Help modding my Rhino for higher level

[Kelpie77]

Hi everyone

At the moment i'm MR11 and past War Within; since i beat Jackals (multiple times) i really loved the Rhino, and his near invulnerable Iron Skin. Then i leveled up to sedna and eris junction with my Valkyr Prime, using the first for the "tougher" missions (like boss fight, derelict mods hunting, etc) and the second for when i needed to go faster, more agile. After some try on Oberon and Nyx (not for me) and Nezha (meh) i found Gara very interesting (for defenses her glass wall is waaaay too cool). I'm waiting for Hydroid Prime and Titania to be built to try them.

Now i'm starting doing higher mission, and while i'm farming items on PoE or mods here and there, advancing on quests, and farming money (seimeni) or endo (alert and maroo's) to fusion my mod, i whant to improve my Rhino. I'm Steel Syndicate so i have access to augment mods, and i already bought Reinforcing Stomp augment.

Actually i have no real problem in playing the game, but i whanna "pimp my Rhino" to keep him my top frame and use it at high level run, nightmare run and eventually sortie (i never tried it so far...).

My actual loadout is this one:

This loadout is built around iron skin and resilience; Vitality, Steel Fiber and Redirection are for survivability. Vigor and Armored Agility for better health, shield and armor (and also sprint speed that's really a problem for Rhino). Flow and Energy Siphon to have enough energy to recast Iron Skin and/or to cast Rhino Stomp. Streamline is for same reason: lower cost = more recast. Intensify is just to increase Iron Skin armor value.
Exilus mod is just one of the few really nice at 4 point drain; i'm planning on using another forma to make some room for Rush or something better, at the moment i don't know

I use Hek with Syndicate mod (the one who add multishot and justice), hell's chamber, point blank, and elemental damage mostly; i use also twin grakatas modded with damage, elemental damage, and critical chance mod, and dragon nikana.
I use a reactor'ed Taxon with Death Cube Machine Gun, mainly for shield buff, shield while i resurrect, guardian, and of course vacuum :D

So... what's the question?

the question is

a) how can i put inside this build Reinforced Stomp (or another augment mod)? what can i remove for that?
b) is this build good? can i survive sortie, lvl 80-100 missions and/or eris/sedna ones?
c) how can i get a better build? what mod i should need to farm/search?

Thank You for your help :)

[Omega-Shadowblade]

I'd personally remove vigor, It doesn't provide the biggest boost to survivability, and if you know how to use rhino's kit effectively you can keep the damage off you well enough.

Edit: also I personally use (primed) Continuity in order to prolong the effects of roar and stomp.

Edited January 16, 2018 by Omega-Shadowblade

[Ailyene]

You could probably replace a shield mod with an augment mod, I personally prefer [Iron Shrapnel] over [Reinforcing Stomp] since its faster at restoring Iron Skin from low percentages, costs less energy, lets me turn Range into another dump stat.  Shields are generally pretty useless for high level content.

For an Iron Skin build you could put more into power strength if you have the mods, stuff like [Transient Fortitude], [Augur Secrets], [Blind Rage], [Power Drift], and [Energy Conversion].  Put in some power duration and it'll be a Roar build on top of Iron Skin as well, Roar is probably the second most powerful damage self-buff in the game aside from Vex Armor but can be shared unlike that.

[--F--NerevarCM]

Remove Vigor and Armored Agility.

Use Ironclad Charge for Iron Skin build and a Power Strenght corrupted mod like Blind Rage or Transient Fortitude

Blind Rage takes efficiency but gives you a lot of Power Strenght

Transient Fortitude gives you less Power Strenght but removes a little of duration. However using Primed Continuity gives you enough duration to nullify TF negative duration. Good if you want a good Roar with Iron Skin.

Change Continuity for Primed Continuity. Better duration for Roar and Stomp

Power Drift for more Strenght

If you want, change Redirection for other mod, I prefer Redirection even with a lot of people that think shields are useless.

Edited January 16, 2018 by -SDM-NerevarCM

[Autongnosis]

There are two main ways to make Rhino relevant for higher end gameplay. 

The first (and more boring imo) one is to go range and a but of duration with high efficiency and use Stomp for its CC and Iron Skin just to survive the odd shot coming your way. 

The second one, which is the one i use and have most fun with, is to combine Ironclad Charge with Iron Shrapnel and run a build with higher strenght, moderate range and duration depending on preference (mine is slightly negative for example). 

That basically works like this: you find a group of enemies, use yiur Charge aiming at them so as to hit as many as possible. Now Ironclad Charge is giving you extra 50% armour (scaling off power strenght) for each enemy hit fir a couple of seconds. If you cast Iron Skin when Ironclad Charge bonus is active, Iron Skin will scale off your total armour at that time (including your IC bonus). 

That way you can easily facetank enemies in a Sortie 3 if you find a nice grouo of enemies somewhere. Iron Shrapnel is needed because that way when your IS gets low on health you can do another charge, then press 2 to explode your current IS dealing some damage and ragdolling enemies away, and then recast a new IS with the bonus yiu just got. 

It's incredibly effective. I got one "tame" version wich has a bit more efficiency and duration that i usually run, and a more extreme one that i run for endurance. Even the first one is able to walk throught a Sortie 3 with boosted enemy damage without a scratch. 

 

An advice: if you go full IS tanking you can potentially forego survivability mods safe for Steel Fiber (that boosts your IS), and also ignore lifesteal/healing. Provided it works for you, that is. It is a possible way tho, i do it and for me it works perfectly. 

In general thoug i would advise against building for shields on Rhino since a) you probably will have IS up most of the time and b) despite the higher base shields Rhino gets a lot more EHP mileage out of health due to his high armour. 

