Edit: Happy to report that banshee bolts now work and tasers now stack properly! See ua-cam.com/video/TnKzURdC24M/v-deo.html Couple of small corrections: since DoT effects tick once instantly when applied, the explosive chemical bolts DoT does 82 total damage at the base duration, not 80. Also explosive chemical bolts do 15/12 damage on hit instead of the 15/10 the other special bolts do. And a couple of extra bits I didn't cover or that other people informed me of: -The beam from taser bolts doesn't actually enable "does more damage against electrified target" type boosts, including magnetic shafts. But the proximity effect from tasers does. -Pheromone grenades give a speed debuff of 0.9x. That's not new, but I should have mentioned it for context since it's probably not common knowledge. Other drg test/info videos: ua-cam.com/play/PLqTo6tQ9tCOrABARyls3C94qzGo6TW3h_.html
I noticed you didn't shoot the enemies directly with the fire bolts. Would that keep the heat moving with the pack or does that not work for some reason?
@@cypher6083 So, it USED to work that, when an enemy dies, the bolt in it also goes away. Which frequently made shooting enemies with firebolts bad, unless the enemy was tanky. Now a firebolt stuck in an enemy doesn't vanish on that enemy's death, unless the enemy's corpse immediately goes away(like a swarmer, which just splatters). So doing that is more frequently good now.
@@LazyMaybe Awesome, I will have to try out more bolt types after watching your video. Thank you for replying and thank you for the hard work you do documenting DRG mechanics. Your research is the foundation of content for almost every other DRG creator. Best DRG content creator!
@@gogodogodo3283 Oi, that's no way to talk about Molly, ya leaf-bumbling son of a mud golem! She carries all the minerals we couldn't possibly carry around by ourselves! She obeys every command without exception! She can even carry you to the Drop Pod or to other dwarves if you're feeling lazy! Why, I ought to volunteer you for the Mini-Mule Mission! That ought to change your tune about how good Molly is to us real quick! Don't you remember what your grandma used to say? They used to use REAL Mules back in the day! With needs, and wants, and fears! They wouldn't step a single hoof in those caves. We're lucky they send us with a Molly at all, and not just a giant burlap sack to put everything in. So don't let me catch you badmouthing Molly like that anymore, ya hear? Ya leaf-lover..
I'm happy that they took the time to change the model for a trifork crossbow, so it shows the three bolts. hope they do the same for the ER and six shooter bulldog one day.
This was an unexpected surprise for me as when it was first showed off, people didn’t find it to be all that useful or fun to use. I was hoping out on it. But my god despite it being seemingly a low tech weapon, it is so technical. I feel like Hawkeye or Green Arrow taking this weapon since there is so many trick arrows you can bring along. And it’s pretty good for support. I really like pheromone bolts with specialist since bring a beast master perk and the pheromone grenades and you can basically let the bugs hurt themselves, which I always find amusing. Also aggressive venting works well to make it a bug repellent build. Also last thing to note. I never knew that trick of firing and changing ammo types at the same time. That’s actually EXTREMELY useful and don’t need to deal with changing them and wasting a lot of time with it. So thanks for that.
I was one of those people who didn't think a crossbow seemed fun. What redeemed it for me is the large number of different bolts. It's truly a swiss army-knife and one of my favorite new secondaries.
I've noticed most of them seem centered or mostly centered around being Long Range weapons, likely to cover for the fact that every class besides Scout and Engineedr woth Lok1 had trouble fighting enemies far away. Don't know about Microwave Cooker though.
@@Manglet762 Gunner's Lead Storm with accuracy mod on tier 1 was pretty competent at long range, though I always take the less heat mod. Even then it's fairly good.
One thing I like about taser bolts is that it constantly applies electric to dreads when they otherwise don't get hit with lightning. This allows you to really take advantage of anything that grants bonus to electrically effected enemies. Things like bullets of mercy, magnetic shafts, or engineers shard diffractor all work well with it if you happen to bring it along for a dread mission. It's so much smoother than using an IFG and seeing them leave it within 2 seconds.
Surprised you'd like Aggressive Venting so much but not fire bolts. One pheromone and one fire bolt into a guard is great for fire and forget horde clearing. Not to mention them being great at clearing swarmers by just standing behind a bolt and maybe jumping over it a bit. It does put more pressure on your primary for single target damage of course.
Yeah Pheromone + fire bolt is extremely good. I don't think he considered that combo but that's okay because most players haven't tried every combo this game has to offer. It takes an enormous number of hours to play every build for at least 10 missions each. Most only play a mission with a build and make a pretty rash assumption about it. Which is fair, given we can't exactly dedicate our lives to DRG..... Or.... Can we?
I'm pretty new (60hrs in) and got fire bolts as my 1st overclock for Boltshark and paired it with pheromones right away. Seeing the sea of fire is so satisfying, but I didn't know you could switch ammo after a shot before this video.
Aggressive Venting on the Drak has always been my favourite overclock, and I'm honestly surprised they buffed it considering how strong it was. It's a shame it was under utilized pre-buff. It's incredible with cryo and peheremone to temperature shock everything, Peheremone Bolts, Cryo Bolts and Peheremone Canisters and Aggressive Venting on the Drak has been my new favourite loadout.
Not to be a party pooper but how was Aggressive Venting strong, considering it was a balanced OC with ammo and cooling penalties, the heat generated from "venting" wasn't enough to light up a Praetorian and you needed to be in 4m (really small radius) to ignite Grunts and the fire damage itself wasn't enough to kill it, and using it with Manual Heat Dump wasn't even an option since you won't ignite enemies unless you're touching them, not to mention that it kinda forces you into this playstyle of always being in close proximity to bugs to get the full effect of the OC...etc etc, (I could go all day listing the drawbacks of the OC), what I'm saying it, the OC had lacking and mediocre effect for the penalties it had (albeit not that huge of a penalty, but still) and with Impact Deflection OC providing much more for much less, the OC never stood a chance. Now changing the OC to Clean, changes everything, since there is no penalty to using it whatsoever, it's really good and fun to use, I'm glad it was changed to a clean tbh since the effect isn't that strong however it can be extremely useful if you know how to use it.
@@TheBadger using it against larger enemies is wrong that wasn't it attended use it was to buff the Crowd Control of the drak. Slower cooling was more of a benefit to the weapon it allowed you to save an explosion for the right moment also the fear was an added bonus to the weapon giving you a personal air bubble also good for reviving a teammate. Lasty a very short over heat time with added manual heat dump you basically never stopped firing, you were either burning them or shooting them.
Something to note: Fire Bolts still do the radial heat when hitting targets, so it’s nowhere near as finicky as you make it out to be. The cryo bolts are probably better though if you’re looking for more of an HVT standard bolt.
in a team setting, I think pheromone bolts generally aren't as good, since things die too quick for it to be useful most of the time. Electricity is better because you can stack them onto detonators, which can greatly slow its advance towards your team or Doretta, not to mention, its effect is actually useful against dreadnoughts in elimination.
Pheremones are extremely strong for clutching, but the real strength is freeing the grenade slot from Cryo/Pheremone for that purpose, letting you run IFGs all the time. Also Phere is arguably even stronger against bulks: They also apply a slow, and make the Bulk target bugs instead.
@@quadconjures the bulk is going to 1 shot all the bugs, so it's not going to be that much of a deterrent as something like electricity. The problem with pheremones is that the situation in which it shines is "clutching", which is really a situation you shouldn't be getting into in the first place. If you're that worried about clutches, iron will is much better and classless.
