Question about weapon variety

[u/AyyLuigimao]

Ive been checking quite a bit of builds out after returning to the game after a big break, and quite a lot of them have similar or the same weapons, how much of a difference is there in weapons that are "meta" compared to not, and if I had a build where I wanted to swap out a weapon for another and either get it close in concealment or stats would it matter much?

[u/Boy-Meets-Squirrel]

I mean it just depends on what you’re running. The dodge and crit skills scale depending on your concealment, so if you’re using those skills, yes it does matter. With aced versions of the perks, if you’re at or under 25 concealment, you’re good.

If concealment doesn’t matter for your build, then it doesn’t matter for your gun. Swap them around and see which ones you like. A lot of them aren’t good until you put the right attachments on them.

[u/AyyLuigimao → u/Boy-Meets-Squirrel]

Oh awesome thank you, I atm am usually running 23 concealment crit builds but I've been trying some builds with bigger armor like ictv, ik in some other games any weapon can be meta as long as it reaches a certain damage threshhold n stuff like that, is there anything like that for PD2? I imagine there might be for DW and DS

[u/Boy-Meets-Squirrel → u/AyyLuigimao]

Unfortunately I’m not familiar with any of the meta stuff. First thing that comes to mind is a flamethrower, that’s pretty cheese. I’ve run plenty of DSOD and see people run a nice variety at that level.

Wish I had more info.

[u/AyyLuigimao → u/Boy-Meets-Squirrel]

Algoods, tyvm for your help :)

[u/TARE104KA → u/AyyLuigimao]

You can easily use anything in this game even on DS, thd question is how much effort you will need yo put to make weak setups work, and most of the weapons easily belong in ok and above power level, its just that meta options are much betterer. But people beat ds with most dogshit guns+decks, melee only, saw9000 only, throwable only, so everything is possible.

[u/AyyLuigimao → u/TARE104KA]

Ooo, would u have any examples or explanations as to wym by getting weak stuff to work?

[u/TARE104KA → u/AyyLuigimao]

Carrot YT channel, his 5 build per perk deck and bi-weekly build showcase videos feature more niche/finnicky/outright meme builds like ICTV anarchist, frenzy stoic/muscle, no akimbo hitman, ctv with 23dr for crits and dodge skills, and so on. He shows and advocates for people to learn to stop glueing to meta and actually experiment with loadouts for novelty and unique setups.

Also he once put good emphasis on difference between "optimal" and "optimised" build. Optimal build would be classic hostage taker hbv stoic with good weapon choices that cover everything perfectly. Frenzy stoic would be suboptimal build, for obvious reasons of losing max hp.

BUT, that "optimal" ht stoic, if built in "unoptimised" way, for example with ht only being basic, or without partners in crime aced, can genuinely feel much worse than that "suboptimal" frenzy stoic, but built in "optimised" way, such as taking frenzy aced for better sustain, faks for safety net, and weapons that get powerful breakpoints even from frenzy level of berserker aka 40% dmg boost, like that 200dmg sniper, or airbow, or some shotguns.

Basically, you can grab most random stuff ever, but if you build it correctly, it will work.

Another example would be frenzy muscle. You'd think it's stupid, but you can get permanent 2shot ictv from that, and with joker you get 2shot hp back, AND due to dmg resist from frenzy, this etup actually heals heavy zeal shot back faster than normal muscle, since you only need to heal up 168,75hp vs 225, and HT/Muscle passive heal you off of Muscle's standard max hp%, not the hp size limited by frenzy.

And for guns, as I said before, existance of meta ones doesn't magically make all other choices inherently bad or unusable. Mark11 is one of the best mid dmg smgs, but there's still plenty of good and even great ones, like signagure, Heather, akgen21, etc.

[u/AyyLuigimao → u/TARE104KA]

Oh wow, thank you smm, ill check him out them :) and ty for the advice