AgentHuntzman's Leaderboard Vanguard Support Build

What This Build Does

Build credit: AgentHuntzman. Go watch his breakdown and drop a sub.

This is the Vanguard Recon Scout, a full team-support build that triples your squad’s damage output. You don’t kill things. You make your entire team kill things three times faster.

The loop is simple: stack Engineering through Torrential Downpour and Fully Charged, convert it into team-wide weapon damage through Tactical Smart Cover, debuff enemies with Scanning Pulse, and supercharge everyone’s rate of fire with Tactical Link. Your personal DPS will look embarrassing. Your team’s total output will be disgusting.

The Build

Gear

Loadout

Skill Mods

Alternatives worth knowing:

• Smart Cover: Hardened Casing (+12% Armor to covered allies) if your team is dying before they can deal damage
• Scanning Pulse: Exposing Burst (increases Exposed stack damage) for harder PvE content with tankier enemies

Loot Quick-Reference

Why Each Piece Matters

Engineering on Every Piece

AgentHuntzman’s video shows mixed cores (Toughness on chest, Firepower on backpack/gloves/kneepads). We recommend Engineering on every piece. More Engineering = more Smart Cover weapon damage for the whole team. That’s the entire point of the build.

Mechanical Expert 4-Piece

The 2pc (+9.6% Skill Duration) and 3pc (-9.0% CDR) keep your skills cycling with near-permanent uptime. The 4pc (+24% SAC Efficiency) means your Tactical Link charges faster from all sources, which means more uptime on the team damage buff.

Boom-Shakalaka 2-Piece

The 2pc (-6.0% CDR) stacks with Mechanical Expert’s 3pc for even faster skill cycling. You only slot 2 pieces, so the 3pc and 4pc bonuses are not active.

Chest: Socialite (And Real Alternatives)

“Grants +10% Movement Speed when there are no enemies within 20m. Grants +36% Armor while within 20m of an enemy.”

You’re sitting in your Smart Cover while enemies push toward you, and it rewards that with a massive armor boost at the moment of contact. Solid pick, and AgentHuntzman’s choice.

Attribute bonuses on the chest: Roll Armor and Damage Reduction here, not Duration or CDR. The chest is the one survivability slot in the build. Socialite’s +36% Armor scales directly off your Armor stat, so more Armor in your bonus slots means a bigger shield when enemies close range. Damage Reduction stacks on top. The rest of your gear handles uptime. The chest handles keeping you alive long enough to use it.

But the chest slot has genuine competitors that are worth knowing:

Deep Focus: “Grants +28% Skill Duration but inflicts -10% Skill Radius.”

This might actually be the better pick for this build. +28% Skill Duration directly extends your Smart Cover uptime and your Scanning Pulse vulnerability window. The -10% Skill Radius penalty sounds scary but does nothing meaningful here: your Smart Cover sits on a fixed piece of cover (radius doesn’t expand its protection area) and your Scanning Pulse already fills a room at base range. If you care more about uptime than staying alive, Deep Focus is worth testing over Socialite.

Accelerated Charge: “Kills and assists behind cover grant +30% Signature Ability Charge Efficiency for 8 seconds.”

More Tactical Link uptime. If your team is getting kills consistently behind your cover (and they will be, because you’ve tripled their damage), this procs constantly and stacks on top of your existing SAC build. Worth running if Tactical Link uptime is your priority over raw armor.

Nothing to Lose: “Taking damage has a 50% chance of reducing Skill Cooldowns of deployed Skills by 2%, up to 3 stacks.”

Situationally useful if you’re getting pressured, but it requires you to be taking hits to proc. Doesn’t fit the play pattern of sitting safely in cover.

We haven’t tested these head-to-head yet. If you run Deep Focus or Accelerated Charge and have results, drop them in Discord. This section will get updated.

Backpack: Brainstorm (Our Recommendation)

“Grants +15% Skill Duration. Grants an additional +15% Skill Duration when within 20 meters of an ally.”

AgentHuntzman runs Intense Performance II (+46% Skill Radius) on his backpack. We recommend Brainstorm instead. Skill Radius is a trap stat for this build. Your Smart Cover is placed on a specific piece of cover, radius doesn’t make it bigger, and your Scanning Pulse already covers a room at base radius. Making it 46% wider to cover the hallway behind you where nobody is standing is wasted budget.

