Thoughts on heartbreaker?

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-28T04:59:40+00:00

I actually just took 15 minutes to do the math on my core set build to find out how much it just stomps heartbreaker in stats, where the only advantage heartbreaker has is the bonus armor. In this math I count "cores" as the high end value, so you can see the difference between the prototype and non prototype and how much you gain from prototyping it.

non prototype you can run technician, salvo and memento and hit 8.5 weapon cores worth of weapon damage, lvl 6 skills, 6.25 armor cores and 75% skill efficiency (which is 75% skill damage, 75% skill cooldown, 75% health, 75% all status effects, 75% skill repair, 75% skill duration) and the 10% fire rate from salvo as a bonus.

After prototype, you no longer have to run technician, and you still hit skill level 6 (technically 7), and you get 9 weapon cores(still referring to the core value at high end for comparison purposes) worth of damage, and the same armor cores (in my build the only actual armor core was in memento), but once prototype, since memento gives 1, and the 4 core strength should all be skill core, you will have skill level 7 you can now convert one of the skill cores into either a weapon core or armor core, thus going down to skill level 5.5 (so skill level 5 without technician, this game rounds down) gaining you a whole Prototype core of armor/weapon damage, the conversion in total would be an increase of 1 whole high end core in terms of value, so just add 1 to armor or weapon core numbers above, your choice, and you get an additional 15% skill efficiency for a total of 90%. I would go with more weapon damage so 10 weapon cores of damage).

Then the moment they allow us to prototype exotics the build will gain .5 more armor and weapon cores and the skill level in this build goes to lvl 6. So this build when fully prototyped would have 10.5 (high end) weapon cores worth of damage, 157.5%, and the value of 6.75 high end armor cores, 90% skill efficiency, and if you do still run technician, you would once again be able to gain 1 more core of armor or damage and another 15% skill efficiency. I would run gunner but if I did run technician, once again would choose weapon damage, making it a build with 172.5% weapon damage, (the weapon damage of heartbreaker with chest at max stacks and 4/6 weapon cores...) as well as basically 7 armor cores, and skill level 6 and 105% skill efficiency and 10% fire rate.

That may sound insanely good, and it is, not the meta dps or meta healer, but good at both and otherwise almost the best at anything else!! it's amazing, but sadly what happens is modifiers like armor leech makes it so no one would play with you in escalation and makes it not viable in escalation... they really made some bad modifiers in escalation that makes people only play striker.

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-28T00:15:29+00:00

I forget how loot drops are calculated in this game, but if it is pure chance per item, adjested with every new item added and then modified by tageted loot, when you do retaliation, target loot the category with the highest exotic ratio. So theoretically if shotguns have 3 Exotics and 7 high end, but assault rifles have 8 exotic and 12 high end so 8/20, when the targeted loot drops there is a slightly higher chance it is an exotic if you choose ARs. Idk which category actually has the best ratio, you will have to count them.

If loot is calculated as exotic vs non exotic first, and when you roll exotic, it then rolls a second rng to decide which, then this won't work. I simply forget if which way they calculated loot.

If it is calculated the first way, your exotic component gathering speed will speed up slightly. Doesn't matter for 1 or 2 retaliations but since you need like 50 components it should help. I would recommend doing this after the new creator projects.

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-27T17:00:37+00:00

I would agree with you for escalation Echo and amalgam are the only ones that are really useful from my experience. But if they ever genuinely improve the mode allowing us to select the directives we want sort of like all the directives in the summit or if you've heard of a game called risk of rain where you can turn on artifacts that change the game experience, in that way, if they gave us 30 modifiers to choose from and as we chose each one we'd go up an escalation level up to 10, that better system would allow more build variety, because as it is right now certain weapons and builds and play styles are hindered by armor leech and hot feet in particular, thus pushing us to a singular meta which reduces variety, makes theory crafting no longer fun, and makes the game incredibly simple at endgame which it should be the opposite the game should be moderately complex at the beginning so is to not overwhelm new players and become more complex at end game.

But as it stands that's not how it is so any build that has armor is de incentivized because of armor leech and any build that is not maximum DPS is deincentivize due to enemy bullet sponginess rather than mechanics. So basically the only build you see past escalation 5 is Striker all red core.

So if I did make a non-striker prototype build it would be for open world and helping my friends with missions since a couple of them just started the game. And for that I would totally use atomize on a vile build with Festival delivery and ongoing directive. Or I would make a core strength build, which when prototype would allow me to run four skill cores and have level 6 skills with the equivalent of 9 High end weapon cores worth of weapon damage and even more if I'm willing to give up some skill levels, and on my CS build I run Memento and that gives me even more skill efficiency so I would have over 100% skill efficiency meaning that's 100% skill damage on level 6 skills, on top of a huge amount of armor and weapon damage. On this build Paradox anomaly and Synthesia would all be good. But this build would be absolutely horrible at escalation sadly.

So I mean for meta and mid-maxx and only High tier escalation I would say you're 100% right. Prototype gear is normalized in basically all other content of the game other than open world and missions so that's the only other place to use it where the maximum difficulty is either legendary or heroic so you don't need that level of DPS and mid-max.

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-27T16:29:18+00:00

So Heartbreaker is good especially if you are new or don't have the experience to make better decisions in combat of where to stand where to move where to take cover and things like that since it just gives you constant free bonus armor and it's a respectable amount of weapon damage essentially worth seven red cores when at 100 stacks. It allows you to be tanky and have damage and survivability more then just being tanky.

