Inferno Amara

SKILL TREE

SKILL TREE NOTES

Absolutely every skill point is synergistic; there are no wasted points. Burn Both Ends is specced, so sometimes it's ok to stand there and take damage - Sustainment will keep you alive.

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ACTION SKILL

Ties That Bind.

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ACTION SKILL ELEMENT

Always cryo, except against Wotan, where corrosive can be used.

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GUN

Hellfire, with Killstack anointment. I recommend going for max damage or max dot damage Hellfires. Get as low of a mag size as possible, because mag size passives are preferred on your artifact to make up for this.

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FFYL GUN

Hellfire, with Consecutive Hits anointment. You lose Killstack stacks when you enter FFYL, and even though this build makes the Hellfire do great things, it's still a relatively weak gun, and you need some form of gun damage to get you out of FFYL. Hence, Consec Hits. Also, during an extended boss encounter with no adds (which can happen during Valks), Killstack may fall off. At that point, switch to this Hellfire.

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EXTRA FFYL GUN

If you want to break the rules a little bit and give yourself a better gun for FFYL, a Free Radical or Plasma Coil with Consec Hits would work well.

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EXTRA UTILITY GUN

If you want to break the rules a little bit less, or perhaps in a different way, a Guardian Angel would be interesting. You can use it with a Phaseflare action skill to make bossing easier, and you can use it in FFYL if there are mobs around by shooting it at one enemy and letting Indiscriminate kill another. Indiscriminate will double-dip the Guardian Angel's bonus damage.

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CLASS MOD

Phasezerker. Skill points don't matter much. What's really important are the passives. This, and also with the artifact, are where optimization really goes a long way toward raising a poor gun. Top three passives are SMG Damage, Splash Damage, and Dahl Weapon Critical Damage. Each of those is in a different category of the damage formula, as is the weapon damage provided by the Phasezerker itself. Action Skill Cooldown Rate is also not a bad passive.

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SHIELD

Re-Volter, with Action Skill Start anointment. The fire rate is very nice, and the shock damage helps complement your cryo and incendiary damage.

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ARTIFACT

Dahl Company Man, with damage, crit damage, and mag size top passives. Recommended passives for the bottom: mag size, action skill cooldown rate, area of effect damage, cryo damage. Here is another example of how much optimization can help. There's a lot of damage in a lot of different categories here. Mag size passives are highly preferred because you don't want to spend precious time reloading while an enemy is frozen.

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Backup artifact, until you get a good Company Man, would be a Pearl of Ineffable Knowledge with a mag size passive.

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GRENADE

Mesmer or It's Piss, with ASE 50% bonus cryo damage anointment. You can also have other ASEs, such as corrosive vs Wotan. But cryo will be the mainstay.

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GAMEPLAY LOOP

Grasp enemies and shoot them in the face. Shoot them in the face between grasps as well. If you have the passive crit damage boosts mentioned above on your class mod and artifact, you'll soon find out just how much harder it hits when you crit. When an enemy freezes, you deal about 10x damage to them.

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This is probably the only build on this site where Fakegrasping is actually beneficial, because it builds Do Harm and Violent Tapestry stacks. See the "Notes - Hellfire Advantages" section below to learn why. And Fakegrasping won't bug out and lose your second activation from Avatar, because this build is not specced to Avatar. If Fakegrasping is not your style (it's not mine, really), then just make sure you're using your action skill as often as possible.

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NOTES - HELLFIRE ADVANTAGES

So how does Amara make the Hellfire kill True Guardian Takedown enemies, even outside of Ties That Bind? By dealing damage to them via Unweave The Rainbow. Unweave The Rainbow is a form of action skill damage, and it gets mayhem scaling and is increased by Do Harm stacks. UTR requires two things: splash or melee damage, and for the enemy to be frozen.

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The Hellfire is actually a splash gun. But why does this build go this route for damage when the gun is fire-locked? Because the Hellfire has a very high cryo efficiency. A gun's dot damage listed on the card divided by its projectile damage listed on the card is its cryo efficiency. You can confirm this if you have two versions of a gun, one cryo and one of a different element. The Hellfire has an extremely high listed dot damage relative to its projectile damage. The one in this save file lists 96,461 dmg/second with a projectile damage of 7,656. If this gun were cryo, that would be over 1,200% cryo efficiency!

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And Amara can make any gun cryo, through Infusion. It's only 40% of the damage at 5/5 points, but that still makes for an effective cryo efficiency of about 500%. The Hellfire freezes very fast for as little damage as it does. And when the freezing occurs, Unweave The Rainbow kicks in to finish the enemy off.

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This is why Fakegrasping, mentioned in the "Gameplay Loop" section above, actually helps this build. More stacks of Violent Tapestry means greater cryo efficiency and faster freezing. More stacks of Do Harm means stronger Unweave The Rainbow damage. I do not suggest Fakegrasping in any other build, because it is usually more harmful than helpful, but in this build it happens to help.

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NOTES - BOSSING

The Hellfire is not a bossing gun, even with this build, because bosses cannot be frozen (Wotan being the exception, but good luck doing that with this gun). Instead, link the boss to a mob with Ties That Bind and shoot the mob to transfer more damage to the boss. Or swap to the Guardian Angel and use a Phaseflare variant such as Shooting Star.

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