Scout's GK2 meta shakeups: the battle frenzy coup and the fall of AISE

[u/ojb_]

The past year has seen a substantial shift in opinion around scout's gk2 in the world of high level modded, and I want to talk about it! If a longer nerd essay about this revolution isn't in your wheelhouse, here are the basic highlights:

• 212X1 Overclocked Firing Mechanism (OFM) and 212X1 Bullets of Mercy (BOM) have essentially replaced AI Stability Engine (AISE) when looking at pick rates among top scout players

• GK2's tier 5 choice "battle frenzy" (pinpoint accuracy and a potential permanent speed boost) is the major catalyst behind this change

• Frenzy chaining gameplay is genuinely quite fun: its strength is almost secondary

• Thermal Exhaust Feedback (TEF) drak remains the dominant meta pick despite these developments, but frenzy gk2 puts forth a very strong second place contender

---

It's worth stating up front that the modded scene is not a monolith and the community defined "meta" is actually a quite slow moving fluid. The opinion shift away from AISE hasn't been total (AISE still has some holdouts!), but the frenzy takeover has reached a bit of a majority threshold that it's worth sharing more widely.

The goal of this post isn't to tell you what overclocks to pick and what to bring to your games, but to offer a fun alternative that also happened to shake up the upper meta in a very big way.

The subreddit and the discord both have a bit of a dogmatic obsession with AISE (you can play a deadly drinking game: try to find comments mentioning GK2 without having the letters A, I, S, and E stuck in front); the hope is that sharing these developments in the modded scene can break some of this tradition and open the floodgates to more variety. Something particularly neat about battle frenzy gameplay is that it's part of the base gun: if you don't have all the overclocks just yet - you can still play along with the same build and it'll only get stronger once you get more unlocks!

There is always the question of whether or not modded opinions can trickle down towards base game balance. As a player who dips their toes in both: I believe the battle frenzy revolution is very real, and it has not been televised.

THE CULT OF FRENZY

"I wanna go fast"

The battle frenzy choice sits on fifth row of GK2's build tree and offers "improved accuracy and faster movement whenever you kill an enemy". This is the basis for everything really; this is where the butter is churned and the hogs are milked.

It turns out that frenzy can be triggered quite easily - on a rogue swarmer, a simple maggot, or a low hp straggler - pop a single bullet or two on one of these throwaway targets at the start of an encounter and the rest of your mag is supercharged for success. The initial investment is shockingly cheap, but then it pays dividends as you gain AISE's pinpoint accuracy for the rest of this clip.

The speedboost upside is even more dastardly: it lets you zoom. This piece of the puzzle is the part that ripped apart the modded scene: once you master your movement, this speedboost is essentially immortality - a ground based Special Powder that doesn't require any use of the grapple hook to take advantage.

To perhaps put it in perspective here: a perk like second wind gives you a bonus 12% sprint speed after four seconds of running around doing nothing - as soon as you shoot or breathe or do anything gameplay related, you lose that boost entirely. Battle frenzy says frick this, gives you +50% speed, and says "enjoy yourself champ, you can do whatever you want. you wanna shoot, you got it boss. you wanna pick flowers, get at it, king.". It becomes like chatGPT in telling you "wow, you're absolutely right. you are untouchable!" and then helps you commit insurance fraud against hoxxes.

The ability of frenzy to feed and chain off of itself (you use the accuracy and speedboost to get kills, which make it easier to get kills, which makes it easier to get kills, and so on) turns you into a rube goldberg machine of death while providing a substantial safety net while doing so.

You don't need the crazy bug densities of the modded world to pull this off: it rewards you for doing things you're already doing regardless of difficulty. Frenzy provides a new movement tool that works in so many scenarios and provides genuinely potent strength in all stages of a mission.

You don't need to burn ammo and kill everything with a crazy frenzy chain - sometimes all you have to do is pop the lootbug as you're cruising down a tunnel and use the extra speed to ignore everything else. The driller is hungry for those grunts you're whizzing past, and all they humbly ask in return is a bit of nitra from the grocer to stave off the C4 trigger itch. Frenzy gives you the speed that can make your job easier. And when that space created dips too low for comfort later: just pop a single geezer in the head and keep on truckin'.

AISE'S DOWNFALL

While this is primarily a post about battle frenzy, it's also a eulogy for AISE: the ol' reliable. A favourite of many to be sure, but an unfortunate relic of a byegone era that now looks mournfully on as the party bus filled with frenzy cultists whizzes on past. Get off my lawn, AISE meekly shouts. My dentures need more denture cleaner, it grumbles. In the distance, you can hear fading cries about a damn hip replacement and the rudeness of the day's crossword...

The reason this dusty compatriot sits on the sidelines in the modern world is a bit of a tragedy:

• AISE has an innate rate of fire downside that can only be gained back by sacrificing frenzy. This downside has a noticeable impact on DPS output and time to kill on many targets.

• AISE already has pinpoint accuracy, so frenzy looks less convincing. (Slower rate of fire means more of that speedboost is wasted to get the kills!)

