The Division 2

I did demo after sharpshooter and leveling up a second wasn't bad. I hadn't done any bounties in ages, so plowing through all the Tusk ones got me enough points to max out grenade launcher damage and explosive damage. Demo is a strange bird compared to sharpshooter. Where sharpshooter has a lot of good passives and the spec gun is garbage 90% of the time, demo has fairly crappy passives but the grenade launcher is ridiculously strong, and I don't even have any +20% explosive dmg perks on my armor. I still don't understand the ammo dropping for it though. Sometimes I'll kill a bunch of dudes with grenades and get no ammo, then I'll run into a random and just light him up with my AR and he will drop some without a bit of explosive damage done to him.

Pro-tip: any time you're out of GL ammo between missions/bounties, just fast travel to the WH and swap specs to something else then back to Demo. You'll get a full load (6/2) of ammo and don't have to dick around trying to get more to drop.

Gravel said:

So anyone got any recommendations for good talents to look out for (or a guide)? Janx mentioned Clutch, which you can find at the Theater vendor (gloves) right now as well.

But I'm not sure what weapons mods are rare, nor what to look for with armor. Leveling to 30, I mostly ran AR/Rifle.

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(I run a tanky but high [enough] dps build for AR/rifle and solo 100% of the time. So YMMV depending on how you like to play. Also, I'm not going to list what each of these perks does, just look them up in the spreadsheet for reference.)

I find Patience to be absolutely required. As long as I stay in cover and don't get flanked by an LMG dude or one of the throwers with their ridiculously OP SMGs I can tank a hell of a lot of damage without needing to constantly drop chems.

Berserk is very strong DPS, but I run AR/rifle so would only get the benefit ~half the time (less in actual practice, at least against challenging content). Since I already have 7B for Patience, and have just over 190k armor before any buffs, I use Unstoppable Force on my chest instead. Plus I'm rarely below max armor thanks to all my healing effects so I wouldn't get a lot of use out of Berserk.

Clutch is good, I use it since switching back to a crit-focused build (which was only really possible once I unlocked the +crit/-hsd scope from control points), but you do need your crit maxed or damn close to it for it to be worthwhile. You also need a high rpm weapon, but I'm ok with only really getting healed by my AR since I don't really worry about healing when at rifle range.

Safeguard is fantastic when combined with other forms of healing, even though it apparently got nerfed to 75%. Mine still says 150%, but people on reddit were saying the nerf happened already(?).

Dialed In was broken OP for a few days, but I think the nerf made it just "OK" now. I only have one mask with it, and haven't bothered testing it yet.

Fill'er Up is really nice if you use stuff like 100 round LMGs and one-shell-at-a-time reloading MMRs like the Model 700. Could combine it with Frenzy on the LMG as well, but the best trick is to carry a double barrel shotgun for sidearm and fire it blindly and reload it to instantly reload both your primary guns. I just use 8% crit on my holster though to get close to the 60% cap.

For weapons, I prefer Ranger on my rifle and Close and Personal (or Strained if you don't mind being hamstrung by its <=5R req) on my AR. One gun should have Protected Reload on it, the other I take what I get since there's more important thing to recalibrate. No idea how to test how much of an effect Overlap has, and frankly I still don't even really know what the hell Weapon Handling in Div 2 does (anyone?)...but maybe it's worth having. For the middle talent, I always prefer Extra ammo, but you can't really be picky there either unless your gun was a godroll to start. First Blood needs a mention because it sounds great but is broken and doesn't actually do anything currently.

Pistol = Liberty exotic. And I carry around a backup sidearm with Transmission on it for when I run into a bounty with some asshole using shock rounds & grenades.


Sadly in order to get all that stuff on my gear how I wanted it, I ended up with 6 pieces from 6 difference brands, and I have to use a ACR-E instead of the CTAR or F2000 or Police M4 that I prefer. No way in hell I'm putting in the time to farm it all up the same way and also have a 1/2/3 or 2/2/2 setup when WT4 is just going to be obsolete soon anyway.

I prefer RoF on my ARs instead of the 12ish extra ammo, to compensate for the extended mag negative. 10% RoF on a Ctar is a lotta dps.

The couple posts I've seen where someone was complaining about the safeguard 75% nerf they were wrong. Just had normalized stats toggled on.

Edit: Oh, and Weapon Handling is a combo stat of like stabilty and accuracy and stuff, just smaller percentages than the standard 15%.

Yeah, if I could get a decent CTAR or even a F2000 or Police M4 I'd want RoF. All my useable ARs have been Mk16's and ACR's though. CTAR seems retarded rare, I only had one drop ever and it's pretty much as bad as it could get. Low damage roll, and all three talents are shitty.

