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.

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.

Giving love to the unloved, this true melee focused-build uses Fist Over Matter and the Dragon class mod. Antimatter Swan SYNOPSIS Giving love to the unloved, this true melee focused-build uses Fist Over Matter and the Dragon class mod. INTRO In my quest to find a use for the Fist Over Matter action skill, I got lucky and also ended up with true melee and the Dragon class mod. It doesn't get much further off-meta than that. This isn't the most powerful or efficient true melee build, but it is well-synergised, and it will steadily carry you through your content. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES This is heavily over-specced into purple tree, but it still picks up two true melee essentials: Sustainment and Find Your Center. It gets a third important skill from the class mod. ACTION SKILL Fist Over Matter. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Any of the four, although there's some really nice cryo synergies in purple tree, so it's recommend to try staying on cryo. If you're fighting vs Guardians, for example, you can stay on cryo because you get shock damage from Re-Volter and Static Charge, and even Shock Stone if you're so inclined. PUNCHING GUN 1 Guardian Angel, with Terror Cryo anointment. This gun is necessary in order to get the most out of Fist Over Matter. You can punch with it while FOM is active, letting FOM kill all enemies in the vicinity while also giving you great Groundbreaker damage for your punches. PUNCHING GUN 2 Psycho Stabber, with Terror Cryo anointment. Swap to this when FOM is on cooldown. BACKUP GUN Face Puncher, with Terror Cryo anointment. Use this to take out flying enemies or whatever else may be annoying you from a distance. FFYL GUN A separate FFYL gun may not be necessary when you have the Face Puncher, but you have an extra weapon slot, so might as well. A Free Radical with Consecutive Hits anointment works well. CLASS MOD Dragon, with at least one required point into Remnant. Remnant is going to greatly help you in nearly all situations. Extra points into Do Harm are also highly recommended, as you have a lot of things that benefit from action skill damage: Remnant, Fist Over Matter, Unweave The Rainbow, Body & Mind, Free The Soul. Recommended passives: melee damage, action skill damage, action skill cooldown rate, splash damage, splash damage radius. The special effect of the Dragon class mod, where your augment is procced upon a melee kill, occurs only once with this build. Yes, unfortunately, the Dragon only procs Expedite on the first melee kill, not any subsequent melee kills. Still, it's basically a free 30% cooldown, and you'll get plenty more Expedite procs from all of your action skill damage skills. SHIELD Re-Volter, with ASE Apply Terror anointment. It will proc naturally, no need for the Action Skill Start anointment. After it breaks, killing an enemy will let it begin charging again via Shield Reboot, and taking another instance of damage will likely break it again. This loop keeps the Re-Volter effect going, without losing an anointment slot. ARTIFACT Elemental Stone Static Charge. Match the element prefix to the content you are facing. Recommended passives: melee damage, area of effect damage in the 2nd or 3rd slot, action skill cooldown rate, move speed, elemental damage. GRENADE It's Piss, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. The extra damage you get from the debuff really helps Fist Over Matter, and even your punches for that... ...matter. Utility grenades are also an option, such as the Hyperion Quasar (non sticky) or Mesmer. You can put on a Fish Slap if you're a degenerate :) GAMEPLAY LOOP Select an action skill element and Elemental Stone suited for your content. First enemy you encounter, grasp them with Fist Over Matter and find something else to punch. The further away you are from Fist Over Matter, when holding the Guardian Angel, the more damage it will deal to the grasped enemy and any others near it. Keep an eye on your action skill active yellow icon, and when FOM is over, swap over to your Psycho Stabber and continue punching. When FOM is done cooling down, repeat the above. It's actually pretty straightforward. While FOM is active, it will grant you healing through Sustainment, making you pretty hard to kill. It will also spawn Remnant orbs from the enemies it kills, creating further destruction and giving you tons of Groundbreaker damage. NOTES - HEMOVOROUS Without recommending Fish Slap or Phaseflare, especially on a true melee build, you might wonder how a build like this can make it through a fight like Hemovorous. But trust in the chaos that Fist Over Matter and Remnant create. Hold the Guardian Angel, grasp at Hemo/Vermi, and run around shooting the Guardian Angel at them for lifesteal while you wait for Remnant to do something. Once you hear or see some Remnant action, slam or Face Puncher Hemo/Vermi to deliver all of that Groundbreaker. This is basically how it goes for all boss fights: wait for Remnant and capitalize on it. This is a slow and steady and patient build anyway, so it fits the playstyle. NOTES - MAYHEM 10/11 For nearly all true melee builds, it's recommended to play on Mayhem 10 for the Speed Demon modifier. You can roll Healy Avenger, Drone Ranger, and Not The Face for your other modifiers and have basically zero downsides.

