This build may be outdated
This build was created in a previous patch and may not perform similarly in the current patch.
by Ecbrd on 06/11/2022
Cryo Cannon
Colette Wave Cooker
Reinforced Power Drills
Satchel Charge
Heavy Drill Suit
Loadout Guide
Solo dread missions have never been so easy!
This is a support-focused build- but don't let that fool you, all these support tools are here for supporting yourself, so you don't have to stick to the sidelines! In fact, as a solo player, this is one of my favourite builds in the game. For the Cryo Cannon, I take:
- C. - Freezing things faster is important for this build
- A. - Feel free to take either other mod, but the ammo is pretty nice to have.
- B. - Once again, just hitting and freezing stuff faster here.
- A. - This one is also kinda just personal preference? I haven't actually tried the other two mods here so feel free to experiment on your own (like that's ever gonna happen on the steal-a-build website)
- B. - Cold Radiance here is incredibly important for freezing targets faster, especially dreadnoughts. Fragile sounds good but we already have cooker to deal with frozen grunts
And of course, the OC, Ice Spear - Tired of robots ruining your fun Cryo Cannon times? Feeling overburdened by primary ammo? This functionally-clean overclock allows you to do a whole buncha stuff that the Cryo Cannon normally can't, basically functioning as an infinite-range axe reserve. Just make sure you're ONLY firing this into either weakpoints or frozen targets, and bear in mind that despite being a spear, it does NOT pierce enemies.
As for the Wave Cooker, I take:
- B. - More ammo! Concave Lens is not necessary here as Wide Lens is like already best in slot for tier 4 anyway so
- B. - A faster fire rate means better odds that we proc our unfortunately chance-based abilities on this weapon quicker (specifically tempshock and boils)
- A. - The other option doesn't do anything here because we're not firing this weapon at half-frozen enemies, and besides that, we've got like the coldest cryo cannon known to man, you'd have to be trying to only half-freeze any glyphid smaller than your mum.
- A. - Wide Lens because the other one really doesn't do anything of particular substance.
- C. - One of the cornerstones of this build, this mod allows you to one-shot hordes of frozen grunts and take chunks out of praetorians and wardens.
And for the OC we take Blistering Necrosis, another cornerstone of the build. This is here to shore up our matchups against both armoured enemies and ceiling-based enemies. This lets you just fire at anything moving on the ceiling until either they die or the gun overheats (ideally you take your finger off the trigger before that happens). It also lets you add weakpoints where there aren't usually, or where there already are! Either way it boosts any further damage you'd deal to that target.
You have at least some way to deal with every enemy in the game:
Axes and ice spear deal with praetorians, wardens and oppressors after you freeze 'em, and deal well enough with patrol bots and turrets where you can't. On top of this, you can snipe spitballers from across the cave! No more waiting for bosco to do it for you, or being forced to play a cover shooter for the next god-knows-how-long while you snipe it down with a secondary, or running out to get into close range and ending up licking the cave floor
Temp shock on the cooker and cold radiance deal with grunts, you can use the vampire perk with your drills to farm grunts for HP if you're feeling safe enough
Spitters on the ceiling? A few seconds of wave cooking will get 'em (results may vary on acid spitters depending on if you proc necrosis)
Rollers got you down? Cover 'em in boils and fire the cryo for 3x damage. This is like, as bad as matchups get for this build and it's not even really that bad
Mactera are easy enough to just freeze, cold radiance lets you do so quite quickly in general, and if you need to snap-kill a tri-jaw before it spits you can always just throw an axe. At longer distances the cooker also works fine
Menaced by menaces? You have two long range weapons in ice spear and the cooker! Always remember, you can cancel ice spear's animation by right clicking if it starts burrowing away before you can get 'em. If it gets close enough you can remind it why this is a misplay by freezing it
Nemesed by Nemesis? Simply pump ice spears into his weakpoints until there's nothing left of him. Bosco actually does decent damage here so do make sure he's on the case of any nemeses that show up.
Bulks ruining your day? Tired of running out of their stupid weakpoint nutsacks? With Blistering Necrosis you can literally just make more of them! You also can freeze them to cancel the detonation but I usually don't care that much about it when they do that
Trolled by Trawlers? They usually go down in one or two axes and are relatively simple to see coming.
Getting caught by Cave Leeches? Skill issue.
On escort, try and keep your Axes through the first heartstone wave so you can throw 'em at the 2nd phase rocks.
Dreads go down to this build very swiftly if you know how to freeze them. To do so, you don't wanna empty the pressure chamber, you need to stop occasionally to refill- but not for too long! Here's some tips for each dread:
Hivegaurd's sentinels go down to just one freeze-tempshock combo and a bit of chip from Bosco or a teammate on haz 5
For Hiveguard's vent phase, you can hit all three of them with a satchel charge then get them the rest of the way down with the cryo, this gets him into his next phase half-frozen, and you can skip the rocks by just freezing him and chucking two axes into him.
It's important for frozen dreads and oppressors that you learn to cancel the recovery frames of your axe throw by right clicking. Practicing the timing for this is literally free because you can just pick up the axes again and it's good to learn because it gives you really good burst damage.
For OG dreadnought, there really isn't much to say besides you can do a lot of damage between freezing, blisters and axes.
For twins, I recommend freezing and bursting down one of them (usually lacerator) to below half to trigger the initial heal, and then taking turns between the two covering them in boils and popping 'em with your axes or cryo cannon.
New Season Notes
This build has only gotten better with less rival presence and more Rockpox events. Against rockpox glyphids you can pretty much add more boils to them as you like. Boils are even better than usual on infected glyphids because they deal fixed damage directly to the healthbar when they pop, similarly to the boils that they already are covered in. Rockpox Praetorians are to you as regular praetorians are to any vanilla cryo build, you can freeze them in place and drill their bits until they die. If you're too crowded to see more weakpoints you can just blast 'em with the cooker to get another weakpoint to hit.
Perks, Armour, Drills, throwable, etc.
As for the rest of the loadout, this is just what I use, health on my armour, damage for drills, more satchels (you really want both ammo mods for satchels because resupplies for specifically satchel charges, and nothing else, don't round up for some reason so you only get 1 per resup if you don't) Very obviously you want axes as the throwable here, if there's any single thing causing you problems you can usually axe it and carry on, and if you don't agree that it's best, then lol. My personal perk loadout here is Thorns, Vampire, Resupplier, Dash, Iron Will. Kinda feels bad that they made so many cool perks and there's like three actives and four passives that are just best-in-slot.