Getaway Artist Buddies

Two turrets do the killing and you do the walking. Hold the grenade and Getaway Artist turns the Storm grenade into an Arc Soul; cast the class ability and Hellion drops a Solar one. Neither is a burst of damage — they are a floor of damage that never stops, and everything else in the Loadout exists to keep both of them out.

The trick that makes it more than two pets is that the game counts both buddies as grenades. They scale off the Grenade stat, they trigger grenade Armour Mods, and under Facet of Dominance the Arc Soul jolts. So Feed the Void gives you Devour off their kills, Devour gives the grenade back, and the grenade is the Arc Soul.

Written for solo end-game — the source ran it through a solo Conquest Lightblade — and it holds up in a fireteam because none of it depends on anyone else.

How it plays

Eat the grenade, Phoenix Dive, and walk. That is genuinely the loop.

What you are managing underneath it is orbs. Three Firepower Mods turn buddy kills into Orbs of Power, Innervation and Orbs of Restoration and Absolution turn picked-up orbs back into ability energy, and Powerful Attraction on the class item hoovers them in every time you dive — so the class ability that summons Hellion also collects the orbs that pay for the next one.

Every orb is also defence. Smoke Jumper’s two-piece grants decaying damage reduction on pickup, and Facet of Purpose reads your equipped Super and hands you the matching buff — Song of Flame means Restoration. Between that, Devour, and the Thunderhead two-piece stacking point-blank resistance every time the Arc Soul goes out, you spend the fight standing in the middle of things.

Two ordering rules are worth knowing. Getaway Artist needs an Arc grenade, and neither Transcendence nor Song of Flame leaves you one — so pop the Arc Soul first, then Transcend or cast. It lasts around twenty seconds either way. And the transcendent grenade, Freezing Singularity, is part Void, so Facet of Dominance weakens with it.

Why the gear

Getaway Artist is the Build. Everything else is chosen around keeping the buddies up and keeping you upright.

The armour is two two-pieces rather than a four. Thunderhead gives License to Thrill, which stacks resistance to point-blank damage whenever you activate your grenade — and the Arc Soul counts. Smoke Jumper gives Ride Together, Die Together, resistance whenever you pick up an orb. Neither is exciting on its own; together they are why a build with no Well and no overshield survives Grandmaster range.

Synchronic Roulette is the one weapon the Loadout actually argues for, and it earns the slot three times over. It is a Neomuna gun, so its Nanotech Tracer Missiles Origin Trait is the second thing License to Thrill reads — it stacks the resistance without you throwing anything. It carries anti-Barrier, which is the one champion type the subclass cannot handle on its own. And it is Strand, which matters because of the Artifact.

That Artifact is the Tablet of Ruin. Unraveling Orbs converts the orbs you were already collecting into unravelling rounds, so the SMG spreads unravel everywhere without spending a melee on Arcane Needle. Unravel is a Darkness debuff, which turns on Facet of Courage for both buddies. Horde Shuttle spawns Threadlings off the unravelled targets, the Threadlings sever, and To Shreds turns a severed kill into a Woven Mail hotspot for you and everyone near you. Vile Weave nearly halves the tangle cooldown when you pick one up, which is the only part of this you have to do on purpose.

The energy and power slots are genuinely free. The source swaps them per encounter and names Anarchy and a glaive as things that work; any Strand weapon in the special slot keeps Unraveling Orbs fed if you would rather not carry the SMG.

The spread

200 Grenade first and it is not close — at 200 the buddies hit for around 65% more, and they are what kills things. 100 Class next, because Phoenix Dive is both the Hellion button and the orb-collection button and it has the shortest cooldown of the three class abilities. 100 Super after that.

Health is a dump stat. Melee nearly is: Arcane Needle is there to apply unravel when you have not got rounds up, and the SMG is doing that job anyway.