Tactical is my favorite, but the second core perk, you should go with the more damage after gunstrike than the versatility perk. Yes, versatility provides your secondary with flat 20% more damage, however, it ends when you reload or switch back to primary. That perk works better for any class that has access to plasma pistol secondary (cause you never have to reload). The awesomeness of tactical is he has melee weapon, which can create gunstrike in a pinch. Combine that with first core perks, wave or group of majoris is a none issue. Pair that with plasma incinerator, with overheat perk, you got yourself some real high damage. Parry, gunstrike, charge up the shot and let her rip.
Yes to the UI showing more info of what abilities are up or on cooldown. This is something Destiny was very good at (sometimes almost too much info at once) and other games including Space Marine could take a page from it
If you’re good at the game it doesn’t matter what level you play at or if you use meta weapons although it isn’t going to be optimal, best to play low level on high difficulty solo or with friends who don’t need a carry to win
The game should just not let you solo queue if you’re under leveled. It’s really annoying getting level 12’s for Lethal. My friends and I intentionally run operations under leveled but we’re in a group and know what we are doing.
It’s SO satisfying matching up with a good random squad in Lethal who communicate by marking things or using the in game lines and for some reason you just mesh well. Found a squad and did 4 lethal missions with them and it was perfection.
Just finished about 3 with a group and had a similar experience... No one was being carried and each of us having clutch moments... Some hard fought wins but lots of fun.
everyone is underestimating the dagger on vanguard. Charged attack is super fast and easy to land. one grappling and charge 1 sec of it hand land the attack, it does wonders of ruthless/lethal difficulty. Made 22K only on melee on mission 7 and with the 15% aura. you should try it!
You’re talking about the shadow stab right? I’ve never actually tried the shadow stab, I wasn’t sure what the use case for it was where it would be better than just throwing out light/chain heavy swings
@@stylisgames have you tried it on sniper melee build? Blocking knife has like 15 dmg, 100% attack buff to the melee attack that breaks camo, so if you go for fully charged shadow stab, that should be like a 1 shot attack that incapacitates healthy majoris?
5:30 the objective best thing you can do is you parry aim down sights and shoot the melta (aiming lets you shoot the gun instead of a gun strike) and then gun strike. There is no better option than this. Also with the melta you can get more damage if you melee between shots, this lets you save ammo in the long run without really hurting overall dps.
True, the comparison was for naught because it worked on the basis that you get the gun strike off, which is not always the case, especially when you have 5-6 majoris around you in Ruthless/Lethal; as opposed to the melta which will stun them 100%.
Awful vanguard analogy. Of course everyone is gonna parry to get the gunstrike for way more damage. Thats not what the interrupt is for. The interrupt is to get the subsequent gunstrike off. Its rate that you have 1 majoris jumping at you. If 6 of them are all coming with attacks, yeah you will parry them all and strike the last one. But its when the 5th one is doing a dodge instead of a counter and by the time youre reset on your feet, the gunstrike on the last parry is over and if you got off the perfect dodge, you cant get that one because the parried guys are no longer dazed and arent going to let you get the strike off either. Unless you interrupt them. The melta is less for interrupts and more for both instant contested health regen or weaving aoe in between attack chains or finishers. Also with the grapling hook increases ranged damage, instant melta shot into your melee combo into parry gunstrike and it's finishable.
Yea i agree with this. Melta is top for vangaurd. Interrupt + instant contested health regen, sometimes even interrupt orange attacks and even if you get hit if you melta blast them right away you get all your contested health back. Not to mention, if you take on multiple majoris + extremis all at 6 gonna wish you had that aoe spread that melta gives you. I can regularly take on multiple majoris' at the same time with melta and parry/gun strikes as long as i keep them all in front of me, which is easily done by circling and dodging back. There's just no comparison between melta and the other options for vangaurd. I also like the synergy with tip of the spear that makes them take 15% more ranged damage from diving kick. It's a great combo starter. Grapple > melta blast > melee. On the ranged enemies they also take double damage from melta rifles its not just the instigator bolt rifle. So weaving in melta shots with melee combos feels really good
100% - I also feel that weapon type is playstyle-based. Melta fits my style best, as I prefer stagger/interrupts over better single-target headshots across the map. Additionally, I prefer the Minoris clearance rate.
My favorite thing about the Heavy Plasma Incinerator is that when you lob a charged shot into a group of Tyranids and you nuke them, it feels like taking a basketball and sinking it at the 3-point line, and you hear the noise the net makes when the ball goes into it.
Play mostly Assault, all on Ruthless & Lethal and cleared anything since release. With Assault you should build it around Groundslam, also the 100% Dmg Increase Perk. With all the + Dmg Perks of the Hammer (you wont be able to fill all out) + Majoris Dmg you are able to OHK Warriors on Lethal with a full charged Groundslam. Also Venators / Liktors (kinda tricky to get a clear hit) are at least near death. With Auspex they a guarantee OHK but you may not execute them because of the over dmg. With that you can nuke a pack of warriors what ever they be in numbers with a near hit dmg so much that a single Hammer light swing will bring them all in execute range. So you get a lot of "WTF was THAT?" Comments . Its important to get them instant or double hit down them, because you have to handle so much of them you want to thin them out fast. Btw... you can Nuke Zoantrophes with it also, it depends on the altitude and maybe rare but if they fly low charge up and Aim below them. They will get instant down, very satisfying. ;)
Yea as a Vanguard I don’t see anything in the game to match the melts at cleaning the little shits up fast enough to get uninterrupted parry and gunstrike time on the majoris. Fast and efficient. Let your team work on bosses, I don’t have to solo carnifax.
Ya he’s a melta hater. Cracks me up. But he’s lying to new players who won’t be that skilled at the start. Shame to be so biased as opposed to helping newbies
Yeah, I'm with you on this. Parry and shoot, you can do that on any weapon, lol. Also, the Instigator does really shitty damage against melee majoris and Terminus enemies. People keep talking about hlw the Melta does low damage, but Melta players regularly top/ compete on the damage charts. Your job with the melta isn't to blast one guy, it's to blast the biggest blob you can find. It's 29 damage, yeah, but hit that on 3 or 4 Warriors plus all the gaunts in between, and that's well over 100 damage.
Man has a considerable bias against the Melta and it's really odd. It's like he's going out of his way to push that the gun is useless in almost every example he gives. Exactly like this one. I'm not saying you can't use the Instigator Carbine but you have to really downplay the threat of a horde on top of you to say it's a better option than the melta.
The Vanguard would be even better if they allowed you to use your grapple attack on flying enemies. If it is too hard to code it would also be cool if you could drag them down to the ground for a few seconds.
I have to disagree with on the perks you are using for the Las Fusil. You are taking 20% wider beam and 25% dmg buff for 5secs on 3+ multikill over 30% headshot dmg and a perk that basically makes it so you never need to pick up a single medpack in lethal anymore? Crazy.
Honestly his sniper build is just bad. I think I've seen breakpoints that show the 30% headshot, with the ammo perk, and the 14 damage last fusil is just way better. Why would you not go for headshot damage??
I stand by the melta van. The melta is a mix-up used in conjunction with your melee. It's used to insta cancel reinforcement and keep the field clear from adds while you deal with the warriors up close. I prefer to play melee because it's fun and not because I was a wllock lament main in a past life. For the assault I don't like the dodge route. I go the slam route. Cohesion for 10% cooldown Precision and Diligence for a Whopping 120% damage on a fully charged slam. I choose maneuverability over zealous blow for a straight 20% cooldown since the AOE is reduced with Precision strike. This build can still hit multiple majoris and put them in finisher state despite the reduced AOE.
Umm a vanguard with a melta and knife is OP as shit. You’re essentially going from Majoris to Majoris getting health back, causing huge AOE with diving Kick every 20 seconds, and your secondary just stays in your holster until you have to deal with a ranged boss which is no big deal if youre a good shot and don’t move in for the kill until you’re ready to trade contested health with the melta until it dies. Super viable on lethal
1000% I was like you brother, but you can't rely on your teammates to kill two zoanthropes or God forbid a neurothrope. You have to take matters into your own hands brother, that melta rifle ain't going to shizz. You're already a God in melee, so you might as well supplement your weakness. You kill ranged units in 2 seconds with a bolter and you actually have competent boss damage. Edit: if you're playing in a pre-made and they are range specialists, then obviously who cares, they're covering your back. Random blueberrys on the otherhand 😬 I'd rather be all around great over specifically targeting the easiest enemies in the game.
Heavy with plasma doesn't need auspex, he just nukes ranged majoris into executable state with one shot, and melee majoris with two shots. Heavy with plasma is *the guy* if you need to carry. Well, both are good, but I prefer heavy dude.
I was having trouble with Lethal with my friends and Randoms but I found two guys yesterday that helped out and we did all the missions in one sitting and it was great. We always had a Bulwark with that contested health perk and that saved us from dying completely because it stops the mortal wound. I know the plasma pistol is objectively better, but I ran my maxed out bolt anyways. We always had a tactical with that Grenade launcher, nuff said. And we always had a heavy that was either using the plasma or the melta. I know that's not too specific build wise but if people are having trouble like I was, those three with those things are like a cheat code to Lethal.
I essentially won all my lethal rounds with a bulwark a heavy and I was tactical. We are the buffs for contested health, contested health earned, and ammo up. I just sat back with my tactical and launch grenades and I let the bulwark and the heavy clean up any stunned enemies. I finished a couple once in awhile to recharge my nades.
