U26 Class Tips

Overview

An overview of classes for Synthetik Ultimate

The Best Class

There is none. Some classes are not as strong as others, but no class is hard mode. Unless you’re starting out, in which case Riot Guard is amazing because it is especially resistant to attrition and has the best class challenge.

My personal experience is not yet trustworthy. I am not especially good at this game. I have completed the class challenges for every class, but am not an experienced player by any means. Note that all advice in this guide is standardized around the idea of beating the game, solo, in a normal game on 140% or 200% difficulty. Some concerns change in other game modes.

Riot Guard is the best class because health regeneration is the best ability and increased health pool is the greatest safety. SMGs are the best weapons. Despite being among the tankiest classes in a normal game, it also has decent damage synergy with increased magazine size on top of the weapon focus on SMGs. Riot Guard has no clear weaknesses in a normal game, but loses much of its vaunted tankiness in loop. Guardian modules are the best on account of their strong defensive nature. Guardian items are the best because of Methadone and Stun Grenade.

Breacher is the best class because a strategy planned in advance can have an especially explosive effect. Having almost anything die to a single buttonpress is worth bombing yourself on occasion. Breacher is the best class because shotguns are the best weapons. Despite the flavor of using heavy explosives, the Breacher class has the highest base movement speed of all classes and an excellent dash. The Breacher class’ most obvious weakness is health regeneration leaving the class vulnerable to attrition. Guardian modules are the best on account of their strong defensive nature. Guardian items are the best because of Methadone and Stun Grenade.

Sniper is the best class because being rich is nice and nothing can attack you if its dead before it notices your presence. Headshots are the best kind of shots and one shot can make two kills (or more). Despite this class not acquiring a weapon focus until level 20, its weapon focus is arguably stronger percentage-wise than other classes. Additionally, the Sniper gets reasonably strong defensive talents. The Sniper can make any weapon deadly accurate and kill a spotted target with one shot, or something close to that anyways, but has a fire rate penalty according to the wiki. Sniper’s most obvious weaknesses are opponents that lack a head (unfortunately some of the more dangerous enemies in the game). Rogue modules are good, but Rogue items are the best. There are just so many neat items that Rogue has access to, even if Methadone isn’t among them.

Assassin is the best class because it combines health regeneration and powerful disengagement tools with much-desired damage bonuses, and even two automatic emergency survivability cooldowns (incoming damage is also capped to 450 in a single instance, but that is less crazy before loop). SMGs are the best weapons. Despite rewarding not getting hit, Assassin can keep up with the Raider in terms of an aggressive, brawling playstyle. The Assassin class’ most obvious weaknesses are opponents that do not care about invisibility, and that the mandatory dagger item doesn’t scale as well far into the game. Rogue modules are good, but Rogue items are the best. There are just so many neat items that Rogue has access to, even if Methadone isn’t among them.

Raider is the best class because it has a double dash with damage immunity, a powerful free item late-game, and because movement accuracy is the best stat. Burst-fire weapons are the best weapons. Despite having a fire rate reduction penalty according to the wiki, the Raider ultimately fires burst weapons faster due to reduced burstfire delay. The Raider class’ most obvious weakness is a lack of innate ways to bolster his effective health pool, which can leave one feeling a little fragile. Commando modules are the best modules because Routine is a weapon focus unto itself and other modules provide either further survivability or damage. However, even though Road Flare is busted good, Commando items are very focused on dealing further increased damage, which is not ideal.

Heavy Gunner is the best class because more dakka is best dakka and the Onslaught system enables that like nothing else in the game (even providing pseudo-lifesteal for the duration!). Weapons that can output lots of projectiles are the best weapons. Despite not having a weapon focus, at level 20 the Heavy Gunner gets a +25 damage with each projectile (~+10%, up to about double/half that depending on weapon) and a chance for more — but you do have to wait until level 20 for it unlike other classes. The Heavy Gunner class’ most obvious weakness is the double-edged nature of Onslaught System, as it reduces movement speed when used. Commando modules are the best modules because Charge provides invulnerability for dodging and Routine is a weapon focus unto itself. However, even though Road Flare is busted good, Commando items are very focused on dealing further increased damage, which is not ideal.

Engineer is the best class because money is power and having options for items is also power. Having the right items is the absolute best weapon, but a few select laser weapons are also exceptional (besides, everything is better with lasers). Despite having a nice advantage in long games to having large amounts of credits and being able to generate large amounts of items, it also has one of the better early starts of all classes due to being able to start with multiple summons and Auto-Overclocker for a short while at the very start of the game being better than even Methadone. The Engineer class’ most obvious weakness is its dependence on the item lottery. Specialist modules are the best modules because items are the best weapons (35+% cooldown reduction!). Specialist items are the best items because everyone can use a good combat summon or two.

Demolisher is the best class because of free stats and remote detonation EXPLOSIVES. Grenades and missiles are the best weapons. Despite relying on explosions, Demolisher can be stealthier than the Assassin as even Kaida’s elite can be heard saying “I think someone chucked a rock or sommat over eah”. The Demolisher class has no clear weaknesses, but has a rather limited weapon focus. Specialist items are the best items because everyone can use a good combat summon or two.

Okay, but actually, best class?

Okay…Here is what my personal experience tells me are the strongest classes: Riot Guard, Assassin, Heavy Gunner, Engineer. I believe these four are more reliable and legitimately require less work to gain similar levels of power. The first two feature innate health regeneration combined with survivability bonuses without sacrificing weapon damage. The Heavy Gunner features a strong mandatory item that is uniquely powerful for a sustained attack combined with Commando items being the most powerful offensive items in the game. The Engineer class is more complicated than the other three because the item lottery can require a lot of game knowledge to use well, and also relies on some measure of luck. However, the Engineer has one of the most potent early game starts of all the classes combined with a good late-game due to generating more items. The Assassin is arguably the most survivable of all classes due to having a incoming damage cap of only 450 and having a naturally high dodge chance.

The Heavy Gunner is worth special mention as being likely the weakest of the four due to reduced movement being irrecoverably deadly in certain high-difficulty situations. Even if it is weaker than the other three, part of the reason for the Heavy Gunner being on on the top of my list is due to having survived half an hour against the LD when it was bugged (almost impossible to kill), with no sign of it being able to kill me or vice versa — this is not a feat that I would’ve been able to accomplish on another class. The Heavy Gunner class’ ability to just keep attacking is no joke.

Raider and Breacher have strong options, but take more work to use. The Breacher has access to Methadone combined with free plating on reaching low hitpoints, making the class exceptionally resistant to being bursted down, moreso than any other class in the game. Enemy penetration on shotguns is amazing against groups of enemies. Finally, the Breacher has great movement and an excellent offensive mandatory item. However, the Breacher class’ lack of health regeneration means the class requires extra care to make exceptional and it is necessary to learn a bit of discipline to avoid self damage. The Raider class having an invulnerable double dash has even better movement than the Breacher, which is particularly useful for bosses, but the Raider really needs to make good use of those dashes to do exceptionally well. Of survivability, mobility, and damage, the Raider has unique benefits to the the middle one, and relatively standard benefits to the latter. However, the Raider is lacking in the former and (in the absence of Bandanna synergy), Rogues can substantially duplicate Raider mobility with Smoke Grenade being available every 20 seconds or so.

Demolisher and Sniper are not bad, but I’d personally rather play Engineer for the former, and prefer not to be specialized in DMRs, period. I’m not sure where either of these classes is supposed to get a significant advantage against bosses from, comparatively (that is, bosses not including the Arena Masters). I suspect people who have played further into loop have less trouble with the LD and UM than I do, though. I stress that these classes are not bad, Rogue items are still excellent, and Sniper eventually gains a bonus to maximum shields that becomes noticeable in loop. Demolisher’s AoE damage also scales very well into loop, which is further bolstered by having an incoming damage cap.

Evergreen Weapons

When I recommend weapons, you’ll see these names show up a lot, so they are worth going over a little detail. I’ve taken a lot of the actual numbers off of the wiki. I’ve also excluded the Arena DLC weapons.

AEK Special Elite: Exceptional in every way. This assault rifle has WTF damage and little recoil and 40 AP off the start because it gives AP ammo. It also features a lower-than-normal base reload and eject time of 1.7s (normal being 2s-2.5s) and a further 15% damage bonus against elite enemies. There also aren’t a lot of weapons that can output 756 RPM, so this thing is just insane. In fact, it could well be twice as good as most weapons at bossing due to having AP ammo, and quick reload time combined with just general damage. Class’ weapon focuses do not matter when it comes to this weapon, always give it an occurrence token.

RPK-12 Tundra: Handles like an assault rifle, has excellent moving accuracy, and due to its large magazine size has excellent sustained damage. This is an excellent bossing weapon, and with AP ammo can compete with the AEK (which is about as high a praise as any weapon could ask for). As if that wasn’t enough, it also provides a 20% bonus to scavenging for possessing it, and acid ammunition on acquisition, and has plenty of ammunition. However, there is no reason to token this unless you already have tokened the AEK. Any class is happy to find this weapon, and should generally equip it on sight.

AS-Val: This weapon does extremely good damage to armored targets (notably bosses) when NOT using Hypersonic ammo, behind only the AEK. It is actually better than the HIG-S and supersedes it for almost all purposes, including ammo pickup and max ammo (per damage). Moreover, suppressed ammo helps remain beneath notice and therefore remain alive. This weapon has crippling ammo issues which prevent this from being a general-purpose weapon. For this reason the AS-Val is to be treated like the HIG-S or RPG-7, kill high value targets, then wait for ammo. If AP ammo is acquired, the RPK-12 Tundra is better in most respects, but the AS-Val will still have much higher instant DPS. The AEK is better than the AS-Val for almost every purpose, but this is still a powerful tool for any class.

AMD 65: Slightly low instant damage due to its slow firerate, but good handling and good damage per magazine. Being 8.8mm makes it potent for all purposes, even without its main feature. And that feature is lifesteal, of all things. It also gives hollow point ammo, though the enemy penetration from the basic Kurz can be preferable due to having enemy penetration. Valuable for every class without exception.

Viciator Ultra: Burst damage supreme. Slightly less damage than the buckshot SPAS-12 for sustained fire, due to a long reload and eject time. This is swell, because less time spent shooting means faster movement, and this weapon increases your movement speed on kills, making you more survivable. This weapon has ammo issues, but if that’s not a problem, this is a very welcome sight for any class.

UMP-10: Like most burst weapons this has a lot of damage per magazine as well as good DPS over the course of a single burst, but medicore sustain, and this weapon actually has slightly worse sustain than most burst weapons and can’t use AP ammo on top of that. However, it makes up for this by having good recoil, by gaining shields for the user on each hit, and providing 75 max shields just for possessing it. SMGs don’t have the best ammo gain in general, but this one has the best ammo gain of all SMGs, being quite reasonable to use exclusively when upgraded. This makes it powerful on any class.

LS Laser Sub: Excellent accuracy, but middling damage. Accuracy is a more important stat than damage most of the time, but this weapon suffers somewhat against both armored and shielded targets. This weapon increases shields by 1 for every kill with no cap (a bonus you retain even if you ditch the weapon later), potentially increasing shields by a lot by the end of the game. While the Medic FMG-9 will provide greater survivability, mostly, this weapon is desirable as a primary weapon in its own right. Moreover, the effects of this weapon fully transfer into loop. This weapon has somewhat average ammo usage and gain for SMGs, so it is difficult to use exclusively. Because of this powerful growth effect, this weapon is powerful on any class.

