INTRODUCTION

This is a build with a very specific playstyle to use Reave to one-shot any enemy in the game that does not possess pure damage reduction (Infested Ancients), damage attenuation/adaptative scaling (bosses, acolytes, demolysts/demolishers/amalgams, eximus, nox, treasurer, sentients, raknoids ) or viral immunity (deimos heavies and infested demolishers). It is still possible to one-shot enemies up to a certain damage reduction amount provided you can cast parasitic link on an ally to boost your ability strength, get max viral status and possibly have further damage multipliers affecting the enemy.

REAVE MECHANICS AND CALCULATIONS

Reave drains 8% shields and health which scales with ability strength and damage multipliers such as viral status (up to 4.25x at 10 stacaks). Reave can drain 100% health (bypassing armor/shields) and therefore one-shot an enemy by either reaching 625% strength with 1 viral status or 295% strength at 10 viral stacks. With Parasitic link cast on an ally (does not work on specters), [Nidus] gains final multiplicative bonus to ability strength, requiring exactly 339% strength to reave 100% health at only 1 viral stack. Reaching this strength is even easier on [Nidus] due to the passive 15% bonus to ability strength.

A further bonus of using Reave is that it heals you, makes you invulnerable for the duration and clears all status effects.

BUILD SPECIFICS

Duration
The 72.5% duration is actually important for both shortening the natural duration of larva so that it can be recast sooner, and shortening the natural duration of Reave, so you travel less distance, just enough to get through enemies within larva.

Efficiency
45% efficiency is easy to maintain on [Nidus] due to the energy refund mechanic of 1. Everytime you cast Larva, make sure you pull at least 7 enemies to fully refund the cost of both 1 and 2. To refund the max energy pool of 531, you need to hit 34 enemies with virulence once, or rather, two casts against 17 enemies. This makes it easy to maintain max energy, as long as you don't spam virulence needlessly.

Range
High range is essential to group enemies into larva so you can reave the most amount of enemies in one go. Range also increases reave width and link distances.

Strength
At 313% max strength (after growing power proc), exactly 9 viral procs are needed to one-shot. With parasitic link on an ally, only 2 viral procs are needed. You can opt to hit the 339% strength treshold as described above but this comes at the cost of range which is crucial for grouping, and is only applicable in group play. It is also incredibly easy to prime every single enemy in larva with 10 viral procs so just passing the 295% strength threshold is fine.

Arcanes
Energize for energy gain.
[Guardian] is optional, could be replaced with avenger, grace, agility e.t.c.

WEAPONS

You must have a viral primer to make this work, preferably a pure viral primer which only has viral as it's status as to not dilute the status pool. Bubonico alt-fire is an amazing viral primer since it is pure viral, AOE, has incredibly high status and shoots a burst of three projectiles. Shotguns also have access to the [Nano-Applicator] acolyte mod which increases status even further on aiming after ability cast, which pairs perfectly with the playstyle of this build. With a pure viral primer bubonico, each alt-fire projectile has a status of 222%, which means you are guaranteed to proc 3 viral with one projectile, and that's ignoring multishot!. Since alt-fire shoots 3 projectiles in burst, each shot actually applies 9 viral procs to every enemy in a 7m radius, with basically guaranteed 10 procs with multishot. With Larva, this means you can apply full 10 stacks of viral to something like 30 enemies in one go. Remember that 313% str allows reave to one-shot enemies at 9 viral? This means you can now one-shot all 30 enemies in your larva in one go! (provided they aren't heavy units).

Here is a sample bubonico primer build: https://overframe.gg/build/222087/

Other alternative viral primers includ eproboscis [Cernos], [Komorex] at max zoom, [Kompressa] and [Pathocyst].
General CO primers like [Kuva Nukor] and [Epitaph] also work, but they generally proc alot of different status types, while we only need viral to work.

PLAYSTYLE

1. You need a little bit of energy for the 2 + 1 combo when you start, so running zenurik or popping an energy pad is recommended to hit at least 101 energy.
2. Cast larva when there are lots of enemies in range
3. Cast virulence into the larva to generate tons of energy and gain stacks
4. Shoot viral primer into the larva (bubonico alt-fire) to prime all enemies with viral
5. Reave into all enemies trapped in larva and watch them all die instantly, while also healing and cleaning status