Gunlugger Pickaxe
Build for Darktide

A guide on using Pickaxes as Gunlugger. Most of this also applies to Feel No Pain/Loyal Protector builds. 

If you're using Karsolas or Branx, I recommend dropping Attention Seeker for The Best Defense.

Which pickaxe is best?

All 3 are good, boss. For gunlugger, I give a slight edge to the Borovian (med), with Branx being slightly better against elites and slightly worse against hordes and mixed hordes. Karsolas is the light attack option and works well but slightly behind the other two. 

Borovian Pickaxe (Medium)

The Borovian pickaxe is my favorite gunlugger weapon. It can handle hordes very nicely with light and push attacks while still packing a punch against armor when conserving ammo or when PBB is on cooldown. 

The weapon special is a Pull that yoinks anything but monstrosities and Muties about a meter towards you, stumbles them, and applies a debuff that increases their damage taken by 10% for ~6 seconds. It's great for opening Bulwark shields. It can pull multiple enemies at once if they're close together. The range of the pull is slightly longer than the normal attack range. It does little damage, but is a fast way to get to the strikedown heavy. You can use the pull while sliding, even if it doesn't hit an enemy, then slide again and charge a heavy attack to hit once you get in range of an enemy. 

Least important stats: Defenses, Cleave Targets

Blessings

The best blessing combo depends on your preferred combos with the weapon. You don't need a toughness blessing as the push attack will make it really hard for most enemies to touch you. My recommendations are Slaughterer or Headtaker + Thrust or All or Nothing, or just Slaughterer + Headtaker. 

A tier (great)

• Slaughterer: 8% power per kill up to 40%. gives a great power boost, its weakness is that it doesn't help much against bosses or heavy Elites when there's no other enemies to feed you power. PBB usually alleviates that weakness but not always. 
• Headtaker - 5% power per hit up to 25%. Power increases damage, cleave, and stagger. Headtaker generates Power quickly in any situation, making it better against bosses and armor which need it most, though it doesn't generate as much as Slaughterer. 
• All Or Nothing - "up to 40% power as stamina depletes". What it really does is give you 1 stack of 8% power for every 20% of stamina you're missing, meaning you'll have 40% power at 0% stamina but only +32% power at 1% stamina, which is annoying. You'll use up a lot of stamina just sprinting around, and you can throw in push attacks to use it up slowly in combat. Quite reliable if you like push attacks, very weak otherwise. To be equivalent to Headtaker, you can't go above 40% stamina, which necessitates lots of push attacks. There's two upsides, though. First, you'll often enter most fights with about that much extra power, which is quite handy in speeding things up and makes cleaning stragglers fast. Second, thanks to the Pickaxe's high max stamina you can stay at 20-40% without much danger. Great for taking out Muties in 1 hit as well as you're usually sprinting around when they strike. Biggest downside is you'll usually have full stamina while fighting Crushers, which is when you need Power most. To alleviate this, block their basic attacks which drain a lot of stamina, instead of dodging them. Make sure to take off any curios with +Stamina regen. When using All or Nothing, I recommend picking up Attention Seeker for taunting on push/block. 
• Thrust - It's great against crushers and Bulwarks and works well on the Borovian with the Heavy 1 + Push Attack combo. Depending on your base stats, can 1-shot a mutie on 3-stack strikedown headshot. 

B tier (good)

• Wrath - up to +200% max cleave is really good for regular and mixed hordes. But it's not A tier because your combos can stagger a huge number of enemies quite well which makes it unnecessary. Pair with Thrust.
• Confident Strike - up to 8% toughness on subsequent hits on any target after swinging an attack. Resets after blocking or if your combo resets from not attacking. Strong defensive option but held back my a critical issue: Confident Strike will NOT trigger from your first attack after blocking, which means it never triggers from Push Attacks or from your first attack after block cancelling. The borovian and branx have great push attacks so I only recommend this blessing for Karsolas. It does trigger from the weapon special, but your first attack after a weapon special will not trigger Confident Strike. 
• Slow and Steady - Charges pretty slowly and rarely contributes toughness when its needed, I only recommend it on Karsolas. Its better here than on Branx though. use with thrust and alternate the push attack and charged heavy. 

C tier (barely usable)

• Torment: 24% power after using weapon special. Anytime you need more power it's often an enemy that is worth staggering first anyway, but for anything but heavy Elites a push attack will be more effective. Other issue is the duration is just way too short. 
• Thunderous - 10% brittleness (max 40) per hit is decent in theory, but it doesn't help this weapon as much in practice because it has very high modifiers against armor already and if someone else is already applying brittleness yours becomes less valuable. That said, 40% brittleness increases the team's damage against Crushers and Flak substantially, and Unyielding and Maniacs by 25-30%. Pushes and push attacks both apply Thunderous, so when you use it against a huge pack of ragers they're all getting 40% brittleness within 4 seconds. Best pairing is Thrust and using the push attack + Heavy 1 combo.

Multi target Combos: 

• Heavy 1 + Light + Push Attack: Great hordeclear combo if not using Thrust. The push attack buys time for your heavy to charge without you taking hits, and Strength buffs make all 3 attacks deadly. 
• Heavy 1 + Push Attack: Combo for Thrust
• Heavy 1 + Light: alternate combo for Thrust. More damage, less defense. Also a good combo for Confident Strike. 
• Light 1 + Push Attack: Combo to drain stamina fast to build All or Nothing, also a good all-around hordeclear combo. 

Single Target Combos:

•  Special + Heavy (+ Light) - for big stuff
• Special + Heavy + Light + Light + Heavy - longer combo for bosses and Reapers. 

Branx (Heavy)

Lights are strikedowns, and so is Heavy 1. But lights chained after the second heavy become wide attacks. The special is a push stagger but still applies the Pull debuff. Only use it after a push attack or a light attack, as it has a super long delay if used after a heavy attack. Your main combos are:

• Push Attack + Heavy 2 + Light - Hordeclear combo with the best defense. 
• Heavy 2 + Light - Best hordeclear dps, but leaves you open to being hit. Usually starts with a push attack. 
• Light + Special + Heavy 2 - weave into your regular combo as needed. The special is good to stagger an enemy about to hit you, buying time for your heavy to charge, or to apply a useful Pull debuff to an elite mixed into a horde. 
• Push + Special + Heavy 2 + Light - alternate combo that applies Pull debuff. Use against ragers. Also useful to build up stacks of Headtaker and Wrath faster. 
• Special + Light + Heavy + Light + Light + Heavy - single target combo if not using Limbsplitter. 

The combos are slow and you're way more likely to take chip damage during hordes and especially mixed hordes than with other weapons, but the payoff is the best anti-armor melee option for Gunlugger. Despite being a push instead of a pull, the weapon special still gives the "Pull" debuff for ~6 seconds. 

Blessing Combos (in order of recommendation)

• Pick 2 of Slaughterer/Wrath/Headtaker/All or Nothing/Thrust. Good combos for mixed hordes and general use. If you get All or Nothing you have to use the push attack combo a lot so its not ideal but better than a bad perk. 
• Thrust IV and Limbsplitter. Limbsplitter allows for a reliable 1-shot against maulers and Crushers if you pick up +Carapace. If you don't get Carapace, most stat rolls can still finish off a crusher with a light or two. You can pretty much perfectly time each Limbsplitter heavy if you purposefully miss a light attack in between each heavy. You can also push without attacking, throw a rock, or use your ranged before charging another heavy. It's awkward but Limbsplitter lets you hit a lot of damage breakpoints to kill things in 1 light when moving around through the map in downtime. Great against muties as you don't even need to wait for max Thrust. 

• Thrust IV + Slow and Steady. The Branx's heavies have a really long initial windup phase before these two blessings start charging, so if you try to use Slow and Steady to regain toughness in combat you'll probably take more damage than if you were just doing normal combos without charging it. If you use these blessings, you should rely on Push Attack + Heavy combo more frequently since it has better stagger than the Heavy 2 + Light combo. 

   

With this pickaxe, I recommend dropping the talents Attention Seeker and Towering Presence so you can pick up Furious for better light and push attack damage and The Best Defense for better toughness restoration or the +5% melee damage node if you need it for breakpoints. 

Karsolas Pickaxe (Light)

The light pickaxe favors a different playstyle than the other pickaxes on Gunlugger. It has the simplest horde-clear moveset, but that doesn't mean it is a lightweight against armor. The weapon special is a powerful stagger that pulls the enemy slightly closer. After using the weapon special, the next attack (light or heavy) becomes a powerful strikedown. The next light after that combo is also a strikedown. 

Dump stat: Defenses (need 50% or more still), you can get by with 60% penetration though. 

Combos 

• Light 1,2,3 + tap block: use in hordes. The tap block avoids the strikedown on Light 4 and is faster horde dps but the downside is it interrupts Confident Strike. You can just do a full light chain if there's a beefier target you want to take out or if you need Confident Strike to keep triggering, or if you're just lazy... it's not a big difference.
• Special + Light + Light: use against medium elites.
• Special + Heavy + Light: go-to combo against Bulwarks and anything with a lot of HP. Great against ragers and other medium elites when you lack buffs. Great to kill a mutant (use the special before they get to you). The special won't pull them, sadly. 
• Push Attack + Heavy + Light: follow-up combo for anything that you've already hit with the previous combo but isn't dead yet. The push attack deals more damage than the special so it's useful when they already have the debuff. The block window is also pretty long so it can be useful when tanking a Monstrosity. It's also a useful combo when you have a mixed horde and need to push everything before taking out a priority target. Alt version is Push Attack + light + light which is great in mixed hordes when you need to take out a medium Elite. 
  • Against Bulwarks, you don't have enough time for the push attack combo after the special combo. Your combo is Special + Heavy + Light + Light. After that the Bulwark will attack; wait until they start the attack to pull them again. 
• Heavy 1 + Light 3: use when fighting a mixed horde. Can add Light 4 if there's a single target left after. Beware that Heavy 2 + Light 1 is slightly inferior due to Heavy 2's longer windup. 
• Heavy 1 + tap block: use when fighting a monstrosity that is attacking you. 
• Heavy Chain: only recommended if not using Confident Strike. Heavy 2 has an awkward windup but both heavies still have good hordeclear. Downside is that the width isn't super high so you might take some chip damage from the sides. 

Note that you can use pushes without doing a push attack by holding block for just a moment after pushing. It can be helpful to push before charging a heavy in cases where you don't want to push attack.

Blessings

If you want to use more light attacks, I recommend Slaughterer + Confident Strike. This version struggles against crushers compared to the other pickaxe builds, so you should make sure your ranged can handle them better (rending on PBB instead of fire bullets for example). 

If you want to use heavies a lot, Thrust + Slow and Steady is good because both blessings charge so fast on the Karsolas that you'll often get 1-2 stacks just from doing normal heavies. 

Wrath/Headtaker/Slaughterer is fine if you want to really tear through hordes and mixed hordes. 

Ranged Options and Point Blank Barrage

There's two main strategies with PBB

• Burn with a fast shooting weapon (Achlys recommended)
  • Works great against bosses and anything but Crushers because burn goes up to 31 stacks, pretty much double what a flamer can do. 
  • You won't kill Crushers fast or efficiently and will want to switch to melee for them after quickly putting some burn stacks on. 
• Rending with any weapon (Gorgonum, Achlys, or Kickback recommended, Ripper II braced is usable)
  • Much better against armor and still strong against bosses
  • Gorgonum Stubber
    • You want to switch to it and brace BEFORE hitting PBB because if you just hit the ability you'll waste 10% of the uptime just bracing your weapon. 
    • You may want to use Charmed Reload instead of Deathspitter. Both work well but with Charmed Reload you really need to watch your ammo consumption so you don't have to hoover up all the ammo all game
  • Ripper II (Braced)
    • You can do Flechette Cavalcade bleed if you have allies buffing crit (the rending does buff the bleed while active), but you're better off running Blaze Away & Fire Frenzy on Burn or Rend; Bleed just doesn't do enough damage to justify using all your ammo on it. 
    • Weaker than stubbers against monstrosities

Grut me, no ammo?

The main strategy of playing Gunlugger is conserving ammo. Rocks help immensely with this since they can take out pesky gunners and specialists, letting you conserve Stubber ammo for when massive amounts of enemies spawn. Don't use PBB just for a regular horde, only for when there's lots of elites or a boss mixed in and the team is in danger of being overwhelmed. If there's Crushers just shoot them for ~1.5-2 seconds each or ignore them and focus on other threats. Once there's no other threats, you'll help your team more by staggering and killing them than by lighting them on fire. 

Charmed Reload vs Deathspitter

Both blessings are good. Charmed Reload lets you fire longer without having to reload and helps keep blaze away up, often even getting you to your next use of Point Blank Barrage, but Deathspitter is way better for your ammo economy. It stacks 5 times and that adds up to a lot of extra damage. 

When moving from Charmed Reload to Deathspitter, I recommend starting off not using PBB at the very start of a fight unless the situation is really bad. Start shooting a bit to get some regular kills first, then pop PBB and benefit from Deathspitter and Blaze Away. 

Kill some snivelers

For a Heavy Hitter pickaxe example build, see here: https://darktide.gameslantern.com/builds/9c60559a-45fc-46c6-9f5a-878eb1e99d33/ogryn-bonepicker