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.
Critical hit chance scales by your current heat level up to 27.5-50%. Also increases critical ranged attacks damage by 4-10%.
Up to 7.5-20% Strength scaling with Heat Level.
This is a pretty meta Weapons Specialist vet. Any melee weapon works, Maccabian Mk IV Duelling Sword is simply the best non-ogyrn weapon in the game right now. M35 Magnacore Mk II Plasma Gun is the best ranged weapon in the game right now.
There is one flex pick, Kill Zone. There are only a few good 1 point options, listed below.
I don't believe there are any controversial picks in this build. It is very meta.
The top of the tree can be re-routed if you prefer. Instead of taking One Motion and Out for Blood, you can take Close Order Drill and Confirmed Kill. This is personal taste for every vet build, although some do prefer one side or the other. Out for Blood works great with grenade builds. Confirmed Kill works great with specialist/elite removal builds. This build is both and both work fine. I like the Movement Speed Boost node that goes with Out for Blood. It is worth noting that Confirmed Kill stacks with each kill, while Exhilarating Takedown only stacks 3 times. Confirmed Kill also works with melee and is much better because of it, which is why you rarely ever see a vet with the left side at the top of the tree.
You can take Smoke Grenade and go through Close and Kill to get the Critical Chance Boost and Melee Damage Boost nodes on the right of the trees. These are both very good. Smoke Grenade is not as good as Shredder Frag Grenade. They have some utility, especially with the mod that makes the smoke invisible and draws a circle on the floor. I would rather have them than Krak Grenade, which are almost useless. Giving up Survivalist sucks, as it is the best aura in the game. If you already have Survivalist on your team, than go ahead and grab the extra damage and probably grab Marksman instead of survivalist, as you no longer route past Kill Zone.
Finally, if you want to change this to a pure grenade build, you can drop Kill Zone and Always Prepared and take Health Boost and Grenade Tinkerer. Take a Godwyn-Branx Mk IV Bolt Pistol with Lethal Proximity. I don't really recommend that, but it is entertaining to have +50% grenade radius on your Shredder Frag Grenade. I wouldn't recommend dropping anything else to get Twinned Blast. It is only 1/5 grenade throws that you get a second one and you don't get to choose when that happens, so can very easily be wasted. Feel free to drop Demolition Team and grab one of the flex picks above. I don't know that you need to spam smokes, although feel free that that is what you want to do.
Any melee weapon works. I actually like all of them. Weapons that are particularly fun with weapon specialist (in my opinion) are:
There are many good blessings on Maccabian Mk IV Duelling Sword:
Not recommended blessings on dueling sword:
For ranged weapons, high alpha, low magazine weapons work the best with Weapons Specialist and Always Prepared. Ones that I like listed below:
Plasma can take Blaze Away instead of Rising Heat if you want more boss damage or find that you are not hitting head shots and need additional shots to take out enemies. For the love of god, do not take Shattering Impact. Shattering Impact will only help you against bosses and not that much. Taking the 71%/69% split on charge rate and thermal resistance supposedly minimizes the firing delay on left clicks. I can't tell the difference, but have been promised it is there by discord.
If you take Zarona Mk IIa Quickdraw Stub Revolver, then Surgical and Hand-Cannon are fine. You will get limited use out of handcannon, but there isn't much else to take.
Bolt Pistol is also good and has a number of good blessings.
Personally I would use Lethal Proximity and Puncture. You get all the crit you need out of Weapons Specialist.
I always take + toughness and + stamina. Stamina affects most of your gameplay and a little extra helps a lot with sprinting and blocking. Vet has low bases in this area so a little extra always helps. Back in the days when all fire instantly removed all toughness, there was a better argument for health. We aren't in those days anymore.
For the small sub nodes, every build in the entire game should use stamina regeneration and ability cooldown on curios. They are the most impactful stats. For the last slot there are a number of decent options:
Play like normal. Try to hold on to Weapons Specialist between fights, but it really isn't that big of a deal if you swap by habit.
You have both grenade regen perks. It is important to understand how Demolition Team and Demolition Stockpile work. Demolition Stockpile ticks down as long as you are not at the grenade cap (3). As soon as you hit the cap, it resets. So to get maximum usage, you never want to be at 3 grenades (unless Demolition Stockpile got you there). If Demolition Team got you to cap, then you just lost that much time on Demolition Stockpile. So make sure you are using them before you reach cap. As a added bonus, you will probably see yellow numbers for damage done on the scoreboard if you follow these rules. Do not pick up grenades unless no one else can use them. You literally conjure them out of your bum and no one else does.
Shout during fights on cooldown. Do not wait for the prime opportunity to stagger things. Gold toughness is an enormous security blanket that protects you from all sorts of things including:
Don't wait, shout.
Finally, you do not have Volley Adept. So learn to animation cancel your reloads (if you are using plasma). Plasma has three points at which you can reduce the reload time. Animation cancels can be done by tap sprinting or QQ (weapon swapping very quickly).
Plasma animation cancels:
