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When playing borderlands, I tend to lean more towards support & utility but also being able to do a good amount of damage because that’s just how borderlands needs you to be. Since this is the case how would working up to this build be?
Borderlands 1 allows for much more freedom in terms of builds, so you should be fine either way.
I usually start with the Infantry tree and get to Metal Storm ASAP. This is one of the skills that make Roland amazing with every gun in the game. Then go down Medic to make myself more tanky adn fiinish off with Support, then spend the rest of the points in whatever order I feel like.
Some advice:
- Stockpile loses effectiveness when you already have Supply Drop - when you unlock it, feel free to spec out of Stockpile and put those points into Defense instead for a little extra, well, defense. One point in Supply Drop should be enough for just you, but you may wanna max it out when you’re playing with friends. I like to max it out either way just to make extra sure I have enough ammo.
- The turret’s offensive capabilities become less and less impressive the further you are in the game. You would probably be better off reallocating the points from Sentry, Barrage ad Guided Missile somewhere else by endgame.
- For COMs, I recommend Heavy Gunner for general ass-kicking, Tactician for some more Defense, and Commando for shotgun goodness.
On the turret’s combat performance: don’t expect kills from it. It should be viewed specifically as general utility. It distracts enemies, stuns them with bullets or missiles, inflicts elemental effects, and can resupply your ammunition. Unfortunately, in order to achieve all this and have a reasonable cool down requires a lot of skill points and early on you’re only making life more difficult for yourself by investing heavily in it.
Also, despite Stockpile and Aid Station appearing to provide more turret utility they come at a heavy cost: loss of Roland’s tactical flexibility. He must stay near the turret, which means you’re either using it outside of battle and losing its battlefield utility, or standing near it and getting shot at instead of moving around. Fortunately he has two skills that are simply better without sacrificing flexibility in Supply Drop and Stat.
If there is a particular class mod you like, then it is a good idea to target its skills early on. I think Commando is an amazing choice, and building for it early leads to Defense, Quick Charge, Impact, Scattershot. The combination of skills and the class mod grants very good damage output and survivability at an early stage of the game. Finishing it off by 50 would be Metal Storm, Fitness, Overload, Grit, and Stat.
If you’re not looking to build around a specific class mod early, then I can recommend Fitness, Overload, Grit, Stat, Defense, Quick Charge, Impact, Metal Storm, and finishing it off by specializing in either shotguns with Scattershot, combat rifles with Assault, or grenades with Grenadier. Such an approach provides strong enough survivability by level 25 that using a specific class mod does not matter much.
From there on it’s all about the turret. Making the turret’s cooldown as short as possible is a good thing, so Deploy and Refire are both recommended in order to make sure it is deployed as often as possible. Once Supply Drop is available placing a single point in it is sufficient for ammunition needs, and the same applies to Guided Missile. Only at this point does increasing the turret’s damage output make much sense, and Barrage should go first before Sentry. With those two the turret’s battle ability is as high as it will get.
There is one point left over. I favor Commando, so the leftover point ends up in Grenadier as the occasional free grenade provides some utility.
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Woah. I did not expect such lengthy and detailed responses. Thank both of you for giving me such amazing responses on how to play this character more effectively!
So Roland’s turret is basically the same as Axton’s but better?
It’s just different.
Overall, Sabre is faster, more flexible, and aggressive, while Scorpio is more deliberate and utility focused.
I mean, I haven’t learned to love Axton’s turret like I do Roland’s yet, so sure. It might be better, but not the same.
Sabre is a viable offensive tool, considering free slag, rocket volleys and the occasional nuke, Scorpio not so much.
That said, the sheer usefulness of the Scorpio’s basically endless player ammo supply, decent health regen (especially combined with Stat), corrosive bullets for some token damage as well as sorta-slagging enemies and potentially being able to deploy it constantly essentially makes you your own best teammate.
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Well, I go for a heavy gunner build with my Roland, with minimization for reloading.