Golden Swan

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.

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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.

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ACTION SKILL ELEMENT

Fire, shock, or corrosive depending on the content you are facing. Do not choose cryo.

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PUNCHING GUN

Psycho Stabber with Urad anointment. Pretty straightforward. Urad will also get added to Groundbreaker damage.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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