Keegan-ReGeared OP4 (ADV Tactics/ Guide) by Hu1k Daddy

Gears 5
#33

HI,

hehe, sure, I have him at level 18, but low cards… But I tried the two distinct play styles (sniper, and the front line executioner). I don’t play him at much, or have cards as high as Keegan, so I have fewer useful comments. My observations (might as well put them here, for others to see too) is that:

If you put Paduk next to Marcus who is feeding him stim, and you equip 5 markza damage cards (markza mastery, bleed, acceleration, rain down, and the poor man’s magic bullet, Paduk becomes a BEAST sniper. I was doing about half the damage of markus and fahz, BUT my cards are level 2-3, whereas they were maxed. And before marcus started running his ultimate, i.e. before it was all auto aim, I was MVPing a lot of the early waves, just manually aiming and shooting the markza. The cri damage perk is great (so there are SIX damage boost modifiers available, including the perk), and ammo capacity too… with over 100 rounds of markza ammo, and each one doing 3,000 damage, do the math :slight_smile: That’s 3K I was seeing before the bleed…
Sure, it’s not quite max Fahz level, but it’s a very reasonable alternative. Just no shooting through walls.

Last night I did the opposite play style: equipped all fear cards, and with a retro and lancer, I was executing everyone around the base, sending others running away, and using/recharging my ultimate . It was useful and helpful to the effort, obviously much less raw damage… With max ultimate recharge perk, and a level 2 or 3 card which speeds up recharge for executions, I think I need about 1.5 executions to get my ultimate back, so I could run it multiple times each wave… and I had the card which healed and gave stim to anyone who killed an enemy in fear, so the whole team was constantly stimmed.

That’s a fun play style, HOWEVER: I would not want to do it again because TC’s stupidity dealing with assigning RB to the retro/chainsaw controls meant I was CONSTANTLY screaming “chainsaw, not reload, stupid game!!” into the mic… That operation (chainsaw and retro charge) are the MAIN elements of Paduk’s gameplay, in that setup,and they are constantly causing reloads and jams, when they should be executing enemies…

Great potential for a lot of fun, broken by stupid control choices TC made in this game…

Anyhow, that’s all I have to say re Paduk… I like him… But bleed is dependent on stim which is only possible with Marcus (even COG won’t really help, since you need it non-stop, and only marcus provides that), and the fear game play is dependent on RB not messing up gun reloads…

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I want to ask about how to play some classes in horde... :(
#34

Doesn’t matter if you are in gas, ash or deep venom. If you look at the minimap on your screen and you are in the green, you are in venom and the venom cards will work.

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#35

SUCH AN AMAZING POST THANKS @Hu1k_Daddy for this super descriptive analysis! Amazing keep it up my dude!

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#36

Maybe not a popular strategy, but I’ve been buying a torque at the beginning to replace my hammerburst so I don’t have to take the hammerburst card. That way I at least have the 10 arrows and 3 booms to use in the first few rounds until I get enough resupply. Plenty of drones and hunters in the beginning to headshot and even active bodyshots kill them with bleed on inconceivable, although I’m unsure if it’s still the case on Master. Eventually, I’ll replace the torque with the dropshot of a dead scion. By that time, my resupply is high enough I consistently get it by the time I’ve burned through the boom and drop ammo.

I don’t have speed loader to six yet, so haven’t been using it. I understand it won’t active until then anyway. Don’t have any issue with actives though, so even when maxed not sure how useful that card will be in my case. Of the cards I’m using currently: recharge bounty, resupply duration, amplifier, shredder, healing module, think only the amplifier I could afford to drop for it. I’m sure it would be dearly missed by teammates though.

#37

The ability to purely spam explosives with level 6 Resupply Speed Loader is what makes it so great. The Dropshot becomes fully automatic and behaves like a handheld napalm airstrike.

1 Like
#38

Thank you,

Much appreciated. :+1:

Cheers!

#39

Id drop recharge bounty ovwr amplifer. With your perk maxed you get your ult back super fast anyway and most characters get it so quick that you dont need to help them. Amplifer doesnt just help team mates when you have level 6 speed loader it gives you the freedom to walk around just constantly shotting boomshot. You can basically single handly clear an entire wave during one ult activate on master.

#40

Yep,

Did a Master Frenzy run with the 3 amigos.

  • Keegan, Marcus and Fahz. You really don’t need anything else.

Cheers!

1 Like
#41

Hey

So at level 5 you bypass reloads, so your boomshot becomes a fully automatic weapon, and level 6 it also makes the rounds active which hugely increases their damage.

