by ninjase — last updated a month ago
Night and Day in final balance; the graceful perfection of the one that walks the borders.
ITEM RANK
3060 / 60
APPLY CONDITIONALS
This Steel Path build is focused around switching forms to take advantage of the survivability/crowd control of night form and [Maim] nuking of day form. Night mode allows you to crowd control entire maps by putting them to sleep with Rest, allowing you to kill them at your leisure to store damage as well as restore shields with Mend for shield gating. With the augment [Energy Transfer], switching to day mode preserves the stored damage. Once you have stored sufficient damage and there is a good enemy density, switch to day form and deactivate 4 to nuke the map.
Resonator is an optional helminth subsume over 2 or 3 which makes everything just easy mode by turning off enemy AI in a 42m radius so you don't even get shot anymore. No need to bother even casting 2 in the case. If you do run resonator, then switch transient fortitude out for augur reach since resonator is all you need for survival.
If you want to add forma, adding - polarities is a good idea.
Alternative Builds
Pure Day form Nuke (Terrify): https://overframe.gg/build/264320/
Gloom time freeze Switch build: https://overframe.gg/build/235332/
Pure Night form crowd control (Silence): https://overframe.gg/build/279616/
Rest Focus/XP farm: https://overframe.gg/build/218823/
Duality AFK: https://overframe.gg/build/207021/
Here is a video example of shield gating with night form to survive and crowd control with rest:
The amount of damage stored by [Maim] is equal to 75% of the amount of health and shields LOST by the enemy (rather than the total damage you actually display). This means if you deal 200 million damage to an enemy with 1 million health and maximum armor (so 10 million ehp), you only store 750k damage. If you then release this damage against another fully armored enemy with 1 million health standing right next to you, you will only be dealing 750k damage out of their 10 million ehp (i.e. 7.5% of their health bar). [Maim] also has linear falloff to 0% damage at 50m and 20% at 40m. Without an armor strip and just running [Corrosive Projection], you will need to release about 40 enemies worth of health to kill the same enemy at 40m and about 8 enemies worth to kill the same enemy at 0m.
if we assume the health of a steel path corrupted heavy gunner, these are the rough values needed to kill them at 40m away.
Level 150: 3,032,667 ehp, needs about 15 million stored [Maim] damage
Level 500: 10,313,210 ehp, needs about 52 million stored [Maim] damage
Level 9999: 55,713,268 ehp, needs about 278 million stored maim damage
Use a combination of crowd control from Rest, i-frames from Shield gating via shield restore from mend and maim and i-frames from [Rolling Guard]. While Mend is active, you can passively shield gate by just getting kills. At max strength, each kill gets approximately 46 shield. Without [Catalyzing Shields] this is ultimately equal to approximately 0.6s shield gate after 1 kill, 0.75s shield gate after 2 kills, 0.87s after 3 kills and 1s after 4 kills. Adding [Catalyzing Shields] makes this approximately 0.9s after 1 kill and 1.33s after 2 kills, which an optional choice if you prefer. As you store damage in Mend and [Maim], releasing charge while in night form also fully restores shields.
Arcane Aegis is a lazy flexible choice in arcane slot that makes you effectively immortal to non-toxin damage for 12s at a time, but only when it activates.
Vazarin Protective Sling is an ultimate backup source of i-frames giving 5s immortality with zero cooldown on demand.
Duration
A low duration does not really affect the build since you will still be hitting the efficiency cap, giving minimal chanelling cost on 4. The buffs from 1 are usually inconsequential and 3 is not affected by duration. Rest and [Rage] have a pretty long base duration already, you should be able to kill enemies before they run out.
Efficiency and Energy Economy
Max efficiency of 190% is recommended to hit the minimal drain cap (at negative duration) so you can maintain 3 and 4 at all times. 60% from Rank 5 [Fleeting Expertise] and 30% from [Seismic Bond] (from a companion) OR 30% from [Streamline] lets you hit 190% efficiency. This also makes casting all abilities very cheap allowing you to spam 2 for crowd control. NOTE: The efficiency cap for channeling abilities is NOT 175%, this is just because the in game UI cannot display above 175%. When you are below 100% duration, you must exceed 175% efficiency to hit the minimum drain.
[Primed Flow] is optional but gives a huge pool of energy so you never run out, while [Equilibrium] helps regenerate energy by picking up health orbs.
Range
High range is required for [Maim], which has a range of 50.4m at 280% range BUT has linear falloff to 0% dmg at 50m. At about 40m this only deals about 20% of the stored damage. High range also gives you a large rest radius.
Strength
The damage of [Maim] is 75% of the damage done to enemies and this does NOT change with strength. Strength does however affect the buffs from metamorphosis and 3, the amount of shields you gain per kill in night form as well as the damage reduction from 3 in night form, so maintaining near neutral strength from Molt Augmented can be helpful.
Arcanes
The second arcane is completely up to preference:
Augments
Helminth
Pacify and Provoke (3) will be your least used ability as it cancels whenever you swap forms, so you can swap this out for one of the following:
Aura
Exilus
Flexible depending on preference:
Archon Shards
WEAPONS
You want to use strong AOE weapons that can collect lots of enemy health quickly in order to build up maim and therefore release quicker.
Slam melees have high AOE and damage to oneshot enemies
Some incarnon primaries can clear trash well:
Any good influence melee can kill enemies in 20m quickly:
A fun weapon that kind of matches Equinox's 'theme' is Zenith, an atronomically related term. Zenith's alt-fire mode also has infinite punchthrough but the enemy indicator built into the weapon only has a 20m range. [Equinox] [Maim] has a 45m range and the slash procs generated by [Maim] create a visual indicator of enemy position allowing you to target enemies through walls up to 45m away even without the inbuilt indicator.
Zenith build : https://overframe.gg/build/237176/zenith/zenith-viral-hm-anti-grineer/
Sigma and Octantis : Another 'astronomy' theme related weapon, but which can also use the Equinox Deluxe sword and shield skin! https://overframe.gg/build/285967/
COMPANIONS
Helios is a good option for a non-helminth [Equinox] build. [Helios] can use [Vicious Bond] to give passive AOE armor strip as enemies get damaged and can also use Seismic Bond which gives equinox a free 30% efficiency with near continuous uptime.
Helios Build: https://overframe.gg/build/542050/
Dethcube with Tazicor equipped to tag enemies for:
