Tips for understanding and building with Amara's Blue Tree at endgame. Blue 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 blue (Mystical Assault) tree. DO HARM Very powerful action skill damage increase. It gets further increased in effectiveness by Awakening further down the tree, and the capstone Avatar allows you to stack more Do Harm at a time. This increases all things that are action skill damage, not just your action skills themselves. This includes Revelation, Remnant, Ties That Bind links, Unweave The Rainbow, Body & Mind, Free The Soul, Catharsis, and Ice Spiker. FAST HANDS Very useful, always-on reload and swap speed. Always take this if you're doing anything with guns at all. VIOLENT TAPESTRY Great utility skill, at the very least useful for 1 point simply for the ability to gain Rush stacks by applying a status effect. Even with a Phasezerker class mod, you can keep your stacks topped up very easily with this skill. If you need to be applying status effects in general, whether its to enemies or to yourself, it's worth investing some points into this skill. It is further increased in effectiveness by Awakening. Violent Tapestry also increases cryo efficiency, making it an extremely important skill for cryo-focused builds. Amara does have a lot of synergy with cryo, either directly or indirectly through melee-related skills. ALACRITY Always worth at least 1 point in a gun build. A good place to dump points if you need to go further down the tree. TRANSCEND Very strong critical hit damage increase, especially because it can be stacked twice with Avatar. Great for boss melts when the boss has an accessible crit spot. A purple Mantis class mod can give you an extra three points into this skill making those boss melts go even faster. This skill can also be taken for builds that crit in unconventional ways, such as Ruby Swan or any Spark Plug build. RESTLESS When Expedite is available, this skill is pretty low value. Otherwise, it can be a points dump if you don't need the reload speed from Alacrity or anything above it. ASCENDANT Always taken if you're going at all deep into blue tree. Increasing the effectiveness of augments like Glamour, Expedite, and Stillness of Mind is game changing for how a build can play and flow. FROM REST This skill is hit or miss, depending on the type of guns you are using. If going for a conventional gun build, I would always recommend putting at least 2 points here. Lots of Maliwan weapons feel sluggish without this skill, because of their charge time. If you're strapped for points in this tree, usually Wrath is taken over this skill, but if you have plenty of other gun damage sources (such as Spiritual Driver or a 250% Phasecast gun damage anointment), this can be prioritized over Wrath. LAID BARE Very powerful damage increasing skill. Always taken if you're this far down the tree, and some builds go into blue tree simply to get Laid Bare , because it applies to everything. WRATH Good gun damage increase, nothing more to it. REMNANT Extremely powerful skill. Always take it if you're this far, and you never need more than one point into it. Some builds even require you to get this skill on a class mod. Remnant gets your overkill damage as its base, then gets a x31 multiplier on Mayhem 10/11, and then gets action skill damage, elemental damage, splash damage, etc. It will always target the enemy closest to you, if that enemy is reachable and still existant by the time it gets there. You may have seen some raid boss 1 shots with Remnant. Yes, it's that powerful. AWAKENING If you need to be investing in Do Harm and/or Violent Tapestry, then you also need to be investing in Awakening, if you get this far down the tree. This skill also increases the effectiveness of the damage reduction on the Stone class mod. Having 6/3 Awakening with the Stone gives you significant tankiness. AVATAR Perhaps the most important skill in all of Amara's skill trees. The ability to get twice the amount of Do Harm or Violent Tapestry when you use your action skill can make or break many builds. It also refunds you half of your converted Rush stacks if your action skill activation killed an enemy. And of course, the ability to activate your action skill twice in a row is huge.

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.

