Wow! this applies especially with the newest forced drone equipment update. Just before the last tanki fund ended, I maxed out my booster. I actually bought the booster a long time ago. Back then, I loved those youtubers who showed off their maxed booster, it was obvioulsy insanely overpowered back then. Shafts dealing insane damage: 18000+ and strikers with cyclone shredding juggernauts apart. I read the wiki: "the drone will quadruple to six times your damage (at max level). 400% - 600% ". That was my goal, get booster and shred people, and juggernauts. I got to less than lvl 10 before an immediate nerf. The booster no longer increased damage by such dramatic numbers, the wiki wasn't updated, but at I knew at once that my booster was not doing what it used to do. It only increased damage by 3x. 300%. I was obviosuly mad at tanki, 3x damage for 3 seconds. Totally fair. However, i couldn't afford to switch drones, I continued to upgrade it. Eventually, the booster was altered to it's final form. The full 30 seconds of boost, at this point the 20% (1.2 times)increase in damage is quite negligible compared to its former 6x damage. I had wasted 1 mil crystals, but I didn't cry about it. I just received crisis from the fund. According to the wiki and my experience in game, the crisis drone increases damage by 50%, meaning that a half, level 10 crisis is better than a maxed booster. Immediately I found success with it. I got scorpion and many different turrets to try it out. It surely was fun to use. Only because it was such a pay to win item. I also had to waste lots of money buying double damages to continue to abuse this drone. But it was comletely worth it. Now that i'm approcahing legend 10, I plan to max out 1 combo, even though i don't like it. But at least will stick to a maxed hull before buying another one. Recently, they probably buffed the camper drone to try to bait people into buyer the only drone in the game that can quadruple your damage. In my opinion this drone is also garbage, probably worse than booster. It only works if you're full hp, if you don't know how easy it is to get hit in tanki, you'll get what i'm saying. 1 small tap and the boost is gone, it would only be useful for guass or long ranged magnums, shafts rails to use in long ranged maps. Basically useless on most maps, or special maps where you can find special spots. Overall, brutus is the best drone for beginning players, and it would be best to switch either to defender or trickster. But it does also depend on your playstyle. That's my tip, see all the players who use booster, it's because it was BROKEN during the old days. But it's BULLSHIT now. Crisis is the best, but not everybody is that lucky like me, another non buyer who got it.
Booster still can be very useful with certain combos. For example its great with magnum, because it allows the shots to deal more then 1500 damage, and its great with a lot of adrenaline combos, such as thunder adrenaline, striker adrenaline, tesla adrenaline. its even good with isida. Its nothing op but it is also not bad. Also when it comes to crisis, upgrade as much as you can on the black friday sale coming this friday (i think). No point using only level 10 crisis if you could use level 15 or 20. Also i agree with you, trickster is very good.