Getaway Artist BuddiesChecked — links and guide are done

Two turrets do the killing and you do the walking. Hold your grenade and Getaway Artist spawns an Arc Soul, cast your class ability and Hellion spawns a Solar one.

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

Use it for solo end-game, up to and including a solo Conquest Lightblade. It holds up in a fireteam too, since none of it needs anyone else.

How it plays

Eat your grenade, Phoenix Dive, and walk. There isn’t more to it than that.

Underneath it you’re managing orbs. Three Firepower mods turn buddy kills into Orbs of Power, Innervation and Orbs of Restoration and Absolution turn those orbs back into ability energy, and Powerful Attraction hoovers them up every time you dive.

The Arc Soul jolting is where the Arc half of the Artifact starts. Dielectric turns kills on jolted targets into Bolt Charge and sometimes an Orb, Flashover amplifies you at max stacks, and Defibrillating Blast gives you max stacks for stunning a Champion.

The Strand half runs off Synchronic Roulette. Unraveling Orbs grants your Strand weapons Unraveling Rounds off any orb or Tangle you pick up, and Horde Shuttle spawns Threadlings off what you unravel. Vile Weave severs whatever your Tangles hit and cuts the Tangle cooldown when you grab one.

Every orb is also defense. Smoke Jumper’s two-piece grants decaying damage reduction on pickup, and Facet of Purpose reads your equipped Super for the matching buff, which under Song of Flame is Restoration. Thunderhead’s two-piece stacks point-blank resistance on top of that, and Facet of Protection is on the whole time you’re surrounded.

Two ordering rules. Getaway Artist needs an Arc grenade, and neither Transcendence nor Song of Flame leaves you one, so pop the Arc Soul first and Transcend or cast after.

The other one is that your transcendent grenade, Freezing Singularity, is part Void. Facet of Dominance weakens with it.

Why the gear

Getaway Artist — the build. Everything else keeps your buddies up and keeps you upright.

Armor — two two-pieces rather than a four. Thunderhead’s License to Thrill stacks resistance to point-blank damage whenever you activate your grenade, and the Arc Soul counts. Smoke Jumper’s Ride Together, Die Together does the same off orb pickup.

Synchronic Roulette — the Legendary SMG, and it earns the slot four times over. Its Neomuna Origin Trait is the second thing License to Thrill reads, which stacks resistance without you throwing anything. It carries anti-Barrier, the one champion type the subclass can’t handle alone. It’s Strand, which the Artifact wants.

It also rolls both Attrition Orbs and Hatchling, and only The Immortal does that too. Attrition Orbs makes an Orb of Power out of sustained damage without reloading, which is the stat this whole build spends. Hatchling spawns Threadlings on precision kills, on top of the ones Horde Shuttle gives you.

Choir of One — flexible. It fires on special ammo, and Fanatical Lance bursts rapidly killed targets into a pool of radiolarian fluid. Being Void it feeds nothing on the Artifact, so Anarchy, a glaive, or any Strand special all work here instead.

Power slot — flexible. The Refurbished A499 fills it and nothing in the build reads it.

Artifact — Tablet of Ruin. Unravel is a Darkness debuff, which turns on Facet of Courage for both buddies. Limit Break pays your Super for casting it with a matching elemental buff up, and Restoration under Song of Flame is one.

The spread

200 Grenade. At 200 your buddies hit for around 65% more, and they’re what kills things.

100 Class. Phoenix Dive is both your Hellion button and your orb-collection button, and it has the shortest cooldown of the three class abilities. 100 Super after that.

Melee is what pays for all of it, with four separate tunings trading it away and no floor on Health either. Arcane Needle still applies unravel when you haven’t got rounds up, and the SMG is doing that job anyway.