Bullet Scrooge Amara Build

Borderlands 3 Amara the Siren
#1

So. Here’s the deal. I want to lay down as many elemental effects and damaging projectiles and EXPLOSIONS!!! as quickly as possible with Amara, while shooting as little as possible – basically, building around Deliverance, Remnant, Rush stacks, and Catharsis. Here’s the spec I came up with: https://bl3skills.com/siren/#0000000000000041403513301015015050301100

From the top, then.

Mystical Assault:
This is the core of this build. While every skill is really good here, we’re mostly looking for action skill damage buffs and cooldown. Everything else is icing – it’s just that all the icing is so damn good it’s hard to choose.

  • Do Harm (5/5). Spec into this for all the extra damage – up to 30%. Makes Deliverance (our ultimate goal) even better.
  • Fast Hands (1/5). Nice little quality of life. 22% swap and 21% mode change sound pretty good for just one point, with reload as icing on the cake.
  • Violent Tapestry (1/5). This is how I’m going to gain all those rush stacks – this, and a nice elemental gun.

Tier 2:

  • Transcend (3/3). +33% critical bonus could be a really big deal depending on how it’s calculated, but I wouldn’t really turn this down anyway.
  • Restless (5/5). More cooldown = more action skill spam. Need I say more?

Game Changer

  • Ascendant (1/1). Oh, give it to me, give it to me! Literally makes actions skill spam even better.

Tier 4

  • From Rest (3/3). If I’m gonna use Maliwan, this is a must. Really no two ways about it – but if there’s a good build with non-Maliwan or fast-charging weapons, you can bet these points are going into Wrath or Alacrity.
  • Laid Bare (3/3). While the percent debuff applied to enemies by Laid Bare is the same as the percent gun damage increase given by Wrath after an action skill is activated, and Wrath has a decent passive as well, the key here is that I don’t want to shoot more than I have to. I want to kill things with my action skill & spawned projectiles/explosions, not bullets! Bullets are for Moze!

Tier 6:

  • Remnant (3/3). At a sweet ~75% of Phasecast’s damage + overkill excesses, and hoping that Deliverance’s projectiles also count as “Action Skill damage”, this is one of the cores of the build. Build up Violent Tapestry with a gun or grenade, then watch the spawned projectile hell open in front of you.

Capstone:

  • Avatar (1/1). Probably the best capstone in the game. Double the fun, whichever way you look at it. More Rush? Yes, please. Free action skill casts?? YES, PLEASE!

Fist of the Elements
Tier 1:

  • Anima (5/5). A cool buff to action skill elemental damage (which we’ll have to wait to see how good it actually is), but I’m taking it here anyway. Will also probably help against those tankier enemies, keeping them coated with the inevitable plethora of elements for longer.
  • Infusion (1/5). Infusion lets me slip an extra element into my damage for free, but I don’t want to go whole-hog here – just enough to get the chance of an extra elemental effect; no more, no less.

Tier 2:

  • Tempest (5/5). Same deal as Anima: elemental damage buffs are awesome. And, Amara’s default action skill element is shock, so here’s a case of DOUBLY AWESOME.
  • Wildfire (5/5). I get to apply elemental effects without even trying? Sounds like free Rush to me. Definitely gonna take this.

Tier 4:

  • Indiscriminate (3/3). Make every bullet count – even though I don’t want to fire very many of them. With something like a high pellet count shotgun that can apply an element, this could be as good as Wildfire for spreading my elemental effects and stacking Rush.
  • Catharsis (1/3): TBH, the damage on this is pretty wimpy. It’s really only in this build for the eye candy. But who could refuse the dream… detonating a whole screen of adds after just a few bullets and two action skills.

Tier 5:

  • Sustainment (1/5): This point is a toss-up between here, Clarity (from Brawl, which I haven’t specced at all), and One With Nature. It’s the only point I’m spending on survival in this build, so it’s got to count… or it’s just going to go to a damage buff. Depends on how hard-hitting late game gets, I suppose.

Hexagon Action Skill: Deliverance. Not only does this do a hefty chunk of damage the first time around (especially buffed by Do Harm), it will summon projectiles to help restack via Violent Tapestry. If the phasecast or the projectiles kill, out come Remnants and the oh-so-beautiful Catharsis explosions. If they don’t, I can always cast it again, hitting even more enemies, thanks to…

Chevron Augment: Allure. If I want to get the most out of my action skill, Allure is going to be the choice. Everything (and more) that doesn’t die on my first pass will be pulled in for take 2… and may the explosions/projectile spam commence.

