Touch of Malice — Bloodletter (Hunter)

Weapon: Touch of Malice (Scout Rifle · Primary · Kinetic) · Subclass: Gunslinger (Solar) · Role: Infinite-ammo primary engine that outheals its own life tax Sandbox: 9.7.0 · Created 2026-06-16

Touch of Malice never reloads — its last round draws from your own life force, hits like a truck, and refills itself. The whole gun is a deal: trade health for a bottomless mag of bonus-damage shots. So stop fighting the cost and drown it. Solar Restoration is a heal-over-time that ticks faster than the final round chips you, so you hold the trigger forever; the catalyst pays sustained fire with ramping precision damage; Wormhusk turns every dodge into a top-up. The fantasy is the bargain made free: bleed and never die.

The weapon

Exotic perk verbatim — Touch of Malice: "The final round in the magazine deals bonus damage, drawing from the wielder's life force, and then regenerates itself. Defeating powerful combatants or multiple targets rapidly restores health."

Catalyst verbatim — Precision Instrument: "Dealing sustained damage increases precision damage."

What it does: the last bullet in the mag does not deplete — it costs a sliver of your health per shot but regenerates, so the gun is a primary you never reload and which deals bonus damage on that self-sustaining shot. Kills of powerful combatants or rapid multikills heal you back, partially repaying the tax. The catalyst layers a precision-damage ramp that climbs the longer you keep the trigger on a target — which is exactly how you hold the bottomless final round. The two effects compound: never reloading means uninterrupted sustained fire, which means the Precision Instrument ramp never resets.

Loadout

Slot	Pick	Why
Subclass	Gunslinger (Solar)	Restoration + Cure are HoT/burst heals that out-tick ToM's life drain — the only element that lets you camp the final round indefinitely.
Super	Golden Gun: Marksman	On-theme precision burst; pairs with Knock 'Em Down for duration. Swap to Blade Barrage for add-clear if preferred.
Class ability	Marksman's Dodge	Reloads — irrelevant to ToM, but the dodge is the Wormhusk Cure trigger; instant top-up between trigger-holds.
Melee	Knife Trick / Lightweight Knife	Precision-kill → Radiant via Ember of Torches; any Solar melee feeds the heal loop.
Grenade	Healing Grenade	Cure + Restoration on demand — the panic button that erases the self-damage when a multikill heal doesn't land.
Aspect 1	On Your Mark	Precision hits stack reload + Weapons stat ×10 → PvE damage on top of the catalyst ramp. ToM is pure precision uptime.
Aspect 2	Gunpowder Gamble	Kills charge a Solar explosive → ignitions for add-density; keeps the multikill heals flowing without spending the grenade.

Exotic — Wormhusk Crown (Helmet)

Activating your class ability grants Cure. Rapid [Solar] Solar final blows grant stacks of Burning Souls that increase Solar ability damage, increase the potency of Dodge's healing, and spreads the healing to nearby allies.

This is the cleanest "outheal the trigger" exotic in the game. Every Marksman's Dodge is an instant Cure burst — a guaranteed counter to a bad health-drain moment, on a short cooldown. Burning Souls then scales that dodge-heal up the more Solar kills you stack (Golden Gun, Gunpowder ignitions, melee), so the more you fight the harder the dodge heals. Wormhusk doesn't touch the weapon — it exists purely to make ToM's blood tax irrelevant, which is the whole build.

Why this works (the mechanics)

• Restoration out-ticks the tax. ToM's final round drains a fixed sliver per shot; Restoration is a heal-over-time. Keep Resto live (Healing Grenade → Empyrean/Solace extending it off Solar kills) and your health rises while you hold a bottomless bonus-damage mag. The gun's downside becomes a non-event.
• Never reloading = the catalyst never resets. Precision Instrument ramps on sustained damage. ToM's self-regenerating final round means you never break fire to reload, so the precision ramp climbs uninterrupted on a priority target — the longer the boss/champion lives, the harder ToM hits it.
• On Your Mark double-dips the 9.7.0 Weapons stat. It stacks Weapons stat ×10 off precision hits; ToM is a precision rifle held permanently, so you sit at max stacks. Weapons stat adds PvE weapon damage on top of the catalyst ramp and Radiant — three multiplier sources from just landing headshots.
• The multikill heal is a real sustain pillar, not a footnote. "Defeating powerful combatants or multiple targets rapidly restores health" is a chunk heal. Gunpowder Gamble ignitions and ToM's own add-clear manufacture the rapid multikills that trigger it, so the weapon partially self-funds its own cost.
• Wormhusk is the floor under all of it. When Resto lapses or a heal doesn't land, the dodge is a Cure on a leash — and Burning Souls makes that dodge-heal scale with your Solar kill count. Worst case you dodge, get Cured, and walk it off. There is no death-by-self-damage failure state.
• Radiant stacks the same trigger-pull. Ember of Torches (melee) → Radiant = +25% weapon damage; with Resto already up, Ember of Empyrean keeps both Radiant and Resto alive off Solar kills. One Solar kill refreshes offense (Radiant) and defense (Resto) at once.

Stats & mods

Weapons 200 → Health 100+ → Class. Weapons because the build is 90% gunplay and the stat compounds with the catalyst/On Your Mark/Radiant stack; Health for a fat buffer the Resto tops off; Class to keep the Wormhusk-Cure dodge online. Archetypes: Powerhouse (Weapons/Super) or Gunner pieces; Specialist for Class.

Mods, by piece:

• Helmet (Wormhusk): Kinetic Siphon (ToM kills → Orbs) · Ashes to Assets (Super on ability kills).
• Gauntlets: Scout Rifle Loader is wasted (ToM never reloads) → run Heavy/ Special Finisher or Melee Font instead · Momentum Transfer.
• Chest: Solar Resistance + flat Resist mods — extra DR under the Resto layer.
• Boots: Kinetic Weapon Surge ×2 (≈+17% to ToM directly — Kinetic, so Kinetic surge is the right element) · Orbs of Restoration.
• Class item: Reaper (dodge → next kill spawns an Orb) · Bomber/Outreach to keep the dodge — and its Cure — recharging.
• Stat tuning: +Weapons where possible; Health is the buffer the heal refills, so it is not the dump stat here (unlike the Turncoat build) — the whole point is having health to spend on the final round.

Where it shines

• Champion coverage (Anti-Champion 2.0): ToM is a Scout Rifle. The artifact carries three Scout mods — Anti-Barrier Scout Rifle (shield-pierce + stun Barrier, and overcharges Scouts), Overload Scout Rifle (consecutive hits → Overload), and Unstoppable Scout Rifle (ADS-loaded payload → Unstoppable). Slot whichever the activity demands and ToM itself becomes the champion answer — a never-reload Scout holding the bonus-damage round through a champion is exactly what these mods want.
• Sustained-DPS targets: the catalyst ramp + no reload makes ToM a premium primary damage option against bosses/minibosses that out-live a normal mag — it never stops climbing.
• Grandmaster / -30/-40 content: the build's selling point is survivability while never stopping fire. Resto + Wormhusk Cure + multikill heals = three heal sources covering the self-damage, so you hold offensive pressure in content where other primaries force you behind cover to reload and reset.
• Endless-add activities: ToM never reloads and Gunpowder ignitions chain multikills → constant heal procs. The gun feeds its own loop.