by garlic — last updated 2 years ago
The heir of twin kingdoms ascends. Biological and Sentient life meet in Caliban. An adept monarch, he offers crowd control and survivability. His creator had more than one world in mind.
ITEM RANK
3060 / 60
APPLY CONDITIONALS
This is my [Caliban] build that I use for Starchart and Steel Path missions. Note that I do not do Endurance runs, therefore my build is not fully optimised for high-level content, although I have survived more than 45 minutes in Selkie without too much problem. Feel free to change the build and experiment with it to suit your own playstyle.
When building [Caliban], I try to go for as much Strength as possible while keeping the other 3 values "comfortable" for myself.
Duration: I went for 140% using a rank 4 Narrow Minded because I want to keep the Conculysts up for a decent amount of time without sacrificing range. The -30% range from a rank 4 [Narrow Minded] can be completely nullified by [Augur Reach]. [Caliban] doesn't suffer a lot from changes to Duration though. His 3 is what you should look out for when changing [Caliban]'s Duration since you don't want to waste too much time recasting your Lethal Progeny. His 2 and 4 are also affected, but his armor strip is permanent, and with my spammy-ish playstyle, I don't need to keep Fusion Strike's fallout field or Sentient Wrath's lift for too long.
Efficiency: I kept it at 110% for the spam, but feel free to change it.
Range: 145% is comfortable for me. Coil Horizon has 17.4m, Sentient Wrath has 31.9m, and Fusion Strike has a radius of 14.5.
Strength: You might think 200% is enough for a full armor strip, but Sentient Wrath's vulnerability and Lethal Progeny's shield [Regen] still benefit from high Strength. You can use a rank 10 [Blind Rage] in place of my rank 9 [Blind Rage]. I just never bothered to get another [Blind Rage] to max it out. At max strength, with [Growing Power] and Augmented active, you will be reaching 305% Strength (314% with r10 [Blind Rage]). This pushes Sentient Wrath beyond 100% vulnerability and increases the max enemies affected to 48. Lethal Progeny's shield [Regen] will [Reach] 76.25 shields per second per drone, and ultimately give 228.75 shields per second for all drones active.
I prefer to use Coil Horizon as a grouping ability because it has the highest range of all Helminth grouping abilities. It is a bit hard to control, but it is the only ability that has a larger radius than Fusion Strike's fallout zone, making it easy to pull enemies into the zone for easy kills.
The other grouping abilities can still work, and feel free to experiment with others.
[Saxum Carapace]: [Caliban] can benefit from the Saxum modset because of his ability to inflict the Lift status. You can replace Narrow Minded with it and use Augur Message in place of Augur Reach instead.
Rolling Guard: Very good for survivability.
Brief Respite / Augur mod set: Either one of these will really help [Caliban] since having ANY number of shields will trigger Lethal Progeny's regeneration. Even better when paired with [Rolling Guard]. Decaying Dragon key is not needed. I equip a sidearm with both Augur Pact and Seeker on as a "statstick" for my Caliban.
The ever-so-popular Panzer Vulpy works. I guess. But I always see myself gravitating towards [Dethcube Prime] and its [Energy Generator]. You can generate so much energy, especially with [Helstrum] modded with [Primed Firestorm], multishot, status chance and Gas. You can change it to Viral if you want but expect fewer energy orbs and more damage.
Your weapons will be your main source of damage, so bring something that hits multiple enemies with enough oomf.
For primary weapons, you can, of course, use the traditional "meta" AOE weapons. But I do find the [Nataruk], [Tenet Arca Plasmor], [Phantasma], and even the [Synoid Simulor] much more enjoyable to use.
Aside from using your sidearm as an Augur statstick, you can use your melee as a Saxum statstick (and sidearm too if you own the elusive [Saxum Spittle]) even if you choose not to use all 3 Saxum mods. There will still be some benefit, even if it doesn't seem like a lot.
Simple, use 3 for survivability, 1 to group up enemies, 4 to strip shields and armor, 2 to debuff and CC enemies, and blast the poor crumpled mess of flesh to death. The ability casts are not necessarily in that order, but the result will still usually be the same if you save the shooting for the end. Note that [Caliban]'s Fusion Strike creates a permanent stripping effect that is irreversible even by nullifiers and Demolyst pulses. It affects Acolytes too so they won't be much of a problem either.
