The betrayer, master of daggers, red crit number overflow - Kullervo!
Release date: 2023-06-21
Passive: All melee weapons equipped by Kullervo gain +75% Heavy Attack Efficiency and +100% Heavy Attack Wind Up Speed.
Wrathful Advance - (TAP) Kullervo charges a Heavy Attack, then teleports to his target and strikes. His rage-filled focus temporarily increases his Melee Critical Chance.
(HOLD) Teleport to any marked location.
Recompense - Kullervo surrounds himself with daggers. Each dagger that strikes an enemy restores his health, but each dagger that misses an enemy strikes Kullervo, dealing a bit of damage. When Kullervo has max Health, he receives Overguard from struck enemies.
Collective Curse - Kullervo sends forth a curse that binds enemies. When a cursed enemy takes damage from him, every other cursed enemy also suffers a portion of that damage.
Storm of Ukko - The Void answers Kullervo’s invocation with a storm of daggers that rain down upon his enemies.
Acquisition: Main and component blueprints are purchased from Acrithis for Kullervo’s Bane.
Here he is! My personal pick for current strongest frame in the game! I was honestly a bit torn between him and Dante, but I think I would put Kullervo ever so slightly higher, his scaling coming from weapons makes him far more resilient to power creep and his single target damage is insane, Dante suffers a bit on that front.
Needles to say, this frame is crazy. Insane levels of damage, shared between as many enemies as you can Collective Curse, nearly immortal thanks to on-demand overguard, free combo counter generator build in to make his heavy attack numbers even sillier and a mobility tool that makes Ash jealous (poor Teleport crying in the corner). This frame, along with Zephyr, are your easiest entry points into Steel Path. If you like guns, pick Zephyr. If you prefer melee, Kullervo is your man. Both of them require just a decent weapon modded for their respective strengths to dominate Steel Path enemies with absolute ease. Just like Zephyr, you don’t even need any mods on Kullervo himself to easily stomp your way through any mission. No matter if it’s a boss or a horde of troops, he carves his way right through them all the same.
Stealth frames with Xata and an Influence nuke weapon can actually enjoy similar levels of KPM and damage output as Kullervo due to the somehow still broken interaction between Xata and stealth bonus. Even Loki can exploit this to have a 20m oneshot nuke, which I find hilarious.
main thing I want to say is to point out that Prova rivens are dirt cheap.
Get one and roll it for crit damage. Then slap on [static discharge] and build Kullevo with the Mecha set and you can triple coat everything in the room with damage from his single target kill. (Collective Curse + Mecha Target + Static Discharge) and one more time if you run Melee Influence.
Ah yes, Kullervo, the reason Overguard finally got fixed. Wrathful Advance is cool, but I actually really appreciate how you can also play him as a nuker due to the quadratic scaling off Collective Curse and Ukko’s Storm.
Ukko’s Advance is a fun augment because it streamlines his gameplay to bringing a combo charger with you as you hack and slap your way to epic victory with his 1.
Not Kullervo specific, but because Blast is currently coded a la Xata as an entire second hit, this means Blast Rauta can actually charge extra combo over what it says it does. Same mechanic behind why Blast on Snipers leads to extremely rapid combo racking. Not sure how it interacts with Xata and Collective Curse, but I imagine Nautilus might enable one-tap combo maxes with such a setup.
I main Nourish Kullervo and love him - it’s not min-maxed, but he doesn’t need to be, since I basically one hit everything in the game :)