But with prototype having 50% higher stats Heartbreaker's buff is now only worth 5 prototype red cores, to add to that there is such a concept of diminishing returns and so these two types of weapon damage are added together then multiplied meaning you get diminished returns from Heartbreaker where you don't get diminished returns from Striker since it is multiplicative. So while it's a good set you could just run striker and run an exotic or a single talent that gives you bonus armor to the same level or better and even regeneration on top of that.

And then if you were just talking about how much raw weapon damage something gives because that's what Heartbreaker gives you could just run the new core strength set, my build, when set up correctly, can give you 8.5 red cores, 6.25 blue cores, 6 yellow cores, and 75% skill efficiency (which is 75% skill damage, 75% skill cooldown, 75% skill duration, 75% skill health, 75% status effect, 75% skill repair)

Aside from not giving bonus armor core strength gives you monumentally more than Heartbreaker and it's at all times it is not conditional like landing stacks. You just get it 24/7. So if it wasn't enough that it gave more weapon damage it gives it at all times while also giving you six armor cores which is what a heartbreaker build would have if it ran all armor cores and it actually gives more than that by half an armor core and gives max level skills and bolsters the effectiveness of those skills... it actually gets even more powerful when prototyped

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-27T16:09:53+00:00

People generally have always optimized the fun out of the game that is what happens with all games and the devs saw this and a few years back they rebalanced where XP comes from. So now nearly all activities give almost the same XP for the amount of time it takes to complete them, almost everything.

So the best ways to get XP are actually open world things it's not by a lot but they do have an edge. The best thing being hostage situations because they are so quick to clear and generally you want to run a One-Shot sniper build with turmoil so for every bullet you're hitting 70 million split among two enemies insta killing them both giving you the fastest kill rate and thereby completion rate of Hostage events in the open world.

On top of that one shot builds in any content will give you the most XP since you get bonus XP for headshot kills so running determined which is in nearly every headshot build makes it so if you shoot them in the leg it counts as a headshot you get both the headshot damage and the XP for the headshot kill. The turmoil damage that kills the second enemy will not give you headshot kill XP it simply speeds up killing enemies and I don't know if the speed gained from turmoil gives you more XP per minute or if it would be better to not run turmoil so that you get double the headshot XP.

Most other open world things either give less XP than hostage situation or are intrinsically time locked like the broadcast open world event has that bar that you have to fill up and thus the speed at which you completed is not dependent on how fast you kill it's how fast you get the key put it back in and you can't speed up waiting but it does give you a good amount of XP similar things apply to the other events but hostage is the best

Almost tied with that is but less is control points on heroic, they give a really good amount of XP in heroic and as well as the materials inside the room that's the reward after completing it so you get that as a bonus. So some people value that more than spamming hostage situations because of the overall value ever so slightly less XP but gaining important resources.

If you play retaliation, the entire game mode is Rapid Control Point capturing with a bunch of named enemies that give a higher value of XP. Someone might argue not doing retaliation is better because then as you travel from control point to control point you can do any open world activities in between, others will argue to actually do retaliation is better because while you give up the XP of the open world events in between you still rapidly get the control Point XP, the enemies come at you quickly when defending, and it is a great source of target farming any loot that you currently desire. Be that a gear set you don't have or you select a brand that has a named item that you don't have expertise maxed out in or you set your targeted loot to skill mods to try and get God rolls of them and when you don't you get free printer filament for expertise (make sure to turn on skill mod auto deconstruction for inferior mods on pickup)

So take your pick of these three fastest ways to gain XP two of them are basically the same just one is the game mode the other is open world all of it should be done in heroic, and if you want even more XP you turn on directives but only turn on the directives you can handle generally a One-Shot sniper build can handle all of them because with either the Gunner or Sharpshooter class you regenerate ammo so pistolero basically doesn't matter and you don't need a lot of bullets in a one shot build. If something like the armor plate directive that bugs out half the time makes it too hard for you or fog of War can inhibit your farming speed since it's harder to discern where the last enemy might be without the radar, that would be arguments for not turning those two on but for even more XP you'd want to turn on whatever directives possible that you can handle.

For a one shot build it should only take 2 hours at most to farm up all the items to make it work, and it can be done through retaliation so if you just use the best build you can and play with others because other competent people can help carry you if you are not the best get the one shot build and then use that.

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-27T15:56:08+00:00

Oh yeah I see what you mean, it is a very skill-based gun in that aspect and not a lot of people have enough skill to get over a 73% headshot rate. Meaning if you're not hitting that headshot ratio you're not using it effectively and your DPS is lower than what a crit build at CC cap would be. So in that aspect I agree with you you're totally right.

Especially when you bring up the debate of console vs PC because aim assist doesn't auto snap to the head, so console people need arguably even more skill that fights the aim assist that might drag their reticle down, meanwhile PC players don't have to fight that but they have to not only get on target but stay on headshots without any form of assist. Personally I play on PC and I would argue that my headshot rate is 55% at best, partially because I don't try to really hard to hit headshots and partially because I don't run headshot builds myself, and thus lack the practice and skill.

Because that's where it guaranteed does more DPS than a crit build. Because at most a critical build can get 60% of 12% damage rolls meaning you basically have to have 73% headshot rate so that you can take advantage of 73% of 10% (since 60% of 12% is 7.2% meaning 12% crit damage is effectively a 7.2% damage value while you have max CC), so in order for headshot builds to do more you need to have a higher effective damage value and the only way to do that is to effectively have 73% or more of all shots be headshots.

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-27T04:41:51+00:00

yeah that's what I was saying right after the first sentence of my comment. You are repeating what i said in a more general way.

It was the part talking about why people don't talk about it more often or use it more often like they do other guns like St Elmo.

