JD-The Boss Slayer (ADV Horde Cards/Tactics) by Hu1k Daddy

Gears 5
#1

Hello all,

Here is my first Character breakdown for Horde. And if you haven’t checked out my Beginners General Horde Guide by Hu1k Daddy. Please check it out.

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JD is personally my current favorite character in the game. This may raise some eyebrows as from the outset, many people do not like him. Well here is a guide that can help you figure out what he is about and how to use him.

General Playstyle and Early Levels:

JD is about two things. Explosives and Bleeding. But When you first start out with him, he feels kinda week. Why? Because his best skills are not yet available. But even so he Feels really weak , more so than the other Hero Gears. You have this cool new Lancer GL but only spawn with one Grenade in it? WTF. Well that sucks. Good news is, once you get past this frustrating point in trying to level him up-its totally worth it.

Stick with the GL. It becomes extremely powerful. However early on in the leveling process you wont actually be using your Grenade Launcher very much but rather just the regular shooting.

During this time you will burn through ammo faster than any one due to the GL’s rate of fire. Now you may think ok well ill get the ammo regin personal upgrade to help. Yea, no. Stay away from this personal upgrade perk as its completely useless and it doesn’t even refill Grenades or any heavy ammo.

So the better option, is to focus on two Perks. Cooldown for Ult and Assault Damage. This will allow you to do better damage with all Assault Weapons. For a list on those, check the Gears5 Weapon guide.

The best early skills in my opinion are as follows:

*Officers Prerogative, Lancer GL mastery, Concussive Strike, Score Boost

This will be what your looking at for about Rank 5. You can choose any of these 3 and be ok. But if you want to level quickly then the Score boost can help, as it does give you more Exp as well at the end of the run.

Mid Level Playstyle

Congrats, you made it. Here is where the starts to begin.

Once you reach rank level 9 you unlock Custom Boomshot. This Card allows you to do more Damage with a Boomshot and will also destroy a Bastions Over-shield on a Perfect Reload. You dead sucka!

Another good Card to Swap in is Custom Lancer GL which unlocks at level 7. As more Damage is always better right?

For a Good Card set at 9 would be like this:

*Officer’s Prerogative, Lancer GL Mastery, Concussive Strike, Custom Lancer GL, Custom Boomshot

This Provides a good mix of Strengths to JD and helps deal with Bosses so much Easier. Matriarch shows up. Get an Air Strike on him, watch him get stunned then GL him with 3 straight Grenades. Boom and dead.

High Level Playstyle

This is it! You made it. This is where JD can one shot Bosses on Elite Diff with no Issues. Be proud that you made it this far, as it gets really fun now.

Ok, so earlier I said JD was about two Things, Explosives and Bleeding. Well we kinda talked about Explosives with the Boomshot but nothing about Bleeding. Well that is about to change.

This is for players up to rank 12 and beyond. As this set really has no weakness to it and you can do Massive amounts of Damage. Im talking like 600,000 points of damage.

Here is the set at rank 12:

*Officers Prerogative, Custom Lancer GL, Custom Boomshot, Launcher Capacity, Razor Hail

Now if you have been saving up Scrap this whole time, Launcher Capacity is JD’s best Card hands down. Its a Rare, so try and level this as soon as you can. Why you ask? Well becuase it does more than the Card says it does. It also increases the amount of Hand Grenades per level and also the amount of GL Launcher ammo.

This is great as now you can do more overall Damage. But it works even better with Razor Hail as this causes bleeding on any target hit by your explosives. Yes even the Robots. This combo is crazy and does massive amount of Damage. You can Air Strike bosses and watch their Health Drop Faster than ever with the Bleed effect on.

So to sum this up. JD is a High Damage Dealer and specializes in killing Bosses and Mini Bosses. Be watchful for Rejects and Leech’s as they rush you and prevent you from doing explosives all day. Try and get a Chainsaw Lancer early on to Swap between so you dont get overrun, if there is a Marcus playing and they are willing to swap with you.

You can run a 3 man squad on Elite with this set. Just need a Del and a Jack.

Now once you become fully leveled, obviously go with the legendary at 16, as this combines well with Spotter Support. I don’t run this much in pubs as many other players don’t mark enemies a lot, but hey at this point Im sure you know what your doing.

If any questions, post them here. Good luck Gears!

25 Likes
Best JD loadout for big damage
JD Horde Setup Help
#2

Razor Hail would like to have word with you. Razor Hail increases the damage of all explosives including his Artillery Strike from not only himself and from Spotter Support and it works for the RL-4 Rocket Pods too. Level 1 is 60% increase in damage for all of these.

