I was told while on mic in a horde game that if you use the boomshot and then reload it a certain way that you can then just unload it really fast or drop a few GL’s or do something with his Ultimate that allows him to do a ton of damage. It was on a master level game so the folks on there all seemed to know what they were talking about.
Can someone who knows JD well explain this? What are the steps, what are the cards needed, etc?
Sounds like they’re talking about two separate things. The first is that you can increase the boomshot’s capacity, damage, and active effects with launcher capacity, launcher mastery, and custom boomshot. Makes the boomshot pretty potent if you get the active reload.
The other is that you can make his ultimate, artillery strike, do massive amounts of damage with officer’s prerogative and razor hail.
Can you explain what the active effects are on the boomshot? And they are enabled when you reload?
I’m not 100% sure about the active effects, but I think it has to do with a larger radius of damage. You get it by hitting the active reload. When you hit RB to reload, you hit it again right on the little white line.
I’ll explain.
Launcher Mastery card lets you reload the Boomshot, Dropshot and Torque Bow faster. Their active reload bar on grey and white are bigger, more chance of landing. And slightly faster to reload by split second, especially when perfect active reload bar not available because of cooldown (no white bar yet). Also, the white perfect active reload bar is increased in size.
Custom Lancer GL card lets you do bigger damage with GL’s explosive rounds and bullets. You can increase it further by using Critical Damage and Assault Rifle Damage Perks. Even headshots with bullets are great to do, on the weaker enemies or early waves. The difference between non-active GL and perfect active Custom GL is doubled damaged. There are times when you’d drop a normal GL round on a Drone’s head and it’ll just get downed. But… if you drop a perfect active reloaded Custom GL on their head, they’ll flat out die. Bypassed execution rules. And the Custom GL on perfect active reloaded is INSANE on Bosses. Perfect active reload once and fire multiple rounds. In fact now, I try to perfect active whenever I can and usually reserve one round per enemy or clusters.
Custom Boomshot is better too since when you shoot normal Boomshot around Wave 41+ on Master, it won’t destroy Bastion’s shield in one normal shot. Even perfect active reload may not. But… if you had Custom Boomshot, perfect active reload on that will one shot a Bastion shield on Wave 41+ Master,
I personally use Razor Hail, Custom Lancer GL, Custo, Boomshot, Launcher Capacity and Officer’s Prerogative.
Pro tip, when you are fighting Bosses like Kestrel, Matriarch, Snatcher or Carrier, if you perfect active reload your Custom Boomshot or Custom GL, then use your Ult on Boss. The perfect active reload damage bonus will carry over to your Ultimate, and could potentially one shot. It’s really much bigger damage. They could die in seconds on Wave 40 and 50 on Master. Perfect active reload Ult + Custom GL rounds together.
Another pro tip, if there are two Wardens, two Stumps or two Sentinels next to each other. Basically, any Mini-Bosses or Bosses close to each other like it can happen on Horde Frenzy too, it is the perfect opportunity to drop Officer’s Prerogative. It will deal damage to both enemies. Kill two birds with one stone. But it would require patience and timing under pressure.
Thanks for this write up. It’s so strange to me that most of the useful cards seem to do more than they say they do. Plus the whole active reload impacting ult damage and perks impacting Lancer grenade damage is crazy.
Do you know if Lancer GL Mastery impacts lancer grenade damage at all? It says increased headshot damage, but maybe that applies to all critical damage, like the perk?
I’m not sure. But when you’re mostly using the GL rounds, that card is not worth having. Unless… you play lower difficulty like Elite and want to have a go at shooting Custom Lancer GL bullets and the reduced recoil from Lancer GL Mastery would help a lot for bullet headshots at distance. A break from explosive play style.
Thank you, prefect, that was what they were trying to tell me.
The only problem I’ve had with that is that sometimes I reload the GL … particularly when it is fully loaded … and get no active effects. I find that I have to fire off some rounds and then reload to get it to kick it.
I also use those exact same cards … I just can’t for the life of me get any razor hail cards to drop. I did a master from 30 – 50 last night and got all daddy’s boy cards. I did an inconceivable from 1-50 and got nothing but daddy’s boy and other useless green cards.
You may want to check this out:
I can count on one hand the amount of times I actually fire the non-grenade rounds from the GL … with JD I’m just in death from above rotation next to my locker and from time to time break out the boomshot and try not to blow myself up.