Doom Roguelike Equipment Analysis: Master Assemblies

The ranged weapon Master Assemblies (Which is 4 out of the 8 Master Assemblies!) have a wonky screw-yourself-over issue, because they have the unique quality that you can slot in the needed number of Mod Packs before you have the Trait necessary to actually get an Assembly out of it. Unfortunately, the game doesn't have any failsafes for this: it won't ask you if you're sure before applying a Mod Pack that could result in an Assembly later but won't now, nor does it check if any of your current gear has a Master Assembly configuration and ask if you want to convert to the Assembly upon taking Whizkid 2, or anything of that sort. Be careful when modding ranged weapons when you have exactly Whizkid 1.

Master Assemblies are also clunky in that there's not many of them, and only 3 out of 8 (As of 0.0.9.8) Master Assemblies can be performed without Exotic Mod Packs. Whizkid 2 thankfully provides the separate functionality of letting you add a Mod Pack to an Assembly so it's a useful Trait increase even if you can't Assemble any Master Assemblies of relevance, but it's still an odd aspect to the design. I don't really get why there isn't anything like an even bigger Elephant Gun or suchlike up here.

Nanomanufacture Ammo

Mods Needed:  (Bulk*3, Nano)

Base: Any ranged weapon that isn't a Shotgun or BFG.

Result: The weapon no longer needs ammo or reloading.

Nanomanufacture Ammo is one of the Assemblies that highlights how weirdly inconsistent the design philosophy of Assemblies is.

I keep pointing out cases where an Assembly is held back by tradeoffs that mean it isn't clearly superior to an unmodded version of the base item, and pointing out cases where an Assembly is shaky when just compared to supermodding, and here we have Nanomanufacture Ammo evading these two problems to a breathtaking extent: ignoring ammo entirely is clearly superior to both 'increase max ammo' and 'ammo regenerates', and Nanomanufacture Ammo has... absolutely no tradeoffs. The need for Whizkid 2 and the need for a Nano Mod are the only things that hold it back.

And simply ignoring ammo is absurdly advantageous! This is an Assembly where you could attach a pretty harsh tradeoff -halving damage, say- and it would still be an incredible Assembly that's absolutely worth taking! (As seen with the Nano-shrapnel Shotgun, which reduces raw damage a lot and is still fantastic)

First of all, there's the point that never needing to reload is a direct increase in DPS anytime you would normally need to perform a combat reload. This is particularly dramatic with Rocket-using weapons, but the Minigun is the only weapon in the game with such a high clip size relative to clip usage that it's unsurprising if you never do a combat reload with it across an entire run. The more significant caveats are Mastery-based: that a Gun Kata Scout can reliably avoid needing to spend time on combat reloads, and that an Ammochain Marine is so absurdly ammo-efficient that applying Nanomanufacture Ammo to a rapid-fire weapon is a very small improvement.

That first example itself comes with the caveat that Nanomanufacture Ammo is a significant expansion to your inventory space. Once you Assemble a Nanomachic weapon, ammo becomes completely optional: you shouldn't necessarily ditch all ammo as it can still be useful to be able to fuel other weapons, but eg a Cateye Scout who was carting around 6 inventory slots of 10mm ammo out of fear of ammo starvation can ditch most or all of that and replace them with more Medpacks, spare Armors, Mod Packs with multiple potential uses of relevance, etc. So even though Gun Kata Scouts don't worry too much about losing damage to reload time, they still very much appreciate having a Nanomachic Pistol. (Ideally, two, but this will almost never actually happen)

Third is the point that Nanomanufacture Ammo makes blind-firing way more viable, much like Nano-shrapnel making radar-shooting a thing you can do effortlessly. You'll still lose shots to the darkness effect, so for one thing it's less reliable at checking for and provoking enemies than a Nano-shrapnel weapon, but in other ways it's a much more dramatic boost to the viability of blind-firing than Nano-shrapnel is; Shotguns are already perfectly usable for firing into the darkness if you know enemies are out there somehow (Intuition 2, Tracking Map, you knocked them outside vision yourself...) whereas for Accuracy-using weapons normally firing into the darkness is bad even if you know exactly where enemies are due to the tremendous loss in ammo efficiency... but if you have unlimited ammo, that doesn't matter anymore! Go right ahead spamming Nanomachic Plasma Rifle shots into some enemy twenty tiles away that you know about via a Tracking Map! You'll probably miss a lot, but who cares! Free damage! (Unless you're on some kind of time limit, such as Angel of Red Alert. Then time wasted is not so free)

