by Aerinx — last updated 3 months ago
White, gold and deepest scarlet, the queen of gore in full regalia.
ITEM RANK
3060 / 60
APPLY CONDITIONALS
If you don't know what each ability does you can learn about [Garuda]'s abilities here and you can learn every detail about Gloom here.
This build kills things mainly with Garuda Prime Talons. I will list two different types of builds, builds that take advantage of Archon Continuity to melt Corpus with Toxin and remove armor with Corrosion and alternative builds if you don't have that mod that use a more classic approach with Viral Slash.
Archon Toxin Talons - Use this build if you have Archon Continuity.
Jump into Madurai Tenno and do a chained slingshot to increase your Ability Power for 20 seconds, go back into your Warframe and replenish energy with Bloodletting (3) then activate Gloom (2). If you need to reactivate Gloom again at any point during the mission do the chained slingshot again. Jump into enemies with [Dread] Mirror (1) to keep up the shield and the knockdown immunity. Move around killing things with your Garuda Prime Talons. If you lose your shields or you find tough enemies tap your Seeking [Talons] and bleed them to death with your weapon. Use a primer weapon of you need even more damage. You can go into Operator and back into Warframe quickly to gain more Casting Speed for 20 seconds for smoother gameplay. When you need more energy tap Seeking [Talons] (4) to gain immunity and start restoring health when it hits enemies, then tap Bloodletting (3) once or twice to refill energy before you run out as needed and go back to killing. Recast Gloom (2) when your Molt Augmented charges up to increase the slow.
Casting Speed: You need at least two Amber Shards or Natural Talent (use the 5th slot for it). Without it every cast will feel slow and overall gameplay will be sluggish.
Helminth: Use Gloom (replaces Blood Altar). Without Gloom high level missions will be much harder and you will die or you'll have to use abilities often to trigger Shield Gate instead of killing things with your [Garuda Talons]. Using Blood Altar will also slow you a bit, but it works nicely to [Recover] your health when you are learning [Garuda] and leveling up. Gloom provides health recovery and CC passively allowing you to focus on killing enemies. Gloom isn't the only good Helminth choice for Garuda but it's the best for the gameplay style of this build and it makes a world of difference when you get it.
Shield Gating: With [Brief Respite] you will regenerate Shield every time you spend mana, helping you stay alive more easily. With Seeking [Talons] you will gain invulnerability, you will [Recover] shields instantly and you will start regenerating more shields. Plus being up in the air will make you less likely to be hit by enemies. Press 4 when you are in danger and you'll be instantly safe. Getting less efficiency will give you more shields but will make your energy management bad, forcing you to use Bloodletting very often and having to press 3 many times to recover all your energy when you don't need to fully recover shields to activate Shield Gate anymore.
Health: We use [Umbral Vitality] unlike many other [Garuda] builds to increase our health (and Strength with the bonus with [Umbral Intensify]). Since this build does actually attack instead of killing everything with abilities, we won't be replenishing shields constantly and having a health pool will increase our survivability a lot when we take random hits and will give us more time to react and get safe with our Seeking [Talons]. Definitely not needed in lower level content, you can remove it and see if low health feels better for you, for me it doesn't. You replenish your health very quickly with Gloom, so it really doesn't matter that it's higher for the purposes of energy replenish with Bloodletting.
[Blending Talons]: It makes Seeking Talons affect any number of enemies in range instead of max 8 when you tap the skill, affecting everyone around you without having to aim and avoiding the need to charge the skill. You can still charge it by holding the skill button if you need to. The downside is that the tap range depends on Range stat instead of being independent (up to 60m when fully charged unmodifiable). Also helps your [Garuda Talons] increase their combo faster since they get 100% increase Combo Count when hitting any enemy affected by a Slash Status proc.
[Kavat's Grace]: When you use Seeking [Talons] you are propped into the air and often you'll get a hard landing when falling back down. This mod avoids that stagger and will make overall gameplay smoother. You can avoid hard landings with movement too, so feel free to change this mod if you never experience those staggers or you don't care about crashing into the floor.
[Archon Continuity]: Your [Garuda Talons] are considered an ability and will trigger it when modded for Toxin helping you remove armor from enemies. Mod for Viral instead if you aren't using this mod and slot [Primed Continuity] instead. Combine with Emerald Archon Shard or Corrosive Projection for 98% armor strip. This will add another 80% damage to melee with Condition Overload.
We choose Madurai for the extra Ability Power that will help us increase the slow of Gloom, more Casting Speed on demand and a bit extra free damage, plus really easy killing of enemies in Operator form anytime we need it thanks to the School abilities. You can also use Operator for mobility quickly and effectively with Madurai and Magus Cadence.
Duration: Affects [Dread] Mirror duration, Gloom energy drain and Seeking Talons duration. You'll want higher duration to reapply Dread Mirror less often.
Efficiency: Affects cost of all abilities except Bloodletting and how much energy you can regenerate with Bloodletting. Negative efficiency will deplete your energy quickly and will make you spend a lot of time using Bloodletting repeatedly but will give you more shields with Brief Respite.
Range: Affects how far you can jump with [Dread] Mirror and how big its nuke will be, how far Gloom will affect enemies and how far Seeking [Talons] will hit when you tap the skill with [Blending Talons] equipped. You will want [Blending Talons] to have as much range as possible to hit more enemies and you won't want negative range with Dread Mirror to use it more easily.
Strength: Affects [Dread] Mirror capture damage multiplier for nuke, Gloom life steal and slow (max 95% at 272% Ability Strength) and Seeking [Talons] damage and chance for forced Slash Status proc (max 100% at 134% Ability Strength). It does not increase GarudaTalons damage. Absolute minimum you will want 134% Ability Strength to force Slash Status with every hit on enemies, and then as much Strength as possible to slow down enemies and be safer.
My recommendation to maximize this build is to use 2 Amber for Casting Speed, 2 Violet for Melee Critical Damage and 1 Emerald to increase max Corrosion stacks (you can change between Corrosion stacks and Poison damage on the last Shard between missions depending on enemy if you like to optimize by changing faction mods and such). A mix of Violet and Emerald gives you the most DPS.
Amber Archon Shards for Casting Speed. Use at least two. You need Casting Speed with Garuda.
Violet Archon Shards for Melee Critical Damage (doubled damage with over 500 max energy, best in slot for raw damage) or Crimson Archon Shards for more flexibility with other builds.
Emerald Archon Shard for increased Poison Damage and increased max stacks of Corrosion Status if you make use of [Archon Continuity].
