Hello all,
First of all I would like to thank Shadowreeper1337 for enlightening me about the power of the White Elephant Artifact and being kind enough to trade me one. (Shoutout to DP_Unkempharold for making me question my previous relic setup) Please credit me and and Shadowreeper1337 and include a link to the guide if you use this build anywhere else.
The build is centered around the increased importance of phaseslam anointments and terror for melee Amara in combination with the White Elephant Artifact, the Facepuncher and the Unforgiven for INSANE damage and survivability. Due to this, it requires god-tier items in order to be effective.
Description: While fracture (phaseslam variant) is a relatively weak ability at early levels, with a full anointed set and the right talents it effectively becomes a +300 weapon damage for 8 seconds, + 200 melee damage for 8 seconds, +40% damage reduction for 15 seconds, + 38% accuracy/ 27% crit damage for 12 seconds with 30% lifesteal ability, making it the best action skill in the game for melee amara.
To take full advantage of the tankiness and damage bursts, your main weapon will be a Redundant Face-Puncher which benefits from both the melee and gun damage anointed bonuses. Paired with 75% lifesteal on the White Elephant relic and all our damage reduction, our enemies will be staring at a 30K+ effective health pool which regenerates instantly while dealing massive damage. Put simply, you hold a hand cannon which fully heals you on almost every shot and allows you to complete mayhem 10 content efficiently as melee Amara.
On top of this the White Elephant relic will give us insane damage potential after fracture with which you can literally melt any boss and insta-heal through the toughest fights. This is because the 14 pellets from our facepuncher will each have a 30% chance to spawn a random element sticky that scales with your melee / splash / aoe (not from grenade damage) and will also be able to crit, this crit damage can be boosted by the unforgiven after you empty a magazine on a crit spot. Furthermore, if you can manage to hit a crit spot in melee after using fracture with the Moar Linoge or Buttplug + switch to the unforgiven while terrified with your shield depleted, you can spawn a sticky that hits for 600m+ with matching elements. This can do so much damage that it will skip Troy’s immune phase, he will instantly die.
Brawl:
5/5 in root to rise and 0/5 in clarity: What we are aiming for is effective health, which means how many hits you can take consecutively without healing before you die. Most enemies will do so much damage that a few percentage of hp a second won’t save you, but having a larger health pool might allow you to survive 2 consecutive hits without going into to ffyl. With this setup you are both the tank and the healer, since your melee hits and facepuncher will be doing all the work and can fully heal you in 1 shot, Clarity becomes useless. Having a larger health pool stacks really well with damage reduction and ensures that you take full advantage of the massive healing bursts. Finally, our Brawlerward shield and Samsara benefit from the 40% extra hp and together already give enough hp per second to survive most dots.
0/3 personal space - Huge multiplicative bonus (more than the talent says) but it does not help the facepuncher. Really good for the Moar Linoge which melts armoured targets and has great melee. You can go 3/3 if you use it often.
3/3 samsara 5/5 helping hands
5/5 Arms Deal - Splash damage will work extremely well with our White Elephant Artifact, boosting the damage of the stickies which will be our major source of dps. Also gives a nice dmg reduction vs splash damage.
0/3 Mindfulness, while the speed boost is nice, it throws off your aim a lot when you take damage making it harder to land crits. Faster shield regeneration severely reduces your damage output since it removes the brawlerward bonuses. The talent is a must only if you use the Driver since DOT will prevent the shield from regenerating. In order to make this work optimally you will need a low level brawlerward shield so the Dot alone will strip your shield every time you fracture (not necessary). Use corrosive for your action skill so you get the longest dot possible for the most movement speed. The movement speed can reach 150% with a +3 Mindfulness Driver which boosts your facepuncher damage by up to 4 times.
1/3 Vigor - Good speed boost which procs from any kill not just action skill kills + it stacks multiple times.
1/1 Find your center
4/5 Jab Cross, decent gun damage boost which applies to the facepuncher.