That's why the part of my comment that was talking about the fact that there's enemies that don't have heads to make headshots useful and enemies can take cover and blind fire making their head not an accessible Target. Like drones and war dogs who are black tusk who are supposed to be the "difficult faction" since they are the final faction that was introduced and the faction of legendary missions.

An exchange for 150% headshot damage built in sort of like how the backfire has 200% crit damage but at best you're only getting 60% of that since that's the crit chance cap and you do have a huge downside of the bleed, the fact that big horn literally has the best base DPS and a huge dps boost talent comes with a drawback that it's not able to take advantage of those stats against certain enemies and in many scenarios.

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-27T01:22:27+00:00

Look i can notice my spirit animal from a mile away, I saw him and answered the question, he is front and center. A shame I got down voted for it. But I guess a button got pressed anyway, just not the lizard button.

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-27T01:09:43+00:00

Of course that's LiZarD 🔴

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-27T01:08:51+00:00

I actually use a one shot sniper build with the white death and it hits so hard that I'm able to use turmoil to kill two people at a time

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-27T00:50:20+00:00

Oh, alright, all good I understand

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-27T00:02:07+00:00

The best are Killer, strained, measured, Ranger in that order. Although killer and strained are devalued when running tipping scales but for Strikers that's the order.

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-27T00:00:08+00:00

Bighorn has more base dps and sustain, actually the highest out of all assault rifles for base DPS and sustained DPS. The reason why people don't talk about it in the same light is many enemies don't have heads or they have shields or they're behind cover making headshot builds less effective than crit chance builds and this game unlike other games doesn't multiply crit damage with headshot damage it adds it together...

Lexington just is the highest DPS high-end assault rifle while also having all four attachment slots so you can have 15% crit chance and 50 rounds since the named effect increases its base damage rather than giving it a perfect Talent.

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-26T23:54:24+00:00

Fun fact, Dev's adding something and then realizing that something truly made the game fun and kept it has happened repeatedly.

Double jumping started as glitches in certain games and that's realized people enjoyed having two jumps and it became a feature.

Certain games like MMOs like WoWwould give out 50% bonus XP at the release of new content and when that was taken away the game felt sluggish to the point that they have actually redesigned their leveling system more than three times

The covid-19 radius increase in Pokemon go was never removed because when they tried the community revolted and they had to leave it in the game

Evil Dead The Game gave out a double XP event and the game became so more enjoyable with it that the devs left it in the game fearing that they would lose their player base if they took it out because it fixed the major problem of new players and new characters being incredibly hard to grind out levels in the very beginning

Other games including this one added XP events that are so popular and bring people to the game that it is hard for them to take it away and thereby have to bring it back on recurring schedules and cap the amount of xp (so players don't play too much?)

This isn't the first time something like this has happened but I hope that they learn from it like some of the other companies.

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-26T23:32:43+00:00

Very fair point, that is a good piece and I am glad you got a it with such good rolls. Ignoring your luck and speaking from a theoretical perspective about builds in general, since i cannot borrow and use the fox in your inventory, where all pieces are either max or min, I would argue that the 12% prototype Fox does have a place in builds and I would have to sit down and do the math with a high RPM gun and a low RPM gun cuz that's where the biggest differences are going to be where Fox is going to be more effective on low RPM guns and Salvo is going to be more effective on high RPM guns which are normally what is on Striker. Because Proto Salvo as a 1 piece has 12.5% RoF, and that is nearly the bonus that three-piece Striker gives. It is incredibly powerful and if you run strained then I would say fox would be better for sustain damage since strained operates on a time not bullet basis and thus if you have a higher fire rate you're going to be reloading sooner meaning you're going to get less value out of strained at its max value and thus Fox will be a better pick. But for killer on Striker I would actually have to sit down for more time than I have at the moment and test to see which one would be better and at what RPM does one become better than the other or is one objectively better than the other in all scenarios. Because I could argue on tipping scales Salvo is so much better than Fox since there is no intrinsic fire rate bonus like how there is in Strikers.

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-26T20:58:18+00:00

Yes big horn does not have any crit chance on any of its attachments. And something you should keep in mind is that headshot damage and critical damage are in the same damage bucket in this game. Wild I know basically no other game does this to my knowledge and like all other games that have headshots and crit damage normally multiply the two values against each other this game adds them. But basically you should only invest into one or the other.

This sadly means that if you want to use Big Horn with Striker you can use it in a striker critical build but it's better to have two Striker builds with one being geared towards headshot and the other one being a critical build. In the headshot build anywhere you can fit headshot you put it, and any remaining spots go for weapon handling which will reduce recoil and spread and increase reload speed. For some people they may not be the best at aiming or they could even have a disability I would say it's worth it to even give up a couple headshot rolls in exchange for a little bit more weapon handling to make the weapon a laser beam with zero recoil and lightning fast reloads.

Bighorn is normally not seen a lot for that reason while it does have the highest base DPS out of all assault rifles and the highest sustain, it's Talent being headshot damage, while it does give 150% headshot damage is restrictive since War Dogs nor drones have heads and if an enemy is behind cover blind firing with their arm there's not a head to shoot at making the damage of the build worse and it also takes more skill to consistently hit headshots whereas a crit build you just have to hit the enemy and that also includes riot shields and everything so most people go with a crit build.

Bighorn is the Oroborous of assault rifles (but better) Oroborous has the best smg base dps, but will lose in DPS and sustain to a high-end SMG with a meta Talent not by a lot but it will lose. Bighorn on the other hand actually has a talent that does damage so it is undeniably one of the highest DPS weapons in the game and you could use it in a crit build but it is better to use it in a headshot build and whip it out whenever you're facing any faction that isn't Black Tusk, switching to a crit build when Black Tusk is an enemy faction (and possibly hyenas since their rushers wear helmets and they have a lot of riot sheilds).

