The best Team Support character?

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel BL:TPS Discussion
#1

So, I was arguing with my best friend about which class is the best for Co-op gameplay and Team Support. At first, I told him that Wilhelm was hands down the best, because of Laser Guided, his Dreadnought tree and his Action Skill. He told me that Aurelia was the best because of her Contractual Aristocracy skill tree and all the boosts she can provide to enemies. We argued a bit, and I thought I could do a thread about that to argue with people on the forums.

So, first let’s see what each character can provide to the team :

#ATHENA THE GLADIATOR :
She doesn’t have Team-related skills, but the fact that she can annihilate frontal damage thanks to the Kinetic Aspis makes her a good “damage sponge” for the team. This can prove very useful versus Bosses or in the Holodome/Shock Drop. In addition, she is the second most damaging character in the game (Melee or CS builds). This and her tanking abilites can really help the team. But other than that, she is not the greatest Team Support character but she can help.

#AURELIA THE BARONNESS :
She obviously was designed for Team Support with her Action Skill and her Contractual Aristocracy Skill Tree. She provides a LOT of boosts to the team, with Contractual Obligations being the key to all of this, introducing the Master-Servant mechanic.

First, her Action Skill is incredibly good for massive debuffing, allowing the whole team to deal more damage.

And second, she provides LOTS of boosts to the team :

  • Valet : Increased Reload Speed
  • Protect Your Assets : Increased Shield Capacity and Max Health
  • You First : Ability to quickly recharge 55% of an ally’s Shield on a kill
  • All Glory To The Master : Increased Critical Hit Damage
  • Keep Your Chin Up : Ability to replenish 9,5% of your Health on a kill
  • Save The Queen : Ability to freeze marked enemies by shooting at them

The problem here is that a lot of these boosts either need stacking, a situation (for Keep Your Chin Up) or is triggered when the Servant kills or the Master kills. So it’s slightly less powerful that what is on the card. They are still ones of (if not) the best Team Support skills in the entire game.

Aurelia is definitely one of the best for filling this role in a Team.

#CLAPTRAP THE FRAGTRAP :
Our little friend Clappy has a Skill Tree dedicated to Co-op gameplay, just like Aurelia. The good thing about it is that his Skill Tree is less complicated (less stacking, no Servant-Master boost thing) but might be less effective since some of them only boost Claptrap’s efficiency. Let’s see the boosts provided by it :

  • Best Buds 4 Life : Provides extra FFYL Time, Damage Resistance, Gun Damage, Fire Rate and a 2,5%/sec Health Regeneration you and downed allies.
  • Maniacal Laughter : Provides Health Regeneration, way less painful to stack.
  • You’re … GOING TO LOVE ME ! and It’s a Trap … Card : Creates healing Novas when killing an enemy and when the shield is depleted.
  • Organised Guns are Happy : Increases Mag Size
  • HIGH FIVES GUYS : Increases Fire Rate, Gun Damage and provides Health Regeneration.

Claptrap has some nice Team Support, but imo, Aurelia is better since she has more Team boosts and they are less situational (Best Buds 4 Life need a downed ally, and HIGH FIVES GUYS don’t last a lot of time and has a 30 sec Cooldown).

He is a good Team character, he is easier to use, but he’s not the best by any means. The good thing about him is that he (maybe ?) does more damage, even with a Team focused Build.

#JACK THE DOPPELGANGER :

He doesn’t have Team-focused skills, but he has a Pet-type Action Skill. This can help distracting enemies while you and your allies kill them. In addition, the Doppelganger is the most damaging class in the entire game. Having a Damage-focused character in the Team is always nice. Other than that, he is definitely not the best Team Support character in the game, but he does decent work at it.

#NISHA THE LAWBRINGER :

Again, she has no Team-focused skills, but she is the tied with Athena as the second most damaging class in the game, but she doesn’t require as much stacking and she has the Aimbot HUM HUM Showdown Action Skill that allows you to just spam your mouse without caring about aiming your weapons. I consider her as the worst Team Support character since she doesn’t bring that much things to the team outside of some damage output.

