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A crazy, dangerous, slamming, casting, grasping, no captones, dotting-yourself build that uses any decent gun. Queen Midas SYNOPSIS A crazy, dangerous, slamming, casting, grasping, no captones, dotting-yourself build that uses any decent gun. INTRO The myth of King Midas was that anything he touched turned to gold. It was both a blessing and a curse. Queen Midas, a Golden Rule gun build, can turn almost any gun into gold. But it's also a curse, because it's a very risky playstyle. This build is in the running for highest skill level required to play. It is not for the faint of heart or the slow of hands. It will punish you. But it will also reward you with, for example, using the Maggie in True Maliwan Takedown. And a literal 1 second Ties That Bind cooldown. You dot yourself in this build, and this enables many interactions, but this style of play is not for everyone. You have been warned. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES I wish I had more points. I want to max Do Harm and Wrath and From Rest and Anima and Infusion and Clarity and Unweave the Rainbow. Alas, compromises must be made to get our important skills: 3/3 Samsara, Remnant, Sustainment, and 5/5 Burn Both Ends. ACTION SKILL Whatever action skill pairs well with these four anointments: Killstack & Consec Hits (Ties That Bind), 250 Phasecast (Tandava), and 300 Phaseslam (Phaseslam). Tandava is your choice when using the 250 Phasecast anointment, because it can splash multiple enemies with Laid Bare. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever element is suited to the content you're facing, except for cryo. Because of our points into Infusion, when you shoot your foot with the Sellout to dot yourself, you will cryo yourself and get slowed. The two cryo skills, Go With The Flow and Unweave The Rainbow, are there if you choose to use cryo guns. DOTTING GUN A low level Sellout. You can zip through the story and get to the Sellout mission on Eden 6, killing as few enemies as possible, at about level 21. The Sellout mission reward will get sent to you at level 26, but then it will be available in Earl's Vendor on Sanctuary at your current level. The anointment doesn't matter. The lower the level, the better, and yes this matters; because of your great damage formula, you can down yourself with the Sellout. You can get one in the vendor as low as level 10, if you have a level 10 friend that is willing to come and shop the vendor for you after you've completed the quest. Anyway, this is the gun you shoot your feet with before swapping to whatever gun you're attacking with. More on this in the Gameplay Loop section below. Protip: turn dialog volume all the way down if you do not wish to hear Amara screaming from self-dots all of the time. ATTACKING GUNS Just about anything. There are plenty of guns that are hopeless, but some old fan-favorites can be put to good use if you have a 250 Phasecast or 300 Phaseslam anointment on them: Maggie, Companion, Hellshock, etc. I encourage you to experiment. One caveat: because the self-dots will shake your screen, avoid any gun you need to be precise with. FFYL GUN Just in case you're trying some off-meta guns that won't help you in FFYL (and you WILL go down with this build), it would be wise to always carry a Free Radical or Plasma Coil or similar. CLASS MOD Golden Rule, preferably with points into Laid Bare first, Mindfulness second. Recommended passives: action skill cooldown rate, splash damage, splash damage radius, weapon damage, weapon type damage, weapon critical damage, magazine size, manufacturer critical hit damage. The Golden Rule stacks a cooldown rate increase whenever you take damage, and this includes self damage and even self applied dot damage. So when you shoot your feet with the Sellout and dot yourself with multiple elements, you can loop your action skills