Weapons worth Honorable Mention

K7 Competition: Highest DPS auto weapon in the game without exception by a substantial amount. However, it has a serious weakness, -25% luck when holding the weapon. The real reason this isn’t evergreen, however, is that DPS is simply not the most important stat for a weapon. The KI Vector has a similar purpose, but I would generally choose either this weapon or the evergreen SMGs. While not lacking in ammo pickup for an SMG, the thing handles in combat like the bullet hose it is. Its damage makes it good for bossing even though it will never have great armor piercing.

Bren Anti Air: This legend is still among the top weapons of the game. Competitive with most of the best auto weapons for damage, and with a damage per mag exceeded essentially only by burst weapons and other LMGs, this weapon is hampered somewhat by having no armor piercing and annoying damage falloff. Even so, this weapon does bonus damage against bosses, and is so potent that it actually amoung the better auto weapons for killing bosses if you don’t have access to AP ammo. Any class is happy to find this weapon, and it is reasonably competitive with the RPK-12.

AN-94 Deathstalker: At close ranges or against large targets this weapon is an absolute bullet-hose. At long ranges, this weapon has good accuracy. To get the best firerate out of this weapon you will want to queue up subsequent bursts as soon as the previous burst begins. The AN-94 Deathstalker does not need to be used carefully to be effective, but because also it empowers headshots and especially double-headshots (mostly helpful to conserve ammo) it further rewards skilled gunplay.

Kaida Medic ACR-X: Unremarkable save for the 5 hp regen it awards for possessing it. This makes it somewhat analogous and inferior to the AMD 65. Additionally, because the FMG-9 can provide more health regen, this weapon is generally disfavored even by the classes that are very interested in health regen. Nonetheless, even being a slightly worse competitor to these excellent weapons earns it an honorable mention by itself.

Medic FMG-9: Useful for all classes for gaining the permanent health regen buff, then throwing away. It does okay DPS, however it has unremarkable DPM, and is near useless against bosses. When the health regen is actually needed, this is preferable to the Kaida Medic ACR-X, partially for being disposable. Because not all classes need the health regen until loop, the FMG-9 barely escapes reaching evergreen status. For players intending to try for multiple loops, this weapon would be absolutely evergreen.

Damnation: This weapon is a pleasant surprise. Even without the free missiles, this thing does decent damage, and further has a high damage per mag like all good burst weapons. This makes it decidedly above average for most if not all purposes, and it becomes even better on high terror levels. On the other hand, it will likely not be as effective as the RPK-12 outside of madness mode, and the recoil on this thing is a bit high.

SCR Laser Socom: Mainly a looping weapon. Around SCR v8-12 this weapon becomes very attractive for every class. However, it is merely above average other than that, which puts it behind the Damnation and Kaida Medic ACR-X for most purposes.

SPAS-12: Not quite the Viciator. Like most shotguns, this weapon has great damage, but is semi-auto, has a small clip size, doesn’t get full headshot damage, and may not be able to hit every single projectile. This one sets itself apart from the other shotguns by having plentiful ammo, long range, and strangely for a shotgun, a useful DoT. Swapping the DoT for regular buckshot can be useful if you intend to use this weapon at point blank range, but there is a lot of power in using this weapon at a distance. If you’re familiar with shotguns, this weapon is worthy of use on all classes. In fact, I have been waffling on whether this thing deserves a spot in the evergreen category (the waffling being enough of a reason for it not to be there I suppose).

RRX Coil Shotgun: Like the SPAS-12, but has slightly lower damage, is a growth weapon (meaning it does substantially more damage than the SPAS-12 later on), and doesn’t get the DoT. It also has 0.9s reload and eject time, compared to the SPAS-12’s 1.35s, and its coil ammo has 10 armor piercing compared to 0 armor piercing for buckshot such as the SPAS-12 might use. With some use this weapon becomes better than the SPAS-12, but it has to be used in order to get there and its larger magazine I find a bit awkward by comparsion.

HIG-S: In most cases a worse AS-Val. However, the AoE damage it does is slightly better than enemy penetration in some cases. The ion damage it does completely ignores armor and it can empty a clip fairly quickly without having an onorous reload time which makes it useful as a secondary weapon for use when your main weapon is overheating. Even being somewhat worse than one of the better bossing weapons in the game is still quite notable and a sound addition to any player’s arsenal.

Basic Item Considerations

I’m not going to go over every item, because I don’t have the experience to do that well, yet. However, are some very basic ideas of on items and important categories of items. Refer to the wiki[synthetik.fandom.com] and/or this item codex steam guide (not as readable, but occasionally contains additional information) concerning the effects of an item.

Red items and Alchemy items cannot receive occurrence tokens.

• Shielded Decoy
• Order 322 (red)
• DMR Sentry Turret
• Phaser
• Stinger Jet Glider
• High Command (red)

These are listed in order of cooldown. Having at least one of these makes a lot of combat situations much simpler, especially at the beginning of a level where you don’t have anywhere clear to retreat to. Having two often means you can use them one after the other, rather than having both out at once. I generally consider having one summon as more important than almost any other item. The second summon is merely nice to have. Summons can do damage, but their greater power is being a distraction.

Since Kaida forces tend to attack the nearest target, it is often better to dash forward and then use a summon, rather than the reverse. The DMR Sentry Turret and the Shielded Decoy will stay where you planted them and will spawn at your location, whereas the others will move to intercept enemies that are in combat with you. It may be that cursor location matters in how the game decides exactly where the latter group spawns, but they won’t generally spawn directly on your cursor.

There is also Gun Drone Spawner, which does spawn a summon, but is not an active item, and has a low (18s) cooldown. This is a fantastic summon due to its low cooldown, but requires kills to function.

• Rosarius
• Last Stand
• Fangs of Mordigan (red)
• Black Berserk Charm (red, recycle for the true bonus: lifesteal)
• Bloodthirsty Ring / Divine Reconstructor (drop only)
• Direct Current (for Kaida shotgunners and Chrono Troopers, but of lesser value otherwise)
• Unstable Current (as above, but more of a damagey approach)
• Refractor Crystal
• Lifeblood (alchemy item)
• Bandanna
• Shaker (in combination with starting items only, alchemy item)
• Refresher (rather situational, alchemy item)

The former list are passive items, the latter list are active. I generally token Rosarius and call it a day, but good players seem to swear by Refractor Crystal despite the long cooldown — they have good reason to do so. Bandanna is neat because it is comparatively hard for the game to kill someone with infinite dashes if they can make decent use of the dodges during its active duration (which the game helpfully puts by your cursor). Lifeblood is one of the more powerful alchemy items, and remains powerful in loop. Try not to be without at least one of these, and it is probably a good idea to go for at least two even though there are not that many survivability items overall.

Survivability items tend to have very different effects, I’ll leave it mostly to you which ones effects are better than others.

• Magic Mag
• Hyperfeed
• Heat Sink
• Powershot
• Refresher (when recycled!)
• Heat Spreader

The former three completely or essentially vent all heat on use. The latter three reduce heat passively. Powershot is especially powerful for reducing heat every 6 shots, rather than as a percentage, while also functioning as a damage item. These are not necessary, but can greatly ease some situations in the game. They can also be more powerful damage items than items that do direct damage, because these effectively increase your weapon damage, which scales better than item power for most classes. Most weapons, even those with short reload times, can benefit from Magic Mag quite a bit.

• Too many to list (including several red items both amazing and terrible)
• Unstable Current
• Icarus
• Powershot
• Twin Link II
• Shock Impulse

Direct Current and Icarus are notable because they deal with some enemies that end up near you essentially by themselves, however those two fall off later in the game. The latter three are especially notable because they are the only passive damage items that scale based off of weapon damage and therefore never go out of style, unlike most of the rest of the non-red damage items.

Actually, Twin Link II is just plain rediculous because it is a effectively double damage while active, and the first few shots of a fight are the most important. Shock Impulse is a similarly outsized effect that makes regular bullets do AoE, which is a multiplier against clumps of enemies, which can be deliberately planned for. The extra shield damage is icing on the cake and makes certain annoying enemies easier to deal with, particularly for that one boss room.

• Devil Dice (red, grants luck based on item power when recycled)
• Lightning Boots (retains movement speed bonus when recycled)
• Tsunami Talisman (negates recoil on 10s cooldown, and also heals slightly)

Some people really like the Tsunami Talisman, I’m not as sold on it myself, yet. The other two though don’t take up an item slot because the goal is to recycle them. In the case of Devil Dice, you’ll need to increase their item power as much as possible before recycling for a substantial luck bonus.

Riot Guard

Core: Unyielding. Kills and damage taken increase the combo, granting up to 25 health regeneration and 125 movement speed.

Riot Guard loadouts tend to look like the following:

• Master Chief (will be dropped later)
• Battlecry Module (mandatory)
• Methadone
• Stun Grenade
• Shielded
• Aegis MK5 Platinum

Other equippable modules to consider include I-Frame, Weapon Mastery, and Warmup, the latter primarily if you are considering going far into loop, the former if you like snacking on missiles. It is theoretically possible to exclude Stun Grenade for something else (random module, probably), but I don’t recommend it as not only is that a very powerful item, but that will also make maintaining core stacks significantly harder.

I would rate Recovery, and Scrap Plating as being quite strong. Stimulants, Push Forward, and Berserk are good modules. Only three of the sixteen guardian modules (Shield Overclock, Bits and Pieces, and Enrage) are near useless to you. In general, random modules for the guardian classes are quite good, but naturally can’t compete with the excellent item slots.

(note that all cooldowns listed here assume the completion of the Engineer class challenge)

Battlecry Module (starting cooldown 16s): In general, Stun Grenade will do everything you’d want this to do if Stun Grenade is off cooldown. Because it doesn’t affect bosses much, it is mostly used as part of a combo with your Riotshield or as a panic button. This can be recycled closer to the end of the game if all one is trying to do is beat the LD.

Methadone (starting cooldown ~24s, effect duration 7s): This gives health regeneration and damage resistance for its duration. The extra damage resistance is 45% to start, +5% for every 25% item power (thanks Simonsis13). Try to avoid using precious charges out of combat, especially because you should have enough health regeneration to deal. Nonetheless, try not to hold these more precious than your life, because they aren’t. You’ll get charges from medical crates (50% chance), vial pickups from killing bosses, and the Shaker synergy item if you can get your hands on it.

Stun Grenade (starting cooldown 16s): Not only does this stun enemies for your approach (or to interrupt theirs), but it also removes enemy shields(!) and grants core stacks. Because it grants five core stacks even when unupgraded, you’ll be using this as a healing item as well as to prepare combat. This item will remove your shield if you get caught in your own AoE, so try to avoid that. This item works on some bosses, so it is no exaggeration to say that Stun Grenade can carry you through most of the game.

Viking Riotshield Your starting weapon besides the pistol. You can drop the pistol by the way, no other class can do that, so you’ll be using a fighting pistol rather than the 57 Fusion. The Riotshield grants 15 armor (nearly useless) and 10% damage resistance when in backpack and double that when held. Your movement is substantially slowed when you hold it, so don’t hold it when running away. In fact, it slows movement by 45ish (think 12%) just for having it in your inventory.

The riotshield also stuns and damages enemies that you dash over while you hold it (this effect is greatly empowered at level 25), which can combo with your items. Remember to switch away from your riotshield when you want to actually shoot things because the ammo gain on this weapon is absolutely abysmal.

Between the abysmal ammo pool and the movespeed reduction, keeping the Viking Riotshield is an interesting decision. I’m actually slightly in favor of tossing it now, which further increases the value of Aegis MK5 Platinum. The movement slow for equipping is ~12%, but this increases to ~30% when held, the slow is more than just the 100 that the lying tooltip says it is. Additionally, if you toss it you can mimic the Heavy Gunner’s three weapon perk.

