HEXBLADE | Deadringer Melee Vex (UVH5)

Weapons

You want 2 to 3 Weapons that have the Maliwan (Element Switch Underbarrel).

• Avoid most bladed weapons, except for Bladed Maliwan Shotgun. Those currently apply an extra 82.5% Melee Damage boost to your Melee Attack. However, they do have long recovery frames, which still makes them pretty meh to use.

They can be any weapon really, as long as they the element switch. Equip them in the order most comfortable to you, and organize their modes in a way that has all your elemental matchups covered for Dead Ringer summoning and Phase Covenant attuned melee attacks..

For your final slot(s), consider a powerful gun for FFYL situations, like any strong underbarrel.

Usually, the things that down you in this build are just the straight-up bizarre ones, but you can learn to expect these enemies and just Slippy them.

Repkit

Triple Bypass with either of Enrage/Hard-Hitter is great.

• Pretty much a requirement for Infusion uptime.

Order Repkit with ANY combo of Enrage/Hard-Hitter/Utility is good.

• Cool for setting up a quick boss melt. Not ideal for sustaining Infusion through longer fights/encounters.

Ordnance Slippy

Slippy gives us another way of accessing melee, and it is a safe way to burst Vile crystals enemies and some other types that you find to be very dangerous at close distance. It will be attuned to Vex's current held element due to Phase Covenant.

It gets its own triggers of Reverburnations.

• Watts 4 Dinner is actually the better shield if you want to focus on Slippy for building up Groundbreaker, since the Heavyweight 100% melee damage doesn't apply to it (it consumes the armor but does nothing).
• The bonus shock from Watts 4 Dinner gets its own Reverburnations, as does Infusion.

Look for a variant that has any of

• Crit Chance
• Nuke
• +1 Max Charge

Then pick your preferred one.

Class Mod

Fire Dancer Vex Class Mod

This is excellent for bossing, and can also work in general use, with a Watts 4 Dinner shield being recommended for it. Look for as much Reverburnations as you can find.

• This is probably the best damage you can get, period. It's a nice swap for bossing if you prefer Teen Witch for mobbing.

Since there's three stat rolls available on this class mod, you can aim for any three of:

• Melee Damage; Skill Damage
• Melee Crit Chance; Skill Crit Chance

Teen Witch

This is the general use option, mainly for mobbing and going about. It sustains both our damage and survival excellently through its very powerful legendary effect. However, it is not the class mod for most damage achievable.

• For a pure damage-oriented roll, +3 Corporeal and +4 Blood Is Magic is ideal.
• For best minion sustain, +2 or +3 Grave Thirst and +5 or +4 Blood Is Magic.

For stat rolls, any of these are acceptable:

• Melee Damage; Skill Damage
• Melee Crit Chance; Skill Crit Chance

Shield Watts 4 DinnerHeavyweight

Watts 4 Dinner

Main shield choice for the Fire Dancer Vex Class Mod, be it for bossing or mobbing with it. Look for Siphon parts.

• This shield's bonus shock damage inherits the source type, and will apply to our melee damage sources. This means that on melee damage instances, including Slippy, the Reverburnations skill can be triggered on your base damage, on Infusion and on the bonus shock from Watts 4 Dinner.
• The minion drain from Dead Ringer can trigger the Siphon part of shields for you.

Heavyweight

Great choice for general use with Teen Witch. We mitigate the armor loss and can spam melee at will because of our class mod.

Look for every elemental flavor possible of a variant that has the Missile Swarm effect on it, ideally the double variant that shoots out five missiles. Missile Swarm is ideal since it contributes to Groundbreaker and Recurrence.

• Careful with Missile Swarm if you don't intend to use Teen Witch, since it can down you. Use other rolls in that case.
• The melee boost from this shield does not apply to Slippy, even though it drains it.

Enhancement

They don't have many melee applications. Most importantly though, you want to look for nice stat rolls.

• Gun Equip Speed
• Gun Type Equip speed

The above boosts will stack, affect your melee recovery rate and also the speed of Maliwan mode switch.

• Gun Splash Damage
• Gun Type Splash Damage

These Splash boosts work on Melee attacks and Groundbreaker, as long as you hold a weapon that fits the requirements. AVOID using both boosts together, they can cause weirdness. While they're a relatively minor boost, I'm listing them here anyway.

Combinations

2/3 Reel Big Fist; 2/3 Action Fist; 1/3 Airstrike

• Maximizes passive boosts. The radius from airstrike applies to Slippy.
• You can play around with anything involving maxed Reel Big Fist or Action Fist, to your liking.

The mainstays here are 2/3 Reel Big Fist and 1/3 Action Fist. You're free to experiment with any of the remaining slots, with stuff like 1/3 Gadget Ahoy for example.

The Best Defense; I Am A Gun; Bear Arms; Groundbreaker

• Nice general use setup that works for everything.
• Pairs well with Shocking Attunement and fast mode swaps for consistent uptime.

The Best Defense; Fragmentation Payload; A Honed Mind; Groundbreaker

• An alternate setup I enjoy using, goes well with crit chance boosts. Boosts Slippy crits a lot.

Tripwire; Now With Caffeine

• Adding this combination to your preference of Specialization setup lets you cancel Dead Ringer summoning (press action skill button twice) for cooldown returns on Slippy.
• This incurs a damage loss since you're gonna use two slots for it, but it can be fun and you will usually have enough damage anyway.