IFGs already make bulk slow to almost a stop while also increasing everyone's damage against it. And while you're not seeing 'clutch' situations with a good team, pheromones still make bugs bunch up more and lessen how much aggro your team needs to deal with. It's not as visible as when people are down or killing things slowly, but you're still getting more value out of it than you normally get from tasers.
Maybe worth mentioning the incredible synergy the Drak has with the Xbow. Until now, the big upside of the Drak has been kind of useless to scout, namely that it doesn't have to reload, because scout kind of always ran born ready for boomstick and flaregun. Now, you can drop born ready (Or take the upgrade on the flare gun) and still not lose uptime. Not only does the Xbow demand a lot of attention in your hands from switching between bolts, leading targets, and it's slow reload, but now with the ability to queue a bolt swap in place of a reload, it's actually actively faster to not get the free reload if you intend to switch bolts anyways, which happens all the time with pheremones. In addition, PCF means the Drak can quickly and efficiently proc magnetic shafts on distant targets without taser, on top of already shoring up the Xbow's weaknesses by being strong against small targets like swarmers. I like pairing a Rewiring Drak with Triple Xbow with Pheremones and IFGs, as a generalist fasting scout to compliment the common ammo-hungry shard gun/gemini engi. Rewiring drak is obscenely ammo efficient, pheremones can build you space to spam more drak, and triple with IFG does huge damage to priority targets like wardens. If the team can survive without many flares (IE does not have a gunner), you can often skip two or three consecutive ammo drops on a build like this. Quietly goated on Sabotage too. My other choice is usually Minimal Clips M1k with Cryo/Pheremone and IFG, for faster horde clear via blowthrough and some very efficient swarmer clearing with cryo bolts. The aoe freeze on cryo bolts also doubles down on blowthrough value. Also fairly strong in large biomes like Biozone, where you can snipe ranged threats with cryo and pop them with m1k. IMHO, the huge upside to the Xbow is introducing flexibility in the scout's grenade slot, letting you get away with IFGs or Pheremones in many more situations. Previously, there was basically no situation in which cryo nades weren't a good choice, from securing resses to mactera swarm to removing death effects to clearing swarmers to just a general sterroid against priority targets. The only big loss is not being able to double cryo a bulk.
Useless? It was always useful for basic crowd control and amount of ammo it had of your build you secondary for burst damage you were all sent and done
@@timothy6583 No, I mean the Drak's primary advantage as a weapon, which is it's lack of reload. The gun has always been good, but not having to reload is pointless on a class which always runs born ready anyways.
I run Sniper as Scout and what I love about the Xbow is that I can now clear mobs at long ranges (Bodkin). Something the shottie or the zhuks doesnt offer.👍
Judging by the thumbnail, I’d say that the boltshark is pretty strong if it’s capable of turning the weakpoints of glyphids into balls of white light that rival the brightness of the sun itself.
I've been really enjoying the fire bolts. Paired with pheromone bolts, it gives Scout a pretty great way to deal with squishy crowds. Pheromone bolt on a big enemy, fire bolt next to it and you'll light a huge number of bugs, normally including the big enemy. Doesn't feel finicky to me :)
Was wondering if anyone noticed that the boltshark has a special bolt type DESIGNED to distract enemies that could be used to make fire more consistent
Idk why you didnt mention the synergy between pheromone nades and chemical bolts, its godly. It makes swarms a joke quite frankly whether you're playing solo or co-op.
I actually found Fire Bolts to be some of the best swarm clear in scout’s arsenal right now. One phero bolt/nade, followed up by a fire bolt can clear a cave. Swarmers almost literally don’t get to exist if you have them, and while they don’t do jack shit to robots, you can keep the ground mostly clear of any junk while your team deals with that. If anything, I’ve found Bodkin points to be kinda meh. Forgoing extra ammo just so my bolts deal with grunts slightly better is a little redundant when I can just… _use my primary or fire bolts for the same effect._
I don't know if this is an imagined effect of just how slow bugs move when hit by the electro-bolt beam, but it seems like you can "leash" large bugs like praetorians and oppressors if you shoot one electro bolt into them and another at the ground. This used to work on dreadnoughts but stopped after the most recent hotfix. It might be a bit niche, but sometimes it's handy to stop an oppressor in their tracks (they don't manage to even turn when 'leashed'.)
Awesome video. One thing that was missed is how effective the taser bolts are with the specialist perk for a few reasons. First, it can almost entirely stun nearly anything if you put 2 bolts directly into it for around 20 seconds. This includes Praetorians, Oppressors, Dreadnoughts, and even works SHOCKINLY (hehe) well against Prospectors, Nemesis, BET-C (when she's being naughty) and EVEN a bulk detonator (this also works against the ghost). This does a fair amount of damage and allows your team to wail on any big baddie from a safe distance. On top of that, two taser bolts will stop any praetorian in it's tracks and kill it outright. 3 bolts will nearly always do the same thing to an oppressor, and on haz 4 I believe 6 bolts will kill a detonator. Many don't realize how much damage these do over time, and if your team realizes this, no one has to waste ammo on most of the big boys. Scout can take them out early on his own without breaking a sweat. The last thing is that your special bolts are refilled between every stage of the deep dive. So scout can use up ALL of his special bolt at the end of every stage, and start full into the next stage. With the overclock you get around 30 special bolts with the right perks. It's incredibly useful in Elite Deep Dives, and is one of my favorite go to's with scout.
Great stuff! Loved triple shot bolts but didn't even think about using them with magnetic shafts/taser special bolts for even more damage. Also I'm seeing more and more examples of aggressive venting with plasma carbine. Almost makes me want to try that gun
@@rocket8848 You're also getting a 25% damage bonus on 3 bolts being fired at once, which is valuable when you have a grand total of 8-11 shots to use. Trifork + taser is my new favourite secondary to have for dread fights.
In my eyes, with the M1000, the Scout already has a nice single target weapon and he needs crowd control badly. The Pheromone + Fire Bolts combo is pretty neat for that. You basically make a huge molotov out of one glyphid.
tip: Scout's electric arrow work alot with the engineer's shard diffractor. since it has bonus damage to the electric enemies, Scout can mark some tough enemies like praetorian, Bulk Detonator, Oppressor, and boss too. making Engineer and Scout perfect for dealing massive damage in short amount of time
I saw you put pheromone darts on with the fire bolt mod, but didn't mention the synergy between the two, making it so that fire spreading is significantly more effective. I sometimes "milk" bigger bugs by pheromoning them and shooting a fire bolt or two into them after. Then the crowd from the pheromones sets on fire, killing them faster and allowing more bugs to attack the bait bug. I have completely trivialized swarms when doing escort missions. I bait a big bug and watch the entire swarm go to them and completely ignore the dozer. However, pheromone darts are significantly weaker in a uncoordinated team due to allies killing your bait.
Not sure if this is intended but iirc the fear chance on the bolts happens on some kind of tick, and so triggers a LOT more than 33% of the time, as well as when the bolt is in the air (I think that part IS intended). Someone may have to fact check me here
Thanks for this video. Since the update came out I’ve felt like the boltshark was very underwhelming. I’m still a very confused as to why it has such huge damage reductions against the main big body enemies in praetorians and oppressors, but highlighting all the varied uses has really opened my eyes. I can definitely see why the normal bolts feel so weak, because I haven’t been taking full advantage of special bolts. Great stuff and thank you.
