[Build] Shielded Enforcer Jack

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel Jack the Doppelganger
#1

This is the skill tree: http://thepresequel.com/Jack/50500105005010550104015101410515005001
The basis of the build was the legendary com Celestial Doppelganger.
Greater Good and Free Enterprise trees are somewhat basic (for this com). You hit all the skills at least once to get the boost (Incentives and Teamwork).

Greater Good:
Teamwork is a great skill but with this com (+5) I find it to be a waste of points. Winning will get your shields up and after a few stacks of teamwork you will regenerate a good amount of health with 6/5. There’s no need to go 10/10, as you will just be maxed on health during your action skill anyway.
Collaborate and Integrity can be changed to 4 and 1, i just prefer it this way. Integrity is always there while collaborate only lasts as long as your action skill, which if you are turning it off manually (so it recharges really fast) doesn’t last that long.
A skill point in Potential and Optimism so the action skill can be activated during FFYL and so your jacks die faster.
Delegation doesn’t help when your Jacks are down, and that’s the only time you need help to survive.

Free Enterprise:
Incentives is nice, but 6/5 is enough of a boost, as you wont be swapping too much anyway.
Company man, absolute advantage and money is power are no brainers (For company man you will need proper gear).
Marginal Benefits is boosted by the com, so you cant really put only 1 point into it, you either go full in and use grenades to reload or you don’t put points at all.
Taxation of trade routes doesn’t work with this com because of Marginal Benefits, because it reloads ALL your equipped guns.
Supply and Demand isn’t needed because we are using Persistence and Teamwork for healing.
Compound Interest i don’t find very useful because there’s no reason to swap guns (and lose time).

The Hero of this Story:
Bolster, Take my Shield and Take their Freedom all help your Jacks survive longer. This is unwanted since their deaths activate your kill skills (Leadership). You also want more dps while the Action skill is cooling down.
Best Foot Forward makes the action skill much longer.
Just Compensation helps has great synergy with Marginal Benefits. These skills combined with Jack’s Cache make it so you never reload your guns instead you throw grenades. (THIS PART IS VERY IMPORTANT) Because of this combo you can keep all your glitches active when you proc them.
Note: Never fully empty the magazine (so it doesn’t auto reload).

This is the build I played on most of the time (while i was leveling up), the only thing I deemed problematic was Jack’s survival while his action skill is down. There are a few options on how to fix this, but the one I like the best is to take Hero Pose and Persistence. These two skills will grant you a giant boost to shield capacity and passive hp regeneration. Shield capacity is important because of Winning. It will heal 20% of your shields every time you kill something. And these skills increase those 20% heal for your shield.
Picking these two skills over (Supply and Demand or Teamwork) grant more HP regen while your action skill is cooling down and also make it so you can spec in the last capstone Promote the Rank (which is basically much more dps during your action skill).

There is one point left over after picking up all three capstones. And that one is of no big importance for this build. Picking up Merger or some other gamechanger is a nice idea, but i like to get 1 more point into Belive, because it’s such a great skill.

Note: This build only works with the specified class mod.

Gear:

Grenades: I find it very useful to have homing cryo hyperion grenades. They need to be Hyperion for Company Man. Homing because you won’t always be facing the enemy while you want to reload your guns. And cryo for that extra chance to stun enemies. Considering that hyperion grenades are singularities that stuns (or rather pulls) enemies aswell so its good for your survival.

Class mod is already specified.

Shield: should be the Shield of Ages because of its capacity (so winning heals more). Other high capacity hyperion shields will work fine as well.

Oz kit: As long as its Hyperion it’s really up to you. I get the ones which boost your accuracy and Critical hit damage while in air. It helps with fighting bosses with big Crit spots.

Guns:
I like to have my Company Man at 6 stacks or higher. So I usually have 2 Hyperion weapons, 1 Vladof and 1 Jakobs. These are important because of the bonuses from Sponsored by.
For Vladof I use the Shredifier. It’s easily farmed from the Grinder, and it has great synergy with this class mod (It grants Hyperion recoil reduction to all your guns). Props to @Derch for pointing that out.
For Jakobs I like to use the Maggie. Its a great gun overall and when combined with an increased magazine and chance to not consume ammo it is just awesome.
The 2 hyperion guns i like to use are the Excalibastard for all your cryo needs. And a glitched shotgun (whichever variant you like most)
You will notice that all weapons mentioned are different gun types. Ammo can be somewhat of a problem with this build. So the different types help a lot to negate that.
The Sponsored By bonuses:
Use the Shredifier after the Maggie so it gets more gun damage.
Hyperion shotgun after the Shredifier so it has a really nice fire rate (and its not jakobs so you don’t have to click spam to get it)
And after hyperion you switch back to your Maggie. Its not like the Maggie needs more bonuses to the accuracy, but it certainly is nice (The bonus fire rate doesn’t help at all).

