Traditional red tree/blue tree Ties That Bind gun build, with a couple small twists. Phasewalker SYNOPSIS Traditional red tree/blue tree Ties That Bind gun build, with a couple small twists. INTRO I avoided making a generic red/blue Ties That Bind build for a long time, because I didn't have anything to add to the concept. After exploring gun dots , I realized I could add a little flair to it. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES The way this build deviates from other builds is you max Anima and Unweave the Rainbow. Gun dots are strong, and getting up to 10 points in Anima really lets you fire and forget, and also increases the effectiveness of Radsplosions. And if you choose to use cryo guns, which don't apply a dot, you are rewarded by Unweave the Rainbow. This build also leans into action skill damage, allowing actions skills outside of Ties That Bind to do work. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. Optionally Reverberation, Tandava, or Phaseslam, all of which will deal plenty of damage on their own, and can be matched with a 250% Phasecast or 300% Phaseslam gun damage anointment on your guns for bossing. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever is suited to your content, keeping in mind that 40% of your gun's damage is changed via Infusion and 18% is a bonus element from Forceful Expression. Also note that if cryo is your action skill element, Anima breaks completely and has no effect. So to take advantage of Unweave the Rainbow and also get juicy dots and radsplosions from bonus elements, use cryo guns and have your action skill element set to something else. GUNS Any decent or strong gun, with Killstack or Consecutive Hits anointment. This build and Ties That Bind allows for quite a variety. Some of my favorites: Hellwalker, Free Radical, Crit, Sand Hawk, Bird of Prey, Major Kong, Yellowcake, Guardian Angel, Reflux, Plaguebearer, Kaoson, D.N.A., Kickcharger, Clairvoyance, Beacon, Flipper, Rowan's Call, King's/Queen's Call. Yes, you can actually shoot the Guardian Angel; it's very effective with Ties That Bind and Indiscriminate. For bossing, any of the strongest guns with a 250% Phasecast or 300% Phaseslam gun damage anointment. OPTIONAL SWAP GUN Guardian Angel, with Killstack anointment. The Killstack anointment is the only anointment that attaches to the player instead of the gun, so you can swap guns freely and the stacks will still be there, decaying over time like normal. This allows you to run Reverberation or Tandava or Phaseslam with the Killstack anointment - swap to the Guardian Angel to buff those action skills, and any kills you get will add to your Killstacks. Swap back to your gun to shoot enemies and your stacks will keep going. OPTIONAL BOSSING GUN Guardian Angel, with Astral Projection or Slam damage anointment. For direct bossing damage with just your action skill. Try the special Reverberation technique for even more damage. CLASS MOD Phasezerker, with as many points into Anima as possible. Recommended passives: weapon damage, action skill cooldown rate, splash damage, splash damage radius, weapon type damage, mag size, action skill damage. This is also a build where the Kensei fits in nicely. Utilize Unweave the Rainbow during mobbing by having splash guns that are cryo or having your action skill element attuned to cryo. During bossing, the Kensei damage itself helps quite a lot, so element-match as best as you can. Same anointment philosophy: Killstack or Consec Hits if using Grasp, 250% Cast Gun Damage if using Reverberation. Tandava and Phaseslam are not recommended with the Kensei because of their longer cooldown. SHIELD Re-Volter, with Action Skill Start. Perfect for buffing your guns and your action skills. ARTIFACT Pearl of Ineffable Knowledge with a mag size passive. Other options are an Atom Balm Victory Rush for greater radsplosions, or a Snowdrift Victory Rush for better movement. Recommended passives on these two artifacts: action skill cooldown rate, area of effect damage in the 2nd or 3rd slot (which will also increase area radius), elemental damage, weapon type damage. GRENADE Whatever you find useful, with ASE 50% radiation anointment. If you're bossing, change this element to match the boss, but for general use, the radsplosions enabled by having bonus radiation damage are very useful. Utility grenades: It's Piss, Hyperion Quasar (non sticky), Mesmer. Damage grenades, especially if holding the Guardian Angel: Lightspeed, Doc Hina's Miracle Bomb. GAMEPLAY LOOP Grasp, shoot, and destroy. If you are wanting to deal damage with action skills or grenades, swap to Guardian Angel to perform those actions, then swap back to guns and start blastin'. This is probably the most straightforward Amara gun build, even with the few twists. This sort of build can run into roadblocks when bossing or raid bossing. Either use Guardian Angel anointed to buff your Reverb or Phaseslam, or use a 250% Phasecast or 300% Phaseslam gun damage anoint on your guns. You can also cheese most bosses with Remnant: hold the Guardian Angel, Reverb a nearby mob, and Remnant will fly toward the closest enemy to you. If it hits the boss, the boss gets deleted. If it hits another enemy, Groundbreaker the boss.

Tediore chuckin' Amara. Mother chucker. Mother Chuckin' Amara SYNOPSIS Tediore chuckin' Amara. Mother chucker. INTRO Inspired long ago by LessHandsomeJack's Yeetbot build, this is a Tediore chucking build that went through many iterations and many failures, especially after the undeserved 50% nerf to Tediore chucks. This is as consistent and strong a Tediore Amara can be. It's mostly the Anarchy show, at least for high end content. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES This is a radiation only build, so Clear The Mind is essential. This is also a Spiritual Driver build, so Mindfulness is essential. Sustainment is necessary to stay alive, and that leaves not much room for blue tree. Tediore chucks can crit, though, so Transcend is a good investment. ACTION SKILL Light Fantastic. Optionally Shooting Star to help with bossing. The long duration of Phaseflare-type skills is important for anointment uptime. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Always corrosive. This is mostly because a corrosive self-dot from the Spiritual Driver will last the longest and therefore keep up your Mindfulness stacks the longest. Further, most strong enemies are armored, and that's radiation's worst matchup. MAIN GUN Anarchy, x18, in radiation, with either Consecutive Hits or 150/90 anointment. The highest chuck damage rad Anarchy is 3185x18 with a mag size of 11. The per-shot damage is a little less than a x20 Anarchy, but the higher mag size means more chuck damage, especially when factoring in mag size increases. The base of the chuck damage formula is card damage * pellets * ammo left in mag. Keep in mind the Anarchy's quirks. Interrupting your reload animation in any way makes you lose your stacks. If you've started and haven't fully finished your reload and interrupt it with throwing a grenade, using your action skill, mantling, getting downed, etc., then your stacks are gone. You can build up your stacks again while in combat, but just be aware of what might cause your damage to suddenly drop off. OTHER RADIATION TEDIORE GUNS Needle Gun, with Consecutive Hits or 150/90 anointment. This is the second best chucking gun, after the Anarchy. The Horizon, x9, 5 mag, with Consecutive Hits, is noticeably weaker, but very fun to toss around enemies with. Shoot the reload bubble while it's soaring through the air and it will create a huge singularity, then explode. Bangarang, with Consecutive Hits anointment. Also somewhat weak, but fun to use if you don't mind lots of flashing lights. Purple Keenfire and Sureshot Tediores, with Consecutive Hits anointment. Look for homing MIRV parts, as other parts on Tediores have much weaker chuck damage. The Handsome Jackhammer is really strong, and in a corrosive variant is great for bossing if you keep your distance from it. Deviating from Tediore a little bit, a couple other guns that work decently with this build are a radiation Backburner, Plaguebearer, and Slow Hand with Consecutive Hits anointment. FFYL GUN A fully stacked Anarchy could get you up from FFYL, but there are reasons you may not have that available. A Free Radical or Plasma Coil with Consecutive Hits is a reliable FFYL weapon. CLASS MOD Spiritual Driver, with as many points into Mindfulness as possible. Recommended anointments: grenade damage (Tediore chucks get grenade damage), splash damage, splash damage radius, action skill cooldown rate, weapon damage, mag size. Tediore chucks get gun damage bonuses at the time the chuck occurs. So if you run fast and chuck, the Spiritual Driver will greatly increase the damage of the explosion. 