I am playing with my wife, she is Maya.
Here is the build I am planning on building towards:
http://bl2skills.com/mechromancer.html#550105101551555155150501000000000000
or possibly this:
http://bl2skills.com/mechromancer.html#550105101551505155150551000000000000
I have come to dislike Anarchy, the loss of accuracy is annoying.
My build is to rely on Deathtrap a good bit (obviously) The shields would either be a 'Roid shield or WTF/Firehawk, as I think both would be sick on DT.
hey, so your currently in normal mode right? shock skills are good for gaige but obviously once you strip enemy shields always remember to switch to fire (humans) and corrosive (robots, armoured enemies) etc… also fancy mathematics and unstoppable force are skills you cant avoid dude. shield skills are very important in this game. My op8 axton is fully maxed out with his shield skills as axton is far superior then all the characters when it comes to shield buffs 
leave electrical burn such a stupid skill, dealing shock damage on enemy with a shield gives a chance they’ll take burn damage? burn damage is null and void on an enemy with a shield. also cooking up trouble is foolish in a mobbed situation, when are you going to have a full mag in a mobbing situation with dozens of enemies firing at you? hope this helps
Awesome. I’ll look into them tomorrow when at work
From what I recall of my Gaige playthrough, early game, Deathtrap is very strong and he also “pulls aggro” so you can look to spec into melee heavy skills with him and getting him out longer. Avoid those one point attack add-ons for him though, they usually just interrupt his normal, stronger attacks.
So no death beam and explosion?
Wow, a lot of bad advice here
You have no clue what you’re talking about. There are great builds, viable at OP8 that are based on EB, it’s one of Gaige’s best skills.
Well…didn’t you just shoot them with a shock weapon…thus depleting the shield in question ? … and letting EB do it’s job? It’s actually a perfect match of elements. Also, it works on all enemies, not just those with a shield.
EB also has damage based on prior damage dealt, so slag counts twice (for a X9 total damage multiplier in UVHM) There are a few guides here on the forum that are dedicated to the maths behind EB, you should check them out (I think I have them both linked in my build)
Case in point:
You clearly never even tried it.
If you have 5/5 in Blood soaked shield, you can totally do without Fancy Maths.
UF is still good though
Quite often actually, especially since he’s not using anarchy (so, no problem with premature reload)
CUT is a stable constant healing source that is super easy to trigger, works from behind cover, when moving between encounters, when throwing grenades… It’s quite good
Forget Buck up, if messes with DT’s AI and he will often try to replenish your shield when you are in FFYL instead of trying to kill things
Drop also shock storm: it has good damage but the radius is just ridiculously small and not worth it.
Interspersed outburst is awesome, take it 
Consider putting points in anarchy, even if you don’t plan to use it: it unlocks BSS, which is one of the best shield skill in the game.
[quote=“Chuck80, post:8, topic:1543465”]Consider putting points in anarchy, even if you don’t plan to use it: it unlocks BSS, which is one of the best shield skill in the game.
[/quote]This…
It also opens up Robot Rampage, which is one of the few skills that lets Deathtrap kill enemies with his (elemental because of Make It Sparkle) claws; his normal melee attacks are slow enough and miss often enough that some enemies can heal through it in UVHM.
Gaige doesn’t have any reload skill buffs except for Smaller Lighter Faster, and the mag size nerf is minimal (unless you’re rockin’ the Infinity), and from there, it’s only a single point to get access to Blood Soaked Shields and Robot Rampage. From there, it’s another single point for Discord (so you can do something productive with the few Anarchy stacks you get other than tossing them with a reload). It really takes, what, a couple dozen at least before you might start to notice an accuracy loss, and that’s a decent amount of healing/fire rate. I didn’t use Anarchy for the same reason (less accuracy? Madness!) until I had Gaige up to UVHM and then figured I would check it out. It’s fun in its own way. Still - Anarchy is easy to ignore; just manually reload to reset.
