Tips for understanding and building with Amara's Green Tree at endgame. Green Tree This guide will help you understand the quirks and uses of each of Amara's skills, so that perhaps you can do some build crafting of your own. In this section, we cover the green (Brawl) tree. ROOT TO RISE Mostly useless. Is sometimes taken just to get to the next tier after maxing Personal Space on a Deathless build, because while Clarity is also useless on a Deathless build, at least Root To Rise doesn't take up a buff bar slot. In the rare instance that you have lots of points to spend in green tree, the trifecta of Root To Rise, Samsara, and Helping Hands makes for noticeble tankiness increase. PERSONAL SPACE 54% V2 damage that only applies to guns/bullets, with quite a forgiving range. Very valuable skill for gun builds. Note that this does not apply to the Face Puncher. It does apply to ASE 50% bonus elements on shield or grenade, because those are technically a bullet damage source, no matter how they are applied. CLARITY Good general health regen. Worth taking if you have the points, and very strong at 10/5. Not only is there a bonus for using your action skill, but it can stack twice if you've also specced Avatar. The recommended choice for moving down the tree on non gun builds. ARMS DEAL Decent amount of splash damage. The damage reduction is negligible. SAMSARA Very strong healing and a little bit of gun damage. This is specced for its healing. Note that it recovers missing health as opposed max health like it says in game. It is still very good, though. It does not proc with Phasegrasp, Eternal Fist, or Ties That Bind. It does proc with the Ice Spiker artifact, however, because the Ice Spiker is basically another Amara action skill. The Ice Spiker can be a way to get Samsara stacks on a Ties That Bind build, if you were so inclined. HELPING HANDS Minimally impactful damage reduction, it's not a bad take if you have leftover points or need to get further down the tree and don't need the splash damage from Arms Deal. MINDFULNESS Very useful skill, mostly for the movement speed, which is survivability and, if you're using a Spiritual Driver class mod, damage. The shield recharge delay aspect of it can help with Topped Off uptime. FIND YOUR CENTER A very good boost to melee damage, and a required take for true melee builds. Trying to punch things as a main form of attack can be very frustrating without Find Your Center. VIGOR This kill skill stacks, and it procs from any kill, not just action skill kills. Useful for builds that need a lot of speed, and a good take if you need to get further down the tree. ONE WITH NATURE Mostly useless. Not even in a good place to get down the tree, because there are better skills above it you can fill out if you need to go down further. DO UNTO OTHERS Very weak skill. At most it can be a source for Sustainment healing once every 8 seconds. JAB CROSS Very good skill for increasing action skill damage, very bad skill for increasing gun damage. Good synergy on a melee build that also has Body & Mind in the purple tree. GUARDIAN ANGEL Self explanatory, excellent defensive skill. BLITZ Wonderful and powerful skill for true melee, when it works. Not only is it a good melee damage increase at all times (100%), but when it procs it is a fresh 83% increase (at level 72) to your base melee damage. It can be buggy and fail to connect to enemies. It can also make you fly through your Phaseflare when trying to punch it at an enemy. But it can also allow you to fly up and punch airborne enemies, which is very fun.

Tips for understanding what you're up against when playing a true melee Amara build at endgame. True Melee True melee, the actual punching of enemies, is both the most rewarding playstyle and the most frustrating playstyle, in my opinion. There are several builds on this site focused on true melee. You must be aware of its limitations, so that you can expect them and do your best to work around them. ZERO RANGE True melee has basically zero range, which presents many problems. The obvious one is flying enemies, such as Death Spheres or Seras. many of which actively avoid your approach, even if you could reach them with Find Your Center or Blitz. Even something simple as an enemy jumping on a box can mean they are unreachable, and while you are trying to get to them you get downed. It's for these reasons that grenades and guns like the Face Puncher and Blade Fury exist. KNOCKBACK There are certain enemies that will relentlessly knock you back while you are attempting to punch them. This is most common in the Guardian Takedown. Additionally, most of those enemies in the takedown are not stunned by your melee attacks. So they remain grounded and attacking you, while also knocking you away, making you have to wait to land on your feet and close the gap again. DEATH SKULLS True melee builds massively benefit from the Speed Demon modifier on Mayhem 10. However, being a true melee build removes the ability to use one of the very hard modifiers, Post Mortem. The death skulls that spawn from a killed enemy have hitboxes instantly, and a punch that kills an enemy will also send you directly into that spawning skull, downing you every time. BODY & MIND Body & Mind is a useful damage increase for punching, but its area-of-effect nature will also detonate barrels nearby, or add elemental damage to the water you are standing in, damaging you. WOTAN The most loved boss of Borderlands 3, Wotan, cannot be true melee'd, at least not without huge risk. His deterrence field healthgates you when you get close. TELEPORTATION There is a risk of teleportation when you attempt punching an enemy. This is especially risky in the Guardian Takedown. See below: There is no rhyme or reason to this teleportation, at least not that I've found. You can be teleported forward, to the side, a short distance, a medium distance, out into midair over a cliff, whatever. It's rare, but it happens. GRASPED ENEMIES Thankfully, Find Your Center allows for meleeing of grasped and elevated enemies. However, it is not made easy. To consistently punch a grasped enemy, you need to move backwards a little bit after each punch, as demonstrated below:

Tips for getting the most damage out of your Phasecast and its variants. Phasecasting There is a special technique to getting more damage out of your Phasecasts, more specifically Reverberation. This does not work with Tandava. When you cast at a surface, your Phasecast "splats" against it, whether it's a wall or floor. This is a separate instance of damage from the cast itself, and it deals splash damage. So if an enemy is backed up against a wall and you cast at them, they will take two instances of damage: the first when the Phasecast passes through them, and again when it splats against the wall behind them. This can be done to an enemy that doesn't have a wall behind them, as long as the enemy is on the ground. You can splat the ground just under their toes, and force the enemy to get hit twice. This is especially important for Reverberation, because Reverb's inherent ability is that it gains damage as it passes through enemies. So that second instance, the splat on the ground, will be stronger not only because of splash damage, but because the Reverb buffed itself. This is on top of Reverb's base damage being much higher than the other Phasecast action skills. Watch as a normal Reverb cast is compared to this special Reverb technique: This is especially useful for casting builds vs bosses. Tandava is great for mobbing, but falls far short on single target damage vs Reverberation with this technique. TANDAVA Tandava does have its own special ability, though (along with Phaseslam). Its ability to wrap around or penetrate hit boxes allows you to hit enemies behind cover. This ability also allows it to multi-hit a couple of bosses that have multiple hit boxes. Wotan's bottom half actually has 5 hit boxes: one for Wotan himself, and one for each of his legs. Tandava's ability to penetrate hit boxes allows it to hit Wotan for 5 times the damage. Check out this screenshot: This is a single Tandava cast at Wotan. Note the four damage numbers up top, one for each leg. There's also an obscured one in the middle near the bottom. Another boss that has multiple hit boxes that can be exploited by Tandava is Blue Fire at the end of Slaughterstar 3000. There may be more. HEMOVOROUS & VERMIVOROUS Unfortunately, Gearbox coded Hemo and Vermi in a way that no form of Phasecast makes direct contact with them. If you send a Phasecast at them, it will simply pass on through as if they weren't there. The only way to damage them is to splash Tandava on the ground near them, and hope they are within the damage radius. This can be tricky when they are in their flying stages.