Brainstorm gives +30% Skill Duration at all times (you are always near teammates). Smart Cover stays up 30% longer. Scanning Pulse vulnerability lasts 30% longer. Every second of extra uptime is a second your team is doing amplified damage. Duration is king.

A Note on Skill Intensity

You’ll notice we’ve swapped most Skill Intensity rolls for Skill Duration, Sig. Ability Charge Efficiency, Damage Reduction, and Skill Cooldown Recovery. Skill Intensity sounds good on paper but its actual impact on this build is not well documented. The community assumption is that it increases the weapon damage Smart Cover transmits to allies, but exact scaling hasn’t been confirmed by testing. Until we have hard numbers, the stats with known impact win. If you test it and get real results, share them in Discord.

Skill Duration vs. CDR: Does More CDR Actually Help?

Short answer: at this gear setup, probably not. Here’s why.

Scanning Pulse base duration: roughly 17 seconds. Base cooldown: roughly 15 seconds. Duration already beats cooldown with no CDR investment at all. That means you can reapply the debuff before it ever expires. CDR reduces the gap between your recast and the next window, but since there is no gap (the debuff is still up when you can already recast), stacking more CDR gives you nothing extra on Pulse.

Tactical Smart Cover base duration: roughly 25 seconds. Base cooldown: roughly 22 seconds (with the 15% CDR from your set bonuses already applied). Same story. Duration wins. Your cover isn’t dropping before you can recast it.

Our gut call: the CDR you get from Mechanical Expert 3pc + Boom Shakalaka 2pc + Pressing Matter is already enough. It’s baked into the build. Every additional CDR roll you chase after that is wasted. You’re buying a faster recast window for a skill that’s still active. Stack Skill Duration instead. Longer buffs mean your team is inside a vulnerability window or behind an amplified cover longer per fight. That compounds.

The one exception: if your rotations feel ragged in practice and Smart Cover is actually going down mid-fight, check your CDR rolls before anything else. But if the build is geared correctly, this shouldn’t happen.

Weapons Deep Dive

All weapons below assume a tactical mod is equipped. SMG tactical mod reduces reload time by roughly 45% (community-tested). AR tactical mod improves stability and reduces recoil. These are not optional. Equip them.

Primary: Police M4 (AR)

• Torrential Downpour: Hitting enemies 10 times within 5 seconds grants +22.5% Engineering for 12 seconds. This is your Engineering injection.
• Rapid Charge: Hitting an enemy 5 times in 3 seconds grants +50 Signature Ability charge. This is how you get Tactical Link back fast.
• RPM: 850. Magazine: 30. This is your proc weapon, not your sustained fire weapon. Land your hits, swap to P90.
• Ideal attributes: Weapon Blast Damage + Weapon Damage.
• Torrential Downpour and Rapid Charge can be recalibrated between compatible AR platforms. Whether a specific AR can accept a specific talent depends on its talent pool. Verify in-game before committing a recal.

Secondary: P90 (SMG)

• Torrential Downpour: Same talent, second copy. Different cooldown timer from the primary.
• Fully Charged: Reloading an empty magazine grants +7.50% Engineering for 12 seconds, stacking up to 3 times (+22.50% total). This is the talent that makes the build tick.
• RPM: 900. Magazine: 50. Reload: 2.47s base. With the SMG tactical mod, that reload gets significantly faster. You burn through the magazine in about 3.3 seconds. Every empty reload is a Fully Charged proc, and with the mod equipped the cycle feels near-continuous.
• Ideal attributes: Weapon Piercing Damage + Weapon Damage.

Why P90 Specifically

This build needs BOTH Torrential Downpour and Fully Charged on the same weapon. You only need one to drop naturally, then recalibrate the other onto it. The P90 at 900 RPM is the fastest SMG that can roll both talent slots, which is why AgentHuntzman picked it. Based on community reports, the AUG A3 Para XS also qualifies. The Vector can’t roll Fully Charged. The MP7 can’t roll Torrential Downpour. If the talent pool has shifted since this was written, verify before you recal.

Smart Cover: What the Description Doesn’t Tell You

Tactical Smart Cover converts 24% of your Engineering into Weapon Damage for every agent behind cover. The higher your Engineering, the bigger that bonus.

What it doesn’t say upfront: the Foxhole specialization node (3/3) grants Fortified to every ally behind your cover. While Fortified, every weapon hit restores health equal to 450% of your Engineering for 3 seconds. On a full Engineering build, that’s a meaningful passive health restore per shot. Your teammates hit harder and stay alive doing it. This is why the build holds up in Legendary content. The cover is doing two jobs at once.

