Please rate my build! (CE Cleric)

I would love it if anyone could take the time to review my build and gear on a new Maya save? I actually haven’t even tested this yet, but in theory it looks pretty tough.

Build (Blue CE Cleric): http://bl2skills.com/siren.html#551001520055155100003550510511
ALTERNATE? (Purple CE Cleric): http://bl2skills.com/siren.html#551001300055152105113550510511

Gear:
DPUH (close range, tougher / armored enemies)
Dastardly Maggie (close - mid range, general usage)
Expeditious Grog Nozzle (slag, emergency heals I guess)
Norfleet (ffyl)
~
Antagonist
Chaotic Evil Cleric (+6 Suspension, +5 Restoration)
Slag Transfusion (maybe Chain Lightning?)
Sheriff Badge (reason why I took the Grog over a Pimpernel)

Okay, let me have it!

Hi,

What are you trying to achieve with this build and the mod? Personally, I don’t rate the cleric mods, not because they outright suck, but because Maya has so many stronger options imho.

Your build is solid and is a fairly standard Maya type setup. I don’t bother with Blight Phoenix, but a lot of people like wings.

You might benefit from watching some of Derch’s Maya build videos on youtube, he has an excellent one called “Stop Wasting Skill Points” where he explains that accelerate is not all it’s cracked up to be, as is Mind’s Eye. Those points can be better used elsewhere.

If you want to boost Suspension particularly, I would go with my preferred Leg Binder based setup, but again we go back to the question of what you want to achieve with the build and then we can look at your allocation and gear choices a little deeper. The gear you’ve chosen is great for most situations, and contains three of the strongest weapons (Grog, DPUH, Norfleet) in the game for any character.

Thank you for responding!

It may not look it, but my original idea was to create a tanky pistol user. Kind of wanted to incorporate Fleet but that probably won’t work out. After a few hours of thought (I did some driving today), this is what I had landed on. I did consider the L. Binder, as well as the L. Nurse COM. I want to be able to stay alive, but I would also like to limit my character to pistols (maybe snipers?)…if that makes sense. This would be more of a support character than DPS-centric. And yes, I only took Blight Phoenix to look cool.
As neither Mind’s Eye nor Accelerate are boosted by my COM, I decided to take them both to 5/5. Big fan of Derch!!

The Cleric would probably be real nice with a Lady Fist and a Bee…hmm.

I’ve thought about using the Cleric mods too, because I like the Tina DLC so much and because I like the Tina mods for other characters, but I’ve come to the conclusion that they don’t do anything the Leg Binder doesn’t do better. But, to quote The Dude, “that’s just like, your opinion man”

If you’re semi-tanking as Maya, I would move the Mind’s Eye and Restoration points into Sustenance and a little into Lifetap. Derch would of course recommend going down into Scorn, especially as you can use it to slag in FFYL. As I normally run a Binder setup, I don’t use it, but I do when using a Leg Siren or Nurse based setup. I would also only put 4 into Inertia and move the Accelerate points into Suspension and Quicken, but the DPUH works with Accelerate well… I want to be all phaselocking all the time, but your build isn’t designed with that in mind, so perhaps a little less critical

I think the slag transfusion choice is good, my fave is the magic missile, but you can down yourself and you do want to semi-tank, so transfusion works well for that

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I’m sure your build is fine. I wouldn’t spend the points quite like that myself (different play style), but you could probably spend zero points and still be fine with this loadout.

Yeah? Awesome. I love Phaselock but I do try to not rely too much on my AS, with any character. Thank you for responding!!

Unrelated, but does your Binder build use SubSequence or Thoughtlock? I remember solo’ing OP8 with that build but I can’t help but wonder if it was optimized lol

No, really - for normal gameplay (as in, not raiding), your biggest concern might be running out of pistol rounds if you’re not sniffing around ammo dumps after combat.

