Tao is the fifth playable Hero in Gunfire Reborn, and despite her melee-oriented style, she plays more like a powerful caster. She is a master in the art of sword control, which allows her to summon a barrage of flying swords to overwhelm her enemies. In this article, we will examine how to play and build Tao in Gunfire Reborn to deal out a massive amount of damage quickly and easily! Let’s begin.
Tao Summary
Tao’s playstyle mainly focuses on high ammo consumption to stack up her Primary skill, Swords Out. She is a fragile glass cannon that can land lightning-fast hits and destroy her enemies with a barrage of flying swords. Despite her artwork showcasing her wielding the Poisonous Ghost, she mainly relies on using weapons that boast a high rate of fire.
Prioritizing Rifles, SMGs, and Injectors allows her to stack her Primary Skill to unleash a barrage of flying swords that home in on nearby enemies. Many of her Ascensions focus on improving the number and damage of these flying swords she creates, and further elevating her weapons to alarming speeds.
How Tao’s Abilities Work in Gunfire Reborn
Swords Out
Swords Out is Tao’s Primary Skill. Using it summons a barrage of flying swords, which home in on nearby enemies. The number of flying swords that are summoned is related to the number of Blade Heart stacks at the time. Each stack of Blade Heart can summon three flying swords. For every 15 ammo consumed, gain one stack of Blade Heart up to a base maximum of six.
Swords Out can be used while performing other actions, including firing your weapon. Casting her Secondary Skill Fatal Bloom, or reviving a teammate. Sadly, Swords Out cannot be cast while knocked down.
Weapons or Occult Scrolls that consume additional ammo will cause Tao to gain Blade Heart stacks faster. Effects that prevent ammo consumption, like Bloody Ammo, also count as if ammo was still being consumed for the sake of building Blade Heart stacks.
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Fatal Bloom
Fatal Bloom is Tao’s Secondary Ability. Using it creates an explosion of petals instantly wherever you are looking. Fatal Bloom deals damage to all enemies within six meters and marks them for six seconds.
Enemies that are marked will retake damage from Fatal Bloom if they are hit 12 times within the six-second mark. The bonus damage can be done repeatedly before the mark wears off, but elemental effects do not count as hits. However, Swords Out does synergize with Fatal Bloom, allowing you to ramp up the extra damage procs depending on your weapons and how many stacks of Blade Heart you have.
Tao Strengths
Tao’s main strengths involve boosting her weapons rate of fire to allow her to build Blade Heart Stacks quickly and to gain extra swords for her Swords Out. Along with unleashing a barrage of swords, her Fatal Bloom enables her to deal tons of burst damage on multiple targets by rapidly striking them. Tao has amazing DPS and arguably has the most consistent damage output in Gunfire Reborn.
However, Tao’s greatest strength is also her biggest downside. Without a weapon that sports a high fire rate or ammo consumption, both of her skills are ineffective or even incapable of using to their fullest potential. Also, due to her Ascensions, the early levels of her runs can be weak compared to the rest of the Hero roster. If you can overcome her weak early game, she has the strength to shine the brightest with a hail of bullets and flying swords.
Tips & Tricks for Playing Tao in Gunfire Reborn
Always prioritize high fire rate weapons. Even if a low fire rate weapon is stronger, both of her skills need that ammo consumption to synergize properly. Tao’s DMG will drastically decline if she’s unable to find a gun that allows her to stack Swords Out, and she will struggle to proc Fatal Bloom’s mark even once.
Swords Out has an extremely low cooldown but only gains stacks when the ability is off cooldown. If your weapon has a high fire rate but a small magazine size, we recommend taking advantage of this small downtime window and reloading while your Swords Out is on cooldown. This tip only helps a tiny bit for the early game when you have few ways of replenishing ammo.
