Veteran
Increased stagger on enemies by 60-90%, on Weakspot hit. Additionally, increases ranged stagger strength by 30%.
10-25% Rending vs Staggered Enemies.
Suppress Enemies within 5-8 Radius on Close Range Kill.
Immune to Ranged Attacks for 0.7-1s on Close Range Kill.
"Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, and brutha? I hurt people."
(Created --/02/2025
Updated: 26/05/2025)
In my efforts to find a way to make the double barrel shotgun not feel like a total drag to play with I found a solution in the same perk that made the Plasma Gun click for me, "Always Prepared". This also lead to me being inspired by Mr. Scout TF2 himself the scooty booty man of Jerma985 legend which culminated in this whole ass build.
You run fast, you shoot gun, you hit people with a metal bat and you can't double-jump so you get to have stealth instead. Got it from ya dad. Swagger (SpyCrabTF2).
Build breakdown:
Weapons:
Double Barrel Shotgun:
The whole reason I made this build.
Terrifying Barrage: Makes ranged enemies cower and scatter instead of shooting you when you get close to them.
Hit and Run: Again, ranged enemies. They're the biggest source of constant chip damage and even a second of immunity is a big help.
Perks:
25% damage to unyielding. See below.
25% damage to maniacs cause ragers are the biggest pain-point of this build, they have the aggression necessary to chase you down and beat your ass, so killing them faster is a big plus. Its why I take man-stopper too, the extra stagger puts ragers on their arse when they take a full blast to the head/torso.
Changelog: Originally I had bleed and crit synergy on this but with continued experience with the game bleed falls off fairly hard unless you're using a weapon that consistently and constantly applies it (like the chain weapons or knife (and even then its debatable) or your name is John Zealot Darktide. Switched to just more raw damage and enemy suppression.
Shock Maul Mk III:
Honestly I only picked this because it looks the most like a bat, it just so happens to also work really well with this build. It has good sweeping cleaves on heavy attacks and push-swings and the special-attack is great for perma-stunning big enemies like crushers or bulwarks so your allies can beat the shit out of them if you happen to run out of kraks.
Falter: Staggering enemies is super useful, especially against maniacs. With the sideways swings you're gonna be landing a ton of weakspot hits.
Opportunist: Finish off ragers when they fall over or stagger real fast with the rending since even the dreg ragers count as being armored. Some kind of "Feel no pain" rules shit. Additionally lets you melt bigger carapaced enemies with the Falter stagger in general, Maulers and Crushers perish.
25% damage to flack armored: Dreg grunts have buckets on their heads that count as flak armor, kill them faster.
25% damage to maniacs. Same reason as on the shotgun, these guys gotta die fast.
Alternative weapon suggestions include the combat knife, chainsword and the duelist sword (though I think its cringe for being OP). I won't bother filling out my build for those weapons it'd be similar to the shock maul.Changelog: Removed Tac Axe & Shovel as suggestions as further experience with the game has taught me that Shovel & Taxe underperform quite severely. Combat knife has superior mobility & damage and the chainsword has superior damage at the cost of mobility.
Curios:
1x +1 wound 2x 17% toughness
Toughness is almost always GOAT, gives you more safety and better ability to absorb chip damage.
The +1 wound is a safety wound, the difference it makes in safety against both corruption and slip ups that get you downed. If you're confident you don't need that 3rd wound then swap it out.
+toughness +health are just further safety
+20% Gunner Resist is to stop you getting instantly melted by a firing squad of scab gunners.
Changelog: Actually have opinions about curios now
Talent Breakdown:
Changelog: One Motion & Out for Blood replaced with Close Order Drill & Confirmed Kill
Close Order Drill: Toughness damage reduction helps a ton with preserving health, as it keeps your toughness above the thresholds that stop you from taking health damage.
Confirmed Kill: A powerful source of toughness replenishment, in higher difficulties you have no shortage of elites and specials to mulch.
Krak Grenade: Your weapons suck at dealing with more than a couple of high health carapace enemies. Krak grenades oneshot crushers and bulwarks, even multiple when they're clumped together, instantly killing 2-3 melee ogryn enemies in good scenarios and kill 1 and reduce nearby enemies to 1/2 or 1/4 health and knocking them over is a massive threat reduction, not to mention the sheer amount of boss damage kraks can do.
Covering Fire: You're going to be doing a lot of point-blank blasting and buffing your allies is real nice. If you think this sucks then take Nade Tinkerer for +50% krak damage to delete bosses faster than you already do.
