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 shitty 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 has by far the best endgame of all the ranged weapon traits, pistols don't need accuracy that urgently, and it uses your starting weapon and your starting mod. Taking a pistol build as a Scavenger also maximizes the chance the special guns you get are guns you won't need, which means more mods for you, which is great when it also builds you into a gun that benefits greatly from being modded to the gills, and if you do manage to find one of the rare pistols, jackpot! For these reasons, this is a high-difficulty Angel of 100 and Archangel of 666 machine. It can be very effective in a standard game as well, but it really shows its full power in very long games where it can get all the Son of a Bitch levels it wants.

Think of this build as Sharpshooter's early-blooming 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 Whizkid 2, and since the capstone isn't useful until you start finding useless rare guns 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 necessarily 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.

Standard Game UV

At level 1, take Son of a Gun and use your starting T-mod on your pistol. Unless you're feeling bold or get really good RNG in level 2, you're going to be skipping Hell's Arena and going for diminished Chained Court for the mods and cells it gives you. This will allow you to assemble an Energy Pistol in time for Revenants to be showing up. Unfortunately, this means that you'll be reliant on RNG for a Rocket Launcher, but it's typically uncommon to go the entirety of Phobos without one. In one of my full-win games, though, I didn't get a rocket launcher until Deimos 1.

Ironically, despite not getting as many rare guns in standard games, you will actually be getting a lot more mods, which you can use on your starting guns with impunity because their opportunity cost is effectively zero once you get your capstone. You can get the mods all back later when you need them, so you can basically carry individual mods inside each of your guns where they're useful.

Since you're going fast-DPS rather than any defensive route, you need to either max out Son of a Gun first or take SoG 2 > Eagle Eye > SoG 3. By level 5, you should be at Chained Court, and here's where the build can diverge a bit. If you find enough mods to make an assembly you want, particularly the energy pistol, you can go for Whizkid 2 right away. P-mod your starting T-modded pistol but don't assemble it until WK2. If you don't get the mods you need in the amounts you need, go for Intuition first. Feel free to take Intuition 2 anytime you like, but modded weapons are where this build really takes off, and pistols are probably the most useful modded weapons because of how fast they fire and how reliant they are on mods and assemblies in standard play.

By the time you reach Deimos Lab/Hell's Armory, you should be ready to take your capstone. Feel free to hold off on it until you find a special weapon you don't need or your older guns outlive their usefulness. From here on out, start leveling Son of a Bitch and rely on your gear to let you run fast and facetank things rather than take Hellrunner to dodge. To this end, you should have at least one Fireproof Red Armor+P by the time you reach the Cyberdemon, but it helps to have two. In one run, I found two Sniper packs in Deimos Lab, and the P3S2 pistol I created carried me to a full win alongside Intuition 2.

Adapt to what you get. Anytime it's been many levels since you considered whipping a modded/special gun out, disassemble it and get a mod for the gear you're actually using. You probably won't get past SoB 3 by the time you get to the Mastermind, but after you see the crazy shit you can do with just one basic modded pistol double-dipping Son of a Gun and Son of a Bitch, you certainly won't regret not being a Sharpshooter. You may even regret you didn't play this instead of a Sharpshooter. They feel very similar. Sharpshooter probably does pull ahead in overall DPS with fewer traits required, but by pigeonholing you into Eagle Eye 3 and pressuring you to get to the capstone ASAP, it pushes you away from taking Intuition and Whizkid, both of which greatly diminishes the chances you'll actually get to your capstone, and since Scavenger can get more mods out of everything on top of being forced into Whizkid 2 and Intuition, you're actually steered in a more helpful direction for going the distance.

The advantage Scavenger has over Sharpshooter is that Scavenger can not only go for Whizkid 2 and Intuition 2 as part of its capstone build order, it isn't totally locked out of going for Son of a Bitch to get more DPS along the way. Sharpshooter is totally reliant on its capstone for all its DPS, and it's forced to take Eagle Eye 3 before it can do that, so any detours you take HAVE to be planned out and worth it as a Sharpshooter, but for a Scavenger, detours are all part of the plan in the first place. Even if you end up never scavenging anything... oh well! Don't take the capstone! Take one more level of Son of a Bitch! You have a gun that kills everything, a set of armor for every occasion, more shoes than your girlfriend, and you're winning the game. What's to complain about?

