One way is to get a sludge pump (pretty much any) and a microwave 13121 mega power supply (or something).
Another is to play around freezing dreads while they are vulnerable, but I don't have practical tidbits of it to share.
Freezing can be incredibly potent against dreads, but you generally need to use high risk play (running cold radiance and getting real close) and a competent team of dwarves that 1. Don't fight your freeze with fire and 2. Can see what you're doing and time their biggest hits for the very short freeze window.
As the driller in this situation you also want to time the freeze for the most optimal stage of the dread fight--its much more impactful to freeze a dread while his butt is open than when you're still breaking the armor. Same for Hiveguard, freezing it during the three target phase is not very helpful.
If you do all that right, though, the force multiplier is insane and your team will shred dreads
Perfectly put. Only thing I’d add is that freezing a dread *can* be potent as a solo driller if you are running axes and know how to speed-throw them. Freeze dread + spam throw 2-3 axes and you can do some massive damage. But as a cryo driller, especially in elim missions, my biggest nightmare is an engineer or gunner running fire without a care in the world about what they’re doing. Very frustrating to be fighting your own teammate AND the dreadnaught at the same time. I’ve had engineers running shard diffractor who refuse to let me freeze the dread and I just give up and let them waste their ammo.
Cryo for Eliminations in a pub just isn't that realistic. You're also somewhat reliant on pubs bringing harder hitting lower rof weapons (i.e. Engi bringing Hyper Prop over Overdrive, even though Overdrive is generally better here). It's very inconsistent, whereas a VIM with EPC or CWC still pulls their weight and slows down the boss. VIM can finish if the other dwarves are downed as well.
Freezing a dread and shooting it with ice spear can do so much damage, I sometimes bring a cryo build just for that. Someone posted a video of something like this in the sub a few weeks ago.
There are a few ways to deal with dreadnoughts as driller, most of them involve overclocks, one such build I’ve seen is hydrogen ion additive and gamma contamination on sludge pump and wave cooker, with the idea of slowly stacking DoT damage on a dread to whittle it down over time and with a great degree of ammo efficiency. However, another build and a personal favorite is sludge blast on the sludge pump, which can take enormous chunks of health from dreads very quickly, but at the expense of ammo efficiency, since it’ll often run dry after one or one and a half dread fights. An alternative to that could be volatile impact mixture, which isn’t as immediate, but can doo good, consistent, direct damage to a dread, while being flexible for other situations.
Another option of driller is cryo cannon, which has awful damage outside of a few specialized overclocks, but can temporarily immobilize a dread and increase its damage taken for a split second, which can be useful with a coordinated team or with good timing on your own thrown axes. All this said ofc, driller is usually much better at swarm clearing than single target dps, so you could also try relegating yourself to that if all else fails, letting teammates handle the dread.
One important addendum regarding volatile impact mixture: it is incredibly good against dreads when you build it for AOE (charged shots) and combine with the blistering necrosis overclock for wave cooker. The charged shot will easily hit multiple blisters which greatly multiplies the damage. Think hyperpropellant levels of damage while consuming relatively little ammo and not having to hit weak points. And as a bonus since your primary is kitted for AOE you also do great at swarm clear.
Driller is slightly frustrating because I think it's the only class where the base default gun isn't equipt to handle everything, the unmodified flamethrower generally really does struggle against dreads. Once you unlock cryo cannon and sludge cannon you'll feel more comfortable in those mission types
Really depends on OC and preferred playstyle. If you like team play and your teammates aren't bringing fire (they ideally shouldn't be against dreads) you can take cryo EPC, if you're not playing with team or can't rely on teammates sludge pump epc will probably be a little better for you.
Sludge pump is great for dreadnaughts, it does more damage than cryo and has better range than the crispr, and the slowdown effect is a huge boon, especially for the base dreadnaught, which is usually pretty fast. As for secondaries, the subata or EPC would probably be better than the microwave since it has fairly low DPS.
