Augmented Body II Mini-Guide

An explanation as to why this is the best Perk ever for the Crusader and how to build around it.

Important update as of patch 1.0.6b

Patch 1.0.6b drastically changed the skill "Defensive Stance" where it no longer funnels 25% of damage taken into Suppression rather than Health. Since that combo was the cornerstone of this guide, consider it officially "dead" or "outdated".

However, due to how being entirely immune to Suppression damage is still an amazing thing, Augmented Body II itself remains one of the best Perks in the game regardless. You should definitely still work it into your build, even if they official "killed" the synergy this guide was/is based upon.

Introduction

What it does
Your character will never ever lose a single Suppression point. That is, the green-to-yellow-to-red bar around your Health bar that keeps you protected from various crowd control effects. As a trade-off your character will not naturally regenerate their health, be it via the Health-per-second attribute or the out-of-combat healing. Healing from your Inculator, items (Health per hit/kill) and other Skills will function normally.



Now, the unfortunate bit o' news here is that it is very much a lategame perk as it does, again unfortunately, not unlock until rank 41. You can unlock a lesser version of it via Heroic Deeds earlier but it is not as potent (only keeps your Suppression in the yellow). I've personally not tried building around it, so feel free to try for a lower level version of this "build" (it is not really a build moreso than a template to build around).

Perk & Skill Synergy

Damage Reduction

The first and most obvious synergy is with the skill "Defensive Stance" in the Defense-tree. This skill makes it so that 25% of all damage taken to Health passes onto Suppression instead and since the perk makes your Suppression never decrease... see where this is going?



Basically a "free" 25% damage reduction.

Which you can then combine with the perk "Crisis Management"*** which adds further 40% damage reduction. Don't be afraid of the "suffer more damage" part. Won't be an issue in the end.




Healing

Naturally, the big downside to this setup is the lack of healing. Thankfully there are several ways to make up for it. The first is to take advantage of the "Focus spent to health" attribute inherent to the Crusader.

First and foremost you want at least 15 points spent in the Virtue attribute as this will unlock a 0.5% healt per 1 Focus spent. If you then go take a look at the Support-tree you'll find "Invigorating Faith" in the bottom right row that does the exact same thing.





This means that for each Assault Jump, costing 20 Focus, you regain 20% of your total Health. Not too shabby. Makes your armour ability act like a mini-Incoculator.

If you also managed to already grind 5.000 total Fate you will have unlocked a Perk called "Self-Flagellation" which basically converts your Health per second into Class Resource per second. 10 or more points in Toughness gives you 30 Health per second by default which translates into 3 Focus per second - which is more than enough metaphorical and literal fuel for your jump-pack.



Since "Augmented Body" disables your Health per second anyway, you're not really losing out on much by picking up this Perk - but you gain so much. You'll should be able to use Assault Jump whenever it is off cooldown for that 20% heal. Plus, the mobility it offers is insane. However, this means that you're dedicating all three of your Perk slots to this setup which is kinda lame, isn't it? You don't really "need" this third Perk for it to work, it is just fun overkill.

Secondly, the Single DPS-tree has one of the most potent skills in the game in it: "Euphoric Glands". This baby restores straight up 10% of your total Health per one-hit kill (don't worry, an aggressive Crusader build will have more than enough umph to one-shot most Regular type enmies and below) as long as it is done with a Single Target ability. No cooldown or nothin'.



Turns those small Horde-type enemies into walking medkits, just waiting to be "popped".








***ON UNLOCKING THIS PERK
You need to kill 100 "Elite Enemies" to unlock it. These are most of the targets marked by Hunt/Assassination missions. Take note that by default you will Execute these enemies when killed by a melee weapon - this disqualifies them from counting against the 100 kills needed!

So make sure you finish them off with a ranged weapon (or other means) as to NOT trigger the Execution scene!

Closing

So that's about it. As I said, never intended for this to be a full build guide - just sort of a base upon which to create your own.

Skills, the third perk and even choice of weapon is all up to you in the end.

The most important thing about this perk is that it allows you to ditch that Thunder/Suppression Shield. You no longer need to build around Deflection in order to survive. You can pick up that Greatsword or Thunder Hammer, spend points in the more aggressive skill trees and just go ham - you will have more than enough mitigation to get away with it now.



"The galaxy is the Emperor's, and anyone or anything who challenges that claim is an enemy who must be destroyed."

— High Marshal Helbrecht of the Black Templars.

[Luke]

Not sure if you're still playing, but I just started recently and found this guide. I've been using a flagellation / missile-spam build, and planning to add Augmented Body to it to keep myself on my feet..

Do you know if the Hermeticon / Voltagheist / Galvanic / Electro-haze / Animus / Shroud psalm-doctrine still works? it is a hefty 6x hit, but it is supposed to subtract 50% of damage from suppression instead of HP..

[Brother PaciFist]

Augmented body is still good but your guide needs an update :). Defensive stance does not give 25% damage to health does not work anymore. Now you get a 25% damage reflection for your deflects. The build is still playable to rank 40 warzones, but then you get severe damage problems. The clear speed is just not good enough for higher difficulty.


Good work.

[Burusagi]

@Mirolog: The game is currently very quirky when it comes to channeled abilities. You will only benefit from "on hit"-effects for the FIRST THREE attacks from gear, and only for the VERY FIRST attack when it comes to skills like "Overwhelm" in the Close-Combat tree.

[Mirolog]

If you have an Eviscerator (2-handed chainsword) with "hp on hit" - you shouldn't spend points to get "Euphoric Glands", it's quite useless, since Eviscerator has low but constant damage on it's single-target attack. BUT, since damage is constant and you deal many "hits" - you receive a ton of health back, With my currect setup I have ~42 hp on hit, and I receive ~140 health for every second of drilling into the enemy with Eviscerator. With all that dmg reduction it's possible to complete +250 tarot missions without inoculator.

@Alcohol Fueled Brewtality thx for the great guide! Emperor protects!

[Burusagi]

Backend: I don't see why it wouldn't. There is no mention of the fact that you need to be able to lose suppression for it to work.

[DoppelGangster]

I've just unlocked the suppression tree, and the first thing that came to my mind was augmented body 2, but are you sure that AB2 can synergy with defensive stance? since we don't lose suppression at all does the damage reduction still apply?

[Valnak]

@SMFScar yes, try it out. Rosarius + Inoc buff + passives + perks. Either that or everyone was missing me for a while.

[SMFScar]

@Valnak are you sure thats still ingame? They said a while back that they had softcapped dmg reduce at 70% (without buffs) and hardcapped at 90% (with buffs)

[Valnak]

Just FYI you can go over 100% damage reduction, resulting in 0 damage taken. Suppression tree is unlocked from "side missions" which are those purple side objectives in maps. I think the only one that works for this achievement is the "rescue guardsmen" which is automatically in some maps.

[Varius Mayhem]

Thanks to this, I now got a Crusader that has with his current equipment, 61% Deflect and most of this damage reduction here.

According to my calculations: 39% of remaining damage - 9,75(-25% damage reduction) = 29.25 - 11,7(-40% damage reduction) =17.55, I now only suffer 17.55% of incoming damage.

Tanky, yet I still have a few levels to climb. I also lack 1 point of virtue and a relic armor either being a sentinel or assault, for demolition doesn't cut it with the cooldown time.

That with a 13 shot inoculator with 20% HP/sec per shot I can blast at 25% HP and lower? If I watch myself carefully, I can go on and on and on... Crusader on Duracell!