Deadshot Gunzerker - [Havoc 40][Revamped]
 Veteran Build - Warhammer 40k: Darktide 

                                                          FOR ATOMA!!!

     This build's aim is to bring a different kind of outlook into what can be done on the class in a Havoc setting and is by no means something to be classified as META, just something that can work. Bringing out the survivability of the Veteran's kit while also allowing the Veteran to deal tons of ranged damage to Monsters, Specials and Elites. You can hang back in the group playing rear-guard just laying down cover fire and tags or go guns blazing as a core, hunting down every enemy on screen. The skill tree makes this a midway support that sets up your team to kill everything you set your eyes on as fast as possible, while providing them resources as you take out enemies. We will be marking targets frequently to provide the team with toughness and stamina which will be fueling our own damage via Deadshot. 

With Deadshot you can pick off snipers and gunners in the back of the map. Everything else from mid to close range gets completely shredded by you and your team due to this set up -- including Crushers and Monsters. This is a scaling build in the sense that it's mileage gets better and better with the higher the difficulty goes up due to the share amounts of Specials, Elites and enemies in general. The tree is also designed to take good advantage of both the Voice of Command Combat Ability and the Executioner's Stance Combat Ability, giving it just a bit more flexibility in terms of damage and defense.

                                               THE BREAD AND BUTTER

     This Veteran setup does a lot of damage really fast to both Elites and Bosses, given that we apply debuffs to enemies with our tags as well as all melee and ranged damage dealt to enemies. The damage that we will be doing happens in very short bursts but in high volume. The only requirement is that we have some stamina because it is the driving force to our front-loaded assault on any and everything.

     We are super focused on stamina in this build. We want Bonus Stamina Bars, Stamina Regeneration, and Stamina Generation. This is because we will be using a lot of it and having more, more frequently, means we can do the one cool thing we're here for --- shredding Elites and Bosses. Sprinting and Shoving already takes away our resource that we will be needing for damage and that's why we want to make sure we have more of it more frequently. (The revised version of this build had removed a +3 Stamina Curio, but still has a good Stamina Pool to keep up it'd damage.)

     Time to explain all the stamina usage in the build: Deadshot . This talent FEEDS off of stamina, and requires more bars to get more shots and time aiming down the barrel. Deadshot drains .75 Stamina while aiming down your sights to reduces your gun sway. When shooting while aiming it will consume another .25 Stamina per shot, this drains our bars because of our rpm. Naturally this means if we have the base 6 bars of Stamina we get with the weapon out we don't have much wiggle room to use Deadshot .

     Because we are using an automatic gun the talent eats through our Stamina but causes the gun to do massive damage with a huge accuracy boost. The main use for the tag system is for our stamina, as tagging enemies will aid us in generating stamina via hip fire. Getting back the stamina also helps us with our melee too which makes the build feel really nice since it's focus is to aid our shooting but our melee benefits from it passively giving us stamina for shoves.

                                               LAY ON THE DAMAGE

    There is a pretty sizeable amount of damage in this build for our ranged weapon in particular.

Here is a list of our static damage nodes.

• Longshot
• Precision Strikes
• Bring it Down!
• Onslaught
• Ranged Damage Boost 

And then we have the dynamic damage buffs being

• Focus Target!
• Deadshot
• Reciprocity
• Skirmisher

Lastly the damage from Blessings

• Dumdum
• Sustained Fire

   The play style for Columnus [Vraks] MK 5 with these blessings will be more burst oriented since to get the most out of our ammo for damage we have to burst fire 4 shots minimum. All this really takes is a tiny pause in firing and isn't required to do for 100% of the time if you don't want to or can't find the rhythm for it. The two Blessings pair really well for boss fights as it causes you to melt down monstrosities in your face.

                           DEFENCE, SURVIVABILITY AND CROWD CONTROL

   For Defense, I didn't bother getting too much total toughness because it seemed a bit unnecessary and a bit stifling to have it challenging more stamina bars and health on the Curios. For toughness and survivability we first should aim for +15% baseline via curios. The higher you go into Havoc, the less toughness increases will matter. Most of the survivability in this build comes from 'Iron Will ' damage reduction and toughness regen from 'Confirmed Kill' procs coupled with Focus Target! and Target Down! . Voice of Command is also you're "oh shit" button option if you take it. Voice of Command is probably one of the better CC tools in the game, and alongside our grenades, it provides a good amount of crowd control giving us a decent amount of breathing room. Aside from that, you should have a good amount of stamina to start shoving and mowing down hordes with melee. As the recent edition of this build now take Executioner's Stance , it is important to explain how valuable this Combat Ability is. Firstly, Executioner's Stance is active even when using melee and thus provides and very nice amount of toughness gen when in melee. Executioner's Stance provides a very nice balance between offense and defense and is a very welcome addition to this build.

