Show your replica thread + discussions

[Thieme]

Since well decked out replica's can be as strong or maybe even stronger than player characters because of their unique gene sets I thought maybe it is interesting to share replica builds and discuss stuff pertaining to replica's like gear choice etc. etc.

If you are unsure about the basics of replica's be sure to read @Red riding hood the third's replica guide here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2812999398

I'll hit it off and show you guys some of my replica's with a little information about them. If you have any questions feel free to ask.

Gunner Replica
https://i.imgur.com/KWId9Y3.jpeg
Even with a 70% ammo chance to not consume ammo he eats ammo like it is nothing but he is very strong and fun. Unsure if the stat window is bugged or not? It shows 159.5% ranged damage but 25% from gun + 35% + 7% from armor and 48% from genes adds up to less for me.

Thorns replica
https://i.imgur.com/KUEVxxA.jpeg
Most enemies usually attack me so not always that useful but he was fun to build and is a blast to use when I go back to the lower levels.
Total 22 health every second, 4 health on a reflect and 2 health on a succesful melee attack.

Lastly my Melee replica. He is pretty new and meant to replace my very first and horrible replica. I haven't used him much but stat wise and how he came out I am pretty damn happy with it. Still need to put him through his paces.
https://i.imgur.com/Jak2hI6.jpeg
Attack speed and attack damage bonusses with some survivability. His evasion and Ion shield should hopefully protect him but there is some backup health regen.
Edit: replaced above melee with this one: https://i.imgur.com/9OxdBSe.jpeg
works a little better


Tips for making a replica.
Slot amount vary between 30 and 34. Modifier nodes which boost the genes on top of them can vary from x0.5 to x2 and there can be 3 or 4 of them.
Your aim should be to try and get a layout where you can use at least 5 and preferably 6 of the 4 slot genes. It is also preferred that at least 2 of those can be placed on a high modifier.
Other things to keep in mind are the same as for player characters, don't combine Host genes with Ion shield genes or high amounts of evasion for example. For the rest read the descriptions and try to find synergies between the genes of different classes and synergies between genes and gear.
Most importantly have fun!

[Thieme]

Hate to bump my own thread. Had hoped people would be more interested in this kind of stuff.
Anyways I made a new build, this time a sniper.
https://i.imgur.com/rbs8r76.jpeg
I got the idea because one of the Gambler nodes boosts both ranged damage and crit damage. Since snipers always crit, it synergizes well. Took him to floor 18 and he oneshots pretty much all trash hitting for ~1500 but he is a little squishy and with the AI not being that great he does go down in the dungeons when up against an elite.
I might end up rerolling one of his gear towards evasion instead of crit damage and hope he still oneshots stuff.

[Zourin]

my advice: specialize around your specialization.

My mistake as a ranged attack build was trying to make ranged attack replicas. The end result was messy and did not make very good use of them. I would stand off and shoot, and they would... charge in and shoot, or get attacked and quickly get disabled, or I'd die without a tank running interference.

Evasion doesn't work well on tanks, neither do ion shields. Evasion doesn't reduce incoming damage, and it doesn't take long for them to get badly injured in a few seconds. Ion shields, likewise, don't reduce incoming damage, and is nothing more than a false sense of security that bails the moment the fight gets hairy. Do one or the other on ranged support IF you are melee.

"Melee damage" is an oxymoron when it comes to replicas. Anything that is going to suddenly bum rush a boss complex and aggro everything at once, as replicas do, is either going to tank it like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ champ or get B-slapped like a chihuahua that just pissed on your favorite shoes. You want damage reduction, which comes in two flavors. The general kind and the 'anti-boss' "Assistant" variety. I say use both.

The damage reflection abilities are.. not great? Sure, it's extra damage, but it's reduced by your armor value, iirc (Correct me if I'm wrong!), so it benefits from high health and low armor. This is TERRIBLE in the lower levels where enemies are so chonk they sunk 15 levels into the planet's crust and can take what they dish PLUS what you and your replica can dish and still eat a big mac in the time it takes for you to drop them.

Overall. tanks are far, far, far, far, far more useful. They take heat off of you, the most important person in the room. If you need to back off, you can. Chungo the thug-spec isn't going to last six seconds around a boss if you need to back off.

[Thieme]

Originally posted by Zourin:

my advice: specialize around your specialization.

I think this is most a problem because of wonky AI. Also you can not put a role for your replica and it doesn't have a taunt action if you want to use it as a tank.

