Doom Roguelike Equipment Analysis: Basic Assemblies

Assemblies are an extension of the Mod Pack system, specifically being a 'recipe' system whereby specific combinations of Mod Packs on the right valid base can produce a radically different effect from what those Mod Packs alone do. I say 'can produce' because the game prompts you if the Mod Pack you're attempting to assign can finish an Assembly, and if you say 'no' to the prompt, one of two things will happen:

1: The Mod Pack assignment will be cancelled. This happens if you can't legally assign the Mod Pack, because you have too many Mod Packs on the gear in question, or because that's too many copies of what you're trying to assign.

2: The Mod Pack will go through as normal, instead of the Assembly occurring.

If you say 'yes', then of course the Assembly completes: the gear in question will be recolored to teal (In graphics mode, this only comes up with menu stuff: surprisingly, the game doesn't apply a teal glow to Assemblies), it will be renamed based on the Assembly, and its behavior will be changed according to the Assembly.

Note that by default you cannot mod Assemblies. If you have Whizkid 2 you can put 1 Mod Pack on them, and as of 0.9.9.8 Technicians can get Whizkid 3 and put two Mod Packs on Assemblies, but that's it. Also note that you cannot recursively Assemble Assemblies out of Assemblies: your Whizkid 3 Technician Assembling a Plasmatic Shotgun and then applying 2 Power Mods to it won't give you an opportunity to make it into an Elephant Gun. No prompt will appear.

Assemblies are one of the more obvious elements of the game intending a player to play 'blind' and learn things themselves, but in a friendlier fashion than with traditional Roguelikes. There's a menu subscreen you can access anytime in play that shows all three tiers of Assembly as existing, shows the names of all Basic Assemblies (And still shows the quantity of Advanced and Mastery Assemblies), and anytime you complete an Assembly recipe the game permanently reveals what the Assembly recipe is across all runs. (Both its Mod Pack requirements and what base is valid for it) So you can go into the game blind and discover Assemblies organically for yourself, but don't have to guess and write down the exact rules for Assemblies you've completed: this is appreciated given for one thing the valid bases for an Assembly aren't necessarily obvious just from successfully making one. (eg High Power Weapon requires the weapon have a clip size of at least 5 while not being a Shotgun: you're unlikely to guess that exact ruleset just from successfully making the Assembly once) It's a nice balance.

One aspect to Assemblies that makes them a nuisance to properly assess when eg looking at the wiki is that the game is inconsistent about the consideration of 'mod pack inheritance'. Some Assemblies 'roll in' the benefits of at least some of the Mod Packs that are required to build them (eg a Tactical Shotgun requires a Power Mod Pack and has higher base damage than an unmodded Combat Shotgun: exactly as much as a Power Mod Pack provides a Combat Shotgun), other Assemblies work in some substantial capacity opposite to at least one of their components (Tower Shield requires an Onyx Mod Pack, which makes Armor indestructible, but Tower Shield can still lose durability and in fact is hard to repair. Nanofiber Armor uses a Power Mod Pack but reduces the Armor's Protection. Etc), and some Assemblies are at huge right angles to their component requirements. (Plasmatic Shrapnel uses a Sniper and Power Mod Pack to switch a Shotgun to Plasma damage. Sniper Mod Packs don't even do anything for Shotguns normally! They affect Accuracy!) This is one area where the game's Assembly screen isn't very useful: it doesn't even give a summary of the effects, let alone get into these kinds of specifics.

Assemblies are in fact one of the bigger motivations for me making Doom Roguelike post series at all!

Anyway, on to specifics, this post covering just Basic Assemblies because if I did all Assemblies in one post it would be unreasonably huge.

Chainsword

Mods needed:  (Power, Bulk)

Base: Combat Knife.

Result: Base damage becomes 8d2, Accuracy becomes +2, can no longer be thrown.

Reminder that a basic Combat Knife is 2d5 and +1 Accuracy. The Chainsword is thus more than 50% more lethal per hit, and is noticeably less swingy with its damage (2-10 becomes 8-16), while being slightly more prone to hitting. (62.5% hit rate rises to 74.07%, specifically)

Note that a Combat Knife you equipped with these Mod Packs without converting it would be 3d6, and thus actually have slightly higher peak damage. (18, specifically) In most runs this doesn't matter, but in Angel of Max Carnage this Assembly is awkward, since you'll always roll max damage and the Accuracy bonus is irrelevant.

A Technician running Malicious Blades should probably build Chainswords anyway since melee weapons can't stack multiple copies of a Mod Pack: Assembling Chainswords so you can put Power and Bulk on those is the best way to rack up more damage. It's not like you're going to put an Agility Mod Pack on, so the only question is if you'd prefer Technical's attack speed increase over all this damage... and that's more a 'maybe put a Technical Mod Pack on the Chainswords instead of a Bulk Mod Pack' point.

Incidentally, Power is the superior Mod Pack to apply to Chainswords since they're made of so many little dice. Adding Power results in 8d3 vs adding Bulk is 9d2, or 8-24 vs 9-18: Power gives a slightly lower minimum, but much higher maximum and by extension higher average.

Chainsword itself is a bit of a niche Assembly. Malicious Blades Technicians care about it very much, but for standard runs, you often get the Chainsaw before you get any Mod Packs, and if you have the Chainsaw, why bother Assembling Chainswords when you could be bumping up the Chainsaw itself? (eg giving it a Bulk Mod and Power Mod results in it being 5d7: 5-35 damage is generally better than 8-16 damage, and ranks in Brute rapidly minimize the minimum damage difference) That said, for Angel of 100 and Archangel of 666 runs that make any use of melee, a Chainsword may well be the best melee weapon you can get, so you should keep it in mind in those modes even if playing a Marine or Scout.

