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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Tips for understanding and building with Amara's Purple Tree at endgame. Purple Tree This guide will help you understand the quirks and uses of each of Amara's skills, so that perhaps you can do some build crafting of your own. In this section, we cover the purple (Enlightened Force) tree. TRUST IN YOURSELF Very effective boost for reload speed, swap speed, and charge speed. This skill can stack twice, and when using a shield with Action Skill Start, after activating that anointment, all you need to do is take damage against your shield for this skill to proc. When stacked twice, some of these speeds become almost comical. The swap speed in particular is useful for builds that do a lot of swapping, such as Emerald Swan. NO MISTAKES IN NATURE A basically always-on melee damage increase. Further down the tree is Joyful Freedom, which has a bit more melee damage and can be stacked by multiple action skill uses, however it cannot be activated while in FFYL, which is one benefit that this skill has. HEAVY RAIN Great splash damage increase, and the projectile speed increase is wonderful for many weapons. However, the speed can make some guns such as the Plaguebearer and the Nukem harder to use. GO WITH THE FLOW Minimal speed and gun damage increase. On a build that does a lot of freezing of enemies, this skill can be justified. Otherwise, it doesn't have much value. Note that it also procs on any cryo self damage. UNWEAVE THE RAINBOW Very good cryo synergy skill, whether you're using something like a Frozen Heart shield, or freezing enemies with your gun or melee attacks. It can be applied, for example, to Tandava in conjunction with an Action Skill Start Frozen Heart. Basically, if you're freezing things, you probably want this skill. It is increased by action skill damage. EBB AND FLOW Good but mostly redundant life steal skill. You can grab this if you're not getting Sustainment, but then you're probably attacking with the Stinger or Fish Slap or Blade Fury or Kensei, because true melee without Sustainment is asking for trouble. If you are specced Sustainement (or are using a Knife Drain), this skill is redundant, because your elemental melee damage that you used to kill the enemy will heal you to full anyway. COMBO BREAKER Not entirely reliable, but very helpful when it procs. This skill is somewhat bugged in that it doesn't reset your action skill correctly if its still active, such as when a grasp or Phaseflare is active. But it's not a waste if you have a decent form of melee damage on your build. Like Ebb and Flow, this skill can proc from Kensei damage. JOYFUL FREEDOM Stackable melee damage increase. It also works on fakegrasping, although it is rather inconvenient to do so and the stacks don't go too high before they decay. BURN BOTH ENDS This skill has its own section here. BODY & MIND Very strong skill, when invested into with action skill damage, both as a supplement for true melee damage and for the Face Puncher. The FP will proc a B&M nova for every pellet. It'll proc twice as many novas if you also have at least one point into Infusion. FREE THE SOUL With lots of action skill damage, this skill is like Remnant 2.0, but it can hit multiple enemies and it acts much faster. Of course, you have to be cryo focused to take advantage of it. However, despite what the skill says, an enemy doesn't need to be fully frozen when they die in order for this skill to proc. They only need to be 75% of the way to being completely frozen. ATMAN Decent flat action skill damage increase. If you're investing into action skill damage and this far down the tree, it's a great place to dump points. CLEAR THE MIND Very strong in some situations, however, its strengths are often devalued by the fact that you can often element match. Not every kind of attack can, though, and for those, Clear The Mind is valuable.

