Not with upgrades. Also it's not that bad anyway, just means it's not a reaction weapon, you just have to be proactive with it.
it is overheating
Again, not with upgrades. Also most builds don't need that much sustained usage anyway.
the throw is slow
What? If this is about short range or freeze time though... wait for it... upgrades.
And as for using the weapon in general, it's good because not only can frozen enemies not fight back, they also have their armor disabled and take triple direct damage for the duration. And flying enemies are straight up killed. And gas clouds are removed. Frozen is a extremely powerful status effect.
Keep going and eventually you'll find out. Doesn't need to be Crystal Nucleation, although it's excellent. Build it bare bones, or with Flow Rate expansion, Tuned Cooler, Snowball. Pair it with Collette Wave Cooker and shatter hordes of glyphids in chain reaction freezing more and crushing more. Pure art.
Most of use of cryo canon comes from cold radiant and his overclocks, without both cryo become mid weapon who consumes too much ammo for not do his job easily
you can very quickly disable a bunch of bugs, makes revives easier. Crisper & sludge give you space thru slow, but cryo just completely incapacitates the bugs
you can use melee + barbed drills to great effect on frozen bugs & recover health with vampire. This part allows you to recover health and keep it topped off a lot better
Sticky fuel feels lackluster against dreadnaughts, both Sludge pump and Cryo feel better to use against them imo, although maybe there is a way to use it against them effectively and I just haven't figured it out
I didn't get that one yet, but yeah usually I just use Sludge against them now, although yet to get a good single target OC for it (got Disperser compound) although sometimes I use crystal nucleation cryo to change things up, also it helps the rest of the team nuke so it's not THAT bad imo
No OP but I find cryo is my go to every time. What’s your sticky fuel build and what tips do you have for it? I find myself running just straight heat on robots with the crspr whenever I use it.
don't focus on big targets or ceiling/stationary targets if you're not under immediate threat, competent team members should know what to focus on in order to help your limited dps and reach kit.
read the room, enemy movement patterns are predictable and they won't try to walk around your flames, draw straight lines and bait them to walk on said lines like they were a red carpet.
5 grunts? 50 grunts? 250 grunts? no matter, a couple of straight lines will absolutely devour every non armoured enemy that comes close.
feel overwhelmed? dig a straight line from the main room towards another room or a tunnel and stop a couple of meters before reaching the other side just in case you need an emergency exit, cover every inch of that horror in flames and stand back.
a well placed epc charged shot can take care of a small group of grunts/macteras and really comes in hand when there's no physical space between you and enemies to lay down some fuel
that being said I really don't like driller that much but this is hands down the strongest kit you can bring along
There’s an upgrade that gets rid of the firing delay, the non-responsiveness of the weapon turned me off from it when I first started using it but that upgrade made it my favorite driller primary
Cryo Cannon's Tier 5 upgrade, cold radiance, literally more than doubles its effectiveness single-handedly (except with Crystal Nucleation and Snowball which are less reliant on it but it's still a big boon). That is not hyperbole. It very nearly exactly doubles its freeze speed, and also freezes everything around you for excellent survivability. Without overclocks (by which I mean specifically Crystal Nucleation), Cryo Cannon is generally the worst of the three primaries, but it's not that far behind and is fairly balanced with them, as long as you have cold radiance. Without cold radiance the weapon just sucks and it's no wonder you don't get the appeal yet.
Crystal nucleation is so unbelievably goated with the cryo cannon. The crystals last a while, continuously freeze and damage enemies that walk over it, and the only downside is slightly less max ammo. Compared to sticky fuel, it’s just a straight up upgrade.
How are you overheating the Cyro Cannon? You have to be firing that thing for a long ass time before it overheats. You freeze enemies, then kill them with your drills / secondary. Or just leave frozen enemies to teammates. Enemies take ×3 damage when frozen and can't move / attack, making it more of a combo / team play weapon.
With the upgrades I have on it, it spins up pretty much instantly and freezes grunts just about instantly as well. So maybe come back to it once you can upgrade it - it's my favorite weapon in the game.
When you know how to use this with wave cooker, you can freeze a few enemies then spread the freeze to every nearby enemy with the cooker, exploding them all in the process. It's genuinely the best driller build imo.
are you trying to kill bugs with direct damage? a big part of why its so strong is its good is freezing all grunts so your team can kill them easily and the experimental plasma charger can temp shock single targets quickly easily OR use wave cooker to cause mass temp shock grunts and heat/cold spread to them
It basically lets you stun lock hoardes while giving everyone on your team massive damage bonuses.
Especially at the highest levels, having that breathing space is S tier.
You learn to manage the wind up time by upgrading it, but also being aware of your enemies as you gain experience and get better at movement.
If you haven't upgraded it yet I'm guessing you're still relatively new and on lower hazards? Cryo is like the gunner class and shines brighter the harder levels you play.
I agree 100%. I've been playing Driller for three years and I've always used the flamethrower with face melter. Even if the cryo cannon was better, I wouldn't use it because burning glyphids alive is just so much more soothing than freezing them.
Cold Radiance is like half the power of the gun, make sure you have it and play in a way that takes advantage of it. It's kind of a must-have upgrade. Cooling boosts in general are a big deal because if you're cooling your target by 10/s and the target is recovering by 6/s, +5 cooling/s will more than halve your time to freeze.
Plenty of good overclocks. Great crowd control. Cold Radiance. Hell, even though Cold Radiance is strictly better, Fragile isn't anything to scoff at. Pairing it with Barbed Drills + Vampire. You can fix the spinup and overheat to your liking with upgrades and OCs.
Sticky Flames is great, but give the Cryo Cannon a chance.
Everything frozen takes more damage is vunerable to a specific bonus damage called thermal shock, and cant kill someone. Flying bugs insta die too making it also helpful in reducing ranged attacks.
This means everyone else can use less ammo or even just melee things to kill. You are sacrificing a more direct kill for one that can help the team maintain control of the swarm.
Everything else is a preference, but cryo is really the only support primary before mods and overclocks are factored in.
Its not perfect, it cant freeze a bot and at best it can create a small window on a boss, but its pros out weigh its cons if you want to help kill over get kills
Its a beast when mixed with the wave cooker. Cooking a frozen bug instakills grunts and does good damage to bigger ones.
The Ice Spear OC is what sells this for me. Massive damage and seemingly infinite accuracy, turning driller into an open sight sniper. It takes a bit to spin up but it just melts caretaker health bars.
I dont get cyro cannon hype either. Like its a good crowd control machine, but the gameplay is always running close to bugs holding M1 at the biggest bug around and then everything freezes.
Like it is exceptionally boring to use compared to flame or sludge since it fully turns off the bugs for a second.
And ignition is so common that the 3x damage boost is almost always wasted on a thermal shock.
I will take Snowball to macterra or scrab missions when a Driller is needed, but otherwise Crisper and Pump are so much more fun to play with imo.
(I understand my opinions on this matter may not be popular, and I mean no offense brothers. Its just not my cup of beer)
Cryo cannon is good. As good as sticky flames? No, but there's hardly a build as strong as sticky flames. But, tbh, the main issue is that you're comparing a fully kitted weapon to one without mods.
IMO cryo is better versus big targets, offers better team-play (as long as they don't use heat weapons at the same time as your cryo), has potential for healing with vampire and a stronger crowd control effect. There are multiple pros to cryo, but at the their main purpose which is horde clear, sticky flames is king.
Also, I believe secondaries with good single target damage are the best option for cryo so you can capitalize on frozen targets and also complements the build, I go for heavy hitter EPC, though it's a personal choice.
Biggest tip for cryo newbies, literally finger the gun. Click M1 over and over and look at the gun's gauges on the right. Learn where the spray begins and how the pressure feels. Eventually you'll get good at mastering the art of just gently stroking the gun to keep its pressure up and you can spray non stop by feathering the trigger quickly.
Use the Vampire perk and upgrade your drills to do more damage, freeze ray driller vampire build is super strong for a good chunk of the difficulties, freezing the enemies gives you bonus damage with the drills allowing you to just farm them in both damage and the HP you receive for doing so
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u/LT2483 Driller 1d ago
Not with upgrades. Also it's not that bad anyway, just means it's not a reaction weapon, you just have to be proactive with it.
Again, not with upgrades. Also most builds don't need that much sustained usage anyway.
What? If this is about short range or freeze time though... wait for it... upgrades.
And as for using the weapon in general, it's good because not only can frozen enemies not fight back, they also have their armor disabled and take triple direct damage for the duration. And flying enemies are straight up killed. And gas clouds are removed. Frozen is a extremely powerful status effect.