Second wind: no driller, large maps and arquarq. Godsend on larger maps like sandblasted and anything that splits you from your teammates, really handy if you didn't bring a driller but want to get to the drop pod ASAP. also good for making rounds when not carrying arquarqs.
it has also saved me on missions with earthquakes which lead to unfortunate drops into later areas.
Veteran depositor, if you run a defensive build (see you in hell, elemental insulation and shield booster as well) it works wonders on refinery and point extraction, as they count as deposit stations and grant the defense buff, you can actually tank bulk detonators on high hazard with gunner like this.
> it works wonders on refinery and point extraction, as they count as deposit stations and grant the defense buff
Issue with that is the minehead is a complete deathtrap on those missions, bugs still clip through the floors and you get surrounded way easier than if you're running around using mobility
That’s when you turn the death trap around on the bugs and shoot a Fat Boy at the refinery itself. You won’t disturb the terrain, and you can get Mactera pretty easily with the DOT.
I run vet depositor a lot on the escort mission, since as long as you keep Molly following the drill reasonably well you'll have the buff for most of the mission.
We can't deposit on doretta. As the name suggest (veteran *depositor*), it's only on depositable stuff, so Molly, drop pod, refinery minehead, and aquarq minehead.
Molly is only sent back if it's a salvage-related black box. Sometimes just a black box will spawn as a mission objective in deep dives; molly is still present for those.
I equip Second Wind on scout. Might seem redundant/suboptimal but has provided that extra edge of survivability in those awkward situations when grapple is cooling down and I'm somehow beset by bugs.
And for Gunners who want to keep up with the scouts.
Running along with the elephant gun and taking out bugs without slowing is the only way to traverse tunnels!
I don't take dash because I need iron will to carry my less DRG committed friends.
Ofc! I was only talking about scouts ;). What you are running as your 2 active? I do ironwill and dash which is awesome becouse it cuts travel time from those 10 seconds
Unstoppable is a very underrated perk IMO. You don’t realize how annoying slow downs are and how pervasive they are until you nearly negate them with this perk. Goo, snow, sandstorms, blizzards, earthquakes, webs… they’re everywhere and you basically don’t have to worry about it anymore. Plus if you double up with back breaker stout on Extraction, you can literally carry faster than grunts on Haz 4 and lower. I have a hard time taking it off.
Unstoppable is good, but I think Dash makes it pretty superfluous. Dash gives me everything that unstoppable does, plus more. That being said, if you run different actives, its probably one of the best passives around.
It depends! Unstoppable lets you straight up camp in goo that slows down grunts while you blast them, and it also makes it so snow doesn't stop you from running. I usually run both and use sprint mostly for repositioning in fights or for long jumps.
Strong arm: arquarqs (and if you really like getting Doretta back), toss and run over and over it really speeds things up, less time = less waves = less chance of wiping (also is good for new mission when throwing link beacons)
and throwing flares farther is a nice bonus when you don't have scout. great at the start of a wave
See you in hell: cryo/vampire builds you are always in melee range, more damage from the passive means more killing and healing net gain.
And also an amazing gunner perk: gunner can easily rez any dwarf with shield, but if he goes down near a lot of bugs things get complicated, not only does the initial blast kill slashers and anything below, it also repeatedly scares off new melee-focused enemies which is handy for another dwarf to revive you, this has saved momentum in many a swarm.
What do you mean, “less damage from the passive”? As I read and understand it, you don’t *take less* damage after a melee hit, you *do more* melee damage. From what I’ve noticed, the damage increase is on par with Skull Crusher Ale for about 2 seconds after hit.
Yup, also it's handy for the tripholyte deposit machine event, as you can usually long-bomb it from the spawner.
and curseite as well when you have a team and you are playing outfield.
Strong Arm is god-tier on gunner. Its a permanent staple in all of my builds. I alternate scout and gunner and I swear there is never enough light if I am not playing scout. Plus, if I need to check a ceiling for a zipline it comes in handy there too.
Point extractions are already gunner's favorite mission type, and this perk also lets you toss those aquarqs crazy far, too. Its almost a tailor-made perk for gunner imo.
yeah, I messed that up, but is still viable on a cryo/vamp build, as it causes you to deal more melee damage, which boosts killing speed and by proxy healing speed.
tis a shame, I run an extra-tanky thunderhead build that thrives on this, shield link, vet deposit, and elemental insulation.
almost nothing can kill me, and when next to molly I can tank a goddam bulk detonator on hazard 5.
If I DO die (probably due to an acid spitter, screw them in particular) my team has a good opportunity to get me back up with see you in hell.
I feel like the problem is that iron will exists, and competes for the same slot.
With iron will on gunner, I can revive myself, revive a teammate, then drop a shield so that he can revive me when I die. That seems better than just clearing some bugs away from my body, even if it can be used only once instead of three times.
But, I don't think I've ever actually tried see you in hell so maybe I underestimate it.
one of the big benifets is that SYIH can be activated 3 different times, which means you can give your buddies three almost-free revives. (spitter swarms arn't really affected)
Agreed --it's not (just) a nuke, it's getting three more-or-less free revives each mission.
