This is a build for [Rhino] that will give you (and your teammates) a massive Roar + Nourish buff while fairly effortlessly providing you with a ton of overguard on-demand (no complicated setup necessary). Makes for an excellent weapons platform, tank, and team buffer all in one. Note that it's important to use armor archon shards, though; base [Rhino] armor of 275 won't quite cut it. Mine's at 1100 thanks to shards.
Play Guide
- At the start of each mission, create an empowered Zenurik bubble (Wellspring) and cast Nourish to get the energy [Regen] juices flowing.
- Follow it up with a Roar cast inside said bubble once you have enough energy (takes only about a second of waiting). You can do this later if you want.
- Find a pack of enemies to charge into with your [Rhino] Charge to proc [Ironclad Charge]'s armor bonus, then follow it up with a cast of Iron Skin. (That's all the setup you need to do. Armor archon shards + gigantic Strength values is enough for ~40-200k overguard off the bat, depending on # of enemies hit and current Strength)
- Do mission stuff, shoot guys. When your buff(s) start to run out, create another zenurik bubble (ideally empowered) and recast. Similarly, if you start to run out of overguard, prepare your [Ironclad Charge] buff and recast once the overguard runs out (or manually, if you choose to add the [Iron Shrapnel] augment).
Survivability
Big overguard number. You can roughly double this number if you utilize Arcane Tanker, and you can make it fairly foolproof if you use [Iron Shrapnel] to not have to wait for it to run out to recast. I don't think either are necessary, though. Also not as big an overguard number as a Parasitic Armor build, but I don't like that build nearly as much as this one (more hassle, less stats).
Energy Economy
Zenurik + extremely high-strength Nourish is all you need. All you really spend energy on is a buff refresh every once in a while, so this is more than enough.
Stat Explanation
Duration is a useful stat since we need to upkeep a couple of buffs. 127.5% is just a tad too high-maintenance for my liking, so I usually prefer to slot in Molt Efficiency to bring it up to 163.5%.
Efficiency is a dump stat, Rhino casts infrequently enough/Nourish regens quickly enough that this doesn't matter at all.
Range is quite useful to have so that you can buff your allies more easily, and more at once, as well as increase the range of [Rhino] Charge, allowing you to hit more enemies and stack that buff higher. We run 1x [Stretch] for a healthy range boost and that's it. If you're playing solo this literally only affects your charge range, though, so you can deprioritize it in that case.
Strength is our pump stat. And we pump it HARD because everything [Rhino] does scales super hard with Strength. Way more overguard (both from Iron Skin's base scaling and [Ironclad Charge]'s armor scaling per enemy hit), way more damage from Roar + Nourish, and way more energy regen. Can't get too much here, really.
Arcane Choices
Molt Augmented is an auto-include like usual these days. +60% strength is way better than every other option.
Molt Efficiency is a great pick if you're bothered by how often you need to recast at 127.5% duration, like I am. You should have Overguard pretty much the whole time you're playing so this is just +36% duration for the cost of 1 arcane slot, which is a solid tradeoff. FYI at 127.5%, Roar lasts 38.25 seconds and Nourish lasts 31.875 seconds; at 163.5%, Roar lasts 49.05 seconds and Nourish lasts 40.875 seconds.
Molt [Vigor] is even more strength and works quite nicely with [Rhino]'s playstyle. More strength is very good. It's a bit of a hassle, though, and the buff is a lot less noticeable than Molt Efficiency's, but this is another great choice.
Arcane Tanker is the main other choice I'd consider, +1200 armor will roughly double the Overguard you can get, since your base armor after shards should be hovering around that amount (depending on how many are tauforged). It is kind of a pain, though, and then you lose your [Vigor] strength buff. Also unusable in Circuit.
You can pick whatever you want here really, no arcane makes or breaks the build. Those are just my top picks.
Mod Choices
There's a good amount of wiggle room on this build. All that really matters is you pump strength to a high amount while not totally thrashing your duration, and be sure to include [Ironclad Charge] of course, and from there it's mostly user preference. So, I'd say the aura slot, exilus slot, [Stretch], and [Augur Secrets] are all replaceable. So, with that in mind, here are some other good mods you might consider:
Iron Shrapnel is a great pick to allow Iron Skin to be recast on-demand instead of waiting for it to run out. Allows you to get a huge Iron Skin value pretty easily because you can always take advantage of any big enemy stack you happen upon instead of just taking whatever you can get. Even still, I've found that you need to recast it so rarely that I don't like wasting a mod slot on it, but you do you. (Note you can leave this unranked to save capacity, the upgrades to it are pretty useless.)
