Most Useful Weapon?

[chord]

In my opinion, it's the gloo gun.

WAITwaitwaitwaitwait wait. Before you get all salty, here me out:

It's the BEST weapon for killing Cystoids! Seriously! All it takes is one gloo charge to kill em!

You can freeze any enemy for long enough to sneak by them or make them weaker to other attacks!

It plugs up fire hazards and electrical leaks!

It can get you virtually ANYWHERE! Just by glooing up walls you can get through so many tough areas! (Seriously. The way I got out of the power plant was just by building a spiral staircase up the grav shaft.)

It's AWESOME! I mean seriously, wouldn't you love one of these things irl?

Anyways, that's my opinion. What's yours?

[blinddeafmute]

There is none. All of them have situational uses, and equally situational downsides.

The Gloo Gun is good for environmental hazards, map traversal, and cc. Its downsides are its fast degradation and unreliable crowd control. Good luck killing anything beyond mimics and basic phantoms with this and the wrench alone.

The stun gun is the strongest CC tool in the game, clocking in at 9 seconds per blast. Since stunned enemies can't "notice" you, it can be used to set up multiple sneak attacks on the same enemy. Thermal phantoms also are unable to use their damage field if stunned, meaning that you can use it to safely get close enough to kill them with the shotgun. In terms of map traversal, it can be used to short circuit electrical junctions allowing it to replace the gloo gun in those situations. It can also be used to disable electronics such as computer terminals or doorways, however i have yet to find practical uses for that function. It also deals absurd damage to robotic enemies. Its main weakness is that it's not able to be used on voltaic phantoms or nightmares, and it doesn't remove the backlash effect from weavers and poltergeists.

The huntress boltcaster is probably the second best cystoid-buster in the game (mindjack being the best). cystoids will continue to chase the projectile even after it lands due to the bolt being a bouncing physics object that also makes sounds. You can even retrieve the dart once the cystoids are dealt with. On top of that it can be used to safely check for mimics, especially before you get mimic detection v2. It can be used to displace items out of reach, pushing them towards you. It can be used to distract enemies, allowing you to escape/get some breathing room. It can be used to detonate placed recycler charges. And on top of all that, there are entire forum threads on how many ways you can sequence break with this thing.

The pistol is a great general weapon. It's the best stealth weapon in the game since it makes no sound and has decent range. It also has the cheapest and most abundant ammo type. Its main drawback is its lack of non-combat applications.

The shotgun is able to explode any enemy sans nightmare. It essentially functions as a melee weapon though, meaning that it can't deal with boss monsters who can fly away (weavers, telepaths, technopaths) or upgraded phantoms with damage fields (thermal, voltaic, poltergeist). Like the pistol, it also lacks non-combat utility.

The Q beam is oddly enough the one i have the most trouble finding useful. It's intended as a boss-buster. however, it just doesn't have the damage to be worth the cost and inventory space. Also factoring in the fact nullwave transmitters fill the boss buster role better while being more reliable and less expensive... things don't look good for the q beam. I should note that it is very useful when clearing out voltaic phantoms.

tldr: all of them are good except for the q beam

[Eterniter]

For me, if you fully upgrade the shotgun and the slow time power you can cheese through everything in the game.

[Ghostwind]

most useful weapon is your brain