General Use [Hildryn] build with high strength + [Corrosive Projection] for full strip pillage on each single cast, [Blazing Pillage] augment for additional shield gain and heat procs and Electric Elemental Ward for bonus shield capacity as well as passive electric procs that stun enemies (and deal decent damage when full stripped). Elemental Ward has an additional synergy with Pillage as shields lost in casting Pillage is also converted to electric damage for elemental ward (with a 1:1 ratio).

IMPORTANT: You must set your PRIMARY EMISSIVE COLOUR to a BLUE or PURPLE hue to set it as Electric Elemental Ward.

Alternative Hildryn Builds:

• Mecha Powered Blazing Pillage Nuke with Heat Inherit : https://overframe.gg/build/441577/
• Balefire Nuke with Airburst Rounds: https://overframe.gg/build/441574/hildryn-prime/balefire-burst-airburst-rounds-balefire-hildryn-nuke/

PLAYSTYLE

1. Activate Haven so Pillage is able to proc [Blazing Pillage].
2. Activate Elemental Ward and reactivate on cooldown
3. Activate Balefire and Spam shots if you want to use it
4. Spam Pillage whenever enemies are around to regain shields, strip armor as well as hit with heat + electricity procs for light crowd control and damage

Video Showing Playstyle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcZm_sqLyrw

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SURVIVABILITY

The two main options for surviving depend on what type of content you want to play.

1. CASUAL STEEL PATH
   For base steel path and below, casual tanking should be sufficient for you. Using [Adaptation] will increase your effective shield HP to over 50,000 at max. Note armor does NOT affect damage reduction on shields, so there is no need to add any armor mods or shards. Arcane Aegis and/or Arcane Barrier can improve this even further allowing you to often regenerate shields faster than you take damage even without spamming Pillage.

2. ENDURANCE STEEL PATH
   For endurance runs (e.g. level 500-1000 and higher), enemies can easily deplete all your shields in seconds or in one hit despite adaptation and max shields. Luckily Hildryn has a special passive where she gains 3s of i-frames when shields break. Shield recharge delay is only 1s and she can regenerate shields at approximately 300 shield/s, meaning you will be able to cast Pillage again by the third second before i-frames end. Pillage lasts either 2.6s or you can end it early. If you use Rolling Guard near the end of your 3s i-frames you will get another 3s of i-frames which should give you enough buffer time to safely cast Pillage and regain all shields to reset your shield gate. You can also stack Vazarin protective dash on top of this for 4s of i-frames on demand with NO cooldown for serious endurance runs. Note, you MUST subsume a good crowd control to reduce the frequency of your shields breaking otherwise you won't be doing much damage since you're constantly trying to reset your shields. Crowd control options include Breach Surge, Resonator, Shooting Gallery which do not work on eximus/acolytes/demolysts and Gloom, which works on acolytes/demolysts/necramechs but not eximus.

BUILD SPECIFICS

Duration
Positive duration helps scale the spread distance of Pillage giving a final effective range of approximately 60m. Duration also improves the shield drain of Haven and duration of Elemental Ward.

Efficiency
You can run negative efficiency since Hildryn has self-sustaining energy economy due to Pillage. Every cast of Pillage at 45% costs 234 shield which can return thousands of shield per cast, up to over 5000 shield with both Haven and Elemental Ward active. If you still have issues with energy economy, you can try to fit in [Streamline]. Haven drains 39 shield per enemy per second, so if you are in a dense group of 20 enemies they could drain up to 700 shield/s.

Range
Range is required for scaling the radius of Balefire, initial cast radius of Pillage, radius of Haven and discharge radius of Electric Elemental Ward. You can run anything between 145 to 235% range up to preference, e.g replace Primed Continuity/[Umbral Intensify] with [Augur Reach] or [Overextended].

Strength
Strength is required for the damage of Balefire, the strip amount of Pillage, the damage and bonus shield capacity of Haven and the damage and shield capacity of Elemental Ward.

With [Corrosive Projection] reducing Armor to 82% while solo, you only need 328% strength for Pillage to strip 82% armor for a full strip (256% strength if two Corrosive Projections in squad, 184% strength if three and only 112% strength if all four players run Corrosive Projection).

This solo strength threshold can be achieved in one of the following ways:

• OPTION 1 MOLT AUGMENTED ARCANE (requires 208 kills at least): Blind Rage + Transient Fortitude + Augur Secrets + Molt Augmented
• OPTION 2 NO ARCANE (requires extra mod slot, Exilus slot and more forma): Blind Rage + Transient Fortitude + Umbral Intensify + Augur Secrets + Power Drift
• OPTION 3 ARCHON SHARDS with NO ARCANE: [Blind Rage] + Transient Fortitude + Umbral Intensify + 30% worth of strength shards (e.g. 3 normal crimson or 2 tauforged crimson)

Aura

• [Corrosive Projection] is most ideal for full strip Pillage in a single cast, since it reduces the strength threshold down from 400% to 328%. This basically acts like a 72% strength mod in terms of Pillage.
• [Combat Discipline] could be useful to help proc Arcane Avenger in endurance scenarios, but in base SP all the damage you take on your shields can also consistently activate arcane avenger.
• Enemy Radar is always nice quality of life to have
• [Growing Power] can help you hit a 400% str threshold when combined with Archon Shards.