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. 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. 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. NOTES - GUARDIAN TAKEDOWN The Guardian Takedown is where I would recommend straying a bit from the normal mobbing setup with dots. For creatures, that setup can remain the same, but for Guardians, I recommend a shock Lightspeed (with ASE 50% corrosive) and shock as your action skill element. Even still, the crystal phases can get a bit hectic. The solution is rather simple: shoot your Guardian Angel. Indiscriminate and Ties That Bind double dip the Guardian Angel bonus damage, so shooting it when there's lots of enemies around will both help you clear them out and give you lots of Groundbreaker damage.

A very strong true melee-focused build that can blitz through any content, if you know what you're doing. Ruby Swan SYNOPSIS A very strong true melee-focused build that can blitz through any content, if you know what you're doing. INTRO Ruby Swan is one of my three crown jewels of true melee builds, along with Sapphire Swan and Emerald Swan. Ruby Swan is designated as such because it uses a red tree action skill, Ties That Bind. But it's not as simple as that. This build probably goes the deepest into the theory crafting rabbit hole, pulls out some tricks I KNOW you don't know, and comes back with tons of power and highlight reel potential. It can even use some guns quite effectively, allowing for a wild run & gun & punch experience. Highly, highly recommended. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES If you want to focus more on guns, move three points from Clarity to Personal Space. Two of the traditionally only gun-focused skills, Indiscriminate and Transcend, actually come into play while punching. Find out why in the "Notes" sections at the end. Burn Both Ends will be self-stacked via our class mod and a bonus element. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever element you want the element of your punch to be, which should be suited to the content you're facing. Except Cryo. This build uses the Spiritual Driver class mod, so selecting cryo will make you slow yourself. PUNCHING GUN 1 The Psycho Stabber, with a Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. The general purpose puncher; use this against beefy isolated targets or if you feel patient enough to punch a boss rather than taking the easy way out and throwing a fish. PUNCHING GUN 2 Unforgiven, with a Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment, preferably with high crit damage on the card and a melee attachment. See "Notes - Unforgiven" below. PUNCHING GUN 3 Ionic Disruptor, with a Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. See "Notes - Ionic Disruptor" below. PUNCHING GUN 4 Guardian Angel, with a Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. See "Notes - Guardian Angel" below. SHOOTING GUNS While this build can use guns in conjunction with punching, you need to stick with strong guns: Hellwalker, Beacon, Free Radical, Kickcharger. All with the same Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. BACKUP GUN Face Puncher, preferably with x14 pellets, with the Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. This is to help take down bosses and flying enemies and anything that annoys you from a distance. CLASS MOD Spiritual Driver, with 3 points into Mindfulness for the movement speed that every true melee build requires. Recommended passives: melee damage, action skill damage, action skill cooldown rate, splash damage, splash damage radius. 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 Brawler Ward with 300% melee damage, preferably low level but not required, with the ASE Apply Terror anointment. If this shield isn't broken immediately by the Driver dot, enemies will take care of it for you. ARTIFACT Elemental Projector Static Charge. The Driver plus Elemental Projector will give you heaps of elemental damage, greatly helping the strength of your punches. The most important passive is Area of Effect in the 2nd or 3rd slot, which will also increase area damage radius. Other recommended passives: melee damage, action skill cooldown rate, movement speed, elemental damage. GRENADE Fish Slap with an ASE 50% bonus element. Match your Fish Slap element and the bonus element to the content you're facing. This will require carrying multiple Fish Slaps. Throw this grenade for easy bossing, or to get rid of pesky mobs from a distance, or to deal with immune heavies in the Maliwan Takedown without switching your action skill element. GAMEPLAY LOOP Assuming you're just holding the Psychostabber, the thought process is very simple: grasp enemy, punch enemy. You have 234% increased elemental damage from your gear and skill