SMG guide for Tala's release

Dont see many people talking about SMG's but they are pretty good (or at least on par with AR's if you build for it) and figured with the release of Tala and her bleed that she would pair well with higher RoF weapons and that i would throw out my ideas, concepts that I've used to complete nightmare and no hope.

The Bleed

Numbers confirmed by Swingpoynt (dev):
"Tala's Bleed is 1 Dmg per .2 seconds up to 10 stacks. Each stack lasts for 5 seconds."

That's 5 damage per second for 5 seconds so each bullet does an extra 25 damage.

With all 10 stacks thats 50 damage per second.

This is a flat amount - every weapon applies the same bleed be it a barret 50cal or your bash.

The damage IS increased with cards that are global damage bonuses (like glass cannon or confident killer) but also any card that makes the target take more damage (like marked for death or shredder).

This makes the bleed scale well with weapons with higher rates of fire or lots of pellets - weapons that wouldn't benefit as much from say walkers 10% damage increase.

Take for example a purple Tec9 doing 12 damage per shot at 1000RPM for some 200dps (127 with reloads), you can get 10 stacks in under a second which is a 25% dps increase or a 39% DPM increase.

Core swap synergy

Admin reload

Admin reload is a must have for any swap deck as its what passively reloads your weapon in the background.

To make the most of this card you can take ammo stash and powerswap so that you can mag dump your secondary weapon without using ammo for a pretty consistent 20% damage bonus. This is great for QP or with a group as you become self sufficient at this point.

Or you can use two is one and one is none as being able to carry a second primary is a huge damage increase as any shotgun or even AR are going to blow a tec9 or glock out the water in terms of DPS even with powerswap.
However ammo can become a problem so while this is good for solo for QP or group play you definitely want an ammo card or 2 to compensate for this - and likely another QoL card as snipers/LMGs have slow ADS times and shotguns want some extra accuracy.

Swap Speed

The simplest option for swap speed is Cocky, its a huge 75 swap speed and losing some accuracy when hit doesn't affect you at all if you are ADS'ing.
Recently though I've been loving Fill em full of lead i find you can hover at about 10 stacks which is 50% swap speed but also 10% RoF (and is the only way to increase RoF without hive attachments) and 10% damage.
I would also recommend another 25% swap speed card like cold brew coffee or shooting gloves if taking fill em so you have a starting swap bonus (plus those cards come with other bonuses you will want).

Combine that with swap speed stocks giving another 75% for blue/legendary or a purple giving 100% swap speed and you should have a near constant stream of lead.

Reload Speed

Since we are swapping weapons instead of reloading the only thing we need to be aware of is making sure that our reload speed is faster than the other weapons mag dump time.
You should be mindful of this if you are using fill em full of lead as this decreases your mag dump times and ofc with 2 is 1 primary weapon reload times and mag dump times vary a lot.

I normally get away with cards that have reload as a secondary stat like cold brew coffee or ammo belt and use extended mag attachments to give the 2nd weapon more time to reload rather than seeking reload speed.

Cards for consideration:

Here i want to highlight some cards that specifically work with this playstyle.
Dont skip out on the usual team/eco/mobility/survival/act/mission cards you normally have.

-Glass cannon; 25% raw damage is huge, stacks additively with weakspot damage which does suck but when a good 20-25% of our DPS is coming from the DoT its instantly worth it
-Confident killer; 1% per special killed up to 15%, on higher difficulties you can get this pretty quick and this is a unique damage type which multiplies with everything.
-Shredder; 1% damage per hit up to 15% - this is a debuff to the target which means it not only multiplies all of your damage and bleed but also boots your teams damage too.

-Hyperfocused; simply the biggest weakspot damage card you can take giving a massive 50% in 1 card.
-Mag carrier; 10% SMG and pistol damage which will benefit both SMG's and pistols while also giving 30% ammo.