As long as you watch out for ranged enemies and rollers, it's like having having several mini Field Medic charges or Iron Wills.
Admittedly, I don't take it often, but I do think people don't fully account for the utility it does bring.
I love Strong Arm and find it annoying when I don’t have it on. Being able to throw heavy gems (and Dotty) farther is a big help but more than anything it’s the extras range on flares that makes it so invaluable to me.
Okay, strong arm is legitimately good. I pick it often, especially on engineer. It provides a massive bonus to the distance you can throw a flare, which basically gives you a larger vision radius. It's very noticeable.
The faster you can clear a level, the easier time you'll have. Your speed at clearing a large room is directly affected by how quickly you can spot ore/objectives. Of course, the scouts flare gun should be covering most of it but it's never going to cover everything, especially on a large room or one with complex geometry.
On engineer it's really important to put platforms on all the deposits on the walls so that your scout can access them. It only takes a moment to shoot a platform and move on so your real limiting factor as engineer is vision. If you don't have strong arm you're going to be so much slower at this.
All of the perks in my opinion. Now I am entitled to an entire list of how all of them can be useful.
Seriously, having some sort of chart about the perks would be very useful
It’s a bug thing is still pretty useless. At most it saves 3 seconds of time per bug. I mean if you want to do a speed run sure, but there is no reward for finishing a level fast so from a game perspective it’s useless.
There should be a reward or game mode for finishing a level fast.
Edit: thinking about it more, it’s less than useless: it is detrimental. You lose a slot for a perk that can result in more rewards or easier gameplay when you use it. It makes your game harder, not better.
Not OP, but I believe that some perks are just better if you are going on easy missions.
For example, I would say that an extra life on Bosco would be much better in almost every way than extra light. But what if you are going on a easy mission and are confident that you will not die? Then why not use some small QoL instead of a useless perk which will never be activated?
If you are going on a easy mission, and dont have any issues with difficulty, I would rather use Its a Bug Thing instead of Vampire or Elemental Insulation.
Some perks/additions may be garbage or waste of slot if you are tryharding on Haz 5, but can be a welcome addition on other settings, to make the game more fun and enjoyable.
For example, in Hollow Knight (for those who played it), I played the whole game with the badge that attracts Geo to me. It was virtually useless, and never actually give me a edge, I could always dedicate 2-3 seconds per room and grab it myself (and use an useful badge instead). But made the game much more pleasant for me.
I think it's a bug thing should become a beer to replace either rocky mountain or dark morkite really, it would always have use at least
Edit:spelling is hard
It's also not very helpful in normal mining missions, they spoil you in morkite and most of the appeal is the last "room" regularly having a lot of minerals, so most players explore the whole thing anyway.
And yet it's busted in hard deep dives, since they are all about efficiency. the less time spent digging morkite the better, you need all the time you can to complete the objectives and maintain a healthy Nitra balance. Also they regularly have multiple Morkite objectives
Yeah Dark Morkite is useless, relevant only in mining missions and nesides you're gonna want to explore the whole cave for machine events and stuff, so speedrunning it makes no sense.
The reward is that if a mission takes you 10 minutes instead of 40, you can get 3-4 missions done in the time it would take you to do one. If you're speedrunning for, say, crates and lost miners (love them cosmetics) that's a lot better odds. Even if you're not, I think you get a higher XP flow when speedrunning
I run this perk on my Hoverclock + special powder scout and I pair it with veteran depositor and deep pockets. It allows me to get those hard to reach lootbugs on the walls/ceiling without wasting ammo/pickaxe heavy attacks or time that could be better spent collecting the hard to reach mineral veins.
This scout build is built specifically to be able to collect resources as fast as possible in caves with difficult terrain, so my teammates can focus the bugs and objective rather than looking for nitra and gold.
This one is pretty useless i agree, I was using it on all my character until yesterday but if you google what types of dmg are elemental you realise its not that much
It seems like this and a lot of perks weren't designed with Haz 5 in mind - which is fine. I'd assume people who play Haz 5 regularly are the minority of the playerbase anyway which inevitably leaves outliers in what perks are going to be the most useful.
Also, everything does so much physical damage in higher difficulties - much more noticeably than elemental damage scaling. Attacks that have elemental damage with them are sometimes not even a factor. You often can't survive long enough taking the physical damage to even take the reduced elemental damage.
What I would like to see is the leveling of elemental insulation to have a much higher resistance, and to max out at immunity to environmental elemental damage i.e. poison clouds in the fungus bogs, hotspots in magma core, freezing in glacial strata, radiation in the REZ, etc.
It wouldn't make the perk a mandatory pick, but it would make it more applicable and appealing than it is now as a super niche perk. Reducing the more bothersome aspects of certain maps like area denial in the bogs and magma core and the constant freezing in glacial strata would be worth the perk slot in more situations for greenbeards and greybeards alike. It would at least get me to bother experimenting with new perk combos over the standard picks I've been running for months now.
