Pendles, the Infiltrator

Overview

Complete guide about Pendles, covering his abilities, his helix and mutations, his skins, his taunts, his lore and strategies for Story mode and PvP.

Presentation

How to unlock

Using the key provided, if you own the Season pass or the Digitial Deluxe edition

47 500 credits

Description

Faction: Rogue

Description given by the game:

How it translate:

Assassin: Pendles skills and stats are aimed at picking off ennemies, not taking the whole wave or team at the same time. You can still damage and attack multiple ennemies at once (I’ll cover this later in the Abilities and Helix sections) but it’s not the kind of situation where he thrives.

Stealth: By default, Pendles is in Stealth mode. Note that it’s stealth not invisibility, so just like Oscar Mike or Shayne, if you’re careful you can see his silhouette move around while he’s in stealth mode. Just like the others, he breaks from stealth when attacking or when an ability or skill reveals him (ex: Reyna’s Priority Target & Ambra’s Solar Wind with the right helix choice). If ennemies shoot at you or if you shoot at an ennemy Pendles, he can die while in stealth. In short, the basic idea is to use his stealth to sneak in ennemy territory and escape when the attention is on you.

Complex: He’s not that hard to play but the challenge lies in knowing when to engage and when to escape. Unless you annoy ennemy players to the point they forget your teammates and hunt you down every secod of the match, you also need to accept the fact you won’t be the center of attention but you can still be a pillar/key part of your team.

What I add:

Saboteur: The same skills that let you sneak and kills ennemies also let you easily do some “sabotage” to their buildables.

Squishy: While it may be a great advantage to run around whithout being seen, Pendles biggest weakness is his HP. If you’re hit with any crowd control effect or/and multiple ennemies aim at you simultaneously, you will go down fast.

Abilities

Corner Sneak: This is the fun part, the passive stealth. There is no time limit to it, so you can remain in stealth for days unless you get shot and killed or break it yourself. If you break your stealth there are only 2 ways to regain it, use Smoke Bomb or disappear from your ennemies’ line of sight. There is an animated icon at the bottom of the screen letting you know if you’re in stealth or not:
Stealth
Visible

Also, as said in the description seen in the main picture, you move faster in stealth than visible. So, if you need to run down someone or need to escape, try to get in stealth mode and move out.

Dual Kamas & Throwing Stars: The Kamas are your basic melee attack while the throwing stars are your ranged secondary attack. Both have decent damages, attack speed and there are Helix and Mutations choices related to those basic attacks.

Snake-Born: Another fun thing, you get a 25% reduction on the duration of crowd control effects applied to you!

Smoke Bomb: Other than disappearing from your ennemies’ line of sight, this is your other option to go back to stealth mode. We’ll get to it later in the Helix section but remember that whenever you use that skill you get cloaked, even if the bomb doesn’t drop at your feet and you’re out of the area of effect. It also deals some damages on impact and for a short period after impact. The damages affect anything from npcs, to players to buildables. If it’s available you can still use it even if you haven’t broke from stealth.

Injection: Your bread and butter for damages and chasing opponents, damages combined with a slow. It can hit multiple ennemies at once, depending on how far you are from them. You also have some options to improve this skill with the helix and mutations. Note that since it is an attack it does break your stealth.

Miasma: The ultimate ability. It does some decent damages over time but the best thing is it greatly reduces Injection cooldown while it lasts. You can also activate it without breaking your stealth but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out where you stand. If players are fighting each other and it looks like a mayhem, use it and move around to damage everybody!

Helix & mutations

To prevent confusion by having too much information in this section, I will only make a few comments. Remember that you unlock mutations at character level 3,5,7,9 and 12. Also, don’t forget to click on the pictures to get a bigger and better resolution.

1.
2.

The right option smakes Smoke Bomb throwable. Even if you don’t stand in the AOE covered by the bomb when it explodes you will still get cloaked. You can throw the bomb quickly or wait a bit and you’ll notice a line with the trajectory and projected land zone of the bomb.