-Cold brew coffee; little bit of everything, reload speed ADS speed and swap speed are all nice to have especially if you arent taking cocky, the flat 25% swap speed will be noticable if you dont have a purple swap stock.
-Quick Kill; the Vectors already so accurate you dont need anymore than this to make it 100% accurate - same with the autoglock and a couple other pistols and opens up options to the other "no aim down sights" cards like motorcycle helmet or killers instinct.
-Combat training; on nightmare at least this will help you hit stumble thresholds as you just shoot so fast, on No Hope this falls off as you dont have enough stumble to solo stumble things like exploders.
-Empowered Assault; This is the best stumble card in the game for any DPS deck as after you kill something like a stinger or a cultist you get an instant stumble for the next reeker or tallboy.
-Front sight focus; ADS speed, accuracy and recoil control make so many weapons more usable like the UMP or non SMG's.
-Shooting gloves; Accuracy, recoil control and swap speed is another nice QoL card if you are using SMG's that already have fast ADS speed.

Also wanted to highlight some team/eco cards:
-Utility Scavenger; barb wire applies Tala's bleed making it insanely powerful being able to find more around the map means you can often throw some down when normally you wouldn't bring it with you and toolkits are insanely powerful and let you open the warped chests without incurring the debuff.
-On your marks, swap speed when a horde starts when you wont have as much but the team ammo sustain is also very useful.
-Magicians apprentice; kinda niche but with so many warped chests you are often going to have special consumables having a chance to re-use these is incredibly powerful (especially ones that have permanent effects like the ammo box giving you 3 ammo intel cards)

Example Decks

So using the concepts above here are some decks i threw together to show some decks i have used:



going from left to right...

The first 4 cards are team preference.
Run like hell for mobility to survive (cant do anything if you die).
Our power swap combo
Cold brew and fill em full of lead for our swap speed
then mag carrier, hyper focused, glass cannon, shredder and confident killer for damage.

For QP we have some very selfish "team" cards to ensure i can complete the objs and afford essentials like flashbangs or pipes for specific missions..
Run like hell AND mad dash for mobility to survive (cant do anything if you die).
Our power swap combo
Cold brew and fill em full of lead for our swap speed
Shredder, hyper focused and glass cannon for damage.

Because you dont need much to really get off the ground you can use this as a fill for another deck like for grenadier or in this case doc.
Mad dash for mobility to survive (cant do anything if you die).
Our power swap combo
cocky as I'm tight on space and dont want to use 2 swap cards.
Since we are focusing on horde clear rather than killing specials large caliber rounds for the penetration is super strong and hyper focus for damage.
With this deck I'm likely going to aim for a MP5, Uzi or Prototype as they have faster reloads and have better handling out the gate.

Weapon disclaimer

Feel like this should be mentioned for anyone that doesnt know.

Dont believe the in-game weapon information.

Firepower combines things like RoF damage penetration stumble all into 1 stat which makes it useless.
Range is just a flat out lie
Handling and mobility are again made up of a bunch of stats which makes them useless for comparison

As far as i know these are the correct numbers:

https://b4bstats.mazz.lol/weapons/

https://b4b.tricky.lol/weapons

Mazz's charts like DPS takes into account reload speed which for a swap speed deck like this is going to paint a very inaccurate picture and i think some other weapons graphs have inaccuracies too.
If something looks weird always get out a calculator and check for yourself.

Primary weapons:

Vector
Long story short this is the highest DPS SMG while firing - but its overall DPM is reigned in because of its longer reload and smaller magazine.
This deck however takes FULL advantage of the vectors burst and then replaces the down time with the tec9 mag dumping allowing you to put up some big damage numbers so long as you are responsible with your ammo consumption.

Attachments:
-Swap speed stock - duh
-Holo/red dot - unless you can get a sharpshooters monacle
-reload speed mag - preferable with extra damage/stumble/magsize - can of whupass or less is more are also good options if your secondary has magsize and can reload intime.
-Long barrel - doesn't need a comp for recoil control, all bite is also good since for hordes we fire so fast losing the penetration isnt a huge problem and 30% damage is huge.

UMP
Almost a reskin of the SCAR with a long reload, high damage and average RoF. Its a really strong gun but it does have some drawbacks like its poor recoil, accuracy and short range which you cant fix all of without using some cards as those are all barrel attachments.

