Introduction

[Baruuk] has always been an absolute powerhouse: highest damage reduction when stacked in the game, and a mean exalted weapon to smash through waves on enemies with ease. Thanks to the new Helminth ability added with [Kullervo], and the Companion rework, this build can be pushed even further.

When creating this build, I also wanted to try for something more fun than the usual builds you see: Lull spam, negative duration, health tank with adaptation. I will explain each of these choices in-depth further into this guide, however if you are someone who is sick of the same old builds [Baruuk] runs around with, this is quite a breath of fresh air.

This build aims for one general idea: MASSIVE DPS, lots of red crits, brain switch off gameplay that should be powerful enough to walk through Steel Path without a second thought.

Gameplay

Relevant Builds

Please take a look at these other builds I run alongside this [Baruuk] build, they enhance the build greatly and provide a large amount of extra damage and utility. These builds (or at least mods from these builds) will be referenced in the guide below.

[Desert Wind Prime] ([Baruuk]'s Exalted Weapon):
Corrosive & Cold Critical Damage Face Breaker

[Adarza Kavat] (Ideal Companion):
Melee Companion Kitty

Wrathful Advance

The addition of Kullervo also brought a new subsumable melee-oriented ability to the table, and to say it is absurdly strong is an understatement. Wrathful Advance; scalable additive critical chance buff, immunity frames, and a teleport.

There are two ways to run Wrathful Advance:

• TAP cast: winds up a heavy attack, gives immunity frames and additive critical chance buff, and then teleports you onto an enemy in range on your crosshairs to release the heavy attack.
• HOLD cast: gives additive critical chance buff, and teleports you to an area in range on your crosshairs.

It's main use in this build is the additive critical chance it supplies. For every 1% ability strength in the build, it gives 1% additional critical chance. And as this is additive, at 300% ability strength, any held melee weapon, even if at 0% critical chance, would perform 3rd tier (red) critical hits guaranteed, for as long as the buff remains active.

While the tap cast for heavy attacks is usable within this build, and deals hundreds of millions of damage if done right, the sheer DPS boost this gives to all wave attacks makes for some extraordinarily high damage when built around.

To make this build run smoother, I would also recommend going into the settings under the first option "KEYBOARD/MOUSE", the first option under "GAMEPLAY", and inverting Kullervo's option. This will allow you to tap-cast the alternate option, instead of having to hold every time you want the buff refreshed.

A couple things to note with this ability:

• Regardless of hold casting in default or tap casting when inverted (for the teleport ability), Wrathful Advance will always use the heavy attack cast when you aim at an enemy. When casting, unless you intend on losing combo and doing a heavy attack, aim at a blank area, be it a wall, floor at your feet, or the ceiling.
• Tennokai does not work with Wrathful Advance. If you wish to equip a Tennokai enabling mod, regular activation of the heavy attack while the Wrathful Advance buff is active will perform the Tennokai heavy attack, but using Wrathful Advance heavy attack will always consume combo and will not consume the Tennokai proc.

Wrathful Advance is subsumed over the 2nd ability, Lull. Why Lull over the usual Elude?

• Elude gives full physical damage immunity for a cone in front of [Baruuk]. Doing some super high level content, and your shield breaks? Just stop attacking for a second, elude will come back online and allow your shield to recharge.
• Elude erodes more restraint than Lull. Each attack evaded erodes 1.2%, versus the 0.8% per enemy from Lull. Each attack, so multiple enemies with faster firing guns can drop the entire restraint meter in seconds, all without a single point of damage taken.
• Lull can be spammed, but requires a negative duration build to be efficient at all. Personally, spamming constantly isn't too fun for me, but negative duration actively hurts our build idea with Wrathful Advance. The typical 13% duration build keeps the buff for less than a second. Comparatively, Elude is a cast once and forget about it ability.
• Elude does not apply while you are attacking (no damage immunity or restraint drain), however there is a low 0.2 second delay after attacking for it to re-apply. The channel remains active the entire time however, and it doubles the seeking range of the 3rd ability, the Desolate Hands. This means that the daggers produced will hit more enemies, keeping restraint eroding by 1.6% every dagger launched.
• Low initial cast cost and low channel drain makes it far easier to drop large amounts of restraint at the beginning of missions, especially without running any efficiency. This makes the build easier to get going.

