💙 Lone, you were always positive, kind, smart, friendly, and generous with the work you did for the community. We all benefited from your mods in a way that increased our knowledge and playtime. And we benefited from you as an example of how to be a curious and helpful community member. In short, you increased our joy. Be at peace in your eternal rest.

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.

Your one-stop-shop for every kind of Amara build imagineable.

Giving love to the unloved, this true melee focused-build uses Fist Over Matter and the Dragon class mod. Antimatter Swan SYNOPSIS Giving love to the unloved, this true melee focused-build uses Fist Over Matter and the Dragon class mod. INTRO In my quest to find a use for the Fist Over Matter action skill, I got lucky and also ended up with true melee and the Dragon class mod. It doesn't get much further off-meta than that. This isn't the most powerful or efficient true melee build, but it is well-synergised, and it will steadily carry you through your content. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES This is heavily over-specced into purple tree, but it still picks up two true melee essentials: Sustainment and Find Your Center. It gets a third important skill from the class mod. ACTION SKILL Fist Over Matter. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Any of the four, although there's some really nice cryo synergies in purple tree, so it's recommend to try staying on cryo. If you're fighting vs Guardians, for example, you can stay on cryo because you get shock damage from Re-Volter and Static Charge, and even Shock Stone if you're so inclined. PUNCHING GUN 1 Guardian Angel, with Terror Cryo anointment. This gun is necessary in order to get the most out of Fist Over Matter. You can punch with it while FOM is active, letting FOM kill all enemies in the vicinity while also giving you great Groundbreaker damage for your punches. PUNCHING GUN 2 Psycho Stabber, with Terror Cryo anointment. Swap to this when FOM is on cooldown. BACKUP GUN Face Puncher, with Terror Cryo anointment. Use this to take out flying enemies or whatever else may be annoying you from a distance. FFYL GUN A separate FFYL gun may not be necessary when you have the Face Puncher, but you have an extra weapon slot, so might as well. A Free Radical with Consecutive Hits anointment works well. CLASS MOD Dragon, with at least one required point into Remnant. Remnant is going to greatly help you in nearly all situations. Extra points into Do Harm are also highly recommended, as you have a lot of things that benefit from action skill damage: Remnant, Fist Over Matter, Unweave The Rainbow, Body & Mind, Free The Soul. Recommended passives: melee damage, action skill damage, action skill cooldown rate, splash damage, splash damage radius. The special effect of the Dragon class mod, where your augment is procced upon a melee kill, occurs only once with this build. Yes, unfortunately, the Dragon only procs Expedite on the first melee kill, not any subsequent melee kills. Still, it's basically a free 30% cooldown, and you'll get plenty more Expedite procs from all of your action skill damage skills. SHIELD Re-Volter, with ASE Apply Terror anointment. It will proc naturally, no need for the Action Skill Start anointment. After it breaks, killing an enemy will let it begin charging again via Shield Reboot, and taking another instance of damage will likely break it again. This loop keeps the Re-Volter effect going, without losing an anointment slot. ARTIFACT Elemental Stone Static Charge. Match the element prefix to the content you are facing. Recommended passives: melee damage, area of effect damage in the 2nd or 3rd slot, action skill cooldown rate, move speed, elemental damage. GRENADE It's Piss, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. The extra damage you get from the debuff really helps Fist Over Matter, and even your punches for that... ...matter. Utility grenades are also an option, such as the Hyperion Quasar (non sticky) or Mesmer. You can put on a Fish Slap if you're a degenerate :) GAMEPLAY LOOP Select an action skill element and Elemental Stone suited for your content. First enemy you encounter, grasp them with Fist Over Matter and find something else to punch. The further away you are from Fist Over Matter, when holding the Guardian Angel, the more damage it will deal to the grasped enemy and any others near it. Keep an eye on your action skill active yellow icon, and when FOM is over, swap over to your Psycho Stabber and continue punching. When FOM is done cooling down, repeat the above. It's actually pretty straightforward. While FOM is active, it will grant you healing through Sustainment, making you pretty hard to kill. It will also spawn Remnant orbs from the enemies it kills, creating further destruction and giving you tons of Groundbreaker damage. NOTES - HEMOVOROUS Without recommending Fish Slap or Phaseflare, especially on a true melee build, you might wonder how a build like this can make it through a fight like Hemovorous. But trust in the chaos that Fist Over Matter and Remnant create. Hold the Guardian Angel, grasp at Hemo/Vermi, and run around shooting the Guardian Angel at them for lifesteal while you wait for Remnant to do something. Once you hear or see some Remnant action, slam or Face Puncher Hemo/Vermi to deliver all of that Groundbreaker. This is basically how it goes for all boss fights: wait for Remnant and capitalize on it. This is a slow and steady and patient build anyway, so it fits the playstyle. NOTES - MAYHEM 10/11 For nearly all true melee builds, it's recommended to play on Mayhem 10 for the Speed Demon modifier. You can roll Healy Avenger, Drone Ranger, and Not The Face for your other modifiers and have basically zero downsides.

