Strange Brigade DPS Guide

DPS breakdown and comparison of all Strange Brigade Weapons

Intro & Data

Strange Brigade Weapon DPS Guide

Originally posted over on Reddit back when I played on Xbox:
https://www.reddit.com/r/strangebrigade/comments/dt3ksm/strange_brigade_weapon_dps_and_stats_breakdown/

This is a breakdown of weapon Damage (DMG) vs it’s Rate of Fire (ROF) to determine Damage Per Second (DPS)

I also take into consideration Accuracy (ACY) and other things such as recoil, spread, and cross hair bloom recovery.

Since I made this guide a while back while I was still an Xbone pleb, I was not able to data mine values, so I had to improvise on how I measured these values:

• Took screen shots of each weapon in the Inventory screen

• Imported them into Power Point and measured the full length of the Stat Bar

• Measured the length of every Stat bar for every weapon

• Divided Measured length by the Full length for each stat of every weapon to get a percentage

• This results in a % of the total possible DPS, which would be a result of 100% DMG & 100% ROF

Excel Sheet Breakdown:

• I have added conditional formatting to show which guns in each of the categories have the highest DPS and ACY in their category

• Weapons are sorted by category (Shotgun, SMG, Rifle)

• Weapon number refers to left-to-right order of the guns in the Inventory screen. 1-11 are the Vanilla, 12+ are DLC.

• Numbers (#) = Weapon Stat Length measured in Power Point

• % = Weapon Stat Length / Total Length

• DPS% = DMG% x ROF%

Weapon & Gem Suggestions

What I find to be the best performing guns in the game. This is taken from the perspective of multiple hours and play throughs on Extreme Difficulty & Force to Max spawns, as I find just about any gun is good on easier difficulties.

I recommend these gems on all guns:

• Increased Damage
  
• Armor Penetration
  
• Health Stealing
  
• Accuracy or ROF (depends on gun)
  
• NOTE: Increased Damage with Armor Piercing can cause certain Rifles to have bullet penetration. It seems the higher the base damage the more frequent and consistent this occurs.

Weapon Suggestions - SMG:

• Audly A40 Exemplar: an all around great SMG. What it lacks in DMG and ROF compared to the Wildfire, it makes up for in ACY. I find this gun more viable since you are able to keep enemies at a farther distance and actually land shots on them, allowing aiming for headshots a very effective strategy. Put the Rapid Fire gem on this gun and its range and accuracy will outperform the Wildfire with ease.

• Colbeck Wildfire: this smg has the highest DPS of any gun in the game, but crap accuracy and recoil. The recoil gem is a must, but even then the range, reticule bloom and recovery, and recoil are all over the place. It is really only viable in Close Quarters Combat (CQC), such as Boss Rooms at the ends of the level. With that said I find the lack of accuracy and range make this gun more of a spray n play weapon that requires enemies to be right on top if you to achieve its full potential, making you very susceptible to melee attacks and not being able to touch ranged enemies.

Weapon Suggestions - Rifles:

• Gehri-Delgane S1: Surprisingly enough I didn’t really look at this gun until I made this chart, and it has become my go-to weapon. I would argue that this is the best gun in the game. I have found that I perform better with this gun in CQC boss fights on Extreme difficulty than with the SMGs or other rifles. So this gun is rather unique in a couple of ways: First it has some serious stoping power and the bullets will penetrate several enemies! While other rifles will sometimes do this, I find the S1 to be more damaging and consistent with its bullet penetration through enemies (Note: the weapon description even mentions that it packs a punch like no other). This allows you to not only one hit weaker enemies on Extreme difficulty, but take several of them out in one shot or easily weaken a group of higher level enemies. I find this interesting with the 6 round clip since the penetrating bullets and ability to hit and even kill multiple targets with a single bullet drastically increases this guns overall DPS. The ability to clean up entire groups of mobs very quickly makes Boss Room fights much easier since you wont have to spray bullets to kill mobs (you can also clean up pesky spear and grenade throwers with ease!). However, there is a trade off. The guns reticule bloom is rather large with a slow recovery, making the Accuracy gem a must. Even then, the gun cannot be rapid fired without significantly impacting your accuracy. For a skilled shooter that doesn’t over spam the trigger this is easily one of the best overall guns in the game. For more trigger happy people, I’d suggest some of the other rifles I list below, but they will not have the stopping power the S1 is capable of.

