How to Use and Build the Breach Cutter in Deep Rock Galactic

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Having learned how to play video games before he could walk or read, Jeffrey is a gaming zealot. With a fixation on efficiency and details, he'll d... Read more

Reviewed by Benjamin Barr

The Engineer Is the problem solver on the team in Deep Rock Galactic. And there are few problems bigger than a hoard of murderous alien insects bearing down you and your team. Luckily, you always pack a devastating secondary for moments like this. With that in mind, we’ll be going over the Engineer’s second secondary, the Breach Cutter, in today’s Deep Rock Galactic guide.

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Breach Cutter Overview

While the Engineer’s default grenade launch is all about dealing damage in a massive circle, the Breach Cutter is geared towards eviscerating everything in a straight line. Every shot fired from the Breach Cutter will send out a horizontal line of hot plasma, cutting straight through everything it touches until it travels a set distance.

Strengths

The shot can travel thorough anything, including enemies and the terrain alike. Thanks to this, you can easily aim through walls to target enemies on the other side if you know where they’re positioned. While the shot won’t travel forever, it usually is more than enough to hit any intended targets.

The weapon’s damage, even without modifications, is usually enough to kill any simple grunts. If you’re able to group up enemies in a nice small corridor, a single shot can usually wipe out the entire incoming swarm.

Even better, the weapon’s shots ignore armor by default and can hit weakpoints. This alone makes it incredibly potent against more problematic threats such as an Oppressor.

Additionally, if an enemy has a large enough hitbox, your shot can inflict damage multiple times to said enemy as it passes through them. This tends to make it much better at dealing with bulkier enemies than your default grenade launcher.

Weaknesses

However, the Breach Cutter does come with a few drawbacks. We’ll begin with comparing its performance to the Engineer’s grenade launcher.

Since each shot from the Breach Cutter is a line that travels perfectly straight forward, you have to aim much more carefully in comparison to the grenade launcher. Otherwise, it’s very possible for your shot to veer horribly off your intended course and hit nothing.

Plus, unless enemies are gathered together in a narrow corridor or are running towards you on a flat even plane, it can be rather hard to get the same amount of kills you would get from a single shot in comparison to the grenade launcher.

The final biggest weakness of the Breach Cutter is its projectiles’ rather slow travel time. Unless you can guarantee the enemy will remain at its current spots or its traveling in a straight line towards you, you’ll probably end up missing. Trying to save teammates from a distance is less than feasible with this weapon.

Best Builds for the Breach Cutter

So with those strengths and weaknesses in mind, let’s go over some of the best builds for the Breach Cutter in Deep Rock Galactic to cover its shortcomings and turn it into guaranteed death.

Build A: Return to Sender

For those of you looking to maximize the value of each of your shots, this is the best Breach Cutter build for you. The overclock for this build allows you to recall your shot to its original position. Simply hold down the trigger to launch the shot as normal, and release the trigger when you want the shot to return.

This is incredibly potent against large bulkier enemies, as you can let the beam pass through completely before recalling it for a second set of damage. Alternatively, you can clear out a huge waves of enemies, double back, and recall the shot to shred through any new ones that appear.

You can still the fire the weapon normally by just tapping the trigger, so you still have the full flexibility of the weapon. However, the overclock does reduce your max ammo capacity on the weapon by 6. You’ll have to take advantage of the ability to recall your shots to maintain ammo efficiency, but you should be able to do more than enough damage to justify it.

• [1] Prolonged Power Generation
• [1] Expanded Ammo Bags
• [1] Quick Deploy
• [2] Disruptive Frequency Tuning
• [3] Triple Split Line – You want to maximize the coverage of your shots to avoid missing enemies.
• Overclock: Return to Sender

Build B: Spinning Death (Laser Gyro)

This build also relies on its overclock, but instead focuses on allowing you to lockdown areas. It does this by turning your shots into spinning gyros of death that stunlock any enemy hit by it and last for a considerable amount of time.

While the overclock does cut your max ammo capacity in half, the bonuses to each shot’s lifespan more than make up for it. The same goes for the reduced damage, as your 4th modifier (Disruptive Frequency Tuning) will keep most enemies stunned/slowed in the beam long enough to kill them.

Just make sure you place your shots in locations that you can funnel your enemies into (like at the start of a dwarf-made Driller tunnel). Additionally, you might need to practice a bit with this overclock to get used to placing your laser gyros.

• [1] Prolonged Power Generation – You want to maximize the lifespan of your laser gyros.
• [1] Expanded Ammo Bags / [3] Loosened Node Cohesion – Having more ammo is always nice, but the other option does give you a much wider kill “circle” for your gyro.
• [1] Quick Deploy
• [2] Disruptive Frequency Tuning – Critical for keeping enemies locked down in your gyro.
• [3] Triple Split Line / [2] Plasma Trail – We personally prefer the first one, as it helps you cover a larger area and ensures enemies can’t avoid your laser gyro. However, the other option increases your gyro’s damage even more and helps deal with bulkier targets.
• Overclock: Spinning Death

All Overclocks for the Breach Cutter

We’ll also be taking a look at each overclock for the Breach Cutter in Deep Rock Galactic , and giving our thoughts on them. Players are always experimenting and finding new builds, so a new build might be discovered down the road.

Clean Overclocks

Light-Weight Cases

If you don’t have the overclocks needed for our two recommended builds above, this should be your next go-to choice. Having more ammo on the Engineer’s secondary is always incredibly useful. The reduced reload time doesn’t matter too much if you’re running the Born Ready perk.

Roll Control

A rather interesting overclock. This one causes your shot to start spinning in a circular motion upon being fired, as long as you hold down the trigger. Releasing the trigger will lock the shot in its current orientation, allowing you to make either a sawmill-like beam or re-orient it to a more favorable angle.

Stronger Plasma Current

A straight up boost to each shot’s damage output. However, given that the weapon already kills most common enemies, you’ll only see the damage increase on bulkier enemies. The additional projectile lifetime is rather negligible in this case as well.

Balanced Overclocks

Return to Sender

We’ve already gone over how useful this overclock is in our first recommended build above. Once again, this is incredibly useful when paired with the Triple Split Line modification, as you can cover a tremendous area and effectively “double sweep” it.

High Voltage Crossover

If you’re running the Stubby with an Electrocute build and really want to double down on it, this overclock adds an Electrocute effect to each of your shots. However, given that you’re likely to just straight-up kill anything that’s hit with the Breach Cutter, we find this overclock a bit unnecessary.

Unstable Overclocks

Spinning Death

We already went over this overclock in our second recommended build above. Once again, it’s fantastic for locking down an area or entrance way. However, you won’t be able to fire the weapon normally, forcing you to kite enemies into it instead of blasting straight through them.

Inferno

We considered doing a build centered around this overclock, but we find that it’s simply less effective than our other two builds. Previously this overclock also reduced your max ammo capacity, but that aspect has since been removed.

Instead, now you can run this overclock with the Plasma Trail modification to create a rather devastating DOT based build. However, we find the direct damage decrease that comes with the overclock to offset its killing potential. Though, you may find some synergistic use with a Driller running the flamethrower, as you can help keep enemies indefinitely ablaze.

Join the High Ground

We hope you found our Deep Rock Galactic guide to the Breach Cutter useful. Do you have another build that you would recommend? Let us know in the comments below!

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Happy Gaming!