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.

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.

Simply a grenade build for Amara. No, not the Fish Slap - actual grenades. Phase Yeet SYNOPSIS Simply a grenade build for Amara. No, not the Fish Slap - actual grenades. INTRO Amara can be very effective with grenades, although to reach her peak with them, she requires quite specific gear. And to put together this loadout correctly, you really need to understand the theory behind all of it. This build is quite far off-meta, which appeals to me, and has the ability to delete both mobs and bosses. It has an unconventional skill spec and even the ability to use a purple class mod you don't remember the name of. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Probably the most alarming thing here is Catharsis. This is covered in the "Notes - Catharsis" section. Personal Space is specced simply for more damage in FFYL. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. You can also use Tandava—I just had too many Phasecast builds at the time of making this one so I decided to focus on Ties. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Most of the time fire. This is related to Catharsis. But switch to shock against Guardians in the Guardian Takedown, and element-match any boss's HP bar. MAIN GUNS Guardian Angel, with Urad anointment. The radsplosions created by Urad will help greatly with area clear. Ties That Bind does not transfer grenade damage, so you have to use some work-arounds. Radsplosions is one of them. UTILITY GUN Face Puncher, with Urad anointment, for delivering Groundbreaker from a distance and stunning enemies. FFYL GUN Free Radical or Plasma Coil or Backburner, with Urad anointment. CLASS MOD Phasezerker or Master (purple class mod) with points into Catharsis. Did you remember the Master com? It legitimately has a use-case here. See the "Notes - Catharsis" section below. Anima points are recommended for the Phasezerker, because there is some dot tech incorporated into this build. Passives on your class mod and artifact are where the specifics really hit hard with this build. The most important are both a grenade damage and a splash damage radius passive on your class mod, the former being more important. Other passives: action skill cooldown rate, splash damage, grenade radius. Even shield capacity or recharge rate can help your shield survivability a little bit. There's a third Class Mod option, but it's mostly just used for raid boss kills: the Spiritual Driver. See the "Notes - Spiritual Driver Loadout" section below. SHIELD Re-Volter, with Action Skill Start anointment. Since this is a Deathless build, the parts on the Re-Volter are fairly important. For survivability, Turtle parts are best, then Absorb, then Adaptive. For utility, Vagabond is pretty nice. With Urad and now the Re-Volter, you have lots of bonus elements for your grenades. ARTIFACT Atom Balm Deathless. Atom Balm buffing the radsplosion damage and radius is very important for mobbing. Just like with the class mod, passives are very important here, with Grenade Damage being top priority and Area of Effect in the 2nd or 3rd slot right behind it. Other good passives: action skill cooldown rate, elemental damage, or even a shield survivability passive like extra capacity or recharge rate. To better take advantage of Unweave the Rainbow you can sub the Atom Balm for an Ice Breaker Deathless. Look out for the same passives, but also include a Cryo Efficiency passive in that list. GRENADE Finally, the meat & potatoes of the build. There are several options here, and also some restrictions. Options: Ghast Call (Roided preferred), Fastball, Lightspeed, triple Sticky purple Hyperion grenade ("Fixative Longbow"), Porcelain Pipe Bomb, Recurring Hex, Whispering Ice, Doc Hina's Miracle Bomb, Core Buster. Restrictions: all of these require the ASE 50% Corrosive Damage anointment, excepting the Ghast Call, which cannot come anointed. Further, if any of the above grenades can come in cryo, you must choose cryo. Last, if you're using the Doc Hina's Miracle Bomb, change your action skill element to cryo. The reasoning for these restrictions is explained in the "Notes" sections below. Your heavy duty bossing grenades are mostly going to be the Ghast Call and the Fixative Longbow, but depending on the boss the Lightspeed and Miracle Bomb can also do some work. GAMEPLAY LOOP Have your action skill element set to fire, equip your cryo grenade with the corrosive anointment, and you're all set. Grasp enemies and throw your grenade at them or a linked enemy. Use your grasp as often as possible, as soon as it becomes available. Grenade damage cannot pass through Ties That Bind, but the ASE 50% corrosive damage can. So if you have that anointment activated from your previous grasp, you can send that damage through Ties That Bind. This, along with radsplosions, is another work-around for area clear. If your cryo grenade freezes an enemy, it will get a significant damage boost from Unweave The Rainbow. Get really good at avoiding damage and you can loop your action skill pretty quickly, which will build up stacks of Violent Tapestry, leading to more freezings with your cryo grenades, leading to more Unweave the Rainbow damage and even faster cooldowns (because kills with UTR damage will also proc Expedite). This build can get some pretty significant momentum. Note that when using the Lightspeed, it is very strong when you throw it at the ground directly in front of an enemy, so that the child projectiles split and bounce into them. Thus, when grasping and using the Lightspeed, try to aim for an enemy on the ground instead of the grasped one in the air. NOTES - MAYHEM 10/11 This build requires you to play on Mayhem 10 with the More Than Okay Boomer easy modifier, so you don't run out of grenades. Other non-impactful modifiers