Changelog: Removed Serrated Blade as bleed is ineffective for this build. Removed Twinned Blast cuz its just overkill and not guaranteed.
Agile Engagement: Agile Engagement is basically a free, permanent 25% damage bonus in a battle since you're gonna be speed-swapping between your shotgun and melee constantly.
Close & Kill: You are the scunt, the scooty-booty vet, the living embodiment of speed. You. Must. Go. Fast. Alternatively you can take Fire Team without any alterations to other talents.
Field Improv, Demo Stockpile: Just 2 really strong talents I have a hard time not trying to squeeze into every build. Replenishing Zealot's & Ogryn's powerful grenades with ammo boxes is huge and cleansing corruption and passively healing toughness with med kits. I'm deeply disappointed every time I see a vet who doesn't have this, its such a colossal boon to the team. Demo Stockpile is just nutty, having an endless supply of nades. If you got max nades just chuck one for fun to keep the replenish timer ticking.
Grenadier: In the wise words of the smartest member of the rejects, The Ogryn: "Big boom." Having 3 Kraks means you'll almost never not have one when you really need it combined with Demolition Stockpile.
Changelog: Replaced Low Profile with Hunter's Resolve. Duck and Dive, Invigorated removed. Reciprocity replaced with Close Quarter Killzone.
Infiltrate, Overwatch & Hunter's Resolve: Seeing as you can't double-jump like Mr. ScoutTF2 you've gotta look for other angles to be able to get in and out of trouble real quick-like, so we're nicking a move from ya dad Mr. SpyTF2 (Swagger). Infiltrate lets you slip in and out of groups of enemies to either disrupt & kill gunners, bombers or flamers or to escape hairy situations like being cornered. Overwatch gives you 2 charges so you can get in to trouble then quickly get out, or double-dip on your stealth to pick up downed team mates in a bad spot. Hunter's Resolve gives you a significant survivability boost for those instances when you're using infiltrate to get out of a bad spot, or when diving into enemy lines to disrupt them.
Desperado, Toughness Boost & Skirmisher: Desperado gives damage, unfortunately the route to Onslaught would be sacrificing more toughness for a stam regen delay reduction which is a big fat load of nothing.
Toughness boost because more tougher is more gooder and Skirmisher because you will almost never not be sprinting from fight to fight so its just free damage.
Weapons Specialist, Always Prepared, On Your Toes: The big boy meat & potatoes talents that bring it all together. The core idea of Weapons Specialist is to reward you for hotswapping between your weapons. Melee kills buff your ranged weapon, ranged kills buff your melee weapon. The real power of this keystone comes from the 2 other perks that enhance it.
Always Prepared is the big momma that makes the shotgun really feel good: For every stack of Ranged Specialist you reload 3.3% of your clip from your reserves ROUNDED UP. Now my friends what is 3.3% of 2, rounded up.
Its 1. Every single melee kill you get will let you reload one shell into your double-barrel just by swapping to it. This is kind of nutty and I love it. Bonk a poxxy, swap to your shotgun, instant swap back to your melee and bonk another poxxy, swap to the shotty, bam you've got a fully loaded shotgun.
What this enables you to do is to really quickly switch between melee & shotgun for instant cannon-blasts of shrapnel into enemies in between weapon swings, and with the 25% weapon swap increase and the already fast swap speed of the shotgun and lighter melee weapons its damn near instant, letting you unload before your gun is even on screen then swap back like it was never there.
And then the must-have "On Your Toes" which just gives you 20% toughness back every 3s when you activated ranged or melee specialist, a free toughness top off every 3 tickers.
Changelog: Added For the Emperor, Tactical Awareness & Iron Will.
Tactical Awareness: A simply great talent that should be squeezed into pretty much any build as it'll significantly reduce your cooldowns constantly.
Iron Will: Makes chip damage and slip-ups taken significantly less punishing as long as you're keeping your toughness high.
So yeah that's the scoot-booty vet, a type build I haven't seen many people (if anyone) run but that might just be cause I'm from Noo Zulland and OCE has a low ass population. But I've been having a ton of success with it on Damnation & even Aurics and its one of my new faves along with my "Jedi" scriers gaze warp-sword build.
I hope this is actually somewhat helpful to literally anyone and hasn't already been done to death and I was just too stupid to look it up first. Anyway yeah. Tap a crusher on the head and go "Yo whatsup?"
