The Defender com is Lilith’s best tanking com, offering the strongest team shield capacity buff in the game by a considerable margin, making it a very co op friendly com choice as well. In addition, it buffs Lilith’s own shield strength even more through Diva, increases her resistance to elemental damage with Resilience, and improves her health regeneration while in Phasewalk with Inner Glow. The 5th line effects are resistance to Corrosive damage or to Incendiary damage depending upon manufacturer materials of the com in question.
Pros:
-Lilith’s strongest defensive com. (Up to +99% to maximum shield capacity!)
-Synergizes VERY well w/ Girl Power, and Resilience only amplifies this.
-Co op friendly: Team effects make this com especially helpful to allies in co op play.
Cons:
-No DPS buffs.
-Still somewhat vulnerable to Shock damage.
-Phasewalk breaks aggro, which is bad for co op tanking.
Skill Tree:
http://talent.87bazillion.com/siren.php?505055355500055055550
The why:
Controller Tree: 23 points
-Diva: It’s buffed by the com, and it increases our shield strength, a definite must. Note that the effect is stronger than the tooltip claims, it is actually 6%/pt. not 5%/pt.
-Inner Glow: Also buffed by the com, and it regenerates health during phasewalk. With the duration increase from Hit & Run, you can recover 100% of your health within the duration of a single Phasewalk.
-Hard To Get: Might as well make sure that Phasewalk is always there when we actually need it.
-Girl Power: With all these shield capacity buffs, and Girl Power’s shield regeneration effect scaling with our maximum capacity, This skill is a lot stronger than it would otherwise be, especially since we also have a good bit of damage mitigation thanks to Resilience and perhaps the 5th line effect of the com if applicable.
-Mind Games (3/5): This is a great 3/5 as even at 15% chance, it won’t take long for us to Daze our target if we’re using a weapon w/ a high fire rate like an SMG or Machine Pistol.
-Elemental Tree: 20 points
-Quicksilver: Since this build generally prefers to fight with guns, this 7%/pt. fire rate buff that’s always on is most welcome.
-Spark: Both a stepping stone to Phoenix and another nice buff to our elemental guns. This skill increases tech pool size (10% at 5/5) and regeneration rate (27.5% at 5/5).
-Resilience: It’s buffed by the com and gives us resistance to elemental damage of all types (impact and DoT alike). This makes our shield and it’s regeneration through Girl Power just that much stronger.
-Phoenix: This skill not only provides potent AoE Fire damage around Lilith, it also gives a chance to reduce the ammo cost of the next shot by 1 for 7 seconds after Lilith scores a kill, effectively increasing the size of her magazine.
-Assassin Tree: 25 points
-Slayer: Increases critical hit damage by 62.5% of non-critical value. Might as well get more out of our gun’s critical hits.
-Enforcer: Increased bullet damage and accuracy on kill are most welcome.
-Hit & Run: This is here mainly for the increased Phasewalk duration so that we will fully recover any missing health if we remain in Phasewalk long enough.
-High Velocity: A solid bullet damage that also substantially increases bullet velocity. This will improve our damage and make getting hits against moving enemies easier.
-Blackout: Just as with Hard To Get, might as well make Phasewalk available as often as possible.
Gear:
Weapon:
This build has not inherent weapon preferences, so use whatever suites you. Keep in mind that Slayer, Enforcer, and High Velocity do not increase damage with rockets from Carnage Shotguns or Launchers, so Lilith has an inherent preference for bullet firing guns, and particularly those that don’t need to reload frequently and those that are elemental (these last two are very slight preferences).
Shield:
A very important choice with this build is what shield to run. The build’s defenses are overwhelmingly from shields, both capacity and regeneration thereof through Girl Power. Since Girl Power scales with maximum shield capacity, running the highest capacity shield you can find is generally preferable. However there can be reasons to pick a different shield. In particular, if you know that the vast majority of incoming damage will be of a single element, using an Extreme Resistance shield matching the element in question can be more effect than sheer capacity alone. In all cases, look for a 550XC Impenetrable version for best effect as these offer the maximum capacity given what else they offer due to manufacturer and materials grade.
Grenade Mod:
As with weapons, user preference prevails here. Lilith can avoid taking damage from her own grenades by simply entering Phasewalk before they explode, which makes it less risky for her to use wide AoE grenade types when fighting enemies close to her when compared with other characters.
Mat2 or Mat3?:
The only difference between the mat2 effect and mat3 effect is which element it applies to, so the choice as to which to run is purely a matter of what element you expect to be damaged by more. The mat2 version gives +42% Team Corrosion Resistance. The mat3 version gives +42% Team Ignite Resistance.
Gameplay Tips and other Information:
Girl Power’s effect is not applied while you are in phasewalk (it will continue after you exit if any duration is still remaining though), and seeing as this build is geared towards gunplay anyways, you generally have little reason to use Phasewalk unless you’re in danger of taking a knee (which isn’t often). As the overwhelming majority of your durability is from shields, enemies with shock weapons are really quite dangerous to you, despite the Shock resistance from Resilience, so be sure to dispatch them first when engaging a large mob.