Overview

A strong all-rounded build that dominates enemies up till level cap (9999). This main build is even 1 forma, though additional formas may be needed to modify it to suit your content/preference or to fit a riven. This build works for any endurance run (Defense/Survival/Disruption), liches, murmur farming etc. Just slap this build on and whack everything in your way to death.

This is a light-attack based build and is centered around high DoT (Damage over Time) DPS against single targets, regardless of armor or faction, in the form of slash procs.
However, it can be easily changed to suit crowds of enemies or even become a hybrid heavy-light build.
Changing your full setup (warframe/guns/aura) also allows for more diverse builds.
This build will likely stay relevant until another melee revision.
Current Version: The Deadlock Protocol 28.0.6

Performance

Starting off with some demonstrations to provide credibility

• Level 9999 Grineer Mobs + Demolyst in Mars, Olympus - Disruption
  No melee arcanes, 1 Swift Momentum Aura, 4/6 GladiatorSet. Swapped [Drifting Contact] for [Primed Reach]. Used [Ash] for slash passive and [Rising Storm]. [Tysis] had corrosiv, gas and cold which helped kill demolysts faster but is not needed, as seen from the last demolyst.
  Abit slow tbh, would be significantly faster with faction mods, melee arcanes and full Gladiator Set.

• Obligatory Level 170 Corrupted Heavy Gunners becuz th3y r so tough
  Same equipment as above.

Stance

[Reaping Spiral] (RS) VS [Stalking Fan] (SF)
RS offers much higher damage, with high damage multipliers and forced slash procs.
SF has lower damage but has more comfortable combos to use against crowds. (Depends on your preference tho so I won't talk bout this much)

RS Combos:

• Eternal Nocturne (Just melee spam)
  High damage multipliers + Strong forced slash procs. Main DPS combo
• Reclamation (Forward + Melee)
  Decent damage multipliers + 2 360° spinning attacks. Good for cleaving through crowds of enemies.
• Abyssal Automaton (Forward + Block + Melee)
  Decent damage multipliers + strong forced slash proc on the final hit + Good forward movement. Good for moving quickly while slashing some enemies or engaging single targets.
• Fading Hope (Heavy Attack)
  Extremely strong forced slash procs on both swipes. Very high damage but slow and costly, use sparingly (Unless you switched build to hybrid)

TIME 4 SUM NERD SHIET

Will go over the general stuff first: CC, CD, SC, DoT
Then I'll move on to the stats related to Reaper Prime itself.

Critical Chance

(Bloodrush + GladiatorSet + CriticalChanceMods + Static Bonus)

• Bloodrush + Gladiator Set
  Bloodrush on its own gives +60% CC per combo counter multiplier, with each gladiator mod adding 10% to a cap of 60%. Ideally with both you can utilize +120% critical Chance per combo counter multiplier which is huge. A helios deconstructor statstick recommended for this.
• Critical Chance Mods
  Mods like [Sacrificial Steel] are honestly not worth it, unless it boosts your crit tier to a higher tier.
  Critical Chance Mods increase CC by multiplying the base CC with the mod's multiplier +1 -> (1+2.2 from Sacrificial Steel) x base CC = Modded CC. CC mods are more noticeable with heavy attacks, as it doubles the multiplier.
• Static Bonus
  Static bonuses refer to stuff like Arcane Avenger or [Harrow]'s Covenant which give a flat increase to critical chance. Smeeta's [Charm] may give a sortof static bonus but it simply sets critical chance to 200% which is great if you have no CC, garbage if your CC is higher than 200%. However, Adarza adds a flat 60% critical chance, making Adarza a generally better choice if you're using kavats for buffs.

Now with all that explained, here's the conclusive equation:
Crit Chance = Base CC × (1 +CritModBonus + BloodRush/GladiatorsetBonus x (Combo Multi - 1) ) + Static Crit Bonus

Critical Damage

(Critical Multipliers + Crit Tiers + Critical Headshots)

• Critical Multiplier
  Modded Crit Multi=Base Crit Multi×(1+CritMultiplierBonus)

• Crit Tiers
  Every 100% mark for critical chance is a crit tier.
  CC = 100% > Tier 1 (Yellow)
  CC = 200% > Tier 2 (Orange)
  CC = 300% > Tier 3 (Red) - Past Tier 3, all crits are displayed as red
  CC = (InsertbrokenCCvalue) > Tier you're gonna get banned (negative blue crits)

  Equation for Critical Multiplier with Crit Tiers > Crit Multi=1+Crit Tier×(Modded Crit Multi−1)

• Critical Headshots
  Headshots will receive additional damage when struck. This damage increase is usually a 2.0x multiplier, but if the strike is a critical hit, then it receives an additional damage bonus. Total Crit Multi = Headshot Multi×(1+Crit Tier×(2×Modded Crit Multi−1) )

Status Chance

With recent changes to status, you can reap the benefits of going over 100% SC. This makes [Weeping Wounds] extremely beneficial as it allows more status procs to occur per hit.
Modded SC = Base SC × (1 + SCModBonus + WeepingWounds × (Combo Multi - 1) )
Basically for WW alone it looks like this:
Modded SC = Base SC x (1 + 0.4 (12-1) )
Generally equipping WW is enough for SC and additional SC mods like the dual stats are not as important.