Depending on what the base was, there can be further not-immediately-obvious beneficial implications. For example, Plasma Rifles (Including Nuclear Plasma Rifles and Laser Rifles) are, with enough ranks in Son of a Bitch, able to cut through walls, but are sufficiently unreliable at generating high enough damage to overcome a wall's 10 Protection that they're very slow and horrifically ammo-inefficient at the task. A Nanomachic version will still be slow, of course, but if speed isn't a concern, then cutting your way through a wall with one is free, which can be nice if you're eg wanting to conserve Rocket ammo.

By a similar token, a Nanomachic Rocket Launcher (Or Missile Launcher, Napalm Launcher, or, for a Technician as of 0.9.9.8, a Revenant's Launcher) makes Rocket usage much more viable as a 'primary' strategy. Many of the problems with using Rocket weapons as your first option for taking out enemies go away entirely if you have a Nanomachic version: risking destruction of items isn't completely irrelevant if you have a Nanomachic weapon, but it is mostly irrelevant. Ammo destruction isn't a lethal problem, because ammo starvation is no longer a concern. Destruction of healing items and/or Armors largely ceases to be a concern if you're willing to heavily blind-fire, because if you're killing everything on the floor without enemies ever getting a glimpse of you, then you're not losing HP and not losing Armor durability. Having a Nanomachic weapon is, all by itself, a notable step toward having basically won the game, and furthermore usually only happens late enough in a run you're often set in other realms: unknowingly destroying an Onyx Mod Pack in your careless rampage is actually pretty unlikely to be The Mistake That Gets The Run Killed if you've got a Nanomachic weapon at all.

Especially since Uniques are completely invulnerable and so if something happens like Malek's Armor spawns, you can't screw yourself out of that with such a rampage.

Do keep in mind the potential for barrel destruction to cause problems for you, though. If you already have immunity to fluids (eg Cerberus Boots), go right ahead, but if needing to cross a wall of Lava is going to be a problem for your run, maybe don't go for the infinite rocket spam strategy.

Nanomanufacture Ammo is absurd, one of the best Assemblies in the game, with the primary caveat to this being that most runs won't get a Nano Mod Pack in the first place. (Secondary caveats: Shotgun-focused runs will presumably Assemble a Nano-shrapnel Shotgun instead, and melee-focused runs would probably rather make Antigrav Boots or some such)

Which in turn makes it all the more strikingly bizarre that horribly flawed stuff like Fireshield exist. Why do some Assemblies get randomly burdened with bizarre disadvantages, while Nanomanufacture Ammo is flawless? It's so weird.

As an aside, an unusual quality of Nanomanufacture Ammo is that most Assemblies have their name as the modifier to whatever they're applied to, but Nanomanufacture Ammo instead changes the weapon's name to 'Nanomachic (base name)'. It's an odd exception.

Demolition Ammo

Mods Needed:  (Power, Technical*2, Firestorm)

Base: Any weapon that uses 10mm ammo.

Result: Changes damage type to Fire, gives shots a blast radius of 1, and overhauls damage, taking the original dice count, adding 2 dice, but replacing the die size with d2.

The damage overhaul can be a bit difficult to wrap your head around, so here's all possible results:

Pistol: 2d4 becomes 4d2, changing the damage range from 2-8 to 4-8

Combat Pistol: 3d3 becomes 5d2, changing the damage range from 3-9 to 5-10

Chaingun+Minigun: 1d6 becomes 3d2, changing the damage range from 1-6 to 3-6

It is always an improvement, but for Pistols, Chainguns, and Miniguns it only raises the minimum/average damage. Only the Combat Pistol has its peak damage go up. Among other points, this means that in a Max Carnage run only the Combat Pistol sees an improvement to its damage at all, and similarly for a Sharpshooter Technician the basic Pistol receives no actual damage boost.

