Important clarification on bio-mass converter: There's a cooldown of 0.25s between ammo refunds on it. That's a short enough delay that it isn't incredibly impactful unless you're going hog wild with feedback loop, but it's worth saying nonetheless. Little thing I didn't mention at 10:32 -the main reason breach cutter works better against dreadnoughts than oppressors is just because dreadnoughts have a large amount of damageable body for the beam to remain in contact with and keep dealing damage. Oh, and a typo: the upper right panel at 8:59 for breach cutter is supposed to say '3 seconds', not '2.75 seconds'. Other drg test/info videos: ru-vid.com/group/PLqTo6tQ9tCOrABARyls3C94qzGo6TW3h_
Hey there, I have a little question about the breach cutter especially your demonstrated setup in this video. You use light weight cases and 21123. Is this your normal setup for breach? Is amour break also bugged on breach? Do you use tripple line for a bigger hitbox or are there also problems with plasma trail? I personally ran 11112 inferno so far. Not exactly a shard difractor question, but since u don't have a breach cutter analysis (hopefully yet :) ) I thought I'll try my luck here. Keep up the good work. Greetings from germany
@@projektmiko-miko2517 Yes, that is my normal BC setup. Armor break on breach cutter isn't bugged, I just don't find it to be high value. Plasma trail also works fine, it just only does a small amount of damage so I prefer a bigger hitbox.
Great video but a bit of advice on that bit at the end, unless you are really unlucky the ants you have in your house are most likely Argentine Ants and it's always easy to bribe them with food and relocate them (if you know where their colony is) than fighting them. I moved one from my inner yard to the front yard in about 10 mins of effort, it took them around 2 days to move completely but they are more than willing in exchange for food and it helps if you wipe the scouts trails on their way back to the colony so your food bribe is even more enticing/required (that's why it's helpful to find the colony first). Also, having a resident ant colony protects you from other ant colonies and other bugs like termites, spiders and q'ronars.
I always look forward to videos on this serie. It's 22 min long, but not a single of these 22 minutes was wasted. Good flow, amazing info and analisys, Keep at it !
I really like how volatile impact reactor hardly hurts your single target dps, building it with weak point damage, armor break, ammo, and VIR makes it incredibly flexible. god like crowd control with the ability to easily melt a praetorian in one mag.
This weapon I was worried the most since this was the weapon the devs had to mess with the most. And I worried that they would of messed with it too much that it would not have the kind of play that was intended. But was glad that it still seemed to be useful in a way. And that they still are able to implement the full mag dump mechanic into the weapon as an option in overclocks. Also, and this can’t be stated enough, GOD I love this game. The amount of customization in this game is so good. They give you a basic idea and implement significant mods and tell you “Make your weapons the way you want”. It’s such a refreshing system and encourages builds the community makes and to share them. Giving people ideas on how they also want to play. It’s an absolute delight.
Overclocks are a genius way to have one weapon feel and perform like multiple weapons without having to reinvent an entire weapon and being able to specfically buff/nerf without effecting the gun as a whole. DRG really hit the sweet spot on so many different levels.
@@SkyNinja759 Yeah in terms of design, DRG is in a league of it's own. Like a Masseuse finding that perfect spot in your back. They honed in on that and made a perfect weapon system using the skeletons of just a few weapons, and making yourself create the whole being as you want.
It is mandatory for an engineer to site the holy words, "THIS IS WHAT YOU GET, MY SUPER LAZER PISS" when demolishing an entire swarm of bugs alone with the feedback loop. If you are doing the funny eggman cosplay on top, you get bonus points.
"You have twenty-three hours before the magma DROPLETS hit the fucking station, now get out of my fucking sight before I volatile impact reactor on you too!"
As a "stubby enjoyer", I've found a lot of use comboing stubby electricity with the Shard Diffractor. Apparently they completely reworked biomass reactor, because it used to only work while reloading. Thank goodness
Interesting that you call the Lok-1 the Loki--I always figured the name is supposed to be read as "Lock One" as in "lock on" since it locks onto targets to kill them. Loki works, but I think the wordplay of "lock on" was the main goal of the name.
This weapon has definitely been my favorite so far from the new secondaries. I've used hyper propellant PGL forever and never thought I would give up my Delete key disguised as a grenade launcher and yet I just love this weapon so much. It feels just as powerful but without the ammo limitations of PGL on hyper propellant. And as someone else said, yes please do more of these for the older weapons. It's really cool seeing a breakdown on these things and the vids are so well made.
I feel like with endothermic explosion you should mention its use regarding bug repellant, since to make great use of it you need to take off bug repellant so bugs dont steer clear of platforms unless you use lures with it.
@@LazyMaybe On one hand, it's stacked agaisnt more platform ammo, on the other, funneling bugs into chokes is the main point of repellant, and with the extended AoE radius you can still deal plenty of damage, especially since repellant makes the bugs path around the plats and not away from them
If your RJ250 loadout is already running AAA instead of the usual BAB, configuring the Shard Diffractor on that loadout to use Plascrete Catalyst is a nobrainer.