Piercing Blade

Mods Needed:  (Power, Agility)

Base: All valid melee weapons.

Result: Adds 1 side to all damage dice, and changes the damage type to Piercing.

In practice, this can only be applied to Combat Knives and Chainsaws unless you're a Technician. Of the two, Combat Knives only have two dice, resulting in an average benefit of 1 damage per hit, while Chainsaws have 4 dice and so average 2 damage gained per hit.

The theoretical primary point is the switch to the Piercing damage type, which is a unique damage type only seen via this Assembly and the Nanoshrapnel Assembly. Piercing itself is on paper a very nice damage type: firstly, nothing in the game resists it (Not even any Armors, so even a Hellknight picking up eg Gothic Armor is taking full damage), and secondly? It completely ignores Protection.

Unfortunately, melee is a weapon category that gets dubious benefit out of the Piercing damage type.

First of all, Arachnotrons are vulnerable to Melee -to the Melee damage type. They take double damage from Melee! So Piercing Blade actually lowers your damage against Arachnotrons! This is a unique issue to Melee: no enemy has a weakness to any other damage type. And no enemy naturally resists Melee damage: the only time Piercing is bypassing a resistance for melee weaponry is when an enemy picks up an Armor that provides Melee resistance.

Second, melee weapons simply don't do hitspam. You always whap the enemy for one big hit. (Partial exception: Malicious Blades usage results in... 2 hits) In conjunction with Brute adding raw damage and Berserk doubling damage before Protection, melee weapons don't actually care that much about enemy Protection: Brute 3 with an unmodified Chainsaw while Berserking is 26-60 damage per hit! No enemy in the game has more than 10 Protection, and in fact very few have even as much as 3 Protection: ignoring Protection is barely affecting a melee build's damage.

Third, the main qualifier to the prior -Malicious Blades- places Piercing Blade in direct competition with Chainsword, which has no tradeoffs, is a much bigger damage increase, and is of course a more general damage increase. And Chainswords backed by Brute 3 is already 17-25 damage: even 5 Protection isn't hurting that badly. Twin Piercing Blades would give you 11-21 damage: you might notice that attacking with twin Chainswords into 5 Protection (ie the Cyberdemon) results in 12-20 damage a hit, which isn't clearly inferior to the twin Piercing Blades! 5 Protection is the highest you see on anything that could be called a normal enemy!

I don't really get why Piercing Blade exists, to be honest. For a Combat Knife, it's far better to turn it into a Chainsword, which has much bigger benefits and instead of demanding you use a semi-valuable Agility pack, it has you expending a Bulk pack. Runs tend to crave additional Agility packs while ending up tossing Bulk packs, unable to find good use for them.

Meanwhile, the Chainsaw has two more advanced Assemblies and simply piling Mod Packs on without turning it into a Piercing Blade will let you get an overall better result anyway. The only time Piercing Blade makes any sense is if you're using a Chainsaw and are confident you'll never get Whizkid ranks.

As of 0.9.9.8 it's slightly less irrelevant as the Technician can apply it to Mjollnir, the Subtle Knife, and the Butcher's Cleaver. Doing so with the Butcher's Cleaver is even a respectable increase in damage raising it from 5d6 to 5d7. The Subtle Knife is more underwhelming, raising it from 3d5 to 3d6, and Mjollnir is downright sad, going from 1d25 to 1d26.

But it's the only Assembly you can put on any of them, so you might as well do it.

Speedloader Pistol

Mods Needed:  (Technical, Agility)

Base: Basic Pistol.

Result: Base reload time lowered from 1.2 seconds to 0.4 seconds.

If you're not getting any ranks in Whizkid, this is one of two options for Pistol-valid Assemblies, and the other one is a bad fit to a Pistol focus, and so unless you find one of the uncommon better Pistols you might as well assemble a Speedloader Pistol.

As it happens, it's actually a pretty good Assembly once you've got a few ranks of Son of a Gun. You end up with reloads being fairly painfully long chunks of time compared to your lightning-fast shots: cutting the time spent on reloading is legitimately quite helpful.

Actually, there also aren't any cleanly better, reliably-producible Assemblies in the more advanced tiers. Everything more advanced needs an Exotic Mod Pack (So you shouldn't pre-plan on the idea you can perform them) and/or has trade-offs built into the Assembly. Speedloader Pistol is the only reliable, clean improvement.

Mind, if you're planning on going for Whizkid 2, you should probably assume you're making one or more Mod Pack-packed Pistols with no Assembly...

To my surprise, 0.9.9.8 actually buffed Speedloader Pistol: it used to result in 0.6 seconds reload time. I'm not sure why this is so: I'm perfectly happy to work with this buff, but Speedloader Pistol was a perfectly usable Assembly. Why did it receive a buff before really sad Assemblies like Piercing Blade?

Elephant Gun

Mods Needed:  (Power*2)

Base: Basic Shotgun.

Result: Base damage raised from 8d3 to 12d3 (ie damage range goes from 8-24 to 12-36), but base reload time raised from 1 second to 2.5 seconds.

Reminder that base reload time has no effect on a Shottyman-derived reload, and so the disadvantage of Elephant Gun can be substantially ignored. Shottyman also means you definitionally have Reloader 2, bringing it down to a much more reasonable 1 second -and if you grab Reloader 3 at extended ranks, then it takes 0.25 seconds, which is very safe.

