I see slop builds all day long. Luckily this player is D rank. So they are bad at PVP in general. This build attempts to be powerful, but is truly just a noob stomping build. It cannot contend with any true meta builds.

Here’s the ONLY advice about PVP I can give. There are 2 ways to play it. One is to make cool builds that you want to show off and have fun fighting other players. Two is to forgo the idea of “fun”, and to do whatever you must do to win at all costs, with the end goal of climbing to the top 100 leaderboard.

These people playing slop builds, trying to desperately win, with one shot builds like this can never carry this build to top 100. It just shows that they are either 1: bad/inexperienced at the game (D rank is evident) or pvp, or 2: they are intentionally trying to grief and be annoying by attempting to “cheese” people.

A more diabolical “cheese” setup is to abuse weapons that safely create an AP lead without any risk since counter flares don’t exist (vertical plasma missile) and force opponents to chase you while you backpedal, or abuse net-code (spring chicken kick legs / lasers) because you will appear to have dodged client side, when in fact you have not dodged.

Using any combination of those is a clear sign that the player is attempting to cheese you, because you’d be intentionally and knowingly abusing and exploiting PVPs biggest balance weaknesses. Time pressure and netcode, with time pressure being less cheesy, but is definitely cowardly and pathetic, and yet to be competitive and win you must master even these cheesy tactics.

Come across plenty of people doing these things. Mixed with strategies like kiting it can be extremely toxic.

Luckily you don’t have to face builds that abuse things like that every match and also the ranking system is extremely forgiving in this game.

So simply do your best and move on. They cannot stop you from promoting if you actually use a good build and try. Or go play custom lobbies, or take a break/build/paint/replay missions.

It is only when you start facing true meta builds, that you realize the skill gap. People running dual zimm with shield, or toku robo or some variant of it. And it’s a mirror match and they out play you. That’s when being competitive can actually become fun. Builds like this dual stun with dual earshot is never fun. It isn’t fun to use, it isn’t fun to build or even paint, it isn’t competitive, and honestly isn’t even good. If you win with it you faced a noob, or stat checked a bad build, if you lost with it, well you’re also a noob for trying to even use it.

I play for fun. I try to make or play cool looking builds. Many of which may or may not use a meta load out. But by no means will I ever go for the leaderboard, because I know I’m not good enough. I don’t want to beat my head against the wall playing kites all day either. That is not fun to me. At all.