So, I’m playing Lv 60 Phalanx/Xiphos, and I know it can be awesome. Kraggons are a breeze, but bandits, especially shielded ones, require a more careful touch. I need to know, in what order do I use my attacks? Do I blood rush first, or do I freeze first? When do I use shock? Should I use only storm front for shock, or switch to bright spadroon? And what should my other 2 guns be?
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You dont need the Bright Spadroon to melee, just a good cryo gun. The best all around gun for melee is the bladed Fridgia, or the Excalibastard if you can crit well enough.
Try Freeze and Blood Rush after. Against a badass or a boss you can also make use of explosive guns like the Ravager after Blood Rushing to get the bonus of Tear and Omega-Senshu.
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I mainly use the Excalibastard, be sure to shoot them first for the Gun Kata bonus. Throw your Storm Front before the fight, it rips through their shields so you don’t even have to worry about it.
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Also, when should I activate the Aspis? At the start of the fight, or a little after?
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Well if you care more about damage than survivability, you’re gonna want to use a roid shield and not use the Aspis at all to keep your shield depleted. If you’re going survivability then I recommend your having your Aspis out as long as possible (little after the start of the fight).
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Right, so here is my final build
For my gear, I’m going with Cyber Eagle, Fridgia, Moonface, corrosive Bullpup, Adaptive Shield, storm front, and Juggernaut Oz Kit.
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Looks pretty solid, looks like you’re going for a gun/melee build actually, using Tear and Maelstrom. For this the general playstyle would be melee, paint with blood > shoot marked target > dead. Maybe considering putting a point into Conduit since you’re using an adaptive shield. Also maybe use a bladed weapon to get more melee damage.
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About the Aspis, if you are using Roid I think it’s better to activate it and strip tour shield right before you start the action. IIRC the duration of the Aspis match with the recharge delay of the legendaries Roids
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My advice would be to not play like Zer0 and expect to kill outright on the first bloodrush. All you need to do is put a bleed on them.
If you’re specced full Omega-Senshu, as you should be, the bleed DoT will finish off most mobs, or come close. What I basically do is bloodrush and bleed several mobs without worrying about finishing any off; usually they will start dying anyway.
For melee, I find cryo grenades much better than teslas. Cryo is melee’s best friend.
You can facetank mobs as well, but the game is much easier to just bleed everything and finish them off.
Bladed Fridgia and Excalibastard are excellent choices. So is Sledge’s Shotty or a bladed Ravager. A follow-on blast from either will finish most mobs if you want to gothat route.
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think one melee, 12 seconds of Rend is enough to kill mobs in UVHM, with their buffed health. If you do only want to melee once, use Tear and finish them off with a shotgun to the face.
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You’re wrong. 
Well, give or take a Roid shield and/or Frozen status.
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Yep, you’re wrong 
Especially with a COM boosting O-S, or frozen enemies.
Mob health in UVHM is not nearly as buffed as BL2. They are still very easy to kill.
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Well, badasses actually take some bullets, but general mooks are weaksauce.
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Well, happy to be proven wrong then
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Yeah, badasses and bosses are the main concern, as the devs intended. Looking back, I should’ve specced into Tear from the beginning. Since main bosses will be immune to freeze, I’ll look forward to making them bleed, then pumping them with bullets. However, I’ve studied the Cyber Eagle, and I’ve found that it only has a tight spread while aiming down. This makes me torn between the Cyber Eagle and the Taser. The Cyber Eagle will not waste bullets like the Taser, but I cannot use it accurately while the Aspis is up. The Taser has reverse recoil, but this will cause the first 3 shots to miss, and hip-firing with a precision gun is a little shaky. Sure, I’ve got the Storm Front, but enemies are not always ideally positioned for maximum damage output. Which one should it be, Cyber Eagle or Taser?
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I personally prefer the Taser, mainly because I’m bad with Jakobs guns and I like hitting critical hits with fast firing Hyperion weapons.
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You’d be surprised. You can actually apply Cryo to almost all of them. They don’t “freeze,” but the DOT applies and you get the damage bonuses while it ticks.
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Yeah, I cryo everything to get more damage. Off topic, RK5 has a bleeding skin, he isn’t very easy to hit with melee but i got him once when he swooped low and was surprised he had a skin for bleeding. I am not running a roid shield so guns are as important as hitting, but mobs mostly still die in one hit or bleed out before i worry about them. Typical strategy is Aspis up, fire bladed fridgia to prime gun kata and then bloodrush. If they aren’t frozen at that point i will either freeze them or if their health is low blood rush again to finish them off. If multiple large targets are present like in the BA rd, freeze and hit them all then start shooting. Also if your aspis is cooling down BloodRush is great to stagger an enemy that is a threat. It buys time to freeze them, kill them or flee depending on how bad the situation is. Anyway, an extremely fun way to play the game, i find myself playing Athena more an more since switching to a hybrid build.
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Yeah excellent point and I was going to mention that - even 'roid shields are optional for Athena’s melee to be effective. I was running around melee specced witha Bulwark for a while and it was still totally fine. The only 'roid shield I would recommend is the Avalanche, actually, and that’s because of its other qualities.
The bleed still kills most non-badass mobs in one DoT regardless, without 'roid, if you are running with a COM that maxes Omega-Senshu. Melee is even good with an Obliterating Cannonness COM, as you get O-S for the DoT and also boosts for your shotgunning ability for follow-on shots.
Basically, tl;dr, her melee is awesome if you don’t try and one-shot kill or 'roidtank everything, and instead play to her strengths. And she can even one-shot and 'roidtank too, it’s just not her primary advantaged playstyle (as opposed to Zer0).
Yeah. Athena isnt an Assassin, she is a Gladiator after all.
Also, Avalanche has synergy with a lot of Athena skills - even for non melee setups. The spikes are great with PfG and Superconductor while the nova is great with Conduit and United Front.
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