Creating an effective PvP Build

As I've been doing a lot of experimentation with build setups in the past few weeks, I thought it would be good to write a piece on how to craft an effective build for PvP. I will evaluate whether these builds are good for PvE as well, but this article is primarily focused on PvP only. Note that I will not discuss the Blink build in this article because I simply do not like it for personal reasons even though that build is deadly in PvP.

To start, in my opinion a viable build for PvP has to have at least 5 points in agility and 3 points in survival. This gives you all movement passives except for sprint reload, deflector skin, and both health passives. With the 8 points spent as previously mentioned you have 12 left to make decisions with. There are some key skills to target based on your weapon choices. EMP, Explosion Resist, and Projectile Resist are very desirable skills for PvP, and to grab all of these would require 6 additional points in survivability. You could throw all 12 points in Combat to boost your secondaries and grab good crit, ammo, accuracy, and magazine capacity boosts, but how often are you able to really utilize your secondary in PvP? Personally, I feel that investing either 3 or 6 points in Combat is preferable as marksman and magazine max out are the most desirable skills in the combat tree that require relatively little investment. Some do not prefer to give up AM bomb or sprint reload and will choose to put three points in agility. You could go for fight for your life (agility) or flash cooldown (survivability) by heavily investing in either tree but these are situational boosts rather than boosts that are active throughout the match.

There are a few different ways to spend the points that I think are good based on play style. If you want to maximize your offensive capabilities, put 6 in agility and 6 in combat. This will give you more crit, sprint reload, AM bomb, and fight for your life, as well as marksman and magazine max out. If you want a blend of offensive and defensive capabilities, put 3 more in agility, 3 in combat, and 6 in survival. This will give you all the resistances, EMP, marksman, sprint reload, and AM bomb. This build is very well suited for a Niko user as you don’t particularly need a magazine capacity boost for that gun. It also serves plenty of other users well and is a great all around build that is basically a variant of the old Masakrator build. Most people will find this build to be the sweet spot as it is well suited to PvE and has all the mobility skills while having some seriously boosted survivability.

One additional variant that I’ve found works is one that is geared specifically towards using the Faraday Accelerator. Because of the small clip size, 6 points in combat is virtually a necessity, and I love the extra survivability of having all of the resistances, so I put the remaining 6 points in survivability. This yields a build that is well suited to the Faraday user, but has certain trade offs. With no sprint reload or AM Bomb, this will turn a lot of people off, especially those that like to play a blend of PvE and PvP. I gladly accept the tradeoff as I play little PvE and find the Faraday to be my favorite weapon. In conclusion, the key viable alternatives to the Blink build in the current meta (0.7.7) are the following builds:

11A-6C-3S (Offensive build)

Key skills: Fight for your life, all Mobility, Magazine Max Out, Marksman, Deflector Skin, and Health Passives

Pros: High damage, lends itself well to PvE

Cons: No resistances, so this has a lower survivability rating.

8A-3C-9S (Hybrid build)

Key skills: All Mobility, Marksman, Deflector Skin, Health Passives, EMP, and all Resistances

Pros: High survivability and mobility with easy transfer into PvE gameplay

Cons: Does not play particularly well if you are a Faraday user where magazine capacity can be a big problem depending on your aim

5A-6C-9S (Faraday survival build)

    Key skills: Key Mobility skills, Marksman, Magazine Max Out, Deflector Skin, Health Passives, EMP, and all Resistances

Pros: High survivability that is very well suited for Faraday users

Cons: No Sprint Reload or AM Bomb can make this a frustrating build for PvE players. Some may also be turned off in PvP without Sprint Reload

Honorable Mention builds: Two other builds that I’ve seen used heavily in PvP are survivability builds that focus on fight for your life or flash cooldown. I have used both builds but did not feel they were as well rounded as the three I have mentioned above. The builds are 11A-0C-9S (Fight for your Life) and 8A-0C-12S (Flash Cooldown). I did not find either high end skill impacted my gameplay very much and instead felt I was missing more shots due to having no accuracy boost from marksman, particularly with shotguns.

Would love to hear more about builds that you feel work well in PvP, as well as thoughts on the builds I have posted here.

-- [APx] InsulinMaze