Recover 15-24% toughness when hitting an enemy with a heavy attack, based on charge time.
Up to 5-20% Strength based on the charge time of your heavy attacks. Stacks 3 times.
You can Hipfire with this weapon while Sprinting. 6-15% Close Damage while Sprinting. Also reduces weapon spread at all times by 30%.
10% Critical Chance for every 0.2-0.35 second while aiming. Stacks 10 times. Discharges all stacks upon firing.
My other main pickaxe build, this build focuses on simply just using the Pickaxe effectively. Just run around doing your bread and butter block attack into heavy light combo (or heavy into light for bigger targets), cleave through the wave with ease, deal with armor and monstrosities with ease, and otherwise just 'mine away'. One might wonder why I don't run Beat Them Back, and part of it is the fact that 'shooters still hurt lots' and 'Can't Hit Me...Again' helps with that tremendously. But there is also something to be said about having *to* much damage. With this set up, you 1 shot all Ogies with ease (on a Strike Down 'fully charged' weakspot hit) even without Payback Time proced, and can do largely the same to anything else that comes your way, but I found with Beat Them Back I was actually 1 shotting everything. You wouldn't think that would be an issue, but when Delight in Destruction is like, your entire reason you can survive within the wave, it makes it really annoying when the only way you can reliably apply bleed is casting your CA. So, I took it off for more DR, and now the light attacks leave the 'second half' of the enemies alive and bleeding (meaning if you're hitting a bunch of small fry the first few still die but as you cleave through the rest start to live but get knocked over). The Heavy diagonals that miss the head also leave ragers alive with a smidge of HP while still knocking them over, so it lets you clean them up with the light while still getting those seconds of DR as well. Since you still CC everything you hit (thank you slam) letting it live a bit longer isn't an issue, and just lets you not get absolutely melted nearly as quickly. Slam also keeps Pumped Up from ever falling off to even with intermittent push attacks, so that's REALLy nice. Kickback is used as the long range option, for old times sake (stubber would be better but again, nostalgia), using Run 'n' Gun to tighten it's cone for those long range strikes. Surgical then synergises with Steady Grip for toughness regen as you wait for a guaranteed crit, before going back to your combo. It also helps since you pull the Kickback out to run between waves due to the mobility boost, so if something like a trapper runs up to you while you're sprinting with no stamina you can just pop it in the face before dealing with it. The lose of reloaded and ready can be severely felt though, but you can make a decent bit of it back thanks to No Hurting Friends! (which is like, the best talent ever. Triggers off toughness damage, triggers off YOU and your friends, it's basically active all the time once the fighting starts, and gives you DR to!), so it still feels pretty good, even if you gotta throw an extra shot into something sometimes.Also I take Bruiser, cause it's still nice to have even in it's nerfed state and helps reward you a bit when you charge a gunner line. There also isn't 1 point I feel like I'm missing, though if one swapped it for the extra toughness node I wouldn't blame you, or even just the 10% ranged damage to help the kickback a bit more. I wanted this to focus on being a melee build though, so I just kept the old standby of getting my 'charge the backline' ability back a bit quicker depending, along with making the extra needed shots for Kickback feel a bit better with the reload speed. There's enough Elite spam these days you'll still feel the difference. (also Box of Boom is just there as a spacing tool/to be thrown at a gunner line to break them up as you get to them when your CA is down. Having 3 now is super nice, extra nades are worthless though as the thing does like 2 damage and is purely for impact and stagger, so just throw a box in a pinch when you need it. Helps for rezing too). Ohh, and I almost forgot. I don't take 'The Best Defense' because this build is very point hungry, and instead I got 'Slow and Steady' on the pickaxe. If you ever need toughness, just charge the heavy a bit longer in the wave, and you'll get a massive amount from all the kills you generate (As you stacked up thrust along with it too), the hit, and the blessing proc. Keeps you topped off while still getting all 'the staples', and since Heavy Hitter gives you Cleave now you don't even miss Wrath. And as stated above, as much as Headtaker is cool, that's for the Rumbler build where it doesn't have as much melee damage. This one gets quite enough especially with Thrust, so just keep that in mind as you're swinging and do a 'long press' heavy every so often. I end up not using Implacable so I can get to No Hurting Friends!, but having that consistent DR verses that intermittent DR is a LOT better along with the strength, and having the swap speed for the Kickback is nice too. One can grab it for Bruiser if they don't value it though (like the other options stated above). But yeah, think that's everything I got. The pick axe is love, the pick axe is life, it is all you need. It's time to enter the mines.
