A very strong true melee build that offers lots of interesting gear and bossing strategies. Steel Swan SYNOP SIS A very strong true melee build that offers lots of interesting gear and bossing strategies. INTRO I've always wanted a true melee build that capped both green and purple trees. But that leaves too few points for Sustainment in red tree. For a long time I believed that a true melee build without Sustainment was simply not feasible. In places like True Maliwan Takedown, incoming damage is very heavy. Closing in on enemies and applying damage fast enough to eliminate the threat often results in repeated FFYL, eventually becoming too much to survive. Usually, melee builds without Sustainment shortcut these situations by heavy use of the Face Puncher, Blade Fury, and/or Fish Slap. Maybe also with Phaseflare. But I was wrong. Here we have: true melee, green and purple trees capped, and as few shortcuts in general gameplay as possible. As a bonus, this build also has diverse gear options. And to tackle bossing, up to SEVEN different strategies can be employed. It's as strong and versatile as steel. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES This is a slightly unconventional green skill tree. Max health isn't often taken. But it is effectively always-on damage reduction and I like the resistance One With Nature provides. You can choose to place the 12 points that are in Root to Rise, Arms Deal, and One With Nature in whichever tank skills you want. ACTION SKILL Phaseslam. It's great for Find Your Center uptime, damage, and enemy staggering. Fracture can be used if you're good at aiming it. A variant of Phaseflare can be used to take out a big boss. Base Phasegrasp is used strictly for when you want to White Elephant punch a True Trials boss or Seer. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whichever element best suits the enemies you're facing, except cryo. Do not choose cryo. MAIN GUNS The guns in this loadout all have different purposes. Let's list these in an order that matches your typical gameplay loop: Face Puncher with Melee Apply Terror anoint. This is a gun you swap to only to apply terror to yourself, or sometimes to take out flying enemies with Body & Mind. You will also kill some non-flying enemies with Body & Mind when getting terror stacks for yourself. Only shoot enough to get full terror stacks. Then swap to... Low level Sellout with Melee Apply Terror anoint. This gun is mainly for dotting yourself with corrosive damage. So make sure it's always switched to corrosive, unless your action skill element is corrosive, in which case switch the Sellout to fire. When self-dotted, and when you have a bonus element active, Burn Both Ends will stack up for you. Corrosive gives a longer dot than fire, which means longer BBE uptime. But when your action skill element is corrosive, you'll get a corrosive dot through Infusion, so switch the Sellout to fire so you get two dots, which stacks up Mindfulness faster. To get an anointed low level Sellout, discard the one you get as a mission reward, and go find an anointed one in Earl's Vendor. Psycho Stabber with Terror Cryo anointment. Your main punching gun and what you swap to after dotting yourself with the Sellout. Now that you've applied terror to yourself and have a dot going, the Terror Cryo anoint on this gun will start stacking Burn Both Ends. ADDITIONAL / OPTIONAL GUNS Guardian Angel with Terror Cryo anointment. Hold this if you want your Phaseslam to do more damage. It can also be held for punching to buff your Static Charge or White Elephant. It will also add damage to the Muse orb. Face Puncher with Terror Cryo anointment. See "Notes - Bossing Strategies" below. Zheitsev's Eruption with Terror Cryo anointment. This is for debuffing bosses. See "Notes - Bossing Strategies" below. Ionic Disruptor with Terror Cryo anointment. Swap to this to change your punch to shock damage, if it's set to fire or corrosive and you come up against a fire- or corrosive-immune heavy. But there are other ways of dealing with an immune heavy, such as Static Charge from another enemy, your Elemental Stone, or Groundbreaker. CLASS MOD The best for general punching is going to be the Muse, ideally with +1 Illuminated Fist and +3 Laid Bare, but any skill distribution will be helpful. The orb from the Muse