As some of these items are upgraded they have reduced cooldowns:

* Methadone doesn’t list a cooldown in the item tooltip, so this is an estimate based on a combination of experimentation and the tooltips for Dragon’s Masterkey.

The first priority when upgrading is likely reducing the Stun Grenade cooldown a few steps (175% and 200% item power make good stopping points), but close behind is increasing Methadone damage resistance, 70% damage resistance should require 225% item power, which is probably around where’d I’d stop upgrading Methadone initially to focus on found items. Even working towards getting Methadone up to 300% may be worthwhile later on. Battlecry cooldown isn’t as important because it isn’t used to gain core stacks in the same way that Stun Grenade is, so I’d upgrade it once or twice and leave it at that until I’m either filthy rich or until loop.

Riot Guard: Continued

Use Stun Grenade, dodge in, shoot stuff, use Stun Grenade on the next thing you see to maintain healing. Simple, effective. If things go sideways, use battlecry, shoot a little bit more, then switch to riotshield to stun some enemies on your way out, then switch away from riotshield for the movespeed. If things go really sideways, Methadone.

It should not be hard for a Riot Guard to take very little damage against most enemy groups due to the large array of stuns at the class’ disposal. However, there is also no need to be particularly careful during the early parts of a run. Taking damage early on may even be desirable to build up painkiller stacks.

The class start out with soft point ammo as of level 5, which helps keep individual enemies completely stunlocked with either the riot shield or another full-auto weapon.

I’d value the Bandanna more than normal on Riot Guard because it can provide an extra-strength disengage, is useful against bosses, and can do enable humorous amounts of damage against non-bosses with the Viking Riotshield. Last Stand I’d also value more than normal because Methadone and the Riot Guard’s natural health regeneration tends towards survival on low health — though this may not be enough to change your preference of survivability item much.

Summons beyond the first are slightly less valuable on Riot Guard because the Riot Guard is quite independent with all the stuns in its possession.

Alchemy items can be particularly useful for the guardian classes. Shaker can help generate large amounts of Methadone, which is very valuable. Refresher can increase the duration of Methadone, which is a rather strong effect. Lifeblood is more valuable because of the Riot Guard’s increased health pool.

At level 5, the Riot Guard the class gets +15% damage to SMGs and +20% reduced recoil, and soft point ammo. At level 15 the Riot Guard gains, 20% increased magazine sizes for all weapons. This makes SMGs rather natural and powerful weapon choices.

The UMP-10, LS Laser Sub (slightly more ammo issues), and Chaos Launcher (armor piercing) are your SMG go-to weapons, so supply hack at least one. The latter is armor piercing and the former two are survivability boosting. The Spectre, and KI Vector (slightly more ammo issues) are nice to have in lieu of the main three, but not something I’d supply hack. Medic FMG-9 (increase health regeneration stat to level: lol), K7 Competition (amazing damage, +125% critical severity bonus, -25% luck), and K3 Boltcaster (much stun and armor piercing, but somewhat reduced damage, and somewhat more ammo issues) are special considerations that are up to taste.

Despite the weakness making it debatable, I feel the K7 Competition actually takes the best SMG spot on Riot Guard because the damage is exceptional, and you don’t usually have a critical chance or anything else that really needs random procs to work. Just remember to not be literally holding it when entering teleporters or opening chests. Heat can be a bit of an issue, though in part due to the increased magazine size. It also helps the K7 Competition’s case that the UMP-10 while still exceptional is slightly less useful on Riot Guard than on Assassin because you will often be fighting serious battles with shields down.

In addition to SMGs, the evergreen weapons of the AEK Special Elite, RPK-12, AMD 65, Viciator Ultra, and AS-Val are always great. If not using the armor piercing Chaos Launcher or K3 Boltcaster, these weapons are also desirable for their boss killing capabilities. In general, however, I recommend tokening an SMG instead, except for the AEK Special Elite, which should always recieve a token.

The Riot Guard is straightforward, powerful, and most crucially, forgiving. It rewards aggressive play, but everything works. With no less than three stuns, combat with a bit of preparation is very safe. Methadone and passive health regeneration greatly increases survivability even in the most hectic of fights.

Breacher

Firstly, Breacher already has a dedicated U26 guide by a much more experienced player, so check it out:

[link]

b]Core: Charge.[/b] Dashing lasts longer, grants 7.5% damage resistance (up to 5x for 37.5%) and bonus damage for each enemy within 350 range when the dash ends. Bonuses last 3 seconds, and refreshes 20% of shields per stack when bonuses expire.

Breacher loadouts tend to look like the following:

• 57 Fusion Pistol
• Super Shorty (hidden)
• Breaching Charges (mandatory)
• Methadone
• Stun Grenade
• Shielded
• I-Frame

Other equippable modules to consider include Scrap Plating and Warmup, the latter primarily if you are considering going far into loop. I-Frame is important when learning the class because it can help you avoid killing yourself with Breaching Charges, but becomes less useful thereafter. It is theoretically possible to exclude Stun Grenade for something else (random module, probably), but that makes the dashing in part of your combat strategy harder so I do not recommend this.

I would rate Aegis MK5 Platinum and Bits and Pieces as being quite strong (but not good enough to equip). Whereas Push Forward is a good module. Only three of the sixteen guardian modules (Stimulants, Berserk, and Enrage) are near useless to you. In general, random modules for the Guardians are nice, but Stun Grenade is of much greater worth.

(note that all cooldowns listed here assume the completion of the Engineer class challenge)

Breaching Charges (starting cooldown 5s): Gain a charge for every dash, and an additional charge based on extra chance (which scales with item power, but scales on the luck stat even more so). Proper use of these is what makes the class. Increased item power primarily affects cooldown and the maximum number of charges you can carry. A suitable amount of Breaching Charges is sufficient to kill almost any enemy that gets in the blast radius, but some of the enemies in late-game may require a good amount of charges. At level 15 explosions in proximity reduce current item cooldown by 2.5% and grant a brief speed boost, two effects which are useful both in and out of combat. Even after the nerf to the level 15 talent Breacher still has pretty reasonable item synergy.

Methadone (starting cooldown ~24s, effect duration 7s): This gives health regeneration and damage resistance for its duration. The extra damage resistance is 45% to start, +5% for every 25% item power (thanks Simonsis13). Try to avoid using precious charges out of combat, though sometimes you simply need health to be able to make it out of the next teleporter in one piece. Nonetheless, try not to hold these more precious than your life, because they aren’t. You’ll get charges from medical crates (50% chance), vial pickups from killing bosses, and the Shaker synergy item if you can get your hands on it.

Stun Grenade (starting cooldown 16s): Not only does this stun enemies for your approach (or to interrupt theirs), but it also removes enemy shields(!) and grants core stacks. This item will remove your shield if you get caught in your own AoE, so try to avoid that. This item works on some bosses, so it is no exaggeration to say that Stun Grenade can carry you through most of the game. Nonetheless, Methadone is more important.

Regarding Core stacks, the Stun grenade does not grant five stacks as it says, but only two to the Breacher at 100% item power. The number of core stacks it grants increases with item power. 3 stacks at 175%, four stacks at 250%, and five stacks at 325%. Again, each stack is worth 7.5% damage and damage resistance for a short duration so this is a quite nice bonus.

Super Shorty Good damage, horrible ammunition gain. Experienced players can use this quite effectively for much of the game, but it really isn’t worth it.

As some of these items are upgraded they have reduced cooldowns:

* Methadone doesn’t list a cooldown in the item tooltip, so this is an estimate based on a combination of experimentation and the tooltips for Dragon’s Masterkey.

The first priority for upgrading is Breaching Charges to a 3s cooldown at 175%, there’s no need to upgrade Breaching charges sky-high even as great as they are. Next up is upgrading Stun Grenade to 175%, as you’ll want to use this for almost every engagement, and possibly multiple times within a single fight. Finally Methadone also needs upgraded for the increased damage resistance, take this to 200% rather quickly both for 65% damage resistance and better uptime. Getting Methadone all the way up to 300% would be nice eventually, though further upgrading Breaching charges to 300% is also a consideration. In general, it is more useful to upgrade Breacher’s starting items than it is to upgrade found items, though the first few upgrades for every item are cheap enough to consider.

Breacher: Continued

Use Stun Grenade, dodge in, either drop charges or shoot stuff (occasionally both), leave. Simple, effective. If things go sideways, your sheer movement speed should carry the day, along with Methadone.

Once enemies are chasing you down, it almost gets easier: plan an ambush! You can activate the a dash without actually moving anywhere just for the purpose of gaining Breaching Charges. If you have the patience you can kill most things that chase you down without them ever shooting at you in this way. Or skip the explosives and dash behind them with a shotgun, that solves most problems, really.

However, if you don’t want to fight up close without Breaching Charges, then rather than merely be patient for an ambush the process can be sped up by applying your dashes into gaining distance for the effective use of a longer range weapon.

While using Breaching Charges while dashing into combat is a common desire, throwing Breaching Charges in the direction of an ongoing Dash is unwise. Instead, throw Breaching Charges to the side while dashing, change directions of the dash to avoid standing on your own charges, or wait until the dash completes before going wild. Similarly, try not to throw Breaching Charges at an enemy that is a half second or less from closing to point-blank range, or at least try to be moving (preferably dashing) in the opposite direction when you do.

The Breacher has little special preference in terms of items. Essentially, the Breacher is a good template for ‘normal’ with respect to item decisions.

Alchemy items can be particularly useful for the guardian classes. Shaker can help generate large amounts of Methadone, which is very valuable. Refresher can increase the duration of Methadone, which is a rather strong effect. Nitroglycerine is also useful for Breacher because it empowers Breaching Charges.

Strictly speaking, Breacher does not actually have a weapon focus, which makes its choices of weapon fairly broad. At level 15 the class gains innate enemy penetration for Shotgun and Coil ammunition, as well as slightly more range. At level 10 the class reloads one shot to a non-empty magazine during every dash. Finally, at level 25 weapons reload and eject faster, and have less deviation. This gears the class towards low-mag-size weapons and shotguns specifically, but the bonuses are not crucial to play by. Shotguns are improved by enemy penetration, but that is mostly important in situations with many enemies such as in loop.

The Viciator Ultra (ammo issues), Road Warrior (ammo issues), and RRX Coil Shotgun are powerful shotguns that plays to the Breacher’s strengths, but the former really seems to me to be the better of the three. The SPAS-12 is an excellent shotgun of a lower rarity and has plentiful amounts of ammo.

There are a few weapons with low mag sizes that can benefit both from the deviation reduction from level 25 and the reload from level 10 that are not shotguns. Notably, the Human Model 9800K, Eraser DMR (a DMR with High-Power First Shot), and Yoko-Lagann (unsure if deviation affects this last one). In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and suggest this is probably the best class for the latter two weapons. The Human Model 9800K also improves Breacher survivability slightly. However, while these other weapons work I’m not entirely sure how well such weapons work on Breacher.

Some SMGs are also valuable for the Breacher, particularly the Medic FMG-9 can do a lot to make Breacher more forgiving to play and IMO is absolutely worth the supply hack token at minimum until you get to know the class more. However, bear in mind that weapons that gain effects based on kills will conflict with both the Road Warrior and RRX Coil Shotgun.

Finally there are the other evergreen weapons: AEK Special Elite, RPK-12, AMD 65, UMP-10, LS Laser Sub, and AS-Val which will never serve you poorly.

The Breacher class is neither forgiving to play, nor necessarily straightforward due to the potential for self-damage, however it is sturdy and powerful. The sheer tankiness of the class is unparalleled when starting from full health. Breacher rewards both aggressive play and planned out traps. With the sheer power of breaching charges, combat with a bit of preparation is often very safe. Most targets will barely know what hit them.

