Global Event Ambush is nearly upon us and one of the classified drops is Tactician. It struck me that many new players may have not run a SP tactician build before as they have probably focused on getting other gear sets. I have been a huge fan of the set since 1.5 (too long ago to remember) and have racked up almost 130k skill skills. So this is my guide to SP Tactician. If you like being a DPS player or a tank you might want to look away . Current SP tac builds are able to solo Legendary content in around 20-25 mins for ‘skilled’ players so the set is very powerful.

Since the drop of Barrett’s chest ( 10% skill power when no skills on cooldown, 5% weapon damage when 1 skill on cooldown, 10% armor when no skills on cooldown) many moons ago, the tactician set evolved to new heights. The basic build comprises:

Barrett’s chest rolled to electronics with electronic/SH mods. If you have a lot of elite NPC’s you can use purple electronics/DtE mods – you will have longer skill cooldowns but you will do more damage. Run skill haste and EAD or HoK as talents. Why HoK – see further below

1. Inventive backpack rolled to electronics with elec/SH mods or purple elec/Dte mods. You can also run a relentless BP which heals you based on the damage done by your skills. Run SP and any other talent (you wont be shooting a huge amount so ammo capacity is not really needed). Mods are elec/SH or purples elec/DtE. Performance mod is seeker mine damage or BFB damage or turret damage, whichever you prefer. I go for 2 x seeker as I think you get more bang for your buck.

2. Tac Mask – electronics roll with EAD and DtE talents. Elec/SH mod or purple elec/DtE mod

3. Tac Gloves – electronics roll with SH, EAD and AR damage

4. Tac Knee Pads – electronic roll with SP and DtE, the others are your choice. Mod is elec/SP as if you already have 4 elec/SH mods you will have hit the 50% Skill haste cap, so there is no point in going over. Alternatively use purple elec/DtE mods. I use seeker mine damage mods.

5. Tac Holster – elec roll with SH. Max out the electronics roll if you can in preference to the other two. Mod is seeker mine or your choice to match the others.

6. Weapons – here you run a 204 AR (buy a blueprint) (you need the EAD for extra damage on you seekers and BFB) with destructive, ferocious and determined talents. You can then run a secondary 204 AR with destructive, talented and ferocious or predatory if you prefer.

7. Note that the weapon talents directly transfer to you r skill damage. So destructive is very useful for an extra 15% damage to enemy armor. Likewise ferocious will do an extra 10% DtE just by holding an AR with it rolled.

Variations of the SP tac build:

1. You can run 1 FA/SH mod to allow you to unlock talented and competent on a 256 AR. So your weapon pairing would be: 1 x 256 AR with talented, competent and destructive and 1 204 AR with destructive, ferocious and determined. This is what I run. Why? Because I sometimes have to shoot down a shotgunner and need the extra damage from the 256 weapon. A 204 just isn’t up to the job.
2. Instead of elec/SH mods you can run all elec/SP mods. This gives you higher overall SP and damage at the slight expense of longer cooldowns.

Why HoK? Well it means that when you get a kill you get 5% of your health back. Oh, but 5% isn’t worth anything right? Wrong. Your health constantly regenerates in game when you are out of combat or in cover and slowly moves up to the next health bar and then stops. As a tac player you spend most of your time in cover. S o say your health was stuck at the second health bar. It’s not going to move from here unless you use a medkit or heal yourself or if you get a kill with predatory on your weapon. But if you get a mere tiny 5% HoK then your health will be pushed over the bar and slowly make its way back to full health. So 5% HoK has just given you a 33% heal (assuming you don’t take any damage whilst is regens). I use this talent all the time and it means I don’t need to run with predatory when doing Legendary missions.

How to get the best use out of your tac build including which talents to select

So you’ve got your tac build ready. How best to use it? It’s confusing right. You’ve got weapons with different talents, different skills to choose from, and different talents. Help!!

Skills:

BFB: This is capable of doing huge damage, well over 10m from a single shot to multiple NPC’s. To best aim when using a BFB use your AR sight and if you get the NPC highlighted in red you are on target for your BFB to hit. Note that BFB’s nolonger proc talented on a kill.

Turret: Pulse or flame, the choice is yours. I prefer pulse due to the extra range. The turret rpm is around 1500 so it is a devastating weapon too a close to medium range. The pulse turret will proc talented on a kill. Talented gives you 15% skill power for 20 secs. More on getting the best use out of talented later.