fairly quickly, assuring yourself constant uptime on whatever anointment you're rocking. SHIELD Re-Volter with an ASE 50% bonus element. Not the Action Skill Start anointment, although you can use that if you like. But I recommend the ASE 50% because the Re-Volter will proc naturally as soon as you deplete it through your own self-dots. And then it will continue to proc when you kill enemies via the Shield Reboot Guardian Rank perk. Kill an enemy, and it will immediately begin recharging and deplete again due to your dots, keeping the effect active. If the self-dots are just too much, you can use an Asclepius to reduce their strength, although you will lose a lot of damage and fire rate. Stick to strong weapons if you're doing this. ARTIFACT Pearl of Ineffable Knowledge, preferably with magazine size, fire rate, or reload speed passives. GRENADE Mesmer or Hyperion Quasar with ASE 50% bonus element, both great utility grenades. GAMEPLAY LOOP First, set your Sellout element (between fire and corrosive) to a different element than your action skill element. Why? Because if your action skill element is, say, fire, and your Sellout is also fire, when you shoot at your feet you'll only get a fire dot. But if you changed the Sellout to corrosive, you'll get both corrosive and fire dots, the first from the gun and the second from fire Infusion on the gun. That's two dots, doubling the effectiveness of the Golden Rule's cooldown. When your ASE 50% anoints are procced, and your Re-Volter is procced, that's more dots. The Sellout WILL dot you within a shot or two, because it fires three projectiles, each with a base 72% status effect chance, which gets further boosted by Violent Tapestry. So don't spam it at your feet. Anyway, start off your encounters by firing a shot or two at your feet. Then swap to your main gun, activate your action skill, and shoot away. As soon as your cooldown is finished or just about finished, swap back to the Sellout to shoot once at your feet, and then again swap back to your main gun, activate action skill, and go to town. That's your basic gameplay loop. Besides enabling the Golden Rule's cooldown effect and reproccing the Re-Volter in conjunction with Shield Reboot, dotting yourself has two other effects. First, Trust In Yourself will get procced over and over again, just like the Re-Volter, keeping your weapon swap speed up and enabling this basic gameplay loop of constant swapping. Second, it will stack Burn Both Ends. BBE does not normally stack on self damage or self dots, but if you have a bonus element active, which you will, it will stack on those instances of self damage. This gives you a constant 75% elemental damage that also applies to non-elemental attacks, as long as you're dotted. The self-dot with this build is sometimes uncomfortably strong. At times, it will seem like you're playing a Urad build, because an enemy can health gate you and then the self-dot takes care of the rest. Just be ready for it. NOTES - RE-VOLTER A slightly deeper dive is required here if you're not using the Action Skill Start anointment on your Re-Volter. Because you're reproccing it by killing enemies and triggering Shield Reboot, you need to kill enemies every 15 seconds to keep the Re-Volter going. It's essentially a kill skill. So be careful if, for example, you're plowing through the Wotan fight and phasing him before he can spawn adds; eventually, your Re-Volter will wear off. As long as there are adds around, though, Indiscriminate will reproc it for you. NOTES - RAID BOSSING This build is pretty much like other standard Phasezeker or Spiritual Driver gun builds when it comes to raid bossing. Use strong weapons (like the Free Radical) and strong anointments, such as 250% Phasecast or 300% Phaseslam. The advantage this has is you don't need to worry about your cooldown. And, well, it's extra cool because it's a Golden Rule build.