you can use along with it are Healy Avenger, Drone Ranger, and Not The Face. NOTES - GRENADE DOTS The reason you select a cryo grenade, where possible, beyond Unweave The Rainbow, is because they can apply good dots for mobbing. Something to know about dots in this game is that you can only have one dot per element per form of attack. So if you have, say, a corrosive grenade with an ASE 50% corrosive bonus element, you can't get two separate corrosive dots. You only get one. So to apply more dot damage, you need to differentiate your elements. Your cryo grenade does not play by the rules in two ways in relation to dots. First, elemental grenades that list a damage over time will do that same damage over time with any bonus element. For example, if a radiation grenade lists 600 radiation damage per second as a dot value on the card, it will deal that damage when the dot procs. Everything normal so far. If that grenade has an ASE 50% corrosive bonus element anoint, and that anoint is active and applies a dot, it will also deal 600 corrosive damage per second (we're ignoring elemental multipliers here). In other words, it deals the same damage as listed on the radiation grenade's card, not 50% less... If you have Forceful Expression and your action skill element set to fire, that grenade will also deal 600 fire damage per second from a dot, not 18% of 600. If Re-Volter procs and dots, the grenade will deal 600 shock damage per second, not 1200 per second. As you can see, the strength of bonus element dots, when applied by grenades, are always the same value: 100% of the card value. You come out ahead here: Re-Volter loses 100%, but your ASE gains 50% and Forceful Expression gains 82%. (Urad is 100% regardless.) The above example illustrates why you have your action skill element set to fire and use a corrosive ASE. With Re-Volter and the Urad anointment, you've covered all elements that can dot, maximizing your dot damage. The second way your cryo grenade breaks the rules is because for grenades, cryo efficiency is not tied to the dot damage displayed on the other elements. For guns, on the other hand, cryo efficiency and dot damage are related. Example, if a fire gun does 1000 damage per shot and deals 1500 damage per second when a dot procs, a cryo version of that same gun will have 150% cryo efficiency. Cryo efficiency is the ratio of dot damage to card damage. However, with many cryo grenades, their efficiency is much, much higher than the ratio of dot damage to card damage in other elements of that grenade. Example: a fire grenade might do 1000 card damage and list 200 damage per second as the dot. But the cryo version of that grenade will not have a cryo efficiency of 20%; it could be something like 60%. Thus, when you apply a bonus element dot with a cryo grenade, the dot will be much stronger, especially since all bonus elements proc at 100% of listed dot damage as explained above. In summary, having a cryo grenade and having your bonus elements differentiated results in the highest possible dot damage from throwing grenades. There is also the added benefit of getting maximum debuff damage from the Guardian Rank perk Harmageddon. NOTES - CATHARSIS In this build you are encouraged to have all 5 status effects applied: cryo from the grenade, corrosive from the grenade anoint, fire from your action skill element (Forceful Expression), shock from the Re-Volter, and Urad from your gun anointment. Catharsis creates an explosion upon enemy death for each status effect applied to that enemy, and will proc up to 5 explosions in all of the elements. These explosions, with Guardian Angel and action skill damage and an extra 3 points from the Master class mod, can deal 40-80 million damage in total, with an average amount of Do Harm stacks. If these explosions kill anything, they will proc Expedite. This is why the Master class mod is viable here - it's the only class mod that can roll Catharsis. Catharsis can deal self-damage, but on a grenade build you do not want to be near your target anyway. Along with radsplosions and your ASE corrosive anointment, this is the third work-around for area clear since grenade damage does not pass through Ties That Bind. NOTES - SPIRITUAL DRIVER LOADOUT For bossing or raid bossing, you can use a Spiritual Driver combined with an Elemental Projector Victory Rush for big damage. However, it's not as straightforward as equipping those two things. The challenge you need to overcome is the fact that the Driver's self-dot is your own damage, and is boosted by the Elemental Projector. Further, when holding the Guardian Angel, all self damage is multiplied by 5. So if you use this loadout you will probably kill yourself before you kill anything else, unless you build some survivability into it as well. The first thing you need is a Re-Volter with adaptive parts. The second thing you need is the Terror Health Regen anointment on your Guardian Angel. This also means you need a way to apply terror. If you don't want to sacrifice the Action Skill Start anointment on your Re-Volter, you can put ASE Apply Terror on your grenade. However, I would recommend you put Terror Dmg/Fire Rate on your grenade and put Melee Apply Terror on your Face Puncher and swap to apply terror at the same time you swap to shoot for Groundbreaker. Alternatively, you can sacrifice the ASS anoint on your Re-Volter and put ASE Apply Terror on it. Then, you can let the Re-Volter naturally break, which can happen very easily in some boss fights. Every time you kill an add, it will begin filling via the Guardian Rank perk Shield Reboot, and then re-break from your own self-dot damage, re-triggering the effect. If you just want to, for example, drop down and one-shot Seer with a Fixative Longbow, you don't need to worry about survivability, and can use the loadout shown in the gameplay video at the top of the page.

