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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.

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

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

Urad true melee build. Very engaging, very strong. Golden Swan SYNOPSIS Urad true melee build. Very engaging, very strong. INTRO This is the resurrection of a really old, outdated build , and it has changed (and improved) quite a bit. But the underlying principle is the same: Urad true melee. And it still uses the same unconventional shield. For the longest time I struggled to justify Urad on a true melee build, because to keep Urad active you have to either give up a powerful artifact suffix (by using Deathless) or a powerful shield, all the while it's competing with Terror Cryo at only 25% less of a bonus than Urad. It would take too long to explain the theorycrafting reasoning behind this build, but the biggest factor is that Urad plays well with Elemental Projector while Terror Cryo does not. Beware: As with any true melee build, this build can be tough to get the hang of. It will probably take a couple runs, especially because of its unique survivability strategy. Just watch the gameplay video, properly digest the Gameplay Loop section, and practice. You will be rewarded. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES There are some odd choices here, for sure. Both max health skills at 5/5? Well, our shield is the Front Loader, and the Front Loader translates max health into shield capacity. Yes this build survives with its shield, among other things. Dread in the red tree is picked only for the automatic reload utility, but that won't happen often. We need to get down to Ties That Bind anyway. The rest of the skills are fairly normal for a true melee build. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind with Glamour. This is part of the survivability strat. Any enemy linked with Ties That Bind will be de-aggro'd via Glamour. A not-too tiny side benefit is the area clear TTB provides. But don't worry, this build still has good single target punching damage. The Shooting Star variant of Phaseflare is also used for raid bossing. That is, if you don't use the TTB / Remnant strategy. See the "Notes - Raid Bossing" toward the bottom. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Fire, shock, or corrosive depending on the content you are facing. Do not choose cryo. PUNCHING GUN Psycho Stabber with Urad anointment. Pretty straightforward. Urad will also get added to Groundbreaker damage. SWAP GUN Low level Sellout pistol with Urad anointment. 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 both the elemental damage of your punch and the Urad bonus element that goes along with it. 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. Urad will also start "ticking" on the dot you placed on yourself as a hidden damage instance. This bonus element ticking on a self-dot will stack Burn Both Ends for you, giving you even more elemental damage. To obtain an anointed low level Sellout, rush the story killing as few enemies as possible (having Guardian Rank enabled makes this pretty easy). You can complete the mission at as low a level as 21. When you do so, discard the Sellout mission reward and farm an anointed one from Earl's vendor in Sanctuary. 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 Unforgiven with Urad anointment. This is to boost the crits from Static Charge, when they manage to crit. And that mostly only happens vs the creatures in the Guardian Takedown, because nearly all of them have forward facing crit spots. When the Static Charge crits while holding this gun, it's pretty much a guaranteed kill, giving you huge Groundbreaker damage for your next punch, especially if the Static Charge kill Hollowpointed another enemy. FFYL / FLYING ENEMY GUN Face Puncher with Urad anointment. This is a Body & Mind delivery system and is great for annoying flying enemies and getting up from FFYL. This build is strong enough to punch up from most situations, if enemies are kind enough to stick around. But the Face Puncher takes care of you when they don't. OPTIONAL SWAP GUN Guardian Angel with Urad anointment. This is only for swapping to after you've sent a beefed up Shooting Star into a raid boss. CLASS MOD Golden Rule, prioritizing points into Laid Bare and then points into Mindfulness. Laid Bare is great damage, and Mindfulness is incredible survivability with the movement speed it grants. Dotting yourself with various elements via the Sellout will also activate the Golden Rule's cooldown effect, giving you *very* short TTB cooldowns. Second, optional class mod would be the Dragon with at least 1 point into