This is the build I played the most in the past two weeks. It’s fast, tanky, has some fun synergies and can be quite addicting. In case you’re wondering what’s so special about it:
These items synergise extremely well, the foundation of this build. Pestilence is quite potent in itself and makes quick work of shielded and fleshy enemies. But it also explodes in a huge radius around us when it breaks. The explosion usually would affect us as well.
That’s where the Red Suit comes in. Aside from its radiation damage aura (more on that later), it makes us completely immune to radiation damage (that’s also handy when standing close by rad-exploding enemies). But a radiation DOT can still be applied to ourself that way - without suffering from its damage. So, now we have a 0-damage rad DOT on ourselves which lasts extremely long due to Amara’s Anima skill.
In order to utilise this DOT, we slap on an Elemental Projector artefact that will make Red Suit’s and any rad gun damage even more potent. It’s a fun and fluid cycle.
An extremely powerful option/addition would be a radiation Hive rocket launcher that you fire before rushing into battle. But I like to retain some challenge, so I don’t use it, otherwise I’ll get bored real quick.
Now we have more potent guns and our shield’s radiation aura is also way beefier. What’s the next step? Believe it or not, the Red Suit’s damage provides life steal via Sustainment. It’s not huge but a welcome addition - still way better than any of Amara’s life regen bonuses. As long as you keep shooting and standing close to enemies you can’t die - unless you rush fully YOLO into way too many enemies while getting frozen without having your action skill available like shown in the video. 
Skill Tree
If you don’t feel the need for the survivability from Brawl you can remove the points below Mindfulness and invest them into Mystical Assault for more action skill damage, reload speed and/or cooldown reduction.
If you don’t like Ties That Bind you can also use The Eternal Fist. Especially when you have the shield anointment mentioned below it triggers on every grasped target so you’ll get way more out of those novas per Action Skill use when enemies aren’t clumped.
Equipment
The only items required to make this build work are the ones mentioned above and those can easily be farmed:
- Pestilence (COV pistol): don’t use a double projectile version, you’ll run out of ammo even faster, drops from Heckle/Hyde in Jakobs Estate or Atomic and Sylestro in Tazendeer Ruins
- Red Suit (shield): it has two variable stats, so you could go for ammo absorption and another defensive stat, boosters look promising due to the auto-pickup from the most recent hotfix, best case scenario would be if you can get your hands on an anointed one with novas while Phasegrasp is active (more damage and healing from Sustainment), mission reward from “Angels and Speed Demons” in Devil’s Razor and drops from Atomic and Sylestro in Tazendeer Ruins
- Elemental Projector (artefact): any variant works, it doesn’t have to be a legendary version, having cooldown reduction and radiation damage as stats are way more important, this is world drop only but since we don’t need a specific legendary version it’s quite a common drop
You could replace the Elemental Projector with an Atom Balm one but it’s noticeably weaker and it would remove a part of this build’s synergy.
Guns
You should definitely carry some backup weapons because the Pestilence eats ammo like crazy. A cryo/corrosive gun would be good because radiation is quite weak against armour. I love the Tsunami in this setup due to its inherent ricochet and it also heals via Sustainment. Enemies with three different health bars (shield, armour and health) get destroyed with this beauty easily. Fast shotguns are great as well since you’ll be close range most of the time.
In order to make it easy-mode just equip a radiation Hive (Torgue heavy weapon) and shoot a few times into the crowd before rushing in.
Class Mod
Anything that boosts Tempest works. The best results are accomplished with a legendary Breaker, Nimbus or Phasezerker (how original).
- Breaker is great all around. Use the one with the highest bonus for Personal Space. That’s a huge multiplicative DPS increase. Since we almost always stand in front of enemies we’ll get the full bonus of the damage reduction and Personal Space’s damage.
- When using Nimbus try to get one without conflux boost or you’ll end up accidentally igniting yourself quite frequently with a very potent DOT. That will kill you. Probably the weakest option of the three legendaries but still better than non-legendary ones.
- When running Phasezerker remove the skill point from Do Unto Others and put it in either Do Harm or Violent Tapestry for 10 more Rush stacks. The aforementioned part about Conflux applies here as well. This one is almost on par with the Breaker COM due to the cooldown reduction and gun damage increase. The Anima bonus will also make your Pestilence DOT last longer which is beneficial.