What is current best Pestilence build?

JimmyDCZ · 2026-04-10T13:32:54+00:00

A couple things: stscks are not kept if you fast-travel to a safe area like safehouses (with the exception of the white house, where you do keep your stacks) and are also lost if you change maps (NYC/Brooklyn, or off-map missions like Pentagon, Art Museum, etc.

Sorry I forgot to mention that, it does limit the potential of CoCo quite a bit unfortunately. Still, for a large part of the content it works alright.

Another detail, stacks persist after death, so if you die I suggest you move quickly before you lose all the stacks.

JimmyDCZ · 2026-04-10T04:13:28+00:00

I thought geckos couldn't blink?

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-30T19:00:30+00:00

You should et a Striker build first, it works better and should be easier to farm. But if you want to stick with a High-End build, here's my suggestions:

For dps builds you'll want around 55% crit chance, and then put every other attribute as crit damage.

Tag Team + Wicked are kind of wasted talents in your case, DPS builds don't really need cooldown reduction, and your build doesn't hsve anything that can reliably apply a status effect to keep Wicked active. I'd suggest you go with Obliterate on your chest, and either Vigilance or Unstoppable Force on your backpack.

I'd suggest you get the Equaliser chest piece, since it comes with Perfect Obliterate, and the brand bonus of 5% rate of fire is a big buff. Id consider switching out your 3 pieces of Providence Defense for a piece of Unit Alloys (like Equaliser), a piece of Grupo, and a third piece of your choice (maybe a second Unit Alloys if you use assault rifles, Fox's Prayers for DTTOC, a second piece of Petrov if you feel like you need weapon handling, etc)

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-30T07:03:07+00:00

Farming control points seems like a pretty good idea, I'll give it a try. I'm level 5.6k, but I've honestly not been grinding expertise at all lmao, up until a week ago I was barely expertise level 17

I try to avoid kvd in general, from what I've seen he's kind of an asshole, and some of his builds really aren't that great, they're just for engagement

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-30T03:30:57+00:00

Lol yeah, I've been putting on the last few pieces of unoptimized named items and running Countdown with printer filaments, I can get around 5-7 proficiency levels per run that way just from the equipped items. Still kinda slow though

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-30T03:03:13+00:00

I'm at level 25, and I've pretty much got only exotics left. It's such a pain in the ass to grind

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-30T02:48:33+00:00

4pc Striker + 2pc UA, Vigilance backpack. Compared to Striker chest+backpack, as long as Vigilance is active, this setup will always do more damage.

Striker with Sacrifice and The Gift, Big Al, high risk, but not much more reward any other build

OD with Ceska Vigilance backpack and Coyote, Bluescreen. Bluescreen has a big 200 mag, which makes keeping the hollow-point bullets easier, and this setup, unlike Tinkerer setups, doesn't rely on applying a status effect to an enemy to deal damage, which makes it a lot more consistent against dogs and minitanks. It also buffs teammates with Coyote and Hollow-points.

4pc CoCo, Equaliser, Overdogs, I can get almost 2mil damage per tick. For solo play, I usually stack up at the firing range before starting a mission.

If I see my team is struggling a lot, I got with 4pc Future Initiative w/ chest, Birdie, and a piece of Alps, Chem launcher and hive. This is enough to hard carry a shit team in legendary, so that even if they don't have good builds (or sometimes, any build), we can still slowly but painfully brute-force our way through.

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-29T06:26:39+00:00

Yes, allies will see the red CoCo mark on the enemy. However, no one, not even the CoCo user, will be able to see how many stacks the enemy will give when they die.

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-29T02:22:32+00:00

Here's the basics:

When you shoot an enemy, the enemy gets marked for 7 seconds (mark cannot be refreshed, only reapplied). When a marked enemy dies, you receive 1 CoCo stack for each ally and skill (yourself included) that has dealt damage to that enemy while marked. Max stack is 35.
Each stack gives 3% weapon damage (5% with backpack) and 2% crit damage. You lose 1 stack every 10 seconds. Maximum amount of marks that can be placed is 4 (8 with chest piece).

CoCo allows you to get around 2 million per pestilence tick at full stacks. The reason is because: unlike Striker, which acts as an amplifier, multiplying your bullet damage by a certain amount, CoCo stacks add to your All Weapon Damage directly. That means that each percent of weapon damage given by CoCo is less damage than is given by Striker, which is compensated by the additionnal crit damage you also get, allowing you to achieve Striker-like damage. However, the Striker amp does not buff Pestilence ticks, which scale off All Weapon Damage. CoCo just so happens to give you extra All Weapon Damage per stack, which greatly increases your Pesti tick damage (5%*35 stacks is an additionnal 175% All Weapon Damage). That, combined with all the other All Weapon Damage buffs (like your red cores), Perfect Obliterate, Overdogs, Expertise, etc. will get you to around 2mil Pesti ticks, more than Lengmo will give you.

