Demoman: Agile Grenade Launcher Build [DOMINATING]

[peet]

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:

[ben]

Don't you instantly kill yourself by triggering the Master Demolitionist Belt?
You would need a different armor to reduce explosion damage, which heavily reduces movement and action points..

[harperfan7]

Don't you instantly kill yourself by triggering the Master Demolitionist Belt?
You would need a different armor to reduce explosion damage, which heavily reduces movement and action points..

No.  He claims 30 damage per use; which is surprising to me because I could use it with mk5s and take almost no damage with siphoner armor. 

[Farsight]

Hi. playing your build, I'm level 13 now and everything is going well, but its unclear how i supposed to kill Arena Masters with explosive damage. Do I need to level up and everything will be fine or is there some special strategy?

[peet]

Hi. playing your build, I'm level 13 now and everything is going well, but its unclear how i supposed to kill Arena Masters with explosive damage. Do I need to level up and everything will be fine or is there some special strategy?

It’s definitely a challenge. I used bear traps and eventually got em stuck on each other at the door to the east of where they hang out, and then whittled them down. It’s prob the hardest fight for this build. I’d wait till like level 20 at least.

[Farsight]

Hi. playing your build, I'm level 13 now and everything is going well, but its unclear how i supposed to kill Arena Masters with explosive damage. Do I need to level up and everything will be fine or is there some special strategy?

It’s definitely a challenge. I used bear traps and eventually got em stuck on each other at the door to the east of where they hang out, and then whittled them down. It’s prob the hardest fight for this build. I’d wait till like level 20 at least.

Tyvm sir, both for the advice and the builds.

[Eidein]

The masters are possible straight out of depot A but its kinda painful, I managed to kill them at lv 13 with bear traps, gas, and acid vials since their acid res is kinda low.

[harperfan7]

I think eventually their armor durability would drop to 0 and you could hit them normally, but good luck getting there.

[peet]

The masters are possible straight out of depot A but its kinda painful, I managed to kill them at lv 13 with bear traps, gas, and acid vials since their acid res is kinda low.

Good call, gas and more bear traps would probably trivialize it.

[peet]

A lil update on gear, i've switched over to blast cloth infused rathound overcoat and blast cloth tabis, as well as using a petard alongside the onager. I'll write a bit more on this as I continue dominating all the pipeworkers i come across.

The blast cloth gear still lets me hit max evasion when on adrenaline and jumping bean, letting me put 5x mk3 HE grenades in my belt and not getting any significant damage when triggering the demolition belt.

Also decided to pump gun nut +5, TM to 160, electronics to 80, hacking to 69 for 130 effective (with jons special, hypercerebrix, eng suit, and phreak glove) for IRIS, and merc to 60 to get Hanna's top level of components. Here's the most up to date build:
https://underrail.info/build/?HgYDCgUMAwfCoAAAAADCoMKgUEUAAABaUD4jWgAtAMKgAAA8UyQxKMOjGUfCh0vDosOlJ8KFKivCtcKkwp3DnMOIXeKpjgXiv6QF44CCBd-8

[Goblingeneral12]

Build looks great, just a few questions.
How does early game go pre thumper, I kinda suck on dom so does this build have a tough time?
How many grenades did it take to kill the 4 nagas?
What should my starting spread be and when should I level up my stats?
Do you think demolition man max stacks would be worth using spec points on or is gun nut working?

[peet]

Build looks great, just a few questions.
How does early game go pre thumper, I kinda suck on dom so does this build have a tough time?
How many grenades did it take to kill the 4 nagas?
What should my starting spread be and when should I level up my stats?
Do you think demolition man max stacks would be worth using spec points on or is gun nut working?

Thank you! It really came together well.

- pre thumper game is a tiny bit rough, but you have decent perception so once you find and AR or shotgun things are pretty chill. You can always lean on bear traps, mollies, taser, and Temporal Distortion to get through the more challenging encounters. Additionally you have good stealth, which gives you an alternate way of dealing with encounters.

- 3x 40mm thermobaric grenades for the 4 nagas, 95AP total which you can easily do with 50 base +20 blitz +20 contraction +20 adrenaline, or 50 base, +20 blitz or contraction, +25 vitality powder

- i'd suggest to start with 6 str, 3 dex, 8 agility, 3 con, 10 per, 3 will, 7 int. raise agility 2 times to get blitz by lvl 10, con 2 times to get demo man by 18, then the rest in per

- gun nut is decent since it always applies and is multiplied by your other boosts. Max stacks is situational since you need to find another way to apply those stacks after you trigger your boom belt, which means you would either have to use AP for shooting yourself (better to shoot the enemy) or throwing a grenade at your feet (25 AP with belt) yourself, but it is better to just kill the enemies with your 50% damage bonus.

[Goblingeneral12]

Thanks for the response I'll enjoy nuking the underground with this one

[Vibos]

Thanks for sharing a build, I am playing it right now and enjoying it.

Evasion and blast cloth have almost no effect on fragmentation grenades. Their damage divided into two parts, heat explosion, that get reduction from explosion resistance, and fragments, that get almost no reduction. So, if you want to use BOOM ability not only for getting stacks of demolition man, but also for killing someone who come close, and stay alive in the process, it`s better to use HE or plasma nades of high quality.

Also, I altered a build a little for my personal preferences. Removed psi empathy and added sniper rifle feats as great fight opener to take down far away enemies with shooting spree. I also put some points in lockpicking to access some of the oddity exp, and use taser in one of the belt slots to compensate lack of psi. Completed almost all pre-DC content, had struggles only with Arena masters, Carnifex and Black Crawler.
Here is my version of the build if someone interested.

https://underrail.info/build/?HgYDCgUMAwfCoABfAAAowqBQOzwAAGRkUFBkAAAAADwAPDkBMSg1w6N-R0vDosOlQRknwrXCpMKFwp3DnMOI4qCKBeKvvQHiv6QE44CCBd-8

[harperfan7]

Evasion works just fine against frag shrapnel (same as any AoE), but blast cloth does nothing.  This is intentional.