As such, Elephant Gun's disadvantage mostly means you're not going to mindlessly apply it to a Shotgun you're using as a backup weapon for a non-Shotgun build. In 0.9.9.7, where Reloader was weaker, it was a more significant issue, but not by much.

Elephant Gun itself is notable for its incredible ammo efficiency: it's better than an unmodded Super Shotgun (Which does 8-32 damage per Shell), it's better than an unmodded Assault Shotgun even when firing on fairly distant targets (At range 8, the Elephant Gun's max damage is 15.2, whereas the Assault Shotgun's is 14.4), and since it fires exactly one Shell at a time it tends to come out ahead of even a modded Super Shotgun since the Elephant Gun will never waste an entire shot the way a Super Shotgun will anytime nothing survives its first shot. This is particularly important to keep in mind in Angel of Shotgunnery runs, where you have decent odds of being basically entirely reliant on Shotgun Shells for the entire run: ammo efficiency is really important for making sure you don't suffer ammo starvation when you're reliant on exactly one ammo type.

In terms of DPS, the Elephant Gun is overall inferior to a Tactical Shotgun or Assault Shotgun unless a single engagement really drags simply because those Shotguns can fire 5-6 times in a row: when ammo is plentiful, those tend to be better to use. As an Elephant Gun is demanding of precious Power Mods, it's a much more dubious Assembly outside of Angel of Shotgunnery, since you have the option of using other weapon types if you run low on Shotgun Shells. Not that it's bad or anything, just harder to justify spending Power Mods on when its benefits are less essential.

The Elephant Gun makes for a good jump-off point regarding one of the odder design decisions to Doom Roguelike; it tends to want Assemblies to have explicit disadvantages. This is clunky given Mod Packs have innate benefits and Assemblies have the implicit disadvantage of locking out/limiting further modding. A basic Shotgun with 3 Power Mod Packs on it is 11d3, or one die short of the Elephant Gun's damage, and you could still stack on a couple of Technical Mods (Resulting in a fire speed advantage) or Bulk Mods (Resulting in reduced reload time instead of increased reload time) onto your supermodded Shotgun. Now of course if you have Whizkid 2 so you can put 5 Mod Packs on you can necessarily put a Mod Pack on the Elephant Gun, but my point is that the Elephant Gun doesn't look so amazing when taking into account supermodding -when the Elephant Gun is one of the better Assemblies on this point. Some Assemblies are such a shaky trade they're arguably a downgrade compared to the unmodded gear!

Basic Assemblies aren't too wonky about this since they don't require Whizkid ranks. If you don't go for Whizkid ranks, the Elephant Gun is competing against a single Mod Pack, not 5 Mod Packs, and it being a 50% damage increase in exchange for +150% reload time is competing with stuff like '12.5% damage increase with no disadvantage', which is much more favorable of a comparison to Elephant Gun. Whizkid is clearly not conceptualized as a mandatory Trait, and if you're not a Technician or doing Angel of 100/Archangel of 666 then it isn't a mandatory Trait, so this aspect of the design is understandable if a bit rough around the edges... ignoring that several Basic Assemblies are really bad, but in most of those cases it's a tuning issue that could be corrected with more favorable numbers.

It's Advanced and Master Assemblies where this tendency toward Assemblies having tradeoffs is basically unavoidably wonky, exacerbated by the fact that some Advanced and Master Assemblies don't labor under such disadvantages.

Gatling Gun

Mods Needed:  (Bulk*2)

Base: Basic Chaingun.

Result: Base clip size raised 50% (From 40 to 60), base damage per shot raised from 1d6 to 1d7, number of shots fired per volley raised by 50% (From 4 to 6), but reloading takes 3 seconds instead of 2.5 seconds.

For an Ammochain Marine, this is a significant improvement to your Chaingun's performance with nearly no disadvantage: a small increase to reload time is difficult to care about when you only need to reload every 60 times you pull the trigger. With that kind of wiggle room, if you're combat-reloading it's probably because you handled a situation poorly in the first place. (Exception: the Mortuary and Limbo can bury you in enough enemies to demand combat-reloads... but there's a solid argument that you shouldn't have gone into them if a Gatling Gun was your best weapon) It's not necessarily the best thing to do with a Chaingun, but if you're overflowing with Bulk Mods, it's a pretty good choice.

For anybody else, the Gatling Gun is a much shakier Assembly. Ammo wastage is a constant hazard with a Chaingun as-is, and the Gatling Gun is worsening the problem! It's also hampered by other design decisions, such as how Triggerhappy doesn't 'interact' with Assembly modifications, so if you have Triggerhappy 2 a Gatling Gun is only a 33% increase in shots fired, further depressing its value. The clip size increase is also less good than it seems: since Bulk Mods chain-multiply, 2 Bulk Mods applied conventionally is a 69% increase in ammo, more than the 50% Gatling Gun provides. This doesn't matter if you're not getting Whizkid, of course, but if you are grabbing Whizkid, you're much better off supermodding your Chaingun with some mix of common Mod Packs.

Overall, Gatling Gun is great for Ammochain Marines and underwhelming otherwise.

Micro Launcher

Mods Needed:  (Technical*2)

Base: Basic Rocket Launcher.

Result: Damage is lowered from 6d6 to 5d5, blast radius is lowered from 4 to 3, but fire time is reduced from 1 second to 0.5 seconds, reload time is lowered from 1.5 seconds to 0.8 seconds, and Accuracy is raised from +4 to +7.

