[deleted build guide]

Now that Twixled incorporated pretty much all of this build’s mechanics into his guide I decided it would be redundant to run two topics that serve the same purpose.

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Nice, I’m glad you found some use for my post! I hadn’t polished it into a full blown guide yet, but I’ll also be doing so soon when I get home. I’m happy the build is catching on though!

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This really sounds interesting, but one question: wouldnt 1 point into Violent Tapestry also increase your Rush cap by 10 and therefore be worth it?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. I do however think it’s worth to keep 1 point in to maintain rush stacks in between phasegrasp rotations.

Both Violent Tapestry and Do Harm set your max stacks to 10. So you wouldn’t gain anything from it.

What do you mean by that?

I like to have at least one point in both Violent Tapestry and Do Harm, as a single point in either gives 10 Rush stacks, and with a point in both, it gives you two ways to build up points. Frankly, 1 point in each and 3 points in the skill between them is best when leveling. It might be worth maxing out Do Harm when you have the Capstone for better damage on the second cast of your Action Skill, but for leveling, one point in each is more than enough.

Good point, I’ll add it to the build.

You’d have to remove points from other more valuable skills and that isn’t worth it IMO.

Does Awakening actually boost Phasezerker?
Based on the wording I would guess that Phasezerker only looks at the number of stacks, not boosted effectiveness.

Good question but rather difficult to test. On the other hand, it doesn’t really matter that much. Cooldown reduction suffers from diminishing returns anyway and the gun damage we get from it is already more than enough. Another +20% gun damage is negligible.

True, but testing it would really benefit the build. If it doesn’t affect Phasezerker, those points could either be used for Do Harm (it does more damage to put points directly into it compared to Awakening) or use the points elsewhere.

Also, did you consider Remnant? I’ve run that skill a bit and I got a feeling it could be pretty insane since we have tons of overkill-damage. iirc I saw one orb do 41k once, it could be worth using one point for.

I tested it, it works like a charm, and I included it in my own posted build.

Would this enable me to not play as defensively?

Yeah, I just wasn’t sure how to test it. But then I decided to record some videos and use a video editing tool to compare the timings. The result is Awakening does absolutely nothing for Phasezerker. Interesting, I thought we would gain at least some minor benefits from it. Another 3 free skill points then.

I did, but it feels fairly clunky/unreliable and can bug out sometimes. Furthermore, this build has already a lot of AoE/mobbing damage. If at all it lacks single target for boss fights and in that case Remnant won’t do much. But since we now have more than enough spare skill points just one point is enough to get at least the overkill damage (which should be the majority of the skill’s damage) rolling.

If you don’t play defensively with the Re-Router it does basically nothing. Any purple shield would be better then. Since we don’t have any shield bonuses in our skill trees it takes quite a while to fully recharge and gain its bonus damage.

Edit: I just updated the guide with all the aformentioned ideas/improvements.

you got gameplay videos?

They are on my to-do list.

Update: Added second skill tree for people who don’t have or don’t want to use the Phasezerker class mod. Extended the equipment section with more options/alternatives. Added a levelling section.

I just crunched some numbers in Excel and the DPS increase from From Rest is roughly the same as Wrath. From Rest just brings some additional utility. So, you can easily swap those points if you like Wrath better.
This is the case as long as you don’t have multiple additional sources of gun damage on your equipment (class mod, artifact, etc.). Then From Rest would always be more benefecial.

Can you explain why you have to phasegrasp an adjacent trash mob near a boss? Phasegrasp deals damage on grasp immune enemies. Would this not count as action skill damage during boss fights? Or are you only talking about bosses that can be phasegrasped?

Yes, it does count as action skill damage. It isn’t absolutely necessary to grasp an enemy near the boss but it has some benefits.

Grasp-Immune: You’d gain quite a bit more healing from Soul Sap and more importantly, your weapon gets instantly reloaded (Dread) when the weaker enemy dies from the linked damage and Indiscriminate. That latter translates into more DPS and a faster boss kill.

Normal: If a boss can be grasped just make sure to shoot a linked target one for Laid Bare. You’d still get life steal from linked targets but you’d lose the instant reload.

Hey, just tested with Twix in a separate chat, but the +35% CDR from Restless results in a ~1s worth of cooldown reduction when you already have the PhaseZerker mod (thank you diminishing returns). Those 5 points might go better in Alacrity or something.

What is interesting is, with 25 stacks of Phasezerker giving (supposedly) 250%, BL2 CDR formula dictates a 18/(1+2.5) = 5.14s cooldown on PhaseGrasp. That doesn’t seem to be the case in game for me. I’m thinking–maybe there’s a CDR cap at 100%? AKA 9s cooldown.