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

A fire-themed Hot Drop slam build. Magmamara SYNOPSIS A fire-themed Hot Drop slam build. INTRO The Hot Drop slam artifact is fairly strong, especially when built around and using Amara's Clear The Mind capstone. This build is purposefully thematic, because just a few changes would make it overshadowed by action skill damage, and leave few enemies left for actually slamming with the Hot Drop. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES There's lots of action skill damage to help supplement the Hot Drop. There's also some cryo synergies taken in the purple tree, despite this being a fire build, and that's because Terror Cryo is a recommended anoint. ACTION SKILL Phaseslam, because this is a thematic build and it's also a type of slam. You can choose something like Tandava or one of the Phaseflare variants if you like. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Fire. Choosing cryo would almost be too powerful, setting off Free The Soul and Unweave The Rainbow constantly, leaving little room for actual damage from the Hot Drop. MAIN GUN Guardian Angels, with Terror Cryo and Urad anointments. This build can use either anointment, and has slightly different setups for each. FLYING ENEMY / FFYL GUN Face Punchers, with Terror Cryo and Urad anointments. With Body & Mind active, this is a pretty good weapon for taking out flying enemies that the Hot Drop can't reach, as well as getting you up from FFYL. BACKUP FFYL GUN Ember's Purge, with Terror Cryo and Urad anointments. Shoot enemies with this gun and the puddle that spawns below them will be strong enough to get you a Second Wind. It can't do anything against flying enemies, but it is very much in theme with the build. CLASS MOD Stone, with points into Awakening being the most important. Awakening will boost the effectiveness of the Stone's damage reduction, as well as the effectiveness of both Do Harm and Violent Tapestry, two very important skills for this build. The most important passive you need on it is Splash Damage Radius, so your Hot Drop can hit enemies in a wider area. Other recommended passives: splash damage, action skill cooldown rate, action skill damage. SHIELD If using the Urad anointment, then Beskar with a Reflect part, with ASE Apply Terror anointment. See "Notes - Beskar" section below. If using the Terror Cryo anointment, there are a few thematic options: Torch, Nova Berner, Void Rift. A Re-Volter is strictly going to be the most damage, of course, but not very thematic. Each of these shields has effects on shield break, so you can choose to run either the Action Skill Start anointment on them, or let them break naturally (more fun) and choose the ASE Apply Terror anointment. ARTIFACT If using the Urad anointment, then Hot Drop Deathless. If using the Terror Cryo anointment, then Hot Drop with one of a few suffix options: Victory Rush, Otto Idol, Cosmic Crater, Pull Out Method. All of those are pretty self explanatory and you can choose whichever one suits you. The Pull Out Method is more for show; the singularity is very weak. But it can briefly stagger some enemies and throw a bunch of debris around, which pairs well with the Void Rift shield. The most important passive to have on your Hot Drop is Area of Effect in the 2nd or 3rd slot, which will also increase area radius. Other recommended passives: action skill cooldown rate, movement speed, incendiary damage. GRENADE Doc Hina's Miracle Bomb, with either Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment (if using ASE Apply Terror on shield) or ASE Apply Terror (if using Action Skill Start on shield). Very thematic, and also very strong. You can melt enemies with this grenade alone, which a good way to eliminate far away enemies while you're occupied with Hot Dropping on enemies nearby. GAMEPLAY LOOP Simply start Phaseslamming and Hot Dropping. Pull out the Face Puncher briefly to take out flying enemies or anything else that annoys you at a distance. NOTES - BESKAR The reflect ability on legendary shields still lets you take damage when a projectile is reflected. The Reflect part that appears on purple shields and some legendaries negates damage when the reflect chance rolls. When the Beskar rolls with a Reflect part, and you enter FFYL once and get a second wind, the Beskar's legendary reflect ability "breaks" and it takes on the properties of the Reflect part. Because the Beskar has a 100% reflect chance, after that point, it will reflect 100% of projectiles without letting them damage you. This does not negate all damage, however; indirect splash can still damage you, and if a projectile dots you, you will take that dot damage. NOTES - GUARDIAN TAKEDOWN Unfortunately, this build does not work at all in the low gravity of the Guardian Takedown. The Hot Drop projectiles time out and disappear before they can hit the ground. NOTES - GROUNDBREAKER Despite this build being themed around the Hot Drop, it can appear that Phaseslam and your other attacks are carrying the damage, and actual ground slamming is only killing things with Groundbreaker. But you can actually turn Groundbreaker off for this build, and still clear content very effectively. NOTES - MAYHEM 10/11 For most slam and true melee builds, Mayhem 10 is recommended with the Speed Demon modifier, to help you close the distance and get to your next enemy before the enemy downs you. Other benign modifiers for this build: Medium - Healy Avenger, Hard - Drone Ranger, and Very Hard - Not The Face. You can certainly play on Mayhem 11, but you will more often go down by way of distant enemies shooting at you. It's fine; there's good FFYL options in the form of the Face Puncher and Ember's Purge.

