Sturm — Together Forever ammo engine (Hunter)

Weapon: Sturm (Hand Cannon · Primary · Kinetic) · Subclass: Gunslinger (Solar) · Role: Self-feeding primary DPS — never reload, never run dry

Sandbox: 9.7.0 · Created 2026-06-16

Two guns that load each other. Kill with the hand cannon → Drang's mag refills from reserves; kill with Drang → Sturm reloads and overflows with bonus damage rounds. Stack a few bonus-round kills and you're swapping between a Kinetic hand cannon and a Solar sidearm that never stop firing — a closed primary-ammo loop with hard-hitting overflow rounds on the front of it.

The weapon

Sturm is a 120-RPM Adaptive-frame Kinetic hand cannon (Impact 92, 9-round mag). What makes it an engine rather than a gun is that it ships with two intrinsic behaviours and a catalyst, all of which only fire when it's paired with its sidearm Drang (the "Together Forever" weapon):

• Accomplice (intrinsic) — "Final blows with this weapon fill the magazine of the equipped Energy weapon from reserves." Every Sturm kill tops off whatever's in your Energy slot — and Drang lives in that slot.
• Storm and Stress (perk) — "Final blows with Together Forever weapons reload this weapon and overflow bonus damage rounds into the magazine. Final blows with bonus damage rounds increase the magazine capacity of Together Forever weapons." This is the other half: Drang kills reload Sturm and fill it with bonus-damage rounds, and spending those bonus rounds grows Drang's magazine.
• Catalyst — Helping Hands — "Final blows with bonus damage rounds build and store charges which allow you to swap and stow Sturm and Together Forever weapons at a massively increased rate." The catalyst pays the swap tax: the whole build is swap → swap → swap, and Helping Hands makes the swaps instant once you're banking charges.

Drang is a 300-RPM Solar Sidearm whose intrinsic Together Forever — "Fires micro-missiles. Final blows with this weapon reload and overflow Sturm." — is the matching key. It must go in the Energy slot so Accomplice can refill it, and it must be Solar to stay on-element with a Gunslinger surge build.

Element: Sturm = Kinetic (Primary), Drang = Solar (Primary, Energy slot).

Loadout

Slot	Pick	Why
Kinetic	Sturm (HC · Kinetic · Primary)	The centrepiece. Accomplice refills Drang; Storm and Stress catches Drang's overflow. Adaptive frame → Barrier champion (Anti-Champion 2.0).
Energy	Drang (Sidearm · Solar · Primary)	Mandatory pair. Together Forever reloads + overflows Sturm; sits in the Energy slot so Accomplice can fill it. Solar = on-surge.
Heavy	Solar Machine Gun / GL	Champion + boss coverage the primary loop doesn't cover; keeps the surge mods Solar.
Super	Golden Gun: Marksman	On-element burst for a priority target between loops; Solar weapon kills extend its supporting verbs.
Class ability	Marksman's Dodge	Free full reload on dodge — a manual "reset both guns" button when the kill chain breaks.
Melee	Lightweight Knife	Precision-kill → Radiant; keeps the Solar economy turning without leaving the gunplay.
Grenade	Healing Grenade	Cure + the throw that procs Ember of Empyrean / sustains between swaps.
Aspect 1	On Your Mark	Precision hits stack reload and Weapons stat ×10 → Restoration at max (9.7.0). Every Sturm/Drang headshot feeds it.
Aspect 2	Gunpowder Gamble	Primary-weapon kills charge a throwable Solar grenade — pure upside on a build that does nothing but get primary kills.

Why this works (the mechanics)

• The two intrinsics form a closed ammo loop. Sturm's Accomplice fills Drang from reserves on a Sturm kill; Drang's Together Forever reloads Sturm and overflows it on a Drang kill. Alternate kills between the two and neither gun ever needs a manual reload — the kill that empties one weapon is the kill that loads the other. This is the build, not a bonus.

• Storm and Stress turns the loop into damage. A Drang kill doesn't just reload Sturm — it overflows Sturm with bonus damage rounds. So the loop is self-amplifying: Drang kill → Sturm comes back loaded with harder-hitting rounds. Then spending those bonus rounds (Storm and Stress, second clause) increases Drang's magazine capacity — Drang gets a bigger tank the more you feed the loop. The system pays compound interest.

• The catalyst removes the only cost — swap time. The loop is built on constant weapon-swapping, and the natural enemy of swap-spam is the ready/stow animation. Helping Hands banks charges off bonus-round kills and spends them to swap and stow at a massively increased rate, so once you're a few kills in, the Sturm↔Drang handoff is effectively instant. Catalyst is non-negotiable for this build.

• Anti-Champion 2.0 gives the pair real teeth. Stun is intrinsic to weapon archetypes now. Sturm is a 120-RPM Adaptive frame → Barrier champion; Drang is a Solar sidearm in the Rocket-Assisted/standard frames (use Heavy for Unstoppable/Overload). The primary loop already covers Barrier without a single artifact mod — rare for a non-special primary.

• On Your Mark double-dips the 9.7.0 Weapons stat. Its ×10 precision stack adds Weapons stat, which adds PvE damage vs minors/majors on top of the bonus-damage rounds from Storm and Stress. Two guns that headshot constantly keep this pegged, and at max it hands you Restoration for free survivability.

• Solar surge keeps both halves on-element. Drang and the Heavy are Solar, so Solar Weapon Surge mods buff two-thirds of your loadout. Ember of Empyrean means every Solar (Drang) kill refreshes Restoration + Radiant — the gunplay loop is the survivability loop, no babysitting required.

Stats & mods

Weapons 200 → Health 100 → Class. Weapons is the obvious primary anchor (the whole build is primary gunplay + bonus-damage rounds + On Your Mark's Weapons stacks); Health for floor survivability under Restoration; Class to keep Marksman's Dodge — the manual reset — coming back fast.

Archetypes: Gunner / Powerhouse (Weapons + Class/Super favoured), Tier 4+ reachable without a perfect roll.

Mods, by piece:

• Helmet: Kinetic Siphon (Sturm kills → Orbs) · Hands-On (Super on melee kills).
• Gauntlets: Hand Cannon Loader · Heavy Handed (melee energy on powered-melee kills — feeds Lightweight Knife → Radiant).
• Chest: Solar + Kinetic Resist — flat DR under Restoration.
• Boots: Solar Weapon Surge ×2 (≈+17% to Drang + Heavy) · Innervation (orb pickup → grenade energy).
• Class item: Reaper (dodge → next kill spawns an Orb) · Bomber (dodge → grenade) · Time Dilation.

Champion note: Sturm (Adaptive HC) stuns Barrier intrinsically; bring a Heavy covering Unstoppable/Overload for the activity.

Where it shines

• Sustained add-clear and majors in any content where you can keep a kill chain alive — the loop needs kills to feed itself, so it snowballs in target-rich rooms and goes quiet against a lone boss (that's what the Heavy and Golden Gun are for).
• Ammo-starved content / long lockouts — two primaries that reload each other means you basically never touch a brick of primary ammo and never stand exposed reloading. Great for grind activities and onslaught-style waves.
• Solo and low-stress play — On Your Mark Restoration + Ember of Empyrean give passive healing entirely off the gunplay you're already doing.
• It is not a boss-DPS build: bonus-damage rounds help, but a hand cannon + sidearm primary loop is a combat/role engine, not a damage-phase melter.