DRG 6x2: Mining - double barrel more like crackedr barrel (true solo scout)
Channel: ojb
Date: 18/06/2023

No deaths, no bosco. Featuring min clips m1k + double barrel boomstick + pheromone grenades in Salt Pits.

Bring out the biscuits, gravy, and the elderly, because we're heading to cracker barrel. Double barrel is absolutely CRACKED in season 4. I say this with no hint of irony: it's the jumbo shells that jumbo shells doesn't want you to worry about.

I've kitted it out with the additional wave damage mod in tier 4 over the usual blowthrough, and this is quite necessary to do anything of value IMO. If you have bugs clumped up (e.g. pheros or just a plain ol IFGd choke), you can delete a lot of bugs extremely fast with no aim required just by getting in close. The wave clear potential is not really *that* different from fire spread, but it's pretty consistent and reliable compared to attempting to light a bonfire on grunts alone. It also acts incredibly fast AND you get credit for kills which I guess is cool too.

I wouldn't call it overpowered or that the buffs went too far yet; it occupies a similar role to jumbo but definitely has a distinct niche because of its downsides. It handles mactera roughly the same but feels worse against large waves of swarmers. For some reason, the cone of the blast wave often fails to kill more than like 3 or 4 swarmers right in front of you. Jumbo loadouts' access to blowthrough (mixed with its nice amount of pellets) is much more consistent and reliable. I struggled a lot more than usual against a swarmer swarm in a different run (not posted to youtube), especially as it was 6x2 with IFGs and not pheromones which are halfway decent against large waves of the lil guys.

Igniting enemies (e.g. for volatile bullets or getting minor breakpoint boosts due to fire ticks) is also a bit worse. You'll likely have to reload at least once to ignite anything, but because you can take the fast reload mod on this overclock it's reasonably fast enough - just beware the slower ignite on spitballers in particular. Grunts and guards can't really be used for fire spread as they straight up die due to omega damage, but jumbo tends to have similar issues and you usually want to start bonfires off bigger bugs like praets anyway.

There are two other major tradeoffs: less consistent stun compared to jumbo, and the requirement of being up close and personal. The first is a substantial problem and one of the risks of using this OC. You can't always guarantee the stunlocking of dangerous enemies (e.g. stopping a praet from spitting or forcing a menace to burrow) like you can with jumbo. This is a severely underrated aspect of why the boomstick is so strong, and losing the consistency provided by jumbo's big burst damage at longer distances (which triggers the stun) is a severe downside. Being forced to get near enemies can also be slightly dangerous, but not so horrible. You become slightly weaker against spitballers and menaces in particular, but those are typically for your primary unless you're running cryobolt or embedded dets anyway.

Where double barrel starts to become extremely impressive to me is how it fares against praetorians and oppressors. Clump up several full HP praetorians and blast em in the face. You don't have to kite to their butts or anything: there is legitimately no aim or movement ability required for the blast wave. It might be bugged at the moment, but it does obscene amounts of damage and you can kill several praets quicker using double barrel than a single praet using jumbo shells. Oh, and you get to keep the hot bullets to use the gas at the end and do even more damage if you're so inclined. Praetorians just utterly vanish from existence even from the front.

Anyway, TL;DR: double barrel good now but w/ some tradeoffs.

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Let's talk stingtail for a bit. That thing is legitimately terrifying. It's like an acid spitter, but 100 times more threatening and 100 times more difficult to kill. If one spawns you basically have to drop everything to handle it, and with how armored it is, you gotta invest a lot of effort to do so. The grab does some weird stuff with your existing momentum so I would reckon it's not unreasonable to get a lot more unfortunate deaths to cratering from being rocketed onto your flimsy ankles at high velocities. Even on scout (the class most suited to handle it), I found it extremely dangerous and from my other runs in the new patch, I've definitely moved it all the way to the top of the priority queue with the grabber. At least the mackie grabber will leave you alone if you shoot it for a second or two. This bad hombre will end you.

The other new mob (the spitter) is really great fun though. 10/10 would squish again.

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Loadout:
23112 Minimal Clips
12233 Double Barrel
Pheromone Grenades

Perks: 
Dash / Iron Will
Resupplier / Deep Pockets / Born Ready

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Highlights:

0:00 Build
0:48 Mission start
3:08 First swarm
9:04 Grunt swarm
14:17 Testing out 99% damage resist in glitch spot
16:02 Final stats page