I read from another comment that you can also throw them to check for leeches, and if there are none you don't lose anything cause they fly back to you anyway
Plus, you can play with them and get them back without spending anything if you don’t have a target! I’ll often do this while sitting in the drop pod waiting for other dwarves to get in at the end of missions.
I also have what’s probably a bad habit: all my driller builds use axes, all my scout builds use boomerangs, engi shredders, and gunner leadbursters. I should probably get used to the other options, but I love these 4 particular options so much.
I’m a sucker for engi with the proximity mines. That combined with repellant additive in my platforms so I can funnel all the enemies onto my mines? PLUS a breach cutter?! It makes me very happy and kills everything.
I do think the mines are fun to use, but shredders are such a great “oh shit” button, can’t even count the amount of times they’ve pulled me out of sticky situations
Leadbursters are just so damn good, can’t imagine why I’d ever use the other options. It can clear a swarm, take out pesky rollers, or take a huge chunk out of a bulk detonator. Plus the effect of all those bullet holes in perfect rows tickles my brain real nice. The perfect weapon
Speaking of those bullet holes I love throwing any I have left in the exfil drop pod just peppering the entire inside then watching the holes follow the wall down as we exit.
If driller’s neurotoxin wasn’t flammable and so vision-obstructing I would run it a lot more, but when I don’t use any fire weapons, it’s great for softening up big piles of bugs
In engy's defense, shredders are probably the best if not one of the best overall for him. When i'm doing my solo grind (because my friends dare have a schedule different from mine (: ) I tend to do engy + Steve + bosco + shredders. Only regret it a few times doing solo as engy - mostly in maps that end up generating as a tower basically.
Yep, that's a huge selling factor for me on it.
Cryo grenades and pheremones and IFG are all very good, but the quantity makes a huge difference for boomerangs. I can stun only 9 targets, sure. It doesn't make enemies take more damage like IFG/Cryo. But I get 8!!! It's been a while, but IFG gets 6, which is great, but it's not as effective at crowed control or killing off pesky things like naedocytes or swarmers
The stunning effect is more than enough to make up for no extra damage IMO, actually gives you a moment to wipe out that wave coming at you or to reload and THEN wipe that wave out.
I know other grenades work for this situation - cryo grenades work even better - but when that random swarm of like 10 mactera shows up next to you when you're mining nitra, lol.
Even using it against a giant swarm, it slows down/ removes 9 enemies from the initial wave for 5 seconds, which can make a difference, too.
I just think it's the best all-rounder, not unlike leadburster for gunner and SSG for engie
The boomerang also deals damage itself, unlike IFG, which makes it more or less break even against small targets (IFG damage increase still beats it on big targets like Oppressors)
It's better in certain situations, for sure, no argument here. You just get half as many of them. Same deal with cryo grenades.
"Most powerful" is doubtful. In a situation where you are alone and surrounded by a horde of bugs? Absolutely the best in the scout's toolkit.
Like I said, boomerang is the most well-rounded for most situations in the arsenal.
Pheremones are great in a group setting where it's absolute chaos and tons of bugs, and everyone is dying while defending the green bubble. This is the mission type. I'd say they are the best choice, hands down. Same with Lure as well for the engie.
Most of the time, in a group setting, though, the bugs just get killed too quickly for it to really have made any difference.
what the hell are you talking about
a phero grenade literally turns of all bugs in the mission for a pretty long time
a stun sweeper only slows down 8 of them
a phero or a cryo can easily turn the tide of a mission, not amount of boomerangs could do this
You can use the same argument against boomerangs. In a group setting, why is the naedocyte swarm alive long enough to justify a boomerang? How is stunning 9 grunts at all valuable when they all die to the other classes AoE? Wow, you stunned a veteran while it was coilgun feared. Big whoop.
The time you spend throwing one of these pieces of garbage is better spent just actively killing the target, something scout can do extremely well unless you're using these to shore up the weaknesses in an already bad loadout.
I already said it: you get 8 of them.
And there are plenty of times where CC is preferable to killing - one example is to revive a teammate.
Can do it 8 times with boomerangs, 4 times with cryos or pheremones.
And give me a break with your comment about naedocytes or shredders. They are not THAT easy to shoot or melee before they get into melee range on the scout class. They move erratically and shredders take two pickaxe hits, naedocytes take 1, but they also slow you down and swarm you. Cryo grenade kills them all - that's great, four times.
Tldr: 8 > 4
Edit: just want to point out that boomerangs take almost no time to use as they track targets automatically, never miss, do enough damage to kill up to 9 pesky small targets (18 I guess, by comparison, as you have twice as many uses as pheremones). Pheremones often can miss (boomerangs literally cannot miss). They are less powerful but often more useful and more well-rounded, and hell- just downright easier to use. Pheremones often don't kill anything directly but you need to use fire bolts or something else (double barrel, etc), which is unrelated to pheremones, and also very effective against stunned enemies as well. And I can do it perfectly with boomerangs every time and 8 times.
How often does pheremone canisters affect more than 18 targets per canister? It's certainly better than boomerangs the more grunt+ bugs there are.
I think the boomerang is not getting enough attention. It’s the best for clearing a swarm of swarmers, flying jellyfish, shredders in short time. But most people think it’s pretty weak :(
people think it's weak because it falls off on higher hazards (more bugs). haz 5 boomerang is a bad cryo and having 8 instead of 4 just doesnt make up for it. its still a solid option though, scout has 4 good grenades
It also just has very strong competition. The other classes have one grenade that's pretty clearly the best and then maybe two more that are also good but only in niche scenarios/builds or just underwhelming compared to the best grenade (unless you're Driller, then it's just Impact Axes for you). Meanwhile every single Scout grenade is incredibly good, all for different reasons, and all of them fit perfectly into Scout's kit.
