How does my skill tree look and what type of gear goes gear. ( I mean normal guns)

Borderlands 2 Gaige the Mechromancer
#1

I’m an LVL 53 mechromancers and I would like to know how I look right to know for when I get to the UVHM. is my tree build right now this going to this and yes I look over the skill form. As for the guns, I got at least one type of guns and some multiple guns for this character. for shotguns, I got Barbed Long ride as my fav but I also got Ornery Scattergun, Ornery Scattergun, and Threpul Bareld Room Clener. The three have more damage than the purple one but it more accuracy than the others. for the Assault Rifles, I got Boss Stomper, Hard Rifle, Onslaught Minigun, Heavy Defender and Rocket Torpedo. For the Boss Stomper and Hard Rifle, I use to fight when I’m low at Anarchy but once higher enough I switch to the Rocket gun. For Pistols I only got The Wheelgun and Twin Dahiminarot for the armor types. For Shields, I got Chitinous Turtle and Bulletproof Booster, I can’t decide which one to go with. I got The speedy punk mod for I use to help get my Anarchy up with it’s 6+ smaller lighter faster skill and Calculating Anarchist mod after the first one which has 5+ Fancy Mathematics Skill. and finally for Grenades, I got Rubberized Fire Leech, Homing Shock Singularity, and Sticky Longbow MIRV and I can’t decide with is better to use ( The HSS is the one with the higher damages). I mostly go with the highs damages ( So I mostly grab the Jakobs and Torgues.) So that what I got so please tell me any tips and advice for her and which guns should I keep or sell.
P.S I know there a gear form and I did look it over but I figure that for when you get to the final mode. Also, I would plan to go with groups but it seems there not that many people playing this on Xbox in the normal mode and The one before Ultimate ( I can’t remember right now what that mode before that is called.)
Update: Just got Captain Blade’s Orphan Maker and Corrosive Stinkpot. Are these two good weapons for Gaige?

#2

True Vault Hunter Mode (or TVHM for short) is the play thru between normal and UVHM. I would take the point out of Buck Up and move it to Annoyed Android- some players have skills and builds that require that their shields be down and DT trying to fix them would be a problem. Gaige does really well with shotguns so she can use the Orphan Maker but the best version of the OM is one with a Rustlers prefix and a 3 round mag (keep an eye out for it next time). The Stinkpot is a weapon she can use but you might want to check out more info on it to see if it’s fits your play style. For the most part Gaige can make just about any weapon work in normal/TVHM so don’t worry too much about such things right now. Do keep an eye out for the ricochet Fibber and the Blockhead- two weapons that work great on Gaige, especially if you toss a Bee on her… BTW, have you decide on what class com you favor?

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#3

As long as they’re at level, Gaige excels with Jakobs shotguns, they’ll serve you well. For pistols, she has literally no crit bonuses in her skill tree (only on a few COMs) which makes Jakobs pistols a less useful choice on an anarchy build. The same is true of assault rifles.
They’re not bad - especially since TVHM isn’t difficult - but something with inherent splash damage will synergize with anarchy, making Maliwan and Torgue good options.

Since you’ve got several weapons from the Scarlett DLC, I suggest you go to Washburne Refinery and talk to a loader there, he’ll give you a couple of missions culminating in you acquiring the Pimpernel sniper. This weapon is so good it’s ridiculous, and it works perfectly for an anarchy build.

For your skill trees, I suggest resetting the links and filling them in again, they’re for 53 and 72, respectively.
Apart from that, I suggest removing all points from Close Enough, Fancy Mathematics and Made of Sterner Stuff, as well as Buck Up.
Fancy M. is pretty weak, it’s situational, and you already have a stellar shield skill in Blood Soaked Shields. If you move the points to Unstoppable Force instead, you’ll have an active shield skill as well to help you defeat DOTs (‘damage over time’, which will gradually become more of a danger to you) plus a movement speed boost to help you introduce your enemies to a Jakobs shotty at close range.
‘Made of Sterner…’ doesn’t do much on its own while Buck Up messes with DTs AI and makes him less effective when he should be out there killing stuff.
Further, you don’t need Close Enough for 150-250 stacks. With the right weapons, you don’t need it at all outside of raids.

Depending on the gear you find, you might also want to consider a shock/DOT build with a deeper spec in Little Big Trouble. (There are famous Youtubers who will advise against this. They are wrong and should be disregarded.)

At 35, I’d suggest something like this for an anarchy build: http://bl2skills.com/mechromancer.html#050050130000000000000000410150131000
150 stacks is more than enough for anything in TVHM including raids, Cooking Up Trouble works well with Jakobs shotguns and if you’re in trouble you can trigger Discord for a few seconds.
Before you hit UVHM you’ll want to get some weapons with a Moxxi life-leech effect, but you’re in no hurry in that regard.

This sub-forum has plenty of resources for your Gaige needs, including gear and build tips which don’t require you to farm uniques, as well as @MidnightNova’s helpdesk here: Nova’s helpdesk for Mechro’s

Have fun!

