Up to +5-20% Strength based on the charge time of your heavy attacks. Stacks 3 times.
Target receives 1-4 Stack(s) of +10% Damage if already Staggered. Lasts 5s.
+4.5-6% Close Range damage on Repeated Hit. Stacks 5 times.
Gain Ranged Attack Immunity while sprinting with over 50-80% Stamina.
Veteran build viable for Auric Maelstroms. While not great at killing trash mobs without grenades, CC is great and it's very survivable and can tear down packs of elites like nobody's business, also sniping specials. Your role will be hitting those pesky gunners in the distance first to give the rest of your team breathing room to sweep up the chaff. Spam heavy attacks with the shovel if you need to get into melee.
For the shovel, with decent rolls, you'll need 3 stacks of Thrust to kill a Mutant in one shot with a folded attack, 0-1 if you get a headshot. Dodge out of the way before you swing to consistently land the hit without getting yoinked. Push attack > L > L is a great single target combo for anything not Carapace armored and useful for the occasional trash mob that sneaks by your team. Perks and Skullcrusher used to allow folded lights to instakill (shot)gunners, good rolls provided as well.
Columnus is your main weapon. You'll be using it during basically every situation. As above - shoot gunners and specialists first before moving on to the melee elites. If there is nothing big and dangerous to shoot, help with trash mob killing with your shovel. ADS is near-perfectly accurate and you can laser down everything with enough mechanical skill. Dumdum works at every range and Stripped Down is useful for repositioning or fleeing from a hail of bullets, triggers Duck and Dive as well. Perks help with killing basically every problem elite, specialists that don't have these armor types are squishy anyways. Don't shoot the trash mobs unless you absolutely have to in order to conserve ammunition. Don't worry about being suppressed, firing enough bullets in their direction will make them stop shooting.
Talent setup is based around grenade spam and buffing the hell out of the Columnus. Shovel is fine on its own and doesn't need help to get good (unlike some certain knives). Close Order Drill's TDR and Confirmed Kill's leech help tremendously with keeping you alive, in any heated scrap you're gonna have at least three CK stacks ticking. Born Leader helps spread the love between your teammates as well, though you can drop it for KTHD if you want better gunner counter-suppression. For the Emperor! lasts too short to be useful IMO.
Shout as often as you can to keep overtoughness on all your teammates. Onslaught is for Crushers, hence Rending Strikes isn't needed. You can swap out Demolition Team for Demolition Stockpile if you wish, that one's up to personal preference - if you're playing with another Veteran who you know runs field improv, take the other grenade regen node. Grenades are your friend, and you want to throw one at hordes every so often, and throw everything you have when things start to look bad. It makes a lot of space and deals solid damage as well.
As Veteran has poor stamina management, having more max stamina helps a lot. I would always have at least one equipped (I personally run three) but you are free to have two toughness curios instead if you want. Stamina regen and sprint efficiency both help with Stripped Down a lot. Gunner/sniper DR can be whatever you want.
