You also forgot about very important part: if damage would break armor, that damage is also dealt to the body underneath. Thats why armor break is also incredibly good with high single damage, like hyperpropellant pgl, and m1000
@gostlyplays technically? You still get armor blowthrough it's just affected by the armor. So your shot breaking a grunt armor would still take the 20% reduction but be applied to health for example.
@@TH3H3LLR41S3R all shots that hit light armor still deal damage to the health with a 20% reduction. that’s just how light armor works. armour blow through in this case would be by taking the armor breaking mod on any weapon, the shot that breaks the armor will deal full damage
@@axolotl_princess Yes but the first way you said it was wrong so i was correcting it. drg's biggest issue is people that dont want to type properly and that leads to people not understanding even basic mechanics.
@@TH3H3LLR41S3R well the special effect armor breaking mods enable doesn’t have an official name but i heard a prominent drg weapon expert ytber use the term “armor blowthrough” for it so i used it here.
I want to clarify that this maintenance patch only fixed DIRECT DAMAGE PROJECTILE armor break. Essentially when a direct dmg weapon hits armor, if that shot breaks the armor the shot is supposed to do full dmg and not get reduced. Projectile weapons like drak, hurricane and Pgl were bugged to not do this. Now that it works, the armor breaking mod allows hyper to deal full dmg to a shellback through armor on its first shot. Furthermore aoe dmg (or radial dmg as the game calls it) armor break only does 25% of their dmg to armor. This is why pgl does not fully strip praetorian armor even with the armor break mod. For a long time this was believed to be a bug but was confirmed by the devs sometime last year to be intentional. For that reason, it is strongly advised to not take armor break on aoe focused weapons, especially aoe pgl builds (so basically not hyper prop). Not only is pgl a very low dmg aoe weapon, the armor break mod also competes with the incendiary mod which solves pgl’s biggest issue: Horrific dmg fall off. And this is because the heat mod has 0 dmg fall off. Tldr As a general rule, I’d recommend, avoiding armor break on aoe weapons and only take it on direct dmg weapons it where it isn’t competing with a dmg mod
also shotguns uniquely roll for armor break instead of overall, so they're a bit less consistent. Warthog especially is competing with just doing more damage, which makes the armor break on it somewhat pointless
@@Appletank8not really uniquely, just every pellet rolling ab on its own, and since each pellet obviously does pretty small dmg, it means breaking chance based armor (like grunts) is less consistent. Also given that pellets are not landing in the same spot, you will get pellets hitting different plates instead of all the pellets hitting the broken plate, so damaging the enemy whose armor you just broke is ALSO inconsistent Tldr shotguns aren’t doing any unique mechanics or anything. It’s just that the way shotguns work (firing multiple weak bullets spread out) is inherently weak (compared to other armor breaking weapons) for breaking armor.
Blowthrough on gas recycling is pretty nice in general, it gives Scout a much needed swarm control option thats more versatile than DB boomstick. (Although I run DB more often these days because it's a better panic button)
One thing I like to do with that is have the conductive bullets upgrade with the elec-reload OC on the GK2. It's just fun to use effectively, especially alongside IFGs.
oh also the currently bugged interaction with corroded enemies where you can shoot them anywhere with subata explosive reload (with NCTC mod) and it applies the detonators
I don't think there's anything sadder than the PGL being THIS useless against armor. I mean... come on! The Breach Cutter just gets ALL the love! I like the Breach Cutter, but the devs really have to put it side by side with the PGL and really understand just how messed up it is that the Breach Cutter is just better at everything until you get to the Hyper Prop and Fatboy OCs. But these just turn the PGL into a niche use gun. Only exception is the RJ250 Compound, which is just fun, sure. But meanwhile, the Breach Cutter gets to ignore armor and shred it at the same time, it gets more ammo, it can fire more than one shot before reloading because it has a magazine, and it has a potential to hit WAAAYYY more enemies, so much so that it can almost be used as second primary. And this is BEFORE we get to the Overclocks which make it EVEN better at any of these things.
I think lazymaybe put it best in his PGL video: It's a matter of flexility what you can target vs flexibility in where you can target them. The Breach Cutter has much better flexibility in target choices, because it can clear a line of grunts or smash through a praetorian/oppressor's health bar. The PGL is only good against groups of weak enemies and does pitiful damage to tanky targets by comparison. However, the PGL has better flexbility in *terrain* than the Breach Cutter. You can pretty much only use the breach cutter when the bugs are charging directly at you on a flat surface or incline. The PGL's spherical area of damage means it's really great at getting the bugs as they are crawling down a ceiling, clambering over jagged terrain to reach you, or moving perpendicular to you towards a teammate/lure. It also has much better range-- the Breach Cutter has a hard cap on how far away it can damage bugs, but the PGL can sink grenades into a grunt pack from across the cave once you get a hang of the angle. When I alternate between both tools often, I start to appreciate the ways in which they excel in different scenarios & mission types. I stand by this even when the PGL doesn't have overclocks-- just the fire damage mod is enough to make it a totally viable alternative for clearing waves, IMO. However, with that being said... it's absolutely bullshit that the breach cutter can peel a praetorian like a banana but the PGL will only ever break 3-4 plates because of a weird hard-coded limit.
@@chastermief839 While the case-use scenario for both weapons is definitely different, the Breach Cutter STILL comes out on top because it's just a matter of timing, and because it gets to ignore terrain. I do agree with almost everything you said though, and agree with your logic, but in the end the fire and forget nature of the PGL isn't as a good as it should be.
