Master Traits and Builds
Because 15 of the 18 builds are centered around the master traits, each section will cover the same information like with the basic and advanced traits, but also go into further detail of how to build each character around master traits, how to use them in various different games, sub-type builds where applicable, and suggested trait progressions. As with all other sections, DoomRL is a very rich and dynamic game where I can't reasonably cover every niche and detail, and this information should be interpreted to be more generalized. In particular with suggested trait orders, these can all highly vary depending on what your needs are and what comes up in each game. I generally suggest the most viable order for builds to get the master traits as early as possible, but there are good reasons to delay them for certain builds, such as early Whizkid, Intuition, Dodgemaster, and others. The players are left to themselves on how to play.
Vampyre
When you kill with a melee attack, heal 10% of the enemy's max health, up to 200% of your health.
Requires: Brute x2, Berserker, Badass x1, Level 6
Blocks: Hellrunner, Son of a Bitch, Eagle Eye, Dodgemaster, Intuition, Triggerhappy
Vampyre is a very strong master trait as it is a massive help with keeping you alive. Being able to heal on every kill reduces the risk of death, reduces needing as many Med Packs in your inventory, and if you play positional or campy, you can often get a kill without taking a hit, functionally treating enemies as small health packs. All of the melee traits strongly support this strategy with Brute dealing more damage and having you take less hits per fight, and Berserker likewise boosting your power to get kills, reducing damage with its resistances, and boosting your speed to help with everything. Badass also allows you to hold onto all of that extra health you're absorbing. With enough offense and defense, you can reach a point where you come out of fights with more health than you had before.
Unlocking Vampyre is also tied for easiest in the game as it only requires 4 trait points and level 6, allowing you to use it in about two thirds the experience of the level 7 master traits, and giving you some early flexibility with one of your points.
For the blocked traits, Brute tends to cover most of the issues and they aren't huge detriments to not have access to. The main loss is Hellrunner as you can't as quickly approach enemies, which can be dangerous, but at least as a Marine with immediate access to Badass, you can reduce some of the movement by taking some less knockback. Alternatively, playing a more campy playstyle, especially in the early game, can be a lot more effective. Until your build is much stronger, you'll likely take less damage than if you were to rush at enemies as you're slow and can't really dodge. Shotguns are an excellent support and secondary weapon as they don't really require many traits to cover the weaknesses of melee with approaching and with groups of enemies.
Vampyre is also essentially the only way to achieve Iron Skull, which requires taking 10,000 damage. In order to take that damage, you need to heal close to that much health, which you can do by repeatedly farming enemies that are respawned, resurrected, or created. Farming enemies in general is also a good idea where possible to exit floors with as much health as possible.
Vampyre is flexible and can be good at almost any game type and challenge. Being a melee build, it does struggle a bit at first and isn't amazing at short games, but medium length and long games it starts to shine. Particularly for long games, finding Dragonslayer makes it one of the best builds possible, but is still pretty good even without it. Reliance on Dragonslayer is not ideal as it is quite rare to find, but Ripper (B) / (T) is a strong second choice, even if the difference is a huge gap.
Overall, Vampyre is an excellent master trait and build that truly enhances melee power, it's very flexible to use, and the trade-off of blocked traits isn't too negatively impactful.
Suggested trait order:
1) Brute 2) Brute 3) Brute 4) Berserker 5) Badass
6) Vampyre 7) Finesse 8) Finesse 9) Whizkid 10) Whizkid
11) Badass 12) Brute 13) Brute 14) Finesse 15) Tough as Nails
16) Tough as Nails 17) Tough as Nails 18) Ironman 19) Ironman 20) Ironman
21) Ironman 22) Ironman 23) Juggler 24) Reloader 25) Reloader
The early game is about building up some melee power, getting Vampyre as early as possible, then building towards Whizkid, and then continuing to buff your defenses. After level 22, the rest are essentially filler traits if you're perhaps using BFGs or still using Shotguns. Shottyman could be used instead of Juggler or even one level of Ironman, but you likely will get to a point where you are playing pure melee. Biggest Fucking Gun can be a way to destroy a portion of a level while following up on the survivors for easy kills for easy health absorption.