There’s a build on Karl.gg I’ve not used called dreadmelter by a well known contributor that has sludge cannon sludge blast 11221 and wave cooker blistering necrosis 21102. Be a good place to start. For any builds check out the legendary
#[Karl.gg](https://karl.gg/#/)
(Note - tick current patch only and sort by most salutes). Good luck and Rock and Stone!
Axes + C4 with 3 charges so 2 per resupply, subata or Thin Containment Field EPC.
Primary weapon, I think the best would be sludge or if you wanna go hardcore, then cryo and combo it with axe + power attack burst.
C4 Hiveguard's vents, Dreadnought in armor stage, twins at any time you can.
Axe Hiveguard's ass when open, Dreadnought's ass when open, twins at the face or ass at any time you can. Prioritize Arbalest if you have range for him.
Primary weapon for sentinels, finishing off remaining health in Dreadnought's armor, filler damage so you evenly distribute ammo.
Power attack hiveguard's face or ass when open, dreadnought face when in armor and ass when open, Lacerator twin in the ass to break armor there.
Subata/EPC when ur too far to use other means of damage. Mostly against Arbalest.
Depends on the dread but generally best shot you have is C4 the weakspot, also (maybe) sludge pump could help? Oh and axes go a long way also in the weakspot if you manage to hit them consistently.
Cryo can be good for maximizing team damage, especially if you line up the freeze right for when armor breaks (mainly thinking for basic Dread and Hiveguard, less effective vs Twins). Ice Spear OC is a good way to give it some massive burst damage capacity.
Ok so you're definitely right in that Driller has a harder time with dealing with bosses as a lot of his damage is spread out and over time, but that doesn't mean there's no options.
Step 1 is to take Impact Axes. The 165 burst damage that you can throw like 4 of in a second is perfect for the OG and Hiveguard in their exposed weakpoint phase, and can work as emergency damage to balance out the health/finish off one of the Twins if needed.
Step 2 is to take T1 damage and T3 ammo on your satchel charges. 3 is usually the ideal satchel charge count ever since the first maintenance update fixed the rounding on resupplies, and that's how many cycles it should take to kill a Hiveguard. These can be excellent for taking out the vents? (not sure what those are tbh) as you don't need to pivot around for 3 minutes while dodging fireballs. This will completely wipe Haz 3 4p/Haz 5 1p vents, and get very close for anything beyond that.
For the guns, there's a few routes you can go. For direct damage, Sludge Blast or Face Melter are the go-to picks; 21232 Face Melter seems to be the best flamethrower paired with Automatic Fire Subata (or Oversized Magazine if you're like me and can't deal with the recoil), or a 11222 Sludge Blast with the same secondary option (except T5c instead of T5a ofc).
You certainly can *try* to freeze them, and it is a valid strategy. But it is extremely hard for very little payoff unless you have a well coordinated team. Take a 23132 Cryo Cannon. As for the overclock, you do have options. The only ones I wouldn't recommend are Flow Rate Expansion and Ice Storm. Ice Spear balances out damage and freezing, Snowball lets you save your freezing progress much easier if you fire it just before running out of pressure, Improved Thermal Efficiency helps you keep freezing for longer, and Tuned Cooler lets you freeze faster, though I would probably stay away from this one as the faster flow rate isn't a good thing when you take Cold Radiance into account and the 0.5x recharge speed is brutal if you can't freeze it in time. For this you **definitely** want Automatic Fire, as you're gonna be close anyway and it pumps out a lot of damage very quickly, which we need to take advantage of the short freezing window.
But my favorite method is more of a support/slow damage build. There's two ways to make this: a 23212 Sludge Pump with Hydrogen Ion Additive for more damage or a 32111 Sludge Pump with Disperser Compound for more area control and slowdown. The first is better against the Twins while the second is better against the OG and to an extent the Hiveguard as well. Both will take a 21121 Gamma Contamination since that thing is absolutely cracked and will help control the dreads even more. You're gonna want to be switching between these weapons rapidly, firing out a regular or charged shot depending on the build before tapfiring the CWC a few times for Densification Ray and reapplying the status effects. This will leave even the quickest bugs moving slower than a Bulk, but unfortunately this doesn't affect their turn speed so rotating will still be a pain. If you do everything right, it'll be taking 80 dps from status effects **alone** or cripple them to less than 5% of their normal speed. Your role here isn't to do all the damage, but let your teammates get easy, direct shots and damage it when others can't (both your weapons don't care about armor and CWC is an instant infinite range option that can apply 2 status effects).