Learn how to play the popular Borderlands 3 esport: Djira Ball! DJIRA BALL a hilarious introduction to a super serious esport: What is Djira Ball? Djira Ball is an esport within Borderlands 3 made by myself and CZ47. It consists of throwing a Fastball grenade at a Djira (the small Nekrotafeyo creatures) that has been launched into the air by a melee attack. If the Fastball is thrown just right, the Djira will get launched away from you, potentially at a very high velocity. In this way, a launched Djira could be seen as a sportsball. This interaction between an airborne Djira and a fast moving projectile was discovered when I was testing how damage affects an airborne Djira. When testing grenade damage by throwing a Fastball, a Djira randomly got yeeted. CZ47 jokingly proposed making a sport out of it. I took it seriously. We collaborated on the parameters of said sport, and CZ47 made the arena for it with hotfix modding. It takes place in the Guardian Takedown. Find the Djira Ball hotfix mod on the Modding page How to Play Djira Ball: Unspec all skill points, remove all gear, do not select an action skill or a pet. Perhaps make a separate save file for playing Djira Ball. Minos Prime’s drop pod is now located above Anathema’s arena, which is now the Djira Ball arena. At the drop pod, buy a Fastball from the ammo vendor and a Toboggan at the shield vendor. If the Toboggan has a movement speed passive, save/quit and try again. If you need money to buy these, open the white chests at and above the vending machines for gear to sell. (Designer’s Cut DLC is required for the Toboggan, lest you be at a movement speed disadvantage. Snowdrifts are not allowed, because the snowball itself will send Djira into the air in an unpredictable manner.) At the staging area above the arena, the teams decide which goal to defend: red plants or blue statues. All players drop down into the arena at once, and play begins immediately. Turn on the “Minimap Legendaries” option under Options > Gameplay. When a Djira is scored and dies outside the arena, it spawns a single legendary. The amount of legendaries on the minimap outside each goal counts as the scoreboard. The first team to score 5 Djira on their opponents wins. Own-goals count against you. The “scoreboard” settles all disputes. Djira can get stuck in walls and on various platforms outside the arena. Play continues until there are zero Djira in the arena and in play. If that occurs, take note of the current score, travel out to Sanctuary and back to Minos Prime and resume the game at the previous score with fresh Djira.

An unconventional gun build using unconventional weapons. Barbie Dahl SYNOPSIS An unconventional gun build using unconventional weapons. INTRO Back in late 2020, SomeOldGuyInHawaii showed me how powerful the Sleeping Giant can be if you used Terror Ammo Regen to prevent reloading and allow it to keep all of its buffs. I made my own Sleeping Giant build, which has since evolved into this build. Rather than focusing on just the Sleeping Giant, it generally uses Terror anoints and Kensei to make use of a handful of overlooked guns. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Some extra points are given to purple tree for some melee synergy. No Mistakes In Nature will boost the Kensei's bonus element, and that bonus element can proc Combo Breaker if it gets a kill. Otherwise, it does not deviate much from a traditional gun build. Dread is hugely important for reloading your guns automatically, preventing guns like the Sleeping Giant, Lucky 7, and Tankman's Shield from losing their buffs. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. You can use Phasecast with 250% Phasecast gun damage anointments for faster boss melting. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever element is suited to your content that also goes along with the element of your gun. Note that the skill tree has 5 points into Infusion, making 40% of your damage potentially different from the element of your gun. Additionally, Kensei damage is essentially a 160% bonus element (10% on the card x16 melee mayhem scaling) that will match your action skill element. With Kensei active, 200% of your 260% damage will be your action skill element, not the element of your gun. The element of your gun is secondary. Perhaps even tertiary with Re-Volter shock damage active. SLEEPING GIANT With Consecutive Hits anointment, or Terror Crit if you can aim well. With all buffs active, this gun shreds, especially when critting. Unfortunately, it can be hard to tell when you have all of the buffs. Test on the Jack dummy in Sanctuary before heading out. There are 4 levels of damage; stop shooting *and don't reload* when you're sure you're shooting for the highest damage. Or use a hotfix that guarantees all of the buffs after every reload. With Terror Ammo Regen and enough mag size boosts, it's hard to run out the mag on this gun and lose your buffs by reloading. TORRENT With Consecutive Hits anointment, or Terror Crit if you can aim well. Another gun that gets overlooked because of ammo problems. Terror Ammo Regen allows you to use the Torrent for as long as you like. You can even drop the Terror Ammo Regen for Terror Dmg/Fire Rate when at the end of an activity or for a boss, where you won't use up all of your reserves. But that aspect of gearing