This Gear on Other Specializations

The gear set (Mechanical Expert 4pc + Boom Shakalaka 2pc) is not Vanguard-locked. If you have the pieces, you can run it on another specialization and keep the set bonuses. What you lose is everything in the Vanguard Recon tree: Foxhole, Exposed, Friendly Hand, Combat Inspiration, Target Rich Environment. All of that is Recon-specific.

On Aegis or Tech Operator with this gear, Smart Cover still transmits weapon damage and the set CDR still applies. You just don’t have the passive health restore from Foxhole, the Exposed damage stacks, or the Sig charge generation from the Scout subclass. The build functions. It’s less effective.

Run it on Vanguard Recon when your team coordinates around the cover. If your team scatters, the multipliers don’t land and you’d get more value from a build that works independently.

Team DPS: Before and After

These are estimates based on each buff’s stated value compounding in sequence, not controlled test results. Treat them as a framework for understanding how the buffs layer, not hard numbers.

Baseline (no support buffs): 100%

After Smart Cover (24% Engineering conversion to Weapon Damage): ~124%

After Scanning Pulse (+20% Target Vulnerability, multiplicative): ~149%

After Exposed stacks (+10% incoming damage, up to 3 stacks): compounds further

After Tactical Link Bugle Call (+14.4% Rate of Fire, more shots per second): compounds further

After Combat Inspiration (+15% Engineering feeding back into Smart Cover): small additional multiplier

These stack multiplicatively, not additively. The actual output depends on your Engineering total and how many buffs are active at once. If you run it and track real numbers, share them.

How the Skills Work Together

Tactical Smart Cover converts 24% of your Engineering into Weapon Damage for every agent behind the cover. The higher your Engineering, the bigger the weapon damage bonus your whole team gets.

Scanning Pulse applies +20% Target Vulnerability + Exposed stacks. Duration is approximately 17.44 seconds, cooldown around 14.94 seconds. That means near-permanent uptime. Every enemy your Pulse touches is taking 20%+ more damage from your entire team.

Tactical Link (Bugle Call) gives +14.4% Rate of Fire, +20% Damage Reduction, and +20% Movement Speed to the team. Duration is approximately 21.74 seconds. Every shot fires faster. Every shot hits enemies who are taking 20% more damage. Every shot is boosted by Smart Cover. Plus Target Rich Environment gives +36% Accuracy, Stability, and Reload Speed during Link.

The team’s DPS doesn’t just go up. It multiplies across three separate buff stages.

Specialization Focus Upgrades

These are unlocked through the Recon specialization tree and are critical to the build.

Foxhole is the sleeper here. The higher your Engineering, the more extra health every teammate gets per weapon hit while behind your Smart Cover. Your teammates become borderline unkillable. This is why the build dominates Legendary missions.

Combat Rotation

Pre-engage:

1. Move within range so Scanning Pulse will cover the enemy group.
2. Drop Tactical Smart Cover on the position your team will ACTUALLY USE.
3. Cast Scanning Pulse. Vulnerability applied. Team starts shooting.

Phase 1 — Proc Engineering (first 10 seconds):

4. Fire Police M4 into the densest enemy cluster. 10 hits in 5 seconds = Torrential Downpour proc (+22.5% Engineering).
5. Keep firing M4. Rapid Charge generates Tactical Link energy (5 hits per 3-second window).

Phase 2 — Stack Fully Charged (10 to 25 seconds):

6. Swap to P90. Empty the magazine. Reload. Fully Charged stack 1 (+7.50% Engineering).
7. Keep firing. Empty again. Reload. Stack 2.
8. One more empty mag. Reload. Stack 3, max (+22.50% total from Fully Charged).

Phase 3 — Tactical Link window:

9. Pop Tactical Link. Bugle Call slaps +14.4% RoF, Damage Reduction, and Movement Speed on the whole team.
10. During Link, fire continuously. Mobile Bastion generates team Sig charge per kill. Scout chip generates team Sig charge per Pulse.

Phase 4 — Re-cycle:

11. Pulse comes back up (~15s cooldown). Recast.
12. Smart Cover refreshes. Recast.
13. Tactical Link refreshes. Repeat from Step 1.

By three rotations deep in a long mission, your team feels like they’re cheating.