Tips for how to best utilize the Overkill Guardian Rank perk. Overkill Upkeep A few builds on this site greatly benefit from the Guardian Rank Perk Overkill. This perk basically increases the effective base damage of your gun by 5x for your next shot. If you miss the shot, you lose Overkill. If you land the shot and Overkill the enemy again, you keep Overkill. Here are some tips for maintaining Overkill. OVERKILL FROM ANY DAMAGE Even though Overkill only applies to you shooting your gun, you can gain Overkill for your gun from any form of attack. It doesn't matter if you Overkill with an action skill or Groundbreaker or Remnant or Hollowpoint. Each of these will give you extra damage for your next gun shot. This is important for informing your gameplay loop. Let's say you Overkill an enemy, and Remnant spawns. You have Overkill for your next shot, and Remnant is flying through the air, homing in on an enemy. You take aim at another enemy and shoot, but you miss. You have lost your Overkill, and your killing momentum has stalled... But then Remnant lands and erases the enemy it was targeting. Suddenly, you have Overkill again. You line up the shot, but miss again. Overkill lost. However, there's yet another enemy close by, and you're within 5 seconds of Remnant landing, you can quickly run over and Groundbreaker that nearby enemy. Overkill achieved again. You take aim for a third time, and finally land the shot, Overkilling the enemy, keeping your damage train going. All of this to say, if you're aware enough of your surroundings and cognizant of the fact that any damage can build Overkill, you can actually have more than once chance to shoot your Overkill shot. CHARGING WEAPONS Overkill is expended upon firing your gun, whether you land the shot or not. This means you can put yourself in a bind if you start charging a charge weapon and your original target is no longer available. Such charge weapons include the Major Kong or the Kickcharger. Let's say it was the last enemy in the area, and Remnant got to it before you could kill it with your Kickcharger, but you already began charging the Kickcharger. The easy way to get out of your commitment is to simply hit the melee button, and during your melee animation, let off of the trigger. Your gun will no longer be charging, no longer forcing you to expend your Overkill.

Peak single-target true melee. High survivability (for a true melee build). Radsplosions. What else can you ask for? Sulphur Swan SYNOPSIS Formerly the peak single-target true melee (since eclipsed by Steel Swan ). High survivability (for a true melee build). Radsplosions. What else can you ask for? INTRO Can true melee defeat a raid boss? Can the White Elephant hit for billions of damage after being applied by a punch? It's kinda surprising, but the answer to both of those questions is: kinda... yeah. Here we have the first build added to this site after the site's launch. And oh boy did it give all the other true melee builds a run for their money. This build emerged when I tried to build around the Zheitsev's Eruption. The Eruption's reload debuff effect is extremely powerful. And being a debuff, it is a damage multiplier that is double-dipped by any double-dipping effect. Like, say, the White Elephant or the Static Charge. The White Elephant was heavily nerfed a long time ago, but if you throw enough damage formula at it, the double-dipping effect overcomes that nerf. The Static Charge has always been strong, and this build uses it very effectively, but its strength shines more in multi-target scenarios. Perhaps most importantly, this build fills in a gap that most other true melee builds on the site have left: it has radsplosions. Lots of them. (Although Golden Swan is now part of that club.) And it has pretty great survivability. And it can boss, too, so what's the catch? Just a slightly odd gameplay loop as you work with the Eruption's effect. But don't worry, it'll only take a run or two to get used to. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Max Do Harm, one point into Infusion, but no Body & Mind? You don't need it, and it can even be detrimental if you're trying to see if your punch stuck a White Elephant bomb to your enemy. Personal Space on a melee build? Personal Space applies to guns/bullets, and the ASE 50% bonus element anointment that you'll have on your grenade always counts as a "bullet". ASE 50% bonus elements apply to Groundbreaker. With all of your buffs going, your total Groundbreaker damage (including the bonus element) is going to be 7+ times as strong as the damage that built it up in the first place. That's right, this build can take Groundbreaker from 10% of the initial damage to 700+%. So, very indirectly, Personal Space is actually quite a large damage increase for your punches. Do Harm is to buff Phaseslam a bit, and Infusion is for a little bit of lifesteal when using the Face Puncher. Max swap speed is important, but no extra reload speed beyond that (no Alacrity). You want to swap to and from your Eruption often, but you also don't want it to complete its reload animation. ACTION SKILL Phaseslam. Technically, any action skill can be used. But Phaseslam will be the most effective because it will: kickstart your damage, stack Samsara, immediately proc your bonus element anointment, keep your Terror anoints cycling, proc a bit of Expedite, and stagger/ragdoll enemies. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever is suited to the content you are facing, except Cryo. It's a Driver build. DEBUFFING GUN The Zheitsev's Eruption, in radiation only , with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. The work horse of the build. The Terror Dmg anointment will get double dipped by your White Elephant (and Static Charge). Upon starting its reload/repair animation, the Eruption sends out 8 homing splash projectiles at nearby enemies. Each projectile debuffs an enemy for 20% increased damage from all sources for 6 seconds. The animation can be cancelled by the typical means: meleeing, throwing a grenade, using your action skill, swapping, mantling, etc. When the animation begins again, the projectiles get sent out again, except if you cancelled it via melee. All other cancellation methods will reproc the projectiles. So the easiest and most consistent way to reproc the projectiles is by swapping to and away from the Eruption. This is totally fine, because then you get to swap to your punching gun... PUNCHING GUN The Guardian Angel, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. No, not the Psycho Stabber, although it's not half bad. The Guardian Angel will add another multiplier for the White Elephant (and Static Charge) to double dip. It's also the gun you hold if you want Phaseslam to do some damage and get you Expedite stacks (you generally want this). FFYL /FLYING ENEMY GUN Face Puncher, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. You can also shoot the Guardian Angel at enemies if you're down, and Indiscriminate will have a good chance of getting you back up. CLASS MOD Spiritual Driver, mostly for proccing Elemental Projector with your action skill element. Mindfulness points are also useful for maneuverability and closing the gap. Recommended passives: action skill cooldown, action skill damage, melee damage, splash damage, splash damage radius. Getting a large splash radius means Phaseslam hits more enemies and White Elephant stickies can hit more than just the enemy they're stuck to. Protip: turn dialog volume all the way down if you do not wish to hear Amara screaming from self-dots all of the time. You can actually run lots of other class mods, though they will be less effective than the Driver: Golden Rule with points into Laid Bare and Mindfulness for a bit of damage and faster cooldown, Stone with points into Awakening and Do Harm, Muse with any skill points, Breaker with Find Your Center and preferably no points into Personal Space, Dragon with a point into Remnant. All of the same recommended passives. SHIELD Red Suit, preferably with two Roid augments, with ASE Apply Terror anointment. The Eruption reload projectiles are splash, and would down you without this shield, especially since you're following the projectiles toward the enemy and ideally boosting splash radius. ARTIFACT Elemental Projector White Elephant. You can also use an Elemental Projector Static Charge for pretty similar results most of the time. However, the White Elephant is what's needed to take down big bosses. The Static Charge will provide more consistency in mobbing and for bosses with lots of adds (like Wotan). The only time the Static Charge truly outshines the White Elephant on this build is when mobbing with Guardians in the Guardian Takedown. Recommended passives: action skill cooldown, area-of-effect damage in the 2nd or 3rd slot (so it also increases area radius), melee damage, elemental damage, move speed. GRENADE Fish Slap, in radiation, with ASE 50% radiation damage anointment. Both aspects are pretty important. Radiation element Fish so that it gets boosted by Elemental Projector. You will almost always have a radiation dot on you (that won't damage you thanks to the Red Suit) from the Eruption projectiles. The Red Suit will also protect you from your Fish, as long as you have the White Elephant and not the Static Charge equipped. Your ASE 50% radiation bonus element will get added to your Groundbreaker when you punch, and it will be even further boosted by Elemental Projector. You're building Groundbreaker all the time via your Red Suit's aura, your White Elephant stickies (or Static Charge chains), Phaseslam, and the Eruption projectiles. This bonus element, when coupled with the Driver self-dot, will also stack Burn Both Ends for you. GAMEPLAY LOOP Before engaging in combat, shoot your Eruption until it overheats, then swap away to your Guardian Angel before the repair animation gets any further. Now it's primed for debuffing. Whenever you swap back to your overheated Eruption, a set of projectiles will get sent out and debuff enemies. (No projectiles will proc if there are no enemies around.) When entering combat, Phaseslam into some mobs while holding the Guardian Angel. Swap back to the Eruption briefly one or two times to send out one or two sets of debuffing projectiles. Then punch 1 or 3 enemies to death. Back to the Eruption again, then back to punching. Keep in mind, the debuff lasts 6 seconds, so you do need to be swapping back to the Eruption pretty often. Luckily, your relatively short window of actual punching will be very productive. Phaseslam with the Guardian Angel in your hand when it's available. Throw a Fish at enemies that are immune to your action skill element. Face Puncher annoying flying enemies. Feel free to follow your Eruption projectiles to the enemy. You want them to proc a radiation dot on you for your Elemental Projector. Standing directly next to an enemy and sending projectiles into them isn't the craziest idea. You have great survivability with the Red Suit aura and Eruption projectiles giving you steady healing with Sustainment. Samsara will pull its weight if you Phaseslammed effectively. You will sometimes get jostled around with this build. Both because you're true melee and because the Eruption projectile explosions can push you a little bit. Just persevere and punch when you can; you'll be fine. NOTES - GUARDIAN TAKEDOWN There are a few areas in the Guardian Takedown where piloting a true melee build can be very risky, for various reasons. For this build, during both crystal phases and during the last mobbing section before Scourge, take a break from the true melee for a while, lest you get overrun and/or knocked off. Instead, continually jump while alternating between reloading the Eruption and shooting the Guardian Angel at enemies. Phaseslam when available. Throw Fish if you feel like it. Maybe when you're on your last crystal you can start punching again, if you want. NOTES - RAID BOSSING The setup for raid bossing with the White Elephant is as follows. Set your action skill element appropriately and make sure the Eruption is overheated. Start with a volley of projectiles from the Eruption, then immediately follow it up with your action skill. You can use Phaseslam or base Phasecast or base Grasp. All you really need it to do is to proc your Elemental Projector and anoints. Once the Eruption is back in your hand, another set of projectiles will proc. Immediately swap to your Guardian Angel, punch 2 or 3 times, and step away. Hopefully, you attached a White Elephant sticky or two. If a sticky of a favorable element gets attached, there's potential for massive damage. If a sticky of massive damage procced, run back up again and punch for Groundbreaker. If not, or after you have punched for Groundbreaker, repeat the process, except your action skill is now on cooldown. Swap to the Eruption a couple times for a couple sets of projectiles, then punch 2 or 3 times again and back away. When your action skill is done cooling down, repeat the whole process. White Elephant is chance-based, of course, but this build is still able to take down raid bosses in a reasonable time frame, in my opinion. NOTES - HEMOVOROUS If you have patience, you can actually punch/White Elephant Hemo to death. Problem is, he's very hard to land a punch on. You have to go for his legs. Keep in mind he will move his legs to both face you and attack you as you approach. It's tough, but doable. You will need to Fish him during his flying phase, though.

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.