Angel of 100

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

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 3 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)

Rapid Start -> Pistol Endgame

There is another way that may perhaps be more consistent for some players. While going outright Pistols first can be effective, it also takes a heavy amount of investment before it gets truly good. A safer way to play involves going for Eagle Eye 2 > Son of a Bitch 1 > Intuition 2 first, which naturally means leaning into rapid weapons at the start of the game. At that point, you really need all the firepower you can get on UV and up, and bullets are so everywhere that you'll probably have 9 stacks of bullets even if you fully chainfire multiple times in literally every encounter.

Because Rapids are your go-to for the first 25 or so levels, you should lean into them as hard as you can, and take at least Eagle Eye 2/Son of a Bitch 3. Don't worry about Son of a Gun just yet, finish Scavenger and then get Hellrunner 2, and once you get to level 12, get Hellrunner 3 and Son of a Bitch 4 and 5.

However! You do eventually need to go Pistols in this build, because where going pure rapids fails in this build is mid-to-late game. Right around floor 50, you hit an ammo drought where Formers mostly stop spawning for a bit, and so does the ammo for your guns. Every few levels you'll be hit with one of these, so it becomes necessary to transition into Pistols in order to survive multiple levels with limited ammo supply. You may have found a Minigun and gotten too excited to use it, only to realize that it drains ammo twice as fast as the Chaingun you've long since disassembled. But even if you didn't find a minigun, even a simple chaingun will become too hard on your ammo eventually, and even if you get a nanomachic, pistols do fill an important niche in this build, so here is where you start taking Son of a Gun.

The kind of pistol you should make is what I call a sniper pistol, which is a normally-modded pistol with 2 sniper mods attached to it and whatever else you want (I recommend bulk mods over power). Sniper mods happen to be something Scavenger is good at finding with its ability being what it is, so this build is perhaps the best suited to wielding it. This gun hits offscreen enemies so reliably it's better than having a nanomachic in some cases. Definitely better than any and all of the pistol uniques, so unless you want one for funsies, disassemble them to try to get yourself some sniper mods. Use a Combat Pistol as your sniper pistol base if at all possible, but any pistol will do. Even just a basic one becomes so overpowered with 2 sniper mods that you'll wonder why you never tried this before.

You see, you already have Son of a Bitch 5, and now you're double dipping those damage bonuses, and by the time you hit son of a gun 3, you'll be knocking back enemies just about every shot. At that point, it becomes straight up inefficient to use anything but a sniper pistol. You knock enemies back so much they never spend any time in your vision range, and you have Intuition 2 besides, so if you don't have a sniper pistol, it's up to RNG if you finish off the enemy you knocked into the fog or if you have to reload and they get to walk into view and throw a blob of acid at you. The same happens with a nanomachic plasma rifle. Good as it is, sometimes you really just have to find out which purple X is the arch-vile and kill it before all its friends start swarming you. This is what a sniper pistol excels at.

But why not use two sniper mods on a rapid weapon? Because ammo, that's why! Thanks to Son of a Gun + Son of a Bitch stacking, pistols are the most ammo-efficient firearms in the game. With SoB5+SoG5, you'll one-shot every former in sight with just a single bullet and 0.1 second of fire time apiece. You'll be killing barons and cacodemons in less bullets than it takes a chaingun and in less time too. Bulk mods should be used over power mods if you don't have a combat pistol because reloading is the slowest part of your game by now, and you need to be able to shoot lots of small things rather than just have more power for big things. The big things will die fast too, but having to reload every 6 bullets will make your DPS unreliable, you should try to have at least 10. You can't mod a nanomachic with 2 sniper mods, and you should be aiming for a nanomachic plasma rifle too at the very least. Even after you get your nanomachic plasma gun, you really will have good reason to keep on using your sniper pistol, but now you can disassemble the old chaingun and only keep 1-2 stacks of bullets and 0 stacks of cells, leaving the rest of your bag free for hoardi-ahem, for carrying emergency supplies. Yeah. Ya Girl Juniper (talk) 21:53, 13 June 2023 (UTC)