Looking for Fl4k build advice

Borderlands 3 FL4K the Beastmaster
#1

Hey! Loving the game and Fl4k so far. I wanted to see if I can get some opinions or advice on my build. I really have enjoyed playing fl4k as a support, and usually play co-op with a Zane and Amara if that affects things at all. Anything helps! Just wanna make this build perfect. Thanks :slight_smile:

https://borderlands.com/en-US/characters/fl4k/#t="as__2841879906___cb__2759216193___p__2158073648-5_117127705-5_1740990601-3_4171864922-1_2927115417-3_1474023286-3_3477499401-5_2030200031-1_2818453945-2_2675403350-3_696695617-5_2555484897-5_1226621728-5_2694263575-2___e__1618958551-3114692079_403040056-2842141809_1825536534-2701689408_772024924-2841879906"

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#2

Looks pretty solid, honestly. Quality combat medic build. You’ve done almost everything possible to max out your health regen and health sharing while still bringing some nontrivial personal damage. Some of the little synergies are actually quite clever, I really like what you’ve done.

I’m a little surprised by the lack of Eager to Impress, but there are enough ways to chase cooldown reduction that it’s not too much of a loss. I can see you’re trying to keep Fl4k’s gun damage relevant, so I get it. In a better world, I would recommend pulling the 2 points from Pack Tactics and putting them into Mutated Defenses and Shared Spirit, but that’s only a significant gain on paper due to how unreliable Fl4k’s pets can be in practice.

With the purpose that you made this build for, I wouldn’t change a thing.

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#3

I appreciate your feedback and the time you took to give it so much! Do you think eager to impress may be more beneficial with the cooldown overall instead of the damage? I’ll definitely try mutated defenses and shared spirit though. But again, thank you so much for your input

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#4

I’d go with Razor’s suggestions, but I will say Mutated Defenses is a massiveincrease to your pet’s overall survivability. It turns your pet into a brick wall, and the 15 second cooldown is moot. As you get higher levels the only time the pet will get slaughtered is when it stands directly in front of an enemy doing one of their signature “you should probably get away from me” attacks. The pet will refuse to move, or die, and by the time they/another do it again the 15 seconds is over.

Eager to Impress is important because that’s a huge damage burst and since you’ve only got a couple points in ferocity it kind of makes up the difference.

This is all speculative. I haven’t tested your build but I like it a lot, especially considering you’re going for a very specific vibe. The only thing I can stand by is the importance of Mutated Defenses. That’s probably the only reason my doesn’t die every 10 minutes in harder modes.

Edit: Also a quick note, since you’re using Lick the Wounds and relying on your pet to avoid a full wipe, MD will definitely save your pet while it’s busy trying to uh, lick your wounds while it’s getting murdered (enemies are going to go after your pet once you’re down).

Good luck!

#5

That’s a personal decision for you to make based on your own testing. One of the things I like about your build is how tightly focused it is, you have two very clear priorities: health regen and gun damage.

Eager to Impress can offer some pretty sizable CD reduction while mobbing, but less on boss fights where there are fewer adds. Since my Gamma Burst builds tend to be full pet builds, I always do everything possible to get that CD as low as possible. Your combat medic build may not need it so much.

So, if you find yourself wanting to hit Gamma Burst but being stopped by the cooldown, give it a try. If not, don’t.

This is also up to you. I don’t know how your team functions and what your order of priorities is. In most games where I’ve played a healer role, things get pretty disorganized and I end up taking way more damage than I’m supposed to while helping other people deal with all the damage they’ve been taking.

The main appeal is that it gives you and your pet some breathing room in bad situations. Mutated Defenses will give your buddy a chance to recover when things go south for them and Shared Spirit will kick in some damage reduction for when things go south for you. As a medic, I try to be rugged because you can’t count on anyone else to heal the healer.

The important thing, I think, is that you identify your main priority and what sacrifices you’re willing to make to prioritize it. Whether or not that last little bit of extra gun damage or survivability matters will depend on your specific group’s needs, I imagine.

#6

Looking good so far! From the selection of skills used in the tree, I’d say the build is well on the way to being a decent support addition to a group, only thing that springs to mind is getting the class mod that revives your pet on kill I believe, it may benefit the group if it has more uptime, especially during the higher mayhem modes.

#7

with FL4K probably the best passive ability is Leave no trace. In fact, when you are invisible and with a gun with good fire rate and magasine, you can almost double the number of bullet heat critical, which is amazing. I got a light machine gun with 44 rounds, and probably send 80 bullets to ennemies without reloading, like a killing machine. really funny with the sound when a bullet “re enter” in the mag.

#8

Since I have seen no better topic for this: How exactly does “Barbaric Yawp” work? Does it just increase the bonuses you get for having your pet out or does it boost other skills? There was a huge discussion about it a few weeks ago in another thread, but since release I have yet to hear about it.

#9

So it increases your pet bonuses based off which pet is out. What’s kinda making me think of dropping it though is that it’s only a 5-10% boost it looks like for 5 points invested. :confused:

#10

If that is all it does, then yeah, it’s not really worth it imo. Is “Frenzy” working out for you? How long do the stacks last? Because with a Gunslinger Jabber you should be able to get to 10 stacks consistently enough, but I don’t know about the Skag or Spiderant.

My own pet build was more focussed on increasing the damage of the pet, which lead to me using the Gunslinger Jabber with “Fade Away” and “The Power within” as that just increases the damage of both of us without altering the way the Jabber works. That way the Jabber could do some good work on trash mobs and we kept us both healthy just by dishing out damage. It is far less pure Beastmaster-y though and more like a Mad Max AI & Animal tag-team.

Here is a slight variation of your setup. Basically I just increased the pet’s damage by a bit instead of using “Barbaric Yawp”. And you have 2 Skill Points left for flexibility

#11

From the build you linked, I assumed you were aware of that and were using the Great Horned Skag specifically for its gun damage boosts. I thought it was a clever way to squeeze a little bit of extra gun damage on a build that’s otherwise heavily support-based, given how deep you have to go into Master for Burst Aid.

If that wasn’t the intent, by all means abandon it.

#12

Its kind of the intention I had but it’s really a debate between whether to get a 10% gun damage boost or a cooldown boost I think. Might just run yawp in certain situations for the guaranteed bonus and then swap to increasing cooldowns in co-op. I really love the potential of this build though and honestly the trees in this game in general. There’s so much capacity to tweak a few things under the hood and get alarmingly different results.

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#13

I agree. While I’m deeply dissatisfied with the way Master performs right now for actual pet builds, its capacity as a support tree is quite impressive and the degree of customization we have for fine-tuning our individual playstyles is unprecedented.

I think you have your build priorities right.