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.

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

Phasecast and gun-based Urad build that creates chaos through cryo and radiation. Fission Amara SYNOPSIS Phasecast and gun-based Urad build that creates chaos through cryo and radiation. INTRO Fission Amara is one of the two builds I originally made in 2020 after the purple tree came out, along with its sister build Oblivion Amara. Here it is updated for level 72, and it's very strong. This is a Deathless Urad build, although it has significant defensive capabilities and can be played very safely at the expense of a little damage. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE ACTION SKILL Tandava for general usage, Reverberation for bossing, with the special Reverberation technique. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Always cryo, except against Wotan, where you switch to corrosive. PHASECASTING GUN Guardian Angel, with the Urad anointment. SHOOTING GUNS Anything cryo and splash, with the Urad anointment. My favorites: Beacon, Kaoson, Boogeyman, Sand Hawk, Flipper, Anarchy, Insider, Soulrender, Plaguebearer, Backburner. FFYL GUN If you're using a less powerful gun for your shooting, it may not be strong enough to get you back up from FFYL, so carrying something like a Urad Free Radical or Plasma Coil may be wise. CLASS MOD Stone or Phasezerker. For the Stone, look for points into Awakening and Do Harm. Awakening boosts the effectiveness of the damage reduction that Stone grants, and allows you to take lots more damage as a Deathless build. Do Harm boosts your action skill damage, which makes lots of your attacks more effective: Unweave The Rainbow, Free The Soul, Remnant, Tandava, Reverberation. For the Phasezerker, look for points into Conflux. The other two skills don't help. Recommended passives: weapon damage, action skill cooldown rate, action skill damage, splash damage, splash damage radius, weapon crit damage, weapon type damage. SHIELD Re-Volter with Action Skill Start anointment or Beskar with a Reflect part with an ASE 50% bonus element anointment. For the Re-Volter, ideal parts are triple Turtle, with triple Absorb being next best. For the Beskar, the Reflect part is essential. The reflect ability on legendary shields still lets you take damage when a projectile is reflected. The Reflect part that appears on purple shields and some legendaries negates damage when the reflect chance rolls. When the Beskar rolls with a Reflect part, and you enter FFYL once and get a second wind, the Beskar's legendary reflect ability "breaks" and it takes on the properties of the Reflect part. Because the Beskar has a 100% reflect chance, after that point, it will reflect 100% of projectiles without letting them damage you. This does not negate all damage, however; indirect splash can still damage you, and if a projectile dots you, you will take that dot damage. ARTIFACT Ice Breaker Deathless. 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, radiation damage, weapon type damage. For bosses, you can swap out to Snowdrift Deathless, which makes avoiding damage during the Wotan fight much easier, and makes navigating the Anathema fight much simpler. GRENADE It's Piss or Hyperion Quasar (non sticky) or Mesmer, with ASE 50% bonus element. Anything utility oriented like these works just fine. GAMEPLAY LOOP Choose your loadout first; you have two classmods and two shields to choose from. Stone will be slightly stronger action skill effects and great defense, while Phasezerker will be slightly better cooldown and better gun damage. Re-Volter will increase DPS massively, while a Reflect Beskar will be massive defense. In an area like the Guardian Takedown where it's relatively easy to avoid damage, you can put on the Phasezerker and Re-Volter. On the Maliwan Takedown bridge where it's relatively hard to survive as a Deathless build, you can put on the Stone and Beskar and be basically indestructible. My overall favorite is Stone + Re-Volter. Other than that, you cast, you shoot, you destroy. NOTES - RAID BOSSES Builds such as this have an inherent way to take out most raid bosses by Reverbing 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 Reverbed directly.

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.

An easy-going aggro-relieving amp-focused build made for snipers and launchers. Hidden Tiger SYNOPSIS An easy-going aggro-relieving amp-focused build made for snipers and launchers. INTRO A deep green tree gun build in order to pick up the Glamour augment. Glamour, when paired with Ties That Bind, will basically de-aggro the whole battlefield, and any enemies that aren't turned into allies will instead target other enemies. Free to approach the fight without any interference, you can carefully apply a few very strong damage buffs: amp shields, Toboggan, and Overkill. While this build can create leisurely gameplay, there's a lot to understand about it. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Going deep green tree for Glamour isn't actually that much of a loss for gun builds. We still get nearly all of the strong skills. Restless is maxed in blue tree because we are not using Expedite and because Glamour actually lengthens our cooldown. Restless is not a huge boost to cooldown but having Ties That Bind back that little bit faster is very nice. You can take a few points away from Heavy Rain and lose cryo as an action skill element and instead pick up Sustainment. Personally, I don't find Sustainment necessary. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. Optionally, base Phasegrasp for some bosses so you can double proc Transcend and so your action skill can begin cooling down while your anoints and other effects are still active. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever element complements your gun vs the content you're facing. Shock if using Spiritual Driver for bossing (see Notes - Bossing section below). GUNS Snipers and Rocket Launchers. My absolute favorite is the Bird of Prey - highly underrated and very effective, especially with Indiscriminate and Infernal Wish. Others that I use: Masterwork Crossbow, Love Drill, Hive, Major Kong, Hellwalker, Recursion, Yellowcake, Globetrottr, Backburner, Kickcharger, Sand Hawk (in semi-auto), Monocle, Ionic Disruptor. Other strong single-shot weapons such as the Kings/Queens call also work (I prefer the long scope so I can use them like snipers). The Lucky 7 can be made to work by having Dread refill your magazine. All guns either with a gun damage anointment (Killstack, Consec Hits, ASE 100, even Grasp Active 150%) or a Next 2 Mags anointment. 125 Splash can also be used on launchers. When bossing with Spiritual Driver, use N2M on a launcher where both the gun element and the N2M element match vs whatever boss you're facing. CLASS MOD Phasezerker and Spiritual Driver. For the Phasezerker, skills don't matter; instead look for good passives: action skill cooldown rate, sniper damage, heavy weapon damage, pistol damage, weapon damage, splash damage, splash radius, weapon crit damage, Jakobs weapon crit. Driver is recommended for bosses, especially raid level HP bosses. Look for +3 into Mindfulness, and similar passives to the Phasezerker, leaning more towards heavy weapon damage and splash damage. SHIELD Best-in-slot is a double-amp Infernal Wish. But even without amp parts, a Wish is recommended. One-Shotter shield would be recommended for multi-pellet weapons such as the Hellwalker or Globetrottr or Sand Hawk. A "poor-man's" shield would be the 0.m, but make sure you stick to 1-2 pellet weapons with that. Anointment: ASE 50% bonus element. ARTIFACT Toboggan, with ideal passives being weapon-type damage, action skill cooldown rate, and Area of Effect in the 2nd or 3rd slot. A well-rolled Company Man could be a good substitute, if you don't like sliding between shots. Keep a Cutpurse on hand in case you run out of rocket ammo. GRENADE Mesmer with ASE 50% bonus element. This grenade is great for aggro relief between grasps. GAMEPLAY LOOP To begin, grasp an enemy, and immediately all surrouding enemies will be linked and de-aggro to you. Make sure you've slid for Toboggan amp, and your amp shield is topped up. Fire at your grasped enemy. If that enemy didn't die, it's very likely a linked enemy did, granting you Overkill and triggering Shield Reboot so your amp shield is quickly filled for your next shot. Slide again and shoot again. Now your grasped enemy is dead, you have your ASE 50% bonus elements procced, and you have Overkill. Rinse and repeat. I'd recommend brushing up on your Overkill Upkeep if you aren't familiar. This meticulous playstyle is made possible because Glamour controls the field. There are some very weird Glamour interactions, though. Grenades do not make contact with Glamoured enemies. If a Hack Hound or Anointed Militant is Glamoured, your shots will pass right through them - you have to either kill them through a TTB link or splash a surface next to them. The flying Sera Guardians, when Glamoured, will fly very high up while fighting each other. You will also see some Indiscriminate projectiles come towards you. Don't worry, in almost all cases they can't hurt you. Just don't use the Headsplosion :) Glamour and Ties that Bind is strong enough that I've taken this build through the entire True Maliwan Takedown bridge area with the Monocle while taking zero damage from enemies. NOTES - BOSSING Equip the Spiritual Driver and switch your action skill element to shock. How does one use an amp shield with the Driver? By simply waiting 3 seconds for the shock dot to wear off, after which you have 5 seconds with your Mindfulness stacks to slide very fast and shoot a rocket launcher buffed by a ton of Driver gun damage, your Toboggan amp, your shield amp (or simply a second projectile from the Wish), and all of your anointments. ASE anointments are activated immediately upon grasping a boss. Yes, this forces you to have a small amount of shock Infusion (16%) against an armored or flesh HP boss, but that's worth the tradeoff for being able to get your shield amp. There are a couple scenarios where you want to switch your element to corrosive, and that's during boss fights where it's impossible to keep your shield topped up anyway. Notably, vs Hemovorous where there's so much being thrown at you, and vs Anathema where the radiation bubbles dot you. Switching to corrosive lets you keep up your Mindfulness stacks longer, because it's a longer dot. Use the Infernal Wish and you're set. As mentioned above, you may also want to consider switching to base Phasegrasp for some bosses so you can double proc Transcend and so your action skill can begin cooling down while your anoints and other effects are still active. The tradeoff is that any adds that spawn will be aggro to you, and may make it hard to keep your amp shield full.

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.