tried to make a build that makes apocalypse easy for new players

[Grizzly]

new as in new to the difficulty, not new to the game.

main focus was to make it really difficult to die with it, while the damage wouldnt fall off too much. went with short range build, as i picked challenger as the main archtype and for the full damage buff enemies need to be within 10 meters anyways.

its extremely difficult to run out of ammo with it as you can use the secondary in combo with throwing your melee to regain ammo for the main weapon and the DPS is pretty good even without using the abilities.

I also tried to take things that are not too difficult to get, and while i managed to do that for most of the build (krell axe isnt important, and for the other things, i wrote not too much worse options that you can take instead) you would still have to get some traits to level 10, at least Regrowth, Triage and Fortify, and get the Tranquil Heart for this build to actually be good. the relic fragments wont be maxed for people either but thats not that big of a problem.



so basically i wanted to know if you think that this build takes too much to make it, and what you would do instead or if you think its good this way.


Stats:
200HP / 70%DR

Archtypes And Selected Skill:
Challenger / Rampage
Gunslinger / Bulletstorm

Weapons / Mods / Mutators:
AS-10 "Bulldog" / Corrosive Rounds　or　Hot Shot / Bandit
Krell Axe / Default / Transference
Tech 22 / Stasis Beam / Refunder

Armor:
Bruiser Helmet
Bruiser Bodyplate
Bruiser Boots
Bruiser Gloves

Relic and fragments:
Tranquil Heart
Health / Armor Effectiveness / Damage Recudion

Amulet:
Whispering Marble

Rings:
Dried Clay Ring
Black Cat Band
Ring of Crisis
Seal of the Empress　 or　 Dead King's Memento

Traits:
10 Regrowth
10 Triage
10 Swiftness
10 Fortify
10 Vigor
10 Expertise
10 Fitness
10 Barkskin
8 Recovery


Concoction:
Mudtooth's Tonic

[Fat Cat]

Everything's fine until tranquil heart....that one relic is extremely time consuming/rng. Since you need two perfect spawns in a single campaign, I would swap out that relic for something else. I would also swap out the 4th ring for generating band. With that, anytime the ring of crisis activates you'll be able to heal a good portion of life, especially with triage at +10. I would also swap out the armor effectiveness relic fragment for healing efficiency. Without flash caster, activating rampage will most likely lead to a few deaths during the animation with getting enraged. Also this particular build has decent burst damage with rampage and bulletstorm active, but once those end, your sustained DPS falls off a cliff. Since it's a mid range build, I would recommend going all shotgun. Sporebloom/double barrel is an excellent combination, try it with bulletstorm active and you'll see what I mean. Just invest in handling.

[Grizzly]

Originally posted by lumiereeclair:

Everything's fine until tranquil heart....that one relic is extremely time consuming/rng. Since you need two perfect spawns in a single campaign, I would swap out that relic for something else.

thats not true, its one 50/50 chance. all you gotta do is to role morrow parish, beat that world, beat the labyrinth and then see if you got forgotten prison or seeker's rest which by the way can all be done on survivor. aside of that you could also simply use RemnantSaveGuardian to skip the RNG part.

Originally posted by lumiereeclair:

I would also swap out the 4th ring for generating band. With that, anytime the ring of crisis activates you'll be able to heal a good portion of life, especially with triage at +10.

The HP regen atm is 5HP/s which is more then enugh and generating band will barely ever be active on that setup, especially since your max HP is now lower, causing the ring to get triggered later, which might cause the damage to just instantly kill you instead. a bad switch if you ask me. at least taking Reserve boosting gem instead would be better, but still worse then the way it already is imo

Originally posted by lumiereeclair:

I would also swap out the armor effectiveness relic fragment for healing efficiency.

you could do that, but it would make the gab bigger again for the 25% health to just get skipped right away, 5HP/s is way more then my average build has (2HP/s) and should really be more then enugh with that DR on top (70 instead of 50 what i usually have)

tho yeah, you could do that if you prefer it.

