How well does Amara handle bosses?

I finished my first playthrough with Moze, and I’m just cleaning up side quests with her. At the same time, I started doing a run with Amara. I’ve been so used to Iron Bear when it comes to bosses, I’m not sure how to use Amara. She’s great at mobs, but I’m wondering what the best approach is to help her in boss fights.

Should I just concentrate on survival skills, or is there a build that gives her extra punch in boss fights? Since bosses can’t be phasegrasped (which is what I had been using), would it be better to focus on a ranged AS like Phasecast?

Yes Use phasecast v single non graspable bosses - as much action skill damage as possible then hit with a facepuncher to proc groundbreaker

Depends heavily on a number of factors. A lot of non-graspable bosses still have minions who you can actually grasp instead and simply killing those mions with TTB can result in a lot of damage against these bosses. I’m not sure how well that works without Mayhem scaling, though.

What is Mayhem scaling?

After finishing a story playthrough, you unlock the option to play on Mayhem Mode for that character. Mayhem Mode causes all enemies and equipment to scale to your level but also makes your enemies significantly stronger and introduces random modifiers that affect gameplay.

One of the hidden Mechanics of Mayhem Mode is that certain things gain additional damage the higher the Mayhem level is that you choose to play on. Most importantly things that aren’t directly affected by your gear but only your character level, such as melee damage or action skill damage.

This leads to some interesting results, such as some things being up to 33 times stronger on mayhem level 10 (which is the current maximum, though a Mayhem level 11 is going to be released on November 10th) than they are on regular level 65.

For Amara specifically that means that if you have Ties that Bind and you phasegrasp an enemy, the enemies connected to your target will actually take considerably more damage than even the primary target.

I’m not an Amara expert by any means, but I have seen bosses getting one-shot because the player had TTB and picked up one of the bosses minions.

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That’s interesting. I made it to endgame with my other character, Moze, but I’m mostly using her to pick up old side quests and complete collectibles. I love her character, but I felt like if I wasn’t in Iron Bear, I was getting pounded. I’ve always liked Sirens because they seem to have this dynamic aspect to combat. I’ve done mostly Phasegrasp, but I feel like I should try some of the other action skills.

She can one shot them with her ball. Otherwise, she deals less damage than all the other characters. She can still hold her own though, just is out damaged by others.

You’ll still feel satisfied when you shred Wotan with a monarch or whatever.