SYNTHETIK – Specialist Class Guide (Modules, Items, Weapons and Tactics)

SYNTHETIK - Specialist Class Guide (Modules
SYNTHETIK - Specialist Class Guide (Modules

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This guide will show all info about Specialist class and subclasses in details.

Specialist Class Overview

Introduction

Radically different from the other 3 classes, Specialists fight in their own way. Engineer is a fragile utility class that can go with a variety of different archetypes from skirmisher, summoner to temporal assaulter; Demolisher is all about explosives, and can gain permanent bonuses from multikills, while also being strong enough to frontline in a pinch.

Engineer

  • Core: Drone Zeal

The Engineer is followed by a Blackjack drone, fires burning laser shots at nearby enemies. Using items grants Drone Zeal power, temporarily increasing its firerate and range, stacks up to 20 times.

  • Core Item: LMG Sentry Turret

Deploys a stationary light machine gun sentry turret, attacking nearby enemies with strong sustained firepower.

  • Core Item 2: Auto-Overclocker

Empowers a friendly unit near the crosshair, granting a firerate and maximum health boost at the cost of 25 scraps, can be stacked and lasts infinitely on summons. Scraps is granted from kills, recycling items, bolts and plating are also dismantled into scrap.

  • Starter Weapon: none

Overview

Starts off significantly weaker than other classes, the Engineer can be either played as a skirmisher, hit and run with his burning laser-firing Blackjack drones before going in for the kill; as a summoner, depending on his turrets, drones and others to fight the enemy on his behalf, setting up crossfire to quickly eliminate targets with overwhelming firepower before his summons expire; or as a highly aggressive assaulter, dish out immense burst damage under the protection of the Auto-Overclocker. 

Can earn stronger body upgrades and heavily relies on items for stacking his Drone Zeal stacks. Can be granted one additional Blackjack drone with 10 recycled items at talent level 10, doubling firepower and allows him to stay relevant late game. Perhaps the class most vulnerable to RNG, but also the most interesting for it.

Base Stats (All measured at 220% difficulty)

  • Health: 800
  • Shield Max: 500
  • Shield Regen: 150
  • Movespeed: 381
  • Luck: 80 
  • Scavenging: 80

Engineer has higher shield and shield regen than standard, but everything else is weaker. Body upgrades for him are 50% stronger, with first upgrade having an additional boost to power. 

Talents

  • Baseline: Start with the Auto-Overclocker item allowing you to buff allies with scrap. Starts weak but gain 50% increased benefits from character upgrades; First character upgrade is stronger.
  • Level 5: Laser weapons fire 30% faster and produce 30% less heat; Special weapons have 30% more max ammo and ammo gain; Overclocking a player additionally grants 5 Core:Drone Zeal stacks and refunds 5 scrap.
  • Level 10: Recycling 3 items grants a new item with 75% of the combined power of the last 3 items; Item shop contains 2 more items; Recycling 10 items build a second Blackjack drone, afterwards each recycled item grants 1 Core:Drone Zeal minimum stacks.
  • Level 15: Your turret grants a shield boost, heals all summoned units when deployed and reduces running cooldowns by 30%; Recycling grants 10 Core:Drone Zeal stacks instantly.
  • Level 20: Not firing a weapon triggers ammo regen after a second and all ammo regeneration is increased by 20%; Headshots scrape off one scrap.

Unlocks overdrive slot.

  • Level 25: Grants a 25% chance to deploy 2 Sentry Turrets at once, otherwise it lasts 10 seconds longer; Core:Drone Zeal maximum stacks are increased by 10.
  • Prestige: All damaged items are spawned in a revised variant with 25% cooldown reduction and normal power.
  • Class Challenge: All classes gain 5% reduced item cooldowns. Doubled effect for party members in co-op.
  • Insanity Challenge: Killing an enemy has a 5% chance to revive it as friendly for a duration.

Recommended Weapons

Engineer gains bonuses to laser and special weapons, but generally he is best paired with a weapon that doesn’t require too much upgrades to be effective, and/or a good all-rounder. Remember: it’s okay to pick weapons and items that go against your class specialisation. A few notable weapons are as follows:

  • Tactical Observer: Reliable burst rifle that improves over time.
  • Medic FMG-9: Health regen on kills is a must.
  • LS Laser Sub: High firerate, but very inaccurate. Increases shielding for every kill and reduces shield regen delay.
  • SPAS-12: Fits very well with Engineer as the weapon promotes hit-n-run, and Dragon’s Breath can allow the Blackjack to constantly refresh burning effect.
  • ‘Eraser’ DMR: Replenish 2 shots to magazine for every kill (4 for Elites), making this gun a good economical choice if you are afraid of running out of ammo (with Field Supply then you don’t have to.) Comes with burning Lithium Cell by default which remedies laser weapons’ weakness against armor nicely.
  • Heavy Flak Cannon: Powerful and accurate launcher that deals AoE damage on impact and confers 40 bonus armor.
  • SCR Laser SOCOM: Laser burst rifle that upgrades itself slightly after every floor. Weak damage may struggle against heavily armored enemies without upgrades or Lithium Cell ammo, but your drones would take care of that for you.
  • Bren Anti-Air: Unusually effective LMG with bonus damage against bosses. 
  • UMP-10 Tornado: Further increases maximum shields and restore shielding on hit makes this one a no-brainer for Engineer.
  • HIG-S Particle Cannon: Energy launcher which fires energy bolts that explodes on impact, dealing damage and slowing in a small area, with a small chance to fire three shots in a single trigger pull. High heat generation and low ammo reserves; explosion has a small delay which can miss fast moving targets.
  • R5000 ‘Sudden’ DMR: Powerful all rounder with AP ammo.
  • Kaida Medic ACR-X: Confers +5 Health Regen when carried. Average stats otherwise.
  • ‘Mjolnir’ Chain LTN: Unique launcher which chains lightning damage across multiple enemies for deadly effect. Limited range and ammo.
  • Ion Obliterator: Curious energy rifle which penetrating bolts travel faster and hits harder as heat accumulates, but unpredictable heat generation may prove fatal. Low ammo capacity.
  • Annihilator ANH-5: HIG-S’ more powerful brother, with higher base heat and other weaknesses to compensate for extra shields and 5% chance to fire four shots in one. Consumes shielding when fired.

General Tips

  • Acid Grenades are very useful at killing turrets and champions, or other armored enemy types. They will head for you as soon as the grenade impacts, though. Consider taking the Dragon’s Masterkey instead which while a little more dangerous to use – requiring close range for best effect – but much more damaging overall, but doesn’t work against champions.
  • The Turret is best as a diversion and also a efficient damage dealer when overclocked. Setup crossfires for maximum effect. Reminder that it can take damage from your own weapons! Don’t focus on upgrading it too much, however, the high cooldown means it won’t be available as often as you’d want it to be.
  • Notice that it takes some time for Turret to be operational. It’s worth to set it up in such a way that it is not damaged immediately upon deployment (if possible). Then lure enemies under the turret. Usually it’s worth to upgrade turret on first deployment so it shoots faster.
  • Turrets tend to have issue with shooting enemies like Ball Bots which attacks at melee range – you better take such enemies out yourself.
  • Unidentified Potion has a chance to poison or slow you, but if you are lucky, it can give you bonus body upgrades which are especially useful as Engineer. If you don’t want to rely on luck, Field Supply can heal you on any ammo pickup for a small amount of 15% of your max health.
  • A good balance of active and passive items (should you remember to activate active items) will give you an edge in battle: as your Drone Zeal stacks increase, your drone(s) get progressively more powerful.
  • Upgrade kits can be recycled and will count towards your second drone. If done right, you can get your second drone by stage 2! Do try to keep items that you find necessary, though.
  • The Auto-Overclocker is useful for keeping your Turret alive for a little longer, fully replenishing its health and increases fire rate, and also yourself for a quick boost in health. Be mindful of your Scrap consumption, however.
  • Drone Zeal speed is increased by the stack, which are increased when used/recycled items. It’s worth to get auto-activating items to permanently have high stacks like Rosarius or Talisman.
  • Dragon Masterkey is pretty useful in early game but later on does not scale that much. Yet it is quite valuable in  Hyper Adrenaline. Just make sure to avoid bullet ricochets.
  • Engineer with its ammo regeneration is designed to synergize best with such weapons as Mjolnir, Liandry or HMN Laser, which tend to have low ammo but allow shooting through walls.
  • When you unlock all Insanity Challenge bonuses then you have a chance to bring back killed enemy back to life instantly – it is pretty useful  because allows to create crowds of supporting units, and you are more like a necromancer. Take a note, though, that some units are not that useful – especially mortar turrets/ crystal dropping turrets in VR will attack you instead of enemies – so take them out quickly!
  • Overdrive can heal turrets or controlled enemies and also upgrades their attack speed. Usually it’s not worth to upgrade more than 4 times – for example Jet Gliders start to fire so fast that they stop doing damage.

Demolisher

  • Core: HE-Ammo

Explosions grant 1-2 stacks of HE-Infusion ammo, each increasing the damage of the next fired projectile by a flat 50 while 20% more damage to turrets and bosses.

  • Core Item: Seismic Resonator

All explosions create a temporary resonating target which can be triggered to create a seismic aftershock explosion.

  • Starter Weapon: Ares GL-16

A serviceable single shot grenade launcher; as with other grenade launchers, the damage will come from your Resonator rather than raw explosion damage. Better find a replacement if able.

Overview

Demo excels at blowing things up. Can be played safer than all other classes as you can detonate your markers and kill any unfortunate souls wandering into them from a safe distance, but can frontline in a pinch with well-rounded base stats. Scales extremely well into late game, while not particularly excelling in any category body stat wise. wip

Base Stats (All measured at 220% difficulty)

  • Health: 1100
  • Shield Max: 400
  • Shield Regen: 120
  • Movespeed: 457

Outside of above standard health and movespeed, Demo starts out with the most average stats of all classes. He can gain stacking permanent bonuses to health regen, armor and scavenging by performing multikills (not necessarily with explosives!).

Talents

  • Baseline: Ejecting and reloading refreshes 100 shield per second, doubled on Launchers; Start with the Ares GL-16 grenade launcher.
  • Level 5: Reloading is 25% faster; Double kills: +1 HE-Ammo damage; Triple kills: heal 100 health; Ultra kills: grant 4% scavenging; (Adjusted for CO-OP)
  • Level 10: Always throw 2 grenades at once and all found items start with 20% more power; Take reduced explosion damage.
  • Level 15: Gain 7 critical strike chance and explosive weapons criticals benefit from 75% of normal critical strike damage (Default 50%); Seismic Resonator benefits from critical strike and gains 10% additional critical chance.
  • Level 20: Never take more than 450 damage in one hit and gain 75 armor while under 30% health; The Seismic Resonator triggers a secondary shockwave, dealing a smaller amount of damage in a larger radius.

Unlocks overdrive slot.

  • Level 25: ARES Grenade launcher is modded after 75 Kills; Launchers, Rifles with Launchers and special weapons gain 10% chance of not consuming ammo and always gain double stat upgrades.
  • Prestige: Triple or Ultra kills grant one Resonator charge.
  • Class Challenge: All classes gain 5 increased maximum spare ammo. Doubled effect for party members in co-op.
  • Insanity Challenge: HE-Infusion bullets gain 10 more maximum charges and each 10th grants 30% increased critical chance and damage.

Recommended Weapons

Demo receives many bonuses to launchers (and rifle with launchers) so naturally that’s what you should take, but must have a good all-rounder to deal with enemies and bosses when the launcher isn’t available. Remember: it’s okay to pick weapons and items that go against your class specialisation. A few notable weapons are as follows:

  • Tactical Observer: Reliable burst rifle that improves over time.
  • SPAS-12: Guaranteed burn ammo gives you a lot of versatility.
  • M79 Terminator: Superior to your starter Ares in every way. Can grant you plating on kills.
  • Object 29: Burst fire fusion rifle with a launcher, with a precise and efficient 2-round burst and a dumbfire rocket every third burst. Rockets may veer off course often.
  • Specialist M16-A3: Usually shots 3 bullet bursts with a grenade launcher, this is one of the most versatile and powerful weapons in the arsenal of the Demo.
  • M32 Multi Purpose: When one grenade isn’t enough, try six. Cannot jam, increases chance of getting powerups.
  • AMD 65: High recoil AR with lifesteal and Bleed ammo.
  • Heavy Flak Cannon: Devastating launcher that fires a small, fast moving projectile then deals AOE damage upon impact. Confers 40 bonus armor.
  • Bren Anti-Air: Excellent all rounder LMG that deals bonus damage against bosses.
  • Human RPG-7: Very slow reload but incredible damage. Just avoid Dumbfire ammo. Gain increased max ammo after every teleport.
  • R5000 ‘Sudden’ DMR: Excellent all rounder with AP ammo.
  • ML7000 Plus: A ton of rockets and rapid reload makes this a no brainer. Avoid Dumbfire rockets. Gives you ammo for all weapons after every teleport.
  • Damnation: Curiously counts as a Rifle with launcher as well. Decent weapon with good balance between firepower, accuracy and stability, and fires a red slow homing bolt every second burst. High deviation and unpredictable bolts.
  • HIG-S Particle Cannon: Energy launcher which fires energy bolts that explodes on impact, dealing damage and slowing in a small area, with a small chance to fire three shots in a single trigger pull. High heat generation and low ammo reserves; explosion has a small delay which can miss fast moving targets.
  • Annihilator ANH-5: HIG-S’ more powerful brother, with higher base heat and other weaknesses to compensate for extra shields and 5% chance to fire four shots in one. Consumes shielding when fired.

General Tips

  • Acid Grenades are very useful at killing turrets and phasers, or other armored enemy. Can leave a marker for you to detonate, making it much more reliable than Missile Drones or Spider Drones. Will instantly attract afflicted enemies to your location however.
  • The two starting Drones can make for good distraction and give you markers to detonate: Missile Drones leave a marker on death, Spider Drones leave a marker after exploding itself (not before, and they are rather dumb.)
  • Watch out the Drones/ Mines though – they sometimes wander like dumb and can cause more harm than help – if possible get only one of them (Missile Drone can be placed close to the cursor, while Spider are spawned randomly near the player).
  • Prioritise upgrading your Resonator, as you will rely on it to deal damage.
  • Grenade launchers are more reliable than rocket launchers: Dumbfire Rockets will veer off course for no reason, Homing Missiles may home into an unintended target, and Target Missiles require you to pay attention to steer the missile properly, and might kill you if you don’t. With grenades, they hit where you want them to.
  • Impact Grenades have a much shorter range than Bouncing Grenades, but the latter is perfectly fine as long as it hits a target instead of bouncing off walls elsewhere and end up killing you in some unlucky occasion.
  • armor does protect against explosions, and this goes both ways. Usually by the time you reach Milbase you’d have plenty of Resonator charges to spare to deal with the heavily armored enemies there, hopefully.
  • Field Supply is a good item to both provide health and ammo (especially ammo for your launchers). 

Specialist Modules

Specialist modules are mostly utility modules that are fairly situational, many of them centered around heat generation.

Stats in square brackets are affected by daily bonus power and Overdrive slots.

Status Extender

  • All user affecting positive and negative status effects last [30%] longer and status effects don’t deal damage below 25% health.
  • A double-edged sword, quite situational but useful against DOT effects (acid, burn, bleed) as you cannot be damaged further than 25% health with this module. Can be combined with Unidentified Potion to increase both positive and negative effects of the potion.
  • If I remember correctly this is very useful on Insanity Challenge modes in high levels, where  fire burning enemies would melt you.
  • Actually grants immunity to all types of DoT, and has been that way for a long time. Less likely a bug and more likely a description error. Very powerful defensive module to use against Assassins and Incinerators, though it doesn’t stop their initial direct damage.

Forged by Fire

  • Grants up to [10%] critical strike chance and [30%] higher firerate the higher the weapon Heat.
  • Increases your damage as your heat increases but beware that higher fire rate means more heat: high heat gen weapons can either make this module shine or a detriment.
  • Goes pretty well with Engineer with Mjolnir or Laser Cannon, just make sure NOT to have automatic weapons to avoid overheat.

Grenadier

  • Getting hit by an explosion refreshes shields and grants a strong damage and firerate buff for [3] seconds. All Grenades, placeable mines & traps have [20%] reduced cooldowns.
  • Strong defensive/offensive module but only if you get hit by explosions. Its second ability depends on your drops, but can be combined with Acid Grenades. Situational.
  • This one is good for Demo in suicidal mode, where you like to run towards the enemy.
  • Makes explosions deal damage to health directly instead of shield first.  This fact alone should turn you away from using this module.

Chromatic Alloy

  • Taking health damage over 50 has a [25%] chance of granting 200 armor for 5 seconds, 20 seconds cooldown.
  • A good protective module that has a lot of chances to proc because of the small damage taken value required, but long cooldown.
  • Not that useful as it sounds in Hyper Adrenaline – you usually get too much damage at once to make it usable.

Weapons Deal

  • Starting Pistols and weapons come in a non standard variant and weapon upgrade shops cost [25%] less.
  • An interesting module if you want to mess around with Starter weapons. Engineer only starts with his sidearm so it’s Demo that would fully benefit from this module (who starts with a sidearm and the Ares grenade launcher.) Situational but can be useful if picked up later in the game for smaller weapon upgrade cost.

Multiply

  • All ammo regeneration effects are amplified by [35%]. Picking up ammo grants slight ammo regeneration for [15] seconds.
  • May have some good synergy with powerup-based modules like Force Unleashed or weapons like M32 Multi Purpose, but otherwise situational. Can go well with Engineer level 20+ as it can enhance ammo regen from his level 20 talent.
  • This goes very well with Demo and ML7000.

Inner Fire

  • Grants [20] health regeneration while in combat for a maximum of 10 seconds. Instantly increases weapon heat by 25 and sets shields to half strength after the maximum duration.
  • Helpful health regen module but a little tricky to use – its duration can be cut short if no more enemies are present within a certain radius (slightly beyond your screen). Can go well with both class but especially Engineer who is much more fragile, while Demo can earn permanent health regen bonuses from multikills.
  • Good for those that do hit-and-run attacks.

Focus

  • Active reload grants [30%] improved recoil control and increases item cooldown speed by [100%] for 2 seconds.
  • Excellent module that rewards precise active reloads, especially helpful for Engineer who depends more on his items. Can be difficult to achieve with Haste and Hardcore I modifiers turned on.

Well Oiled

  • All items grant [4] maximum health and heal for the same on activation – stacks 50 times. Item activations have a [2%] chance of resetting running cooldowns of all items.
  • Decent module that would grant a total of 200 extra health at baseline, more with Overdrive and daily upgrades. Situational but worth taking on Engineer for the 2% cooldown reset chance as well.
  • Works very well with two or more auto-activating items like Talisman.

Overdrive

  • Items cool down [25%] faster and weapons eject up to [35%] faster if heat is over 40. Increases movement speed by 30.
  • Heat dependent, synergises well with Unceasing but harder to utilise it without, even harder on low heat weapons. Increased movement speed is always very good.

Elemental Power

  • All inflicted slow, poison, fire, or bleed effects last [25%] longer (radiation deals more damage). All effects applied by shots have a [15%] chance to have triple strength.
  • Situational but may go well on Engineer whose Blackjack drone fires burning laser and would benefit more from building around burning effect.

Calculated

  • Take [15%] increased damage under 50 Heat and deal [15%] more damage when over 50 heat. Overheating no longer removes shields and grants a strong shield buff for 6 seconds.
  • Heat dependent, can go with either Unceasing (which it has synergy with) or Inner Fire for health regen to make up for the inevitable health loss from taking damage and/or overheating. Situational but might make for a fun challenge build.

Transmutate

  • The first recycled item grants a replacement of the same rarity and [2] Plating. Passively increases recycling gain by [35%].
  • Very powerful for Engineer if you are building for the second Blackjack drone –  and you will, considering how much extra firepower you can get with twice the burning lasers. Not mandatory but will make your playthrough a little easier as it gives you an extra item towards the drone, as well as extra money for recycling items.

Unceasing

  • Increases heat generation by [25%]. Dash now resets current heat, refreshes shields and reduces Dash cooldown all by [30%]. Increases dodge chance by 5%.
  • Basis of just about every heat builds as it’s the only module that increases heat generation. Makes dashing much more powerful as well: worth taking even if you aren’t building around heat generation and you only need the upgraded dash.
  • A must-have for Specialist classes. The benefits clearly outweigh the additional heat generation, which is hardly noticeable.

Sun Rising

  • Every 300 Heat produced passively increase burn and crit damage by 1%. Stacks [40] times and reaching the max heals to full HP once.
  • Should be combined with Unceasing, goes well with Engineer whose Blackjack already fires burning laser, but usually no use on Demo.

Force Unleashed

  • Picking up Powerups heals for [10%] missing health and all powerups last [3] seconds longer (Powerups always last longer depending on how fast they were picked up).
  • Too dependent on RNG but can be useful if you plan to build around the M32 Multi Purpose – in that case pick this on Demo. Field Supply is a more reliable healing source.

Specialist Items

Specialist items are mostly defensive/utility, with two healing and summon options along with more offensive items.

Unidentified Potion

  • Has one of the many mostly positive side effects and heals 35% missing health on all team members. Gains one charge when teleporting.
  • RNG dependent, usually heals you and even comes with bonuses on top but occasionally can poison or slow you down. Not really something you want to use in an emergency if you are risk-averse, but if you are comfortable living on the edge then by all means: it can sometimes grant extra body upgrades, making this very useful on Engineer. Situational, otherwise.

Field Supply

  • Deploys an ammunition canister to be used by all team members. Picking up any ammo heals team members for 15% maximum health.
  • Heals you on any ammo pickup (drops, chests) which is very powerful. Upgrades increase the potency of healing effect as well. Refills your ammo when used, even more useful on Demo who usually uses low max ammo launchers.

Acid Grenade

  • Creates an acid puddle, afflicting anyone passing it and generates 25 heat when thrown.
  • Not very good against crowds as it usually doesn’t stack Acid effect enough to deal noticeable damage, as well as attracting their attention towards you instantly, but perfect against turrets. Creates a marker on impact allowing Demo to use his Seismic Resonator on it.

Dragon’s Masterkey

  • Fires a quick short range shotgun blast using custom Dragon’s Breath incendiary ammunition, causing burning damage and slowing targets.
  • Perfect for Engineer who benefits from anything burning related. High deviation and doesn’t pierce (unlike M26 MA Shotgun System) but can deal very good damage at close range, usually enough to kill outright (failing that, there’s the burning effect), more when upgraded. 

Missile Drone

  • Spawns a fragile ranged drone, dealing high damage with homing missiles for a duration.
  • Calls in a Missile Drone at your cursor, usually too fragile to do anything outside of being a very short-lived distraction. Explodes upon death, allowing Demo to use Resonator on it.

Spider Mines

  • Spawns spiderbots, seeking near enemies and detonating when reaching proximity. Gains one charge for every double kill and two for triple kills.
  • Summons Spider Mines close to you but they are a little too dumb for their own good – would sometimes not come to the enemy and would rather stay right where they are. Gunfire towards your desired destination at least usually does the trick. Only explodes when they finish their detonation sequence, not before – which means if they get bursted down they are pretty much worthless (but still make for good distraction).

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