Venom — Khepri's Sting (Void Hunter)

Centerpiece: Khepri's Sting (Gauntlets) · Subclass: Nightstalker · Role: Weaken-chain smoke assassin Sandbox: 9.7.0 · Updated 2026-07-03

You kill one weakened body and the gauntlets exhale a fresh cloud of weakening smoke over everything nearby — then hand your melee straight back. Weaken spreads like a disease, and every casualty pays for the next dose. This is the debuff build that runs entirely on its own victims, no cooldown of its own.

The exotic

Touch of Venom: Defeating a weakened target releases a burst of weakening smoke and refunds Void melee ability energy.

Khepri's Sting turns the weaken debuff into a self-feeding chain. You open on a pack with weakening smoke (Snare Bomb) or an undermining grenade; the moment one weakened target dies, the gauntlets vent a new smoke burst that weakens the survivors and refund your Void melee energy — so the tool that started the chain is immediately back in hand. Because weaken is a shared damage-taken debuff, every burst is a rolling team damage buff, not just fuel for your own kills. The exotic has no internal cooldown and no charge: as long as weakened targets keep dying, the smoke keeps spreading and the melee keeps coming back, letting one Snare Bomb blanket a whole room.

Loadout

Why it works (the mechanics)

• The exotic converts kills into the debuff that enabled them. A weakened kill vents a fresh weakening smoke burst and refunds Void melee — so the survivors are now weakened and your Snare Bomb is charged again. It is a self-propagating debuff engine with no cooldown of its own; the only input it needs is weakened bodies dying, which it also produces.
• Weaken is a damage multiplier for the whole fireteam. Weaken sits in the shared debuff bucket, so every smoke burst raises the damage six players deal to those targets, not just yours. The chain is a rolling team buff disguised as an assassin loop.
• Every weakened body is a Stylish Executioner trigger. "Defeating a target affected by any elemental debuff grants invisibility and Truesight" — the same kills that spread weaken cycle your invisibility, so the safety half and the debuff half share one set of kills. Stylish's follow-up melee also weakens, seeding the next burst.
• Echo of Expulsion adds the AoE the chain wants. "Void ability final blows cause targets to explode" — Snare Bomb and Trapper's Ambush kills detonate, and the explosion kills more weakened targets, each of which pops another Khepri smoke burst. Three overlapping detonation loops feeding the same weaken pool.
• Devour keeps the melee flowing. Echo of Starvation grants Devour from Void Breaches and Orbs, Power From Pain grants it on rapid weakened final blows, and Echo of Persistence stretches it — full-health-on-kill plus grenade regen means you can stay in the smoke and keep the dive/melee cadence up.
• Deadfall is the reset button. When a room is too big for one Snare Bomb, the tether mass-weakens and suppresses the pack at once, giving Khepri a wall of weakened targets to chain off and re-arming the entire loop in a single cast.

Stats & mods

Melee 200 → Class → Health. Skirmisher/Brawler/Reaver lean — melee is the recharge you spend most, Class feeds Gambler's Dodge redundancy, Health for uptime in the smoke.

Mods:

• Boots: Melee Kickstart ×2 — reinforces the Khepri refund so Snare Bomb is essentially always up.
• Arms: Heavy Handed — melee final blows restore melee energy and spawn an Orb.
• Chest: resistance mods (Concussive Dampener / elemental resist) for pushing into packs.
• Class item: Reaper or Bomber — Orb on dodge, or faster grenade for extra Undermining weaken.
• Surge: Void Surge — matches the all-Void kit for weapon damage on weakened targets.
• Anti-Champion: none from the exotic; lean on Deadfall's suppression for Overload and weapon champion mods for the rest.

Artifact — Slayer Baron Apothecary Satchel

Picks (2/3/2):

• Tier 1: Power From Pain · Total Carnage
• Tier 2: Void Renewal · Debilitating Wave · Curative Orbs
• Tier 3: Supernova · Old God's Rite

• Power From Pain grants Devour and creates a Void Breach on rapid final blows against weakened combatants — exactly what the chain produces, tying the weaken loop directly into Devour and Breach generation.
• Void Renewal makes Void weapon kills generate more Void Breaches while Devour is active, so the Breach economy Power From Pain starts keeps feeding itself.
• Supernova turns each Breach pickup into a large weakening pulse on your next source of Void damage — a second weaken source stacking on top of Khepri's smoke to blanket packs.
• Old God's Rite rains seeking Void projectiles after a Breach pickup, cashing the Breach flood into extra AoE damage on the already-weakened crowd.
• Debilitating Wave lets finishers emit a Void wave that weakens, an on-demand top-up when the chain stalls.
• Curative Orbs and Total Carnage cover survivability — Orbs and health from shield breaks, plus damage resistance and healing after finishing powerful combatants.

Where it shines

• Add-dense PvE (Nightfalls, Onslaught, patrol clears): one Snare Bomb into a pack snowballs into a self-sustaining weaken-and-explode chain that clears the room.
• Team play: the weaken bursts are a shared damage multiplier and Debuff support, and the invisibility keeps you safe while doing it.
• Boss/miniboss chip: Deadfall tether plus stacked weaken (Khepri smoke + Supernova) raises everyone's damage on the target during DPS windows.
• Champion coverage: the artifact 2/3/2 carries no intrinsic champion breaker — Deadfall's tether suppresses tethered targets (behaviourally halting Overload during the Super), but for Barrier/Unstoppable and off-Super Overload you must bring the appropriate anti-Champion weapon mods.

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: weapon champion mods for the rest.