Chainsaw Build: Tank The Frontier

Here’s the recipe for the tankiest build in the game that still manages over 200 DPS vs mutated.

Overview

The chainsaw build is the strongest build in Dead Frontier 2 as of this writing.

This guide outlines which stats to maximize through your skills and gear.

This sturdy build features maximum protection from burns, bleeding, infection, and radiation. Additionally, maximizing incoming damage reduction and health further survivability significantly.

By pushing the limits of sprint, you’ll be able to traverse the open world quickly, move quickly from one target to the next, make it back and forth to destinations in a flash, and escape when you don’t feel like engaging in nasty situations.

Damage vs Mutated gives you the confidence to attack bosses with impunity, shredding through them in seconds.

Skills, core stats, bonus stats, and gear stats are listed in order of importance.

If your gear provides burns and bleeding and/or infection and radiation chance, you can reallocate one skill point for every 20% to any skill you’d like not included in the skill list. I don’t recommend this approach to gear in a general sense. However, if you’re using Dogg’s Britches, you can save one skill point on Thick Skin to use on another skill, such as Looter or Mule for search speed or inventory capacity.

End game stats for this build should result in over 75% body damage, 50% attack speed, 125% damage vs mutated, 250 hit points, incoming damage reduced 50%, 100% resistance to burns, bleeding, infection, and radiation, the ability to sprint permanently, 100 DPS vs infected, and 200 DPS vs mutated.

With best in slot gear, you can easily reach 35 inventory slots with this build without sacrificing survivability which makes it great for farming and allows you to leave for journeys prepared however you see fit for maximum survivability.

Finally, stay intoxicated for an extra 5% incoming damage reduction as the accuracy penalty from being intoxicated doesn’t affect this build. Cheers!

Skills

• Lumberjack
  
• Aim For The Heart
  
• Immune System
  
• Thick Skin
  
• Sprinter
  
• Hunter
  
• Toughness

Core Stats

• Body Damage
  
• Attack Speed
  
• Damage vs Mutated
  
• Incoming Damage
  
• Health
  
• Bleeding Chance
  
• Burns Chance
  
• Infection Chance
  
• Radiation Chance
  
• Sprint Cooldown
  
• Sprint Duration
  
• Sprint Speed

Bonus Stats

• Inventory Capacity: Inventory capacity is a great stat to stack on this build for farming.
  
• Search Speed: Search speed is great for looting while being attacked.

I don’t list walk speed or jog speed as bonus stats because this build should be able to perma-sprint, and the amount of time you spend attacking a given enemy is generally so short you’re only walking for a split second unless you’re up against a very hearty boss zombie.

I prioritize inventory capacity over search speed heavily since I’m not overly concerned with searching while being attacked. With that being said, if you are able to find gear that has all of the core stats and search speed, it’s a welcomed bonus.

Gear

Primary Weapon

• Chainsaw with Weapon Attack Speed, Weapon Body Damage, Damage vs Mutated
  
• Bonus Stats: Incoming Damage, Health, Inventory Capacity
  
• Best In Slot: Cattle Mangler or Elite with Weapon Attack Speed, Weapon Body Damage, Damage vs Mutated, Incoming Damage
  
• Upgrade: Chainsaw Muffler

Base DPS: 78.79
DPS Versus Infected: 96.91
DPS Versus Mutated: 177.28



Secondary Weapon

• Damage vs Mutated, Incoming Damage, Health
  
• Bonus Stats: Sprint Cooldown, Sprint Duration, Sprint Speed, Inventory Capacity
  
• Best In Slot: Elite with Damage vs Mutated, Incoming Damage, Health, Sprint Cooldown

Head

• Attack Speed, Body Damage, Damage vs Mutated
  
• Bonus Stats: Search Speed
  
• Best In Slot: Butcher’s Mask or Elite with Attack Speed, Body Damage, Damage vs Mutated, Search Speed

Body (Armour)

• Kevlar Vest with Incoming Damage, Health
  
• Bonus Stats: Inventory Capacity
  
• Best In Slot: Elite Kevlar Vest with Incoming Damage, Health, Inventory Capacity
  
• Upgrade: Ballistic Plates

Hands

• Attack Speed, Body Damage, Damage vs Mutated
  
• Bonus Stats: Search Speed
  
• Best In Slot: Butcher’s Gloves or Elite with Attack Speed, Body Damage, Damage vs Mutated, Search Speed

