Winter's Guile BastionChecked — links and guide are done

A damage phase you spend inside melee range. Warlord’s Sigil stacks melee damage off your final blows, Bastion pays you for landing melees, and each half raises the other.

Song of Flame is the payload. Your abilities come back almost instantly while it is up, and every Celestial Fire that goes out is riding max Warlord’s Sigil stacks.

Bring it to a boss you can stand next to, with adds nearby to build stacks on.

How it plays

Stack before the phase, not during it. Melee and finisher final blows both count for Warlord’s Sigil, so clear what is around the boss with Celestial Fire and finish anything that survives the punch.

Then alternate Bastion and your melee. A burst that lands most of its pellets raises your melee damage, a melee hit raises Bastion’s damage and drops its charge time, and neither buff lasts long enough to sit on. Cast Song of Flame once you are at max stacks and the melee regeneration is running.

Underneath that you are managing radiant and ammo. Ember of Torches makes you radiant on a powered melee final blow, Ember of Solace holds it longer, and Ember of Empyrean extends it again on any Solar final blow. Special Finisher hands Bastion ammo back for the finishers you were doing anyway, and Queensfoil Rush turns the same finisher into an overshield and a slowing burst.

Why the gear

Winter's Guile — Warlord’s Sigil, the reason melee is the damage. Final blows stack melee damage, and at max stacks you get vastly increased melee regeneration for a short time. Finisher final blows count too.

Bastion — Saint’s Fists reads your melee and your melee reads it back. Hitting a target with most of the pellets in a burst raises melee damage, and a melee hit gives the weapon increased damage, reduced charge time and improved reload. Breakthrough staggers Unstoppable Champions, and three copies of Kinetic Weapon Surge point at this one gun.

Acasia's Dejection — Solar, which is what Ember of Empyrean and Harmonic Siphon read. Reconstruction refills it to double capacity while you are busy punching, so it is loaded whenever the fight makes you back off. Any Solar special does the job.

Terciopelo-4bl — flexible, with one thing reading it. Sword strikes build Taking Initiative the same way melee hits do, which is worth something on a boss you cannot punch.

Techeun’s Regalia and Dark Age — two and two. Queensfoil Rush pays the finisher, Taking Initiative pays handling and reload for melee and Sword hits. Truth to Power on four Techeun’s Regalia is the better half of this, but that is four Shattered Throne pieces and this Loadout has two imo.

The spread

160 Weapons. Bastion is half the damage in the phase, and Weapons is the stat that raises it.

100 Melee for Celestial Fire, 100 Super for Song of Flame, which is the whole phase. Grenade and Class come after because Firebolt is there to apply Scorch and Phoenix Dive already comes back off Ember of Singeing.

Health is the dump stat, three of the general mods trade it away, and Queensfoil Rush is what you have instead.