I’m partial to The Stare and One Two Boom myself. They can definitely kill things, but they’re an acquired taste. Once you’re familiar with Gaige at her best, they’re worth trying just to see if the mechanic is something you enjoy.
The Stare is pretty much a guaranteed kill against chump-level flesh-based enemies if they’re slagged (it can’t miss, and shoots through walls and the floor if needed). If it’s a higher-level flesh-based enemy, it’ll still wreck face. For whatever reason, he doesn’t use it against Rakk though (and that shock beam, by comparison, is almost useless)?
One Two Boom, especially if you’re all buffed out in the Little Big Trouble tree, is pretty fun, but takes some practice to get good with. Deathtrap will broadcast that he’s spinning up an orb with a unique sound, so you can a) get some slag onto targets, b) figure out where the orb is coming from and get into position, and c) switch to a non-splash-only weapon so you can actually hit it. I think we’re batting about 800 for actually popping these on target (of the remaining 200, half of them are the mob migrating elsewhere for a whiff, and the other half is me not catching it properly). It’s rare but super satisfying to clear a room with one shot though… I think I ganked seven or so Spiders in The Lair of Infinite Agony with it once - refilled like half of his meter in one shot.
If you’re still leveling her, neither of those should be disregarded. They can both kill outright up to OP3-4, at least. Explosive Clap also has the benefit of causing significant knockback and stun to enemies it doesn’t kill, which is very useful in a variety of situations and certainly worth the single point.
Unstoppable Force is a stellar skill, easily able to defeat DOTs while letting you close range quickly to punish whoever put them on you. Very similar to Maya’s Inertia, although the boost to movement speed is arguably even more useful than the improved reload speed.
The Electrical Burn damage formula should speak for itself. No offense to the person @Chuck80 corrected, just…don’t take their advice on Gaige.
[quote=“cioran, post:10, topic:1543465”]They can both kill outright up to OP3-4, at least.[/quote]True - I do play at OP3, and can’t remember the last time I used it at something higher.
[quote=“cioran, post:10, topic:1543465”]Explosive Clap also has the benefit of causing significant knockback and stun to enemies it doesn’t kill, which is very useful in a variety of situations and certainly worth the single point.[/quote]I love it for that, but when it does kill, it’s so satisfying.
For Electrical Burn, I like to put one point into it, and “turn it on and off” with a COM, which brings it to six points. If I’m in Loader country and won’t really be using it, using a COM that doesn’t hit Electrical Burn only “wastes” one point, where if I’m up against a lot of flesh-based enemies, using a COM that does hit it brings Electrical Burn back on deck.
By this, I mean that each instance of shock DoT fires six hits, each of which has an opportunity to fire Electrical Burn. With six points @ 24% chance per hit, you get a 144% chance that they’ll catch fire each time you electrocute them (a pretty safe bet). Since five of those points are from a COM, it only “costs” one point to get there. Now you can certainly fill that skill with +11 points and nearly double the proc rate, but I find that a) I prefer to re-electrocute them for more Electrical Burn than to get more burn chance per electrocution and put those points elsewhere, and b) it hits pretty hard with an average single instance per electrocution already.
It seems like we did the math on this before. The damage ticks are independent of each other, but that term is used when checking them in some combination (like two ticks would have to both trigger Electrical Burn before the target lit up, for example). I think each damage tick is a separate event.
If I flip a coin and want to get heads, but I only get one toss, I have a 50% chance to get heads. If I get two tosses, the chances that one of them will be heads is 100% (not 25%), no?
If I roll a die and want to get 3, but I only get one roll, I have a 1/6 chance to get it. If I get six rolls, and I only need one of them to be 3, six rolls should give me 100% odds?
I get that it’s not a guarantee that these will happen, but unless these events are dependent on each other, I don’t think they’re multiplicative? If I want to get two heads in a row, then it’s multiplicative.
When I first played Gaige I avoided the OC tree as well (started in the LBT tree). My suggestion would be to take the points from Shock Storm and put them into either The Better Half, Unstoppable Force, Fancy Mathematics or Myelin. Other than that it looks pretty much like what I ran until I switched to an Anarchy build- clearing the entire platform in Bandit Slaughter w/o even moving is a hell of a thing to watch…
hey chuck80, I was trying to replace two skills for kgk, so he could spec those 10 points into shield skills, rather then shock skills. Shields don’t get stripped straight away and theres only a 20% chance they’ll ignite. Its a waste of 5 points when you can just use a shock weapon, then switch to a fire weapon. Anyway at 4.30 onwards bahroo (an elite) discusses why shock gaige is pointless.
I will never think I know better then the big boys, like bahroo, derch, molmf etc… when playing any character.
That’s fine 
, I have nothing against that. And on that matter, your advice was good: EB alone is pointless. (though shock storm is arguably a better pick for removal)
what I disagreed with is your next point, that EB is a bad skill… it is most certainly not. In fact, it’s one of Gaige’s best skills.
Well, it depends on what shock weapon you use, but saying that shields don’t get stripped straight away as a general rule is false. Most EB builds use fairly powerful weapons to get their shock DoT going (Twisters, Pimpernels, Storm, and in my case more often, chain lightning) or they use Shock and AAAGH I have NEVER met a mob with a shield I couldn’t strip with a single shot of one of these.
Furthermore, that’s 20% FOR EACH DOT TICK, which means 6x 20% in 2 seconds, more than enough to ignite anything nearly 80% of the time. And that’s with just ONE shock DoT…Shoot something with a pimpernel and you’ll have at least 3 or 4 of those at the same time… it’s a very rare case where I can’t get a burn out of a shock DoT to trigger
There is also the fact that Slag can boost your shock DOT, creating a stronger fire DOT, which then ALSO gets boosted by slag… I have seen burn DoT in the 10s of millions per tick on a regular basis, easily.
I find I can generally kill anything with EB by just holding a grog, repeatedly shooting once and reloading to trigger SaA and let everything burn to death.
Or better yet: Spray a whole room with a Slagga, then throw a single chain lightning and watch everything (including UBA) all die at once.
I suggest you TRY IT before you post half-baked assumptions about how a skill work, especially since I provided numerous proofs that it’s much better than what you say.
I mean, a skill that you can build your whole playstyle around can’t suck as much as you think it does…
Please, before we discuss this any further, go read these 2 links:
Slag, wind and fire by Draug
LOL 
Good one
Bahroo did a lot of great things in BL2, but he’s not the be all end all of the good players. If anything, Barhoo is a solid Salvador and Maya player, but as for Elite Gaige player, I will trust @pokapoka a thousand times over Barhoo. Some of his stuff is downright false and we’ve spent a lot of time correcting misconceptions about the game that came from things he said without checking.
I consider @Derch, @Sljm, @Aether_Seraph , @CoonTail, @khimerakiller and @DSs to be much more reliable sources than Barhoo
Awww man! I thought I would make the list this year! 
I really thought that this would have settled the matter:
…that or one of my numerous guides and builds.
Chuck your on my list, just yesterday someone asked me in my YouTube comments about a sap build I told him to go ask chuck 
In fact I rate sal players on how often they talk about you.Ganza is a top sap to me because when he runs the deputy I always hear him mention you.
Thanks Derch
Oh yeah, I totally forgot @Ganza! sorry pal
I’m sure I forgot a lot more
Edit: LIke @Exotek and @Afro_Samurai
Chuck you are like the Tom waits of borderlands the vast public might not be aware of your brilliance but the people in the know all love and respect your work.
If I’m not mistaken Evil Enchantress also works hand in hand with Electrical Burn- ever since they got WDT working properly it’s been an ever better deadly combination…