Sapphire Swan

SKILL TREE NOTES

Blue and purple trees synergize very well with a melee and action skill focus. However, you can't cap both of them and also pick up Sustainment, and true melee needs Sustainment. True melee also needs Find Your Center, but you'll get that from the class mod. There's some reload speed taken in blue tree, and that's because there is a strategy for shooting your gun occasionally.

​

ACTION SKILL

Tandava. Optionally, Reverberation for bossing or better single target damage, especially with the special Reverberation technique.

​

ACTION SKILL ELEMENT

Freezing enemies through punching is a core mechanic of this build, so always cryo. Even against Wotan. (There's no points in green tree for corrosive anyway.)

​

PUNCHING GUN

Psycho Stabber, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment.

​

CASTING / UTILITY / PUNCHING GUN

Guardian Angel, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. Swap to this to cast Reverb or Tandava for more damage. In areas where mobs are weaker, like trials or Slaughterstar, you can get away with casting while holding the Psycho Stabber, if you like.

​

You can also shoot the Guardian Angel at enemies for a couple of benefits. First, it will grant you healing through Sustainment. Second, when the projectiles ricochet through Indiscriminate, they will double dip the Guardian Angel bonus. When those ricocheted projectiles hit enemies, they will either kill them or at the very least give you good Groundbreaker damage.

​

Because of that, this is the recommended punching gun against Guardians in the True Guardian Takedown. When you're not Phasecasting, alternate between shooting the Guardians and punching them.

​

FFYL / BACKUP GUNS

Face Puncher and Blade Fury (masher preferred) with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointments. The Face puncher is for killing enemies out of reach or to help with bossing. It will also get you out of FFYL if you still have Body & Mind active. The Blade Fury is a backup FFYL gun for when Body & Mind runs out and you're still not back up.

​

CLASS MOD

Breaker, with a required point into Find Your Center. True melee builds don't function well at all without FYC. The remaining points should go to Jab Cross, which adds action skill damage to your attacks.

​

The most important passive is Splash Damage Radius. Other recommended passives: action skill damage, action skill cooldown rate, splash damage, melee damage.

​

SHIELD

Re-Volter, with Action Skill Start anointment. This adds tons of shock damage to all of your attacks, allowing you to keep cryo as your action skill element, even against blue HP bar bosses. Defensive augments are recommended, such as absorb, health charge, shield charge, turtle.

​

ARTIFACT

Cryo Stone Static Charge. The Cryo Stone further helps your punches freeze enemies. The Static Charge is the best all-around artifact suffix for melee. The most important passive is Area of Effect in the 2nd or 3rd slot, which will also increase area radius. Other recommended passives: elemental damage, action skill cooldown rate, melee damage, movement speed.

​

GRENADE

Mesmer or Hyperion Quasar (non sticky) or radiation Fish Slap (for immune Maliwan Heavies; see "Notes - Immune Maliwan Heavies" below), with ASE Apply Terror anointment.

​

GAMEPLAY LOOP

Phasecast at something to get your kill skills and anointments rolling. Throw a few punches, then repeat. Try to kill lots of enemies with your cast, to get more stacks of Expedite. If you fail, you still have other skills that will proc Expedite for you: Remnant, Unweave The Rainbow, Free The Soul, Body & Mind. There's also Combo Breaker, which comes in clutch every so often.

​

Beware of the timing between your casts. Sometimes you don't want to cast twice in immediate succession. Since this is not a Phasezerker build, Rush stacks will need to be accrued manually. This isn't hard, but it's something to keep in mind. If you have 20 Rush stacks that are converted to Do Harm stacks when you cast, and your cast kills something, Avatar will refund you 10 Rush stacks. Then you can build up another 10 to get back to 20 before casting again.

​

For bossing and tankier enemies, you will be relying more on your Reverbs and Tandavas than you will on your punches, but you can still punch down even the toughest mobs if you desire. For raid bosses, you can use a Phaseflare variant such as Shooting Star.

​

During the Wotan fight, keep using cryo Tandava, and wait for some mobs to spawn. Tandava hitting Wotan and also killing those mobs will either 1. make Free The Soul and Remnant target Wotan or 2. give you enough Groundbreaker to shoot Wotan with the Face Puncher or Blade Fury.

​

NOTES - IMMUNE MALIWAN HEAVIES

The two elemental damage types you deal with this build are cryo and shock. There are no others. That means both Cryo and Shock immune Heavies in the Maliwan Takedown pose a problem. For Cryo heavies, your punch will essentially have zero effect, not even for delivering Groundbreaker. Cast at them with Reverb or Tandava and let the Re-Volter damage kill them. If it doesn't, ground slam at them to deliver Groundbreaker. You can also deliver Groundbreaker this way from damage you dealt to other enemies.

​

Shock heavies are less of a problem. Your attacks will do significantly less damage to them, but it's still enough. They can be punched directly to deliver Groundbreaker. They can also be frozen.

​

NOTES - MAYHEM 10/11

Most of the time, true melee builds should play on Mayhem 10 take advantage of Speed Demon, and this is one of those times. Other benign Mayhem 10 modifiers: Medium - Healy Avenger, Hard - Drone Ranger or Ticked Off, Very Hard - Not The Face.

​