Lilith, being the game’s premier elementalist, unsurprisingly has a class mod dedicated to Shock weapons. The Tempest com has the same 1st line and available 5th line effects as Roland’s Shock Trooper com, but of course different skill buffs.
Pros:
-Electrocution: Massive 1st line shock damage buff.
-Buff to Silent Resolve provides massive damage reduction after exiting phasewalk.
-Bane of Eridians.
Cons:
-Lack of DPS skill buffs means that shock resistant enemies can be a pain to deal with.
-Effectiveness with non-Shock weapons is somewhat limited for the same reason.
-Not necessarily better than Mercenary com for shock SMGs.
The Build:
http://talent.87bazillion.com/siren.php?505055355050005555550
The why:
Controller Tree: 23 points
-Diva: More shield capacity? Sure.
-Inner Glow: Percent health regeneration while in phasewalk is especially nice when we want to stay in it for the full duration.
-Hard to Get: Shorter Phasewalk cooldown, so we can make use of Silent Resolve and Radiance more often.
-Girl Power: One of the most powerful defensive skills in the game, of course we’re taking this!
-Mind Games (3/5): This gives our bullets a chance to Daze. Dazed enemies lose movement speed and significant amounts of accuracy, making them way less dangerous.
Elemental: 15 points
-Quicksilver: +35% to Fire Rate at all times? Sure.
-Spark: More tech pool and faster tech regen means more procs. More procs means more Shock DoT. More Shock DoT means more dead enemies.
-Radiance: Buffed by the com. While in phasewalk, we will do shock damage to nearby enemies. This damage is mostly in the form of DoT, and hence can be quite powerful, especially if we manage to get a good DoT stack going over the course of phasewalk’s full duration.
Assassin Tree: 30 points
-Slayer: Buffed by the com, and more critical hit damage is always welcome anyways.
-Silent Resolve: Also buffed by the com, the description of the skill is misleading, it actually provides damage resistance (100% does not equal damage immunity) rather than damage reduction (100%=immunity to damage), but the amount is also much higher than claimed, being a whopping 50%/pt. instead of 14%/pt. Thus, for 5 seconds after exiting phasewalk, we are so highly resistant to damage as to be nearly immune to it (a 400% (450% with 9/5) increase in effective health and shields).
-Enforcer: On-kill spread reduction and bullet damage, nice buff to our Shock weapons.
-Hit & Run: As radiance does damage during phasewalk, the longer our phasewalk is, the more time Radiance has to deal damage, hence this skill is very worthwhile at helping us get the most out of Radiance. It also incidentally gets us more out of Inner Glow too.
-High Velocity: Increased Bullet velocity and damage, lovely.
-Blackout: Reducing phasewalk’s cooldown as much as possible allows us to use phasewalk more often, which lets us access Radiance’s damage, and the subsequent massive damage reduction from Silent Resolve more often.
Gear:
Guns:
The rule here is simple: Shock=good. But what sort of Shock guns are available? There are a few which are worth mentioning specifically because of just how effective they are:
-Orion: This legendary S&S semi-auto sniper rifle is famous for its ricocheting bullets which split into 3 (or 4) bullet which all do full damage when it impacts a surface at an angle for the first time. As a result, it can deal far greater damage that it’s already impressive stats would imply, and it already an above par shock sniper rifle. Moreover, the multiple projectiles greatly increases its ability to generate a DoT stack, especially since shots from this gun always proc, which is especially powerful given the short duration of Shock DoT effects.
-Atlas Aries: The pearlescent Atlas revolver is not only a phenomenally good shock revolver, but it also heals you like a transfusion grenade from it’s damage.
-Eridian Thunderstorm: Surprising enough, not all eridians are trash. The thunderstorms are probably the best Eridian weapons in the game, and are actually pretty potent shock weapons, which are basically Eridian analogs of a shock shotgun that readily stack Shock DoT. Between the ease with which one can be acquired and their DoT stacking effectiveness, unless I have an Orion handy, I typical use one of these to kill Craw Maggots because they’re actually better at it than just about anything else I could have other than an Orion.
-Eridian Lightning: Second only to the thunderstorm among Eridian weapons, the Eridian Lightning is effectively an eridian version of a shock sniper rifle with a high DoT chance, but the weapon sways while ADS, so you will have to get used to correcting for this to get the most out of its high accuracy. That said, it’s precision, effective DoT stacking, and ready availability make it a very effective weapon with this build in particular.
Other shock weapons will generally have similar characters among shock weapons of their given type, hence we need only compare and contrast how the different types of weapons perform as Shock elemental guns.
-Repeater Pistols: Low tech costs+moderate rates=tech pool lasts a while, surprisingly good for DoT stacking.
-Machine Pistols: Share the low tech costs of Repeaters, but have Stinger SMG level fire rates. Make great bullet hoses that will still stack DoT pretty well.
-Revolver Pistols: Slow fire rates, but always proc, so they WILL apply DoT every time (unless ofc the target is DoT immune, many bosses are). High accuracy makes them great for sharpshooting DoT stacking.
