by ninjase — last updated a month ago
Primal. Insatiable. Grendel Prime devours all who oppose him.
ITEM RANK
3060 / 60
APPLY CONDITIONALS
This is a [Grendel] build designed for general Steel Path endurance and even endurance with a focus on scaling ability DPS via Regurgitate. Feast is required to power his abilities. Nourish provides AOE viral procs and stun, applies free viral damage to both your guns and also provides energy multiplier to all energy sources so you should never have energy issues even at 45% efficiency and with no Arcane Energize. Regurgitate slows enemies by 80% and full strips armor in 17m radius (at max range) and deals scaling damage.
UPDATE DEC 2025
Arcane slot for arcane persistence which prevents you taking more than 500 damage per second while armor is higher than 700. [Grendel] has high base health and armor as well as a passive that gives armor with each enemy swallowed. With [Stand United] in aura you hit 500 armor which means all you need is 200 more armor to activate arcane persistence. This can be achieved by either swallowing a single enemy (each enemy gives 250 armor), by slotting a tauforged Archon Shard (gives 225 armor) or running Unairu (gives 200 armor passively). Using the armor shard is maximum safety/consistency since you will still be safe even if you expel all enemies from the stomach and aren't running Unairu.
With [Vitality] on you have about 5s of time to heal back damage before you hit 0 health. Both Nourish and Pulverize heal you. Nourish heals about 2000 health at 200 str on cast while Pulverize heals above 400 health per second over 5s at 200 str. If you can somehow reach 250 strength Pulverize will hit 500 health/s which exactly matches the rate of health loss from persistence. The only things that can stop Persistence are violence, nullifiers, magnetic status, corrosive/heat status (which reduce armor below 700). [Hearty Nourishment] augment makes you status immune which removes the vulnerability from statuses at least.
UPDATE OCT 2024
Empty slot is for new Augment [Gastro] which lets Regurgitate bounce up to 4 times, effectively increasing ability DPS 4 times. I removed Breach Surge as the subsume and kept Pulverize since you can cast feast more seamlessly while in Pulverize.
Regurgitate deals 2000 damage at base strength + 10% of the launched enemies current health. For example, if you were to swallow a level 9999 SP Corrupted Heavy Gunner a with max health of 1.9 million health and immediately regurgitate it, you would deal approximately 190,000 toxin damage, with a subsequent forced toxin proc dealing 95,000 toxin damage per second, both of which deal their full damage amount since you full strip armor. With 10 viral (due to Nourish viral retaliation), this can be increased to 800,000 toxin damage on hit and 400,000 toxin dmg/s.
If you use breach surge:
An enemy affected by Breach Surge has a 10% chance per damage instance (and 100% chance on kill) to spawn a spark with approximately 4x multiplier, meaning a spark created by the 400,000 toxin proc would then deal 1.6 million radiation damage. Breach Surge has special quirk in that it is coded as a 'weapon' and Nourish actually applies its damage bonus to it, further boosting the spark to 4 million viral damage. Adding in the viral status multiplier again (assuming 10 viral), we can increase this to a maximum of 17 million viral damage at 10 viral stacks. Finally, viral damage on enemies with cloned flesh has a further 75% damage bonus, doing a total maximum potential 30 million damage per spark. If you add Arcane Arachne onto this, we get another 2.5x multiplier for up to 70 million damage.
After stripping armor, we can even cast Feast again by holding 1 to vomit all stored enemies to deal more toxin damage that scales with enemy level, this time independent of health. At level 9999, expelling 5 enemies deals 14 million total damage.
Mecha Set Option
Mecha Set with Huras or [Raksa Kubrow] (wearing the cool Lunar new year skin) is a further option to massively increase the damage and AOE potential of Regurgitate. Mecha Empowered double dips status procs and multiply damage on marked enemies by 6.25x, so 95,000 toxin proc becomes 590,000/s. This can be spread to all enemies in 30m if they die.
Huras as the additional bonus of making you invisible so you barely get hit, while Raksa passively provides shield gate for you as you take damage. If you want to use the Mecha Set, swap aura for [Mecha Empowered] and [Catalyzing Shields] for [Mecha Pulse]
Option 1: Arcane Persistence
Arcane persistence prevents you taking more than 500 damage per second while armor is higher than 700. [Grendel] has high base health and armor as well as a passive that gives armor with each enemy swallowed. With [Stand United] in aura you hit 500 armor which means all you need is 200 more armor to activate arcane persistence. This can be achieved by either swallowing a single enemy (each enemy gives 250 armor), by slotting a tauforged Archon Shard (gives 225 armor) or running Unairu (gives 200 armor passively). Using the armor shard is maximum safety/consistency since you will still be safe even if you expel all enemies from the stomach and aren't running Unairu.
