Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Martyr: Tech Adept Combustor Build and Starter Guide

This is a guide to running a Tech Adept that focuses on using constructs to do the work while the TA guides them and frequently resummons them, which is how I like to play the class. The first part outlines what the build looks like at maximum level and how to get there, then the second part explains how to get there starting from level 1. This build plays in mostly the same style from start to finish (you start running your final construct layout at level 28 with no special gear needed), is capable of running endgame (118-126) level missions comfortably with easily acquired lower level gear, and is readily capable of completing all seasonal objectives in a season.

This started out as a ‘here’s a guide to playing a new tech adept using Skykuvar’s guide with a quick explanation of what I do differently. When I went to outline the differences between his guide and what I do, I realized that my build has diverged from his guide on numerous points, and that explaining the differences was going to be almost as much work as just describing what do from scratch. I’ve also included some things for reference that I don’t have an easy reference for even if you don’t really need to do them for the guide. (like farming tech fragments). In this guide I assume the reader is familiar with the game but not with Tech Adept, so I don’t try to explain general game concepts like what rerolling gear means. Also the early game guide is aimed at someone who’s playing the game solo as the first character in a season; if you’ve got someone powerleveling you then you’ll skip right past the early stuff, and can probably do gear more quickly than I talk about.

This section describes the final form we’re building towards. Skip down to the “EARLY GAME GUIDE” section if you’re looking for how to start.

Morality:
Radical Morality enables a key perk and my preferred morality armor.

Perks:
Mechanosapient: This core of this build’s lineup is combustors, getting 50% more of them is an easy choice.
Omniscient Constructs: +66% damage for 20 seconds when summoned sounds like an interesting but temporary bonus. However, we’re going to be resummoning our combustors  more often than every 20 seconds, so this is effectively “+66% damage to combustors constantly and sometimes to Vanguard”.
Radical: This gives you rapid data flux regeneration so you can keep summoning your combustors to keep up the Omniscent Constructs bonus and replace any that die. It also isn’t affected by the ‘resources that regenerate with time regenerate 80% slower’ penalty, so we have no problems with missions that draw that. The regeneration is overkill when you’re fighting hordes of enemies that die quickly,

Variant: In season 6, Escalation Shards are available. These reduce the cost of summoning skills in armor and increase data flux regeneration rate in other, with 2 in armor and 1 in belt you can replace Radical with Electro-Scourge for +20% attack speed on constructs. You can try Electro-Scourge without the escalation shards and will do fine on easier maps, but you’ll end up starved for data flux when you’re fighting high level single enemies like the end boss(es) of a void crusade ad seasonal bosses.

Attributes:
Logic 25+: All of the bonuses are nice, and we’ll be resummoning enough that the 25 point bonus of +10% construct damage should be up almost all the time. Excess points here is more damage.
Bionics 15: The bonuses up to +15 are nice, we explicitly don’t want Aegis Protocol.
Mindlink 15: 10 points here is key to early survival, and the bonus at 15 helps immensely with resummoning combustors. We don’t need the later bonuses.

The 15 points in mindlink provide self-heal and cheaper summoning and are the most important in the build, and the 15 in Bionics are good bonuses. Logic provides more damage even past the last specific bonus, so is the ideal place to dump all free attribute points after hitting 15 in the other two.

Construct Offense: Take everything that boosts the 3 construct types this build uses.

Construct Ability: Take everything that boosts the constructs we use, then some extra attack speed which enables relentless constructs at the top. The 6% attack speed is useful on it’s own, but even if those were blank tiles spending 3 points for 30% summoning and construct skill cooldown reduction here is better than spending 4 points for 20% summoning cooldown reduction in Construct Specialization or 4 points for 8% data-flux skill cooldown reduction in Support. Since the cap for Cooldown reduction is 40%, this ends up letting us skip those other 8 points almost entirely with gear.

Construct Specialization: Boost Vanguards, make lasguns blind, and reduce data flux costs and reserve. The 2 points marked in yellow are for cooldown reduction – if you want to maximize cooldown reduction from passives then take them, but if you have cooldown reduction in gear you don’t need to.

Construct Defense: Take everything but tarantula buffs and distributing damage from the TA to constructs. The DOT immunity is very strong since combustors like to stand in place and don’t have a way to clear DOTs.

Defense: Take most of the tree to enable reanimator glands, and generally boost the Tech Adept’s toughness. The two side points for energy shield efficiency and dodge are useful, but save them for last when you’re filling out this tree. Don’t bother with the point in shock dampening because you will end up cap without even trying.

Damage over Time: Caustic Reagents is incredibly good on any boss that regenerates health since this build will always have DOTs on them. It’s almost required in season 6 for some of the boss types. Haemophilic Shock gives a free extra debuff which boosts overall construct damage since we’re applying bleeds already. DOT damage itself isn’t that important, so there’s no reason to get the whole tree.

Radical Path: Take the +XP perk from when you can get it until level 100, then mind reset out of it at 100 since XP comes to an end.

