So I was never really a fan of the core strength set. Thought of it as a jack of all trades master of none. When escalation first dropped if I saw anyone wearing it in T5+ I honestly just left.
I played around with it to see if it does actually bring anything to the table and after a ton of testing this is what I landed with, and boy does it bring a lot.
Gear is ninjabike backpack(chc mod), CS mask(wd core/chd/chc mod), CS chest(Skill Tier/chc/chc mod), CS gloves(Skill Tier/chc), Foxes Prayer(wd core/dttoc/chd), and Picaro's Holster(Skill Tier/chd/wd).
All prototype piece are rolled with echo augment.
This setup allows me to have 6 Skill tiers due to the 1.5tier prototype cores, brazos brand set, and ninjabike and being able to run gunner spec for armor on kill, ammo generationg, and foam grenades primarily.
Weapons are Capacitor and either first bloom or Military MK46 w/ frenzy also rolled with echo. This setup puts my Capacitor at 198k base damage with 56% chc and 117% chd. Crit hits are floating around 1-1.1m dmg with zero stacking required.
Armor is sitting around 2.2mil.
With having the 6 Skill tiers + efficiency from the non skill tier cores due to the CS set, I run precision smart cover which provides myself and all teammates 41% dttoc as well as 90% weapon handling(great for those frenzy strikers) for 35.4sec and only a 26sec cooldown.
Now where it gets crazy is with my seasonal modifiers running optimize/overload with saturate utility/split defense/saturate offense. This gives me 74% skill cooldown on a 35sec timer allowing me to keep my smart cover up nearly indefinitely with close to zero downtime and each deployment being overcharged bumping that ddtoc to 49% dttoc at all times.
For my second skill I either run oxidizer if theres already a healer (oxidizer ticks for around 250k-300k per tick), or a healing chem launcher to help keep teammates from having to hide from broken armor(initial heals at 721k and 150k per sec).
So not only does this provide huge damage increases to my teammates, but also can hybrid as healer if needed while still pumping out big damage. Most runs I top the board with damage/kills even with people running the cookie cutter striker/frenzy setup.
Thought I'd share what me and my team came up with to make things a bit more fun and off-meta 😊 by no means do I encourage running core strength with random matchmaking.