Overview: Gauss manipulates kinetic and thermal energy to speed across the battlefield, projecting fields of fire, armouring himself in force and smashing into hapless foes. Pick up his blueprint on the market and his components on Kelpie, Sedna.

Prime: Ironically it’s going to be some time before Gauss prime reaches us.

Special: Gauss charges his battery as he moves, granting him a faster shield recharge rate and a reduced delay before recharge begins. This is surprisingly good at keeping you alive as long as you keep moving.

Pros: Fast, durable and capable of regenerating energy via Kinetic Plating (2) providing you are taking fire. Also has some fun animations and good sound design.

Cons: Thermal Sunder (3) feels clunky to use properly and Kinetic Plating (2) only works against certain damage types – furthermore, being caught without Kinetic Plating (2) active can get you downed very quickly, so watch out for nullifiers and toxic ancients.

Powers: Always be moving – Gauss gains battery as he moves, and gain gain even more by using Mach Rush (1) to bowl over enemies for a chunk of damage and crowd control. The Mach Crash augment will generate a vortex that pulls in enemies when you bounce off terrain.

You can add a slash damage status effect to Mach Rush (1) by using Kinetic Plating (2) which also provides physical, cold, heat and blast resistance at the cost of your battery, while making Gauss immune to knockdown and stagger – so consider using explosive weapons at point blank range! Kinetic Plating (2) needs to be refreshed fairly often, but will convert incoming physical/cold/heat/blast damage to energy – meaning you can sustain your powers with ease.

Thermal Sunder (3) comes in two flavours, either tap (3) to draw heat out the surrounding area – charging your battery and generating an area of persistent cold damage – or – hold (3) to expend battery and generate an area of persistent heat damage. If a cold and heat sunder overlap, you’ll cast a blast sunder instead. Finally, sunders will add matching bonus damage to a Mach Rush (1) that passes through them.

Lastly, Redline (4) will provide a variety of bonuses based on your battery level, making you perform all actions faster, discounting Mach Rush (1) allowing Thermal Sunder (3) to freeze, burn or blow away the armour of victims and adding melee damage to attack made while Kinetic Plating (2) is active. Redline (4) will also periodically emit energy bolts that damage and stagger nearby foes.

Opinion: Gauss is pretty fun if you can keep yourself focused – I found it quite hard to avoid spending an entire game body-slamming things! Either way, Gauss performs reasonably well in any mission type, able to hold up under heavy fire and bring a bit of utility to a team fight via Thermal Sunder (3) – I’d say he’s quite playable, but ironically, isn’t going to lead the pack.