In short: you've made your Rocket Launcher less lethal per shot and by extension made it less prone to vaporizing gear and punching holes in walls as well as reduced its ability to kill large groups at once, but it's much more likely to hit your desired target and has a much better fire rate. Especially as of 0.9.9.8: previously it only lowered fire time to 0.8 seconds, so most of the fire rate increase was from making the reload occur almost twice as fast. This is an appreciated change given for one thing Shottyman works on Rocket Launchers and so you don't necessarily care that much about the raw reload time.

Do keep in mind that if you're using Shottyman's effect to reload that you're ignoring a significant fraction of the Micro Launcher Assembly's benefits. It can still be a worthwhile Assembly to pursue for a Shottyman, especially if you've been showered with Technical packs, but if you're religious about move-reloading you might be better off trying to build a Tactical Rocket Launcher, or not even trying to Assembly it up at all.

Also keep in mind that in a standard run you'll automatically get multiple Missile Launchers out of Special Levels, which also have a tighter blast radius, also have higher Accuracy, and can be fired four times in a row before needing a reload: if you don't expect to use a Micro Launcher before reaching The Wall/Containment Area, Assembling one has pretty good odds of being a waste of Technical Mod Packs.

I personally rarely Assemble a Micro Launcher, but I'll admit I probably underuse rocket weapons in general, so that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad Assembly.

Tactical Armor

Mods Needed:  (Agility*2)

Base: Green Armor.

Result: Sets resistances and Armor stat to 0, but increases movement speed by 15%, regenerates 2 points of durability per action after five actions of taking no damage, and adds 10% to Dodge chance.

If you're the sort of player who can get through a run without ever being hit by any enemy, I suspect Tactical Armor is objectively the best Armor Assembly.

For mere mortals such as myself, though, I'm pretty dubious on it.

The first problem is the early competition with Tactical Boots, which also require 2 Agility Mod Packs, but are using the Boots slot, which makes all the difference. Boots that provide no protection in exchange for Dodge and movement speed is basically a freebie, since you only rarely need to wade through Acid or Lava, whereas fighting enemies is a constant and so your Armor providing no damage reduction is bad. As such, it just makes more sense if you want Tactical Armor's benefits to make Tactical Boots first and only consider Tactical Armor if you still have an excess of Agility Mod Packs and no weapon projects urgently needing them.

The second problem is that Armor is where the majority of your potential for damage reduction lies. This is a bit less true in 0.9.9.8 than before, between Marines picking up innate energy resistances and Ironman now providing physical resistances, but overall it remains the case that a well-constructed Armor can make you virtually invulnerable, whereas operating without your Armor helping any with durability can only get vaguely close to invulnerability if you're leaning on Berserker. Notably, Cerberus Armor requires an Agility Mod Pack: Assembling a Tactical Armor may be what prevents you from being able to Assemble Cerberus Armor later!

The third problem is that while more movement speed and Dodge is good in a general sense, there's something of a diminishing returns aspect to both mechanics. Being a bit fast means you stop having to worry about Barons of Hell attacking you twice when you step forward into their vision. Being moderately fast means you stop having to worry about the same concern from a few other enemies, such as Arachnotrons. Being really fast largely doesn't add much further protective value: no matter how fast you get, it's always possible to walk into view and have an enemy immediately attack you, for example. So if you have Tactical Boots and ranks in Hellrunner, Tactical Armor probably doesn't add much value on that end. Dodge meanwhile has a hard cap of 95% chance of triggering, and you'll plenty often be running into that with just Tactical Boots equipped, let alone throwing in Hellrunner, so Tactical Armor's Dodge bonus will be doing nothing a lot of the time.

The wiki also claims Tactical Armor in particular has its Dodge bonus multiplicative with Hellrunner's. I'm... not sure what that actually means, but the wiki presents it as making the bonus less effective than if it were additive. If so, that'd be another flaw with Tactical Armor.

Anyway, there's a big qualifier to all this 'movement speed has diminishing returns' stuff, but that qualifier is that melee-focused builds always appreciate covering ground in less time, and... I'd be very surprised if a melee run has been done where no enemy ever got to hit Doomguy. Melee can't do stuff like corner-shooting or radar-shooting, so it's even more important to melee runs to have good defenses, which means you want actually-protective Armor, which means Tactical Armor is dubious for a melee run.

I'm actually not sure Tactical Armor is ever a good choice unless you're the kind of player who never gets attacked in the first place... and I wouldn't be surprised if such a player popped in to go 'actually, Tactical Armor is still bad if you're that good'. I'm certainly not fond of it as a concept.

Tactical Boots

Mods Needed:  (Agility*2)

Base: Steel Boots.

Result: Sets knockback resistance and Protection stat to 0, but increases movement speed by 15%, regenerates 2 points of durability per action after five actions of taking no damage, and adds 10% to Dodge chance.

A straightforwardly excellent Assembly most runs should endeavor to construct.

The loss of damage reduction on your Boots is essentially irrelevant: basic Steel Boots are helpful when crossing Acid while Running, removing a third of the damage you'd otherwise take, but if you're not Running fluid damage is barely impacted by 1 point of damage reduction and when it comes to Lava Steel Boots barely impact even the damage taken while Running. The loss of knockback resistance is slightly more significant, but is generally more than made up for by how increased movement speed is significantly protective, making it easier to back out of bad situations, reducing the odds you'll be attacked the instant you enter an enemy's line of sight, making it easier to try to Dodge attacks, bringing you closer to being able to escape Archvile and Revenant splash damage, making you more able to get out of the line of fire of Mancubi, and helping anytime time pressure is a concern. (eg in the Mortuary/Limbo, in the Halls of Carnage, and for several level feelings)

This is all particularly so for Marines, whose easy access to Badass means they can trivially become largely immune to knockback and so very unlikely to be knocked into Acid or Lava mid-combat to make the Tactical Boots' lack of protective qualities abruptly relevant, but is still pretty substantially true of Scouts and Technicians, just with the qualifier that Scouts and Technicians going for their respective melee Masteries might prefer knockback resistance over even more speed.