Remainder: These 105 points are the core for your build, the last 7 can go where you like. You can put 1-2 into Construct Specialization to max out cooldown reduction if you don’t have it fom gear. Aside from that, Health and Movement are the candidates for the remaining points. Physical Attacks, Melee Combat, Ranged Combat, Single DPS, Area Effects, Debuffs, Critical Hits, Heat Attacks, and Suppression all affect Tech Adept damage and not constructs, so there’s no reason to get them. Support provides some data flux and cooldown reduction that is covered elsewhere, and this build doesn’t heavily use the innoculator.

Constructs Used:
Slot 1: Vanguard – Tank plus AOE and debuff
Weapons: Power Axe
This is your main tank with an AOE taunt, knockdown on charge, and a Fabricatus Scatter Field. He also does does AOE damage and lays down shock, bleed, and slow, but his main job is being hard to kill and soaking enemy fire.

Slots 2-4: Combustors – Damage plus debuff
Weapons: Lasgun
These guys rapidly shoot lasers at your target (and sometimes a wall) and destroy it, they’re your main source of damage and apply some major debuffs. Their lasers apply and spread burn, which quickly applies heat and general vulnerabilities, and they also apply blind (from a passive). They don’t directly have an AOE but their fast attack rate and spreading burn from the psalm doctrine does reasonable work on hordes.

Slot 5: Kastelan – AOE, Debuff, secondary tank
Weapons: Phosphor Cannon and Flamer

The Kastelan’s main job is adding a little more AOE and spreading debuffs – shock from a passive, and poison and hallucinate through modules. He also acts as a secondary tank, since his AI will usually have him hanging out a little bit in front of the combustors.

Construct Modules:
Vanguard Modules: 2x Defensive, 1x Offensor
Major enchants: One Fabricatus Scatter Field, one Supreme Damage Reduction
Minor enchants: One Damage Reduction, 1 each of resist fire/physical/warp, Life drain on defensive. Knockdown% and +damage on offensive.

Your constructs start off with +30% Damage reduction (35 on Kastelan and Vanguard), +35% heat and physical resistance and +55% warp resistance from attributes and the construct defense tree. Soft cap is 60% resistance and hard cap is 80%. While constructs will get additional DR from Aegis of the Vigilant, the Vanguard charges in before the enemies are stacked with the debuffs that Aegis needs to work, so you want to have his DR capped without that bonus. It easy to hit that with one Supreme DR enchant and one DR enchant on a module, plus a Supreme DR enchant on the Tech Adept’s armor. The fire/heat/warp +resist enchants are all at least 30%, so a single one of each will take you over cap.

Endurance modules are generally better at tougher missions in the late game, Force Fields are generally better at earlier levels. I tend to use all endurance modules at endgame, but some people use a mix of endurance and force field. I’ve heard of people having trouble with the Fabricatus Scatter Field in multiplayer, if you run into that you should keep a module with a different ability to swap in for MP games.

Combustor Modules: 3x Offensor
Major enchants: +X% damage per debuff on target.
Minor enchants: +X% damage against burning enemies is best since the combustors apply burning, +X% against [debuff]ed are also good. Boosts to heat damage, ranged damage, and general damage aren’t as strong so should be rerolled.

Kastelan Modules: 1x Forcefield or Endurance, 2x Offensor.Major enchants: Fabricatus Scatter field, +X% chance to cause Hallucinate, +X% chance to cause Poison. Minor enchants: resists on the defensive module (see Vanguard), +damage and ranged life drain on the offensor modules (see Combutors)
These offensor modules lay down two debuffs which act as a multiplier for combustor damage and reduce . The Fabricatus Scatter Field won’t get hit as often as on the Vanguard and causes crashes for some people in multiplayer, so you may want to use a different defensive ability here.

Construct Weapons:
For construct weapons your priorities are Combustor lasguns, then Vanguard axe, then both Kastelan weapons. Max lasguns, get the axe 10 levels behind it, and have the others catch up to 10 levels behind later on before you come back to lasguns. Typically in the 90s you end up with something like lasguns at 90, Axe at 80, Kastelan weapons one at 80, one in the 70s. You don’t need lasguns above 90 for endgame (level 126+) missions and shouldn’t need to farm specifically to level construct weapons. if you want to maximize your construct weapons, Raezadarkstar on Discord tested and found the below.

Farming Tech Fragments:
Tech fragments drop like experience points do from mobs, but aren’t affected by experience modifiers. They get a multiplier based on mission level that ranges from 200% at +0 to 700% at +10 and a small bonus from more difficult modifiers. Every enemy drops them, race doesn’t matter, tougher enemies drop more. Tarot cards that cause extra champion units to spawn result in more, the cards that can have that modifier are Superstition, Murder, Seal of Divine Choir, Seal of Malleus and Seal of the Adept. No specific tarot cards boost the amount dropped beyond changing mission level, difficulty, and number of mobs.

Assassination missions are best because of guaranteed elites and roving murder mobs of champions (18,000-23,000 per level 110 map). Next best are Hunt, with 2-3 Elites and a boss (13,000-16,000). Large versions of upper hive maps have a ton of enemies and work well. Bunker Busting, Silence the Guns, and Siege random missions usually have champion groups, but not as many as assassination, as do Mech missions in Void Crusades. Others are pretty equal.

Key Gear:
The gear this build really needs to work offensively is the construct modules (see the construct section), one weapon, two signums, and the burn spreading psalm doctrine (see psalm doctrine section). The armor, belt, and inocculator, add greatly to survivability.

Weapon Set II:
Relic Plasma Cavalier Beta
Enchant: All Construct Heat attacks apply Burn on Hit with a 15% chance.
Other enchants should boost construct damage and vulnerability effectiveness, Cooldown Reduction is also an option.

Archeotech Signum Enchant: Adds a Heat Vulnerability on Causing Burn effect
Archeotech Signum Enchant: x% chance to add a general Vulnerability when the target gets a debuff effect
Other enchants should boost construct damage and vulnerability effectiveness, don’t need any specific combination.

These items cause your construct heat attacks (primarily combustors) to apply burn, then make that burn apply heat vulnerability, make all of your debuff-causing attacks have a chance at applying a general vulnerability, and with the psalm doctrine spread the burn and debuffs to nearby enemies.

Weapon Set I:
Alpha weapon (any flavor, I usually use an axe) with at least 2 secondary enchant slots, level 20+
2x Signums of any quality with at least 2 secondary enchant slots.
Reroll to a high score of +Loot Quality and +Loot Quantity on all three.

You have an alpha weapon to enable a 5th summoning slot at the start, and loot bonuses because you switch to this when opening chests.

Armor:
Morality (Radical) Technomartyr Vestment
Enchant: Teleports away from a potentially lethal blow in a random direction (10 second Cooldown)
Other enchants: One should be increased supreme damage reduction for constructs.

This provides a ‘don’t die’ effect when acting as a forward observer for constructs. The supreme DR enchant pushes your Vanguard to 80% DR with his modules and helps the others a bit.

Innoculator:
Archeotech Innoculator Enchant: +X shield charge gained for every point of data flux spent
Other enchants: No specifics
Inoculator slots: At least one red (Mitigator). Additional red HP regen, yellow use Satrophine

This build doesn’t use the Innoculator for buffs, just as an emergency heal/escape.

Belt
Ancient Relic Technomartyr Girdle of Calculation
Main Enchant: +X shield charge gained for every point of data flux spent
Other enchants: unchangeable

The belt and innoculator provide a large energy shield that replentishes itself when you summon constructs. With one item at level 100 the shield is around 9000 HP, with both it goes up to around 12,000. With both summoning 3 sets of Combustors will recharge the shield, with just one you typically need 4 summons to fully recharge. Ideally you have both, but just one is workable.

Purity Seal
Archeotech Relic Enchant: Invulnerability for 3 seconds when losing at least X% HP on Hit Taken
Other Enchants: no specifics

This gives you a short invulnerability shield whenever you take a hard hit. Since you should only be in front of your constructs for short periods of time, the 3 second duration is much more effective than it would be for someone who tanks. This enchant is also available on the Innoculator, if you don’t have this purity seal but do have a Technomartyr Girdle of Calculation I would use the inoculator with this until finding a purity seal).

Secondary Gear:
Eye Implant
Relic or Archeotech Relic Enchant: 25% increased effect of Heat Vulnerability

This is a nice boost in damage, since we’ll have a full stack of heat vulnerability on anything that’s not instantly dead.

Main or Neural Implant:
Aegis of the Vigilant, movement bonuses, defense bonuses

From my reading of Aegis of the Vigilant it should effectively add to Damage Reduction for constructs, which means it will take your non-vanguard constructs up to the DR cap against fully debuffed enemies. There’s speculation that it doesn’t apply to constructs, and I haven’t specifically tested it, but it seems to work. Otherwise you want main enchants that increase TA defense or movement. I don’t recommend any of the ancient relics for these slots, most of their effects only apply to the TA rather than constructs.

Most of our sockets will be filled with psalm doctrines. The other sockets are not dedicated to a specific use. Generally a single Uncreator psalm (increased vulnerability effect, only one per item is effective) on each item is the best choice when there’s a free slot. Fulgurite shards in weapon reduces ability cooldown, this is useful while leveling but you can max Cooldown Reduction though enchants and passives. Fulgurite shards in armor give extra move speed. Several types of shard give resistance, these are good for filling in holes in your defense. Escalation shards in season 6 reduce Data Flux cost and increase Data Flux regeneration, which enables a variant perk setup.

Psalm Doctrines:
Weapon II or Armor:
Core ability
Inflicting a Burn DoT on an enemy also puts Burn DoT on nearby enemies
Terminus Psalm + Phosphoenic Psalm + Icarus Psalm + Phosphoenic Psalm + Volkite Psalm

This is the most important psalm doctrine for this build, it spreads burns and heat vulnerabilities through a whole crowd of enemies. It’s a 5-slot so has to go on either weapon or armor leaving 1 slot free. Socket this ASAP even if you have to steal Phsophenics from simple +damage doctrines.

Weapon II or Armor:
+125% Heat Damage. Affects Constructs as well.
Phosphoenic Psalm + Binharic Psalm + Volkite Psalm + Terminus Psalm

Most of this build’s damage is laser and plasma, so bonus heat damage is really good for it. There are two slots free. You want to put this on whichever of your armor or weapon you’d like to have more free slots available, when leveling I like this in the weapon slot so I can use a Fulgrite for cooldown reduction, at the end I like armor for more resistance or move speed.

