Best secondary to deal with illuminate shields

[Razer]

So I've been using the Sickle primary with grenade pistol secondary which is great, but I wanted to change things around. The Purifier is a fun weapon, but cannot take down shields unless you want to make a day of it. It also cannot destroy the ships with the charged shot so that sucks.

In order for me to bring a different primary (one that cannot take down the shields quickly or at all) I need something else. I've been trying the strafing run, but it's limited and I don't really want to waste a strategem on just shields. But it's ok.

So I was wondering what secondary would be good. I don't own all of them, but just looking for suggestions. I have tried the redeemer and it "can" take down ship shields in 1-2 magazines, but it's iffy and it has very limited ammo.

Thoughts?

[Razer]

Originally posted by Trig_Zero:

Orbital Gas can actually go through and 1shot those landed ships
albeit u need a direct hit
so i normallly just go with Knight smg, 1 mag can delete the shield
nade pistol(backup), gas grenade, then either RR or Commando + Gun dog and Gas strike
its set for most of the situation i found mysellf in lv7~10 squids
the other 1~2 stratagems is free

The redeemer SMG cannot consistently take down the shield of the ships in one magazine. Sometimes takes 2 full mags to deplete the shield. Maybe it depends on whether you're standing still or whether you're hitting it in a specific spot or if you're hitting all shots in the same spot. Not sure. I've had varrying results.

Gas strike is great, but not really good for taking down ships because it's a one time use before cooldown. The center of the impact needs to hit the ship too otherwise it deals no damage to it. But it's great for a general purpose strategem. I wouldn't bring it just to take care of the ships. There's far too many ships to clear and I'm not going to stand there waiting 2 minutes for it to be back up ;)

[Akameka]

All laser weapon except sickle have terrible DPS. Laser pistol is 250 VS 687,5 from sickle (55x750/60). Redeemer has 1100 DPS, so that's why it shred shields too.
Laser canon seems okay-ish ( probably around 450-500 DPS )

Tripod shield Value is less than 3200 ( recoiless one shot the shield) while the ships shield is slightly above that value. You can barrelly destroy it with an almost full sickle burst of 100 shots (so probably 5000 hp). Given that it takes about 3s of sickle shot to down tripod shields, I would guess it's around 2000 hp.

As the shield auto-regen for each frame it is not activelly attacked, you either want high burst or high DPS weapon to deal with it.

[Razer]

Originally posted by Akameka:

All laser weapon except sickle have terrible DPS. Laser pistol is 250 VS 687,5 from sickle (55x750/60). Redeemer has 1100 DPS, so that's why it shred shields too.
Laser canon seems okay-ish ( probably around 450-500 DPS )

Tripod shield Value is less than 3200 ( recoiless one shot the shield) while the ships shield is slightly above that value. You can barrelly destroy it with an almost full sickle burst of 100 shots (so probably 5000 hp). Given that it takes about 3s of sickle shot to down tripod shields, I would guess it's around 2000 hp.

As the shield auto-regen for each frame it is not activelly attacked, you either want high burst or high DPS weapon to deal with it.

I think you're calculating that wrong. Redeemer has 1100 fire rate (rounds per minute). With 65 damage per shot it has 71500 DPM, which is 1191 DPS max, but it needs to reload so it has 2015 damage per magazine which is 2 seconds of firing. 8060 total for all 4 magazines.

Now here's where it becomes interesting and why I think DPS is not what is required. The purifier has 200 damage with a 15 mag clip. You can fire this as fast as you can at max 1000 rounds per minute for a theoretical DPS of 3333. It deals 3000 damage per magazine. However from my testing it takes 4 magazines to take down a ship shield. Which is in total 12000 damage. Now of course during reload the shield regenerates, but it still has higher sustained DPS vs the redeemer. Yet the redeemer takes down shields much much faster.

So I'm currently thinking that there's a max damage per shot the shield takes and the rest is ignored. Or it takes different damage per damage type. Maybe balistics are better or certain types of ammo deal more damage? Could be either one.