Some alternative setups for this include starting with Finesse and only taking two levels of Brute early on in order to make use of Shotguns in the early game to make up for the lack of range, but less melee accuracy can make the early game a fair bit harder and inconsistent. Since melee attacks are weak while only wielding your fists and Combat Knives, even just a basic Shotgun helps a lot with groups of enemies, scouting areas, handling Demons, and more use. If you are using a melee hybrid, you may want to pick Juggler much earlier, such as if you are using rockets for destroying corpses, or using Shotguns long-term. You could also delay getting Whizkid by a couple levels for gaining the second level in Badass earlier. However, while you can carry the 200% health instead of 150% health, depending on how much killing you're doing you may already effectively be at 200% most of the time anyway.
Overall, I wouldn't stray too much from this ordering.
Early equipment for Vampyre builds include Shotgun, Chainsaw (in standard games), and Combat Knife. I don't really suggest using other weapons with the lack of Son of a Bitch and Eagle Eye. Middle game equipment includes Piercing Blade Chainsaw (in standard games), Chainsword, Tactical Shotgun, Red Armor (P), and Nanofiber Red Armor. Piercing Blade Chainsaw or otherwise Chainsword are your best melee weapons, or if you're lucky, Butcher's Cleaver. Chainsaw (B) is actually stronger on average against most enemies, but is weaker against Cyberdemon, Angel of Death, and any enemies picking up armors, but it does make good use of Bulk Packs that otherwise may go to waste. If you're able to tough out a harder early game, saving your Chainsaw until you unlock Whizkid x2 to assemble Ripper is the best non-unique melee weapon, and you can use a single Mod Pack of your choice in the meantime. Tactical Shotgun is generally your best weapon for handling groups or enemies far out of range, especially Former Sargeants who have strong knockback. Because you can expect to take lots of hits, despite constant healing, Nanofiber Red Armor is excellent to use, while Red Armor (P) is for more dangerous enemies. Your health will be semi-infinite, so you need to make sure your armor is infinite too.
Late game equipment doesn't tend to change significantly except for Cerberus Boots (A), Chainsword (P), Nanofiber Red Armor (P), and possibly Tactical Shotgun (P). Various exotic armors and unique armors can be very beneficial such as Gothic Armor in Nanofiber Armor assembly, Phaseshift Armor, Shielded Armor, and Cybernetic Armor. If you find an Onyx Pack, you can opt out of using Nanofiber Armor for something much tougher. Assault Shotgun and Laser Rifle are also nice possible finds. Longinus Spear and Azrael's Scythe are both massively powerful weapons that you should always obtain in standard games, or otherwise use Ripper (B) / (T). If you can kill enemies in a single hit, Ripper is more efficient in time, but its accuracy can be a detriment until you get Brute x5.
For long games, you may be fortunate enough to find Dragonslayer, from which point you will basically kill everything in one hit and doing so extremely fast that you will constantly heal, while also taking almost no damage, more or less winning the game. Otherwise, use Ripper (B) / (T) or the reward from Unholy Cathedral. Shielded Armor is excellent if you play campy, or otherwise a Cerberus Armor with one of the strong bases, ideally Gothic Armor (O) or (P). Cybernano Energy-Shielded Vest (P) is also excellent with Berserk for covering more resistances, at the cost of being permanently unremovable, which is particularly a problem if you want to equip Dragonslayer. For boots, Cerberus Boots (A) are usually your best choice, but you could use the Phaseshift Set instead for better movement speed to approach enemies with. Inquisitor Set is also always good so long as you can let it repair as you fight.
Bullet Dance
Triggerhappy works for Pistols. Note that the effect of each level of Triggerhappy is only applied once when using Grammaton Cleric Beretta with Bullet Dance, despite being both a rapid-fire and a Pistol.
Requires: Son of a Bitch x2, Son of a Gun x2, Dualgunner, Triggerhappy x1, Level 7
Blocks: Hellrunner, Eagle Eye, Brute, Berserker, Dodgemaster, Intuition
Bullet Dance simply allows Pistols to benefit from Triggerhappy, allowing for multiple shots from them in a row like a rapid-fire weapon. The advantages of doing this over just using a rapid-fire is that Pistols are much stronger on a per bullet basis, they benefit from Son of a Gun, and tend to be more accurate. With Son of a Gun x5, Son of a Bitch x5, and Dualgunner, most enemies get killed very quickly. With Son of a Gun, the bursts are also extremely fast, so for anything that does survive, or when taking on groups, you can continue shooting with little retaliation.
Bullet Dance at first can also be excessive with ammo, but you're able to still use aimed shots to fire individual shots, or simply keep your second weapon empty and avoid dual reloading. Bullets tend to be fairly ammo efficient to begin with which is also helpful.