Nanofiber Armor

Mods Needed:  (Power, Bulk)

Base: Any valid Armor.

Result: The Armor's Protection and resistances are halved, rounding down, but the resulting Nanofiber Armor cannot lose durability.

If your run is doing well on Power and Bulk Mods, especially if it's not doing so well on Armor, applying Nanofiber Armor to eg a Red Armor is a good idea to ensure you always have a wearable Armor no matter what. There is often a very stark difference between 'attacked while naked' and 'attacked while wearing an Armor' -even with Nanofiber Armor crippling an Armor's protective qualities, something is a lot better than nothing! A Nanofiber Red Armor, for example, still shaves off 4 damage from an Archvile's 20 ranged damage, making them noticeably slower at killing Doomguy.

This is especially so if you have Whizkid 2 (Or 3, as a Technician) since you can put a Power or Technical Mod Pack on the Armor, and those don't lose value from Nanofiber's modifier: your Red Armor you Nanofiber up and then put a Power Mod Pack on ends up right back at 4 Protection, for example.

If you get an Onyx Mod Pack or to a lesser extent a Nano Mod Pack, Nanofiber Armor is a lot less likely to matter. You might want to Assemble a Nanofiber Armor anyway if you want the Onyx/Nano for an Assembly you won't be getting to for a long time, as a stopgap measure, but Technicians especially can easily grab Whizkid ranks on demand and so are very unlikely to need a Nanofiber Armor in such cases.

Do note that Nanofiber Armor doesn't affect movement speed or knockback modification. Duelist Armor is one of the more appealing bases for it as a result, giving you essentially Tactical Armor that still protects some against Melee damage, actually provides knockback resistance, can't be destroyed, and still has a point of Protection!

High Power Weapon

Mods Needed:  (Power, Bulk)

Base: Any ranged weapon with a clip size of at least 5 that is not a Shotgun.

Result: Adds 2 to the maximum roll on dice, or adds 2 dice, whichever is the highest number (Preferring to raise the max roll if both are equal), but the weapon's ammunition is reduced to 65% of base. (This will erase any loaded ammo over the new maximum)

All possible outcomes:

Pistol: 2d4 becomes 2d6. (ie 2-8 damage becomes 2-12 damage)

Combat Pistol: 3d3 becomes 3d5 (ie 3-9 damage becomes 3-15 damage)

Blaster: 2d4 becomes 2d6. (ie 2-8 damage becomes 2-12 damage)

Anti-Freak Jackal: 5d3 becomes 7d3. (ie 5-15 damage becomes 7-21 damage)

Trigun: 3d6 becomes 3d8. (ie 3-18 damage becomes 3-24 damage)

Basic Chaingun: 1d6 becomes 1d8.

Minigun: 1d6 becomes 1d8.

Basic Plasma Rifle: 1d7 becomes 1d9.

Nuclear Plasma Rifle: 1d7 becomes 1d9.

Laser Rifle: 1d7 becomes 1d9.

BFG 10K: 6d4 becomes 8d4. (ie 6-24 damage becomes 8-32 damage)

BFG 9000: 10d6 becomes 12d6. (ie 10-60 damage becomes 12-72 damage)

Nuclear BFG: 8d6 becomes 10d6. (ie 8-48 damage becomes 10-60 damage)

Tristar Blaster: 4d5 becomes 4d7. (ie 4-20 damage becomes 4-28 damage)

Railgun: 8d8 becomes 8d10. (ie 8-64 damage becomes 8-80 damage)

Note that while this is possible to apply to a Nuclear BFG, it's a terrible idea because it will render it unable to fire, and even with Whizkid 2 you won't be able to fix it by applying a Bulk Mod Pack. (That is, applying a Bulk Mod Pack won't bring its ammo back high enough to fire... though as of 0.9.9.8, a Technician can get Whizkid 3 to get back over the ammo requirement by adding two Bulk Mods) Also note that any ammo loaded into the weapon beyond its new maximum is simply lost; if ammo crunch is a concern (Which might be why you're even considering this Assembly!), make sure to unload the weapon.

Honestly, this is a pretty underwhelming Assembly in general, only worth considering if you expect to never get any ranks in Whizkid, as its benefits are literally just 2 Power Mods, but with a giant disadvantage thrown in. With even one rank in Whizkid, the only reason you might consider High Power Weapon is if you have excess Bulk Mods and a low amount of Power Mods and still want to increase damage on your weapon.

This makes it unfortunate that it technically is propped up by the Technician's Pistol Mastery. The flaw of mostly only raising the maximum possible damage isn't a flaw at all if you only ever do max damage anyway... but the Technician really should always take Whizkid in every run, so never mind that synergy; you're better off piling on Mod Packs, and can reliably do so.

Max Carnage runs, by a similar token, find this Assembly a bit more appealing, and it's pretty decent returns on your investment in a Max Carnage run in that case. Gun Kata Scouts who don't expect to get Whizkid -such as because you're playing on a lower difficulty and so won't get enough experience to get around to it- are one of the better possibilities for leveraging High Power Weapon, as the loss in ammo capacity may be pretty painless thanks to the free-reload effect.

Overall, though, the main thing High Power Weapon has going for it is that it's a Basic Assembly that manages to cover a few specific weapons no other Basic Assembly works on, specifically Combat Pistols, Blasters, Tristar Blasters, Miniguns, all Plasma Rifle variants, and the basic BFG. If you don't have Whizkid and are wanting to improve eg a Laser Rifle further than just one Mod Pack can do, High Power Weapon is your only option.

Honestly, I virtually never use High Power Weapon regardless. The clip size reduction is simply too steep a disadvantage given how mild the damage boost is.

It's slightly better off for (most of) the weapons that have more dice than sides to their dice, since it's raising minimum damage and all, but for one thing the Anti-Freak Jackal and BFG 10K can only be modded by Technicians, and a High Power Nuclear BFG can only be fired by a Technician, so for non-Technicians that leaves the BFG as the only usable weapon that has this edge.

Power Armor

Mods Needed:  (Power, Nano)

Base: A Green, Blue, or Red Armor.

Result: Adds 1 Protection, doubles the existing damage resistances, adds 25% Melee resistance, sets movement modifier to +0%, and sets knockback modifier to -25%. Additionally, after five actions of the player not taking damage while equipped the Power Armor will regenerate 5 points of durability per further action.

Power Armor is an okay Assembly primarily held back by the fact that a run is lucky to get even one Nano Mod Pack and non-melee runs are generally much better off using the Nano Mod to solve ammunition forever. As such, ranged attacker runs that find a Nano Mod Pack at all are probably not able to justify using the Nano Mod on Power Armor.

That said, there's two qualifiers there.

First of all, for melee runs -especially dedicated melee runs, such as Angel of Berserk runs- the only good uses for Nano are to make one of the three Armor Assemblies. The Advanced and Master Armor Assemblies that use Nano aren't actually clearly superior to Power Armor -the Advanced one locks you into the armor for good, while the Master one also requires an Onyx Mod Pack- and so slapping Power Armor onto a Red Armor -or maybe a Blue Armor if you're a Malicious Blades Technician- is possibly the best way to leverage your Nano Mod at all.

Second, it's the only Nano-using Assembly possible if you don't have Whizkid. This was more pertinent in 0.9.9.7 where Masteries were allowed to block off Whizkid, but even in 0.9.9.8 non-Technicians may not be able to justify the significant Trait investment necessary to reach Whizkid 1 or 2, especially when playing on lower difficulties where you get less experience. So Power Armor might be the best thing you can do with your lucky Nano find...

... especially if both are true: you're playing a melee-focused Marine or Scout and aren't interested in getting Whizkid ranks at all. Power Armor will seriously be your only relevant use for the Nano Mod Pack.

Outside those situations, though, Power Armor is usually pushed out of relevance by Nano-shrapnel Shotgun or Nanomanufacture Ammo.

But that's for the next couple of posts.

Tactical Shotgun

Mods Needed:  (Power, Technical)

Base: Combat Shotgun.

Result: Removes the need to 'pump' between shots and raises damage from 7d3 to 8d3.

Note that an Assault Shotgun is 100% superior to a Tactical Shotgun even before considering that it's fully moddable, and so if you happen to have an Assault Shotgun you don't need to bother assembling a Tactical Shotgun. Notably, Assault Shotguns actually can start spawning from the same floor as Combat Shotguns; Assault Shotguns spawn more rarely than Combat Shotguns, so you'll usually find a Combat Shotgun before an Assault Shotgun, but even if you find a Combat Shotgun on the earliest possible floor you may still find an Assault Shotgun before you leave that floor. And in a standard run, Assault Shotguns are guaranteed late in the game, so in the long haul you will displace your Tactical Shotgun with an Assault Shotgun.

Also keep in mind that Shottyman innately skips the 'pump' action. If you mostly rely on Shottyman, upgrading your Combat Shotgun into a Tactical Shotgun is a bit of a waste of a Technical Mod Pack.

All that said, Tactical Shotgun is a very nice Assembly for most Shotgun runs: yes, an Assault Shotgun will displace it eventually, but you can potentially Assemble a Tactical Shotgun halfway through Phobos, whereas you have to be a good chunk through Hell for a guaranteed Assault Shotgun to be on the table, so very often your Tactical Shotgun will be a staple weapon for over a dozen floors given there's also Special Levels throughout. That's a plenty fine investment.

There's a decent argument for preferring an Elephant Gun instead, mind, especially with 0.9.9.8 having buffed Reloader. The Tactical Shotgun is more straightforward to leverage well, but the Elephant Gun's superior ammo efficiency and exceptional knockback potential is very nice. If you're drowning in Power Mod Packs and starving for Technical Mod Packs? An Elephant Gun is probably the smarter choice.

Tower Shield

Mods Needed:  (Power, Onyx)

Base: Red Armor.

Result: The Armor now has 12 Protection, a maximum durability of 200%, and -90% knockback resistance. Conversely, it has a -30% movement speed modifier, and cannot be repaired or given another Mod Pack even with Whizkid 2.

I... have a hard time imagining burning an Onyx Mod Pack on this.

12 Protection is admittedly a lot of damage reduction and does apply to everything, but...

The core problem is that you're spending an Onyx Mod Pack, which you could use to make your Red Armor indestructible, to... make it largely impossible to repair and also horribly slow you down. 12 Protection is not worth that trade! Indestructible Armor is amazingly useful, far more protective than 12 Protection that inevitably melts out of existence.

The bizarre thing is used to be even worse: prior to 0.9.9.8 its movement penalty was -50% and it inexplicably only raised the durability to 150%!

