Skip to this post if you just want to get to the tier list and don't care to read my explanations for the rankings.As I finished up my
Everyman Angelic run and achieved 26/26/26/26/26/13 badges in DRL, before ending my time with 0.9.9.7, I wanted to write up a final review and ranking of all the badges in 0.9.9.7, as well as do the same for all the different builds. Most people playing DRL at this point will be playing one of the post-JHC DRL versions, but for those going back to play what was the final version for over a decade, the information here could help them, and I thought it would be fun to write this up to later compare how the builds and badges have evolved since then, as I plan to eventually do this again with a later DRL version after even more major changes happen.
Going back to 0.9.9.7 after spending the past couple years playing 0.9.9.8/0.9.9.9 beta/0.10 DRL and JHC, yeah DRL then was certainly full of warts; some of the most degenerate strategies ruled (infinite run -> wait camping, infinite respawn farming, Sereging, etc), half the Assemblies/Exotics/Uniques were very underwhelming or outright trash, only a few builds I would say were legitimately good (bit of a spoiler on the tier list later...), special levels are completely imbalanced on higher difficulties (to say nothing how much a chore many are to clear on N!), and the badges and medals are pretty whack between very inconsistent difficulty within the same badge tier and many just offering uninteresting challenges or lack of variety. And that's just the gameplay aspects, DRL has certainly gotten a big visual glowup in the versions since. It's still DRL and I still enjoyed playing it, DRL is one of my favorite games, but it certainly was a bit hard to go back to 0.9.9.7, and after fulfilling my goal of getting as close to 100%ing pre-JHC DRL as is realistically possible, I probably won't play it again beyond maybe the occasional nostalgia trip.
To begin with, I'll preface how many Diamonds and Angelics I won with each build to establish some credibility (with Technician, Armorer, and Heroic excluded since they required the effort of many runs, also note all challenge-based Diamonds were gotten purely, i.e. they weren't mixed in any Dual Angel so no Sereging):
- Shottyhead - 6 Diamonds (Veteran, Elite, Demonic, Shottyman, Lightfoot, Masochist), 5 Angelics (Veteran, Elite, Shottyman, Lightfoot, Masochist), 11 total
- Vampyre - 5 Diamonds (Strongman, Berserker, Everyman, Daredevil, Scavenger), 2 Angelics (Strongman, Berserker), 7 total
- Blademaster - 2 Diamonds (Quartermaster, Centurial), 3 Angelics (Eagerness, Quartermaster, Centurial), 5 total
- Cateye - 2 Diamonds (Hunter, Longinus), 1 Angelic (Marksman), 3 total
- Masterless Scout - 1 Diamond (Destroyer), 1 Angelic (Inquisitor), 2 total
- Masterless Scout (no mastery possible) - 1 Diamond (Arena), 1 Angelic (Everyman), 2 total
- Scavenger - 2 Diamonds (Marksman, Eagerness), 0 Angelics, 2 total
- Ammochain - 2 Diamonds (Reaper, Inquisitor), 0 Angelics, 2 total
- Fireangel - 1 Diamond (Gatekeeper), 0 Angelics, 1 total
- Gunrunner - 1 Diamond (UAC), 0 Angelics, 1 total
I'll note the 2 Diamonds I won with Ammochain I would have went Vampyre for instead if I wasn't trying to intentionally limit my Vampyre usage, rather than legitimately thinking Ammochain gave me the most optimal chance at those badges. Similarly, I wouldn't have used Gunrunner for UAC if I wasn't intentionally trying to make an overly easy Diamond more interesting by maining Shotguns with no Berserker nor any melee investment, otherwise that would have been another Diamond for Blademaster. From this you can already see what I meant with only a few builds being legitimately good, with me not even using half the possible builds, even less if I didn't intentionally go with a less optimal choice, and while some of the unused ones could have been used just fine for the easier Diamonds/Angelics like Veteran, Scavenger, Longinus, or Lightfoot, they would have merited little to any serious consideration for the legitimately difficult badges and never had a real niche where they could shine.
This post will be for the Build Tier List, I'll do the Badge Difficulty Ratings in another thread since this post is going to get huge enough without trying to fit both in the same OP.
S tier(Brokenly good, actively simplifies the game)
*Vampyre - 0.9.9.7 Vampyre isn't the outright cheat code that it is in 0.9.9.8 (which in retrospect, I should have ranked it SS tier on my
0.9.9.8 Build Tier List, that shit was an abomination to game balance), it can be mortal with lesser equipment and the early game is a more serious hurdle without the 0.9.9.8 Marine's OP inherent +20% energy resistances nor 0.9.9.8's dodging bug. However, it still doesn't take all that much to achieve a near immortal state with 0.9.9.7 Vampyre, with a relatively reachable ceiling that is still essentially IDDQD; it says a lot that I could still viably tank with Vampyre in Angel Of Humanity, while the rougher early game can be alleviated by getting Finesse with the free trait Vampyre allows, which also gives you the option of Juggler if you need more early game help and that will only delay Vampyre to level 7, the same as most other masteries anyway. What really pushes Vampyre to S tier is how much it just simplifies the game, when nearly any combat encounter can be solved by "rush in and mash click", Berserker and the massive boosted health Vampyre lets you basically carry at all times means you don't need to worry about suddenly wiping from any blunder, inventory management doesn't really matter when you don't need ammo to kill things nor medkits to heal, and it destroys all the special levels aside from maybe N! Mortuary if you're in AoB and are lacking speed-boosting equipment. Vampyre additionally gets even better on Nightmare!, in fact I would rate it S+ there, when Vampyre can farm respawns for 150%/200% health at any time, making hot starts basically a complete nonissue as you enter every floor with Supercharged health and can quickly trigger Berserker to kill everything while getting all your health back, and in general it means Vampyre won't need to worry about getting overwhelmed from respawns when it just keeps fully healing from them while not needing to expend any ammo. The only thing that keeps Vampyre from being an even more dominant choice for Diamonds/Angelics is several of them having a strict damage limit, having a strict speed requirement that makes HR mandatory while Vampyre is blocked it, or just limiting you from using melee altogether. Vampyre very much deserved the nerfs it got in 0.10 even after the 0.9.9.8 excesses got stripped away. Even having one of the worse set of blocks doesn't matter with how OP Vampyre is on top of Berserker being OP and melee in general being OP.