Don't forget that taser bolts inflict electrocution on targets that are normally immune to it. The long-duration (stacking?) slow makes them excellent for mitigating dangerous high-health enemies, like oppressors and dreadnoughts. Unfortunately, because dreadnoughts specifically have a high resistance to electric damage(WHY?). As such, a max duration/max special ammo build isn't quite worth it, even if the damage per full reload is over 8K. It is pretty effective against dreads, but unreliable, I suspect a lot of damage comes from the arcs.
That's true! I usually take IFGs to elimination anyways, but it definitely doesn't hurt to have another way to use magnetic shafts or other elec boosts against them.
@@LazyMaybe and of course the electric bolts do insane damage to dreads for some reason. Try it vs a normal dreadnaught and watch its hp drop with two bolts on its back.
I heard some Dodonpachi music during the Pheromone bolt section. Bullet Hell gamer? Edit: oh there's even more Dodonpachi music! And isn't the track at the beginning from Rabi-Ribi?
With fire bolts, you can place two bolts next to each other on the ground. The heat stacks, and so two bolts will ignite a horde of grunts passing by them without the need for slows or additional kiting.
Not sure why you stuck cryo arrows in enemies but not the fire ones. I find them (fire arrows) to be pretty damn good at doing large swaths of damage from just one arrow stuck in a grunt guard. Combined with pheremones and baby, dinner is served. Absolutely based music choices though holy shit.
Snipe high value targets(stuff like trijaws, spawn, wardens, spitters) more than large single targets, use special bolts to supplement utility(pulling away aggro with pheros being the best one but explosive bolts helping clear groups and a couple direct tasers neutering most big tanky enemies have situational use as well). Also the most dated part of this video which came out when boltshark was new is that I didn't like fire bolts. Both fire bolts and cryo bolts are cracked for different reasons and if you find normal bolts are underwhelming due to most primary setups already killing the targets they're good against, fire/cryo bolts are probably what you want.
@@LazyMaybe Yeah, I agree. Cryo bolts are my favorite OC, while bodkin point is really fun. But I still don't get this gun with those "special" oc, that drastically change the gun. Special bolts are very good, but gun by itself isn't, well, except disruption enemies
1:25 Something you probably should've tested: It seems like the area damage DOES affect more than one enemy, but it only does when you actually hit an enemy, not terrain. I've seen the Boltshark kill multiple grunts without Bodkin points.
Taser bolts can forcibly apply the shocked status to targets that are normally immune to it (like Dreadnoughts). Rather, this gives you a second, long-lasting alternative to applying the shocked status without using an IFG if you have them equipped, which combos quite nicely for other players that might be running on-shock effects (like Shard Diffractor's last mod).
Tasers are extremely effective against Nemesis. Not quite sure why, but they do a ton of damage plus slowing it to a standstill. I thought the taser beam stacked with the proximity AOEs, giving 3 sources of damage and slow, it doesn't seem to do that with bugs, but from the damage I see on Nemesis it might actually be working there. While the Zhukov's have more total damage on paper, a Boltshark with Bodkins will likely put out a LOT more damage in practice, owing to the Zhukov's abysmal range and accuracy. The Boomstick isn't even a competitor for damage, even at its maximum damage build it does less than the Boltshark (basic bolts alone) and that doesn't account for the accuracy. Multiple Penetrations are the only way to get anything comparable.
Unintuitively, taser bolts are strongest for single target-either enabling magnetic shafts, or just stacking 2 taser bolts onto the same target in order to slow it by a ton and get a good amount of DoT on it. Could have emphasized that more here, but if you want to use them that's definitely their best use case.
The sound you use when you kill them bugs with the Trifork volley oc is S-tier. Asides from that, some of the best drg weapon breakdown vids I've seen. keep it up chyeeeaah
Cryo minelets is a bit faster but doesn't work against breeders, and often won't work on spitballers at range. So it's weaker against set spawns, and of course it doesn't come with special bolts.
I personally combo the bodkin bolts with the bouncy rounds of the plasma carbine. It actually makes scout pretty decent at crowd control letting him much more effectively deal with bigger groups of enemies that he otherwise can’t handle
Tazer bolts are also good for putting electric defuff of oppressors and dreads. I need to practice bio chemical bolts, but I still feel wierd that they have less ammo then pheromone bolts. Wish they would just set all the special ammo to 12 and be done with it.
If freezing targets cancels out the explosive chemical bolts death animation (and thus, explosive chemical bolts itself), then why run it with cryo bolts? isn't that counterintuitive? 12:09
It's not about what those options do together, it's what they cover. Cryo bolts have lower damage and are worse for killing the targets that normal bolts are normally good at, which means your primary needs to pick up the slack somewhat. Explosive chemical bolts help with that. You don't combo them with the cryo bolts, you combo them with your primary to stretch primary ammo and swarmclear further, and use cryo bolts against specific nasty enemies.
Is it true that enemies affected by electric beams (both from taser bolts and turret arc overclock) don't count as electrocuted for mods that increase damage to electrified targets?
Don't know how that slipped by me, but that is actually true! The proximity elec on the bolts works, but not the beam. That goes for the homing of magnetic shafts as well as the damage boost, and things like bullets of mercy.
How do you feel about the change to Aggressive Venting? Personally it has always been my favorite oc for the Drak and I found it more effective than even the bouncy bullets oc in a lot of ways. I get that most people probably did not like it very much so a buff may have been warranted but removing the ammo penalty and making it clean makes it almost feel overwhelming.
Honestly the only reason people aren't screaming foul at the Xbow for being busted op is the existence of special powder. What's price's line from mw2 about extinguishing an oil fire? It's the same shit with both the Shard Diffractor and the pocket microwave, being overshadowed by Hyperpropellant and TCF respectively.
@@quadconjures that's the best part "when everyone's super, no one is" all is balanced when balance is not a concern the devs have. It's all about what's fun and that's why there's hardly ever community outcry
@@punchoponcho5238 Yeah, although I'd still like to see changes to all three mods. Powder needs a downside of some kind (I wouldn't care what, maybe something small like ammo or spread or swap time), and TCF should honestly just be rolled into the base gun. IDK what I'd do about propellant tho.
@@quadconjures I really don't agree that SD is overshadowed by hyperprop at all. Unless you have a pocket cryo driller to constantly play with, overdrive SD can kill stuff roughly as fast but with greater efficiency and a lot more flexibility than hyperprop.
10:54 FCK THIS FKIN CEILING GRASS FFS. I always remove it, dont care how long it takes. Cuz when I die because someone didn't remove it, it is the only time this game makes me actually angry and pissed and sometimes even ragequit. It is just soooooo damn annoying, makes the biome rating from a 4/10 to a 0/10 ngl
I don't even understand why most bolts are retrievable. It's a precision weapon, you should be aiming for weakpoints... meanwhile can only recover when you miss? Kinda weird synergy with fear as well. Missing on purpose, because you get LESS effect when you hit? Just weird, man. Anyway I run this Pheromone/Cryo with primary plasma. Never bothered to switch out my cryo nades either, don't much see the point of the slow in comparison...
So I'm testing tasers against nemesis in sandbox. Apparently the taser bolts apply a stacking, permanent electrocution effect to the nemesis of about 1.65 damage per damage tick per bolt, IN ADDITION to the damage the bolts themselves do in proximity. This same behavior can be seen on Patrol Bots, though the damage comes out to 2.2 per damage tick (possibly rounded, I have a hard time testing 2 as the patrol bot dies before I can get clean results)
Magnetic shafts plus taser bolts feels so pointless, you already oneshot non-tanky enemies, and praetorians and oppressors have resistance that makes the combo not worth using on them, so what exactly are the magnetic shafts for?
