Weapons Platform Gauss build suitable for any content in the game save for Eidolon hunts and conservation. Can pub-carry 60-Eyes.
Archon Shards
For melee main:
5 of the best crimson/violet Melee Crit Damage shards you have.
For other weapons:
Crimson or violet shards with weapon bonuses as appropriate for your preferred weapon, or just crimson duration.
If using Corrosive:
Two regular green (for full strip) or one tauforged shards (if you don't want to dedicate more slots/shards) with +Corrosive cap. With the changes to enemy armor calculation, this might not even be necessary any more for corrosive setups.
If struggling with energy:
One purple [Equilibrium] mod should be sufficient if you’re not using another means of energy economy, since you cast your buff rotation so rarely.
Note on forma usage
Over-formaing your frame affects your starting energy when entering missions, giving you an extra 5 energy per point of unspent capacity. If you forma all the slots, you get 16 free capacity, which gives you enough energy to do your whole buff rotation as soon as you start without using Zenurik or an energy pizza or waiting for [Energy Nexus]. If you run run the minimum forma setup above, it takes 20 seconds for [Energy Nexus] give you enough energy to cast your last buff.
Playstyle:
Load up your preferred weapon and go to town, ideally an AoE weapon which does not interrupt your movement while attacking and which benefits from high fire rate/attack speed. Heavy spam or Tennokai builds also gives you the option to run [Dispatch Overdrive] to further improve your movement and gap closing ability.
My preferred variant has been using heavy attack spam on machetes, since the first part of the heavy attack chain does a 360 degree spin with a forced slash proc, and is the only heavy attack that does not root you in place, allowing you to decimate groups on the move. Following the release of Veilbreaker, block-cancelling to repeatedly do the first part of the attack chain was patched, but you can still do it by manually timing your inputs. Entering Forced Melee mode by holding F and manually blocking while attacking still makes this more consistent.
Also with inclusion of auto-melee, this only works if heavy attack is bound to a button or key, as the mousewheel is too imprecise for consistent single inputs,
Clearing test vs level 195 SP Exo Gokstad Officers. Still need to get my last Tauforged Violets:
In addition to [Rush] adding a sizable 30% bonus to [Gauss]'s already impressive sprint speed, [Dispatch Overdrive] adds another +60% movement speed, and [Amalgam Serration] and Fire Walker each adds another +25% (or 20% if you use [Nami Solo] + [Rauta] instead of [Amalgam Serration]) sprint speed, allowing us to zoom across the map. If you run one of the beam sentinel weapons, it will also point you to the nearest living enemy without needing to look around or look at the map before continuing the slaughter. With the attack speed and melee damage boosts from [Gauss]’s abilities, it’s easy to [Reach] the point where identifying and closing the gap to new groups of enemies becomes a bigger bottleneck for your kill speed than your damage output, also in Steel Path.
Abilities and helminth:
+340% duration adds some truly massive increase to your melee speed with Redline, as well as great tankiness and free melee damage and staggers with Kinetic Plating. Your full buff rotation lasts 100 seconds (120 with Invocation buffs), making for very comfortable play. Tapping Mach [Rush] allows you to easily fill up your battery and activate Redline, and also helps with mobility and keeping the murder party going..
Although Thermal Sunder can strip armour and provide elemental damage with the new augment, and can effectively nuke with multicasting, giving it the range and energy economy needed to make it effective would take up a lot of build space that I find better spent on QoL. Frequently casting it further breaks up the [Flow] of combat in a way I personally don't find enjoyable, and I don’t don’t find it particularly valuable over weapons clearing, as you can instakill regular enemies and very quickly kill bosses in all content the game rewards you for, and replacing it through helminth can provide other useful utility options. If you would prefer a TS-based nuking build, I recommend checking out 170-200 KPM Gauss nuke for all Steel Path content by SentientSpaghetti.
I've opted instead to use shattering impact and toxin damage on my melee for niche cases where slash/viral isn't optimal (status-capped bosses and SP Corpus), and replace Thermal Sunder with [Firewalker], which provides a decent [Sprint Boost], along with CC that scales duration and move speed speed instead of range, and a useful status cleanse for your whole party, shoring up two of Gauss's major weaknesses; magnetic/toxin procs and his difficulty with protecting defense objectives.
Some notable alternatives to Firewalker:
Keep Thermal Sunder and use [Thermal Transfer]: Gives you an okay fire or cold damage boost, allowing you to switch damage types on the fly. Also gives you access to a full strip in cases where that's relevant, though I prefer sourcing that from Shattering Impact for status-capped bosses where slash/viral isn't sufficient. You might want to spend some of the flex build space on more range if going this route.
