Hello,
My name’s Retrodenizen, and I decided to post about the build I’ve created and my gear load out for Jack. I’ve been meaning to post here for a week or so now, but I’ve just not found the time. I first created this build without looking online and without the skill Company Man, but when I was looking at the forums here to see if anyone had my build, I noticed that many people used other skills that I hadn’t taken, so I did some testing and in the end I slightly tweaked my build to include Company Man.
In case you’re wondering, I removed 5 points from Integrity to do so.
As a note, I haven’t noticed anyone with my exact build. I have noticed one or two similar builds, but as of yet I haven’t seen anyone post with this build. The biggest difference in this build that I use compared to the other similar builds that I’ve seen is that I haven’t seen anyone take and utilize all of the speed boosts that this build has to offer like I do.
Below is a link to my build. The only skills missing on this build are the class mod given skills, since the site does not have the mod that I use. What should be there is 10/5 Company Man and 11/5 Absolute Advantage.
Anyways, here’s a video of me fighting Eclipse & Eos (<–video link) with my setup with a 3 minute 37 second kill time (legitimate of course, no hacks, no exploits of any kind).
As to my build and weapon load out, you can find them below.
Weapons:
2 Practicable Development Shotguns (In the video I have an electric and a corrosive shotgun. Fire makes a decent backup if you’re going up against high health fleshed mobs.)
Absolute Zero (Any cryo Maliwan weapon will do, this one simply empties its clip fast.)
Win-Win T4s-R (Any Hyperion weapon will do.)
Gear:
Shield of Ages (extremely high shield capacity)
Indistinguishable Projection Class Mod (yes, the blue one)
Homing Quasar (just because it’s a Hyperion)
Arctic Tranquility Oz Kit (for extra gun damage)
Build:
Hero of this Story (16 points)
5/5 Best Foot Forward (every time you kill an enemy, increases your Digi-Jacks’ duration.)
5/5 Take Their Freedom (every time you or your Digi-Jacks kill an enemy, you heal 12.5% of your health)
1/1 Jack’s Cache (I needed to use a point, so I may as well have a free grenade if I ever choose to use one. Also, it’s another “kill an enemy” skill.)
5/5 Lean on me (Increases fire rate based on how high your health is. This synergizes well with Best Foot Forward and Teamwork.)
Greater Good (24 points)
5/5 Collaborate (Stacking damage bonus when a Digi-Jack dies.)
5/5 Synergy (Kill an enemy, get more weapon damage and critical damage.)
1/5 Teamwork (When a Digi-Jack dies gain health regen)
5/5 Winning (Kill an enemy, get 25% of your shields instantly. Synergizes well with Shield of Ages.)
1/5 Optimism (When a Digi-Jack dies it comes back with less health. This allows them to die faster and more often (that’s a good thing)).
5/5 Believe (Kill an enemy, gain more power.)
1/1 Potential (When a Digi-Jack spawns he sets off a shock nova (landmines anyone?). More importantly you can summon your Digi-Jacks in “Fight for your Life” mode.)
1/1 Leadership (When a Digi-Jack dies, it counts as if you had killed an enemy! Also a Digi-Jack dying can bring you up from “Fight for your Life” mode once per activation.)
Free Enterprise (27 points)
5/5 High Frequency Trading (Increases weapon swap speed. Synergizes well with Incentives.)
5/5 Incentives (Stackable fire rate bonus for swapping your weapon.)
1/1 Money is Power (…an overpowered skill if I’ve ever seen one…)
10/5 Company Man (10 ranks = 20% increased Critical Hit Damage per equipped Hyperion weapon.)
5/5 Taxation of Trade Routes (Up to 60% fire rate depending on how empty your equipped guns are.)
11/5 Absolute Advantage (Killing an enemy gives a chance to not consume ammo when fired. 11 ranks = 88% chance for guns and 44% chance for rockets.)
1/1 Sponsored By… (Lots and lots of effects. I use this with a cryo Maliwan weapon.)
How it works:
If you’ve used a similar build to this playing as Jack, then what I’m going to say here probably won’t surprise you at all. If you’ve not used or seen a build like this before, then allow me to ask, “what have you been doing all this time while playing Jack!?”
This build is built around Jack’s action skill, his “Digi-Jacks”, and maintaining kill skills while they are out. They are the source of his power. Any damage they happen to do to an enemy is just extra damage on top of this build. If they didn’t attack, the build wouldn’t suffer in the least.
First off, because of the skill Leadership, every time a Digi-Jack dies, it counts as a kill towards granting bonuses that a kill would (including Second Winds, once per Action Skill activation). There are few things that this does not work with, and in fact the only thing I have run across that Digi-Jack granted deaths/kills do not help with is reloading your weapon if it’s yellow glitched.
Also, because of the skill Optimism your Digi-Jacks will start dying faster the longer they are out. As a note, you can “range” your Digi-Jacks, that is to say that you can run away from them. This will cause them to die and re-spawn next to you. When you range your Digi-Jacks it does count as them dying in terms of any effects that would give. Also, I have seen people put 5/5 into Optimism. This is unnecessary, as 1/5 will suffice in giving your Digi-Jacks less health whenever they re-spawn.