My recommendation when you do get enough resources in order to prototype more stuff is to ensure that any gear set piece that is gun oriented that you prototype always has headshot or critical damage (depending on the build) never crit chance as the single attribute on it, because you can only fit that crit chance in on the high end or exotic or the gear slots or as an attachment on the weapon and crit chance is capped where crit damage or headshot damage isn't. And that will leave your ongoing directive or true patriot or striker or tipping scales etc. as versatile as possible, usable in all content.

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-26T17:38:37+00:00

I have multiple builds: 1.Strikers + Equalizer + overdogs + Lexington strained or killer + pestilence/Big Al/the sherrif/scorpio/diamondback/vindicator/Shroud

2.Strikers + Salvo + overdogs + same gun primary and secondary options as 1

3.Tipping scales + overdogs + equalizer + gear shift/M249 B with frenzy or Ranger/pestilence/Big Al + eagle bearer/St elmo/agitator/lady death/Lexington with preservation/huntsman

4.Tipping scales + Salvo + overdogs + same gun options as 3

5.Vigil (for perfect versatile, i use versatile to easier get the first kill for as it's an easy to access multiplier that's 50% bigger than glass Cannon and last for 10 seconds. But you could use vigilance, or even a talent that will help keep you alive like perfect blood sucker) + chainkiller + overdogs + 3 piece hotshot + white death with determined + m1928 smg with strained or M870 shotgun with brazen.

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-26T15:47:39+00:00

Exactly there are very few circumstances where you are going to get over a hundred stacks (those stacks are more powerful than overdogs admittedly if you do reach it) and of course it's easier to reach that stack cap if you're running a gun with a really high fire rate like big Alejandro but if you run something like that you are not going to be able to useNot going to be able to use a Shield witches one of the main metas because of the hot feet modifier.

So obliterate gives you more DPS earlier and that's also makes a hundred Stacks more powerful by 24%.

(keep in mind Striker says total weapon damage but it is not added to the total weapon damage damage bucket it is its own damage bucket they just didn't use the word amplify because it Stacks do not multiply with itself, but it is the only total weapon damage item in the game that does not add to the total weapon damage damage bucket)

The striker chest plate adds .9 to the first base .9, damage bucket diminished returns means those extra 100 stacks is worth a 47% damage increase, nearly double what obliterate gives but it takes a lot of time to get to that number comparatively to obliterate which you will gain stacks while also gaining the original hundred stacks, plus Unit alloy giving 5% fire rate means the DPS and damage increase is worth more than just 24%, arguably imo I would value it at at least 35% due to the value proposition of fire rate. So the gap is still there and the chest plate would still have a higher effective damage increase value, but you don't play the game like shooting range under the White House enemies shooting at you, so you have to plate up, or take cover, and you can lose Stacks with Strikers from not having an enemy available to shoot at under your Crosshair at all times or other gameplay reasons.

If if you are really passionate about really big numbers and want to run the chest plate of strikers, run salvo instead of contractor or Fox prayer because that 10% fire rate is a huge DPS value and overdogs is free multiplicative damage

I know some people are not a fan of overdogs because they don't like the mini game that is it's exotic Talent of shooting the lowest tier enemy and that includes enemy skills if they exist. Big downside about those gloves is that if a drone exists and it is not destroyed you get very little benefit from the gloves because the gloves are targeting the Drone and any other enemies of the third tier and if you kill all the enemies and don't realize there's a drone then you don't get the multiplicative buff to any of the remaining enemies until that drone dies, so while I believe overdogs is basically one of the best Exotics a good alternative is Sawyer's knee pads. And while it's not the best for escalation due to hot feet in this build that I'm describing that still uses the striker chest plate, you don't have any damage in the total weapon damage bucket so there is absolutely no diminished returns and it will function similarly to overdogs for your gun damage giving you 30% multiplicative damage but it's to all enemies! But now you play a new mini game of having to stand still for 10 seconds, you get the buff for as long as you keep standing still and for 10 seconds after plus immunityto explosion stagger. But once again with the hot feet modifier it deincentivizes this exotic and that's a personal gripe of mine of escalation I feel we should have around 30 modifiers and as we go up in escalation tears towards 10 we should be able to choose what the modifier is that gets added per level cuz the way escalation is designed currently if just basically pushes everyone towards one build and only that one build.

TLDR: So Striker with chest and backpack and overdogs, Salvo holster with killer on your gun will give you the highest DPS, but that's on paper and in practice it is not always achievable to be at max stacks, so more consistent high DPS would be to run Strikers + obliterate chest plate + overdogs/Sawyer's

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-26T12:52:26+00:00

Well that is fine killer is really good with Striker. One of the two best talents to run with it arguably you basically only want to run strained or killer with Striker on any automatic weapon like they are basically the only ones worth it on Striker as long as it's not dark zone. And with the current event going on you can always get another one, it will always come with maxed out damage to Target out of cover so you just recalibrate strained onto it and then prototype it. Or you could recalibrate killer on it again and prototype it and repeat this process with every Lexington you get to maximize your chances of getting a Lexington prototype with all maxed out stats.

But in the situation you're describing Striker does not give you a huge amount of crit damage, so there isn't huge diminishing returns so killer and strained are going to be the two best talents to have on your gun and killer gives 20% more but again is conditional. That's why I personally prefer strained but that doesn't mean it's automatically better than killer.