[Piercing Roar] is solid to allow Roar to be recast too, and give it +40% range. Makes it mismatch Nourish's range (they are otherwise identical), which is annoying, but this will make it easier to keep all your allies Roar-buffed. Unfortunately, recasting will remove the buff from all allies not in range upon recast, so you can't Roar one guy and then jump over to the next guy and Roar him too, the first guy will just lose the buff. Also applies knockdown and max stacks of puncture to all enemies in range, which means 2 primer statuses, CC, and enemies that take +25% crit chance and deal -80% damage, which is pretty nice.
[Amar's Hatred] is a Strength + Armor buff, both of which are relevant to our interests. However they're both pretty tiny buffs (you get a whopping 82 more armor and +15% strength) so it's hard to justify using a slot on it.
[Umbral Fiber] is a significantly stronger buff than [Amar's Hatred] for the most part; only +11% strength (when paired with [Umbral Intensify]), but a far more sizeable +378 armor. Even still, eh. Probably would require an Umbra forma at that point, and for me going from 1,100 -> 1,478 doesn't justify that. But, again, you do you. [Umbral Vitality] is sadly useless on the build aside from the umbral set bonus, which doesn't move the needle enough.
[Narrow Minded] can be slot in alongside [Stretch] if you want super comfy buff uptimes. You can't treat Range as a dump stat even on a selfish build though, because [Rhino] Charge will go absolutely nowhere and you'll be unable to get a big Iron Skin.
[Augur Reach] and to a lesser extent [Overextended] are also worth considering if you want even more range, but, you know, meh.
[Vigilante Pursuit] is a solid pick too, if you want even more radar and a little more primary damage. I used to run this, but Update 34 dropped and gave everyone +30 [Enemy Radar] for free, so I don't value this anymore.
Aura mods like [Corrosive Projection] or [Enemy Radar] are also strong picks. [Enemy Radar] + [Energy Conversion] is arguably a stronger setup than [Growing Power] + [Vigilante Pursuit] anyway, so feel free to use that instead.
Archon Shards
Fill this bad boy up with Armor shards so we can get a bunch of Overguard. [Rhino] is one of the few frames that actually gives a sh*t about blues, so you should have plenty to spare. Other options are even more Strength/Duration, or perhaps a cast speed shard or two. Armor is gonna be the most bang for your buck, though. It's due to armor shards that we can forgo annoying setup steps before we cast Iron Skin. A simple [Rhino] charge into a group is all you need when you pair it with armor blues and a ton of strength.
Helminth Ability
This is explicitly a Nourish build. The energy economy would be extremely dicey without it and would likely require rethinking the build; further, Nourish is a fantastic buff to weapons damage that pairs extremely well with Roar. Add a corrosive weapon into the mix and pretty much regardless of what weapon you picked it will absolutely shred through enemies. Or just keep your weapon on Viral if it's a more slow-hitting raw-damage focused weapon, either way you'll be doing a ton of damage.
You could opt for other picks like Parasitic Armor or Breach Surge or Eclipse or something, but those would be totally different builds, and generally not nearly as good from what I've played. I'm all about the Nourish life.
Video
Here's me taking the build for a spin in Steel Path Circulus (lv 180-200 survival). I try to avoid the buffer guy so as to make it properly representative. I start out with a pretty terrible Iron Skin but it lasts for quite a while. Towards the end I get a >190k one.
Conclusion
Rhino is pretty sick, a massive-strength Roar + Nourish combined with massive Overguard makes for a preeetty good frame. And your allies will really appreciate the buffs, as well. You don't need a complex setup investing a bunch of resources in getting as big an overguard number as possible, just charge + skin and you're good to go. Enjoy your unstoppable force + immovable object in one convenient package!
Changelog
Oct 20, 2023: Update 34 released, giving everyone a free +30 [Enemy Radar] and allowing anyone to pick up energy orbs when at full energy if you have Energy Conversion without the buff ready; as a result, it became a no-brainer to drop [Vigilante Pursuit] for [Energy Conversion]. [Energy Conversion] is REALLY good on this build now, it's nearly always ready outside of the very start of the mission.