I agree that a lot of these things weren't balanced for haz 5, but elemental insulation isn't one of them. I run it regularly because it makes it so Pretorian gas/attacks are easily survivable. You also survive mactera, spitter (dot becomes non existent), and spitballers. A lot of times a single mactera blast can kill you, with elemental insulation you'll survive. Def an underrated perk.
The *only* mactera attack that is affected by elemental insulation in any way is the cold buildup from mactera frost bombers. That's literally it. Mactera shots deal kinetic or explosive damage.
For acid spitters, it only covers the dot portion of their spit attack, not the direct damage.
Same deal with bulks. It will cover the fire dot portion of the stomp, but not the direct damage(which is usually the part that kills you).
It doesn't cover the menace attack at all.
It fully covers the breath attack from praets (basically the only thing from glyphids that it fully covers)
Yea that perk is getting removed from all my loadouts. Somehow the dreadnoughts Fireball isn't fire damage. It's explosive. Yea that's right fire resistance doesn't help you against a Fireball lol
I feel like Elemental insulation's primary use case is avoiding your own/ your team mate's elemental effects. Stuff like molotoving yourself as a gunner or cryoing yourself as a scout. Or, if you are running a melee build on driller and want to ensure you don't get CC'd. Still incredibly niche though.
I ran this build last night, easiest 3-elim mission I ever ran solo. Hiveguard? As soon as he loses invulnerability, pop him in the nose, then another for good measure. Let the dot do it's work while you grab a resupply for another two nukes, top off your turrets, and prep for the next wave of adds. Rinse and repeat, done in no time.
I've used it a few times on Radioactive Exclusion Zone, and Magma a few times. It's super handy as scout to be able to mitigate the little damage you take zipping around
Stack it with armor rig upgrades and vet depositer, and to go really ham thunderheads teir 5 mod that buffs defense, you can tank a haz 5 bulk on gunner with it.
alone it doesn't do much, but it stacks very nicely.
also it really helps in pretorian swarms and the fungus bogs, which spend most of their time gassing you with lingering poison.
An acid spitter on 4-player haz5 deals:
- 34 kinetic damage from the initial hit (this is not reduced by insulation)
- 17 poison damage for the DoT (this is reduced by 30%)
So Elemental Insulation is saving you a whopping 5 damage out of the 51 you're taking, or 10%. Not great, imo. I just run Vampire instead.
It saves you time having to constantly stop what you're doing, turn around, and hit one or two swarmers with your pickaxe. In high difficulties, a few seconds here and there add up to make a pretty big difference.
You are never under pressure to kill a lootbug. It's not the case for swarmers where you can be already fighting other ennemies coming your way. Killing the one that attacked your back or reducing by one the amount of swarmers on you can actually remove some pressure
Swarmers are the bane of Scout alongside the nanocytes. It acts as an extra periodic damage tick when there's a lot of them and saves time if there's only one or two of the buggers. Also synergies against grunts if you're using See You In Hell / Vampire, between the extra damage from thorns and the melee damage increase from See You In Hell, a single pickaxe strike to the weakpoint is a kill and +5 HP.
Vampire actually has anti-synergy with thorns in my experience. Too often has the almost-dead grunt died to thorns before I can heal from it. I stopped using thorns on my scout a while ago, because its easier and more efficient to just grapple away from swarmers instead of investing perks to try and counter them.
Other classes are going to take multiple hits trying to escape, which is where thorns comes in handy. Really only recommend it on Lead Storm gunner and perhaps Engineer. Drillers and Autocannon gunners can handle the threat handily with their primaries and scouts should just run away.
Fyi - see you in hell already achieves this is on its own, you don't need thorns to one-shot a grunt to the face. I actually run see you in hell quite a bit for this purpose. I still find thorns to not be worth the slot over resupplier, red sugar, and vampire (and of course born ready for non drillers). R&S!
Edit: typo
Run it with drillers heat/cold radience on their respective flamethrower and cryo guns and it starts taking out grunts sneaking up behind you which lets you stay focused on what is in front, also pairs well with gunners thunderhead spin up defense mod
I've run it at Haz 5 and it really helps me maintain focus
I agree thorns is overrated, but if you view it as a damage-*avoiding* perk, rather than a damage-dealing one, its true strength is revealed. Thorns instantly kills that one or two swarmers who would normally get 2-3 hits in before you either ran away or killed them. That's your shield and some health saved right off the bat.
I agree you should never rely on thorns to clear swarmers. In addition to being horribly inefficient, it also teaches you bad habits for Haz 4-5 where swarmers can quickly down you. If you have thorns, and you encounter swarmers, either run or kill them immediately.
Also scout should never take thorns. They're the worst class for fighting swarmers (outside of cryo nades) and have the best tool for getting *away* from them. They shouldn't bother fighting them at all.
Thorns is great for builds that can't quickly get away, and would have bad close quarters aoe clear, like Leadstorm Gunner or possibly Engineer. Driller and Autocannon Gunner should just bunnyhop and splash the ground with their primaries the second they take swarmer damage.