Phasecast and gun-based cryo build that creates all sorts of chaos. Oblivion Amara SYNOPSIS Phasecast and gun-based cryo build that creates all sorts of chaos. INTRO Oblivion Amara is one of the two builds I originally made in 2020 after the purple tree came out, along with its sister build Fission Amara. Here it is updated for level 72, and it's very strong. This is a cryo gun and Phasecast build, and has the potential to create some very fun, very destructive shenanigans. Sometimes you might find yourself suddenly wondering where your nearby enemies went and how they died. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE ACTION SKILL Tandava for general usage, Reverberation for bossing, with the special Reverberation technique. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Always cryo, with a few exceptions. You can stick with cryo vs many armor bars, but you much switch to corrosive vs Wotan. You can also switch to better match harder content, such as fire vs Guardian Takedown creatures and shock vs Guardian Takedown Guardians. Your action skill element greatly affects your guns' power, as that is the element Unweave The Rainbow procs as. PHASECASTING GUN Guardian Angel, with either the Killstack or 200% Astral Projection anointment. Killstack is the only anointment that is attached to the player, not the gun, so if you get some Tandava/Reverberation kills while holding a Killstack Guardian Angel, that damage and reload speed will transfer when you swap back to your shooting gun. 200% Astral Projection is great for Reverberation vs bosses. SHOOTING GUNS Anything cryo and splash. Even though you can change your action skill element as mentioned above, do not deviate from cryo weapons (exception: "Notes - Frozen Heart" below) My favorites: Beacon, Recursion, Kaoson, Sand Hawk, Flipper, Plaguebearer, Anarchy, Trevonator. The reason we want to stick with cryo is because shooting and freezing enemies and then hitting them with Unweave The Rainbow is a very strong mobbing strategy, especially when coupled with radsplosions and Free The Soul. The anointment varies based on your preferred playstyle. If you want to swap to the Guardian Angel for your casts, put Consecutive hits or 150/90 on your guns. If you don't want to swap, you can put 250% Phasecast on your guns to get more gun damage. Swapping is not necessary; Tandava won't kill as often without the Guardian Angel, but it will definitely freeze enemies, allowing you to kill them easily with the aid of Unweave. Reverb will still kill if you aim it correctly. FFYL GUN My favorite FFYL strategy is to use my cryo gun to freeze a nearby enemy and get up when Unweave finishes them off. But if you're using a less powerful gun for your shooting, it may not be strong enough to freeze, so carrying something like a Consecutive Hits Free Radical or Plasma Coil may be wise. CLASS MOD Phasezerker, with points into Clarity. This class mod will allow you to automatically stack Rush and Do Harm, leading to more powerful Phasecasts and other action skill effects such as Unweave The Rainbow, Free The Soul, and Remnant. Further, it increases your cooldown and gun damage. Because of the way the Phasezerker works, you should generally cast Tandava or Reverb twice in a row for maximum Do Harm and maximum damage. Recommended passives: weapon damage, action skill cooldown rate, action skill damage, splash damage, splash damage radius, weapon crit damage, weapon type damage. SHIELD There are a few options, but the most important one is the Void Rift, with Action Skill Start anointment. It's the shield that was used for the original version of this build, and it both synergizes so well and helps create so much chaos. Upon break, it will suck nearby enemies towards you (and barrels - watch out) and then release a strong cryo nova. Further, when enemies shoot you and damage it, it responds by sending homing cryo projectiles back at them. Both of these types of damage are cryo splash, further helping us freeze things and finish them off with Unweave The Rainbow. Other options: Frozen Heart, cryo Stinger, Band of Sitorak, Plus Ultra. The Frozen Heart, with Action Skill Start anointment, is easy-mode for freezing enemies. Just cast and then shoot at whatever blocks of snow are laying around you. Unweave will take care of the rest. The cryo Stinger, with Action Skill Start anointment, is just a powerful punch in nova form. The Band of Sitorak or Plus Ultra, with ASE 50% bonus element anointment, is for when you don't want to swap to the Guardian Angel to cast. These shields provide great Topped Off uptime, especially the Band of Sitorak, which then leads to great 250% Phasecast uptime on your guns. The Band of Sitorak is especially fun with a Safe Space augment, able to send basically any enemy ragdolling. The Plus Ultra is a little slower to recharge than the Sitorak, but it doubles your health for better defense. ARTIFACT Ice Breaker Otto Idol. 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, cryo efficiency, weapon type damage. There are a few other options for artifact prefixes: Snowdrift for moving around a boss arena. Last Stand for more survivability. Ice Spiker for another form of attack and another way to proc Samsara. GRENADE Unfortunately I have to recommend a Fish Slap, not in cryo, in order to deal with cryo immune Maliwan Heavies. Shock or radiation or fire, with an ASE 50% radiation bonus element for radsplosions. There's always the option to Groundbreaker an immune heavy with damage done to other enemies, but sometimes the timing for that can be too tight. If you don't have to worry about immunities, It's Piss or Hyperion Quasar (non sticky) or Mesmer, with ASE 50% radiation bonus element. Anything utility oriented like these works just fine. GAMEPLAY LOOP Figure out if you want to be swapping for your casts or not, and choose your weapon anoint and shield accordingly. Then you cast, you shoot, you destroy. If you're using the Void Rift and a Beacon, the OG loadout, there will be tons of things flying around, freezing, and exploding. Sometimes you have to play a game of "Are any of these blocks of ice still alive?". NOTES - FROZEN HEART An exception to using cryo-only guns is if you want to only freeze with the Frozen Heart, and use splash guns of other elements. With this setup, I would also recommend not swapping for Phasecasting, and use the 250% Phasecast anoint on your guns to keep their power up between freezes. You also would not need to use the Ice Breaker artifact. NOTES - RAID BOSSES Builds such as this have an inherent way to take out most raid bosses by Reverbing or Tandava-ing 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 Reverb'd directly.