Innoculator and Main Implant:
+70% Heat Damage. Affects Constructs as well.
Phosphoenic Psalm + Volkite Psalm + Hypergheist Psalm

This is a solid damage boost for all of you lasers and plasma, this is the default enchant for 3-slot items. There are two other options for specific situations:

Killing a Shocked enemy creates an explosion causing Shock and dealing damage equal to Damage from the killing blow
Nova Psalm + Volkite Psalm + Transonic Psalm

This is useful for adding a bit of AOE damage, you won’t need it for high end missions but if you’re spamming Valorous Heart to level it helps your clear speed more than heat damage.

+100% Constuct HP
Emanatus Psalm + Galvanic Psalm + Volkite Psalm

If you’re having trouble with constructs dying a lot, changing one damage doctrine to this makes them significantly more durable. You shouldn’t need it once you’ve got your passives and construct modules in place, but depending on what kind of missions you’re running and how far along you are this can help more than damage.

Weapon I
Creates a damaging aura dealing +100% Heat damage per second. 6m radius, ticks every .25 seconds
Phosphoenic Psalm + Technomartyr Psalm + Neuralis Psalm + Binharic Psalm

You normally use your slot I weapon for opening chests, this lets you also use it for destroying traps and gives a distinct visual effect when you have the wrong weapon equipped. Fill this one in last, it’s a little bonus you don’t need to use very often.

Start a mission by summoning your constructs, then switching to your Plasma Cavalier. For a cautious approach, shoot your Plasma Beam at a spot on the ground ahead of you and your constructs will move forward, then attack once they see an enemy. If you have all of your defensive pieces in place and want to live more dangerously, run ahead to scout and rely on your various defenses to save you while constructs catch up.

When you engage enemies, don’t try to damage them yourself. Once the Vanguard has charged in, enemies should be focused on him and you can move forward to help pick targets with your Plasma Beam. Your constructs will do most of the actual fighting, the only time you want to keep firing your plasma beam on a single target is when there is just a big boss enemy and you want to help your constructs’ damage. Generally you want to encourage your minions to kill all of the smaller enemies first, then focus on the stronger ones. Typically you’re clearing almost every enemy on the map, not rushing to objectives.

Whenever your armor’s teleport triggers, immediately run to safety behind your minions while popping your innoculator and resummoning as many constructs as possible (these will clear DOTs and refill your health and energy shield). Stay safely back until your summoning cooldowns come back up, continue to run if your constructs aren’t holding enemy attention.

Most of the time if your 3 second invulnerability triggers or you take actual health damage, do the same innoculator, summon, and run routine. Sometimes you’ll know that the hit was a one-time incident and can stay forward.

You want to resummon combustors frequently (often every cooldown) to keep the Omniscient Constructs buff active. This is also your default heal and energy shield refresh. Generally you only want to resummon the Vanguard if he dies because he’s usually holding enemies in place.

Don’t resummon combustors right at the start of a fight, instead let them engage the enemy for a few seconds first. Often something starts the fight by hitting combustors with AOE damage that wipes them out, and you’d rather not have to wait for cooldowns to clear.

If a boss has lots of minions around him, it’s often best to retreat and resummon to thin out the crowd, usually not everything will follow. Similarly if your minions are getting wiped out, retreating and dealing with just what follows you is usually easier than trying to resummon in place.

If you’re resummoning combustors during a fight, move between each summon if possible so they start spread out and get hit by less AOE.

If your combustors are stuck attacking a piece of terrain, run your TA to somewhere that has a good LOS and resummon them. This will often lead to you getting hit, so it’s a good idea to wait for defensive cooldowns to reset before doing this.

If there is a horde approaching and your combustors are stuck attacking a strong enemy or one that is blocked behind terrain, find one medium-tough enemy that will last for a few seconds and use your Plasma Beam on him. Your combustors will have time to target him, he’ll die, then they’ll look for a new target and will usually select the close horde enemy. (If you target a weak enemy, it won’t live long enough for all of your combustors to target him),

For killing the skull in a Void Crusade, you usually want to rush to where it is (relying on defenses to keep you alive) and resummon minions right on top of it. Don’t bump the level of the skull mission if you think you’ll have trouble doing this.

At lower levels:

At the start of the game, you don’t have enough Data Flux or regeneration to resummon constantly, and you don’t get big bonuses for it until you have your third perk active so don’t bother with it.

Early on you can scout without defensive gear. As you move to more difficult missions, you’ll go through a phase where scouting ahead kills you, so be more cautious. Later on when you get your shields you can play more forward.

Until you have your burn and vulnerability gear setup, your constructs will need more help with damage on medium to tough enemies so you’ll need to use your Plasma Beam more. The +50% damage makes a huge difference at low levels.

The rest of this guide describes how to go from level 1 to farming for end game. Here’s a reference for specific changes at specific levels that you’ll hit while leveling up.

