Bought the handsome collection a few days ago, just imported our 360 characters last night. My brother and I are split screening as Athena/him as Wilhelm. We’re on the mission “Let’s build a robot army” we’re only level 51 and can still use all our level 50 legendaries, so gear/skill specs aren’t a problem, but… it’s just awful. Why is the xp so slow? Why are bad asses so hard to take out? We’re on mission 7/12 (no sidequests done yet) and we’ve only gotten one and a half level so far! Borderlands 1 only took 2 play throughs to max a chaaracter, Borderlands 2 uvhm gave 4 levels without side quests. Does it get any faster? 7/12 main missions meaning we’re more than half done. Will we only get 2 levels per play through? I just want to get level 70 so we can start the clap trap dlc. Does it get any faster? Is cryo needed to take out the bad asses we’ve been struggling with?
Well, sidequests often give more XP than main quests, so I recommend doing some of those 
if you just want to get to 70 to start the clap trap dlc then side quests/ grinding is faster IMO. you can grind the guardians or darksiders or something. Or someone has recommended restarting UVHM, playing through to the first time you meet jack, then restarting again as a way to gain experience. Personally, I had started the claptrap playthrough at 60 on UVHM and only gained 1 level in the HOURS I played it so that was strange too lol. You can also go back and fight red-belly a bunch of times. that seems to give decent experience and it’s pretty easy to run right to them if you do a bit of platforming.
If you do missions you won’t have any problems advancing 10 levels per playthrough. Badasses are badass. You have to make sure that you match elements against them and don’t stand in front of them. Use the strategery.
Honestly, I haven’t been able to try out UVHM yet. Its scaling looks way better than in BL2 however.
If you are struggling with XP, you may want to go to exp farming areas. Some areas I would recommend:
Holodome: Badass round (If you can stomach it). Lots of enemies, decent weapon and exp upon completion, repeatable.
New claptrap arena
Also, you may want to adjust your spec for your characters. Melee athena seems very dependent on decent gear to work correctly, so malestrom athena is probably your best bet if you are struggling with badasses. Go for a tesla grenade/ maliwan laser build and move from there. Should be able to wreck most high health targets with that build. I don’t really have any advice for wilhelm, except that he is not the strongest character to begin with. You may need to focus on the laser weapon type and really crutch the Rose for a bit.
Ah, the double-edged sword of scaling…
So, it seems that in UVHM, you get the map scaled to you when you enter it, REGARDLESS of the predetermined level scheme from TVHM and Normal. So, you’re not likely to face a trash mob of dudes 2-3 levels higher than you, that you can still beat down pretty easily with good gear, and gain tons of XP.
The alternative? Until about level 68, everything and everyone has 3-4 levels on you. One small mistake, and a Kraggon Pebble puts you in FFYL.
I started playing the Claptastic DLC on Tuesday night, and made it more than half of the way to level 61 from level 60, and that’s getting through to the sub-subconscious. I’m sitting at level 63 right now, after three straight nights of play, a UVHM restart, etc. A single Iwajira kill nets less than 10% of the required XP for leveling up.
Same stuff we dealt with, first time the level cap was increased, and UVHM was added. Personally, I’d prefer more badasses. The XP would be nice. But then, BL2 on OP8 kinda spoiled me on every third enemy (seemingly) being a badass of some description. TPS isn’t much of a challenge next to that.
Agreed with above: SIDE QUESTS.
Since 3/4 of my equipped guns are shock, I’ll switch my spec from this to this and we’ll do some side quests and redbelly farming. Thanks, everyone. 
I like your first build better. If you’re running a melee build you need to use cryo and explosive elements a lot. Hopefully you have a bladed Fridgia or Taser, and a good explosive weapon to make the most out of your current skills.
Also check out a couple good Xiphos based builds for ideas on progression:
Honestly, and I hate to say this, re-running the very first quest in UVHM repeatedly was the quickest way I found to get from 50-60, and I’m doing it again on at least one character for 60-7. Boring as all hell, but the thought of having to do the story AGAIN more than one more time is worse than the thought of starting UVHM over at level 70 with level 60 gear (but I did a “no-gear to start” uvhm run on Athena at level 60 with no problems, so I’ll risk it).
In my opinion, they really dropped the ball on UVHM XP in this game.
I seem to be doing better after I got a new Moxxi gun and switched to this http://thepresequel.com/Athena/5555151002100000000000415110115000/celgladiator,auto
The cryo suggestion was really good, thanks. I traded my brother a freeze easy for a fridgia and gave him an unkempt harold to go with it, makes badasses a lot easier.
While the EXP is slower than BL2, I’m not sure why everyone says it’s “bad”. Yeah, people who are like “I’mma save all the sidequests for lvl 60! Why am I completing the game at lvl 53?” are going to be low leveled. I did all the sidequests I normally do (not all of them) and usually killed Iwajira about 3 times per level. I ended the game just below level 59.
As for badasses, it’s the same reason as BL2. It’s supposed to be a hard enemy and now you’re on the hardest difficulty. Use every mechanic in the game to kill it. Have a good cryo weapon. Frozen enemies take a lot more damage from explosions. Fight it at a distance that benefits you but not the badass. Be airborne if you have good buffs for it. Slam attacks usually stagger enemies and buy you a few seconds.
There are quests u downright have to save for level cap for gun farming. And since tps has fewer side quests overall, the ones u have to save take their toll
doing side quests from what I have learned in uvhm makes everything overleveled up to the point to where eventually your weapons may be useless
Once you beat the game just farm the Sentinel, as well as the other loot dropping bosses. Loot runs through the R&D facility are pretty good for XP as well. BTW-My average on the Claptrap DLC was two+ levels per playthrough.
I’ve already gotten to level 70 on 3 characters. I had to do the uvhm story and a good majority of side quests, then reset and repeat that around a total of 3 times. It’s. so. slow.
edit: I’d also like to add that ultimate badass muggers are/were very hard to take out before I had my endgame gear.
edit 2: reworded for better understanding
I havent done enough UVHM yet to feel the tedium of the leveling yet, but i just got my 6th toon to 50, so it’s about to begin!
Aside from the XP thing, though, it’s a beautiful game mode.
The xp is slow, but the gameplay is so much better than bl2’s uvhm. No enemies with health regen, I’m not forced to use slag on everything, or cryo in this case. 
I think that’s exactly it, why they left out the health regen in UVHM. No slag. They had to play a little differently.
After all, there are cryo-resistant enemies and shields. There was no cryo-resistant shield in BL2, and only a few enemies were slag-resistant. So they could crank up the health and the regen, and you had slag to offset it. Not the case in TPS with cryo. Cryo may have kinda taken slag’s place, but it’s no 1-for-1 replacement for it.
UVHM isn’t as steep a curve in TPS, I think, as it was in BL2. I mean, the mid and upper 50s (levels) were HELL in BL2. OP8 feels downright easy next to the grind required to get through the 50s.