+2.5-4% Bonus Critical Chance on Chained Hit. Stacks 5 times.
Hitting at least 3 enemies with an attack, increases your damage by 24-36% for 3 seconds.
+5-8% Strength for every 10% of magazine spent during continuous fire. Stacks 5 times.
+1-4% Toughness for every 10% of magazine spent during continuous fire. Stacks 5 times.
Gameplay (Yes, it's exactly the kind of build you clicked the picture for):
Engage the enemy. Spam lights, most things will die from that alone, but if they live; then they'll likely live long enough to trigger more buffs that'll make you stronger. If they're still alive; use rev'd heavies. That'll take care of anything else. During high intensity engagements where there are a lot of enemies present, you can reliably spam your dash (which I'll refer to as FotF). If you're up against a lot of gunners, use your gun to weave out of their line of fire while shooting indiscriminately at them. Doing so will cause you to replenish toughness, reduce their numbers, and cause them to reduce their gunfire all while making your way to a better position to repeat the process.
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This build rewards aggression and adaptability; the aggression being your Eviscerator and the adaptability being your Shredder. These two tools working in tandem with the skill tree will provide you with the means to either resolve a situation or gain control of it. This skill tree has been my go-to since Patch 13 for weapons with access to Shred (blessing) due to the amount of offensive and defensive buffs it has access to. The reason why I'm writing a build on it now is because rather than being a base template; I believe it brings out the very best in the Mk XV. But before addressing the weapons; let's briefly go over what the skill tree does. The short version is that this skill tree is designed to make you stronger under pressure, but that strength starts to dissipate as things ease up. Because of this, you're incentivized to target either the largest portion of the horde or the biggest enemies in it as either option will result in you dealing more damage and becoming harder to kill as a result. There's just a few drawbacks I'll address; one in this section, and the others under each weapon's section. So the first is that this is a Martyrdom build. I'm writing from the perspective of someone who always stays between 5-6 stacks. If you're not there yet; I'd encourage you to work your way towards that level of comfort as you'll get more from this build at 6 stacks than you will at 3. While your toughness and health pool are both numerically small; being active in a fight grants you a lot of damage reduction so any attack except for heavy overheads by Monstrosities, Crushers and Maulers will barely leave a scratch. Ideally, those scratches over the course of a run will add up to a wound which inevitably results in you getting stronger. With that much durability; it's easy to want to play more recklessly and reach 6 stacks sooner. But bear in mind that your health is still a valuable resource which shouldn't come cheap for the heretics. It's just more efficient. But if that's how you role and you know what you're doing; then go wild. Taking risks and limit testing are what I enjoy most from playing with/as a Zealot.
Breakdown of the Eviscerator XV (since it is a new weapon relative to when I wrote this):
The Eviscerator XV is an offensive powerhouse that is incredibly heavy.
It swings slowly, slows your movement when swinging, and has a very poor dodge.
Martyrdom, FotF, and Faithful Frenzy will turn your sluggish swings into a Meatblender.
The 10% movement speed from the skill tree will make the slowdowns when swinging more feasible.
The poor dodge cannot be compensated for when wielding this weapon, so dodging with this weapon out will be more for avoiding a disabler or heavy attack than repositioning.
The upsides of this weapon are its offensive capabilities. Spamming light attacks will be sufficient for cleaving through trash mobs, gunners, and even maniacs (I often, albeit a little inconsistently stun maniacs caught within my light hits). Critical Hits. Most people go down Blazing Piety for that, but you really only need Shred and Scourge. Shred 4 will quickly gives you 20% critical hit rate. The fun part is that Scourge will give you an additional 30% lives. So worst case scenario is that your fast and wide sweeping weapon will take a fat fraction off your cooldown every 1/5 swings. Best case scenario is that what you're hitting lives and makes you crit half the time. You will see quite a lot of resets and the more dire the situation; the more you'll get to spam your dash. If you're up against maulers, crushers, and monstrosities; you'll be using a rev'd heavy which will either one-shot carapace units or bring them to near-death. Against monstrosities; if you classify the Thunder Hammers as an S-Tier boss killer; the XV would be a comfortable A-Tier.
Breakdown of the Shredder Autopistol (because I know someone will wonder why Pinning Fire is missing):
The Shredder Autopistol is my choice for this setup because it has access to Inspiring Barrage, is very mobile, ammo efficient, and has reliable crowd control. If that sounds like a lot of utility, its because it is and I'll go over why its important. This build benefits from a plethora of buffs that you'll constantly trigger as an afterthought when swinging away at whatever Nurgle throws at you. Void of a melee encounter; you lose access to a lot of them and are susceptible to taking chip damage. Normally when something hits you in melee, you'll immediately turn to kill whatever hit you along with any bystanders in your field of vision, yanking back the toughness you lost from them. This isn't true for ranged combat where you're actually susceptible to taking chip damage. Being near the middle of a room with no cover is an exceptionally dangerous situation and factoring the Eviscerator XV's weight on top of bullets slowing down your movement; the usual fallback of comboing dodges and slides together becomes less reliable the further from cover you actually are. This gun's setup accounts for all of that because of the utility I mentioned earlier. The Shredder's superior mobility will allow you to weave seamlessly through gunfire again and the chosen blessings serve to bolster your toughness and ramp up your damage as you unleash a torrent of gunfire on your way to a safer position. Since you're not a Veteran pre-patch 13 that cheeses Maelstrom by using Pinning Fire + Blaze Away and consuming all the ammo and we've established this weapon is selected more for its utility; you will be far more ammo efficient than thought possible for someone using a shredder autopistol. Besides that, it's also far more ammo efficient than the other two options for this blessing (flamer and boltgun). Finally, crowd control; progressing down the skill tree from FotF, you have to take the +25% Suppression node and this gun has the often overlooked substat, Collateral making it perfectly compatible.
Other Guns with blessings like Ghost or Hit & Run were considered and employed. While they did well and could make viable alternatives. Ultimately the conditions of their 1 second immunity aren't always as readily available and consistent as just having to hold down the trigger for toughness, cc and damage.
Toughness Regeneration Tools:
List of Buffs
Toughness Damage Reduction:
Health Damage Reduction:
Critical Hit Chance:
Melee Damage Bonus:
Melee Attack Speed Bonus:
Movement Speed:
