Similar to the Shaktiboy’s BeeFour and Shaktiboy’s Bouncing Ruin Bee builds I posted. Shaktiboy’s build help me get through OP8 with ease. Enjoy:
Certain links will be broken but I’ve replaced the one I can. It would be a ton of work to replace all the work Bahroo and company did in the past lmao
I have all 6 classes unlocked for 72 OP8 and this particular Gaige build is very robust and flexible for general mobbing and DigiPeak runs.
A lot of classes need to run in UVHM mode with a heal gun of some sort (Rubi/Grog) on swap. This build is built around the same concepts as Atroization’s “BeeFour” build for Axton, and just like that Axton build, this one can run most UVHM content, even solo DP OP8 runs, -without- needing a heal gun at all. Hell, you don’t even really need to slag things.
This Gaige build is actually -stronger- for general mobbing than the Axton’s BeeFour. Gaige can play like a juggernaut face-tanking steamroller with this build. Axton has to play more tactically and do some cat-and-mousing, even for general mobbing. For harder DigiPeak runs at high OP levels, Axton probably has a slight edge over this build because of the fine control with which he can manage aggro using his turrets.
The skill tree and what makes it different from most popular Gaige builds
When looking at the skill tree, bear in mind that this build concept requires the following COM from the new UVHM2 expansion, specifically for the +5 bonuses to Myelin, Unstoppable Force, Smaller Lighter Faster, and Typecast Iconoclast, which pushes each to 10/5 points.
Legendary Anarchist (Gun Damage +47%, Gun Accuracy -34%;
+5 Strength of 5 Gorillas, Myelin, Unstoppable Force, Smaller Lighter Faster, Typecast Iconoclast)
Also bear in mind that this is a min/max build that avoids EVERY weak skill listed in the Gaige’s General and Skill Tree Deficiencies thread. This means it purposefully eschews the Little Big Trouble tree entirely except for one specific skill that helps to max out uptime for The Bee: Myelin , which is boosted to 10/5 by the Anarchist COM). Even with the new Legendary Catalyst mod, IMO the LBT tree is still not beefed up enough to make the electrical and status effect buffs worth a damn compared to the return on investment you can get from investing in the BFF and OC trees. Yes, I’ve tried all of the new synergies afforded by the Catalyst COM, and I’m not impressed. And yes, there are 2 points in Annoyed Android , which is one of the “weak” skills, but I needed 2 more points in the OC tree to unlock Nth Degree and there was no better place to spend them.
I’m dubbing this build the " Insulated Discordant Bee " as a mnemonic to distinguish it from other Anarchy-centric builds. This build is designed 100% around maximizing uptime for The Bee sheild, and Discord actually plays a large part in that. Also, it is “insulated” against shock buffs (anti-LBT tree) Therefore: Insulated + Discord + Bee shield = Insulated Discordant Bee .
What’s different about this specific build? Six things all specifically oriented around maximizing up-time for The Bee and min/maxing the best buff synergies for Gaige while avoiding the weak ones:
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Max investment in Anarchy generation buffs (9/5 Smaller Lighter Faster, 10/5 Typecast Iconoclast, and 1/1 Rational Anarchist to provide plenty of “fuel” for Discord. In this build, Anarchy is a resource to be constantly consumed for ongoing health regen during battle, not hoarded and built up. Your damage comes from The Bee, not from Anarchy stacks. This enables you to use accurate weapons for faster burn-down of targets than you can typically accomplish with 400+ Anarchy stacks and a Fibber/Hail/CC to compensate for the accuracy loss.
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Playstyle requires keeping Anarchy stacks very low (rarely higher than 75) to enable using high-accuracy weapons for faster Bee takedowns during the alpha strike of every encounter, where high initiative counts.
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Max investment in shield recharge rate and delay buffs. The 10/5 in Unstoppable Force isn’t really for the shield buff, but for the movement buff. (The sheild buff from this particular skill is made effectively obsolete by how Blood Soaked Shields works.)
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Max investment in health regen rate buffs (specifically Discord ) to mitigate the downside of an essential shield recharge rate buff ( Blood Soaked Sheilds ).
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Max investment in Upshot Robot and 20% Cooler to provide as much tanking distraction as possible from DeathTrap, meaning you’re shot at less and your Bee shield therefore stays full more often.
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Explosive Clap is used specifically to maximize DT’s aggro-drawing potential, even though you might normally argue for omitting Explosive Clap to maximize the single-target damage potential of Robot Rampage.
These six unique elements synergize to minimize the “glass” portion of the “glass cannon” effect of The Bee. In fact, it minimizes the effect so much that you literally never need a heal gun at the ready for any UVHM situations. Not even for a solo DP8 run. You can have Discord running constantly throughout the alpha strike of every encounter, which makes Blood Soaked Shields painless. Unlike in the Axton BeeFour build, you don’t need to jink and run away as often if your Bee takes a hit, because the best way to get the Bee immediately recharged with this build is to face-tank and kill any enemy ASAP, which immediately brings The Bee back into action.