This is all fine, though, because the actual point of Demolition Ammo is rendering your bullets explosive. Now your shots can catch multiple enemies at once, miss the target in a technical sense but do damage anyway because the shot detonated on a wall right behind them, vaporize corpses if Archviles are a concern... or if you're playing on Nightmare difficulty or Angel of Darkness.

It also opens up the potential for wall-busting... well, for Pistol runs. The Chaingun/Minigun require 5 ranks of Son of a Bitch (Or 4 ranks plus a Power Mod Pack attached) to do any damage through a wall's innate 10 Protection, so that's only doable very late if at all. But for a Pistol run, Son of a Gun 3 is enough to make a Demolition Ammo Pistol able to (slowly) cut through a wall, and a Combat Pistol just needs 1 rank. If you're stacking on Son of a Bitch as well, Demolition Ammo Pistols/Combat Pistols can cut through walls pretty quickly! This makes Demolition Ammo particularly useful to keep in mind for Angel of Marksmanship runs, where options for cutting through walls are largely not usable.

Do note that Energy Pistol is another way to cut through walls, requiring fewer Mod Packs and not requiring an Exotic Mod Pack. Demolition Ammo is still good to keep in mind, but it's not like it's the only way for an Angel of Marksmanship run to cut through walls... but it is the only way for an Angel of Marksmanship run to destroy corpses outside using Skulls.

Unfortunately, Demolition Ammo is... clunky. There's the recurring problem that explosions risk destroying items and causing problematic chaos in general, of course, but the change in damage type is also less great than you might assume: every enemy that resists Bullet damage resists Fire as well (Albeit Revenants do resist Fire less than they resist Bullet), and then there are enemies that resist Fire damage without resisting Bullet damage! (Most extremely: Lava Elementals are straight-up immune to Fire damage) As such, the switch in damage type is on average dragging down performance when talking single-target shooting.

Now, of course it adds splash damage and so Demolition Ammo has potential for high performance when fighting mobs, but enemies in Doom Roguelike tend to spread out if they don't currently know where Doomguy is, and the player should generally be trying to not get swarmed, so good play tends to keep opportunities to benefit from this uncommon. In truth, the primary benefit of the splash damage is usually corpse destruction.

Demolition Ammo is very funny with an Ammochain Marine, mind. Their absurd ammo efficiency makes it viable to spray exploding shots and not worry much about ammo starvation, up to and including firing blindly into the darkness. I wouldn't say this is a good strategy, but it's funny and fun to do at least once, and it's not actually likely to get your run killed outright so long as you're not completely careless about monitoring ammo.

Conversely, it's especially awkward with Gun Kata, as tactics like 'fire between two enemies next to a wall to hit both of them' won't get to trigger the free reload even if a kill results. Also, since Gun Kata only triggers if your target dies, Demolition Ammo is non-obviously less effective than you might intuit by virtue of the fact that you can end up killing enemies with the splash damage and not get the free reload. So that's two layers of awkwardness.

Actually, in general it's awkward when Dualgunning, which is unfortunate.

Conversely, a weird synergy is that Fireangel makes it more appealing, since you can fire point-blank shots without hurting yourself. I call this 'weird' since Fireangel is a Shotgun/Rocket Launcher Mastery, so it's a bit odd that this Pistol/rapid-fire weapon Assembly goes well with it.

Overall, Demolition Ammo is an interesting idea, but hamstrung enough by explosive attack problems that it's a pretty dubious Assembly overall. That this is so is in fact one of the key problems with Firestorm Mod Packs, as this is the only Assembly that uses a Firestorm Mod Pack without requiring multiple Exotic Mod Packs. If your run finds a Firestorm Mod Pack, it'll probably be the only Exotic Mod Pack that run sees, so this'll be the only Assembly you've got on the table... and you'll have to wait for Whizkid 2, by extension spend 4 Mod Packs to get it, and then the result isn't clearly worthwhile.

I actually don't get why Demolition Ammo isn't a Basic Assembly. (eg Power+Firestorm) It would still be an iffy payoff, but it would be an accessible payoff, which would help it a lot. Angel of Marksmanship runs would love to be able to break into the Containment Area/The Wall, and a Basic version of Demolition Ammo would create that opportunity in a timely manner basically anytime Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab happened to generate a Firestorm Mod Pack. It would hold up a lot better if it was Basic, and this would make Firestorm less consistently a disappointing find.