But just going by DPS then it doesn't make sense that the purifier cannot take the shield down even though it has higher DPS than the redeemer.

[Trig_Zero]

Originally posted by Razer:

Originally posted by Trig_Zero:

Orbital Gas can actually go through and 1shot those landed ships
albeit u need a direct hit
so i normallly just go with Knight smg, 1 mag can delete the shield
nade pistol(backup), gas grenade, then either RR or Commando + Gun dog and Gas strike
its set for most of the situation i found mysellf in lv7~10 squids
the other 1~2 stratagems is free

The redeemer SMG cannot consistently take down the shield of the ships in one magazine. Sometimes takes 2 full mags to deplete the shield. Maybe it depends on whether you're standing still or whether you're hitting it in a specific spot or if you're hitting all shots in the same spot. Not sure. I've had varrying results.

Gas strike is great, but not really good for taking down ships because it's a one time use before cooldown. The center of the impact needs to hit the ship too otherwise it deals no damage to it. But it's great for a general purpose strategem. I wouldn't bring it just to take care of the ships. There's far too many ships to clear and I'm not going to stand there waiting 2 minutes for it to be back up ;)

i wasn't talkin about the redeemer but i guess u misunderstanding me makes sense duue to the topic asking for secondaries
but its actually the pre-order smg, knight, on a similar stat, the free killzone smg actually works the same
can break the shield within a mag as well

Gas strike works well for its short af cool down, i think shorter than OPS
and has a cloud gas that stays for roughly 20sec
DoT crowd control that can kill overseers and zombies pretty quick
is a must bring for me on any squid missions lol

[Razer]

Originally posted by Trig_Zero:

Originally posted by Razer:

The redeemer SMG cannot consistently take down the shield of the ships in one magazine. Sometimes takes 2 full mags to deplete the shield. Maybe it depends on whether you're standing still or whether you're hitting it in a specific spot or if you're hitting all shots in the same spot. Not sure. I've had varrying results.

Gas strike is great, but not really good for taking down ships because it's a one time use before cooldown. The center of the impact needs to hit the ship too otherwise it deals no damage to it. But it's great for a general purpose strategem. I wouldn't bring it just to take care of the ships. There's far too many ships to clear and I'm not going to stand there waiting 2 minutes for it to be back up ;)

i wasn't talkin about the redeemer but i guess u misunderstanding me makes sense duue to the topic asking for secondaries
but its actually the pre-order smg, knight, on a similar stat, the free killzone smg actually works the same
can break the shield within a mag as well

Gas strike works well for its short af cool down, i think shorter than OPS
and has a cloud gas that stays for roughly 20sec
DoT crowd control that can kill overseers and zombies pretty quick
is a must bring for me on any squid missions lol

I was assuming you mis stated the name hehe. No worries. This Knight gun is no longer available I gather?

[Trig_Zero]

Originally posted by Razer:

I was assuming you mis stated the name hehe. No worries. This Knight gun is no longer available I gather?

sadly yea
but the killzone smg is free, and its not far off stat-wise
only problem is there's no optics
not like u need it for the knight
but i do want flashlights or laser pointers on smgs

[Botji]

Originally posted by Razer:

Now here's where it becomes interesting and why I think DPS is not what is required. The purifier has 200 damage with a 15 mag clip. You can fire this as fast as you can at max 1000 rounds per minute for a theoretical DPS of 3333. It deals 3000 damage per magazine. However from my testing it takes 4 magazines to take down a ship shield. Which is in total 12000 damage. Now of course during reload the shield regenerates, but it still has higher sustained DPS vs the redeemer. Yet the redeemer takes down shields much much faster.

So I'm currently thinking that there's a max damage per shot the shield takes and the rest is ignored. Or it takes different damage per damage type. Maybe balistics are better or certain types of ammo deal more damage? Could be either one.