tree. The Static Charge chains will double dip that damage, because they're based on the strength of your melee hit and then get their own damage formula, including elemental damage. A Static Charge chain was used to one-tap Seer in the gameplay video above. Not only will the Static Charge kill nearby mobs for you, it will also give you lots of Groundbreaker for your next punch while doing so. Your ASE 50% bonus element on your Fish Slap will get added on top of your Groundbreaker damage. This build is extremely efficient when mobbing, even in True Guardian Takedown. If you can't get ahold of a flying enemy with Ties That Bind, shoot 'em down with the Face Puncher. Hold the Psycho Stabber or Guardian Angel and throw Fish for bosses. If you're shooting guns, make sure your gun element matches your action skill element. This means no cryo or radiation guns. NOTES - UNFORGIVEN This is where the rabbit hole begins. Buckle up. You can punch with the Unforgiven for its ridiculous crit multiplier. "Melee can't crit in this game, though", you say. While this is true, melee-adjacent things can. In the "Gameplay Loop" section above, I talked about the strength of Static Charge chains. These chains can also crit and, when they do, they'll be buffed by the Unforgiven and Transcend in the blue skill tree. Static Charge chains basically aim for center-of-mass, so they rarely crit against humanoid enemies. However, the creatures in the Guardian Takedown have mostly forward-facing crit areas, and the Static Charge chains will crit them quite often. In the gameplay video above, you'll hear lots of Hollowpoint explosions when punching those creatures, because the Static Charge is killing them with crits. Let's talk about that: Hollowpoints while meleeing. In case it hasn't dawned on you, this is effectively a way to punch for billions of damage. Not only will a Hollowpoint clear out enemies around the kill (hence why the Area of Effect passive is recommended on the Static Charge), but they will give you enormous Groundbreaker damage going into your next punch. Your Groundbreaker damage will be above damage cap. And that's not all... Going further into the rabbit hole, an ASE 50% bonus element's damage source is "bullet". What does that mean? Well, if you melee with, for example, a Re-Volter or Urad bonus element, those bonus elements will get mayhem scaling along with the melee attack. Same goes with action skills: your Phasecast, for example, gets 200% bonus shock damage from Re-Volter because the bonus element gets the same action skill mayhem scaling. This is because the damage source of those bonus elements (along with the Terror Cryo bonus element) matches whatever attack they go along with. This is not the case for ASE 50% bonus elements on grenades and shields. Their damage source is always "bullet". If you attach one of these bonus elements to your melee or action skill, it'll be 16x or 31x weaker, respectively. There is no mayhem scaling for bullets. However, Groundbreaker, which can be accumulated through mayhem scaled attacks, is not itself mayhem scaled. Therefore, ASE 50% bonus elements properly add their 50% damage to Groundbreaker. Why does this matter? Because bullets can crit. If you have an ASE 50% bonus element active and you punch a crit spot, the bonus element will crit. Let's say you have, for example, 10 million Groundbreaker damage build up. This is very easy to do between Ties That Bind and Static Charge and even your guns if you're shooting things. An ASE 50% bonus element adds 5 million damage to that Groundbreaker. Now imagine, with that damage stored, you punched a crit spot while holding an Unforgiven and with Transcend procced. That 5 million turns into 67 million . We're already in crazy territory here, but now you need to realize that this enormous ASE 50% critting is likely going to kill the enemy, proccing Hollowpoint directly on the enemy you're punching. If there were any other mobs in range, they're gone now, and you have billions of Groundbreaker damage stored for your next punch. Yeah. So the Unforgiven is not only for your Static Charge chains, but also for your punches directly. This is why, vs the creatures in the gameplay video, you see me grasp an enemy but punch a linked enemy on the ground, instead of the grasped enemy. It's much easier to hit that crit spot when the enemy is on the ground facing you. NOTES - IONIC DISRUPTOR But wait, there's more! There's a special effect of the Ionic Disruptor where if you melee an enemy with it, that enemy will have a shock dot applied to them, and while it's applied the Disruptor's bullets deal more damage to that enemy. As you might guess, there's more going on under the hood here. Firstly, if you're holding the disruptor, it converts your melee damage to shock damage, even if you have Illuminated Fist and your action skill element set to something else. Even if you throw a corrosive Fish Slap, it will get converted to shock damage on impact while holding the Disruptor. (This is sort of a way to get around immune Heavies in the Maliwan Takedown - if you're punching with fire and come up against a fire immune heavy, you can swap to the disruptor and your punch will now be shock without changing your action skill element.) Secondly, the shock dot that gets applied by a Disruptor melee is not a normal dot. It is also a bullet. Yes, that's right, you're not going insane; every dot tick is a bullet instance. And funnily enough, it does bullet things like heal you through Sustainment and travel through Ties That Bind links. Every dot tick does those things. It's why you can storm the Maliwan Takedown bridge while true-meleeing with the disruptor: you apply dots and constantly heal from them as you move around. It's why in the gameplay video you see me punch an enemy with it, Phasegrasp one of them, and then see every enemy linked by Ties just melt. It's crazy. This is the recommended weapon to hold against Guardians in the Guardian Takedown. But you can do it pretty much anywhere. Just make sure your action skill element is also set to shock, so your Driver self-dot, and therefore Elemental Projector, are there to boost your punch. NOTES - GUARDIAN ANGEL Now it's time to have some fun. The Guardian Angel is a great gun for this build. First, it will increase the damage of your Static Charge chains, making them more likely to kill enemies and give you more Groundbreaker damage for your next punch. Second, it can be shot at enemies to build up lots of Groundbreaker damage that way. This gun's projectiles double dip Indiscriminate, so when you shoot an enemy and those bullets ricochet around, you're going to get Groundbreaker damage for your next punch. Those ricocheted bullets will also do plenty of killing all by themselves, especially with a good amount of damage from Spiritual Driver. It's fun to shoot as you're running and approaching enemies; if the bullets themselves didn't kill anything, your punch certainly will. Bonus points for when this high-projectile-count shotgun launches enemies away. Third, it can come with both a 60% bonus melee damage attachment and extra crit damage bonuses. NOTES - GUARDIAN RANK Disable Shield Reboot and Emergency Response, so that your Ward remains depleted as long as possible. NOTES - MAYHEM 10/11 You must play on Mayhem 11 with this build, even though I usually recommend Mayhem 10 and the Speed Demon modifier for true melee builds. The problem with Mayhem 10 on this build is that the only very hard modifier that doesn't completely kill the build is Not The Face, and that modifier ruins our critical hit interactions. You get enough movement speed with the Driver and Mindfulness anyway.

The try-hard grenade build. Boomfist SYNOPSIS The try-hard grenade build. INTRO Want to see the Fastball hit for hundreds of millions of damage? Want to make the Lightspeed seem like it's double dipping as it chews through raid boss HP bars? Want to be a little try-hard about making grenades really strong? This is the build for you. Unlike the other grenade build on this site, Phase Yeet , this build is very active. Also unlike that build, this one is rather easy to understand. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Over-specced into blue, nothing in green. Don't worry, Blight Tiger is not necessary. Max Violent Tapestry for the occasional freeze via Terror Cryo. ACTION SKILL Fist Over Matter. Grenades go *boom*, Fist Over Matter goes.... *fist*? But also *boom*. Whatever, don't think too hard about it. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Either fire or shock. The actual element you need to worry about is that of your grenade, which will be either fire, shock, or corrosive. If you can match your action skill element to your grenade (i.e., fire or shock), then great. If your grenade is corrosive, then your action skill element should be whatever is second best for the content you're up against. Fire is almost always gonna be second best, the exception being when you're fighting Guardians. Action skill augment is either Expedite or Allure. The former for more Fist Over Matter activations, the latter for more aggro-control / defense. Dealer's choice. MAIN GUN Guardian Angel, with Terror Cryo anointment. SWAP GUN 1 Face Puncher, with Melee Apply Terror anointment. You'll be regularly swapping to this to keep terror stacks up (and sometimes deliver Groundbreaker). SWAP GUN 2 Low level Sellout. Anointment not necessary. You will also be regularly swapping to this to keep yourself dotted, which activates Elemental Projector, Burn