Marco has an interesting solo PVE build that I think I have all the stuff for and could try out tonight to see how it compares to what I'm using now. After seeing how huge a difference it makes having the godmode grenade launcher instead of the shitty TAC-50 I don't think I can go back to Sharpshooter spec, especially not now that I know how easy it is to refill the GL ammo as needed. And continuing to use rifles instead of at least one of the weapons that are buffed by Demo passives doesn't really make sense. Honestly I'm getting sick of manually pulling the trigger for each bullet too, so switching to AR/SMG is appealing for that reason too.

I just can't do LMGs, especially being on console. Too used to laser-beam-accurate ARs and rifles to go back to something that kicks like a mule and has a nasty reticule spread at the best of times. I'll try Marco's setup though, with AR built to replace my rifle for long-ish range, and SMGs aren't bad for dealing with rushers (which is goddamn everything at Challenging+ difficulty). I know at least one of my 4 Vectors rolled really well too, been itching to give it some use.

Up to like 448 , and nothing is optimized, but I do alright. Just did my first Level 4 Control Point, and it was tedious at best. It even bugged out in our favor, and we didn't have to kill the last boss, which included the huge sledgehammer dude. I really feel like Level 4 is tuned for when we all have WT5 gear, or just highly optimized gear? Despite it's tediousness, I did enjoy the challenge.

Yeah, with decent enough gear only slightly recalibrated to optimize guns and maybe 1 or 2 armor slots with beefed up stat rolls I'm at like 451 (simply replacing perks never increases GS, and Liberty can't go above 440 so that drags me down a bit). Challenge mode and +3 CPs are easy enough and I don't really miss being able to exploit control points anymore. I still wait to summon the dipshits during the defend wave rather than right away though, that way I can fast travel to get more GL ammo if I really need it and also if the dipshits die and you have to resummon them it can slow the process down considerably.

+4 just isn't remotely worth the bother. Heroic bounties are doable solo, provided you don't let anything get within melee range.

Is there fohforum clan?

Alasliasolonik said:

Yes. You on gameboy color or sega saturn?

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What? Do you think I'm made of money?

Commodore 64

It's irritating that as soon as WT5 releases I will be right back to square one.

Destiny really has them beat here when it comes to melting gear into other pieces.

Ahh... finally, the last mask I needed.

Yeah, but two of those masks aren't obtained the proper way yet. I'm sitting on 10/12 until the autists figure out the last puzzles.

Vorph said:

Yeah, if I could get a decent CTAR or even a F2000 or Police M4 I'd want RoF. All my useable ARs have been Mk16's and ACR's though. CTAR seems retarded rare, I only had one drop ever and it's pretty much as bad as it could get. Low damage roll, and all three talents are shitty.

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Police M4 with stability has been the best dps so far. Why stability? Because then I can run +20 crit chance on the gun mods and still maintain 100% stability. Tested this today in the gun range and out in the field with two M4s one with +10 ROF, and the other with +Stability. Hands down the dps of the Stability perk was higher than the ROF.

Bringing the ROF weapon up the same stability by dropping off a 10% crit mod was too much of a dps difference... and while it wasn't that much worse with the 2 crit mods on, the ROF M4 had an additional 200 damage per bullet due to being a higher itemlevel. It also missed headshots far more often in a sustained firing run than the stability option.

Stability is king in regards to actual gun performance.

Are you using a -stability scope? I use the crit scope and haven't had any stability issues.

Also are you comparing with a F2000 or a CTAR? Not able to check in game right now but IIRC both those guns have nearly maxed out base stability. Police M4 is high too, but I thought it was still a ways behind the two best overall guns.

I set myself up with Marco's build last night and I still really don't like SMGs even though I have a Vector 9mm that's about as good as it can possibly get, and all the relevant mods. Still can't kill a challenging vet (other than True Sons shotgunner) in one magazine with it so..... meh. I think I will craft Chatterbox tonight and try to use it in the second slot instead. Not sure it can beat a Vector with Strained on it, but at least the Blabbermouth effect is a pretty significant buff for my AR. Right now I'd say I have probably a 85/15 split on AR/SMG kills, and my AR also has Strained on it with almost-max crit chance, so as long as I don't run out of ammo using one gun as a stat stick of sorts isn't that bad really.

Edit: Anothing thing, I'm not sure why Marco wastes an active gun talent on Preservation (12.5%/???% on headshot armor on kill with Safeguard) when you can just get 2pc Badger which is 37.5% armor on kill with Safeguard. I think double Strained is absolutely the way to go. You do have to give up Clutch to use Badger gloves, but Clutch seems to have some sort of ICD and I'm not really convinced it is worth the slot anyway.