What’s the best weapon? It depends - on what you are playing and what heroes you are playing with.
My preference if all weapons are at the same rarity / level:
| Run | Weapon |
|---|---|
| Campaign | Looper |
| Tournament | Looper |
| Castles | Looper |
| Weekday Daily elemental events | Looper |
| Gambit | Looper |
| Weekend Boss fight | Plasma |
| Jetpack Heart Hunt | Plasma |
| Endless Waves | Plasma |
| Endless Events | Autogun |
| Dark Castle | Autogun |
| Endless Boss event | Autogun |
Rationale:
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Why the looper is generally the best:
- Works better with more hero passives (details)
- Works better with more perks (details), although for some (e.g. Headshot) the autogun has an edge
- Works very well with gear damage, second only to the autogun
- Built-in piercing and boomerang (until you get bouncy) - especially helpful to clear mobs, more so when stacked with perks like Ice/Improved Ice, Zap and/or Shrapnel - all of them do the same damage even with a shot weakened by piercing and boomerang/bouncy (details) and you would have to be quite unlikely to not get any of them in a run
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Why Autogun for Endless: I can consistently reach 100+ in Endless runs, by then
- My dps is boosted by several +170 Attack from mystery crates (on top of the increased benefit of Gear Damage and the +100 ground, +150 melee etc bonuses I’ve taken)
- This makes up for needing to use a perk roll for piercing
- Boomerang is irrelevant as it will be replaced by Ghost (preferable) or Bouncy Walls
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Why Plasma for the weekend boss fight, Jetpack and Endless Waves:
- My strongest heroes are all fire, so I don’t lose out on Passive skills proc’ing less (only relevant for Weekend Boss, as other events tend to be element-specific)
- When it comes to bosses, the Plasma does more dps because there are no mobs to take Indirect damage (however, for the endless Boss autogun is still better because the Plasma blast damage doesn’t scale up)
- For jetpack, I don’t want any collateral damage - the ideal is to pick off enemies one by one to collect the hearts. The plasma blast can kill nearby enemies, but that’s OK as they are close enough to collect the heart
- For Endless Waves, the enemies appear in a cluster, so almost all of them take collateral damage from the blast
Note:
- Some people seem to find the Gemini Laser useful. I think it’s a fun gun to play with but the laser link tends to disappear with homing (a perk I value even more than multishot) - maybe a totally different perk build would work
. Also the laser link doesn’t proc’ passive skills so that’s a disadvantage with Jackbot, Mortis, Frostina, Arctor, Fursus, and Prospero. - For the daily gun dungeons, the best gun would be the gun with the bonus if you had all of them at the same level. But it isn’t worthwhile to invest in the Blaster / Laser Rifle just to make it easier to get more of them. So just use your main gun for those 2 events - they are still worth playing for the rainbow/upgrade material even if you don’t care about the weapon drops.
My recommendations:
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If you have the looper: Develop it as your main weapon, but in the meantime if your autogun/plasma (or maybe even Laser) is stronger (see Damage Simulator) you should continue to use it until you develop the Looper. Continue to fuse up the Autogun and Plasma, but don’t spend coins on them except when your looper progress is stalled (at Mythical and then later at Exalted); even if you spend coins (because you want a boost for some event), save the Rainbow material for the looper.
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If you don’t have the looper:
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If you can get it from winning an event (it was once the top reward for the Bunny Track event), great. If not, I advise against trying to get it from Platinum crates - most people will need to spend a lot of real money on gems to be able to get it (details) although a small number of people will be really lucky and get it on their first few pulls.
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New players: Focus on the Plasma Cannon as your main weapon; but in the meantime fuse up the autogun as well. You can scrap the Blaster and Laser Rifle (see also the Scrapping guide). As you progress, your Gear mastery permanent upgrade will increase, you will unlock more perks that work better with the Autogun (Zap, Ice and their improved versions) and you will acquire more heroes who will proc better with the autogun - so at some point it will make sense to invest in levelling up the Autogun and switch to it (except for the runs where the Plasma is anyway better) - use the Damage Simulator to estimate before busting your coins.
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If you’ve already invested in the autogun, or already have heroes who proc better with the autogun, focus on the Autogun as the main. In the meantime fuse up the Plasma Cannon and scrap the Blaster and Laser Rifle. You will have to check on the Damage Simulator to see if it’s worth spending coins on the Plasma before you max out the Autogun.
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Note that without the coins bonuses from the battlepass it will be very difficult to develop more than 1 gun. Even with it, manage your coin spend (see Best way to spend coins) so upgrading your main weapon doesn’t stall because you busted coins on a secondary gun.
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