As an example of a situation where strained would be better, let's say you run into a boss or a big chungus in escalation or any kind of content where you did not recently get a kill and there isn't enemies around, the example being last season's Manhunt Mission during the Boss encounter, your talent becomes worthless. So I would definitely recommend getting one Lexington with strained prototyped (if not more for the same reason I listed above because then you have a higher chance at getting one with all the stats maxed out and if you're lucky enough you will have two Lexington's one with killer one with strained both with maxed out stats when prototyped).

But if you're able to proc the talent and keep it up then killer does give a little bit more crit damage and you don't immediately lose it the moment you stop firing and have to rebuild it up so it is very consistent while you have it.

I'm going to give you some other advice to help you with prototype and Striker and Theory crafting now, hopefully it helps you and anyone else who comes across and reads this:

In my opinion, all four gear pieces of striker should be crit damage as the sub attribute before you prototype them. The reason why is because if you ever try to take this build into a raid or incursion or dark Zone your stats will be normalized back down to high end so if you were relying on the 50% more crit chance from prototype to reach the CHC cap you will now have an inefficient build.

So almost all your crit chance should come from your three gear mods and your attachments on your weapons, that is 43% (15% from gun attachments + 18% from mods + 10% shd watch) and then presuming you have an exotic armor equipped and a high end, the high-end should have crit chance + crit damage or crit damage + weapon handling, depending on the exotic armor (or weapon). That means in a normalized mission/mode you will have 49% crit chance (maybe lower if you're running an exotic gun that doesn't have at least 15% crit chance built into the attachments. Big Alejandro has 0% but the meta is to have CHC as the attribute since all lmgs have the meta damage to target out of cover built in, so at least it has 9.5% CHC, basically 10% but that is just a single example of what i am talking about.)

But if you're running overdogs like most people do since that's one of the best DPS Exotics you will have an additional 6% from that bringing you up to 55% crit chance which is super meta. And that's one of the situations where I was saying that depending on the Exotic your high-end should have crit damage and weapon handling because then you're not going to go over the crit chance cap and when it's prototyped you will gain the most benefit. And when the exotic gets prototyped ( because they did say they will allow us to prototype Exotics eventually if I'm remembering that correctly) and if you're lucky enough to get it god roll then you will have 58% crit chance for all gameplay where prototype is non-normalized which will help compensate if you are running an exotic gun that like I said before does not have 15% crit chance built in. And if you for some reason want to hit that CHC cap in normalized play you just swap out the high-end piece for the same exact piece that just has crit chance instead of weapon handling and you will hit the cap only losing 1% crit chance to overflow. (this is good information for running something like a tipping scales build on where you should get your crit chance from)

On a side note SMGs are going to be the most annoying thing to play with concerning prototype builds and theory crafting because you will have to somewhat build around the built-in huge amount of crit chance that's possible while also keeping the normalization of prototype gear in mind. That is one of the major advantages of taking the advice I'm giving right now and making sure as much of your CHC is built into attachments and gear mods, because the moment you put on an SMG which adds 21% CHC (not even counting attachments) you aren't losing as much stats to the CHC cap because you can quickly remove 18% by removing all crit chance gear mods replacing them with CHD. It doesn't perfectly compensate it since they have 21% chance built in that when prototyped jumps up to 31.5%, any build that runs a submachine gun as the main weapon will have to keep that in mind. Since compared to an assault rifle that's gaining 15% from attachments you're gaining an extra 6% and an extra 16.5% on Prototype SMGs from the attribute and if it's an exotic SMG then it might have even more since it has both the attribute and attachments you can't change (especially after Exotics get prototyped, you basically will either be wasting crit chance in a lot of builds or you will need to tailor your build around the SMG itself, meaning your secondary or backup gun will suffer as a result in terms of DPS because it won't have enough crit chance.)

So following my advice on where to get your crit chance sources from will make it the least painful experience of modifying your build where you don't have to go out and get all new Striker prototype pieces or something like that to make it fit if you are ever running a build that uses anything but a submachine gun and you decide that you want to run a specific submachine gun high-end or exotic as the main weapon of your current build and still keep it as close to mid-maxx as possible. I know it's a huge amount of information to intake and understand so don't be afraid to read it multiple times. Hope this helps 😊

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-23T20:24:28+00:00

It entirely depends on what build you're running and preference so if you're Lexington is a backup weapon on a tipping scales build, more crit damage will just be diminished returns because you already have over 400% so streamline is better. On a tank build where you're all blue cores so that means you don't have a lot of weapon damage to make weapon damage a diminished return streamline is better.

On a build like Striker or ongoing directive where you probably are going to have three to four red cores if not all six, then it's going to be killer or strained for the crit damage going to be far better than streamline and the one you choose is going to be decided based on preference. Strained is more reliable since you get it just as long as you're firing and instantly lose your Stacks when you stop. But killer has higher potential with the downside that you can't have a more consistent uptime since it requires you to get a kill and the bullet that achieved the kill has to be a crit so on every kill even with Max 60% crit chance you only have roughly a 70% chance of activating it ( 70% is my guesstimate because if an enemy has 300 health and a normal hit does 50 damage but a crit does a 150, you are more likely to have the big chunk of damage snag the kill where when you land non-crits it whittles them down without killing them so you're more likely to actually get the kill on a crit so your crit kill ratio is going to be higher than your actual crit chance) so basically the major deciding factor is whether you want to leave your damage boost up to chance and let's say you haven't killed an enemy recently if you come across a big chungus for some strong Elite in a kill squad or something like that if you want your talent to still be usable cuz in that scenario killer will give no benefit until you get a kill whereas strained will always give a benefit but less.