A Multi-tap-only Ties That Bind gun build. Leeloo Dallas Multi-tap SYNOPSIS A Multi-tap-only Ties That Bind gun build. INTRO The Multi-tap is pretty consistently underrated, so this build is simply meant to optimize and showcase it. The dang thing can get up to nearly 100K damage per bullet with 7 shots per second fire rate, with a mechanic that can make it do extra damage on reload, plus Atlas Critical Hit Damage can roll on class mods. These upsides outweigh the downsides of it being non-elemental and non-splash. Yes, the build name is a Fifth Element reference. Atlas guns sort of look like the guns they have in that movie, too. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Typical red/blue Ties That Bind gun build. However, Dread is avoided and as many reload speed skills are specced so that you can take advantage of the Multi-taps cryo projectiles on reload. This occurs every reload when at least one enemy is tagged with the tracker grenade. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. Phasecast for bossing with the 250% Phasecast gun damage anointment. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever is suited to the content you are facing. This build has 5/5 Infusion to allow for some element matching (and lifesteal with Sustainment). GUNS Multi-tap, with Killstack anointment. An additional Multi-tap with 250% Phasecast gun damage anointment. There are perhaps other weapons that can take advantage of the fast fire rate and reload speed of this build. The Prompt Critical is not bad. You can experiment and find others. CLASS MOD Phasezerker. Skill points don't matter much. What's most important is an Atlas Critical Hit Damage passive. Other recommended passives: action skill cooldown rate, pistol damage, weapon damage, splash damage radius (for larger hollowpoints). SHIELD Re-Volter, with Action Skill Start anointment. The boost to fire rate is key for depleting the mag quickly and getting to the cryo reload. The shock bonus damage, of course, is also good. ARTIFACT Atlas Company Man, with any top rolls except Magazine Size. Recommended bottom passives: area of effect damage, reload speed, action skill cooldown rate. Avoid mag size here as well. If you set your action skill element to cryo and use a cryo bonus element on your grenade, an Ice Breaker Victory Rush would be a good substitute. GRENADE It's Piss, with various ASE 50% bonus element anointments. Change out the elements to suit your content. GAMEPLAY LOOP Grasp an enemy, shoot the tracker grenade at them, and fire away. Tracker grenade enemies between grasps, too, or don't. Using the tracker can make it hard or impossible to hit crits, but having those cryo projectiles is great for some bosses such as Anathema and the Valks. There's not much to this build. The Multi-tap melts.

All possible locations of breakable crystals in the Guardian Takedown, useful for eliminating enemy knockback.

