Strategy:Tactical boots

Patch notes

Pre-0.9.9.4

Tactical Boots had 1 protection, gave +20% movement speed, gave -25% knockback, and regenerated 1% durability per action.

0.9.9.4

Tactical Boots's movement speed bonus was nerfed to 10%, and its knockback resistance was reduced to -15%.

0.9.9.6

Tactical Boots now have 0 protection, but its movement speed was buffed up to +15%, the knockback resistance was removed, and it gives a +10% dodging bonus. Its regeneration was also buffed to recover 2% durability per action, albeit it now doesn't start regenerating until 5 actions without being damaged.

0.9.9.7

Tactical Boots was nerfed by having the dodging bonus removed entirely.

Overview

Tactical Boots is one of the big three staple assemblies alongside Fireproof armor and the Tactical shotgun, and almost certainly reigns supreme as the most commonly made assembly of all. Only +15% movement speed doesn't sound amazing, and having no protection for your feet sounds bad when that is supposed to be the point of boots, but faster movement speed is very important for offensive and defensive purposes. Being able to outmaneuver even lowly Imps without having to activate Run is a lot more useful than you would think, let alone outmaneuvering Hell knights and Barons that are the bane of players on Phobos when playing Ultra-violence, and having your running speed be faster than Demons, Revenants, and Arachnotrons without Hellrunner will absolutely save your ass. You can read Hellrunner's strategy page for all the virtues that having faster movement speed grants.

The main thing that makes Tactical Boots so good is its cheap investment cost and its splashability. To assemble, it just requires common Steel boots and two agility mods, the ingredients for which you can sometimes have after The Chained Court and will usually have before Phobos Anomaly if you don't skip out on Military Base/Phobos Lab. Then when it comes to splashability, every build in any sort of challenge benefits significantly from having more movement speed, so you'll want more movement speed as soon as you can get it. Now as mentioned earlier, Tactical Boots provide absolutely no protection against fluids, but the thing is you can usually just avoid running into them, so the movement speed of your boots is far more important, and if you are concerned about scenarios where you're forced to run across fluids to progress or fighting in situations where you risk getting knocked into a pool of acid/lava, you can just carry another pair of boots with better protection while wearing your Tactical Boots for all other situations. Another knock one may levy against Tactical Boots is that the second agility mod to assemble only adds +5% movement speed over what the first agility mod added to the requisite Steel Boots (or any other pair of standard boots), while adding it to your armor instead will give it +15% movement speed, overall giving you an effective +25% movement speed boost when combined with the A-modded Steel Boots. However, the other thing that makes Tactical Boots great is that you'll get to always keep them on to always benefit from its speed boost (and their durability even regenerates if they get damaged, so you should never lose them), whereas you'll be constantly cycling through armors from them getting worn down or to utilize armor more suited for the battle at hand, so it'll generally serve you best to prioritize making your boots faster before your armors (not to mention that you'll be very unlikely to have anything better than Blue armor before the guaranteed Red armor in Phobos Anomaly).

For the final note on Tactical Boots, you can make their movement speed even faster if you got Whizkid 2, which allows you to apply a single mod to assemblies. There is no need to bother going through the other mod options, applying an agility mod is the only mod you should consider for your Tactical Boots, adding another +10% movement speed and overall giving +25% movement speed, tied with A-modded Phaseshift boots for the second fastest boots and only beaten by Antigrav boots that require a rare nano mod to create. Unfortunately in 0.9.9.7, you can only mod assembles you made after you get WK2, and since Tactical Boots is an assembly you'll almost always make in Phobos while WK2 is something you'll usually pick up at least a few levels into Deimos, you'll rarely get to utilize this outside of Angel of 100 unless you're willing to put off assembling your Tactical Boots until you get WK2 or are willing to make another pair after getting WK2, either scenario usually being unideal. Fortunately in the upcoming long-awaited 0.9.9.8, WK2 had that dumb restriction removed and so you'll be able to mod your assemblies regardless of when you made them, allowing you to put another agility mod on those early Tactical Boots you make and solidifying this assembly's place as the staple assembly of DoomRL. Omega Tyrant (talk) 09:17, 6 July 2024 (UTC)