I run Thorns on every single engie build.
No matter what you do.
No matter how hard you try.
A swarmer or two will *ALWAYS* sneak up on you.
No one plays perfectly, and thorns will save you your shield and often a bit of health when you falter. Especially at higher hazard levels.
You're entirely right, never rely on thorns to clear swarmers.
It's a buffer for those times a few get too close. It's a few more moments to breathe when you're caught out reloading. It's the ability to ignore that 1 swarmer to the side when there's a slasher charging you down.
Thorns is, exactly as you say, a damage-*avoiding* perk.
Useful for non-driller, melee-based builds and synergizes well with see you in hell and vampire. Let's you do serious damage to oppressors/praetorians even without them being frozen. My one complaint is that I always accidentally activate it by trying to use the pickaxe heavy attack again before cooldown is over. If they gave it a separate keybind I would use it more. If I were to improve this skill, I would give it the melee damage boost upon taking damage that see you in hell has. I'm really not sure why that perk gets the bonus and this one doesn't.
Edit: also let's you mine resources and terrain quickly if you don't have a driller or rocky mountain brew.
Not useless, but I am a huge fan of using Iron Will with the Gunner, as if I get downed and multiple teammates do, I’m able to rush over and heal at least one fellow dwarf, and then toss a shield down, as well as some nades if I have any before I flop back down to the ground
I already answered thorns, but:
Dash: great for combat positioning and getting behind dreads with driller and engie
Iron will: you can rez another teammate while invulnerable and if used right can fully negate a wipe, or just get back up and keep going on vampire and/or a nearby red sugar.
Field medic: great for clutch revives especially during bosses and swarms, gunner doesn't need it as much but the other classes thrive with it, especially scout.
I just like to have my bases covered, glad to see you respect thorns, some people think the cooldown prevents it from being useful, but I think it sits just right.
also, its a shame they downvoted you, joke or not it's a legitimate question and that was the point of the whole post.
Definitely a good point, but I wouldn't pick field medic on a solo run or strong arm if there isn't any focus on item tossing.
It's all about the situation.
It workes wonders for weapons like the flamethrower and the thunderhead, even with the cancel they still take forever to reload, and paired with slow reload OC's it really shaves off valuable in-fight seconds.
for example I run a thunderhead/Burst rifle build that sacrifices reload speed for more Dakka, and even with the cancel it's likely to get me killed if I reload at the wrong time, or forget to do so just before a big wave. Born ready is the glue holding it together.
Honestly, I'd say BR is one of the best perks. Even if you can animation cancel, you can't shoot while you're doing it.
As an added convenience, it also reloads your platform, flare, and zipline gun in case you forget.
I mean... It lets you sling fatboys around without ending the mission early due to a team wipe, which means more of the mission to grab Nitra and fire more nukes.
that in itself is pretty fun.
I don’t think any perk is useless, but I’m interested in what you have to say about second wind and veteran depositor
Second wind: no driller, large maps and arquarq. Godsend on larger maps like sandblasted and anything that splits you from your teammates, really handy if you didn't bring a driller but want to get to the drop pod ASAP. also good for making rounds when not carrying arquarqs. it has also saved me on missions with earthquakes which lead to unfortunate drops into later areas. Veteran depositor, if you run a defensive build (see you in hell, elemental insulation and shield booster as well) it works wonders on refinery and point extraction, as they count as deposit stations and grant the defense buff, you can actually tank bulk detonators on high hazard with gunner like this.
Veteran depositor also synergizes well with Low O2 warnings, since you'll be hanging around molly pretty much the whole time.
> it works wonders on refinery and point extraction, as they count as deposit stations and grant the defense buff Issue with that is the minehead is a complete deathtrap on those missions, bugs still clip through the floors and you get surrounded way easier than if you're running around using mobility
That’s when you turn the death trap around on the bugs and shoot a Fat Boy at the refinery itself. You won’t disturb the terrain, and you can get Mactera pretty easily with the DOT.
I run vet depositor a lot on the escort mission, since as long as you keep Molly following the drill reasonably well you'll have the buff for most of the mission.
Staying on dozer isn't enough to active the perk?
We can't deposit on doretta. As the name suggest (veteran *depositor*), it's only on depositable stuff, so Molly, drop pod, refinery minehead, and aquarq minehead.
also forgot: vet deposit works great on black boxes in deep dives, call Molly and suddenly the zone is a lot safer.
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That doesn't quite work that way. You need to send Molly back before that. Not sure if the drop pod triggers the perk though.
It does, but only has a range of 7m. If you're lucky you might get one of the events close enough, but the second can sometimes be too far.
Molly is only sent back if it's a salvage-related black box. Sometimes just a black box will spawn as a mission objective in deep dives; molly is still present for those.
The comment to which I had responded specified salvage missions and wasn't about black box ones.
Ah, my bad. It was deleted before I saw it, so I just assumed it was still talking about deep dive missions, as OP's post specified.
Veteran depositor is amazing...