Phaseflare, specifically Shooting Star, build. It also uses the Blade Fury for some filler. Meteor Amara SYNOPSIS Phaseflare, specifically Shooting Star, build. It also uses the Blade Fury for some filler. INTRO Phaseflare and its variants are definitely the hardest action skills to use. Besides its clunkiness with respect to terrain, two of the biggest issues with it are losing it when going into FFYL and directing it around without literally punching it to death. This build solves both of those problems to the best of its ability. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES For daily driving Phaseflare through all content, it can be a mistake to invest heavily into purple tree. The only things of direct value to Phaseflare later in the tree are Burn Both Ends and Clear The Mind. For the most part, Phaseflare does not need help from Clear The Mind. And Burn Both Ends greatly increases the chance that you go into FFYL and lose Phaseflare altogether. Green tree is much more valuable for increasing your QoL when using Phaseflare. The melee damage in the tree works well for supplementing your damage with the Blade Fury. ACTION SKILL Shooting Star. This variant of Phaseflare allows you to be more imprecise, as it can damage enemies at a distance. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever is suited to the content you are facing. Corrosive is a good choice for True Takedowns. GEARING NOTES There are several ways to acquire damage through gear for the Shooting Star and your Blade Fury. There's variation in your bonus elements, your survivability, and your Blade Fury damage. Shooting Star itself doesn't much care - it will be strong no matter what. This is more of a playstyle choice you'll be making. MAIN GUN 1 Guardian Angels, one with Terror Cryo anointment and one with Urad anointment. Which one you use depends on your artifact of choice. The Guardian Angel will help Shooting Star melt bosses, and quickly ramp up its damage for mobbing. MAIN GUN 2 Blade Furies, single projectile, one with Terror Cryo anointment and one with Urad anointment, just like the Guardian Angel. At the very least, the Blade Fury is for delivering Groundbreaker at a distance and for dealing with flying enemies. But it can also be made to deal strong damage all by itself, depending on your class mod and artifact. CLASS MOD 1 Stone, with as many points into Awakening as possible, and then hopefully the remainder into Do Harm. The Stone's damage reduction is very effective with 25 Rush stacks and 6/3 Awakening. This class mod will not only make your Shooting Star stronger, but it will help you avoid FFYL and losing your action skill. Class mod passives: highly, highly recommend a splash damage radius passives, as that will increase the effective area of your Shooting Star. Other passives: splash damage, action skill damage, action skill cooldown rate, health regen. CLASS MOD 2 Spiritual Driver, preferably with as many points into Mindfulness as possible. This class mod gives much less survivability than the Stone, but it increases your Blade Fury damage, and when paired with Elemental Projector, will give you a strong initial boost to your Shooting Star's damage. ARTIFACT OPTIONS There are three prefixes and two suffixes to choose from. The prefixes: Snowdrift, Elemental Stone, Elemental Projector. The Snowdrift is used for maneuvering around the field and dragging your Shooting Star after you. You can begin a slide and at the same time call the orb to you, and it will follow you all along your slide, killing any enemies it touches along the way. The Elemental Stone is for increasing your Blade Fury damage. Cryo Stone is recommended for freezing enemies. The Elemental Projector is for increasing your initial Shooting Star damage when using the Spiritual Driver class mod. The two suffixes: Otto Idol and Deathless. Otto Idol is great for survivability, and keeps you from losing Shooting Star by going into FFYL. The Deathless is for when you want to use the Urad anointed guns. Artifact passives: it's very important that you get an area of effect passive in the 2nd or 3rd slot, as that will also increase the effective radius of your orb. Other passives: action skill cooldown rate, melee damage, elemental damage, health regen, movespeed. SHIELD OPTIONS There are three main shields you can use with this build: Mana Well, Transformer, and Infernal Wish. The Mana Well, when you slam, will give you a strong 100% shock bonus element and 90% damage reduction until the shield drains. Look for a Safe Space part on this shield to increase survivability. Anointment: ASE Apply Terror. The Transformer is all around a great survivability shield. Anointment: ASE Apply Terror or Melee Apply Terror. Infernal Wish is for increasing your Blade Fury damage and decreasing your survivability. Anointment: Melee Apply Terror. Bonus shield option: Mana Well with three Roid parts, so you can slam for bonus shock and damage reduction, then when it's drained you'll have greatly increased Blade Fury damage. Anointment: Melee Apply Terror. Disable Shield Reboot and Emergency Response if using this option. GRENADE Fish Slap, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate. This is also used as filler damage, for taking out annoying enemies, for moving your Shooting Star around at a distance, or whatever other use you find. Possibly consider matching your Fish's element with your action skill element when using Driver/Elemental Projector. GAMEPLAY LOOP Your gameplay loop will vary depending on your loadout. For example, using the Terror Cryo anoint, Stone class mod, Mana Well shield, and Snowdrift is a loadout more focused on Shooting Star damage, and will not have much Blade Fury damage. The Blade Fury will mostly be for delivering Groundbreaker. With this loadout, you would want to hold the Guardian Angel, summon the Orb, punch it a couple times to ramp up its damage, and then Snowdrift around the area, dragging it behind you. This technique is probably the most painless way to use Phaseflare during any content. Continuously punching your Shooting Star to direct it around will kill it prematurely. The best option is always call it to you after you've initially ramped up its damage. In the gameplay footage above, you can see how you can slide with the Snowdrift and perform the recall action early in the slide, allowing you to effectively drag the Shooting Star over a long distance, killing everything in its path. Another example loadout would be Urad anoint, Driver class mod, Infernal Wish or Transformer, and Elemental Stone Deathless artifact. This loadout is more focused on Blade Fury damage, so your gameplay loop will be holding the Blade Fury, summoning the Orb, punching it a couple times, and then running around real fast shooting things and dragging the Orb behind you. There's no "slide and recall" like there is with the Snowdrift, but the same principle applies: move fast and cover a large distance while dragging the Shooting Star on a long, destructive path. Mix and match the items in your loadout as you see fit, and adjust your gameplay accordingly. Just be wary of what you're doing. For example, using the Deathless with a Mana Well is counterproductive, because putting the Mana Well to use means draining your shield. NOTES - PUNCHING THE ORB Two things to know about punching the Shooting Star (or any punchable variation of Phaseflare). The first is that your raw melee damage does not matter for increasing orb damage. That is, hitting it with a Fish Slap or Stinger doesn't make it stronger than just punching it. However, increases to melee damage do make Phaseflare stronger, as long as you punch it at least once after summoning. The second is that the orb dies after a certain amount of melee instances. This matters because of your bonus elements. Your punch is one melee instance, and any bonus elements that also scale with melee damage are separate instances. Elemental Stone, Mana Well shock, Terror Cryo, and Urad all count as instances. So the more of these you have active, the fewer times you can punch the orb before it dies. But since each instance makes the orb stronger, the more of those instances you have, the fewer punches you need to make it strong. You'll just have to figure out what the limit is for whatever loadout you're running. Sometimes you'll notice Amara punching through the orb and going for enemies instead, if there's an enemy just on the other side. That can be very frustrating. However, since your gameplay loop involves dragging the orb around, simply rotate around the orb and punch it away from the enemy and then drag it back to kill them.

Simple yet very effective Phasecast-centered build. Sorceress Queen SYNOPSIS Simple yet very effective Phasecast-centered build. INTRO This was the build, years ago, that resulted from my discovery of the Reverberation technique. After DLC6 gear, level 72, and Expedite fix, it's quite a bit more effective and easier to play. The Reverb technique is now only needed for bossing, as Tandava is strong enough to be used for quicker mobbing. This build's damage is entirely cast-centric, and it gets recycled through Groundbreaker and Remnant. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES This is basically blue tree carrying, with a little support from each of the other trees. There's some cryo-related skills for use when your action skill element is cryo. ACTION SKILL Tandava. Reverberation for bossing, with the Reverb technique. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever element is suited to the content you are facing. MAIN GUN Guardian Angel, with Astral Projection anointment. There is a Urad version of this build, in which case, also have a Guardian Angel with Urad anointment. SECONDARY GUN Face Puncher, x7 simply for less reloading, with 150/90 anointment. This is your tool for delivering Groundbreaker after you cast and again after Remnant lands. The 150/90 anointment helps assure enemies are 1 shot with Groundbreaker. For the Urad setup, another Face Puncher with Urad anointment. FFYL GUNS Because you can't cast while in FFYL, and Groundbreaker and Remnant might not be available, you have room for a couple FFYL guns, all with Urad anointment: Free Radical, Backburner, Plaguebearer, Plasma Coil. CLASS MOD Phasezerker, preferably with points into Clarity. The most important passive is Splash Damage Radius, to make your Tandava explosion larger. Other recommended passives: action skill damage, splash damage, action skill cooldown rate. SHIELD Re-Volter, with Action Skill Start anointment. This massive shock bonus element will not only apply to your casts, but also to your Groundbreaker. Groundbreaker is at 40% effectiveness relative to its power when this build was made, and this bonus element helps make up for it. Frozen Heart with Action Skill Start anointment is a good option for the Deathless/Urad version of the build, where crowd control may be necessary. This will also allow Unweave The Rainbow to give you a bit more damage, as well. The original shield option is still viable: Band of Sitorak, this time with ASE 50% Cooldown anointment. The Band of Sitorak has an extremely short recharge delay and an extremely fast recharge rate, making it the optimal shield for Topped Off uptime. So while this shield won't give you more direct damage, it will allow for more casts overall. ARTIFACT Snowdrift Victory Rush, most preferably with an Area Of Effect passive in the 2nd or 3rd slot, which will also increase area radius. The Snowdrift is important for mobility and avoiding damage, so that your shield can remain undamaged for Topped Off uptime. It can be swapped out for a Last Stand if you feel you need more survivability, or an Ice Breaker if you're running cryo action skill element. If using the Urad loadout, this can be a Snowdrift or Ice Breaker or Last Stand Deathless. Other recommended passives: action skill cooldown rate, move speed, elemental damage, health regen. GRENADE Hyperion Quasar (non sticky) or Mesmer, with ASE 50% radiation bonus element. This bonus element will apply to Groundbreaker, and the radiation dots, in tandem with Violent Tapestry, will keep your Rush stacks topped up. If you want to throw a grenade for damage, even though it's not the theme of this build, you can use a Fish Slap. GAMEPLAY LOOP The basic loop is to cast, shoot for Groundbreaker, let Remnant hit something, shoot for Groundbreaker again, and then repeat all of those steps. Then await your cooldown by either stunning enemies with the Face Puncher's melee, throwing a crowd control grenade at them, or simply dodging out of the way with your Snowdrift. Once you are familiar with this build, you should start aiming your Groundbreaker more deliberately. If you cast, then shoot your Groundbreaker at the same enemy that Remnant is going for, then you effectively lose two attacks. Remnant will always go toward the enemy closest to you, so get in the habit of aiming for mid-to-far enemies. You can then stun the enemy closest to you while Remnant closes the gap. NOTES - HEMOVOROUS FIGHT Phasecast, any variant of it, will not make contact with Hemo or Vermi's hitboxes. Use Tandava to splash the ground below/next to them, and then shoot them with the Face Puncher. Usually, Remnant or the Groundbreaker damage after Remnant are the things that end up finishing the fight for you. NOTES - NON-DLC LOADOUT This build can be made without DLC, and it will only be slightly less powerful. Hold the 150/90 Face Puncher at all times (or the Urad one, if going Urad), except in FFYL, and use the Frozen Heart or Band of Sitorak. Use this skill tree and pick any augment between Revelation, Soul Sap, and Glamour. You may have to use the Reverb technique against tougher content such as True Guardian Takedown.

Tips for building with Amara's Burn Both Ends skill at endgame. Burn Both Ends Burn Both Ends is an elemental damage increase that also applies to non-elemental attacks. That is to say, if you have 5 points into Tempest (30%) and 5 points into a fully stacked Burn Both Ends (75%), then you have +105% increased elemental damage. It will take a 100 damage elemental gun to 205 damage. And it will take a 100 damage non-elemental gun to 175 damage. But it doesn't apply to just guns, it applies to everything. So it is a very strong damage increase for multiple kinds of builds. The main drawback with it is it requires you do be damaged by enemies at a constant rate in order to keep up your stacks. Self damage normally does not stack it. There are a few workarounds, though, and these workarounds are core to several builds on this site. The main interaction in each of these workarounds is that, while self damage does not stack Burn Both Ends, an active bonus element on your self damage, being a separate instance, will indeed stack it. An active bonus element includes Urad, Terror Cryo, Re-Volter, and ASE 50% bonus element anointments on your grenade or shield. There are three main ways of dealing self damage: 1. Shoot your foot with something like a low level Sellout pistol, and dot yourself. The normal dot from the pistol won't stack BBE, but the bonus element will also dot you and start stacking it. Note that dotting yourself with an active cryo bonus element will slow you. 2. Have an Infernal Wish shield equipped and proc the fire self damage by shooting your gun. An active bonus element in this instance won't also dot you. Instead, it will be a hidden damage instance, but it ticks along with the Infernal Wish fire to stack BBE. 3. Have a Spiritual Driver equipped and use your action skill to proc a self-dot. In the same vein as the Infernal Wish, an active bonus element won't dot you when doing this, but it will tick along in the background, stacking BBE.

