DRG- Hazard 7x2 VEA Gunner True Solo (Rotary Overdrive + stun Mole)

Season 5 is upon us!... is what I would've said half a month ago. Rather old news by now, I imagine, but Gunner's new minigun overclock is nothing short of cracked; Aggressive Venting was already easily one of his most potent self defense/crowd clear options (and it's found on debatably his best primary, no less!), so, naturally, anything that allows him to chain them together non-stop like anal beads is bound to be cooking.
However, despite the weapon's ludicrous potential, it's not as strong as I thought. In my mind, because of its superior heating and incredible Aggressive Venting potential, I pictured it as a power-creep Burning Hell, which thankfully isn't the case. It's true that it has much higher potential than BrH and higher DPS to boot (which is somewhat of a double-edged sword - the overclock is rather ammo-hungry), but it simply lacks the constant, reliable crowd ignition of BrH. It's maybe the only gun in this game I'd describe as being able to "snowball"; building heat takes some time, but once you get the first AV you can keep going and going and going and you create a fire-y safety bubble for yourself that, at the cost of munching through ammo like a Glyphid through a chicken coop, will leave you scratching your head thinking "How the fuck did that work?".
The gun isn't without its flaws though. One would be that it offers DPS through volley of fire, not via caliber of bullet, which, despite the minigun's generous ammo economy, can put quite a strain on you since the overclock mandates constant firing to make use of its upside. I prefer t2 ammo because of that, despite my partiality for t2b. It's also got little in the form of crowd clear outside of AV, hence why I took blowthrough, which means 1. you have horrible clean-up (you can see in the video how much I kept struggling with clean-up, leading to even shorter breaks between swarms) and 2. swarmers and other small critter become your #1 opps.
There's not much to say about the mission itself; it's a 225 Morkite mission, which is not that impressive. I decided to use stun Mole with the gun, somewhat of a dead weight secondary, partly to challenge myself and partly to show off Rotary's power. I also chose clusters, mostly to cover up for Rotary's lack of immediate and mixed swarm clear but also because I love using them. The mission itself went somewhat smoothly, I had plenty of nitra throughout, an easy swarmer wave at the beginning, but I did score an L from a cheeky Stalker that I couldn't've done much about. I'm a little mixed on them, but they're fine enemies, unlike the Barrage Infectors which, frankly, have no right spawning in packs of 3 or more in a cave; the ammo and time required to clear caves filled with Barrage Infectors is genuinely infuriating. Despite what I said just last sentence, I believe Barrage Infectors are still ok stationaries, but they should not be treated whatsoever like Spitballers that you can spam. Keep their spawns rare and treat them like special, heavy units, which is the design philosophy that I believe GSG was going for in the first place. Thank god I was able to skip the last cave, otherwise the run was more than definitely dead.
Also I used VEA because I can't stand vanilla stingtails and I believe VEA does a good job making them more fair. The other changes are not really noteworthy, regardless.
Overall, I like Rotary Overdrive. It's a surprisingly skillful gun; it rewards good positioning, AV timing, overall awareness and is really engaging to play with. Good job GSG, Gunner really is your golden boy.
BUILD:
31321 Rotary Overdrive
23113 Mole
223 Shield
Cluster grenades
1213 Armor
312 Zipline Launcher
11 Pickaxe
I forgot to flash it at the beginning, you can go check 41:16 for the build instead. I also went to go eat watermelon immediately after I was done with the mission, hence the sudden cut during the mission end screen. Anyway, long geeky-ass ramble done, bye bye

[@muramasa870]

wtf MGE BRATVA ARRIVED ON HOXXES?!

[@dankluck8077]

great run! 7x2 sounds like my own personal nightmare (especially as gunner as i suck w him (scalebramble + 3 nexi + 3 barrage might actually be a criminal activity)), so this was awesome to watch! in the description you mention vea as a stingtail balance, but ive not heard of that before? what mod is that?

[@nastyflick69420]

Thanks for the kind words mate! VEA stands for Vanilla Enemy Adjustments and you can find it here: mod.io/g/drg/m/vanilla-enemy-adjustments. You can check the page for the whole list of tweaks and fixes in the mod, but for the most part they're fairly minor QoL changes (for instance, Shellback Spit gets changed from 100% Explosive damage to 50% explosive and 50% Kinetic, Pretorians and Oppressors lose their pointless 30% Pierce damage resistance, Web Spitters' AI receives a touch-up so they wander less and shoot more, etc.). The most substantial changes however, by far, are the ones done to Stingtails: their health now increases with player count, they go from 400 base hp to 450 hp, get decreased grab range and stun immunity but can grab more and are more aggressive. One could label it a cheat since Stingtail's bullshit factor mainly stems from its ridiculous long distance yoinks, but the mod trims off the nasty bits of the enemy (however many it can!) and buffs him everywhere else outside of that - a change I'm fully on board with; I see little harm in making a game more skill-reliant by removing the RNG aspects of it. However, even for me, whether or not VEA makes Stingtails stronger or not is in slightly murky waters, but I still prefer having it as I consider Stingtails (ESPECIALLY in the generous quantities modded loves handing you) to be the most infuriating enemy in the whole game, almost by design. Most modded players I've seen consider VEA Stingtails to be more difficult, but I'm unsure of that.
There's also Vanilla Weapon Adjustments, a mod created by the same guy behind VEA, that seeks to rebalance DRG's arsenal in accordance to modded difficulties' requirements. It's a pretty damn rad mod, one I'd suggest you give a go should you dip your toes into modded territory (if you haven't already!), with plenty of genuinely well-balanced, thoughtful changes to the game's weapons. It promotes build diversity by, for instance, reworking the Autocannon, Subata, PGL, GK2 to be fantastic weapons, while simultaneously nerfing the overpowered or over-performing stuff like Coilgun fear, Minelayer, NTP, PBM, Hellfire, Volatile Bullets, Executioner, Sticky Fuel, TCF and so on so forth (notice, btw, how most of the stuff mentioned here is Gunner's... as a Gunner main, I kinda feel pity for all the other classes that've got nigh naught similar to the nectar of the gods that is these loadouts - overpowered and boring to play, occasionally, as they might be).

[@kaustubhowmick]

Damage Numbers mod, makes it too messy to see, plus having the pc render so many numbers causes fps issue.
Impressive run. Will be looking forward to see more. Maybe mortar rounds