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Gauss

Immortal Melee God Gauss v2 [Budget, link to Endgame v3]

by last updated 2 months ago

70

Take charge with the Saint of Altra. Gauss is fast, deals high damage, and has strong survivability. Movement charges his powerful battery, so never stop moving.

112 VOTES
27 COMMENTS

ITEM RANK

30

60 / 60

APPLY CONDITIONALS

ENERGY
225
HEALTH
370
SHIELD
555
SPRINT SPEED
1.4
DURATION
100%
EFFICIENCY
100%
RANGE
100%
STRENGTH
100%
ARMOR
185
Damage Reduction
38.1%
EFFECTIVE HIT POINTS
1,338
Guide
27 Comments
Gauss builds
Builds by LionOfComarre

Immortal Melee God Gauss v2 [Budget, link to Endgame v3]

Disclaimer: This build is outdated, but I'm keeping it up as a budget version since it still works as written. For the most recent endgame version ,see Weapons Platform Gauss v3

Melee Gauss build suitable for any content in the game save for Eidolon hunts (and conservation ;) ) - Including long arbitration and Steel Path runs. I'm typically the one resurrecting people in arbitration PUGs because I'm so effectively immortal and the Cyath far out-damages nearly anything apart from dedicated nuking frames, all while zooming across the map and blasting eurobeat. Good times all around.

Playstyle:
The melee rework made heavy attack spam very powerful, especially on weapons with guaranteed slash procs as part of the heavy attack combo. On machetes, if you hold F to wield the weapon and hold block, you can keep doing only the first part of the heavy attack combo, Following the release of Veilbreaker, block-cancelling was patched, and you now have to time your heavy attacks to after the end animation while holding block to keep doing the first part of the [Machete] heavy attack combo, which in addition to doing a lot of damage and having forced slash procs allows you to continue running at full speed.

As of the inclusion of auto-melee, this only works if heavy attack is bound to a button or key, as the mousewheel is too imprecise for consistent single inputs. Since the machetes kill things so quickly, the best way to improve your efficiency is to close the gap between groups quicker.

In addition to [Rush] bonuses adding a sizable to [Gauss]'s already impressive speed, the melee setup allows us to run [Dispatch Overdrive], adding another +60% sprint speed, and [Amalgam Serration] and Fire Walker each adds another +25%, allowing us to zoom across the map. If you run one of the beam sentinel weapons suggested below, it will also point you to the nearest living enemy without needing to looks around or look at the map before continuing the slaughter.

Abilities:
+300% duration adds some truly massive increase to your melee speed with Redline, as well as great tankiness and free melee damage and staggers with Kinetic Plating. Your full buff rotation lasts 90 seconds, making for very comfortable play. Tapping Mach [Rush] allows you to easily fill up your battery and activate Redline.

Although Thermal Sunder can strip armour and provide elemental damage with the new augment, and can effectively with multicasting making it effective takes up a lot of build space and breaks up the [Flow] of combat in a way I personally don't find enjoyable or valuable over heavy machete clearing. I've opted instead to use shattering impact and toxin damage on my melee for niche cases where slash/viral isn't optimal, and replace Thermal Sunder with [Firewalker], which provides a decent [Sprint Boost], along with CC that relies on duration and speed instead of range, and a useful status cleanse for your whole party, shoring up two of Gauss's major weaknesses in mag/toxin procs and protecting defense objectives. If you'd prefer a TS-based nuking build, you can check out this one: CK's Thermal Sunder Nuke build

Mods and arcanes:
Over-formaing your frame affects your starting energy when entering missions. 16 free capacity gives you enough energy to do your whole buff rotation as soon as you start without using Zenurik or an energy pizza. If you run Zenurik or do not care about having all your buffs on at mission start, you can get away with 4 forma, 3 if you use a Naramon aura.

As of recently, starting energy across all frames seems to have been increased by 70 above what the calculations would suggest. As this does not appear to be covered in the patch notes, it is unclear if this is intentional or a bug that will be reverted, but that does presently reduce the benefits of over-formaing. However, extra energy to start building your Redline with Mach [Rush] is nice. This change was reverted, overformaing your frame is again a requirement if you want to be able to do your full buff rotation out of the box at mission start.

