General Flak Skill Questions

Borderlands 3 FL4K the Beastmaster
#1

So I thought I’d use Flak as my main but his pet playstyle isn’t really jiving with me but still I’d like to level him up to 50. With that said I feel a bit weaker than the other VHs and that’s probably because I’m still low lvl plus I’m not synergizing a lot of my skill points so that is on me. With that said there is a few things I’d like to ask because I’m trying to really get into him atm. I usually follow build guides since I suck but SupMatto is no more and AdmiralBahroo only has a theorycrafted 50 guide so that doesn’t really help me.

  1. So I main Fade Away as my Action Skill. It says each shot is automatically a crit. So my question is this: Say I have a human enemy running towards me. Normally I try to shoot him in the head for a crit. If I use Fade Away should I still aim for the head for double crits (are double crits a thing?) or does it not matter and I should just aim for body shots since they will all crit regardless? I’m asking this because my aiming isn’t good so I may hit 50% headshots but 100/100 body shots under Fade Away.

  2. Should I reserve my grenades and throw them all in Fade Away? Can grenades crit under Fade Away and is it worth the time to throw grenades rather than activate and shoot right away?

  3. I’m using the base level pets at he moment. None of them are really catching my fancy. Is there any reward system or really a reason to keep them alive/revive them? I was trying to build a way they can stay alive but now that I’m looking at how borderline useless they are I’m thinking of just using those skill points on myself instead of buffing them. (For example 3 points into All My BFF’s doesn’t seem to do much in the grand scheme of things. He dies and comes back so regen is a moot point?)

  4. If I am dying and one of my pets gets a kill does that count as a Second Wind for me? I ask this because I’m wondering if it is worth the 1 point in putting a point in “Lick The Wounds” for him to revive me

  5. My last question is for the “Eager to Impress” ability. For the high level gameplay and pro gameplay - Are you guys hurting the enemy BUT NOT KILLING the enemy so your pet can kill it for the extra reduced timer? Questioning if I should just kill everything or let my pet kill it and try to work around Attack Command for faster Action Skill Cooldown.

Thank you

#2

Feel free to center mass it, there are no double crits. If it hits, it crits.

Grenades can serve a number of different purposes, such as healing or debuffing, plus the grenade throw animation is pretty slow and can’t be sped up. And no, they don’t crit from what I’ve seen. The Fade Away description specifically says “each shot”.

While you do want to coordinate your burst with Fade Away, Jakobs weapons are usually the best choice for that. High fire rate, typically good crit damage (plus the richochet), good damage per shot. With Leave no Trace (tier 1 Hunter talent)giving a chance to return ammo on crit, your highest damage will be plugging as many rounds into the meat as possible.

If you want to do some heavy AoE damage under Fade Away, a Jakobs shotgun will fill the room with autocrit ricochets and rocket launchers crit very handsomely. Both options are much more responsive and damaging than the average grenade in the time constraints you have to work with.

It depends on your specific relationship to your pets. If you just look at them as a minor source of DoT, then the downtime of them dying and coming back (1 minute)won’t matter much to you. If you find them to be useful for other reasons, keep them around. Remember: BFFs scales with all your health regen, the more you put in, the more your pet gets out.

Yes, but it’s unreliable. You can’t always count on your pet downing a mob in time to save you. You might die from a random grenade or barrel explosion after everyone has died, or you might be in a boss fight where there are no adds available. Lick the Wounds isn’t mandatory, but it’s an extra layer of safety that can help in difficult situations or when you’re learning new boss fights. One more reason to keep your pet alive.

So, this depends on your build and the pet you use. The Gunslinger jabber’s Attack Command move is a three-shot rocket launcher that does fairly heavy damage with a respectable AoE. With a single point in Eager to Impress, he can spam this more or less endlessly as long as he keeps killing enemies. Handy for mobbing if you like pet damage.

In that case, yes. I will play more of a control/debuff role and let him secure the kills against most mobs so he can keep chaining rockets. This is the only case where that’s true though, and most often I use Eager to Impress as a generic CD reduction talent because pet kills become an increasingly unreliable resource the higher you go otherwise.

Happy hunting.

2 Likes
#3

Thank you so very much for this wonderful information. I am going to get on right now and see how I do again as Flak. I changed some points around and found me a Jakob gun. I think I will do better from here on out with this information.

1 Like
#4

Hakuna matata.

My only caveat for Jakobs weapons is to be mindful of the fire rate on white quality sniper rifles. Green and above seldom have this problem, but the trash tier tend to boast deceptively high damage numbers which distract from their abysmally low fire rate.

I personally find anything under 0.9 to be unacceptable for usability purposes. While leveling, there were times when I couldn’t find a decent one. Vladof and Dahl make fine substitutes during those times, the lower damage and lack of ricochet is compensated for by the high fire rate and large magazine size.