A very strong true melee-focused build that can blitz through any content, if you know what you're doing. Ruby Swan SYNOPSIS A very strong true melee-focused build that can blitz through any content, if you know what you're doing. INTRO Ruby Swan is one of my three crown jewels of true melee builds, along with Sapphire Swan and Emerald Swan. Ruby Swan is designated as such because it uses a red tree action skill, Ties That Bind. But it's not as simple as that. This build probably goes the deepest into the theory crafting rabbit hole, pulls out some tricks I KNOW you don't know, and comes back with tons of power and highlight reel potential. It can even use some guns quite effectively, allowing for a wild run & gun & punch experience. Highly, highly recommended. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES If you want to focus more on guns, move three points from Clarity to Personal Space. Two of the traditionally only gun-focused skills, Indiscriminate and Transcend, actually come into play while punching. Find out why in the "Notes" sections at the end. Burn Both Ends will be self-stacked via our class mod and a bonus element. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever element you want the element of your punch to be, which should be suited to the content you're facing. Except Cryo. This build uses the Spiritual Driver class mod, so selecting cryo will make you slow yourself. PUNCHING GUN 1 The Psycho Stabber, with a Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. The general purpose puncher; use this against beefy isolated targets or if you feel patient enough to punch a boss rather than taking the easy way out and throwing a fish. PUNCHING GUN 2 Unforgiven, with a Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment, preferably with high crit damage on the card and a melee attachment. See "Notes - Unforgiven" below. PUNCHING GUN 3 Ionic Disruptor, with a Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. See "Notes - Ionic Disruptor" below. PUNCHING GUN 4 Guardian Angel, with a Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. See "Notes - Guardian Angel" below. SHOOTING GUNS While this build can use guns in conjunction with punching, you need to stick with strong guns: Hellwalker, Beacon, Free Radical, Kickcharger. All with the same Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. BACKUP GUN Face Puncher, preferably with x14 pellets, with the Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. This is to help take down bosses and flying enemies and anything that annoys you from a distance. CLASS MOD Spiritual Driver, with 3 points into Mindfulness for the movement speed that every true melee build requires. Recommended passives: melee damage, action skill damage, action skill cooldown rate, splash damage, splash damage radius. Protip: turn dialog volume all the way down if you do not wish to hear Amara screaming from self-dots all of the time. SHIELD Brawler Ward with 300% melee damage, preferably low level but not required, with the ASE Apply Terror anointment. If this shield isn't broken immediately by the Driver dot, enemies will take care of it for you. ARTIFACT Elemental Projector Static Charge. The Driver plus Elemental Projector will give you heaps of elemental damage, greatly helping the strength of your punches. The most important passive is Area of Effect in the 2nd or 3rd slot, which will also increase area damage radius. Other recommended passives: melee damage, action skill cooldown rate, movement speed, elemental damage. GRENADE Fish Slap with an ASE 50% bonus element. Match your Fish Slap element and the bonus element to the content you're facing. This will require carrying multiple Fish Slaps. Throw this grenade for easy bossing, or to get rid of pesky mobs from a distance, or to deal with immune heavies in the Maliwan Takedown without switching your action skill element. GAMEPLAY LOOP Assuming you're just holding the Psychostabber, the thought process is very simple: grasp enemy, punch enemy. You have 234% increased elemental damage from your gear and skill tree. The Static Charge chains will double dip that damage, because they're based on the strength of your melee hit and then get their own damage formula, including elemental damage. A Static Charge chain was used to one-tap Seer in the gameplay video above. Not only will the Static Charge kill nearby mobs for you, it will also give you lots of Groundbreaker for your next punch while doing so. Your ASE 50% bonus element on your Fish Slap will get added on top of your Groundbreaker damage. This build is extremely efficient when mobbing, even in True Guardian Takedown. If you can't get ahold of a flying enemy with Ties That Bind, shoot 'em down with the Face Puncher. Hold the Psycho Stabber or Guardian Angel and throw Fish for bosses. If you're shooting guns, make sure your gun element matches your action skill element. This means no cryo or radiation guns. NOTES - UNFORGIVEN This is where the rabbit hole begins. Buckle up. You can punch with the Unforgiven for its ridiculous crit multiplier. "Melee can't crit in this game, though", you say. While this is true, melee-adjacent things can. In the "Gameplay Loop" section above, I talked about the strength of Static Charge chains. These chains can also crit and, when they do, they'll be buffed by the Unforgiven and Transcend in the blue skill tree. Static Charge chains basically aim for center-of-mass, so they rarely crit against humanoid enemies. However, the creatures in the Guardian Takedown have mostly forward-facing crit areas, and the Static Charge chains will crit them quite often. In the gameplay video above, you'll hear lots of Hollowpoint explosions when punching those creatures, because the Static Charge is killing them with crits. Let's talk about that: Hollowpoints while meleeing. In case it hasn't dawned on you, this is effectively a way to punch for billions of damage. Not only will a Hollowpoint clear out enemies around the kill (hence why the Area of Effect passive is recommended on the Static Charge), but they will give you enormous Groundbreaker damage going into your next punch. Your Groundbreaker damage will be above damage cap. And that's not all... Going further into the rabbit hole, an ASE 50% bonus element's damage source is "bullet". What does that mean? Well, if you melee with, for example, a Re-Volter or Urad bonus element, those bonus elements will get mayhem scaling along with the melee attack. Same goes with action skills: your Phasecast, for example, gets 200% bonus shock damage from Re-Volter because the bonus element gets the same action skill mayhem scaling. This is because the damage source of those bonus elements (along with the Terror Cryo bonus element) matches whatever attack they go along with. This is not the case for ASE 50% bonus elements on grenades and shields. Their damage source is always "bullet". If you attach one of these bonus elements to your melee or action skill, it'll be 16x or 31x weaker, respectively. There is no mayhem scaling for bullets. However, Groundbreaker, which can be accumulated through mayhem scaled attacks, is not itself mayhem scaled. Therefore, ASE 50% bonus elements properly add their 50% damage to Groundbreaker. Why does this matter? Because bullets can crit. If you have an ASE 50% bonus element active and you punch a crit spot, the bonus element will crit. Let's say you have, for example, 10 million Groundbreaker damage build up. This is very easy to do between Ties That Bind and Static Charge and even your guns if you're shooting things. An ASE 50% bonus element adds 5 million damage to that Groundbreaker. Now imagine, with that damage stored, you punched a crit spot while holding an Unforgiven and with Transcend procced. That 5 million turns into 67 million . We're already in crazy territory here, but now you need to realize that this enormous ASE 50% critting is likely going to kill the enemy, proccing Hollowpoint directly on the enemy you're punching. If there were any other mobs in range, they're gone now, and you have billions of Groundbreaker damage stored for your next punch. Yeah. So the Unforgiven is not only for your Static Charge chains, but also for your punches directly. This is why, vs the creatures in the gameplay video, you see me grasp an enemy but punch a linked enemy on the ground, instead of the grasped enemy. It's much easier to hit that crit spot when the enemy is on the ground facing you. NOTES - IONIC DISRUPTOR But wait, there's more! There's a special effect of the Ionic Disruptor where if you melee an enemy with it, that enemy will have a shock dot applied to them, and while it's applied the Disruptor's bullets deal more damage to that enemy. As you might guess, there's more going on under the hood here. Firstly, if you're holding the disruptor, it converts your melee damage to shock damage, even if you have Illuminated Fist and your action skill element set to something else. Even if you throw a corrosive Fish Slap, it will get converted to shock damage on impact while holding the Disruptor. (This is sort of a way to get around immune Heavies in the Maliwan Takedown - if you're punching with fire and come up against a fire immune heavy, you can swap to the disruptor and your punch will now be shock without changing your action skill element.) Secondly, the shock dot that gets applied by a Disruptor melee is not a normal dot. It is also a bullet. Yes, that's right, you're not going insane; every dot tick is a bullet instance. And funnily enough, it does bullet things like heal you through Sustainment and travel through Ties That Bind links. Every dot tick does those things. It's why you can storm the Maliwan Takedown bridge while true-meleeing with the disruptor: you apply dots and constantly heal from them as you move around. It's why in the gameplay video you see me punch an enemy with it, Phasegrasp one of them, and then see every enemy linked by Ties just melt. It's crazy. This is the recommended weapon to hold against Guardians in the Guardian Takedown. But you can do it pretty much anywhere. Just make sure your action skill element is also set to shock, so your Driver self-dot, and therefore Elemental Projector, are there to boost your punch. NOTES - GUARDIAN ANGEL Now it's time to have some fun. The Guardian Angel is a great gun for this build. First, it will increase the damage of your Static Charge chains, making them more likely to kill enemies and give you more Groundbreaker damage for your next punch. Second, it can be shot at enemies to build up lots of Groundbreaker damage that way. This gun's projectiles double dip Indiscriminate, so when you shoot an enemy and those bullets ricochet around, you're going to get Groundbreaker damage for your next punch. Those ricocheted bullets will also do plenty of killing all by themselves, especially with a good amount of damage from Spiritual Driver. It's fun to shoot as you're running and approaching enemies; if the bullets themselves didn't kill anything, your punch certainly will. Bonus points for when this high-projectile-count shotgun launches enemies away. Third, it can come with both a 60% bonus melee damage attachment and extra crit damage bonuses. NOTES - GUARDIAN RANK Disable Shield Reboot and Emergency Response, so that your Ward remains depleted as long as possible. NOTES - MAYHEM 10/11 You must play on Mayhem 11 with this build, even though I usually recommend Mayhem 10 and the Speed Demon modifier for true melee builds. The problem with Mayhem 10 on this build is that the only very hard modifier that doesn't completely kill the build is Not The Face, and that modifier ruins our critical hit interactions. You get enough movement speed with the Driver and Mindfulness anyway.

