Cryo Minelets Zhukovs by MusNothus

Check out my full Cryo Minelets Guide including gameplay clips demonstrating how the different options in this loadout work on the Drilling in the Name of channel on YouTube.

Tier 1: The options here are 100 extra ammo or 1 extra direct damage. That’s a pretty small amount of extra damage, and it doesn’t reach any notable additional breakpoints. Furthermore, we’re not just using this weapon for direct damage when we’re using the cryo minelets overclock, and having extra ammo means extra minelets. 100 extra ammo is a lot, so I choose the extra ammo.

Tier 2: In tier 2, I choose quickfire ejector to reload more quickly for multiple reasons. One of the main reasons is that I pair this with “get in, get out” in tier 5 – which gives a 50% movement speed bonus for 2.5 seconds when you reload after emptying an entire clip. Obviously being able to reload more quickly is helpful on its own, but counterintuitively it’s actually also kind of beneficial to have the smaller clip size that cryo minelets gives you when you’re using “get in, get out” because this means you can unload the entire clip faster and more frequently, thus activating the “get in, get out” movement speed bonus more often without wasting as much ammo. Although we could take the first mod in this tier for plus 10 clip size to increase the clip size back up to equal with the base gun, I find that a 40 ammo clip produces enough minelets to freeze a praetorian or a line of bugs, so unloading an entire 50 ammo clip would not only take longer but would also be a waste of ammo. Similarly, the zhukovs already fire very quickly, so an increased rate of fire would also probably waste ammo.

Tier 3: Again, 1 extra damage just isn’t that beneficial for this build. Reducing your base spread from 100% to 40%, on the other hand, is very useful. This improvement in precision allows you to keep your minelets clustered tightly even when shooting across the room, which makes it easier to freeze enemies like menaces from a distance. Update 34 also improved this mod so that it now reduces your base spread to 40% rather than just to 50%.

Tier 4: To get the most out of cryo minelets, “blowthrough rounds” are pretty much mandatory because they allow you to shoot through enemies and create minelets below them, rather than only creating minelets with bullets that don’t hit any enemies. The other two options in this tier also got a bit weaker with update 34. “Expanded ammo bags” went from 150 extra ammo to just 100 extra ammo, and 50 ammo was added to the base weapon. The weakpoint bonus on the base weapon also went from 0% to 15%, so you’re already getting some weakpoint bonus even without “hollow-point bullets.”

Tier 5: If you’re using IFG grenades (e.g., for an “elemental loadout” paired with “bullets of mercy” on the assault rifle), then you should take conductive bullets (in which case I’d also take the larger clip size in tier 2). I still take cryo grenades with this loadout, though, because they are just so powerful, which makes conductive bullets nearly pointless. So I take “get in, get out,” which I think is super helpful for making your scout as mobile as possible; I also take “battle frenzy” on my assault rifle for the same reason.

Lastly, I should also briefly mention that update 34 improved cryo minelets indirectly because the zhukov’s base horizontal spread was reduced slightly and also directly because the chance of producing a minelet with each bullet was increased from 70% to 100%, which makes the overclock more consistent and allows you to freeze larger targets.