Now that I’ve gotten to level 30, I can say that one of my two weapons HAS TO BE either an assault rifle with an extended magazine, or an LMG with 100 round loads.
The reason for this is the “tank” enemies, usually with a big hammer, shotgun, or LMG. You have to shoot those guys in one spot until their ammo breaks; if you stop shooting at them they charge at you and then you’re dead (you CAN evade them by rolling and running, but they run just as fast as you).
Anything but an extended clip AR or a 100 round LMG is going to end up reloading too soon. Currently I use a Tactical M249, but I also like the M60.
My other weapon is a sniper rifle; I prefer to kill as many as I can at long range, especially the grenadier, engineer (what I call the guys with the r/c cars that blow up), or the reviver.
Where DO you shoot the guys with the hammer? I have occasionally staggered them but didn’t see where I shot them cuz I’m usually rolling and running and gunning lol.
I agree with @Ordegar on the AR or LMG, especially if your running solo. It takes sustained damage to take down a yellow tank like the sledge hammer or chainsaw guy. I only agree with the LMG because of the rounds you can carry in one clip but I do not like the response time of it. I feel it takes to long to bring it up for shooting, and when you get surprised from behind, I like to have my weapon up quickly. The AR is almost instant aiming and reloads in a second or 2 if needed. But this is just my preference and I am positive others can pull of other weapons with their play style.
I mostly play solo so I depend on keeping everything in front of me and at a distance which is why I also pick off as many as I can with the Marksman rifle. I carry an M44 right now which easily drops most enemies with a well placed head shot. If you cant kill enemies with 1 or 2 shots with the MR then you might want to consider switching to a rifle instead. It carries more ammo, reloads faster and a much faster RPM. It doesn’t do as much single bullet damage as a the MR but several shots from it will, which is easily accomplished with the steadiness the rifle has. When I run with a rifle, I always double tap my shots. That is because they stay on target so well and both bullets will hit. That is usually enough to bring down most “red” enemies.
Keep in mind that once you get to end-game and specialize, each specialization has boosts to specific weapon types. Sharpshooter is Rifle; Demolitionist is LMG and SMG; Survivalist is Assault Rifle and Shotgun. They also have a “signature” weapon that is separate from the two normal weapon slots: Sniper Rifle, Grenade Launcher, and Crossbow respectively. You can spec in more than one specialization.
LMG+Assault Rifle is my favorite combo right now and yeah, gotta have the extended mag for the AR, IT IS NECESSARY (hehe)! I always put the ammo pouch mod on LMG’s for the reload speed reduction even though it lowers the ammo capacity to 85, still works for me. I’ve also had some success against the tank elites using the ACS-12 Shotgun, the one with the ammo drum that holds 20 rounds and shoots fast. I either use the immobilization foam (if I ever have it slotted or remember to slot it when a tank shows up or with the shotty or I get the tank to chase me around an obstacle while I’m in cover, which actually looks a bit silly as I crouch walk in cover around an obstacle playing chase and tag with the elite.
Last night I actually started to get comfortable and pretty good with Marksman Rifle, something I have never really cared for in the first game. That being said, it has to be a marksman rifle that doesn’t use the scoped view for aiming, because I can’t stand that. There’s at least one specific Marksman Rifle that doesn’t have the scoped view that I am using (can’t remember which one) that I find myself liking. I paired it with the ACS-12 Shotgun and they went well together.
I played mostly PC before; now I’m playing on XBox. I have to play very different on console; aiming with a controller is immensely horrid.
So I use shotgun for close stuff since it only takes one or two hits to kill most things. The melee girls with the helmet I found that it’s best to shoot them in the chest rather than head; the helmet has to be broken to get through, but they have no armor for body hits.
With a controller LMG has too much recoil and it’s too hard to keep decent aim with sustained fire, so I’m using regular rifle (not assault rifle) for my main weapon; it does better damage per shot than just about anything except marksman or shotty, the range is good, accurate, and can be fired very fast, and reloads fairly quickly.
I tried an assault rifle, but for the first time ever I ran out of ammo and had to run around killing minions with the shotgun to ammo up. I didn’t like that; so I’m sticking with rifle for now.