#WILHELM THE ENFORCER :

My favourite character in TPS. He really shines in Team Support thanks to Saint & Wolf (being a pet class that can aggro enemies and damage them by quite a bit actually) and some of his skills, and he can put serious amounts of Damage on enemies while having a lot of Team Support. Let’s look at the boosts he can provide to the team :

  • Laser Guided : Allows you to mark an enemy, allowing Wolf to focus on him. Marked enemies take +87,5% Damage from all sources (multiplicative boost, just by pressing the Action Skill button).
  • Energize : Occasionally restores 40% of you and your allies’ Shields. 80% with the Celestial Enforcer COM.
  • Zero Hour : creates a healing circle that heals you and your allies for 8% Health/sec when you recall Saint and Wolf.
  • Hazmat Containment System : provides you and your allies a 50% Elemental Resistance, and the ability to transmit DoTs to enemies.
  • Overcharge : provides you and your allies +15% Movement Speed, +75% Fire Rate, +75% Reload Speed and Ammo Regeneration for 10 seconds, just by summoning Wolf and Saint.

Wilhelm’s boost are really huge and they don’t need any stacking or situation (outside of recalling/summoning Wolf and Saint), he has the most consistent Team boosts in the entire game. Laser Guided and Overcharge can give a huge boost to other characters such as Jack, making them absolutely insane. He is one of the best Team Support characters in the entire game.

#CONCLUSION AND YOUR THOUGHTS :
So, in my opinion, Wilhelm is the best at Team Support, but I’m really curious about what do you guys think, so please give me your opinion about this problematic, I’m really interested.

Thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas (Happy New Year soon) :slight_smile: !

#2

For me, it’d come down to Claptrap or Aurelia. I haven’t actually played with Aurelia’s co op mechanisms, so can’t honestly speak to them, but they seem much stronger.

1 Like
#3

What about Wilhelm ?

#4

[quote=“Enderborn1, post:1, topic:1552766”]ATHENA THE GLADIATOR :

She doesn’t have Team-related skills[/quote]I’m sorry, what?

  • Vanguard heals nearby allies. Fairly small range, but can be useful at times.
  • United Front recharges everyone’s shields. May screw over players with a maylay shield, but for any other shield it’s good. (Same problem as with Wilhelm’s Energize and Aurelia’s You First, actually.)
  • Stalwart … When I wrote somewhere on this forum that this skill is useless, someone else mentioned its synergy with Vanguard and United Front: other players can then trigger those skills themselves.
  • Prepare for Glory: with at least one point here activating the Aspis draws aggro. Who needs a pet when the Aspis can do damage and pull aggro?
  • Clear. Think Maya’s Res, only much better. When combined with Wrath of the Goddess Athena can revive the entire team at once (including herself when the Aspis throw kills something).

The only problem I can see with Athena as partner is kill-stealing.

[quote=“Enderborn1, post:1, topic:1552766”]JACK THE DOPPELGANGER :

He doesn’t have Team-focused skills[/quote]I wouldn’t call Supply and Demand nothing. Sure it’s not a lot, but health regeneration for the entire team is useful.
And then there are his options for ridiculous levels of crowd control:

  • You Have My Shield and a Black Hole constantly pulls enemies around, so they can’t shoot anyone.
  • Jack’s skills for free grenades (Jack’s Cache (enhanced by Leadership) and to a lesser extent On My Mark) can be combined with a singularity Grenade for similar effects.

Unfortunately Jack also has skills working against a team support role: Commitment and Accountability. Both give Jack benefits while his allies are down.

You forgot to mention Claptrap’s Through Thick and Thin: action skill cooldown for everyone when Clappy’s action skill is active. Oh, and some of his action packages can be quite useful for the entire team, for example Gun Wizard or One Shot Wonder.
Another thing you forgot is Aurelia’s Magic Bullet, which heals players around Aurelia’s target and can even revive them. It’s commonly used to get Aurelia herself back up, but it works for all players.

Now let’s look at another source of team support potential: class mods.

  • Athena has the Protector, which provides team cooldown rate, and boosts both of her 5-point team skills as well as Hold the Line which makes them last longer. Some other class mods for Athena can boost these skills as well, but none can compare to the Protector in terms of team support.
  • Claptrap has the Brotrap for team health regeneration, max health for only himself and boosts to Best Buds 4 Life and Through Thick and Thin.
    He also has the Piñata with team ammo regeneration, max health for himself (again) and a boost to Best Buds 4 Life.
    Honorable mention to the Celestial Fragtrap which also boosts two of Clappy’s team skills (Best Buds 4 Life and Maniacal Laughter) and the Glitch which should work relatively well by boosting Maniacal Laughter and making it easier to trigger that via elemental effect chance. (Haven’t used it yet, so that’s just a theory.)
  • Nisha has … (drum roll) still nothing.
  • Wilhelm has the Mech for team shield recharge rate and delay as well as a boost to Energize. You mentioned the Celestial Enforcer in your writeup on Energize, but for the skill boost alone a blue Support Mech would be better. Both have a cooldown skill on them as well which minimizes W&S (and therefore Energize) downtime.
    Honorable mention for the Chronicler of Elpis as the only class mod boosting Hazmat Containment System, but it doesn’t have a lot of team support other than that. Maybe a little bit more freezing via freeze chance and Cold War … but I wouldn’t use it for team support.
  • Jack has the CEO. Accuracy and critical damage for the team, plus most players use it anyway for its skill boosts.
    The Economist boosts Supply and Demand, and then there are the Protagonist (team shield capacity - not as useful for everyone because without a recharge rate boost a shield takes longer to recharge to full) and the Role Model (team max health and a rather bad class mod otherwise).
  • Aurelia has the Mistress for team health regeneration and a Valet boost. Fairly straightforward.
    The Master boosts two of her team support skills (Keep Your Chin Up and Save the Queen).
    Her remaining multi-point team skill, Protect Your Assets, can be boosted as well (using the Lady).
    Even when none of these are used, a boost to some of her cryo skills can mean less enemies shoot at the players, they take more damage, and they cannot dodge.

In my opinion Aurelia and Claptrap highest in terms of team support potential. Their toolkits are just so much bigger than those of other characters. Aurelia’s team support tree involves a lot of stacking, but do you need that when the entire battlefield is frozen?
Nisha is the last one for obvious reasons (her only way to help the team being to kill enemies before they can do fatal damage). Jack can do that too, and he has at least some team support options.
Athena and Wilhelm are somewhere inbetween. Willy boosts a lot of things (but some things are situational, like Hazmat Containment System requiring Wilhelm to have DoTs on him, or Zero Hour’s enforced immobility), Athena simply lives up to her team class mod’s name: she protects you no matter how much damage the enemies pump out, and if you are foolish enough to walk into the line of fire between her and the enemies, an Aspis throw gets you on your feet again.

4 Likes
#5

Well, I missed a LOT of things.
About Athena : to be honest, I’m not the biggest Athena player outside of Melee. You are right, she actually is a decent (or even good) Support character. The Ability to revive at range, Vanguard and Prepare for Glory (which is the “sponge” part of her support role) gives her a nice stand on co-op.

About COMs : I should’ve mentioned them, sorry about that. Thanks for underlining that. But I beg to differ on some things.

While the Mech boosts Rapid Reinforcement and Energize, the Celestial Enforcer also boosts Auxiliary Tanks, Afterburner, Fire Support and Man and Machine. Auxiliary Tanks’ cooldown boost is constant while Rapid Reinforcement is a Kill Skill, and the Movement Speed boost is already provided by the Celestial Enforcer COM and just needs your Action Skill to be up. Afterburner, Fire Support and Man and Machine boost Wolf’s efficiency, and Wolf is very important for Laser Guided, which is a HUGE damage boost for the entire team, so making Wolf stronger just makes Wilhelm better. In my humble opinion, the Celestial Enforcer COM is way better for Team Support, but the Mech is viable as well (if you don’t plan on using Laser Guided, the Mech COM is way better).

Well, as I already said I’m not the most proficient with Athena (except for melee), but the Defender is not really Athena’s best COM for herself alone. While Wilhelm still does awesome Damage with his Team Support COM, Athena is better off with other COMs.

But Wilhelm can make everybody do 87,5% more Damage on marked targets thanks to Laser Guided. This combined with Overcharge can waste Raid Bosses such as EOS within seconds.
And he can do some “sponging” with the 8,5%health/sec regen and Divert Power, and he can also deal significant DPS. While Athena’s “sponging” abilites are absolute (no damage taken), Wilhelm’s sponging abilities are constant (at least they last much longer).

For the rest, I completely agree with you.[quote=“3298, post:4, topic:1552766”]
Nisha has … (drum roll) still nothing.
[/quote]

:joy:

#6

[quote=“Enderborn1, post:3, topic:1552766, full:true”]What about Wilhelm ?[/quote]At some level, they’re all good at it, especially if the player uses gear and builds around shared co-op buffs, and actually plays this style properly. Compared to Aurelia, I would say that Aurelia’s a better choice, but again, I haven’t played with Aurelia’s Contractual Aristocracy tree; I’m basing this solely on the apparent merits therein.