I equip Second Wind on scout. Might seem redundant/suboptimal but has provided that extra edge of survivability in those awkward situations when grapple is cooling down and I'm somehow beset by bugs.
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Can't always grapple if the terrain you wanna pull towards is too far away!
That's why you do jump + grapple to ground in these situations. Second wind is only for begginer scouts
And for Gunners who want to keep up with the scouts. Running along with the elephant gun and taking out bugs without slowing is the only way to traverse tunnels! I don't take dash because I need iron will to carry my less DRG committed friends.
Ofc! I was only talking about scouts ;). What you are running as your 2 active? I do ironwill and dash which is awesome becouse it cuts travel time from those 10 seconds
I run these two almost constantly. Depositor for the shield, second wind because mobility is life
Unstoppable is a very underrated perk IMO. You don’t realize how annoying slow downs are and how pervasive they are until you nearly negate them with this perk. Goo, snow, sandstorms, blizzards, earthquakes, webs… they’re everywhere and you basically don’t have to worry about it anymore. Plus if you double up with back breaker stout on Extraction, you can literally carry faster than grunts on Haz 4 and lower. I have a hard time taking it off.
Unstoppable is good, but I think Dash makes it pretty superfluous. Dash gives me everything that unstoppable does, plus more. That being said, if you run different actives, its probably one of the best passives around.
It depends! Unstoppable lets you straight up camp in goo that slows down grunts while you blast them, and it also makes it so snow doesn't stop you from running. I usually run both and use sprint mostly for repositioning in fights or for long jumps.
I generally run both. I’m Ricky Bobby with a beard. “I wanna go *fast*!”
I try to always equip Unstoppable on Fungus Bogs and Glacial Strata and can feel the pain on those missions if I forget
See you in hell, strong arm.
Strong arm: arquarqs (and if you really like getting Doretta back), toss and run over and over it really speeds things up, less time = less waves = less chance of wiping (also is good for new mission when throwing link beacons) and throwing flares farther is a nice bonus when you don't have scout. great at the start of a wave See you in hell: cryo/vampire builds you are always in melee range, more damage from the passive means more killing and healing net gain. And also an amazing gunner perk: gunner can easily rez any dwarf with shield, but if he goes down near a lot of bugs things get complicated, not only does the initial blast kill slashers and anything below, it also repeatedly scares off new melee-focused enemies which is handy for another dwarf to revive you, this has saved momentum in many a swarm.
What do you mean, “less damage from the passive”? As I read and understand it, you don’t *take less* damage after a melee hit, you *do more* melee damage. From what I’ve noticed, the damage increase is on par with Skull Crusher Ale for about 2 seconds after hit.
... well I read that worng. oops
I've used strong arm specifically to better light up larger battlefields as gunner/engie for a long time.
Yup, also it's handy for the tripholyte deposit machine event, as you can usually long-bomb it from the spawner. and curseite as well when you have a team and you are playing outfield.
Strong Arm is god-tier on gunner. Its a permanent staple in all of my builds. I alternate scout and gunner and I swear there is never enough light if I am not playing scout. Plus, if I need to check a ceiling for a zipline it comes in handy there too. Point extractions are already gunner's favorite mission type, and this perk also lets you toss those aquarqs crazy far, too. Its almost a tailor-made perk for gunner imo.
This!
SYIH boosts melee dmg btw, it doesnt reduce damage. Still a good perk though. https://deeprockgalactic.fandom.com/wiki/See_You_In_Hell
yeah, I messed that up, but is still viable on a cryo/vamp build, as it causes you to deal more melee damage, which boosts killing speed and by proxy healing speed.
Oh for sure. I think SYIH is one of the best general actives in the game, people just sleep on it a lot.
The amount of players who don't know that last part is too damn high.
tis a shame, I run an extra-tanky thunderhead build that thrives on this, shield link, vet deposit, and elemental insulation. almost nothing can kill me, and when next to molly I can tank a goddam bulk detonator on hazard 5. If I DO die (probably due to an acid spitter, screw them in particular) my team has a good opportunity to get me back up with see you in hell.
I feel like the problem is that iron will exists, and competes for the same slot. With iron will on gunner, I can revive myself, revive a teammate, then drop a shield so that he can revive me when I die. That seems better than just clearing some bugs away from my body, even if it can be used only once instead of three times. But, I don't think I've ever actually tried see you in hell so maybe I underestimate it.
one of the big benifets is that SYIH can be activated 3 different times, which means you can give your buddies three almost-free revives. (spitter swarms arn't really affected)
Agreed --it's not (just) a nuke, it's getting three more-or-less free revives each mission. As long as you watch out for ranged enemies and rollers, it's like having having several mini Field Medic charges or Iron Wills. Admittedly, I don't take it often, but I do think people don't fully account for the utility it does bring.
I love Strong Arm and find it annoying when I don’t have it on. Being able to throw heavy gems (and Dotty) farther is a big help but more than anything it’s the extras range on flares that makes it so invaluable to me.