I hope you liked this build. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

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#2

Keep in mind these are just suggestions, so take them with a grain of salt. Also, the other Jack experts around here @khimerakiller and @Hoyle4 should be able to give some advise as well. That being said…

  1. I really think those last 6 points you’re spending in the HoTS tree are being wasted. There is a reason that persistence is that far down in the tree; it assumes the use of the Jacks as a main damage source, which would imply that they are being kept out longer, increasing the length of the cooldown. Since you are using the CD COM, and have 10 points in BFF, you shouldn’t have problems with the cooldown at all. Manually recalling your Jacks will ensure that you always have them ready when you need them, so taking a skill that only works when they are on cooldown is counterproductive to the COM you are running. I would suggest moving those points elsewhere.

Maybe this http://thepresequel.com/Jack/50500105040000550105115101410515005001/celdoppelganger,auto

  1. If you find you have trouble staying alive, try replacing you’re grenade. A quasar would be the best option since it’s still hyperion, but even a transfusion could work. You would lose 10% crit, but you’d have 6 points to put somewhere to help make up the difference.

  2. I suggest having only the valdof or the Jakobs equipped at any one time, not both. You are losing 10% crit damage on one of them. If you point some of those 6 points into either Lean On Me or Accountability, you would have enough fire rate that the vladof would be wasted on most guns. If you choose to do so, I would suggest loosing the shredifier.

  3. As a cryo weapon, the T4-3R will be easier to use and may be worth looking into.

Otherwise, it seems pretty good!

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#3

Although i agree those are good suggestions, these are the problems:
The com isn’t a CD com it boosts your crit dmg and elemental dmg. Yes you usually recall your Jacks for a quick cooldown it isn’t always the case. Big bosses don’t allow for that type of play (sometimes) and even when you call them back early it takes like 5-10 sec to get them back. I liked the idea of getting more out of winning with Persistence and that is more or less what this build is any different from the others.
T4-3R i hope you mean T4s-R. And yes, that gun is very good, but i wanted a bit more diverse gun type setup.
Shredifier is a personal preference as it might not be the best weapon, i still like the fact that it shoots for days (because it has an abnormally big mag and chance not to consume ammo) + the only bad aspect of it (it isn’t very accurate) is negated by the com.
As for loosing one of the non-hyperion guns, i’d much rather have 30% gun dmg from jakobs, than +10% crit, and more accuracy (which is probably non existent) Maybe having 2 jakobs guns as main dmg guns would be best. Since you can buff their fire rate much anyway.
The quasar is good, but for the sake of making a non-gibbed build is a really disaster to farm, and isn’t as good if not longbow (so you control where the enemies are being pulled)
Let’s be honest here, Jack is OP on his own, and i’m not sure how much these tweaks will change the performance in game. My main point was that it was a mistake to max out Teamwork, and that there was no real reason to pick up Supply and Demand over Persistence, when it does much more in game.
Thanks for the feedback :smiley:

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#4

Isn’t that a Celestial Doppelganger? Do you use a different COM?

There aren’t many mobbing scenarios where persistence will see much use either. Besides, the Celestial Doppelganger increases your AS duration from BFF, so you can have the clones out for 20 seconds, recall them, and still have a 10 second cooldown (not exact numbers). You can cycle them for bosses (for those who even live that long) and still do OK.

Builds that rely on the Celestial Doppelganger normally don’t need the survival boost from persistence, especially since the action skill is up so often. If you want to make the most out of persistence and winning, the Chronicler of Elpis may suit you better.

Which weapon in your loadout do you use the most? I made my suggestion under the assumption that you mainly used your hyperion weapons, in which case the 30% damage from Jakobs, 28% fire rate from Lean On Me, and the crit damage from having a weapon slot free for another hyperion weapon would outdo the extra 35% fire rate from the vladof bonus. If the shredifier is your main weapon, disregard what I said.

True, but even the best can eek out a bit more performance under careful examination :slight_smile:

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#5

My bad, i didn’t understand that CD com meant Celestial Doppelganger, i thought you mean the CD com as in it reduces the cooldown of your action skill.
Good point for hyperion weapons, but if we are going that far you can even switch from a jakobs and then change that jakobs gun to hyperion and still keep the Sponsored By bonus (not sure if it works tho). So it would be all 8 items. Which hyperion items do you suggest apart from the T4s-R?
And i don’t know about you but i seem to be going down a lot as soon as my action skill is on cooldown. Maybe i change my play style at that point and play more defensively which just doesn’t work with jack because he relies on his kill skills so much…

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#6

With your COM, your Action Skill shouldn’t be down long enough for it to really cause issues. If you’re having issues surviving during cooldown phases, you should either add more CC or more healing. So while your Jacks are on cooldown, throw more singularities, or use transfusion grenades during that time.

Or, just wait until the skill comes back to engage enemies. If you watch TGtBatU weapon recaps, that is how Derch plays Jack.

Apart from the T4s-3R, the Fatale, any thinking shotgun, and the Omni-cannon are good weapons to use.