Remnant. This is only for a raid bossing strat. Recommended passives: melee damage, action skill cooldown rate, splash or grenade radius (for your grenade), action skill damage, reload speed, shield capacity. SHIELD Front Loader with Apply Terror on Action Skill End. Highly, highly recommend getting at least one Shield Booster augment, and it can come with up to two. The Front Loader takes away your health gate (and activates Urad). This leaves your shield capacity as your main survivability stat. Luckily, Amara can boost that through her max health skills and the Front Loader's health-to-shield effect. But your shield will constantly be slowly draining because you're going to be self-dotting with the Sellout. It won't have the opportunity to recharge. Shield Booster augments greatly enhance the longevity of that shield bar, and they can keep you alive indefinitely if you're really good at dodging damage. ARTIFACT Elemental Projector Static Charge. The Elemental Projector will be procced by your Sellout pistol, granting you lots of damage for both your main punching element and the Urad bonus element. The Static Charge is not only a nice bonus element for your punches, but the chains will be very strong. Urad will also get applied to the Static Charge chains. Recommended passives: melee damage, area damage (in 2nd or 3rd slot), elemental damage (except cryo), action skill cooldown, max shield, reload speed, move speed. GRENADE *inhales* Hyperion Longbow Tran-fusion, in any element, with the Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. Here's where the real fun begins. (And yes, I also learned while making this build that it's "Tran-fusion", not "Trans-fusion".) When this grenade damages shields (blue HP), it sends blue healing orbs to you that refill your shield. When it damages health (red HP), it does the same for your health. We only care about the shield part. You know how Shield Boosters are important for the Front Loader? Well this is doubly important. This picks up the slack when the Shield Boosters can't keep up, when you've sustained a decent amount of damage and your shield is mid to low. More on how to use this in the "Gameplay Loop" section below. Before you get all 5Head on me and exclaim, "But Stone/Swan! The Fish Slap can roll Generator parts, why not use that?!", first of all, don't call me "Stone slash Swan", call me either "Stone" or "Swan". Thanks. Second of all, Generator parts don't work on the Fish Slap. Yeah. Third, even if they did work, the Fish Slap is slow when you need healing fast. That's why we want a Hyperion Tran-fusion instead of an Atlas or Tediore. Last, the Fish Slap would just be doing all of the killing on its own anyway, and that's extremely boring. GAMEPLAY LOOP The basic gameplay loop is very simple; the devil is in the details. This is a long one. Buckle in. Let's start with the basics: shoot your foot with the Sellout, swap to your Psycho Stabber, grasp something, start punching. Rinse and repeat. Use the Face Puncher vs flying enemies if you can't take them out via a Ties That Bind link. You need to be constantly dotted by the Sellout both for damage and cooldown. That means basically any break between enemies, or when damage is suddenly not there vs an enemy, you need to step back, swap, and re-dot before re-engaging. When your action skill element is fire or shock, set your Sellout to corrosive. If your action skill element is corrosive, set your Sellout to fire. This way, you get one dot from your action skill element via Infusion, and a second dot from the element of the Sellout. This means faster stacking Burn Both Ends, faster stacking Mindfulness, and more cooldown from Golden Rule. Taking care of your Front Loader is where most of your focus should go. There are three equally important ways you do this. First, grasp an enemy whenever grasp is available. This is not only for damage (even on single targets - there's some sort of shenanigans with Glamour and the Static Charge, a la the Reflux), but also for aggro control. When you grasp a group, you have some breathing room (provided there aren't a ton of enemies outside that group). They stop attacking you, and you can use a small portion of that time to dot yourself and/or throw your grenade... The second form of care for your Front Loader is the Tran-fusion grenade. Sure, it sucks that it will only refill your shield if it damages shields, but shields are everywhere. If you swing your crosshair around the battlefield it's actually very easy to see blue HP bars and know where to send the grenade. Maliwan enemies always have shields so any area where you know there are fresh Maliwan troops is a good area to chuck this thing. Plenty of CoV enemies also