*Sunder technically does help deal a bit of CC for hordes and this is why I take it sometimes over Brutal Momentum. Each enemy that you hit with the power up special will be stunned, and mowing past Bulwarks and still being able to stun everything else is something I find valuable. Swap between Sunder and Brutal Momentum and see how you like it.

                                                    THE ARMORY

Achlys Mk VI Power Sword : This is going to be our secondary answer to approaching Specials and Elites only really needed for when we get rushed into close-range combat and have no space to reload. This weapon 2 taps crushers in the head even without Brutal Momentum.

• Carapace + Unyielding: The weapon mows down most chaff in the game as long as we aim head height so our perk choice aims to cover the main problems Specials and Elites. Crushers and Bulwarks are our biggest melee threat so taking Carapace and Unyielding for them is a MUST [Aim for the head: Power Up > Bash Attack > Light Attack 1. Follow through and/or Repeat]. For monsters your combo slightly changes [Aim for the head if you can: Power Up > Bash Attack > Heavy Attack 1 >Heavy Attack 2. Repeat].

• Power Cycler + Brutal Momentum /Sunder /Slaughterer : Power Cycler is the Bread and Butter choice for the weapon. Sunder is my choice in 2nd blessing but you can also go Brutal Momentum if you don't value the cleave from Sunder. I personally don't like my attacks stopping in thick hordes of mixed infantry. Sunder makes attacks feel like they have infinite cleave regardless of kills. It also powers up Charged attacks if you ever want to use them, I personally use a heavy melee at the end of the 2 hit string on Monsters in my face for a bit of extra damage. You can lean into heavy attacks vs Monsters, just make sure to hit the weak spot. I recently included Slaughterer into one of the choices because it is easy to maintain while mulching through hordes. Between the buffs from Slaughterer and other damage stacking you will be able to deal with Crushers pretty fast. I think Slaughterer is a great choice for this weapon ever since trying it more.

   

  [With the new changes to armour on Armoured Ragers and the addition of Havoc I would value Sunder slightly higher than Brutal Momentum]

  [Also something that isn't valued much on Sunder is how each enemy hit CAN be staggered so it technically IS crowd control]

Vraks Mk V Infantry Autogun : You can take a Grey Columnus into Auric and never worry about killing anything with this skill tree. Maulers die in 1-2 seconds of shooting them and Crushers maybe survive 2-3 in mid to close range [Down to 1 with an actually build up weapon]. The blessings we are taking is just to supplement killing power on Monstrosities. I personally dump ammo in place of mobility because you realistically won't run out of ammo and mobility helps with moving hip fire accuracy and dodges.

• Elite/Flak/Unyielding/ Carapace: The gun struggles against Armour, Ogryns and Monstrosities, so we cover our base of choice.
• Sustained Fire + Dumdum: There are a million blessing combos to go on the MK 5, but since we are focused on special killing and want more consistent damage sources for Monstrosities I went these 2. Deathspitter is valued way too much and players really don't realize that the damage it gives require you to dump ammo into enemies PRIOR to the actual threat you care about using the bonuses on, and that this means you aren't shooting at the same target that you will want to be using said damage on. Not requiring kills to feed damage for only 3.5 seconds is more than enough reason to not care about DeathSpitter. Burst firing while being close is perfectly fine for us when killing Monsters.

    For the Curios the list of perks is ordered in terms of priority. Health is always going to be nice but more Toughness means we are less likely to take Health damage if we can keep it up. To be honest Vets get carried by Iron Will so you can forgo Health as much as you want: 

Toughness > Health > Stamina

CDR > Gunner Resistance > Stamina Regeneration Speed > Revive Speed

-You can and should replace Sunder with Brutal Momentum if you value that Blessing more. It is more damage for add clear, but less cleave for mixed hordes -- either way you aren't struggling too hard with hordes. Make sure to implement shoves during hordes to reduce some of the pressure on you as you will eventually find yourself needing to block because the mobility of the Power Sword is abysmal.

Havoc 40 modifier -> Total Toughness = 138 || Total Health  = 127