25-40% Cleave on Hit. Stacks 5 times.
11-14 Bleed Stacks from Special Attacks.
30-60% Heat generation on Critical Hit.
Critical hit chance scales by your current heat level up to 27.5-50%. Also increases critical ranged attacks damage by 4-10%.
This isn't so much of a ranged build as blowing holes through big enemies to kill them as fast as you possibly can. I consider this build to be "supportive" because you aren't really there to be a frontliner or anti-ranged headpopper. Your goal is to make sure nobody on your team has to deal with ogryns and monstrosities at all during the mission, with the added bonus of just doing so much damage that you can deal with all elites efficiently.
Due to the nature of Veteran's left side talent options, you aren't really going to want to go fully into ranged builds. You have to take a lot of terrible talents that punish you for being in melee—something that is totally antithetical to the design of the Tide series. Instead, focus on only unlocking the necessary talents for Weakspot damage and move onto the middle tree.
I do not take the 'Survivalist' aura because it requires you to invest in mediocre talents. I consider the aura to be worthless now after its nerf. Moving over to 'Fire Team' grants you pathing to 'Demolition Stockpile' instead, and 'Grenade Tinkerer' is way higher value.
'Focused Fire' gives you a generous boost in damage when dealing with bigger threats, especially monstrosities, that will give you (and also your team) the power to obliterate targets. I generally recommend fully investing in the 'Focus Target!' Keystone for teamplay advantages, but 'Target Down!' may not always be a necessary pick if you want to put that point elsewhere.
'Demolition Stockpile' I consider to be a staple/tax for Veteran that guarantees you always have grenades available for situations, as Vet has some of the strongest grenades in the game. This talent is what I consider to be absolutely mandatory in any build.
'Volley Adept' doesn't have to be taken but one of the plasma gun's biggest weaknesses is how unbearably slow it is to reload.
'Precision Strikes' isn't necessary but with the plasma gun's finesse buffs, it does help quite a bit. My weakspot damage on a Crusher goes from ~2960 to ~3600 (max Crusher HP in T5) with some other damage buffs active.
There is a lot of flex here where you can take different things to tweak your playstyle due to not committing fully to a Keystone, especially with your ranged weapon options.
The Mk XIIIg Assault Chainsword is a solid weapon with a great selection of Blessings and enough staying power to kill armored enemies. My go-to is having at least one Blessing based on increasing Cleave and the other usually being 'Bloodletter' for finishing off harder to kill Elites and bonus damage on Ogryn and Monstrosity enemies. 'Rampage' is also always a solid choice, especially paired with any Cleave Blessing.
The Mk2 Plasma Gun is a hard-hitting heavy weapon that will make sure anything you aim at doesn't survive. It has some flex with Blessings depending on if you want to focus on charging shots or primary fire.