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

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: 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.

Phaseflare, specifically Shooting Star, build. It also uses the Blade Fury for some filler. Meteor Amara SYNOPSIS Phaseflare, specifically Shooting Star, build. It also uses the Blade Fury for some filler. INTRO Phaseflare and its variants are definitely the hardest action skills to use. Besides its clunkiness with respect to terrain, two of the biggest issues with it are losing it when going into FFYL and directing it around without literally punching it to death. This build solves both of those problems to the best of its ability. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES For daily driving Phaseflare through all content, it can be a mistake to invest heavily into purple tree. The only things of direct value to Phaseflare later in the tree are Burn Both Ends and Clear The Mind. For the most part, Phaseflare does not need help from Clear The Mind. And Burn Both Ends greatly increases the chance that you go into FFYL and lose Phaseflare altogether. Green tree is much more valuable for increasing your QoL when using Phaseflare. The melee damage in the tree works well for supplementing your damage with the Blade Fury. ACTION SKILL Shooting Star. This variant of Phaseflare allows you to be more imprecise, as it can damage enemies at a distance. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever is suited to the content you are facing. Corrosive is a good choice for True Takedowns. GEARING NOTES There are several ways to acquire damage through gear for the Shooting Star and your Blade Fury. There's variation in your bonus elements, your survivability, and your Blade Fury damage. Shooting Star itself doesn't much care - it will be strong no matter what. This is more of a playstyle choice you'll be making. MAIN GUN 1 Guardian Angels, one with Terror Cryo anointment and one with Urad anointment. Which one you use depends on your artifact of choice. The Guardian Angel will help Shooting Star melt bosses, and quickly ramp up its damage for mobbing. MAIN GUN 2 Blade Furies, single projectile, one with Terror Cryo anointment and one with Urad anointment, just like the Guardian Angel. At the very least, the Blade Fury is for delivering Groundbreaker at a distance and for dealing with flying enemies. But it can also be made to deal strong damage all by itself, depending on your class mod and artifact. CLASS MOD 1 Stone, with as many points into Awakening as possible, and then hopefully the remainder into Do Harm. The Stone's damage reduction is very effective with 25 Rush stacks and 6/3 Awakening. This class mod will not only make your Shooting Star stronger, but it will help you avoid FFYL and losing your action skill. Class mod passives: highly, highly recommend a splash damage radius passives, as that will increase the effective area of your Shooting Star. Other passives: splash damage, action skill damage, action skill cooldown rate, health regen. CLASS MOD 2 Spiritual Driver, preferably with as many points into Mindfulness as possible. This class mod gives much less survivability than the Stone, but it increases your Blade Fury damage, and when paired with Elemental Projector, will give you a strong initial boost to your Shooting Star's damage. ARTIFACT OPTIONS There are three prefixes and two suffixes to choose from. The prefixes: Snowdrift, Elemental Stone, Elemental Projector. The Snowdrift is used for maneuvering around the field and dragging your Shooting Star after you. You can begin a slide and at the same time call the orb to you, and it will follow you all along your slide, killing any enemies it touches along the way. The Elemental Stone is for increasing your Blade Fury damage. Cryo Stone is recommended for freezing enemies. The Elemental Projector is for increasing your initial Shooting Star damage when using the Spiritual Driver class mod. The two suffixes: Otto Idol and Deathless. Otto Idol is great for survivability, and keeps you from losing Shooting Star by going into FFYL. The Deathless is for when you want to use the Urad anointed guns. Artifact passives: it's very important that you get an area of effect passive in the 2nd or 3rd slot, as that will also increase the effective radius of your orb. Other passives: action skill cooldown rate, melee damage, elemental