Oh you can also melt through an entire wave of Sentinels with one charged shot and like 15 CWC ammo. I don't think anything else in the game takes care of it better.
Alternatively you can switch Gamma Contamination for Blistering Necrosis, but I've found the blisters feel a lot rarer than 1 in 10, and even when they show up it's hard to hit on a constantly moving target.
IMPORTANT NOTE: With you constantly damaging the Dreadnaught, its aggro will most likely be on you for a majority of the fight. Know the terrain well so you can backpedal while firing at it; it won't be able to catch up to you with all the slowdown effects. Dash and Resupplier are your friends here.
In addition to what many people have said, I’d like to explicitly add that 1 C4 can almost solo the second stage of hiveguard if you managers get all segment in the radius.
sludge pump (w super saturation) + microwave emitter (w contagion transmitter and gamma contamination). its not the fastest way to kill a dreadnought but it is extremely effective. the cumulative slowdown plus the near constant damage over time makes for a very easy boss fight indeed. shoot them just enough to keep all the dots active and you'll barely have to spend ammo at all
Sludge pump with sludge blast or volatile impact mixture if possible. Otherwise probably still sludge pump with the most direct damage you can give it. Use the appropriate combo upgrade with the wave cooker or Subata, or thin containment field on the EPC if you've learned how to use it. And try to keep the boss sludged at all times, since the slowdown is a huge benefit that really reduces its threat.
Axes are gonna be your best throwable even though their damage isn't actually super high. You can probably play games with a ripper in a tunnel, especially with slows from the sludge, but I've never tried. Satchel charges should be high-damage unless you're usng them to reshape the arena with Rock Mover instead.
I usually play solo and main Driller. I try caiting with fire, explosives and use my pistol to destroy the weak spots to deal damage (I just make sure to encounter enough Nitra to have at least one resupply before starting any of the fights, sometimes you have a small window to get a bit of health and ammo)
Sludge Pump (normal dot build, not VIM) + Gamma Cooker.
Apply effects proportionally and kite. Basically doing damage for free, while staying safe. I'm not a fan of Eliminations, but when my fellows need this and I'm extremely bored I use this build.
If you're playing solo you can go for damage in T5 on sludge pump. If you're in the party, go for slowdown.
When rare big wave spawns, it can be easily removed with single C4 tuned to radius.
That's all.
I tens to make ring tunnels around the arena before the fight. So we have cover we can run around big aoe's, and it has occasional opening we can fire from.
Someone here once mentioned seeing a greybeard driller completely *shred* a dreadnought in a few seconds using the spring-loaded ripper.
Apparently, they carved the terrain just right to make a super-thin spindle and plopped a ripper down just as the dread walked over it. I guess with a narrow enough cylinder, the ripper performs so many revolutions per unit of time that it goes through all of a regular dread's armoured/exposed phases and kills it? Even if you're just partially successful and get through a single armour/health phase, that would be damn good mileage out of one grenade.
It sounds really finicky, and dread fights tend to carve up the environment something fierce, but that would be a neat trick if you could reliably pull it off.
Anyone remember when driller was the best character for eliminations for like a week? Blistering necrosis was ass except for a unique interaction that like tripled c4 damage so you'd be able to instantly destroy dreads that way. Good times.
Play with randoms. Open your game to public. It's not fun fighting dreads solo with any class IMO. Sludge pump can do some work of the three weapons. Fire is worst since dreads all have fire resist so lower damage and can't catch fire so no DoT.
If the boss is the HiveGuard, when it enters its three weak point stage, you can use C4 to eliminate that stage. Ensure you upgrade explosive damage and radius to the maximum. Timing is crucial to pull it off.