Furthermore, 0.9.9.8 indirectly dragged Tower Shield down by reworking Technical Mod Packs: in 0.9.9.7, you could only buff an Armor's damage reduction one time (Via Power) without leveraging Assemblies, whereas in 0.9.9.8 you can do it a second time by adding a Technical Mod Pack. That means the strength gap between a supermodded Red Armor and a Tower Shield favors the Tower Shield less than before.

Using an Archvile's attack as an example, a supermodded Red Armor in 0.9.9.7 would shave 6 damage with Protection and 5 damage with Fire resistance, knocking 20 damage down to 9. In 0.9.9.8, your supermodded Red Armor would still shave off 6 damage with Protection but would now shave off 7 damage with Fire resistance, knocking 20 damage down to 7.

Tower Shield by contrast shaves off 12 points with Protection and 5 with Fire resistance in both versions, resulting in 3 damage at the end.

But there's another detail I really need to get into the next Armor to properly cover...

Fireproof Armor

Mods Needed:  (Bulk, Technical)

Base: Any Armor.

Result: Fire resistance is improved by +30%, but Melee resistance is downgraded by -30%.

You might look at Fireproof Armor and think it's an unfavorable trade -after all, every enemy has a melee attack, whereas Fire damage is merely one of the most common ranged damage types- but in practice Fireproof Armor is one of the most essential Assemblies to know and take advantage of in essentially every run. A Fireproof Red Armor will go a long way to extend your survivability against key late-game threats -Revenants, Archviles, Mancubi- while the vulnerability to Melee damage is surprisingly trivial of an issue. Even for melee builds it often doesn't really matter! (The actual argument against building Fireproof Armor as a melee build is that Berserker covers resistances just fine)

This was all true in 0.9.9.7, and 0.9.9.8 defacto buffed it with the change to Technical Mod Packs, as the resulting Fireproof Armor does in fact retain the resistances added by Technical Mod Packs. (If the Technical Mod pack didn't get applied last, specifically) As such, taking an Armor with a Technical Mod Pack on it and then slapping a Bulk Mod Pack on to convert it to Fireproof Armor will actually only lower Melee resistance by 10%, and will increase Fire resistance by 40% -in addition to increasing the other four damage type resistances.

Oh, and this Technical inheritance quirk is the other reason I say 0.9.9.8 de-facto nerfed Tower Shield. Say you Assemble a Fireproof Red Armor in the correct Mod order: now you have a Red Armor with 65% Fire resistance and 4 Protection. Remember the Archvile's 20 damage? The resistance alone knocks it down to 7, and then the Protection knocks it down to 3 -so the same as Tower Shield, except you can still mod the Fireproof Armor to make it even better so long as you take Whizkid 2... such as by putting that Onyx Armor on it so it's indestructible.

And sure, not every enemy does Fire damage, but many of the worst threats do, and Tower Shield is competing with multiple potential Armor setups...

... and the core problem with Tower Shield is that it does melt. As soon as it drops below 50 durability, it's suddenly only 6 Protection, and you can only fix it with a Megasphere. You know what else is 6 Protection? A Red Armor with a Power Mod that's undamaged. Which if you put an Onyx Mod onto it, that state lasts forever.

When you must have an Onyx Mod to be able to Assemble Tower Shield, so this option for-sure exists.

Not helping is that 12 Protection is actually overkill against a lot of threats. Former Captains can't roll anywhere near that high in the first place, for example. Tower Shield can be melted by enemies who are too weak for its primary advantage to be truly existent!

Anyway, Fireproof Armor. It's great. Red Armor is a great default base for it to maximize that Fire resistance...

... though do note that if you're playing a Malicious Blades Technician, a Blue Armor is a better base. Malicious Blades covers Fire resistance enough that Fireproof Red is overkill against Fire threats, whereas a key hole for Malicious Blades is Plasma damage, which Blue Armor resists.

As of 0.9.9.8, a Marine's innate energy resistances give them more flexibility in what constitutes a good base as well: a Fireproof Blue Armor still results in 60% Fire resistance thanks to your innate resistance if you applied the Technical Mod first! An Archvile only does 6 damage to you at that point -if you have Tough As Nails ranks, this is really trivial.

Fireproof Boots

Mods Needed:  (Bulk, Technical)

Base: Any Boots.

Result: Fire resistance is improved by +30%, and knockback resistance is set to -20%.

Where Fireproof Armor is great, Fireproof Boots are... lackluster. Not worthless, but difficult to care about in most circumstances. You'd generally rather be wearing Tactical Boots 99% of the time, and there's multiple options for getting across Lava with no harm or very minor harm. Constructing Fireproof Boots to make it a little less painful to wade through Lava is just not worth doing in most runs.

The main thing it has going for it is that it's a Basic Assembly, and so can be constructed even in a run that doesn't expect to get Whizkid 2. In such a run, you might be concerned about your ability to survive navigating Mount Erebus/the Lava Pits, especially if you're not a Marine and so Envirosuit Packs last an uncomfortably brief period for you, and Fireproof Boots are one option for making it more likely to work out.

A pretty terrible option, mind, but something you shouldn't completely forget exists.

It's been slightly upgraded by the Technical Mod Pack change since the resulting Fireproof Boots will be +40% resistant to Fire, not +30%. (Assuming you went Technical->Bulk, of course) This is in fact enough to shave off another point of damage from Lava. So... that's something?

It's still pretty underwhelming.

Ballistic Armor

Mods Needed:  (Technical, Agility)

Base: Any Armor.

Result: Raises Melee, Bullet, and Shrapnel resistance by +40%, lowers Fire resistance by -20%, and zeroes out any Plasma or Acid resistance the Armor might have.

0.9.9.8... mostly buffed this? Previously, it was +30% to physical resistances and -30% to Fire resistances, which was awful. Now it buffs physical resistance more and hurts Fire resistance less... but for some reason it zeroes out Plasma and Acid resistance, adding a weird disadvantage if applying it to eg Blue Armor. It's also been implicitly buffed by the inheritance of Technical resistances, where if you apply a Technical Mod Pack first you end up with +60% physical resistances and -10% Fire resistance relative to the unmodded Armor, but less so than other Technical-using Armor Assemblies since the zeroing out of Plasma and Acid resistance does in fact overrule the Technical Mod-derived resistances.

The buff was needed, but... isn't really enough. Ballistic Armor is hit hard by the converse to the Fireproof Armor Assembly's point: that a Fire weakness means making yourself more vulnerable to many of the game's deadliest enemies, whereas physical resistances are helpful predominately against the game's overall least threatening enemies. There's a caveat there that the Military Base spawns Elite Formers and so can present you with some fairly serious Shrapnel and Bullet threats even in a standard run, but the odds of this are lower than you might think, as only Elite Former Humans are reliably using a relevant damage type: Elite Former Sergeants can spawn with a Plasma Shotgun, and Elite Former Captains can spawn with a Laser Rifle. Counting on Ballistic Armor to be a big help in the Military Base is an easy way to end up abruptly dead.

Also not helping is that Technical and Agility Mod Packs are both reliably useful for other notable Assemblies relevant to the early game, such as Tactical Boots, Tactical Shotgun, and, well, Fireproof Armor. Assembling Ballistic Armor is directly competing with making less dubious Assemblies!

I really don't get why it throws in the Fire weakness. It would be mediocre even if you removed the negative Fire resistance and made no other changes simply because physical damage types can largely be handled with modest amounts of Protection, making resistance to them low in value, but at least it wouldn't be outright a bit of a trap.

Plasmatic Shrapnel

Mods Needed:  (Power, Sniper)

Base: Any Shotgun.

Result: Changes damage type to Plasma.

The one and only good use for a Sniper Mod Pack.

To be fair, it actually is quite good if your run is able and willing to use Shotguns. It's especially fantastic to luck into in an Angel of Shotgunnery run, letting you breach the Wall/Containment Area without relying on getting lucky with Phase Devices, but even in a run that isn't locked to Shotguns outright it's still providing a corpse-clearer, drastically improving your Shotgun's damage against higher-Protection enemies, and making it much rarer for 'enemy picks up an Armor' to substantially boost their survivability, all of which are individually pretty solid benefits.

That it's the only good use for a Sniper Pack also makes it an easy Assembly to justify building: you're not going to be torn between using it for Plasmatic Shrapnel vs using it for some other Assembly, after all. It's not quite mindless since Power Mod Packs are often in high demand and so it might be genuinely problematic to commit a Power Mod Pack to making a Plasmatic Shrapnel Shotgun, but outside that and the question of 'which Shotgun should I put it on?' it's pretty straightforward.

Oh, and I should explicitly note this does not change what ammo type the Shotgun uses.

And if you were wondering: yes, you can apply it to a Plasma Shotgun. No, this doesn't do anything except waste Mod Packs and lock you out of supermodding the Plasma Shotgun. Only do it for your own entertainment.

Grappling Boots

Mods Needed:  (Technical*2)

Base: Any boots.

Result: Adds 1 Protection and -50% Knockback resistance (Capped at -90%), but sets movement speed modifier to -10%.

I don't really get why the Grappling Boots are a thing.

They're particularly lackluster for Marines, who can trivially become basically immune to knockback via ranks in Badass, but honestly, even for the other classes you're often better off sticking with Tactical Boots and just getting better at avoiding being hit in the first place.

0.9.9.8 implicitly provided a very mild buff in that the Grappling Boots inherit 1 Technical Mod Pack of resistances. So now they're slightly better protection from Acid and Lava. You... still should be trying to not walk through hostile fluids with them...

They're probably a good choice for Blademaster Scouts and Malicious Blades Technicians? I still prefer Tactical Boots myself, but if someone felt Grappling Boots were the best choice for those, I wouldn't argue with them.

Lava Boots

Mods Needed:  (Technical, Onyx)

Base: Any boots.

Result: Renders boots indestructible, sets Fire resistance on them to 100%, and sets knockback resistance to -30% but also sets movement speed modifier to -30%.

The primary flaw with Lava Boots is that if you get an Onyx Mod Pack, odds are good that's the only one the run is going to get, and it's much more important and valuable to set up an indestructible Armor. Lava Boots are a luxury Assembly, something you build if you happen to get two Onyx Mod Packs, or if you get Onyx Armor and decide to use that to get your indestructible endgame Armor.

When you can justify building Lava Boots, they're fantastic, especially if you also lucked into finding Acid-Proof Boots; Assembling them into Lava Boots permanently solves all fluid damage problems, after all. That's mostly a neat bonus, though; Acid largely goes away as you get deeper into a run anyway, so Lava immunity is generally more than adequate.

0.9.9.8 is a bit of a mixed bag for Lava Boots. Acid sticks around slightly more consistently in 0.9.9.8 than in 0.9.9.7 (For Angel of 100/Archangel of 666 runs, anyway), so them being immunity to Lava in specific isn't quite as optimal. On the other hand, they inherit the new Technical Mod Pack resistances, so they pick up 10% resistance to Acid, making them slightly less narrowly focused on protecting Doomguy from Lava.

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Next time, we cover Advanced Assemblies.

See you then.