Gambit Melee dps gambit leveling pve pvp
Guide by Crem Last update at Apr 3rd 2014, 19:55

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Cherie 1
1  60
Malfean setup: Aubrey Setup:
LM: Strike LM: Strike
A: Roll A: Sweep
S: Beatdown S: House of Cards
D: Slam D: Slam
F: Ragin F: Cheat
G: Vault G: Ragin
E: 52 E: 52
RM: Sweep RM: Beatdown (F1), Vault (F2), House of Cards (F3), Roll (F4)



Before we start I would like to say that I am by no means any type of "Pro". This is just what works for me and I would like to share it. This build has been tested against MODOK in cosmic terminals SOLO with 0 deaths on most occasions. This is including doing the bounty solo for the extra 3 chests.
20
20




GEAR IS KEY FOR THIS BUILD. It may take a lot of level 60 farming before you can effectively use this setup to the extent that I do. There are a few KEY points on gear I would like to iterate before we get started on the more specifics. Health is god. Health gives you time to notice you are in a tight spot and react. It is the bread and butter of this build. 2nd to be really effective you need a decent amount of power duration. I have just under 10 seconds of down time without 20 active at 37% increased power duration. Let's face it. 20 is where Gambit's DPS really shines. The longer you can keep this active, the faster you can clear. 3rd most important would be the various forms of health regen. This includes 25% regen on costume core, Life on hit, Life on damage dealt, and Life on basic attack, and flat health regen. All of these help to KEEP YOU ALIVE.



Now to start into the gear specifics.
For gear you will be using 2 of Gambits uniques. Death's Black Staff and X-Ternals Mantle.

The Black Staff is great for clearing trash with 20 because it has the auto kill feature built into it. This can save you a lot of time killing Elite mobs. It also has more DPS than a cosmic staff and has a guaranteed Physical damage bonus roll. This is important because all of your main damage spells are physical damage. Black Staff also provides health on defeated enemy and a nice bonus to all current Bo Combat powers.

The X-Ternals Mantle is used because it is essentially an upgraded cosmic in the sense that it is Gambit specific and gives +1 to all current powers. On top of this it gives us all sorts of other goodies! It has Health and Health regen(SEE ABOVE FOR IMPORTANCE.) It has Rare Item Find(RIF), because who doesn't need to drop more loot? It also provides us with a 3% bonus to all damage dealt to Bosses! This helps a lot in clear time of boss rooms.

Now on to our Cosmic Item Slots!
For your three cosmic items try and land 1 of them that grants invulnerability when attacked(Cosmic Bulwark). This will help you take more of a punishment in those nasty cosmic boss fights! Also have at least 1 that has a chance to give Attack Speed, Movement Speed, and Damage Rating on hit. This can enhance your clear time!

Cosmics Gloves are our first slot after uniques. Health and Power Duration or the key affixes here. Try for 1500+ Health and 10%+ Power Duration. This item can also have a GRANT(Affix that GIVES you a spell free of charge at specified level.) Look for Grants in spells that you have only invested 1 or 0 points in as these don't increase the level of your already leveled spells. Good options for this could be 20 , 20 , 20 , and 20 .

Next item slot is boots. For our cosmic boots the Key Affixes are health and our CURRENTS(Affix that essential levels up your spell ON TOP of the points you have already invested in said skill.) Again look for 1500+ health roll for these. For your Currents look for skills that you HAVE invested your points in. These would be your skills with 20 points in them. Top choices for these would be 20 , 20 , 20 , and 20 . Other nice Affixes for this item slot are RIF and Movement Speed. Movement Speed will help your clear time as it will allow you to traverse the terrain quicker.

Next Cosmic slot is your Playing Cards. On these again the most important Affixes are Health and Currents. SEE BOOTS ON WHAT TO LOOK FOR ON THOSE TWO. You can also again find RIF on this slot. MOAR LOOT PLZ.

Next is our Ring.
I personally like my level 60 Fandral ring, but I got it before Cosmic Rings were released. On Fandral Ring look for 150+ Dodge and 200+ Damage. This takes a lot of PVP farming to get so Cosmic Rings may be the more common option here and as I am not too familiar with their rolls and affixes yet I will just leave this section alone until I have gathered more information on good cosmic ring options.

Now to Relics and Uru-Forged gear.
For Your Relic Lemuria is king! It procs with each hit of 20 . This goes a long way in keeping you alive while channeling.
For your Uru-Forged slot I use the Physical damage Uru-Forged War Gauntlet. Again because your main damage is coming from Physical spells in this build.

Artifacts and Medallion time!
We will start with your Medallion. is key for this build. It gives you Health, Damage, and Power Duration. A good roll to look for would be 325+ damage, 22%+ Power Duration and 850+ Health.
For our four Artifacts we will be using , , , and .
Is key to the success of this guild. It gives you a good bit of Health for survival. It gives Movement Speed for clear time. It gives Spirit on Dodge(KEY MECHANIC) for sustaining your 20 . THIS ITEM IS A MUST HAVE! Numbers to look for here are 5% Movement Speed, 340 Dodge, and 1000+ Health.
gives us Melee Damage, which all our main damage spells have this Skill Tag. It gives us Defense. Guess what? It also give us Health! Numbers to look for here are around 300 Defense, 240 Melee Damage, and 1000+ Health.
is also pretty important. The proc on the Invulnerability may look like a low chance, but it actually procs quite often. This gives good survival against Bosses and large high damage mobs. It also rolls a pretty good bit of Physical damage for clear time. What else? You guessed it. It also gives Health! Numbers to look for here are 450+ Physical damage and 1400+ Health.
(I am now using Adv Kung Fu Training Sequence here. WIll update this when it is added to MarvelBase) gives us lots of Health! From this item we get a really good amount of Health. It also gives us Defense, Health Regen, Spirit Regen, and a proc to increase our Movement Speed and Attack Speed.
Good numbers here are 1800+ Health, 200 Defense, and 2500+ Health Regen.

