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.
3.5-5% Critical Chance on Weak Spot Hit until your next Critical Hit. Stacks 5 times.
1-4 Burn Stack(s) on Critical Hit to a maximum of 3-12 Stack(s).
This is my favorite variation of the Recon Lasgun Veteran build. It deals great boss damage while allowing you to multitask in order to focus specials or clear hordes.
Pros: Highest ammo efficiency in the game, great single target damage from any range, and fantastic AoE damage.
Cons: Slower melee attacks than a Weapons Specialist build, RNG on Demolition Team may screw your AoE damage over if you're unlucky.
Weapons
In this build you may use any weapon with the Uncanny Strike blessing. This can be either the Duelling Sword, 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.
Your ranged weapon is going to be the Mk XII Recon Lasgun and there are plenty of ways to build it. I like to slow 5% Crit and Unyielding Damage to melt bosses with Headhunter and Infernus, and because this perk and blessing combo makes the gun highly ammo efficient. Conversely, you can run Dum Dum to increase your damage to enemies that are close to you if you want to sacrifice crit from Headhunter or the DoT from Infernus. This is a very diverse weapon that can be built nearly however you want!
Curios
For Curios I run a balanced setup with 2 toughness and 1 stamina. Grab Ability Cooldown, Stamina Regeneration, Gunner Damage Resistance, 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
Grab Close Order Drill and Confirmed Kill for toughness damage reduction and toughness regeneration. Whenever you hear specials you need to be seeking them out because eliminating them is your primary job.
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, which will be Survivalist for its insane ammo efficiency.
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 threshold - including while your toughness is over capped. 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.
Bring it Down and Focus Target allow you to deal insane damage to Bosses. I like to run Damage Over Time blessings like Infernus when using Focus Target because it's one of the only damage increases in the game that increases DoT damage.
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. Shock Trooper is also a must have to make this setup the most ammo efficient in the game.
Over on the right side of the tree Reciprocity and Desperado to increase the effectiveness of the Duelling Sword, which is going to be used primarily to deal with Carapace Armor, Captains, Lieutenants, and Mutants.
Depending on your weapon choice and how you'd like to build, I would say that this build has 4 flex points. I like to take the 5% Crit Node to the right of Demolition Stockpile because each point of Crit increases our ammo efficiency significantly. If you're running something like the Shovel you don't really need Reciprocity and Desperado so you can save 3 points by not building into them. This would allow you to take something like Field Improvisation, Redirect Fire, and Focused Fire.
