All sorts of tricks, techniques, and knowledge to help you plow through the most difficult content as Amara. Tips Various tips for increasing your general knowledge and skill level at endgame, opening up more build possibilities for you. Combat General Advice FFYL Maliwan Takedown Guardian Takedown True Melee Skill Trees Amara's Green Tree Amara's Blue Tree Amara's Red Tree Amara's Purple Tree Other Skills & Gear Burn Both Ends Groundbreaker Grenades Overkill Upkeep Phasecasting

Tips for how to best utilize powerful and underrated grenades at endgame. Grenades Grenades are an often overlooked form of attack, at least on Amara. I will cover some useful grendes here, dividing them up into damaging grenades and utility grenades. DAMAGING GRENADES Check out the Phase Yeet build to see what Amara can do with grenades. With the right build, she can make use of the Fastball, Whispering Ice, Hex, Porcelain Pipe Bomb, Ghast Call, Core Buster, Doc Hina's Miracle Bomb, Lightspeed, and purple grenades with 2 or 3 Sticky parts. These are of varying strength, but the top tier of them can defeat raid bosses rather handily. The Fish Slap, of course, can be used to wipe out anything. It's the most powerful item in the game. Spec a few melee skills, a few splash skills, a few elemental skills, and grab a Guardian Angel and your Fish is now a destroyer of worlds. I tend to avoid that, however, because it almost completely removes the need to have a build. UTILITY GRENADES More often, though, I recommend grenades for utility on Amara. Two grenades in particular are great for crowd control: Mesmer and Hyperion Quasar (non sticky). Both of them, when used well, can make an off-meta build go from barely playable to breezing through content. Proper grenade usage increases build diversity for you. A simple Hex grenade can also help keep you out of FFYL, if you're specced Sustainment. Sustainment is not a cheat code; Amara does get put into FFYL, and it's often while she's reloading. However, if you're throwing Hex grenades (or any grenade that deals many instances of elemental damage) every now and then, they can Sustain you while you reload and find your next target.

Information about quality-of-life hotfixes and other mods for playing Amara at end game. Modding If you're on PC, we can fix a thing or two to increase your quality of life while playing Borderlands 3. Examples include making the Sleeping Giant always roll all of its buffs, or making the Shooting Star shield work on every map. Below, I will direct you to resources for setting up mods, and share what I consider to be essential mods. Open Hotfix Loader (OHL) There are a few kinds of mods. The most common kind is known as "custom hotfixes". To set up custom hotfix mods, you will need to download and correctly place a few files. Go to this website and scroll down to the "Installation" section, and follow the instructions. Essentially, after OHL is set up, you will have a folder into which you place your hotfix files, and when Borderlands 3 is launched, your custom hotfixes are automatically loaded and applied. To add hotfixes to an already launched game, add the new hotfix to the folder, quit to Title Screen, and re-sign in. There is no need to quit to desktop to add hotfixes. On the other hand, if you want to remove hotfixes, you need to quit to desktop, remove the hotfixes from the folder (or place them in another folder within your 'ohl-mods' folder), and relaunch the game. Essential Hotfixes DJIRA BALL! , by CZ47. Do yourself a favor and hop on over to the dedicated page for this , and introduce yourself to the coolest esport within your favorite game :) Note that the Guardian Takedown will not play normally with this hotfix enabled. VENDOR CRASH FIX , by CZ47. You know how sometimes in the Maliwan Takedown (or anywhere, really) your whole game can crash when you approach a vendor to refill your ammo? This mod will fix that basically 100% of the time. REALLY LUCKY 7 , by CZ47. Allows you to use the Lucky 7 pistol at maximum power without spending 25 minutes reloading it. FYI, it is considered in poor taste to run out the magazine with this mod enabled and continue to use the Lucky 7 for the activity you're currently running. It should be treated as if you rolled all of the modifiers yourself and have ammo regeneration tactics to keep it from being depleted. SLEEPING GIANT 100% , by CZ47 (direct link, right click > save as) . Like the Lucky 7 mod above, this mod makes the Sleeping Giant always roll all of its buffs after the first reload. The same etiquette also applies here. SHOOTING STAR SHIELD FIX , by CZ47 and Lonemasterino (direct link, right click > save as) . If only Gearbox fixed this shield, we would have it as a very strong avenue of attack for Amara's gun and true melee builds. Thankfully, we have this hotfix, which also includes a fix to the Hot Drop artifact so that it works in low gravity, like in the Guardian Takedown. PHOTO MODE UNLOCK , by Apocalyptech. Removes the boundaries of the photomode camera and increases its movement speed. Get closer to damage numbers, or simply look around at the beautiful maps Gearbox has created. TERROR NO EFFECTS , by Bra2ha and CZ47. If you are annoyed by the visual and audio pollution created by the terror status, this removes both of them for you. Terror anoints are absolutely wonderful, so I would hate for people to avoid them because of aesthetic reasons. THE FULL LIST of mods for Borderlands 3. Feel free to browse and see if anything interesting or fun catches your eye! SDK Mods A second kind of mod is called an SDK mod. These are much less common but much more capable than hotfix mods. To get SDK mods installed, go to this web page and follow the instructions. Then add whichever SDK mods seem appealing to you. The one that appeals to me the most, however, won't be found on that site. As of right now, it can only be found here. Thanks to the genius modder OhYes10fps, we have an SDK mod that reverts the projectile nerf and brings back the original glory days of the Projectile Recursion and other weapons. Check it out: Download it here. Download the build I used in this video here. Beware: this interaction always resulted in frame drops, and can even potentially crash your game. I would not recommend firing a recursion when there are two immune enemies in close proximity. Examples include first phase of the Valkyrie fight, when they all drop down at the beginning, and Diadems in the Guardian Takedown. Most PCs will be severely lagged or crashed by something like this happening: Save Editor We all know farming in this game can be a pain. On PC, you can save edit your gear with the ZakisM save editor . I urge caution, however. If you don't know how to make legitimate gear, I would stick to changing things like the element or anointment of an item you already found.

Dark Army-focused build. Nightmare Amara SYNOPSIS Dark Army-focused build. INTRO The Dark Army is one of the strongest guns on Amara, if properly set up and built around. The core interaction with this build is the fact that Dark Army drones, when summoned (i.e., when you swap to the gun), retain all of your gun damage bonuses you have at the moment of the swap and summoning. Coupled with the Spiritual Driver class mod and lots of movement speed, you can make the Dark Army drones permanently, hugely buffed. Credit to Skkra on the Borderlands 3 subreddit for informing me of this interaction. More details on setting this up are in the "Gameplay Loop" section below. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES This is a fairly basic Driver setup, with a couple notable omissions of Dread and Deep Well. You want to be reloading as quickly and easily as possible, and those two skills delay your reloads. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever element is suited to the content you are facing, which must also match the Dark Army in your hand. Fire, shock, or corrosive. No cryo - this is a Driver build. GUNS Dark Army in fire, shock, and corrosive, with Next 2 Mags anointment matching the element of the gun. Look for a low mag and high damage version. This is your main gun, your FFYL gun, your bossing gun, your everything. It will carry you. CLASS MOD Spiritual Driver, preferably with as many points in Mindfulness as possible. Recommended passives: SMG damage, splash damage, action skill cooldown rate, splash damage radius, weapon damage, reload speed, fire rate, crit 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 ASE 50% Radiation damage anointment. Preferably a low level one, but it's not necessary. The Action Skill Start anointment is not necessary because it will break naturally as soon as enemies are engaging you. And you can let them engage you; nothing matters with the Dark Army at your side. ARTIFACT #1 Elemental Projector with Otto Idol or Victory Rush. Recommended passives: SMG damage, area of effect damage in the 2nd or 3rd slot, action skill cooldown rate, reload speed, movement speed. ARTIFACT #2 Snowdrift. Rarity or passives don't even matter. This is for pre-buffing the Dark Army drones by sliding very fast. See the "Gameplay Loop" section below for details. GRENADE It's Piss with ASE 50% Cryo damage anointment. With cryo and radiation as your bonus elements, you get 2 more stacks of Harmageddon, you slow enemies so that the Dark Armies can better aim at them, and you get some very strong radsplosions. GAMEPLAY LOOP To get maximum damage out of your Dark Army drones, you must pre-buff them after every fast travel or map load. As noted in the Intro, the Dark Army drones, when summoned (swapped to), retain all of your gun damage bonuses at the time of summoning. With the Spiritual Driver equipped, you can swap to your Dark Army of choice when moving very quickly, and the drones will retain all of that Driver gun damage. Here's how you prebuff: equip the Snowdrift, swap to Phasecast, and do *not* be holding the Dark Army you want to use. Cast at the ground. This dots you via the Spiritual Driver, and because your action skill ended, the anoints on your grenade/shield allow you to get 25 stacks of Mindfulness. Make sure you