Solo Pistolero
This was harder than melee IMO. I was a better player this build and I used the tagged skills and upgraded my gadgets unlike my Solo Blunt ... but Pistolero does not have the same damage output as solo blunt, and relies on ammo. I had to buy ammo quite a few times. Should never have sold the Energy Pistol either, I haven't actually fired it once yet in the game yet. In my solo blunt playthrough I didn't need to use as many grenades as I did in this build (I think I used 2-3 extra ones this time around). I only used pistols, never used anything else - not how I played in my Solo Blunt and not how you would play the actual game, I'm sure.
Colt Classic was a big jump from any of the other pistols before it, I actually don't really rate any of the other pistols in the demo apart from the two I'm holding. The multi-barrel / short range ones have some use early on but then I found that they became useless after Big Jim because their penetration through armor sucks plus they have high AP cost and it's just not worth using them.
I used the Deflection Shield (?) instead of the Energy Shield for this build and upgraded it to the 55%, I tried the Energy Shield but didn't feel like it really helped that much as enemies often flank you, maybe it's better when it's upgraded though.
In hindsight I would tag armor instead of Critical Strike for the extra point in Armor, just to get that bit of extra survivability which I think is worth a lot more than 1% CS. I made some saves and experimented with a couple of other feats ... I tried Sharpshooter as 7th but didn't feel it had any impact and reloaded and picked Lone Wolf and it made a difference in the final fight for sure, the extra 5 CS helped me get a couple of super crits early on ... and then I killed Winfield with my very last .45 bullet (0/0) in both guns after I missed him 5 times in a row before a final graze to kill (True Random UL).
I used four of the same feats as my other build: Fast Runner, Second Wind, Tough Bastard and Lone Wolf. I found that Charger was super useful for positioning and flanking and I think Opportunist was helpful reducing incoming damage as staggers reduce enemy AP on their next turn. Second Wind was still good, but not AS good as with Solo Blunt because of the lower damage output there was less of a snowball effect. I think both Opportunist and Second Wind could be swapped out for the Initiative one and maybe the dodge feat and performance would be similar.
In the fight positioning I still used the most forward positioning most of the time to optimize my hit chance, and Charger made it possible to start in a close square and then move back behind cover at the end of the turn. I can see how playing defensive works for Riflemen but I find that for other guns you really need to be up in the enemy's grill to have the most impact. I feel a bit less bad about cover after this playthrough, finishing your turn at least with cover from *some* of the enemies is almost always better than standing out in the open and an enemy Rifleman behind cover is annoying.
I think maybe there's some room for a cover-based feat for people who want to play as a popamole.
Hardest fights for this build were (in guesstimated order):
Big Jim (needed a flashbang, medium gas and aggro stim to win this)
Carter
Clarence Manley
Mutants / the early fight with the Distortion Basher cunt
I found Mutants harder as Solo Blunt, although if I had tagged skills and upgraded my deflection shield in that playthrough maybe I wouldn't have. I found everything after Carter a lot easier. The Carter fight would actually be much harder if he didn't do dumb shit like throw a smoke, run and then not shoot at you - which he does if you start on certain squares. In both my completed playthroughs he has had a higher initiative than me, and all he needs to do is shoot straight off the bat at you at close range, and and that would probably cause an early g_g 100 re
You have 16 stat points to distribute with a 4 as a base line, 1 tagged skill by default w/o int bonuses, 3 skills to raise by 1 and a starting feat. That's it. The rest "building" is just picking a feat each level up. The list of feats would be nice to look at outside of the game though.