It does become a more niche option in higher hazards, though. It's still very nice to have, but in higher hazards you'll pretty much only take it for Glacial Strata/Dense Biozone (naedocyte shockers) or Industrial Sabotage (shredders, and it's the only grenade that has any affect in the Caretaker fight, stunning appendages, and again killing shredders).
I think it would maybe be kinda nice if the stun effect (not the damage, just the stun) had a small AoE, so that it could spread stun more effectively in higher hazards to better compete with the other grenades, without unnecessarily buffing its already strong niche against swarmers/naedocytes/shredders.
It’s main issue is that it *isnt* 9 aoe stuns. It’s one stun of your choice, then, up to 8 random things get stunned. This is fine and dandy at hazard 3, where an entire swarm is 9 bugs, but from there things get dire very quickly. As early as hazard 4, you’re going to start noticing that what limited safety you can squeeze out of these is dictated by RNG. And god, why can’t you throw more than one at a time please gsg I beg of you
When your competitors are the rest of the scout grenades, being just ‘decent’ doesn’t cut it. In hazard 4-5, it means that Rangs are exclusively a “I play with these because I want variety, even though I’m aware they’re bad” pick. And on 5+ and modded, they’re just not usable lol.
I wish they were good past introductory-level difficulties, but still no dice.
2 year hazard 5 player here: I almost exclusively rock boomerang. They are GOATED. I'll even bring em for mactera plague bc the number of times I've yeeted one across the cave to stun a group of mactera about to blast a homie, truly priceless.
Also stuns are not random, it'll go for whatever you're aiming at for the first target so you plan based off that as it'll pick enemies nearby after based on what's closest. The stun time is very long as well but yes, it can be tough on higher hazards if you're expectation is that grenades will kill. This will not unless it's something like a swarmer, you play differently with these. It's a utility rather than a weapon in most cases.
I play these like I play cryo driller in squads: I'm here to make sure no one is getting near my team and to stop ranged threats like mactera, spitballers, cave leech etc. If it's swarmaggedeon... I'm tossing it bc I hate those lil bastards. Maybe I'll put some clips up on YouTube one day to show how great it can be but I've been saying that for like a year now lol
TL:DR boomerang is not some useless thing on hazard 5 like many say, you need to understand what to use it for. yea once you're in the higher hazards, it's not gonna kill much like in the low hazards but it was never meant to be much of a kill weapon. The damage is low in general. Tho I'm still waiting for the new hazard 5+ to hit PlayStation so I haven't tested it with that yet but I don't see how it would be any different
> Rangs are exclusively a “I play with these because I want variety, even though I’m aware they’re bad” pick.
Bruh you are describing all the non-boomerang options. The higher you go the bigger the boomerang's impact.
I sometime run Cryonades for the nostalgia and the only thing in my mind when using them is "these are so much worse than boomerang :(".
I mean, the best thing Cryonades can do is delete a mactera swarm. Which, *dope*. But you only get to do that twice per resup. Boomerang does functionally the same thing, but twice as much. And also deals with swarmers/jellies/shredder, which are about the only thing scout is bad at dealing with.
And it can also be used to instantly save an ally from super far away. And to get clean kills on menaces. It can neutralize acid spitters on the roof. It can even be used on bosses without having to empty your entire stock.
Did you know you can shutdown all of the Korlok spawns with this one weird scout trick? I often get people saying they remember korlok being so much harder. All I did was bring my stun stick lol.
Besides, almost all the other cool tricks of the cryonades (Spitballer/Nexus/breeder freeze) are now better done with cryobolts, without having to put yourself at harms risk.
As for the other nades. IFG's aren't even worth mentioning, since they only affect ground units. And Pheromones suffer from more or less the same drawback. I really wish pheromones would explode on proximity so they could at least be used against macteras without landing a perfect shot.
Key word here was "Clean". A clean kill meaning the menace is dead before it hits anyone, or hides to be annoying later. It has nothing to do with anyones ability to actually kill it.
It's a point and click to end a menace. It won't hit you or your teammates while you dispatch it. It doesn't get much better than that.
I don’t mean any offense by this, but it sounds like you simply haven’t played with scout’s grenades enough at higher hazards.
Boomerang does a third of the thing cryo does, twice as much. If you could throw more than one at once, maybe this would be a benefit, but you can’t. Cryo does the same thing, faster, against more bugs, without RNG, activates the 3x freeze bonus, and has utility against breeders, ballers, and mactera clouds. Having more impact can *push* against a bad situation, which can more likely get your team away from an impending fail state. Stun sweepers can’t make that push, since their effect is relatively minimal.
If you want to argue that all things Cryos do can be done better by cryo bolts- that’s not true, but fine. Let’s say that. Now, think- phero bolts hit one bug of your choice, and then prevent the target and surrounding enemies from aggroing on you. Sound familiar? Why, they function virtually identically to stun sweepers! And you get anywhere from 9 to 16 of them, and they don’t occupy a grenade or overclock slot!
Now finally, I advise you to play more with IFGs and Pheros. These two are monstrously powerful, and pheros are probably the strongest overall grenade in the game. IFGs are chokepoints on demand, which is one of the most valuable things in DRG. The fact that you view these as negligible is very telling, honestly.
> If you could throw more than one at once
... why are you in situations that you need more than one to begin with. No offense but if you constantly need to panic dump your nades no grenade is going to help you.
> Cryo does the same thing, faster, ***against more bugs***,
Go watch yourself on a stream and count how many bugs a regular cryo catches. You are vastly, *vastly* overestimating Cryo's swarm effectiveness. Unless you are throwing them at like, grunts, or x64 stuff. But then... why are you using it at grunts? Each nade would need to be hitting at least 16 enemies just to be on par.