1/1 Guardian Angel
1/1 Blitz
Fist of Elements:
3/3 Steady Hands - Helps land critical shots with the facepuncher from a longer distance
2/5 infusion - gives you a way to change a portion of your facepuncher damage to your chosen element, the elemental portion of the damage is boosted by tempest, you can go 5/5 and drop steady hands.
0/5 anima - go 5/5 with the Driver so you get a longer DOT to keep the shield down and keep the speed boost up. You don’t need anima without a driver com.
5/5 tempest 1/1 Illuminated fist, pretty self explanatory. Melee hits are converted to elemental damage and we do more elemental damage. These damage increases are also multiplicative which makes them extremely good.
Mystical assault:
3/3 fast hands - ensures that you will be able to get the next facepuncher shot sooner after reloading which increases your dps and healing, especially if you are too far to melee your target. The weapon switch speed works wonders when switching to the unforgiven for the sticky damage.
1/5 Do Harm, 1/5 violent tapestry, for the most rush stacks.
3/3 Transcend - Will make your facepuncher shots much more accurate after you fracture so you can land those stickies on the crit spots and boosts your crit damage on those stickies.
5/5 restless - will allow us to have the phaseslam anointments up more often which basically translates to + Melee damage +Gun Damage +damage reduction + mobility etc.
2/5 Alacrity for more reload speed
3/3 Wrath if you mostly use the face puncher, will give more damage when fracture is in cd but its not multiplicative like laid bare.
2/3 Laid Bare - Good multiplicative boost after damaging enemies with your AS, you might want to go 3/3 if you use the normal phaseslam variant instead of fracture since you damage enemies more often with it than fracture.
1/3 Remnant - This can hit crazy amounts now that the facepuncher and melee does so much damage, 1 point provides the full remnant effect.
Soul Sap is the best aug since it doesn’t increase cd and gives you some healing.
Guardian Rank: While most of the Guardian ranks have a positive effect on melee Amara, avoid putting points in shield regen, capacity and delay, and if you put points in the rest make sure you avoid Shield reboot at all costs, it will completely gimp your damage after each kill since it will cause your shield to regen and you will lose your Brawler Ward bonuses. (You can disable it individually in the GR menu) Best to disable emergency response as well.
The Gear
Phaseslam Anointed FacePuncher, as explained above, benefits both from melee and gun damage. If you time your facepuncher shots a fraction of a second before your melee attacks, you are effectively able to double your melee hits since you will be splitting your cd on melee and facepuncher firerate between the 2. In game, this happens almost instantly and it feels as if you didn’t shoot at all, but you did. This can also be good to keep up blitz vs tougher enemies. While it works amazingly in combo with the unforgiven, it is more than capable of killing enemies alone after using fracture and outdpsing your melee by a ton. Aim for the head, while the facepuncher cannot crit, the stickies can. After using fracture with high mindfulness stacks the facepuncher alone can do 25m per shot without counting the stickies, 14m with the Breaker com, it will be much easier to land crits with the Breaker though. Usually if your facepuncher shots brought your enemy under 50% hp, the stickies should finish them off even without the unforgiven or any crits. Remember to keep moving while you shoot if you use a Driver Com, the facepuncher should do 4x damage at max speed.
The Unforgiven will be the final piece of the puzzle vs badass and boss type enemies. Empty a Facepuncher magazine on the crit spot after depleting your shield and using fracture, switch to the unforgiven and watch their hp DISAPPEAR. Don’t just sit there and watch while you wait for the sticky to explode, melee the enemies with the unforgiven, a perfect melee hit with all bonuses up can spawn a sticky that hits for close to 1b damage. Having a 50% terror anointed version will boost your stickies everytime you switch to the unforgiven while terrified, unfortunately this isn’t farmable anymore so it’s capped at lvl50, not that it matters since we don’t really shoot with it.
Terror Facepuncher
A terror anointed Facepuncher will be our engine to keep terror stacks up while we wait for fracture to come off cd. This will allow us to have the gun damage / fire rate and 50% cryo bonus damage active all the time which provides a massive boost to dps. Unfortunately, all terror gear is capped to lvl 50, and it’s stopped being farmable after the end of the Halloween event, the damage boost is great but it’s not essential.