Sniper

Core: Spotter. Supported by Striker drone which tags enemies and renders them vulnerable.
Eliminating the target quickly grants 30 credits and a temporary 20% damage buff for all allies.

Sniper loadouts tend to look like the following:

• 57 Fusion Pistol
• Targeting Laser (mandatory)
• Smoke Grenade
• Decoy
• Shadow Dance (overdrive slot)
• Evasive Maneuvers

Other equippable modules to consider in place of Shadow Dance (Dodge/Healing) include Switch Position (Damage Reduction and movespeed on eject), Perfection (critical chance/severity, headshot healing, would take overdrive slot), and Freeze (stutter step for damage absorption 2 seconds of every 12). It is possible to replace for Decoy for Flare Gun or something else, but Smoke Grenade is fairly core to the class.

I would rate Discipline (heat reduction/shield regen) as good. Head Hunter, Keeping Cool (active reload bonus), and Backstab are kinda usable. The other eight are pretty trash. As a clarification to that, Die Hard is useful, but not for 140%. DMR Conversion can have nice synergy with burst weapons, but bricks auto weapons (including the AEK, so I don’t recommend it). This means starting with a random module is not good as Sniper.

The PXS Covert Ops is a powerful alternative to the 57 Fusion Pistol, and especially makes early headshots easier, but I feel silenced weapons aren’t actually that effective at preventing groups of enemies from chasing down the sniper and every bit of shields this class can get helps significantly.

(note that all cooldowns listed here assume the completion of the Engineer class challenge)

Targeting Laser (starting cooldown, 14s): Targeting Laser gives a free crit and puts the item on cooldown. Not a bad effect, but by itself not a good one either. The other effect works regardless of the cooldown, and creates a blue laser sight which reduces movement speed (and therefore reduces movement inaccuracy) and ‘drastically’ decreases weapon deviation and recoil. This appears to reduce recoil by around a third, which makes short bursts very accurate even for less stable weapons. Unloading a full mag at once will not benefit as much as this effect does nothing to increase recoil control, only to reduce recoil. At level 15, using Targeting Laser retains the class’ 20% damage absorb bonus and 10% dodge bonus while moving, so it is rather important to be continuously activating this whenever you are not trying to move at speed.

Smoke Grenade (starting cooldown 17s, effect duration: ~8s): The item description says that it refreshes your dash cooldown. This is incorrect. In fact, it grants a dash charge that can exceed your maximum dash charges. It is possible to stock up more than one additional dash charge in this manner, though that is not recommended because living without dash while stocking up sounds horribly painful. Using Smoke Grenade with your dash unused just before talking to the LD should leave you with essentially a triple dash by the time it starts shooting at you, very nice for that fight. Note that items do not cool down during their effect duration, so even when upgraded to 175% the full wait time until the next activation on this will still be 20s or so.

The actual effect of Smoke Grenade is to gain a dash charge, fully restore shields, pseudo-blind enemies, and increases dodge chance by ~20 (+2 and a bit for every 25% item power) in the smoke field. Oh, it also increases the i-frames you get when you take health damage, which helps make the dodge bonus more noticable. Quite the litany of useful effects. The pseudo-blind acts seems to initially make the Kaida forces slower to follow your movement more or less regardless of who is in the smoke cloud. After that any Kaida forces within the smoked area will have reduced accuracy.

Decoy (starting cooldown 17s): Kaida forces tend to prioritize the nearest target, so advancing before placing this and then shooting down enemies while you retreat slightly is ideal. The distracting power of stationary summons is not to be underestimated, in fact, this item can carry the game.

Flare Gun (starting cooldown 27s, effect duration: ~2s (9-12s): The Flare Gun has base 25% effectivity and 37.5% effectivity at 200% power (a gain of ~3.13% per 25% item power). This fully applies to recoil and damage. Even less stable weapons will shoot bursts quite straight with this buff (especially useful for DMRs), and the damage is excellent. The item has a fast duration so will start the cooldown quickly, while the flare persists for 9s I believe, and the flare gives a 4s buff, (so usually 12s). Even at 150% power, this thing has ~50% uptime, though you need to stick somewhat around the flare to keep receiving the buff. This is not an active, but activates on the first weapon shot you make when it is off cooldown. This is absolutely a damage item to compete with late-game damage items. That said, there may not be a lot of slots to spend on damage items at that point. Survivability is key, so this is an alternative to Decoy rather than the other way around even though upgrading Flare Gun is a pretty efficient credit sink. I should also mention that a short DoT will also be applied to enemy units caught near the initial activation zone, but that affect is pretty irrelevant.

Flash Grenade (starting cooldown 23s): After a short delay Flash Grenade blinds enemies in an extreme radius for a longish duration, and the player for a short duration if the player is looking towards the Grenade location. It also deals percentage damage based on the enemy maximum health with a maximum of 2000 damage. Kaida forces under a blind effect will greatly scatter their weapons fire, including each individual buckshot pellet, which is pretty comical. The blind effect does not impede Kaida forces from knowing or moving to your location. The blind effect can provide much of the protection that Decoy does (though not quite, mind) but can’t be killed and also deals some damage.

As some of these items are upgraded they have reduced cooldowns:

TP Flash Grenade’s percentage damage scales according to the following:

Upgrading Smoke Grenade and Decoy both significantly improve your survivability, so pushing those forward to at least 175% is the first priority. If the Flare Gun is equipped getting that to 175% is a high priority as well, and in fact it is worth pushing to 300%. Targeting Laser is worth an upgrade or two, but it doesn’t scale as well with item power so I wouldn’t focus on upgrading that. Decoy.

For spending larger amounts of wealth, improving Flare Gun from 175% to 300% is very valuable, giving lots of recoil reduction and damage and greatly improving uptime (from 34.38% to 50% effectivity and from 19s to 13s cooldown). Improving Smoke Grenade to 300% is less valuable but can be useful for specific purposes, upgrading from 175% to 300% gives somewhere around 11 points (somewhat more, I believe) of dodge during the smoke effect and reduces the cooldown from 12s to 9s.

Sniper: Continued

The spotter drone will signal the beginning of your attack pattern. One headshot to the spotted target should essentially be enough to take it down regardless of the damage of the weapon. This provides a sizeable heal after level 10.

It is important to plan out the fights a bit, and particularly a plan of escape since the Sniper class isn’t particularly mobile. Dropping a Smoke Grenade and continuing to fire will limit your escape speed later, but will regenerate your shields and buy you time to finish off your foes. Saving your Smoke Grenade will leave you with a double-dash and slow pursuit. Decoy is very powerful for enabling standing in the open and picking off Kaida Forces, and will provide a distraction to slow or prevent pursuit. In boss rooms, Smoke Grenade is mainly used for the extra dash.

At level 15 you are tankier when standing still or when using targeting laser, but that doesn’t mean you should be taking bullets to the face if you can help it. Keep at least strafing except when you need lots of stability to fire accurately. Sniper has a hidden bonus of lifesteal on headshots, this covers your need for health regeneration, but getting the headshots will always be important to you.

If the Sniper’s loadout includes Decoy, further summons are slightly less valuable. However, the Sniper does greatly desire further means of disengagement as it is somewhat hard to prevent enemies all enemies from being unable to close distance. Therefore, in in the absence of Bandanna or Psy Field to help escape, a second summon is extremely desirable indeed.

For this reason, Bandanna and/or Psy Field are also somewhat more valuable on Sniper than other classes. Due to the exceptional recoil of some of class’ preferred weapons, Tsunami Talisman is also slightly more valuable.

The Sniper class does 50% more headshot damage, at level 5 does more damage from enemy penetration, and at level 20 gains 50% increased rate of fire, 30% ejection speed, and 10% reload speed with marksman weapons. You’ll need every recoil control tool you have to keep your weapons usable at that firing speed. However, if the wiki is to be believed, the Sniper class has a 10% reduced fire rate with all weapons.

The key weapon of the Sniper class is the AN-94 Deathstalker. It does everything you want it to except enemy penetration and actually being a marksman rifle. Headshot bonus, sufficient boss damage, recoil that class tools help control, it has it all.

Other than that, evergreen weapons are likely the best choices until level 20. This means the AEK Special Elite, RPK-12, AMD 65, UMP-10, LS Laser Sub and AS-Val.

Once level 20 arrives, among DMRs, the R2000 Sour DMR probably takes the top spot here because it does more damage, but the R5000 Sudden DMR is still great and gives AP ammo. The Eraser DMR isn’t worth it because the heat gain is unmanageable with the level 20 class talent and it doesn’t get enemy penetration on any of its ammo, even though some Sniper players like it because of the bottomless clip effect. For anti-material rifles the powerful Human Model 9800K is the best looking rifle on the market by a long shot, and kinda overshadows the DMRs.

My thoughts at the moment is to at level 20 to token the AEK Special Elite, the AN-94 Deathstalker, and the Human model 9800. After that, its a tough decision to stop there, or to add one of the the DMRs or another evergreen weapon.

The Sniper is the Rogue that I understand much less about. It has a powerful late-arriving bonus that the class seems to revolve around. Marksman rifle gunplay is complicated because of the desire to fire accurately enough to headshot targets and the substantial amounts of recoil involved. However, the class retains thematic options that could be strong in the right hands.

Assassin

Core: Professional. Every third projectile deals 150 extra damage and heals for 10 health, bonuses stack with each third hit. Taking damage or missing 5 shots resets the stack.

Assassin loadouts tend to look like the following:

• 57 Fusion Pistol
• Scoundrel’s Dagger (mandatory)
• Umbra Adaptive Cloak (hidden)
• Smoke Grenade
• Decoy
• Perfection
• Evasive Maneuvers

Other equippable modules to consider in place of either Evasive Maneuvers (Dodge/Movement) or Perfection (critical chance/severity, headshot healing) include Shadow Dance (Dodge/Healing), Switch Position (Damage Reduction and movespeed on eject), and maybe Discipline (heat reduction/shield regen). A lot of choices. It is possible to replace Decoy for the Flare Gun (and I personally prefer to do so), but Smoke Grenade is fairly core to the class.

I would rate Freeze as good, and Backstab (almost more for the free cloaking on teleporter exit than the damage bonus) and Keeping Cool (active reload bonus) as kinda usable. The other eight are pretty trash. As a clarification to that, Die Hard is useful, but not for 140%. DMR Conversion could be made useful, but it wastes the wonderful bonuses for SMGs and requires a special playstyle. This means starting with a random module is not good as Assassin.

Building a loadout to get 100% dodge chance in the Smoke Grenade effect is possible, if difficult and requires some luck. ~20 to start (including from the Deflect difficulty modifier), ~10 from Shadow Dance with three stacks, 5 from Evasive Maneuvers, ~35 from Smoke Grenade +275%, ~10 from recycling Umbra Cloak (might be able to get more for Umbra cloak if recycled with more item power?), ~21 from three dodge body upgrades (with Hardcore difficulty modifier). The highest dodge I’ve had during Smoke Grenade yet was 92, but I wasn’t running both Evasive Maneuvers and Shadow Dance at the time. Bear in mind there is 0.25s cooldown on dodging.

(note that all cooldowns listed here assume the completion of the Engineer class challenge)

Scoundrel’s Dagger (starting cooldown, 4s): Fun to use, it is also your main source of healing. Early-game, this is also your main weapon. It does not take much upgrading to get the cooldown to 3s, which is quite servicable, as the cooldown is halved when stabbing people in the back. Getting the cooldown to 2s is nice, but weigh that against the cost of the upgrade, and the further expense of being at melee range against late-game enemies. Using the blade also reduces weapon heat by 10 on use, which is cool because this can be used repeatedly during a fight. Recycling this is also an option later, if you have another good source of healing.

