Strategy:Scavenger

The real power of Scavenger comes in what it doesn't lock you out of. Hellrunner's open season, so you already know it's gonna be good, but imagine a Sharpshooter build that can also take 5 levels of Son of a Bitch while also turning every unique you don't need into a rare mod that you do. In this example, that's what we'll be doing. Since this is a General Master build, you can technically do whatever you want, so go ahead and try something else too, but Son of a Gun scales by far the fastest of all the ranged weapon traits, pistols don't need accuracy that urgently, and it uses your starting weapon and your starting mod. For that reason alone, this is a high-difficulty Angel of 100 and Archangel of 666 machine.

Think of this build as Sharpshooter's cooler sibling. It blooms faster than Sharpshooter because it's not forced into 3 levels of Eagle Eye before it's allowed to get good, and also forces you to take things you'd want to take as a Sharpshooter anyway, like Intuition, and since the capstone isn't useful until you start finding useless Uniques anyway, it doesn't hurt you at all to delay it until you get all the other goodies you want first. Once you get past the early levels, it starts to snowball out of control, and since the plan is to take Son of a Bitch too, your other weapons also get better, but your rapid weapons will get even better than the rest, so you don't have to sigh and discard all the cool rapid weapons you find. You could even dip into Brute later on if you find the cleaver! You can't take Dualgunner or Triggerhappy or Berserker, but you really won't need them. You'll feel OP enough as it is.

TL;DR

SoG1 > SoG2 > SoG3 > EE1 > SoB1 > SoB2 > SoB3 > [EE2/WK1] > [EE2/Int1/WK1/WK2] > [EE2/Int1/WK1/WK2] > [Int1/WK2] > MSc > Int2 > SoG4 > SoG5 > SoB4 > SoB5 > UP TO YOU LOL

Cooler Sharpshooter w/ Cooler Guns

For UV/Nightmare Ao100, take Son of a Gun and immediately use the Technical mod on your pistol, because you are guaranteed to start with a pistol, and since there is no Entryway it's entirely possible for you to spawn on level 1 right next to a Demon with no Shotguns or Shotgun Guys on the level and no armor in sight for 6 floors (and any that does spawn gets stolen by the Barons of Hell anyway). You can start taking Eagle Eye and go for Intuition right away, but I recommend you max out SoG first, because the most reliable way to reduce incoming damage is to kill fast, and on high difficulty, you could be fighting Barons as early as level 2. The biggest threat to your life on high difficulty is a horde of powerful enemies that overwhelm your cover. Even Rapid builds struggle to get strong enough fast enough, and they suffer greatly from being surrounded. They overkill smaller enemies who die after the second bullet and can't knock back that Baron of Hell that'll slash you a new vagina if he rounds the corner, so when faced with a horde, rapid builds have to eat chips at every meal, which is bad for your life expectancy. You need to become good at killing things fast, and SoG3 with that T-modded Pistol does that. If you want that mod back, you can disassemble the gun with Scavenger later.

Anyway, take Son of a Gun on levels 1, 2, and 3. At level 4, take one level of Eagle Eye. You do need some accuracy, but thankfully a pistol really only needs one level for now.

From 5-7, max out Son of a Bitch. You need to be able to knock things back with your starting pistol, because if you're on UV you've been facing Barons for a while now and are unlikely to come across a Combat Pistol because those are more rare than the Uniques for some reason.

With just one level of SoB, you can knock things back with a max damage roll, which is already something a Sharpshooter can't do by itself until level 12, and with each level of SoB it gets more reliable. You shoot almost 5 times a second by now, so you have many chances to knock enemies back for each of their actions, and right here is where this build starts to overtake Sharpshooter. What Sharpshooter builds struggle with the most is surviving to level 7 after their power plateaus at level 4, and right from level 5 it can do something a Sharpshooter isn't even guaranteed to be able to do with their level 7 Mastery. You don't even have yours yet!

