1-4 Bleed Stacks on non-Weak Spot Hits.
5-8 Bleed Stacks on Critical Hit.
18-30% Toughness on Elite Kill.
Suppress Enemies within 5-8 Radius on Close Range Kill.
Primer - Toughness is effectively a Damage Reduction Bar. It's not a Shield. If you are attacked at 100% Toughness, you will take no HP Damage. If you are attacked at 50% Toughness you will take approximately 50% of that attack's damage to your HP bar as Chip Damage. If a Scab Mauler attacks you and you've been stunned and your Toughness is at 0% there is a high chance you will outright DIE. Understanding this mechanic is critical to knowing HOW and WHY and WHEN to play a Tank role in this game. If you allow your Toughness bar to be depleted you are just as easy to kill as any other member of the team. This build intends to make that effectively impossible without being incapacitated first. Engage appropriately and stay in Coherency, and you will reap the benefits of 97% damage reduction, massive Critical Strike chance with one of the highest Single Target Damage weapons in the game, and Hoard-Clearing Bleed DoT's.
Requirements - This build only requires that you be Level 15 for “Benediction”, have a Combat Knife with the “Lacerate” Blessing, and that you can stomach the visuals of an incredibly twitchy Dodge-Heavy playstyle. No Particular Ranged weapon is necessary, though I do recommend the Revolver as a Fast-to-Deploy, Elite and Special killer. You don't want to be caught out without a means to kill a Sniper or Gunner line.
THE BUILD - This build prioritizes the positive feedback loop between “Lacerate”, “Flesh Tearer”, “Bloodletting”, and “Faith Restored”.
Maintaining “Faith Restored" throughout a fight is critical to your success as a Toughness tank. Use “Purge the Wicked” to engage hoards and save a charge to reposition, regain 50% Toughness, and re-engage with other groups. You will often need to use the 2nd charge to close the distance with Shooter squadrons after you have run out of hoard enemies to kill.
”Purge The Wicked" is much preferred to “Invocation Of Death” as Invocation's usefulness is inconsistent and highly dependent on a percentage hit-chance. You would have to Critically Strike 10 times in less than 15 seconds to make Invocation as cooldown efficient as Purge, without the functionality of being able to Charge twice rapidly.
You can easily choose any of the Level 20 Feats for a variety of reasons. “Holy Revanent” provides you the chance to meet a Penance requirement and is one of the better ‘clutch’ Feats. “Thy Wrath by Swift” could work in tandem with “Invocation of Death” to ease the necessity of “Purge the Wicked” by giving you lots of movement speed when repositioning rather than relying on Chastise to close distance. “Faith Restores All” provides approximately 30-50 HP in between Medikit and Medicae Station uses. I would not advise taking “Faith Restores All” as it directly counters your 4 max Martyrdom stacks you could potentially be utilizing and the healing provided is very minimal overall. (If testing proves that this will heal 1 hp when you receive 1 point of chip damage however this will get higher priority)
“Benediction” is wholesale better than the rest of the other options. You don't heal yourself an additional 20% Toughness when you use Chastise with “Inspiring Excoriation” whereas “Benediction effectively turns your entire team into 22% Tanks (including your Passive Aura) and provides you up to 97% Toughness Damage Reduction when ”Faith Restored" is active (always).