hits hard if you're holding the Guardian Angel. The orb also likes to crit, which can lead to massive Hollowpoint and Groundbreaker damage. But this build can use many class mods. Breaker can be used for extra melee damage, Jab Cross points to buff your Phaseslam, and some damage reduction. Golden Rule can turn the build into a more action skill-oriented build. Dragon can give you access to Remnant, buff your Slam with Do Harm, and give you a little extra augment activation. Driver can be used, which, if you're using corrosive action skill element, allows you to skip self-dotting via the Sellout. Recommended passives on all of these: action skill damage, action skill cooldown rate, splash damage, melee damage. Survivability passives like elemental resistance and health regen aren't terrible. SHIELD Again, there are a lot of options, all with the Terror Health Regen anointment. This anointment makes the build possible, and allows us to more comfortably skip Sustainment. At full terror stacks, it's 8% max health regen per second. It may not sound like much, but coupled with our other tank skills, it's very strong. As for the shield itself, the quintessential punching one would be a Brawler Ward. Re-Volter is also very strong for punching and buffing your Phaseslam damage. A double-roid Plus Ultra is great for survivability, as is a Beskar with a reflect part in bullet-heavy areas (like Maliwan Takedown bridge). For some damage at a distance and more Groundbreaker, a Messy Breakup is helpful, especially if you're holding the Guardian Angel while punching. The Shooting Star works great in the maps that allow it, or any map if you use a hotfix mod. ARTIFACT Some more options. The typical loadout uses an Elemental Stone Static Charge. The element of the stone should compliment your action skill element, and be suited to the enemies you are facing. The Static Charge will be the most consistent for mobbing and for bosses that have lots of adds. An Elemental Stone White Elephant can be used for mobbing as well. And if you want to punch down a raid boss, it is necessary. See "Notes - Bossing Strategies" below. A Spark Plug Static Charge or White Elephant is also a great artifact for this build. The Spark Plug will provide extra damage and crowd control (when it crit-staggers enemies), build damage for Groundbreaker, and allow you to skip the Face Puncher with Melee Apply Terror. Instead, you would only swap back to your Sellout, slam near enemies, and then shoot your foot to dot yourself. The Spark Plug chains will trigger the Melee Apply Terror anointment on the Sellout. Recommended passives for all of these: action skill cooldown, melee damage, movement speed, area-of-effect damage in the second or third slot, elemental damage. Just like with class mods, survivability passives like elemental resistance and health regen aren't terrible. GRENADE Do the options never stop?? A Mesmer for crowd control (great for Maliwan Takedown), a Hyperion Quasar (non-sticky) for the same reason, or a Fish Slap for damage. All with the Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. GAMEPLAY LOOP There are several things you always need to keep in mind when setting up. 1. How are you getting terror stacks? It's either with the Face Puncher or with the Spark Plug. Make sure, if you're using the Spark Plug, that you actually get full stacks before swapping away from your Melee Apply Terror anointment. Full stacks come nearly instantly when there's at least a few enemies around. But when there's only a lone enemy, it may take a few seconds. Having terror applied to yourself is an enormous boost to your damage and survivability. 2. How are you dotting yourself? Having a self-dot is a necessary step to getting your Burn Both Ends damage. Usually it's with the Sellout. You can also use the Spiritual Driver, but only if you're in an area where you can set your action skill element to corrosive, because you need that long corrosive dot. 3. Is your Sellout set to corrosive? And if your action skill element is corrosive, is it set to fire? This is a seemingly small optimization, but it's important. Being self-dotted means having lots of BBE damage. And getting more Mindfulness stacks sooner means better movement, which means better survivability. 