INTRODUCTION

This is a general use Gara build focused around nuking maps with high range mass vitrify explosions and providing medium duration damage reduction/splinter storm damage to yourself and defense objectives, which is refreshed with the constant casting of mass vitrify. You can also stack up splinter storm damage gradually and run around with a high radius splinter storm that scales indefinitely. Spectrorage provides some crowd control while [Spectrosiphon] augment is used for some to generate tons of energy orbs to top up energy for yourself and your squad.

This is a high duration pure splinter storm variant : https://overframe.gg/build/213287/

See my other endgame helminth Gara builds:
Splinter storm focused: https://overframe.gg/build/193196/gara-prime/shimmering-glass-eclipse-gara-splinter-storm-500k-stack-solo-sp/
Dispensary nuke: https://overframe.gg/build/194448/gara-prime/shattering-glass-gara-nuke-and-defender-steel-path/

PLAYSTYLE

• Cast 2 on yourself, your companion, your allies and the defense object
• Cast 3 in front of you/nearby to CC enemies and prime them to drop energy orbs when they die. Note if you cast it around an acolyte, their AI often turns off. Spectrorage can also inconsistently crowd control eximus/overguardeed units.
• Cast 4 and press 4 again immediately to end expansion (you want enemies to be outside the wall)
• Kill some enemies with your primary to proc arcane blade charger (your sentinel can do this too)
• From inside the wall, cast 1 at the wall (either tap or hold depending on stat stick damage type - tap is preferred since it is faster to cast and doesnt prevent reloading) to nuke the map and build splinter storm stacks
• Repeat 4 + 1 combo
• Kill heavier targets/acolytes by stacking damage into splinter storm and just, standing near them.
• Add in armor strip if possible to speed up kills (e.g. Helios, Unairu, Grimoire with Jahu Canticle, Latron, or use Corrosive Heat on a primer).
• Add a viral primer to speed up kills.

SURVIVABILITY

Shield Gating
When you lose shields to 0, you gain a short duration of invulnerability known as the "shield gate" which scales off the highest value of shields you had before breaking. [Brief Respite] and Augur mods allow you to generate shields on demand by casting abilities. Casting 4 will be your main way to shield gate since it makes you completely invulnerable during cast, creates a physical barrier and glasses enemies it touches, and costs 75 energy at base efficiency, generating 142 shield with just [Brief Respite] and [Augur Message] (giving 0.9s iframes). Adding up to 2 or 3 more augur mods (eg [Augur Reach], [Augur Seeker], [Augur Pact]) can generate up to 232 shield which gives 1.1s iframes. [Catalyzing Shields] in this case only adds another few milliseconds up to 1.33s iframes so is not that important.

Tanking
Splinter Storm gives 90% damage reduction at 134% strength, allowing you to shrug off a fair amount of damage in non-endurance scenarios. You can maximise EHP by adding in Arcane [Guardian] or [Health Conversion] for armor, Arcane Blessing or [Vitality] for health, or simply relying on shield tanking by using Pillage to gain overshields (since shields have a natural 50% DR).

BUILD SPECIFICS

Duration
More duration is beneficial for splinter storm giving you more leeway between casts of 4 so you don't lose all your current stacks of splinter storm. Add more duration over range/efficiency if desired (e.g. put [Narrow Minded] over [Stretch] when you want splinter storm to last much longer so you don't need to recast 4 as much).

Efficiency
Since you will be spamming mass vitrify and breaking it with 1, you need to maintain some efficiency for energy economy. 100 to 130% is sufficient since we are running [Primed Flow], arcane energize and [Spectrosiphon]. [Spectrosiphon] augment generates tons of energy orbs for you and the whole squad. [Seismic Bond] on your pet further helps give free 30% efficiency since it procs while you are expanding 4.

Range
Range is the most important stat for nuking, allowing the mass vitrify explosion radius to [Reach] 37.5m and shattered lash to [Reach] 25m You can increase this more by adding [Augur Reach].