Originally posted by lumiereeclair:

Without flash caster, activating rampage will most likely lead to a few deaths during the animation with getting enraged.

id expect someone who wants to play apoc not to be so bad that he doesnt know when to proc rampage to not get hit. its not random, you can see your time and stacks. (also it seems like you are not aware that there is a damage immunity active? you have I-frames on the damage proc. you can only get catched at the end of the animation by an attack, no way multiple would hit you)

Originally posted by lumiereeclair:

Also this particular build has decent burst damage with rampage and bulletstorm active, but once those end, your sustained DPS falls off a cliff. Since it's a mid range build, I would recommend going all shotgun. Sporebloom/double barrel is an excellent combination, try it with bulletstorm active and you'll see what I mean. Just invest in handling.

going all shotgun would take away your ability to hit things that are far away completly, while having something else in there only takes challengers damage boost away. especially the guns you recommended will struggle against much moving bosses more then mine even if youd take handling in there (which would take away another trait)

the damage doesnt drop much. you still have 60% damage boost, 15% Fire rate and 15% crit chance with it without the abilities being active. kills everything i fight again fast enugh.

[Fat Cat]

It wasn't specified, but I was under the assumption that this build is for a "new" character starting out on apocalypse. If it's an already existing character, then there are many things that can be changed around, depending on individual playstyle.
Even with 200hp and 70% DR, you won't be able to tank every hit. When you do get hit, tranquil heart's healing is too slow on apocalypse. Not to mention using the relic without any speed boosts is very slow. If you must run tranquil heart for some reason, then it's better to run it with doe amulet and ring of omens for the misty step dodge. Pair that with +10 fitness and dodging becomes much much easier.
Challenger's damage perk works best against close enemies. If you wanted to shoot enemies farther away, then choose another archetype that doesn't have a distance penalty to damage. It's why shotguns are very effective with a challenger archetype. If shooting "fast" enemies is too difficult with shotguns, then choosing another weapon type and different archetype would be more effective.
Your damage numbers are missing some key pieces of context. For any enemy within 10m to your position you get the full challenger 30% damage buff and 10% crit chance to all damage types. From gunslinger you only get 25% damage, 15% firerate, 5% crit chance buffs to firearms only. There is an important distinction, because any melee/mod/skill/status damage will not get damage buffs from gunslinger. The only way to maximize damage potential for a challenger archetype is to be very close to enemies, which makes it a much more aggressive playstyle, where you need to kill enemies quickly or get overwhelmed. If you play defensively and stay farther away, your damage is considerably lower, and longer fights are bad on apocalypse.
With your specific setup, without handling, it is harder to get accurate shots with the bulldog, the spread is wide, and getting all the pellets to hit smaller weakspots is difficult with the recoil. The tech 22, is almost near useless against anything other than trash mobs and using it for stasis beam. Even then, the mod gen for the tech 22 is too slow, and using the double barrel with extender mutator would be a much better choice. Also its important to note, that against most bosses (primogenitor being the lone exception) stasis beam is completely useless. If you must use tech 22, then for boss battles it's best to swap stasis beam for corrosive rounds and change the mutator to fetid wounds. At least this way you'll get up to a 20% increase to all damage.

[Grizzly]

Originally posted by lumiereeclair:

snip

i feel like you and me play diffrent games.

yeah an already existing character for a player that wants to start playing apoc

the only thing you wont be able to tank with the 200HP 70%DR are insta kills which is alright. there is a reason that you got mid role with fitness.

ofcause the main damage will be done close up, but the Tech 22 can kill mobs without a problem from 20-25 meters away too on this, and allows you to shoot stuff like the oneshot flyers on yeasha out of the air and animals without having to reload the gun right after.

i can really tell that you never really played with the Tech 22 the way you write about it

consum speed or cast speed is almost never worth the cost for me. if you are able to shoot at an enemy you are also able to find a moment and use something. the only speed up thing is revive speed that really makes sense to take always(as long as you play coop that is)

made a clip cause i run into a funny situation with this build, yeashas default mobs dont attack you anymore if they push you into a corner. added a combat clip at the end of it too just to show it one time cause you mentioned the DPS falloff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFmaEzQEAM0

[Fat Cat]

I'm actually using the tech 22 in my current build. It's however, vastly different from your proposed build. Pros of the tech 22 is very high fire rate and high crit chance and good accuracy. Con's are is low damage, and low stagger rate and possibly lowish magazine size. With your build as proposed, there are better options than tech 22 for a side arm. As for your combat clip, every enemy was well within 10m of you, so you're getting the full damage buff of challenger. If you wanted to show the damage fall off of this build fight mothermind, sha'hala, bloat king, or annihilation (1st form). While you certainly can fight some of these bosses within 10m, I don't recommend it for players new to apocalypse.

[Xaelon]

I lived through Annihilation on Apoc at max level by stacking HP bars. Nothing else provided enough OHKO protection.

I tried max armor + max DR builds with bulwark and other stuff and that wasn't enough VS some of the last boss's combos.