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 Red Suit, with ASE 50% radiation bonus element. This shield will prevent you from dying to your own Tediore chucks, and will allow you throw them with reckless abandon and increase their radius through splash radius passives. It will also shield you from your own Backburner and Plaguebearer shots, if you're using those guns. A Power Charge augment or two on this shield is beneficial. ARTIFACT Cutpurse Victory Rush. Throwing a Fish Slap with a Cutpurse will keep up your ammo reserves, allowing you to chuck endlessly. Recommended passives: grenade damage, area of effect damage in the 2nd or 3rd slot (which will also increase area radius), action skill cooldown rate, radiation damage, mag size, move speed. A second recommended artifact is an Elemental Projector Victory Rush. This can be swapped in for boss fights where you plan on killing the boss before running out of reserves. Throw a Fish at your foot to dot yourself and proc it. If you do run out of ammo before the fight is over, you can always briefly swap in the Cutpurse to refill. In the gameplay video above, all footage was taken with the Cutpurse equipped, except for the Hemovorous fight, for which the Elemental Projector was used. Or you can run the Elemental Projector most of the time by equipping a different weapon type in each slot, and simply swap when you run out of ammo for one type. Just remember that if you swap away from the Anarchy, it is no longer stacked. GRENADE Fish Slap, in radiation, with ASA 150% grenade damage anointment. This anointment will greatly increase your chuck damage when Light Fantastic is active, as chucks get grenade damage. The Fish itself will be used to proc Cutpurse and restore your ammo reserves. It can also be thrown at your feet to dot yourself and get stacks of Mindfulness outside of an action skill activation. The Fish in radiation will not be able to hurt you, because of the Red Suit. If running the Elemental Projector, something like a radiation Lightspeed for throwing at your feet will more reliably proc a radiation dot. GAMEPLAY LOOP Summon Light Fantastic, shoot your gun once, make sure you're moving really fast, and then chuck. Shoot your chuck's target bubble if it has one. Chuck again. The faster you move while the gun leaves your hands, the more damage it will do when it explodes. Throw Fish at enemies every so often to replenish your ammo. If you've lost Mindfulness stacks, throw Fish at your feet until you're dotted. Light Fantastic is often not used for damage. Just activate it and forget it; go about chucking. Occasionally, though, it will find a way to kill some enemies and become very strong, in which case you can pay attention to it and direct it around. For tankier bosses such as Scourge, the Shooting Star variant of Phaseflare can help you out, provided you buff it up with a few punches. There's also the Elemental Projector. As long as you're chucking, Sustainment will do a great job of keeping you alive. You can be very aggressive with this build if you keep performing actions. If you're using the Anarchy, pre-stack it at the ammo vendor. Be careful not to ever interrupt its reload animation until it is fully complete, otherwise you lose your stacks. You can rebuild stacks while in combat, if necessary.

Tips for recovering from Fight For Your Life (FFYL) as Amara at endgame. FFYL Amara loses a lot of her buffs when going into FFYL, including Do Harm stacks, the Killstack anointment, and self-dots. Here are some tips to help you get up if you've gone down. HAVE A GOOD FFYL GUN This is the most important measure against death. Good FFYL guns for Amara are basically guns that are powerful on their own. Prime examples are the Free Radical and the Plasma Coil. Other strong contenders are the Backburner, the Plaguebearer, and the Sand Hawk. The Backburner and Plaguebearer both have a vortex/singularity effect, which can be useful for keeping enemies in place, preventing them from running away. Another less-well-known gun is the Ember's Purge. This gun works well for grounded enemies. When shooting an enemy, there's a random chance a fire puddle will appear beneath them, and this puddle does massive damage to anything standing in it. If you're a melee build and have a Static Charge, a Face Puncher is a great FFYL weapon. (It's even better if Body & Mind is active.) Static Charge will chain to nearby enemies, building up Groundbreaker for every Face Puncher shot. SHOOT THE GUARDIAN ANGEL Lots of builds use the Guardian Angel to buff their attacks, and this gun is actually an amazing FFYL gun if you're also specced Indiscriminate. The Guardian Angel's damage bonus will get double dipped by Indiscriminate. So you can repeatedly fire at a single enemy in front of you, and the ricochets will find enemies off to the side and obliterate them. The Guardian Angel is also useful if you have any decent strength dots on enemies when you go down, as it will increase the damage of those dots. You can get decent dots even without building for them if you're using high-dot weapons like the Free Radical or Plasma Coil or Kickcharger. FFYL GUN ANOINTMENT Take care in choosing the anointment for your FFYL gun. Most of the time, it's between Consecutive Hits and Urad. Consecutive Hits is useful because Amara won't have a lot of gun damage while in FFYL. But Urad can be just as effective. If you're specced into Sustainment, beware that you can lifesteal while in FFYL. Your health might not be visible, but it's still there, and you can lifesteal out of Urad, deactivating the anoint while you're still in FFYL. In general, I choose Urad, unless I'm specced Sustainment, in which case I choose Consecutive Hits. USE GROUNDBREAKER When shooting an enemy while in FFYL, if you have Indiscriminate specced, you often don't need to finish an enemy off with your gun. Indiscriminate builds lots of Groundbreaker damage from the other enemies. You can get the enemy in front of you most of the way down, and punch your way through the rest. Be careful, though: if you have to crawl to close the distance to connect a punch, you may inadvertently decrease your time in FFYL by losing the Dead Man Walking Guardian Rank perk. It's a balancing act. USE YOUR MINIMAP The instant you get put into FFYL, check your minimap for the most likely target. You should not be spending time in FFYL looking for an enemy to shoot. This can save you precious seconds. Ping the enemy you want to kill to highlight them, so you can follow them in case they become obscured. PREDICT YOUR FFYL If you know you are in a sticky situation you can't get out of, pre throwing a grenade or Fish Slap or grasping an enemy can set you up to recover quickly. For example, if you're mid-reload and a group of enemies starts attacking, but your Ties That Bind is availble, don't wait to finish the reload. Instead, grasp an enemy, then go down. The Lead Or Alive Guardian Rank perk will reload your guns for you, and you'll have an easy time killing enemies caught in Ties That Bind. There's also the old Borderlands trick where, in a tough encounter, you leave a weak enemy or two alive for easy Second Winding.

