Shock trooper Moze- M4 Takedown Mind Sweeper Build Guide

Borderlands 3 Moze the Gunner
#1

Want a Moze build that doesn’t rely on nade spam or require you to use splash weapons? Tired of constantly hopping in and out of iron bear just to proc anointments?
Look no further: this build uses Mind Sweeper and a fast, run-and-gun playstyle to make Moze a frontline shock trooper, both literally and figuratively.



Skill trees:
https://bl3zone.com/planner/AAC5EB2ED5EM1EO3EP1EQ1ES5ET4EU1EV1EW3EX1EY5EZ1FC5FD3FF1FG3FH-el1AA

A brief overview of Mind Sweeper grenade (MSG) mechanics:
MSG damage is based on the damage of the critical hit that procced Mind Sweeper. MSGs can crit with PthP, which can then proc Mind Sweeper again for a secondary MSG with hugely increased damage. I’ve seen 50mil on secondary MSGs from a krakatoa. MSGs also proc vampyr, allowing you to heal from grenades without actually throwing grenades all the time.

Playstyle
The build revolves around using the Transformer to turn the biggest downside of Mind Sweeper (killing yourself with MSGs) into our source of sustain. We use high-firerate shock weapons with heavy investment in bottomless mags to drop a consistent stream of MSGs from whatever enemy we’re shooting, while rushin’ offensive and 5+ TCP let us close distance to those grenades. As long as we stay within TCP radius of the enemy we are shooting, we fully restore our shields and proc vampyr multiple times per second. This build strongly rewards aggressive positioning and movement by giving near-invincibility when we are close to the targets we’re hitting.

MSG damage is so high that even a fraction of bonus incendiary from 5+ FitSD, experimental munitions, and stoke the embers lets us use shock into red health without issue. SRPMs boosts MSG damage and production via crit damage and firerate. Armored Infantry gives a nice addition to damage and survivability while shields are active, which they should nearly always be if we stay within our TCP radius. We have 1 point in MoD because there are phases of Wotan where you can’t reliably crit anything for MSG healing. During those we may need to use grenades for healing and it’s nice to have just a bit of nade regen with IB explosive miniguns.

IB is mainly used as a safety net if we’re taking a lot of damage and there’s nothing nearby to heal off of, or to give ASE elements to deal with tougher enemies.

I’ve been having a blast with this build and possibly the best thing about it is that it’s very easy to make it work without much gear requirement. Because MSG damage is based on the crit that procced it, you don’t need the perfect splash+AOE rolls on all your relics and etc. Our damage output is a combination of weapon damage and MSG splash damage, and any weapon/crit/manufacturer damage rolls will contribute to MSG damage as well. That said, I’ll go into what I’ve been using and some tips for doing the takedown with Mind Sweeper:

Required gear:
-Obviously a transformer. Good anointments include element ASE for damage and 75% health+shield for a big boost to your total effective hp as you will be constantly full-charging it.

-Any high-firerate shock weapon that you can consistently crit with. For optimal MSG damage you want a high damage per pellet. I use a hellshock, though you have to be careful when shooting enemies near walls. The fire ricochets can crit and drop fire MSGs, which will oneshot you. The hellshock’s damage is so high that I feel it’s worth the risk and is probably the best weapon for the build. Hyperfocus, star helix, lasersploder, and ion laser all performed well and I’m sure there are many other options that would work. No specific anointments are required, but 160% splash and 125% fire are obviously very strong. Consecutive hits is also excellent for reasons I’ll get into later.

-Mind Sweeper. Skill distribution doesn’t matter too much. TCP, FitSD, and redistribution all benefit the build. As I said above, good stat rolls include any form of weapon, crit, or splash damage specific to what you’re using.

Other gear:
-Corrosive weapons. The build has high shock and fire damage baked in, but killing armored targets can sometimes be difficult. For targets that can be readily crit such as the valkyries, I would suggest sticking with your shock weapon and using a shield/grenade with corrosive ASE. If you are going to switch to a corrosive weapon, manage your positioning carefully as corrosive MSGs will oneshot you. For krakens/thors/wotan’s first phase, I highly recommend the cutsman, as you can just shoot through the midsection to hit their crit spots without getting behind/close to them. This build using a consecutive hit cutsman kills the final phase of wotan faster than a 100% ASE boom sickle in a standard blastmaster build. Other good options are hyperfocus, ion laser, and breath of the dying (if you dont mind twice the ways to kill yourself).

-Grenades. Ideally, a shock homing tracker with element ASE for minor healing. I didn’t have a shock tran-fusion so I’ve been using a random blue grenade from a vending machine. Again, this is not a heavy nade spamming build so you can really use whatever you want. If you don’t feel you ever need to rely on nades for sustain you can go it’s piss for max damage. Just keep in mind that PthP procs of non-shock grenades will drop MSGs that kill you (seeing a theme yet?). As such, I would highly advise against the cloning maddening tracker as it litters kinetic MSGs everywhere.