1: Unlock Mechanosapient
5: Alpha weapon, five summons.
8: Melta gun combustors
11: Lasgun combustors
15: Second perk
20: Vanguard in slot 1, upgrade construct weapons, should have 10 mindlink.
21: Mitigator (DOT Removal) on innoculator
28: Kastellan in slot 5
30: Third Perk, upgrade construct weapons
34: Third construct module
X0: Upgrade construct weapons

Character Creation:
Pick Adept Dominus as your subclass (if you pick a different subclass, the late game will be the same but a lot of the specific unlocks for the early game will be different from what I say here).

If you are playing the campaign:
Play the tutorial even if you can skip it, as there is a morality choice in it that you don’t get on skip. Level up through the tutorial followed by campaign missions, bumping the level of them to what works for you (I used +3 when making the guide.) Pick the radical option on all morality choices. You want to summon a total of 300 vivisectors early on, if you keep resummoning your 2 slots of vivisectors during the tutorial you should unlock the Mechanosapient perk by the time you’re able to go to the bridge of your ship. Once you can go to the bridge, change all of your summon slots to combustors and follow the rest of the guide.

Towards the end of the campaign there is a mission where you fight Fabius Bile, if you don’t finish this mission by restarting or quitting after he dies, you can repeatedly kill him for his drops. I recommend keeping the campaign unfinished until you’ve farmed core gear off of him, even though it means your Radical perk won’t be as effective. Once you’ve gotten to Bile or finished the campaign, you can switch over to missions in the section below.

If you are skipping the campaign:
For your first mission, you want to unlock the Mechasapient perk by summoning a total of 300 Vivisectors. On your character sheet set your perk to the Radical perk (if you skipped campaign) and on the bridge go to construct setup and set all 4 of your summons to vivisectors. Run a default mission, and keep summoning your vivisectors during it (you need to summon all 4 sets 25 times). If you complete the mission without unlocking the perk, run another mission with all vivisectors, and hang around after the mission spamming summon to be sure you get it. Now change your perk to Mechasapient and change all of your summon slots to combustors.

Run one or two random missions at your level to get a handle on how to play the class, and then you have a variety of options. Random and system missions are easy at base and can use tarot cards, and intel missions require an intel and are a bit harder. Astropath assignments generate a bunch of at-level missions and are required for some things. Use as many useful tarot cards as you can handle on missions. Once you’ve got 10 points in mindlink, you can run the special mission Valorous Heart for XP – before that, it’s easy to get injured and not able to recover while swarms keep coming at you. Once you unlock them, void crusades give pretty good XP and very good loot. Some seasons have seasonal missions, they’re usually good to run whenever they are available.

My recommended starting plan: Unlock Mechanosapient with a random mission. Run a random Astropath assignment, which will give you a bunch of easy missions to level up in early, an attribute point if you don’t die during them, and a seasonal achievement in most seasons. Run random missions to get to 10 mindlink if needed. Run Valorous Heart several times to get to 35, mixing in intel missions for variety. Run your first void crusade at that point. If there are seasonal missions, run them when they are available.

Attributes: You want 10 points in mindlink ASAP so that you heal your hp and suppression whenever you summon constructs. This is much better than life drain for this build, since you’re usually not doing damage yourself. Get to 5 in bionics after that (which will probably only take a point or two), then 15 in mindlink. After that drop points in Logic until you hit the end of the tree. If +attribute bonuses get you close to having another bonus in Mindlink or Biotics, taking them to X5 or X0 is worth doing, otherwise drop points in Logic. Make sure to have your set II weapon equipped when adjusting attribute points so you’re getting the right values.

If you find that resummoning constructs costs more than it should during a mission, pull up your character screen and add/remove a point from mindlink and adjust it if it’s not at 15. Outside of a mission also take off all of your gear and put it back on. Sometimes the game gets weird about remembering attributes or applying the bonuses from equipment.

Perks: If you skip the campaign, get Mechanosapient early and use it, then the radical perk at 15, then Omniscent Constructs at 30. You can should use Electro-Scourge rather than Radical from 15-30 if your constructs aren’t dying. If you’re running the campaign, get Mechanosapient early and use it, then Artifical Organs as your second, and switch Artificial Organs to Electro-Scourge once it unlocks, then re-take Artificial Organs for your third. Switch to Mechanospaient, Radical, and Omniscient Constructs once you unlock the radical perk in the Savant Lair mission.

Constructs: At level 5 when you unlock alpha weapons, buy one from a vendor, put it in weapon set 1, then set up your 5 construct slots with all combustors. You start the mission with Set 1 equipped, summon the set from the fifth slot, then switch to set 2 for actual fighting and summon the rest. If you need to resummon them, switch to set 1 and then back. You won’t need to do this switching once you have a Kastellan in slot 5 at level 28.

At 8, switch your Combustors to melta guns, and at 11 to lasguns. At level 20, change your first slot to a vanguard. At level 28, change the 5th slot to a Kastelan with phosphor cannon and flamer. (If you don’t follow my recommended passive path and don’t have any data flux cost reduction, you’ll find that the data flux reserve for the Vanguard and Kastelan doesn’t leave enough data flux for Combustors unless you’ve gotten gear that helps.)
 
