So, Aurelia is an awesome sniper, no doubt. And, her celestial COM giving her constant ammo regen makes her even more awesome. But, I’m having trouble dealing with close-range attackers. What skills should I use? Which guns should I use? It does seem like Gearbox has a tendency to make Borderlands snipers glass cannons. Mordecai barely had any health regen, Zero needed a transfusion grenade to stay alive in UVHM, and now Aurelia probably needs a transfusion grenade as well.
Tediore shields and bitter riposte to freeze them fast. An explosive gun to shatter them, or a fast cryo gun like a bullpup or anarchist.
A cryo Oz kit helps too. Anything comes close to you, just buttslam and stuff gets frozen.
Polar vortex further helps doing crowd control.
What about Rapid Release? And, how good or bad is Winter’s Fury, and is it worth investing into? Also, is Custom Loads worth it? I often find myself waiting for the right element instead of shooting asap.
It all depends on your playstyle, I was using it, but the way I snipe I wasn’t using it effectively like I could. So I respeccd and removed it.
CQC is a big problem with my baroness as well. I spec down cold money for the close guys, but those heavily shielded guys are still a problem.I have a sure fast tediore sheield that rechagres really fast. that+ bitter riposte helps a lot, not always though since sometimes it just flies around blindly not hitting them when it should. It does help. 1 point, and it seems to instantly freeze just about everything that isn’t cryo based itself.
I just got that torque explosive shotgun in TVHM from the zapped quest so that should help. Honestly my biggest problem CQC is the cryo guys as other than the new shotgun and my jakobs sniper… everything is cryo based and depended upon freezing them.
Up to 45% splash damage and is it worth it?
For those up close and personal moments I’ve been using cryo spike shields with short recharge delays for when Bitter Riposte is busy and a bulky Torgue gun to hammer the popsicles to pieces.
I also have the celestial baroness mod which deals cryo spike damage when her skill is activated. I mostly use her skill solely for CQC. 80% of the time I am sniping from afar and pegging them all off one by one. I can’t do this for all of them of course, like kraggons.
Winter Veil is good. I would max out Avalanche so your cryo defense is more reliable (more points = less stacks needed)
Cryo Anarchist or Cryo Sledges Shotty ftw
I do use transfusion grenades. They help a lot.
I look for quickly recharging shields (for novas and shards) and have all the skills that do ice damage.
Releasing her action skill for up close fights makes for a whirlwind of ice shards and explosions.
Even in UVHM … so far … it is clearing out the groups … maybe leaving one Ultimate BA with a shred of health frozen behind some cover.
Add in a nice purple cryo splitter and it seems easy enough so far.
Can’t wait until I am ready to pull Exalibastard and see how that thing works with her. (I should check my other characters and see if I have one in “storage”.)
Kinda works for mini-bosses with using cover and waiting for recharge … but Bosses which all seem to be immune from freezing … are another story.
Torgue shotguns are good (very good for torks and kraggons), but Torguemada and Flakker seem to have issues with Aurelias skill that boosts pellet speeds. Plenty of other Torgue shotguns to use, however. Or even cryo shot guns.
Be careful with bitter riposte in CQC though… they do splash damage and I’ve gone into many a FFYL and deaths being close to a barrel when it hit a guy. I’ve also seen it freeze two guys who were side by side. Bitter ripotes + guy next to explosive barrel = pure entertainment. 
Yeah, been barrel’ed more times than I can count … with many characters.
If I am thinking I try to shoot the barrels before I get into an area. A little harder to do that sometimes when playing with a group.
Yeah seriously. All my characters have probbaly died more on average because of the barrels than the actual enemies.
Does a spike shield have a status effect chance? I haven’t used a spike shield since my normal playthrough with Maya, lol. If so, what is the chance, because effect chance of oz kits,shields, and grenades are generally not listed. Also, just to be clear, Custom Loads does NOT convert my sniper’s damage, right? Is the elemental damage calculated separately from the gun’s base damage?
1+ points in Bitter Riposte.
1 point in Winters Veil.
1+ points in Whiteout.
I have more of a problem with mid-range enemies (ones close enough that sniping gets sketchy if they decide to close the gap with a sprint). If the Celestial Baroness class mod giving you cryo spike damage to melee enemies who are already eating Bitter Riposte and Winter’s Veil (which invariably manages to freeze anything that hits me) isn’t doing the trick, you can equip an Avalanche (for more spike damage and another cryo nova if needed). Winter’s Fury does work, but while the cooldown is relatively quick, it’s not instant, and can get tricky to keep enemies off you if there are more than two.
I haven’t used Whiteout yet myself, but it looks like it would almost nullify enemies within melee range? I never noticed the 17% before… do subsequent points have diminishing returns (or is there a class mod that buffs this to over 100% so melee enemies might heal you?) 
Nah, iirc, multiple damage resistances are calculated as such, so that they never reduce damage to zero.
my biggest weakness with baroness right now is going against cryo stuff. I keep making the error of depending entirely too much on cryo weapons. I am currently trying to work my way to Pity’s fall[or whatever] and that big ice kraggon with the dude riding his back is wrecking me hardcore. Considering how he pops up always when I killed just about everyone minus the handful of badasses. I get curb stomped pretty quick. That cryo healing thing helps, but I wish it wasn’t a kill skill. Railguns, particularly the fire ones freaking destroy me. I think I may need to shop around for a ultra fast tediore shiled with a higher shield #.
Cryo is my mid-close rank problem solver, but if they are cryo based themselves…??
Fire resistant fast shields. Prevent fire dots from happening. Keep a shock or explosive or non elemental side arm for cryo resistant enemies in that order.
Whiteout isn’t damage reduction, it’s what we call damage mitigation. If the skill wouldn’t have diminishing returns built-in you could reach damage immunity (100%).