With [Vitality] on you have about 5s of time to heal back damage before you hit 0 health. Both Nourish and Pulverize heal you. Nourish heals about 2000 health at 200 str on cast while Pulverize heals above 400 health per second over 5s at 200 str. If you can somehow reach 250 strength Pulverize will hit 500 health/s which exactly matches the rate of health loss from persistence. The only things that can stop Persistence are violence, nullifiers, magnetic status, corrosive/heat status (which reduce armor below 700). [Hearty Nourishment] augment makes you status immune which removes the vulnerability from statuses at least.
Option 2 : Shield Gating + Crowd Control
For an active playstyle, utilize shield gating and crowd control to allow [Grendel] to survive any level up to level 9999. Use [Catalyzing Shields] to drop max shields to 19, meaning a single cast of Nourish or Regurgitate will reset shield gates with a single Brief Respite or Augur mod active, giving 1.33s iframes. This will allow you to survive any instance of non-toxin damage. Combine this with the stun from Nourish and slow from Regurgitate. Adding a form of invisibility from Huras Kubrow or Shade would also make surviving much simpler.
Option 3: Casual ehp Tanking
Casual Tank Grendel Build: https://overframe.gg/build/547930/grendel-prime/the-glutton-beginners-casual-tank-grendel-300k-ehp-0-forma/
For a more laid back playstyle, [Grendel] can absolute passively tank base SP and about up to level 500ish easily. Swap [Catalyzing Shields] for [Adaptation], [Hearty Nourishment] for [Gourmand] and [Vitality] over [Augur Reach]. Arcane Avenger can swapped for Arcane Blessing and Molt Augmented can be swapped for [Guardian] (both optional)
[Grendel] has a passive that provides 1250 flat armor after swallowing 5 enemies, or 2000 armor with [Gourmand]. Combine this with his high base health pool and [Adaptation] to get a decent eHP of approximately 300,000. For reference, a solo full tank [Inaros] has a max of approximately 1 million ehp while [Trinity] has approx 1.5 mil ehp, and the maximum possible ehp by [Baruuk] is about 9 million.
Duration
You need positive duration for the uptime of Nourish so you don't have to recast as often. [Archon Continuity] is OPTIONAL but allows both Regurgitate and Feast to apply Corrosive procs which can be an extra status for Condition Overload and Galvanized Aptitude/Savvy/Shot on weapons. This is absolutely NOT necessary and you can simply use Primed Continuity if you own it.
Efficiency/Energy Economy
Negative efficiency is sustainable due to the energy multiplier from Nourish and [Primed Flow] + [Hunter Adrenaline] or [Equilibrium]. If you still feel like you have energy issues, you can add any of the following into your loadout: Arcane Energize, [Dethcube] with [Energy Generator], [Emergence Dissipate], Primary Exhilarate
Range
Range benefits the viral retaliation from Nourish, strip range of pulverize and range of regurgitates aoe.
Strength
Higher strength benefits the energy multiplier on Nourish and damage of Regurgitate. Regurgitate only needs 134% strength to full strip, which we hit before Molt Augmented is even stacked.
Aura
[Mecha Empowered] helps nuking when used alongside a Kubrow.
If not using Kubrow, just slot Corrosive Projection
Flexible Options
Hearty Nourishment : optional augment that gives up to 38s of status/knockdown immunity from each cast of Nourish. This is excellent quality of life meaning you dont need [Primed Sure Footed] to prevent knockdown and dont get affected by heat procs from Arson eximus, magnetic procs or toxin procs. Can swap this for more health, Strength or Duration mods if you prefer.
[Catapult]: allows you to speed around in Pulverize, lots of fun
Arcanes
Molt Augmented is ideal to give bonus strength.
Arcane Persistence lets you have easy survivability
Molt Efficiency is an alternative to give bonus duration.
Arcane Avenger is option to boost your weapons crit chance if you like. This does not affect breach surge or regurgitate.
Arcane Arachne gives a 2.5x multiplier boost to Breach Surge sparks if you want to focus purely on ability damage, but requires you to occasionally perform a wall latch.
Arcane Energize for even more energy if you have energy issues.
1 Amber Cast Speed Shard
1 Armor shard optional with stand united for non-conditional persistence activation
3 strength shards to hit 250% strength
Pulverize will be your helminth slot since it limits mobility, deals relatively low damage and prevents you from using weapons. A good crowd control option would be ideal for endurance situations, with grouping as a fun alternative to improve the amount of enemies hit by regurgitate.
1. Breach Surge - needs line of sight but blinds enemies, creates sparks that scale with damage that created it e.g. regurgitate
2. Roar - double dips forced tox DoT from regurgitate
3. Resonator - shuts off enemy AI in huge radius, doesnt affect acolytes/eximus
4. Grouping eg Pull, Airburst, Ensnare, Larva. - brings enemies into group to be hit by regurgitate
Since Nourish provides viral damage to you weapons, it is best to DROP viral mods on any weapons you equip and add more damage, crit, fire rate mods to increase total DPS.
My favourite weapon suggestions are:
Factors that boost Pulverize movement speed include:
