Let's talk speeders

Having temporarily abandoned my shooter I'm working on building up my speeder. The current status is M3 fighting 600-1200 infamy. Typical opponents range from M1-M5. AT the high end those M5's have racks of legendaries but more commonly I see a hodgepodge of rare/epic stuff. The game has blessed me with infinite flares and blast cannons so it's just a matter of getting rare parts to level them up. For my blue slots it's almost certainly going to be turbo and bandages. That leaves a few questions.

Red Slots
Flare: What perks go in this?
Blast Cannon: Seems obvious that it's burn damage perks.

Yellow Slots
Right now I'm using overboost and tesla bolt on the [sort of] advice from @TheAntiSnipe . For the overboost I'm not really sure why I want that over nitrous. My base boat speed with the turbo is already 1.49. I feel like the burst speed of nitrous is a more valuable "get out of jail free card" than the longer term but much smaller boost of overboost. Any thoughts on that? I have the same question regarding the tesla bolt. Honestly, when I've fooled around with speeders in the past I loaded them with dual nitrous. Another part of this issue is that I have plenty of tesla bolts, tesla shields, and nitrous but only 1 rare overboost right now.

What perks do people routinely put in overboost, bolt and nitrous?

Thanks in advance for the advice from any of you speeder pro's. For those of you in a Mark umpty-quadrillion boats, please try to remember back to the baby gear in your responses (think R25 type gear).

 

Fine fine... I'll put my epic rudder on it and see. But honestly I'm not finding myself troubled by the turn rate or my ability to put my sights on the target when I want. I suspect dogfighting in the much more cumbersome shooter is what's making this seem trivial in comparison. I'll go ahead and develop one of my nitros and see how that works in conjunction with the OB. I suspect I'd love that more than the tesla... at least right now.

I think I may be addicted to the speed. From a strategic sense I love being able to put my boat on the battlefield where I want, when I want. And I love being fast enough to avoid most incoming fire. I've been doing my enfo for questing and getting a feel for that tesla bolt. It certainly has it's moments. If I do it right, between maneuverability and the bolt stun... even this short duration one... I can dogfight with much beefier boats. I have to admit... the enforcer certainly has it's charms for a guy who likes precision more than brute force. I feel like I can position that boat with nearly pinpoint precision. We'll have to see if I go that way in the end. Conveniently, it's all the same gear at this point.

ROFL, I just finished a match where I turned in a 2 star finish among a sea of M5's with a few M4's -- that cute little M2 enforcer is nearly un-hittable when I'm "in the zone" -- 1350 HP (a large part of which involves knowing where not to be in the combat)

 

I don’t think the mk3 has space for a rudder. Turbo is pretty much essential.

Options for flare perks. You can either go for duration, which is most popular, or all weapons, which will give an extra boost to your big Blast Cannon hit. Or, if you’ve got em, some hit point perks, which certainly wouldn’t hurt on a mk3.

The advantage of Overboost is that you can reposition faster, to get where you need to be (or get away from where you don’t want to be).

I agree that Nitro + OB is probably the most solid combo, but if you’re planning to stick with speeder, it might worth practicing with the Tesla Bolt as early as possible. It’s a great item, and even with a short duration, it’ll make it much easier for you to hit other speeders, and it’s good for getting people off your back, and killing time while your weapons cool down.

 

All of that makes total sense and thanks for the perk info. I wasn't even sure what perks were available for the yellow stuff. I'm glad I took advantage of last weeks raffle and got some decent epic perks.

insofar as the bolt, I think I'll just leave that on my enforcer and take that out for a spin every few days for 20 or 30 matches. I agree that it's an awesome item but it takes practice. That was obvious last night while I was dancing with an M5 fixer wielding a railgun. It was tight space and in theory I should've been able to dance with him forever. In practice it was only "long enough"

Regarding the rudder, I won't really be taking the speeder out till it's M4. So it'll have another blue slot. I am fully intending on bandages/turbo but, as promised, I'll test out rudder (and I suppose shield too). The reason I'm waiting is that I want my reactions to start training on a boat which behaves roughly like the final target. So I need it to have the speed items it's going to have and they need to be at least some usable level.

