5-8% Strength for 4.5s on Kill. Stacks 5 times.
5-8% toughness on Chained Hit.
Level 5 talents (Best Form of Defence/Smash'em Good) - These are roughly the same, however they ONLY seem to proc on their described trait i.e. single target will only get bonus on a single target, the moment it hits another enemy you lose the bonus. Depends a bit on your weapon type.
Level 10 talent (Heayweight) - this could be an option but wouldn't recommend unless you are doing Hersey+ as there just isn't enough consistency in Malice or lower. If this was a bit more open on the type like against all monstrosities, carapace, etc. this would be great. Bombs Away is fun but super unreliable in my opinion to spec into it; whether you miss completely, hit a trash add accidentally, hit the wrong enemy type, scarce grenade pickups, and not to mention competing against other teammates for scarce pickups. This feat needs to have the enemy type limiter removed for me to recommend this.
Level 15 talent (Towering Defence) - another optional choice. This would help more with Lynchpin however I usually find myself sticking with the team in most cases anyway and haven't really needed more radius. The radius bonus from this feels negligible and assuming its maybe only like 3 more meters.
Level 20 talents (Die Hard/Hard as Nails) - these kind of feel like niche talents cause ideally you shouldn't be solo'ing and/or expecting your team to die constantly & you very rarely, at least in my experience, find yourself below 25% health for Die Hard. Hard as Nails gets a bit more valuable in Hersey or Damnation but I really wouldn't recommend unless you have a ton of health, like more than 500 since this only applies to your health whereas Bloodthirst applies to your toughness and health.
Level 25 talents (Knife thru Butter/Raging Bull) - Fully charging for unlimited cleave is kind of silly and Raging Bull either doesn't work, extremely negligible, or bad wording and I don't understand what its asking. From what I can tell it only increases damage based on the attack type of your first hit. So if you swing a heavy all other attacks also need to be a heavy. but assuming you're hitting in crowds and/or swapping attacks it probably resets anyway.
Level 30 talents - I would say all of these are probably viable. Unstoppable to knock down bigger units condensed in horde and good for moving out of bad situations, Bull Gore would help a bit with Bloodthirst when you charge into a horde and surrounded. Non-Stop would a be a decent way to have a bit sustain on toughness.
*** Still a work in progress ***
Shield is more for horde/CC as it benefits mostly from heavy attacks however with super low dodge, mobility, and attack speed I just find myself taking more damage. Blocking and special blocking doesn't prevent you from getting hit from explosions, shockwaves, disablers, etc. which could be shields weakest attraction.
Club has stats meant for armored units, however I personally can't stand this weapon as its so unbelievably slow even with Bull Rush (25%) attack speed its unnoticeable; shield also has this problem. Not only are attacks super slow but push attacks also feel sluggish/delayed. Wouldn't mind the slowness but even with a good ~70% stat club in all categories it was super underwhelming against armored units.
Curios - I have mainly been stacking health since this will be your biggest survive kit and along with this even makes Hard as Nails and Die Hard a bit more approachable. A lot of this build is speculation or “would like to have” since gunners/bombers have been my biggest hurt issues and block eff with revive speed would be nice to pickup teammates. Toughness has been in a weird state since closed beta and with it:
https://twitch.tv/crispb
Updated for .13Adjusted some details and more notes on weapons.
Updated for .12Added more details and comments since doing Hersey and Damnation runs.