Non-DLC true-melee focused build. Stone Swan SYNOP SIS Non-DLC true-melee focused build. INTRO This build is meant to give the true melee experience to everybody, no DLC required. There's a lot of true melee tech with DLC items and the DLC skill tree, but there's still a lot of fun options with base game items. This build allows several different gameplay styles, some easier, some more challenging. It goes back to basics, calling on tech I've used throughout my time crafting true melee builds. It's the Stone Swan. Hey, that's me! Hopefully the name won't lead to any confusion... GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Typical green tree melee skills, red to Sustainment, and blue increases action skill damage and cryo efficiency. Remnant is a very helpful skill, but that will be picked up through your class mod. ACTION SKILL Phaseslam or Ties That Bind. Which of these you choose depends on how much challenge you want. Ties That Bind makes killing groups and controlling the field very simple, and is recommended for harder content such as true takedowns. Phaseslam is more thematic, and gives you Samsara stacks as a bonus. Either one of these action skills will proc Glamour on every enemy affected, allowing you to punch without much trouble. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever is suited to the content you are facing. PUNCHING GUN Psycho Stabber, with Terror Cryo anointment. The cryo bonus element will help freeze enemies through punching. It will also apply to Static Charge chains and your action skill (Phaseslam or Ties That Bind links). SHOOTING GUN Face Puncher, with Terror Cryo anointment. For flying enemies or anything else that seems out of reach or annoys you. This is a true-melee focused build, but do not feel bad about using tools such as the Face Puncher; true melee has a lot of obstacles. ALTERNATIVE PUNCHING GUN Psycho Stabber, with 150/90 anointment. This is for using with the Unleash The Dragon artifact. CLASS MOD Dragon, with at least one point into Remnant, and preferably the rest into Do Harm. Recommended passives: splash damage, splash damage radius, melee damage, action skill cooldown rate, action skill damage, weapon damage (for Face Puncher). Whenever you melee kill an enemy, all nearby enemies will have Glamour procced on them, basically taking all aggro off of you. The ability to get Remnant through this class mod is also very important. Remnant helps clear enemies and, after it lands, gives you lots of Groundbreaker damage for your next punch. Alternative class mod is the Phasezerker, with as many points into Anima as possible, for use with the Unleash The Dragon artifact. SHIELD There are a few options here, but the most important one is the Stinger, with ASE Apply Terror anointment. The Stinger is kind of a cop-out when it comes to true melee builds, but at least you're not using Action Skill Start on it. It will help you out when it breaks naturally, which occurs less often than you may think. Glamour controlling the battlefield means your Stinger is full, most of the time. The 50% melee damage increase that the Stinger gives while full is multiplicative with regular melee damage. Another option is the Nova Berner, preferably with Nova parts. The novas on this shield are quite strong, and when they go off they will either kill nearby enemies or at the very least give you lots of Groundbreaker damage. A third option is the Frozen Snowshoe. With this shield, you can slide into an enemy and proc a large nova, freezing enemies in the area. Not only is this a form of aggro relief and healing, it allows for a very powerful punch against those frozen enemies - great for pairing with the Unleash The Dragon artifact. The last option is the classic Brawler Ward. Pair with any artifact. Make sure to turn off Shield Reboot and Emergency Response when using this one. ARTIFACT Elemental Stone Static Charge. Cryo Stone is recommended, for more frequent freezing through punches, but you can also element match. Recommended passives: melee damage, action skill cooldown rate, area of effect damage (in the 2nd or 3rd slot), elemental damage, move speed. Alternative artifact would be the Unleash The Dragon. Use with the Phaseerker (that has Anima points) and a 150/90 Psycho Stabber for the greatest effect. Any of the shield options will work except the Nova Berner. GRENADE Fish Slap, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. This is your bossing tool, or just something to throw at a lone badass you don't feel like punching several times. This build is meant to be easy-going; don't be afraid to Fish. GAMEPLAY LOOP Start off using your action skill and then punch whatever is the most convenient target. Enemies will be affected by Glamour for a while, allowing you to basically roam freely. Throw a fish at extra tanky enemies. If you're using a Stinger, occasionally it will go off, obliterating anything near you. Face Puncher flying enemies. Note that Glamour has some weird effects. Grenades do not make contact with Glamour'd enemies, so if you grasp one and try to throw a Fish at it, the Fish will just pass right through. Either splash a linked enemy on the ground, or wait for Grasp to end and splash the original enemy. Or just punch the grasped enemy. Glamour will also cause some flying enemies to initiate an aerial battle with each other, making them fly high up and far apart. You may have to use the Face Puncher to take them out.

Traditional red tree/blue tree Ties That Bind gun build, with a couple small twists. Phasewalker SYNOPSIS Traditional red tree/blue tree Ties That Bind gun build, with a couple small twists. INTRO I avoided making a generic red/blue Ties That Bind build for a long time, because I didn't have anything to add to the concept. After exploring gun dots , I realized I could add a little flair to it. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES The way this build deviates from other builds is you max Anima and Unweave the Rainbow. Gun dots are strong, and getting up to 10 points in Anima really lets you fire and forget, and also increases the effectiveness of Radsplosions. And if you choose to use cryo guns, which don't apply a dot, you are rewarded by Unweave the Rainbow. This build also leans into action skill damage, allowing actions skills outside of Ties That Bind to do work. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. Optionally Reverberation, Tandava, or Phaseslam, all of which will deal plenty of damage on their own, and can be matched with a 250% Phasecast or 300% Phaseslam gun damage anointment on your guns for bossing. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever is suited to your content, keeping in mind that 40% of your gun's damage is changed via Infusion and 18% is a bonus element from Forceful Expression. Also note that if cryo is your action skill element, Anima breaks completely and has no effect. So to take advantage of Unweave the Rainbow and also get juicy dots and radsplosions from bonus elements, use cryo guns and have your action skill element set to something else. GUNS Any decent or strong gun, with Killstack or Consecutive Hits anointment. This build and Ties That Bind allows for quite a variety. Some of my favorites: Hellwalker, Free Radical, Crit, Sand Hawk, Bird of Prey, Major Kong, Yellowcake, Guardian Angel, Reflux, Plaguebearer, Kaoson, D.N.A., Kickcharger, Clairvoyance, Beacon, Flipper, Rowan's Call, King's/Queen's Call. Yes, you can actually shoot the Guardian Angel; it's very effective with Ties That Bind and Indiscriminate. For bossing, any of the strongest guns with a 250% Phasecast or 300% Phaseslam gun damage anointment. OPTIONAL SWAP GUN Guardian Angel, with Killstack anointment. The Killstack anointment is the only anointment that attaches to the player instead of the gun, so you can swap guns freely and the stacks will still be there, decaying over time like normal. This allows you to run Reverberation or Tandava or Phaseslam with the Killstack anointment - swap to the Guardian Angel to buff those action skills, and any kills you get will add to your Killstacks. Swap back to your gun to shoot enemies and your stacks will keep going. OPTIONAL BOSSING GUN Guardian Angel, with Astral Projection or Slam damage anointment. For direct bossing damage with just your action skill. Try the special Reverberation technique for even more damage. CLASS MOD Phasezerker, with as many points into Anima as possible. Recommended passives: weapon damage, action skill cooldown rate, splash damage, splash damage radius, weapon type damage, mag size, action skill damage. This is also a build where the Kensei fits in nicely. Utilize Unweave the Rainbow during mobbing by having splash guns that are cryo or having your action skill element attuned to cryo. During bossing, the Kensei damage itself helps quite a lot, so element-match as best as you can. Same anointment philosophy: Killstack or Consec Hits if using Grasp, 250% Cast Gun Damage if using Reverberation. Tandava and Phaseslam are not recommended with the Kensei because of their longer cooldown. SHIELD Re-Volter, with Action Skill Start. Perfect for buffing your guns and your action skills. ARTIFACT Pearl of Ineffable Knowledge with a mag size passive. Other options are an Atom Balm Victory Rush for greater radsplosions, or a Snowdrift Victory Rush for better movement. Recommended passives on these two artifacts: action skill cooldown rate, area of effect damage in the 2nd or 3rd slot (which will also increase area radius), elemental damage, weapon type damage. GRENADE Whatever you find useful, with ASE 50% radiation anointment. If you're bossing, change this element to match the boss, but for general use, the radsplosions enabled by having bonus radiation damage are very useful. Utility grenades: It's Piss, Hyperion Quasar (non sticky), Mesmer. Damage grenades, especially if holding the Guardian Angel: Lightspeed, Doc Hina's Miracle Bomb. GAMEPLAY LOOP Grasp, shoot, and destroy. If you are wanting to deal damage with action skills or grenades, swap to Guardian Angel to perform those actions, then swap back to guns and start blastin'. This is probably the most straightforward Amara gun build, even with the few twists. This sort of build can run into roadblocks when bossing or raid bossing. Either use Guardian Angel anointed to buff your Reverb or Phaseslam, or use a 250% Phasecast or 300% Phaseslam gun damage anoint on your guns. You can also cheese most bosses with Remnant: hold the Guardian Angel, Reverb a nearby mob, and Remnant will fly toward the closest enemy to you. If it hits the boss, the boss gets deleted. If it hits another enemy, Groundbreaker the boss.

A spicy Spiritual Driver gun dot build that rewards accuracy via the Elemental Crit anointment. Amara Dot Crit SYNOPSIS A spicy Spiritual Driver gun dot build that rewards accuracy via the Elemental Crit anointment. INTRO The anointment, "Elemental critical hits can cause status effects of that element to explode..." (EleCrit) has been a favorite of mine for a long time. It's most common usage is on a gun you swap to to detonate a status effect (dot) applied by Fish Slap/UTD or a strong, one-shotting gun like the Kickcharger. But I've always wanted to find a way to use it as a main gun anointment. I've, also, always wanted to make a gun dot build with the Spiritual Driver. This build accomplishes both. As a cool side effect, it allows usage of some really underused and otherwise weak guns. Inspiration to try working with the EleCrit anointment came from Ancient Rune's Alchemical Agent Zane dot build. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Yep, no capstones. The EleCrit nova is based on the strength of the dot you apply, and then it gets its own damage formula. This is a form of double dipping. Therefore, we need to grab damage boosts in our skill tree that will apply to both your initial dot and the EleCrit nova: Tempest, Laid Bare, Burn Both Ends. Just for fun, let's follow the rest of the logic for creating this skill tree. Because this is a Driver build, we also want points into Mindfulness. And we also need to spec Sustainment for survivability. We need Sustainment because other forms of healing won't work here: Samsara doesn't apply to Ties That Bind, Ebb & Flow is for melee builds (although we take it here because sometimes you punch for Groundbreaker and we need to dump some skill points somewhere to reach Burn Both Ends), and Clarity is not enough on its own. We choose Ties That Bind as our action skill because it has a much shorter cooldown than a Phasecast or Slam action skill. A shorter cooldown matters because the Driver self-dot will deactivate Topped Off, making us lose a lot of action skill cooldown rate. Cast/slam also won't be able to help us with their huge gun damage anointments, because we're using the EleCrit anoint. Ties can also give us lots of Expedite stacks, further facilitating its cooldown. Following the chain of logic back, we need Sustainment because we're using Ties because we're using Driver. We've chosen our action skill and the end points of each of our four trees. The rest of the skill points cover regular gun benefits, dot skills, and some splash for the EleCrit nova. This is one of the few builds that could actually use more skill points: 1 more for Burn Both Ends and 1 more for Mindfulness. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. For some boss fights, base Phasegrasp can be used for faster action skill cycling - it has a shorter cooldown and no duration when grasping a target that cannot be lifted. Hemo is a good fight for base Phasegrasp. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Fire, shock, or corrosive. Whichever one matches your fire, shock, or corrosive gun. No cryo, because this is a Driver (and dot) build. GUNS Anything with at least a decent damage over time stat, with the EleCrit anointment. I'd say around 50K-ish status effect damage per second or greater. We get to use quite a few overlooked weapons here. My favorites: Hellfire, Fearmonger, Recursion, Free Radical, Plasma Coil, Beacon, Hellshock, Kyb's Worth, Trevonator, Chandelier, Slow Hand, Soulrender, Insider, Satisfaction, Back Burner, Plaguebearer, Hive, King's/Queen's Call, Unkempt Harold, and Boogeyman. I've also had minor success with the Convergence and the Flipper. There might even be some non-unique purple weapons with acceptable dot values. Note, though, that a max damage per-pellet version of a gun may not have the max status effect damage. You want the version of every gun that has the highest status effect damage. You also want the version of a gun that has the fewest projectiles per shot, if it has such variants. The lower the pellet count, the higher the status effect damage. UTILITY GUN Guardian Angel, with EleCrit anointment. Its usage here is like the typical usage of the EleCrit anointment: apply a dot with your guns, then swap to the Guardian Angel and detonate the dot with a grenade (that can crit) of the same element as the dot. This gun can also be shot in FFYL, and if there's multiple enemies around, there's a good chance it'll get you back up via an Indiscriminate projectile. CLASS MOD Spiritual Driver, with as many points into Mindfulness as possible. Phasezerker usually overshadows the Driver when building for gun dots; it can get you up to 10 Anima and it applies dots more reliably through better Violent Tapestry stacking. However, there's still a reason to use Driver for dots: moving fast gives you a lot of gun damage, and dots from your guns are strengthened if you have more gun damage. To make up for less reliable dots, you simply shoot your gun more. This results in a go-fast-pew-pew-style dot build, as opposed to Amara Dot Gun , which is a methodical, single-shot dot build. Recommended passives: splash damage radius, splash damage, action skill cooldown rate, mag size, weapon charge speed, weapon damage, weapon critical damage. 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 Re-Volter, with Action Skill Start anointment. The fire rate from this shield is great all on its own, but also because it will give you more stacks of the Guardian Rank perk C-C-Combo, which is a damage increase that will double dip with the EleCrit novas. Also, the shock damage will give you a shock dot at 200% power - which is all-around great. If you're using a shock weapon, your EleCrit will detonate based on that stronger dot from the Re-Volter. ARTIFACT Elemental Projector Victory Rush. The Elemental Projector is the more important part. But both parts of this artifact will provide damage boosts that the EleCrit nova can double dip. Recommended passives: action skill cooldown, movement speed, AoE damage, fire/shock/corrosive damage. GRENADE Hex, Lightspeed, or Hunter-Seeker, with ASE 50% bonus radiation damage anointment. All three of these grenades can crit, and therefore can proc the EleCrit anointment on your gun. Because this is a dot build, adding a radiation bonus element will create and strengthen radsplosions and overall spread a lot of damage around. GAMEPLAY LOOP Your Re-Volter will cover shock, and your grenade anoint will cover radiation. So your guns will mostly be fire or corrosive, depending on the base health of the enemies you're facing. Shock can be used for Guardians in the Guardian Takedown or just in general with a very high shock dot weapon like the Plasma Coil or Free Radical. Choose the element of your gun to suit the content you're facing, and grasp and shoot and aim for crits. Believe it or not, this build can be very forgiving if you don't have good aim. Dots are not increased by landing a critical hit. So you can do a drive-by at high speed with your Driver and land some body shots just to apply a large dot (remember dots are increased by gun damage), and then stop and carefully hit a crit to proc EleCrit. If you can hit crits at high speed, all the better. If the enemy doesn't have an easily accessible crit spot, don't fret: this is a Driver build. It's still going to have good damage simply by moving fast and shooting a strong gun. The EleCrit anoint has a cooldown. However, the cooldown is reset if you swap to a different gun. A fun way to play this build is to have 2-4 guns of the same element and rapid-fire swap between them, getting an EleCrit with each before moving on to the next one. Weapons with charge times slow this strategy down a little bit, so choose your guns wisely. NOTES - IMMUNE MALIWAN HEAVIES When facing a Maliwan Heavy that's immune to your gun's element, your damage will drop significantly (and you won't lifesteal). The solution here is to use a radiation Hex. Your main gun element won't do any damage, but the radiation dot created by the bonus element anoint on the Hex will still get applied. Then the Hex can be thrown and used to proc EleCrit in radiation. The Hex will also keep your lifesteal going. NOTES - ALTERNATIVE BOSSING STRATEGY Similar to the strategy above regarding Maliwan Heavies, and alluded to throughout this guide, an alternate strategy to shooting and getting crits is to apply your gun's dot at high speed, then swap to the Guardian Angel and proc EleCrit with a grenade that element-matches the dot that you applied. See the Hemo fight in the gameplay video.

