Grey's Cryo / Single Target EPC Fun [Archived]

by Mouse on 26/06/2023

Salutes 1

Cryo Cannon

Cryo Cannon icon
x0.33 Pressure Drop Rate
-0.4 sec Chargeup Time
+1 Cold per Particle
+75 Tank Size
+5m Cold Stream Reach
-1 sec Repressurization Delay
x1.75 Pressure Gain Rate
+1.6 Flow Rate
+3 Damage per Particle
+1 Cold per Particle
+150 Tank Size
When a particle from Cryo Cannon damages a Frozen enemy and brings its health below 100 "true" hp, it has a (1 - hp/100) probability to deal the remaining hp as Kinetic Damage.
Cool down enemies within 4m of you at a rate of 60 Cold/sec. This stacks with the direct stream and Ice Path's cold sources as well.
Improved Thermal Efficiency

Experimental Plasma Charger

Experimental Plasma Charger icon
+5 Regular Shot Direct Damage
+24 Battery Size
+15 Charged Shot Direct Damage, +15 Charged Shot Area Damage
x0.4 Heat per Second when fully charged
+25% Regular Shot Velocity
-2 Ammo per Charged Shot
x2.5 Charge Speed
+50% Cooling Rate
+1m Charged Shot AoE Radius
+24 Battery Size
+15 Charged Shot Direct Damage, +15 Charged Shot Area Damage
Charged Shots now deal their Direct Damage to enemies hit by the projectile while in-flight, but it no longer explodes upon impact (functionally removing Area Damage). Deals x3 damage vs Frozen targets. Additionally: x0.3 AoE Radius. Regular Shots do [5 plus 25% of their Direct Damage] Heat per shot which can ignite enemies, and 70% of the Charged Shot's damage is converted to Fire-element + Heat.
Shoot the Charged Shot with a Regular Shot before it impacts anything to make it detonate for 240 Damage and carve terrain within a 3m radius. Additionally: x0.8 Heat per Regular Shot and x0.8 Heat per Charged Shot.
Regular Shots now do 10 Fire-element Area Damage in a 1.5m Radius in exchange for -10 Direct Damage.
Heavy Hitter

Reinforced Power Drills

Reinforced Power Drills icon

Satchel Charge

Satchel Charge icon

Heavy Drill Suit

Heavy Drill Suit icon
Impact Axe
Impact Axe icon

Loadout Guide

This is the default Cryo build.
T1: Faster Turbine Spinup for faster responsiveness in close quarters combat (which is what you should be doing with Cold Radiance anyway). Bread and butter of every melee Driller build. +1 Freeze Power doesn’t matter with Cold Radiance; Larger Pressure Chamber, while being an insane upgrade (it actually increases your weapon’s “magsize” or runtime by x3, from about 50 ammo per pressure to 150 ammo per pressure), doesn’t matter because we’re going close range for Cold Radiance to do its job.
T2: Range is a great option in most cases simply for sniping Breeders and killing Mactera at range. Ammo could be used if you’re playing low Complexity caves.
T3: Improved Pump is my default pick; if you feel that you need higher RoF, go for it but I won’t recommend it because Cold Radiance already gives you a ton of Freezing Power every second it procs. Cold Radiance scales off you firing the weapon, RoF doesn’t do much of anything for it besides increasing your freezing speed slightly and increasing ammo spent.
T4: +150 ammo, BiS choice. Everything else is negligible (Cryo does 6 damage per particle, adding +3 won’t make it better than even the default Flamethrower in terms of DPS; +1 Freeze power gets it up to 9, but this is negligible in terms of Freeze breakpoints). If you run out of ammo with this build, I have no idea what you’re spending it on…
T5: Cold Radiance, the cornerstone. 60 Cold per second in a 4m range makes it so anything below a Grunt Guard freezes in 1 sec without you even pointing the cold stream at them. Wade in, freeze, enjoy your free health (two out of three damage components on Throwing Axes have Physical damage type, so do the Drills and Pickaxe which allows you to easily proc Vampire against Frozen targets. Ha ha HP bar go brrr).

This build can be played with a variety of OCs. Ice Spear gives you a 50 ammo 350 Kinetic/150 Area projectile that stuns targets for 3 seconds and pops Frozen enemies with ease, Snowball gives you a 35 ammo 200 Cold power 4m radius projectile with 50% falloff that is basically a great Mactera Plague counter (and can also snipe Breeders/Spitballers at OK range, requires some adjustment to projectile trajectory), and Improved Thermal Efficiency is a good clean OC that doesn’t have any penalties.

U35 edit: Tuned Cooler has been relegated to the dumpster tier thanks to the Pressure Gain Rate penalty being increased to x0.5.

EPC Single-Target Build
The build path is a no-brainer since there’s little support for DD build in the EPC mod tree.
T1: always Increased Particle Density, nothing else improves your direct damage.
T2: always Higher Velocity, Heat Shield is for charged shots.
T3: Tweaked Radiator. Additional cooling rate comes in handy between bursts of single shot fire. There’s a possibility for Crystal Capacitors if you are planning on a TCF/Direct Damage build, but I’m not really keen on mixed builds - you’re missing out on T1 ammo and Heavy Hitter penalises your ammo as well.
T4: +24 ammo.
T5: Thin Containment Field. I’ve learned the hard way why Plasma Burn’s temperature manipulation is fairly weak: it denies you your bonus damage vs Frozen (you hit for 120 damage per shot with this build, by the way) for a negligible 200 Disintegrate burst damage on creatures with 1000+ HP and dangerous melee/AoE attacks which they’ll gladly resort to once you Temperature Shock them. And TCF has quite a convenient x0.8 Heat for Normal Shots stat bonus, making it BiS for normal shot builds because it extends your effective magsize.

OC: Heavy Hitter. No choice among other OCs, this is the only one that adds direct damage to your shots.

EPC’s single shot has issues when it comes to hitting far away targets as it isn’t hitscan. EPC’s normal shots also can’t break armour, aim for the head.