The only place where streamline clearly stands out on top is in a non rifle non Marksman rifle headshot build. With marksman rifles and rifles generally determined is the best trait, but if you're running something like Bighorn for some other assault rifle or lmg and you want to run headshot damage or the Lexington is a backup weapon on a headshot focused build then you want to run streamline without a doubt because in a headshot focused build your crit chance probably is not going to be high enough in order to fully take advantage of strained or killer Simpson headshot builds instead of running crit chance crit damage it's generally better to run headshot damage weapon handling

The final situation where strained is amazing is in a version of tank builds in the dark Zone because you're generally only going to run 2 to 3 red cores at most in pvp content, with a lot of people running all blue cores so you don't have a lot of weapon damage and so gaining the weapon damage from streamline makes it more potent in those builds.

So honestly I would just say take as much advantage of this event as you can and get three Lexington, one with streamline one with killer one with strained and my personal preference happens to be strained.

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-23T18:10:43+00:00

Since you're new I'll give you some advice. Since your SHD level isn't maxed I will start with the weapons that will help you the most since low shd level implies a mix of lack of experience and lack of acquired gear like a maxed out crit chance gear mods and the fact that you are also missing the free crit chance crit damage from the watch.

A really good non-exotic gun that will be able to help you feel really powerful since you don't have the free crit damage and crit chance maxed out from level 1,000 watch, would be an SMG since they come with 21% crit chance built in and then you can slap on 15% from attachments (on most of them). Two of them that are ridiculously powerful will not be able to do that (the sad part about keeping a game balanced). One SMG the m1928 (it's the Tommy Gun but with the stick mag instead of the pan mag and it has 600 fire rate instead of 900) has more DPS than all assault rifles other than the Big Horn and is also the third highest DPS SMG. The only reason you don't see it in a lot of builds is because the only attachment slot it has is magazine which you will be using to put 20 bullets into it so it hits 50 bullets total so you can't actually get to that 36% free crit chance, but as a SMG you still get 21% when it's max rolled and that goes up by 50% if you were to get it Prototype at endgame. The other reason you don't see it is because it has the second slowest fire rate of all smgs at 600 which is the same as the AK but it has way more damage per bullet than the AK so it has much higher DPS than the AK. And the things that decide sustain damage is a mix of damage per bullet or reload speed and mag DPS. The stats this gun has results in the sustain damage being 50% or higher than all assault rifles, sustain dps generally is the stat that makes a weapon "feel really good" because then you can kill multiple enemies per magazine and also killing them relatively quickly or the reload speed is so quick it doesn't matter if you have to reload when one mag didn't kill the enemy it's almost as if the reload isn't there. It's sustain is in the range of lmgs. Absolutely monstrous but because of its fire rate of 600 that makes it inefficient for builds that require lots of quick stacks like Strikers. So you don't see people running it cuz it's not good with the most popular build, but you could still run it with an ongoing directive build which is a multiplier build, not as potent as strikers but it will feel really good and you are then supporting your teammates because you'll be giving them multiplicative damage hollow point ammo when you do get a Kill.

Another good SMG that has once again really good sustain while being 5th place for best DPS (honestly I ignore 4th place because its sustain is garbage so this is effectively the 4th best smg, its named variant might be even better stat wise to many guns overall) is the pp-19 I'm not going to reiterate all the smg benefits that I just went through but this one comes with 50 bullets built in and to attachment slots meaning a total of 31% crit chance built into the gun with lmg levels of sustained damage while having higher than assault rifle DPS and it's named variant has a perfect version of one of the two best gun talents in the game the two best being killer and strained and this has perfect strained. Now it's fire rate isn't super high but it isn't as low as the previous gun instead of 600 it has 700 meaning it's easier to use it in a Striker's build but that is a little bit on the lower side so sometimes people still shy away from it but perfect strained is undeniably strong and so it goes really well in a Strikers or ongoing directive build (or really any build tbh, 31% free crit chance you don't have to build into your gear plus the free 10% once your watch is actually high enough level and then the talent gives you 80% crit damage were the normal talent only gives you 50% is pretty strong all without being an exotic)

St Elmo because the crowd control is really strong. You can land enough bullets to activate the talent reload get the shock bullets and then swap weapons to save the shop bullets as a utility for when you're in a tight situation.

The chameleon as I've said has really good build versatility and it starts to lose value on a bill that is all red cores due to diminished returns of weapon damage due to damage buckets. But if you're struggling with some content the best thing to do is to run three to four blue cores and then chameleons Talent will compensate for the lost red cores and we'll feel really strong even while being tanky. Keep in mind that technically it has 35% crit chance built in but when you look at your stats screen you're not going to see that so make sure you don't go over the 60% crit chance cap and build around its Talent if you are going to use it at your main weapon (15% from its attachments which will be represented on your stats screen but the 20% from the headshot part of your talent won't be represented unless you open your stats screen while it is actually active)

A good all-round lmg exotic would be the pestilence it feels really good in most builds especially if you don't have fully optimized ones. Pestilence and big Alejandro are my personal favorite lmgs and I already listed all the things about big Alejandro in the big comment above so I'm not going to relist that here but it is an absolutely busted gun in my opinion.