Attachments:
-Swap speed stock - duh
-Holo/red dot - unless you can get a sharpshooters monacle
-reload speed mag - preferable with extra damage/stumble or can of whupass if your secondary has magsize size
-Laser/ Laser comp - UMP accuracy is so bad its noticable when ADS'ing

Uzi
Lowest damage per bullet but respectable RoF puts him middle of the pack main problem really is that its DPS is very similar to the tec9/autoglock, its very ammo hungry and its got a lot of recoil so you are stuck using a comp which sucks as its got a very short range.

Attachments:
-Swap speed stock - duh
-Holo/red dot - unless you can get a sharpshooters monacle
-damage/pen/stumble mag - large mags = more ammo burned and we dont really need a faster reload either so you can get away with one of the other mags
-laser comp/anchor - needs some help with recoil

MP5
Similar to the Uzi in that its got similar DPS to the secondaries we are after and again its got a lot of recoil so you want a comp which sucks as its got short range.

Attachments:
-Swap speed stock - duh
-Holo/red dot - unless you can get a sharpshooters monacle
-damage/pen/stumble mag - large mags = more ammo burned and we dont really need a faster reload either so you can get away with one of the other mags
-laser comp/anchor - needs some help with recoil

Secondary weapons:

Tec9
Practically the best side arm you can find for this.
Blazing fast reload, high RoF, large mag despite its low damage per shot its got a very competitive DPS.
Once you have one its hard to drop it for anything other than a higher rarity.

Auto glock
It can out perform the tec9 as its got more DPS and it does have very good accuracy.
However the small magazine and high RoF means that your primary wont have time to reload in the background. This often makes them weird to pick up as they can "break" or push your timings off even if its an upgrade just because of its small mag and longer reload compared to the tec9.
If you are going the hipfire route with quick kill then mag coupler will fix all the timing issues.

Not the Tec9 or Auto glock
The rest of the side arms are all pretty comparable after these 2, they're all great for commons and general horde clear but lack the burst for specials. If you are stuck with any of these go for magsize to get fill em full of lead value to make them shoot faster.

IMPORTANT: in your gameplay settings you should have auto fire on to ensure that fill em full of lead is constantly proccing - if you have a deagle and its not shooting fast enough you wont get full stacks.

The Belgian
Unfortunately the belgian just doesnt work here. We arent building for shotguns, we dont have an loads of reload speed and need our secondary to be up for over a second to give our primary time to reload.

Attachments

For stocks once again its swap speed.
For magazines its really a question of does your primary reload intime to swap back to it, if not then magsize so you spend more time shooting your secondary but if it all works out then you can grab a damage or penetration mag.
For muzzles you cant go wrong with lasers/compensators

Footage

Figured most people would want to see this in action:

[1NSENT]

[锁了我的头就不能再锁我的牛至了喔]

6

[Saladdd]

Read the post, loved it, decided to give you all the awards

[DrunkBunny94]

You've replied twice the first was literally the first line of the guide and the 2nd showed that you didn't read the other sections.

Like you said you wanted decks with room for you to swap cards out for preference when the main portion of the deck is talking about options, outlying what you need to make such a deck function rather than giving specific cards and even in the examples where i swap around over half the cards for different needs and explicitly say in the first one "The first 4 cards are team preference".

If you want to discuss something or share your preferred cards that's fine but if the answer is something i can copy and paste from the guide what else am i supposed to say lol

I will add a link to mazz's weapon stats (even though his graphs are inaccurate) and when Tala comes out i will update this with how her bleed actually works.

[DrunkBunny94]

We dont know what the bleed damage is going to be. All we have is potentially how its going to work based on the Pestilence/claws. That said even if the damage is extremely low high RoF weapons tend to have low damage per bullet which would make a bleed do well when compared to say walkers percent damage bonus.

Also if you read anything you would see that the guide extremely loose and gives multiple examples of the very small combo. I dont even give a ridged swap card because theres so many ways to get swap speed that i didnt want to limit your choices...

Read the guide instead of just scrolling to the pictures next time.

[DrunkBunny94]

First line of the page, cmon bruh.

"Dont see many people talking about SMG's but they are pretty good (or at least on par with AR's if you build for it) and figured with the release of Tala and her bleed that she would pair well with lower damage higher RoF weapons"

[󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡Club K]

And then Tala: Not that...