Breed
Solitus - May be the new best breed with the Survival perk and easiest to get high lvl symbs in, a balance between Atrox and Opifex.
Atrox – Highest Attack Rating (AR), lowest evades. 810 stamina is earlier than soli.
Opifex – Highest evades. Second highest AR. 810 stamina requires perks and equipment. Easier to twink Tier and CSS.
Nanomage – Don't bother.
PvP Breed Choice by Tiamin and Stromm
Abilities
Here is the list of attributes in order of importance, assuming you are opifex
Ranged
- intelligence - absolutely most important. All 6 nano skills are dark blue
- agility + sense - most cheap and trickles down to our most important skills - evades.
- stamina - very important. it trickles down to body development that increases HP
- strength - trickles down to some important fixer skills like SMG, burst, run speed, still, not very important, don't max, raise when you wish.
- psychic - just forget about this attribute. we dont really need it. raise when you're title capped.
- body development - very important. if low on IPs, you can skip raising for level or two, since we are mostly depend on evades to keep us alive, not HP, but still you cant go wrong with putting IPs into body development.
- nano pool - not very important. we mostly use nanos offline, which means we can just recharge the nano from nano kits.
MG/SMG is green to fixers. Burst is a light aqua. Most of the fixer only guns are SMG and Burst. Is it any wonder why you want to max SMG and Burst every single lvl? If you look at our guns the SMG is 100% of our attack skill, and as you raise SMG, your AR goes up. Increasing Burst will shorten the duration between bursts, depending on the gun. Multiranged can be raised, if necessary, early on, but there are guns that can be equipped at the same level and do more damage, use past level 205 for the KMP.
Specials formula (from SirAronar):
Aimed Shot capped at 11s = (Recharge* x 40) - (3 x AS skill/100)
Burst capped at 8s = (Recharge* x 20) + Burst Delay** - Burst skill/25)
Fling Shot capped at 6s = (Attack x 16) - Fling skill/100
Full Auto capped at 11s = (Recharge* x 40) + Full Auto Delay*** - FA skill/25
* The gun's recharge in the attack/recharge, so 1/1 guns like the Beamer and the SMG have lower req's to cap.
** Burst Delay = BurstRecharge/100. BurstRecharge can be found in auno.org
*** Full Auto Delay = FullAutoRechage/100. FullAutoRecharge can also be found in auno.org
Speed
Ranged Init. - Max that at all times so you can fight at a lower agg/def setting
Evades: Dodge-Rng, Evade-Clsc, Duck-Exp – Did you not roll a fixer? Max.
Nanoresist: I didn’t max this until late TL5
Run Speed: See evades.
Trade & Repair
Comp. Lit. allows for higher lvl NCU to be put in and Grid travel. NCU is what allows your char to do almost anything in the game. Max this as well.
Nanoprogramming – You need 200 to clean QL200 implants, luckily though the 1k tokenboards adds 210 NP. If you want to clean them early on, or make some implants, you could raise this skill, I’ve left it alone.
Nano and Aiding
Matter Metamorphosis – Long and Short HoT’s, SWSs, NCU buffs, dmg buffs, and Grid and Garden nanos. Those are the core Fixer nanolines, excepting the run buffs, max this skill.
Biological Metamorphosis – Long and Short HoT and the SWS, you need it less than MM (about 2/3) and most of them are lvl locked anyway. If you’re keeping MM maxxed, you can keep BM about 2/3 of it.
Psychological Modifications – Grid and Garden nanos, B&E buffs, roots, and the root reducer, as well as the SMG buffs. Raise as necessary.
Matter Creation – Don’t touch until you have a Grid Armor nanocrystal. If you plan on lvling past 160 w/SL, dont bother at all.
Time and Space Modifications – HoT’s, run buffs, snares, roots and the snare and root reducers, the Fixer Grid, SWSs, and NCU buffs. Max for snares to land.
Sensory Improvement – Roots and snares and their reducers, B&E buffs, SMG buffs, run buffs, Grid and Garden nanos, Dmg buffs, and NCU buffs. Max as well
First Aid – I left alone because of our HoT’s. Vega2 says "in early levels FA is very important, it even more important in SL as SL first aid kits are much more effective. "
Treatment becomes the single most limiting factor of implants and symbs past QL50. Max.
Spying
Breaking and Entering – Early on I raised it until I could get to 401 buffed, but when I got Karma Harvest, I stopped raising it until late TL5. Between our B&E buffs and the Thief perkline, we are the B&E’ers of AO. Raise it if you want, ignore it and save IP if you want. 401 B&E allows you to open any chest in a QL200 mission. It takes 950 B&E to clean a QL200 implant. It takes 1400 B&E to hack a QL200 Nano Rifle.
Trap Disarm – Ignore. By the time you find the bomb you can either run around it or your teammate has already tripped over it.
Perception – Important for crit scope. But between our B&E buffs and Advy buffs, you can equip a QL250 VE w/o spending a drop. Raise it if you don’t want to be dependent on begging buffs from Advy’s or feel like hotswapping between TIM scope and crit scope.
Navigation
I’m only going to discuss Vehicle Air and Map Navigation here. If you want a yalm, there’s a shiny eye cluster for Vehicle Air you can shove in. Fixers can run faster than yalms. So you don’t really need to raise VA. Same for Map Navi. Go make a temporary set of Map Navi imps like you have for Comp lit and Treatment.
Summary for early IP spending.
Max all basic abilities for armor, implants, and HP. Max SMG and Burst for damage. Max treatment. Ranged Init. Evades. Runspeed. Needed nanoskills. Good luck keeping up with all of it from 50-150, IP gets very tight.
Perks
Shadowlands Perks
Very easy for fixers. Only 3 worth doing early on.
Acrobat – adds to agi, and evades, as well as 2 great specials in Limber which you get at lvl 60 and Dance of Fools which you get at lvl 140 that adds 1000 to your evades for 75% of the time you are in combat
Defensive Stance – Combine this with Shadowweb Spinners, Left Arm and Foot Support Symbs (the arty right arm luckily has both addall off and and alldef), or once you hit lvl 100 Addalldef Jobe Clusters. It seems like FC took the MA and Shade’s Careful in Battle Group perkline, renamed it, and made it a Profession perkline for us. It doesn’t matter, you still need it. Here’s why:
DS1 Lvl 40 Defensive (1hr) +20DMS -2 Crit Deceptive N/A
DS2 Lvl 70 Defensive (1hr) +40DMS -4 Crit Deceptive +150DMS (62s)
DS3 Lvl 100 Defensive (1hr) +62DMS -7 Crit Deceptive +250DMS (64s)
DS4 Lvl 130 Defensive (1hr) +85DMS -10 Crit Deceptive +350DMS (66s)
DS5 Lvl 160 Defensive (1hr) +107DMS -14 Crit Deceptive +450DMS (68s)
DS6 Lvl 200 Defensive (1hr) +135DMS -21 Crit Deceptive +550DMS (70s)
DS7 Lvl 205 Defensive (1hr) +163DMS -30 Crit Deceptive +650DMS (72s)
DS8 Lvl 207 Defensive (1hr) +195DMS -42 Crit Deceptive +750DMS (74s)
DS9 Lvl 212 Defensive (1hr) +235DMS -57Crit Deceptive +875DMS (76s)
DS10 Lvl 219 Defensive (1hr)+300DMS -80 Crit Deceptive +1000DMS(80s)
SMG Mastery – More SMG and more Burst.
Alien Invasion Perks
Dark Kin – get the first 1 for Power Bolt, ignore the rest until you’ve finished off the Champion of Light Artillery, Nano Combat, and Alien Technology Expertise, or if you’re an evade freak
Champion of Nano Combat adds to our nanoskills. The perk specials do more dmg than the Dark Kin ones, excepting Power Bolt.
Champion of Light Artillery – Adds to SMG and has 2 decent perk attacks.
Alien Technology Expertise – bump this up the list if you need to.
Weapons
I’m going to divide this into early lvl and mid lvl weapons and then give a link to Zura’s excellent weapon guide.
Early lvls (up to about 41)
Backyard weapons – upgraded starter gun for alien backyard, the Chimera Machine Gun is so much better though. In the alien backyards Kyr'Ozch Submachine guns drop until QL15. Very high min. dmg, but no specials, unless you type it with a Type 4,5, or 12 Biomaterial. Not worth typing if you are not a TL1 twink and plan on leveling past 15. Once you leave Alien backyard, head for Jobe and start on the Chimera, it's free.
OT Kerans Automatic Grinner – Uses SMG and Burst, uses poison damage, low attack time, fast burst recharge, rollable in Clicksaver, relatively inexpensive and is available in Omni stores. What more can you want in a gun to get you to your first Perennium Beamer? Just keep buying a higher QL one until you can get a beamer.
Gamma Ejectors – I’m tossing this in for the fr00bs, because by lvl 41 you should be able to acquire a low level beamer easily with the glut of weapons in the player shops now. [Due to update of Foreman's, I no longer know the exact drop location of this gun]
Other weapon options: Vega2 advocates Sleekmaster Classics at low lvls
there's reprint from on of the posts about them: Well dual sleekmasters really are good damage wise at lower levels. The reason is that they are fast and have min damage better than 1. And they have really low reqs in SMG/Burst/MR, so it's possible to equip farly high ql of them. It's perfectly Ok to go dual sleekmasters, then gamma ejector, and dual gamma ejectors, and dual PLS in the end. But there are reasons most dont go this way.
You need to put IPs into Ranged energy and Multi Ranged. RE is dark blue and MR is light blue, means it needs a lot of IPs. And if you want to keep your Attack rate high enough you ll need implant RE into head, instead of SI or MM, which means you lose even more in nano skill department.
What i suggest is using Sleek masters till 41, then IPR RE. and at level 70+ go for dual Gammas.
just for example:
ql 40 kerans:
reqs:
SMG 190
Burst 143
dmg: 1-79
ql 56 sleek masters:
reqs: Self MG/SMG >= 168Self RangedEnergy >= 113Self Burst >= 141
dmg: 11 -110
The same reqs, but a lot higher dmg. and only for 1 hand. dual wield it - u get uber dmg.
Older guns, viable for fr00bs: Mausser Particle Streamer , Mausser Chemical Streamer Guide to making a Mausser Chemical Streamer, Manex Catastrophe December, Michael Patriot Ffi 29B, MTI Aleph 99, Illicit Laser Backups MTI - Russian Good Day
Mid lvls (lvl 41-190)
Perennium Beamer – QL50 to QL200, relatively high min. dmg; a 1/1 gun means you can fire at full speed lower on the agg/def bar. By far the most efficient gun for the midlvls.
Mortiig Beamer – a great gun, pity it only goes up to QL125. By the time you can solo the Mortiig’s you can be in a better gun than they drop, so make some friends and try to do it as early as possible. Dual wieldable.
Blackbirds – the fr00b alternative to the beamer, dual wielded these are decent against RK mobs. A pair of Blinded Blackbirds looks good too. Blackbirds are found on Cenobite Shadows in the Crypt of Home in Broken Shores, so bring your cluster bullets.
Syndicate Messenger Gun – for the rich fixer alt. You can realistically use this gun until TL7. A 1/1 gun with a higher min. damage than the QL200 beamer and crits that can do more dmg than Bursts. High crit setups can be expensive. If you want your own, go kill Crete, Ithaki or the Conflagrant Spirit in Inferno, but bring a lot of friends.
Kyr’Ozch Submachine Gun and Machine Pistols – Type 5 – Not everyone has the means to get the SMG. These weapons can outdamage the Superior Perennium Beamer and almost come close to the SMG below QL250.
Higher lvls (190+)
By now you should know what you are doing or you’ve read Zura’s endgame weapon guide here at least once.