have plenty of space in front of you. At 25 Mindfulness stacks, run and slide. At the beginning of your slide when you are moving fastest, swap to your Dark Army of choice. Now your drones are permanently buffed, as long as you do not swap away from them. Change the Snowdrift out for the Elemental Projector and select Ties That Bind. Make sure your action skill element matches the Dark Army you are holding, and you're ready to obliterate things. If you need to swap or re-buff your drones in combat, you can get a slightly less powerful setup: after your grasp on an enemy ends, make sure you have 25 stacks, then simply run up to top speed and swap. Note that after you've buffed your drones, you do not need to keep moving fast. You can stand still, and they will still do massive damage. The Dark Army that's actually in your hand will do much, much less damage than your drones. There's two things you need to do while in combat. 1. Fire the Dark Army in your hand and reload it. It must be a full magazine depletion, not a manual reload with some ammo still in the mag. This makes the drones deal elemental damage for a short time, which is important because... 2. Always be using your Grasp in order to keep yourself dotted and keep Elemental Projector procced. This gives the drones a massive damage boost if they're firing elemental shots that match your action skill element. NOTES - GUARDIAN TAKEDOWN There are times you need to switch Dark Army elements between facing creatures, Guardians, armor phase of bosses, and shield phase of bosses. You will also need to re-buff your drones between each Scourge teleport, because they don't teleport with you. At nearly every point you need to swap, instead of redoing the whole gear change and slide setup, you can utilize the speed boost provided by a jump pad. Simply swap as soon as you hit the pad. Of course, you can choose to do the long setup if you prefer. Between the first room and the first Guardian encounter, there's a pad. There's no pad before Anathema, but you can use your falling speed to swap to corrosive. During the fight, you can switch from corrosive to shock on the jump pads. After the fight, you can still use the jump pads to switch to fire for creatures. After creatures, there's another jump pad before the second set of crystals. You will need to manually buff and swap after teleporting into Scourge's arena and before triggering the cutscene. In the first teleport area, there's a jump pad below where you spawn. When going back to Scourge's arena, there's a jump pad to go up and smash the crystal. You'll have to manually run and swap during the second teleport.

A Nimbus and damage over time (dot) build. Amara Dot Com SYNOPSIS A Nimbus and damage over time (dot) build. INTRO The Nimbus class mod is still pretty weak, but it can be built around to make a fun and interesting build. The damage over time from the cloud by itself is great for mobbing, but would make very slow work of bosses if you don't supplement it with additional mechanics. Notes that the Nimbus class mod has two dots, the tiny one that's listed on the class mod itself, and one that the cloud applies based on the gun you are holding. You can ignore the one listed on the class mod; this guide only references the second one. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES There is an extra point in blue tree, and 5 points in Restless that can be moved as you like. If you want to fire your gun in addition to using the Nimbus cloud damage, you can put more points into Alacrity and/or From Rest. If you want Tandava to deal more damage, you can move 4 into Do Harm. The Nimbus cloud damage that is based on your gun looks at your gun's dot chance. Every tick of the cloud has that chance to apply the dot to an enemy within it. This is why you spec Violent Tapestry and Awakening, to increase that chance. Nothing in purple tree helps except perhaps Burn Both Ends, but speccing that would mean taking a lot more damage and therefore losing Topped Off cooldown. ACTION SKILL Tandava is the best option here, for a few reasons. 1. You need to have an action skill that ends immediately so your anoints kick in and apply to the Nimbus cloud, adding dots in different elements. 2. Having the splash version of the action skill makes you much more likely to land a hit on an enemy and proc the cloud. 3. The Phasecast 250% gun damage anoint greatly increases the cloud damage, because it increases your gun's dot damage. Glamour's aggro-relief is the best option for keeping Topped Off active, which is important because of Tandava's long cooldown. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Your action skill element determines the primary element of the Nimbus cloud, and this should be selected to match the content you are facing. GEARING STRATEGIES There are many ways to gear for this build, depending on if you want to go all-in on the Nimbus dot or if you want to supplement it with a dot from your gun. Before going into the gear recommendations, you need to know how dots work. The cloud's damage over time is based on your gun's listed dot damage. The chance for it to apply this dot is the same as the listed dot chance. All guns have a dot damage and dot chance, even non-elemental and cryo guns. Non-elemental and cryo versions of a gun have dot stats proportional to the other elemental versions. For example, a fire Ion Cannon lists 295529 card damage and 201698 dmg/s for the dot. The ratio of dot to card is 201698 ÷ 295529 or 68.25%. That ratio is the same for all Ion Cannons, and in fact all Vladof launchers. 68% is also the same cryo efficiency you'll find on any cryo Vladof launcher. (The ratio varies based on manufacturer and weapon type.) That means that a non-elemental Ion Cannon, with it's higher listed card damage of 369411 multiplied by 0.6825, has a higher hidden dot damage of 252123 (with the same dot chance). Non-elemental versions of guns create stronger Nimbus cloud dots. And cryo versions are stronger than other elements (dual element Maliwans being the exception). The strongest Nimbus cloud gun is the non-elemental Ion Cannon, while the second strongest is the Masterwork Crossbow. The third is a cryo kickcharger. The Nimbus cloud damage, being based on your gun's dot damage, is also increased by your active gun damage bonuses at the time the dot takes effect. Any skills, anointments, artifact passives, and classmod passives that add to gun damage will be factored in. The cloud dot is also increased by elemental damage. The Nimbus cloud's size and area of effect is increased by splash radius boosts on class mod and artifact, though splash damage itself does not affect the cloud's dot at all (nor does it affect gun dots). The Nimbus cloud applies a primary dot based on your action skill element, regardless of the element of the gun in your hand. The cloud will also apply a dot for each active bonus element, one per element. The bonus elements are applied at 100% of the damage of the primary dot, regardless of the bonus element's strength, whether it's a 50% ASE, a 100% Urad, or a 200% Re-Volter. Therefore, the way to get the most damage out of your cloud is to diversify your action skill element and bonus elements. Similarly, if you also choose to shoot the gun you're holding in order to apply dots from that source, you get one dot per element. Therefore, in this case, match the element of the gun you're holding to your action skill element. Your gun, then, will match your Nimbus cloud element, and be diversified from your bonus elements. Never hold a radiation gun; in all situations with this build, radiation is much more effective as bonus element, and radiation guns have the lowest base damage. With all of that explained, you can now make decisions about your gear. GUNS All guns with the 250% Phasecast gun damage anointment, and all of them single projectile. You want guns with high dot damage, whether it's listed or not. For maximum Nimbus cloud damage, hold a non-elemental Ion Cannon. Vladof Launchers have a movement speed penalty, however, so perhaps the 2nd best Masterwork Crossbow would suit you, or a non-elemental Major Kong. If you'd like to shoot the elemental gun you're holding to supplement Nimbus damage, good options are the Kickcharger, Major Kong, Slow Hand, Recursion, and Storm. The Kill-o'-the-Wisp can have a very high dot damage, but it is only applied by the orbs exploding, not the lightning chains. Shoot the Wisp for chip damage and Sustainment healing. Your non-elemental and cryo guns, if shot, will still be able to apply dots from your bonus elements, but you'll be missing the full power dot from your gun. SWAP GUN Guardian Angel, with Elemental Critical Hit anointment. Swap to this if you want to accelerate the Nimbus cloud dot damage, AFTER the dot has taken effect. Once the Nimbus cloud dot has applied your main gun's dot, swapping weapons won't change the damage of that dot. HOWEVER, if you swap before the dot applies, it will likely apply based on the Guardian Angel's much, much weaker dot value. In practice, this means waiting 2-3 seconds after the cloud has appeared before swapping. The anointment here is for triggering a large status effect explosion on enemies. The best way to do this is with a grenade. Radiation is going to be your workhorse dot for the vast majority of content, so a radiation Hex is great for critting while holding the Guardian Angel. The Guardian Angel is also your FFYL gun. You will likely have at least some dots going when you are downed, so the GA will help finish off those enemies. Additionally, you can shoot the GA at the nearest enemy and Indiscriminate projectiles, which will double dip the GA damage bonus, will kill other enemies nearby. CLASS MOD The Nimbus, with as many points into Tempest as possible. The most important passive is Splash Damage Radius, as that will increase the effective area of the Nimbus cloud. Other recommended passives: weapon damage, action skill cooldown rate, shield recharge rate (for Topped Off uptime). SHIELD There are a few options here, but all of them must have ASE 50% Radiation anointment. If you want