Tips for understanding what you're up against when playing a true melee Amara build at endgame. True Melee True melee, the actual punching of enemies, is both the most rewarding playstyle and the most frustrating playstyle, in my opinion. There are several builds on this site focused on true melee. You must be aware of its limitations, so that you can expect them and do your best to work around them. PROTIPS Before diving into all the ways true melee challenges you, a few practical tips: If you're using keyboard and mouse, rebind your melee key to something on your mouse hand. I have mine set to middle mouse button (pushing the scroll wheel down, which only really works with a scroll wheel that has stops - not a free-scrolling one). The default keybind of 'V' requires you to take your index finger off of WASD, your movement keys. (I don't know how melee works on a controller.) Movement and mobility are absolutely crucial to suriving the hardest content with a true melee build. For example, greatly increased movement speed is a key point of survivability in my Urad true melee build . True melee is "brain-on gameplay". Don't just hold forward and start trying to punch enemies. Unless you have a rare high-survivability true melee build , you should only be engaging enemies you know you're going to kill quickly. Or if you can't, you must have a backup plan or plan for retreat. You must, in general, learn how enemies move and attack. You must often dodge attacks (again, increased movement speed helps a ton). You must simultaneously pay attention to the minimap and the enemies within your field of view. You must know what kind of attack you can use to likely stagger an enemy. You must use cover often and wisely. You must know when to give in and swap to your Face Puncher or throw a Fish. All of these things you learn through playing and paying attention. Take a true melee build into the True Maliwan Takedown Bridge, while trying to kill as many enemies with punching as possible. You'll quickly learn how high the skill ceiling in this game can get. One specific tip I've learned is circling an enemy. Let's say you have a dangerous enemy to deal with, like a Badass Maliwan Trooper. If you punch, then rotate around them a bit to punch their side, then keep rotating and punching, each move you make forces the Trooper to spend time turning toward you. He will attempt to melee, but by then you've rotated out of the way. (Again, movement speed.) This is one way to take no damage from an otherwise very dangerous enemy. This of course assumes no other enemies are attacking you and forcing you to break away. Ok, now time for the despair... ZERO RANGE True melee has basically zero range, which presents many problems. The obvious one is flying enemies, such as Death Spheres or Seras. many of which actively avoid your approach, even if you could reach them with Find Your Center or Blitz. Even something simple as an enemy jumping on a box can mean they are unreachable, and while you are trying to get to them you get downed. It's for these reasons that grenades and guns like the Face Puncher and Blade Fury exist. KNOCKBACK There are certain enemies that will relentlessly knock you back while you are attempting to punch them. This is most common in the Guardian Takedown. Additionally, most of those enemies in the takedown are not stunned by your melee attacks. So they remain grounded and attacking you, while also knocking you away, making you have to wait to land on your feet and close the gap again. DEATH SKULLS True melee builds massively benefit from the Speed Demon modifier on Mayhem 10. However, being a true melee build removes the ability to use one of the very hard modifiers, Post Mortem. The death skulls that spawn from a killed enemy have hitboxes instantly, and a punch that kills an enemy will also send you directly into that spawning skull, downing you every time. BODY & MIND Body & Mind is a useful damage increase for punching, but its area-of-effect nature will also detonate barrels nearby, or add elemental damage to the water you are standing in, damaging you. WOTAN The most loved boss of Borderlands 3, Wotan, cannot be true melee'd, at least not without huge risk. His deterrence field healthgates you when you get close. TELEPORTATION There is a risk of teleportation when you attempt punching an enemy. This is especially risky in the Guardian Takedown. See below: There is no rhyme or reason to this teleportation, at least not that I've found. You can be teleported forward, to the side, a short distance, a medium distance, out into midair over a cliff, whatever. It's rare, but it happens. GRASPED ENEMIES Thankfully, Find Your Center allows for meleeing of grasped and elevated enemies. However, it is not made easy. To consistently punch a grasped enemy, you need to move backwards a little bit after each punch, as demonstrated below:

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

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

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

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.

Get in touch with Stone_Swan about Amara builds. Questions or Comments? There's a lot of info on this site. I try my best to explain things thoroughly, but if something isn't clear, feel free to reach out. Plus if you have any build or site feedback, any at all, I'd love to hear it! This site has gotten hundreds of thousands of visits since I've created it, and I've gotten very little specific feedback. Catch me live streaming (albeit infrequently) on Twitch at: twitch.tv/stone_swan Join my Discord server and ask a question in the bl3-general channel . I or someone else in the community will do our best to answer.

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.

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.

A damaging aura-based slam build, with some action skill damage and Terror Reflect supplements. Gone Fission Amara SYNOPSIS A damaging aura-based slam build, with some action skill damage and Terror Reflect supplements. INTRO The Mind Melt is the radiation slam artifact, and while it's not the strongest item by itself, it encourages a rather fun, oddball playstyle. With the Mind Melt, after you slam, you carry around a damaging radiation aura for several seconds. The Ember's Blaze shield also creates a damaging aura. The Terror Reflect anointment, when holding a Guardian Angel, and especially with bonus elements, can make enemies kill themselves. The combination of these three things allows you to basically just stand there and clear content. Almost as if you're "out to lunch" or "gone fishin'". "Don't mind me, I'm just melt ing things." GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Speccing Sustaintment allows both your damaging auras and your reflected projectiles to heal you. Coupled with your class mod (Stone), this build is quite the tank. You have a decent amount of action skill damage to boost Phaseslam, Reverberation, Body & Mind, and Free The Soul. There's some cryo synergies in there as well, because you'll be using the Terro r Cryo anointment on your weapons. ACTION SKILL Phaseslam. Reverberation for bosses. Phaseslam's wide radius will build up a ton of groundbreaker damage to be released on your next slam. And whatever it doesn't kill, it will freeze if you're attuned to cryo. Reverbation, with a particular technique , can chunk boss health bars. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Cryo, to synergize with Go With The Flow, Free The Soul, and Unweave The Rainbow in purple tree. Unweave procs with splash damage (and melee damage) dealt to frozen enemies; Phaseslam and your damaging auras are splash damage. Switch to corrosive for Wotan, fire for Guardian Takedown creatures, and shock for Guardian Takedown guardians. Everything else: remain on cryo. MAIN GUN 1 Guardian Angel with Terror Cryo anointment. Terror Cryo will get added to all of your damage, even reflected projectiles. It will help freeze enemies for the cryo-related skills in purple tree. Guardian Angel, with Indicriminate, can be shot at enemies in a pinch to build up Groundbreaker. MAIN GUN 2 Face Puncher with Melee Apply Terror anointment. Swap frequently to this gun and shoot at enemies to make sure you have max (3) terror stacks. Body & Mind will also make this gun pretty powerful, if you want to supplement your main damage before swapping back to the Guardian Angel. Always perform your other attacks, action skill and slam, with the Guardian Angel in hand. OPTIONAL GUN Zheitsev's Eruption (pre-overheated) for debuffing. This can be swapped to and away from to add quite a bit of damage from debuffing. Anointment doesn't matter much, although Terror Health Regen will increase your survivability while you have it out. FFYL GUN Something typical, like a Free Radical or Ember's Purge with Consecutive Hits anointment. CLASS MOD Stone, with heavy preference for a splash damage radius passive. That radius increase is pretty crucial, because all of your attacks rely on it. Skill rolls aren't as important, but lean toward Do Harm and Awakening. Awakening not only boosts the effectiveness of both Do Harm (for damage) and Violent Tapestry (for freezing), but also the effectiveness of the damage reduction on the class mod itself. Other acceptable passives: action skill damage, action skill cooldown rate, splash damage. SHIELD Ember's Blaze, with the Terror Reflect anointment. This shield and anointment account for a lot of your standing still damage and subsequent healing through Sustainment. ARTIFACT Mind Melt, with heavy preference for an Area of Effect passive in the second or third slot, which also increases splash radius. The second half of the artifact can be a few things: Victory Rush, Safeguard, Cosmic Crater, even Pull Out Method. Pick whatever suits you or sounds fun. Other acceptable passives: radiation damage, incendiary damage, action skill cooldown rate, cryo damage, cryo efficiency, movement speed, corrosive damage. GRENADE Anything utility oriented, with the Terror Damage And Fire Rate anointment. Hyperion Quasar (not sticky), Mesmer, It's Piss. GAMEPLAY LOOP When entering a fight, start off with a couple Face Puncher shots to build Terror stacks, then Phaseslam, then start ground slamming with reckless abandon. After that, the order you do things in doesn't really matter. Just don't forget to keep Terror stacks up. For boss fights, switch to Reverberation, and you can use that plus Body & Mind to take them out, while also ground slamming to deliver groundbreaker and take out adds. NOTES - BARRELS & WATER Slam builds are especially vulnerable to barrels and water. Be careful out there and try to clear barrels before approaching them. Avoid water and puddles at all costs. NOTES - HEMOVOROUS You might think a build based on a relatively weak slam effect wouldn't do much to Hemo, but you'd be wrong. While Hemo is kind of a hitbox mess, there's a mechanic in the fight we can take advantage of. The eggs and pods that both Hemo and Vermi launch at you are destroyed very easily by your auras and slams, dealing damage directly to Hemo and building up tons of groundbreaker to be released when you slam near them. Also, the eggs/pods are automatic lifesteal, as Ember's Blaze kills them on approach, and failing that, automatic second winds. Add some Phaseslam into the mix and baby you've got a stew going. This is one of the few builds you can take to Hemo and just go wild with slamming.

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.

A thematic Blade Fury build. Ragebow SYNOPSIS A thematic Blade Fury build. INTRO The goal for this build is to deal every type and element of damage possible for Amara. Literally, there are damage types in this game, and it's the reason why, for example, grenade damage doesn't increase the damage of the Fish Slap. Despite the adherence to this theme, this build is not weak at all. It's a simple, set-it-and-forget-it, point-and-shoot build. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES It's kind of all over the place, but this build could make use of so many skills that choices had to be made, and some things had to be left out. Burn Both Ends normally does not proc on self-damage or self-dots. However, if you have an active bonus element while self-dotted, that bonus element "ticking on top of" your dot (it doesn't actually deal extra damage to you, but it's there) will stack Burn Both Ends for you. That way, you don't need to always be taking damage to benefit from Burn Both Ends. This build self-dots through the Infernal Wish, and one of your bonus element anointments will almost always be active. It's also notable that Body & Mind is action skill damage, along with being splash damage. These are your first two damage types. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. Optionally Phasecast for using an appropriately anointed Blade Fury. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Cryo. This is element #1. GUNS Blade Fury, single projectile, with Consecutive Hits, Killstack, and/or 250% Phasecast gun damage anointments. The Blade Fury deals both gun (or "projectile") damage and melee damage, giving you damage types 3 and 4. It is also non-elemental: "element" #2. CLASS MOD Muse, with as many points into Laid Bare as possible, and hopefully also an Illuminated Fist point. The Muse orb is grenade damage, believe it or not. Damage type #5. Recommended passives: grenade damage, action skill cooldown rate, melee damage, weapon damage, assault rifle damage, mag size. SHIELD Infernal Wish, with ASE 50% Incendiary bonus element anointment. These ASE 50% anointments are technically "bullet damage", and yes, that's a thing in the code, separate from the damage type that comes from your gun. Damage type 6, and element 3. ARTIFACT Corrosive Stone Static Charge. Elements 4 and 5. Note that the corrosive here, the fire on your shield anoint, and your cryo action skill element all can be swapped around. But in order to keep the theme of the build, they all must be separate elements. Shock is always taken care of by the static charge. Recommended passives: assault rifle damage, area of effect damage, action skill cooldown rate, melee damage, elemental damage. GRENADE Anything you like, with an ASE 50% Radiation bonus element. Element #6. Fish Slap does decent work. If you want to make things really interesting, a Moxxi's Bouncing Pair could be put to use. It will regen your Infernal Wish if it damages shielded enemies. However, the explosions are huge, and it'll likely kill you. GAMEPLAY LOOP Activate your action skill and start shooting. Beware that the Infernal Wish dot will grow in strength as you play. Just don't kill the last enemy in the room with a strong dot on yourself. Remember that going down resets the Wish, so you can always just let it happen before killing that last enemy. Don't be afraid of FFYL; the Blade Fury is very strong. Or if there's no enemies left and you're about to burn alive, look around for health vials. For bossing, a 250% Phasecast gun damage anointed Blade Fury is strongly recommended. Consecutive Hits is your reliable mainstay. Killstack is for less dangerous areas, as going into FFYL will make you lose Killstacks. Gun damage, bullet damage, grenade damage, action skill damage, melee damage, splash damage, non-elemental, fire, shock, corrosive, rad, and cryo. All in one very simple package.