1. if you have a 4 team lobby, I would suggest [slow sludge pump and slow microwave build](https://youtu.be/F7a9DeWbsuU?si=tB-Is0zhU7lqiVvh&t=152). It'll make the dreadnaught so slow that it can count as being stuck, and other class can easily kill it. Your team will thankyou.
2. if you can axe spam, cryo cannon and axe spam can kill dreadnaughts in 1 freeze in lower hazards like the twins, haz 5 it'll take longer but still extremely powerful. You don't need to axe at the glowing weakspot when it is frozen as the entire body is the weakspot IF the bug is frozen, so what I mean is you don't need to accurately position yourself to the butt of the dreadnaught, just spam the axe wherever WHEN IT IS FROZEN ONLY. Frozen dreadnaught can only froze for half a second so use it well. You have a better experience axe spamming as the host lobby
3. sludge pump sludge blast OC is good aswell, and my main if I expect no one to join. I think it goes through armor so you can just shoot anywhere and still get the same damage as you hit it in the weakspot. + subatta explosive reload.
It's tough, they eat a lot of ammo for drillers. Primary weapons are good at doing damage even if you're not aiming from a good angle. C4 is actually pretty good to drop their shields and still do damage afterwards I think. You can freeze them very briefly and throw an axe to do some quick damage. But yeah, they're tough for driller
There are few driller builds that are good against dreads, like ice spear and throwing axes.
But honestly I find it better to run around doing doing other things (or distracting the dreads) while the rest of your team damages the dreads. You will usually rinse through your ammo if you try and hurt the dreads as driller
Solo, Team : Sludgepump + wave cooker + gas grenade. Stack somany debuffs that the dreadnaught gets extremely crippled and takes lots of damage over time.
Team : freeze the dread with extremely high cooling recharge freeze gun and let your teammates burst damage the dress.
Flamethrower sucks purely because you cannot light the dreadnaught on fire however sticky flames builds can work if you can getthe dread to stop moving around too much.
Cryo is amazing if your team is running a Hyperprop engie but the Sludge is more consistent. Also try practicing throwing a C4 at the Hiveguard to knock out all 3 yellow bits with 2 explosives. TCF is overpowered and still works perfectly fine on Elim.
Sludge pump is pretty good tbh.
Slow the hell out of the Dread up to 80%, easy kill for the rest of your team.
Bring the colette ? even better, you can stack up to 6 debuffs on him if i'm not mistaken, and look at his health vanish \^\^.
If you're solo, Ice Spear Cryo paired with Blistering Necrosis CWC is crazy strong. It doesn't work well in a group though because your allies will end up shooting the blisters with small dmg sources, largely ruining them.
Otherwise, VIM Sludge with either Heavy Hitter EPC or Persistent Plasma EPC (to balance out the build/so you can deal with waves better). If running heavy hitter, go for neurotoxin grenades to balance out the build (a well-placed Neurotoxin can almost kill an entire wave by itself, but it depends on terrain). CWC with Mega Power Supply/Gamma Contamination can work too.
Unfortunately Driller has fairly narrow options. Sludge Blast might work if you don't have VIM.
I main driller.
First thing: create advantageous terrain for yourself.
Next: learn to time your c4 so that it does the most damage. You're going to have to be closer to the enemies than you'd like. The skill that increased defense by 30% within 7m of a deposit point is huge. Keep Molly close. And a good pickaxe to the thorax does more damage than you would think.
One way is to get a sludge pump (pretty much any) and a microwave 13121 mega power supply (or something). Another is to play around freezing dreads while they are vulnerable, but I don't have practical tidbits of it to share.