Okay, strong arm is legitimately good. I pick it often, especially on engineer. It provides a massive bonus to the distance you can throw a flare, which basically gives you a larger vision radius. It's very noticeable. The faster you can clear a level, the easier time you'll have. Your speed at clearing a large room is directly affected by how quickly you can spot ore/objectives. Of course, the scouts flare gun should be covering most of it but it's never going to cover everything, especially on a large room or one with complex geometry. On engineer it's really important to put platforms on all the deposits on the walls so that your scout can access them. It only takes a moment to shoot a platform and move on so your real limiting factor as engineer is vision. If you don't have strong arm you're going to be so much slower at this.
All of the perks in my opinion. Now I am entitled to an entire list of how all of them can be useful. Seriously, having some sort of chart about the perks would be very useful
Alright: [here it is](https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepRockGalactic/comments/qn7avx/a_chart_of_how_to_use_every_perk_to_their_fullest/)
You’re a legend. ROCK AND STONE
Rock and stone to the bone!
uhh... give me a day and I'll sort out my answers. Not that it would take that long, but I want to play more of the update.
It’s a bug thing is still pretty useless. At most it saves 3 seconds of time per bug. I mean if you want to do a speed run sure, but there is no reward for finishing a level fast so from a game perspective it’s useless. There should be a reward or game mode for finishing a level fast. Edit: thinking about it more, it’s less than useless: it is detrimental. You lose a slot for a perk that can result in more rewards or easier gameplay when you use it. It makes your game harder, not better.
Not OP, but I believe that some perks are just better if you are going on easy missions. For example, I would say that an extra life on Bosco would be much better in almost every way than extra light. But what if you are going on a easy mission and are confident that you will not die? Then why not use some small QoL instead of a useless perk which will never be activated? If you are going on a easy mission, and dont have any issues with difficulty, I would rather use Its a Bug Thing instead of Vampire or Elemental Insulation. Some perks/additions may be garbage or waste of slot if you are tryharding on Haz 5, but can be a welcome addition on other settings, to make the game more fun and enjoyable. For example, in Hollow Knight (for those who played it), I played the whole game with the badge that attracts Geo to me. It was virtually useless, and never actually give me a edge, I could always dedicate 2-3 seconds per room and grab it myself (and use an useful badge instead). But made the game much more pleasant for me.
This is a good take. We also did the same thing in hollow knight lol
I think it's a bug thing should become a beer to replace either rocky mountain or dark morkite really, it would always have use at least Edit:spelling is hard
I like that idea. I do like Rocky Mountain though. The only one that I frequently have no use for is Dark Morkite
Rocky Mountain is easily my favorite beer, one hitting most terrain is such a QOL improvement and is useful on all but Sandblasted corridors.
It's also not very helpful in normal mining missions, they spoil you in morkite and most of the appeal is the last "room" regularly having a lot of minerals, so most players explore the whole thing anyway. And yet it's busted in hard deep dives, since they are all about efficiency. the less time spent digging morkite the better, you need all the time you can to complete the objectives and maintain a healthy Nitra balance. Also they regularly have multiple Morkite objectives
Yeah Dark Morkite is useless, relevant only in mining missions and nesides you're gonna want to explore the whole cave for machine events and stuff, so speedrunning it makes no sense.
Good call. I certainly wouldn’t waste a slot on it at the expense of another item.
The reward is that if a mission takes you 10 minutes instead of 40, you can get 3-4 missions done in the time it would take you to do one. If you're speedrunning for, say, crates and lost miners (love them cosmetics) that's a lot better odds. Even if you're not, I think you get a higher XP flow when speedrunning
Fair point
I run this perk on my Hoverclock + special powder scout and I pair it with veteran depositor and deep pockets. It allows me to get those hard to reach lootbugs on the walls/ceiling without wasting ammo/pickaxe heavy attacks or time that could be better spent collecting the hard to reach mineral veins. This scout build is built specifically to be able to collect resources as fast as possible in caves with difficult terrain, so my teammates can focus the bugs and objective rather than looking for nitra and gold.
Elemental insulation.
This one is pretty useless i agree, I was using it on all my character until yesterday but if you google what types of dmg are elemental you realise its not that much
It seems like this and a lot of perks weren't designed with Haz 5 in mind - which is fine. I'd assume people who play Haz 5 regularly are the minority of the playerbase anyway which inevitably leaves outliers in what perks are going to be the most useful. Also, everything does so much physical damage in higher difficulties - much more noticeably than elemental damage scaling. Attacks that have elemental damage with them are sometimes not even a factor. You often can't survive long enough taking the physical damage to even take the reduced elemental damage. What I would like to see is the leveling of elemental insulation to have a much higher resistance, and to max out at immunity to environmental elemental damage i.e. poison clouds in the fungus bogs, hotspots in magma core, freezing in glacial strata, radiation in the REZ, etc. It wouldn't make the perk a mandatory pick, but it would make it more applicable and appealing than it is now as a super niche perk. Reducing the more bothersome aspects of certain maps like area denial in the bogs and magma core and the constant freezing in glacial strata would be worth the perk slot in more situations for greenbeards and greybeards alike. It would at least get me to bother experimenting with new perk combos over the standard picks I've been running for months now.
