Ivan’s Guide to Whiskey (Tango) Foxtrot

Overview

Whiskey Foxtrot is a powerful character, if you know how to play him. Head on inside to find out how to live long and play piano!

Gearbox and their idiocy

After Gearbox’s mindless buffs to various characters and nerfs to others, I now plain refuse to take this game seriously anymore. Thus, this guide is now out of date and should be disregarded.

Introduction

Hello, I’m Ivan and you may know me from my other guide, Ivan’s Guide to Oscar Mike. In this guide, I will cover the traits, skills and gameplay basics of Whiskey Foxtrot. And in case any of you should think him weak, I present you evidence to the contrary.

Whiskey Foxtrot is a Rogue faction Battleborn who plays a lot like the UPR Battleborn, Oscar Mike. The main differences include his rifle being three-burst rather than fully-automatic, his different skillset and Whiskey Foxtrot being a ranged assassin rather than a team pusher. As evidenced in the above picture, this does NOT mean that he is weak! He is just harder to play.

Without further ado, let us get on with the guide!

Author’s Note

This guide is primarily for the Incursion and the Meltdown game modes, although it will also do you well in PvE. This guide is also a presentation of the basics of Whiskey Foxtrot and my personal loadout, upgrade paths and playstyle rather than a detailed meta analysis of him.

Traits and skills

Unlike his clone contemporary Oscar Mike, Whiskey Foxtrot (unit RDC-WF02-1221) originated from a batch of defective troopers, and is the last surviving member of his line. Rejected by the Peacekeepers, Foxtrot joined up with the Rogues after arriving in Solus.

Tags:

• Versatile
• Assassin
• Easy

Basic information at level 1:

Health: 1091
Shields: 300

Passive:
Combat Rhythm: After each enemy kill, Whiskey Foxtrot’s attack damage is increased by 25% for 10 seconds.

This also includes minion kills.

Weapon:
UPR-SL3 Tactical Rifle: Whiskey Foxtrot’s Tactical Rifle is accurate, deadly and fires in three-round bursts.

Unlike the similiar Oscar Mike, the rifle is your bread and butter on Whiskey Foxtrot. His rifle is accurate and does twice the damage of an unupgraded Assault Rifle for each hit.

Talent:
UPR-RDC Combat Armour: Whiskey Foxtrot’s battered UPR armour still serves him well in battle – with a few modifications here and there, of course.

Skill 1 (Q):
Sticky Bomb: Hurls a grenade that sticks to surfaces and enemies. Detonates after 3 seconds, dealing 200 damage to nearby targets.

This skill is excellent for clearing minion waves, slowing down enemies and generally doing damage when upgraded right. A powerful tool in the right hands, it takes practice to land accurately due to it being a projectile and the timed detonation.

Skill 2 (E):
Scrap Cannon: Fires a spread of shrapnel from the rifle’s underbarrel, dealing 133 damage and wounding for 4 seconds.

Being able to be upgraded as either a debuff, shield drainer or pushback. A highly versatile skill which any Whiskey Foxtrot should learn to use.

Ultimate (F):
Overdrive: Loads Whiskey Foxtrot’s Tactical Rifle with a clip of 75 bullets which can be fired fully automatically.

This turns Whiskey Foxtrot’s Tactical Rifle into a fully-automatic, highly-accurate machine gun. Requiring Whiskey Foxtrot to be present in order to bring his rifle on bear on enemy targets, it should be used with great care and only when you are sure that you can escape the enemy’s wrath.

Helix choices and why

In this section I will go over which helix choices you should roll with and why. The highlighted choices are my personal recommendations.

Opinion: This one depends on the person playing Whiskey Foxtrot. If you are experienced with using Sticky Grenade, I recommend Weighed Down as it makes the affected enemy an easier target. If not, I recommend either Shield Scrapper or Flak Off depending on if the enemy has a lot of melee characters or not.

Opinion: Another situational choice. If you have previously picked Flak Off I recommend Scrap Banker as it allows you to hold additional charges for your Scrap Cannon. If not, I recommend Swiss Cheese as it allows you to do 25% extra damage to enemy targets.

Opinion: Had this been before the 19th of september 2016, I would have recommended the ACOG scope. But since Gearbox changed said scope for the worse to the point where you have very narrow vision, making tracking targets incredibly hard, I recommend the Red Dot Sight.

Opinion: This is a matter of personal taste. If you are good at hitting with the Sticky Grenade, Stick ‘n’ Sap is not a bad option for draining the shields on an enemy target, allowing them to be finished off by your Tactical Rifle. For all other situations I would recommend either Sticky MIRV or Triple Threat as it allows you to blanket an area easily with grenades, increasing your chances of hitting a target.

Opinion: Health regen on killing an enemy is good. Health regen when killing an enemy is even better. Get this as clearing a minion wave becomes much easier with Sticky MIRV, allowing you to replenish a lot of health very easily. In lieu of this mutation, I recommend Speed Burst for relocating more rapidly.

Opinion: Napalm; the smell of victory. This upgrade is excellent for area denial and minion wave clearing. Always choose this if you can. If you lack this mutation, either of the other two will do, although Flack Back in combination with Flak Off will be helpful against melee Battleborn.