When I heard the line about this being TV's perception of the best builds rather than favourite builds I had hoped this would mean admitting the melta is best for the vanguard class. Obviously it's easily defensible to pick the plasma incinerator for the heavy and the bolt rifle with grenade launcher for the tactical but for vanguard the melta is just better than the instigator. You can switch out to the instigator before the heldrake or hive tyrant but otherwise the only time you would want to use it is if you are pairing up with an assault and bulwark.
Yeah, Melta + knife is the way to go for melee oriented combat. Not spamming, but group-stunning in between knife attacks. "Marksman" Vanguard is also fun, but it's a choice. Better suited against chaos, probably, and for boss fights.
He refuses to admit the melta is best for the majority of situations you face in the game. The instigator may have its uses, but they're very situational and dependent on what your team is doing.
He refuses to admit the melta is best for the majority of situations you face in the game. The instigator may have its uses, but they're very situational and dependent on what your team is doing.
@@DJordan115 I understand why people don't like the melta weapons. They have a low skill requirement and it's what most new players seem to default to when they find out how useful the stagger and add clear is. It's legitimate to point out that the range is poor as well for zo/neurothropes as well. But he's just biased against the weapons and not running melta on vanguard is the wrong choice ~90% of the time even with the bolter buffs.
@@youtubevoice1050Would you have any tips on using the knife effectively? I've tried using it, but went back to the chainsword, because the knife's time to kill spamming light attacks didn't feel all that much faster, plus the shoulder bash combo on the chainsword has such great range, damage, and I think it even tracks enemy movement a little bit.
In the case of the Vanguard with a melta (this is just me personally) I use it to both maintain the stunlock and do more damage with both melee and ranged attacks as I have +damage effects for both ( I shoot from the hip after the slash/kick combo from chain sword and just alternate like that). It's not so much that it just stuns it's the fact that you'll also interrupt enemy attack animations, this is particularly useful against Chaos marines. I also tend to dive and multi-parry like 6 attacks in a single go because the extended parry window mechanics let you do that (not sure if thats intended or a bug. It's just something I found that works for me) so I tend to have very little trouble in Lethal because of that. Of course it does take some getting used to as if you mess up on one parry or dive in at the wrong time your probably dead from enemy hit stun as they will all target you, but it's been working well for me so far as the aoe detonation talent on the dive in creates an opening and space for a about 1-2 secs. That's usually enough advantage on initiative for team mates to punch through as well as for you to clear a way out with parries and melta push back. This is just preference on my end as I prefer to have more control over a fight. In the case of the Sniper I do take the emergency invis talent to abuse position and damage+ for both standing still and being invis lol. In the long run I don't think it's more dps but in Extremis or boss fights it can turn into a ton of burst for about 7-10 secs. It's purely an abusive play lol. In the case of the bulwark I take both the armor perk that makes you immune to knock back and +10% damage on banner because there's a point in lethal where your armor hp doesn't matter, what matters is doing more damage on the trade to push your target into the red for executions (once again personal choice), and it tends to give me far more yield. This also helps with the gun strikes as you can take them even if you get hit because it won't interrupt the animation (so long as you have armor) most of the time. I also stick to chain sword as I tend to screw myself with power sword lol. The curse of muscle memory. In the case with assault, I try to play it as an aggressive bodyguard with Heavy Pistol and Chainsword. I take the two talents that reward jump pack dodging because not only can you bait gun strikes that are just hard to get, you can just get more of them and it also works with jump packing straight up AS a dodge and go into a ground slam. (btw jump pack dodging is really hard lol, super rewarding but damn yo.) In the case of tactical I have a similar mentality as the Vanguard with a Melta. It also doesn't help that I'm definitely a melta junky. For context I mostly play with pugs, got my helm, and this is just what worked out for me. Might give others some ideas that could help.
I USED to be a melta die-hard because they feel amazing, much better than every other weapon out the gate. The issue ar higher levels of play is melee enemies by themselves literally don't pose a threat. Hitting parry in a horde almost guarantees you full armor with the changes and tyranid warriors/minoris enemies have no way of getting through your defenses if your eyes are open. Runs are won and lost depending on how you deal with ranged enemies so I started to gravitate towards ranged weapons that can take care of them.
@@spartanlemon9397 sure, if you ignore the melee enemies and pray the shotgun tyranid stays CCd the entire time, yeah they're dealt with, but how are you taking care of the zoanthropes and bosses (specifically neurothrope)? The Melta is great for CC, but you'll run out of ammo way before any boss goes down unless you have a tac on your team or resupply box.
@TrippyTigre I've genuinely never struggled with ammo against Neuro. I usually stick right underneath it when I have Melta, that way its ai decides to fly down and scream, removing pressure off of my team. When it's not screaming, I'm underneath blasting.
@@TrippyTigre Instigator doesn't CC ranged enemies though, you can only consistently interrupt rocket terminators and other big threats with the melta and grapple.
@TrippyTigre i also never have issues with neurothropes since they have a phase where they land and pulse waves and you can get in there and hit them. Sure at range all i got is my bolt pistol (i hope vangaurd gets the neo volkite pistol to help alleviate this). One time on a ruthless run I beat a neurothrope in a group with just melee classes. Bulwark, assault, vangaurd by hitting it when it landed and shooting it with pistols. The problem of not being able to do tons of damage to flying enemies is one that all melee classes share anyways so its not unique to the vangaurd. Also a sniper, heavy, tactical can deal with zoanthropes way faster than a vangaurd with an instigator. That's one of the reasons the class implements the one class per mission rule so that your teammates can cover your weaknesses and you can cover theirs. Not every class has to be good at dealing with everything. The vangaurd is a close range specialist with some at range options. The one class that is the jack of all trades is the tactical. I don't think vangaurd is supposed to be the all arounder in the team.
I think going top tree for Instigator is better than loading up the magazine with extended mags. Free reloads on finisher is insane and 35% headshot DMG after an empty reload makes you DESTROY an extremis or majoris in 3-5 burst. Perpetual Penetration is a must. Not getting ammo back in reserves in a bit of an L but your bolt pistol is more than capable and you can just save the Instigator with mag empty for when something needs to die now.
All I’d say for sniper when it comes to being invulnerable for 5 seconds every 3 mins, is you acc benefit from never needing to use a medkit, and I like the faster charge shots so being low health is a buff. Also you don’t need radius to kill multiple enemies at once. And if you run a bulwark and you refill your contested, one shot will full heal you. This is better for higher difficulties as your teammates have more consumables for sustain and bulwark has access to his banner whenever. and I never even down with this comp. Ran all 7 missions on the new difficulty without downing once, only issue is sometimes the ammo is a bit less reliable than the build shown here
Running around in Ruthless with. Heavy that has 50 Multi-Melta shots is some really stupid fun. You have no range, but you are the shotgun man, you don't need no range.
Fun fact for Las Fusil. If you use the perk that "below 30% health killing 3 or more enemies restores health" you can get a full heal if you hit a big group of small enemies. Its how I was able to let all my teammates on lethal snag stims.
Chainsword is better than the dagger, particulary if you use the full throttle skip. With full throttle skip the chainsword out dpses the dagger 1v1 vs majoris. It also stunlocks them more consistently, and it is infininitley better for horde clear. Hard to test in absolute isolation, but including parry gunstrikes, I got: An average of 15 seconds to execution with chainsword 1v1 vs nid majoris using full throttle skip. An average of 19 seconds to execution with combat knife vs nid majoris. Testing was done loading into the start of 8 ballistic engine missions with bots, killing nids, then watching back to try and isolate the cleanest kills. Also melta is better than instigator unless your team lacks range vs chaos. Even then, the stun of melta is hard to ignore.
What's the full throttle skip? Like charge and animation cancel? Also i agree the melta rifle out performs instigator every time. Even in chaos missions.
@@Bigborian92783 You can search it here for a tutorial, but basically you pick the full throttle perk on the chainsword tree. Then in game you do a quick hold a release to skip your first mellee attack and go straight to the second. This means you can go (1) light (2) heavy shoulder bash, or (1 ) light (2) light (3) heavy stomp. You basically get to your most powerful moves quicker.
Knife is better at horde clear with light-heavy combo and the weapon perk that increases radius of that combo by 50%. It's fast, has good AOE, and sends minoris flying. You take way less damage repeating that combo, than goung for a stomp, skip or no skip. I prefer the knife more, but a balanced one, it's fast, the fencing one is kinda slow and for that is inferior to fencing chainsword.
Just chiming in about vangaurd with melta. I enjoy your videos and I learned a lot from them so don't take this as I'm not a fan or something haha. I think melta is the only best option for the vangaurd and i really think the hate on melta comes from the people who think it's just too easy of a weapon to use and perform well with. In my opinion, the vangaurd is designed to be a close range specialist. That's why the class skill you get is a grappnel launcher so that you can close distance fast. It's not designed to be an all arounder jack of all trades type of class. That's the tactical. I think its perfectly fine to have a weakness for vangaurd because that's supposed to be covered by your team who are range specialists. This is also a problem for assault and bulwark too but there doesn't seem to be anyone saying they need to be able to handle the flying enemies and bosses. Additionally in your true damage video that you posted the melta rifle out performed the instigator rifle per shot and it also does double damage to ranged majoris that is not unique to the instigator. Apparently all ranged weapons do double damage to ranged majoris. Another thing is the easy access to get your contested health back. So for bosses it does decent damage but the great thing about it is if you're close you can parry the hits you can parry and gun strike but if you get hit you can get right back up and melta blast them to get all your contested health back. I have "tanked" carnifex's and hellbrutes in lethal and ruthless this way. Although i will still overall lose some health i can hang in there like that and not die.