After your Digi-Jacks die about 4 times each, they will be offing themselves about every second if you’re in combat between enemies hitting them and you running around ranging them.
So, every time your Digi-Jacks die, what do you gain? Well, let’s itemize it:
- Health Gain: 12.5% instant + 0.5%/second regen for about 10 seconds. The regen can stack up to 10 times.
- Shield Gain: 25% instant
- Movement Speed: 20% (kill skill granted)
- Digi-Jack duration increase: 2.5 seconds (with diminishing returns).
- Weapon Damage: +55% (kill skill granted)
- Weapon Damage: +5% per stack every time a Digi-Jack dies (stackable to 10 times for 50%).
- Critical Damage: +30% (kill skill granted)
- Fire rate: +20% (kill skill granted)
- Reload Speed: +20% (kill skill granted)
- Accuracy: +20% (kill skill granted)
- A shock nova somewhere around you as a new Digi-Jack spawns immediately as the previous one dies.
- Picks you back up out of “Fight for your Life” if necessary (once per Action Skill activation).
- Every 4 kills (or Digi-Jack deaths) gives you a free grenade (only 1 grenade can be stored this way).
- Lastly, and most importantly, an 88% chance to not consume ammunition when firing (kill skill granted)
And those are just what happens when a Digi-Jack dies! There are other abilities that function Independently of that:
- Lean on me grants up to 35% fire rate dependent on how full your health is, and as long as your Digi-Jacks are out, your health is almost always full.
- High Frequency Trading gives you a permanent 75% weapon swap speed bonus.
- Incentives gives you 10% fire rate per stack (up to 4 stacks) for 10 seconds whenever you swap weapons. If you’re doing this correctly, every time you swap weapons you will get 2 stacks of this (see Sponsored By…).
- Money is Power gives you a 0.25% damage bonus every time you pick up money with a whopping 999 stack limit! While getting 999 stacks isn’t really feasible in normal gameplay unless you’re playing for hours on end, at max stacks that is a massive 249.75% damage bonus! (as a note, the game says “damage bonus” as opposed to “weapon damage”, so I don’t know how this particular skill multiplies into damage calculations.)
- Company Man at 10/5 ranks into it gives a 20% Critical Hit damage and 15% Accuracy bonus per piece of Hyperion gear I have equipped. As I have 6 pieces of Hyperion gear on, that is a 120% Critical Hit Damage and a 90% Accuracy bonus.
- Taxation of Trade Routes grants up to 60% fire rate depending on how empty your equipped guns are. I always run around with my Absolute Zero and my Win-Win T4s-R empty because of this skill.
- Sponsored By… I’m sure that this skill has been the subject of much debate. I personally used to swap from Vladof weapons to take advantage of the +35% fire rate increase that it granted, but after some testing between that and Jakobs, my friend and I found that the Jakobs +30% weapon damage boost out shined the Vladof fire rate for the Shotguns that I was using, even if just barely. After a little more testing (and again, before looking at any forums) we then found that using a cryo Maliwan weapon was the way to go for 3 reasons. First, it gave more of a damage boost than the Jakobs because the Jakobs damage affects weapon damage, while the Maliwan’s +25% “damage as elemental” seems to take effect after all damage has been calculated. Second, it has a significant chance to freeze non-cryo enemies rooting small enemies in place and making all frozen enemies take additional tick damage (on top of the initial hit of damage on every shot). Third (and in my opinion most importantly) because it freezes enemies, my shotguns will deal an additional +200% Critical Hit Damage. Every time you want to switch to a different weapon, you should switch to the cryo Maliwan first so that you keep your Sponsored By… bonus. Swapping in this way will also give you 2 stacks of Incentives.
All told, when running full tilt (which doesn’t take long to do), my build here boasts:
- Massive health and shield gain,
- +20% Movement Speed,
- +105% Weapon Damage (not including the +37.08% additional gun damage from my Oz kit -or- my +49% Hyperion weapon damage from my class mod (it would be +191.08% with full Oz)),
- Upwards of 249.75% additional damage from Money is Power depending on how many stacks you have,
- +25% damage as cryo damage,
- Additional ticking cryo damage,
- +350% Critical Hit Damage,
- Upwards of +115% to 155% Fire rate depending on how empty your clips are and if you’ve swapped weapons,
- +20% Reload Speed,
- -75% Weapon Swap Speed,
- +110% Accuracy (and on top of that I use Hyperion weapons),
- A shock nova somewhere around you as a new Digi-Jack spawns immediately as the previous one dies,
- Exploding Digi-Jacks,
- Attacking Digi-Jacks (not necessary, just icing on the cake, as it were),
- A button to get up from “Fight for your Life” (once per Action Skill activation),
- Free grenades (not necessary, just more icing),
- And an 88% chance to not consume ammunition when firing.
On top of all of this, throw in any Badass ranks you have if you want!
Anyways, try it out when you get a spare moment. Feel free to comment and let me know what you think.
I’ve got the Ts4r and using the cyro switch thing with the “sponsored by” skill 