A tier(Very powerful and often optimal builds, but have just enough holding them back from trivializing the game)
*Shottyhead - Always been my personal favorite build and believed it got slept on, but thought "ok maybe it's only a B tier mastery, Reloader was pretty bad before 0.9.9.8". However when going through 100%ing 0.9.9.7, I've come to realized that no, Shottyhead was very much a top tier mastery even before the Reloader buff and those rating it as mediocre or bad were the ones doing something wrong with it, if they even gave it a chance. Having triple speed shotguns is very powerful, not just for DPS but very importantly this gives you perhaps your best answer to countering deadly hot starts aside from Vampyre or lategame Blademaster, as Shottyhead can just blow away tough monster groups before they wake up and knockback other enemies out of vision before they wake up to give you time to escape or the space to stand your ground. Another common but dangerous scenario is you're cornershooting something from imperfect cover and another enemy pops up at a different angle with LoS on you, normally you would have to take hits here or try retreating, but with Shottyhead you can keep blasting this enemy out of vision while keeping the enemy you're corner shooting from reaching you until either dies. Shottyhead can additionally fight well in the open if need be, since you can keep knocking back multiple enemies out of vision from different angles, limiting or eliminating their ability to hit you, while you're still outputting strong AoE DPS. These sort of situations are what will most often cripple or outright kill your runs beyond the early game, and so Shottyhead's ability to get you out of these game-altering scenarios with little to no damage is extremely valuable, while Shottyhead can get Berserker too to make it even better at these scenarios. Shottyhead also has a very strong and synergistic prereq path, with being able to open with Finesse -> Juggler without delaying it being especially powerful in the early game, and so Shottyhead will be great from beginning to end. Shottyhead tended to get written off because it blocked SoB, a trait a lot of people insisted was mandatory, but SoB just doesn't matter much for shotguns when +1 flat damage (before falloff!) is so relatively little when shotguns are dealing 10+ damage per hit and Whizkid with Power Mods are much better for buffing their damage output. The main drawback of the SoB block is that Shottyhead can't really use a Plasma Rifle all that well, but with the aforementioned overwhelming strengths, you can very much live without them. The other common criticism of Shottyhead is it being "ammo hungry", but shotguns are already naturally ammo efficient, so it's only being ammo inefficient if you get carried away with repeatedly blasting far away enemies, and if you're playing N!, you can just infinitely farm shells off of any Shotgunner anyway (which I would actually rate Shottyhead A+ on N!, because you can utterly abuse the infinite ammo to blast away at long distance enemies with no threat to yourself). With the aforementioned collection of Diamonds and Angelics I got with Shottyhead without any Dual Angel abuse, including serious heavy hitters like Masochist Diamond, Demonic Diamond, and the previously unwon Masochist Angelic, I do think I proved myself on how good Shottyhead is.
*Blademaster - When it comes to clearing out floors, simply no build is faster than Blademaster, and Blademaster is your other best option for surviving hot starts alongside Vampyre and Shottyhead, as Blademaster will slice through large hordes of enemies before they can ever act with your instant action kills. You also got Berserker to greatly limit the damage you take in these hot starts, as well as protect you from big hits when exploring. Blademaster is simply unparalleled with completing anything time-sensitive, or for just when you want to get through the game quickly. Blademaster's main stumbling is the below-average early game, being even weaker than Vampyre in that regard with its inability to pick up Finesse without delaying it and not being able to get early Juggler without delaying until level 9, but once you make it to The Chained Court, it'll make the rest of the game significantly easier than with any of the below builds. On that note, Blademaster is another mastery I say gets even better on N! and would rank A+ there, as melee's early weakness is significantly alleviated when you got doubled healing, doubled armor repair, doubled powerups, and faster EXP gain, while Blademaster's effect becomes more valuable the more enemies there are and how fast Blademaster clears out floors quickly greatly limits the amount of respawns you have to deal with. As a testament to this is me being able to win the once-believed near impossible Eagerness Angelic with Blademaster even in 0.9.9.7 where respawns count towards your kill percentage, and then winning Quartermaster Angelic on N! in 0.9.9.7 with Blademaster, something I'm sure people would have thought inconceivable previously. The SoB block is the only real detrimental block, but Blademaster has far more other traits that it would rather have anyway and with how strong melee is, not being able to effectively use Plasma Rifles doesn't really matter, while the TaN block doesn't matter either when berserk alone gives so much resistance in this version and TaN gives no additional resistances (with the TaN block only mattering when playing Angel of Purity).
