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Builds / Demoman: Agile Grenade Launcher Build [DOMINATING]

« on: January 28, 2024, 06:41:02 am »

Demoman
Agile Grenade Launcher Build


Summary

An optimized Grenade Launcher build focused on damage, evasion, and mobility, with Psychokinesis and Temporal Manipulation for utility.

See latest replies for any updates.


Build

https://underrail.info/build/?HgYDCgUMAwfCoAAAAADCoMKgbUUAAABaUD4jWgAtAMKgAAA8JDkxU8OjKEfChyfChcOlw6JLKsKkwrVdK8Kdw5zDiOKpjgXiv6QF44CCBd-8

• Roll your game to have the Arena Masters when making new game. This requires dominating difficulty and an email message with the subject line of: "Master Skull Smasher" on your computer when you start the game.
• Take Practiced Parabola, Tricky Trajectory and Demolition Man out of the grenade launcher feats
• Spec Demolition Man damage, tricky trajectory damage, and whatever else you want with the rest.
• Use arena master belt to get Demolition Man buff.
• Join JKK for the jacket, protectorate for the weapon parts.
• Use house benches, Hypercerebrix, Engineer Suit, Energizing Glove, Boning Knife, and Jon's Special to craft as needed.

Gear


Seeker (Night Vision) Googles - boosts crit, reduces accuracy penalty.
Blast Infused Rathound Leather Armor - boosts crit and reduces AOE by up to 75%. use JKK jacket till you can get it.
Master Demolitionist Belt - gives you the Boom ability, which (for 10AP) gives you 5 stacks of Demolition Man feat for a 50% damage bonus (25% when unspecced). Use launcher grenade strap belt and large waist pack till you can get it.
Infused Hopper Tabis - boosts your evasion, dodge, and movement points, reduce sprint cooldown by half. Have black tabis for swap. Blast tabis are good too.
Main weapon: Scoped 40mm 6-Chamber Onager Tactical and 1 Scoped 25mm 8 Round Petard Tactical. Onager for big fights. It's got the highest damage and crit damage. The high damage is further boosted by Gun Nut, and the crit damage by Critical Power. Use the thumper until you can craft a nice Onager. Use Petard for easy encounters.
Utilities: Mk1-3 HE Grenades. Using 5 of these with the Boom ability damages you for barely any HP.


Highlights

You abuse grenade launcher's insane AOE damage, along with blistering mobility while having 5 con, high dodge and evasion, AP boosters and psi utilities, turning you into an unstoppable whirlwind of explosions, crushing all of your encounters, even in Dominating difficulty.

• Epic damage
• Extremely mobile
• Good survivability
• Get to make everything explode
• Use the Master Demolitionist Belt

How it Works

Grenade launchers already do insane damage, and with 40mm frag grenades that insane damage is spread out across all of the shrapnel pieces, which makes any damage boosts to grenade launchers significantly more consistent since they average out over multiple hits with frag grenades. This insane damage is further boosted by using the Master Demolitionist Belt along with the Demolition Man feat to give you a 10AP 50% damage buff.

You use the usual TM abilities (contraction, stasis, increment), along with two PK abilities: grounding (immobilizes and drops enemy evasion to zero for up to 5 turns), Electrokinetic Imprint (10 AP stun trap). The PK abilities are especially useful on evasive enemies, such as Carnifex and Rathound King, since stunned and immobilized enemies have their evasion dropped to zero. You can also use Premed + EK to trivialize a certain enemy that shuts down grenades in the compound.

You might only have 5 con, but you're pretty stout with all that evasion and dodge, along with a nice shield. Evasion and dodge apply before shield, and effectively become a multiplier on shield and hp. You're also very mobile so you can position well and retreat/take cover if needed.

Start your engagements in stealth, trigger boom ability for your buff (if needed), shoot a grenade, everything dies, pop your drugs if it is a hard engagement, use your bountiful movement points for superior positioning and cover. Win initiative rolls for anyone that proceeds to enter your screen after the initial batch of enemies is toast.