Vanguard was my first class and instigator was my first gun and I love the setup so much. Run the combat knife, hunt majoris and get 10% health back on execute. I was doing a lethal run the other day and I was carrying the team, letting then have all the stims and clutching the run when they went down. I'm not even bragging, I'm no God gamer or anything its just that effective and I've spent so much time playing the class. Grappling a major, giving it a ranged damage debuff. Blast it in the head a couple times with the instigator, finish with the knife and get some health back. It's so effective who needs a melta? I will use the load out station and use the melta for specific instances like the bridge on decapitation. But instigator is the way to go and it's so much fun. Also inner fire is incredible.
The melta can stun more than one enemy. You don't get that with the instigator. It also add clears behind the main target. I'm not a great gamer either but I can carry teams a lot of the time with the melta. You just need a sniper/heavy/tactical for it to work.
I leveled up the instigator just because i saw so many people praising it saying its better than melta. While i will say its not bad, its just not better than the melta. I die more when i use instigator. I did like doing the grappling hook to chaos marine and then point blank aim and burst some shots to their head. But i felt because of the lack of stun and contested health back, if that combo doesn't kill them, I'm gonna take damage. I found myself dying a lot more with instigator than with melta.
@TrueVanguard You have some real good insights, but I respectfully disagree on the meltas for three reasons. 1 - Melta is just point and delete plus stun, Plasma require targeting, and bolters require headshots. If someone is new to the game, I would suggest maxing meltas first. Plasma and Bolter take time to really learn. 2 - Melta seem to level very smoothly and just get better. Bolters and Plasma are only good at or near max. 3 - When you are getting swarmed, I don't think anyone would want a plasma or bolter over a Melta. I really enjoy the bolter and plasma options, but they are nowhere near as good as the Meltas. I only play Ruthless with a Melta.
You can fire the heavy plasma and grenade bolter at your feet which does massive damage and stun to everything around you instead of the small cone of a melta. It is a noob weapon for sure but as soon as you unlock mastercrafted versions of each one (single substantial mission) it gets left behind.
One cool thing about the Duelist perk is it lets you run a balanced weapon with essentially the same parry window as a fencing weapon, without the stat tradeoffs. I like it over trading taking more ranged damage for taking less melee damage because I should be parrying most melee damage anyway. I could see liking Close-Combat perk if you're set on bolter/chainsword since that changes your primary wave clear to melee stomp + gun strike, but I like how the Melta trivializes wave clearing to the point where I'm only worried about getting randomly jumped by a Ravener from off-screen. I just grapnel enemies who try to call for reinforcements. My fav thing to do as Vanguard rn is getting in enemies' faces with grapnel/knife and clearing waves with melta/nades, but this makes me want to try instigator bolter!
Can you please make video about weapon perks? Why are they in different shapes? Even if they say the same. Do they work for that gun only or all guns you have? Do headshot damage works for Gun Strike? Do better weapon increase Gun Strike damage? Will "icrease dmg after perfect parry/dodge" work for Gun Strike?
Man, I love Bulwark so much. I literally only ever play Heavy when Bulwark is already taken. If they ever patch the matchmaking and fix that, I'll probably continue playing my 25 Bulwark with Relic weapons 😂
If the end game damage screen doesn't show gun strike damage or perfect parry damage in the melee and range sections, there should be a third damage section that's just "Total Damage" that calculates all the damage you've done to enemies across all sources. Including gun strike, parry, grenade and environmental
Not sure I agree with your logic on the first point - sure, a parry and gunstrike is great, but what if the warrior does an unblockable attack or something else on the side whacks you first? It's not laboratory conditions, after all, and both attacks are situational. I wouldn't say to dive into a swarm and immediately melta shot them unless you WANT to stun them all or are interrupting reinforcement calls. But if you're going to just dive into a group and wait for a parry opportunity that may not happen right away, that's a bit silly. A melta is for clearing trash anyway, I think any Vanguard worth his salt knows he should be meleeing a warrior if possible.
Exactly. He keeps bringing up the melta's damage. It's not built for single target damage. It's built to clear all the ads and stun the major, allowing us to knife them to death. The instigator can't do either one of those.
@@DJordan115 Also, if you're vaguely decent as a vanguard with a melta you are manouvering and lining up the melta to do damage to more than just the primary target. You can dodge around a thousand sons marine or majoris tyranid while laying waste to the minoris around them.
@DJordan115 im actually pretty sure the melta does more single target damage than the instigator. The only downside is that you have to be up close and personal to a boss. But he even did a true damage value video on both of these weapons and the melta did more damage than the instigator to both melee and ranged majoris. Also he seems to always bring up that instigator does double damage to ranged majoris but that's not unique to the instigator. All ranged weapons do double damage to ranged enemies. Melee damage does double damage to melee enemies. That's just the mechanics of the game. So melta also does double damage to ranged majoris
your question about the scenarios of course the gun strike is better, BUT the melter is not ment for that scenario. it is for a whole group of majoris with sword and stop them all, or to clear out terma dnd hormagunts. the instigator has another role. in case you dont have an heavy or sniper with you. ok in random games it is hard to choose since you may not know how the others play or which loadout they got, but with a team you know, you pick your weapons on what fits the role you have to take
As someone who’s played a lot of lethal heavy with all 3 weapons the plasma is more fun but the melter is just easier to get the clear. Helps out so much more when getting overwhelmed. Only over thing is on the sniper I’d take the dead cloak ability. Yes quality of life is good but saving a run is more important imo especially with random groups
Notes: Important to compare difficulty. Take your Vanguard Melta example; Yes a 360 stun ontop of 100 gun strike dmg is better, but that is under the assumption you land the parry. Versus, me just pulling the trigger on a melta and guaranteeing a stun. That is a whole lot easier and less moving parts to pull off. Many factors play into these choices. I agree with the Instigator choice. There is also a mentality when making a build, called "Planning for Failure". For example, increasing your dodge window by 50% when below 50% hp, is a great perk if you are struggling in a difficulty with parrying. But if you never drop below 50% hp, you will never see the benefit of that perk which can arguably be called wasted. Versus, killing 10 enemies in quick succession (ie grenade, TNT barrel, Chainsword Stomp, etc; will return 1 Equipment Charge.) Depending on your build (melta lovers should go Equipment Charge) a player would receive more ulitilty from that perk, than a 50% HP dodge increase (Especially if you are running 10% HP return on majoris kills). Love your work on Space Marine 2 guides/break downs.
For tactical, any idea if the grenade launcher rounds count as equitment damage? Usually I don't pick the perk that gives 25% equitment damage to auspex scan but if your running GL that could be a nice use case.
Thanks for the heads up on gun strike damage not showing in the total damage. I was wondering why some games I feel like I put in more work and had 400+ kills but ended with thousands less overall damage. Is it safe to assume executions aren't part of total damage as well? The missions where I have to chain gun strikes and executions to carry the team and stay alive I end up with lower damage than what I would have expected.
I also WANT to like the sniper rifle over the Las Fusil but against Tyranids with ammo recovery perk you can actually clear massive waves of minoris so fast with the Las Fusil and not waste your ammo. With the Bolt Sniper Rifle you have zero wave clear ever, in any situation. Against Chaos though the minoris with the shields make it to where you can not freely do the same with the Las Fusil ammo restore perk.
For the Tactical, wouldn't Balanced Distribution (Your Primary Weapon deals 10% more Damage, but your Secondary Weapon deals 10% less Damage) be better than Kraken Penetrator Rounds (Bolt Weapons penetrate 1 more enemies)? The bolt rifle with grenade launcher has a base penetration rating of 3, is increasing that to 4 actually impactful? I'd much rather increase its damage by 10%! Balanced Distribution's downside of -10% secondary damage is practically non-existent when you're running Emperor’s Vengeance (Killing a Majoris-level or higher enemy restores your Primary Weapon’s Ammo by 1 magazines). It's nigh impossible to run out of primary ammo unless you're skipping every Majoris kill, so you can run the whole map and have no reason to even use your secondary weapon.
Kraken rounds have nothing to do with weapon penetration. Penetration simply ignores enemies' armor. whereas Krak amo actually goes *through* enemies and hits additional one.
@anitaremenarova6662 you can't use nades all the time. You can use it a *lot*, I admit. But not all the time. And nades don't need a dmg boost. It doesn't make them kill things faster, nor does it his certain breakpoints.
@anitaremenarova6662 highly situational. I could see that 10% if you are going for Hive Tyrant but other than that, Auspex has more than enough dmg to kill this stuff quickly (even more so if you pick the last signature perk)
Agreed on all account except some things I think you’re missing on the assault perks. The one where you don’t get knocked back after ground pound is not the strongest in that tree.