As for your guide it’s really not needed since there aren’t to many alternatives, but I will say you’re avoiding certain cards due to randoms well some of the cards you’ve chosen are prone to be rendered moot by randoms as well so it’s pretty arbitrary to avoid some and not others. I’d also argue Confirmed Kill is just ‘okay’ and not an “obviously go with the Legendary at 16”, don’t need to have strike when it really counts and even with Spotter Support you won’t be spamming it to make sure you have it when you do really need it. Finally Custom Boomshot is situational, not everybody likes the Boomshot and there are plenty of perfectly viable alts for JD.

4 Likes
#3

Ok, so question for you. This was to help people who didnt know these things. Since you know so much, where is your guide to help others?

8 Likes
#4

Oh look somebody who can’t take a little criticism and only wants people to praise them blindly, shocker. If the actual guide was to help people a little constructive criticism wouldn’t be met with such a response it’d be something that could improve your guide, but clearly you posted it for your own ego since you were obviously only expecting praise and for nobody to say anything negative about your guide. If you can’t take any critiques you really shouldn’t be posting a guide, but whatevs not worth debating your inflated ego. So have fun with that.

7 Likes
#5

Hey thanks for the guide. Unlike the other guy who responded, I think you’ve got the bones of JD in your guide and the rest is personal preference. For me, I use Razor Hail/Spotter Support/Custom Lancer GL/Launcher Capacity/Officer’s Prerogative. Spotter Support is only good if you have voice communication with your team and you can ask them to mark the second boss (if there is one) and additional mobs, then you can do some serious damage. Otherwise, I go for Lancer GL Mastery as at rank 5 its 90% reduced recoil and 10% headshot damage…always nice.

The one thing I could recommend is to have Del give you your own locker and put 2 GLs in there with a 3rd on you. Then you only need ammo refils for secondary wep and always have a ■■■■ tonne of launchers available when you need them. This is the key to massive JD damage. Some waves on insane I go through all 3 GLs in a wave. If JD gives you 4 wep slots in your locker you can store 2 GLs and 1 Secondary wep and never have to get ammo refils the whole match. JD is the only char that deserves his own locker Imo.

Thanks and hope your enjoying gears as much as me!

4 Likes
#6

Word man. Yea I do the same. It’s all about personal preference for sure. There have been a lot of posts about bad JD was so yea . Was surprised there wasn’t already a guide out about it. So tried to get this done for those who didn’t like him. Thanks dude.

#7

Thanks. i like the guide. The big issue is getting to the level up. 50 waves is just so long and solo with randoms sucks.

#8

Hello there… Help me understand that part in there plz. So do I say goodbye to my boomshot and carry a GL as main and a Lancer as secondary?

#9

Nice guide.

Personally I really like using JD, you could see the potential he has as you gradually level up, used him for 9 of my 10 completions

The leveling up can be pain playing with randoms, Right now It feels like quitting is worse than in 4.

Soon as I get the last of the power I need to Unlock Desert JD, he will be my main and look forward to having some really fun completely and eventually mastering runs

1 Like
#10

Hey there,

Good question. I tried to make the guide to people playing with randoms more or less. So early on in the match it’s good to try and get the lancer if a Marcus is playing. Once the scion boom shots come in then put the reg lancer on a ammo locker and alt between the boomshot and the reg lancer. If you have a group with you then you can keep swapping between boomshots and don’t need to worry about the reg lancer. Hope that helps. :sunglasses:

1 Like
#11

I had no idea score boost increases the amount of exp you get for the class. Kinda wish I knew that before I grinded Kat to lvl 16 for Halo.
Now that I know lancer capacity increases grenades I have to run it now :stuck_out_tongue:

#12

TYVM for your post. Now all I need is my group to stop stealing my GL from the weapons locker!!! I donate 90% of my energy so our engii can supplies us enough lockers and they still take away my weapons…

1 Like
#13

Thanks for the guide

#14

Thanks !

#15

JD is clearly amazing ! I play a Horde in incomensurable difficult ( I don’t know what it is the name of the difficulty in english, is more than Insane but not Master !) with a great team and achieve the 50 waves ! Amazing ! JD made more than 700.000 Pts of damage !!! Totally crazy ! A very good JD, a good Del and Jack and only with this 3 good characters you can beat the horde easily ! Really ! A good managing of fabricator and energy and it’s easy !

#16

join custom games if you’re not already, Lobbies will often state exactly what they plan to do and having backfill is much more better. It’s generally much more enjoyable.

#17

Also noob question here, I’ve been playing a good bit of JD and I still don’t know what the deal is with the artillery strike.

Do I have to aim it at the enemy or where they’re standing? I know it’s not supposed to work indoors obviously, but even out in the open it never works for me.

#18

You have to mark the enemy that you want to hit with it. Then use it. It’s a good idea to wait until that enemy is not moving.

1 Like
#19

As JD need to Spot/Mark the single mob you want your artillary strike to hit.

#20

Yes that’s a continuous issue. And I think it’s because people don’t know you have more rounds in your GL than they would due to the card not being clear in what it does. Once this becomes more we’ll known than hopefully this will not happen as often.