True melee and action skill hybrid build. Sapphire Swan SYNOPSIS True melee and action skill hybrid build. INTRO Sapphire Swan is one of my three crown jewels of true melee builds, along with Ruby Swan and Emerald Swan. Sapphire Swan is designated as such because it uses a blue tree action skill, Tandava. It is the simplest of the three gems. The philosophy of this build is to supplement your punches with action skill damage, Groundbreaker, and the melee damage bonus vs frozen targets. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Blue and purple trees synergize very well with a melee and action skill focus. However, you can't cap both of them and also pick up Sustainment, and true melee needs Sustainment. True melee also needs Find Your Center, but you'll get that from the class mod. There's some reload speed taken in blue tree, and that's because there is a strategy for shooting your gun occasionally. ACTION SKILL Tandava. Optionally, Reverberation for bossing or better single target damage, especially with the special Reverberation technique. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Freezing enemies through punching is a core mechanic of this build, so always cryo. Even against Wotan. (There's no points in green tree for corrosive anyway.) PUNCHING GUN Psycho Stabber, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. CASTING / UTILITY / PUNCHING GUN Guardian Angel, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. Swap to this to cast Reverb or Tandava for more damage. In areas where mobs are weaker, like trials or Slaughterstar, you can get away with casting while holding the Psycho Stabber, if you like. You can also shoot the Guardian Angel at enemies for a couple of benefits. First, it will grant you healing th rough Sustainment. Second, when the projectiles ricochet through Indiscriminate, they will double dip the Guardian Angel bonus. When those ricocheted projectiles hit enemies, they will either kill them or at the very least give you good Groundbreaker damage. Because of that, this is the recommended punching gun against Guardians in the True Guardian Takedown. When you're not Phasecasting, alternate between shooting the Guardians and punching them. FFYL / BACKUP GUNS Face Puncher and Blade Fury (masher preferred) with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointments. The Face puncher is for killing enemies out of reach or to help with bossing. It will also get you out of FFYL if you still have Body & Mind active. The Blade Fury is a backup FFYL gun for when Body & Mind runs out and you're still not back up. CLASS MOD Breaker, with a required point into Find Your Center. True melee builds don't function well at all without FYC. The remaining points should go to Jab Cross, which adds action skill damage to your attacks. The most important passive is Splash Damage Radius. Other recommended passives: action skill damage, action skill cooldown rate, splash damage, melee damage. SHIELD Re-Volter, with Action Skill Start anointment. This adds tons of shock damage to all of your attacks, allowing you to keep cryo as your action skill element, even against blue HP bar bosses. Defensive augments are recommended, such as absorb, health charge, shield charge, turtle. ARTIFACT Cryo Stone Static Charge. The Cryo Stone further helps your punches freeze enemies. The Static Charge is the best all-around artifact suffix for melee. The most important passive is Area of Effect in the 2nd or 3rd slot, which will also increase area radius. Other recommended passives: elemental damage, action skill cooldown rate, melee damage, movement speed. GRENADE Mesmer or Hyperion Quasar (non sticky) or radiation Fish Slap (for immune Maliwan Heavies; see "Notes - Immune Maliwan Heavies" below), with ASE Apply Terror anointment. GAMEPLAY LOOP Phasecast at something to get your kill skills and anointments rolling. Throw a few punches, then repeat. Try to kill lots of enemies with your cast, to get more stacks of Expedite. If you fail, you still have other skills that will proc Expedite for you: Remnant, Unweave The Rainbow, Free The Soul, Body & Mind. There's also Combo Breaker, which comes in clutch every so often. Beware of the timing between your casts. Sometimes you don't want to cast twice in immediate succession. Since this is not a Phasezerker build, Rush stacks will need to be accrued manually. This isn't hard, but it's something to keep in mind. If you have 20 Rush stacks that are converted to Do Harm stacks when you cast, and your cast kills something, Avatar will refund you 10 Rush stacks. Then you can build up another 10 to get back to 20 before casting again. For bossing and tankier enemies, you will be relying more on your Reverbs and Tandavas than you will on your punches, but you can still punch down even the toughest mobs if you desire. For raid bosses, you can use a Phaseflare variant such as Shooting Star. During the Wotan fight, keep using cryo Tandava, and wait for some mobs to spawn. Tandava hitting Wotan and also killing those mobs will either 1. make Free The Soul and Remnant target Wotan or 2. give you enough Groundbreaker to shoot Wotan with the Face Puncher or Blade Fury. NOTES - IMMUNE MALIWAN HEAVIES The two elemental damage types you deal with this build are cryo and shock. There are no others. That means both Cryo and Shock immune Heavies in the Maliwan Takedown pose a problem. For Cryo heavies, your punch will essentially have zero effect, not even for delivering Groundbreaker. Cast at them with Reverb or Tandava and let the Re-Volter damage kill them. If it doesn't, ground slam at them to deliver Groundbreaker. You can also deliver Groundbreaker this way from damage you dealt to other enemies. Shock heavies are less of a problem. Your attacks will do significantly less damage to them, but it's still enough. They can be punched directly to deliver Groundbreaker. They can also be frozen. 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 or Ticked Off, Very Hard - Not The Face.