Both Ends, and the Golden Rule class mod. Protip: turn dialog volume all the way down if you do not wish to hear Amara screaming from self-dots all of the time. FFYL GUN Free Radical with Consecutive Hits or Terror Cryo anointment. CLASS MOD Golden Rule, with points into both Laid Bare and Mindfulness being very helpful. Normally, Fist Over Matter is a clunky action skill because of its duration and long cooldown. This class mod (and self-dotting with the Sellout) help shorten that cooldown substantially. Recommended passives: grenade damage, splash damage, action skill damage, mag size, splash radius, grenade radius, action skill cooldown rate, Hyperion weapon critical hit damage (for when the Lightspeed crits while you're holding the Guardian Angel). SHIELD Re-Volter, with Terror Health Regen anointment. Even though this build has Sustainment, and plenty of elemental damage instances with Fist Over Matter and your grenades, it's still a bit squishy. Burn Both Ends makes enemies *very* angry. Additionally, your Sellout self-dot will be steadily eating away at your HP and shield, because holding the Guardian Angel will boost that damage x6. I very highly recommend finding a Re-Volter with at least one shield charge augment. That way, you can keep reactivating its effect by picking up a shield charge, which allows your self-dot to immediately deplete the shield again, refreshing the Re-Volter bonus. This is as opposed to relying on the Shield Reboot Guardian Rank perk, which requires a kill. ARTIFACT Elemental Projector Victory Rush. The Elemental Projector is the more important part, here, so a purple one with good passives will be much more effective than a Vic Rush with bad passives. This artifact will boost the damage of your grenade's element, your Re-Volter bonus element, and the element of your Fist Over Matter. Recommended passives: grenade damage, area damage in 2nd or 3rd slot, fire/shock/corrosive damage, mag size, move speed, action skill cooldown rate. GRENADES The only downside to this build is that the grenade options are somewhat limited. The upside is that the options we do have are extremely strong. Any of the following grenades in fire, shock, and/or corrosive, with the Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment: Fastball, Lightspeed, double or triple sticky Hyperion Longbow, Ghast Call, Doc Hina's Miracle Bomb. A shock Hex can do low level content. GAMEPLAY LOOP Choose a grenade of the appropriate element for the content you are facing. Match your action skill element to it if you can, otherwise choose the 2nd best option between fire and shock. Set your Sellout to corrosive (it should *always* be set to corrosive on this build). Then, in any order, grasp an enemy, shoot an enemy with your Face Puncher to generate terror, and dot yourself with the Sellout. At that point you're ready to swap to the Guardian Angel and start chucking grenades. In the midst of battle, do whatever needs doing - if your self-dot is running out, swap to the Sellout and re-up it. If Fist Over Matter is cooled down, go ahead and grasp something. Shoot the Face Puncher regularly to keep up terror. You get the idea. Whenever you aren't doing those things, you should be chucking grenades with the Guardian Angel. The chaos created by your grenades, Fist Over Matter, and Remnant should start wiping everything out. Even vs raid bosses, you don't need to switch off the Lightspeed if you don't want to, despite the Ghast Call and double/triple sticky Longbow being stronger. Hemo, for example, is totally pwned by Fist Over Matter. The constant re-depleting of your shield as you pick up shield charges may be a little jarring and make you think you're being attacked when you aren't. You'll get used to it. 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.

Tips for best utilizing the powerful Groundbreaker Guardian Rank perk. Groundbreaker Groundbreaker is a kind of damage just like any other, and therefore can receive some bonuses and be buffed, beyond whatever damage you used to build it up in the first place. Groundbreaker can be delivered by melee or slam, and the only method by which it can be applied to multiple targets is via ground slamming. Even the Stinger nova, if it hits mulitple enemies, will only deliver Groundbreaker to one of them. Bonus elements apply to Groundbreaker, such as the ASE 50% bonus elements and Urad and Re-Volter. Since there is no mayhem scaling involved with Groundbreaker, all of these bonus elements properly scale. The Guardian Angel's damage bonus also applies to Groundbreaker, which is a very strong synergy when applying Groundbreaker at a distance and to multiple enemies with a ground slam. Other global bonuses apply, such as V1 from Victory Rush and the bonus from Burn Both Ends.