Scoundrel’s dagger gains a 10dps acid DoT at level 10 per core stack, grants a plating on an elite kill, and most importantly grants three core stacks. The core stacks acquired from the dagger in this way are a substantial source of healing by themselves. At level 15, backstabs steel 8-15 credits with a small chance for 10x the amount. The prestige allows you to continuously stab people in the front while using Smoke Grenade. Of these only the latter is a consideration in whether this item is recyclable.

Umbra Adaptive Cloak (starting cooldown 17s, starting effect duration: 6s): Another useful item worth considering recycling later on. Assassin has so many interesting choices. The recycle bonus for ditching this is +~10% dodge chance. The bonus for not ditching this, the game’s most powerful disengagement tool that remains useful well into loop. You have 100 armor during use, the cloak duration cancels when attacking, or using certain items.

In practice, Umbra Adaptive Cloak has an essentially lower cooldown than Smoke Grenade by about four seconds, perhaps a bit more. This item is of limited usefulness against bosses, but if I understand correctly the cloaked armor bonus should still be used while repositioning or reloading. If all you want is to beat challenge, recycle this just before the LD. At level 15 opening chests while under the effect of Umbra Cloak gains credits, often 300+ (there might have to be enemies around for this to take effect, I am unsure). At level 20 using the cloak will also reload half of the current magazine (this always conusmes the full amount of ammo even if it reloads less than that).

Smoke Grenade (starting cooldown 17s, effect duration: ~8s): The item description says that it refreshes your dash cooldown. This is incorrect. In fact, it grants a dash charge that can exceed your maximum dash charges. It is possible to stock up more than one additional dash charge in this manner, though that is not recommended because living without dash while stocking up sounds horribly painful. Using Smoke Grenade with your dash unused just before talking to the LD should leave you with essentially a triple dash by the time it starts shooting at you, very nice for that fight. Note that items do not cool down during their effect duration, so even when upgraded to 175% the full wait time until the next activation on this will still be 20s or so.

The actual effect of Smoke Grenade is to gain a dash charge, fully restore shields, pseudo-blind enemies, and increases dodge chance by ~20 (+2 and a bit for every 25% item power) in the smoke field. Oh, it also increases the i-frames you get when you take health damage, which helps make the dodge bonus more noticable. Quite the litany of useful effects. The pseudo-blind acts makes the Kaida forces slower to follow your movement more or less regardless of who is in the smoke cloud. After that any Kaida forces within the smoked area will have reduced accuracy.

Decoy (starting cooldown 17s): Kaida forces tend to prioritize the nearest target, so advancing before placing this and then shooting down enemies while you retreat slightly is ideal. The distracting power of stationary summons is not to be underestimated, in fact, this item can carry the game.

Flare Gun (starting cooldown 27s, effect duration: ~2s (9-12s): The Flare Gun has base 25% effectivity and 37.5% effectivity at 200% power (a gain of ~3.13% per 25% item power). This fully applies to recoil and damage. Even less stable weapons will shoot bursts quite straight with this buff, and the damage is excellent. The item has a fast duration so will start the cooldown quickly, while the flare persists for 9s I believe, and the flare gives a 4s buff, (so usually 12s). Even at 150% power, this thing has ~50% uptime, though you need to stick somewhat around the flare to keep receiving the buff. This is not an active, but activates on the first weapon shot you make when it is off cooldown. This is absolutely a damage item to compete with late-game damage items. Survivability still is very important, but I saw the light and now I’m a believer in the Flare Gun for Assassin. Oh, a short DoT will also be applied to enemy units caught near the initial activation zone, but that’s irrelevant.

Assassin: Continued

As some of these items are upgraded they have reduced cooldowns:

Dagger reaches a 2s cooldown at 225% item power, but I prefer upgrading it only once until I am much wealthier and know whether I want to use it as my primary source of healing or want to recycle it. Getting Umbra Cloak and Decoy to 175% is first priority after the first upgrade on Dagger. Getting Smoke Grenade and Flare Gun to 175% is next. Upgrading Decoy past 200% is never worth it. After these milestones are achieved, don’t neglect found items.

For spending larger amounts of wealth, improving Flare Gun from 175% to 300% is very valuable, giving lots of recoil reduction and damage and greatly improving uptime (from 34.38% to 50% effectivity and from 19s to 13s cooldown). Improving Smoke Grenade to 300% is less valuable but can be useful for specific purposes, upgrading from 175% to 300% gives somewhere around 11 points (somewhat more, I believe) of dodge during the smoke effect and reduces the cooldown from 12s to 9s.

Enemies don’t have infinite turnspeed, so dashing through an enemy will generally give you a proper backstab opportunity. Therefore, the general plan for melee attacks is to get within dash range with a full dash charge, activate Smoke Grenade, dash behind the enemy, stab, dash back to the smoke, then either open fire within the buff effect of the Smoke Grenade or go hide as Kaida Forces won’t be able to follow through the smoke at any speed. You can also wait to activate the smoke until after the melee attack in order to keep your shields at maximum, but it will be slightly easier for enemies to follow if you do this. Attacks at range are simple, but waiting to use Smoke Grenade until eating the first couple bullets lets you take advantage of the full shield restoration. Waiting on that activation will decrease the damage you take and leave you with likely two dash charges for quick escape. In boss rooms Smoke Grenade is mostly used for the extra dash rather than its other effects.

When Smoke is on cooldown, Umbra Cloak (or Decoy) can be used as a replacement. So, after dashing behind an enemy, stab-and-shoot, then use Umbra Cloak. When trying to heal, aggro a bunch of enemies and use the cloak. Kaida forces will tend to clump up after losing track of the player, which enables you to stab 3+ at once (preferably in the back). Other than this (and to approach gatling turrets) I do not recommend using the cloak to close distance because that is a waste. Keeping the cloak in reserve is also powerful option because discretion is the better part of valour. Again, the cloak can be used in boss rooms while reloading for an armor bonus, though you’ll still be in plain view to them.

Don’t worry much about maintaining Core: Professional stacks. Five stacks is lots for most purposes. Feel free to go ham a bit with the dagger, the class has plenty of healing. However, it is generally best to open with the dagger and then finish with a firearm, rather than trying to get multiple stabs on the same target. Even with the small credit bonus it isn’t really worth caring
whether the knife gets the kill. The assassin’s combat stabbing philosophy should be to take advantage of the dagger’s cooldown and stab more often rather than more accurately — for contrast, the Raider blade is better at killing targets in one strike, but has a longer cooldown.

I reiterate that the escape items (Smoke Grenade and Umbra Cloak) should not be used to close distance, except when using Umbra Cloak to heal, or when approaching a Gatling turret. If you want to roleplay an Assassin that cannot play the game without using both Smoke Grenade and Umbral Cloak, then you won’t be able to play the game much. However, this charade doesn’t generally improve your combat effectiveness much at all, and can even get you into awkward and deadly situations if you try to approach a group of enemies under Umbra Cloak without grabbing their attention first to get them to group up. Instead, use Smoke Grenade to clear out one group without taking much damage, a summon (like Decoy) for the next group, and then perhaps consider using Umbra to disengage for a third time if Smoke Grenade isn’t off of its cooldown.

Because dashing behind an enemy is important for healing purposes, Icarus is an extremely uncomfortable item on Assassin, and should be actively avoided. Because of Smoke Grenade and Umbra Cloak, Bandanna is substantially less useful on Assassin than on other classes.

Having more than one summon can be decidedly less useful on Assassin because it can feel like a little bit overkill due to the large amount of active disengage items the Assassin will generally keep,
unless Umbra cloak is recycled. This being the case, always aim for two survivability items at least.

Heat Spreader is significantly more useful on Assassin because it functions as useful DoT during the full duration of Umbra Cloak, however this is not sufficient to make it among the most important items. Similarly, Lightning Boots is great on assassin because you will often be dashing over enemies at least until late game.

As the Assassin levels up, the class gets +15% damage to SMGs and 10% reduced recoil with SMGs. Additionally, the Assassin gets 15% increased critical damage and headshot damage with all weapons and 5 degrees reduced deviation with all weapons. Core: Professional damage works well with weapons that output many projectiles. This makes SMGs a rather natural fit. It would also seem like shotguns fit due to Core: Professional, but alas, Core: Professional stacks do not stack up with each individual buckshot pellet.

The UMP-10, LS Laser Sub (slightly more ammo issues), and Chaos Launcher (armor piercing) are your SMG go-to weapons, so supply hack at least one. The latter is armor piercing and the former two are survivability boosting. The Spectre and KI Vector (slightly more ammo issues) are nice to have in lieu of the main three, but not something I’d supply hack. The K7 Competition (amazing damage, +125% critical severity bonus, -25% luck), Medic FMG-9 (health regeneration is always good) and K3 Boltcaster (much stun and armor piercing, but long reload time, and somewhat more ammo issues) are special considerations that are up to taste.

In addition to this the evergreen weapons of the AEK Special Elite, RPK-12, AMD 65, Viciator Ultra and AS-Val are always great, and if not using the armor piercing Chaos Launcher, these weapons are also desirable for their boss-killing capabilities. In general, however, I recommend tokening an SMG or one of the two shotguns instead, except for the AEK Special Elite, which should always recieve a token.

The Assassin is a powerful and forgiving class due to health regeneration from Scoundrel’s Dagger and Core:Professional, along with its powerful items. It rewards careful play, but everything works. With the ability to start with three disengagement items, combat with a bit of preparation is very safe. Increased critical chance and critical severity from the Perfection module further improves the class’ already excellent damage output.

Raider

Core: Looter. Kills drop Dogtags which refresh shields. Looting any pickups grant 1 stack of Looter, buffing firerate, burstfire-delay and scavenging. Lasts 5 seconds, stacks 3 times. Stacks also reset duration.

Raider loadouts tend to look like the following:

• 57 Fusion Pistol
• Reverbing Blade (mandatory)
• Road Flare
• Overdose
• Routine
• Field Rations

The other equippable module to consider in place of Field Rations (increased healing effects per medical chest) is Madness (credit gain). Overdose is a reliable but generally terrible healing item. Upon getting used to the game, it is recommended to switch it for Seth-Up Suitcase Sentry which gives an Unidentified Potion when recycled (doing this steals up to 750 credits if you have the credits, so do this at the start). Alternatively, healing items can be eschewed for Stim Pack, which seems to also be a popular Commando item.

Other than the equippable modules I would rate Drill, On the Edge and Press the Attack as being quite good and Specialized Ammo as being decent. Scarred…I’m not sure whether Revberbing Blade counts as lifesteal. The other eight are decidedly marginal, unless you get lucky with Pack a Punch. In general, random modules for the Commando are mediocre, and not a competitor against items.

The Kaida Model H is a reasonable alternative to the Fusion 57 for this class because the Raider doesn’t start with a weapon and the 100% item power Reverbing Blade is a bit slow to use as a primary weapon unto itself. However, this trade away maximum shield power for an offensive sidearm. Generally I’m a fan of the former, so I prefer the Fusion 57.

(note that all cooldowns listed here assume the completion of the Engineer class challenge)

Reverbing Blade (starting cooldown, 12s): Maxes out at 1500 damage and 250 damage radius at 100% item power. Suffice it to say, that’s deadly effective. Moreover, it heals you for a portion (‘a bit’ is all game tells us) of the damage it deals. There is no need to get finishers to heal with it anymore in the present update. It also reduces weapon heat by 10 on use, so it has additional use in a boss room I guess? This is the Raider’s main way of healing, and is relatively convenient when over 1000 damage. Using it on more targets simultaneously means more healing. At level 10 its cooldown is reset if it kills an enemy. However, this is of marginal use, since to be truly useful it either needs time to reverberate by itself, or it needs to be used on an already damage target. Take note of when it exceeds 1000 damage. The Reverbing Blade will need to be upgraded to 200%ish before it starts collecting damage in reasonable amounts of time.

