Hello fellow Vault Hunters,
Do you love animals? Do you relish the thought of them tearing your enemies apart? Do you not have time to farm? Does “social distancing” mean nothing to you? Is your soul elated by the sight of
HUGE CLUSTER@#%S OF ■■■■■■■ EXPLOSIONS???
Then boy-oh-boy, do I have the build for you.
This build has undergone some radical changes with the introduction of the Trapper skill tree. It is so much more powerful than it was before. However, it is almost a completely different build than the non-DLC version. I’ll post a link to a google doc for the non-Trapper tree variant of Killer Queen for anyone who may need it. While the build is still effective without DLC 5 (and actually still gained power with the 11/9 patch like a lot of builds did), I prefer the Trapper variant for its superior pet damage.
How does it work?
This build is based entirely around the Guardian Rank perk Hollowpoint. Needless to say, if you prefer to play without Guardian Rank or haven’t reached this perk yet, you can’t play this build.
@DocStrangelove explains Hollowpoint in his Overkill Explained thread, but as a quick refresher Hollowpoint will create an explosion on critical hit kills that deals damage equal to your Overkill. However, what really makes this skill amazing is that, unlike Overkill, the damage of Hollowpoint is uncapped, meaning that it can hit for some absolutely bonkers numbers. On top of being uncapped, this perk also scales with Pet Mayhem scaling, meaning Hollowpoint explosions from pet critical kills will deal X51 damage in M10.
We’re going to use Go for the Eyes to guarantee consistently powerful critical hits. This skill only provides crits on the first melee attack to hit an enemy. The goal of this build is to take full advantage of this perk by loading up on as much splash damage as possible to boost the Hollowpoint explosion and attack command damage, and then utilize the correct pets to hit huge melee crits with Go for the Eyes and blow up mobs of enemies. Using Eager to Impress to spam attack commands, we can keep tossing out high damage nukes with our pet. We further boost this attack command damage with the recently buffed pet terror anointment (attack commands consume all terror and the pet deals 200% bonus damage as fire for about 18 seconds) and roid shields with Take This.
Pets can stack overkill and Hollowpoint for FL4K even though they don’t personally benefit from it. We can utilize these interactions for massive damage boosts against tough enemies.
The Skill Tree
Pets
Because of the mechanics of this build, only one pet really works: Spiderant Countess. Countess ticks every box for this build. Her attack command scales off of splash damage and it’s melee so it can proc Go for the Eyes. The most important feature of this pet however is that it’s melee attack is a teleport. Not only can she attack enemies from surprisingly long ranges, but she can move quickly and seamlessly from one enemy to another without running into any other bodies messing with her AI. As long as you are diligent in your commanding, you can essentially guarantee that Countess will not have an opportunity to get off a normal melee attack on an enemy before she teleports and kills them with her burrowing attack.
Skills
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Take This - This skill allows you to equip your Spiderant with a roid shield. All of the damage types on Countess’ attack command (splash, terror) scale with roid. Giving you anywhere from an 80-300% damage boost on almost all of her attacks.
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Headcount/Eager to Impress - We need Headcount to lower our Gamma Burst duration, and Eager to Impress to spam attack commands.
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Go for the Eyes - This build won’t work without at least 1 point in this skill, but your effective DPS will increase dramatically with as many points as you can spare in here. Hollowpoint is based off of the damage you overkill enemies with, so the higher your crit damage is, the more damage the explosion will do. This crit can also Throatripper crit, resulting in an attack that deals 2.75x damage.
GEAR
Weapons
Ideally, the Gamma anoint would be used for this build since we need a roid shield and we have better artifacts to use than Deathless. However, because the Gamma anoint is broken right now, I’ve been using Consecutive Hits.
Facepuncher- This weapon is used for generating terror. Because we’re using a roid shield, the Facepuncher can deal decent damage when we are in FFYL. This weapon is a great utility slot which can function as an ammo restoring tool (cutpurse) or lifesteal (knifedrain), but the goal is to give the Facepuncher enough damage to keep up stacks of Interplanetary Stalker.
