The Dilemma of Gorment Armor - Builds and Discussion (Patreon)

One of only 2 completed Gorment Armor survivors I have constructed to date.

I've been spending a fair amount of time working on my Gorment Armor builds in order to get the remaining models assembled and I found sort a few things that have made building the armor set a little problematic.  I still think it's an amazing armor set and I rate it a lot, but I've found it very restrictive.

1. Affinities - The Gorm Armor set requires 2 Green 1 Blue and 1 Red affinity to activate Guard and get the Free Survival on it.  However it only supplies 1 full Green, 1 half Blue (up) and 1 half Green (down) on the early game suit and the upgraded version only adds more greens onto it.  This means you need to provide 2 matching red half affinities in order to get Guard on the suit unlocked.  When you see the builds below you'll get a sense of how awkward this can be to achieve - especially when you try and fit an affinity free shield like the Beacon Shield into the grid.

2. Guard - Guard is an amazing ability, but it's inferior to Blood Paint outside of taking up less room on the grid.  However, there is an exception to this.  Guard works with two handed weapons + Shield while Blood Paint does not.  So it becomes clear that the focus on the Gorment Armor set should be around a two handed weapon + shield.  Making it a bruiser/tank armor set, now it should work well with Spears, but on the whole the Screaming Armor set is much better at this, so that's a bit of an issue in itself because Screaming Armor is easier to make than Gorment by a large gap.

3. Guard Movement - Tanking with Guard is tricky vs. many monsters because of the 'closest threat/closest survivor/closest survivor in field of view' targetting.  You can't really be the core tank with Gorment Armor a lot of the time if you're going to be using Guard - which is why I typically call Gorment a Bruiser Armor Set rather than a Tanking one.

4. Space Issues - When you look at fitting a shield, plus the 2 items for the red affinity (or the one Red Charm/Lion God Mehndi) and a weapon into the Gorment Armor grid and getting the Gorment Mask ability active (which is a challenge in itself) you start to run into some real space issues.  This can often push Monster Grease out of the grid, and that stops you being able to tank hits very well against monsters with more than 2 to 3 speed.

Now, when you're playing the game, you tend to compromise a lot with these issues, adding a bone sword/dagger to complete affinities for a while, just sticking some utility item that is marginal in the grid, using less than optimal weapons or giving up on activating the mask in order to activate other items instead (because the mask is super awkward to activate).  But for the purposes of building representative models I want to have stuff that is based on optimal gear grids without too much cross expansion gear (so mostly just core game + Gorm).

So with all this in mind, I sat down and worked out that the following weapons were the best choices to use with Gorment Armor builds.

Each of these weapons fits a few specific criteria; they are two handed, they are from the Core Game/Gorm Expansion and they provide a red affinity.  

The Perfect Slayer is included mostly for the modelling opportunity of using it, it's rare that you actually get that weapon built. Most of the time it would just represent a Dragon Slayer.

You'll notice that there is basically just one Gorm weapon here, the Greater Gaxe.  I've done the best I can, but I have found that the other Gorm weapons, as good as they are, tend to be better used on other survivors - my Rib Blade Gorment survivor up there is not an optimal build and it often doubles for a Zanbato Gorment survivor.

Builds:

So this done, with the criteria above, here are the builds I will be constructing for my models.

Zanbato + Leather Shield:

Easily the best of the builds possible because of the way the Zanbato helps activate Monster Grease.  The flex slots are the Healing Potion and the Gorn.  The Gorn is really good because it provides a lot of power and utility, but it can easily be armor spikes.  The Healing Potion can be a Scrap Dagger or Knuckle Shield instead.

Greater Gaxe + Leather Shield

The Monster Tooth Necklace is a flex slot item for the affinity and the +1 Strength (which helps bring the Greater Gaxe into the mid-game), as you can see there is a non-affinity based flex slot here that could be Monster Grease, or a Red Charm (for +1 Str), a Pulse Lantern (OP OP!) or even a Lion God Mehndi (unlikely).

It's not the best build, but it's very hard to make Gorment Armor work with  any of the Gorm weapons.

Counterweight Axe/Finger of God + Leather Shield

Same build, just a weapon swap on each one.  The Finger of God in particular works well with Gorment Armor because it has the same activation requirements as Guard.

Now we'll look at the two late game builds.

Dragon Slayer:

This is absolutely a DPS build, but it's one with tonnes of utility.  It's probably best on a survivor with the 'Tough' fighting art because it has little defense outside of Gorment Armor, the Pulse Lantern and the Leather Shield.  

Dragon Slayer + Beacon Shield + Full Gorment

This is probably the pinnacle of the armor set.  It's actually using the Regeneration Suit and has managed to fit that affinity free Beacon Shield in.  The Crest Crown can be Elder Earrings if required, so you can bring a disposable newbie survivor into the hunt party late on and bring them up to speed quickly.  It's also easier to make Elder Earrings.

That's it at the moment, these are the builds I'm going to construct for my actual models.  However, I'm very much open to seeing what other people have done with their Gorment Armor survivors, what's worked for you guys?