Tips appreciated for playing with this thing in the first place, cuz I just don't know how to begin. I have the fire bolts, cryo bolts, tri-fork volley, and quickfire overclocks. Edit: I have since played with this more. I didn't like fire or cryo bolts at all. However, I have done tri-fork + taser bolts for an elimination melting build.
Just wanna say, loving this recent content from you. Keep it up mate! Also, thanks for showing the mod at the end, I've been really wanting to test stuff recently!
I think I need to give magnetic shaft another go. My test run against dreadnoughts were kinda iffy, as trying to shoot a weakpoint proved difficult, if there's two beasties in the electric field. For me it just shoved the arrows into the armor, not into the weakpoints where i aimed. Doing sharp 90° turns while doing so.
I swear, i am getting best overclocks for best guns for no reason, and i am pretty new to the game (only 140 hours in, every dwarf promoted once except gunner, who is pronoted twice), and i have trifork volley, volatile bullets, burning hell, special powder, fat boy, magnetic pellet alignment and etc, looking forward for some other overclocks too tho ° -°
Firebolts seem like they'd be handy in instances where someone has Neurotoxin grenades. The gas is flammable so you can set it off in one shot. Also if everyone is running fire stuff the heat would build up quicker.
I use the electric bolts on dreadnaughts - it does good chip on armour. So I can be moving while the bolt is doing the job of removing it's armour and revealing its weakpoint.
The one thing i dislike about it is the time it needs to change ammo type even with the related perk. However, i didn't know about the firing + reload button trick... Haven't gotten the reload overclock either, gotta try that.
Fire bolts make this weapon the best secondary for scout by far in the majority of scenarios. No other secondary allows for the wave clear that fire bolts do.
Also did you do any testing with firebolts on robots? Like can they light patrol bots easily? Turrets? I bet they can be used to easily delete sniper turrets. Personally though I always take cryo and pheromones in a team setting to focus single target enemies and then give crowd support
Uselessly terrible against patrol bots, don't bother. They work kind of ok against turrets, but it takes 3 bolts landed close to the turret without pausing so it's not really that good of an advantage.
@@LazyMaybe well hopefully fire bolts get some sort of buff in the future, I really wish the devs would focus less on nerfing what's popularly used and think why something is underused and buff it
@@stanman3192 They buff underused stuff much more than nerf popular stuff. See the buffs to rewiring mod and AV on drak, and the lack of nerfs to NTP autocannon.
Taser bolts can create lines on one target, making them great at dealing with large threats. Four bolts, 2 on each weakpoint, will nearly straight kill a BetC. 2 in the face of an Oppressor, and one on the weak point creates two lines on it.
good timing on that video. I was wondering if the more potent special bolt effect upgrade in tier 5 affects special bolts like the cryo and fire bolts as well
It's been a sec since this video came out, does the explosive chemical bolt do anything to how a bulk dies? Does it die the same or does it do the special animation and explosion?
Does anybody know how to get that empty test chamber at 6:13 ? I've seen it a whole lot in this channel, and would love to use it to test out my builds, but I can't find it at all on the mod website.
Trifork volley works great with the buffed electrifying reload GK2. It can both set up big targets for the crossbow and deal with large crowds of grunts by itself. Tri-fork helps with it's lacking single target damage.
The weapon is super niche but so good if you use it right. Not my goto, as I tend to just prefer playing something simple like jumbo or embedded dets, but it's rewarding and a good brain teaser every now and then. I think a lot of the criticism of the weapon definitely misses the point, so I'm glad there's resources that explain what the weapon is about. Is trifork worse than embedded detonators? Yep, a lot worse, way less damage on a bad damage type. Is Bodkin bolts worse than boomstick blowthrough? It has its advantages, but it's a pretty massive ammo loss and much lower single-target damage. Thing is, it's comparing half of the boltshark to the entire boomstick or NUKs pair. Running two secondary weapons in exchange for both of them being kind of weak on their own can definitely be worth it. I think cryo bolts are the most disappointing OC on the weapon. It got a lot of hype from its early adopters, but their radius seems to be tiny and their effect application painfully slow if not paired w/ something else. The phero combo is cool and all, but I'd rather have two secondary weapons, the whole gimmick of the BS, rather than one secondary weapon that's just cryo minelets with extra steps. The convenience on cryo bolts is nice, but I don't think it's actually that practical if it's only for breeders and spitballers specifically behind terrain. Minelets seem to be straight up better for general purpose freeze output, with only a few losses into HPTs.
Edit: Happy to report that banshee bolts now work and tasers now stack properly! See ua-cam.com/video/TnKzURdC24M/v-deo.html
Couple of small corrections: since DoT effects tick once instantly when applied, the explosive chemical bolts DoT does 82 total damage at the base duration, not 80. Also explosive chemical bolts do 15/12 damage on hit instead of the 15/10 the other special bolts do.
And a couple of extra bits I didn't cover or that other people informed me of:
-The beam from taser bolts doesn't actually enable "does more damage against electrified target" type boosts, including magnetic shafts. But the proximity effect from tasers does.
-Pheromone grenades give a speed debuff of 0.9x. That's not new, but I should have mentioned it for context since it's probably not common knowledge.
Other drg test/info videos: ua-cam.com/play/PLqTo6tQ9tCOrABARyls3C94qzGo6TW3h_.html
I noticed you didn't shoot the enemies directly with the fire bolts. Would that keep the heat moving with the pack or does that not work for some reason?
@@cypher6083 So, it USED to work that, when an enemy dies, the bolt in it also goes away. Which frequently made shooting enemies with firebolts bad, unless the enemy was tanky.
Now a firebolt stuck in an enemy doesn't vanish on that enemy's death, unless the enemy's corpse immediately goes away(like a swarmer, which just splatters). So doing that is more frequently good now.
@@LazyMaybe Awesome, I will have to try out more bolt types after watching your video. Thank you for replying and thank you for the hard work you do documenting DRG mechanics. Your research is the foundation of content for almost every other DRG creator. Best DRG content creator!
Bonus tip: (Last I checked) Molly also makes a good mobile quiver for retrievable bolt storage if you have excess before a resupply.
:o
(:
How many times are we gonna find ways to turn Molly into a pin cushion
Poor molly
@@ricecooker7037 its just a soulless tin can, it doesn't even have AI. Bosco rules
@@gogodogodo3283 Oi, that's no way to talk about Molly, ya leaf-bumbling son of a mud golem! She carries all the minerals we couldn't possibly carry around by ourselves! She obeys every command without exception! She can even carry you to the Drop Pod or to other dwarves if you're feeling lazy! Why, I ought to volunteer you for the Mini-Mule Mission! That ought to change your tune about how good Molly is to us real quick! Don't you remember what your grandma used to say? They used to use REAL Mules back in the day! With needs, and wants, and fears! They wouldn't step a single hoof in those caves. We're lucky they send us with a Molly at all, and not just a giant burlap sack to put everything in. So don't let me catch you badmouthing Molly like that anymore, ya hear? Ya leaf-lover..
I'm happy that they took the time to change the model for a trifork crossbow, so it shows the three bolts.
hope they do the same for the ER and six shooter bulldog one day.
A year late but justice for the bulldog! The incorrect cylinder count has always bugged me
Did they? Six shoot still have 4 bullets
@@KleberDKurosaki he said they changed the crossbow, hopes they change the six shooter
one day...