So that’s what allows you to do (at my bleed level, which is 23%) about 390,000 damage in about 25 seconds:

that card doesn’t help you when using the salvo, because salvo is already fully auto AND there are no actives with the salvo.

it will also help you with the drop, since your drop will auto reload and give you active rounds, when you are trying to kill the matriarch…

but, as always, if your card selection works for you, for your play style, etc, then, by definition, it is the “right” choice, for you :slight_smile: !

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#42

Well said brother!

Cheers!

1 Like
#43

I just tried it once and then went back to the old setup. I’ll admit, I’m not a horde veteran. I mainly play escape. My experience is on inconceivable frenzy and 1-50 runs on the new map, Rail Line. I took MVP every single round on frenzy, and about half the rounds on 1-50 while being the main killer of swarmaks, matriarchs, flyers, and flocks. I never needed an auto-boomshot to kill anything and tend to take time to aim the boomshot for hail marys. The only time I required an auto explosive was for the flock, matriarch, or guardians/sentinels. At that point, I grabbed one of the 5 or so salvos the team was keeping on lockers. With 40 salvos and resupply maxed out, I had pretty much the same effect as an auto-boomshot. Yeah you can move around more with the boom, but why do I need to move around so much if I’ve got healing module on while I’m sending a flurry of explosives at a slow-moving boss (or frozen boss if someone uses the cryo)? When taking recharge bounty, there wasn’t a need to put any points into cooldown. I maxed out resupply ASAP, then pumped points into capacity. If you skipped recharge bounty, then you’d need to pump cooldown. So you give up capacity when you could’ve used a card to get the same effect and given all the extra power to the engineer. Well, maybe on 1-50 you could pump three perks, but I prefer frenzy anyway. Either way you’d need to put off maxing a third perk until the final waves, so what’s the point? Anyway, I’m sure people are doing great with the speed-loader setup, but I’m convinced it’s mainly a preference and Keegan is equally useful either way.

1 Like
#44

Thanks for the post man.

Cheers!

#45

That’s the thing right he has a couple viable ways to play. With the alternative to yours you dont need to put any perks into capacity really because you have ammo all the time anyway.

Happy hunting.

#46

Just tried to take out a Swarmak with Keegan using salvos and didn’t appear to be doing any bleed damage (bleed registered with boomshot).

Visual glitch or something else? :thinking:

#47

Swarmak health is calculated based on blisters. So bleed is only applied to affected blisters and once they are burst then you can’t damage them anymore. So for example if you’ve been smashing the front of the Swarmak and all of the blisters there are destroyed then you won’t be able to damage it anymore. You have to hit the other blisters instead.

On the plus side, technically the Swarmak cannot regenerate health - it’s an illusion. If the Swarmak has one blister left and regenerates its health then it still dies after the last blister is burst.

3 Likes
#48

Thanks for the guide! This made me start Keegan journey and is all I play currently. I haven’t found a better build than the Final build you proposed. A few tips I found out by myself and could help other people becoming better at Keegan:

Best locker setup for me: 1 Salvo, 1 Boomshot, 2 GL. In hand: Dropshot and Boomshot.
Why: You need a second or third boomshot (3rd gets replaced later) asap. Otherwise you just don’t have the ammo to clear waves if your team is mediocre. If you have little energy a Salvo/Boomshot + GL is enough, so you need a minimum of 2 locker spots.

Salvo gets used for 2 things: Filling up ultimate and damaging a far away Matriarch (it ALWAYS damages and applies bleeding, even shooting the front).

GL gets used for 2 things: Filling up ultimate by bombing spawn/groups of enemies. And for getting a second ultimate quickly in a bosswave (just spam the rockets on a boss). In addition and very important: With a GL and boomshot you can solo Swarmaks. I just spam the front with boomshots (stunning him due to blister pops) during ulti and then use the GL on top of him to take out the other blisters. It seems impossible to kill a frontal facing Swarmak without GL.

Dropshot: I underestimated the dropshot. It’s a rather difficult weapon to use correctly but can be more powerful than an instant active boomshot in some situations. First of all: The dropshot fires more quickly than the boomshot during ultimate. If we are overrun you can use the dropshot to explode everything shortrange (in cover, using blindfire or even bouncing from walls). Secondly: You melt certain bosses close range. If you are confident in your ability you can headshot the Snatcher/Carrier or even Matriarch closerange and deal more damage than you could with a boomshot. (Missing shots can be costly as they can explode you, so it takes practise). I have gotten a lot of reactions in gamechat and whispers, some are astonished and some think Im cheating.

Specific boss tips:
Matriarch: Salvo always damages the Matriarch! Boomshot: Don’t shoot the boss directly (not even the backside), shoot the ground on the sides and backside of the Matriarch to damage her.

Swarmak: Spam boomshot in the front to pop blisters and use the GL to pop the other blisters. Without GL it becomes near impossible to kill a Swarmak from the front for Keegan.