This all sounds quite nice, and the build does become fairly viable in the late game with some nice equipment, but Bullet Dance is very weak in the early and middle games. Bullet Dance will often knockback enemies so that you won't be getting full damage unless you're aiming at one of the eight main angles. Bullet damage also tends to be quite weak compared to other types, especially against Revenants.
Bullet Dance also has awful blocks, especially Eagle Eye, meaning that many of your shots will miss. Pistols, Combat Pistols, and the unique ones do have decent accuracy, but not enough to max out the chance to hit even at point blank. Lack of Hellrunner also slows you down significantly, and Dodgemaster hurts defensive combat a lot. Lack of Intuition also impacts navigation through floors and trying to hit enemies that fall out of your vision after knockback.
Until you get all of the Son of a Gun and Son of a Bitch traits available, the damage itself is also not fantastic, so for short or medium length games, you functionally turn Pistols into a Chaingun, or at best, a Minigun. For long games, you can get a much more viable build out of masterless or other master traits that use better weapons, even among rapid-fire usage like a Laser Rifle.
Angel of Death poses serious problems for conqueror games due to Bullet Dance blocking both Brute and Hellrunner, so you'll either need very fast items or cheese it with a nuke.
Overall, Bullet Dance is bad but is at least playable once you build up the power.
Suggested trait order:
1) Son of a Gun 2) Son of a Gun 3) Dualgunner 4) Son of a Bitch 5) Son of a Bitch
6) Triggerhappy 7) Bullet Dance 8) Finesse 9) Finesse 10) Whizkid
11) Whizkid 12) Triggerhappy 13) Son of a Gun 14) Son of a Gun 15) Son of a Gun
16) Son of a Bitch 17) Son of a Bitch 18) Son of a Bitch 19) Tough as Nails 20) Tough as Nails
21) Tough as Nails 22) Badass 23) Badass 24) Ironman 25) Ironman
For the pre-requisites, Dualgunner is generally better than Triggerhappy, mostly due to the lack of accuracy for Chaingun, although Son of a Bitch earlier is helpful if you start with a Shotgun. Once you have Bullet Dance, your best method to improve your build is generally access to Whizkid, and the traits for adding damage should come after. After all those traits are filled in, then start focusing on the defensive traits. It takes a long time for Bullet Dance to start becoming fairly effective, and you can be very frail until you get Tough as Nails. You could mix the trait order, but strong damage is more helpful since you'll already be fast to counter retaliation, and it improves ammo efficiency which can be an issue. If you're fine with getting Whizkid later, you can also get Triggerhappy x2 after Bullet Dance to make more use of the master trait.
In the early game, standard equipment is Pistol x2 and Shotgun. Most of the basic assemblies for Pistols are not great, so you may prefer simply using Agility Packs for accuracy increases. Speedloader Pistol can be decent once you get Bullet Dance due to the need to reload frequently. In the middle game, Pistols with Bulk Packs and Agility Packs best support Bullet Dance, while armor should generally be something that reduces damage well like Red Armor (P), and Tactical Boots are usually the best until you have access to more Mod Packs and Whizkid x2. If you're lucky, you might find Trigun, Anti-Freak Jackal, or Grammaton Cleric Beretta, all of which generally outclass regular Pistols.
For the late game, you'll have low defenses and need to balance your inventory between bullets and Med Packs. Strong armor like Cerberus Armor (P) / (O) in a strong base is helpful, as well as Cerberus Boots (A) to travel across fluids. For weapons, it highly depends on what you find. The good and cheap option is Pistol (PPPBB) x2, while Combat Pistol (PPPSB) x2 is much nicer. Mod Packs are fairly customizable and you may prefer Agility Packs or double Sniper Packs for less accuracy issues. Anti-Freak Jackal, Trigun, and Grammaton Cleric Beretta are also all very helpful and powerful over regular Pistols, but can fall behind a very strong Combat Pistol.
For long games, Nanomanufacture Combat Pistol (S) x2 are your best Pistols possible as it removes the issues regarding ammo management and reloading speed. It allows you to be spammy when firing and makes the build very powerful, able to destroy even Cyberdemons in a few bursts. You may also want to get Biggest Fucking Gun for more general coverage, either in a regular BFG (N) or Nuclear BFG (F). Inquisitor Set provides some good protection and movement speed, while Cerberus Gothic Armor (P) / (O) and Cerberus Boots (A) are better for damage reduction. Phaseshift Set is also nice with its movement speed and allows you to adjust your firing angles if you knockback enemies in awkward directions. Grammaton Cleric Beretta in full-auto has some of the highest damage per in-game time of everything in the game, but ammo usage can get excessive and Nanomanufacture Combat Pistols do just fine, even if slightly weaker.