Alas.

Cybernano Armor

Mods Needed:  (Power*2, Onyx, Nano)

Base: Any Armor.

Result: Armor gains 4 Protection and becomes indestructible.

Cybernano Armor confuses me. You spend 2 Power Mod Packs, 1 Onyx Mod Pack, and 1 Nano Mod Pack... to get the benefits you would get out of just the 2 Power Mods and the Onyx Mod? The only reason this isn't completely useless is because Armor won't actually accept 2 Power Mods normally...

... is what I'd say in 0.9.9.7, where Technical Mod Packs provided knockback resistance rather than damage resistance. Now that Technical Mods provide damage resistance, just supermodding with Power+Technical+Onyx is almost completely superior to Cybernano Armor: 20% to physical resistances is 2 damage shaved off if the incoming attack is over 5 damage, and 10% to energy resistances is 2 damage shaved off if the incoming attack is over 10 damage. (Which most energy attacks will more or less always be over 10 damage) So the supermodded Armor will only have worse performance against very low damage values... which will be irrelevant so long as your base was strong enough: a Red Armor as the base will give you 6 Protection, so 'weaker against 5 or less damage' is simply untrue. And the resistances are always shaving off at least 1 point of damage, so... against 8, 9, and 10 damage, the supermodded Red Armor can be at worst 1 point inferior to Cybernano Red Armor, assuming the right damage type. And doing this supermodding frees up the Nano Mod to go into Nanomanufacture Ammo or Antigrav Boots or whatever.

This was honestly underwhelming even in 0.9.9.7, but in 0.9.9.8 there's a fair argument that Cybernano Armor is only worth making to get an Assembly crossed off. Like yes I'm leaving out that you can attach another Mod Pack to the Cybernano Armor, but is that really worth giving up the ability to spend the Nano Mod elsewhere?

For a Technician, where it's possible to get Whizkid 3 and so attach two further Mod Packs, Cybernano Armor is more appealing. You're still giving up other uses for that Nano Mod, mind, but at least you're producing indestructible Armor with +6 Protection and widespread resistances. (Or you can trade one of those damage reduction benefits for +15% movement speed if you prefer) A Cybernetic Cybernano Armor with Power and Technical slapped on is 13 Protection, 40% physical resistances, and 30% energy resistances, which is pretty outrageous: that's knocking Archvile damage to 1 point all by itself, for example.

I'd personally argue giving up Nanomanufacture Ammo, Nano-shrapnel, or Antigrav Boots isn't really worth making such a Cybernano Armor, but if someone disagreed I wouldn't find that bizarre.

Biggest FG

Mods Needed:  (Bulk*2, Firestorm*2)

Base: A BFG or Nuclear BFG. ('Any' BFG)

Result: Doubles damage, both dice count and sides per die, doubles the blast radius, increases clip size by 150% but causes the BFG to consume 150% more ammo per shot. (ie they go from 40 Power Cells a shot to 100 Power Cells a shot)

This, incidentally, is the one bit of profanity from the game I'm self-censoring. In-game, it's three separate words, not one word and two letters like I'm doing.

Anyway, as for what it results in...

A regular BFG thus goes from 10d6 to 20d12, while a Nuclear BFG goes from 8d6 to 16d12.

For a regular BFG, that's shifting from 10-60 damage with an average of 35 damage to 20-240 damage with an average of 130 damage. Clip size goes from 100 to 250.

For a Nuclear BFG that's shifting from 8-48 damage with an average of 28 damage to 16-192 damage with an average of 104 damage. Clip size goes from 40 to 100.

As such, ammo usage is much higher, but ammo efficiency actually goes considerably up: spending almost three times as much ammo to get on average about 4 times the damage? This is only less efficient in cases where 1 or 2 shots from the non-Assembled version is enough to kill everything you need killed. And it makes a regular BFG even more absurd at Power Cell storage, fitting 5 inventory slots of Power Cells into one inventory slot! 

