Holier Than Thou

A permanent embodied saint build for the Battle Sister.

For everyone who is missing their shotgun.
Requires level 90.

Gameplay

Basics

When optimizing your damage you need to take into account the following categories:
- Base damage
- Damage bonus
- Damage bonus against
- Critical strikes
- Vulnerabilities

These categories are additive within themselves but multiplicative with eachother.
Naturally we want to utilize all of them as much as possible and not focus to much on one at cost of others.

Base damage
It is comprised of the damage rolls on your weapons and signums, your offensive attribute (Contempt) and some passives and perks.

Damage bonus
This is the sum of all damage bonuses that apply to your skills.
- ranged/melee damage bonus
- AoE/single target damage bonus
- physical/heat/warp damage bonus
- plain damage bonus

Damage bonus against
This is the sum of all applying "damage bonus against" modifiers.
- damage bonus against debuffed
- damage bonus against bleeding
- damage bonus against shocked,slowed or stunned
...

Critical strikes
this comprises your chance to land a critical strike and how much bonus damage you get from critical strikes.
- Critical hit chance
- Critical hit strength
- Critical damage

Vulnerabilities
These are debuffs you apply to enemies that increase the damage they receive.
- physical/heat/warp vulnerability
- general vulnerability

Berserk tokens
Berserk token can be aquired through various means and you can stack up to 100 at a time.
They provide 5 suppression regen/sec, 4% damage bonus and 0.35% movement speed per token.
You will lose one token per second until you have none left.
Some relic enchants allow you to further augment the bonuses from berserk tokens, but more on that in the gear section.

Attack speed
All attacks have an animation that has to complete.
If your cooldown is lower than the duration of the animation, you are animation speed locked.
attack speed speeds up animations.

Supreme stats
Many stats have a soft and a hard cap.
Supreme stats allow you to exceed the soft cap up to the hard cap.

Gear

Weapon:
It does not really matter what weapon you pick.
You will not use its abilities for this build.
The weapon will be a stat-stick.
However, I do recommend using a relic melee weapon for two reasons:
1) Melee weapons have access to the life drain enchant.
You can compensate for this with HP on crit enchant though.
2) "+X% chance on hit: All hits are guaranteed critical strikes for 3 seconds" is the most powerful enchant in the game and only available on relic weapons (not on archeotech or morality relics)

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Neural Implant:
Berserk tokens on massacre bonus because they simply have to many synergy effects to not use them.

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Eye Implant:
Berserk tokens on massacre is also available on main implants but we need that for something else.
Because of that, we need to use the Eye Implant of Insanity

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Main Implant:
Faith on kill while in saint form.
This is one of the key mechanics allowing you to permanently maintain the embodied saint form.

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Purity Seal:
Purity Seal of Trauma gives you bleed on crit, in combination with passives you also apply slow, opening up the use of damage against bleeding and slowed, shocked, stunned.

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Belt:
What belt item you use is irrelevant as the belt skills are disabled in saint form.
If you have a Harbinger of Judgement from season 5, use it.
Otherwise I would recommend a relic belt item with X% chance to poison on critical hit for an additional debuff.

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Armour:
I always recommend going puritan for the immunity to DoT effect holy armour.
Enemy DoTs are extremly deadly on higher difficulties.
Notable alternatives are the radical armour that teleports away from lethal blows and archeotech armour with X% chance to trigger a rosarius force field on hit taken.
As for armour type, I prefer the Seraphim armour as it provides the highest defensive bonuses and we can cap movement speed anyway.

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Inoculator:
HP regen per berserk token is massive sustain.
Preferably you get one with 4 yellow or 3 yellow and 1 green slot.
Psychon is the component of choice as any bonus other than damage should be caped or of no real benefit to the build.

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Signums:
One signum with chance to apply general vulnerability on debuff and one with damage bonus per berserk token.
You should apply enough debuffs to reliably stack general vulnerability this way.
I don't think I need to further elaborate on a potential 500% damage bonus from a single relic enchant.

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Psalm Codes and Doctrines:
Armour: +200% Damage Bonus against Shocked, Slowed or Stunned enemies.
Damage against is multiplicative and otherwise hard to get.
Weapon: Creates a damaging Aura dealing +100% Heat Damage per second
It is very useful to trigger on-hit effects and provides a little extra damage.

