Print

Please login or register.

1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever

Login with username, password and session length

[markar]

I've been playing the current version as well as Gunslinger a good amount now, and feel like Scouts are quite weak at the moment. Am I missing something, or has anyone else noticed this as well?

I'm not sure what the design goals around Scouts are, but it would make more sense to me if they had stronger perks related to Hellrunner and likely some more passive traits. Currently I take too much unavoidable damage (on hard or higher) as a Scout to finish all enemies and branches, where Marines and Technicians are in much better shape. A big part of this seems to be from the advanced Hellrunner perk, where Marine/Tech can reduce explosion damage while Scout only gets the passive action bonus. This bonus is pretty weak to begin with, and only worse with the addition of dodge penalties to armor as well as using short range pistols toward the late game.

Any thoughts on this? Would love to hear some feedback and see how other people are finding Scouts to play.

[Moonshine Fox]

I'm playing almost exclusively Scout at the moment, and like you, going mostly Gunslinger. The only reason Scout works right now is because Gunslinger is as strong as it is.

Avoiding/mitigating damage as Scout is hard, and I think the main cure for it is more diligent use of Stealth to get into cover. But even with cover, you take a lot of chip damage because of low damage output and low range.

My best Scout game yet was only made possible because I got two 9mm Calibrated in the Barracks, allowing me to confidently snipe.

[markar]

Gunslinger is good, but Marines also have access to it and I'm not even sure it's better than headshot is for Technicians. It can be strong enough to go far depending on your luck with medkits/mods and good pistols, but overall I feel like it requires a lot more luck than playing Marine/Tech.

As you said, even using stealth to get into an optimal position leaves you taking massive amounts of chip damage. This is especially bad against anything with a rocket launcher, where unless you can 1-shot it, you're still going to take 30-50 damage killing a single enemy from an ideal position of cover.

Not as significant, but the Scout bonuses are really weak as well and tailored to doing speed runs and maybe some angel modes. On a regular game, you don't really care where the elevators and chests are because you're going to reveal the entire map anyway. Losing a weapon slot on top of that is especially rough since that almost forces you into taking gun hoarder for flexibility, basically starting with one less talent. 

Using a good rocket launcher or shotgun to kill stuff off-screen helps with the constant chip damage, but it's a relatively frustrating way to play and still usually doesn't make up for the damage difference between Scouts and Marines/Technicians due to their talents. Recently, I've had more luck using this strategy with gun hoarder & juggler to make use of more (untalented) weapons than actually going for gunslinger, but it doesn't feel like the intended way to play a scout.

[Moonshine Fox]

Not as significant, but the Scout bonuses are really weak as well and tailored to doing speed runs and maybe some angel modes. On a regular game, you don't really care where the elevators and chests are because you're going to reveal the entire map anyway. Losing a weapon slot on top of that is especially rough since that almost forces you into taking gun hoarder for flexibility, basically starting with one less talent. 

Using a good rocket launcher or shotgun to kill stuff off-screen helps with the constant chip damage, but it's a relatively frustrating way to play and still usually doesn't make up for the damage difference between Scouts and Marines/Technicians due to their talents. Recently, I've had more luck using this strategy with gun hoarder & juggler to make use of more (untalented) weapons than actually going for gunslinger, but it doesn't feel like the intended way to play a scout.

You do need Gun Hoarder to get Whizkid, which is a requirement if you're doing in a Gunslinger run or AoM run. You have to stack those P-mods on your guns to survive.

Blind-shooting is even more messy if you're doing a pistol run, as they have a 0% hit chance outside of your visual range, unless you're lucky enough to have 9mmC. But then your damage output is meh.

[markar]

True, stacking power mods is extremely helpful on pistols, and if you get lucky with mods that can definitely let you 1-shot almost anything with a crit. I might try optimizing around crit pistols on my next run, as with 60% crit chance that should reduce chip damage a good bit.

Blind shooting seems to work okay with a plasma pistol with their 4/8 range, but I generally only do that for killing turrets. The third slot is usually reserved for either a rocket launcher or a shotgun, whichever I happen to find a better version of. I went back to play Technician again last night to make sure I'm not imagining things and won on my second run (on hard), same with Marine. I still can't manage a win on a Scout on hard with the current build, but I'll keep trying little tweaks until I do.

If I get some time tonight I'll try to pull up the list of talents for Scouts from DoomRL and see what they're missing, they were definitely loads of fun back then and I wonder what the gap is.

[khiijol]

you can blind shoot with regular pistols it just has to be at a certain diagonal angle. it takes a while but sometimes going through 30 9mm shots is worth it to take down an otherwise pesky turret

[Moonshine Fox]

Headshot is better than Gunslinger. It deals more damage and uses less ammo, so Tech comes out ahead on that one.

And you're right, Plasma Pistols work for blind shooting. Regular 9mm or .44 don't work.

[Supernaut]

Headshot is better than Gunslinger. It deals more damage and uses less ammo, so Tech comes out ahead on that one.

And you're right, Plasma Pistols work for blind shooting. Regular 9mm or .44 don't work.

Technically, Headshot is guaranteed +50% damage of your best gun which is often less than gunslinger. It does use less ammo and is slightly faster on top of being more accurate, but I think you need a really good pistol for it to be straight up better damage wise (or gunslinger to have crappy pistol and no scavenger). Unless the crits stack multiplicatively, in which case it would be better in case you get 2 crits stacked on top of each other, which is not guaranteed. I'm gonna test that.

[khiijol]

headshot used to be a straight 2x damage rather than crit bonus