This Assembly is usually the best use for Firestorm Mod Packs if you're going to get ranks in Whizkid... with the big qualifier that most runs won't get two Firestorm Mod Packs. This Assembly is in fact one of the most obnoxious obstacles to getting all Assemblies done so Schematics will stop spawning in Hell's Armory/Deimos Lab, since this Assembly becomes vastly more likely to be completable once you've gotten Schematics to go away, making it a bit of a 'the key is in the safe' situation. This is another reason the 'lesser' Exotic Mod Packs being just as rare as the 'greater' ones is so janky/frustrating of design.

Ripper

Mods Needed:  (Power*2, Bulk, Technical)

Base: Chainsaw.

Result: Raises damage from 4d6 to 6d6, halves attacking time, but lowers Accuracy to -4.

The Accuracy penalty makes it essential to have either Brute 5 or Eagle Eye 5 to be able to land swings effectively: Eagle Eye 5 is mostly a waste to take, and the Ripper isn't so great as to justify Eagle Eye 5 all by itself, while Brute 5 rather implies you're a melee run, which in a standard run means you have every reason to hit the Unholy Cathedral and net yourself the Longinus Spear or Azrael's Scythe, which are both very powerful melee weapons themselves. This ends up a bit awkward.

The Longinus Spear is 8d8 once per second. Let's just use high rolls for comparisons: the Longinus Spear is 64 damage per second at that point. Brute 3 results in 73 damage, and Brute 5 results in 79 damage.

Azrael's Scythe is 9d9 once per second. With high rolls, this of course is 81 damage by default, 90 damage with Brute 3, and 96 damage with Brute 5.

The Ripper is 6d6, which with high rolls results in 36 damage twice a second, or 72 damage at base with high rolls... but without Brute or Eagle Eye ranks, you'll miss more than 90% of your swings. If you have Brute 3 instead, the high-roll damage rises to 45 twice a second, so 90, but you'll miss more than 25% of the time. Finally, at Brute 5 it rises to 51 twice a second, so 102, and Accuracy is as high as it can go, and hey, that's around 25% more damage than Azrael's Scythe...

... but without Brute 5, the Ripper is surprisingly dubious to a melee run! This is particularly awkward when playing on lower difficulties, where getting a couple levels into extended ranks won't happen even in a run that fully clears every single floor including going into every single Special Level, but even on higher difficulties it can be awkward, where you hold onto the Chainsaw intending to turn it into a Ripper but aren't using it until you get to Brute 5 because the Unholy Cathedral reward is better before then. Especially since Marine and Scout Masteries don't trivially segue into Whizkid 2: they have to route through Finesse 2 to get started, and neither has Finesse as part of their requirements, meaning it takes ten Levels worth of Trait investment to be able to build the Ripper after getting a hold of your Mastery... and you'll need an eleventh level for Brute 3... so there's absolutely no wiggle room to consider putting points into other stuff.

The Ripper is pretty cleanly superior at DPS once you do have Brute 5... at base. For a Blademaster Scout, the awkwardness comes right back: it's better to do one big hit that gets fully refunded by Blademaster than it is to hit twice in the same time but get refunded only that second hit, and Azrael's Scythe especially is lethal enough to pretty reliably one-shot a lot of things. The Ripper won't be any worse for a Blademaster Scout at cutting through low-end enemies like Imps, but it's only marginally better there (By virtue of a miss being less punishing) while being way worse against various enemies the Ripper won't one-shot. (Or at least is much less reliable at one-shotting)

A Malicious Blades Technician similarly is having to compare it against dual Chainswords. Brute 5 Chainswords with Bulk and Power Mods attached are 24-42 damage twice (ie 48-84 damage per second) vs the Ripper being 21-51 twice a second. (ie 42-102 damage per second) The Ripper is overall ahead there -even before considering the possibility of adding a Power and Bulk Mod to it- but by a small enough margin you're dealing with the issue of 'is it worth hauling the Chainsaw along for over half a run, not using it, and spending Mod Packs into it that could go into things you're benefiting from more immediately?' For that modest an advantage over the dual Chainswords? Probably not.

A Vampyre Marine does thankfully consider the Ripper straightforwardly great, but yeah, the Ripper's design is a bit awkward. It thankfully will Get The Job Done even for Blademaster Scouts or Malicious Blades Technicians, so it's not a huge problem, but... awkward.