4. Is your Shield Reboot Guardian Rank perk set appropriately for the shield you have selected? Some shields you want to remain depleted: Brawler Ward, roid Plus Ultra, Shooting Star. For those, disable Shield Reboot. Keep it enabled for the other shields: Re-Volter, Messy Breakup, Beskar. The Re-Volter and Messy Breakup don't need to fully recharge to proc again, so Shield Reboot will give you a little bit of shields whenever you kill an enemy, and when that little bit of shields is quickly depleted again, you get another proc. 5. Is your action skill element set appropriately? This determines the base element of your punch, the Muse orb element (if you're using the Muse), and your Phaseslam damage. 6. Have you chosen an appropriate element for your Elemental Stone? Once you've figured all of that out, you're ready to go. Get your Terror, dot yourself, and attack. Keep swapping around as necessary to keep up terror and your self-dot. Once you've figured out a loadout you like, you won't have to worry as much about all of the above questions. But perhaps the most important rule of all: Be Careful! This is still a true melee build without Sustainment. In dangerous places like the Maliwan takedown, you need to be very mindful of what you're walking into. Always be ready to back off and use cover. Doing so also offers you an opportunity to re-up your terror and self-dot. NOTES - BOSSING STRATEGIES When I'm piloting a true melee build, I usually dread figuring out what to do when it comes to bossing. This build keeps it very interesting by giving you so many options: 1. Equip Spark Plug Static Charge, Messy Breakup, and hold the Guardian Angel. Let your damage work from a distance, and occasionally get close to slam another Spark Plug and apply Groundbreaker. 2. Equip a Dragon class mod with a point into Remnant, and then Phaseslam an add. Let Remnant take out the boss. Note: Remnant targets the closest enemy to you, so make sure that's the boss. 3. Phaseflare. Do your normal setup: apply terror and self-dot. Then summon Phaseflare (or the Shooting Star variant). Recall and punch it once while holding the Psychostabber. When it reaches the boss, swap to the Guardian Angel. Watch boss health bar go away. 4. Body & Mind. This is what the Face Puncher with Terror Cryo is for. Again, get your terror stacks and self-dot. Additionally, make sure you have an enemy to kill to activate Body & Mind. Swap to your Terror Cryo Face Puncher and kill that enemy. If you want extra damage, quickly swap to your broken Zheitsev's Eruption to debuff the boss. Then shoot the boss with your Terror Cryo Face Puncher. 5. Punching. This strategy is taken from Sulphur Swan . First, have an Elemental Stone White Elephant equipped. Get your terror stacks, dot yourself, apply the Zheitsev's Eruption debuff, then swap to your Guardian Angel and punch. If a White Elephant sticky got applied, back up and watch it go off. For maximum punching damage, use a +3 Laid Bare Muse and, while your Zheitsev's Eruption is out, use base Phasegrasp to apply Laid Bare to boss, just before swapping to the Guardian Angel to punch. 6. Fish Slap. Pretty self explanatory. Hold the Guardian Angel and have an Elemental Stone Stacic Charge or White Elephant and chuck a fish. 7. Shooting Star shield. Similar to the Body & Mind Face Puncher strat, only you don't need to kill an enemy. Instead, make sure your shield is depleted (and that the Shooting Star works on the map). Get your terror, self-dot, swap to Terror Cryo Face Puncher, and shoot away. Watch the fireworks. NOTES - MEME BUILD ORIGIN Funnily enough, this build has its origins as an action skill-less build. You technically don't need to use an action skill. All anoints are triggered by Melee Apply Terror. The only thing you miss out on is proccing Find Your Center and stacking Samsara. But you can punch without Find Your Center (not that it's any fun to do so). And Samsara points can be moved into other tank skills like Helping Hands. And I suppose you won't get Laid Bare if you're trying to get extra damage when punching a raid boss. Point being, you can use any action skill you want, or no action skill. You could use Downfall. You can use any augment you want, including Glamour. That's sort of the theme of this build - you get to build it your favorite way!

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.

