BEST IN SLOT Descent Game Mode Talent Guide | The Division 2

Buzz, I can't believe you don't like insistent chatter. If you ever run for shotgun you going to want to set the chatter simply for the fact that you will not run out of ammunition. The second part of his talent is when you get a kill you get half your ammunition back so you don't have to reload your inmate 70 or your SMG or AR.

I've been playing descent for about 3 weeks. About half solo, half duo. Invariably, as a duo communication is key in choices. First loop choices should be supportive of anything - don't accept unhinged, luckyshot, etc until you choose the exotic and your second gun. Bullethell with unhinged requires too many stability talents - you are essentially losing 2%+ damage, at a minimum. The nemesis encounter tends to be more difficult the more loops you do. I've succeeded solo about 50% of the time - the talent & armament randomness sometimes stacks against you. In a duo you're building for 2players - not always 2 primaries, but sometimes a support build. I've killed the nemesis solo in a range of times, from 2 seconds to 78 seconds (plague)-and gloriously died occasionally. Sometimes with 5 red and no hardened, once with no red, no hardened, all skill. Possibilities are endless, you can even do it with a revolver if that wascally nemesis agrees to cooperate with your hollowpoints.

A fait amount of either outdated or just straight up wrong info on here. I have played an absolute craptonne of Descent and there are some very, very crucial things to take note of when choosing talents particularly Red ones.

The most obvious of which should be what kind of damage boost you are getting - Weapon Damage, Total Weapon Damage, or Critical Hit damage. Apparently the main game treats headshot damage as critical, but I'm not 100% sure that's actually the case in Descent. Unhinged is also a huge trap unless you are running a Plague build and mostly sticking to cover/using tne Booster hive as it will utterly ** your handling.

Dr Home is also complete garbage, avoid at all costs unless your other options are awful.

Chatterbox is actually much, much better than Bullet Hell especially at higher levels when you start dealing with 4+ waves per room because it helps conserve ammo, and certain skills like the Assault Turret and Striker Drone can actually proc the ammo refill.

Also Allegro isn't really free damage - it's not a bad talent and can be very good, just remember it's not actually increasing your damage output only how fast you are delivering it.

The absolute best DPS talents are Plague and Breathe Free, and they generally should be prioritized over anything else. Bloodsucker is also practically mandatory if going solo.

I have a question does Optimist work with bullet hell because if it does I don't ever see any increase in damage to be honest just curious

I like the plague and trauma combo but why not add vindictive to take further advantage of them?

Do u always pick armor for stats upgrade at end of loop?

If you haven’t gotten the diamond back exptic perk it will certainly leave an impression on you as one of if not the best

So I like to rock breathe free with plague of the outcast with gunslinger and opportunist. It just melts robo dogs. I stay away from unhinged all times as it’s not good for shotguns and pistols. I run sandman as you can easily kill outcast rushers and cleaners shield guys. I use my pistol as sniper and with that amp damage and plague you can easily kill far away targets.

Sandman is 🔥

These exotic choices are very bad. Chatterbox and plague are required. The third one can be either bloodsucker or chameleon or breath free.

My question is, is the Nemesis supposed to be a copy of your open world agent? Or a copy of the agent you create throughout the Descent experience? I ask cause the last time I faced it with a group, all of the Nemesis's had friggin stinger hives, EMP sticky-bombs and crap which none of our agents had during our run.

What skills do yall prefer ?

This mode is not good, period. There's no real reason to play it. it's lackluster rewards for the amount of time spent. A complete waste of time and resources that should have been used to fix crashes and bugs.

you forget chatter refills 50% of your mag so you can nuke a door without reloading and acts like bullithell but without the negatives

Stacking unhinged leads to hilarity....... especially eith a rifle, as its negative only seem to apply occasionally

Thank you very much

Breathe free exotic with pump shotgun and bolt action sniper love it

Are there any rewarda for beating it?

My agent hasn't stepped foot in this game mode and most likely never will

My big 3 I got. Chameleon exotic talent, bullet king, and pestilence. Pair with 1% to accuracy and stability for 100 to get a magazine back, with an lmg that's 100 you can gain ammo and save on spending points for later use on re rolling the multiplicative talents like overwatch which at 50% with composure at 40 and 4 red bars. 10+ is essentially you are Rambo and a plague Terminator wiping rooms from the corner of the small combat areas. Oh and stay away from vigilance unless you have a sheild or a good decoy.
Side note the 93R pistol has a reload time in the form of it stoops shooting when you are empty after firing the whole magazine rapidly.

If you don't like the weapons, or skills . Just pick one and leave and restart. I've gotten 3 garbage smgs, once, twice and most likely again.