Tips for understanding and building with Amara's Red Tree at endgame. Red 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 red (Fist of the Elements) tree. ANIMA A skill with many uses. On builds that utilize damage over time (dots), this skill is invaluable. It's what makes Amara the strongest character with the Fish Slap grenade and Unleash The Dragon artifact. It has two often overlooked properties in that it further boosts status damage of your action skill element, and when attuned to shock it gives shock status damage an even longer duration increase. Even on gun builds that don't focus on damage over time, but still use guns with high damage over time (Free Radical, Kickcharger, Plasma Coil), investing into Anima means dots will help finish off enemies. And if you have radiation damage in your build, stronger radsplosions. A common class mod for gun builds, the Phasezerker, can roll extra points into Anima. When self dotting for various buffs, whether it's with the Spiritual Driver class mod or directly shooting your foot, Anima will keep that dot on you longer. Unfortunately, Anima breaks in all respects when your action skill element is set to cryo. It does not buff anything at all in this situation, as if you never specced it. STEADY HANDS Often taken for granted, I would recommend 3 points into this skill on nearly every build that shoots a gun. INFUSION Another skill with many uses. The most basic use is to fully invest in it so that you can diversify the elements of an element-locked gun (such as the Free Radical), non-elemental gun, or to tackle content where enemies have multiple HP bar types. For example, against creatures in the Guardian Takedown, which are armor and flesh, it can be used to infuse a corrosive gun with fire, or the other way around. Whatever percentage that you have Infusion convert, that percentage of your gun's damage becomes a bonus element, and bonus elements do not get increased by splash damage. So if you're using a splash gun and have any increased splash damage, that splash damage bonus is effectively reduced by the same percentage you have invested into Infusion. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because using Infusion for a better elemental matchup can result in more damage than what you've lost from your splash bonuses. The second use for Infusion is to put one point into it to create another damage instance for the Face Puncher, which, when specced into Body & Mind, doubles the amount of Body & Mind novas that get procced. And Body & Mind is a very strong skill when invested into. A third use for Infusion is another one point wonder when shooting your feet to dot yourself, which you may do for various reasons. For example, you want to proc Elemental Projector with a low level Sellout, but you want shock damage, and the Sellout only has fire and corrosive. Attuning yourself to shock and having 1 point into Infusion means a portion of those Sellout projectiles are shock and will shock dot you. You can also use Infusion to diversify the Sellout's dot on yourself, so that you get multiple dots and therefore multiple stacks when using the Golden Rule class mod. E.g., you're attacking with fire phasecasts, so you set the Sellout to corrosive and Infuse it with fire so that you get fire and corrosive dots when you shoot your foot, increasing the effectiveness of the Golden Rule. Infusion can also be used to change your gun's elemental output when you don't want to swap weapons, such as having a buffed Lucky 7 or Sleeping Giant or Anarchy. You can, for example, have a corrosive Lucky 7 that you Infuse with fire while fighting the creatures in the Guardian Takedown, and then you switch your action skill element over to shock when you move onto the Guardians. And then corrosive when you drop down to fight Anathema, and so on. Lastly, investment into Infusion can be useful for true melee builds. It's common to get knocked backwards, especially in the Guardian Takedown, and not be able to melee for lifesteal for a few seconds. Shooting an element-infused Psycho Stabber can allow for enough life steal to regain healthgate before closing the distance again. TEMPEST Very important elemental damage increase. Very hard to pass up. A requirement for nearly every build. ILLUMINATED FIST Extremely important for true melee builds, as it allows your punch to also be increased by elemental damage boosts and to Sustain you. Outside of that, it's just a flat 75% melee damage to all forms of melee damage. It can also be specced so that, even on non-melee builds, when you punch an enemy to deliver Groundbreaker you also get healed by Sustainment. Beware that attuning your punch to an element will make you unable to Sustain off of or deliver Groundbreaker to enemies that are immune to that element. This comes up most often in the Maliwan Takedown. (Use ground slam as an alternate method of Groundbreaker.) WILDFIRE Mostly a low value utility skill that can be specced to help spread around status effects, which, when also specced into Violent Tapestry, can help gain you Rush stacks. On a more dot-focused build, whether it's Unleash The Dragon or gun dots, this skill becomes much more valuable. It also has value on cryo-focused builds, because it can spread the frozen status effect from one enemy to another. It doesn't have the greatest range, though. DREAD Very useful skill on grasp gun builds, mostly for the mag refill upon killing a grasped enemy. It does not matter how the grasped enemy dies, you will get the mag refill. This aspect is very useful for managing the ammo in your mag on, for example, a Lucky 7 build. It is also a generally good DPS increase, because you can skip a reload. One odd situation where it is detrimental is if you're running Terror Ammo Regen and trying to sustain a Sand Hawk in semi-auto mode for a long activity, as Barbie Dahl can do. Dread pulls from reserves, so even with ammo regen, it will eventually run your sniper ammo stock dry. Other than that, it's a good skill. The gun damage aspect of it will also stack with each newly grasped enemy when using Eternal Fist. INDISCRIMINATE Very, very powerful skill, and most gun builds take it. Turns any gun into a multi-target gun, at least the guns that it works with (which is most of them). Also extremely useful for getting up from FFYL. The card says damage of ricochets is reduced, but on Mayhem 10 or 11, it also gets about a 5.5x mayhem multiplier, making your ricochets stronger than your original shot. DEEP WELL 1 point wonder for a slightly significant mag size boost. No reason not to take it on a gun build that goes this far down the tree. CATHARSIS Mostly bad for a few reasons: it has an unnecessary cooldown, it deals self damage, and it can be tough to get all of the investment needed for it to be any good, which is all 5 status effects and lots of action skill damage investment. The only case I've found for it is on a grenade build , as it helps increase area clear. You avoid the self-damage of it because you also want to be out of range of your own grenades, and going down blue tree to get Laid Bare and Avatar gives you plenty of points to dump into action skill damage. Because it's not like there's much else in the blue tree that benefits grenades. SUSTAINMENT Very valuable life steal skill. Not as necessary as most people believe, because of the power of Samsara and Clarity for healing. But still highly recommended, and required on almost all true melee builds on this site. CONFLUX Useful only as a way to get 1 or 2 more status effects for greater debuff from the Harmageddon Guardian Rank perk. FORCEFUL EXPRESSION Decent value increase for both guns and grenades. It can be hard to justify the extra points required to get here on some builds, though.

