by ndhwar — last updated 4 days ago
Seeker of knowledge. Keeper of history. Daring researcher of Leverian lore. Dante composes arcane tales to support allies and devastate enemies.
ITEM RANK
3060 / 60
APPLY CONDITIONALS
When first looking at [Dante] and his abilities, it's easy to become overwhelmed. Don't worry though, for what looks like a vast ocean is actually fairly shallow (and in a good way). In fact, with just a good pair of rubber boots, you'll be a member of the Shadow Archmage Money Gang in no time. Let's break down his abilities into more digestible pieces first...
[Noctua] is what the [Grimoire] wants to be when it grows up, and for good reason. Not only does it reinforce the studied scholar vibe [Dante] has, but it also acts as a fantastic foundation for personal enhancement. This is because [Noctua] has a unique trait that allows it to equip an unlimited number of Invocation and Canticle mods. What this means is that you can use your personal Day Planner as the ultimate self-buffing and energy regen tool.
Before moving forward, let's go over what makes Noctua good in the first place:
Noctua build for self-buffing and proccing Archon Stretch: https://overframe.gg/build/638558/
While you can build [Noctua] as a potent weapon for crushing your foes under a burning love for literature, I recommend using it in order to boost your own Ability Strength and Ability Efficiency. You also get the added benefit of passive energy [Regen], thanks to the [Xata Invocation] in combination with Augur Reach. Using the remaining mod slots, we focus on multishot and fire rate to drastically decrease the time between alt-fire uses, as well as adding viral which is a great for priming enemies.
This is where we begin stripping the layers of the proverbial onion that is [Dante]'s kit, revealing just how simple it really is. Light Verse is the first of two verses that [Dante] can cast, the second being Dark Verse. Let's focus on Light Verse for now though. First off, what does Light Verse do? In general, it's the primary building block for our survivability and group support. On cast, all allies within 20 meters base will receive a chunk of percentage based healing in addition to a respectable amount of Overguard. While not exactly exciting on its own, by casting Light Verse we also inscribe a Light page into the HUD Tome (positioned bottom right, just above your ability bar), which we'll cover more in-depth later on.
Stripping yet another layer of the onion, we come to [Dante]'s third ability. Dark Verse is the second verse that [Dante] can cast and focuses more on offense. On cast, [Dante] swishes his Finger Quills, dealing some damage and applying Slash to all enemies within a 50 degree cone up to 20 meters away. Also, after casting Dark Verse a matching Dark page will be inscribed into our HUD Tome. Dark Verse on its own is great for quickly clearing out low level enemies, but it's true power comes later when used in Verse Combinations.
Final Verse it probably the part that confuses people the most, as it uses a combo system based on the Light and Dark pages we preload into our HUD Tome from previous casts of Light or Dark Verse. Like it says on the tin, when you have two Light Pages loaded in your HUD Tome, you can activate Final Verse to cast a significantly stronger support buff that grants a huge amount of initial Overguard as well as Overguard [Regen] when you get either a kill or an assist. This buff lasts for 45 seconds at base and is applied to allies within 30 meters as well. [Styanax] would blush at the amount of Overguard you can generate for your team using this ability.
Moving on, we have our second potential combo, a Light Verse followed by a Dark Verse (the order does matter, you want Light on the left and Dark on the Right). By casting a Light Verse, and subsequently Dark Verse, we can use Final Verse to give ourselves and allies within 30 meters a copy of our resident textbook, [Noctua]. This copy will attack once per action instance for each player individually for the next 45 seconds. Basically, if you poke a Grineer the book unloads a 5,000 word essay on them. While the damage won't be as high as the original, the great part about the clones are that any status effects your original [Noctua] has, the clones will have as well. This is why we put viral on our [Noctua], giving everyone in the squad easy Viral priming. Overall, a great offensive support skill that makes everyone look a little more booksmart.
Now we're getting into the really interesting stuff. If we start with a Dark Verse, followed up by a second Dark verse, we get to the nuking part of this build. When casting Final Verse with double Dark Verses loaded into our HUD Tome, we can activate Tragedy by using Final Verse. This ability compounds and removes all damage over time status effects into a single potent hit. At base, it deals 6,500 slash damage in a 30 meter radius and multiplies the final damage of all compounded damaging status effects by 3. This is how [Dante] clears rooms, as the higher your Ability Strength, the better the base damage and multiplier becomes. I don't know about you, but seeing a room suddenly fill with a lot of big funny numbers will always make my neurons activate.