Urad true melee build. Very engaging, very strong. Golden Swan SYNOPSIS Urad true melee build. Very engaging, very strong. INTRO This is the resurrection of a really old, outdated build , and it has changed (and improved) quite a bit. But the underlying principle is the same: Urad true melee. And it still uses the same unconventional shield. For the longest time I struggled to justify Urad on a true melee build, because to keep Urad active you have to either give up a powerful artifact suffix (by using Deathless) or a powerful shield, all the while it's competing with Terror Cryo at only 25% less of a bonus than Urad. It would take too long to explain the theorycrafting reasoning behind this build, but the biggest factor is that Urad plays well with Elemental Projector while Terror Cryo does not. Beware: As with any true melee build, this build can be tough to get the hang of. It will probably take a couple runs, especially because of its unique survivability strategy. Just watch the gameplay video, properly digest the Gameplay Loop section, and practice. You will be rewarded. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES There are some odd choices here, for sure. Both max health skills at 5/5? Well, our shield is the Front Loader, and the Front Loader translates max health into shield capacity. Yes this build survives with its shield, among other things. Dread in the red tree is picked only for the automatic reload utility, but that won't happen often. We need to get down to Ties That Bind anyway. The rest of the skills are fairly normal for a true melee build. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind with Glamour. This is part of the survivability strat. Any enemy linked with Ties That Bind will be de-aggro'd via Glamour. A not-too tiny side benefit is the area clear TTB provides. But don't worry, this build still has good single target punching damage. The Shooting Star variant of Phaseflare is also used for raid bossing. That is, if you don't use the TTB / Remnant strategy. See the "Notes - Raid Bossing" toward the bottom. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Fire, shock, or corrosive depending on the content you are facing. Do not choose cryo. PUNCHING GUN Psycho Stabber with Urad anointment. Pretty straightforward. Urad will also get added to Groundbreaker damage. SWAP GUN Low level Sellout pistol with Urad anointment. This gun is for shooting your foot to place a dot on yourself in order to proc the Elemental Projector artifact, giving you a huge increase to both the elemental damage of your punch and the Urad bonus element that goes along with it. You only need to shoot once and then swap back to the Psycho Stabber. Each of the three projectiles from the Sellout has a 72% chance to dot you, so it's basically guaranteed. Urad will also start "ticking" on the dot you placed on yourself as a hidden damage instance. This bonus element ticking on a self-dot will stack Burn Both Ends for you, giving you even more elemental damage. To obtain an anointed low level Sellout, rush the story killing as few enemies as possible (having Guardian Rank enabled makes this pretty easy). You can complete the mission at as low a level as 21. When you do so, discard the Sellout mission reward and farm an anointed one from Earl's vendor in Sanctuary. Protip: turn dialog volume all the way down if you do not wish to hear Amara screaming from self-dots all of the time. ALTERNATIVE PUNCHING GUN Unforgiven with Urad anointment. This is to boost the crits from Static Charge, when they manage to crit. And that mostly only happens vs the creatures in the Guardian Takedown, because nearly all of them have forward facing crit spots. When the Static Charge crits while holding this gun, it's pretty much a guaranteed kill, giving you huge Groundbreaker damage for your next punch, especially if the Static Charge kill Hollowpointed another enemy. FFYL / FLYING ENEMY GUN Face Puncher with Urad anointment. This is a Body & Mind delivery system and is great for annoying flying enemies and getting up from FFYL. This build is strong enough to punch up from most situations, if enemies are kind enough to stick around. But the Face Puncher takes care of you when they don't. OPTIONAL SWAP GUN Guardian Angel with Urad anointment. This is only for swapping to after you've sent a beefed up Shooting Star into a raid boss. CLASS MOD Golden Rule, prioritizing points into Laid Bare and then points into Mindfulness. Laid Bare is great damage, and Mindfulness is incredible survivability with the movement speed it grants. Dotting yourself with various elements via the Sellout will also activate the Golden Rule's cooldown effect, giving you *very* short TTB cooldowns. Second, optional class mod would be the Dragon with at least 1 point into Remnant. This is only for a raid bossing strat. Recommended passives: melee damage, action skill cooldown rate, splash or grenade radius (for your grenade), action skill damage, reload speed, shield capacity. SHIELD Front Loader with Apply Terror on Action Skill End. Highly, highly recommend getting at least one Shield Charge augment, and it can come with up to two. The Front Loader takes away your health gate (and activates Urad). This leaves your shield capacity as your main survivability stat. Luckily, Amara can boost that through her max health skills and the Front Loader's health-to-shield effect. But your shield will constantly be slowly draining because you're going to be self-dotting with the Sellout. It won't have the opportunity to recharge. Shield Charge augments greatly enhance the longevity of that shield bar, and they can keep you alive indefinitely if you're really good at dodging damage. ARTIFACT Elemental Projector Static Charge. The Elemental Projector will be procced by your Sellout pistol, granting you lots of damage for both your main punching element and the Urad bonus element. The Static Charge is not only a nice bonus element for your punches, but the chains will be very strong. Urad will also get applied to the Static Charge chains. Recommended passives: melee damage, area damage (in 2nd or 3rd slot), elemental damage (except cryo), action skill cooldown, max shield, reload speed, move speed. GRENADE *inhales* Hyperion Longbow Tran-fusion, in any element, with the Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. Here's where the real fun begins. (And yes, I also learned while making this build that it's "Tran-fusion", not "Trans-fusion".) When this grenade damages shields (blue HP), it sends blue healing orbs to you that refill your shield. When it damages health (red HP), it does the same for your health. We only care about the shield part. You know how Shield Charges are important for the Front Loader? Well this is doubly important. This picks up the slack when the Shield Charges can't keep up, when you've sustained a decent amount of damage and your shield is mid to low. More on how to use this in the "Gameplay Loop" section below. Before you get all 5Head on me and exclaim, "But Stone/Swan! The Fish Slap can roll Generator parts, why not use that?!", first of all, don't call me "Stone slash Swan", call me either "Stone" or "Swan". Thanks. Second of all, Generator parts don't work on the Fish Slap. Yeah. Third, even if they did work, the Fish Slap is slow when you need healing fast. That's why we want a Hyperion Tran-fusion instead of an Atlas or Tediore. Last, the Fish Slap would just be doing all of the killing on its own anyway, and that's extremely boring. GAMEPLAY LOOP The basic gameplay loop is very simple; the devil is in the details. This is a long one. Buckle in. Let's start with the basics: shoot your foot with the Sellout, swap to your Psycho Stabber, grasp something, start punching. Rinse and repeat. Use the Face Puncher vs flying enemies if you can't take them out via a Ties That Bind link. You need to be constantly dotted by the Sellout both for damage and cooldown. That means basically any break between enemies, or when damage is suddenly not there vs an enemy, you need to step back, swap, and re-dot before re-engaging. When your action skill element is fire or shock, set your Sellout to corrosive. If your action skill element is corrosive, set your Sellout to fire. This way, you get one dot from your action skill element via Infusion, and a second dot from the element of the Sellout. This means faster stacking Burn Both Ends, faster stacking Mindfulness, and more cooldown from Golden Rule. Taking care of your Front Loader is where most of your focus should go. There are three equally important ways you do this. First, grasp an enemy whenever grasp is available. This is not only for damage (even on single targets - there's some sort of shenanigans with Glamour and the Static Charge, a la the Reflux), but also for aggro control. When you grasp a group, you have some breathing room (provided there aren't a ton of enemies outside that group). They stop attacking you, and you can use a small portion of that time to dot yourself and/or throw your grenade... The second form of care for your Front Loader is the Tran-fusion grenade. Sure, it sucks that it will only refill your shield if it damages shields, but shields are everywhere. If you swing your crosshair around the battlefield it's actually very easy to see blue HP bars and know where to send the grenade. Maliwan enemies always have shields so any area where you know there are fresh Maliwan troops is a good area to chuck this thing. Plenty of CoV enemies also have shields, and it's not hard to find them or know which enemies are most likely to have them. IMPORTANT NOTE: Glamour'd enemies are intangible to grenades. Chuck a grenade at a grasped enemy or any linked enemy with this build and it will pass right through them. Instead, throw it at a floor or wall near them. This is why splash radius passives are recommended. If enemies are lacking shields, that usually means they're weakened, and a Glamour'd Ties That Bind (plus a punch) is probably going to finish the fight. There are two exceptions to this general rule. The first is Guardians in the Guardian Takedown. Here, either fresh enemies (before they've gained an armor bar) or weakened enemies (after the armor bar is depleted) will have exposed shields. Just do a quick scan and you'll find them. If you don't see any, get a Ties That Bind going ASAP. The second exception is creatures in the Guardian Takedown, where there are no shields at all. This leads to the third form of Front Loader care, and that is movement. Smart movement is extremely important in true melee builds, and in this build even more so. You need to be strafing enemy attacks and placing yourself briefly behind cover or backing away while you do things like self-dotting or reloading the Sellout. Don't ever just stand still unless you're engaging an enemy you know you're going to kill. Know your enemies, keep an eye on the mini-map. Those creatures in the Guardian Takedown? Easily survived by just your Shield Charges if you know how and when they attack and can dodge them. The many points in Mindfulness this build has makes quick movement very easy. Pay attention to my movement in the gameplay video and note how I'm always throwing in little strafes and such. Strafing causes enemies to miss and also forces them to spend time turning toward you, which is very effective at close range. Note that the strats with the grenade are only in play if you see your shield at mid to low levels. If you've got the movement down and you're doing really well at avoiding damage, then Shield Charges will last you a long time. But always be keeping an eye on your shield capacity and have an idea of where blue HP bars might be on field. NOTES - RAID BOSSING This build doesn't have the same sort of raid boss punching ability that Sulphur Swan and Steel Swan have. Instead, you have three different options: Shooting Star, Remnant, and plain ole Fish Slap. Shooting Star: when you initially summon the ball and punch it out, recall it once and punch it only once with the Psycho Stabber and you're good to go. Punching it a second time will end it prematurely, because of the extra damage instances provided by Urad and Static Charge. You can swap to the Guardian Angel and back away if you want even more damage from the ball, but my favorite thing to do is follow the ball and start punching along with it to keep delivering Groundbreaker. It also feels cooler and more interactive this way. Remnant: Swap to a Dragon class mod with at least one point in Remnant. Wait for a mob to get near the boss, grasp the boss so the mob is linked, punch the boss, then watch Remnant float in like the Angel of Death and delete the boss. Fish Slap: Hold either the Psycho Stabber or Guardian Angel and chuck fish. It's boring but it works. Of course, for any of these strats, always be self-dotted for lots more damage. NOTES - ANATHEMA This fight can be frustrating. When Anathema's radiation bubble goes off, some of the other guardians in the arena survive and are irradiated. Their radiation aura will damage you if you get near them, and because you don't have health gate, it will be instant FFYL. Just do your best to avoid them. NOTES - CRYSTAL PHASES IN GTD These sections can be pretty easy. Ties That Bind and Glamour mean you can get away with hardly attacking any of the enemies, if you play it right and get lucky. Make sure you're still dotted, though, to keep the Golden Rule cooldown going and get grasp back. Sometimes TTB + Glamour won't be perfect, though, because we aren't specced Ascendant for more Glamour time and because Burn Both Ends makes enemies *really* angry. If things get out of hand, don't be afraid to use the Face Puncher liberally. What I like to do during crystals with any true melee build is use cheesy strats for the first two crystals, then switch back to punching when I get to the third crystal, where I can take my time. NOTES - GEARBOX This build hosts a few bugs/quirks courtesy of Gearbox that may lead to some frustration: grasp bugs, Blitz bugs, and the Psycho Stabber animation lockout. Just know that getting up from FFYL is usually never a problem, and this build is rewarding enough to overcome these frustrations.

