Hipster: Not the Best Anti-Grunt M1K Option

Hipster M1K OC is often advertised as the overclock you pick when you plan on using M1K as an anti-grunt weapon. This overclock provides a great increase in ammo count, RoF, burst DPS and hipfire effective accuracy. It emphasises on the gun's traditionally anti-crowd firing mode. But is that enough make the OC a good anti-grunt pick? Or is there a misconception hidden?

Intro

Glyphyd Grunt is the most common enemy normally encountered in Deep Rock Galactic. And its "regular" subtype is the core part of this type composition. Even at hazard 5, with higher ecnounter ratios of veteran variations, the regular 108 health point grunt takes the majority of enemy count except for specific conditions like enemy type mission mutators. So in fact every single M1K build should take the grunts' existence into account. And it is reasonable to make M1K builds that revolve around killing the grunts fast and efficiently.

This guide has nothing to do with anyone willing to use hipster versus hordes and grunts for subjective reasons like DAKKA (7 RoF objectively is a huge impact on how good the weapon feels). Instead, it will research the true state of things related with how efficient the Hipster OC is in terms of dealing with Glyphid Grunts. According to what I see, many players find the Hipster OC to be the M1K's best way to be used vs grunts. In the end, the guide should tell you, if picking hipster and using it to clear grunts is the real solution that helps you play hazard 5 easier.

Meet the Hipster

Stats:

• x1.913 ammo reserves
  
• +3 RoF
  
• -10% spread per shot
  
• x0.5 recoil
  
• x0.85 max bloom
  
• -17 damage

Almost twice the ammo, nearly double the RoF, insane handling bonuses at the cost of mere 17 damage. Should make a great weapon. Let's use MeatShield's DPS calculator and pick few numbers for comparison.

Hipster provides a great Burst DPS increase for the weapon (220 -> 266), especially if you pick T1 damage since the OC's damage penalty is linear (260 -> 336). This happens because the damage penalty of -17 is not as significant as the RoF bonus of 75% of baseline rate of fire.

Total damage gets a great increase. 8250 -> 10412 with T1A and 7150 -> 9504 with T2B! Almost a 33% increase if you use T1 damage to compensate OC's penalty.

However, sustained DPS is hurt when you pick hipster (97.8 -> 83.5 or 115.6 -> 105.4), not that bad when you go T1 damage. T3 clipsize further smoothens the difference making it barely equal with T1B and T3C picked both. This happens because of hipster reducing one clip damage (-17 damage w/o any ammo added to the clips) and the weapon having the reload time of 2.5s. While it takes you way less time to empty a clip, one clip packs less damage and you have to spend same much time reloading.

And now a yet another number to notice. Grunt breakpoints. If you are building an OC-less M1K and pick T2C armour breaking (effectively a mustpick since U34, especially when going anti-grunt), you kill grunts with 1 headshot and 2 body shots. And then if you select hipster and play with the upgrades selection around, you will notice you can't really achieve those numbers without having to pay much. That is the catch. M1K is a breakpoint weapon. Its single shot damage is high and even one extra ammo spent is much. The grunt breakpoints of OC-less M1K vs Hipster M1K show exactly how can a moderate damage penalty actually become a large expense. My question is whether the Hipster's bonuses are enough to cover it.

Meet the Champion

In order to answer the question above, we need to get a non-hipster M1K build to compete with hispter OC builds. And here is one.


Grunt headshots, 2 body shots, clip of 18 full-damage rounds. The true king of M1K hipfire builds. 990 clip damage, just for an instance. Blowthrough potentially lets to hit up to 4 targets per shot. Top with stun for on-demand utility via focus shots or killing machine for extra sustain. Stun is still better but that -0.2s reload time OC's bonus makes KM a sliiiightly better option than it normally is.

It packs a theoretical capability of 2 grunts/ammo unit and 36 grunts/clip with no headshots at all. Of course, such numbers are not going to be real. For me, numbers usually are 1 ammo per 1 grunt, with some grunts being not head-shot due to skill issue and some grunts being multi-head-shot.

Numbers:

• 8470 total damage
  
• 77 nominal grunt bodykills
  
• 220 burst DPS
  
• 145.6 sustain DPS
  
• 3 penetrations

Looks decent, at the VERY least. How that compares to hipster builds?

The Fight For The Breakpoints Back: Focus-Hipster

Sounds weird right? Why would you ever build an OC that cuts gun's shot damage and compensates shot damage loss with regular mode RoF to use focused mode? The answer is that we are trying to keep killing grunts with body shots with cost of 2 ammo per bug. And this is the only way hipster can do that. It takes us pick all the 3 bodyshot damage options available in the upgrades tree. T1 damage raises our shot damage to 48. T2 AB lets us ignore damage penalty of grunt's armour and deal full damage on body shots. Finally, T3 focused damage increases the focused damage mult up to 2.25. With focus shots hitting exactly 108 units of nominal damage. Pinpoint accuracy match.


Numbers:

• 10368 total damage
  
• 96 nominal grunt bodykills
  
• 140 burst DPS
  
• 77 sustain DPS
  
• 1 headshot breakpoint competes vs penetration.

Well, that is an increase in total grunts killed but at what cost? You can't extend the clip, your focus speed is not flash fast and it will take you ages to kill grunts. Like, you lose 50% the sustain DPS compared to the minimal clips build. Technically, this build can both pick T4A or T4B but giving blowthrough up is a severe self-handicap if you are killing grunts. And then if you don't pick crit, you can't do better than 96 separate grunts since you won't oneshot them.

