What builds are you guys using now?

[[Slayer]]

So far the Bomber and interceptor are godtier at rifts, but kinda tedious for the story. Vindicator is beast mode for the general game with tons of expertise investment and can still do lower level rifts, and if you do enough of them you get all the same gear anyways. With bomber, you sometimes get super railroaded because some fights are in tight spaces and using cruise missiles or mines or ults just make you die.

What are you guys running now?

I tend to just have a mining flak with the gauss cannon on my Vindicator atm.

[Sanzor]

Interceptor from the moment I could buy one. I just prefer the close range action. Using a mix of Sync Coil Gun types, Gauss Cannon and Bloodstar Autocannon. Interceptor Ultimate is just so funny making mincemeat out of everything mixed with "Symphony and Destruction".
I still use the legendary shield from the quest. The idea is to keep your Shield gone, since this will keep the decoys on the field and they can draw A LOT of fire from you.

In terms of Devices I use Energized Boost with the ramming damage, as this soften up or entirely kill packs, while you can avoid damage and relocate yourself.

EMP with the modifier to lower it per ship hit. Effective anywhere and especially in "vs. battles" and High Risk missions.

Front Shield Generator with Avenger. The fact you can ignore ALL damage as long as you're aligned towards most incoming firepower while also damaging the enemy in the proces is crazy. It lasts for a long time and a decently low cooldown depending on your Utility stats.

...the Nano device that repairs armor. Although by now I really rarely use it as armor tanking combined with crit perks makes you difficult to kill. Sometimes I switch it with Annihilator Virus with R-Naught to wreck packs of enemies.

[Pappy]

Gunship is my go to. It may not be the preferred class, but I don't have any issues with it. Seems to handle just about anything you can throw at it. If I die, it's pilot error each and every time.

Weapons and stuff can vary depending upon what's currently the best items I have, but I tend to always keep at least 1 high energy damage weapon and 1 high kinetic damage weapon and then I typically have a Flak as well as it's just such a good all around weapon for almost everything including mining. With secondaries I try to find 1 that will be fired on Crit and keep it selectd most of the time just for the free missile and then I use mines in the other slot and just spam those when there's a ton of ships around. I also keep a spare rocket in my inventory just in case.

For my Devices I usually go with the Boost, Anti-Missile, Shield Generator and the "Hook" which is just too much fun with the Gunship. Teleporting drones are funny when they try to teleport away and I just snatch them and pull them to my ship. LOL. Anti-Missile restocks my secondaries for me so I rarely run out of them. I barely even use consumables, have stacks and stacks of them always.

With this setup, there's almost no situation that I can't handle. I've actually done some really stupid things like hook an asteroid next to a group of mobs that I was actually just trying to pull 1 mob and simply blasted my way out of them. That's always good for a laugh. I love those random outlaw events where they say "Ah, he took the bait" and then I enable my ULT and blast them all to pieces in seconds. Maybe not boys.

Haven't really had much chance to do a whole lot of Ancient Rifts, but based on my time in High Risk areas, I think I'll be ok.

[Riktor87]

Gunship - Ship
Thermo / Flak / Railgun - Primaries
Rockets / C-Missiles / Mines - Secondaries
Damage Limiter / Damage Booster / Peacekeeper / Sticky Turret - Consumables
Teleporter / Energized Boost / EMP - Devices

Typically I can warp right into any engagement and pretty much idle and act as a turret just mop up kills while containing all loot drops in one spot instead of chasing down components all over the zone.

Use corrosive missiles just for larger targets that have big shields.
If the map has one of the larger hollow asteroids you can fly through I'll mine it a bit rally up all the hostiles and lead them through it. Sticky turrets are just because I couldn't think of another consumable I wanted to carry. And rockets are either spammed at larger targets, bases when I feel lazy about aiming. aside from that, I use the railgun to snap shot any webbers I see before even bothering to engage.

[Rithrin]

There's always Vindi, Gunship, and Bomber builds galore here, so I'll share the build for my tiny fragile Stinger baby.

Managed to pick up a Stinger with the following Passives: 25% reduced Support device cooldown. 25% reduced Warfare device cooldown. Using a device restores 25% shield.