Opinion: Having faster reload means that you are more likely to finish off that elusive low-health enemy. Shield penetration is only useful if the enemy has full shields and very low health, an unlikely scenario.

Opinion: As Whiskey Foxtrot is best used at medium range, I recommend getting Long-Distance Flak to maximise your chances of hitting an enemy with your Scrap Cannon. The inherent spread from Spread Shot makes it incredibly difficult to hit an enemy at range.

Opinion: As Stronger Stickies doesn’t affect napalm damage, I recommend Swift Stickies instead to reduce your cooldown time on the Sticky Grenade.

Opinion: Picking Overoverdrive gives you an additional 25 rounds with which to gun down the enemy with, being especially useful against enemies with no shields. However, should the enemy team have a Reyna or Kleese, What Shields? is an excellent alternative as you can negate their rapid shield-regenerating abilities completely.

Pros and cons

In this section I will cover the pros and cons of Whiskey Foxtrot.

Pros:

• Strong ranged attack.
• Abilities can slow down an enemy push.
• Good minion wave clearer if upgraded right.
• Stronger melee attack than Oscar Mike.
• Very strong ranged ultimate.
• Very good late-game.
• Strong helix mutations.

Cons:

• Poor initial minion wave clearer.
• Weak in melee against melee Battleborn.
• Inability to escape sticky situations easily.
• Ultimate requires you to be exposed.
• Poor early-game.
• Requires helix mutations to be truly effective.

Even if you do everything right, you can expect a lot of assists as Whiskey Foxtrot.

Levelling

Level 1: Whiskey’s early game, unlike Oscar Mike’s, is not very good. All you can do here is to stay behind your team and stick grenades on the enemy.

Level 2: Your game just got a little easier with the Swiss Cheese upgrade. You now do 25% extra damage to enemies whom your Scrap Cannon as much as touches.

Level 5: Your life just got a whole lot easier with Killer Regen. Killing a minion and retreating a bit allows you to regenerate health, allowing you to rejoin your compatriots very rapidly.

Level 6: Congratulations, you just got your napalm! Combined with your level 5 Killer Regen helix, you will now regenerate health and clear minion waves like crazy. Your late-game is very good, thus levelling should be much easier now.

Gameplay

Unlike Oscar Mike, your job as Whiskey Foxtrot is not to initially clear minion waves. This does not mean that you cannot do this, but your lack of an early AoE and your powerful mid-ranged attack allows you to instead engage enemy players from behind the rest of your team. Your lack of a quick escape and your three-burst rifle also means that you are not a frontline skirmisher. The picture above is your worst nightmare and will occur if you stray too far ahead.

To summarise your role:

• Harass/kill enemy players
• Kill minions
• Destroy buildables
• (Incursion-only) Backdoor the sentry
• Execute those low-health enemies
• Did I mention low-health enemies? Yeah, kill those.

Never stray too far ahead! Your lack of a powerful melee attack, combined with your lack of a quick escape, means that sticky situations like these will get you killed. Like Oscar Mike, you can only deal consistent damage if you are uninterrupted whilst doing so, and you are even better at this than Oscar Mike! Stay behind your team and support them with ranged, automatic fire.

And remember, you can always backdoor the sentry. Even though you can’t Airstrike the sentry when its shields are down, you can still do considerable damage to it with your Tactical Rifle. This also means that taking down buildables such as turrets falls under your purview; take down those buildables!

And should all else fail, then remember that you didn’t live this long being easy to kill! A tactical withdrawal is always an option, especially if you can lure an enemy into range of your sentry in Incursion.

Gear recommendation

Gear 1:
Galahadric Gun Grease: This is arguably one of the better Battleborn-specific legendaries in the game. It suits Whiskey Foxtrot very nicely as the increased reload speed and fire-rate will help you kill stuff faster, and the reduced recoil is incredibly helpful in landing shots since the Tactical Rifle has considerable recoil. As this is Whiskey Foxtrot’s lore legendary, you will need to complete all of his lore challenges in order to get it.

Alternatives: Eldrid Stalker Ammo.
Any recoil-reducing equipment.

Gear 2:
Symbiotic Gauntlet: This item gives Whiskey Foxtrot more health, allowing him to stay in the fight longer, but also gives him extra attack damage, boosting his already considerable Tactical Rifle damage output, up to a whopping 17.58% extra damage. Combined with the Galadric Gun Grease, you should have a fast-reloading, hard-hitting, low-recoil setup.
Available from The Guardian Arc miniboss on Story Mission 5: The Sentinel.

Alternatives: Mini-Singularity Launcher
Recoil-reducing equipment.
Veil-Breaker Rounds.

Gear 3:
“Easy Money”: As both the other items are very expensive, it is highly recommended that you take a shard generator in order to stay on the frontlines more instead of going for shard clusters. Any shard generator will do, especially zero-cost ones.

Alternatives: Any shard generator.

Credits

A big shout-out to -AG- psychopath13 for encouraging me and being moral support during the creation of this guide, and Näfty for tips and tricks on Whiskey Foxtrot.

And as always, a big thank you goes to everyone on the Cha0tic Gam3rs Discord server for being awesome people. Without you, i would never have gotten the games in that I needed to research Whiskey Foxtrot!

And thank you, dear reader, for taking the time to read my humble guide!