INTRODUCTION
General Use Steel Path and Endurance viable Hybrid weapon platform + sunder [Gauss] build for utilising all base abilities with a focus on using weapons to deal damage, cold sunder to crowd control enemies + build redline and heat sunder to strip and deal AOE damage. Mach Rush provides fast map traversal, battery charge and light CC + AOE damage. Kinetic Plating gives complete knockdown/stagger immunity, near complete status immunity and up to 100% damage reduction to impact, puncture, slash, cold, heat and blast damage at max battery, as well as energy generation on taking damage. Thermal Sunder is an amazing ability that allows you to hard crowd control enemies with freeze (at full redline) or soft CC with cold procs/heat procs, do scaling nuking with heat sunder spam or at full redline perform full armor strip in AOE by combining one heat and one cold sunder into blast (any order). Redline gives multiple buffs to fire rate, melee speed, reload speed and holster speed in addition to several bonus synergies for the other abilities such as half cost of mach [Rush], melee damage bonus and stagger bonus to kinetic plating.
Variant Builds
Pure Thermal Sunder spam for nuking up to levelcap: https://overframe.gg/build/591349/
Pure Weapon spam (energized munitions): https://overframe.gg/build/591358/
Max speed meme (molt) or high damage weapon platform (roar): https://overframe.gg/build/327555/gauss/gauss-molt-speed-meme/
UPDATE JULY 2024
The new Arcane [Ice Storm] can give +40% strength and duration and can be easily triggered by casts of Cold sunder, and even triggers when Cold Sunder combines with Heat sunder to make Blast, as long as the enemy doesn't die straight away.
ARCHON VITALITY/VEILBREAKER UPDATE
Archon Vitality now doubles heat procs which significantly increases the output/scaling of Thermal Sunder (since the fused blast damage increases with the number of heat procs). If you are using shield gating, you can use a rank 0 [Archon Vitality] to save mod capacity. If you are using health tanking, you can use a max rank [Archon Vitality].
PLAYSTYLE
You can invert the default settings for thermal sunder so tap becomes heat sunder if you prefer.
Activate 2 and 4 as soon as possible and keep refreshed at all times. You can cancel and reactivate when they are close to expiring in a safe location rather than letting them run out in the middle of enemies.
Build up battery charge as quickly as possible by using 1 and cold 3 (tap 3 default for cold sunder) to generate +10% battery per cast until you hit 100% with Redline active (i.e. simply casting cold sunder 5 times and mach [Rush] 5 times maxes the battery). This will give you 100% damage reduction to IPS,cold,heat,blast on Kinetic Plating as well as allow for 100% armor strip on Thermal Sunder. IMPORTANT NOTE: Battery level is the blue bar in the right lower corner and does NOT have a numerical indicator. The Redline level is an entirely SEPARATE numerical number given by the percentage to the left of the battery bar. Your goal is to simply keep your battery ABOVE the horizontal red line (marks 80% battery) or ideally at 100% battery which will cause your 'Redline' % to steadily grow to 100%, with fastest growth at 100% battery. Note this rate of growth is limited by your duration (takes 1/3 of you duration minimum to hit 100%), and is not really affected by how often you spam 1 or 3 once you are already at 100% battery. Once you hit 100% redline, your battery will no longer drain at all.
Absorb damage to generate energy while Kinetic Plating is active, although note you will lose battery when this happens before you hit 100% redline.
Spam 1 and run into enemies into walls to knock enemies around for light CC and to generate battery. Melee attack to generate battery or shoot enemies to kill them.
When BELOW MAX REDLINE: Tap 1 to mach [Rush] and ap 3 (default cold) to create zones of cold that can crowd control enemies (tap once for cold proc to slow, tap twice for full freeze or full freeze with one tap at 100% redline) and generate battery. Once you are at 100% battery, but below max redline, you can alternate casts of ONE HEAT SUNDER (-10% battery), followed by quick tapping ONE MACH [Rush] (+10% to bring back to 100%), followed by ONE COLD SUNDER to full strip and group enemies. The amount of armor stripped depends on the proportion of the last 20% of battery unlocked during Redline (i.e. 80% battery is 0 out of 20% meaning 0% armor strip, 90% battery is 50% strip and 100% battery is 100% strip). Since you are constantly losing battery, dropping 1% below 100% battery before max redline means you may only be stripping 95% armor on combining cold after using heat and mach [Rush]. Using [Corrosive Projection] actually reduces the required battery level for full strip to be 82% of the last 20% of battery i.e. 96.4% of total battery, basically guaranteeing a single cast full strip everytime you perform the HEAT, MACH [Rush], COLD combo. Performing this combo basically maintains near 100% battery to allow redline to continue to grow, while also offering max buffs, armor strip and grouping even before max redline.