Blessing Options for your Artifacts!

Blessing of Fandral for +100 Crit Rating and +3% Dodge. This can give you some faster clear time with increased Crit Rating and the Dodge increase helps you stay alive and regain Spirit with .
Blessing of Hogun for +3% Melee Damage and +3% Physical Defense. This helps with clear time by adding to your Melee Damage.
Blessing of Hela for +5% Brutal Strike Rating and 5% chance to invoke the Hand of Glory, dealing energy damage equal to your Health. Really all of that Health just became an attack? NIIIICE! This could easily deal 25,000 energy damage per proc if you get decent items.
Blessing of Volstagg for +3% defense and +3% base Health. What was that? More Health? Sure why not!
Blessing of Odin for 7 spirit when you defeat and enemy and +5% bonus damage against bosses. This will help take down those pesky bosses in no time flat!

Legendary Items!

There are a lot of good options here. Personally I like Excalibur and not just for its flavor text which is very fitting for this build! It gives +800 Melee power damage, +1000 defense, +400 Crit Rating, and +50 Life on Hit. So from this item we get a good bit of damage, defense, and sustain. By far my favorite for this build!
Other options could be Gungir for the Crits. Which would mostly just help while in 20 as this build isn't Crit intensive.
Cosmic Control Rod for the Energy Damage, Spirit Regen, and +300 health on enemy defeat. This can increase your Crit Rating, and Damage while in 20 as well as giving you some sustain upon killings mobs.
Shield of Perseus could be an option for its +1000 Health and Defense, but if you have followed my guide this far then this shouldn't be needed and you can opt for a legendary with more damage.

Costume Core and Insignia!

For your Insignia you can really use whatever you like here. I like Insignia of Beast with 12% chance for +400 Melee Damage on Dodge.
Ogrady Insignia is always a solid option.
Insignia of Piotr Rasputin is another good option if you don't want to wait for a proc to get your damage, but you don't receive as high a bonus.

For Costumes we get a 25% Health and Spirit regen core. I like Health on the core until we have some word on the stats rework. Try and get a level 60 core for this so your costume rolls are higher. For Grade 1 & 2 we roll Health (Are you really surprised at this point?) For Grade 3 I went for Regenerate 150 Health on Basic Attack Hit for extra sustain. For Grade 4? Yup, Health. Try and hit around 1500+ on your Grade 4 Health roll.

Runes and Runewords

Good Runes to look for on to Enchant you slots 1 through five are Cattle(+200 Health), Stone(+50 Physical damage), Spear(+50 Melee damage), and Serpent(+100 dodge). All of these are good options to compliment my build, feel free to mix and match to your liking.

Good Runewords to use would be :
Valkyrie's Legacy for the +200 Melee damage, along with it's sustaining Spirit and Health on hit.
Bone Breaker for the +200 Melee damage, +2% Attack speed, and +1 Strength(essentially +5% Physical damage).
Viking Gladiator would be TOP TIER for this build. +400 to Melee damage, Defense, Health, and Dodge. AMAZING RUNEWORD
Heartbreaker could be used if you want to get more Critical/Brutal Rating/Damage Rating
Heroes of Asgard if you want to be a team player and help out your allies. Seems to have some nice procs on it.
Viking's Vitality if you are finding it hard to come up with all the gear Health you need and are having trouble staying alive.

Skill Usages and Rotations

Lead off each fight with 1 to apply 20 . You can also drop 1 to accomplish the same thing, or you can save it for crowd control, either is fine. Then if it is a Boss hit with 20 to apply the damage buff. Next step is to hit that amazing 20 and go straight into 20 and repeat. 20 can also be used instead of 20 for clearing trash mobs super fast. When using 20 just 1 into the middle of the action with 20 active and let them have it!
My skill bar setup is as follows:
LClick:20
A:20
S:20
D:1
F:20
G:1
H:1
RClick:1
HotKey1:20
HotKey2:1
If you are really into loot hunting you could change 20 into a 1 pointer and make 20 get those points.

Summary

This build will give you TONS of sustain and allow you to do amazing things in group or solo. It's damage is VERY deceiving. You have a lot of bonuses to Melee Power which doesn't show up anywhere on your sheet damage. This can make your numbers look small in the damage department, but don't let that fool you! This build has GREAT clear time from all that hidden damage and the fact that you NEVER DIE! That being said you still have to react to things happening in game and can't just stand in place auto attacking. You still need to tumble, vault, and All In to victory!

Gambit has always been my favorite Marvel hero and I know a lot of people have been disappointed with his state in game right now. I have made this guide to show that Gambit can hold his own in PVE against the best of them! I know that Gaz will continue to work on him and improve some of his more awkward mechanics in time, but this is still an amazingly fun hero.

Thank you everyone for checking out my build and I look forward to seeing more people enjoying Gambit!

Edit 2-14-14
I got some requests for screenshots of my power tree and damage numbers and I finally had some time where I felt like adding them so here they are!

Power TreeBo BeatdownAll InGrand SlamRagin Cajun52 CardVaultRed SuitsCherie

I did not include Good Times Roll screenshot because we all know what that does.
Also didn't include Royal Flush screenshot because it isn't needed to apply Red Suits with the temp fix in place.