Athena vs Eclipse & EOS, in 3 minutes 30 seconds

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel Athena the Gladiator
#1

[This thread][1]

[1]: The Perfect Storm- A Maelstrom Stacking Method opened my eyes to extreme stacking, and this kill borrows heavily from this. After seeing Jack and Nisha kill Eclipse and EOS literally effortlessly (especially Nisha… tombstone & the unforgiven are just ridiculously OP against EOS), I got really upset, so I wanted to get a fast kill as Athena.

The spec, gear (no Moxxi), and BAR (off) are at the end. The only skills that matter are Maelstrom, Storm Weaving, Unrelenting and Elemental Barrage.

Now, I have two requests for the community:

First, please try to beat my time (or the French guy’s, if that’s even possible) and perhaps come up with better strategies and/or positioning that I haven’t thought of.

Second, can anyone test out Badaboom and/or the Pitchfork? Badaboom does have considerably higher DPS than even the quad-barreled hyperion shotgun, but I just can’t squeeze it in, especially with the travel time. I just found myself switching between the shotguns for the DPS. As for the pitchfork, I know it’s not gonna be as good as the shottys for stacking maelstrom, but I’ve seen jack and nisha use it to absolutely destroy EOS and I’m thinking maybe it has higher DPS than even the shottys. I’m not sure.

Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention: at 700 stacks, when storm weaving is active you have 100% chance to not consume ammo. If anyone’s going with a Badaboom kill, I recommend spamming the s*** out of it when you reach around 700 stacks.

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OG Eclipse and EOS speed kill with history of improvements!
Item Finds of the Day
#2

Oh, and YouTube might still be processing. I dunno. I uploaded it in 720p60.

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#3

Try Clear Skies for comparison to Ack Ack. The extra damage may help shave off some time.

In terms of stacking I think you need to stick with the Hyperion Thinking. I opt for a Taser or Shredifier to take out minions and proc Unrelenting, then swap to Thinking for stacking, then Development for death blow.

One other Closer that I would recommend against Eclipse is the Hail. If you find the range to crit, it will instantly drain his shield and health. I like to swap to corrosive once I’m through the shield and get a kill, then it’s just a matter of finding the range.

Badaboom is a great rocket launcher to run against EOS. Cryophobia is another that I discovered works amazing, especially if you have Flash Freeze and are at max stacks when you swap. From my experience by the time you get through the shields you’re already at max stacks with the Development and you’re through each health phase a couple seconds later so I’m not sure swapping to RL will make it any faster. It’s just a lot more fun :slight_smile:

Try and find some vids of @Ha_Na for maybe some other ideas.

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#4

Hmm… I’ll try. It’s the vladof Oz kit, right?

Why didn’t I think of the Hail… good one there. And about the RL, yes, I agree that swapping to RL might actually be a DPS/time loss. Who knows.

Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll definitely try them out.

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#5

you could get a slightly faster time if you used an aggressive expansion instead of a thinking for stack building.

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#6

I’ve never heard of it. Is it another weapon?

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#7

hyperion shotgun with a tediore barrel. its the same as the thinking (hyperion barrel) except it has higher damage but less accuracy.

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#8

If the rate of fire is faster, I might have to try that out.

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#9

Okay it looks like there is no difference between the shotguns except for damage, accuracy and mag size.

But damage is really, really miniscule and negligible difference and mag size +1 is… well, not much. That accuracy drop might affect how many of the pellets hit the boss, though, so I see no reason to use the tediore barrel over hyperion one, especially since I’m not using Thinking for raw DPS (that’s for badaboom/torgue barrel)

But thanks for the suggestion. 8/10 with rice.

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#10

i saw a green arrow next to damage, and i thought that it meant that it would do more. after testing, i found its not. i just like shiny green arrows. sorry for wasting your time.

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#11

no problemo!

For future references, athena’s stacking speed is mostly dependent on # of pellets and rate of fire, with splash and DoT playing a minor role.

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#12

in that case, maybe switch out the fast talker for a meat grinder? 8.7 fire rate and 3 pellets per shot. might be better than the fast talker.

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#13

I’ve tried it but the ■■■■■ accuracy really is poopy sometimes… I’ve already tried meat grinder and while it does stack slightly faster, again, dat accuracy…

Obviously, there is some bias here. It’d be nice to see someone else’s view on this.

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#14

accuracy is big, i can understand that. but on eclipse if you are close to him, accuracy shouldn’t even be a concern. for mobbing though. that accuracy would really suck.

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#15

Accuracy is also really important when it comes to critical hits not to mention Hyperion barrels just seem to handle better than Tediore in terms of recoil. But I wouldn’t hesitate using a Tediore barrel Hyperion shotgun if I had the vertical grip accessory and no Hyperion alternative since fire rate, ammo efficiency, and magazine size are the most important factors for stacking Maelstrom. Damage really is secondary since you’re swapping to a Closer, or high-powered weapon, when your stack count hits 400+ and you have Unrelenting active for the coup de grace.

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#16

Damn this is crazy. Some of that gear is really hard to get, but this has inspired me to dust off Athena. She’s been on the back burner for quite a while now.

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#17

If you managed to farm a set of Bullpups before they patched that loyalty farming then you can use those but if not just keep on the lookout for any shock or incendiary purple Hyperion shotty. Hyperion or Tediore barrel is your Stacker, and Jakobs, Bandit, or Torgue barrel, is a Closer.

I found my first Practicable Thinking against Iwajira back at level 60. It had less than ideal parts but the prefix and element were right and I knew I had something special. I still kept that and my shock Focus Group that I used to learn how to max stack Maelstrom with.

Now I run a glitched Practicable Thinking and it’s quite insane the difference in stacking but it’s not necessary. If you see the first video in my thread you’ll see I went from 0 to 999 in less than 30 seconds with okay gear. Timing with Storm Weaving and a good run of free ammo from Elemental Barrage is everything.

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#18

Yeah, she has a LOT of potential with CS tree, and it’s sad that people brush it off in favour of easier class like nisha or jack.

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#19

Really, any new-style hyperion shotguns will do - having a practicable thinking and practicable development just makes it a bit easier.

Bullpup is old-style, so firerate is slower and you will stack slower.

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Athena skill tree setup