Just out of interest - which option *did* you pick when your back was to the wall? Firing, popping a medikit, donning armour, or running to the next level?
It wasn't a question of a single choice, it was one made EVERY single turn once I realized I was pinned. I'd need to get BFG rounds out or I'd die ... I'd fire ... get slammed by two Vile flames and two Rev rockets, end up with destroyed Armor and 5-20% HP ... pop a Large Medkit, get slammed again with no armor, taking me down to 40-60%, Put on fresh armor and geting nailed down to 5-20% again. Pop ANOTHER Medkit, get slammed AGAIN, but end up with 50-60% hp and fully intact armor. Fire BFG. Pray I don't run out of Armor, Large medkits (Small Medkits would be a battle of attrition, on the loosing side.) ... or Cells in the mag (thank you Bulk mod!), And pray to hear the sound of that last vile dying, everything else can be mopped up quickly, once the Viles are gone. Add 'run like hell' if I think I might see an opening, or at least room to dodge ... dodging doesn't do much against a crowd of Viles + Reverants ... I'm just glad there weren't a crap ton of Mancubi ... they're slow and easy on they're own, but in packs, with Viles ... ugh.
That fight ended with almost all my armor gone, ALL but a few small medkits gone ... and wondering whether or not I was going to make it. Globes and medkits were aquired ... before things got hairy again. It was terrifying.
In retrospect, I probably could have skipped, but as with many of my YASDs, I made a gamble (Vaults can be a bad idea for the unprepared ... and ... oooh! The Mortuary, what's that? ) ... I knew I had 100%, and I didn't want to break it over a vile pack, especially due to the fact that up until this point, one bulk and two tech mods on my BFG had been enough to place the plasma equivalent to a strategic orbital strike on every vile pack I'd found so far. My initial approach seemed like a bad idea, as I couldn't see the Viles, and I'd have to wade through the reverents ... so I tried to flank around the building (Hellish City map) And stepped out to find the pack right there ... reverent rocket bounced me away from my exit strategy (phaseshift boots FTW!), and there I was, pinned at the top of the map ... with a bunch of very pissed looking V's and R's forming a nice ring around me.
With that in mind, your damage/second is actually higher with SOAG x 3 than it is with SOAG + SOAG + dualgunner. (the necessity of reloading makes DG generally a better choice though).
The reason I post all this is because of how excruciatingly late you got your third level of SOAG. Damage builds for pistols are awesome indeed. I'd argue they're better than gunkata builds, but you want SOAB for your pistol knockback - the difference it makes to your shotguns is absolutely minimal.
When you go for hurt me plenty or ultra violence, try something like the following:
SOAG -> SOAG -> DualGunner -> SOAG -> EE -> SOAB -> SOAB -> Finesse -> SOAB -> Finesse
Finesse can be switched out if you don't fancy it. Alternatively, if you like your shotguns, instead of starting with SOAB (like you did here), try starting with finesse and juggler. Finesse will more more difference to your shotgun damage than SOAB will, juggler will let you switch immediately to combat shotgun, shotgun, and double shotgun when enemies get close, and you'll still be well on your way to ultra-powerful pistols.
Oh, and outside of AoMR, knockback on the pistols isn't really that important. If you use cover well, just ramping up the damage/second (instead of the single shot damage) lets you kill barons, mancubi, arachnotrons, and revenants way before they move into a position to fire back.
Sorry for war-and-peace-ing your thread, just thought it'd be worth posting a few pistol tips here. :)
Congrats on your win anyway. Sounds like it was an intense game!
That's the funny thing, this run started off as an experiment.
I had started out hoping to be flexible, picking my exact build path depending on what my early game drops were, and picking the early Traits that would give the most flexibility, perhaps even giving me the option to go ammochain rather than damage pistol. This was one of the reasons I started SoaB rather than SoaG.
I sometimes have trouble early game, before I can get my pistols really causing some pain. I wanted to see if I could get SoaB up (Even considering an MCe pistol build, for grins) I wasn't even sure whether or not I wanted to really pull a pistol build. If Shotguns started raining from the sky, or an early assault shotgun could be found before I grabbed my first SoaG, I'd have happily gone for a shotty build. I love juggler and I like taking one finnesse relatively early just to keep my options open in regard to both juggler and whizkid is always something I like to try.
In a sense I'm still learning the feel for the game, and which builds fit my playstyle. (I somehow end up preferring damage over survival. TaN is nice ... but ... even with AoD, I can never quite get the damage output with the shotties quite where I want it ... but then again I've really yet to learn how to play shotgun builds effectively. I started with standard builds, always picking a master trait to aim for. MGK is fun as hell, and started my love affair with pistol builds. (It's a rather masochistic relationship, yes?) When runs started going bad, and I started getting YASD often, even on easy games, I started playing with some of the builds I saw in the mortems, and then started messing around with oddball builds, not unlike this one.
As far as taking SoaG #3 so late? I had four/five mods weighing down my pack from around the time just after I got EE ... and having all that space taken up by mods you can't use hurt, especially knowing that I needed to stockpile Pistol ammo before the hellgate, so I rushed Whizkid, even pushing back SoaG. Silly, probably a bad decision, and I could be cheeky and tell you that the result was the best run I've ever had, but frankly, with how strangely the run went (Tech mods raining from the sky ... and plowing through several levels of Phobos to land at my feet), it beats the hell out of me. The Wall's backpack is something I always try to get for the space and pistol stockpile capacity ... to the point where I'm hoping to phase it during my AoMr attempts, simply for this reason.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for the input and advice ... I crave this stuff. You even gave me another idea for an extremely wacky build that will probably fail, but will probably be fun on E and M.
EE -> SoaG -> SoaG -> SoaG -> Fin -> Jug -> SoB -> SoB -> SoB -> Fin -> Wiz
With Whizkid pushed back as needed after juggler.
Should be fun. I want my mortems to be entertaining ... and hopefully informative, rather than simply chest beating my accomplishments. Feedback is always appreciated, especially the 'war and peace' posts.
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Topic: [M|100%|YAAM] Pistols Kick Ass! (Read 3391 times)