Does anyone have a full grenade launcher build?

[Goblingeneral12]

I've seen some cool clips of grenade launchers wiping encounters and been wiped by some of the new enemies that have them, but has anyone done a full build with them or tested them out yet? If you have I'd love advice on the frames and attachments you use and any sidearms you use if any. Thanks!

[Sat]

It goes rather bad with LMG by lacking power compared to them for the AP cost.
On the other hand, it synergize well with AR (Str requirements, gun skills,...). However, it will also stay situationnal.
It also has low feat needs with Tricky trajectory being important, the others may not be worth the investment depending on stats distribution and side weapon.
Also, it should complement well a sniper build or some versatility ones.
Playing only with it is very annoying when enemy close in so better to have a side weapon planned.

[Goblingeneral12]

Thanks I'm halfway through a grenade launcher only build and yeah what you're saying sounds pretty right, practiced parabola is also pretty useful especially if you want to move and shoot and not kill yourself. Also close range worked pretty well most of the time as long as you can move a little back because the radius of 25mm grenades is pretty small

[Kiruha]

Grenade Launchers are very strong if you have high critical chance, they will crit a lot.

[ShoggothWhisperer]

https://underrail.info/build/?HgQDCgUQAwXCoAAAAAAAwqAya3QAAF1dW39dAAAARgAAUyskMTkow6MdR8KHS8Oiw6UmPyfCtcKkwqbipYoB4qeXA-KxlgLjgIIF44CDBN-8
This is a demo man build based around using the thumper, although if you eat a str boosting food and use adrenaline you can wield other grenade launchers. Demoman provides a 50% damage boost at max stacks with specialization, so the objective is to take a ton of explosive damage at the start of combat, use evasion to reduce the damage by 85%, and then reap the rewards of the massively increased damage. The 40mm cluster grenade procs one stack of demo man for each cluster bomb that hits you, so start combat by shooting directly at your feet with the thumper to get 3-5 stacks of demo man, and then with blitz, psycho temporal acceleration, and adrenaline/vit powder you can shoot off 3-4 additional grenades. Since each grenade hits multiple times with each shot, crit chance increases are effectively just bonus damage, so use gear that provides extra crit chance for higher damage. You’ve got pretty high survivability since you’re almost immune to explosive damage and have high mobility to avoid melee enemies. Ranged enemies have at most a 40% chance to hit you thanks to the evasion, but enemies usually have closer to a 10-20% chance to hit due to distance penalties, move and shoot penalties, and darkness penalties. Do not take shell shock on this build, as cluster grenades will debuff you with multiple stacks of shell shock when you shoot yourself.

[peet]

I found that GL does so much damage that you kill yourself even with max evasion and cluster nades. Is this not the cas?

[ShoggothWhisperer]

I found that GL does so much damage that you kill yourself even with max evasion and cluster nades. Is this not the cas?

I guess I overlooked mentioning armor choice, sorry about that. Each bomblet deals ~75 mechanical damage and ~75 heat damage after the evasion reduction, so you’ll want to use a low frequency energy shield and maximize mechanic and heat resistance to minimize the damage. A low frequency energy shield can absorb the bulk of the impact, since explosives have a fast impact speed, but you need enough damage to get through so that it isn’t blocked by Heat DT. With Aluminized cloth tabis and siphoner/greater siphoner leather armor you can hit 95%+ heat resistance and about 30% mechanical resistance, and when combined with the shield you should only be taking about 50-80 damage from the cluster bomb detonation.

[destroyor]

There's an alternative way of buffing yourself w/ Demolition Man.

Just build a Mangonel long barrel GL with the lowest quality frame you could find (~ 20ish from SGS vendor, or get disassemble and lower the quality down to 15) and use it for buffs.

Another tip - if you are not wearing Launcher Grenade Strap Belt (it only reduces reload cost by 50% so it's not that good), just get Quick pocket and switch to another fully loaded GL from inventory using 25AP. You can buff youself w/ the aforementioned Mangonel long barrel and then switch it out.

Overall I would say LMG is way easier and more powerful than GL. Still waiting for the alleged minigun rebalance as it's all style, no substances.

Correction: just opened up my GL save - you can lower the quality of a frame down to 1 using disassemble. A quality 1 Mangonel long barrel GL base damage is 28-57 (if you are getting Gun Nut - make sure to craft this before you get it). I think 15 is the lowest possible frame quality spawn by loot/vendor.

[harperfan7]

blast cloth stacks with evasion, just watch out for shrapnel from frags

[destroyor]

blast cloth stacks with evasion, just watch out for shrapnel from frags

Keep in mind if you take 0 heat damage you won't get the buff.

[harperfan7]

Keep in mind if you take 0 heat damage you won't get the buff.

Im taking 0 damage because I have 6-7 electricity and energy dt; just don't have any dt and you'll still take a teeny bit.

[peet]

I've seen some cool clips of grenade launchers wiping encounters and been wiped by some of the new enemies that have them, but has anyone done a full build with them or tested them out yet? If you have I'd love advice on the frames and attachments you use and any sidearms you use if any. Thanks!

Just shared my GL build: https://stygiansoftware.com/forums/index.php?topic=10502.0