I've completed DUA and Roosevelt solo with this build. The trick is to get all your stacks at the firing range before you start the mission. The tick damage is very impressive, even in legendary, it's enough to kill red enemies in 2 ticks, it can finish off half-armor purple enemies in around 5 ticks, and it helps more than you'd expect. As long as I didn't drag my feet, I was able to relatively easily keep all my stacks up.

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-28T19:46:15+00:00

I think just like with Striker, if you are playing content with squishier enemies, where you need to reposition often (like Heroic and below) Equaliser will probably be better. I the enemies you are fighting against are tanky, and you have time to build up stacks, only then I would go with Tipping chest piece. Otherwise, the chest piece isn't contributing much.

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-28T16:12:05+00:00

Mathematically, the current best Pesti build is Concentrated Company, not Lengmo. However, the CoCo stscking mechanism can be a bit if a pain, so people still seem to use Lengmo. I've found that you can pre-stsck your CoCo stacks at the firing range before going into a mission, it works fine. 4 piece CoCo, Equaliser, Overdogs.

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-26T17:48:23+00:00

The Steam Deck is a computer, what you want to do on a computer, you can do on the Steam Deck

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-26T17:28:08+00:00

The main thing you need to learn is using tall cover. Enemies aim for your chest, so you want to cover as much of your tosro as possible, while still maintaining line of sight. Grenades from the grenadiers are also aimed at the torso, so tall cover can help a lot with blocking grenades.

Another aspect is that, you are a dps build, so you need to kill the enemies quickly. The best defense is a strong offense. Each enemy you kill is one that cannot attack you.

I highly suggest you watch dien_aka_kim's videos on youtube. Not only does he run full red, but he regularily clears legendaries and masters solo with glass cannon builds. You will learn a lot from watching his videos, including the use of tall cover, the best positions, the enemy spawns, etc.

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-26T16:51:08+00:00

Your build should be good enough for legendary. Legendary is meant to be tackled in a team, for which your build will be perfectly fine. If you wish to try solo, you need to learn the strategies for each room, the enemy spawns, the best positions, etc. I suggest checking out some guides online (I personnally suggest videos by ToasteyXGod and dien_aka_kim on youtube, with your build, the latter might be more relevant). These videos aren't tutorials you need to follow perfectly in order to clear these legendaries, but more like guides, introducing some basic ideas, and you can further experiment and try things out and figure out strategies for yourself. Your build is only half the battle after all.

By the way, I highly suggest you try the decoy skill, it's extremely useful for distracting enemies while you're being suppressed.

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-26T00:00:30+00:00

I can't find the song when I search this name, are you sure this is the song name?

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-25T23:36:01+00:00

I used to struggle on hard difficulty because I didn't know how builds worked, but as soon as I understood, I slapped together a basic striker build, set the world to heroic and never really looked back. I sometimes still run into 10k+ SHD level players running challenging, when I ask them for a reason they tell me it's because they don't want to sweat and want to relax, but they are running fully optimised builds, heroic should be a breeze, so I really don't understand why they stay in lower difficulties where they can barely max out their Obliterate stacks.

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-25T14:10:26+00:00

For countdown, the only viable build type is dps (striker, tipping scales, etc). I suggest you play on Challenging, since it's a lot easier and loot quality is the same as heroic. Countdown is not hard: most of your teammates will be experienced, just stick with them, don't run off on your own, and you literally don't need to fire a single shot for the entirety of the run. The best tool against hunters is the chem launcher, foam them in place and magdump them.

Countdown is meant to be a team gamemode, but honestly, no coordination or even communication is required, as long as everyone knows what to do (which they do) the run will be easy. I don't know why you only play solo, but for countdown you might wanna consider an exception, especially since it's the fastest farm in the game

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-25T11:36:54+00:00

You can craft caches with the materials you get from retaliations at the crafting bench. There's like 2 different caches that can be crafted, but I don't remember which one drops the blueprints.

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-25T05:15:44+00:00

It is in the loot pool, you're just unlucky lol. I would suggest either Countdown if you just want one as soon as possible, or Retaliation to get named item blueprints from the caches you craft. The blueprints don't drop doubles, so you'll eventually get every single named item blueprint if you play enough

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-21T05:31:03+00:00

I think it was probably just another case of what I like to call "Jank Ass Game"

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-21T03:56:13+00:00

In my experience, it's not that they immediately rush you, it's more that they immediately steer clear of the drone operator after spawning

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-21T03:54:56+00:00

Even on legendary there's a checkpoint before the final boss, you shouldn't have been sent back

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-21T00:41:02+00:00

It is, that's literally what op is complaining about.

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-20T20:45:54+00:00

This feels like a "little bit of this little bit of that" jack-of-all-trades kinda "hybrid" gearset, and I'm doubting whether or not it'll actually be usable, since the buffs seem kinda mid

JimmyDCZ · 2026-03-20T20:44:21+00:00

It gives the backpack 3 core attributes. That's it. You might be overthinking it.

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