Army of the Dead
Sharpnel damage is instead piercing damage.
Requires: Reloader x2, Badass x1, Shottyman, Level 6
Blocks: Finesse, Hellrunner, Eagle Eye, Juggler, Dodgemaster, Intuition, Whizkid
Army of the Dead is tied for the most flexible trait to unlock, only requiring 4 traits and level 6, and adds some decent damage to Shotguns which otherwise generally have the worst damage type. It can be roughed out to be extra damage equal to double an enemy's armor value, but this does still come before distance checks. Overall, it will save varying amounts of shots to kill, which helps with safer, faster kills, better ammo efficiency, not having to worry about enemies picking up armors, and significantly better damage against the toughest enemies.
Unfortunately, that's where the good of the trait mostly ends. Army of the Dead is the only master trait to block a total of 7 others, and every single one of them is a good one too. Without either Hellrunner or Finesse, this build is very slow. Lack of Hellrunner hurts the usage of Shottyman as a form of reloading because the time spent moving around is generally much more than just standing in place to reload, and without Dodgemaster, it's generally not ideal to be running around enemies in combat to reload. Camping also is less effective because of slower firing speed. This can counteract Army of the Dead's damage buff as you may still be getting hit just about as many times anyway. Only hiding in secluded areas are safe, and lack of Intuition also hurts the ability to scout for these.
Lack of Eagle Eye and Juggler also harms the potential of using any secondary weapons effectively, such as a Chaingun or Plasma Rifle. Stacking Shotguns and cycling through with Juggler is unavailable, although this is somewhat alleviated by taking Reloader early on in the game. Rocket Launchers can be helpful as support, but they're ineffective as a true secondary weapon due to low ammo and messiness with use.
And even if you get a decent game going, the big lack of Whizkid means that you quickly get capped in how effective your equipment can get to. Basic assemblies end up being the best items, such as Tactical Shotgun, Elephant Gun, Red Armor (P), and Tactical Boots. You can potentially find some better exotics and uniques, but then you also become highly reliant on luck to find them in order to improve your build.
The biggest setback for Army of the Dead is the trait itself is obsoleted by just about any other build which can make Nano-Shrapnel anyway, which also provides infinite firing, making it better than anything Army of the Dead can generally use. Not having to find a Nano Pack for part of the effect is certainly helpful, but not at the expense of everything else.
Army of the Dead is decent at short games because of how quickly accessible it is, but for medium and long games, the build stops meaningfully developing and is far less viable than most other builds. Even against the Cyberdemon, the trait struggles a bit because while the piercing damage adds a ton of damage against its otherwise strong armor, simply having Dodgemaster does much better anyway.
Overall, Army of the Dead sucks. It's still playable, but it's a huge handicap compared to just using other builds.
Suggested trait order:
1) Son of a Bitch 2) Reloader 3) Reloader 4) Shottyman 5) Badass
6) Army of the Dead 7) Son of a Bitch 8) Son of a Bitch 9) Badass 10) Tough as Nails
11) Tough as Nails 12) Son of a Bitch 13) Son of a Bitch 14) Tough as Nails 15) Ironman
16) Ironman 17) Ironman 18) Ironman 19) Ironman 20) Reloader
21) Triggerhappy 22) Triggerhappy 23) Brute 24) Brute 25) Berserker
Early on, you'll likely be using a Pistol briefly before a Shotgun, so Son of a Bitch can be a helpful start. You could also get Badass a bit earlier if you don't find needing Reloader as much in the early game, especially as many enemies die in one or two hits, but Shotguns can be fairly slow without it. Army of the Dead should be obtained as early as possible, followed by buffing its damage up more and then improving your defenses. Brute is also necessary for the Angel of Death since you can't as easily cheese by running away since Hellrunner is blocked, so if you intend to kill it, get Brute much earlier.