• Audly Burst Rifle: Highest rifle DPS with both ranged and CQC capabilities makes this gun an all around solid firearm. Can single shot at range and 3-round burst for up close. However, I find that it’s DPS comes from spamming the trigger and burning your ammo, which reduces is effective range for achieving its full DPS potential and makes you stay close to an ammo bag. The single shot doesn’t do a lot of damage compared to other rifles, so this gun is best utilized as a trigger-spamming mid/CQC gun, which kind of defeats the purpose of a rifle with only 15 rounds in it. You will also need the Accuracy gem to control the recoil and reticule bloom to make this gun effective in burst at more than just a few meters away. Now if you don’t have any DLC weapons, this is still arguably the best gun in the Base Game.

• Mikhailov-38 & Eastleigh M1: if all the rifles are different branches of the Rifle Tree, then the Mikhailov and M1 are different leaves on the same branch. They both have fantastic accuracy, recoil, and reticule recovery. This allows them to be spammed while maintaining perfect accuracy, even with the rapid fire gem. Their difference is the DMG-ROF tradeoff and ammo amounts to compensate. Their values are virtually double or halved from each other, as you can see in the chart. Mikhailov has twice the DMG, but half the ROF of the M1. To compensate, the M1 has 10 rounds as opposed to the 4 rounds of the Mikhailov. They just about even out when it comes to DPS, so it’s a matter of preference between these two incredibly accurate and controllable rifles: More ammo, ROF, but half the damage - Twice the damage, half the ammo, and less ROF. The 4 round mag means more reloading, but if you hit harder you will trade the more frequent reload times for having to shoot twice as many bullets to kill something. Once agin, preference of Shooty-shooty-spam-spam or hard hitting precise shots.

Weapon Suggestions - Suggestion:

• Consider this a “if you’re reading this, you’ve gone too far” notice. Shotguns have high damage output, but have some major drawbacks, especially on Extreme. Shotguns just aren’t effective at any range on Extreme mode, and you have to let enemies get right on top of you to do any noticeable amount of damage, usually within their aggressive lunging range. That means you’ll have several enemies lunging at you without the ability to spam shots and stagger then. Sure the shotgun has spread to hit multiple enemies and stagger, but it just does not kill quick enough (since it cannot one hit basic mobs) and cannot handle the amount of enemies when set to Force To Max. If you do decide to use a shotgun, I’d recommend using the AB Woolf Slamefire with Nalangu Rushida. Since the shotgun only has 3 gem slots and you’ll be slapping mummies back more than you will be shooting them, you can take advantage of her healing backhand ability. This way you’ll still have a healing effect and don’t have to use the Health Stealing gem, which will help you better utilize the 3 gem slots. I’dk still recommend Damage and Armor Penetration gems. You can use rapid reload to spam rounds down range and increase the guns use in CQC, but the spread is all over the place and renders the gun useless if shooting too quick, so accuracy is probably the way to go just for the ridicule recovery.

[The Fountain]

What PC control do i use to throw Grenade/Dynamite?

[RecklessPrudence]

Okay, thanks! I'm using the P19 too, found it the best-feeling tho wasn't sure why

[AlfaFoxWolf]

@RecklessPrudence
I consider pistols to be pretty useless as a whole. I play on Extreme with spawns Forced To Max, so they're really only good for shooting collectibles or puzzles and not a large group of mummies (better off going for ammo resupply and using invincibility frames).
I use the "Wilkers and White P19" with damage and armor penetration since it has a good ammo count, rate of fire, and accuracy/bloom (where the other pistols usually have higher damage but slower reload or terrible bloom after 1-2 shots).

[RecklessPrudence]

What would you recommend for the pistols? Would only the DLC pistols be worth it, since they've got two gem slots over the base game pistols' one? I'm guessing the Damage gem would be the one-n-only on the base game, and the first for DLC ones, but what for the second one on the few that have it? Armour-piercing?

[Licher.Rus]

in the game it says previously installed gem would be destroyed

[AlfaFoxWolf]

@WH1TEWOLF
yes, you should be able to drag and drop a new gem over an existing one or remove already assigned gems. It does destroy the one you are removing though.

[WH1TEWOLF]

can you reassign gem upgrades?

[AlfaFoxWolf]

@Licher.Rus
are you using the correct Gem upgrades? if so then it will. Need the Damage and Armor Penetration Gems.

[Licher.Rus]

Gehri-Delgane S1 - I like this weapon too, but it doesn't penetrate enemies.