When I grapnel into a group of Majoris and the 5th one back behind a pack of Minoris begins calling for reinforcements, my Melta interrupts and staggers everything in its path, and clears the Minoris with one shot. Melta deals less damage, as you know, because of its ability to do so much per shot. It's wasted on single targets as a damage dealer. I wish I could drop the Pistol for the Instigator. 😂
Thats'a what TV missed in his analysis here. The melta shatters the enemy behind your main target. Anyone with a clue is constantly shifting to hit enemies behind the target you are just about to execute.
Just started leveling the Sniper, really surprised that its so fun and not as squishy as I expected. Just have to manage groups of minoris because its more annoying to deal with compared to classes with the chainsword.
Brother, I know you've done good work in this game and that these are subjective, but I cannot wrap my head around that instigator pick. From 3:33 - 3:57 you engage a chaos marine and its mediocrity is on full display: You begin by telling us that the weapon does double damage against ranged (I saw your damage testing video and I know what you mean and how much incredible work you did), then engage the marine. It's true, you interrupt his call-in at long range, but you proceed to spend 19 bolt rounds (emptying your clip) with only a few misses, and don't get anywhere near stunning him. Once he teleports to you, it takes 5 more melee hits to stun. If you're placing all the value on that call-in interrupt, sure, the weapon has utility. But if, as a practical matter, outside of a testing environment, it's taking more than a single clip to stun a majoris, I just don't think you can ever call it OP, or even decent. It may be fine as a distraction to stop reinforcements, but it's a worse weapon than the bolt pistol.
The Vanguard scenario you described is pointless because you rarely just fight one Majoris. And you need to take into account the 15% extra ranged damage after an enemy is grappled + the 10% extra damage for the first shot after a reload for the Melta. Thus you have a grapple, 25% extra damage from 1 shot of the Meltam then you switch to melee, and you delete Majoris and have an option to clear ads, especially on higher difficulty levels. For bosses the same strat works, if you can outmaneuver them and don't be afraid to use your sidearm. Not saying the Instigator is bad, just that it's objectively not as good. Aaaand Bulwarks and Assaults will thank you for picking the extra 15% melee damage perk. Your build is not even close to being OP or even optimal, you just made it work for you.
Didn't see your Power Sword Perk Tree on the Bulwark build if that was supposed to be included. I'm wanting to try all of your builds to see how they play.
I have found taking the ammo variant of the Las fusil on sniper is better when facing tyranids, since the 15 dmg one does not seem to be able to kill tyranid majors in one headshot. The 15 dmg one against chaos allows you to one tap marines whereas the 14 one can not without cloak. What do you think is the most effective class distribution in a squad? Bulwark for area denial and support buffs, heavy with plasma and tactical for ad clearing? Do you find heavy plasma or las fusil is better for a single target clearing role?
Very cool! I would be interested to know why bolt pistol over plasma with the heavy - some of the perks for the plasma pistol benefit the incinerator, so I'd have thought it had better synergy.
I usually run plasma pistol along the heavy plasma incinerator because de ammo (i'm not sure about the rest) perks are shared for both weapons. So I can go full top row with the incinerator and have more ammo with the pistol perks.
Swap the assualt to do more damage to majors and higher level enemies. Same with weapon perks. Ignore the double slams. They're not worth it. Juice up majoris damage. I know it forces you to do more damage to chaos enemies but one slam and a simple swing hive majors are put in a cripple state. Even on ruthless. Chaos majors insta cripple if you land a dirct full charge. Kill majoris hive minor enemies become cake walk. Ive carried multiple lethal even pre nerf lethal once i swapped the build to a majoris killer.
Haha wrote the same. ;) Near idk 90%+ of Guides to Assault dont do it and claim you wont be able to do it, thats flat wrong. You can just Nuke a 5er pack of Warriors in 2 sec (beside charge up time) and with a very clear hit also Liktors & Venators (rare to get them clean but even if not they are near death after you got them) and low flying Zoantrophes in a tunnel? jeah they are simply dead.
Parrying on bulwark seems a little odd for me - as it works so inconsistently. Is the parry window smaller as for other classes? I'm getting beaten much more often than using the tactical or any other class. Any hints on that?
Speaking of things the game never really explains, I have a confession to make. The little blue aura that surrounds enemies sometimes? In god only knows how many hours of the game… never figured out what it means. It doesn’t seem to make much difference.
I normally only use the melta gun, but my friend and I decided to do our first ruthless mission and we were paired with a random lv25 Tactical. Most other tacticals we play with use only the melta gun too but this guy was running Grenade Bolt rifle and I didn't realise how strong it was until he solo killed a Hellbrute wiithin 10 seconds of it appearing. Now here I am wondering what the optimal builds are cos Melta guns aern't deleting enemies like that lmao
Cloack 75% damage gperk gets added to the cloacks original 25% boost making it 100% more damage. And with damage relic fusil and heatshot perks you can instakill ranged majoris and get melee majoris to execution range. I think the damage i calculated was 440something for one shot.
29:21 really?, you didn't wanna mention how to properly kill a zoan as assault?... 15% gun damage point blank until it drops into its AOE attack, then instead of running away? lol you go INTO melee and groundslam the bug.
definitely need a perfect dodge guide to help out with the sniper invis dodge perk, as I can never seem to get the perfect dodge right so I never get use out of that perk and thus don't run it
Melta interrupt into a knife shadow stab. You're using the chainsword for hordeclear and the instigator for single target. You _cannot_ use the instigator to instantly make space, you need to get to the stomp on the sword for that.
Also, you're assuming it's a parriable attack. You're assuming it's not three ranged warriors with venom cannons that don't go into melee but keep charging those. Melta has a LOT more usecases than what you outlined.
It takes too long to get to the stomp. Knife is better at horde clear with light-heavy combo spam and the weapon perk that increases a radius of that combo by 50%. But you need the balanced knife for that, the fencing one is too slow, comparatively speaking.
On assault you missed the vital perk of doubling slam damage, this is your essential extremis deleter and terminus chunker, diligence is useless in higher difficulties I run 25% extra slam damage after finishers easy to get just dash strike a gaunt/tzaangor and you don't have to soak up extra damage in the air for no reason.
I've leveled up all weapons to relic tier and i find the melta guns to be way overrated. They're good at what they do but outside of of that niche they are worthless. Trying to deal with zoanthropes and neurothropes using a melta is painful, i'd rather use the occulus bolter.
Check out Filmora here: bit.ly/3U5RrWc
Which build do you enjoy running the most?
Tactical is my favorite, but the second core perk, you should go with the more damage after gunstrike than the versatility perk. Yes, versatility provides your secondary with flat 20% more damage, however, it ends when you reload or switch back to primary. That perk works better for any class that has access to plasma pistol secondary (cause you never have to reload). The awesomeness of tactical is he has melee weapon, which can create gunstrike in a pinch. Combine that with first core perks, wave or group of majoris is a none issue. Pair that with plasma incinerator, with overheat perk, you got yourself some real high damage. Parry, gunstrike, charge up the shot and let her rip.
Yes to the UI showing more info of what abilities are up or on cooldown. This is something Destiny was very good at (sometimes almost too much info at once) and other games including Space Marine could take a page from it
In your opening gunstrike example why can't the vangaurd weilding the melta open with a gunstrike?
The randoms I play with say otherwise, they say that level 2 assault on ruthless is the best build in the game LOL
I keep getting level 5-8 vanguards..
😂
@@dredgen0268 I got a lvl. 8 Vanguard if you down.
If you’re good at the game it doesn’t matter what level you play at or if you use meta weapons although it isn’t going to be optimal, best to play low level on high difficulty solo or with friends who don’t need a carry to win
The game should just not let you solo queue if you’re under leveled. It’s really annoying getting level 12’s for Lethal.
My friends and I intentionally run operations under leveled but we’re in a group and know what we are doing.
It’s SO satisfying matching up with a good random squad in Lethal who communicate by marking things or using the in game lines and for some reason you just mesh well. Found a squad and did 4 lethal missions with them and it was perfection.
A good team, especially by random chance enhances the game so much
Just finished about 3 with a group and had a similar experience... No one was being carried and each of us having clutch moments... Some hard fought wins but lots of fun.
everyone is underestimating the dagger on vanguard. Charged attack is super fast and easy to land. one grappling and charge 1 sec of it hand land the attack, it does wonders of ruthless/lethal difficulty. Made 22K only on melee on mission 7 and with the 15% aura. you should try it!
You’re talking about the shadow stab right? I’ve never actually tried the shadow stab, I wasn’t sure what the use case for it was where it would be better than just throwing out light/chain heavy swings
I usually go for 15% finishers so my team can use their abilities a lot esp tactical and bulwark
Agree the dagger is great
@@stylisgames have you tried it on sniper melee build? Blocking knife has like 15 dmg, 100% attack buff to the melee attack that breaks camo, so if you go for fully charged shadow stab, that should be like a 1 shot attack that incapacitates healthy majoris?
@@ДанилоЯнчук sounds fun! I'm planning on leveling sniper next so I'll give that a shot, although I'm typically not a fan of block weapons 😅
5:30 the objective best thing you can do is you parry aim down sights and shoot the melta (aiming lets you shoot the gun instead of a gun strike) and then gun strike. There is no better option than this. Also with the melta you can get more damage if you melee between shots, this lets you save ammo in the long run without really hurting overall dps.
Also melee between melta shots makes for some sick ass action movie combos
True, the comparison was for naught because it worked on the basis that you get the gun strike off, which is not always the case, especially when you have 5-6 majoris around you in Ruthless/Lethal; as opposed to the melta which will stun them 100%.
