Scout Mobility Loadout by MusNothus

This is a version of the loadout I discussed in my Scout Mobility Guide on the Drilling in the Name of channel on YouTube. The big difference is that in my YouTube guide, I picked upgrades with the sole purpose of improving mobility, but the upgrades I've chosen in this Karl.gg guide have the goal of being more combat-capable (ie, for Hazard 5) while still using mobility-focused overclocks etc. Below, I'll explain why I made the changes that I did.

M1000 loadout changes:

• These changes are largely focused on meeting important breakpoints and will be referencing the U34 changelog.

• There are two important mods which you might consider switching to for the purpose of reaching breakpoints in haz 5: tier 1 damage and tier 2 armor break. Without these, you will already kill grunts with a regular shot to the mouth and you can kill a slasher with a focus shot to the mouth, but you can't kill a grunt with a focus shot to the body and you can't kill guards with focus shots to the mouth. If you change my loadout to take damage in tier 1: then you can kill a guard with a focus shot to the mouth and you can kill a grunt with a focus shot to the body. If you change my loadout to take armor break in tier 2: then you can kill a grunt with a focus shot to the body or with two regular shots to the body. If you change my loadout to take both of these: then you can do all of the above plus kill an acid spitter with a focus shot to the body. The nice thing about having these extra one-shot kill options with focus shots in regards to mobility is that it gives you another way to refresh the hover mechanic with a focus shot. Giving up ammo in tier 1 is a loss of a lot of ammo, which I find to be a little rough when using a special powder boomstick, but those additional one-shot options are really nice, and like I mentioned in the video you can hover without using ammo, so this doesn't affect your mobility that much. Giving up fast charging coils in tier 2 will affect your hovering a bit, but really not a ton (that's why it was hard to demonstrate the difference with clips in my video). Plus, with hoverclock you're going to want to hold the focus shot for the max hovering duration anyway, so being able to shoot a focus shot sooner with fast charging coils won't really matter for you.

• So overall, I think there's a pretty good argument to change the loadout I mentioned in the video from 11121 to 23121 in order to meet more hazard 5 breakpoints (4 player scaling). Analogously, for combat purposes, it may make sense to change the boomstick loadout to take damage in tier 1 or more pellets in tier 3.

• If, on the other hand, you want a build prioritizing regular shots instead of focus shots, you should definitely use the hipster overclock, and there are some important breakpoints for this, as well, which help dictate the loadout. Taking the T1 damage boost allows you to one-shot grunts with a regular shot to the mouth (which you otherwise lose due to the -17 direct damage from hipster), and then if you add on T3 focus damage you'll be able to one-shot grunts in the body with focus shots, which is great for swarm clearing with blowthrough rounds. If you take T3 damage, you lose out on the larger clip size, plus you'll be using fewer focus shots with this build so hitting where it hurts and precision terror in T5 are less useful, thus it might make sense to use killing machine in T5 (with the caveat that animation canceling makes this less useful).

• Therefore for a hipster blowthrough build, it would make sense to use 23113 as your loadout (especially given that extra ammo is somewhat overkill because of how much ammo you already get with hipster).

Boomstick loadout changes:

• The first thing is to change to "white phosphorus shells" in tier 5. For the max mobility loadout, I chose "fear the boomstick" because it adds some evasiveness to your loadout which fits with the mobility theme, but it's not that strong of a fear effect and combat-wise, "white phosphorus shells" is much stronger. As LazyMaybe explains in this video, "white phosphorus" converts half of your kinetic damage to fire damage and also adds heat without actually decreasing any of your total direct damage, unlike PGL's "incendiary compound" which does subtract half of your direct and AOE damage in order to just add heat (i.e., no fire type damage is dealt directly, but rather the only extra damage done is from being set on fire). That means that "white phosphorus" can do more direct damage against enemies who are weak to fire and less direct damage to those with fire resistance, but you can also set enemies on fire for damage over time, so this is typically a net gain overall.

• The second thing to change is to either take "double sized buckshot" in tier 1 for +3 damage per pellet or "high capacity shells" for +3 pellets per shot (which LazyMaybe also covers in his video). The tier 3 mod is a bigger overall damage boost but also a bigger decrease in ammo from not taking ammo in that tier. Having more pellets is also probably more reliable than more damage per pellet, though, since there's more chances to hit the enemy, rather than relying on fewer, higher damage pellets, in which case having a pellet or two miss is going to decrease your damage dealt more significantly. So overall I think the choice will depend on how often you use your boomstick for combat vs how often you use it for mobility, but I think taking "high capacity shells" in tier 3 but sticking with ammo in tier 1 is a good compromise, though this is more of a personal choice than taking "white phosphorus shells" which is a stronger recommendation.

• Therefore, for combat effectiveness, I'd change the loadout I mentioned in the Scout Mobility Guide video from 11212 to 11313.

Perks

• Vampire, resupplier, born ready, dash, and hoverboots are a good balance of mobility and combat effectiveness, but I'd probably still replace hoverboots with iron will and would consider replacing dash with field medic as well.

A note on using "overcharged winch" vs "high velocity ejection system" on the grappling hook when using hoverclock:

• I should clarify that personally I definitely prefer "high velocity ejection system" overall. Honestly personally I'm so used to using "high velocity ejection system" that it's really disorienting to switch to "overcharged winch." I know a lot of very skilled players use "overcharged winch," though, and it can be fun to just slingshot yourself around with this when you also have hoverclock and special powder as additional ways of maneuvering in the air. Since you have these other ways of maneuvering when you have hoverclock and/or special powder, you don't necessarily need the faster "wind up time" from "high velocity ejection system" because you can catch yourself with hoverclock or special powder when you fall, rather than solely having to rely on the grappling hook to save you from falls. That being said, the faster "wind up time" with "high velocity ejection system" is helpful when chaining together hovers or when you accidentally special powder yourself the wrong direction. Overall I'd just describe "high velocity ejection system" as feeling 'crisper' than "overcharged winch," kind of like the difference between tight and loose steering in racing games or floaty and precise controls in platformers or fighting games. I guess to really boil it down, the main reason why now I sometimes use "overcharged winch" with my special powder hoverclock loadout is just for some variety, but I only sometimes use "overcharged winch" for this and still mostly use "high velocity ejection system".

A note on the flare gun loadout:

• Lastly, I'll just briefly mention that I set up my flare gun build differently in this mobility loadout than on my main loadout. I take the increased firing rate in tier 2 because I have born ready, so I don't have as much of a use for the larger clip size. And I take more ammo in tier 3 rather than duration because I'm assuming I'll be moving from place to place more quickly and therefore will leave an area before the flares go out, but I'll also want more flares available since I'll be moving from place to place more. AxisKronos does make a strong argument for choosing 222 on your flare loadout in this video, however, which is based on how DRG rounds your ammo resupplies based on the size of your magazine.