Bloodsplosion Moze - M10 Raid Build
What if Krieg and his bloodsplosion build from Borderlands 2 but its Moze and Borderlands 3 instead?
Hey everyone! My names Nootmad and im bringing you a build that is what i believe to be the closest you will ever get to the satisfaction of bloodsploding enemies in Borderlands 3. The build has a few components to it that enables it work effectively. Primarily, the Guardian Perk Overkill is the star of the show. What Overkill does is basically carry over excess damage from your previous kill to your next shot. As this build will be dealing insane amounts of splash/weapon damage, you’ll be dealing crazy amounts of overkill damage that constantly transition to the next shot.
The radiation element is another component to this build. When enemies under the radiation proc explode, they 1) spread radiation procs to nearby enemies and 2) the explosion is buffed by overkill, aura damage, splash damage and AoE radius. What this allows is what i call ‘bloodsplosion’ and is more or less what Krieg was able to do in Borderlands 2. When presented with a large group of enemies, a single shot with this build can nuke the entire cluster of enemies once overkill and radiation explosions are thrown into the mix.
Also. Heres some gameplay for you lovely people. This one uses the Yellowcake + Blastmaster COM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlwWjW9pFrM and this one uses the Plaguebearer + Baby Boomer COM: https://streamable.com/hte32q
Skill Tree
So as described previously, the build focuses on boosting splash damage and radius and this is done through multiple ways. I’ll be using Demolitions Woman and Shield Of Retribution as they provide the best gun damage and splash damage increases for the build. I am also going to walk you all through why im picking up each skill to help you understand my reasoning, and to help you guys create your own variations of the build since you will know what skill does what.
Demolitions Woman
Torgue Cross Promotion + Stainless Steel Bear + Short Fuse
In a recent patch, Torgue Cross Promotion was given Splash Damage along with the pre-existing Splash Radius increase and so maxing this skill to 5/5 is a no brainer. It has also been discovered that skills that boost Iron Bear damage also boosts the overall damage of Short Fuse and as a result, maxing SSB will boost our Short Fuse damage, once again enabling us to increase our explosive damage output.
Means of Destruction
Means of Destruction gives you ammo regen based on the number of instances of splash damage you are doing and is one of the critical skills in this build to enable rapid rocket ammo regen. Coupled with the right class mods and grenade mod, the issue of running out of rocket ammo is long gone.
Vampyr, Holy Pin, To The Last and Auto Bear
at this point, Vampyr has been given 4 points, Holy Pin has 3, 1 point in To The Last and no point has picked up Auto Bear. I see this is a ‘flexible’ option, should you decide to want aggro relief in the form of auto bear, you can easily take out a point from either Vampyr or Holy Pin and put it into Auto Bear. Should you decide to go this route, i recommend taking a point out of Holy Pin rather than Vampyr for 1 reason. Vampyr allows both yourself to heal, as well as Auto Bear. Considering how some mobbing situations can get out of hand pretty quickly, its always nice to have extra healing. Should you decide to pick up Auto Bear, i recommend using either Target Softening for a nice damage buff, or use Hammmerdown Protocool to spread even more radiation procs and psuedo crowd control as the nukes knowndown enemies as well. (personally, i would pick up Hammerdown only because this build is far from lacking in damage, and you’ll barely be noticing the damage buff that Target Softening provides). Finally, To The Last has been picked up as its a nice utility skill to have but is entirely optional. Feel free to max out Vampyr or use that point to pick up Auto Bear instead.
Short Fuse
Short Fuse is more or less the quintessential skill of this entire build and is what enables the dishing out of ludicious amounts of damage. Secondary explosions are buffed by all splash damage sources and that includes Torgue Cross Promotion. This helps to further the ‘bloodsplosion’ effect that this build strives so hard for.
Shield Of Retribution
Security Bear and Armored Infantry
So. At this point, Security bear should only be picked up should you have chosen Auto Bear as a skill in the Demolitions Woman tree. If you didn’t. Theres no reason to NOT max out Armored Infantry.
