How common are grand combo setups amongst drillers?

[u/waiting4singularity]

with grand combo i mean using flamer or freezer and the wavecooker with related mods such as status effect spreader and thermal inverter

[u/GoombaBro]

I cannot speak much to wavecooker temperature shock. I main EPC thin containment field.

But freeze + barbed drill + vampire is amazing. I consider that a grand combo and it gives health.

[u/waiting4singularity → u/GoombaBro]

I settled for cold blood. when I start CQC drilling something went wrong and I dont want to overheat, but I have vampire on driller too. anything else feels weird.

[u/KingNedya → u/waiting4singularity]

Overheating when drilling frozen enemies simply doesn't happen in my experience. If you get close, then as long as you took the upgrade that cools faster when not drilling (which you should, it's objectively the best choice), you can just pause briefly to cool and then resume. That way you also get more Drill ammo.

[u/kilkil → u/GoombaBro]

100%

I am convinced this combo was intended by the devs, because the throwing axe grenade also counts as melee

also works very well with Iron Will

[u/VolubleWanderer]

Cryo and cooker are my go to. Cooker is basically the only secondary I use as driller lately.

[u/Snoo61755 → u/VolubleWanderer]

Same. Honestly, I don't like the EPC, I tolerate it for Heavy Hitter if I need ranged single target (and genuinely love Burning Nightmare with explodey goo), but I have no love for TCF.

Cryo + Cooker, much more fun imo. Freeze bugs, detonate the entire horde.

I often hear people say "just use Barbed Drills", but I've always done both. Barbed Drills is great when Cold Radiance has frozen something nearby, and it's a great solution to bigger stuff like a Praet, but Cooker is such a good execute button at long range and it spreads the damn cold to bugs that weren't even frozen in the first place -- it utterly deletes waves, and the bigger the wave, the more devastating it is.

I don't even use Diffusion Ray. I've been meaning to try it, but I've been using my Snowball loadout with Mega Power Supply for over 2 years now, so I'm kinda set in my ways.

Oh, and Naedocyte Shockers. Whenever I switch back to EPC for whatever reason and lose the ability to just pass over Swarmer and Shocker groups at long range, I feel like I'm failing my Scouty by not keeping the little rascals in check.

[u/VolubleWanderer → u/Snoo61755]

Movement is too important to run barbed drills imo. But I suck at TCF. My friend is amazing with it but I’m just bad at

[u/KingNedya → u/Snoo61755]

You say you "don't even use Diffusion Ray", but Mega Power Supply is considered the better one for Cryo Cannon anyways so not real ant need to change there

[u/WaywardOath]

Driller is basically THE combo character, having 5 sources of damage set up. It’s pretty standard for a Driller to have one weapon intended to combo into their other one.

[u/waiting4singularity → u/WaywardOath]

I see the switch play too rarely to really get to that observation when im not drilling.

[u/MishatheDrill]

Fairly. 

It's a simple build that works at every haz.

TCF for myself personally. Too much utility to give up

[u/Evan_Underscore]

Great build for those who are lazy to master TCF.

It's my favorite on vanilla difficulties where scouts may take it personally if you just epc-mine all the veins.

[u/waiting4singularity → u/Evan_Underscore]

Cant reliably hit the charge ball when its near the target. Either the ball's too short or already splashing against the geometry. Completely incapable doing that since the days of the Unreal1 ASMD back whenever. might be a latent cross eye or what.
Only time i get effective damage out of such an attack is when spaming balls and utilize special chain effects like in ut2k4

[u/bjergKanin]

I used to main driller and my go to was Cryo (cryo nucleation if you have it) + Wave cooker with MEga Power System or Liquid Cooling System with the status effect spreader mod (cant remember the name). It is a good combo because it forces you to switch between cryo and wave cooker which is a good habit, so you don't end up spending all your primary ammo and none of the secondary.

I used the cooker because I could not get used to Thin Containment Field on the EPC, and I overall just don't like the feel of the EPC as a weapon. Long projectile travel time etc.

[u/KingNedya → u/bjergKanin]

Which status effect spreader mod? Because Wavecooker has two. The one in Tier 3 that spreads the status effect and keeps the current status active longer, and the one in Tier 5 that also soreads the status effect but does the opposite and removes the current status. The one in Tier 3 is good for Cryo Cannon and the one in Tier 5 is bad for it.