Here’s my preferred setup, it’s basically designed to wreck sh*t… unlike Derch and others, I play on the wonky and unreliable PS3/PSN with laggy internet so I’m not always going for criticals because of the framerate drops and lag, I’m usually just aiming for center of mass and trying to phaselock everything for me or my friends… No claims it’s the best out there, but I love it and I think it measures up well to other Maya setups

HTTP://BL2SKILLS.COM/SIREN.HTML#505001455014054101003551510501

Leg Binder
Elemental BOTA (matching ot the area I’m in or weapons I’m using)
Blockade Shield or Antagonist
Magic Missile

I vary my weapons a lot to try stuff out, but on 1 or 2 player I really like

Boss Bekah
Slag Pimpernel
Shotgun (Twister, Butcher, CC, Interfacer - matching elements with the latter 3)
DPUH (ffyl)

I go with 1 into Helios because of the Binder mod, I go with 1 into Mind’s Eye because I already have 9 in Sweet Release and I can switch to a Leg Siren mod easily with the same allocation, even if it’s not ideal. I take a different setup for Raid Bossing.

Honestly though I took another look at the Twisted Pimp build and it would work with a L. Nurse COM haha…I don’t plan on doing any raiding so I moved the one Accelerate point to Ward and the one Mind’s Eye point to Restoration. Other than that I kept my right tree the same.

Your Binder build is solid! Do you switch to the L. Siren a lot while mobbing? If you only use it for raids / Digistruct then perhaps put more points into Helios somehow? Even with the buff I feel like it’s still not worth it until it’s at 9 or 10 points, so it’s better to invest more into the L. Binder strengths if that’s your main. Especially with 5/5 Subsequence! If you need to switch COMS there are Quick Change or Fast Travel stations before most of the tougher areas in the game if you don’t mind taking 30 seconds to respec. But ultimately that’s just like, my opinion man.

I think I might use a NE Lady Fist instead of the Maggie, trade the Grog for a Pimp to avoid ammo issues, and probably switch to a Quasar instead of a transfusion since I have a bunch of healing now.

Like the Twister, the Blockhead and Omen guns are very fun to use point blank!

Thanks again @Adabiviak and @ChemicalConundrum for your input!

I honestly like your second build better and assume that the purple mod is +5, +4, +4, which would be the reason for the 1 point in each of Life Tap, Restoration and Suspension. My only suggestion is that if you plan this as a support character would be to take the points from Inertia and put them all into one of the skills boosted by the com (or spread them out if you wish). Also, Blight Phoenix tends to set off nearby barrels, which is the main reason I’ve never been fond of it…

How low would you go with Inertia? I can’t imagine playing without it entirely, but perhaps OP8 isn’t much more difficult without the reload speed and shield regen?

I don’t like Blight Phoenix either, but I just threw in a point for aesthetics. I’ll just have to watch out for barrels. Most of the time I just take them out with a sniper before proceeding.

That Binder build is my main build I use for mobbing, I prefer it to the Leg Siren because I can routinely clear 2-3 enemies per phaselock with subsequence and in some weaker areas (Southpaw for example), I can even clear more on occasion. Even in multi player, I’m constantly setting up easy kills for my friends with it and I’m disrupting enemy attacks even if it only holds for a moment. I used to put more in Helios instead of Flicker, but I found Helios doesn’t do much at OP8, so I’ve switched to just 6/5 and a few points in Flicker (which I also think doesn’t do much for Maya). I’ve found 4/5 in subsequence works pretty much the same, but that extra point wasn’t doing much elsewhere, so now I go 5/5. I also think the boosts to Reaper and Wreck from the Leg Binder along with the longer phaselock (thus boosting Wreck more) equal/just outweight/or are just under the passive bonuses from the Leg Siren COM though I haven’t broken out the calculator to confirm it. The difference in cooldown is neglible between the two COMS with all the other cooldown boosts. I sacrifice a little control with the undirected phaselocks at times, but my playstyle (and the game itself) is a bit chaotic anyway. Wtih that setup, I can also easily switch to a Leg Cat or Leg Siren for bosses or really heavy enemies. I only use the Nurse with groups for certain Raid bosses, but the healing regen doesn’t do much at OP8, so I actually think the Binder is better synergy with groups except for the chars/setups that don’t need cooldown boosts (like Krieg). The main advantage of the Nurse I find is that you can use the middle tree to tank staying alive at the cost of doing any damage, but you can then be running around Res’ing people.