For the few of those reading the 204th comment on this multi-month old video, a few quirks about the weapon (at time of writing) the video didn't really touch on that I found while tinkering around with it in gameplay 1). The "spin-up" can be done while the weapon is recharging it capacitor, effectively allowing you to overlap the cool-downs to resume firing slightly faster. I suspect this is also the case when drawing the weapon, though I haven't tested this personally and the benefit is very minimal in any case; I also suspect this is the case for the minigun as well. 2). You can "reload cancel" the weapon, though its done rather strangely. Basically, the weapon seems to "remember" the firing capacitor's charge every second or so, and when you put away the weapon (through an animation cancel of some kind) it sets itself back to that value. As a result, rapidly swapping the weapon can effectively "reset" the charge back to a prior values; if you just finished firing it, that means it adds back charge into your capacitor for you. From testing, this allows for ~20 charge to be instantly loaded if timed well, and if this happens to set the weapons capacitor back to its maximum value, you can start firing again immediately (spin-up aside). Even when you don't get the max charge immediately, the recharge rate doesn't get updated, so you're still "reloading" faster than you would have otherwise. However, this works in reverse as well; doing this while the weapon is recharging will actually slow down its recharge instead (setting the value to a smaller value, rather than a larger one. You also need reserve charge in the battery for this to work (so it has ammo to pull from to bring it closer to its "final" state; this does not generate or destroy ammo as far as I can tell). The Plascrete Catalyst overclock in particular benefits massively from this, because its explosion is timed near perfectly for an instant reload if you do a quick animation cancel after it, effectively bypassing the overclock's downsides (slower recharge and instantly putting you on recharge when an explosion occurs) when you use it to blow up some bugs. Great content as always LazyMaybe; just wanted to report on these weird traits. I've already reported the latter to Ghostship just in case it is unintended or considered an exploit, so use it with caution.
@@squeezyjibbs6643 also I have shit aim and enjoy gratuitous use of the grande launcher. Burn and stun 'em with a 'nade and zap 'em with an electric build stubby to clean up the smoldering remains.... At least until I got explosive rounds lok-1.... That thing has become my favorite child. (Still would have preferred to get rj compound, only been grinding for 5+ months with like every other pgl overclock except for it and fat boy....)
@@samfish2550 dude ECR is my favorite engi build too! It got a little bit less reliable with the rival presence warning added to the game imo, but I still enjoy it on other missions.
Maybe its a patch thing? When season 2 first released the Shard Diffractor slow DID work, it just also affected allies. The last hotfix claimed to have fix that, but clearly it just turned the slow off entirely. Does the PS4 get hotfixed at the same time as PC or could you be on the older version of the game?
Couldn't tell you why, but the closing "enjoy the neurotoxin payload, idiots" had me rolling. Nice vid! Definitely using some of these once I get the overclocks.
if you're interested in making more videos like these, i'd love to see this same format for all of the DRG weapons. big ask i know but they're very informative and every one has informed my build choices and made me pick up a build i otherwise ignored
Great video as always! I do want to add something: a small trick I found with the Diffractor is that you can skip the wind-up period after you stop firing, by tapping Ctrl. After that you can almost immediately start firing again if your previous burst was short. What this allows you to do is use small and controlled bursts to kill small groups of enemies, without being penalized with a long wind up time before your next burst. Normally, you're forced to wait for the gun to wind up again, but by skipping that, you can start firing again much sooner. Note that if you magdumped the weapon in your previous burst then the difference is very small, and this also won't work if you have 0 reserve ammo.
What I love about VIR is that you don't have to worry too much about keeping the beam on a target all the time for good ammo efficacy - any 'misses' still have a good effect
After 400 hours of DRG and I'm still having a blast. Also this content is fantastic. Thank you for all the time and efort you put into them !! ROCK AND STONE !! 🍺
My favorite secondary they've added and one of my favorite weapons to use. I wish it had a crap load more ammo but I understand lol. This weapon just feels so nice to use and visually looks amazing
i love the endothermic explosions, cause i can just right out delete a chunk of praetorian/oppressors hp as i'm ending the burst, plus it's at any range
Breach Cutter with the Armor Break mod reliably disrobes Praetorians. Plus they take 1x damage on any unarmored part, just no weakpoint bonus damage from your weapon. Pretty helpful for a lot of weapons that're otherwise forced to flank them.
I've been messing with VIR alongside cycle overload since day one of season two. Coincidentally, my build landed exactly the same as yours except I went with turret whip to help with mactera swarms. Awesome video. Educational and also really fun. I can't put my finger on the exact reason but your uploads get my attention like nothing else (must be doing plenty right).
Engineer has to have the most busted secondaries in the game. They all hit like a truck and their overclocks make them even more ridiculous (fat boy anyone?)
The dazzler module does work, but only on teammates. The friendly fire slowdown from this weapon is applied in full if a teammate or even yourself is caught in the range of the AoE. You won't take damage from the gun, but you will from the bugs that catch up to you.
