Is scout just a flashlight, and an errand boy collecting mineral?

[Ubi Kayu Rebus]

scout feels lacking in combat situation. His primary feel too weak, chews on his ammo, and overly reliant on weak point damage. His secondary somewhat powerful but still feel lacking.

Only one of his grenade is almost lethal, is scout a nature lover, a leaf lover? putting small dots can make him feel less stressful to play, his grenade would save him ammo and time to do more mining and prepare for the next swarm

what was dev vision of scout originally, was he a gunnerlite?, a selfish version of gunner. Or the dev forgot and just became an after thought. his new overclock look like the dev pissin over scout for wanting a burts gk with ♥♥♥♥ damage originally.

[Vault Traveler]

ye

[Dollop of Mayo]

Scout's job is to light things up (more useful than you might think), grapple to hard to reach areas, and help support in battle, especially with big targets. Your ammo is limited, yes, but you can do a LOT of damage with your secondary especially.

Scout is also the only class with access to Pheremones, either through grenade or the crossbow, which can get a ton of bugs to group up, taking pressure off your teammates and giving them concentrated targets to bomb.

[Speed Malus]

Light, hard to reach mining, CC, single target killing.

[Torres, The Devourer]

For one, you gotta focus on HVTs. It’s totally normal to feel that scout has poor crowd clear- because he does. That’s why his strength lies within his ability to quickly and efficiently deal with dangerous targets such as acid spitters, web spitters, mactera, mactera trijaws, wardens, menaces, so on and so fourth.
He has excellent mobility thanks to his grapple hook, allowing for skilled players to forge and weave through attacks. Got a big swarm you can’t take down? Have you team take care of it while zipping away! Just make sure to keep the caves lit, kill bugs, and maybe support the team with a grenade or two.
Oh! Grenades! Like you said, scout has some lethal grenades. I’d go so far as to say he has the best throwable in the game. The IFG is a reliable throwable that slows down enemies and makes them revive 33% extra damage while also contributing to weapons that bright from shooting electrocuted targets. Cryo is the best status effect in the game, so being able to have emergency flash freezes in your pocket is a tremendous help. Also it’s extremely effective against mactera and large hordes of swarmers. Pheromone canisters went from THE best grenade in the game (I wasn’t playing the yet though) to one of the worst (I was playing during that time) to one of the best (current time). I tell ya, I. Haz 5, and ESPECIALLY in haz 5+ these things are a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lifesaver.

His weapons are… interesting. GK2 at base is imo not the best even after the buffs, but BoM, and ESPECIALLY AISE make the gun extremely potent.Another OC worth shouting out is electric reload; which doesn’t deal as much damage but is a great anti grunt option.
M1000 is probably the best one because it does its job of dealing with HVTs, something which all scouts should do, much easier. Plus, it has focus shots which makes things easier. It also has options for blowthrough builds, allowing you to do some crowd clear but still have the ability to dish out focus shots for HVTs.
I love the drak, but it has issues. It has a bad OC pool and was nerfed to make the gk2 look better (it obviously didn’t work so the GK2 got buffed, while the drak remains nerfed). It also lacks damage which is really rough when the weapon already has no WP bonus and is a projectile weapon rather than hits an (but I don’t mind projectile weapons). Still, I do enjoy my TLC drak and SBB.
Boomstick is good (perhaps even great) OC pool but you’ll be running the same 1X313 build for every OC excluding double barrel. It’s a great weapon and if I may throw in a personal opinion I’d like to add that shaped shells is really fun despite its simplicity.
Zhukovs are a bad weapon because they lack utility (among other things, like accuracy). Thankfully, it’s unstable are all great. Cry minelets are good, just be sure to take blowthrough and aim diagonally through the bugs and into the floor. Embedded dets may seem OP but I assure you they are perfectly fine as they are. Another good pick if you like burst damage and funny born ready shenanigans. Gas recycling is my favorite! Yes, it removes and bonus damage from weak points, but in return you get a massive damage boost and armor breaking which turns this gun into a blowthrough machine. Plus, it’s actually gives the gun utility in the form of armor break.
Boltshark is full of utility. T1 special bolts are all great. Phero is simple and effective, chemical explosion bolts are a great boon to scouts crowd control (and believe it or not deals more damage than the pgl, and actual grenade launcher), and electric bolts are your go to if you want single target damage. It has good clean OCs, but fantastic balanced OCs in the form of cryo and ice bolts. Tri fork will give you all the damage you need especially with the magnetic shafts mod (although the ammo cost is steep). Bodkin is alright. I don’t use it as much anymore because of the reload speed penalty.

As for mining and lighting up the caves: yes.
Light up the caves. ALWAYS KEEP THE CAVES LIT! Ok maybe not always, but the flare gun is one of if not your most important to.
With the grappling hook and engineer platform synergy you are great at mining high up minerals and it will usually be your job to do so (especially with the help of a proactive engineer). But remember, mining is everyone’s job, so everyone should be pitching in whenever they can.