A- tier(Great builds but lack the oomph to easily handle difficult situations)
*Masterless Scout - Probably my most controversial ranking here is putting the perennial favorite Masterless Scout merely at fourth best and in A- tier. Masterless Scout is certainly good when you got unparalleled flexibility and no suboptimal prereqs you have to fuss with, which combines well with the Scout being inherently stronger than the other two classes in this version with the great +10% universal speed bonus and stair sense. But no mastery leaves you lacking that strong extra perk, which can make going masterless lacking power and make difficult scenarios all the more harrowing to get out of. In particular, a major reason I rank the three above masteries higher is their ability to get you out of hot starts without dying or crippling your health/armor supply, whereas if you go Masterless, you get no such boon to help get you out of them and become more dependent on Phase Devices, and whether you can survive said hot starts will often be what kills runs. You can get Berserker to help you with hot starts, but the three above builds get Berserker in addition to abilities that actively help with hot starts on their own and stack very strongly with Berserker. Aside from when the game is too short to even get a mastery, the only things Masterless Scout can really offer over the above three masteries is being able to get SoB, which is just a much weaker boon than what the three higher masteries give, and being able to get TaN/Badass unlike Shottyhead and Blademaster, but these two are some of the least impactful traits most of the time and even Masterless Scout won't want to get them before most other traits outside of the couple Angels where they're more meaningful. You usually can't go wrong though with Masterless and it has no glaring weakness, and you can do the vast majority of challenges well with it, it just isn't strong enough to optimally handle some of the top end challenges and can be inadequate to surviving especially terrible level generation.
*Cateye - Another perhaps controversial ranking, as Cateye tends to be the mastery that gets ranked alongside Masterless Scout at the top of lists. Cateye offers a level of flexibility not seen in most other masteries with it, with its more open prereq path (including allowing a free level and being a level 6 mastery), and Cateye's effect itself being a +2 vision boost that's universally good on any weapon, so while technically a Rapid Fire mastery, you can play it as a Generalist build, as a Shotgun build, or even a Pistol build. This +2 vision boost and being able to stack Int2 on top to effectively detect and fire on enemies from 5 tiles outside your vision additionally makes Cateye the premier build for avoiding damage, so what keeps it from being up in the S or even A tier? Well the +2 vision boost doesn't directly boost your combat prowess, and more importantly, it effectively doesn't do anything when the enemies are already around you. So like masterless, Cateye crucially doesn't help you get out of hot starts, and unlike masterless, Cateye can't get Berserker to help as it is blocked Brute, which additionally makes Cateye more fragile in dangerous situations where damage is unavoidable. This is why I didn't use Cateye in any of the Diamond/Angelic badges with extreme damage limits, as Cateye ends up actually taking more damage or outright dying in these hot starts or pincer moments, while Int2 and smart play will usually be enough to avoid stumbling into enemy fire. So overall, still very good and it'll have no significant problem handling most challenges, it just will be suboptimal for some of the hardest ones and you can get screwed over by a really bad hot start.
B+ tier(Borderline great with top tier potential, but has holes significant enough to bring it down)
*Ammochain - A ranking I surprised myself to be making, as Ammochain has historically been a top tier or outright OP mastery, and I would rank it A+ in my 0.9.9.8 build tier list even above Shottyhead. 0.9.9.7 Ammochain though is definitely its weakest iteration, as this is after Ammochain's broken glory days where it gave you outright infinite clips and then got a guaranteed Nuclear Plasma Rifle from Spider's Lair, but this is before the inherently weak Marine got buffed with inherent energy resistances and before the mostly lousy Reloader got buffed. Reloader and SoB don't make for a bad early game, you'll be able to corner shoot with shotguns quite effectively with that combo, but since this is prior to the Reloader buff, it isn't quite as reliable as you would hope with killing bigger enemies before they reach you without also having Finesse or the Scout's speed boost, and with no Eagle Eye, the Chaingun is woefully unreliable, which in turns make those Triggerhappy levels later in Phobos quite painful, as the Chaingun will still not be good and they'll do nothing to bolster the Shotgun nor help you escape/tank enemies. This can make later Phobos and early Deimos a noticeable rough patch, especially if you don't get any Commandos to spawn on Phobos 6/7 and so don't get a Plasma Rifle until Deimos. The Marine's 10 extra max HP also just doesn't do all that much to bolster survivability without the inherent resistances too, and longer powerups is contingent on said powerups spawning in the first place for that perk to matter. Once you get Ammochain with a Hyperblaster, a tricked out Nuclear or Laser Rifle, or even just an A-modded Plasma Rifle, Ammochain does become quite powerful, and its perk extends beyond ammo-saving, as being able to fire off
40 consecutive full TH2 Plasma Rifle bursts before needing to reload instead of a mere five, does help with the aforementioned hot start problem. Ammochain additionally does not have Hellrunner and Berserker blocked, so Ammochain can pick up both lategame and achieve one of the highest ceilings. "Lategame" is the keyword though, as taking the traits for them earlier in the game will delay Ammochain, and picking up Whizkid is near mandatory for Ammochain to alleviate the EE block, while Ammochain can't get both the mastery and WK2 until level 11 at minimum. Overall, while offering stronger potential than the B tier masteries, I think Ammochain just has too long of an awkward period before it truly comes online to be an A tier mastery and I find it to rarely be a compelling choice for Diamond/Angelic badges (with me getting only two Diamonds with it, and both times was me deliberately avoiding the much easier path of yet another Vampyre run), so it ends up ranked in this borderline tier.
B tier(Builds that can be good but have clear weaknesses or not overwhelming enough strengths that makes them rarely optimal picks)
*Scavenger - While this is before 0.9.9.8 gave Scavenger a much welcome buff with being able to dissemble melee weapons, armor, and boots, Scavenger is still pretty good, as it not only has the fewest blocks of any mastery, but two of its three scant blocks (Dualgunner and Triggerhappy) really don't matter, so it's not much different than playing masterless, except you get some extra mods, and have increased odds to get the highly coveted rare mods; even just getting a single Firestorm or Sniper can make a serious difference on N! with letting you build a Demolition Pistol or Plasmatic Shotgun for much easier corpse disposal. Since you can only dissemble ranged weapons in this version, Scavenger won't be able to get that many extra mods, especially outside of A100, and Scavenger itself offers no extra perks, while the Berserker block does make it more frail in the later game and bad at handling hot starts without rare mods, so it's clearly below the A tier masteries, as it will be weaker in most games without exceptional scavenging luck. Still it has no major detriment bringing it down, overall being the best Technician build in this version, which does give it a niche for Eagerness Diamond (where you must play a Technician), and I would say Scavenger is actually the best at running pistols (with me successfully using it for pure Marksman Diamond), as you can play it as a pseudo-Sharpshooter build that trades excessive EE for SoB levels that significantly help the early game hell while getting more mods and SoB to bridge the gap in lategame power. So while not a serious optimal pick for most Diamonds/Angelics, there are a couple where Scavenger can shine, and it can otherwise work well as a "vibe pick" for less difficult Diamonds.