Feats

Grenade Launcher Feats
Take these as soon as they become available
Practiced Parabola - makes you less likely to blow yourself up and pretty much always hit your target
Tricky Trajectory - major damage boost
Demolition Man - gives you a 10AP 25%-50% damage buff

Early Game Feats
Nimble - big evasion boost
Gun Nut - 7.5% avg dmg boost
Paranoia - great init boost, pairs well with JKK jacket
Sprint (or hit & run, but i find sprint to be better) - Mobility is great for combat
Recklessness - boost that crit. Can take later

Mid Game Feats
Blitz - turn that MP to AP
Psycho-temporal acceleration - more AP
Pack Rathound - launchers and nades are very heavy. I very rarely use feats like pack rathound, but it just makes a ton of sense for this build. Can take this late game if you can bear it.
Critical Power - works well with Onager's 125% crit damage bonus

Late Game Feats
Blindsiding - multiplicative 15% damage boost out of stealth. Synergizes with Stasis.
Increased Perception - self explanatory
Scrutinous - boost that crit
Skinner - 2% more crit, more evasion and dodge, more armor, etc
Premeditation - free AP for psi

Feats to Consider
You'll have some feats to spare, so these are decent ones to consider taking: premeditation, skinner, uncanny dodge, decommissioner (or serial killer), and/or sprint and hit & run if you haven't picked those up yet.


Tattoo

The beast or drifter. Damage or mobility, your choice.


Specialization

First boost Tricky Trajectory damage +5 for an extra 10% damage increase.
Then boost Demolition Man damage +5 to raise the buff from 25% to 50% at full stacks.
Use the last 5 points on Gun nut.


Abilities

Strength: 6 - Gives us Onager with 6 round cylinder, Petard with 8 round magazine, and lets us open air vents with crowbar while on adrenaline shot
Dexterity: 3
Agility: 10 - For feats (blitz, hit&run, sprint), movement points, evasion, and dodge
Constitution: 5 - For Demolition Man feat
Perception: 14 - For damage
Will: 3
Intelligence: 7 - For Tricky Trajectory, Gun Nut, Psi slots and crafting skills


Food and Drugs

Hardcore chips for crit, root soda occasionally for initiative.
Adrenaline shot and focus still is all you'll need for the most part when it comes to drugs.
Hypercerebrix and Jons Special for crafting and mercantile checks.




Let me know if you have any questions or feedback. Enjoy!

Here's a lil showcase:



4 Nagas 1 Turn

before:


after:

2

Builds / Zoom & Boom: Agile Shotgun, Crushes DOMINATING, Very Fun

« on: November 03, 2022, 02:26:10 am »

This build is probably the most fun build I've played, and I've played a few.

https://underrail.info/build/?HgUFDQMNAwTCoEgAAMKgwqBQAE8AAFpkDipkAAAAwqAAAD8rKDkkwrDClsKPR8KHSxlBMcKYwoXCpcKkwrXDjOKgigXip5YF4rewBd-_



Highlights

- Insane damage output
- Tons of mobility
- Good survivability
- Win all your init rolls (allows for a different playstyle)
- Min-maxed skills



About the Build

Fun to play
Shotguns are really fun to use. High mobility is fun to work with. Shotguns and high mobility are a great match, because you get to play around with positioning.

In addition, the high initiative lets you consistently win all of your initiative rolls. Sometimes you can do an init ambush type of play style, where you hang around a corner and kill every enemy that goes into view, then go out of combat, then the next enemy walks into view, you kill them, go out of combat, next enemy comes around the corner, and so on.

You also have stealth for a change of pace and for bonus damage later in the game.

Insane and consistent damage
Shotguns actually output pretty consistent damage due to it being averaged across all of the pellets! More pellets = more consistent damage.
They also do an insane amount of damage and are very versatile. You can easily deal with bots or with low armor enemies.

High Survivability
The build's high initiative plays into survivability. Offense is the best defense on DOMINATING, and if you always get the first shot off, you always win.

Additionally you have high evasion and dodge. I consider these skills to be pretty underrated. You can think of them as a multiplier on your shields + hp. By the end of the game if your shield is 1200, your hp is 300, and if your enemy has a 40% chance to hit, you effectively end up with a 3000 shield and 750 hp.

Most mines and grenades don't affect you at all due to evasion.