Whew, that was a long reply but I had a lot of fun writing it! Hope it helps. Cheers!

[Summersong]

The scout does fine in fights, you just need to fight like a scout. Don't get involved in brawls, make use of your grapple to get into good shooting positions, and pick your targets. Scouts do high damage at long range with good accuracy. His primaries aren't there to pray and spray. Aim well and you'll do a lot of damage very quickly. You just need to get into a good rhythm of moving, firing and switching weapons. I'd say Born Ready also helps a LOT with the scout.

His grenades are incredibly good, they don't need to do damage to have powerful effects. Frozen enemies take double damage, or instantly die if they're swarmers or flying enemies. The IFV is excellent for crowd control. Pheremones can instantly disrupt a whole wave coming at you, and the boomerang is fantastic at mass stunning difficult enemies. And his secondaries just absolutely rip and tear, there's no a weak one amongst them, and they're perfectly for quickly doing a lot of damage before grappling away. Safe, clean, lethal.

And unlike the other classes, the Scout has an instant relocate button. You never have to fight at a disadvantage for more than a moment or two, and you can easily position yourself into very helpful and dangerous positions. Uplink defenses and repairing piplines especially, speed is life. And Dreadnaught fights are defined by the need for constant movement, which is the scout's strength.

I routinely top kill numbers with the scout. Legit, it's a skill issue if you're finding them pillow fisted.

[Lord Of War]

It's actually a girl.

[DJTron]

TLDR: Whereas gunner is sustained damage and staying power, scout is burst and utility. If you need to kill one specific target as quickly as possible or disable enemies, it's hard to do better than scout.

That's not to overstate the fact that even if scout were just a mineral-gathering light source, those 2 things are extremely helpful. Most mission types scale up the difficulty the longer you stay in a mission so time is crucial at higher difficulty.

Scout being able to loot a whole cavern in minutes is huge. And the light not only prevents ambushed but also saves you more time and longer range for safer fights.

[Victor]

My opinion is scout is very well balanced for this class-based, small squad coop game,
and the very last thing the game needs, is for Scout to be much better at swarm clear and muck up a good formula, over people noticing that the class has downsides.

Scout is the best at many other things, while not entirely lacking completely, in any single aspect. Same as all the rest of the classes.

And the class has a bunch of various OC's, weapons and mods to cope and adjust the capability for doing various different things,
and that makes the game better.

Improving his general potential at swarm clear, aoe, or ammo economy further than what OC's ect., do already, is eating into the upsides of the other classes. It would not improve the game. I'm glad the devs seem to agree.

And yes, being a "flashlight errand boy" is the baseline, and an important part of playing good scout class DRG. He is the opposite of "selfish gunner" a scout should set up his team for success.

If Scout got any "buff" I wish they'd give him 4-8 more flares so they could be more loose with them.

[Fail]

Let's be real, scout's primary use is for "stress testing" my c4

[Vault Traveler]

Originally posted by Lord Of War:

It's actually a girl.

And medic.

[AyyDimitri]

The character that can do the mission without needing to shoot, is some how supposed to be effective an firepower specialist....

Scout deals damage by wasting enemy pathfinding and time...
Bullets are just self defence or target removal...

[Ubi Kayu Rebus]

i not fully agree that scout is in a balance or good position. Drg is a horde shooter, i don't really feel that flare gun, and grappling hook is good enough to justify the weak primary gun of scout. More so for solo player

flare gun can make you see the enemy in cave, most enemy you engage with is within 10m, 20m max, regular flare do that already. flare gun is mostly for safe traversal and navigation.

Scout mobility do not justify the level of weak primary of his gun. In team environment, you can kite enemy and get some aggro of your teammate. if all of them is down, the cave is pretty small, then what? the more you kiting around waste time, more enemy will spawns.

i do believe that scout is strong at objective completion, collecting and starting. Giving scout more offensive capability would free him to help his teammate

would agree if i just say give him more primary ammo in general, abit more fire rate to modulate his dps, weak dots on grenade to soften the swarm.

But man... scout secondary is all over the place, sometimes strong, sometimes feel like slapping a wet noodle at the grunt, boomstick have shotgunitus, zukhov wheres my ammo at?, boltshark is just batman utility belt

[Ubi Kayu Rebus]

Originally posted by AyyDimitri:

The character that can do the mission without needing to shoot, is some how supposed to be effective an firepower specialist....

Scout deals damage by wasting enemy pathfinding and time...
Bullets are just self defence or target removal...

coop shooter, but dev dont want you to shoot too hard as scout for some reason. If scout grappling hook have 5 or 6 second cooldown, we probably wont having this discussion

[DarkSim]

Scout is the best class in the game.
If you want something that doesn't need skill or brain, go play Driller.

[Chibbity]

It's pretty simple.

If Scout did more damage every team would be 4 Scout's, because Scout doesn't need the other classes for anything besides wave clear.

That said he has a very important job in combat, dealing with high value targets before they become a problem for the team.