damage, health regen, movespeed. SHIELD OPTIONS There are three main shields you can use with this build: Mana Well, Transformer, and Infernal Wish. The Mana Well, when you slam, will give you a strong 100% shock bonus element and 90% damage reduction until the shield drains. Look for a Safe Space part on this shield to increase survivability. Anointment: ASE Apply Terror. The Transformer is all around a great survivability shield. Anointment: ASE Apply Terror or Melee Apply Terror. Infernal Wish is for increasing your Blade Fury damage and decreasing your survivability. Anointment: Melee Apply Terror. Bonus shield option: Mana Well with three Roid parts, so you can slam for bonus shock and damage reduction, then when it's drained you'll have greatly increased Blade Fury damage. Anointment: Melee Apply Terror. Disable Shield Reboot and Emergency Response if using this option. GRENADE Fish Slap, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate. This is also used as filler damage, for taking out annoying enemies, for moving your Shooting Star around at a distance, or whatever other use you find. Possibly consider matching your Fish's element with your action skill element when using Driver/Elemental Projector. GAMEPLAY LOOP Your gameplay loop will vary depending on your loadout. For example, using the Terror Cryo anoint, Stone class mod, Mana Well shield, and Snowdrift is a loadout more focused on Shooting Star damage, and will not have much Blade Fury damage. The Blade Fury will mostly be for delivering Groundbreaker. With this loadout, you would want to hold the Guardian Angel, summon the Orb, punch it a couple times to ramp up its damage, and then Snowdrift around the area, dragging it behind you. This technique is probably the most painless way to use Phaseflare during any content. Continuously punching your Shooting Star to direct it around will kill it prematurely. The best option is always call it to you after you've initially ramped up its damage. In the gameplay footage above, you can see how you can slide with the Snowdrift and perform the recall action early in the slide, allowing you to effectively drag the Shooting Star over a long distance, killing everything in its path. Another example loadout would be Urad anoint, Driver class mod, Infernal Wish or Transformer, and Elemental Stone Deathless artifact. This loadout is more focused on Blade Fury damage, so your gameplay loop will be holding the Blade Fury, summoning the Orb, punching it a couple times, and then running around real fast shooting things and dragging the Orb behind you. There's no "slide and recall" like there is with the Snowdrift, but the same principle applies: move fast and cover a large distance while dragging the Shooting Star on a long, destructive path. Mix and match the items in your loadout as you see fit, and adjust your gameplay accordingly. Just be wary of what you're doing. For example, using the Deathless with a Mana Well is counterproductive, because putting the Mana Well to use means draining your shield. NOTES - PUNCHING THE ORB Two things to know about punching the Shooting Star (or any punchable variation of Phaseflare). The first is that your raw melee damage does not matter for increasing orb damage. That is, hitting it with a Fish Slap or Stinger doesn't make it stronger than just punching it. However, increases to melee damage do make Phaseflare stronger, as long as you punch it at least once after summoning. The second is that the orb dies after a certain amount of melee instances. This matters because of your bonus elements. Your punch is one melee instance, and any bonus elements that also scale with melee damage are separate instances. Elemental Stone, Mana Well shock, Terror Cryo, and Urad all count as instances. So the more of these you have active, the fewer times you can punch the orb before it dies. But since each instance makes the orb stronger, the more of those instances you have, the fewer punches you need to make it strong. You'll just have to figure out what the limit is for whatever loadout you're running. Sometimes you'll notice Amara punching through the orb and going for enemies instead, if there's an enemy just on the other side. That can be very frustrating. However, since your gameplay loop involves dragging the orb around, simply rotate around the orb and punch it away from the enemy and then drag it back to kill them.