Excellent video! Super informative as usual! One small thing: You missed my favorite way to break armor, the Zhukov's Gas Recycling overclock. Throw in an IFG and conductive bullets and let it rip and you can defeat a praetorian in seconds flat.
bit more context on driller and armour break. thermal shock doesnt care about armour and doesnt get blocked. And as you mentioned the collette wave cooker secondary passes straight through armour. If you hit a Praetorian frontally in the face it still counts as if you hit it on the back weakpoint i think. I do think its absolutely worth it to use your drills in combat. So use it for the armour break. Its even better in combat when freezing enemies first and then using barbed drills on them. Since frozen enemies take 3X damage from melee. One thing missed is that the shot that breaks the armour (i.e depletes the plate's last hp) deals full damage to its health. I think in the case of light armour that means that the shot that breaks the plate doesnt get reduced by 20% and deals its full damage. Also, no conversation about armour is complete without talking about weakpoints. Not all weak points are created equal. Small bugs have a 2X weak point on their face, so its always worth it to shoot this. Praetorians have a 1X weakpoint on their butt, so its only worth it to shoot that when your weapon has weakpoint damage, otherwise you might as well hit them in the face. For opressors its different again, they have a 3X weakpoint damage bonus
0:48 the survival guide INGAME literally says differences between the armors, grunts have light, praetorians have heavy, oppressors and above have unbreakable.
I ran armor breaking on the minigun exclusively since I started playing. I didn't care that everybody said stun was better, I liked having that option when I needed it. Finally, I tried out stun, and fell in love with it. Also, armor wasn't that bad. 2 days later, armor got buffed. *Sigh*
@7:45 The Driller in fact is the best at taking down armor OR ignoring it completely. The tone you set for the Driller should not be defeating. That said, I really enjoyed this episode and it helped me understand the tools the other 3 dwarves have to take down armor. It almost feels like armor is a debuff targeted at the other 3 dwarves. The drillers attacks and abilities that either go through armor or ignore it completely fit thematically with them. This is a good chance to make a new driller video highlighting their armor breaking and armor ignoring capabilities. take care.
Yeah it's a little misleading to say the driller has poor armor breaking ability-- he has the best tool for it in the game and it's always equipped for free. Tho i do appreciate that in context of the rest of his kit he doesn't really care about it. But if he wants to break armor, he absolutely can lol, so IMO he's the best for "dealing with" armor, either by shredding it with drills or by just bypassing it with status effect damage.
You forgot Scout's Gas Rerouting OC on the Zhukovs, whose whole gimmick is that its damage is completely based off of armour break, to the point that shooting weakspots is technically detrimental to its damage output.
I picket up this game a week ago and decided I want to max out the driller before touching other classes and thanks to your video I now know there's armor in the game
Three things to note: 1. This is probably the most important one. A large part of the armor break fix was making a specific mechanic work properly. The way armor break is supposed to work is that if you break an armor plate & you have an armor break mod* with a shot, that shot should do full damage. For example, a JFH Hurricane with Direct Damage in T1 & Armor break in T2 should do 60 damage per hit (50 direct + 10 area) when it breaks an armor plate, allowing it to 2 hit haz 4/5 grunts anywhere. However, pre-patch it would do 50, as the 50 direct damage was reduced by 20%, even when it destroyed the armor plate, meaning it'd take 3 shots unless you hit the exact same spot twice. This was also the case for the PGL, especially with Hyper Propellant. Now you can shoot the heavy armor of a Praetorian & do the full damage rather than just the area damage like pre-patch. 2. Lazymaybe did a great video on this patch, which I suggest watching. In it, he makes a compelling case that area damage is breaking armor as intended & is not bugged. He also makes the argument it should work the way people think it does. 3. Taking the armor break OC on the LOK-1 is pretty much pointless. The LOK-1 has an usual mechanic where if it breaks armor it deals full damage, even without an armor break mod. So with the T1 damage mod, you can reliably 4 shot grunts at Haz 4/5. I think Seeker rounds are better anyway, since they don't care about armor or even terrain. * Excluding the LOK-1
this may be a silly question to ask, but given the rework to the armor mechanic and the last major update introducing a few new enemies, my question to you would be the following: What new enemy types would you like to see added into the game, given the current roster of enemy bugs available AND the presence of new armor / damage applications being considered in the game? I'd love to see more Pretorian type enemies. bigger bugs that make use of this armor stuff is always satisfying to fight! I'd also love to see new grunt types that might make use of medium* armor.
The thing is Armor Breaking upgrades on AOE weapons do not suffer from this bug only. Shotgun weapons also have this problem but not the same as projectile bugs and AOE reduction. Normally When you equip Armor Breaking on weapons every time you manage to break armor it also deals full damage on it and a chance to break for light armor is calculated properly. but it's not the case for shotgun weapons. because the chance to break light armor is calculated for each pallet and not the total which ends up the less total chance to break light armor + if each pallet didn't manage to break it also means dealing less damage to them too. Boomstick doesn't suffer this problem much because of an upgrade and overclock that makes it deal lots of damage. But Warhog on the other hand does suffer a lot from this and that's why most people gonna tell you to pick better damage instead of armor breaking and use another method to break it (Breach Cutter or Shard Diffractor) still, I do hope PGL Armor Breaking is a bit better because if they intended to make it like that it also means it's not really worth taking Armor Breaking on PGL but HyperProp Overclock.
yeah I was kinda disappointed this "complete guide" didn't even mention shotgun armor break, since it's a very strange quirk of the armor break system and definitely needs an explanation. also I think the main reason people say to pick the damage mod is that it effectively hits the same breakpoints as the armor break mod, but also does more. The armor break mod for the warthog allows you to kill a grunt in two shots if you hit them in the body. The damage mod for the warthog in that same tier allows you to... kill grunts in two shots if you hit them in the body. It's effectively the same outcome, but the armor break mod has more general utility because it has better weakpoint damage, too.
