Hello everyone!
I'm writing this guide to help out those who are new to the game. I'll discuss some basic concepts and a basic PVE DPS build, telling what you should look for in the gear pieces to be as effective as possible.
INTRODUCTION
Each gear piece comes with stats (the big numbers under the icons) and major and minor attributes (the things that are written in a list below the stats). The stats, from left to right, are: Firearms (the one with the triangle icon), Stamina (circle icon) and Electronics (diamond icon). Firearms increase your bullet damage, Stamina increase your hitpoints and Electronics increase your Skill Power. Most items have a major stat (which will have a value between ~1100 and 1272) and minor stats (with value ~200). The execpion is the holster, which have all stats in the 1100-1272 range.
Also, there are three types of gear that are worth our time: Exotic (red), High-end (yellow) and gear set (green/teal). The exotics and high-ends have a talent, described in the text. Whenever I say, for instance, Savage gloves, I mean a glove with the Savage talent, and so on. For exotics, the name of the item dictates its talent, since they have always the same one.
Since we are going for a DPS build (i.e. meant to shoot things), Electronics won't be our focus here, since it improves your skills. However, damage and survivability are key factors in this type of build, therefore, Firearms and Stamina are both important. If you focus too much on Firearms, you become a glass cannon and anything can kill you, even before you can kill them. If you focus too much on Stamina, it will take ou longer to die, but will take you much longer to kill. What I recommend is to have a Toughness (which is a combination of your hitpoints and armor) between 330k-370k, this will give you a decent survivability and leave room to focus everything else into damage output.
GEAR - What should you look for
Regardless of the major stat, which with everything combined should give you a thoughness between 330k and 370k, you should look for pieces where the major stat is at least 1200, below that the item is pretty much trash. To be good, a stat should be at least 1250. However, the variability comes in the minor and major attributes, and that is what we are going to discuss now. I will list what I think is ideal for these attributes, at least for a PVE DPS build;
Vest: Major attributes should be health + enemy armor damage or skill haste. Minor attribute should be Ammo Capacity.
Mask: Major shoud be either skill power or enemy armor damage. Minor should be damage to elites.
Kneepads: Major should be health. Minor should be damage to elites plus anything else.
Backpack: Major should be health and minor should be ammo capacity.
Gloves: You should have weapon damage (for the weapon that is going to be your primary, i.e.: assautl rifle, SMG, LMG, etc.) plus two of those: skill haste, enemy armor damage, crit chance or crit damage.
Holster: major attribute should be either health (for more survivability) or reload speed (for more DPS).
Now we come to gear sets, and there are a few options. For a jack-of-all-trades DPS I recommend Striker, Predator or a High-end build. If you want to go sniper, take either Dead Eye or Sentry. Despite that, you need only 4 pieces from a set to get all its bonuses, which leaves us with two pieces free. My recommendation for these pieces are (any two of those):
- The exotic Barret's Vest: gives skillpower when none of you skills are in cooldown, damage when one of them is, and armor when both are. It is a REALLY good item for most builds around.
- Savage gloves: These give you extra crit hit chance against targets out of cover. If you use one, the major attributes should be weapon damage, crit chance and crit damage.
- Specialized backpack: it gives you extra skillpower without having to spend anything on electronics. The more Firearms and Stamina you have, the more skillpower you get. Even you are not focusing on skills, skillpower helps to improve your healing.
Now, if you are going for a High-end/Exotic build, the options are:
Vest: Barret's, Vigorous (all healing skills overheal, for survivability), Rapid (reduced cooldown on healing skills, for survivability), or Reckless (You deal more damage and take more damage, for full DPS potential).
Mask: The exotic Ferro's Mask (you can shoot while on fire), or Tenacious Mask (using a medkit increases your damage).
Kneepads: The exotic Shortbow (grenades explode in only 0.2 seconds).
Backpack: Specialized.
Gloves: The exotic Skulls MC (more weapon damage when you have no gear set bonuses active) or Savage.
Holster: Nimble (moving from cover-to-cover heals you) or Sturdy (staying in cover increases your armor).
The exotics are hard to get, so you will probably go for some gear set to begin with. But once you have enough loot in your stash, you might be able to have a good High-end/Exotic build.
GEAR MODS
Finally, gear mods. These are simple, either Firearms or Stamina with health as a major attribute. Put the stamina ones until you have the desired toughness and the rest should be firearms. For performance mods (the ones that improve your skills) First-aid self heal is strongly recommended, since your skillpower will be low and your heals will be weak. However, if you don't have enough good mods, use anything you have available. It is better to have a little extra stats than no extra stats.
WEAPONS
For overall combat, assault rifles and LMGs are the best, they have decent range and damage for most situations and most likely will be your primary weapon. For secondary you can go SMG or shotgun for short range or sniper for long range. All weapons (except sidearms) have three talents. Two of them have an attribute requiremnt and the third is free. Therefore, for our DPS build, we will focus on talents that require only stamina and firearms. Finally, and very important: don't use burst fire weapons, they are complete trash!
Since we are talking PVE and DPS, the best weapon talents are:
Destructive: increased enemy armor damage, good for everything.
Responsive: increased damage at close range, better for SMGs and shotguns.
Ferocious: increased damage against elite enemies, good for everything (get it as a free talent, because it requires electronics).
Fierce: more crit chance, specially good for SMGs (get it as a free talent, because it requires electronics too).
Deadly: more crit damage, specially good for SMGs.
Brutal: more heashot damage, good for everything except shotguns.
Prepared: more damage at long ranges, good only for snipers.
WEAPON MODS
They have 3 (or 4 in the case of barrel mods) attributes, one major and two minors. Not all guns support all mods, some are for small guns, some are for large guns, and some guns don't have all 4 slots. Whenever you can, use a gun with all 4 slots (shotguns are an exception, since they don't have the barrel mod). Finally, I'll list only the major atributes, because for minor ones you should always look for: crit chance, crit damage, headshot damage, rate of fire or reload speed.
Don't trust completely the DPS calculation of the game. You will notice that whenever you slap a mod with headshot damage on it it will give you more DPS than any other mod you try on that slot. However, headshot damage is good only if you can land headshots, so, if you are having trouble to hit the enemies in the head get some mods with stability on your gun.
Anyway, my recommendations for each slot are:
Sights: Major should be headshot damage, or stability (crit chance or crit damage for SMGs and shotguns).
Barrel: Same as sights.
Underbarrel: Major should be reload speed or crit damage.
Magazine: Major should be magazine size and one of the minors should be rate of fire, ALWAYS.
TALENTS
Now, about your character talents. Here is the list, on my order of preference, pick any 4 of them according to your playstyle:
One is none: headshots have a 50% chance of not consuming the bullet. A must have talent that greatly increases DPS.
Precision: headshots pulse the enemy.
On the move: if you kill the enemy while you are moving, you get extra damage resistance for some time.
Combat medic: when you use a medkit, nearby players and deployed skills are healed as well (good for playing in a group).
Tech support: when you kill an enemy, it extends the duration of you deployed skills. Good if you are using turrets or healing stations.
Stopping power: increased headshot damage when you supress an enemy, really good if you are using an LGM.
Critical save: using a medkid while at low health gives you temporary extra damage resistance.
Strike back: when at low health, skill cooldown is reduced.
That's it guys. It is a lot of stuff and it is only the beggining, but this game is complicated. I hope you find it useful on making a nice DPS build that works in almost every scenario, a good starting point for your farming and hunting.