Volatile Bullets Bulldog Discussion

[Trenchfox1917]

Hello everyone,

I really hoped the Gunner would get access to the volatile bullets mod on at least one of his sidearms. When I saw the OC was being given to the Bulldog as a replacement for feather trigger, I was initially excited. It currently works as follows:
- 25 direct damage (50% of base)
- +300% damage against burning targets (4x multiplier)
I find that the penalty and the reward are quite extreme, and yet somehow it is categorized as a balanced overclock.

Now, it is nice being able to synergize with minigun fire builds and incendiary grenades, unfortunately when a target is not burning the weapon performs very poorly making it a feast or famine type OC.

Aggressive Venting is my preferred minigun choice, but to make this playstyle work I have to take into account the fact that I will be stuck using my sidearm for a wider window of time, and without burning effects, I find that the weapon performs so poorly its almost not worth using the ammo. Additionally, any targets ignited below the burning threshold gives you no bunus. In order to ignite a praetorian with Aggressive Venting you need to be close enough to get it started with Burning Hell. The range increase helps with this, but it still requires you be quite close. If you have not started it with Burning Hell, you will need to use an incendiary grenade to get it over the threshold. I recommend either partnering with a flamethrower driller, or waiting to use your incendiaries until your weapon has overheated, or both.

I found that it works better with Hot Bullets as it is easier to consistently light hard targets, and the bulldog with volatile bullets is very useful as a finisher for burning grunt guards, praetorians, goo bombers, grabbers, spitballers, oppressors, and spawners. Everything else has too little health for the damage bonus to be relevant. With this playstyle you swap between your two weapons dealing killing blows with the revolver, and attempting to light enemies as fast as possible with the minigun without letting it overheat. With heavy sustained fire however you will burnout, as when your gun overheats, once again you have the problem of your revolver performing substandardly.

In general I find it more useful to have a general purpose sidearm equipped with either build, unless your whole team is taking fire damage equipment as the weapon struggles to be useful outside of when a target is burning. And generally when a target is burning, it is going to die anyway except the hard targets I mentioned above.

The increase in damage against burning targets is extremely noticeable and you are rewarded for producing a volume of fire over accurate shooting. If you can make enemies burn reliably with enough health remaining that the damage bonus is significant, you will get the most out of this overclock. I have found it to be mostly situational so far, and thus I would opt for a more general purpose sidearm build instead.

In addition to the Minigun with Burning Hell and with your choice of fire mod, and Incendiary Grenades, I recommend the following build as it gives you the right balance of ammunition, versatility, and flat damage.

Tier 1: Quickfire Ejector. Generally flaming targets are close enough that accuracy is of little concern
Tier 2: Expanded Ammo Bags +12 Ammunition, I would take at least one of these
Tier 3: Explosive Rounds, +30 AoE damage, x0.5, direct, Helps compensate for the damage penalty, and the damage scalar is less impactful given the penalty.
Tier 4: High Velocity Rounds, +15 Direct Damage (7.5 with scalar, bringing direct damage up to 20 + 30 from explosive rounds). I would take at least one of these.
Tier 5: Dead-Eye: No accuracy loss when moving. Neurotoxin is decent too, especially to make up for a bit of damage, but overall I find the ability to run and gun more accurately more useful during an overheat.

That is 40 rounds that deal 50 damage each, or 200 damage when attacking burning targets.

Overall I wish this Overclock was more similar to the mod for the subata, giving a +50% damage bonus to burning targets with less of a penalty, so the weapon remained generally useful against targets that aren't quite burning. I understand the massive increase in burning damage is meant to more than compensate for it, but in general I find targets I've managed to ignite are well on their way to death as is.

[RaNdOmKiLs666]

Yeah I just tried it and it sucks, the gunner has a hard time consistently lighting stuff on fire unless you take Hot Bullets, Burning Hell and Fire grenades, but even then it's a bit clunky to use properly, plus the revolver becomes garbage against enemies that are not on fire.

An easy way to fix this OC is to remove the 50% damage reduction and replace it with "The bulldog does double its damage as heat" (i.e 50 damage = 100 heat) and then change the 300% damage boost vs burning targets to a 125% boost, this will stop it becoming too strong. Lastly give it some other downside, like increases recoil and base spread by 50%. This would be the best way to go about it imo.

[DD The Pumpkin King]

Breeders, Spitballers. Anything heavy I can set on fire fears me now. Liking it quit a bit. But haven't tried it with the splash just yet.

Is the spalsh damage effected by the 300% bonus?

[Coffeefiend]

Requires specific loadout to be effective while also being very gimmicky overall.
Hardly any targets where I could see any advantage in this OC, especially with ER out there.