The guns that I like depends on the spec that I am using.
Survivalist for assault rifle I like the CTAR-21 P416 or Police M4 along with the chatterbox exotic weapon for the extra rounds per minute boost after killing an enemy. I been running this for a while now it seems alright for everything I am doing from challenging missions to level 3 control points. Ammo can run out fast sometimes I noticed.
Sharpshooter for this one I like the Classic M1A along with SR-1 or M700 Carbon. The 1886 can be fun to mess with sometimes as well. I am still working on getting the exotic rifle can’t recall the name of it for this build.
As far as LMG I dont like them at all not sure why though. The only one I like if I had to use one is the Military RPK-74 M.
So far my favorites are LMG and AR
I have tried and sometimes still try to snipe with the MR and fail every time.
The shotgun is a waste of time for me.
The little zip sprayers (SMG) are not bad but if the ROF is too high it is just a waste of time because you spend more time reloading than you do firing.
The LMG is really my best choice because of the large ammo pool (typically 102 rounds for me with mods) and the big hit low ROF means I can knock stuff down pretty fast. I also love that I can keep bad guys suppressed for a long time while team mates get in and finish them off which is doubly handy while I am tossing out heals. The bonus damage to targets not in cover is just icing on the cake.
LMG all the way for me.
Survivalist, heal grenades and heal chem gun or revhive is my typical load out.
I tried the marksman rifles when I first found one and didn’t like them. So for the first 14ish levels my goto was assault rifle/rifle. Then I got a purple M700 (think thats the name) and have been using assault rifle/marksman since. Just last night on my daily shopping trip to all the control point supply rooms I got a gold high end M700 tactical. I prefer the regular but I aint gonna complain
I have been shopping around rifles lately and to be honest, I have been a bit disappointed so far. I wanted to switch to rifle to carry more ammo, shoot faster, but still have the distance. Unfortunately, I do not find them to have the accuracy MMRs have, or the damage at range. I think I found the best of both the rifle and MMR, however. The SOCOM MK20 SSR marksman rifle.
It has significantly less damage than most of the MMRs but slightly better than most of the rifles at 30.6K. The RPM is at rifle speed at 275 and I have it holding a mag of 24. It can shoot about as fast as your finger pull and stays on target way better than all of the other MMRs. I might have been looking to switch to rifle but I think I found a MMR instead.
But once I hit level 30 and higher, I felt that I needed to be sending more fire downrange than I could get with the rifle so I switch to the Assault Rifle.
So now I terrorize the bad people with a SOCOM MK16 and an LMG.
I went Survivalist and specced out AR and shotgun and I must say it works pretty well…full transparency, my playstyle lends itself to close combat haha. I’ve gotten pretty good with a MR but I like the rush of in-your-face combat.
I saw an interesting build on YouTube by Widdz that is Demolitionist and relies on the Vector…shades of early D1 haha.
Played D1 up to lvl4 on one toon, so cant say much about weapons in that game. As for TD2 I am running with a AR-stacked with stability for control and the chatterbox. I like this combo as I can hit targets from mid-range & afar with the AR and in the up close and personable encounters the chatterbox. I have played with MR & rifle like them both just need to get better with them.
So I am noticing that specialization makes a big difference in weapon DPS.
Until recently I was a LMG/AR player all the way. Then I went down to the shooting range while I was in Demo spec to do a little research on my weapons, see which was outperforming the others. Turned out that with the bonus percentage to SMG I was far surpassing the AR. So I tried a little experiment and swapped specs, and continued to check out DPS across various weapons and types.
What I found was 2 things.
First, the 15% bonus you get to a particular weapon type for being in a spec really makes a big difference. More than I expected. Not sure if it is stacking or a flat 15% on top of all other bonuses or what but it is noticeable.
Second, DPS is funny. Weapons that do small damage with fast ROF and low reload times performed much lower than high damage low ROF weapons. Of the three aspects that we have to work with (ROF, Damage and Reload speed) the one that had the least effect was reload time. What mattered most was ROF, with damage being a close second to that.
So anyway, just thought I would share what I found in this little experiment. YMMV, but as a general rule, if two weapons are similar in damage but one has a faster ROF, pick the faster one regardless of reload speed.