Road Flare (starting cooldown 19s): Recoil reduction and damage increase with ridiculously high uptime. The effects are 25% at 100% item power, and 37.5% at 200% item power (a gain of ~3.13% per 25% item power). Yes, that applies to both recoil reduction and damage. Better still, although the item doesn’t have an effect duration, the actual flare effect persists for 9s and that flare provides a 4s buff to the player if the player doesn’t already have the buff, meaning an overall duration of up to 12s. At 200% item power this is an overall ~85% uptime. If that wasn’t enough, Road Flare also applies a reasonably strong DoT on enemies that get near it. This is the true best Commando item, and it is essentially an upgrade over the similar item that Rogue has.

Overdose (cooldown not in tooltip, but 76s?): Consumes shields or damages the player on use. A few seconds later heals for more than 300. Counts as a substance for the purposes of the Hardcore difficulty. Long cooldown. This is a very slow item and indeed, the worst healing item in the game even moreso than Cell Replacer. Even if it healed for 400 it would still only heal about 5.2 hitpoints per second, and it makes the user more vulernable to further damage for several seconds after use. However, it doesn’t have charges, so it is still useful when starting out.

Stimpack (starting cooldown 67s, effect duration 10s): Firerate increase, damage increase, movement speed increase, and improved dashing recharge. All at 25% effectivity at 100% item power (scaling with item power like Road Flare). Wow. Long cooldown, but very worth the low uptime. Just the dashing recharge is huge by itself.

Unidentified Potion (starting cooldown ~10s, effect duration ~2s): Maximum charges scales with item power. 4 max charges at 100% item power, but I haven’t done rigorous experiments yet to determine how max stacks improve. Gains one charge while teleporting and also gets charges from vial pickups (guaranteed in boss rooms). Along with a 40% heal (+1.25% per 25% item power), it provides randomly an additional effect from the following list (20% probability for each): Temporarily slowed movement, poisoned, random body upgrade, shields restored, or temporary health regen. The cooldown is not listed in the tooltip, but I’ve experimented to get a decent approximation.

As some of these items are upgraded they have reduced cooldowns:

Overdose when upgraded also gets a substantially reduced cooldown, but it is harder for me to get a good idea of the cooldown progression because it isn’t in the tooltip.

The first priority is upgrading Reverbing Blade to 175% then improving Road Flare to 150%. Then one or two upgrades into the other items. After that, further increasing Reverbing Blade and Road Flare even up to 250% and beyond is extremely useful. Stimpack I have less experience with, but getting it to 175% is important, just not as much so as getting Reverbing Blade upgraded.

Raider: Continued

It is useful to know that you can interrupt a burst and save ammo (and the target you were shooting at, if you really want) by pressing ‘Q’ or using your mousewheel to switch weapons. Also, try holding down burst fire, some burst weapons are also fully automatic with their bursts.

For a knifing combat strategy, the idea for an Reverbing Blade that isn’t well-charged is to shoot an enemy a few times while dashing forward (Raider has great movement accuracy and can shoot effectively during the dash), knife to finish things off, then dash backward. Don’t worry too much about resetting the knife cooldown every time, it is necessary to let it reverberate by itself for a while to gain damage anyways. Road flare can be thrown into the above to apply a DoT to remaining forces that come your way. This is a lot of things to do at once, but it is manageable. For a knife that is well-charged you can just dash in, use knife, and kill a group of enemies just with that.

When not actively trying to use the knife, the goal is more or less to combine strafing and dashing to evade almost every bullet that comes your way, taking cover when convenient. Road Flare and your natural movement accuracy means you will generally have a very high effective range compared to your targets (even snipers, if you are careful), so take a position well removed from your targets in this case and plan for a fighting retreat.

The Raider has an advantage at killing bosses due to its excellent movement. Do remember that your dash charges do not regenerate separately, so you may wish to keep a dash charge on-hold for when you need to get out of Dodge.

The immunity from the Charge module lasts a rather long time, so Bandanna lets you string dashes together to make you practically invincible. Bandanna is a must-token item due to this rediculous synergy.

Other than that, the Raider has fairly normal item preferences. However, some item considerations may depends on your healthcare plan. Tsunami Talisman is the main droppable healing item for you, which synergizes with Field Rations, but if you are running Overdose or a Medic FMG-9 you may not care about either benefit.

For alchemy items, if running Unidentified Potion, Shaker (alchemy item, not tokenable) is great. Lifeblood is always an excellent find even if you don’t particularly need more healing.

At level 5, Raider has 50% reduced movement inaccuracy, 33% reduced firing movement slowdown, and 20% reduced burstfire delay. At level 25, Raider gains a 15% extra shot chance. However, according to the wiki all weapons have their firerate reduced by 9.5%. Core: Looter stacks decrease burstfire delay further and increase firerate.

The Raider is synergizes with weapons that feature burst delay. Of those, the Damnation, SCR Laser Socom, and the UMP-10 being the standouts, with the Object 29 being another strong option. The Damnation and the SCR Laser Socom are weapons that only one other class each are interested in, but are quite useful, so I recommend taking advantage of these.

Additionally, I am a fan of tokening the Medic FMG-9 on Raider for improved health regeneration, even moreso if you are of a mind to take Stimpack. The Eminence AR is a burst weapon that could see some use due to being passable and having the excellent feature of reducing item cooldowns, but I’m not at all sold on that being worth a token for the Raider.

Then there are the evergreen weapons: AEK Special Elite (always token), RPK-12, AMD 65, Viciator Ultra, LS Laser Sub, and AS-Val which are always great. However, while in most cases the UMP-10 and LS Laser Sub are very close in performance, in this case the LS Laser Sub loses out to the UMP-10 due to Raider synergy, unless one is planning to go far into loop.

The Raider class is not particularly forgiving, but can be reasonably safe when things go according to plan. The class does suffer somewhat from a weaker weapon focus combined with less reliable healing than some other classes. However, Raider has powerful movement options and pinpoint accuracy that reward fast-paced gameplay, combined with explosive attacks with Reverbing Blade and the excellent selection of Commando damage items.

Heavy Gunner

Core: Suppression. Bullet hits have a heat dependent chance to Suppress enemies, reducing their accuracy and movespeed. Can carry an extra weapon.

Heavy Gunner loadouts tend to look like the following:

• 57 Fusion Pistol
• LG-2 Onslaught (hidden)
• Onslaught System (mandatory)
• Road Flare
• Overdose
• Field Rations
• Charge (never in overdrive slot)

Other equippable modules to consider in place of Field Rations (increased healing effects per medical chest) include Routine (both movespeed and lots of damage) and Madness (credit gain). Eventually swapping Field Rations for Routine is very important for Heavy Gunner as that is a lot of damage against bosses, however that can be undesirable if running both the Haste and Hardcore difficulty modifiers. Therefore, I recommend Field Rations at the moment because it gets stronger over time and should increase the lifesteal effect from the Onslaught System as well as any other healing that may be obtained. That said, even if you failed on every seventh reload, Routine would still be superior.

Other than the equippable modules I would rate Drill (for damage) and Scarred (largely inferior to Field Rations) as very good, On the Edge and Press the Attack as being quite good, and Specialized Ammo as being decent. The other eight are decidedly marginal, unless you get lucky with Pack a Punch. In general, random modules for the Commando are mediocre, and not a competitor against Stimpack.

Overdose is a reliable but generally terrible healing item. Upon getting used to the game, it is recommended to switch it for Seth-Up Suitcase Sentry which gives an Unidentified Potion when recycled (doing this steals up to 750 credits if you have the credits, so do this at the start). Alternatively, healing items can be eschewed for Stim Pack, which seems to also be a popular Commando item.

Due to how the Onslaught System works, the Heavy Gunner finds it slightly harder to deal with the Scorching and Haste difficulty modifiers than other classes.

(note that all cooldowns listed here assume the completion of the Engineer class challenge)

Onslaught System (starting cooldown, 19s, effect duration: ?s): Not only does this provide ammo regeneration, but this also reduces recoil and increases your damage (firerate and extra shot chance). At level 5, it also provides lifesteal, shield pseudo-lifesteal, and increased armor and critical chance. At level 25 it also can fire missiles. However, it slows the user while active and does not reduce heat generation (careful or your shields will burn out). This is an extremely powerful damage item.

Road Flare (starting cooldown 19s): Recoil reduction and damage increase with ridiculously high uptime. The effects are 25% at 100% item power, and 37.5% at 200% item power (a gain of ~3.13% per 25% item power). Yes, that applies to both recoil reduction and damage. Better still, although the item doesn’t have an effect duration, the actual flare effect persists for 9s and that flare provides a 4s buff to the player if the player doesn’t already have the buff, meaning an overall duration of up to 12s, at 200% item power this is an overall ~85% uptime. If that wasn’t enough, Road Flare also applies a reasonably strong DoT on enemies that get near it. This is the true best Commando item, and it is essentially an upgrade over the similar item that Rogue has.

Overdose (cooldown not in tooltip, but 76s?): Consumes shields or damages the player on use. A few seconds later heals for more than 300. Counts as a substance for the purposes of the Hardcore difficulty. Long cooldown. This is a very slow item and indeed, the worst healing item in the game even moreso than Cell Replacer. Even if it healed for 400 it would still only heal about 5.2 hitpoints per second, and it makes the user more vulernable to further damage for several seconds after use. However, it doesn’t have charges, so it is still useful when starting out.

Stimpack (starting cooldown 67s, effect duration 10s): Firerate increase, damage increase, movement speed increase, and improved dashing recharge. All at 25% effectivity at 100% item power (scaling with item power like Road Flare). Wow. Long cooldown, but very worth the low uptime. Just the dashing recharge is huge by itself.

Unidentified Potion (starting cooldown ~10s, effect duration ~2s): Maximum charges scales with item power. 4 max charges at 100% item power, but I haven’t done rigorous experiments yet to determine how max stacks improve. Gains one charge while teleporting and also gets charges from vial pickups (guaranteed in boss rooms). Along with a 40% heal (+1.25% per 25% item power), it provides randomly an additional effect from the following list (20% probability for each): Temporarily slowed movement, poisoned, random body upgrade, shields restored, or temporary health regen. The cooldown is not listed in the tooltip, but I’ve experimented to get a decent approximation.

LG-2 Onslaught Great magazine size, trash everything else. Neat to start with, but don’t hold onto this a moment longer than is convenient.

As some of these items are upgraded they have reduced cooldowns:

Overdose when upgraded also gets a substantially reduced cooldown, but it is harder for me to get a good idea of the cooldown progression because it isn’t in the tooltip.

For upgrades, pushing Onslaught System and Road Flare towards 300% are the priorities. Most found items are only worth upgrading once or twice by comparison. If Stimpack is chosen, getting that to 150% or 175% is ideal once the cost of upgrading Onslaught System and Road Flare becomes more expensive.

Heavy Gunner: Continued

Heavy Gunner has one of the more difficult combat strategies in the game. Shoot the thing. And that other thing. Make good use of cover.

Doing this well, given the reduced movement speed caused by the Onslaught System, is a matter of strafing and of discretion. Road Flare helps by significantly weakening slower enemies that advance, but there is little in your kit to slow them down except shooting them. On the other hand, the Heavy Gunner lacks neither ammo nor damage, and if careful, every hit will a help towards having good health.

Because there are some items with irreplaceable synergy on Heavy Gunner, I imagine occurrence tokens for this class will tend to look very similar across all players.

Any summon will greatly simplify the Heavy Gunner’s gameplan and are therefore more desired than usual. Due to the sheer continuous fire that the Onslaught System helps put out, any heat reduction that can be attained is highly important. Powershot is therefore must-token. Due to synergy with the Charge module, Bandanna is the most powerful item on Heavy Gunner bar none, anf is also a must-token.

The Heavy Gunner has no true weapon focus, but at level 15 gains 25 damage for each projectile, and each shot (I believe this is not synonymous with projectile in the case of shotguns but am not sure) has a 2% chance to be a staggering “ultrashot” that deals 1-1500 bonus damage. At level 10 the Heavy Gunner also has all weapons reload 25% faster. Given how the Onslaught System works, magazine size is also a factor in addition to fire rate. My assumption is that the 25 damage bonus is flat and does not scale with weapon damage multiplier, but I don’t know that, it’s just a guess. It is possible that ‘for each projectile’ doesn’t apply to shotgun pellets, but my assumption for now is that it does.

Given that my assumption is correct, the Chaos Launcher, RPK-12, AEK Elite, Bren Anti-Air (assuming that its dual projectiles count separately), Medic FMG-9, Kaida Medic ACR-X, and LS Laser Sub seem to me to be the most desirable non-shotguns that synergize with the bonus, more or less in order. The bonus damage should mostly be at least 8-12% of the total damage, with the Chaos Launcher being well above this, think 15-20%. It is hard to get real numbers because if my assumption is correct the bonus damage is less effective after upgrading weapons.

The Medic FMG-9 is desirable on the Heavy Gunner because that will help further increase your overall tankiness and this class can afford to keep it around without any real reason. Additionally, backpack fusion weapons like the Eminence AR (item cooldown), Enforcer Carbine (+100 shields), and UMP-10 (+75 shields) are not generally worth tokening, but are a welcome sight nonetheless.

The buckshot shotguns produce more projectiles than the auto and burst weapons, and the SPAS-12 can output nearly three times the number of projectiles that the best of bullet hoses can manage or more (whether it can hit all of them is another question). The Super 90 can output the same number of projectiles given enough ammo, but doesn’t start with the ammo supply to be able to do this for any length of time. Given that my assumption is correct, the SPAS-12 may benefit by more than 20% from an extra 25 damage per projectile. The other two shotguns by ~15-20%. This doesn’t make Heavy Gunner necessarily a shotgun class, however. The non-shotguns benefit more from from Onslaught System’s ammo regeneration.

The evergreen AS-Val is of course, quite potent (though the AS-Val still has ammo issues, even for someone like you), but strangely enough lacks the same level of synergy that the other evergreen weapons possess.

The Heavy Gunner, while not particularly forgiving, is straightforward to play and potent. Mind the movement penalty on the Onslaught System. Good luck out there.

Engineer

Core: Drone Zeal. The Engineer is followed by a Blackjack Drone, which fires burning laser shots at nearby enemies. Using items grants Drone Zeal power, temporarily increasing its firerate and range, stacks up to 20 times.

Engineer loadouts tend to look like the following:

• 57 Fusion Pistol
• LMG Sentry Turret
• Auto-Overclocker (hidden)
• Missile Drone
• Seth-Up Suitcase Sentry
• Overdrive (in the overdrive slot, naturally)
• Unceasing

The only other equippable module to consider in place of Unceasing is Transmute. The purpose of Seth-Up Suitcase Sentry is to recycle it for an Unidentified Potion at the cost of up to 750 credits (this also gains progress towards your second blackjack drone). Field Supply is an alternative that doesn’t enable the recycle synergy and provides less healing per use, but ultimately provides more sustain.

Other than the equippable modules I would rate Well Oiled, Elemental Power (your blackjack drones make use of this), and Sun Rising, and Grenadier as quite strong. Status Extender, Chromatic Alloy, Multiply, Focus, and Force Unleashed are good modules. The only ones I don’t like for a normal run are Weapons Deal (for PPQ-H runs), Forged by Fire, and Calculated (for suicide builds), though Inner Fire can be a bit annoying too. There are enough good Specialist modules that random modules can be quite valuable. However, it is still not reasonable to start with one, because this class wants to recycle items to become more powerful.

The PPQ-H is an alternative to the Fusion Pistol that can carry the game by itself, but backpacking the 57 Fusion Pistol and using other weapons is still stronger.

(note that all cooldowns listed here assume the completion of the Engineer class challenge)

LMG Sentry Turret (starting cooldown, 35s): Good summon, quick cooldown, hard to replace. Enemies tend to attack the nearest target, so place and then retreat slightly for maximum effect. At level 15, this reduces running item colldowns by 30%, which is very, very nice indeed, so make sure to use this after Missile Drone if you still have it available.

Auto-Overclocker (cooldown, 2s): Buff yourself, or your pets. No real cooldown, but uses are limited by scrap gained primarily from kills. Maximum scrap increases by 12.5 every 25% item power and the scrap gain per kill can further increase with item power as well. All plating you would normally gain also gets turned into scrap. You can upgrade a summon multiple times for stacking bonuses that last for the entire duration of the summon, and should do so because a pet worth upgrading once is almost certainly worth upgrading twice, and buffs extend the overall duration of a summon. Buffs grant, I think about a 25% fire rate, and a large temporary health pool.

The biggest value of the Overclocker however is in using it on yourself, which lasts only for about five seconds. However, the temporary health pool is about 400 hitpoints which will generally absorb most or all of the damage that would be gained during that time. The exact amount of health it provides may scale based on your maximum health or item power or both, I don’t know. Since it doesn’t have a substantial cooldown, can be used at least five times on a player in a row (with the level 5 talent) and can therefore improve survivability by such a great amount in a crisis this item is essential to the Engineer’s kit.

Missile Drone (starting cooldown 24s): Quick cooldown, scales with the recycling that you were going to do anyways, can follow you between combats unlike LMG Sentry Turret. Most importantly, it always spawns near the cursor. Kaida Forces tend to attack the target closest to them, so this is extremely valuable, and more or less the best summon in the game. The cooldown is so quick that eventually the summon can last as long as the cooldown. Placing it behind and near enemies maximizes its distraction potential.

Unidentified Potion (starting cooldown ~10s, effect duration ~2s): Maximum charges scales with item power. 4 max charges at 100% item power, but I haven’t done rigorous experiments yet to determine how max stacks improve. Gains one charge while teleporting and also gets charges from vial pickups (guaranteed in boss rooms). Along with a 40% heal (+1.25% per 25% item power), it provides randomly an additional effect from the following list (20% probability for each): Temporarily slowed movement, poisoned, random body upgrade, shields restored, or temporary health regen. The cooldown is not listed in the tooltip, but I’ve experimented to get a decent approximation.

Field Supply (starting cooldown ~5s, effect duration ~2s): Grants ammo and a 15% heal (+1.25% per 25% item power). More importantly it grants the heal for every ammo pickup and ammo chest. This provides about half of the effect of Unidentified potion per charge, but healing on ammo pickups means that on balance you’ll get four times as many heals. The downside is not getting the random body upgrades or full heal from temporary health regen and not being able to heal as much in-combat except against the LD (which has ammo chests in the room). I don’t know the cooldown progression for this item, because it isn’t listed in the tooltip and is plenty short already.

As some of these items are upgraded they have reduced cooldowns:

The priorities for upgrading are Auto-Overclocker to 125% followed by Missile Drone and LMG Sentry Turret to 175%. After that pushing Auto-Overclocker past 200% for even further tankiness and LMG Sentry Turret to 225% is probably recommended, but upgrading found items, particularly lowering the cooldown of a third summon is also important.

Engineer: Continued

Use items, supplement that with your blackjack drone and yourself. Remember to use the Overclocker on yourself when your shields go down, as that will minimize the real damage that you take. Engineer can be something of a pet class. Your pets aren’t usually the majority of your offense, but they are an unbreakable defensive plan outside of boss rooms, taking most of the damage that would come the way of the Engineer. It isn’t that the pets couldn’t clear floors themselves, it is that you are too impatient to let them.

Again, do not fail to take advantage of the sheer amount of health available to you. Five uses of the Overclocker should, I believe, count for +2000 (temporary) hitpoints, and three uses of Unidentified Potion should count for +1000 hitpoints or more, and that’s not including the hitpoints you start with. Using all of these effectively can make Engineer a tanky boss in a normal game, if not as much so as the Guardian classes with their upgraded Methadone.

The Engineer’s largest bonuses are item related. This makes knowing the items that you can find rather important. “Is this better recycled, or should I keep it?”. Every class asks that question, but for the Engineer this question is far more important. Generally I’m willing to recycle a mediocre item that I’d otherwise keep if it means I could buy a terrible item from a shop that I would otherwise be short for, and am willing to recycle poor items to upgrade the rest of my kit early if they aren’t too useful to me.

A more detailed guide would focus on which items are the best and for what purposes, but unfortunately that isn’t the guide you are reading. For now, the best I can do for with regard to complete engineer item advice is this tier list[preview.redd.it], which is not Engineer specific and is very looping focused and therefore not entirely applicable to a regular game. For instance, Overlocker remains useful until well into the first loop, but does fall off pretty hard, same with many of the damage items. Nonetheless, that tier list should provide some general pointers and is the product of a player’s many hours of experience.

With Engineer level 10, every third item recycled will grant a new item and recycling ten items will grant a second blackjack drone greatly increasing the effectivity of Core: Drone Zeal. Recycle aggressively. I recommend recycling three one-charge weapon upgrade kits at some point in the game, as this will help you reach the maximum item limit and in general the point where you really come online in addition to bolstering the amount of credits you have and working towards the second blackjack drone.

The Transmute module is worth special consideration and changes up recycling considerations somewhat. While I like Well Oiled for the cooldown potential, Transmute also provides late-game power by increasing your ability to gain credits sky-high and by providing a replacement item for the first item recycled of the same rarity. Using Transmute generally means holding off on recycling any items until most or all item slots are filled. Red damage items can be especially powerful, however, about half of the red items in the game are pretty underwhelming. Being able to reroll a red item is extremely powerful and if a trash red item is rerolled for Fangs of Mordigan or Infinity Drill Piece the worth of Transmute can be considered to be even greater than Overdrive. However, rerolling a less useful purple item is much less powerful, so there is a give and take to this. Note that recycling a starting item with Transmute gives an random item instead of another starting item.

You are slightly incentivized to recycle items during a credit powerup (I believe), as well as to recycle items while in boss rooms. To get the most out of recycling an item in a boss room, use Auto-Overclocker on yourself first (you’ll gain scrap from recycling the item depending on item power), and do the actual recycling while reloading so you don’t lose damage output. If you are at least level 15, you will gain 10 Drone Zeal stacks, which is actually decent damage if you have the second blackjack drone out. This is a lot of work for a small bonus though.

Due to the much reduced cooldowns, summons are great, so there is a higher priority on one of Stinger Jet Glider and Gun Drone Spawner than for other classes (also High Command if you happen upon it). Both is overkill, since you already have two decent summons with lower cooldowns in your loadout, and that is without taking spider mines.

The already powerful Refractor Crystal is even better on Engineer than it is on other classes, again because of the cooldown reduction. Same with Unstable Current and Icarus, but to a lesser degree.

For Alchemy items, if you run Undentified Potion, Shaker can be nice.

At level 5 the Engineer gains a 30% firerate and 10% heat reduction for laser weapons. Additionally, the Engineer also gets 30% more max and ammo gain for special weapons, though this is fairly irrelevant. At level 15 all weapons gain ammo regeneration, which is nice, but doesn’t change the weapons discussion.