Reminds me of that double barreled grenade launcher in TF2 that shoots three shots 😂
This was an unexpected surprise for me as when it was first showed off, people didn’t find it to be all that useful or fun to use. I was hoping out on it. But my god despite it being seemingly a low tech weapon, it is so technical. I feel like Hawkeye or Green Arrow taking this weapon since there is so many trick arrows you can bring along. And it’s pretty good for support. I really like pheromone bolts with specialist since bring a beast master perk and the pheromone grenades and you can basically let the bugs hurt themselves, which I always find amusing. Also aggressive venting works well to make it a bug repellent build.
Also last thing to note. I never knew that trick of firing and changing ammo types at the same time. That’s actually EXTREMELY useful and don’t need to deal with changing them and wasting a lot of time with it. So thanks for that.
I was one of those people who didn't think a crossbow seemed fun. What redeemed it for me is the large number of different bolts. It's truly a swiss army-knife and one of my favorite new secondaries.
Bodkin-Pheromone Gang ✊
They should’ve given it jumbo shells, then I’d have considered using it
@@Valkrias Like Lazy said in the video, triple shot IS the jumbo shells of this weapon.
I think I've noticed a theme off the new weapons being unusually flexible. Thanks for the explanations and builds!
I've noticed most of them seem centered or mostly centered around being Long Range weapons, likely to cover for the fact that every class besides Scout and Engineedr woth Lok1 had trouble fighting enemies far away. Don't know about Microwave Cooker though.
@@Manglet762 Gunner's Lead Storm with accuracy mod on tier 1 was pretty competent at long range, though I always take the less heat mod. Even then it's fairly good.
@@reinbeers5322 and the hurricane is literally just a free hit every shot. The gunner really do be getting some good weapons.
@@NOTIAREPANDA Well, yeah. He's the Gunner, his entire thing is "apply gun to problem".
One thing I like about taser bolts is that it constantly applies electric to dreads when they otherwise don't get hit with lightning. This allows you to really take advantage of anything that grants bonus to electrically effected enemies. Things like bullets of mercy, magnetic shafts, or engineers shard diffractor all work well with it if you happen to bring it along for a dread mission.
It's so much smoother than using an IFG and seeing them leave it within 2 seconds.
Surprised you'd like Aggressive Venting so much but not fire bolts. One pheromone and one fire bolt into a guard is great for fire and forget horde clearing. Not to mention them being great at clearing swarmers by just standing behind a bolt and maybe jumping over it a bit. It does put more pressure on your primary for single target damage of course.
Yeah Pheromone + fire bolt is extremely good. I don't think he considered that combo but that's okay because most players haven't tried every combo this game has to offer. It takes an enormous number of hours to play every build for at least 10 missions each. Most only play a mission with a build and make a pretty rash assumption about it. Which is fair, given we can't exactly dedicate our lives to DRG..... Or.... Can we?
Just here to put support on the fire bolt + pheremone train. Really unfortunate that he missed the synergy
I'm pretty new (60hrs in) and got fire bolts as my 1st overclock for Boltshark and paired it with pheromones right away. Seeing the sea of fire is so satisfying, but I didn't know you could switch ammo after a shot before this video.
Aggressive Venting on the Drak has always been my favourite overclock, and I'm honestly surprised they buffed it considering how strong it was. It's a shame it was under utilized pre-buff. It's incredible with cryo and peheremone to temperature shock everything, Peheremone Bolts, Cryo Bolts and Peheremone Canisters and Aggressive Venting on the Drak has been my new favourite loadout.
I enjoy spamming it.
@@indecisivecountdooku1340 especially with hot feet
Not to be a party pooper but how was Aggressive Venting strong, considering it was a balanced OC with ammo and cooling penalties, the heat generated from "venting" wasn't enough to light up a Praetorian and you needed to be in 4m (really small radius) to ignite Grunts and the fire damage itself wasn't enough to kill it, and using it with Manual Heat Dump wasn't even an option since you won't ignite enemies unless you're touching them, not to mention that it kinda forces you into this playstyle of always being in close proximity to bugs to get the full effect of the OC...etc etc, (I could go all day listing the drawbacks of the OC), what I'm saying it, the OC had lacking and mediocre effect for the penalties it had (albeit not that huge of a penalty, but still) and with Impact Deflection OC providing much more for much less, the OC never stood a chance.
Now changing the OC to Clean, changes everything, since there is no penalty to using it whatsoever, it's really good and fun to use, I'm glad it was changed to a clean tbh since the effect isn't that strong however it can be extremely useful if you know how to use it.
@@TheBadger 🤓
@@TheBadger using it against larger enemies is wrong that wasn't it attended use it was to buff the Crowd Control of the drak. Slower cooling was more of a benefit to the weapon it allowed you to save an explosion for the right moment also the fear was an added bonus to the weapon giving you a personal air bubble also good for reviving a teammate.
Lasty a very short over heat time with added manual heat dump you basically never stopped firing, you were either burning them or shooting them.
Something to note: Fire Bolts still do the radial heat when hitting targets, so it’s nowhere near as finicky as you make it out to be. The cryo bolts are probably better though if you’re looking for more of an HVT standard bolt.
in a team setting, I think pheromone bolts generally aren't as good, since things die too quick for it to be useful most of the time. Electricity is better because you can stack them onto detonators, which can greatly slow its advance towards your team or Doretta, not to mention, its effect is actually useful against dreadnoughts in elimination.
Pheremones are extremely strong for clutching, but the real strength is freeing the grenade slot from Cryo/Pheremone for that purpose, letting you run IFGs all the time.
Also Phere is arguably even stronger against bulks: They also apply a slow, and make the Bulk target bugs instead.
@@quadconjures the bulk is going to 1 shot all the bugs, so it's not going to be that much of a deterrent as something like electricity.
The problem with pheremones is that the situation in which it shines is "clutching", which is really a situation you shouldn't be getting into in the first place.
If you're that worried about clutches, iron will is much better and classless.
IFGs already make bulk slow to almost a stop while also increasing everyone's damage against it. And while you're not seeing 'clutch' situations with a good team, pheromones still make bugs bunch up more and lessen how much aggro your team needs to deal with. It's not as visible as when people are down or killing things slowly, but you're still getting more value out of it than you normally get from tasers.
Don't use it in close range. It's better to distract the backlines of the swarm while your team face the frontline
I dunno man ... it's rather handy when the game decides to hand you 2 Praetors behind you then spawn an Oppressor right after just to be cheeky. 🤔
I use the Fire Bolts OC with Pheromone Special bolts. Pheromone a Praetorian or Oppressor, then hit it with a Fire Bolt and watch the swarm ignite.
Id rather have the ammo loss on hellfire then the duration nerf😭
Maybe worth mentioning the incredible synergy the Drak has with the Xbow.
Until now, the big upside of the Drak has been kind of useless to scout, namely that it doesn't have to reload, because scout kind of always ran born ready for boomstick and flaregun. Now, you can drop born ready (Or take the upgrade on the flare gun) and still not lose uptime. Not only does the Xbow demand a lot of attention in your hands from switching between bolts, leading targets, and it's slow reload, but now with the ability to queue a bolt swap in place of a reload, it's actually actively faster to not get the free reload if you intend to switch bolts anyways, which happens all the time with pheremones.
In addition, PCF means the Drak can quickly and efficiently proc magnetic shafts on distant targets without taser, on top of already shoring up the Xbow's weaknesses by being strong against small targets like swarmers.