I wouldn't say unrivalled. There's only 6-7 exotic talents, usually gives anything but a shield or healing skill at the start, you have no stats like Crit chance which is 0% at initialization unless you spend the currency before you enter to get 10%. Gear is randomized base versions of weapons and is equal parts skill (and avoiding the divisions well division-ness). It's more like deadly Tetris where what pieces and how much you stack them and where matter most. Oh and they need to not include the base useless pulse, firefly's except detonation one, recon pulse, bombardier drone (ehh it gets em out of cover on activation and misses 89% of the time due to collective mind AI software). The scaling needs tuning and enemies need less armour and health at times. The nemisis took 1.8k ticks while under fire for a solid 4 minutes and healed 3 times (even when only slightly injured), double rolled across 30 feet! Like some dolphin going 40mph. Having 3 skills (heal hive, riot foam and artillery) and doing 75% of my armour in two shots when I had put 4 points into the armor. I like some difficulty I can overcome with skill but flat out being immune to shock, fire and a tier 3 riot foam being as useful at keeping them in one spot duration wise as me rolling once. Their mobility speed, dmg resilience, tactics, and armour out do that of Division 1 Underground hunters when they were introduced.
Mins you I won the fight but only because of the tick and a revive hive.
Upgrades like the additional weapon/skill should be permanent and having the ability to spend decent points to get 3-5 additional Random talents at the start would make this more easily enjoyable.

Nice guide, miss Blinding Justice and the Stat core but you have other nailed.
I do recommend composure as you need to stick to cover almost 90% of the time. If you right about Unhinged (or bug) .... I think I have another much have talent now :3

Braced and Steady Handed once stack is super satisfy. You basically shooting laser (with AK) across the longest room and make Markman Rifle cry in agony.

It's really sad to see how they advertise Descent as roguelight but it's down to how much META talent you can have before enemy become too much of problem. Can't be fancy much even the game itself somewhat can support it. Feel like they said they gonna make brand new board game but it's just another rule Chess.

you missed one exotic talent, the justice one where its all about shooting the weakpoints.

Hey Buzz, I wonder now, since Y5 has kicked off, and potentially a lot new players are coming or old lapsing players return to D2 to check it out, how is the actual story experience going through the entire story and than into the new season. I wonder if it is awkward to come out of new york finally and than been thrusted straight into Civilian rescue missions because of reasons with no recap what happend the former 4 years in D2. Maybe you have some thoughts on this too?

Optimist still works for bullet hell, the damage cycles through whatever the mag size. Ex for a 30 rd mag gun that has bullet hell, Optimist will cycle from 0 to max damage every 30 rounds. I find it works really well

This mode has so much potential but needs tweaking. The Leaderboard doesn't represent anything other than who had the luckiest RNG with talents and weapons.

On my first ever run, I was granted three exotic talents before I even got to the Nemesis, on subsequent runs it has only granted me one.

If you get to the end of Loop 2 without getting some essential talents and weapon types then you're probably better off restarting.

And the rewards🤣 I spent nearly three hours on a run, defeated the Nemesis and then was killed 2 rooms later by Black Tusk exploding drone spam🙄 I received a single Exotic cache, a single Simulation cache and a Crafting cache as well as my usual proficiency caches, also I got the collectible Comms. On a previous run with similar results I was awarded multiple Simulation caches and a Reconstruction Cache which contains DZ exclusives, I know this because it gave me a Matador. But seriously, the rewards are an insult and if you're looking to grind you are better off avoiding this mode.

Plague Of The Outcasts talents is a must, it helps kill enemies quickly and helps you saves so much ammo. Bullet Hell is also a must to compensate for not being able to use larger magazine sizes.

Preservation, Composure, Companion (used with defender drone, turret, Booster Hive or Decoy), Adrenaline Rush, Strained (with Bullet Hell) are pretty much the most desirable for my runs along with the above mentioned Exotic talents.

I love the concept of this mode, but I hate the way they have implemented it. The rewards need improving and the structure needs a tweak. The first half a dozen loops you're better off going "all in" and taking on Hard rooms as they only have a single wave of enemies, the rewards are better and the enemies are weak.

Also, your pistol is your best friend for ammo conservation. It's surprisingly strong against enemies.

I'm a completionist, so I only really play this for the Comms you get doing the Weekly Project. Otherwise if it wasn't for that, I would never waste my time on this mode again.

Extra is useless until you maxed out Lucky Shot as LS gives you more for the same talent slot. Really good combinations are Unhinged+Steady Hand and Trauma+Vindictive, combine this with a m870 and opportunistic and you are going one tap almost everything, even bosses and dogs only take 2-3 hits (+exotic chatterbox talent for faster rpm and no reload). Defensively of course the mentioned talents in the video.