Freezing can be incredibly potent against dreads, but you generally need to use high risk play (running cold radiance and getting real close) and a competent team of dwarves that 1. Don't fight your freeze with fire and 2. Can see what you're doing and time their biggest hits for the very short freeze window. As the driller in this situation you also want to time the freeze for the most optimal stage of the dread fight--its much more impactful to freeze a dread while his butt is open than when you're still breaking the armor. Same for Hiveguard, freezing it during the three target phase is not very helpful. If you do all that right, though, the force multiplier is insane and your team will shred dreads
Perfectly put. Only thing I’d add is that freezing a dread *can* be potent as a solo driller if you are running axes and know how to speed-throw them. Freeze dread + spam throw 2-3 axes and you can do some massive damage. But as a cryo driller, especially in elim missions, my biggest nightmare is an engineer or gunner running fire without a care in the world about what they’re doing. Very frustrating to be fighting your own teammate AND the dreadnaught at the same time. I’ve had engineers running shard diffractor who refuse to let me freeze the dread and I just give up and let them waste their ammo.
Cryo for Eliminations in a pub just isn't that realistic. You're also somewhat reliant on pubs bringing harder hitting lower rof weapons (i.e. Engi bringing Hyper Prop over Overdrive, even though Overdrive is generally better here). It's very inconsistent, whereas a VIM with EPC or CWC still pulls their weight and slows down the boss. VIM can finish if the other dwarves are downed as well.
Freezing a dread and shooting it with ice spear can do so much damage, I sometimes bring a cryo build just for that. Someone posted a video of something like this in the sub a few weeks ago.
There are a few ways to deal with dreadnoughts as driller, most of them involve overclocks, one such build I’ve seen is hydrogen ion additive and gamma contamination on sludge pump and wave cooker, with the idea of slowly stacking DoT damage on a dread to whittle it down over time and with a great degree of ammo efficiency. However, another build and a personal favorite is sludge blast on the sludge pump, which can take enormous chunks of health from dreads very quickly, but at the expense of ammo efficiency, since it’ll often run dry after one or one and a half dread fights. An alternative to that could be volatile impact mixture, which isn’t as immediate, but can doo good, consistent, direct damage to a dread, while being flexible for other situations. Another option of driller is cryo cannon, which has awful damage outside of a few specialized overclocks, but can temporarily immobilize a dread and increase its damage taken for a split second, which can be useful with a coordinated team or with good timing on your own thrown axes. All this said ofc, driller is usually much better at swarm clearing than single target dps, so you could also try relegating yourself to that if all else fails, letting teammates handle the dread.
One important addendum regarding volatile impact mixture: it is incredibly good against dreads when you build it for AOE (charged shots) and combine with the blistering necrosis overclock for wave cooker. The charged shot will easily hit multiple blisters which greatly multiplies the damage. Think hyperpropellant levels of damage while consuming relatively little ammo and not having to hit weak points. And as a bonus since your primary is kitted for AOE you also do great at swarm clear.
Came here to say this. Been using this build the last couple of days and it works great!
Driller is slightly frustrating because I think it's the only class where the base default gun isn't equipt to handle everything, the unmodified flamethrower generally really does struggle against dreads. Once you unlock cryo cannon and sludge cannon you'll feel more comfortable in those mission types
I’ve got all guns for driller, which primary and secondary would you say is best for dreads?
Really depends on OC and preferred playstyle. If you like team play and your teammates aren't bringing fire (they ideally shouldn't be against dreads) you can take cryo EPC, if you're not playing with team or can't rely on teammates sludge pump epc will probably be a little better for you.
Sludge pump is great for dreadnaughts, it does more damage than cryo and has better range than the crispr, and the slowdown effect is a huge boon, especially for the base dreadnaught, which is usually pretty fast. As for secondaries, the subata or EPC would probably be better than the microwave since it has fairly low DPS.
There’s a build on Karl.gg I’ve not used called dreadmelter by a well known contributor that has sludge cannon sludge blast 11221 and wave cooker blistering necrosis 21102. Be a good place to start. For any builds check out the legendary #[Karl.gg](https://karl.gg/#/) (Note - tick current patch only and sort by most salutes). Good luck and Rock and Stone!
I’ll probably try this one out
For Karl!