Originally posted by Zourin:

Evasion doesn't work well on tanks, neither do ion shields. Evasion doesn't reduce incoming damage, and it doesn't take long for them to get badly injured in a few seconds. Ion shields, likewise, don't reduce incoming damage.

I never tried a full tank using ion + evasion but from my experience using replicas that use a combination of Ion shields and Evasion it works well enough for survivability.
Defense and evasion both suffer quite a bit from diminishing returns so in a way a combination of defense, evasion and ion should be superior. Since you get a nice baseline of defense from gear and the point where evasion becomes less useful is reached pretty soon, I opt to take Ion too. Preventing health damage as much as possible also stops my replica's from using food/healing items.
When you use a melee replica that uses health leech gene + Divil's dagger leaving out Ion is the better option on paper but it is difficult to combine Thug + Attack speed + defense because they all have the same general shape for the 4 lot genes. That kind of annoys me a bit especially if that means you can not get some boost in a corner because of it. Yes I know I could leave out attack speed but when using Divil's weapon it becomes a tool for survival too.

Originally posted by Zourin:

The damage reflection abilities are.. not great?

Yeah never said they were good but it is funny to use when visiting earlier floors you overleveled. Stuff attacks your replica once or twice and dies.

Originally posted by Zourin:

Overall. tanks are far, far, far, far, far more useful.

In a sense I agree but want to mention again that the lack of a taunt can be a pain in the ass. A true glass cannon build for the player is still not advised even if you have both your pet and your replica tanking because the enemy might still decide to hit you when they feel like it. Nevertheless a tank build should probably be everyone's first replica

[Zourin]

You can toggle a tank/taunt mode for replicas and pets in the upper left corner.

The rant wasn't so much about ion + evasion, but just the two of them in general. Things hit HARD in lower levels, and trading damage reduction/health for either is a bad trade, particularly since ion shields are only good when you're fighting only 1-2 things at once.. aka, 'fair weather'. The moment things get hot, ion shields aren't worth much. They don't work well in prolonged fights like vs bosses (or surrounding areas) like a defense/hp/assistant build would. Any build can smurf upper levels, but when the pressure's on, you don't want to be roaming around with a replica relying on evasion or ion shields.

Pound for pound, I still prefer a tank-perked pet setup with a sand/forest whale or nightmare tank running interference. The only downside is i'm spending my slot, but when a L4 sand whale takes less than 1 point of damage a tick from a boss chainsaw on L19 and can sit there for a full minute, fiddling with replicas feels VERY pointless.

[Thieme]

Originally posted by Zourin:

You can toggle a tank/taunt mode for replicas and pets in the upper left corner.

How do I keep missing such obvious stuff in this game .... it is bad lol

As for the rest of your post I understand now. I might try and build a better version of my melee replica without ion. Although I admit that since beating the game it doesn't really pul me in much anymore.

[Zourin]

yeah, the game drops off pretty hard at the end. what are you going to do with a small army of replicas and pets once the game is beat?

[Thieme]

Yeah nothing :D but it is still kinda nice to see what is possible

[Thieme]

Originally posted by Zourin:

yeah, the game drops off pretty hard at the end. what are you going to do with a small army of replicas and pets once the game is beat?

After 7 resets of the clone thing I finally found a good replica worthy of building.
This is my new replacement Melee DPS without Ion shield (but still a little evasion)
https://i.imgur.com/9OxdBSe.jpeg
15 HP/sec + 3% of damage done + 2HP for each hit on enemy. With the resistance and reduction he should do well.
The gear bonusses are still evasion. Unsure if I want to keep it that way or switch it up.

[Tseralith]

I made a ranged + crit damage bonus replica with the Sniper Rifle who'd do quite hefty damage with every shot. I made sure to turn myself into a tank so my replica wouldn't take any hits. Works most of the time. A little so-so against bosses as they attack everywhere on the screen.

I would like to point out the "4 hp recovered on reflection" gene is actually really good for a tank build of your replica. Not for the reflection itself, but rather to make sure you have multiple of them so your replica recovers more hp than it loses. Then it won't matter if bosses shoot 100 bullets every second if your replica technically gets more health back from it. I'd say this is even more valuable than hp recovery per second.

You just have to make sure your replica also has several of the "25% damage reduction from bosses" gene plus enough defense, gear, and health to survive the stronger shots. Also hopefully turn every shot into weak shots.