Tips for understanding what you're up against when playing a true melee Amara build at endgame. True Melee True melee, the actual punching of enemies, is both the most rewarding playstyle and the most frustrating playstyle, in my opinion. There are several builds on this site focused on true melee. You must be aware of its limitations, so that you can expect them and do your best to work around them. ZERO RANGE True melee has basically zero range, which presents many problems. The obvious one is flying enemies, such as Death Spheres or Seras. many of which actively avoid your approach, even if you could reach them with Find Your Center or Blitz. Even something simple as an enemy jumping on a box can mean they are unreachable, and while you are trying to get to them you get downed. It's for these reasons that grenades and guns like the Face Puncher and Blade Fury exist. KNOCKBACK There are certain enemies that will relentlessly knock you back while you are attempting to punch them. This is most common in the Guardian Takedown. Additionally, most of those enemies in the takedown are not stunned by your melee attacks. So they remain grounded and attacking you, while also knocking you away, making you have to wait to land on your feet and close the gap again. DEATH SKULLS True melee builds massively benefit from the Speed Demon modifier on Mayhem 10. However, being a true melee build removes the ability to use one of the very hard modifiers, Post Mortem. The death skulls that spawn from a killed enemy have hitboxes instantly, and a punch that kills an enemy will also send you directly into that spawning skull, downing you every time. BODY & MIND Body & Mind is a useful damage increase for punching, but its area-of-effect nature will also detonate barrels nearby, or add elemental damage to the water you are standing in, damaging you. WOTAN The most loved boss of Borderlands 3, Wotan, cannot be true melee'd, at least not without huge risk. His deterrence field healthgates you when you get close. TELEPORTATION There is a risk of teleportation when you attempt punching an enemy. This is especially risky in the Guardian Takedown. See below: There is no rhyme or reason to this teleportation, at least not that I've found. You can be teleported forward, to the side, a short distance, a medium distance, out into midair over a cliff, whatever. It's rare, but it happens. GRASPED ENEMIES Thankfully, Find Your Center allows for meleeing of grasped and elevated enemies. However, it is not made easy. To consistently punch a grasped enemy, you need to move backwards a little bit after each punch, as demonstrated below:

A Multi-tap-only Ties That Bind gun build. Leeloo Dallas Multi-tap SYNOPSIS A Multi-tap-only Ties That Bind gun build. INTRO The Multi-tap is pretty consistently underrated, so this build is simply meant to optimize and showcase it. The dang thing can get up to nearly 100K damage per bullet with 7 shots per second fire rate, with a mechanic that can make it do extra damage on reload, plus Atlas Critical Hit Damage can roll on class mods. These upsides outweigh the downsides of it being non-elemental and non-splash. Yes, the build name is a Fifth Element reference. Atlas guns sort of look like the guns they have in that movie, too. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES Typical red/blue Ties That Bind gun build. However, Dread is avoided and as many reload speed skills are specced so that you can take advantage of the Multi-taps cryo projectiles on reload. This occurs every reload when at least one enemy is tagged with the tracker grenade. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. Phasecast for bossing with the 250% Phasecast gun damage anointment. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever is suited to the content you are facing. This build has 5/5 Infusion to allow for some element matching (and lifesteal with Sustainment). GUNS Multi-tap, with Killstack anointment. An additional Multi-tap with 250% Phasecast gun damage anointment. There are perhaps other weapons that can take advantage of the fast fire rate and reload speed of this build. The Prompt Critical is not bad. You can experiment and find others. CLASS MOD Phasezerker. Skill points don't matter much. What's most important is an Atlas Critical Hit Damage passive. Other recommended passives: action skill cooldown rate, pistol damage, weapon damage, splash damage radius (for larger hollowpoints). SHIELD Re-Volter, with Action Skill Start anointment. The boost to fire rate is key for depleting the mag quickly and getting to the cryo reload. The shock bonus damage, of course, is also good. ARTIFACT Atlas Company Man, with any top rolls except Magazine Size. Recommended bottom passives: area of effect damage, reload speed, action skill cooldown rate. Avoid mag size here as well. If you set your action skill element to cryo and use a cryo bonus element on your grenade, an Ice Breaker Victory Rush would be a good substitute. GRENADE It's Piss, with various ASE 50% bonus element anointments. Change out the elements to suit your content. GAMEPLAY LOOP Grasp an enemy, shoot the tracker grenade at them, and fire away. Tracker grenade enemies between grasps, too, or don't. Using the tracker can make it hard or impossible to hit crits, but having those cryo projectiles is great for some bosses such as Anathema and the Valks. There's not much to this build. The Multi-tap melts.

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.