Awful vanguard analogy. Of course everyone is gonna parry to get the gunstrike for way more damage. Thats not what the interrupt is for. The interrupt is to get the subsequent gunstrike off. Its rate that you have 1 majoris jumping at you. If 6 of them are all coming with attacks, yeah you will parry them all and strike the last one. But its when the 5th one is doing a dodge instead of a counter and by the time youre reset on your feet, the gunstrike on the last parry is over and if you got off the perfect dodge, you cant get that one because the parried guys are no longer dazed and arent going to let you get the strike off either. Unless you interrupt them. The melta is less for interrupts and more for both instant contested health regen or weaving aoe in between attack chains or finishers. Also with the grapling hook increases ranged damage, instant melta shot into your melee combo into parry gunstrike and it's finishable.
Yea i agree with this. Melta is top for vangaurd. Interrupt + instant contested health regen, sometimes even interrupt orange attacks and even if you get hit if you melta blast them right away you get all your contested health back. Not to mention, if you take on multiple majoris + extremis all at 6 gonna wish you had that aoe spread that melta gives you.
I can regularly take on multiple majoris' at the same time with melta and parry/gun strikes as long as i keep them all in front of me, which is easily done by circling and dodging back.
There's just no comparison between melta and the other options for vangaurd. I also like the synergy with tip of the spear that makes them take 15% more ranged damage from diving kick. It's a great combo starter. Grapple > melta blast > melee. On the ranged enemies they also take double damage from melta rifles its not just the instigator bolt rifle. So weaving in melta shots with melee combos feels really good
100% - I also feel that weapon type is playstyle-based.
Melta fits my style best, as I prefer stagger/interrupts over better single-target headshots across the map.
Additionally, I prefer the Minoris clearance rate.
My favorite thing about the Heavy Plasma Incinerator is that when you lob a charged shot into a group of Tyranids and you nuke them, it feels like taking a basketball and sinking it at the 3-point line, and you hear the noise the net makes when the ball goes into it.
Play mostly Assault, all on Ruthless & Lethal and cleared anything since release.
With Assault you should build it around Groundslam, also the 100% Dmg Increase Perk. With all the + Dmg Perks of the Hammer (you wont be able to fill all out) + Majoris Dmg you are able to OHK Warriors on Lethal with a full charged Groundslam. Also Venators / Liktors (kinda tricky to get a clear hit) are at least near death. With Auspex they a guarantee OHK but you may not execute them because of the over dmg.
With that you can nuke a pack of warriors what ever they be in numbers with a near hit dmg so much that a single Hammer light swing will bring them all in execute range. So you get a lot of "WTF was THAT?" Comments .
Its important to get them instant or double hit down them, because you have to handle so much of them you want to thin them out fast.
Btw... you can Nuke Zoantrophes with it also, it depends on the altitude and maybe rare but if they fly low charge up and Aim below them. They will get instant down, very satisfying. ;)
Your Vanguard comparison said absolutely nothing about the weapon choice. You can just do the same parry gunstrike with the melta equiped lol
Yea as a Vanguard I don’t see anything in the game to match the melts at cleaning the little shits up fast enough to get uninterrupted parry and gunstrike time on the majoris.
Fast and efficient. Let your team work on bosses, I don’t have to solo carnifax.
Ya he’s a melta hater. Cracks me up. But he’s lying to new players who won’t be that skilled at the start. Shame to be so biased as opposed to helping newbies
Agreed, his argument is weak.
Yeah, I'm with you on this. Parry and shoot, you can do that on any weapon, lol. Also, the Instigator does really shitty damage against melee majoris and Terminus enemies.
People keep talking about hlw the Melta does low damage, but Melta players regularly top/ compete on the damage charts. Your job with the melta isn't to blast one guy, it's to blast the biggest blob you can find. It's 29 damage, yeah, but hit that on 3 or 4 Warriors plus all the gaunts in between, and that's well over 100 damage.
Man has a considerable bias against the Melta and it's really odd. It's like he's going out of his way to push that the gun is useless in almost every example he gives. Exactly like this one. I'm not saying you can't use the Instigator Carbine but you have to really downplay the threat of a horde on top of you to say it's a better option than the melta.
Just remember, the only thing better than a chain sword is two chain swords.
The Vanguard would be even better if they allowed you to use your grapple attack on flying enemies. If it is too hard to code it would also be cool if you could drag them down to the ground for a few seconds.
Oh that would be sick! Kind of like scorpion from mortal kombat
I have to disagree with on the perks you are using for the Las Fusil. You are taking 20% wider beam and 25% dmg buff for 5secs on 3+ multikill over 30% headshot dmg and a perk that basically makes it so you never need to pick up a single medpack in lethal anymore? Crazy.
Honestly his sniper build is just bad. I think I've seen breakpoints that show the 30% headshot, with the ammo perk, and the 14 damage last fusil is just way better. Why would you not go for headshot damage??
Yeah this is a bad Las Fusil build. Beam width isn't worth it when you ha e infinite horde clear ammo
@@AFKlayy Right? If it was any other class I'd get it but as a sniper using Las Fusil and not going for headshot dmg just seems weird.
I stand by the melta van. The melta is a mix-up used in conjunction with your melee. It's used to insta cancel reinforcement and keep the field clear from adds while you deal with the warriors up close. I prefer to play melee because it's fun and not because I was a wllock lament main in a past life.
For the assault I don't like the dodge route. I go the slam route. Cohesion for 10% cooldown Precision and Diligence for a Whopping 120% damage on a fully charged slam. I choose maneuverability over zealous blow for a straight 20% cooldown since the AOE is reduced with Precision strike. This build can still hit multiple majoris and put them in finisher state despite the reduced AOE.
Umm a vanguard with a melta and knife is OP as shit. You’re essentially going from Majoris to Majoris getting health back, causing huge AOE with diving Kick every 20 seconds, and your secondary just stays in your holster until you have to deal with a ranged boss which is no big deal if youre a good shot and don’t move in for the kill until you’re ready to trade contested health with the melta until it dies. Super viable on lethal
+
Vanguard is c tier bro
Just 4 fun build
1000% I was like you brother, but you can't rely on your teammates to kill two zoanthropes or God forbid a neurothrope. You have to take matters into your own hands brother, that melta rifle ain't going to shizz. You're already a God in melee, so you might as well supplement your weakness. You kill ranged units in 2 seconds with a bolter and you actually have competent boss damage.
Edit: if you're playing in a pre-made and they are range specialists, then obviously who cares, they're covering your back. Random blueberrys on the otherhand 😬 I'd rather be all around great over specifically targeting the easiest enemies in the game.
@@rouvenklingyou must be a braindead heavy plasma bot or tactical scan crutch player 💀
IIRC the "Focused Strength" Bulwark perk also sets up minoris enemies hit for a gunstrike, which further helps gaining back armor.
Great video!
Yeah Shield Bash gives you access to on-demand gun strikes any time you need a node of armor with minoris enemies. I love Bulwark so much
Nice walk-through on builds. Learned a fair bit. One step closer to playing better. 👍🏻👍🏻
The green spores are a pain now. One moment the area is clear of Green Spores then next moment you're dancing in a Tyrannid Garden.
Very good video. Well-deserved comment for algorithm
This is great! Assault with hammer might be the most fun to run, but if I have to carry it is Tactical with GL and those perfect parry scans ALL DAY
Heavy with plasma doesn't need auspex, he just nukes ranged majoris into executable state with one shot, and melee majoris with two shots. Heavy with plasma is *the guy* if you need to carry. Well, both are good, but I prefer heavy dude.
Great video - loving your work on this game so far.
I was having trouble with Lethal with my friends and Randoms but I found two guys yesterday that helped out and we did all the missions in one sitting and it was great.
We always had a Bulwark with that contested health perk and that saved us from dying completely because it stops the mortal wound. I know the plasma pistol is objectively better, but I ran my maxed out bolt anyways.
We always had a tactical with that Grenade launcher, nuff said.
And we always had a heavy that was either using the plasma or the melta.
I know that's not too specific build wise but if people are having trouble like I was, those three with those things are like a cheat code to Lethal.
You pretty much need a bulwark for lethal (and it's best if you don't have an assault as a result).
I essentially won all my lethal rounds with a bulwark a heavy and I was tactical. We are the buffs for contested health, contested health earned, and ammo up. I just sat back with my tactical and launch grenades and I let the bulwark and the heavy clean up any stunned enemies. I finished a couple once in awhile to recharge my nades.
When I heard the line about this being TV's perception of the best builds rather than favourite builds I had hoped this would mean admitting the melta is best for the vanguard class. Obviously it's easily defensible to pick the plasma incinerator for the heavy and the bolt rifle with grenade launcher for the tactical but for vanguard the melta is just better than the instigator. You can switch out to the instigator before the heldrake or hive tyrant but otherwise the only time you would want to use it is if you are pairing up with an assault and bulwark.
Yeah, Melta + knife is the way to go for melee oriented combat. Not spamming, but group-stunning in between knife attacks. "Marksman" Vanguard is also fun, but it's a choice. Better suited against chaos, probably, and for boss fights.
He refuses to admit the melta is best for the majority of situations you face in the game. The instigator may have its uses, but they're very situational and dependent on what your team is doing.
He refuses to admit the melta is best for the majority of situations you face in the game. The instigator may have its uses, but they're very situational and dependent on what your team is doing.