Strength
While strength does scale into explosion damage and shattered lash damage, the majority of the explosion damage comes from melee mods on the stat stick/shattered lash. Only 130% strength is needed to hit 90% damage reduction on splinter storm. Could have lower rank [Umbral Intensify] or even swap umbral intensity for low rank intensify+power drift to hit this instead.

Options
Aura slot is flexible - [Brief Respite] is useful for endurance runs where you need to abuse shield gating, steel charge provides the most mod capcity and adds to shattered lash/splinter storm damage, Corrosive Projection reduces armor which is useful when using Armor Strip abilities.

Exilus slot is flexible - cunning drift for range, primed sure footed if you own it, handspring, vigilante pursuit, power drift etc

Rolling Guard - can replace [Streamline] if you feel energy economy is enough. Nice quality of life for high levels and shield restoration, but if you don't like the playstyle , you can always switch out for something more passive like adapation, or even more range e.g. augur reach.

Primed flow/streamline - depending on whether you own arcane energize, both might be necessary. If you own energize, you could drop one of the two mods and add in survivability like rolling guard/adapation.

[Narrow Minded] is an optional addition over [Streamline] or [Stretch] that will give you much higher duration at the cost of range. This is useful in situtations where you may not want to nuke and just keep splinter storm on for damage reduction and splinter storm damage etc.

Shattered Storm - optional augment that spreads splinter storm onto enemies hit by 4, which creates a 35% damage vulnerability (basically acting like a universal 1.35x damage multiplier)

Mending Splinters - support oriented augment for healing defense operative, pets and teammates. Can slot over Streamline

Arcanes

• Molt Efficiency - free 36% duration to improve splinter storm duration
• Molt Augmented - free 60% strength to further boost shattered lash damage, useful in longer missions where you expect to get 250 kills
• Arcane Blade Charger - if you have an AOE primary or high DPS sentinel weapon, you can easily get this buff, which will boost the damage of mass vitrify explosion
• Arcane Fury - similar to blade charger but doesn't require a primary, is easier to proc but provides slightly less stack
• Arcane Aegis - If you have problems with surviving

Helminth
Subsume over Spectrorage:

• Nourish: Gives additive Viral dmg boost to Shattered Lash and gives energy multiplier which helps greatly with energy sustain. Drop Spectrosiphon for Constitution/Streamline/Equilibrium/Rolling Guard or Narrow minded
• Pillage strips armor/shields and provides shields to you, useful for both shield tanking and shield gating
• Dispensary with [Equilibrium] is another good option for energy sustain in mostly stationary missions like defense and mobile defense, or for camping in survival. Drop Spectrosiphon for Equilibrium in this case.
• Eclipse boosts shattered lash damage witch feeds into both splinter storm buildup and mass vitrify explosion damage. Drop Spectrosiphon for rolling guard/Narrow minded.
• Terrify fullstrips at 167% strength, or 137% strength if running corrosive projection. Drop Spectrosiphon for Streamline.
• Fireblast strips armor in AOE which helps splinter storm and mass vitrify do more damage to armored enemies. At 100% str, fireblast strips 75% and causes heat status which strips a further 12.5%.

Archon Shards
Amber - 1 to 2 cast speed shards to make casting of mass vitrify smoother
Crimson - fill rest with duration shards so splinter storm lasts the longest

STAT STICK

There are two ways to build stat sticks for Gara, initial combo and x12 combo. Since most nuking will be stationary, a non-combo build is ideal.

An initial combo stat stick means you will completely ignore your melee and only shoot with your primary/secondary weapons. These builds utilise initial combo bonus (+30 from [Fragor Prime], +30 from [Corrupt Charge], +20 from [Synoid Heliocor] or [Furax Wraith]) in addition to the usual damage ([Primed Pressure Point], [Spoiled Strike]), elemental ([Primed Fever Strike], [North Wind], [Molten Impact], [Shocking Touch]) and slash or puncture mods ([Buzz Kill] or [Auger Strike]). Due to the combo bonus, [Fragor Prime] is an excellent choice as adding [Corrupt Charge] on top gives a 60 combo allowing you to hit the 1.75x melee bonus straight off the bat.