On my Scout i run the Dual SMG as my secondary and gave him the over clock with freeze damage. So im either going to freeze enemies directly or indirectly to help in killing swarms of enemies both big and small. It also doesnt hurt having the cryo grenade in my arsenal. As you mentioned with the Driller him being able to bypass armor is amazing. One of the things i love doing is just freezing Pratorians and let my gunner friends shred them in half a second. However the Drillers pistol being mag dumped into a frozen Pratorian is equally effective.
I'm not sure if I just missed it but I didn't hear mention of how armor breaking mods also allow the shot that breaks armor to deal full damage to the enemy This tidbit is mostly good for high damage weapons like the m1000 and (recently fixed) hyper propellant PGL which would have their damage nullified or greatly reduced without that mod Sadly twins armor is a bit jank it seems and doesn't deal full damage on the armor breaking hit as it should (in my experience)
I remember when I first leveled my gunner up, I got the armor breaking on the lead storm. Now if I have the ammo to burn I can just stare down praetorians and point my gun at them
Unbreakable isnt just an "armour weight class", it can actually apply to Light and Medium armour. However, only the Crassus uses Unbreakable Medium, and Unbreakable Light isnt a thing on any current enemy.
Gunner is the polar opposite of the Driller. The Driller doesn't care about armor, and will destroy the bugs regardless. The Gunner has every reason to shred armor, and will do so, along with the bugs entrails and double joints.
Imo the breech cutter is PERFECT if you don't want to spend some time to shred armour. With the armor break mod, you can shred the Twins' armor before they dig in so when they resurface, they're already naked throughout. Swarm of pretorions? Aim one right and you'd have a naked pretorion catching your executioner bullets from your smart rifle in no time.
The explosion is very weak for armor breaking. What’s really pulling the weight there is that lok1 secretly has armor break on the base gun. Thats the real reason ab module is useless.
Haven't seen anyone mention this yet, but one of lazymaybe's videos say armor break isn't as effective on shotguns because it calculates per pellet rather than adding up to guarantee armor break. Or something along those lines... I don't want to take his words out of context. I'm still a greenbeard so not really sure why that matters much, but wanted to mention here that shotguns behave weirdly at least according to the hardcore players.
If you watch carefully, even light armor can be stripped. It visible on the "butt" of the grunts. However, I got just a few oportunities to actually take advantage of this. Only with low DPS weapons.
Plasma carbine OPA over clock Speed up fire rate at 50% Speed up movement on overheat Max out fire rate and damage AP rounds 2 second armour tearing mag dump that lets you make a quick getaway
idk how to feel about armor breaking upgrades, in scenarios where it should come handy you discover that you could have been better off picking up another overclock or upgrade. Then you have those random scenarios where you waste ammo because the game decided to spam pretorians and guard grunts.
I really enjoyed the video but I think there are 2 important things I feel like you neglected to mention: Shots which break armour deal full damage as if it hit a health pool, which means that for the M1K for instance it's extra important as it lets you hit breakpoints on non-weakspot shots on acid spitters. Armour breaking on AoE weapons feels rather poor as it is hard limited to only removing up to 5 armour plates. So even if you use a fatboy overclock with armour breaking and hit a praetorian head on, it can at most remove 5 of all of its armour plates.
Yes having armor break on the area damage would be cool but has ghost ship said or hinted that it not applying to the area damage is a bug or did the community call it a bug and is sticking to that?
due to fire mod on hyperprop being fixed and actually lowering its damage now armor break mod is now the default I'd say unless you're going into rivals presence/industrial sabotage(questionable) mission since now you can hit a praetorean anywhere even into armor with no damage losses
Bulks also have the unbreakable medium armor that's just a flat dmg reduction, the crassus just has a better version of it. Doesn't nemesis also have heavy armor? The top part atleast
1. This video would have been improved by a section on what weapons are and are not affected by armour in the first place. 2. You make several references to weapons that have high RoF and low per-shot damage being good for armour removal, but I don't get why. If two weapons have the same DPS and armour damage multiplier, why should it matter how fast they shoot?
Not only that, but he’s kinda completely wrong on that point. Single powerful shot weapons, like hyperprop and m1000 are better with armor breaking because of the mechanic that allows ab weapons to deal full dmg on the shot that breaks the armor. Since this is a single shot getting this effect, you’d want the shot that breaks the armor to be really strong. On top of that, those weapons tend to do enough dmg to break the armor in one shot anyway, so they basically get to ignore armor (particularly noticeable with m1000 vs grunts with ab)
You forgot the Lithophage with unbreakable armor. Also all the Lithophage hybrids seem to have medium armor. Engi, Turret Armor breaking is ok alone, stun usually better choice.. BUT with turret whip, the anti armor jumps. Menace seems to have some sort of armor that does not sheer off. Also you forgot grenades. Anyone with numbers per chance?
Running armor break mods to increase your armor break % is worth doing so that you can hit damage breakpoints for bodyshot kills. This is mostly for better kill times when clearing waves of grunts, for example on the vanilla M1000 (no overclocks): The gun's base damage is enough to one shot a grunt if you get a headshot. But if you only land body shots, you'll need at least 3 shots to kill. That's where armor break is handy-- if you're using an armor break mod, any bullet that destroys the armor will also bypass the armor, so hitting a grunt in the body will break & bypass the armor's 20% damage reduction to get full damage. Meaning you can kill a grunt in only 2 body shots. even if those both of those shots hit armor plates. in an ideal situation you could just always land perfect headshots every time, but against an entire swarm it's just not practical to assume that. More importantly, blowthrough is a very important tool for clearing crowds with the m1000, and if you're using blowthrough you definitely can't guarantee headshots. so the bonus armor damage really comes in handy there.