will be covered later. LUCKY 7 With Terror Crit anointment. The most powerful gun with this build. I still have a couple time trials placements with this build using the Lucky 7. Terror Ammo Regen, a Jakobs Company Man with two mag size boosts, and mag size on your Kensei will make it relatively easy to keep all of the Lucky 7 buffs, if you have a little bit of trigger discipline. Try using a hotfix to make the Lucky 7 roll all of its buffs with every reload. TANKMAN'S SHIEL D With Terror Crit anointment. This gun is very hard to use, but worth it. For every enemy you kill with it (and it must be a direct kill by the gun), the next magazine gets 40% more gun damage, stacking up +250% gun damage. The problem is that you lose the stacks if you go into FFYL. This gun is best suited to a longer form activity where you can stay relatively safe, such as Slaughterstar 3000 or Scaled Maliwan Takedown. Pair it with a Hyperion Company Man with double mag size boosts for extra assurance you can gain/keep stacks without reloading. Terror Ammo Regen may not be necessary if you're making good use of Dread to refill your magazine. GUARDIAN ANGEL Usage #1 is with Killstack anointment. This gun does silly things with Ties That Bind and Indiscriminate, and Kensei will help buff the initial shot as well. There's no need to run Terror Ammo Regen with this gun; instead run Terror Dmg/Fire Rate. Usage #2 is with Terror Cryo anointment. There are only a few melee effects that the Kensei bonus element can proc, and the Shooting Star shield is one of them. Shoot enemies with the Guardian Angel with the Kensei active and your shield depleted and your dozens of Guardian Angel projectiles will spawn dozens of Shooting Stars, all buffed by the Guardian Angel's bonus damage. If the Shooting Star worked on all maps, this would be the most powerful Amara gun build by quite a margin. There is a hotfix available that makes the Shooting Star shield work on all maps. SAND HAWK With Terror Crit anointment. Using this gun in semi-auto mode will make your ammo last much longer, if you have a Dahl Company Man with double mag size boosts and Terror Ammo Regen. You will eventually run out, though, simply by killing grasped enemies, because Dread pulls ammo from reserves. Spec out of Dread if you want to run with only the Sand Hawk for a while. THEMATIC GUNS Two more guns fit the bill of never reloading, even though they're relatively weak on this build: The Butcher and the Super Shredifier. The former does not need Terror Ammo Regen (run Terror Dmg/Fire Rate instead) and the latter, with Terror Ammo Regen and enough mag size, will never reload no matter how hard you try. META GUNS Any strong gun will also work on this build. Free Radical, Skullmasher, Kaoson, etc. Choose between these three anointments: Consecutive Hits, Terror Crit, 250% Phasecast gun damage. CLASS MOD Kensei, with skill points in No Mistakes in Nature and/or Joyful Freedom. The six second bonus element that this provides is enough to get you rolling or phase a boss. SHIELD Re-Volters, one with Terror Ammo Regen and another with ASE Apply Terror. This means you must occasionally take damage to let the Re-Volter proc naturally. Run Ammo Regen for the guns that need it. Run ASE Apply Terror when you need Terror Dmg/Fire Rate on your grenade. Shooting Star, in various elements, with ASE Apply Terror anoint. This is for pairing with your Terror Cryo Guardian Angel, as explained above. When using this shield, turn off Shield Reboot and Emergency Response Guardian Rank perks. You can use the Infernal Wish, with ASE Apply Terror, for a bit easier time with the Tankman's Shield. ARTIFACT A Company Man of the appropriate manufacturer, with double mag size rolls (one on top and one on bottom). Backup option would be a Pearl of Ineffable Knowledge with a mag size roll. GRENADE Fish Slaps, with ASE Apply Terror (if using Terror Ammo Regen) or Terror Dmg/Fire Rate (when you don't need ammo regen and have ASE Apply Terror on shield). There's some melee damage specced with this build, so the Fish can do some work. You can even swap to the Guardia n Angel when throwing it. Alternatively, an It's Piss (with those same anointments) for dealing more damage with just your guns. GAMEPLAY LOOP Choose your loadout carefully. Does your gun need ammo regen? If so, make sure your grenade has ASE Apply Terror. What element do you want your gun to be, and what is your action skill element? For guns like the Sleeping Giant or Lucky 7 where you can't change the element without losing buffs, you can change the element of a lot of your damage by changing your action skill element. Keep in mind that shock damage is usually covered by the Re-Volter. Is the right Company Man equipped? If you're using the Shooting Star, are two of your Guardian Rank perks disabled? Have you switched to Phasecast if you're using a 250% Phasecast gun damage anointment? There's a lot to consider when you decide to play with a certain gun. Terror anoints won't kick in until your action skill ends, so start off using your action skill. Kensei damage will help you kill your grasped enemy without emptying your mag. Let yourself take damage every now and then to proc Re-Volter. Have some trigger discipline when using the Sleeping Giant and Lucky 7, especially when you have that Re-Volter fire rate.

