Paranoid Stewardroid
All those unborn chickens, though…
- Full Madtrap build at Level 50
- Full Madtrap build at Level 60
- Full Loose Cannon build at Level 50
- Full Loose Cannon build at Level 60
Introduction
I’m rather new in the Fragtrap’s world, and just very recently got to figure things out and start making my own builds and strategies for the little guy. Claptrap is a very interesting character to play with, since many of his skills bring gimmicks into the game, so you will have to be very versatile in order to make the most out of this class. That is also what this build centres around: using the mechanics to our favor, being a variable in the battlefield, never using the same thing too much. Also hoping for Funzerking not to activate in Co-Op, because that’s just obnoxious, but it’s not really up to us, is it? I wish it was…
In the breakdowns, I will be referencing the level 60 Loose Cannon version of the build, so some things I say might not apply well for level 50 play or any level of Madtrap play.
This build draws heavy inspiration from the Wreck-it-Trap 2.0 and Voracidous.exe builds, which were the ones I ran with before trying to come up with something of my own.
Boomtrap breakdown
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5/5 Drop the Hammer
What we’re getting here is a bonus of twenty five percent to your Fragtrap’s rate of fire and reload speed and a downside that doesn’t matter. Great for mobbing, great for bossing. Can’t really go wrong, can you?
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5/5 Killbot
Restoring up to thirty five percent of your health on kill is perhaps the bonus that most resembles health gating in the Pre-Sequel, getting Claptrap closer to Krieg in playstyle. However, we do get one tenth of our max shields drained along with the health restoring, but that passes as another bonus while using a roid shield.
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1/1 Second Wind [by Tediore]
This is the point that starts putting the “boom” in “Boomtrap”. Whenever you enter FFYL, a terrorist clone of yourself will be thrown at your foes and explosive novas will come out of you. Why they didn’t credit Torgue for the last part, I don’t know. Maybe Tediore is just that power-hungry.
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1/5 Load ‘n’ Splode
Boosted by our chosen COM, this skill will grant a nice stacking bonus to explosive damage after you reload the weapon in your hand. No downsides, no gimmicks, just Torgue.
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5/5 Start with a Bang
One of the things I learned using Wreck-it-Trap was to love this skill I used to hate. As NinjaWitAttitude says himself about the nova overshadowing Float Like a Bee, it “is hard to handle at first, but after a while you will only notice extra damage it does”.
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5/5 One Last Thing
We asked them to buff Money Shot, and, well… they didn’t. This skill differs from Salvador’s by having an eighty percent smaller buff at five out of five and a minimum magazine size to work with. Far less overpowered, much more satisfactory.
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1/1 Livin’ Near the Edge
Another bonus to rate of fire and reload speed, but inversely proportional to your health and shields count, going up to a hundred percent. HOWEVER, JUST IGNORE THAT. PIRATE SHIP MODE WOOOOOO!!!
I Love You Guys! breakdown
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5/5 Maniacal Laughter
So, let me see if I got this right, aussie. A stacking skill that gives me health regeneration and a bonus to status effect chance that’s based on having a DoT applied to an enemy? … hah… haha… hahahaha… HAHAHAHA… HAHAHAHAH HAHAHAHHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
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5/5 All the Things are Awesome!
Working both in solo and co-op play, this skill grants us bonuses to rate of fire, max health and weapon swap speed. The three are very nice, but become nicer when they increase based on how many team mates you currently have. No downsides, really, apart from your friends having to deal with it when you trigger Funzerking.
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1/1 You’re… GOING TO LOVE ME!!!
The second step the Fragtrap can take on lite health gating. Works good along Killbot since both trigger on the very same criteria, so there’s not really a reason why you shouldn’t grab this. Also, Gandalf would be proud… if you weren’t a Claptrap unit.
Fragmented Fragtrap breakdown
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1/1 All the Guns
Mandatory in order to go down the tree. Unlocks gun-based subroutines, adding damage, fire rate and reload speed bonuses to the currently supported gun type and a damage penalty to all other gun types.
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3/3 Fuzzy Logic
Mandatory in order to go down the tree. Not the most reliable critical damage bonus in the game, but guns like the Excalibastard can take profit off of this, given that the player doesn’t have too much trouble aiming.
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1/1 Safety First
Mandatory in order to go down the tree. Unlocks health and shield subroutines, granting regeneration of the currently supported attribute and also boosting its max value. On the downside, it lowers gun damage by fifteen percent.
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1/1 Rope-a-Derp
Melee subroutines! Who even cares about guns anymore? When this skill’s subroutine is active, you get a bonus of one hundred and fifty percent to melee damage output, but a penalty of twenty five percent to gun damage. Now pray for that Psycho action package to activate when this is up, and not Funzerking.
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4/5 Blue Shell
Gun damage, rate of fire, reload speed and FFYL time bonuses inherently active. This skill is all it takes to piss off your foes, specially the one that’s in first place.
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1/1 Tripleclocked
Multiplies bonuses and penalties of your active subroutine by up to three, inversely proportional to your current frag stacks count, except for the Safety First subroutines’ max value bonus, which gets the triplication at all times. Quite a tricky skill to be picking, but it goes with that gimmicky element I mentioned some time ago.
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1/1 Element of Surprise
Unlocks elemental subroutines, granting a damage bonus to the current element and a penalty to the same thing to all other elements. Both ways, it goes great with Maniacal Laughter. Do you want to build more of it up? Use the wrong element. Do you want to just wing it? Use the right element.
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5/5 Death Machine
By giving bonuses to gun damage, reload speed and movement speed, this skill goes great along with Blue Shell, Killbot and other skills picked in the build. One would think that this would make Claptrap less paranoid, but off with his head, man.
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5/5 Float Like a Bee
Our third and lest step into health gating matters isn’t only about killing, but about killing with a melee attack. Good to not make it too overpowered, really. Aside from health restoring, it also increases melee damage by thirty percent, movement speed by fifteen percent, and helps to keep your current subroutine going longer by adding frag stacks. All those bonuses also come with a melee kill.
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1/1 Rainbow Coolant
Nar-whow… rainbow novas all the way across the moon… and all those lasers are starting to make it look like an inferno… it’s so beautiful… what… what does this mean?!
Gear breakdown
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Excalibastard / Niveous Iterated Blaster / Bladed Fridgia
The weapon in this slot will be used to profit from the melee bonuses and from the Fuzzy Logic bonus to critical hit damage. Obviously, it is also our gun of choice for freezing enemies. The difference in play comes from these guns’ distinct rates of fire, and also in gimmick. You see, the Excalibastard is guaranteed to freeze any enemy you land a critical hit on, but it has a very slow firing that only gets aided when you’re at maximum firing speed, while the Fridgia will land far less critical hits, and when it does, they will not be as powerful as its legendary contestant’s, but it will certainly freeze more enemies in shorter time, and will go crazy when at rate of fire cap. The Blaster works as a mid-term option, getting a critical hit damage bonus, a fire rate placed between the two already mentioned weapons, cryo element and a blade attachment.
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Explicit 88 Fragnum / Casual Flakker / Casual Ravager
With this weapon, our goal is to benefit from the explosive damage output bonuses from the Boomtrap tree and from the multiplier on frozen enemies. The choice here lies on what you prefer using, since the first option relies on a tighter spread than normal from the prefix and has critical hit bonuses, while the second and third are good in general damage output, without any specifics, lying on a vertical grip for the prefix. For more insight on how to use the Ravager with One Last Thing, refer to this post.
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Corrosive weapon of choice
For building Maniacal Laughter stacks and killing all armored things. Corrosive is the longest lasting status effect, so it is ideal for the slot. Hyperion shotguns work well here, but it truly is up for choice.
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Shock weapon of choice
For making shields less of a problem and also some other enemies. Beam lasers, dahl or hyperion blasters and smgs work quite well for this task.
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IVF
This weapon will go in pair with a Bomber Oz Kit to make for bossing gear, specially against The Empyrean Sentinel. This can be switched to anything Tediore that you work well with, but it’s only optimal with the listed gun. Pick either the Refill or the Brisk prefix.
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Warming Avalanche / Warming Maylay Shield
Once again something to make use of melee bonuses, also making the Killbot penalty irrelevant. The Warming prefix prevents the movement speed decrease from having a Cryo status effect applied on you, and also decreases all damage of that same element. This here will put the roid in the stewardroid, am I right? I’ll… show myself out.