-SMGs: High Fire Rate and good accuracy, but high tech costs, so poor at stacking DoT. Best for mid-range impact DPSing.
-Combat Shotguns: Generally low accuracy, high impact DPS, poor proc rates. Procs are an, all-or-none thing though, so when they do proc, it will stack quite a bit of DoT if all the pellets hit the target.
-Assault Shotguns: Similar to Combat Shotguns, but have higher fire rates and somewhat lower per-shot damage and pellet counts are usually lower (7 versus 7 to 12 depending on type of Combat Shotgun in question)
-Combat Rifles: Burst fire, and highly accurate, poor proc rates, and thus best of impact DPS sharpshooting.
-Machine Guns: Less accurate than SMGs but higher impact DPS, other characteristics are similar.
-Repeating Sniper Rifles: Extreme accuracy, high tech costs make DoT stacking hard, but proc chance is high, so they will proc periodically. Low fire rate. Best for long range sniping.
-Semi-auto Sniper Rifles: Very High accuracy, higher fire rate than Repeating Snipers, procs infrequent as a result. Best for long range impact DPSing.
-Rocket Launchers (also, Carnage Shotguns): Despite not taking advantage of Spark, Slayer, Enforcer, or High Velocity, shock Rockets are still quite effective with this build, useful for providing excellent AoE damage, and spreading Shock DoT around.
Shield:
As is usual with Lilith, the higher capacity shield, the better. As such, the highest capacity Pangolin shields are typically best. In some situations, an Extreme Resistance shield of highest capacity may be desirable, particularly a Cationic Shield with Shock Carnages and Rocket Launchers will help diminishing the danger of your own splash damage to yourself, which is especially significant given that shock damage is very strong against shields and most of Lilith’s hit points are usually from her shield.
Grenade Mod:
Just like with the weapons, the rule of thumb here is: Shock=good.
Here’s a rundown of the various types of Shock nades and their uses.
-Contact: Basic general purpose explodes on contact grenades that do good damage in a moderate radius.
-Rubberized: These will bounce around like crazy! With some practice however, you can reliably throw them near enough to the enemy that they will explode immediately (their trigger radius a fair bit bigger than Contact grenades). Their blast radius also seems to be bigger than Contact Grenades too.
-Sticky: Stick to objects and people, will detonate after a brief timer. A little harder to land than Rubberized and Contact nades, but they’ll stay with the target and detonate a little later, this is helpful against enemies that hit-and-run (like Rakk) as it means they will get far enough away from you before the Grenade goes off that you won’t be caught in your own Grenade’s blast radius.
-Proximity Mine: Only stick to the ground but they will stay there for quite some time before detonating, unless of course an enemy wanders too close after their brief arming time. These are great against enemies that bum-rush you (skags, psychos), set up a minefield ahead of time, and then start the fight and let them run through the minefield to get to you.
-Longbow: The ultimate sniping Grenades, deliver exploding electric death with pinpoint precision over tremendous distances. Aim at the targets feet to make sure it lands next to them so they’ll feel the hurt. Also great for nade-jumping (your shield will hate you for trying to do so with a shock nade though).
-Bouncing Bettie: Great for spreading Shock DoT all around, use these to soften up a mob for easy pickings.
-MIRV: Kinda like Bouncing Betties, but smaller blast radius and they take longer to do their thing. The upshot of this is that they deny area better than Betties do, and are somewhat better at getting at enemies in cover too.
-Rain: These Grenades are rather unique, the Grenade pops into the air about 10-15 feet and then rains down acid on anything caught below. These are REALLY good DoT stackers, use em to get a nice big Shock DoT stack going on your unfortunate victim(s).
Mat2 or Mat3?:
It’s worth examining the question of when to use the Mat2 version, which has +84% Shock Resistance (this works out to +84% effective health and shields against Shock damage), versus the mat3 version, which has +42% Shock Elemental Effect Chance (this actually increases the tech pool regeneration rate of the currently held shock weapon by 42%, which has varying effects on actual proc rates). In most cases, the mat3 buff to shock tech is more valuable than the increased resistance to shock damage, but there are some exceptions. When using a Shock Rocket Launcher or Carnage Shotgun, the tech buff is irrelevant and furthermore, the shock resistance can help reduce the danger that our own splash damage poses to us. Similarly, when fighting against enemies that deal significant shock damage (such as Lancer patrols or Shock Troopers), the Shock resistance buff of the mat2 version suddenly looks a LOT more appealing.
Gameplay tips and other information:
This is build prefers to use Phasewalk defensively, as the 1st line buff from the com is huge for your Guns (for which the relevant skills have also been spec’d), as you won’t be DPSing enemies with your weapons during Phasewalk, though Radiance will at least do some damage in that timeframe. That said, when you do use Phasewalk, be sure to stay in it as long as possible and stand next to as many enemies as you can for maximum Radiance damage (and maximum health regeneration from Inner Glow). You should generally run the Shock element for Phasewalk, unless you are fighting in an area with some Shock resistant enemies, then it may be worth switching to another element.