Zheitsev’s Eruption - Debuff tool. There are very few enemies where this will be required, but it is generally useful to have this weapon overheated so it will fire out its debuff rockets every time you swap to it.
The final 2 slots can be filled by any high powered splash damage weapons of your choice: Backburners, Plaguebearers, Sandhawks, Anarchy, etc… The goal is to have weapons that can quickly dispatch badasses and bosses when the Facepuncher doesn’t cut it. I try to have a shock, corrosive, and fire option for any of the weapons I carry, but prioritize shock and corrosive since those are the most useful for raid content.
SHIELDS
This build will work best with the best roid shield you have on hand, preferably with the Pet terror anointment. This build can work with any roid shield with the terror anointment (an 80% roid bonus with pet terror will beat out a 180% roid without it), but your goal is to get a 300% Brawler Ward.
GRENADES
The grenade will be where we have our “generate terror on melee” anoint so we can use a damage anointment on the Facepuncher.
Quasar/Whispering Ice - For singularity nades.
Hunter Seeker - Can proc Headcount through Megavore crits and regen ammo with Leave No Trace.
RELICS
No relic’s special effect works for the pets, so you have 2 options:
- Victory Rush - More personal damage with guns, Countess kills stack this
- White Elephant - can help with Facepuncher damage against single targets.
- Static Charge- AOE damage for Facepuncher, and chains + bonus damage help kill trash mobs and keep up Interplanetary Stalker.
As for prefixes
Go for Knife Drain if you feel you need survivability
Go Cutpurse if you’re fighting tough enemies and you think you’ll run out of ammo
Go Stone if you want more Facepuncher damage above all else
Go snowdrift in any other scenario
CLASS MODS
The Red Fang class mod is preferred for this Gamma Burst version of Killer Queen. Ideal stat rolls are +3 Ferocity, +1 He Bites, and +1 Eager to Impress. Passives would be Weapon type Damage, Splash Damage, and either charge speed (if applicable) or weapon damage.
The Red Fang is needed in this setup for 2 reasons: we don’t have the points to reach Eager to Impress so we need a class mod that gives us points in the skill, and we need the pet’s roid shield to be down for max damage so the taunt ensures the shield never gets a chance to refill during combat.
How It Works
As was mentioned above, the core of this build is Go for the Eyes, Eager to Impress, and Hollowpoint. By spamming Countess’ attack command as the first melee hit on an enemy, we can guarantee a critical hit that will (more than likely) kill the enemy and proc Hollowpoint explosions.
Where this build changes is in how powerful the attack commands are. The Trapper tree introduced several skills that supercharged Countess’ damage. The first is Gotta Go Fast, which is an independent 35% damage multiplier. This skill gives us an always on Deadeye bonus. The next skill is Throatripper which gives the pet a 15% chance to hit a critical hit. This skill is like Megavor in that it can make any pet damage source crit, which even includes Go for the Eyes crits. It gives a sizeable damage increase to basic attacks too when it procs. Finally, Take This allows you to give the pet a roid shield, which can be as much as a x4 damage multiplier.
Because we have access to roid, we no longer need to focus on keeping up the splash anointment for damage. Gamma Burst gives us access to the 75% bonus radiation damage, and we have permanent uptime on the 200% bonus fire damage from terror. Both of these bonus elements scale with roid damage, so now Countess can cover the elemental weakness of every health type.
Because the pet stacks overkill and Groundbreaker on Hollowpoint kills, you can use it to build damage to nuke larger targets with your guns. This is especially helpful on the Facepuncher and single projectile weapons like the Plaguebearer and Backburner.
Gameplay Footage
Thanks for taking a look. This build is the most fun I’ve ever had in BL3. Seeing my pet, which 2 months ago struggled kill trash mobs, hitting bosses for hundreds of millions of damage is a sight to behold, and the amount of explosions going off on screen would make Mr. Torgue shed a tear.
I’m renaming my FL4K Yoshikage Kira in honor of this build, as whenever FL4K points his finger at something and says “That one’s talking ■■■■” this is what happens.