Good. Stingtail shouldn’t have had armor covering weakspots to begin with. No other ludicrous priority enemy has that at all. Most of those kinds don’t have armor at all.
Well I just run mini-shells and RJ250 because they cant kill you if your not there and mini-shells with armour breaking mmmm by god it kills feels like scout if he had a grenade launcher and a 12 shell shotgun.
we have only two enemies that have armor and it really should be removed its Mactera Brundle and Q'ronar Shellback. Pickaxe copes with them perfectly, so armor breaking is usable in 2 cases: 1 for turrets cus they aim in center of bug and wasting all ammo if they dont have armor breaking, 2 for m1000 for two shots grunts in body
*GASP* How dare you not know Javarak that the dreadnoughts "armor bars" are actually just more health bars!!! lol j/k yeah my original guess was yellow bar? must be armor right? Love the video man thank you for the in depth explanation on all the confusing stuff with DRG
Really good video but you did get a few things wrong about the actual changed What was broken about armor break on AoE weapons wasnt that they didnt break armor. The armor break upgrades have a unique effect where the shot that breaks armor will deal full damage as if it wasnt there, essentially a “punchthrough” effect. The bug was that for projectile weapons like the PGL they would break the armor but not get this “punchthrough” effect and lose most of its damage, which of course is no longer the case Additionally, the PGL and other AoE weapons are still quite bad at breaking armor because of a weird thing where explosions do less damage to plates of armor as soon as 1 plate has been broken, so they only break 1 plate at a time instead of all at once. Even fatboy with armor break still cant strip a preatorian…. PGL fans stay losing :(
I thought that the mini versions of that one boss(the one where you kill the mini ones and then the 3 yellow ones and then his back weakspot) had medium armor?
Drillers dont need armor break lmfao, damn near all of his guns just outright bypass armor, flamer, sludge gun, even cryo gun, the plasma gun the microwave gun, ain't no need for armor break lmfao
Me when my mini-nuke launcher is worse at removing armor than a funny little assault rifle
Me when my APDSFDS-40mm launcher is worse vs 2 heavys bugs than the funky AR
Me when I see a horde of bugs surrounding a large target.
the mini nuke is not very good at much if i'm honest, only useful scenario i've seen so far is when a downed dwarf is swarmed by a lot of bugs
@@D0NU75 Hyper prop for life
@@D0NU75 Yeah, the PGL's OCs are not well balanced tbh. Only real options are RJ and HP, which sucks because FB is really damn cool
“I’m a strong, independent dwarf, I don’t need any help!”
Said every driller ever
They ... don't need help
until a dreadnought comes along. Drillers dont have the best dps but their aoe is second to none
@@leoritchie9635 cryo then spam axe
@@tunguska2370 im a flame driller, i kill infinite bugs and heat up the big boys for my gunners volitile bullets
@@leoritchie9635 I let my team deal 3 times the damage
You also forgot about very important part: if damage would break armor, that damage is also dealt to the body underneath. Thats why armor break is also incredibly good with high single damage, like hyperpropellant pgl, and m1000
but this only happens if you specifically take the armor break mod on that weapon. if you don’t take the mod, you don’t get the “armor blowthrough”
@gostlyplays technically? You still get armor blowthrough it's just affected by the armor. So your shot breaking a grunt armor would still take the 20% reduction but be applied to health for example.
@@TH3H3LLR41S3R all shots that hit light armor still deal damage to the health with a 20% reduction. that’s just how light armor works. armour blow through in this case would be by taking the armor breaking mod on any weapon, the shot that breaks the armor will deal full damage
@@axolotl_princess Yes but the first way you said it was wrong so i was correcting it. drg's biggest issue is people that dont want to type properly and that leads to people not understanding even basic mechanics.
@@TH3H3LLR41S3R well the special effect armor breaking mods enable doesn’t have an official name but i heard a prominent drg weapon expert ytber use the term “armor blowthrough” for it so i used it here.
Driller's Subata double shot mod does increased armor damage.
Unfortunately you have to use the subata to get this benefit
"My armor can't be broken, foolish dwarf!"
Me, with my Corrosive Sludge Pump: "I don't recall asking"
Driller breaking praetorian armor with drills for the benefit of the team is legit though, in the right situation and if you don't have freeze
and its fun too!!
I want to clarify that this maintenance patch only fixed DIRECT DAMAGE PROJECTILE armor break. Essentially when a direct dmg weapon hits armor, if that shot breaks the armor the shot is supposed to do full dmg and not get reduced. Projectile weapons like drak, hurricane and Pgl were bugged to not do this. Now that it works, the armor breaking mod allows hyper to deal full dmg to a shellback through armor on its first shot.
Furthermore aoe dmg (or radial dmg as the game calls it) armor break only does 25% of their dmg to armor. This is why pgl does not fully strip praetorian armor even with the armor break mod. For a long time this was believed to be a bug but was confirmed by the devs sometime last year to be intentional.
For that reason, it is strongly advised to not take armor break on aoe focused weapons, especially aoe pgl builds (so basically not hyper prop). Not only is pgl a very low dmg aoe weapon, the armor break mod also competes with the incendiary mod which solves pgl’s biggest issue: Horrific dmg fall off. And this is because the heat mod has 0 dmg fall off.
