Disclaimer: all builds made by me are my own personal builds, so all criticism is welcome and in fact encouraged as it not only helps anyone mad enough to use my builds, but also me. (reason most my builds have Rivens is because I love me a good riven and especially the GAMBLING that comes with rolling)

Introduction

Hello all! This [Guandao] build is one of my main melees, of which I find particularly funny when you have fully built your combo counter and then do a lovely Tennokai heavy attack when available for some funny damage increases without costing any of your combo. The reason I am using Melee Retaliation is because I mainly use [Revenant], as I have since his release so my shield state rarely changes unless I forget about my charges but however the other option that I will use is Melee Fortification if I'm using a build that requires more survivability and I happen to use my melee a lot (which I do).

The Build

This [Guandao] is mainly a slash combo build which, once combo is built up will mainly deal red crits I use this technically as a flex build between normal and heavy attacks as I like to be flexible between my playstyle but also because the new Tennokai is rather funny especially since it doesn't take away any of my combo which is built up to maintain my consistant damage.
As for why I have that Tennokai mod on is due to the fact that I don't own and am not using the Tennokai mod I'd prefer which is Discipline's Merit as it removes the RNG from Tennokai and allows for consistent use.
Now there is no range on here, other than the Tennokai because I like to get up close and personal so I can stare in the cold dead eyes of the Grineer Vat Rat as I tear open his intestinal tract in the name of the Lotus and allows me to add a [Gladiator Might] which increases your crit damage from 4.6x to 6x plus the set bonus of the 10% melee critical chance per combo multiplier may not be very useful, but it does help you get into the red crit zone slightly quicker.
On my riven there is nothing that important maybe other than the initial damage increase that is gained from it, with the additional combo chance just being my preference on making it faster for me to get to the higher combos and the heat just coming with the roll, although the damage from heat and the 50% armor strip can come useful granted your main damage will be from the slash damage (normal attacks) and your Tennokai heavy attacks. The minus of the heavy attack efficiency can be detrimental at times due to the extra loss of combo, unless of course you're utilising Tennokai.
The other mods are very self explanatory and rather basic combo build that you can see throughout all combo weapons, with [Blood Rush] and [Weeping Wounds] adding extra critical chance and status chance per combo multiplier making you deal red crits and letting your slash procs get on the enemies very easily with the max of 120% status and 348.9% crit chance (higher than the usual 313.7% crit chance due to the use of [Gladiator Might]). [Condition Overload] to increase damage for each status affecting the target, which can be done by priming with your secondary weapon or you pet as well as the heat and slash procs from your [Guandao] and lastly [Sacrificial Steel] to maximise your critical chance (which doubles on your tennokai attack as it's a heavy attack) and [Organ Shatter] to make the most of your red crits.

If you don't have a riven of your choice, I recommend replacing the riven with either [Boreal's Contempt] as it adds extra damage AND increases the damage of your slash procs or even a Primed Racism Mod depending on the faction you are facing per node. Granted this makes this build not as good as others, so I do recommend looking at the others if you do not have a riven.

P.S. I'm not very good at explaining things that I do, but I hope everything I have put so far helps explains my choices and my reasons (even though it is very much a plain build except for the riven.