Tao’s Best Talents in Gunfire Reborn
Every character in Gunfire Reborn has three talent trees that focus on enhancing their guns, abilities, or granting extra utility. Tao’s talent tree focuses on enhancing her Fatal Bloom, her weapons fire rate, or increasing her blade manipulation. There are many viable Tao builds in Gunfire Reborn for focusing on one tree over the rest. Yet, we found that focusing on buffing Tao’s Swords Out ability is one of her stronger paths. We ultimately recommend it over other builds.
Sword Shadow
Each stack of Blade Heart summons additional flying swords with Swords Out. Moreover, each tier adds one additional sword, up to a maximum of three extra swords per Blade Heart stack.
Each stack of Blade Heart summons three swords, and Swords Out can stack up to a base maximum of six, equivalent to 18 swords at max stacks. Sword Shadow at max rank adds three extra swords to every stack of Blade Heart, which adds up to 36 swords. This is a significant damage increase for a Gunfire Reborn Tao build, even when only using rank one of Sword Shadow.
Normally Swords Out can only proc Fatal Blooms mark once. Yet, with max rank Sword Shadow, Swords Out can proc Fatal Bloom three times. Add any additional gunfire on top of this massive barrage of flying swords, and Tao’s damage skyrockets.
Sword Guard
For every flying sword summoned, increase Tao’s max shield and recover a fraction of her shield for a few seconds. Sword Guard increases Tao’s shield by two, then three, up to four for between six to eight seconds, depending on rank while replenishing the same amount gained. At rank three, when the max shield bonus exceeds 20 stacks, increase Tao’s shield recharging speed by 50%.
Sword Guard is an amazing Ascension for keeping Tao alive since she operates like a glass cannon. Every flying sword you send out will replenish your Shields and restore them with your massive burst window. The base cooldown of Swords Out is roughly five seconds, and Sword Guard allows you to combine your most offensive ability with shield replenishment.
Warlike Blade
For every ten ammo consumed, Tao’s rate of fire increases by 10%, 15%, and up to 20%, with her accuracy increasing by the same amount. There’s also a slight chance to recover ammo consumed when firing, starting at a 5% chance up to 15% at max rank. The total buff lasts three seconds but can be stacked multiple times.
We consider Warlike Blade as a must-have Ascension talent for every Tao run. Taking Warlike Blade effectively turns whatever automatic weapon Tao uses into a laser-accurate gun that fires even faster and has a chance to replenish your ammo reserves. There’s absolutely no downside to taking this Ascension, and it further doubles down on her already established play style.
Epic Swordcraft
Epic Swordcraft increases Flying Swords base damage by 100%, then 200%, up to 300%. This talent provides Tao in Gunfire Reborn free damage scaling. Moreover, it pairs well with any highly focused Swords Out build. It’s a simple damage buff with no gimmick to activate, and that’s enough for us to prioritize it.
Luminous Heart
Luminous Heart increases Blade Heart’s base stack and maximum stack by one per level. Taking this Ascension will increase every stack to have one additional sword. This allows you to send past the basic six-stack limit. Also, at max rank, Luminous Heart reduces the ammo consumption required to obtain a stack of Blade Heart from 15 to 10. It also increases stacking speed by 50%.
Luminous Heart is another wonderful choice and synergizes extremely well with all other Swords Out upgrades that we previously mentioned. It’s another high-priority talent we recommend for every Tao run.
Alternate Talents for Tao in Gunfire Reborn
A few other strong talents to grab are Blade of Bloom. Furious Wave, Amplified Sword, and Empathy With Sword. Blade of Bloom summons flying swords equal to the amount of Blade Heart stacks after casting Fatal Bloom on an enemy. Each flying sword generated by Blade of Blood and then homes in on a randomly marked enemy.
Furious Wave gives every flying sword a 40% chance to deal double damage. There’s also an additional 30% chance to deal three times the damage when hitting enemies who are marked by Fatal Bloom. Amplified Sword causes any enemy previously hit with a flying sword to take additional damage from other flying swords.