Drowning In Brass, Thin Red Line and Vladof Ingenuity
I am not even going to go through my thinking on why im maxing Drowning in Brass. Just do it. It’s free damage. 2 points are invested in Thin Red line and 5 in Vladof Ingenuity only because i need points to get down to Phalanx Doctrine and Tenacious Defence. Selfless Vengeance is not worth speccing into as you won’t be reloading much at all. I don’t put 3 points into Thin Red Line so i don’t go under health gate and thus preventing one shot downs from enemies (although one aspect of this build is coming to terms with killing yourself more than the enemy would actually kill you).
Full Can of Whoop Ass and Behind the Iron Curtain
Now. I did not spec into these skills for a few reasons. Primarily because i won’t be using Iron Bear at all (considering i didn’t spec into Auto Bear) thus making Full Can redundant. HOWEVER. If you decide to pick up Auto Bear and are struggling to survive in difficult situations due to being a ‘low health’ build, you can pick up and max both these skills to give you some breating room. If you do this, obviously don’t spec into Thin Red Line at all.
Experimental Munitions and Desperate Measures
Experimental Munitions is always a good skill to have as it not only boosts the incendiary damage of weapon crits, but also grenade crits (so its just extra elemental damage which is always nice to have in any build). As this can technically be considered a ‘low health’ build, Desperate Measures was picked up to give us a marginal but always constant damage buff which is always nice to have. But once again, this is primarily done to enable us to pick up Phalanx.
Phalanx Doctrine, Force Feedback and Tenacious Defence
And now after all this reading (thanks for sticking around if you did) we finally come to the powerhouse of this build. Phalanx Doctrine is hands down one of Moze’s best mobbing skills , and you can expect to maintain 15 stacks of Phalanx in any frantic mobbing situation. 10% gun damage for every kill as a stacking skill is huge and is what helps this build ramp up its damage output. Force Feedback after its recent buff to give you a flat 10% of your shield back is very nice and helps a lot to stay alive. Finally we reach Tenacious Defence which is a very useful skill to have. On shield break, you get 40% of your shield back (pretty cool) but more imporantly, 30% gun damage for 30 seconds. This gun damage carries into FFYL as well as when you second wind so it can help to get you out of sticky situations. Getting a second wind will also refill your shields completely (thanks to the Resilient Guardian Perk)
Class Mod
Ok so. Now that we have all the skills explained, we can finally move on to the gear! For this build, you can technically use 3 and swap out depening on the situation. Quite obviously, the passive stat rolls you want are those that will buff Splash/AoE Damage and/or Radius, Heavy Weapon Damage and Magazine Size.
- Baby Boomer Class Mod (Epic Rarity). This Class Mod should ideally be rolled for +3 Means of Destruction and +2 in Torgue Cross Promotion. As Baby Boomer is a purple COM, you can only get 2 passive stat rolls.
- Blastmaster Class Mod (Legandary rarity). This Class Mod should ideally be rolled for +1 Redistribution. The other 4 points the COM may give you dont really matter. Redistribution is very useful for ammo regen as the grenade crits can regen ammo for you. Not reloading and maintaining solid ammo regen is very important to maintain the splash damage buff that Blastmaster provides.
- Mindsweeper Class Mod (Legendary rarity). Mindsweeper is arguable Mozes best Class Mod for the majority of builds for a few reasons. First, it can roll with both Redistribution AND Torgue Cross Promotion making it very opportune for any splash based builds. Secondly, its passive effect is straight up amazing. As you will be spamming nades, the critical hits from said grenades will also proc the mindsweeper effect allowing you to chain micro nades and deal huge damage. Finally, its a legendary Class Mod and as a result, can roll 3 passives. What’s not to love.
