The Subata 120 is the first secondary for the driller.

This is a "simple" pistol that can compliment all 3 primaries, or can be used independently from them.


Unlike the other secondaries who focus on some utility and crowd control, this gun focuses on single target/burst damage. This is something that the driller is usually lacking, as all primaries are crowd control weapons.

The 2 shorthands I'll use in this guide:
- DOT: damage over time, basically status effects
- CC: crowd control, targeting multiple enemies at once.

The goal here is to maximize damage output, as ammo is usually not a problem. This gun has a strange role, we use it on bugs we can't reach normally, large enemies. or for self defense against stragglers. (we can get rid of them faster with it than for example the sludge pump. Again niche use)

This is not your primary weapon, this is your sidearm. You can't really do any crowd control with it.


This setup is a good baseline, and I'll explain each choice:

• On t1 pick your poison. Accuracy helps us hit weakspots, bigger mag is more sustained fire. Both help us.
  
• t2 is also a freebie, we pick damage as ammo is usually not an issue on this gun.
  
• t3 without overclocks in my opinion is an obvious choice for burst. More details bellow.
  
• t4 we pick weakpoint damage because the +100% weakpoint damage worth it more than the base damage.
  
• t5 is blowthrough here (we don't do combos here), but we can pick the mod for our primary weapon.

This should also work with most(not all) overclocks.


Some more info on some specific mods, that deserve more attention.


This is probably the single most impactful mod on the entire weapon.

• You can onetap (headshot) grunts, making it better for self defense
  
• Crack frozen grunts in 1 burst
  
• It takes 2 explosive reload shots to kill a grunt
  
• makes tranquilizer better, by giving more chances
  
• makes chain hit better, by giving it more chances
  
• Because the 2 shots are done quickly, it makes shooting weakpoints (the forte of this gun) significantly easier. Aiming once deals double the damage.
  
• additional armor break, so you can get to the soft spots a lot easier.

It feels like it wastes ammo, but the only thing it really does is increase your damage potential/shot. You can shoot less frequently, but you also finish targets sooner.

I'll be using "one burst" to signal that you can use this mod to oneshot a target, as it is 2 bullets but effectively a oneshot.


This is a simple but powerful mod. Burning targets get +50% heat damage, which does not only mean more damage, they will also burn for longer.


On a base level, this is basically volatile bullets for corrosion. That is how it will work most of the times, just increases damage dealt by corrosion/poison.

It also has a secondary effect that does additional damage from a small explosion. For most cases, you can ignore it. This does not mean that it is useless, but can take some effort to make use of.

On every build here I have blowthrough on t5, but only as a "generic choice". We can just pick the one that has a synergy with our primary.



This is primarily for big targets, shoot it into the weakspot. Every mod choice is here to maximize damage and sustained fire.


Here the objective is to multiply our bounces with the burst, to get more value. But getting bodyshots is not much value. We also have a blowthrough interaction where the bullet splits in 2, we get both the blow through and the bounce.


This is one of the most interesting overclocks on this weapon. This is the single option that can become a crowd control tool, but only in a very narrow case. We can use it together with the neurotoxin grenade to abuse the secondary effect of NCTC, and spread those explosions around a large crowd. We need the toxin, because unlike sludge it won't kill the trashmobs on the spot so the explosions can just spread. With the bounces, we can just spread it to more bugs with each shot.

Not worth relying on it imo, because we only have 4 grenades. But, at least we don't get a gun that is worse than the base so it can be a viable strategy in case we have like a single target focused primary. It can "round out" your kit.

I do say that this effect mostly does nothing, because other than this one case that is exactly what happens.


Not much to talk here, just a bigger mag, the gun remains as it was.
This is what I usually use as a "general purpose build". The downside does not matter due to born ready, so it just gives you more sustained fire.
If we don't have born ready, then it's still not that much slower.


Full ammo is a solid choice, but it may not kill the bug on a bodyshot.


For bodyshot kills, we need to sacrifice some more ammo. You can shoot through 2 grunts and kill both on the reload.


This is pretty much how you want to build it to make sure that a lowroll won't actively nerf your gun.
The only variations are t1 and 5, you need the rest to reliably 1 burst grunts. You also want burst, because you lose the ability to reliably oneshot swarmers, it makes that not matter.