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Rabble Rousing Loose Cannon / Irresponsible Madtrap
For the first option, we will have five points into Death Machine and four into Drop the Hammer and Load ‘n’ Splode, as well as bonuses to pistol usage, which can be exploited by the 88 Fragnum. This makes for the most explosive road to go down on, relying on constant reloading and killing to keep bonuses up. However, we have a second option, which gives us once again a bonus of five points to Death Machine, but has its four points bonuses going to Blue Shell and Killbot. This allows us to go into Surprised? Stabilize!, making beam lasers less tricky to use, but also requires us to drop Start with a Bang, completely erasing one of the main weapons that the Loose Cannon version uses. Aside from that, it gives us a gun damage bonus and a shield capacity penalty. This here is a very tough call, and will be the factor that changes the way you play as well as the build version you use, so choose wisely, and, if necessary, try both.
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Tesla Grenade Mod
Either area-of-effect or singularity mods work well in this slot. The first one can be used to break your own shields given it has a fuse of zero, and the latter can make crowds easier to handle, as I learned with the Voracidous.exe build. Both are good for Maniacal Laughter.
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Systems Purge / Cathartic Oz Kit / Bomber Oz Kit
The first item listed will be optimal on Claptrap, since it not only benefits from his inherent lack of oxygen consumption (except for butt slams and double jumps), but also gives the bot better crowd control potential with its shockwave. The second one is the best option for building Maniacal Laughter stacks, and it’s also very humiliating to your enemies. Really, you’re killing them with a fart, it doesn’t get much better. The last item is intended only for bossing purposes, and as was said in the IVF’s breakdown text, it’s specially for The Empyrean Sentinel.
Moxxtails breakdown
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Brick’s Fist
Helps to keep a better grip on melee damage when you’re without the subroutine, and makes it better when you are with it. Generally great, and just about that.
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Lemon Lime & Bullets
One of the main issues I ran into while using this build was going out of ammo with the Viral Marketer I picked for the third slot. This moxxtail prevents that from happening with its ammo regeneration.
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Hot Gazpacho
This one increases your status effect chance, giving a helping hand to build up more Maniacal Laughter stacks within a smaller time frame.
Playstyle breakdown
As was said in the introduction, the main focus of this build is to use Claptrap’s unpredictability to the fullest, making him tricky to use, but also very interesting and versatile. What you will want to be doing is prematurely reloading every time your rate of fire isn’t high enough to just breeze through the magazine, getting bonuses from Drop the Hammer and, consequentially, Start with a Bang. Speaking like this makes it seem like One Last Thing is completely superfluous to how the Paranoid Stewardroid plays, but when you get your maximum rate of fire going (160% for solo and 180% for co-op, action packages not taken in consideration), pistols and shotguns in general will be seeing much more of that damage bonus to the last shot in far less time than normal. Keep in mind that you should praise variety in the optional slots for the gear, trying to make it so that you never really miss a subroutine’s bonus, which, of course, has its potential dragged down by the limited number of slots, but you can count on the subroutine’s algorithm most of the time. Getting into melee play is also advisable, since the build-up in Fragmented Fragtrap supports it by means of Rope-a-Derp and more dearly Float Like a Bee, allowing us to get more health gating potential while still having an incentive to keep using melee, given that it boosts its damage.
I Love You Guys! plays a mostly supportive role in the build, and it only gets optimal when you’re with the Cathartic Oz Kit on, since it can build tens of Maniacal Laughter stacks in very little time, specially when it’s paired with a singularity tesla grenade mod. The tier two skill goes in almost exactly like Blue Shell, but with a co-op gimmick attached to it. You’re… GOING TO LOVE ME!! is the true shine of this tree for our little stewardroid, since it unlocks the Gun Wizard package for your action skill, and I don’t think I even need to say that the bonus to fire rate will heavily benefit the build, making it faster to get to that One Last Thing and, on the same note, to force reloading.
In conclusion, I just hope you noticed that you have access to Pirate Ship Mode, Laser Inferno and Gun Wizard all in the same build. You’re welcome.
Final talk
So, here you are, at the end of the build write-up! I’d like to use the time you have (or don’t) to thank you for the attention you’ve given (or not). This took me quite a while to do, even with all the inspirations and heritage this build gets from the already mentioned bases I used for it. If you have any feedback to give, feel free to do so on the comments down below. Once again, thank you for the attention, and have a nice day.
