General Use [Hildryn] build focusing on all abilities or can be used as weapon platform too.

UPDATE APRIL 2025
[Balefire Charger] with [Aegis Gale] is simply one of the strongest exalted weapons now. [Aegis Gale] gives Balefire an alternate fire that you can spam that deals alot of damage and a reasonable AOE. Exalted weapons can now use arcanes, meaning Balefire can equip Secondary Enervate which gives it an average final crit chance of around 90% making it crit viable which is a huge boost to DPS.

BUILD VARIANTS

• Pure Balefire with Molt for speed: https://overframe.gg/build/441574/

PLAYSTYLE

1. Activate Haven so Pillage is able to proc [Blazing Pillage].
2. Spam Pillage whenever enemies are around to regain shields, cleanse status and strip armor
3. Enter Aegis Storm when there are enemies you want to kill, and shoot alt-fire to kill enemies

OLD VIDEO Video ShowingElemental Ward Hildryn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcZm_sqLyrw

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SURVIVABILITY

The two main options for surviving depend on what type of content you want to play.

1. CASUAL STEEL PATH
   For base steel path and below, casual tanking should be sufficient for you. Using [Adaptation] will increase your effective shield HP to over 50,000 at max. Note armor does NOT affect damage reduction on shields, so there is no need to add any armor mods or shards. Arcane Aegis and/or Arcane Barrier can improve this even further allowing you to often regenerate shields faster than you take damage even without spamming Pillage.

2. ENDURANCE STEEL PATH
   For endurance runs (e.g. level 500-1000 and higher), enemies can easily deplete all your shields in seconds or in one hit despite adaptation and max shields. Luckily Hildryn has a special passive where she gains 3s of i-frames when shields break. Shield recharge delay is only 1s and she can regenerate shields at approximately 300 shield/s, meaning you will be able to cast Pillage again by the third second before i-frames end. Pillage lasts either 2.6s or you can end it early. If you use Rolling Guard near the end of your 3s i-frames you will get another 3s of i-frames which should give you enough buffer time to safely cast Pillage and regain all shields to reset your shield gate. You can also stack Vazarin protective dash on top of this for 4s of i-frames on demand with NO cooldown for serious endurance runs. Note, you MUST subsume a good crowd control to reduce the frequency of your shields breaking otherwise you won't be doing much damage since you're constantly trying to reset your shields. Crowd control options include Breach Surge, Resonator, Shooting Gallery which do not work on eximus/acolytes/demolysts and Gloom, which works on acolytes/demolysts/necramechs but not eximus.

BUILD SPECIFICS

Duration
Positive duration helps scale the spread distance of Pillage giving a final effective range of approximately 60m. Duration also improves the shield drain of Haven and duration of Elemental Ward.

Efficiency
You can run negative efficiency since Hildryn has self-sustaining energy economy due to Pillage. Every cast of Pillage at 45% costs 234 shield which can return thousands of shield per cast, up to over 5000 shield with both Haven and Elemental Ward active. If you still have issues with energy economy, you can try to fit in [Streamline]. Haven drains 39 shield per enemy per second, so if you are in a dense group of 20 enemies they could drain up to 700 shield/s.

Range
Range is required for scaling the radius of Balefire, initial cast radius of Pillage, radius of Haven and radius of Aegis Storms crowd control area. You can run anything between 145 to 280% range depending on preference.

Strength
Strength is required for the damage of Balefire, the strip amount of Pillage, the damage and bonus shield capacity of Haven

Aura

• Corrosive projection reduces armor to 82% meaning you could strip in two casts at 183% strength rather than three.
• Enemy Radar is always nice quality of life to have
• [Growing Power] can help you hit a 400% str threshold when combined with Archon Shards.

Exilus
Completely flexible. Primed sure footed fits the natural polarity.

Flexible Slots
Blazing Pillage is optional and can be swapped for:

• Streamline for better efficiency
• [Adaptation] if you prefer to have passive tankiness for casual SP missions. Having up to 90% DR on your shields can increase your shield eHP to over 50,000.
• Rolling Guard for extra i-frames
• Augur Reach for even mroe range

Arcanes

• Arcane Velocity - boosts balefire/aegis gale fire rate
• Aegis - when this procs, your rate of shield [Regen] could surpass the damage you take. If this procs during your shield gate duration you will effectively be immortal as you will constantly be refreshing your shield gate (at least to the 0.33s iframe window)
• Barrier - consistently procs during hildryns 3s shield gate which returns her to instantly full shields, very useful but falls off in endurance
• Augmented - gives free strength but needs 250 kills

Archon Shards

• 2 Amber Cast Speed
• 3 Crimson Strength Shards

HELMINTH ABILITIES

Subsume over 3 if you want to use Aegis Gale, or over 4 if you don't want to use Aegis Gale.

• Molt - allows you to move faster while in Aegis Gale
• Elemental Ward (Electric) - gives more shield capacity and stuns enemies with electric status effect. Since Blazing Pillage damages enemies but drains your shield to cast, it is counted as a form of damage and
• Gloom - Crowd controls enemies, prolongs the stun on Haven (on light units) and [Blazing Pillage] heat procs, and energy sustain is via Pillage. The channeling cost of Gloom is also not inflated into shield cost, so at 45% efficiency Gloom only costs a maximum of 9 shield/s at 10 enemies.
• Breach Surge - blinds enemies, damaging or killing enemies generates sparks that scale off damage dealt. These sparks deal more damage against unarmored enemies stripped by pillage.
• Roar - Boosts the heat DoT damage from Blazing Pillage and damage output of Balefire
• Shooting Gallery with Muzzle Flash - passively blinds enemies are you get kills ,doesnt afffect acolytes or eximus
• Resonator - turns off enemy aggression, doesnt afffect acolytes or eximus

OPERATOR

Vazarin Protective Sling is very good for backup survivability in steel path (particularly endurance) as you get 5s i-frames on demand with no cooldown. Vazarin also has the [Guardian] Break ability which increases shield regeneration rate when [Guardian] Shell breaks.

Madurai is excellent for giving bonus cast speed and 40% strength.

ARSENAL

Balefire Charger build: https://overframe.gg/build/441556/

Companions
Make sure to equip Reinforced Bond, Tenacious Bond and Seismic Bond where possible

Taxon: https://overframe.gg/build/441108/

• Molecular Conversion - An attack by taxon is converted into 200 shields for HIldryn with a 12s cooldown, basically equating to 1000 free shields every minute.
• Guardian - fully regenerates shields to max when shields deplete, with 30s cooldown. This is a huge lifeline to hildryn whenever her shields break.
• Shield Charger - Gives 60% extra shields for 10s (calculated from base unranked shields, so about 285 for Hildryn), with a 30s cooldown, equating to about 600 bonus shields for 20s out of every minute.

Raksa Kubrow: https://overframe.gg/build/442740/

• Protect - gives 300 shields every 5s whenever your shields are not max
• Pillage also affects Kubrows and Moas but NOT sentinels so you can keep this alive by just spamming Pillage

Nychus Moa: https://overframe.gg/build/444949/

• Can equip [Guardian] mod like sentinels, can also equip [Verglas] for extreme DPS, but MoAs can also be affected by Pillage and can be revived, so have better longevity compared top Sentinels.
• Can also equip any second precept.

Shield Osprey Specter: Gives 100 flat shields + 35% base shields (166), equating to about 266 bonus shields.

Weapons:
Raw damage non-slash weapons that thrive off Pillage Armor strip:
Shedu: Shoots Heat projectiles with Electric AOE, fitting the theme of fire and thunder: https://overframe.gg/build/446053/
Arca Titron: Big electric slams https://overframe.gg/build/383171/arca-titron/mjolnir-x12-heavy-electric-slam/

[Rakta Dark Dagger] has a special ability where it generates shields on dealing damage to an enemy affected by radiation procs, provided you have some shields already.: https://overframe.gg/build/264292/