*Masterless Technician - You can see what I wroteup about Masterless Scout and apply much of it here, but the Masterless Technician has near-instant item use, turning Computer Maps into Tracking Maps, and being able to mod a few Uniques, instead of the Scout's +10% universal speed bonus and stair sense for inherent perks. This leaves Masterless Technician substantially weaker, and results in it having an even greater problem with hot starts without the Scout's inherent perks. Masterless Technician is additionally nearly outclassed by Scavenger, as they'll play mostly the same but Scavenger gets extra mods to have better equipment. However unlike Scavenger, it can get Berserker, which can be more valuable than the extra mods at times (having a particular niche in Angel of Humanity). And overall as a Masterless build, it can't be bad at any point of the game, so Masterless Technician is solid B, though very rarely, if ever, will it be an optimal pick for any run.
B- tier(Not noticeably flawed to be ranked lower but is too lacking in compelling advantages to be ranked higher)
*Masterless Marine - Take what I said already about Masterless builds, but instead of being universally faster and having stair sense, or having near-instant item use to prevent getting caught in healing loops or getting killed after Phasing in the middle of enemies, you only have 10 extra max HP and a situational bonus of longer powerups. Additionally, while the Scout gets immediate access to Intuition that has obvious use, and the Technician's immediate access to Whizkid can be quite useful too, the Marine's signature advanced trait is... Badass, which unless you're playing Vampyre or a few certain challenges where retaining boosted health has increased value, is mostly a dud of a trait and can even be counterproductive with the permanent knockback reduction nerfing your rocket jumps, or making you take more hits than you would have if it kept an enemy from launching you out of its or another enemy's vision. Once more as masterless, it can't be bad, so it can't be ranked in the lower tiers, yet Masterless Marine really has no real compelling niche of its own. If you really want to play a Marine with access to Intuition, Masterless Marine has that over the higher ranked Vampyre and Ammochain, which are blocked from getting Intuition via virtue of their EE blocks, but the perk offered by Ammochain and especially Vampyre are far stronger, and the flexibility advantage is greatly diminished if you have to denote a whopping four traits to getting Int2.
C tier(Functional, but held back by serious faults that cannot be ignored)
*Sharpshooter - If this tier list was only ranking masteries by how strong they are once you get them, Sharpshooter would be an easy A tier; always max damage on pistols with just SoG3 is seriously powerful, to say nothing of when you get them with SoG5. But a serious aspect of ranking masteries are their prerequisite traits and how their early game will play out, and this is where Sharpshooter falls apart. Pistols already mightily struggle in the early game even after you get SoG3, with no Berserker nor Chained Court equivalent to give them a major mid-mastery power boost like the similarly weak-early-on melee builds, but then you need to get three fucking EE levels after that with each having greatly diminished returns, and then still survive one more level after that for Sharpshooter. Even outside of AoMr where you're free to use other weapons on your way to Sharpshooter, its prereqs do absolutely nothing to boost the shotguns you would be primarily relying on, and the Chaingun is still worthless without any SoB, so the EE levels don't help there. And it's hard to justify taking traits outside of Sharpshooter's prereq path for more immediate help, as the build is still going to be incredibly weak until you get to Sharpshooter, while each additional level will take increasingly longer to get to; you really
really don't want to be in Deimos on UV or N! without Sharpshooter nor anything else but SoG3 to bolster your wimpy pistols. Sharpshooter without a doubt has the worst early game of any build other than maybe Bullet Dance, and Sharpshooter builds will have abominable winrates on UV or especially N! for anyone but the absolute best players. It's hard to rank such a polarizing mastery, there is value in having a mastery that nearly ensures you won't have a run die in Deimos or Hell after hours have been invested into it, but it can't be ignored how much effort and luck it'll take to even reach that point with such a weak early build, and how all those extra early game deaths will make successful Sharpshooter runs require more real time investment than the higher tiered builds that are far more reliable in the early game while still offering a reliable mid and late game. Ultimately this early weakness will keep Sharpshooter from being seriously considered for any Diamond/Angelic or even Platinum badge, outside of Marksman Platinum/Diamond or being chosen as a vibe pick for the easier badges. Even for Marksman Diamond, the one Diamond that Sharpshooter should be the optimal pick for, this was major enough of a problem to make me go with Scavenger instead, and I'm sure my unconventional Scavenger pick is part of what made me need far fewer attempts to win the badge than the other people who used Sharpshooter reported needing. I'll still rate it above the lower tiers though, as at least there is an opportunity for Sharpshooter to shine if you can get it, while the lower ranked masteries offer far less compelling advantages, even if their early games aren't as bad.
*Fireangel - Splash damage immunity is a nice defensive perk, and no damage rocket jumps can be very fun, but offering no direct offensive benefit, blocking SoB, and no Scout universal speed bonus, gives Fireangel abysmal offensive potential, and splash immunity alone is not a strong enough defensive perk to make up for Fireangel's abysmal offense. As a result, Fireangel can seriously struggle in encounters where it can't output enough offensive power to quickly kill the most pressing threats, especially when they involve enemies where the splash immunity is irrelevant, such as against Arachnotrons, Formers, or Shamblers. And trying to heavily use Rocket Launchers offensively to take advantage of damageless rocket jumps or close quarter rockets will lead to you running out of ammo in short order unless you play N!, while even then having to repeatedly farm Revenants or Mancubi to keep your rocket supply up is cumbersome. Fireangel can get Berserker to help its offense problem, but Fireangel has anti-synergy with Berserker, when the splash immunity means you can't facerocket yourself or use barrels to trigger it, while you also can't have VMR trigger it unless you stand still for them to hit you directly, which then makes you vulnerable to getting hit by other enemies before the VMR hit you, so Fireangel is still worse off offensively. The Reloader, Shottyman, and Hellrunner2 prereqs does give Fireangel an above-average early game, though it's still not compellingly strong early on, especially when this is before Reloader's buff, and this prereq path will start falling behind in later Phobos without stronger offensive traits or Berserker, especially when the other prereq is the rather situational and mostly defensive Dodgemaster. At least if you get the mods and Double Shotgun to make a Focused Double Shotgun early on, the ability to detour for Whizkid without needing Finesse would give you a significant offensive boost with Fireangel's prereqs in late Phobos and for the Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab Shamblers, but that requires a decent amount of luck to obtain before Armory/Lab, and since this is 0.9.9.7, you would also need to get WK2 first or else you painfully won't be able to mod that Focused Double Shotgun later. Altogether, 0.9.9.7 Fireangel is the epitome of "mid", having no point in the game where it's ever particularly good but it's functional and will never reach the depths that the below masteries will. At least it should be mentioned that Fireangel does have a legitimate niche in being the least luck-dependent way to get Gatekeeper Diamond, though considering that double-digit players still won the badge without Fireangel in 0.9.9.7, it's evident that it's still one of the easiest Diamonds even without Fireangel.
*Gunrunner - When you get Shottyman alongside Gunrunner, Gunrunner rampages can be a thing of beauty; combining shooting, reloading, and moving into one action is extremely powerful on shotguns, and can be devastatingly good with rocket launchers too, while it significantly helps with the ever prominent hot start problem, but it has two major problems. One, Gunrunner has a crippling Whizkid block, which aside from that being a major later game power limiter in general, means it can't use what would have been its reliably best weapons in a Focused Double Shotgun and Tactical Rocket Launcher. Gunrunner with an Elephant Gun can be nice, but it just doesn't compare to its damage ouput with a Focused Double Shotgun, and a Missile Launcher is similar to a Tactical Rocket Launcher, but the Tactical's smaller explosion radius is even more important for Gunrunner to safely use an explosive weapon without facerocketing itself. You could still get a Super Shotgun to match what a Focused Double Shotgun would do, but without Whizkid, Gunrunner can't triple P mod nor potentially make its dream weapon of the Nano Shrapnel SSG, and no Whizkid also means it can't make its other dream equipment of Antigrav Boots, so no matter what, Gunrunner's potential is seriously impaired. Two, neither Shottyman or Reloader are among its prereqs, and Gunrunner without Shottyman is nigh-worthless, so Gunrunner is effectively a level 9 mastery. It has a very strong early game by getting Juggler, HR, and Reloader, very similar to Shottyhead in that regard, but instead of getting one of the biggest mastery boosts in the game upon hitting level 7, you have to get a second level of HR and then Dodgemaster, weakening its late Phobos/early Deimos, and this also means you can't really afford to go for traits like Intuition outside this strict path, as any farther mastery delay gets especially painful. Even when you do get Gunrunner with Shottyman, it's only active when you are running, so any time you're not running it effectively does nothing, and there can be dangerous combat situations where it's not safe to use, such as against a squad of VMR that you can't dodge or whenever barrels are around, while Gunrunner's auto-firing can also be very chaotic and can shoot at things you don't want it to. Gunrunner rampages will additionally consume a lot of ammo, particularly as it will be repeatedly firing shotguns at long distances, and so that's another knack against it when playing below N!. It should be noted that Gunrunner can get Berserker, but it's another mastery that's actively anti-synergetic with it as you can't activate run while you're berserked, and an enemy hitting you to trigger it in the midst of a Gunrunner rampage will end it right there, so even ignoring the difficulty of fitting in Berserker on Gunrunner, it can't be viably picked up for defensive purposes nor to bolster Gunrunner's offense farther. The great early game and a mastery effect that can occasionally be amazing means Gunrunner can't be that bad, however the kneecapped potential, needing extra levels, and unreliable nature means Gunrunner can't be rated highly either, while there's just really no good reason to pick Gunrunner when Shottyhead does much of the same but better, between not needing as many levels, synergizing great with Berserker, and the mastery effect itself being active at all times and fully controllable (the only time I went Gunrunner instead was in my shotgun-only no-Berserker UAC Diamond run, and only because killing the Mastermind with Gunrunner was faster in real time). Also it should be mentioned that Gunrunner was a popular pick for Quartermaster Diamond and Angelic, but I wouldn't say this is a real niche for it, as aside from Shottyhead being basically straightup better, Blademaster was clearly the far better choice for AoRA-related badges.
