Okay, WOW. Dumb4Cum actually makes Melee Tech Specs almost as powerful as Ranged Mercenaries and widens the gap between them and Smugglers even further. I've never used it before despite knowing of its benefits because I'm not a fan of the concept of decreasing a character's intelligence like that, but, on a whim, I just edited a copy of the save I used for testing in the previous discussion to finally try it out for myself. To broadly sum up the results, the boost they get from the 20 extra intelligence was enough to reduce the average number of turns to kill Lash from between 7 and 6 in prior testing all the way down to 5, with a shockingly high chance to take him out in FOUR turns depending on the amount of crits you get. Even though I've seen the math on it Dumb4Cum and Tech Specs before, I did not expect the functional benefit in real gameplay to be that significant. The accuracy bonus definitely helps as well, making the build far more consistent overall. Considering you need to rely on the incredibly overpowered, likely-to-be-nerfed Akane's Painslut perk to keep you alive against Lash with a Ranged Mercenary and hit almost all of your shots if you want to reach that absurd 4 turn kill (which requires that you not waste a turn setting up with defensive skills like Take Cover or Headbutt), I'd honestly say that it's kinda up in the air which build is actually superior. I still think I side with Merc because they pull of that 4 turn kill far more regularly than Tech Specs, even if Tech Specs have a lot more utility abilities, but if Painslut ever gets reworked, things are going to get very interesting.
