[PS3] I need advice on good character builds

Borderlands 2 Gameplay Discussion (Spoilers!)
#1

It’s been a very long time since I last played Borderlands 2. I think it’s been about 3 years since I last played. I got caught up in getting my huge backlog of PS3 games finally played and finished. Now I’m finally getting back in to Borderlands 2, and I’ve finally purchased and downloaded all of the DLC. (Previously I was playing the game without any of the DLC.)

Now that I have all of the DLC I plan on doing playthroughs with all of the characters and getting them all to max level. (I have a lot of free time on my hands for the next few months.) So I was hoping the fine people of these forums would be kind enough to give me advice on some character builds. In particular what are the top builds (the top three or so) for each character? Also what is the Mechromancer character like? I’m thinking of starting with her but I’m not sure.

Thanks in advance.

#2

There are no top 3 builds.
May I suggest taking a look at the sections for the characters and seeing what looks fun for you.

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#3

Piemanlee pretty much covered it. Only thing I’d add is that Gaige is kind of slow out the gate, but really ramps up as you get her further along. You don’t really need the damage from Anarchy early on, but you may want to take it sooner rather than later so you can get used to not reloading.

#4

Not sure I agree with this, having 3 Gaiges everywhere from level 15 to 72. Thing is, there are so many ways to start each character off it can sometimes be hard deciding what to pick for your first 5-10 skill points. As @Piemanlee said, they’re all good.

#5

I think it depends on the quality of weapons. Its tough to get replacements for good stack building weapons as you level with anarchy. There’s always Jakobs, but you have to try to find ones that won’t deplete your limited early level ammo pool, so you’re stuck with coach guns and below. Maliwans pistols take too much ammo, and I can’t really think of any other good stack builders. Then again, its been a year or two since I’ve leveled a Gaige.

#6

An endgame build isn’t necessarily what’s best for you while you’re leveling up a character. Do yourself a favor, and try out different builds, so you’ll get a feel for what each skill adds to your character, and if it has synergy with another skill. It’s also depending on which COM’s and other gear you get.

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#7

Stacking Anarchy is fast with all guns, as kills stack it. Especially in the early game, where you wont have trouble to kill fast.
Just carry at least one of every kind of weapon: one pistol, one shotgun, one assault rifle, one sniper rifle and etc.
Know how to approach an area and you are never going to be out of ammo.

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#8

It all depends on how you want to play the game. In normal just about any skill tree for any character will get you thru to the end. Once you start TVHM gear becomes more important as does selecting skills that compliment the way you want to play- not every melee Zero player plays him the same way, after all…

#9

Have the assault rifles been fixed after all the patching? The last time I played this game assault rifles were really REALLY bad. No joke, I actually found it easier to kill things with the pistols than with the assault rifles. Though that was many many patches ago. I just remember in my last experience with this game assault rifles/combat rifles were garbage and not worth keeping or using at all.

Also, the last time I played the game it was generally a good idea to keep one weapon of each damage type with you at all times. Is this still a good idea in the current version of the game? I see the latest patch is 1.15 if I’m not mistaken. If I recall correctly the last time I played the game it was on version 1.09, give or take a patch or two. So it seems there are plenty of changes I’m going to have to get used to.

Another thing, this is the first time I have any of the DLC. Should I wait and complete the main game before I do the DLC or can I do the DLC whenever I want to? IIRC with Borderlands 1 you had to be a certain level before doing the DLC otherwise you got completely pwned by the enemies.

#10

Jakobs and Torgue ones are amazing. Dahl are pretty accurate so the burst is going to fully hit the crit spot if the enemies dont move.

Now, Vladof and Bandit are basically going to waste your ammo.

About elemental guns, I usually keep one corrosive for bot areas. The rest I use what is good, but while in normal, non-elemental and explosive are the best to kill fast. Element matching is pretty good in UVHM, but it wont matter this much in normal and True.

And the DLC are scaled to lv 20 IIRC. I usually finish the main game in normal and start the DLCs in TVHM, always works.

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#11

In normal Capt Scarlett and Mr Torgue have a recommended starting level of 15 and max at 30 IIRC while Sir Hammerlock and Tiny Tina have a recommended starting level of 30 and max out the gear at level 35. If you’re expecting even close to real world physics with AR forget it but for a loot and shoot game I’d say some of the unique ones are some of the best, specifically the Hail and Kitten. Some folks do swear by the Hammer Buster which is a legendary AR while the Bekah is the one that acts most like a real world AR (except for the whole bullet splitting thing…) and is considered one of the best weapons to have for almost any character.

#12

I’m not gonna say that assault rifles suck, coz then @Derch will probably tell me that I suck.

AR’s will definetly do the job! No question about it. They will do the job just like any other gun in BL2. If you shoot enemies a lot, they die. The thing is that, with a few exceptions, all other guns in BL 2 are better than AR’s. Saying that they suck because they’re useless wouldn’t be true, but when you compare them with the rest of the guns… Yeah, they suck!

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#13

This game is awesome, but I do wish that they had made use of certain systems that you find in some other games. Specifically the online loot system from Diablo III and Resident Evil 6. In both those games online players don’t share loot. So people can’t steal each others stuff. Even when playing with friends I find that I constantly have no ammo because my friend(s) always take everything. There is a very strange bug of sorts in this game when you are playing multiplayer where even if your ammo is full you can still pick up that ammo and then it basically goes to waste and it makes it so that someone else that might have needed the ammo can’t get it any more. The loot system really sucks in multiplayer. I was playing with a friend and when we killed Captain Flint he dropped one blue item and one orange item. So now me and my friend end up fighting over who gets the orange item. I prefer the loot system in Diablo III, where the game drops a legendary item for each player in the game if you kill a boss that happens to drop legendary items. In Borderlands 2 it’s way too easy for one player to charge in and grab all the good items and run before anyone else has a chance to get the good loot. It kind of makes you hate playing this game with others.

A lot of multiplayer issues could be solved in Borderlands 2 if they were to incorporate the Diablo III and/or Resident Evil 6 loot systems.

Another thing I wish this game had was enemies that always scale to the player’s current level. Like the system they have in the current version of Diablo III. It kind of sucks that you can basically over-level in this game without even trying to and then you’re way too high a level for the part of the game you are playing. I like to explore everything in these types of games, but doing that in Borderlands 2 causes you to over-level and you eventually end up being 5+ levels above the rest of the game everywhere you go.

I don’t see why they can’t add these things with another patch. It’s still a great game, but there are some things they could have done better.

#14

Probably not at all easy, and certainly not something that could be done with a patch this late after launch. The loot and multiplayer systems are deeply embedded in the game; changing mechanics from pool to instanced would require a major re-working of a lot of things, and change memory management to boot. It’s the sort of thing you need to decide about before you start actual coding. There’s a downside to instanced loot in a multiplayer environment, and GBX obviously preferred to go pool over instanced as part of their design decision. It will be interesting to see how this is addressed in Battleborn, but this is one thing I’m not expecting to change moving ahead to BL3.

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#15

Like I said I still love this game. Even if there are a few things that I wish they had done differently. Anyway, I’ve gotten off topic. So to get back on topic:

I completely understand that whenever I start out a new character I should not worry about builds and I should just play around with all the skills in order to see how they all are for myself. That is indeed what I am doing. However, eventually I am going to reach “endgame” with my character, and when that happens I would like to know what the more popular builds are for each class, so that when I do reach that point I can switch to something more efficient if I choose to do so. After all, I am assuming that in the very highest levels of the game not all builds are made equal. Just by quickly glancing through some of the character specific threads I’ve already seen more than a few posts about how some skills become practically useless in the highest levels of the game.

So, what are the more popular builds for each class? Or what would you guys recommend for the highest levels of the game?

#16

It depends a little but on what you want to do once you hit maximum level. Do you prefer just running through areas taking out mobs? Finishing off every last side quest? Trying to solo every raid boss in the game? Some of the differences between builds reflect these different end-game activities. I’m not sure that the most popular builds are always “the best” even then.

You’ll also find that even the most popular builds are subject to variation as individuals tweak them for their own play-style, or that unique piece of gear they just got. I’m currently running a Nurse-DPS hybrid build for Maya, an IO-centric elemental build for Gaige, and a hybrid build for Axton. The Maya and Axton builds have been tweaked so that I can do different things simply by changing class mod and relic while avoiding respeccing.

I’m not sure what I’d classify my Sal build as, or even where it came from, but it seems to the closest to “most common” i.e. copied without much thought (!) I don’t have my other characters to max level yet, but I’m going gun-melee hybrid with Zer0 and Kreig (although those end up as very different play-styles.)

Don’t know if that helps or not: just be on the alert whether a build is highly gear-specific, or tuned more towards raid bosses than general mobbing.

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#17

OK, cool. So, unless I’m the worst player in the universe, (hopefully I’m not), I should be able to get through the game by simply just using the skills I like the most as well as some common sense and combine skills together that work well together?

Sorry for the constant questions about “best builds”. It’s just that I’m so used to Diablo III, where if you want to play at the highest level there is pretty much only 1 build for each class that allows you to do that. Unless I’m mistaken it seems Borderlands 2 is not like that. Which is a good thing. The fact that Diablo III only has 1 viable build for each class in the highest levels of the game just shows how bad the devs screwed up the development of that game.

So, essentially what you are saying is that in Borderlands 2 I can pretty much come up with my own build and still be successful?

#18

Definitely not like that!

In normal mode, pretty much. A bit less so in true mode (second play-through) and much less so in ultimate (third play-through/end-game). However, you should have a better idea of what you do and don’t like by the end of normal mode, and a greater awareness of which things work better together by the end of true mode. That way, you should be in a better place to make intelligent builds for ultimate and end-game.

Most importantly, remember to have fun!

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#19

The gear synergies are not nearly as intricate in BL2 as in Diablo, and all of the massively inflated damage multipliers that exist in sets in Diablo are in the skills in BL2. So as long as you have good gear for your character and avoid certain questionable skills, you should do fine.

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