3.
4.

Some of you may notice somethign about the description of Savage Cut (the right opton). Depending on where you look at (Command menu or in a match/mission), it says +90 or +104. I would have to really stop and count the damages it does to provide the proper information but you still get the idea. It’s not a gamebreaking problem.

Escape plan, the right option, is pretty nice but remember that Pendles is pretty squishy, so to have the cooldown reduced by 100% you will take quite a beating. Once you get that option it’s always on, it’s not like Kelvin’s armor that lets you get another Chomp if you missed then you get the cooldown if you miss again. The moment you take damage the cooldwon is reduced.

6.
7.

Coiled spring, the left option, makes you jump roughly twice the normal height, it’s not a double jump.

8.
9.
10.
Just to make sure everybody knows the Wound mechanic, basically it reduces by 60% healing, health regeneration and lifesteal effects.

Builds

Globally the choices for PvE and PvP are the same with a few exceptions. So, here is my take by level (see above for infos).

1. Since the damages of Smoke bomb can affect anything from NPCs, to players to buildables, having the over-time effect last longer can help you bring down whatever is your target.For example, you’re attacking an ennemy Accelerator, an opponent see you and comes towards you, yo ucan drop Smoke bomb to disappear and the over-time effet will last long enough to finish the job. So, Left.

2. Smoke bomb has a sizeable AOE so blinding opponents, even for 1 second, can be interesting in PvP. Making the bomb throwable can let you go invisble without being too close to your ennemies, it can also help you harass and reach a Marquis and it can help you handle multiple ennemy groups at once. So, Left or Right depends o nthe situation and mode.

3. The mutation can be nice but if I remember correctly it’s the last or second last you get, so if you want to improve the attack seed you got to do it with items for the first few levels. The lifesteal can be fun but the kamas don’t deal huge amount of damages. The bonus from the back can be fun because in stealth you can still body-block opponents.You get behind your target and you unleash your attacks while they try to move back towards you because they think they hit the environment. So, Right or Mid (later).

4. You get another chance at getting some lifesteal if you haven’t at level 3. The mutation makes the slow duration go from 2 to 3 seconds. The other option adds damages over time. Personally I take the Savage Cut. So, Up to you.

5. Cloak and Cover is good in PvP when your opponents chase you a lot even after you cloak. In PvE, the ennemies don’t chase you nor shoot at you when you’re in stealth unless a teammate or drone is stading right behind you. Honestly, maybe some future maps will be some mazes and you won’t see or know what lies around the corner but for most games, either in PvE or PvP, there isn’t much you can’t do with the radar and your teammates vision, so the mutation is ok but not amazing. As said before, the right option can let you use Smoke bomb faster as you get damaged. This works well in PvE and PvP. So, Left or Right.

6. Pendles has the skills to make attacking from the back a reality, so I’m not sure when Feint would beat Sweet Spot (which works against anything). So, Right.

7. The mutation is nice, especially in PvP, if you face a melee-heavy team. Coiled spring can let you reach new spots so you can move around more easily. Deeper pocket can be useful if you need to improve your range game. So, Up to you.

8. There is an eternal debate between players about this kind of choices. More damages or use more frequently? Depending on what you picked before you may already have a cooldown reduction on Smoke bomb so you may want to get more damages. Personally, I prefer to use it as often as possible. So, Up to you.

9. The options depends mostly on what you face. You will get disabled by some crowd controls effects in PvE but not as much as in PvP. The right option, Slippery, is if your opponents retaliate or try to shut you down instead of fleeing. For example, a Galilea (not close to death) will more likely retaliate and try to fight you than a Thorn or Miko. It can also be to prevent your opponents to drop a long stun on you while you chase them. It’s interesting but nothing some items can’t help with. On the other side, Relentless Strike reduces Injection cooldown with every hit you land. You will never attack fast enough to have no cooldown but it can make Injection reusable quickly. So, Left.