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

Slam build based on the Ice Spiker artifact. It's much stronger than you probably think. Icicle Amara SYNOPSIS Slam build based on the Ice Spiker artifact. It's much stronger than you probably think. INTRO It was the summer of 2020 when I noticed that if you had a Nimbus class mod equipped, you fake-grasped, and then slammed an Ice Spiker projectile into an enemy, the Ice Spike would proc the Nimbus cloud. It wasn't until later that year that I figured out why: Ice Spiker is basically another Amara action skill. The Ice Spikes get action skill damage, proc Samsara, proc Laid Bare, proc Expedite with a kill, and even refund half the rush stacks consumed by your latest action skill usage if they get a kill (see Avatar). And of course, they proc the Nimbus cloud. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE ACTION SKILL You can actually use any action skill available to you. But the best are: Tandava, Reverberation, Phaseslam, Eternal Fist, Shooting Star, Light Fantastic. That's most of them. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT You can get away with cryo in nearly every situation, even vs Wotan depending on your loadout. But just to be safe: always cryo except element match a boss. MAIN GUNS Guardian Angels, one with Terror Cryo anointment and the other with Urad anointment. This build can play either way. BACKUP / UTILITY / FFYL GUNS Face Punchers for delivering Groundbreaker or using with Body & Mind to take out elevated/flying enemies. With Terror Cryo and Urad anointments. FFYL weapons such as Ember's Purge, Free Radical, Backburner, Plasma Coil are recommended in case Body & Mind isn't active while you are down. Same anointments as above, or with Consecutive Hits. A Crader's EMP-5 is nice for getting around. CLASS MOD Stone, with Do Harm and Awakening points. Awakening points will buff the damage reduction on the com, as well as the effectiveness of both Do Harm and Violent Tapestry, two very important skills for this build. Recommended passives: splash damage radius, splash damage, action skill damage, action skill cooldown rate. A well-rolled Stone is more effective than the Phasezerker for action skill damage, and its damage reduction is very good. These two perks are what enable the usage of a wide variety of action skills. SHIELD You've got 2 options, depending on if you're using Terror Cryo or Urad. First is a Mana Well with ASE Apply Terror anoint, for use with Terror Cryo. Slamming with this shield (when it has any capacity) will give you a 100% shock bonus element and 90% true damage reduction. Second is Beskar with a Reflect part and with ASE Apply Terror anoint (see "Notes - Beskar" section below), for use with Urad. This shield is also insanely defensive. ARTIFACT Ice Spiker Otto Idol (for use with Terror Cryo) and Ice Spiker Deathless (for use with Urad). The most important passive is Area of Effect in the 2nd or 3rd slot, which also grants increased area radius. Other recommended passives: cryo damage, action skill cooldown rate, movement speed, radiation damage (on the Deathless). If you want even more tank, use the Safeguard suffix (when using Terror Cryo). Ice Spiker can be swapped out for Snowdrift if you just want to use your action skills during a boss fight. GRENADE Hyperion Quasars (non sticky) with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate and Phasegrasp Terror Skulls. The Terror Skulls are for when you want to use Eternal Fist (see "Notes - Terror Skulls" section below). GAMEPLAY LOOP Activate your action skill of choice and slam away. It takes a little bit to get the hang of the Ice Spiker projectiles. They travel through enemies, and up around over most terrain obstacles. For example, you can hit an enemy who is hiding behind a box by simply slamming directly at them; the spikes will travel straight over the box and hit them on the other side. If you slam close enough, you can get all three projectiles to hit. However, you'll have a bit more damage if you're further away and let the Guardian Angel add its damage bonus. Cryo immune Maliwan heavies are usually not a problem, because you have a non-cryo bonus element with either the Mana Well or Urad. Because this build uses the strongest defense-oriented items in the game (Stone, Beskar, Mana Well), you can basically go wild in dangerous places like the Maliwan Takedown bridge. But as always, be careful of barrels and water. NOTES - BESKAR The reflect ability on legendary shields still lets you take damage when a projectile is reflected. The Reflect part that appears on purple shields and some legendaries negates damage when the reflect chance rolls. When the Beskar rolls with a Reflect