My brother and friend both just reached end-game in TD2 after defeating Keener... which was remarkably easy as a group on story mode compared to what I remember solo.

Anyway, I want to share some of my build advice wisdom and here's what I can recall... am I missing anything important?

General Advice:

• A good build should consider the gear brand bonuses, stats, mods, talents, weapon choice, and of course play-style
• Builds that synergize these things are going to perform best
• Jack-of-all-trades are master's of none - they will not be very effective at anything

Playstyles:

• It's best to build around a preferred playstyle... and there are two high-level play styles...
  • Run and gun CQB - moving out of cover a lot - a shield skill and armor regeneration are important to this style
  • Staying back and using cover - moving cover-to-cover but trying to keep some distance - this play style allows more focus on damage and less on armor
• Of course this is a broad spectrum and there are variations, but these are important play style considerations
• Choose gear, stats, mods, talents and weapons that support your play style or play to the style of your build

Brands:

• Typically you want at least one brand piece bonus that boosts your primary weapon damage
• 3 of any given brand may not always be the best - mixing 6 different brands might be the best - it might not

Gear Sets:

• Gear sets are really only useful for very specific play styles. You have to play to the gear set otherwise you're likely going to find it lacking
• Gear sets are usually better off when combined with the backpack from that gear set as it usually improves the talent substantially (Negotiator's Dilemma)
• Gear sets may be better off when using the chest piece from the gear set (e.g. Eclipse), but you may also be better off with a brand piece instead (most gear sets)
• Some gear sets may be better off when using neither the chest or backpack (e.g. Hunters Fury with Momento and Zero F's can be more effective)
• Keep in mind that gear sets offer only two attributes per piece so when using a gear set, its benefits need to make up for a loss of 4 brand bonuses and 4 attributes.
• Gear sets have the advantage of being easier to optimize as you only need one good stat - the other you can recalibrate

Damage Builds:

• For max damage consider...
  • Weapon damage should be the first thing to max out as everything else depends on this
  • Crit Chance and Crit Damage are helpful in almost all weapon-based builds
    • Crit chance maxes out at 60% - don't waste any Crit chance buffs beyond that
    • Crit chance should be no less than half of Crit damage until you get to 60/120... put more into crit chance if you're out of balance
    • High RoF weapons like the Vector really shine with high Crit Chance
  • Headshot damage is obviously good if you shoot rifles or MMRs and can consistently hit head shots
  • Damage to targets out of cover, armor, and health are generally worth more as they are multiplicative damage vs additive damage
  • Weapon handling can make more difference to damage with full-auto weapons than you think - as it will improve the number of shots on target
  • Weapon handing buffs stability, accuracy, and reload speed
• Talents that don't require thought to trigger are obviously better than talents that require some specific conditions to trigger
• Test damage at the range... you may not be triggering your full set of buffs as often as you think
• Use Gunner class for full-auto weapons (SMG/LMG/AR) and Shaprshooter for semi-auto (Rifle/MMR)
• Make sure to reconfigure your specialization points to max out damage for your primary and secondary weapons

Armor Builds:

• In general armor on kill or armor regeneration are the best talents, attributes, or mods to have on an armor or mixed damage/armor build
• Armor is far more important than health... you can't improve health enough to make a significant difference in survivability - focus on armor

Skill Builds:

• Having just one skill tier can significantly buff skill effectiveness so a gear piece with +1 Skill Tier and other attributes rolled Red or Blue can be very effective
• All Yellow builds with 6 skill tiers are extremely effective but boring as your skills are having all the fun
• Use the technician specialization for skill focused builds as it offers a bonus skill tier

Mixed Builds:

• Mixed builds with mostly Red damage as the focus, with one skill tier, and some armor regeneration or armor on kill can be super effective in a variety of situations

The Most Powerful Builds:

• The most over-powered builds are those that kill a lot of enemies quickly or at once
  • Negotiator's Dilemma (gear set) with a full auto weapon
  • Pestilence (exotic LMG) builds
  • Eclipse Skill Builds using fire or some other status effect (area of effect)
• Or builds that make you more powerful with each kill...
  • Almost any build that leverages the Momento Backpack (exotic backpack) falls in this category

Sorting Gear:

• Mark all gear you want to use and keep in your inventory as favourite so you don't accidentally dismantle or sell it
• You need to balance dismantling gear and selling as you need both materials and cash
  • I generally dismantle vs sell every other time to build up a bit of materials and cash
  • Once you get some serious cash, you can dismantle everything
  • Mark all gear you want to dismantle as junk enabling a quick one-button-press to dismantle all junk
  • Similarly mark all gear you want to sell as junk enabling a quick one-button-press to sell all junk at a vendor
  • Sell all purple gear as it does not provide materials
• Any gear with a single good stat roll or talent that you would normally consider selling or dismantling...
  • Mark it for recalibration and strip it into your recalibration library
  • The triangles under the stat bars on your gear indicates what your current library contains
• Put any piece of gear with really good stats that you don't see using now, into your stash for possible future use
• Put any named item or exotic you don't want to use into your stash for possible future use
• Put any gear set item for a gear set you may wish to use later into your stash for possible future use
• Occasionally go through your stash and get rid of any duplicates - keeping the best one only

Gear Optimization:

• You can exchange/recalibrate one attribute or talent on any piece of gear except exotics, and talents on named items
• Don't worry about being a few percent off of max for any given stat, it's unlikely to make a noticeable difference
• Don't optimize an attribute until it's 1 or 2% from perfect as it's expensive and you will find a better piece or a stat you can recalibrate it with before you can possibly fully optimize the one you have
• Use watch level scavenging points for SHD resources as these are the most constrained and cannot be farmed

Farming Gear:

• Check targeted loot on the main map
• Set your targeted loot when playing the Summit
• Play harder difficulty get get better minimum gear rolls
  • Harder difficulties don't guarantee better gear, just less chance of utter garbage
  • Challenging is the sweet spot difficulty in terms of time investment, frustration (enemy sponge), and reward
• Bosses in missions and harder bounties will offer the best loot
• The Summit and Control Points offer the next best loot
• Loot in crates around the open world does not scale with difficulty - it is now junk to dismantle/sell
• The best named and exotic gear comes from season rewards (for me)
• Keep an eye on vendors as they may occasionally have a decent piece of gear or have an attribute or talent worth adding to your library

Nailed it

its like a resume of all the feedback you got to the questions you asked in the forums

nice to have seen you evolved from clueless to teacher , im proud of you agent!

@n3mb0t

Yeah... good point... it's really all of the wisdom of the regulars and veterans on this forum that I've learned over the last several months. Thanks again to all of you!

A couple of notes I would add to this:

For high-armor builds, the normal 'armor regen' stat (that gives a fixed amount of regen per second) is not particularly useful - the amount is too small. Regen stats that give a % per second are much more powerful (but limited: Memento, Belstone and Emperor's Guards are the only items with this I can think of).

Gear/weapon talents that give an 'on kill' bonus (such as Memento, or the 'killer' weapon talent) are less effective in cooperative play as it won't always be you landing the kills. They're also less effective against singular, strong bosses. It can be a good idea to keep a less kill-dependent loadout or two available to you and switch before particular battles (such as rogue encounters).

@the_kettle (2)Golan also gives 1% aRegen. Unfortunately you need to burn the first piece on Status Effects

Use the technician specialization for skill focused builds as it offers a bonus skill tier

One caveat - don't do this if you're running six yellow cores. The extra tier doesn't automatically overcharge your skills. Instead, use another specialization that offers bonuses that are useful to your build.

Nice job otherwise

One question… when assigning points from your watch levels to character attributes… what strategy should I recommend? On my PC character I maxed weapon damage, stability, armor, and skill damage first. What do you recommend?

Well done, agent. If you don't mind I'd like to contribute a bit to your great piece of work – by also adding some options and some "don't"s here and there:

(...) Playstyles:
- It's best to build around a preferred playstyle... and there are two high-level play styles... (...)

I think there are way more than just two playstyles. Supporting roles should also be considered, at least the ones that are not too complex for beginners – for example healers, tanks, and CCs.

Brands:
- Typically you want at least one brand piece bonus that boosts your primary weapon damage

A good "don't" here would be including to try to not incorporate Brands that are of no use for your build, especially Brands with bonuses for weapon types which you are not using (although there are exceptions to that role for some named items).

Also, adding that Brands only offer a specific bonus for wearing one, two, or three pieces could be a good idea. While also making clear that wearing four, five or even six items of the same Brands does not grant any more bonuses and is thus a waste.

Gear Sets:

Same for the Gear Sets: They do not offer a bonus for wearing only one piece, so using only one piece of a Gear Set is never a good idea. And they do not offer bonuses for waering five or six pieces. Thus this also is considered "wrong".

Additional information on talents of Gear Sets:
Both the talents of the backpack and the chest are only activate, while wearing four pieces of that Gear Set in total. That's because those talents usually boost the Gear Set specific 4pcs-talent. For example, wearing a holster, gloves, and a backpack of a Gear Set will not grant the 4pcs-bonus and thus will not activate the backpack's talent. But wearing a holster, gloves, kneepads, and the backpack will activate the 4pcs-bonus and thus also the backpack's talent.

One question… when assigning points from your watch levels to character attributes… what strategy should I recommend? On my PC character I maxed weapon damage, stability, armor, and skill damage first. What do you recommend?

I think it's hard to give general advice that covers each and every playstyle and each and every possible build. But I'll give it a try nonetheless (being only my personal opinion, of course):

Offense

1. Weapon Damage
2. CHC
3. CHD or Headshot Damage

Defense

1. Armor
2. Hazard Protection
3. Explosive Resistance
4. Health

Utility

1. Skill Haste
2. Skill Damage or Healing (depends on whether you rather play DPS-skills or healing skills)
3. Skill Duration

Misc

1. Reload Speed
2. Stability and Accuracy
3. Ammo Capacity (as this is not the max magazine size, but how much ammunition you can carry in total)

I think there are way more than just two playstyles. Supporting roles should also be considered, at least the ones that are not too complex for beginners – for example healers, tanks, and CCs.

Good point… I struggled to think of other play styles that were fundamentally different from either using cover extensively or not using cover and moving in the open. For example, a tank style falls into the latter… moving out of cover, CQB, heavy focus on survivability (armor)… unless I’m missing something?

None of us are interested in playing healers so we don’t need to dive into that but I imagine others might… I’m guessing survivalist specialization… what else?

What’s CC?

ps. Thanks for the other helpful tips.

What’s CC?

Crowd Control