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#4

Nothing much to add, just wanted to say that @cioran has given you some great advice. The only thing I’d mildly disagree on is taking all the points out of close enough. My reason for keeping this skill is that there are times when it means you can hit an enemy behind cover that you would otherwise not be able to. It’s probably not as important in TVHM as later on though. (Certain weapons you might want to get at the start and then end of UVHM also benefit from Close Enough, but that won’t matter until you complete TVHM.)

#5

Sorry, I didn’t see that I put in the wrong lvl thing I’m lvl 53 acutely. My mistake.

#6

To add to Cioran’s excellent post; MoSS is only useful when you make use of the Blockade shield. Otherwise the DR is too little to be of use.

#7

You’re killing me smalls. I noticed this last night and is been eating at me since. The C in com stand for class. I’m sure you know this and it was a mistake but this got under my skin the same as when someone says ATM machine, THAT’S WHAT THE M IS FOR!

In no way am I trying to be a dick. I know it’s hard to tell sometimes because well… I am a dick but if I didn’t say anything it would have continued to eat at me. I do feel better now tho.

Sorry @Carlton_Slayer but I couldn’t just leave it alone.

End rant.

#8

The reason I make the distinction of saying ‘class com’ is because the word com has a variety of meanings- just put the word into your favorite search engine and you’ll see a variety of results. I know that in these forums it might be generally understood that com means what you said, but since the word has more than that specific meaning in general use, I like to be specific about it. Now, if I were typing Runs Batted In as RBI’s… :grin:

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#9

That’s why I tend to call it a class mod (as in Class Optimisation Module as per Clappy’s introduction to it). When I see COM I always think of really bad things happening to Windows 3.11 if I run that file /shudders

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#10

I’m only a novice Gaige player, but it seems to me that Close Enough is always going to be worth getting unless your build is so tight you just cannot afford those 5 points.

Do you NEED it? No, certainly not. But face it: you’re going to shoot at guys and miss. It’s going to happen, no matter what character you’re playing. Even without Anarchy, some stupid Rat or Skag is gonna juke constantly and dodge everything you fire at him. So why not invest in a skill that gives those missed shots a second chance to hit things?

Like I said, if your build is so tight you can’t afford 5 points for it, then sure, go without. But if you can afford it there’s no real reason not to get it, from what I can tell.

#11

It’s a perfectly fair question, and I know there are people who disagree with me on this. Why say no to free damage, especially with such a quick and twitchy enemy AI?

For me and several other Gaige players of my acquaintance, there are two parts to it. The first goes back to her release and the initial reception. There was a rather heavy gaffe by a lead designer who was describing her in an interview prior to release, referring to her as a ‘girlfriend class’ - which was obviously insulting on several levels.
(On a side note, I’ve seen the man demo gameplay with other characters, and my god it was pitiful.)
Personally I think that stupid remark was something he was pushed into by the marketing department, who wanted to field her with a focus on the ‘excessive adorability’ aspect. That’s entirely guesswork based on his embarrassed look as he said it and on my profoundly felt contempt for marketing people in general, so take it with a grain of salt.
There’s a good reason for Close Enough to be there merely to offset the accuracy penalty from anarchy, after all.

The image stuck, though, and as is the way of the Net, it was perpetuated to the point where plenty of successful Youtubers and their sycophants still view her that way.

Thus, when choosing to not employ a partial reflection/aimbot script…am I actually caving to pressure from the madding crowd, virtually all of whom are people I can outplay in my sleep - or am I striking a blow for a Gaige who exceeds and transcends the boundaries of her original design and the suffocating meta of willfully ignorant casuals?
Or am I just overthinking it far more than I reasonably should?
Tricky.

The second part is much simpler: I don’t need it since the accuracy offset is something you get used to compensating for, Gaige’s DPS is tremendous anyway, and I can make good use of those points elsewhere. Specifically , CuT on the same tier is a good and frequently underrated skill from the first time you can get it to the day you’re fighting OP8 raids in a healthgate-abuse setup.

These musing are entirely my own and I’m but one player, so please take them for what they’re worth.

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#12

:scream: I am so glad I missed seeing that interview. I’ve never really paid that much attention to YT videos (I find most of the game-related ones annoyingly inane, repetitive, and over-the-top) so I just played the character.

Anarchy looked a bit confusing to me so, in the heat of a couch co-op game where I was just learning the character, I went BFF/LBT and took CuT first. (Because I also sucked at playing video games, and needed all the health regen I could get. Still do, actually!) I’m fine with it now, but I have two Gaiges with different emphases. Early game I certainly take CuT, but I always figure I can respec later if I want to. At the end of the day, it’s really about what works for the individual player.

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#13

I personally like Close Enough combined with The Nth Degree, mainly because I’ve used it to clear the entire map of Bandit Slaughter w/o even aiming at every intended target- there’s just something really satisfying about that…:smile:

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