Cerberus Boots

Mods Needed:  (Power*2, Technical, Agility)

Base: Any Boots.

Result: Sets Fire and Acid resistances to 100%, sets knockback modification to -30%, but sets movement modifier to -30%.

The Assembly that provides the best argument for pursuing Whizkid 2 within a standard run, particularly a standard run that is shooting for a complete victory.

Specifically, Cerberus Boots are the most reliable option for making Mount Erebus/The Lava Pits safe to navigate with minimal risk of becoming trapped or the like. The 'default' option is to try to navigate the Lava with Envirosuit Packs, but while this is reasonably reliable for a Marine, for a Scout or Technician it's much easier to run out of Envirosuit Packs before you're properly done with the area, and it's always possible to overlook a Lost Soul or something wandering around and so not have your Envirosuit Packs stretch far enough. Given you need to kill everything in Mount Erebus/The Lava Pits if you're shooting for a complete victory (Even if you're not shooting for 100% kills overall), that's a big problem! Better to have an unlimited-use form of protection against Lava.

Notably, there's only three options for unlimited lava protection: Enviroboots (A Unique, so you shouldn't plan around finding them), Lava Boots (Requires an Onyx Mod Pack, which a given run won't necessarily see), and Cerberus Boots. Cerberus Boots are thus your only option if your run doesn't luck into Enviroboots or an Onyx Mod Pack. (Or does get an Onyx Mod Pack, but you'd rather spend it some other way)

Also, it's worth pointing out that Cerberus Boots overwrites every relevant quality of the base Boots except for two points: first, if the Boots are part of a set, they retain that. Second, if the Boots have non-standard durability, they keep that. As such, most Boots are interchangeable with one another (Steel Boots and Acidproof Boots end up identical, for example), with only Gothic Boots and Phaseshift Boots being exceptions.

Gothic Boots is awkward as a base. Durability on Boots doesn't actually matter when those Boots are immune to fluids, so it resulting in double-durability Cerberus Boots is zero value. Cerberus Boots also is a dubious tradeoff in terms of knockback/movement modification: Gothic Boots are baseline faster and substantially more knockback resistant than Cerberus Boots! That leaves only the set bonus as a potential reason to want your Cerberus Boots to be Gothic Cerberus Boots, and I'd argue that's really another reason to not want to use Gothic Boots as a base: having your Lava-wading Boots disable movement if combined with a specific Armor can be very problematic, such as if your Armors all get shredded except for a Gothic Armor. In such a(n admittedly improbable) scenario, if you found yourself needing to wade through Lava, you'd have to take off your Armor entirely, taking unreasonable damage from any enemies taking potshots at you as you crossed the Lava!

Phaseshift Boots are just plain a nonsensical base. If you have Phaseshift Armor, applying Cerberus Boots is redundant: you can already have fluid immunity by wearing both Phaseshift items. Even if you don't have Phaseshift Armor, turning natively-fast Boots into slow and knockback-resistant boots when you could use any other Boots as the base requires a pretty specific RNG scenario to really make sense. (As in, you find Phaseshift Boots, do not find Phaseshift Armor, and find literally no other Boots)

Anyway, Cerberus Boots are a particularly important Assembly for Angel of 100/Archangel of 666 runs. It is all but guaranteed that you'll be forced to cross rivers of Lava (Or maybe Acid, but probably Lava) at least once in an Angel of 100 run, and probably several times, and 'natural' Envirosuit Pack generation is actually astoundingly rare: it's easy to overlook this in standard runs because Special Levels guarantee multiple Envirosuit Packs across a run, but it's pretty normal for 'natural' item generation to produce 0-1 Envirosuit Packs across an entire standard run. Which is to say that in Angel of 100/Archangel of 666 runs, you're very unlikely to have enough Envirosuit Packs generate to cover all your Lava-wading needs.

As such, unless you luck into one of the alternative permanent solutions fairly early (eg Enviroboots), you should be planning under the assumption you're going to make Cerberus Boots. By extension, you should be planning under the assumption you're getting Whizkid 2. (This was one of the bigger reasons why it was bad that in 0.9.9.7 there were Masteries that blocked Whizkid) Thankfully, you get so many extra level-ups in Angel of 100/Archangel of 666 that this isn't as burdensome as it would be if standard runs were designed to functionally demand Cerberus Boots, but I imagine there are players who did Angel of 100 and died because they didn't think they needed Whizkid, or kept putting it off in favor of other Traits and, again, died as a result of not being able to costlessly wade through Lava.

On a different note, Cerberus Boots technically benefit from 0.9.9.8 having Technical Mod Pack resistances inherited by the resulting Assembly. I say 'technically', because of course the only change is Bullet/Shrapnel/Melee/Plasma resistance being added, none of which has any relevancy to Boots.

Cerberus Armor

Mods Needed:  (Power*2, Technical, Agility)

Base: Any Armor.

Result: Sets Fire and Acid resistances to 70%, Plasma resistance to 50%, knockback modification to -30%, but sets Protection to 0 and sets movement modifier to -30%.

Note that Cerberus Armor retains the Bullet, Shrapnel, and Melee resistances of the base Armor. Otherwise, it throws all the base Armors qualities in the trash, aside the exceptions of retaining Onyx Armor being indestructible/infinite durability and retaining that Gothic Armor has increased durability. (And being part of a Set, where applicable)

Among other points, this means Green Armor is the best base out of the non-Exotic Armors, as its mild Bullet and Shrapnel resistances will be retained while Blue and Red Armor will offer no alternate advantages. Conveniently, Green Armor is common to see all throughout a run; you can usually hit Whizkid 2 and then start looking for a Green Armor to use, instead of carting a Green Armor around, waiting to be able to get started on Assembling it. (Assuming you found no better base, of course)

This also means 0.9.9.8 accidentally buffed it pretty noticeably, as Assembling Cerberus Armor must have Technical as not-last and therefore the resulting Cerberus Armor will always have +20 to its physical resistances, meaning its comparative susceptibility to physical damage has been ablated a fair amount. (Its Fire/Acid/Plasma resistances were not modified by this, note: Cerberus Armor setting those resistances to specific values overrules the +10% energy resistances)

Another incidental buff caused by 0.9.9.8 is the non-buggy point that Ironman now gives physical resistance, making Cerberus Armor's default poor performance against physical damage more correctable than in 0.9.9.7. (This would be more significant if the Technical Mod inheritance didn't apply, mind)

Cerberus Armor itself is, compared to Cerberus Boots, much less notable or essential. It's worth keeping in mind, absolutely, but even in an Angel of 100/Archangel of 666 run, it's entirely possible to get through the whole run with no motivation to actually Assemble it.

First of all, melee builds generally don't want Cerberus Armor. Berserker (Or Malicious Blades) covers the resistances about as well as Cerberus Armor does, but without requiring you have no Protection and, crucially, without requiring you labor under a moderate penalty to movement speed: it's generally better to use unmodded Armors and carry backups (Which melee builds can afford to do readily since they don't need to reserve slots for ammo), or to Onyx Mod something decent enough so you can stop needing such backups. It's to a lesser extent worth pointing out that Tough As Nails ranks can close gaps in performance between Armor types, 

Second, it's a bit more likely that you'll get an Armor that displaces Cerberus Armor than the possibility of finding a pair of Boots that displace Cerberus Boots. While Armors with innate energy resistances are a minority, there's all of Energy-Shielded Vests, Medical Armor, Lava Armor, Malek's Armor, Cybernetic Armor (Particularly for Technicians), and awkwardly the Energy Shield. Boots that provide Lava Immunity is restricted to Enviroboots, Nyarlaptotep's Boots (If you have Malek's Armor), and Phaseshift Boots. (If you have Phaseshift Armor) That's 6 Armors that meaningfully overlap with Cerberus Armor, vs only 1 pair of Boots that can displace Cerberus Boots just from finding them alone.

Third, Cerberus Armor has to compete with various other Assemblies more substantially than Cerberus Boots do. Say you get a Nano Mod Pack and find an Energy-Shielded Vest: in that case, you can turn it into Power Armor, and the result will be capped on energy resistances, have 2 Protection, have superior Melee resistance, and innately regenerate durability. 0.9.9.8 having Technical Mods apply resistances that get inherited actually exacerbates this point, where a few Armor Assemblies (Such as Fireproof Armor) can have better energy resistances than in 0.9.9.7 while Cerberus Armor's energy resistances didn't get any better.