Tips for conquering the Guardian Takedown as Amara. Guardian Takedown The Guardian Takedown is one of the best designed pieces of content Gearbox has ever made, in my opinion. However, its difficulty is a turnoff for many. Hopefully, by helping you learn the content, you too can spend more time there and enjoy it. Here are some tips for the Guardian Takedown, in no particular order. CRYSTAL PHASES The objective during the crystal phases is to charge the crystals before they drain and detonate. You actually don't need to kill any enemies. Now, most builds have no other solution to the enemies the game throws at you than to kill them. But there are many tactics, other than killing, for preventing Guardians from entering the charging square. 1. The Mesmer grenade basically makes the Guardians fight each other and ignore you, allowing you to charge the crystal in peace. The enemies that get damaged by this grenade briefly turn to allies, and all nearby enemies, even if untouched by the grenade, will start attacking their new foes. This piece of gear is less effective if you are specced Burn Both Ends, where only the enemies directly damaged by the grenade stop attacking, and most other enemies still come after you. 2. If you have a build that has both Glamour and Ties That Bind unlocked, you can simply grasp a group with that augment, and any enemy touched by the linkage will become an ally for a period of time. This is the same effect as the Mesmer grenade. 3. Alternatively, you can use Ties That Bind with Stillness of Mind to lock the first set of enemies in the air. Then, if you have Avatar, do it again when your first grasp ends. This will take you most of the way to a full crystal charge. You can drag out this tactic longer by waiting to execute your first grasp until the first wave is getting close to you. Do NOT damage the enemies, just dodge their attacks. If they have any damage over time affecting them, they will fall out of the Stillness bubble. 4. A shield with a Safe Space part can send enemies near you ragdolling through the air, completely removing them as a threat until they land and recover. The Band of Sitorak shield is great for this. It can even send Guardians to their death during the second crystals phase. This is not the most applicable tactic, as most builds need a shield that doesn't come with Safe Space, but it's an option. You can use these methods, in combination with other tips in this guide, to reliably get through the crystals sections. Enemies don't necessarily need to be killed, just controlled. And if you control the first wave well enough, no more will spawn. ELIMINATING KNOCKBACK One of the most annoying ways to die in the Guardian Takedown is by being knocked off of an edge by an enemy. And your own movement speed and momentum can exacerbate this problem. So if you're running a fast build, you can feel extra punished. Thankfully, there's a way to eliminate enemy knockback. Any time you punch crystals with the Eridian Resonator, that is, when this animation happens: knockback Your ability to be knocked back ceases. Watch: The above video also demonstrates a way to undo this and allow yourself to be knocked back again: by meleeing an enemy. Therefore, if you accidentally melee an enemy, you must find another crystal to punch to become grounded again. True melee builds or builds that punch a lot for Groundbreaker application will not find much use in this trick, because the effect will constantly be reset. At least Groundbreaker can still be applied via groundslam, which is a better way to apply it anyway, because then it hits a whole area instead of just one enemy. If you want to rocket jump in the Guardian Takedown, this trick prevents the rocket knockback. You must find an enemy to melee if you want to reset it and regain the ability to rocket jump. Another demonstration - watch as I can stand at the very edge of the Anathema platform and fail to get knocked off: I've catalogued all possible crystal locations that I've found in the Guardian Takedown. This resource is for both finding your first crystal to activate this trick, as well as finding further crystal locations in case you have accidentally reset the trick by meleeing an enemy. Click the interactive map below to see all crystal locations. Only a random subset of locations spawn each time you load into Minos Prime. And of those that spawn, some may be invisible (but can still be melee'd while invisible, or can be seen by equipping the Mysterious Artifact). If you find a location not shown on the map, send a screenshot and I'll add it! Always Be Jumping ALWAYS BE JUM PING (well not always...) Two of the Guardian types, Spectres and Diadems, have their AI confused while you are airborne. The Spectres are the ones that have blades on their arms and run directly for you and melee you. However, if you're in the air, they stop their advance and throw a ranged attack at you. If you're constantly jumping, they will only advance forward very briefly when you touch the ground. See below: This is especially useful during the crystal phases of the Guardian Takedown, but can also be used for general damage relief throughout the entire takedown. This is why you see all of the speedrunners constantly jumping during the crystal phases. If you get overrun, this tactic obviously doesn't mean much anymore, but it's something you can use to prevent being overrun. Diadems are a bit more complicated. They basically lose sight of you entirely while you're in the air, and start following a predetermined path. They turn again toward you when you land. During the crystals, their predetermined path is always toward the crystal they're spawning next to, so jumping does not prevent them from approaching your crystal - the Diadem must be dealt with. But Diadems that are spawning for a different crystal than the one you're on can be prevented from finding you by constantly jumping. See below: And this is why during those same speedruns you see the player remain grounded during the Scourge fight when he summons Diadems, so that the Diadems converge around Scourge. Otherwise, they would wander in all sorts of directions and be hard to detonate. In general, jumping is a very effective form of aggro relief during the whole takedown, and it's made easier by the fact that it's in low gravity. HOLD THE POINT Another crystal phase tactic is to hold the point, or the front of the boundary of your crystal's box. That way, as enemies approach and attack you from the from the front, they stay outside of the boundary, while you remain inside. You can use this tactic (in addition to the jumping tactic above) at the beginning of crystals to buy lots of time. When using this tactic, the Wraith Guardians, the ones with the staff that sometimes leap or pole vault toward you, will land in front of you. They will remain outside of the box, and then most of the time they either immediately walk backwards or flip backwards. Their attack doesn't do much damage, and they end up being completely non-threating to you charging your crystal. See below: Obviously, if things have gotten out of control, this tactic can be abandoned, but it's one more tool you can use to prevent things from getting out of control in the first place. PHASEGRASP AND DIADEMS Do not Phasegrasp a Diadem that has begun it's self-destruct animation. If it dies while grasped, your grasp will be bugged and remain unavailable for a couple minutes. You can grasp a Diadem that has not started this animation, and shoot and kill it like normal. CRIT SPOTS Most people are unaware of how to crit the Nekrotafeyo creatures and/or the Guardians. I believe this prevents people from using guns such as sniper rifles during this takedown, and in general enjoying the content. Below, I will outline the crit spots of the various enemy types: Three of the creature types, Vandas, Mantas, and Djira, have the same type of crit spot: on the tip of their nose. This crit spot actually extends onto the top of their nose just a little bit, so a reliable way to hit it is to aim just above the tip. The Korax's tail spike is their crit spot. The Mantakores have big, flashy, flower face as a crit spot. Note, though, that when Phasegrasping a Mantakore, their entire body rotates a little bit relative to their position on the ground, and their face, when lifted, will be about 90 degrees to your left. This is important for positioning yourself before grasping a Mantakore. All Guardians have the same general crit area, a head that sits low between the shoulders. Note that since it does not stick out above the shoulders, you cannot crit them from behind. Also note that, when Phasegrasped, the Seras cover the lower part of their face with their arms. They can still be critted on the top half of their head. SERA LASER The Flying Sera Guardians have a dangerous laser attack, and it can be especially painful during the crystals phases, where there isn't much room to maneuver. They can be knocked out of this attack either with melee (including the Face Puncher) or by critting them. ANATHEMA MOBS The Anathema fight spawns mobs around the arena every phase of the fight. Any mobs that survive Anathema's exploding bubble have radiation applied to them. As you may know, when you irradiate an enemy, they have an aura that damages nearby enemies with radiation. Well, when an enemy (Anathema) applies a radiation status to another enemy (the mobs that survive the bubble), the radiation aura on them now damages you . And that radiation aura is strong, relative to player health. When those irradiated mobs are close to you, you will get health gated. This is instant FFYL for Deathless builds. If you have a strong dot on yourself, you can also go down that way after being health gated. There's no foolproof solution to this. Simply kill and avoid them as best you can if you have a fragile build. WATCH YOUR FACE There are many things that fly towards you suddenly in this takedown, including projectiles launched from mobs, mobs themselves, dead bodies and body parts of mobs. Every one of these things, if it gets in your face, can make you splash and down yourself if you're using a splash weapon. Always be moving, strafing, dodging to prevent this from happening. HAVE A GOOD FFYL WEAPON See the Tips section on FFYL here.

Revelation and Face Puncher build, in honor of one of the greatest builds of all time. Lame Faker Amara SYNOPSIS Revelation and Face Puncher build, in honor of one of the greatest builds of all time. INTRO Moxsy's Game Breaker Amara used to be a crazy build where Amara would grasp enemies with Ties That Bind and every enemy within the linkage would instantly vaporize. This was mostly due to the fact that the damage from the Revelation augment would transfer through the Ties links. After the enemies were vaporized, you could redirect all of that damage with a Face Puncher through Groundbreaker at anyone unlucky enough to still be around. The build was nerfed in many ways, and basically no longer exists. This build seeks to emulate that playstyle (relatively poorly, considering the strength of the original). It's not a Game Breaker Amara, it's a Lame Faker Amara. Still, it can clear all content without too much trouble. Instead of Revelation damage traveling along Ties That Bind, you're just going to have it hit enemies directly with splash radius increases. If it doesn't kill anything, the next best thing is for it to freeze your grasped enemy. Then you can direct melee or Unweave The Rainbow damage at the frozen enemy to finish them off. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES The skills you are focused on here are ones that boost melee and action skill damage. 3 points are also given to Indiscriminate, which will be explained later. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Always cryo, except against Wotan, for whom you switch to corrosive. With plenty of Do Harm stacks, a cryo Revelation nova will freeze most things, if it doesn't kill them. GUN 1 Guardian Angel, with Urad anointment. The Guardian Angel damage bonus and the Urad bonus element will apply to the Revelation nova. This is the most effective way to increase its damage. GUN 2 Face Puncher, preferably x7 pellets, with Urad anointment. This is for delivering the Groundbreaker damage accrued by Revelation, as well as finishing off a grasped enemy and any enemies still linked. The Urad bonus element will also apply to Groundbreaker. CLASS MOD Phasezerker. Skills do not matter. The most important part is having a Splash Damage Radius passive on it, so that your Revelation nova can hit more things. Other recommended passives: splash damage, action skill damage, melee damage, action skill cooldown rate. SHIELD Re-Volter with Action Skill Start anointment. The shock bonus element will also increase Revelation damage as well as apply to Groundbreaker. ARTIFACT Cryo Stone Deathless. The Cryo Stone is for freezing enemies with the Face Puncher. The most important part is having an Area of Effect passive in the 2nd or 3rd slot, because then it will increase the radius of your Revelation. Other recommended passives: action skill cooldown rate, melee damage, cryo damage, cryo efficiency. GRENADE Fish Slap in various elements, with ASE 50% Cryo damage anointment. This anointment will apply to Groundbreaker. Revelation isn't really strong enough for bossing, unfortunately, and neither is the Face Puncher in this loadout. The Fish Slap picks up the slack. GAMEPLAY LOOP You can actually Fakegrasp to build up Do Harm stacks, if you so desire, but you can also just jump into the action. Stand far away to get a greater Guardian Angel bonus and use your grasp as often as possible to keep your stacks up. The lifted enemy will get hit with the Revelation nova, and hopefully it also hit some linked enemies. With lots of Do Harm, and assuming the enemies are not too tanky, everything should basically die instantly. Swap to your Face Puncher and fire at whatever else is around to deliver Groundbreaker damage. If the grasped enemy is still alive, hopefully they are frozen. Frozen enemies take 300% damage from melee. You will also get bonus damage from Unweave the Rainbow. This also means you can simply not swap and shoot the Guardian Angel at the frozen enemy; the Guardian Angel does splash damage and will also get Unweave bonus damage. It will further annihilate anything still linked through Ties That Bind. The Guardian Angel projectiles will also Indisriminate, further decimating enemies and giving you even more Groundbreaker damage should you want to swap to your Face Puncher. If the grasped enemy is still alive and not frozen, simply try and whittle them down with your Face Puncher. Your Cryo Stone's damage will hopefully freeze them, allowing for an easy finish. Beware, this is a Deathless build, and going into FFYL will make you lose Do Harm stacks. When you get back up, you will need to rebuild your stacks through continuous action skill usage. Generally, stay as far away from enemies as possible. For bosses, hold the Guardian Angel, grasp, and throw a Fish. That should take care of it.

Tips for best utilizing the powerful Groundbreaker Guardian Rank perk. Groundbreaker Groundbreaker is a kind of damage just like any other, and therefore can receive some bonuses and be buffed, beyond whatever damage you used to build it up in the first place. Groundbreaker can be delivered by melee or slam, and the only method by which it can be applied to multiple targets is via ground slamming. Even the Stinger nova, if it hits mulitple enemies, will only deliver Groundbreaker to one of them. Bonus elements apply to Groundbreaker, such as the ASE 50% bonus elements and Urad and Re-Volter. Since there is no mayhem scaling involved with Groundbreaker, all of these bonus elements properly scale. The Guardian Angel's damage bonus also applies to Groundbreaker, which is a very strong synergy when applying Groundbreaker at a distance and to multiple enemies with a ground slam. Other global bonuses apply, such as V1 from Victory Rush and the bonus from Burn Both Ends.