I like pairing a Rewiring Drak with Triple Xbow with Pheremones and IFGs, as a generalist fasting scout to compliment the common ammo-hungry shard gun/gemini engi. Rewiring drak is obscenely ammo efficient, pheremones can build you space to spam more drak, and triple with IFG does huge damage to priority targets like wardens. If the team can survive without many flares (IE does not have a gunner), you can often skip two or three consecutive ammo drops on a build like this. Quietly goated on Sabotage too.
My other choice is usually Minimal Clips M1k with Cryo/Pheremone and IFG, for faster horde clear via blowthrough and some very efficient swarmer clearing with cryo bolts. The aoe freeze on cryo bolts also doubles down on blowthrough value. Also fairly strong in large biomes like Biozone, where you can snipe ranged threats with cryo and pop them with m1k.
IMHO, the huge upside to the Xbow is introducing flexibility in the scout's grenade slot, letting you get away with IFGs or Pheremones in many more situations. Previously, there was basically no situation in which cryo nades weren't a good choice, from securing resses to mactera swarm to removing death effects to clearing swarmers to just a general sterroid against priority targets. The only big loss is not being able to double cryo a bulk.
Useless? It was always useful for basic crowd control and amount of ammo it had of your build you secondary for burst damage you were all sent and done
@@timothy6583 No, I mean the Drak's primary advantage as a weapon, which is it's lack of reload. The gun has always been good, but not having to reload is pointless on a class which always runs born ready anyways.
I run Sniper as Scout and what I love about the Xbow is that I can now clear mobs at long ranges (Bodkin).
Something the shottie or the zhuks doesnt offer.👍
@@quadconjures I never run born ready on my scout, but I prefer the SMG which has a quick reload so it would not shine as much perhaps
@@theknight1573 that was actually exactly one choice I was going to mention but omitted for length
Judging by the thumbnail, I’d say that the boltshark is pretty strong if it’s capable of turning the weakpoints of glyphids into balls of white light that rival the brightness of the sun itself.
I've been really enjoying the fire bolts. Paired with pheromone bolts, it gives Scout a pretty great way to deal with squishy crowds. Pheromone bolt on a big enemy, fire bolt next to it and you'll light a huge number of bugs, normally including the big enemy. Doesn't feel finicky to me :)
Was wondering if anyone noticed that the boltshark has a special bolt type DESIGNED to distract enemies that could be used to make fire more consistent
Idk why you didnt mention the synergy between pheromone nades and chemical bolts, its godly.
It makes swarms a joke quite frankly whether you're playing solo or co-op.
I actually found Fire Bolts to be some of the best swarm clear in scout’s arsenal right now. One phero bolt/nade, followed up by a fire bolt can clear a cave. Swarmers almost literally don’t get to exist if you have them, and while they don’t do jack shit to robots, you can keep the ground mostly clear of any junk while your team deals with that.
If anything, I’ve found Bodkin points to be kinda meh. Forgoing extra ammo just so my bolts deal with grunts slightly better is a little redundant when I can just… _use my primary or fire bolts for the same effect._
I don't know if this is an imagined effect of just how slow bugs move when hit by the electro-bolt beam, but it seems like you can "leash" large bugs like praetorians and oppressors if you shoot one electro bolt into them and another at the ground. This used to work on dreadnoughts but stopped after the most recent hotfix. It might be a bit niche, but sometimes it's handy to stop an oppressor in their tracks (they don't manage to even turn when 'leashed'.)
Awesome video. One thing that was missed is how effective the taser bolts are with the specialist perk for a few reasons. First, it can almost entirely stun nearly anything if you put 2 bolts directly into it for around 20 seconds. This includes Praetorians, Oppressors, Dreadnoughts, and even works SHOCKINLY (hehe) well against Prospectors, Nemesis, BET-C (when she's being naughty) and EVEN a bulk detonator (this also works against the ghost). This does a fair amount of damage and allows your team to wail on any big baddie from a safe distance. On top of that, two taser bolts will stop any praetorian in it's tracks and kill it outright. 3 bolts will nearly always do the same thing to an oppressor, and on haz 4 I believe 6 bolts will kill a detonator. Many don't realize how much damage these do over time, and if your team realizes this, no one has to waste ammo on most of the big boys. Scout can take them out early on his own without breaking a sweat. The last thing is that your special bolts are refilled between every stage of the deep dive. So scout can use up ALL of his special bolt at the end of every stage, and start full into the next stage. With the overclock you get around 30 special bolts with the right perks. It's incredibly useful in Elite Deep Dives, and is one of my favorite go to's with scout.
Great stuff! Loved triple shot bolts but didn't even think about using them with magnetic shafts/taser special bolts for even more damage.
Also I'm seeing more and more examples of aggressive venting with plasma carbine. Almost makes me want to try that gun
I think the magnetic shafts is more for grouping their spread together
@@rocket8848 nah take magnetic shafts with ifgs and murder
@@rocket8848 You're also getting a 25% damage bonus on 3 bolts being fired at once, which is valuable when you have a grand total of 8-11 shots to use. Trifork + taser is my new favourite secondary to have for dread fights.
I enjoyed your mario sound effects with montages of bug deletion so much
In my eyes, with the M1000, the Scout already has a nice single target weapon and he needs crowd control badly. The Pheromone + Fire Bolts combo is pretty neat for that. You basically make a huge molotov out of one glyphid.
tip: Scout's electric arrow work alot with the engineer's shard diffractor. since it has bonus damage to the electric enemies, Scout can mark some tough enemies like praetorian, Bulk Detonator, Oppressor, and boss too. making Engineer and Scout perfect for dealing massive damage in short amount of time
I saw you put pheromone darts on with the fire bolt mod, but didn't mention the synergy between the two, making it so that fire spreading is significantly more effective. I sometimes "milk" bigger bugs by pheromoning them and shooting a fire bolt or two into them after. Then the crowd from the pheromones sets on fire, killing them faster and allowing more bugs to attack the bait bug. I have completely trivialized swarms when doing escort missions. I bait a big bug and watch the entire swarm go to them and completely ignore the dozer. However, pheromone darts are significantly weaker in a uncoordinated team due to allies killing your bait.
Man . i always appreciate your videos . They help me optimize my build based on understanding what things actually do.
What if pheromones and fire at the same time? That sounds pretty brutal.
it doesn't have embedded detonators though
Great Video, fuck ceiling grass.
Not sure if this is intended but iirc the fear chance on the bolts happens on some kind of tick, and so triggers a LOT more than 33% of the time, as well as when the bolt is in the air (I think that part IS intended). Someone may have to fact check me here
Thanks for this video. Since the update came out I’ve felt like the boltshark was very underwhelming. I’m still a very confused as to why it has such huge damage reductions against the main big body enemies in praetorians and oppressors, but highlighting all the varied uses has really opened my eyes. I can definitely see why the normal bolts feel so weak, because I haven’t been taking full advantage of special bolts. Great stuff and thank you.
I feel like bodkin points is super good to take on mactera plague
Yep, it’s great. You want to shoot the lowest mactera in a group to maximize your chances of hitting the other ones' weakpoints.
my favorite thing to do with taser bolts is Absolutely MELT base dreadnaughts.
Don't forget that taser bolts inflict electrocution on targets that are normally immune to it. The long-duration (stacking?) slow makes them excellent for mitigating dangerous high-health enemies, like oppressors and dreadnoughts.
Unfortunately, because dreadnoughts specifically have a high resistance to electric damage(WHY?). As such, a max duration/max special ammo build isn't quite worth it, even if the damage per full reload is over 8K.
It is pretty effective against dreads, but unreliable, I suspect a lot of damage comes from the arcs.