A Jakobs Amara, except it also uses a select few other manufacturers. Agent Amara SYNOPSIS A Jakobs Amara, except it also uses a select few other manufacturers. No "Sheriff" or "Deputy", just "Agent". INTRO This build is not for you. It requires extreme care and discipline. It is punishing, if you don't play it correctly. And even sometimes if you do. It's also quite gear specific. You have been warned. ... With that out of the way, this build is the result of putting the Infernal Wish on an Amara gun build. It actively kills you, but rewards you with high damage and the ability to use some weaker weapons. (And the inability to use a lot of regular weapons.) GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES This is a very interesting setup. Sustainment is two points away, but obtaining it requires losing Blight Tiger, Avatar, or 30% elemental/kinetic damage from Burn Both Ends. Blight Tiger is hugely important for infusing Jakobs weapons with corrosive. Losing Avatar is simply not an option; this is a Kensei build, and Avater gives you twice the Kensei damage uptime. And Burn Both Ends synergizes very well with both non-elemental weapons and the Infernal Wish. None of these things can be lost. Which is fine, because Sustainment actually doesn't help very much. Basically, if you have a Wish dot and something healthgates you, you will go down immediately, even with Sustainment. So yes, this build has no life steal and actively tries to kill you. The Wish dot, coupled with an active bonus element (from your shield and grenade anointments), will self-stack Burn Both Ends. Normally, self damage such as the Wish dot does not stack BBE, but the bonus element "ticking on top of it" as a hidden damage instance will stack it. Just through regular action skill usage and gun shooting, BBE will give you damage without having to worry about being damaged by enemies. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. Phasecast coupled with 250% Phasecast gun damage anointment for bossing. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever is suited to the content you are facing. This is a Kensei build, and it also has Infusion at 40%. This is so you can add lots of elemental damage to your non-elemental weapons for better element matchups. Choose your action skill element wisely, as it will greatly impact your damage. CLASS MOD Kensei, with as many points into Joyful Freedom or No Mistakes In Nature as possible, and with one of the four possible manufacturer crit passives: Jakobs, Dahl, Hyperion, and Atlas. This crit passive is a whopping 64% at level 72. And this is why the build is not just restricted to Jakobs weapons. Other recommended passives: weapon damage, action skill cooldown rate, splash damage radius, weapon type damage, weapon crit damage, melee damage, shield recharge rate, incendiary resistance (works against the Wish dot). JAKOBS GUNS This build uses lots of Jakobs guns well, because they tend to pack a stronger punch per trigger pull, and pulling the trigger fewer times is beneifical because you don't want the Wish dot stacking too high. Bekah, Rowan's Call, King's/Queen's Call, Hellwalker, Clairvoyance (single projectile), Love Drill, Trickshot, Bird of Prey. You can even use overlooked or less powerful guns, although some may only work against non-True Takedown-level enemies: Dead Chamber, Companion, Maggie, Quickdraw (have 2 so you can swap between them), Seventh Sense. Some of these guns are normally fired rapidly, such as the Rowan's Call. Exercise trigger discipline and only fire as many times as it takes to kill the enemy. The damage output of this build is designed to require fewer trigger pulls. The Trickshot fires rapidly automatically, but whatever you're aiming at should be dead after 1-2 trigger pulls anyway. All guns with the Consecutive Hits anointment. Killstack would be a contender, but you lose Killstacks when you enter FFYL, and this build definitely enters FFYL. For a bit of nostalgic fun, use a Wedding Invitation with Next 2 Mags Cryo anointment, with an ASE 50% cryo bonus element, and cryo action skill element. You might be surprised how strong it is. The Wedding Invitation, when it crits or hits an enemy with a ricochet projectile, stacks a debuff to both fire and cryo damage, the former up to 100% and the latter up to 200%. Credit to Lonemasterino for this discovery. So cryo damage is very strong with this gun. DAHL GUNS Soulrender, Kaoson (x1), Sand Hawk, with Consecutive Hits anointments. These weapons synergize with the Wish because they allow you to restrict your trigger pulls. The Soulrender can be fired in bursts until a couple skulls appear, at which point you can let off and let the skulls destroy enemies. The Kaoson has extra damage from the stickies exploding, allowing you to stop firing before an enemy is dead. The Sand Hawk, in semi-auto mode and when aimed at a crit spot, kills just about anything in a few shots anyway. HYPERION GUNS Guardian Angel, Masterwork Crossbow, Heart Breaker (x8), Smog, Reflux (x7), Convergence (x3 or x4), all with Consecutive Hits. Exercise trigger discipline and these guns will take you a long way. The Crossbow is especially powerful when you get used to aiming it. The Guardian Angel with Indiscriminate will wipe out a whole group quite easily. ATLAS GUNS Multi-tap and OPQ System, with Conseutive Hits anointments. Trigger discipline required. OTHER GUNS This build can make use of some other guns, in which case you can ditch the manufacturer crit passive on your class mod and use a Splash Damage passive: Anarchy, Contained Blast, Prompt Critical, Backburner. With Consecutive Hits. FFYL GUNS Each manufacturer listed above has a good FFYL option: Hellwalker, Soulrender or Sand Hawk, Guardian Angel, OPQ System. However, it may also be wise to have a separate FFYL gun that will work in all situations, such as the Free Radical or Plasma Coil, with Consecutive Hits anointment. BOSSING GUNS Some of the stronger guns listed above should be equipped with a 250% Phasecast gun damage anointment and be used for bossing: Bekah, Trickshot, Hellwalker, Bird of Prey, Sand Hawk, Soulrender, Anarchy, Contained Blast. SHIELD Infernal Wish, with a highly recommended shield charge part or two. With ASE 50% bonus element anointment. The shield charges are very important for survivability, as the Wish dot will do much less damage to its own shield than to your health bar. A strong dot can be chunking at your health, and picking up a shield charge will suddenly make it much less likely to kill you. Avoid the following augments, which disable the Wish's extra projectile effect: Adrenaline, Capacity, Delay, Recharge, Reflect, Trigger Happy, Turtle. Protip: turn dialog volume all the way down if you do not wish to hear Amara screaming from self-dots all of the time. ARTIFACT An appropriate well-rolled Company Man or Pearl of Ineffable Knowledge with a mag size passive. Passives for Company Man: elemental damage, area of effect damage, melee damage, shield recharge rate, action skill cooldown rate, move speed, incendiary resistance (works against the Wish dot). GRENADE Hyperion Quasar (non sticky) or Mesmer, with ASE 50% bonus element anointment. Both of these are great for crowd control, which may be necessary more often than you expect. Throw these for utility whenever there's a hint of danger. GAMEPLAY LOOP Activate your action skill and start shooting, but exercise great trigger discipline. Only shoot as often as necessary to kill. If needed, wait for your action skill to come back before continuing firing, so that your trigger pulls are more powerful with Kensei damage. If there's trouble brewing, throw your crowd control grenade. Aim for crits. This build will often play like a Deathless build, in that getting health-gated means you instantly go down anyway, because your Wish dot takes out the rest of your HP. But as long as you have a good FFYL gun, this is no problem. Going down resets the severity of the Wish dot. You're just going to have to rewire yourself to not get frustrated by going into FFYL. At the end of combat, or with one enemy left, keep an eye on how strong your Wish dot is. You don't want to go down with no enemies left. If it looks like you might go down, look around for health vials and shield boosters. Health vials, in general, are going to be something you should pay attention to at all times with this build. NOTES - ANATHEMA FIGHT There is a dumb mechanic to this fight where if you pass close to a Guardian mob, you are health-gated just by touching them. This can mean an instant down if you have a Wish dot active. Do your best to avoid the mobs walking around, especially when taking a jump pad back to the arena or when they're doing a pole-vault-front-flip at you. NOTES - RAID BOSSING When referring to bosses like Hemo, Seer, or the True Trials bosses, this build cannot raid boss well at all, unfortunately. If you want to try, equip a Re-Volter with Action Skill Start and use something like a 250% Phasecast gun damage Free Radical.