to shoot your gun, a triple-amp One-Shotter or Mana Well or 0.m are great options. An Old God will increase a specific element's damage. A Band of Sitorak is great for Topped Off, especially with a Safe Space augment, which will help clear away approaching enemies. The Mana Well offers the most damage for your cloud, although it comes with some complications. If you have any capacity, slamming will give you a shock bonus element and start draining your shield. This can be the fourth element for your cloud, assuming your action skill element and your two anointments cover fire, corrosive, and radiation. However, you need to work that slam into your attack pattern, and you will lose the cooldown from Topped Off. Tandava with Glamour has a base 42 second cooldown, so losing Topped Off is significant. ARTIFACT Again, more options. The highest damage for your cloud is offered by the Pearl of Ineffable Knowledge. The cloud damage will ramp up on the fly as your Pearl stacks accumulate. However, the Pearl does not offer Area of Effect or Cooldown passives. An Atom Balm Victory Rush is great for more effective radsplosions. The overall best, though, is a Company Man of the appropriate manufacturer with a 50% Damage roll on the top. With the Company Man, you get gun damage as well as whole suite of good passives. The most important passive, again, is Area of Effect in the 2nd or 3rd slot, which will increase area radius and the effective size of your cloud. Other recommended passives: elemental damage, action skill cooldown rate, movement speed, shield recharge rate. GRENADE And still more options, with an ASE 50% bonus element anointment that's a different element from radiation and your action skill element. There's always the general crowd control grenades such Hyperion Quasar (non sticky) and Mesmer. But those will not easily take advantage of the Elemental Critical Hits anointment on your Guardian Angel. For proccing the Ele Crit anoint, the most all around useful grenade is a radiation Recurring or MIRV-tacular Hex. If you want to Ele Crit your fire or corrosive dot, a fire or corrosive Lightspeed will work. GAMEPLAY LOOP To be absolutely clear, this build clears slowly. Patience is required. However, at least Glamour allows you to relax while you wait. How you play depends on your chosen loadout. Assuming you're going for just cloud damage, you would cast at some enemies, perhaps cast again at a different group of enemies, let the dot take hold, then switch to the Guardian Angel and throw your grenade for some Ele Crits. Then you have to wait for your cooldown. While waiting, avoid damage in order to keep Topped Off active, and stay on your Guardian Angel and perhaps throw another grenade. When Tandava is cooled down, repeat. If you're trying to get the Mana Well bonus element in the mix, cast once, slam for the Mana Well bonus element, then cast again at different enemies to spread the dots around and put more enemies under the effect of Glamour. Your cooldown will be longer this time without Topped Off. If you want to shoot your guns along with the cloud, equip an amp shield. Cast, shoot, cast, shoot. Then swap, throw grenades, and await cooldown. The caveat here is that you can't swap back to your gun and fire some more, because then you will have lost your 250% Phasecast anointment. You should also, before swapping to the Guardian Angel, space out your shots so that each shot is amped. Even further, wait until an enemy dies before shooting so that your shot gets Overkill , which will increase your gun's dot. You will need to always be mindful of all of your elements: action skill element, gun element, anointment elements, element of your grenade. The Nimbus needs all the help it can get, so forgetting something can make your gameplay more painful than it needs to be. Once you're comfortable aiming your Casts and avoiding damage, you can switch to base Phasecast or Deliverance, use Allure, and equip the Band of Sitorak for a much faster action skill cooldown. NOTES - RAID BOSSING It's possible for the Nimbus cloud to take out a raid boss if you only help it along with Guardian Angel and Elemental Crits. However, it's slow going. The recommended raid bossing setup is to use the gun dot from something like the Kickcharger. Have your elements diversified like normal, equip an amp shield, equip a Toboggan, hopefully have Overkill, and fire a shot after Phasecasting with all of those bonuses applied. If the shot applied a dot, then swap to the Guardian Angel and start Ele Critting. NOTES - BONUS LOADOUT For the actual highest damage cloud dot, you can dot yourself with a low level Sellout and use an Elemental Projector Victory Rush. Gameplay loop would be as follows: shoot your foot with Sellout, swap to non-elemental Ion Cannon, cast at enemy, slam for Mana Well shock, cast again, swap and shoot your foot again, swap over to Guardian Angel and start Ele Critting. This is usually more work than it's worth, and you lose Topped Off. This would be a way to take out a tough boss with just the Nimbus cloud, though.