1 Like
#7

[quote=“Enderborn1, post:5, topic:1552766”]About Athena : to be honest, I’m not the biggest Athena player outside of Melee.[/quote]And I’m not exactly the best Wilhelm player, as you can see. :innocent: You make a good point on the Celestial Enforcer.[quote=“Enderborn1, post:5, topic:1552766”]the Defender is not really Athena’s best COM for herself alone. While Wilhelm still does awesome Damage with his Team Support COM, Athena is better off with other COMs.[/quote]… but it’s not a bad class mod either. I ran mostly on Celestial Gladiator, Eternal Protector and (rarely) Resolute Protector solo all the way to 70, including Invincible Sentinel, Holodome Badass Round, Eclipse/EOS, Mutator Arena and Iwajira. It worked quite well.
Also, she doesn’t need the Protector to protect. :wink:

I might add that the Celestial Gladiator is a somewhat usable team class mod too. I initially skipped it because in terms of support it’s strictly inferior to the Protector, but it hits the Vanguard / Hold the Line pair as well. You only lose the cooldown boost and United Front.
Oh, and I just spotted an error in my Protector writeup: “boosts both of her 5-point team skills” -> “boosts two out of her three 5-point team skills” - I forgot Stalwart for a moment because I generally don’t really care for it. Strictly speaking Prepare for Glory is a 5-point skill too, but only the first point does something for the team (the aggro draw), so it’s a 1-point skill here.

1 Like
#8

It’s a well rounded COM, I like it a lot.[quote=“3298, post:7, topic:1552766”]
And I’m not exactly the best Wilhelm player, as you can see. :innocent: You make a good point on the Celestial Enforcer.
[/quote]

This is why the community exists :slight_smile:

#9

The Protector is actually really good for Athena and the Team. And she has enough damage without rocking a Storm or Dominator com to still blow Wilhelm away at his best. And besides the buffed up team boost it also has the only always-on cooldown boost available to the entire cast, which is pretty valuable in a world without BotA relics. But between the cooldown and boost to ‘Hold the Line’ it boost her survivability and damage quite a bit.

  • Unkillable
  • Ephodos is up longer and comes back quicker
  • Prepare for Glory stacks last longer and have the chance to stack even more
  • Supercondutor is up more
  • You can throw more Clear!s and Zeus’ Rages

Food for thought that I accidentally made over a year ago

So not the biggest of boost but still more than nothing. And if you still feel it’s lacking you can go for the Celestial Gladiator like 3298 said and get 10/5 Vanguard and Hold the Line plus much more.

You can’t even target EOS with Laser Guided, so he’s pretty worthless there. :stuck_out_tongue:

3 Likes
#10

As I already said, i’m not an Athena expert at all, so I might have said wrong things ^^
Your point and your arguments seem true, I forget about the stacking aspect of Gunner Athena.
(btw, nice gameplay here, didn’t know you were positing so I subbed :slight_smile:)

Sure, but you still have Overcharge. I was playing with my friend, he had Jack and I had Wilhelm. We wiped out ECLIPSE in a few seconds (I think he was using the Spadroon), and he used a Glitch Quad (or Developement, can’t remember) for EOS. Overcharge was enough to allow him to reach insane Damage outputs, just by deploying my Action Skill. His Digi-Jacks and Wolf kept everybody distracted while we were wasting EOS.

1 Like
#11

Athena or Aurelia. Been running my 70 Aurelia with 66 Claptrap; he’s had no issues surviving and man, what a combo.

1 Like
#12

Aurelia + Claptrap and Jack + Wilhelm are probably the best character combos in the game, imho.

1 Like
#13

Wilhelm’s the one character I don’t have at 70. lol So I can’t say much about him, but Aurelia + Clappy is insane and Jack’s so good, he’d fit in on any team.

#14

Well, if you have the time, I highly recommend you to try him if you like support characters.
His Action Skill can keep enemies distracted and Wolf does serious damage with enough Rolling Thunder stacks, Overcharge gives Ammo Regeneration, +75% Fire Rate and Reload Speed and +15% Movement Speed to all players in the team for 10 seconds when deploying Saint and Wolf, Energize can instantly regenerate 80% of you and/or an ally’s Shield and Laser Guided gives +87,5% Damage from all sources to the marked enemy.