10. Necrosis, the left option, is clearly intended for PvP (becasue ennemies don’t heal or regenerate often in PvE) while the right option, Venom Synergy, can be used for both PvP and PvE. Since Miasma is something you cast on yourself and it follows you around, I tend to prefer Necrosis to make sure my target doesn’t heal much while I’m chasing. So, Up to you

In short:

PvE
1. Left
2. Right
3. Right
4. Up to you
5. Right
6. Right
7. Up to you
8. Up to you
9. Left
10. Right

PvP
1. Left
2. Left
3. Right (or Mid once you get it)
4. Up to you
5. Right or Left
6. Right
7. Up to you
8. Up to you
9. Left
10. Left

Items

I use 2 different loadouts with Pendles. One is for PvE, where I focus mostly on damage and attack speed and one for PvP where I tend to be a “semi-support” while gaining some health and attack speed.

PvE

Missions tend to be long enough to farm crystals so I go with 3 legendaries and since your teammates can revive you I don’t focus has much on survivability as much as damages and attack speed since this is what Pendles is all about.

Here is the loadout:

The bonus attack speed combined with Relentless Strikes (level 9) let me use Injection often. The damages and critical bonuses let me clear waves easily by myself.

PvP

I haven’t played Capture maps in a while so my build is made for Meltdown and Incursion.

With this build, the first thing I do is go behind the ennemy players and destroy everything I can, but first and foremost their Accelerators so it stalls their push a bit. I also roam, get kills, destroy bots as they barely get out of spawns and steal whatever crystals I can find. With this build, my teammates also gets bonuses from the crystals I pick and I’m the one buying and upgrading the buildables since I can afford them and I apply a bonus to them.

Here is the loadout:

The Sentinel Reset Switch and Quartermastery Bin make me a rich man with all the crystal they generate and the Bin makes me now share a total of 50% of every shards I pick (mostly on ennemy side) with my teammates. The wrench also makes my tier 3 buildables slightly more durable and annoying while costing me less. The Talon gives me decent health (survivability) and attack speed bonuses.

I am aware those builds are costy to activate and they may not represent the ideals for everybody but they fit the way I see the character.

Lore

(That’s the same picture I used to begin the guide but I simply pressed E, to hide the lore infos for the first shot)

Completing Pendles lore doesn’t require much grind but it’s not the easiest out there. Most objectives will be completed just by playing normally PvE and PvP games.

Hitman for Hire: This one just takes the time to play the game. Some NPCs like H3CHM4N (first mini boss found in The Algorithm) do have some crowd control effects.but you will face them mroe often in PvP. You can’t activate Smoke bomb while stunned so any slow will do. All you have to do is activate it once you see the effect in your screen. Do it 100 times and this one is done.

Toxic Lifestyle: It may take a moment to master the timing but getting 20 kills while Miasma (the ultimate) is active shouldn’t be hard. Note that it say while it is active, not with Miasma, so you can actually get the kills with another ability while it is active.

The Pitch: Dealing 500 damages after uncloaking 100 times sounds more difficult than it is. If you pick all the bonuses that applies when you attack from the back and unleash what you got on NPCs groups in Story mode or minion waves in PvP, it should also be done quickly.

Kamas: It’s simply dealing 50 000 damages to ennemies from behind. Bonuses and abilities count so just play and it will happen quickly too.

Word of Warning: Tentacle-slap ennemy (means it has to be done in PvP) Battleborn 50 times. The slap is the quick melee hit (with the mouse it’s clicking the wheel). Since it’s an attack it deals damages and you can kill players with those slaps (I did).

Once you’re done with the 5 parts you will get the achievement Twice-Made Sneaker (see the picture used for the thumbnail of the guide) and you will receive a legendary item for Pendles:

Adding Wound to Injection can really mess up the players you’re gonna suprise. The movement speed bonus helps you keep up the pace while visible and the reduction of crowd control effects duration is also welcomed.