The hardest hitting true melee build I've ever made. This one is for the purists. Emerald Swan SYNOPSIS Formerly the hardest hitting true melee build I've ever made (since eclipsed by Sulphur Swan and then Steel Swan ). This one is for the purists. INTRO Emerald Swan, along with Sapphire Swan and Ruby Swan , is one of my "jewels" of true melee builds. This one is the "green jewel", designated as such because it uses a green action skill, Phaseslam. This was my magnum opus, so to speak, and the final inspiration to make this site. I say "was" because Steel Swan, made long after this build, is probably my greatest true melee build. I've always wanted to make a true melee build that plays like they did when the game launched: using Phaseslam, the Brawler Ward shield, and speccing down to Blitz. Back then, Phaseslam didn't even kill things most of the time - it was all about punching hard, and Phaseslam only facilitated that. There weren't overpowered melee items like the Stinger and the Fish Slap, and we don't rely on those here. Beware: this principled true melee style will make apparent just how frustrating true melee can be to play , especially in places like the True Maliwan Takedown. You must be very deft with your movement and decision making. This build is very challenging, but also very rewarding. Blitz chaining might be the coolest thing in this game. There are items and skills available to make life easier, even though the build isn't meant for them. Do not feel ashamed of using them. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES There are no wasted skill points here - everything about this spec is important and has a use. ACTION SKILL Phaseslam. Optionally, to make harder areas or bosses easier, you can use a Phaseflare variant. I would recommend Light Fantastic or Shooting Star. When you dot yourself (see "Swap Gun" below), Light Fantastic will "attach" to you, which is quite convenient, if a bit weird looking. Ties That Bind is available, but that strays too far from the principle of the build. But Phaseslam is recommended in most cases because of ease of stacking Samsara and keeping uptime on Find Your Center and your Terror anointments. It will occasionally kill some enemies; more if you decide to swap to the Guardian Angel when slamming. Glamour is an optional augment, if you need some aggro relief at the expense of a longer cooldown. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Fire, shock, or corrosive depending on the content you are facing. Do not choose cryo. PUNCHING GUN Psycho Stabber with Terror Cryo anointment. The cryo will occasionally freeze some enemies, but at all times it is a great damage boost. SWAP GUN Low level Sellout pistol. Anointment not necessary. This gun is for shooting your foot to place a dot on yourself in order to proc the Elemental Projector artifact, giving you a huge increase to elemental damage. You only need to shoot once and then swap back to the Psycho Stabber. Each of the three projectiles from the Sellout has a 72% chance to dot you, so it's basically guaranteed. When you swap back to the Psycho Stabber with Terror Cryo, that cryo bonus element will start "ticking" on the dot you placed on yourself. It won't actually cryo you - it's sort of a hidden damage instance. But that bonus element ticking on a self-dot will stack Burn Both Ends for you, giving you even more elemental damage. Otherwise, self-damage and self-dots would not stack BBE. Since you can use an Ascetic class mod with up to +5 in Burn Both Ends, that combined with Tempest and the Elemental Projector means this build gets up to +309% increased elemental damage! See the "Notes - Low Level Sellout" section below for obtaining the lowest level Sellout possible. Protip: turn dialog volume all the way down if you do not wish to hear Amara screaming from self-dots all of the time. ALTERNATIVE PUNCHING GUN Ionic Disruptor with Terror Cryo anointment. Swapping to this gun and punching with it will convert your punch to shock damage, even if you have it set to a different element via Illuminated Fist. This is convenient for punching an immune Maliwan Heavy, as opposed to switching your action skill element. This can also be a primary punching gun if you choose shock as your action skill element. The shock dot that this gun leaves on enemies will heal you through Sustainment. PHASESLAM / PUNCHING GUN Guardian Angel with Terror Cryo anointment. Swap to this after the Sellout but before the Stabber if you want Phaseslam to kill things more reliably. When your action skill element is set to shock, this is also a great punching gun for mobbing, as your Static Charge chains will become very powerful. But beware, holding this also increases the strength of your self-dot by 6x. You can also shoot this gun at enemies between punches, which, if you land the shot, has 4 possible effects: 1. You can stun them by landing a crit. 2. You can knock them back with high-pellet-count shotgun physics. 3. You get lifesteal to keep yourself alive. 