A very strong Spark Plug slam build. Teslamara SYNOP SIS A very strong Spark Plug slam build. INTRO The ultimate evolution of the original Amara Spark Plug build , it has grown almost too strong. It can speed through nearly any content. And it's very simple to play. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES There are some gun-related skills for your the Face Puncher, your FFYL weapon, or shooting the Guardian Angel (see "Notes - Shooting the Guardian Angel" section at the bottom). Transcend also is beneficial for the Spark Plug, because the Spark Plug can crit. Burn Both Ends can be self-stacked by the Spiritual Driver self-dot and an active bonus element (Terror Cryo). Normally, self damage does not stack Burn Both Ends, but a bonus element "ticking on top of" a self-dot will. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. Optionally base Phasegrasp for bosses for the lack of duration and shorter cooldown. You can actually use any action skill you want, just be aware that waiting too long between activations will make you lose damage. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Always corrosive. Nothing of importance changes if you change your action skill element, so corrosive is chosen for the longest dot length. The longer the dot is on you, the longer you have Mindfulness movement speed and the longer you have Burn Both Ends damage. MAIN GUN Guardian Angel, with Terror Cryo anointment. Hold this, slam, and move away for increased Spark Plug damage. FFYL GUN If you have any still going, your Spark Plugs will get you up from FFYL most of the time, but it may be wise to carry something like a Free Radical or other strong gun. Anointment possibilities: Consecutive Hits, Terror Cryo, Terror Crit. BACKUP GUN Face Puncher, preferably x14, with Terror Cryo anointment. With Body & Mind active, this gun can help you quickly take out distant flying enemies or get you up from FFYL. CLASS MOD Spiritual Driver, with as many points into Mindfulness as possible. Movement speed is quite important for slam builds. Otherwise, it's used to self-stack Burn Both Ends, in conjuction with an active bonus element. The most important passive is Splash Damage Radius, as that will increase the radius of your slams, and thus increase the area over which you can apply Groundbreaker. Other passives: action skill cooldown rate, splash damage, action skill damage. SHIELD Re-Volter, with ASE Apply Terror. Your Re-Volter will break naturally, and reproc every time you kill an enemy, via the Shield Reboot Guardian Rank perk. This frees up an anoint slot instead of using Action Skill Start. Another favorite of mine with this build is a corrosive Messy Breakup, with the same ASE Apply Terror anoint. Like the Re-Volter, this shield can re-break over and over again with Shield Reboot, giving you lots of drones. The drones are very helpful for bossing, distant enemies, and shock-immune enemies. ARTIFACT Spark Plug Static Charge. The Static Charge bonus element applies to the Spark Plug. The most important passive is Area Of Effect in the 2nd or 3rd slot, as that will also increase your splash radius and the radius of your slams. Other passives: action skill cooldown rate, shock damage, cryo damage, movement speed. GRENADE Fish Slap in various elements, with Terror Dmg/Fire Rate anointment. Use the Fish if you want to more quickly deal with immune shock heavies or dispatch a boss. GAMEPLAY LOOP Grasp immediately when it's available, then slam with reckless abandon. Move away from your Spark Plugs to increase damage from Guadian Angel. When out of combat, get into the habit of swapping away from your Guardian Angel, perhaps to something like the EMP5. The Guardian Angel increases all self-damage by 5x, so with the Driver self-dot active, you can actually down yourself while running between fights with no enemies around. NOTES - SHOOTING THE GUARDIAN ANGEL Guardian Angel with Indiscriminate makes the Indiscriminate ricochets double-dip the Guardian Angel bonus damage. The ricochets are very powerful. Randomly shooting the Guardian Angel at an enemy will sometimes clear all of the enemies around you and give you huge Groundbreaker damage for your next slam. This is a great technique for speeding up the Anthema fight: as you approach Anathema to slam a Spark Plug, shoot the Guardian Angel at his face. The bullets will ricochet and kill the mobs all around the arena, and your next slam will take a huge chunk out of Anathema. NOTES - SPECIFIC BOSSES The Spark Plug can completely meme on some bosses: Scourge, Rampager, Tyrant of Instinct (even the True version). Try and and see for yourself. Beware that during the Scourge fight, slamming a Spark Plug too close to the center of the arena can automatically chain-kill the Diadems that he spawns. Instead, place the Spark Plugs near the top of the center diamond on the side you enter the arena. The Spark Plug does not work at all against Hemo and Vermi. For that fight, equip an Elemental Projector Static Charge, and corrosive Fish Slap, and just Fish them to death. This build has a great damage formula, and this will make very quick work of the fight.

