Hi All. It’s been a minute since I’ve posted here. It’s also been a minute since I’ve played BL3, primarily because my excitement and anticipation for a proper pet class in a Borderlands game was quickly deflated upon release. As most of you know, Fl4k’s evolution into a pet class has been a painfully slow process. Every few months, it seems, pets are given a buff or a skill formerly pointless gets a tweak that adds a splash of value. Then, the purple tree dropped.
And now I just destroy absolutely f$&#@%* everything.
I have solo’d the Maliwan Takedown. I have solo’d all Proving Grounds. I have solo’d the Slaughter Shaft.
On Mayhem 11 (mods annoy me).
Here’s the build:
You probably have questions. Feel free to ask. Let me jump into a few details first:
Overview
This set up is ridiculous. Your damage output, utility, and survivability are all insane. It’s also easily the laziest possible build. The build itself and the mechanics are what make it so powerful, not the player. Once I finalized the build and snagged some half decent gear I didn’t do ■■■■, man.
- Gamma & War Bot build.
- You and your pet have absurd shield and health regen.
- There are fail safes in case things get nasty; pet can revive. Also, Mutated Defenses.
- You’re going deep into three trees. But not too deep.
- This build is only reliant on two pieces of gear, but really just one; Red Fang.
- You’re not touching the Hunter tree.
- Pet does 99.9% of the damage. You just stand there and flex.
- Pet uses your shield.
Gear
Keep in mind, all I really had going for me was the Red Fang mod when I put this thing together, and getting new gear was a noticeable improvement. However, when I say “noticeable” I mean it went from “damn this is really easy” to “hack the planet!” If Red Fang is the only thing you have going for you, that’ll get you through most of the things. Just assign the points and go kill stuff. Even if you don’t have Red Fang, learn to hide.
Beyond Red Fang, the only two suggestions I have are on shield and grenade. First, people are going to tell you to get the shield that explodes every time it breaks because your pet is going to constantly be breaking and filling their shield. Bad idea. War Bot actively avoids melee. Both bots do. You’re going to have brief moments where the enemies swarm your bot, but that’ll be over in about 5 seconds between the shotgun to the face and the gamma. Defense is more important. Get the shield with the 5 second immunity-on-break. Or don’t, I’m not your dad.
Grenade is really personal preference but I highly recommend the HEX nades. Multi grenade with homing abilities will literally clear the room when your Bot launches it. It’s just fun to watch. Again though, it’s your call. Just remember your pet is so damage buffed that those nades will straight murder everything, so multi-hit is better.
As far as guns, idk man, use whatever anointed ■■■■ makes the most sense. I swap guns all the time and the boss still dies horribly in less than a minute regardless. So basically whocares.png.
Preemptive QA
Why didn’t you put points into Success Imminent?
See above about melee. Your bot avoids it. Also who cares.
Was Combat Vet really a good idea?
Not really, no. It doesn’t do a hell of a lot for regen unless you throw 11 grenades, but it does help when things get brutal. Also, I needed 1 more point to open the next tier.
No Dominance? No Power Inside? Why?
Because they’re trash, and we’re focused on making the pet a monster. Period.
Seems like you put quite a few points into regen and stuff. We all know regen isn’t great.
It’s not great. You could go out of your way to dump every conceivable point into things that aren’t regen, but we’re trying to be lazy and survive. In Mayhem 11 I basically just stood in the line of fire and waited. Your pet does more than enough damage without having to min/max his output constantly. Focus on attrition; pet kills, you live. Happy balance.
Only two points in Fast and Furry? Madness!
This build comes with two skills that can swap points; Fast & Furry and Fuzzy Math. This is just my recommendation. You’re sacrificing 10% damage for another 3% shield regen on crit. Basically, swap points between Fuzzy Math and FF. I went with 2 points in both skills. Do what feels the best.
Go Kill Things
My specialty in games, often irritating to others, is to find the easiest, laziest build, spend hours tuning it and testing, then executing. And by executing I mean drinking whiskey while my automatons murder stuff. That makes me happy. I think I played through the entirety of Outer Worlds without actually firing my gun. My FF12 party fought the optional post-game boss without me touching the controller. You get the idea.
Lastly, I can tell you that I was legitimately surprised how effective this was. In the Proving Grounds, I routinely cleared them at around 23-24 minutes (25 being the ultimate bonus goal with a party). I threw down gamma and watched. Good times. Anyway, have fun yall.
Much Love,
Brew
P.S. It’s good to be back.
EDIT: Link fixed. My bad. Thanks boombumr for the heads up.