By level 20, there's not really anything else worth getting because of all the blocks, so you could also either go with a melee secondary or a Pistol secondary. If ammo becomes an issue, you could opt to get these traits earlier instead of Ironman. Melee doesn't fill up your inventory with ammo, and can help for single targets, while Son of a Gun and Dualgunner can give you a secondary ammo set. In particular for long games, if you find Frag Shotgun, which uses bullets to fire, having Pistols helps by sharing ammo. If you are playing a long game, you could put two points into Triggerhappy, specifically for Jackhammer, which does become absurdly powerful, but is not ammo friendly and hard to find. The third point in Reloader can be a bit helpful, even earlier on in leveling if you're playing very campy. Berserker only really helps with getting boosted after a heavy hit, but this might become impossible to trigger anyway with the usage of Ironman. Overall, you'll generally be using Shotguns and the traits beyond level 20 don't really matter.
Early game equipment includes mostly just a Shotgun. If you're lucky, you can find a Combat Shotgun to switch to. Agility Packs generally go into Steel Boots, while Power Packs and Technical Packs are best to be saved for weapons later on. Bulk Packs aren't too useful, so you can use it in a Shotgun for even faster reloading, or otherwise Chainsaw in standard games. In the middle game, Tactical Shotgun, Elephant Gun, Red Armor (P), and Tactical Boots are the main equipment. Elephant Gun does much more damage and has a better spread, while Tactical Shotgun reloads faster and has more ammo in its clip. Tactical Shotgun tends to be easier to assemble since it takes different Mod Packs.
For the late game, your equipment doesn't change a whole lot since you can't get Whizkid. Rocket Launcher (T) can be a decent support since they benefit from Shottyman and Reloader a lot. You could also invest in having Fireproof Platsteel Boots for better fluid resistances. Overall though, you need to rely on finding lucky exotics and uniques to get better equipment. You'll cap out quickly, and long before the danger of enemies do.
For long games where you can reasonably expect to find a lot more, Jackhammer is a nice addition to your supply, as well as Assault Shotgun (T), Super Shotgun (T), and Elephant Gun. Assault Shotgun (N) is your best option for semi-infinite ammo if shells get low and you happen to find a Nano Pack. For more diverse ammo, you may also want Frag Shotgun and Plasma Shotgun (T) / (N) so you don't have to rely on only shells. Army of the Dead with Jackhammer and Triggerhappy is actually the most powerful Shotgun by a huge gap, but still not the most viable because of Nano-Shrapnel Super Shotgun and its infinite shooting. For armors and boots, Inquisitor Set is nice, but Phaseshift Armor (O) with Phaseshift Boots (A) can be nice for fluid immunity and gaining a lot of movement speed. Enviroboots and Lava Boots assembly in Acid-Proof Boots are other ways to get fluid immunity since Cerberus Boots are unavailable.
Ammochain
Weapons that can Chain Fire only use 1 ammo per burst. Note that BFG10K uses 5 instead of 25.
Requires: Son of a Bitch x2, Reloader x2, Triggerhappy x2, Level 7
Blocks: Tough as Nails, Son of a Gun, Eagle Eye, Dualgunner, Intuition
Ammochain significantly improves ammo efficiency of rapid-fire weapons by reducing ammo costs per burst. For Plasma Rifles with the required Triggerhappy x2, the cost per burst is an eighth of what it normally is. This allows you to very freely spam powerful shots, keeps your inventory much more open for other useful items, and greatly reduces the need to reload. While other builds can be using Plasma Rifle and other rapid-fires, they generally can't sustain the ammo cost for very long.
Ammochain does slightly suffer from the lack of Eagle Eye and lower accuracy, but with spamming enough shots, you can still reliably kill enemies. Hyperblaster and Laser Rifle in particular mostly nullify the issue and then Ammochain can supply you with constant huge damage.
This build also starts off fairly strong as Son of a Bitch is a great trait and is a prerequisite, while Triggerhappy is also very good, and Reloader can support Shotgun usage. Blocking Tough as Nails is a slight detriment, but not significantly so, and compared to other Marine builds, this is only one besides masterless that can use Hellrunner. Ammochain doesn't really block off anything too significant.
Hyperblaster being reliably available is critical to making Ammochain powerful because of its accuracy and having good power too. While using only 1 ammo per burst doesn't make as significant use due to Hyperblaster shooting smaller bursts, it generally does more damage on a per ammo basis still, and it also firing twice as fast as other rapid-fire weapons.
The main drawbacks to Ammochain is that it is a bit weaker with groups of enemies as rapid-fires are generally single target weapons, and lack of Eagle Eye, while impacting accuracy, does also block Intuition, which is generally a very useful trait for rapid-fire builds. Ammochain does also lose some of its advantage when it comes to late game weapons such as Nanomanufacture rapid-fires, and to a lesser extent, Nuclear Plasma Rifle, but with only single shots per burst, Ammochain allows for the expensive weapon of Laser Rifle (NNFFF), which offers two extra Firestorm slots compared to Nanomanufacture Laser Rifle (F), and Nuclear Plasma Rifles with their decent clips means that you can get a lot out of them after recharging compared to non-Ammochain usage. You can also use two Nuclear Plasma Rifles and never really run out of being able to fire by switching between them.
Overall, Ammochain is extremely strong and could be argued as the the best middle game build, while still being strong in the early and late games as well. It's one of the best master traits.
Suggested trait order:
1) Son of a Bitch 2) Son of a Bitch 3) Triggerhappy 4) Triggerhappy 5) Reloader
6) Reloader 7) Ammochain 8) Finesse 9) Finesse 10) Whizkid
11) Whizkid 12) Son of a Bitch 13) Son of a Bitch 14) Son of a Bitch 15) Hellrunner
16) Hellrunner 17) Dodgemaster 18) Finesse 19) Hellrunner 20) Badass
21) Badass 22) Ironman 23) Ironman 24) Ironman 25) Ironman
Start off by increasing power and then larger bursts with Triggerhappy while using Chaingun. If you really prefer Shotguns, you could switch the order of Reloader and Triggerhappy. Once you have Ammochain, going for Whizkid to unlock access to Hyperblaster and more usage of Mod Packs is important. Then from there is power, speed, and defenses. For standard games, you may want to get Dodgemaster much earlier to handle the Cyberdemon, but if you're careful and have decent armor, you could cornershoot it from the pillars. You'll also need to rely on Hellrunner for the Angel of Death.
For the early game, you can either focus on Chaingun, Shotgun or both. If you like to use Agility Packs for your early rapid-fires, you should just use Protective Boots or Platsteel Boots instead of Tactical Boots. The middle game is where Ammochain begins to shine with Gatling Gun, Plasma Rifle, and Hyperblaster. While Hyperblaster does fire less shots in its burst, its huge accuracy bonus and higher damage makes up for the difference and is definitely the best choice on a per shot basis. It also fires faster, which can be helpful in dangerous situations. You could use a Firestorm Pack on it, but it may serve better for a potential Laser Rifle. However, 2 extra shots on a Hyperblaster to go from 5 to 7 is a pretty big increase. For armor, Red Armor (P) is a good choice, but be cautious on your slow move speed. Tactical Boots or working towards Cerberus Boots (A) are the best choices for boots. Once you have Hyperblaster (A) / (F), fill your inventory with cells and you'll likely replenish them before ever getting even close to running out. Ammochain with Hyperblaster destroys everything.
For the late game, Hyperblaster (A) / (F) is still the best choice unless you get lucky enough to find Laser Rifle, in which case you should add Power Packs, Firestorm Packs, and Nano Packs to it. Nuclear Plasma Rifle can also be nice if you want to empty out your inventory for more useful items than ammo, in which case you may want to use Bulk Packs so you don't have to worry about recharging as often. For armor, Cerberus Armor (P) / (O) is good for covering resistances, and Cerberus Boots (A) are good for fluid immunity. The enemies will start to catch up a bit to Ammochains domination, but you'll still have traits to put points into to keep up.
For long games, Ammochain falls a bit behind because of Nanomanufacture Ammo, so you may want to opt for weapons that don't use it in order to benefit from more Mod Pack slots. Laser Rifle (NNFFF) gives infinite ammo through no recharge delay and is the most powerful rapid-fire in the game when setup with 3 Firestorm Packs. Nuclear Plasma Rifles can also become infinite with just one Nano Packs since they already recharge, and have a lot of Mod Pack slots for customization. Another weapon that can be interesting to use is Demolition Ammo Minigun (F) / (N), which gives you huge, mostly free bursts of firey explosions, which can be helpful for clearing out corpses, although it can't destroy walls. For armors and boots, Cerberus Gothic Armor (P) and Cerberus Boots (A) are good for protecting you, and Inquisitor Set is also good for fire immunity and movement speed.
Survivalist
Med Packs are capped in healing to 200% instead of 100%. Large Med Packs heal up to half your health, or up to 100%, whichever is more. Also, all damage you take that would be reduced to 0 has a 50% chance of doing no damage.