C- tier(Grossly outclassed with no niche, but just functional enough)
*Malicious Blades - The mastery itself gives a nice defensive benefit, when fire is the most important resistance in the game and +50% of it on top of Red Armor will mostly invalidate the VMR, while 75% melee res is obviously great for melee builds or when you have the opportunity to get in the face of an enemy that would be more dangerous at range. The critical issue with Malicious Blades is it blocks Berserker... and Berserker is pretty much straightup better on its own. First that +50% fire res... you get +60% with berserk, and Berserker will often be triggered by most sources of fire damage, while unlike Malicious Blades, berserk will give you +60% resistance against plasma and acid too, while the extra +15% melee resistance of Malicious Blades is mostly overkill, when the +60% melee resistance of berserk on top of common armor will reduce most sources of melee damage in this version to 1. Malicious Blades' offensive perk is additionally laughable compared to what berserk gives you, as it would take double P-modded Chainswords with maxed out Brute just to match the damage output of Artifact weapons without berserk, and they'll never match the offensive potential of a Ripper, so this offensive perk may as well not exist. Meanwhile with berserk, you not only are hitting far harder with other weapons, but you're also moving and attacking way faster, so Malicious Blades just doesn't compare to a build with Berserker, even without comparing it to what Vampyre and Blademaster can do. As a result, Malicious Blades ends up taking far more attrition damage from melee combat, and it can't really rush into hordes like other melee builds do, especially when they consist of plasma enemies or Barons. For the extra salt in the wound, berserk lets melee hit hard enough to gib enemies, especially with the Artifact weapons, but Malicious Blades will be unable to hit these gibbing thresholds and so that makes the gap even wider on N. There's the idea you can just play Malicious Blades as a hybrid build, that takes advantage of it not blocking SoB like the other melee masteries and the ability to just slot a Combat Knife in your prepared slot to benefit from it defensively, but said hybrid build requires a lot of ancillary traits before it really gets going on top of Malicious Blades' prereqs, and you'll be unable to use ammo boxes when you need to keep a blade in your prepared slot, while Berserker will trigger off of any strong fire hit and give you even better defense in addition to all the other benefits of berserk. If you play Malicious Blades as a straight melee build, it just makes early melee even harder; no Berserker removes your big powerup in the level 3-5 range, and the prerequisite Dodgemaster really sucks when HR2 lets you dodge many things already, while you especially want Fin2 or Brute 3 when you don't got Berserker, all for a payoff that is so underwhelming. So whether you want to play a hybrid melee build, a melee Technician, or a melee build that actually sticks to only using knives, anything with Berserker just outclasses Malicious Blades to a hilarious degree, to say nothing of how much it pales to what Vampyre and Blademaster can do as proper melee masters, and there's just no possible run I can think of where Malicious Blades is a remotely optimal pick. Still, semi-permanent +50% fire resistance without being locked to a specific weapon type, alongside prereqs that aren't all bad, is functional enough to not reach the dreadful depths the lower tier masteries do.
D tier(Not unplayable, but these severely flawed builds actively make the game much harder)
*Gun Kata - Gun Kata is supposed to offer a Pistol mastery with a "good" early game compared to Sharpshooter. "Good" is in quotes though, because you're still using fucking pistols, and even then Gun Kata really isn't all that much better early on than Sharpshooter; Dualgunner is a trap that lures you in with dazzling DPS numbers on paper, then when you actually use it you kill a couple enemies and then you have two empty pistols that each take over a second to reload while the hoard you're fighting bears down on you, being unable to use an Ammochain box to get a quick reload. Then having Hellrunner isn't as nice a prereq as you would think here and that Dodgemaster prereq is outright bad, as pistols desperately need to get their combat up to snuff, and so you much rather get SoB, which Gun Kata is blocked, or Whizkid or even one level of EE since pistols miss so much, which ties into the next point... Gun Kata requires a gross amount of ancillary traits, as firstly Gun Kata doesn't technically require SoG3 but you
NEED SoG3 for pistols to be halfway functional, SoG2 + DG is not adequate and you're going to get your ass kicked if you're still rocking SoG2 when the big fry like Barons, Arachnotrons, and Revenants start showing up. This effectively makes Gun Kata a level 8 mastery, but there's more! Unless you get lucky with finding the Unique pistols, you're gonna really want Whizkid to buff up your weakass pistols and compensate for the lack of SoB, but this requires two levels of Finesse that will eventually become pointless on your pistols and you won't get WK2 until level 12. But then you desperately need SoG4 and SoG5 at that point, you still haven't gotten any EE yet to patch up your accuracy issues, and you can just forget about fitting in HR3 or Int or other nice post-mastery stuff soon enough to matter. Then for Gun Kata itself? The "90% faster firing after dodging" is unusable in nearly every meaningful combat encounter, as you can't dodge VMR, can't reliably dodge rapid fire enemies, and can't effectively dodge if several enemies are firing on you from multiple angles, all to become completely irrelevant anyway once you get SoG5 and your pistols hit the firing speed cap. Meanwhile the "automatic reload on kill" sounds great at first to solve the Dualgunner reloading bottleneck, but is very finnicky in practice when you can't always cleanly get a kill when you need the reload and is overall less reliable in meaningful combat encounters than the single pistol + ammo box. Not to mention if you get lucky enough to build a Nanomachic Pistol, Gun Kata's reloading perk becomes pointless and you're just worse off than you would have been playing a masterless Pistol build that can get SoB, or even Cateye, which can get SoB and has an effect that is always beneficial to pistols. At least with Sharpshooter, if you can survive to it you get a serious powerhouse that immediately makes the game significantly easier from that point forward, while with Gun Kata you're just always lagging behind the power curve until the very end and even there it's not anything impressive. Funny how much I rag on DRL Gun Kata prior to its 0.10 iteration, when I would later become its biggest advocate with its JHC iteration...