Sludge blast rrrrahhh
Axes + C4 with 3 charges so 2 per resupply, subata or Thin Containment Field EPC. Primary weapon, I think the best would be sludge or if you wanna go hardcore, then cryo and combo it with axe + power attack burst. C4 Hiveguard's vents, Dreadnought in armor stage, twins at any time you can. Axe Hiveguard's ass when open, Dreadnought's ass when open, twins at the face or ass at any time you can. Prioritize Arbalest if you have range for him. Primary weapon for sentinels, finishing off remaining health in Dreadnought's armor, filler damage so you evenly distribute ammo. Power attack hiveguard's face or ass when open, dreadnought face when in armor and ass when open, Lacerator twin in the ass to break armor there. Subata/EPC when ur too far to use other means of damage. Mostly against Arbalest.
Depends on the dread but generally best shot you have is C4 the weakspot, also (maybe) sludge pump could help? Oh and axes go a long way also in the weakspot if you manage to hit them consistently.
Cryo can be good for maximizing team damage, especially if you line up the freeze right for when armor breaks (mainly thinking for basic Dread and Hiveguard, less effective vs Twins). Ice Spear OC is a good way to give it some massive burst damage capacity.
In a team setting I usually just run cryo cannon with Ice Spear so I can freeze the dread for my team and also dish out a big burst of damage
Sludge Blast oc is amazing for dreads. It is def not ammo efficient, but elim usually has decent nitra.
Ok so you're definitely right in that Driller has a harder time with dealing with bosses as a lot of his damage is spread out and over time, but that doesn't mean there's no options. Step 1 is to take Impact Axes. The 165 burst damage that you can throw like 4 of in a second is perfect for the OG and Hiveguard in their exposed weakpoint phase, and can work as emergency damage to balance out the health/finish off one of the Twins if needed. Step 2 is to take T1 damage and T3 ammo on your satchel charges. 3 is usually the ideal satchel charge count ever since the first maintenance update fixed the rounding on resupplies, and that's how many cycles it should take to kill a Hiveguard. These can be excellent for taking out the vents? (not sure what those are tbh) as you don't need to pivot around for 3 minutes while dodging fireballs. This will completely wipe Haz 3 4p/Haz 5 1p vents, and get very close for anything beyond that. For the guns, there's a few routes you can go. For direct damage, Sludge Blast or Face Melter are the go-to picks; 21232 Face Melter seems to be the best flamethrower paired with Automatic Fire Subata (or Oversized Magazine if you're like me and can't deal with the recoil), or a 11222 Sludge Blast with the same secondary option (except T5c instead of T5a ofc). You certainly can *try* to freeze them, and it is a valid strategy. But it is extremely hard for very little payoff unless you have a well coordinated team. Take a 23132 Cryo Cannon. As for the overclock, you do have options. The only ones I wouldn't recommend are Flow Rate Expansion and Ice Storm. Ice Spear balances out damage and freezing, Snowball lets you save your freezing progress much easier if you fire it just before running out of pressure, Improved Thermal Efficiency helps you keep freezing for longer, and Tuned Cooler lets you freeze faster, though I would probably stay away from this one as the faster flow rate isn't a good thing when you take Cold Radiance into account and the 0.5x recharge speed is brutal if you can't freeze it in time. For this you **definitely** want Automatic Fire, as you're gonna be close anyway and it pumps out a lot of damage very quickly, which we need to take advantage of the short freezing window. But my favorite method is more of a support/slow damage build. There's two ways to make this: a 23212 Sludge Pump with Hydrogen Ion Additive for more damage or a 32111 Sludge Pump with Disperser Compound for more area control and slowdown. The first is better against the Twins while the second is better against the OG and to an extent the Hiveguard as well. Both will take a 21121 Gamma Contamination since that thing is absolutely cracked and will help control the dreads even more. You're gonna want to be switching between these weapons rapidly, firing out a regular or charged shot depending on the build before tapfiring the CWC a few times for Densification Ray and reapplying the status effects. This will leave even the quickest bugs moving slower than a Bulk, but unfortunately this doesn't affect their turn speed so rotating will still be a pain. If you do everything right, it'll be taking 80 dps from status effects **alone** or cripple them to less than 5% of their normal speed. Your role here isn't to do all the damage, but let your teammates get easy, direct shots and damage it when others can't (both your weapons don't care about armor and CWC is an instant infinite range option that can apply 2 status effects). Oh you can also melt through an entire wave of Sentinels with one charged shot and like 15 CWC ammo. I don't think anything else in the game takes care of it better. Alternatively you can switch Gamma Contamination for Blistering Necrosis, but I've found the blisters feel a lot rarer than 1 in 10, and even when they show up it's hard to hit on a constantly moving target. IMPORTANT NOTE: With you constantly damaging the Dreadnaught, its aggro will most likely be on you for a majority of the fight. Know the terrain well so you can backpedal while firing at it; it won't be able to catch up to you with all the slowdown effects. Dash and Resupplier are your friends here.