Beginner-friendly Ties That Bind gun build that is very Ties That Bind gun build. Possibly even the most Ties That Bind gun build. Acidwolf SYNOPSIS Beginner-friendly Ties That Bind gun build that is very Ties That Bind gun build. Possibly even the most Ties That Bind gun build. INTRO When facing off against raid bosses, most Amara gun builds change something, like switching to a Phasecast action skill and Phasecast anointed gun. Or a Phaseflare action skill and a Psychostabber. Or swapping to the Guardian Angel and throwing a fish, perhaps also with Unleash the Dragon. Or whatever else. In contrast, this build leans so hard into Amara's multi-target abilities that it *becomes* the raid bossing solution. Using Ties That Bind to kill a boss through a second enemy isn't anything new. What's new is the strength with which this build does it. This isn't just: "Ties That Bind Wotan as he splits to kill both halves instantly." This is also: "Ties That Bind True Hag of Fervor (and a tink) and a single Beacon projectile produces a Remnant that hits Hag for hundreds of billions." This is: "Every Indiscriminate ricochet hits for hundreds of millions instead of just 10 or 20 million." If you're a real OG, the damage philosophy is very similar to Pain Amp Amara , even though that isn't a gun build. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES This skill tree isn't too far off from a typical red/blue TTB gun build. However, there are a few very deliberate omissions and inclusions. Remnant, Ties That Bind, and Indiscriminate are all double-dipping skills. That means that their damage is based on a different, initial source of damage, and then they get their own damage increases as well. (That initial source in this build is our guns.) So to increase the effectiveness of these three skills, we need to choose damage increases that affect both the initial source and these skills directly for maximum double-dipping effect. All three skills double dip elemental damage, for example, if you're using an elemental gun. If you use a non-elemental gun, then it's just a single dip, a normal damage increase. Remnant and Indiscriminate double dip splash damage if you're using a splash gun. That's why we spend the five points in Arms Deal - for more splash damage. It's why there's zero Infusion points - the Infused portion of a gun's damage does not get splash bonuses. Action skill damage is maxed through Do Harm and Awakening, because Ties That Bind link and Remnant damage is increased by action skill damage. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Always Corrosive. This is a single element build. As for why, see the artifact section. GUNS Anything splash and corrosive that can roll the ASE 125% splash anoint. Effective weapons that fit that criteria: Beacon, Recursion, Trevonator, Gargoyle, Major Kong, Anarchy, Contained Blast, Fearmonger, Hive, Plaguebearer, Backburner. Those last three don't really Indiscriminate, but they're strong enough that it doesn't matter. You can use some other strong corrosive splash guns that can't roll the splash anoint: Kaoson, Soulrender, Sand Hawk, Hornet. For these, use the Killstack anoint. CLASS MOD Phasezerker, ideally with points into Anima for that extra dot damage, but it's not too important. Prioritize passives: splash damage, splash damage radius, cooldown, weapon damage, weapon critical damage. That splash damage passive will make Remnant and Indiscriminate double dip harder. The Phasezerker is ideal for this build because it will stack up a lot of Do Harm for our TTB links and Remnant. It does this by its special Rush stacking nature, and because the cooldown it provides will keep our TTB cycling quickly. It also provides some much needed gun damage. SHIELD Corrosive Old God, with ASE Apply Terror anoint. The corrosive elemental damage increase provided by the Old God will get double dipped by our three important skills. ARTIFACT Flesh Melter Victory Rush. This is why we only use corrosive guns and corrosive action skill element. The Victory Rush part isn't essential. A purple Flesh Melter with great passives will beat an average Flesh Melter Victory Rush. The passives you're looking for are corrosive damage and AoE damage, with cooldown closely behind those two. The Flesh Melter is an absurd amount of corrosive damage when fully stacked up. This, of course, makes us lean even harder into the "need more than one enemy" linchpin of this build, but we're already in too deep. The only way out is through. Turns out, there's hardly any relevant end game fights where you have just a boss and no mobs to work with. GRENADE Fish Slap, in radiation, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. Because all of our other damage is pure corrosive, we need something to take out those corrosive immune Maliwan heavies. Even if it's just to deliver Groundbreaker. (You could also just switch elements on your Beacon, but whatever.) The Terror Dmg will get double dipped by our skills. GAMEPLAY LOOP You grasp. You shoot. You destroy. Indeed, that's the gist of it. The whole idea here is to make it simple to raid boss. There's no elaborate setup or anything; you just wait. You grasp the boss and wait for an add to get linked up, then you shoot the boss. Remnant kills the boss. Ok, there's a *little* more to it. One important thing to know is that Remnant targets the enemy closest to you. So before shooting that raid boss with a mob linked, make sure you're kinda close. But not close enough to splash yourself, of course. You'll find the same sort of thing happening often during regular mobbing. You grasp and shoot an enemy, then all other nearby enemies die, and Remnant drifts toward the original grasped enemy and obliterates it. In scenarios where waiting a few seconds gives you extra enemies, then wait. Notable example here is the first few phases of Wotan. Wait for him to spawn some adds before you attack his shields. That way, you can utilize TTB and get Flesh Melter stacks. Versus the Seer, step in the water and wait for guardians to approach. You get the idea. Otherwise, this doesn't play much differently than a normal red/blue TTB gun build. But you will see tons and tons of large damage numbers. It will definitely be weaker in single target scenarios and/or when your buffs have worn off. But that's what strong guns like the Plaguebearer and Backburner and Beacon are for. Or, if you're quick enough, Groundbreaker can be utilized on that lone enemy. If the somewhat weaker single target damage is too frustrating for you, consider the alternative loadout... NOTES - ALTERNATIVE LOADOUT Swap out your Phasezerker for a Spiritual Driver (with points into Mindfulness, same recommended passives) and your Flesh Melter for an Elemental Projector. Again, the artifact doesn't need to be a Victory Rush, but it helps. Prioritize passives: corrosive damage, AoE, cooldown. This setup will have less reliable raid bossing ability when utilizing Ties That Bind and Remnant, but it will have much better single target damage. NOTES - HEMOVOROUS Indiscriminate and Remnant make this fight pretty fun. You can pew pew at Vermi, and Indiscriminate will chunk Hemo if he's nearby. Or just spam a Recursion. Stay somewhat close and Remnant will track them, although there's still a chance it gets thrown off by all of the little bugs in the fight. Their red HP phases are probably the only time you might consider switching your action skill element to fire, using a fire weapon, and using the Driver/Projector loadout. NOTES - OTHER BOSSES As mentioned above, there's hardly any relevant end game fights where you have just a boss and no mobs to work with. Bosses like Anathema and Scourge initially start alone, but just wait 5-10 seconds and mobs will appear and you can begin doing work. Spawn mobs in the Seer arena by walking in the water. Spongeboss can be lured out by the Spiderants. Etc.