The original action skill build, moves quickly, decimates everything, but with a jarring playstyle. Supernatural Amara SYNOP SIS The original action skill build, moves quickly, decimates everything, but with a jarring playstyle. INTRO This build was originally made to make the Downfall action skill viable, shortly after Gearbox introduced mayhem scaling in the summer of 2020. Downfall is 10/10 cool, but 2/10 in usefulness relative to Phaseslam and Tandava and Reverberation. Regardless, this build uses all of those action skills. And Downfall is actually somewhat strong, all things considered. The main problem is its cooldown, a whopping 47 seconds. In order to get around that, you need to self-dot and use the Golden Rule classmod. Yep, at heart, this is a Downfall Golden Rule build. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES The single point into Infusion is so that you always have a dot on yourself of the same element as your action skill element. More on this later. The three points into Unweave the Rainbow are there if you choose to use the Terror Cryo anoint and/or the Frozen Heart shield. ACTION SKILL Phaseslam or Tandava or Downfall. Reverberation for bosses if you use the Reverb technique. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever element is suited to the content you're facing, except for cryo. Because of the 1 point into Infusion, when you shoot your foot to dot yourself, you will cryo yourself and get slowed if you choose cryo. MAIN GUN 1 A low level Sellout pistol, anointed with either the Astral Projection 200% or Slam 300% anointment, depending on which action skill you have selected. Often, you will be swapping to the Guardian Angel to activate your action skill, but you don't need to; with these anoints on the Sellout, you can cast or slam without swapping and still do great damage. With this gun, you'll shoot your feet once or twice to dot yourself, triggering both the Golden Rule class mod and the Elemental Projector artifact. You can get a low level anointed Sellout by finding one in Earl's vending machine on Sanctuary, after completing the quest. I was able to get to the Sellout mission on Eden 6 at level 21 by killing as few enemies as possible, meaning the Sellouts I found in Earl's vendor were also level 21. You can find an anointed 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. Protip: turn dialog volume all the way down if you do not wish to hear Amara screaming from self-dots all of the time. MAIN GUN 2 Guardian Angel, with the same Astral Projection and Slam anoints mentioned above, but optionally also one with a Terror Cryo anoint. This is for holding while you cast/slam if you want big, big damage. MAIN GUN 3 Face Puncher, with a Urad anointment. This is for delivering Groundbreaker from a distance. Our action skills will be building up tons of Groundbreaker, and you can make a quick swap to this gun to erase another enemy. The Urad anointment is sort of a last ditch effort to give you more Groundbreaker if shooting the Face Puncher while in FFYL. FFYL GUN Free Radical, with either Consec Hits or Urad anointment. CLASS MOD Golden Rule, preferably with points into Laid Bare first, Mindfulness second. Probably the most essential passive to have on it is splash damage radius. Other good passives: action skill cooldown rate, action skill damage, splash 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, getting even Phaseslam to a total cooldown of about 3 seconds. SHIELD There's a few options here, but the strongest is a Re-Volter with the Action Skill Start anointment. Other fun options are the Frozen Heart and the Stinger, both with the same anoint, the latter when paired with the Static Charge artifact. If you want to use Downfall, an Action Skill Start Stop Gap is necessary so you don't get downed in mid-air. ARTIFACT Elemental Projector Victory Rush. Optionally, an Elemental Projector Static Charge if using the Stinger shield. The most important passive is an Area of Effect roll on either the 2nd or 3rd slot, which will also increase area radius. Other recommended passives: elemental damage, action skill cooldown rate, movement speed, melee damage (with stinger). GRENADE Mesmer or Hyperion Quasar with ASE 50% radiation bonus element. These are both great utility grenades if you need an extra second or two for your cooldown to end. The 50% radiation element is important, as that's another element to dot ourselves with when shooting the Sellout. This 50% damage will also get added to Groundbreaker. If using the Terror Cryo Guardian Angel, then have one of these grenades with ASE Apply Terror anointment. 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% radiation anoint is procced, that's a third dot. If you're using the Re-Volter, that's a fourth dot. 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. If you want big damage, swap to the Guardian Angel and activate your action skill. If you don't care that much, just keep holding the Sellout. After your action skill, find a target for your Groundbreaker and either punch, slam, or Face Punch it. Repeat these steps as necessary - just make sure you stay dotted with the Sellout. Anima will keep those dots on you for a decent length of time. Remember, the dots are not only for your cooldown, but also for lots of Elemental Projector damage. NOTES - HEMOVOROUS None of the action skills used in this build make direct contact with Hemovorous. You can see this by trying to Phasecast at him; it just passes right through. Instead, splash him with Phaseslam. Go wild with it, actually. If you slam while there's a bunch of pods/eggs out, they'll explode and deal lots of damage to Hemo. Remnant will also do some work. If you notice Hemo or Vermi getting instantly phased by a huge chunk of damage, that means Remnant hit something; immediately swap to your Face Puncher to deliver all of that Groundbreaker damage somewhere. NOTES - GUARDIAN TAKEDOWN CRYSTALS This build has Glamour unlocked, so you can Tandava at Guardians during the crystals phase and they'll keep themselves occupied and let you charge your square. Just don't do this while swapping to the Guardian Angel, because you'll just kill them. Stay on the Sellout. NOTES - GUARDIAN ANGEL Believe it or not, you can actually do quite a bit of damage to your health with a dot from a level 21 Sellout. That's because the Guardian Angel increases all self damage by 5x. Don't linger holding the GA for long after using your action skill. You should be swapping to the Face Puncher and/or Sellout to keep your gameplay going anyway.

The hardest hitting true melee build I've ever made. This one is for the purists. Emerald Swan SYNOPSIS Formerly the hardest hitting true melee build I've ever made (since eclipsed by Sulphur Swan ). This one is for the purists. INTRO Emerald Swan is one of my three crown jewels of true melee builds, along with Sapphire Swan and Ruby Swan. Emerald Swan is designated as such because it uses a green action skill, Phaseslam. This is my magnum opus, so to speak. I've always wanted to make a true melee build that plays like they did when the game launched: using Phaseslam, the Brawler Ward shield, and speccing down to Blitz. Back then, Phaseslam didn't even kill things most of the time - it was all about punching hard, and Phaseslam only facilitated that. There weren't overpowered melee items like the Stinger and the Fish Slap, and we don't rely on those here. Beware: this principled true melee style will make apparent just how frustrating true melee can be to play , especially in places like the True Maliwan Takedown. You must be very deft with your movement and decision making. This build is very challenging, but also very rewarding. Blitz chaining might be the coolest thing in this game. There are items and skills available to make life easier, even though the build isn't meant for them. Do not feel ashamed of using them. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES There are no wasted skill points here - everything about this spec is important and has a use. ACTION SKILL Phaseslam. Optionally, to make harder areas or bosses easier, you can use a Phaseflare variant. I would recommend Light Fantastic or Shooting Star. When you dot yourself (see "Swap Gun" below), Light Fantastic will "attach" to you, which is quite convenient, if a bit weird looking. Ties That Bind is available, but that strays too far from the principle of the build. But Phaseslam is recommended in most cases because of ease of stacking Samsara and keeping uptime on Find Your Center and your Terror anointments. It will occasionally kill some enemies; more if you decide to swap to the Guardian Angel when slamming. Glamour is an optional augment, if you need some aggro relief at the expense of a longer cooldown. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Fire, shock, or corrosive depending on the content you are facing. Do not choose cryo. PUNCHING GUN Psycho Stabber with Terror Cryo anointment. The cryo will occasionally freeze some enemies, but at all times it is a great damage boost. SWAP GUN Low level Sellout pistol. Anointment not necessary. This gun is for shooting your foot to place a dot on yourself in order to proc the Elemental Projector artifact, giving you a huge increase to elemental damage. You only need to shoot once and then swap back to the Psycho Stabber. Each of the three projectiles from the Sellout has a 72% chance to dot you, so it's basically guaranteed. When you swap back to the Psycho Stabber with Terror Cryo, that cryo bonus element will start "ticking" on the dot you placed on yourself. It won't actually cryo you - it's sort of a hidden damage instance. But that bonus element ticking on a self-dot will stack Burn Both Ends for you, giving you even more elemental damage. Otherwise, self-damage and self-dots would not stack BBE. Since you can use an Ascetic class mod with up to +5 in Burn Both Ends, that combined with Tempest and the Elemental Projector means this build gets up to +309% increased elemental damage! See the "Notes - Low Level Sellout" section below for obtaining the lowest level Sellout possible. Protip: turn dialog volume all the way down if you do not wish to hear Amara screaming from self-dots all of the time. ALTERNATIVE PUNCHING GUN Ionic Disruptor with Terror Cryo anointment. Swapping to this gun and punching with it will convert your punch to shock damage, even if you have it set to a different element via Illuminated Fist. This is convenient for punching an immune Maliwan Heavy, as opposed to switching your action skill element. This can also be a primary punching gun if you choose shock as your action skill element. The shock dot that this gun leaves on enemies will heal you through Sustainment. PHASESLAM / PUNCHING GUN Guardian Angel with Terror Cryo anointment. Swap to this after the Sellout but before the Stabber if you want Phaseslam to kill things more reliably. When your action skill element is set to shock, this is also a great punching gun for mobbing, as your Static Charge chains will become very powerful. But beware, holding this also increases the strength of your self-dot by 5x. You can also shoot this gun at enemies between punches, which, if you land the shot, has 4 possible effects: 1. You can stun them by landing a crit. 2. You can knock them back with high-pellet-count shotgun physics. 3. You get lifesteal to keep yourself alive. 4. You can build up a lot of Groundbreaker and even kill nearby enemies - the Guardian Angel does some wild stuff with Indisciminate. FFYL / FLYING ENEMY GUN Face Puncher or Blade Fury, with Consecutive Hits anointment. Blade Fury can take out multiple flying enemies at once with Indiscriminate, making life a bit easier. As punch-themed as this build is, these guns are still necessary to get rid of things out of reach and for some bosses. CLASS MOD Ascetic (spelled incorrectly on the item card by Gearbox as "Acsetic") class mod with as many points into Burn Both Ends as possible. This purple class mod can only drop with 1 passive but that's fine. Recommended passives: melee damage, splash damage, splash damage radius, action skill cooldown rate, reload speed. Alternatively, until you can get a nice Ascetic, you can use a Muse class mod with 1 point in Illuminated Fist and as many points into Laid Bare as possible. Same recommended passives as above. SHIELD Brawler Ward with ASE Apply Terror anointment. A low level one is recommended, but not necessary. There are a couple other fun options: the Messy Breakup and the Shooting Star (if you use the Shooting Star Fix Mod ). Make sure to match the element of these shields to your action skill element (which means don't use Messy Breakup if you're using fire action skill element, because it only comes in shock or corrosive). Same ASE Apply Terror anointment. The Re-Volter will also be very strong, even though it strays from the OG Mayhem 3 vibes. ARTIFACT Elemental Projector Static Charge. The Elemental Projector will be procced by your Sellout pistol, granting you lots of damage. The Static Charge is not only a nice bonus element for your punches, but the chains will be very strong. The chains will double dip your massive elemental damage stat, and get the Terror Cryo bonus element on top of that. They will kill or freeze enemies and also give you lots of Groundbreaker damage for your punches. An Unleash the Dragon artifact works well with this build, even though the build isn't meant for it. That's Amber Swan's specialty. GRENADE Mesmer, It's Piss, or Hyperion Quasar (non sticky) with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. These are great utility grenades. You can use a Fish Slap if you want to have an easier time with bosses. GAMEPLAY LOOP Set your Sellout pistol to corrosive. This will do less damage to your health bar. You don't need to worry about element matching for Elemental Projector and Illuminated Fist - Infusion will make sure that you're always dotted with your action skill element. Swap to the Psycho Stabber or Guardian Angel and use your Phaseslam. Then start punching with the Stabber. Every several seconds, swap back to the Sellout to keep yourself dotted. Repeat, dotting yourself again before Phaseslamming again. This might seem like a lot of swapping that you don't have time for, but Amara has tons of swap speed. Even though you have a Brawler Ward that you want depleted, keep your Shield Reboot Guardian Rank perk enabled, so when you kill an enemy it begins recharging. It will deplete again immediately because you have dotted yourself. This re-depletion-upon-kill keeps Trust In Yourself stacked, giving you lots of swap speed. In dangerous places like the Maliwan Takedown or Slaughtershaft, you may find that enemies down you before you can reach them. You either need to dodge better or use one of the extra tools available to you: Quasar, Mesmer, Fish Slap, Face Puncher, Blade Fury. This is the pain of the true melee build. But you will have lots of movement speed, and you should use it your advantage. A good general tactic is to punch and then immediately back off a little bit and throw some lateral movement around before coming back in for another punch. This throws off the aim of distant enemies. You can also circle around an enemy bit by bit as you punch, forcing them to turn and delaying their attack. Shooting Star (action skill) and Light Fantastic are always there for you, even if they are a bit too strong and take away from the pure punching nature of this build. Blitz, when it works, is extremely useful for hitting flying enemies or enemies perched on top of boxes/terrain. NOTES - LOW LEVEL SELLOUT A lower level Sellout means less chance of being downed by your own self-dot. Normally, completing the Sellout mission nets you a level 26 unanointed Sellout. There's a few ways to get an even lower one. First, before completing the mission, have a friend join you in the Ambermire with a fresh level 1 character. When you complete the quest, they will receive a level 8 unanointed Sellout in the mail. Second, after completing the mission, the Sellout appears as a mission reward in Earl's Vendor on Sanctuary. Have a friend join you with a level 10 character and shop the item from the machine for you. Level 10 is the lowest level it will appear for them. Third, after completing the mission and receiving your level 26 Sellout, discard it and shop for the item in Earl's Vendor yourself, where it will be your level. You can reasonably get one at level 21, if you go through the story up until that point killing as few enemies as possible.