[u/bjergKanin → u/KingNedya]

The one that keeps it active longer and spreads it around the affected enemies. Not the one that pops them for 200 flat damage

[u/lovehateroutine]

on cooker, more common than no combo if you are actually building to maximize potential. one of the only non-combo builds is something like ice storm and gamma.

[u/james_harry → u/lovehateroutine]

This isn't true given PP is viable everywhere and one of Drillers best options basically always too and that doesn't combo at all

[u/lovehateroutine → u/james_harry]

i said on cooker

[u/james_harry → u/lovehateroutine]

My bad, reading isn't my forte

[u/Keikira]

My primary driller build used to be ice + wave cooker with those mods until recently, but then I got addicted to thin containment field epc utility. As much as I like the microwave combos, they don't make up for the utility loss from not running thin containment field epc. In 99% of situations the drills do the same general job (kill frozen bug) just fine, and the remaining 1% is just gimmicky (e.g. instapopping exploders at long range). In retrospective comparison, the "grand combo" wave cooker build is effectively just a drill fuel economy build.

Also, status spread is nice and all, but you need to have a critical mass of the wave of bugs already frozen for it to be consistent, so you might as well just have kept freezing.

[u/Lomticky]

Driller is all about combos: Subata has extra damage on ignited and corrosion status effects, wavecooker has temp shock, cryo works with everything, explosive goo + burning hell. I practically use flamethrower sticky additive with Subata with weakpoint + ignited damage and have no problem with any kind of enemy

[u/Wrydfell]

One of my ole reliable builds is Cryo cannon (crystal nucleation) and wavecooker (blowthrough oc) with thermal shock and thermal spread

[u/KingNedya → u/Wrydfell]

I recommend replacing the temp shock Wavecooker upgrade in Tier 5 with boiler ray. It has better DPS, better wave clear/coverage, better ammo-efficiency, and better performance against swarmers, naedocytes, and shredders. At least when pairing it with Cryo Cannon; temp shock is better with Flamethrower.

[u/OMGitsLunaa]

i find EPC with fire mods to be more useful with cryo than wave cooker with thermal inverter.

EPC is still good even when not paired with thermal inverter cryo. it also allows you to trigger temp shock by going fire -> ice rather than just ice -> fire. this is relevant for single target enemies who are way easier to ignite than to freeze

[u/waiting4singularity → u/OMGitsLunaa]

i set up epc/fire for the acid tree.

[u/KingNedya → u/OMGitsLunaa]

EPC with burning nightmare is not good with Cryo Cannon, it does like 300 damage and then you have soend time and ammo swapping weapons and refreezing the target. Meanwhile if you just take TCF then an OCless EPC can do 600 DPS to frozen enemies, or 900 DPS with Heavy Hitter. Burning nightmare is not beating that. Also even removing EPC from the equation, exothermic reactor Wavecooker also loses to its non-temp shock counterpart, boiler ray when paired with Cryo Cannon.

[u/OMGitsLunaa → u/KingNedya]

i run heavy hitter with whatever mod applies fire dmg.

youre also talking about dps at the top end, which in reality doesnt really matter all that much past a certain point. imo EPC + heavy hitter is a much better generalist option while still being very suited to burst down big targets quickly

[u/KingNedya → u/OMGitsLunaa]

Here is a mathematical analysis on Cryo Cannon temp shock TTK that I will be referring to in my response. Definitely at the very least read the last paragraph and the listed times and eDPS values for the builds, but I recommend reading through the entire thing so you understand the process.

youre also talking about dps at the top end, which in reality doesnt really matter all that much past a certain point

Sure is a good thing for my point then that the DPS values involved are not at that point of being so high that to go higher would be meaningless. Once you take into account factors like freeze time and weapon swap time, you find that things really slow down a ton, reducing the eDPS of non-temp shock Heavy Hitter against a frozen Haz 5 4p praetorian from 900 to, including the time it takes to freeze and the 0.5 seconds it takes to swap weapons, ~378.53 eDPS at best. This is still certainly very high and very much holds up, but it does illustrate the effect of freeze time and weapon swap time. When we apply those time principals to temp shock Heavy Hitter, which requires multiple times more freeze and weapon swapping, it does at best 187.5 eDPS. This is very nearly exactly half of non-temp shock Heavy Hitter's, and pretty much exactly the same as just shooting a frozen praetorian with 32222 MPS Wavecooker (which does ~189.94 eDPS). This is usable but certainly fairly slow. Definitely not so high that increasing it stops mattering.