Now. The reason why i say you can interchange the class mods is because each class mod fills a different role more or less. Baby Boomer is best used for situation where you will be spamming heavy weapons ALOT. 6/3 Means of Destruction more or less guarantees infinite rocket spam and helps in situations where you’ll be shooting a lot. Blastmaster is best used in areas with a contained number of enemies (i recommend using Blastmaster in Proving Grounds and Takedown), and finally Mindsweeper is used for when you feel like doing large amounts of damage to small clusters of enemies.
Artifact
As this build is based on doing immense amounts of radiation damage, an Atom Balm relic works best. Atom Balm increases the range and damage of the aura explosions and fuels bloodsplosion chains when stacked with overkill. Victory Rush suffix is most suitable for this combination as free damage and movement speed when killing badass enemies (which there are a lot of) is always welcome. Hence, Atom Balm Victory Rush is best in slot for this build. The stat rolls you want are once again, those that will buff splash damage and/or heavy weapon damage + magazine size.
Shield
The shield isn’t really a critical factor for this build so feel free to use whichever one you most enjoy. The optimal suggestion for this build however would be a radiation Old God with triple Absorb or Adaptive rolls. The annoint doesn’t matter. You’ll basically be using the shield for survivability and not much else.
Weapons
And now for the big crescendo. THE WEAPONS. To literally nobodies surprise, the primary weapons you will be using are the shiny new ones that released alongside the Mayhem 2.0 update.
The Yellowcake comes highly regarded and does a ludicrous amount of damage + the added bonus of being a radiation weapon. It has a very large splash radius, can be fired near infinitely paired with the right build, and can hit in the millions per shot and easily ramps to well over 100M damage once Overkill kicks in.
HOWEVER. The Yellowcake is not the only option. Other launchers that work just as well include the Plaguebearer (my personal favourite), the Nukem, Backburner (currently bugged and only obtainabl at M0 level but it doesnt matter because that weapon slaps), Scourge, Hive, etc…
You ideally want everything to be radiation element to keep the DoT damage and AoE damage to its optimal level. However, if you decide to do Takedown with this build, a corrosive Plaguebearer will come in very handy when fighting Wotan the chunky boy himself.
Now. As for annoints, you have a few options. Should you decide to invest 3 points into Thin Red Line and go under 50% health, you can effectively use the 150% radiation damage while under 50% health annoint. BUT. The primary annoint i recommend is the 300% weapon damage to enemies over 90% health. Mostly because its V2 damage and therefore multiplicative, and also because you’ll be killing enemies in one shot most of the time anyway and this annoint helps you ramp up overkill damage much faster.
Grenade
Now, for this build to work effectively, you need a very specific grenade mod. And by that, i mean a Cloning Maddening Tracker grenade. Its an epic rarity com and is best farmed from vendors. The reason this grenade comes highly recommended is because of its ability to create multiple explosions. It comes with cloning and mirv parts and ultimately, is able to create 27 explosions in perfect situations. This is very helpful for keeping Means of Destruction constantly working to keep your ammo reserves topped off. As for the annoint, the 25% Weapon, Grenade and Action Skill Damage increase on grenade throw is best.
If you made it this far, thank you very much. I tried my best to explain this build as much as possible to (hopefully) make it easy to understand how and why this build works the way it does. If you have some criticism/feedback about the build, feel free to let me know! I’m always looking for ways to improve my builds. Anyway, thanks for reading and hope you guys get a lot out of this build. Happy Vault Hunting everyone!
Love, Nootmad
. If you don’t want to get below health gate, the best anoint you can run with on weapons other than rocket launchers is the consecutive hit anoint (if you want to ignore Iron Bear). You will feel the difference though, especially when fighting multiple enemies, compared to the 50/150 anoint option. For boss fights, I wear the Pearl of Knowledge (outweighs the Atom Balm VR in terms of damage, It’s Piss grenade (extra 20% damage on top of the 25% anoint), and 300/90 or/and consecutive anointed weapons.
). I am always happy to learn and, as a consequence, become able to improve certain builds of mine