That's true! I usually take IFGs to elimination anyways, but it definitely doesn't hurt to have another way to use magnetic shafts or other elec boosts against them.
@@LazyMaybe and of course the electric bolts do insane damage to dreads for some reason. Try it vs a normal dreadnaught and watch its hp drop with two bolts on its back.
I heard some Dodonpachi music during the Pheromone bolt section. Bullet Hell gamer? Edit: oh there's even more Dodonpachi music! And isn't the track at the beginning from Rabi-Ribi?
Anybody know what's happening with the Sludge Pump, why can't it stop the explosion from the creepers?
Please help.
With fire bolts, you can place two bolts next to each other on the ground. The heat stacks, and so two bolts will ignite a horde of grunts passing by them without the need for slows or additional kiting.
Not sure why you stuck cryo arrows in enemies but not the fire ones. I find them (fire arrows) to be pretty damn good at doing large swaths of damage from just one arrow stuck in a grunt guard. Combined with pheremones and baby, dinner is served.
Absolutely based music choices though holy shit.
I don't get this gun. Low ammo, high single target damage...with all big targets resistant to it. What are you supposed to do with it?
Snipe high value targets(stuff like trijaws, spawn, wardens, spitters) more than large single targets, use special bolts to supplement utility(pulling away aggro with pheros being the best one but explosive bolts helping clear groups and a couple direct tasers neutering most big tanky enemies have situational use as well).
Also the most dated part of this video which came out when boltshark was new is that I didn't like fire bolts. Both fire bolts and cryo bolts are cracked for different reasons and if you find normal bolts are underwhelming due to most primary setups already killing the targets they're good against, fire/cryo bolts are probably what you want.
@@LazyMaybe Yeah, I agree. Cryo bolts are my favorite OC, while bodkin point is really fun. But I still don't get this gun with those "special" oc, that drastically change the gun. Special bolts are very good, but gun by itself isn't, well, except disruption enemies
This guy good only problem he needs better thumbnails
1:25 Something you probably should've tested: It seems like the area damage DOES affect more than one enemy, but it only does when you actually hit an enemy, not terrain. I've seen the Boltshark kill multiple grunts without Bodkin points.
So glad this video was made, had no idea what do with the Boltshark despite being a Scout main. Lots of thanks for this!
Taser bolts can forcibly apply the shocked status to targets that are normally immune to it (like Dreadnoughts). Rather, this gives you a second, long-lasting alternative to applying the shocked status without using an IFG if you have them equipped, which combos quite nicely for other players that might be running on-shock effects (like Shard Diffractor's last mod).
Am I sick for wishing there were humanoid enemies in this game?
Tasers are extremely effective against Nemesis. Not quite sure why, but they do a ton of damage plus slowing it to a standstill. I thought the taser beam stacked with the proximity AOEs, giving 3 sources of damage and slow, it doesn't seem to do that with bugs, but from the damage I see on Nemesis it might actually be working there.
While the Zhukov's have more total damage on paper, a Boltshark with Bodkins will likely put out a LOT more damage in practice, owing to the Zhukov's abysmal range and accuracy. The Boomstick isn't even a competitor for damage, even at its maximum damage build it does less than the Boltshark (basic bolts alone) and that doesn't account for the accuracy. Multiple Penetrations are the only way to get anything comparable.
People talk trash about it but with upgrades it is pretty good
thank you for this!
Just got it and felt the electric bolt to be weak AF. however, havent used it much and can't wait to try your tips!
Unintuitively, taser bolts are strongest for single target-either enabling magnetic shafts, or just stacking 2 taser bolts onto the same target in order to slow it by a ton and get a good amount of DoT on it. Could have emphasized that more here, but if you want to use them that's definitely their best use case.
The sound you use when you kill them bugs with the Trifork volley oc is S-tier. Asides from that, some of the best drg weapon breakdown vids I've seen.
keep it up chyeeeaah
idk why you compare cryo bolts to cryo grenade but never brought up cryo minelets.. how does the two compare though?
Cryo minelets is a bit faster but doesn't work against breeders, and often won't work on spitballers at range. So it's weaker against set spawns, and of course it doesn't come with special bolts.
I personally combo the bodkin bolts with the bouncy rounds of the plasma carbine. It actually makes scout pretty decent at crowd control letting him much more effectively deal with bigger groups of enemies that he otherwise can’t handle
What's your aggressive venting build? Really wanna try that out. Wonderful testing as always tho!
11311
Tazer bolts are also good for putting electric defuff of oppressors and dreads. I need to practice bio chemical bolts, but I still feel wierd that they have less ammo then pheromone bolts. Wish they would just set all the special ammo to 12 and be done with it.
If freezing targets cancels out the explosive chemical bolts death animation (and thus, explosive chemical bolts itself), then why run it with cryo bolts? isn't that counterintuitive? 12:09
It's not about what those options do together, it's what they cover. Cryo bolts have lower damage and are worse for killing the targets that normal bolts are normally good at, which means your primary needs to pick up the slack somewhat. Explosive chemical bolts help with that. You don't combo them with the cryo bolts, you combo them with your primary to stretch primary ammo and swarmclear further, and use cryo bolts against specific nasty enemies.
@@LazyMaybe makes sense. thanks for clarifying!
I would imagine mix pheromone bolts with cryo/Pyro bolts would be _very_ nice.
Is it true that enemies affected by electric beams (both from taser bolts and turret arc overclock) don't count as electrocuted for mods that increase damage to electrified targets?
Don't know how that slipped by me, but that is actually true! The proximity elec on the bolts works, but not the beam.
That goes for the homing of magnetic shafts as well as the damage boost, and things like bullets of mercy.
@@LazyMaybe Thanks for confirming it, i hope it gets fixed.
How do you feel about the change to Aggressive Venting? Personally it has always been my favorite oc for the Drak and I found it more effective than even the bouncy bullets oc in a lot of ways. I get that most people probably did not like it very much so a buff may have been warranted but removing the ammo penalty and making it clean makes it almost feel overwhelming.
It's a classic gsg 'nerf/buff by pickrate'. It probably didn't need it, but it's not on the level of neurotoxin payload or bulldog VB, so whatever.
Didn't need the ammo but plus 2 damage is good to have
Too bad im addicted to jumping around with boomstick
Honestly the only reason people aren't screaming foul at the Xbow for being busted op is the existence of special powder. What's price's line from mw2 about extinguishing an oil fire?
It's the same shit with both the Shard Diffractor and the pocket microwave, being overshadowed by Hyperpropellant and TCF respectively.
@@quadconjures that's the best part "when everyone's super, no one is" all is balanced when balance is not a concern the devs have. It's all about what's fun and that's why there's hardly ever community outcry
@@punchoponcho5238 Yeah, although I'd still like to see changes to all three mods. Powder needs a downside of some kind (I wouldn't care what, maybe something small like ammo or spread or swap time), and TCF should honestly just be rolled into the base gun.
IDK what I'd do about propellant tho.
@@quadconjures yeah you can't really choose what's the most fun if there is an objective best option
@@quadconjures I really don't agree that SD is overshadowed by hyperprop at all. Unless you have a pocket cryo driller to constantly play with, overdrive SD can kill stuff roughly as fast but with greater efficiency and a lot more flexibility than hyperprop.
that fear bug be like
Bulk: Imma rip ya a new one
*metal pipe sfx*
Bulk: OH SHI-
10:54 FCK THIS FKIN CEILING GRASS FFS. I always remove it, dont care how long it takes. Cuz when I die because someone didn't remove it, it is the only time this game makes me actually angry and pissed and sometimes even ragequit. It is just soooooo damn annoying, makes the biome rating from a 4/10 to a 0/10 ngl
I don't even understand why most bolts are retrievable. It's a precision weapon, you should be aiming for weakpoints... meanwhile can only recover when you miss?
