Hello,
The idea of this build is to increase Gun damage as much as possible and add bonus damage because (I hope) it scales off of your gun damage:
- “Armored infantry” increases gun damage by 15% and damage reduction by 13% while our shield is up. The damage reduction sounds pretty awesome when we stack other skills that increase our shield uptime;
- “Drowning in brass” increases our gun damage by up to 60% (if you kill 3 enemies), but reduces fire rate by up to 7,5% and lasts for 15 secs. This sounds very powerful if there are many mobs to kill and the fire rate reduction does not sound bad at all, it basicly transforms a fast shooting gun into more of a sniper/shotgun. Allies get the gun damage bonus but not the fire rate penalty so its extra good in team play.
- “Desperate measures” increases gun damage by up to 50% depending on how low our health is. This should work really well with the next skill.
- “Thin red line” reserves 60% of our max health and adds that to max shield. I’ve heard that it is not confirmed that reserves means missing health and it might not synergise with “Desperate measures” skill, but there is written that the health is “reserved and cannot be restored”. Imo that means that it is not there and we cant get it back, which means that with this skill we basicly have 40% health max. If there are any PoE players out there: imagine reserving your mana. When you activate your mana reservation skill you lose the mana because when you deactivate it the mana is not magically back there, you have to regenerate it. Thats how this skill works imo. If im right then we get around 30% increased Gun damage at all times.
- “Phalanx Doctrine” Increases Gun damage by 10% and max shield by 15% per stack. We get stacks from kills and there is no limit to the stacks. Each stack lasts 30secs. This sounds extremely powerful if you can kill a lot of enemies within a short period of time, but since each stack lasts for 30secs we will start losing the stacks regardless of how fast we kill the mobs. Still, I think it should be fairly easy to get at least 10 stacks for 100% bonus gun damage and 150% bonus energy shield.
- “Vladof” ingenuity" Increases maximum shield by 30% and gives 47% resistance to shock damage. A good skill for extra survivability because it synergises with other shield skills and the resistance is awesome too.
- “Force feedback” makes your shield start recharging immediately after a critical kill. As much as I understand, Critical kill is a kill when you shoot the enemies’ weak spot, so it is a nice skill to boost your survivability even more.
- “Tenacious defence” makes us immediately restore 40% of your shield if it gets completely depleted and boosts your gun damage by 30% for 30 seconds. It can be triggered again only after your shield was fully recharged. Since we have a lot of shield from various skills, this skill shouldn’t proc too often, but if it does then you get a lot of gun damage increase and the 40% shield recharge would be a big ammount. So basicly with this skill you have 40% extra shield on top of already huge ammount of shield you have from other skills AND it gives 30% increase to your gun damage. Sounds really powerful.
- “experimental munitions” adds bonus 10% damage as fire to our critical hits. Since our gun damage is increased by a lot, our critical hits should hit like a rocket to the face. Then add 10% bonus damage to that. Madness.
- “Selfless Vengeance” adds 15% bonus damage for 5 secs and removes 5% of our max health after we reload. Since we have a crap ton of shield the health lost is not a problem, its actually a win thanks to the “Desperate measures” skill. So, after we reload, we get a small boost to our gun damage and on top of that we get 15% bonus damage as fire.
- “Cloud of lead” makes our every 4th shot not consume ammo and deal 11,25% bonus damage as fire. Helps a bit with ammo problems and also adds even more bonus damage.
After this point I am not 100% sure what to pick, but I went with these:
- “Fire in the skag den” gives our splash damage extra 15% damage as fire. Now Im not sure if guns that do splash damage can do critical hits aswell. If they do, then its awesome, if they dont, then this skill would not work with “Experimental munitions” and “Force feedback” skills. In case it does not work, then there are 2 options: a) pick “Fire in the skag den” and drop “Experimental munitions” and “Force feedback” - you get 2 skill points back which you can use somewhere else, you are forced to use splash damage weapons for the maximum bonus damage and your critical kills would not make your shield recharge and b) use these 5 skill points somewhere else (maybe buff up your iron bear with them), but you would lose the 15% of splash damage as bonus fire damage. Anyway I hope that at least some of the splash damage weapons can crit.
- “Redistribution” makes us regenerate 5% of our magazine over 3 seconds? or every second for 3 seconds? after we do a critical hit. Now this sounds like a good skill for some extra ammo sustainability, but it lowers the strength of “Selfless vengeance” skill a bit since we would need to reload less often and, in case splash damage weapons dont crit, it would not work with “Fire in the skag den” skill.
- “Means of destruction” gives us 10% chance to get ammo and 6% to get a grenade added to our magazine/inventory after we do splash damage. This again lowers the power of “Selfless vengeance” skill and, if splash damage can’t crit, would not work with the critical hit/kill skills.
So, all in all, you get tons of gun damage increase, then you add tons of bonus fire damage on top of that and get tons of shield so you never die. And, if it works, you use splash damage weapons. You use iron bear for “oh ■■■■” situations to regenerate your shield and to nuke tougher enemies with your dual grenade launchers boosted by extra direct hit damage. Sounds completely awesome in my head. What do you think?
TL:DR Stack a lot of gun damage, then add a lot of bonus fire damage on top of that and blow ■■■■ up.