Fourth, good play and/or the right Trait picks can make having good Armor much less important to non-melee builds. If you're skilled at corner-shooting and radar-shooting such that enemies never get a chance to attack you in the first place, you don't need Armor. If you've got Intuition 2 and/or Cateye, you can kill enemies without risk of retaliation very regularly without having to be particularly good at blind corner-shooting/radar-shooting.

All that said, Cerberus Armor can be a lifesaver if the game isn't generating good Armor, and is a very good thing to apply an Onyx Mod to. (Assuming you didn't use Onyx Armor as the base) 0.9.9.8 has made this latter point more true thrice over: first and second are the physical resistances provided by Ironman and inherited from the Technical Mod Pack application, as in 0.9.9.7 it was genuinely a hard choice between 'make the Cerberus Armor indestructible' and 'apply a Power Mod Pack' if you didn't have ranks in Tough As Nails, didn't have Berserker, and didn't have Malicious Blades, as Cerberus Armor by default let all physical attacks through at full power, with a Power Mod Pack substantially ablating this issue. Now that 20% physical resistance is guaranteed and Ironman ranks can raise that still further if you're still concerned about physical threats, this relative weakness is very mild.

Third is Technician-specific: they can apply one Mod, then the other as soon as they hit Level 12 and take Whizkid 3. (eg make it indestructible, then apply a Power or Technical Mod)

Mother-In-Law

Mods Needed:  (Power*2, Nano, Firestorm)

Base: Basic Rocket Launcher.

Result: Raises damage from 6d6 to 6d9, raises blast radius from 4 to 6, and the weapon no longer needs ammo or reloading.

An Assembly added by 0.9.9.8, which for some reason is listed as one of several Assemblies receiving buffs. ('suddenly existing' is a 'buff' compared to 'not existing', I guess, but it's still weird that the patch notes don't try to communicate that it's a new Assembly)

As for why it exists and in particular has this name: it's a community reference. Somebody did an Angel of 100 run, made a Nanomachic Rocket Launcher, put a Firestorm Mod Pack on that, and proceeded to win, and somebody suggested calling said Rocket Launcher 'Mother-In-Law'. Why this stuck with the devs enough to justify making a reference to it years after the original event, I couldn't say, but that's the backstory.

As for its merits as an Assembly...

Well, it's pretty cleanly superior to a Nanomachic Rocket Launcher aside the need for two Exotic Mod Packs to build it. (And to a lesser extent that it swaps Bulk Mods for Power Mods, when Power Mods are generally more desirable than Bulk Mods) You get three Power Mod Packs of damage, you get a radius boost (However dubious radius boosts are as a benefit for non-BFGs), and you still get the full benefits of Nanomanufacture Ammo. If you find a Nano and Firestorm Mod Pack close together (Such as getting them simultaneously in Deimos Lab), and you were thinking of making a Nanomachic Rocket Launcher, you certainly should make a Mother-In-Law instead.

As ignoring ammo entirely is an absurd benefit all on its own, I similarly can't argue you should just do supermodding. Its numbers are in fact high enough I can't argue this in even a narrow technicalities sense: if you supermodded a Rocket Launcher with 3 Power Mods, a Nano Mod, and a Firestorm Mod, it would get the Mother-In-Law's exact stats except it would replace 'ammo isn't a concept this Rocket Launcher believes in' with 'you have to wait several actions between shots', ie the supermodded version would be flatly inferior -before considering the Mother-In-Law can put in another Mod Pack.

I'm not a fan of this Assembly anyway, mind, as Assemblies that require two Exotic Mod Packs are extremely awkward and it doesn't fill an actually distinct niche: while it's better than a Nanomachic Rocket Launcher, it's not better in a substantive way that changes how you play. It's just a Nanomachic Rocket Launcher that kills enemies more quickly, which is nice but not important in context. There's a very large 'wishlist' of Assembly types I'd much rather have seen be added, and indeed I'd rather have seen significant overhauls to some of the really bad/niche Assemblies before getting a community reference that is of no mechanical interest be added.

So... I'm disappointed by this Assembly anyway.

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Next time, we move on to Powerups.

See you then.