Loveless has a sniper setup that does not really behave like a sniper setup. Instead of firing one huge shot at a boss, you bank the damage from three rifle shots and then dump it all into a melee slash. The result is a single hit that reads in the tens or hundreds of millions, and the whole loop works from the moment you can spend points in Hack / Slash all the way up to level 70.
Quick answer: Equip Visual Paradox Nexus with the Stack Overflow augment, kill an enemy to enter Stealth, fire three sniper shots while cloaked, then tap the Action Skill to release the stored damage as a critical Kusarigama slash.
Why Stack Overflow and Visual Paradox Nexus one-shot bosses
Visual Paradox Nexus cloaks Loveless, raises her movement speed and critical hit damage, and drops a clone wherever she kills something while the skill is running. Killing an enemy during the skill also pushes her into Stealth. Tapping the Action Skill again fires the Function, a Kusarigama slash that deals Radiation melee damage. If she is in Stealth when that slash goes out, it automatically critically hits and ends the cloak.
Stack Overflow is the piece that turns that slash into a finisher. Once you are in Stealth, the augment stores the damage of your next three gunshots instead of spending it, and hands the total over to the Kusarigama as bonus damage. Shooting does not break the cloak, so you are free to line up all three rounds.
The reason the numbers get silly is that the stored pool is counted twice. It scales once while it is being built, using everything that boosts your gun and sniper damage, then it scales again on release through melee and Action Skill damage multipliers. Every point you put into sniper damage is effectively taxed twice in your favour.
How to run the Hackshot damage loop
The Torgue double-hit trick with High Caliber 3
High Caliber 3 makes your bullets pierce through enemies. On its own that is a mobbing perk. Paired with a sniper carrying a Torgue attachment, it doubles the value of every single round you bank.
The trick is the angle. Aim slightly downward so the bullet strikes the enemy, keeps travelling, and buries itself in the floor just behind them. The impact on the target triggers one Torgue splash explosion, and the impact on the ground triggers a second one that still catches the enemy. Every shot in your three-round window pays out twice, which is what pushes the final slash from tens of millions into the hundreds of millions.
Note: the second explosion needs a surface to land on. If your target is airborne, standing on a ledge, or you are shooting flat or upward, the round sails past and you only get the single hit.
Best gear for the Hackshot Loveless build
The class mod is the single biggest lever. Flashy Montage Maker drops from Violetter and can roll +1 to Refactored Damage Formula, which is worth a 2.2x multiplier to sniper rifle damage. Since that multiplier is applied while the pool is being stored, it gets carried through the double dip.
| Slot | Pick | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Sniper | Sudden Looming Truck | High base damage with a Torgue attachment for the splash double hit |
| Backup | Boomslang | Secondary option for clearing adds between loops |
| Class mod | Flashy Montage Maker | Rolls +1 Refactored Damage Formula for 2.2x sniper damage; drops from Violetter |
| Shield | Superconductor Guardian Angel | Fast recharge keeps a 150% Amp shot available almost every time |
| Repkit | Large Triple Bypass with Amp | Amp damage rolled into the stored shots |
| Ordnance | Fully Loaded Vivisecting Crit Knife | Forces critical hits on bosses that are otherwise hard to crit |
| Enhancement | Excruciating Pumper | Torgue enhancement that boosts the splash side of the build |
| Firmware | High Caliber 3 | Pierce that sets up the second Torgue explosion |
Skill tree priorities in Hack / Slash and Virology
Hack / Slash carries the build. Refactored Damage Formula is the anchor for raw sniper damage, Methodical rewards slow-firing rifles, and Third Party feeds the Kusarigama itself. Killing Machine keeps the Function cooldown short so you can chain loops, while Death Begets Death sustains Visual Paradox Nexus off your kills. Merry Bandwidth increases how many clones accelerat.exe consumes if you take that augment instead.
Disdain, Odium, Ratio Technique, Retribution and Flow State fill out the rest of the tree as supporting passives. Split points between Retribution and Infinite Murder Hack depending on how reliably the latter procs for you.
Down in Virology, the points exist to feed Loveless’s RAM bar and add free elemental damage on top of your stored shots.
| Skill | Effect |
|---|---|
| Established Gameplay Loop | Gun damage and reload speed whenever you apply an Elemental Effect or Contagion |
| Toxic Chat | Increased Corrosive damage, plus bonus Corrosive on your guns as a kill skill |
| Heat Sink | Faster Action Skill cooldown on applying an Elemental Effect or Contagion |
| Central Procing Unit | Chance for a second random Elemental Effect on unaffected enemies |
| Depletion Load | Bonus Radiation damage on your guns after an Action Skill, Function or Executable |
| System Restore | Lifesteal from Splash damage, with excess healing turned into Overshield |
Wide Net rounds out the green side. For specialization points, One Shot, One Kill, I Am A Gun and A Honed Mind are the three that matter for this loop.
Why the slash sometimes does almost nothing
There are only a handful of ways this loop fails, and all of them come down to the Stealth window.
- You never killed an enemy while Visual Paradox Nexus was active, so Stealth never started and Stack Overflow had nothing to store.
- You fired the Kusarigama early. The slash ends Stealth, so any shots you had left in the three-round window are gone.
- You used the Empowered RAM melee instead of the Action Skill Function. The stored pool only rides on the Kusarigama.
- Your sniper has no Torgue attachment, so there is no splash to double up regardless of your aim.
Loveless arrived on September 10 alongside Version 1.10 and the level cap increase, and this loop scales the whole way up with her. You can start running it around level 11 with nothing more than the Stack Overflow augment and a Torgue-attached rifle, then swap in the Montage Maker and High Caliber 3 later to turn a good burst into a one-shot.