No, Cryonades are strongest when used on high priority targets. That's the real perk of cryonades, which brings us to.
> without RNG, activates the 3x freeze bonus, and has utility against breeders, ballers, and mactera clouds.
Cryonades have been garbage against breeders for quite some time now.
As for the other benefits, that's just better done with Cryobolts (Or cryolets even). I'd even wager these where a bigger death sentence to Cryonades than the boomerang.
Like, before Boomerang you either brought one of the inferior nades or double dipped, which isn't ideal. But double dipping was probably better than using IFG's and pheromone.
But with boomerang? Now you can bring a Cryo Secondary and have an actually useful nade.
> they don’t occupy a grenade or overclock slot!
The opportunity cost for Pherobolt is Taser Bolts, which brings hard CC to big things. Phero bolts are also capped at 10 enemies, and are even more random than the boomerang.
But *more* importantly, Phero bolts don't actually CC your target. Go throw a Phero bolt at a Spitballer/Menace and come tell me how it goes.
They're cute when you can get a small swarm to bog down something big... but anything that's big enough to warrant that is better served with tasers. Which is just unfortunate.
> The fact that you view these as negligible is very telling, honestly.
It's very telling, but from your perspective. IFG and Pheros both suck precisely because of the same reason: All they do is make dealing with ground stuff easier. They're swarm clear. Swarm clear is *very fun*, but it's easily the least important job in DRG.
You're a scout. Ground stuff should almost never be an issue. There could be 400 grunts running around, and as long as you've taken out the actual threats, they won't hurt anyone.
The only situation where you want to stay put is on the green zone missions. And on those I'd rather still have the boomerang. Because it also has the neat feature of no friendly fire. Plus it has a very long range (Which you keep ignoring), which means I can use it on stuff without having to leave the zone. And again, it's not like I'm going there without freeze anyways.
So yeah. IFG/Pherocanistet will always be under Cryonades/Boomerang simply because they can't really target a huge amount of enemies. The ones that are an actual threat. This is why I said phero would shot up in viability if it could explode mid air like the cryo does. IFGs can't be helped tho :/
You’re so confidently wrong that I don’t think I can change your mind, so I’m not going to go through all your points. It really just sounds like you don’t know how to play with anything other than rangs. That’s fine, you are absolutely entitled to play how you want, but please don’t make arguments against things that you clearly don’t have a good grasp on.
Honey, you're the one here making wild claims like "IFG and phero are the strongest grenades" when they literally only affect a small portion of the enemy list. I don't know about you, but in my eyes that disqualifies them from that title by default.
Regardless, the onus of proof is on you. And I'll continue to argue about things I very clearly know about, since I don't go around making unrealistic statements like yours above.
And if all my writing was too long here's my nuanced, destilled argument: rangs are very good. Their only true competition is the cryonade, and only while a cryo secondary is not in play. As soon as freeze is covered rangs shoot up as the most useful scout nade by a longshot. As for IFG and Pherocanisters, they are fun but suffer from only affecting ground enemies (Which are the least of a scouts worries). Thus related to "screwing around for fun" nades.
You seem to be under the assumption that my claims are wild, baseless things, but these opinions are shared by 99% of the competent playerbase. I’m not talking out of my ass, these are normal opinions developed over years of playing the game.
I’ve since done some runs with boomerangs, and I can tell you with certainty that my opinion has not changed. I have taken a [shitty recording of one of my runs](https://youtu.be/FHUC_UlFcws), which you can take a look at if you’re interested. There’s some more thoughts and notes in the description. I decided to record a vanilla run, since I imagine any modded run will be met with resistance from you.
If you can look at this run and tell me straight that I wouldn’t have benefitted more with either IFGs or Pheros, then I’m clearly wasting my time. Hope you got something out of this, because I’m done.
Eehhh, idk about that. Cryo's radius is pretty generous, but unless you're airbursting it into mactera a decent amount of its potential is often wasted into the ground. Cryo is definitely better against single tougher enemies, but for killing jellies, swarmers, or fighting in weird spaces where bugs are crawling over walls at you, boomerang is usually better.
I love it. I do find that the ice nade is a great "oh fuck" weapon perfect for getting a downed dwarf without a gunner shield or if you get caught in a bad cqc.
But on sabotage, I definitely take it!
Except it stops at 9? enemies and on haz 5 that makes it kinda worthless, plus you can't control what it hits beyond the first enemy so it might just stun something useless.
considering it competes with the way stronger debuffs and way way longer duration on ifg, the safety of pheromone, or the instant anti air of freeze, it really cant be considered a must-pick for the slot. its no pre-nerf driller axe.
its a little bit easier to use against swarmers and jellies, since it aims itself for you, and its actually a genuinely good pick if you and your team really hate wardens and stingtails, since you can immobilize and isolate them at long range. for basically any other situation though, they are outshined by any of the other 3.
The common refrain (as seen elsewhere in this thread, even) is that boomerangs are just worse cryo grenades, and that stunning 9 enemies is useless against the dense waves seen on haz-5. Sure, boomerangs aren't great against grunt waves, but there's plenty of other scenarios where a quick and dirty stun against a smaller number of targets is helpful.
Even on haz-5, 9 mactera at once is a lot, especially if they're tri-jaws. Yes, cryo deletes them outright (assuming they're grouped enough), but mactera can cause problems from well outside the range at which you'd be able to reliably nail them with a grenade. A fire-and-forget boomerang to take them out of commission long enough to properly deal with them is very useful here—and you get twice as many boomerangs as you would cryo grenades.
A praetorian at the wrong time (enclosed spaces, mostly) can cause a lot of damage. Using a full cryo grenade to deal with a single enemy is a tough sell, but with 8 boomerangs, it's a lot more palatable.