@@DJordan115 I understand why people don't like the melta weapons. They have a low skill requirement and it's what most new players seem to default to when they find out how useful the stagger and add clear is. It's legitimate to point out that the range is poor as well for zo/neurothropes as well. But he's just biased against the weapons and not running melta on vanguard is the wrong choice ~90% of the time even with the bolter buffs.
@@youtubevoice1050Would you have any tips on using the knife effectively? I've tried using it, but went back to the chainsword, because the knife's time to kill spamming light attacks didn't feel all that much faster, plus the shoulder bash combo on the chainsword has such great range, damage, and I think it even tracks enemy movement a little bit.
Fantastic video and information as always.
In the case of the Vanguard with a melta (this is just me personally) I use it to both maintain the stunlock and do more damage with both melee and ranged attacks as I have +damage effects for both ( I shoot from the hip after the slash/kick combo from chain sword and just alternate like that). It's not so much that it just stuns it's the fact that you'll also interrupt enemy attack animations, this is particularly useful against Chaos marines. I also tend to dive and multi-parry like 6 attacks in a single go because the extended parry window mechanics let you do that (not sure if thats intended or a bug. It's just something I found that works for me) so I tend to have very little trouble in Lethal because of that. Of course it does take some getting used to as if you mess up on one parry or dive in at the wrong time your probably dead from enemy hit stun as they will all target you, but it's been working well for me so far as the aoe detonation talent on the dive in creates an opening and space for a about 1-2 secs. That's usually enough advantage on initiative for team mates to punch through as well as for you to clear a way out with parries and melta push back. This is just preference on my end as I prefer to have more control over a fight.
In the case of the Sniper I do take the emergency invis talent to abuse position and damage+ for both standing still and being invis lol. In the long run I don't think it's more dps but in Extremis or boss fights it can turn into a ton of burst for about 7-10 secs. It's purely an abusive play lol.
In the case of the bulwark I take both the armor perk that makes you immune to knock back and +10% damage on banner because there's a point in lethal where your armor hp doesn't matter, what matters is doing more damage on the trade to push your target into the red for executions (once again personal choice), and it tends to give me far more yield. This also helps with the gun strikes as you can take them even if you get hit because it won't interrupt the animation (so long as you have armor) most of the time. I also stick to chain sword as I tend to screw myself with power sword lol. The curse of muscle memory.
In the case with assault, I try to play it as an aggressive bodyguard with Heavy Pistol and Chainsword. I take the two talents that reward jump pack dodging because not only can you bait gun strikes that are just hard to get, you can just get more of them and it also works with jump packing straight up AS a dodge and go into a ground slam. (btw jump pack dodging is really hard lol, super rewarding but damn yo.)
In the case of tactical I have a similar mentality as the Vanguard with a Melta.
It also doesn't help that I'm definitely a melta junky.
For context I mostly play with pugs, got my helm, and this is just what worked out for me. Might give others some ideas that could help.
I'm still cleaning up other games before I dive into Space Marine 2, but as always, you are making the builds easy to follow!
I USED to be a melta die-hard because they feel amazing, much better than every other weapon out the gate. The issue ar higher levels of play is melee enemies by themselves literally don't pose a threat. Hitting parry in a horde almost guarantees you full armor with the changes and tyranid warriors/minoris enemies have no way of getting through your defenses if your eyes are open. Runs are won and lost depending on how you deal with ranged enemies so I started to gravitate towards ranged weapons that can take care of them.
@@TrippyTigre But you have a grapple launcher. And a fire shotgun. This solves both problems.
@@spartanlemon9397 sure, if you ignore the melee enemies and pray the shotgun tyranid stays CCd the entire time, yeah they're dealt with, but how are you taking care of the zoanthropes and bosses (specifically neurothrope)? The Melta is great for CC, but you'll run out of ammo way before any boss goes down unless you have a tac on your team or resupply box.
@TrippyTigre I've genuinely never struggled with ammo against Neuro. I usually stick right underneath it when I have Melta, that way its ai decides to fly down and scream, removing pressure off of my team. When it's not screaming, I'm underneath blasting.
@@TrippyTigre Instigator doesn't CC ranged enemies though, you can only consistently interrupt rocket terminators and other big threats with the melta and grapple.
@TrippyTigre i also never have issues with neurothropes since they have a phase where they land and pulse waves and you can get in there and hit them. Sure at range all i got is my bolt pistol (i hope vangaurd gets the neo volkite pistol to help alleviate this).
One time on a ruthless run I beat a neurothrope in a group with just melee classes. Bulwark, assault, vangaurd by hitting it when it landed and shooting it with pistols. The problem of not being able to do tons of damage to flying enemies is one that all melee classes share anyways so its not unique to the vangaurd. Also a sniper, heavy, tactical can deal with zoanthropes way faster than a vangaurd with an instigator. That's one of the reasons the class implements the one class per mission rule so that your teammates can cover your weaknesses and you can cover theirs. Not every class has to be good at dealing with everything. The vangaurd is a close range specialist with some at range options. The one class that is the jack of all trades is the tactical. I don't think vangaurd is supposed to be the all arounder in the team.
I think going top tree for Instigator is better than loading up the magazine with extended mags. Free reloads on finisher is insane and 35% headshot DMG after an empty reload makes you DESTROY an extremis or majoris in 3-5 burst. Perpetual Penetration is a must. Not getting ammo back in reserves in a bit of an L but your bolt pistol is more than capable and you can just save the Instigator with mag empty for when something needs to die now.
Fantastic video, TV, thank you!
All I’d say for sniper when it comes to being invulnerable for 5 seconds every 3 mins, is you acc benefit from never needing to use a medkit, and I like the faster charge shots so being low health is a buff. Also you don’t need radius to kill multiple enemies at once. And if you run a bulwark and you refill your contested, one shot will full heal you. This is better for higher difficulties as your teammates have more consumables for sustain and bulwark has access to his banner whenever. and I never even down with this comp. Ran all 7 missions on the new difficulty without downing once, only issue is sometimes the ammo is a bit less reliable than the build shown here
Running around in Ruthless with. Heavy that has 50 Multi-Melta shots is some really stupid fun. You have no range, but you are the shotgun man, you don't need no range.
Great video! Thanks TV!
Fun fact for Las Fusil. If you use the perk that "below 30% health killing 3 or more enemies restores health" you can get a full heal if you hit a big group of small enemies. Its how I was able to let all my teammates on lethal snag stims.
Chainsword is better than the dagger, particulary if you use the full throttle skip.
With full throttle skip the chainsword out dpses the dagger 1v1 vs majoris. It also stunlocks them more consistently, and it is infininitley better for horde clear. Hard to test in absolute isolation, but including parry gunstrikes, I got:
An average of 15 seconds to execution with chainsword 1v1 vs nid majoris using full throttle skip.
An average of 19 seconds to execution with combat knife vs nid majoris.
Testing was done loading into the start of 8 ballistic engine missions with bots, killing nids, then watching back to try and isolate the cleanest kills.
Also melta is better than instigator unless your team lacks range vs chaos. Even then, the stun of melta is hard to ignore.
What's the full throttle skip? Like charge and animation cancel?
Also i agree the melta rifle out performs instigator every time. Even in chaos missions.
@@Bigborian92783 You can search it here for a tutorial, but basically you pick the full throttle perk on the chainsword tree. Then in game you do a quick hold a release to skip your first mellee attack and go straight to the second. This means you can go (1) light (2) heavy shoulder bash, or (1 ) light (2) light (3) heavy stomp. You basically get to your most powerful moves quicker.
Knife is better at horde clear with light-heavy combo and the weapon perk that increases radius of that combo by 50%. It's fast, has good AOE, and sends minoris flying. You take way less damage repeating that combo, than goung for a stomp, skip or no skip. I prefer the knife more, but a balanced one, it's fast, the fencing one is kinda slow and for that is inferior to fencing chainsword.
Just chiming in about vangaurd with melta. I enjoy your videos and I learned a lot from them so don't take this as I'm not a fan or something haha.
I think melta is the only best option for the vangaurd and i really think the hate on melta comes from the people who think it's just too easy of a weapon to use and perform well with.
In my opinion, the vangaurd is designed to be a close range specialist. That's why the class skill you get is a grappnel launcher so that you can close distance fast. It's not designed to be an all arounder jack of all trades type of class. That's the tactical.
I think its perfectly fine to have a weakness for vangaurd because that's supposed to be covered by your team who are range specialists. This is also a problem for assault and bulwark too but there doesn't seem to be anyone saying they need to be able to handle the flying enemies and bosses.
Additionally in your true damage video that you posted the melta rifle out performed the instigator rifle per shot and it also does double damage to ranged majoris that is not unique to the instigator. Apparently all ranged weapons do double damage to ranged majoris.
Another thing is the easy access to get your contested health back. So for bosses it does decent damage but the great thing about it is if you're close you can parry the hits you can parry and gun strike but if you get hit you can get right back up and melta blast them to get all your contested health back. I have "tanked" carnifex's and hellbrutes in lethal and ruthless this way. Although i will still overall lose some health i can hang in there like that and not die.
Appreciate your tips! I'll be getting back into the game tonight so will get some of these implemented for Lethal
Love the video tv, this helps a filthy casual like me with setting things up!
