UPDATE MAY 2025
Since armor and health changes, enemies have twice as much health but now have capped armor so slash procs are no longer as strong as other statuses such as Electric, Heat, Toxin, Blast and Gas. All of these have a certain niche in specific situations and can all be viable. I have chosen Electric as the default as it is the most consistent and flexible in most situations.

UPDATE Nov 2023
Ideally run with a Companion primer (eg hound, diriga, Panzer Vulpaphyla) or a secondary/melee primer (eg epitaph/[Kuva Nukor]) to give viral procs to magnify slash procs (up to 4.25x at max 10 stacks of viral) as well as give additional statuses to power [Galvanized Aptitude].

With the companion update, companion priming is better and easier than ever with Diriga and Hounds, in addition to panzer.
Diriga primer: https://overframe.gg/build/541464/diriga/hydroids-arsenal-ultimate-jellyfish-priming-dps-orb-generation/
Hound pimer: https://overframe.gg/build/540825/dorma-hound/bond-robo-dog-update-34-oct-2023/
Panzer: https://overframe.gg/build/220091/

UPDATE May 2023
The new bow arcane Longbow Sharpshot gives +300% separate multiplier on the next shot after a headshot, giving potentially 4x damage multiplier (separate to aptitude AND [Serration] AND bane) when chaining headshots. Primary Deadhead is still fine to use if you don't like chaining headshots.

Here is a quick showcase since people never seem to believe this build works for them:

Mod breakdown:

• Amalgam Serration - base damage that multiplies with galvanized aptitude.
• Galvanized Chamber - for multishot
• Galvanized Aptitude - currently this is multiplicative with +dmg from serration or primary merciless/deadhead on charged and perfect shots only, and increases with status effects
• Critical Delay - Gives crit chance at the cost of fire rate
• Vital sense - for crit damage
• Primed Shred/Vigilante Fervor - Gives fire rate to offset critical delay. While Nataruk innately has infinite BODY punchthrough, Primed Shred adds punchthrough to walls/objects so it doesn't get blocked by corners, thin walls and random objects. [Vigilante Fervor] adds to the vigilante crit bonus. Using [Vile Acceleration] increases the charge rate the highest, but makes it slightly harder to get perfect shots since the bar charges to max very quickly. Which option you use is personal preference. You could even drop this entirely and just run Point Strike.

• Primed Bane of Grineer - multiplicative 1.55x to both galv aptitude and +dmg, as well as double dipping on slash procs to give 2.401x . If you don't like faction mods you can run one of the flexible options below:

• Terminal Velocity - improve flight speed

Flexible options

• Rifle Elementalist
• Hammer Shot
• [Heavy Caliber]

Arcane:
Longbow Sharpshot is a separate 4x multiplier on the shot after a headshot, giving potentially ALOT more damage on chaining headshots.

Deadhead provides a 1.3x headshot multiplier rather than Nataruks base 1x head multiplier, thereby multiplying headshot damage by 1.3x. Also double dips for elec and gas procs on headshots for 1.69x damage. Deadhead also provides +360% dmg which is additive to serration but multiplicative to Galvanized Aptitude.

ELEMENTAL VARIATIONS

• ELECTRIC: Best 'general use' element because it ticks INSTANTLY when procced meaning it has the potential fastest TTK, has a small AOE which helps with clearing groups of enemies, benefits from electric mods and is best used alongside Roar or Shock subsume with Shock Trooper. Electric also has a bonus against murmur enemies.
• HEAT: Best element against armored enemies but has a 1s delay, but strips armor by up to 50% after 2s which is equivalent to a 3.6x damage boost. Can benefit from heat inherit meaning if you prime first with a secondary weapon with Faction Mod bonuses and Heat mod bonuses, they can be inherited by Nataruk. This is the way to maximise single target DPS but requires setup. Best used with Roar subsume.
• TOXIN: Best against corpus since toxin completely bypasses large shields and directly oneshots health.
• GAS: Nice AOE clearing element as it creates persisting zones of damage, but requires two mod slots and does not benefit from elemental mod bonus. Nice for stationary or camping missions where new enemies will continuously walk into clouds.
• BLAST: Has the fastest AOE clearing potential but is also the most inconsistent since it requires you to either proc 10 blast statuses within 1.5s (which is impossible on [Nataruk]), or have enough raw damage to oneshot enemies while also proccing one blast proc (mostly possible against lower level trash).