This is a utility oc that has a few effects:

• Better self defense: It can stun guards and slashers so they can be drilled or picked
  
• stop priority targets. This stun comes with a slow as well, so it works on everything.
  
• Let bugs sit in the DOT not doing anything.
  
• Annihilate menaces. The stun is so long, that you can comfortably kill them, if they burrow after the stun was over then it is entirely on you and your team.

Subata is a secondary, so we should keep our primary in mind when we build it. We can always just use the subata as a "standalone gun" if we want that.




T5 volatile bullets full auto is my primary recommendation. It helps us kill big targets. I usually use it with a "full heat" flamethrower.



2's all the way. This is probably the single scenario where we want to go "full damage", and don't pick weakpoint damage. We want the extra damage to shatter frozen trash. We want burst, because 2 bullets shatters 1 grunt. We want blowthrough so we can shatter 2 grunts in 1 burst, putting us roughly on the same level as the EPC (1 bullet/grunt).

We don't have too many options here. Oversized magazine is picked to have more sustain, shoot more bullets before needing to reload. (or swap for born ready)



I usually go with something like this. I pick this, because I want to be more flexible with when I apply my burst damage from it.
Stun also works well to let bugs marinate in the DOT.



This is only my personal recommendation. For the pump and the flamethrower, we don't need the t5 slot for the gun to work alone, so we can basically pick what we want.

This section remains here for "historic" reasons. This gun used to be the worst option for long enough that people forget that it even exists.

The primary difference between this and the other 2 secondary is that it is a long range single target weapon, instead of a CC tool.

Season 4 was a complete overhaul to the weapon, I would even say that it is a brand new gun now.

I'll elevate only a few things:


The oc got hit with an extremely heavy ammo nerf, on par with engineers nukes. This was well deserved. It is also most likely the single reason why faster reload is also in the same slot as burst fire, as having both would be a huge buff for this.


Chain hit was just not good, while homebrew was a flat nerf to the gun. The single advantage was randomly killing webspitters in 1 fewer bodyshots. This is good.

Chain hit even took up the one role I could see for it, which is being the "pseudo crowd control overclock".


This is the single biggest thing, as mathematically this gun always needed 2 shots for most things. If we only got this mod, then the gun would have became "fixed" as is in my eyes.

Armor break was also something it needed, and that is also here. Quite cleanly, as with full auto I'd still pick recoil reduction so I can hold it on my target.


It never worked with that primary before. This was caused by the cryocannon removing weakpoint bonuses the subata could not shatter frozen bugs well. Now that it can, we have room for more builds.

I like to leave it here, just for flair and possibly to address some issues. (the 2 round burst used to be here)

I'd have a gripe with the chain hit+NTCT interaction, because the neurotoxin grenade has some issues.

• Responsiveness: right now you need to throw it preemptively or it misses a lot of bugs it could affect
  
• placement: It can roll over the intended spot, last time I used it I had to power attack into the ground then place it in there for reasonable effectiveness...
  
• visibility
  
• low effectiveness: it deals with only a few bugs, and may not get much of it. It is easy to throw it and for it to not do anything.

Possible fixes:

• Give more, so we can waste a few of them.
  
• Start the cloud as soon as it was thrown. This means that the placement can be more easily controlled, and it also becomes more responsive. I can throw it at a pack of grunts, then switch to NTCT subata to clear it.
  The smoke particles may also need to sit around for a bit longer, but I'm not sure about that one.
  This is most likely the one fix it may need, as it lets us deploy it in a hurry.
  
• Make the cloud transparent, so oppressors can't emerge from it.

IF the neurotoxin becomes more usable/reliable, then you can have a very strong case to carry it+a subata for "pocket CC" with a single target primary. This also just goes back at this gun just "doing whatever it wants/needs to" as it's niche.

This does not hurt anything, as in most cases it is completely redundant as we have so many cc options on the driller. We also just generally need a facelift here as well, as it was never that good in the first place, used to be (before the HE buff) "pick this, if you don't like axes".



The second thing is that stun is inconsistent now. As far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong) only some stuns give a slow effect as well. Only the subata and the boomerang.
This works well, could apply to all and make the stun on the warthog and the gk2 (especially this, as now it can debuff the big targets you normally shoot) more reasonable choices. I don't know if I should be worried for the minigun's stun chance.