Tldr As a general rule, I’d recommend, avoiding armor break on aoe weapons and only take it on direct dmg weapons it where it isn’t competing with a dmg mod
also shotguns uniquely roll for armor break instead of overall, so they're a bit less consistent. Warthog especially is competing with just doing more damage, which makes the armor break on it somewhat pointless
@@Appletank8not really uniquely, just every pellet rolling ab on its own, and since each pellet obviously does pretty small dmg, it means breaking chance based armor (like grunts) is less consistent.
Also given that pellets are not landing in the same spot, you will get pellets hitting different plates instead of all the pellets hitting the broken plate, so damaging the enemy whose armor you just broke is ALSO inconsistent
Tldr shotguns aren’t doing any unique mechanics or anything. It’s just that the way shotguns work (firing multiple weak bullets spread out) is inherently weak (compared to other armor breaking weapons) for breaking armor.
@@kismet4918 It seems like if GSG wanted to make shotgun AB more consistent, they could've made the AB bonus like, +10000%
We all watched LazyMaybe lol
The gas recycling OC for the dual smgs for scout just peels praetorians in an instant! Since I run that with an AI GK2 it pairs quite well.
hey hey! That's my build too!
Gas Recycling + AISE is particularly good on Elimination. Gas gives raw damage and shreds the armor on Twins, AISE hits weakpoints.
Blowthrough on gas recycling is pretty nice in general, it gives Scout a much needed swarm control option thats more versatile than DB boomstick. (Although I run DB more often these days because it's a better panic button)
My favourite loadout in the entire game, it's so good if you have the aim for it
One thing I like to do with that is have the conductive bullets upgrade with the elec-reload OC on the GK2. It's just fun to use effectively, especially alongside IFGs.
Driller gang. Armor is just bug decoration!
I mean...Driller doesn't really need armor breaking since all of his primaries and secondaries just bypass it (except the Subata)
Not to mention drills having 10,000% armor breaking
oh also the currently bugged interaction with corroded enemies where you can shoot them anywhere with subata explosive reload (with NCTC mod) and it applies the detonators
i believe the goo gun destroys armor too
It does. Also frozen enemies take a flat 3x damage so that's even better than armor shredding.
thisis the funniest comment section evr and i dont even kno if its on purpose rly
Gas Recycling on the Zhukovs did get a buff relatively recently to have a bunch of armour breaking, a pretty fun option on the scout :)
You forgot to mention that the Stingtails, one of the most annoying enemies in the game, have heavy armor carapaces.
Bingo.
I don't think there's anything sadder than the PGL being THIS useless against armor.
I mean... come on! The Breach Cutter just gets ALL the love!
I like the Breach Cutter, but the devs really have to put it side by side with the PGL and really understand just how messed up it is that the Breach Cutter is just better at everything until you get to the Hyper Prop and Fatboy OCs. But these just turn the PGL into a niche use gun.
Only exception is the RJ250 Compound, which is just fun, sure.
But meanwhile, the Breach Cutter gets to ignore armor and shred it at the same time, it gets more ammo, it can fire more than one shot before reloading because it has a magazine, and it has a potential to hit WAAAYYY more enemies, so much so that it can almost be used as second primary.
And this is BEFORE we get to the Overclocks which make it EVEN better at any of these things.
Yeah the pgl feels terrible without overclocks. I'm not necessarily calling for a breach cutter nerf but it is wild from a balance standpoint
I think lazymaybe put it best in his PGL video: It's a matter of flexility what you can target vs flexibility in where you can target them. The Breach Cutter has much better flexibility in target choices, because it can clear a line of grunts or smash through a praetorian/oppressor's health bar. The PGL is only good against groups of weak enemies and does pitiful damage to tanky targets by comparison. However, the PGL has better flexbility in *terrain* than the Breach Cutter. You can pretty much only use the breach cutter when the bugs are charging directly at you on a flat surface or incline. The PGL's spherical area of damage means it's really great at getting the bugs as they are crawling down a ceiling, clambering over jagged terrain to reach you, or moving perpendicular to you towards a teammate/lure.
It also has much better range-- the Breach Cutter has a hard cap on how far away it can damage bugs, but the PGL can sink grenades into a grunt pack from across the cave once you get a hang of the angle.
When I alternate between both tools often, I start to appreciate the ways in which they excel in different scenarios & mission types. I stand by this even when the PGL doesn't have overclocks-- just the fire damage mod is enough to make it a totally viable alternative for clearing waves, IMO.
However, with that being said... it's absolutely bullshit that the breach cutter can peel a praetorian like a banana but the PGL will only ever break 3-4 plates because of a weird hard-coded limit.
@@chastermief839 While the case-use scenario for both weapons is definitely different, the Breach Cutter STILL comes out on top because it's just a matter of timing, and because it gets to ignore terrain.
I do agree with almost everything you said though, and agree with your logic, but in the end the fire and forget nature of the PGL isn't as a good as it should be.
Pgl is great at longer ranges and in bigger, more vertical caves.
Swap Fat Boy and RJ250. Fat Boy is just fun, but bad, and RJ250 is actually the best PGL overclock for AoE, plus the mobility is useful.
Excellent video! Super informative as usual!
One small thing: You missed my favorite way to break armor, the Zhukov's Gas Recycling overclock. Throw in an IFG and conductive bullets and let it rip and you can defeat a praetorian in seconds flat.
bit more context on driller and armour break. thermal shock doesnt care about armour and doesnt get blocked. And as you mentioned the collette wave cooker secondary passes straight through armour. If you hit a Praetorian frontally in the face it still counts as if you hit it on the back weakpoint i think.
