by LJHalfbreed — last updated 4 years ago
Grendel sees every battlefield as a smorgasbord. His insatiable appetite rewards him with high survivability. Enemies will be eaten. And regurgitated.
ITEM RANK
3060 / 60
APPLY CONDITIONALS
This build basically plays like Inaros, but with some better team utility through buffs and temp/perm enemy removal. Focus is on high duration for longer buff duration (~50 seconds) and reduce the energy consumption of devouring enemies, and a moderate boost to strength to give solid bonuses to your buffs.
[Grendel] has extremely low shields, so he's going to be taking direct punishment to his health more often than not, even with shield gating. Armor and Health are, therefore, pretty solid picks for here. If you are on a budget, you could likely get away with slotting your choice of armor, health, and [Adaptation], if you don't mind the hit to strength and energy [Regen].
Slotting all three gets you a bit over 200% duration, which greatly increases the length of your buff, and helps slightly with energy management on devour/pulverize. If you find yourself soloing, or prefer to have a bit more energy, you can swap out Message for [Flow]. Your buffs will only drop to ~45 seconds, and you'll get a much larger pool for holding folks in your belly or staying in roly-poly mode.
This gets your strength up from 166 to 190, which adds a nice boost to everything, including the killer Nourish Strike (~2.5 to ~3). If you prefer though, you can use this as a flex slot similar to message, and slide in a [Flow] for better energy availability, etc.
If you're tight on forma, you can definitely swap out rage or reduce this a few ranks. with all the buffing and belly-holding you'll be doing with [Grendel], you'll need energy. Since your shields are nearly nonexistent (75), you'll take plenty of hits directly, so this is a perfect way to get your reserves back up to full passively.
If you have saved slots elsewhere (or used an Umbral Forma), you can change this to something better for your playstyle (CP, etc). Another option, if you truly want to go full buff frame is to swap this with [Power Donation]. You'll still get the full 18 mod points, but you also boost the strength of everyone else on the team in exchange for an [Intensify]'s worth of Str. But, I know how people [Hate] seeing their frame get smoked on the results screen, so slot whatever you feel is best between SC and PD. Personally, if you're with a group of friends? I say go with PD.
Empty to save on slots. An Umbral forma (or adjusting the mod-cost of the other things in your build) would allow you to slot other things here, but all I can recommend is some KB protection/recovery, or maybe [Power Drift].
Naramon (Dash) polarity definitely has some utility. The issue is that unless you are willing to drop ranks in some of your mods, or use an Umbral forma, you're not going to have a huge amount of room to slot in something new. Streamline and Flow are obvious choices, and you can mix-and-match as needed to find what fits your playstyle. I still recommend [Constitution] since you have no KB protection, but you can definitely drop that in favor of Message, and have a few more points to allow you to slot a [Primed Flow]. [Streamline], to me, is a lesser choice, as even though it will help you with your energy management, I find [Hunter Adrenaline] pairs better with [Flow]. Or if you prefer "Would you rather have 33% more casts, or almost 300%?" Now, if you are worried about getting your energy leeched, fine. But if you keep Nourish Energy up, you'll be okay.
I advise looking at your "on damaged" arcanes, as you will constantly be getting your health dinged up (that you can nearly instantly heal up with swallowing). Avenger is probably my favorite here for the flat crit buff, which can be paired pretty well with crit and hybrid weapons to do big damage. [Guardian] is nice if you think you'll be soloing or facetanking more than keeping dudes in your belly. Grace is kinda low ranked, even though it's a percentage of health, you can schlurp up a whole mob of baddies and digest them all in a row to top off your health pretty quickly.
[Masseter] has a paired buff with [Grendel] in that you can't get knocked down or whatever doing heavy attacks. However, most heavy attack builds focus on getting as much speed out of the swing/wind-up as possible. So masseter is definitely on-theme, but you will have to decide if you want a crit/status hybrid and forego the heavy-spam bonuses, or if you want to go with a heavy spam build, and choose between staying immune to CCs, or actually doing damage faster.
You'll be taking a lot of health damage, so a companion that can heal you is a solid choice. If you choose a Synth Fiber+Deconstruct build (like Djinn+Sweeper), you may want to think about changing out your Naramon (-) flex slots to fit in an equilibrium to keep your energy topped off, and therefore reduce/eliminate reliance on [Hunter Adrenaline] (freeing up another slot). Healing animals (Hunter Recovery, Vasca, etc) can help out a little bit, especially if you slot link health and Link armor, and consider pack leader and/or the medi-kit to keep them healthy as well.
And that's basically that. Bog standard, not-quite-Inaros build for when you want to face tank, but also burp/puke/fart out your enemies. Neat!