Medic Shield + Shielded Heart + HP and Shield effectiveness frags = over 300% effective HP. I ran Engineer with Soul Link for healing.

As far as your build goes drop Barkskin for Syphoner or something else. Barkskin is not as good as it seems because it's not flat +10% DR, it gives 10% DR of whatever your armor DR is.

I would also drop Dead King's Memento since that's a Cass item and what you get from her is RNG. Replace it with Excess Coil, Ring of Diversion or Tightly Wound Coil. Soul Link is also really good sustain, but you need summons to go with it.

[Grizzly]

Originally posted by lumiereeclair:

I'm actually using the tech 22 in my current build. It's however, vastly different from your proposed build. Pros of the tech 22 is very high fire rate and high crit chance and good accuracy. Con's are is low damage, and low stagger rate and possibly lowish magazine size. With your build as proposed, there are better options than tech 22 for a side arm. As for your combat clip, every enemy was well within 10m of you, so you're getting the full damage buff of challenger. If you wanted to show the damage fall off of this build fight mothermind, sha'hala, bloat king, or annihilation (1st form). While you certainly can fight some of these bosses within 10m, I don't recommend it for players new to apocalypse.

well here is the Tech 22 of that build, doing good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwgeQVrqPNQ

[Grizzly]

Originally posted by Xaelon:

I lived through Annihilation on Apoc at max level by stacking HP bars. Nothing else provided enough OHKO protection.

I tried max armor + max DR builds with bulwark and other stuff and that wasn't enough VS some of the last boss's combos.

Medic Shield + Shielded Heart + HP and Shield effectiveness frags = over 300% effective HP. I ran Engineer with Soul Link for healing.

As far as your build goes drop Barkskin for Syphoner or something else. Barkskin is not as good as it seems because it's not flat +10% DR, it gives 10% DR of whatever your armor DR is.

I would also drop Dead King's Memento since that's a Cass item and what you get from her is RNG. Replace it with Excess Coil, Ring of Diversion or Tightly Wound Coil. Soul Link is also really good sustain, but you need summons to go with it.

barkskin in this build gives 5.6% extra DR from 66.2 to 70.8 and reduces the damage vs without it by about 15%

15% less damage for the leftover damage is worth it for me especially when we think about the 25% HP mark for the shield regen that could just be skipped by an attack and kill you instead.

aside syphoner wouldnt be that good in this build either as passiv regen is already really high



Dead King's Memento (which is very easy to get, i use it on my hardcore runs a lot, cass inventory rerolls every 30 min so after 3 hours you had 6 times the chance for this to spawn, which it does almost always for me anyways) would only be taken if the player doesnt take Seal of the Empress which is 20 HP, which after the %HP buffs is almost 25HP which is 12.5% of your total HP and taking that away means you are once again closer to skip the 25% for the ring of crisis and die right away.

doing that only makes sense if you get rid of the ring of crisis at which point this isnt even the same build anymore.

[Fat Cat]

Originally posted by Grizzly:

Originally posted by lumiereeclair:

I'm actually using the tech 22 in my current build. It's however, vastly different from your proposed build. Pros of the tech 22 is very high fire rate and high crit chance and good accuracy. Con's are is low damage, and low stagger rate and possibly lowish magazine size. With your build as proposed, there are better options than tech 22 for a side arm. As for your combat clip, every enemy was well within 10m of you, so you're getting the full damage buff of challenger. If you wanted to show the damage fall off of this build fight mothermind, sha'hala, bloat king, or annihilation (1st form). While you certainly can fight some of these bosses within 10m, I don't recommend it for players new to apocalypse.

well here is the Tech 22 of that build, doing good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwgeQVrqPNQ

So tech 22, fast fire rate, high crit chance. Lowish damage and small magazine size. Against the meatballs on yaesha, effective enough. Very different story when fighting the bi-pedal robots and drzyr zombies on ne'rud or the fae/dran on losomn.

[Grizzly]

Originally posted by lumiereeclair:

Originally posted by Grizzly:

well here is the Tech 22 of that build, doing good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwgeQVrqPNQ

So tech 22, fast fire rate, high crit chance. Lowish damage and small magazine size. Against the meatballs on yaesha, effective enough. Very different story when fighting the bi-pedal robots and drzyr zombies on ne'rud or the fae/dran on losomn.

its not good against the fae aside of the armored dudes, just gotta shoot their hands. all the other guys you listed are simply weakspot targets and they make no problems.