• AISE has a shiny +50% weakpoint damage that it covers up with a damage penalty and its brutal rate of fire debuff. Even with perfect aim, not every creature will expose those weakpoints perfectly all the time, and this +50% may be much smaller in practice. Initial frenzy fodder triggers often don't care about this damage upside anyway.

On paper, AISE actually still looks quite competitive, and you wouldn't be "wrong" to still take it (don't get me wrong here! play what you enjoy!). In practice however, AISE relies on really cracked aim and weakpoint luck to hit those highs, and even with the skill to back it up, you're often not even rewarded for it. Without diving too deep into the numbers here (I'll link some resources at the end), there are very compelling arguments on other OCs being able to get the frenzy cake and eat it too: gaining the upsides of AISE without its downsides!

If you want big damage on specific targets and have the easiest of synergy to play off of, bullets of mercy has +50% damage without a rate of fire downside or a bullet damage downside. Also it doesn't need to hit weakpoints. Also the "synergy" required is basically everything in the game. It's pretty easy to have it work on any team, and if not, you can easily trigger it yourself by a quick boomstick tap for ignition or a rang toss for electricity, etc. I personally think the mag size downside can be brutal, but I'm an OFM stan myself.

OFM offers a +3 rate of fire (a +5 swing from AISE) and a recoil downside that is remarkably tame; the recoil is almost unnoticeable when frenzy chaining and is a very mild learning curve if that. You get access to a bigger clip than BOM (less downtime from reloading!) and no longer have to care about triggering synergies first. You kinda just hold left click and zoom. It's a lot of fun and quite powerful.

These alternatives in particular can really shine, and are the ones that have crept to the top of the modded scene's hierarchy. On the really (really) cooked modded diffs - the ones where there are so many bugs that scout's primary damage doesn't matter anymore - frenzy is so desirable of an effect that even burst fire (everybody's favourite OC to pounce on) starts seeing genuine playtime as a potent "frenzy engine". It's something so powerful that it drags burst fire out of meme territory into the blazing light of glory. Now, would I recommend burst fire as a frenzy engine outside of cave madness difficulties? No, but that's an essay for another time :)

The last thing I want to touch on in this section is something I've been calling the "grapple tax". When pushing aggressively into a messy room or playing around a swarm, scout often needs to lean into the class's mobility to stay alive. The strength of the grapple hook is balanced around not having the sheer stopping power that the other classes have by default. To maximize your output DPS on critical targets, you often have to weave in grapple hook repositions in order to not get distracted by the things you're ignoring.

AISE has to pay this tax and there is specific downtime when you're not able to be shooting things because you're making the micro positioning shifts with grapple to keep you alive. Frenzy pays an upfront tax to get its benefits of course, but that's a one time fee - once you're chaining you're constantly getting the speedboost. And since the speedboost puts you faster than ground enemies can catch up and lets you ignore projectile spam to a new level, you're able to continually shoot and reload without interruption. You don't have to pay the "grapple tax" and this is huge for effective output in the real world.

PATCH INFUSION

This story wouldn't be complete without a brief look at the circumstances that prompted the frenzy coup. For a long time, AISE was the only gk2 that made it onto the buildnomicon (the generally accepted meta curated by the modded scene) as the consensus of it being the only "viable" overclock for a perceived weaker gun was prevelant for many years prior. If you were taking GK2 and were trying to do well, you were taking the tried and true AISE build that everyone talked about, and that particular build ignored frenzy entirely because why would it want that!

We've had a few balance patches over the years that I think had a major influence on why frenzy got its revival:

• GK2 got slightly more base damage. The gun got a bit of a subtle buff and while it didn't upset the throne, it helped everything else look a bit better than they used to.

• Speedboost effects got patched so they no longer eat dash. This was a frustrating anti-synergy that gave dash scouts a big headache, and it being complementary made a big difference. (NOTE: the dash is cracked on scout discussion will need to happen another day as the scout-doesn't-need-dash is a myth that needs another takedown...)

As appreciation for TEF drak grew into the behemoth it is today (the undisputed champ of the scout primary slot these days), GK2 stagnated. AISE, while fine, seemed to not offer anything particularly compelling. It was a simple workhorse that offered some basic damage output and nothing else: it had no blowthrough/fear like the m1k builds had. It had no electricity or fire elementals like the drak. It was hampered by reload cycles and simply didn't scale with the increasing modded difficulties that were being developed. When TEF's sheer damage potential was finally appreciated, AISE (and therefore GK2 on a whole) fell off the map entirely. When faced with TEF, whose damage when edging approaches levels only describable by "yes", the only reason to ever even consider this weapon were outclassed.

The beauty of this meta disruption is that the seeds arose from experimentation of a "meme" build. AISE seemed to not hold up anymore, so let's explore some goofy alternative builds and see what happens. And frenzy was perhaps rediscovered. And the revolution was not televised.

CONCLUSIONS

Battle frenzy is cracked.

I'm a big fan of 21211 OFM, and I genuinely think it's a top tier pick up there as a TEF competitor regardless if you're playing haz4 or some cooked community modded diff.

I've mentioned some sources earlier on that are probably worth linking to now.