Lastly, but definitely not least, we have a Dark Verse followed by a Light Verse. Upon casting Final Verse with this combo, [Dante] will summon three Murder Birds that will fly around and draw enemy fire for 45 seconds. However, that's not even the best part of this ability. The best part is arguably the debuff that the sparkly Murder Birds spread to enemies they damage. Any enemy that a Murder Bird hits will become more susceptible to status effects. This means that the damage of status effects you apply will skyrocket on debuffed enemies, greatly enhancing the damage potential of Tragedy. They also look really cool, just sayin'.
Since we have a way to generate endless Overguard via Triumph, we won't be needing Sure Footed for knockdown resistance or any health/shield mods. Embrace the squishy wizard you know yourself to be, and hide behind your magic barrier while everyone else worries about "health" and "armor."
Next, since we have ample energy regen via Noctua (proccing Xata/[Netra] and [Archon Stretch]), Energize (optional), and [Equilibrium], we slot in [Primed Flow] for a very healthy max energy pool. We then want to boost our range a bit, to allow more victims students to attend our lectures. With [Archon Stretch] and [Augur Reach], we have a respectable 35 meter range on both Light and Dark Verse, with a 52.5 meter range on Final Verse.
Moving on, we load up as much power strength as we can get in order to boost the effectiveness of our abilities. Since we get 60% ability efficiency from our invocation on [Noctua], we could slot in Blind Rage, but after playing Dante for a week the times where you have negative efficiency really hurts your up-time. Because of this, we want to avoid negative efficiency as much as we can. Don't worry though, even when forgoing [Blind Rage] we still have a hefty multiplier for Tragedy with our buffs up. If things start to survive the double Dark Verse and Tragedy combo, remember that you can keep stacking slash with Dark Verse or apply additional damaging effects with weapons in order to create a higher damage nuke. Precision and [Umbral Intensify] are both interchangeable and up to personal preference.
Adding some Quality of Life, we also slot in [Primed Continuity]. This increases our already long base durations so we don't have to recast as often. It also counteracts the negative duration from [Transient Fortitude].
As for the Aura, I went with [Growing Power] since you don't really need [Brief Respite] with the amount of Overguard you generate, more so if you count the shield [Regen] you get with the two Augur mods. While the Overguard gating effect is very short, you [Regen] it so quickly that you should never run into any issues so long as you're actively casting abilities. While this build may have slightly lower Ability Strength than others, it makes up for it by having fewer energy constraints, enabling you to cast your abilities more often.
Final Stats w/ Buffs and Noctua Invocations:
Umbral Intensify;
Precision Intensify;
As for arcanes, Molt Augmented is strongly recommended. The 60% extra Ability Strength it gives is a nice addition to our bulging intellect. However, your second Arcane is really up to you. I prefer Molt Efficiency here as it reduces the number of times I have to rebuff. If you're still running into energy problems though, don't hesitate to run either Arcane Energize or Arcane Steadfast. As for Archon Shards, two Amber (normal or Tauforged) are borderline mandatory to speed up cast times. The remaining three slots can be anything you like. Personally, I like to slot in three Tauforged crimson shards for an extra 45% ability strength, giving a total strength value of 444% when fully buffed. Although, lately I've also enjoyed 3 Tauforged Amber shards for casting speed paired with 2 Tauforged Crimson shards for added ability strength.
Remember, this is only one of many ways to build [Dante]. I definitely don't know everything about him, and will be right there beside you all as we continue to learn more about our Wizardly frame. So don't be afraid to experiment with the build, tweaking it to your preferences and playstyle. But for now, I hope this guide has given you the knowledge you need to become a fledgling Wizard. Hopefully soon, you'll blossom into an Omnipotent Bookworm of Destruction. Until then, be sure to crack a lot of spines.
Updated 4/25/24:
Minor additions to guide, build remains effective and damage bonus from Murder Birds was restored. Build can easily solo Netracells as well, usually finishing in under 15 minutes per Netracell.