4. You can build up a lot of Groundbreaker and even kill nearby enemies - the Guardian Angel does some wild stuff with Indisciminate. FFYL / FLYING ENEMY GUN Face Puncher or Blade Fury, with Consecutive Hits anointment. Blade Fury can take out multiple flying enemies at once with Indiscriminate, making life a bit easier. As punch-themed as this build is, these guns are still necessary to get rid of things out of reach and for some bosses. CLASS MOD Ascetic (spelled incorrectly on the item card by Gearbox as "Acsetic") class mod with as many points into Burn Both Ends as possible. This purple class mod can only drop with 1 passive but that's fine. Recommended passives: melee damage, splash damage, splash damage radius, action skill cooldown rate, reload speed. Alternatively, until you can get a nice Ascetic, you can use a Muse class mod with 1 point in Illuminated Fist and as many points into Laid Bare as possible. Same recommended passives as above. SHIELD Brawler Ward with ASE Apply Terror anointment. A low level one is recommended, but not necessary. There are a couple other fun options: the Messy Breakup and the Shooting Star (if you use the Shooting Star Fix Mod ). Make sure to match the element of these shields to your action skill element (which means don't use Messy Breakup if you're using fire action skill element, because it only comes in shock or corrosive). Same ASE Apply Terror anointment. The Re-Volter will also be very strong, even though it strays from the OG Mayhem 3 vibes. ARTIFACT Elemental Projector Static Charge. The Elemental Projector will be procced by your Sellout pistol, granting you lots of damage. The Static Charge is not only a nice bonus element for your punches, but the chains will be very strong. The chains will double dip your massive elemental damage stat, and get the Terror Cryo bonus element on top of that. They will kill or freeze enemies and also give you lots of Groundbreaker damage for your punches. An Unleash the Dragon artifact works well with this build, even though the build isn't meant for it. That's Amber Swan's specialty. GRENADE Mesmer, It's Piss, or Hyperion Quasar (non sticky) with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. These are great utility grenades. You can use a Fish Slap if you want to have an easier time with bosses. GAMEPLAY LOOP Set your Sellout pistol to corrosive. This will do less damage to your health bar. You don't need to worry about element matching for Elemental Projector and Illuminated Fist - Infusion will make sure that you're always dotted with your action skill element. Swap to the Psycho Stabber or Guardian Angel and use your Phaseslam. Then start punching with the Stabber. Every several seconds, swap back to the Sellout to keep yourself dotted. Repeat, dotting yourself again before Phaseslamming again. This might seem like a lot of swapping that you don't have time for, but Amara has tons of swap speed. Even though you have a Brawler Ward that you want depleted, keep your Shield Reboot Guardian Rank perk enabled, so when you kill an enemy it begins recharging. It will deplete again immediately because you have dotted yourself. This re-depletion-upon-kill keeps Trust In Yourself stacked, giving you lots of swap speed. In dangerous places like the Maliwan Takedown or Slaughtershaft, you may find that enemies down you before you can reach them. You either need to dodge better or use one of the extra tools available to you: Quasar, Mesmer, Fish Slap, Face Puncher, Blade Fury. This is the pain of the true melee build. But you will have lots of movement speed, and you should use it your advantage. A good general tactic is to punch and then immediately back off a little bit and throw some lateral movement around before coming back in for another punch. This throws off the aim of distant enemies. You can also circle around an enemy bit by bit as you punch, forcing them to turn and delaying their attack. Shooting Star (action skill) and Light Fantastic are always there for you, even if they are a bit too strong and take away from the pure punching nature of this build. Blitz, when it works, is extremely useful for hitting flying enemies or enemies perched on top of boxes/terrain. NOTES - LOW LEVEL SELLOUT A lower level Sellout means less chance of being downed by your own self-dot. Normally, completing the Sellout mission nets you a level 26 unanointed Sellout. There's a few ways to get an even lower one. First, before completing the mission, have a friend join you in the Ambermire with a fresh level 1 character. When you complete the quest, they will receive a level 8 unanointed Sellout in the mail. Second, after completing the mission, the Sellout appears as a mission reward in Earl's Vendor on Sanctuary. Have a friend join you with a level 10 character and shop the item from the machine for you. Level 10 is the lowest level it will appear for them. Third, after completing the mission and receiving your level 26 Sellout, discard it and shop for the item in Earl's Vendor yourself, where it will be your level. You can reasonably get one at level 21, if you go through the story up until that point killing as few enemies as possible.

Phasecast and gun-based cryo build that creates all sorts of chaos. Oblivion Amara SYNOPSIS Phasecast and gun-based cryo build that creates all sorts of chaos. INTRO Oblivion Amara is one of the two builds I originally made in 2020 after the purple tree came out, along with its sister build Fission Amara. Here it is updated for level 72, and it's very strong. This is a cryo gun and Phasecast build, and has the potential to create some very fun, very destructive shenanigans. Sometimes you might find yourself suddenly wondering where your nearby enemies went and how they died. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE ACTION SKILL Tandava for general usage, Reverberation for bossing, with the special Reverberation technique. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Always cryo, with a few exceptions. You can stick with cryo vs many armor bars, but you much switch to corrosive vs Wotan. You can also switch to better match harder content, such as fire vs Guardian Takedown creatures and shock vs Guardian Takedown Guardians. Your action skill element greatly affects your guns' power, as that is the element Unweave The Rainbow procs as. PHASECASTING GUN Guardian Angel, with either the Killstack or 200% Astral Projection anointment. Killstack is the only anointment that is attached to the player, not the gun, so if you get some Tandava/Reverberation kills while holding a Killstack Guardian Angel, that damage and reload speed will transfer when you swap back to your shooting gun. 200% Astral Projection is great for Reverberation vs bosses. SHOOTING GUNS Anything cryo and splash. Even though you can change your action skill element as mentioned above, do not deviate from cryo weapons (exception: "Notes - Frozen Heart" below) My favorites: Beacon, Recursion, Kaoson, Sand Hawk, Flipper, Plaguebearer, Anarchy, Trevonator. The reason we want to stick with cryo is because shooting and freezing enemies and then hitting them with Unweave The Rainbow is a very strong mobbing strategy, especially when coupled with radsplosions and Free The Soul. The anointment varies based on your preferred playstyle. If you want to swap to the Guardian Angel for your casts, put Consecutive hits or 150/90 on your guns. If you don't want to swap, you can put 250% Phasecast on your guns to get more gun damage. Swapping is not necessary; Tandava won't kill as often without the Guardian Angel, but it will definitely freeze enemies, allowing you to kill them easily with the aid of Unweave. Reverb will still kill if you aim it correctly. FFYL GUN My favorite FFYL strategy is to use my cryo gun to freeze a nearby enemy and get up when Unweave finishes them off. But if you're using a less powerful gun for your shooting, it may not be strong enough to freeze, so carrying something like a Consecutive Hits Free Radical or Plasma Coil may be wise. CLASS MOD Phasezerker, with points into Clarity. This class mod will allow you to automatically stack Rush and Do Harm, leading to more powerful Phasecasts and other action skill effects such as Unweave The Rainbow, Free The Soul, and Remnant. Further, it increases your cooldown and gun damage. Because of the way the Phasezerker works, you should generally cast Tandava or Reverb twice in a row for maximum Do Harm and maximum damage. Recommended passives: weapon damage, action skill cooldown rate, action skill damage, splash damage, splash damage radius, weapon crit damage, weapon type damage. SHIELD There are a few options, but the most important one is the Void Rift, with Action Skill Start anointment. It's the shield that was used for the original version of this build, and it both synergizes so well and helps create so much chaos. Upon break, it will suck nearby enemies towards you (and barrels - watch out) and then release a strong cryo nova. Further, when enemies shoot you and damage it, it responds by sending homing cryo projectiles back at them. Both of these types of damage are cryo splash, further helping us freeze things and finish them off with Unweave The Rainbow. Other options: Frozen Heart, cryo Stinger, Band of Sitorak, Plus Ultra. The Frozen Heart, with Action Skill Start anointment, is easy-mode for freezing enemies. Just cast and then shoot at whatever blocks of snow are laying around you. Unweave will take care of the rest. The cryo Stinger, with Action Skill Start anointment, is just a powerful punch in nova form. The Band of Sitorak or Plus Ultra, with ASE 50% bonus element anointment, is for when you don't want to swap to the Guardian Angel to cast. These shields provide great Topped Off uptime, especially the Band of Sitorak, which then leads to great 250% Phasecast uptime on your guns. The Band of Sitorak is especially fun with a Safe Space augment, able to send basically any enemy ragdolling. The Plus Ultra is a little slower to recharge than the Sitorak, but it doubles your health for better defense. ARTIFACT Ice Breaker Otto Idol. The most important passive is Area of Effect in the 2nd or 3rd slot, which will also increase area damage radius. Other recommended passives: action skill cooldown rate, movespeed, cryo damage, cryo efficiency, weapon type damage. There are a few other options for artifact prefixes: Snowdrift for moving around a boss arena. Last Stand for more survivability. Ice Spiker for another form of attack and another way to proc Samsara. GRENADE Unfortunately I have to recommend a Fish Slap, not in cryo, in order to deal with cryo immune Maliwan Heavies. Shock or radiation or fire, with an ASE 50% radiation bonus element for radsplosions. There's always the option to Groundbreaker an immune heavy with damage done to other enemies, but sometimes the timing for that can be too tight. If you don't have to worry about immunities, It's Piss or Hyperion Quasar (non sticky) or Mesmer, with ASE 50% radiation bonus element. Anything utility oriented like these works just fine. GAMEPLAY LOOP Figure out if you want to be swapping for your casts or not, and choose your weapon anoint and shield accordingly. Then you cast, you shoot, you destroy. If you're using the Void Rift and a Beacon, the OG loadout, there will be tons of things flying around, freezing, and exploding. Sometimes you have to play a game of "Are any of these blocks of ice still alive?". NOTES - FROZEN HEART An exception to using cryo-only guns is if you want to only freeze with the Frozen Heart, and use splash guns of other elements. With this setup, I would also recommend not swapping for Phasecasting, and use the 250% Phasecast anoint on your guns to keep their power up between freezes. You also would not need to use the Ice Breaker artifact. NOTES - RAID BOSSES Builds such as this have an inherent way to take out most raid bosses by Reverbing or Tandava-ing a mob and letting either Remnant hit the boss or letting it hit another mob and then you Groundbreaker the boss. Some of the weaker raid bosses can be Reverb'd directly.

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.