An experiment with UVHM Melee

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel Athena the Gladiator
#1

Since we don’t have the ability to start a brand new character at level 60 with full skills, I decided to restart UVHM with my Celestial Gladiator Athena, only I gave all of her gear to a mule, so she started with no gear at all - nothing but her shield and her money (starting build here). I did a straight story-only run, with no chest/loot farming (other than those I found during the course of a quest) or alt-f4/dashboarding. It was actually a lot of fun - challenging in some spots, but otherwise nothing insurmountable. She managed to grind a Celestial Gladiator class mod right before she did the turret training, but otherwise she ended up with no other legendary gear. Her final loadout for fighting the Sentinel below, but the only bladed weapon she ever found was a green Maliwan Cryo SMG (which made badasses MUCH more manageable). Her shield of choice was a blue 47% Adaptive, and her grenade was a decent purple Shock transfusion with around 1.2s delay - she never found anything better (not a single low-delay Tesla, ever :frowning: ). Bottom line, for those who seem to ask every couple of weeks: yes, Melee Athena is viable in UVHM, without the need for any specific piece or quality of gear :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#2

No Golden Keys?

1 Like
#3

Nah, no Golden Keys either - she started with nothing and only used what she found in chests or vendors (without farming) or could grind once her backpack was full. I DID loot Moonstone chests when I found them as well if I could. Made for an interesting run. I was just about to redo her build to something a bit more tanky when she got lucky and was able to grind the Celestial Gladiator class mod.

1 Like
#4

I don’t even melee and I’m pretty impressed with this. I wish I could show this to every noob who shows up to my game and goes “Anyone got any legendaries I can have?”

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#5

I think the “impressive” part is that they’ve managed to balance UVHM such that many different builds are viable, and you don’t need a specific piece or quality of gear to be successful. I doubt I’d be able to solo the raid Sentinel using her as-is (more because of my lack of skill than anything else), but otherwise there’s nothing that’s overly difficult to handle.

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#6

But, melee hazn’ bein viable since evil Gearbox nerfed teh Shooting Star!!!

Nice job proving all of them ^ wrong.

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#7

I’ve always wanted to try this but then I hear all my normal gear doing the puppy dog whimper in the armory.

1 Like