General advice for playing Amara and succeeding at endgame. General Advice KNOW YOUR BUILD It's unwise to jump into an activity without first understanding all of the moving parts of your build. It can mean the difference between smooth sailing and getting downed and frustrated and dying. It's why I'm so stupidly long-winded in the build writeups. Even when I choose a build of my own to play, I still open up my inventory and skill tree to make sure I'm approaching the content correctly. ELEMENTAL ATTUNEMENT Something that people new to Amara may not be accustomed to, but you need to have your action skill element appropriately set for the content you're facing. This may mean, for example, switching to shock before going down the elevator to fight the valks, and then later switching to corrosive when you fight them individually. Yes, it's tedious, but Mayhem 10/11 can be tough, and having a favorable elemental matchup vs an unfavorable one can, in extreme cases, mean you more than triple your damage. Amara's action skill element affects such things as Infusion on your gun, Illuminated Fist for your true melee element, Forceful Expression's element, the type of damage that Ties That Bind shares, and all of her other action skills. There are a few exceptions to switching elements, of course, such as cryo-focused builds or certain Spiritual Driver builds. AVOID BARRELS Barrels are an extremely frustrating part of the game, and they're ubiquitous. They are basically an instant down, and because Amara has lots of challenges in FFYL , they can ruin your day. Either look for barrels ahead of time and detonate them safely, or know where they are and avoid them. When I do the Slaughter maps, I blow up all of the barrels between each round before starting the next. AVOID WATER Water transfers elemental effects, making you damage yourself if you're in that water. Operating a slam build, for example, in a puddle results in you downing yourself every slam. Punching in water with Body & Mind active will down you. In general, just stay out of water and puddles entirely as best as you can. KEEP TRACK OF YOUR ANOINTMENTS Many anointments, such as bonus elements on grenade and shield and the Killstack anointment, aren't active at the beginning of fights. You may have to go through a full action skill cycle and start killing enemies before all of your buffs are active and your damage is rolling. Inactive bonus elements can be very apparent in dot-focused builds. KNOW YOUR ENEMY Understand what your high priority targets are. Jetpack troopers and snipers in general can instantly healthgate you; if you see a red laser trained on you, that's an enemy that needs to be killed, stunned, or line of sight broken from. Badass Maliwan Troopers and Wardogs deal relentless amounts of damage. Goliaths can deal constant, debilitating damage, but can be easily defused by shooting their helmet off. Shock Maliwan Heavies or Nullhounds can easily ruin a Deathless build, or make your Infernal Wish completely useless. Flying Sera Guardians tracking you with a powerful laser attack can be a big problem during the crystal phases of the Guardian Takedown. COMBAT TACTICS There are often instances where you can't kill a dangerous enemy immediately; waiting to finish a reload, for your projectile to hit, for your cooldown to finish, or for you to close the distance can result in you going down. Here are a few tactics you can use to stall or prevent an enemy's attack while you get a handle on the situation: 1. Critting the enemy: shoot an enemy's crit spot, and most of them will stagger. Even Wotan staggers when you crit him. This effect has a cooldown, of course, so you can't stunlock enemies by critting. 2. Melee the enemy: melee damage, in a similar way to critting, will also stagger an enemy. Meleeing and critting are on separate timers, so you can make use of both tactics in immediate succession. Note that melee in this instance counts for any kind of melee: punching, Face Puncher, Fish Slap, etc. 3. Grenade toss: the effectiveness of this tactic varies with enemy type, but some enemies will dive for cover if you throw a grenade at or near them. COV enemies have the most obvious response to this. Others may just side step briefly. This was a tactic I used often in my original true melee build ; I would throw the Fastball at an enemy while I approached them, giving me time to close the distance while also dealing significant damage to them. 4. Other physics interactions: the Safe Space shield part, Quasar grenade, and high pellet-count shotguns can all toss enemies around. I often recommend a Quasar (Hyperion, non-sticky) in my builds specifically for this sort of aggro-relief. The Safe Space part can even toss around the otherwise almost physics-immune guardians in the True Guardian Takedown. 5. Take cover or dodge: yes, the age-old trick of hiding behind something or moving away from danger. If you just need to reload or wait for your cooldown, sometimes this option is the simplest. All too often I see someone trying something off-meta, they attempt to face-tank whatever content, the build doesn't absolutely destroy everything with a button press, they get downed, they die, and they declare said off-meta thing not viable. If you play intelligently, you'll have much, much more game available to you.

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

Slam build based on the Ice Spiker artifact. It's much stronger than you probably think. Icicle Amara SYNOPSIS Slam build based on the Ice Spiker artifact. It's much stronger than you probably think. INTRO It was the summer of 2020 when I noticed that if you had a Nimbus class mod equipped, you fake-grasped, and then slammed an Ice Spiker projectile into an enemy, the Ice Spike would proc the Nimbus cloud. It wasn't until later that year that I figured out why: Ice Spiker is basically another Amara action skill. The Ice Spikes get action skill damage, proc Samsara, proc Laid Bare, proc Expedite with a kill, and even refund half the rush stacks consumed by your latest action skill usage if they get a kill (see Avatar). And of course, they proc the Nimbus cloud. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE ACTION SKILL You can actually use any action skill available to you. But the best are: Tandava, Reverberation, Phaseslam, Eternal Fist, Shooting Star, Light Fantastic. That's most of them. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT You can get away with cryo in nearly every situation, even vs Wotan depending on your loadout. But just to be safe: always cryo except element match a boss. MAIN GUNS Guardian Angels, one with Terror Cryo anointment and the other with Urad anointment. This build can play either way. BACKUP / UTILITY / FFYL GUNS Face Punchers for delivering Groundbreaker or using with Body & Mind to take out elevated/flying enemies. With Terror Cryo and Urad anointments. FFYL weapons such as Ember's Purge, Free Radical, Backburner, Plasma Coil are recommended in case Body & Mind isn't active while you are down. Same anointments as above, or with Consecutive Hits. A Crader's EMP-5 is nice for getting around. CLASS MOD Stone, with Do Harm and Awakening points. Awakening points will buff the damage reduction on the com, as well as the effectiveness of both Do Harm and Violent Tapestry, two very important skills for this build. Recommended passives: splash damage radius, splash damage, action skill damage, action skill cooldown rate. A well-rolled Stone is more effective than the Phasezerker for action skill damage, and its damage reduction is very good. These two perks are what enable the usage of a wide variety of action skills. SHIELD You've got 2 options, depending on if you're using Terror Cryo or Urad. First is a Mana Well with ASE Apply Terror anoint, for use with Terror Cryo. Slamming with this shield (when it has any capacity) will give you a 100% shock bonus element and 90% true damage reduction. Second is Beskar with a Reflect part and with ASE Apply Terror anoint (see "Notes - Beskar" section below), for use with Urad. This shield is also insanely defensive. ARTIFACT Ice Spiker Otto Idol (for use with Terror Cryo) and Ice Spiker Deathless (for use with Urad). The most important passive is Area of Effect in the 2nd or 3rd slot, which also grants increased area radius. Other recommended passives: cryo damage, action skill cooldown rate, movement speed, radiation damage (on the Deathless). If you want even more tank, use the Safeguard suffix (when using Terror Cryo). Ice Spiker can be swapped out for Snowdrift if you just want to use your action skills during a boss fight. GRENADE Hyperion Quasars (non sticky) with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate and Phasegrasp Terror Skulls. The Terror Skulls are for when you want to use Eternal Fist (see "Notes - Terror Skulls" section below). GAMEPLAY LOOP Activate your action skill of choice and slam away. It takes a little bit to get the hang of the Ice Spiker projectiles. They travel through enemies, and up around over most terrain obstacles. For example, you can hit an enemy who is hiding behind a box by simply slamming directly at them; the spikes will travel straight over the box and hit them on the other side. If you slam close enough, you can get all three projectiles to hit. However, you'll have a bit more damage if you're further away and let the Guardian Angel add its damage bonus. Cryo immune Maliwan heavies are usually not a problem, because you have a non-cryo bonus element with either the Mana Well or Urad. Because this build uses the strongest defense-oriented items in the game (Stone, Beskar, Mana Well), you can basically go wild in dangerous places like the Maliwan Takedown bridge. But as always, be careful of barrels and water. NOTES - BESKAR 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. NOTES - TERROR SKULLS Phasegrasp Terror Skulls will reproc and seek out a grasped enemy every time Eternal Fist lifts a new enemy. And the skulls are very powerful. There is the Terror Skulls anoint on a low level grenade with this save file, and the anoint notes the skulls having very low damage because of that. But the skulls actually deal damage based on the level of the gun you're holding. This setup is great for taking out airborne enemies while your Ice Spikes take care of everything on the ground. NOTES - BONUS LOADOUT You can also use a Re-Volter shield with Action Skill Start for a bit more damage. But this is a risky playstyle, especially if using a Phaseflare action skill. Pair with a grenade with either ASE 50% corrosive bonus element (if using Urad) or ASE Apply Terror (if using Terror Cryo). NOTES - RAID BOSSING While the Hemovorous fight can be very hectic and dangerous, it's rather easy for this slam build. Go Terror Cryo, Mana Well, and Shooting Star, and slam, slam, slam. Shooting Star can even get strong enough on this build to melt True Hag of Fervor.

A true melee build focused on the Unleash The Dragon artifact. Amber Swan SYNOPSIS A true melee build focused on the Unleash The Dragon artifact. INTRO This rather leisurely true melee build involves drive-by punching and leaving enemies to die alone somewhere behind you. The goal here is to punch once and let the fire dot from Unleash The Dragon take care of the rest. As always, there are caveats with things that cannot be punched and things that do not take dot damage. But if you want to insta-melt raid bosses while barely paying attention and have a blast zipping around and sucker punching mobs, this is your build. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES With Sustainment, Guardian Angel, and move speed from Mindfulness, this might seem like a tanky build. But punching is your healing, and the goal of this build is to just punch once for every enemy. You still have to be mindful (heh) moving around between encounters. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT This is somewhat complicated. Unleash The Dragon snapshots the damage of your punch and deals fire damage over time based on that. So you want to remove as much HP as possible with your first punch. However, Anima gives a status effect damage boost to whatever your action skill element is, and the Unleash The Dragon is always fire. For removing the most HP from an enemy, there's an argument for shock, because lots of enemies are shielded, and shock damage against shields gets huge bonus. That big hit against their shield will make UTD very strong, especially with a 150/90 anointment. Run shock against Maliwan enemies and Guardians. Run incendiary against COV enemies and creatures. Even though COV enemies can be shielded and armored, there's still lots of pure flesh enemies. PUNCHING GUN Guardian Angel, with 150/90 anoint and a 60% melee damage blade. By punching enemies and running away, not only do you increase your survivability, but the Guardian Angel bonus increases the damage of the UTD dot. This gun is also a survivability tool. It can be used to get yourself up from FFYL, if there's no enemy in punching range. The Guardian Angel projectiles will double dip Indiscriminate, so you can shoot the nearest enemy and other enemies in the periphery will take lots of damage. It can be shot at enemies for healing through Sustainment if you're taking lots of damage. Alternating between shooting and punching is the recommended way to face True Guardian Takedown Guardians; you will clear much faster if Guardian Angel Indiscriminate projectiles are also taking chunks out of them. BACKUP GUN Blade Fury, with 150/90 anoint. This is for flying enemies such as Seras and Death Spheres. Shoot them once and then UTD take care of it while you turn your focus back to grounded enemies. This can also be used to help you clear the crystal phases of True Guardian Takedown. CLASS MOD Phasezerker, with as many points into Anima as possible. Recommended passives: action skill cooldown rate, melee damage, area damage, area damage radius. Alternatively, outside of True Takedowns, an Elementalist with points into Wildfire can help with area clear. At 10/5, Wildfire has an 80% proc rate, so you will often kill two enemies for one punch. SHIELD Brawler Ward, with ASE Apply Terror anoint. Preferably low level, but that is not required. This shield will consistently provide a huge buff to your punches. A Stinger shield with Action Skill Start anointment is recommended for the crystal phases of the True Guardian Takedown. Otherwise, you will very likely get overwhelmed. ARTIFACT Unleash The Dragon arti fact. It can only roll with 2 out of 3 passives, those three passives being incendiary damage, melee damage, and incendiary resistance. Skip the incendiary resistance. GRENADE Fish Slaps, in corrosive and radiation, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. Radiation for Maliwan Takedown because of immmune heavies (see "Notes - Immune Maliwan Heavies" section below), and corrosive for dealing with most raid bosses. Shock can be used for one shotting Seer. GAMEPLAY LOOP Set your action skill element appropriately. Grasp an enemy and punch it or a linked enemy. Move quickly away to the next enemy, punch it, move to the next, and so on. Throw some zig zag in there to dodge enemy attacks while approaching your next target. Remember, the further away you get from your punched enemy, the stronger the fire dot on them becomes because of the Guardian Angel. For bosses like the Valks, you can punch them and run away just fine. For tankier bosses, simply throwing a Fish Slap at them is recommended. NOTES - IMMUNE MALIWAN HEAVIES You have your action skill element set to shock vs Maliwan enemies, as noted above. However, there are two different problems created by shock and fire immune Heavies in the Maliwan Takedown. For shock Heavies, you can ground slam them, because UTD also works with slam, and your slam is non-elemental. Keep the Heavy at the edge of your slam radius, so that the Guardian Angel applies more damage to it. Fire heavies, no matter whether you choose to punch or slam them, simply won't take any damage from the UTD dot. For these enemies, delete them with a Fish Slap. NOTES - DOT IMMUNE ENEMIES Badass Maliwan Heavies of any element, along with Anointed Tinks, will not get the UTD dot applied to them. Use your radiation Fish Slap against them. Blue Fire and Red Rain also are dot immune; use your corrosive Fish Slap against those two. NOTES - MAYHEM 10/11 Most of the time, true melee builds should play on Mayhem 10 take advantage of Speed Demon, and this is one of those times. Other benign Mayhem 10 modifiers: Medium - Healy Avenger, Hard - Drone Ranger, Very Hard - Not The Face or Post Mortem. Post Mortem is usually fatal to true melee builds, because your killing punch will send you directly into the spawning Death skull. However, this build, you punch and run away, so you can safely dispatch the Skull from a distance with your Blade Fury. NOTES - GUARDIAN RANK Most of the time, disable Shield Reboot and Emergency Response, so that your Brawler Ward remains depleted as often as possible. When using the Stinger with Action Skill Start for Guardian Takedown crystals, re-enable those perks temporarily.