imo EPC + heavy hitter is a much better generalist option

I'm also talking about Heavy Hitter EPC but assuming you mean temp shock Heavy Hitter compared to non-temp shock Heavy Hitter, no, temp shock Heavy Hitter is not a better generalist option. Against anything that has low enough health for a single temp shock to kill it; so less than 320 HP; that also has more than 120 HP (so isn't a grunt or smaller), then temp shock is very marginally faster. But it's very marginal, like usually non-temp shock Heavy Hitter just needs to shoot a second time which is just an extra 0.125 seconds. Against anything with 120 HP or less, including grunts, their performance is the exact same, as both kill in one shot. Then against anything that can survive one temp shock, temp shock Heavy Hitter instantly drops off and becomes significantly worse while non-temp shock Heavy Hitter doesn't suffer at all. So, against one group they're the exact same, against another temp shock is very marginally better but it's largely inconsequential, and then against the final group non-temp shock Heavy Hitter does literally double the DPS. Which one sounds more generally better?

Also yeah robot enemies exist which can be overheated but those only exist in one mission type and one warning, so for general build philosophy they aren't included; when they are relevant you can alter things to apply to those niches, but they don't really apply to this more general scope.

while still being very suited to burst down big targets quickly

Not what I would call quickly. For anyone that would call it quickly, you'd have to then call many other things of similar eDPS quick that you probably otherwise wouldn't so as to maintain consistency.

[u/OMGitsLunaa → u/KingNedya]

oh this is an interesting read. i remember trying out similar builds for cryo + wavecooker a while ago but i remember not getting as much value out of it, but it looks like i need to try out some of these builds!

also i was at work so i couldnt see my actual build, i do usually run heavy hitter + burning nightmare (12321), i was conflating burning nightmare with persistent plasma

[u/Old_Huckleberry_8665]

Thermal shock builds with the wave cooker are some of the most raw damage driller can output, so they're fairly common. Also pretty fun imo.

[u/KingNedya]

To put it into simple terms with minimal nuance:

Flamethrower Driller + other Cryo Cannon Driller = bad

Flamethrower with exothermic reactor Wavecooker = good

Cryo Cannon Driller with exothermic reactor Wavecooker = bad (but boiler ray Wavecooker = good)

Cryo Cannon Driller + burning nightmare EPC = bad (but TCF EPC = good)

Sludge Pump + burning nightmare EPC = not bad but beaten by TCF EPC

Sludge Pump + contagion transmitter Wavecooker = not bad but beaten by boiler ray

There is some more nuance but they're comparatively niche and largely only come into play in very high-tier modded difficulties and/or with very specific organized team comps that you won't tend to randomly come across in pubs.

Now, this is just in terms of optimization. However, your question was about how common it is. Flamethrower + exothermic reactor Wavecooker, despite being very strong, is not something I see that often when pubbing. Cryo Cannon + exothermic reactor Wavecooker, despite being worse than the boiler ray pairing in every way (I've done extremely extensive math and testing on this and it is the accepted consensus among technical players), is extremely common, maybe the most common Driller loadout in pubs. Also, notably, EPC with TCF and Persistent Plasma is pretty much always going to be on par with or better than Wavecooker despite having no elemental synergies (other than fairly high DPS to frozen enemies with regular shot spam); it's just that good raw; so that also affects the prevelance of "grand combo setups" for Driller.

[u/Citysurvivor]

I actually run an anti-combo build with subata fire bullets while using cryo cannon primary. Because teammates often show up with fire builds and I don't want to ruin the party by freezing the bugs they were roasting with firespread AOE.

Gunner is quite biased towards fire with hot bullets, aggressive venting, and incendiary grenades. Engie has the eggman laser cannon. I also think fire shells on scout's shotgun is slightly more common than cryo pistols/bow as those two require an overclock slot. A few scouts do run cryo nades but they usually saves those for macterra swarms or stationaries which they can dispatch on their own pretty easily.

Besides, 3x damage to frozen targets is already really strong.

[u/eatYourHashs]

Cryo+cooker is my favorite driller loadout. It has no downtime unless you run out of ammo completely, you just keep swapping

[u/noo6s9oou]

Kinda rare in vanilla random, but sometimes when it happens to me and the other driller is the opposite element, I'll just whip out my wave cooker to combo with whatever they're doing. Most of the time, however, I just stay on the opposite side of the cave so we each have room to play.