A Driver, Deathless, Infernal Wish, Light Fantastic (but can use any action skill), Terror, Urad, Dark Army build. I'm sure this combination breaks some cosmic rule somewhere. I can't believe this build exists. Unreal Amara SYNOPSIS A Driver, Deathless, Infernal Wish, Light Fantastic (but can use any action skill), Terror, Urad, Dark Army build. I'm sure this combination breaks some cosmic rule somewhere. I can't believe this build exists. INTRO Probably the most wild build on this site. It's the demented cousin of Nightmare Amara. The Dark Army allows for some crazy build concepts, and this build has all of them in one. It will get you killed, but it will kill other things way more effectively. All it requires is a little bit of setup and upkeep in some situations. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Nothing crazy in the skill tree. Fairly standard gun stuff with concessions made for Deathless (no Clarity, Samsara, or Sustainment) and Driver (going far enough into green for Mindfulness). Of note, however, is Burn Both Ends. When you are self-dotted by any means, and if you also have a bonus element active, that bonus element "ticking on top of" your self-dot will stack Burn Both Ends for you, without you having to take damage from enemies. You are self-dotted in this build through both the Spiritual Driver and the Infernal Wish. And you always have a bonus element active in the form of Urad. ACTION SKILL Light Fantastic, but literally anything. Some action skills, of course, will be stronger than others. Light Fantastic is.... fantastic in the Guardian Takedown. Reverberation, Tandava, Phaseslam, and Fracture are all good. There's no reason to use a Grasp skill, but it won't hurt. You don't even have to use your action skill but once every now and then to proc your Terror anoints. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever is suited to your content, yes even including cryo on a Driver build. You don't need to be moving fast while in combat. See the next section. Your action skill element also does not need to match your gun's element. SETTING UP THE DARK ARMY 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 this interaction. To prebuff the Dark Army drones before combat: make sure you are not on the specific Dark Army you want. Fire your gun until the Infernal Wish dots you. Wait for your Mindfulness stacks to get up to 25. At max Mindfulness, run and slide and, at the beginning of the slide when you are moving fastest, swap to the Dark Army you want. Now those newly-summoned drones have Driver's movespeed gun damage permanently, or at least until you die, fast travel, or teleport. If any of those things happen, just repeat the process. GUNS Dark Armies in all elements except Radiation, all with the Urad anointment. FFYL GUN The Dark Army drones will get you out of FFYL. However, there is a tiny, tiny amount of situations where they won't do anything for you, such as if you are in FFYL and get teleported during the Scourge fight. In such a case, carry something like a Free Radical with Urad anointment. Note that the Dark Army you hold in your hand is only a small percentage of your damage output. The vast majority comes from your drones and Light Fantastic if you're using it. CLASS MOD Spiritual Driver, with as many points into Mindfulness as possible. This is the core item that will give your drones their permanent power. Recommended passives: action skill cooldown rate, splash damage, splash damage radius, SMG damage, weapon damage, action skill damage. Avoid mag size passives. SHIELD Infernal Wish, with ASE Apply Terror anointment. The Wish does not add a projectile to your Dark Army drones. It is simply there to buff your own gun by a little bit and to allow for easy self-dotting outside of action skill usage. The Driver takes care of dotting you when you use your action skill, but Phaseflare-type action skills do not get activated very frequently. ARTIFACT Snowdrift Deathless. This will greatly increase your slide speed when you are pre-buffing the Dark Army drones. Recommended passives: SMG damage, action skill cooldown rate, area of effect damage in the 2nd or 3rd slot (which will also increase area radius), elemental damage, movespeed. GRENADE Whatever you like, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. The Hyperion Quasar (non sticky) is very good for grouping up enemies so your Dark Army drones can shoot 'em all at once, and your Light Fantastic can blow all of them up at once. GAMEPLAY LOOP After pre-buffing your Dark Army drones, all you need to do is fire the Dark Army in your hand a little bit. You don't even need to hit anything with it. The purpose is 1. to empty the mag and force a reload, which makes the drones deal elemental damage (according to the gun's element) for a short time. And 2. to proc the Infernal Wish dot on yourself, which will keep Burn Both Ends stacks up. You can stand still, even cryo yourself with a cryo action skill with the Driver; your drones are still buffed, and your handheld gun's damage doesn't matter. However, this being a Deathless build that also procs the Wish on itself, you will get put into FFYL as part of the normal gameplay. But don't let that stop you; this build is a freight train. Your Dark Army drones will get you back up in short order. The only thing to watch out for is if you're going to go down, you're dotted, and the last enemy is about to die. You can't get up from FFYL if there are no enemies left. In that case, stop shooting and let that enemy down you before killing them.

The try-hard grenade build. Boomfist SYNOPSIS The try-hard grenade build. INTRO Want to see the Fastball hit for hundreds of millions of damage? Want to make the Lightspeed seem like it's double dipping as it chews through raid boss HP bars? Want to be a little try-hard about making grenades really strong? This is the build for you. Unlike the other grenade build on this site, Phase Yeet , this build is very active. Also unlike that build, this one is rather easy to understand. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Over-specced into blue, nothing in green. Don't worry, Blight Tiger is not necessary. Max Violent Tapestry for the occasional freeze via Terror Cryo. ACTION SKILL Fist Over Matter. Grenades go *boom*, Fist Over Matter goes.... *fist*? But also *boom*. Whatever, don't think too hard about it. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Either fire or shock. The actual element you need to worry about is that of your grenade, which will be either fire, shock, or corrosive. If you can match your action skill element to your grenade (i.e., fire or shock), then great. If your grenade is corrosive, then your action skill element should be whatever is second best for the content you're up against. Fire is almost always gonna be second best, the exception being when you're fighting Guardians. Action skill augment is either Expedite or Allure. The former for more Fist Over Matter activations, the latter for more aggro-control / defense. Dealer's choice. MAIN GUN Guardian Angel, with Terror Cryo anointment. SWAP GUN 1 Face Puncher, with Melee Apply Terror anointment. You'll be regularly swapping to this to keep terror stacks up (and sometimes deliver Groundbreaker). SWAP GUN 2 Low level Sellout. Anointment not necessary. You will also be regularly swapping to this to keep yourself dotted, which activates Elemental Projector, Burn Both Ends, and the Golden Rule class mod. Protip: turn dialog volume all the way down if you do not wish to hear Amara screaming from self-dots all of the time. FFYL GUN Free Radical with Consecutive Hits or Terror Cryo anointment. CLASS MOD Golden Rule, with points into both Laid Bare and Mindfulness being very helpful. Normally, Fist Over Matter is a clunky action skill because of its duration and long cooldown. This class mod (and self-dotting with the Sellout) help shorten that cooldown substantially. Recommended passives: grenade damage, splash damage, action skill damage, mag size, splash radius, grenade radius, action skill cooldown rate, Hyperion weapon critical hit damage (for when the Lightspeed crits while you're holding the Guardian Angel). SHIELD Re-Volter, with Terror Health Regen anointment. Even though this build has Sustainment, and plenty of elemental damage instances with Fist Over Matter and your grenades, it's still a bit squishy. Burn Both Ends makes enemies *very* angry. Additionally, your Sellout self-dot will be steadily eating away at your HP and shield, because holding the Guardian Angel will boost that damage x6. I very highly recommend finding a Re-Volter with at least one shield charge augment. That way, you can keep reactivating its effect by picking up a shield charge, which allows your self-dot to immediately deplete the shield again, refreshing the Re-Volter bonus. This is as opposed to relying on the Shield Reboot Guardian Rank perk, which requires a kill. ARTIFACT Elemental Projector Victory Rush. The Elemental Projector is the more important part, here, so a purple one with good passives will be much more effective than a Vic Rush with bad passives. This artifact will boost the damage of your grenade's element, your Re-Volter bonus element, and the element of your Fist Over Matter. Recommended passives: grenade damage, area damage in 2nd or 3rd slot, fire/shock/corrosive damage, mag size, move speed, action skill cooldown rate. GRENADES The only downside to this build is that the grenade options are somewhat limited. The upside is that the options we do have are extremely strong. Any of the following grenades in fire, shock, and/or corrosive, with the Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment: Fastball, Lightspeed, double or triple sticky Hyperion Longbow, Ghast Call, Doc Hina's Miracle Bomb. A purple grenade with just a single sticky part can raid boss if you keep your distance well enough for max Guardian Angel bonus. A shock Hex can do low level content. GAMEPLAY LOOP Choose a grenade of the appropriate element for the content you are facing. Match your action skill element to it if you can, otherwise choose the 2nd best option between fire and shock. Set your Sellout to corrosive (it should *always* be set to corrosive on this build). Then, in any order, grasp an enemy, shoot an enemy with your Face Puncher to generate terror, and dot yourself with the Sellout. At that point you're ready to swap to the Guardian Angel and start chucking grenades. In the midst of battle, do whatever needs doing - if your self-dot is running out, swap to the Sellout and re-up it. If Fist Over Matter is cooled down, go ahead and grasp something. Shoot the Face Puncher regularly to keep up terror. You get the idea. Whenever you aren't doing those things, you should be chucking grenades with the Guardian Angel. The chaos created by your grenades, Fist Over Matter, and Remnant should start wiping everything out. Even vs raid bosses, you don't need to switch off the Lightspeed if you don't want to, despite the Ghast Call and double/triple sticky Longbow being stronger. Hemo, for example, is totally pwned by Fist Over Matter. The constant re-depleting of your shield as you pick up shield charges may be a little jarring and make you think you're being attacked when you aren't. You'll get used to it. NOTES - MAYHEM 10/11 This build requires you to play on Mayhem 10 with the More Than Okay Boomer easy modifier, so you don't run out of grenades.

