Melee Amara - Community Megathread

MELEE AMARA (updating this week)

Thank you all for input. Everyone is welcome to give feedback and advice.

So, with a few weeks behind us people in the forum have shared plenty of information about what to use and the best methods to play.

Your aim is to get Anointed gear which further boosts the melee damage, especially the Weapon and Shield. Be sure to use the trade threads for items you find hard to get.

Calculated Melee Damage: (equation required - i’m too thick)

Let’s highlight some of the best gear (BiS) for Melee Amara:

Weapons

Face-puncher – A Hyperion shotgun that has a hidden boost which amps your bullet damage based on your ‘overall’ melee damage.

Face-puncher

Psycho Stabber – Comes with 120% Melee Damage which makes it a go to for the slice n dice. Other COV weapons can come with the 120% (max melee on weapon).

Psycho Stabber

Other 120% Melee Weapons

Moar Linoge – A COV Pistol that can role with 120% melee damage, but has a multi-pellet Fire shot which is good if utilising Amara’s elemental damage skills.

Moar Linoge

Buttplug – It’s all in the name (giggles)… Hit em in the rear portions and do double damage. You don’t have to be stood behind to hit the rear, but it kinda helps with most enemy.

Buttplug

:snowflake: Versus Frozen Enemy :snowflake: – Melee damage against frozen enemy is tripled giving you a good incentive to freeze them mutha’s with nades or even the weapon your using. Having your co-op buddy chill’em out would be pretty sweet.

Ice Weapon with Melee

Shields

As previously in Borderlands 2, ROID Shields give melee bonuses whilst depleted. BiS is gonna be the Brawler Ward, with an Anointed version giving further bonuses.

Brawler Ward – This can be looted from the Grave Warden boss. Giving 300% melee bonus it’s the highest currently available.

Brawler Ward

Other – Until you have your Brawler Ward, or even whilst levelling, keep an eye out for other shields that may give you some good tasty melee action.

Worthy to use

NOTE: Be aware of the issue regarding Shield Recharge in the Guardian Ranks. In the Survivor Tree there is s skill called Shield Reboot that will start your shield recharging on kill, negating the ROID bonus on the shield. Ideally Gearbox would allow us to have this localised for each Vault Hunter.

Survivor Tree Bonus

Class Mods

Various Class Mods can be used, but the Breaker gives Melee Damage and Damage Reduction making it s strong contender for BiS melee. But others can be used, so refer to builds guides and the gameplay videos linked.

You can refer to the Class Mod thread here – ( Amara - Master List of Class Mods )

Relics

Relics can offer some great varieties in Borderlands 3. For Melee Amara, you have to choose wisely between ‘Survivor or Damage’. This can be switched easily for any situation.

Life Steal Relics – Even a simple Green relic can be very good for surviving. They aren’t going to add any damage unless it’s in the additional perks (see below), but you can fill your health bar quick. The higher the level, the more perks you’ll get and more health you’ll recover.

Green

Legendary

Melee DPS Relics – These will have a couple of main inputs - Elemental and Melee Damage. Elemental Relics will come in all variations and Imbue your hits with that extra bonus.

  • As Fire :fire: is the strongest element versus most unshielded enemy (not resistent) the one relic that ‘shines’ is the Unleash the Dragon relic which causes melee hits to burn the enemy with very high status effect. This is considered to be the BiS for DPS currently known.
     
Elemental Example

Unleash the Dragon

Gameplay Videos

(have your gameplay linked in this section - Proving Grounds preferably)

@Dr_H0H0 -

Useful Forum Links

Melee Testing and info – by @Gentlemann
Actual Amara Melee Number Statistics! (what does increase the damage, and what does not)

Skills Overview and Ratings – by @DankRafft
[Guide] Amara's Skills - Analysis and Rating

Amara Builds List – by @Aaero
Amara Master List: Build Collection

External Google Doc for Gear - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fkCwu0zeX1BBGcNEzWGZDr2kQ0IOPSoZQK2FD-zpw1M/htmlview?sle=true#gid=0

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No and I’ve gone through hundreds of them by now.

I haven’t seen anything like that either. Probably was some sort of misinformation. Or they changed that part at some point in development.

Yeah, that seems to be the highest possible modifier on guns.

Yeah, Grave does that but it’s situational. Bonus elemental damage is more useful anyway because it’s multiplicative while standard melee damage is just additive.