Once you hit MAX REDLINE, you can no longer lose battery meanig you can now spam as many heat sunders in a row as you like. Hold (or tap if inverted) 3 multiple times to create heat procs (eg 2-3 times), followed by tapping 3 to combine heat + cold to full strip enemies, suck them towards you and convert the heat procs into blast to nuke the full-stripped enemies. Thermal Sunder has exponential scaling so that each heat sunder cast doubles all current heat procs.
Heat Inherit
'Heat inherit' is a mechanic where using a heat primer to apply an initial heat proc followed up by heat sunders allows thermal sunder's heat procs to inherit the +heat and +faction mods from the primer. For example you could use an AOE heat primer like [Epitaph], shoot ONCE, then spam a few heat sunders before detonating with cold sunder. This will significantly boost the damage of both the heat procs and blast damage by an order of 5 to 10x depending on the build. Note, this is NOT practical in general thermal sunder spam gameplay since it is hard to ensure the very first heat proc originated from the primer instead of thermal sunder itself.
Blast Expedite
Stacking heat procs from a heat DPS weapon then using cold sunder compresses all the heat proc damage into a single blast instance and applies it after stripping armor. You can easily hit 100k - 1 million or even damage cap if the enemy doesn't die first. For example, you could use a heat DPS beam like [Furis] incarnon, [Miter] incarnon, [Kuva Nukor], [Phage], [Phantasma] to stack 500 heat procs then 'detonate' it with a cold sunder. You can even combine this with a heat inherit primer to maximise damage. This is a meme way to kill strong targets like demolysts and thrax units.
SURVIVABILITY
OPTION 1: Shield Gating for a hyperactive playstyle
This is recommended for steel path endurance. You will rely on a combination of 100% damage reduction to certain damage types while at 100% battery as well as shield gating with shield generation from brief respite/augur mods achieved by spamming mach [Rush] and thermal sunder, crowd control from cold sunder and finally increased passive shield recharge from redline. With [Brief Respite], TWO augur mods on frame and up to TWO additional augur mods on a pistol, each cast of Thermal Sunder can generate up to 108 shields, which gives approximately 1.2s shield gate i-frames with Catalyzing Shields on (or about 0.6s iframes without). Without Brief Respite, we can generate about 56 shields which equates to about 0.8-1s shield gate (note, it is likely you will generate sufficient shields before taking damage while spamming 1 and 3). Catalyzing Shields is an entirely flexible addition to gain more i-frames per cast. Rolling Guard is also a flexible option for i-frames, although i prefer to use Vazarin Protective Sling for i-frames instead.
OPTION 2: Quick Thinking Tanking
This is a meme option for lazy tanking base steel path/non-endurance. [Quick Thinking] uses energy as health pool once you hit 2hp. Kinetic Plating converts damage into energy. This allows you to to stay practically immortal while Kinetic Plating is active since you constantly create the energy you lose. You will eventually get one-shot by an instance of damage that surpasses the total ehp pool, which can be increased with [Adaptation] and armor. Swap [Streamline] for [Adaptation], [Augur Reach] for [Quick Thinking] and Arcane Energize for Arcane [Guardian].
OPTION 3: [Fast Deflection] + Arcane Aegis (probably a bug)
Exceeding the recharge delay reduction through [Gauss]'s passive and [Fast Deflection] then triggering Arcane Aegis once allows an "aegis" effect to persistently trigger subsequently, making you immortal to all non-toxin damage without hitting 100% battery. This is probably a bug and could be patched at an unknown time. If you want to use this simply drop [Streamline] or [Augur Message] for [Fast Deflection] and one of the Arcanes for Aegis.
BUILD SPECIFICS
Duration
Duration is the most important stat since it determines how long Kinetic Plating and Redline stay active as well as all redline buffs. Duration also affects the drain of Mach [Rush] and the heat proc duration of Thermal Sunder, which directly translates into overall sunder damage. [Primed Continuity], [Augur Message], [Constitution] and Molt Efficiency gives a duration of 243%. Adding optional 4 to 5 tauforged duration shards can give up to 318% duration total.
Efficiency
We can keep efficiency neutral at 100% or add [Streamline] to get 130%, because you only need to recast 2 and 4 once every 1.5 minutes roughly and Mach [Rush] is extremely cheap to cast. Thermal Sunder spam is the only ability that has significant impact to energy economy, but [Gauss] also has innate energy regeneration from absorbing damage via kinetic plating. This combined with Arcane Energize means it is very easy to go back to max energy quickly. [Seismic Bond] on a companion can also give a consistent source of free efficiency. [Streamline] is then flexible for more duration (eg [Nira's Hatred]) or [Rolling Guard].