Edited January 17, 2018 by Autongnosis

[Xzorn]

One of the best things about Rhino is he starts out pretty strong and only gets stronger as you grow.

My main Rhino build, this would be a full Iron Skin tanking method mentioned.

You may need to use a 6/10 Blind Range depending on your energy management. Rush is just my thing, Power Drift, Streamlined Form or Enemy Sense all work great. Health Conversion is there in case you need it. Under lvl 100 the mod slot doesn't make much difference and above lvl 100 you can pick up health orbs from lockers or crates by injuring  your companion / Sentinel and improve his Iron Skin to an avg of 70-90k. Upwards 200k. He will not lose the stacks from Health Conversion unless you take damage with Iron Skin off and that would kill him at those levels anyways.

To be honest I don't think anything lvl 100 or lower is going to challenge this but it's there if you ever want to push the limits. I've pushed it to lvl 300 before I goofed and the reason it's a more advanced option is because dying at lvl 300 with this build is tough to recover from. Least Solo.

[Kelpie77]

Ok tyvm for your advices

I already thought about removing shield mod and test it during nightmare mod; i also see many build without vitality and shield (but some use primed vigor so it's something like cheating :D )
I bought primed cotninuity from Baro last weekend, but it's a long way to rank it (and also i need more forma to be applied to squeeze it inside... but knowing what to do is a good start). I don't remember if i have power drift... honestly i doubt it :\ but it could be a good mod to put on exilus slot.

I'll look forward to remove shield mod than and put inside augment mods in it. Or remove Vigor. Or both :)

Oh i also forget mentioning i was using unairu primary focus... then i discovered wiki information are outdated and is now useless for tank build x_x so i'm starting farming for zenurik to give me more energy... :| (i need a lot of energy also in my valkyr prime and gara build, while this one could also benefit from unairu 'cause got low armor by default)

[kissmyaxe21]

Use sttrengt and duration mods they help rhinos abilities

 

[(PSN)drpunk-yo]

Dump Vitality, Redirection and Vigor.

As long as Iron Skin is up (which makes use of Steel Fiber) then health and shields are irrelevant.

Use those 3 freed slots to buff range and duration and roar for your team.

[Kelpie77]

Ok i tried removing Redirection and did 2 test, first one was with Reinforced Stomp, second one was with Iron Shrapnel. I tested it on 10 wave on Akkad. Ok mobs at 10th wave are not "high level" but it worked well, dunno if better but sure not worse than my previous setup, and spamming Reinforced Stomp to replenish IS is fun so it's a win situation

With Iron Shrapnel is a little less funny, but the ability to recast IS at will before it depletes is way too good. Also, i used roar a lot to cast it a little before IS explosion and was really good at clearing room

Then i tried a lvl 60 bounty on PoE with both (removing Vigor too), and facing higher level mobs i saw IS going down too quickly for Reinforced Stomp to regenerate. It's a little shame because stomping my way around is funny :) However Iron Shrapnel and recast is still a good thing and save my rhino's back a couple of times. In the end i gone down only one time (and the PUG i was playing with was not really a good team player) and this time was to revive a pet when i should had to leave after bounty was completed)
Overall test is good, but i need a little more testing

Probably Stomping and Shrapnel is not a good combo? i mean i need to put only one of them? or probably i need something else to have an higher IS?

At the moment i got not enough syndicate standing to buy Ironclad Charge too, but i think will be next step... i read many post of people having fun with Charge -> Shrapnel -> IS... :)

ps: the lvl 60 bounty shows me i need to mod more Dragon Nikana 'cause is not really good at slashing armored tusk grineer... ok the combo "hek-hek-hek-hek-dragon nikana-dragon nikana" is good, but overall damage seems better with Broken War than with Dragon Nikana...)

Edited January 18, 2018 by Kelpie77

[Xzorn]

Reinforced Stomp was made as a counterpart to IronClad where Rhino using 200+% Range would mostly rely on their Stomp to stay alive, not their Iron Skin. Sadly though this technique died when DE released Nullifiers as they ignore Stomp and shoot Rhino anyways making IronClad the more reliable answer.

Due to (likely purposeful) low ball on the numbers involved Reinforced Stomp doesn't integrate very well into a non-Stomp build either. After all, why get a % of your IronSkin back if you can get 100% back with Iron Shrapnel. Add in that if you use IronClad to buff your armor then you'll need to also use IronClad for Stomp in order to get decent returns and it gets unreasonably taxing on energy.

It's a shame cuz the mod had potential when it was first voted on.

[Autongnosis]

Il y a 4 heures, Xzorn a dit :

It's a shame cuz the mod had potential when it was first voted on.

What do you mean? What was different? 

[Xzorn]

19 minutes ago, Autongnosis said:

What do you mean? What was different? 

 

When the mod was first posted to be voted on it said something like "Iron Skin is replenished an amount based on the number of enemies stomped".

The concept is A+ but the execution was fumbled because the values and interaction were made too low.

If I recall that round also had the "Mesa can move at walking pace during Peacemaker" which hasn't seen the light of day. Not that I would use it but it was top voted along with a Trinity Blessing and Nova M.Prime augment. None of which happened. This was back in July 2016.

[Kelpie77]

Oh ok so i'll definitely need to get the IronClad Charge

and of course Power Drift and/or Transient Fortitude so to increase iron skin armor value

Besides, i did a couple more test, on PoE lvl 50-60... iron shrapnel is good. The fact it ragdolls enemies is good for defensive reason: if surrounded, hit 2 twice in a row: the first time everyone fly away, the second time you're an unstoppable force of nature again :D