MINERVA
ATHENA THE GLADIATOR BUILD
Last updated on August 31st, 2025
MINERVA
Level 70
Melee • Versatile
PLAYSTYLE
Athena is basically a Greek Goddess who happens to know how to wield a gun and summon thunder. While a lot of builds focus on her Aspis ability, Athena isn’t defined entirely by it. This build focuses on all her abilities, but melee in particular. Guns and shield combined makes her a formidable warrior who can also shoot well.
For this build, you’ll want to absorb damage with her Aspis, but also liberally use her melee attack. With each melee attack, you’ll apply bleed, but that’s not really our main focus. Thanks to Blood Rush, Athena can now dash toward enemies, which allows her to get into this loop where you start with Aspis, throw the shield, melee at an enemy, and finish off with some shooting.
SOLO
This is a great build for solo play because it utilizes most of Athena’s toolkit in a meaningful way. She’s fast on her feet, great with melee, and Aspis ensures she always has a powerful projectile that summons a host of elemental effects. Athena doesn’t really need a lot of support, and at Level 70, with this build, she’s a force to be reckoned with. She has also multiple abilities that directly regenerate her health and shield.
COOP
Similarly, Athena is a valuable asset to have in a team thanks to her diverse toolkit. She has AOE attacks, a great defense mechanism, melee that does great damage, and elemental damage output that can hit multiple enemies at the same time. She also heals the entire team during her active Aspis and taunts enemies to focus fire on herself, giving the team room to direct their fire towards enemies without any worry. Any heals provided to her are helpful, but for the most part, she will be doing her own thing.
GEARS
Slot 1: Thunderfire
Slot 2: Acuminous Frostfire
Slot 3: Practicable Crowdsourcing
Slot 4: Muckamuck
Grenade: Quasar
Shield: Shield of Ages
MOD: Celestial Gladiator
OZ Kit: 3DD1.E
SKILLS
Hold the Line extends her Aspis duration by over 3.3 seconds, while Prepare for Glory taunts nearby enemies to distract them towards herself.
Tear makes bleeding enemies take more gun damage while slamming enemies now pulls them into a singularity.
Slamming enemies also link nearby enemies with a shock tether which shocks them, releases a fire nova, and and stacks an additional Maelstrom. Each Maelstorm increases elemental damage by over 0.4% per stack.
