Sleeping giant. The strongest SMG?

Borderlands 3 Amara the Siren
#1

Noone ever talks about the sleeping giant. Let’s change that.

I found a non-elemental kind of bad ‘sleeping giant’ yesterday, I would have left it there like I usually do if it weren’t for the “Increased crit damage while terrified” annointment. I had never tried that before so I decided to make myself a build for it and test it out.

With a fire rate of 12+ I wasn’t expecting to see high numbers, but every now and then I saw numbers with “m” behind them. While trying to shoot 1 bullet at the time at single enemies I could see numbers in the 50mill range from 1 bullet (and that was just the white non-elemental base damage*) (*This might be something else, see edit)

I have no idea what the random bonuses are on this thing, but here’s a video I shot a few minutes ago of me shooting Grave. Look at the last clip at 45 seconds. (also -50% non-elemental damage -20% gun damage, like the worst modifiers)

Edit: So I might be full of poop. I can NOT get the “m” numbers on the training dummy. I do get around 40k pr. bullet. But I do get “m” numbers when I use TTB and indiscriminate and shoot clusters of mobs. So I have no idea whats going on. Maybe some crazy bouncing effect? I do not see the same numbers when I swap over to another SMG under the same conditions with TTB and indiscriminate… I am much confuse.

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#2

It’s called the Sleeping Giant. It’s clearly designed to have a niche use that makes it great, but is meant to be under the radar. Your whole post is basically just to say they did what they intended to do.

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#3

I think it’s gimmick is that, randomly, it gets some big buff one magazine at a time. Super fast fire rates are one that I’ve seen, and I think I’ve seen it reload in a snap, but that might have been a skill I wasn’t paying attention to.

What other buffs have we seen it trigger?

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#4

The new orc.

#5

It is a really good SMG, I use from time to time I hate that it doesn’t come in Cryo.

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#6

It has several effects, and I know it can roll more than one at once but I am not sure if there is a max.

For sure there is:

  • increased fire rate
  • increased damage
  • increased reload speed
  • better accuracy/handling
  • double projectiles - it is doubled rather than +1, turns x2 into x4

There might be crit damage? but I was shooting technicals. Target dummy tomorrow!

#7

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IMG_20191120_210751466.jpg1500×2000 1.02 MB

It blazes through shields. Fun on captain haunt. :grin:

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#8

Yeah, I get the irony. I was expecting it to have the “normal” buffs like double fire rate, double, maybe triple damage occasionaly.

I was not expecting 50m kinetic damage from 1 bullet in an SMG. That was a suprise :slight_smile:

#9

Wait what?
I can’t find this on the news page, are we getting a patch tommorow?

#10

first of all it is a great smg and anyone who tried knows it but it is not the strongest smg by any stretch of imagination it is an RNG gun and such is it’s nature when conditions are met it is great but so is zx1 or conference call, stable base performance is worth a lot while it has good dps it also reloads much more than hyperion counter parts crossroad beats it in other departments then we have mirv reloads on tediore SMGs. i do not see any smg being the best like lyuda is for snipers a lot of other gun categories do not have clear best.

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#11

I think we should give a moment’s silence for the poor, poor target dummy. HE GUNNA GEDDIT! ! :joy:

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#12

See, this is where I don’t agree.
I’ve ran the slaughter circle with a bunch of SMG’s under the same conditions, and build/gear.

None of my crossroads, zx1, or cutsmans could match this. Even when its not on one of the crazy reload modes.
Crossroad in a matching element comes close, but the Giant has way better ammo economy.

Out of the SMG’s I had at hand, I could not find one that beat it for mobbing or bosses. Look at the damage it does on Grave with absolutely horrible modifiers and non-elemental damage even without reload bonuses.

Imagine that with a matching element and elemental projection.

Also, reloading is not an issue with Amara if anything in a bubble dies in under 1 magazine. So I can’t put to much weight on that arguement.

I wholeheartedly disagree about the lyuda.

I do agree its hard to say that 1 is the definitive best of anything though. But I think the sleeping Giant should at least have it’s name among the best.

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#14

If anything that weakens your point because with the auto reload you don’t get a chance to proc the red text.

#15

She also has Fast Hands as a Tier 1 skill, and Alacrity as a Tier 2 perk, ahe also has other sources of Reload Speed.

#16

Or you get to keep an awesome perk for a long time.
Ups and downs, but all in all I think its a great weapon for amara. I was at least very suprised at how ridiculously strong it could get. 1 Burst quite often takes out all the TTB bubbles even with badasses and annointeds.