I do think its absolutely worth it to use your drills in combat. So use it for the armour break. Its even better in combat when freezing enemies first and then using barbed drills on them. Since frozen enemies take 3X damage from melee.
One thing missed is that the shot that breaks the armour (i.e depletes the plate's last hp) deals full damage to its health. I think in the case of light armour that means that the shot that breaks the plate doesnt get reduced by 20% and deals its full damage.
Also, no conversation about armour is complete without talking about weakpoints. Not all weak points are created equal. Small bugs have a 2X weak point on their face, so its always worth it to shoot this.
Praetorians have a 1X weakpoint on their butt, so its only worth it to shoot that when your weapon has weakpoint damage, otherwise you might as well hit them in the face.
For opressors its different again, they have a 3X weakpoint damage bonus
0:48 the survival guide INGAME literally says differences between the armors, grunts have light, praetorians have heavy, oppressors and above have unbreakable.
I ran armor breaking on the minigun exclusively since I started playing. I didn't care that everybody said stun was better, I liked having that option when I needed it.
Finally, I tried out stun, and fell in love with it. Also, armor wasn't that bad.
2 days later, armor got buffed. *Sigh*
I love it how even mechanically the driller is the odd one out. He really has a specific target audience LOL
@7:45
The Driller in fact is the best at taking down armor OR ignoring it completely. The tone you set for the Driller should not be defeating. That said, I really enjoyed this episode and it helped me understand the tools the other 3 dwarves have to take down armor. It almost feels like armor is a debuff targeted at the other 3 dwarves. The drillers attacks and abilities that either go through armor or ignore it completely fit thematically with them. This is a good chance to make a new driller video highlighting their armor breaking and armor ignoring capabilities. take care.
Yeah it's a little misleading to say the driller has poor armor breaking ability-- he has the best tool for it in the game and it's always equipped for free. Tho i do appreciate that in context of the rest of his kit he doesn't really care about it. But if he wants to break armor, he absolutely can lol, so IMO he's the best for "dealing with" armor, either by shredding it with drills or by just bypassing it with status effect damage.
Driller: **eyes glowing** 'im 3 steps ahead of, AT ALL TIMES'
9:01
Also, Temp Sock, which is letting you do a flat 200 ignoring Hazard DR and any other effects.
_"I'm not gonna sugarcoat it."_
You forgot Scout's Gas Rerouting OC on the Zhukovs, whose whole gimmick is that its damage is completely based off of armour break, to the point that shooting weakspots is technically detrimental to its damage output.
I just returned to the game after plating last time in season 3 and found this really helpful! Thank you!
14:50 Excuse me, can someone explain how the scout created that green pancake? Ive seen them before, but didn't know that you can make them.
They’re part of the environment in the glacial strata. Dwarf-sized green plants that expand into a platform when damaged.
I picket up this game a week ago and decided I want to max out the driller before touching other classes and thanks to your video I now know there's armor in the game
more like
breaking down the breaking down of enemy armor
Three things to note:
1. This is probably the most important one. A large part of the armor break fix was making a specific mechanic work properly.
The way armor break is supposed to work is that if you break an armor plate & you have an armor break mod* with a shot, that shot should do full damage. For example, a JFH Hurricane with Direct Damage in T1 & Armor break in T2 should do 60 damage per hit (50 direct + 10 area) when it breaks an armor plate, allowing it to 2 hit haz 4/5 grunts anywhere.
However, pre-patch it would do 50, as the 50 direct damage was reduced by 20%, even when it destroyed the armor plate, meaning it'd take 3 shots unless you hit the exact same spot twice.
This was also the case for the PGL, especially with Hyper Propellant. Now you can shoot the heavy armor of a Praetorian & do the full damage rather than just the area damage like pre-patch.
2. Lazymaybe did a great video on this patch, which I suggest watching. In it, he makes a compelling case that area damage is breaking armor as intended & is not bugged. He also makes the argument it should work the way people think it does.
3. Taking the armor break OC on the LOK-1 is pretty much pointless. The LOK-1 has an usual mechanic where if it breaks armor it deals full damage, even without an armor break mod. So with the T1 damage mod, you can reliably 4 shot grunts at Haz 4/5. I think Seeker rounds are better anyway, since they don't care about armor or even terrain.
* Excluding the LOK-1
4:05 i think they mentioned stingtails got this armor on one of the last updates
this may be a silly question to ask, but given the rework to the armor mechanic and the last major update introducing a few new enemies, my question to you would be the following: What new enemy types would you like to see added into the game, given the current roster of enemy bugs available AND the presence of new armor / damage applications being considered in the game?
I'd love to see more Pretorian type enemies. bigger bugs that make use of this armor stuff is always satisfying to fight! I'd also love to see new grunt types that might make use of medium* armor.
5:01 ah yes the DRG TF2 MGRR collaboration I was waiting for
The thing is Armor Breaking upgrades on AOE weapons do not suffer from this bug only.
Shotgun weapons also have this problem but not the same as projectile bugs and AOE reduction.
Normally When you equip Armor Breaking on weapons every time you manage to break armor it also deals full damage on it and a chance to break for light armor is calculated properly.
but it's not the case for shotgun weapons.
because the chance to break light armor is calculated for each pallet and not the total which ends up the less total chance to break light armor + if each pallet didn't manage to break it also means dealing less damage to them too.
Boomstick doesn't suffer this problem much because of an upgrade and overclock that makes it deal lots of damage.
