Introduction

Need to carry your team? Tired of waiting for your scout to mine minerals? Tired of having to rely on your teammates to deal with swarms, glyphids, mactera? Need more CC? Want a class that does it all? Enter the One Man Army Driller Build.
This is also a setup that I use and works for modded Hazard 6, x2 enemies difficulty and other modded difficulties. Of course, it also works on other types of modded difficulties and the regular vanilla game in Hazard 5 and below.
The Sticky Flame playstyle is one of the most powerful and ammo efficient ways to deal with enemies. 20? 30? 100 grunts on your screen? It doesn't matter because they will all be walking through the same lines of sticky flames and will be dead as they walk through. Here is a showcase of the sticky flame playstyle's power: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEfb-nvMsmE. One magazine to deal with an entire wave of grunts by myself.

Weapons

CRSPR Flamethrower

• Tier 1: Don't need magazine size especially if you cancel the reload animation. You will get more value from having more range instead as it allows you to do the sticky flame playstyle more proactively from a further and safer distance. A lot of the time, bugs are tightly clumped up when they just spawned. Being able to reach these further spots allows you to decimate them more efficiently. And you are able to provide better sticky flame coverage support for your team as you can shoot from a longer range.
• Tier 2: Natural choice is Sticky Flame Duration (+3 seconds)
  • Having a longer sticky flame duration allows you to even be more efficient.
  • Triple Filtered Fuel is no longer necessary with the nerf to the robots.
  • Why not T2 damage? Because it's useless for sticky flame playstyle. Your damage comes from your sticky flames. This mod does not affect the damage of sticky flames. Even if you wanted to sprinkle in some direct flame damage with the sticky flame playstyle, you neither have the large magazine or total ammo capacity to be sustain ths efficiently.
• Tier 3: absolutely no-brainer here. This is one of the core aspects that makes sticky flame playstyle so efficient and powerful. If you don't take this mod, it increases the chance of even regular grunts walking past your flames not being ignited.
• Tier 4: just pick ammo. There's no other better option in this tier. This gives you a nice healthy 300 total ammo which is plenty enough even in modded difficulty.
• Tier 5: Neither of these really make a big impact on sticky flame playstyle.
  • If you do the sticky flames playstyle properly (being proactive rather than reactive) you will very rarely ever get to take advantage of Heat Radiance because 1) enemies won't be in range most of the time (since most of them should be dying already by the time they do get anywhere near in range), and 2) Sticky Fuel builds do not have the magazine or total ammo capacity to sustain proccing Heat Radiance efficiently.
  • For regular Haz 5, it won't matter which you pick but I do recommend Targets Explode for Glacial and Dense Biozone missions to counter shockers.
  • For modded difficulty, you will get more value using Targets Explode as it is insanely good against Brood Nexuses (if you time it properly you can insta kill all of the swarmers after it pops), naedocytes (especially since breeders are now actually a very consistent spawn in modded difficulty), and shockers making it even more ammo efficient.

EPC

The listed EPC build (21222 Persistent Plasma) is the recommended build. However, depending on your playstyle there are two main options you can change--the overclock and the T3 mod choice. Also the T2 mod is to your preference. T2.A allows you to manage heat of chaining multiple charged shots easier and T2.B might make it easier for you to shoot medium-long range TCF shots although some practice generally negates this.

Choosing the overclock

First, there are two main overclocks for the "One Man Army" Driller playstyle: Persistent Plasma and Energy Rerouting.

• Persistent Plasma is undoubtedly the strongest option--it leaves a DoT field of plasma. Unlike Energy Rerouting, doing normal charged shots has value and isn't reliant on TCF completely to have a purpose. It is highly recommended for modded difficulties.
  • More additional damage: especially against larger enemies like oppressors which takes too long for sticky flame to damage through or harder to reach enemies like breeders or spitballers
  • More coverage on top of your sticky flames: You can shoot a plasma field at far away enemies (or even your teammates to give them a quick defense). It's also useful when you run out of flamethrower magazine and you still have to quickly provide more AoE support for you and/or your team.
  • Efficent defense against regular and nadocyte shockers: Especially in modded difficulties, it is good against these waves of shockers that come at your team rather than relying solely on your Flamethrower's T5 mod.
• Energy Rerouting is good if you simply want more TCF ammo usage and don't mind the loss of plasma field. Again, we are talking about the One Man Army Driller here. It's not just the damage dealer/AoE/CC support of the team that you want to excel at. It is also the objective completion and gathering of resources.

