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Dronemaster, on the other hand, is one of the most underrated classes in the game. It's also a situational class, but its team utility is unmatched.
Its quadrocopters highlight teammates on Extreme difficulty (where the friendly outlines are disabled) and make them clearly visible when they are surrounded by zombies or hidden behind the fog/blizzard/gas clouds. The drones also disable friendly fire damage entirely (with the "Not On My Watch" perk), which gives teammates an opportunity to be less timid with cleaning up zombies around players followed by drones, especially if they have explosive weapons. It also makes challenge missions with the "Treason" mutator less painful to play (since friendly fire damage is increased significantly).
Drones can also prevent a knockdown by giving a masking effect if the player it's following is very low on health ("Saving Grace"). A masking effect exactly when it's needed, not earlier, not before, and triggered automatically. If the "Clear!" perk is taken instead, players followed by drones will get auto-revived.
Drones are a way to help someone remotely, even when you are separated by walls and other obstacles. It comes in handy when the team has to split. For instance, if a teammate in the Moscow 4 subway gets pinned by a sudden Lurker while pressing the button on the upper floor, the drone can help them immediately (while the player from the bottom floor will have a long way to run). The same principle applies to collecting crates in the New York 1 subway, car parts in Jerusalem 2, and missiles in Marseille 2.
Drones are the only way to automatically unpin teammates attacked by boosted common zombies. Incredibly helpful when they don't have access to the "Rooted" perk.
Anyone followed by a quadrocopter can afford to stay firing the stationary machine gun in odd positions longer because the drone will take care of stray zombies without distracting the gunner and making other teammates shift focus from the main horde. New York 2, Jerusalem 1, Kamchatka 1 & 2, Rome 2 & 3 have some odd positions during major horde sequences. New York 2 also has tunnel boring machines that take some time to reach the trains and require the player to be vulnerable for some time.
Dronemaster is also the only class that can dispose of Screamers without making someone abandon their position and go against the flow of zombies. The "Keep It Down" perk will auto-kill a Screamer in 20 seconds, which is helpful in situations when there's no direct line of sight on it. Screamers can sometimes get spawned in locked areas, too.
"Housekeeping", another perk that can be taken instead of the perk for Screamers, can defuse mines and turrets in inconvenient positions (helpful in maps like New York 4, Jerusalem 3, Moscow 3, and Kamchatka 2).
In the Marseille 3 catacombs, drones can take care of zekes that players couldn't spot early enough because of the darkness.
It's also worth mentioning that a Prestige 3 Dronemaster with ["Spotter" + "The Big Five 0"] has just enough damage to one-shot Bulls with the Payload rifle on Extreme as long as they have the drone. It saves the team's ammo and resources. "Spotter" also boosts the gun damage in general.
Dronemaster's utility lies in preventing bad situations from happening rather than mitigating the consequences.
How comes that medic with constant 25% bonus bonus damage for everyone in a team somehow cant deal damage and need to be carried by team, but dronemaster with 15% damage for two team members is not? Especially considering that dronemaster's perk that is required for that bonus unlocks only at PRESTIGE 3 and perk that gives friendly fire immunity(the only one that grants dronemaster ability to actively participate in game as a class) unlocks at level 28 which means leveling up prestige 3 will lock you into hours of nothing to do.
And no offence, but its a little bit strange that you claim to be knowledgeable in this game, but somehow stuff you write imply that you dont know that medic can swap his starting SMG for literally any other weapon found in the level, it just sounds strange.
It looks like you have completely misunderstood the points I've made.
In my previous comment about the Medic you are referring to, the point I've made is that this class is overrated, and a lot of that has to do with the "Secret Ingredient" perk. Medics who use the masking effect produced by this perk improperly tend to get their teammates killed. Then, if such Medics manage to come out of the disaster alive, it's too easy for them to think they have carried the team and saved the day when they actually were a big part of the problem in the first place.
In this comment about the Dronemaster, I have never said that the point of this class is to carry teams. I have made it clear that it's a support class with the kind of utilities that are supposed to prevent bad situations from happening rather than letting them happen and recovering from the consequences more efficiently.