The Build

Companion

[Adarza Kavat] is the chosen companion for this build, due to many synergies between mods to boost damage output and sustain Baruuk's energy economy.

Notable Mods:

• Cat's Eye gives a 60% additive critical chance bonus.
• [Tenacious Bond] gives a 1.2x final critical damage multiplier, using Bite to get enough critical chance on the companion to activate this effect.
• [Duplex Bond] clones your companion based off energy spent, up to 3 clones (4 total companions). Their kills give energy, although they rarely every get kills in higher level content.
• [Tandem Bond] gives you combo count whenever your companion (including clones) does a melee attack. This is the single easiest way I have found to gain combo count on [Baruuk]'s Exalted weapon, which will give critical chance from the Gladiator mod set. As long as there are sufficient enemies around, and enough abilities being cast to keep the clones active, this will passively get you to and keep you at 12x combo.
• [Swipe] also synergizes with [Tandem Bond], as it allows melee attacks to hit multiple targets at once. Some sources say that clones do not inherit any mods from the main companion, but the wiki entry for [Duplex Bond] says (in the notes) that clones benefit greatly from mods that utilize basic attacks such as Swipe. Even if only the main companion can use this, it can attack 5 enemies at once, giving 30 combo count per attack.
• [Synth Deconstruct] will add a 25% chance for enemies that the companion assisted with killing (dealt damage to) to drop a Health Orb when killed. Combined with [Equilibrium], the clones from [Tandem Bond], and [Swipe], energy will never be an issue when running this companion.

Link to the full build used is above.

Survivability

[Baruuk] by himself gains many layers of damage reduction that all stack to give some extraordinarily high tankiness.

Damage Reduction math:

• Having 9 daggers from Desolate Hands (3) gives 90% damage reduction.
• Having Serene Storm (4) active gives 40% damage reduction.
• Having eroded all restraint (Passive) gives 50% damage reduction.

The total amount of damage taken is found by multiplying the actual damage taken through each layer:
10% x 60% x 50% = 3%
This means the total damage reduction is 97%, which applies to both health and shields. On top of this, shields gain an innate 50% damage reduction from all sources of damage, bringing damage reduction to shields up to 98.5%. Using [Primed Redirection] gives [Baruuk] a base 1,302 shields, gives an effective 86800 shields.

[Adaptation] is another mod that can be used on the build, if you feel like you need even more tanking, bringing the effective shields up to 868,000. Using the build with Elude however, I would rather maximise damage and utility, so I do not use Adaptation.

Why shield tank, and not health tank?

• Shield gives 50% base damage reduction, against the 44.4% from Baruuk's base armor.
• The shield gate goes from 1.5 seconds at base shields to 2.5 seconds of invulnerability with Primed Redirection.
• [Umbral Vitality] would require an additional Forma to build, but gives far less bonus. 130% health (with Umbral Intensify), vs 180% shield, and Baruuk has higher base Shield than Health.
• [Umbral Vitality] also does boost [Umbral Intensify], giving more base damage to Serene Storm and more critical chance on Wrathful Advance's buff, so I would consider it a viable alternative, but I find the extra damage to be minimal in most circumstance

Energy

While this build does not spam abilities, it does often recast Wrathful Advance and Desolate Hands to keep damage and damage reduction at maximum, and keeps Elude channeled as well, so it is something to think about, especially with 45% efficiency.

A good note is that even though there is 45% efficiency, Elude's drain/second is unchanged from base due to the extra 55% ability duration cancelling it out. The initial cast is still more expensive, but 2.5 energy per second is quite a reasonable drain.

Mods:

• [Equilibrium] gives energy on every health orb collected, and allows you to pick up health orbs even while at full health, as long as you are also missing energy. As mentioned in the Companion section, the companion build can help produce a very large quantity of health orbs.
• [Archon Flow] provides additional chance for energy orbs when killing enemies with cold abilities. Exalted weapons count as abilities for this purpose, and a cold modded weapon provides the condition. It also allows Baruuk to have a large energy pool to keep energy in reserve should RNG desert you.
• [Duplex Bond] occasionally provides extra energy orbs as well.

These options don't sound like much, but they are capable of keeping [Baruuk] going for hours.

Damage

Damage is pushed as far as possible for a good balance between base damage, elemental damage, critical chance and critical damage.

Base Damage:

• Blind Rage, Umbral Intensify, Augur Secrets and Molt Augmented bring ability strength to 327%. This gives a base damage of 818.
• Using Madurai's chained sling will give an extra 40% ability strength, pushing up to 367%. This gives a base damage of 918.
• Arcane [Fury] provides +180%, [Steel Charge] +60%, and Sacrificial Pressure 137.5 (With Sacrificial Steel), giving an additional 377.5% base damage, pushing to 4,383 base damage.
• [Reactive Storm] also changes the impact damage to match the enemy weaknesses, which applies up to another 75% to base damage, bringing it to 5,072 base damage.
• [Primed Fever Strike], Shocking Touch and North Wind apply 345% elemental damage on top, bringing it to 22570 total modded damage.

Critical Chance:

• [Sacrificial Steel] provides 275% critical chance (with [Sacrificial Pressure]), and Gladiator Mods (3x bonus on any random melee) with 12x combo adds 360% critical chance, bringing the base 50% to 368% critical chance. Requires 3 Gladiator set mods on the equipped melee weapon, not the exalted weapon. Even though the mods are on another weapon, the set bonus still applies, just using the combo count of Desert Wind Prime itself.
• [Blind Rage], [Umbral Intensify], [Augur Secrets] and Molt Augmented bring ability strength to 327%. Wrathful Advance will give an additive 327% critical chance, bringing critical chance to 695%.
• Using Madurai's chained sling will give an extra 40% ability strength, pushing up to 367%. Wrathful Advance will instead give an additive 367% critical chance, bringing critical chance to 735%.
• [Cat's Eye] provides an extra 60% additive critical chance, bringing critical chance to 795%.

Yes, 795% critical chance. This build will be almost guaranteed hitting 8th tier critical hits.

Critical Damage:

• Organ Shatter and Gladiator Might for 150% additional critical damage, bringing the critical damage multiplier to 5x.
• 5x Tauforged Violet Archon Shards set to critical damage, provides 37% critical damage each, doubled due to having more than 500 maximum energy from Archon Flow, giving 370% additional critical damage, bringing the critical damage multiplier to 12.4x.
• Cold procs apply an additional 0.1x critical damage, additive after mods, per stack up to 0.5x extra. This brings the critical multiplier up to 12.9x
• [Tenacious Bond] on companion for 1.2x final critical damage multiplier, bringing the critical damage multiplier to a final 15.48x.

Using the wiki's Average Hit formula found here, the average hit deals a bit over 2.6 million damage. Adding a single attack speed mod, such as [Berserker Fury], gives a DPS of up to 4.45 million damage per second on all regular wave attacks from [Desert Wind Prime], alongside doing some armor stripping of enemies through the high status chance from Reactive Storm and the corrosive elemental damage.

Focus School

There are 3 options for focus school:

• Naramon allows for combo decay to be much slower, keeping high combo counts will be so easy you don't have to think about it. I would use this if you find your companion AI to not be working out too well, while in theory they should keep a pretty constant 12x up without any extra effort, companion AI leaves a lot left to be desired. Lethal Levitation is also nice to have as Baruuk's slide attack lifts enemies nearby, as a little damage boost.
• Madurai pushes DPS the most with a Chained Sling/Sling Strength giving an extra 40% ability strength. Note that while [Desert Wind Prime] has a base damage type of Impact and Phoenix [Talons] does apply to exalted weapons, [Reactive Storm] changes the base impact damage to an elemental damage type, and so I am fairly sure that it doesn't give any base damage boost with Reactive Storm.
• Unairu allows for much higher level gameplay. Caustic Strike provides a full armour strip, Poise provides a better buff than Prime [Sure Footed] could ever do, and Magnetic Flare allows you to disable enemy shields.

I personally take Naramon for the switch brain off type of gameplay that I like to play after a day at work, and have yet to need Unairu as I have not done any kind of endurance run (a couple hours in survival, and the damage alone is still more than enough), though with a bit more patience and active gameplay you can easily keep the 12x combo yourself by hitting with the fists directly when needed, making Madurai the ideal choice for those who do not mind chain slinging and keeping combo up.

Archon Shards

While Archon Shards are not necessary for the build to function, there are two options that really make the damage sing.

• Crimson shards for melee critical damage.
• Violet shards for melee critical damage, doubled when maximum energy is above 500, which is gained from use of [Archon Flow].

A full set of 5x Tauforged Violet Archon Shards provide 370% extra critical damage multiplier, bringing it from 5x to 12.4x alone. This is a HUGE damage increase, especially when running near guaranteed 8th tier critical hits.

Alternative Options

To make this build more new(er) player oriented, and far easier to obtain, I am just using [Handspring] in the exilus slot. However, [Primed Sure Footed] is far better than [Handspring], and is what I would change if I had one.

[Augur Secrets] is the most flexible slot in the build. The extra 24% ability strength isn't going to boost that hugely, and there is certainly some other utility I would be able to recommend:

• Adaptation for extra tankiness, needed more in endurance runs than regular steel path.
• [Stretch] for additional range. This allows Elude's cone to apply up to 261° over the base 180°, the desolate hands to reach 17.4m over the base 12m (with Elude active), and Wrathful Advance can teleport up to 18.1m from 12.5m.
• [Constitution] for additional duration. This lowers Elude's channel drain from 2.5 energy per second to 2.1 energy per second, and increases Wrathful Advance's critical chance buff from 15.5s to 18.3s.

[Primed Redirection] can also be swapped with [Umbral Intensify] for less effective hit points, but more overall damage through the Umbra mod set bonus.

Playstyle

This build is designed to have a playstyle as laid back and easy to run as possible.
1. Activate Elude (1) and find a group of enemies. Face the enemies and let them attack, they will quickly drop your restraint and you should take no damage from it, as long as you keep them in the 180° cone in front of you. This will get your first layer of damage reduction, from the passive. As the restraint is eroded, you will get up to 50% damage reduction.
2. Activate Desolate Hands (3). I prefer to do this after restraint is eroded as much as I want it to be, as disarming enemies, particularly Grineer gunners, can slow the initial restraint drop a lot, unless there are a very large number of enemies (such as with the spawn rates of Steel Path survival). This will get you to your second layer of damage reduction. Each dagger gives 10% damage reduction, capped at 90%, so this ability needs to be recast whenever it gets close. This build starts with 21 charges, and you will get a few more as Molt Augmented builds up and with Madurai's chain sling, should you use it.
3. Activate Serene Storm (4). This will equip your [Desert Wind Prime], [Baruuk]'s Exalted weapon. It will also give your third layer of damage reduction, applying 40% while the ability is channelled. Once this is active, your restraint will begin to fill back up, and while Desolate Hands' daggers (3) can keep pushing it down as it climbs, occasionally you may want to find a group of enemies, and hold back on the killing until Elude drops it again.
4. Activate Wrathful Advance (2). Make sure you aim to an empty space, be it a blank wall, the ceiling, or the floor at your feet. Hold-casting, even when inverted in the settings menu, will still trigger the heavy attack when aimed at an enemy. This heavy attack will always use combo, even if Tennokai is active (will not use the Tennokai proc). You can use this to your advantage to kill tougher enemies much quicker, but in general combo gives alot of critical chance through the Gladiator mod set bonus.
5. Hit things. Hard.

That is pretty much it. Keeping buffs active when they run out or get low, Wrathful Advance can be used as mobility as an instant teleport a decent range away ([Gauss] got nothing on that), super high damage reduction allowing you to chill through Steel Path, and damage that will make your foes weep.

End Note

This build is still being tweaked and worked on, so if you decide to run this build and find something that works better, please let me know!