part, and you enter FFYL once and get a second wind, the Beskar's legendary reflect ability "breaks" and it takes on the properties of the Reflect part. Because the Beskar has a 100% reflect chance, after that point, it will reflect 100% of projectiles without letting them damage you. This does not negate all damage, however; indirect splash can still damage you, and if a projectile dots you, you will take that dot damage. NOTES - TERROR SKULLS Phasegrasp Terror Skulls will reproc and seek out a grasped enemy every time Eternal Fist lifts a new enemy. And the skulls are very powerful. There is the Terror Skulls anoint on a low level grenade with this save file, and the anoint notes the skulls having very low damage because of that. But the skulls actually deal damage based on the level of the gun you're holding. This setup is great for taking out airborne enemies while your Ice Spikes take care of everything on the ground. NOTES - BONUS LOADOUT You can also use a Re-Volter shield with Action Skill Start for a bit more damage. But this is a risky playstyle, especially if using a Phaseflare action skill. Pair with a grenade with either ASE 50% corrosive bonus element (if using Urad) or ASE Apply Terror (if using Terror Cryo). NOTES - RAID BOSSING While the Hemovorous fight can be very hectic and dangerous, it's rather easy for this slam build. Go Terror Cryo, Mana Well, and Shooting Star, and slam, slam, slam. Shooting Star can even get strong enough on this build to melt True Hag of Fervor.

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.

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

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

Tips for understanding and building with Amara's Red Tree at endgame. Red 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 red (Fist of the Elements) tree. ANIMA A skill with many uses. On builds that utilize damage over time (dots), this skill is invaluable. It's what makes Amara the strongest character with the Fish Slap grenade and Unleash The Dragon artifact. It has two often overlooked properties in that it further boosts status damage of your action skill element, and when attuned to shock it gives shock status damage an even longer duration increase. Even on gun builds that don't focus on damage over time, but still use guns with high damage over time (Free Radical, Kickcharger, Plasma Coil), investing into Anima means dots will help finish off enemies. And if you have radiation damage in your build, stronger radsplosions. A common class mod for gun builds, the Phasezerker, can roll extra points into Anima. When self dotting for various buffs, whether it's with the Spiritual Driver class mod or directly shooting your foot, Anima will keep that dot on you longer. Unfortunately, Anima breaks in all respects when your action skill element is set to cryo. It does not buff anything at all in this situation, as if you never specced it. STEADY HANDS Often taken for granted, I would recommend 3 points into this skill on nearly every build that shoots a gun. INFUSION Another skill with many uses. The most basic use is to fully invest in it so that you can diversify the elements of an element-locked gun (such as the Free Radical), non-elemental gun, or to tackle content where enemies have multiple HP bar types. For example, against creatures in the Guardian Takedown, which are armor and flesh, it can be used to infuse a corrosive gun with fire, or the other way around. Whatever percentage that you have Infusion convert, that percentage of your gun's damage becomes a bonus element, and bonus elements do not get increased by splash damage. So if you're using a splash gun and have any increased splash damage, that splash damage bonus is effectively reduced by the same percentage you have invested into Infusion. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because using Infusion for a better elemental matchup can result in more damage than what you've lost from your splash bonuses. The second use for Infusion is to put one point into it to create another damage instance for the Face Puncher, which, when specced into Body & Mind, doubles the amount of Body & Mind novas that get procced. And Body & Mind is a very strong skill when invested into. A third use for Infusion is another one point wonder when shooting your feet to dot yourself, which you may do for various reasons. For example, you want to proc Elemental Projector with a low level Sellout, but you want shock damage, and the Sellout only has fire and corrosive. Attuning yourself to shock and having 1 point into Infusion means a portion of those Sellout projectiles are shock and will shock dot you. You can also use Infusion to diversify the Sellout's dot