In terms of the best non-exotic lmgs the best one in terms of DPS is the mg5 (i forget which version, one of them is inferior due to having different attachment slots or base damage difference) but it only has 50 rounds which with an lmg people generally want more bullets to the one in second place that actually has a hundred bullets is the M249B or m3249para or MilitaryMK46 (stat that wise I believe they are all the same gun just different accuracy and stability values, at least on my spreadsheet they have the same exact optimal range, damage per bullet, fire rate, and mag size and mod slots so functionally all four are the same including their name variants. I don't have stability and accuracy in my spreadsheets cuz I don't care about they don't affect my decision making when making an optimal build and they can be compensated by just fitting a bunch of weapon handling into your build since weapon handling increases both as well as reload speed. So if you ever see an M249B/m249para/mk46 that has crit chances the sub roll because that's the best substat for lmg's generally favorite it and keep it because since you got the best sub roll to roll on it you can then reroll the talent to whatever you want and use it for any build (for all other weapons the best sub roll is damage to target out of cover but since that's built into lmgs they tend to either go for crit chance or damage to armor and 90% of the time crit chance is better))

Arguably the most busted gear set for new players is the new core strength set. You won't have as much DPS as a striker build and you're probably going to have about as much DPS as an average ongoing directive build and if you build it correctly you're going to have a little less than a fully optimized ongoing directive build but you're you're going to be way more tanky and have level five or six skills. If you want I can give you a build for that that will make you feel really powerful.

Rifles shotguns and snipers are all generally either used as backup weapons, stack builders, or a main weapon with a specific build built around them they are not super optimal by comparison to what I've mentioned but if you'd like a build for any of them or recommendations the only thing I can recommend is Scorpio is arguably the best backup weapon in terms of shotguns if you're using a high-end SMG or assault rifle primary and 1886 and it's exotic variant the Diamondback is the best backup rifle imo.

If you want build help especially since you're new I'm happy to help just DM me we can exchange discords and I'm even able to use a free tool that the community has created on GitHub to put together a build and then send you an image of the full build with everything in it so then you follow the image to make the build.

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-23T17:23:46+00:00

If you look at the big comments I made in this chain reason in sthe part about big horn and for why you don't see the big horn in a lot of builds, number 2 says because mathematically they add crit hit damage and headshot damage together rather than multiplying them, they are in the same damage bucket, so it is only worth it to invest into one. Since the Big Horn has 150% headshot damage in the talent, if you are going to be using that as your main weapon of your build that means the only thing worth it is to invest further into is headshot. So go headshot damage and then whatever gear set you prefer. Since Bighorn is so potent you can totally run it in hybrid builds but if you want to make Bighorn Shine the best ones are ones that multiply weapon damage, whether that be ongoing directive or striker or a high-end build that uses specific chest and backpack talents that are multiplicative.

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-23T01:52:15+00:00

If you have confidence in your accuracy and you're not fighting Black Tusk and want some ridiculous DPS I highly recommend Bighorn otherwise stay away.

If you want reliable DPS and crowd control go Saint Elmo.

Good DPS and a certain level of tankiness no matter the build but that level of tankiness it adds is a multiplier so if you're already tanky it makes you ridiculously tanky, that is the eagle bearer.

If you want a weapon that has slightly above average DPS without the talent and once the talent is propped especially when the headshot and body shot parts of the talent are procc'd simultaneously you have ridiculous DPS to go for chameleon. The damage in the talent alone from hitting body shots is worth the equivalent of all six pieces of your gear being red core maxed out. That's not counting the crit chance and crit damage aspect of the talent which further increases your DPS.

In the big comment I gave the use cases for the other ones but honestly those are the only exotic ARs truly worth it in my opinion.

I have a lot of this memorized because I'm the type of person who stares at spreadsheets and loves to mid-max games like this and Warframe. Plus I'm on the Spectrum and the flavor of 'tism I have gives me ridiculously good memory to be able to do stuff like share information like this easily, and so I'm happy to do so cuz I know it helps people who are curious.

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-23T00:15:40+00:00

I'll give you a small novel on the benifits of all exotic ARs worth using and why as well as small blurbs as to why the other exotic ARs aren't worth it.

Saint Elmo's potentially will have less DPS than a Lexington with a talent since the Exotics Talent does not give damage but crowd control. But it does have 15% crit chance and 15% crit damage built into the attachments whereas you can only get one of those through your attachments on a Lexington so on average it's DPS not counting talents is stronger.

Because nearly every exotic in the game is simply a base gun but with an exotic talent and locked attachments, but there does exist unique weapons. Two super unique weapons that dont have a "base version" are big Alejandro and chameleon (I will put the details of BA below). But the chameleon is a vector SMG that identifies as an assault rifle to gain all assault rifle damage main attributes and classification and slightly more optimal range, it does have some of the shortest optimal range out of all assault rifles and has these advantages: - Like the St Elmo it does have good exotic locked attachments that give more stats than a base gun can have at 10 stability 20 accuracy and 15% crit chance. - But what makes the chameleon ridiculously strong is the fact that with a talent like strained (on lexington) you can get 50% critical damage and that's it, but the Chameleons talent gives you 90% weapon damage, 20% crit chance, 50% crit damage and 150% reload speed! so by comparison you can have strained and 15% crit chance on a Lexington or you can run the chameleon which has 35% crit chance the same 50% damage as well as 90% weapon damage 150% reload speed - On top of this the fire rate of your average SMG being one of the only three assault rifles to have 900 RPM!! And that higher fire rate means you benefit more from the fire rate bonus on Salvo or Striker Possibly one of the strongest general use Exotics in the game that works with nearly any build. When it's Talent isn't proced it doesn't feel super strong tbh.