have shields, and it's not hard to find them or know which enemies are most likely to have them. IMPORTANT NOTE: Glamour'd enemies are intangible to grenades. Chuck a grenade at a grasped enemy or any linked enemy with this build and it will pass right through them. Instead, throw it at a floor or wall near them. This is why splash radius passives are recommended. If enemies are lacking shields, that usually means they're weakened, and a Glamour'd Ties That Bind (plus a punch) is probably going to finish the fight. There are two exceptions to this general rule. The first is Guardians in the Guardian Takedown. Here, either fresh enemies (before they've gained an armor bar) or weakened enemies (after the armor bar is depleted) will have exposed shields. Just do a quick scan and you'll find them. If you don't see any, get a Ties That Bind going ASAP. The second exception is creatures in the Guardian Takedown, where there are no shields at all. This leads to the third form of Front Loader care, and that is movement. Smart movement is extremely important in true melee builds, and in this build even more so. You need to be strafing enemy attacks and placing yourself briefly behind cover or backing away while you do things like self-dotting or reloading the Sellout. Don't ever just stand still unless you're engaging an enemy you know you're going to kill. Know your enemies, keep an eye on the mini-map. Those creatures in the Guardian Takedown? Easily survived by just your Shield Boosters if you know how and when they attack and can dodge them. The many points in Mindfulness this build has makes quick movements very easy. Pay attention to my movement in the gameplay video and note how I'm always throwing in little strafes and such. Strafing causes enemies to miss and also forces them to spend time turning toward you, which is very effective at close range. Note that the strats with the grenade are only in play if you see your shield at mid to low levels. If you've got the movement down and you're doing really well at avoiding damage, then Shield Boosters will last you a long time. But always be keeping an eye on your shield capacity and have an idea of where blue HP bars might be on field. NOTES - RAID BOSSING This build doesn't have the same sort of raid boss punching ability that Sulphur Swan and Steel Swan have. Instead, you have three different options: Shooting Star, Remnant, and plain ole Fish Slap. Shooting Star: when you initially summon the ball and punch it out, recall it once and punch it only once with the Psycho Stabber and you're good to go. Punching it a second time will end it prematurely, because of the extra damage instances provided by Urad and Static Charge. You can swap to the Guardian Angel and back away if you want even more damage from the ball, but my favorite thing to do is follow the ball and start punching along with it to keep delivering Groundbreaker. It also feels cooler and more interactive this way. Remnant: Swap to a Dragon class mod with at least one point in Remnant. Wait for a mob to get near the boss, grasp the boss so the mob is linked, punch the boss, then watch Remnant float in like the Angel of Death and delete the boss. Fish Slap: Hold either the Psycho Stabber or Guardian Angel and chuck fish. It's boring but it works. Of course, for any of these strats, always be self-dotted for lots more damage. NOTES - ANATHEMA This fight can be frustrating. When Anathema's radiation bubble goes off, some of the other guardians in the arena survive and are irradiated. Their radiation aura will damage you if you get near them, and because you don't have health gate, it will be instant FFYL. Just do your best to avoid them. NOTES - CRYSTAL PHASES IN GTD These sections can be pretty easy. Ties That Bind and Glamour mean you can get away with hardly attacking any of the enemies, if you play it right and get lucky. Make sure you're still dotted, though, to keep the Golden Rule cooldown going and get grasp back. Sometimes TTB + Glamour won't be perfect, though, because we aren't specced Ascendant for more Glamour time and because Burn Both Ends makes enemies *really* angry. If things get out of hand, don't be afraid to use the Face Puncher liberally. What I like to do during crystals with any true melee build is use cheesy strats for the first two crystals, then switch back to punching when I get to the third crystal, where I can take my time. NOTES - GEARBOX This build hosts a few bugs/quirks courtesy of Gearbox that may lead to some frustration: grasp bugs, Blitz bugs, and the Psycho Stabber animation lockout. Just know that getting up from FFYL is usually never a problem, and this build is rewarding enough to overcome these frustrations.

Tips for conquering the Maliwan Takedown as Amara. Maliwan Takedown THE WALL Clearing the enemies on the turrets opens the gate, and Death Spheres spawn in the Ratch area. If you ignore the Death Spheres and continue on, they can later on park above the wall and shoot at you from afar. Most builds can deal with this, but some more fragile builds may need to take the time to kill the Death Spheres before moving on. HIGH PRIORITY ENEMIES 1. Jetpack Troopers can snipe your health away very quickly. If you have a red laser trained on you, that's a Jetpack Trooper about to attack, and you either need to break line of sight, stun them out of the air, or kill them quickly. 2. Badass Troopers if left alone will consistently down you with their powerful, fast firing guns. Badass Wardogs are the same. 3. Shock Heavies can instantly down a Deathless build, or render an Infernal Wish shield useless. Hackhounds are a similar type of threat, though they can't actually do any health damage. VALKYRIES Each Valkyrie does have a crit spot, even if it is hard to hit. Sigrdrifa's is on her waist, the narrowest part of her model. Sometimes it is more reliably hit when shot a little off-center. Hildr's is right in the middle of her chest, the easiest one to hit. Rota has the same crit spot as Sigrdrifa, but also a slightly larger area on her lower back, where it is colored black. When Rota drops down and is crouched while spawning the cryo drones, that is a perfect opportunity to loop around to her back and deal lots of damage. DEATH SPHERES Sometimes, when stunned, Death Spheres will unleash a continuous laser attack and move around erratically. It is nearly impossible to dodge, and the Death Sphere is nearly impossible to hit. This most often happens when they are stunned with a Face Puncher. If you have an attack that stuns the Spheres, make sure you can finish them off quickly, or you risk this attack. IMMUNE MALIWAN HEAVIES If your attacks are mostly mono-elemental, you will likely run into heavies that are immune to that element, especially as Amara with her elemental attunement. There are a few ways of dealing with them. 1. The most obvious is to quickly change your action skill element, and then change it back once the heavy is dead. However, this is tedious, and sometimes not possible when there's lots of other dangerous enemies around (like the bridge) and you've chosen your particular elemental attunement for a reason. 2. If you have strong bonus elements, those can sometimes be enough to deal with the heavy. Notable examples are Urad and Re-Volter bonus elements, or ASE 50% bonus element anointments on your grenade and shield. You won't lifesteal with Sustainment off of these bonus elements, though; if a heavy is immune to your main attack element, you may need to briefly Sustain on a different nearby mob before finishing off the immune heavy. 3. A strong radiation attack, such as a radiation Fish Slap, is often useful for dealing with immune heavies, since there are no radiation immune heavies in the Maliwan Takedown. 4. You can deal your damage to other enemies, then kill the immune heavy with Groundbreaker. This may not be simple if your method of dealing Groundbreaker damage is also elemental, such as punching when specced into Illuminated Fist, or slamming when wearing a slam artifact. If one of those attacks is elemental, make sure the other one isn't, so you don't run into problems delivering Groundbreaker. WOTAN The quicker you can damage Wotan to his next immune phase, the smoother the fight will be. If he's able to stay in a certain phase long enough, he will spawn more and more adds, and the fight will eventually become overwhelming. Wotan resists cryo, so unless you're Moze and specced Superior Firepower, it is the worst element to use on him. Corrosive is the best element. If you have little to no elemental damage increases, then kinetic/non-elemental is second best, as it does 80% damage vs armor. Shock would be third, at 65%, unless you have enough elemental damage increases to put it over the 80% of kinetic. Note that the "Better Half" or flying half, after the split, is not cryo-resistant, and can even be frozen and dropped to the ground. The Better Half is also the only half that spawns adds , which may be necessary for a second wind. It does have a dangerous attack, though, so it's always a game time decision whether you take it out before or after the bottom half. You can get one second wind by shooting the glass around the brain on Wotan's bottom half. The glass is a separate entity, and it counts as a kill when it "breaks". The bottom half of Wotan is particularly vulnerable to a strong Phaseslam or Tandava attack. This is for two reasons. 1. The glass can be killed, spawning a Remnant orb inside the brain case, which then quickly makes contact inside Wotan's hitbox and finishes him off. 2. There are multiple hitboxes in Wotan's bottom half, one for Wotan himself, and one for each leg, even while the bottom half is still alive. You can see this in the following screenshot: This is a single Tandava casted at Wotan's bottom half. You can see four separate instances of damage at the top, one for each leg, and there's another obscured one in the middle at the bottom. I believe this has to do with the ability of Tandava and Phaseslam to sort of "go through walls". They can penetrate some hitboxes, and it looks like that allows them to hit every part of Wotan, effectively quintupling your damage.

