Question about Amara

Borderlands 3 Amara the Siren
#1

So I’ve main Fl4k and played both Moze and Zane so the sensible next step is to play Amara.

I’m currently watching videos on builds for her etc and see people often (what seems to be) phasegraaping nothing, what is the reason for this?

#2

Moved to the Amara section.

It’s nicknamed ‘fake-grasping’. A while back GBX made it so if you tried to phase-grasp and missed, the action skill was simply reset instead of having to wait out the cooldown timer. A side effect of this is that there are a bunch of things that get triggered by using phase-grasp that - it turns out - don’t actually require a successful phase-grasp. So you can stack various boosts that way. It’s clearly not how this was intended to work and, at some point, GBX may use a patch to adjust this. Meanwhile…

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#3

It’s most commonly used to build mindfulness stacks with the Spiritual Driver or Rush stacks with the Phasezerker class mods, it also triggers ASE anoints. With a good Ties That Bind build it’s totally unnecessary though.

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#4

Jeff has it right. Building stacks.

I ignore fake grasping from personal perspective. It is a legitimate technique at this point. I prefer actually grasping enemies and having them share the damage with their friends with via ties that bind.

#5

Cheers guys! Makes sense!

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#6

It’s still worth fakegrasping once before entering combat to activate the extra elements - then just phasegrasp as normal. You really notice the difference in damage on the first grasp if you don’t have the ASEs.

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#7

Is Amara fun to play? She’s my last VH, but I’m on the fence.

#8

Yes, she definitely is, at least to some of us. She’s very flexible, with multiple distinct playstyles. She prefers elemental weapons, but doesn’t need them, as she can make plenty of elements, even on weapons, herself. She has probably the best lifesteal and healing in the game, the very best crowd control skill/setup in the game, some of the best insta-yeet tricks up her non-existant sleeves. She’s also the consistent fastest VH with the right setup. She has the single best action skill in the game in Ties That Bind (edging Fade Away for that distinction IMO). She has some of the very best lower and mid tier skills in the game as well - Personal Space, Tempest, Laid Bare all multiple damage in very advantageous places in the formula, and Indiscriminate is just abusive.

Her only real downsides are that, outside of TTB, her action skills are meh, her scripting isn’t spectacular (though it’s not that bad compared to Moze or Fl4k) and she doesn’t have a capstone skill that you build around (not unique to her - only SF and Megavore really qualify).

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#9

Thanks!

#10

I think she’s best of the four, but I may be biased toward sirens. I’ve mained siren in each game since prolly early 2014 when Derch and/or Johnrr6 convinced me on the old forum that Maya was beast. Went back and replayed BL1 with Lilith too, clear through.

Clearly couldn’t main siren in TPS.

Amara is pretty badass besides. In previous games your melee badass was another character, be that Brick in 1, or Krieg or Zer0 in 2.

But I love good mobbers, especially when they can excel in mid-range. Maya is obviously my gold standard. But Amara kicks ass here too.

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#11

Thanks! I’m LVL 20 and having fun, but it’s a bit tough. Would you reco a good tree or Build for starting out?

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#12

SPOILER ALERT

Claptrap is a siren.

You heard it here first.

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#13

Put enough into the red tree to get Ties that bind. That is going to be your biggest asset and will totally change your playstyle experience.

Then I would probably spend up the blue tree to get stillness of mind. You CAN just use allure from the red tree but early on where you might want to lock down those enemies to keep them from shoot you, stillness of mind is a hell of an augmentation to Ties that Bind.

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#14

I love you and never change.

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#15

I agree about Ties That Bind, it’s Amara’s best skill, especially in the end game.

But pre-Mayhem it’s definitely worth trying Melee/Phaseslam or Phasecast, as that still does damage and is good fun - as in, you can actually kill enemies with that. In the end game, Slam and Cast are only really used for triggering augments and anointments because they don’t scale with Mayhem. Melee doesn’t scale either, which is a bit of a problem when enemies have 10x or 100x HP.

In the first normal playthrough however, a shotgun melee build can be frantic fun, feels a bit like Doom. If that’s your thing, maybe give it a try.

If not going for melee, here’s what I’d use at level 20 (action skill is TTB):

https://bl3skills.com/siren/#0300000000000000000000000005315001000000

And how I’d go on from there:

https://bl3skills.com/siren/#0300000000000000000000000005325001310200

The most important skills here are Personal Space, Tempest, Indiscriminate (massive damage increase) and Sustainment (Amara’s best healing source by far).

Xolos mentioned Stillness of Mind (blue, tier 3), which is a good shout – it will take an entire group of enemies out of combat at once, although at the cost of some damage and cooldown time.
Thing is, as soon as you’re in red tier 4 (Ties That Bind) you can pick Indiscriminate which is just too good not to take imo. After that, you’re close to Sustainment which is then too good not to take. If you have Sustainment, I greatly recommend having at least 1 or 2 points in Infusion because that will make even kinetic guns heal you.

Red tier 1 is pretty open, experiment with that. If you use a lot of kinetic weapons, do consider more points in Infusion. Steady Hands has arguably a smaller impact than the other two, but it’s the only one that comes without disadvantages, also I love accuracy and low recoil.

There are many different viable strategies, you can also invest in green or blue, but this is what I personally find most effective. Damage output is definitely top priority in this approach. You can’t really go that wrong with Amara, the greatest mistake you can make is not to take Personal Space and Tempest.

Do try Maliwan weapons even if you don’t like the charging mechanics, because with Amara’s elemental damage they’re extremely powerful.

With TTB, Amara is also extremely good with sniper rifles – in this case, definitely try Stillness of Mind. And a Monocle.

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#16

And thankfully there are a few that bypass that ridiculous charge mechanic.

I’ma second pretty much your whole post there. Can’t remember all the names of skill tree stuff for her (still have Maya’s stuff in my head 6 years later), but you can use Phasecast to Phasegrasp multiple enemies all at once. Pure Phasegrasp with lots of CDR and Ties that Bind does seem like the new Converge-Ruin Phaselock.

And again, she’s one fire Kitten away from god-tier mobbing.

DAMN I miss that all-Moxxxi guns Maya…

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#18

Amara and the Hellwalker are best friends if you like to play DOOM in BL3. However, at the moment endgame scaling is horrible, so we’ll have to wait for a some patches before I can go back to playing with my favourite guns in M10.

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#19

A driver build and a recursion is awsome fun to with a pearl it clears mobs great and switch to elemental projector for bossing it works really well