It’s a very strong build concept that is nearly the equal of the Axton BeeFour:
A. It supports a huge variety of weapon preferences equally well.
B. It burns down single targets faster than even sweet spot hits with a Pimpernel on a Zero built for Pimpernels. Squeeze>burst>dead on anything except Badasses and Constructors.
C. It’s completely robust without ever needing a Rubi/Grog on swap ready to save your bacon.
Refresher course: Why The Bee?
In part, because it enables you to deal with UVHM difficultly even with crappy white and green guns .
In normal and TVHM playthroughs, The Bee was widely considered OP and broken. However, in UVHM mode, and especially in OP1-OP8 play, the Bee is instead an equalizer to get ahead of the ramped up HP Pools and Health regen scaling of UVHM play, especially at all levels above 61. The problem is that while nearly every class can benefit from the huge extra damage output of The Bee, not every class can realistically deal with The Bee’s main tradeoff, which is a low capacity coupled with a long recharge delay time (roughly a 6-second baseline before buffs/modifiers). Only Axton and Gaige have the ability to effectively minimize the downsides of The Bee. Maya can also minimize the downsides, but not to the same extent as Axton and Gaige.
It’s worth remembering (or learning) that The Bee and all amp shields already gain a huge extra bonus from weapons that have “splash damage”. Basically, The Bee (and all amp shields) deal their full listed amp damage value for the initial hit from every bullet, plus one more scaled hit for the splash hit from every bullet. So, for example, if the weapon you’re using has an 80% splash bonus, then the Bee hits twice as follows:
100% of listed amp damage for the initial bullet hit
+
80% of the listed amp damage for the splash hit.
So you would get the bullet damage itself + the gun’s splash damage itself + (amp damage * 1.80)
To see my own in-depth testing of The Bee in UVHM2 OP+ environments with LOTS more details and commentary, refer to Updates on The Bee at 72 OP+ levels.
To see which weapons have splash and more detail about amp damage and splash, here are three useful links:
Bahroo’s explanation of Amp shields
Bahroo’s explanation of splash mechanics and splash bonuses
A comparative survey of common splash weapons + The Bee by Seraphor
The gear
Guns:
For general UVHM mobbing and coop, pretty much anything you like. Seriously. I like the way SMGs “feel” with The Bee, so I run with a Hellfire, a corrosive Bitch, a general purpose AOE splash gun like an Ogre or Hail, and some type of FFYL gun in the 4th slot (Norfleet, DPUH, or SWORDSPLOSION!!!) Pimpernel snipers are also amusing and fun with The Bee (and therefore often replace my AOE splash gun in the 3rd slot.
For harder OP4+ play, such as an OP8 solo run, you’ll need to start abusing some well-known guns that make for a “broken” combo with the Bee, namely:
A fire Sandhawk or Fibber (Barrel 3), a corrosive Sandhawk or Fibber (Barrel 3), a shock Gromky Lyuda, and a shock Norfleet.
As I’ll mention further below, you can alternatively abuse Fibber (Barrel 3) and Hail guns if you want to swap 3 points from Potent as a Pony and 2 points from Annoyed Android into (5/5) Preshrunk Cyberpunk for maximum Anarchy stacks on top of the Bee damage for the hardest OP8 content.
Other gear:
COM: Legendary Anarchist (Gun Damage +47%, Gun Accuracy -34%;
+5 Strength of 5 Gorillas, Myelin, Unstoppable Force, Smaller Lighter Faster, Typecast Iconoclast)
Relic: fire Bone or corrosive Bone
Shield: Inflammable Bee or non-elemental Bee (Tediore capacitor for the fastest recharge delay).
Grenade: Magic Missile provides endless homing slag. There is no better grenade for this build.
Earlier versions of this guide recommended a non-elemental Bee based on asserted data at the time. My own detailed testing has more recently proven that all things considered, an elemental Bee is the best option, for reasons explained here: Updates on The Bee at 72 OP+ Levels. And among all the elemental resistances, Fire resistance is the best all-around choice. If you have a Corrosive Bee, that’s useful too when running in robot-heavy areas. And finally, if you don’t have an Inflammable Bee but you -do- have a non-elemental (Tediore) Bee, that will work just fine too as your full-time shield.
Coupled with all the other shield-buffing skills in this build, the Bee just zips back up to full amazingly fast after getting hit. One thing to bear in mind is that the damage from the Bee itself at these high 72+ levels is a MASSIVE part of your damage output. For example, an OP3 Bee does 940,095 damage per hit. An OP3 Bitch does 108,562 per hit. The +47% gun damage buff from your Legendary Anarchist COM ups that Bitch damage to 159,586 per hit. So your +47% gun damage buff is giving you an additional 51K damage, but just equipping a Bee gives you an additional 940K damage. Per hit. For a non-splash weapon. Because the Bee also adds an additional hit for the splash component, the Bee is even more devastating with most splash weapons.