Kinda weird synergy with fear as well. Missing on purpose, because you get LESS effect when you hit? Just weird, man.
Anyway I run this Pheromone/Cryo with primary plasma. Never bothered to switch out my cryo nades either, don't much see the point of the slow in comparison...
Banshee bolts bugged? Seems to be working perfectly fine for me.
/shoot crossbow at bulks feet
So I'm testing tasers against nemesis in sandbox. Apparently the taser bolts apply a stacking, permanent electrocution effect to the nemesis of about 1.65 damage per damage tick per bolt, IN ADDITION to the damage the bolts themselves do in proximity. This same behavior can be seen on Patrol Bots, though the damage comes out to 2.2 per damage tick (possibly rounded, I have a hard time testing 2 as the patrol bot dies before I can get clean results)
The Mario noises are hilarious
Taser bolts might be good for bunkers, tho that's not really scout'a forte
Such a thorough explanation of a weapon's mechanics and different builds you can use with it. Awesome work, rock and stone miner!
Quick question: why in the name of Karl do electro bolts have that ring around them if the electric beam has 1/3 of that range?
1:35 Molly doing her thing
Magnetic shafts plus taser bolts feels so pointless, you already oneshot non-tanky enemies, and praetorians and oppressors have resistance that makes the combo not worth using on them, so what exactly are the magnetic shafts for?
I didn't know detonators fear from the arrow. Should've know it's a bug, I've thought it was a unique feature to the Nishanka.
Looking forward to your Shard Diffractor video.
Tips appreciated for playing with this thing in the first place, cuz I just don't know how to begin. I have the fire bolts, cryo bolts, tri-fork volley, and quickfire overclocks.
Edit: I have since played with this more. I didn't like fire or cryo bolts at all. However, I have done tri-fork + taser bolts for an elimination melting build.
Just wanna say, loving this recent content from you. Keep it up mate! Also, thanks for showing the mod at the end, I've been really wanting to test stuff recently!
I think I need to give magnetic shaft another go. My test run against dreadnoughts were kinda iffy, as trying to shoot a weakpoint proved difficult, if there's two beasties in the electric field. For me it just shoved the arrows into the armor, not into the weakpoints where i aimed. Doing sharp 90° turns while doing so.
I swear, i am getting best overclocks for best guns for no reason, and i am pretty new to the game (only 140 hours in, every dwarf promoted once except gunner, who is pronoted twice), and i have trifork volley, volatile bullets, burning hell, special powder, fat boy, magnetic pellet alignment and etc, looking forward for some other overclocks too tho ° -°
You caught me on the jumbo shells thing. I like my secondary to hit hard, so I do like the triple bolt thing
Firebolts seem like they'd be handy in instances where someone has Neurotoxin grenades. The gas is flammable so you can set it off in one shot. Also if everyone is running fire stuff the heat would build up quicker.
I should stop bringing special powder for literally every mission
*but I don't want to*
I hear music from Rabi Ribi in some of your vids. Good taste in games man!
Hey, I wanted to let you know. You're good at this.
I use the electric bolts on dreadnaughts - it does good chip on armour. So I can be moving while the bolt is doing the job of removing it's armour and revealing its weakpoint.
Forget jumbo shells, I prefer DOUBLE BARRELED >:D
The one thing i dislike about it is the time it needs to change ammo type even with the related perk. However, i didn't know about the firing + reload button trick...
Haven't gotten the reload overclock either, gotta try that.
If u use the electric bolts and a HFG on a Detonator at the same time, it completely demobelises it. Thank me later 😘👍🏼
Fire bolts make this weapon the best secondary for scout by far in the majority of scenarios. No other secondary allows for the wave clear that fire bolts do.
Also did you do any testing with firebolts on robots? Like can they light patrol bots easily? Turrets? I bet they can be used to easily delete sniper turrets. Personally though I always take cryo and pheromones in a team setting to focus single target enemies and then give crowd support
Uselessly terrible against patrol bots, don't bother.
They work kind of ok against turrets, but it takes 3 bolts landed close to the turret without pausing so it's not really that good of an advantage.
@@LazyMaybe well hopefully fire bolts get some sort of buff in the future, I really wish the devs would focus less on nerfing what's popularly used and think why something is underused and buff it
@@stanman3192 They buff underused stuff much more than nerf popular stuff. See the buffs to rewiring mod and AV on drak, and the lack of nerfs to NTP autocannon.
Taser bolts can create lines on one target, making them great at dealing with large threats.
Four bolts, 2 on each weakpoint, will nearly straight kill a BetC. 2 in the face of an Oppressor, and one on the weak point creates two lines on it.
good timing on that video. I was wondering if the more potent special bolt effect upgrade in tier 5 affects special bolts like the cryo and fire bolts as well
Cryo bolt comparing to nades? Its secondary weapon so should be compared to secondaries and you literally have cryo option and its better sadly
It's been a sec since this video came out, does the explosive chemical bolt do anything to how a bulk dies? Does it die the same or does it do the special animation and explosion?
Does anybody know how to get that empty test chamber at 6:13 ?
I've seen it a whole lot in this channel, and would love to use it to test out my builds, but I can't find it at all on the mod website.
Rogue legacy 2 is an extremely important thing that game is so addicting
Trifork volley works great with the buffed electrifying reload GK2. It can both set up big targets for the crossbow and deal with large crowds of grunts by itself. Tri-fork helps with it's lacking single target damage.
Excellent info as always, my dude.
Can you do a video on drillers insane ability to regen using vampirism and their drills against grunts?
Another case of trijaws being the most bullshit enemy in the game
Playing Rogue Legacy 2 is a fair priority, to be sure.
What's your thought process with explosive bolts tier 1 with the Cryo Bolts overclock? I thought frozen enemies couldn't be exploded...
They can't. I take it there to help with swarm clear together with the primary since cryo bolts aren't great at that.
hi~could you tell me what's the name of the testing room mod? i can't find it on modio
I love boltshark I can't use any other secondary now
The weapon is super niche but so good if you use it right. Not my goto, as I tend to just prefer playing something simple like jumbo or embedded dets, but it's rewarding and a good brain teaser every now and then.
I think a lot of the criticism of the weapon definitely misses the point, so I'm glad there's resources that explain what the weapon is about. Is trifork worse than embedded detonators? Yep, a lot worse, way less damage on a bad damage type. Is Bodkin bolts worse than boomstick blowthrough? It has its advantages, but it's a pretty massive ammo loss and much lower single-target damage. Thing is, it's comparing half of the boltshark to the entire boomstick or NUKs pair. Running two secondary weapons in exchange for both of them being kind of weak on their own can definitely be worth it.
I think cryo bolts are the most disappointing OC on the weapon. It got a lot of hype from its early adopters, but their radius seems to be tiny and their effect application painfully slow if not paired w/ something else. The phero combo is cool and all, but I'd rather have two secondary weapons, the whole gimmick of the BS, rather than one secondary weapon that's just cryo minelets with extra steps. The convenience on cryo bolts is nice, but I don't think it's actually that practical if it's only for breeders and spitballers specifically behind terrain. Minelets seem to be straight up better for general purpose freeze output, with only a few losses into HPTs.
10:08 the grunt in the middle was vibing to the music