Lastly, Empathy with Sword gives Tao a 20% chance to summon a flying sword after dealing DMG to hit the same enemy.
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Best Tao Weapon Builds in Gunfire Reborn
As we previously mentioned, Tao synergizes best with a high rate of right weapons to allow her to stack her Swords Out and proc her Fatal Bloom as quickly as possible. All Injector and SMG weapons are great picks, but there are a few we prefer over the rest. Look at our list of the best guns and other weapons in Gunfire Reborn to learn the top picks for each weapon type.
Injector Weapons
For Injector weapons, we recommend either the Laser or Thunderclap Gloves since both burn through a ton of ammunition and are laser-accurate. The Laser Glove is better for single-target DMG, while the Thunderclap Gloves are better for eliminating groups of enemies or dealing with shields.
Best Sub-Machine Guns for a Solid Tao Build in Gunfire Reborn
For SMGs, we recommend the Demonlore, Angelic Aura, or Scalpel. Between all three, we enjoy using the Scalpel on Tao. Its alternative firing mode shoots two bullets at once, ramping up her Blade Heart stacks quickly. The Demonlore is always a great pick for its high damage scaling for killing enemies. The Angelic Aura is also a good all-around SMG but would be our least picked between our three options.
Top Rifles to Use
If you want to use a Rifle in your Tao build, then we recommend taking the new Hexagon or the Cavalry. The Hexagon’s damage absorption is a great utility option to help keep Tao alive since she is one of the lowest HP characters. The Cavalry is also a good pick because of its full auto mode, and every third shot is a guaranteed crit.
Despite Tao’s official artwork showcasing her wielding the Poisonous Ghost, we don’t recommend using any melee weapon in a good Gunfire Reborn Tao build, even if her entire theme is using flying swords. She is still a glass cannon and won’t survive in melee for very long without many defensive Ascension talents or Occult Scrolls.
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There are a lot of Occult Scrolls in Gunfire Reborn. They can shape the outcome of your build by adding some quality of life improvements or drastically impacting your damage output. To round up our Gunfire Reborn Tao build, we recommend the following Occult Scrolls.
- Perfect Sixth: Every sixth shot gains +80% DMG (Count is reset when reloading.)
- Improved Clip: Whenever an ammo pack is picked up, it directly refills the magazine instead of reserver ammo and increases your movement speed by 25% until the next reload.
- Ammo Belt: Ammo capacity gets doubled.
- Magic Magazine: When reloading, there is a 33% chance of not consuming reserve ammo and gaining +30% weapon DMG for the reloaded magazine.
- Genesis: When shooting, there is a 20% chance to add extra ammo into the magazine.
- Bullet Bank: All picked-up ammo will automatically convert to the currently equipped weapons type.
- Skateboarder: Fill the magazine instantly after dashing with Tao in Gunfire Reborn
- Flowing Wing: While moving, the faster you move, the less DMG you take. (Up to -20%)
- Deft Hands: Shooting won’t consume any ammo for the next two seconds after killing an enemy or destroying an item.
- Arms Dealer: -20% DMG taken and +30% DMG death for ten seconds whenever you consume 100 ammo.
- Advanced Depot: -15% weapon DMG, but use reserve ammo first rather than the magazine when shooting.
- Backup Shield: Recover 40% Shield/ Armor instantly when your Shield/ Armor is Broken. (Cooldown: ten seconds.)
- Merciless Combo: +15% weapon DMG for two seconds whenever hitting an enemy. (Can be stacked up to 50 times).
Wrapping Up Our Tao, Gunfire Reborn Build Guide
That’s our build and guide for Tao in Gunfire Reborn. Looks can be deserving, and many players have flocked to Tao thinking she was a melee-oriented character. While she’s fantastic at putting out unbelievable DPS with her flying swords, she fulfills a summoner playstyle with the number of blades she can send flying into hordes of enemies.
If you want to play a front-line swordsman, we recommend checking out our Qing Yan build guide for Gunfire Reborn.
