+7.5-15% Weak Spot Damage. Weakspot Kills also ignore Enemy Hit Mass.
+1-2 Extra Chained Energised Hits and +2.5-10% Impact on Energised Hits.
+4.5-6% Close Range damage on Repeated Hit. Stacks 5 times.
Immune to Ranged Attacks for 0.6-1.2s on Weak Spot Hit.
because this build is entirely dependant on a high headshot rate to function. Also, I hope you like Hadron's weapon-junking slot machine, because this build is also pretty contingent on specific weapon blessings and perks.
WHAT DOES THIS BUILD DO?
This build turns your veteran into a versatile frontline powerhouse, able to duel anything in the game with relative ease in melee, with a fast ranged weapon that can kill specials and shooters when it has to. You're also gonna be keeping yours and your team's survivability up with constant toughness regen.
TALENTS
I believe this to be the best combination of killing power and survivability in melee. It leverages the Mk 6 Power Sword's insane damage on it's Push Attack -> Light 3 attack chain and melee finesse, anti-armour, and elite-killing talents to boost your headshot damage in melee to the point where you can two-shot every non-monster in the game with empowered hits. Most of the points spent on nodes in the bottom half of the tree are to facilitate this, either directly, or because a node is on the way to an important node below. The load-bearing talents here for melee damage are Superiority Complex (+15% base damage against Elites), Bring It Down (+20% damage against Ogryns), Rending Strikes (+10% Rending), and Desperado (+10 Melee Crit and +25% Melee Finesse Bonus). At the bottom of the guide I'll list out all the breakpoints on Damnnation for the Power Sword with these talents, perks, and blessings.
MELEE
Use heavy attacks or an alternating Heavy -> Light pattern to clear hordes. Use your push attack -> light attack combo (which does a stab followed by an overhead) against more dangerous targets. You can also use heavies in duels, but not for more damage; the push attack -> light does more. Instead, heavies deal more stagger, so if you need to clear some space against multiple enemies, use a heavy to stagger one or two so you can focus on the third. The Brutal Momentum blessing allows you to deal even more headshot damage, and potentially kill closely stacked enemies, as well as making your unempowered hits still okay at clearing hordes. You technically only need one extra powered hit to hit your breakpoints, so Power Cycler III is still good enough, but realistically, IV is still far more reliable, as even the best players won't hit weakpoints 100% of the time. Bonus damage to Maniacs helps you hit breakpoints on Muties and Ragers, and +Unyielding is just to make your boss damage a bit better.
RANGED
We're using the Mk II Laspistol for its instant deploy speed, headshot and crit damage, and bigger ammo pool, allowing us to spam shots more. Bonus to Flak and Unarmoured allows you to pop shooters' heads without a crit on Damnnation, making you an excellent Anti-Shooter character as well. Ghost blessing is critical here: combined with the Determination (Gain Suppression Immunity) talent, this allows you to survive getting caught in the open, especially against gunners: Shoot a head, and run in, spamming headshots until you can use Voice of Command to knock the shooters down, until you can use your sword, or until repeated headshots kill them anyway. Your bonuses to weakpoint damage you're taking for the sword also help here, as the Laspistol already has great weakpoint damage and crap bodyshot damage. So again, I hope you're good at clicking heads, you're gonna need it. Extra Ammo talent is being taken anyways to get to Superiority Complex, but it allows us to spam shots more when we need to anyway. Bodyshots will still kill things, even if it takes thrice as many.
BLITZ, ABILITY, AURA, & KEYSTONE
Frag grenades are generally the highest utility option here, bleeding enemies and staggering them. Throw 2 to clear a room. But, Krak grenades aren't the worst either: They're exceptionally helpful for your hardest matchup, Bulwarks, due to their obscenely huge shield hitbox, and throwing a few Krak grenades on a boss is safe, easy monster damage. However, due to how limited our points are, taking Krak grenades also means giving up Survivalist, which is easily Vet's best aura. So pick wisely.
Survivalist gives more ammo. Lets you spam more without needing ammo pickups, and helps your team. What's not to like?
Voice of Command is no contest the best choice for this build. Free, on-demand Toughness and huge stagger has such a huge variety of uses that I'm not gonna bother listing them here. Just use it more or less on cooldown. The free revive node has its uses, but its cost is too high. Far better to keep people on their feet the whole time with extra survivability and a faster cooldown, than to revive them when they go down. You can usually just shout to clear space for a revive anyway, without needing the talent.
Focus Target! instead of Weapons Specialist might be contentious, so I'll explain why:
A) We have to give up a large enough number of talent points to go for Weapons Specialist that we lose some of our biggest breakpoints on sword damage, particularly the easy two-shots on Crushers, Maulers, and Ragers.
B) Focus Target! by itself is of better use to your team than Weapons Specialist's self-buffs. Focus Target! also still lets you get over important breakpoints by itself anyway.
C) Weapons Specialist's buffs are nice, but not at all load-bearing for these weapons. Your sword attacks plenty fast, we have enough stamina and regen from curios and Target Down!, and the laspistol already reloads fast enough.
D) Target Down! is a surprisingly good supplement to your team's toughness.
I think with only two points to spare, the boost from Focus Target! is better than Weapons Specialist.
POWER SWORD BREAKPOINTS
Light Attack Weakpoint Oneshot:
Light Attack Weakpoint Twoshot:
Push Attack Oneshot:
Push Attack -> Light Attack Weakpoint Twoshot:
Critical Hits usually knock a breakpoint back a tier.