The plasma rifle on tactical against thousand sons is actually amazing because the charge shot can stun lock larger enemies so they can’t shoot back!
You'd think a guy with a jet pack would be great against a floating target
Why you’d think that? Jump packs never ment for aerial battles. It’s for the mobility of close support units. That’s why it’s jump pack not a fly pack
Vanguard was my first class and instigator was my first gun and I love the setup so much. Run the combat knife, hunt majoris and get 10% health back on execute.
I was doing a lethal run the other day and I was carrying the team, letting then have all the stims and clutching the run when they went down.
I'm not even bragging, I'm no God gamer or anything its just that effective and I've spent so much time playing the class.
Grappling a major, giving it a ranged damage debuff. Blast it in the head a couple times with the instigator, finish with the knife and get some health back. It's so effective who needs a melta?
I will use the load out station and use the melta for specific instances like the bridge on decapitation. But instigator is the way to go and it's so much fun.
Also inner fire is incredible.
The melta can stun more than one enemy. You don't get that with the instigator. It also add clears behind the main target.
I'm not a great gamer either but I can carry teams a lot of the time with the melta. You just need a sniper/heavy/tactical for it to work.
I leveled up the instigator just because i saw so many people praising it saying its better than melta. While i will say its not bad, its just not better than the melta. I die more when i use instigator. I did like doing the grappling hook to chaos marine and then point blank aim and burst some shots to their head. But i felt because of the lack of stun and contested health back, if that combo doesn't kill them, I'm gonna take damage. I found myself dying a lot more with instigator than with melta.
@TrueVanguard You have some real good insights, but I respectfully disagree on the meltas for three reasons. 1 - Melta is just point and delete plus stun, Plasma require targeting, and bolters require headshots. If someone is new to the game, I would suggest maxing meltas first. Plasma and Bolter take time to really learn. 2 - Melta seem to level very smoothly and just get better. Bolters and Plasma are only good at or near max. 3 - When you are getting swarmed, I don't think anyone would want a plasma or bolter over a Melta. I really enjoy the bolter and plasma options, but they are nowhere near as good as the Meltas. I only play Ruthless with a Melta.
Meh. Grenade bolter disagrees. As does stalker in capable hands. Most are viable. Only a few are literally unusable.
I think it's a combination of disdaining the ease of melta fire and engagement farming.
You can fire the heavy plasma and grenade bolter at your feet which does massive damage and stun to everything around you instead of the small cone of a melta. It is a noob weapon for sure but as soon as you unlock mastercrafted versions of each one (single substantial mission) it gets left behind.
One cool thing about the Duelist perk is it lets you run a balanced weapon with essentially the same parry window as a fencing weapon, without the stat tradeoffs. I like it over trading taking more ranged damage for taking less melee damage because I should be parrying most melee damage anyway. I could see liking Close-Combat perk if you're set on bolter/chainsword since that changes your primary wave clear to melee stomp + gun strike, but I like how the Melta trivializes wave clearing to the point where I'm only worried about getting randomly jumped by a Ravener from off-screen. I just grapnel enemies who try to call for reinforcements. My fav thing to do as Vanguard rn is getting in enemies' faces with grapnel/knife and clearing waves with melta/nades, but this makes me want to try instigator bolter!
Great info, TV. Thanks!
Can you please make video about weapon perks? Why are they in different shapes? Even if they say the same. Do they work for that gun only or all guns you have? Do headshot damage works for Gun Strike? Do better weapon increase Gun Strike damage? Will "icrease dmg after perfect parry/dodge" work for Gun Strike?
Man, I love Bulwark so much. I literally only ever play Heavy when Bulwark is already taken. If they ever patch the matchmaking and fix that, I'll probably continue playing my 25 Bulwark with Relic weapons 😂
Awesome vid! What secondary do you use for the plasma heavy build? Do you have a vid on the perks you use for it?
You run plasma pistol, there's genuinely no point in using the basic one.
From a series x player, PC looks sooo much better
If the end game damage screen doesn't show gun strike damage or perfect parry damage in the melee and range sections, there should be a third damage section that's just "Total Damage" that calculates all the damage you've done to enemies across all sources. Including gun strike, parry, grenade and environmental
Did anyone else chuckle when he said “getting your crap pushed in by a big Majoris”?
Would love to see your Chainsword build, you omitted it here. Thanks for the vid, some good ideas and a deferring opinion.
I thought I was the only Vanguard that ran a Instigator Bolt Carbine. Also, I NEED the colors you have on your Vanguard!
Not sure I agree with your logic on the first point - sure, a parry and gunstrike is great, but what if the warrior does an unblockable attack or something else on the side whacks you first? It's not laboratory conditions, after all, and both attacks are situational. I wouldn't say to dive into a swarm and immediately melta shot them unless you WANT to stun them all or are interrupting reinforcement calls. But if you're going to just dive into a group and wait for a parry opportunity that may not happen right away, that's a bit silly. A melta is for clearing trash anyway, I think any Vanguard worth his salt knows he should be meleeing a warrior if possible.
Exactly. He keeps bringing up the melta's damage. It's not built for single target damage. It's built to clear all the ads and stun the major, allowing us to knife them to death. The instigator can't do either one of those.
@@DJordan115 Also, if you're vaguely decent as a vanguard with a melta you are manouvering and lining up the melta to do damage to more than just the primary target. You can dodge around a thousand sons marine or majoris tyranid while laying waste to the minoris around them.
@DJordan115 im actually pretty sure the melta does more single target damage than the instigator. The only downside is that you have to be up close and personal to a boss. But he even did a true damage value video on both of these weapons and the melta did more damage than the instigator to both melee and ranged majoris.
Also he seems to always bring up that instigator does double damage to ranged majoris but that's not unique to the instigator. All ranged weapons do double damage to ranged enemies. Melee damage does double damage to melee enemies. That's just the mechanics of the game. So melta also does double damage to ranged majoris
On Vanguard, you equip Melta for Nids and Instigator for Chaos.
That's all there is to it
your question about the scenarios of course the gun strike is better, BUT the melter is not ment for that scenario. it is for a whole group of majoris with sword and stop them all, or to clear out terma dnd hormagunts. the instigator has another role. in case you dont have an heavy or sniper with you.
ok in random games it is hard to choose since you may not know how the others play or which loadout they got, but with a team you know, you pick your weapons on what fits the role you have to take
As someone who’s played a lot of lethal heavy with all 3 weapons the plasma is more fun but the melter is just easier to get the clear. Helps out so much more when getting overwhelmed. Only over thing is on the sniper I’d take the dead cloak ability. Yes quality of life is good but saving a run is more important imo especially with random groups
The trick is to aim the heavy plasma at your feet in that scenario.
Notes:
Important to compare difficulty. Take your Vanguard Melta example; Yes a 360 stun ontop of 100 gun strike dmg is better, but that is under the assumption you land the parry. Versus, me just pulling the trigger on a melta and guaranteeing a stun. That is a whole lot easier and less moving parts to pull off. Many factors play into these choices.
I agree with the Instigator choice.
There is also a mentality when making a build, called "Planning for Failure". For example, increasing your dodge window by 50% when below 50% hp, is a great perk if you are struggling in a difficulty with parrying. But if you never drop below 50% hp, you will never see the benefit of that perk which can arguably be called wasted. Versus, killing 10 enemies in quick succession (ie grenade, TNT barrel, Chainsword Stomp, etc; will return 1 Equipment Charge.) Depending on your build (melta lovers should go Equipment Charge) a player would receive more ulitilty from that perk, than a 50% HP dodge increase (Especially if you are running 10% HP return on majoris kills).
Love your work on Space Marine 2 guides/break downs.
For tactical, any idea if the grenade launcher rounds count as equitment damage? Usually I don't pick the perk that gives 25% equitment damage to auspex scan but if your running GL that could be a nice use case.
Imagine if Assault have the Adrenaline Rush perk from Vanguard...
I'm never gonna change class if that happens.
Thanks for the heads up on gun strike damage not showing in the total damage. I was wondering why some games I feel like I put in more work and had 400+ kills but ended with thousands less overall damage. Is it safe to assume executions aren't part of total damage as well? The missions where I have to chain gun strikes and executions to carry the team and stay alive I end up with lower damage than what I would have expected.
I'm curious why you prefer the auto bolt over the heavy bolt?
I also WANT to like the sniper rifle over the Las Fusil but against Tyranids with ammo recovery perk you can actually clear massive waves of minoris so fast with the Las Fusil and not waste your ammo. With the Bolt Sniper Rifle you have zero wave clear ever, in any situation. Against Chaos though the minoris with the shields make it to where you can not freely do the same with the Las Fusil ammo restore perk.
For the Tactical, wouldn't Balanced Distribution (Your Primary Weapon deals 10% more Damage, but your Secondary Weapon deals 10% less Damage) be better than Kraken Penetrator Rounds (Bolt Weapons penetrate 1 more enemies)? The bolt rifle with grenade launcher has a base penetration rating of 3, is increasing that to 4 actually impactful? I'd much rather increase its damage by 10%! Balanced Distribution's downside of -10% secondary damage is practically non-existent when you're running Emperor’s Vengeance (Killing a Majoris-level or higher enemy restores your Primary Weapon’s Ammo by 1 magazines). It's nigh impossible to run out of primary ammo unless you're skipping every Majoris kill, so you can run the whole map and have no reason to even use your secondary weapon.