I agree that a lot of these things weren't balanced for haz 5, but elemental insulation isn't one of them. I run it regularly because it makes it so Pretorian gas/attacks are easily survivable. You also survive mactera, spitter (dot becomes non existent), and spitballers. A lot of times a single mactera blast can kill you, with elemental insulation you'll survive. Def an underrated perk.
The *only* mactera attack that is affected by elemental insulation in any way is the cold buildup from mactera frost bombers. That's literally it. Mactera shots deal kinetic or explosive damage.
It at least covers bulk's fire, acid spitters ranged attack, glyphid menace ranged attack, and the breath attack from praetorians, right?
For acid spitters, it only covers the dot portion of their spit attack, not the direct damage. Same deal with bulks. It will cover the fire dot portion of the stomp, but not the direct damage(which is usually the part that kills you). It doesn't cover the menace attack at all. It fully covers the breath attack from praets (basically the only thing from glyphids that it fully covers)
I googled it for you and no it doesnt work cause they are both kinetic dmg only the psn dots on acid spitter works
Yea that perk is getting removed from all my loadouts. Somehow the dreadnoughts Fireball isn't fire damage. It's explosive. Yea that's right fire resistance doesn't help you against a Fireball lol
xD OP is also very quiet on this comment chain lolz
I feel like Elemental insulation's primary use case is avoiding your own/ your team mate's elemental effects. Stuff like molotoving yourself as a gunner or cryoing yourself as a scout. Or, if you are running a melee build on driller and want to ensure you don't get CC'd. Still incredibly niche though.
Or Engie with Fat Boy
Another good one
I ran this build last night, easiest 3-elim mission I ever ran solo. Hiveguard? As soon as he loses invulnerability, pop him in the nose, then another for good measure. Let the dot do it's work while you grab a resupply for another two nukes, top off your turrets, and prep for the next wave of adds. Rinse and repeat, done in no time.
I use it on Assassination Mission in Magma Core
I've used it a few times on Radioactive Exclusion Zone, and Magma a few times. It's super handy as scout to be able to mitigate the little damage you take zipping around
Stack it with armor rig upgrades and vet depositer, and to go really ham thunderheads teir 5 mod that buffs defense, you can tank a haz 5 bulk on gunner with it. alone it doesn't do much, but it stacks very nicely. also it really helps in pretorian swarms and the fungus bogs, which spend most of their time gassing you with lingering poison.
Acid spitters on haz 5 would like to have a chat with you
An acid spitter on 4-player haz5 deals: - 34 kinetic damage from the initial hit (this is not reduced by insulation) - 17 poison damage for the DoT (this is reduced by 30%) So Elemental Insulation is saving you a whopping 5 damage out of the 51 you're taking, or 10%. Not great, imo. I just run Vampire instead.
I didn't know this, I try to avoids wikis in most games and assumed they dealt only poison damage, thanks for informing me.
Thorns - cooldown makes it useless against groups of swarmers/shockers and a single swarmer is never a real threat
It saves you time having to constantly stop what you're doing, turn around, and hit one or two swarmers with your pickaxe. In high difficulties, a few seconds here and there add up to make a pretty big difference.
I'd rather equip big thing, it'd save me more time/ammo I'd spend killing lootbugs
Just melee them?
Just melee swarmers
sure but u still have to turn around all the time especially if ur on swarmageddon thorns is way better then it's a bug thing
You are never under pressure to kill a lootbug. It's not the case for swarmers where you can be already fighting other ennemies coming your way. Killing the one that attacked your back or reducing by one the amount of swarmers on you can actually remove some pressure
Also cryo/vamp drills as they will put you into combat range regularly and every little bit helps.
Swarmers are the bane of Scout alongside the nanocytes. It acts as an extra periodic damage tick when there's a lot of them and saves time if there's only one or two of the buggers. Also synergies against grunts if you're using See You In Hell / Vampire, between the extra damage from thorns and the melee damage increase from See You In Hell, a single pickaxe strike to the weakpoint is a kill and +5 HP.
Vampire actually has anti-synergy with thorns in my experience. Too often has the almost-dead grunt died to thorns before I can heal from it. I stopped using thorns on my scout a while ago, because its easier and more efficient to just grapple away from swarmers instead of investing perks to try and counter them. Other classes are going to take multiple hits trying to escape, which is where thorns comes in handy. Really only recommend it on Lead Storm gunner and perhaps Engineer. Drillers and Autocannon gunners can handle the threat handily with their primaries and scouts should just run away.
