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Dune: Awakeninghas a fairly robust class sytem; no one class has an overwhelming amount of mechanics in it, but because you can combine skills from multiple classes together, there is an absurd amount of build potential possible.
Mentats pride themselves on being able to adapt to many different situations. They’re most effective when they take time to look at a situation and prepare; in a straight-up fight they can be beaten out by many other classes, but if you give them a moment to observe their surroundings and come up with a plan, they can set themselves up for some easy success.
Mentat Skills Overview
Mentats have access to three skill trees:Mental Calculus, Assassination, and Tactician. These all focus on different strengths, but the name of the game with Mentats is to give yourself options. Spread yourself across all three of these for the most success.
Description
Mental Calculus
This tree iswhere quite a bit of your damage is going to come from. This provides a variety of buffs for firearms, some of which give you extra damage for either creating an enemy weakpoint, or exploiting an existing weakpoint, like a headshot.
Assassination
This tree is also going toamplify your damage, but in a more specialized way. The abilities in this tree mostly revolve around inflicting poison on enemies, but they also reward stealth, as well.
Tactician
This tree is one of the more difficult trees to get value out of, but has an extremely high value for people who are capable of using it to its fullest. This tree ismostly abilities, ranging from misdirection, movement impediment/enhancement, a shield, and more.
What Are A Mentat’s Strengths?
Mentats are best when theyeither have an opportunity to study a situationbefore they involve themselves in it, orthey’re familiar enough with certain situations that they know what to expect, and can plan accordingly.
Ranged Damage
Mentats areespecially strong when they focus on firearms and dealing ranged damage. That’s not to say they can’t hold their own in a melee fight; they certainly can. But they’re at their best when they’re taking advantage of the multiple firearm buffs that they have access to.
This is particularly true when firing at the head. You can have an extremely high headshot multiplier with the Marksman Technique, at the cost of bodyshot damage.
Setting Traps
Mentats haveaccess to multiple traps, as well as a turret, which can fulfill a similar purpose. All of these can do a lot to make a Mentat feel like a larger force than they are. Well-placed traps and knowledge of the area can force enemies either into your crosshairs, or walk directly into something that’s either going to either hurt them or make it difficult for them to move.
Stealth
Mentats don’t have a ton of different abilities that make use of stealth, but what they do have are very strong. They havemultiple headshot modifier buffs, as well as a buff for shooting an enemy from behind. These can combine into doing ridiculous damage to an enemy on a headshot from behind, particularly with a high-damage weapon.
This is without mentioning their Hunter-Seeker ability, which deploys a tiny drone that deals extremely high damage to enemies, best used when the Mentat is unseen.
Mentat Synergies
Certain other classes have Techniques or Abilities that blend well with the Mentat class, either because they accentuate one of the Mentat’s strengths, or help cover one of their weaknesses.
These are far from the only skills in other trees that have value to Mentats, but these are some of the greatest hits.
Trooper
Ranged Damage (Passive)
This is asimple, ranged damage increase. Mentats are already strong with firearms, and this pushes that even further.
Suspensor Dash (Technique)
Both Troopers and Mentats have access to abilities that affect gravity. This makes it nearly impossible to move in many circumstances, but one way to get around this is with the Suspensor Dash Technique,which allows you to dash in this situation. (The Trooper’s Shigawire Claw Ability can fill a similar void.)
Bene Gesserit
Poison Tolerance (Passive)
If you’reusing Mentat abilities that cause poison, chances are, you’ve accidentally poisoned yourself. Sometimes it’s unavoidable.This would keep that poison from putting you in a life-threatening situation as quickly. (The Bene Gesserit’sMetabolize Poison Technique would do a similar thing, though it would take a Technique slot.)
Mentat Mid-Level Build
Because the Mentat gives you so many options, itcan be difficult to decide which way to go when building your character.
you’re able to respec your character for free once every 48 hours. So, if you make some choices that you don’t end up liking or just want to try something out, there’s no harm.
By mid-game (starting around level 20, but lasting for quite a while after that), you should start seeing some benefits of a build that has multiple pieces working together.We’ll show a build that we think works very well, and points you in the right direction for an endgame build possibility.
Mid-Level Mentat Build Skills
Here are theskills that we recommend picking upfor this particular Mentat build:
We’re going to include more than two Abilities in this build; you may swap Abilities anytime they aren’t on cooldown, and much of the strength of the Mentat comes from giving them options.
Mentat
The Sentinel (Ability)
This is going to take up an ability slot, but it’s going to be worth the value if you’re using it right. This is going to be very little help against melee enemies, but against ranged enemies,place this somewhere where they need to expose themselves to it to shoot you, or place it somewhere far enough from you that you essentially have two sightlines.
This is just aranged damage increase, but it’s going to help in virtually every combat scenario.
Marksman (Technique)
Thisprovides a damage buff for shooting enemies in the head, but a damage debuff for shooting them in the body. If you’re confident you can hit more headshots than not, this is going to be a damage increase.
Rifle Damage (Passive)
This isgoing to increase the damage that your rifles do; while you can certainly use small-arms if you prefer, rifles deal high damage, which makes use of the percentage buff upgrades that Mentats have. It also keeps them further from their enemies, which is generally ideal.
Headshot Damage (Passive)
This isanother headshot damage buff, but this one doesn’t come with a bodyshot damage debuff.
Assassin’s Shot (Passive)
This is adamage buff when shooting enemies in the back. As mentioned before, this rewards stealth and precision; if you shoot an enemy from behind and in the head, it’s going to be a very powerful shot.
Hunter-Seeker (Ability)
If you’re in a situation with a high-power target, or else just a single target and multiple other enemies you have no need to fight,a Hunter-Seeker can take down a target relatively easy, without other enemies the wiser.
Gravity-Mine Mine (Ability)
We need this toslow enemies that are rushing usby placing these in the direction that enemies are likely to approach. Ensure you don’t get snared by it, because what comes next isn’t going to be pretty.
Poison Mine (Ability)
Place this a few meters behind the Gravity Mine.Enemies will walk into the gravity field and get slowed, and be forced to tank your poison. For situations where you’re happy with your current firepower or have multiple melee enemies that will approach, swap this and the Gravity Mine in, and toss The Sentinel out. Specifically, you’ll want to grab at least thesecond level of this ability, because that’s when it will start occasionally being lethal on its own.
Exploit Weakness (Technique)
Thiscreates a weakspot on an enemy when you shoot them, as long as they’re unshielded. Continuining to shoot this weakspot deals enhanced damage. Keep this on a head to get the most out of this combined with your already existing headshot damage buffs.
Trauma Recovery (Technique)
Filling in our last Technique slot, this is going tohelp you recover health a bit faster. Since you’re usually going to be at range, you’ll have more moments to heal during a fight than other characters might, meaning you’ll get some extra use out of this.
Just like the one in the Mentat tree, this is aflat ranged damage buff.
Tips For Playing A Mentat Build
This build can fill a few different purposes, fromall-out gunfights,to rebuffing melee attackers,to assassinating targets from stealth. Generally, you want to stay at range as much as possible with this build.Keep your aim high so you’re hitting enemies in the head, and prioritize getting rid of melee enemies as quickly as possible.