My main issue with both these setups is the lack of cooldown rate. The build with the blue COM has 2/5 in Quicken, but that’s not a lot considering that none of your gear boosts it, and the build with the purple COM has none. This limits your damage output, and your ability to heal yourself and others. An alternative build could look loke this:

http://bl2skills.com/siren.html#501501350005255102103550510511

I ditched the points in both Mind’s Eye and Accelerate, and put them in Kinetic Reflection and Quicken instead. I also went further down the Harmony tree to get Life Tap. 6/5 in Restoration is overkill. Get a COM that boosts Suspension and Life Tap instead, and put 2/5 in Restoration. Also consider getting a CN Cleric or a CG Cleric instead. Bigger mag or quicker reload sits better with me for general combat.

And finally… Quasar! Because… Quasar!

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That’s a great build for that COM Ronnie, I might move those KR points into Suspension with the remainder completing Inertia because I don’t think KR does much at OP8, but that would be experimentation in game to confirm that. For mobbing/raiding I don’t find Restoration to be useful unless I’m playing with a melee Krieg player. I’m too busy shooting mobile enemies to worry about my mobile friends and they can use Sweet Release too. If he wasn’t going with a pistol based setup and the Sherrif’s badge, an elemental BOTA along with Quicken would help the cooldown. Quasar is a always a great choice. My default is always a magic missile because I hate worrying about grenade ammo, but those can’t be used up close, unlike the quasar which can be tossed behind groups to pull them back away from you.

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Don’t forget that they also heal from Elated. I’m not a big fan of Restoration either, but he seemed to want it, so… there it is! :slight_smile: Some points can be moved according to personal preferences, but fact is that the Cleric COM just doesn’t quite cut it. As @ChemicalConundrum pointed out…

I also noted something that I missed earlier…

Phaselock is intimately connected to some of Maya’s best skills, and avoiding it will simply make you THAT. MUCH. WEAKER. It would be as if your build looked like this.
http://bl2skills.com/siren.html#500500500050500155515553010510

And if it did… I’d recommend that you shifted some more points into Fleet and slapped on a Banshee COM, coz you’d be running a whole lot. :grinning:

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While that is true, you have to look at it in the context of his build. He was using a COM that boosted both skills by 5, all his weapons would have been negatively impacted by too much bullet speed, and his build was designed around using skill points for survivability and gear for damage. In the context of what he wanted to do that worked.

This build isn’t the same though. The Cleric and the Leg. Siren are two different beasts, and all of the OP’s weapons would love more bullet speed. They also doesn’t get as much raw damage from the Cleric as the Siren (Crit damage vs. accelerate, mind’s eye, and COM gun damage), so speccing into Accelerate and minds eye (granted they favored the maggie over the DPUH) wouldn’t be a bad move.

Although I’ll echo what every one else is saying in recommending the Leg. Binder. Or if you want to go uber deeps for whatever reason, you can use a Leg Cat. It’s still very potent even without the passive bonuses.

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Absolutely @boombumr, I thought I mentioned that above somewhere that the DPUH would benefit from Accelerate, as would the grog to some extent which is also slow firing (edit meant slow projectile speed). However, those are both plenty strong and useful without it, so I think the surviveability of the other skills outweighs Accelerate though it’s probably six of one, half dozen of the other… Accelerate is just not as strong as it looks on paper, unless you are beehawking with the Cat Com, then you can dump out a lot more DPS… Mind’s Eye is similar in that regard, it just doesn’t do enough compared to other skills in the tree imho… I do realize I’m speculating to some degree so if the hard numbers don’t back that up, I look forward to being corrected :sunglasses: