Helldivers
Dear Breaker Spray & Pray,
I've been seeing hate against Breaker family's middle child, Breaker S&P, mostly from Gundamboi propaganda, so I decided to try it out. While I do think it's worse than breaker for sure, it also oddly feels very good to use. The fast fire rate lets me do what the name says and with EIGHT spare mags with a DRUM MAG, it has far superior ammo economy than the other breakers. It also comes with slightly better recoil and ergonomics than the other breakers which is really nice too.
I do think this weapon could be better by increasing its fire rate in order to give it better burst damage and allowing it to utilize its massive quantities of ammo more often. Afterall, bigger fire rate makes head feel more tingly.
From, Tabbi.
Discussion
To each their own, I could never warm up to the Breaker, I'm a Punisher guy
One tapping hunters is amazing and so slept on. Picks limbs off alpha commanders, stuns stalkers.. I have the full choke on it
Yes I am a punisher fan myself. Absolute limb picker
The knockback from the Punisher is so good at keeping bugs at bay, coupled with the rounds reload means you can keep breathing room between you and the swarm.
Yup. It's my go to against pred strain
For normal bugs though I do think the S&P has it's uses, it's just they're very niche. Really only good on those missions with lots of hunters and those little leeper guys. Every other mission type there's generally too many armored enemies for the S&P to be all that useful.
o7
This is the one gun I take out, when I am done with the enemies shit
I turn into the DOOM slayer with it in my hands
Man, don't get the breaker sp hate. It's my main on bugs and illuminate. Imo it's the best shotgun. With all the ammo in the world I feel like captain America when a horde comes along as I can do this all day.
I have a very aggressive playstyle and the breaker sp just hits all the right spots.
What other gear do you run with the spray and pray?
Depends on what the squad needs. That turns out to be the RR most times, Pair with the nade pistol launcher for bug holes, and thermite for heavy enemies that I don'thave the time to rr. Strats for his load out ill got Gatling and mg sentry with the eagle strafe.
Only bug this loudout will struggle with are the bile spitters, I tend to ignore them untill I see a bunch together so it's worth the nade pistol shot or the HE on the RR . If no AT needed then I get to use my baby he normal mg (stalwart for pred strain) and whatever backpack a teammate brought.
Hope this makes sense, just had operation on my eye and can barely see.
Against bugs and illuminate I like to run it with: Gundog for the medium pen, de-escalator as it’s great aoe and can deal with medium targets such as spitters as well as biles/harvestors. Then last two slots I like mg turret and 500kg. Nade pistol and thermites typically.
It is my favorite shotgun for bugs when I’m bringing gas. 10/10 best birdshot bugshot weapon.
Gas isgreat against he pred strain, only time I will take the gas dog out. Woof.
Bit overspecialised for dealing with chaff for my tastes but I would never complain about having a teammate like you packing one.
I think a lot of the hate it got is when it came out it has zero penetration and literally could barely kill regular enemies. They did buff it a lot but the stigma still remains the days you would go to a mission with your new shotgun and go through a clip to kill anything larger than fodder.
That's pretty much true of the Breaker against Fleshmobs. You need at least two magazines.
The biggest hate towards it was bc of the duckbill choke, which made landing all ur pellets basically impossible even at melee range.
Now that you can change the choke, it is just a breaker with slight less dmg but double the ammo
The duckbill is what made it good. Did people really see that it got a crowd control pattern for chaff enemies and decided they were still going to use it like the normal Breaker anyway? The whole point of the S&P is to spray down crowds of enemies.
Thats the problem, the duck bill made the horizontal spread so wide there needs to be 2 stalkers infront of you before all ur pellets hit. And it also made single target dmg so bad stalkers are actually harder to kill with it than with the liberator
Idk why arrowhead didn't put the duck bill choke on the incendiary breaker instead, its purpose is to set enemies on fire anyways
I never had a problem with Stalkers or any enemy for that matter with the S&P. At least no rogher time than I normally would without a stopping power or stun gun.🤷
Hey, if you want 40% of ur bullets to not hit the enemy unless its in a crowd, thats your preference, the gun alr does less dmg than the breaker, might as well do even less with that spread
I forgot that, it use to be worse which is insane to say.
Only shottys i use are Cookout and breaker incendiary. Id like to use shottys more in general but alas bots are far more fun to fight against than the rest..and range/pen matters.
I pray for a medium pen Breaker some day. It would complete the Breaker family similar to the Liberator family.
Would be cool, but for it to be balanced it would likely have to have serious drawbacks. Halt has med pen ammo option but i find it tad but too clunky to use in tense situations.
The halt is my favorite after the nerf to the slugger. But that ammo size AND the fact you have half your ammo devoted to a kinda meh stun.
How about making it rounds reload?
Did the Breaker have medium pen at one point? I do remember it being a truly godlike weapon when first released, then it was one of the biggest casualties of the Great Nerfing, but I don't know the specifics and haven't used it recently either.
always light
It really wasn't that good—I'd honestly say it was worse than it is now thanks to attachments. Its competitors were just so much worse than what we have now. Even before the nerf, people were beginning to hop off the "breaker is the god gun" train as more and more players unlocked the scorcher.
Imagine the Breaker Flechette. Fires round similar to the halt in med armor pen but in fully automatic style. I would KILL for a weapon like that...
Medium pen shotguns don't make sence as shotgun rounds have poor armor penetrative properties. The Halt has flechet rounds and slugger uses... well slugs to give it medium penetration. Maybe special magnum rounds where there are less projectiles in the shot but have more power behind them.
Then again I'm using real world logic in a game with aliens and lasers so does it really need to make sense.
What about the Slugger, or the Punisher Plasma?
Slugger is imo completely obsolete when you have jar 5 or deadeye, and pplasma is too weak also. It takes too much ammo to kill reliably anything bigger than chaff, but the cc aspect is kinda cool
I do like that slugger has twice the capacity as deadeye and much better ergonomics than dominator. I just want to beg to Arrowhead to give it a 2x scope. Overall, slugger is kind of like a medium range head popper, kind of like reprimand, but with some nasty stagger. Love the weapon.
I need to give the slugger another go, the deadeye-senator combo is just so damn satisfying. I love the just ker-klunk of the deadeyes lever action after domeing a bot.
The slugger is straight up dogshit, zero point taking it over any marksmen rifle.
and range/pen matters.
Do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior Slugger?
Yea the fact that it has double the spare ammo, means you rly can just spray without watching you shots... With the other breakers I always hesitate/hold back because I don't wanna waste ammo... While with s&p I just immediately let all hell loose
Randomizer gave me that gun on bots, it was the most horrible gun i have ever used against them
On bots you need to treat it like a rifle, not a shotgun. Always aim for the torso, never stop firing. It isn't ideal. But with the right choke, it will serve dutifully.
It usually took about 20 shots up close to the belly, unless i was at melee range
It had duckbill cause i never use it
I recently got to lvl 25 with it and while the others were fun to play with I loved the s&p. I was fighting bugs mostly while using it, and I use siege ready with it and I just felt like I didn't have to worry about ammo with it . I love the s&p and after I'm done with the other shotguns, I'll probably go back to it.
This thing is the sleeper of breakers and will put the rest to shame. That is my honest opinion. I think I’m gonna start leveling the spray and pray up now after seeing this. That gun held me through the trenches, I need to pick it back up.
I need to give this thing another honest try. I gave it too much crap in the past for taking so damn long to put down even the smallest of enemies. I'm sure a basic mod-up of foregrip, full choke, and iron sights will carry this HARD. stoked to give it a shot(gun)!
Shiiiit man you come across a pack of hunters and that spray and pray is your best friend. I find different guns work better on different factions, and as far as bugs, yeah that thing shreds.
These days it will one shot any of the small bugs, even at something of a distance. Against Warriors it can pop their head in one hit, and they bleed out pretty quickly afterward. It's fantastic. Very responsive, very snappy.
Love hate relationship for me, but I love it more without the duckbill attachment. Feels far better
Honestly, i liked it more than the standard breaker, i thought i was going crazy, but it really was preforming quite well on the illuminates
But man oh man, every 2 missions i play without my Eruptor i feel absolutely naked and defenseless, im lvl 150 and i have been for a while, maked out the last 2 warbonds while playing at almost every difficulty, and still, the only gun i have at max lvl is the Eruptor
Its a high like nothing else, but i gotta say, the spray and pray held my attention longer than most guns
You get SO many mags and an insanely fast reload if you switch to the standard mags. S&P is better than standard for crowd control, and with the full choke, its just so much fun on every front.
Is funny gun, having 8 Drum mag to shoot is just funny compared to 4 of normal Breaker
The breaker S and P is fun on bugs till you run into an alpha commander or a bile spewer seed, then you hate your life. I think it's kind of ass against the squids though, it's not the absolute worst against fleshmobs but it really struggles against flying overseers.
Don't forget, if you get the full choke on it with the large mage (13 or 16 shot I can't recall), it essentially becomes a fully automatic stock breaker with about 2x the available ammo.
It was definitely a black sheep before the customization, but now with the customization it is very viable
I'm doing a combat medic build right now, breaker S&P is my primary, mostly because it fits my medic outfit.
It feels so good to mow down smaller bugs with it. There's just something aesthetical about it.
I have 2 different spray&pray customisation, one that turn it into a pretty solid gun, and one that turn it into a shit gun, the main difference is the type of magazine it uses, one is with drum mag one is with short mag
It’s very very good at killing voteless. Pair it with the laser cannon and you barely need anything else against the Illuminate.
Its an absolute blast to use against Terminids...Until you realize you can get the same results with less shots fired from the standard Breaker. Now that the Breaker can get a drum mag of it's own...
I mained Laser cannon. Because if this I need something to kill the close quarter anti-democrats when a jump pack are on cooldown.
In this case I have no time nor nerve to carefully aim. This is when S&P come in to.play.
Panic - triggering, and clearing the bunch of them. This could be a life saver.
Level up the original breaker for the drum mag. Absolute game changer
I enjoy the weapon, issue is fire breaker does it better. Especially once upgraded. Standard breaker hits harder. Your solution of faster fire rate would be a great solution to raise it back to same level as the rest of the breaker family.
Breaker pray and spray was the first primary I managed to solo full clear with so it always holds a place in my heart
I use it for Crowd control on Bugs and Squids
So yall like the s&p over the incendiary?
Since regular breaker can use the drum mag, how about this? Spray and pray should get med. penetration to compensate for its lesser damage. How's that?
It's birdshot it isnt going to pentrate armor.
I've never understood the S&P hate. I assume it came from people who never saw it got a duckbill muzzle and never tried using it as a CC weapon. That thing was my go to for bugs for a while because it sprayed down crowds like no one's business.
See a tidal wave of chaff heading your way? Just point in the general direction and go to town.
Even with customization, where you can basically turn the Breaker into a diet S&P, the S&P still has it best out in the fact that it has a lot of spare drum mags without any negative hits to ergo. It's a beast.
It is really benefits from full choke, cause it has more pellets, that are weaker that ones from standard Breaker.
I’m grinding breaker for the drum mag, that will be a unit
Love this. I’ve never main’d anything other than ARs. I have the fire breaker one and it’s cool but not my thing. Gonna try a few different shotguns and see what’s up
I love this gun, but with a little seasoning it could be so much more, faster fire rate and maybe a tiny bit of stagger, doesn't need to stop enemies just slow them down.
That 10% fire rate boost really does not feel worth the massive loss to damage and accuracy to me. But if they cranked that fire rate up to 500+ rpm… then we'd be cooking
It's good if you want a drum mag for the basic breker but are too lazy to level it up so all you gotta do is use the spray & pray and remove/change the barrel attachment. Otherwise i see the spray&pray as just a worst breaker
You can even trim it down with shorts and a full choke and with a whooping 16 spares, 20 with Siege Ready, and you trade a little in the moment stamina to achieve the closest thing to a belt fed shotgun we can get currently. The thing that scratches the itch for me is for the small fry it's often the same two shot kill you'd get with the Breaker anyway. Even if it costs one extra shot you have such a greater wealth of munitions it's the one gun variant where you well and truly don't need to care about being efficient.
It is a fantastic compliment to the HMG or even the Autocannon and one of the load outs I love the most.
The real turn off is that it lacks the push and stagger force of the regular breaker. I don't mind the lower damage and higher fire rate but it just doesn't have the stopping power that I want out of a shotgun.
I agree with you though, it could use a fire rate buff to really capitalize on the amount of ammo it comes with.
Salt and pepper has smaller shitty pellets and I prefer the big pellets
The racing stripes are cool tho
This is hands-down my go-to pick for illuminate. Duckbill makes it easy to mow down walls of Voteless, the fast reload and excellent magazine size and count means minimal downtime. It puts out damage fast enough to put down an Overseer in a panic situation. High total DPS means it chews through shields quickly.
It frees up my support weapon to deal with heavier targets.
Breaker with Drummy > Breaker S&P
Every time I tried the B:SP, I felt like I was using a shitty machine gun.
The only shotty I can get behind is the Cookout. Does enough damage to reward the skill shot, but even if you only get a couple pellets into it, you still kill it from the burn. Love pairing it with the autocannon or grenade launcher.
This gun fills a hole in my heart no other gun can. I'm not the best shot, so a shotgun with full auto and minimal kick is ideal.
Then I messed with the attachments. Iron sights, angled grip, short mags, full choke, and single fire, turn it into a punchy battle rifle with 240 damage and a ridiculous amount of spare ammo.
Reloads are fast, turning is snappy, and the pellets let me get close enough without having to be precise.
I understand why people love the other guns more. However, I love this one most because it's exactly what I need.
Warmest regards,
Captain Heartburn, lvl 150 Fire Safety Officer, SES Champion of Conviviality.
I feel like that loadout would be better suited for regular Breaker if you're using single fire since Breaker does more damage per shot.
I find that the regular breaker eats ammo. The only things I actually need to resupply are stims. I am used to the sp ammo economy, I cannot go back anymore lol.
More pellets gives me a better chance to hit. It really counts against the Illuminate.
Possibly, but remember that the normal Breaker doesn't unlock its' drum mag until Level 24, which is pretty late in terms of unlocks.
I suggest you to try out the cookout. Rounds reload, heavy stagger and sets stuff on fire. It's amazing! :)
I was only using auto shotguns until I tried the cookout. Can confirm, it’s a good unit.
I think all the pump action shotties beat the auto ones…even if it’s just as a cool factor.
For me it's because of the stagger
The little-and-often reload style is also really comfortable especially if you combine it with the siege ready armour passives.
I switched to that combo from the Breaker line and pretty much haven't looked back.
Seige Ready, Cookout, and the gas Gaurd Dog are my go-to against bugs, especially Predator Strain. The stagger lets me juggle multiple enemies and the DoT from fire and gas does the work.
standard punisher vs automatons is awesome imo
the stagger and burning is so good against predator strain its hard to use any other primary