Build:
- Cores: 4 red, 3 blue, 1 yellow (ninjabike gives +1 to all 3 cores)
- Specialization, Gunner (+10% armor on kill, refills some bullets)
- Skills, Reviver Hive, Assault Turret (your choice, turret good value fast cd, tough distraction)
- Main Weapon, Pestilence LMG exotic (12% DTTOC, 6% Damage to Armor)
- Secondary Weapon, anything
- Pistol, Quickstep
Gear Pieces:
- Backpack, NinjaBike Messenger Exotic (set bonus with one less piece, +1 all 3 cores)
- 3 pieces Ongoing Directive, mask, holster, kneepads. (+20% dmg, extra bullets)
- Chest, Petrov Defense Group, Talent Unbreakable (lmg dmg +10%, +15% weapon handling)
- Gloves, Uzina Getica (+5% total armor, armor on kill +10%)
My Stats:
- 38.7% CHC, 93% CHD, 85% Headshot DMG, 6% Armor DMG, 23% Weapon Handling, 930k max Pestilence ticks at 24 expertise solo.
Benefits:
- 20% armor on kill is massive constant heal.
- Foam grenades.
- 1.4 Million Armor.
- Weapon Handling, Chest 15% + 8% on kneepads.
- Pestilence ticks are decent, aim for 600-900k a tick, +expertise/+red cores for more.
- Nearly unlimited ammo due to Hallow Points and Gunner perk refil.
- Great for all directives open world XP farming.
- Works on Hardcore and Softcore.
- Strong survival build, Unbreakable on chest helps a ton.
Play Style:
STAY IN COVER SHOOT FROM MID RANGE!
If you have directives on and no ammo when you load into game wait until your Gunner perk gives you some ammo and reload all your weapons. Start encounters from mid to long range, adding weapon handling really improves your accuracy from distance and from cover. Hit weak points or environmental damage to trigger status events (fire, shock, confuse) and get the kill while enemy is affected to acquire Hallow Point bullets. Target prioritize the most dangerous enemies, engineers with turrets, drone operators/controllers, snipers etc.. Shooting heavy enemies to stack pestilence ticks works well too, can unload on one and it might spread on kill to finish an entire mob.
NEVER RELY ON REVIVER HIVE!
If Unbreakable talent triggers start backing off or find better cover, do not push more because you still have Reviver Hive. You never want to rely on Reviver Hive, an enemy can shoot or melee you before it revives, seen it many times. Again do not sleep on Weapon Handling, it is a main stat that effects multiple stats like accuracy, stability, and reload speed. Do not use a status effect skill, recommend a good value one like assault turret, good constant damage, stays alive longer, and fast cooldown.
I have made many variations of this build in Hardcore, this one has proven to be the best one for PVE with all directives on Challenging difficulty. This build allows you to do decent damage, and if you need to move it’s still doing damage due to Pestilence ticks. If using this build on a softcore character I’d suggest using another chest talent instead of Unbreakable and changing one blue core to red to bump up damage quite a bit.