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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 immune 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.

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. Billions that the ASE 50% is going to apply to again . 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.

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

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

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

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

Tips for conquering the Guardian Takedown as Amara. Guardian Takedown The Guardian Takedown is one of the best designed pieces of content Gearbox has ever made, in my opinion. However, its difficulty is a turnoff for many. Hopefully, by helping you learn the content, you too can spend more time there and enjoy it. Here are some tips for the Guardian Takedown, in no particular order. CRYSTAL PHASES The objective during the crystal phases is to charge the crystals before they drain and detonate. You actually don't need to kill any enemies. Now, most builds have no other solution to the enemies the game throws at you than to kill them. But there are many tactics, other than killing, for preventing Guardians from entering the charging square. 1. The Mesmer grenade basically makes the Guardians fight each other and ignore you, allowing you to charge the crystal in peace. The enemies that get damaged by this grenade briefly turn to allies, and all nearby enemies, even if untouched by the grenade, will start attacking their new foes. This piece of gear is less effective if you are specced Burn Both Ends, where only the enemies directly damaged by the grenade stop attacking, and most other enemies still come after you. 2. If you have a build that has both Glamour and Ties That Bind unlocked, you can simply grasp a group with that augment, and any enemy touched by the linkage will become an ally for a period of time. This is the same effect as the Mesmer grenade. 3. Alternatively, you can use Ties That Bind with Stillness of Mind to lock the first set of enemies in the air. Then, if you have Avatar, do it again when your first grasp ends. This will take you most of the way to a full crystal charge. You can drag out this tactic longer by waiting to execute your first grasp until the first wave is getting close to you. Do NOT damage the enemies, just dodge their attacks. If they have any damage over time affecting them, they will fall out of the Stillness bubble. 4. A shield with a Safe Space part can send enemies near you ragdolling through the air, completely removing them as a threat until they land and recover. The Band of Sitorak shield is great for this. It can even send Guardians to their death during the second crystals phase. This is not the most applicable tactic, as most builds need a shield that doesn't come with Safe Space, but it's an option. You can use these methods, in combination with other tips in this guide, to reliably get through the crystals sections. Enemies don't necessarily need to be killed, just controlled. And if you control the first wave well enough, no more will spawn. ELIMINATING KNOCKBACK One of the most annoying ways to die in the Guardian Takedown is by being knocked off of an edge by an enemy. And your own movement speed and momentum can exacerbate this problem. So if you're running a fast build, you can feel extra punished. Thankfully, there's a way to eliminate enemy knockback. Any time you punch crystals with the Eridian Resonator, that is, when this animation happens: knockback Your ability to be knocked back ceases. Watch: The above video also demonstrates a way to undo this and allow yourself to be knocked back again: by meleeing an enemy. Therefore, if you accidentally melee an enemy, you must find another crystal to punch to become grounded again. True melee builds or builds that punch a lot for Groundbreaker application will not find much use in this trick, because the effect will constantly be reset. At least Groundbreaker can still be applied via groundslam, which is a better way to apply it anyway, because then it hits a whole area instead of just one enemy. If you want to rocket jump in the Guardian Takedown, this trick prevents the rocket knockback. You must find an enemy to melee if you want to reset it and regain the ability to rocket jump. Another demonstration - watch as I can stand at the very edge of the Anathema platform and fail to get knocked off: I've catalogued all possible crystal locations that I've found in the Guardian Takedown. This resource is for both finding your first crystal to activate this trick, as well as finding further crystal locations in case you have accidentally reset the trick by meleeing an enemy. Click the interactive map below to see all crystal locations. Only a random subset of locations spawn each time you load into Minos Prime. And of those that spawn, some may be invisible (but can still be melee'd while invisible, or can be seen by equipping the Mysterious Artifact). If you find a location not shown on the map, send a screenshot and I'll add it! Always Be Jumping ALWAYS BE JUM PING (well not always...) Two of the Guardian types, Spectres and Diadems, have their AI confused while you are airborne. The Spectres are the ones that have blades on their arms and run directly for you and melee you. However, if you're in the air, they stop their advance and throw a ranged attack at you. If you're constantly jumping, they will only advance forward very briefly when you touch the ground. See below: This is especially useful during the crystal phases of the Guardian Takedown, but can also be used for