Diamond/Elemental Augment: None. If shock is anything like BL2, it will make for a decent mobbing experience. Perhaps Soulfire for flesh bosses, but I expect the damage increase to be not worth reopening the menu.

So there’s the build. I could see this generating a dozen projectiles, easy, on the second Deliverance cast (that’s a measly 3 enemies hit and killed) – and a whole bunch of explosions. Depending on the damage of those projectiles, this could even chunk bosses’ health pretty heavily (thinking that Megamind boss shown in gameplay previews – throw Deliverance or even Tandava straight at his face through those drones, and let chaos commence). Who needs to shoot their own bullets?

Alternatively, using the Torgue sticky mode, imagine the overkill damage from unloading a whole magazine onto a weak/damaged enemy, then detonating everything with perhaps a rocket launcher (not clear on interactions, but c’mon. Let me dream!). The Remnant projectile could chase around the whole freaking map, killing things. Also, Remnant should proc Catharsis, and I shouldn’t need to explain why that is awesome.

For bosses without plentiful adds, perhaps Soul Sap for survival, or, more likely, an entirely different build going for Downfall (Brawl & Mystical Assault trees). On the off chance Downfall’s beam lasts for one second, or if Do Harm buffs Tandava better, Tandava becomes the obvious choice for straight damage.

Quite a monolithic post for my first here… thanks for reading. Hope this sparks some ideas!

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#2

Hm… I dunno what you could potentially sacrifice for it, but Clarity (in the Phaseslam tree) would allow you a bit of extra survival, plus, if you decide to break it out afterward, maxing Clarity (Health Regen up to 5% per second for 5 seconds) unlocks Blight Tiger, which turns your Action skill into pure Corrosion, melting anything with armor.

#3

Yeah. The level cap has me wanting so much more… Clarity and One With Nature look like awesome survival skills in their own rights. Having Soul Sap available should help with survival in the meantime, too. Although, if everything dies 5 seconds after Amara walks into the room, I don’t think survival is going to be an issue. Co-op with 4 Amaras is going to be insane, she has so many customization options that every build could be valuable and quite distinct.

#4

Well, if the Borderlands 3 DLCs pull anything from Borderlands 2, the increased level cap should be on that list.

Level 80 Axton: 2x Slag ammo, rocket launching, mag-clamp-equipped longbow Sabre turrets. Need I say more?

#5

You said it all right there!

#6

You were right, @ewhall18, our builds play off each other pretty well.

If the game has (knock on wood, god forbid) similar scaling to BL2, I could honestly see a variation of this as my end game raid build just because you can get the single point of sustainment. ■■■■, I may mod my build get to get it just because 4% flat life steal is big in these games once numbers get big.

Without butchering either of ours too bad, this is the happy median I can come up with.

My only notes from yours is that as good as “from rest” is, I can not bring myself to leave wrath on the table with any build that runs Avatar. That’s an effective 15% damage buff you can keep up almost all the time that stacks with laid bare and the other toys that going AS/FOE grants. We give up a little on reload speed and crit damage but can pretty much always use allure or stillness of mind since I don’t think you’d ever need to tap the soul sap key with the point in sustainment. This feels like a really decent high damage/high survivability build, but the give away is that your dots and dot spreading effects aren’t as cohesive.

#7

Yeah. Your hybrid build is specced to take better advantage of weapons than mine – that reload speed and gun damage from Alacrity and Wrath come to mind.
Here’s a build that gets into Remnant and Awakening by swapping out of Transcend and From Rest. I don’t know about the last two points that need to go into From Rest or Wrath, or back down the tree to VT… From Rest seems like a bigger deal for just one point and I can’t sneak the leftover one into Awakening. If Maliwan turns out to be garbage though From Rest will be next to useless, and the choice is easily Wrath.

I haven’t even attempted to math whether the third point is better in Remnant or Awakening. Maybe I’ll break out a spreadsheet later.

1 Like
#8

mrt

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#9

Remade the build under the assumption that Deliverance’s projectiles will spawn novas (being Action Skill projectiles) when specced into Revelation… hopefully even better explosions than Catharsis, albeit we don’t get to use Allure & get explosions without jumping into the menu.
I’ll call it… Revelations of Deliverance Amara. Although, Tandava into a clump of enemies could be hilarious, especially if Revelation procs itself. I doubt it, but… EXPLOSIONS!!!

If there’s a COM that boosts Violent Tapestry, I think with 1 skill point we can get to near 100% elemental effect chance at 18~20 Rush stacks (EDIT: when using a gun with relatively high base chance). Those 2 points go straight into Alacrity or Remnant, then.

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#10

mrt

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