Nourish: Adds viral to your attacks and improves your energy economy, though we can easily source viral from our companion. A decent choice if you want your companion to put down magnetic for Melee Vortex.
Silence: Can deactivate some annoying boss abilities and gives you the stealth damage bonus if you run the augment. Works better with melee due to the low range of the bubble.
Energize Munitions: A good option when using low ammo or ammo hungry AoE weapons like the Kuva Zarr or Bramma.
Molt/Infested Mobility: Provides more speed than [Firewalker], especially if you run a variant of the build that has strength (e.g Molt Augmented over Molt Efficiency), at the cost of needing to be recast 4-5 times as often and no CC or status cleanse on IM, and Molt only status cleansing yourself and only when you cast it, rather than passively.
Mods and Arcanes:
[Ready Steel]: Frees up [Corrupt Charge] on your weapon if you are using heavy spam, or stacks with it for an additional damage bonus. [Swift Momentum] is also an alternative, giving you some heavy windup speed in lieu of [Amalgam Organ Shatter] or [Killing Blow], and more duration to make building combo for incarnon transforms comfier. If you’re using guns, run whatever aura you want. Some options to consider are [Brief Respite] to keep overshields topped up more easily, [Corrosive Projection] if doing 11 stack corrosive at levels where that doesn't fall of yet, and energy siphon to help with energy economy if needed.
Running four duration mods + Molt Efficiency gives you a comfy 100 seconds on your buff duration, and very powerful redline buffs. [Augur Message] also contributes to your overshield generation, making building shield capacity somewhat redundant. Since [Constitution]'s secondary bonus is useless to you with kinetic plating, and we already have very high duration, it is a good candidate for a flex mod.
While Kinetic plating and using shield gating + augur mods is commonly enough to survive most content, toxin clouds and some some lingering status effects can be a weakness. I personally find having a large chunk of EHP a comfier and less intrusive way to deal with those issues than [Rolling Guard]. If you don't mind using that instead, all of these slots are flex.
Arcane Blessing and [Health Conversion] provide large flat health and armor bonuses with the health orbs generated by Synth Deconstrus, which together with Adaptation gives you a massive EHP despite Gauss's low base health and armor.
Since the buff rotation is so long, Energy Nexus should completely cover our energy needs unless you keep running into Nullifier bubbles.
[Primed Flow] is entirely there to meet the activation condition of purple melee crit damage shards. If you’re not running those, this is a flex slot.
Good alternatives for flex slots are: [Equilibrium] (If you don't have access to [Energy Nexus] yet), [Carnis Carapace] if you're doing heavy spam and want better set bonus uptime, ability augments or archon mods that work with your helminth ability, or more duration. [Quick Thinking] + [Primed Flow] also makes Exodia Brave or Primary Exhilarate double as Life Steal, especially since [Gauss]’s abilities [Negate] the stagger from [Quick Thinking]. [Archon Vitality] might be worthwhile for buffing [Firewalker]'s heat output if you also build more strength.
Weapons and companions:
Run whatever you want, though weapons that benefit from your massive fire rate or attack speed bonus, have a big AoE radius and don’t prevent you from moving while attacking work the best.
Bringing a companion that has [Synth Deconstruct] and can apply viral or other useful statuses to your enemies is universally useful, and much less annoying now that companions can’t die permanently.
Since this build isn’t dependent on using archon shards for utility, casting stats or defense stats, you can dedicate them entirely to critical damage on melee weapons, critical chance on secondaries, or status or electrical damage on primaries.
You can use the freed up build space all these factors provide on mods that give you the biggest stat increase relative to the amount you have of each damage multiplier, or to run more utility mods if you find your damage output is already excessive. Secondaries can run corrosive + heat with a single tau topaz shard since you don’t need to use viral on the weapon itself, compensating for the lack of [Hunter Munitions] to deal with armored enemies on secondaries.
What I’m personally using:
Melee:
For heavy spam machetes, there are currently two endgame options: Incarnon Nami Solo and a Cyath zaw.
Nami Solo has overall better damage output, status, range, and can get 1.0 follow-through, but has the downside of requiring you to build combo every three minutes to activate its transform, which can be a hassle if you’re not using the Rauta. It also has extremely good riven disposition.