general damage relief throughout the entire takedown. This is why you see all of the speedrunners constantly jumping during the crystal phases. If you get overrun, this tactic obviously doesn't mean much anymore, but it's something you can use to prevent being overrun. Diadems are a bit more complicated. They basically lose sight of you entirely while you're in the air, and start following a predetermined path. They turn again toward you when you land. During the crystals, their predetermined path is always toward the crystal they're spawning next to, so jumping does not prevent them from approaching your crystal - the Diadem must be dealt with. But Diadems that are spawning for a different crystal than the one you're on can be prevented from finding you by constantly jumping. See below: And this is why during those same speedruns you see the player remain grounded during the Scourge fight when he summons Diadems, so that the Diadems converge around Scourge. Otherwise, they would wander in all sorts of directions and be hard to detonate. In general, jumping is a very effective form of aggro relief during the whole takedown, and it's made easier by the fact that it's in low gravity. HOLD THE POINT Another crystal phase tactic is to hold the point, or the front of the boundary of your crystal's box. That way, as enemies approach and attack you from the from the front, they stay outside of the boundary, while you remain inside. You can use this tactic (in addition to the jumping tactic above) at the beginning of crystals to buy lots of time. When using this tactic, the Wraith Guardians, the ones with the staff that sometimes leap or pole vault toward you, will land in front of you. They will remain outside of the box, and then most of the time they either immediately walk backwards or flip backwards. Their attack doesn't do much damage, and they end up being completely non-threating to you charging your crystal. See below: Obviously, if things have gotten out of control, this tactic can be abandoned, but it's one more tool you can use to prevent things from getting out of control in the first place. PHASEGRASP AND DIADEMS Do not Phasegrasp a Diadem that has begun it's self-destruct animation. If it dies while grasped, your grasp will be bugged and remain unavailable for a couple minutes. You can grasp a Diadem that has not started this animation, and shoot and kill it like normal. CRIT SPOTS Most people are unaware of how to crit the Nekrotafeyo creatures and/or the Guardians. I believe this prevents people from using guns such as sniper rifles during this takedown, and in general enjoying the content. Below, I will outline the crit spots of the various enemy types: Three of the creature types, Vandas, Mantas, and Djira, have the same type of crit spot: on the tip of their nose. This crit spot actually extends onto the top of their nose just a little bit, so a reliable way to hit it is to aim just above the tip. The Korax's tail spike is their crit spot. The Mantakores have big, flashy, flower face as a crit spot. Note, though, that when Phasegrasping a Mantakore, their entire body rotates a little bit relative to their position on the ground, and their face, when lifted, will be about 90 degrees to your left. This is important for positioning yourself before grasping a Mantakore. All Guardians have the same general crit area, a head that sits low between the shoulders. Note that since it does not stick out above the shoulders, you cannot crit them from behind. Also note that, when Phasegrasped, the Seras cover the lower part of their face with their arms. They can still be critted on the top half of their head. SERA LASER The Flying Sera Guardians have a dangerous laser attack, and it can be especially painful during the crystals phases, where there isn't much room to maneuver. They can be knocked out of this attack either with melee (including the Face Puncher) or by critting them. ANATHEMA MOBS The Anathema fight spawns mobs around the arena every phase of the fight. Any mobs that survive Anathema's exploding bubble have radiation applied to them. As you may know, when you irradiate an enemy, they have an aura that damages nearby enemies with radiation. Well, when an enemy (Anathema) applies a radiation status to another enemy (the mobs that survive the bubble), the radiation aura on them now damages you . And that radiation aura is strong, relative to player health. When those irradiated mobs are close to you, you will get health gated. This is instant FFYL for Deathless builds. If you have a strong dot on yourself, you can also go down that way after being health gated. There's no foolproof solution to this. Simply kill and avoid them as best you can if you have a fragile build. WATCH YOUR FACE There are many things that fly towards you suddenly in this takedown, including projectiles launched from mobs, mobs themselves, dead bodies and body parts of mobs. Every one of these things, if it gets in your face, can make you splash and down yourself if you're using a splash weapon. Always be moving, strafing, dodging to prevent this from happening. HAVE A GOOD FFYL WEAPON See the Tips section on FFYL here.

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

💙 Lone, you were always positive, kind, smart, friendly, and generous with the work you did for the community. We all benefited from your mods in a way that increased our knowledge and playtime. And we benefited from you as an example of how to be a curious and helpful community member. In short, you increased our joy. Be at peace in your eternal rest.

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.

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.