Seekers: Seek out your targets and decimate them with the cluster seeker mine. It’s the only seeker worth using with a high SP build. Pick the right talents and shred through NPC’s. Seekers nolonger proc talented on a kill.

Talents:

The main talents to consider using are:

1. Shrapnel – This will give a 30% chance to apply a bleed to the surrounding NPC’s within 10m. An essential talent to have when running seekers.

2. Tech support – Extends your turrets life by 10% when you get a kill. An essential talent to run with a turret. If you turret has been excessively damage by NPC firepower then this wont save it though!

3. Chain reaction – gives 20% extra damage from a blast when damaging multiple targets. Another essential talent to run with seekers or BFB.

4. Death by proxy – This increases you skill power by 20% when you destroy a deployed NPC skill.

5. Demolition Expert – Kill an NPC with an explosion to increase explosive damage by 20% for 15 secs. This is an essential talent to run with BFB/seeker combo but doesn’t work with seekers alone.

You can choose 4 of these talents depending on which skills you are running. I usually run with seekers and pulse turret and change the turret to BFB when required. As a result I run shrapnel, tech support, chain reaction and death by proxy for my seekers and turret. I switch tech support to demolition expert when using my BFB/seeker combo.

Putting it all together:

Seeker/pulse turret combo:

Take cover. Then you need to throw your seekers first. Why? If you throw your turret first , then your turret immediately goes on cooldown and you lose the 10% SP bonus from Barrett’s chest. So seekers first immediately followed by turret. Place your turret above the ground on a railing or tree or similar where is difficult for a heavy to get to and kick. As you throw your seekers first you want to have the 204 destructive, ferocious, determined weapon equipped. Add a coloured skin to recognise which gun it is or use a slightly smaller mag size. Your turret will start to build tac stacks which will increase your skill power on the next skill deployed. Your seekers will do their thing, NPC’s will die, you’ll get some HoK back if you took a few hits. You should be at full health. When the seekers are off cooldown, relaunch them. They will now do more damage as they have the benefit of the tactician stack 4 piece bonus. If you have a 256 weapon with talented on it then you can switch to this before you launch your second round of seekers. If you shoot an NPC or wait for the turret to kill one whilst holding this weapon, then talented will proc and you skill power will go up by 15% for 20 secs. You can then switch back to your 204 weapon and launch your seekers for extra damage. Take a bit of getting used to but become second nature after a while. If your turret now gets destroyed, you can relaunch it as talented will likely still be up, making your turret do extra damage.

Water: Dont forget to drink water if you need an extra 20% DtE for a boss fight or big NPC wave. This will boost all your skill damage for 50 secs.

BFB/seeker combo:

Talented cant be procced here unless you actually kill an NPC with your weapon. This exposes you to high damage as you are squishy but try it and see how it goes. You might see a weakened NPC that just needs a couple of shots to take down with your 256 AR and then you have procced talented . Switch back to your 204 and launch your seekers or BFB to get the extra damage.

BFB/turret combo:

Talented is easier to proc here as your turret will do it for you. Just make sure you switch to your 256 AR as you seekers get close to cooldown.

6pc Classified Tactician

I tested this extensively in the PTS (Xbox) and reported on it here, testing out different combos both 6pc and 5pc: https://redd.it/76csol

It seems that Massive haven’t listen to the complaints about the 6pc bonus and have gone ahead with it pretty much the same as it was in the PTS. The main changes are (4pc bonus) that your bullet damage now raises your SP by 1% for each shot up to a max of 30%. Turrets still only raise it by 0.2% per hit. So you as a player, need to only get 30 hits to an NPC to get the max stack. The turret still requires 150 hits for the 30% stack. This is to encourage you as a player to shoot more. They also changed the 6pc bonus to multiples of 3000 electronics instead of 2000. Bottom line being that to get the full 6pc bonus 100% of the time you need 9000 electronics instead of 10000. This allows you to put 1000 in to FA to make you deal more damage. Should be quite interesting – tac builds that can do some damage. The whole switching skills to benefit from the full 60% 6pc stack bonus is still flawed though and difficult to use, and only gives a 7.5% increase in damage compared to the 30% stack.