Hitting at least 3 enemies with an attack, increases your cleave by 140-200% for 2 seconds.
10-25% Strength (next 3 attacks) on Weapon Special attack Hit.
5-8% Strength for every 10% of magazine spent during continuous fire. Stacks 5 times.
1-4% Toughness for every 10% of magazine spent during continuous fire. Stacks 5 times.
A build made as an alternate melee build to the 'Indomitable Gauntlet Butcher' build, this one focusing on using Taunt instead. To give it a bit of variety, I figured this would also be a good build to use 'Valuable Distraction' on. Since with the Butcher Cleaver, you can save a point since you don't need the final upgrade in Heavy Hitter thanks to Savage Sweep, which allows you to actually take Bruiser comfortably without really giving up any power. Since you don't have Loyal Protector up nearly as often with this set up though, I ended up enjoying having 'Stay Close!' more than Bonebreaker's Aura, since you have plenty of damage whenever you need it, but not nearly as much regen. Brings everything together though with that aura, and feels rather nice. I end up dropping Steady Grip for just having Inspiring Barrage on the Ripper too, since you don't tend to use it much outside of burst firing trappers/other specials and killing monstrosities/reapers. So just firing off shots to get toughness when you need it while suppressing targets as you walk over to them is totally fine and causes little issue on the ammo economy. Beyond that, it's a pretty standard set up. All the melee damage possible (outside of the Aura), all the DR possible, and all the melee regen so I can put Tenderizer on the Cleaver and feel good about it. Much much damage being dished out with this set up, you're able to two tap Crushers with everything stacked up (waiting on a second or two of bleed) by 'punch heavy punch heavy'ing them, and everything else dies in one more often than not. You basically save your CA until you need toughness or until a bunch of elites spawn, which is pretty often, and then you taunt them all and slice and dice them before going back to the standard loop. That loop being a light heavy string, or doing a push attack, heavy into light back into the string again, OR punching, and light heavying as it resets the combo. With Stay Close!, as stated, even without Protector up you'll be fine on toughness regen, and if ever you're getting gunnered down you can just pull out the Ripper and fire away until empty, usually killing the entire swarm while keeping your toughness maxed out (it even deals with far of snipers easily too, due to being a sudo shotgun with a spread pattern). Ohh, and use Bomb's away when you need space for a revive or need to stagger stun the horde to pick them apart while they can't do anything.That's pretty much it for this one, a simple yet very effective build. Not to much to think about, just go in, pull all the aggro, and slice it all up into nice gibblets for rations. Keep tines safe, keep you fed, better than breakfast!