Exilus
Completely flexible. Primed sure footed fits the natural polarity.

Flexible Slots
Rolling Guard/Adaptation and Blazing Pillage are both flexible for any combination of:
- [Adaptation] if you prefer to have passive tankiness for casual SP missions. Having up to 90% DR on your shields can increase your shield eHP to over 50,000.
- Rolling Guard is better for endurance, but this could easily be replaced by Vazarin protective dash too
- Augur Reach for more range to scale all her abilities
- Balefire Surge for a more Balefire oriented setup, if you enjoy aiming for direct hits or if you are playing corpus/corrupted maps full of nullifiers
- [Archon Vitality] to double the heat DoT applied by each cast of [Blazing Pillage], good for AoE nuking in low levels. Note this doesnt really do much damage in steel path without Heat Inherit.

Slotting archon shards for strength can let you hit full strip requirements easier.

Arcanes

• Augmented is specifically used to hit the 328% str threshold but if you don't mind casting twice for full strip, or have multiple strength archon shards, you could drop this
• Aegis - when this procs, your rate of shield [Regen] could surpass the damage you take. If this procs during your shield gate duration you will effectively be immortal as you will constantly be refreshing your shield gate (at least to the 0.33s iframe window)
• Barrier - consistently procs during hildryns 3s shield gate which returns her to instantly full shields, very useful but falls off in endurance
• Avenger - used for adding flat crit chance to Balefire

Archon Shards

• 2 Cast Speed
• 3 10% Strength shards or 2 15% tauforged strength shards lets you hit 328% strength, meaning you dont need to build up Molt Augmented for strength.

HELMINTH ABILITIES

• Elemental Ward (Electric) - gives more shield capacity and stuns enemies with electric status effect. Since Blazing Pillage damages enemies but drains your shield to cast, it is counted as a form of damage and
• Gloom - Crowd controls enemies, prolongs the stun on Haven (on light units) and [Blazing Pillage] heat procs, and energy sustain is via Pillage. The channeling cost of Gloom is also not inflated into shield cost, so at 45% efficiency Gloom only costs a maximum of 9 shield/s at 10 enemies.
• Breach Surge - blinds enemies, damaging or killing enemies generates sparks that scale off damage dealt. These sparks deal more damage against unarmored enemies stripped by pillage.
• Roar - Boosts the heat DoT damage from Blazing Pillage and damage output of Balefire
• Shooting Gallery with Muzzle Flash - passively blinds enemies are you get kills ,doesnt afffect acolytes or eximus
• Resonator - turns off enemy aggression, doesnt afffect acolytes or eximus

OPERATOR

Vazarin Protective dash is nearly compulsory in steel path (particularly endurance) as you need all the i-frames you can get if you lose shields, so you can regenerate shields quickly enough to cast pillage and return shields within the i-frame time. Vazarin also has the [Guardian] Break ability which increases shield regeneration rate when [Guardian] Shell breaks.

Madurai is excellent for giving bonus cast speed and 40% strength.

ARSENAL

Balefire Charger build: https://overframe.gg/build/441556/

Companions/Specters:
Taxon: https://overframe.gg/build/441108/

• Molecular Conversion - An attack by taxon is converted into 200 shields for HIldryn with a 12s cooldown, basically equating to 1000 free shields every minute.
• Guardian - fully regenerates shields to max when shields deplete, with 30s cooldown. This is a huge lifeline to hildryn whenever her shields break.
• Shield Charger - Gives 60% extra shields for 10s (calculated from base unranked shields, so about 285 for Hildryn), with a 30s cooldown, equating to about 600 bonus shields for 20s out of every minute.

Raksa Kubrow: https://overframe.gg/build/442740/

• Protect - gives 300 shields every 5s whenever your shields are not max
• Pillage also affects Kubrows and Moas but NOT sentinels so you can keep this alive by just spamming Pillage

Nychus Moa: https://overframe.gg/build/444949/

• Can equip [Guardian] mod like sentinels, can also equip [Verglas] for extreme DPS, but MoAs can also be affected by Pillage and can be revived, so have better longevity compared top Sentinels.
• Can also equip any second precept.

Shield Osprey Specter: Gives 100 flat shields + 35% base shields (166), equating to about 266 bonus shields.

Weapons:
Raw damage non-slash weapons that thrive off Pillage Armor strip:
Shedu: Shoots Heat projectiles with Electric AOE, fitting the theme of fire and thunder: https://overframe.gg/build/446053/
Arca Titron: Big electric slams https://overframe.gg/build/383171/arca-titron/mjolnir-x12-heavy-electric-slam/

An AOE heat inherit primer could be useful to allow Blazing Pillage heat procs to do more damage:
Epitaph: https://overframe.gg/build/376162/epitaph/heat-inherit-primer-epitaph/

[Rakta Dark Dagger] has a special ability where it generates shields on dealing damage to an enemy affected by radiation procs, provided you have some shields already. Unfortunately, haven does not proc radiation status on enemies.