With IFG you are able to use 2 body shots or 1 headshot to kill a grunt so it is recommended to fall back to hipfire when shooting grunts stacked in the IFG field - this will save your time with the help of hipfire RoF and ammo with occasional headshots.

The Fight For The Breakpoints Back: One Shot, One Kill - No Luck, Just Build

As it has been mentioned in the previous chapter, it also is possible to build hipster to onetap grunts with headshots. This time we will emphasis our build on hipfire and pick T3 clipsize to make our sustain numbers better.


This time T5 pick is not mandated again, as well as T2. At least, for the case of shooting grunts, this build will only kill a grunt with 3 body shots, regardless what is picked in T2 (obviously, other enemies still exist and their breakpoints can be a solid reason to stick to T2C). Note that you can kill grunts with 2 bodyshots with T2 armour breaking when they are affected with IFG so that AB has much point to be picked even if we only take regular grunts into account. We had to give the blowthrough up, but at least we are not bound to use T3A and get a slight relief of extra 4 ammo in the clip.

Stats:

• 9504 nominal total damage, 11404 with weakpoints.
  
• 198 grunts onetapped if gitgud enough to hit crits. Garbage otherwise. (66 which is the lowest number that can't even be subjected to multihits.)
  
• 336 (403.2) Burst DPS. Amazing thing to shoot a preat's crit.
  
• 149.3 (179.2) sustain DPS.

Real grunts killed is something inbetween 66 and 198, but it is hard capped there which actually is not any great.

Don't Give a Quack About Breakpoints

What if we embrace the fact that Hipster loses breakpoints and let it do so? We won't pick neither T1 damage, nor T4 weaskpot and definitely not T3 focus shot damage. At T2 we are still interested in armour breaking that changes the bodyshot grunt breakpoint from 4 to 3.


Stats:

• 10412 total damage
  
• 91 grunts bodykilled, 137 crit killed (1 crit + 1 whereever)
  
• 266 Burst DPS
  
• 118 sustain DPS
  
• 3 penetrations

This time Hipster has penetration and at the same time it does not completely suck at killing grunts with headshots. But now DPS sucks. Not as bad as with focus-hipster but it does not provide good time-to kill neither.

The Comparison

So what do we have here?

Focus hipster wins the Minimal Clips build for 24.7% grunt kills but can't simultanerously have both native features of intact AB M1K: penetration and grunt onetap. Also, DPS and time to kill are exactly ♥♥♥♥. Can't call that build better.

The onetapping build has a problem since it only has 198 grunt kills on parer and that is the limit of it. It gives the penetration up - a major component of antigrunt builds that lets you increase the MC's 77 grunt kills by a factor of 2 when you combine both the weakspot oneshots and penetration in battle conditions. 154 total grunts killed is pretty real for MC. But I doubt you can easily score that many with a non-penetration build that can take 3 shots to kill if missing crits. This is not a bad build, I'd say it is a great build, but not in terms of anti-grunt clear. If you need an anti-grunt build, you better stick to minimal clips or any other generic OC rather this build.

Full ammo build is the only one that lets you properly use both penetration and Hipster's hipfire DPS. 18% increase in nominal grunts killed compared to MC, a 12% loss for crit kills but for real 2-shotting a grunt with this build you only need 1 crit shot. Better burst DPS, worse sustain. I'd say it is slightly better grunt-wise, packs a good increase in overal total damge like as all other Hipster builds do. However this can't go without a drawback. Long range and focused shot operation (relevant when you have to pick tricky weakpoints at range and utilize T5 stun), your focus shot DPS stats are going be really bad. Less than 100 burst DPS and 67.6 in sustain. Whereas Minimal Clips hipfire build can use focus shots when needed and do 125.7 burst DPS at the ways greater sustain of 97.3. And I find this versatility being a reason to claim Minimal Clips hipfire to be the best anti-grunt M1K build. While the last Hipster build does the gruntclear better, it pulls the weapon's ranged performance down really hard.

That is it. I don't see any Hipster M1K build to be a better anti-grunt pick than the MC hipspam 1321X build.

[Sutasu!]

Thanks to this guide, I will never use minimal clips again! Thanks again bro

[Torres, The Devourer]

Very great guide. Been using minimal clips for some time now. Thanks!

[Sutasu!]

Excellent job, братан

[Iluszachane]

Impressive analysis... didn't read it though, because why would I listen to a driller?

Honestly though, great job breaking all this down. I still feel compelled to use hipster because of the overall feel, and I'm not the most keen with grunt headshots. I use it to vaporize large frozen units, and along with blowthrough just blast through grunt waves with the right angling. The RoF is so much fun.

[Drillboy Jenkins]

You take 50% more bodyshots to kill and have an option to retain head oneshots but you have to give the T4.Blowthrough up. That is key issue - you can't have 2-shots, headshots and penetration all at the same time for the Hipster M1K w/o having to spend a grenade. And the non-hipster has all of those with nades being a great augmentation perk for blowthrough.

[YCCCM7]

Is there something I'm failing to grasp? You get 91.3% more bonus ammo, but take 50% more body shots to kill? And the same amount of headshots? Getting headshots reliably with the m1000 isn't particularly difficult. Even when I was relatively green to the weapon, it didn't take me long to be capable of shooting 8 shots and getting 7 heads... And that's without hipster, mind you.