DoT (Slash)

With all the CC, CD, SC stuff explained, slash is pretty simple to understand.
The status effect of Slash damage is Bleed.

• It applies a DoT effect, dealing a tick of damage each second for 6 seconds. Each tick deals damage equal to:
  0.35 × Modded Damage × (1 + Faction Damage Mods) as True damage.
• True damage ignores the damage reduction from Armor, making it an extremely good against hordes of Grineer with very high armor, as well as Grineer Demolysts.
• Slash procs scale with damage multipliers such as Critical Hits, Viral procs, and Headshots.

Other significant multipliers include faction mods and Ash's Passive.

• Faction Damage is applied twice, making their effective bonus = (1+Faction Bonus)^2. Which is +69% (heh nice) for the 30% Faction Damage mods and +140.25% for the 55% Primed Faction Damage mods.
• [Ash]’s Passive is also applied twice, making its effective bonus = (1+0.25)^2=1.5625

So how do all these affect Reaper prime?

• CC= 35 x (1 + 0.6 x (12-1) ) = 266% CC ( Crit Tier "2.6")
  or if you have GladiatorSet: (Each CC Value for each added gladiator mod)
  CC = 304.5%, 343%, 381.5%, 420% (heh nice), 458.5%, 497%
• CD= 1 + 2.6 x (4.75 -1) = 10.75x
  or if with full GladiatorSet:
  CD = 1 + 4.97 x (4.75-1) = 19.6375x
• SC = 25 x (1 + 0.15 + 0.15 + 0.4 + 0.4 x (12-1) ) = 152.5% (3 procs every 2 hits)
• Slash Procs (Assuming 4 Status proced on enemies, including 10 viral stacks)
  = 0.35 x 1160 x 10.75 x 4.25 = 18 549
  with GladiatorSet:
  = 0.35 x 1160 x 19.6375 x 4.25 = 33 884

While the values 18 549 or 33 884 may seem lackluster compared so some builds boasting "oRh yEa oV3r MiLlI0n DaMaGe", this is because it is only a single slash proc tick value, without faction mods, [Ash]'s passive, Melee arcanes, CO Primer etc. Also for slash builds with elemental damage to boost damage on hit, the slash procs will not receive the bonus damage from the elemental multiplier, and against armor, the boosted damage becomes very tiny as compared to the slash ticks because of armor damage reduction.
If you hit the target twice, that theoretically results in 3 slash procs 55 647 or 101 652(Gladiator) dmg per second, for 6 seconds 333 882 or 609 912 total damage, which bypasses armor.

Why unmaxed Virulent Scourge/[Vicious Frost]?

It is most important to ensure slash procs have the high priority to proc as it is the main source of damage. Strongly suggest keeping viral at a total of 75% with 1 maxed and 1 R0 Virulent Scourge/[Vicious Frost].
Higher Viral percentage bonus is unnecessary as you only need the 10 viral procs. At higher levels, especially against armor, raw damage just doesn't cut it anymore. Ideally, a CO Primer to proc viral along with other statuses to boost [Condition Overload] is used to save 2 slots on melee for more damage (i.e faction damage) or utility (i.e range). Which segues me right to my next point.

Build Variations

As said in the Overview, I will now discuss some viable variations with warframe/gun/aura

• Warframe
  [Ash] is extremely good for this as his passive offers a 1.5625x damage increase to slash procs, his smokescreen is also one of the best invisibility abilities in the game, and his BladeStorm augment, Rising Storm gives a passive +10s combo duration which can replace combo duration on melee, saving a slot on melee.

• Guns
  Secondary pistols are great as CO Primers. Pistols like a Magnetic [Kuva Nukor] or a [Tysis] with high SC and innate secondary elements make them great for boosting Condition Overload's damage bonus as well as procing viral, saving 2 slots on melee.

• Aura
  [Swift Momentum] on your frame or [Melee Guidance] on squadmates can replace combo duration on melee. [Steel Charge] is kinda decent. [Empowered Blades] can also be extremely useful with its unique "+60% Status Damage" on heavy attacks, although at the cost of shields which may be detrimental if you are relying on shield gating to stay alive.

Melee build options

With the factors above in mind, here are some further advice for modifying the main build:

• Condition Overload, BloodRush, WeepingWounds are absolutes and should not be swapped off.
• Organ Shatter and Berserker may be swapped with a riven with AS/CD stats.
• [Virulent Scourge] and Vicious Frost can easily be swapped out if using a CO primer or if the damage is simply sufficient even without viral procs.
• [Drifting Contact] can be swapped out if you use [Rising Storm] augment or Combo Duration auras.

Final Words

This guide is already quite long and I'm not sure how many people will even see the build, let alone the guide. But I hope whoever comes across this finds it useful and effective in their runs. Incidentally, the principles of this build can be applied to other weapons like the Nikana Prime, with little variation, so I hope readers of this guide section also feel more informed about how damage - at least for melees - work in warframe.
I've also made a guide for DPS in disruption detailing how I managed a 150 rounds kelpie arbitrations, and a 297 rounds Apollo Arbitrations. Link to the guide here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jgWRvGipoilefkbCiJKUwLFO9T4XoPUqqdwdoUWfjrs/edit?usp=sharing
Thanks for reading! I hope this helps improve the general gameplay of players so everyone can enjoy a fun time in warframe.

Cheers,
--PG--SSJ.OneeChan--