 

I found the rudder especially fun, mainly because in 1 vs 1 situations, it allows you to keep turning behind your opponent’s turret, faster than most Shooters and Defenders can rotate it. So it rewards skill. You can do that reasonably successfully in a mk4 regardless, and just use Tesla Bolt and Nitro for when they start to catch up.

In the mk5 you take another big agility hit, so I’ve found it much harder to pull off. I’ve been really focused lately on trying to get the 5% agility boosts, off Swift and Burnace, in order to fix that... but it’ll never be as good as having a rudder (my one true love, lol).

But anyway... 1 vs 1s aren’t nearly as frequent as people critting you with sniper (etc...), in the first few minutes of the game (even if you go looking for 1 vs 1s), so generally speaking, the Small Shield will serve you better. In my experience, getting my Small Shield to t3 was worth about 500 infamy, over any other Blue item. Just remember to keep training the Big Shield too (as you need it at mk5).

I never got along with bandage. Maybe for the Sniper/Mine Speeders it’s better. For the ‘in your face’ BC/ExC Speeder, I’d go shields.

 

Thanks. I'll inspect the small shield choice carefully. My suspicion at this time is that the relative value of each depends a lot on the native play style of the user. A "bob & weave" combat style is what I naturally assume in pretty much any game so the speed makes sense as does the rudder if I actually need it. The shield (from my own perspective) is only useful when I have already failed.

The rudder still baffles me but needs experimentation. I still don't find myself having agility problems but it may be a case of "not knowing what I'm missing".

 

The "training wheels" aspect makes a lot of sense. I just think all my practice on that lumbering oaf of a shooter did plenty of training for me. It feels like fighting with one hand tied behind your back and then suddenly having that hand freed.

On the bandages, conveniently the game has seen fit to give me dual epic bandages. Like my epic turbo I'm perfectly willing to invest in them because I cannot see a future in which the bandages won't be desired on at least one of my boats. Plus, then idea that I can hit & run has an awful lot of appeal. I know bandage speeders where the ones that vexed me the most on my shooter. I could kill them like any other speeder, but when they fled, I HAD to chase or my work was useless. So they could (and did) take me out of the battle even if I ended up sinking them.

Being two-shottable is simply a fact of life for me any time I'm actually trying to win. So I'm not particularly worried about that. That is Battle Bay.

 

Coming along nicely. If I get that flare up to 25-ish and the nitro up to 25-ish and my epic bandages leveled I'll be thinking we're ready for a full swapover rather than relying on my shooter for income.

Edited to add:
OK, I can't really do much damage with that setup but a 1400hp speeder is like catnip for M4 & M5 foes. I can suck a TON of bullets into the waves and terrorize their fixer.

 

I'm avoiding upgrading mark until the gear is upgraded. But oh yes I'm looking forward to M4 and M5. It's just a long road of waiting for blue parts.

 

I don’t think there is much disadvantage to upgrading to mk4. Your base speed will drop a little, but you have an extra blue slot, so you can just slap on a 2nd low tier turbo.

Running two small turbos, obviously, isn’t as optimal as running one awesome turbo and a shield. But it’s still better than any build you can do on the mk3. So I wouldn’t hold off upgrading to mk4, it has more hp, and is just better than the mk3 in every way. The only issue is lost speed, but as I say, you can just run two turbos side by side while you’re waiting to upgrade your blues.

I did that when I first upgraded. I run rare and uncommon turbos side by side, and got my speed up to ~1.6. It’s actually only recently that I’ve managed to get back up that high with a single epic turbo on my mk5, so it really very fast.

 

I went ahead and upgraded. Right now I'm using turbo / bandages (speed 1.53, health +48) but my overboost may be too crappy to really make hit & run really viable. I don't have a good small shield though. The next big thing is to get Bernice leveled up so I can get my flare past R-20. Oh, and I cannot wait for the raffle board to show me some burn damage love for my blast cannon.

I'm just grinding away on quests now so using my shooter but overall I'm loving the speeder hands-down even with it's relatively crappy gear. It is SO much more responsive to an aggressive play-style... for better and worse LOL. I love it that when I'm "in the zone" it's like I'm the angel of death and when I'm not I die messily. I also like how it's speed and maneuverability allow even my M3 speeder to take down an M5 shooter if I was driving really well.

 

Yes but need a decent amount of talents and lots of big perks for nitro to get it down to 5 seconds. And over boost needs 4 epic perks for that and remember rares can't fit 4 perks only 3. We're talking around mk3 here.

 

That's the path I'm on. And as you observe, I haven't really prioritized leveling up nitro. It's only use is a short squirt to get you out of a positioning jam (well, that and to put you on the other side of the map when needed).

Apropos of nothing, RNGesus was kind to me last night.


A second epic turbo! That is the only duplicate turbo I've received. Yay!

 

And my little speeder is slowly making progress...

• Flare: Burnice will soon be level 14 in another 3 days and I have PLENTY of rare flares. So I'm basically focusing on Burnice for a while.
• Blast Cannon: BHurt is level 16 and once I work my flare up I'll be wanting to get the blast cannon into T4 (Bhurt level 20). I JUST got that rare fire damage perk from the shop a bit ago so that'll help.
• Overboost: Oh what I wouldn't give for more overboosts. Unfortunately, that was one of the very few items I scrapped early and I scrapped a few of them. I have one epic one in inventory which is better (at E1) than the R10 I have equipped but I'm avoiding investing in it. Sooner or later RNGesus will give me another blue one.
• Nitro: I have another one to tier-up but I'm not hugely excited about that. I've been pushing the turbo and bandages instead.

The turbo seems like a no-brainer. The bandage choice vs. the shield is interesting. I only have one rare small shield so I couldn't really do much with it anyway. On the whole I think the choice balances out. It forces me to play better because I only have 1700hp. I seriously need to consider my approach as I go in for the kill (from the side or the rear idiot! NOT the front! NO NO NOT THE FRONT! *BOOM*). On the positive side, a successful escape after an assassination means I will be able to fight further even if I took a beating and there's no fixer. If I could drill it into my thick skull that there is no point loitering in dog-fighting range between shots that'd be another 11 seconds of healing time in between every 1000 points of damage I do. I still play my speeder too much like my old brawler shooter and I forget I only have 2 guns and LOTS of mobility. I tend to "snuggle up" once I've closed with a victim rather than hit & run. Overall the bandage choice makes for a higher risk play style which encourages aggression at the right moment. That suits my temperament. It's a choice of subtlety and skill over brute force. If I drive well it pays big dividends. If I don't... well....

The Nitro/OB combo appeals to me a great deal but not for dog-fighting purposes. I wish I had Nitro/Bolt for that. Rather, I like it for strategic reasons. I can put my speeder anywhere on the map very quickly even with my crappy overboost. That means, assuming I'm paying attention, that every 1v1 becomes a 2v1. Every weakened enemy limping to safety no matter how distant gets hunted down. I can go scouting for my shooters and get out again without taking a beating. My team's fixer is never fighting for his life alone. It means that enemy capture is never a pressing matter -- I have lots of time to get there. I think using Nitro/Ob is sacrificing some tactical strength for strategic control. That choice also suits my personality.

I suspect that eventually getting a better turbo or better overboost will make me question the need for both. But for now I'm liking it. I have no idea how well I'm doing overall but my M4 speeder is right up there with my M4 shooter at 1290-ish (and likely could've gone further but the new quest week started). I thought that was fairly good since the gear on my shooter is significantly better. Breaking through the wall of well-developed M5's at around 1300 is going to require better gear or much, much better skill. Personally I think I need a bit better gear (particularly on the yellow items) but I have a lot still to learn. I'm in no rush anyway since I still need the quests so there's no point in huge infamy.

 

And.... master league! 1319 1391 infamy... in my still fairly gimped little speeder. Honestly I'm not convinced my M4 speeder is "better" than my M4 shooter. But it sure suits my play style and temperament a lot better and it helps decouple my play from that of my team. I think it also helps that a speeder has an innate defense in it's speed so being totally outgunned is not necessarily the end of the story.

in another hour Burnice finishes training then I'll add another 5 levels or so to my flare.

Heh, I go back and forth over the shield/bandage thing but man I must be just as annoying to the enemies as bandage speeders always were to me on my shooter. Unless they kill me it's a safe bet I'll be coming back for more. If they try to chase me down, sometimes they do but it takes an enemy boat out of the match for quite some time.

 

I absolutely love the rudder on a speeder. I can't wait til mk6 so I don't have to give up my big shield for it (obv can't ditch the turbo).