Choosing the T3 mod choice

The T3 mod choice is simple--less charged ammo cost OR faster charge speed.

Here is a list of the combinations of overclock choice + T3 mod choice. It is sorted by decreasing charge speed, first build has fastest charge speed

• 2X222 Energy Rerouting (faster charge speed)
• 2X222 Persistent Plasma Pipe (faster charge speed)
• 2X122 Energy Rerouting (reduced charge ammo cost)
• 2X122 Persistent Plasma (reduced charge ammo cost)

Which TCF build should I use?

I highly recommend just playing these different combinations in actual missions to get a feel for what you are comfortable with when it comes to ammo usage and charge speed when it comes to YOUR playstyle.

Depending on your playstyle, you may find that a particular build suits you more:

• 2X222 Energy Rerouting - maybe you don't really find much value from the Persistent Plasma or dont find it too necessary for what you play. So you want something still with fast charge speed but more ammo for TCF shots than the next PP build.
• 2X222 Persistent Plasma Pipe (faster charge speed) - the overall recommended build.
• 2X122 Energy Rerouting (reduced charge ammo cost) -
• 2X122 Persistent Plasma (reduced charge ammo cost)

Keep in mind that Persistent Plasma does not need TCF implosions (which costs one extra ammo to detonate the charged shot) to have value.

Also fast charge speed may not necessarily be an upside for you. Perhaps you find it harder to execute TCF shots because it charges too fast, so you may find the reduced charge ammo cost to be a double upside instead (reduced charge ammo cost and having slower charge speed to line up TCF shots easier).

Perks

I personally use Resupplier, Sweet Tooth, Vampire for my passive perks then Dash and Iron Will for my active perks. However, here are a list of options.

• Passive Perks:
  • Resupplier (strong choice): good choice for any class. Both the extra health and the increased resupplying speed are very useful in vanilla and modded difficulties.
  • Sweet Tooth (strong choice): having EPC's T5 TCF mod gives you the ability to mine red sugar from ceilings and higher walls, therefore you can get good usage from this perk.
  • Vampire (IW perk dependent): main use of this is for getting health back during IW. If you use Iron Will, I recommend getting this as Driller is considered a pillar in clearing safety for your team.
  • Born Ready (playstyle dependent): particularly, there is a use for this if you use the Persistent Plasma Overclock. Essentially this allows you to use your PP weapon more and then come back to a reloaded flamethrower. An often scenario you'll encounter is that you emptied your magazine laying down sticky flames, but there is mactera or an unprotected side of grunts that can come through. So you switch to PP, lay down some plasma fields, then switch back to a reloaded flamethrower to continue laying down sticky flames allowing for higher uptime of sticky.
  • Deep Pockets (playstyle dependent, weaker choice): I do not recommend this for modded difficulties as there are simply better choices. But if you play at a comfortable difficulty and you like to mine/TCF everything and want to simply carry more, then this is a nice QoL perk. This allows for faster speedplay and getting ahead of the team. I do use to run this everytime back when I only played vanilla Haz 5, and this perk does uphold the "One Man Army" Driller idea.
• Active Perks
  • Dash
  • Iron Will

Misc

• Pickaxe (11): Take the damage mod
  • The biggest weakness of sticky flames is single target damage. The damage mod is really good against big enemies such as Oppressors and Praetorians.
• Grenades: Impact Axe
  • Can take out terrain like the lightning crystals, fungus poison mushrooms, hollow bough's stabber vines and regenerating vines.
  • Quickly stunning things like Menaces
  • If you fail your TCF, dont have enough time to prepare one, or dont have enough space, axes are amazing against quickly taking out some trijaws/brundles/mactera.