Breaking Down Enemy Armor: A Complete Guide

Me when my mini-nuke launcher is worse at removing armor than a funny little assault rifle

“I’m a strong, independent dwarf, I don’t need any help!” Said every driller ever

You also forgot about very important part: if damage would break armor, that damage is also dealt to the body underneath. Thats why armor break is also incredibly good with high single damage, like hyperpropellant pgl, and m1000

Driller's Subata double shot mod does increased armor damage.

"My armor can't be broken, foolish dwarf!" Me, with my Corrosive Sludge Pump: "I don't recall asking"

The gas recycling OC for the dual smgs for scout just peels praetorians in an instant! Since I run that with an AI GK2 it pairs quite well.

I want to clarify that this maintenance patch only fixed DIRECT DAMAGE PROJECTILE armor break. Essentially when a direct dmg weapon hits armor, if that shot breaks the armor the shot is supposed to do full dmg and not get reduced. Projectile weapons like drak, hurricane and Pgl were bugged to not do this. Now that it works, the armor breaking mod allows hyper to deal full dmg to a shellback through armor on its first shot. Furthermore aoe dmg (or radial dmg as the game calls it) armor break only does 25% of their dmg to armor. This is why pgl does not fully strip praetorian armor even with the armor break mod. For a long time this was believed to be a bug but was confirmed by the devs sometime last year to be intentional. For that reason, it is strongly advised to not take armor break on aoe focused weapons, especially aoe pgl builds (so basically not hyper prop). Not only is pgl a very low dmg aoe weapon, the armor break mod also competes with the incendiary mod which solves pgl’s biggest issue: Horrific dmg fall off. And this is because the heat mod has 0 dmg fall off. Tldr As a general rule, I’d recommend, avoiding armor break on aoe weapons and only take it on direct dmg weapons it where it isn’t competing with a dmg mod

Driller breaking praetorian armor with drills for the benefit of the team is legit though, in the right situation and if you don't have freeze

I don't think there's anything sadder than the PGL being THIS useless against armor. I mean... come on! The Breach Cutter just gets ALL the love! I like the Breach Cutter, but they really have to put these two side by side and really understand just how messed up it is that the Breach Cutter is just better at everything until you get to the Hyper Prop and Fatboy OCs. But these just turn the PGL into a niche use gun. Only exception is the RJ250 Compound, which is just fun, sure. But meanwhile, the Breach Cutter gets to ignore armor and shred it at the same time, it gets more ammo, it can fire more than one shot before reloading because it has a magazine, and it has a potential to hit way more enemies, so much so that it can almost be used as second primary. And this is BEFORE we get to the Overclocks which make it EVEN better at any of these things.

Excellent video! Super informative as usual! One small thing: You missed my favorite way to break armor, the Zhukov's Gas Recycling overclock. Throw in an IFG and conductive bullets and let it rip and you can defeat a praetorian in seconds flat.

I wish they'd update the wiki to show the 3D models of the Spreader and Stingtail with their respective armor color-coding.

Gas Recycling on the Zhukovs did get a buff relatively recently to have a bunch of armour breaking, a pretty fun option on the scout :)

I mean...Driller doesn't really need armor breaking since all of his primaries and secondaries just bypass it (except the Subata)

Driller gang. Armor is just bug decoration!

@7:45 The Driller in fact is the best at taking down armor OR ignoring it completely. The tone you set for the Driller should not be defeating. That said, I really enjoyed this episode and it helped me understand the tools the other 3 dwarves have to take down armor. It almost feels like armor is a debuff targeted at the other 3 dwarves. The drillers attacks and abilities that either go through armor or ignore it completely fit thematically with them. This is a good chance to make a new driller video highlighting their armor breaking and armor ignoring capabilities. take care.

I ran armor breaking on the minigun exclusively since I started playing. I didn't care that everybody said stun was better, I liked having that option when I needed it. Finally, I tried out stun, and fell in love with it. Also, armor wasn't that bad. 2 days later, armor got buffed. Sigh

I love it how even mechanically the driller is the odd one out. He really has a specific target audience LOL

I just returned to the game after plating last time in season 3 and found this really helpful! Thank you!

Awesome videos as always!

Thank you! I have needed to know this for a while.