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#7

I could talk your ear off about how to min/max Jack if you want but he is so diverse you can’t really tell anyone what is definitively better when it comes to him 80% of the time. So I’ll just leave one bit of info and critique your build a bit. Jack’s power comes from his ability to utilize high power/high ammo consumption weapons. Of which the Shredifier and Maggie aren’t really anywhere near the extreme for either category, plus the CD doesn’t synergize with the Maggie in the first place.

  • Hero Pose is a very mediocre skill in the terms of Jack, and you’re better off allocating skill points into DPS skills to make it so you can reliably proc Winning without having to rely on Leadership. Which in turn boost your DPS with and without your Digi-Jacks, also increasing your survivability even more since most of the time if something is dead it isn’t killing you.

  • @boombumr already did a good job of explaining how lackluster Persistence is, especially with the build you have set up. Learning to loop your Digi-Jacks at the right time will drastically improve your QOL.

  • Promote the Ranks isn’t worth the skill points to get to it when you I am assuming moving around a lot and that you are specced into Optimism. They do nothing in a boss fight and they don’t really have time to do anything while mobbing with your build. Unless you are focused on a pet build it is better to buff yourself.

  • Integrity is really good and you should definitely find a way to take it. It becomes even better in coop, and unlike Reaper it also boost the damage of pure splash damage guns. Plus it’s kinda broken where you get the 160% bonus damage sometimes even if you’re playing solo.

  • Accountability is really good for only 1 skill point, even in solo play it’s easy to get 20-30 stacks. But in coop a basically always on 50% FR and 100% RS if you’re playing with a tanky character like Claptrap is mind boggling too good to pass up.

  • If you like spinny barrel ARs I’d recommend Jacobs or Torgue much higher than I would Vladof. And if you have a glitch variant I’d recommend Dahl as well for the Overload abuse.

  • The Celestial com is amazing, but if you don’t play to its strengths you’re doing yourself a disservice. Like I said the Maggie doesn’t pair well with it, but something like a Torgue Spitter does.

  • 9 times out of 10 Maliwan is the best Sponsored By… manufacturer, specifically cryo.

I have a great Celestial Doppelganger build, built around the Spitter if you’re interested. It is extremely fun and effective at mobbing.

And don’t think I’m trying to strong arm you into anything, they’re just some friendly suggestions. If you don’t like them it’s all good, and you can always look back at them if you ever want to increase your level of play. As someone like myself isn’t happy until I’ve min/maxed to the extreme.

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#8

So using the idea of upping the shields as much as possible isn’t the best option then… I mean i wanted this build to kinda work around that bit as well like a few gimmicks reload with your grenades, heal with your shields, abuse the glitched weapons. But when it comes to min maxing i guess your suggestions are pretty much on point. I haven’t been doing this for long (actually this is the first time i did this sort of thing) so i hope it was at least a good try at it :smiley:

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#9

Your original idea wasn’t bad, it’s just the COM you chose to use doesn’t support it. The Chronicler or the entrepreneur would work better for heavy shield use than the Celestial COM.

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#10

I might be very wrong here, but i usually go for a com that boosts the most skills id use anyway and then make the rest according to the com and what i’m missing. Basically i considered it a waste to get a com with less bonuses than +5 to 5 great skills and 1 that’s a bit lacking. Maybe my thinking is all wrong but in my mind the only other com that is worth using with jack seems to be the Projection which boosts Absolute Advantage, since the skill is so broken you don’t need any other dps (when you just go jakobs), you shoot for max fire rate without reloading for 10-15 shots and your action skill lasts a while.
Just to be clear, i might be completely flawed in the way of thinking here, but that’s how i play my borderlands, and i have played quite a bit by this point :smiley:

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#11

The 200k of the base SoA is plenty, 20% more is no where near as apealing as Integrity is IMO. It loses value as Winning makes the 20% rate and delay worthless and getting 50% of 200k shield every 2 seconds once Optimism is fully kicked in and 25% every kill makes it extremely hard for any enemy to chew through. And those that do will never kill you because of your 6/5 Teawork.

Your difficultly with bosses can/could be solved simply by killing them faster in my experience :wink:

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#12

So basically what you’re telling me is my guns are bad, and if i use those in a correct way there no reason for trying to survive after your action skill because nothing lives that long? xD
Btw from what i got out of all this is change these 11 points from Hero of this Story to Integrity 5/5 Lean on me 5/5 and accountability 1/1. Sounds good to me, yet its gonna be someone else’s build all over again, but cant really argue against it if it’s just better :smiley:
Will try harder next time, and maybe earlier while the game isn’t this old xD

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#13

Its pretty hard to find a unique build at this point. Changing a few points around is fine but when I make a build i try to stick to my main build while taking advice.

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#14

That’s not a bad way of going about things, but you do have to keep in mind the total package of what gear you are going to use and how it will effect your COM choice. If you want to focus heavily on shields, a COM that boosts shield skills would do better than one that doesn’t.

BTW, unique flavors of a build are possible, but entirely new specs aren’t. Changing gear is the way to new builds at this point.

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