An aside on bonus elements and MSGs:
I haven’t done the full science on this but this is what I’ve found through playing. Adding bonus elements through anointments, FitSD, or whatever else will not spawn MSGs in those elements. It will, however, add those statuses to your shock MSG explosions. You will be constantly running into these explosions and having these dots on you. As such, consecutive hit anointments are very good in this build because self-damage maintains your stacks. You should never use cryo ASE in this build as you will continually cryo yourself. Which brings us to:

-Relics. For the reasons above, elemental projector will maximize the damage output of this build. If you have corrosive and shock ASE, your MSGs will apply shock, corrosive, AND fire (through FitSD) to yourself, allowing elemental projector to pump out insane dps. It’s fun, but elemental projector also amplifies the strength of the dots, and they can actually kill you pretty easily if you’re dot’ed after you run out of targets to drop heals from. So I’ve been sticking to the standard relics for the most part. Any combination of snowdrift/last stand and victory rush/otto idol is fine.

All in all, it’s very flexible in terms of equipment. Clearly there are some constraints due to the ease at which the extreme damage output of Mind Sweeper can kill yourself, but it’s a been a refreshing and different Moze playstyle and I’ve had a ton of fun with it.

Thanks for reading and I hope you try it for yourself and enjoy.

4 Likes
#2

Sounds pretty fun have you been able to get any gameplay footage yet?

#3

I play on a laptop and sometimes recording can be a little iffy with performance so I shot in 3 parts. Second 2 are uploading but I’ll edit them in when it’s finished. Not the best run but I wanted to get something up.

1 Like
#4

I feel it PS4 is terrible any editing and it turns to ■■■■

#5

Full run is up. Like I said, not the best. I missed the recursion shot as he was splitting and this build’s damage against flying enemies is pretty bad otherwise. Trying to think of better ways to do it but there’s no real way to hit them with Mindsweeper. Also killed myself getting too close to a corrosive grenade on the Kraken at the end.

1 Like
#6

The second damage phase on Wotan is always hard for me with MS because of the heavy add presence that builds upif you can’t melt the phase that has no crits…if you don’t use a rocket launcher like a lump or scourge or find a good grenade spamming strategy to clear the adds clean up will drain you. I found throwing either some ghast call or some corrosive torgue mirv+mini mirv under him can cheese that phase, I also mixed in an eruption reload to debuff.
As far as krakens go I always try to skip their spawn because that’s alot of badass for this lil lass, the recursion is a good idea though. Remember the krakens have the same lump on their back as Wotan.
Still that’s about all I know for that, pretty limited in the Moze department.

#7

Yeah, the thing is none of the AOE rockets do that much damage with MS. I found it easier to just kill everything manually. As long as you dont let yourself get caught in the rocket attack you can keep healing off the adds as you kill them.

The recursion oneshot is pretty common if you are up on any Amara meta builds.

1 Like
#8

I just play Moze and Fl4k for the moment, I had to set Amara down, still your recursion strategy is what I do on Wotan with 3 shot fadeaway and I’ve one shot them all before…
The problems I see with the recursion and Moze is the limits on ase elements without hurting the build, the fact that we are using a splash weapon without caring for the splash damage and though not relevant GM is actually almost useless with this gun.
The lump is a little different than other launchers if you’ve never used it and it really can be effective regardless of mod. some for the road really allows for that gun to be abused and click click along with the regeneration from MoD go a long way. Still it may not be good enough for your build once you enter true Takedown mode

I believe @kabflash knows alot about Moze and the recursion, if I remember correctly he had cleared the Takedown with this gun before scaling was an option. There is also a maliwan themed build that was posted here less than a week ago.
Aside from video of a MS build using a lump this is as much help as I can give based off of my struggles with the takedown.

#9

I did make a build around it:

There isn’t much to it, acts like on any other char the anoint gives a projectile COL does too afaik. The ricochets are splash so that’s a bonus for Moze.

1 Like
#10

Yeah, we were discussing ways to kill flying enemies with mindsweeper. Best way I’ve found so far to kill wotan’s head is just recursioning it on split using that mechanic. Any other ideas are welcome.

#11

Well Mindsweeper itself is literally going to do nothing for the Better Half or any other flying enemy, so my suggestion is to pause and switch to a useful COM for the situation (an underused but valid strat) - or just use an OP weapon that’s strong against it (many things fit this bill).

#12

strictly speaking you were spamming (micro)grenades tho :smiley:

1 Like