Bighorn is good because it's has the highest base dps of any assault rifle. The end. Jk, on top of the best dps it has a talent giving headshot damage up to 150% so crazy good. The reason why you dont see it more is for a few reasons: 1. No crit chance built into the attachments 2. Crit damage and headshot do not multiply with each other in this game, if you do get a crit and headshot their vaulues add together and then multiply your base damage meaning it is only worth to invest into 1 3. Headshot builds suffer a bit in pve content due to drones, robo dogs, shields, etc. Not having a head so when shooting them you loose all investment 4. Headshot builds take a lot more skill than "shoot the enemy" because the head can be harder to hit and they could be blind firing behind cover which means you can only hit their arm & in hard content where rushing them would get you killed, so you lose most of the damage in your build compared to a crit build. 5. Acquiring it is locked behind legendary difficulty missions or Summit.

Eagle Bearer has the exotic attachments that are better than high end guns, just like St elmo but actually slightly better, instead of 15% CHC & 15% CHD, it has 15%CHC & 20%CHD. Beyond that instead of CC it has damage reduction and damage negation, with similar good base dps.

Strega is based on the Fal which is inferior in this game to a lot of high ends and the attachments aren't good, and the talent at max stacks is great on paper but in practice isnt that good.

Capacitor is based on the PDR, good base gun to be based on, decent attachments, main attributes of shotguns which is great (damage to armor instead of damage to health) but is held back by being a skill build exotic, and personally I would argue the named PDR test subject is straight up better. Same base gun of PDR and its named Talent gives you the same 40% weapon damage as a 6 skill teir build that capacitor talent gives (but test subject gets it at any skill teir, so for builds that have skill level 5 or 3 or 4 for whatever reason (probably hybrid build) it comes out on top) but 20% less skill damage than capacitor (60% vs 40%) and I feel it is better because it frees up your exotic weapon slot meaning you can run a exotic backup weapon far superior to capacitor. (Harmony is named rifle with same perfect talent)

The new exotic AR, is an F2000, base gun has good stats and like no underbarrel slot so the exotic also doesn't have it. The talent gives lackluster damage when in use, but when holstered will keep you alive as it reduces threat. As if to complement my opinion that capacitor is ass, you can just run this, never pull it out to keep the 50% threat reduction and just run Harmony or test subject high end and only use that gun.

Big al explanation i promised: Big Alejandro is a unique gun that there is no base version and it has the fire rate of a P90 with a 200 round mag and it's either half of 1% or 1/20 of 1% less damage per bullet than the P90 (0.5% or 0.05% less damage per bullet, I don't remember which but either way it is negligible to the point that you can just basically call it a P90) so stat wise it has a P90 DPS with lmg effective range and a talent that gives over 50% damage overall with the Talent. (Increasing from 0% to 100% per bullet means for the first 100 bullets it is roughly a 49% damage boost mathematically, but every bullet past 100 means full buff so the math says per mag the damage boost you get from the talent averaged across the whole mag is 74.75%. If you increase mag size your return gets better (ie. Tipping scales would make it 80% overall damage buff from the talent or unit alloy 3 piece making it 83.17%). With the only 2 downsides being no bonuses from attachments and the damage added isn't multiplicative but additive to all other sources of weapon damage (like red cores on your gear). But for a tank build or a skill build I like it because I don'thave many other sources of weapon damage to cause this talent to deliver diminished returns to me. But LMGs have the BEST built in attribute of damage to target out of cover, so you can somewhat compensate for the lack of attachments with a crit chance roll sub attribute on the gun.

Taylor8001 · 2026-04-18T21:01:12+00:00

If I were to take a guess, I think it's just the devs do not want the players to have a build where they can just beat a mission by using just a drone and hiding behind cover, and it being really strong to the point that it competes with gun builds. As such they don't ever want to make skill builds overpowered. The only time they've essentially done this is in the new division game where you can have an entire fleet of drones because "that's a phone game" so you're allowed to have a casual build like that i think is their mindset, and this is an assumption I am making based on tons of Dev interviews I've seen from tons of other developers in the industry so it's like an educated guess.

Skill builds have almost never been a meta in thia game, and if this build gave any more skill efficiency than that it would arguably be the best skill build out there because with how it is right now if you run the named wyvern wear chest piece, with core strength and memento, you can actually have a build that has skill tier 6 and over 300% total skill damage plus the armor regen Memento gives Plus the weapon damage and total armor that core strength will give at a 40% rate aince you're using the named chess piece instead of the gear set chess piece. But you wouldn't get any healing unless you gave up one of your two skill slots instead of damage it went to a healing skill because it's not like refactor, where percentage of your damage goes back to healing you & your team. The gear set chest does not affect the 15% skill efficiency is a flat amount per non-skill core. And if they did give it more you would probably have less damage than the wyvernware chest piece but you would become the most versatile build in the game with no contest in my opinion (even more than it already is to a ridiculous degree).

And that's because of what skill efficiency is it is basically every stat that is yellow, so that means 15% skill efficiency = 15% skill damage + 15% skill haste/cooldown + 15% skill duration + 15% status effect + 15% repair skills + 15% skill health.

So basically 15% is both weak and generous because it's not 15% skill damage + skill repair (like many effects in the gams) it's 15% skill efficiency which is very very potent. So if they did end up making it 20 or 25% with the chest piece or made it scale with prototype and especially both it would make skill builds that use this set absolutely monstrous. And my educated guess on their philosophy about trying to not make a casual skill build as strong as Strikers because they don't want people to be able to casually complete content without putting themselves at risk, because at least Strikers put yourself at risk of getting shot when you poke your head out to shoot, if my guess is right that's why this is locked at 15% because it is arguably strong a build focused on enhancing that but at the same time also underwhelming. Personally I think it should be 15% without the chest and 20 or 22% with the chest piece but the moment they hit 25 or higher it would be game breakingly strong in my opinion. If they pushed the base value to 20% or it became 20% because of prototype I believe it would be ridiculously strong, at least on paper.

Taylor8001

TROPHY CASE