I made one, albeit too focused on damage reflection, yet still tough enough to solo Man in Black on Expert mode by himself with almost no problem at all. Only his phantoms were dangerous since they aren't technically considered bosses, and thus my replica wouldn't benefit from his "80% damage reduction from bosses".

Oh! The skill Cell Armor (increases damage reduction for you and your close allies) is also vital for everyones' survival.

[Thieme]

Originally posted by Tseralith:

Post

Sniper one in fun yeah! Also a good tip about that host gene!
I'd love to see pics of the way you arranged your genes on your replicas

[Tseralith]

Originally posted by Thieme:

Sniper one in fun yeah! Also a good tip about that host gene!
I'd love to see pics of the way you arranged your genes on your replicas

Sure thing! Here it is.
https://i.imgur.com/oonbjEp.jpg

8 hp recovery per damage reflection
80% damage reduction from bosses
Only kinda (but maybe not?) unnecessary amount of extra damage reflection.

Guess the only slightly troublesome part with this "intentionally/doesn't really care if I get hit" build is that his armor will suffer greatly from all the hits.


Edit: Forgot to include my sniper build. Here it is.
https://i.imgur.com/W4Ufghg.jpg

Almost completely ignore defense genes in favor of offense.

[Thieme]

Originally posted by Tseralith:

Sure thing! Here it is.
https://i.imgur.com/oonbjEp.jpg

Hmm not sure I would have done the same actually using 3 of those boss resist genes. It is a shame the bottom boost is only a 1.2. I would probably opted to have a bit more general defense but as long as it works for you more power to you (and your replica)

Originally posted by Tseralith:

Edit: Forgot to include my sniper build. Here it is.
https://i.imgur.com/W4Ufghg.jpg

Almost completely ignore defense genes in favor of offense.

Is there a reason you didn't take more 4 slot genes on the left? The numbers don't lie, I am sure the damage is great but on a quick glance it could have been better?
It does take some balls to only take 2 1 slot ions as mitigation and x2 boost a gene that decreases defense :D

[Tseralith]

Originally posted by Thieme:

Hmm not sure I would have done the same actually using 3 of those boss resist genes. It is a shame the bottom boost is only a 1.2. I would probably opted to have a bit more general defense but as long as it works for you more power to you (and your replica)

Yeah... I didn't really try too hard on getting a perfect replica to use. This guy was mostly an experiment to see how it would work out. I did, however, want a quite high boss resistance since I was playing on Expert mode and I knew bosses deal a looot of damage. That's how my "hp on reflection" idea actually works against those hard-hitters (or at least against the Man in Black. Never got the opportunity to challenge the later bosses yet). Most normal defense actually comes from excellent gear plus me using "defense increase" and "defense reduction" leader auras. Also the Cell Armor skill.

90% damage resistance, 90% damage reduction, and 80% boss damage reduction works quite well. There might be a point where I could gain more benefit from extra defense rather than boss damage reduction Also from better gene boosts. However, this replica was still an experiment just to try out a concept.

Theoretically, you could maybe even get 100% damage reduction from bosses. I just don't know if the game would actually allow that.

Originally posted by Thieme:

Is there a reason you did take more 4 slot genes on this one? The numbers don't lie, I am sure the damage is great but on a quick glance it could have been better?
It does take some balls to only take 2 1 slot ions as mitigation and x2 boost a gene that decreases defense :D

It could surely get better if you made effort into finding the "perfect" replica to use. This one happened to have two 2x gene bonuses, which was quite nice and I made use of the genes I happened to have available at that time. He did his job, so I was quite satisfied with him.

Defense wise ... I had the idea that if I made sure to tank everything, my replica wouldn't need to take any hits. Ironically, me focusing on increasing my own defense actually ended up also increasing the defense/resistances of my replica. He ended up with ~88% damage resistance and 90% damage reduction as well (after using Cell Armor).

Granted, he was a bit so-so against bosses due to them attacking everywhere. Also when my Cell Armor went out and he became a target.

[Thieme]

Originally posted by Tseralith:

post

I play on normal so for me things are probably a bit more easy. I wouldn't even know what modifiers the mobs get on expert but yeah I can understand your reasoning. It does take a lot of time to wait for the perfect replica and farm plenty of all the gene stuff

[Qiox]

I'm using an all ghost replica with 85% evasion equipped with a dagger for lots of stabby dps and doesn't die.