Don’t spend any fragments upgrading the construct weapons you’ll switch out of. Combustors do most of your damage, so keep their weapons high, then the Vanguard’s axe, then the pair on the Castellan. I make a ‘rule’ to check weapon advancement every 10 levels because it’s easy to forget about. At low levels you can max them all, at high levels you’ll end up with something like combustors max, Vanguard 10 behind, Castellan 20 behind. The fragments you get along the way are plenty.

Passives: Refer to the screenshots of trees to see Get Forbidden Knowledge in the Radical path (+15% XP) once you can. In Construct Offense go to the upper right side and get Thermic spike and one of the life drain perks. Go through the middle of Construct abilities to get the two Vanguard buffs. Then work on Construct Ability – head left to get the Vanguard charge and it’s buffs plus Canticles of the Ommnisiah. Now start on Kastellen boosts – left side of Construct ability for the litany of the electromancer skills, then data mining protocols, Kastellan explosion on the right and two more attack speed bonuses, and end with Relentless Constructs at the top. (Exploding Kastellans and attack speed aren’t that amazing and you might be tempted to do something else, but the cooldown reduction on Relentless Constructs is core to this build). Then go to the left side of Construct Specialization to get blind for combustor lasguns and Voltaic communication at the bottom. (the data flux cost and reserve reductions here are significant). Head back to Construct Attack and get Canticles of the Omnissiah and its buffs to finish out your Vanguard. Get DOT immunity for constructs in the Construct Defense tree.

After that, pick what’s next based on your playstyle and where you’re having trouble. Construct defense is good if your constructs are dropping quickly, and finishing the offensive abilities is good if they’re lasting long enough. You’re going to want the defense tree to make your TA more tanky, whether you do it early or late depends on how much dying you do. Mostly you want to fill in for the endgame skill setup, but there’s nothing wrong with taking skills that you expect to spec out of later on. (I generally get DOT immunity, flesh out construct offense, and then start on defense for the TA)

Early Gear:
Most enchants on gear make a negligible difference to you – since your constructs are doing the work, you don’t really care about your weapon damage, boosting your abilities, life drain, and a lot of what other classes really want. The simplest way to handle gear is to get some items that make leveling and gearing faster, then pay little attention to sub-relic quality gear from an early point.

You want to get an alpha weapon for slot 1 as soon as you can at level 5 (buy one from the captain if one doesn’t drop) so you can use 5 summoning slots, and want to keep a beta ranged weapon in slot 2 for guiding your constructs. Always use a Technomartyr Vestment and Technomartyr Girdle for your armor and belt, you start with these and don’t need any of the other types. Get an innoculator with 2 red slots. Other than those specific pieces, for early gear you want Green/Blue/Purple (GBP) items that have at least one of +XP%, +loot quality, and +loot quantity and some that have +movement.

Once you unlock Reforging Protocol, Optimization, and Canticles of Perfection, you’re going to do some early rerolling, this will probably happen in your 20s or 30s. Most guides say not to reroll early, but weapon set I is endgame gear you’ll get in the 20s so is worth rerolling, and the other rerolling will be using more materials that don’t matter and not more than a handful of Machine God Sparks.

In your 20s, you want to get an alpha weapon of at least level 20 with 2 secondary enchant slots and 2 signums with 2 secondary slots. Reroll to get both +loot quality and quantity on all of them, and reroll values to get at least +40 on the weapon and +20 on the signums. Use Machine God Sparks for this, as these 3 seemingly-crappy items are your endgame chest opening equipment, you’ll be using them at level 100. Mark all of these as favorites so that if you accidentally switch them out it’s harder to mistakenly vendor them.

For other TA gear, look for GBP items that have at least 2 secondary enchant slots and at least one other enchant that you like (some move speed, otherwise construct boosts) and reroll them to have any two of the XP and loot bonuses with decent numbers. You only want to use the crafting capacity that comes on the item, if you get to zero crafting capacity and don’t like the item then vendor it and try again on another one. If you get mods you like but the numbers are low then spend one Machine God Spark for +5 crafting capacity to roll better values, but other than that save the sparks for later items.Once you have GBP items like this in all slots, you’re done looking for TA gear that’s below Orange.

For early construct modules, put force field and endurance modules on your Vanguard and Kastelan and offensor modules everywhere else. If you get a relic module that has an enchant you like, use it and don’t worry if it’s the wrong type. Reroll to get a decent damage value on offensor mods, and reroll the other enchants. Like above, don’t use any Machine God Sparks for this, just the free crafting capacity that comes on them. Around level 30 stockpile an extra force field and four offensor modules so you can fill the new slots that open at 34.If you’re not seeing enough offensor modules drop, buy some from one of the shops. Remember what base damage your offensor modules have (like 20-25) and wait until you start seeing higher ones to really look at upgrades.

Vendors and Blueprints:
Once you have enough money, buy Mind Resets every restock until you have 20 or so in storage – they’re cheap by mid-late game standards and doing this means that if you decide to revamp your build you won’t need to wait on restocks.
Keep an eye on the Ordos vendors at each restock.
In Xenos look for any relic+ items that are match what you’re looking to find, definitely get a relic Plasma Cavalier Beta and Relic Technomartyr if you don’t have one from a drop.
In Malleus always buy the two Psalm Codes if they’re just cash, buy fate ones if you need them.
In Hereticos buy blueprints for a relic (orange) Plasma Carbine Beta, Technomartyr Girdle, or Offensor Module, and the artificer (purple) blueprint for Offensor Module.

