With Season 2 just releasing for The First Descendant, we have some brand new characters to try. The major one of these is the new Descendant Keelan that can be unlocked through Void Vessels. Since he’s brand new, players are still not sure what the best build for him is.
If you’re also confused about how to optimize Keelan’s build, we’ve got you covered! In this guide, we’ll be showing you the best build that you can make for Keelan. Let’s get into it!
Best Keelan Build Guide
Since Keelan is relatively new, there are still some details about his build being ironed out. So, it’s possible you’ll see multiple builds of Keelan all being labeled as the best.
If you still haven’t unlocked him, our ultimate void vessels guide can help you out so that you can get the blueprints and materials you need for him!
Keelan Abilities
Before we get into the build, it’s worth understanding how Keelan works and what his abilities are. It will help you understand what aspects of his build you’ll want to target for the best build in The First Descendant.
Keelan is a Toxic Fusion and Toxic Singular Descendant. So, all of his abilities will revolve around his toxic abilities. We recommend focusing on the toxic singular aspect of his because his best abilities are toxic singular.
Here is a breakdown of all of Keelan’s abilities in The First Descendant:
- Void Corrosion
- Fires missiles that hit up to 4 enemies by default
- Number of targets can be increased to a maximum of 10 depending on range
- Each hits inflicts Acidic Corrosion which deals Damage Over Time (DoT)
- If the target already has Acidic Corrosion, you’ll deal around 120% additional skill damage
- The DoT isn’t significant but it can be used to proc additional damage.
- Onslaught
- Dash forward and damage enemies with explosive damage at the end up to a maximum of 5 stacks
- Each stack has a massive cooldown so your focus will be to try and reduce it
- Apply acidic erosion with each hit and deal additional damage if the target already has it.
- Septic Gust
- It deals damage to enemies within range and inflicts Acidic Decay
- Enemies inflicted by Acidic Decay are inflicted with Blood Rot that deals explosive damage
- It also inflicts Acidic Erosion or Septicemia if already inflicted with Acidic Erosion
- Septicemia does an AoE damage of 422.9%.
- Tremor
- Deals a lot of damage in a short range
- You deal damage to enemies within range based on their Acidic Decay stacks
- If they do not have Acidic Decay, increases the number of Onslaught stacks
- Onslaught stacks are really useful since the ability has such a long cooldown
- Erosion (Passive)
- Using skills will increase your Acidic Infusion Level
- Grants agility and skill power modifier increase in combat
- Acidic Infusion Level acts like mana as certain abilities cost infusion level
- The first and second skills help generate this level while the third and fourth ones use it as a cost
So, all fights will start off with your first and second ability where you’ll apply stacks and generate your Acidic Infusion Level. Once everyone is inflicted with these stats, you can use your third ability to proc explosive AoE damage.
Finally, you can use Tremor when close up to deal a lot of damage. After that, you can just rinse and repeat.
Main Build
For the main Keelan build, we’ll be focusing on improving four aspects of Keelan:
- Increasing his HP since he’s effective up close and will take a lot of hits
- Improving his cooldowns as all his abilities have high cooldowns
- Increasing his range since most of his abilities improve with range
- Increasing his toxic damage as he has a very low Crit Rate.
With that said, here are the mods that will help you achieve that for the best Keelan build:
- Focus on Toxic
- Increases toxic damage and reduces cooldown
- Nimble Fingers
- Massively reduces cooldown
- MP Conversion
- Massively reduces cooldown
- Maximize Range
- Increases his range to his max 250% that will improve his abilities
- Increased HP
- Improves his survivability
- Stim Accelerant
- Sacrifice mana for HP as Keelan doesn’t use Mana
- Focus on Singular
- Makes his most powerful abilities even stronger with more cooldown
- Toxic Amplification
- Improves his toxic damage
- Singular Amplification
- Improves his singular toxic damage
- Skill Expansion
- Increase his range
You may be wondering why we’re not using the two Transcendent mods that Keelan comes with: Mobile Strike and Focus on Prey.
With Mobile Strike, you will be able to use the Onslaught dash much more frequently without having to worry about losing stacks. However, this only lasts for three seconds which means you can only use up to 4 dashes in that time.
On top of that, it increases your cooldown significantly and also reduces the damage of your Onslaught from 797% to 213% which is not worth it at all.
You’ll have better luck using Focus on Prey as it enables you to increase your maximum stack count of Acidic Erosion. So, you can potentially get much more AoE damage from your fourth ability.
However, it reduces your single target damage by 80%. So, effectively, you’re not really doing that much more damage. The build with Focus on Prey would really only help with bosses.
Weapons And Reactors
Unfortunately, there isn’t any weapon that directly synergizes with Keelan currently. So, for the best weapon option, we’ve gone with the Blue Beetle.
Starting off, it gives off an additional 115% Skill Critical Hit Rate which can help compensate some of the low Crit that Keelan has. But all in all, this won’t benefit him too much.
Besides that, the Blue Beetle also offers Purification that helps remove debuffs when we use Singular skills. Since we focused a lot on singular skill damage for this build it’ll help Keelan a lot, especially since you’re going to be close to enemies.
The Voltia can also suit him if you’re running Void Vessels. Check out our best voltia builds guide if you want to use it with Keelan.
Next, we’ll be looking at Reactors. The most important thing you’re looking for Keelan in reactors is cooldown. You can ignore everything else and try to get a purple or gold cooldown.
In our case, we’re using the Toxic Singularity Reactor with the cooldown. You could go for the Fusion one but the Singular one will suit the build much more.
Components And Inversion Reinforcement
For components, there are a wide variety that you can choose for the Keelan build. However, we recommend that you use components where you can max roll for HP or some form of resistances.
When you do select a component, make sure to choose one that doesn’t boost MP since mana regeneration is useless for Keelan. With that said, here are some components that you can use:
- Hunter Sensor
- Hunter Processor
- Both of these in a 2 Set help provide -4% Skill Cooldown
- Venom Essence Sensor
- Venom Essence Processor
- Increases Toxic Skill Power by +6.2% in a 2 Set
But if you have components with really good HP rolls, you’re probably better off without them.
Lastly, we wanted to quickly mention a great Inversion Reinforcement skill that can work well with him. This is the seasonal Arche Boost buff that provides a skill cooldown of -15.5%.
In this way, you’ll be able to use his abilities more.
That’s everything you need to know for the best Keelan build in The First Descendant. As you can see, he can be incredibly strong with this build. However, with some small reworks, Keelan has the potential to be even better with his Transcendent mods.
