Queen Midas

SYNOPSIS

A crazy, dangerous, slamming, casting, grasping, no captones, dotting-yourself build that uses any decent gun.

INTRO

The myth of King Midas was that anything he touched turned to gold. It was both a blessing and a curse. Queen Midas, a Golden Rule gun build, can turn almost any gun into gold. But it's also a curse, because it's a very risky playstyle. This build is in the running for highest skill level required to play. It is not for the faint of heart or the slow of hands. It will punish you. But it will also reward you with, for example, using the Maggie in True Maliwan Takedown. And a literal 1 second Ties That Bind cooldown. You dot yourself in this build, and this enables many interactions, but this style of play is not for everyone. You have been warned.

GAMEPLAY VIDEO

SKILL TREE

SKILL TREE NOTES

I wish I had more points. I want to max Do Harm and Wrath and From Rest and Anima and Infusion and Clarity and Unweave the Rainbow. Alas, compromises must be made to get our important skills: 3/3 Samsara, Remnant, Sustainment, and 5/5 Burn Both Ends.

ACTION SKILL

Whatever action skill pairs well with these four anointments: Killstack & Consec Hits (Ties That Bind), 250 Phasecast (Tandava), and 300 Phaseslam (Phaseslam). Tandava is your choice when using the 250 Phasecast anointment, because it can splash multiple enemies with Laid Bare.

ACTION SKILL ELEMENT

Whatever element is suited to the content you're facing, except for cryo. Because of our points into Infusion, when you shoot your foot with the Sellout to dot yourself, you will cryo yourself and get slowed. The two cryo skills, Go With The Flow and Unweave The Rainbow, are there if you choose to use cryo guns.

DOTTING GUN

A low level Sellout. You can zip through the story and get to the Sellout mission on Eden 6, killing as few enemies as possible, at about level 21. The Sellout mission reward will get sent to you at level 26, but then it will be available in Earl's Vendor on Sanctuary at your current level. The anointment doesn't matter. The lower the level, the better, and yes this matters; because of your great damage formula, you can down yourself with the Sellout. You can get one in the vendor as low as level 10, if you have a level 10 friend that is willing to come and shop the vendor for you after you've completed the quest.

Anyway, this is the gun you shoot your feet with before swapping to whatever gun you're attacking with. More on this in the Gameplay Loop section below.

Protip: turn dialog volume all the way down if you do not wish to hear Amara screaming from self-dots all of the time.

ATTACKING GUNS

Just about anything. There are plenty of guns that are hopeless, but some old fan-favorites can be put to good use if you have a 250 Phasecast or 300 Phaseslam anointment on them: Maggie, Companion, Hellshock, etc. I encourage you to experiment. One caveat: because the self-dots will shake your screen, avoid any gun you need to be precise with.

FFYL GUN

Just in case you're trying some off-meta guns that won't help you in FFYL (and you WILL go down with this build), it would be wise to always carry a Free Radical or Plasma Coil or similar.

CLASS MOD

Golden Rule, preferably with points into Laid Bare first, Mindfulness second. Recommended passives: action skill cooldown rate, splash damage, splash damage radius, weapon damage, weapon type damage, weapon critical damage, magazine size, manufacturer critical hit damage.

The Golden Rule stacks a cooldown rate increase whenever you take damage, and this includes self damage and even self applied dot damage. So when you shoot your feet with the Sellout and dot yourself with multiple elements, you can loop your action skills fairly quickly, assuring yourself constant uptime on whatever anointment you're rocking.

SHIELD

Re-Volter with an ASE 50% bonus element. Not the Action Skill Start anointment, although you can use that if you like. But I recommend the ASE 50% because the Re-Volter will proc naturally as soon as you deplete it through your own self-dots. And then it will continue to proc when you kill enemies via the Shield Reboot Guardian Rank perk. Kill an enemy, and it will immediately begin recharging and deplete again due to your dots, keeping the effect active.

If the self-dots are just too much, you can use an Asclepius to reduce their strength, although you will lose a lot of damage and fire rate. Stick to strong weapons if you're doing this.

ARTIFACT

Pearl of Ineffable Knowledge, preferably with magazine size, fire rate, or reload speed passives.

GRENADE

Mesmer or Hyperion Quasar with ASE 50% bonus element, both great utility grenades.

GAMEPLAY LOOP

First, set your Sellout element (between fire and corrosive) to a different element than your action skill element. Why? Because if your action skill element is, say, fire, and your Sellout is also fire, when you shoot at your feet you'll only get a fire dot. But if you changed the Sellout to corrosive, you'll get both corrosive and fire dots, the first from the gun and the second from fire Infusion on the gun. That's two dots, doubling the effectiveness of the Golden Rule's cooldown. When your ASE 50% anoints are procced, and your Re-Volter is procced, that's more dots. The Sellout WILL dot you within a shot or two, because it fires three projectiles, each with a base 72% status effect chance, which gets further boosted by Violent Tapestry. So don't spam it at your feet.

Anyway, start off your encounters by firing a shot or two at your feet. Then swap to your main gun, activate your action skill, and shoot away. As soon as your cooldown is finished or just about finished, swap back to the Sellout to shoot once at your feet, and then again swap back to your main gun, activate action skill, and go to town. That's your basic gameplay loop.

Besides enabling the Golden Rule's cooldown effect and reproccing the Re-Volter in conjunction with Shield Reboot, dotting yourself has two other effects. First, Trust In Yourself will get procced over and over again, just like the Re-Volter, keeping your weapon swap speed up and enabling this basic gameplay loop of constant swapping. Second, it will stack Burn Both Ends. BBE does not normally stack on self damage or self dots, but if you have a bonus element active, which you will, it will stack on those instances of self damage. This gives you a constant 75% elemental damage that also applies to non-elemental attacks, as long as you're dotted.

The self-dot with this build is sometimes uncomfortably strong. At times, it will seem like you're playing a Urad build, because an enemy can health gate you and then the self-dot takes care of the rest. Just be ready for it.

NOTES - RE-VOLTER

A slightly deeper dive is required here if you're not using the Action Skill Start anointment on your Re-Volter. Because you're reproccing it by killing enemies and triggering Shield Reboot, you need to kill enemies every 15 seconds to keep the Re-Volter going. It's essentially a kill skill. So be careful if, for example, you're plowing through the Wotan fight and phasing him before he can spawn adds; eventually, your Re-Volter will wear off. As long as there are adds around, though, Indiscriminate will reproc it for you.

NOTES - RAID BOSSING

This build is pretty much like other standard Phasezeker or Spiritual Driver gun builds when it comes to raid bossing. Use strong weapons (like the Free Radical) and strong anointments, such as 250% Phasecast or 300% Phaseslam. The advantage this has is you don't need to worry about your cooldown. And, well, it's extra cool because it's a Golden Rule build.