Peak single-target true melee. High survivability (for a true melee build). Radsplosions. What else can you ask for? Sulphur Swan SYNOPSIS Peak single-target true melee. High survivability (for a true melee build). Radsplosions. What else can you ask for? INTRO Can true melee defeat a raid boss? Can the White Elephant hit for billions of damage after being applied by a punch? It's kinda surprising, but the answer to both of those questions is: kinda... yeah. Here we have the first build added to this site after the site's launch. And oh boy does it challenge all of the existing true melee builds. Perhaps it's not a crown jewel of my true melee builds, but instead the crown itself. (Although this is now contested with the creation of Steel Swan .) This build emerged when I tried to build around the Zheitsev's Eruption. The Eruption's reload debuff effect is extremely powerful. And being a debuff, it is a damage multiplier that is double-dipped by any double-dipping effect. Like, say, the White Elephant or the Static Charge. The White Elephant was heavily nerfed a long time ago, but if you throw enough damage formula at it, the double-dipping effect overcomes that nerf. The Static Charge has always been strong, and this build uses it very effectively, but its strength shines more in multi-target scenarios. Perhaps most importantly, this build fills in a gap that the other true melee builds on the site have left: it has radsplosions. Lots of them. And pretty great survivability. And it can boss, too, so what's the catch? Just a slightly odd gameplay loop as you work with the Eruption's effect. But don't worry, it'll only take a run or two to get used to. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Max Do Harm, one point into Infusion, but no Body & Mind? You don't need it, and it can even be detrimental if you're trying to see if your punch stuck a White Elephant bomb to your enemy. Personal Space on a melee build? Personal Space applies to guns/bullets, and the ASE 50% bonus element anointment that you'll have on your grenade always counts as a "bullet". ASE 50% bonus elements apply to Groundbreaker. With all of your buffs going, your total Groundbreaker damage (including the bonus element) is going to be 7+ times as strong as the damage that built it up in the first place. That's right, this build can take Groundbreaker from 10% of the initial damage to 700+%. So, very indirectly, Personal Space is actually quite a large damage increase for your punches. Do Harm is to buff Phaseslam a bit, and Infusion is for a little bit of lifesteal when using the Face Puncher. Max swap speed is important, but no extra reload speed beyond that (no Alacrity). You want to swap to and from your Eruption often, but you also don't want it to complete its reload animation. ACTION SKILL Phaseslam. Technically, any action skill can be used. But Phaseslam will be the most effective because it will: kickstart your damage, stack Samsara, immediately proc your bonus element anointment, keep your Terror anoints cycling, proc a bit of Expedite, and stagger/ragdoll enemies. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever is suited to the content you are facing, except Cryo. It's a Driver build. DEBUFFING GUN The Zheitsev's Eruption, in radiation only , with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. The work horse of the build. The Terror Dmg anointment will get double dipped by your White Elephant (and Static Charge). Upon starting its reload/repair animation, the Eruption sends out 8 homing splash projectiles at nearby enemies. Each projectile debuffs an enemy for 20% increased damage from all sources for 6 seconds. The animation can be cancelled by the typical means: meleeing, throwing a grenade, using your action skill, swapping, mantling, etc. When the animation begins again, the projectiles get sent out again, except if you cancelled it via melee. All other cancellation methods will reproc the projectiles. So the easiest and most consistent way to reproc the projectiles is by swapping to and away from the Eruption. This is totally fine, because then you get to swap to your punching gun... PUNCHING GUN The Guardian Angel, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. No, not the Psycho Stabber, although it's not half bad. The Guardian Angel will add another multiplier for the White Elephant (and Static Charge) to double dip. It's also the gun you hold if you want Phaseslam to do some damage and get you Expedite stacks (you generally want this). FFYL /FLYING ENEMY GUN Face Puncher, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. You can also shoot the Guardian Angel at enemies if you're down, and Indiscriminate will have a good chance of getting you back up. CLASS MOD Spiritual Driver, mostly for proccing Elemental Projector with your action skill element. Mindfulness points are also useful for maneuverability and closing the gap. Recommended passives: action skill cooldown, action skill damage, melee damage, splash damage, splash damage radius. Getting a large splash radius means Phaseslam hits more enemies and White Elephant stickies can hit more than just the enemy they're stuck to. Protip: turn dialog volume all the way down if you do not wish to hear Amara screaming from self-dots all of the time. You can actually run lots of other class mods, though they will be less effective than the Driver: Golden Rule with points into Laid Bare and Mindfulness for a bit of damage and faster cooldown, Stone with points into Awakening and Do Harm, Muse with any skill points, Breaker with Find Your Center and preferably no points