Kraken rounds have nothing to do with weapon penetration. Penetration simply ignores enemies' armor. whereas Krak amo actually goes *through* enemies and hits additional one.
@@wegielek3 Which is pointless when the whole reason you're using that gun is for the nades
@anitaremenarova6662 you can't use nades all the time. You can use it a *lot*, I admit. But not all the time. And nades don't need a dmg boost. It doesn't make them kill things faster, nor does it his certain breakpoints.
@@wegielek3 Yes you can you get 11 back every 30 seconds. Also wrong yet again you want all the damage for extremis and terminus.
@anitaremenarova6662 highly situational. I could see that 10% if you are going for Hive Tyrant but other than that, Auspex has more than enough dmg to kill this stuff quickly (even more so if you pick the last signature perk)
Agreed on all account except some things I think you’re missing on the assault perks. The one where you don’t get knocked back after ground pound is not the strongest in that tree.
When I grapnel into a group of Majoris and the 5th one back behind a pack of Minoris begins calling for reinforcements, my Melta interrupts and staggers everything in its path, and clears the Minoris with one shot.
Melta deals less damage, as you know, because of its ability to do so much per shot.
It's wasted on single targets as a damage dealer.
I wish I could drop the Pistol for the Instigator. 😂
31:05 BRO YES, i thought i was going crazy! They're everywhere now 😂. That's pretty much all that kills me or leads to my downfall these days
Pfffft OP this OP that. Sheeesh.
I use the Vanguard and to answer your question, I would parry, gun strike then melta the Majoris's face of and he stunned freinds.
Thats'a what TV missed in his analysis here. The melta shatters the enemy behind your main target. Anyone with a clue is constantly shifting to hit enemies behind the target you are just about to execute.
Finally u got rid of 20 green armory datas :D
I've been fucking around with a Bolt Sniper build recently. It's holding up pretty nicely even compared to the Las
One thing about Melta that I miss everytime I use a different weapon is the contested health recovery...
Just started leveling the Sniper, really surprised that its so fun and not as squishy as I expected. Just have to manage groups of minoris because its more annoying to deal with compared to classes with the chainsword.
Brother, I know you've done good work in this game and that these are subjective, but I cannot wrap my head around that instigator pick. From 3:33 - 3:57 you engage a chaos marine and its mediocrity is on full display:
You begin by telling us that the weapon does double damage against ranged (I saw your damage testing video and I know what you mean and how much incredible work you did), then engage the marine. It's true, you interrupt his call-in at long range, but you proceed to spend 19 bolt rounds (emptying your clip) with only a few misses, and don't get anywhere near stunning him. Once he teleports to you, it takes 5 more melee hits to stun.
If you're placing all the value on that call-in interrupt, sure, the weapon has utility. But if, as a practical matter, outside of a testing environment, it's taking more than a single clip to stun a majoris, I just don't think you can ever call it OP, or even decent. It may be fine as a distraction to stop reinforcements, but it's a worse weapon than the bolt pistol.
The Vanguard scenario you described is pointless because you rarely just fight one Majoris. And you need to take into account the 15% extra ranged damage after an enemy is grappled + the 10% extra damage for the first shot after a reload for the Melta. Thus you have a grapple, 25% extra damage from 1 shot of the Meltam then you switch to melee, and you delete Majoris and have an option to clear ads, especially on higher difficulty levels. For bosses the same strat works, if you can outmaneuver them and don't be afraid to use your sidearm. Not saying the Instigator is bad, just that it's objectively not as good.
Aaaand Bulwarks and Assaults will thank you for picking the extra 15% melee damage perk. Your build is not even close to being OP or even optimal, you just made it work for you.
Note that ascension also staggers teammates… it’s kind of annoying for my buddies but hey, I’m just doing my part
Didn't see your Power Sword Perk Tree on the Bulwark build if that was supposed to be included. I'm wanting to try all of your builds to see how they play.
I have found taking the ammo variant of the Las fusil on sniper is better when facing tyranids, since the 15 dmg one does not seem to be able to kill tyranid majors in one headshot. The 15 dmg one against chaos allows you to one tap marines whereas the 14 one can not without cloak. What do you think is the most effective class distribution in a squad? Bulwark for area denial and support buffs, heavy with plasma and tactical for ad clearing? Do you find heavy plasma or las fusil is better for a single target clearing role?
Heavy plasma is better, no need to headshot and just nukes an area the size of a frag grenade
Very cool! I would be interested to know why bolt pistol over plasma with the heavy - some of the perks for the plasma pistol benefit the incinerator, so I'd have thought it had better synergy.
im loving vanguard, 😆, LIKE A LOT!!!!!
I usually run plasma pistol along the heavy plasma incinerator because de ammo (i'm not sure about the rest) perks are shared for both weapons. So I can go full top row with the incinerator and have more ammo with the pistol perks.
Swap the assualt to do more damage to majors and higher level enemies. Same with weapon perks. Ignore the double slams. They're not worth it. Juice up majoris damage. I know it forces you to do more damage to chaos enemies but one slam and a simple swing hive majors are put in a cripple state. Even on ruthless. Chaos majors insta cripple if you land a dirct full charge. Kill majoris hive minor enemies become cake walk. Ive carried multiple lethal even pre nerf lethal once i swapped the build to a majoris killer.
Haha wrote the same. ;) Near idk 90%+ of Guides to Assault dont do it and claim you wont be able to do it, thats flat wrong. You can just Nuke a 5er pack of Warriors in 2 sec (beside charge up time) and with a very clear hit also Liktors & Venators (rare to get them clean but even if not they are near death after you got them) and low flying Zoantrophes in a tunnel? jeah they are simply dead.
Does it deal double damage against the Carnifex? It does have a ranged attack but is it considered to have a ranged weapon
Parrying on bulwark seems a little odd for me - as it works so inconsistently. Is the parry window smaller as for other classes? I'm getting beaten much more often than using the tactical or any other class. Any hints on that?
Tap the button. If you hold it a little too long, you end up blocking instead.
@klazik4261 Thank you, I'll try it.
Bro you made to best point ever with Vanguard... I have 200 hours play time, why the fuck am I still using the parry perk haha
Is it possible that the las fussil heal is bugged that it always heals you as soon as you fell under 30% health once?
+170% DMG auspec scan/4seconds and reduced radius. + Infinite grenades = best tactical build. No perry required.
They definitely should make it so the gl have a 3 round mag and reloads at the same time as the proper rifle. Still strong, but not insane
Speaking of things the game never really explains, I have a confession to make. The little blue aura that surrounds enemies sometimes? In god only knows how many hours of the game… never figured out what it means. It doesn’t seem to make much difference.
Those are the "called-in" reinforcement enemies
19:30 what do you mean here regarding the parry windows, when did that happen and what did they change?
4.1 Fencing and Balanced weapon have the same amount of parry frames, but starts at different points in the animation.
I normally only use the melta gun, but my friend and I decided to do our first ruthless mission and we were paired with a random lv25 Tactical. Most other tacticals we play with use only the melta gun too but this guy was running Grenade Bolt rifle and I didn't realise how strong it was until he solo killed a Hellbrute wiithin 10 seconds of it appearing. Now here I am wondering what the optimal builds are cos Melta guns aern't deleting enemies like that lmao
Cloack 75% damage gperk gets added to the cloacks original 25% boost making it 100% more damage. And with damage relic fusil and heatshot perks you can instakill ranged majoris and get melee majoris to execution range. I think the damage i calculated was 440something for one shot.
29:21 really?, you didn't wanna mention how to properly kill a zoan as assault?... 15% gun damage point blank until it drops into its AOE attack, then instead of running away? lol you go INTO melee and groundslam the bug.
32:45 bother you’re wrong. Marksman bolt carbine variant is very good. And fells much better on tactical than sniper. Just like the Stalker rifle is
Where does it say the instagator rifle deals double damage to ranged enemies? im a Vanguard player and having difficulty find it
definitely need a perfect dodge guide to help out with the sniper invis dodge perk, as I can never seem to get the perfect dodge right so I never get use out of that perk and thus don't run it
Melta interrupt into a knife shadow stab. You're using the chainsword for hordeclear and the instigator for single target. You _cannot_ use the instigator to instantly make space, you need to get to the stomp on the sword for that.
Also, you're assuming it's a parriable attack. You're assuming it's not three ranged warriors with venom cannons that don't go into melee but keep charging those. Melta has a LOT more usecases than what you outlined.
It takes too long to get to the stomp. Knife is better at horde clear with light-heavy combo spam and the weapon perk that increases a radius of that combo by 50%. But you need the balanced knife for that, the fencing one is too slow, comparatively speaking.
Ascension perk has killed ME several times , it must be bugged. < Assault class
Kinda wish we had a auto boltor with a plasma launcher attachment
Ryan!?
I don't remember you ever saying that in a Destiny video.
Nova marines FTW!
On assault you missed the vital perk of doubling slam damage, this is your essential extremis deleter and terminus chunker, diligence is useless in higher difficulties I run 25% extra slam damage after finishers easy to get just dash strike a gaunt/tzaangor and you don't have to soak up extra damage in the air for no reason.
I've leveled up all weapons to relic tier and i find the melta guns to be way overrated. They're good at what they do but outside of of that niche they are worthless. Trying to deal with zoanthropes and neurothropes using a melta is painful, i'd rather use the occulus bolter.
But do U have max perks