300% on the Brawler Ward.
On standard shields it can go up to 160% IIRC if you can get one with three roid affixes.

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awesome cheers :vulcan_salute:

Can you post a shotty of that Brawler if you have time
I still haven’t had a breaker drop…

Out of interest, whats the highest single melee damage number you’ve seen so far? i was mucking about the other night and was hitting 15k on minion mobs, so it should go up over 20k for sure

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Here you go:

I’ve played melee only for a couple of minutes. And didn’t pay attention to the actual numbers. I like her gun gameplay a lot more and it’s also way superior IMO.

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Have you experimented with relics for a melee amara? Currently the 100% melee ignite one from el drago Jr seems to be the best but I’m thinking that the rotating +elemental damage one might be good to handle mayhem 3 modifiers.

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Damage-wise? Possible. On the other hand, a White Elephant will give you a lot of damage and the option to have life steal with melee attacks (or another multiplicative elemental damage mod). With an El Dragon you lack quite a bit of survivability.

Yeah, I thought so, too. On the other hand, it doesn’t say anywhere that the bonus damage applies to melee attacks. It could be that it works similar to Jab Cross and in that case, you’ll hardly gain any benefit on a melee build.

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Do you have a pic of the white elephant relic haven’t seen it and can’t find anything on it googling

Currently not, I sold all of them because of bad stats since I had to make some space on my mules.

Okay what exactly does it do then adds elemental melee? (And how high of a percentage if so) And can roll knife drain (75% melee life steal) on it as well?

It doesn’t, it attaches a sticky bomb to targets when you melee them. And yes, you can have life steal or any other elemental melee bonus damage on top of that.

that’s just 100% chance, not added damage.

My Mind Melt Commander deals 69% bonus elemental damage with every melee attack (not sure on highest maybe 75%) which rotates elements every 5secs

It also creates a Radiation aura after slamming so its pretty badass if you can get a few slams in during gameplay

@DankRafft - That Brawler Ward is awesome, me gots to gets one!!

Have you actually tested if this bonus applies to melee attacks? Based on the wording it could be just bonus elemental gun damage similar to how Jab Cross works (melee triggers the effect but there’s no bonus for melee itself).

The el Dragon IS added damage and it’s ALOT.

The way the relic work if I punch for 30k it ignites them
And does dots that do the exact same as your melee hit per second from what I’ve tested. So if your melee does 30k they lose another 30k per second from dots. The relic has by far the most dps for melee I’ve used. But the survivabilty just sucks. If it could have melee lifesteal it would be the quintessential relic for melee Amara.

Yeah the wording is finicky but I’ve found that it adds to the damage like you said. My guess is it does a fire dot with damage based on your melee hit. Experimented with it and the dots were ticking for similar numbers to my default shock dots.

Right now I’m trying to find alternative relics to the el drago one and shields aside from brawler.

Elemental % increases give much more mileage to damage due to it being multiplicative rather than additive in the case of melee % bonus. This explains why the el drago brings such a high dmg bump despite (100% ignite) vs say an additional point in “find your centre” (100% melee) as a comparison.

Side note, how are u spending ur points on the survivability stats?

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Yeah if I knew how to record and upload vids properly I would post a video of what I just did to show the damage difference.

A single melee against the ravager boss with no no skill points used or melee buffs did 2.5k (a sliver of his health) on normal mode. It took 9 individual melee hits to take the first 1/3 of his health for the first immune phase.

Meanwhile switching only to only the el dragon one single melee completely chunked a full 3rd of his health into the immunity phase.

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No, was waiting to get better gear. Hence getting some heads together and feedback from others.

I’ve been working on a mobbing build using Rough Rider which seems to be pretty good now. So once i get it proper good, i’ll get all the melee gear and start recording. Sometimes with all the madness and effects on screen its hard to see anything :rofl:

@DP_Unkemptharold - thnx for the feedback. i had used it initially but probably wasn’t taking much notice to the damage etc. Will be good to compare it now i know

Yeah no problem and if you missed my post right above since we posted at the same time my testing shows how much of a significant difference in damage there is.

yeh i saw that. if i get time this arvo i’ll test the 2 relics and see how it comes out.

does the test dummy allow access is is for guns only…again?

There is no test dummy apparently :frowning:

If possible can you test with a face puncher shotgun (translates melee bonuses into ranged damage), in theory el dragon should apply it’s affect for the shotty but now at range…