The zaw, while slightly weaker, still has very good damage output, does not require combo building for the transform, and allows you to run Exodia Brave, covering your energy economy without needing additional build space and doubling as a pseudo life-steal if using Quick Thinking.
Primaries:
The [Rauta], currently one of the most effective combo building games in the game, makes using and transforming incarnon melee weapons much less annoying. Being a high status shotgun, it’s also decent as an [Energy Generator] with [Equilibrium] Prime, though because of the low impact weighting it may be slightly unreliable without a riven. Or you can build magnetic on it for SP treasurers and slot in Primary Obstruct to put additional CC on enemies while you're building combo.
[Tenet Ferrox] (Impact): A great utility tool, the [Tenet Ferrox] can act as a fifth CC ability covering a hallway for 30 seconds, while constantly giving you energy through Arcane Exhilarate if you give it an impact bonus, fitting [Amalgam Serration] for more sprint speed, and providing more incidental status priming. Switching to it and throwing it every 30 seconds can get slightly more disruptive to your gameplay than using the Rauta every 100-120 seconds though.
Secondaries:
Generally, you just want your secondary to be a stat stick for Carnis Stinger, Augur Pact and Augur Seeker, and Arcane Dexterity for comfier duration. My preferred option is:
Companions:
A companion with Synth Deconstruct/Fiber and a high status output weapon, or the Panzer Vulphaphyla, allows you to not need to run viral on your weapon, and provides health orbs to top off yourself and your companion and proc Health Conversion and Arcane Blessing (and Equilibrium if you’re using it).
Diriga is an excellent option for priming elements for CO/GunCO in an AoE around you with [Manifold Bond] + [Arc Coil], and can also reliably proc [Mystic Bond] to improve your energy economy.
My recommended weapons for the Diriga are the Helstrum, for more AoE proccing, or the Artax, which has the niche use case of providing the most non-physical status types, and [Shivering Contagion] makes the forced cold procs from it trigger in an AoE. Having [Shivering Contagion] on your companion weapon also makes all cold procs from any source on your kit, including all your weapons and abilities, become AoE.
The Verglas also has extremely good single target status output, and is my go-to for any companion which cannot make effective use of [Manifold Bond], like the [Helios Prime].
Various:
A necramech with a [Mausolon] is nice to take down open world dropships, since it skips the stagger animation of summoning and unsummoning the arch gun.
Links to related builds:
Budget version of this build (still works fine): Immortal Melee God Gauss v2
Melee 1: Nami Solo Spinblade
Melee 2: Cyath Spinblade
Primary 1: Exhilarate Rauta
Primary 2.1: Obstruct Rauta
Primary 3: Tenet Ferrox Utility Stick
Secondary 1: Incarnon Furis Statstick Healer and Primer
Sentinel 1: Diriga AoE Primer
Sentinel 2: Scanner Helios Prime
Sentinel weapon alternative 3: Viral/Rad/Electric Proccing Murder Verglas
Sentinel weapon alternative 2 (Requires [Manifold Bond] to be effective): Shivering Contagion Artax
Sentinel weapon alternative 3: Viral/Rad/Electric Storm Helstrum
Recommended soundtrack: Your choice of The Initial D OST, Yellow Line, City Escape, Snailchan Adventure or the Beyblade theme.
My Gauss playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgdQbj7tBiB4GNqVCLaCSmv6aMfKzhvTZ
Revision history:
-Replaced [Archon Vitality] with [Constitution] as a default suggestion, trimmed Helminth suggestions list, changed and elaborated on topaz archon shard recommendation.
-Changed formatting, hopefully to be easier to read. Removed No Umbra disclaimer from title, since most Gauss builds don't use it anyway.
-Replaced [Carnis Carapace] with [Energy Nexus], removed some lingering references to [Archon Vitality], rewrote flex mod alternatives and amended Rauta and Furis sections with alternative builds now that Primary Exhilarate is less important.
-Changed the default forma suggestion and updated the forma usage section to include information about Energy Nexus.
-Changed by nuker build recommendation to SentientSpaghetti's, based on the inspired move of using corrosive projection to make TS armor stripping more reliable.
-Since the last patch removed the ability of amps to proc invocation buffs, and the addition of multishot on the [Grimoire]'s alt fire does not affect proc rate, I removed the grimoire and the corresponding amp I use to proc it from my recommendations.
-Amended archon shard recommendations for corrosive setups after recent armor changes. Also using the new Elementalist mod on the melee weapons, but that didn't merit a change to the main article. Also fixed some minor spelling/language errors.