25-40% Cleave on Hit. Stacks 5 times.
2.5-4% Bonus Critical Chance on Chained Hit. Stacks 5 times.
4.5-6% Close Range damage on Repeated Hit. Stacks 5 times.
Gain 7-10% Close Damage for 3.5 seconds after killing an enemy at close range, stacking 5 times.
As a Veteran Ghost you have two primary jobs: flank & support. This build specializes in killing Elites, Specials, Ogryns and Monstrosities (bosses). This is crucial on Auric Damnation and Maelstrom missions where they come in frequent waves. In addition, you can revive teammates and complete objectives in stealth, which will avoid any and all enemy disruption.
The build itself focuses on Ability Modifiers over Keystones for high burst damage when coming out of the Infiltrate ability. Blessings, perks, flat modifiers and teammate talents will sustain damage effectiveness when not using your ability, so you won't miss Keystones at all. It's not a super meta build. It's a finesse build that weaves between team offense and team support. If played optimally, in most team comps, you can expect good scores in Team, Defense and Offense stats. You should also have high scores in Disabler and Special kills. This build is meant to be played at a very fast pace.
There are other weapons that can work in this build, but the fire rate, damage, reload speed, and ammo pool are too inviting to pass up. The other gun that could match well is the Accatran Mk XII Recon Lasgun; mainly because it has the fastest fire rate in the game and an even more generous ammo pool.
I go with Krak Grenades to deal with Ogryn and Mauler waves, but Shredder is a fine choice if you want more CC; especially if other classes on your team can take out Crushers, Bulwarks and Maulers faster. I like having the guarantee of dealing with heavy armor when doing Quick Play. No matter your choice, we always want the Grenadier passive so we can have nades throughout the mission. This allows us to ignore in-game pick ups, which gives more opportunities to our teammates.
If you choose a gun that's less ammo efficient, then Survivalist will make sense and often does in most Vet builds. However, the Vraks Mk V has a large enough ammo pool (especially with Fully Loaded) that the 1% replenish isn't as useful. And since we're trying to maximize burst damage, Fire Team is the go-to choice here. This will also provide a nice, albeit modest, bonus to Dumdum & Fire Frenzy blessings when our ability is on cool down, in addition to our melee weapon. Lastly, it's team friendly when fighting in coherency, so everyone gets the buff.
Infiltrate is the nucleus of your burst damage. All of the maximum damage this build does is predicated on Infiltrate. The second you come out of stealth, let the bullets rain. Unlike some of Vet's other abilities, Infiltrate gets so much utility and synergy from its modifiers. As a result, we're taking all subsequent modifiers under Infiltrate:
Like I mentioned in the overview above, we're ignoring all Keystones to maximize damage off Infiltrate. The bonus is we also get buffs to our damage while on cooldown, so we improve kill potential between stealth uses.
You can choose any melee weapon you want. I just like the speed and TTK of the Cadia XIIIg. Honorable mentions to Cadia Mk IV and Turtolsky Mk VI and IX. There's few wrong choices in this category and this chouce will come down to personal preference.
Curios, unlike your melee choice, have less wiggle room because we're playing on the highest difficulty. All three of your Curios should have Ability CDR. We want to use our ability in this build, or any build for that matter, as much as possible. I use to run toughness regen a lot, but talent trees can get you good toughness boosts and regen, which negates this option pretty handily. Thus I go with +12% Stamina Regen across all three. Since we're going to use our ability to reposition (sprint) most of the time, getting our stamina back quickly becomes essential. This also helps our defense if we're stuck out of position, or just need to kite enemies for a better engagement, which happens often in Auric Damnation & Maelstrom. Finally, I go with +17% Toughness perks on two Curios and +3 Stamina on the third one. More toughness, i.e. shields, is never a bad choice and more stamina = more blocking and longer sprint time. This is my first entry on this site. I actually main Ogryn and Psyker. But I recently had to rebuild my Vet Stealth because of the Unlocked and Loaded update. I ended up having so much fun because the playstyle is so unique. I thought it would be a fun experiment to share with the community. Thanks for talking a look.
