty certain boosts everything, weapon damaeg, your frag damage, elem damage, this makes it work with everything before even looking at the crazy infinite ammo swap speed firerate combos you can pull off.

Elemental options are also insane. Chill is probably the safest, freezing enemies makes landing your shots easier and the blizzard can help with kiting melee enemies.
But lightning and void are also insane with chain lightning and tendrils adding loads of damage.
Fire is probably the "worst" imo but its by no means bad as it gives flat damage, i just prefer lightning/void for damage.

The only other thing is knowing when you have enough damage and when to start looking for defensive stuff to not die. The 2000 armour item is its 20% DR, the invuln when your shield breaks saves you from a bunch high damage attacks, dash cooldown on crit is insane. Its definitely worth grabbing a couple of these once your damage is "enough" that elites are no longer really a threat.

[Special Ed Forces]

Void build with the minigun is one of the strongest builds. The constant barrage of bullets spawns things.

Get a Void Tendril weapon and you will be constantly spawning these tendrils that will AoE everything, even ranged immune mobs.

[Rogue]

Only thing that gets me is the stupid void spiders if I don't insta kill them out of stealth one always sneaks up and dies too close to me and I get sucked into the void and die to all the other mobs.

[Flak Monkey]

Yeah those spiders gotta chill. They have way too much health for how annoying they are.

[Mila Alba]

Repeat repeat repeat!

[Sharkinbear]

The best build that I've cleared Zone 2 with was the auto shotty with freeze, sidearm with electric. Get either fire or void for your melee. Using the artifacts that let you use another weapons element you can stack up a ridiculous amount of debuffs quickly. And the auto shotty fires so fast I was able to perma-stun chain lightning a whole room fairly easily.

[Rogue]

I finally beat it on Hard using a pure Void build