Other key elements for the min/max version of the build are the new (UVHM 2 DLC) Legendary Anarchist COM and the (DLC 4) Bone of Ancients relic. The Anarchist COM gives you 10/5 Unstoppable Force for ultra fast movement to avoid more bullets during combat, 10/5 Myelin for 60% resistance to Shock and 30% larger Bee shield, and 9/5 Smaller Lighter Faster plus 10/5 Typecast Iconoclast for ultra-fast generation of Anarchy as a resource for your Discord. You never need to bother with preloading Anarchy before playing because it generates so fast. You always have enough Anarchy to run Discord full-time as needed during the hot combat situations.
The Bone’s main buffs give you the better min/max on your fire/corrosive damage, plus fastest possible cooldown on your Death Trap when coupled with your 5/5 in 20% Cooler .
Playstyle
Toss out DT and a Magic Missile ahead of you, and toggle Discord on as soon as you have 25 stacks of Anarchy during the fire-fight (which happens at the first kill or first auto-reload.
Unlike with an Axton Bee-based build, you don’t want to run for cover every time your Bee takes a hit. Instead, you need to fearlessly face-tank (at long/mid range where possible) and always be pressing forward and making kills. String those kills together as fast as possible to keep DeathTrap up and running, to keep the Anarchy stacks building up faster than Discord eats them up, and to keep your Bee recharged to full as fast as possible when you do take a hit here and there. Stand in the fire and let DT show you what to kill next (while watching your radar for red dots appearing behind you and on your flanks. The more aggressive you play, the more invincible you are. The Bee plus Blood Soaked Shields does 90% of the work as long as you push forward to find new targets to face tank and burn down. You do the other 10% by managing Anarchy and Discord correctly. You want Discord running full time, and if you’re playing aggressive enough, you can spend entire minutes with Discord active and never shutting off, because you’re generating Anarchy so fast. And even if Discord does shut off, one kill (or auto reload) and you start the engine rolling again.
Likewise, if you’re playing aggressively enough, DT rarely disappears and can last for minutes. I’m able to clear the initial train-tracks area of Lynchwood with one DT summon…and he never disappears until after every bandit is dead. All of them.
Don’t let your Anarchy stacks get above 75, or your accuracy suffers.
If you have less than 25 stacks of Anarchy after clearing an encounter, then just let it run down to 0. It’s faster to start a new fight with 0 Anarchy and instantly jump to 25 stacks (from Rational Anarchist ) than it is to start with 19 stacks.
A note about Nth Degree and why it’s worth it
Some people dismiss Nth Degree as “not worth it” because they feel that it scales best at 1/5 and there is diminishing returns for the next 4 points. Also they feel that even at 5/5 it’s not worth it because “it’s only a 20% damage increase”.
However, most analyses of Nth Degree are wrong, and they overlook one fact: if the ricochet bullet hits its target, then it counts as one of the bullet hits towards the next one! Draw it out like this, starting with your first shot. Each new line represents a ricochet that procs from each 5th consecutive hit (at 5/5 Nth Degree), assuming that every ricochet hits.
Code:
hit hit hit hit hit
----------------hit hit hit hit
----------------------------hit hit hit hit
----------------------------------------hit hit hit hit
See how the frequency actually works out to 25%? Do you want 25% more Bee damage for 5 skill points? Especially considering that there aren’t any better places to spend these points by the time you get past 60 points invested? Hell yes! That works out to roughly 250K more damage per shot that hits at the OP0-OP8 levels of The Bee. What other skill left after the first 60 points invested (towards this build concept) will give you that return on investment for 5 points?
So the true damage increase potential of Nth Degree works out more like this:
1/5 12.5%
2/5 14.3%
3/5 16.7%
4/5 20.0%
5/5 25.0%
How to tune for OP8 solo runs of DigiPeak
If you feel like The Bee is “too glassy” as you push past OP4 DigiPeak runs, you can easily to convert to the same core build synergies (high Anarchy stacks, no Discord looping) that Caballo Gallo used for his solo OP8 DP run.
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Move 3 points from Potent as a Pony and 2 points from Annoyed Android into Preshrunk Cyberpunk to get PC to 5/5.
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Equip a fire Dynamic Fibber (Barrel 3) and a corrosive Dynamic Fibber (Barrel 3) as your main guns.
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Start with fire and corrosive Sandhawks, but as your Anarchy stacks creep over 100 and your accuracy with Sandhawks goes down too far, swap to the Fibbers instead and start shooting at the ground instead of at targets. It’s cheap cheese, but you need cheap cheese to solo OP8 DigiPeak, and only Fibbers will work to get you through Surveyors. Unlike Axton’s similar BeeFour build, you can’t rely on accuracy to snipe down the Surveyors with a Bitch or Gromky Lyuda, so you can’t really main Sandhawks nearly as well as you can main Fibbers and supercharge them with 400 stacks of Anarchy on top of your Bee.
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Switch to ShamFleet for the assassins, then back to Fibber afterward.
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Use the Bee for the encounters where it still works for you and makes sense. But you can also switch to a Sham or Blockade in sections where you need more damage absorb.
Hope this was helpful to all the Gaige players. Try it; you’ll like it!