But Warhog on the other hand does suffer a lot from this and that's why most people gonna tell you to pick better damage instead of armor breaking and use another method to break it (Breach Cutter or Shard Diffractor)
still, I do hope PGL Armor Breaking is a bit better because if they intended to make it like that it also means it's not really worth taking Armor Breaking on PGL but HyperProp Overclock.
yeah I was kinda disappointed this "complete guide" didn't even mention shotgun armor break, since it's a very strange quirk of the armor break system and definitely needs an explanation.
also I think the main reason people say to pick the damage mod is that it effectively hits the same breakpoints as the armor break mod, but also does more. The armor break mod for the warthog allows you to kill a grunt in two shots if you hit them in the body. The damage mod for the warthog in that same tier allows you to... kill grunts in two shots if you hit them in the body. It's effectively the same outcome, but the armor break mod has more general utility because it has better weakpoint damage, too.
I like this video alot it tells me everything i already knew because i have been playing since 2018
On my Scout i run the Dual SMG as my secondary and gave him the over clock with freeze damage. So im either going to freeze enemies directly or indirectly to help in killing swarms of enemies both big and small. It also doesnt hurt having the cryo grenade in my arsenal.
As you mentioned with the Driller him being able to bypass armor is amazing. One of the things i love doing is just freezing Pratorians and let my gunner friends shred them in half a second. However the Drillers pistol being mag dumped into a frozen Pratorian is equally effective.
I'm not sure if I just missed it but I didn't hear mention of how armor breaking mods also allow the shot that breaks armor to deal full damage to the enemy
This tidbit is mostly good for high damage weapons like the m1000 and (recently fixed) hyper propellant PGL which would have their damage nullified or greatly reduced without that mod
Sadly twins armor is a bit jank it seems and doesn't deal full damage on the armor breaking hit as it should (in my experience)
Anectodal but i've heard the twins armor is just far enough off its body that the hit doesnt register as hitting what's behind the armor.
I remember when I first leveled my gunner up, I got the armor breaking on the lead storm.
Now if I have the ammo to burn I can just stare down praetorians and point my gun at them
Awesome videos as always!
Thank you! I have needed to know this for a while.
Thank you for showing just how NUTTY the GK2 is for armor peeling. One clip can fully peel a praet.
Unbreakable isnt just an "armour weight class", it can actually apply to Light and Medium armour. However, only the Crassus uses Unbreakable Medium, and Unbreakable Light isnt a thing on any current enemy.
Gunner is the polar opposite of the Driller.
The Driller doesn't care about armor, and will destroy the bugs regardless.
The Gunner has every reason to shred armor, and will do so, along with the bugs entrails and double joints.
Me, a driller: "Armor? What's that?"
(Most of my weapons ignore armor in some way. I can just shoot oppressors from the front.)
8:24 “I am the fallout…” - my driller I guess.
Imo the breech cutter is PERFECT if you don't want to spend some time to shred armour. With the armor break mod, you can shred the Twins' armor before they dig in so when they resurface, they're already naked throughout. Swarm of pretorions? Aim one right and you'd have a naked pretorion catching your executioner bullets from your smart rifle in no time.
Not only explosive chemical rounds for Loki are better than armor break module, but also explosion has it's own armor breaking effect
The explosion is very weak for armor breaking. What’s really pulling the weight there is that lok1 secretly has armor break on the base gun. Thats the real reason ab module is useless.
Remember the only creature armor breaking really matters on is the stingtail as all others have weakpoints exposed and in not too hard to hit places.
Haven't seen anyone mention this yet, but one of lazymaybe's videos say armor break isn't as effective on shotguns because it calculates per pellet rather than adding up to guarantee armor break. Or something along those lines... I don't want to take his words out of context.
I'm still a greenbeard so not really sure why that matters much, but wanted to mention here that shotguns behave weirdly at least according to the hardcore players.
If you watch carefully, even light armor can be stripped. It visible on the "butt" of the grunts.
However, I got just a few oportunities to actually take advantage of this. Only with low DPS weapons.
Plasma carbine
OPA over clock
Speed up fire rate at 50%
Speed up movement on overheat
Max out fire rate and damage
AP rounds
2 second armour tearing mag dump that lets you make a quick getaway
idk how to feel about armor breaking upgrades, in scenarios where it should come handy you discover that you could have been better off picking up another overclock or upgrade. Then you have those random scenarios where you waste ammo because the game decided to spam pretorians and guard grunts.
I really enjoyed the video but I think there are 2 important things I feel like you neglected to mention:
Shots which break armour deal full damage as if it hit a health pool, which means that for the M1K for instance it's extra important as it lets you hit breakpoints on non-weakspot shots on acid spitters.
Armour breaking on AoE weapons feels rather poor as it is hard limited to only removing up to 5 armour plates. So even if you use a fatboy overclock with armour breaking and hit a praetorian head on, it can at most remove 5 of all of its armour plates.
Yes having armor break on the area damage would be cool but has ghost ship said or hinted that it not applying to the area damage is a bug or did the community call it a bug and is sticking to that?
due to fire mod on hyperprop being fixed and actually lowering its damage now
armor break mod is now the default I'd say unless you're going into rivals presence/industrial sabotage(questionable) mission since now you can hit a praetorean anywhere even into armor with no damage losses
Def sharing this on the FB group.
Bulks also have the unbreakable medium armor that's just a flat dmg reduction, the crassus just has a better version of it.
Doesn't nemesis also have heavy armor? The top part atleast
Overall gunner might be the best, but the breach cutter is hands down the best. If engi sneezes on a pretorian it becomes completely armorless.
Using GTA San Andreas sounds at the beginning was not something i expected lmao
1. This video would have been improved by a section on what weapons are and are not affected by armour in the first place.