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

Phasecast and gun-based Urad build that creates chaos through cryo and radiation. Fission Amara SYNOPSIS Phasecast and gun-based Urad build that creates chaos through cryo and radiation. INTRO Fission Amara is one of the two builds I originally made in 2020 after the purple tree came out, along with its sister build Oblivion Amara. Here it is updated for level 72, and it's very strong. This is a Deathless Urad build, although it has significant defensive capabilities and can be played very safely at the expense of a little damage. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE ACTION SKILL Tandava for general usage, Reverberation for bossing, with the special Reverberation technique. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Always cryo, except against Wotan, where you switch to corrosive. PHASECASTING GUN Guardian Angel, with the Urad anointment. SHOOTING GUNS Anything cryo and splash, with the Urad anointment. My favorites: Beacon, Kaoson, Boogeyman, Sand Hawk, Flipper, Anarchy, Insider, Soulrender, Plaguebearer, Backburner. FFYL GUN If you're using a less powerful gun for your shooting, it may not be strong enough to get you back up from FFYL, so carrying something like a Urad Free Radical or Plasma Coil may be wise. CLASS MOD Stone or Phasezerker. For the Stone, look for points into Awakening and Do Harm. Awakening boosts the effectiveness of the damage reduction that Stone grants, and allows you to take lots more damage as a Deathless build. Do Harm boosts your action skill damage, which makes lots of your attacks more effective: Unweave The Rainbow, Free The Soul, Remnant, Tandava, Reverberation. For the Phasezerker, look for points into Conflux. The other two skills don't help. Recommended passives: weapon damage, action skill cooldown rate, action skill damage, splash damage, splash damage radius, weapon crit damage, weapon type damage. SHIELD Re-Volter with Action Skill Start anointment or Beskar with a Reflect part with an ASE 50% bonus element anointment. For the Re-Volter, ideal parts are triple Turtle, with triple Absorb being next best. For the Beskar, the Reflect part is essential. The reflect ability on legendary shields still lets you take damage when a projectile is reflected. The Reflect part that appears on purple shields and some legendaries negates damage when the reflect chance rolls. When the Beskar rolls with a Reflect part, and you enter FFYL once and get a second wind, the Beskar's legendary reflect ability "breaks" and it takes on the properties of the Reflect part. Because the Beskar has a 100% reflect chance, after that point, it will reflect 100% of projectiles without letting them damage you. This does not negate all damage, however; indirect splash can still damage you, and if a projectile dots you, you will take that dot damage. ARTIFACT Ice Breaker Deathless. The most important passive is Area of Effect in the 2nd or 3rd slot, which will also increase area damage radius. Other recommended passives: action skill cooldown rate, movespeed, cryo damage, radiation damage, weapon type damage. For bosses, you can swap out to Snowdrift Deathless, which makes avoiding damage during the Wotan fight much easier, and makes navigating the Anathema fight much simpler. GRENADE It's Piss or Hyperion Quasar (non sticky) or Mesmer, with ASE 50% bonus element. Anything utility oriented like these works just fine. GAMEPLAY LOOP Choose your loadout first; you have two classmods and two shields to choose from. Stone will be slightly stronger action skill effects and great defense, while Phasezerker will be slightly better cooldown and better gun damage. Re-Volter will increase DPS massively, while a Reflect Beskar will be massive defense. In an area like the Guardian Takedown where it's relatively easy to avoid damage, you can put on the Phasezerker and Re-Volter. On the Maliwan Takedown bridge where it's relatively hard to survive as a Deathless build, you can put on the Stone and Beskar and be basically indestructible. My overall favorite is Stone + Re-Volter. Other than that, you cast, you shoot, you destroy. NOTES - RAID BOSSES Builds such as this have an inherent way to take out most raid bosses by Reverbing a mob and letting either Remnant hit the boss or letting it hit another mob and then you Groundbreaker the boss. Some of the weaker raid bosses can be Reverbed directly.

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

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

All sorts of tricks, techniques, and knowledge to help you plow through the most difficult content as Amara. Tips Various tips for increasing your general knowledge and skill level at endgame, opening up more build possibilities for you. Combat General Advice FFYL Maliwan Takedown Guardian Takedown True Melee Skill Trees Amara's Green Tree Amara's Blue Tree Amara's Red Tree Amara's Purple Tree Other Skills & Gear Burn Both Ends Groundbreaker Grenades Overkill Upkeep Phasecasting