Up to 5-20% Strength based on the charge time of your heavy attacks. Stacks 3 times.
12-24% Rending on Enemy Weak Spot Hit for 3.5s. Stacks 5 times.
Point blank shots cause an explosion. Explosion Radius increases by 10-25%.
Ranged hits add 1-4 stacks of bleed to enemies.
This is my favorite variation of the Bolt Pistol Veteran / Grenade Veteran build. It's great at killing groups of elites, specials, and hordes at the same time while providing amazing boss damage.
Pros: Jack of all trades, great overall damage package in ranged, melee, and with its blitz.
Cons: Not as ammo efficient as the Recon Lasgun, not as much focused cleave as the Plasma Gun, and not as crazy broken as any Ogryn with a Rumbler (thankfully since we're bringing Survivalist, Ogryns want us around).
Weapons
In this build you may use any weapon with the Uncanny Strike blessing. This can be either the Duelling Sword or the Combat Blade (or even the Shovel!). I primarily run the Mk IV Duelling Sword with the build because of its access to the Thrust blessing and its convenient thrusting heavy attack combo.
Note: On the Duelling Sword I like to ignore Carapace damage because Thrust makes Crushers and Maulers extremely easy to deal with. I instead go for Unyielding for more boss damage and Flak in order to hit a bleed breakpoint on Scab Ragers. The breakpoint is 2 Shredder Frag Grenades w/ a consistent 3-5 stacks of Uncanny Strike. You can also easily hit this breakpoint with other passives that increase DoT damage, but we don't take any of those in this build.
Your ranged weapon is going to be the Bolt Pistol which is going to be doing all of your special sniping and cross firing. I grab Flak and Unyielding damage for more damage against gunners and bosses and the Puncture Blessing to help hit breakpoints. Lethal Proximity is a must include in this build because it increases the explosion radius of our Shredder Frag Grenades.
Curios
For Curios I run a balanced setup with 2 toughness and 1 stamina. Grab Ability Cooldown, Stamina Regeneration, Toughness, Sprint Efficiency, and Block Efficiency. You're going to be using your ability whenever it's up so you really want as much cooldown reduction as you can get and stacking stamina benefits makes surviving much easier. Stacking toughness curios allows you to mitigate more damage in the long run.
Talents
For your starter you can either go for Close Order Drill and Confirmed Kill or One Motion and Out For Blood. Each option is going to be good, but if you go for Confirmed Kill your toughness regeneration is going to be based on killing Specials and Elites rather than immediate. Out For Blood works really well with this setup because we're going to be doing tons of cleaving and AoE.
Our Blitz is going to be the Shredder Frag Grenade, often seen as one of the strongest grenades in the game and rightfully so. It provides immediate crowd control, a generous amount of AoE bleed, and you carry just the right number of them. Additionally we don't have to take a point tax as we move into our aura.
Grenade Tinkerer is a key talent in this build because it increases our grenade explosion radius and stacks with Lethal Proximity, which we take on the Bolt Pistol. This combination synergizes really well and makes the Bolt Pistol competitive in Havoc where there are tons of specials and elites that needs to be killed ASAP.
Next up we have three of the most powerful talents in the game: Demolition Stockpile, Voice of Command, and Duty and Honor. Demolition Stockpile allows you to run through a map without ever having to loot any grenades, leaving them for your team to pick up. Voice of Command and Duty and Honor will crowd control anything in the game, restore your team's toughness, and overcap your toughness, allowing you to absorb a ton of extra damage without losing health.
Right under that we have two more nodes that synergize with using our ability: Tactical Awareness and For the Emperor! These talents will allow us to spam Voice of Command more often (and you should definitely be spamming it) and it will give our team 10% more melee and ranged weapon damage. Right under that, Iron Will also benefits people who are using Voice of Command with Duty and Honor because it gives you massive toughness damage resistance when you are over a certain toughness threshhold - including while your toughness is overcapped. The synergy in this set of talents is nuts.
Demolition Team is like Demolition Stockpile but it sees much more value in higher difficulty content since there are infinitely more elites and specials.
On the left side of the tree we take Precision Strikes, Fully Loaded, and Superiority Complex to be able to increase our overall damage and ammo efficiency.
Over on the right side of the tree Reciprocity, Desperado, and Trench Fighter Drill make our melee weapon an absolute beast. We skip out on Exploit Weakness because it doesn't really have high value.
For our keystone we take Weapons Specialist without any of the bonus keystone modifiers. At this point we're completely spent on talent points so we can't grab anything else. Weapons Specialist is here to help us survive in melee, which we're going to be doing a TON of because the Bolt Pistol shouldn't be leaned on as your "primary" weapon.