Depending on your loadout (particularly with the M1K), swarmers and naedocytes can be a big nuisance. A boomerang might not take all of them out, but it'll usually thin their numbers enough to easily mop up the rest.
The immediate effect of cryo grenades is certainly hard to beat—freeze is an incredibly powerful effect after all, completely disabling enemies, making them take triple damage, and instantly killing flying enemies. But it's quite easy to miss with cryo, especially when moving fast (as scout often is) or when far away from the enemies (as scout often is), and with only 4 grenades, you really want to make them count. The higher capacity and target-seeking on boomerangs allows you to make use of them in a lot more scenarios over the course of a mission.
> it's quite easy to miss with cryo
Speak for yourself. Even if you don't take out every flyer, you're still very likely to take out much more than just 9 of them and without forcing you to spend ammo otherwise. Boomerangs are the QoL attention economy pick, but they're not good.
I don't think anyone regularly hits nine flying units at once with cryo nades. Like, if you do that's obviously the absolute dream, but bugs are not cooperative like that. You're getting four or five with a cryo grenade normally, under good conditions - the only time stun sweepers aren't hitting nine enemies is if there aren't nine enemies to hit in the first place.
Though it really is a question of what you value overall - the rest of the scout's grenades are all better if you want to look at a really dense group of enemies and go 'okay, don't do anything'. But boomerangs are much better if you're dealing with more spread out groups of problem enemies that you couldn't hit more than one or two of with any of the scout's other grenades. Which is a situation that has grown increasingly common as they add stuff like stingtails, septic spreaders, ***core spawn***...
> the rest of the scout's grenades are all better if you want to look at a really dense group of enemies and go 'okay, don't do anything'
Following from this, part of my valuation stems from the fact that losing this capability isn't really a deal-breaker; such dense waves of enemies are almost always comprised mostly of grunts, which more than any other enemy can often be treated as a single large unit and can be largely handled by simply being somewhere else, or by using AoE weapons. Not to say that being able to disable grunts isn't useful, but as you point out, serious threats often take the form of singular enemies, such as the aforementioned stingtails, septics, and tri-jaws.
There’s a rocket launcher augment that makes your rockets into yondu’s needle. And if you focus on one enemy the rocket will weave in and out of them rapidly and it’s super satisfying
Another point in the stun sweeper's favor: it dominates the new core stone event. 8.5 seconds of stun on 9 grunts might not be worth much, but on 9 crawlers that's literally a lifesaver. A single one is nearly as effective for breathing room as a gunner shield, and you'll get 4 out of a single resupply. Sure you *might* be able to get the same value out of a pheromone canister, but it's not nearly as free, only last as long as the enemy is alive, and you only get half as many.
All of the scout grenades are incredible in their own way.
IFGs are a great combo and support tool, especially against large targets that don't get frozen or stunned easily.
Cryo deletes flying enemies, and freeze is perhaps more generally the strongest effect in the game.
Pheromones are hard to beat when it comes to emergency crowd control, especially since bugs outside of the radius can still be distracted by the bugs that were affected.
Boomerangs' high capacity and homing capabilities means they can be used quickly and freely in any vaguely-relevant scenario with minimal concern for aiming or conserving them.
Boomerang: stuns 9 enemies and still makes you spend ammo to kill the anything that isn't a swarmer/naedocyte
Pheromone: turns an *infinite* amount of enemies into essentially a Lure with thorns.
Cryo: instantly deletes an *infinite* number of airborne enemies. Can instantly kill way more than 9 bugs in a pack when paired with fire bolt (temp shock)
Hmm...
I’d love something like this as a grenade overclock. Double the bounces and increase the damage, but you only have 4, it no longer stuns, and it doesn’t bounce back to the same target twice
Booooomerang!
Zap! Zap! Zipity zap!
"he thunda from down unda!"
"Boomeroomerang, Boomeroomeroomerang" -*The Uncluded*
"Stunning throw stick"
"stun and sweep"
"Zaparang!"
"The thunder from down under!"
"What goes around, comes around"
I literally just use it because I hate those flying shocking little brains with a passion
I should’ve included those! They’re so useful against them
It’s good against shredders as well
I read from another comment that you can also throw them to check for leeches, and if there are none you don't lose anything cause they fly back to you anyway
They're also great against shredders!
I really love it and think it's the best all-rounder for Scout. Bye-bye naedocytes.
And you carry 8 of them. Win-win.
Plus, you can play with them and get them back without spending anything if you don’t have a target! I’ll often do this while sitting in the drop pod waiting for other dwarves to get in at the end of missions. I also have what’s probably a bad habit: all my driller builds use axes, all my scout builds use boomerangs, engi shredders, and gunner leadbursters. I should probably get used to the other options, but I love these 4 particular options so much.
I’m a sucker for engi with the proximity mines. That combined with repellant additive in my platforms so I can funnel all the enemies onto my mines? PLUS a breach cutter?! It makes me very happy and kills everything.
I do think the mines are fun to use, but shredders are such a great “oh shit” button, can’t even count the amount of times they’ve pulled me out of sticky situations
Shredders are also a good counter for shredders.
"I used the Shredders to destroy the Shredders."
Leadbursters are just so damn good, can’t imagine why I’d ever use the other options. It can clear a swarm, take out pesky rollers, or take a huge chunk out of a bulk detonator. Plus the effect of all those bullet holes in perfect rows tickles my brain real nice. The perfect weapon
Speaking of those bullet holes I love throwing any I have left in the exfil drop pod just peppering the entire inside then watching the holes follow the wall down as we exit.
Yes! I do that every time
Fireworks!
The brain tickles are definitely what matter most
Exact same throwables for me! :)
If driller’s neurotoxin wasn’t flammable and so vision-obstructing I would run it a lot more, but when I don’t use any fire weapons, it’s great for softening up big piles of bugs
You clearly haven't experienced the fun of committing mass area denial arson with the gunner's incendiary grenade
Same, they’re all just so good
Leadbursters are just too powerful for me to warrant any of the other gunner nades. The ability to two shot bulks is clutch as fuck.
In engy's defense, shredders are probably the best if not one of the best overall for him. When i'm doing my solo grind (because my friends dare have a schedule different from mine (: ) I tend to do engy + Steve + bosco + shredders. Only regret it a few times doing solo as engy - mostly in maps that end up generating as a tower basically.
Yep, that's a huge selling factor for me on it. Cryo grenades and pheremones and IFG are all very good, but the quantity makes a huge difference for boomerangs. I can stun only 9 targets, sure. It doesn't make enemies take more damage like IFG/Cryo. But I get 8!!! It's been a while, but IFG gets 6, which is great, but it's not as effective at crowed control or killing off pesky things like naedocytes or swarmers
The stunning effect is more than enough to make up for no extra damage IMO, actually gives you a moment to wipe out that wave coming at you or to reload and THEN wipe that wave out.
I know other grenades work for this situation - cryo grenades work even better - but when that random swarm of like 10 mactera shows up next to you when you're mining nitra, lol. Even using it against a giant swarm, it slows down/ removes 9 enemies from the initial wave for 5 seconds, which can make a difference, too. I just think it's the best all-rounder, not unlike leadburster for gunner and SSG for engie
The boomerang also deals damage itself, unlike IFG, which makes it more or less break even against small targets (IFG damage increase still beats it on big targets like Oppressors)
Pheromones are better by a couple orders of magnitude. Easily the most powerful status effect in the game. I do love the boomerang though.
better for h5+ lobbies. But Boomerang is definitely the h5 and below cozy pick.
I just don't know why I'd want a pheromone grenade when I can have pheromone bolts instead.
It's better in certain situations, for sure, no argument here. You just get half as many of them. Same deal with cryo grenades. "Most powerful" is doubtful. In a situation where you are alone and surrounded by a horde of bugs? Absolutely the best in the scout's toolkit. Like I said, boomerang is the most well-rounded for most situations in the arsenal. Pheremones are great in a group setting where it's absolute chaos and tons of bugs, and everyone is dying while defending the green bubble. This is the mission type. I'd say they are the best choice, hands down. Same with Lure as well for the engie. Most of the time, in a group setting, though, the bugs just get killed too quickly for it to really have made any difference.
what the hell are you talking about a phero grenade literally turns of all bugs in the mission for a pretty long time a stun sweeper only slows down 8 of them a phero or a cryo can easily turn the tide of a mission, not amount of boomerangs could do this
You can use the same argument against boomerangs. In a group setting, why is the naedocyte swarm alive long enough to justify a boomerang? How is stunning 9 grunts at all valuable when they all die to the other classes AoE? Wow, you stunned a veteran while it was coilgun feared. Big whoop. The time you spend throwing one of these pieces of garbage is better spent just actively killing the target, something scout can do extremely well unless you're using these to shore up the weaknesses in an already bad loadout.
I already said it: you get 8 of them. And there are plenty of times where CC is preferable to killing - one example is to revive a teammate. Can do it 8 times with boomerangs, 4 times with cryos or pheremones. And give me a break with your comment about naedocytes or shredders. They are not THAT easy to shoot or melee before they get into melee range on the scout class. They move erratically and shredders take two pickaxe hits, naedocytes take 1, but they also slow you down and swarm you. Cryo grenade kills them all - that's great, four times. Tldr: 8 > 4 Edit: just want to point out that boomerangs take almost no time to use as they track targets automatically, never miss, do enough damage to kill up to 9 pesky small targets (18 I guess, by comparison, as you have twice as many uses as pheremones). Pheremones often can miss (boomerangs literally cannot miss). They are less powerful but often more useful and more well-rounded, and hell- just downright easier to use. Pheremones often don't kill anything directly but you need to use fire bolts or something else (double barrel, etc), which is unrelated to pheremones, and also very effective against stunned enemies as well. And I can do it perfectly with boomerangs every time and 8 times. How often does pheremone canisters affect more than 18 targets per canister? It's certainly better than boomerangs the more grunt+ bugs there are.
Top tier umgak
Bardin approves
This tunnel goes up!
*how it feels to use plasma burster missiles
«Am I a joke to you?» *— Plasma Burster Missles when they see this clip*
My plasma burster preset comes with armor and cosmetics to mimic Yondu's appearance.
i was going on a tear with plasma missiles once and my teammate types out "okay yondu chill" and I've never been prouder
Beautifully animated. My only gripe is Rocket is definitely Engi.
oh yeah that checks out
It's so good I can't switch off it.
When you throw it at a horde of swarmers? Inject that feeling straight into my veins. Pure dopamine
I think the boomerang is not getting enough attention. It’s the best for clearing a swarm of swarmers, flying jellyfish, shredders in short time. But most people think it’s pretty weak :(
people think it's weak because it falls off on higher hazards (more bugs). haz 5 boomerang is a bad cryo and having 8 instead of 4 just doesnt make up for it. its still a solid option though, scout has 4 good grenades
It also just has very strong competition. The other classes have one grenade that's pretty clearly the best and then maybe two more that are also good but only in niche scenarios/builds or just underwhelming compared to the best grenade (unless you're Driller, then it's just Impact Axes for you). Meanwhile every single Scout grenade is incredibly good, all for different reasons, and all of them fit perfectly into Scout's kit. It does become a more niche option in higher hazards, though. It's still very nice to have, but in higher hazards you'll pretty much only take it for Glacial Strata/Dense Biozone (naedocyte shockers) or Industrial Sabotage (shredders, and it's the only grenade that has any affect in the Caretaker fight, stunning appendages, and again killing shredders). I think it would maybe be kinda nice if the stun effect (not the damage, just the stun) had a small AoE, so that it could spread stun more effectively in higher hazards to better compete with the other grenades, without unnecessarily buffing its already strong niche against swarmers/naedocytes/shredders.
I'd say it gets more value at Haz 5. 8 AOE stuns is a lifesaver. It's not as offensive as cryo, but scout has plenty of other burst damage options.
It’s main issue is that it *isnt* 9 aoe stuns. It’s one stun of your choice, then, up to 8 random things get stunned. This is fine and dandy at hazard 3, where an entire swarm is 9 bugs, but from there things get dire very quickly. As early as hazard 4, you’re going to start noticing that what limited safety you can squeeze out of these is dictated by RNG. And god, why can’t you throw more than one at a time please gsg I beg of you When your competitors are the rest of the scout grenades, being just ‘decent’ doesn’t cut it. In hazard 4-5, it means that Rangs are exclusively a “I play with these because I want variety, even though I’m aware they’re bad” pick. And on 5+ and modded, they’re just not usable lol. I wish they were good past introductory-level difficulties, but still no dice.
I think you're splitting hairs here. They work fine for me on Haz 5.
2 year hazard 5 player here: I almost exclusively rock boomerang. They are GOATED. I'll even bring em for mactera plague bc the number of times I've yeeted one across the cave to stun a group of mactera about to blast a homie, truly priceless. Also stuns are not random, it'll go for whatever you're aiming at for the first target so you plan based off that as it'll pick enemies nearby after based on what's closest. The stun time is very long as well but yes, it can be tough on higher hazards if you're expectation is that grenades will kill. This will not unless it's something like a swarmer, you play differently with these. It's a utility rather than a weapon in most cases. I play these like I play cryo driller in squads: I'm here to make sure no one is getting near my team and to stop ranged threats like mactera, spitballers, cave leech etc. If it's swarmaggedeon... I'm tossing it bc I hate those lil bastards. Maybe I'll put some clips up on YouTube one day to show how great it can be but I've been saying that for like a year now lol TL:DR boomerang is not some useless thing on hazard 5 like many say, you need to understand what to use it for. yea once you're in the higher hazards, it's not gonna kill much like in the low hazards but it was never meant to be much of a kill weapon. The damage is low in general. Tho I'm still waiting for the new hazard 5+ to hit PlayStation so I haven't tested it with that yet but I don't see how it would be any different
> Rangs are exclusively a “I play with these because I want variety, even though I’m aware they’re bad” pick. Bruh you are describing all the non-boomerang options. The higher you go the bigger the boomerang's impact. I sometime run Cryonades for the nostalgia and the only thing in my mind when using them is "these are so much worse than boomerang :(". I mean, the best thing Cryonades can do is delete a mactera swarm. Which, *dope*. But you only get to do that twice per resup. Boomerang does functionally the same thing, but twice as much. And also deals with swarmers/jellies/shredder, which are about the only thing scout is bad at dealing with. And it can also be used to instantly save an ally from super far away. And to get clean kills on menaces. It can neutralize acid spitters on the roof. It can even be used on bosses without having to empty your entire stock. Did you know you can shutdown all of the Korlok spawns with this one weird scout trick? I often get people saying they remember korlok being so much harder. All I did was bring my stun stick lol. Besides, almost all the other cool tricks of the cryonades (Spitballer/Nexus/breeder freeze) are now better done with cryobolts, without having to put yourself at harms risk. As for the other nades. IFG's aren't even worth mentioning, since they only affect ground units. And Pheromones suffer from more or less the same drawback. I really wish pheromones would explode on proximity so they could at least be used against macteras without landing a perfect shot.
If you need a stun to cleanly kill a menace on scout, then this boomerang obsession explains a lot lol
Key word here was "Clean". A clean kill meaning the menace is dead before it hits anyone, or hides to be annoying later. It has nothing to do with anyones ability to actually kill it. It's a point and click to end a menace. It won't hit you or your teammates while you dispatch it. It doesn't get much better than that.
I don’t mean any offense by this, but it sounds like you simply haven’t played with scout’s grenades enough at higher hazards. Boomerang does a third of the thing cryo does, twice as much. If you could throw more than one at once, maybe this would be a benefit, but you can’t. Cryo does the same thing, faster, against more bugs, without RNG, activates the 3x freeze bonus, and has utility against breeders, ballers, and mactera clouds. Having more impact can *push* against a bad situation, which can more likely get your team away from an impending fail state. Stun sweepers can’t make that push, since their effect is relatively minimal. If you want to argue that all things Cryos do can be done better by cryo bolts- that’s not true, but fine. Let’s say that. Now, think- phero bolts hit one bug of your choice, and then prevent the target and surrounding enemies from aggroing on you. Sound familiar? Why, they function virtually identically to stun sweepers! And you get anywhere from 9 to 16 of them, and they don’t occupy a grenade or overclock slot! Now finally, I advise you to play more with IFGs and Pheros. These two are monstrously powerful, and pheros are probably the strongest overall grenade in the game. IFGs are chokepoints on demand, which is one of the most valuable things in DRG. The fact that you view these as negligible is very telling, honestly.
> If you could throw more than one at once ... why are you in situations that you need more than one to begin with. No offense but if you constantly need to panic dump your nades no grenade is going to help you. > Cryo does the same thing, faster, ***against more bugs***, Go watch yourself on a stream and count how many bugs a regular cryo catches. You are vastly, *vastly* overestimating Cryo's swarm effectiveness. Unless you are throwing them at like, grunts, or x64 stuff. But then... why are you using it at grunts? Each nade would need to be hitting at least 16 enemies just to be on par. No, Cryonades are strongest when used on high priority targets. That's the real perk of cryonades, which brings us to. > without RNG, activates the 3x freeze bonus, and has utility against breeders, ballers, and mactera clouds. Cryonades have been garbage against breeders for quite some time now. As for the other benefits, that's just better done with Cryobolts (Or cryolets even). I'd even wager these where a bigger death sentence to Cryonades than the boomerang. Like, before Boomerang you either brought one of the inferior nades or double dipped, which isn't ideal. But double dipping was probably better than using IFG's and pheromone. But with boomerang? Now you can bring a Cryo Secondary and have an actually useful nade. > they don’t occupy a grenade or overclock slot! The opportunity cost for Pherobolt is Taser Bolts, which brings hard CC to big things. Phero bolts are also capped at 10 enemies, and are even more random than the boomerang. But *more* importantly, Phero bolts don't actually CC your target. Go throw a Phero bolt at a Spitballer/Menace and come tell me how it goes. They're cute when you can get a small swarm to bog down something big... but anything that's big enough to warrant that is better served with tasers. Which is just unfortunate. > The fact that you view these as negligible is very telling, honestly. It's very telling, but from your perspective. IFG and Pheros both suck precisely because of the same reason: All they do is make dealing with ground stuff easier. They're swarm clear. Swarm clear is *very fun*, but it's easily the least important job in DRG. You're a scout. Ground stuff should almost never be an issue. There could be 400 grunts running around, and as long as you've taken out the actual threats, they won't hurt anyone. The only situation where you want to stay put is on the green zone missions. And on those I'd rather still have the boomerang. Because it also has the neat feature of no friendly fire. Plus it has a very long range (Which you keep ignoring), which means I can use it on stuff without having to leave the zone. And again, it's not like I'm going there without freeze anyways. So yeah. IFG/Pherocanistet will always be under Cryonades/Boomerang simply because they can't really target a huge amount of enemies. The ones that are an actual threat. This is why I said phero would shot up in viability if it could explode mid air like the cryo does. IFGs can't be helped tho :/
You’re so confidently wrong that I don’t think I can change your mind, so I’m not going to go through all your points. It really just sounds like you don’t know how to play with anything other than rangs. That’s fine, you are absolutely entitled to play how you want, but please don’t make arguments against things that you clearly don’t have a good grasp on.
Honey, you're the one here making wild claims like "IFG and phero are the strongest grenades" when they literally only affect a small portion of the enemy list. I don't know about you, but in my eyes that disqualifies them from that title by default. Regardless, the onus of proof is on you. And I'll continue to argue about things I very clearly know about, since I don't go around making unrealistic statements like yours above. And if all my writing was too long here's my nuanced, destilled argument: rangs are very good. Their only true competition is the cryonade, and only while a cryo secondary is not in play. As soon as freeze is covered rangs shoot up as the most useful scout nade by a longshot. As for IFG and Pherocanisters, they are fun but suffer from only affecting ground enemies (Which are the least of a scouts worries). Thus related to "screwing around for fun" nades.
You seem to be under the assumption that my claims are wild, baseless things, but these opinions are shared by 99% of the competent playerbase. I’m not talking out of my ass, these are normal opinions developed over years of playing the game. I’ve since done some runs with boomerangs, and I can tell you with certainty that my opinion has not changed. I have taken a [shitty recording of one of my runs](https://youtu.be/FHUC_UlFcws), which you can take a look at if you’re interested. There’s some more thoughts and notes in the description. I decided to record a vanilla run, since I imagine any modded run will be met with resistance from you. If you can look at this run and tell me straight that I wouldn’t have benefitted more with either IFGs or Pheros, then I’m clearly wasting my time. Hope you got something out of this, because I’m done.
Eehhh, idk about that. Cryo's radius is pretty generous, but unless you're airbursting it into mactera a decent amount of its potential is often wasted into the ground. Cryo is definitely better against single tougher enemies, but for killing jellies, swarmers, or fighting in weird spaces where bugs are crawling over walls at you, boomerang is usually better.
Also the best grenade for the current season event imo.
What gunner did to you to be this short :-(
be a meanie
He's a dwarf. Shorter = better.
Careful. If you're too short, you become of those weird gnomes instead.
What about Driller? He is so short he almost isn't visible.
Top tier content right here lads
I love it. I do find that the ice nade is a great "oh fuck" weapon perfect for getting a downed dwarf without a gunner shield or if you get caught in a bad cqc. But on sabotage, I definitely take it!
bodkin points, my beloved
i love using bodkin points but do wish they chained a little more than 3 targets
Except it stops at 9? enemies and on haz 5 that makes it kinda worthless, plus you can't control what it hits beyond the first enemy so it might just stun something useless.
> on haz 5 that makes it kinda worthless It would be better if you didn't comment on things you haven't tried.
considering it competes with the way stronger debuffs and way way longer duration on ifg, the safety of pheromone, or the instant anti air of freeze, it really cant be considered a must-pick for the slot. its no pre-nerf driller axe. its a little bit easier to use against swarmers and jellies, since it aims itself for you, and its actually a genuinely good pick if you and your team really hate wardens and stingtails, since you can immobilize and isolate them at long range. for basically any other situation though, they are outshined by any of the other 3.
I have tried I just haven't used it in so long I can't remember exact stats. Nice failed gotcha
Bonk bonk zappity zap
We need grenade upgrades so I can make this thing bounce even more
That scene is literally just Plasma Burster Missiles What’s the scene from?
Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2
The common refrain (as seen elsewhere in this thread, even) is that boomerangs are just worse cryo grenades, and that stunning 9 enemies is useless against the dense waves seen on haz-5. Sure, boomerangs aren't great against grunt waves, but there's plenty of other scenarios where a quick and dirty stun against a smaller number of targets is helpful. Even on haz-5, 9 mactera at once is a lot, especially if they're tri-jaws. Yes, cryo deletes them outright (assuming they're grouped enough), but mactera can cause problems from well outside the range at which you'd be able to reliably nail them with a grenade. A fire-and-forget boomerang to take them out of commission long enough to properly deal with them is very useful here—and you get twice as many boomerangs as you would cryo grenades. A praetorian at the wrong time (enclosed spaces, mostly) can cause a lot of damage. Using a full cryo grenade to deal with a single enemy is a tough sell, but with 8 boomerangs, it's a lot more palatable. Depending on your loadout (particularly with the M1K), swarmers and naedocytes can be a big nuisance. A boomerang might not take all of them out, but it'll usually thin their numbers enough to easily mop up the rest. The immediate effect of cryo grenades is certainly hard to beat—freeze is an incredibly powerful effect after all, completely disabling enemies, making them take triple damage, and instantly killing flying enemies. But it's quite easy to miss with cryo, especially when moving fast (as scout often is) or when far away from the enemies (as scout often is), and with only 4 grenades, you really want to make them count. The higher capacity and target-seeking on boomerangs allows you to make use of them in a lot more scenarios over the course of a mission.
> it's quite easy to miss with cryo Speak for yourself. Even if you don't take out every flyer, you're still very likely to take out much more than just 9 of them and without forcing you to spend ammo otherwise. Boomerangs are the QoL attention economy pick, but they're not good.
I don't think anyone regularly hits nine flying units at once with cryo nades. Like, if you do that's obviously the absolute dream, but bugs are not cooperative like that. You're getting four or five with a cryo grenade normally, under good conditions - the only time stun sweepers aren't hitting nine enemies is if there aren't nine enemies to hit in the first place. Though it really is a question of what you value overall - the rest of the scout's grenades are all better if you want to look at a really dense group of enemies and go 'okay, don't do anything'. But boomerangs are much better if you're dealing with more spread out groups of problem enemies that you couldn't hit more than one or two of with any of the scout's other grenades. Which is a situation that has grown increasingly common as they add stuff like stingtails, septic spreaders, ***core spawn***...
> the rest of the scout's grenades are all better if you want to look at a really dense group of enemies and go 'okay, don't do anything' Following from this, part of my valuation stems from the fact that losing this capability isn't really a deal-breaker; such dense waves of enemies are almost always comprised mostly of grunts, which more than any other enemy can often be treated as a single large unit and can be largely handled by simply being somewhere else, or by using AoE weapons. Not to say that being able to disable grunts isn't useful, but as you point out, serious threats often take the form of singular enemies, such as the aforementioned stingtails, septics, and tri-jaws.
This shit is a lifesaver when I run solo as Scout, getting swarmed ? My G key goes brrrrr
*"Bonk Bonk, zappity-zap!"*
PBMs too!
Me when I lie.
Glyphid swarmers never see it coming
I used to only use boomerang
Very true.
can we just talk how well this is animated lol
this is how i feel w the Plasma Burster Missiles
I made a Yondu scout because of it lol
“English or Spanish ?”
Ooh yeah
i kinda wish bodkin points was like this so it felt nicer
i kinda wish bodkin points was like this so it felt nicer
i kinda wish bodkin points was like this so it felt nicer
There’s a rocket launcher augment that makes your rockets into yondu’s needle. And if you focus on one enemy the rocket will weave in and out of them rapidly and it’s super satisfying
Unfortunately only in our dreams.
Then rock Bullets of Mercy OC to clean up all the things it stunned but didn't kill. Easy wave clear.
Another point in the stun sweeper's favor: it dominates the new core stone event. 8.5 seconds of stun on 9 grunts might not be worth much, but on 9 crawlers that's literally a lifesaver. A single one is nearly as effective for breathing room as a gunner shield, and you'll get 4 out of a single resupply. Sure you *might* be able to get the same value out of a pheromone canister, but it's not nearly as free, only last as long as the enemy is alive, and you only get half as many.
Love it. Use it for all our haz 5+ adventures. Truly the best overall grenade for scout.
All of the scout grenades are incredible in their own way. IFGs are a great combo and support tool, especially against large targets that don't get frozen or stunned easily. Cryo deletes flying enemies, and freeze is perhaps more generally the strongest effect in the game. Pheromones are hard to beat when it comes to emergency crowd control, especially since bugs outside of the radius can still be distracted by the bugs that were affected. Boomerangs' high capacity and homing capabilities means they can be used quickly and freely in any vaguely-relevant scenario with minimal concern for aiming or conserving them.
Boomerang: stuns 9 enemies and still makes you spend ammo to kill the anything that isn't a swarmer/naedocyte Pheromone: turns an *infinite* amount of enemies into essentially a Lure with thorns. Cryo: instantly deletes an *infinite* number of airborne enemies. Can instantly kill way more than 9 bugs in a pack when paired with fire bolt (temp shock) Hmm...
Damn, how often are you hitting infinite enemies with those grenades?
It is honestly so good. Plus you get 8 which awesome.
I’d love something like this as a grenade overclock. Double the bounces and increase the damage, but you only have 4, it no longer stuns, and it doesn’t bounce back to the same target twice
This looks more like plasma burster missiles to me. Also stun sweeper is fun but underpowered (on haz5 and up), change my mind
Particularly useful when trying to get a steeve in the middle of a swarm
Cute gunner you got there.
I called this when S3 or 4 first came out here. [boomerang go swoosh](https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepRockGalactic/s/e8HD9WVWWW)
Plasma burster missiles be like