Might work better with a mechanic similar to volatile bullets, which has the side effect of keeping targets on fire.

[DD The Pumpkin King]

Originally posted by Coffeefiend:

Requires specific loadout to be effective while also being very gimmicky overall.
Hardly any targets where I could see any advantage in this OC, especially with ER out there.

Might work better with a mechanic similar to volatile bullets, which has the side effect of keeping targets on fire.

Much higher Burst and sustain then ER. Granted it does require specific build to do so.

[Coffeefiend]

Originally posted by DDNappaTheProducer:

Originally posted by Coffeefiend:

Requires specific loadout to be effective while also being very gimmicky overall.
Hardly any targets where I could see any advantage in this OC, especially with ER out there.

Might work better with a mechanic similar to volatile bullets, which has the side effect of keeping targets on fire.

Much higher Burst and sustain then ER. Granted it does require specific build to do so.

Unless I'm missing something you have pretty much the same damage per shot unless you pick damage upgrades which in turn will leave you with less ammo than ER.
Specific loadout and a half crippled gun aren't worth some burst damage in situations where I probably don't need it anyway.

[DD The Pumpkin King]

Originally posted by Coffeefiend:

Originally posted by DDNappaTheProducer:

Much higher Burst and sustain then ER. Granted it does require specific build to do so.

Unless I'm missing something you have pretty much the same damage per shot unless you pick damage upgrades which in turn will leave you with less ammo than ER.
Specific loadout and a half crippled gun aren't worth some burst damage in situations where I probably don't need it anyway.

nope

Elephant rounds max damage and ammo including clip
160x18

Volatile rounds max damage and ammo, can fire quickly (requires hitting burning target, easy to setup)
165x32

If the bug is on fire the new volatile completely outlast the Elephant rounds. Sure it doesn't have as much range but at that distance the bugs aren't a threat anyway.

It's a pretty cool oc. It is worth mentioning, it's not that effective against dreadnoughts since they can't be ignited. I'm also not against overclocks requiring specific builds to get their full power, so long as it produces a different sort of playstyle.

Bullet Hell, one of my favorite overclocks, is like this. It's very ineffecient if not built a certain way and so I've encountered a lot of players who thought it wasn't any good.

[Coffeefiend]

Originally posted by DDNappaTheProducer:

Elephant rounds max damage and ammo including clip
160x18

Voliatale rounds max damage and ammo, can fire quickly (requires hitting burning target, easy to setup)
165x32

If the bug is on fire the new volatile completely outlast the Elephant rounds. Sure it doesn't have as much range but at that distance the bugs aren't a threat anyway.

It's a pretty cool oc. It is worth mentioning, it's not that effective against dreadnoughts since they can't be ignited. I'm also not really against overclocks requiring specific builds to get their full power. Bullet Hell one of my favorites is like this. It's very ineffecient if not built a certain way and so I've encountered a lot of players who thought it wasn't any good.

Why would I run 160x18 when I can have 100x42 instead?
Shouldn't it be 220 instead of 165x32?
Range is unaffected by any of the OCs.
Obviously VB outshines in the burst scenario doing 2-3x total damage compared to other setups.
Still not that great. It's not only inefficient it's downright detrimental if you're not running minigun with hot bullets (burning hell OC) and incediary grenades.
Dreadnoughts don't care and anything else dies easily enough (without need for any setup).
The total damage looks neat on paper but with the extra steps, overkill damage and damage loss vs unaffected targets you'll most likely not get that much extra mileage.
Feel free to use it if you enjoy it but it's not my cup of tea.

[Trenchfox1917]

I think its situationally useful, but the penalty and bonus should be more in line with other balanced overclocks. I just wanted a damage bonus against burning targets, not crazy damage against burning targets but terrible damage otherwise. It negates the usefulness.

and yes it seems the explosive damage is scaled by the +300%

[King Fossil]

Overclocks are more fun when they have huge penalties as well as bonuses.
This is also good because it helps hot bullets. It's good that there's a reason to use something other than cool as the grave.

[DD The Pumpkin King]

Originally posted by Trenchfox1917:

I think its situationally useful, but the penalty and bonus should be more in line with other balanced overclocks. I just wanted a damage bonus against burning targets, not crazy damage against burning targets but terrible damage otherwise. It negates the usefulness.

and yes it seems the explosive damage is scaled by the +300%

Thats pretty cool. I'll have to play with it a bit.

[DD The Pumpkin King]

Originally posted by Coffeefiend:

Originally posted by DDNappaTheProducer:

Elephant rounds max damage and ammo including clip
160x18

Voliatale rounds max damage and ammo, can fire quickly (requires hitting burning target, easy to setup)
165x32

If the bug is on fire the new volatile completely outlast the Elephant rounds. Sure it doesn't have as much range but at that distance the bugs aren't a threat anyway.

It's a pretty cool oc. It is worth mentioning, it's not that effective against dreadnoughts since they can't be ignited. I'm also not really against overclocks requiring specific builds to get their full power. Bullet Hell one of my favorites is like this. It's very ineffecient if not built a certain way and so I've encountered a lot of players who thought it wasn't any good.

Why would I run 160x18 when I can have 100x42 instead?
Shouldn't it be 220 instead of 165x32?
Range is unaffected by any of the OCs.
Obviously VB outshines in the burst scenario doing 2-3x total damage compared to other setups.
Still not that great. It's not only inefficient it's downright detrimental if you're not running minigun with hot bullets (burning hell OC) and incediary grenades.
Dreadnoughts don't care and anything else dies easily enough (without need for any setup).
The total damage looks neat on paper but with the extra steps, overkill damage and damage loss vs unaffected targets you'll most likely not get that much extra mileage.
Feel free to use it if you enjoy it but it's not my cup of tea.

Why would I run 160x18 when I can have 100x42 instead?

Fair enough but you missed the point. Rather you favor ammo or damage, Volatile Bullets still has much greater sustain and damage/burst close range

Shouldn't it be 220 instead of 165x32?

I believe it just multiplies the damage by 300%. At least thats how it shows in game and appears to be when used on bugs. I had thought it multiplied the damage but if it adds that amount instead that's actually pretty cool.

Range is unaffected by any of the OCs.

??? um...I'm not sure what makes you say that. Did you think I meant the literal distance a weapon can reach? Quit a few overclocks effect the effective range a weapon can perform at. Accuracy, recoil, spread, stability, rof make quit an impact on the range a weapon performs at

Obviously VB outshines in the burst scenario doing 2-3x total damage compared to other setups. Still not that great. It's not only inefficient it's downright detrimental if you're not running minigun with hot bullets (burning hell OC) and incediary grenades.

Ya pretty much, unless you're working alongside a Flame Driller closely it's not going to make an impact

Dreadnoughts don't care and anything else dies easily enough (without need for any setup).
The total damage looks neat on paper but with the extra steps, overkill damage and damage loss vs unaffected targets you'll most likely not get that much extra mileage.
Feel free to use it if you enjoy it but it's not my cup of tea.

So far just from playing it's going way further then any Elephant Round setup I use, it just requires you to be comfortable fighting fairly close. It's really shined against Praetorians, Wardens and bulks in particular. It's completely cool that you don't like playing with it since it requires a very specific style to get the most out of. Just don't underestimate it's power. That said you think it'd be a better design for it produce it's own heat or be able to maintain already ignited targets?

[BongBong]

feels like it just need less of a damage penalty, or a diffrent downside, thats my stance

[PrediN@ter]

I play gunner a lot and I found that this only works if you go burning hell aggressive venting. This way you have two ways to catch them on fire and can finish off fleeing pratoreans. A lot of people complain about the cooldown but if you go sticky grenades that have fear and dash you can easily evade until it is ready. It honestly does not stay overheated for too long and makes it fun and playable. Also you do have a shield as a backup to keep you safe.

[Trenchfox1917]

Originally posted by PrediN@ter:

I play gunner a lot and I found that this only works if you go burning hell aggressive venting. This way you have two ways to catch them on fire and can finish off fleeing pratoreans. A lot of people complain about the cooldown but if you go sticky grenades that have fear and dash you can easily evade until it is ready. It honestly does not stay overheated for too long and makes it fun and playable. Also you do have a shield as a backup to keep you safe.

Awesome idea. I tried them again last night and found as long as I had a driller using the flamethrower to effect I usually had some prime targets. I find they work best with the explosive rounds mod as it gives the biggest flat damage increase. The more ammo the better. You just sort of spam fire them at anything ablaze.

[MrPurple33]

I use Volatile Bullets in the Combo with my Subata and FT for Driller- so yes, when I got this OC for the Bulldog a few days ago, I was Interested, but disappointed

as stated above, the Burning Hell OC combo, and Incindiery Grenades are the obvious chice to use it- but both are harder to Combo and occur Less frequently (4 Grenades) than what you get from the Driller FT/Subata Combo (a quick puff of flame on a Prae triggers the Subata Bonus Hits)

I can see it being much more effective with a Gunner/Driller Team- but again, situational, much Like the odd Scout Electrical buffs comboed with an Electric SMG Engineer

I mostly use the BRT anyway, but when I do go Bulldog, I'm using the 5 (now 6!) Shooter- 6 shots, extra damage, extra ammo- all around goodness