Dark Army-focused build. Nightmare Amara SYNOPSIS Dark Army-focused build. INTRO The Dark Army is one of the strongest guns on Amara, if properly set up and built around. The core interaction with this build is the fact that Dark Army drones, when summoned (i.e., when you swap to the gun), retain all of your gun damage bonuses you have at the moment of the swap and summoning. Coupled with the Spiritual Driver class mod and lots of movement speed, you can make the Dark Army drones permanently, hugely buffed. Credit to Skkra on the Borderlands 3 subreddit for informing me of this interaction. More details on setting this up are in the "Gameplay Loop" section below. GAMEPLAY VIDEO SKILL TREE SKILL TREE NOTES This is a fairly basic Driver setup, with a couple notable omissions of Dread and Deep Well. You want to be reloading as quickly and easily as possible, and those two skills delay your reloads. ACTION SKILL Ties That Bind. ACTION SKILL ELEMENT Whatever element is suited to the content you are facing, which must also match the Dark Army in your hand. Fire, shock, or corrosive. No cryo - this is a Driver build. GUNS Dark Army in fire, shock, and corrosive, with either Killstack anointment or ASE 125% Splash anointment. Look for a low mag and high damage version. This is your main gun, your FFYL gun, your bossing gun, your everything. It will carry you. CLASS MOD Spiritual Driver, preferably with as many points in Mindfulness as possible. Recommended passives: SMG damage, splash damage, action skill cooldown rate, splash damage radius, weapon damage, reload speed, fire rate, crit damage. Protip: turn dialog volume all the way down if you do not wish to hear Amara screaming from self-dots all of the time. SHIELD Re-Volter, with ASE 50% Radiation damage anointment. Preferably a low level one, but it's not necessary. The Action Skill Start anointment is not necessary because it will break naturally as soon as enemies are engaging you. And you can let them engage you; nothing matters with the Dark Army at your side. ARTIFACT #1 Elemental Projector with Otto Idol or Victory Rush. Recommended passives: SMG damage, area of effect damage in the 2nd or 3rd slot, action skill cooldown rate, reload speed, movement speed. ARTIFACT #2 Snowdrift. Rarity or passives don't even matter. This is for pre-buffing the Dark Army drones by sliding very fast. See the "Gameplay Loop" section below for details. GRENADE It's Piss with ASE 50% Cryo damage anointment. With cryo and radiation as your bonus elements, you get 2 more stacks of Harmageddon, you slow enemies so that the Dark Armies can better aim at them, and you get some very strong radsplosions. GAMEPLAY LOOP To get maximum damage out of your Dark Army drones, you must pre-buff them after every fast travel or map load. As noted in the Intro, the Dark Army drones, when summoned (swapped to), retain all of your gun damage bonuses at the time of summoning. With the Spiritual Driver equipped, you can swap to your Dark Army of choice when moving very quickly, and the drones will retain all of that Driver gun damage. Here's how you prebuff: equip the Snowdrift, swap to Phasecast, and do *not* be holding the Dark Army you want to use. Cast at the ground. This dots you via the Spiritual Driver, and because your action skill ended, the anoints on your grenade/shield allow you to get 25 stacks of Mindfulness. Make sure you have plenty of space in front of you. At 25 Mindfulness stacks, run and slide. At the beginning of your slide when you are moving fastest, swap to your Dark Army of choice. Now your drones are permanently buffed, as long as you do not swap away from them. Change the Snowdrift out for the Elemental Projector and select Ties That Bind. Make sure your action skill element matches the Dark Army you are holding, and you're ready to obliterate things. If you need to swap or re-buff your drones in combat, you can get a slightly less powerful setup: after your grasp on an enemy ends, make sure you have 25 stacks, then simply run up to top speed and swap. Note that after you've buffed your drones, you do not need to keep moving fast. You can stand still, and they will still do massive damage. The Dark Army that's actually in your hand will do much, much less damage than your drones. There's two things you need to do while in combat. 1. Fire the Dark Army in your hand and reload it. It must be a full magazine depletion, not a manual reload with some ammo still in the mag. This makes the drones deal elemental damage for a short time, which is important because... 2. Always be using your Grasp in order to keep yourself dotted and keep Elemental Projector procced. This gives the drones a massive damage boost if they're firing elemental shots that match your action skill element. NOTES - GUARDIAN TAKEDOWN There are times you need to switch Dark Army elements between facing creatures, Guardians, armor phase of bosses, and shield phase of bosses. You will also need to re-buff your drones between each Scourge teleport, because they don't teleport with you. At nearly every point you need to swap, instead of redoing the whole gear change and slide setup, you can utilize the speed boost provided by a jump pad. Simply swap as soon as you hit the pad. Of course, you can choose to do the long setup if you prefer. Between the first room and the first Guardian encounter, there's a pad. There's no pad before Anathema, but you can use your falling speed to swap to corrosive. During the fight, you can switch from corrosive to shock on the jump pads. After the fight, you can still use the jump pads to switch to fire for creatures. After creatures, there's another jump pad before the second set of crystals. You will need to manually buff and swap after teleporting into Scourge's arena and before triggering the cutscene. In the first teleport area, there's a jump pad below where you spawn. When going back to Scourge's arena, there's a jump pad to go up and smash the crystal. You'll have to manually run and swap during the second teleport.