[Gauss]

High speed CC Nuking Tank Gunslinger

Before Gauss' Kit can be utilized, one first needs to learn Battery management

Charging Battery

• Moving
• Casting Mach Rush (1) charges 10%
• Running over enemies with Mach Rush charges 1% per enemy
• Casting Cold Thermal Sunder (3) charges 10%
• Meleeing enemies

Draining battery

• Having Kinetic Plating (2) active slowly drains
• Taking Physical, Heat, Cold, or Blast damage while Kinetic Plating is active
• Casting Heat Thermal Sunder drains 10%
• Having Redline (4) active slowly drains
• Deactivating Redline when not on 100% Redline (based on how much of the Redline Meter was left)

Gauss' abilities, how to use them, and how they interact with the Battery

Passive

• [Gauss]' passive gives him faster shield regeneration and delay
  Mach Rush (1) is your main Battery builder and mobility tool
  -It's cheap cost and spammability makes it essential to maintaining a high battery level
• Running into enemies knocks them down which also makes it a decent get out CC ability
• Spammability allows it to be used with Brief Respite and Augur mods for easy shield gating
• Has niche interactions with running into walls
  • Running into a wall leaves a small and weak shockwave of 800 Impact damage
  • Whenever Kinetic Plating is active this will start causing bleeds that do 280 True damage
  • Running while in or into a Thermal Sunder will add that Sunder's damage to the impact shockwave
    • Multiple Sunders can add more damage

Kinetic Plating (2) is your defensive and energy managing ability

• Gives Damage Reduction to Impact, Puncture, Slash (IPS/Physical), Heat, Cold, and Blast damage
  • Taking damage from these sources will convert 5% of the damage into energy
    • While seemingly small, 5% of damage from singular enemies in most content is more than enough to give at least 25 energy
• Damage Reduction level is directly proportional to your current battery level at base 100% strength

Thermal Sunder (3) is your CC/Nuking/Stripping ability

• I highly suggest you invert tap/hold Gauss' abilities as Heat needs to be spammed but is set to the hold cast
• The damage dealt of the cast is based on your Battery Meter
• To reach their full effects, you need to double cast them
  • Casting cold on cold will freeze enemies
  • Casting heat on heat will increase the damage taken
    • Because these are heat procs, each cast will reset each other which leads into a damage snowball from heat procs
  • Casting heat on cold will cause a blast effect (while possible with cold on heat, heat on cold provides a significantly higher damage)
    • The damage done is calculated as "Heat damage * Proc duration + Damage of Cold"
      • What this boils down to is the more heat procs on the enemy, the higher the damage of the resulting blast

Redline (4) is a buffing tool for maximum efficiency

• During Redline, Gauss' guns and weapons gain signifcant buffs that further pushes his DPS
• The buff's strength is connected to your current battery level
• Whenever active, a number will appear next to the red line that indicates Gauss' max battery when out of Redline
  • This is not the Battery Meter but rather, the Redline Meter (explained later)

Redline's buffs and connection to the Battery

How Redline affects guns
Redline's effects are very simple when it comes to his guns
These buffs include

• Gun Fire Rate
• Gun Reload Speed
• Gun Holster Speed (Replaced by Casting speed as of Veilbreaker Hotfix 32.0.12)
• Melee Attack Speed
• Whether these buffs are additive or multiplicative to mods I'm unaware

How Redline affects abilities
Do note that these only take effect when above 81% battery
Mach [Rush] only gains the benefit of a halved cost whenever Redline is active.
Kinetic Plating needs to be active whenever Redline is active.

• It gives a Damage Reduction that reaches up to 100% as at base strength

Thermal Sunder gains the ability to skip it's double cast requirement on all variants

• Cold casts now instantly freezes enemies on cast
• Heat now deals max damage
• Blast can now armor strip, 50% at an unmaxed Redline Meter and 100% at max (Redline Meter explained later)

Redline Meter

• The time it takes to build the Redline Meter is increased by higher duration
• The buildup of the Meter is tied to the Battery Meter
  • Whenever you are at 81-100% Battery it charges
    • Charge speed is based on how high you are on the Battery
  • Whenever you are at 0-80% Battery it drains
    • Drain speed is based on how low you are on the Battery
• At a maxed Redline Meter, the battery will completely stop draining until Redline is deactivated or runs out of time
  • During this period, all the benefits of having 100% Battery will be in effect (such as 100% DR on Kinetic Plating)

Mods, Stats, Arcanes and how they affect abilities

• Strength
  • Mach Rush Impact damage
  • Kinetic Plating damage resistance
  • Thermal Sunder damage
  • Thermal Transfer (3 Augment) elemental damage bonus
  • Redline cast/deactivation damage
• Duration
  • Mach Rush continous run drain
  • Kinetic Plating duration
  • Thermal Sunder status duration
  • Thermal Sunder AoE drain speed, higher duration slower drain
  • Redline duration
  • Redline gun buffs (???)
• Range
  • Mach Rush impact size
  • Mach Crash pull size
  • Thermal Sunder AoE size
• Efficiency
  • Overall ability casting cost
  • Mach Rush continous run drain

Why I built for these stats
688 Energy (P. Flow + Azure Archon Shard)

• Higher energy capacity means I'm more comfortable using Thermal Sunder spam without worrying about running out of energy

340 Health (Archon Vitality)

• Rank 0 Archon Vitality increases the damage of Thermal Sunder by 2x just by being placed

113 Shield (Decaying Dragon Key + Brief Respite)

• Gauss' passive along with the current meta means he's best built for Shield Gating

1,82 Sprint Speed (Rush)

• Simply optional, Gauss already has a high enough run speed

183 Duration (Primed Continuity + Constitution)

• Most of Gauss' abilities strengths come from duration
• Longer duration on Redline and Kinetic Plating allows me to reap the benefits of 100% Redline longer
• 183 is long enough for me to be comfortable but not too long that Redline takes too long to build

100/130 Efficiency (Equilibrium/Streamline)

• I run a Panzer Vulpaphyla which allows to me to use base efficiency as the dropped health orbs and Kinetic Plating's regen is enough for me
• If I choose to run a diffirent companion I will use Streamline

145/ 175 Range (Stretch /+ Augur Reach)

• This gives me enough range to make Thermal Sunder cover more of the map to nuke enemies
• If I'm not running any mods such as Archon Vitality I will place Augur Reach

100 Strength

• Strength only affects Kinetic Plating's DR which already reaches 100% at base so I don't need to go higher and going lower will mean I lose the DR

100 Casting Speed (Natural Talent + 2 Amber Archon Shards)

• Casting Speed increases how fast I can activated Redlined Plating and how spammable Thermal Sunder can be

Other Stats/Mods/Arcanes

• Rolling Guard gives me a safety net in case I run into a damage type like Electric or whenever my Redline Plating is down/unmaxed
• Arcane Tempo/Acceleration makes my primaries feel stronger as they output even more bullets than they're intended to
  • Arcane Velocity provides the same experience for Pistols