A x12 combo stat stick means you will use your melee or other method to build combo to x12 quickly and maintain at x12. This will forgo initial combo bonus and instead require combo duration (from body count, drifting contact or primary/secondary dexterity arcanes) or combo count chance (e.g. true punishment, quickening), and is most ideal on gunblades, particularly redeemer (non-prime perferred in case you get a riven) due to quick combo gain from a distance OR Praedos/[Innodem] which have a passive combo gain perk upon picking up. Using any normal melee may be trickier since enemies may die from Splinter Storm before you can get into melee range.

A riven can be used in any high disposition weapon as well, provided the riven has excellent rolls for +dmg, +element , +slash/puncture or +combo with any other negative

UPDATE 2023
Initial Combo:
The current best initial combo stat stick is Ceramic Dagger Incarnon because it has innate x7 initial combo after getting 100 primary kills:
https://overframe.gg/build/498648/

Next best alternatives are Tenet Agendus/Exec or Kuva Shildeg with > 40% bonus (of any element): https://overframe.gg/build/376515/tenet-agendus/gara-non-combo-statstcik/

The third best alternative is Fragor Prime: https://overframe.gg/build/213539/[[Fragor]](/items/arsenal/1134/[[Fragor]](/items/arsenal/1134/fragor/)/)-prime/[[Gara]](/items/arsenal/24/[[Gara]](/items/arsenal/24/gara/)/)-shattered-lash-non-combo-stat-stick/

x12 Combo:
While ANY melee can be used (particularly one with high disposition with a good riven), the current best options are either using [Rauta] with [Tenet Agendus] which allows you to build combo by shooting from a distance, or use Praedos or Innodem since they can allow you to refresh combo passively by just picking up ammo. This means you can build to x12 combo initially, then swap back to primary weapon and use that indefinitely so you also keep Arcane Blade Charger active without needing to hit enemies with your melee.

Redeemer: https://overframe.gg/build/213542/
Praedos: https://overframe.gg/build/442780/

ARSENAL/OTHER TIPS

Sentinels
Use a sentinel as a companion rather than a moving pet. You can cast splinter storm on your sentinel and give it 90% damage reduction as well as creating a second damage source that gains the same stacks as [Gara]. Since the sentinel moves with you and overlaps your splinter storm radius, you effectively do twice the damage per tick compared to when splinter storm is on [Gara] alone. To cast on your sentinel, point your cursor directly up and press the reverse camera key (check key bindings) then spam 2 as the crosshairs pass over the sentinel. Furthermore, since the sentinel never runs away like other pets, you can keep 100% uptime on its splinter storm whenever you cast mass vitrify.

Recommended sentinels:

• Helios Prime with Vicious Bond and Deconstructor - allows you to passive armor strip enemies recently damaged by abilities, which is exactly what [Gara] specializes in. This allows you to use Nourish as subsume instead. You can also equip Seismic Bond which will trigger while Mass Vitrify is expanding, giving free 30% efficiency for 12s. https://overframe.gg/build/542050/
• Nautilus with Cordon and Manifold bond - allows you to passively group enemies so you can kill them quicker with splinter storm. https://overframe.gg/build/540870/
• Wrym prime with negate - prevents status procs including knockdown, very useful if you don't own primed sure footed. https://overframe.gg/build/545608/
• Dethcube prime with energy generator - makes energy orbs every couple of kills, very useful if you don't own a full set of arcane energize. https://overframe.gg/build/224301/

Weapons
No specific weapon synergies exist apart from having a good primary to proc arcane blade charger quickly, and a secondary primer such as epitaph or kuva nukor which can increase the damage from splitner storm/mass vitrify (by reducing armor from heat procs, and magnifying damage from viral procs). [Rauta] can be used to build combo from a distance, as well as simultaneously deal some damage to proc arcane blade charger.