*Army Of The Dead - When it comes to blocks absolutely crippling a mastery, there's no bigger example than Army Of The Dead. First you got the Eagle Eye block, ok you don't care about that with shotguns, but it also means Intuition is blocked, not a dealbreaker by any means but that's not a trivial block. Then you got Hellrunner blocked, which is much worse, as aside from its universal usefulness, Shotgun builds especially want it when it actively bolsters the effectiveness of Shottyman, and this also means Dodgemaster is blocked, not important but still yet another block by association and it means you lose the option to get a free Cyberdemon fight if you need it. For the third block you then have Finesse..... I cannot put into words how crippling this is. Aside from the major hit to your DPS potential, corner shooting effectiveness, and general attacking safety, this blocks Juggler, the best early game combat trait and a nice trait later on for letting you more cleanly utilize several different weapons, while also
blocking Whizkid! With Whizkid blocked, Army Of The Dead just gets a hard cap put on its potential, no ifs ands or buts, no Advanced or Master assemblies and no more than a single mod on any piece of equipment, you'll be stuck rocking lackluster equipment to the end of the game and can't rely on your equipment to make up for your slow ass movement + attacking speeds. Altogether, this also results in Army Of The Dead being blocked
SEVEN FUCKING TRAITS, the most of any mastery! Ok, but Vampyre managed to be the best mastery in the game despite some bad blocks, so what incredibly broken effect does Army Of The Dead have to warrant such a horrendous block list? You get shotguns that... just deal piercing damage... which effectively amounts to your shotguns dealing 2 or 4 more damage against non-boss enemies before falloff. Yippee, you saved a shell corner shooting that Baron to death... did the old devs really think this was some game-breaking mastery effect that needed such brutal blocks to be balanced? So you're slow as balls, you can't viably fight in open combat without getting mauled, your equipment sucks, hot starts will fuck you, you don't even excel at corner shooting when you're stuck using slow firing shotguns, and you have arguably the weakest mastery effect in the game aside from maybe Bullet Dance, just how is Army Of The Dead not in the bottom of F Tier? Well, it is not blocked Brute, and so it can get Berserker, while it is a level 6 mastery that lets you pick a free trait, so you can get it and Berserker by level 8, with you being able to open with Rel2 -> SM for an alright early game and then going for Berserker as you approach The Chained Court. With this, you can rely on Berserker to help keep you alive in hot starts and carry you through boss fights or any other meaningful combat encounter, while you shotgun stuff down whenever you can corner shoot to save on attrition damage. This is nominally a Shotgun build when Melee will be doing all the heavy lifting and there's the serious question of why would you play this instead of just playing Vampyre (which you will have to actively forego as the prereqs overlap if you get Berserker before Army Of The Dead) or even a masterless Melee build that will be far
far better, but Army Of The Dead built this exact way
is a semi-functional build that can more viably achieve things on UV or N! than the below ranked masteries. Just don't try Army Of The Dead in AoSh...
F tier(Abysmal from beginning to end with little good to say about them, just beating standard N! with them would be a Diamond-level achievement)
*Entrenchment - No surprise that the most commonly derided mastery ends up in F Tier. You got terrible prereqs in TaN, Badass, and Triggerhappy that make for a dreadful early game. You require several ancillary traits for Entrenchment to function, as you obviously need EE for rapid fires without Ammochain and need Whizkid, making it take a much longer time for Entrenchment to truly come online than just reaching the mastery. Then Entrenchment itself is one of the weakest mastery effects, only applying when chainfiring, already something that is impractical the vast majority of the time, and then only giving +30% resistances. To actually make Entrenchment functional, you're also going to need very good armor or Berserker to stack those +30% resistances on (the latter means even more ancillary traits), as 30% resistances alone is not enough to actually stand still tanking enemies, and you're also going to need a Nanomachic weapon or a Minigun that is Bulked to hell, as if you try to actually extensively chainfire, you're going to be depleting your weapons' clip after only a handful of bursts, where you then have to deal with 2+ second reloads without an ammo box and start your chainfiring again, while wasting a lot of ammo in general. If you do get all those things, Entrenchment can actually work and be a surprisingly decent answer to hot starts, but nearly any build already nearly autowins with a Nanomachic weapon and can function just fine without one. Did I mention Entrenchment is blocked Finesse too, at least as a Technician you won't be blocked Whizkid but that puts a significant cap to your offense, which when combined with the Reloader blocks, just makes the early game all the more worse as you lose the option of an early Finesse, Juggler, or Reloader detour to more effectively corner shoot with shotguns. The more surprising thing is Entrenchment not being ranked last, but it does at least boast legitimately good boss matchups, including surprisingly having one of the easiest times for a non-melee build against the Deimos Lab dual Shamblers, which when combined with being able to competently use a Plasma Rifle and having the option to get carried by Berserker, saves it from reaching the absolute worst depths that DRL has to offer. Also for the dozen Entrenchment fans that existed back in 0.9.9.7, be sure to play 0.10 and JHC, Entrenchment will get a serious redemption arc after over a decade of languish.
*Survivalist - A purely defensive mastery in 0.9.9.7? Already not off to a good start, but then we see those prereqs... Tough as Nails 2, Badass, and Ironman
fucking 3?! Being before Ironman got buffed to give physical resistance and TaN got buffed to give energy resistances, while there are no inherent Marine resistances in this version to stack resistances on, this is just hideous in a game that very much favors offense over defense. Sure you'll be able to tank the early Formers and Imps well enough, but when the Hell Knights and Cacodemons start showing up, your TaN does shit to reduce their damage, while each Ironman level basically amounts to only being able to take one or two more hits from them inbetween heals, and then once the Barons and other big enemies start showing up, you're just not tanking shit, but you can't effectively fight back against them without any offense-boosting traits. As for what Survivalist itself does, it does have an interesting primary perk of any hit that your defenses would reduce to 0, will actually be reduced to 0 half the time rather than you taking the usual mandatory minimum 1 damage, which is a serious boon to tanking when normally several enemies hitting you at once can chip you down fast even if you're reducing everything to 1 damage, especially from rapid fire enemies. The issue is actually getting the defenses to reduce damage to 0, which TaN2 alone on even Red Armor is not going to remotely achieve against anything bigger than Imps, so you effectively need Whizkid to build a good enough armor to utilize this perk, which will almost certainly come down to building a a P-modded Cerberus Armor, or a P-modded Powered Red Armor, Nanofiber Skin Armor, or Cybernano Armor if you get a Nano Mod. Thus you
need WK2 before Survivalist can actually do anything, making it effectively a
level 11 mastery, and actually probably more like level 12 because opening with Finesse -> Juggler is likely going to be your only shot to survive the early game on UV and especially N!. Oh Survivalist also has the perk to let you overheal with medkits, but if you're constantly chugging medkits anyway because you can't really tank nor have the offense to avoid damage and will struggle to get medkits back from Formers/Nobles, this perk may as well not exist most of the time. Speaking of no offense, you're blocked HR, SoB, and Berserker, so you just get the worst offense in the game, all you can do is shotgun stuff down with no boost to them beyond what Fin/Rel/WK can give, or whack stuff with a modded Chainsaw or Artifact weapon with no berserk, all while being unable to outmanuever enemies. You can get SoG for offense, but fitting five levels of SoG in top of everything else already mentioned... yeah fucking no, that isn't viable at all outside of lategame A100, and with no SoB nor Sharpshooter, your pistols are going to be shite until SoG5, so you can't try to makedo with only SoG3 or some other half-measure. At least the skeleton is there for a workable mastery, so Survivalist will see much better days in JHC and later DRL versions after getting several direct and indirect buffs, with it even being the top dog and outright OP in 0.10, just anyone visiting 0.9.9.7 from post-JHC be warned that this mastery isn't the juggernaut they may be used to...
*Bullet Dance - And the reward for worst DRL mastery in 0.9.9.7 goes to this horribly impractical piece of shit. The idea is it's the only actual Pistol mastery that can stack SoG and SoB together, which when combined with it shooting extra bullets and Dualgunner, will give the greatest DPS potential on paper. "On paper" being very
VERY keywords here. First you look at the prereqs, SoB is nice for pistols but instead of SoG3 you get DG... as mentioned with Gun Kata, your pistols aren't shit without SoG3 and DG is a trap, so that already effectively delays your mastery a level. Then another prereq is Triggerhappy... a trait that does
literally nothing for your pistols until you get Bullet Dance, so an actual literal dead level! This already gives you an early game whose terribleness is nearly on par with Sharpshooter's, and with how bad the Chaingun is, you can't even rely on TH to make the Chaingun help carry you to Bullet Dance. As for Bullet Dance itself, firing an extra bullet from your pistol for each TH level sounds nice at first, it's double and then tripled damage, how can it be bad?! Well those second and third bullets are going to be missing a lot, especially if the first bullet knocks an enemy out of your vision, which will happen a lot with SoG and SoB stacked on each other. Just get EE then you say? Well guess what,
Bullet Dance is blocked Eagle Eye! Unless you find the Trigun with its inherent +6 accuracy, or get Whizkid and load up your pistol with Agility or Sniper Mods, you're not remotely touching your theoretical "DPS" from all these missed bullets. Additionally, those double and especially triple shots are draining your pistols fast, while the basic Pistol has a puny 6 bullet clip and maxes out at 13 bullets with three Bulk mods, and the aformentioned Trigun also has a 6 bullet clip, so unless you can make a Nanomachic pistol, get a Nano-modded Blaster, or at least a Combat Pistol that is heavily Bulked, you're going to be reloading nearly as often as you're firing, and I already ranted about the issue with having to reload two pistols in the midst of a fight. You could go with one pistol + Ammochain box, but then that just makes that DG level you had to get even more wasted. Bullet Dance additionally severely nerfs your firing time by +50% for each Pistol, so while you're dealing more damage to a singular enemy, all the other enemies around are getting much more hits in on you, making it so much worse at fighting crowds and hot starts than any other sort of Pistol build is. As for your other two blocks, you got Hellrunner, so you're always slow and N! AoMr with Bullet Dance is flatout unviable, and you got Brute, so you don't even have the option for Berserker to save your ass. And ultimately?
DPS is the last thing lategame pistols need! Even if you get a Bullet Dance build with maxed out SoG/SoB/Fin with a S-modded Nanomachic Combat Pistol and NNSSA Blaster, any other build with those traits and weapons would be basically killing everything before they can act, so Bullet Dance's added DPS is just completely overkll, you go through all that hell to survive to this point and get all that incredible luck to reach your absolutely platonic ideal, and you're still not offering anything practically more with it than what any other build could with the same amount of levels and item luck. Awful in the early game, awful in the mid game, awful in the late game without very good item luck, no sort of niche in any special level or challenge, requires an absurd amount of ancillary traits and equipment to even be semi-functional, there's absolutely nothing redeeming about Bullet Dance. And unlike with Entrenchment or Survivalist, there is still no happy ending for Bullet Dance, with its successor of Bulletstorm in JHC often being derided as that game's worst mastery, while in the current DRL version of 0.10 it's even worse, as the SoG change to +3 damage/-10% firing time and Finesse being nerfed to -10% firing time makes Bullet Dance's +50% firing time an even more crippling drawback, being arguably worse than having a mastery that does literally nothing.
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Well thanks for reading that far. For a TL;DR - Being good at all points of the game matter, not just the early or late game; Scout good; helping you survive hot starts is important; Berserker is OP; Pistols sux; faster attacking speed rules unless you're Pistols, in which case you still sux anyway; tanking sux unless you're Vampyre; the less things you need to be good the better; don't get blocked Hellrunner unless you're Vampyre; and don't get blocked Finesse.