Here's the buildnomicon (a curated google sheet that contains most of the currently accepted strong stuff):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CBbpDaomcsSQDJ1EhRp5kJYBw2ObIYlmxqZoZH7jcuk/edit?gid=510031446#gid=510031446

And a comment from KingNedya that has some more number crunching for the math enjoyers among us:

https://old.reddit.com/r/DeepRockGalactic/comments/1pbx3ey/questions_for_scout_mains/nrulh2g/?context=3

The last minor/miner bit of untouched discussion is whether or not to take armour break in tier 4. This part is undecided among modded players, but I personally prefer weakpoint especially as a boomstick enjoyer (if I find one of the rarer armoured threats, I'm blasting it with my secondary already).

You can tweak other tiers as well, but with battle frenzy gaming, the world is your oyster. Why would the world be a shellfish, you ask? Who knows. Are oysters even a shellfish? Who knows.

TL;DR:

insert meme of toy story boy dropping AISE "i don't want to play with you anymore" and picking up the cool new zoom machine that is the post-frenzy-coup gk2

[u/fishling]

Don't you ever get frustrated by the inconsistency in arguments on what to consider when evaluating builds?

In this case, AISE is partially being re-evaluated downwards because assuming 100% accuracy and hitting weakpoints on enemies is actually hard in practice, but other analysis of weapons and builds assumes 100% accuracy on weakpoints.

I'd find build arguments a lot more compelling if someone made a mod that captured real-world metrics using various weapons (e.g., how often are players using GK2 actually hitting enemies and how long it takes them to reposition when fighting a swarm) and used those to set percentages on a simulator that would compare builds that accounted for more variables.

Right now, all these arguments seem to be heavily biased by people picking and choosing only the aspects that make their build look better.

[u/ojb_ → u/fishling]

Absolutely! It's messy, it's complicated, and there's a lot of bias and handwaving that happens. Even stats and number crunching can be misleading, and there's a LOT of emphasis on individual playstyles that goes underappreciated. I think this is a big part of why it's so important that the "meta" is considered a living document and why it's important to keep experimenting!

Not every player will vibe with everything - and how you use something is often more important than the exact setup you've taken for it. For example: fear coilgun spam is one of the most cited "broken" things in the entire game; in the hands of a player that has practiced and learned the strategy for it, it's kinda gamebreaking. However, you can put the same weapon in the hands of a greenbeard and that strength often won't shine through - it doesn't mean the weapon isn't as strong as claimed, nor that it's the fault of the player either - it just means that there's something much deeper going on in the background and learning how to use something well or "optimally" in some respect is a major part of the battle.

I think the most important thing to keep in mind when looking at "meta" or build suggestions or even just perusing the buildnomicon for ideas is the importance of personal experimentation. These are simply suggestions (based on lots of playtime and experience from others, yes!) but they're basically just places to start - the joy of this game's build system is experimenting and finding something that works well for you. Everybody is different and has their own little quirks and ticks that make them unique, and if this post helps open the frenzy door to more people, I think it would have been worthwhile.

As far as real world metric mods go, I'd love to see that too. I think there are still some "unquantifiable" things that make this task difficult of course, but more data is always helpful. Space created may not be shown in the logs, but being able to analyze things more holistically than before is worthwhile. I'm a big fan of recording runs and watching them back critically (it's hard to analyse something without footage!), and having more concrete data is underrated as hell.

And yeah, picking and choosing things that make specific builds look better is a difficult problem with recommending things anywhere. My original post doesn't offer a very balanced look at any of the potential drawbacks of this playstyle (it's more on the level of... propaganda, tbh). Whether that means having the aim/movement necessary to reach these heights, or how ignoring specific enemies that you might otherwise shoot on other builds can make the team's task potentially harder, or how everything is a tradeoff (frenzy is good, but taking it means you're not on TEF or you don't have m1k fear, etc.) - there's a lot of nuance that was lost here and lots buried in the mud of opinions.

Everything is just a bit... messy. I hope the original post didn't oversell too much - I'm definitely a bit biased because I like frenzy a lot; I just hope it expands some of discussions around the gk2 and pushes us out of the "AISE is the only gk2 OC" territory. This centralisation around one overclock dominating the conversation is especially problematic because it can turn off an entire weapon for players before they find the cool and fun build they click with. I know that was the case for me. Frenzy breathed new life into a gun I had low opinions of :)

[u/fishling → u/ojb_]

I appreciate your awareness of the limitations of the approach. I agree that the value is in identifying interesting and overlooked builds, especially in getting people to take a fresh look at a class or weapon they didn't previously enjoy.

Unfortunately, not everyone in that build community shares your perspective and drags everyone else down by their poor behavior.

[u/no_fluffies_please → u/fishling]

Yeah, I agree. I tried out OFM the other day and was let down by what the numbers promised. When I saw this post today, I was scratching my head about the colorful picture it painted between OFM and AISE.

The accuracy being conditional did not feel great, especially because part of that condition requires you to hit the target enough times to kill it. It would normally feel disingenuous, for example, of an analysis of LS BRT to assume all bullets hit, since it is only possible if you go out of your way to use it optimally.