Requires: Ironman x3, Tough as Nails x2, Badass x1, Level 7
Blocks: Hellrunner, Son of a Bitch, Berserker, Dodgemaster, Triggerhappy
Survivalist is a fairly unique master trait as it's one of the few directly improving defenses instead of offense. With the Med Pack effect, you can make good usage of all the excess Small Med Packs without filling inventory space, instead of either wasting them or risking enemies picking them up. Staying at well above 100%, especially with the extra health through Ironman and the Marine's naturally higher health, ends up giving you significantly more than most builds. With the minimum requirement of Ironman x3, the accessible 200% is a total of 180 health, as opposed to 50 for other characters that can't as easily achieve or maintain that.
The effect of reducing damage to 0 in some cases is also helpful. With strong enough armor, some resistances, and Tough as Nails, a lot of weak damage can be ignored, such as Shotgun blasts from a bit of distance, indirect splash damage, and many rapid-fire attacks. Although there is a luck factor and no direct indication that damage was reduced to 0, the effect makes your build's health sustain a lot longer, which is already much higher than usual.
Being a defensive trait, Survivalist is also versatile with weapons, and you can effectively make a Shotgun, Pistol, Melee, or hybrid build with Survivalist. The damage and speed dealt won't be as good as other builds, but you'll be able to tank damage significantly better than others.
All of this sounds pretty great on paper, but there are quite a bit of setbacks to this general strategy. First, your health will get quickly destroyed on harder difficulties if you can't offensively defend yourself by quickly killing enemies. All the health in the world won't matter if it's getting constantly drained. Next, while all the extra health is available, many other builds can also just as easily dump points into Tough as Nails and Ironman early on, just that it's often more effective to focus on Son of a Bitch, Hellrunner, and Finesse, two of which are blocked with this build. Lack of Dodgemaster also creates a problem with the Cyberdemon for standard games, and you can't tank rockets or hard-hitting melee attacks forever.
With the nature of the game tending to favor offense, Survivalist is a bit backwards with early focus on the defensive traits first. This means that traits like Ironman which are usually your filler skills for late game become what you need early on to unlock the master trait and others like Finesse and Whizkid take the late game spot of what would be filler traits. Whizkid is also very needed for many setups as the effect of reducing some damage to 0 won't occur often if you can't reduce damage that low in the first place, making Survivalist essentially a Med Pack booster, which is still nice, but definitely not worthy alone of being a master trait. Top, end game equipment is generally required to reduce damage down to 0 as by the time you unlock Survivalist, you'll be seeing more stronger enemies anyway.
Survivalist is a decent choice for long games with Angel of 100 and Archangel of 666 where you can more realistically find everything you need for the build and gain the experience to unlock all the traits you need, but otherwise, Survivalist is pretty average for standard games.
Suggested trait order (Shotgun/hybrid):
1) Finesse 2) Finesse 3) Tough as Nails 4) Tough as Nails 5) Badass
6) Ironman 7) Ironman 8) Ironman 9) Survivalist 10) Badass
11) Whizkid 12) Whizkid 13) Tough as Nails 14) Finesse 15) Ironman
16) Ironman 17) Eagle Eye 18) Eagle Eye 19) Intuition 20) Intuition
21) Juggler 22) Brute 23) Brute 24) Brute 25) Brute
Survivalist is arguably the only master trait where it's generally less viable to try to unlock it as fast as possible as you'll need many other traits both to support making good usage of Survivalist, and to be able to attack back and reduce the damage you take before taking into consideration of the master trait's effects. Finesse is generally the best starting trait for offense, then you can build up to Survivalist. You may want Badass x2 before it if you want to keep 200% instead of just 150%. Whizkid can also be valuable earlier on, as well as Juggler if you are shuffling multiple weapons. From there is improving the rest of the traits, and then investing towards Intuition, and filling in the rest. Rapid-fires with a few levels of Eagle Eye are still decent, but lack of Son of a Bitch and Triggerhappy leaves them much weaker than other builds. Brute for some melee power is also nice to cover potential ammo issues of Shotguns. If you want to fully submit to Shotguns, you could also invest in Reloader and Shottyman, but given that Nano-Shrapnel makes the traits useless, they're not worth it for long games, which is what Survivalist is best in anyway. Other weapons you can play with are Rocket Launchers, Acid Spitter, and Tristar Blaster, as with strong enough armor, you can reduce the self-damage to 0 part of the time as well.
