I usually don’t remember to change difficulty, heh. I did change global diff to Hard on one character at least. And yeah, GS 500 means squat once you hit Manhattan.
rei
1625
It wasn’t even NYC but the encounters in DC before I bought WONY were noticeably more difficult with existing GS500 gear as well after the WONY patch.
rei
1626
I’ve never used marksman rifles or rifles but I just looted a Classic M1A so I had to try it. It’s crazy overpowered. I’m trivializing normal/hard by 1-2 shotting everything.
Basically, my experience today.
Yeah, it’s pretty sick. I have the Baker’s Dozen named M1A and using Perfect Glass Canon and Companion and getting something like 2 million dmg with crits which is every other shot at 50% critical chance and Boomerang on the gun itself just makes it even more fun devastating.
rei
1628
Did two challenging runs of Lincoln Memorial with 3 other people. All of us had Baker’s Dozen M1As and we facerolled it.
Thanks to rei for helping out and introducing me to the wacky world of mask hunting. The difference between builds and players was highlighted for me when we added that rando and the target that was destroying us went down in second. Whoever that dude we picked up was, he made me look like a kindergartner.
JeffL
1630
Where does one find the Baker’s Dozen? I don’t think I’ve picked on up yet.
KevinC
1631
I think it might be a season reward, but I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten it as a drop as well. My inventory had like 3 of them in it, anyway, so seems like there’s multiple sources.
rei
1632
Random drop as well as level 57 of Season reward.
Been playing this a lot since the exp.
Loot 2.0 is growing on me now that I can ‘read’ a piece of gear a lot quicker and find out if its a keeper or not. This took a good week or so to get comfortable with.
I have 3 main builds I am refining that all function great in any challenging 1-4 player game.
A striker gear set based straight gun build with riot foam + situational skill. Pretty boring but works.
Skill (tier 6) explosive skill damage mortar build. Tons of fun to play but takes some finesse/practice with the turret. Can trivialize some encounters if you bombard group spawn points. Slightly weaker against heavies and their overtuned ‘KILL THE TURRET OVER ALL ELSE’ behavior.
A tank/healer build in two variations (dps or tanky) that lets me just stand in the middle and go toe to toe with anything/any groups in challenging. Uses Liberty exotic pistol as its key talent to keep shield healed. Slower to run solo and my index finger aches after playing it due to semi auto pistol spam. Tested in heroic content but not quite god rolled enough for that, shield melts a bit fast in large groups.
Loving the game again…
I rolled up a tanky shield character and it is indeed hilarious just walking up and shooting bad guys in the face while their bullets bounce off the shield… or ricochet back at them if I use the deflector style! I don’t have a good pistol yet tho so it takes forever to kill anything. Sometimes I use the smaller shield and Sweet Dreams shotgun which melee-kills non-elites instantly, adding insult to injury.
Speaking of Liberty pistol, I’ve got all of the parts and now I’m trying to find a D50 as the “base” of the crafting operation. Just completed a 45-minute mission where pistol was the targetted loot and literally had only 2 purple X-45 pistols drop… sigh
If possible group up with 3 others and ask if anyone gets a spare they can share.
I redid my liberty quest over the weekend. Pistol targeted was Roosevelt Island, only took one run to get a D50 as someone was nice enough to share a drop after I asked.
KevinC
1636
What helps a shield build more, stacking armor/defense or skill?
You will want to target skill tier 6, most folks go technician for the free +1. You can then mix in 1 red or 1 blue depending what you want.
A requirement for shield (IMO) is liberty pistol and the named (gold not exotic) gloves you can get from technician field research that give 20% skill health. My bulwark shield has 17mill health at the moment.
The majority of armor/defense things/items impact YOUR armor bar, not the shields, and thus don’t really apply.
The flame spec shield that lets you use other weapons is a lot of fun but has like 1/3rd the health of the bulwark.
rei
1638
The clan vendor sells the D50 this week
Holy smokes, you’re right! Wow, that was easy… I now have a Liberty! thx
There are a few pieces that have synergy with shield including Pointman vest (with Perfect Vanguard), Forge holster, and Gila backpack w/Protector. I have only 3 skill tiers but the shield itself is tier 6 and has like 14 million health. I also just got Sawyer’s kneepads which seem to fit in well too which make you impervious to explosion stagger.
Also, put plenty of Explosion resistance and Hazard protection because while you’ll shrug off bullets and axes and the like, you can still get fried pretty quickly by the elements!
You will have to decide between extra damage (example: +20% Pistol damage kneepads vs Sawyer’s) and more “turtling” depending on playstyle and group make-up.
This is what im running, swapping a pistol damage piece for a defense heavy piece depending…
rei
1642
I’ve got 165/165 specialization points for the Gunner, Survivalist, Demolitionist and Sharpshooter classes. On stage 2 of Technician field research.
rei
1643
I’m doing Challenging mode comfortably now and Hard is too easy. I don’t think I’ll ever waste time doing Heroic.