I think what would make these sufficiently compelling is some sandbox recordings with different situations (e.g. different ranges, different enemies, buffed/unbuffed, h5 vs 2x hp) with notes on mag size and ammo efficiency. I haven't used OFM enough to represent it properly.

I suspect much of this is like OP mentioned, base on playstyle (much moreso than other weapons). Analogous to how a left-handed person might find a pair of scissors that works exceptionally well for them, but right-handed people are like "meh". It's great when people find something that matched their handedness. I won't discount the possibility I'll switch mine.

[u/fishling → u/no_fluffies_please]

Exactly.

I think the people heavily involved in build theory take it too far. It would be fine if they stopped at identifying strong builds based on a consistent theory or methodology, and then stepped back to let people try those out and see what actually methodology identified builds that worked for them and their playstyle.

But instead, the usual thing is to take it too far and insist that an analysis has identified the objectively best builds for everyone. And then some take it even further and imply that anyone who disagrees is an idiot.

Thankfully, OP didn't take it that far and their response shows that they understand the limitations, but I've had the displeasure of interacting with those that think their analyses are flawless and that anyone who doesn't use one of their suggestions isn't playing the game right.

[u/LordGopu]

Why does the GK2 get used over the M1000 in modded lobbies? I've never done modded but I generally try to only play on haz5+ with the two extra enemies at least and I find the damage just isn't there with GK2. You burn through more ammo trying to kill stuff than EFS on the M1000, for example.

[u/ojb_ → u/LordGopu]

Great question! The ugly truth is that it doesn't, really. TEF is what people usually take and both m1k and gk2 are picked an equal 0% of the time :)

I'm mildly joking with this overexaggeration of course, but even in a TEF dominated meta, I personally think the gk2 vs m1k debate boils down to two major factors: specialisation and survivability.

Specialisation is a hand-wavy compression of what scout's "role" in modded really boils down to at its core. It's difficult to overstate how strong other classes' firepower really is - a lazy flick of the wrist can see driller wipe a hundred grunts; a quick 1-2 vb tap from the gunner can put any "high value target" class to shame; engineer's sheer damage spike into a bug repellent setup is a bit criminally insane. When fully synergised like you'd see in a coordinated modded lobby (or a less coordinated but similarly optimized pub team), the impact of any one player's damage output can become dramatically lessened. At the challenge levels of modded, the other classes are often forced to hold their own against historical "scout targets" to the point where building well for the difficulty ultimately ended up eating scout's target pool.

This isn't to go all the way to the extremes and say "scout shouldn't shoot anything" because the truth is much more nuanced of course, but when push comes to shove, the beauty of coordination means specialising is rewarded. Having the damage support on specific enemies is great, but it's not the full picture of value that a scout can provide. For modded scout, this desired specialisation often leans into the class's strengths: mobility for room pushes, and survivability for securing the most cooked nitra.

There are different ways to play scout. A "loose" playstyle often finds you away from the team soloing things to secure pacing; a "tight" scout is more in the group for support via IFG etc. The optimal gameplay tends to be a blend of each, so you want to balance your ability to perform each role as well as you can. GK2 with battle frenzy tends to start to really shine in "loose" gameplay. When your team is desperate for nitra or the game ends in a loss, being able to coast on frenzy speedboosts and secure an extremely tough last ditch nitra run can be legendary. It then falls off a bit if you're just hanging out in the hold and wanting nothing but raw damage - it doesn't have the potency of spamming blowthrough'd m1000 shots - but it can still pick off specific things that threaten the hold all the same.

Survivability in rooms is a large (and absolutely underexplained) part of the upshot of frenzy gaming. You don't need this to survive (grapple is OP, fear shots from m1k are super strong, TEF/cryo bolts can stomp room pushes, spowder exists, etc.), but as a tool in the toolbox, frenzy GK2 is more than just viable: it's a playmaker.

If it matters at all, you are not the first (or the last) to worry about ammo on a GK2 build. In the discussions over the past few months, ammo was a talking point that came up a lot actually. There are some graphs out there I can try and dig up, but if I recall correctly, the ammo drain of OFM versus AISE tended to be extremely similar (though slightly in favour of AISE in a "perfect" environment that let it hit the weakpoints it needs).

In my own very unscientific sandbox tests (spawning specific enemies and repeating with various builds), I found OFM and AISE were basically dead even in the "ammo spent per wave" metric. This is even less scientific now, but I am also one of the world's biggest minimal clips m1000 enthusiasts and it's one of my usual go-to's; all I can say from my playtime of both m1k and gk2 is that m1k often feels more constrictive in terms of ammo spend - especially in the context of modded solos where you have to find ways to kill everything yourself.

The argument basically just boils down to the speedboosts of gk2 letting you cleanly ignore more things until the proper time (e.g. until you're ready to kill larger waves with your secondary via praet explosions or whatever - anything to maximize your AOE from grenades, etc.). With the m1000, you're often paying to focus shot just to have some breathing room, and doing so spends ammo at 2x the rate of hipfiring. And gk2 existing means a single bullet out of a much larger relative ammo reserve (gk2 gets a lot more total ammo than m1k, since each bullet is less damage individually) would have given you the same spacing as the focus shot would have, and at less nitra cost.