Suggested trait order (Pistols):
1) Son of a Gun 2) Son of a Gun 3) Dualgunner 4) Eagle Eye 5) Finesse
6) Finesse 7) Tough as Nails 8) Tough as Nails 9) Badass 10) Whizkid
11) Whizkid 12) Ironman 13) Ironman 14) Ironman 15) Survivalist
16) Badass 17) Tough as Nails 18) Son of a Gun 19) Son of a Gun 20) Son of a Gun
21) Eagle Eye 22) Intuition 23) Intuition 24) Eagle Eye 25) Eagle Eye
At the very end of this build, you get a really fast firing Pistol build that also can handle taking a ton of damage. Because of how fast attacks are, you can very precisely choose when to heal during fights, which can help optimize usage of Med Packs, or just running into a different position. The obvious issue with this build is you pretty much need to hit level 23 to be functionally complete, and Survivalist has to take a backseat in order for you to be able to attack back at enemies effectively. This build only functionally works for long games, but is pretty decent once complete.
Suggested trait order (melee):
1) Brute 2) Brute 3) Brute 4) Tough as Nails 5) Tough as Nails
6) Badass 7) Ironman 8) Ironman 9) Ironman 10) Survivalist
11) Finesse 12) Finesse 13) Whizkid 14) Whizkid 15) Badass
16) Brute 17) Brute 18) Tough as Nails 19) Ironman 20) Ironman
21) Finesse 22) Eagle Eye 23) Eagle Eye 24) Intuition 25) Intuition
Like the other Survivalist variants, this build takes very long to complete and the early game can be tough. A point or two in Finesse before Survivalist can be helpful for better attacking speeds if desired and for support for a Shotgun secondary weapon. The exact ordering of all the traits is highly customizable for your specific needs, but you won't be able to make good use of Survivalist for awhile. The advantage of using melee with Survivalist is that melee damage from enemies is generally much weaker and you can reduce the damage to 0 much easier. However, lack of Berserk is a big loss and with also missing Hellrunner, you'll have to play fairly campy. If you're lucky enough to find Shielded Armor, you can actually tank hits very effectively. If you're also lucky enough to get Dragonslayer, the massive boost in resistances will actually start making your build feel more invincible, while still dealing massive damage to anything that approaches you, and turns out to be a pretty good build. The obvious issue with that is getting the build going and actually acquiring Dragonslayer is very rare. If you do get it, Cybernano Energy-Shield Vest makes you mostly immune to all of acid, plasma, and fire, and likewise pretty tanky for the other damage types which generally deal less damage. This variant has the worst average viability, but has the greatest potential when fully maxed out.
For the early game, your equipment will highly vary based on what type of variant you're planning for, but Pistol x2, Shotgun, Chaingun, and Chainsaw, are all the good standards. For the middle game, you might not yet have access to both Whizkid and Survivalist, so your best choices may be Red Armor (P), Tactical Shotgun, Piercing Blade Chainsaw, and Tactical Boots. Even with 8 protection through the armor and Tough as Nails, there might not be too many attacks it's reducing to 0 anyway, unless you're playing on an easy difficulty.
For the late game, you'll hopefully have some of the traits to get Survivalist going more. Assault Shotgun (PPPTT) or Tactical Shotgun (P), Piercing Blade Chainsaw or Unholy Cathedral rewards, and Hyperblaster and Pistol (PPBBB) x2 are some of the various common weapons for your build. Lots of different uniques can be very useful too. For armors, Cerberus Armor (P) might be able to reduce damage low enough depending on the attacks and rolls, but might not actually work all that often. Specialized armors tend to be more effective such as Plasma Shield, Energy Shield, Shielded Armor, and Tower Shield. If you try for something more generalized, you'll reduce damage well like normal, just that it doesn't make use of Survivalist. For boots, Cerberus Boots (A) are always good for fluid immunity.
For long games, the best equipment will depend on the build. Nano-Shrapnel Super Shotgun (P), Biggest Fucking Gun in regular BFG (N), Combat Pistol (PPPBB) or the expensive variant of (PPPNN), and Dragonslayer are all the usual best weapons. For armors, a mix of specialized shields are generally best to cover for everything, or Cerberus Gothic Armor (P) if you're fine with not taking full advantage of Survivalist and want better inventory management. Shielded Armor is excellent for melee camping, or if you find Dragonslayer, Cybernano Energy-Shielded Vest compliments the Berserk effect well. Every build likely makes best usage of Cerberus Boots (A) unless you want to use Inquisitor Set or Phaseshift Set.
