A build (or three) for every weapon (Dominating approved)

[Vokial]

Your Arena burrower fight betrays you. Spending round after round only denting the high DR enemy.
If we want a psi-less build, then using Traps and high initiative cheap Kneecap Shots is the best alternative to employing psionics. You still pretend to not notice that the Pistol is only used here as yet another method of crowd control. Which Traps come in addition. While Increment and Contraction is not necessary in every fight, reducing the cooldown of Aim Shot and Shooting Spree is still the goal, thus using your rifle becomes even more important. While the above abilities can buy you time + you can keep the Ambush going (thus one-shotting enemies) with Molotovs and Incendiary Traps. It's just the better play that actually compliments your sniper approach and maintaining the distance advantage, making you a better sniper. Instead of doing the exact opposite - requiring you to be close and not reducing cooldown.

[Eidein]

Wow using traps and temporal manipulation makes a build stronger? I had no idea!

Like I said its a cheeseless build, pistol of course has more crowd control than smg, it has more everything than smg. That's the point of not using it! If I was being real optimal I would just take concentrated fire and use an assault rifle with my sniper, completely eliminating the need for it (like pistol).

SMG works well with Sniper despite not having any of the tools you mention, evident by the run and video. No traps, no temporal, no deaths. A plain and simple solid build. No cheese required to work.

The burrower fight is literally because I made the mistake of having JHP equipped it has nothing todo with the smg. If a pistol had JHP equipped it would be exactly the same.

The build in question btw: https://underrail.info/build/?HAUICAUOAwPClmQAAChnwpbCgig3AMKCwowtEAAAAAAAAABlATl_TjUCfjdLM0FJwoXCg8K1eGzipKII4q-8BOKvvQHfvg

Im not arguing pistol and Temporal manipulation wouldnt be stronger in the build, im arguing those tools are too overpowered and would overshadow the sniper rifle with how universally strong pistol is at all ranges 1 shotting just as hard as sniper does for MUCH lower ap.

[Vokial]

You cannot one-shot a Dreadnought with a pistol, even if you tailor the whole build for the handgun and drop the sniper rifle. You need to Snipe/Aim Shot with armor piercing 12.7mm from a Corsair for that. Pistol can one-shot a crawler spawn or a rathound with normal shots. Regular low armor humans can drop too on lower difficulties - in cases when you get it to crit.

Pistol is not that good as you describe when you don't build your entire build around it. Yet you keep sticking to this idea and base your whole narrative and reasoning to that - effectively arguing with yourself and disregarding my points, which hints that you have nothing to say against them. I clearly mention that we only use it for CC. Here we only have 7 DEX, Gunslinger and Kneecap Shot - that's it. Going psiless frees up more feat slots, so we can also take Sharpshooter that benefits both guns - these two firearms are meant to be together. Hammerer can pack a punch if you're lucky and get high base damage on the lottery, but there's no point in wasting AP using that for CC purposes. You can totally just use even a 5mm Neo Luger. The point is the MP reduction of the enemy and to get the Initiative bonus. Also, a Hammerer shot cost almost as much AP with 7 DEX as a Spearhead - at which point you're far better off using your rifle anyway, even if they would do the same damage (which they won't, especially with the Hammerer damage being so random) solely for the mentioned cooldown reductions and the ability to use it from farther away. There's no point in using pistols for damage when you have a sniper rifle.

[Eidein]

Not going to lie you lost me when you said ambush doesn't work with burst and to take trap expert.

Ambush does work with burst just to let you know.


I will give you an example of what pistols are capable of, and you can tell me if they wouldn't completely overshadow the sniper part of a sniper/pistol build.

https://youtu.be/f-GyGQBN8s0

I have no doubt about Pistol and Sniper being strong together, but pistol fills the same niches as sniper AND fills its weaknesses. Too high ap cost attacks? - bullet time! enemies close? - no melee penalty! need to move and shoot? - no movement penalty!

Smg does the same but doesn't have the strengths of range, single target damage, good crit damage, and high special attack damage like sniper does, that's why they go well together they cover each others weaknesses instead of overlapping and overshadowing them!

Sniper/pistol is strong especially with your version of traps tm gas and whatever but that's not the point of the build I was trying to make. When I ran this build I couldn't place a 2 layer deep trap wall to stop all enemies from ever reaching me, it was meant to be a sniper build with a sidearm that complements and that's how it is, allowing it to operate at ranges not specifically planned for with meticulous trap placement and stasis. It was the first psiless ironman recorded and its a fantastic build despite being psiless. Perfectly balanced each weapon in harmony with each other.

If I had a pistol with bullet time, ambush, and crit power - where does the sniper fit in? My opening salvo with pistol would be much stronger than with sniper past the first 4 shots, 4ap attacks, 1 shotting each enemy and 2-3 shotting bosses. Sniper would essentially just be a vanity weapon at this point. If your pistol wasn't doing this you were playing very sub optimally, it is not hard for pistol to achieve this even very early on.

Cheers!

[harperfan7]

I have seen a pistol rapid-fire a dreadnought to death. 

Also I would never spec snipe for a real run; thats for meme numbers only.

[harperfan7]

If you had firearm pistols (arguably the strongest weapon in the game) why would you even need the sniper? They operate at roughly the same range and pistols 1 shot everything, contrary to the smg.

They're only the strongest if you build around them, and even then only past the midgame.  As a sidearm, you have a fairly-low AP-cost and accurate weapon (for applying kneecap shot) to take down trash mobs or enemies who get too close.  Gunslinger gives you a nice initiative boost for when stealth doesnt work.  Tygrende liked to use a laser-sight neo-luger for most of the game, switching to a .44 hammerer lategame, and he even took rapid shot for them.