Here is a very strong build that might be one of the better survival builds on this site, this is using Core Strength gear set from Year 8 Season 1. Unlike other “Survival” builds here this one has some serious damage due to “First Bloom Assault Rifle” from same season, farm for the best version of this gun or prototype it. Build details below, watch for updates my builds get updates often as notated near bottom of most posts.
This build is much better than the Hunter Killer build shown on this site.
Build:
- Cores, 5 Red, 2 Blue, 1 Yellow (Using NinjaBike Messenger Backpack)
- 3 pieces Core Strength, Mask, Chest, Gloves. Roll these all red focusing on CHC as attribute. one piece can have a blue core, on mine the gloves have armor.
- Holster, Unit Alloys “Salvo” named holster for 10% ROF, 20% AR Damage
- Kneepads, Murakami Industries “Emperors Guard”, Red core, Armor Regen 1.0%, CHD, the 2x set bonus is very useful in this build for the chem launcher heal.
- Backpack, NinjaBike Messenger, for its great triple core and extra set bonus for 3 gear sets in build.
- Gear Mods, CHC until around 50% then CHD.
- Specialization, Gunner, ammo perk, foam grenades, armor on kill.
- Season modifiers, I’ll be straight up I set mine to Optimize/Overload as main modifier, then passives all set to split so all 3 stacks are at 25. This makes it set it and forget it for me, but do you. Using the Optimize for cooldown reduction especially useful for reviver hive resets.
Skills:
- Chem Launcher Reinforcer, 3 charges at skill Tier 1, make sure to have heal mod. This quick heal is clutch and allows you to be in cover and click it to heal and will put you back with same gun ready to fire, one small thing that helps. Another thing is the skill is getting +15% Duration and +35% Repair Skills from Emperors Guard kneepads, it’s a great heal. Can be used to heal a teammate too from distance.
- Reviver Hive, has +2 charges in this build so can be used to revive another and you can pick it back up for yourself.
Weapons:
- Main Weapon, First Bloom Assault Rifle, AR DMG, Health DMG, DMG to target out of cover aka DTTOC the damage multiplier. Use this most of the time, it is the best gun in the game right now I think. I use CHC +6.0% and Optimal Range +50% as weapon mods. Prototype this gun as your first with either Amalgam or Echo, it’s worth the farm. I got lucky and mine came out event cache as prototype, the talent Blossom Harvest amplifies damage bases on armor and health of enemy fo each 10%, it’s amazing too. You love seeing those big boys with this gun or even war hounds.
- Secondary, Pestilence LMG, for spamming on large packs coming out doors or man holes. We use my favorite gun in the game maybe 25% of the time.
- Pistol, Quickstep the only pistol anyone uses anymore plus Retaliation movement speed.
Retaliations are one of the best activities to do in the entire game, XP, Exotics, Blueprints, Resources, Named Caches, Variety of Locations and Enemy Types. You want a strong vanilla shooting survival build like this for this game mode,
Tactics and Info:
- Cover based play shooting style but build has high armor 2.1 Million on mine so you can chase enemies while shooting with First Bloom, the bigger the enemy the better FB works. If you prototype this build it can go next level which I plan to do.
- Packs of enemies coming out doors or manholes use Pestilence to spread “Plague of the Outcasts”.
- When fighting tough enemies like a heavy weapons gunner or Chunga from cover pop your chem launcher heal to fire aggressively. You will heal up about as fast as they damage you, can do this when no cover is available too just stand in heal circle.
- My First Bloom is at 183.80K weapon damage and Pestilence 142.49k both at 30 expertise in this build.
- This build destroys retaliations with ease, the strong heal is faster than most other options and build all works together well.
- Build may be updated in the future, use this as a template but as is it works great if you play it like I have suggested.
- If you don’t have the Emperor’s Guard kneepads due to its rarity try farming named caches, alternative use a normal Murakami kneepad with similar stats, wont be able to have the 1.0% armor regen that’s main perk of the named item.
- If you don’t have the First Bloom AR yet, farm any event with Assault Rifles as targeted loot. You will get one eventually or when a new event happens, plenty are still dropping for the key event now in Y8S1.
- Another perk of Core Strength in this build is its giving us Skill Efficiency, the heal from chem launcher is super strong even at Tier +1. Launch a heal at a damaged teammate, it will fill their armor up nearly instantly.