into Personal Space, Dragon with a point into Remnant. All of the same recommended passives. SHIELD Red Suit, preferably with two Roid augments, with ASE Apply Terror anointment. The Eruption reload projectiles are splash, and would down you without this shield, especially since you're following the projectiles toward the enemy and ideally boosting splash radius. ARTIFACT Elemental Projector White Elephant. You can also use an Elemental Projector Static Charge for pretty similar results most of the time. However, the White Elephant is what's needed to take down big bosses. The Static Charge will provide more consistency in mobbing and for bosses with lots of adds (like Wotan). The only time the Static Charge truly outshines the White Elephant on this build is when mobbing with Guardians in the Guardian Takedown. Recommended passives: action skill cooldown, area-of-effect damage in the 2nd or 3rd slot (so it also increases area radius), melee damage, elemental damage, move speed. GRENADE Fish Slap, in radiation, with ASE 50% radiation damage anointment. Both aspects are pretty important. Radiation element Fish so that it gets boosted by Elemental Projector. You will almost always have a radiation dot on you (that won't damage you thanks to the Red Suit) from the Eruption projectiles. The Red Suit will also protect you from your Fish, as long as you have the White Elephant and not the Static Charge equipped. Your ASE 50% radiation bonus element will get added to your Groundbreaker when you punch, and it will be even further boosted by Elemental Projector. You're building Groundbreaker all the time via your Red Suit's aura, your White Elephant stickies (or Static Charge chains), Phaseslam, and the Eruption projectiles. This bonus element, when coupled with the Driver self-dot, will also stack Burn Both Ends for you. GAMEPLAY LOOP Before engaging in combat, shoot your Eruption until it overheats, then swap away to your Guardian Angel before the repair animation gets any further. Now it's primed for debuffing. Whenever you swap back to your overheated Eruption, a set of projectiles will get sent out and debuff enemies. (No projectiles will proc if there are no enemies around.) When entering combat, Phaseslam into some mobs while holding the Guardian Angel. Swap back to the Eruption briefly one or two times to send out one or two sets of debuffing projectiles. Then punch 1 or 3 enemies to death. Back to the Eruption again, then back to punching. Keep in mind, the debuff lasts 6 seconds, so you do need to be swapping back to the Eruption pretty often. Luckily, your relatively short window of actual punching will be very productive. Phaseslam with the Guardian Angel in your hand when it's available. Throw a Fish at enemies that are immune to your action skill element. Face Puncher annoying flying enemies. Feel free to follow your Eruption projectiles to the enemy. You want them to proc a radiation dot on you for your Elemental Projector. Standing directly next to an enemy and sending projectiles into them isn't the craziest idea. You have great survivability with the Red Suit aura and Eruption projectiles giving you steady healing with Sustainment. Samsara will pull its weight if you Phaseslammed effectively. You will sometimes get jostled around with this build. Both because you're true melee and because the Eruption projectile explosions can push you a little bit. Just persevere and punch when you can; you'll be fine. NOTES - GUARDIAN TAKEDOWN There are a few areas in the Guardian Takedown where piloting a true melee build can be very risky, for various reasons. For this build, during both crystal phases and during the last mobbing section before Scourge, take a break from the true melee for a while, lest you get overrun and/or knocked off. Instead, continually jump while alternating between reloading the Eruption and shooting the Guardian Angel at enemies. Phaseslam when available. Throw Fish if you feel like it. Maybe when you're on your last crystal you can start punching again, if you want. NOTES - RAID BOSSING The setup for raid bossing with the White Elephant is as follows. Set your action skill element appropriately and make sure the Eruption is overheated. Start with a volley of projectiles from the Eruption, then immediately follow it up with your action skill. You can use Phaseslam or base Phasecast or base Grasp. All you really need it to do is to proc your Elemental Projector and anoints. Once the Eruption is back in your hand, another set of projectiles will proc. Immediately swap to your Guardian Angel, punch 2 or 3 times, and step away. Hopefully, you attached a White Elephant sticky or two. If a sticky of a favorable element gets attached, there's potential for massive damage. If a sticky of massive damage procced, run back up again and punch for Groundbreaker. If not, or after you have punched for Groundbreaker, repeat the process, except your action skill is now on cooldown. Swap to the Eruption a couple times for a couple sets of projectiles, then punch 2 or 3 times again and back away. When your action skill is done cooling down, repeat the whole process. White Elephant is chance-based, of course, but this build is still able to take down raid bosses in a reasonable time frame, in my opinion. NOTES - HEMOVOROUS If you have patience, you can actually punch/White Elephant Hemo to death. Problem is, he's very hard to land a punch on. You have to go for his legs. Keep in mind he will move his legs to both face you and attack you as you approach. It's tough, but doable. You will need to Fish him during his flying phase, though.

