Hi fellow Amara-ers. I’m MH2 right now, doing Guns, Love and Tentacles Dlc in TVHM. I got this awesome shield, which -in conjunction with Amara’s Sustainment- keeps me alive in most situations except maybe extremely tough bosses. Problem is… I don’t have a build. I just put points following what I needed at that moment and this resulted in poor optimization. Anyone care to point me towards a proper build? I can’t seem to find a Rough Rider based build around here… Thanks a bunch!
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The Roid Rough Rider with the Facepuncher shotgun can be a lot of fun if you want to go the Melee Amara route.
I originally intended to do so, but i read that melee doesn’t scale with mayhem levels… Can you point me towards the build anyway?
Just buff your melee in your skill trees as much as possible, use class mods and artifacts that boost melee damage. You might want to find a White Elephant artifact with melee buff to give you some explosive damage on top of your melees.
If you are playing in the higher mayhem levels melee is only going to frustrate you. Id recommend m3 or lower for melee builds.
I’m M2 atm, so I don’t think I will be in much trouble. The shield, along with a Lob, is all I have atm, and I must respec to give Amara energy and Melee Damage… I don’t know if I’m able though, not much experience in doing builds…
Update: I got a face punch, but sadly… It doesn’t pack any elemental damage, thus not replenishing my energy. I’m still stuck with Lob, which even if 580 item level, is capable of dishing out severe damage. My melee does about 1,5x the damage of AN orb from Lob. Which isn’t bad but I almost only use it as a gap closer atm. I don’t have the right artifact nor class mod, and this really hurts the build… Where can I find them?
Facepuncher + Knife Drain = Grog Nozel
The best Rough Rider shield is the Featherweight Rough Rider which combines the Sprint RR and the Roid RR giving you both 10% movement speed (Sprint RR) and 80% Melee (Roid RR).
However, you may want to look into the ‘Adrenaline Initative’ shield instead of the RR. It gives you 23% Reload speed, 13% damage reduction and weapon damage and increases health by 50%.
If you are on PC I can give you a M10 Facepuncher with ASA 200٪ along with a bunch of other gear to get you rollin’.
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Hey there, I already got that shield, and remain startled for a sec… It’s a rough rider with more health and less DR. Matter is… I seem to die wearing that shield, as if its DR is not enough to sustain me. I’ll try it again today. As for the other combination you mentioned… That would render my Amara Sustainment quite useless, in that it only procs upon elemental damage which is NOT influenced by Infusion (this is still a mistery to me…). I’m on PC yes, steam version. That’d be great, eve though I don’t want to abuse your kindness.
Infusion does proc Sustainment now, but it still doesn’t with the face puncher, which is not weapon damage, but melee damage. The optimal trick for the face puncher is to use a Knife Drain White Elephant artifact. Knife Drain is a LOT of life steal, and White Elephant with a Face Puncher will attack multiple stickies per shot at close range. Those stickies can crit. Boom goes the dynamite.
Generally, though, it won’t scale well to M10. There are some niche build tricks that can work sometimes to get the required damage at that level, but it’s a lot of work for a very beatable amount of damage. Tomorrow, however, melee might come back to life.
Another cool new trick at lower Mayhem levels that I’ve been enjoying is the Stinger shield (drops from the GTD). On break it procs a nova, and the nova is MELEE damage, and also splash, and it’s also in your action skill element (at least, it is with IF). With an ASS shield effect anoint, you can proc it at will, and melee bonuses, elemental bonuses and splash bonuses (Arms Deal, Tempest, FyS, Blitz, IF, plus COM and Artifact stats) all apply, and AoE damage and Splash Radius both increase the radius to “quite large.” It won’t do work (now) in the GTD at M10, but it’ll run it ragged at lower M levels.
Rough Rider shield = A Rough Ride
It was only useful with Maya when used with a Breakneck Banshee com (granted that you invest in the Fleet perk) in BL2 to give Maya super speed. It is the worst shield in the game and could have been forgotten after BL2.
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