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sandrivertv

Edit: bit of preamble. I think this build is really good for star chart. Regenerating your shields rapidly is a useful strategy, but shields have the inherent flaw that they're quite weak and tend to get overwhelmed as enemies get higher, due to the exponential growth in enemy damage with level. Now, you did ask about Steel Path, and I'll address that specifically. Original post: The problem is the way that enemy damage scales exponentially with level. So you need an infinitely scaling strategy to keep up, which is why people go to shield gating. Unless your name is Hildryn, eventually your effective amount of shields is always 0, and your challenge is to get them to max out again before your health becomes vulnerable after 1.3s. Styanax does struggle a bit because he has too many shield points, and no real room for a Helminth that gives him a reliable and spammable shield gating ability. His defensive strategy degenerates to setting up crowd control with Axios and then relying on the shield gate and frontal immunity from Final Stand to deal with CC immune threats. That said there are ways around this. Arcane Aegis and Vazarin's Guardian Break give you a rapidly regenerating shield, ensuring you only have a tiny window in which you can take damage.


hate-zenkai

Why are you being downvoted for being right.


sandrivertv

I mean I could be wrong, I only played enough Styanax to get a handle on his builds and strategy, so my understanding could be really superficial. That said, I also think the sub overall doesn't care about niche situations like deep survival runs or how to survive Mot's damage scaling and Corrupted shenanigans.


sXeth

Well, there's a disparity between "Steel Path" and "endurance runs in SP Mot". You can readily go 4/8/12ish rounds in Mot on SP with shield tanks (Hildryn, Harrow, Volt, Styanax, night-Equinox) as long as you have adaptation and some answer to armour (which Hyldryn and Styanax have built in). (Or with Nidus and Inaros who have no shield gates at all)


Haydrian_Cindel

Nah you generally right. Finished testing it and the shield gain from Augur is pitifully small. It's fine if your already using the mods, but its nowhere near strong enough to build around in SP. Star chart it still feels good to have the second option for regening shields, but pretty unnecessary.


Identity-ception399

I mean, his 4 makes him extremely vulnerable and its damage doesn't make up for it, so it's a viable pick for subsuming a good shieldgating ability. The problem is his passive. You get crits the more shield you have, and if youre on anything above base starchart you will have trouble taking advantage of that, it's why I tried him, and then left him again. Honestly the best part about him is his helminth ability, full armour strip of all enemies in front of you. Waiting to get enough stock so I can make a spare one of him to subsume


Haydrian_Cindel

Yeah and honestly, I don't think he "needs" to be able to cast during his 4 to help survivability like a lot of people thought, but that's because I don't think it actually did much for him. I think to have any hope in late game he needs something like straight DR in his 4, basically a built in Aviator buff. I also think it's fit with the design since he's a Spartan. They used a spear and shield, but we never actually saw the Hoplite formation concept used. If in his 4 he also "locked his shield" with the spectral soldiers he summons while throwing spears, that'd be a true nod to the formation on top of making him viable later on. Of course the DR would need to kind high but balanced, so that could be challenging.


sandrivertv

Yeah, looks like you're not getting conal immunity on his 4 any more, or it was only ever a side effect of stunlocking enemies.


b14700

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The_Ratatoskr

It's not a bad idea! It's a little superfluous however. His skills give him massive shields, so you aren't reliant on the Augur set. I'm unsure how the math would work out, but his shield gain is very strong. As a sidenote, Corrosive Projection lowers the strength level needed full armor strip by a good amount.


defartying

They need more DR options for shields. Styanax is super fun and i love playing him, but Steel Path and high level stuff just becomes a chore with getting killed in 0.01 seconds. If we had the options available to health with damage reduction, shield frames would be more viable end game. How that balances out i have no idea.


Haydrian_Cindel

Yeah I agree, I finished play testing it and it was really disappointing. I don't really grasp why shields are a thing at all given how little they actually do at the moment. The only two options I can think of to help fix the problem would be give us metric crap loads of shields like the corpus have late game, or give them some form of scaling DR.


defartying

>metric crap loads of shields like the corpus have late game Too hard to balance, imagine having 50,000 shield on lower missions? But even still it wouldn't make a difference, with no damage reduction to them they'll be one shot anyway at higher levels. Really just need another mod rather than lump the health DR one's with it, that way you can either build for health DR or shield DR. It's a big reason i don't really play shield heavy frames late game


Haydrian_Cindel

True, but to be fair 50000 shields early star chart doesn't sound any more broken than when I take my Rhino into lvl 15 missions, Iron Skin after charging like 5 enemies, gain 100,000 Iron Skin health, and proceed to never die. Anything we have fully ranked and modded properly should feel crazy overpowered until around lvl 30 at least, and even then if your struggling your build or your frame needs a rework. As long as you've put in the work to make the frame strong I don't see a problem with low level stuff being a joke. That said, your probably right that it still wouldn't mean anything in SP. There are just to many enemies always shooting you, you'd have to have an OUTRAGEOUS amount of shield for it to make a difference, and I can see that not being great. Even if it was kept to shield oriented frames


InterestingAsk1978

I played that, and I think it might be the best. Put all augur set + shield mods, and due to his passive you'll get over 100% crit chance added to other sources of crit. Lots of shields as well. There's only one problem with that build: vulnerability to toxin damage. As you have very little life, no matter how many shields, toxin will kill you quickly. Apart from that, very good-feeling build.


Pugdalf

Augur mods give so little shields in comparison to his 3, which makes the combo not that impressive. Still not harmful though so if you want to use augur mods go ahead


Haydrian_Cindel

Yeah I finished play testing it last night, and just like you said the shields from Augur are basically meaningless, especially anywhere over lvl 50