Counterpunch King — Prismatic Hunter

Centerpiece: Liar's Handshake (Gauntlets) · Subclass: Prismatic · Role: Immortal melee brawler — dodge, punch, heal to full, ramp, repeat. Sandbox: 9.7.0 · Updated 2026-07-03

Dodge next to a body, throw one punch, and the counterpunch heals you to full while the hit lands harder than the last. Chain it across the room — the moment of maximum risk is also the heal trigger, so you simply do not die while everything around you does. Arc bursts and Transcendence show up as by-products of the same rhythm.

The exotic

Cross Counter: Using your Arc melee ability or being hit by a melee attack will allow you to follow up with an extremely powerful melee counterpunch that will heal you.

(Clarity) While you have an Arc Melee Ability equipped: Receiving Melee damage or scoring an Arc Elemental Melee Hit grants the 'Cross Counter' buff for your next Melee Attack within 3 seconds. Cross Counter grants 400% additional base Melee damage and restores 40 HP on Melee Hits. Cross Counter's Melee deals Arc Damage.

Liar's Handshake turns your Arc melee into a self-healing sledgehammer. Land an Arc melee hit (Combination Blow qualifies) and you get a 3-second window to throw a follow-up that carries +400% base melee damage and restores 40 HP — so the punch that puts you in danger is the same punch that tops you off. Because the counterpunch is a separate damage bucket layered on top of Combination Blow's own ramp, the two multiply rather than average, which is why the haymaker one-shots things the tooltips say it shouldn't. The upgrade path is a Prismatic exotic class item rolling Spirit of the Liar (keeps the healing counterpunch) alongside Spirit of Caliban (punches also ignite) or Spirit of the Assassin (invisibility on melee kills) — one perk per column, so Liar can't pair with a second Col-2 spirit.

Loadout

Why it works (the mechanics)

• Three separate melee buckets stack multiplicatively. Combination Blow's tiered ability ramp, Cross Counter's +400% base melee damage (Clarity), and the artifact's Armorsmith shield-break bonus are different damage categories, so they compound instead of averaging — the source of the one-shot punches.
• Gambler's Dodge converts a stat into melee uptime. Dodging next to an enemy fully refunds Combination Blow, so every point of Class-stat regen is directly melee economy — two stats funding one loop. Facet of Hope then regenerates your class ability faster whenever you hold any elemental buff (Radiant from Dawn, Amplified from Ascension), tightening the dodge→punch cadence.
• The heal is welded to the damage event. Cross Counter restores 40 HP on the melee hit itself and Combination Blow heals on kill, so being in melee range — the riskiest position — is also the heal trigger. There is no separate survival rotation to manage.
• Facet of Dawn makes you Radiant on contact. Powered-melee hits grant Radiant, a weapon-damage buff, and it's active every single punch — feeding both the haymaker chain and any add-clear gunplay.
• Winter's Shroud + Facet of Courage turn CC into damage. Dodging slows nearby targets (a Darkness debuff), and Facet of Courage makes your Arc/Solar/Void abilities deal increased damage to Darkness-debuffed targets — so the same dodge that resets your melee also debuffs the crowd you're about to punch.
• Transcendence charges itself. Arc punches fill the Light gauge; Grapple movement and Winter's Shroud slows fill Dark — so playing the loop passively charges Transcendence, and Facet of Protection's DR is increased while Transcendent, deepening the immortality exactly when you spike.

Stats & mods

Melee 200 → Class → Health. Lean into archetypes that carry those pairs: Reaver (Class/Melee), Skirmisher (Melee/Weapons), and Brawler (Melee). All exotic armour is Tier 5 now, so hitting the spread is easy.

Mods:

• Boots — Recuperation (heal on Orb pickup) + Innervation/Absolution as flex; you swim in orbs, so on-orb regen is nearly permanent.
• Arms — Melee Kickstart ×2 (refund melee energy when it whiffs on a shielded target) + a Heavy/Special Ammo Finder.
• Chest — Concussive Dampener / elemental resist mods; pure survivability garnish on an already-immortal loop.
• Class item — Better Already (health regen on Orb pickup) + Bomber or Utility Kickstart to speed the dodge back.
• Surge — one Surge mod matching your Heavy's element (feeds the Machine Gun damage step).
• Anti-Champion — none from armour; under Anti-Champion 2.0 champions are stunned by weapon archetype, so coverage comes from your gun kit (below).

Artifact — Encrypted Data Disk

Picks (2/3/2): Press the Advantage + Fierce Proxemics — Armorsmith + Counter Energy + Precision Equity — Elemental Orbs: Arc + Tazer Tag

• Armorsmith — breaking a shield grants DR and increased melee damage with no elemental conditions, making it the unconditional melee pick for a build with no native Woven Mail/overshield.
• Tazer Tag — Arc-powered melee hits jolt and deal further damage: it lands straight onto the core haymaker, adding jolt chain-clear to every punch.
• Counter Energy — stunning a champion returns energy to your least-charged ability, topping up whichever half of the loop is starved.
• Precision Equity — precision final blows build toward a large Orb of Power; Monte Carlo's chatter feeds your on-orb mod payoffs (Recuperation/Better Already).
• Elemental Orbs: Arc — Arc kills spawn jolting Arc orbs, another orb source for the on-pickup regen and a second jolt vector.
• Press the Advantage + Fierce Proxemics — shield-break stability/handling/reload and finisher-driven grenade+melee energy round out the two-tier picks with more melee-economy and gunplay smoothing.
• (Why not Shieldcrush? Its melee boost gates behind Woven Mail / Frost Armor / Void Overshield, none of which this build generates natively — Armorsmith is the unconditional pick.)

Where it shines

• Add-dense general PvE — the dodge→punch→heal loop resets faster the more bodies are around, so packed rooms make you stronger, not more fragile.
• Survivability-check content — with the heal welded to the damage event and DR from Protection/Ascension/Transcendence, you rarely have a "who healed me?" downtime.
• Champion coverage — the build breaks nothing intrinsically from armour; bring a spread of weapon archetypes for Anti-Champion 2.0 (e.g. Rapid-Fire for Overload + Aggressive for Unstoppable + Precision for Barrier). Tazer Tag's jolt and Counter Energy help once champs are stunned, but the stun itself is on your gun kit.

Mod selection (masterworked — full allocation)

All 15 sockets used, 10 energy per masterworked piece; costs from the manifest. Core mods are the build's engine; fill mods are strong defaults — swap freely (chest resists should match the activity's damage types). Flex/loadout-dependent: so coverage comes from your gun kit (below).