Red Tree

This guide will help you understand the quirks and uses of each of Amara's skills, so that perhaps you can do some build crafting of your own. In this section, we cover the red (Fist of the Elements) tree.

ANIMA

A skill with many uses. On builds that utilize damage over time (dots), this skill is invaluable. It's what makes Amara the strongest character with the Fish Slap grenade and Unleash The Dragon artifact. It has two often overlooked properties in that it further boosts status damage of your action skill element, and when attuned to shock it gives shock status damage an even longer duration increase.

Even on gun builds that don't focus on damage over time, but still use guns with high damage over time (Free Radical, Kickcharger, Plasma Coil), investing into Anima means dots will help finish off enemies. And if you have radiation damage in your build, stronger radsplosions. A common class mod for gun builds, the Phasezerker, can roll extra points into Anima.

When self dotting for various buffs, whether it's with the Spiritual Driver class mod or directly shooting your foot, Anima will keep that dot on you longer.

Unfortunately, Anima breaks in all respects when your action skill element is set to cryo. It does not buff anything at all in this situation, as if you never specced it.

STEADY HANDS

Often taken for granted, I would recommend 3 points into this skill on nearly every build that shoots a gun.

INFUSION

Another skill with many uses. The most basic use is to fully invest in it so that you can diversify the elements of an element-locked gun (such as the Free Radical), non-elemental gun, or to tackle content where enemies have multiple HP bar types. For example, against creatures in the Guardian Takedown, which are armor and flesh, it can be used to infuse a corrosive gun with fire, or the other way around.

Whatever percentage that you have Infusion convert, that percentage of your gun's damage becomes a bonus element, and bonus elements do not get increased by splash damage. So if you're using a splash gun and have any increased splash damage, that splash damage bonus is effectively reduced by the same percentage you have invested into Infusion. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because using Infusion for a better elemental matchup can result in more damage than what you've lost from your splash bonuses.

The second use for Infusion is to put one point into it to create another damage instance for the Face Puncher, which, when specced into Body & Mind, doubles the amount of Body & Mind novas that get procced. And Body & Mind is a very strong skill when invested into.

A third use for Infusion is another one point wonder when shooting your feet to dot yourself, which you may do for various reasons. For example, you want to proc Elemental Projector with a low level Sellout, but you want shock damage, and the Sellout only has fire and corrosive. Attuning yourself to shock and having 1 point into Infusion means a portion of those Sellout projectiles are shock and will shock dot you.

You can also use Infusion to diversify the Sellout's dot on yourself, so that you get multiple dots and therefore multiple stacks when using the Golden Rule class mod. E.g., you're attacking with fire phasecasts, so you set the Sellout to corrosive and Infuse it with fire so that you get fire and corrosive dots when you shoot your foot, increasing the effectiveness of the Golden Rule.

Infusion can also be used to change your gun's elemental output when you don't want to swap weapons, such as having a buffed Lucky 7 or Sleeping Giant or Anarchy. You can, for example, have a corrosive Lucky 7 that you Infuse with fire while fighting the creatures in the Guardian Takedown, and then you switch your action skill element over to shock when you move onto the Guardians. And then corrosive when you drop down to fight Anathema, and so on.

Lastly, investment into Infusion can be useful for true melee builds. It's common to get knocked backwards, especially in the Guardian Takedown, and not be able to melee for lifesteal for a few seconds. Shooting an element-infused Psycho Stabber can allow for enough life steal to regain healthgate before closing the distance again.

TEMPEST

Very important elemental damage increase. Very hard to pass up. A requirement for nearly every build.

ILLUMINATED FIST

Extremely important for true melee builds, as it allows your punch to also be increased by elemental damage boosts and to Sustain you. Outside of that, it's just a flat 75% melee damage to all forms of melee damage. It can also be specced so that, even on non-melee builds, when you punch an enemy to deliver Groundbreaker you also get healed by Sustainment.

Beware that attuning your punch to an element will make you unable to Sustain off of or deliver Groundbreaker to enemies that are immune to that element. This comes up most often in the Maliwan Takedown. (Use ground slam as an alternate method of Groundbreaker.)

WILDFIRE

Mostly a low value utility skill that can be specced to help spread around status effects, which, when also specced into Violent Tapestry, can help gain you Rush stacks. On a more dot-focused build, whether it's Unleash The Dragon or gun dots, this skill becomes much more valuable. It also has value on cryo-focused builds, because it can spread the frozen status effect from one enemy to another. It doesn't have the greatest range, though.

DREAD

Very useful skill on grasp gun builds, mostly for the mag refill upon killing a grasped enemy. It does not matter how the grasped enemy dies, you will get the mag refill. This aspect is very useful for managing the ammo in your mag on, for example, a Lucky 7 build. It is also a generally good DPS increase, because you can skip a reload.

One odd situation where it is detrimental is if you're running Terror Ammo Regen and trying to sustain a Sand Hawk in semi-auto mode for a long activity, as Barbie Dahl can do. Dread pulls from reserves, so even with ammo regen, it will eventually run your sniper ammo stock dry.

Other than that, it's a good skill. The gun damage aspect of it will also stack with each newly grasped enemy when using Eternal Fist.

INDISCRIMINATE

Very, very powerful skill, and most gun builds take it. Turns any gun into a multi-target gun, at least the guns that it works with (which is most of them). Also extremely useful for getting up from FFYL. The card says damage of ricochets is reduced, but on Mayhem 10 or 11, it also gets about a 5.5x mayhem multiplier, making your ricochets stronger than your original shot.

DEEP WELL

1 point wonder for a slightly significant mag size boost. No reason not to take it on a gun build that goes this far down the tree.

CATHARSIS

Mostly bad for a few reasons: it has an unnecessary cooldown, it deals self damage, and it can be tough to get all of the investment needed for it to be any good, which is all 5 status effects and lots of action skill damage investment. The only case I've found for it is on a grenade build, as it helps increase area clear. You avoid the self-damage of it because you also want to be out of range of your own grenades, and going down blue tree to get Laid Bare and Avatar gives you plenty of points to dump into action skill damage. Because it's not like there's much else in the blue tree that benefits grenades.

SUSTAINMENT

Very valuable life steal skill. Not as necessary as most people believe, because of the power of Samsara and Clarity for healing. But still highly recommended, and required on almost all true melee builds on this site.

CONFLUX

Useful only as a way to get 1 or 2 more status effects for greater debuff from the Harmageddon Guardian Rank perk.

FORCEFUL EXPRESSION

Decent value increase for both guns and grenades. It can be hard to justify the extra points required to get here on some builds, though.