Up to 5-20% Strength based on the charge time of your heavy attacks. Stacks 3 times.
40-100% Critical Chance on your next Melee Attack after Special Attack Kill.
Suppress Enemies within 5-8 Radius on Close Range Kill.
Gain 7-10% Close Damage for 3.5 seconds after killing an enemy at close range, stacking 5 times.
Chainaxe is a personal preference, chainsword also works, but the bleeding special can shred through most elites on headshots/weakspots, and special attack rev kills(even on fodder horde enemies) massively increases your crit chance long enough to rev and cleave through more of the horde or rev to shred through a few Ragers or Ogryns and keep the cycle going. The very nice thing about a rev'd chainaxe/chainsword is that it prevents Ragers and Maulers from posing any kind of threat by keeping them locked in a stagger animation. Bloodthirsty and Rev It Up for Blessings gives you a hefty Crit Chance bonus on rev'd kill and some movement speed on revving to rush in where you're needed- or swap Rev It Up for Thrust for beefier Rev'd Charged Heavy attacks.
You could also opt to run with the "Devil's Claw" swords if you're skilled with the Parry against Overheads and Rager flurries, and most other troublesome attacks it can also parry like Plague Beast tail whipping and Plague Ogryn stomps.
The Shovels are nice, but they honestly just don't fit my playstyle enough to use them all that often. Same with the Knives/Blades, very good weapons but I just find them very boring.
The new Shock Mauls are a fun alternative to your Chain-weapons, functioning much the same in stunning Ragers and Maulers with the special attack thrust to electrocute but with the added horde control capability of the light swings being mostly sweeps instead of overheads and mostly-overheads. High Voltage and Entropic for blessings pair really well together, and reduces your vulnerability from not entirely relying on the Special Attack to stun.
With the Dueling Swords and Heavy Swords unlocked for Veteran, they open up a few more melee options. Dueling Swords are a good Knife alternative focused on Weakspot Crits. Heavy Swords are just kinda fun to mess around with, in my opinion.
Choosing your gun is important, you have the ability to fill in most ranged roles if you see your team composition is lacking something.
For your gun, you have a number of options, giving you some flexibility in your role depending on if you prefer sniping at longer range with precision repeated-single-shot volleys or spraying full-auto at mid-to-close range. Ideally, use your ranged weapon to fill in whatever gaps your melee leaves: High-cleave horde-clear melee, maybe take a high-damage burst DPS ranged weapon like the Helbore or if you're feeling frisky one of the shotguns.
You can set up your curios with whatever best fits your needs, I just prefer having more stamina and stamina regen with ability cooldown reduction to make sure I always have at least one charge of Infiltrate to get out of a bad situation.
Managing your stamina to dodge attacks will give stamina back(Ranged attacks only as of Patch 14) as well as boosting your crit chance and damage output(any attack dodged). Keeping your crit chance stacked high ensures you always deal pretty high damage, and dealing rapid damage stacks Brittleness to let you burst down Crushers and Maulers with relative quickness no matter what gun you decide to run with.
Killing Specialists reliably ensures you always have at least one charge of Infiltrate to stealth and reposition around the horde to get to troublesome Elites and ranged enemy clumps, and smart use of your smoke grenade can keep ranged Elites and regular Scabs from applying too much suppression to the group during particularly nasty horde sections with very little cover to weave in and out of.
Agile Engagement is a nice damage bonus for when you need to juggle melee and ranged frequently, like clearing a chunk of a horde to make room for lining up a headshot on a spawned Special or a distant Elite that's going to cause problems soon, or needing to swap from a horde-clear full-auto into melee to deal with an angry Rager or Mauler barging up into your rev'd up chainaxe/chainsword for a nice clean headshot.
Making smart use of the Weapon Specialist keystone, even without any upgrades to it, can turn you into a powerhouse against beefier enemies especially when paired with your "For the Emperor!" ability modifier and all your other buffs you can stack together.
You can also make very good use of Team Support nodes like "Covering Fire" and "Fire Team" aura by fighting in close-range and staying in Coherency to boost the entire group's damage and restore a good chunk of Toughness.
If you ever get into a bad spot where you need to revive your team, "Leave No One Behind" paired with Infiltrate will let you get them back up quickly and relatively safely.
You can trade Field Improvisation for Demolition Stockpile depending on how much use your team gets from Medi-Packs and Ammo Crates within a mission.
The "Low Profile" ability modifier on Infiltrate is incredibly useful for getting into and out of trouble when you need to revive a team-mate but it doesn't quite last long enough, and very nice for moving into position for Monstrosity DPSing without worrying about it suddenly turning to target you. You can trade it out for "Surprise Attack" if you tend to use Infiltrate more aggressively on Monstrosities and Bulwarks/Crushers/Reapers.
Testing in the Meat Grinder, depending on your weapons rolls and perk levels(don't even need maxed anything, imo), you can hit your breakpoints very easily on Damnation- even without stacking all of your buffs up because in a practical situation you'll never be able to maintain max stacks of Weapon Specialist and Skirmisher's sprinting bonus, they've just nice extra boosts to have for the occasions you can make use of them: don't put yourself in a bad position by trying to use them.