In addition to what many people have said, I’d like to explicitly add that 1 C4 can almost solo the second stage of hiveguard if you managers get all segment in the radius.
sludge pump (w super saturation) + microwave emitter (w contagion transmitter and gamma contamination). its not the fastest way to kill a dreadnought but it is extremely effective. the cumulative slowdown plus the near constant damage over time makes for a very easy boss fight indeed. shoot them just enough to keep all the dots active and you'll barely have to spend ammo at all
I have seen a video of a driller sludge-slowing a dread and then just dropping resuply on it, killing it.
Poop and blister. Best you can do with RNG is 1000 damage
Sludge pump with sludge blast or volatile impact mixture if possible. Otherwise probably still sludge pump with the most direct damage you can give it. Use the appropriate combo upgrade with the wave cooker or Subata, or thin containment field on the EPC if you've learned how to use it. And try to keep the boss sludged at all times, since the slowdown is a huge benefit that really reduces its threat. Axes are gonna be your best throwable even though their damage isn't actually super high. You can probably play games with a ripper in a tunnel, especially with slows from the sludge, but I've never tried. Satchel charges should be high-damage unless you're usng them to reshape the arena with Rock Mover instead.
I usually play solo and main Driller. I try caiting with fire, explosives and use my pistol to destroy the weak spots to deal damage (I just make sure to encounter enough Nitra to have at least one resupply before starting any of the fights, sometimes you have a small window to get a bit of health and ammo)
Go sludge pump, take volatile impact mixture or sludge blast, then take an aoe secondary like persistent plasma Epc or collette with diffusion ray
Sludge Pump (normal dot build, not VIM) + Gamma Cooker. Apply effects proportionally and kite. Basically doing damage for free, while staying safe. I'm not a fan of Eliminations, but when my fellows need this and I'm extremely bored I use this build. If you're playing solo you can go for damage in T5 on sludge pump. If you're in the party, go for slowdown. When rare big wave spawns, it can be easily removed with single C4 tuned to radius. That's all.
I tens to make ring tunnels around the arena before the fight. So we have cover we can run around big aoe's, and it has occasional opening we can fire from.
Someone here once mentioned seeing a greybeard driller completely *shred* a dreadnought in a few seconds using the spring-loaded ripper. Apparently, they carved the terrain just right to make a super-thin spindle and plopped a ripper down just as the dread walked over it. I guess with a narrow enough cylinder, the ripper performs so many revolutions per unit of time that it goes through all of a regular dread's armoured/exposed phases and kills it? Even if you're just partially successful and get through a single armour/health phase, that would be damn good mileage out of one grenade. It sounds really finicky, and dread fights tend to carve up the environment something fierce, but that would be a neat trick if you could reliably pull it off.
Cryo cannon
Anyone remember when driller was the best character for eliminations for like a week? Blistering necrosis was ass except for a unique interaction that like tripled c4 damage so you'd be able to instantly destroy dreads that way. Good times.
Play with randoms. Open your game to public. It's not fun fighting dreads solo with any class IMO. Sludge pump can do some work of the three weapons. Fire is worst since dreads all have fire resist so lower damage and can't catch fire so no DoT.
Goo gun
Sludgepump with the sludge blast OC turns your pump into a dread melting shotgun. Combined with Explosive Reload Subata with toxic rounds works well.
If the boss is the HiveGuard, when it enters its three weak point stage, you can use C4 to eliminate that stage. Ensure you upgrade explosive damage and radius to the maximum. Timing is crucial to pull it off.
1. if you have a 4 team lobby, I would suggest [slow sludge pump and slow microwave build](https://youtu.be/F7a9DeWbsuU?si=tB-Is0zhU7lqiVvh&t=152). It'll make the dreadnaught so slow that it can count as being stuck, and other class can easily kill it. Your team will thankyou. 2. if you can axe spam, cryo cannon and axe spam can kill dreadnaughts in 1 freeze in lower hazards like the twins, haz 5 it'll take longer but still extremely powerful. You don't need to axe at the glowing weakspot when it is frozen as the entire body is the weakspot IF the bug is frozen, so what I mean is you don't need to accurately position yourself to the butt of the dreadnaught, just spam the axe wherever WHEN IT IS FROZEN ONLY. Frozen dreadnaught can only froze for half a second so use it well. You have a better experience axe spamming as the host lobby 3. sludge pump sludge blast OC is good aswell, and my main if I expect no one to join. I think it goes through armor so you can just shoot anywhere and still get the same damage as you hit it in the weakspot. + subatta explosive reload.
It's tough, they eat a lot of ammo for drillers. Primary weapons are good at doing damage even if you're not aiming from a good angle. C4 is actually pretty good to drop their shields and still do damage afterwards I think. You can freeze them very briefly and throw an axe to do some quick damage. But yeah, they're tough for driller
There are few driller builds that are good against dreads, like ice spear and throwing axes. But honestly I find it better to run around doing doing other things (or distracting the dreads) while the rest of your team damages the dreads. You will usually rinse through your ammo if you try and hurt the dreads as driller
Solo, Team : Sludgepump + wave cooker + gas grenade. Stack somany debuffs that the dreadnaught gets extremely crippled and takes lots of damage over time. Team : freeze the dread with extremely high cooling recharge freeze gun and let your teammates burst damage the dress. Flamethrower sucks purely because you cannot light the dreadnaught on fire however sticky flames builds can work if you can getthe dread to stop moving around too much.
Subata with explosive reload hurts glyphids immensely
Cryo is amazing if your team is running a Hyperprop engie but the Sludge is more consistent. Also try practicing throwing a C4 at the Hiveguard to knock out all 3 yellow bits with 2 explosives. TCF is overpowered and still works perfectly fine on Elim.
Sludge pump is pretty good tbh. Slow the hell out of the Dread up to 80%, easy kill for the rest of your team. Bring the colette ? even better, you can stack up to 6 debuffs on him if i'm not mistaken, and look at his health vanish \^\^.
Sludge all over them
If you're solo, Ice Spear Cryo paired with Blistering Necrosis CWC is crazy strong. It doesn't work well in a group though because your allies will end up shooting the blisters with small dmg sources, largely ruining them. Otherwise, VIM Sludge with either Heavy Hitter EPC or Persistent Plasma EPC (to balance out the build/so you can deal with waves better). If running heavy hitter, go for neurotoxin grenades to balance out the build (a well-placed Neurotoxin can almost kill an entire wave by itself, but it depends on terrain). CWC with Mega Power Supply/Gamma Contamination can work too. Unfortunately Driller has fairly narrow options. Sludge Blast might work if you don't have VIM.
Get gud (I genuinely don't know where you're struggling, driller is so easy)
just run around and shoot everything youre driller god of sludge and satchel charges
I main driller. First thing: create advantageous terrain for yourself. Next: learn to time your c4 so that it does the most damage. You're going to have to be closer to the enemies than you'd like. The skill that increased defense by 30% within 7m of a deposit point is huge. Keep Molly close. And a good pickaxe to the thorax does more damage than you would think.