Arbites
Up to 25-40% Strength, as Stamina depletes.
5-20% Damage Bonus vs Staggered enemies.
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 Dog Arbites / Pet Arbites build. It's a great all-rounder that is able to dish out plenty of damage and survive in the highest difficulties.
Short Link: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tlmkR2JYXe8
Pros: Fantastic damage and survivability against all targets and nearly any range.
Cons: The Dog AI can freak out sometimes, making the dog useless in some combat scenarios or just straight up leaving you without a pet for a while.
Weapons
The best melee weapon for the Arbitrator is currently the Arbites Shock Maul with All or Nothing and Execution. The Push Attack / Heavy Attack combo has phenomenal Horde Clear and the Heavy attack Special Attack combo has amazing single target damage + electrocution application.
For your ranged weapon I would recommend either variant of the Exterminator Shotgun, but I really like the Bolt Pistol because of how fast it is and because of its ability to quickly apply bleed with the Puncture blessing. Being able to quickly apply bleed before the Cyber Mastiff does with Razor-Jaw Augment ensures that all of the bleed stacks will be using your increased damage buffs from your passives, increasing your bleed damage by up to 155% on Monstrosities when all of your buffs are rolling at the same time. It's insane.
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.
Stamina is important with the Arbites Shock Maul because we SPAM the Push Attack Heavy attack combo, it's just that good.
Talents
In order to be overpowered we're going to need every point we can get, so we take No Escape just to get to Razor-Jaw Augment, which is going to allow us to stack bleed on bosses extremely quickly by comboing with a bolt pistol shot or spread bleed in an area with Remote Detonation.
Up Close and Force of Will are the Arbites' bread and butter toughness regeneration talents that nearly everyone should take and Walk It Off has a ton of value because we're always using push attacks, blocking, and sprinting.
Remote Detonation allows us to spread electrocution and bleed to a lot of enemies in an area AND it staggers bosses. This is a really powerful ability that requires you to know where your dog is at any given time to take full advantage of.
Concussive is a must have on any Arbites build because it allows your attacks to treat any enemy as if it's Staggered. This triggers all sorts of defensive and offensive bonuses.
Voltaic Mandibles Augment is similar to Razor-Jaw Augment except we can't take the electrocute effect for ourselves like we can bleed. We won't be able to buff it's damage with this build, but it's still a respectable amount of damage coming from your dog and it places the electrocute effect on targets. This plus bleed will kill nearly any special or elite enemy (other than Ogryns and Maulers) with one pounce, allowing you to micro your dog between targets to maximize its pounces. More Pounces = More Damage.
Take Canine Morale and Part of the Squad on the way down to Castigator's Stance and Writ of Execution. The former boosts your survivability while the latter ability is the best ability for the Arbites. The survivability granted by Castigator's Stance in insane and it taking away your sprint is barely noticeable. Writ of Execution allows you to achieve a higher damage buff than Break the Line in higher difficulty content because there are always so many elites and specials.
Our keystone is going to be Execution Order because of the Malocator modifier, which boosts our cooldown reduction by 50% when we kill a target marked by our keystone. Targets get marked all the time so it's very easy to get Castigator's Stance back, typically I get it back in about 20 seconds or less.
Increase all Damage by % Talents: Arbites Revelatum, Not Far Behind, Justified Measures, Weight of the Lex. 55% obtainable damage increase on all attacks / dots.
Increase Monstrosity Damage Talents: Keeping Protocol, Monstrosity Hunter. 50% increased damage against Monstrosities.
Writ of Execution at max stacks. 50% increased damage on all attacks.
Total damage increase = 155% on ALL your attacks (this doesn't include your dog's damage or its status effects).
Note: this build technically has 2 flex points. I like to take Judicious Efficiency and Rapid Movement because they drastically improve game feel and let me play a little bit faster, which I find really helps in Darktide nowadays.
Have fun!