Fate:
You want to keep around 12 Fate in reserve in case you see one of the specific items or blueprints you’re looking for. Start your big spending with Ankh, and unlock Reforging Protocol, Optimisation, and Canticles of Perfection. Then Fusion and Socket Extraction, then the rest of the tree. Once the tech tree is done, go to the Merciful Agony special mission and get the two upgrades from there. After that, start buying Sparks of Glory from the Ordo Hereticus vendor every inventory refresh, and use other fate for buying loot crates from Ragna.

Disposal:
That tells you how to find the gear you want. For gear you don’t want:
Sell all greens and blues. Salvage purples when you need Ancient Mechanisms for rerolls, once you’re done with early rerolling sell all purples too. There is a seasonal objective to salvage 100 items in most seasons, you can use purples for that.
Salvage all relics (Orange), you never have enough machine god’s spark.
Sell ancient relics (Red) for cash and three Fate each.
Salvage morality and Archeotech relics (Light Blue and Glowing Orange) until you have around 25 Spark of Glory saved up, then sell relics. (Ancient Relics give 3 sparks or 3 fate while ancient relics give 1 spark or 3 fate, so salvaging Ancients is better). When you use Sparks of glory, start salvaging again until your stockpile is back to 25.
Sell most Archeotech shards. For specific shard types that you plan to use, keep the smaller ones to combine later. Keep several of each of the top level shards even if you don’t plan to use that type in this build in case you change your mind later.
Keep Psalm Codes unless you’re sure you’ve got all you need.
Learn any blueprints you find, sell duplicate blueprints.
Sell any Intels that you’re not going to use for missions.

Key mid-game Gear:
There are two enchants that are key to this build, “All construct heat attacks apply burn on hit with a X% chance” and “Adds a Heat Vulnerability on Causing Burn effect”. Once you have these two enchants, you can probably complete missions with the +11 card (though you probably won’t be ready to run them regularly). If you find an item with these enchants, definitely save it or buy it from a vendor. 

“All construct heat attacks apply burn on hit with a X% chance” is a relic enchant on weapons. You should keep a relic Plasma Cavalier Beta with the most enchant slots as you’re leveling – you don’t really care about its weapon damage, a level 35 gun can easily last you to level 100. Once you have enough Machine God Sparks (probably sometime in levels the 40-60), reroll the enchant on it until you get this. (Obviously if one drops with the enchant, you don’t need to reroll). Since this is a relic, you can reroll the other enchants without using Sparks of Glory and should do so to get some decent modifiers.

“Adds a Heat Vulnerability on causing Burn effect” is the other key enchant. For the final build you want this on a Signum, but getting from anything is good before that, and if you have signum(s) of wisdom then you want to use them until level 100. This effect can also roll as an archeotech enchant on a neural implant or belt and as a relic enchant on a belt, so if you find any of these items keep and use them. If you don’t get any of these as a drop then get or craft a relic Technomartyr Girdle and reroll until you get this enchant. (The in-game enchant viewer doesn’t know about the relic version on belt, but Mome’s enchant viewer does and I’ve verified that it is possible to roll). Since this is a relic, you can reroll the other enchants without depleting your Sparks of Glory.

Mid to Late Game Gear:
You want to watch for Signums of Wisdom and gear with any of the enchantments mentioned for endgame items, I’ve listed them below for convenience. Ancient relics of burning, combustion, and boiling are not in the final equipment set, but are useful while leveling (especially if you don’t have things setup for constructs to apply vulnerability). While leveling up just getting the main enchants is a huge boost and some rerolling is good, but you should limit heavy rerolling (and especially rerolling to perfect scores) to endgame-quality gear (level over 90, 6 enchant slots or 4 enchant slots for construct modules).

Plasma Cavalier Beta Relic: All Construct Heat attacks apply Burn on Hit with a 15% chance.
Signum Archeotech: Adds a Heat Vulnerability on Causing Burn effect
Signum Archeotech: x% chance to add a general Vulnerability when the target gets a debuff effect
Technomartyr Vestment: Morality (Radical)
Innoculator Archeotech: +X shield charge gained for every point of data flux spent
Technomartyr Girdle Ancient Relic: of Calculation
Technomartyr Girdle Relic: Adds a Heat Vulnerability on Causing Burn effect
Purity Seal Archeotech: Invulnerability for 3 seconds when losing at least X% HP on Hit Taken
Eye Implant Relic or Archeotech: 25% increased effect of Heat Vulnerability
Main and Neural Implant: Aegis of the Vigilant, Movement Bonuses, Defense Bonuses

Construct Modules:
Once you start getting relic construct modules, use them if they do something useful even if they don’t fit the type and enchantment of endgame. At some point (probably in the 60s, definitely in the 80s) you should start rerolling their enchants to mostly match the engame construct setup, especially on 4-slot modules. You shouldn’t reroll to perfect scores until you get your final modules (relic, level over 90, 4 slots), but getting good construct modules will make a big difference in how hard of missions you can complete.