Legs

• Incoming Damage, Health
  
• Bonus Stats: Inventory Capacity, Sprint Cooldown, Sprint Duration, Sprint Speed
  
• Best In Slot: Vagabond’s Jeans, or Elite with Incoming Damage, Health, Inventory Capacity, Sprint Cooldown

Feet

• Sprint Cooldown, Sprint Duration, Sprint Speed
  
• Bonus Stats: Incoming Damage
  
• Best In Slot: Ghost Sneakers or Elite with Sprint Cooldown, Sprint Duration, Sprint Speed, Incoming Damage

Backpack

• Best In Slot: Military Daypack

As I improve my gear, I will update the screenshots here.

Leveling

1 - 10
The lowest level requirement to use any chainsaw is level 10. When you hit level 10, buy a chainsaw and keep 4 fuel in your inventory at all times.

Before level 10, there are two paths you can take, a safe route and an aggressive route. If you’ve been playing for a while and have other developed characters, I would recommend playing aggressively. If you’re just starting out in Dead Frontier 2, I would recommend the safe route.

Take Sprinter and Toughness if going the safe route or Lumberjack and Aim For The Heart if playing aggressively.

10 - 20
Take Immune System and Thick Skin for these levels.

20 - 30
Take Lumberjack and Aim For The Heart for these levels if you’re playing it safe, or Sprinter and Toughness if you’re playing it aggressive.

30+ Skill Points
Take Hunter for these levels to maximize your damage versus mutated.



Enjoy knocking the Stalker down with impunity!

[Fumo Bnnuy n Frends]

no
now zombies do more dps and hae special variants. So you'll need to put in there more %stun threshold / recovery to not get stunlocked by bosses or even curse of comer zombies. Also investing more in stun / knockback distance / duration to keep zombies at bay hit and run tactics.

[FluffyGuy]

yes and no, its kinda ok ish once you get to lvl 50 pres 10 but good luck with that

[Shadow Wolf]

Do the nerfs for the chainsaw destroyed the build? (the 50% less body damage)

[Yeastisbae]

cool, thx for reply. I suppose having friends for bossing is a possible strat to overcome that.

[Fumo Bnnuy n Frends]

out of current bosses only 6 are really worth meleeing or chainsawing.

normal zombies but mutant boss status (1 for each special damage type making it 4 different types) like the slightly bigger/taller ones in lvl 1-5 areas
spiters
stalkers if they're not chasing you directly

Chiors will gain an advantage if you're close range
Mothers can sadly one shot you (seen it happen if you survive you can get black and white status easily)
Fingers can do some damage at close range + they can have the added bonus of blinding you if you look too high up
roid hulks will mess you up at close range
tendrils too but they have the b.s. long arm range of 1-2 counter tops

With more special infected being added chainsaws may be worth more for special infected zombies than mutants bosses

[Fumo Bnnuy n Frends]

Tbh imo chainsaw builds work better for normal zombies. With newer variants coming it'd be much better if you could just shred enemies really quickly especially lower lvl ones. Making it easier to loot stuff since most newer bosses are getting better at close and medium range attacks.

with the new assault rifles on the way, they'll give chainsaws a run for their money.

To add headshot damage is better for bosses than body damage. Even with high body damage it's still better to headshot them.

Chainsaws also have a hidden bonus of (idk if bug or feature) stun locking normal zombies with a high enough knockback. Bosses sadly have a knockback cooldown especially tendrils since people used to cheese them with melees.

[Fumo Bnnuy n Frends]

@ yeastisbae

Apwn capped it but yeah its basically ALMOST unlimited sprint. Though with high sprint duration and speed you can literally never need to rely on cooldowns b/c you can cover the equivalent of 1 block at half the sprint bar in like 10 seconds.

It's sorta like in DF1 where people would tap run only when bosses would attack especially titans who would easily out last you but you could out sprint them before their attacks registered.

[Yeastisbae]

mmm, maybe you refer to this?
https://www.df2haven.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=58&start=10

[Yeastisbae]

i love the build but please for the love of god explain perma-sprint. Are you claiming its possible to have -100% sprint cooldown? I really want to go sprinter instead of jogger for my build but nothing seems to point towards sprinting being viable...