For weapons I focus on having a Flak (Currently using a Penumbra variant) for engaging light groups and drones, and a Coil Gun (Currently using a Prime Zapper variant), for drilling down on single targets. I've tried using Blasters, Scatterguns, various others, but this pairing seems to be the best for my playstyle with this build.

Secondaries are Destabilizer missiles, and another missile which can be any type. They both have the ability that gives a chance to fire on a Primary critical. For bosses, cruisers, or just very tough smaller ships like Overseers, I switch to the Destabilizers for the free damage boost, and use the other missiles for anyone else.

For Devices, I've stuck with EMP (Short Circuit), Energized Boost (Compressor), Annihilator Virus (Symptomatic), Nano Transmitter (Carefree Package).

Adam's perks are Defensive Massacre, Downtime Warrior, and Crit Happens. The 25/30 perks are not super important, but Retaliation and Symphony of Destruction are good for this.

My equipment setup is focused around increasing my Precision, Firepower, Utility, and whatever else can go into Expertise. I have a Cargo module that triggers shield recharge upon looting (It helps), and a Shield module which triggers EMP upon depletion.

So with this setup, it ensures I'm critting often for the free missiles, which either debuff or just do raw damage, I can cycle through devices routinely due to the cooldown reduction, which grants me both an extra hardpoint as a Stinger AND reduced weapon energy use from Downtime Warrior for sustained fire. The extra hardpoint gives me more shots and crits for more missiles, and more crits give me more area of effect damage via Crit Happens perk. I'm EMP'ing when my relatively small amount of shields are down, which get regenerated via kills, via using a device, and via picking up an item, or even which can then be immediately depleted and launch another EMP. When enemies are not EMP'd I can use Nano Transmitter and, with all the damage boosting, essentially facetank enemies for about 10 seconds.

Basically: Everything focuses on DPS, disabling enemies, and burst survivability for tough situations.

Seems to be working quite well so far.

[[Slayer]]

Ya the stinger is OP once you get all your magic space powers, but still takes lot more effort to deal same amount of damage as a bomber or interceptor build. Vindicator takes almost no effort if you just spam low level rifts.

[Dephase]

So far the ships which performed really well for me in rifts are interceptor, gunship and striker. About the others I either haven't used them yet or, at least, not beyond 300-350 lunacy.
The build is very similar for all ships, Adam's perk might change.

Weapons: Penumbra, Prime Zapper and Gauss Cannon (sometimes the 3rd is replaced with umbra for the set bonus).
Destabilizer missiles and rockets to quickly obliterate the final boss ship.

Core: energized SP (better than standard power core), with tuned catalyst

Shield: Cassiel's protection

Armor: Omni manus (sometimes I switch to renegade plating which has about 5k more durability but I'm liking this legendary for now)

Sensor: it's irrelevant at this point I only look at the stat bonus. I got a starforged observer with 527 Firepower, Precision and Expertise (optimized catalyst on this too).

Booster: recharge booster with eco catalyst

Cargo unit: optimized cargo unit

Devices: Shield surge EMP, scurry teleporter, sustenance missile defense system, carefree package nano transmitter

It's fairly simple:

Keep the boost on all the time, if runs out it recharges in <2s (thanks to recharge booster and energized sp core). That makes you harder to hit. If you see a cluster of ships, harass them with penumbra and then charge right into it, strafing as much as you can (which is why core and booster are geared toward duration rather than speed), if they come too close, activate missile defense system (omni manus turns it into a damaging device, 4722 kinetic + 3005 energy dmg/s altough idk if it scales with utility, the numbers stay the same even with 2.5k+ utility).
Sustenance helps to keep it active for longer, especially when a Zurilia bomber fires 6 missiles at you. Overall, it's quite easy to keep it active for 40+ secs
If cassiel's protection gets depleted, fire the emp (if there are no enemies use teleporter to quickly go into another cluster of ships so you'll make the most of it, bypassing the 14s delay while still having those decoys that will keep some enemy fire away from you).
If you're unlucky and depletes again while emp is on cooldown or you get a lot of armor/hull dmg use the nano transmitter (note: missile def system damage is converted to repairs as well).
If both modules are on cooldown and you need to escape quicky, there's the teleport (which you can also use to quickly eliminate sniper drones or, as I mentioned before, going straight into enemy ships clusters).

Use your ship ult to have that burst of extra dmg while nano transmitter is active and then disable it immediately after you're back to full.

For last, the perks:

lvl 5: close call since it prevents you from getting oneshot once (but exit strategy might be good too since you're always boosting).

lvl 10: downtime warrior (or if you prefer percussive maintenance but the goal here is to try and keep the shield up and minimize hull/armor dmg so I chose the first)

lvl 15: i use relentless with gunship and striker (with 3 support devices is a +60% weapon energy reserve and those weapons are quite power hugry), with interceptor you can use crit happens since has better energy management than the other ships

lvl 20: critical faculty (the other that might be worth is unyielding assault which could make sense if you're taking too armor damage but with 2 devices geared for your surivivability, you might not need this).

lvl 25: retaliation on gunship and interceptor, exploitation if you have striker's 20% slow on locked on targets passive.

lvl 30: ride the lightning (cassiel's protection is an ST shield and this uses its 20/30% capacity to deal kinetic and energy dmg). Also, the damage bypasses the front shields that some ships might have and damages them directly. If you manage to get 5 stacks, unlimited boost + higher firerate and you're a killing machine.
With a striker if you chose exploitation you could also choose symphony of destruction, focus on a ship and if crits, deal a lot of dmg to nearby enemies as well. Highly recommended at higher levels of lunacy since this uses the enemy hull and at those levels is super buffer.

P.S: about symphony of destruction, unfortunately I don't have eye of the storm but, if I had it, I'd pair it with devotion and put them on a bomber to have always critting missiles and proc those enemy discharges more often.

[Baronfuming]

I am only level 16 still, so long ways to go yet.

I've been enjoying the vindicator a lot so far, but I want to buy a nice gunship next. I've got flak and a nice beam laser for mining and killing enemies. This combo seems to work pretty well. Flak is very nice for getting rid of drones quickly.

I have Energized Boost and Missile Defense as my utility slots. These are very useful, of course.

[Gamerzilla]

I bought a few ships but survival wise I seem to synergize with scout XD
Killing people with railguns in one shot from 5km away and then ulting into the shadows or escape boosting away any time so much as a shot gets sent my way has let me kill many enemies I really shouldn't have been able to (stuff 5-7 levels higher). When this doesn't work I carry corrosive & shield buster missiles (shield buster is immune to drone intercept and corrosive beats anything with big shields).

[Rithrin]

Originally posted by Slayer:

Ya the stinger is OP once you get all your magic space powers, but still takes lot more effort to deal same amount of damage as a bomber or interceptor build. Vindicator takes almost no effort if you just spam low level rifts.

I wouldn't call it OP, it definitely is a struggle compared to some other builds and I'd say the Heavies tend to win out if for no other reason than ease of use.

[LarvaLounge]

I used to always have 'Defensive Massacre' Perk on every build, the one that starts shield recharge on kill... but between that and energy orbs filling shields, it counteracts certain very nice perks. So, I decided to try out the SH-8495 Shield (No Shield) for something entirely different on my Gunship. So far it is performing WAY better than I expected.

The idea is to minimize the downtime on both the Ultimate (Coil Gun Turret, of course) and Missile Defense System (Omni Manus) as much as possible.

Legendaries:
Omni Manus - the best Legendary, imo
SH-8495 - the 'no shield' shield

Perks:
Exit Strategy - 25% damage reduction while boosting
Percussive Maintenence - Armor/Hull hits reduce cooldown of random device.
Crit Happens - no brainer, but Relentles might be ok if you like Synchro Pulse
Ulterior Motive - 100% ULT generation when shield is depleted (I have no shields)
Retaliation - only one here that makes any sense
Symphony of Destruction - though Overkill is also good here.

