So my friend @Slif_One recently put together a cool L80/OP10 Maya build (The Fleeting Trickster) that asks the question, “What if you could play more aggressively as Maya?” I tried it out and it wasn’t quite working for me, plus I wasn’t able to use Fleet off host playing with my friends. So I thought to myself, what could I trade off in order to play more aggressively?
Build: The Heretical Binder (This sounds better than “Playing Maya with a Leg Binder/Subsequence but without Ruin”)
The ideas: What if we had enough slag that we didn’t need Ruin? What else would that allow us to do? Are you really so dense that you can’t see that you can just spend 4 more points for what is supposed to be Maya’s best skill?
At the cost of Ruin, I can now take the rest of a full Binder Build, full Kinetic Reflection, full Life Tap, and Scorn. Is this the most optimal Maya build, most certainly not, but you are much tankier and I can push really hard with this setup.
Skill Tree Discussion: You could put some of the points in Cataclysm where you like, it’s hard to pass on Foresight, Chain Reaction, Cloud Kill, and Reaper as straight DPS skills. I put 4 in Immolate because playing aggressively in BL2 means going down occasionally and 1 in Helios because I have 5 from my class Mod.
Harmony is wide open too, we just need some points in Sweet Release then Wreck, Res, Life Tap and Scorn. I take 1 in Restoration and Res for Co-OP as I’m often playing with melee characters.
For Motion, I don’t like Accelerate so I take Ward. Suspension is important for Subsequence and Kinetic Reflection is important for being able to push into mobs. Converge is essential, further testing might see the points in Quicken and Inertia swapped, I’m not sure what’s the best allocation between those two. Full Subsequence shockingly in a subsequence build.
Gear: All optional, I’ll go what I run and why
Relic: On element Bone of the Ancients as Phaselock4Life
Class Mod: Legendary Binder is my choice because of the cooldown bonus, the boosted Suspension, and the damage boosts to Reaper and Wreck. Other options would be a True Neutral Cleric with boosts to Suspension and Life Tap or a Mirrored Trickster for the same purpose as in @Slif_One 's build. Even though it doesn’t match the build, the Leg Siren is so good it would still be useful with this setup. You can swap out to a Leg Cat too when needed. Without the legendary class mods, I’d look for a blue Cunning Binder with +6 to Reaper.
Weapons: We’re fighting mid range to face tank range, so I had to make the hard to call to put the Bekah away…I go with Florentine for slag and dealing with OP10 shields on multiplayer difficulty. Without the shields, the Slagga would be a far better choice for this slot as the Florentine isn’t a great slagging tool. Then I go with an on element Butcher and Tattler for damage, both are great at face tank range or mid range. Finally, an explosive Badaboom for second winds. I keep the usual assortment of Pimpernels for Buzzards and/or other things at range.
Grenades: I use a low level magic missile so that I can not down myself on them as I rush in. These are for slagging and for not running out of grenades because you’re busy face tanking mobs as Maya. Anything would work here, a Quasar for crowd control, slag singularity for same, longbow slag transfusion for healing is probably optimal but I run out of grenades too easily.
Shield: Antagonist was my first choice due to the bullet reflection, slag chance, and the fact I didn’t have an OP 10 Blockade. Now that a generous PS4 forum member traded me one, I want to see if the flat DR from the Blockade outweighs the bullet deflection and slag chance of the Antagonist. I use the Evolution in wildlife areas. I can’t think of other useful options here outside of maybe a Roughrider, but I’m sure other stuff works.
Playstyle: I don’t have an easy means of uploading gameplay footage but I’ll try to get up a run of Sawtooth and Lynchwood I took with this build solo. The basic idea is to lead with a slagging option on the way in (Scorn, grenades etc.) or phaselock something quickly and throw a scorn ball. Then it’s get that first kill to get Kinetic Reflection and Life Tap up and go nuts like you’re Krieg (well maybe not that nuts…). I definitely went into FFYL at times, but it wasn’t constantly and I was rarely in a bad spot since I was close to enemies and have Scorn to slag without having to switch weapons.
I’m far from the first forum user to run without Ruin and I’ve seen others comment on this over the years, but I hadn’t seen any specific Binder setup like this without Ruin. If someone has made a similar build on these forums from the past, please let me know and I’ll link in this post to provide credit.
edit: Further testing shows not much difference going with 2/5 in Quicken and 5/5 in Inertia. I think this is a really strong setup 1 or 2 player, I haven’t tested it yet in 3 and 4 player where you can’t burst down big enemies in one phaselock as easily. On single player, a good (I have the reload prefix, maliwan grip, dahl stock) Florentine is great for small shielded enemies but I doubt it scales well for more players.
For bullet heavy areas, I definitely prefer the Antagonist. The blockade or evolution is great in non bullet areas. The build suffers in really wide open areas where there’s a lot of flying enemies. This is not as bad on the Peak as it’s made out to be (there’s not that many flying enemies, just some really annoying ones), but there I wouldn’t use this build due to it being risker to face tank on that run.
