This build is designed to abuse the new Melee Doughty arcane from 1999. [Vaykor Sydon] has the highest puncture contribution of any melee weapon (tied with its normal version), has a high status chance of 33%, and a reasonable crit chance of 21%. This build wants to stack as much status chance as possible since Doughty turns it into crit damage, a bunch of crit chance to go with it, and no elements so that puncture has as high of a contribution as possible.

Mods

• Primed Pressure Point - Simple base damage. You can use Condition Overload if you are using a primer, but this build will only ever proc one type of status effect.

• Auger Strike and Jugulus Barbs - In lieu of elemental mods, we are increasing our damage with puncture mods. These are more valuable than usual given the [Sydon]'s 95% puncture weighting, and these mods I crease that to 98%, which does actually account for an extra 1x mult when your status is maxed. Jugulus also gives status chance which gives us more crit damage.

• Weeping Wounds - A backbone of this build, it give us tons of status chance which turns into a ton of crit damage, for a crit damage of 21.5x once fully stacked.

• Blood Rush and Sacrificial Steel - Crit damage will be entirely taken care of by Melee Doughty, but we want as much crit chance as possible. These two together will max out at 182.8% crit chance for 42x damage super crits (overframe will show 229% due to doubling Sacrificial Steel's contribution).

• Primed Fury and Gladiator Vice - These are mostly flex slots, attack speed is just the simplest damage multiplier. These could pretty easily be replaced by a Smite mod or a Riven.

• Exilus - [Condition's Perfection] will add more status chance to your tennokai attacks, increasing the critical damage they deal, or you can use [Discipline's Merit] if you prefer it. [Guardian Derision] is also an option here if you actually want to use the [Vaykor Sydon]'s radial blind ability.

Riven

Your best stats to aim for are crit chance and status chance. Status chance will give you more crit damage, and crit chance can push you over into red crits (62.5x) which you can't otherwise achieve without a second Gladiator mod somewhere. Melee damage, puncture damage, and attack speed are also fine stats, especially if you are replacing the attack speed mods with a Riven and a Smite. Crit damage and range are fine as other options but should not be prioritized. Unfortunately elemental damage should be avoided, unless you can profitably squeeze viral in using a Riven; something like +tox/+cold/+status chance may be worth it.

Why not mod for viral directly?

Viral is a huge damage increase, but Melee Doughty relies heavily on the weighting of your puncture damage, and introducing any other types of damage will lower your crit damage. For example, using 60/60 viral mods in place of the puncture mods drops your puncture contribution from 98% to 43%. They also just give you less damage: 120% viral vs 210% puncture. You could make this up with Primed Fever Strike, but then you have less status chance which means less crit damage and also lower puncture % for less crit damage - you see the problem. It's not all bad however, 60/60 viral does outperform this build at 4+ viral stacks, and with 217% status chance those won't be too difficult to achieve, but it is something to keep in mind. The more viral you have, the less crit damage you have and the more puncture you have, the less often you will apply viral. Puncture procs will also increase your crit chance, but I think its mostly negligible in the viral comparison. It's for this reason that Rivens are likely the best way to get viral on this weapon since you can keep Auger Strike or Jugulus Barbs. Ultimately, exterior sources (Panzer/priming) will be the best way to apply viral stacks. Nourish is probably fine in this regard, but testing buff abilities on top of everything else is a lot more work than the scope of this guide ([Venom Dose] will reduce puncture % but adds damage and strips armor. Is it worth it? Idk, probably).