Here’s a situation for a laugh.

I was playing this mode yesterday and I wanted to test my luck with the assault turret. I finally got it on loop 5 after going without a skill equipped. In the very next room my gun with bullet hell equipped started clicking and not firing. All of a sudden I was dead in a instant.

Since this game is plagued with bugs I wish the devs would not make us start over in this. Each loop should just save our place and and we should have the option to restart from scratch if we want.

Sad to say I finally gave up and uninstalled the game, this game mode and the rinse and repeat manhunts/save missions aren't enough to keep me playing.........I'm currently playing outriders and absolutely loving it 👍

I’d really like to see a video about the rewards from decent, I’ve not seen a clear explanation of how you get item crafting schematics and other rewards from this mode. Especially when they are hiding some decent gear schematics behind this gameplay.

Good info as always, Buzz.

Just wish Ubicorp would sort out hte crashes ingame though - had one at Loop14, and then the following day at Loop8 as we entered teh Nemesis chamber and they failed to spawn........

it would help alot if you added information on every talent at max level 10 like hazard protection is at level 10 is 55% hazard protection neferd from 100 % from pts etc

why don't MMRs have scopes in Descent? 🤔

I want them to add more talents/exotics over time and maybe also let us reroll exotics at least 1 time to break up the RNG (maybe a 4th slot NSA token).

How cool would it be for creeping death, or a bunch of set 4p bonuses? Think of 4ps as exotics like Eclipse Protocol, or Foundry Bulwark, True Patriot, Hunters Fury, or Striker?

I also think getting exotics is a bit too RNG- a good run is when you get another (or a 3rd) before you get to the nemesis; you can really mix things up and get ridiculously OP once you start stacking synergies.

If you play enough NSA just piles up. They need a dump for the points you accrue on the vendor (caches for NSA), even if they end up resetting every season.


The XP is OK, but the caches rewarded are pathetic. Tune that shit up by at least 5x and/or lower the floor to more interesting cache rewards.

My fundamental critique is the incoming damage is too high in low loops (make taking glass cannon suicidal for most builds) so its very unforgiving. The scaling in groups is stupid too- too spongey, too soon.

I think the hard scaling should be reserved for post-nemesis play. Getting to the nemesis should be a gimme for most people.

I also think blue core and yellow core builds are underpowered, compared to the obvious gun build synergies, and many of the talents are underwhelming in those 2 areas.

For whatever reason, certain skills come up WAY more than others.

The Nemesis can have skills that are not yours, which isn't what I thought was supposed to happen?

I think the mode has good bones, but could have used more polish before it went live, and it's too bad only PC players feedback was on the PTS. I think consoles have a harder time due to the nature of being surrounded frequently in this mode. They flank and get whacky LoS on you like crazy.

On the up side, consoles have less issues with crashing causing the end of a run...

speaking of which, we should have a save at the end of each loop, so we can eat/go to bed/deal with life and not forfeit a run.

Am I the only one where every time I get close to fighting the nemesis my game crashes. I love the game mode but this gets frustrating every time I get close to maxing out the nemesis meter I get blue screened

Awesome video man, from the explanations to the graphics. Thank you! 🤙

I notice Shield mods all the time but nobody ever has a Shield.

I must admit that I didn't have faith in decent but after having tried it I love it... I'm playing it most of the time and perfecting the strategy, plague of the outcast and bullet hell (the last one especially if you choose a sniper) are the best to end leaders and nemesis

This is what I would recommend, for the best talents out there:
Red: Allegro, Companion, Critical, Obliterate, Optimist, Precise, Strained, Surgical, Vigilance.
Blue: Adrenaline Rush, Insulated, Preservation, Protected Reload.
Yellow: Destructive, Empowered, Extra, Skilled, Surge, Tech Support, Trauma.
Exotic: Bloodsucker, Bullet Hell, Glass Cannon, Incessant Chatter, Plague of the Outcasts.

For Stats:
Spec into RED, as much as you can.

I finally beat the nemesis today 🎉

Legend, great videos and a very helpful content creator 👍❤️👍

I think the mode is what you make of it

This dude does it right, seen soo many people try and give builds for decent when the choices are random. Also I think alot of people are sleeping on trauma and the classic mia.

Extra is just Lucky shot but worse. Also, you missed an Exotic Talent: Blind Justice

I’m not necessary agree with everything.

Exotic for me: breath free or chameleon talent instead of plague.

Also if you have bullet hell I recommend a shotgun and it gives a massive hit with trauma-opportunistic-enpower unity talents

Have you cleared Nemesis in a 4 man group?

I not sure but when optimist and bullet hell are combined I pretty sure optimist will not work

I'm waiting for my friends to get on to play.