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

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 launcher-only Amara build. Hard to play, but very rewarding. Beeg Badaboom SYNOPSIS A launcher-only Amara build. Hard to play, but very rewarding. INTRO If you can master the technique of this build, it will make nearly any launcher strong. That's the goal of it, at least. It involves moving at high speeds while shooting, and that often means you're going to down yourself. This build takes a while to learn, and is one of the higher-skill-required builds on this site. But it makes beeg badabooms. This is the second build name that references the Fifth Element. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Samsara is your healing. There is some action skill damage specced because sometimes Tandava will kill weaker enemies, giving you Expedite procs along with Remnant doing its thing. You can move points from Do Harm to Violent Tapestry to instead proc Unweave The Rainbow and Free The Soul more often. You can also move points from red tree and Wrath in order to spec some Mindfulness points, if you can't get many from your class mod. Burn Both Ends can be self-stacked by the Spiritual Driver self-dot and an active bonus element (on shield and grenade). Normally, self damage does not stack Burn Both Ends, but a bonus element "ticking on top of" a self-dot will. ACTION SKILL Tandava, always. The main purpose is to have an action skill that can hit multiple enemies to get stacks of Samsara. And also for your action skill to end immediately so that your anointments kick in. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Corrosive, always. This is one of those builds where changing your action skill element does not change anything significant, damage-wise. Corrosive is picked because it is the longest dot, giving you longer uptime on both Mindfulness and Burn Both Ends stacks. GUNS Here's the fun list: Hive, R.Y.N.A.H., Lump, Scourge, Mongol, Globetrottr, Plaguebearer, Backburner, Kick Charger, Yellowcake, Major Kong. All with ASE 125% Splash anointment. If any of these have variants with more projectiles, choose the version with the fewest projectiles. Some of these have more mobbing and area clear capabilities, and some are more single target. Some have a charge time where you need to hold down the trigger, some have a charge time where you only press the trigger once, some don't charge at all. Some are element locked. Some are stronger than others. You'll have to figure out which guns work best for which activities. FFYL GUN Free Radical or Plasma Coil, with Urad anointment. Launchers can get you up from FFYL, but ammo is precious considering it's your main weapon type. And they can lose a lot of power if the first shot doesn't get you back up and you don't have Overkill anymore. CLASS MOD Spiritual Driver, with as many points into Mindfulness as possible. This class mod requires you to move quickly to get more damage, whether it's sliding or just running and jumping. Recommended passives: splash damage radius, splash damage, action skill cooldown rate, heavy damage, action skill damage, mag size, weapon charge speed, weapon damage, weapon critical damage. Protip: turn dialog volume all the way down if you do not wish to hear Amara screaming from self-dots all of the time. SHIELD Infernal Wish, with ASE 50% bonus element anointment (radiation is recommended). The Wish stacks will eventually get to you and down you, but going down is something you should get used to on this build. ARTIFACT Toboggan. Not only will sliding grant you 100% bonus amp damage, but it will also greatly increase your movement speed for more Spiritual Driver damage. Sliding and shooting is how you get maximum damage out of this build. Recommended passives: heavy damage, elemental damage, action skill cooldown rate, area of effect damage, mag size. BACKUP ARTIFACT Cutpurse Launch Pad. You will most likely run out of ammo during long activities, even when using efficient launchers such as the Yellowcake and the Kickcharger. This artifact will replenish your rocket ammo when slamming. GRENADE Hyperion Quasar (non sticky) or Mesmer, with ASE 50% bonus element anointment. Either of these are great for aggro relief, which can be necessary because this build does not have direct life steal. GAMEPLAY LOOP Cast Tandava toward a group of enemies for as many Samsara stacks as possible. Your Driver dot will be ramping up Mindfulness and Burn Both Ends. You can either slide and cancel for Toboggan amp or simply shoot during the slide. Either way, you must slide before each shot. Whether you shoot while sliding or shoot while running is up to you, your gun, and your content. If you can't aim quick enough to shoot while sliding, then don't (although some launchers don't really need to be aimed all that well). If your gun has a charge time, that can make sliding and shooting tougher to execute -- make sure you begin the charge at the same moment you begin the slide. And if the terrain you are in doesn't allow for clear sliding lanes and shooting your launcher away from your face, then don't shoot while sliding. But sliding and shooting is how you attain maximum damage, and should at least be performed in boss arenas. Maintaining your Overkill is an important part of doing damage, and being forced to slide and get up to speed before each shot helps you keep that Overkill. This is because during the time it takes to set up the next shot, the previous shot should have killed something. If you shoot twice in rapid succession, and your first shot had Overkill, your second shot will be significantly weaker. Taking advantage of Overkill also helps make your ammo last longer. NOTES - GUARDIAN TAKEDOWN CRYSTALS This is probably the toughest challenge for this build, because there's no room to move fast and shoot. Additionally, sliding for Toboggan lets some of the enemies close in on you. Use the Mesmer, have a Kickcharger equipped, and stay in the air. Manage your Overkill , and if you can quickly slide and cancel for amp between shots, do so.

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

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

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

The big list. The Builds READ OR DIE. Well, kind of. A lot of these builds require lengthy explanations in order to be properly understood and played. Playing a build improperly may result in a bad time. Most of these builds require intermediate to expert level experience with the Borderlands 3 endgame. If you're not quite at that point, perhaps head over to the Tips section for help. It is assumed that you know how the anointments function, that you have all Guardian Rank perks unlocked, and have a basic understanding of the damage formula. All gameplay footage of Takedowns are in True Takedown mode. Gun Builds Acidwolf Hidden Tiger Queen Mida s Inferno Amara Nightmare Amara Leeloo Dallas Multi-tap Amara Dot Gun Amara Dot Crit Barbie Dahl Phasewalker Cold Hearted Ragebow Beeg Badaboom Agent Amara Mother Chuckin' Amara Action Skill Builds Supernatural Amara Meteor Amara Sorceress Queen Hybrid Builds Fission Amara Oblivion Amara Lame Faker Amara True Melee Builds Emerald Swan Ruby Swan Sapphire Swan Golden Swan Sulphur Swan Steel Swan Amber Swan Antimatter Swan Stone Swan Slam Builds Gone Fission Amara Icicle Amara Magmamara Teslamara Other Builds Phase Yeet Boomfist Amara Dot Com Unreal Amara