[Shepherd] is absolutely overkill for keeping your sentinel alive even on Steel Path with the amount of passive CC you have, you're free to run whatever. I just find my [Helios] having over 1000 HP hilarious.

Running three duration mods + Molt Efficiency gives you a comfy 90 seconds on your buff duration, and very powerful redline buffs.

Using the Cyath Zaw machete with Exodia Brave provies free energy, doubling as a pseudo-lifesteal with [Quick Thinking] and [Primed Flow] to [Protect] against damage that penetrates shields. Kinetic Plating also gives you immunity to staggers, which negates the main downside with [Quick Thinking]. [Adaptation] gives a large separate multiplier on EHP when building health or [Quick Thinking]. [Carnis Carapace] on its own does not provide a lot of EHP, but running two pieces of the set gives the set bonus buff a four second duration, making the status immunity and 20% evasion bonus viable to keep up most of the time as long as there are enemies around.

Overshields from the Augur set makes building shield capacity redundant.

Health Conversion gives a large flat armor bonus, helping compensating for Gauss's middling base armor. For the non-duration arcane slot, I use Arcane Pulse, which synergizes well with [Synth Deconstruct] and [Synth Fiber] on my sentinel to provide some healing to defense targets and the sentinel.

Weapons and companions:
Primary and secondary doesn't really matter, but you still want to run them to fit [Amalgam Serration], [Carnis Stinger], [Augur Pact] and [Augur Seeker] for the passive bonuses.

I used to recommend [Shedu] as an alternative way of resetting sentient defences without breaking your [Flow], but honestly, between sentients no longer being status immune and operators being client authoritative with Angels of Zariman, that's not really needed. Just use the amp of your choice if sentients ever become a threat again, I'm running a Lega/Phad/Lohrin one.
For ranged weapons I'm using a [Mutalist Cernos] to stack magnetic on steel path treasurers, and a [Furis] to give rescue targets life steal with [Winds Of Purity], but just run whatever you want as long as you have the four mods listed above. A necramech with a Mausolon is nice to take down open world dropships.

Sentinel of your choice (I link my Helios below) with Synth Deconstruct/Fiber and a high status output weapon, or the Panzer Vulphaphyla, allows you to not need to run viral on your zaw, and provides health orbs to top off yourself and your companion and proc Arcane Pulse (and [Equilibrium] in one of the variant builds below).

Variants:
If you feel you don't need the CC of Fire Walker, other good helminth options are Silence to help deal with Ancient Healers and Eximi after the Angels of Zariman rework, or Gloom for mod-free lifesteal, especially if you run the health variant below.

If you find the amount of EHP to be overkill, you can replace [Quick Thinking] with [Vitality] or [Umbral Vitality], and [Primed Flow] with the mod of your choice. If you slot in [Equilibrium], you can replace Exodia Brave on your zaw with whatever you want for your energy economy in combination with [Synth Deconstruct], (but there aren't any other great Exodia arcanes currently that fit with this playstyle currently).

Replacing [Carnis Carapace] with [Equilibrium] is also a good choice for energy economy if you want to use a gun with this build.

[Shepherd] and Arcane Pulse are flex slots, the ones I picked are just my preference. Put whatever you like there.

Before you get access to Zariman Arcanes, you can replace [Health Conversion] with [Constitution] or [Nira's Hatred], and Molt Efficiency with Arcane [Guardian]. Alternatively, if you go with the health version above, you can replace [Primed Flow] with one of the duration mods and replace Molt Efficiency with the arcane of your choice (For example Arcane [Fury] for a minor damage boost).

Links to related builds:
Melee: Melee Gauss's Spinblade Cyath
Primary: Anything with [Amalgam Serration].
Secondary: Anything with [Carnis Stinger], [Augur Pact] and [Augur Seeker].

Sentinel: Helios Prime
Sentinel weapon: Viral/Rad Proccing Murder Verglas
Sentinel weapon alternative: 368.7% status Cryotra
Sentinel weapon alternative 2: Rad and Viral Helstrum
Sentinel weapon alternative 3: Rad and Viral Deconstructor

Recommended soundtrack: Your choice of The Initial D OST, Yellow Line, City Escape, Snailchan Adventure or the Beyblade theme.
My Gauss playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgdQbj7tBiB4GNqVCLaCSmv6aMfKzhvTZ