Devices:
Energized Boost - Compressor
EMP - Short Circuit
Missile Defense System - Sustenance for maximum up time.
Nano Transmitter - Carefree Package

Weapons:
Jaeger - Easy on Energy, especially since I don't have Downtime Warrior

Penumbra - mine came with Marksman and I added Kinetic Damage. I kinda like the extra range for snipers so not sure if I will trade it for Powerful when I do find a good one.

Gauss or Equalizer for hard armored targets. Though sometimes it seems like the Penumbra does more DPS on armor even though on paper it shouldn't.

Secondaries:
Destabilizer with Auto-Fire on crits and 'Cannot be Intercepted'
Rockets - I try to like Cruise Missiles, but for Capital Ships rockets just win out.


So far, with less than optimal gear, this build is out performing my old, more 'normal' gunship build by a fair margin.

[Rithrin]

Originally posted by LarvaLounge:

So, I decided to try out the SH-8495 Shield (No Shield) for something entirely different on my Gunship.

Yeah, have been wanting to experiment with that one, but sadly I do not own it. It looks pretty easy to become nigh invincible.

[BigDaddyBulgyWulgy420]

The Sentinel T4s with the right build are disgusting if you go for crit and gauss cannons

you'll always have shield up so you get your lightning balls that do massive dmg based on your shield, you get one of the best ults for crowd clearing that refills your shields

using the wrath of the fallen cargo will make armies when you unleash the lightning
using the shield leggo to spawn copies until your shield recharges adds to that

[♢ ۷ Ξ Я ₲ ℝ ♢ Ʉ ₦ D҉]

Originally posted by LarvaLounge:

Legendaries:
Omni Manus - the best Legendary, imo
SH-8495 - the 'no shield' shield

Yeah been maining gunship and so far this build seems to be one of the best min/max builds. Pretty much trivializes lunacy 1k so long as I don't kill myself with blast damage and a teleport drone. Only differences between your build and mine are:

Front shield generator (All Day) instead of EMP, for constant weapon energy up time while in use (You surprisingly get a LOT of weapon energy when taking hits), which synergizes with a booster that has [Weapon damage increases by 20% when standing still.] You can basically sit there blasting from a safe spot and kill anything before it can get near you, especially when you activate turret + manus.

Also running teleporter with scurry since it's versatile due to the nature of having charges, so I can use it as either a panic button or gap closer.

As for weapons, a cool thing you can do with Gunship is flak-swapping to basically rapid-fire two flaks. I bound my Mouse-4/Mouse-5 to Primary 2/3 and run dual Penumbras + one Umbra for the set bonus. Rapid on all primaries, with kinetic bonus on flaks and energy bonus on umbra.

[LarvaLounge]

Originally posted by Rithrin:

Originally posted by LarvaLounge:

So, I decided to try out the SH-8495 Shield (No Shield) for something entirely different on my Gunship.

Yeah, have been wanting to experiment with that one, but sadly I do not own it. It looks pretty easy to become nigh invincible.

I'd only been doing 500-600 Rifts before. But I've been doing Level 1000 in that SH-8495 Gunship build, now fully kitted out. It gets a little hairy... but then I'm no Pro-Gamer. I fly Gunship pure Rambo style. I boost strafe a lot, and I kill Snipers as soon as I see them, but aside from that. it can basically face tank the rift as long as I manage the cooldowns OK. It's best not to have ULT and Missile Defense both on cooldown at the same time for very long.

Originally posted by ♢ ۷ Ξ Я ₲ ℝ ♢ Ʉ ₦ D҉:

Only differences between your build and mine are:

Front shield generator .....

Good tips. I've messed with FSG on older builds, in Early Access... but only for ships that were getting one-shot by Snipers. IE not the Gunship. When I fly Gunship, most of the enemies are not in front of me, anyway, I'm in the thick of it.

I found a Starforged Rapid Penumbra, so switched to that. I don't think I want to go Penumbra as main weapon though. I like the more 'pew pew' lasers.

I did try the Rapid Penumbra on Interceptor and, at least during the ULT, there was really no point firing any other weapon. It was ridiculous.

[Alt0153]

used interceptor from the start, got into a gunship recently and just mow things down, can now do tier 500 rifts with my good buddy bob running distraction