The laser weapons that the Engineer is interested in are the LS Laser Sub, which becomes quite impressive, and the SCR Laser Socom, which becomes impressive later on. That’s it though. The Eraser DMR doesn’t really benefit from these bonuses very much, and the 420 Sniperdragon only slightly more so. The QBZ Type LAS is affected, but isn’t a great weapon.

Other than that I recommend the Evergreen weapons: AEK Special Elite, RPK-12, AMD 65, Viciator Ultra, UMP-10, and AS-Val. So the weapon decisions aren’t hard, but the item decisions will make up for it.

The Engineer is a powerful and forgiving class. However, it is complicated to play well due to being item focused and because the level 10 talent is a bit of an item casino — it helps to know all the odds. It is also somewhat luck dependant. Combined with this late game advantage, the Engineer also has arguably the strongest early game of all the classes due to starting with multiple summons and tools for adding on to the default health pool.

Demolisher

Core: HE-Ammo. Explosions grant 1-2 stacks of HE-Infusion ammo, each increasing the damage of the next fired projectile by flat 50 and dealing 20% more damage to turrets and bosses.

Demolisher loadouts tend to look like the following:

• 57 Fusion Pistol
• Seismic Resonator (mandatory)
• Field Supply
• Missile Drone
• Overdrive (in the overdrive slot, naturally)
• Unceasing

Other equippable modules to consider in place of Unceasing or Overdrive are Grenadier (refresh shields when being hit by an explosion) and Well Oiled (+200 health eventually, decent chance for cooldown reset), but I strongly feel Overdrive and Unceasing are irreplacable, as awesome as Grenadier is. There’s no need to recycle lots of things, so Field Supply is preferred to Unidentified Potion, however it is entirely reasonable to take the latter if you don’t need the extra sustain for more in-combat healing.

Other than the equippable modules I would rate Transmute, Chromatic Alloy, and Sun Rising as quite strong. Status Extender, Multiply, Focus, and Force Unleashed are good modules. The only ones I don’t like for a normal run are Weapons Deal (for PPQ-H runs), Forged by Fire, and Calculated (for suicide builds), though Inner Fire can be a bit annoying too. While not all Specialist modules are amazing, lots of them are quite nice. For this reason I consider dropping Missile Drone for a random module, but I’m crazy, doing that is probably bad.

The PPQ-H is an alternative to the Fusion Pistol that can carry the game by itself, but backpacking the 57 Fusion Pistol and using other weapons is still stronger, unless you intend to run out of ammo for your primary weapons, which is completely possible on this class when using explosive weapons and not taking Field Supply.

(note that all cooldowns listed here assume the completion of the Engineer class challenge)

Seismic Resonator (starting cooldown, 9.14s, 4 starting charges): Any explosion caused by anything will leave a marker on the map that you can use this to detonate. Detonations from this item also leave such a marker. It’s a sweet way of doing damage, moreover, like many things Demolisher, it doesn’t alert enemies to your location, so this contributes to your overall stealthiness. While this quite isn’t as potent as Breacher’s Breaching Charges mostly due to the greater amount of time necessary to use all of the charges, this will still be a lot of damage, so upgrade this and use often. However, this item is extremely awkward and of little help against the most important boss of the game.

Field Supply (starting cooldown ~5s, effect duration ~2s): Grants ammo and a 15% heal (+1.25% per 25% item power). More importantly it grants the heal for every ammo pickup and ammo chest. This provides about half of the effect of Unidentified potion per charge, but healing on ammo pickups means that on balance you’ll get four times as many heals. The downside is not getting the random body upgrades or full heal from temporary health regen and not being able to heal as much in-combat except against the LD (which has ammo chests in the room). I don’t know the cooldown progression for this item, because it isn’t listed in the tooltip and is plenty short already.

Unidentified Potion (starting cooldown ~10s, effect duration ~2s): Maximum charges scales with item power. 4 max charges at 100% item power, but I haven’t done rigorous experiments yet to determine how max stacks improve. Gains one charge while teleporting and also gets charges from vial pickups (guaranteed in boss rooms). Along with a 40% heal (+1.25% per 25% item power), it provides randomly an additional effect from the following list (20% probability for each): Temporarily slowed movement, poisoned, random body upgrade, shields restored, or temporary health regen. The cooldown is not listed in the tooltip, but I’ve experimented to get a decent approximation.

Missile Drone (starting cooldown 24s): Quick cooldown, fires explosives, and always spawns near the cursor. Kaida Forces tend to attack the target closest to them, so this is extremely valuable, and more or less the best summon in the game. The cooldown is so quick that eventually the summon can last as long as the cooldown. Placing it behind and near enemies maximizes its distraction potential. It scales with recycling, but this summon isn’t great because it does damage, it’s great because it is a distraction and enables Seismic Resonator.

Spider Mines (cooldown 2s): This item gains charges from multikills, which is something that comes naturally to you. Since it is quite normal to get one double kill per fight and there is essentially no cooldown, this is a neat summon for Demolisher. These cute little distractions help make fighting a lot safer, especially since unlike most summons you can call multiples at once. Like most summons they will show restraint from chasing down enemies except for the ones you are currently in combat with. One bullet and the race is off! Unfortunately, they tend to get shot down pretty quick in loop and Military Base, so I am more fond of them than they deserve, Missile Drone is better.

Dragon’s Masterkey (starting cooldown 24s): It’s a powerful shotgun to keep enemies from being able to engage with you at close range. Simple, direct, effective. Applies a DoT if it fails to kill something, but doesn’t have enemy penetration like the M26 MA Shotgun System.

Ares GL-16: Once you have a suitable explosive weapon, there is no special need to hold onto this. However, the level 25 talent actually makes this a pretty decent launcher, so there’s also no hurry to get rid of it.

As some of these items are upgraded they have reduced cooldowns:

Additionally, the Seismic Resonator gains max stacks:

Upgrading the Seismic Resonator is crucial as both max stacks and cooldown will increase the ability to take out groups, I’d stop around 250%. Unidentified Potion is likely worth an upgrade or two as well, but it doesn’t scale particularly well with item power. Missile drone is worth getting to 175% when convenient for the reduced cooldown. Spider Mines aren’t worth upgrading more than once, perhaps twice at most.

Demolisher: Continued

The most basic Demolisher strategy is to target the nearest enemy with an explosive weapon, then let Seismic Resonator rip for great damage. Demolisher can be somewhat analagous to Breacher play, You can choose to go after Kaida regulars largely directly and use the resonator for the powerful first strike, or patiently set up an ambush. Demolisher can avoid engaging with enemy forces even more than Breacher can. Set up a explosion somewhere as a trap, then encourage the enemy to walk over, and treat the explosion location like remote mines.

Gaining ultra-kills increases scavenging which improves the type of chests that you find on each level as well as makes ammo drops more plentiful. Double kills increase the damage of Core: HE-Ammo. As such, killing multiple enemies at once especially in the early game is quite useful. In order to get a multikill you’ll need to kill multiple enemies in the space of about two seconds. It doesn’t matter how. Using AoE damage (such as from Seismic Resonator), a weapon with a good rate of fire, enemy penetration, whatever as long as a certain number of enemies are dead within that time frame.

To get multikills there are many different approaches. Here are a few I recommend:

• Carefully manage enemy health pools and kill them with one long burst of an auto weapon.
• Aggro 5-8 enemies and try to get them all to engage at the same range. Follow up with explosives.
• Enemies that haven’t noticed you will bunch up and investigate exposions, such as from the Ares GL-16 or the Seismic Resonator itself. Use the Seismic Resonator a few times on the hapless robots.
• The easiest way to get one or two ultra-kills is probably to activate the teleporter before clearing the map then escape unnoticed. Use an explosion followed by the resonator until you get an ultra kill. The remaining damaged enemies may even be sufficient to set up another one with a regular weapon and a further Seismic Resonator charge or two.

If using Spider Mines (or though I don’t recommend it, Acid Grenade) creating the first explosion of a fight can be quite easy even without a launcher. Moreover, Spider mines tend to kill at least one unit by themselves, so if you arrange for yourself to kill a different enemy at the same time, that makes triple kills and even ultra kills a bit easier sometimes.

Due to the much reduced cooldowns from the Overdrive module, summons are great and you may choose to not start with one, so there is a higher priority on all summons than for other classes. Having two summons is great (or even three), though perhaps tokening two is a stretch. Summons generate explosions when they die, too.

The already powerful Refractor Crystal is even better on Demolisher than it is on other classes, again because of the cooldown reduction. Same with Unstable Current and Icarus, but to a lesser degree.

For Alchemy items, if you run Undentified Potion, Shaker can be nice. Nitroglycerine is useful for Demolisher because it empowers explosions.

The Demolisher gets increased critical strike chance with explosive weapons and explosive criticals benefit from 75% of a normal critical rather than the normal 50% at level 15. At level 5, ultra kills grant permanent scavenging and reloading is 25% faster for all weapons. Finally at level 25 Launchers, Rifles with Launchers, and other Special weapons gain a 10% chance not to consume ammo, and gain double the amount of stat upgrades (that is to say they upgrade faster, not that they upgrade further before hitting the soft cap). In fact, I have it on good authority that the double stat upgrades works at all levels, though I haven’t tested it myself yet.

For the most part, there isn’t a particularly great incentive to use launchers other than the Ares GL-16 itself. In fact, I would say there are only three launchers substantially better than the Ares GL-16 after the upgrade available from level 25 in the class. Specifically the HIG-S, ML7000 Plus, and maybe somewhat the Human RPG-7 (this will get a magazine of two RPGs when fully upgraded, but isn’t spectacular). Of these I have the easiest time getting multikills with the latter, but the other two are more powerful, especially the former. The ML7000 is difficult to use.

Beyond those, the M79 Terminator isn’t bad, but isn’t much of an upgrade to the upgraded Ares GL-16, swap for them if you feel like it, or if you don’t have the level 25 talent. The M32 Multi-Purpose is nice for creating multiple explosion locations like the HIG-S, but is a somewhat poor weapon otherwise. Interestingly, the Yoko-Lagann also counts as a launcher. The HIG-S and red-rarity Annihilator ANH-5 count as special and launcher both, which is slightly useful to be aware after the 25 talent.

As with Breacher, the real weapon focus is your mandatory item, Seismic Resonator. However, the weapons that work well with this are not as varied. The Damnation, the Object 29, the Type-89 Tokko all create explosions while not being launchers themselves. Of the above, the Damnation is the standout here, but the Object 29 is also excellent. I recommend choosing between these and the HIG-S, mainly. These weapons are the primary beneficiary of the double stat upgrades after the soft cap, moreso if weapon upgrade kits are not used on your secondary weapon.

In addition to this, the evergreen weapons are always great, but if you don’t have at least one means to create explosions at range, your class features will languish a bit. Having such an excellent starting weapon as the Ares GL-16 helps mitigate this risk. The evergreen list is as always, the AEK Special Elite, RPK-12, AMD 65, Viciator Ultra, UMP-10, LS Laser Sub, and AS-Val.

My thoughts right now are to token the Damnation, AEK Special Elite, and either another evergreen weapon or the HIG-S, but I admit I haven’t figured out the Demolisher very well yet. I have used the RPG-7 as a primary weapon, but in truth though it has a certain flair, the Ares GL-16 is likely good enough.

The Demolisher has a neat bag of tricks that can devastate and generally make fools of Kaida regulars and the Kaida elite. The Demolisher class rewards devious tactics. This is then combined with item usage bonuses common to Specialists and the item power bonus at level 10, for a capable all-around kit with lots of AoE damage. However, Demolisher’s damage bonuses are awkward against bosses. Demolisher also doesn’t have extraordinary tankiness like the Engineer or the two guardian classes, and doesn’t have the movement bonuses of the Rogues or Raider, so it isn’t a greatly forgiving class.