Carrier: Very easy to spam the dropshot on. Not even JD with artillery and GL can outdamage a Keegan if he does it correctly.

Sentinel: Spam walls behind and on the sides if possible to kill a low HP sentinel. Especially if my ultimate is on CD I prefer doing this since it fills the ultimate (hitting shield does not). Spamming a shield during ultimate is good however, since people seem to focus the sentinel faster when the shield is down.

Kestrel: Find a good ulti position that allows you to retreat and go back in the open. Spam the engines with the boomshot. It seems that hitting the engine directly with a boomshot deals insane damage. And what’s better than a boomshot hitting a Kestrel engine? That’s right, 30 boomshots hitting those engines.

When ultimate ends: Depending on boss, switch to salvo or GL to quickly get a second ultimate. It’s not uncommon for me to get a 3rd ultimate and even a 4th if the team damage isn’t that good. For example, a wave 12 Master Frenzy run with a Matriarch and Carrier I could use my ultimate 4 times while doing 1.3 million damage (1million+ damage is uncommon but certainly not rare).

Ultimate: You actually become MUCH tankier, even able to tank multiple Salvo hits or at times a matriarch charging you. If you set up your ultimate in a way that makes it so you can go in the open AND retreat while in ulti, you can actually solo push back entire waves that overrun you. Good examples are Blood Drive and Forge. I just pop the ulti, spam the dropshot to clear close enemies and switch to boomshot to clear the others. Keegan is the only character I’ve seen that can do this so effectively. A JD could do this, sure. But often when pushed back your lockers are destroyed or out of reach. Good luck to that JD with only 1 GL and a boomshot. Keegan just needs a boomshot, a dropshot makes it a bit easier.

Last tip for the ultimate: Early game, when you have no ammo perks, max reload perk or multiple explosive weapons you have to end your ultimate with a full boomshot. Otherwise getting your ultimate back takes too long. This is also a reason why I love having a Dropshot as my other weapon. Playing Keegan is basically managing your ultimate and spending the least amount of time waiting on that cooldown. Wiping happens when you need to wait on that CD and have no ammo, for example when someone steals the weapon from the locker you expect to use to refill ulti.

EDIT: I’ve found that using your ulti to mainly help your team during difficult situations usually isn’t too effective. Most people underestimate how much tankier they get and therefore move out of radius easily. Other times the whole team is in ulti just tanking shots and once it runs out they all get downed instantly. So I would say to just use ulti to benefit yourself most and don’t worry too much about your teammates. The radius is huge with lvl 6 card, so everyone that wants to use it should be able to.

2 Likes
#49

Me using Lizzie with the Dropshot would like to argue with that statement. Basically permanent stun locking and it seems to do damage even if you hit the top of the Swarmak. Once I even somehow got the Dropshot projectile to lock on to one of the blisters on its back which also boosted my ult from 1/4 charged to full(and I hadn’t invested any power into the cooldown perk). Would say I did a decent amount of damage to it given I made it out of the last wave with around 640k damage.

#50

I should try that more seriously then, though killing a Swarmak with a dropshot as Keegan doesn’t seem ideal. Popping front blisters and then spamming a GL on top makes for a very safe kill. Quite frequently the Swarmak doesn’t even get the chance to fire a single shot if you do everything right.

A dropshot from a certain range takes long to reach the Swarmak and without a stun attached to it he could kill you. And I don’t want to be short or even mid range of a Swarmak as Keegan. If you don’t have the choice (like a first wave boss) it could be a good way to take it down. Especially since an early wave Swarmak won’t get you down during ulti unless he hits you directly with rockets.

Swarmak damage doesn’t mean much though as even a single enforcer bullet has the ability to do hundreds of thousands of damage just by popping a blister.

#51

Well, yeah, for Keegan it is likely better to just keep hitting blisters and kill the Swarmak that way. But the damage does mean something if the Swarmak’s on very low health, as I’ve finished ones off by bleed or hitting a Dropshot directly ontop of it. But blisters are definitely the best way to kill them, still.

#52

Just tested it, Dropshot seems absolutely useless for the Swarmak as Keegan. The damage is terrible for the amount of risk involved and hitting the back blisters consistently doesn’t seem possible. Due to the size of the Swarmak you also can’t spam the dropshot on it like you can a boomshot. Only if the Swarmak is very close to death you can rely on the dropshot to at least do some bleeding damage and maybe bring it down (I hit 3 dropshots on his head and the HP bar barely moved, maybe like 2-4%), otherwise you’re better of trying to flank it, hide or just use a GL. Or if the only blister left is the one on the head you can try going for it. The back blisters are very unreliable to hit with a dropshot. So I stand by my point: The Swarmak is basically impossible to bring down from the front without a GL.