What are the best anoints for my element Phasegrasp build?

Borderlands 3 Amara the Siren
#1

Build:

I have read to try and get the 50% a ASE on my grenade and shield. Currently running cryo and radiation on them.

For guns are the best anoints going to be to add a different type of element damage, or is it better to have 200% damage during action skill or 300% damage to enemies above 90% health?

And why? Does each element type create its own extra projectile? Or is that only on the recursion?

I’m trying to figure out as I find gear what to prioritize and why. I have a 22k Incendiary lob that does 50% shock ASE that I’ve been wrecking with. I also have a kinetic boomsickle that does 300% damage to enemies above 90%. This thing also shreds, but am I hurting myself by using a kinetic weapon?

#2

The bonus elements will create an extra hit. For other VHs that means only using it on guns with a natural ricochet effect or hidden bullets. For Amara it means use Indiscriminate. The Lob will not work with indiscriminate or create an extra projectile. Lob is still a good gun, though.

The anointment will come down to choice and what enemies you are fighting. The 300% above 90% is a v2 buff. This makes the end result damage huge. It will work on any enemy with multiple bars, as long as their lowest “base” bar is above 90%. 200% action skill is also very good. You can use it two ways. Either grab something with Grasp and unload on the enemy and get all the damage or grab something nearby and shoot everything else. It will also work on bosses. Often times when you grasp a boss they are immune, but you will still see the “active” yellow bar for the grasp timer. During this time the anointment is active. Not all bosses can have this effect though.

Nothing wrong with using a kinetic version of a gun, but with the build you posted try to find elemental versions of the Boom Sickle. Damage will be higher in the end with element matching, Tempest buffs, Guardian Rank buffs, and healing from Sustainment.

#3

Thank you for the response! Do I have to have that weapon equipped at ASE to get the anoinment? And if so, if I switch to another gun and switch back is the anoint lost?

And is the 50% ASE on the lob doing nothing since indiscriminate doesn’t proc?

#4

If the anointment is on the gun, then you lose it when you switch. If the anointment is on the shield or grenade you don’t lose it as it lasts 10 seconds.

Also, make sure the grenade and shield are two different elements. The gun (Next 2 Mag) can be the same element as the others. You will also get an additional projectile from Forceful Expression and Infusion.

#5

Interesting. Forceful express and infusion each add another hit? Even though they’d be using the same element? And the extra damage either comes from indiscriminate or gun’s own ricochet, or both?

#6

FE and Infusion both give an additional bullet. Infusion bullet will be weaker, but can still be pretty lag choas inducing with something like a recursion.

If you take a gun that doesn’t ricochet you will do the damage of the gun and 50% as the element. There is more math involved, but basically you will see to numbers. Amara is unique that she can take guns that don’t ricochet and make them with Indiscriminate. There are some guns, though, that don’t work with the skill. Lob is an example.

I did some testing on this back in September. If you take a gun that can ricochet and use indiscriminate then two things happen. First the gun is going to naturally ricochet. It’s doing what it wants to do. Then there is going to be a percent chance the gun with “create” an extra bullet with Indiscriminate. 30% chance when not phasegrasped, 60% when phasegrasped.

This is why even with out 50% ASE the Projectile Recursion was considered Top Gear for Amara back at launch before we had anointments. With the anointment it was discovered that this will create an extra projectile on a ricocheting bullet. This also applies when the 50% bullet hits a target and Indiscriminate’s chance procs.

That is why one shot from a Recursion can turn into over 50 bullets killing everything including your Frames per second.

#7

It depends, but in most cases you want some extra damage anointment on your gun instead of a bonus element. The reason is that if you’ve got a lot of other bonus elements going on, having e.g. +100% ASE (on action skill end) on your gun will increase all other bonus elements accordingly, while having bonus elemental damage on the gun will not increase those. The more bonus elements you have going on with shield and grenade and Forceful Expression etc., the better a weapon damage increase fares compared to a bonus element on the gun.

Generally, your weapon damage increase is lost whenever you switch weapons… HOWEVER the 300% damage against enemies with 90% health (I’ll call it 300v2 from now on) works differently. Weapon damage increase like 100% ASE, 250% Cast, 300% Phaseslam, 200% action skill active, is calculated on shot. When you shoot, the bullet carries that bonus.

The 300v2 anointment however is applied on hit. It doesn’t calculate its damage when shooting your bullet, instead it checks on hit if the enemy has enough health left and only then increases damage. This means that you can “god swap” by shooting with e.g. a +250% after Phasecast weapon, and while the bullet is flying, you can switch to an Unforgiven with the 300v2 anointment. On hit, the bullet will have both the +250% and the 300v2 anointment and the Unforgiven’s critical hit bonus, because critical damage is applied on hit too, not on shot.

As for hurting yourself by using kinetic weapons, there’s one big issue I see in your build: you’ve got 5/5 in Sustainment but 0/5 in Infusion. This means that using a kinetic weapon won’t give you any life steal, greatly reducing survivability. Put one point in Infusion. That won’t only give you an extra ricochet on some weapons like Projectile Recursion/Carrier/Rowan’s Call/etc., it will also heal you a lot.

#8

No votes for consecutive hits? Big damage, pretty low maintenance. It doesn’t care if you used your action skill or not, can stack during cooldown and Amara can spread dots around like no one else making for fast and maintainable stacks.

Lacks the instant boost of some of the others but frees you up to swap weapons when you want as well.