A single uncreator psalm outperforms every 3-psalm doctrine, which is why you should try to put one in every item.
The remaing slots are filled in with one Ordinatus psalm (to help with armoured targets), one Magistratus shard (Weapon - ToA chance) and 4 Sicarian shards (more crit strength)

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Additional notes:
Try to have at least one act of faith slot available.

Perks

Purified Spirit
This allows you to keep generating faith while in embodied saint form.
Absoloutly madatory.
Unlocks at level 58

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Martyr's Devotion
Lets you start the mission with a full faith meter, allowing you to activate embodied saint form right away.
Also mandatory.
Unlocks at level 90

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Cull the Weak
Probably the best damage perk in the game due to how little damage against bonuses you can get from other sources.

Acts of Faith, Sacred Rites and Saintly Deeds

Acts of Faith
You can't use Acts of Faith in embodied saint form, so you only take them for the passive effects.

Expurgation Sweep
Provides 15% supreme movement speed.
This is very useful for clear speed so a hard recommendation.

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If you have further slots available, the following would be my recommendations

Bolts of Retribution
Helps you stack vulnerabilities faster.

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Wrath of the Penitent
Slight damage bonus to your bleeds

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Sacred Rites

Spirit of the Exemplar
If your kill streak is high enough, a single group can fill your faith bar completely.
Thanks to Purified Spirit, this remains active even in embodied saint form.

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Saintly Deeds

Blessed Bolts
This is your bread and butter in this build.
As soon as enemies are in range, keep the button pressed untill none are left.
It works just like shotguns Burst Shot

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Righteous Judgement
Single target, big damage, armour piercing and giant killer.
This is a boss killer.
In addition it is a gap closer and allows you to jump over some obstacles in the map.

Passives

Area Effects
Your main attack is an AoE skill and the keystone of this tree allows you to spam the ability.

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Physical Attacks
Both of our main skills are physical making this tree a perfect fit.
Damage against bleeding and physical vulnerability on crit are the main points here.

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Damage over Time
Haemophilic Shock - Bleeding enemies are slowed as well.
You have bleed on crit on the Purity Seal of Trauma.
This automatically applies slow, allowing you to take advantage of damage against slowed enemies.

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Debuffs
Increasing the effectivenes of slow and giving damage bonus per debuff on the target.

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Critical Strikes
You don't really need the crit chance, but all the other bonuses the tree provides, including the keystone, are pretty good.

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Warfare
You take the suppression on hit so you don't have to roll or socket it.
The movement speed on ranged kill is also quite handy.

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Acts of Faith
Take the Sacred Rites effectiveness to ensure you don't run out of faith.

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Movement
Everything you can get to reduce cooldowns.

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Defense
A bunch of resistances, damage reduction and a nice one-shot protection keystone.

Attributes

You want all the bonuses for the embodied saint form you can get.
So get 25 in Contempt and Resolve.
The rest goes into Passion for the movement speed milestone and the suppression resistance per point.

[DM|Hachbubuch]

To be honest, I was unsuccessful at finding use for the Living saint, as I tried to base it on the skilltree, acts of faith and inventory item types. Seems my mistake was ignoring the orange effects of items and psalm codes, as they are much more important, than the most of the skilltree and inventory item types. Gonna make something interesting from ranged weapons with this knowledge, thanks!

[DM|Hachbubuch]

Sory, just noticed the vid. Looks cool.

[DM|Hachbubuch]

Ah and what modifiers does +61 have? I mean to damage dealt and damage taken.

[DM|Hachbubuch]

Thanks, didn't know about that. So, is there enough damage to be constant saint at +61?

[DM|Hachbubuch]

I'm just not sure it is possible to keep the Living saint constant with this Sacred rite on higher difficulties. So, I am curious if this build has enough damage to stay constant saint, versus, for example, +10 eldar, as they have no swarm units to activate massacre. By +10 I mean missions that are higher than your level by 10. For example, if you are level 100, the +10 mission is level 110.

[Schalimah]

some seasons have seasonal missions that can level up to level 150 and then you apply a +11 tarot.

[DM|Hachbubuch]

How do you make +61?

[Schalimah]

+61 if you so desire.

[DM|Hachbubuch]

+15?

[Schalimah]

any