First of all, I have made it clear that damage dealing is not the main purpose both of these classes are supposed to serve. They are support classes.
Secondly, I believe you are referring to the "Fighting Fit" perk by mentioning the 25% damage bonus. This perk has more cons than pros and is not worth using:
- The damage bonus applies only to the Medic, not the whole team.
- Temporary health doesn't count. Every single member of the team needs to have more than 50% regular health for the bonus to work.
- If at least one player in the team is dead, the bonus is disabled until that player gets respawned. 3 alive players with full health + 1 dead player = no damage bonus.
"In The Zone" (another perk in the same column) that gives you a 50% damage boost for 10 seconds is a better option, but the bonus is not constant: it only triggers when you spend a Stim Pistol charge.Even if a Medic takes "In The Zone" and "Lobotomy", unlike classes that specialize in dealing damage, they will lack access to other important bonuses that improve weapon handling. This means that 1 Medic in a team of 4 players is a significant reduction in the overall firepower.
What is that firepower given up for? For team utility. However, the sorts of support abilities the Medic has access to are centered around damage mitigation and become highly relevant only in challenges with specific mutators. The Dronemaster, on the other hand, offers a different kind of team utility. It's preventative. It's meant to stop teammates from taking damage and prevent bad situations from happening instead of mitigating the consequences.
Class levelling in this game doesn't take much time. It takes a few hours (less than one day) of regular gameplay to level up a class from 0 to 30. It's even faster if you use optimized farming methods. I would like to note that the OP has already reached the 4th Prestige as a Medic and is curious about what other perks are worth levelling up. Dronemaster is a class that benefits a lot from getting prestiged. The OP is also on the lookout for tips about the higher difficulties where having maxed-out perks is the norm.
The point about that Prestige 3 perk is meant to show that the Dronemaster can kill special infected faster and more efficiently than the Medic. The buffed Payload rifle one-shots Bulls.
On a side note, even without that "+15% damage" perk, the rest of my points about the Dronemaster's team utility still stand.
It sounds strange because you have misunderstood my points. Picking up new weapons isn't a feature exclusive to the Medic, every class can do that starting from level 0. Many other classes can utilize any weapon in the game better than Medics with any perk composition. The Medic can get a slight edge on some other classes when it comes to using SMGs. This advantage isn't really impressive given that it's the worst primary weapon class in the game.
I dont think Ive experienced a team wipe or getting in a bind because the medic was dumb to mask. Almost every Medic uses the stim to pick up someone, or when theres a free pickup. Its rare to see someone use the stim to preemptively save someone and I never see someone fumble the stim. I dont think your argument works when it only applies to the dumbest of the dumbest, Id just leave the lobby and run ai if I dont have the choice. But yes Medic is not THE strongest class because the DPS classes have perks to sustain themselves with yellow health or cc. If yellow HP is not in this game then Medics would be necessary in every coop lobby.
In coop i definitely wouldnt mind if someone is DM or Medic. I get more mileage out of getting the electric drone than getting stim there are mutators (no pharma; no pickup; protect the king) where I wish someone has heal pack on 15 kills. That perk is OP in many maps. DM is good in nemesis he can take care of the Golden Bull with Payload Rifle and Electric Drone for a long time.
If youre new I suggest you level HR or Ext, run the yellow HP perks. Here Kitty on HR will help you against bulls but watch out for FF.
I don't think so. This thread has produced more useful information than all of those "hurr durr dead game" or "moar content plox, update when?" topics.
I agree with the point that good Medics will be more careful if they take the perk with the masking ability ("Secret Ingredient"). However, the perk itself is objectively problematic for everyone. Those good Medics will have less freedom to use their Stim Pistols exactly when they need to, since a good moment for using a Stim Pistol to trigger the bonuses could be a bad moment to use masking.
The Exterminator's masking perk can cause problems, too, but at least it gets triggered when Exterminators are eliminating zombies in large quantities, so it's not detrimental to that extent, in my opinion.
Good points, I agree.