Buttplug
The buttplug can be really good to melee enemies that are hard to crit with the Unforgiven and still spawns a massive sticky. It does 110% melee damage, which appears to be partially multiplicative (Unlike cov 120% melee damage weapons), making this our best weapon for straight-up melee. Furthermore, melee damage is doubled when hitting your enemies on the back. (you don’t necessarily have to be behind them) Like all stickies, a crit can be boosted by the unforgiven, this can reach insane damage levels. Also good at keeping Blitz up vs weak enemies.
Moar Linoge
The Moar Linoge offers a +120% melee bonus, but is weaker in melee than the buttplug or facepuncher/ instant melee combo for our build. However, unlike the buttplug, it can offer some really serious shooting power. Make sure you stop shooting and start punching before it overheats so it can have time to cooldown (basically an automatic reload). A 50% cryo terror anointment on a lvl 50 Linoge offers comparable damage to the buttplug in pure melee hits.
The Brawler Ward shield, the best melee shield by far. Using a lower level shield (lvl 1 is best) helps with shield stripping since the Driver’s dot or Its Piss will do all the work.
On anointment effects and stickies: Since I’m seeing a lot of people confused about the anointments I wanted to clarify a few things. 2 different anointments on a weapon and shield will stack (like 200 melee and 300 weapon damage) 2 of the same will not stack (like 2x200 melee or 2x300 weapon damage). While stickies are not boosted by weapon damage directly, weapon damage will increase your facepuncher damage which also means more sticky dmg (since they scale to the damage of each pellet). If you switch weapon at any point while the 300 weapon damage phaseslam anointment is active you will lose the anointment effect, even if switching to a weapon with the same anointment. Terror anointed effects on the weapon equipped and grenade mod will always be active while terrified.
It’s piss
Good boost to damage, removes dots from yourself and can strip your shield without hurting yourself if you use a low level brawlerward. (a level 30-40 It’s Piss is perfect for stripping a lvl 1 brawlerward) The terror fire rate/ gun damage anointment also makes all your weapons immune to the terror accuracy debuff. Note that the +crit / extra pellet / cryo damage / ammo regen anointments cannot spawn on grenades.
Recurring Hex
Amazing at freezing enemies which boosts our melee damage by x3. I prefer not using cryo with the driver since it might slow you and reduce your damage. A shock version can also be good at stripping shields. Great at killing flying targets / freezing them to make them easy kills.
Driver
The dot applied to yourself every time you fracture breaks your shield if you use a lvl 1 brawler and brings you up to 15 mindfulness stacks for 15 seconds or so, place your actionskill to corrosive to get the longest Dot possible. It boosts your facepuncher damage to the point that you can hit x4 more with high mindfulness stacks on the initial shot, resulting in much bigger facepuncher stickies. Remember to keep moving to keep the damage boost up . Hard to hit crits though. Make sure you spec 5/5 anima and 3/3 mindfulness if you want to use the Driver.
Use a breaker for pure melee or if you have problems landing crits at high speed with the driver. It’s still able to own enemies with a facepuncher and unforgiven + it gives more survivability, but you will have to break your own shield with an It’s Piss since you can’t rely on the driver dot anymore. As of lvl 60 Mh10 this is my favorite com since pure melee is great again and this is easier use than the Driver. You can still one shot Graveward with it, so you don’t really need the Driver’s extra facepuncher damage.
Knife Drain White Elephant
As explained earlier, with anointed phaseslam gear and unforgiven +splash damage the relic outdpses other relic options by far and gives us constant healing. A Godly Relic. You can also opt for one without Lifesteal for more dps but with the unforgiven this won’t be necessary. Some people prefer other lifesteal relics that straight up add melee damage like planetoid or static charge relics for general mobbing since these will keep blitz up much better, but you will be nowhere near the dps of the White Elephant against tougher enemies. Note that a cutpurse relic will allow you to regenerate all your ammo in 1 facepuncher shot if you ever run out.
That’s all! Please credit me and and Shadowreeper1337 and include a link to the guide if you use this build anywhere else. Thanks!!
