Mods possibly needing a buff or rework for Amara

Borderlands 3 Amara the Siren
#1

Aw yes we’re close to the end of 2020. It’s been a fun ride making builds even if it wasn’t as strong as you wanted it to be.

I’m surprised out of all the mod buffing and changes they did for Zane the operative and Moze the gunner (I recall her getting some buffs and changes but could be wrong) we still never got updates for Amara mods.

Though I will say that Golden rule and Stone mod was pretty fun when I made it work with Pain is power builds. Fun times…

I sill hope to see changes to her mods though because currently when I think about it the best mods for Amara still remains the same. Spiritual still seems like the best with Phasezerker coming right behind it then you got maybe two thrown right after?

Breaker and Muse. Maybe kensei? Not entirely sure how other feels about Kensei. I like it but the farm is painful it’s not really at my top interest plus (was kinda a let down it didn’t interact with some skills that activate off of melee)

I heard Dragon seems to be doing good but then again it doesn’t work with the new argument and most people just facepuncher with it because for obvious reasons other than it’s freaking cool (It doesn’t work with other augments effectively)

I can say while Breaker and Muse do add other ways to play with Amara the others just seem still not worth using. May be forgotten about to or left behind maybe? (Can’t even think the last time I’ve seen someone make a build with Golden rule. Wouldn’t surprise if people forgot that mod existed as well sadly. RIP!)

I hope Gearbox will buff Elementalist and Nimbus at least because Nimbus I feel like locks your playstyle down too much so you have to use a high status effect damage to make it work and Elementalist just needs to either be reworked entirely or buffed a lot though I did hear Harmageddon has some sweet interactions with it so maybe I’m missing something there. (Not really into phasegrasp honestly)

How does everyone feel about Amara mods? I think they’re in better spot than before with all the new stuff that came in but I keep thinking they should get more attention for a fine tuning for improvement.

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#2

Elementalist needs a rework, I can t find any use for it

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#3

Agreed.

#4

My biggest disappointment with most of the new Amara mods is still, for a gun-focused Amara that I like to play with, how outclassed every mod still gets by the Phasezerker. That and that they flat-out refuse to release new mods that don’t involve melee for Amara as well. I like to use Jakobs, so Driver was never really an option. I’d just like to have a second option for a gun build, that can compete with the Phasezerker. Something like the Trickster for Maya, which was a Blue COM that could easily compete with Legendary Mods when you built for it. That’s one of the main reasons I stick to BL2 when I want to play Borderlands at the moment. Just way more variety and better farming experience.

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#5

Kensei seems to be another take for more gun damage from melee damage buuuut…I don’t think it competes well with spiritual driver and Phasezerker…

Personally I love the idea of Kensei (Fits perfect for gun/slash melee Amara) but the farm for it is so painful in my opinion. Not to mention trying to get the stats you want for it…I also think it should get a buff on how long the buff is active because 6 seconds just seems WAY too short

Also WHY DON’T WE HAVE ANY REAL DEDICATED MELEE MODS IS BEYOND ME? Sigh. T_T

#6

Kensei is annoying because of how random the farming experience is with Arms Race, plus the skills it boosts are somehow both helpful and useless at the same time. None of them really benefit her overall in min-maxing any one of them, and the lack of interactions with melee artifacts makes it feel lacking even when it technically isn’t.

Phasezerker being the top do-all mod even over Driver but being utterly useless with Phaseflare kinda sums up the whole feel of these hotfixes, patches and changes. Elementalist is still useless for 90% of any viable loadout for Amara, Nimbus only works with high DoT weapons which do terribly on Mayhem and even then you still need one with +5 in Tempest to really make it do any work.

Golden Rule I think should ideally work with Phaseslam/cast damage Anoints but it still lags behind Phasezerker for cooldown and for Phasegrasp the cooldown is too sporadic compared to Phasezerker. Breaker CAN be good, but you need it to roll with a melee damage affix and +3 to Personal Space along with the +1 to Find your Center, so its picky as hell to get a good one.

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#7

Pretty much sums up most of Amara’s mods in a nutshell. I still want them to improve Golden rule for what it’s intended…T_T

As I said I been hoping Gearbox would take the time to buff and improve Amara’s mod for more ways to play. Variety in mod selecting just doesn’t seem too…interesting right now.

If they would just buff and rework her other mods this would fix the problem more. Golden rule can be one of the best tools for the longest cooldown action skills as well as helpful for activating her anoints, Nimbus straight just change how it works honestly same goes for Elementalist, the Dragon mod seems fine but in my perspective I feel it’s just underperforming unless you play Facepuncher with stillness of the mind or revalations augment but to me it seems too weak with other augments, and lastly Kensei should get buffed to either 12 seconds or more when active this would give you more time to play with the buff as well as makes it more useful for phaseflare because once again 6 seconds still seems too short. It’s not a grenade throw anoint it’s a mod so why should they share the same duration? WHY!? I can understand why it doesn’t activate effects that proc off of melee but then again it activates Ebb and flow and combo breaker so why not let it activate the rest at this point? Maybe power creep? That doesn’t sound right at all thinking about it.

(Stone I honestly believe needs to be reworked because blue tree is all about consuming stacks buuuut… stone wants you to save them? WHAT!? If it’s a new way to play with rush stacks sure but why not make it do something for us when we consume those stacks? Just seems a bit off from the purpose of building stacks of rush only to not consume them?)

I just want these other mods brought up. No more spiritual driver and phasezerker being the mainly two best coms to speak of for Amara.

(Side note I feel like the only reason Breaker is good is because of the skills being boosted because technically stone outclasses it in term of the special effect it gives then again I could be missing something here.)

#8

I personally like Nimbus a lot, it’s one of the most original playstyle in the game so I would not like if it was completely reworked, but it could use a buff (I would add on it as cooldown and dot damage boost)

Golden rule actually works really well for cooldown, but you need to use self damage (I like StoneSwan build a lot he uses low level Wester gun and golden rule to main downfall)

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#9

People are sleeping on the kensei. It’s does more damage than the phazezurker. And allows you to adopt this really cool punching and shooting playstyle. Like a hybrid of melee and gunplay. Plus it lets you proc action skill end annointments unlike the oh so precious phazezurker.

Plus if you spec into the purple tree well you can totally have a super fast cooldown. Especially with ties that bind. Ties that bind plus expedite equals 5 second cooldown on average dude. And that’s not not mention the fact you likely have passive action skill cool down on your class mods.

The kensei is one of Amara’s best class mods hands down. You can even buff unweave the rainbow with it, and vaporize things.

Don’t even get me started on the spiritual driver.
You can still get so much damage from it. More than the phazezurker, because the weapon damage boost is large on the spiritual drivers than the phazezurker and the elemental projector deals more damage than the pearl. These are just facts, if you look at the numbers.

Yeah, you have to be creative with Amara. She’s got faults, but if you work for it you can pull some crazy damage out of her. Especially if you’re not using a damn phazezurker.

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#10

So if I wear a Phasezerker com and use PhaseCast I wont get ASE’s?

Expedite currently does nothing. It will not proc at all.

Amara doesn’t have a problem with trash mobs that can be frozen for the bonus damage.

Damage is about the only thing you get from driver now and its at the cost of massive amounts of cooldown from Topped off since the movement speed can be subsidized by Speed Demon.

The facepuncher already does this, as much as I hate that it exists.

Kensei not procing melee effects from other items means that its just another bonus element which Amara has 3 of in an average spec.

Cooldown is Amaras most important stat outside of maximizing the little damage we get from her skill tree in comparison to the other characters and Phaszerker is the only COM that gives cooldown in a way that you can also have topped off active at the same time.

#11

Obviously ■■■■■.
My point is that it’s much easier to proc with kensei. You just fakegrasp and boom, plus 1600 ASE elemental damage. All action skill end of annointments procced.

Just untrue. Do some testing with a ties that bind and expediate build.

You can freeze Wotan. And vaporize him. Regardless the kensei deals crazy boss damage anyway. So you vaporize trash mobs and melt bosses without unweave the rainbow.

You get damage, speed and the dot on you builds up groundbreaker which you can use to one shot things. You get a interesting way to play. Yes you loose out of topped out, only you seem to care about that dude. Because all the other spiritual driver players I’ve met, if they’re serious about thier builds have just built in action skill cool down through their equpiment. I don’t even play with Speed demon on

I don’t think you’ve actually used the kensei much. Because if you had your see the damage makes it way worth it. “Just another bonus element”. You sound like you haven’t worked with the mod at all. You know it can actually proc even comboo breaker? Y’all don’t do any testing , or not nearly enough.

Just talking out your asses to be honest.

What???
I think you mean, the driver is the only mod that makes it so you cant use topped off. And yes that’s true, it does have downsides but you can still build around that and have a 6 second cooldown. Which is mighty fast. Faster than all your dots last on you.

So the Facepuncher exist so a melee and gunplay focused mod can’t exist right? Stupid argument. The facepuncher is just a gun. It shouldn’t dictate or impact how the game creators make their games.

People won’t work hard at all into making a mod work. This is end game content my guy, it’s hard to make a build that works. Especially since youtubers haven’t been posting the kensei for ■■■■. And people look at moxxys ice shatter siren and think that’s the best a kensei can do. Which is just sad.
Where if you actually just sat down for more than a day and worked at making it work you’d realise just how little you have to complain about.

Maybe the kensei should have been able to proc melee effects or whatever. But the fact that it can actually be proc combo breaker and go with the flow, is amazing to me. But you didn’t know that right, because you haven’t played the kensei extensively. And are talking out your neck .

Y’all are weird.

#12

Uhm wasn’t fake grasp fixed a while ago? And you should consider that there are consolle players.
On consolle, fakegrasp was never possible, and most important it’s absurdly rare to get a decent Kensei out of Arms Race, because a Kensei with the right skill and the optimal passives is a certain thing, and a random Kensei with wrong skill distribution and atlas fire rate, cov dmg and corrosive resistenze is another

#13

The Elementalist has a couple neat things about it but it’s one of the most disappointing COMs in the game to me.

The Good: There are to my knowledge two good things about the Elementalist Class Mod

  1. Is very good at stacking and maintaining Consecutive Hits anointment and Pearl of Ineffable Knowledge damage bonuses.

  2. Has the capability to reach 10/5 Infusion which enables players to take element-locked weapons and almost completely convert them into other elements. If you ever wanted a cryo Reflux or incendiary Seventh Sense, this gives you the opportunity to (almost) do that.

The Bad: The two aforementioned points aren’t very impressive on their own.

  1. Reaching Pearl and CH max stacks is not a difficult feat for most builds. The bar for reaching maximum stacks isn’t very high and once it’s passed no extra benefit is given because there is a hard ceiling.

  2. Players don’t seem to value breaking weapon element restrictions with Infusion. Possibly because element matching isn’t so important in BL3 or maybe because the opportunity cost of not using other COMs is too high, or maybe there are other reasons. Just speculating.

  3. DOTs don’t do nearly enough damage in the higher Mayhem Levels. Harmageddon isn’t enough to salvage DOTs as a debuff utility either. DOTs just aren’t great so the special effect is of questionable value.

Personally I would use the Elementalist if it just made DOTs worth chasing. Spreading tons of damage types among a mass of enemies is incredibly fun to watch and it feels great with all of Amara’s synergistic element/DOT skills. It can be a really fun mobbing Class Mod while leveling up but the DOT spreading effect really drops off in Mayhem Mode even with a large investment in said skills. I always liked the idea of a crazy good DOT build but the last time I tried using it in higher difficulties the payoff was just too weak, and that was while really pushing hard to put 4 DOT types on all enemies (2-3 elements from ASE anointments, one element from Infusion, and the base element of whatever gun I was using). That’s not to say it can’t be used at Mayhem 10/11 but it doesn’t really stand on its own in a big way like it could (and IMO should). I just want a way to really push DOTs farther, whether it’s from a flat damage buff from the COM itself or some sort of conditional skill or gear requirement that needs to be met.