2. You make several references to weapons that have high RoF and low per-shot damage being good for armour removal, but I don't get why. If two weapons have the same DPS and armour damage multiplier, why should it matter how fast they shoot?
Not only that, but he’s kinda completely wrong on that point. Single powerful shot weapons, like hyperprop and m1000 are better with armor breaking because of the mechanic that allows ab weapons to deal full dmg on the shot that breaks the armor. Since this is a single shot getting this effect, you’d want the shot that breaks the armor to be really strong. On top of that, those weapons tend to do enough dmg to break the armor in one shot anyway, so they basically get to ignore armor (particularly noticeable with m1000 vs grunts with ab)
You forgot the Lithophage with unbreakable armor. Also all the Lithophage hybrids seem to have medium armor. Engi, Turret Armor breaking is ok alone, stun usually better choice.. BUT with turret whip, the anti armor jumps. Menace seems to have some sort of armor that does not sheer off. Also you forgot grenades. Anyone with numbers per chance?
if you can drill through the rocks you can definitely dril through bug armor
Why would you need more than %100 armor penetration anyways? You don't need the bug to reach 0 armor health for it to die.
Running armor break mods to increase your armor break % is worth doing so that you can hit damage breakpoints for bodyshot kills. This is mostly for better kill times when clearing waves of grunts, for example on the vanilla M1000 (no overclocks): The gun's base damage is enough to one shot a grunt if you get a headshot. But if you only land body shots, you'll need at least 3 shots to kill. That's where armor break is handy-- if you're using an armor break mod, any bullet that destroys the armor will also bypass the armor, so hitting a grunt in the body will break & bypass the armor's 20% damage reduction to get full damage. Meaning you can kill a grunt in only 2 body shots. even if those both of those shots hit armor plates.
in an ideal situation you could just always land perfect headshots every time, but against an entire swarm it's just not practical to assume that. More importantly, blowthrough is a very important tool for clearing crowds with the m1000, and if you're using blowthrough you definitely can't guarantee headshots. so the bonus armor damage really comes in handy there.
You do not have to shoot weakspots on dreadnoughts or opressors with sludgeblast
OMEN tower also has unbreakable armor. New korlok but worse also does.
Stingtail got so nerfed that people forget to include it in a complete guide of enemy armor breaking.
Good. Stingtail shouldn’t have had armor covering weakspots to begin with. No other ludicrous priority enemy has that at all. Most of those kinds don’t have armor at all.
Well I just run mini-shells and RJ250 because they cant kill you if your not there and mini-shells with armour breaking mmmm by god it kills feels like scout if he had a grenade launcher and a 12 shell shotgun.
we have only two enemies that have armor and it really should be removed its Mactera Brundle and Q'ronar Shellback. Pickaxe copes with them perfectly, so armor breaking is usable in 2 cases: 1 for turrets cus they aim in center of bug and wasting all ammo if they dont have armor breaking, 2 for m1000 for two shots grunts in body
there is any guide about resistances?
I'll still run armour break on dreadnaught missions as it will help deal with glyphid sentinels. Also do sentinels have light or medium armour?
Sentinels don’t have armor. Their front just isn’t a weakpoint. Only dreadnaught armor breaking is good for is the twins.
Lmao, the zhukov gas recycling stat buffwas forgotten
Me who doesn't care about meta: you dare challenge me?!
Doesn't the Subata 2-round burst break armor? I mean, it doesn't feel like it, but it says so lol
Why try for armor breaking if you can aim at the weakspots anyway?
If it isn't drillable, it's propably flammable. Or sludgeble.
Will the skin under the armor count as weak points?
0:12 what do you mean?
Just shoot plate armour off and shoot the fleshi bits
Nothing complicated about that lol
good video, sir ;)
Stingtails were originally going to have medium armor
turrets without armor breaking is just a waste of ammo, actually theyre waste of ammo in any case but you cant get rid of them
I don't care if the armor breaking is only on impact I'm using the 40mm
*GASP* How dare you not know Javarak that the dreadnoughts "armor bars" are actually just more health bars!!! lol j/k yeah my original guess was yellow bar? must be armor right? Love the video man thank you for the in depth explanation on all the confusing stuff with DRG
Really good video but you did get a few things wrong about the actual changed
What was broken about armor break on AoE weapons wasnt that they didnt break armor. The armor break upgrades have a unique effect where the shot that breaks armor will deal full damage as if it wasnt there, essentially a “punchthrough” effect. The bug was that for projectile weapons like the PGL they would break the armor but not get this “punchthrough” effect and lose most of its damage, which of course is no longer the case
Additionally, the PGL and other AoE weapons are still quite bad at breaking armor because of a weird thing where explosions do less damage to plates of armor as soon as 1 plate has been broken, so they only break 1 plate at a time instead of all at once. Even fatboy with armor break still cant strip a preatorian…. PGL fans stay losing :(
Detonators only have medium armor? Dear god, I thought they had god mode cheat on. They take way to many hits and where are their weakpoints?
Im just gonna keep holding left click on things till they die
love it
9:35 the what? 😂
3:38 he’s naked
Yea Gunner
Do the Caretaker's vents count as armor, or is it just "extra health bars"? Is it's eye even a weakpoint? Some clarification would be appreciated.
I thought that the mini versions of that one boss(the one where you kill the mini ones and then the 3 yellow ones and then his back weakspot) had medium armor?
Drillers dont need armor break lmfao, damn near all of his guns just outright bypass armor, flamer, sludge gun, even cryo gun, the plasma gun the microwave gun, ain't no need for armor break lmfao