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Garuda Talons

Malicious Talons: The Strongest Endgame Talon Build

by last updated 4 years ago

10

These nasty things come out when Garuda forgoes a melee weapon.

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ITEM RANK

30

60 / 60

APPLY CONDITIONALS

ATTACK SPEED
1.00
CRITICAL CHANCE
20%
CRITICAL MULTIPLIER
2.0x
RANGE
2.20m
RIVEN DISPOSITION
1.00
STATUS CHANCE
36%
DAMAGE
 IMPACT
19.8
 PUNCTURE
54.6
 SLASH
173.6
TOTAL Damage
248.0
AVERAGE HIT
297.6
SUSTAINED DPS
297.6
Guide
2 Comments
Garuda Talons builds
Builds by LJHalfbreed

Malicious Talons: The Strongest Endgame Talon Build

TL;DR: Use loadout as-above, or swap out [Organ Shatter] for the "Smite <Faction>" primed mod of your choice. Focus on performing the neutral Combo, Jagged Gash, by pressing melee 3 times, without holding forward or block. This comes with two freebie Slash Procs, plus the Viral and Slash status chances of your Claws add insult to injury. End Result: Everything Dies Super Quick using a weapon everyone currently thinks is worthless.

Also, only needs one Forma, changing - to V for your Organ Shatter to work as a flex slot. Don't want to swap out Smite Corpus/Infected/etc? Don't need it!

INSANE SLASH DAMAGE TIME YES!!!!

The goal here was to find SOMETHING to make [Garuda]'s [Talons] worth not equipping a melee for, especially since [Deconstructor]'s Wombo Combo (packing in gladiator mods) doesn't trigger for her claws. Go figure.

I ended up with this, which instead of focusing on "huge DPS on the screen tab", focuses more on leveraging built-in procs on the Malicious Raptor stance to do absolutely insane numbers on anything susceptible to status/slash. You can end up swinging your claws so fast that you look like a blur as everything around you deletes to huge bleed numbers. Neato!

PROS:

  • Crazy Slash potential, amazing synergy
  • Probably Top 20 in damage output, once including slash procs
  • Get to use Garuda's Talons

Cons:

  • Not a lot of flexibility.
  • Can't use Wombo Combo (add gladiator mods to Helios+Deconstructor)
  • Problems with various "Melee Only" challenges
  • You still won't out-damage a Kronen Prime, Orthos Prime, Lesion, or certain decently built Zaws.
  • Suffers against anti-status enemies.

LOADOUT

As shown. To be honest, Organ Shatter is probably going to be your only flex slot, and only to swap out one of the different Smite X mods. Slash procs double-dip with Smite mods to do some insane damage. However, the new Helminth system is dropping, so you may be thinking about swapping out a power for something a bit more useful, so you can definitely find some wiggle room to possibly change out [Drifting Contact] or Berserker.

Oh, and I know for some folks there's a huge desire to try and swap out Viral (Cold+Tox) status for anything else. I advise against it, due to how Viral interacts with Slash procs, but you do you, boo.

  • Organ Shatter swaps

This should probably be your main flex slot that you swap out for regular/Primed "Smite" for the type of enemy you know you're facing. This will usually send your total damage into the stratosphere. However, if you're like me, you probably [Hate] having to swap back and forth between specific builds. So Organ shatter is a solid choice for 'general damage increase', but don't expect to see amazing numbers without a Smite/Primed Smite.

[Drifting Contact] keeps your combo counter high and ensures CO has enough to hit off after the first or second swing. If you tend to 'prep' or 'prime' your enemies by hitting them with a high status weapon (like say, a [Nukor]), if you take along a status spreading companion, or if you have a teammate that spreads status, you can likely swap this out. Goal here is specifically QOL, so things that increase range and combo duration are solid choices, as is [Healing Return]. If you plan on having a lot of downtime between battles, or hate Naramon school, a Relentless Combination can totally fit here and help your combo counter out.

  • Berserker swaps

I highly recommend sticking with berserker unless you would rather use a subsumed melee speed ability (Warcry, etc), or have a pocket [Wisp] to team with. Arcane Strike could be substituted as well. If you are already going to have the amount of melee speed you are happy with, then you can look at the options above to figure out how best to tweak this out. [Organ Shatter]+Smite <enemy type>? Yes please!

HOW TO USE

The goal is to get in close to your enemy, and do a "Neutral Combo". That's where you hit the melee key 3 times in quick succession while NOT holding down block or 'up' or 'towards'. Why? Because this 'neutral combo', called Jagged Gash, hits multiple times, very quickly. Oh, and includes two freebie slash procs, an impact proc, and a 'lifted' status. Super duper awesome. Most standard enemies can barely handle 1-2 of these combos, and once you get your combo multiplier up, even Steel Path enemies quickly bleed out instantly.

If you choose to keep [Dread] Mirror (and you should), you can use this as a closer to get in quick and spam your melee button. Anything that is still alive is about to fall over dead from slash procs, or you can pop another [Dread] Mirror and do it all over again. If you have [Dread Ward], you can practically keep up an infinite 'unkillable' state on [Garuda] as you wreck things, and don't forget you get quite a few nasty hits in if something survives your Mirror and you perform a ground finisher on them.

SUGGESTIONS

While Steel Path and 'regular' are two different beasts entirely for a frame like Garuda, you can do pretty well even on SP by planning ahead.

Firstly, you may honestly want to have 2-3 builds with the individual smites on them. The difference is honestly huge, even against things notoriously tough.

Think about bringing a primary or secondary that is good at "Status Priming"... meaning something that hits AoE and has very high Status Chance (and doesn't even need to do damage well!). If you have a Status Primer you're especially fond of, there's a totally different loadout I can share that will capitalize on "hitting something that already has 2-3 different statuses on it". But either way, sometimes having those extra statuses (especially stuff like Magnetic for corpus nullifiers!) is super useful, as you can do your full CO damage right off the bat.

Also, take a look at your own [Garuda] build. With a bit of time and investment, along with some practice, you can definitely stay alive quite well by leveraging [Rolling Guard], [Dread Ward], and [Brief Respite]+Augur mods to basically keep yourself very mobile and very unkillable. [Rolling Guard] makes you invulnerable (and clears status effects!) for 3 out of every 10 seconds. [Dread Ward] can make you unkillable for a base of 5 seconds. Now that Shields have gating, you can spam abilities to pop your shield back up. Between Rolling, Ward-ing, Shield-gating, [Dread] Mirror's frontal shield, and Blood Altar's [Regen], you can stay alive a LOT more than you probably think without needing to slot a lot of armor and health modifiers. Alternately, throw on all the armor, health, [Adaptation], etc you can, then swap [Healing Return] in for [Organ Shatter] and laugh as you become unkillable when paired with a Blood Altar or two.

Finally, I don't recommend using this in an "Adaptation+Quick Thinking+Flow" Death's Gate build. I feel that type of build is better built for casting/shooting instead of melee, and it's real, real easy to die on Steel Path in melee range, especially on Infested, but you do you. I'd prefer even a [Prisma Obex] over her Talon's here, as the Entropy Detonation aug can make the ground finisher after Dread Mirror leaping an absolute screen-clearer.

Hope that helps, and Good Luck Tenno!