Hellfire-only build. It's only half a joke. Inferno Amara SYNOPSIS Hellfire build. It's actually pretty good! INTRO This build started as a meme, a proof of concept, the concept being just how far theorycrafting and optimizing can take you. The Hellfire is widely considered to be a very weak, very terrible gun. But it can still be built around to make it kill True Guardian Takedown enemies, even without Ties That Bind. It's also, actually, a pretty fun build, because the Hellfire has a great feel to it, as do most Dahl SMGs. The core interactions that make this build work are down toward the bottom in the "Notes - Hellfire Advantages" section. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Note no Sustainment. Samsara is your sustain. Unweave the Rainbow is your damage. Violent Tapestry allows you to access that damage. ACTION SKILL Reverberation, usually. Tandava can also be used, but beware the longer cooldown. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Almost always cryo, but you can experiment with matching your element to your content. Even against Guardians in the True Guardian Takedown, I tend to stick to cryo for the faster freezing, even though shock makes for much stronger Unweave damage. When bossing with Reverberation, element match the boss (cryo can often be used in place of corrosive, unless you're fighting Wotan). GUN Hellfire, with Phasecast 250. I recommend going for max dot damage, single projectile. Get as low of a mag size as possible, because mag size passives are preferred on your artifact to make up for this. FFYL GUN Free Radical with Consecutive Hits anointment. Even though you can often get up from FFYL with the Hellfire on this build, sometimes it just isn't enough to cut it. UTILITY / BOSSING GUN Guardian Angel with 200% Astral Projection anointment. This is for big bossing Reverb/Tandava damage. CLASS MOD Phasezerker. Skill points aren't too important, but lots of points into Clarity does help your survivability. This, and also the artifact, are where optimization really goes a long way toward raising up the Hellfire. Passives such as SMG Damage, Action Skill Damage, and Dahl Weapon Critical Damage, Weapon Damage, and Mag Size really make a difference. Splash Damage Radius is very helpful for Hollowpoints, which greatly help with area clear. Action Skill Cooldown Rate is also not a bad passive. SHIELD Re-Volter, with Action Skill Start anointment. ARTIFACT Dahl Company Man, with damage, crit damage, and mag size top passives. Good passives for the bottom: mag size, action skill cooldown rate, area of effect damage, cryo damage, cryo efficiency. Mag size passives are highly preferred because you don't want to spend precious time reloading while an enemy is frozen. Backup artifact, until you get a good Company Man, would be a Pearl of Ineffable Knowledge with a mag size passive. GRENADE Whatever grenade you want, with ASE 50% bonus cryo damage anointment. It's Piss, Mesmer, Hyperion Quasar are all good utility. Fish Slap if you want to incorporate it into your bossing strategy. GAMEPLAY LOOP Cast Reverb at enemies, then shoot them in the face. That's the basics. Always be casting as soon as you can, because the more you cast, the more Violent Tapestry and Do Harms stacks you build (because of the Phasezerker's Rush stacking method). I often cast twice in a row whenever it's available. See the "Notes - Hellfire Advantages" section to learn why both Do Harm and Violent Tapestry are critical to this build. Always be aiming for crit spots. Unweave the Rainbow can crit, making it obscenely effective. A nice bonus to killing with Unweave critical hits is more Hollowpoints. NOTES - HELLFIRE ADVANTAGES So how does Amara make the Hellfire kill True Guardian Takedown enemies? By dealing damage to them via Unweave The Rainbow. Unweave The Rainbow is a form of action skill damage, and it gets mayhem scaling and is increased by Do Harm stacks. UTR requires two things: splash or melee damage, and for the enemy to be frozen. The Hellfire is actually a splash gun. But why does this build go this route for damage when the gun is fire-locked? Because the Hellfire has a very high cryo efficiency. A gun's dot damage listed on the card divided by its projectile damage listed on the card is its cryo efficiency. You can confirm this if you have two versions of a gun, one cryo and one of a different element. The Hellfire has an extremely high listed dot damage relative to its projectile damage. The one in this save file lists 90,786 dmg/second with a projectile damage of 7,205. If this gun were cryo, it would have over 1,200% cryo efficiency! So how about we just add some cryo? And Amara can make any gun cryo, through Infusion. It's only 40% of the damage at 5/5 points, but that still makes for an effective cryo efficiency of about 500%. The 50% Cryo ASE bonus element also inherits the Hellfire's efficiency. The Hellfire freezes very fast for as little damage as it does. And when the freezing occurs, Unweave The Rainbow kicks in to finish the enemy off. This is why constantly Phasecasting is recommended in the "Gameplay Loop" section above. More stacks of Violent Tapestry means greater cryo efficiency and faster freezing. More stacks of Do Harm means stronger Unweave The Rainbow damage. Beware that going into FFYL makes you lose all stacks for both of those skills. So don't act like you're invincible or anything. Remember: no Sustainment. NOTES - BOSSING The Hellfire is not a bossing gun, even with this build, because bosses cannot be frozen. That's why we have the Guardian Angel and use powerful action skills like Reverberation (learn more about Phasecasting technique here ) and Tandava. Add on the Fish Slap if you want. You can even get an Orb Damage anointed Guardian Angel and use the Shooting Star variant of Phaseflare. Equip a Snowdrift when bossing, if you like, because it's not like a Dahl Company Man or Pearl are going to help your action skill damage.

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

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