Hey guys! I’ll likely be on here killing time for a while after release. I’m curious what kind of Sirens I’ll be shooting the ■■■■ with. So if you’re here, seems like you’re at least tangentially excited about Amara - how are you going to spec her?
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My plans are to make her like a kinda hybrid of Athena and Gaige. Just causing as much elemental chaos up close and personal as possible.
As someone who hunts for elemental stuff, she seems to have more in common with Athena than the other sirens thusfar. That being said, I still spec’d my Athena as mid range - the only time I got up close was when I needed shackles to boost stacks >.>
I’m going straight mage.
What do you play on?
But yeah, I am trying to build a good mix it up Athena. And currently working out the bugs on the most volatile In Your Face Gaige possible. Lol.
Steam, seemingly soon to be Epic, barring any changes between now and release.
I respect it. I feel kind of bad because Athena and Amara both were clearly meant to be all up in peoples business and such… and I’m just over here like “awww, I have to use a shotgun”…
I never had much luck with gaige though. My elemental build seemed… not great without anarchy, and I’m bad at not reloading >.>
I think I’ll start with a close quarters build with the left tree, using melee as a finisher and to trigger Jab Cross. I’ll definitely try an elemental build eventually, status effects seem really interesting in this game with cryo and the new radiation element.
I gotta say though, when you’re used to having 70+ skills points it’s so hard to make builds for level 50. There’s always something just out of reach!
I think my favorite part of this go around is probably less the new skill trees (which are still a step up), but how customizable you can make your action skill.
I have almost no interest in the Brawl tree, but Glamour seems very workable with elemental support in a slightly close up run, so I’ll probably try it out at some point. Revelation is almost good enough for a beam spamming Amara to get 10 points in just to add a nova to her modded Phasecast.
It’s an interesting system, I’m really geeked to see how it plays out.
You kinda need to go melee/elemental to get the most bang-for-your-punch with amara since there are two skills in the right tree that are pretty crucial to a melee build.
Mmmm, kind of?
This is at least the prototype of what I could see my brawl spec as. For sure, there’s some elemental stuff involved, but a lot of it is just coming from the baseline stuff involved in the action skill and generally adding gun damage.
I’d probaly say Downfall + Stillness of Mind/Glamour + Blight Tiger makes for a fairly potent combo with that setup.
It’s hard to ignore the flat melee buff in the other, but if you’re looking for an up close/tight build that doesn’t necessarily only rely on melee, Mystical Assault gives you the firm ability shove a shotgun in somethings mouth and teach it some etiquette.
Melee, of course. But a melee build will be able to cause elemental damage, so I ticked that too. And since she’s more of a “punch-you-in-your-face-until-you-die” melee character like Brick, Krieg, and Athena, than the sneaky OSOK assassin that Zer0 was, tanking her out will be important, so I checked that box too.
She’s like a Lilith/Brick/Athena hybrid, and Athena herself was kinda like a Maya/Krieg hybrid. All among my favourite characters in the series, and I love melee characters. Amara is already my new favourite vault hunter.
My provisional build so far - It could be a little tankier admittedly but seeing as it’s a melee-elemental hybrid build and roid shields are making a return, I didn’t want to put points into Mindfulness, and Helping Hand(s) only lasts for 8 seconds after using an action skill which if the action skill + augment causes enough damage and/or crowd control to make swift work of them all, probably won’t need to waste points on it. So I chose more overall synergy instead with Arms Deal.
Can’t say too much about the action skills yet, but I think I’d be content with using Phaseslam and augmenting it with Allure, possibly with corrosive damage. Even if there are stragglers remaining, the crowd control + X stacks of Samsara should be sufficient to finish the job.
DAMN IT. THEY DID IT AGAIN.
They put a shield regen skill on a movement speed skill. Brb.
I just decided to come up with a sniper Amara build. Brb
So, I didn’t properly distribute these, but the basic gist here is to make an elemental sniper. PhaseGrasp from a distance to then wreck everything in existence. I mostly put points into Brawl to make sure I have a bonus corrosive element to use, but also, the arm damage thing is kinda cool, as is increased splash damage. Then I used middle tree to get to Stillness of Mind, because if I can’t Wildfire a group of enemies, then snipe them out individually too. That’s gonna be great. Again, skill points need to be relocated a few of these cause I missed some critical hit and accuracy bonuses. But the basic concept remains, crowd control via sniper range. But she can also get in and get messy if she has to.
I wonder if ricocheting bullets from Indiscriminate or DoT spread from Wildfire would interfere with Stillness of Mind? If those skills drop everything otherwise held by Phaselock, which I assume you don’t want to happen as you want them held in place so you can line up an OSOK, they might be rare instances of detrimental skills?
This also got me thinking, how well would Indiscriminate synergise with Ties That Bind and would the link damage from Ties That Bind drop enemies held by Stillness of Mind? Ah so many possibilities!
It’s hard to say without testing. At face value, going by my inner MTG rules lawyer, my thought would have to be “if it takes damage while it’s in stillness”, it gets broken. I don’t see it as the major crowd control mechanic - that’s what the Phasegrasp set of abilities is for. I see it as a tangential “oh ■■■■” type of thing you’d use in like, mass mobbing situations when trying to provide cover support, kind of like a “Daze” effect in World of Warcraft. It’s possible they’ve already hashed this out and have exceptions in place for a lot of those skills (perhaps only breaking if directly targeted? Seems pretty exploitable with a lot of aoe abilities/grenades though).
I’m more curious how they’ve balanced the various phase shift versions that basically read “hit them, and then extra damage to stuff around them”. Those type of abilities are really hard to apple/orange correctly, because if one is slightly better than the other… well the other will never get used. Considering the magey build I put up relies heavily on the idea of spamming those… that math will be important ;.;
Right now I think Allure and Soul Sap are two of the most dynamic “chevrons” that people can pick up, because they cover a lot of bases no matter what you’re trying to do. Allure is equally useful for elemental ranged people trying to bunch enemies together for big Action Skill bombs and for melee people using it as “c’mere” feature when going through a round pound. Like wise soul sap never seems like a bad thing, especially with all the AOE action skills that amara has options to hit, and can either provide the extra juice needed for tanking or spot healing for a more damage based build. Don’t get me wrong, I like most of the chevron abilities, but both of those are good enough for a build to tap into a tree it may not like just to grab.
For the most part I agree. The main reason Revelation appeals to me is because it reduces action skill damage by the least out of all the augments - bar Soul Sap which has no damage penalty - while also adding an additional damaging nova that is boosted by Ascendant. With Amara’s survivability in her BRAWL tree I’ll only take Soul Sap if I feel like she needs more. On paper, and especially with Samsara, that may not be the case. At least for my planned build anyway, but we shall see.
Also, I don’t have enough investment to reach Allure 
Here’s a better nut for your trail mix -
Avatar (Mystical Tree) + Action Skill The Eternal Fist from Fist of the Elements + Stillness of Mind Chevron
So um.
Is that just like a screen wide CC or…?
Cause by my math that’s up to 8 grasp targets every cooldown (with at least two of them going through, the rest are dependent on kills while locked) and every time you do it everything around them also gets locked?
That seems… um. Let’s say problematic. Fun. But problematic.
I have thought about the action skill and augment combo, not so much the skill as I don’t intend to venture far into that tree. Amara can get a lot of hard CC if you build her for it. She’s going to be a great tank, melee or not. But melee, of course.
Edit: What about Ties That Bind + Glamour? Does the damage the confused enemies inflict on each other share between the links, or does that only apply to Amara’s attacks? Imagine if they all just kill each other 