Backup sources of energy include [Equilibrium] with [Synth Deconstruct], [Dethcube] with [Energy Generator], [Grimoire] with [Xata]'s Invocation, Emergence Dissipate, Zenurik Wellspring.
Range
Range is used mainly to boost Thermal Sunders range so you can have high area crowd control as well as high area AOE armor strip + nuke. High range also slightly benefits Mach [Rush] impact radius which can deal minor damage but also cause knockback and light CC. Anywhere between 145 to 235+ range is reasonable depending on the tileset. If you prefer more range, simply swap [Augur Message] or [Augur Reach] out for [Overextended], and use Molt Augmented. [Cunning Drift] is also optional over [Rush].
Strength
We need to keep strength at or above 100% so Kinetic Plating maintains 100% damage reduction at max redline. Strength does directly affect Thermal Sunder but we don't need to go overboard since Thermal Sunder is so strong with exponential scaling and in built armor strip, it kills sufficiently fast at only 100% strength. Strength otherwise is not extremely important as it only provides minor boosts to the damage of mach [Rush] and redline projectiles. If you run overextended, you just need to use Molt Augmented to bring it back to 100% or the Grimoire Strength mod.
Aura
- [Corrosive Projection]: Additively strips 18% armor, meaning you need to be at 82% of the last 20% battery i.e. above 96.4% to full strip in one cast. What this means is you don't need to be at exactly 100% battery while not at max redline to allow heat sunder to one cast strip after a cold sunder or for cold sunder to one cast strip after a heat proc, giving more consistent single cast strips at all times.
- Brief Respite: Optional for generating more shields for shield gating
- Sprint Boost : stacks with rush to mach rush even faster
- Enemy Radar : for tracking enemy spawns, stacks with primed animal instinct and passive radar
Exilius
- Rush : sprint speed affects mach rush speed
- Vigilante pursuit : alternative to enemy radar
- Cunning Drift: for more range
Arcanes
- Energize : optional for energy economy
- Molt Efficiency : adds +36% extra duration
- Arcane Ice Storm: adds 40% duration and 40% strength, can trigger with cold sunder use
- Arcane Pistoleer: for ammo efficiency when using with secondary weapons
Flexible Options
[Catalyzing Shields] is the FLEXIBLE slot for [Archon Vitality], [Rolling Guard] or [Nira's Hatred].
Archon Shards
4 to 5 tauforged duration shards which boosts all of [Gauss]'s abilities.
1 cast speed shard is OPTIONAL to increase speed of recasting redline and make up for low cast speed bonus in initial low battery levels. Once battery is near max redline will give up to 100% cast speed bonus.
HELMINTH
Roar (over 1) - general weapon damage and ability damage increase (double dips DoT effects like heat) and boosts the damage of thermal sunder again (for triple dip).
Energized Munitions (over 3) - allows weapon spam in redline without needing to reload constantly. See dedicated weapon platform build.
FOCUS
Flexible depending on your loadout.
Vazarin gives you on demand 5s invulnerability with protective sling. This is the default school for steel path endurance.
Zenurik gives you energy [Regen], especially useful if you don't have arcane energize.
Naramon is good for a melee focused loadout
Unairu is the least useful on [Gauss] since Kinetic Plating gives knockdown resistance and thermal sunder gives armor strip.
ARSENAL
Guns
Redline buffs fire rate and reload immensely allowing you to take better advantage of normally slow firing or slow reloading weapons:
Fully Automatic pistols that you can use with ARCANE PISTOLEER for infinite ammo:
[Knell Prime] and [Athodai] have inbuilt infinite ammo buffs
Melees
Melee attacks build battery for redline so [Gauss] synergizes well with any good melee weapon.
Certain corpus themed melee weapons (best used with electric + Melee Influence and sunder armor strip):
Other just really GOOD melees:
Heat Inherit Primer
Use a heat based status beam weapon such as [Kuva Nukor], [Gaze], [Phage], [Phantasma] to quickly stack heat procs which you can then explode with cold thermal sunder.
A heat inherit primer can also be used to directly increase the damage of heat sunder's heat ticks and ultimately the blast proc: https://overframe.gg/build/376162/epitaph/heat-inherit-primer-epitaph/
Companion
A sentinel with [Seismic Bond] can trigger a free +30% efficiency because mach rush, kinetic plating and redline all act as a Channeled ability.
Carrier - for ammo issues when you spam weapons: https://overframe.gg/build/541747/
Dethcube - helps generate energy orbs: https://overframe.gg/build/224301/
Nautilus - helps group enemies passively: https://overframe.gg/build/540870/