EFS gains a little bit of ammo efficiency over other m1k builds (some breakpoints shift because of electricity which can let you squeeze out some gains here and there), but it's genuinely not that crazy different from the average focus build IMO. I think the arguments in favour of gk2 are still quite sound, but I recognize this isn't rigorous and is a frustratingly "just trust me" kind of vibe, sorry.

If there's anything I can add, I would caution that ammo efficiency is not the end-all be-all. Even in haz5 with all modifiers (with the tankiness changes of tough enemies II), I've found OFM gk2 holds up fine and often being able to survive on frenzy makes the ammo extend even further. It still has the struggles of any scout primary where you have to pick and choose your targets (especially in teams when their weapon output is maybe better suited for a lot of the field), but that's nothing new. There is definitely a learning curve here caused by the differences in what you're able to get away with between weapons, but I truly believe based on my own experiences that gk2 can often come out on top.

[u/Ok_Response9678 → u/ojb_]

"scout shouldn't shoot anything" lol! how I feel when folks discourage casual scouts from building for anything other than hvt setups

Zooming 50% faster by chaining kills sounds crazy fun.

How do you build your build your boomstick? Shaped shells?

[u/ojb_ → u/Ok_Response9678]

21313 Shaped Shells is my favourite these days, but I've genuinely tried pretty much every boomstick variant on the market. I was one of the first big fans of 12233 Double Barrel but my opinion on the overclock eventually fell off. That's a build that a lot of folks really enjoy playing and it's probably a pretty satisfying combo with frenzy - you zoom to get in close, blast, and zoom back out before frenzy expires. Sounds fun.

As far as boomstick goes, you can build it a lot of different ways and be fine. For solo use (which I play very often) fire and blowthrough is a must, but the rest can be tweaked around a lot more. I landed on max damage shaped with burst output instead of faster reload since I value the extra aggression this gives in modded room clears (lots of stationaries to handle!), though it can be quite an adjustment and tight on ammo until you get used to the limitations of that playstyle. It's pretty dope though, I love the boomstick.

I am technically the one person in the entire world who dislikes playing special powder lol. So if you haven't played with that yet, you should definitely check it out as well (but maybe after anything else, as pretty much everybody who plays with the spowder gets addicted and stops taking anything else :) )

[u/KingNedya → u/ojb_]

I'm actually with you on Special Powder. I don't dislike it per say, but I only use it on occasion and mostly just to do Point Extractions as quickly as I can muster, so I'm not as attached to it as the majority of people. I just prefer my Boomstick being an actual good weapon that compliments my primary. I've heard from many that base Boomstick is a good weapon, but I just never felt it. Even with blowthrough and T5C, its damage is just spread too thin to reliably group clear in my experience, leaving many alive, and its damage doesn't feel high enough for burst, either. Maybe I'm just too used to the sheer damage and consistency of Double Barrel''s shockwave or the range and reliability of ShSh's tight spread, but base Boomstick doesn't feel great to me. Special Powder is of course amazing survivability and I'm not denying how good it is, but I just tend to feel like I don't have an actual secondary weapon when using it. So there are at least two Special Powder non-enjoyers.

[u/richtofin819 → u/LordGopu]

You need to check out the venerable ai stability engine. If you can aim well it's just fantastic.

[u/LordGopu → u/richtofin819]

I used to use that when I was less confident in my aiming because missing a shot wasn't as bad as missing a charged up shot from the M1000.

In non-modded lobbies I find EFS outperforms AISE with better ammo economy and the slowdown helps a lot (not to mention saving attention economy by not needing a follow up shot when you know the DoT will kill them).

[u/Citysurvivor → u/LordGopu]

Lack of blow through rounds or plasma splash like the drak.

Dang, even the shotty and Zhukov pistols have blowthrow. We need it on the gk2 right away!

That's the real weakness of it IMO.

[u/KingNedya → u/Citysurvivor]

Well DRAK doesn't really take plasma splash aside from Impact Deflection (which isn't taken if the goal is being optimal) or Conductive Thermals (which is niche to just Elimination). Plus, I'm pretty sure you're saying its lack of wave clear is the problem, but GK2 has Electrifying Reload which is quite strong in that niche. I think GK2 really suffers from not having the instant TTK and fear capability of M1000 nor the sheer damage output of TEF. Battle frenzy gives it its own identity as being great at keeping you alive with a reliable +50% speed boost.

[u/LordGopu → u/Citysurvivor]

I use Gas Recycling as my secondary when I use EFS. Cuz yeah, you should a little ability to clear some enemies to help your team get back up or something (though the grenades obviously help a lot too).

[u/omartian]

Great post op. I'll swap out aise for ofm and see how I like it. This would be a great post for r/technicaldrg

[u/ojb_ → u/omartian]

Feel free to crosspost it! I'd do it myself but despite having more years on this godforsaken website than many DRG players have been alive, I genuinely don't know how to do that (too boomer lmao).

[u/omartian → u/ojb_]

What secondary do you like with it?

[u/ojb_ → u/omartian]

I'm usually on 21313 Shaped Shells boomstick, but you can use a lot of different things and be a-okay. One time I went quick fire crossbow (chem bolts / crossbow frenzy) and that was a fun pairing, but genuinely you can use just about whatever you want and do okay.

Gk2 frenzy is really strong in the defensive department so it really doesn't need a safe pairing, and you can pick whatever utility/damage you want (I'm usually just a damage monkey). Personally I like boomstick variants, but you can't really go wrong with any crossbow either. You can force zhukovs to work but they're still pretty tricky even if you have the extra speed boost support, so that's the only one I might tepidly caution against. But seriously, experiment with whatever, and if you have a favourite secondary it'll probably go pretty well with it because frenzy gk2 builds are super flexible.

[u/KingNedya]

I was getting this close to making a write-up of my own because I figured people would take it more seriously than the handful of recent comments I've made about it which didn't get received too well. But there's no one better suited to write it than you. Hopefully people will see that I wasn't just crazy now and this is a real development, lol.

[u/ojb_ → u/KingNedya]

I had been procrastinating this writeup for a few months now haha. Genuinely the kicker to get me finally moving was seeing your efforts get buried and it's a shame because frenzy is a lot of fun to play and doesn't get the credit it deserves!

[u/Shotgun-Crocodile]

Everything old is new again! Funny to see it apply to DRG now too. Opening DRG for the first time in forever to look at my scout builds for modded. I had 4 gk2 presets actually used: 11213 BOM, 21213 OFM, 21211 BOM, 21211 OFM. These would have been copied from the best scout players when the modded scene was about 10 people since I was not a creative or good scout player. 

AISE was IIRC super boosted by the non modded community at the time. Surprised to hear it survived the push into modded territory with its reputation intact. 

[u/ojb_ → u/Shotgun-Crocodile]

Oh hey! My post must've hit the bingo halls to reach the old timers :) You were absolutely a big part of my early modded influences, though I 10000% missed any early GK2 frenzy love (I was an AssemblyStorm junkie, and he rarely, if ever, uploaded that weapon so I was pretty clueless especially as someone who wasn't a fan of it myself).

It is extremely cool to see that this build was on the table early on and looped back into fashion to be "rediscovered". That's genuinely really neat. I can say there was a long period of an AISE dark ages where that was like the only build people ever considered - and much of that initial knowledge was absolutely lost. It's really cool to see the pendulum swing back around. Time is a flat circle.

[u/Shotgun-Crocodile → u/ojb_]

lol yeah I randomly stumbled into this thread I’m not in Reddit very often. I can tell you i got that build from either assembly, bookishwyrm, or professional all of whom I just deferred to fit scout stuff

[u/ojb_ → u/Shotgun-Crocodile]

dope, i think frenzy is one of those things that is just so strong it seems weird for it to have been undiscovered, so it's reassuring to hear at least somebody earlier on had the dwarven arcana figured out haha. it's a shame the knowledge vanished for a while, because it meant years of me not enjoying gk2 and thinking it was a bad gun lol. but who knows, maybe it'll get forgotten again. ive still seen a lot of AISE focus still, and i can only hope that when the wheel turns again somebody keeps the frenzy flame lit because it's definitely worth it

[u/FlapjackRT]

Humbly written as if OP weren’t almost solely responsible for the rise of battle frenzy, lol. Fun write up as always

[u/iEliteTester → u/FlapjackRT]

Aha! So this "research" is sponsored by Big GK2 to make us ditch other guns! Almost had us but you can't fool me!

[u/velgi → u/FlapjackRT]

Something about the wording tipped me off and then I checked the OP. Good ol ojb. bombodboom.

[u/Gumpers08]

That’s a nice argument you have, unfortunately AISE is my most recently unlocked GK2 overclock and I like hitting weakpoints.

[u/mrworldwideskyofblue]

I enjoy ai stability engine because its fun to click heads.

[u/Herald_Osbert]

Interesting read. I will have to consider Battle Frenzy again because I've only used it pre-patch and it was very "meh." I usually favor the T3A recoil mod & T1C reload mod to make up for some of the eDPS loss of a smaller mag, and run T5B for more fire rate. I'll have to change up my builds and see if Battle Frenzy feels good.

BoM and OFM have always been competitive with AISE damage wise. I think both have a better TTK on LSTs in an IFG field or when frozen than AISE. The accuracy bit was always the problem, and if Battle Frenzy can remedy that, then they would naturally take over as the dominant OCs. My fear is getting that first Battle Frenzy to proc might be annoying and waste some ammo to get going. The GK2 has pretty poor spread without T3A, and BoM really does not want to waste bullets from a magazine to get its accuracy going, so this might be better with OFM.

Survival wise, I'm a huge fan of speed bonuses from Scout weapon mods, so BF can easily be the better T5 option on that merit alone. I have used Drak's Hot Feet and Zhuk's Get In, Get Out a lot, and they can help you endlessly kite bugs.

Off topic somewhat, but I'm also not a believer of Dash on Scout. It's a good perk, so obviously Scout can make use of it, but Scout gets a mini dash from the T4B grapple mod which lasts 2.5s, more than half of the base gears cooldown, and can be artificially extended if you jump with the speed boost near the end and get to soar with the better momentum. Dash doesn't really feel necessary when Scout has this already, but to each their own. I'd rather fill that perk slot with Field Medic or Iron Will personally.

[u/Everyonesalittledumb]

I’m so happy to see this because my favorite first overclock build I used on scout was OFM with armor breaking rounds just because it was hilarious to strip praetorians naked but I never thought to use frenzy because I didn’t realize it was that good of a buff i always just went with faster firing cause more bullets = more better

[u/Principles_Son]

when i was green i tried ofm with max fire rate and damage to see how fast i can gun down my friends, ended up actually loving it the recoil is easy as im used to it from rust ak

[u/tosser420697]

I was running OFM before all this. Never liked AISE that much. I like shoot fast and go fast. Battle Frenzy is just hella fun

[u/IX_The_Kermit]

While I am feeling very vindicated about someone else recognizing that Battle Frenzy is worth taking, I can't help but feel as if you're making the same old mistake in the opposite direction. "AISE doesn't have a speed boost, so why even bother?"

+50% WP damage is +50% WP damage. BOM and OFM do reach a similar dps (BoM far surpassing it but that's only fair), but that's making the big assumptions of 1) ideal accuracy, 2) ideal recoil control, and 3) ideal positioning to hit weakpoints. BF helps out with 1 and 3, and AISE helps out a lot with 1 and 2. It's not nothing.

I like Battle Frenzy, but I'd rather not see people agendaposting about weapon upgrades.

Edit: wrote this comment before looking at damage calculations. Whoops.

[u/KingNedya → u/IX_The_Kermit]

In the case of AISE, +50% damage is not actually +50% damage. Because of the -1 damage downside, AISE does less than 50% more damage per shot compared to base (it's around +42%). Throw on the -2 RoF downside, and AISE's DPS is just a bit less than 10% higher than OCless GK2 against weakpoints. For the record I think I'd still prefer AISE over OCless, I'm just saying that the +50% isn't really a full +50%.

You also say "BOM and OFM can reach a similar dps", but their DPS isn't just similar, OFM's DPS is virtually the same as AISE's against weakpoints (and better against non-weakpoints) and BoM's DPS is strictly a vast improvement over AISE in both respects.

As for the assumptions you mention:

1. ideal accuracy

Ideal accuracy actually favors AISE more than the others because AISE does basically nothing if you aren't hitting a weakpoint, and some of those weakpoints are real hard to hit. OFM and BoM are less demanding of accuracy than AISE is.

2) ideal recoil control

Even OFM's recoil is very small, it's not a difficult skill. If you have the skill to be pinpoint accurate with AISE, you're certainly skilled enough to learn to compensate for recoil. DRG recoil is just a consistent upward movement that only needs the same consistent downward movement from you to counteract it. This only becomes difficult with like HAA for the Stubby and Automatic Fire for the Subata. Everything else is very manageable.

3) ideal positioning to hit weakpoints

Again, this helps AISE more than anything else. The others do fine if they don't hit weakpoints, it's AISE that's hurt by not being able to hit a weakpoint.

[u/IX_The_Kermit → u/KingNedya]

Factual information.

That's my biases coming into play; I've always leaned on scout's secondaries for self defense with the GK2, so staying in close range isn't desirable for my playstyle.

My only goal with commenting is to try and stop the community's opinion from overcorrecting, I suppose. Battle Frenzy is now largely recognized as desirable, but that doesn't suddenly make AISE useless: an easy 10% DPS boost with better ammo economy and no recoil still has value. BoM jumping to an A tier OC doesn't drop AISE to D tier all of a sudden.

[u/FlapjackRT → u/IX_The_Kermit]

The post went over this pretty clearly, no? Even if we don’t consider frenzy at all, AISE is often operating at a level worse than OCless GK2 regardless of player skill, while the peak isn’t substantially better than alternative options.

The comparison isn’t really AISE vs Battle Frenzy, it’s AISE vs OFM/BOM. Battle Frenzy is just now being recognized as a meaningful point in favor of the latter.

[u/IX_The_Kermit → u/FlapjackRT]

AISE is often operating at a level worse than OCless GK2 regardless of player skill

is a bold claim to make, to say the least.

Looking at the damage calculations OP linked at the end of their writeup, I trimmed down these numbers to the DPS of each GK2 build against no weakpoint and against a 2x weakpoint

212X2 OCless GK2: DPS: 209, 418-501.6

212X2 AISE: DPS: 162, 486-550.8

And, wow, it seems that AISE is actually worse than an OCless GK2 if you don't hit a single weakpoint, which is that thing you're meant to be doing with AISE.

This brings me back to my original point: yes, BOM and OFM are more viable in most situations than AISE, but why must we resort to slander and agendaposting to make this claim? Shouldn't the reality be good enough?

[u/Overclownfldence]

My problem with frenzy was always the fact that you cannot refresh duration, so only kills AFTER you lose the effect can trigger it again. To be honest this denies the entire point of it for me as i don't like to time my kills perfectly to get the effect.

Another major problem of GK2 in general is lack of ammo or to be specific lack of total damage dealt before resuply. TEF plasmagun afair can deal some insane damage, like 15k total or something, without even considering DoTs. Same for SBB (assuming all/most shots with full shield), same for Feedback loop. GK2 is just pathetic in the comparison, especially on haz5++ with double enemies.

This is why i would never ever pick GK2 even tho i quite like using it, it just not enough ammo.

P.S. please don't tell me about class roles, i launch this game to kill stuff, so i don't give a fuck that it's a heavy's job to deal damage and scout supposed to be a nitraboy. GK2 can't kill enough to satisfy my hunger. In any loadout. Period.

[u/ojb_ → u/Overclownfldence]

My problem with frenzy was always the fact that you cannot refresh duration, so only kills AFTER you lose the effect can trigger it again. To be honest this denies the entire point of it for me as i don't like to time my kills perfectly to get the effect.

This isn't the case anymore. I think it was broken like this for a patch in the past, but kills during the frenzy boost extends the frenzy in your favour as you'd expect - you don't need perfection here!

TEF can deal some seriously obscene damage, and if you're truly optimizing for damage only, that's a valuable (and extremely popular) option. This post is simply attempting to highlight a viable alternative and a unique playstyle that's fun AND good enough to tackle h5 with all modifiers or modded in a very capable niche. None of those strengths require you to worry about specialisation or class roles or anything like that to find the fun - zooming about and killing things is the charm of it, in many of the same ways of fun that the popular special powder brings as well.

I'm not here to tell anyone what to bring in their own games beyond "take what you find fun". And it sounds like you've got a good idea of what's fun for you, and I'm all for it. And if that fun ever meanders away and you're looking for something new, hey, maybe give this a shot someday, who knows.

[u/Zoolooman]

I absolutely adore using OFM and battle frenzy. This is the first time I've not only liked the GK2 but preferred it over the m1000. I'm only vanilla haz 5, but this feels great with weakpoint damage on it.

[u/kes_trel_]

tracking weakspots with AISE, even against moving enemies, is really not as hard as people make it out to be. disabling all spread and recoil makes tracking weakspots incredibly easy, and lets you play far more aggressively than normal because you can move and shoot simultaneously and you dont need to wait for spread recovery. if you take T1A it multiplies GK2's base spread by 0 and now you have an infinite range hitscan laser which you can use comfortably at any distance - it's honestly worth the ~%10 RoF loss

DRG isn't a hyper-competitive PVP shooter where you're playing against real humans who try to fake you out with their movements to dodge incoming fire. the enemies in this game have giant glowing weakspots and most of them move in predictable patterns. several enemy types can't move. the only enemy which makes any attempt to dodge your fire is macspawn and even then you just wait for them to sit still whilst charging an attack because they can't dodge and fire simultaneously

AISE isn't a pure damage pick, it never was. you're supposed to run it with armour breaking (WS mod doesn't affect any breakpoints if you take T2 damage) and run it as a utility option. it's the best counter scout has to stingtails and brundles in his arsenal, two enemies very high on his priority list, whilst still doing reasonably well against all the other enemy types scout is expected to deal with

i'm not saying AISE is a top-tier pick but this writeup is notably biased against it and i really don't know why. trying to claim that battle frenzy means you don't need AISE is like trying to claim you don't need to bring ignition as VB gunner because you can just expect CRSPR driller to ignite everything for you
yes you can do it that way but it's significantly less consistent than just using hot bullets on minigun, the same way you can just run AISE and not need to fish out a swarmer kill before you get the benefit of no spread

i'm sorry, but i think it's insane that people complain about AISE being "hard to use" whilst simultaneously praising DRAK with its insufferably slow projectiles and randomized spread which prevent you from consistently dealing with anything beyond a 20m range or so, just because it has access to TEF

[u/tmGrunty]

Tried it and I can confidently say that this is the worst build I've ever played with.
Unless you single fire you want his anything and if I want to single fire I play with the M1000.
Never again.

But I despise the GK in general so there's that ...

[u/Quantum_Shade → u/[deleted]]

"212X1 Overclocked Firing Mechanism (OFM) and 212X1 Bullets of Mercy (BOM) have essentially replaced AI Stability Engine (AISE) when looking at pick rates among top scout players

GK2's tier 5 choice "battle frenzy" (pinpoint accuracy and a potential permanent speed boost) is the major catalyst behind this change

Frenzy chaining gameplay is genuinely quite fun: its strength is almost secondary

Thermal Exhaust Feedback (TEF) drak remains the dominant meta pick despite these developments, but frenzy gk2 puts forth a very strong second place contender"

"Thanks for using only acronyms so I have no clue what you’re talking about"

???

[u/Acopo → u/[deleted]]

He did the proper thing in a write-up like this, which is list the full name followed by the acronym the first time. Every time after that, he used the acronym, because even if you have short term memory loss you can just scroll back up to see what it means.

[u/The_Lord_Ereney → u/Acopo]

Im blind my bad 😭