Any decent, recent guide on all of FL4K's skills?

FL4K is the last VH I’m getting to 50 and for past VH and past games the community skill ratings here have been an amazing resource. Even if I don’t follow it perfectly it’s nice to have a general idea of which skills are outstanding, good, mediocre, bad or just don’t work right (for better or for worse). FL4K is even more complicated because they have different pets that could theoretically be affected by skills in certain unforeseen ways.

Anyway, is there anything like that for FL4K in the pipeline or did I just miss the relevant thread?

Thanks!

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Nothing yet, unless it’s buried really far down.

I don’t know if anyone was planning to do one anyway. I have played with all of FL4K’s builds (Rakk, Gamma, and Fade Away) but not for the amount of time some on here have. Still, I think there’s a general consensus on FL4K’s skills, so if no one else was planning on it I could put one together.

@nodreamsonlygoals @AbbyHour @GimmickBuilds Sorry if there is anyone else that I’m not thinking off. Any plans for a skill guide?

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As w Fl4k main I think one of these would be useful for two reasons.
1: I see too many meta Fl4ks compared to other characters.
2: This is the important one, alot of people seem to have trouble staying alive as Fl4k. Sure part of the play style is to anticipate going into FFYL occasionally but in matchmaking other Fl4ks be dropping like flies. I think this is because meta rakk builds usually don’t provide stable survivability then gammaburst and Fadeaway builds need to either eliminate down time or turn it into up time without killing synergy.

Honestly you can not go wrong with a lot of skills with Fl4k. You can choose a tanky HP one but you will lack DPS compared to any glass cannon. I run a mix dmg/HP w/ little hp regen, but I also use a re-charger and a flesh melter otto idol to sustain up time. My fl4k typically has about 12k shields and 10k hp.

I’ll have to do some searching. I don’t remember seeing a community skill breakdown either. This could definitely be useful especially with the handful of values that are wrong, bugs, and other things. Here’s a super brief breakdown of some skills

Skills you pretty much hard avoid are Sic’em and Dominance.

Don’t max out on Ferocity or Go For The Eyes. Persistence Hunter is going to give the most value in that first master tree row.

Hunter’s eye values are about half for armor damage, a third less for human crit, and we didn’t test Beast DR. @Ratore did the testing for the Hunter’s Eye values. It is also a Hunter Skill so gets boosted up by Cosmic Stalker and Big Game.

Low projectile count weapons get the most benefit out of Two F4ng due to it adding 1 additional projectile

Parts of Interplanetary Stalker don’t get boosted by Big Game or Cosmic Stalker passive but it doesn’t matter enough for us to not max it out in the Hunter tree whenever we go Red.

Ambush Predator is supposed to have an indicator which we don’t have at the moment telling us the range. If it had this indicator would be used a bit more often.

He Bites procs Frenzy stacks so having 1 point in it from either tree or class mod is recommended in Blue builds

There are some differences in skill quality depending on what Action Skill you’re running but above are just some stand out things to be on the lookout for. It will help stray away from completely butchering a build at the least lol

Some formulas and general math stuff is getting updated at the moment in this doc. It’s going through a rework though as new information is being discovered

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Ehhh…

I get where you’re coming from (pet damage isn’t worth the investment etc…), but I’d swap Sic Em’ with Go For the Eyes. At least Sic Em is multiplicative, one of the only ones the pets get and one of the most consistent.

If we’re going solely by which has a greater effect on damage, all 3 choices (Ferocity, Go for the Eyes, and Sic Em) deal with pet damage anyway, so none are build defining or even entirely necessary. Ferocity is 99% of the time better than Go for the Eyes (and the other 1% is incredibly niche). Between the other 2 though, Sic applies to every attack command and lowers their cooldown, which can be especially useful with CC attacks like the Eridian Skag.

I feel like ambush predator has a range of several to ten yards based off of feeling but it is discouraging to use that when you can’t see when you do and don’t get the buff.

Yeah more things in this game need icon activations

Also thanks for the info everyone, I do like the Eridian Skag’s attack command but in general I never use attack command because it takes too long to hold down the button, too long for the pet to get there and too long for the pet to actually activate it. It’s pretty much never worth it. I wish it was something that they just did automatically every so often.

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With Sic Em I’m comparing it with its position on the skill tree in mind. It’s going up directly against Furious Attack and Self Repairing System. I haven’t ran into a situation where I’d take Sic Em over the other two. If we do somehow get to a point where we can pet damage our way to the top, I would agree with the Sic Em > Go For The Eyes breakdown.

@megadethwm

Yea ambush is pretty solid in some set ups as well. Hopefully they’ll actually add an indicator at some point in time. There are a few things in the game that need to be ironed out so we move away from tedium

@aidanward I experienced pretty much the same thing with attack command. Just more effort than its worth. The Eridian Skag singularity I feel should be a bit better as well. It never felt like that great of a pull from my dabbling with it. Haven’t messed around with it in a few weeks though

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It’s frustrating that Atomic Aroma doesn’t seem to proc Frenzy at all, not sure about Who Rescued Who either but probably no for that one as well

Relative to the top of the tree I understand, but if we’re talking about the Stalker tree in its entirety than it’s a fair choice in some circumstances.

For example, Once you get down to Fast and the Furryous, you only have 4 skills left to spec into to get to the Power Inside: Overclocked, Hidden Machine, Rage and Recover, and Sic Em.

For any build that isn’t coop oriented or using Red Fang, you get extremely limited use out of Hidden Machine. Overclocked’s fire rate bonus can be helpful in some situations, but 20% on it’s own isn’t a whole lot, and most of the time you won’t notice if that fire rate is missing. Rage and Recover is a fair healing skill, and honestly even if you don’t need the healing all that often is a safe use of points. Still, for 3 points to get to the capstone, it’s not too bad.

Also, the decreased cooldown is necessary for anointments that activate on Attack command. Not that there are a ton that people use, but one is for 30% life steal, which is pretty big on FL4K builds that can’t spam ASE lifesteal anoints.

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Not My Circus taunt looping for fadeaway set ups is another use for hidden machine we can throw in

What are the 30% lifesteal on attack command favored FL4K builds you’re running for M4 Slaughter Shaft & up?

Haven’t done any dabbling with that particular lifesteal in a bit, you know if this is true?

The pet has to carry out the command before it will start, usually by then its to late (atleast for when i’ve used it)

Haven’t done it yet because I don’t have a good shield with the anoint. If I can find one, I’d try it on my Fade Away build since Red Fang doesn’t need it.

TBF though, I’ve only done a few M3 SS coop, never solo. So while it would keep off the ground for a little bit, I’d end up dying anyway.

I’ve incorporated AC spamming into my playstyle, so while it is still extremely annoying, I’m finding it less annoying than most do.

If I’m using Fade Away should I be using Guerillas in the Mist even with low fire rate, high damage weapons or no?

I didn’t think lifesteal came on shields. Lifesteal is pretty useful on Fl4k, a Maggie with 15% will out tank a badass until you have to relaod. I’ve been looking for Maggie and a few good ones for attack command lately.

Nope.

The use case for GitM is actually much narrower now since the nerf. Personally, I’d only use it for fast firing weapons like SMG, ARs, some shotguns. Otherwise, 3-shot fade away is far more useful and powerful.

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I can’t remember, but I think I saw purple shield in Earl’s shop with the anoint. Is there a list somewhere that says what anointment can spawn where?

I ran into this site recently, I think it’s something like an open platform of sorts but I’ve seen a few good articles like this one before.

It’s interesting that Megavore benefits multi-pellet weapons the most but then two-fang benefits single-pellet weapons the most