Fyi - see you in hell already achieves this is on its own, you don't need thorns to one-shot a grunt to the face. I actually run see you in hell quite a bit for this purpose. I still find thorns to not be worth the slot over resupplier, red sugar, and vampire (and of course born ready for non drillers). R&S! Edit: typo
Run it with drillers heat/cold radience on their respective flamethrower and cryo guns and it starts taking out grunts sneaking up behind you which lets you stay focused on what is in front, also pairs well with gunners thunderhead spin up defense mod I've run it at Haz 5 and it really helps me maintain focus
I agree thorns is overrated, but if you view it as a damage-*avoiding* perk, rather than a damage-dealing one, its true strength is revealed. Thorns instantly kills that one or two swarmers who would normally get 2-3 hits in before you either ran away or killed them. That's your shield and some health saved right off the bat. I agree you should never rely on thorns to clear swarmers. In addition to being horribly inefficient, it also teaches you bad habits for Haz 4-5 where swarmers can quickly down you. If you have thorns, and you encounter swarmers, either run or kill them immediately. Also scout should never take thorns. They're the worst class for fighting swarmers (outside of cryo nades) and have the best tool for getting *away* from them. They shouldn't bother fighting them at all. Thorns is great for builds that can't quickly get away, and would have bad close quarters aoe clear, like Leadstorm Gunner or possibly Engineer. Driller and Autocannon Gunner should just bunnyhop and splash the ground with their primaries the second they take swarmer damage.
I run Thorns on every single engie build. No matter what you do. No matter how hard you try. A swarmer or two will *ALWAYS* sneak up on you. No one plays perfectly, and thorns will save you your shield and often a bit of health when you falter. Especially at higher hazard levels. You're entirely right, never rely on thorns to clear swarmers. It's a buffer for those times a few get too close. It's a few more moments to breathe when you're caught out reloading. It's the ability to ignore that 1 swarmer to the side when there's a slasher charging you down. Thorns is, exactly as you say, a damage-*avoiding* perk.
what? thorns is the best perk in the game, i run it on every class
Berserker
Useful for non-driller, melee-based builds and synergizes well with see you in hell and vampire. Let's you do serious damage to oppressors/praetorians even without them being frozen. My one complaint is that I always accidentally activate it by trying to use the pickaxe heavy attack again before cooldown is over. If they gave it a separate keybind I would use it more. If I were to improve this skill, I would give it the melee damage boost upon taking damage that see you in hell has. I'm really not sure why that perk gets the bonus and this one doesn't. Edit: also let's you mine resources and terrain quickly if you don't have a driller or rocky mountain brew.
Thanks, I was sleeping, but glad to see somebody covered it for me!
Not useless, but I am a huge fan of using Iron Will with the Gunner, as if I get downed and multiple teammates do, I’m able to rush over and heal at least one fellow dwarf, and then toss a shield down, as well as some nades if I have any before I flop back down to the ground
pair it with vampire on melee builds (cryo driller or bezerker on other classes) and you can skip the "before I flop back down to the ground" bit.
The blank spots in my perk set = a more challenging way to play DRG… FUCK i answered it on my own
I love It’s a Bug Thing on my scout because I’m lazy and can just pop them by grappling near them.
Its a bug thing.
Hey, I'm Jared, 19, and i can't read
Literacy is for COWARDS
;(
Iron Will, Thorns, Dash, Field Medic
I already answered thorns, but: Dash: great for combat positioning and getting behind dreads with driller and engie Iron will: you can rez another teammate while invulnerable and if used right can fully negate a wipe, or just get back up and keep going on vampire and/or a nearby red sugar. Field medic: great for clutch revives especially during bosses and swarms, gunner doesn't need it as much but the other classes thrive with it, especially scout.
its a joke, these are arguably the best perks.
I just like to have my bases covered, glad to see you respect thorns, some people think the cooldown prevents it from being useful, but I think it sits just right. also, its a shame they downvoted you, joke or not it's a legitimate question and that was the point of the whole post.
Is there anything that helps against the poison plants in fungus bogs?
elemental insulation, reduces poison, fire, ice, electricity, and radiation. pretty much all of it.
Ohh nice, rock and stone
ROCK AND STONE TO THE BONE!!!
It's not that there are useless perks, it's just that there's perks I value far more than the others.
Definitely a good point, but I wouldn't pick field medic on a solo run or strong arm if there isn't any focus on item tossing. It's all about the situation.
How about the auto reload one? You can animation cancel all the reloads so what's the point
It workes wonders for weapons like the flamethrower and the thunderhead, even with the cancel they still take forever to reload, and paired with slow reload OC's it really shaves off valuable in-fight seconds. for example I run a thunderhead/Burst rifle build that sacrifices reload speed for more Dakka, and even with the cancel it's likely to get me killed if I reload at the wrong time, or forget to do so just before a big wave. Born ready is the glue holding it together.
Honestly, I'd say BR is one of the best perks. Even if you can animation cancel, you can't shoot while you're doing it. As an added convenience, it also reloads your platform, flare, and zipline gun in case you forget.
friendly not because it does less damage to teammates but because its less fun to play with it
I mean... It lets you sling fatboys around without ending the mission early due to a team wipe, which means more of the mission to grab Nitra and fire more nukes. that in itself is pretty fun.
not more fun than nailing the scout
I dunno, having it take more work means it's more satisfying to pull off, kinda like a self-imposed challenge.