But just going by DPS then it doesn't make sense that the purifier cannot take the shield down even though it has higher DPS than the redeemer.

Afaik the ship shields are immune to explosive damage(tbh I would guess all shields are meant to be, including the Harvesters but they are currently not) which is what makes certain weapons surprisingly bad at destroying the ship shields.

The 200 damage you are using in your math is based on a 1 second fully charged shot where the projectile also gains the 300 explosive damage for a total of 500.

When you rapid fire the Purifier it only does 35% of that = 175 damage.. and apparently if we can trust the wiki that 175 damage is made of 100 energy and 75 explosive damage, which the ship shields are immune to = each shot does 100 energy damage to the shield that may or may not reduce energy damage(or kinetic does bonus damage ?)

Anyway even with the full 100 energy damage it is still half of what you assumed.


I know the Pummeler can take down a ship shield on its own using just about an entire mag.
475 RoF = 7,916 bullets per second
65 damage per bullet -1 because apparently almost all projectiles immediately lose 1 damage with how the damage drop off works? = 506 DPS
45 bullets per mag = 2880 damage per mag

I would assume the shield health is either close to that 2800 or it has a constant regeneration and perhaps closer to 2500 health?

Best way to find out how it works would probably be to test with a few high DPS kinetic weapons that can break the shield with 1 mag or less, then reduce the amount of bullets you have left in the mag before dumping it into the shield to dial in how much damage it really takes to break it while the high DPS keeps the shields ability to regen to a minimum.

Then with that baseline test some lower DPS kinetic weapons and see how many bullets/damage they need to break it and work out the shield regen from the difference... finally do the same with some energy weapons and see if they do full or reduced damage.

If I get bored I might do it myself, not now though.

[dyra55]

Originally posted by Razer:

Originally posted by dyra55:

Yes, if you fire it quick enough it drops them in about two cylinders

Cool. I'm going to give it a try.

Not the best weapon to drop the shields but i use it because it can kill overseers with one well placed headshot

[Husker_85]

The shields have a flat, regenerating health pool that resists exotic damage types. Any ballistic weapon will work; the higher the DPS, the better. So with that in mind, you could probably use the Senator or Verdict

[Nihil]

Originally posted by an entire Roman legion:

Im just going to hijack ur thread to praise the eagle strafing run+nade pistol: my tools to take down those landing ships w/ shield

Yeah since one person posted it on youtube how good it is, now everyone copypasted it for himself.

[an entire Roman legion]

Originally posted by Nihil:

Originally posted by an entire Roman legion:

Im just going to hijack ur thread to praise the eagle strafing run+nade pistol: my tools to take down those landing ships w/ shield

Yeah since one person posted it on youtube how good it is, now everyone copypasted it for himself.

wat

[Rail]

after all the secondaries I tested redeemer seems the best or just ultimatum and kill them through the shields one shot lol, I had hopes for the dagger but no, everything else is just super bad, redeemer takes also less than 2 secs to kill harvester shields in one go

for primaries there are plenty options, same goes for support weapons, but I also wanted to mix things up but redeemer seems to be the only choice which is quite sad

[jeffy]

grenade

[Vivianite]

dagger

[Xzystance:TTV]

Honestly, for illuminate i use this loadout:

Light 100% melee boost armor, Crossbow, Axe and Impact incind grenades.

Stratagems:
Eagle 500k
Orbital Perscision Strike
Ballistic Shield
Mg-43 Machine gun

I use the eagle and orbital for taking down most illuminate ships, use the axe and shield for voteless, use the crossbow for arc towers and overseers on the ground, MG-43 machine gun for flying overseers Harvesters.

When my orbital and eagle are on cooldown, i use the MG-43 to take down to take down the ship shields and crossbow bolt in the front door to destroy them.

Work really good for me on D10. Just gotta hit and run a bit, don't focus on one thing too long. if the squids start getting thick, go hit something else and come back.

This load out isn't meant to stand and fight endless armies, though it does hold its own fairly well.