About Stone_Swan, creator of countless off-meta Amara builds. About Hi! I'm Stone Swan. I'm an Amara build crafter, making builds since around February 2020. I was originally inspired by Moxsy, and tried to differentiate myself by making off-meta builds. I made a green and blue tree gun build . I made the first Amara slam build with the Spark Plug. I had the goal of making true melee viable in Mayhem 4, which back then was the highest difficulty. I accomplished that goal within a couple months with the original Black Swan build , and thought I was done. Mayhem 2.0 rolled around, and I couldn't make anything off-meta work until Gearbox did a couple major balance changes and introduced mayhem scaling. Soon, the builds started flowing again. A generalist gun/melee/action skill build . A Downfall build that was later converted to Phaseslam and Phasecast to participate in the two End Game Rush community challenges (and got 2nd place for the second EGR ). Old builds were updated, purple tree builds were made , Nimbus was used somewhat successfully . I discovered how the Ice Spiker artifact was tied to Amara's action skills and made my second slam build type . Making full-length build videos was fun and very rewarding, but I continued to have less and less time to dedicate to them. I decided to go out with a bang and put out 9 builds at the same time, covering three of them in depth in my Whiteness of Swans video. That was the end of my YouTube builds, but not the end of build making in general; DLC 6 and level 72 were yet to come. I continued making builds but not making videos for them, only showing them on stream. I made more true melee builds. I got Amara to deal damage over time (dots) from guns (NOT Unleash the Dragon) on a level that erases raid bosses extremely quickly. I discovered that the Victory Rush artifact wasn't working properly, and the community responded loudly enough that Gearbox fixed it. I figured out the radsplosion damage formula , and made countless other small discoveries. I made grenade builds , more slam build types , a Hellfire build , builds using nearly every legendary class mod, and even a couple purple ones. A sniper build. A launcher build. Even builds where you can shoot the Guardian Angel effectively. You name it, I've probably tried it. I accomplished my final goal: a true melee Amara that can punch to death True Guardian Takedown enemies without overly relying on action skill damage (Phaseflare, Ties That Bind) or Unleash The Dragon or other forms of melee damage, while also using tropes from the Mayhem 3 days: Phaseslam, Blitz, Brawler Ward shield. Once that was done, I knew it was time to make this site and share everything. Since this site's launch, I've figured out how Zane's Our Man Flynt skill actually works , eventually leading it to be one of the strongest skills in the entire game . More builds have been added to the site, starting with the resurrection of the White Elephant on true melee builds , making true melee capable of raid bossing . I performed the first Graveward one-punch and the first Mayhem 11 boss kill with the Binary Operator . Shoutout to my friends, acquaintances, and inspirations along my build-making journey, in no particular order: Moxsy, CZ47, MadGlenny, lesshandsomejack, tbj_quag, soccerchickTV, LazyData, SomeOldGuyInHawaii, Skkra, Ancient_Rune, xEternalDragonx, Lonemasterino, nino_salvaje, Oh yes 10 FPS, and I'm sure many more I'm forgetting... Much love, Stone_Swan

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

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

Learn how to play the popular Borderlands 3 esport: Djira Ball! DJIRA BALL a hilarious introduction to a super serious esport: What is Djira Ball? Djira Ball is an esport within Borderlands 3 made by myself and CZ47. It consists of throwing a Fastball grenade at a Djira (the small Nekrotafeyo creatures) that has been launched into the air by a melee attack. If the Fastball is thrown just right, the Djira will get launched away from you, potentially at a very high velocity. In this way, a launched Djira could be seen as a sportsball. This interaction between an airborne Djira and a fast moving projectile was discovered when I was testing how damage affects an airborne Djira. When testing grenade damage by throwing a Fastball, a Djira randomly got yeeted. CZ47 jokingly proposed making a sport out of it. I took it seriously. We collaborated on the parameters of said sport, and CZ47 made the arena for it with hotfix modding. It takes place in the Guardian Takedown. Find the Djira Ball hotfix mod on the Modding page How to Play Djira Ball: Unspec all skill points, remove all gear, do not select an action skill or a pet. Perhaps make a separate save file for playing Djira Ball. Minos Prime’s drop pod is now located above Anathema’s arena, which is now the Djira Ball arena. At the drop pod, buy a Fastball from the ammo vendor and a Toboggan at the shield vendor. If the Toboggan has a movement speed passive, save/quit and try again. If you need money to buy these, open the white chests at and above the vending machines for gear to sell. (Designer’s Cut DLC is required for the Toboggan, lest you be at a movement speed disadvantage. Snowdrifts are not allowed, because the snowball itself will send Djira into the air in an unpredictable manner.) At the staging area above the arena, the teams decide which goal to defend: red plants or blue statues. All players drop down into the arena at once, and play begins immediately. Turn on the “Minimap Legendaries” option under Options > Gameplay. When a Djira is scored and dies outside the arena, it spawns a single legendary. The amount of legendaries on the minimap outside each goal counts as the scoreboard. The first team to score 5 Djira on their opponents wins. Own-goals count against you. The “scoreboard” settles all disputes. Djira can get stuck in walls and on various platforms outside the arena. Play continues until there are zero Djira in the arena and in play. If that occurs, take note of the current score, travel out to Sanctuary and back to Minos Prime and resume the game at the previous score with fresh Djira.

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.