on yourself, so that you get multiple dots and therefore multiple stacks when using the Golden Rule class mod. E.g., you're attacking with fire phasecasts, so you set the Sellout to corrosive and Infuse it with fire so that you get fire and corrosive dots when you shoot your foot, increasing the effectiveness of the Golden Rule. Infusion can also be used to change your gun's elemental output when you don't want to swap weapons, such as having a buffed Lucky 7 or Sleeping Giant or Anarchy. You can, for example, have a corrosive Lucky 7 that you Infuse with fire while fighting the creatures in the Guardian Takedown, and then you switch your action skill element over to shock when you move onto the Guardians. And then corrosive when you drop down to fight Anathema, and so on. Lastly, investment into Infusion can be useful for true melee builds. It's common to get knocked backwards, especially in the Guardian Takedown, and not be able to melee for lifesteal for a few seconds. Shooting an element-infused Psycho Stabber can allow for enough life steal to regain healthgate before closing the distance again. TEMPEST Very important elemental damage increase. Very hard to pass up. A requirement for nearly every build. ILLUMINATED FIST Extremely important for true melee builds, as it allows your punch to also be increased by elemental damage boosts and to Sustain you. Outside of that, it's just a flat 75% melee damage to all forms of melee damage. It can also be specced so that, even on non-melee builds, when you punch an enemy to deliver Groundbreaker you also get healed by Sustainment. Beware that attuning your punch to an element will make you unable to Sustain off of or deliver Groundbreaker to enemies that are immune to that element. This comes up most often in the Maliwan Takedown. (Use ground slam as an alternate method of Groundbreaker.) WILDFIRE Mostly a low value utility skill that can be specced to help spread around status effects, which, when also specced into Violent Tapestry, can help gain you Rush stacks. On a more dot-focused build, whether it's Unleash The Dragon or gun dots, this skill becomes much more valuable. It also has value on cryo-focused builds, because it can spread the frozen status effect from one enemy to another. It doesn't have the greatest range, though. DREAD Very useful skill on grasp gun builds, mostly for the mag refill upon killing a grasped enemy. It does not matter how the grasped enemy dies, you will get the mag refill. This aspect is very useful for managing the ammo in your mag on, for example, a Lucky 7 build. It is also a generally good DPS increase, because you can skip a reload. One odd situation where it is detrimental is if you're running Terror Ammo Regen and trying to sustain a Sand Hawk in semi-auto mode for a long activity, as Barbie Dahl can do. Dread pulls from reserves, so even with ammo regen, it will eventually run your sniper ammo stock dry. Other than that, it's a good skill. The gun damage aspect of it will also stack with each newly grasped enemy when using Eternal Fist. INDISCRIMINATE Very, very powerful skill, and most gun builds take it. Turns any gun into a multi-target gun, at least the guns that it works with (which is most of them). Also extremely useful for getting up from FFYL. The card says damage of ricochets is reduced, but on Mayhem 10 or 11, it also gets about a 5.5x mayhem multiplier, making your ricochets stronger than your original shot. DEEP WELL 1 point wonder for a slightly significant mag size boost. No reason not to take it on a gun build that goes this far down the tree. CATHARSIS Mostly bad for a few reasons: it has an unnecessary cooldown, it deals self damage, and it can be tough to get all of the investment needed for it to be any good, which is all 5 status effects and lots of action skill damage investment. The only case I've found for it is on a grenade build , as it helps increase area clear. You avoid the self-damage of it because you also want to be out of range of your own grenades, and going down blue tree to get Laid Bare and Avatar gives you plenty of points to dump into action skill damage. Because it's not like there's much else in the blue tree that benefits grenades. SUSTAINMENT Very valuable life steal skill. Not as necessary as most people believe, because of the power of Samsara and Clarity for healing. But still highly recommended, and required on almost all true melee builds on this site. CONFLUX Useful only as a way to get 1 or 2 more status effects for greater debuff from the Harmageddon Guardian Rank perk. FORCEFUL EXPRESSION Decent value increase for both guns and grenades. It can be hard to justify the extra points required to get here on some builds, though.

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

Information about quality-of-life hotfixes and other mods for playing Amara at end game. Modding If you're on PC, we can fix a thing or two to increase your quality of life while playing Borderlands 3. Examples include making the Sleeping Giant always roll all of its buffs, or making the Shooting Star shield work on every map. Below, I will direct you to resources for setting up mods, and share what I consider to be essential mods. Open Hotfix Loader (OHL) There are a few kinds of mods. The most common kind is known as "custom hotfixes". To set up custom hotfix mods, you will need to download and correctly place a few files. Go to this website and scroll down to the "Installation" section, and follow the instructions. Essentially, after OHL is set up, you will have a folder into which you place your hotfix files, and when Borderlands 3 is launched, your custom hotfixes are automatically loaded and applied. To add hotfixes to an already launched game, add the new hotfix to the folder, quit to Title Screen, and re-sign in. There is no need to quit to desktop to add hotfixes. On the other hand, if you want to remove hotfixes, you need to quit to desktop, remove the hotfixes from the folder (or place them in another folder within your 'ohl-mods' folder), and relaunch the game. Essential Hotfixes DJIRA BALL! , by CZ47. Do yourself a favor and hop on over to the dedicated page for this , and introduce yourself to the coolest esport within your favorite game :) Note that the Guardian Takedown will not play normally with this hotfix enabled. VENDOR CRASH FIX , by CZ47. You know how sometimes in the Maliwan Takedown (or anywhere, really) your whole game can crash when you approach a vendor to refill your ammo? This mod will fix that basically 100% of the time. REALLY LUCKY 7 , by CZ47. Allows you to use the Lucky 7 pistol at maximum power without spending 25 minutes reloading it. FYI, it is considered in poor taste to run out the magazine with this mod enabled and continue to use the Lucky 7 for the activity you're currently running. It should be treated as if you rolled all of the modifiers yourself and have ammo regeneration tactics to keep it from being depleted. SLEEPING GIANT 100% , by CZ47 (direct link, right click > save as) . Like the Lucky 7 mod above, this mod makes the Sleeping Giant always roll all of its buffs after the first reload. The same etiquette also applies here. SHOOTING STAR SHIELD FIX , by CZ47 and Lonemasterino (direct link, right click > save as) . If only Gearbox fixed this shield, we would have it as a very strong avenue of attack for Amara's gun and true melee builds. Thankfully, we have this hotfix, which also includes a fix to the Hot Drop artifact so that it works in low gravity, like in the Guardian Takedown. PHOTO MODE UNLOCK , by Apocalyptech. Removes the boundaries of the photomode camera and increases its movement speed. Get closer to damage numbers, or simply look around at the beautiful maps Gearbox has created. TERROR NO EFFECTS , by Bra2ha and CZ47. If you are annoyed by the visual and audio pollution created by the terror status, this removes both of them for you. Terror anoints are absolutely wonderful, so I would hate for people to avoid them because of aesthetic reasons. THE FULL LIST of mods for Borderlands 3. Feel free to browse and see if anything interesting or fun catches your eye! SDK Mods A second kind of mod is called an SDK mod. These are much less common but much more capable than hotfix mods. To get SDK mods installed, go to this web page and follow the instructions. Then add whichever SDK mods seem appealing to you. The one that appeals to me the most, however, won't be found on that site. As of right now, it can only be found here. Thanks to the genius modder OhYes10fps, we have an SDK mod that reverts the projectile nerf and brings back the original glory days of the Projectile Recursion and other weapons. Check it out: Download it here. Download the build I used in this video here. Beware: this interaction always resulted in frame drops, and can even potentially crash your game. I would not recommend firing a recursion when there are two immune enemies in close proximity. Examples include first phase of the Valkyrie fight, when they all drop down at the beginning, and Diadems in the Guardian Takedown. Most PCs will be severely lagged or crashed by something like this happening: Save Editor We all know farming in this game can be a pain. On PC, you can save edit your gear with the ZakisM save editor . I urge caution, however. If you don't know how to make legitimate gear, I would stick to changing things like the element or anointment of an item you already found.