Sharpshooter can't actually knock things back without at least a P-modded pistol or SoG4, which is why level 12 is what Sharpshooter has to wait for if they get unlucky. Being able to do this can keep Barons from even fighting you, not to mention you're doing more damage so you kill faster and can push things into lava and acid. You can also more easily one-shot zombies, so you take less chip damage when one walks into vision as you're fighting something else, and they won't get the chance to use up those Health Packs and Phase Devices, instead popping like a piñata as they deliver them right to your feet. The amount of resources you'll save from that alone will start to make a big difference, and this is something Rapid builds can't match because enemies cheat and can use these items in the middle of your burst, even though that would be impossible for you.

By the time you get SoB3, you'll FEEL like a Sharpshooter. You will arguably be better than one, actually, because while sharpshooters always do 11 damage per hit, your average damage is 11 but you can hit a maximum of 14, both at level 7.

And oh right, you need to actually finish your way to Scavenger, but this build benefits from the freedom to delay its own Mastery until you need it, so what you dip into first on the way there is up to you. If you've got a burning need to make a Cerberus Duelist Armor and half your bag is mods you're waiting to use, you can take Whizkid at 8 and 9, and don't worry if you made any assemblies that become useless later, Scavenger gets to turn those into mods too anyway.

If you're not there yet, though, take a second level of Eagle Eye at level 8 and get Intuition at level 9. I'd get both levels of Intuition eventually even though the second is technically optional. Being able to sense enemies is obviously incredibly useful, but even just being able to sense powerups means you can sense the computer maps, and since you're a Technician, you can see all the enemies with any computer map. Not to mention, you get to play around knowing what levers do.

Whichever of the two paths you took first, take the second one at level 10 and 11.

Now you're level 12, and as stated, you can still delay the capstone until you need it, and if you don't need it, you can veer off into a masterless run and take literally whatever else you want! The rest of the way is up to you. I'd max out Son of a Gun and Son of a Bitch first, though, because right there is where it's clearly far and away just inarguably better than Sharpshooter, because a Sharpshooter with SoG5 would always be doing 13 damage a shot with a basic pistol, but once you get SoB5, you do almost that much damage on a minimum roll now, and you both fire just as fast. You'll be doing 12-18 damage with just a basic unmodded pistol, and you'll be at the firing speed cap to boot, so you'll just be deleting enemies with one click before they can even react. You'll even use the unique pistols better, especially the Grammaton Cleric Beretta on full auto, which for you deals a minimum of 66 damage if all bullets connect but roll a 1, or as much as 102 damage if you get extra lucky and all bullets roll max too. Meanwhile a Sharpshooter would be doing a maximum of 72 damage if all bullets connect. Crazy. This is why you can't take Triggerhappy, because you'd be doing almost double their damage with it if you could take that too.

From there, I'd take Hellrunner so that you can move as fast as you shoot, as well as Dodgemaster since you're dipping there anyway. You need to run fast in case your cover gets overwhelmed or you need to space to reload. Dip into melee combat with Brute if you want! You'll benefit from Son of a Bitch there too. I wouldn't bother with Finesse or Juggler, since you hit the pistol firing speed cap without Finesse, and Pistols are clearly your bread and butter. But heck, maybe you don't want to go all the way with pistols! Maybe you want Shottyman so you can use every gun! Just watch that bag space.

And of course, with your capstone, anytime you find a weapon you don't need, you can turn it into a mod, which means you're going to always be geared to the sky all the way from down in hell. Make any assembly you want, but from experience, pistols benefit way more from not having an assembly and just being modded to hell, so ahead and just throw mods on things! If you only used a single mod on a weapon and you'd like that mod back, you can disassemble the weapon and just get it back. You'll even get Nano packs and Onyx packs from Uniques sometimes!

Honestly, the power level of this build might embolden you enough to consider doing a masterless build if you didn't veer off into one already. It's so good, and I never would have thought to try it if I wasn't frustrated with all the luck you need for Sharpshooter to take off! Ironically, it presents a strong case for allowing Sharpshooter to take Son of a Bitch, since it basically does what Sharpshooter does without forcing it to take too many levels of Eagle Eye, and then it gets even better and gets to do crazy things with mods.

Ya Girl Juniper (talk) 03:40, 21 May 2023 (UTC)