@@prosto_lucky we accidentally got a Nemesis that my engineer didn't kill properly so we brought him back to the rig. Now we're trying to teach him what to and not to kill.
your content is so interesting and informative I've rewatched your videos more than any other youtuber because there's just such an incredible amount of information and it's all so well put together
I think the battery charge time not changing much between a empty and barely used might be intentional to kind of mimic how capacitors charge in real life. It takes 5 times as long to charge a capacitor to 99% than it takes to charge it to 63%.
For the last overclock make sure you don't have the repellent platforms selected, one of the upgrade options causes bugs to attempt to avoid the platforms, limiting the usefulness of the blast radius and damage boosts.
I was listening to this video during a workout, and your calming voice and the chill background music almost made me fall asleep on the mat! Haha. Great video!
I wonder what kinda spot the original "platform synergy" overclock would end up in practice ya know, in experimental when it's effect instead of exploding platforms was that it bounced up to two times off platforms, magic prediction laser pointer included, with the first effect getting stronger with each bounce
The best part of overdrive booster is it can take down a praetorian head on with minimal requirement for aiming, with armro breaking enabled, it can tear through the praetorian's frontal armor and still do enough damage to kill it within one boost shot, while hyper propellent has to take aim going for the unprotected head or hit the back
Btw for endothermic explosion, it doesnt have to be a full platform, it can just be a small little part of one or one that you've already endothermic exploded.
Rip for your monoxide detector. That said I'm happy to see this video. I've heard a lot about how insane this gun can be but never an actual breakdown of why that is and how to build it into that.
That's great. I love videos that help me understand the nitty gritty mechanics. I meber would have touched these OCs because I'm more of a Keep It Simple, Stupid guy. But now I understand them perfectly. Subbed.
my favorite part about the shard diffractor is that it comboes extremely well with the voltaic smg. because you have the power of an angry rock in your back pocket as long as you have ammo, you really dont need much more than a piddly peashooter in your hand for when god isnt out smiting your victims.
volatile impact reactor is absolutely my favorite overclock for shard diffractor. I like running it with the full single target damage build for the diffractor, and turret em discharge stubby or ecr ecr loki.
Just unlocked endothermic explosion mod. I think it’s one of the most fun overclocks in the game. Adds even more utility to platforms. Always love overclocks that require you to switch weapons.
I now realize how lucky I was to get Volatile Impact Reactor from infusing one of my first blank matrix cores, considering I main Engi, and it was shortly after I got Shard Diffractor and realized I really like the thing.
I refer to it as my Death Ray because I can never remember the actual name and also it draws as many surprised gasps as direct impact cannon PGL when things just disappear. Another bonus to the wave-clear build is the AoE is large enough to damage directional invincibility enemies from wrong angles, much like Driller's passthrough primary weapons. I usually run wave-clear Overdrive with extra ammo, paired with either electric build SMG or magnetic alignment shotgun and turret whip
After watching this I didn't put two and two together with the minimum comparison but makes so much sense now. Minimum is my favorite gunner weapon too so this might be another reason I love the new engi secondary so much, also sweet ass laser beam...
Best part about the opening gag is that the two missions shown have the Mactera Plague and Rival Presence modifiers, which focus on enemies that are weak to fire and therefore get killed easily by the Shard Diffractor.
I'm actually really glad i watched this video, i was going to write off Volatile Impact Reactor as dumb and gimmicky because i thought from the description it turned the ground into the actual magma terrain permanently, which is not something i wanted to deal with lol.
I do like the shard diffractor because it is useful against small ground enemies, like swarmers, spawns, rockpox larvae, and parasites because of the splash damage that deals no damage to you.
The Overclocks looks fun but I already have the clean one & I don't want to keep digging for more Engi Overclocks since I got so many whilst looking for the Fat Boy that I really want to get some for other classes.
I love this weapon. I've done several Deep Dives as solo Engineer with this and a max-electrify Stubby. Electrocute, laser. Electrocute, laser. It creates a stupidly powerful loop that melts everything from Preatorians to non-Hiveguard Dreadnoughts in a risiculously short amount of time. Who needs ammo when all your targets are dead?
don’t get me wrong, love all your analysis videos, especially the weapon specific ones, but that line at the end was the best. had to drink some water so i didn’t get dehydrated from all the salt
Counterpoint for not using shard diffractor against frozen enemies: you do get thermal shock damage, which chunks out a big portion of their health. Hyperpropellant does kill them faster, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't madly in love with the thermal shock effect.
Finally bought the Shard Diffractor the other day because I got the Volatile Impact Reactor overclock and heard it was fun. I'm in love, building this OC for full single-target damage makes it such a good all-rounder weapon, and it's really helped me as I get more and more used to Haz5. For mooks, I often open with drawing a line or two on the floor for defense, and for anything at least as bulky as a Guard? Just shoot it in the face/ass, it'll die quickly enough. Personally, I've been trying to roll with a Turret Whip build for my primary, with Gemini+Hawkeye on my turrets so that I can direct my rockets, keep one fully-loaded turret on hand at all times, and double-whip when necessary (usually swarms and Dreads). Volatile Impact Reactor even synergizes here, since the slow effect might buy you the extra second or two you need to build a turret for an on-demand whip.