Quality Of Life

- Your high perception means you detect all mines or most mines without motion tracking goggles.
- Good subterfuge skills (high stealth and lockpicking)
- 80 throw for 90% chance at 4 tiles
- Enough crafting to craft all relevant end game gear
- 135 lockpicking with jkk jacket, jacknife, huxkey, and eel sandwich
- You walk really fast
- You can just wear the large waist pack for the +50 carry capacity most of the time, since you seldom have hard enough encounters that require more than both shotguns worth of shells.



Gear

End Game
- Weapons: 2x Tactical Short Vindicators (saves a reload)
- Armor: Infused Rathound Overcoat or JKK jacket for init
- Belt: Either shell strap belt or doctor's pouch depending on the encounter
- Helmet: Night Vision Seeker Googles
- Boots: Infused hopper tabis
- Shield: Efficient high + high and low + low shields

Early and Mid Game
- Weapons: 2x Tactical Short Vindicators (or best other shotgun frame you can find)
- Armor: Tac vest or siphoner leather armor early game, jkk jacket mid game
- Belt: Either shell strap belt or doctor's pouch
- Helmet: Seeker Googles
- Boots: Best tabis you can find or craft
- Shield: whatever you can find



Crafting and Mercantile

Crafting and mercantile is optimized to require sgs tattoo, hypercerebrix, jon's special, and your home crafting benches. With those items you can hit Constantine's level 2 check, and you can craft with components up to 160 quality. With a boning knife and the other buffs, you can craft hypercerebrix, just need to find your first hypercerebrix.

Tip: Always buy good Vindicator frames, Forward Grips, goggle frames, good seeker lenses, night vision tubes, and good black cloth so you have some handy when you need to craft.



How to Play

For regular encounters, just walk up and blast the enemies. By the way, you always get to go first.

For trickier encounters, you can stealth up to get your 15% blindsiding bonus, position yourself so that you have a couple of enemies in your shotgun's damage cone, kill an enemy to get some MP, pop sprint to get MP above 60, blitz for 20 more AP, contraction for 20 more AP, increment, focus stim and jumping bean if it's a tricky encounter, then when you're out of AP, pop adrenaline and engage stasis.

After stasis, kill some more enemies, moving and shooting, turn on your energy shield and activate precognition (that's why you have 160 Temporal Manupulation), optionally activate uncanny dodge to nullify any risk of melee attacks.

- Eat hardcore chips and pop adrenaline, focus stims and jumping beans as needed. Use root soda for bonus init
- Line up enemies to hit multiple per shot
- Use your mobility to abuse line of sight so you don't get hit
- Get close to low evasion or incapacitated enemies to get that 20% damage bonus
- Kill an enemy, then pop sprint or contraction to get >60 movement points for blitz
- 5 turn bitz and sprint cooldown with specialization and infused hopper tabis (3-4 with Limited Temporal Increment)
- Use precognition to lower enemy hit chance even further
- Pretty much guaranteed 1 turn invulnerability from melee enemies with Uncanny Dodge (>10 attacks by end of game, >13 with adrenaline, more with jumping bean). Use it preemptively to deal with deathstalkers and crawlers

Note:
- Join protectorate for the gun oil (+10% damage)
- Join JKK for the jacket or Praetorian for the ChemHaze grenades.



Leveling Up

- Raise guns, dodge, evasion, and mechanics (till 90) every level.
- Raise stealth every level early on until its around 50
- Get electronics to 20 to craft a taser ASAP, then you can ignore it for a while
- Get tailoring up to ~50 to craft siphoner leather armor before depot A
- Get TM up to 35 for Limited Temporal Increment, then stop leveling till almost done with depot A, at which point you raise it to 55
- Get effective Mercantile up to 25 to unlock level two items from Blaine ASAP
- Raise lockpicking according to the level of the are you are in, 50-60 effective by depot A

Level 10 build: https://underrail.info/build/?CgUFCgMMAwQ8DwAAPDwyAC0AADwUAAA8AAAAIwAADys5KCTCsMKWwo9H378



Early Game

- Use guns and/or Temporal Distortion until you get a shotgun
- Use those 5 molotovs that Quinton sells to help rescue Newton
- Enjoy winning once you craft your first Tactical Short Shotgun
- By depot A, you can shoot 8 shells in 2 turns, and evade/dodge a ton of attacks. Depot A is a breeze.



Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any questions or feedback.