Force fields are generally more useful defensive moduless than endurance early on. At higher difficulties, force fields tend to deplete very quickly so you probably should switch to endurance modules. Some people prefer more force fields at high levels.

Extra Items:
I usually stash items that are key for other characters or builds that I might try another time. Things that give effects related to enrage, berserk, and shock are good for other characters, and Robotics ancient relics plus any gear with “-X% data flux reserve” are key to TAs built around the heavier robots.

You want to follow the usual pattern of leveling up venom first, then the other cards you use, You will probably skip the intermediate +level cards as you’ll either be using Treasure Trove (for most drops) or Arch Enemy (highest level drops) when you get to endgame.

Typically Treasure Trove (+2 level) and a mix of Murder, Momentum, and Venom is your go-to combination while leveling. Once you can swing it, putting Arch enemy (+11 levels) and Murder on a mission gives lots of XP, going through a Void Crusades, intels, or seasonal missions like this is my preferred way to level. Early on a bad combination of penalties can be devastating so swap cards or use no cards if you don’t like what you penalties get. By late game the only penalties that worry me are 5 minute time limit on large maps and heat resistant enemies (especially multiple heat resists).

For loot, ‘chance to gain a duplicate item’ is generally better for loot than ‘chance to gain a high quality item’. Treasure Trove (+2 level) gives more bonus items than the other (+5 to +11) cards. For the last mission of a VC you should pretty much always use one of the ‘duplicate item’ majors, Momentum, and Venom or a seal.

For Void Crusades, you usually don’t want to bump the level up more than +2 for Panic Room or Rescue missions (the people you’re trying to save will die easily) or for the mission with the Servo Skull (you usually have to run past enemies to get to the skull).

For farming money, Treasure Trove, Momentum, and Perserverance is the best combination. Onslaught seems like it would be good, but it gives a relatively small bonus because it only affects actual credit rewards when most of your money comes from selling drops, especially intels.

For influence, The Pure and Martyrdom cards make low-level missions give a lot of influence (For example, a base low level mission will give 10 rep, but will give over 50 with those two cards and some third card). On high level missions, cranking the level by +11 with Arch Enemy usually gives more influence per mission than The Pure (in both cases you’d use Martyrdom as a minor). To unlock cards and seasonal achievements that require reputation, use the star map to go to the system you want to gain reputation in and run the missions you find there with the cards mentioned above.

Background tasks:
There are some easy heroic deeds and seasonal goals that you can do in the background while leveling. Most of these are a pain to do specifically but can be done in the background.

Blow up Traps Until Cheating Death (50). Note that shooting a mine doesn’t count for this, but running up to trigger a mine, then back or past it so it blows up but doesn’t hurt you does.
Skull traps count for Cheating Death and a seasonal achievement, keep an eye out for them and blow them up. There’s a cathedral map in the southwest part of Viridian void crusade that has a lot of them.
Explode containers until Demolisher (50)
Pick up and use all World Skills until Enunciator (50)
Open all Medical Boxes until Grand Resource Acquisitor (100)
Open supply boxes until Ordnance Seeker (10)
If you use inocculator on a mission, use it on every cooldown for the rest of the mission until Chemo-Saturated Organs (300,000 health)
If you can, avoid using the innoculator at all until Hypodermic Abstinence (50 missions)

Unlocks:
Some Ancient Relic items (notably Signum of Wisdom) have unlocks that require things like ‘kill 100 enemies with critical hits’ that will take forever to complete in regular play since construct attacks don’t crit. To clear one of those in 2-3 missions, swap most of your construct slots to tarantula turrets, respec for better crit chance and bigger AOE, then run Valorous Heart and keep dropping turrets onto packs of little enemies. This also works well for ‘kill X enemies’ and ‘inflict X physical damage’ unlocks.

Several Tarot cards and seasonal achievements require reputation. You can easily boost your reputation in a system by using the starmap to travel to that system, look at planets for missions, and follow the advice in the tarot card section to maximize your reputation for each mission. With tarot cards even a low-level mission can give around 50 reputation so you won’t need a huge number of missions. And remember that enemies won’t hurt you on low-level missions, you can just rush to each objective, resummon your robots, and kill/activate just the objective.

Seasonal:
You should be able to do all of the seasonal achievements without trouble other than the annoying season 1 ones (War Zones is a 110 mission grind and collecting 2000 cortex fragments takes at least 10 weeks). Most of them are self-explanatory or have a trick you can check forums or discord for. The three that people worry about are Protector Magna, Ultimate Penance, and Thorough Crusade, which aren’t hard for you. To complete Protector Magna see above. For Ultimate Penance the only difficult part is collecting a full set of blue items, the mission should be extremely easy since your constructs can use their upgraded weapons and construct modules. While you’re not a speed demon like some builds, Thorough Crusade is easy to complete if you use one of Grimstalker’s fast paths through one, don’t crank the difficulty through the roof, and don’t spend too long on the big maps. Viridian is the easiest for this build.